The Should-Be Mom

Mornings are rough. That's what my friend Liz told me when she lost her baby just weeks before we lost Andrew. The same has rang true for us. I think it's the reality I have to face when I wake up that I don't have my son. The day will carry on as though he were never grown and never born and I hate that. I also hate that I can do whatever I want on any given morning because he isn't here. I don't want that freedom ever again.

Saturday mornings particularly prove to be the worst. Even though Ray is home with me and we usually sleep in, I still struggle with the reality that we should be waking up and having amazing family time. I know that what I want is probably a dream: baby sound asleep after a long and restful night, waking up and making waffles, going for a jog or walking in downtown Naperville with our stroller and grabbing coffees, smoothies, or whatever else sounds good. But since all I'll ever have with Andrew are dreams, I think I deserve whatever I want to think up-- even if they aren't reality (talking about the whole baby sound asleep part). I should be a mom to that little munchkin. Not a mom to a dead baby... a mom to a real, live, smiling baby who needs us. We should be excited about Saturday family days and looking forward to all the fun things we can do this summer like hiking and short driving trips.

It's also hard to think about never having Andrew again. For some reason our brains work in strange ways. Though I plan to become pregnant again with baby #2 (I hope) sometime this year, I still can't wrap my head around the fact that baby #2 won't be Andrew. I can't fathom, for some reason, that it's not just a long wait again for us to meet up with him and finally get to know him. It's weird to think that I will give birth once again to a baby that is possibly a baby girl and not a baby boy! Baby #2 will end up being a baby totally different and never our Andrew. We'd love them just the same, but it won't be him. Since we dreamt for nearly 19 weeks about our baby boy (since we found out the gender at 20 weeks gestation), we had such visions. Our dreams didn't start there, but they became reality when we placed a name to his baby body. Ray even admits that he has little flash-forwards of "I can't wait to ____ with Andrew when he comes." We know he has come and gone. We know. But for some reason our brains aren't willing to release that reality just yet. All it does is make us sad that we won't be able to do all of those wonderful things with him, so I sure wish our brains would kick in to reality soon.

This should-be mom and should-be dad still have hope in the future of our Wilson family, just missing our baby boy, that's all.