Exam pressures, Alien invasion and other reasons not to blog.

Perhaps this is how it'll be here - no formal goodbye just, well, less of a presence. I made a conscious decision to walk away a couple of months ago but I knew I'd wander back. I like this place and I like the virtual friends I have made here. So, there will be no final post here. Like others before me, I'll meander back to say "Hi. How you doing?" I'll still try to read EVERYTHING that comes through my reader, fail miserably and feel guilty. I ponder posts, like the darned good one I thought about which was an extended metaphor of grief as a forest (don'tcha wish I'd been around for that scintillating piece of writing) and then reject them. I agree with Jess - I still have things to say but they aren't always about sinking in a morass of grief or even specifically about Emma any more - although all my observations of my world and my life are threaded with her and my love for her and my longing for her and the space that is not her, but not always consciously now.

So, I will still be writing and definitely still trying to read your blog too if I know of it. It's just got harder. I've just embarked into my annual foray in the world of work-at-home motherdom. Our dining room is currently home to several hundred exam papers to be graded and returned by the end of June. I do this most years and I always forget the slightly panicked feeling I get as friendly postmen unhunch themselves on my doorstep as they divest themselves of heavy looking parcels for me to pour over. I manage it all by chanting "Think of the money, think of the money" under my breath and drinking too much tea.

Besides which, I no longer have internet access during the day. Our ancient old PC has been re-sited into Ben's room, which does not have anywhere for the modem and there seems no way of asking it nicely to connect wirelessly. So, I am constrained to visiting here, via the laptop, in the evenings only when, frankly, my brain has seen better days. The PC has been moved to accommodate a cot in our room for the gorgeous and exceptionally chubby Tobias, who has now outgrown his Moses basket. I always feel slightly envious of co-sleeping mums and dads - it seems so lovely and snuggly to me but it's a no go here. My lovely husband has what I have boldly - and with no medical training at all - designated a mild sleep disorder. It's not at all bad but occasionally he acts out his dreams. I was woken a few months ago when the duvet was unceremoniously ripped off my legs and my (completely asleep) husband started slapping my legs (not hard, I want to stress!) Upon further questioning of said sleepy other half, it turns out he was "getting the aliens off [me]"! So, no little baby in the bed for us (although he does sneak in for his night-time feeds) and no more computer in our bedroom. But at least I can rest easy that I'm sorted in the event of alien invasion.

Seven Minutes.

Beth left a comment on my last post that got me thinking. She said that she hadn't realised that Emma had died SEVEN minutes before she was born. I'm not surprised. I talk a lot about how I plod my way through grief and I even wrote this post about the person I thought my daughter was or might have been. But I've been reticent about sharing the details of her birth - which was also her death. Partly because I've done pretty well at avoiding the attentions of the malevolent "anonymous" trolls who leave despicable and thoughtless comments on the blogs of grieving parents. I suspect a post about birth choices might draw some of them out of the woodwork. Mainly, however, it's because I'm frightened of being revealed as a fraud. I think all of us grieving parents recognise guilt as part of the grief process. We also understand that mostly the guilt is not based on reality. But, how do you process it when choices you made are implicated in your child's death?

In real life, I have worked hard on this. Mostly, I have made peace. My obstetrician assured me just hours after Emma's death that I would never know if she might have lived through an elective section. He was sure that arriving at the hospital sooner would not have changed the outcome. They were some of the kindest words I could have heard in the immediate aftermath of her death.

But, as I approach Jurgen's increasingly imminent arrival in this world and I feel the familiar dread of a surgical birth enfold me, I realise that this might be one part of my grief that I will never fully accept or "heal" from. I'm hoping writing here will release some of the panic I feel as I prepare for our fourth child. I will have the planned section because I am a mother and I want what is best for my child. It seems that operative deliveries are best for my children so, of course, I set aside my own preferences to hopefully obtain the best and safest outcome for my baby but I miss feeling joy and anticipation at the prospect of labouring and birthing my baby myself.

Emma will be my only vaginally birthed child. Her two older siblings were born by emergency section after long and difficult labours. I experienced some post-natal post traumatic stress disorder after the birth of her elder sister. It isn't nice - it isn't, of course, one billionth as painful as living for the rest of your life with babylost grief - but it isn't a pleasant or easy way to start mothering a child. I know that some babylost parents feel very frustrated by mothers who profess birth trauma after the birth of a living child - and I understand that entirely. I mention it here because it is part of the path that led to me making the decision to pursue a vaginal birth at home with Emma. NHS protocols here meant that I would have been offered a planned section at 39 weeks for her birth. Would I be here if I hadn't declined that path? What if ... what if... two horrible words to live with.

We don't know because we don't exactly know why Emma died. I went into labour spontaneously, my labour for the most part was straightforward. Emma, by every indication used to determine distress, was a perfectly happy baby for the duration of my labour. The last time we heard her heartbeat at 2.17am, just after we had transferred to the hospital so I could have a little bit of help with my second stage, it was well within the healthy range for a baby so close to birth (and we're pretty sure it was her heartbeat not mine, something I've been asked about when I share this part of the story). At 2.25am, I birthed a baby with no breath and no heartbeat. We didn't have an autopsy because it seemed so obvious to us that it was a "birth accident". Sometimes I wonder if a postmortem would have showed something more but I think that's because I want to believe that healthy babies being born to healthy mothers during healthy labours can't die. I'm proof to myself that they can. She was a good healthy size, her placenta and cord were healthy and revealed no clues. The best guess we can make is that her cord became pinched between me and her in those final minutes.

In the absence of any definite answers to her death, I have had to simply surrender to the course of action that will bring Jurgen into the world. I don't feel like I can make any choices for this little boy or little girl. I tried last time to make the choices that were "best" and safest for myself and my child. With the benefit of hindsight, it turned out they were neither.

Anger revisited.

Approximately 24 hours out from losing our precious girl, I got myself on the computer and ordered up a stash of grief literature. It's what I do. Need to know something? Find a book. So I did - and I read them cover to cover in the days that followed. But I really didn't read them as though they had any relevance to me: I had a sort of anthropological detachment as I read the stories of other grieving parents. "Oh. Those poor parents. How sad. How horrible. How do they cope?" It wasn't "forgetting" exactly, more a complicated form of denial that I was and am one of those parents now. I read about the grief cycle and how anger can be a BIG part of it. "Not for me", I thought breezily. I'm from a cold, damp region of the world and my constitution is, at best, described as phlegmatic. My idea of a blazing row with D. is to sulk for several hours until he asks what's wrong. I'm just not an angry person really.

Correction - I WASN'T an angry person. It was around Christmas time when I was surprised by the blazing rage that took hold of me - around 2 months out. It really, really scared me. Rage is such an out-of-control emotion and I don't like to be out of control. But, as it persisted over the next few months, I got used to it and I (almost) grew comfortable with feeling so close to boiling point all the time. It felt like an "active" emotion. Feeling angry at my daughter's death made me feel like I was actually parenting her in some way. It felt like expressing my disgust at whoever thought they could take her away from me, at the universe, at randomness, at God, at whatever it was that caused this foul chain of events that ended in my daughter's heart stopping, was productive. Maybe it was. I decided from the outset that whatever I felt was what I needed to feel, even if the emotion was downright ugly. I certainly think it's been healthier for me to feel these emotions than to repress them.

All the same, I was relieved when the anger just naturally dissipated over the summer. Nothing in particular happened to move me along. It was just a gentle summer with lots of fun things happening and it was healing for us all in lots of ways. There were days when I actually didn't mind the version of normal that I have now - it was okay. I learned how to laugh and not feel guilty. I discovered that I could be pregnant and scared but also excited and hopeful.

Since Emma's birthday, the anger is back - but it's mutated. This is cold. It's not passionate or helpful, it's my version of a pity party. I try not to think "Why me?", because really, what's the point? It was me and that's not going to change. But it's the refrain that underlies everything I do at the moment. Some of it is fear - the end of this pregnancy feels close and yet so far. I have started to have very vivid dreams about stillborn babies which I try to shake off but which linger in the shadows through my days.

It's more diffuse now too. I have spent a year in this little corner of the internet now and I have "met" some amazing women (and men). Whenever I read about another stillborn child, another baby born too soon; whenever I read about mothers who are grieving for their precious children and yet also face battles to conceive again or who lose again I feel SO angry. I want to stamp my feet and scream about the unfairness of it. Not just "why me?" but "why us?"

Play acting "normal" pregnancy.

... that's what I've been up to this week. I decided to head to aqua natal classes at the local pool. I have been doing a salsacise class at our local community centre but Jurgen is no longer a willing participant in being shaken about like that - not even the sedate sort of shaking that I am able to manage. Aqua natal is perfect - all jiggling goes on beneath the water, which acts as a wonderful cushioning pillow to poor, saggy (non-existent, possibly) tummy muscles like mine.

I knew it would be unsettling the first time I went. The last time I went I was 20-something weeks pregnant with Emma. But I thought it would be okay. I mean it isn't as though I was a regular aquanatalist the last time - the classes didn't coincide with nursery pickups so I had many good intentions but not much in the way of actual exercise. I think I managed 3 classes all told.

And the class was fun, once I got past the initial weirdness of the same swimsuit, the same instructor, different, but still bumplicious, other participants - I got to pretend cycle up the pool on an green latex noodlely thing - what's NOT fun about that I ask you? But, it was like being hit by a brick. I am NOT a normal pregnant woman.

Normal pregnant women don't wonder if they are killing their baby by doing (very gentle) exercise. Normal women don't pause and wonder how much information is absolutely essential when the instructor asks if there is anything she should know about this pregnancy. Internal answer: Yes, it's a blessing, it's a miracle, it's fragile, it might end at any minute for absolutely no reason, don't you dare do anything that might cause my uterus to erupt or my cervix to melt or my baby to die, d'you hear me? External answer: No, everything is fine thank you. Normal pregnant women don't almost fall of their green, latex noodle when the instructor (who is also a midwife) tells us all, during the relaxation phase of the class, that S. - the tall one with bobbed hair - had her baby last week. A nice, straightforward labour. You see, says the midwife joyously, it does happen, even with first babies. We need to focus on the positives not the horror stories because it's mind over matter. If we think positively, it'll all be fine. I was in the deep end so I couldn't throw my noodle at her but the temptation was there. I was an all singing, all dancing advert for the power of positive pregnancy. I LOVED pregnancy and I LOVED all things birth related. I was the Little Miss Sunshine of the positive birth community. Guess what, my baby died. I don't want to broadcast this fact to a group of women I've never met before but I don't think I'm unreasonable to think that a midwife, of all people, might recognise that there might just be someone in her class for whom those sort of comments might just be a little bit on the sensitive side.

So, I think I can safely say that I'm not really, truly a normal pregnant woman this time around. I think I'll still go back though - I DID like the green noodle and I might get a pink one next time.

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.