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.