Different

     It has been a little over a year since we lost our little boy and I have had several people come up to me lately and ask us how it feels to 'move on'.  In a way, I am glad that some people still remember us, but I really hate the term 'move on'.  You can NEVER move on from the loss of a child.  You can 'move forward' over time and handle your grief differently, but you don't move on.  Moving on implies that you choose to forget it every happened and go on uninterrupted like life was before.  That is IMPOSSIBLE to do!
    Now that we are expecting our rainbow I think there are people who think everything is 'all better now'.  This baby is not, and can never be, a 'replacement' for our little Jackson.  It does ease the hurt a little to be pregnant right now and my heart aches for my angel mama friends who are still struggling to get pregnant, but it doesn't 'cure' anything or take away our pain.
     One thing I am struggling with lately is the whole 'how many kids do you have?' question.  Now that I am pregnant I get asked ALL THE TIME what 'number' this is for us.  It's hard finding the right way to answer that question.  It depends on the situation, but I usually say it's number 4, we have 2 kids at home and we lost a baby last year.  I usually don't bring up my miscarriages.  I definitely count those babies in my heart and they are special to me, but it's too hard to explain all this especially if it's someone I don't know.  I never would have thought that this would be a hard and uncomfortable question to answer.  It is something I will always get asked though.  Over time it will get easier to answer.
   It's so interesting to see how far I have come and how different I am than I was a little over a year ago.  I hear pregnant women all the time complaining about trivial, common pregnancy ailments or I hear them talking about how many kids they have and how many they want and how far apart they will all be like it's something you can control.  Some people are lucky enough that they can control those things more than others, but it's really naive to assume that is the same way for everyone else.  I feel like before I was very naive and walking around with blinders on when it comes to things like this.  Now I feel like my blinders have been stripped away and I see things in a way that most people can't.  I look at these other pregnant women who still have their blinders on and I almost feel sorry for them.  I don't mean that to sound mean and I know it sounds weird, but I am truly grateful for my new perspective and I wouldn't ever want to go back to to the way things were before.  Even though I have been through a lot of pain and anguish over this past year, I have grown a lot and I see the world in a whole new light in a way that I would never have been able to before.  I have such a deeper understanding of things that are really important and matter.
    Now we are really hoping that we get to meet this little rainbow next month!