Officially, a loss between conception and twenty weeks is classified as a miscarriage and a loss after twenty weeks is classified as a stillbirth.  I was sixteen and a half weeks.

This wasn’t the same as a full term loss.  I didn’t come home to an empty nursery, I came home to a house with a room that we were going to clean out, with a single stuffed animal in it.  I don’t have to explain to the grocery store checker or the Chinese food restaurant where the baby is because I wasn’t showing enough that anyone would have dared to assume I was pregnant, even though they may have been suspicious.  My physical experience and recovery are much easier than with a full term birth. I lived with the hope of this baby for three months, not for eight.

However.  I’ve had a miscarriage and this isn’t a miscarriage either.  There is something wholly different in this experience.  There is something so, so different for a baby that I labored for, delivered, held, kissed, named, and called a funeral home for.  I’m in an in-between place, stuck between two definitions.