382. What Remains

October is pregnancy loss awareness month and if you’ve lost a pregnancy we understand your sorrow. And we are here to hold space for what was, what is…and what will never be.

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It’s pregnancy loss awareness month and if you’ve lost a pregnancy…every month is pregnancy loss awareness month. You’re never not aware of what happened, and what did not. What was, what is…and what will never be.

It’s been 10 years since I saw my second baby for the last time. A little ghost inside of me, the life gone. When did it happen and what was I doing when she left? I was searching for a reason, and the reason had to be my fault: something I ate or didn’t, something I did or didn’t.

But there is no reason. These things just happen. They happen so often that this is the month for us to be *aware* of it, even though so many of us are already too aware: that it’s a miracle any of us ever made it here.

The day after it happened, I stepped outside into the crisp October air and saw a rainbow arching above our little house. A sign from above, maybe. A sign from her.

It was too soon to know if she was a girl but there are things you just know.

And there is plenty you don’t know, and never will.

We hold these losses forever. Not always with a tight grip, but tucked within us, always. How could we not?

Since my own loss I have held the losses of many women I know and love, and many women I do not know but love anyway. I have been without words because words do not always help.

But this one did: microchimerism.

A chimera is a mythical creature made of many animal parts.

Microchimerism is when

It’s when cells that are not your own are within your body, and it can happen when there is an organ transplant or blood donation…or pregnancy.

The simplest and probably most incomplete way of describing it is that the cells from our pregnancies stay with us. That’s not as good as having our babies, of course, but it’s something. Something magical and ephemeral and real all at the same time.

There’s a reason it feels like they stay with us.

Because they do.

There’s a reason it feels like they changed us.

Because they did.

I’m Nora McInerny, and it’s going to be okay.