DECEMBER 2005 • VOLUME 4 • HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

I remember when I first found out I was pregnant. It was like I was never going to be alone again. My heart grew warm and seemed to swell with so many emotions, that I cannot even begin to describe. I felt warm, so very warm, like someone had wrapped his arms around me and given me the biggest hug of my life. I felt secure, special but at the same time like I finally fit, everything fit, everything made sense. It is a delicious moment, a special moment. One that on the one hand I wanted to run out screaming to the world of the incredible wonder of it, and on the other hand one that I wanted to hug into myself, keep it to myself because it was so special and so precious. I really don’t know if anyone who has not been pregnant can understand the range and strength of emotions that come upon you at that moment, never to leave again. I was changed forever more in that moment. Love was now a word that I would live by for the rest of my life.  No longer would my life be about me, my life was now filled with the love I felt for the sweet baby inside of me.

I sat in the living room the radio and TV off, the room quiet. The sun filtering through the curtains on the window. And sat in the solitude and felt like I was connected to the entire world. I sat alone and just enjoyed the wonder of it.

The pregnancy would probably be called normal. As if normal was throwing up for three months, strange, unexplainable cravings, and not being able to see your own toes. Strange what we think of as normal! I was so happy, my husband I know was as well. We had fun trying to come up with the perfect name, for our soon to be born perfect child. A child that I talked to, as I rested my hand on my tummy. Who I told everyday about all the things that it would get to do. How first it would learn how to crawl and then walk. And how we would teach it to throw a ball, and ride a bike. I spent hours reading about childhood development and I would share with my unborn the dates of those special milestones that every mother awaits impatiently for. Sitting up on their own for the first time, turning over on their own, and of course the most important one.. the first step.

I’ll spare the details of the labour, because in the end it really doesn’t matter, you will forget, as I forgot, that very first moment that they lay that sweet babe in my arms. She was so, so tiny. Her little fingers, her little nails, tears ran down my face, I was so happy, so filled with love to finally, finally hold this precious, precious baby in my arms.

Soon we were home again, and I dug out all my childhood development books, like every first time new mother, waiting breathlessly for those first milestones.

But it was not to be.

I find it hard to talk about even now.