"Edited to Add"....

This started as a pregnancy blog when I fell pregnant in May 2009 after four years of finding a donor, doing all the counselling / paperwork / tests and trying.

And now, thanks to a 4WD which skidded onto our side of the road, killing our baby daughter at 34w and injuring me, my partner and two of my stepdaughters on 27 December 2009, it has turned into something else. We didn't want this something else, but apparently it is all we've got to go on with.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Slow

I'm now 26w pregnant, and it is odd to be back in this visibly, publicly pregnant state - almost as big as I was when we lost Z.  And I'm just realising that, no, I didn't imagine it - my boobs really were this big last time, my belly really was this huge.  It's almost as though, when Z died, a part of me felt that because I hadn't managed to deliver a living baby, that my pregnant and post-partum body was somehow imagined - or worse, a kind of fakery, when really - there was no baby to show for it.  As though I wasn't entitled to have all this odd bodily paraphenalia of pregnancy.  As though her death cancelled out the whole pregnancy and turned all our plans and love for her into self-delusion.  Here I was, impersonating a mother.  Back when I started this job, I thought of myself as an injured person recovering from a car accident rather than a new mother of four months.  I was so focused on getting back on track so that we could get pregnant again -  grief was an energy-sucking distraction, an indulgence.  

I look back and I'm shocked at my own cruelty to myself.  It took me quite a while, but I've now properly claimed that title of mother to Z.  While it still breaks my heart that she's not here and whole, revealing her two-year-old self to us, I'm proud of her.  And I feel like I've learned a huge amount about being a mother because of her.  That I can survive the unimaginable, that I can feel that awful and still be me - even if it is a weepier, more fragile me.  That things can be completely, irretrievably broken, and mundane or miraculous at the same time.  I'm kind of stunned that I had this depth of love within me - to love a child who isn't even here, who gives us no tangible sign of  response, and yet who makes love spill out of me in such a way that I have to lavish it upon the stars, earth, sea and air in the hope that maybe some of it will hit one of her atoms.  She has, exactly as I feared, made me into a bit of a grief-struck crazy-lady, but in a much more whole and connected way than I ever imagined.  I even have some fondness for my crazy-lady habits, because that's how I know that I'm her mama - because I'm the woman who pauses on the street to stick my nose right into the heart of the rose, and inhales, whispering, l love you, my darling girl.   

We're at the point where we are beginning to plan for all the things we'll need if Adzuki arrives safely.   It feels ridiculously foolhardy to do these things - to accept gifts of second-hand baby baths, to go to a breastfeeding preparation class, to start moving furniture so we can fit a cot in our room.  A voice in my head constantly harps, Don't you know what happened last time?  What makes you think you'll be needing these things?  And the truth is, we don't know.  Nothing can guarantee that he will come home with us, living and breathing.  But I also know now that if all the awful things conspired and he didn't come home, I would still love him and he'd still be our son.  I won't kid myself that one grief fully prepares you for another, and I am still terrified of all the possibilities for things to go wrong.  But being able to sit with those possibilities also enables me to let in the good possibilities, and to appreciate that right now things are wide open, that for now I get to feel every kick and try to be awake to it - to experience the aspects of the pregnancy that are similar to my pregnancy to Z, and also those which are completely different.

El Prima and I are getting impatient now - mid May feels so far away.  And we know from Z that it could all happen much sooner than that.  I'm trying to hold onto the realisation I had while looking at the clouds the other day - that even when it looks like nothing is moving, if you give it proper attention, you'll see the slow shift of things changing moment by moment.

10 comments:

  1. you have a great way of putting your feelings into words,wish I had been able to do that when I had my loss, love your words.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks so much connie for reading them. xxxxh

      Delete
  2. Crying and nodding. And waiting with you. Oh the waiting - it is enough to almost destroy a woman!
    Love to you, H.
    xo

    ReplyDelete
  3. You are such a gifted writer. Thank you for sharing these thoughts. I'm 16 weeks pregnant and of 'advanced maternal age'. I'm carrying fear around with me constantly this pregnancy (I have a little guy who will be four in March) and there seems to be no end to the things that 'might' go wrong. Thank you for reminding me to not let that fear encompass me, I will come back to read this post often I think!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm quite fond of my crazy lady ways too. Love to you. x

    ReplyDelete
  5. I quite like to think of us all, scattered around the world, with our crazy-lady habits! I whisper to my girl too. Just in case she might hear somehow. As you say, I don't actually mind being a grief struck crazy lady as such. It makes sense to me.

    I love that last paragraph and it is true, things are changing even when it doesn't look or feel like it. But Sally is also right, it is enough to almost destroy a woman, all this waiting. I feel I spent 2009 to 2011 just waiting, waiting, waiting. And desperately hoping that when things went right, they wouldn't go wrong.

    Pregnancy is such a strange state. It seems to slip through my fingers as, the moment it's gone, it's like it never was. I had a few photographs of myself pregnant but I always look at them with disbelief. And a strange feeling of being somehow fraudulent. Strange.

    Hoping for you and with you, that the time passes quickly until your little boy is safe in the arms of you and El Prima xo

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is such a beautiful post, and there is so much base truth in it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. From time to time I've also felt that perhaps because there was no baby to show for it that maybe the whole pregnancy/birth/etc was some sort of elaborate hoax.

    Congrats on making it this far and hopes for making it to a beautiful and joyous end.

    Your fellow crazy-lady,

    Jenn

    ReplyDelete
  8. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed. May is both far away and very close.

    I'm fond of my own crazy lady habits, too :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thinking of you and wondering how you are doing. I hope you are well. Sending you love.

    ReplyDelete