Things come in runs. On Tuesday, a gym mum asked me how it was going having a boy after all those girls and then today at TKD someone asked me “what did you have?” It’s beyond me to say “a boy” and not tell them he died – and not possible anyway really as the conversations would naturally go on and then, you know, at what point do you say “no, he’s not crawling yet, he’s dead!” Besides, the gym mums at any rate are a close knit bunch and it’s just as easy to have the awkward moment sooner rather than later. Telling people “I had a boy, but he died. But his name was Freddie and he was lovely” doesn’t get any easier. Funny though, people never ask to see a photo, unlike when you have an alive baby that you left at home. I’d love to be asked to show people his photo. I offered once, but the person said “oh no, it would be too upsetting.” He was lovely. I wish I could show him off. I’d like to.

We’ve had an okay week. The diary idea seems to be working just fine; Bank Holiday muddled past but on Tuesday we did lots, including getting on with some GP French, which pleased them all. It’s taking a little time to drop back into things but it was bound to anyway, and Fran is definitely seeming to be motivated by it. She’s done some good science work, got on with history and I’m really impressed with how much her written work is coming on. Today she spent ages translating Latin, having had home work set by Katy and I hardly had to help at all. Whether she’s got it right or not, the effort is lovely to watch.

The others are very happily working away at gradually increasing amounts of stuff; I’m working Maddy and Amelie together on GP books so as to minimise the ffort but they’ve both enjoyed maths and Mathletics and been very busy. The afternoons all last week and this week have been free for playing and art.

We did Latinetc on Wednesday, although it was more Latin/French/Art and me trying not to burn pasta

Today I knew we needed some time outside (what’s the point of HE if you can’t enjoy the sun?) so after we’d done some work and eaten an early lunch, I took them to Sacrewell Farm – the intention had been Burghley, but I forgot horse trials were on so we diverted. (That’s the short version, the long version involves a traffic jam, an ‘adventure back road’ and some swearing!) We still had a really nice time, although they are too old for the farm now I think. There was a sheep race to watch and pond dipping and they explored the water mill and played. Fran and I talked lots about the Second World War as she’s been reading “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”.

I do so love them.

Dear Freddie,

Today you should be 5 months old. For the first time, I hardly know what to write to you. I’ve thought a lot about how this time 5 months ago we were so close and yet already so far apart. It was already too late. I think it was too late from our first moments together. I think I always knew that you wouldn’t be with me. I can’t think how I would have known that unless somehow you told me. I just know that it was true.

I keep thinking that I carried you, never knowing all I was doing was protecting and caring for a baby I would never be able to enjoy; that while I laboured, your daddy got gradually more confident that his great fear, that something was going to happen to me, was not going to come true. That he must have watched me getting close to delivering you and known that soon it was all be over and that everything we wanted, one more baby, a boy, a delivery I’d look back on with joy and most of all you, was nearly here.

And how he held me tight as it started to go wrong, as you refused to breathe, as the room filled with people and I said, the first words you’d hear -  “He’s going to die.”

I keep thinking how I begged for you, how much I needed you – asking all the time, without knowing, for a baby who would die in my arms. I keep thinking that you gave me everything, a beautiful birth that I should be able to look back on with pride but that everything, all the important and unimportant, got taken away in the same moment.

What matters has changed so much in these few months. The raw desperate need from early on has gone, the memories I crave have not come back – I’m beginning to accept they won’t. I can’t feel you and I can’t make you come back. I’m okay – I’m upright and functioning – and sometimes I hate myself for that. I want to be sat still, unable to move for the pain of losing you – but I’m not. You’ve left a huge hole and nothing at all. Without me noticing you’ve become something complete; not unfinished, not half begun. A little boy who was born and who died.

You’ve settled in my soul; a bad time I cannot make light of, but one which I have to carry as part of me. A little boy I search for in the faces of your daddy as a child in photos and in the faces of your sisters. My little boy, one I cannot replace, one I wanted so very badly indeed. Someone I will miss to the end of time but who I can never know. When I look back on the records of Josie through her first months, I have to think both “Freddie should be doing this now” and also that “Freddie might never have been that able.” I don’t know what went wrong, I only know that you told me, somehow, that all was not well.

I hold your blanket every night. I hold it in my arms and pretend it is you. Sometimes daddy lies with his arms round me and I pretend we are both cuddling you. It’s a pretend that makes the nights nearly bearable. I have the one memory, my first cuddle with you, where you tried to open your eyes and look at me – and I hold on to that feeling, perhaps the best moment of my life because it was bought with such a cost. The best moment and the very worst moment, all rolled into one. I think it was the only moment in your life I had real hope for you and 2 hours later, all hope seemed to have gone.

I want you to know that we are carrying on because we have to, because I can’t see how sitting still and grieving for the rest of my life will honour you in any way. Whatever happens next is because of you, because I love you, because I’m trying really hard to be the mummy that would have made you proud. You are the spark.

I think perhaps people underestimate the effect the last few months have had on the girls, perhaps because on the face of it, they appear to be doing so well. Although this is a blog about family, I’ve avoided talking so much about them because it seems a private thing, but sometimes I worry they’ll read this when I’m gone and they’ll wonder if I just didn’t care, or if I was so wrapped up in my grief that I wasn’t watching.

The children are different to me, their process is more like Max’s, a more linear one, which started at a point of disbelief and hurt and is gradually moving through the phases of understanding and coming to terms with it. It is a process familiar to Max, because he experienced a terrible, immediate family loss when he was 10, losing his mother when he was just the age Maddy is. I knew lots about his experience and how he reacted and he knew exactly how the children needed to be included in the process of Freddie’s life and death in order to allow them to absorb the impact. Not lessen the impact, that isn’t possible – our aim was more to ensure that when the tidal wave hit they were not washed away, so we tried to warn them, wrap them in sturdy clothes and tie them to a railing, hoping to goodness that the railings wouldn’t be entirely submerged.

I think that we can take full credit for how they’ve coped; if I’m honest, I think Max and I did brilliantly in the immediate days afterwards and much of their strength and general state of repair comes from that. I’d started a book just before I had Freddie where 2 out of 4 siblings die (ironic, no?) and in it, the parents disappear for a week, leaving the survivors in limbo. We tried to make sure that their world knew what had happened in advance, so that people were kind and supportive, we tried to carry on as normal, we tried to be there when they cried and answer questions and reassure them that life would go on. We acknowledged the plaintive and pain-filled whispers of “it’s not fair” and we let them see us cry and that we were sad but that we could also recover each time we crumpled too.

It seems a long time since that moment now; we came home and opened the door and Fran appeared at the top of the stairs and ran to me. “Has he died?” she asked and I said yes, carrying her up the stairs to my bed. I can’t believe I managed that, 11 days after giving birth. I don’t remember how Max got up the stairs or how the rest of us got to the room. I don’t remember what we said, only that the 6 of us left huddled on the bed together and did… something. I have no idea what.

I don’t remember what we did that day. I know it was the last time I saw my dad.

The girls are doing as the are doing largely because we’ve tried to preserve a sense of calm in their life. That’s what I think. Maddy thinks she isn’t sad enough, measures her grief by how much she cried for Smartie the rabbit. We try to tell her that it is okay, that no one thinks she doesn’t care, that she wanted Freddie very badly and that some people just shut off from that sort of hurt. We tell her she’s a practical girl and that no one wants her to spoil her life because of Freddie. But I worry about her, because she has been powerfully undermined by this; her foundations are rocked and she panics at even the slightest change in tone from us now. I talked on the phone the other night, while in the bath and apparently she cried for 20 minutes with fear that it must be something bad. I have no idea how to help her overcome that.

Josie has gone from a clingy baby child to a self-possessed and insular one, but is almost more likeable for it. She takes Freddie’s monkey everywhere with her, cannot countenance sleeping without it and plays careful games about hospitals and sick babies. She’s gradually moving on to games where she nurtures and mothers baby boys. She’s mostly utterly shut about Freddie though, will not acknowledge him as her brother, is firm that she is still the youngest and if, as happened recently, I refer to something being true for all 5 of my babies, she interjects with “four!” very quickly. I don’t think you can underestimate the impact that losing him has had on her. She was so little to experience just a thing.

Fran is different; I don’t know where her hurt is exactly, I think it has cut somewhere deep in her. She links Freddie and the loss of my dad into one thing and I think more than anything she she is bewildered that the universe could be so cruel to her. She says she feels “disappointed” and I think that although she refers to my dad with that, she means both. I think the universe and all its ups and downs got laid bare in one fell swoop. Life does not always work out kindly. She seems okay but she’s watching me all the time and you can see the strain on her. She needs to know how I am, what’s going to happen next, will we be okay, can I stop more bad things happening. I see it written in her face. She knows I can’t. She had to grow up in one horrible day and she’s too old not to feel the ripples. She knows people are hurting, she knows people can’t fix it and she’s sliding between the need to try and the need to ignore it, manifesting itself in desperately trying to achieve at all the things she loves to do and locking herself away in imaginary games at home. She’s never played like that – that’s how I know it is her process for coping.

Amelie is Amelie. Grief is writ large on her; every fibre of her being has “Freddie Died” written through it like strands of seaside rock. mercurial at best, she plunges and soars like the English weather right now; being hurt reminds her of that hurt. Every time she is sad, she remembers she has reason to be sad and you can almost see the thought rise to the surface before it bursts from her in painful sobs “I want Freddie….” She’s small and she’s angry and she’s hurting and the world is not a place where her mummy and daddy can control what happens.

I wonder if they think I’m sad enough? Do they worry the world would carry on the same without one of them? Would we be largely normal, still go to gym, still eat meals without one of them? If the space where Freddie’s highchair should be, even though it never was, can seem so huge, how large would their empty chair be at dinner? I see the thoughts shadow across the faces of the older ones often, sad and relieved they choose not to speak them.

I’ve turned into the mother from hell to some of the people in their life, I know. I want to keep their world still and calm. I don’t want more let down or disappointment for them. They were expecting something lovely for all that time, were so patient, put up with the restrictions. It is as if someone cancelled Christmas but the implications are so much wider than that. The ripples go on forever. Even, as strong and whole as they are, the effects of this are with them daily, every day is still a day when they’ve done well. Knowing they are experiencing so much grief and loss and disappointment because of something I wanted, maybe because of two things I wanted, it makes it incredibly hard for me to watch when I see the other parts of their happy life in jeopardy. It’s hard to explain how much that changes me and turns me into a high maintenance mummy.

I feel like I’ve got them to the lifeboat, got the survivors safely inside, but the sea is rough and the weather is bad and there is nothing to bail out with. And we don’t have life jackets. It will only take one more thing to go wrong and they’ll be drowning. The difficulty is that the passage of time means that we’re expected to be “back to normal”.

There is no normal. We’ve got nowhere to go back to.

I’ve cycled 300 miles since I left hospital without Freddie. I cycle the same route most days: around 3 lakes, over bridges, through gates, under trees. I listen to stories and I breathe and I keep a steady pace.

Today I listened as Lyra and Will fell in love, found what it was to touch and hold the soul of another and learned what it is to live a life apart.

Mostly I look. I watch. I hunt for signs in rainbows and birds and the flicker of the sun on the water.

***

One day I walked down there with one of my neighbours; we’d smiled at each other a few times as she pushed the pram with the baby in it that was born less than 2 weeks after Freddie died. That day I spoke, thinking that as we had nodded to each other through our pregnancies and as she must have heard that we were baby-less, the onus was probably on me to speak first, to break the silence. I’d been so envious of her, but so glad that she at least had come home with arms that didn’t have to ache with loss.

I peeped in her pram and saw that, like us, the gods had chosen to make the birth of her first child not quite a simple as it could be. Like us, her first child had been born with something on her face that was going to cause people to look and ask and question. We talked; we shared the stories, I hope I had something positive to give – that we stood upright through that and that mostly all will be well.

I was transported back to those first days with Fran again, just as I was while we were still in hospital with Freddie. How I grieve for us then – we were so unready for that, so ill-equipped to cope with the shock and the fear it brought. Nothing has ever been quite so bad since, not even Freddie’s short life in many ways. We’ve grown so much and have so much strength between us, have got to grips with the reality that sometimes the unimaginable will happen.

I hope my neighbour’s been okay. I hope that, if it has been as hard for her as it was for me, something has at least spoken to her – “it’s bad, but it could have been worse.” I wish I could take away the dark and sad moments she may have had. I hope that knowing the tragedy playing out in our walls has given her an ability to see the edges and limits of things, edges I failed entirely to grasp back then.

****

Just after Freddie died I had a dream. He was in a car seat, the one Fran and Maddy used, little and frail and as pale as when he died and we were out at a circus. I knew there was something wrong, his neck seemed disjointed in some way and he could hardly breathe. I was with Fran too and I had to take her somewhere, she needed something or my attention in some critical way. I took her down a dark lane towards a doctors and realised as I got there that I had left Freddie behind in the car seat. I couldn’t get back to him and I knew it was too late – I’d left him behind and I wasn’t going to be forgiven for that. I had to choose and I chose to stay with Fran.

****

A few weeks ago I dreamt again. I thought Freddie was still in the hospital, that they’d forgotten to tell me he hadn’t died. I had to collect him and try to make up for the time we had lost. Freddie was with me, older and seeming to change quickly, grow up quickly. I checked and doubled checked; I was definitely awake and it was definitely real. I’d made a mistake. He was alive and growing and okay and perfectly normal and able. I kept checking that I was awake, that I wasn’t dreaming.

Then Max woke me up. The pain was unimaginable.

****

There’s a field full of horses near the bottom of a hill on my cycle route. As I rode along the other day, I saw a woman standing by the fence. There were tears pouring down her face and she was pointing with a finger, pointing at the field and counting. Counting. Counting. Counting.

Counting Magpies. One for sorrow. Two for joy. Three for a girl. Four for a boy.

I never go past a person looking sad without wondering if they’ve lost a child now. Without wondering if they have a secret pain that they’d tell me about in a moment if I only stopped. Because I want to tell everyone about Freddie. Keeping a stiff upper lip is one of the hardest things. Being “that women who lives at number x whose baby died” is hard too. The children in the street don’t call for my children any more. I guess they are afraid that all we do is cry and talk about dead babies.

I don’t want to be reduced to the slightly maddened, tear streaked reality of counting magpies.

****

Last night I dreamt I was folding nappies, ones I’ve never used, but in my dream I knew they had been in the bag of clothes that came to me from my friends but went straight to my nephew. In my dream, I knew Freddie was dead and that I was putting the nappies away forever.

***

Four years ago, I thought that all I had left was to try and live out the rest of my life, accepting that I’d sacrificed ever being whole again in the hope that things would be better for the other five of us. I felt like Frodo; I saved the Shire, but not for me. I cycled home tonight wondering how Will felt to find, and then accept not ever holding again, both his daemon and his first love. I wonder if Freddie came to be my daemon soul, to be the thing that I can’t ever hold but who makes me what I am.

I wish this had never happened to us. But since it has, we have to do with it what we can, with what we have left in us.

Tonight I’m sending my daemon to comfort the souls of the people I love who have been torn apart by grief. Thinking of you.

I appreciate this doesn’t really look like maths. Or science.

But it really was.

Fran was doing branching charts and identification in her Galore Park science today; she had to design one to work out which of 8 figures was being identified. It took her a while (logical isn’t her thing any more than it is mine) but with a few goes she got one good enough to work and Maddy tested it with her.

My children have been obsessed with my age old collection of My Little Ponies for the last few weeks and as I’ve forgotten the names of most of them recently, they’ve been using Dream Valley’s Identifier to work some of them out. Once fran had finished her work, we talked about how this was essentially the same as what she’d just been working on and then we had a ‘group idea’.

A big pile of ponies came down and the 4 of them took it in turns to choose one and be asked questions, like the Guess the Animal game we play in the car. They had to try and think of questions that would really narrow down the range and look at how wide the spread of varieties could really be to make it a useful tool. Everyone got very into it and tomorrow we’re going to try and devise our own version. Fran will have to put it on to Powerpoint as I don’t know how to use it

Well. We haven’t really done so much of either. But I quite liked it as a title

Yesterday we started our new HE regime… for however long it lasts. In an attempt to pull together some of what has worked in the past, add a little of what we enjoy and try some things that are new, we all mutually decided to do things a bit differently. One of the things i wanted to explore the most was the possibility of some work all together that would strength skills all round without appearing to have to take anyone over old ground too hard.

On recommendation from a friend, I’ve started doing a morning challenge from Peggy Kaye’s Games for Learning with all of them together. They like it, it is fun to do a group bit of work, they feed of one another and everyone can benefit on some level or other. I’ve bought the writing version too.

We’ve started using our diaries and trying to be a bit more structured in the mornings, knowing that leaves afternoons freer. I think it will take a little doing to get the balance right but hopefully it will come. So far they’ve been warmly received and kept people busy doing a reasonably varied selection of work. I think it will be a better way of sharing the HE load between max and I; despite many variations of trying, none of our kids seem happy if left to themselves, they just are not naturally totally autonomous. They do have times of being very self led and self motivated but the times in between don’t please any of us.

Josie was most put out that I had’nt filled hers in, thinknig that we’d be better using it as a record, not a plan, so she and i have been adding small tasks to hers. She’s really liked her “coloured word book” – tracing over words she’s chosen from her board and then repeating them back, sounding them out and spotting them.

Fran spent this morning writing about her gym week – it is an epic and I’m deeply impressed by a lot of aspects of it, from the length and improvement in her writing style, to the mature fashion she tried to handle the issues while she was there.

I think we’re all ready for some routine, I know I am. I can’t bear to look backwards and I can’t bear to look forwards – focusing on today is the only thing to do.

Other news is that, as I suspected, Amelie has been bumped back down a gym squad and is back in the same one as Fran, but in a new group, from Thursday. I can’t say I’m surprised as something was clearly going very wrong – and I can’t say I’m sorry. The running about will be less, the stress on her will be less and the worry for me will be less. She’s been a very sad little person for a few weeks, not just there but at home and once she started to ask not to go to gym, I knew there was something amiss. So being bumped back came approximately 4 minutes before I was about to ask to have her moved back and that’s fine. She was sad to start with but then rather sensibly said “no one is dead and it’s only a silly cartwheel” and has been a happier and far less screechy little soul today. I hope she’ll get another chance sometime, hopefully when she isn’t 8 with a recently dead brother, but we’ll see. She may not want to. It’s been a rather soul destroying experience for her, which is an awful shame because that was neither what was hoped or anticipated nor really anyone’s fault and certainly not what I expected, given how much I like it there; I guess what you want isn’t always what is right for you.

As for me – well, I had some blood test results which I suspect, unless they’ve been badly affected by remaining pregnancy hormones (which is possible), pretty much spell my baby making days as over. I might get lucky, but I suspect I may not. I think I’ve been praying that I’d get to snuggle another baby to take some of the pain of losing Freddie away but I’m not sure that is going to happen. From here on in, for the next 8 months, I think I’ll always be thinking “this time last year I was x months pregnant.” It is going to be hard. I never expected to find that I’d run out of what I needed to make it happen. I don’t quite know what to do really. I can chill out an hope things settle, but I have a bad feeling in me that perhaps they won’t. I’m going to have to try to get over this one without help. I didn’t expect to be so old at 36

I guess what you want isn’t always what is going to happen.

Art day again. Unfortunately I was having a basket case day, for a variety of small and imperceptible reasons, but luckily Zoe was on top form and carried us beautifully (thanks and sorry!)

Started off with Zoe talking to them about Picasso from various books and then they tried something Maddy did at the art group she went to last week, trying to draw a portrait with their eyes shut. We coloured them in afterwards in a disjointed fashion to mimic the “not real” aspect of Picasso.

I rather liked Maddy’s.

They also talked about acrostic poems and did one together on Picasso, then tried their own names too.

Once they’d got those done (I was a bit worried about Amelie, who made one of her e’s stand for Evil!) we got out a mass of origami papers of one sort or another that I’ve hoarded from the last time we tried some collages, using pictures from Picasso books as a starting points.

Josie finished first with her Charlie and Lola-esque living room. I must take another photo of it, I seem to have forgotten it.

We had lots of papers and books for inspiration and Zoe and I worked along side them, partly to encourage them and mostly because it looked fun.

Once we’d finished, we had some fun with Picnik to make a little more of what we’d done. In a random tangent, this proved quite interesting today as we’ve been talking about the Guides airbrushing campaign and how things look different with a touch up. It’s amazing the extent you can turn iphone pictures into works of art. Here are the ones we’ve done so far.

Amelie’s face.

Amelie’s Violinist.

Maddy’s Gloomy Period

Fran’s Clown.

Poppy’s Clown (half finished, her finished picture was amazing).

Zoe’s Portrait.

My thoughtful woman.

This was another good day; it inspired us a good bit, got them to engage in something that didn’t involve “being good” at art but really got them thinking about how to portray movement with shape, mood with colour and ideas with impressions.