I lied.

I lied to you, and to myself, about why I started this blog. Yes, I want a creative outlet. Yes, I think I have some helpful tips that may help others. But here's the real reason.

I had a miscarriage. Or rather, a missed miscarriage. I had known I was pregnant for one day short of two months, from mid October to right before Christmas. We had seen the heartbeat twice, everything looked great. I felt awful (nauseous) but that subsided around 9 weeks, possibly around the same time our baby stopped growing and died.

But, while there were no symptoms of a miscarriage, I knew something was different. I just suddenly felt differently about it all. I wasn't surprised when, at our 12 week appointment, my OB-GYN could not find the heartbeat with the fetal scope, or the external ultrasound. Or when he did an internal ultrasound and said that the baby was measuring at only 9 weeks and there was, unfortunately, no heartbeat.

I wasn't surprised but I was still devastated.

A D&C was performed four days before Christmas, and it was all over. We'll never know why it happened, or if the baby was a boy or a girl. It was just a bad thing that happened. It just happened.

And now all that exists as evidence of that pregnancy is memory and two ultrasound photos, neither of which looks like a fetus. I remember bringing the pictures home and thinking, "Looks like fuzz to me." At the ultrasound that revealed our baby had died, it looked like a fetus. Perfectly formed with a giant round head and a tiny little body, in profile.

So I've been occupying myself with projects while I mentally keep tally of where we should have been. We should have already known what it was-- boy or girl. We should have been arguing about discussing names. We should have been bringing home a healthy baby in a little more than four months from now. But none of that is happening.

I partly started this blog as another project, to keep moving forward. I am a firm believer in dealing with things and moving on. DEAL WITH, MOVE ON. In that order.

I'm trying to make it bright for you, but I'm also making it bright for me.