Archive for May 2010
Dartmoor Holiday
31st May 2010
Last week the six of us took a week away in our absolute favourite place in the entire world – Dartmoor, the place where Max spent the early part of his childhood. We rented an absolutely gorgeous 2 bed cottage on a farm, with a lovely garden that the children tented in. Lower Hookner was owned by Max’s Gran in the years before he was born and he also remembers playing there as a child; the current owners remember him too and even recognised Maddy as being the most like him as a child 
If you fancy a quiet place to visit Dartmoor from, i really recommend the farm – both the little cottage and the main one are beautiful and staying there is a complete pleasure. The girls adored the ducks, the horses, the lamb, the dogs (oh my, the dogs!) and the people. Josie now wants to own a farm.
We had an absolutely wonderful week – the weather smiled on us, as it normally does when we go there, we were made incredibly welcome by the owners and we had a chance to do some of the regrouping that we desperately needed. Along with that, we had some lovely days out and spent some time with Max’s brother and family and also popped in to see Sarah.
Before we left, we had to take Amelie to a gym competition; she was cross because she screwed up her vault (even worse than normal) and so got a second place of 2 in her level (not much of a competition!) overall – but her floor was lovely. Hopefully it will concentrate her mind on having to work harder at vault!
On Sunday we had a day with cousins at Castle Drogo.
It was also Fran’s birthday – she’s now 12 – so presents happened in the morning and little treats through the day.
Lots of duck watching in the evening…
I did slightly break my heart over the white duck (it had to be the white one) who having finally been adopted somewhere she was allowed to hatch eggs, only managed to hatch one, who was not viable and didn’t live. Felt a little close to home really.
Monday we spent down by the river, mainly naming rocks, so far as i can remember and shopping for warm weather clothes and food.
That evening we tried a walk to the moor but ended up by another river instead.
Tuesday, we might not have done much.
The girls were loving the dogs, doing jigsaws and playing games. Josie fell completely in love with all the dogs and spent most of the week hung round their necks in total worship mode. We all enjoyed watching one of them herding ducklings in the evening.
Wednesday we took a long walk from Bellever Forest to Laughter Hole House – i’m deleting the picture of me from the walk!
Stopping off at Postbridge for ice cream and a paddle.
I don’t want this post to be about Freddie really but there were parts of it which i felt very keenly, either the loss of him, or the presence of him. It’s something to write about another day but a couple of moments stood out. One was the ice cream man – he commented, as people do because with 4 girls we are a noticeable family, on our 4 girls and said he had 5 boys. He asked if we’d be adding to the brood yet. And we said nothing. We all said nothing, Max (i think) stilling the temptation to do so (and what could it possibly achieve?) and the girls looking at us for a lead or to see whether we (i?) were upset. I bit my tongue and betrayed my baby boy. But what else can you do? For the rest of my life i’m going to have to decide on a case by case basis how many children i have.
It hurts. It hurts terribly. It hurts more than people who ask me if perhaps i ‘can’t carry boys, do you think?’ or ‘you are coping so well’ or (the killer) ‘you just have to be grateful for the others you do have’. It hurts every time i have to say 4 not 5, to save the feelings of someone else. And to not turn into a mad woman people step away from. I keep wondering how people think it might help me to wonder if my body broke him because he was a boy, or what choice i have but to cope, or which child was supposed to be disposable. And i know people say those things meaning well and i appreciate the care, i really do, but this child loss thing is just death by a thousand invisible knives, none of them obvious.
But mostly it just hurts to deny him, like he never existed.
But still.
Wednesday we popped to Exeter to recharge the air-con (thereby breaking the weather and annoyingly it must be leaking as it only lasted an hour!) and then to Teignmouth for boat watching and tea.
The next day we did a round of family graves down there, something which sounds odd but which we all find curiously peaceful and comforting. By Gran’s grave there is a child buried in th same year she died – last time we went, it had hama bead shapes hung on it and so the girls went to look at it. And saw the name of that little child – Frederick James – which would have been Freddie’s name had he lived long enough to ever be registered with a long name. I think we were all a little taken aback.
More ice cream. And a trip to the top of Kestor where i think i began to feel that i was going to be able to find some peace about Freddie in something tangible that i love about Dartmoor. We also found our letterbox (old fashioned version of geocache for the uninitiated!) which has been up there 3 years and is nearly full of comments
After that we went on again and, because it was unfortunately part of what we needed to do that week, looked at the place we want Freddie to be buried. We found a nice spot, open to the moor and with some other babies, near the playground.
Friday included a trip to visit friends on their farm – Fran was particularly delighted with some (*choke*) bareback pony riding. Lovely gossip (thank you so much for the ear) and much fun. In the morning we did a fairly hefty hike up Easdon, right to the trig point and also walked to the farm Max lived in, which i’d never seen before.
Then it was time to pack up and go home, stopping for a last night in Exeter on the way back. It was a lovely week, just what we needed.
(Yes, that is Josie, out on her own, playing with a Border Collie. Really. No… REALLY!)
Frost and Earthquakes
21st May 2010
7 weeks. Really? Only 7?
I can hardly believe there was ever a part of our life that didn’t have Freddie as part of it. I was going to say in it, but that isn’t true. He’s not been in it for so much more time than he was. Already. That isn’t true either of course because there was a whole (long enough for the novelty to wear off) conception process and 9 months of us all learning to love a bump with promise of joy in it. We invested a whole marriage, a whole recovery, a whole future for a family in a baby. He was the culmination of so much fixing that we had worked hard on; not a baby to fix things but a baby to celebrate that we had fixed things. A baby to celebrate the beautiful foundations of a new emotional house we’d thought we’d built for ourselves and our family. And then he died and we had no choice but to test whether we’d poured cement in the cracks of the old house, which might get damaged by a hard frost, or built ourselves a new house with solid foundations that not even an earthquake would shatter.
I think it is the latter. I’m fairly sure it is. We started testing for earthquake damage even before he died, in an awful, dreadful night where the reality of what was happening hit us both in 2 very different ways. I realised that the best thing for all of us might not be for Freddie to make it home, the best thing for the six of us and the one of him. And Max realised that he had to tell me, brutally and bluntly, that he couldn’t manage it if i came apart at the seams and blamed myself for everything that was going wrong. I put charges in the fault lines and brought on the earthquake, he engineered some frost and showed me where the lines in the old house were that might shatter if we didn’t make sure we moved on.
Yesterday someone gave me a photo of one of us taken just after that conversation, one of us holding Freddie, cradling him and loving him, with more pain and hope mingled with a desperate joy that was still lingering written on the face than i’ve ever seen anywhere. That was after we promised each other, practically in blood, that we would get through. It was a sobering moment. Probably the toughest moment of the entire 11 days.
We both made a conscious acknowledgement that we were living on the new foundations, not the old. The new house is good. It is strong. It is the product of talking and acknowledging and being open. It is knowing when to speak and when not to. Knowing that unspoken words that need to be said grow into elephants in the room if you don’t make them heard but words which don’t need to be said, even if you want to, need to be said elsewhere and to someone they won’t hurt. That it is pointless to stew and rant inside yourself but that words to wound, just because you are hurting, help nothing.
We’re making time to speak to each other. We’re communicating to our children that we need that time. I’m making the time, Max is making us have the conversations. I organise the childcare, he says “we need to discuss this…” and we do it. I’ve learned not to resent his need to move on and not look back. He’s learned to put out his hand and pull me very gently along behind him, stopping to hold me close when i need it. It’s amazing how hard you have to work at not resenting people just being people, difference being different but okay. It is amazing how long it took us both to learn it. Perhaps other people learn it quicker, perhaps we both came to each other from places we hadn’t seen it ever happen.
I don’t think we could be managing this if we hadn’t gone through what we did before. That we wouldn’t be here now without that is an irrelevance i can overlook.
I don’t think i can draw many beautiful positives from the all too short life and death of Freddie, but i can draw this. We have a truly grown up marriage. We’ve learned from our mistakes. We’re not the original couple; we’re something much better.
I imagine, in honour of the sentiment of the post, we’ll probably manage to have a bitter and screaming row later on. But i no longer fear that we won’t know how to make it up afterwards.
Posted in Freddie, Thinking, Uncategorized | 
Tags: baby loss, child loss, grief, life after loss, losing a child, neonatal death | 
11 Comments »
Words
18th May 2010
Every picture tells a story?
A picture paints a thousand words?
Words don’t mean anything?
The problem with reality, even in the finger tips of a five year old spelling out the names of her family members, is it doesn’t always equal actual fact. And which is fact, 6… or 7?
Posted in Freddie, Josie, Thinking, Uncategorized | Tags: baby loss, child loss, grief, life after loss, losing a child, neonatal death | Comments Closed
The sun always rises.
15th May 2010
There is some form of normality around, although too much of it is over laid by things which just aren’t normal and right now, if i’m honest, don’t feel like they ever will be. Reading this post on glow this week pretty much summed it up. The ripples really are everywhere.
(Breaks to watch Dr Who, adds it to the list of things like every song on the radio etc etc that screams DEAD BABY! to the entire family.)
The girls are making a sterling effort to get back to their work and are all doing well enough. Neither Max nor i can concentrate on anything for very long at all, not even full days at work (which we are lucky to be able to accommodate) so we don’t expect them too. I don’t think they’d be as generally whole as they are if they were trying to manage through days at school – i assume not anyway as i sure as hell can’t make it through more than about 3 hours of even being out of the house.
This week we’ve aimed to have everyone do 3-5 bits of sensible, easy, familiar work and some music practise each day. Nothing too taxing, nothing that involves mess or coordinated effort, just time spent exercising brains in a way that feels normal. Once again i’m glad (if disappointed in my lack of originality) at our ‘normals’ – they are at least easy to get back to. Max did an afternoon of ‘telly maths’ with them and we’ve had afternoons of friends, crafts, exercise and so on.
We had play dates with Poppy and Skye and also with Big, Small and Soa. I nearly pulled my heart out watching Josie relate to a baby but aside from thinking “dammit, i really DID want another baby”, that was okay for me and it was lovely to talk to Jax. We all enjoyed their company. Fran went off with Auntie Michelle and did mucking out and then got to ride her (extremely beautiful) dressage horse which she was very delighted about. She came home with pony magazines and costs of horse ownership 
We had lunch with Little Flower and i went to work for an afternoon. We had a gym lesson another day and divided ourselves up to give Josie some time with just one adult for a while.
Thursday Amelie found out she was going to get a trial with the A Squad at gym; she did her first session today and has 4 weeks to prove herself there. She looked pretty at home there but she’ll have to adapt to a new coach and a different type of training. She is teetering between absolutely over the moon, as A Squad was absolutely her target, and rather gutted at the thought of moving away from her beloved coach and a group of friends she was beginning to be very comfortable in. For what it’s worth, i think she needs the challenge of not always bubbling straight to the top of the pot and really having to battle for being one of the most able ones will be good for her. Fran has been very brave about it but i know that really she is gutted that it isn’t likely to be an opportunity she wins herself without a minor miracle. I’m very much looking forward to being a gym on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays (3 times!), Thursdays and Saturdays. (Groan.)
In keeping with a lot of my life just now, i can’t actually remember much else. Maddy and Josie have been busy being creative and doing lots of reading and word practise and are a pleasure to be with as usual. Maddy was giving a little award for good TKD work a couple of weeks ago and that really fired her enthusiasm. I watched her the other night and she works so hard there and does very well. She has pushed me to the edge of getting really worried about her spelling and, once i started worrying, sees to be doing better. She’s quite stressed right now but seems to have some confidence breakthroughs, not least in explaining her worries to us (which helps) and facing some. This week she got brave enough to start taking her hamster out of its cage herself – a big achievement. She made me laugh lots with her musical performance with Small and sigh at her dance – she dances so nicely, it is such a shame she gave up classes. And she joined in the gym lesson this week.
Today we had a day that required a TARDIS, with children all over town all day – we had start and end times at different places for different children of 8.30, 10, 10.30, 11.30, 12.30, 1.30 and 2.15 – it became faintly ridiculous! Fran helped coach all morning and then got to do a school display of tumbling with the A Squad in the afternoon – they all rehearsed better than they performed but she really enjoyed the experience.
And me? Us? Max has been rather down all the second part of the week and i seem to have had some different version of grief – more like the effect of a shock wave than a fire bomb. I just have not stopped crying. Not even crying, more just silent dripping. I can’t listen to a song without crying, all tv has funerals, death, cremation, there are babies everywhere, there is other stuff to worry about. I have literally sobbed in every single spare moment when someone hasn’t been looking at me. I cannot believe what has happened. The children dream that Freddie comes home and tell me how much it hurts when they wake up and he isn’t here. I just dream, over and over again, of the moment when i realised he was going to die. I dream of the moment when i suddenly realise he was looking frail. I dream that i can’t protect any of them. I sob when i hear anything that beeps like the SCBU monitors do. I have not stopped, not stopped at all. I fell asleep this afternoon and dreamed i was dying of cancer and when i woke up, instead of being relieved it wasn’t true, i was just hit with the reality that we have, or don’t have, a dead baby. I can’t make it add up to something that makes sense.
I wish i knew what to do. The unbelievable actual fact is that we are always, ALWAYS going to have a dead baby Freddie. The name Freddie is always going to make me sad. Beeps will always make me sad. Some songs will always remind me of him. All of us are always, ALWAYS going to wonder if what has just caught and snagged at our grief has saddened one of the others too. My girls will grow up and face motherhood knowing some babies really do die. REALLY do, not just in an alternate reality that happens to others. And if that can happen, what else can happen? Trite phrases don’t help – i know it will feel less raw in time but that doesn’t take away the always-ness of it. 9 months growing a baby who i don’t have. A tiny person who i – but also we – got to know and then didn’t get to keep.
Talking to Jax yesterday i felt i had put my finger on another hole, one i hadn’t quite seen coming until then. When you know you are having a baby, you expand the love you have and find you have more to fit the needs of the new person coming along. You don’t divide the love you had for 4 into 5, you simply produce a 5th element of love from a place that appears like another dimension from within you. But if that 5th child doesn’t stay, the love doesn’t dissolve away like the breast milk does. It stays. There is all this love and nowhere to put it, nothing to give it to. I can’t redivide it up and give it to the girls, because it is love that belongs to Freddie. Only he doesn’t need it and there aren’t enough memories to feed it, so it is eating away at me like a hungry and lost little soul. The photos don’t feed it, wallowing in sad songs doesn’t feed it. I sat for days beside his little cot thinking we were missing our first days together, even when i also knew in my heart that he wouldn’t survive, and i couldn’t make enough memories or pour away that love away. It just grew and grew and now it won’t go.
I really, really… really… want our little boy.
Posted in Amelie, Fran, Freddie, Gymnastics, Thinking, Uncategorized | Tags: baby loss, child loss, grief, life after loss, losing a child, neonatal death | 27 Comments »
Blue
13th May 2010
It’s been a month. A month since I held our baby boy in my arms and watched him breathe slower and slower until he stopped. A month since I watched his little fingers turn the wrong colour, covered them with a blanket as if to stop him being cold and didn’t call for help. A month since I asked for water so I could wash his cheeks so he died with a clean face. A month since we decided to let him show us if he wanted to be alive. I know I’m all for following the lead of a child, but my god that was a big lead to follow.
A month since I saw the bridge of his nose turn dusky and then more so and then white. A month since we became people who had watched a child die, let a child die, held a dead child, kissed a dead child. A month since I put him down on the bed, said I was sorry to him and let someone take him away. A month since I did all those things and never once thought to ask Max if he wanted to hold him too. A month since I realised I had to let him go because when I moved him slightly there was a noise from his lungs that I didn’t want to hear. A month since I put my fingers on his wrist, on my child’s wrist who I had watched like a hawk and prayed would be a miracle, and didn’t feel a pulse. A month since I watched a doctor listen for his heartbeat and hoped, bizarrely, that i wasn’t wrong and he wasn’t somehow holding on in there.
None of those things seem to fit with my idea of who I am. I keep reminding myself that I’ve done those things, that we’ve done those things and I can’t work out why I haven’t changed more. I feel I should have changed more. I feel I should have rent my clothes and poured ash on my head and hurled myself into a state of not eating or drinking or sleeping. I feel I should have my hand on my brow and be wailing and raging and crashing.
It’s more akin to… “Oh. Well. Gosh. Oh.”
Not an offhand “oh” – more a slightly stunned ‘what the hell has happened, how can everything still be the same and be so utterly and completely different?’ Sort of “oh” in the kind of voice you might use if someone had told you that you didn’t get the job you wanted but never mind, it just wasn’t meant to be and you were under qualified anyway. But actually, since you asked, we’re making you redundant.
“Oh. Right. What now then?”
A month since we came home and told our children he had died. A month since we went, without ever really saying it aloud that we had become so, from 5 children to 4.
And here I am, still really quite the same. Not particularly altered. Not particularly more or less compassionate, not more alive, not less alive, not a better or worse mother. Perhaps it hasn’t sunk in yet. Perhaps it sunk in months ago and that’s why it isn’t a shock.
The thing I mind most is that I knitted him a blanket and it will never be the loved blanket of a little boy who sleeps under it night after night. I feel almost cross about that.
Perhaps that’s because it was the only thing I had done to get ready for him.
Posted in Freddie, Uncategorized | Tags: baby loss, child loss, grief, life after loss, losing a child, neonatal death | 23 Comments »
Amelie is 8
10th May 2010
Happy Birthday (on the 8th) lovely girl
I’ve been thinking of words to describe you – vivacious, audacious, outrageous, exceptional, intelligent, competitive, focused, perceptive, delicate, dreadful, adorable.
You’ve been spectacular since the minute you were born. These last few weeks, yet again, you’ve awed me with your intuitive ability to understand, to comfort, to express yourself. If children are fixed in personality by the time they are 7, i’m glad you are fixed as you are. (Although your table manners leave something to be desired!)
You were a pleasure to give a birthday to this year, even more than normal. Thank you to the Barts and Beans for the impromptu party we cooked up – bowling was lots of fun.
We love you Amelie.
Boxes & Beginnings
9th May 2010
Today has been a difficult day. Every day is difficult at the moment, mostly because of Freddie and then other stuff which is lying on top of that, or underneath, but which isn’t mine to blog about. I think it is fair to say that life feels a bit surreal at the moment. There is enough whizzing around that sometimes i hardly think of him at all and then life tumbles down at breakneck speed when i suddenly remember the brutal truth that we six are missing a son and a brother.
Yesterday was a birthday – should have been the first birthday party he attended but instead was the first one where we didn’t have him. The first time when i thought “he won’t ever have birthdays, he’ll always be a baby.” 
I don’t suppose i was the only one thinking it. We cleared the cards off the windowsill that piled in to comfort us and replaced them with birthday cards. It was odd. But it was a fresh start and time to make that so. We’d agreed that we’d always add a sixth present to the pile and make that a gift from Freddie but i admit to going cold at the last second and so a certain little girl was lucky and ended up with extra presents to hide the sixth one in among. Lucky we own a toy shop 
There isn’t a manual for this any more than there is a manual for any of the rest of being a parent; we’re just doing our best, trying to second guess ahead of time what the effect of any one word or decision might be on the girls. Just trying to get it right. Mostly we seem to be succeeding.
Today felt like a day for taking control of the house, which has been slowly disappearing under the detritus of stuff that collected while we were in hospital, or from when i was pregnant. I’ve not been able to face it as i knew it was going to be laced with baby things – for someone who bought almost nothing, didn’t set up a cot, didn’t get out baby clothes or make a place for a baby in the house, there sure was a lot of baby stuff Max did his best to waft as much of it away without me seeing but even then i fell apart on a regular basis at bits of stuff left from hospital notes, catalogues that came through the post that i put in a pile to read while breastfeeding, knitting, baby name books and worst of all, a little crocodile dressing gown and a blue baby duvet cover that i’d tucked away thinking they’d suit a baby boy nicely.
Then there was the ACTUAL stuff that Freddie himself ended up creating. The hospital made a memory box for him during his life, full of little medical odds and sods. I guess they usually end up being things to show a child or siblings about the happy ending hospital stay. All we’ve got, more or less, are arm splints and face masks and oxygen tubes. It is surprising how comforting they are – but it didn’t need to be on my window ledge any more. So i packed up the 2 congratulations you had a baby cards that we got and the 100 or so sympathy cards, the mothers day card Max gave me from him and 4+1 and the photos i’ve not found a suitably short photo album for yet, the 2 outfits i bought and the cute jumper that was knitted and the babygro that was sent when things seemed like there might be a happy ending. And the toys the hospital and an aunt gave him, the footprints, the lock of hair, the ends of each ball of wool from the blanket i knitted, the 4D scan dvd, the cd of music from the funeral, the name book, scan photos, a pregnancy test, his birth and death certificate. There are 3 boxes on the shelf in my wardrobe now that contain nearly all that is left of Freddie; i’m not thinking about the other one that Max has hidden where i can’t see. While i was at it, i made a tiny, weeny memory box for that other baby. It felt right to put them away together.
Max put away the clothes and the nappies and the blankets that we pulled out in the last couple of days before he came and we discussed plans to turn the room that would have been his bedroom into a snug. That was hard. I cried.
I haven’t put away the blanket i knitted. We only used it in those last 12 hours or so of his life, although i cuddled it and slept under it every night i was in hospital. I thought about leaving him wrapped in it afterwards but in the end we left him with one all his sisters used and i brought the blue one home with me. Who would have thought that all that time i was knitting myself a comfort blanket, not him? And as it happens, made of heavy wool and rather bigger than i initially planned, i can roll it up into a size and shape that is just about enough like a newborn that it is comforting to cuddle when my arms feel the emptiest.
Tonight, i went out on a bike ride – i wasn’t expecting to be able to do that for a while but either it would be better to lose some baby/Merry flab in case we do decide to have another or getting fit will help me feel better. And if not, it is better to get on and do those first things that i didn’t think i’d have time for this summer as quickly as possible. I didn’t go far, only 2.5 miles and i didn’t risk the lakes with people pushing prams so i stayed around the local business park – but it is a start.
And tonight i started knitting. Josie asked for a Freddie Blanket for Baby Stella before he was born and i said i would – i’ve got a feeling she needs it and she’s been very patient. I was worried that knitting again would remind me of how much i enjoyed making the blanket for him while i was pregnant but in the end i’ve decided that i’m better off knitting and thinking of him. As someone i know says, stitches equal love.
Posted in Freddie, Knitting & Sewing, Thinking, Uncategorized | Tags: baby loss, child loss, grief, knitting, life after loss, losing a child, neonatal death | 12 Comments »
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