Fostering the Big Questions - moving on from the last ones

Today was filled with the kind of curly questions only a child can ask. And again - just as last time -  I was compelled to answer as truthfully as I could.*

It's like that when she looks me straight in the eye and squares her jaw; there is no getting around it any other way than honestly. The sort of tactful, metered honesty that shields from the gritty details yet doesn't shy away from the facts.

"What happened straight after I was born?" she asks me.
"Straight after?.... Well... your Dad and I brought you home and fed you and looked after you." I smile at her, remembering fondly.
"Yes, I know," she frowns, looking a trifle frustrated, "but what happened before that?"
She's getting her before's and after's mixed up at the moment. It's a stage.
"Before when?"
"Before, when Ella was born." 
I don't quite know what she's trying to decipher with her line of questioning so I can't guide my answers toward anything that will succinctly nip it in the bud for her. So we continue with the short answers-short questions.
"You want to know what happened just before Ella was born?" She nods.
"Well... when Ella was born, she was very little. I stayed in the hospital with her for a few days but then I had to come home. And when I did, she stayed in the hospital." 
She pouts sadly. I am certain I see a little look of sympathy in the way she tilts her head and makes a slight grimace. 
"But every day," I assure her, "I would wake up early and drive to the hospital and feed her my milk and talk to her and her nurses until it got dark and late at night. Then your Dad would drive from work and come and sit with me and we would look at Ella and talk to her together. She was a very lovely little baby."
My other very lovely little baby is sitting across the room from me, a range of emotions moving across her face now. I can't gauge if it's compassion for us or a sense of loss for herself, mixed in with a good dose of "I feel I've missed out on something you were all doing when I wasn't here". I daresay it's all of that. Then I realise she is trying to pinpoint where Ellanor is again. She does this, searching for her sister, a few times a year. I invite the conversations openly.... but they are still heart-searingly difficult.
"But... why did you leave her at the hostible?" she asks, her large blue-green eyes suddenly looking heavier, her little brow furrowing.
"Because she died, darlin', we had to."
Stated simply, just like that, it sounds callous and cold and hard-hearted. I know what she's thinking. I'm thinking it too now as we look at each other and the distance between us, across the rug and the arm of the couch to where she's leaning seems somehow suddenly further. If her father and I could leave our baby somewhere to be handled by goodness knows who, what's to stop us taking leave of our senses and doing it to her? I feel wretched for a turn, before my logical mind catches up and keeps me moving along before I get too morbid. That would not help either of us.
"Who has her now?"
"Nobody. She's not at the hospital any more."
"What kind of hostible did you leave her in?"
"A people hospital. Where doctors and nurses help sick people. You know, Lol, you wouldn't be here if Ella was."
"Yes, I know that," she answers me with a tone beyond her five short years. And she frowns again slightly, a pained, longing look on her face. She really does get that, I marvel to myself. "But why can't I see her? I want to see her." Ah. Getting it and living it are two completely different things, though, and it is this knowledge - that my child has been forced to remain permanently separated by her living from a sister she yearns for deeply - that really clutches at my mother heart.
"I know you do." Matter of fact. It's the only way. We agree it's shitful without saying any more.
"How did she get to Pixie Hollow?" she asks, changing tack slightly and mercifully saving me from the always uncomfortable "Well, why didn't any doctors and nurses save my sister" challenges.
This is the moment my heart swells to bursting. The Pixie Hollow explanation is something that Ellanor's sensitive little sister came up with quite on her own one day earlier this year out of the blue while we were driving. She told me that day decidedly that Tinkerbell and the fairies had taken Ella to live "on another planet because I think.... Yeah! That's where Pixie Hollow is!"
I hasten to quantify here that the LGBB is also very partial to the unabridged J.M. Barrie book, Peter Pan - the whole Lost Boys in Neverland premise fascinated our Lolly. What's more, I believe that Pixie Hollow (perhaps more due to the gorgeous name rather than the Disney-fied slant on "fairies" and, indeed, Tinkerbell herself) and Neverland are a mash-up of one and the same place in her imagination.
"You know what? That I don't know," I tell her honestly.

Our talk peters out at this point and I am left with a vacant but equally full feeling for the rest of the day. When we catch up a few hours later, Lolly is sitting playing on her bed with various tiny bits and pieces of some monstrosity that look like bottom-of-foot attractors if ever I saw them. Jagged and pointy bits everywhere.

She hands me a green glass-looking rubbed stone. "Is this a wishing stone?" she asks.
"I think it might (as) well be!" I exclaim.
"I've been making lots of wishes and they're going to come true," Lolly says nodding and glancing around her room before she launches into what I think is going to be her long list. But she only tells me one wish.
"I want a baby brother. And another sister." Again with the direct gaze and the square-set jaw. My goodness, but her eyes are beautiful. I'm distracted by them when I should be thinking of an answer. Fast.
"Wouldn't that be wonderful, to have both." I smile at her.
"Then I can have someone to play with," she says earnestly. Honestly. My loins don't feel any sort of stirring whatsoever, regardless of wishing desperately my only child was not an only child. We tried. Honest to goodness, her father and I tried.
"You know, though, babies take a long time once they're born to be able to play. Look at your cousin Blake. He's pretty little still, isn't he?"
She's unwavering. Her eyes look into me - through me - and I can kind of see she's not all here. I wait, watching her face, until she finally answers.
"I think they're not babies. Maybe they're older than me." 
Despite myself, I raise my eyebrows and nod in agreement. Yes, that's right. Perhaps they are.

I completely forgot until today that I have been tossing up foster parenting with Steve for some years now. It comes up once every year or so, since we said goodbye to Ellanor, but it never felt "right" to go ahead with it.

Perhaps? Maybe now? Lolly seems to know more about it than I. We shall see. If nothing else, I trust the Universe will advise, devise and deliver all in its exceptionally good, right time.



* (Just as an aside, that last Big Questions post is a really important read if you are dealing with them yourself - or trying to find a way through them with your surviving young, inquisitive children and wonder how the heck to start... also, take a deep breath in and just go with your best instinct! ;-)

Smile... no matter how awkward you feel.

Unexplained Infertility? Let's look at Heavy Metals, Hormones & Tummy Fat

A message from MassAttack - This is an unsponsored post and is a copy of MassAttack's latest e-newsletter that comes directly to my inbox. The information contained in this post is intended as an information reference. If you are experiencing unexplained infertility, perhaps this presents something new for your consideration. 

For your own copy of the e-news or to find out more about what they offer, why not check out their website?

Female hormones are influenced by heavy metals and this is an area that is so readily overlooked when dealing with unexplained infertility.  Heavy metals also have an influence on your weight.  In fact, if you want to attain your ideal weight and improve your health in the process you need to start with detoxification.

Everything in our bodies is interrelated so you really can't change something without changing something else. Let's consider one example of such interrelationship:

Heavy metal intoxication and tummy fat. How are they related?
Studies show the connection between certain chemical substances accumulated in the body and underactive thyroid function leading to weight gain. For example, mercury and copper toxicity can result in hypothyroidism and hence the weight gain. Heavy metals also interact with each other, for example the presence of lead can make the detrimental effects of mercury much stronger.

Heavy metal toxicity also results in different digestive tract disturbances such as bloating, constipation or diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and others. Heavy metals accumulated in the body can cause the liver damage and since the fat regulation is among the important functions of the liver, it will be impaired too.

Don't think that heavy metal exposure is a problem only for people who directly work with them
All of us are widely exposed to heavy metals in our daily lives. Cosmetics, deodorants, dental amalgams, newsprint, paint, birth control pills, aluminum foil, antiseptics, body powders, cheese, toothpaste, milk products, nasal sprays - all of them are sources of heavy metals. As you can see, nobody is immune to them.

The heavy metal intoxication levels in your body may need to be addressed before you can solve your hormone imbalances and weight-related problems. 

We now offer a full 24 hour comprehensive urine heavy metal test, and if this is something you would like to chat about, please call 1300 133 536. 

Remember, you need to fine-tune your health if you want to attain and maintain your ideal weight.

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.

The business of IVF

I'm writing again. Got to ride the crest of the wave when it presents itself or I'll end up strolling along the shore for another long bloody year.

Anyway, trawling through this end stage of the book (end stage, end stage!! it is nigh! oh my giddy aunt, I may just finish it yet!), I was struck by some of the things that happened to Steve and me during our IVF prep - which I had forgotten, but remembered as soon as I read what I had recorded (and thank God I was writing this stuff down to help me recall it now for the book) - that really makes me take a step back and see just how convoluted and invasive the business side of IVF can be.  The side that doesn't even take the prospect of there being a baby, a spiritual being, at the end of all this into account.

This is a real uncomfortable thing for me to uncover and confront. I guess I had a whiff of it when we did our IVF in 2005. But I held my sights on the end result as best I could. It was something my cohorts at the time were instructing me to do, and I did it willingly. These were IVF veterans, many of them, who knew far better than me how to keep their heads afloat in this strange world of medicated cycles and white theatre gowns. Funny it's only struck me now, now that I am so far removed from it, that I can properly acknowledge how difficult it really is not to get your head stuck in the processes and the intellectual, financial, nitty-gritty of it all. It's a trap. It feels like a whirlpool where all you can do is keep your head above the water, even if you're being sucked in by the current and can no longer even paddle. Just keep your head up above that water line, if nothing else. A tremendously arduous way to live, particularly if one is balancing IVF "life" with work, family, home and whatever other realities.
 
It's plain to see now, the geneticist we saw was against IVF. Steve and I were old hats at recurrent miscarriage, infertility, loss and the "waiting game" by this point. But I wonder just how damaging this doctor's opinions would have been to the other IVF candidates who consulted with him. He was not part of the IVF clinic (and I daresay he had a thing against "this IVF business"). Rather, he was
a senior geneticist at the Genetics clinic that became known to us once Steve's blood results showed up his carrier condition (a balanced translocation). I don't know if his gripe was a purist one, or was stemming from perhaps a personal moral issue with IVF - perhaps the advances in his chosen profession had caused a dilemma for him and the whole "playing God" aspect of not only out and out IVF but now this new technology of PGD* - but this guy was hostile as all get-out about us trying it.

At the time, Steve and I had nothing to lose. Well... except the better part of $20,000, that is. $20k that would have helped us right about now, with all our renovations and water/hail storm damage. Do I regret attempting IVF, now that I know it failed us?

Not on my life.

I was provided with an invaluable insight, undergoing IVF. My head was well and truly, firmly jerked back in. And my world was opened up even further. Where once I had a closed view of IVF and what it represented (to me), it did the exact opposite to what I thought it would.

I am beginning to weave it in to my story. Here is the opener, before we start our first cycle, where we have to go visit this Mad Hatter of a retiree aged geneticist (name has been changed, of course) and request he grant us the medical nod by way of a letter to our chosen fertility specialist to say we have ticked this particular box and dutifully done our rounds with the genetics side of things - to prove we understand why/how/what we were getting into.

As always, feedback about this (below) is welcome and invited. Much obliged to those who feel compelled to comment. The excerpt begins just after the doctor asks us how our (deceased for the past year) daughter is doing... he had gone over her post mortem with us only months before. Good start, non?

The meeting went from bad to worse after that. Dr Greenwood all but tried to talk us out of PGD*. For every point he made against the procedure, we had a positive response. We had the financial means, we understood it was very expensive. Yes, we understood the success-failure rates. We were by now very well-versed on our conditions, both Steve’s chromosomal factors and my anti-phospholipid syndrome, which was under control.
“Once you see an IVF doctor, they'll be all positive about it and, well, IVF just isn't all that good," Dr Greenwood concluded about the procedure. I exchanged a wide-eyed look with Steve. We would hope our IVF doctor would be bloody positive about it, because we were!
“Well, we’re willing to discover that for ourselves,” I retorted. “If you could please do whatever it is you need to from this end, to begin the ball rolling, we’d appreciate it, thank you.”
Steve and I returned home, dumbfounded.
“I don’t understand, why would he doggedly push us to reconsider doing IVF?” I asked Steve, quite dismayed that our trip to the geneticist had not gone more positively. “He said it wasn't "that good" and, okay, we more often hear of IVF successes in the media - but why couldn't he focus on SOME positives too? I get that he wants us to be well-informed about the expense involved and that it might not even work, despite how much money we lay down. But, really, did he not see our history?”
“I think he’s just old-school,” Steve offered, shaking his head. “We know what we’re getting into, but perhaps some people he sees are clueless and just starting out when they go for these IVF prep appointments. We’ve gone past that now. He was just spinning the company line. This is business for them. I’d say they have some duty to inject a bit of reality about the success rates of IVF. That’s all.”
Regardless, we now had to rethink our plans that afternoon, yet again. If Dr Greenwood was not forthcoming with a recommendation to the specialist that we were viable candidates for PGD, our hopes would be stalled. I was so fed up with miscarriages and not knowing which pregnancy might be our next normal one, like Ella. I dreaded the wait to find out if we would ever have another viable pregnancy ever again, before time – and my natural fertility – ran out. It was obvious, with the miscarriages since Ellanor had died, that the universe was not going to dish out an “easy ride” to success for us simply because of our trials so far. It was almost as though it was taunting us, daring us to try IVF now.
The knowledge that there was some way of testing the embryos before transferring them in the hopes of one implanting had become a viable option. I had no more strength to continue, blindly losing these beginnings of life before they had even properly begun. And while Ellanor had become our guiding light, the very reason Steve and I continued to remain hopeful of becoming parents again, her death had also left us in a state of flux. We agreed we could no longer go on treading water for an indefinite length of time.
“Well, what do we do?” I asked, hoping Steve knew.
“I think we keep working towards doing IVF,” Steve replied with certainty. “If this guy doesn’t agree, we’ll go to someone else. All we need is the letter.”
“And what about contraception?”
Since Christmas, we had decided to avoid any more natural pregnancies. The sobering shock of having to terminate the most recent pregnancy while there was still a slow, but abnormal, heartbeat really had changed the way we wanted to work with our fertility issues. Contraceptive measures had been the wisest and kindest thing to do these past weeks, despite how very counter-productive it seemed.
“I’m game if you are,” Steve said, staring at his shifting feet.
I looked at him. The Geneticist had warned we could be waiting up to six months for a test to be made up from Steve’s sperm, before we even went on the waiting list for the actual commencement of our first IVF cycle. I couldn’t wait that long without trying to conceive a baby with him, I knew it. And I was so relieved that it was Steve’s suggestion to forge ahead. Who knew, perhaps we would be ever so lucky to become pregnant with a healthy baby before even starting IVF.
“Okay, so we try to conceive again naturally, for at least half of these months we’re being forced to wait,” I suggested. Steve nodded decidedly, holding his hand out for me to shake on the deal. We shook on it and laughed, happy to have reached a decision.
It was no longer strange for us to consider this baby-making business a job, a contractual agreement. It had become something of a life within itself, the third wheel to our relationship. We had acknowledged its presence for so many years now and included it in all our holiday-making and workload decisions, just like we would a member of the family. It was one of our team, although I know we both secretly hoped it would meet its contract so we could make it redundant, already.
“So if we do have another miscarriage, we still have time to recover before I have to start stimming,” I said, taking some of my newfound IVF terminology for a spin.
“What’s stimming?”
“It’s what the girls on the forum call it when you start the follicle stimulating hormones part of the cycle,” I replied, feeling a bit excited for the first time about the prospect of going into a medically controlled state where, if the result was a pregnancy, we would be assured of an embryo that would result in a baby who was free of our genetic fucked up-ness.

*Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis:  basically, a very invasive procedure on the fertilised eggs - embryos - whereby several cells are biopsied from an 8-cell blastocyst and analysed for genetic markers. The embryos go through an incredible amount of, well, 'invasion'... After the cells are extracted, miraculously the embryos continue to divide, replenishing the lost cells. If they continue (and are normal, according to the results of the analysis), they are either frozen for a thaw cycle or transferred to the female, where hopefully they implant. From then on, it's pregnancy as usual. In an ideal world.

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.

A direct quote from Yours Truly

Having traipsed back over my old stomping ground (an online pregnancy/IVF support network) and reading my posts from there as if it was just yesterday, I see I clearly had an obsession with sperm - at the time, dare I say it... as nudge-nudge-wink-wink as it sounds.... all I could think, eat and breathe were the little fella's (ok, pipe down, enough with the gags I can hear you all forming in your dirty little minds already). Now, I am thinking I need to write a book on the comical side to the strive for optimal sperm health.

And I quote *a-herm-herm*

Who knew that sperm that's not regularly "turned over" may actually not have enough energy to get to the egg? And then if they do make it, they're too tired to fertilise it? Awww! How typical..... can you just imagine it: they've spent all their energy driving around cos they don't want to use a map. And then they make it and all they can do is put a bent arm up on the side of the egg, with the other hand on their hip..... heaving and gasping for breath because they're so out of puff they can't even knock on the door.

Hmph!

And just one other little bit o' trivia for you - I posted this on what was to become Lolly's birthday, exactly one year before she was born. Wow-ee, if only I'd know, hey?

My sobriety

I'm feeling "between realities" right now.

I spent five hours straight yesterday, writing the book. And more again today. The chapters that have been taunting me for a year are finally out of my head. Yes. A FULL year has passed with this writer's block! But now, on the back of a most encouraging new round of praise (one from a prospective interested publisher and the other from a very well-read, well-connected friend - it was just a matter of time before I drew her into the "readerly fold" for her critiqueing, she herself is no stranger to NICU's and premies), I am both buoyed and fired up.

I think I can see the end. I can see it, guys! Holy fark, how long have I (we) been waiting for this?! I feel like such a faker and a charletan so often here, as I have made soooooo many (broken) promises to finish.

Now, tonight, I see the end. Sweet relief.

And at the same time, I am so incredibly emotional about being steeped in this time period. Currently, I am locked in the space of 2004. The year I lost our girl, then two more pregnancies (including another girl just before Christmas). Revisiting all this, seeing the timeline so accurately spaced..... well, it's no wonder, really, that I have subconsciously been protecting myself from writing about it. So hard. So arduous.

And then the LGBB walks in. I hug her. Wrestle with her on the ground in a delicious tickle-fest. Share her delight in counting out her shell collection from our summer holiday. Kiss her goodbye as she climbs into the bath with Daddy. Go back to writing about our angst-ridden first year without her sister. Aaaaagh, it's cathartic and mind-fucking all at once. A mind-mash, if you will.

But by God, I'll finish this juggernaut. As Ella is my witness ;) So very sobering and humbling, all of life right now.

The Planned Child

by Sharon Olds

"I hated the fact that they had planned me,
she had taken a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry
as if sliding the backbone up out of his body,
and made a chart of the month and put
her temperature on it, rising and falling,
to know the day to make me --
I would have liked to have been conceived in heat,
in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,
not on cardboard, the little x on the rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine
and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,
I took the wine against my lips
as if my mouth were moving along
that valved wall in my mother's body, she was
bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then
bearing down, pressing me out into
the world that was not enough for her without me in it,
not the moon, the sun, Orion cartwheeling across the dark,
not the earth, the sea --
none of it was enough,
for her, without me."

This is a poem I found towards the end of my pregnancy with the LGBB. It almost choked with its realism at the time. And it said for me what I had been trying to decipher for myself: that a child so planned, so yearned for, whom I tried to "catch" so often.... was made into reality because our world was not enough for me without her in it.

I can hear that child right now, exclaiming to the descant recorder she fell asleep holding last night (she currently has a penchant for musical instruments, perfecting her baseball and golf swings on the Wii and Chuggington and Waybalu). And without her in my life, I would surely have been tipped over the edge a long, long time ago. She is the salve that soothed my aching, raging heart back then. I would never have come as far in my healing as I have, not without her.

I don't feel quite as emotional now as I used to when I read this poem now - a sign I am either lost to cynicism or have come a fair way in my recuperation of our troubled conception journey. I like to think it's the latter, at least for the most part.

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.

I'd like to thank Libra for being so supportive

But I'd actually rather BOYCOTT them. If I could be bothered. Pah.

The little wrapper that greeted me as I reached for the pad during my latest early miscarriage bore this fascinating little tidbit:


Are there too many men working there? Or young go get'em females who haven't a clue about how their periods work? Or are they all just numbskulls? Now, I can "do"/overlook the baby fact ones, but foetus facts really should not make it past the boardroom brainstorm.

Should they?

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

I keep forgetting

Look, this is a somewhat uncharacteristic, breast-beating ME post. So look away now if you may become repulsed. We can't have that, lurkers!

I keep forgetting to remember that most of my blog readers aren't on Facebook. Rather, aren't my "friends" on FB. I don't want to go mixing it up like that. Too easy to find me/stalk me and all that... never the Twain shall meet, etc. etc. I keep the FB crowd small. Ridiculously, I-really-have-no-business-being-on-FB small. And that's just how I need to keep it.

So anyway. I'll fill you in.

Very suddenly, it's all come about that I needed to put "something" together so that the one or two people who were asking could hand their clients my information, in order that they might confer with me (over matters pertaining to infertility, miscarriage and similar heart rending stuff that I'm rather familiar with). I said yeah, I'll get right onto that a couple of times throughout 2009 but never did, until suddenly, the other night, I just sort of.... went ahead and actually did it! I willingly created something, it just came spilling out - the wording took a little more thought and actually mostly got 'downloaded' into my head while I was hanging out washing on Monday afternoon in the backyard - and when I mentioned it over the past couple of days, I have had another several people, health professionals/health care providers of different modalities, saying they would like a "stack" of my cards when I have them printed so that they may refer people to me as well.

To say I'm sort of gulping on the speed of all this (like I've been dunked under the water before taking a deep enough breath) is putting it mildly.

Mind you, it's not like I haven't had lots of time to ease myself into this. It's not that I haven't tried the coat on, even, over the past one or two years and even sounded it out loud (home alone here) "I'm an energetic consultant" and seen if it fits. I'm not even sure what I am. I'm not comfortable with that, or any, label. I just wanna say, I listen.

Steve and I have (me more seriously than him) considered that I might simply put that on my business card: I'm The Listen Lady, just like Marge Simpson when she starts a listening/help line and answers it "The Listen Lady" (Mo calls and says, "Yeah, listen lady, I got this problem...")..... Er. I guess you'd have to know The Simpsons really well to even raise a smirk at that one.

***awkward***


I shouldn't be so flippant. I'm not anymore. I've worked out where I sit in my morality and comfort level with how to charge for my time - this was a real big issue for me and also held me back, ie. I never want to be asking the sorts of fees other consultants/counsellors, etc., charge but on the other hand... I can't very well do it for free either because it takes a lot of preparation before the consultation even begins, so roughly double or more the time I spend seeing someone will be spent getting "in the zone" and tuning in to them. I can't really not charge for a bit of that time, otherwise I'd have to not do it at all (because I do still need to contribute to the household income or we'd be screwed).

Anyway, because I can't define what I do (or I'm not comfortable doing it), it hasn't manifested. That was, until Monday night when I put the artwork together. I wrote my name. Yep, cool with that. My mobile and email address. Easy. Hmmmmmm... but now for the tricky part to see in stark black and white: what it is I'm actually willing to offer. Well, I've always been willing to offer help, but I'm making it official now that I "do this". Of course I do this. It's what I've been studying for the past 3-4 years for heaven's sakes. Where did I think it was all leading!? Certainly not just for me to personally gain from my discoveries. I know the work, I know how amazing and graceful and non-denominational it is. I have to stop fearing that I won't know it when I'm in front of someone. That's just silly talking! I get told all the time (by strangers and loved ones/friends alike, but mostly strangers these days cos those who know me have already said it) that I'd be "so good at doing this for a 'living'..." or that I'm "really good at this stuff" (detaching and feeding back constructive, useful, contemplative suggestions etc.) and I've always waved the suggestion away, even while I've been knowing deep down that I know I have to start working in this capacity soon. In fact, some have begun mentioning to me that I have this (I suppose you could call it) quality - that I have started to exude some sort of calming effect over them when they're talking to me on the phone! Uh... ah ha! That'd be my tricky, trippy cosmic anaesthetic vibes working! No. Not really. I can't explain that one, except to say that I'm chuffed they feel so calm and uplifted (sometimes) when talking to me. So I can obviously put my "work" hat on and not even really notice. Now's the time to make it official, though - do it in a fully consciously aware state - where I can be more fully in control of the energy that I'm giving out. Always work to do!

So. I'm ready to say it. It's not my job, my business venture (god no!), my career or my "little hobby."

This is my passion, my calling, my work, my duty. My responsibility this lifetime. Ok. I'm an energenetic healer. (Want to know more? Email me)

Eeeeek. Pass me a bucket for my nerves, won't you?

(You'll have to click on the images to actually read them..... and do forgive the blurring out of the obvious contact information)

Feeling close to Ellanor

I don't know why - and I don't search for reasons anymore - but my firstborn little munchkin is on my mind a lot this week.

There was a corner handwash basin I was supposed to buy (no, stay with me - the two are related...) and I have gone back to that same plumbing place three times this past fortnight, as well as one or two others, not to mention scouring the internet to ensure I was getting something that would a) fit and b) not cost the earth, considering its basic purpose.

Each time I went to this particular local plumbing shop, I held off deciding on one and just purchasing the damn thing, already. I don't know. It just felt rushed. I felt under-researched or... if truth be told, I felt like the showroom showgirls were just that: there for show. Each time I went in there, they didn't seem all that interested in helping me so, uh, I didn't feel all that interested in spending time with them going through the ordering and purchasing motions either.

But today, a new face was there. A new face with an enviably neat pregnant belly. This woman was different. She was lovely. She was paced and welcoming and just .... normal. She even showed me that the very basin I had been considering all along was on special - $55 off, nothing to sneeze at! - and I mused silently to myself that the girl who "helped" me yesterday did no such thing. Pah.

So we went along, finally settling on this hand basin and a mixer to go with it. The ordering almost complete, I did something I NEVER (repeat: never) do these days, not since all our troubles began and kept continuing as recently as 12 months ago... - I acknowledged her belly.

"So you're going to get a baby for Christmas, then!" I said. I know. I suck at opening lines involving pregnancies too - as I said, I never do it. Pregnant bellies confront me more than anything and I almost always allow the expectant parent/s to do the bringing up, after which time I willingly and genuinely chime in with conversation. But I don't ever bring it up first.

"Yeah," she said. And then she told me her first baby boy had been born at 24 weeks, her membranes rupturing at 20 weeks. He couldn't be saved.

I sat and fixed my eyes respectfully on this lovely mum while she went deeper and deeper into her story. She just about leapt over the desk at me once I divulged a little of our journey as well. And although it's something I don't willingly offer anymore (my need in this regard has passed, some years ago now), I completely appreciate the need for someone in her position to hear as much about it as she can. She has never met anyone else who has lost a baby before. I was so heart-full to know I had given her some tangible, walking, surviving proof.... that it will be okay.

I am choked up now remembering again how her brilliant blue eyes misted over and her face contorted, touching briefly on the fear of what the next few weeks will bring. How would she get through the birth this time, she wanted to know? How could she possibly be okay, not knowing until this little one was laid into her arms, breathing, alive, that everything was alright?

I recall the moment vividly when the LGBB entered the world. There was not a sound. You could have heard a pin drop. I was completely out of it with fear, pain and then rising hysteria when I couldn't focus on what was going on. I hadn't heard her cry yet. Jesus, why wasn't she crying!?? I had to yell for attention, they were milling about my pasty-grey little second-born, who still had not cried. I was told she was beautiful - but that didn't equal alive to me.

Lolly needed respiratory assistance straight after birth - a common thing, many have said to me, waving me off - but in light of the fact that she had come along after such an intense and precarious birth, not to mention the 6 year-long journey and loss of her older sister in our past, I have always considered this lessening of my fear state at that time a real oversight by others.

They'll never know what it's like to anticipate a subsequent birth, let alone the pregnancy up to the point of giving birth. Not unless it happens to them. And this is not a slight against people who do attempt to say the right thing - not at all - just more, I guess, a verbal expression of the big sigh I feel inside when I hear about this sort of thing happening to others (because I remember it so well happening to us - we were supposed to be happy now, all had been righted, we had a live baby to take home... what more did we want? Surely we didn't need to keep talking about that firstborn of ours or process the birth of our second child??).

And so, I cherished today for the umpteenth countless time that I had this history of mine. It felt useful. It felt like what it was all about, this experience I have shouldered. Today, I looked in the face of a woman who represented, in the flesh, the many whom I have met online but not sat with in person as they go through their anticipation and reservations.

I did something else I have never done before I left the shop - I gave the saleswoman the name of my website and invited her to go and read it, as she had been saying how isolated she felt about it all. She avidly jotted down the address and thanked me.

I feel so incredibly privileged. And this mother will be in my thoughts in the lead-up to Christmas. I hope I hear from her again. The likelihood is, I never will. Either way, I feel so close to Ellanor today. Perhaps this woman is the reason why my baby girl has been on my mind so much these past days.

Please Don't Judge A Mother



Please don't judge a mother
As she struggles with her grief
Time is NO great healer
Whatever you believe

Please don't judge a mother
As the tears fall from her eyes
You have your child here
But to hers, she said goodbye

Please don't judge a mother
When she feels the need to say
How much she loves her child
Each and every day

Please don't judge a mother
If she feels the need to talk
She'll never get to hold her child
Nor see her child walk

Please don't judge a mother
If she feels she cannot smile
The guilt if she feels happy
Lingers for a while

Please don't judge a mother
If she feels she cannot spend
A minute with your child
You see her pain it never ends

Please don't judge a mother
When she needs to be alone
She needs to wallow in her grief
In the privacy of her home

Please don't judge a mother
When she feels she can't join in
Pain is all she feels
Having fun feels like a sin

Please don't judge a mother
For anything at all
Just listen to her, hold her
And let her tears fall

Author: Christine Wildman

The real meaning of Christmas

An interesting question posed for this week's challenge, set by BlogThis. It is one I've actually asked myself many times during festive seasons over the years. Only when we lost everything (in 2004) that truly meant anything to us did I really *get* the whole concept of giving thanks and forgiving others' trespasses from throughout the previous year.

I wrote about "the meaning of Christmas" in my old blog, just before Christmas 2005. Retrospectively, I was being decidedly cynical but attempting to lace it with 'umour, as had become my method of survival during that period of my life. I wrote:

Another year of wondering what it's all about.

K: So what is it, anyway? Is it about the kids?
S: Nah.
K: No, I mean, it started with the birth of Christ and all...
S: That's the story.
K: ...but the tradition now is for the children. Yes, it's totally over-commercialised and it's possibly taken for granted by many. But for the kids, it's still exciting to see their families all together at once, isn't it?
S: Yeah.
K: And forgiveness. It's such a crock that warring people have to 'put it all aside' to spend Christmas together. Look at WWI, WWII. The story is famous, how they put down their weapons and had a spot of turkey together. What's with THAT?
[Thinking: But maybe that's it, maybe without Christmas and that one day's grace from grievances, there isn't any other time to take a breather from all the sadness that goes with fighting and disharmony]
S: *continues driving in silence*
K: So then... what is the meaning of Christmas? What's it all about?
S: *decidedly, as if he had just been waiting for me to shut up and ask him* The food.
K: Huh?
S: It's about the food.
K: What!??
S: When else do you get to have yummy ham and yummy turkey? And that stuffing?
K: It's..... about..... the food....
S: *quite pleased with himself* Yuh.

I wrote this post at the end of the second, most arduous, year after losing Ella. We had done our NICU stint for 31 relatively very short days (although it was, literally, a lifetime we spent there with our firstborn) the previous year, in 2004. The first Christmas without her was spent cradling my sore belly from a termination we had to contend with (this one at 10 weeks) the day before Christmas Eve. For fear of my family dismissing Ella, or thoughts of her, I didn't tell them. In fact, we downplayed the whole thing, because that first Christmas was meant to be her first. Our first, as parents.

It was our first Christmas as parents, technically. Except there were no presents for our little 11 month old baby girl under anyone's tree.

By the end of 2005, I knew that the pettiness was not going to stop. A second year filled with my own growing anger and cynicism, coupled with an equally measured confirmation by others that there were going to be no special favours or allowances handed out to me or Steve, had shown how far open the chasm could grow between us and our loved ones.

The meaning of Christmas was lost in amongst the taste of an awfully bitter pill. I flayed myself that second year, in 2005, for not being more "up". A well-meaning and gorgeous family friend took me aside and said, "What are you doing all this for? Don't you know, you are so vital?" The intention was genuine, but it left me feeling even more alone, for I was not doing anything on purpose. I was simply surviving at this time, still, two years on.

It was an incredibly stifling time, I felt gagged from airing my feelings anymore, for apparently the use-by date on how often I was "allowed" to bring up Ella's name had long passed. For me and for Steve, so much of what we were expressing and how we were interacting with people was done through a filter of immense grief. Of a core-deep fear that we would never again be able to come close to filling the hole our daughter had left in our lives. We had another baby on board that Christmas in 2005, but even she did not comfort in the way a new beginning ought. For we had been there before, so many, many times (the LGBB was our 10th pregnancy and, so far, she remains our only surviving child).

I've spent more Christmases feeling hopeful in my life than not, though, all this moroseness aside. Even during my years of attempting to conceive (no less than six), it marked the beginning of a new start. A fresh year just around the corner that maybe, this year, would be "our year" and we'd be parents by the end of it.

Christmas was such a magical time in my childhood. I truly loved it. I loved the presents, I loved the food, I ADORED sitting with my Granddad and his silly, sweaty paper hat at their table for a post-Christmas (Boxing Day) feast. My Grandma made the best stuffing. My parents (I think it was mostly Mum) made Christmas pretty magical too. They did their best. There was a lot of fighting too. A lot. But I have tended to shut that out over the years, because overall, Christmas has always been a season with an energy of renewal about it.

Replenishment, restocking and renewal.

So. Back to the Challenge.

What does Xmas mean to you and your family?
Have you got some traditions??
What will you cook?!
Who will you spend it with?
Got a favourite Christmas memory?
How are you decorating??

We don't have any traditions. These were all blown out of the water over the various breaking downs of our family/ies over the years. Not noice, no, but real. And just how it is.
We are unfortunately not going to decorate this year. We've a bit of Topsy-Turvy Land going on here at the moment, with the house extension in full swing. So if I have to see one more bit of clutter (and this year, the Humbug in me has come out on this one), even if it is in the shape of a glorious bit of tinsely ornament, I will cry.
I don't know what I'm cooking (or if I will), nor who we're spending it with. Our habit over the past five years has been to darken the doorstep of our gorgeous inlaws, once removed... my brothers' inlaws, to be exact. A more welcoming home, with better company or food, you would be hard-pressed to find. I hope the invite is extended again this year. If it's not, well, we have a new room now! So it might hopefully be finished into some state of readiness for a barbie and we can return the 'favour'!

What does Christmas mean to me? Outside the obvious reminiscent markers of being pregnant, grieving a lost pregnancy or then - the big one - realising everyone else's children were getting older and their lives were progressing and their presents tastes were changing?

It means closing in around those people and things that are important to you and letting them in to surround you too.
It means not rushing around with the best prepared plate of food or the cleanest floors or the widest smile.
It means gathering with those who are truly your kindred kind (and this is not necessarily family).
It means stopping and playing with the children in your life instead of standing in the kitchen and lamenting all that you have to do (or that this feels like any other day to you, just with more food to prepare).
It means copious amounts of belly-full laughter.
It means realigning yourself with your partner (if all the time they really take is over Christmas/New Year).
It means Meet Me In St Louis (a MUST for me each festive season, even through the hard ones, has been to watch this movie, ever since I was about 11 years old and my cousins introduced me to it once on a visit from Perth to our place)
It means wandering around our neighbourhood looking at Christmas lights - now that was a moment (last Christmas when we did it for the first time with our then 2.5yo) when I knew I was a parent... we had a ball and the three of us came home so full from our walk :)
It means cracking out my beloved oldies Christmas tunes by Mel Torme, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Perry Como and the likes (love, love, love the old and big band festive stuff!)
It means tipsy giggles with the womenfolk in their kitchens.
It means wandering out to a grassy lawn to play volleyball or totem tennis or some other ball game with the menfolk and the kids (one and the same, in my experience, usually!).
It means happiness that makes your heart swell.

And it always, always, means hope for another, better, year.

Grandma Ruby

My father spent his life as an only child. His mum, my Grandma (and Ellanor Ruby's part namesake) had a very tough life. To cut a long story short, she spent time in an orphanage after her mum died (pregnant with her TENTH child, but only the 4th one that Grandma ever knew about) and her father couldn't look after the children. She and her younger sister, Joan, raised themselves into young women and had a grand time around wartime London.

When they were evacuated from Folkestone up to Chester, fate created my father (with her boss). Grandma raised Dad on her own for a few years, until she met and married my gorgeous Granddad, who adopted Dad and created a new life with them, for them. Their attempts to conceive were dashed, several times, resulting in awful losses (that we never knew about, as a family, in any great detail until the day when Grandma told me over the phone - I had called to tell her I lost our first baby in 2000 and it all just came spilling out of her).

After that conversation with Grandma, I felt kindred with her. She wasn't an exceptionally loving woman, not demonstrative with it, anyway. Hers was a gruff affection. She was gorgeous with it but it was also really confronting and didn't feel like love - not the love I wanted from her, anyway, as a kid.

Grandma died about 5 months after our phone chat. She died of a heartattack, right in front of me (and Steve). Utterly profound experience, especially given my new connection with her.

Then Dad began to really get into genealogy and researching his Mum's family. He spent his life believing there must be more cousins out there for him to meet (he had one that he knew of, a boy who was, allegedly, killed by a gunman at university/college in the US.... but there is a slight suspicion it may have been suicide). And lo and behold, with the world getting smaller as it is these days, Dad has uncovered countless family. Cousins (the children of his mother's long lost siblings, people she herself didn't know about, some of them half brothers/sisters but a couple of full blood relations).

Grandma's younger brother's name was Frank. He died a relatively young man - if I remember correctly, he returned from the war a very changed man and ended up stumbling, drunk, into the path of a bus in London. A goner, instantly.

This brother, Frank, had children. One of these children, a girl (I can't remember her name!), is one of these long lost cousins of my father's. She sent a few photos recently, from her father's collection. Photos of a young girl they didn't really know anything about, but were told it was someone called Ruby.

We've grown up only ever seeing one photo of Grandma before the age of about 20. No other baby or early childhood photos of her, because she herself didn't have any. Imagine only having one photo of yourself, your whole life, and not even having anybody who knew and raised you around that time to fill in your missing blanks. Anyway, when Dad's cousin sent these photos through, it was unmistakable, undeniable, to us, who it was.

Little Ruby.

I touched up the photo for Dad and the result brought the old picture, taken in the early 20's, to life. I plan to have it and another enlarged for hanging on the wall. There is something so incredibly poignant about seeing this photo, which Grandma may never have seen herself (she and the two brothers she knew of became estranged as they had to fend for themselves, so it was just her and Joan, really). My heart swells with love and sadness and connection when I look at it. She looks so much like "one of us". It is so much easier to see our place - my siblings' places - in the family likeness when I look at this.

And I feel pangs for that little girl in the photo, who had already lost her mum and was about to have the most horrendous sexual abuse inflicted upon her in a foster house where she was supposed to be safe and cared for (it could actually have been going on during the period this photo was taken).

She was a cracking spirit. I never realised just how much until after she died. Ruby is a major part of the book I am writing, for I feel a kinship with her over our losses (albeit for different reasons) and am so very relieved I was able to be that release valve for her to tell at least someone in her family before she died.

A word about Miscarriage

I wanted to share something with you that I never knew (or recognised or accepted as acknowledged fact). The acupuncturist I went to on Wednesday night unknowingly tripped a wire I didn't realise I had set. He advised the same thing I found in a book I later 'googled' (and have included the link here, for anyone interested):

It is important to remember that, according to the experience of Chinese medicine, a miscarriage is as draining to a woman's energy as labour. Indeed, there is a saying that proclaims "a miscarriage is more serious than labour." . . .

The popular view, often corroborated by medical opinion, is that a miscarriage is a trivial occurrence after which a woman can try to conceive again straight away. This is not so from the point of view of Chinese medicine, which considers a miscarriage to be as draining to a woman's system as childbirth, if not more so, especially if there is profuse loss of blood during a miscarriage. In fact, after a miscarriage, there is a sudden drop in hormone levels which has a very weakening effect on the mother. Furthermore, a miscarriage is more draining than childbirth from an emotional point of view, as childbirth is at least followed by the joy and emotional fulfilment of motherhood, whereas a miscarriage is followed only by an intense sense of loss and, often, of failure, however unjustified."

from: Obstetrics and gynecology in Chinese medicine
By Giovanni Maciocia

I believe this is too important to overlook. I know first hand the desperation and determination that arises from just one pregnancy loss, let alone multiples (or the death of a born child). I also know what it's like to "recover" from birth - it took eight months to physically heal after the LGBB (urgently pushing a posterior presenting baby out to prevent a cord 'accident' when you're only 8cm dilated may just do that to some of us...).

But just like the acupuncturist and I discussed, a birth also gives back a whole lot - things a miscarriage will never be able to.

There has been such a freeing in being gifted this 'saying', by a total stranger, who had absolutely no idea the prison he was unlocking me from.

Who knew that all this time, when I was surrounded by people who didn't pay much mind to what it felt like being on the other end of things they said, like, "just another pregnancy, it was early, you're still young, you can try again..." I was actually doing it harder - longterm recovery-wise - than their one or two live, relatively uncomplicated births?? I never ever gave myself permission to consider a miscarriage might be harder to go through. I was not allowed nor encouraged to see the miscarriages as anything other than pissy annoying false starts getting in the way of what it meant to be a real woman, in the scheme of things.

They weren't all "no more than just a late period" miscarriages. I'd say only three (roughly calculating here) of the nine were under five weeks. The rest were enough to have already sent my body, mind and heart into baby-nurturing overdrive. Swollen breasts, heavy abdomen, nausea, fatigue.... for this to suddenly stop and those hormones to (sometimes) keep going but always just go nowhere... well, is it any wonder it can knock a body around? And that's not even factoring in the missed miscarriages (I have had two... and a half... the half being not completely missed because the foetus was just hanging in there when we stopped it, before it became a Christmas to Remember in 2004...) - a missed miscarriage means your body doesn't really have any idea there's trouble afoot! It keeps merrily swelling, deceiving your mind into thinking that "Hey, if I don't want to give up the cream pie and pickle sandwiches just yet, surely everything must be fine this time in there." A body that has not responded, hormone-wise, to the demise of a baby is bound to also need some talking down from the ledge. My body never got that talk. I just shifted it up a gear and went, hey, let's make another... that D&C was fun!

And now, this release has catapulted me into a different level of healing, which I am enjoying and keeping low about until it is fully passed and the time is right.

I have soooo much more to tell you! But it's not the right time to truly go digging deep into it. I just couldn't leave this hanging, though, in case there is just one person who reads this and gains a similar sense of validation or comfort as I have had, years past my TTC days.

But what I will share here is something very important. To anyone experiencing, especially, multiple miscarriages, I do not believe the investigation of these things (or consideration) can be flippantly overlooked. I'm not saying this is a cure-all answer. Nooooo, no no no. I don't live in that world.

However, in case it is of any help at all, take a look here at this book and see if anything might be for you. The entire ruddy thing appears to have been scanned and uploaded on the web! So take a squizz. You can search the actual text using your own key words, over on the left side there and it will find all instances of the word/s you're looking for.


Looking for more about what I have to say on miscarriage/infant loss? See here.

Finding out how 9 miscarriages can bite... the hard way

I have a lot I need to say about this past week. Being still in the throes of the most excruciating week (physical pain-wise) of my life, I'm not properly centred yet to go firing off about what's been happening.

Knowing me, as you may do by now, you'll probably have guessed correctly that I am throwing everything (esoteric, alternative, medical and otherwise) at this affliction I find myself in. It's made for some very interesting learning, particularly in the past two days.

An infection has now settled in the base of my face. I have a huge lump the size of an outstretched hand, running the length of my chin and right hand lower jaw. Now that it's manifested physically, I have to let the antibiotics do their thing while the Chinese medicine also boosts me from the inside out. I'm on homoeopathics to take the edge off pain in between times and I am most relieved to say that at least the Panadeine Forte now works when I take it. Not for long, but a half hour without a twinge of pain somewhere in my teeth, gums, jaw, cheek, forehead or temple is sweet, sweet relief and I'll take it.

I want to come back and properly fill in the gaps. This has been important. A huge chunk of learning and realisation that all comes back to the nine babies we lost between 2000 and last year. I have only done one deep meditation on it (this morning) and am still walking through it, cradling myself, if you will. Before I can post about it, I need to responsibly clear and protect my outpourings, in order to effectively protect you, the reader, from such heavy burden and "someone else's stuff", basically. The realisations I've had are profound, more profound than even I, on my journey so far, could have known.

It has taken this pain, this bolt out of the clear blue, to shake me, make me still, realise and release the pain I didn't know I was still carrying. So buried has it been by the loss of Ellanor and then the birth of the LGBB.

I am working through giving myself permission to be so affected by these losses. I am learning to release the guilt of trying again so soon, again and again and yet again, pushing and striving and yearning all those months. It was bound to take its toll. As I kept getting pregnant, I honestly thought it wasn't affecting or effecting me (or the outcome). I felt less and less emotional turmoil about them. I racked them up as one great big collective loss.

But they are not. They are individual. And until I unify all of this, I will not be whole. A birth is complete, and yet a miscarriage... a miscarriage, in some respects, is never-ending.

More later.