five

Tomorrow (Thur 6th Feb) will be five years since I lost my daughter Tilly.  It's been five years so, naturally, no-one else remembers.  Not my parents, not my friends and I am sure not even A.

There's no-one else I can tell, no-one else who will tell me that it is okay to still grieve except you who read this because you have also gone through similar.

I am very sad tonight.

today

My friend had her baby over the weekend, and today I duly went off to buy something to send.  In hindsight, I should have left it for a day.
Three years ago today I lost Bean, my daughter Matilda Tui.
Maybe one year in the future I will stop marking the day, but not today.

bumpy

This morning, at a meeting that starts before daybreak (8.00am), I was in a room full, FULL of pregnant women (two).  One was my friend, who sat next to me and we had a delightful 5 minute chat about her slightly bonkers obstetrician.  This was perfectly fine; my heart didn't get kicked through my stomach and I thought that I have regained a normal reaction to other people's pregnancies.

And then pregnant doctor #2 came in and I had to swallow a gulp of scalding hot silage (coffee from the machine in A&E) to create an excuse for the sudden tears in my eyes.

Maybe I have only regained a normal reaction to friends' pregnancies.  I can live with that.

three years

Three years ago today we lost Starchild.

I'll always love you, my Zachary Joseph.

a day like any other

Every day I think about my babies.
Tomorrow will be the same.
Every day I miss my babies.
Tomorrow will be the same.
Every day I wonder what Starchild and Bean and Little Stars would look like now.
Tomorrow will be the same.
Every day the hole in my heart is almost tangible.
Tomorrow will be the same.
Every day there is something missing.
Tomorrow will be the same.
Every day something, some thought, some sight, will make me catch my breath at the pain of loss.
Tomorrow will be the same.

Tomorrow is just another day like any other; I will mourn my babies no more or less than today.  But tomorrow is 6th February and two years to the day that we lost our precious daughter Bean and it hurts so much that I feel like I am going to shatter into shards.

a year ago

A year ago today I was pregnant.

A year ago tomorrow I learnt my HcG levels were dropping.

A year ago on Friday I started to miscarry our Little Stars.

A year ago I still thought that this Christmas would see us as parents.

It was only a year ago.

But it was also a lifetime ago.

bittersweet

One day while pregnant with Bean I fainted at work and was tended to by Dr Lovely.  She asked me if I was pregnant while she took my blood pressure and when I said "yes" I saw something in her eyes I recognised - pain and envy.  A few weeks after Bean died a group of us went out for an evening and Dr Lovely and I found ourselves at one end of the table, tipsy and talkative.  She told me about the struggles she and her husband had had, how there was no chance of them conceiving without medical intervention, how none of their first cycle embryos had made it to blasts and how they were going to be sinking everything they had into a cycle done at a famous American facility.

Last November Dr Lovely had her embryos transferred two days after I did.  I lost my Little Stars on Christmas Eve, hers stayed for just one more week.  We had cycled together, hoped together, tentatively rejoiced together and then mourned together.

Today I had a gentle email from Dr Lovely who is currently working in Africa.  They had a last ditch, 4th IVF at the famous American facility and she is now almost out of the first trimester.  I am genuinely happy for her and rejoiced that her heartbreaking journey is finally heading in a wonderful direction and could send a sincerely joyful email back.  But if she had been in front of me she too would have seen something in my eyes that she recognised.

the importance of names

I have been thinking about writing this post for weeks now but (for reasons I find very difficult to explain) I have felt shy of doing so.  But then I was encouraged by two awesome women (from here and here) so have found the courage.

Doing a very quick search on the world's premier online market place (UK site) I found that there are at least 1,265 books of baby names.  You can get books of "unusual" names, Armenian names, Gaelic names, saints' names.  You can get bumper books, little books, greatest books, modern books.  But mostly you get the idea -  the naming of children is a very important matter.

A and I never knew Starchild's gender but I believed at the time and later (when pregnant with Bean) was convinced that he was a boy.  So in our hearts we gave our son a name: Zachary Joseph MySurname.

We found out for sure that Bean was a girl only after she had died (we hadn't wanted to know at  my 12-week scan).  Her name is Matilda Tui MySurname.

We never got that far with our Little Stars so they will always have to remain nameless.

Zachary Joseph, Matilda Tui, Little Stars.  "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be."

punched

This afternoon A was doing a back-up of all our photos and videos, clicking on the odd one now and then as he went.  Before I could stop him, he clicked open an untitled video he took of me in early April 2008 at the top of the Sk.y T0wer in Auckl@nd.  It's quite an ordinary video, I'm just walking on the glass floor and staring down.  But it's the commentary.  A is talking to Starchild-in-the-future, saying "there's mummy, isn't she pretty?"

It punched us both in the stomach.

different world

I sometimes (*cough*) think about What Might Have Been.  I wonder what our life would be like if I hadn't lost Starchild and he (we didn't know if Starchild was a boy but I was convinced) was going to celebrate his 2nd birthday next month.

Or what our life would be like if we hadn't lost Bean and we had a 15-month old daughter lighting up our days.

Or what if we hadn't lost both our Little Stars in December and we would be currently sleep-deprived and ankle deep in the nappies.

I've fallen a bit in love with the many worlds theory lately because it says that somewhere there are universes where all of those things are real.

October 15th

www.october15th.com

Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope

Today (and every day) I remember Starchild (lost 28th April 2008), Bean (lost 6th February 2009) and Little Stars (lost 24th December 2009).  I love you, my babies, and I miss you every moment.

in which I fail to find my big-girl pants

I am having a bit of a mini meltdown.  It's not pretty, feel free to click away and come back when I have grown a pair.

1.  We have damp.  I was making up the spare bed this evening, for my mother to spend the night in tomorrow and found small spots of damp in one corner of the mattress.  There are also spots of damp on A's and my bedroom ceiling.  I am going to have to Get A Man In and, even though it may all turn out fine, at the moment I am being very Eyeore and trying to figure out how the frack I am going to pay for a damp course.  Two years ago I had to have a new boiler installed, 18 months ago I had to have double glazing put in and then my half of the cost of the fertility treatments wiped out what was left of my savings.

2. My dad is having surgery on his retina tomorrow.  Again, I am sure he will be fine, it's a routine operation and he should, all being well, only have to stay in hospital until Tuesday.  But he is 70 years old and not in the best of health, and will be having a general.

3. Work is awful at the moment, so much so that for the past month I have found my footsteps slowing the closer I get to the hospital.  A couple of days ago I had to shut myself in my office on arrival because I was in tears at the thought of facing another day there.

4. I am really, really tired.  Tired of worrying about things, tired of wondering how to afford to pay to fix the next problem. Tired of the huge, gaping void in my life and heart that hurts with almost each breath I take. Tired of pretending that everything is fine, tired of pretending that I am fine.

5. I am not fine.

everywhere

From the barista at my local coffee shop to the receptionist at work (22, unplanned) via one of the nurses, it seems that everyone in my working day is pregnant.

I am so bitter and envious and raw and hurting that I don't recognise myself.

days like these

Most of the time I potter along, doing okay. And then - bam! It all hits me all over again.

To be fair, today didn't come completely out of the blue, I've been teetering on the edge of a wobble since the weekend. Saturday went better than I expected (a post on that later) but it was a gathering where A and I were the only adults who weren't parents.

I have spent the days between then and now thinking about our losses.

I have a work colleague who regularly sends out forwarded emails (you know the kind). Usually she sends religious texts or prayers or miracle stories (all of which I find difficult being agnostic). This morning she sent a prayer which was illustrated by maybe 12 pictures of babies. Smiling, happy, healthy, living babies.

Three hours later I discovered another colleague is pregnant. No-one told me, she has just started to show.

And now I am undone. I miss my babies. I know that if Starchild had lived, I wouldn't have been pregnant with Bean. And if Bean had been born, I wouldn't have had my little stars inside me. But I miss my babies, all of them. I want to hold them and kiss them and feel their hearts beating and hear them laugh and watch them play and tell them how much I love them and how I will always love them.

I want my children back.