Take the Duchess, for example.

Ah, Duchess.

I feel for you, I really do. Mere days into what might have been a hard-fought-for pregnancy – certainly one long wished for – and already your happy news, which I'm sure you'd prefer to keep private for now, is splashed across all the world's front pages.

You seem like a nice girl, and he seems like a nice guy, although I really do think there are better options for thinning hair than that. You're a nice couple, and no doubt you'll be nice parents. You've both been open about prioritizing family, and thus your announcement, which I read just as my evening was drawing to a close, does not come as a surprise.

What does shock me, though, is this: although I wish you all the best, I was immediately flooded with negative emotions that too many know only too well in response to news of this kind: jealousy, bitterness, anger, resentment, hopelessness ....

All of which is completely understandable in somebody who is very unfortunately not pregnant after wanting and trying hard and long to be. But – let me glance casually at the calendar in the guise of not knowing the duration of this pregnancy down to the hour – I will be ... oh yes, that's right, fifteen weeks tomorrow, with nary a sign of misfortune other than in my own worse nightmares.

I went to join Gilles in bed and started sobbing. "I hope it's still alive," I repeated, again and again, mixing in an occasional, less cheerful, "I hope it's not dead." Both phrases have regrettably become standard as a kind of prayer, during my terrible moments as well as my good ones.

He didn't understand. "What happened today?" he kept asking. "Something must have happened. You've been so hopeful lately."

And it's true; I have. Only yesterday I was making a little list of things I might just be buying during our jaunt to the country described by an acclaimed newspaper during the 2008 currency exchange crisis as "Europe's giant outlet mall," an appellation that made me grin at the time and that I appreciate even more fondly today.

(Of course, that's really "things I might be buying ... if." If the sixteen-week appointment shows heartbeat and good health next week. If the twenty-week anatomy scan doesn't show otherwise. If, always that damned if ....)

It's also true that "something happened today." But how could I explain to this patient and caring yet rational and logical man that these round hot tears of fear for the future of our baby were streaming from my eyes because of a stranger's pregnancy announcement?

If you should by chance be reading this, Duchess, don't feel too badly. It's not only your news that has shaken me so; since I first saw those two pink lines a few months ago, it's been anybody's. After our loss, I greeted no pregnancy announcement kindly, whether it came from a headline or from a real-life friend (unless it came from you, dear bloggie friends), but never has my reaction been as visceral and as violent as it is now that I'm pregnant again.

I ask myself why and puzzle over it and all I can think is that my fear of never again being pregnant was not nearly as great as my fear of being so but losing it, and that immense, terrible fear is what arises each time I hear someone else's happy news.

I am so incredibly grateful to have the chance that allows me to feel such fear but regret so very deeply that it must exist.

Is there anybody else out there who has experienced this heightened response to others' announcements while pregnant after loss, or am I, as with respect to other things, alone in my craziness? 


toasting with water:
"Kate Middleton is either pregnant or hates your cheap wine."
source (of both the photo and the quote)