Entry 004
Today I packed up the pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and hospital bands from our fourth pregnancy. Something I couldn’t get myself to do in the past almost three weeks since our last ultrasound—the one when we learned we gained another angel. These things have been accumulating on our dresser and kitchen table from various stages of the ten-week pregnancy. Most of the days were happy when the items found their place in plain site, and seeing them reminded us of the little one getting closer to being in our arms every second. Today, putting them away means it’s really over.
Tears filled my eyes while writing the date of the appointment, baby’s final measurements and how far along we were when he stopped growing above our last picture of him on a printed out piece of copier paper. My hospital doesn’t print the sheets with multiple shiny ultrasound images that fan out like an accordion. I’ve always wanted one of those, but they say the paper is too expensive.
On a brightly-colored sticky note, I wrote the date we saw two pink lines, the date we should’ve met baby on earth and the date we learned baby went to heaven, because these are dates we never want to forget.
I put the copier paper ultrasound picture inside a zip lock bag. I added all the positive pregnancy tests with the date they were taken written with Sharpie on the back. I sealed the bag and put the sticky note on the front. Then I put it in a box. The same box that has seen this process three times before.
It’s not just any old cardboard box that originally held something that came in the mail. It’s a pastel-colored box with illustrations of Noah’s Arc. One where the lid lifts off the top and the inside is lined with a cute patterned paper. It’s the box I gave my husband to tell him we were pregnant the very first time. But instead of it being filled with the newborn-size onesie that says ‘little Lindquist’ and that first positive pregnancy test, the hat that says ‘Dad’ and that little box of dad jokes for him to practice up on that it once held, it’s now the home to four of these zip lock bags.
This box of plastic and paper things is all we have for our dead babies. No ashes, no tiny hand or footprints, nothing physical other than the pregnancy tests and the ultrasounds of the last time we saw them alive. For our first two, we don’t even have both—only the tests with lines that have almost completely faded and those sticky notes with dates we’ll remember forever.
The box sits on the floor of our bedroom closet with spots where the paper has bubbled from my tears. And it’s almost out of space.
Emily Lindquist