Balance.

Some days I realise all over again that these scales can't be balanced.

I'm an optimistic, "count your blessings" kind of girl. The stuffing got knocked out of me, big style, twenty-odd months ago, leaving me limp and floppy and sad. But, on the whole, I have been unwilling to sacrifice any more of me than was ripped away without my permission. So, I've strived to grieve actively, to confront it all head on. Keep my eye on those blessings. Dave, Ben, Lucy and Toby - they're my lifeblood.

But I can't put them on one side of a set of virtual scales and expect them to balance with Emma on the other side. It's not that simple. That simile doesn't work. That view of life doesn't cut it. She's my lifeblood too, my love for her wraps around everything. Sometimes, it's possible not to be sad - to remember her and simply be glad that I ever had her at all. But other times, like now, fighting my way to the positives is just too hard. I am sleep deprived - I don't mind. I am losing sleep in the best possible cause. But I know me and I know how lack of sleep pulls me down. I don't think this is depression, postnatal or otherwise. But, I don't always have the energy to fight the sadness. Finding balance is hard.

Anger revisited.

Approximately 24 hours out from losing our precious girl, I got myself on the computer and ordered up a stash of grief literature. It's what I do. Need to know something? Find a book. So I did - and I read them cover to cover in the days that followed. But I really didn't read them as though they had any relevance to me: I had a sort of anthropological detachment as I read the stories of other grieving parents. "Oh. Those poor parents. How sad. How horrible. How do they cope?" It wasn't "forgetting" exactly, more a complicated form of denial that I was and am one of those parents now. I read about the grief cycle and how anger can be a BIG part of it. "Not for me", I thought breezily. I'm from a cold, damp region of the world and my constitution is, at best, described as phlegmatic. My idea of a blazing row with D. is to sulk for several hours until he asks what's wrong. I'm just not an angry person really.

Correction - I WASN'T an angry person. It was around Christmas time when I was surprised by the blazing rage that took hold of me - around 2 months out. It really, really scared me. Rage is such an out-of-control emotion and I don't like to be out of control. But, as it persisted over the next few months, I got used to it and I (almost) grew comfortable with feeling so close to boiling point all the time. It felt like an "active" emotion. Feeling angry at my daughter's death made me feel like I was actually parenting her in some way. It felt like expressing my disgust at whoever thought they could take her away from me, at the universe, at randomness, at God, at whatever it was that caused this foul chain of events that ended in my daughter's heart stopping, was productive. Maybe it was. I decided from the outset that whatever I felt was what I needed to feel, even if the emotion was downright ugly. I certainly think it's been healthier for me to feel these emotions than to repress them.

All the same, I was relieved when the anger just naturally dissipated over the summer. Nothing in particular happened to move me along. It was just a gentle summer with lots of fun things happening and it was healing for us all in lots of ways. There were days when I actually didn't mind the version of normal that I have now - it was okay. I learned how to laugh and not feel guilty. I discovered that I could be pregnant and scared but also excited and hopeful.

Since Emma's birthday, the anger is back - but it's mutated. This is cold. It's not passionate or helpful, it's my version of a pity party. I try not to think "Why me?", because really, what's the point? It was me and that's not going to change. But it's the refrain that underlies everything I do at the moment. Some of it is fear - the end of this pregnancy feels close and yet so far. I have started to have very vivid dreams about stillborn babies which I try to shake off but which linger in the shadows through my days.

It's more diffuse now too. I have spent a year in this little corner of the internet now and I have "met" some amazing women (and men). Whenever I read about another stillborn child, another baby born too soon; whenever I read about mothers who are grieving for their precious children and yet also face battles to conceive again or who lose again I feel SO angry. I want to stamp my feet and scream about the unfairness of it. Not just "why me?" but "why us?"

Malaise

I'm still here, still reading - though not so frequently right now. Still celebrating when there is news to be celebrated and breaking my heart when I read of more sadness and more hurt. Just - not posting or commenting much.

I know from other mothers that what I'm experiencing is not unusual. The aftermath of Emma's birthday has been so much harder than the days before or the day itself. It's not the raw numbness of this time last year, the weeks between her death and her funeral. It's flatness - and tiredness. Exhaustion seems to be a very physical manifestation of grief for me. I just can't seem to pull round and find my va-va-voom. It's been swallowed up in a general sense of "bleurgh".

I have such fear too. I have been working so hard to embrace this new pregnancy and give our little Jurgen all the love and excitement and anticipation that his/her siblings have all had in utero. Mostly, I think I've managed it - I am genuinely in love and every kick represents hope. But, passing Emma's birthday has brought the alternative possibility right back into my field of vision. I reached viability the same week I reached my daughter's birthday - a minor co-incidence that I have found very hard to reconcile. Catherine has written very powerfully about what the word viability means to her. My, somewhat morbid, thought on the subject was that legally I'm now in the same position I was last time. If Jurgen dies I have to go through exactly the same again - registering his/her birth, arranging a burial. Jurgen has been so real to me for so much longer than just these past two weeks so but somehow that landmark - a small celebration for most innocently pregnant women - has combined with the oppressive sadness of these past few days to make the hope and the possibility of a better outcome feel a little more elusive.

I haven't fallen back to the very bottom of the pit but it feels like I've fallen in and got caught in a ledge half way down. I will climb back out - I know that. It's just taking a little bit of time.