My life updated: not again. A Second stillbirth.

I wanted to give a little update on my life since Rosie was born into heaven. She is four now and we still celebrate her birthday every year.

I had to stop writing in my blog, I’d noticed that I wasn’t living for my future but I was constantly looking to see if people remembered my pain. So I got myself into education and volunteering, i had got myself a brilliant but emotionally hard waring job. I also studied again in my job and threw myself into it completely. It was a job working with people whom had very hard lives so i loved loving on them but i also realise now that i spent my time working and thinking about work. I hardly spent time with my husband, Andrew, and this took a tole on us which we only noticed in hindsight. We suffered a miscarriage whilst we had separated for six months. We did work through our problems and are still married (5 years so far). It has been hard, working through our grief and how we handled it differently and being newly married and living with my Mum was more than hard but we persevered and I found a different job and a new home for us and then we became pregnant with Isabelle Poppy 3 and a half years after Rosie was born. We felt so positive during our pregnancy with Isabelle, no way could stillbirth happen to us again especially when Rosie’s death was a fluke, a mere flaw. A cord wrapped around her which she couldn’t escape from. So we bought everything, moved into a new house and let ourselves prepare and become excited. Rosie’s little sister, Isabelle Poppy got to 35 weeks in my tummy and stopped moving. We went to hospital on October 26th 2016 (5 months ago at my time of writing this) and we were put in the same delivery room we had Rosie in. They looked for Isabelle’s heartbeat and couldn’t find it but assured me it was nothing to be worried about at that time. A doctor and three midwives came in with a scan machine and looked for what felt like hours but must have been minutes, Andrew was watching intently but all i could do was look at the wall the opposite way, she wasn’t moving in the scan so i was full of fear. The doctor found Isabelle’s heart and asked Andrew if he could see it, he replied “yes, its flickering”. I looked at the scan immediately and saw the doctors face slide to a greyish shock where she said “no, it is not. I’m sorry” we had to wait half an hour for a second doctor to confirm Isabelle’s death but still i could not believe it, I was so full of hope and disbelief that this could happen to us again and in the same room. I immediately zoned in and out of “she’s dead” and “she can’t be” i took the last pictures i could of my Isabelle bump with tears streaming over my blotchy smile, i apologised to Andrew as though i was watching him go through a horror i couldn’t comprehend. I called some friends and asked for prayer that this wasn’t happening and then the doctor came in and confirmed Isabelle had no heartbeat. He then explained that the protocol was to give me a tablet to start labour in 24 hours at home. I could not carry her for that long knowing i wouldn’t be able to see her how she should have looked. He broke my waters and started inducing me straight away. I was in a very intense and painful labour for many hours, we were moved to a suite for stillbirth parents which did not look anything like a hospital room, bloods were taken from me for testing, gas and air was given to me, My mum came and slept on the sofa in the room and Andrew slept next to me on the bed. I was in and out of shock, the gas and air blocked a lot of reality but there were often bursts of reality which overwhelmed me with grief and the worry of the hardships to come. Being in labour however painful and however hard it was was blissful, it was a moment in time that stopped, it wasn’t the hard part. I had to then be coaxed into another delivery room by the midwives, i had to run there between contractions and was told they had to move a woman out of there to put me in. When i ran in a midwife ran with me and as i sat down we heard the radio was on and it was playing ‘tragedy’ by steps. I laughed and the midwife laughed with me and then i cried and she cried with me. She switched it off and i carried on like every strong, brave mother does. My friend came and read the bible to me, my Mum helped me up and down to the toilet and Andrew held my hand through every contraction and faced me with as much bravery as i was showing. I would have completely understood if he couldn’t have been there through it again but he stayed and i loved him for it. So Isabelle Poppy Hope Ainsworth was born on 27th October 2016 and weighed 5lbs. She looked so much like Rosie but so different to her. We spent three days with her in the hospital and then sent her to Manchester for a post mortem. Her funeral was beautiful, my friends did the service and handed out poppy seeds to everyone at the end. My amazing midwife whom was my midwife for Rosie and Isabelle came and is now on a career break having adventures in Australia! I consider her a part of my family. She visited me every week to see how i was and to just talk about Isabelle until she left for her adventures. That was not a part of her job.

We had the post mortem results back saying the likely cause of death was e.coli, i know i could have touched someone or eaten something with it but i think from the events i have been through that it was a take away pizza that had this infection, it was the last thing i ate before Isabelle stopped moving and Andrew and i were extremely careful with everything we could think of and could control. For us to know that we are not the reason our daughters were born into heaven is a blessing, it gives us hope. Having two stillborn babies is an experience i had never even had nightmares about and it still shocks me that i am living this reality, that this is not a sad book nor a tragic movie, this is my life and often i cry as though I’m watching these events happen to some character in a film. In this second journey I have felt a want to talk to other mothers with more than one stillborn baby but this is rare and i have not been given this chance which I enjoy as it means not many people are suffering this.

I want to leave you with hope, there is a future and there is hope. Andrew and I have hope and a future. We have as much joy as we do pain and that is okay. We focus on fun because that is allowed, life is really hard and I know i won’t be how i used to be but i have life in me and courage.

The Importance of a Dead Pigeon

Since Rosie’s death and birth I have become more sensitive to life. More sensitive to having breath in my body, having the gift of life, more sensitive to those that endanger other lives by making them inhale their toxic smoke, more sensitive to those that have lost a loved one and suffer the pain that brings, more sensitive to those that hurt themselves because they don’t want to be alive. Life, this thing that we take for granted but we know one day it will be taken from us, we don’t realise the pain the ending of life will cause.

I was walking the long way home with my husband, Andrew, I still can’t walk past the girl who had her baby at the same time as me, I can’t handle the pain of seeing her baby alive, doing and growing as Rosie should be. It makes me angry that they have their baby when mine is dead. I’m angry and jealous of her and her family.
I passed a squashed dead pigeon in the middle of a road which had evidently been run over by a car. I looked at this dead pigeon and cried with a real and painful emotion. My heart beat faster, my arms wanted to make it feel better somehow. I had to tear myself away from that pain that I wasn’t expecting. I said to my husband “can we pass this quickly, there’s a poor dead pigeon there and it’s making me sad” Andrew replied to me with an automatic comment which has changed my way of thinking about Rosie his reply “why are you sad? Its just a dead pigeon, there’s millions of them.” I got so angry at him but came to a sudden realisation that people think of my baby in that way. They didn’t know my baby, she’s just one dead baby when there are millions of other, living, babies in this world. My Rosie is a dead pigeon to you, she is just one dead baby that you didn’t know. My baby the anonymous pigeon flattened by the car of life.

This brings me to the failure I feel, I’ve failed as a mother because I couldn’t keep my baby alive, I couldn’t speak for her when she needed me to, I didn’t protect my baby from the wrong doings of the “experienced” midwives. I’m trying to keep my Rosie’s memory alive but I’m failing her with that too, I want to talk about her all the time but people don’t want to listen, those friends that knew me when I was pregnant don’t want to know me or Rosie now, they enjoy the new babies in their lives and forget about mine. They don’t want to feel my pain or joy in Rosie they just want to fly with the living pigeons.
How can I be a good mum when I can’t show my baby I love her, want to teach her, how can I be a good mum when I have no chance to give to my precious bundle? I can’t hold my baby, I spent only sixteen hours with her, I watched her bleed and swell and deteriorate, I watched my baby’s body die slowly in my arms. Yet I still loved and still treasure every moment of it. The only time I have to remember my baby, so excited to see what she looked like, whose nose she had, what colour hair and it was taken away from me quickly. So when you watch your baby breathe, move and grow remember that I’m the mum that watched her baby’s body die, she never took a single breath, nor did she move outside of my womb but she is still the best thing I have ever done. If I could carry and grow Rosie and give birth to her all over again, still knowing the outcome I would. I’d do everything all over again because she, my baby, my Rosie, my pink perfection is the greatest thing I have ever done in my life but here I am, the failed mother. Failed as a woman, I failed my daughter, my husband, my family. I have failed to live since Rosie died, I haven’t done anything amazing in the past nine months since Rosie was born.
Let me tell you something wonderful, something powerful, it’s okay if all I do in a day is breathe. As much as I want to be with my daughter I am not failing at life, I am breathing. As much of a failure I feel and know I am I am not failing at life. It’s very hard to not try and kill myself, in all honesty I have thought about it a lot, every week, I have written a suicide letter and have worked out exactly how many painkillers I need for my weight and have set them out in front of me but I haven’t done it. As much as I hurt I haven’t let my husband or mum go through the pain I am going through.
Don’t mistake this for feeling suicidal, this is normal, wanting to be with my baby, to be able to cherish her and look after her is not a wrong feeling, it is normal.

I am breathing.

It Still Hurts, Like the Day You Died.

It hurts now seven months after Rosie died and then was born just as much as it did when I found out she had gone.
I still have that heart wrenching pain, the panic, the nervous tapping and sweaty palms. I still have moments where I say “my baby is dead” because it hasn’t sunk into my head. I still have the hormones, the nurture, the motherly feelings that you get when you have your baby but mine are wasted. I hear a baby cry and my body yearns to protect my baby when my head is telling me that my baby isn’t here to protect or mother. It hurts all over again. Every day I wake up to an empty crib next to my bed and I remember I am not pregnant, I am not excited for our baby to arrive for ours was born in heaven. I remember my baby is dead. The world doesn’t. The world forgets about us and our pain. Even friends and family forget about us. Forget that we relive this pain every day. When you give birth to your baby you count the days until their birthday, for us Rosie’s birth was the reinforcement of her death. We won’t celebrate her first birthday on the 12th January next year, we’ll be mourning her death on the day she was born.

You have your baby and send us pictures or tell people how happy you are. You forget that we have lost the future we planned, we have lost a part of ourselves before we had a chance to know it. You forget that we still live this pain. We always will live this pain but now as we need and ask for love and support, we ask you to remember Rosie and our loss but you forget. When you hand your baby to my mum, the woman who lost her only grandchild, you only think that you need a break from your tired arms. I see you replacing our daughter who should be held in her grandmothers arms with yours. I see the pictures of your baby as the thing I am missing. I hear those cries and break again.

I can choose to be around you and your lovely living baby but I can’t choose how you send your happiness my way. Some times I can do it if you need a friend, some times I can say hello to your baby because I have worked myself up for days and hours to be strong and do that, I wish I could choose for the world to remember our baby and our pain but I cannot so I write to you here because today I am not strong enough to smile at you and pretend I’m okay.

I still break down and cry in public, I went to the hospital last week trying not to let the pain attack me, I lasted until I stepped out of hospital and its bad memories, I cried walking to the bus, I cried asking the driver for my fare, I sat on the twenty minute bus journey and cried in front of all those people. They didn’t know why I cried nor did they ask. At every stop I looked at the doors praying for someone I know to get on and hold my hand, ask me if I’m okay. I’m not okay. Life isn’t okay. I am strong and I am an inspiration but I am still human and I still hurt.

Do you still hurt from that messy divorce? Do you still hurt from your parents death? Does it still hurt you when you remember how a friend upset you?

I can’t control my pain, there are no pills, no operations, just pain.

If I reach out to you, could you reach back?
If I can remember your pain can you remember our pain?

Has Something Good Happened to You Today?

Have a think, think about today, what good can you get from it? Did you get less headaches than usual? Did you get something for free? Did someone smile at you when you were on the edge of tears? Have you looked at the people that love you and forgotten about those who despise you?

What have you done to bless someone today? Have you made your loved one a drink just because you love them? Have you smiled at a stranger because maybe they need it today? Have you paid for the person behind you in the coffee queue? Have you asked someone who’s hurting how they are? Have you text a friend letting them know you’re thinking about them?

Often I forget to think about my blessings and concentrate on the pain I have. I have a lot more to deal with than most of the people I know but does that mean that their worries mean less than mine? Does that mean that they hurt any less? Perhaps, perhaps not. You see I often hear about friends and family who have lost a job or are looking for a job or feel insecure about their abilities and I think to myself, yep I know how hard that is. I then list my problems in my head. I know how it feels to be out of work and desperately searching for a job I’m in that, I know how it feels to live with others because you can’t afford your own place I’m in that, I know how it feels to be insecure in your abilities I’m low on that, I know how it feels to worry about health I’m in that, I know how it feels to be without my daughter because she died I’m living that for eternity. I feel exactly what you feel because I’m in it or have been in it or are going to be in it for life but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to know about your situation. Share with me your worries, tell me about your pain. It’ll help me more than it’ll help you but at least you’ll be doing good for someone today. If you share your pains maybe you won’t feel so bad about not feeling the best parent because you can still show your children you love them, perhaps if you read about my mother in law yours won’t feel as bad. Perhaps if you are worried about finding your job lets search together. Don’t leave people in space, let them in on your troubles, let them listen and help, let them pick you up when you need it so that you can pick me up when I need it. Its far easier to think about others problems than it is our own. Maybe that one good thing you could do today is to lean on a parent with no baby, help take their mind off their emptiness, share as we’d like to share with you.

Space is something that you can have too much of, it feels overwhelming, vast, empty. Maybe text or call the mother whose baby died because she has no baby to care for, no job to earn, no friends to call on, she has too much time on her hands and no one to share it with. Sometimes she’ll be too afraid, too insecure, too upset to be with you but at least she’ll know that you care and you can share with her.

This is not just for me, those people that lose their children will always remember and will sometimes want you to make them feel wanted, loved, good about themselves.

Let blessings come looking for you, open up to someone who needs you to. Smile at the stranger in line who could have lost a baby themselves. Give an enemy a good gesture. Strengthen your good side so that you feel better about yourself, you have worries and pain but like me try and count the blessings of which sometimes you don’t always see. I’m glad some of you reading this have not lost a child, I’m happy for you but you may not even be able to feel that happiness. Let me point out that I have lots of blessings and one very big negative. How many blessings can you count in your life and can you bless someone else in theirs.

Expect blessings. They are coming to me, so if you expect them they’ll be coming to you too.

Are you my blessing today? Am I yours?

Let me tell you that I have been very negative since Rosie died but also amazingly positive. I thank the Lord my husband is with me because I feel that I could never cope without him, if he’d have died instead of Rosie I would not be on Earth. Does that make me wrong for seeing that I am still alive after Rosie’s death a blessing? Does it make me bad for carrying on?
I haven’t got a home of my own but I have shelter, I have a place to stay, my mum loves me and Andrew so much she has opened up her home to us for as long as we need it.
I do not see or hear from friends very often and family never but when I asked Daddy God to bring me people he brought me two amazing ladies I met at the gym. They told me how horrible I was to my husband, how awful I was telling him I wanted to die and be with Rosie, how he has twice as much pain because his daughter died and now his wife wants to leave him. These people shared their worries with me, ask me about Rosie and in turn I have been blessed by sharing my relationship with God with them. I have brought two people to Christ. I have had two blessings brought to me and created more blessings for them, when I thought I couldn’t give any more I gave more than I ever thought of myself. I now teach them as they teach me.
I have also found a passion for yoga. It makes me feel like I’m ready for the world. I cry in every single yoga session but it builds me up even stronger. Crying is not weakness, showing your pain to others makes you stronger and I am strong as I show you my pain.

So these negatives in your life, could they be blessings as well?

Family and their selfishness

So for the past few weeks I’ve been really asking for love and support from friends and family, the royal baby, a nations happiness forcing its way through to my sadness. I’ve been asking people I have let into my life since Rosie died to show me they care, to be there to try and love me.

This week I have been shown that those who once shared our loss of our daughter no longer share it with us but are now jealous that we have had this tragedy happen to us and not them. Some people just can’t see others pain because all they have to worry about is small in comparison to truly tragic circumstances. I have been shocked that some people have turned out to be so selfish they tell me they can’t love me, such as my mother in law. I begged her to show me love and support, she couldn’t. She told me that I don’t love my husband because I don’t have a job, she told me I control my mum whom I look after because I don’t let her grieve because I live with her. She told me that she had more of a right to grieve over my daughter than me. This is the woman who tried to break mine and Andrew’s wedding up, got me in a room surrounded by her family when I was five months pregnant so they could tell me how horrible I was and how I’d never be good enough for their family, this is the woman who let her other son come at me in a rage to be stopped by my husband. This is the woman whom let her husband square up to and threaten me whilst pregnant. This pathetic excuse for a woman also text my husband several times asking if he was dead… I guess she must be happy now she got her wish and someone died. This woman shouted at and belittled me on my wedding day and asked nothing about our pregnancy with Rosie after that. She didn’t know Rosie, she didn’t care about her or Andrew and I so she must have felt guilty when Rosie died. I blessed this awful human by letting her say goodbye to my daughter when she was stillborn. I blessed this woman by telling her I loved her and calling her mum. I showed her grace and favour after all she had done and let her family do to me, Andrew and Rosie. Six months after Rosie’s death she has told me I shouldn’t grieve any longer, she has told me I am lazy and don’t work hard, she has told me I am selfish myself for grieving and asking for support and love. This woman also told me how a few days after Rosie died she took lots of tablets and tried to kill herself. What a selfish person to try and make me, the mother of, the woman who went through labour knowing my baby died and gave birth to. She is so black hearted and jealous that she wanted this tragedy to happen to her so that she could have the attention, the sympathy, the love. Very sick minded for someone to think only of themselves. My mother in law monster in law’s husband even agreed with me that she can’t love, she doesn’t know how to show it. She thrives off attention, jealousy and selfishness.

There are people that will, believe it or not, be jealous that your baby died. There are people that are so selfish they cannot put anyone before themselves, these people have a black heart which you won’t be able to heal. As much as I tried to bless this woman and her family it didn’t work, they couldn’t handle my strength and love so I bless them now by letting them fester together alone. This light is no longer in their lives but shines for her own family. The future me and my amazing rock of a husband have together. Do not try and change those selfish and jealous people just cut them out of your life like the cancer they are.

Blessings are coming.

One Angry Mother Faither

People, friends, family. Hurt. Pain. Anger. Faith.

Why do people let me down so much? It has only been six months since Rosie died and then was born yet no one remembers her, not every day like I do. Not every moment like me. Friends, they don’t contact me, they make arrangements to meet with me and never show up, they even walk past me in the street. Friends push me to people who will understand what I am going through, tell me to reach out to other lost parents. Family, forget about me, never contact me, expect me to contact them and when I do they don’t realise how hard it was for me to even text them. My door knocks and I still run upstairs to my bedroom because I can’t handle people and their misguided ways of how to treat me. The door never usually knocks for me but i’m still scared of the outside world, judging me and how I should be coping now, telling me I should be over this, even telling me I should have more children right away, Judgement happens in the world, it shouldn’t but it does, you are even judging how i’m writing these words now. I judge, I often see mothers smoking whilst pregnant and get so very angry, I get angry because my friends that I had before Rosie died are no longer my friends now. I judge you, you are judging me too. My judging gets me angry, I judge you on your lack of friendship towards me, your lack of contact, I judge you on how you act when you see me, even the words you speak, i get angry that you can no longer treat me how you once did, I get angry when I reach out to you for friendship, support, love. I don’t get it, if i do get it, it isn’t enough. You make me angry. Wait, it isn’t your fault. I’ve been angry at you, friends, family, church, because you couldn’t be there for me. Perhaps you didn’t want to be there for me. In all I have judged you for this and I am wrong for doing so. I have just realised that you can’t be here for me, you can’t because you are happy in your life and you don’t want to take on my sadness. Or because life is hard for you too and you can’t handle my sadness. Or you just aren’t perfect. Yes, that’s right i know you’re secret…you never have been and never will be perfect. You can’t be here for me because you can’t give me your all. I can’t give you my all either, I can’t give you all of my pain because I need this pain to remember Rosie did exist and I am a mum. You aren’t God, only he can be there for me completely, only my heavenly father can feel all of my pain and carry it with him as well as carrying me. You may only be able to smile at me or think of me every now and again because that is all you can handle in your life right now. Some people can’t be happy themselves and think of others pain at the same time, its too hard. Let me tell you, dear friend, I feel pain all of the time so when you come to a time that you feel pain I will think of you and be here for you, not completely because I will always carry my own pain too but as you live in happy times I find it hard to stand with you in joy because my life has very little of it. Just know that as you feel your own pain i stand with you and offer you my hand, God though, will be there for you in joy and pain he is completely yours, completely mine. We, we’re not perfect, so I forgive you for not remembering Rosie, not remembering our pain, not being a friend when we most need it because I want you to forgive me for not remembering your happiness or joy when you need friends to celebrate with you. I am very proud of the accomplishments you make in life, I am proud that i have known you at one time but I do not know you now as you do not know me. I am changed, for better and for worse. I can very much handle your pain as it takes me away from my own, I can love people very easily and help people because I reap the rewards of those happy moments for my own selfishness. 

I will admit to you that I have been very angry with you, friends, family and even you strangers, angry that you don’t share my pain, angry that you forget about me, angry that you have the things that I do not have. Where has anger gotten me? I am still in this emotional wreck, still looking for signs of hope I am still walking by faith and not by sight. Anger is a fool’s emotion it does nothing for anyone but yourself and all it does is make life darker with less to live for. 

I want to share with you a passage out of the bible which has helped me in times of despair, I have screamed this out for my Daddy God to hear but I have realised that he already knew it before I shouted it: Psalm 31 

 1-2 I run to you, God; I run for dear life.
    Don’t let me down!
    Take me seriously this time!
Get down on my level and listen,
    and please—no procrastination!
Your granite cave a hiding place,
    your high cliff aerie a place of safety.

3-5 You’re my cave to hide in,
    my cliff to climb.
Be my safe leader,
    be my true mountain guide.
Free me from hidden traps;
    I want to hide in you.
I’ve put my life in your hands.
    You won’t drop me,
    you’ll never let me down.

6-13 I hate all this silly religion,
    but you, God, I trust.
I’m leaping and singing in the circle of your love;
    you saw my pain,
    you disarmed my tormentors,
You didn’t leave me in their clutches
    but gave me room to breathe.
Be kind to me, God—
    I’m in deep, deep trouble again.
I’ve cried my eyes out;
    I feel hollow inside.
My life leaks away, groan by groan;
    my years fade out in sighs.
My troubles have worn me out,
    turned my bones to powder.
To my enemies I’m a monster;
    I’m ridiculed by the neighbors.
My friends are horrified;
    they cross the street to avoid me.
They want to blot me from memory,
    forget me like a corpse in a grave,
    discard me like a broken dish in the trash.
The street-talk gossip has me
    “criminally insane”!
Behind locked doors they plot
    how to ruin me for good.

14-18 Desperate, I throw myself on you:
    you are my God!
Hour by hour I place my days in your hand,
    safe from the hands out to get me.
Warm me, your servant, with a smile;
    save me because you love me.
Don’t embarrass me by not showing up;
    I’ve given you plenty of notice.
Embarrass the wicked, stand them up,
    leave them stupidly shaking their heads
    as they drift down to hell.
Gag those loudmouthed liars
    who heckle me, your follower,
    with jeers and catcalls.

19-22 What a stack of blessing you have piled up
    for those who worship you,
Ready and waiting for all who run to you
    to escape an unkind world.
You hide them safely away
    from the opposition.
As you slam the door on those oily, mocking faces,
    you silence the poisonous gossip.
Blessed God!
    His love is the wonder of the world.
Trapped by a siege, I panicked.
    “Out of sight, out of mind,” I said.
But you heard me say it,
    you heard and listened.

23 Love God, all you saints;
    God takes care of all who stay close to him,
But he pays back in full
    those arrogant enough to go it alone.

24 Be brave. Be strong. Don’t give up.
    Expect God to get here soon.

Now I expect great, magnificent, wonderful, complete things from God and not from you. 

Faith, Sex and my Dead Baby

“Why don’t you go to church anymore, is it because you don’t believe in God?” My answer was ‘when my baby died I found it very hard to be around babies and people who didn’t know what to say to me.’ her reply “oh yeah, I’m sorry I forgot”.

People do forget, people wonder why they don’t see you often. People wonder if my faith in God has gone. I very much believe in God, I have more faith since Rosie died. Don’t get me wrong when Rosie did die I didn’t want to believe in God, I didn’t want to believe that God let this happen to our baby. I was angry and believe me I told him so, I begged God to bring my baby back to build her back up from the ashes to just answer why she died. To give me some hope, I beg for the pain to stop. For the world to stop hurting me. The way I’m writing this may seem to you as though God is cruel, as though he doesn’t exist but think of this.. There is hope. There is hope that from this deep abyss there will come the greatest glory. If you believe in God you will know that we don’t get what we want we get what we need. Things don’t make sense until you look back when all the things you went through were to strengthen you or to prepare you or to help others. I think I will always look back and wonder why Rosie died, why God let her die, because he did, he let it happen. As much as I don’t want to think that the most admirable and wondrous force took my daughter away from me he did and that hurts but its for reasons I don’t know why. I can only try and soften the blow by thinking Rosie was saved, saved from years of pain and illness or something worse. This is just my way of thinking, I understand lots of people feel angry with God and you know I’m still angry with him but I still love God, I still live my life knowing that he knows what is best for me and knowing that to him I am a princess and worth all of his royalties. These times have felt like I’ve been going from bad to worse, what could I be being prepared for? My husband and I barely have a marriage, oh we love each other so much don’t be mistaken by that but we argue a lot, we struggle to spend time together, we don’t date mainly because of money issues, we don’t find romance and our sex life well that goes up and down. If I told you six times a month I’d be lying that was just one month in the past six. Thinking about making love and being in the mood for it are different things, sometimes we can’t stop thinking about death or pain or all these worries we have. You may think I’m divulging too much but I believe that someone else is going through this too and may need to hear that they aren’t the only ones. Can you think about sex and not associate it to babies and then death? It takes a lot of training your thoughts to stop bringing these thoughts together. Making love is what you need, you don’t need to feel loved by using sex, it doesn’t work. You don’t want to have sex to make babies, you don’t want to think of yourself as the vessel that brought a dead baby into the world. I felt like I was death in form. As though my womb was useless and poisonous. Some times I’m scared because I don’t want to bring death to anyone else. Some times I feel disgusting, useless, unworthy of my husband because I brought our baby into the world dead. I think if you focus on making another baby after one has died sex becomes machinery, baby making. You need romance, to stop associating negativity with the intimacy two people can share in a magnifiscent way.
My husband and I don’t have a home of our own, we don’t have money, infact because we live with my mum we’ve gotten her into thousands of debt in just six months. So now I have the guilt of my mums debt for us, my husband working 40 hours a week for barely £200 and me with nothing, no job, no baby, no home, no help, just worries and pain and frustation. Am I angry with God? Yes, who would be in this situation and not be angry? Who wouldn’t just say to him Give us miracles and prove you’re here? I’m not. I thank him every day for the wonderful things he’s bringing to us, if I don’t remember love and hope what else do I dwell on? Negativity. I don’t want to be negative, life is what you do not what has happened to you. If I lived forever in negativity I’d just be asking for bad things to happen, be thankful for the days that will come to you for the path you’ll make for yourself, you may even get something good from it. Listen I hate being positive when I have nothing good in my life except my husband but if I lost him I’d have nothing so why wouldn’t I be thankful and happy to have him? There is something you have that is positive and in the future you’ll have more of those somethings to be positive.

Losing a baby takes away your future for a while but its time to realise that you still have a future a different one but it could be a good one.

She’s Looking At You Kid

It’s been a long time since my last post. I’ve been very weak, I’ve barely been able to carry on with life over the past few weeks. Things just suddenly became hard and unreal again.

“What has the hardest part of Rosie’s death been?” is what a friend asked me. I didn’t know what to reply with, did I say the week that Rosie died or the week after, now? I couldn’t put it into different difficulties, it’s all been just as hard. Every moment I remember my baby is dead I have to try and stop myself from thinking in order to stop the pain. The pain doesn’t get any easier, you think it will, you see people living with grief and think that they don’t feel the pain any more. I replied with “the hardest time was when I still had to give birth to Rosie knowing that she was dead” but as I look back that was the easy part, i’d love to feel Rosie again, have her physically with me, now I feel nothing, sometimes I forget i’m a mummy. I have all of these natural instincts in me that are wasted, every time I hear a new born baby cry my body yearns and screams. I feel a physical pull urging me to protect my baby but it isn’t my baby I hear cry. I find myself not only looking but staring at heavily pregnant women wishing it was still me and Rosie, I watch mothers with their babies cooing over them, feeding them, checking they are okay. I see women stop prams to look at the contents with smiles and laughter, I don’t just look I stare and I know that i’m doing it I just can’t stop myself. I went to a friend’s house so that I could mix with people i knew which is a scary thing, I still won’t see or speak to my own family. They had someone there with a baby girl a few months probably Rosie’s age had she of lived, I watched people make funny faces, play and giggle with her. My heart, wow, my heart stopped. That should be my baby. I knew then that I will find every day and every situation hard. I didn’t go back the next week because I felt so hurt by it that it had weakened me. Gradually I have become weaker, I have stopped seeing children I know that like me, such as my nephews I won’t go to a place if I think they’ll be there. I have these motherly instincts that are for Rosie but somehow I find myself being looked up to by other kids. It feels so wrong to me, I’m Rosie’s mum no one else’s so I have avoided children and family and friends. I started to only go out at night time so there were less people around, now its summer people are everywhere whatever time it may be so i’m being pushed to go out. I still live in the same area where every one knows i’m the mum to a dead baby, I get looks and nods and sympathy half smiles. I have very few meaningful friends that want to spend time with me, I think i’m more of a party pooper now, here comes the dead baby lady. I went back a few weeks later to my friends house, I had a particularly hard week, I just didn’t want to be here any more I began to say “I give up” that was the day I told my husband how bad I was feeling, I told him I can’t live in this pain any more. I have joyous times, you’ll always see me smiling despite the pain I feel but you see i’m unhappy, i’m lost, i’m still in this black pit and the light I see above me is fading. The evening at a friends I walked in and cried, I was at the end, no more could I live with the pain. My husband helped me calm down and paint a smile back on so I engrossed myself in conversation talking and enjoying hearing about other peoples problems, to talk about other peoples problems is such a mighty relief it takes my mind off my pain and hurt. I got on with someone I have never really had a deep conversation with before, I thought that I was making a friend that would actually be a friend it gave me a sense of hopefulness. And then I found out from a piece of paper saying “_ and _’s baby will be my best friend” I thought this was a joke, I actually laughed thinking no one would leave this around for me to find if it was true. I took the paper to this friend and found out she was pregnant. At that moment my heart fell out of my mouth onto the floor and was crushed by the falling of my hopefulness. This is what lead to me nearly killing myself. Again. My husband hugged this friend and congratulated her, I felt as though he had betrayed me, I felt like he was happier to see their pregnancy than he was for ours. I didn’t remember how happy Andrew was when we found out we were pregnant I just automatically thought that he had betrayed me and Rosie. I barely kept it together for the next ten minutes before we left and then when we  made our way home I started to deteriorate. I was thinking about what happened, how I found out, how Andrew reacted how betrayed and let down I was by friends and my husband. It kindled in my head and then at home it burst into ferocious flames, I lost myself. I couldn’t move from the bus when it was our stop, the bus driver was patient as Andrew had to drag me off, I didn’t want to go home, my baby should be there but she wasn’t. I couldn’t face the torment again. Constantly comparing my losses to the friends gains, they have two great jobs, money, a beautiful house, friends that stick by them, a car, loving family and now a healthy pregnancy and soon a baby. We have a dead daughter, living in a small flat with my mum because we can’t afford our own place, my husband earns just over minimum wage, I earn nothing because every job I go for I’m not right for. No benefits or help from the government, living on £50 a week for two. Why do we have nothing when other people seem to have the world and much more. If any one deserves a break its us but no we get to find out this news in such a harsh way. It bubbled into volcanic lava spewing out of me, I collapsed to the floor which was the middle of a road and I screamed and cried, I had no control over my actions, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk all I could do was scream and cry on my knees in the middle of a road. As I fell to the floor my husband tried to catch me but couldn’t, He then sat in front of me holding me tight trying to get me to move. People came to see if they should call 999, cars came and stopped because I blocked the way, I just couldn’t move an inch. screaming so loudly at 10pm in the middle of traffic I almost got my husband arrested. I was there for at least twenty minutes before I could move. Andrew lead me home, my body was so weak, everything started to shut down, I couldn’t talk, could barely think. I hardly even knew where I was going. I don’t remember getting inside or sitting down, I must have been sobbing and screaming slumped on the sofa for half an hour, I couldn’t even close my mouth so I had fluid all down my clothes. Then I got the strength to go to the kitchen and get a knife, I took a chefs carving knife and held it against my wrist keeping my veins prisoner. I didn’t want to kill myself I didn’t plan it I just saw it and wanted to scare myself back into reality, I held the knife strong against my skin. Andrew followed me and took the knife away from me with the most hatefully loving look I have ever seen, he embraced me and walked me over to the sofa and held me tightly again, my mind woke up, I couldn’t talk still I just kept mouthing words to him looking into his angry loving eyes. After lots of attempts the words started making sounds, the words I chose summed up everything I was feeling and struggling with “my baby’s dead” over and over with passion and terror I kept saying it. Every time I said those words they meant something different but that’s all I could say. The lava that spewed out of my mind took over every part of me, had I not have gotten the energy to scare myself I believe I would have given up and stopped. I still haven’t put myself together I feel angry, betrayed, lost, I feel useless and unworthy of anything good. If anyone needs blesseings in life I do, we do. And I bloody well expect millions of blessings to come to us now. If you feel like this about anything you should expect blessings too.

Our ocean of blessings is coming, so we’re learning how to swim.

Putting you away

When its time to address those things you bought and were given for your baby its like addressing that permanent loss you have all over again.

I worked myself up to taking Rosie‘s dresses out of my wardrobe. My husband had put them behind our wedding outfits so that I wouldn’t see them everyday. He thought this was being really helpful but I liked seeing them, it gave me that excitement I had when I was pregnant, looking at them counting down the weeks and days until I could put Rosie in them. I didn’t like not having that excitement. Even now I go shopping in the baby sections and see some things that would be perfect for Rosie. I want to buy them. I seem to block out the pain and use the excitement that I’ve found something perfect for Rosie, I’ve asked my husband if I can buy some things for her. He has to tell me that they will never be on her, they will just collect dust. My baby is dust now. It makes sense to me in a very strange way. Although when Andrew comes shopping with me and I wander into the baby sections he follows me with dread, he almost can’t keep his heart inside of his chest. It hurts Andrew, he feels the pain straight away, I’m shopping for a baby I’m excited to see and he’s there thinking about his dead daughter that he’ll never see again. I’ve pointed out the perfect dress for Rosie or ‘a Rosie dress’ as I call it, Andrew breaks down in tears falling to the floor. Telling me that we should be buying new dresses for her now. Its comforting for me to see Rosie clothes but for Andrew its a reminder that we don’t have Rosie.

I still have Rosie’s pram, baby seat, bouncer and winter coat in my living room. All parked up ready to go, I sit opposite them everyday but it doesn’t hurt me. It feels like Rosie is going to come home, it feels like we’re ready for her. For anyone else that walks into my living room its an echo of death. What should have been. I’m working toward storing them away for Andrews sake, he doesn’t feel comfort from these things. He remembers when we took Rosie’s pram out for the first time when we were pregnant testing to see if it was good enough for our Rose, we were so excited saying to one another that soon we’ll be pushing the pram with our baby in it. He remembers the pain, the knee buckling screaming pain we carry with us daily.

So for me putting Rosie’s dresses away used a lot of strength, I’m taking away the comfort of lying to myself when I see Rosie’s things. With her things all around us ready it feels like Rosie will come home. With them gone its like putting away Rosie. I feel so guilty for putting Rosie’s things away, squeezing them into a chest of drawers. Out of sight out of mind. No more excitement of meeting our baby, no more use for all of these expensive things. Not able to use them as anything but for putting things on. I’ve taken Rosie’s pretty dresses and put them away. We’ve started to dismantle Rosie’s crib at the bottom of our bed, the baby changer in our room is empty of all those nappies, creams and baby wipes now. The pram holds our wedding album and the teddy we bought for Rosie. Waiting to be folded and stored away.

All of those positive things we have for Rosie are being replaced with pictures of her and dust. When Rosie’s ashes came I wasn’t ready. She came home as dust, she shouldn’t have come home in a white plastic tub with her name on it. I don’t want her ashes with me, they aren’t her, they aren’t my baby. The ashes are just dust, settled dust that will never feel my love. Putting my baby’s things away is like putting my Rose into a drawer, never to be seen or heard. For most I should be moving on from this. People often say to me “how are you now, have you moved on?” Have I moved on? When your child turns 16 and is no longer a child do you forget about them and move on from those sixteen years you cared for them? What a stupid thing to ask, just over four months after Rosie’s death and birth i’m supposed to forget about her and move on because I can always have more babies and do more things. This is maddening. No parent to a dead child will ever move on. We survive and carry on but never ever do we move on.
When I was pregnant I found out my neighbour to my left was pregnant too, her and her husband had tried for years to conceive and suddenly as they were going for ivf they found out they were pregnant. She was two weeks ahead of me. We went through lots of first time excitement and worries together, it was so fun to have a friend who felt the same as me at the same time. We even had a race to see who would give birth first. I won. I gave birth to Rosie two days before my due date where she was overdue. But my baby died just after I arrived at hospital. I still gave birth naturally and did all the hard work, no one remembers the hard work I did which was even harder because I knew I was giving birth to my dead baby. It takes more strength and bravery to give birth to your dead child. Any woman that does it deserves the recognition for being so very strong. If you have done this please let me congratulate you on doing so well to bring your baby into the world when you had no hope to hold on to. A few days after I had Rosie my neighbour was induced and had her daughter. It made me sick when I heard, her baby will remind me of the baby I lost she’ll be the same age, a constant reminder of what my baby should be like. I Haven’t been able to see or even pass my neighbour, I have to leave my house and walk a completely different direction in order to not see her. If I saw her baby i’d just see what I should have. Years i’ll think my baby will be this age and height. Its too much to contemplate. So I walk half a mile out of my way every time I leave my house. Yesterday I opened my door and saw her opposite me with her pram and her mum. I slammed the door shut and started hyperventilating  It gave me the first panic attack I’d had since I was a teenager. It also gave me the opportunity to get one step closer to being stronger. I may not be able to face that baby but I look forward to seeing my friends babies. I gift them with baby things to strengthen their pregnancies, I celebrate with them for the gift of their healthy children. I thank God for my future children that will be healthy and victorious when I have them. Rosie will never be with me in person but through her I do amazing things to help others. Without ever taking a breath Rosie has been a blessing to me, her Dad and many many others. I’ll tell you all the things Rosie has spurred us to do one day but now I battle with putting her away.

Four Months That Started Cold

As I look back over the past four months, the four months that Rosie has been dead. Four months ago Rosie was born and four months that I have survived wanting to be with my baby.

When I was pregnant my main concern was how we were going to keep Rosie warm when she was out in the big wide world. I had my mum knitting and crocheting blankets for Rosie, I had room temperature gadgets, I even read up on how a mothers skin adapts to the baby’s heat cooling and rising to whatever the baby needs when the baby is close to you. I read about the signs of a baby sticking its arm out when its too hot. I was ever so keen on making sure that Rosie would never be cold.

My Mum holding Rosie the day after she was born. Wrapped in the blanket made for her.

When I gave birth to Rosie she was put onto my skin she was so warm it was very comforting. I watched her face to see if her eyes would flicker, concentrated hard trying not to blink so I could see if her lips would move or her nostrels would flare with breaths being taken. She was warm and perfect, it was very evident that Rosie had only just died which is where Andrew and I were blessed, we still got to see Rosie as her. She was still a baby and not a dead baby. Many parents don’t have the blessing to see their baby as they should have looked so for this I am so very thankful. I gently opened Rosie’s eyelid to see the colour of her eye. It was a stone coloured blue  but still I imagine her with brown eyes, perhaps because both Andrew and mine are brown and that’s how hers would have changed. Rapidly Rosie began to lose the warmth she came out with. This is how I knew she was never going to open her eyes to look at me, I would never see her chest move up and down or see her lips move.  The opposite of what I had prepared for had started to happen and I had to do all I could to keep my baby cold. I wasn’t prepared to keep my baby cold, it was so unnatural. We bathed Rosie shortly after she was born, Andrew filled the bath with cold water, I tested the water to feel the temperature, it was cold. I couldn’t put my baby in a cold bath it wasn’t right. I asked Andrew to change the water to something a bit warmer, I just couldn’t bare to put Rosie in a cold bath. She shouldn’t be cold, everything in me wanted to make sure my baby was warm and comfortable, handled gently and smoothly. I rocked her and stroked her, I held her hands and patted her bum. Nothing to me was natural to treat my Rose like she was dead. Birth is supposed to be the beginning of life not the end of it so how could I tell myself to go against my natural instincts? When Rosie was dressed we wrapped her in blankets that my mum had made for her and put her in a moses basket. This moses basket had a cold mattress in it, although it wasn’t working properly to keep Rosie cold enough I remember confusing myself, keeping Rosie wrapped up but keeping the air cooler on in the room and a cold cot to make her cold. No baby should be cold but mine was losing heat. She wasn’t warm any more. I wanted Rosie to be warm, the confusion of trying to make her cold was something in itself to focus on. When we visited Rosie in the funeral home she was left in a room so cold you could see your breath when you walked in, She was just placed on an adult sized bed not moving, cheeks as blue as her eyes were when I looked and lips a dark purple that looked almost black, I guess this is as close as we’d get to seeing her go through that teenage goth phase. Still after a week of knowing Rosie was dead and that we had to keep her cold to preserve her body my instinct was to wrap her up in more blankets. I had my mum making more for her the week that she had been dead. Feeling her cold cheeks and head made me feel like I wasn’t doing my job as her mum properly. I wanted my baby to be warm. When we settled Rosie down, this is what we called her cremation, a funeral isn’t the right word for a baby so we chose to call it Rosie finally being settled, We knew that no longer would Rosie be cold. No longer would I fight my natural instincts to keep my baby warm. We now believe that Rosie is warm and safe in our hearts and every time we eat a Rosey apple sweet which is what our Rose was named after we remember she is  no longer cold but warm and safe in our hearts.

Four months after Rosie was born I thought that I wouldn’t be here, I thought that I was so broken i’d be with her in no time. Four months on Andrew and I talk about what she’d be doing now, how big she would be and laugh about how much more hair she’d have. Four months seems like such a long time but for me it is no time at all. Lots of people have moved on from what happened to Rosie, lots of people choose not to remember because it hinders them from being happy in their own lives. People don’t ask us about Rosie anymore, friends don’t even mention her name scared that it will make things uncomfortable or bring back painful memories. Let me explain that Rosie isn’t a painful memory but she is the most amazing and beautiful thing I have ever done. I am so proud to be Rosie’s mum and so very lost without her. Please remember Rosie, she isn’t just a dead baby she was a person with her own personality that died. Rosie is as much a part of  history as you and me, you only get to meet her through me, that’s the only difference. Rosie’s death doesn’t get any easier to deal with its just easier to fill life up with other things as well as grief. The pain I had when I found out Rosie was dead is still the same, I just manage to smile more now.