A void

I have been avoiding coming to my blog, reading other blogs, commenting on blogs. I haven't avoided thinking about blogging friends though - this part of the internet has been my virtual home for nearly two years now - a place that I buried myself in for a while back there. I still potter on with my daily life and wonder about the mums who are completing difficult PALs or who are trying to embark on one, mothers who are learning about the joy and the strain of motherhood after loss. And it's all still important to me but, with a dodgy internet connection and online shopping to be done, it was easy enough to claim that precious screen time needed to be spent elsewhere. But, that wouldn't be the whole truth - the decision to step away was somewhat more deliberate than that. These times come along sometimes, it seems to be just part of the cycle.

I don't know what I expected for two years. Something more gentle maybe. But, no. What I got was a stumble, a head first pitch into the deeper recesses of the grief pit. Because there is still a void - a hole that will never, ever, never be filled. Most days I can step around it - carefully, but relatively surefootedly because I know the terrain by now but not this time of the year.  I celebrated my daughter's second birthday without her, just as I will celebrate her fifth, her eighteenth, her twenty first... We do celebrate but it is a conscious choice to do so - to do it in the face of an overwhelming urge to roll into a ball, refuse to leave my bed and focus on the void.

And gradually, imperceptibly, the depression lifts again and I only realise how low I actually was in hindsight.

And then it's Christmas - a whole bundle of conflicting emotions to try to deal with. I can't avoid Christmas, even if I wanted do, not with exuberant living children writing Christmas lists and begging for the tree to go up. I think it's good for me to be pulled out of myself and I am finding some seasonal joy this year as we sing along to carols and make mince pies. There are moments of intense sadness - of course there are. Emma isn't here and she should be, no amount wrapping paper covers the void. I took a Christmas wreath to her grave and cried harder than I've cried for a long time. I hang her decorations on the tree and feel again the paucity of what I have for her, compared to the piles of gifts hidden upstairs for her siblings and I feel angry all over again. Angry for what I've been cheated out of, angry that SO many of us face this Christmas without our babies and angry for her, that she is missing all this. Except I don't really think she is missing out on it all. I truly believe she is somewhere safe and well - somewhere I hope to join her one day, if I find my feet with my faith again. Somewhere, where Christmas is celebrated without sadness and only joy.

But, still, at this time of year I long for there to be no gaping hole in my life and I struggle to comprehend that there is - and always will be.

Day 16 - A song that makes you cry (or nearly)

I'm not going to fill in the gaps from the last few days, just pick up with today.

So, songs. I agree with Angie, all music has the capacity to dissolve me into a puddle of sadness. Sometimes, I deliberately play things I know will make me cry, just for the catharsis. All song lyrics are about dead babies, all babylost parents know that. I can't sing many of the songs in church any more. And lullabies and nursery rhymes? I'll be astonished if Toby ever learns the words, as pronounced by his wailing, snot-dribbling mummy as she hugs him so hard he gives his protest squeak.

But, in  particular, a piece of music played by Emma's daddy for her birthday chokes me. I've heard it a lot these past months, as Dave practised it before recording. It has become her music.

And this will always remind me of my beautiful little girl too:

Subsequent Pregnancy Guilt

Survivor, survivor's, or survivors guilt or syndrome is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives himself or herself to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event. It may be found among survivors of combat and natural disaster, among the friends and family of those who have committed suicide, and in non-mortal situations among those whose colleagues are laid off. The experience and manifestation of survivor's guilt will depend on an individual's psychological profile.

(from Wiki.ped.ia)

Lately, I've been dealing quite a lot with what I can only really describe as "Subsequent pregnancy" guilt. I love this community. I have no doubt that my path through grief has been a little smoother, a little less lonely because of my involvement in various online communities. But, it is strange to actually cry tears of anger, frustration, joy for people I have never met face to face. There is a large degree of trust going on here. You have to trust that I am truly a bereaved mother, just as I do for you. And I do ...

To digress for a moment: my husband and I are big fans of a cult, terribly British, sci-fi show from the seventies (sounds great, doesn't it !?) called Blake's 7. I remember, in particular, an episode when an idealist, alien, freedom fighter tells a far more cynical character: "My people have a saying. One who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken." I can't quite decide if that is profound or just terribly cheesy. Maybe it's both. But I think of that quote often when I'm meandering around in cyberspace, especially this babylost portion. I choose to believe the blogs I read - usually because there is something in them that strikes me as real or honest, something I recognise from my own experience of losing a child. As a result, I do invest a lot of emotional energy in what I read. I quite often dwell on posts throughout my day. I quite often feel frustration at my inability to do more than simply post an (often inane) comment.

So, back to the pregnancy guilt. There are a lot of us here who are navigating our ways through pregnancy after loss. But, I am so very aware at the moment, there are many other blogging parents who are hoping and longing for another pregnancy. And I feel so tremendously guilty that I already have 2 living children and I've been able to conceive with relative ease again. I feel a little ashamed of having broadcast my very straightforward, average PAL when other pregnancies after loss are not straightforward and have risks of complications and difficulties attached.

I suppose all I can do is to say that I do not take the blessing of my living children for granted. I do not, ever - not for one minute - take the blessing of this little life within for granted. In the midst of fears about losing again and grieving again, I do acknowledge the awesome privilege that this pregnancy has been and is. And to say that I long for each and every babylost mother or father who wants it to be able to walk this path too is an understatement.

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.

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.