January 31

One year ago today, our son came into the world not alive. After nearly two weeks of wrestling with our insurance company, and standing by as our doctor fought for us with Swedish Hospital in Seattle, who ultimately denied the termination of my pregnancy due to its Catholic affiliation, we spent several days at the University of Washington Medical Center. I heard the word "abortion" more times than I ever care to again, and saw it written in type on documentations with my name on them. I awoke to a hospital bed covered in blood, and was transferred to a hotel bed to sleep for the rest of the day. The next morning we were driving back to Bellingham, and the morning after that was The Superbowl and my Mother's 60th birthday, and the day the world found out that Philip Seymour Hoffman was dead.

The days that followed were full of medication and walks outdoors with my father and hibernation. My milk had come in, and the only relief I found was in cold cabbage leaves on my skin. I took pills and drank wine, and our house was covered in vases full of flowers from people I didn't have the energy to thank. I returned to work shortly thereafter, where it seemed women everywhere were finding out they were pregnant. I was mortified by the awareness that people were uncomfortable around me, that they were looking at me as the girl whose baby had died.

We named our son Clark. When his due date came around in June, we had a small ceremony for him in my parents' backyard and buried his ashes beside a newly planted tree. My mother placed a small clay bird over the place he laid. My father shared some eloquent words, none of which I remember. Someone gave my parents a blue knit diaper cover fit for a baby born at 20 weeks.
I have never been able to look at it.

In October, I went on a writing retreat with a good friend of mine to Arch Cape, Oregon. My grandmother had just passed away, and I wanted to compile some of the essays I'd started over the past year into a manuscript about loss. I was in the midst of writing about some of the darkest days I'd had after losing Clark, when I peed on a stick in a single-stall bathroom in a tavern and found out I was pregnant. My friend and I shared an order of chili cheese fries and a slice of chocolate peanut butter pie, and I borrowed her phone to call Robert. I tried to write during the days that followed about what it felt like to be pregnant again after losing a baby, and then I came home and haven't written a word since.

We have returned to the same doctor, and taken early tests and we have been cautious. We found out early that we're expecting a daughter, and we found out she is developing a functioning brain and has a skull that is covering her entire head. These are all good things, and we are grateful each day for the miracle of growth and the fact that all signs point to health. We will love her wholeheartedly and love every moment we get to share with her on this earth. But the fact that I am pregnant does not mean I am fine, nor does it mean that everything that happened before is behind me. It will always be with me, and the name Clark will not be foreign to our daughter, and his imprint will never leave its mark on my broken heart.