Reading: Bag of Bones, Stephen King.

Weather: We awoke this morning to the sound of rain on the windows. Tab and I both agreed that we were lucky we didn't have this kind of weather for our weekend at the beach. Our friend's beach house was spacious, but it would have seemed a lot smaller if we'd been stuck inside with the three little guys.

Loss

This afternoon I talked to a friend of mine, who is nine weeks pregnant but who just found out that the fetus died. It was not unexpected news; she'd had indications all along that there were problems. She hasn't miscarried yet. Her doctor told her she could wait until it happens naturally or she could induce the miscarriage with prostaglandin gel on her cervix, the option she has chosen.

Talking to her brought up memories of my miscarriage in May 1992 and the emotions it engendered. It was an unplanned pregnancy: Tab and I had slipped up with birth control. I started spotting only a few days after I found out for certain that I was pregnant. A few weeks later I miscarried. I barely had time to get used to the idea of having a baby when I lost it. But sometime between finding out and the miscarriage itself, I'd decided I wanted this unplanned baby after all.

I remember the final night of that pregnancy. The cramps were so bad I couldn't sleep. I went downstairs with a stack of used books I'd picked up at the Bryn Mawr book sale a few days before. Some of these were children's books that I had bought for this baby I was carrying.

I lay on the couch and read Ben and Me, a book about Benjamin Franklin and a mouse, which I'd remembered enjoying when I was young. I tried to keep from thinking about what was happening. Finally at 4:30 a.m., I couldn't stand it any more. I called the doctor and was told to go to the Emergency Room. I woke Tab up, and we drove to the hospital.

Fetal demise. That was the term they used after an ultrasound found no heartbeat. I had a D&C later that day to remove what hadn't already passed. When I left the hospital I was an empty vessel, scraped clean.

The speed with which everything had happened underscored the unreality of the event. I could look around our living room and think, "Twenty-four hours ago, I was sitting in that chair, and I was still pregnant."

One of my aunts who'd had a number of miscarriages herself was especially sympathetic to me because my sister had just had a baby that month. My aunt felt it would upset me to see Lori and her newborn son when they came down from Maine for a visit in June. She was wrong. It wasn't women with newborn babies I envied; it was pregnant women, particularly those who were at the same stage I would have been had I not miscarried.

Though we hadn't planned that pregnancy, we decided after the miscarriage to try again. At the recommendation of my doctor we waited one cycle, and then we conceived Daniel right away. As happy as I was to be pregnant again so soon, for months I felt almost as though I was experiencing two pregnancies: the real one and another, phantom pregnancy about three months further along.

At New Year's Eve, I grieved for the baby who would have been born around then. And periodically I think of that child, calculating how old he or she would be. I sometimes question why it still upsets me; after all, if I had not lost that pregnancy, I would not have conceived Daniel, my beloved oldest son.

And yet I do mourn that loss.

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