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.