Remembering

I’m the only person who knows the significance of today, no one else has remembered. I guess why would they? It’s a highly personal anniversary.

You see it’s a year today that Peanut and I went our separate ways, that she left my body and was no longer a part of me. Even now as I feel this new baby wiggle inside of me, it doesn’t take away the heartache I feel for Peanut, this baby doesn’t replace her in any way whatsoever and it doesn’t make everything ok. I am over the moon to be expecting again and I already love this new baby with all my heart, but I haven’t forgotten Peanut, or stopped loving her, or missing her, I never will.

I feel weird when people ask me if this one is my second baby, I don’t say “No, it’s actually my fourth” because I don’t want the awkward situation that would arise from elaborating on that. But the little girl I carry now is my fourth child. I may have never met two of them, but they were real, they existed, albeit for a short while, and they will always be a significant part of me.

I have two little crystal angels that hang in my dining room window, when the sun hits them in the morning they fill the room with beautiful rainbow coloured lights that dance around the walls. It’s a sight I love to see and it always makes me stop for a moment and remember, before the chaos of the day swallows me up again.

Introducing The Secret Baby Diaries

I've been a bad blogger, it has been months since my last confession and now I don't know where to start...

A few days after my last post, after attending the Saying Goodbye service in York, something unusual happened: a tiny bit of bleeding I initially thought must be an early period. But it was weird, it was earlier than it had ever been before and wasn't following the usual pattern. In fact it totally stopped within two to three days.

A little voice at the back of my head was whispering "implantation bleeding." Could it be?

Saying Goodbye

When I first miscarried in 2009 we lit a candle in a beautiful little church in France and later released balloons with our friends on a weekend away in York. We said goodbye properly and it helped.  So it happened again this year I knew I needed to do something to both honour the little life that briefly inhabited me and to say my farewells, but I didn’t know what.

Miscarriage - 5 months on

Last week I bumped into a lovely couple who live just up the road from me, I hadn’t seen them in a few months so I stopped to say hello and ask how they were. Then came a question I wasn’t expecting…

“So when are you due?”

Oh….

Fingers crossed

This is my favourite time of the month. Ovulation has come and gone, we’ve done all we can and now have to wait and see. In two weeks or so the results will be in and then I will be either disappointed or terrified. 

A Bit of a Wobble

An email was sent around at work this morning entitled “News of another baby”.

Yes, another pregnancy announcement at work.

Alright, alright, I AM counting

I just came on.

I’d hoped by some sheer stroke of good luck I’d get pregnant this month, without putting in much effort, without really thinking about it, it could have crept in under the radar and I might even have been able to ignore it for a few weeks – because let’s face it, if I do get pregnant again it’s going to be scary. To be able to ignore it for as many weeks as possible would be a blessing.

Last Thursday Part Three

Getting Back to Normal

Thursday also marked the return of my periods following the miscarriage. The last time I was in this situation I remember it feeling like a positive experience, like I was healing. But there was room for such flowery thoughts that time around – we were on holiday wandering around ancient stone circles in Scotland. The experience this time was the opposite, I felt completely and utterly miserable and overwhelmed by life, I wanted to be alone, I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, but I didn’t have the luxury of that (maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know). So yes, we can officially try again now if we want. If. I don’t know that I’m ready to go through all that again, and right now I just can’t seem to imagine any other outcome.

The Latent Hippy Returns?

To bring us up to date...

Work

I’m struggling to get back into work, finding it hard to be interested in anything that goes on in the world of business, politics and the economy (all of which are my job to know about). It’s not helping that before the miscarriage I moved teams and all my new team mates are younger than me, not to mention child free, so while they’re really passionate about their jobs and work all the hours they can, then head to the pub to wind down; I'm struggling to give a shit about work and leave on the dot so I can see my son before his bedtime. I just don't have much in common with them and I’m feeling kinda isolated. 

Chaos!

My head is a very busy place at the moment, it’s mostly running around in circles and getting tied in knots but I’m working through it all that’s the best I can say. Yesterday I just felt miserable. But rather than trying to force myself to cheer up I just went with it, let myself feel whatever I felt. I took any irrational thoughts I had with a pinch of salt, went easy on myself and just let myself be. There were times I could barely speak and other times I wanted to talk and cry, so I just rolled with it. I guess this is to be expected, good days and bad days, isn’t that how it goes? It’s helping to just get everything out writing here, so here we go again…

Always look on the bright side of shite...

And so it's back to work, back to normality, life marches on and all that. I need to be back, that's for sure but it's hard when not so long ago I thought my days here were numbered and I was happily planning my escape, but now that's all changed and for the foreseeable future I'm here to stay. That's pretty depressing. I've also had to contend with the memories that are being thrown up at me by being back in the place where things started to go wrong two weeks ago today. 

Things I am grateful for

1. Taters - Going through this the second time round is harder in some ways than the first time, because you can't believe it's happening again; but also it's easier and that is purely because of Taters. The first time it happened I feared I'd never be a mother, that that entire world was being denied to me, I mourned not only the baby but the dream of an entirely different future. This time obviously I already am a mother. And if I'm really unlucky in that baby number two never happens, well, what I have now is pretty bloody wonderful. I'm trying not to think of a second child as completing my family, because if Taters is all I have, then I already have the best thing on earth, so I have nothing to complain about there.

Blah Blah Blah

I don't know where to start so I'll just dive in anywhere. I've had one of those day where I dissolve into tears at the drop of a hat, one minute I'm laughing at my little boy and the next minute my chin is quivering and tears are spilling from my eyes. I didn't expect things to still be so raw, but actually it's more raw now than it ever was. Where did my strength go? 

Who sucked all the joy out of the world?

Bleak... that about sums things up today. Physically things are returning to normal, no bleeding today which surprises me, I was told to expect that for the next two to three weeks. Not that I'm complaining, not about that anyway.

Home truths that will never be spoken

Dear Emma*

Names have been changed to protect the innocent. This may not be the most coherent blog post ever, I'm still steaming...

Earlier this year my husband received an email from yours asking if you'd done something to upset us as you'd not received a birthday present from us this year. Well yes, you had as it happens and I'd actually been trying to gently distance myself from you for quite some time - I say gently because our husbands are friends and I didn't want to damage their 'bromance'. I would have cut and run a long time before that if it was possible.

Welcome to my nightmare

It has been anything but your average day.

I woke up at around 5am with the realisation that I was bleeding, I mean really bleeding. Like something out of a horror film bleeding.

A very sad day

It may be too soon to be writing this, but I need to get it out.

Monday I started spotting, that dreaded tiny bit of old brown blood that strikes terror into your heart. By Monday afternoon it had stopped, so while apprehensive I was hopeful it was something and nothing.