Weep Not For The Memories

The funeral is done. I feel like the first chapter is finished, the book will never end, but the first part is done and over with, and the rest will be easier to get through.

I’m still trying to put together all of the pieces of the last fortnight, it still seems like a crazy dream, and I can’t honestly work out how I got from the excitement of Thursday morning, my waters breaking all over the bed and making our way to hospital joking about everything we still had to buy, to cremating our daughter eleven days later. This isn’t something that happens to you, it’s one of those things you just hear about, a friend of a friend experienced it, but not in any of my pregnancies did I worry for a moment about my baby dying inside me in the last few weeks of pregnancy.

This entire experience has made me look at life in a new light, see things that I previously took for granted and appreciate them more, it’s made me want to make the most of this gift I’ve been given and to achieve so much more with my time on earth.

Midway through the service today everyone there stood up and placed a present or a flower on Robyn’s casket while Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears In Heaven’ played. I’ve always loved the song, but now it feels even more poingant, in particular, this part:

I must be strong
And carry on,
‘Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven.

That has stuck with me through the past few days and given me so much strength. When I wanted to curl into a ball and never face the world again, that was all that went through my head. I need my life to carry on even though hers hasn’t, I need to celebrate Declan and Connor (even when they drive me up the wall!) and I need to look after myself and make the most of my own life.

Tomorrow is a fresh start, I have new goals for CraftBlog, I need to lose about 50lbs and get much fitter and I need to not dwell one what could have been, but instead enjoy every moment. I’ve learned how precious and fragile life is, and I don’t want to ever look back and think what I could have been, I want to look back and be proud of what I have achieved.

Robyn Jade

I keep on trying to write this post, and it’s either too short and clinical, or too long and I can’t emotionally bring myself to finish it.

Our very unexpected baby died in utero in the early hours of the morning on February the 19th, at spot on 36 weeks gestation. I was induced that afternoon and delivered a baby girl weighing 6lbs 13oz and 50cm long at 3:15pm. We named her Robyn.

There’s currently no rhyme or reason for what happened, although initial testing did pick up an infection in the placenta, it’s too early to determine if that is the cause, we have an appointment on the 16th of April to hear the full post mortem results.

It’s now been just over a week and both Dan and I have run through every emotion you could possibly imagine. I am focusing on the positives, I already have two beautiful sons, we’re lucky enough to not have any fertility issues, and I have my health (physical at least, mental is still up for debate).

The funeral is on Monday afternoon. I’m both dreading it and looking forward to the closure that I hope it might begin to give us. I’m still in shock more than anything, this just wasn’t something I was prepared for in any way.

The next few months will probably be talking about what’s happened a fair bit, I also want to write up a birth story, and, when I feel able enough to move them off the camera, I will be posting some photos of her. I know this is a sensitive topic, so I wanted to give some prior warning so that those who felt too uncomfortable could avoid the blog for a while, or take me off their reader.

Adjustment

I spent July afflicted by seemingly never ending food poisoning combined with an acute case of cystitis that was never even vaguely cured by antibiotics. In August I clued in that something was up and peed on a stick. Immediately a deep pink line appeared, darker than the control line, telling me I wasn’t just a little bit knocked up, I was well and truly preggers.

I did what any completely sane and rational person would do upon finding this out. I said “FUCK!” loud enough for the neighbours to hear, ran into the bedroom slamming the door behind me, shoved my head under the pillow and burst into tears.

I love my children, I love having them in my life, but I was just coming around to the idea of sticking with the two boys. We would be great with a standard car, a three bedroom home would suit us just fine and the odds were even, there were two parents and two children, minimising the amount of kid juggling we had to do – we had our little routine for getting in and out of the car completely down and I was starting to like it that way and forget my plans for a third child.

Then some super hormone defying sperm managed to break through my protections and ruin all my future plans for family game nights involving four players.

I went to the first ultrasound to date the fetus and hoped it was just a false alarm, a fake positive on the test… and all the other tests, and maybe my blood got mixed up with someone elses at the doctors, and it was them that was pregnant, not me. Instead I found out I was due on the 19th of March, exactly a month after my eldest’s third birthday.

Then came my first OB appointment at 15 weeks, she couldn’t find the heartbeat on the doppler, suddenly it was obvious, it had all been a mix up! The blood work was incorrect, the sonographer had been wrong, the growing belly was just too much KFC, our fridge wasn’t cool enough which was why I STILL seemed to have food poisoning every other day and the fact that sneezing in the wrong way would lead to an emotional breakdown was just proof that my zoloft needed to be upped.

I laughed as she left to room and joked about how silly it was that I’d been thinking I was pregnant, until the OB returned with an ultrasound machine, squirted the cold blue goo onto my belly and didn’t discover a three piece meal with the Colonel’s secret spices, but a fifteen week feotus, hanging out and waving at us.

I went back to the car and cried.

I’m now just over 18 weeks pregnant and I’ve only just started adjusting to the idea of having a third child. I thought it would hit me all of a sudden, one morning I would just wake up and would be thrilled about the prospect of a third child, that hasn’t been the case, it’s been a slow process where I take a leap forward followed by a step back.

I’ve spent a lot of the time since August angry. I’m angry at the powers that be for putting me in this position.  I’m angry that our life, the lives of the boys, is going to be turned upside down by a tiny being.  I’m angry that no one seems to understand why I’m not elated. I’m angry at myself for not being elated and angry that I’m not grateful that I can even conceive in the first place when so many of my friends are struggling to conceive their second or even first child.

Somewhere in the background is fear. I will be the first to accept I’m not mentally stable, so I’m scared of the effects of having another child on my emotional state. I have a condition that causes my membranes to rupture prematurely which cannot be prevented in anyway, my waters broke at 37 weeks with Declan, then 34 weeks with Connor and I was told that with each consecutive pregnancy it’s likely to get earlier. One of the things that is said to raise the chance of this is having less than three years between deliveries. I’m very lucky that this won’t lead to my baby arriving prematurely, but I have to lay in a hospital bed leaking fluid until I hit 36weeks when the feotus is developed enough to be induced, not exactly how I want to be spending a few weeks.

We went for the anatomy scan last week, and it was like acceptance just washed over me. I have no idea what it was, but something hit me whilst I was laying on my back with a stranger ramming a mushroom shaped zappy thing into my belly button. Something just washed over me, and it wasn’t acceptance, it was more than that, it was excitement. For the first time I felt more than fear and anger at this blob of cells inside me, I felt excitement at the future ahead, about giving birth, nursing a newborn instead of a wriggly toddler and about adding another member to our little family, welcoming them with open arms instead of frustration and tears.

It took a while, the adjustment that I never thought would happen has happened, I am now an expectant mother with a spring in her step and a baby in her belly, instead of fear I am excited about what is in store for us. I never thought it would happen, but now that it has I feel wonderful, and that is the best feeling ever.