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.