Keeping My Game Face On

....is so exhausting.  At the shops, on the tube, at work, in the doctors, walking down the street. To anyone else looking at me I look normal. They would never guess that I have lost a baby. At first glance they wouldn't see just how devastated I am inside.

I guess I could walk around with tears running down my face, bearing my soul to all but they would probably think I was a nuts and I am sure it would make everyone else feel more than a little uncomfortable. So, the Game Face is required. The one that smiles at the man in Starbucks when he's taking your order, the one that doesn't flinch when stood next to a mother with a pram in the queue, the one that makes the world think "She's ok".

I'm now back at work 3.5 days a week and so the Game Face is required more so than ever.  I cannot cry in front of people in my office. It's a law firm. A big corporate, male dominated law firm. Crying would be seen as weakness. Not that I really care if they think I am weak, but if I want to keep my job and my clients and for people to believe I am still capable of doing this job, then the Game Face has to stay on.

It is so draining and when I first started back at work, I would walk in through my door at the end of the day and burst into tears. It was like a massive emotional release of all of the emotions I have had to keep in check throughout the day. Emotions that build and build and build and build until I am safely in the comfort of my own home...and then they all come rushing out.

Problem is that sometimes you just can't keep that Game Face on. It can slip. It does slip. It's happened to me twice this week at work. First, I saw on facebook that another friend had had her baby, then today a colleague called me to tell me his wife is expecting. On both occasions it was just too much and I couldn't control the tears.  Thankfully, on both occasions I made it to the staff toilet and managed to cry my eyes out silently, in the privacy of my own cubicle.  I don't know if anyone realised but my blood shot eyes were a pretty good giveaway to those who saw me on the way back to my desk.

This Game Face thing is just one big act and it is so tiring. I wonder if it will always be this way. Is my life destined to be just one massive play with me as the central character, acting out a "normal' person's life? Will one day I really feel happy again, not always on the brink of tears, not carrying around this heavy weight of grief? I really and truly hope that one day I will feel happy again and my Game Face will not longer be required.... because I am not sure I can keep this act up forever.

Sometimes.....

I feel like I will never feel happy again.

I look at the photos of me in frames around our house and think that that girl is gone forever.

It seems like everyone else has their babies but me.

I find it hard to believe that I will ever have my own take home baby.

I worry what would happen if it happened again. Whether I would survive, could survive.

I think it might be better if I didn't, because then I would be with William again.

I think I am being punished.

I wonder if there really is a God.

I have to believe there is a God - that William is with him and that I will see him again.

I worry whether William will remember me.

I wish this had never happened.

I am glad that it has, because if it hadn't, I would never have known the joy of carrying William, seen how beautiful he was when I held him, and he wouldn't be waiting for me in Heaven.

I feel like running away, far away to somewhere like South America. Starting again and pretending this isn't me. That I'm happy and carefree. A girl whose heart hasn't been broken.

I have so much resentment and hatred inside I feel like it could consume me.

My heart actually aches for William. I can feel the physical pain inside my chest.

The grief overwhelms me and I cry just as hard as I did the day we lost him.

I wonder what this has done to my relationship with my husband. Are we closer for having gone through this together or has it tainted our marriage with a sadness that can never be overcome?

I feel betrayed by old friends who I thought would be there for me but who abandoned me when I was most in my time of need.

I am surprised by how wonderful some friends can be.

I find it hard to believe I am a Mum.

My heart fills with warmth when I tell myself I am William's Mum.

I find it hard to believe that I will learn to live with this pain and have any kind of 'real' life again.

I have to believe there is a happy ending for us, that my husband and I will have a take home baby. That we will be a proper family here on earth, not just in Heaven.

The Unanswerable Question

Why?

I used to ask this a lot in the early days - when we first found out there was something wrong with William. Why him? Why did it have to happen to us?

I couldn't understand it.  I still can't understand it. We so desperately wanted this baby.  There are hundreds of people who get pregnant when they don't want to, who drink, take drugs, smoke....not caring about the welfare of the little human being growing inside them. They do all of this and their babies turn out just fine. What did I do wrong? I avoided coffee and tea, didn't touch a drop of alcohol, I avoided pate, soft cheese, shellfish. I followed the advice to the letter. So why did something go wrong with our little boy?

I also seem to be SURROUNDED by friends who have had healthy babies. Not that I would wish this on anyone but none of them have had any problems at all. I mean literally nothing. They all got pregnant, they all sailed through their pregnancies, they all had their perfect babies. Why did they get to have their babies? Why did we have to lose ours?

I also stupidly thought my husband was untouchable. I know that sounds silly so let me explain. My husband has a brother who is disabled (his condition is completely unrelated to William). He also used to have a sister. That's right - used to - his sister was knocked over and killed by two motorbikes when she was just 21.  I would look at my husband and think - he's been through enough. He has had more than his fair his share of misery and heart ache. I used to think that when I was with him I was safe - that because of him we were invincible. Nothing bad would touch him now.... hadn't he already suffered enough? Apparently not.

My husband blames himself - he says after his brother, sister and now his son - he is the connection. He thinks that everything he touches turns bad. It breaks my heart to hear him say that. He is a wonderful person. He has a truly beautiful pure soul. He couldn't be the source of anything bad.

I think its me. The miscarriage, William, the tumour, my Dad's heart attack. I must have done something terrible to deserve all that. I must be a horrible person. This is my punishment.

It will be 6 months on the 20 April and yet last night I broke down in tears and asked my husband again...why did it have to happen to us? Why?

There are no answers.

Mummy's Day

It was Mother's Day yesterday here in the UK and to say I was dreading it was an understatement.  At one time I had been so excited about this day - after all, this year was supposed to be the year I would be receiving my own Mother's Day card and not just giving one.

After losing William, the day can now only serve as a reminder of what I have lost.  In the weeks preceding, everywhere I turned were references to Mother's Day - signs out side card shops, bouquets filling the entrance to the supermarket, hell, even the M&S advert was promoting a £15 Mother's Day meal you can buy and cook your Mum.  It feels as though the the entire country got together and took it upon themselves to have a special day to remind me (as if I could possibly have forgotten)

YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR BABY.

YOU WON'T BE GETTING A CARD. 

YOU AREN'T A MUM.

And perhaps its not just the entire country who is saying that to me. Perhaps, if I'm honest, it's the way I really feel about myself.  It's definitely the way I think my friends, even my very close ones, feel about me. If they were asked which of their friends were mothers, I don't think I would be included in the list.

My counsellor is always saying  "You ARE a Mum" to me. On the one hand I love hearing that but on the other I find it very hard.  It brings tears to my eyes every time.  You see, I don't really feel like a Mummy.  Deep down I know I am William's Mummy but I never had a chance to mother him. So now I have this title of "Mummy" but its a role I can't fulfil as William isn't here. It leaves me feeling stranded. I have all of this motherly love to give and no one to give it to.  It is a difficult position to be in and one which I don't think will ever change until we are lucky enough to have another child.

I am incredibly lucky to have an amazing husband who completely understands how I feel about being/not being a Mummy (I guess because he feels the same way about being a Daddy too). He knew I was dreading yesterday and he was very aware that the day was certainly not going to be anything like I'd imagined when I found out I was pregnant just under a year ago.

He knew I didn't feel like I deserved a card but he gave me one anyway and inside he told me that I was the best Mummy in the world for protecting William and going through all of this pain so that he didn't have to. He also gave me this beautiful Sweet William candle which we lit last night before bed and thought about our little boy.

As you can imagine, it made me cry, but as I was reading the words he had written in the card, I felt, for  perhaps the first time since I had held William in the hospital, that I was a Mummy. My husband was right.  Isn't the role of a parent to love and protect their child? To do what's best for them? To put the child's needs before their own? Isn't that what we had done for William when we sent him to Baby Heaven? We loved him. We wanted to protect him. We wanted what was best for him. And, even though its broken our hearts we chose to take that pain than for him to suffer for even a second. We made that decision as his parents. We made that decision as his Mummy and Daddy.  Nothing can ever change that.

Baby Loss Buddies

This whole baby loss experience (for want of a better word) can be pretty isolating. Sometimes I feel like I want to cut myself off from the rest of the world and hide in my house with the curtains drawn. In reality, and especially if I do want to start trying to get my life back, I appreciate that that is not practical.  I do need to have some interaction with the outside world.

My husband and I are really lucky. We have some great friends who have been hugely supportive throughout this whole ordeal and offer to meet up with us whenever we want - we only have to ask. Here's the problem....they all (and I mean ALL) have babies or are pregnant. Some of them even have more than one baby. One of them has two...and she's now pregnant with twins (now that's just plain greedy in my view).

I find it too painful to be around babies or pregnant people at the moment - I'm already in enough pain without actively seeking out more by surrounding myself with reminders of what we have lost. So, I pretty much don't have anyone to hang out with in the outside world.

I mentioned this to my counsellor and she said "you need to get some new friends". I laughed and thought she was joking. I mean,  I'm 31...where the hell am I going to go and pick up some new friends?  Everyone already has their friends by the time they hit 30. I can't exactly walk into a bar and go and sit at a table with a bunch of random strangers and ask them to play with me...did she not see Bree try and fail at that in Desperate Housewives last week?

Turns out she wasn't joking and she wasn't proposing I pick up some new mates in a bar. She wanted me to get a new, very special kind of friend - the Baby Loss Buddy.  A Baby Loss Buddy is someone who (as the name suggests) has also lost a baby and so has been through the same experience as you. They are in the unique position of being able to understand exactly how you feel - without you even saying it - as they have been there themselves. With them you can say anything. There is no filter on the conversation as they will not judge you. They understand. Completely understand.

This sounded like a great idea but the only problem was, where do you find yourself one of these Baby Loss Buddies? My counsellor suggested getting in touch with a help group like ARC or SANDS and asking if they could put me in touch with someone.  As it happened, I am already a member of the ARC online support forum and someone on there had asked if anyone in London fancied meeting up for coffee. So, I tentatively replied.

Last weekend four of us met up for brunch. I was incredibly nervous when I walked into the cafe. Since hiding away at home for the past five months I've lost a lot of confidence and so meeting old friends, let alone new ones, seemed really daunting. I was also a slightly worried that we might all be a bit depressed and that hanging out together might bum us out even more.

I needn't have worried. All three of the girls were so nice and within a few minutes we were all chatting away like old friends. So many of the things they said resonated with me and it was a relief just to know that how I feel is normal. That they feel that way too.  It's too early to tell yet whether we are the types of people who would be friends were it not for the fact that we have all lost babies but for now, just having that in common is enough for each of us.

And when I walked out of the cafe it felt like a little bit of the weight had been lifted. I actually felt happier and definitely not so alone.  Losing William has been the worst thing I have ever been through and it is very hard to see any positives that could come out of this. But, perhaps I will now make a couple of special friends as a result and that would be nice.  I really hope that is the same for William too. Maybe the babies of my Baby Loss Buddies will make friends with William and he will have some mates to hang out with in Baby Heaven. That would be really cool.

To Truly Understand These Shoes You Must Walk In Them

So I know most people have their own views on the whole pro-choice/pro-life debate and there will be some people who will simply not understand our decision to send William to Baby Heaven - even with all of his medical problems.  For a fleeting moment, the views of others was something which caused me concern - what would our friends think? Would they judge me? Would we lose friends over this?


Ultimately, as William's parents, we had to do what we thought was best for him and it didn't matter what anyone else thought. My husband would constantly remind me - "they may think they know what they would do in this situation but until they are stood there in that hospital room, talking about their own baby, they will never really know".


We have been really "lucky" in that we have received nothing but support from our friends and family and if any of them do disagree with our decision, they have certainly never let it be know.  However, it is something I do still think about from time to time most recently when I read another girl's blog entry about her own experience of losing a baby.


The girl in question lived in Ireland, and like William, her baby had had severe genetic problems and she had decided that she could no longer continue with the pregnancy.  As she lived in Ireland, she had been forced to fly to the UK for the procedure. This, in itself, I found very sad - the ordeal she was faced with was already traumatic enough and it seems unnecessarily cruel to force her to leave her friends, family and support system behind her and fly elsewhere for the medical treatment she needed. This aside, how she was treated upon her return to Ireland astounded me.


Like may women who have been through the deeply traumatic experience of losing a baby, she sought counselling to help her try and come to terms with what had happened. Thankfully, this was offered to her in her home town in Ireland. However, instead of the counselling sessions helping her through her grief, they proved to be extremely upsetting.  The sessions themselves were fine but each time the girl in question walked to or from the building where the sessions were held, she was met with a barrage of abuse from protesters outside.  On one occasion they cornered her and wouldn't let her walk to her car and continued to shout at her even as she broke down in tears.


Each person is entitled to their views and as I said at the outset, I am sure there are people within my own circle who disagree with the decision we made for William.  I am certainly not saying that the path we chose is always the right one, but it was the right one for our little boy.    What I do disagree with, however, are those who openly judge other parents for the decision they have made and berate them for it, especially when they themselves have never been faced with having to make such a decision.


I have not encountered one set of parents who were "happy" to have been given the option to bring the pregnancy to an end for medical reasons.  Whilst they may be thankful that they had the option to prevent their child from a lifetime of suffering the decision has ultimately been heart braking.  My little boy was very much wanted...more than that...he was desperately wanted by me and my husband. We loved him terribly and choosing to let him go has broken our hearts. We will never ever be the same again and we will never ever get over the pain of losing him. 


I am sure this is exactly how the girl in Ireland feels.  She is heartbroken. She loved her baby. She wanted her baby. She did what she thought was best for her baby.  The decision she made was one based on pure, unselfish love for her unborn child and it was heart braking   I am sure it takes ever ounce of strength she has just to get up in the morning, let alone to drive her car to the counselling offices and walk across the car park into the building whilst the protesters hurl abuse at her.  I wonder...would their reaction be the same if they had been faced with making this decision about their own child? I suspect not. 


Until you've walked in my shoes, don't judge me.

I wear a pair of shoes

They are ugly shoes

Uncomfortable shoes

I hate my shoes

Each day I wear them and each day I wish I had another pair.

Some days my shoes hurt so bad that I do not think I can take another step

Yet, I continue to wear them

I get funny looks wearing these shoes

They are looks of sympathy.

I can tell in others eyes that they are glad they are my shoes and not theirs

They never talk about my shoes

To learn how awful my shoes are might make them uncomfortable.

To truly understand these shoes you must walk in them.

But, once you put them on, you can never take them off.

I now realize I am not the only one who wears these shoes.

There are many pairs in this world.

Some women are like me and ache daily as they try and walk in them.

Some have learned how to walk in them so they don’t hurt quite as much.

Some have worn the shoes so long that days will go by before they think about how much they hurt

No woman deserves to wear these shoes

They have made me who I am.

I will forever walk in the shoes of a woman who has lost a child.

Rock Bottom, Fifty Feet Of Crap, Then Me.

So I pretty much thought I had reached rock bottom in this whole utterly shit situation but it turns out you can feel worse. Yesterday my best friend had a baby. The baby wasn't expected to arrive until the end of March but she was taken into hospital 6 weeks early as her waters broke. I knew she was in hospital and so for the last couple of days I've been bracing myself for the news that the baby was here.  Last night my husband walked through the door and told me the baby has been born. It's a boy.

I feel like my heart has been ripped open.

The news, although half expected, has devastated me. They didn't know the sex and so there was always a 50:50 chance it would be a boy but I have still been saying "please let it be a girl, please let it be a girl" every day.  If the baby had been a girl, it would still have been hard but the fact that it is a boy is so much harder.

It feels like just as I was scrambling to my feet, trying to get up off the floor, someone has come along and hit me with a tonne of bricks and knocked me over again.

Since we lost William I haven't seen my friend. The thought of seeing her with a bump when I had lost mine was just too painful. We were so excited when she became pregnant 10 weeks after me and had talked about all of the things we could do with our babies. I'd imagined our babies being best buddies and us all hanging out together.  So much of the future I had imagined for William was connected to their baby in my mind.

My friend could not have been nicer and said she completely understood why it would be too painful for me to see her. She said we would wait until I was ready before we saw each other again and in the meantime, we could keep in contact by email, which we have done.  It hasn't been easy. It's hard for her to support me when I won't even see her and I feel sad that I have not been of support to her too whilst she has been pregnant. This is one of the happiest moments of her life and I haven't been able to share it with her.

I've spent a great deal of time thinking about when the time might come when I could see her again. I knew it wouldn't be whilst she was still pregnant but thought I might be able to see her once the baby arrived. Now he has, I still don't feel I can.

As her baby has arrived early he is now only 5 weeks younger than William should be. It feels like I am being tortured knowing that for the rest of my life, I will watch a little boy grow up and reach every milestone at the same time that William should be. I don't know if I can face seeing that for the rest of my life.

So, that leaves me in a state of limbo. I've lost my baby. Am I now going to lose my best friend too?

I know it is my choice but in reality, it doesn't really feel like I have much of a choice. Self preservation dictates that I don't go out and openly seek yet more pain on top of that which I have already suffered. And yet I am torn. I miss my best friend.

Termination For Medical Reasons (TFMR)

What is it? Well, it's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. You decide to end your pregnancy because your baby is suffering from a medical condition so sufficiently horrendous that you think they would be better off dead than alive....that is if they would even make it out of you alive in the first place.

You can elect to do this at any stage of your pregnancy but if it's after 24 weeks, the hospital will only allow it if two medical consultants consent to it too. I was 26 weeks pregnant when we were told there was a problem with William's heart and that we had a decision to make. Before you even start researching the medical condition which has decided to afflict your baby, you know the outcome for the little mite isn't going to be good when they tell you as they told me....

"I would support you in your decision if you choose to bring this pregnancy to an end and I know there are several other people in this hospital who would also do so".

If you do decide to end your pregnancy the methods of doing so also differ depending on how far along you are. At 28 weeks (as I then was) the process of ending your pregnancy is two fold. It isn't pleasant but it's not something you can really sugar coat (although I will try) so if you don't think you are going to like reading about this bit you may want to skip onto the next post:

Sonographer man sticks a needle into your tummy and into your baby. The baby gets a hit of valium so he feels super dooper relaxed and stops kicking the hell out of you. Feeling all chilled and nice and cozy in your tummy the baby snuggles down for his final Mummy Tummy Nap. Whilst off in baby dream land the sonographer man gives your baby another injection right into his heart to send him to Baby Heaven.

I don't like to think too much about what was in that last syringe as the reality of allowing someone to inject that into your baby is just too horrific.  It's made worse by the fact that the medical professionals all refer to that bit as "feoticide" which is a term I loathe and which reminds me of homicide and murder.  Instead, I like to think of this last injection as a huge dose of love mixture from me and my husband and something akin to Red Bull. We loved William so much that rather than him suffer a minute of pain we gave him some Red Bull to give him wings.

The second stage is relatively simple in comparison. You take a tablet to soften your cervix and two days later go into hospital to be induced and give birth. The labour itself is like the birth of any living baby (so I'm told) although you haven't got all of those happy pain suppressing natural endorphins flying around your body and so it tends to hurt like hell once it all gets going. On the up side, most midwives don't want you to be in an physical pain given you are already suffering enough so they will pretty much offer you every drug they have available to them the minute you start to feel anything.

When we first had to consider ending the pregnancy I thought this process was so horrific that I didn't think I would be able to get through it. Even if it meant William being born alive and having a lifetime of suffering. I just didn't think I was strong enough and couldn't handle the pain of losing a baby.  Ultimately, however, I decided that I would feel more pain and guilt watching him suffer from the minute he was born and that my reasons for continuing with the pregnancy could not simply be that I was too much of a coward to do what might be the right thing for our baby.

Once the decision was made, I didn't want to know anything about William (I can't believe I even thought that now), didn't want to know the sex (we didn't know he was a boy at this stage) and I wanted to be knocked out, for them to take him out of me and for me to wake up, bump-less. I certainly didn't want to give birth to him or to see him or hold him. I rang every private hospital and asked if I could pay for a c-section as the NHS wouldn't allow it. They all said no.

I talked to a counsellor and they said the process was there for a reason. That I wouldn't come to terms with it if I went to sleep with a bump and woke up without one. I thought "what does she know" and that the medical profession were cruel, unbelievably cruel, for making women go through this process when they were losing their baby.

In hindsight, I can see the counsellor was right. It was hard, so so hard but I am glad I went through it. William went to Baby Heaven straight from my tummy and went to sleep when he was with me, all warm and safe. His birth was really really peaceful and gentle and as a result, no harm came to his tiny little body. It also gave my husband and I the chance to see just how beautiful and perfect he was and to hold him and say goodbye properly.  I can now say, without a shadow of a doubt, that holding him in my arms was one of the highlights of my life, no matter how sad the circumstances, and I wouldn't give that up for the world.

Note to William: Mummy may have allowed you to get your first hit of drugs when you were with her but getting high, even with a parent, is a big no no. Do not even think about it in Baby Heaven...even if its someone disguised as Jesus telling you to drink the special wine and eat his magic bread. Just. Say. No.

Top Ten List Of The Worst Things You Can Say To A Baby Loss Mummy

Below is a list of things people have said to me over the past three months. I have also provided the response that went through my head (naturally I was too polite to actually say that)...

1. "There is always someone who is worse off than you" 

Yes, cheers, thanks for that. I appreciate that there are such people in the world but if I am quite honest, I don't know how they haven't topped themselves as I can't imagine feeling any worse than I do now.

2. "Wouldn't the morphine make the baby drowsy during labour?"

Umm, given he was already dead at that point I am thinking "No"?

3. "You went to the Maldives? Wow, you are so lucky."

If you'd like to send your baby to Heaven and send William back down to me I will gladly fork out for you to go to the Maldives.

4. "I'm pregnant"

I hate you.

5. "I'm worried about giving birth"

FFS stop complaining. At least your baby should be alive at the end of it.

6. "What on earth do you want a big car like that for?"

Well we ordered it when I was pregnant and then after the baby died we thought the least we deserved was a new car....even if we have nothing to fill it with.


7. "Well let me tell you, you have been through a lot but I've been to hell and back"

My baby is dead. Your husband might have had surgery but he is alive. I think I trump you on the hell and back stakes on this one.

8.  "It's not all about you"

Thanks. It's been three months. Sorry I've been "making it all about me" for longer than you deem acceptable.


9. "We've all been through difficult times and have felt like that"

Right. I don't think you are fully appreciating this situation. I lost my baby, my BABY.  "Difficult times" doesn't even begin to describe it and rest assured, I don't think you have ever felt like this.


10. "It must be very worrying" [about the genetic tests and another baby potentially having the same condition]

Yes it is. Thanks for the reminder.

What To Expect...To Feel... When You Are No Longer Expecting

I recently read a beautiful post on a US website summarising how a woman feels when she has lost a baby. I've posted the link below so that you can read it for yourselves.

http://smallbirdstudios.com/2012/02/05/when-you-lose-a-baby/

If you aren't based in the US,  you'll no doubt have noticed that some of the comments don't apply. It got me thinking about what it feels like to be a Baby Loss Mummy in the UK. If I were to add my own thoughts to the link above, this is how it would read:

You're in a John Lewis and you want a cup of tea. You always have to walk right through the baby department to get there.  You get to the top of the escalator and then its eyes down. You walk past the prams, past the cots, past the numerous excited parents-to-be discussing the pros and cons of the latest car seat. As you reach the entrance to the cafe you think you've made it and then you hear a baby's cry ring out across the store. The waitress behind the counter asks what you want but you can't read the menu up on the wall. Everything is blurry as your eyes fill with tears.

You read the Daily Mail Showbiz section online and feel the resentment surge as you see yet another celebrity pregnancy announcement.

The thought of going on the tube (the underground to the non-Londoners reading this) fills you with anxiety. You used to take it every day to work and think nothing of it. Now, even the thought of going on there again makes your heart pound and your chest feel tight. You do not want to be crammed into a confined space with a bunch of strangers.

You watch One Born Every Minute even though it kills you and it always ends with you in tears.

You see stories of pregnant 14 year olds in the press or pregnant women outside bars drinking and smoking and wonder why they get to keep their babies and you lost yours.

You hate Facebook and yet can't terminate your account. You log on every day to see yet another baby announcement from a friend or pictures from their latest scan. You wonder how they can announce it all so freely to the world. You think "you have no idea what can go wrong".

You worry about Amanda Holden and Lily Allen and feel relieved when their babies are born safely.

Every hospital should have a room donated by SANDS (a soundproof, private delivery suite for those women delivering what will be a stillborn baby). You wonder how those women coped if they did not have this "luxury". Did they hear a baby cry as it was being born in the next room whilst they were delivering their own dead baby? How did they survive that?

The coffin, the funeral, none of it had to be paid for. The funeral directors refuse to charge for anything when a baby dies. This makes you smile. Not because you've been given a freebee but because there is still some humanity in the world.

People ask you how you are but you know they don't really want to hear the truth in response. That would be inappropriate. The English are always so polite and feel uncomfortable even at the mention of death. So, they ask, and you lie. You say "I'm ok" and then see the relief flash across their face.

You become obsessed with getting pregnant before Kate Middleton. If she announces her pregnancy first it will seriously piss you off.