Literary Mourning

I'm currently reading a book about a woman who takes up knitting after she loses her five year old daughter to spinal meningitis. The book is very good. I could tell it was going to be good before I'd even finished the first sentence, but for me, it is also very hard to read.
Something has happened to my psyche ever since having the Little Guy where any mention of the death of a child has the power to open up a chasm of horror inside me. It's a depth of dread and anguish I can't even describe. The love I feel for him eclipses any other emotion I've ever had and the very thought of him no longer existing is terrifying and horrible. And I don't know if this happens to everyone, but when I read a story about a child dying I cannot help but have momentary thought of 'What if it were MY child?'. The other day I was watching a movie based on E.M. Forster's book Where Angels Fear to Tread and realized that a child was going to die. I immediately turned it off, as if by stopping the video, I was able to stop the story and thereby save the child.
T.G. and I lost a baby before I became pregnant with the Little Guy. At the time I thought I understood the feelings that go with having a child, even though I never held that little baby once in my arms. I certainly did love my little unborn baby, but it was the love of a mother for an unmet and unknown potential. I longed for that baby, I prayed for it, I wanted it so very very much, but I know now that I did not love it as I love Little Guy. I couldn't possibly. With Little Guy I bonded with every nursing, I woke several times a night and tenderly cared for him, marveling at his beauty. My days are filled with him. I wake when he does, we eat together, I am the last person he sees before a nap and the first person he sees when he wakes. I, in essence, gave up the person I was before and assumed a new identity as his mother. I put the joy of his being on like a garment until it simply became me. And because of this, I know that if something ever happened to him I would be lost. I'm not me anymore, I'm his mommy. There is a certain terror that goes with loving another human being so much that your identity is completely intertwined with their existence. To be so very vulnerable and to know that I cannot protect him from everything harmful gives me pause several times a day. He is so small. He is so lovely. He is so beloved.
So I read about this mother who has lost her little girl and even though she is a character in a book, I mourn with her. I can understand her emptiness because it is almost too hard to bear imagining that emptiness for myself. And I think even though it is a very good book, I will not read more like it. At least for now, I'd rather not want to imagine what that pain feels like.