This January sucks. I’m just going to come out and say it. Not only are we (still) dealing with COVID and all the stressful stuff that comes with it, but it’s just a heap of grief rolled into the first month of the year for me. January 7th marks 6 months since I had my D&C, 184 days since the miscarriage was medically over. This Saturday marks the day Bean was supposed to be due. We should have a full nursery right now, complete with a full wardrobe and toys, but instead, that room is still my office as it is slowly becoming a nursery for a different baby. We should have a lot of things right now and we should be doing different things than what we’re doing, but unfortunately, that’s not the reality.

When I’ve brought up my grief with some people, they saw, “but you have a healthy baby that will be coming in July.” Just because I am pregnant again with my rainbow baby, it doesn’t replace my loss and it doesn’t erase my grief. I can be excited for my baby boy arriving in July, but still grieve the baby I should have welcomed this weekend.

Now, I’m weird about my feelings. I don’t practice what I preach to my clients all the time. I find it hard to be open with most people about my feelings, especially grief. I am incredibly open with my husband and a few friends, but then with others, I feel too vulnerable talking about my grief. But I can’t keep this in. I can’t bottle this up and force only myself and my baby boy to cope with this powerful feeling.

So I’m dealing with it the best way I can: with a schedule and planning. It may not work, but I’m hoping that it will at least get me through this weekend which is a good first step. My plan is to work on Saturday, the original due date, but only work in the morning, and then I get the afternoon to be miserable and watch movies. Then, on Sunday, it’s time to keep busy and get out of my head. That’s where I had to reach out to someone in my village and that’s where my mom came into play. We’re going to spend the day together to keep me out of my head.

I don’t have the instruction book on how to navigate grief after a miscarriage or how to navigate a pregnancy after miscarriage, especially in an unsettling time such as a pandemic. I don’t know how this weekend is going to go or how I’m going to cope, but I know that I need to work through my feelings and emotions for my baby boy. I just hope that I can be the mom he can be proud of one day.