Today, I should have been having a baby.

Today would have been Pumpkin’s due date.

It crept up on me, to be honest, I knew it was sometime around now, especially as a girl on my Facebook who announced that she was five weeks pregnant the same day I turned five weeks pregnant has had her baby in the past week, but the exact date slipped my mind. It wasn’t until last night when I was ironing a ‘Pumpkin’ vest that my friend sent me for Elizabeth that I checked my diary and there it was, ‘due date’. I would more than likely have a newborn baby now, a week or two old.

But I’m not due a baby today. I don’t have a newborn baby. Instead, I’m sitting here, 26 weeks pregnant with our baby girl.

When I had the miscarriage, back in October, the day before my birthday, I thought my entire world had caved in. It was a baby that had never been planned but was wanted so much, and within three weeks, it had gone. In those three weeks, we fell in love. And then…gone. At the time, I couldn’t see how I could get over it.

I still think of Pumpkin every so often. I wonder whether they would have been a boy or a girl, what they would have looked like. I think about how we would be as a family now, with our new baby girl or boy, knackered from the sleepless nights and sore from stitches and breastfeeding.

I was worried about how I would feel when this date came around, but I actually feel okay, I think. Of course, I know the main reason that I’m ok is because I’m sitting here, typing this, with two tiny feet and two tiny hands punching me from the inside. I know that at the moment, our little girl is safely inside, growing as she should be. Next to me is a pile of freshly ironed vests and the tiniest pair of pink tights I have ever seen. That’s why I feel okay. If it hadn’t been for Pumpkin, Elizabeth wouldn’t have been thought of. I’ve written about how I refuse to call her a rainbow baby, and I absolutely stand by that, but I can see why people would use that expression. She is the good thing that came out of that terrible time.