Naivety

I want what I will never have.  To give birth and believe that nothing can go wrong.  That bad stuff happens to other people, not me.

I hear of the safe arrival of babies constantly at the moment.  The gushing facebook posts, and I find myself annoyed/frustrated that another person knows this joy.  Obviously I would hate for it to be any other way for them, but I am selfish for me.  For what I want. 

I remember the excitement and anticipation as I passed the full term mark, knowing I was so close to meeting my daughter.  What happened at 39 weeks was so beyond what I was ever prepared for and now that naive joy I know will never be mine. 

I do know, or hope, however that I will have such a deeper joy when I get to hold Amelia’s sister or brother.  That will be a great day.

Wishing Time Away

The waiting is so hard.  Wishing time to go fast but not wanting to will away my life or the moments of this pregnancy.  I am not even out of the first trimester, it seems to be taking so long.  I’m trying to set myself mini-milestones but work is so quite at the moment so the days pass by so slowly.

This week at work has been quite ironic.  I work in retail and we’ve just launched a new brand in our stores of gorgeous infants’ wear.   I spent my day putting together marketing material for the launch, which meant looking at lots of photos of beautiful babies and reading about sweet little clothes.  It’s not hard, I love babies, I so desperately hope to have one, and I so want this little one thats growing to be THE ONE. 

I am still nervous, every ache or pain or twinge makes me immediately think its all gone wrong and the baby’s not alive anymore.  And this is why I just want time to pass a little quicker so I can be in the second trimester and feel a little more secure, so I can get to the weeks when I can feel those jabs and kicks and movements, so I can be a little closer to holding a warm, breathing, blinking baby in my arms.

I’m already counting down and know that’s not good this early in the piece.  

What can I do to stop counting down? Stop wishing time to pass faster?  Just relax?  It's like waiting an extremely long time to unwrap a present that you really REALLY want!

An unmarked grave

For the 6 month anniversary of Amelia’s birth we installed two new plaques - one on a central memorial plinth and one on her grave.  It made the day less hard as we were doing something practical and nice to honour her.

Amelia is buried in our home town so on Easter Friday when we went down to visit a friend who has just had her baby, we popped out to the cemetery to visit.

We were greeted by an unmarked grave. 

Just the most awful feeling – I felt guilt that I had neglected her even though it was not something we had done.  Luckily we had the old plaque we had removed still in our car so put this straight back in.  The plot next to ours had their plaque missing too (they are small silver markers).

I rang the cemetery once they opened after Easter and asked if they had removed it because it didn’t comply with regulations.  But no, they hadn’t. 

So the only assumption I can make is that someone took it.  But why?  I’m so confused, I wonder if the plot next to us had taken it as an example to get their own made up since their marker was missing too – but why would they do this, they have lost a baby too so surely they would understand how upsetting that would be.  I just can’t think of any other reason why someone would remove the marker off a baby’s grave.

Distraction Therapy

Introducing my new distraction therapy.  The newest member of our family is a 10 week old kitten named Pixel.  She is fun and cuddly and helping distract me from over thinking other things. 

Shock… in a good way for once

After finding out last Monday at my Obstetrician’s office that he suspected (and was pretty sure of) a missed miscarriage, I’d spent the rest of the week angry that I still felt nauseous and sick even though I was no longer pregnant.  I thought it a cruel joke.

On Friday I had the formal scan to confirm the miscarriage.  I went into that waiting room knowing the outcome I expected.  I watched happy people come out of rooms with smiles having just seen their babies flipping on the screen… and I was ok.  I had emotionally disconnected.  In no way did expect what happened next.

A flicking flash of light rapidly pulsing on the screen, a heartbeat, a baby.  Holy shit!

It turns out I am earlier than expected based on LMP but they match perfectly to my ovulation dates (I’d been BBT charting).  It’s still very early days (7 weeks) and I would not normally “out” myself this soon, you know, wait for that magic (or not so magic as we all know) 12 week safe marker.

But the support I received to my post when I sincerely believed I had miscarried was amazing.  I was broken on Tuesday, but the support you all gave me helped me pull myself together and remember I am not alone.  THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!

This week has really tested my limits of extremes and now I just don’t want to get my hopes up too high.  I’m too full of fear and anxious to get too excited again.  I’m just going to try and take one day at a time.