Joy and Sorrow...

Seems like I just can't have one without the other. I'm emotional lately, seems like there are so many beautiful babies , rainbow babies being born in the loss community. And I am joyful, oh so joyful for their safe arrivals into loving arms who have waited an eternity to mother them. These babies and their mothers certainly have a special place in my heart and I have shed many, many tears of joy upon reading of another new arrival. However......with this joy comes an old sorrow, this persistent longing for another babe of my own to cradle in my arms, another chance to smell the delicious scent of newborn skin and hair. I'm feeling sorry for myself in a most pitiful way. Sorry I tied my tubes. Sorry for my age and all the worry that comes with it when one is thinking about conceiving, sorry for my son and my missed opportunity to mother twins. I feel selfish and ugly for feeling these things and I wish to hell I didn't. Because I don't begrudge ANY momma their babies, I just want another one of my OWN. It really stinks, this land of indecision. I can afford IVF now but I'm so very AFRAID of what might happen and what would happen to me in the aftermath of another loss but the calling to be uncomfortable and full of rolling, stretching baby is overwhelming me and I wonder just how on earth they all did it. How do you say goodbye to your precious child and then find the courage and the strength to overcome the fear and sadness to try again. And in some cases, again and again. I wonder if the price I'd pay for this longing would end up being my emotional wellbeing in the end, but then again I don't feel emotionally well NOW. I feel incomplete. I want another baby but I am terrified to take a chance to go through with the steps it will take to get to what I want. What if it fails? What if I produce another child who has a defect that costs him or her their life again? What if I CAN'T get pregnant anymore, even with IVF? The more I try not to think about it and just live my life, the more rainbow babies seem to be arriving....and while I know it's far from true, I feel like I am the ONLY one who has lost a child and then not gone on to have another. I am so very, very torn. And while yes, I am very full of joy for you all, I am at the same time filled with my own sorrow and longing. I miss my son. To this day I miss him with every beat of my heart. Time hasn't healed me, it's merely given me a reprieve in between moments of gutwrenching pain. I think I'm beginning to realize it will probably always be this way although the moments in between will continue to grow further and further apart. This stinks. I wish I could just push it all away and celebrate for you my friends, without that pain twisting in my gut and the echoes in my head of what could have been.....