An empty chair at our table

Going home!

2011-11-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

We just heard that we now have a UK passport for Hope - and so we can go home. That is such good news. We've been here four weeks and we always knew that the legal paperwork would take at least that long. But I was beginning to get really worried that we might be stuck here for much longer. My husband and son have already gone back. They left on Friday and yesterday my son was crying on the phone. It isn't great to have one child on one side of the Atlantic and one on the other. And this Minneapolis Hotel room was wearing pretty thin as well. But now we are going! The journey is quite daunting. And I won't really feel safe until we get through passport control at Heathrow. There is no reason at all why we should be detained. Everything we have done is within the law and Hope has both a US and a UK passport - but still I'm worried. The other problem is that her face is covered in those harmless spots which babies do get at about three weeks. I'm just going to go for the Big-Hat and Lid-Of-The-Maxi-Cosy-Up Otion and trust to good fortune. I can't believe that we are one day closer to the moment when Hope will just be a regular baby and we'll just be a regular Mum and Dad. We have never kept the circumstances of her birth a secret and we never will - but soon I think there just won't ever be much reason to talk about it.

Hallmark cards

2011-10-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

There are so many profoud things I could say right now. But instead I'll say something silly which is ....... now that Hope is born people find it easy to know what to say. They can just say 'congratulations.' Just as they would when any other baby is born. When we told people in England about the pregnancy, they didn't really know quite what to say. In particular, they didn't seem to want to ask anything about our surrogate Mum. I suspect that they thought that she was some semi-literate woman who has been impregnated against her will and locked in a cellar ...... Obviously people in America are a bit better informed. I'm particularly touched that people reading this blog have mentioned her and sent their love. I want that thanks and recognition for her because she did something extra-ordinary. But I don't blame people in England for their confusion and reticence. As my husband rightly says, 'Of course, people don't know what to say. After all, there isn't a Hallmark card which says Congratulations On Your Surrogacy And Donor Egg Pregnancy, is there?' He's right. There's a gap in the market there. But I think we'll probably have to wait a while before Hallmark make that card.

Pictures

2011-10-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

Here are pictures of Hope. Not particularly good pictures but I have had a computer problem and can't upload the better ones. She is doing fine - and we are doing fine. We have moved from Marshall now to Minneapolis where we have to get a birth certificated, US passport and UK passport. Our time in Marshall was wonderful. It's a really small-town place but amazingly friendly. We spent a lot of time there with our amazing surrogate Mum and her partner. We will see them again on Saturday as they are coming to Minneapolis for the day. It is so strange. Throughout this whole processs the Agency just kept saying to me, 'It'll work. You'll see. It'll work.' And I never really believed them - but they were right. I spent so much time worrying about our surrogate Mum and it wasn't until I was leaving the hospital that I finally got it. I finally really understood it. The truth is that their are woman who are born to be surrogate Mums. That is their vocation, their destiny. They can carry a baby in love and hand it over to another woman and still feel love - but also let go without grief or difficulty. I think you have to see that happen in order to believe it. God bless our surrogate Mum and all the other surrogate Mums as well. They are extra-ordinary women.

Hope Kinsella

2011-10-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

Our daughter, Hope Kinsella, was born at 17.17 on Sunday. She is alive and well. And we are all doing fine. The last two days have been an extra-ordinary experience. I'm too tired to write more now but we are so, so happy. And we have no words to express our thanks to our amazing surrogate Mum and her partner. We are so very, very blessed.

Marshall, Minnesota

2011-10-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

We got here! The journey was 24 hours and when we arrived we were all exhausted and disorientated. But we all had some sleep and now we are doing fine. In one hour we go to meet our surrogate Mum who we have never met before. I usually consider myself reasonably good at coping with most social situations. But having lunch with the woman who is carrying my husband's child may be a stretch! We are in a foreign country in so many different ways. But everything is actually going fine. I think that our day at the hospital will start at 6 am tomorrow morning. I'm scared of the birth. Very scared. And I'm scared about what I will feel when I see Hope. Except actually I'm not because I know that women have a hundred different reactions to the arrival of the baby - not all of them positive. And although birth is a big moment actually it isn't the birth that matters. It is the next eighteen or more years. And in the long term I know we'll be fine. I have never held a baby or been anywhere near one since Laura died. And I have had doctors tell me that I have PSTD and all that stuff. But actually I don't really accept that. And I have my husband and son with me and an amazing friend called Lin. And if I can't cope then they will. And once we get through this we have the rest of our lives to look forward to. And I will have a daughter - something that I thought I could never have.

The value of being attacked

2011-09-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

I'm OK now - partly thanks to those two lovely messages. And actually what has happened does have its value. I remember that something like this happened to me once before in relation to my writing. A really horrible woman said to me. 'You have to realise that this is just a business, that's all it is. And you just have to write the book that the market requires. And nobody cares less about your creativity or what you want to write etc etc.' I was just so upset. But then after a while I felt really good because I realised how totally and completely I disagreed with her. So the fact that she said all of that actually confirmed and strengthened my position. After that I felt strong and sure of myself and my work in a way I never had done before. And it is a bit like that this time. This woman's unkindness has made me think, 'Actually I've spent far too much time worrying if what I'm doing upsets or offends some other person. And now I need to stop thinking about that.' And what I'm seeing now is our family - the four of us - and we're really together and strong and happy and no one can touch us. And I'm thinking, 'Actually this is our moment of happiness and, my God, we've waited a long time for it. But now it's here I'm going to take it and enjoy every moment of it.' And if there is anyone who doesn't want to share then they can pack their bags and go ..... Because I know that there are plenty of kind people - on the internet and in the wider world - who are prepared to share it and they are proper friends.

Meltdown

2011-09-24T15:59:00.001-07:00

I've been doing really well. It's hard but I've been managing. Until today. The story goes like this. A few months ago I was asked by someone in the local area if I could offer support to a woman who has recently lost a baby. Of course, I said yes. So I spent two or three evenings with this woman and her husband. For the sake of argument, let's call her Sarah and the lost baby (her fourth) Katie. During those evenings I didn't say anything much about myself. Instead I just let her talk. I think I was helpful to her. I certainly tried to be. I didn't tell her about the surrogacy because we weren't telling anyone at that time. But recently I decided I ought to let her know as I didn't want her to find out from someone else. So I sent a card telling her that I had some pregnancy related news and saying - if you don't want to know, that's absolutely fine. But she said she did want to know. So I sent a mail telling her as tactfully as possible. But then today I received a mail from her. She's accused me of not being direct with her, of failing to reply to her texts and e-mails (although she didn't send any). The mail finishes, 'Why isn't Katie interesting enough for you?' No mention of Laura, of course. I'm just so, so upset. It's so clear that this woman has never even seen me. I obviously simply don't exist for her. Of course, she is mad, mad with grief. But I've been mad with grief. We've many of us been mad with grief. And really it is no excuse. How much would it have cost her just to send a cheerful e-mail saying 'congratulations?' Even if she was just pretending. Couldn't she have just looked at my husband and me and thought, 'Those people deserve their baby, they deserve a little bit of luck?' So many other people have been really supportive. But there was always going to be one ...... But I find it particularly hurtful that it should be a bereaved Mum. And did she have to do this when I'm effectively eight months pregnant? I know I just have to lay it aside. It is her stuff not mine. I offered her something beautiful and she took it but afterwards she spat on me. It happens. But nevertheless I am devastated. It's horrible, really horrible.

Scrapbooking

2011-09-17T05:02:00.001-07:00

We fly to the States on 7 October. Hope will be induced on 9 October if she hasn't arrived before. I have our bags packed - or nearly packed - in the hall. I'm wandering around the place feeling panicky, tearful and excited. I wish I could enjoy all this more. Everyone keeps saying to me, 'Isn't this so exciting?' But I just can't enter into the whole thing as I should. I suppose the truth is that this is a pregnancy which follows a stillbirth and so excitement and joy perhaps just aren't really possible. I'm scared. I'm really scared. But we're getting through the days. Last night Thomas and I started making a big album of photographs and messages which is for our amazing surrogate Mum. We're decorating it with pretty papers and stickers and flowers. I'm pretty pleased with the way that it looks. Although in reality, I think that this whole album / scrap book business is really more for the under tens, right now it is the level of activity that my brain can manage.

A map of Minnesota

2011-09-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was in my Mum's tiny local town (Upton on Severn, Worcestershire) and it happens that there is a specialist map shop there. And you can go into that map shop and they will give you a map of anywhere in the world. And so I went in and asked for a map of Minnesota - which is where Hope will be born. I don't know why I've never done that before. I did once look at a map of Minnesota on line but I couldn't find Marshall - where Hope is - on the map. That made me feel a little panicky but it was also typical of this whole process. I didn't look any further in case it turned out that Marshall didn't exist. But now I've got a proper map and I managed to find Marshall. It certainly does look like an out of the way kind of place. While I was looking at the map Thomas was sitting on the sofa nearby and then my Mum came into the room. 'What is Mummy doing?' she said. 'She's looking for our baby,' Thomas said, without raising his eyes from his book. But then he came to kneel by me and looked at the map as well. It turns out that Marshall is near a place called Springfield. Thomas was thrilled by that. I don't watch the Simpsons but he does. 'Oh no,' he said. 'Oh no. My sister is going to be small and yellow and she's going to have a thing on her head which looks like a star or maybe like a rubber glove.' Well, surrogacy does have its lighter moments.

All the same story

2011-09-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

For a while I have felt uncomfortable with this blog. I felt that it was a blog about Laura and about miscarriages and that, therefore, I didn't want to write about our new baby on it. I felt that there should be a cut off point, a new beginning. A moment when I said, 'All that difficult stuff in the past is done with now and I'm moving on.' But I didn't want to move on. I didn't want to leave Laura behind. And so I hesitated, uncertain what to do. But now I've realised that I don't need to do anything really. I don't need to start again by setting up a new blog. So all I've done is to updated the heading and the summary. There really is no big new beginning, just a seamless shift. Laura and Hope can exist together. I can feel sad about Laura and happy about Hope. Family and friends are beginning to ask for news of the surrogacy so I might even tell them about this blog. It's never been a secret, I just never told them before as I didn't think they would be interested. Now they might look at the blog and be shocked by some of the stuff I wrote in the past. But actually that's fine because if they want to understand what we are doing now, then they need to know what happened before. It's all the same story.

Death of Honey

2011-09-09T04:52:00.001-07:00

Our friend Honey died at around 4.30 on Tuesday. Apparently she was with three friends and was, briefly, conscious. One of the friends was remembering something in the past, telling a story, and everyone laughed, including Honey. Then she just took three short breaths and died. That seems about as good a way to go as any. She had seen the children recently and they have had much good support from bereavement counsellors at the hospice. Her ex-husband's sister has courageously agreed to make the two older children her own. She already has two older children so I'm sure she'll be an amazing Mum to Honey's two. Joslin's younger child is being cared for with great tenderness by Mr Man and his friend. Everyone involved agrees that many opportunties must be created for the three children to be together. I don't know what else to say. She was an extra-ordinary person. I will miss her always - but I will also always be encouraged and inspired by her, as will everyone who knew her.

Honey's Grandmother

2011-09-06T04:24:00.000-07:00

I think that Honey will die soon now. A friend saw her yesterday and she was in a very profound sleep. I could go to the hospice to see her but I've decided against it. I may go tomorrow. I don't feel great and I'm not sure I want to see her lying motionless on a bed - that isn't how she is to me and so I don't think it would help me to see that. Also I don't think I can help her. I realise that I've felt for a long time that everything is resolved between her and me. She knows how completely I love her and how much she means to me. The rest doesn't matter. But over the last couple of weeks a strange thing has been happening. Many people involved in this situation have thought a lot of Honey's grandmother. She died quite a while ago so we none of us knew her. But we all know how much Honey loved her. In particular, for me, I always picture Honey in a certain coat she wears - black velvet, embossed with faded coloured flowers and with a fur collar - and I know that that coat belonged to her grandmother. And now I find myself imagining this unknown grandmother vividly. Others have also felt her presence or dreamed of her. And Honey herself had seen her several times - but has been confused as to whether her grandmother was telling her to stay or to go. And now particularly today I'm imagining Joslin's grandmother on the shore, close to the waves as they come up the beach. And she's holding Laura in her arms and she's waving to Joslin and then Joslin walks up the beach towards her ...... I know that this is really all sentimental rubbish but right now it is helpful sentimental rubbish. I don't know. I know that there is really no reason to beleive in the after life but, actually, illogically, I do. Mainly because I just think that if someone burns so brightly in this life then they can't be totally extinguished. Some how I feel sure of that.

Honey - more news

2011-08-25T02:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all those who posted messages about Honey. I spoke to her on Monday and she sounded quite well then. She said that she had had some really bad times and had felt that she had been very close to death but then she said, 'But then again, I'm still here.' And I could really hear her - the essence of her - in the way she said that. But then I went to see her in the hospice on Tuesday and I would have to say that the situation was really dire. She was incredibly distressed and upset. Her legal situation - and particularly the custody of her two oldest children - really isn't sorted out. The solicitor was there and we got a will signed which should help. But it is awful that she's still fighting with all that stuff when she should just be enjoying a bit of peace and quiet and love. Some people around her are saying, 'She needs to let go ... etc.' But realistically, if you have three small children, how can you let go? Last night I got a text saying that her condition has worsened and that the children are coming to see her again. I think that perhaps what everyone has hoped for is some moments of peace and acceptance at the end. But I myself have let go of that one. I think that she may go out raging and there are worse ways to go. She always lived with a great passion so perhaps it is right that she should die that way too. I know for sure that I've never seen courage like hers before and I don't expect to see it again. There is a lovely photograph of her which someone in the hospice took - she's there with her youngest daughter. Obviously very sick but some how radiant and full of love. I'm going to try and get that photograph and maybe post it up on line. It isn't actually reflective of how things have really been for the last two years. But I suppose it is a reminder that even in the very worst of times, there are still those moments of grace.

Honey

2011-08-09T03:23:00.001-07:00

I'm just posting this up here in case there is anyone out there who used to read Honey's blog. If you did, and you find this, please pass this information on to anyone else who might want to know. I am afraid that Honey is very, very ill. I went to see her in the hospice yesterday. She was really very poorly. She doesn't want to die. This has come so much too soon for her and for everyone who loves her. She has fought so bravely over the last couple of years. I've never seen anything like it and I don't expect to see such courage ever again. I saw her just two weeks ago and she walked two miles then. The room in the hospice has a balcony which looks out over fields. There is also a bird table there and she was able to enjoy a robin which came and a fat pigeon. I am going to see her again tomorrow, I hope. It would be so good if she could have some peace at the end but I'm not sure she will. The pain is just so much. Selfishly, I had hoped that she would live to see our new baby but I don't think she will now. I wish so much that she hadn't had to give up her blog because she really needed that to keep in touch. Of course, the worst thing is that she had three young children. I can't even bear to think what this is doing to them. I keep thinking of Dylan Thomas. 'Do not go gentle into that long good night but rage, rage, against the dying of the light.'

Prams

2011-07-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

I just bought a pram on-line. A pram is only a few metal struts, some canvas, wheels. That's all. It's important for me to remind myself that a pram is not Shakespearean tragedy or a Wagner Opera. It has certainly felt a bit like both over the last few weeks. First there was the trip to the pram shop (John Lewis, Oxford Street, London, to be specific). It was pretty hard to get myself there but I did it. And when I got there - what happened? Mainly I remembered that, leaving aside all that has happened over the last six years, I really hate those shops. I hated them when I was pregnant with Thomas and I hate them just the same now. Inevitably there was this ghastly woman who was having a melt down with the shop assistant. She was quite sure that the pram she bought could have one of those cup holders for carrying your coffee - but now it turns out that her model of pram can't take one of those. National scandal, apocalypse, blah blah. Of course, the reason why I hate that woman so much is because I'm frightened I'll turn into her. After that I look at prams on-line and it becomes one of those late night internet obsessions when you really can't stop yourself looking at page after page, comparing reviews and prices, matching up dimensions, on and on, late into the night. And I am turning into the nightmare cup holder woman ...... Then I measure the car and find out that only two models of pram will fit in our tiny car anyway so most of the research was wasted. And I start to question the whole pram project. Every other woman I know who has lost a baby has avoided buying anything even slightly baby related until after the birth. So shouldn't I do that as well? Am I not tempting fate by buying a pram? Maybe - but after Laura died it really killed me to see a beautiful pram. And now I have a reason to buy one. So I want a pram anyway. If no baby ever finishes up in that pram then so be it. I'll have enjoyed the pram. The pram maybe all I'm going to get so I might as well make the best of it. And once I've got it, I'm going to put it in the hall, just so I can enjoy it. And also so it's there and ready to go if we get a call far earlier than expected. In fact, I'm going to pack everything we need soon. Just in case. Repeat after me. A pram is only a few metal struts, some canvas, wheels.

Twenty four weeks

2011-06-29T05:19:00.000-07:00

I have taken care not to count the weeks of this surrogate pregnancy too carefully. Last week I sort of knew that it was the twenty fourth week - but I was careful not to know. Or at least until Thursday. Then on Thursday I suddenly felt the urge to get the calendar out and check exactly. Twenty four weeks. Laura was twenty four weeks when she died. It's OK - but I just want to type that here. Twenty four weeks. I know that because Laura died at twenty four weeks that doesn't mean that Hope will die now - or any other time. But still - twenty four weeks. I just need to register the fact. I said that to my husband and then I said, 'So we really start to know what we have to lose now.' And he agreed. It's sad in a way that, for us, Hope is measured by what her loss would mean. Or maybe it's not sad. Maybe everything should be measured in that way.

Scan photos

2011-06-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

Our surrogate Mum had her twenty week scan and everything seems to be fine. Or more or less. Apparently they couldn't scan her heart properly as she wasn't positioned at the right angle. So our surrogate Mum has to go back for another scan. I'm assured that this isn't a problem and I'm managing to believe that most the time! We have also been sent scan photos. My husband has looked at them and he could definitely see a face, a nose, a chin. He was thrilled. I have to say that I haven't looked yet. I just can't. I promised myself after the second miscarriage that I'd never look at one of those scan photos again. I know that it is time to ditch that promise but I just can't do it for the moment. The time will come, I'm sure. The problem is that once I see Hope then I'll know just how much I have to lose. That makes it sound as though I'm in a really morbid frame of mind - but I'm not. I'm generally fine. But I just find scan photos difficult.

Heart beat video

2011-05-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

Hope is now fifteen weeks. We had news at the end of last week that our amazing surrogage Mum had been for a scan. She didn't actually see Hope but she heard her heart beat. Our surrogate Mum e-mailed that she had tried to make a video of the heart beat. I'm not quite sure what that means! But, anyway, apparently it didn't work properly because when our surrogate Mum tried to tranfer it to her computer the sound didn't come through. As a result, she decided not to send it to us. I thought she was properly right about that - a video of a heart beat without the sound is probably not a meaningful experience. As you may guess by the tone of the post, I'm not in the least upset about this. In fact, I'm strangely amused. Some how it seems symptomatic of this whole weird world we are in. This now-you-see-it, now-you-don't kind of world where everything is ridiculously abstract. Actually the truth is that I was pretty glad not to hear the heart beat. I've heard too many heart beats which have subsequently stopped. And, had I heard it, I would probably have spent the whole weekend in tears - and as it is I've had a lovely time at my Mum's farm in the gorgeous spring weather with my mum, my sister and my little boy.

Worries

2011-04-05T05:48:00.000-07:00

We are up to twelve weeks and all seems to be going well. But I am beset by worries. Strangely these worries aren't about the obvious things - like will Hope die? Instead they're about the whole surrogacy process. Obviously my husband and I thought very long and hard before we chose the surrogacy route. And actually there is now no point in considering whether our decision was right or wrong. But some how the reality of the decision we've taken is only just hitting home now. My main worry is that surrogacy is just too big an ask. It's too much to expect another woman to have a baby for you. And it isn't just that woman. It's her family. Our surrogate had her own six year old daughter. I know that it has been explained fully to that six year old that the baby won't be staying. But how can you explain that to a six year old? I don't know. Of course, I should have thought more before we decided. And I did think. But I'm a woman who wants a child and I am not rational. Not at all. But equally that isn't an adequate excuse.

Our baby has a name!

2011-03-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

We have discovered that our baby has a heart beat - always a good thing. And we've decided to give her a temporary name. This decision was not without its difficulties. Our lovely surrogate Mum suggested we should find a name and I was broadly in favour but my husband was nervous. He is, understandably, very cautious. I think he just can't bear to be disappointed again - and he can't bear to see me disappointed either. But I'm strangely full of confidence. I wasn't confident with the last two pregnancies. I knew they would fail. And I knew the IVF wouldn't work. But now I just feel sure that this will work. And so we have settled on a temporary name for our baby. She is called Hope because that's what she represents to us. I feel rather teary typing that. Of course, the Black Humour Department of my brain has pointed out that, should she die, then that will The Death Of Hope. But then that is what it will be - literally and metaphorically - so that at least satisfies the writerly part of me which exists that things must be called by their proper names. Anyway, for the moment, we have Hope. And that's just fantastic! Actually totally, completely, wonderfully amazing.

Amazing news!

2011-02-14T03:52:00.000-08:00

Our fantastic surrogate mum is pregnant! We found out 10 days ago and I've just been in a total spin ever since. I thought I'd been on some emotional roller coasters in the past but this is the wildest ride yet. I am thrilled - but so much of the past has suddenly come rushing back and that has been a huge shock. I have also been furiously researching surrogacy. Of course, I should have done that before. But I just couldn't invest in the process because I was sure it could never work. In fact, the truth is that I only ever started the whole surrogacy thing because my husband was so, so low and I was frightened for our marriage .... And I just thought it might give him a bit of hope. And all the time I've been waiting for the Huge Great Big Obstacle that would make the whole thing impossible. And there certainly have been a few Huge Obstacles - largely because the law in this country is ridiculously dated and complicated. But now suddenly we are there and it's happened. How extra-ordinary! How totally extra-ordinary! I've had such a poor level of support from family and friends through all these difficulties - and now two ladies in America (an egg donor and surrogate) have taken my problem on and solved it. My head is just spinning.

Surrogacy - it's happening!

2011-01-10T04:11:00.000-08:00

Suddenly I'm back to this blog again. I'm making myself type a post in order to make something which seems unreal into something real. For the last eighteen months my husband and I have been planning to do gestational surrogacy in the United States - and now it's happening. At the end of this week. Everything is sorted - finding the agency, the surrogate, the egg donor, the clinic, the lawyers. But the truth is that I never believed that any of this would actually happen. I just couldn't allow myself to believe. But now it is happening and I'm in a total panic. I realise that I have no idea what I'm meant to be saying or doing in this situation. I feel that I'm in totally uncharted terretory. Elton John has done this but not many other people in England have. I realise that I'm going to have to find some sources of support and I'm also realising that (as in the stillbirth world) the internet is more likely to be of help than those around me. In particular I just want to give our wonderful surrogate the best support I can. Very few people in my real world know what I'm doing. That's because I don't want to raise expectations but also because I just don't feel robust enough to deal with any criticism - although I now I need to get over that pretty quickly now.

Anniversary

2010-05-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of our daughter's death. By this time five years ago I knew that she would die but I still had to go through the labour. The odd thing is that I'm not upset at all. I've just spent an hour reading posts on the SANDS (UK stillbirth charity's) website. Usually I finish up having a good cry if I do that. But no! Of course, it's stupid for me to be upset because I'm not upset. I should just make the most of it in the certain knowledge that there will be a day when - randomly - I'm really upset. I know that some people would assume that I'm not upset because five years have gone by. But actually it is only eighteen months since the last miscarriage - and the final, final knowledge that we were at the end of the road. I think that the truth is that for the last two years I've just been entirely frozen. Loss has piled up on loss and I've just ceased to have any reaction. I don't look as though I'm frozen. In fact, I look quite normal but I really don't feel anything about anything. After Laura died, I promised myself I'd write a letter to her every year on her birthday and that I'd put all the letters away in her special box. But last year I didn't write the letter because I didn't have anything to say. This year is pretty much the same. My husband is away. So I'm here on my own with my son. I keep thinking I'll call someone but I don't really feel like it. Maybe I'll just go to bed and read a book.

The cricket team

2010-05-10T01:01:00.000-07:00

Suddenly it has all come to bits because of the cricket team (I ask you - the cricket team!) and I'm sitting here crying when I haven't cried in months. The story is that my son (age 7) isn't in the cricket team. He's nearly a year younger than most of the other boys in his class and many of them are a whole head shoulders taller than he is - so although he's really keen on sport and tries really hard he isn't in the team. And it tends to happen at his school that if you aren't in the team at the beginning then you're never going to be in the team. There's this clique of big, beefy, hearty, sporty, loud boys who are in all the teams and my son is small and quiet and thoughtful but he really wants to play sport. But I can't even bear to hear myself say all this because I've always had a total contempt for all those pushy parents who care so much about whose child is clever / sporty / top of the form in this or that. And yet here I am in tears because my son isn't in the team. But, of course, it isn't really about any of that ..... I just tried talking to a couple of other mothers and they made comforting noises about how some children are good at some things and some are good at other. But for them there are children. For me, there's a child. And I know I'm lucky there is a child. I can't explain. It's too difficult. I suppose the thing is that it's the fifth anniversary of Laura's death on the 19th May and I was talking to my husband about that the other night. I said, 'It hasn't got any better, has it?' I expected him to say something comforting about how things have got a little easier with time. But instead he said, 'No, it hasn't got any better.' And that's just it. And now I start getting upset about the stupid, stupid cricket team.

Surrogacy

2010-04-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm making myself type this post when I don't really want to. The truth is that we're looking at surrogacy. No, the whole truth. We're quite far down the line with the whole surrogacy business. We are looking at the US rather than the UK because in the UK surrogacy is virtually unknown. I don't know why I find it so hard to admit to this. I think it's because people I know will think that it is really weird / extreme / desperate / sad. Also I'm really frightened, really frightened of someone saying something horrible about it, or chucking a bucket of cold water on the whole thing. I vaguely tried it out on two friends. One said something derogatory about 'the kind of woman who would do something like that.' (In other words be a surrogate mother). This woman, of course, has three live and healthy children. The other friend said something chilly about the difficult psychological effects for the child. And actually I hadn't even said 'surrogacy' only 'donor egg.' I find these kind of comments amazing. Given what my husband and I have been through, I just thought people would cheer from the sidelines, no matter what they really think. On the upside, my Mum thinks it is a great idea. Also one dear friend here is whole heartedly supportive. Needless to say, she is a bereaved Mum. At the end of the day, I'm not really going to be influenced by what anyone says. But I could do without yet another thoroughly isolating experience.

Letting go - again and again

2010-03-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

To me it seems like this - you start out on the whole business of having children and you have an idea of how you want it to be. Ideally you want two children, a boy and a girl. To begin with all goes well. The boy is born and you love him more than you can say. But then the girl dies and suddenly you have to readjust your ideas about how you thought things would be. But still you expect to have another child. Then you miscarry and you miscarry ....... and all the time you are having to change your expectations. Then you think donor eggs. Yes, but you can't use your own eggs. So actually you're never going to have another baby that is your own. So then you think adoption might be better. But you are told that there are no babies in the UK. You'll have to adopt a child who is two or older. Once again you readjust. You can adopt a baby abroad. A Chinese baby, you think, that would be good. But nowadays it's very difficult to get a Chinese baby so you'll have to have a Russian baby ...... OK fine. But have you seem the admin you'll have to go through? So maybe surrogacy ...... And so it goes on. But the point is that, at every stage, you have to let go of an idea of how you thought the world would be. And that letting go is difficult and it takes time and there really aren't any short cuts. At each stage, as each piece of bad news hits home, you say, 'No way. No way at all. I'm not doing the donor egg thing / the overseas adoption thing / the surrogacy thing ......Never in a million years.' But then over time you see that actually there may be no choice. And slowly you come to accept the new reality. You talk yourself into the fact that it may be a good idea. Of course, the lesson is that you shouldn't ever have an expectations of how anything will be. But of course we do have expectations because we see what other people around us are doing. Wanting two children isn't like wanting to win the Booker Prize / the Pultizer Prize, nor is it like wanting to win millions on the lottery. It's a reasonable expectation - but dangerous all the same.

The human will

2010-02-26T13:55:00.000-08:00

About a year ago a thought came to me. The thought was this - 'In all of this I have reckoned without the force of the human will.' I think that in our generation the human will is a bit unfashionable. Everybody has to be allowed to feel what they want to feel, to express everything, to process everything. Certainly in my twenties and thirties that was the way I thought. And that view does still have its value. But there are things too big to process. Sometimes the only way to survive is to get up and walk off. You can decide just not to think about certain things. And it also becomes apparent that you can also decide to be happy - although when I was younger I never thought that you could. In fact, the human will is incredibly strong. I feel now that I understand my mother and my (departed) grandmother in a way I never did before. They are war time women and they have very English stiff upper lips. They are busy, practical, efficient, nothing gets them down, they smile no matter what. Five years ago I'd have criticised them for 'denial.' Now I'm a grown up myself and I understand that sometimes it is better to smile and pretend it never happened.

The end of the story

2010-02-11T14:02:00.001-08:00

I feel as though I need an end to our story. Or perhaps it is more the case that other people need an end to the story. Usually stories like ours end with the birth of another baby. Of course, people who have suffered a stillbirth know that a new, living baby isn't the end of the story at all. But I think that, to the outside world, it looks like some kind of ending. But we, sadly, are not going to get that ending ..... So some how we need another. We need - or other people need us - to be able to say, 'Yes, all these horrible things happened but now we have ....... established a charity for disadvantaged children / started a course in environmental science / taken a year off and travelled around the world / written a book about what happened / become involved in a campaign for better medical research .......' (Fill in any number of other possible suggestions). We some how need an outcome, a story to tell which has an ending. I feel that if we had that ending we would find it easier to re-engage with the world. But no big project presents itself. Ideas come to us but we feel unable to commit to anything in particular. So instead the days drift on and we seem stuck in the same old place. Not desperately unhappy but just numb, disconnected.

My sister's baby

2010-02-08T14:42:00.000-08:00

My younger sister has had a baby - a little boy called William who was born yesterday. He is her first child and the first baby to be born in the family since Laura died. I didn't know that I'd really been worrying about my sister until I woke up this morning and realised that I didn't have to worry any more (or at least not as much). I did call her on Saturday night and she said, 'Yes, I thought it was all going to happen yesterday but now it has all gone quiet.' Of course, I wanted to yell down the phone, 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN - QUIET?' But I managed not to do that. I'm so, so pleased that she has had a boy. That is a real help to me and to her. I didn't want everyone looking in the pram and thinking, 'I wonder if Laura would have looked like that.' (Would anyone have thought that? Or am I kidding myself?) Also that wouldn't be fair on my sister. Her experience is her experience and she wants to enjoy it freely, without being weighed down by my baggage. Today I mentioned to a couple of woman on the school run that I was relieved the baby is a boy. They didn't get the point at all. And they didn't understand why I had been scared and worried. Perhaps it was stupid of me to think that they might understand. On Sunday, while my sister was in labour I did ring a lovely lady who I know in this area who also had a stillbirth. She is such a support to me. I said to her, 'My sister is in labour. I'm not upset but I just wanted to say those words to someone.' She understood entirely and it really helped. Tomorrow I might have to take my son to see the baby. That could be a bit more challenging. I think my sister knows that I'm not going to hold her son. I've never held a baby since Laura died and I'm not thinking of starting now. I'll be OK if the baby is big and fat and jolly looking. What I can't cope with is any tiny, skinny little babies which look a bit premature. But at the moment I'm not worried about all this. A day will probably come when I'll wail about all the attention that this new baby is getting and I'll think, 'I wanted Laura to have all the cards and the flowers and the new baby grows, all the love and the care.' But for the moment I don't feel like that. I've got much better at simply deciding not to feel certain things.

The meaning of blog

2010-01-31T02:37:00.000-08:00

I understand from reading other blogs that people write blogs for very different reasons. I suppose for lots of people blogs are just a place to post news and photographs - and why not? But my blog isn't like that at all. I don't usually put any stuff here about our holidays, our friends, our building work, my son's school - or whatever. Because the point is that I can talk to anyone in my normal life about those things. So for me this blog is specifically to do with my daughter's death. It contains thoughts I very seldom share with anyone in my normal life. Inevitably it also contains some of the rather small and bitter stuff which really has no other place to go. It seems to me that that is fine. Problems only arise if someone reads this blog and thinks that it is actually representative of my life as a whole. If they do that then, of course, they judge me as bitter and obsessed and sad. But anyone who does that is making a mistake. In my normal life I'm cheerful and busy and generally fairly positive - and, of course, I have masses of things going on in my life which have nothing to do with my daughter's death. I tend to assume that people who read blogs can figure that out for themselves - but perhaps not all of them can!

Back again

2010-01-19T17:35:00.000-08:00

I haven't written this blog for a long time! I stopped writing it because somebody made some very nasty comments about it and the whole thing was so damaging and upsetting that I couldn't even face looking at the blog at all. But now I've thought it all through and I've realised that, if stop writing this blog, then I'm giving in to those people who have hurt me. So I'm starting again. And actually I never used to tell anyone in my normal life about this blog - but I'm going to now. I just feel that I do have a right to say what I want to say, in the way I want to say it, and that I should exercise that right. Of course, I know hardly anybody reads this anyway but that's not the point! Thanks to those who have posted comments in the past and might again in future.

America and infertility

2009-07-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

I don't sleep any more. Instead I stay up late and the surf the internet, finding my way into bizarre websites about infertility / donor eggs / surrogacy. Most of these websites are American because the Americans talk about these things. In Europe it's all too embarrassing and nobody says anything. The details on these websites is incredible. You can search data bases of people who might give you an egg and you can put in your exact requirements. I want tall, slim, blonde woman who looks like a supermodel, speaks five languages and has a PHD. OK, feed that into the search and you'll be shown a photograph of a woman who fits that description and is willing to give you one of her eggs ..... Or apparently so. There is also a lot of details about costs - all the possible costs. Including what it will cost you if the surrogate gets pregnant with triplets and you want to abort one or more of the foetuses. Yeah, it gives you a cost for that - per foetus. Which is very precise, at least. Last night I clicked a button labelled financing and it took me into a site selling a number of different things - breast reduction, teeth whitening, getting your bald patch fixed .... and infertility. I showed this to my husband. 'Great,' he said. 'Why don't you get your boobs done, I'll get my teeth whitened and we'll buy a baby .... and then may we'll be eligible for some kind of discount.' Well, clearly, I'm taking the piss. But actually I'm deeply grateful to these websites and to the people in America who I e-mail. They e-mail straight back. They say, 'I'm sorry for your loss,' which people in England don't say. And they say yes and yes and yes. I like that very much. God Bless America. In England for the last four years all they've said is no and no and no - and then they've looked really embarrassed and hurried us out of the room.

The Almighty

2009-07-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

I went to the Quaker Meeting House today and an elderly man told an interesting story. It goes like this. A vicar in a rural village went to call on an old man. They had a cup of tea and the old man then offered to show the vicar his garden. They went out together into the garden and the vicar was thrilled by the garden as it was stacked with flowers, fruit and vegetables. The vicar expressed his surprise and delight and then turned to old man and said, 'So what do you think that the Almighty has to do with this?' The old man thought for a while and then he said, 'Well, vicar, I really can't say. But I would comment that when this place was left to the Almighty it looked a really terrible mess.' I don't know why but this story appealed to me. It is quite typical of the Quakers who believe in getting on with it yourself, rather than relying on divine intervention.

Honey

2009-06-30T07:01:00.001-07:00

My life has gone upside down. This is due to absolutely appalling news about my friend Honey. She was the person who started me off writing this blog - and she's been a great support to me over the last couple of years and now ....... It would be wrong for me to write anything about what is happening to her because she is telling her own story, on her blog, in her own clear, brave and humourous words ....... Her blog is called Honey Letting Off Steam and it is linked to mine. Honey is extra-ordinary - courageous, honest, loving and graceful. Thank God I am near enough to go and see her. I love her so much and I'm so privileged to be part of her life. Remember - if you do know her real name, don't use it. Send all your loving thoughts her way. She needs and deserves it all - and much more.

Days when it doesn't matter

2009-06-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

My son just turned seven. He's an amazing child. One day, about a year after his sister died, he and I were walking down the street together. Suddenly he said to me, 'Mummy, can I say something to you?' I said, 'Yes, of course. You can say anything to me.' He said, 'Yes, but Mummy it's about Laura and I think maybe you won't like it.' I said, 'You can say whatever you want to say.' So this is what he said. 'You know, Mummy, some days it seems really, really sad about Laura but some day I just feel like it doesn't really matter at all.' I was amazed by his self awareness and honesty so I gave him a big hug and told him that what he said was absolutely right. And he is right. Absolutely spot on. I have days when Laura's death just seems huge and terrible and overwhelmingly sad. But there are also days - I admit it - when it really doesn't seem that big a deal. Days when I think, 'For goodness sake, a child is dying every eight seconds due to lack of clean drinking water in this world so just get over your little problem.......' And, in that moment, I can effortlessly bend my mind to that particularly geometry. But grief is - beyond all else - unpredicatable. I can never tell whether it will be 'an overwhelmingly sad' day or a 'perhaps it doesn't matter' day. And neither can I tell what apparently trivial incident might turn one kind of day into another ...... Often there isn't even an incident. Nothing happens but suddenly I'm in a state where the whole thing is so awful that my chest caves in and I'm gasping for breath.....

What other people want

2009-06-16T07:27:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we went to the hospital again. They are very keen to push on us the donor egg idea. Apparently it has a very high chance of success. I can see that my husband is pretty interested in this. I've spent the last twenty four hours in tears. I phoned my Mum and she also thinks that I should be doing the donor egg thing. She tells me that the fact that the baby won't be my baby doesn't really matter at all. I think she's talking about her need for another grandchild, not what is really best for me. The truth is that I've never been anywhere near a new born baby since my daughter died. I find having to go anywhere near a hospital very traumatic. When I think about having a donor egg baby all I can envisage is lying there in a hospital bed, looking at the baby and thinking, 'No, I don't want that one.' I'm so confused and upset by all this. The choice seems to be between living with the pain of our daughters death forever - or doing the donor egg thing and finishing up with a baby which I might not want. Neither option looks good to me. Just to be clear, I'm not anti anyone else doing the donor egg thing. I just don't think it can improve our situation - and anyway it probably wouldn't even work. All we'd be doing is damaging ourselves further by creating the possibility for more disappointment.

Gloucestershire SANDS

2009-06-08T13:40:00.001-07:00

When I moved back to England in September of last year I rang up SANDS (The UK Stillbirth and Neo-Natal Death Charity) to ask about a local support group. They told me that in the area where I live - Gloucestershire - there was no support group. I was pretty shocked. Gloucestershire has 250,000 people and it takes more than an hour and a half to drive right across it. So I decided that I would just have to set up a support group. There really wasn't any choice about it. I was exhausted by the move and I didn't know anyone here. I needed support, not the work involved with offering support to other people. But still I just knew I had to do it ..... Another bereaved Mum at school helped me and other bereaved Mums came in as well ..... And to cut a very long and tough story short ...... Gloucestershire SANDS has now been set up. The website was done for free by the husband of one of the other committee members. And last Tuesday was the first Gloucestershire SANDS meeting. It was totally terrefying. It was too close to the anniversary of my daughter's death...... But it worked. In fact, it was great. Well, as great as a Dead Baby support group can be. I know that it was really, really helpful to the people who came along. Now it is going to meet every month. Also one of the other committee members organised a ball which has raised loads of money. I don't want to sound big headed but I feel pretty proud. What I've learnt is that the line which supposedly divides the helper and the helped is so thin that it doesn't really exist. Some how I wasn't able to do anything much at all to mark Laura's anniversary - but this support group is a tribute to her.

Anniversary

2009-05-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

Tuesday (19th May) will be the fourth anniversary of my dauthter's death. I was actually told that she would die on the evening of 18th May and then she was born dead at 3.00 the following day. So maybe the anniversary is really tomorrow. I don't know. One of the things that bothers me is that I'll never know exactly when she died. Oddly, I feel more or less OK. Exhausted and a bit shaky but not worse than that. We were in London for the weekend. We stayed at the house of friends and it was in that house, four years ago, that this whole nightmare began. I didn't go in their downstairs loo because that's where the bleeding started. I did walk in the park where I walked on that morning. The people who walked there then do not exist any more but I felt their shadows around the place. We haven't been to that house for the last four years. It wasn't a plan that we should go there at this time - just an unfortunate coincidence. Then today (still in London) we went to a big lunch party where there were lots of people with big happy families. I managed all right. I never said anything about the anniversary because those people can't really get it. None of it was too bad. It was just that sense which I often have - the sense that I am not occupying the same planet as other people. The kind of things which interest and concern other people don't seem relevant to me any more. I'm shut outside the whole thing, watching it. But I survived it. I suppose what bothers me about this anniversary is that we are still exactly where we were four years ago. Things did not move on, they didn' t change - or certainly not for the better. It was good to come back to our house this evening. I like this place, at least.

Hope and despair

2009-04-16T13:19:00.001-07:00

I can cope with despair. What I can't cope with is hope. And hope does keep forcing itself upon me. Just recently I learnt that an old and dear school friend is pregnant. She's 43 and she and her husband have been through every hell to have a child but it never happened. Three years ago they had to give up. And now she's pregnant. I cried buckets when I found out. I spoke to her on the phone and she explained to me what I had guessed - that the baby is from a donor egg (and donor sperm). She then told me what the success rate is if you use a donor egg and it is very high ...... And suddenly I was thrown into spasms of panic and fear. I talked to my husband and he thought we should try it. I spent two days in tears at the thought of doctor's appointments, drugs, hospitals. Then I decided I'm just not going to do it. Despair is really easier. Also it is all too Brave New World for me. I certainly don't criticise anyone who goes down that route. People do it because they're desperate and I know what it is to be desperate. But no. I'm just not going to go to hell and back again for some other woman's child. Or that's what I feel right now anyway.

Help!

2009-03-17T05:31:00.001-07:00

Well, it's a beautiful day here and I'm really enjoying it. Tomorrow we're going to a meeting about the possibility of adopting a child. And my son starts his Easter holiday tomorrow so I'm really looking forward to having more time with him ..... So things are good. Or they were until I switched on my computer and found two really horrible comments typed on my blog. It's so sad. Usually this whole blogging world is full of supportive, helpful people, with interesting opinions. But then there always has to be someone who is just really nasty. Of course, I know that a person with a badly disabled child is in a worse situation than I am ..... Of course, I know that. And I think the things I write on my blog make that clear - to anyone who is actually reading it properly. Thanks to that spiteful person for casting a dark cloud over my sunny day. But life could be worse. I also could be someone who gets pleasure out of finding people who are already hurt and then trying to hurt them further. Can anyone tell me how stop this throughly nasty person from posting things on my blog?

Survivors' guilt

2009-03-12T14:45:00.001-07:00

I know that many people find me difficult to deal with because they suffer from survivors' guilt. They look at me and they feel awful because it happened to me, and not to them. I understand this and I ask myself, 'What is it that I need from the survivors?' I know what I usually get and that is people telling me that really it's very tough for them as well. They tell me that one of their children has learning difficulties, or asthma or impaired hearing. As I'm a polite person, I finish up offering sympathy about their child's problem. But if I'm really honest there's a voice in my head saying, 'If your child is alive then you don't have a problem.' Or I get people telling me that they had a really bad labour and their baby nearly died. And I suppose that they say that in order to empathise with me - but it really doesn't work. Again there's that nasty little voice in my head saying, 'Yes, but the whole point is that your child didn't die.' I know that's not very charitable of me but it's just how it is. But then interestingly a good friend said something quite different to me the other day. 'I look at you,' she said, 'and I just value my children so much and I just feel so, so lucky ....' And oddly that was the right thing to say. That's what I need. I just need the survivors to know that they're lucky and to say it. That's all.

Lost friends, lost worlds

2009-03-03T13:46:00.000-08:00

I have found a friend here. She's a woman who has also had a stillborn baby. We were talking about the amount of friends that we've both lost since joining the Dead Baby Club. She said, 'I do miss those people.' I had a think about this. 'I don't miss them,' I said. 'Because after all I could ring them up any time and they might even be pleased to hear from me.' So it isn't the friends I miss. What I miss is the world in which those friends seemed relevant. I don't know why they aren't relevant any more but they just aren't. Perhaps it is because those friendships were largely based on the idea of 'having fun' and that idea has gone from our lives. A while ago I met a woman who I used to be quite good friends with in the supermarket. She was pleased to see me and said, 'You must come around.' I said, 'Yes, why not, that would be good.' And for a moment I remembered what it was like when I used to go around to her house and I felt sad for that whole world that I've lost ..... But there wasn't a moment when I considered calling her up and fixing to visit her. There just wouldn't have been any point in doing that. I wonder what she thinks. Is she completely mystified? Does she just think I'm a total bitch? Or does she partially understand? I've really no idea. I'm not that interested. Maybe she feels sad. Ah well, someone else can take a turn at feeling sad. She has three live kids and functioning marriage so I can't really spare much sympathy for her. What a horrible, horrible approach to take - but that's how it is.

Depression

2009-02-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

It is very strange. Before my daughter died I had had four of five bad bouts of depression. And even when I wasn't actually suffering from depression I often lived in a fairly depressed state. Now I'm not like that any more. I go around cracking jokes about this. 'I used to suffer from depression but five dead babies cured me entirely.' But the point is that this is only partly a joke. Something has changed. I'm often grieving, numb, miserble, in pain, angry - but none of those things are depression. I just feel now that depression is an indulgence I can't afford. But even as I type that I hate myself for saying it. I know perfectly well that depression isn't an 'indulgence' and I know that it isn't something which some people can 'afford.' And yet it is true that I just can't allow myself to be depressed any more. Life is already too difficult without being depressed as well. I used to find all sorts of little things too much to bear. But now it seems that, because I know what a real disaster is, I can simply rise above the minor disasters. But even that doesn't adequately explain the change. I can't work it out. It is very strange.

Another uncertain mind

2009-02-03T13:49:00.000-08:00

A lovely person called C. wrote a comment on her blog called 'An Uncertain Mind' about whether to continue trying to have another baby or not. I wanted to leave a comment but the technology didn't seem to allow it. But what she wrote really has resonance for me. It's so hard to give up trying. But I did give up and I know when it happened. It was when we were trying IVF. I was in hospital, lying in bed, recovering from the egg collection. I felt like hell - full of drugs, exhausted, in pain from the operation, tearful. I had just shouted at one of the nurses (with good reason). And as I lay there I looked up at the window. There was nothing much to see - just a few branches of a not particularly attractive tree. But some how even those few branches made me think, 'There's a whole world out there and I'm not seeing it.' And suddenly it was as though I was way above myself, looking down, and I could see myself lying in that hospital bed. And there I was, a youngish and healthy woman, made ill and pathetic and ugly by a medical treatment which I had chosen to undergo. And suddenly I thought, 'That person lying there isn't me. That is not who I am.' And for a moment I saw myself as I was when I was younger. And I was travelling in some distant place, on a boat, with the wind in my hair, staring out at the ocean, going somewhere. And that was when I gave up. At the moment when I couldn't stand the person I'd become. And I thought I was through, I thought I was finished. I thought I could start finding my way back to the boat, the wind, the joy of going somewhere. But it seems like it's never finished.

Statistics

2009-01-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

Today my husband and I drove to Oxford (1 and a half hours away) to see a senior consultant at the John Radcliffe Hospital. We had booked the appointment in the expectation that I would still be pregant and we were not sure whether we should cancel it or not. But we decided to go. It rained heavily all the way there. I feel like it's been raining for three years. The appointment with the consultant was all about statistics. If you've lost five babies then the chance that you'll lose another is 50%. If you get pregnant at 42 then you have a 50% chance of losing the baby. If you have had a detached placenta then there's a 10% chance it will happen again but the risk is much higher if you are older. At some point I lost track of whether one of these figures is subsumed into the others, or whether I am meant to add them all together. If the latter is true then I seem to have at least 110% chance of losing another baby - even if I could get pregnant. (In another mood I might see the comic side of this). Well, the consultant was doing his best. At least he listened - which is more than can be said for most of his profession. I stopped listening at a certain point. I am very bad at maths but even I could figure out that, no matter how you add the figures up, the answer always equals Totally and Utterly Hopeless. I managed not to cry in the appointment or say bitter things but towards the end of the conversation I was beginning to lose control. As we left the consultants office, he said, 'You know there's a cafe, if you want a cup of tea. At the end of the corridor, a cup of tea.' Poor guy, we want a baby and all he can offer is a (very British) cup of tea. I came home, went to bed, cried for two hours. But after that I had to get up and make the supper and try to play the Normal Life Game. My husband and I get through the day but the grinding, grinding misery is pretty hard to bear. And there isn't really any end to it as far as I can see.

Cold

2009-01-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

Finally I took a photograph of our new house. It looks like something out of a Hammer Horror movie, I know. I love that. It is right up on top of the Cotswolds and it is very, very cold in this place. We don't have any curtains or carpets and the heating doesn't work properly and the place is a mass of drafts ..... Yet some how it suits us quite well. We bought the house four years ago when we expected to have more children to fill it. There are a lot of empty rooms but I don't think we'd have the energy to sell it now and get something more practical. I feel like I'll remember this period of my life for ever. The cold, the silence, the long, long days. My husband has gone away for work and my son and I are snowed in here. It isn't a problem because we have everything we need for the moment. I don't see anyone or speak to anyone. I don't answer the phone. It is easier like that. If I see anyone then they'll ask me whether I had a good Christmas and then I won't know whether to say, 'Yes, fine thanks.' Or whether to say, 'No actually I had a miscarriage and actually this is the fifth baby that we've lost.' If I say that they'll look at me in disbelief. I won't blame them for that. I don't believe it either. Perhaps the thaw will come tomorrow. So many people have posted lovely messages on this blog. That helps a lot. So odd that people miles away that I've never met should be so kind. Thank you very, very much.

New Year

2008-12-31T14:45:00.000-08:00

I had a miscarriage. I was only seven weeks pregnant anyway and I think that the baby had been dead for a while. It is 11.00 o'clock on New Year's Eve. The weird thing is that I didn't know it is New Year's Eve. I only found out an hour ago when my husband told me. I'd thought that New Year's Eve was tomorrow. This makes me realize how totally cut off my husband and I are from the rest of the world. We spent the morning at the hospital being pitied by pleasant people who can do nothing for us. I spent the evening lying in bed next to my son, bleeding and listening to a Narnia audio CD. My husband stayed downstairs and drank wine and listened to the radio. Somewhere not far away there are people having parties and letting off fireworks. My husband and I haven't been to a New Year's party since our daughter died. One year we did go away together to a hotel and I enjoyed that. I suppose that we could put the radio on and listen to the New Year being rung in. But I don't think we'll bother.

The Medical Profession

2008-12-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

I'm all right as long as I don't have to deal with the medical profession. In the doctor's surgery a cheery lady on the reception desk said, 'Congratulations? When is the baby due?' I walked out of there in tears. Then a midwife from the local maternity hospital rang me. She wanted me to go in to the hospital so that she could talk over all sorts of details about the pregnancy. What kind of tests I might want, which hospital I want to have the baby in ...... She was pleasant and she was just doing her job but I told her that I'd ring back ..... And I haven't rung back and I'm not going to. I really don't need any of that stuff. I also got sent a cheery little booklet covered in photographs of smiling mothers and babies. It had a helpful little calendar to tell you what you should expect at what time. That went straight in the recycling. It's not that I'm negative about this but I'm just not thinking beyond tomorrow. When I get to eight weeks, I'll go and find out if there's a heart beat. Until then I'm not dealing with the medical profession. And anyway it is just before Christmas. Christmas is quite hard enough without a visit to a maternity hospital.

On becoming an urban myth

2008-12-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

We've all heard those stories about women who tried for a baby for ten years, who tried IVF but failed, who were in the process of adopting .... and then found themselves pregnant. To be honest, I was always a little doubtful about those stories. But now it's happened to me. I'm 42. I've lost the last four babies (if you include the stillbirth). IVF failed. I had given away everything in my house that had anything to do with babies ..... And now I'm pregnant. I don't know what to say. The Big Man in the sky does like a joke, doesn't he? And I'm not sure his jokes are always in very good taste. But of course, I'm glad. Even if I have another miscarriage, I'm glad. I know that the odds are badly stacked against us but at least something has happened .... At least I've got another chance. Now that I've got over the shock, I'm doing OK. Just getting through each day. Trying not to think about it all too much. I'm a Quaker and Quakers don't pray. Or at least they think there is only one prayer which is worth anything and that is - 'God grant me the equanimity to bear the outcome well - whatever it may be.' Quakers also say - 'I pray not to change God's will but to align my will with his.' Actually, I stopped believing in God a while back (during the IVF, to be specific) but still that's the approach I need right now.

Cathy

2008-11-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

A couple evenings ago I went to a support group for people with dead babies. I have never been able to do that before because of living abroad. It isn't easy for me to go even now that I'm back in England. I had to drive a long way and go into a city which I don't know. I was on my own and it was dark. I'm not good with cars, maps, that sort of thing. I spent hours driving around the city, lost and increasingly desperate. But all the while this lovely woman called Cathy (who runs the support group) was sending me texts and trying to help me get there. Eventually I got there. A community centre in some back street in the middle of nowhere. And there was Cathy - on her own. She usually has more people turning up but that night she didn't. She always sits there all evening anyway just in case someone shows up. She's a tall, thin woman, with lovely long black hair. Dignified, resolute and calm. I was just so moved by her and by what she's doing. There she was, on her own, in that middle of nowhere place. There to help women who've lost babies - despite the fact that she has the most God awful story to tell herself. There waving a flag for the bereaved - which is something that very, very few people do. She said to me that she set up the group because she felt she owed it to her lost son Adam to help other parents .... Very modestly, she added that she feels that she's done Adam proud. Well, let me tell you, Cathy. You have. You really have.

What does the damage?

2008-11-13T13:33:00.000-08:00

A while ago I saw a television interview with a man who had been the victim of a serious assault and who had later had a nervous breakdown. Let's call this man John, for the sake of argument. John explained that the attack had happened in broad day light. He was driving along a road when another car pushed him into the verge. A man jumped out and beat John savagely. John then lay on the side of the road, bleeding badly, for about half an hour. During that time about twelve cars drove past but they didn't stop. John explained that it wasn't the attack which caused his nervous breakdown. He understood that to be the work of a random lunatic and so attached no wider signficance to it. It was the cars which drove past which caused his breakdown. They changed his view of the world. He thought that he was living in a caring society and he found out that he wasn't. Now none of the things which have happened to me are anything like as bad as that attack ..... But nonetheless, as I listened to John speak, I understood his point entirely.

Dropping things ....

2008-11-02T13:31:00.000-08:00

For the past few months, every day has been full to the brim because of moving. That has suited me. No time to think. And the days are still very full ..... But I'm not coping with all this any more. Today I burst into tears four of five times. Each time it's because of something stupid. The fire won't light because the logs are wet, a drawer jams and I start thumping it wildly to force it shut, I try to lift something down from a shelf and a load of other things fall down on top of me .... and then I start crying. I have to stop this because of my son. He's lovely to me, full of cuddles and hugs but it is really, really wrong that a six year old should have to provide comfort to an adult. My husband is in the house but he tries to ignore what is happening. The other problem is that I have no manual dexterity at all. I drop and break everything. I trap my hands in doors, I cut my hands while chopping vegetables, I burn my hands taking food out of the oven, I drop food on the floor, things slip through my hands ..... I just tried to wash my son's hair and I smeared shampoo all over his face. Knowing that I was about to start crying, he bravely said that it didn't get shampoo in his eyes and that it didn't sting one bit .... I wasn't aware that extreme clumsiness is a sign that you're losing your mind but clearly it is. A large part of the problem is that I'm trying to do everything far too fast. I some how need to slow down but I just can't do that. Maybe tomorrow will be better. I just hope so. I worry most for my son. I want so much to give him a wonderful childhood. He's all that I've got. But most of the time I just see him as someone who has spread LEGO all over the floor. And if I have to tidy up any more LEGO then I'll go out of my mind ... if I haven't already.

On coping

2008-10-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

I have an old friend who had a still birth and miscarriages (although she does now have three live children). She and I were at school together but we hadn't really kept in touch. But when she heard about Laura's death she called me up and was really kind. It was like talking to someone I know really well although actually we hadn't spoken in fifteen years. She said two things which I remember. Firstly, I said, 'I don't feel like I'm coping very well.' She said, 'You know what? The verb to cope should never be followed by an adverb. There is no such thing as coping well or coping badly. It's just coping - that's all. If you get through the day then that is enough.' We also talked about the difference between a miscarriage and a still birth. We agreed that the latter is very much worse than the former but then she said, 'You know the truth is that there aren't any easy ways to lose a baby.' So very true. I don't know why I think of those things now. Perhaps just because I'm grateful to her. Having said that, she hasn't been in touch again over the last two years. Probably she guesses that I never had another child and she feels embarrassed / guilty because at least, for her, there was (a partial) happy ending. Oh well, I don't mind. At least she tried her best to help at the time - which is more than can be said for a lot of people.

Serial Rescuer II

2008-10-08T13:53:00.001-07:00

I suppose that I'm interested in this Serial Rescuer question because I think that it is linked, very loosely, to women who have still births (and perhaps others who suffer awful disasters). One of the theories about Serial Rescuers is, I believe, that they endlessly give out what they hope to receive. For me, this explanation makes sense. I say that because I know that recently I went out a big Salvation Mission. A friend of mine, who has also lost a baby, went on a similar Mission as well. We laugh together now about our experiences - although only because if we didn't laugh then we would cry. I think that for both of us the motivation was the same. It went like this: I've just been through a terrible experience and I didn't receive proper help and support and so now I'm going to ensure that nobody else is left in that situation ....... But the point is that both my friend and I decided to save people who couldn't be saved. And both of us wore ourselves out trying and trying and trying ...... And we both admit now that we didn't like the people we tried to save! But at the time we simply refused to admit that maybe those people were simply not worth the trouble. For both of us these Salvation Missions finished up being deeply bruising experiences. Well at least we can laugh and comfort each other by analysing how we could have been quite so stupid ..... Perhaps a Salvation Mission of this kind is just one of the many distractions you get yourself into when you've lost a baby ..... And at the end of it, and all those other high-ways and by-ways your shamble down in your grief, you are always forced back on the knowledge that your baby remains just as dead as he / she always was ......

Serial rescuer

2008-09-30T02:45:00.001-07:00

I hadn't heard the words 'serial rescuer' until recently. They rang an instant bell with me because they describe my mother very exactly. There is nothing she likes more that a really awful crisis because she can then rush in and offer comfort, salvation, practical support. She's always been like that. At her kitchen table there is always some person who is bereaved / lonely / sick. A few years ago (when I was in Shrink Mode) I used to judge my mother quite harshly. I felt (and I'm probably right) that she only helps other people in order to avoid her own problems. Now I don't really see it like that. I just think that it is good that she helps people and it really doesn't matter why she does it. But I do still have questions about 'serial rescuers' because (like mother, like daughter) I used to be one myself. And to some extent I still am. But something has changed and I'm not quite sure what. I've always known that if you are in the Rescue Business then you better not keep a balance sheet because you'll never make it add up. What you give out will not come back. The person who spends hours and hours telling you about their tragedy will happily shut the door on your need a year later. That's life, that's the rules of the game ...... But still I've got questions. I can't work it out. I'll have to write another post about it when I've thought it through ...... Any other serial rescuers out there who would like to comment?

The Year of Magical Thinking

2008-09-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

My husband and I went to see a play called The Year of Magical Thinking. It was written by a woman called Joan Didion who I'm sure that I should have heard of but I haven't. (Can Americans out there help me?) I really wanted to see the play because it has been quite a hit, and it is a one woman show about grief, and so I really thought that it would be interesting. But I have to say that it wasn't. Not at all. I don't want to be critical of Joan Didion who has clearly lived through terrible tragedies (the death of her husband and her daughter in one year) but her play is really dodgy. I was so disappointed. Every day I read blogs which are infinitely more thoughtful, intelligent and honest than that play. Joan Didion seems to think that she is the only person in the world who has ever had anything bad happen to them. I also had the impression that she's never had a conversation with anyone else about grief. None of this would matter except that, at the end of the play, many people stood up as they clapped. And afterwards everyone else in the audience seemed to think that the play was wonderful. For my husband and I, the whole thing was a real Emperor's New Clothes moment. I left the theatre feeling really frightened because I suddenly felt as though I'm occupying some totally different world to other people. But then I've always felt like that so perhaps I should stop worrying about it. Maybe I should be more respectful to Joan Didion. After all, she's got a right to say what she thinks about grief. But should she be able to proclaim her story from stages all over the world when actually - I've got to say it - her play is just vacuous?

New house

2008-09-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

There is so much that I want to write about - but I've no time and no proper internet connection. I'm typing this in an internet cafe. My son and I have been camping at our new house for the last three days. We have no furniture except an air bed but we've loved it all the same. Yesterday evening we stood at the window and watched a deer grazing on our lawn. That happens quite often. The deer come down from the woods behind the house and occupy the lawn as though it is their own. I'm longing for the moment when I can take a photograph so you can see the house. In an hour's time the furniture van arrives. It could be quite a difficult afternoon! But at least something is happening.

So Thomas is your only child?

2008-09-07T03:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't met many people in our new area yet but everyone I have met has asked that question. 'So Thomas is your only child?' Of course, it's a harmless question. I don't blame the people who ask. But then I've got to explain it - again and again and again. Of course, I could just say, 'Yes, he's my only child.' I've often done that over the last three years. But I've decided that I'm not going to do it any more. My husband and I have had very difficult conversations about this. He thinks I shouldn't tell people - or not immediately. He says that people find if very off putting to be told that kind of information when they've only just met someone. I, frankly, don't care. These are the circumstances of my life. That's what it is. People either get it or they don't. The truth is that if you've had a baby that has died then there are plenty of people out there who want to silence you. For me, it's distressing to realise that one of those people is my husband. But, of course, you can decide not to be silenced. And that's what I've decided now. I refuse to participate any further in the Great Lie that says that life is always lovely, and everyone is always happy, and every story has a happy ending. This might imply that I feel desperately miserable and bitter right now. I don't actually. I just want to see things as they are and I want to be surrounded by people who are trying to do the same.

Staying with my mother

2008-08-26T02:54:00.001-07:00

There are so many things I want to write. And I can't write any of them really because I don't have an internet connection. At present I'm at my sister's borrowing her computer. It is still another couple of weeks at least until we'll move into our new house. Staying with my mother is quite an experience. She doesn't actually have chickens in her kitchen but it's that kind of set up. The place where she lives is a beautiful but semi-derelict farm house at the foot of the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. Water pours through the roof when it rains and nothing works. For years my mother didn't have mains water or central heating and she didn't have a kitchen - just a sink, a table and one round pin socket. Things have improved recently but not that much. The whole thing is still like a really badly organised camping holiday. The whole house is covered in dog hair. When you take your clothes off at night you find dog hair down your bra. My mother can't see anything odd about any of this. On good days, I love sharing her life but there are times when I really have to struggle to keep my temper. The upside is that it's paradise for my son. He brings in buckets of mud from the garden and spreads them all over the kitchen floor and my mother says, 'Lovely dear, do you want some water to mix it with.'

Sons and daughters

2008-08-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

We moved house. Currently we are not actually living anywhere. That is not as bad as it sounds except that everything I need is in a bag which is somewhere else ...... I'm typing this from an internet cafe. Today I heard someone repeat a saying which I had never heard before. It goes likes this: 'A son is a son until he takes a wife. A daughter is a daughter for all of her life.' That one hit me pretty hard. It's true, of course. A mother-daughter relationship is a special and unique relationship. I'm never going to have that and I'm lonely without it. I have my husband and my son but they're blokes and so there are some things that they just don't understand. But I'm defiant. Defiant. That's an important word for me right now. I want life, life, life. In spite of what has happened I want as much life as I can have. It won't end well. I'm running myself into the ground and I'll finish up ill. But until that moment comes I'm just enjoying the fact that I, at least, am alive.

Foxy the bike

2008-08-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

Life should be absolutely terrible right now. It's four days until we leave this city. I'm packing all day, every day. It's physically exhausting and emotionally draining. Everyone I know is away on holiday - and even if they weren't I probably wouldn't see them. My husband is busy at work and says, 'It'll get done some how.' (I noticed that men say that often. It means, 'Some woman will do it.') So here I am alone in this half packed house. Whole swathes of my past have been carted away to the junk yard, and loads more will go. But the strange thing is that, on a minute by minute basis, I don't feel that bad. I don't really feel anything at all - but I don't mean that in a negative sense. I'm like somebody in a dream. Today I did have a moment when I lost my nerve. I should have taken my son's bike to the dump but I couldn't do it. My son has out grown the bike and it was always horrid anyway. My mother got it from a dump. It's black and orange - a combination of colours I particularly dislike. For some reason it has 'Foxy' painted on the cross bar so that's what we call it. My son and I have had some fun with Foxy. Last summer I taught him to ride without stabilisers and he's written miles and miles on that bike. And so when it came to taking Foxy to the junk market I couldn't do it ..... It's funny the odd things which tug at the heart strings, the bits of the past which refuse to be cut adrift.

Packing and crying

2008-07-27T13:44:00.001-07:00

We are leaving Belgium in two weeks time. I first came here sixteen years ago. My husband has lived here for twenty years. We love our house here and Brussels is a wonderful city in so many ways. But we're going .... I know it's right. We badly need to start again and we can't do that here. At the moment I'm packing all day, every day. Our house is big and we are very untidy people. I'm taking car loads of stuff around to the charity shop. I know that this has to happen but it is so, so hard. Everything I touch is charged with some huge emotional significance - and I haven't even got to all that baby stuff in the attic yet. But the truth is that the life we used to have in this city came to an end three years ago ....... What we're leaving behind is the shape of a life, not a real life. I just can't think about what is happening. I can't. All I do is tell myself (and everyone else) that we'll come back often - even though I know that we probably won't. Since I got married seven years ago I lost my father and my brother (both of them refuse to speak to anyone in our family), then I lost my daughter, a good friend died of cancer, another is dying of it now, and I'm leaving a city that I love. But life is all about loss, I suppose. And the people who survive best in life are the people who are good at losing things. Well, let's hope practice makes perfect .....

The motherhood door slamming shut

2008-07-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

I suppose every woman comes to a time when she realises that she isn't going to be a mother again. And probably every woman is sad at that time. No woman wants to let go of that part of herself. But for most woman the motherhood door eases shut slowly. Many women I know have two or three children and they know that, in reality, they won't have more. But they don't confront that fact, and they hold onto the baby clothes, and they continue to talk half-heartedly about having another child. And it's probably not until they reach the menopause that they'll really face up to the knowledge that motherhood is over. The problem for me is that the motherhood door has slammed shut suddenly. And also, unlike most women, I can't even comfort myself with the thought that, after all, I had my fair innings. Because I didn't. For me, motherhood was over before it had really got going. And now it's like I'm going through the menopause early. I've been trying to find some small upside in this and, on a good day, I can just about succeed. The upside is this: if you're in your mid fifties when you have to let go of motherhood then it's hard to start re-making your life at that time. I'm going to have to re-make my life now (aged 41) and I do still have time for that. I am still young enough to start a new life and I think I will find one to start. Except that just now I don't have the energy or confidence for it.

Counsellors

2008-07-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

I've been going to see a counsellor ever since our daughter died. Today the counsellor finished the session by saying, 'Would you perhaps feel ready now to write a letter to Laura saying good-bye to her?' I said without hesitation, 'No, I wouldn't.' Is it just me or was her question really stupid? To me it seems stupid for two reasons. Firstly, Laura is dead so why would I be saying good bye to someone who is dead? I said good bye to her three years ago. Secondly, even if the counsellor was asking me to say good bye to the memory my daughter, I still find it a stupid question. Because I'm never going to say good bye to the memory of my daughter. If I live to be ninety I won't do that. Why would I? I had her name tattooed on my foot specifically so that the memory would always be with me. I feel really let down by the fact that the counsellor said this. I now suspect that, in her own mind, she has perhaps spent three years waiting for me to get to the stage when I can write this letter. But if that's the case then all of our meetings have been based on a fundamental misunderstanding. I really feel like it's time for me to stop wasting my time and money. I used to be a big believer in counselling but now I'm not. I think counselling maybe useful for problems which do have a solution. My problem doesn't have a solution so I don't really know what counselling can acheive.

What is lost?

2008-07-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

One thing my experiences have taught me is that, when you suffer a loss, it is important to work out what the loss really is. What part of the loss is truly sad and painful and hard to bear - and what part of it only involves waving good-bye to things you didn't care about anyway? I ask myself those kind of questions often at the moment. It works like this. A few days ago I went into one of those mega toy stores which house acres of beeping, plastic, electronic, sexual-stereotyping crap. I was looking for a bike for my six year old son. But, of course, as luck would have it, I had to walk through the baby department to get to the bikes. And there were all the baby toys ..... And, predictably, I was ambushed by emotion and tears rushed down my face as I realised that I'll never buy baby things again. And then just as I was about to start out down the road of two-days-weeping-at-the-bottom-of-the-bed, I pulled myself up short and thought it through. Actually the truth is that I can't bear those huge mega toy stores. They make me feel sick. They're all about want, want, want. Yuck. So I don't need to cry about the fact that I have no reason to go into a baby store any more. I just need to cry about the loss of my daughter and my two miscarried babies. They are the only loss that matters.

Suffering

2008-06-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

This is a quote from the catholic writer Leon Bloy: 'Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering in order that they may have existence.' That thought is interesting, I find. On a good day I think that it is true. On a bad day I'm not so sure. After all, many people are not improved by suffering. Some people suffer and as a result they finish up mean, small, frightened, bitter. I am perhaps more interested in what R S Thomas (my favourite poet) has to say in his poem The Unvanquished: 'But you / who are not free to choose / what you suffer can choose / your response.' To me, that is a key statement. There is always that choice. And actually that choice is the one thing which we all possess and which no-one can ever take from us. It is the final freedom. I also like what the Quakers say about suffering. They do not think there is any point in discussing why there is so much suffering. Instead the important question is - What are we going to do with suffering? Again it is a choice, isn't it? Either we allow suffering to make us into small, mean people (as I'm doing at the moment) or we allow it to open new places in our hearts. Finally we have to chose the latter. Give me a few weeks and perhaps I'll get there.

Comfort and comforting

2008-06-19T03:50:00.000-07:00

In my head I rant continually about the fact that nobody in the real world cares less about what has happened to me. They ignore me, they shut me out, they change the subject, they look embarrassed, they just don't understand. But is it as simple as that? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm not very good at asking for help, maybe I'm unable to receive the help that is offered. Perhaps I'm not open enough. It's certainly true that, when people ask how I am, I usually say that I'm fine. Despite the fact that I want to say that I'm desperate, devastated, struggling to get through the day. So recently I decided to adopt a new strategy. No more saying - I'm fine. Instead I'm going to try and tell people the truth about what has happened and how I feel. But so far I have to say that the new strategy has not been a rip roaring success. I've tried it twice and both times the people I've talked to have finished up in tears. Not tears for me, you understand. Tears about their own situation. And yes, both of them are people who are in quite difficult situations. But situations which are, actually, largely of their own making. And nothing like as bad as my situation ..... (Sorry I hate competitions in pain but what I'm saying is true). And yet I'm the one mopping up the tears and offering the comfort. Why does this happen? Is it something to do with me? Am I someone who is incapable of ever making myself centre stage? Or do I just happen to know a lot of people who don't really recognise that the business of comfort is a two way street? I really don't understand and I find all this very upsetting. Any advice appreciated!

Unhappiness

2008-06-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

A lovely-sounding person left a comment on my blog which said, 'I'm finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that there's so much unhappiness in the world.' I understand that completely. Over the last three years my main emotion has been outrage. Again and again I find myself unable to come to terms with the amount of suffering there is all around me. But the question is - why am I surprised? And why is the lovely-sounding person on my blog so surprised? After all, the levels of suffering have not got worse. In fact, if anything, suffering has vastly reduced over the last fifty years (at least in the Western world). So then why are any of us surpised? To me this is a key question. I think it has to do with the fact that we are living in a society which is in massive denial about sadness, adversity, grief, pain. We live surrounded by images of happiness and talk of positive thinking. Conversations about death are considered morbid. Feeling sad is equated with failure or weakness. Avoiding pain has become the main national occupation. And so we are conned into thinking that the world is essentially a happy place. But it isn't. Suffering is right at the heart of human existence - and it doesn't matter how rich you are, how educated you are, how good you are - that's always going to be the same. If that were accepted and discussed then there wouldn't be people like me (aged 41) saying, 'Oh but I didn't know it would be this hard.'

Yesterday

2008-06-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was meant to go to the hospital. My husband and I decided not to go. We just couldn't face it. We've been trailing back and forwards to one hospital or another for three years and in all that time we've never had any good news. If we'd gone to the hospital yesterday we would have been kept waiting for an hour and a half. Then we'd have seen a doctor for ten minutes. The doctor would have spent at least eight of those ten minutes looking at a computer screen. Then he'd have told us some bad news. After that I would have been upset and the medical staff would have looked at me as though to say, 'Please can you not cause embarrassment by looking sad in the hospital. In fact, please can you take your dead babies somewhere else because we really don't need your bad news story here.' My husband and I would then have come home and had a row. After that I would have cried for three days. So what did I do instead of going to the hospital? I met up with my wonderful friend and we had breakfast in a cafe. I had a cafe latte and a croissant - two thing I never normally have. And it was a lovely morning. My friend's life is actually even sadder than mine at the moment - but still I really enjoyed our time together. Definitely better than a visit to the hospital. Oh I can't describe to you the relief I feel at not going there.

Amsterdam house boat

2008-06-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

So this is a photograph of Amsterdam. It shows my husband and my son (making a cheeky face). In the background is the house boat which we stayed on. I've always dreamt of living on a house boat. Years ago I nearly bought one but lost my nerve. I felt sure that if we went to stay on a house boat then it would turn out to be damp / cramped / smelly / uncomfortable - and that would put an end to my fantasy. But no. It was wonderful and I'm now more determined than ever that I'll live on a house boat permanently some time. Of course, all this dashing around the place doing odd things is simply a distraction - and sometimes it doesn't work that well. But it's certainly better than sitting around at home refusing to answer the phone, or reply to any e-mails, which is what I'd be doing otherwise. I need another trip - now. But there's nothing planned. I feel ill all the time at the moment. My heart has been beating wildly ever since we had our bad news. By four o'clock in the afternoon I'm too tired to do anything. My eyes feel heavy all the time. How much longer is this going to last? I wish we could go back to Amsterdam and stay on the boat again.

The danger of miracles

2008-05-31T08:23:00.000-07:00

Everyone has got a story. They go like this: My husband's sister's dog's wife went through IVF sixteen times and then age 48 she got pregnant with twins. My colleague's brother's budgerigar's sister had a baby when she was 62. Did you see that story in the paper about the woman in Romania who had a baby when she was 70? My mother's best friend's brother's wife had her uterus taken out and then she got pregnant. Well I exagerrate - but you get the point. It is all kindly meant. Most of it is probably even true. But I am not sure it is helpful for me right now. Of course, there are miracles but the reason why they are miracles is because they happen very, very seldom. My personal feeling is that I have to draw a line under this at some time and so maybe I should do it now before I drive myself and everyone else insane. We all know deep down that there two major source of unhappiness in all of our lives: First is the refusal to see a situation for what it is. Secondly, the desire for something which we simply can't have. My feeling is (at least for today) that I need to focus on what I have and not on what I don't have. So that is what I will try to do for the next three days. Which, incidentally, my husband and son and I are going to spend on a house boat in Amsterdam. Photos to follow ...... And thanks so much for the comments.

Hospital hell

2008-05-28T13:39:00.001-07:00

Today I had to ring the hospital. I put off doing that because I always finish up in raging temper when I have to speak to them. Today was as bad as ever. They had rung me because I hadn't gone in for a blood test to find out whether I was pregnant or not. So I rang them to confirm that I'm not pregnant. It would have been so good if they had said, 'I'm sorry about that' or 'that must be disappointing for you.' But they never say anything like that. I then explained to them that my husband and I are now trying to decide whether we should go through the treatment again. I asked if there would be someone at the hospital who could talk that over with us. The woman on the telephone said, 'Yes, you could talk to one of the nurses.' So I said, 'OK, so should my husband and I come into the hospital for that?' The woman said, 'Oh no, you just talk to them on the telephone.' So we've spent thousands of pounds at this hospital, they've done nothing for us and we're now trying to take a very difficult and emotional decision .... and the best that they've got to offer us is a telephone conversation with a nurse. I mean, nothing against nurses but I just find that laughable. This hospital has a world wide reputation for infertility treatment but nobody in the place has any communication skills. Their whole approach is to deny that there is any emotional aspect to anything that they are doing. I just find that so shocking. They've treated me like a piece of meat. The truth is that they never wanted my husband and I anywhere near their hospital. That sounds paranoid but it isn't - this is the third hospital we've tried and they've all shut the door on us - slowly and politely. If you've been diagnosed as having recurrent miscarriages then no hospital wants to know because they can't help you and your story is not going to end well. Yes, I'm angry - very, very angry. I just want someone in that hospital to say something kind to me. It wouldn't cost them anything. But they'll never do it.

Manic Amsterdam

2008-05-26T02:33:00.000-07:00

We just went to Amsterdam for the weekend. It was a last minute decision. It took a lot of courage to go. We just couldn't make up our minds if it was the right thing or not. And in fact none of the plans we made really turned out quite right - but still we had a good weekend. I don't think that anyone can fail to enjoy Amsterdam. It's the right city for me because I hate cars and there are hardly any in Amsterdam. Under the law of the city if there's an accident involving a car and a bike then the car is always at fault (isn't that great!) I think all European cities will be car free in thirty years time and I'm looking forward to it. But it isn't just the bikes ..... it's the flowers, the canals, the height of the sky, the gabled houses, the pancakes, the friendly people, the quirky little shops, the smell of drugs and stagnant water. It's my new favourite city and I could move there tomorrow (I have a new favourite place about five times a year). Now that I'm back I'm in a very odd state. I'm running around the place doing and planning a hundred things. I'm jittery and nervous and I can't settle down to anything. I remember this manic state from the time after my daughter died. I think the idea that lies behind the mania is, 'If I book the right trip, or buy the right skirt, or read the right book, then everything will be fine.' But, of course, I can go on trips and read books and buy skirts until hell freezes over and it won't change anything. This afternoon I'll probably go to bed and cry. I don't answer the phone to anyone and I don't reply to most e-mails. Before my daughter died I thought that grief was someone sitting in a chair crying - elegantly. But that's not what grief is at all. It is far, far more dangerous than that.

Comments

2008-05-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

People type such wonderful comments on this blog. They are people who don't know me at all and yet they take the time to say they are sorry. It helps so much. What is the exact way in which it helps, I wonder? Some how it helps me to know that what has happened is bad. It's strange that I should need somebody else to tell me that but I do. It was like that after my daughter died. She'd been dead about three months and I met a woman who I hardly know in the street. Often I didn't tell people what had happened because I couldn't take that risk. But some how I did tell this lady. And she just burst into tears. I was so grateful to her for crying but I was also shocked. I looked at her and I thought, 'Oh yes, it's really bad. That's how bad it is.' But I had to see her cry to know that. It's odd that, isnt' it? I think there's two reasons for it. Firstly, whatever is happening in your life becomes commonplace after a while. No-one can feel sad all day every day. So sometimes you need someone else to tell you that it's sad. Secondly, there's always someone who has got a worse story to tell and so one doesn't (or I don't) feel entitled to too much grief. It helps a lot when someone says, 'Yes. It's really bad so it's OK for you to feel terrible.' I don't have people around me who are saying that. I think they have become too frightened and worn down to say anything at all. Everyone really needed a happy ending to this story and there just isn't going to be one. The weather is actually quite warm here but I find myself wearing jumpers, socks, scarfs. The days are very unkind. I can sometime do a simple administrative task but even that can be too much. My level of isolation is hard to bear (even if it is partly of my own making). This blog is helping. Thank you so much for those comments.

Resilience

2008-05-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

You know how it is when something really horrible happens? You think - ok, now I'm going to stay in bed and cry forever and I'm going to starve myself to death and I'm never going to talk to anyone again. And you really, really want it to be like that. But then you get bored of lying in bed and you start feeling really hungry ..... and you hate yourself because you are so resilient. You hate yourself for not starving or dying. But some how you can't do either. You're tough even though you really don't want to be. Just at this moment I actually feel all right (although I did spend half the day lying in bed crying) and I'm shocked at myself for not feeling too bad. I like the lady who writes a blog called 'Awful but functioning.' What I'd like to know is how do you stop functioning? I don't seem a talent for it.

Nothing

2008-05-20T12:51:00.001-07:00

Well, it turns out I didn't have to wait until Friday. I already know that the IVF didn't work. I found out late last night - the day which was the anniversary of my daughter's death. Great timing. I find that these things are organised to cause the maximum amount of pain possible. I just don't believe it. To be specific, I can't believe that at the end of all this we've got nothing. Nothing at all. For months I've been trailing back and forwards to one hospital or another, and I've had hundreds of blood tests and I've had my feet stuck in stirrups again and again. And I've had one metal instrument after another shoved up my vagina by people who behave like car mechanics. I've poisoned myself with masses of drugs and spent my time being foul to my husband and son. And at the end of all this? Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a piece of paper. The whole thing was just one massive waste of time. And the worst thing is that I can't even blame this on anyone else. I knew that we shouldn't do IVF. I don't even approve of IVF. But still I went throught with it. And now - nothing. Our situation was bad and now it is worse. And still the days keep on coming and we keep on living in them. What choice do we have?

The blackest night

2008-05-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the blackest night. I miss Laura so much. And I'm terrified about Friday. I'm pretty sure that the IVF hasn't worked. And they'll just telephone us to tell us that and then they'll put down the phone. And after that I'll be expected to get on with my life. And the next day will come and the next and it'll just go on the same. And people will look at me and they'll see nothing at all. I'll look just the same. But inside I'll have died. I want SOMETHING TO HAPPEN. I really I don't care at all if I get pregnant again and I miscarry. At least that way SOMETHING HAPPENS. But I won't even get that. I'll just have to get up the day after and go on as though it doesn't really matter that much. Oh Laura I want you back so badly. Our lives would be totally and completely and utterly different if you haven't died. This punishment goes on endlessly but I can't work out what I did. Maybe on Friday I'll just take my son and go away somewhere, anywhere. Maybe somewhere by the sea. If I just got up in the morning in a different place that might help. If I could just go somewhere where I don't have to pretend.

Laura's flowers

2008-05-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

I think I might be about to put a photograph on my blog! OK, so it doesn't sound too exciting to you because you've been doing it for the last five years. But I'm someone who finds it difficult to operate a toaster so for me this is big progress. And this is a very important flower. It's Laura's flower. It comes from her rose bush. In truth, the rose bush was given to us by my husband's former colleagues. It was one of those thoughtless, corporate kind of gifts. And when my husband left that company we fell out badly with everyone there. Partly that was due to the fact that I considered that those people behaved very disrespectfully to us around the time that Laura died ..... But leaving all that aside the rose bush is wonderful. We are going to be moving house and country in two months time. The rose bush is going with us. I just hope it survives the move.

Balloon

2008-05-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

For the last few days I have felt dangerously well. I know that it can happen like that sometimes. At the very worst times of life one is often filled with a strange energy. After my daughter died I had days when I could have conquered the world. Nothing was beyond my reach. That's what the last few days have been like. On Monday I wrote a very challenging article on late abortions and sent it off to all the national papers. On Thursday I read from my new book. That was a great evening. There were five of us who read and loads of people turned up which was a real surprise. Then yesterday I sent out a play that I've written to nine different theatres. But all this is very fragile - very. I'm like a great big red balloon, sailing through the sky, full of hope and promise, cheerfully waving in the wind. But it will only take one thorn and the balloon will be gone in one sharp bang. Nothing left but a small and twisted piece of rubber. Tomorrow is the third anniversary of my daughter's death. On Friday we get the results of the IVF. Balloons are a wonderful sight to see but they don't last long.

What I want

2008-05-09T13:40:00.001-07:00

Over the last three years I've had to let go of a lot of comforting ideas I used to have about the way the world works. For example, I used to believe that if I looked deep - very deep - inside myself then I would know what I want and what is right for me. It turns out that that isn't the case. For the last three years I've been looking deep within myself and I'm still entirely confused about whether I should be trying to have another baby or not. In my rational mind I'm sure that I shouldn't. There are a hundred arguments which I use to support that idea. I'm not a natural mother anyway, I have other things I want to do with my life, the chances of me having another live baby are too small to take the risk, I already have one beautiful son and that is enough, I have moral problems with the whole process of IVF ...... Yes, my rational mind knows quite well that I shouldn't try to have another child. But there's some other part of me which just won't listen and goes on and on and on clammering for another child. That part of me is in some deep and primeaval place and operates at some level far below (or above?) my rational mind. One day the rational part of my mind is in control, the next day the primeaval baby urge takes over. But which of these people is the real me? Any guesses?

Happiness

2008-05-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

Today should have been a terrible day. Not only was there the egg collection but all my child care plans for the next week fell through meaning that I won't be able to get any work done for several days. But oddly I had a good day. When I was in the operating theatre, legs up in those stirrups, drugged up to my eye balls, one of the nurses spotted the tattoo on my foot. 'Oh so you've got a daughter,' she said cheerily. 'Yes,' I said, 'but sadly she's dead.' The nurse then said very kindly, 'I'm sorry for your loss.' I'm not exaggerating when I say that she's the only person in the medical profession during the last three years who has said anything like that and it really helped.
I'm back home now, sore and tired, but still feeling surprisingly positive. Today made me remember two important things - firstly, happiness has very little to do with external circumstances. It's possible to feel really quite happy when everything around you is awful, and equally possible to feel dreadful when nothing bad has happened at all. So happiness is all about what's going on inside you. Secondly, my experiences today reminded me that what you give out is what you get back. Today the nurses were kind to me because I was pleasnt to them. Often they aren't kind to me because I've got a face like granite. It's important for me to keep that in mind - except that the whole point about being in a face-like-granite mood is that you've lost the perspective necessary to think in that kind of way.

Egg collection

2008-05-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I have to go into hospital for the egg collection. I hope I don't scream at anyone. I'm worried because I won't be allowed to eat for several hours and I'm someone who soon goes into melt down if I'm not able to eat. My husband will go with me for an hour or so because he has to (where else is the sperm going to come from?) But he'll get out of there as soon as he can. I should perhaps insist that he stays with me. Most other women seem to have their partners there. I shared a room with very smiley Flemish / Italian lesbians last time. But I don't really think there is any point in insisting. Having my husband sitting there looking like he wants to be somewhere else isn't really going to improve my state of mind. The only problem is that the hospital make you stay much longer if you haven't got someone to drive you home. Last time I just lied to them and said I was getting a taxi and then took public transport for an hour (bus, metro, tram) home. The journey made me feel really bad and I did wonder why I was punishing myself by doing that when I didn't really have to. But for some reason I do feel that I should take public transport to the hospital. That's because to me IVF feels very self indulgent. I can more or less justify it to myself but not if I'm damaging the environment as well. That's silly, I know, but it's how I feel.

Candles

2008-05-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

The IVF is going ahead and I'm actually really enjoying life at the moment. I've managed to get in and out of the hospital several times without screaming at anyone. Also, I have to say that the physical aspects of IVF are not too bad. In a way I don't want to admit that because I don't want to have to say that IVF is anything less than vile - but really, at least physically, it's OK, or at least the early days of it are. I had a really terrible reaction to Clomid and to Utrogestan (fertility drugs) so I was ready for real trouble with IVF but it hasn't turned out like that. I think the truth is that when you live through the kind of horrible times I'm living through then your expectations of what life has to offer become very low and paradoxically this means that it's far easier to be happy. Now I often find myself thinking, 'Mercifully nothing really bad is happening at this precise moment.' And suddenly just the fact that that is true turns a rather ordinary day into a really Good Day. I suppose it's rather like having a load of candles burning in a room. You can't see how bright the candles are until you turn the lights off.

Taking a hit for the team

2008-04-29T03:54:00.000-07:00

At the weekend my dearest friend Amanda came to visit from Rome. We managed to sit out in the garden all afternoon and talk and talk and talk. She really has the most original mind of anyone I know. With regard to my daughter's death, she said, 'Don't you think there is a sense in which you are taking a hit for the team?' I didn't really know what that meant but she explained to me that it's an American baseball phrase. Apparently, it refers to when the person who is meant to be hitting the ball gets hit by the ball instead (often very hard). Initially, I didn't understand what she meant but then she said, 'The point is that if seventeen babies are stillborn in the UK every day then the fact that you had one of those babies is actually really good for everyone else. It means that there is some other person out there who doesn't have to have a still born baby. So you are taking a hit for the team.' The thought was an odd one but I do think she's got a point. However, we both of us agreed that the idea only works if 'the team' does exist. In other words it only works if all the people around me offer me lots of love and support because they acknowledge that actually I'm doing something wonderful for them. Of course, I do know people who are offering me love and support (thanks Amanda, thanks Joslin, thanks everyone at the Quaker Meeting House). But there are many people who are just hiding from me because they feel guilty and embarrassed. They should really change their approach. They should come up to me and say, 'Let me offer you any help and support that I can because I'm so, so grateful to you for doing this. Because you're doing it, I am not having to do it. Thank you very much.' This all sounds mad, I know, but I don't think it is.

Why?

2008-04-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

I went for the blood test yesterday. It was disasterous. I started screaming at the nurse. There was no real reason for this. She was slightly annoying. I've encountered her before and she is a bit of a bitch. But she really didn't give me any cause to scream a lot - which is what I did. I just sat there shouting 'Fuck, fuck, fuck .....' After she got me out of the room, I shouted it some more in the corridor. She shut the door on me at that point as I suppose she thought that it was all rather embarrassing for the other patients. After that I went into the loo and screamed more and kicked the wall until my foot hurt. I then wanted to go straight home, but it was throwing it down with rain, and it's a long walk to the bus stop, so I sat in the deserted foyer of the hospital for a while (it was 7 pm by then). I called my Mum and my sister and wailed at both of them down the phone. I usually try not to call them as I think they've both got enough problems of their own. My sister was great. She said, 'I think that was a fantastic thing to do. I think you should do that more often.' It was good of her to say that but actually the way I behaved was terrible. I don't know what has happened to me. Until two years ago I was always, always very polite and reasonable. Perhaps that's part of the problem. Perhaps I've been storing it all up for the last thirty eight years and the damn has finally burst. But I find it hard to accept this new version of myself. I remember all the stories that I've heard over the years of those people who've got cancer for the third time and they're still smiling at the hospital staff and being tremendously courageous and pleasant. It turns out that I am not like those people. I am not courageous or selfless or long suffering. Instead I'm on the edge, right on the edge. What do I do in this situation. What do you do if you know that you're losing your mind? I've got no idea.

Clubs

2008-04-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Today I have to start IVF. Actually all I have to do is go to the hospital and have a blood test. So that's not so bad, is it? It does take an hour to get to the hospital on thee types of public transport and an hour to get back but actually I like public transport. As a writer, I don't go anywhere so even a trip on a tram, a metro, a bus can seem quite exciting. So surely it's not too bad then? The problem is the hospital. I absolutely hate the hospital. As soon as I get anywhere near the place I finish up in raging temper. People I know send me e-mails suggesting to me that I should meet up with this friend of theirs who is going through IVF, or they suggest web sites where you can read about IVF. No doubt these people are well meaning but I don't want to talk to anyone about this, I don't want to be informed about it, I don't want to become part of some cosy little group of women who are all going through the same thing. I'm too angry for any of that. All I want to do is scream and keep on screaming. The truth is that I just don't accept that I am a patient in an infertility clinic. I've been pregnant four times in the last five years so how come I'm being treated for infertility? I accept that I'm part of the Dead Baby Club, I accept that I am part of the Recurrent Miscarriage Club, I could even accept that I'm part of the Grief Has Ruined My Marriage Club, but I do not accept that I'm part of the Infertility Club.

IVF

2008-04-18T08:34:00.000-07:00

A very bad day. I've spent most of it in tears. A session with the counsellor set me off (isn't counselling meant to make you feel better?) and I haven't stopped since. The problem is, in short, that I'm just not sure that I can go through IVF again. If I'm in this state before I start where will I be when I finish? Particularly as I think that this is the last time that we'll try IVF. I just can't stand going to the hospital again. I can't stand being the person that I become when I go there. And the worst of it is that this is all my choice. I could ring up and cancel. There is that option. But I'm in a situation where it's too painful to stop and too painful to go on. I know that the IVF is more or less hopeless. The chance that it could work is around 5%. If you threw a twenty sided dice you wouldn't really expect to get a 20 would you? And after that there's the 60% chance of a miscarraige. So why don't I just ring up and cancel? All I'm doing is damaging myself. And delaying the moment when I have to admit that there is no more hope. I think that the truth is that I'm only doing IVF because it's less painful to do it than it is to watch my poor husband being forced to accept that he's never going to have another child - and that all the horrors that we've been through in the last three years have resulted in nothing. If he'd married someone else he'd probably have three perfectly healthy children by now. Instead he has one live child, three dead children and a wife who is a basket case. If I was him, I'd walk out on me.

Technology

2008-04-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

The last few years life has seemed to me like a continual process of doors being slammed in my face. I've lost so many friends, I don't have good working relationships with people who should be supporting me in my writing, I keep submitting pieces of writing which mysteriously get rejected although I know quite well that they're good (and the people who reject them even admit that). But, of course, although I may feel thoroughly rejected on every front, the truth is that a feeling isn't a fact. Yes, I have been rejected quite a lot but I've also seen rejection where it doesn't really exist. Technology is a very small example of this. I'm 41 and so I'm a little too old for the internet generation. I also, until recently, had a rather sniffy attitude to the internet. But then suddenly I realised that I have simply been left behind and that it's my fault. So now I've got a blog (OK so I can't put an image on it but you've got to learn to walk before you can run). And I've put all our photos on our computer (yes, I know everybody else did that ten years ago but I just felt I couldn't cope with it). I'm also going to set up a web page, which I should have done years ago. So I'm am slowly moving into the technological era and it feels good. Technology is a door I am opening. And I suppose the truth is that even when a door has been genuinely and decisively slammed in your face then you just have to push it open again. The problem is that over the last few years I've lost the courage for that.

Waste

2008-04-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

Most people in my situation ask - why did my baby die? I have to say that I have never really asked that question. Plenty of other questions but not that one. I some how accept the fact that babies do die. I think this has to do with being bought up in a farming world. In my childhood we often stayed up late into the night bottle feeding orphaned lambs but we frequently found them stiff and cold in the morning. No one could tell us why. On the farm next door to us a litter of eight puppies died. The bitch lay on them and suffocated them all. I also remember a couple of mornings when a mare was expecting a foal and I went out with my mother into the fields and found the foal lying in the grass, perfect and dead, with the frost settled on its soft baby hair. Perhaps through these experiences I learnt that baby animals do just die and there is no reason for it. I think that the truth is that people who don't really know anything much about the natural world talk endlessly about its miracles. People who actually live very close to natural processes (as my mother does) tend not to talk much at all. But what they know is that natural processes are largely characterised by appallingly high levels of waste.

Venice

2008-04-06T12:10:00.001-07:00

I'm just back from a trip to Venice. I took my five year old son with me and we travelled to Paris by train and then took a night train to Venice. This was something I really needed to do. It is part of attempt to rediscover the person I used to be. Travel was an important part of that person. When I was young I travelled all through Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America. I also took the train all the way from Brussels to Beijing. I was always setting off somewhere - usually with no money and no map and not much idea of where I was going. For the past five years I haven't done that. But now that my son is five I can start to travel again. Also - and it's really, really hard for me to say this - the fact that my daughter died makes it possible for me to travel. Travel is one of her gifts to me. And my son and I had a fantastic time. There's so much I could write .... But the best bit was the hotel. We stayed on the Lido because I thought my son would like the space and the beach. The hotel was called The Hotel des Bains and it was so Jazz Age, so Scott Fitzgerald, so Noel Coward. A great wedding cake of faded splendour right on the beach. Also my son and I were literally the only people there because the hotel is closed in winter and only re-opened for the summer the day we arrived. And so there we were, the two of us, in this ridiculously grand and other worldly hotel. The lack of people didn't bother me in the least. There's nothing I like better than a seaside hotel out of season. My son swam in the sea in his vest and pants (I forgot his swimming stuff). We peddled all around the lido on a four wheeled bicycle. We visited St. Mark's Basilica and had tea in Florian's in the plaza. We gasped at the grandeur of Venice and ate stupid amounts of ice cream. This morning, after taking the night train back, we had delicious coffee and croissants at the Gare du Nord in Paris. My son was wearing his pyjamas because I some how lost interest in putting his clothes on. And I knew that I had rediscovered the person that I used to be - and the person that I will be in future. Because this is how my son and I are going to live now. We will become nomads and drift from place to place. We will take our sadness with us but we'll live in defiance of that sadness as well. Suddenly life seems possible again. At least for today.

Screaming

2008-04-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I sat in our car (a clapped out Peugeot 109) in a suburb of Brussels and screamed for a long time. I screamed F***, F***, F*** over and over again very loudly. The reason for this - or at least the superficial reason - was that I was trying to drive to an appointment and despite having set out in good time, and having a map, I just couldn't find where I needed to go. After I'd been driving around the same few streets for about twenty minutes I stopped the car and started screaming. I've done quite a bit of screaming recently. After the IVF failed I sat on the kitchen floor and beat a roasting tin onto the tiled floor for about twenty minutes. I've heard that other people hit telephone directories with rolling pins. That could be worth a try but it wouldn't make much noise, would it? Whereas the roasting tin and the tiles make a satisfactorily loud noise as they meet. As I smashed the tin down again and again I was interested to see whether the tiles would break, or whether the tin would buckle, but neither suffered any damage. Physical objects are surprisingly robust, it seems. Not like the human heart.

The Gentle Genocide

2008-03-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine just had a miscarriage. The statistics show that about a quarter of a million babies will miscarriage in one year in the UK. On top of that 17 babies are still born in the UK every day. And then there are terminations for abnormality .... and I don't even know the statistics for that. What I do know is that when you add it all up it's a lot of babies. In my mind I call it The Gentle Genocide. Because it is a genocide, a holocaust, a massacre, and yet it happens so quietly you never even know about it. And that's what's so strange - the fact that we simply accept this situation. Dead babies are taboo. They are not to be discussed in polite society. In the Twin Towers tragedy approximately 3,000 people died. Think of all the publicity, discussion, comment there has been about that. Before anyone gets angry let me say that I'm not comparing someone having a miscarriage to someone losing a relative in a terroist attack. There clearly is a very big difference. But what exactly is the nature of that difference? Do foetuses not count because you don't see them? Why are the 3,000 always talked about and the half a million never talked about? What is it costing us as a society to live with denial on such a huge scale? And how do we all keep getting up in the morning in the face of so much loss?

Leagues of Grief

2008-03-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know whether everyone who grieves plays the Leagues of Grief game. I suspect that they do. I certainly play it all the time. It's about trying to work out just how bad the things that have happened to me are. I go through it all in my head and compare my situation to that of other people that I know. I have a friend who had twins who died soon after birth and she never managed to have another baby. So her situation is definitely worse than mine. I also know of a family who only have one little girl and although she's lovely she is very badly disabled. They will never have another child of their own. So again I think that is worse than me. But most other people I know seem some how to be better off. They may have had a still born baby but they've gone on to have other living children. But what's the point of this? Why do I go through all this in my head again and again? Of course, it has to do with the question of entitlement. How much grief am I really entitled to? When do I stop all this and start counting my blessing (oh how I hate that expression)? When I think it through I know quite well that the words 'grief' and 'entitlement' should never appear in the same sentence. You feel what you feel and that's that. But still the game goes on. Some times I tell people about what's happened to me and I see the look of absolute shock on their faces. And some how I know then how bad it is. Most of the time I don't really know. Whatever happens to you becomes normal after a while just because it is what is happening to you.

Hamster

2008-03-19T08:45:00.001-07:00

At school they asked my five year old son Thomas to draw his family tree. He bought his work home to show me. At the top of the family tree I can see my husband and me. Don't you love those five year old drawings - huge hands, triangle skirts, corrugated hair? On the line underneath Thomas has drawn a picture of himself. To one side there is a tiny person who he has drawn in a box. He tells me that this is his sister Laura. I'm very glad that he's drawn her there. To me this suggests that he's coping well with his loss. I've never wanted Laura to be a dark secret and it's clear that he doesn't see her as that. But then there's another image on the family tree, on the line next to the picture of Thomas. There's a circle with spokes and something small and round inside the circle. This, Thomas explains to me, is his hamster. He's been promised a hamster when he moves back to England and so optimistically he's decided to draw the hamster now. Other children, of course, have a brother or sister to draw. I'm glad he's drawn the hamster. Actually, I'm looking forward to the hamster as well. They make such amazing cages for hamsters now with hundreds of wheels and tubes and compartments. Whole hamster worlds. Yes, the hamster will be fun. But a hamster is only a hamster. It's not the same as a baby.

Laura

2008-03-10T15:01:00.000-07:00

I know what Laura looks like. I can envisage her exactly. She's a tiny child, just like her older brother Thomas. When I see her she's running in a garden. It's winter in that garden and Laura is wearing a fitted navy blue woollen coat with a rounded velvet collar. Her hair is white-blonde and falls to her shoulders. She wears a navy blue beret on her head. She's running fast, one arm stretched forward and one leg raised. She's got thin legs and she wears woollen tights which wrinkle at the ankles. She's running so fast that the toe of that stretched-forward foot is pulled back towards her shin. Both of her feet are above the ground as she speeds forward. My image of her is blurred because of the speed at which she moves. Her face is serious - concentrating on what she is doing. She's in the garden at Mount Vernon but I don't know exactly where. Behind her there a flower bed with rose bushes in it. My feeling is that she's running on the front lawn of Mount Vernon but that can't be right because the bank there is too steep for any child to run. But she's definitely somewhere in that garden. Other children will grow up and they will change. Probably they will disappoint. Laura will never grow up. She'll be running in that garden forever. Even when I'm eighty she'll still be running in front of the rose bushes in her navy blue beret.

Lepers

2008-03-03T06:48:00.000-08:00

My husband and I have become like lepers. People move away when they see us. They try to edge us out of the door, or they try to move us on to some other place. It happened at the hospital this morning. The doctor we saw was more helpful than most of his kind but he could smell failure and pain on us. And so he talked to us for a while and then slipped away, without really concluding our meeting. He passed us on to a nurse who briskly filled out forms. She, also, wanted to be somewhere else.
It used to make me angry that people treat us like that. It still does - sometimes. But in truth how can I blame these people? If I could walk away, I would do. My husband and I have been longing to walk away from our own lives for three years now. But unfortunately we are inside our skins, inside our heads, and there is no way out. We live inside such a small room and it has no door.
Friends look at us and I can see it written on their faces, 'Thank God it wasn't us.' I'm glad as well that it wasn't them. I don't see why it should have to be anyone. But somebody's card was marked and it turns out it was ours. Somewhere - perhaps round a corner, over the brow of the hill, beyond the end of the road - there is another life which we could be having. But we cannot find our way to that other place. I doubt now that we ever will.