those pictures of us

I'm wishing, at this moment, that I had taken more pics of me pregnant with baby #2.

My father-in-law got married to a lovely lady on Saturday. I'll post pics soon, especially of G because he was so stinkin' cute in his bow-tie and hat. My mother-in-law was the photographer and she asked me to be a bit of a second shooter for her. A few hours before the wedding, I cleaned off my SD card to make room.

As the photos, about 800 of them, were deleting off the card, I caught a glimpse of me pregnant with baby #2. I was 10 weeks at the time.

A huge wave of panic hit me. I thought I had copied all of the photos off my SD card, but I knew I had to check for my own sanity. I pulled up my folders, scanned through the past three months, and found only one from that photo session, the one I had used to blog that I was 10 weeks pregnant.

I had been meaning to take another maternity photo of myself, especially after I hit the second trimester mark a few weeks later. But I never did. There are no photos of me earlier along than that.

In a blink, I had deleted all of the rest of those photos from that 10 week session. There were a few others, a few of me with G as well. The lost of those hurt the worst. How stupid was that of me? Tears immediately glossed over my eyes. I didn't want to lose it, knowing I had to soon get ready for the wedding, but I could feel the grief welling up inside me all over again. One photo. That was all I had of me pregnant with baby #2. I already had an overwhelming sense of having nothing to remind me of second-baby, especially the lack of a body to bury. This was just one more heart-wrenching kick-me-while-I'm-down moment.

I took a deep breath and traveled further back in my stored photos. To 2011. To Christmas.

Here, here is a picture of me pregnant. The morning of Christmas Eve.

And here, another one. The evening of Christmas Day.

I was 6 1/2 weeks pregnant on Christmas and already showing, my belly bloated and swollen, my face already filling out.

And here, on my 30th birthday. Four weeks pregnant and I knew.

I knew so so early in that pregnancy that there was a new life inside me. I tested positive on a pee stick 8 days after ovulation, when I was only 3 weeks and 2 days pregnant.

There may be others, other photos that other people took of me when I was pregnant, and I cling to these photos because it's all that I have left. I have my hospital bracelet sitting on my jewelry box. I have the scar on my wrist that may never go away, one inch to the left of the IV scar from G's birth. I have second-baby's first ultrasound pictures, and a morbid part of me wishes we had images from the ultrasound that diagnosed the miscarriage. Second-baby had been so utterly beautiful to me at that moment.

I hate so badly that I deleted those photos of me 10 weeks pregnant, except for the one above. I wish I had taken some when I was 13 weeks pregnant, a week before all of that baby was lost to me. I promise myself that I'll do better with the next one, but that doesn't erase the heaviness that always lingers on my chest.

It's been almost 8 weeks since the day we found out about the miscarriage. Sometimes it feels like it never happened, especially as I sit here in my very not-pregnant body. Sometimes it grasps at my running heels as though it was yesterday.