Silence and Shadows.

For the first time ever, I have an unpublished post in my "drafts" folder. Generally, I'm from the "publish and be damned" school of blogging. Probably because my head acts as my drafts folder and, if something makes it from head to screen, it's usually what I needed to get out. But, recently, I feel wordless. I have wondered whether this is me telling me to stop, to pack up and move out. But I'm resisting. I don't feel done and this is one of the few places in my life that is still all about Emma (okay, with a little bit of Toby thrown in ... but mainly my girl.) The frustrating thing is that the words are there - I feel them bubbling under the surface, I gag on them but I can't make them take shape here. And I hate that it's her second birthday soon and I can't find anything to say. Of course I can say "I hate this", "I wish this hadn't happened to us", "I want her back" but, well, those things go without saying don't they?

***

It's our niece's second birthday today. I thought it was tomorrow. Fortunately, I sent the card and present earlier in the week so it arrived in good time. Shopping for her presents is a strange experience. I couldn't let myself think about what 2 year old girls really like so I was staring at rows of toys trying to choose something innocuous, something that wasn't going to make me feel sad and mad and angry that I'm not buying something for my daughter too. I certainly couldn't buy her clothes - that would mean going into the girl toddler aisle and I can't do that. 

I rant (prudish mama, me) about the difficulty I had in trying to buy Lucy (soon-to-be 6 but tall and lissome and older than her age sized) an age-appropriate winter wardrobe - Jeggings, yuck, yuck, yuck! At least, shopping for a 6 year old among Han.nah M branded clothing and lurid neon sack dresses - nostalgia for an era twenty years before she was born - is a world away from trousers still cut to accommodate nappy covered bottoms and sweet little dresses. 


I don't actually know what my little niece is "into" - her favourite TV characters or her preference for play. I don't know because I choose not to know. Bad Auntie that I am, always striving to avoid the unavoidable. She is here - a beautiful, healthy little toddler - and Emma is not. I bought some jigsaws and some crafty/colouring stuff. A nice (such an anaemic word) present I hope. I made her card too - taking time and care over it, perhaps overcompensating for finding it hard to see her as anything other than my daughter's shadow companion.

The precious gift of being able to miss.

I love all of my children with a white hot love. I remember my first night with my first-born. A difficult but successful birth - a baby who lived. I was high on motherhood and morphine so those early hours are blurred but, as dawn rolled into the room, I remember watching my tiny son in his plastic bassinet and thinking, "I would kill for you." It was a foregone conclusion that I would have died for him. That choice was made the minute I knew I was pregnant. But having him there, next to me, my mama-tiger was roaring, prowling - ready to fight. White-hot love. Fortunately, I have never had need to test that strong, primal feeling but it is still there - for all four of my babies.

Many of us with rainbow babies have written about the fact that we, probably, would never have had both babies, if our dead child had lived. That is almost certainly true for us - although when I said so to Dave, he said that maybe Toby would have been my "stamped feet" baby - the "let's have one more" child. Or, as my sister calls it, my "Oops-a-daisy baby". Maybe, we were always meant to have him somehow. Look at him - he's gorgeous. So alive. How could he not ever have been? How could I not love him with every last atom of my being ? ... and yet, if I hadn't had him, I wouldn't have known him to miss him. I find that so strange and unsettling.

When Emma first died, both Dave and I questioned the adage "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Some days were so hard and so painful and so raw that we wondered if it might have been better not to have had our third child. If we had never known her, we would not have been able to miss her with such gut-wrenching profundity. But that thought was fleeting. More often I recognised that her being in my life was -and is- a precious gift. To be able to miss her every day is my connection to her, my opportunity to mother her. A testament to the deep, abiding adoration I have for my tiny, beautiful baby girl.

Moonlight, Memories and Musings

The long drive home after visiting close friends who live at some distance. It's late and three bathed and pyjama-ed children sleep in the back. The sky is clear and the moon is full - maybe. Maybe just past full. It's beautiful and I think back to the days before Emma's birth - the frenzied speculations on the forum about whose labour would be triggered by the full moon. I look again. The moon is a nine months belly - full and round and gorgeous. From here, it's not barren and dusty - devoid of life.

The short drive away from home - I step out of the back door into a peaceful, silent night. I'm wearing a nightdress and wooley socks. I walk, pausing often to breathe...scream ...groan, to the ambulance that has come to take me to hospital. I'm barely away of my surroundings but just for a second, I look at the moon, serene and round. With total clarity, I know that this moment will be imprinted forever - a postcard on my mind. The moments just before the birth of my child. The moments just before her death.

I look behind me. I can't see baby. He's rear facing. I can barely see the oldest - they're in the second row of seats but I sense their breathing and their dreams. Just for a moment I'm aware of my second daughter too - the moon brings her close.

I step out of the back door - no romance. I'm taking the bins and the compost out. But I look at the moon and I remember a poem I wrote a long time ago. I go in and dig around the computer, trying to find it. To lay claim to something that connects me to her.


Emma's Playtime.

Search for me in the slim silver sickle
Of the new moon.
I'm swinging there
Legs out ... legs in
Flying high.
I've watched you teach my sister, mama,
And I can do it too.

See me climb the brightest rainbow
Heart in your mouth.
I'm sliding there
Hear me squeal with delight
As I propel myself down.
I love the orange, mama,
But I know you prefer indigo.

Find me in the softly blushing tulips -
The ones you bring to me.
I'm pretending to be Thumbelina.
I giggle as I hide
Tucking my knees under my chin.
I'm wearing fluffy fairy wings.
Can you see them, mama?

Admire my handiwork amongst the symphony of colours
In a beautiful sunset.
I'm finger painting
Dabbling my fingers in pots of pink and gold
The paint is everywhere, mama.
I'll enjoy my bath tonight.

Feel me in the sleepy kiss of my sister
As you tuck her in,
In the last, long hug my brother gives
Before you turn out the light.
It's been a busy day, mama.
I'll sleep well tonight.

Hope Angel

About three weeks before Tobias was born, I contacted Sally to say that if he was a little girl, we were probably going to call him Hope. Sally responded with such grace and generous spirit. It didn't register with me then but we already knew the date our baby was coming - Tuesday 19th January.

Toby, obviously, was a boy. I cannot envisage it (nor would I want it) any other way. And it is right and proper that a very, very special little girl remains, uniquely, Tuesday's Hope.

Sally - because the 19th is significant to me too, now - I think about you and Hope around this time every month. But especially today.

Happy 2nd birthday, Hope Angel.

Holi-holiday

"We're all going on a summer holiday" ... la, la, la, la.

It's nice, having my family around me. August is the biggest perk of having a husband who teaches. The six weeks holiday is delicious for us - completely shared parenting means lie-ins, blissful opportunities for much missed sleep.

We pack picnics and head off to parks, museums and such. Today was lovely and lively and happy. I was surprised by the pang I felt when I saw a V-E-R-Y pregnant lady. I thought I was past that. In the land of the lost, I'm lucky enough to have been found. But, sometimes I still feel lost and pregnant bellies remind me. But, it's fleeting these days and all I have to do to counter it, is look at the tiny sumo wrestler who looks up at me and laughs as if he's really pleased to see me and the feeling folds back into my heart.

At some point we'll head back to the place I wrote about here and it'll be lovely. I have been there with Dave and Ben and Lucy and Emma (34 weeks pregnant). I was there last year with tiny, still mostly secret, Jurgen tucked inside of me. This year, I actually get to follow up on a pregnancy and head back with a baby - an honest to goodness little person. I will get to see how Toby reacts to sand (on current form - my prediction is he'll try to lick it!) and I'll still wonder what Emma would have made of it all.

Strange but true - Denial.

I wondered, when I wrote the post entitled "Acceptance?", whether I was just setting myself up for a fall, hence the question mark. The question mark was supposed to show I wasn't taking it for granted at all, that I wasn't trying to push my luck.

I don't think I ever "did" denial - I sort of skipped over that little bit of the grief cycle. Emma's death was unexpected - I laboured, I birthed her, we rejoiced and then we were handed our dead baby. I don't suppose labouring, knowing is any easier. I doubt it. But, even in the absence of any time to process what this was going to mean for us, we held her and I think we both realised that denial wasn't an option. We both felt that we needed to face the grief, the hardship, the horror face on. I was definitely numb for the first couple of months but I never sunk into any sort of denial. I have told people that I have four children - and omitted to mention that one is dead but I don't omit that information because I can't face it or because I forget or because I try to fool myself. Usually I omit that information for the benefit of the other person or simply for privacy for me.

And yet, since Toby, I have struggled to hold onto her. Immediately after his birth, I lived in the land of gratitude and joy. I had a baby WHO LIVED. I cried a lot more often for Emma, I felt so close to her all over again because I could see her in him. And then, I hit a bit of a slump. Tiredness, hormones resetting ... who knows. But recently, I've found myself resenting the fact that I'm a mother whose child died. I'm tired of grieving and I just want to pretend that I'm not. I've never needed to visit Emma's grave with regularity but it's close and it's a very beautiful and peaceful place. I've never found it hard to go and just be still there - until now. Recently, I've felt like I ought to go and I've been unable to. Something in me has resisted. And I feel so guilty - as though Emma is drifting away from me - and I'm pushing her away. I still love her so much but I haven't quite worked out how to parent my living children the way I want to, how to be the sort of mother I want to be and not deny my precious, precious third child in the process.

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.