Nursery open day and my dire need to get in shape

Today they had an open day at M's nursery. I think they must have had them before but I have never been. It was space themed. They had really spent ages decorating the nursery, with rockets, aliens etc. M loved it, playing with glitter, torches in the dark, painting, eating cakes, he had helped cook the day before and playing in the ball pool. It was lovely as we could stay with him and of course we never normally get to do that.

Have I said they are moving M up to the preschool class in Sept? I can't believe it, seems too early! But I think he'll like it, he has had trial days there already and seems ok. Normally they move up when they are 3, but I think they have too many younger kids coming up to his current class and of course have other older children leaving and going to school.

There is a party for the children moving to preschool on Thursday. So I'm going to go along with M as it isn't his normal nursery day. I'm sure he'll like it.

We went to Birmingham for the night a week or so ago. S organized it. Never been before. It was nice to get away, although I was not at all excited about going away. It is hard to get excited about things since Orson died. They had a dinosaur exhibit on at the museum there. Lots of life sized dinosaurs moving etc. M loved it. He has been excited by dinosaurs ever since!

I finally got around to weighing myself today. Scary! I have about 3/4 stone to lose to get to the weight I was at Christmas when I found out I was pregnant. And to be honest I have been a lot lighter than that before. S unhelpfully pointed out cutting out chocolate etc might help! Trouble is when I'm feeling down I do tend to eat sweet things like chocolate and I tend to have lots of sad times right now... But am going to try and be stronger, and hopefully start doing some exercise too. Because I didn't move around for the last 10 weeks of my pregnancy I just put on loads of weight. I found it easy to lose weight after M because I didn't put much on and I breastfed for ages. I want to figure out exercise that will help reduce the size of my stomach. I still look quite a bit pregnant, not great. I usually just do running which probably won't help too much for that area. Of course I have always been useless at getting motivated about exercise.

I really am very unfit though. Playing on the Wii with M this afternoon was exhausting. And according to the Wii I burnt hardly any calories!

5 weeks since Orson died

Not been good at updating this blog but it is so hard to know what to say right now.

Physically I'm much better. It has been 5 weeks since Orson died. I should have been 36 weeks pregnant. I am still not back to my old self but that is just a mixture of the normal post pregnancy stuff and of course being very unfit! I haven't really been able to exercise all year. In January doctors told me not to do strenuous exercise because of early bleeding, so I interpreted that as no exercise and then of course i had 10 weeks of hardly moving at all before Orson was born. It has made me very unfit.

I am also keen to get my pre pregnancy shape back. But I know from having M it takes a long time. The doctors told me not to do any exercise until 6 weeks after the birth so I will try sit ups etc in a week or so. But I seem to recall it took at least 6 months after I had M before I was happier. But I guess the difference was I didn't really care then as I had M to concentrate on. Plus I had the added help of breastfeeding with M which burns loads of calories...

Emotionally I am acting more normal again. In the first few days an hour didn't go by where I didn't cry now I can function normally most of the time. It is worst at night. I just lie awake thinking about things, getting sad. I still break down at inappropriate times and I get upset with S and M more often than normal but they are coping with me.

M is starting to notice my weaknesses. He has taken to fake crying to get me to give him something he wants. In fact just asking for things works well with me at the moment. I think since nothing makes me happy I am just making him happy instead. I took him to shopping this week. My Mum had given him clothes that were too big so I exchanged them, I also got him a balloon and a new toy till (his favourite game is now shop keepers). I got nothing for me on this trip.

I find on the days M isn't in nursery I keep busy and get very tired just looking after him. I try and take him to places he likes (playground, aquarium etc) and I can act normally. I say act because I am always thinking about Orson and events around my pregnancy etc even when I seem ok.

I think it is easier for S because he wasn't the one who was pregnant. I am only now realising how close I was to Orson even though I never got to see him alive. I think it is because for the 10 weeks before he was born he was all I was concentrating on. The last few weeks I was even recording when I felt movements in the hope I would notice any decreases in movement and be able to get to the hospital in time for them to save him.

Orson's funeral

Nobody should have to have a funeral for their baby. We did. it is surreal, I cannot believe we had to do it. 30th July 2010 became the day we said good bye to our little Orson for the last time.

Here is the story of that day.

We thought it would take ages to get to the crematorium but forgot it was the school holidays, so we had loads of time to spare. We went for a walk around the grounds before hand. It was nice and peaceful there. Lots of trees. It was on a big hill and you could see the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Ashton Court, Clifton Village, you couldn't quite see our house but almost.

We were surprised that they brought Orson to the service in a black funeral car. I imagined he would already be there. I had been thinkng about it and getting so upset the day before. I was thinking about him leaving the hospital and how we should have been with him.

He had a very small light brown wooden coffin with brass coloured handles. There was a brass plaque on top with his name inscribed. They had put a white carnation on top.

Since it was just me and S the chaplain came right over to us and bent down so she could just do the service as if she was chatting to us. No idea what she said. Afterwards me and S went over to Orson, touched the coffin and said goodbye. We said we love him and that we were sorry.

The funeral only took about 10 minutes.

Afterwards we didn't want to leave immediately so walked around the grounds for ages before coming home. We went for lunch out and had a nice glass of red wine.

A very quiet simple funeral for our little baby.