There are moments ...

My dad's birthday was this past Wednesday, so the family was having a cookout yesterday.

Their house was insane - 10 adults and 6 kids, although it felt like 20 kids. Really. It was a bit nuts.

My step-sister is having a joint birthday for her two - one turns 11, one turns 1 about two weeks apart, so she decided to do the joint thing.

I was ok thinking about going to the older child's birthday. But the 1 year old? The one who's birthday is within just a few days of my own edd?

Gah.

I can't help but think that we should be celebrating that milestone ourselves with our own daughter.

I know my family won't understand, but I may bail.

I know you never truly stop grieving, but damn I'm tired of it. I'm tried of seeing him do new things (he's starting to take his first teetering steps) and instantly wondering if our daughter would be doing those same things by now (I was up and at it by 9 months). I'm tired of wanting to scream at my dad and step-mom every time they feel a need to tell me what his favorite toy is or how they love to watch him push a toy car around while crawling behind it. I'm tired of feeling like our pregnancy and loss was barely a blip on their radar.

It's times like these that I really struggle with the question of which is worse - never getting pregnant or getting pregnant and losing your baby? I use to say I'd rather never get pregnant at all. Then I got pregnant and that all changed. Even after losing our baby, I was still grateful for knowing what it was like and having even just a few weeks of happy baby talk that was about me instead of someone else.

But there are moments when my heart knows this wouldn't hurt so much had I not been pregnant at all.

I hope this changes when we adopt our own child. I'm worried I won't be able to finally let it go.

Does it? Does anyone know?

Because I can't imagine spending the rest of my life feeling like this every time I see that child.

Edit:

Thought I'd toss this out there ... I started my period today. I'm normally a 35 - 40 day cycler. I've noticed the last few months have had me around 30 - 31 days apart.

Odd.

But it does at least explain the fact that I've been ready to cry at the drop of a hat the last few days.