Different

October 24, 2014

The loss of Olivia is just different from the other losses. For one, we knew about her for more than twice as long. We knew she was a girl. Our daughters knew about Olivia and were anticipating her arrival with us.  My body had already grown to accommodate her.

It was different also because she is the only baby we lost after seeing a heartbeat.  And we saw or heard it four times from seven to 12 weeks. She’s the only baby we lost after we were “in the clear” of the second trimester.  

But what really makes this different is we knew her as our daughter.  And the girls knew her as their sister.  We had chosen her name. We had talked about her. We had looked ahead and imagined our life with her.  Of course we’d imagined our life with each of our other losses but this time our imaginations had more detail, more reality to pull from.

And perhaps the most bittersweet: we had more time to fall in love with her.