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.

Riding the Wave of Grief

For a while now I have been thinking of this whole grieving process as a bit like trying to surf (not that I can surf but I've watched Keanu in Point Break).  I feel like I am trying to ride a wave. There are really big ups and downs but I keep trying to stay up on the board and on my feet.

Every so often a really big wave comes along and knocks me off the board and into the sea. I swallow a shit load of sea water and find myself gasping for air, coughing and spluttering. I have to muster up enough energy to drag myself back up onto the board like a drowned rat and try and catch the next wave.

Until recently, I'd always imagined myself trying to scramble back up onto my feet and up on the board as soon as I've been knocked off.   However, this week I met a new Baby Loss Buddy and after explaining my surfing analogy to her she said that sometimes she feels the need to paddle for a a bit before climbing back up on the board.

For some reason paddling had never occurred to me before but thinking about it now, it seems like a good idea. When I'm knocked off the board I am so worried I'm not going to be able to get back up again that I try to get back up there as quickly as I can and it can be pretty exhausting. Maybe I should be paddling.....a little break might give me some time to think about my surfing stance and why I wiped out...as my Baby Loss Buddy, said we can just enjoy the scenery for a bit and miss a couple of waves until we feel strong enough to catch the next one. 

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.

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.