Honest Scrap

Today has been a sad one but I was uplifted to get this from Lachlan's mum. Thank you - I was touched.

The rules are:
Choose a minimum of 7 blogs you find brilliant in content or design. Show the 7 winners’ names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they have won the Honest Scrap award.

So, here are my 7 nominations for the award (a tough one this. I find every blog I visit speaks to me in some way):

Opus Angara
Baby Bean v1.1
I lost a World
Knocked up, knocked down
Inanna Journey
After Iris
Waiting for Happy

I hope you're all able to participate. The 10 interesting facts bit is hard!!!

... And now for the ten probably not-very-interesting facts about me:

1) I ADORE "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. I read it for the first time when I about nine and I've read it about 20 times since then.

2) Thanks to my husband and my DS I can quote very large chunks of St.ar Wa.rs - the original trilogy (none of this prequel rubbish) . I do a mean Chewbacca impression!

3) My Victoria sponge cakes NEVER rise but I make a fabulous milk chocolate cake with lashings of milk chocolate icing.

4) I learned to belly dance when I was university. I figured with the amount of belly I had it had to be meant for something. I was good and would love to do it again.

5) I love Meatloaf ( hey, this is HONEST scrap!!) and was once on a television programme that he was on.

6) I did half an A-level in Latin Literature and a year of Chinese Language and Literature as part of my degree.

7) I used to have a phobia of bananas. I still hate them but made myself touch them when I was weaning my DS & again with DD ... both of whom now also hate them!!

8) I can't whistle at all. Just can't do it.

9) My absolute favourite colour is purple and I used to dress in it from neck to toe when I was a teenager - even though it clashed with my very red hair (not natural unfortunately - courtesy of a bag or seven of henna).

10) I failed my driving test four times and only passed my fifth because I was not asked to reverse park. I'd still be taking driving tests 14 years later if I had had to reverse park because I still can't do it. I have very limited spatial awareness!!

A pregnancy post.

Where to start ... in a little over an hour, I will be 17 weeks pregnant. I have been feeling small amounts of fluttering from Jurgen for several weeks now and this past week they have turned into definite movements - not regular yet but there.

I am completely in love. Any idea I had that I might remain detached was a falsehood. I adore this little one, just as I adored each of his or her brother and sisters. I have survived (am surviving - I don't know when it gets to be past tense) babyloss once, I don't know how I would do it again. I am just hoping and hoping that I don't have to.

I have never had a distressing ultrasound. Emma died 7 minutes (7 stupid, tiny minutes) before I pushed her into this world so the first we knew of our descent into hell was the paediatrician turning away from her and saying "I'm sorry". Those sickening words. So, I shouldn't fear ultrasounds, right? Except losing Emma has brought me into a world where babies die at every possible gestation - and beyond. And losing one child does not exempt you from the possibility of losing another to completely random and different circumstances. So, as my "big" scan approaches I can feel myself tensing. I try to shrug it off. I try to focus on now. I cannot change anything that is happening within me. I simply have to surrender to it happening and love my baby with everything I have ... and I do. Sometimes I dare to hope. As one of my fellow posters on MDC said of her own new pregnancy, "Being hopeful is brave. Be brave."


I do manage sometimes. I dreamed I was holding a little dark haired newborn boy with startlingly blue eyes. I try to hold onto that dream. I bought a pair of maternity jeans today and a journal with enough space to include not only my diary of the pregnancy but of milestones beyond. I looked at the newborn clothes too but didn't buy - I'm not there yet. We've discussed names - since D. is the one who christened Jurgen, you can see why we might need to start the conversation for "real" names somewhat early. We've debated whether to find out Jurgen's gender or have a surprise (still undecided). Yet, it all feels a little bit surreal and "naughty" as if I shouldn't be doing those things.

At 14 weeks, my Obstetrician asked me if I was feeling anymore reassured yet after three "good" first trimester scans. He seemed surprised when I said that I wasn't. I was surprised he expected me to feel reassurance at any point in this pregnancy. I will never reach a safe milestone. Emma died at 40 weeks, this baby will come at 38 weeks. He or she will need to be in my arms before I can tell my OB I feel reassured and even then ...

All I can do is love and hope and be brave.

10 months

Double figures. Perhaps because nine months was SO hard, Emma's ten month day is passing far more gently than expected. Perhaps it's because it's the long summer holiday and I have my other two and D. here with me so there isn't silence where there should be a whirlwind of infant activity. Perhaps it's because the past few weeks have been very hard and at some point I had to climb back out of the pit for a breath.

I still wish I could have known her at ten months - my other two were earlyish walkers (11&10 months) so perhaps she'd be cruising around the furniture. 6YO is building an elaborate wooden traintrack - I'm quite sure she'd be tasting the trains and messing up the design.

I wish.

Miss you sweet little girl.

Catharsis

I started with the cupboard under the stairs, then moved on to the cupboard containing the pram we bought for Emma (a proud E.ba.y moment that one!), the sideboard, the bookshelves, the cupboards in the children's room, the garage. Cleaning, decluttering, bringing order. I am not a hoarder by nature and chaos distresses me. Hurling broken toys and mouldy carpets into the giant skips at the tip felt GOOD. I look around and I feel accomplished.

If only it were so easy to do the same with my brain.

Healing & Holidays

I love the sea. I always find being near it calms me in a way that nothing else can. We don't have a great line in palm fringed sandy paradises with calm azure waters here in the North East of England. Our coastline is rugged and dramatic and beautiful. It rains a lot too. Standing by the sea here is a salutary reminder of nature's power and its unpredictability. The coast round here is studded with ruined castles, relics from an era when Vikings and others ravaged our little bit of England, the sea is studded with wrecks of ships who have come a cropper in these dangerous waters.


Last year we loaded up our brand new people carrier (well, brand new to us), bought to accommodate our need for 3 car seats, and trooped to a cottage on the Northumbrian coast. I was 34 weeks pregnant and we were all so happy. The weather was blissful and we stayed on the beach from morning (well lunchtime by the time I'd had my nap) until night.

D. & I headed back this way in November. The friends who let us use their cottage gifted us with a weekend here - a tiny opportunity to heal in the bleakest and darkest of days. We left the little ones with auntie, loaded up the too big car with logs for the open fire and lots and lots and lots of wine and comfort food. We hid away for a day or two.

... and we came back this year, uncertain if we were doing the right thing. Coming back without Emma. It was bittersweet, of course. How could it not be? But it was still a lovely holiday. The weather was not so kind this year but it was still good enough to spend our days building sandcastles and certainly not cold enough to deter our eldest daughter (who is almost certainly part mermaid) from braving the sea!


We arrived late afternoon on Monday and went for an evening stroll on the beach. Reaching out over the sea was a beautiful and vibrant rainbow. It wasn't the weak or vacillating sort. It was a perfect arch and it lasted the whole time we walked and played and climbed over the dunes back to our car. We claimed it as a good sign, a promise. Of what? I'm not too sure really. Of hope for brighter times to come I think.

Most mornings our children played outside the cottage whilst we got ready to head out. There is a family who have made a life for themselves, in this very remote spot. They live there all year round, the only permanent residents in a row of holiday homes. Their three children let ours use their ride along tractors and climbing frames and secret dens last year, and the friendships were renewed this year. We didn't really get to know the parents last year but I remember that their mother gave us a sympathetic and sad smile as we were leaving last November. This year, she cajoled me around for tea and parsnip cake (yes, really. Root vegetable cake! It's absolutely delicious). As I've said on this blog many times, I don't really socialise any more. Actually making small talk with a stranger ranks pretty high on my list of nightmares but I braced myself and went. She was lovely. Without any preamble she poured tea and said, "I'm so very sorry for your loss". Someone who said the right thing. How incredible is that?

"The same happened to me nine years ago. Our first child, our first son was stillborn." That's how she knew what to say. I always feel so sad when I hear that somebody else has lived through this awful experience but there is such relief in pouring it all out to someone who truly knows.

Yes, this holiday certainly had its sad moments. I stood on the beach and ached to know how Emma would have reacted to sand - would she have eaten it? (a la big sister) Would she have screamed at the sight of it? (a la big brother) Would she have a completely different reaction all of her own?

But, you know there were moments of peace and joy and even, maybe, a tiny bit of healing.

My grief work

After reading Lea's lovely news about her new pregnancy and her thoughts about a second blog, I contemplated the possibility of starting a new blog to document Jurgen's journey. I only contemplated it briefly. I am unlikely ever to win an award for world's most prolific blogger as it is and I know that I would not be able to do either blog justice. So, with your permission, I will remain a solitary blog kinda girl for now.

This is Emma's place and I still intend it primarily to be about her and my journey since meeting her, kissing her and saying goodbye. There will be the occasional pregnancy post of course. The crazy triad of birth/death/maybe life that is pregnancy after loss (so powerfully articulated by Sally here) is an enormous part of my tangled, messy grief yarn right now. Parts of Emma's birth and death that I thought I had begun to process, begun to integrate suddenly loom very large again now.

I remember reading "Empty Cradle, Broken Heart" just a few days after Emma died and latching on with absolute fervour to the idea of "grief work". The idea that grief was something I could "do" something about, the possibility of clawing back some control in a situation where I lost every last vestige of controlling influence - that possibility was a heady and intoxicating one. It still is, although I think I possibly have a more nuanced idea of what it means now. I might be able to "do" grief but I cannot do away with with it.

I also remember reading a thread over on the pregnancy loss section of Mothering, not long after Emma died when my arms ached to hold a baby and getting pregnant again seemed the cure for all ills. There was a wise and gentle post written by a someone who was several years into this journey. She found herself unexpectedly and quickly pregnant again after the death of her precious firstborn daughter. She talked abut how she handled her still very raw grief alongside her hope of a different outcome for her second pregnancy. She talked of working on her first daughter's scrapbook & journal whilst all the time documenting her journey towards meeting her second little girl. It seemed to me then, and still seems to me now, a powerful and positive way to approach a new pregnancy and I have stored it away in my brain for a time like now.

I'm about to leave the first trimester and today I saw Jurgen again, doing headstands. I am being forced to believe (against my current inclination to preclude any optimism in case of a jinx) that at his moment in time, this pregnancy is progressing well. When I was expecting Emma, I started a cross stitch birth sampler for her. I didn't start it until I was 34 weeks as I was making one for her cousin first who was expected before she was. So Emma's was unfinished when she was born. I looked at it a few days after I arrived home from the hospital and had what might have been my first coherent thought of the aftermath. "I can't complete this now but if I ever have another pregnancy, this is my project to get me through". I have not touched it again but now I'm ready. Ready to document my daughter whilst I wait hopefully for her sibling. Like the cross stitch, this blog is a place to document her too, another place where I do my grief work.

I think there is still quite a lot to do.

Monday Musings

9 months.
Tomorrow she will have been gone from my arms longer than I ever held her in my womb. But she is not gone from my heart - my ever pregnant heart. There she lives, there she shines, there she IS ... eternally.

***

The Red Tent.
After reading this beautiful post from Inanna, I was compelled to go back and read this gorgeous book. It is rich and dangerous and brutal and sad. I've read it more than once but this time I read it in a different way. I read it as a baby lost mother. I don't think I managed more than 2 pages at a time without tears. It is a story that honors motherhood profoundly. It is a story that recognises that for all mothers, even those who in our sanitised culture have forgotten it, death & life are both a part of birth.

"In the red tent we knew that death was the shadow of birth, the price women pay for the honor of giving life. Thus, our sorrow was measured." (page 58)

We ignore the shadow in our modern world and when our babies die, we become shadow women. Other mothers don't know what to make of us. They don't/can't embrace us because we are the embodiment of their most secret fear. The thing they want to deny.

We don't have a red tent. I do have a little gray box and a keyboard. It's not quite the same but I don't know where I'd be without you all - my modern red tent.

***
Gravestones.
I never imagined having to choose a gravestone FOR MY BABY. It stinks and we can't agree on a design. But we will, because we do agree that we want her name proclaimed. Her tiny plot is no longer so clear, the edges are no longer raw like a gaping wound. There is comfort in that, the earth is doing its job - integrating her more thoroughly than I can yet. But there is fear too - I don't want her forgotten or hidden. So soon, there will be a stone - beautiful and polished and permanent and we will plant daffodils round it. And her name will be remembered.