Filling that hole (in my ♥)

Lena is 2 months old already.

The time has completely flown by. And all I've been doing for the past 2 months is watching her. Watching her eat. Sleep. Cry. Throw up. Grow. There are times when I feel like I can literally see her growing. Today she was so interactive with me and Jeff. She knows us and our faces and voices. We make her happy (sometimes?). 

It's already going so fast. 

I've felt a sensation of relief these past 2 months that I haven't felt since losing Luke, though. Relief that things are normal again. And I know that's weird. I feel like I should be more paranoid now that I have her here. But just watching her become who she is...it's settling. It makes me so happy to see. 

Maybe I'm relieved because I know she's getting a chance to be things. To know us as her parents. The chance that Luke never got. 

In a way, I feel like I'm betraying my grief--by being happy. But I know that it's at a turning point now. I still think of Luke. Every. Single. Day. I sometimes hear Lena coo and wonder to myself if that's what his coo would have sounded like. If he would have made the same squinty duckface smile that she makes. 

And then I know I'm not betraying my grief or him. These questions will haunt me for the rest of my life. I might not ask them as often at some point. But they'll always be there.  There's a pain in knowing that.

But watching her grow will so often trigger these feelings. And all I saw for him was in my imagination. They were my dreams for him that will never be realized.  

So it's a relief. To know that Lena can take my dreams for her and make them her own. To know that she'll know me as her Mom. That's the part about losing Luke that hurts still--that I never knew him outside of my body. Our relationship was in my head and imagination--In the future that now never existed.

To never have had a give and take relationship with him...still gets me. So I'm going to take every day I get with his sister and try to make it count enough for both of them.

Stillbirth--leaves a hole in your heart.  That space will always be occupied by my hopes that never got realized for him.  But slowly, I feel like my heart is filling in with other love. 

Thank god for the evolution of grief.  For letting me realize that there's room in there for both of them.