One Month

One month.

Women who experience a loss like this seem to do it in stages - and they tend to coincide with the developmental stage their baby would have been in, had they lived. That's my current theory. At least, that's what I've noticed in the brief time I've been reading the journeys of others through this dark landscape.

My theory, at least anecdotally, seems to be bearing itself out.

Today I'm imagining my one-month-old. A one-month-old William. What would he be like? He'd still be a tiny little guy, but growing, nursing around the clock, keeping us awake nights. We'd be taking long naps together in the afternoon, he and I, and I'd be washing diapers constantly, too. (If he was big enough to fit into them yet!) I'd be carrying him in a sling most of the time, and tucking him into his car seat whenever we had to go out.

They change so very much that first month. What color would his eyes be now? Would they be lightening like mine or darkening into his Daddy's deep brown hue? And all that gorgeous hair he had... would it be falling out, like some newborn hair does, or would he have kept it, I wonder? He'd have his alert times - his eyes open and exploring our faces, memorizing us - and his sleepy times, probably sucking his thumb like his sisters and brother did, his breath like a soft breeze over sweet grass on my cheek when I rested beside him. We'd be just discovering his moods, his temperament. Fiery little Aries, most likely, just as lively outside as he had been inside.

I'm sure his daddy would have been walking him around a lot at night to give Mommy a break, like he did the other two between nursing when they didn't seem to want to sleep. I can see William's tiny body propped up on his big shoulder, while Daddy sang him the "Gone Fishin'" song and, eventually, any and every song he could think of... (strangely, Daddy singing his off-key version of "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC quieted both of the other two down... don't ask me!)

William and I would be spending every day alone together until the littles would come home from school and rush to see him and say hello. Z. would act the little mommy, asking to change and burp and feed him all the time. (Sorry, sweetie, only Mommy can do that last one!) I can see her natural mothering tendency just coming out, cooing and talking to him just like she did when she held him in the hospital, exclaiming over his every little perfection.

And Daddy would come back from work to find his little family, William and I snuggled together somewhere, on the couch or in our bed, his son nursing and his wife reading a book, or typing (one handed!) on the laptop, the other two kids jumping around him, as excited as our cocker spaniel to have him finally home.

Our days would be full of the sweetly mundane, and they would pass so fast that I would look at the calendar today, May 1 - and wonder where the time had gone, and exclaim over how big my baby boy had grown, how much he was changing, that he wasn't my "little newborn" anymore. And I would be taking lots of pictures so I could remember our last, sharing them, our precious little man, with friends and family, always the proud mama - don't I have the most beautiful baby in the world? Isn't he a dream?

A dream. Yes. Yes, he is.

He was.

A dream I dreamed for nearly a year before he was born still and I woke up into the nightmare my life has become since he died. Just a sweet, heartbreaking dream.

If he were alive, I might have glanced at the calendar today and smiled - a month! Time flies! But I would have probably been too busy to really think about it, to consider it more than just a little milestone, a brief marker of time as we moved through our day, our week, our life together, William and I.

But he's not alive, and hasn't been for a month. All the mothers who gave birth around the same time I did are doing all of those things with their one month olds that I imagined, but I'm not. They're lamenting how fast the time has gone, how much their babies have grown and changed, how their tiny newborn is now a developing little person, and I'm lamenting that all I have left of my baby is a memory box, an urn with his ashes, and some pictures.

Time goes on, but the image of William stays the same, fixed, unchanging. This is the image I will have of him forever, and nothing more. His lips and fingernails and face will always be red with pooled blood, his skin beginning to fill with fluid, to wrinkle and slough off.

He'll never grow and change over time, learn to track objects with his eyes, or to find his thumb for comfort. He'll never experience the beauty and joy of his first month in the world, the softness and nourishment of his mother's breast, the sound of his Daddy's sweet songs, the laughter of his siblings, the bright beauty of the afternoon sun streaming into our bedroom windows.

He's a month gone from me, and it might as well be an eternity. Today I woke with the weight of that knowledge hanging around my neck, so unbearably heavy I didn't want to move, now or ever again.