Perfection?

So I've been thinking on and off about perfection. Actually I've been feeling angry that it's something I think is denied to me now. Those "perfect" life moments - how on earth can you have them when one of your children is dead? It feels like one more thing to grieve - as if grieving the physically painful lack of my baby isn't enough.

But then the rational side of me kicked in (good to know it's buried in there somewhere). My life was NOT perfect before Emma died - it was good and rich and happy but ... perfection ... all the time?? ... I realised how stroppy I was being mourning something I never had (and never missed) anyway.

I also realised that life is not all bad now either. It's tough and grey and teary a lot of the time but not always. In the very early days after Emma died I used to feel guilty that I couldn't say, "My life is terrible" - as if somehow I failed her for not feeling like that. But, if I had said that, wasn't I "failing" all the people still living who have offered love and comfort and made this path bearable? Wasn't I "failing" Emma's brother and sister for not seeing the joy that they bring to my life. Emma's death was terrible -is terrible and sad and momentous - but the life I'm living in and around the grief isn't.

This was brought home to me this weekend. My wonderful husband said he wanted our anniversary to be "a break in the storm". It was, because he worked SO hard to make it that. He headed off to work for the day before arriving back with an armful of beautiful flowers and the surprising announcement that he'd managed to get the day off (he teaches so this is a big deal - he can't simply take leave whenever). It was a good day - and it just got better. After a meal out, instead of driving home, he drove us to the castle (turned hotel) where we spent our wedding night. I had *no* idea any of this was coming. The enjoyment he so obviously got from pulling the wool over my eyes was so touching and me - well I got a day and a night that were pretty near to perfect. I got my break in the storm.

10 years ago ...

I stood at the front of church and promised "For better, for worse". I could never, ever have envisaged what that would mean in reality. The best has been better than anything I could possibly have dreamed up. The worst ... well, I don't need to say do I? Nobody says their wedding vows, imagining the day they'll have to bury their child.

My husband is my best friend, truly. For all that's a cliche ... it's absolutely right. I still wake up and turn over to find him in the morning and feel relief and joy and peace that he is there next to me in the bed. I honestly don't know where I'd be right now if I hadn't had his hand to hold on this horrible, horrible bit of our journey. I feel as if we're two battered trees, falling towards each other. Somehow, our branches are tangled and we prop each other up - not in strength but in struggling together.

It's because of him that I know I have strength for this. After ten years, I say again, "For better, for worse" ... forever.

It was Mother's Day yesterday

I have said that if I ever write a memoir about Emma, I'd have to call it "Life in the Conditional Tense" because it is so hard not to spend so much time with the shoulds and the woulds and the what ifs. Yesterday should have been my most perfect mother's day. I should have been celebrating the fact that my family is complete and I get to watch them grow. But it isn't like that. I didn't get woken up in the wee small hours by a hungry, chubby 5 month old.

But ... it wasn't so bad. Bittersweet ... as is much of life now. I was allowed a lovely long lie in and I was woken by 2 very excited little people and their daddy with a tray full of breakfast goodies. I got 3 gorgeous cards - two my lovely son & daughter had made a nursery and school. One bought by daddy and decorated by the kids. They worked very hard on it yesterday (I guessed what they were up to ... 4 year olds are not discreet) and their daddy announced it was a card to celebrate life, a card full of exuberance. And, you know, the card from my stillborn daughter was indeed full of life - the children had coloured it with bright colours, stuck wobbly eyes and felt poms poms wherever there was a gap and daddy had written the verse:

Dear mummy,

I am your forever baby,
forever your princess,
forever in your heart.
I love you,
my forever mummy.

Emma xxx

As sad & as incomplete as I felt yesterday, I also felt deeply, deeply blessed for what I do have. I just miss my smallest girl.

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." (Khalil Gibran)

Mixed feelings.

I don't know where I want to go with this post. I just know I want to write something. It's been a strange few days ... in places painful with the raw hurt I felt back at the beginning of this, without knowing why these days should be like those days. Sometimes, I can point and say, "That's why it hurts". Other times, I simply have to accept with bewildered certainty that the hurt will subside again in time.

And then I read Gal's post at Glow in the Woods. It took me a long time to read because the tears started within a couple of lines. But they were good tears - tears that bring a tiny measure of healing with them and at the end I had one of those moments where my soul breathed a sigh of relief - relief that someone has managed to gift me with something I didn't even know I needed.

Then I logged on to one of my loss forums and a friend who has walked this path so closely with me, announced her pregnancy. I feel pure joy for the possibility that is growing in her right now.

I would like to hang to these moments of peace and joy. I hope that I can.

A Daddy's Tribute

D. would probably want me to apologize for the sound. He recorded himself playing this on our old, battered digital camera. Nonetheless ... I think it is so very, very beautiful.

Quieting the snakes.

My darling man looks burdened tonight - his shoulders are hunched and his eyes are dark. There's been an inspection in school so it isn't all that surprising. But I recognize grief beyond tiredness so I ask ... and he replies "A. was off today." A & his wife both work with D. More than that, they are his closest friends there. A's wife is currently on maternity leave with their third child. They have a daughter, they have a son ... so far, so parallel lives. I have prayed since Emma died that their new baby would be a boy.

Today, they had a baby girl.

Whenever, I feel like this pit must have a bottom ...

I hide my Medusa head - I shush the snakes, cram them back down and try not to focus on the fact she cried when she found she was having an unplanned third pregnancy. Because her new daughter will be loved and cherished - just like mine is. Because when I miscarried our tiny one, she send me a huge bouquet of flowers. But mainly because my husband is hurting and I want to make it right for him. I can't but I can try to avoid making it more wrong.

Getting it wrong.

You are only an acquaintance - we met at a coffee morning, probably a year ago. I remember I had an obvious bump - probably about the same size as the one you are carrying proudly now. I was probably stroking my wee girl - in the way that absent minded and unburdoned pregnant mamas do in public. You didn't say much then - I thought you were shy. My best friend fears you are just arrogant.

I can't tell how pregnant you are - I think you must have been pregnant when Emma died. That at least would explain why you look like a rabbit in the headlights when we pass each other at the school gate. It's your third - like Emma was my third. I shouldn't judge but I suspect you've had no losses - your children are close in age. I wish I knew what you are thinking when you look at me with such empty eyes. Are you feeling sorry for me? Guilty over your third beautiful bump?

Most pregnant women seem to exude an air of relief around me - a naive assumption that because I was the unfortunate 1:200, their odds are somehow lowered. I've done the suffering for them. I could tell them that I'm the third of three generations to experience stillbirth in my family or I could tell them of an internet acquaintance who lost her baby daughter to a placental abruption back in September and posted a heartbreaking message just weeks ago to say that her sister's tiny boy had been born too soon to survive life outside of his mama. The fact is their odds remain the same - low but not somehow lowered by my tragedy. Perhaps your reaction is more honest; perhaps my daughter's death has shocked you to the core. But I dislike you and I go out of my way now to avoid eye contact with you. NOT because of your pregnancy - pregnant bellies do sting me but I can't stop the world gestating and I hope to do it myself again one day. No, I dislike you because I can't read you - you don't warm your sad eyes with the ghost of a sympathetic smile. You make me feel worse - if that is even possible - about being a deadbaby mama. I don't like you because when it comes to reacting to me, you got it wrong.

Consolation

It's funny - I walk around composing posts for here in my head ... actually is that funny or is that sinister? Whichever, it's what I do right now. Anyway, if I had managed to post this up yesterday, then it would have been very different. That is one of things I find so very hard about this grief - I'm used to considering myself an emotionally stable person. Not any more. I know so many deadbaby mamas find it hard to sleep after a loss. Not me. I welcome the oblivion that comes with sleep - I think because it's a release from this dizzying array of emotion that swamps me when I'm awake and doesn't give me time to catch my breath.

Anyway, I was considering this post whilst standing in church. I have time to do this, because I find it virtually impossible to participate in the service in any meaningful way right now ... and I got to thinking about consolation. One word, two meanings. The thing about having a baby is there is no consolation prize - it's an all or nothing scenario. Either you get to grow, birth & raise a baby ... or you don't. Maybe, the two meanings aren't so different - maybe the consolation prize is finding those things that console - that offer consolation.

I have found them: my husband, who lightens dark days for me. My children who simply have to exist to make a day special. My best friend, who was at Emma's birth. Who, five months on, still cooks for us sometimes to save me the effort. But, I know where I'm going with this: the consolation of my faith. I know, I know ...it seems like I'm obsessed - two out of my four posts mention this but it's pretty fundamental to me and pretty fundamental to my grief process. I've been a Christian for nearly 30 years - I can't just walk away. I've thought about it several times in the last 5 months but actually becoming apostate isn't all that easy for me. You'd think stopping believing something would be easy, right? Especially when continuing to believe requires some pretty breathtaking leaps of trust. But no ... not for me. I remain convinced of the existence of God. I suppose that is something - the way I wander around the house shouting at Him about my daughter's death ... well, that would be crazy if I didn't believe right? I want to believe that He is the same as He was to me before October 14th: good, loving and personal. And, try as I might to deny it - the days I feel a sense of connection to Him are the days when the grieving is gentle ... this, I suppose, is consolation.

But I stand in church and I can't pretend that I'm okay with the fact that Emma died and God either caused or allowed that ... arggh. I thought having faith would help in such tragic circumstances but sometimes I think that believing the universe is random and our children dying was random bad luck might be easier. But, I can't change my absolute unshakeable belief that my daughter did not end when her life here did. I believe she is alive in heaven, that she is whole and healthy and happy there. Does it make it easier? I suppose yes - her death marks a pause in our relationship. It doesn't deny her or I the chance to be together again someday. It brings me no comfort that she is not in my arms right now. I am not consoled by this idea.

I am quite sure that this will not be my final musing on this subject ...

5 months ...

... since I held our long awaited third child in my arms. She was so, so beautiful - the image of her big sister. Sometimes it feels as though I blinked and woke up here. Other times it feels as though I've lived 5 lifetimes in these 5 months.

The hours leading to her birth seem dreamlike now - labouring at home in the birth pool, deciding to transfer because I was tired (but baby was fine); the registrar preparing the ventouse, my midwife laughing and saying "You don't need it clever girl, baby has turned. You can do it yourself"; the most triumphant moment of my life when I pushed our baby out and lifted it to my tummy, the shock and elation of finding out "Bobby" was a girl after all ... and then. Baby girl isn't breathing. She's taken from my chest to the resuscitaire, I can't see her because she's surrounded by doctors (I'm grateful. My husband could see and finds it hard to talk about even now). We agree her name is Emma (suggested by daddy just hours before) and I add Faith - trying to affirm I believe she'll be fine. I know she won't be. How? How do I know this? I just do. Her soul is already elsewhere.

Those words ... "I'm so sorry" and then she is back with us, warm and safe and perfect in my arms. We have photographs from these first moments - such precious treasures now. The first photograph we have is almost identical to the ones we have when our son and first daughter were born. Tiny baby wrapped in a towel, nestled in mama's arms. Daddy's arms around us both. We're smiling, tired but proud parents. I'm glad - glad the shock allowed us that moment of normality before we awoke to the fact that "normal" for us now is so very different from what it was before.

Normal, today, is allowing my 6 year old son to choose the flowers we will take to his sister's grave (yellow roses - he has excellent taste). It's hoping that I'll manage to avoid the 5 other mothers who gave birth to baby girls (not a single boy) between September & December 08 when I collect my daughter from nursery - and averting my eyes if I don't. It's feeling perpetual anger simmering beneath the surface. I was always so calm, so placid before - this rage frightens me. It's aimed at God mostly, as I wrestle with the tenets of a Christian faith I have cherished almost my whole life. I still believe, I want to find comfort but I cannot blindly accept this and the answers to the questions don't make sense to me yet - I'm uncertain whether they ever will. But I want them too. I am finding it hard enough to grieve my daughter. I don't want to grieve a loss of faith too. I call it "faith by my fingertips". Is it worth the effort? I have to believe so, most days. But that doesn't stop the anger or the anguish.

When I held my daughter in the quiet and stillness after her birth, I told my husband that I needed her death to mean something. I still do ... I know her death from a probable cord accident is senseless and horrific but I NEED good things to come from it. But I'm learning that I can't force those good things - they are aspirations right now, not reality. Some of the women walking this path ahead of me talk about the compassion they have now, the ability to appreciate life. I find it hard to accept that my child needed to die for me to become more compassionate. Current evidence suggests that I am less compassionate, less patient. My internal response to hearing bad news is almost always, "well, that's hardly as bad as a baby dying is it?" Some of my relationships have deepened and blossomed, many more are dying or have died. My joy in pregnant bellies and newborns is gone, perhaps for good. My daughter's 6 month old girl cousin, her shadow companion & bump mate, is a virtual stranger to me. I can look at pictures of dead babies and admire how perfect and beautiful they are. I can't be in the same room as a living one.

Perhaps for now, I shall hold on to the fact that my living children are the beneficiaries of my desire to find glimmers of hope in this morass of horror. I cherish them with a love that is strong and fierce and potent. Five months on, I get out of bed each day for them - and maybe that is enough for now.

What's in a name?

The name of this blog comes from this song which makes me howl for my precious little one. She should be here and she's not:

Little Voice

If I'm honest, it was only a matter of time before I became a blogger ... even before Emma died I had developed a bit of a "forum" obsession. It started when I was expecting our second child - I joined a "Due Date Club" - somewhere to moan and groan and celebrate. It was so much fun ... and a seed was planted. Then our daughter was born and things got busier and I stopped visiting.

Fast forward a year or two. I had the great idea that we should add to our family and DH has agreed - eventually! I joined a Trying To Conceive forum. My husband just doesn't get overly excited about periods, cycles, temperatures (hard to imagine, I know) so it was good to have a like minded community to share with. When our third pregnancy ended at just 6 weeks, it was a simple matter to rejoin the forum for TTC after a loss ... and here's pretty much where a simple hobby began to tip over into mania. By the time I was 20 weeks pregnant with Emma, I was a member of 2 Due Date Clubs and a Pregnancy After Loss one too. In my defense, I would like to say that I did see my husband occasionally through the pregnancy.

...and then, it all went hideously and catastrophically wrong ... I went back to the boards to post sad goodbyes to women who had become virtual friends, women who were now mostly cherishing little newborns in babymoon land. I had to find weeping icons instead of champagne corks popping. The trouble with forums is that they are all about words and, for a while, there were no words to explain how being tipped head first into hell feels ... but they were all I had. Initially my husband and I didn't have anyone else IRL to talk to about this so it was back to the forums; loss ones now ... and, from the bottom of my heart, I bless the internet for existing. Posting on MDC Birth Loss and the SANDS forum has been my sanity these crazy months. When I felt alone, I could see (heartbreakingly) that I wasn't.

From there, it was a simple of matter of clicking on someone's signature and finding myself in the blogasphere (blogosphere? blogisphere?). I have wept for women I will never meet and mourned their birthed and buried children, even as I grieve my own. Reading their words made me want to join in - so here I am, dipping my toe in the water to see how it feels. I have to confess I'm nervous. I want to tell my story but I don't want to bore anyone. I want to speak of my daughter but I want to cherish her and hug her close. I want my voice to mingle with the ones already telling this painful story but I don't want to simply be a mimic. I just want to be me. Time will tell if I can manage this.

If you've made it this far ... welcome.