Fri, 2007 Apr 27
Pi
A couple of months ago, my wife and I found out she was pregnant with our first child. Lacking either a name or a useful pronoun (thanks to the English language’s psychotic half-gendered nature), we decided to call the baby Pi.
Last week we found out the possibility that my wife had a blighted ovum, meaning she was no longer pregnant, but still appeared to me. My understanding is that this is normally caused by a very early miscarriage. After two ultrasounds, a week apart, this was confirmed.
When we found out, I was just getting a hold on the idea that somewhere inside my wife, our child was growing. Our kid. Walking out of the hospital today, with my mom and my wife’s parents, we passed a family. Just as I was approaching them, one of the family members said to the new dad, “So, you’re a father now.”
The pregnancy, the loss (whatever the right word, there, is, I may never know), it’s been hard for me to find any reality in it. My wife could feel changes in her body, the surgery today was her surgery, but for me there’s never been anything to hold on to and say, yes, this is real.
Walking out of the hospital, passing by a new dad, seeing his joy–and his acknowledgment that, yes, his life is really going to change–that maybe made it more real to me than anything else. I prayed for that baby a couple of hours ago. This side of heaven, I may never have a grasp on the reality of Pi, but knowing that God is blessing that other child, that new dad and mom, that means a lot to me.
So, yeah. And, yeah, it sucks.
