It’s that feeling, when you find out that you are pregnant, and you peer into your calendar, excitedly counting down the weeks until the gender scan.
When you rub your still small but growing belly, wondering who God is knitting inside of you.
Debating over the top three strongest boy names and the top three prettiest girly names.
Wondering if you will be buying pink or blue.
It’s that feeling, as the day draws near. You know the ultrasound technician is looking for other stuff, and that is important too – confirming that you have that perfect little person inside of you.
It’s that excitement as you find yourself waking up early on the ultrasound day.
Squealing with delight, you imagine how you will tell your husband. Maybe you’ll find a way to actually have him tell you.
Yes, that’s it, you decide. The ultrasound technician will write it down, then your man will know first. Then he can tell you!
You are perhaps not so secretly hoping for one gender in particular. You try to control your enthusiasm by preparing your heart that it might be the other gender.
Mostly, though, you realize that it’s just the excitement of finally knowing.
The wonder.
The amazing discovery.
In your frantic thrill, you wonder if you should maybe just wait until the baby is born before you find out.
You imagine waiting.
The image only lasts a minute before you emphatically determine that you simply cannot wait.
It’s just more practical to know, right?
More than anything, your thoughts return to just wanting to know who God has been so carefully knitting inside of you.
A boy?
Or a girl?
Could you even imagine, for just one minute, having to wait the rest of your life to know?
To meet your child, this person God knit in your womb?
My miscarried baby would soon be one year old.
That day is drawing near.
Birthday gifts would be lined up on my kitchen table.
What color tissue paper would they have?
What color frosting on the cake?
I can go by my hunches.
By my dreams.
By the earliest of external development, by what I saw.
But I don’t know entirely for sure.
Pink for me, because I am mom.
Blue for my husband, because he is dad.
Together, we make purple.
And so, purple is the color to depict our baby, born by miscarriage.
A neither overly masculine name, nor an exceptionally feminine name, depicts our baby, born by miscarriage.
No gifts line the kitchen table.
No tissue paper.
No festivities of my baby’s short life.
Just, a heart, my heart, filled with so many emotions.
The excitement, the wonder, the suspense…
the uncertainty, the longing to know…
all of the feelings of this day – the ultrasound day, the anticipation day, the stillbirthday –
I will feel
still tomorrow.
My baby, too, is a beautiful shade of lilac. Though I feel in my heart he was my son.