Present and accounted for

Where on earth did that time go?

My due date has been and gone since we last spoke, so that may go some way to explain the intermittency of my posting.

Hell, that was a bad weekend. March 5 fell on a Saturday and it was horrific, and not only for the trip to a shopping centre.

Ha. I don’t know what we had to buy there, looking back now, but we had arranged my relatives to take Jay from lunchtime Saturday until Sunday morning...just because of the day it was.

So, whenever we manage to extricate ourselves from toddler-ville, thoughts automatically turn to what toddler-free activities we need to get accomplished. Somehow in the course of a busy life, carefree whimsical things of such wicked abandon like sleeping in, watching what we want on TV, reading entire book chapters or a newspaper uninterrupted, going out for dinner and not wolfing down our meal because we are already 45 minutes past young master’s bedtime ... disappear from our thought possibilities. Such naughty spontanaeity will never do. In fact, there, I have spelled the word incorrectly and will not check it to prove my very sad point. You know that will kill me, but I am as steadfast in my martyrdom as I am in my, er, point-making. Instead, we are ever-practical in the knowledge we have but a few precious hours to get absolutely the highest priority things done first. And somehow that always ends up being a trip to a shopping centre, where we can browse (impossible concept with a toddler) and inevitably purchase some book or toy or shoes or clothes for the young master who should be the furthest thing from our minds, but is often the opposite...cause we are missing him so much, to be honest.

Do those swords really need two edges and how come the grass on my side can't be verdantly Photoshopped?

Shopping centre errands are a nightmare at the best of times (although not sure when they are), but with a toddler, you are essentially saying to the world “kill me, kill me now – and play me the Muzak version of Ebony and Ivory as I lay on the too-shiny tiles being slowly trampled by the bargain hunters, but can you get me a cake donut from Donut King first and oh look Best & Less actually have an item of clothing that is A) more expensive than $5.99 and B) vaguely acceptable in public and oh look another stroller to dodge and oh look there’s a posse, not a family, but a bogan posse with two trolleys, three strollers, a bad attitude and 73 chicken nuggets between their 10 kids”

I guess I digress, yes?

We got home from shopping, too buggered to see a movie (another impossible toddler-inclusive activity), so went home to consume some of the stash leftover still from T's 40th: a nice bottle of champers and about 18 million spring rolls, samosas etc

Party food. But no party.

To tell the truth, that entire week had been a bloody shocker. Suddenly I was snapping at people, my fuse was shorter than it had been in a while and I was downright exhausted, often going to bed and going to sleep sooner than our three year old.

Saturday it all hit. When night fell, I felt more able to descend into tears and sobs, as if I could hide in the dark somehow...just like I had been in the thick of the worst of it last September.

It ached, it hurt my head, it made me thirsty and so so tired. I felt black and heavy. One part of me felt as if I was hovering above myself, looking on with T, worried. The other part just felt lost, really.

But after a little while, I took a few deep breaths and acknowledged that while I felt September...it was a new feeling, one I hadn't felt in months.

Progress, I had made some. I had gotten a bit better, or better enough to realise when I had momentarily lost sight of the very same stars I had somehow managed to see quite clearly in recent months.

I was driving to collect J from day care this week. Thinking I should update my blog. And this random thought popped into my head: we were grieving for the idea of a baby more so than the actual baby. And the in-between-ness of it all made it all the more difficult and messy.

That sounds quite wrong and callous now that I have written it down. But I was honestly struck by that...because I have so struggled with how to grieve properly for something I didn't see or touch or smell...someone who had only engaged us on an almost ethereal, dreamy level. Yes of course there was desire to meet him, expectation about him, excitement at the thought of what magnificent things he might bring to our family. But the connection was imaginary, while the loss of that connection was so intensely real.

It doesn't mean the grief is any less or more, it is most certainly there, let me tell you. But looking back, I feel it is on a strange, other level...like in a different time zone.
Hmm, hard to articulate...but gee, I see I've again given it a good crack here!

Got to go do some work. Love to you all.

Friend, I miss you

I have a friend.
We share a raft of uncanny similarities and often call each other doppelganger. Actually I call her doppel, she calls me ganger.
Not all the time.
Actually, not very often at all.
Maybe it was once, and I initiated it, and therefore think it to be funnier and a longer-lasting joke than it actually was. Leos can be like that.

Whatever the official statistical facts on the term’s usage, the point is the foundation reason why we/I decided upon such a term: we are very much alike.

We have not been friends very long, maybe a year, but we realised pretty quickly that a “clicking” was underway, and complete, within about three emails between us (she worked in an outer office of the newspaper where I work).

In-jokes, the crafting of a new pseudo-language, outrage over grammatical faux pas, tears of laughter over a random assortment of YouTube clips, primarily from the 1980s, tales of woe from our respectively mental family units, tips on tweaking our blogs: we have shared them all in rapid succession.
In my more vain moments, I may consider it plausible that we look alike in a sisterly way, although she is stunning. Well, we are both brunettes and tall, and that’s good enough for me.

We might not see each other very often, or talk all that regularly...but when we do, we slot as neatly into a rhythm of candour and affinity as a Scalextrix car into its tracks.

The spooky, mirror-imagery of our relationship reached a peak about six months ago when we became pregnant at almost exactly the same time.

There were, in fact, seven days separating our due dates.

Seven days.

It wasn’t planned, it just happened that way. And it was accepted as yet another example of two lives in parallel.
In those early months, before we lost the baby, I was so overjoyed to have strengthened our connection in such a freaky way.

What are the chances?

I told someone at work how great it was. “It’s like having a mother’s group before you’ve even given birth,” I said, smiling.
Smiling, and anticipating all the wonderful times we’d have complaining about being bloated while slurping mocktails and shoving her home-baked cookies into our endlessly-starving gobs.

Crying together when the hormones just got too much, laughing at the insane changes in our bodies and falling into that inevitable, non-malicious tit-for-tat dance all mothers – expecting or not – get into: have you felt the baby kick yet? No, I heard it won’t happen for another few weeks. How are your ankles? Huge! Same as my boobs. And will I ever stop going to the toilet? I know! Are you feeling sick at all? No, but really really tireddddddd – I barely had the energy to finish typing that word. Yeah, me too and I cannot sleep. I am eating so many almonds right now and heaps of tea. Be careful of the types of tea you drink – have a look at this website. Thanks, have you checked out baby paraphernalia yet? There are some great forums and product tests at this site. Good one, when is your 12-week scan? This week, Friday.

This week, Friday.

And that is pretty much where all the good stuff stopped. That’s when the beauty and colour went out of the world for a while.

That’s when bleak was an understatement. When tragic seemed a cliche not dark enough, or sufficiently devastating, to describe what we went through.

But I am lucky to be able to write that sentence in the past tense now, and realise that today, exactly three months on, things are slightly better.

Some hesitant watercolour brushstrokes are gradually bleeding into the stark white parchment of our lives (and I use the term bleeding both figuratively and literally...more on that later).

What picture are they painting? I don’t know yet, but I am grateful it is starting to take shape, and in living colour no less.

So what has it been like seeing her in the three months since?

There is no easy answer to that question.
I don’t mean to sound vague, but it has honestly been an equal and intense mix of heartbreak, elation, jealousy, joy, sympathy, sadness, anger and delight. The good feelings outweigh the bad ones. They have to, for sanity's sake.

Of course, when we see each other, I am not the type of person to let the bad stuff out face to face. It’s not as if I sit there drinking tea with her, seething and picturing myself slamming her head into the table.
Actually I must admit I don’t even have that thought when I am not with her.

I will admit, however, that in my quieter moments – often when I am going off to sleep at night or driving in the car – I feel a physical pang of what must be jealousy. But it is more about me wishing so desperately to be still pregnant, rather than me wishing she was not.

I would never dare think that. I am worried, in fact, about even writing it down.

I cannot deny it is hard sometimes seeing pregnant people, or mums with kids. I am such a bitch that I actually have flaring flashes of white-hot anger when I see some feral, disinterested teenager with two toddlers already hanging off her tattooed arms, pregnant and whining to her B-Boy wannabe boyfriend about the price of chicken nuggets or two-minute noodles or something. How dare she. She doesn’t deserve it. The baby, I mean. Everybody has a right to two-minute noodles.

It is easier to direct those sorts of feelings, fleeting though they are, to people I will never know or talk to. But I am not someone who would even contemplate feeling that way about my pregnant friends.

The fact is, good always beats evil with them, because I care for them deeply. Our friendship gives me an in-built cut-off switch for any of that bad stuff. But it’s a switch that never moves anyway. It’s taped stuck in one direction. That’s why, I think, we are friends in the first place.

Again, I am sensible and mature enough to know that hanging on to those toxic kinds of feelings will only contaminate your soul.

Yes you are allowed them for a while when life deals you a truly shitty hand, but letting them rule you day-to-day does nothing but leave a permanent and very ugly stain.

Perspective.
Attitude.
Outlook.

Every individual has one very powerful thing when crafting their own: choice.

I choose to recover from this. I choose to concentrate on all the wonderful things in my life more often than the bad shit that has happened. I choose to let myself grieve and remember and never forget, but I also choose to move on. I choose to feel whatever my hormones, environment and thoughts make me feel. But I also choose not to get too carried away by extremes. I choose to realise that having a purpose gives me the strength to push the darkness away. I choose to take refuge in the unconditional love I am so fortunate to have as my constant cloak. And I choose to make the effort to make good, not bad, on this short life.
What alternative is there?

So, friend, I love you. But I miss you almost as much as I understand why you are sometimes absent from my life. Please don’t worry about me or for me. Don’t ever feel you have to run and hide your big old pregnant self from me.

Tell me everything, keep me in the loop. Don’t anticipate or wonder how I might react. Just know that I will react, and 99% of the time I will be filled-to-overflowing with happiness for you.

If I’m not, if that 1% creeps in, well that’s my cross to bear; but it’s one I am trying to shuffle off.

I won’t be that type of crucifixed martyr.

I choose not to be.

One month ago

Yesterday was the one-month anniversary of the baby's birth.

In all, it was a pretty good day. Sure, there were a few moments of tears, terrible flashbacks and remembrance...dusk the night before was all it took to take me back to that hospital room exactly four weeks earlier and remember the frustration and despair at the sun setting on a day when all the horrible stuff should have happened, but it didn't. We had been in the hospital since 8am that morning...no one expected it to still be happening when the sun set. And yet it was. I was only half-way through. I never want to feel that pathetic desperation again.

Mostly though, I was amazed to be able to look back on how I felt four weeks ago and compare it to today.

I feel better.

My head is slowly clearing and the whirring merry-go-round making an ugly blurred rainbow of my emotions is gradually slowing.

Gradually. You hear of people describing emotional and physical scars from a trauma and they are really the best description.

Physically, I stopped bleeding almost two weeks ago - finally - and the occasional jarring pains in my abdomen have ceased completely.

I had exactly six days of blood-free bliss when I started again. Embarrassingly, I called the doctor, a little worried, and was told it was my period.

Right, well, my system seems to have corrected itself mighty quickly then, hasn't it? I would, however, like someone to explain to me how I can bleed for three weeks after a birth and still have the lining re-form, only to bleed again after a week's break. So, what? I have two wombs now?

Emotionally, I am still yo-yoing, but I feel like those particular wounds have sealed themselves with a bit of fresh crusty scab. No, not an overly nice description, and not an overly nice feeling this, but it is progress.

I can't remember if I wrote about this earlier, but T and I wanted to include our family in a memorial for the baby, even though they live all over the country.

So yesterday, being the one-month anniversary, we nominated a time of 4pm and let everyone know that we would be at the beach at that time to say another goodbye to the baby. Our family could do anything they liked from spending a moment thinking about that little life to lighting a candle, but at least we would be unified in thought and in farewell.

We went to one of our favourite local beaches with my auntie and nan, who placed flowers in the water among the rocks, as the tide was coming in. T, Jay and I stood slightly to one side and held each other...kissing him, thinking again about the baby and crying. It was windy, but beautifully sunny. Then we had a few beers and some fish and chips as the sun set and the most spectacular orange moon rose up over the ocean, between the pines.

The week at work was strange, nightmarish, great and exhausting.

I was completely freaked out at the thought of heading in there again. Why? Well, I realised as I pulled into the car park that the last time I was there, I was pregnant.

Minutes earlier, on the drive in, I almost lost it. I almost pulled over, called T and told her I couldn't do it. I felt so afraid.

But I shook myself alert, took a few deep breaths and kept driving onwards.

Frankly, after what happened in the first half an hour, I should have walked out the door and driven right home. It was freaky.

I open my diary with another deep breath and some anticipation about returning to work-type things to deal with, to handle, to fix, to deliver.

There on that day's date was a reminder about a 4.45pm appointment with our OB/GYN to discuss our 18 week scan the previous Friday.

Then, I decide to clean up my desk. There are a stack of papers on top of my computer and I lift them up, noticing something stuck to one of them. It's a toy dummy someone had given me to congratulate me on the baby.

Then, I am clearing a pile of three weeks’ worth of Financial Reviews...stacking them up one by one to make sure nothing is hidden in between them, and my eye stops on one edition and one only. Which one? The one from the date the baby was born.

Then, I am clearing the 4,277 emails that have accumulated in my absence and there are about five from people I know emailing about work stuff, but each one alluding to my pregnancy...”hope the bundle is growing well” etc. I email them back to tell them what happened.

I see four people in the office from other departments who I sort of know. They all ask if I am feeling better...well, not really. They all thought I was sick, I explained to a few of them and manage to make it through without crying.

Someone else asks me if I enjoyed my holiday. "Go anywhere nice? Hope you got some sun..." Sigh.

Obviously I really need to improve my marketing of this blog! It does all the talking for me. The feeling, however? That I have to do on my own.

Couple all of that with demanding phone calls and further emails, the inevitable work-related catastrophes, sitting in front of a computer screen for hours all day and even the light-hearted small talk with colleagues...and it was all enough to have me requiring immediate horizontal-ness every night. Throw in my "Period: Back With Avengeance...And This Time She Means Business" and I was a fricking mess.

I normally get a little moody at a certain time every month, but this was ridiculous. I had horrible, hot bursts of rage, severe annoyance at the tiniest thing (bananas facing the wrong way, T putting the butter back in the fridge when I needed it etc) and moments of panic that something bad was going to happen to Jay.

Oh, and Jay decided that 5am would be a fabulous time to get out of bed every day last week. Every day.

Thank the lord I do not have to do that week ever again!

Expressing my outlook

Cursor blinks.
Flashing. On. Off. On. Off.
Waiting. On. Off. On. Off.

I am writing the same email I have written more than 10 times this week, explaining to friends and acquaintances I know through work that our baby is gone.
These are people I know well, and people who knew I was pregnant. They do not know, until I email them, that is not the case anymore.
Each time, I stop at the same point, fingers hovered over keyboard and emotions suspended in mid air.
“Apologies, I have been away for the past three weeks on unexpected sick leave. We actually lost our baby, so it has been a...”

Cursor blinks.
On. Off. On. Off.

It’s been a what? “A terrible time?” “An awful ordeal?” “A period of time where we have been physically crippled with sadness?” “The worst, most fucking unfair situation I have ever faced in my life?” “A truly horrific experience I would not wish on my worst enemy?” “Pure hell?”
Any word or possible combination of words does not seem enough.
I can think of nothing to say to sum it up, and I kind of resent the very nature of email for forcing me to.

How have you been, long time no email, kind regards, looking forward to the next board meeting, we should catch up soon, when are you free for coffee, our baby died.

So, why tell them then? Firstly, I feel duty bound to explain my sudden absence because it’s the polite thing to do; and of course it’s a self-preservation tactic so I can get in first and drop the bombshell so I don’t have to risk responding to a “how's the baby bump growing?” question later.
This way I am in semi-control of my emotions.
And that’s a laugh. Each time someone asks me face to face about it, I react differently. A work friend rang me a few days ago and I couldn’t speak in response to her consoling words, so choked was I with grief. I squeaked, literally squeaked, a thank you, before I hung up and went to the loo for 10 minutes to cry.

But then a girl I work with came up to me at my desk yesterday and asked how the amnio went, and I despaired at the eager hope in her gaze.
But suddenly I was calm and sounded like I was telling her what I was having for lunch.
“Oh, love,” I said as I patted her on the arm. “We lost the baby. It was Downs Syndrome, plus a major heart defect. I’m only back at work this week...I’ve had the past three weeks off. I thought you knew.”
Someone else rang me today and asked “how’s the pregnancy going”.

The question hung for a mere moment in time...but it froze in my mind for longer than that as I took a deep breath and allowed myself a split-second fantasy that I could deliver the expected response.
“Great,” I longed to say, and smile while saying it. “I am really huge now and last weekend I had to go out and buy all these new clothes.
“We are due to have a scan this week and hopefully we will find out the sex.”
A pang of hurt instead brought me back to earth before I blinked and responded, giving her a glimpse of my reality.

From this life to the next

Last Thursday we said goodbye to our baby in a simple Buddhist ceremony called a puja. Well, a goodbye of sorts, and a goodbye for now.

An old family friend is a monk who lives in Sydney and after we agreed on a time, he adjusted it for daylight saving and commenced the ceremony at the same time as we did, some 1000 kilometres to the north.

I picked some flowers from the bushes in our street: four bright red hibiscus and four bright yellow daisies from one end of the street, a clip of pinky-purple bougainvillea as well as the tiniest flower I have ever seen.

Frankly, I think it is a weed, as it grew from a decidedly boring and scraggly-looking plant at the front gate. But the flower it produced was a light powder blue, almost purple, with petals shaped like a delicate star protecting a miniscule set of stamens. How could something so tiny capture my gaze, make me stop in my tracks and lean in for a closer look? Hmm, how indeed. That flower represented our baby, so I picked one, and placed it in a little basket, nestled amongst the more strongly-coloured flowers. It fell almost out of sight a few times, just because of its size and seeming insignificance, before I placed it with extra care right in the middle. It was a little buried, but only because it needed a wall of the bigger flowers for protection. It was always visible, however.

We also got a bowl of clean water, a candle and some incense. Steve the monk (he does have an authentic title befitting his years of study and devotion to Buddhism, but I have always known him as Steve) asked us to write a small note to the baby, which we would burn during the ceremony. We would then put the flowers in the bowl of water, each of us blowing our breath across the liquid, before pouring it over the ashes of the burning note...all the while thinking of the good we have done in our lives and passing that loving kindness onto our son, to send him on his next journey.

I debated whether or not to, firstly, photograph this; but also whether or not to upload it here. I mean, the whole point was to burn it away to nothing. So, at the risk of breaking some sacred Buddhist rule (and surely that statement is contradictory), here it is. And I kind of figure, the more eyes that read it, the more people can stop for an instant and share a sentiment with us...and strengthen to send-off for our little boy.


T and I read some prayers calling on Lord Buddha to "grant our dear child peace, happiness and compassion". To bless him and guide him on his next journey.

A few lines from that first prayer strangle my heart with sorrow. "Our child is passing from this world to the next, he is taking a great leap. The light of this world has faded for him...he has gone into a vast silence. He is borne away by the great ocean of birth and death."

I think I am just paralysed with grief thinking about this tiny baby floating somewhere in the universe completely alone. Frightened, maybe, anxious. I want to protect him, we want to do that as a family. We were getting ready to do that and I was already doing that as he grew inside me for more than four months. It is incredibly painful not to be allowed to continue to do that.



The second prayer we read was titled The Heart of Perfect Understanding - surely the hardest thing to attain at a time like this. But surely something too important to give up on finding.

Then there was one last prayer we read together asking the Buddha to guide our thoughts, to help us to be strong at times of weakness, that we would not waste this life on useless pursuits and that all living beings find peace and happiness.

We sat in the backyard on cushions for about 40 minutes as the ritual played out. It was a sunny day, but swirling winds regularly blew out the little teal blue candle we had and made the sandalwood incense burn down much quicker than it perhaps normally would.

We laughed as T stumbled on some of the more lengthy and confusing words in the prayers and let out sighs of relief as we stretched our crossed legs out straight. We lit and re-lit the candle and more incense and we battled the bloody wind to get the note on fire...

But then we held each other in silence a lot. We felt the breeze dry our tears and talked softly about what might be next for our little boy. It just wasn't his time yet, we said. He could already have returned in another form and be making another family on the other side of the world blissfully happy. Yes, it is achingly sad that we couldn't be that family, but how wonderful that someone else could know him and enjoy him better than we ever did.

I cried a lot, and I was exhausted afterwards. But a strange feeling was also there - I was quite uplifted at the thought of his soul continuing a survival. I had not touched on the fringes of a thought like that during this whole experience. To me, this was final. It was awful and it was final. All over.

But it is not at all. My life will go on - it already is...everyone's life goes on. And even our little boy's life - in some form or another - will also go on. How amazing.

There is enormous peace in that. (But it still makes me cry!)

These are the blessing threads that Steve made for us and sent up to us in the mail. We tied them on each other's wrists and every time they catch our eye, we are urged to send thoughts of loving kindness to our baby.


And there is even greater peace in that, because it encourages a positive when there could potentially only ever be a negative. It forces light in, with too much power to be ignored.

Thanks Steve...lots of love to you for being the coolest monk we know!

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet
Let it not be a death, but completeness
Let love melt into memory, and pain into songs
Let the flight though the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night
Stand still, o beautiful end, for a moment, and say your last words in silence
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way
- Rabindranath Tagore