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.

Will I ever get that happy ending?

After everything that has happened, I find it very hard to be positive. Now we've started trying for another baby, I am more aware of this than ever. Every month I tell myself it isn't going to work.  That I won't be pregnant (so far I've been right!). When we first lost William I would tell my counsellor that one way or another I would have another baby - even if the tests showed we couldn't have one of our own or had to use egg or sperm donors...I would even adopt. Whatever it took, I said we would have a family one day. Since we've started trying again I find that very hard to believe. In fact, I seem to have done a complete u-turn and now I don't feel like we will ever have a baby.

If I let myself believe for a second that we will, then I find it hard to believe that the baby will be ok. I keep thinking the next baby will have the same condition as William or something else wrong with it. All sorts of scenarios run through my head and every one of them ends badly.

I never let myself imagine the happy ending..my husband and I and a healthy baby in my arms.

To Pee Or Not To Pee

We've decided we're ready to try again for another baby. We have wanted to since we lost William but we had to wait for all of the genetic test results. I also had to get over the operation on my neck and feel physically capable of trying again.  More than that, we needed to feel ready emotionally. I had read that doctors don't recommend you try again until you are strong enough to cope with the possibility that something could potentially go wrong again this time around. I'm not sure I will ever be ready to face what we have been through a second time, but I at least feel like I can cope with all of the anxiety and worries that will come with being pregnant again.

We were very lucky that I got pregnant on the first tries the last two times (1 x MC 1 x William) and I have no doubt that we won't be as lucky this time.  I've partly convinced myself that I won't even be able to get pregnant again. Part this is a defence mechanism I suppose, to try and protect myself from the disappointment I will feel each month when my period arrives, but from a medical point of view, I also reckon my chances will be lower this time around. When I grew William my body also decided to grow a fibroid at the same time. Apparently this is quite common and it is the pregnancy hormones in your body which cause the fibroid to grow. They usually shrink after you have given birth and the hormone is no longer being emitted. I had a scan 8 weeks after having William and it showed that my fibroid had shrunk but it was not gone entirely.  Fibroids can cause problems when you are trying to get pregnant and so I have this fear that it's not going to let any embryo implant as it wants my uterus all to itself.

When I got pregnant last time I pretty much knew my cycle inside out.  For the first pregnancy which ended in an early miscarriage, I didn't pee on sticks, track my temperature, use an online calculator - nothing. I could just tell when it was the right time and we did it and I fell pregnant.  The second time was pretty much the same although I did pee on an ovulation stick for two days in a row just to check I still knew my cycle.

Since having William, I know my cycle is slightly different - the length of it is still the same but from the middle of my cycle until I get my period, I now get period pain type cramps every day and there is a lot of *ehem* CM (so sorry for the TMI!) which I didn't have before.  So, now I am trying to decide how far I want to take things in terms of tracking when I am going to ovulate to make sure we do it on the right days (yeah yeah I know we could just do it every other day for the whole month but my husband is a lawyer and I'm afraid that means a lot of late nights when he comes home totally exhausted so its not really feasible and will only add to his stress).

I know neither my husband or I are as relaxed as we were last time around and so I am concerned that peeing on sticks or taking my temperature will not only become a bit obsessive, but its also going to add a huge amount of pressure. We are both so desperate for me to get pregnant quickly that I think our lives could quite easily end up revolving around those few days each month when there might be a chance.  Everyone is always saying how you need to be relaxed to fall pregnant but I worry that doing all of these things to check we're at it at the right days will only stress us out.

On the flip side, I watched my best friend try for a baby for many months (most likely on the wrong days) and watched how disappointed she was each time her period came. Surely the disappointment each month upped the stress factors when they came to try the next time? It was only when she invested in an ovulation monitor and worked out when she was ovulating that she got knocked up almost straight away.

So, in summary, I guess its stressful trying to get pregnant, its stressful when you don't get pregnant, its stressful becoming obsessed with getting pregnant BUT you do actually need to be doing it on the right days if you are even going to be in with a shot. So I think this month I shall pee on a stick around about the time when I think I might be ovulating just to check (because come on - they are SO expensive - I'm just not doing it every day - its like peeing on £30 by the end of the month!) but that's it. No temperature tracking, no online charting, no CM checking, just the peeing. That is unless I am too stressed to even be able to go......

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.

Aversion Therapy

As you may have already read, I tend to try and avoid all pregnant people and/or babies as they are painful reminders of what we have lost. I don't see any pregnant friends or any friends who have young babies. If I get on the tube and there is a baby I get off and go and sit in another carriage. If I'm queuing to pay for something in a store and there is a pregnant person in the line, I go to another checkout.

Realistically, I'm not going to be able to do this forever. There are going to be times where I get on the tube or I'm in a restaurant and someone walks in who is pregnant or has baby.  What am I going to do? Stand up in the middle of my meal and just walk out? I am going to have to get used to be around bumps and babies or its going to get out of control. Plus, I don't want to cut those friends and family who have babies out of my life forever. I've already lost enough. I don't want to lose them all too.

So, I've enrolled myself in an Aversion Therapy course. I am the tutor and there are no other students (not surprising given I made the course up myself in the privacy of my own living room!) so I can pretty much dictate the rules and what the course involves.

There are five stages to my made up course which are as follows:

Stage 1: Learning to tolerate pregnant strangers.

Objective - student must be able to be in the presence of pregnant strangers without welling up in tears and staring at their baby bump. In order to pass stage 1, student must be able to sit or stand next to a pregnant stranger.

Stage 2: Learning to tolerate stranger babies

Objective - student must be able to be in the presence of stranger babies of all ages (including newborn). In order to pass stage 2, student must be able to tolerate hearing the baby cry and seeing the mother feed baby.


Stage 3: Hanging out with friend's babies who were born pre-William

Objective - student must be able to spend time with and play with the baby.  Student must be able to tolerate hearing the baby cry and be able to watch the mother interact with or comfort the baby. In order to pass stage 3, student must be able to hold baby...and then be able to give it back to the mother.

Stage 4: Hanging out with pregnant friends


Objective - student must be able to spend time with friends who are pregnant and have announced their pregnancy since William was born. Initially, the student will be expected to do nothing more than spend time with the friend and look at her from the neck up only.  Over time, student should endeavour to make general enquiries about the pregnancy (an example might be to ask the mother when she is due). In order to pass stage 4, student must be able to look at the friend as a pregnant person - i.e. someone who actually has a bump body below her neck.

Stage 5: Hanging out with friend's babies born post-William

Objective - student must be able to spend time with babies who are born after William was born. Student must be able to tolerate hearing the baby cry and be able to watch the mother interact with or comfort the baby. In order to pass stage 5, student must be able to hold baby...and then be able to give it back to the mother.

So far, I think I'm hovering around stages 2 and 3. I stood behind a pregnant person in the queue in Starbucks today and didn't freak out. That being said, I am not sure I could stand to sit next to a pregnant stranger on the tube. I can also walk past mothers with prams and have been in a cafe at the same time as a baby (although I did end up bursting into tears but that was because the baby was sat in the same pram we'd bought for William) but I can't stand hearing them cry. I've also spent time with and held two babies who was born before William came along.  Both of them were girls and about nine months old. As a result, they looked nothing like William and were able to interact with me as they were no longer little newborns. I didn't find it easy to be around them and when I left I noticed I had a nervous heat rash all over my chest so it obviously really affected me.  As a result, I think I need to work on this module and I'm not ready to graduate to stage 4 just yet.

I have had the odd mental moment where I have thought about taking this aversion therapy to the extreme and skipping to stage five which involves me going to John Lewis and just standing in the baby section watching all of the pregnant families around me. In reality, I suspect this is not sensible and it will only end in one of two ways:

(a) Claire breaks down in hysterical tears and has to be taken to the Manager's office so that they can call her husband to come and collect her;

(b) Claire is taken to the Manager's office by Security so that they can call the police as they suspect her of being a baby snatcher given she has spent the last hour not buying anything and staring at other people's babies.

So for now, I'm sticking to the therapy plan above. It will be interesting to see what happens when I go back to work next week. I know one of the secretaries at work is pregnant and I have a sneaky suspicion one of my friends at work is pregnant (although she hasn't told me yet).  Ordinarily I would avoid her but as she works in my office its going to be pretty much impossible so I might be moving on to stage 4 sooner than I think.

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.