4 Months

The anger and bitterness have been washed away and replaced with longing and sadness today.  A friend of mine had her baby girl  and another close friend is due in the coming weeks.  I have decided to embrace the sadness, just as I embraced happiness yesterday.  I am allowing myself to cry for what I am missing.  I am allowing myself to recognize the divide that is created between those with children, and those without.  I recognize that to others I am in the "without" category.

I wonder what it will be like to see these friends again?  I feel like there is a black mark on me.  I am hesitant to see them not only because of my own feelings, but to spare them the pain as well.  

I am their worst case scenario.  

I keep thinking of what it would be like to hold a living baby.  I don't really remember holding Julia.  My only vivid memory of her is feeling her cheek against mine in the recovery room-her skin was already beginning to turn cold.  I worry that parents would be reluctant to let me hold their newborns.  That they would think I could somehow rub off on their little ones.  Or that I would not want to give them their child back.  When I do hold a newborn it will be sad.  I will probably cry and think of Julia.  But handing the child back to her mother will not be hard. You can't replace one baby with another.  Julia is irreplaceable.

She would have been four months old tomorrow.