The Year of the Baby: it’s not too late for it to be too late.

There’s no good time to have a miscarriage, obviously, but I think the timing of our pregnancy and its subsequent loss made our pain just a little bit sharper.

One dark morning in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I saw the two pink lines pop up, quickly and simply, for the first time ever, and the day – life itself – instantly became brighter. I told Gilles that night by giving him the three perfectly positive tests taken to date, prettily wrapped and be-ribboned, and the pregnancy guide since relegated to the shadows and cobwebs of our cellar, as well as a “Bonne Année” card on which I’d written that it would be a good year … as it would be the one during which we would become parents.

We laughed and cried and shared our delight and disbelief and hopes and fears and dreams. It was the best present either of us could have hoped for, and receiving it during this season of love and festivity among family and friends, we felt especially blessed. Toasting the beginning of 2012 surrounded by the ones we held dear, we exchanged little secret smiles each time we were wished the best of years ahead. It would be. We already knew it would be.

Well, it was for eight and a half days. After that, the inverse of the joy we had felt slammed us with a force many magnitudes greater than that of which it had inverted.

But if we’re lucky, 2012 could still be a good year in that same sense. If we’re lucky, we could still come in under the wire. Although we won’t know the truth for another two weeks, and even then we wouldn’t know for sure until December (post-miscarriage let’s-not-count-our-chickens-type disclaimer), it’s time to roll the dice.

And if not, well, I guess there’s always 2013.

"get on with it," says the CBEFM

PS: I’m well aware that, in the aforementioned two weeks, this will become a post I’ll look back on and laugh sheepishly at. What arrogant hope I dare to have!