Everyone But Me

It's time, time for a "woe is me" moment that my oldest daughter has down to perfection.  The other night we were invited to a family gathering when something unexpected occurred.  One of my cousins was there, a very pregnant cousin, along with my aunt and uncle whose daughter was not in attendance but also happens to be very pregnant.  One of my other cousins is expecting a baby early this fall and myself and my brother just had babies in April and May.  So it boils down to a lot of babies being born in our family within about a six month period. Which got me thinking, unintentionally of course (because isn't that how it always works, these things just sneak up on us), that all of these other babies are firstborns, healthy little babies expected by very excited parents and grandparents.  That brings me to the Everyone But Me part.  My firstborn was not healthy and though we were excited it was nowhere near the excitement one experiences when expecting to bring their firstborn home from the hospital rather than knowing their firstborn will never leave the hospital alive.  There was talk of baby showers which I never had.  Preparations which I never made.  Just those words buzzing around me were enough to shroud me with that woolly black coat which makes me the black sheep of the family.  My little nuclear family is stricken by some apparently genetic anomaly which is medically unexplained and for us was undiscovered until our second son was diagnosed and died.  Just me.  Meanwhile life goes on around me and healthy babies are born to everyone else.  Including me.  Sometimes. As my moment of self pity fades away I am left with gratitude that those healthy babies will be born to families who don't intimately understand that pain that I am all too familiar with.