Lately I’ve been feeling guilty. 5 years out from my loss, and yet I am still hopeful next time it won’t hurt.

-Next time someone says they are pregnant, I won’t forget to breathe.
-Next time someone talks about their pregnancy as if it will come to full and healthy fruition, I won’t want to punch them.
-The next time I see a gender reveal party, I won’t think about how it is all fun and games until the ultrasound tech reveals your baby is missing the top portion of their skull, oops.
-The next time someone posts their belly on Instagram, I won’t study it and die a little inside just remembering how good it could have been.
-The next time someone has their baby and it is healthy and fine like it always is, I will be happy for them and I will expect that of course, that baby is okay, and send a card and mean it when I say “Congratulations” ...

But it never fails, it never comes, the next time.

I think the peculiar torture that is infant loss is this. The entire worlds most amazing gift brings the highest high a person can have and go. But when it goes wrong, it’s the worst pain of all. We have to tuck away that pain, feel all the triggers, to be in society against the normal again. Where else is someone’s triggers glorified in such a way? Where else does someone have an entire greeting card area of their trigger plastered all over the isle?

We are supposed to smile and be happy and go back to thinking pregnancies are exciting and special and babies are amazing, happy little beings that bring us blessings and miracles and yet, yet they can also bring burials and leaking breasts and cries and terror in the night.

I do relate to this Anon. I’ve got nothing to say that would help. So just know that I’m sitting here with you. Feel free to pretend I’m next to you when it happens, we can give each other a pointed look, a hand squeeze, remember our kids for a second, and just get on with our day...hugs mama.

Me too, I want to be happy for the pregnant women I come accross; my neighbour, my ex collegue, the other mums at my son's school...but something just pulls me back, that voice inside my head like a little reminder saying "don't be happy for them because your baby died". I don't know what it is about that voice. It's as if it would mean forgetting her and the trauma we went through as a family if the voice didn't remind me of it.
So I dont think I'll ever be truely happy for someone who is expecting a baby.