The last milestone.

This pregnancy has been filled with both excitement and trepidation. And as much as I try not to compare this pregnancy with my last one – and believe this one will have a happier ending – it’s only natural to reflect on prior experiences when navigating anything in life. In the beginning of this pregnancy, I couldn’t help but compare my feelings and symptoms to what I experienced last time. And then we made it past 8 weeks for the first time, and suddenly we were in uncharted territory gestation-wise. In many ways it was freeing to not be able to compare what I was going through to the last time. Things started looking up, and I started feeling more confident.

But while the gestational milestones were officially behind us, significant dates were not — certain dates that have been ingrained in my mind. We had already passed the anniversary of our previous due date. That one was the hardest to get through, mostly because we weren’t pregnant yet. But even after getting pregnant, some other anniversaries have come up that caused me to reflect on our previous experience. October 6 was the day we got our first positive pregnancy test. Then last week, there was November 7 – what I consider to be the anniversary of our loss – the day we went in for our first ultrasound and found out our baby had died. Now today, November 14, is the anniversary of when I had my D&C. To be honest, I’m not as sad today as I thought I might be, though the significance of the date did not go unnoticed.

I hope that the freeing feeling I felt passing our 8 week milestone will only increase now that all of our previous pregnancy and loss milestones are truly behind us.