I’ve relived those thirty-eight weeks over and over.

The joy of finding out there was a baby growing inside of my belly, getting the news he was a boy, and seeing him grow at our weekly scans. I remember picking out the colors for his nurseries and painting his wood wall. His baby shower took a huge chunk of my time planning. Every game I created myself and choosing what was on the registry was such an event. I remember how much he loved mac and cheese and chocolate milk or that I couldn’t eat anything before ten. So many happy memories that replay in my  mind.

There’s also the memories that play even when I don’t want them to.I’ll never forgot my stomach dropping when we found out about Down syndrome and my persistent worrying of being a good enough parent to him. That brought me so much stress through the second half of my pregnancy that I never thought anything else could go wrong.

When I go through my pregnancy, I feel like everything slows down and speeds up at the same time when I get to the end of March. I know what’s coming next. That week leading up to his birth are so vivid in my mind. Sometimes I wish I could pinpoint what went wrong or what more I could have done. The emotions and reactions from those memories hurt. Each time I get to the fourth of April, my body can feel what I was feeling under the numbness . I honestly try not to go to that day and his birth. If I let it all play out, I feel as if I would never get back to the surface. That’s the hardest part about these memories and PTSD. My body remembers. It’s sort of like a blanket that falls over you and you cannot escape it until it lets you out.

Memories can be such beautiful images and they can be the worst ones too.

I choose to honor both, but would much rather go to those that make me smile. For the rest of my life, I’ll try to make new memories with Jensen, but they’ll never be the same as the months he was with me. I miss him so much, but for as long as I live, his memory will never fade away.

Inspired from the What’s Your Grief Photo Challenge.