To My Baby on Your Due Date

Today would have been Miles’s due date. Would have been? Is? Was? I don’t know the correct way to say it, but he was due today, October 22, 2020.

I took the day off work to just allow myself time and space to have big feelings if I needed to. I know, as Jon pointed out, that Miles most likely would not have been born today at all. I have always said that due dates are just best guestimates and they are pretty arbitrary. They give you an idea of when to be ready, but no one can pin them down. And I know that Jon is probably right about that. I could still be pregnant with a giant belly and swollen feet. Cillian was three days early so maybe Miles would already be here and we’d be basking in postpartum glory. We have no way to really know.

But either way, it felt important to mark today. Even though C was born on the 18th, I still remember his due date was the 21st. We certainly don’t celebrate his due date but as a mother, those things never leave us. Cillian has a birth day where we celebrate him each year and Miles does too. His birthday is May 30th. That is the day we will celebrate his life every year.

I count myself among the lucky to have a date and time to mark Miles’s birth. A lot of women who have experienced loss don’t have that. They don’t know when exactly their baby stopped developing or died. All they really know is the day they found out and that’s a sad day no matter how you look at it. Their body might have then taken days or weeks to complete the miscarriage process and, depending on the circumstances, she might not know when exactly her baby came out. It would be difficult to pin that down as a birthday. Those who had to have a D&C to remove her baby have a date but that hardly seems like a date to honor your baby. Perhaps that is why days, weeks, or even the whole season in which a mother loses a baby hold so much weight.

This seems to be why most parents choose to celebrate the due date of a baby who didn’t stay on earth rather than any of the dates that were consumed by sorrow. The due date was a date that was only looked on with hope and positive expectations. It was the count down to baby, the deadline to preparedness. Because of that, it felt really important to mark today, Miles’s due date, as a special occasion at least this year. Maybe next year it won’t feel so big or so heavy, but this year I want to allow it to feel anyway it needs to.

So, happy due date, sweet Miles!

I never imagined I’d have a child I don’t get to hold. I never thought I’d celebrate your life without squeezy hugs and sugar covered kisses. I never fathomed how completely my heart could break and yet go on beating. We miss you constantly. We miss you every family photo. We miss you every introduction. We miss you every restful night and every easy morning. You should be here upending the life we know and forcing us to learn all over again. In a way, you are. Just not in the way we expected. None of these beautiful words come close to expressing the aching we have for you. All I can say is, we wish you were here instead of there.
Love,
Your Family.