It's Here.

It's here.

It's here and I am not ready. I thought I was, but I'm not. I don't know how to account for the past year, and I had hoped by now that I would. But it's here, so here I sit on a couch in the dark just as I sat one year ago, wishing time would just stop. Because it's here and I'm not ready. Because there really is no great way to adequately mark a birth day that never was and the year of unimaginable firsts that followed.

I have a million times replayed the life I thought I'd have each day of the past 365, contrasting it against the one I've got and imagining what each and every day would have held, if only.

It's here and I'm not ready, but here it is all the same. And while I wish this day had no reason to be different than any other, there is so much I want to remember from the year I'd just like to forget. So I write, because that's what I do when I don't know how to think about something...


Just seconds before my OB turned away from the ultrasound screen, I remember thinking, He has to tell me that he can't find a heartbeat. I had seen the screen where my boys sat silently; I knew what he knew.

He didn't need to say anything at all; his face gave it away — genuine sympathy mixed with something else, something very telling from someone who has seen this before: a quick glimpse in one small grimace of all that is to come.

"Oh sweetie, I am so sorry. They're gone."

My brain was racing, though I didn't move and didn't know what to say, so I sat: quiet.

I was so quiet, that after a minute, my doctor asked me if I understood what that meant. I understood. But all I could think was nothing and everything all at once. So I sat there, quiet, while my brain whirred on.

Finally, after staring at my toes for what felt like an awkward amount of time—the toenails I had painted blue for my baby shower just three days before—I noticed both my doctor and the nurse staring at me, waiting for me to say something. And I realized I was supposed to take the lead. So I said, "Are you—"

I stopped. I knew what I wanted to ask, but I didn't want to hear the response. So the three of us just sat there. Me, staring at my blue-is-for-boys toenails, and the doctor and nurse staring at me as I tried to make sense of the unimaginable by playing back the months and weeks and days leading up to what had just become the worst day of my life...

I remember being relieved that Andy wasn't with me, because I didn't want to look at anyone, didn't want to say anything, didn't want to move, and I would have wanted to look at him had he been with me. I would have needed to follow his lead, and I was glad to just sit silent.

I remember thinking it was nice of my doctor to have gently covered my sticky belly with a towel before telling me. I remember thinking it would have been awkward to be laying there bare-bellied while they stared at me and I stared at my toenails.

I remember thinking for a long time about that blue toenail polish. I had bought it to use on one of the babies so that we could tell him apart from his identical brother after they were born—I had read something about that being a good idea. I had the same brand of green toenail polish that Nora helped me pick out tucked in a drawer at home, waiting for the day our boys would turn our world upside down.

I remember thinking that never in a million years could I have guessed that this would be their birthday and that this is how our lives would so change.

And then I remember thinking, But maybe I did.

I reasoned with myself, as I stared at my blue toes, that I had been overly and increasingly paranoid about this pregnancy over the past few weeks. I reminded myself of the braxton hicks that wouldn't end. Of the persistent promptings I'd regretfully ignored to make Andy take my picture, a blissfully unaware, happily round-bellied soon-to-be mom. And of the literally overwhelming joy that washed over me when I felt a strong jab on my left abdomen just two days before. So overwhelming, that even now, I remember it clearly: the last time I felt Benjamin kick.

I remember wondering, if I sat there thinking long enough, would I be able to recall the last time I felt Andrew?

I remember thinking about Andy then. The boys' kicks had just recently become strong enough for anyone besides me to feel. Andy had only felt them move once—a week before—and I felt so sad that I hadn't grabbed his hand and placed it on my belly every moment between then and now. I wondered if his only memory of our boys would be of those jabs and kicks on the Sunday afternoon I spent sorting through boxes of Porter's old baby clothes.

I remember thinking about everything we had already done to get ready for our boys—just in case they came early, as twins often will. And I wondered if I had jinxed them. I remember wondering if I had only put all of the shopping and decorating and celebrating off, would things have turned out differently? Then I remember wondering if I had subconsciously known all along that those seven months would be all the time I'd get as their mom.

I remember thinking about how I put off calling my doctor that morning to ask about the contractions and lack of movement. I had told myself it was because I didn't want to be the crazy lady with a million questions. I had told myself that everything was fine. But even then, I knew I needed to call.

I remember thinking that before, when the nurse had gone to get the first ultrasound machine after the doppler failed to pick anything up on what was supposed to be a quick non-stress test, I had momentarily thought it ironic that I was lying there waiting to hear my babies' hearts beat while I could so clearly hear the heartbeat from the soon-to-be born baby in the delivery room next to me.

And I remember thinking about the prayer I had frantically whispered just 20 minutes before the silence that now surrounded me, after the nurse left the room to get the second, "better" ultrasound machine. It was rushed and felt, even as I said it, like it was too late. I just kept repeating, "Please let them be ok, please let them be ok, please let them be ok." I thought about bargaining in that prayer, but then I thought it weird that I was begging for them to be ok; I was being overly dramatic—of course they were ok, because these kinds of things don't happen to me.

I remember wondering how unlikely the odds must be for someone to naturally conceive identical twins and then to also lose them this far along. Surely, these kinds of things just don't happen, right?

I remember thinking that I had been wrong. How in the world do these kinds of things happen? 

I remember thinking a whole lot as the minutes ticked by and my doctor waited for my response. And then I took a deep breath, looked up only to quickly look back down to my blue toenails, and asked, "Are you sure?"


How can 365 days have passed when just one of those days runs on repeat in my head? It's here, and it feels all too similar to that other quiet morning in the dark, willing time to stop while waiting for the sun. And still, I'm not ready.