Birthday Boy / Birthday Girl

It has been a busy weekend here. On Friday we celebrated the fact that our beautiful boy, our Ben, was 7. I am so very, very proud of my little man. He is sensitive and articulate and loving. Parenting after the loss of a child can be so difficult. Those of us who are blessed to have living children at home with us recognise deeply how precious these little lives are. I know I feel an immense burden of responsibility to try to protect them from the aftermath of this tragedy whilst recognising that, really, I can't. They need to be free to feel it too. But I doubt my two eldest will ever know how much they have helped Dave and I through this past year.

But, to more frivolous matters. Friday was a day to celebrate the long awaited arrival of a much wanted Nin.ten.do D.S. and to eat pizza. It was an excuse to overindulge in yummy sticky chocolate cake, artistically decorated with Le.go by yours truly!!


On Saturday, the whole shebang started over as we celebrated that our lovely Lucy was 5. Her name means bright/light and it has always suited her but, over this past year, I have been so glad of her company - of the way her larger than life firecracker personality has lit up my days. This time it was a Bar.bie scooter (complete with a lip gloss so Lucy need never be caught scooting bare lipped again!!) and a pink princess cake. (I know there's probably a debate to be had about gender stereotyping here but lets save it for another day!) and four 4/5 year old girls arguing over whose turn it was to wear the mermaid outfit.

Happy, precious days.

And now, we are two weeks away from another birthday. One which, sadly and inevitably, will be different again. I hope we can make Emma's day a celebration too. I honestly have no idea how I want it to be right now. But I want her to know that I am immeasurably proud of all my children and I delight in them all - the ones I am privileged to raise and the one who soars.

Emma's Hope Collage

When I saw Lea's post, featuring Nicholas' beautiful collage; I went to Franchesca's site. I think it's a lovely idea - and I think Emma's collage is just stunning.

A good scan.

Friday's scan went well. By all such indications, Jurgen is healthy and growing well just as he or she should be. We have stayed with an enigmatic bump - D. says girl, I say (somewhat tentatively - with almost a 100% track record in being wrong) a boy.

To say we were relieved by the good news would be an understatement! I know ... heavens don't we all? ... that such things are not 100% but for now, I'm happy & excited and choosing to believe that I might just bring home a baby in January.

Our children think so. We told them on Friday night. We were braced for the questions about whether this baby would die. They didn't come then, just squeaks and squeals of excitement. "I think it will either be a boy baby or a girl baby" says 4 year old L. sagely. There are signs that they have more anxiety than "normal" siblings. L. saw a mother with her baby in the changing room at dance class. She leaned in confidentially to me and whispered, "I hope this baby lives. I'd like us to have a baby at home." Oh me too, sweetheart, me too. Our 6 year old keeps stroking and cuddling my bump and asking, "Is Jurgen kicking you just now, mummy?" It's what we expected - this pregnancy is different from Emma's for all of us but their hope is good.

Intact

Several months ago I was reading a post I came across in a grief and loss forum. A mother, six months out from the death of her toddler, talked about the difficulty in trying to reconnect with friends from the time before. "I can't just pretend," she wrote (I'm paraphrasing slightly as I can no longer remember the exact words), "that I don't hate their intact lives."

It was one of those "Whoa" moments. I understood exactly what she meant. That sentence clarified exactly what I had been feeling. I have written here before about being introvert, about needing solitude and preferring to avoid anything requiring a degree a sociability. Deep down I had a sense of what this mama was saying but I hadn't managed to articulate it, even to myself. I planned to write a blog entry about it, back then, several months ago. But then other things came up, other topics to consider and I would remember it as various times but never got round to writing about it.

I've been thinking about it a lot over the summer and the post I write now is very different from the one I would have written three months ago. I have had a LOT of company these past few weeks. My husband and both my older children have been on holiday for six weeks and we've crammed such a lot of things into a month and a half. Most profoundly for me, we have visited with family and I held my thirteen week old nephew for the first time and spent time in the company of my little niece - 5 weeks older than Emma would be. What struck me was the lack of resentment. I braced myself for these visits, expected to survive them and sink into a deeper grief afterwards. It wasn't like that at all. Of course I thought about my daughter and looked for her features in these cousins of hers. Of course I longed for it to be different - to be passing my nephew back to his daddy because I needed to stop my 11 month old making a beeline for the staircase. But there was more too. I enjoyed snuggling a wonderfully warm and cuddly three month old and seeing him smile. I realise that somewhere in the last three months I have stopped hating people for their intact lives.

I know, of course, that some of this is down to Jurgen and the hope that he/she engenders in us. If I weren't pregnant again I doubt I would have had the same capacity for graciousness. But, there's more to it than that. After all, my husband and I have both considered how best to tell people about this pregnancy (it is still for the most part a secret to anyone except family and blog readers). We want people to be pleased but not to assume that this baby replaces Emma or somehow makes us "intact" again. He/She doesn't. If this baby lives and thrives, I will still be a bereaved mother - something everyone here gets but not everyone in real life.

I think mainly it is the passing of time. My grief, in the early stages, was of necessity selfish. How I felt, how I handled things, what I needed to do to survive and get through the day - these were my main considerations. They had to be. As I'm slowly emerging from the deepest level of this pit I am able, once again, to consider other people more objectively. Whilst very few of the people I know in real life have experienced tragedy at a level I have, I can now recognise that life is not perfect for anyone and I do not need to hate their "intactness". Also, I'm in a better position to appreciate the joys and good things that still exist in my own life - my truly amazing son and daughters and their wonderful daddy and other smaller daily gifts.

If this sounds insufferable, I apologise. I do not intend it to come across that way. This is a season I'm in at the moment - a breathing space for which I am grateful. Emma's first birthday is approaching - I know. This fact nudges at me through everything else. I have other milestones to face - my 20 week scan on Friday, my son's seventh birthday, my daughter's fifth birthday. For now, all my concentration is on these things but when October comes around there are no more distractions and I don't quite know how I will be. It's too big and momentous a time. For now, I'm just trying to enjoy a period of respite.

Stop all the clocks

For Jet and all the other babies who should be here but aren't:

Stop all the clocks
by WH Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

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.