Hopeful – Last October

Parker and I always knew that we wanted more babies after Benny passed.  Darcy wasn’t meant to be an only child.  I had always wanted three, but when we had a very spirited second child, I had begun to rethink that plan.

So over the summer we tried again.  We figured it would take a while, seeing as how it took four months for us to conceive the first two.  Imagine my surprise when we fell pregnant rather quickly.  We found out on September 1st, our 8 year anniversary (there’s that number again).  Based on everything, we were due on May 8th…the 6 month mark of the accident, the day that we buried Benny a year ago.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but I was excited, I had hope again.

On September 8th, I started spotting.  I had gone in for bloodwork earlier that day and when I called the next morning, my numbers were low, super low.  I knew that I was miscarrying, but I was so angry at the injustice of it all!  Hadn’t we suffered enough??  And of all days, for this to happen on the 10 month anniversary of Benny’s death?!  I was not in a good place for awhile.  I felt like I was falling backwards again.  I only had hope for 8 days, but it was a lot to lose so quickly.  I just kept thinking that I had been pregnant three times and I only had one living child.  I was beside myself.

We went to see the midwife.  She had seen me when I was pregnant with Benny, but since moved to a practice here in Worcester.  We went in and she asked if we could wait before trying again.  I started crying and told her no, that we had already lost too much.  I told her about Benny and how we felt we had lost so much time already.  I was going to be 35, and that meant now I fell into the ‘older mom’ category, that scared the shit out of me!

Fast Forward to October 15th.  I was having a hard time that night.  I had already taken a hundred pregnancy tests (or so it seemed) and nothing.  I was sad, I was desperate.  November 8th was hanging over my head and for the first time, I realized how close it really was.  How it really had been a year since my world imploded.

I lie in bed next to Parker snoring and I begged Benny to pull a miracle.  I needed that hope again, I wanted to feel life growing inside of me.  I cried and I begged Benny and my mom to pull some strings.  I wanted to fill my empty arms.

I had two dreams that night, one filled with positive pregnancy tests (which I had last time too).  In another dream, there were two little boys.  One was definitely Benny and a part of me knew that he was ‘on loan,’ he wasn’t mine to keep.  The other looked similar, but was much calmer.  I think we were at the beach, because both boys were eating rocks and sand and I had to keep pulling them out of their little chubby hands.  I woke up nervous and excited.

After I put Darcy on the bus, I tested and got a faint line.  This made me nervous, because we got faint lines last time too.  I tried really hard to breathe and stay cautiously optimistic.  I called Parker and said, ‘so I had a dream last night.’  He said, ‘yeah me too.  I dreamt that we had a little boy that looked like Benny, but he was different, and I knew it wasn’t Benny.’  I started to cry.  How is it possible that we both had little boy dreams on the same night??

I’m attempting to stay cautiously optimistic.  I understand too well that there are still a million things that could go wrong.  But I have a Benny on my side.  He’s already pulled some incredible stunts, so I’m hopeful that this is one of them.  The bottom line is that I’m hopeful again, which is an amazing feeling.

Author: sheriroaf

Sheri Roaf is the mother of four wonderful children who turned to blogging after her 17 month old son Bennett passed away unexpectedly. Through her writing she has found a way to help herself and her family move forward in the face of tragedy. View all posts by sheriroaf