While pregnant with Hannah, Ryan and Abby, like any new mom to be, I had dreams about what they would look like and who they would be like. I was thrilled to have both genders and I would imagine me dressing them, the girls in fancy dresses and Ryan in a dapper outfit and taking them out. I also looked forward to their rooms-decorating them and then helping my kids decorate as they got older. I have always believed that a bedroom is a great place for a child to express him/herself and that they should be allowed some creative freedom to decorate their own rooms.
I had decided that since Hannah, Ryan and Abby would probably be small and it would be easier for R and me, that they would share a room after they were born, so I "designed" a room that would be appropriate for both girls and a boy. When I was pregnant with Joey, I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about whether or not I wanted to change the room or keep the theme and color scheme the same. In the end, I decided that I love the room and that I wanted to keep it. I did give away the boy crib bedding I had gotten for Ryan and bought a new one for Joey. I just couldn't bear the thought of another child using Ryan's bedding, even though Ryan had never used it. And, I didn't want Joey to have to "share" his bedding with a memory of what should have been...
While I was pregnant with them, the room got painted, I set up a crib and had furniture, but that was as far as I had gotten before I went on bed-rest. There were no wall decorations, no pictures, no books, no trucks or toys. The room was basically "sterile" and it stayed that way for almost a year and half, until just after Joey was born. It was then that I was able to personalize it for Joey and it is now Joey's room, not Hannah, Ryan and Abby's room.
The other day, Joey told me he wanted a truck bed (his friend has one). I'm not running out to buy him a truck bed tomorrow, but I do recognize that it's just a matter of time before the room is too "baby" for him.
When the day comes that I have to swap the baby colors for big boy ones and pack up all the things in his room that make it "baby-like", a part of my heart will be sad that my little boy is growing up so quickly. Changing out his room will be a symbolic end of his baby-ness.
But, the sadness will run much deeper than that for me. Even though it is Joey's room, the vision and dreams of that room started with Hannah, Ryan and Abby and my visions and dreams for them. So when the room gets changed, I will lose another connection to my three babies who never had the chance to sleep there. In a world where there are so few tangible, touchable connections, it really stings to lose another piece.
I miss the memories that we'll never make.
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2 comments:
What connects us with our babies never ceases to amaze me - the simplest, most banal things like bedding. When Hope, Meret and Annalisa died I wept over boxes of dried milk used to make calorie rich smoothies. And, that's all we have left. I know I am not expressing this exactly as I want, but I have thought of this a lot because I struggle so much with finding a positive way to remember THEM (not the loss).
But, I am sorry that you are losing the tangible reminders. They will always be in your heart - in every fiber of your being.
We were in the middle of remodeling to prepare for the twin's arrival, so we never got as far as you did with their room. At the time we lost them it was still J's room, and so J's room it stayed. But he still wanted his new room we were adding for him, and of course we couldn't say no, so once the remodel was done he moved to his new room, and T moved into J's old room. And then... we had an empty bedroom. That was really, really hard. But once Pumpkin came along I didn't really have any strong feelings about her taking that room because it wasn't the room we had planned the twins to have anyway.
However, I do have many other little things that take me back to the plans we made for them, and I feel sad about all that never will be.
It's hard to feel as though we keep losing them- one piece at a time.
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