I always knew that it would be hard. How could it not be hard to get over something so traumatic or to live with the decision that I have made. It is after all a life changing decision, the decision to terminate the tiny little life that's growing inside of you. A little life that you helped to create. A little person who is part of you and nestled inside of you safe and sound. A little person who should be so precious. No-one could just get over that although I must admit that I had kind of hoped that I would. I hoped the anger that I felt towards Nathan would numb the pain I felt for deciding to terminate you my little baby and make me feel that the decision I had made truly was the right one. How wrong I was. How absolutely, totally wrong.
I don't think anyone ever knows what they're going to feel like after doing what I've done. I certainly didn't expect to feel like this. To feel the all consuming grief and sense of loss, a deep ache that never goes away because you are no longer within me. Tess said today that I needed to let myself grieve but I feel like I have no right to because terminating your life was my choice. It was all down to me. I should be punishing myself for what I did to you, not grieving because you're gone. That would make me a fraud wouldn't it? because I was the one who chose to end your life. I was the one who chose not to keep you. I was the one who lay there while they removed you from within me. What right do I have to grieve for the baby whose life I took away? Your own mother!
When I was carrying you I was filled with so many mixed emotions. I was filled with such love for you, my unborn child but also fear. Fear that I would never be a good mother to you, fear that I wouldn't be able to love you when you were born because of the man who was your father, fear that I wouldn't be able to bring you up on my own…so much fear…and so much anger towards your daddy. I let that fear and anger overshadow the love that I felt and the need I truly felt within me to continue the pregnancy and bring you into the world. I let the hate that I have for him and the hurt that I carry inside of me because of him every day completely overshadow any joy I felt about the pregnancy or any belief I had within me that I would be a good, loving and doting mother to you. I let the hurt, anger and self loathing that I felt for loving him and letting him hurt me turn my head against my heart and in doing so chose to end your life. Now I am stood here, watching this tiny little baby boy breathing such precious breaths and I could just collapse onto the floor in agony with the ache I feel inside of me that tells me how wrong I was to let my little baby go.
I wanted you so much. I wanted so much to have the strength to carry on with my pregnancy. You don't realise what you have had until you let it go and now I have realised that I have let go what was possibly the most precious and wanted thing in my life. My child. My little, innocent child.
When this little boy was brought in today, so tiny and such a little miracle I couldn't even put a line in because seeing him, so beautiful with such tiny little fingers and toes…so fragile, made me think of you. All I could think of was that I would never feel you inside of me again, feel the nausea or the tiredness you brought to me, the butterflies in my tummy that I would have felt as the pregnancy progressed and you would move, the kicks that I would have felt as you grew within me or the contractions that would come as I brought you into the world and into my arms and my life, forever filling a hole I didn't know that I had until now.
In front of me was a tiny little boy that needed my help and all I could think of was that I'd chosen to let you go, the baby inside of me that in just a few short months would have been a little person just like him that I would have been cradling in my arms, and able to touch and kiss. Mine to love and protect for the rest of my life. How could I have done that to you sweetheart? How could I have deprived myself of the baby that I loved and had wanted for so long in my life? Because I did love you my darling, so much and I hate myself because I know that I made the wrong choice and now there's no going back.
I stand here in the quiet and for the first time since that awful day I really allow myself to cry for you. Looking at him makes me think of all of the things that I'm going to miss out on and I wish so hard that I could turn back time and have you nestled safely within my womb again because I know that if I had a second chance I would never let you go. I feel so empty as I look at him knowing that I don't have you within me any longer. There's a hole where you used to be and an ache so deep that it touches my soul. I chose not to have my own little baby who I will now never hold, never cuddle, never kiss, bathe or change. I'll never nurse you and feel the closeness that comes with something so beautiful like that and I'll never sing you to sleep. There are just so many things that I will never be able to do. Would you have been a little boy or a little girl? Now I'll never, ever know.
I watch as baby Steve wriggles around in front of me and let the sobs overcome me as I stare at his tiny hands and feet and wistfully think of you. They're not gentle, they make my whole body shake and while I try and stop the tears from falling I find that fighting them is futile. The sobs are violent, my body feeling like it's going to shatter with the force of all of the sadness with which I cry for you and my hands find their way to my now empty belly and cradle it as I grieve for you. Oh how I grieve my darling, every second of every day.
You were a little person, you would have been a beautiful little girl or a gorgeous little boy just like him but I robbed both of us of our life together by making the choice which I now regret with all of my being. You were so perfect on that scan, so beautiful. I may have tried not to look but I couldn't help it and I was in awe as I saw how perfect you were. But I was too hurt by Nathan to listen to the heart which was screaming out for me to keep you and instead followed thoughts blackened by hurt, anger and Nathan's betrayal. I wanted him out of my life and that meant choosing not to have you, but you weren't just his, you were my baby too and it rips me to shreds knowing that you were so beautiful and innocent but that I never gave us a chance.
The power of the sobs and the pain that they cause make me happy somehow. Like they're a punishment for the horrible thing that I did to you. I should feel awful. I should feel pain. I should hurt every day because I lay there in that clinic bed while they took you from me and I let them do it. I chose for them to do it. I never realised what a connection I had to you until you were no longer inside me my darling but since that very moment when they told me it was over its been as if a part of me has gone. Not just you my sweetheart but part of my heart, part of my love and part of the person that deserved the chance to be a mother. I am so empty and its because you're not here anymore. My beautiful little child.
And so I ask that you forgive me. The mother who chose the wrong path. The mother who felt such a connection to you from the moment she found out she was pregnant and yet let the anger, fear and resentment towards your father dull the maternal instinct and the love in her heart for you until she made the only choice she thought was right. But it really wasn't the right choice my little one. I know that now and I know at my heart will punish me for your loss for the rest of my life.