Awww are you guys on a babymoon too? A complete stranger asked as I laid on a beach in Kauai quietly crying under my sunglasses.
No. Vacation. I think, I responded. The woman proceeded to share the babymoon she was on and all the stuff she wasn’t able to do that she thought she’d be able to do but because she’s pregnant she just can’t do. I silently nod and let the sound of waves soothe me to sleep…
It makes sense she would ask. I still looked six months pregnant and my skin showed fresh stretch marks — battle scars I managed to avoid until delivering our son’s soulless 9 lb. body just 42 days earlier.
Her questions brought on intense sadness and instead of turning to judgement to numb feeling sad, I let curiosity run its course. Where did sadness come from?
While being sad, I started writing about how strange it was to be sitting on a gorgeous beach on an unexpected trip in a place I only dreamed about visiting. If our son had lived, we wouldn’t be here. Now we are here because our son died and I didn’t know how to shake sad. Up until this point, I had only been good at being numb. Yet being in paradise also made me angry — I wanted our son more than sand. It was a necessary realization as there was certainly a season just a few months earlier I would have preferred the sand over our son. I saw a different side of…
