Seven months old: a world of changes

* I'm sure it has something to do with my technical inaptitude, but I just realised this post did not get published last month. Better late than never!

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Dearest Alice,

The last month of your life has been the most exciting yet, as we watch you really wake up to the world around you, joyful and curious about all it has to offer. You've become quite the conversationalist - random noises, coos and shouts have given way to more deliberate experiments with vowels and consanants that roughly mimic the sounds you hear around you.

You've had a huge advance in your physical development, surprising us with how well you can roll in every direction, not just to change your view, but you roll as a form of transportation from one place to another. I've watched you roll across the room to get a particular toy you've had your eye on. Sophie the Giraffe is your absolute favourite, with your little red rattle crab coming in a close second, I think.

You don't just roll on the floor, either. As soon as we put you down in your cot for a sleep you turn over onto your tummy and think it is a great game. To our shock, you are able to manoevre yourself right around the cot. Each time we peek into your room we are never quite sure where we're going to find you, only that you won't be anywhere near the place we left you. At night time you are still sleeping in your bassinette next to Mummy, but during the day you are increasingly napping in your own room.

Sleep doesn't come as easily to you as it once did, or rather, you have begun to actively resist it a lot of the time. Trying to get you to sleep has actually become something of an ordeal. During the day you will sleep most easily in the pram or car seat, so the least painful thing to do is to get out of the house first thing in the morning. This is fine by me as I don't really like being stuck at home all day, but it makes things difficult when for some reason we can't go out and you end up being crabby. Then neither of us have a good day.

Getting you to sleep at night never used to be a big deal - somoene to hold your hand and a lullaby were the most it ever took, but you're getting very clever now. Last night, for example, you screamed whenever we put you in your bed. We'd pick you up and bring you into the living room and you'd cheer right up but as soon as Daddy carried you anywhere near the bedroom you knew this meant sleep time and would promptly start to cry! We don't believe in letting you cry yourself to sleep so we're kind of out of options at the moment and feeling a little helpless.

You really love interacting with other little children lately and it is gorgeous to see. On the weekend we are going to one of the local creches open day to see if it might be a place you'd like to go for a few hours every now and again once Mummy goes back to work next year. I think  you'll get a lot out of the social stimulation. I think Mummy will have a hard time leaving you there, though, so we will see how that plan works out in reality!

You're really starting to enjoy your swimming lessons, too. You've not as wary and serious as you were in the beginning and will happily kick and express your pleasure at being in the water. This pleasure extends to bathtime, where you make a terrible mess all over your parents (and the floor!). You're rapidly outgrowing your baby bath, which leaves us with a bit of a dilemma as we don't have a bath in our house. I'm sure we'll come up with something, though.

The other thing I'm really noticing about you is that you are expressing preferences for things and people that you were never really capable of before. Your favourite toy is Sophie the Giraffe and you also really like holding your big brother's soft bunny rabbit. You especially like to hold either of these when you are going to sleep. You seem to like having something in your hands at all times, even if that something is my hair - you're starting to get quite rough now, and we are trying to teach you what 'gentle' means! You're fascinated by faces and mouths most of all. You also love feeling different textures and fabrics. Your favourites are my dressing gown, the couch, and a particularly frilly pillow case on our bed.

You've been a slow starter when it comes to eating solid foods, but we can see an improvement even in the last few days. So far you've had pumpkin, carrot, sweet potato, pear, apple, banana, avocado, porridge, rice cereal, yoghurt, brocolli and peas. Your favourite is definitely the yoghurt. You were launching yourself at the spoon to get it into your mouth more quickly when we gave you that!

The other major milestone to note is that you are almost sitting independently. You can do it for a few seconds on the floor but always fall forward. You've got the strength, I think, but not quite the balance or stamina. You'll be sitting up by Christmas for sure.

It is a bit of a tough month for Mummy and Daddy this month as it is your big brother Max's second birthday. We are trying to stay present and actively enjoy each moment we spend with you - even the hard ones - as we know how precious they are and how much we long for the ones we did not get to spend with Max. We are so glad you will be here to spend the day with us this year. Last year we were still so scared and unsure if you'd ever make it home with us. I don't think we'll put you down all day that day.

We love you more than ever and we adore watching other people in our lives get to know you and fall in love with you too. 

Our seven month old baby girl, who's made all of our dreams come true.

On Max's Second Birthday

Today, on his second birthday, we remember with great love, immense pride, and constant longing our beautiful little boy, Maxwell Alexander. His death shattered us, and we are changed, but his life was not one of only tragedy, but one of immense power and beauty, too.

For six hours his precious hard stayed strong as we held him in our arms and then he was gone, just like that. It was not enough time. There could never have been enough time to come to terms with the fact that we would walk out of that hospital and never see him again.

We remember him not as an angel looking over us from a better place, not as an innocent soul too good for this earth, not as someone any imaginary deity needed more than we did, but just as he was - a darling baby boy. Our baby boy. How we wish he could have stayed. But how lucky we were that he was here.

Pregnancy and infant loss memorial day

This year on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Memorial Day - the second year we have marked this occasion - I was asked to speak on a national TV news program on behalf of Sands, about what it is like when your baby dies. I have been a volunteer with Sands for quite a while now and I considered it a privilege to speak on behalf of all of us who are grieving and missing a child. 

It all happened very quickly, as I guess it does on those kind of programs. I found out at 4pm the day before that they wanted to run the story, and we were to appear at 8.30am the following morning. There had been some talk amongst the program producers that perhaps the topic wasn't quite the thing for a breakfast program but I am pleased they decided it was important enough to risk that people might choke from distate on their breakfast cereal.

I am quite comfortable public speaking. I have done quite a few talks for Sands now on my experience as a bereaved parent, and of course being a teacher the ability to put yourself up in front of a not-always friendly crowd is a key skill you develop quite early on in the piece. This was my first time being interviewed on television, though, and both Leslie and I were quite nervous about what to expect.

It was an early start for all of us, made slightly more difficult by the fact that Alice had quite an unsettled night, so I was running on empty a bit. We made it their for our allotted time, however (quite a feat, I thought, with a six-month-old baby in tow!) and before we knew it we were being whizzed through hair and makeup for a spruce-up and very quickly chaperoned on set.

The set itself is actually a lot less intimidating than you'd imagine. There are no cameramen these days (who knew?) as everything is automated and run by a bunch of button pushers in an office in another room. It was just the three of us, the two hosts and the one floor guy who did all the count-ins to the segments and generally kept everyone doing what they were supposed to be doing.

In previous lives, Les and I had both been on television before, but never for something this personal and this important. I was a contestant once on The Weakest Link (narrowly missing out on the $25,000 prize money in the final round of 'sudden death', and Leslie had famously once auditioned for Australian Idol and was so genuinely awful that he made the show as one of the 'you had to be there to believe it' stories they intersperse between the genuinely talented people)

I think the interview went quite well, although it was a lot shorter than I had imagined. There was so much I could have said, and at times they kind of put words in our mouth, and to be honest I'm still not entirely sure what their angle was (how to help people who've lost a child? putting a face to the statistics? raising awareness?), but we received a lot of positive feedback and I think the folk at Sands did too. Leslie shared the video with his workmates and quite a few of them then opened up to him about their baby brother who had died of SIDS or another baby in their family that was stillborn. 

The best thing about putting yourself out there as we have done since Max died is that you open a dialogue for people to respond in kind. This is not only valuable in terms of making the death of a baby a less isolating topic to experience and talk about, but has also enabled us to forge really special connections with people we might otherwise not have. Our relationships - the ones that have survived intact throughout all this - are stronger, deeper and more enduring because of it. For that we count ourselves very lucky indeed.

Here is the video. 

As I'm sure you'll agree, baby Alice completely stole the show, and should probably employ her own agent as a matter of urgency. I was concerned when they wanted Alice to appear on screen that they might be tempted to trivialise the uncomfortable dead-baby parts and push the 'and look, here's a happy ending!' as the focus of the story. I hope that it didn't come across like this. It was hard to talk about the nuances of navigating parenthood as a survivor of neonatal death in such a short interview, and that is the one thing I wish they'd given more time to. I'm happy if she acted as a symbol of hope for those who might be feeling as hopeless as we did in those early months, but I'd hate to think that having a healthy, beautiful, subsequent baby with us did not rub salt in the wounds of those we hoped to reach out to the most.

Alice really was this well behaved the whole time we were there. She was turning on the charm to whoever would look her way. The tongue thing she does is a new skill she's learned and she seemed very excited to show it off on national television. We shall be saving the footage for the little miss's twenty-first birthday, that's for sure!

Six months

In case it's not already obvious from my lack of posts of late, my darling Alice is requiring much more of my attention now that she has turned the big six months old. I mean this in a positive way - she's alert, engaged, entertaining - but the days of putting her down to sleep and knowing you had a good couple of hours before you to get stuff done are well and truly over. I'm lucky if I can get her to nap for an hour at the moment, and to get that hour requires about 30 mins of settling and co-ercing beforehand, so it is a long, drawn-out process!

She is really starting to change so much. Six months seems to be a real developmental turning point. Suddenly she can roll from back-to-front and front-to-back, and use multiple rolls in a row to get herself across the room. The first time she did it scared the life out of me. I'd gone to the kitchen for something and left her on her playmat in the living room. I came back in a couple of minutes later expecting her to be right where I left her but she was in a completely different place and had rolled onto her tummy! The look on my face must have been pretty funny as she immediately gave me a great big grin, as if she'd been saving the skill up for the exact right moment to cause maximum shock!

Our quiet little baby has also turned into a huge chatterbox! She'll have long, drawn-out conversations with you now, and seems to develop new sounds to practice every few days, which are getting increasingly complex. It's fascinating to watch her practice moving her mouth in different ways to produce different sounds, and she's also just beginning to experiment with volume...she's suddenly realised that she can screech very loudly and once you've got the ability it's a waste not to use it, isn't it?! She actually screeched so much one day last week, continuously, all day, that I had to take some Panadol! In the beginning I thought something was wrong with her every time she did it, but I soon figured out she was perfectly fine after I ran into the room each time in a panic only to be greeted with a big gummy smile. She has realised she can seek attention, which must be the most powerful skill she's learnt yet.

It is an effort and a half to feed the little mite at the moment. We began introducing solid foods just before her six-month-birthday and she's shown very little interest. I can see small improvements - she doesn't always push the spoon away now and I think she swallows some - but she hasn't taken to it with the gusto that some of the other babies her age I know have done. I'm not too worried as we still have to give her a bit of leeway given her prematurity but I wonder if I should be doing more to encourage her. I don't want to force her to eat but I'm conscious that her iron stores will be depleting at this age so I'm a little paranoid about that. I've bought special spoons, bowls and lovingly pureed fresh fruits and veges for her but so far the effort has gone unappreciated! I think it will be a bit easier once she can sit up a bit better, too. At the moment she needs a lot of propping up, still, and doesn't have the stamina to sit supported for very long. We are giving her lots of tummy time to try and strengthen her abdominals but I think she has a little bit of work to do yet!

Frustratingly, she's also become a fussy feeder with her milk. All of the babies in our mothers' group are going through a similar phase. She continuously pulls off the breast about a thousand times whenever there is anything remotely more interesting to do/look at, which is pretty much ALL THE TIME. It's gotten to the stage where the only time she feeds well is in the middle of the night while she is still half asleep. I've been worrying she's not getting enough milk feeds, so in my paranoia I offer her a bottle of formula, but this only serves to sabotage me further as my supply drops and she becomes frustrated and rejects even more. I'm not really sure how to get out of this vicious circle and I think I'm going to ring the lactation consultant I saw a few months ago to get her advice. I'm not keen to throw my hands up in the air and declare breastfeeding to be over as I just worked so bloody hard to establish it in the first place! It really took a good twelve weeks for me to be able to breastfeed without excruciating pain and for Alice to actually be able to suck properly. I want to get some return on my investment, you know?

There's still no sign of a tooth, though every thing she can get her hands on currently goes into her mouth for her to chew on. She loves grabbing your finger and munching on it and has taken a particular liking to her Sophie giraffe toy lately. She seems to have two favourite fingers of her own that she likes to chew on. I'm not sure exactly what makes those two fingers superior to all the others she has, but it is only ever the same ones that end up all wrinkled and slimy.

Oh, and speaking of hands and mouths, why didn't anyone tell me that at six months old your baby becomes vicious as hell, intent on scratching and smashing your face to pieces at any given opportunity?! Any time I put her even remotely near my face she pulls my hair, pokes out my eyes, threatens to pull my nose and lips off and leaves track marks from her pincer-sharp nails down my cheeks. I should be paid danger money, seriously. I have so much little knicks and cuts where she's dug her nails into me. They're like knives! I'm desperate to avoid their pain, even paying $40 for this special electric baby nail file, which is actually not that effective but makes me feel like I'm at least doing everything I can! Leslie and I got to pondering last night why babies even need to have fingernails, or even why adults do? We don't need claws anymore so you'd think evolution would have fixed that up, wouldn't you?

We've had a terribly unpredictable Spring here in Melbourne. Some days it feels like winter and other days, like today, it is hot and windy. Alice is growing out of her wintry 000-sized clothes, but not having much of a chance to wear her summery 00-sized dresses and shorts so she's currently short on outfits. This is not ideal now that we're experimenting with solids as no matter how many times I try to cover her clothes she invariable spits things on them or wipes her greasy little hands on them. She also seems to leak a lot of poo out of her nappies these days and it's great fun trying to get those stains out. My laundry cupboard is full of sensitive skin detergents and Napisan and there's always something soaking in the bucket. 

I guess I better add a bit about Alice's vital statistics, too. I've had her weighed a couple of times this month as I was worried about her lack of interest in feeding. She's putting on a steady amount of weight, but nothing huge. She's still sitting comfortably on the 25th percentile and was 6.7kg about a week ago. I'm not sure of her length, but I know she is getting much longer as things she previously wore as pants now suspiciously are only three-quarters of the length. I think she's going to be a tall and lean girl. There's no doubt she'll be taller than me...probably by the time she starts school!

I feel like these first six months of her life have been a bit of a blur, really. The first few passed in a sleep-deprived haze and I feel like I'm only really now returning to the top of my game. At the same time, though, it is like all the adrenaline of first bringing her home is starting to wear off and I'm getting tired. She's in this awkward in-between phase where she can't sit up or get about much but is also getting bored just lying around so I spend a lot of time just trying to figure out what to do with her to keep her entertained. I've been doing a lot of reading on imaginative play and am putting some little discovery boxes together for her and trying to take her on a lot of walks so that we are not just stuck inside all day. I'm also trying to keep my fitness and weight loss as a bit of a focus going forward so the warmer weather and the beginning of daylight savings are both welcome changes to our routine.

Six months old. The best six months of our lives, with many, many more to come.

I love you little girl. 

Capture your grief

As Max's second birthday approaches, in November, I welcome the milestone as a chance to focus on him as much as I dread it for what it signifies: that a very long time has elapsed since I saw him for the first and for the last time.

As we get further out from our loss, the opportunities to mourn and to remember him lessen. In those early days, when you are actually still counting in days, there are so many significant days and so much time to mark them. For instance, for a long time each Thursday that passed was an 'event' for me, given Max was born on a Thursday and it had also been the day my pregnancy ticked over week by week. Of course we don't need a reason to remember Max, he is with us every day of our lives, but the difference is that our grief now rattles along beside us as we get on with the business of living instead of being our sole focus, stopping us in our tracks.

For this reason, I really welcomed October and the amazing Carly Marie's project intended for bereaved parents to capture their grief using a series of prompts and ideas for each day of October, which is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. I'm already quite a few days behind, but have decided to address the prompts at my own pace for the next little while as an exercise in personal reflection, as well as to think of, and share, Max's story in a new way. 

I'll write and use photographs to explore the idea each prompt gives me. I'm really looking forward to getting started.

You can read more about the project and get a head start on the prompts here.

September Swim School

September has brought not only the beginning of Spring, but the start of baby swim school for Alice!

Leslie and I were both keen to get the little one comfortable in the water from an early age. For me, it's because I have never myself been comfortable or confident in the water. I'm a poor swimmer and I have bad memories of my swim classes as a child. Leslie is a strong swimmer and we both hope she inherits his aptitude in the matter! He has been excited about starting an activity that could become something that the two of them share together.

Alice also had a say in her new hobby, of course. From her first bath in the hospital just a couple of days after she was born, she has shown a real love of the water. She's never once cried or fussed in the bath. She seems to find it really relaxing, and increasingly, really fun now that she can kick her little arms and legs about to make a splash.

The swim school takes babies from three months of age for water familiarisation and awareness lessons. This week is school holidays in Victoria and they were running a week-long trial program for babies, so that you could try-before-you-buy for the coming term. Next term she'll be attending classes with many of her little friends from mothers' group, but this week there are only three babies participating - one from mothers' group, and another little fellow, who is eight months old.

Les worked from home today so he could come during his lunch break. As a) I can't swim well and b) I don't want to see myself in bathers anytime soon, he accompanied Alice into the water. I'd bought her a cute little swimming suit and water-proof nappy (although I have no idea how those things work?!) and I was so excited putting them on for her. I told her all about how much fun she was going to have in the 'big bath' and she seemed genuinely joyful to be going on an adventure. 

It's a salt-water pool, which is much better for delicate baby skin than a chlorinated one, and it was really well heated, too. A little too heated if you're standing on the sidelines fully closed. 

Alice looked surprised when she first got into the water, but she took it all in her stride. She is a very brave little girl! She spent the entire lesson with a very serious look on her face, though, interspersed with a frown. Where the other two babies were smiling and having fun from early on in the lesson, Alice remained very reserved, taking in everything around her. She participated in all of the activities but she was keeping her feelings to herself! I don't think it was that she didn't enjoy the water. She is just a pensive little thing. She likes to observe and process everything that is going on around her before she jumps in. She is much like her Dad in that way, I can already see this. She also was the only girl in the class, and the smallest, so perhaps it was a little intimidating, too!

One thing's for sure - they don't take baby steps in baby swim class. First time in the pool, ever, and they were already putting their heads under the water with a game of Humpty Dumpty! There were no tears from any of the babies all lesson, which I thought was pretty impressive!

Alice was so tired by the end of the class that she could barely stay awake, and got a bit sad while getting dry and dressed. Her little lip was quivering and she was starving, so we got her rugged back up and I gave her a quick feed before bustling in her into the car. She fell asleep instantly and had a good hour-long nap when we got home. 

It was a perfect day to be introduced to the pool - a balmy 27 degrees in Melbourne, which was the warmest day Alice has ever experienced!

I can't wait to take her back again on Wednesday and Friday, and for her to start proper classes with all of her little friends in October.

We are both very proud of our little baby and so excited that we get to go on these many adventures with her. We are the luckiest parents in the world.

Another season without you

My darling boy,

I've been composing this letter in my head for days now, but to find the time - no, the energy - to sit down and pour the words out has been hard. It's not that I don't think of you anymore, far from it. It's just that I'm trying to give your little sister all my time and attention. She deserves it, of course, but so did you. How I wish that I could have given you more time. How I wish that someone had have given me more time with you. I'm so conscious of every minute that passes when I'm in your sister's company. I'm so fearful of wasting moments, even mundane, everyday moments, because I know too well that moments are sometimes all you get and that the nature of them can change in an instant. I know that it is only a moment that separates any of us from the stuff of our worst nightmares. I try not to let it, but of course this knowledge gets to me sometimes. I don't wish to be naive again, I wouldn't choose to go back to the way I was before you were born. At the same time, though, I wish the backdrop to my busy day were not a ticking clock, reminding me of how fleeting my life is, and how impermanent all that is in it.

I inhabit a strange world right now. Though my heart has expanded to find room to love my two children, as parents of multiple children will tell you it does, it is becoming increasingly awkward to have one foot planted in the here and now and one back there, on that special November day, with you. Thinking of you necessarily entails a looking back to the past, as the past is all you and I have. There are so few reminders of you in my daily life, despite my many efforts to create keepsakes and special symbols in your name. Your photos are up all over the house. Your beautiful urn sits in full view when I come through the front door every day, I walk past your special plants whenever I leave the house, your doll and teddies, and ornaments sit proudly in the living room where I look at them all the time. But all of these things - and I know how lucky I am to have so many of them - are not enough. As the months march on I fear that you get further away and I don't know what else I can do to keep you here. I take every opportunity I get to speak your name and to tell your story, even when it's awkward, even when it's painful. But still you slip away. You have always just too easily slipped away.

A few days ago I added a picture to my bedside table of your sister, right next to the one I have of you. I framed one for Daddy, too, so he could have both of his little children right in front of his eyes when he wakes up each morning. I chose a black and white picture of Alice to match the black and white one of you that I've always had there. I spent ages sitting on the bed and looking back from one to the other, desperate to find the similarities between the two of you.

I can see that Alice has the same nose as you. I wish I found it easier to imagine how you might have looked had you been bigger, had your skin not still been so fragile and translucent. In the photos I chose you both have your eyes shut. You look no more dead than a sleeping baby. all over again I find myself willing you to wake up. I like to think that you might be just about to open your eyes in that picture. In the same thought is a sudden stabbing pain, though, as I realise that I never got to find out what colour your eyes were. Alice's being so blue have made me wonder if yours were too. There are so many things I wish I knew about you, and some of them are only becoming apparent now. Everything I learn about your sister highlights the sad fact that I knew so little about you. What kind of little personality would you have had? What did your face look like when you smiled? 

There is a little baby in the new mother's group I've been going to that Alice has taken a shine to. I recently found out that his middle name is Maxwell. I felt uncomfortable with this to start with. I hate to think of any other person being called by your name. But when I'd had time to think I decided that this could be a lovely thing - a connection from you to Alice, perhaps, through this lovely little baby friendship. I told the little boy's mum that it was my son's name, too, and she agreed that it is a fine name - one given only to beautiful little souls and fine, kind men. A few of my new friends from the group have asked about you now we have gotten to know each other a bit better, and I'm so happy to talk to them about you. I want everyone to know that Alice has a big brother, and that he is a part of our lives, and that we miss him beyond measure. I never want her to have to ask about you. I want her to always know that she's the world's greatest little sister, not an only-child.

Your camellia plant has bloomed again, for the second year in a row. It was beautiful to see, but it also reminded me that really soon it will be two years since I saw you for the first and last times. The warming weather reminds me that it was Spring when I lost you. Your season is here again. We begin our lives without you all over again.

It goes without saying that I miss you. There aren't enough words in the English language to describe how much so, or in how many ways. 

I love you, always. Thank you for letting me be your mum.

Love Mummy xxx  

Hope, always

There are not many days set aside for the grieving to stand still for a while and reflect on what is, what will be, and more painfully, what might have been. In the beginning it seemed the world expected us to resume our place in it much sooner than we had anticipated. Now, in the days, weeks, months or sometimes years since the day we last laid eyes on our dear son or our darling daughter, we find ourselves looking for a chance to remember. It's not that we need one, we who have committed to heart the very essence of that little person who is no longer with us. But give us permission, open a dialogue, and we'll very quickly fill the space with our little one's song.

Our eagerness to speak our babies' names - to claim a place for them in the everyday conversation that makes up our lives - is often troubling, especially for the ones who love us. They want us to 'move on' as it is painful for them to see how much we are hurting. They're afraid to ask questions lest they make it worse. And, the truth is, for most of those who know us the passage of time distances them from our tragedy. For us to talk openly about our babies who have died is to remind everyone within earshot that sometimes even those we would give our own lives to protect can be taken from us. 

Today, August 19th, is a special day we claim for publicly acknowledging and remembering our babies. It is a day of hope, the origins of which you can read more about here.

I am privileged to know Hope's mama, Sally. She has been an incredible source of comfort, support and inspiration for me since I found myself a part of a whole community of women grieving the loss of a cherished child. I met her when I was just a few months out from losing Max, when I was broken, confused and fumbling every which way to find answers, to find peace, and to find a way to express my love for a baby that no one else could see. I was drawn to her as if she was an oracle. I sought her out as a kind of mentor for my grief journey. She is one of the only other people I've met in real life whose baby died. She has generously listened to my story countless times and has always responded kindly to my regular pleas for reassurance and comfort. 

Today is the day Hope would have turned five. Today I, and so many others, think of her and her beautiful family, all of whom must face another day, another week, another year without her.

For me it has been a day of solitude, spent in quiet reflection of how incredibly grateful I am for both of my babies. Though Max could not stay, I am still so happy that he was here. It is impossible for me to separate the joy I feel that my baby lived with the sorrow that remains now that he has died. Those feelings are forever entwined. 

Today, in the company of my beautiful rainbow baby, I contemplated all the reasons my family has to hope that our future with this little girl in our lives will be bright and joyful, even though someone so integral to our family is missing. And I know Hope's family will show us the way - one which they have paved so beautifully for themselves in the five years since their first child was born.  

I told Alice Hope's story this afternoon, and she had her picture taken with one of the gorgeous fairy tale prints that are raising money for The Stillbirth Foundation in Hope's name. There are still some for sale, and hanging one on your wall, or the wall of a special child in your life, is a way that you can help us acknowledge and value the impact that our babies have had on the world.

A rather fancy afternoon treat

This past weekend was a special occasion for our little family. It has to be said that I enjoy the finer things in life. I'm not a high-maintenance kind of girl in terms of clothes, or shoes, or makeup, but I do enjoy pursuits that have a touch of old world elegance about them - experiences that make you feel special, in pleasant surroundings, with good company, and where polite attendants cater to my every whim.

And so, my dear Leslie searched high and low for a birthday present for me this year that would tick all of those boxes. And he found it at The Windsor Hotel, whose traditional afternoon teas are something of an institution in Melbourne. When I say he had to look high and low, what I really mean is that he knew exactly where I like to go for special occasions, so he went there and bought me a gift certificate! The weekend sittings are always booked out weeks in advance. I didn't think that was much of a problem, however, as it meant I would get to celebrate my birthday twice - once in July and once in August - and a girl can't really complain about that.

I would normally have gotten a bit frocked up, but I seem to be without any well-fitting attire at present, having lost all of my baby weight immediately after Alice was born, but then proceeding to put it all back on as a result of 2am, sleep-deprived, desperate binges on biscuits and sweet tea. As a result, I feel uncomfortable in pretty much every item of clothing I own. A birthday shopping trip did little to solve this dilemma as I ended up feeling very glum in about a million change rooms trying to find things that looked good. Consequently, I have just begun a healthy eating and exercise plan, but obviously this started after the fancy afternoon tea...

Alice did, though. She couldn't wait to wear her beautiful little winter dress for the first time. It had been hanging up in her wardrobe, gathering dust, just waiting for an occasion to make a gorgeous baby the very picture of old-fashioned infant chic. Les told her that it was going to be a long afternoon of sweets and savouries, so she made sure she got in a really good sleep before we left. There's no way she wanted to miss out on seeing the scones, the decadent cakes and macaroons, and especially the crepe station! 

She napped in her bed.

Then she napped on my lap.

We bundled her into the car, where she slept all the way to the station. Then we caught the train into the city, which was so relaxing, with so much rollicking and rolling along the tracks that it, too, lulled the baby back to sleep for the twenty-or-so minute trip, which left Les and I with nowhere else to focus our attention except awkwardly on the couple across from us who were focusing all their attention on us, or more specifically, Alice.

We arrived at the hotel, helped into the foyer by the doorman, or footman, or, I'm not really sure what he is known as, but he's the fancy guy who opens the car door for you out the front. We had a bit of time to spare before our sitting so we sat in the lobby and soaked up the ambience. There was a harpist, some big Chesterfield lounges, lots of mahogany and charm, and...a big, gaudy, flashing neon sign hanging over the reception counter, which was so out of place to be an almost comical addition to the scenery. Not wanting to waste her energy before afternoon tea had even begun, Alice slept in her pram whilst we waited, too.

At 2.30pm we were shown to our table, feeling very special and very posh as we were led through the beautiful tea room. We sat, were poured tea and coffee, salivated over our tiered stand of goodies, and  waited for Alice to wake up so we could take a photo of her sitting next to all the goodies.

We waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. The baby would not wake up. She just wouldn't! 'We've come all this way...' we told her. 'We've paid all this money!' we implored. But still she slumbered. We poked her. We prodded her. We got her out of the dark, cosy pram and into the bright afternoon light. But on it went. The sleeping. It Just. Went. On.

Les tried handing her to me. I also had little success in coaxing this little cinderella from her deep repose. 

The two women sitting at the table beside us seemed quite bemused by the situation. They offered to take a photo of us all together for our album. I was going to have a whole page dedicated to Alice's first afternoon tea. But we just couldn't seem to get a happy snap where we were all smiling at the right time, without a goofy look on our faces, or, more importantly, where we all had our eyes open (not mentioning any names...ALICE!)

Despite our daughter's disinterest in the proceedings, Les and I had a wonderful time. I loaded my plate up with goodies but could only manage to actually eat a fraction of what I wanted to. The sweets were so rich that one bite of each and your stomach was already turning. It was really hot inside the tearoom as well so I started to feel really sick by the end of the afternoon. 

As we were contemplating leaving, of course, the child awoke! Wide eyed and wondering where the hell she was, Alice came to life just as we were ready to prepare ourselves for a dusky siesta. To pay her back for her tardy awakening we made her pose for about a thousand pictures, whether she liked it or not. 

She didn't like it a lot. She didn't flash so many of her winning smiles. But at least we can say she was conscious, and sometimes you've got to take what you can get!

Four months old

Here she is, the four-month-birthday girl, doing what four-month-birthday girls do best - showing off the gummy smile she's had plastered all over her face ever since she figured out she had muscles controlling that thing her parents kept calling a 'mouth'.

Alice is, without a doubt, the happiest baby I have ever, ever had the pleasure to know. I'm not even going to preface it with a 'so far....' or a 'touch wood' anymore, as I have been until now. I'm simply going to call it as it is. She is happy all the time, so long as she's got a full tummy, someone/something to play with, and is swaddled up tightly when she is tired. This baby self-settles most of the time. She plays happily on her play mat by herself while I have a shower or make lunch or go outside to check the mail. The first thing she does upon waking is to great you with a beaming face. She smiles with her eyes, this one. Even the tiniest sliver of a grin is enough to make you think your heart is about to literally explode from joy.

You get the feeling, talking to other parents, that you're supposed to apologise if you're having a relatively easy time of it as a new mother. Truth be told, in an attempt to fit in, I sort of had to make up issues I was having with her at my parents group so that I could actually participate in the session. I didn't want to be stabbed in the eye, which is what I feel could happen if some other mothers of four-month-old babies knew that I've never once had to walk the hallway with an inconsolable infant, nor had to ring the maternal/child health advice line in the midst of a 2am fit of despair. 

Alice is just....well...she's just a joyful little girl. And she's mine. And no, you can't have her! 

I wonder if other people's 'rainbow' babies are as peaceful and easygoing as Alice is. Is it a trait shared by subsequent children who somehow know that their anxious parents need some calm in their lives? Or is it because she takes after her daddy, who is about the calmest, most emotionally stable person I know? Perhaps she knows how precious her life is, and came here to earth pre-packaged to make the most of every moment. Whatever the reason, she certainly does that. I have never felt so happy as when I am in her jolly company. She is everything I could ever have dreamed of. I know that sounds cliched, but she really just is. I can't think of a better way to say it.

At four-months-old, Alice has really started to come into her own. We have a real sense that we are not dealing with a helpless newborn anymore but a little lass with ideas and a will of her own. Someone's definitely switched the lights on in there, you can see it in her eyes. It is amazing to start getting real glimpses of the person inside, the person we will get to know better than anyone else in the world. Just this week she has figured out how to reach out and grasp the toys hanging from her play gym. To watch her concentrate, and frown, and try and try again, and then to see the look of glee on her face when she finally catches her favourite little elephant friend is just amazing. She's absolutely obsessed with that little guy. No other toy can compete with him! I'm not sure if it is the elephant per se that interests her so, or just that he's at the right height or angle for her to most easily interact with. I'm going to try and move the toys around to different positions to test the theory...

Alice is rapidly outgrowing the swaddling stage of her infant-hood, alas. There is no swaddle she cannot get out of, and as soon as her arms are out she's wide awake and wanting to get out of that style-cramping bassinet. We're thinking we'll have to start to transition her to a sleeping bag but whenever we've tried she sleeps fitfully and for only short stretches. That's fine during the day, but we're really trying to get a decent amount of sleep at night so it's not an ideal situation. Perhaps we need to try a few different types of sleeping bags, but those things aren't cheap, so we'd kind of rather not buy a bunch that she then refuses to sleep in!

I have being doing lots of baby massage with her and I can sense that she really enjoys it now. I smother her in sweet almond oil every day and we use the time to sing little songs and talk about our day. It really is one of the nicest times of my day. Just taking the time to actually sit down and focus on just that one thing has been really good for me, too. I make sure the room is warm and we are both comfortable and cosy and we spend about 20 minutes at a time after she's fed and happy. My favourite part of her to massage is her feet. A baby's feet have to be the softest, most delicate skin you could ever hope to feel. And the toes...well, there are no words for the toes, are there? Cute doesn't even come close. They are so teeny-tiny that it is hard to believe they are real. But real they are. She has her daddy's feet - long and skinny. And, she has Max's feet. His looked so much like hers do, just much smaller. I can't wait until she is old enough to turn this massage ritual into a reciprocal arrangement...

Speaking of extremities, Alice has rather large hands, I think. All the better to explore the world with, I say. She has long, long fingers. I think she gets that from me. Lots of people have called them piano fingers. Musical aptitude is a shared family trait on my side, at least, so I really hope she is able to find pleasure and joy in being able to play an instrument one day.

The past month has been quite eventful. I took her to Tasmania for a long weekend to meet some of her extended family. It was her first time on a plane, and her first time away from home since she left the hospital. She coped brilliantly with the flight, and with the changes to her routine. I will write more about our trip soon. We had such a lovely time.

Perhaps her most amazing achievement of late is that she has, on at least a couple of separate occasions, done that thing they call 'sleeping through the night'. One of the nights we were away, after an especially busy day, she slept from 8pm until 5am. I woke up in an absolute panic, not knowing what the hell had happened. Had I fed her overnight and not remembered? Were the clocks wrong and playing tricks on me? Had I been so tired that I slept through her crying and left her starving for hours until she cried herself back to sleep? No. None of those things. She had just had a really damn good rest, the dear little thing. She didn't repeat it afterwards until last night, almost two weeks since that time, when I put her down about 10pm and didn't hear from her until 5am again. Strangely enough, on both occasions, although I got more sleep than I've had in months, I felt quite under the weather the next day. I felt less rested, if anything, even though I had many more hours sleep. That doesn't seem right. Or fair. Does it?

She has finally grown into (and actually, almost out of) all of her 000-sized clothes and is getting to be quite a heavy baby! I'm not sure how much she weighs at present, but we will find out at her four-month check up later this week. My guess is that she is pushing 6kg - twice her birth weight!

She is so much stronger when she's on her tummy now, too. She can hold herself up quite high and I don't think it will be long before she can roll from her front to her back. She's definitely trying. She absolutely loves having a chance to kick her legs around, and especially when she's not wearing any nappy or clothes! She's got quite a bit of power behind her now and is able to push herself off from the end of her bassinet, or from your lap if you are not careful. She's a little kangaroo, ready to jump. In the middle of the night I often find her at the opposite end of her bassinet, although she's not going to be able to do that for much longer as she's almost outgrown it!

She's very, very interested in the world around her and likes nothing better than people watching. She used to love being carried around in the hugabub but now she squirms and struggles to get out so she can turn around and see what is going on. I need to investigate if there is an option to carry her forward facing so she can get the best of both worlds! She is quick to smile at new friends and has her eye on everything that is happening around her. We had to attend a funeral this past week and I'm afraid to say Alice thought it was pretty much the best day ever. A room full of people wearing black and white contrasting colours (it was the funeral of a Collingwood supporter!) who were all really glad to see a baby, I think, in their sadness. I've never seen a face more joyful at a funeral than Alice's that day!

Because of her increasing social awareness, Alice is also getting difficult to feed if we are away from home. I breastfeed her perfectly happily at home but if we are out she latches on and off constantly, even if she's starving. Then she usually screams all the way home in the car because she is hungry! I often have to resort to feeding her a bottle when we are out, which I'm trying desperately not to do, as I already have supply issues and have been trying to wean her from supplements pretty much for 8 weeks now. It is not easy! Especially since I have some real confidence issues when it comes to breastfeeding, after a very rocky start to the whole process. She is not showing any interest in eating or any curiosity about food yet, which is good, as I'm not ready for a new stage yet! I'm still catching up with the fact that she is not a newborn anymore!

I really wish I could find more time at the moment to write here. This post has been more about getting all of the 'facts' down somewhere rather than really thinking about what the last month has been like, which I'm disappointed about. But hey, it's better than nothing, right? More soon - hopefully!

Transitions

I tentatively approach this place for the first time in almost a month. I wish it hadn't been so long, because what it looks like now is a space where I return only to attempt to record the wonderful advances with which my living child grows. I've written little from the heart since Alice was born. I haven't had time. That's the most obvious difference between parenting a living child and one that is dead. After I came home from the hospital, leaving Max behind, I had hours upon hours stretching ahead of me that I had no idea how I would survive, let alone fill. So I wrote. I wrote my way into the midst of my grief for him. I turned it over every which way and looked at it as deeply and as fearlessly as I could. Grief felt like love and all I wanted to do was to love my little boy in every way I knew how.

After Alice was born I was swept very quickly into the 'now'. The constant care and attention needed to look after a newborn baby leaves little time for projecting into the future. I guess everyone knows that. What I didn't anticipate was that being a parent of a living child distances you further and further away from the past. I can barely remember life before Alice. I know I cannot remember any of the details of my pregnancy with any accuracy as I've since contemplated doing it again one day, seemingly oblivious to the fact that at times I did not think I would survive the pregnancy myself, let alone to bring it to its expected conclusion where a healthy baby is born. 

Some people would say it is for the best that they can't remember much of life before baby. That way they don't mourn so much the freedom, sleep, and pleasant selfishness of their childless days. But not me, not us, not the bereaved parents, who cling desperately to the days that came before where they better remembered their lost child's face, or the way his little hand felt rested in their palm. Passing days fade the trauma, yes, but they also dim the memories. When memories are all you have of your baby that must surely be your worst possible nightmare. Forgetting is to experience the loss afresh. Your baby is gone, but now he is further away from you in time and space than ever before. As I embrace the 'now' with Alice, grateful for every single day spent with her, I have also become aware that all of the tomorrows we share take me further away from her brother. To Alice, Max's story will be but a fairy tale, something that happened 'once upon a time, long ago'. I don't know how I feel about that.

My recent 6-week stint at 'new parents' group has given me reason to reflect on how successful my transition to the world of parenting a living child has been. I'd like to say that I think I've managed better than I expected I would, but that the challenges I anticipated in trying to join a group of new mums who don't know me, or my story, have definitely surfaced. I'm doing remarkably well in the everyday matters of childcare and its associated domesticity, but I don't think I'm really fitting in well with the other local mothers I've met who have babies around the same age as Alice. I know it definitely feels uncomfortable, but I'm not sure how much of that unease I bring with me, feeling separate and different as I always tend to do, and how much of it is a real, but unfortunate result of me having shared my story in the first week. 

Everyone was encouraged to share their birth story with the group, which I thought was a pretty intense activity in a room full of people you've never met before, but what do I know, I suppose. Each person reeled off a bunch of facts mostly: natural or surgical delivery, epidural or no epidural, two-day public hospital stay or a close to a week in a luxury hotel suite. The stories shared were certainly varied. There were those whose pregnancies and births had been textbook normal, and a fair number who had experienced complications of some sort (breech presentation, placental problems, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia). One woman delivered her baby at 32 weeks due to pre-eclampsia, and had watched her baby struggle through a bunch of frightening illnesses as a result. There's one friend for me, I thought. She looked teary. I sensed a fellow wounded soldier. I'm drawn to the suffering these days. I can spot it a mile away.

I had given a lot of thought as to how to share my story before the group meetings began. I was never not going to talk about Max, but I also didn't want the kind of awkward attention I knew that the telling of my story would bring. I don't know how common a feeling this is, and I'm not quite sure even how to describe it, but every time I tell someone that I had a baby who died I feel embarrassed, like the person thinks I am one of those woe-stricken attention seekers who you always end up sitting next to at a bus stop - the person who wants to tell you their whole, sorry life story, when really you just wish they'd keep their problems to themselves. Or, worse still, that irritating person who always has to top your story of ill-fortune with one detailing how much worse their lot has been. I imagined the woman next to me in the circle bravely recounting the story of her baby's birth that had been traumatic, close to tears as she tells it, and being offered sympathetic nods of understanding - a silent, unspoken acknowledgement that the business of birth does not really occur in the lavender-scented, dimly lit paradise that your birth plan had prescribed. And then, I'd chime in with my dead baby story, and make the woman feel like the biggest bitch on earth for her comparatively pedestrian complaints.

I tried to avoid that situation, but despite my best efforts I'm afraid to say that it pretty much played out exactly like that. I couched it in gentle terms, beginning by saying that although I was attending this new mother's group I was not, in fact, a new mother, but that Alice was my second child, adding that I had a son who died at birth as a result of the consequences of extreme prematurity. That's all I sad but it was enough to make those I nervously glanced around at look at the floor, at the wall, at anyone other than me. I should have left it there, but when the facilitator immediately began to try and fill the awkward silence with reassurances that babies very rarely die here in Australia in the twenty-first century, I couldn't let it go. 'Oh yes they do!' I interrupted. 'Babies die all the time, most of the time for no bloody reason, it's just that no one wants to talk about that, so you never hear about it until it happens to you'. I could see what the facilitator was trying to do - to reassure these anxious new mothers that their baby could not just drop dead - but all I could think about was rectifying her glaring error. I think I was the only one in the room who believed their lives would be genuinely improved if everyone present knew how easily their beloved child could be taken from them.

Do I need to add the part about how I felt distinctly out of the loop in the social conversations held after the session had officially ended, or are you guys right there with me? The thing is, the other women in the group seemed like lovely people, it's just that I felt as if they didn't know what to say to me after that. And who could blame them? I just wish that my desire to acknowledge Max, and my genuine interest in connecting with other people by sharing my story, was not always thwarted by how uncomfortable the mention of his short life makes people. I don't know how to make friends anymore. I certainly don't know how to belong in the group in which I've unbelievably, miraculously, found myself - parents of a living child.

Whether I like it or not, the way I navigate my journey as a mother to Alice is different than it would have been had I not known loss and grief. Max, and his life and death, are part of the fabric of who I am now, and though this brings new complications for me as I move through new phases in my life without him, amongst people who do not know he existed, I wouldn't change that for anything. I also won't apologise for it, though I often feel as if I'm meant to. I think this must be one of the hardest aspects of having lost your first child - feeling as if you have to convince the rest of the world that you are not a 'new' mother at all, but rather one who has already trodden a long and winding path. 

I really hope I begin to find my place among the world of the living, for Alice's sake more than anything. I have hope that the group of women I've met will, as they get to know me, feel comfortable to broach the subject of the many and varied journeys we have all taken to get to where we are, for I'm surely not naive enough anymore to think that there aren't some hidden stories of struggle amongst the 13 or 14 of us. Alice loves being around the other little babies so much. I'd love her to have a bunch of local friends to play with, and that they all might go off to school together one day, and that we might build the little community of people we have felt sorely in need of in the many times we have felt isolated and alone since Max died. That's what I hope for.  

I am thinking about what I want this blog - my special space for Max - to be, now that Alice is here. I still want it to be that, undoubtedly. I still want it to be a place where I can remember him, and love him, and share him with those I trust enough to honour his story. Sometimes I think of making the blog more public, of sharing it with everyone I know instead of just you select few, so that they can see how Max is still a big part of our lives, and how we manage to include him in our family, even though he is no longer here. On the one hand I want everyone to know how the experience of parenting Alice is different, deeper, than it might have otherwise been. On the other is this continuing sense of wanting to protect myself, and now my daughter, from those who might wilfully misunderstand, or judge, or gossip, or otherwise hurt our hearts. 

I'd like this to be a joyful, funny, light place where I can celebrate both of my children - my beautiful family - with others....but would that mean that I might censor what I have to say for fear of offending or upsetting others? And how will Alice feel, one day, having had her early life recorded on the internet? Will she be glad that I have documented it or resentful that I did not respect her privacy more? Am I over-thinking all of this? Probably. But these things are on my mind. The question of how best to go forward on this blog is perhaps really a question of how best to go forward, now, in life. To move into this new chapter but not to leave the important parts of the past behind. 

I would like to give the blog a new look, too. I'd like someone to illustrate a header/banner (I have some ideas in mind) and an overall design for it that makes it a bit less cluttered. Perhaps I'd like a few sections. I want to review some of the information I have up here and update it. And if I'm honest, there are some posts I've written that I'd like to take down. Ones that I am not proud of having written. Ones that I don't really want to see again. But that defeats what my aim was when I began here - to let it all out. And I can't really bear to go back and read any of my previous posts, so if only for that reason I guess everything will stay as it is, content-wise. Here it all is. Warts and all. The story of my babies. The stories of their lives.

Oh, how she's grown! 3 months old

My tiny little baby has grown into a big strong girl before my very eyes. She's 5.2kg of chubby little thighs and chipmunk cheeks that look like they're storing sacks full of chestnuts for the winter. Her 'fourth trimester' (the newborn period) is over and Alice is now officially referred to as an infant - and she has the next-size-up nappies to prove it!

One of the best things I'm finding about this age is how social she is becoming. She is so interested in meeting people. She stares into everyone's eyes and is becoming much more generous with her smiles, particularly when someone is really trying to engage with her. She's started making excited noises when she first sees you in the morning or when she's playing on her play mat. It is very sweet. We've been taking her out and about, all over the place, ever since we've had her home from hospital so she's really comfortable in new environments and will sleep through most any noise.

She absolutely loves being in the pram or in the car. The only problem with car trips is that she cries at just about every red light! The amount of times I've considered running a red light just so she won't grizzle is a bit scary! I've got a few tactics up my sleeve now, though. If there are not many cars I'll slow down really....well....slowly, in the hope that the lights will change before I get there and I'll be able to zoom right through. If I'm planning on driving on a freeway I also have to make sure she's been well fed as it seems every time I get on a road where I can't stop for kilometres she decides she's absolutely starving and screams and screams. In case you didn't know, this makes for a very stressful driving experience!

She is still feeding four-hourly at night. I can't complain about this as it still allows for a reasonable amount of sleep (on my part) and she goes back to bed easily after I've fed her so it's not as if I'm up for hours each time trying to re-settle her. Having said that, apparently it is now OK to start encouraging her to stretch her feeds out a little so that she only needs one at 2-3am. I get so confused about what things are recommended and what are not. Like the whole demand feeding thing. I thought the basis of that was that you don't try and do things like stretch feeds out but that you feed on demand whenever your baby shows hunger signals. Today, however, the maternal and child health nurse told me that everything is flexible and that it's good for babies to learn to get through the night without feeding all the time at this age. I feel like I never quite know what I'm supposed to be doing as I get different answers to all of my questions depending on who I ask!

She's not sleeping for longer stretches overnight, but she's definitely sleeping less during the day now. She used to be in a pretty reliable pattern of feed, play, sleep, but now she will be awake and playful for much longer periods of time. This morning I only got her to sleep for half an hour before she was up again but then she went down for a really long nap in the afternoon. It's actually really lovely having her awake so much given that she spent so many of her early weeks deep in the land of nod with her eyes squeezed tightly closed against the world! She's not at all a baby who demands attention and constant entertainment. I can put her on her play mat and she'll happily lay there for 15 minutes talking to her little animal companions, looking around and kicking about. That gives me enough time to grab a cup of tea or go to the toilet, which are about the only two things I'm finding time for during the day right now!

Now, we think it is possibly a fluke, but Alice also rolled from her tummy to her back this month - twice, maybe three times! No one seemed more surprised than she did to accomplish this feat. She absolutely hates tummy time so we figure this is probably a huge motivator for her to get herself onto her back again. I'm pretty sure she just so happened to have her hands in the right position to lever herself over. Still, I'm calling it a milestone. I officially recorded it as one in her baby book!

We had a little visit to the emergency department this a couple of weekends ago, too. It turned out to be nothing, and we knew it probably would be, but we just wanted to be on the safe side. Alice was refusing to feed properly for a good 36 hours and seemed very lethargic. She didn't have a fever and wasn't crying but just didn't seem herself. The doctors said there was nothing wrong with her but I think maybe she had a little bug or something that was making her feel a bit under the weather. She started picking up late the next afternoon - right in time to be the star attraction on my birthday! I had a couple of friends around for coffee and cake and she woke up and totally stole the show. No one's interested in me at all anymore - it's all about the baby! But that's OK, as she is a pretty awesome human being.

Here she is on her three-month-birthday, all 5.2kg of her!

Happy. Just happy.

On more than one occasion lately I've found myself saying to Les 'I'm just so happy'. I say it in a slightly bemused tone, as if feeling happy is the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. Locked in a beaming competition with my baby, or watching her have little conversations with her daddy, the feeling hits me with unexpected intensity, almost like I have never experienced 'happy' before. Of course I have, but it's been a while. It has been a long, long, while.

Until the last couple of weeks, having settled into everyday life with Alice in my arms, I didn't realise just how much fear, how much anxiety, how much helplessness, and how much grief I've been carrying around with me for the best part of eighteen months. I guess that is because those feelings became  my 'new normal'. I struggle to remember life before the storm of neonatal death hit us. Was there ever a time when I didn't know this pain? It's so much a part of my heart, even when I'm otherwise joyous, that I can't comprehend what was previously in its place. What got pushed out when grief moved in? Probably a lot of things. Innocence. Any sense of belief in destiny. The ability to give a shit about pretty much anything most 'normal' people talk about.

While it's true that happiness is ever-after more complicated once you've been touched by such sorrow, always tempered by the tragedy of what came before, since Alice was born I've come to allow myself new ways of feeling it and savouring it that don't diminish the pain of a wounded heart, but that honour it. It has been hard. I have to consciously remind myself that each moment I share with Alice, enjoying every amazing thing about her, does not entail a forgetting about her big brother or the enormity of his loss, but is in fact a conscious practice of the lessons his precious life left with me: that the most significant moments of our lives are fleeting and we must do our best with what we've got, no matter the nature of those moments, to capture them.

Alice has brought me a lightness that in the aftermath of Max's death I expected never to feel again. At first I resisted it. I didn't want all those people who offered me platitudes in the wake of his death - 'it won't always feel like this', 'time heals', 'this too shall pass' and countless variations on the theme - to be right. Those platitudes were, and still are, an affront to my searing pain. I've never wanted the pain to pass, because this grief is the only expression of love I can give my little boy. 

Moreso, I'm wary of becoming the poster girl to restore people's faith in 'happily ever after' now that I have a living child. In the weeks and months after Max died someone always seemed to have a story of a neighbour's second cousin's wife who also 'lost' a baby but who then went on to have another, and perhaps another after that. I know that those stories were told to encourage hope but I did not see hope up ahead when I heard them. I saw attempts to deny the magnitude of my loss and to treat Max as a commodity that could eventually be replaced. Did no one understand that  I didn't want a baby. I wanted my baby. The very one specific little soul I had grown and nurtured for five months. 

Such stories only served to confirm what I already thought - that most people can't bear to think of a 'lost' baby as anything other than a blip on the radar, a false start if you like, on the road to motherhood. They don't seem to realise that a 'lost' pregnancy doesn't just dissipate into the air, like you're pregnant one minute and just un-pregnant the next. They can't acknowledge that there is a body involved - a very human body. There's blood and guts and searing physical pain and there's an actual baby in your arms. A still one. A cold, dead, poor little baby, as precious, as perfect and as loved as any other being born in the hospital that night.

To deny a baby personhood like that is a way that people protect themselves from a truth that is troubling to confront - that life is painful, that the pain won't spare you, that the things you love most in the world can, and might, be taken from you, that terrible things happen to good people. I don't want to be that woman in the story who lived happily ever after, becoming a beacon to mitigate another's searing pain, a reason to restore people's faith that everything eventually works out for the best because I know for a fact that it damn well doesn't. Not only is 'happy ever after' never a possible outcome after your child has been torn from you, but you know what? It was never a possibility. I became a lot less angry about Max's death after I realised that a happy ending was not my right, that the happily ever after I thought I deserved was just an illusion that I'd swallowed from an early age, hook, line and sinker.

From where I stand now, in the priveleged position of being a mum to a healthy baby girl, I can say that I know happiness, in some way, shape or form, is possible in the wake of even a horror as great as this. However, the birth of a subsequent baby, called a 'rainbow baby' in the baby-loss community, in recognition that the beauty of a rainbow does not negate the ravages of the storm than raged before it, is not a panacea for healing. Rather, a rainbow baby, my rainbow baby, is a gift of beauty and light that has appeared in the midst of my darkness, not instead of it Alice's birth has not broken the storm but it has given me shelter so that I no longer have to bear the full force of it. She is my break in the weather. She is my sunshine.

My grief for Max has not abated since Alice's birth. Indeed at times it has intensified. In the days after her birth I was a wreck, the trauma of Max's birth re-surfacing in vivid detail. I feel it especially when I hold her baby weight in my arms and remember how much my arms physically ached to hold Max in the weeks and months after his death. I'm constantly looking at her face for the tiny resemblances that connect my two babies. I kiss her little lips often just to feel the sheer surprise of their warmth. The last baby lips I kissed were cold, and dry, and still. Alice's lips are perhaps, as a consequence, one of my most cherished things about her. The way she moves them, especially when she sleeps, melts my heart. I love those little lips and can barely believe they'll one day say things to me and soon call me 'mummy'.

I marvel at Alice's aliveness each and every day. That she survived despite all of the accidents that could have befallen her along the way - accidents that I know have befallen other babies, other mothers, who wanted their babies as much as I wanted Alice. There was a real risk she would be born before she was strong enough for them to save her. We were going week by week and sometimes day by day for a lot of my pregnancy. This time we were lucky. She wasn't born too soon, though she gave us a fair few scares along the way. At 26 weeks I had steroids administered because of signs that labour could be impending but it didn't eventuate until 9 weeks later. When each day makes a difference to a baby's development during the crucial second trimester, 9 weeks, I'm sure you'll agree, is an incredible feat. To put it simply, I cannot believe our luck. I keep waiting for it to end. I'm sure, on some level, I'll always be looking over my shoulder for the 'catch'. What do I have to give up in return for keeping this one? In my dark moments I wonder that a lot.

In the middle of the night when I'm up feeding Alice, enjoying all of her milk-monstering grunts and sighs, I try to figure out what I now think about life. How will I explain the meaning of it all to her as she grows? I cannot give her the idea of heaven as a reward for suffering. I cannot teach her that if you are a good person then you enjoy some level of benevelence against misfortune. I cannot tell her that she can make her future whatever she wishes it to be. I cannot protect her from the things that will hurt her. I want her to know the truths that I now know, as there is great freedom in those truths, but at the same time I want to shield her from ever having to know them. I want her to think of the world as a wonderous and hopeful place but I also want to make sure she's better prepared to face adversity than I was. I want her to have her cake and eat it too. Surely that is a little girl's perogative.

What do I think about life? Well, my understanding of the world at this moment in time (it's always changing, always being re-assessed) is that it's just a game of chance. You're allocated a pack of cards, someone throws them up in the air, and they land in a certain configuration, depending on the way the wind blows. If you shuffle the pack, take one step to the right, touch your nose or spin around in a circle and the cards land differently there'll likely be a whole other set of outcomes for you. 

I do find this understanding problematic at times. I struggle with the aspect of accepting that I've got no control over the accidents that befall me. I still don't really believe that there is nothing I could have done to change what happened to our darling baby boy. But I want to. I want to really believe that we could not have seen it coming. I want release from the constant second-guessing, self-doubt, guilt and regret. But it's complicated. If I could have seen this fate coming would I have laid down in front of that hurtling fate train and offered myself up for slaughter instead? Absolutely. In a second. Am I glad I did not have the chance to do such a thing? Well, yes, I'm that too. I have to be, as I know if I'd done so there'd have been no Alice. 

Though it was not her job to bring respite, and I am very conscious of never expecting that of her, Alice has brought it, unknowingly, anyway. She's the calmest baby I've ever encountered. Surely a calm presence is the most wonderful gift you can give to a mother who has faced so much anxiety. She makes me laugh a lot. By far her most common expression is one of bemusement. She has a smirk that makes you think she's quietly entertaining herself in her little imagination and that the joke's clearly on you. I feel like she'll have a real sense of humour. God knows her mum and dad could use some giggles.

And it's not just us, her mum and dad, that Alice has touched in the weeks since her birth. Expressions of love for her, and for us, have poured in from near and far in ways that themselves make you feel really good to be alive. The reconnection of old friendships, the delight in sharing her with those who helped me count down the weeks until she would be considered 'viable'. The absolutely engaged and compassionate carers who took some of the worry from my shoulders, gave me continuity of care, and who safely delivered Alice to me. They all visited. Some of them cried. All of them were genuinely as delighted and relieved as we were that we made it to somewhere resembling the finish line. 

My support crew during that eight month pregnancy, and indeed in the months leading up to the pregnancy, were hands on, available day or night, patient enough to sit with me through the uncertainty week after week after long, exhausting week. 35 of them all up. 12 more than I ever expected. One living, breathing baby who I was convinced would die too. For once in my life I've never been more relieved to have been proven wrong. 

Two months old and kicking goals!

Alice is two months old and after a rocky start to life is finally beginning to really thrive. She's stacking on weight and is getting much longer, too. In fact I'm starting to worry that our plans for keeping her in her bassinet for at least six months might not come to fruition as there already doesn't seem to be much space left in it! At her health check this week she weighed 4.5 kg. Given we have had a lot of feeding issues with her this is very reassuring that we are doing something right, even though we are currently mixed feeding due to...well...so many issues really that I've been meaning to write an entire post based only on that, called something like 'Breasts for Beginners', because I certainly have not found breastfeeding to be a naturally occurring or intuitive skill in the least.

The best news from Alice's check up is that she officially no longer needs to have adjustments made for her corrected age. She has caught up on all the developmental milestones expected of an 8 week old baby even though they have been treating her as only a month old due to her prematurity. We were just thrilled. She is so supportive and just really reasonable about things and I've heard that this is not often the case. The centre we go to has a 'drop in' morning on Wednesdays where you can take your baby to have a weigh-in or to discuss any concerns you might be having between your appointments. The nurse must know me well enough to predict I might be one of the anxious ones dropping in every week as she specifically told me that I wasn't allowed to come every week!

Now, Alice was born with an incredibly full head of hair, but would you believe that instead of falling out as most people told me it would, it just keeps growing, and it's growing in a distinctly upwards direction. This means that she has had to put up with me calling her Spike a lot, and I also often refer to her as my little grease-ball, as she has unfortunately inherited her father's very oily hair that needs washing every single day or else it looks like it's been plastered down with vaseline. Alice is not very happy about this as she doesn't really like having her hair washed, although I really like washing it for her as it goes all soft and fluffy and blonde afterwards and makes me fall in love with her all over again.

Babies really can be oily, scaly, dirty little creatures. She has also developed the hideously-named skin condition 'cradle cap', which is apparently the result of overactive sebaceous glands on the head and face. She only has it mildly but it still looks pretty gross and I keep annoying her by rubbing olive oil all over it in an attempt to remove the crusty bits. The maternal and child health nurses seem to be big fans of household edible oils. They've recommended I use olive oil for a variety of random skin upsets that Alice has experienced. At least her baby acne has cleared up. Yes, the poor darling had that too, and both Les and I had trouble resisting the urge to squeeze all of her whiteheads! Gross, gross, gross, I know.

I'm also very pleased to report that I have decided Alice is 'officially' smiling. She has actually been giving a few smiles here and there for about a fortnight, but they were few and far between and very fleeting when they came so I didn't really feel like I could call it, which is a shame as I really wanted to record the date she first smiled in her baby book but now I'm not sure which date was the real date she began, especially as the early smiles were somewhat more like grimaces so I wasn't exactly sure what was going on. Just the last few days, though, she's been giving out genuine smiles, big grins, especially in the mornings when she first sees you. Today I had my regular psych appointment and she even smiled at Melanie, which is the first time she's smiled at someone that is not mummy or daddy. It absolutely makes my heart melt to see her little face light up and it makes me tempted to overfeed her all the time as she is at her smiliest when her tummy is filled to near-bursting point! I'm yet to get a smiling photo of her, but stay tuned as I am going to try very hard over the weekend!

She's been a very lucky little baby this week. I bought her a tonne of books in a book sale that was on near my house (turns out there's a major children's publishing warehouse right near our place, who knew?!). Here is Les reading her one about a bad-tempered ladybird. We haven't yet found out what happens to the ladybird as Alice cracked it before we could get to the end. What a cliffhanger!

She also received the most amazing handmade quilt from one of my oldest, closest friends. It is just the most beautiful thing, and once again I am in awe of people's incredible craftsmanship. It's going to be great for putting on the floor for her to play on, and later on it will look just gorgeous on her bed. Our cats also think it is a pretty neat place for an afternoon nap. I'm sure they would say they are just warming it up for her...

Alice also received her membership kit for her daddy's football team. They are right onto the baby marketing business and sell a variety of infant team merchandise. I'm happy for her to have a footy team. I know it is a distinctly Melbourne thing for her to have, and that pleases me. I also like that it is something her and Les can do together in the future. I just wish his team wore better colours. Brown and yellow have to be the most disgusting combination out of all the AFL teams, don't you think?

After two months of sleep deprivation Alice also has a very confused and muddled mother on her hands. A number of times lately I have completely messed up the times and days of appointments and outings, leaving me swearing at myself for my silliness and wishing I'd stayed in bed. This week I brunched alone after driving to the outer suburbs to meet a friend of mine. I knew something was wrong as she is never late and the minutes were ticking by. Turns out I'd turned up an entire week early and completely forgotten an entire conversation we'd had about it. I felt very stupid and will now be texting to confirm all of my plans from now on!

Alice also has a new cry to add to her repertoire. It has to be said that she does not cry that much for a newborn baby. Mostly she only cries when something is actually wrong, like she is hungry or tired and she is good at stopping the wails as soon as you deal with whatever the problem is. She now has a kind of shouty-out cry, though, which means she's just getting annoyed, I think. I'll have to try and capture it on video as I can't really describe it in words. As much as I don't want her to be frustrated and angry with me, it is good that she is starting to tell us what she wants and needs after so long of being a tired and unresponsive little baby. Yes, Alice, you can cry if you want to, but I'm sure I'll regret saying that!

Here is the girl of the hour...or more specifically the month...for your viewing pleasure! I think you'll agree that she has grown so much since she was last wearing one of these little stickers!

Two Months Old!