By Marissa Khosh 
Sometimes I miss those days of innocence. Those days before the grief. Those days before our reality became a repetitive bad dream.
Oh, how I miss those days of excitedly trying to begin a beautiful journey of parenthood. Those days of dreaming about our future children. I miss those days from long ago when my heart still rejoiced at a positive pregnancy test.
I miss those days of secret smiles over the hidden treasure I carried in my womb. I miss those days of blissful planning from before loss taught my heart the cruel fact that our best intentions don’t always produce the best results.
I miss being able to make light of the idea of having more children. I miss trying to convince my husband, jokingly, that we should have 12 kids. I miss the days when those kinds of comments and jokes didn’t feel like a sharp knife piercing my heart.
Crazy as it sounds, I miss that terrible two-week wait that drove me insane because I was hoping to be pregnant so badly. I miss buying several boxes of pregnancy tests at the dollar store (usually more than once), knowing I would not be able to wait a full two weeks to start testing.
I miss dreaming of our next baby as I cuddled our first to sleep. I miss longing to be pregnant with a sibling for my daughter. I miss caressing a still-flat pregnant belly with love overflowing from my heart. Oh, how I miss that innocence, that unparalleled joy.
I miss the beauty of dreaming about what our baby would be like. I miss the peace of believing all would be well with my child. I miss the excitement of growing our family.
But now . . . Too many of those dreams turned into nightmares. Too many times the peace was shocked out of me. Too many times I was let down by the news that this would not be a sibling for my daughter.
I will never be that woman from those early days of trying to grow our family again. I cannot possibly think of pregnancy as a blissfully happy experience anymore. I can no longer joke about the multitude of children I want to have without feeling the painful memories crash into me.
I can no longer say we are going to have at least three children. When I’m asked by a stranger whether I want to have more kids, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and my words get jumbled. I try to give some kind of answer. But there really is no answer to that question. Just pain.
I miss those innocent days so much. I miss the joy that is unbiased by hurt and trauma. I miss it so much. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those ignorant days.
But that’s not who I am anymore. I’m a different person now, a different mom. And this new version of me . . . I would not have chosen it for myself. But God did. And I trust that right now, I am exactly where He wants me.
And I also trust He will not waste my pain. He always has a purpose—even in the pain. I began to learn this when my cardiac baby (that sibling for my daughter for whom we waited so long) had to go through pain to receive ultimate healing for her heart.
As I stayed by her side every moment of every hospital stay, I realized I am like a baby when it comes to pain. I beg God to make the painful things stop, unaware that those painful things have to happen for God to ultimately fix my heart.
I might not ever understand it in this life. But I have to trust that He knows best. I have to trust Him with faith like a child. Even when I miss those days from before loss.
by Megan Hanlon 
by Jenny Albers 
