Heartbreak hotel.

Ugh.

I promise not to bitch about the whole baby-dying thing too often, but honestly, it is amazing how fast people forget. It's been just over nine months since Abigail died, and my coworker (the one with the incredibly annoying Krusty the Clown laugh) just appeared in my doorway with his girlfriend's week-old baby in his arms, saying, "Hi Ann, just here to show off the baby."

"Oh, that's nice," I said with a patently forced smile, keeping my eyes glued to my computer screen so it would look like I was doing something important instead of dicking around on Twitter. "Congratulations." A few seconds of silence & he drifted away again.

Seriously. It's not like I expect my coworkers to keep track of my life's details, but your child dying is, you know, kind of a big deal. I mean, it was to us. Maybe I'm just crazy. One could hope for a teeny bit more sensitivity from people, though. Or a smattering of memory. I would like to think that if I knew an acquaintance of mine's kid died, it might be one of the few things I would remember about them.

I mean, go ahead and bring the tot to work, but do you really have to bring her into my office? Could we maybe just take two seconds to think about this? Is it just me??

On the plus side, it didn't reduce me to a weeping mess and cause me to flee the entire workplace, as an incident a couple months ago did. Let's hear it for healing! Or whatever you would call this.

For the record, she was tiny. And adorable. My coworker's kid, I mean. But so was my Abigail. Okay, now I'm reducing myself to a weeping mess. I'll stop.

Fucking shitass.

Or perhaps I should just write *heavy sigh*. Another of my high school classmates just announced her pregnancy.

This isn't your usual oh-I'm-30-and-my-stupid-clock-is-ringing-like-a-mo-fo bitch session. No, this is the "I'm 30 and was supposed to have a baby last year but she died 5 weeks before she was due." And yes, it was the most horrible, hellish experience ever. The baby dying part, not the pregnancy part.

So, granted, Abigail died in August, and some time has passed. For the most part, I'm able to enjoy life again and I don't even hate all my friends that are now getting pregnant, despite the fact that they seem to be falling like fuckin' dominoes. Used to be I couldn't even stand to be around baby girls, but now I can even offer their mothers a generally sincere smile.

But every so often something blindsides me. Like I expect to see a plethora of tots in strollers when I'm out and about, and there are about a billion pregnant women at my workplace, but the random pregnancy announcement on Facebook this morning had the emotional impact of a bitchslap.

Don't get me wrong. I'm truly happy for my friends. And I recognize that I can't expect the world to stop just because I had a personal tragedy. Nor are women going to stop getting pregnant and having babies, so I really have tried to just get used to it. Most of the time, the news doesn't even upset me - just on random days and at random times I have this random "oh, fucking a" reaction. Such as now.

She's been on my mind a lot lately, actually. I'm not sure why. I think the times are harder when I've had specific daydreams about her, like the holidays this past year were absolute and total hell on earth. Believe it or not, the NCAA tournament - UNC basketball freak that I am - was even a bit tough because I had this cute little Carolina onesie I was going to put on her. And I daydreamed of taking her out and about in springtime - she'd be about six months old now, and I thought we'd be cruising the neighborhood & enjoying the sunshine together. So, whatever. Sometimes it's hard to look at the oh-so-stellar examples of humanity wandering around Wal-mart with empty eyes, dragging drooling, dirty, screaming children and not feel resentful/angry/jealous/cheated by life/like a big fat fuckin' failure.

But hey! I'm only 30! The doc assures me I have an "excellent" chance of having kids that, you know, live. So, having (mostly) ceased to reel from the random Facebook pregnancy announcement, we will now attempt to return to the (mostly) enjoyable day already in progress. Lucky for me I started a blog devoted to ranting & raving this morning, eh?

Our girl Abigail, when she was still healthy & presumably happy at 20 weeks.