Seven Years

It was this week, seven years ago, that I became pregnant for the first time.

There is something about that number. Six, it's very close to five. Five isn't that big. But when you get to seven, you are creeping ever closer to ten, which is a decade, and that is a very, very long time indeed. I don't know if it ever dawned upon me, seven years ago, that I might even become pregnant, and I obviously didn't ponder that a pregnancy could end in disaster. In fact, the deciding point for trying that summer was that I really wanted to get pregnant the summer after that, but I knew that sometimes it would take up to a year to conceive and so I wanted to cover my bases. After all, I reasoned, would you ever be disappointed to have a child? Think, I should have worked that extra year, saved the extra cash? Not in our family.
So we threw caution to the wind, and sometime between the 6th and the 12th of August I became pregnant with what would become a little girl who would change so many people's lives for the better. And who would leave a lot of broken hearts in her wake.

Six years ago last week, I became pregnant with another little being, who now sits in the bathtub over my head laughing at whatever antics his father is performing. This, I can believe, because I can feel the six years of pure bliss this boy has brought me. Six years hardly seems enough for the joy to be contained within.

But seven years of loneliness? That is harder to grasp.