Happy Birthday, darling Max

My beautiful boy,

We must celebrate another birthday without you. Another of hundreds of special occasions where we will carry memories of you throughout the day instead of a growing little boy. We tried our best to make it a good day - to think of you with a smile instead of tears, but the memories we have of you are so few and fleeting that sometimes it is impossible to hold them still enough in our minds to really look and it takes all our energy to chase them. And so we stare at your picture and try to remember the essence of you and how it felt to hold you in our arms. We love you. We miss you. We are so glad you were here, if only for the briefest moment.

All our love, forever,

Mummy, Daddy and Alice

xxxx

Three Years

Max would have turned three years old today. Back then I could no more have imagined three years passing than I could have 3000 years flying by, so excruciating was the passage of each hour of each day in the months after he died. But here I am and three years have passed. So much life has been lived in those three years, but so much life has also been lost, too.

I’m not sure what the milestone of Max’s third birthday means to me right now. I’ve never known what to ‘do’ with this day. Celebrating, as such, doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. He never lived to see a single birthday and the day he was born was the most traumatic of our lives.

At the same time, however, we desperately want to celebrate Max for the amazing little baby he was, and the wonderful little boy he would have grown to be. We want the day to be special and reflective and full of love, but we don’t want to dread it for the pain this reflection inevitably bring us. No matter how we look at it there’s no plan that sits comfortably with us. I think this is because what we really want is for him to be here to enjoy his own birthday with us. Everything always comes back to that impossibility.

This year, rather than load ourselves up with pressure to make the milestone of Max’s birthday somehow ‘meaningful’, we’ve made tentative plans to make it a special family day where we do something nice together that’s out of our normal routine. Last year we went to the Aquarium with little baby Alice in our arms. This year we may brave the zoo, although there’s always a lot of little three year old boys at the zoo, and that also makes it hard.

Even in these three short (but long) years I’ve found that the significance of these kind of milestones has changed, which makes this year different, too. In the early days of my grief I clung to every significant event and anniversary as a landmark I could use to distinguish the painful flow of one week to another. His funeral, his one month anniversary, receiving his birth certificate, collecting his ashes, finally reaching his due date and then his first birthday - those things gave me a timeline for my grief and a long list of to-do’s that brought meaning to my days. None of them were easy - far from it - but they were things that promised to keep Max real and present in my life as I learned, slowly, the very painful lessons of how to let him go.

After Max’s first birthday these milestones stopped cropping up as often. Then I realised that I wasn’t keeping track of the calendar so much waiting for the 24th and the anniversary of his birth to roll around every month. I no longer dreaded Thursdays (the day our world fell apart). Things were changing. There were no more speeches to prepare, no more cards to write, no memorials to plan or get-togethers to arrange in his memory. What then, I found myself asking, was left? Of him? Of me? At times it felt like by letting go of these formal opportunities to mourn him that I was losing him all over again. The expanse of time that lay ahead of me, without him, was so overwhelming and I often felt that I was sinking under the weight of this ‘forever’. Max’s time was gone but I did not know how to make him a part of my life that was to come.

That his time has passed - that the world will never again pause to pay this little lost boy his due - is a realisation I’ve had to revisit numerous times since he died. That I will never, ever see him again still seems like such an unbelievable, absurd concept, no matter how many times I turn it over in my brain. The permanence of it all still brings me to my knees when it strikes me afresh some mornings after I awake - the realisation that I will never again get the chance to hold him and love him as I long to do.

Three years on and I can say that I don’t need milestones, birthdays and anniversaries to call to mind my baby boy.These days are special on the calendar, but they’re always strangely devoid of feeling when they finally arrive. It’s the rotating roster of not-anything-special-at-all days that really do you in. Maybe I hear a mother call out to her son, Max, in the supermarket and for a split second look up, expecting to see my Max. Sometimes I’m just driving along in the car not even realising that I’m crying, or sometimes it will hit while I’m in the shower on an ordinary Tuesday morning. Grief is unpredictable, like life.

Lots of people along the way have told me that time is the great healer - that if you put enough of the stuff between you and your tragedy or trauma it won’t hurt anymore. This sounds like a nice romance, doesn’t it? It is a lovely way to comfort someone in the depths of grief who thinks they won’t survive it. The sentiment is well enough, but for me it has just been completely untrue.

Time doesn’t heal. It distracts and it distances, yes, and those can be really helpful things. But the passage of time is accompanied by its own special kind of torture in that it has taken me further and further away from the moment Max was mine. Time has made it harder to recall him as he really was and I have to turn to photos to fill in the gaps. Because of the passing of time I am often desperately trying to claw back memories that are threatening to fade - memories of how delicate and silken his skin was, what it really felt like to hold him in my arms, what I felt like when I saw my baby for the first time. It’s stressful to search in a panic for those memories, as if I can’t quite remember where I put them for safe keeping. It hurts and it makes me angry that I can’t even make the memory of him stay. ‘What kind of mother am I?’ I ask myself in those moments, and I can’t answer. I didn’t get the chance to find out what kind of mother I would be for Max. I’ll never, ever know.

I’m still trying, every day, to make a space in the world for Max - to tell people that he was here and that he mattered and that he was loved beyond measure - but it is not easy. People in general don’t deal well with death and none of us like to think much about the terrible things that might one day befall us. To talk about your baby who has died, especially, is the hardest thing to do, but by far the easiest way to clear a room. Meeting new people and anticipating their innocent, yet loaded questions ‘how many children do you have?’ or ‘is your daughter your first?’ can be excruciating, for both parties. But then, sometimes people surprise you...

Recently I got talking to a woman with a child Alice’s age while waiting for an event to start in the city. Those same questions arose, I answered as I usually do, and she simply replied ‘I’m so sorry. What was your son’s name?’. It was an amazing moment for me, and I’m so thankful for those very kind of people I’ve encountered throughout the last three years and brought into my life, as well as to the people who’ve stayed the course as I’ve fallen over time and time again in the roughest terrain. Those are my all-weather friends - more valuable and treasured than they know.

Each year that passes I hope I’ve found a new way to honour and remember Max. Each year I hope there will be more people who know that he was here, and who will understand the special impact he had on the world in his short, but significant life.

Three years on and everything is different, yet three years on and everything is exactly the same - I love him, I miss him, I wish he could come home.

Alice at Fourteen Months Old

We've been in double digits for a while now but 14 months old just seems so grown up. You are so big now,  my baby, and you are getting so tall. Once you spent all of your time laying down. Then, when you could sit, you did that, and nothing else would do! Now, though, you are mostly upright. You never want to lie down, not even for a nappy change. I guess lying down is for babies, huh? And you're making it clearer day by day that you're not a tiny little baby anymore!

You're not yet walking independently but I get a real sense that you absolutely could if you felt like it. Every time we think you're *that* close you seem to lose interest. When we try and get you to stand on your feet and walk along holding our hands you just collapse your legs and start rapidly crawling away! You do like toddling along behind your trolley or doll's pram. Once we get you get started on that you don't want to stop and you get the biggest grin on your face. It makes me so happy to see that smile, especially when you are beaming with delight because you've achieved something new. You're beginning to experience the feeling of pride, I think. You often applaud yourself, like when you put a shape in the correct hole of your shape sorter. I know you must have learned this from us - we were so desperate to teach you to clap (you were a bit slow in the clapping milestone stakes!) that we clapped every time you did something remotely interesting! It is really cute to see you do it, but nowhere near nowhere near as cute as when you give me a round of applause after singing you a song! I love it!

You've been sick again this last week or so, and so have I. More viruses, more fevers and more sleepless nights. You're also teething. A molar is coming through on the top right hand side and it looks really nasty and sore. I think it has been giving you pain. When I'm feeling under the weather too I find it so hard not to let everything overwhelm me and on some days I feel like I haven't really enjoyed you as much as I should have. I've been frustrated and tired, sometimes even wishing you'd just go to sleep so I could just sit down or get something done around the house (ie. perhaps mop the filthy kitchen floor). I know I shouldn't think those things, and I feel so guilty for it, but I guess it is normal to get a bit over the daily grind of it every now and again. I know everyone must have those days but I think because I feel I should be constantly grateful for having you here (and I am) that I'm inviting something bad to happen to you if I take you for granted for even a second. I try to give myself a break but that part of being your mum is hard, continually hard. I wish I didn't fear so much that you could be so easily snatched away.

This month you have been learning to blow kisses at daycare. I've also been trying to teach you the actions to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. You've started putting up your little chubby hands in the air trying to copy me and it melts my heart. You are so observant at the moment, trying to copy everything I do. You are experimenting all the time with different ways to move your body and showing off lots of new impressive dance moves! You're also trying out lots of new sounds and tricks with your mouth. You're spending a lot of time clicking your tongue or opening and closing your mouth like a goldfish. I blame daddy for that one as he does it to you all the time! He also taught you to make a ninja sound, which everyone makes the mistake of thinking is 'hiya', as in a friendly greeting, but which is actually 'hiiiiiiiyaaaaaa', you know, the sound of a ninja fighting move! You also quite clearly say hello now and you are understanding so much more of what we say to you. You know what 'bye bye' means and your day carers commented on how well you respond to instructions. They were so surprised and excited when they called your name and you put up your hand, and when they tell you it is story time you are able to go and get a book and take it over to the teacher to read to you. I wish I could be there to see that.

You're making deliberate requests for things you want now, not so much by pointing as extending your hand out to them. I'm pretty sure you think doing so initiates some kind of telekinesis as we normally give the thing straight to you if you've asked for it. You are getting frustrated at times because you clearly know what you want but Mummy and Daddy don't quite understand your requests. We offer you everything within sight but get it wrong every time! You like asking for your water bottle and you get excited when you go in your high chair as you know it is time to eat. You can be a bit impatient when you are hungry and you don't quite understand that I need to cool down your food before you can have it! You also don't like waiting for your milk bottle to come out of the microwave! You're also beginning to anticipate things - such as bath time - which is fun, but it has a flip side when I take you to daycare because you now recognise that I'm going to leave you there and you cling to me as we walk down the corridor to your room. That makes it even harder to leave you but I know you have a good time with your little friends there and you are always so happy when I pick you up in the afternoons.

You're still quite particular with your food and refuse things for no apparent reason one minute that you'll happily munch on the next. We never know if we are going to get a good meal into you or not and it is stressful because I worry that you are hungry or that you are not getting all the nutrients you need. Also, it is kind of annoying because I've been putting in so much effort making meals for you! I'm not a natural in the kitchen so it is damn hard work! I've been making you recipes with ingredients I've never heard of and can't even pronounce to ensure you end up a confident eater. I've been getting into the super foods and the finger foods and the family meals, but sometimes all you want is a cheese sandwich and a handful of grapes, or your absolute favourite thing in the whole wide world - sultanas. You love drinking water and are so good at drinking out of a straw. You make the cutest 'gulp gulp' sounds as you're drinking, exaggerated, like a cartoon character or something! You're getting surprisingly good at feeding yourself with a fork or spoon. I didn't think children could feed themselves with utensils until a much older age but you are really quite good at it. You haven't wanted to be spoon fed pretty much ever so I guess I've been letting you practice doing it yourself and putting up with the ensuing mess. I'm pleased to see that it is paying off!

One of your favourite things to do at the moment is to post little objects inside other, bigger objects. You love getting hold of our coffee mugs and filling them up with assorted dummies you've collected (and which we've usually been frantically looking for the night before) then systematically taking them out and doing it all over again. And again. And again. And again! You are also obsessed with trying to put things in other people's mouths! You keep trying to feed us and you don't take no for an answer! Even Kitty is not safe. You keep trying to put your dummy into his mouth. He is not so keen on you at the moment as you are being a bit rough with him, pulling his leg, his collar and his hair. You're getting better, and you understand how to pat gently, but you get a bit overexcited at times and the temptation is just too much.

Your favourite toy right now seems to be your shape sorter. You are getting really good at putting the shapes in the holes, but then occasionally you also put other things through the holes, like your grapes! Your Fisher Price dinosaur also collects a lot of your snacks and other toys - pieces of toast, apple and some of your Duplo blocks. We never know what we are going to find inside him!  You're loving your Duplo blocks and love to pack them back into their box and then tip them out again because they make such a big rattly noise. Your little box of Mr Men books is also a current favourite, as well as some toy kitchen utensils that you bang on things to make big clanging sounds. The other thing you love to do, which we are actively discouraging, is to race to the kitchen when we are not looking and dip your hands in the cat water bowl before tipping it out all over the floor. We really don't like it when you do that! And you are now desperate to make your way to the study on the days Daddy is working from home. You're intent on switching off his computer and because the study is near the laundry you're also fascinated by watching the washing machine go around and around, which does at least once a day now because you get so dirty and create so much washing! I can't wait until I can delegate this task to you! You do help already, it is just that you have the process a bit backwards. You take things out of the clean washing basket and put them on the floor and rip the wet washing off the clothes airer instead of waiting for it to dry first.

You are really starting to enjoy being around other children, and seem to particularly like it when older children pay attention to you. You watch them so intently and I can already see you subtly trying to build relationships with other little people. You are so gentle with others. Lots of other babies your age are all with the pulling hair, poking out eyes and snatching toys from each other but you tend to just sit quietly and observe. I love this about you but I think you're going to have to start defending yourself a little better from the other, rougher children! Our playgroup session on Wednesdays is going really, really well and you're just at the right age and ability level to really get excited about the different activities on offer for you. You always go straight for the soft climbing equipment and like being up on top of the big blocks. Here are some pictures of you enjoying Playgroup from last week. I love to see you having so much fun. I also love the chance to sit back for once and just observe you playing instead of being actively involved in playing with you. It gives me a whole other perspective on your personality as well as a nice chance to have a cup of tea and chat with the other mums. You always sleep really well afterwards too. All that play must really tire you out!

I think the next month or two are going to be really full of developmental milestones as you start to understand and participate more and more in the things going on around you. I can't wait to share all of the fun Winter days ahead with you, especially since I will be on holidays from work and we will have no other responsibilities eating into our time together.

I love you, my little girl.

Love Mummy.

Thirteen Months - Illness and more Illness!

Alice is thirteen months old, beginning her second year of life. The past month and a bit we have all been in the wars with illness after illness. There was the gastro that almost ruined Alice’s first birthday celebrations. Then there was the terrible case of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease which threw a lot of pain and suffering at baby Alice. She screamed so much from the pain of blisters in her throat and mouth that she completely lost her voice, which distressed her even more as she could not cry out for help.

Around ten days before she came down with H, F & M we had taken her for her 12 month immunisations and just as she was recovering from this god-awful virus she also developed some vaccine side effects that had me very scared for my little girl. She coped incredibly well with the immunisations themselves, hardly even a cry and no immediate after-effects, but as we found out 5% of children develop a measles-like rash, fever and lethargy around 7-10 days after immunisation. Of course Alice fell into the 5% and of course I totally blew those side effects out of proportion. When you can so easily imagine the dead weight of your lost child in your arms it becomes harder and harder to convince yourself that adverse events are unlikely and improbable and instead can too easily imagine the worst possible thing again befalling you. If the death of one of your children isn’t a painful enough thing to carry around for the rest of your life, the sense that you are cursed to suffer – that every conceivable thing that could happen will happen to you, well it is hard to maintain perspective sometimes, particularly in stressful situations of high emotion.

When Alice went really downhill again last Monday afternoon we assumed it was the H, F & M but by the time we got her to see the doctor she had developed a full body rash, was pale, feverish and could barely stay awake. Of course I’d forgotten all about the immunisations by this time and thought that she was becoming seriously ill. I could not contain my anxiety, no matter the doctor’s assurances that it would be short-lived and that she would most likely be over the worst of it within 24 hours. By the time I’d taken her from the doctor’s office to the car I had convinced myself that she was the one in a million case who’d die because of her immunisations. I really had to try hard that day to stay calm so that I didn’t stress Alice out any more than she already was. As the doctor had said, the rash did begin to clear the next day, although she was still very tired and irritable. It took a good few more days for us to start to see her cheery old self again. Since her smiles and silliness have returned I’ve been making an extra effort to just enjoy playing with her, ignoring how much the floor needs to be vacuumed and the cleaning washing needs to be folded and put away.

Given that Alice has caught so many bugs since she began in childcare a couple of months ago I fear that we might be in for more illness as the winter draws closer. I know it is unavoidable, and that it is good for her immune system, and that most things she gets will not be serious (or as unpleasant as the H, F & M) but so much of me still wants to pull her out of childcare and keep her at home where I can better protect her. I have to fight this urge daily and can only imagine how much harder that gets when your children start becoming more independent and go off into the world without you. I have to let her have experiences and freedoms, and I want nothing less for her of course, but I also selfishly want to keep her with me always so that I know she is safe. Someone very wise once told me that having a child is like taking your heart and watching it walk around in the world without you – you can no longer protect it from hurt or harm but become just a fairly helpless observer. She couldn’t have been more right. But I know how important it is to let go. Even at this early age, to teach her that she can be safe in the world without me – that the world is not a scary place.

Being so ill has meant we’ve held off on a lot of transitions we were planning to begin making after Alice turned one. Weaning her from bottles and onto sippy cups and trying to cut out overnight feeds (she still feeds at least twice overnight). Partly we have made that rod for our own back because we feed her to sleep and use bottles to soothe her when she wakes during the night. I find it really hard to think in terms of long term gains so I always find myself doing the thing that is going to get the results right now, and feeding to soothe and sleep is one of those things. I really don’t mind feeding her once a night. I know she doesn’t need it, but I’d be happy to do so, it is just that sometimes she wakes and cannot go back to sleep without being fed and cuddled for a really long time, and those nights make it really hard, especially as I no longer get the concessions associated with having a newborn baby that does the same – naps when the baby naps, not having to work, people generally expecting much less of you. I’m back in the world now and I need to be able to function during the day and not be reaching for caffeine and chocolate to keep my energy levels up when they begin to flag. I’m trying to make some healthy changes and build some fitness up so I feel that all of this also depends on me getting a decent amount of sleep each night.

Because her throat was so sore Alice also went off all of her solid food, which worries me a little. She is not a great eater compared to all the other babies her age I know. She refuses to eat anything off a spoon at the best of times so she never really gets a good volume of food as she picks around on her plate with her fingers. I’m trying not to put any pressure on her as the last thing I want is to create a general food aversion but god dammit I just want her to eat! It makes me so happy to see her eat a good meal, it just doesn’t happen very often! We continue to offer her lots of food, whether she eats it or throws most of it on the floor in disgust, but I have to admit it gets a bit demoralising after a while when you go to so much effort to prepare food for her and she won’t have a bar of it. I can’ t help but take it personally! There are a few favourite things she will eat most of the time – scrambled eggs, sultanas, rice snacks, carrots, but I don’t want to get into the habit of only offering her things that are her favourite, so I’m kind of at a loss as to how to proceed from here. How do you get a reluctant baby to eat?!

She’s become super playful over the last few weeks when she’s been feeling well. She’s figured out how to play peek-a-boo and will often take a piece of clothing and put it over her head to hide from you and thinks it is the funniest thing ever when you act surprised to see her after she pulls it off. She’s also taken to hiding around corners and then peeking around the wall at you. It is so cute and she grins like mad while she is doing it. Her other favourite game is putting her hands on her head and then you copying her or vice versa. Sometimes she just comes out and does it while she’s in the middle of something else and Leslie and I then have to race to copy her. It’s kind of fun for us too and she enjoys it so much. She’s beginning to put her hands over her eyes now as well and we are trying to teach her other parts of her face to put her hands on. 

We are really beginning to notice her interest and affinity for music. She absolutely loves to dance and bop around and it makes my heart melt so much to walk into a room to find her sitting there rocking from side to side to the song from one of her toys or the radio. She doesn’t care how good the song is either – she’ll begin to dance even to something silly that we are singing to her! She loves to stand up against the TV stand where our stereo speaker sits and dance right in front of where the music comes out. I’ve been trying desperately to capture her bopping on video but she always stops by the time I get out my phone and switch it to video mode! She’s becoming really hard to photograph as every times she sees the phone or camera now she just takes a dive for it and throws a big tantrum if she can’t have it. It’s making it hard to get stuff like blogging done as I can’t use any electronics in her presence without her stealing them off me, and if I refuse, her going into a crabby baby rage!

Another of the cutest things she does at the moment is go into her room, pull all of her books of the shelves, and sit quietly turning the pages. I’ve been doing things in the kitchen once or twice and realised everything has gone really quiet. I’ve rushed into her bedroom to see what kind of mischief she’s up to and she’s just been sitting there reading. I find those moments just extraordinary. Not just because I’m so happy she loves books but just noticing that she’s beginning to choose which things she wants to do rather than just do whatever is put in front of her. Her intentions and actions are becoming so much more deliberate, which is a huge developmental milestone, but also means she has very strong opinions about what she would or would not like to do! Having her nappy changed or being dressed and undressed are about the worst things we can do to her right now. It is really becoming quite impossible and she is really strong and twisting and contorting to get away from you. We’ve found only one thing that keeps her still and calm while being changed at the moment and that is a slowly-deflating helium balloon left over from her birthday party. Because it is on its last legs it is kind of floating down low in the middle of the room and if we put it beside her change table she’ll look at it and play with it for long enough for you to get the job done. She loves balloons and always points up when she sees them. She knows the word ‘balloon’ now too and when you say it she will look up to see if she can see one.

She has a few words in her vocabulary now – mama, dada, cat, nan, hiya. I can tell that she understands a lot more of what I say now though. She listens really, really hard. We read lots of stories at home and at the library and I talk to her all the time about what we are doing so I hope that I am providing her with a really language-rich environment that will help her learn to speak.

We’ve just started playgroup with a few mums and babies from my mothers group and Alice is loving that. They have soft climbing equipment and she’s quite brave about crawling up on top of things, which surprised me! She’s also attending lots of her friends’ first birthday parties at the moment. We’ve had one every weekend, and next weekend we even have two to go to!

I really hope that she stays in good health for the coming months as I want the chance to have some real fun with her now that she’s understanding more. I’m going to try to plan to take her to the Botanic Gardens while Autumn is still here and the leaves are all crunchy on the ground. I have very fond memories of doing the same thing when I was a child so I’d love to see her crawling about in the leaves. She’s still not walking – doesn’t really have any interest in being upright at all – but she’ll get there, and I’m not exactly in a hurry to have her able to run away from me at any opportunity, so I’ll happy have her crawling around for a while yet!

Just One

Just One

(For Alice on her first birthday)

 

You are my darling, my daisy, my dumpling
You are my sweet little strawberry delight
I wished for you on the first star at twilight
You brought the dawn to my dark, lonely night.

You are my treat, my treacle, my treasure
Look at those eyes, so sparkling, so blue
You share a smile and all hearts start a-melting
You radiate sunshine, whatever you do.

You are my beautiful, bright little blondie –
My constant companion, my smallest dear friend
You’ll still be my baby as days turn to decades
Your mother’s love for you, it never will end.

My kissable, kittenish, cute, clever cookie
How can I describe your many sweet ways?
You’ve been funny and fearless, silly and sunny
On all of your three hundred sixty five days.

Your first orbit has ended, it is time for another
So pick up those little feet – ready? Let’s go!
Your second year’s starting, let’s not waste a minute
May you love, may you learn, may you laugh, may you grow.

      -- Mummy