"Edited to Add"....

This started as a pregnancy blog when I fell pregnant in May 2009 after four years of finding a donor, doing all the counselling / paperwork / tests and trying.

And now, thanks to a 4WD which skidded onto our side of the road, killing our baby daughter at 34w and injuring me, my partner and two of my stepdaughters on 27 December 2009, it has turned into something else. We didn't want this something else, but apparently it is all we've got to go on with.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Fierce with Love (Six Months without Haloumi Cheese)

27 June 2010
Something is different today. I woke in El Prima's arms, like last Sunday, but this time without sadness pulsating through my head to the tune of K's announcement that A had died. Today I can get up and decide what to do without tears, I can pull on my new, soft elephant t-shirt for the first time and think "maybe I can do this, maybe I can be like an mama elephant*, and be all the more fierce with love because of my loss".

So what happened to make this small welcome change? Partly the elephant t-shirt, a birthday present to myself. Partly spending Saturday night with friends, so that we could release balloons for little A, to mark his paris funeral. Partly having an hour holding our dear friend's 4 week old son, and drinking in his living baby features and living baby noises.

But a big part of it is also coming home to a parcel from sydney containing this:


I can't remember exactly when my friend Leo had started up our little stitch and bitch group - but it became a force of its own. Our formula was very simple - we'd lug sewing machines & sewing boxes over to someone's house, and spend the day eating pastries, drinking tea and talking, and eventually get around to sewing something.

Nearly every scrap of fabric in the banner I remember from a project - pajamas for Nik's son, a gift Leo was making, a dress for Cathy's daughter, the apron Belinda was making for her sister in law. And linking them all together - the green backing and the letter "O" is the fabric I found in a cupboard in a sharehouse in Brunswick over nine years ago. there was metres and metres of it, so at my last stitch and bitch before we left sydney, we cut it down the middle and I left them with half. As their little note said, Haloumi was a definite part of our stitch & bitch sessions together - both when we were wishing for her and when she was there in my belly, encouraging me towards another pastry. I wept, but my heart swelled and I felt humbled to be the recipient of so much stitched love.


* apparently a ridiculously huge proportion of first elephant pregnancies end in stillbirth, often after 22 months gestation. If you can find a reference for this then you are more dilligent than me. I promise you I read it somewhere. [<-- I would be in fits if any of my students tried to reference in this sloppy manner!]

7 comments:

  1. What a lovely gift. I hope the sun shone brightly for you today.

    ReplyDelete
  2. having people around you that love you and do loving things for you certainly help you wake up and have mornings like sunday's was. 6 months is far too long to be without haloumi as is 4 months and one week. thinking of you and sending love xxx

    ReplyDelete
  3. That is such a beautiful gift. It is lovely that you all are surrounded by such love.

    ReplyDelete
  4. sounds like a lovely group to be involved with and so wonderful that they have given you such a significant memento.

    I am sorry to read of the loss of your friends baby. so much senseless loss, so hard to comprehend.

    6 hard months for you...I hope you are finding some peace.

    owlie

    ReplyDelete
  5. That is a beautiful gift, and so thoughtful. I love that you know what project each of the fabrics came from.

    I had never heard that about elephant females. That is a really cool shirt, and I think you are very fierce to have been dealing with all this for 6 months!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks owlie - we're getting there. it is senseless. xxh

    ReplyDelete