What is in a (due) date?

  At the very beginning of that journey, the moment where we stare down at that digital display or two blue lines.  We sit, mesmerised, stomach turning over with excitement, fear, love and trepidation; right at the beginning where the calculations start and a countdown commences.  This magical date becomes the centre of your new world.  It signals the start of hopes and dreams, of altered sleep; of new relationships, new roles, new dynamics.  It is anticipated to be the moment of meeting love itself.  And however much we know that this date may not be fixed, this is the flag in the ground – the focus of our attentions for the next 8 months or more.  How strange it is that this date has then become long since forgotten with the children who have come home with me.  It has become replaced by a more meaningful birthday and those milestones like first teeth, first steps, first words.  The memory of having future hopes and dreams is replaced by the daily peaks and troughs of real life.

Today is Freddie’s due date, and because his “firsts” never came to pass, this date is etched into forever as a marker for my hopes of meeting him, and my dreams of our life together.   Today I remember the innocence of that pregnancy and the wonder of growing him.  I remember those worries which accompanied our journey, from getting him here safely, to the fear that I might not have enough love to go around.  I remember the joy I had in seeing his feet thump around my belly,  and the huge impatience I had to meet him and tickle those feet properly.  I remember counting down the days to 26^th January 2015, desperate for him to be early because in my mind I had waited for him for years instead of months.  How foolish that impatience seems now, to wish away what little I eventually had.  The due date continues to harbour those precious few memories, in a way which isn’t necessary with children who live.  It becomes a storage unit for that short but beautiful life of innocence that we shared with our child, and the heart-breaking reminder of a date which so cruelly dashed all expectations.