You find him

I explained to Orson's little sister who's now two years old that tomorrow is one of her brother's birthday and that he would have been 5 years old. I told her that he died and we will be sad tomorrow because we miss him. I then asked her if she understood, this was our conversation:

2 year old: "you sad"
Me: "why am I sad?"
2 year old: "miss him"
Me: "yes"
2 year old: "you find him"

 If only I could.

 Happy birthday Orson. xx

Three years ago. I slept well. I was happy. I woke up early. I felt you move. I thought you were safe. I drifted back to sleep. 

And then the pain. And the hospital. And the scans. And then no heartbeat.

Disbelief. Pain. Fear. 

Then I held you.

Three years later. It's your birthday. I cannot sleep. Tears run down my face.

I still miss you. I still love you. And I'm still so very sorry.

Mummy
xx

Just a quick hello

I'm posting again but I think it will be a minor blip. I just couldn't let Orson's third birthday pass without marking it here. I wrote the next post when I couldn't sleep last night.

Thank you and bye for now

I am sorry to say that I am not going to be posting here any more. I have thought about whether to continue blogging here but think it best to stop. At least for the foreseeable future. I am a little sad about this decision. This blog has been a big part of helping me to cope with Orson's death but I am just not posting regularly enough at the moment.

I want to thank all of you for being there for me since I started blogging. I have really appreciated your support. I would be lost without you all.

xx

International Pregnancy and Baby Loss Awareness Day

www.babyloss-awareness.org

 

Today is International Pregnancy and Baby Loss Awareness Day.

In the UK 17 babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth every day (ref: SANDs). In the UK stillbirth is defined as death of a baby before birth at 24 weeks gestation or above. In England and Wales 5 out of every 1000 babies are stillborn (just over 3000 a year) (ref: NHS Direct).

Last year I asked women from on-line groups I use on Facebook and SANDS if they herod like me to publish the first name of their baby and the date they died along with Orson's name and the date he died. I was overwhelmed by the amount of women who wanted their baby's name included in the list. Unfortunately I haven't been able to do this again this year, but you can click here to see last year's list.

She's here

I am thrilled to be able to let you know that A arrived safely around two weeks ago. I was 37+1 weeks pregnant. She was born by planned c-section and weighed 6lb 11oz. She is perfectly healthy and we were home from hospital when she was two days old.

I will write more when I can.

Hoping for a rainbow

So I suppose I am back to blogging again though I will apologise I don't think I will be too frequent at posting. We will have to see how it goes.



It has been a difficult few months. I am currently 31 weeks pregnant with a girl. The exact same gestation we lost Orson. My waters are still intact and the only physical problems I have had is some bleeding early in the second trimester and SPD. I never ever thought I would get this far in a pregnancy again.

I am probably not going to post much about this pregnancy. I am finding it very hard emotionally, every day I am terrified and writing about it here does not help. Physically too with the SPD it has been hard, sleep is often elusive because of the pain.

I have had lots of hospital appointments, cervical scans between 17 and 24 weeks and growth scans from 27 weeks. I have been on low dose aspirin and high dose folic acid throughout the pregnancy. So far everything is fine. They are continuing to monitor the baby's growth and my consultant has said that she will let me deliver at 37 weeks, so just 6 more weeks to go.

Please help Lila

Please join me in supporting Lila. Her mum is a friend of mine. Please share this link where ever you can:
Lila Tjader Support & Wellness Fund

Lila's mum is one of a small group of women who I met on-line two years ago when my waters broke early with Orson. During my 10 weeks of modified bedrest I would log on to a support group several times a day and chat with these women who were all going through exactly the same as me in dufferent parts of the world. After Orson died we stayed in touch and still chat on-line most days. Some of us lost babies but some like Lila survived.

Lila is now almost two years old and has cerebral palsy caused by her premature birth (her mum's waters broke around the same gestation as mine and Lila was born at around the same gestation as Orson). Her mother is trying to raise money to allow her to have hippotherapy (therapy with horses) to help strengthen her muscles so that she may one day sit, stand, and even walk unassisted. The therapy will hopefully have massive impact on her life.

You can also follow Lila on her Facebook page: Love for Lila Facebook Page

Thanks so much.
xx

Tomorrow he should be two

It will be two years tomorrow since Orson died. Although it has been a long time since I last posted here I have not forgotten about this blog and I couldn't let Orson's anniversary pass without a post.

I cannot believe it has been two years. So much has happened and so little has happened at the same time. To think we should be celebrating Orson's second birthday tomorrow is very sad. I miss him so much. Wish he was here with us.

I am not sure of our plans for tomorrow just yet but we will be remembering Orson in some way.

A break

I am really sorry I haven't posted in a while. And unfortunately it is going to be a little longer before you get any more posts from me. Do not worry everything is fine. I just need a break from blogging for a bit longer. I will post again. Not sure when just now, it could be in a week or or could be a few months.

Thanks for your patience.

Facebook is bad

A note to my readers

Before I start please can I apologise? If you are reading this it is possible you may think that I am referring to you in this post. Really sorry. Can I just say I don't aim to offend you but need to write about how I feel. And can I also add that if you are currently going through a pregnancy after a loss or infertility issues then it's highly unlikely to be you I am referring to in this post. So please don't be offended. xx

So now on with the post...

Facebook is fabulous and bad. It is a source of great comfort, joy, friendship and amusement but also pain and sadness for me.

I want to tell you about both the good and the bad but I have decided to split the post into two. Today I am afraid is all about the bad. I will concentrate on the good in my next post which knowing me might not be for a couple weeks!

Pain and sadness

How can Facebook possibly be a source of pain and sadness you might ask? Well to be fair to Facebook it is not Facebook itself that causes these feelings but instead it is a few of it's users, some of my Facebook friends to be more exact. Not most of them, just a few - the pregnant ones mostly. Not all of the ones in that category. Some don't bother me. The ones who do are the ones who like to incorporate their pregnancy into the vast majority of their status updates. Or who install apps on Facebook that automatically update all their friends weekly with the number of weeks they are in their pregnancy along with a detailed description of their unborn child's developmental status and usually a picture.

Some of my friends are ingenious in their ability to incorporate their pregnancies into their statuses. They manage to find ways to express their joy and excitement in the most mundane of posts. Here is an example (a fictional one):

"Amy Pond is looking 10 weeks further along than she actually is after eating a massive takeaway meal. So happy to be pregnant!"

Then you get the posts where the women are in their third trimester and like to share how they wish they were no longer pregnant:

"Amy Pond is so fed up. I feel fat and bloated and my feet hurt. Can't wait for this pregnancy to end."

Or how about the announcements? Women who aren't even past their first trimester announcing their pregnancies on Facebook. Don't they know the chance of miscarriage is high in the first trimester? Most women wait until they have just had their dating scan at 12 weeks when they assume everything will be fine and announce their pregnancy in interesting ways. Often they post a scan picture. Then of course you get later scan pictures too....

For a mother who has lost a baby these status updates can be difficult to cope with. Maybe not all women in that category get upset. Perhaps I need a more specific category of women to describe here, maybe you need to be someone feeling fragile who has not only lost a baby but also miscarried a few times and then struggles to get pregnant and is not pregnant when she sees the status updates? Me for example.

So for those of you who have no idea how I feel this is how you would feel if you were me, but be warned this next bit isn't pretty it is all about jealousy, grief, bitterness and just feeling sorry for yourself. If you were me:

1. When you see pregnancy statuses or pictures on Facebook yes you are happy for your friends but also you are sad. Their pregnancy reminds you of your dead baby. You remember how you felt at their stage in pregnancy and remember you are not currently pregnant and do not have a baby.

2. Comments on statuses make you feel sad and jealous - you doubt whether you will ever get pregnant again and even if you do you wouldn't put anything about it on Facebook (in my case even before Orson the first mention of any pregnancy or baby related posts by me was me saying I was home from hospital with M). So if you were me you would be thinking that you will never get to have comments like that from your Facebook friends. And you would be feeling sorry for yourself. Things go wrong. If you get pregnant you will never assume at any point during your pregnancy that everything will be okay and that you will get a living baby at the end of your pregnancy.

3. You get surprised that your friends who are aware of your loss do not stop to consider you when they update their status or upload scan photos. They know your baby died. You wonder why they don't they stop and consider that maybe they are making you sad when they repeatedly post about their pregnancy? Don't they care?

So there you go I have said it now. Sorry for the negativity I know it is childish and borne out of all the emotions we are not supposed to show or admit we feel but I honestly have heard so many women who have lost babies complain about this that I can promise you I am not alone in having these emotions.

Next time will be better, next time is all about how I cannot live without Facebook.

What if?

In a few days it will be the anniversary of my first miscarriage. And had my third pregnancy after Orson not ended in miscarriage I would probably have delivered in the last week or so.

I don't dwell on the miscarriages much. Although I got to 11 weeks both times I never accepted I was actually pregnant.

But this week as I hear of new births from women who were pregnant the same time as me I can't help but think, what if?

Only one

As you all know a possible future outcome for us is we never have another living child and M continues to grow up as an only child. I have been wondering about this. How would I feel if this happens? How would S feel? How would my parents feel? How would S's parents feel? And most importantly how would M feel?


I'm going to concentrate on the how would M feel question right now.

Obviously I think it is best for M to have a brother or sister. If I thought it was a bad idea we would never have started trying for another child. S has an older brother. I have a younger brother. As a child we would play together, we got on well. To me life seems very lonely as an only child. I know M can have friends to play with but he can't do that every evening and every day of school holidays or weekends. Will he be okay playing on his own? Will he be okay interacting with other children? His friends already have siblings and he is not yet four years old. Will he feel different being an only child?

There is so much more to consider. And truthfully I am not sure I am ready to think about it all yet. I still hope to have another child one day, but I think I will look into this more. If only to try and reassure myself that we will be okay if it happens. So you can exect more blog posts on this in the future.

In the mean time I wanted to share this interesting article about only children with you. It made me think.

I am interested in your views on this. If you are an only child do you think having no siblings has disadvantaged you in any way?

2012

Happy new year.

If years were exams (graded A-E) then I would grade the last few years like this:

2007 - B
The year I got pregnant with M.

2008 - A
M was born in January. A very good year.

2009 - B
Another good year. Enjoying life. I was pregnant with Orson at new year's eve.

2010 - Fail
After a horrible pregnancy Orson died in July. This year definitely warrants a fail.

2011 - E
Better than 2010 but not good enough. Started out well but with two miscarriages and no pregnancy at the end of the year after six months of trying it only just gets an E grade.

2012 - to be confirmed. Hoping for a A - C grade.

Christmas Eve thoughts

I can't believe I am about to celebrate my second Christmas since Orson died. It has been a long time but I still remember everything so clearly. It still seems very recent.

I am incredibly lucky to have M and for him Christmas will be happy and fun but it is tinged with sadness because we should also have an 18 month old to open presents tomorrow. This time last year I felt sad but hopeful, I was pregnant and I thought we would have a younger brother or sister for M and Orson by now.

This Christmas isn't as happy as it should be.

Not much hope

Well I am still here. Now 34 years old. My birthday was just over a week ago. I was 31 when I got pregnant with Orson and 32 when he was born. Seems like such a long time ago.

Nothing much has changed in my life lately. I am still not pregnant. Beginning to think it will never happen. When I lost Orson in July 2010 I found so many blogs of women who had also lost babies - most have either had babies since then or are now pregnant. It is the same with women I have met in forums. It gets very hard hearing so much good news when I don't have any to share myself.

I am trying to be positive. Trying to concentrate on the future. But I cannot escape the fact that my life isn't how I would like it and there is nothing I can do about it. I am trying to concentrate on Christmas. But I remember the last two Christmases. I discovered I was pregnant with Orson around Christmas time two years ago. I found out I was pregnant again about this time last year. At Christmas I had so much hope for this year. 2011 was going to be a very good year. But instead it has been very poor. Two miscarriages and six months since my last one and right now I am still not pregnant. I want to believe 2012 will be a good year but right now I don't have much hope for it.

Many Worlds Theory

Pandatolife at Tiny Glimmers wrote this post about alternate realities recently. It was nice to read as I had been thinking about a similar concept back in August after I watched the film Source Code with S.

Source Code is about alternate realities. After I finished watching it I said to S that it made no sense (I still think it made no sense). S has a theoretical physics phd and informed me the basis of the film is a mainstream theoretical physics theory called the Many Worlds Theory.

Some people think the many worlds theory could actually be correct. The website How Stuff Works explains the theory in more detail but here is a bit of what they say:

"As unsettling as it may sound, Everett's Many-Worlds interpretation has implications beyond the quantum level. If an action has more than one possible outcome, then -- if Everett's theory is correct -- the universe splits when that action is taken. This holds true even when a person chooses not to take an action.

This means that if you have ever found yourself in a situation where death was a possible outcome, then in a universe parallel to ours, you are dead."

When I heard this a few months back I burst into tears. Why? Well probably the wine I had consumed didn't help but there was another reason. If the theory is correct then there is another universe where Orson is alive. I am embarrassed to say it took me a while to get a grip and realise that I was being ridiculous. Firstly I do not believe the theory is correct. And secondly even if there is another universe out there where Orson lives it makes no difference - I am here in this universe where he is dead.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Results: Unlucky

Image: tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You may recall back in September I wrote a post saying that I had finally been tested for everything recurrent miscarriage related? Well I have finally got the results.

I have to admit I was hoping that they would find something wrong that was easily correctable. Something that explained losing Orson and both miscarriages. Of course no magic explanation exists and I knew that that 50% of the time the results all come back normal even when things clearly are not normal (so the miscarriages keep happening even with normal results).

So I expected my results would probably be normal. I was correct. I'm normal. Both me and S had completely normal chromosome results, my barrage of thrombophilia  tests were normal and my antibodies are fine too.

So what does this mean?

Well as you already know a sample of pregancy tissue from my June miscarriage was sent off for tests and they came back positive for Trisomy 22. Trisomy 22 pretty much always results in miscarriage. The Doctor today said that women who have one Trisomy 22 pregnancy have an increased chance of another Trisomy pregnancy, and in my case that would probably be a Trisomy 22 pregnancy. I was reassured that the chance of that happening is low, the chances of a normal pregnancy are much higher. I do like my statistics so asked about the chance she guessed that where the chance is normally 1% with me it is 5%. Although another Trimsomy is most likely to occur with chromosome 22 it could happen on any so early in pregnancy I would be offered all the Trisomy screening tests.

So for now we just keep trying to get pregnant and hope our luck improves. If I get pregnant I need to  take asprin (just in case) and take the normal dose of folic acid (I asked about a higher dose and was told it is not needed). I was reassured that I just need to phone the hospital early on in a new pregnancy and they will get me seen and scanned before 12 weeks.

Of course I still have to get pregnant. It has never taken us so long. I am beginning to doubt it will ever happen, but I will save those doubts and worries for another post.

Lack of posts

Sorry for the lack of posts again. I am still here but just not posting much. Wish I could say it was because I am incredibly busy with loads of exciting things happening but that is not the case. Equally nothing terrible is happening either. Things are the same, time passes and little changes.

Will post something new soon.

Trying

Trying to conceive.

Trying to get pregnant

Trying for a baby

One thing they all have in common is the word trying. Trying is included in these phrases because there is a chance you might not succeed. Those of us trying to get pregnant are all too aware of this.

I decided to research euphemisms for trying to conceive (30 seconds on Google searching for "euphemism trying to conceive.") I didn't do too well but instead found an article which was kind of funny. If you have ever spent some time trying to conceive you may find this funny too so I thought I would share it with you. The full article can be found here. I am in no way trying to imply that the article or website is at all factually correct, hopefully you know I know it is not. My intention is not to offend only merely to make you laugh. It was just the start of the article that I found funny and so that is what I have reproduced below for you:

Breathe: A Guy's Guide to Pregnancy
By Mason Brown

Trying to Get Pregnant

Getting pregnant doesn't just happen. You have to work at it (unless you're dating an unwed teen, in which case pregnancy can occur via contact with a doorknob).

Amazingly enough, science has proved beyond doubt that the odds of conception are inversely proportional to the desirability of conception. A simple graph renders this concept easy to grasp.

This immutable law of nature results in a curious corollary — the more financially successful a couple is, the more likely they are "trying" to have a baby. "Trying to have a baby" is a euphemism for "rogering like feral weasels," which is in turn a euphemism for "having sex often."

Some couples proudly announce that they are trying to have a baby without realizing that they are presenting an unsavory visual picture to their audience, who immediately conjure up the image of the naked wife doing a headstand while her husband cheers his mighty swimmers onward. More often than not, this visual image is uncannily accurate.

Still others try to conceal their efforts, feeling that failure to conceive reflects badly on themselves. Unfortunately for these shy souls, it is all too easy to tell when a couple is really making an effort. In such cases, one or more of the following symptoms will appear:

FOR THE MAN

Drowsiness
Irritability
Heightened desire to watch SportsCenter

FOR THE WOMAN

Normal post-coital glow replaced by grim attitude of soldier in the trenches
Constant concern over husband's choice of briefs rather than boxers
Neck strain from standing on her head after sex

Obviously, if a couple would really, truly make good parents, then all efforts to conceive are rendered futile. Nature abhors functional families. So, if you really want your wife to get pregnant, forget fertility clinics — institute divorce proceedings. Just remember to have one last drunken, abusive fling before separating. You'll be a daddy in no time.