12wbt: Reflections of Accountability - One Month In

This is by no stretch a sponsored post or a review. This is just my usual tell-all spill which I tend to do periodically if you'll be so kind as to bear witness to my latest discovery about myself. Shall we?




I just want to start by saying if it seems to you like every second person is talking about this 12 week body transformation (12wbt) thing, it's because it is astoundingly good! In my very humble opinion. And with the proof of 18 stubborn centimeters already lost from my frame. So far. At every turn, there seems to be a ready-reckoner by way of a timely video message from Michelle herself that speaks right to the gnawing age-old habits just lurking in the background waiting to pounce on me like some big meanie and say "A-HA, knew you couldn't hack the hard work. Here... have a chip or 100." I've dabbled in forcing a bit of "old food" (sugary stuff) down in this past month - with little detriment to my overall progress so far, I might add, but not doing myself any favours - because I figure, I am going to encounter some of these falling off the wagon times and this 12 weeks I am viewing as my testing ground. The control is the food. Rather, the lure of the unhealthy choice stuff. You know what I've discovered? I've lost the taste for it. The enjoyment is all but gone! I had half a melting moment two weeks ago as a "reward"....... It was the best thing I could have done because I knew straight away that it was no treat. The "treat" would have been a glass of water and my favourite salad when I got home. Huge lesson for me. Huge.

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Accountability and Application. I often mistake "accountability" for "responsibility". Somewhere along the line, I also fooled myself into believing that "knowledge" was near enough to "application" to be considered as good as the same thing.

With the shedding of my weight and the re-toning of my once-fit body, I am re-familiarising myself with my shapely arms, my strong thighs, my muscly powerful shoulders. I have the incentive of a finely crafted online weight loss and fitness program to thank for getting me back into the swing of it. The psychology behind my lack of effort to resume caring for myself is a little trickier, though, than handing over my credit card number to purchase the three-month package.

Thing is, I blamed my body for a long time. I thought I had stopped, but I have come to accept accountability for continuing to reward or punish my appearance depending on how I was feeling on the inside. Basically... it's a mental thing.

For six years - the better part of last decade, the 2000's - when nothing else in my life was going to plan I would hit the weights with my personal trainer. I might not have been able to carry a child, but I could put my body through its paces. Feel the burn, feel alive even if I could not nurture a life.

Pretty soon, I was blaming my exercise on my miscarriages. So I added yoga to my regime. No fewer than two early pregnancy failures happened directly after attending a yoga class. I'm not sure if you've ever experienced something like this, but for me it was the fastest way to make me not repeat what I had just been doing in the previous 1-24 hours of finding that first tell-tale spot on my pants. The very technique I had taken up to create some space and inner peace in my busy "work until I am successful creating a family" life became a source of fear as well.

In reality - and I have since become quite the well-read and practical expert on miscarriage - I know now that the pregnancies were failing days, possibly a week and sometimes more, before I was ever alerted. Nothing I was doing was causing them. Even with the knowledge of our specific male genetic factor, my blame game number on myself continued until Lolly came along. And then some.

Those years between 2000 and 2006 were an endurance marathon I'm not sure I would have signed up for if I had known what was to be held within them for me. I may have had a great recovery time from a flat-out boxing session with my trainer - something I recall being proud of at the time - but I could not chase away the niggling self-torment that by keeping fit, I was somehow ruining my chances of becoming a mother. Although I was reassured at every turn by my trainers and my health care providers, the armchair experts on the home front were wary of all my exercise. They were concerned and confused, even, as to why I would spend money on going to a studio to work out. "Have a baby! Carry that around all day, that'll give you muscles!" Yes. Someone actually said that to me. Someone who should have known better, as my recurrent (by that stage) miscarriages were not unknown to them.

Little by little, my weight crept up. The more I eased off the training, terrified as I edged towards the age of thirty that my fertility might also begin to decline if one of these babies wouldn't stay to satiate my mono-focused need to have a child, the more I justified my "eat treats" with a sense of self-punishing self-nurture. Both. At the same time. I deserved to be kind to myself, my internal voice would coo. I also deserved to punish my body, my sabotaging voice would claim equal rights. Both trains of thought ended in the bowl of ice cream or the bag of chocolate bullets.

Once Steve and I had done our two rounds of IVF in 2005 my body was so bruised from the 2004 birth and death of Ellanor and then the further two miscarriages the same year that, by rights, I should never have been ready or able to carry the LGBB to full term in 2006.

But I did. And I added 31 kilo's to my already solid frame in the process.

I really, and I mean really, paid my body in what I thought was kind. Food=Comfort=Nurture to me. For so very long. Like so many people.

So then I found myself with the baby we had yearned for (and lost) on so many occasions. But I was consumed by my sense of duty to my new role as Mother that all care and concern for my fitness - if not my health - went sailing out the window. Most devastating of all to me was the deeply distressing fact that I was so disgusted with the sight of myself in photos or video that I have scarce little photos of myself with my only surviving daughter. I was too ashamed that I now appeared so much huger than I felt.

And somewhere along the line these past five years, it just became the norm. The huge flab of skin on my tummy that looked like a second "rear end" out front.... the arms that tone so naturally quickly, all the definition in my waist that I worked so hard to get. All of it, so far gone that it felt like another person's body I just had on loan for a while there in my twenties.

When we moved to our new home in 2007, Lolly was almost two. I determined to walk all the streets of our charming new community, so rich was it in opportunities to really huff and puff and get fit and see some cracking scenery while I was at it. But I've never done anything of the sort. Sure, I have justified my inaction with plenty of seated work. I have finished writing a book (amongst many other computer-related projects), for gawd's sake. You can't do that standing. But, see, there was no balance. And definitely no accountability.

Now, my day generally begins with a 6am start and the dog is raring to go before I can grab my cap off the hall stand hook. I adore the old familiar surge that courses through my entire body. Without any of the toxins that I was ingesting the night before, my body can quite easily rise at this time and get me where I need to go. I can walk and par-jog 5km's these days, up some mountain goat-like hills and back down some equally mean ones in the space of that one precious hour before heading home to greet my five year-old for the day.

I have come to realise that my mind was holding me back. My self-reward/self-punishment cycle had to stop. My body has actually done me so proud. Always. It responds scientifically, if only I would get out of my own way and just fuel it correctly. In the first month of this 12-Week Body Transformation, already I have seen the visible evidence that I was not too far gone to even bother trying after all. I am a self-starter, just like I always thought I was. I can do this. And I must. For I have kept myself out of too many photos with (and now for) my baby for too long. Heck, I'm not even so afraid to vlog any more because I'm making peace slowly with my appearance (compare the latest one to the first deer-in-headlights one I did a few short months ago!).

From now on, my accountability to myself is going to remain front and centre. It isn't enough that everything in Michelle Bridges' 12wbt program is pretty much all familiar to me. It matters not one tiny skerrick if I don't apply it. That was what I was missing. Hmmm... pretty crucial point!

I have welcomed myself to my New Life proper now. With the invaluable assistance of the thinking largely being done for me, the final layers of my healing are being shed so willingly. I find I have no emotional ties to what I've been holding onto.

If you are looking for something to catch you out on all your fall-back methods of justification - the things that keep you caught in your own cycle of self-destruction disguised as self-soothing or similar - this program will blow you out of the water if you are truly ready to let it all go and give over to the responsible, accountable way you could be living your life.

And if you hadn't already gathered, I can't recommend the Michelle Bridges 12WBT program strongly enough! She had me at Pre-Season Week 1 and it's been a cathartic journey ever since. So give it a go. I'd love to hear from you if you decide to.

The elephant in the womb: Why I'm glad I'm not an elephant

In July, 2006, I looked like this:

A very early capture of our little Photobomber, Jazz, refining her art

My ribs being positioned where they are (right on top of my hips with nary a centimetre between bone structures), there is nowhere to go but out, baby! So the LGBB was hovering out over nothing. A bit like walking the Eureka Skydeck88, I imagine. I only know what it was like from the building's perspective: damn uncomfortable and actually painful (I tried not to complain at the time, grateful as I was, but man.... my body was not happy and I had to increasingly manage the unexpected pain as I got bigger).

Around the time the photo above was taken, I mused the following to Steve (lifted from my old, now private, blog). He had no end of these sorts of musings thrown at him and, thankfully - or not - I recorded them on my blog as they happened. He's a funny guy. Most of the time. This time, I wanted to stab him. But I couldn't move.

Please excuse me, but there's an expletive involved:

Me: Imagine being a pregnant elephant. And gestating for two years. WITH AN ELEPHANT.

He: *daring to speak after thinking a moment* Hey... imagine if YOU were pregnant for two years. With.... an elephant.

*****respectful pause*****

Me: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.


I had forgotten all about this until tonight when I heard on the news that Melbourne Zoo's Asian elephant, Num-Oi, is expecting her first calf. Already four months along, it is considered very early and there is a risk of miscarriage, as with any, and I felt a pang of hope mixed with trepidation. I don't know why.

Then the news presenter said the expected due date was sometime in January..... 2013.

January 2013!?!

And of course, me being me, I got to thinking how utterly, utterly stressful that would be for an elephant if it had lost its first calf in infancy. They remember, you know. Don't they? Elephants, I mean. What the hell would go through an elephant mother's mind, I wonder. Waiting and gestating that, er... little 100kg precious bubba.

The day we took the LGBB to the zoo last year, I admit to shedding a happy tear seeing this gorgeous little three-month-old healthy girl:

Baby Mali on a family outing in April 2010:

"Are we THERE yet?"

I am SO glad I am not an elephant. Respect to the mamas. Major respect.

They walk among us

Those people with the nasty M-word in their history.

Years ago, this blog used to struggle with the minefield that was being pregnant (again.... again) after neonatal loss. At the time, I was indignant. I held on to my feelings about it all while I made every effort to safely get through (and by "safely", I also include every reader of my words).

You see, over time, I have been silenced. I did this to myself. Putting my neck out to speak up for the "club" I belong to - a complicated one - used to attract ire from time to time. Once upon a time, at the height of my "aloneness", the less I felt heard, the more I yelled into the cyber-void. It became a vicious circle. Passing through that phase, I was fortunate to come to a place where I could step outside of myself and my situation and consider others, no matter what their standing or their misfortune (or lack of). I cared enough for myself, too, and the shattered person I was, to strive for this understanding.

This, I believe, is called compassion. 

com•pas•sion –noun

1. A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

I learned and I practiced and I was diligent in seeking a way that was less and ever less offensive to anyone who happened across my words. It took time, it took years. And it took a conscious, concerted effort on my part to be responsible for my own words. I had to face the fact that although I justified my ranting writing as "my blogspace, I'll do what I like with it", I would be doing myself a great disservice if I did not grow from each and every post I chose to publish - if I did not acknowledge that my words had the potential to change someone's day or thinking, then I was acting terribly irresponsibly. I took my blog very seriously as I practiced. I still do.

My book has been written under the same protective, careful umbrella.

When I was heavily pregnant with Miss Lolly and grappling with being swallowed in the huge leveller that is Parenthood, I was confused by "the others" (parents) and their flippant attitudes towards what I was really facing. I felt very alone in a big, cold world. I became blinkered to the plights of so many millions, spread across all countries of the globe, battling their own hardships, because mine was all I could see in that instant.

My situation was equal to the girl who got the awful botch hair cut and colour. For her, as for me, she could not possibly see any silver lining and writhed and wrote her way through her situation. (This is a made-up situation, please take careful note! It's just to draw comparison...) It took me a while to accept this, but I did come to a point where I could see that even in lives that were seemingly so fine and perfect, there was struggle and strife. Whether admitted to or not. And that was how I came to my own personal peace with the situation I found myself in. In some respects, I was no worse off than the girl with the bad dye-job because, in our respective situations, we were currently in the worst circumstances we could ever be in.

So why is it that being told I have written something "depressing" grates on me so? Why do I find it almost disrespectful of someone to tell me, bold-faced, that they would not read my story because it's just too sad? Granted, there are only a few individuals who have said this to me over the years and while they are grossly outweighed by people itching to read it, I admit I'm affronted.

I have already lived with being "too hard to talk to" or deal with. I realised years ago that it was very difficult for some to be my friend (because of my history). I would like to think I have grown exponentially since thinking that about myself, while also not allowing my skin to grow too thick at the same time. It's been a tricky thing to balance.

I understand, I truly do, that it is not a book for everyone. And of course, to each their own - no arguments there. However, I think I have finally figured it out (why this sticks with me so much). 

However, there is a proper, compassionate way to deliver such an opinion to a person about their own life. If you must tell me my story depresses you and you don't want to know it/read it, please at least be apologetic about it! Or.... hey.... just don't tell me. Um, or, I know: Don't read anything I write! Pretend I don't exist, perhaps that would work better for you. For when you say that to me, you are saying it to EVERY parent who has lost a child and I find that so cold and callous and short-sighted, dismissing all the tiny little personal victories that go with moving through this most awful life event. Managing to get out of bed in those early weeks is a feat beyond imagining, let me tell you. That's just to name one achievement you are dismissing (it's so basic it would be easy for one to overlook it as important) when you wipe off our stories as too sad or depressing to warrant your attention.

Have a serious think about this, if you will:

How would you honestly feel if your life/ your story was belittled to such a pin-point that it was merely cast aside as "too depressing"? The life you have lived, the one that has saved you from yourself, inspired you beyond belief, reached and touched many and become a pillar of positivity to YOU because you lived and survived it...  To be told, without any sort of apology or tact, that your life depresses someone would put you on the back foot, no? Saying this reduces all the good, hard work I feel I have (had no choice to have) done.

The only thing that is "depressing" about it, to me, is the ignorance that miscarriage/child loss is written off so quickly as just so negative that there can surely be no positives out of it. 

THIS is why I write this blog. 

To keep myself reminded, and to inform, that there is far more to pregnancy loss than the loss itself. There ARE positives to come out of them - sure, they sometimes have to be sought (and even hunted down sometimes!), but they are there. 

I must thank those who think my story is too depressing (but who, intriguingly, still choose to read my blog) because it gives me renewed resilience to keep advocating for a huge collective consciousness - the bereaved who are mourning their unmaterialised child/ren - that have the lid put on their trials. 

Is it any wonder, really, that so many women choose to move on without more thought to what actually happened to them when they are faced with such dismissive attitudes by society? Often by other women, no less?

We walk alongside people every day who have all sorts of hardships, the depths of which we have no idea. The immensity of what some are coping with will often bely their quips, their smiles and friendliness. But it doesn't mean they are not doing an admirable job of carrying it all. 

Please... have a little heart. Consider your words and how you are delivering them on others (no matter what the justifications you can give for them). Remember your compassionate self. 

A sad story can still be uplifting, enriching and optimistic.

You Are There: Hearing the words for the first time

I began my long-awaited call to duty this week and took my first round of grief counselling calls  (miscarriage related). They were, of course, really poignant for me on a personal level. I have begun to see my role as a future counsel take shape. I like what I see. Most of all, I am shocked at how little it takes out of me while I am still being of great shape-shifting, behaviour-changing use to others I am in dedicated service to - going on feedback such as that which I received just yesterday from one of my lovely clients (not a grief counselling recipient), who called me a "miracle" (err... perhaps I ought to give her Steve's phone number and he can fill her in on all the ways I might not quite be one of those...).

Such humbling work, I can't even share it for it is not mine. But I will get a post out before long regarding my personal growth from what I have been involved with. Sometime. Not yet.

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It's time to share with you another moment when something so sweet and uplifting has come through all my conscious filters to reach me in a most intimate, private, lonely, sole, soul space.

I was in the kitchen by myself, cooking dinner for the family after a long day working outside with Steve. He was with the LGBB while she had her (much needed - she made puddles today in a back yard that was already a mud pit, soooo much fun!) bath.

I started an iTunes genius mix, which had the old regulars in it:  Madeleine Peyroux, Biréli Lagréne, Eva Cassidy, Sara Gazarek, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald... We listen often to music like this. One of our latest finds (and favourites) in the past year or so has been Stacey Kent, thanks to none other than Steven Tyler, of Aerosmith fame. She sings beautifully and complements our stable of gorgeous music perfectly.

I've heard the album of hers that we have many times now. Certainly heard this particular song so many times that I couldn't count for you how often it has played through our speakers. But tonight, for whatever reason, while I was thinking back on the week that has been, I was unconsciously casting my net out wide to capture the essence of my forever-babe.

My beautiful Ellanor.

While I busied my hands, pulling pasta out of the cupboard, shallots out of the fridge, heating the olive oil in the pan, thinking at the same time about the little piece of us who would never take her place at the table after a bath, the song below came on. And I heard the words for the very first time.

Love songs are like this. The more wistful or yearning, the more they could just as easily be singing about a lost loved one and not just an unrequited love.

So, I hope you enjoy the voice of Stacey Kent and this charming heart-pull of a song.

In the evening
When the kettle's on for tea
An old familiar feeling settles over me
And it's your face I see
And I believe that you are there

In a garden
When I stop to touch a rose
And feel the petals soft and sweet against my nose
I smile and I suppose
That somehow maybe you are there

When I'm dreaming
And I find myself awake without a warning
Then I rub my eyes and fantasize
And all at once I realise

It's morning
And my fantasy is fading like a distant star at dawn

My dearest dream is gone
I often think there's just one thing to do
Pretend the dream is true
And tell myself that you are there

Questions about questioning a loss (rewind post)

Hello, dear people. Another week down and I find myself - crestfallen - still unable to 'pen' the second part of that awesome lesson-filled Ebay exchange I had a couple of weeks back. I shan't do one more new post until I do! *shakes fist at sky* But until then, I would like to repost/rewind with something I wrote in January 2010. It's a shame so much can get buried so quickly! I have this creeping concern that I am missing out on other blogs' amazing, funny, insightful, vital writing and it is one of those parts of blogging that frustrates me, just as much as realising that stuff I write - so heartfelt - is lost almost the day after I write it sometimes. Phooey.


Annnnyway... to the old post (below). It's yet another very looooong one. But given my lack of daily posting, I hope that's okay. I also hope it is of some use to someone, currently. Let me know your thoughts. I will also add it to my Highlighted Posts page.



Originally posted on Sunny Side Up, January 22, 2010

(in which she finally gets around to answering the question posed by a commenter over a week ago...)

"So, is it getting any better, love?" Dad asked. He had phoned to say he was thinking of us, after also sending a really beautiful card, 'remembering our Spirit Girl, Ella.' So simple, yet majestic in its offering. My Dad is a masterful card-writer and his secret, really, is to be short and sweet and coming from a place most heartfelt, without even seeming like he's tried or searched or struggled for the right words.

It was an interesting question he posed to me on our daughter's sixth birthday.

"I have to say, it is... and it isn't," I fumbled in reply. How was I going to catch my father up to speed about how much more I had worked on myself [my attitude, my sense of self-centre, my further acceptance about what has happened to me in my life, learning to tailor my responses to people even further so they were real me responses, the genuine ones - after much time and understanding had passed, I would finally feel safe to be me in 2009] when he only asked this every year or so? Beautifully posed cards aside, I don't get checked in on at any other time of year. Not by anyone in my family. Save for my sister in-law sometimes, bless.

"Of course, it's easier in some respects," I continued on, with a real 'comma-but' implied in the trailing off of my sentence that indicated I had more to say.

"Ah, well that's good. I'm glad then," Dad said. He sounded relieved of his post. I left it at that.

There's no way to "nutshell" this process, really. At the end of the day, I'm now beyond needing to hear words of solidarity or comfort from my family and friends. But it's so good to have them delivered on us randomly - it's actually more poignant to be reminded, on any ordinary day during the year, that someone was "just thinking about you and how you're doing" or "had a moment, thinking about Ella today." Those gestures are priceless, this many years on.

So, to the question that was posed in the comments section of a post I made last week. I have to preface my attempts at answering this by clarifying that I am just one of many millions who have suffered the loss of a child over the 'lifetime' of this world. And I don't claim to definitively "know" the answers to these sorts of things. But, of course, without sounding too simpering, I know that I - and so many others like me - have more of a grip on this reality I'm in because of my strive to seek clarity and information and understanding for myself. It is this understanding and perspective only that I can share. And each person's will be different, even if only slightly, because we are all individual. Yes *say it together now* We are all individuals.

The comment:

Years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I was cheerfully chatting to a lady in my workplace and I asked her how many children she had. Two, came the reply. I then asked how old they were, she replied that one was three and the other had died as a newborn.

It totally floored me, I didn't know what to say or where to look. Did I ask what happened and seem nosey? Or should I say something like 'I'm sorry for your loss' and sound glib or insincere, even though I most certainly wasn't? Or should I just bring up the latest episode of Friends and seem uncaring... It all got really awkward and I started babbling about how terrible it must have been and felt like such a clumsy idiot.

In all honesty I'm still not sure I'd know how to react tactfully to the news a person had suffered such a terrible loss. So please, do you have any hints? What is a sensible, tactful response to the news that a person has lost a child?

Firstly, I can't answer this easily. I need to give a bit of background "depth" to this, for it is a situation that happens on a daily basis, I'm sure.

I think the most important thing to remember here is that.... at the end of the day, the woman gave birth to a gorgeous baby. Are we all not very proud of this achievement, as women and mothers, when this happens? The very moment that bubba passes, it's as if all of that joy and wonderment and empowerment gets sucked out of you (the parent) - and mostly, it pains me to have to break it to you, this process happens at the hands of others. Well-meaning they may be, but those who • change the subject, • go straight for the pained or tragic slant on the whole "thing" without properly acknowledging the (albeit short) life of the child, • ask only questions relating to what happened (why the child died).... feel very vampirish. Now, I know vamps are all "in" at the moment. But when you feel like your catastrophic event is being sucked on, it really isn't pleasurable. That joyous moment, the euphoric post-birth high gives way to.... nothing happy. Nothing rewarding. Which urges me to point you to this post (the tulip flower link on the right of this page) about miscarriage and the deep and lasting effects it can have on a woman's body. If people around the parent/s begin to reinforce the fact that theirs is a taboo, ugly, dark, too-hard-basket situation, then the parent/s will eventually have not many places in which to proudly talk about their baby and the experience/s (and life journey, however short-lived) they shared. SO.... my point about all of that paragraph is, what a blessed gift you would give a parent, if you were to provide them an opportunity to talk about the joys, the hope, the blessing they saw/see their child to be, their memories as a normal parent, basically - it is far more rare to receive this welcome opportunity, let me tell you.

All of that being said, one of the hard lessons of becoming a bereaved parent is the difficult realisation of "a-ha, I really DO have such a great duty of care here." When you start to lift yourself out of your own fog of grief - which can literally take years - and see that the responses you've been inflicting, on members of the general public or workmates, etc., who are completely unaware of your situation, are actually really affecting the person in front of you - reactions vary from visible crumbling, instant tears in the eyes, avoidance of meeting your gaze and so forth - that parent then has to become very quickly sound in their delivery. As if to buffer the receiver of the information. So bereaved parent becomes the comforter, if you will. It's a strange dynamic.

What to say, though, in far fewer rambly words than I've just unleashed from the depths of who-knows-where? Well, for starters (see - I can't be succinct with ANYTHING), I'm not a huge fan of directing anyone towards The One Ideal Sentence. There actually isn't one, if truth be told. Because the 'ideal' response is as varied as there are dynamics between personae - both the bereaved parent and the person who is attempting to offer some words of sympathy. Suffice to say, a great start would be - absolutely - "May I ask what happened?" Note that this is very different from asking "What happened" without the "may I ask", for you are giving the parent the choice to decide whether they will or will not go into it.

It takes much energy to explain, for me, even this many years on, and dependent on how interested the person is and how many subsequent questions they ask, I could be drained for the remainder of the day (without properly focusing on why that might be). So be mindful too that whatever you ask, you really are extracting memories that the parent may not be feeling up to delving into at that moment in time. Remember too, then, that that too shall pass (the moment of not feeling up to it) and it shouldn't be taken as read that you should never again attempt to enquire or seem interested. If your relationship with the parent is longer than a fleeting passing in the street situation, it would pay you well to perhaps revisit at a point in the near future - if indeed you have been thinking compassionately about the parent - and say something like, "I've been thinking about you and your baby, I can't possibly imagine what you've been through. But I would be interested/would like to learn some more about your experience with him/her sometime." And leave it at that. You may be pleasantly surprised at the appreciation you receive, if in fact you are genuinely interested.

You could also try:

(totally dependent on timing - both of asking the question and how recently the baby passed - and on your familiarity with the person AND not least in importance, being sound in your own agenda: why do you ask, why do you really want to know... a rhetorical question worthy of some consideration)

• I'm very sorry to hear that. (And leave that as your last sentence.... don't trail off into "But at least you've got one child" or "Are you planning to have any more" etc. etc.... these are extreeemely personal questions that I have never ever heard as being useful or received inoffensively in all my years of reading and talking with bereaved parents)

• Did you spend some time with him/her. (Again, VERY dependent on your comfort level of receiving the answer, your reason for asking in the first place, the nature of your relationship with the parent, the nature of the passing - although, in saying that, I think it is fairly standard these days for parents to be given the choice to determine how long they stay with their child after he/she has passed away... I stand to be corrected if anyone wants to weigh in here)

• Don't forget, the very simple "I cannot imagine."

Mostly, if you really would rather not know "details" and just want to back out without causing harm or offense, the first and last response are fine and would be suitable in pretty much all circumstances as a quick pull from your Memory File marked Social Etiquette Techniques.

It's an extremely important question that has been asked - What is a sensible, tactful response to the news that a person has lost a child? - and one that has no really short answer, as I've *aherm* illustrated. It's also something that can really blindsight a person, asking a seemingly obvious and simple question as "How many children do you have" and receiving the reply that one of the counted is no longer living. I'm unsure if I would be gracious and unflappable in response, had I not now experienced the journey I have.

So you'll find, by and large, that the mother or father you are feeling very inadequate in front of (in terms of a fitting reply, I mean) is going to be very forgiving of whatever response you give. Either way, I always maintain, one must act from the heart. To truly communicate and convey from this very private place within yourself, you have to first really know yourself - the Self you are today, forgetting tomorrow because things are going to happen today that could change that truth and standing of 'tomorrow', aren't they - and from there, that's when the giving and connection (between parent and innocent bystander) can truly begin to unfold the magic. Depending how you do it, you could deliver on each other a most astounding gift for the future, without either of you even realising. I think it's called........ unconditional, Universal love, in that brief moment. Remember this post and its story.

Don't know if that makes anything clear at all. I'm pretty satisfied with my response. But I know I've probably disappointed some by not being dot-pointy. I tried! I did. See the dot-points? I just don't do abbreviated, though..... Hnnngh.

But I guess, in closing, I have to refer back to the beginning of this post and my comments about my father's card: an honest, sincere and simple gesture is probably almost always going to work best.

By the way: please excuse any inappropriate Google ads that may appear beneath this post... they change at random and sometimes aren't offensive, but the one I just saw was about as poorly placed as a Libra oddspot.

Embracing Infertility: Boys are strong, like King Kong

I know exactly when it happened. When I turned the corner and stood face to face with the fact:

I am infertile

I had spent years skirting around the issue, the word, the stigma. Years justifying it with:

"I get pregnant literally all the time, so we're obviously fertile."
"We've become parents once before, it will surely happen again. We don't need extra help."
"I'm not the infertile one with the *thing* causing the problems, it's my partner."


I want to explain something here that I have never dealt with - I don't think?? - on either of my blogs [aside: I had a different blog for two years before Sunny Side Up and it is this first blog that I intend to dissect and repost here over time]. It speaks to that need to belong. That feeling of wondering "where do I fit?" in the world of infertility and pregnancy loss. I thought infertility was one and the same. I thought it was something you either had... or you didn't.


Here's what happened to me:

One day several years ago, I sat with my growing folder of assisted conception paperwork all on IVF Clinic letterhead, browsing the information while I waited for my latest blood test with my nurse. Suddenly, I sat bolt upright. There, staring me in the face were the words "Infertile Couple" on some referral letter or another. After the initial feelings of shock and indignation wore me down and I sat with the label for the rest of the day, I supposed that if this was how the medical system viewed me and Steve then it simply had to be. If we had to be considered on paper as "infertile" in order to receive treatment to hopefully skirt our genetic factor, then so be it. At least it was feeling like it was getting us somewhere further in our seemingly never-ending journey to bring home a child. I made nothing much more of it.

A few months later. I was served a lesson that smacked me once and for all between the eyes.

Reading on a forum I used to frequent in my "trying for another baby" days/months/years, the deflection and denial turned into reflection and acceptance. I saw an exchange between two women - and I can't tell you with any great accuracy how much IVF drugs may or may not have played a part in how hotly this got debated and weighed in on - that basically went like this:

"Oh, it's not me with the problem. It's my husband." I began to nod along with what the woman was expressing, until I read the response...

"Honey, you're in a relationship with this man? And he is the infertile one? Then sorry, you are both infertile."

It was so harsh. My cheeks flushed instantly and I felt so indignant that I rose a little off my seat, so ready was I to bash out a retort on my overworked keyboard. The cursor blinked back at me in its sea of white. I sat there staring at the other member's words. And then, as the realisation finished all its connections I raised my eyes from the screen and focused somewhere off into the middle distance in front of me.

Holy shit. That's me.

I wanted to recoil. To cringe. To shy away from all that I had been merrily labelling my own husband with before tripping off into some fanciful "Get out of jail free" type card. I realised with a start that I had been absolutely fooling myself all along and it had taken a virtual stranger's words to stun me out of my oblivion.

Ever since the test results had come back, in 2002.
Ever since we had been given a Russian Roulette-style run-down by a geneticist with more statistics than a statistician.
Ever since we were told we were "lucky" we could "get pregnant easily" by the geneticists.
Ever since we discovered our choices were, if we wanted a child, to either keep conceiving and hoping for a "normal one" or we saved up for IVF. Very expensive pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) - biopsy of embryos after ICSI (Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection) - kind of IVF.


We had already welcomed our first child in to the world. Against ALL odds. We had also farewelled her just 31 days later. My realisation came many long months in to our continuing, angst-filled journey to conceive again. When I attempted to join in to online groups, I entered with the added confusing twist that I was already a mother. But technically, not "mothering". Mostly, I was invited in with welcome arms by fascinating, insightful and supportive women all going through the IVF mill and sharing the process and the journey with each other.

I had experienced the wonder of pregnancy and birth. I felt somewhat set apart from people who had not experienced either of those things. "Set apart" in that I felt guilty, somewhat of an imposter. Should I be chatting with these women, many of whom were yet to even fall pregnant, when I had experienced it time and again? How much knowledge should I impart to them? What was too much information? What was not enough sharing of my vast experience with pregnancy (to not share what I knew was equally irresponsible of me, in my books)?

It was a brilliant - absolutely invaluable - learning ground. I learned how and where and what to pitch about myself. I honed a sense of tact and diplomacy. I learned to recognise how exhausted I felt after I put too much of myself out for others to voyeuristically take from - a truly useful thing, given that the birth of my blog was just around the corner.

But I still wasn't entirely sure I shouldn't be in with the "secondary infertility mums" - those who were experiencing infertility but who already had at least one child. I'd go in there and they would be discussing the trials of IVF cycles around play dates and kinder meetings. I couldn't possibly do that, it gutted me. So I stayed with the first-timers. Those yet to become parents. And I cried countless times, privately, at how much I couldn't share about my daughter. It was well known on the forum that I had lost a child. I spoke about it in different areas of the board. But remained respectful on the IVF forum.

Once I had our second daughter, the LGBB, I was well and truly ousted. The "trying to get pregnant" crowd naturally booted me from the nest I was so safe in. I don't blame them, I would have done the same thing. I didn't know where to fit in after that. I was not someone who had come to motherhood in a relatively straightforward way, so I felt quite set apart from other new mothers - "normal" mothers, I considered them, in my hazy newborn-mind state. And I found I could not really handle reading about the change in some of the people who had struggled through the tedious nature of infertility (or otherwise just an unexplained "long time to conceive"), now mothers and complaining about it all the way. That was really hard. I floundered for a while, but left the community within the year.

I stayed with the one thing that accepted me how it found me: my blog. I made the rules there. I didn't need a label there. Eventually, I felt compelled to find and embrace my voice as a mother, a fully-fledged mother (regardless of my shattered journey to getting there eventually) and I began to flex my muscles - on the blog - about the hard parts of motherhood. I agonised for the first year of Lolly's life and it literally almost sent me mad. Oh the guilt at complaining! So I felt like I had well and truly alienated myself from any of my "IF sisters" from the online community I had joined. I struggled to join in with mothers who didn't have a deceased child anywhere in their brood. I straddled both worlds and felt accepted in neither.

But I digress. Back to the subject of embracing infertility.

----

I came to realise that Steve and I were in this together. That simply because my body was not the "issue", my reluctance to get on board and properly partner him - embrace the fact together - sent him a really awful, lonely, unintentional message on my part.

I embraced our infertility then. In fact, I took it on so much that an exasperated friend at one point asked me when I was going to "stop allowing" infertility (and loss) to define me. The truth is, it has defined me. If nothing else, I have grown my compassionate self, have championed the cause alongside others, have really discovered the depth and breadth of who I am because of our conception history, not in spite of it.

And as for Steve, well, I could not be more proud of him flying the flag. Hell, the guy has even had his sperm talked about on national radio (more than once)! You've gotta be okay within yourself to be down with that, don't you? When I stand back and have a look at our learning curve, together as a couple, it's a wonder we haven't run away and hidden under adjacent very big rocks. As facetious as it might sound, I am proud of my partner. Deeply respectful of the processing he has done, all on his own, to reach a point of acceptance in himself to be okay with our situation being discussed in public. In a book. And, of course, in depth in my book about our journey.

----

It's a very deeply personal and subjective, er, subject. So I would never rush to encourage anyone else to do anything other than what feels right for them. But if nothing else, above all, I feel more comfortable saying now that "we" are infertile - despite the fact that I am about to go and do the kinder run to collect our only surviving child - and I will never again look on infertility as being the issue of either the male or female. To me, it is a couple thing. At least, that's what worked for us.

If you would like to chat privately about this post, please feel free to email me. My contact information should be up there ^^^ in my profile.

Dear Ella

And away we go.

I got my first proper rejection from a publisher today. I knew it would come, I know they will continue. Over and over, like endless, unrepentant waves on a shore... Much the same as my realisation of the way the grief of losing you was going to work as I started to wake up in my new life seven years ago, a few months after you left.

You should be here tonight. I miss you tonight. Why? Why tonight out of all the other nights that have passed this year since your sixth birth day? Well, it's as random and unpredictable as what I expect your behaviour would be (as a child of this age). I was lighting a candle just before for today's Remembrance and it hit me. The candle was next to a photo of your sister as a baby. The shelf above has a photo of you, older than her in your photo. How is it? You passed each other by. She mentioned you again yesterday. It happens a lot and then peters out again, as her little mind comprehends that bit more. "Ella's my sister and she's in our family but we'll never see her again," her forlorn little voice trails off from the back seat of the car. Keep it together, you've got mascara on, I say to myself in the front.

So the night will wear on. We have a house full of family expected. I can't get motivated to clean the house and get the dinner on. I have to. My cheeks are flushed. My mind is on you. On the relentless rejections I am going to brace myself for in the lead-up to Christmas. Hey.... as I said, I knew it would happen.

It's time for me to release myself from this project a little, so that I can cope with it. It's not a matter of toughening up. I've lost you. I'm tough. I'm as resilient as stone.

But now, to find a way for my head and my heart to work separately, for I am not ever severing myself from my journey with you. But now, the book becomes a part of the world. Just as when you came and left again, you very clearly showed me you were not ever mine alone to own.

I love you, baby girl. And along with those 12 other little lost beginnings of life of mine, as well as the countless more around the globe, I remember you today. As always.

Here we go: Family Lore/Law and healing patterns

Hello! So huge is this that I have to divvy it up to try and make it palatable, not only for you lot reading but for me as I catalogue it all in my time - this blog is a time-stamp for me as much as it is an outlet.

 This post is just part of a thread of thought/learning pertinent to cross-generational childbirth/loss and patterns of behaviour that I am going to have to split across all three of my blogs. There is a lot of personal family information - but incredibly pertinent to my discovery (which relates directly to my own healing and understanding of the burdens of my journey) - which I want to discuss on the private blog in due course. 

There are also a number of different realms and realities associated with what I am uncovering, which are probably best suited to the Earth Healing blog (where I am, after all, trying to collaborate and consolidate what I come across, like an index of sorts). 

And, of course, there is the continuing story of me, the person, which you have come to know through this blog - and this is where I want to begin to unravel not only so I can share, but also so I can understand and get my head around this most amazing story that has been unfolding. I would be delighted if you visit all three places, to gain a more rounded insight, if you feel moved to do so! Otherwise, I'll be sharing public thoughts here. As always.

A little preface:
I am writing about this in the spirit of sharing, in case this little snippet of my ongoing discovery might cause a spark of recognition for someone reading. This is a story/awareness not unique to me. And the experience that has journeyed me through this awakening is the vehicle by which I can explain how, by healing the family patterns from generations dead and gone, a remarkable and unmistakable healing - a pardon of the past - can take place.

My story is a rather extreme version of this occurrence/possibility. I am getting used to the fact that it is this way because it serves to highlight to me, personally, where I have had opportunities to discover, uncover and learn more. Constantly shifting and lifting all the drift wood. If I did not have this hugely impacting succession of the same lessons, I would not have persevered to learning the truth about my generational patterns of abuse, neglect and loss. It has been an enormous package, so huge in fact that I am struggling to fit it all into words. I possibly never will. But I am trying to describe it because I also realise that this is not something for me, alone, to simply discover, heal and move on with. That has never been part of my social cause. I get that now.

Getting to the crux of it:
All of us have the same opportunities to heal our family patterning - after all, we are all borne of families generations in the making somehow (even when we are adopted in to families, although this creates a really intriguing sidetrack). Whether this is through dissolving redundant but, regardless, still prevalent family lore (the family stories, traditions, anecdotes, "just the way it is in our family") or discovering ways of life that have amazing similarities to those of your ancestors, even when carried out 50, 70, 100 years apart.

When I had my first pregnancy, I did not even contemplate its connection to any sort of "bigger picture". When I lost my second, third, fourth and then fifth, I didn't think I was incredibly unique. I still did not really think about my place "in all of this", my humility didn't allow it.

My sixth pregnancy produced Ellanor. With her - and this is putting it very briefly!! - I was delivered a gift of glimpsing life beyond life after she died. If you doubt, I don't blame you. And if you doubt, all I can say is..... trust and faith and a healthily skeptic open mind is what saw me through the next six years (and counting). Trust me ;) Heh. So, I spent this pregnancy devoting much time to contemplating my grandmother and her own losses - of which I believe there were at least two, possibly three or even more - in her second trimester of pregnancy. BUT this is as far as I thought my connection to her went. I thought, at this point, and for all these years since, that I truly understood the kinship I felt to her the instant she died (my grandmother and not Ella). And that this posthumous kindred spirit, for want of a better explanation of it, was what I bonded with during the months of not only conceiving but then carrying Ellanor (for Ellanor came in to my awareness some seven months before I fell pregnant with her). Little did I know that this was just an introduction to really getting to know what my Grandmother had been all about, and her mother before her. AND, the most mind-blowing part of all, that the multiple pregnancy connection that I thought was the thing we shared (and her mother before her as well, who had a total of twelve live births before dying aged 38 when 7 months pregnant) was actually a ruse. That this female energenetic connection I have with them was merely the hook, ensuring I really understand them on this level in order to get to the real crux of all the scandalous running around that really went on, starting at least as far back as turn of the last century London?

My seventh, eighth and ninth pregnancies netted no result, or so I thought, but a dashing of hopes and now numbed and incomprehensible grief and pain. Sorrow and sadness were dancing within me beside my belief, belonging and will to strive/survive. But....

At this point, I also began to develop a real sense of belonging to a greater, much larger tapestry. Me and my failed pregnancies - and, indeed, the dear soul Ella - were but a miniscule part of it. However, without us, there would have been an undeniable hole in the overall picture. So the picture not only required me and my journey with these babes, I relied on it (completely unknowingly, unconsciously until only last week) to seek my Comeback, my homecoming and my calling.

I am floored to discover, only after pregnancy 10 (which gave us our blessed relief in the form of our second girl, Lolly), and then pregnancies 11 through to 14, which I of course lost last week, that there is NOT a curse on me but a course. Through me. And through me, my paternal female genetic line has been patiently, fervently holding. Waiting for this moment in time to be discovered by me. The pregnancy last week reminded me to keep seeking answers - I had stopped, foregone that duty, as getting pregnant is not on my radar anymore and the game of chance and two lines on a wee-stick is not one I am actively playing anymore - and I received them.

Like a bolt out of the blue. Or, hey, a burst blood vessel in the leg. Whichever ;)

So now, I am going to throw it over to the Earth Healing blog where, if you are so inclined, you can go catch up with the workings/"mechanics" of healing a family pattern. Or, indeed, how to discern whether you have one to heal. Give me a few days (maybe even a week or two) for this one, as it is huge and I need to get it as 'right' as I can in my head and heart before I can post it. As well, I need to get some of the more personal jot-points down and out quickly, before I forget and lose the essence of my great-grandmother (in particular), and I want to do that behind the veil of my private blog, for the protection of my family still living more than anything.


Phew. Well, I feel a tad lighter, getting that out of my head. Thank you for lending me your eyes, if you went with me on that. I hope it wasn't too hard to follow? If anyone has any questions they'd like to ask for the sake of clarifying in their own field of awareness, please ask. It may help immensely in shaping future posts on this subject of energenetic (family pattern) healing and for that, I would be ever so grateful for the cerebral stimulation from those interested in learning more. If you catch my drift...

Getting a bit tired

Look, I don't mean to harp. And I promise I'm not moping about this. But I just want to say.... nay, let me SCREAM it....

I don't care so much that I "still have plenty of time" and that, apparently, at 35 now, I am "still young". What the HELL!?!?  I have heard these same two sentiments since I was 24 and was scraping myself back together after our first miscarriage. Twenty-four! Now thirty-five. Thirteen babies conceived within that time. Still hearing it. Still hearing that I am still young!! Perhaps it's meant as a compliment, after all, I do still look like I'm a twelve year-old....

Do people honestly think these platitudes bear any weight with a woman who's just lost a baby?? If you have ever said these words, ever intend on saying these words, ever overhear these words and think it's a nice thing to say...... please have a good, hard think again.

I don't appreciate the inference. That I am somehow still good and should still be up for another 5, 7, maybe if I'm "lucky" 10, more years of this pain and torment. I never have liked it and never found comfort in knowing I still have all this time in the world to accept, graciously, more and ever more pain and sadness. This is my 11th year in this "game". It goes far beyond what I'm experiencing physically and I know it. I've stared that realisation in the face for a good seven years now. Ella taught me that.

This trite spouting of words is not helpful. The best thing that a few people have said this week to me is, "God.... that is just awful. I don't know what to say, except that I'm sorry."

The rest? All bullshit. Especially, and not only, the neighbour who replied (when seeing me hobbling around after Lolly in the front yard and learning what was happening), "Oh, geez.... well, you don't want to hear that I'm pregnant with number two, then, do you ha ha ha?"  No. No I probably didn't. But what choice do I have? You've blurted. I've heard. Ya think you could've maybe told me some other way, some other time perhaps? Considering we don't move in the same circles, it could have waited. Anyhow, congratulations.

That is all. As you were. I'm off to the chocolate shop to drown in a mug of mocha with Lolly and my dear friend and (another) neighbour. Still nursing these crippling cramps, four days post-bomb-drop.

Just what the doctor ordered

And in my favourite mug too.

Please excuse lack of words, peeps. I may purge later in the week. For now... this one's knocked me around a bit. Has surprised me, actually.

More later.

And now.... It's Monday

It is here.

And it is excruciating.

Panadeine and heat packs front and back.

In the grand scheme of everything, this is nothing. But it was something.

This is a pain so familiar, so worn. It is avoidable. It is unavoidable.

Time to go bear hug my girl.

On being late and endings.

I was a couple of days late. So I did a test. As you do. A line. A shockingly "there" line. That was last week.

Then the niggling premenstrual taunts began a few days later. A stab of pain here. A creep of an ache there. For three days now, I have wondered, which of these moments would bring the beginning of *that* familiar colour? And, just as they do at the beginning of all pregnancies, each one has so far amounted to nothing. A rising and passing of pain.

In a successful pregnancy, this is stretching of the uterus and surrounding body bits. This pain/awareness happens as a matter of biological course.

In someone like me, who is on Ride #14, it readies me. Prepares me for the most likely imminent conclusion. Of course, we have done this many times before. The most recent time was this past January, quite similar to how it has happened this time, I must say. I count my blessings today as I did then. And the two times before that. Thank God for Lolly.

Today, we are packed and ready to head out the door for the day. Fun times with my little family of three (plus one, out there somewhere, far away today). I am prepared for The Colour. The line has gone, I tested again today. Pad is in place in my underpants.

I am prepared and ready. Must remember to pack the heat pack.

The end of the first chapter

I am all written out. We're well into the job of editing now, Dad and I. Working to my direction, he has taken on the first 6,000 words (or three chapters) and I am mindful of not over-burdening him. This is sensitive subject matter for a father to read, let alone dissect to the enth degree.

I remain so grateful and respectful of this time he is giving the 'project'. He has been under the pump with other work, as well as the gruelling task of putting his property on the market now that they are settled in the new place - a whole lot of elbow grease has had to go into the old place and I am relieved he is finally past that now. He looks so old these days! And I can see now (during a rare, impromptu visit he made by train last Friday - he lives a couple of hours away) that he has become invested in this book. It honestly takes a lot to impress my father.... where words formed into a story are concerned, amongst other studious things. So I am a little humbled by that, if nothing else.

Before I step away from the computer and leave this manuscript in peace for another few days, I want to share the final paragraph of the first chapter. Without giving too much away, the book begins in a crisis moment and provides a chance for a bit of reflection of my journey to parenthood.

This is the end of that chapter. I'd be grateful to know what you think - whether it would entice you to turn the page, whether it's too cryptic, what feelings it conjures... I realise it's a bit difficult to do without having the whole chapter to read, but hopefully you'll catch its drift.

For better or worse (it's the unedited version!), here it is:

   Over the next several days, I cried, I ate and drank a bit too much, I mothered myself the only way I knew how. But I felt different. So much had changed since the last time I had been given pathology results for a baby of Steve’s and mine that would never come into existence. The experience this time allowed me to retrospectively look at my internal reasoning and reactions, using them as a chance to learn even more about myself and noting the difference in sympathy we received now from those around us when they learned of our latest loss. I was also surprised by how much more it seemed to physically take out of my body – as if I was at a critical mass point of succumbing to the toll these miscarriages were really taking on me. I could not bounce back like I once used to and this time, I was forced into bed for a spell. After all, almost a decade had passed since our first loss. I was neither as young nor as healthy as I had been in my twenties.
   It used to be so different. Was I relieved now that the emotions a miscarriage evoked in me were less extreme, perhaps not quite so raw or crucial because I didn’t have every hope pinned on this tiny life? Did I have anything left in me to try and bring another child into existence one day? Had this, therefore, been Steve’s and my last remaining chance to bring another baby into the world? I didn’t know. But I wondered where I found all my resilience.

   The answer was actually to be found in a number of different places, including from deep within. And as I recounted my child-bearing life’s journey, I found with great relief that I was thankful for every single, solitary, sad and sorry, warm and fuzzy one of them.

The Water Lily

A lonely young wife
In her dreaming discerns
A lily-decked pool
With a border of ferns,
And a beautiful child,
With butterfly wings,
Trips down to the edge of the water and sings:
`Come, mamma! come!
`Quick! follow me-
`Step out on the leaves of the water-lily!'
And the lonely young wife,
Her heart beating wild,
Cries, `Wait till I come,
`Till I reach you, my child!'
But the beautiful child
With butterfly wings
Steps out on the leaves of the lily and sings:
`Come, mamma! come!
`Quick! follow me!
`And step on the leaves of the water-lily!'

And the wife in her dreaming
Steps out on the stream,
But the lily leaves sink
And she wakes from her dream.
Ah, the waking is sad,
For the tears that it brings,
And she knows 'tis her dead baby's spirit that sings:
`Come, mamma! come!
`Quick! follow me!
`Step out on the leaves of the water-lily!'

Henry Lawson, 1867-1922

This poem takes my breath away. I published it on my old blog in 2005 (if it looks familiar to any of  ye olde readers).

It was written in 1890. Seems some things never change.

What IF: Creating a positive force for change?

I was deeply moved by this video. In the online world, "IF" stands for "Infertility." I found that out the hard, smack-in-the-kisser way. Oh, didn't you know? We are technically infertile. It was a hard thing to admit at the time. A strange thing to wrap our heads around, particularly after we gave birth to our first (and then second) child, unaided by the medical profession. But, be that as it may, our recurrent miscarriage "efforts" afford us that branding. And on paper, yes, we are indeed... IF.

This is a courageous video, made by a woman on a mission named Keiko Zoll. I love her work:

What IF? A Portrait of Infertility from Keiko Zoll on Vimeo.

Read the full description here: hannahweptsarahlaughed.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-if.html

IF. A word of possibilities, choices, paths. IF, the acronym in the blogging community for infertility, a world full of choices, paths, possibilities... IFs.

This video is a response to RESOLVE and Melissa Ford's #ProjectIF, as part of National Infertility Awareness Week 2010. As a member and blogger of the ALI (Adoption/Loss/Infertility) Community, this project is so important this year to bring real stories, real faces to the issue of infertility. My hope is that this video illustrates the "everydayness" of coping with infertility.

I'm known on the internet as Miriam, writing for my IF blog, "Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed." It is my hope that by publicly "outing" myself and my struggle with infertility that I can help erase some of the stigma surrounding the subject. I hope I can be a voice for those women and couples who can't speak up or speak out for themselves. I hope that my legislators can see that yes, infertility IS a disease, and that healthcare coverage of infertility treatment is a worthwhile cause to the health and welfare of their constituents.

When infertility takes so much of your sense of control away from you, it's advocacy projects like these that allow us to take charge again.

What IF we no longer remain silent about our infertility?

What IF we give infertility a face, a name, a story?

What IF we can become a positive force for change?

You know you've had a lot of miscarriages when...

...your Obstetrician calls just to shoot the breeze and "see how you're doing". And apologises for not replying to your SMS sooner.

See? I've done it so often, I'm on a personal text message basis with my practitioner (who was so pleased for us and offered his excited congratulations this last time). He is an utter gem in my life. And he loves seeing "his" families grow. It's a humbling privilege of mine to watch, from the sidelines, this quiet-spoken soul for the past 6, almost 7, years as he attends to his calling.

Having found him in 2003, already three years in to our journey - and knowing the difference it has made, having a permanent, familiar backstop there who I can get answers from in quick-fire succession, as well as sympathy* - I'm never going to let him retire. Not until I reach menopause and the opportunity to conceive just isn't biologically there anymore. He knows that. I'm holding him to a promise....


* Did I ever tell you, he and his practice midwife took me out for lunch 3 days after Ella died? Just cos they care??? Now, that was a lunch - food and conversation - I didn't digest, it was all so surreal.

Taking a moment

I've been looking at our daughter through different eyes these past two weeks. The day I discovered the lines on the pregnancy test, we had a nap together. I was so tired (pregnancy hormones had begun to hit) and, mercifully, so was Lol. While she dozed, I watched her. For over an hour, I gazed at her lovely face. So beautiful, such a freaking miracle that she is here to ease our angst. Each and every day.

That day, all of the wonderings and what if's of the future and a new pregnancy battled in my mind with the ones that insisted I "stay in this moment, right here, right now, don't go into flights of fancy... not this time, not yet." Once again, my good ol' instincts proved right. I could see, as I was getting further into the week, that my heightening tightening grip on the process was becoming too desperate for this to turn out 'happily'. I knew it. I denied it. Again! *d'oh*

One of the most poignant scenes of last week was watching our sweet little girl blowing out the six candles on her sister's cake. The cake was rather hard for Daddy and I to swallow past that lump in our throats, but seeing Lolly's face light up both when we decorated it and ate a piece each was all worth it.



My meandering thoughts will find their way to a proper post. Soon. There is too much I have uncovered this time (yes, I know, who KNEW you could still be 'learning' after 10 miscarriages!?) for me not to share, I am duty-bound to do so. It's far too late in the peace for me not to.

Hokay.... who wants to hear about Lucky #13?

Well, Internet, I thought I was doing smashingly. I got a positive line on a pregnancy test last Friday. That's a week of not letting on. Only two very close, trusted friends knew (I had to have someone to count things out with). And I was doing so well.

But then, the line became fainter on Tuesday. I waited out Ella's birth day on Wednesday, waiting to miscarry. Yesterday morning the line was non-existent. And today, I have been mercifully, obviously freed from the torment of waiting and wondering, especially considering the alternate reality I've been upholding with regard to grieving for Ella.

Yesterday I was a mess. I don't think there was an hour of the day I didn't reduce to tears over something. To make matters worse, the LGBB's little friend (who has nagged me for weeks and weeks to come and play at our house) tormented her the entire time she was here, snatching her own toys off her and running away with things and smacking Lolly's hand off anything Lolly tried to touch. Yep, I can hear some already saying "That's what kids do... she's just a kid..." yada-yada. BUT.... I didn't want to see it yesterday! It seemed so vicious. And besides, this girl is older than Lol (who is 3.5) but behaved more like the clueless anti-social three year-old. I was really sad to see it unfold the way it did, put it that way. She just refused to share anything and gallavanted around as if Lolly wasn't even here, so there were lots of tears for me to comfort (on top of my own!).

Anyway, enough about that. More about me..... I need to work this through and how I feel about it all. It's now not the first nor the second time we've had an unplanned result, neither of which turned out well. The reaction of my body is immediate, you know. My bra started filling out at the start of last week and the slight feeling of discomfort and firmness began before I was even due. By the eve of my pending period, I was saying to myself, "By jove, I think we've had a slip-up!" and had a very strong inkling that if I tested, I'd see that double line.

I have been taken out beyond my own thoughts this week with all this. In the background, beneath my anticipation (no, once again, we were not 'trying' although I am coming to believe that 'slip-ups' of this nature don't just whimsically occur - there must be some split second, momentary 'bring it on' vibes being sent out to the Universe controller/s, even if ever so brief), I have realised that this time, there are not one but two couples around us who have now been trying to conceive a baby of their own with absolutely no break-through for several years. And my first thoughts turned to them and the guilt I felt as I imagined telling them.

I'd like to tell you I came up with some amazing insights about this loss. Perhaps I will, in the coming days. I know it is designed to take me to task and test me - this is my pattern and my learning ground, if I didn't know THAT by now, I'd have to be a fruit cake - so if I discover any epiphany worth sharing, I know where to come express it.

For now, I'm giving this experience a slow nod of recognition. Laced with a bit of disdain. I've almost reached double figures in the straight-out Miscarriage Dept. (we've had two terminations, 9 spontaneous miscarriages and our two precious girls). And here I was, so sure that our Lucky Pregnancy #13 would be the one to stick. Goes to show how much I know.

I could say 'I'm sick of this shit', but really... that wouldn't get me anywhere. That just sounds belligerant and a bit teenagerish. So I'll go up, out and seek answers. If nothing else, my suitcase of gifts and abilities for my calling is expanding. Even if my belly will not.

My dear, dear Boo

Here we are again. So close to your sixth birthday, the anniversary of the day Steve and I became parents. Shocked and elated and scared witless at your early arrival.

I don't know if I have much to say, for how often have I said it? When I thought I couldn't possibly heal any more (and would always remain in a slightly broken, semi-pieced-back-together state and "so be it", I discover I have healed SO much more this past year - the fifth spent without you, residing physically in our family - I've read more, I've learned so much more from others (and about myself).

Could I really be ready to say that the grief is gone? By jove, I think I might be....

This is no easy task and if truth be told, it has begun a bit of a pain in my forehead just putting it "out there" to the wider audience that is the very anonymous, voyeuristic www. It in some way breaks my own deep-seated notion that, to convey just how deeply I love you and how irreversibly broken I was to lose you, I must always, always appear pained when I talk of you. It must always shine through. But something has changed in the lead-up to your birthday, since Christmas. No longer does my pain 'cloak' need to be worn by me. I get it now. I do, truly, get it. I don't need to wear it in order to prove anything. I've lived it. I've shared it. I've expressed it every which way, up, down, blown wide open, sideways, upside down, cynically, humourously.... and at the end of it all, I've still had to roll up my sleeves and do all the work (on myself) to get myself to a place of further healing.

Boo, I have always held close to my heart the imagery of all those moments that made up your brief life. The needlepricks, the bruising, the nurses (both the good and breathtakingly awful ones), the sheer panic of not being able to "fix" you with my boob, my hands, my ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to take the pain (and all of "them") away and stop you from being so uncomfortable, the brain bleeds, the horrendous possiting of your feeds and what that meant - were you getting an infection, were you reacting to my milk, were you simply too small and feeble to tolerate such an enormous feed - the dicey pace-setting of the cardiologists to get you to the point of surgery for your heart abnormality weighed up against the incredible pressure it placed your body under (not to mention your lungs, your breathing, your blood saturation), your desat rate which never went above 70 (and me, never even knowing what this really meant but that it was bloody dangerous and posed a life threatening danger to you from the get-go), the awful, heart-racing feeling of seeing your heart rate dip and stop, dip and stop whenever those nurses stopped their compressions, those same nurses as they cried while they performed their ultimately futile attempts to save your sweet, monumentous, precious life.

Yes. I can let it all go. I must. And I have. For now, the picture does not involve all that I have been this past decade. And it is not just you and I. Nor even you and I, your Dad and little sister. It is not just my "audience" here on this blog, who have collectively spurred me on, helped set my healing pace, cried and cheered with me through a few more pregnancies (both the successful and four more tantalisingly close but no cigar ones since having you) and seen me come somewhere near full circle. There are so many in the world who need that light. Just one little flicker of light.

It now becomes me as the torch bearer. I've pulled my head out, reached my hand up and said, "Okay, it's time." I can't even say I'm shitscared. That was last month. This time, on the eve of your birthday, I realise I carry with me all those images I mentioned above and many, many more. They are the snapshots of my time with you. My precious, everlasting, unforgettable time with you.

But they are also my past. From past life, whereby I was born again, out of the horror of losing you. Born into new gifts, awareness and abilities that I never knew would one day lead me to a place of solace where I would be bold enough to ever dare dream myself ready to reach a hand out and help lift another up who was going through the same thing. And now, here I am, readying to take with me those gifts you bestowed and entrusted to me, with that pained and anguished part of my past lovingly and respectfully moving to the background so I can take a position at the helm to be willing and truly in the moment for others. I couldn't do that with my own pain still breaking the surface.

I read your "fairytale" story again two nights ago. I still cannot get through it without crying. I just can't. It is SO incredibly beautiful. The meaning of it is ingrained in me as if you were telling it yourself. And you did, too, you cheeky l'il thing! I know you did, because I can feel your essence positively dripping from every page. If only people would pass it on, light that candle in their heart, stop forgetting...... how very enlightened would the world be then?

You. Baby girl, you and all your untold strength. You did it. You got me over the line. And I thank you, I thank you so, so very much. I wish you were always here to hold. Instead, I hold you in my forever. And ever.

You gave me back the Me I was destined to be. Thank you.

I love you.

Ellanor Ruby's very first - and only - blissful bath