The hole in my heart.

It was 2 years ago today that our darling little Grace was stillborn.

I don't know what to say.
It's 2 years of my life that have been filled with so much sadness, and heartbreak and grief. So much longing and so much pain.

She was such a beautiful little baby and I wish more than anything in the world that we got to see her grow up.

Expectations -the age gap

I can remember when I fell pregnant with Grace in 2010 (and had already had two miscarriages and taken longer to fall pregnant than expected) I would complain to friends about how the age gap between Sophie and baby number 2 would be so big (it would have been three and a half years if Grace had survived).
It seems ridiculous to me now that I used to complain about the age gap back then -as the age gap between our kids will now be almost 5 years.

It's taken me a long time to come to terms with what the age gap will be between our kids, and it's not because I believe there is a 'right' age gap at all, I can see the benefits of having kids close together and far apart. The thing that has bothered me so much is that I had expected to have kids close together and the hard thing has been learning to adjust to the way that life turned out rather than how I expected it to be.

We started trying for another baby when Sophie was a 1 year old and sometimes I can't believe that here we are, all these years later still waiting for another (living) baby to arrive. It was so hard for me to watch everyone else go on to have baby number two and even baby number three while I was still desperately trying to fall pregnant or stay pregnant. I felt sorry for Sophie because she wanted a little brother or sister so badly and although I knew I was lucky to have her, I really felt like I was being left behind. Especially after I fell pregnant so easily with Sophie, it was such a shock when it became so, so difficult the second time around.

I know that there will be so many benefits to having such a big gap between kids.. Sophie will be able to help with so many things and because she will be at school full time next year I will have so much one-on-one time with the little man.  I know that it will be great and I am not worried about the age gap anymore, but before I fell pregnant it was crazy how it use to eat me up inside. I sometimes laugh when people tell me how many kids they are going to have or what age-gap they plan on having because I have learnt that sometimes we just have no control over these things at all.

I guess at the end of the day you love the kids you end up with so much that you can't imagine life any other way.



*Photo of Sophie - who has had enough of photos!

22 weeks

I'm 22 weeks this week. Many of you will remember that I was 22 weeks pregnant when I went into labour with Grace in my last pregnancy. It's a very scary time but I have to keep telling myself that this pregnancy is different and I know that I can carry a baby to full term.. I have done it before!

We are right in the thick of the risky stage as babies born at 22 weeks have no chance of survival, but babies born at 28 weeks have a good chance of survival.. just 6 more weeks and we will be on the home stretch! (Not that we want a baby born at 28 weeks.. that is still very premature.. we are aiming for 37 weeks here and not any earlier!)

Everything is going really well and I am literally just counting down the days until I get to 28 weeks and we can all let out a great big sigh of relief!

The strangest thing is that because I have given birth to a 22 week old baby I know exactly what this little boy in my tummy looks like (well obviously he will have his own features) but not many pregnant women can say that they know how a baby looks at 22 weeks.. It's slightly scary and kind of comforting in a funny way.

With every single kick I get I am so grateful that I am pregnant and that this little boy is still in my tummy.
I just need him to stay there for another few months. Sometimes I find myself talking to him and saying "I can't wait to meet you" and then I quickly add "But not now.. I don't wan't to meet you now! Stay in there until full term okay and don't come out any sooner!"

Okay little man, you got that?



*Photo of a little baby blanket I have been making this week.. after 4 years of being surrounded by pink everything, it's nice to have a bit of blue!

Adjusting

A few people have asked how Sophie is adjusting to having a mummy who spends 24 hours a day in bed. It has been an adjustment but we are all doing as well as any family can I guess.

The last year or so has been difficult for Sophie. She had only just turned 3 when Grace died and could not really comprehend what had happened. For months afterwards she would ask questions like "Mummy, why did our baby die?" or worse "Mummy, when I grow up will my baby die too?" or "Mummy, why do all my friends have a little brother or sister to play with, but I don't?" For months afterwards she would draw pictures of our family with four people "mummy, daddy, me and the baby that died".

We have always tried to be as honest as we can about what happened and try to remind her that one day she will have a little brother or sister, it just takes some mums and dads longer than others. Yesterday she asked me if she will "have to lie in bed to help her baby grow" when she grows up. The poor little thing.. It is all very confusing for a 4 year old.

The funny thing is that I actually get to spend more quality time with Sophie now than I ever had before. I have nothing to do, nowhere to go and I can sit her with her for hours reading books and doing puzzles. I find it amazing how little quality time I spent with her before. We were always doing things, had somewhere to be, playdates, dinner to cook, cleaning to do, and apart from a few stories before bed I rarely sat down and just read stories, played games with her and listened to her tales about her day.

It's quite nice really.

"I know how you feel, my dog died" and other things not to say to someone who gave birth to a dead baby.

I am not sure if I should publish this post.

I actually wrote it more than 6 months ago, but I thought it sounded a bit mean and insensitive so I never posted it, but Ill try and write without sounding too ungrateful.

There are a few things that people say to me when they find out about Grace that really annoy me. Like, annoy me to the point where sometimes I think I might slap the next person that says it to me. I always smile and say thanks, but I think to myself "Who the hell says that? I just told you my baby died and you said THAT" !!??!

Tom always reminds me that I can not get upset because no one means to upset me, they are trying to empathise with me and make me feel better. And Tom and I have always said that if it had happened to someone else, we would have no idea what to say, I mean what do you say? There are often no words.

But still there are a few things that people say to me all the time that annoy me.
The thing I get most often is "Oh well, at least you are still young". Now, if I am talking about infertility, then sure, I'm very lucky I'm still young but in response to learning that my daughter died!? When people say this they are reassuring me that I have plenty of time to have more children, but they are missing the point completely. It does not matter how many more children I have there will always be a great big Grace shaped hole in my life. Full stop.

The other thing that people say is "I'm very sorry, I understand how you feel.. my dad died last year". I know this sounds insensitive but parents are supposed to die before you.. Your children are NOT. There is something fundamentally wrong with the world when you bury your own child. I know this sounds cruel, I'm sure losing a parent is awful (My dad got given 2 months to live almost two years ago and I have watched him get worse day by day) but I just can not imagine that it is anything like losing a child.

Alot of people like to tell me that "everything happens for a reason". This is fine to say to someone if they have lost their car keys or missed their bus on the way to work, but really? The whole medical profession can not find a reason my baby died, but you think there is? Oh good for you. I think the only people who believe this are people who have never suffered any real tragedy in their lives.

And lastly (and this one might make me very unpopular), is that people say "I'm so sorry, I know how you feel.. I had a miscarriage last year". Now, the ONLY reason I can write this is because I had two miscarriages before Grace died and I can tell you that having a miscarriage is nothing like having a stillborn baby. NOTHING.
I know this sounds so awful to say and I am really not trying to take anything away from people who have suffered a miscarriage. I know that when I had mine they were devastating, heartbreaking beyond belief. At the time I thought it was the worst kind of pain. But then I went through hours of excruciating labour and gave birth to a dead little girl who I got to hold in my arms and that was a pain unlike anything else. The kind of heartbreak that makes you wonder if you can go on living. If you can go on breathing. If you will ever survive.

__________________________

So there. I said it.
I really hope that I don't sound like I am dismissing other people's loss as nothing. I don't mean to take anything away from people who have experienced a loss and I know that it is soo hard to know what to say. But people, things like "My dog died last week" or "Oh, you mean you had a stillborn, that's okay.. I actually thought you had lost a living child" or (when I returned all the baby clothes I had bought) "Well, at least you get some nice new clothes for yourself" are not cool things to say. Not cool.

This is a photo of Grace's coffin. It was taken exactly one year ago on this day. Sitting in the funeral parlour choosing a baby sized coffin while stuffing tissues down my bra to try and control the milk leaking from my boobs (the milk that was supposed to be nourishing my little baby) was the lowest moment of my life.

365 days

It was exactly one year ago today that our darling little girl was born sleeping.
Much too early. Much too small, but still so perfect.

I miss you everyday.

I hate this picture, but I love it too.

In a couple of days it will be my birthday. This is a photo of me on my birthday last year.
I was 21 weeks pregnant with Grace.
So happy. So blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.

I wonder if my birthday will always be a sad day for me from now on. Will it be my happy birthday or will it be 10 days before Grace died? I guess that is a choice I have to make.

28 sucked big time. But 29 is going to be the best year of my life.
(PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE).

two thousand and twelve

Firstly, I'm really sorry for my last post. I hope that I did not scare anyone off! I really wanted to write that post before the new year so that I could start fresh in 2012. Tom was really upset to read my last post and (being the eternal optimist that he is) said "What happened was tragic. It was completely heartbreaking and always will be, but you have two choices.. You can let the grief overwhelm you and give up OR you can realise that we are so lucky in so many ways and charge ahead knowing that life is going to be great. And actually, you don't have the option of giving up because we have Sophie and she still needs her mum and dad to be full of life." (or something along those lines).

And I agree with him 100%. Now, that does not mean in anyway that I am not allowed to be sad, to feel pain, to have days when things feel hopeless.. but, it means that I need to stop living in my little bubble of 'life is really cruel to me' and start appreciating what I do have. Tom's dad actually said something to me the other day that really stuck.. he said "every single day you get closer to the day that you will be pregnant".. and that's so true! I never looked at it like that before.. but today I am closer to being pregnant than yesterday and that is great.

(I think that it's been so hard for me because when I fell pregnant with Grace I had already been trying for years to fall pregnant again and had already had two miscarriages. I thought it could not get any worse.. and that was 2 years ago! The next time I fall pregnant will be my 5th pregnancy. I will have to spend the entire pregnancy on full bed rest and have a stitch put in my cervix that has a high risk of causing a miscarriage at 11 weeks. It's actually funny that I am so obsessed with falling pregnant when that is only the very first step in a very long journey!)

So anyway, I still would like to write about Grace and infertility and all those things, but I really don't want this to be a 'dead baby blog' and I just wanted you to know that.


Secondly, These tomatoes came from Tom's mum's garden yesterday, there are hundreds of them (or at least it feels that way).. Pretty awesome hey! (Tom gives me a hard time for having a blog called Grow. Cook. Sew. when we don't actually grow anything at the moment.. so this is for him). If I was allowed to use emoticons I would insert a face with a poking out tongue here.

The year that was.

Thank god the year is almost at an end! It has been the worst year of my life, I mean, how could it not be? I began the year by giving birth to a dead baby.

I am so sick of the pain that surrounds my life every single day. I would do anything in the world to have someone erase the memory of Grace from my mind. I know (hope) that one day her memory will bring me comfort that at least I got to carry her for those precious 6 months and at lease I got to hold her after she was born and tell her how much she was loved. But, at the moment (still only 11 months since her death) her memory haunts me every single day of my life.

I can't go anywhere without imaganing myself with 2 little girls. I imagine how old Grace would be and what she would be doing. At Christmas, I imagined the joy that she would have brought the whole family, some meeting Grace for the first time.
At the park, I'll see a mum with 2 little girls.. one Sophie's age and one a few months old and I think 'that should be me'. But it's not because my little baby is dead.

I get asked almost every day "Is Sophie your only child" and I hate the answer, whatever way I choose to respond (The truthful way or the socially polite way). All the mothers in my mothers group or playgroup with kids that are the same age as Sophie have all had baby number two and most have even had baby number three. It kills me. It kills me every day.

I still wonder why this had to happen to us. I sometimes imagine the alternative universe where Grace is alive and how happy I am. And then I sometimes wonder if I will ever be truly happy again. Grief is like a blanket that has been pulled over the entire world.. There are lots of wonderful things but they are all a little less bright than before.

On top of the unbearable pain of grief, the anger, frustration and sheer heartbreak that I feel after almost a year of negative pregnancy tests is really starting to get me down. I know that another baby will never replace Grace, but really, the only thing I want in the world is to have another baby. I have watched almost every single friend I have either fall pregnant or give birth this year. Of course, I am happy for them but it hurts soo much. I just think "why not me?" And I am soo sick of Tom telling me that it will be my turn soon.

I did a pregnancy test this morning. I had a really good feeling about it. I thought it would be so nice to end the year with the best news ever, but it was negative (again) and now I just want to go to bed and hope that this year ends.. quickly.

_________________________________________________

It's funny though, because it's also been a good year (if you take away the grief and frustration). Moving to Perth has been wonderful for us and I am really glad we decided to make the move. I have made soo many wonderful friends in Perth who have all put up with my whinging about not falling pregnant (even when most of them are pregnant themselves), I have loved being close to Tom's family who are all so wonderful and supportive and I really feel at home here.

Sophie has made so many lovely friends, we found an excellent montessori school where she has just thrived and she just loves being close to all her grand-parents and aunties. Tom loves his new job here and has remained the eternal optimist throughout everything.

I guess that I do still have quite a bit to be grateful for. So, after that little rant.. I hope that you all have a wonderful 2012. Thanks for all your support over the last year, especially all your kind words and encouragement. I am really, really looking forward to a new year..

Night everyone x



P.s Tea definitely tastes better in a Kate Spade tea cup

I could not have said it better

'Lighter things will happen to you, birds will steal your husband's sandwich on the beach, and your child will still be dead, and your husband's shock will still be funny, and you will spend your life trying to resolve this.'

Except from 'An exact replica of a figment of my imagination' by Elizabeth McCracken

Party time

It has taken us 4 years to realise that no one wants to go to a party the day after boxing day (Sophie's birthday). So this year we are having her party a month early.

I bought these gorgeous invitations and party bags from Poppies for Grace.

How cute are the lolly bags! I really love this brand, even if the name makes me sad.

The F word.

I am so friggin sick of seeing this stupid friggin single pink line.
For F sake, what the hell is going on?!

Month after month of disappointment.
It's killing me.

All I want is to be pregnant again.
Having to deal with infertility on top of the pain of losing Grace is unbearable.

Completely unbearable.
(Insert F word here).

Pregnancy loss

This is by far the best book I have read on pregnancy loss.

And believe me, after two miscarriages and a stillbirth.. I have read a lot of books on the subject.
Pregnancy loss is a book that I keep coming back to over and over again. I highly recommend it for anyone who has experienced the tragic loss of a baby.


Grace should be almost 4 months old now. Instead I am staring at her ashes.

Baby. Baby. Baby?

Remember this photo?

I can not believe that it was almost exactly a year ago that I wrote this post about how desperately I wanted to be pregnant again.

I can not believe that it's been 8 months since Grace died and I am still not pregnant.

I can not believe that we have spent the last 2 1/2 years trying to have another baby. Falling pregnant and losing the baby. Again and again.

I can not believe that the gap between Sophie and her little brother or sister will be at least 4 1/2 years.

I can not believe that my only hope of having another baby is to have a stitch put in my cervix (which has a 10% chance of miscarriage) and spend the entire pregnancy on bed-rest.

I can not believe that almost every single friend I have has either fallen pregnant or given birth in the last 8 months.

I can not believe how unfair it feels.

I can not believe how much it hurts.

Two.

"How many children do you have?"

Almost everyday I get asked this question and every time I pause for a long time before answering "Two. Sophie is my oldest and I had a little girl in January who was stillborn. Her name was Grace."

I wish that I could answer differently, but I can't. I have two children. I have given birth twice. And as difficult as it is to tell someone that I had a stillborn baby within moments of meeting them, I can't answer any differently.

2.

Today.

Today is the day that Grace should have been born.
In an ideal world I would be holding my little girl in my arms. Alive.



(Image from 'names in the sand')

A life without Grace.

It's been 37 days.

37 days since my whole world came crashing down around me.

It was just over five weeks ago that life was close to perfect. We were super excited about our 4000km road trip across the country and couldn't wait to set up house in a new city. But most importantly, we were over the moon to be finally, finally pregnant with baby number two (after almost 2 years of trying to conceive and several miscarriages).

I spent the first few months of the pregnancy so worried about having another miscarriage. I had one at 8 weeks and another at 16 weeks, so even after my 12 week scan I was still nervous. But I had just had my 20 week scan and everything was perfect so I decided it was time to relax.
How wrong I was.

It still feels like some kind of horrible nightmare.

It all happened so fast. One moment I was out buying baby clothes and the next moment I was in hospital being told that my cervix was 4cm dilated and I would go into labour in the next 24 hours. We were then told that our little girl had no chance of survival. If she did survive the birth, she would die within moments of being born and we would have to watch her suffocate to death. There was nothing anyone could do.

Our whole world came crashing down around us. Tom and I cried more that night than we have in our entire lives.

We spent the next 48 hours in a tiny hospital room just waiting.. waiting for our little girl to be born. And die.

The labour was horrific. It was long and painful. It was the complete opposite of the labour I had with Sophie (a beautiful, drug free, 3 hour birth).
I screamed and cried. I was given (way too much) morphine for the pain which made me pass out in the middle of labour. I woke up a few minutes later and had no idea where I was or who I was. The pain was unbearable and the morphine made it 100 times worse. (I was told after the labour that "that can happen sometimes"!?) I begged them to make it stop and then at the end of it all I delivered a dead baby.
The room was silent.

We spent the next 2 days with our little girl. She was the most perfect little thing, just so tiny. We called her Grace.
She looked exactly like her big sister. I hugged her and kissed her. I wanted to take her home with me and hold onto her forever.

As the days went by, her little body grew cold and stiff. I have never felt anything so cold in my life. It broke my heart.
I wrapped her in blankets. I tried to keep her warm.
When the time came to say goodbye I felt like I would die.
Leaving her at the hospital and walking away empty handed was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

I got home and cried for days. I cried because every single part of my body longed for my little baby.
I wanted her back so badly. I didn't think I could live without her.
And then just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, my milk came in. It was the cruelest part of all.
I felt so empty. Dead inside. I didn't know how the world could still go on and why everyone was still walking around like nothing had happened.

We organised her cremation. She had a little white coffin and Sophie asked "When will the baby come out of her box?"
I filled in her birth certificate. And her death certificate.
_____________________________________________


I am not sure how to describe the past few weeks. It has been a roller-coaster of devastation, disbelief, horror, denial, incomprehension, anger and sheer heartbreak. The number of times I have asked myself why? Why me? Why me again?

The number of times I have been over and over every little thing I did or didn't do in those last few weeks of pregnancy.
But I have been told over and over again that I must not blame myself, this is just "one of those things".
No one understands why this happens.

Tom and I are trying to focus of the fact that I have every chance of having a healthy full term baby in the future.
And of course, it is very difficult to be upset all day long when you have a happy, healthy 3 year old running around who still needs her mummy and daddy.
We are so lucky that we have little Sophie and we are trying to remain positive for her sake. There are times when I still feel overwhelmed with grief, like I can't actually go on living anymore. But most of the time I am okay. I get through one hour at a time and then suddenly another day has gone by and I survived.
I survived.

Heartbreak and loss.

On Friday 28th January I went into labour 18 weeks early.

On Saturday morning we were told that our little baby girl would be delivered in the next 48 hours and at only 22 weeks gestation, she would either die during the birth or shortly after. Nothing could be done to save her.

On Monday morning our beautiful baby girl 'Grace' died during childbirth.

She was only slightly bigger than my hand, but perfect in every way.

There are no words to describe the devastating heartbreak and loss that Tom and I are feeling right now.