In My Thoughts

"The baby I lost will always be in my thoughts – but considering how early I miscarried and all that, here I won’t refer to that pregnancy as my first (seeing as I barely even realized I was truly pregnant).  That does not mean it hurts any less, it just means that I don’t have any real knowledge or experiences from that pregnancy to share"

I came across this comment at the end of an article by the Undomesticated Housewife after she left a comment on a blog I use for the Writing Workshop.

It made me stop and think.

When I was younger I was never really successful with the other sex and very rarely went on dates. Eventually I decided that I had to do something about that so I put an ad in the paper and joined a dating agency. My advert in the paper resulted in my receiving a couple of letters from women who were divorced and had children. I wrote back to both of them and after swapping letters with both a few times arrange to meet up with M.

My relationship with M lasted for all of 6 months. Certainly not an uneventful or boring 6 months though.

When I met M I was completely inexperienced when it came to the sexual side of relationships. Yes, I was indeed a virgin. It didn't take long for that situation to be rectified.

M and I were so smitten with each other and before too long I'd proposed to her and she accepted.

Shortly after that we discovered that she was pregnant. Neither of us had been expecting that, although we should have as we never used any form of contraception.

M and I got over the shock of becoming parents, me for the first time and her for the second. We began to make plans, started choosing names for the baby.

Then everything came crashing down.

One day M went up to the bathroom and while she was sitting on the toilet she began to bleed. Worried we got her to a doctor and it we were told that she had had a miscarriage and the baby was gone. M was so early in the pregnancy that it would have still only been a tiny embryo at the time.

Although the pregnancy wasn't planned I would have loved to have had a child then. I have a son now and he is wonderful and brave and fun and the light of my life.

My son was born in 1998, I met married his mum in 1995 and we met in 1993 not long after M and I had split up. We would have lost our baby that same year.

I've always thought of my lost baby as a girl. M and I had decided that we liked the name Kayleigh for a girl and so that is how I think of her. She would have been born around November or December of that year and so at the end of this year I would have celebrating my Kayleigh's 18th birthday.

I don't think however long I live that I will forget her, even though I never really knew her. Even though she was never born, never really had a chance to live she will be in my thoughts, how can she not be.