The curious case of the never will's...

Today was a a little harder than some.  This morning I picked up Carter's remains. It was another thing that had me hyperventalating the whole way up to doing it, but turned out to be a little easier than I imagined. I mostly held it together. And now, she is home and while its certainly not the way we originally imagined her coming home, its something.
Pete used a phrase today that got me thinking... well, not really. It summed up what this whole experience feels like. He told me "...And I just got into a dark place and started thinking about a lot of never wills...."
Thats what makes me feel like someone has punched me in the gut every time I see a baby or pregnant person. Its what made me feel like I was being stabbed to come home today and see signs about a baby shower happening in the house across the street. I know things are not to the extent that we should defer to use of the word "never," but the timeline sure is a whole lot different than we thought.
We won't be parents in a few months. We won't be celebrating our baby's first Christmas this year. For me, thats the big one I dread. I know there is an extra stocking in the decoration box we won't need. And I bought a couple kid's christmas classic books, excited about reading all the favorites to her.
This pregnancy was so stressful and ful of constant doubts that we never spent a lot of time talking about our hopes for our child. Especially since Pete so wanted a boy... ;) When other people brought them up, we would say, "lets just get her home first..." or with things that were farther in the future, "Doesn't she have to learn to walk first?" Anything to try and end the conversation. But that doesn't mean we weren't thinking about Aunt Amy's baby ballerina classes, swim lessons, pee-wee sports, and daddy's first "interview" of a first date.
Doctors are still speaking as if we will be more successful after I have... another major abdominal surgery, this one to remove the fibroids. But that just makes things so much farther into the future, so much more pain, so many more "what-ifs," and that is when the never will's return to the forefront of your mind.
I really want to keep saying "eventually" and "someday" and "it will happen" but frankly, I just worry that at a certain point hope becomes unrealistic optimism and crossing over to that would just make the future more devastating.