"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.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Christmas Shopping for my ghost-baby

I don't know if this was torturing myself, but I got the idea in my head that I would buy some Christmas things to donate to the giving tree at work.  The instructions said to label the gifts with the age and (if appropriate) gender of the child the gift would be suitable for.  Here, let me imagine a hypothetical child who I wish I was buying a Christmas gift for.  She's about to turn two, and apart from her curly dark brown hair, that's all I know about her.  I'm not sure I can successfully combine my grief for Z, my desperate hankering for her to be here, with the altruism that Christmas giving really requires.  All the same, at least this way of remembering her, of showing my love for her, has some benefit for a child who needs it.  Yet it spikes my heart that a living child will get to use these things while Z never will.
 
The girls helped me pick out two things - a little navy and white striped summer playsuit and a fisher price pull-along telephone - ubiquitous toy of doctors waiting rooms and kinders.  I was amazed they are still making them.  Yay nostalgia.  Buying things was hard.  Leaving them there under the Christmas tree was harder.  It still shocks me that this happened to us, that I have a daughter, but she died.  I can't manage to pat this grief into any kind of shape today. 
Posted by Hanen at 8:38 PM
Labels: ,

10 comments:

  1. beanDecember 20, 2011 at 9:08 PM

    It still shocks me that it happened to you too. I wish she was here with you all. And with us too! She'd be teaching Jinny and Tycho some cool moves. I find in the bottom two left branches of every piney christmas tree there is a Z.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanetteDecember 21, 2011 at 1:22 AM

    Hanen, it's so hard. I still gravitate to the little girls section in stores.x

    ReplyDelete
  3. briannaDecember 21, 2011 at 5:03 AM

    I just did the same thing yesterday. Then promptly came home and burst into tears. There are times when the permanence of his death cuts me to my core. I hate it so much. For me, for you, for all of us who have lost so much I just really hate it.

    Hoping little adzuki bean is growing and growing. Much love to you and your family.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hope's MamaDecember 21, 2011 at 2:24 PM

    Seems we're all waxing lyrical about our dead babies at this time of year. It sucks. So much. I just want them here, and not to be ghosts.
    Love to you, H.
    xo

    ReplyDelete
  5. sarahDecember 21, 2011 at 4:22 PM

    Wow, yes, we are all in it right now, I guess. Fucking holidays and empty holes where our babies should be.

    Sending much love to you, H. xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  6. Catherine WDecember 22, 2011 at 3:57 AM

    It was a beautifully generous gesture, even more so given the circumstances and the pain it must have cost you. I always surprise myself by how much I buy for my own living version of my lost little one and how often I buy things in pairs. Sigh. I don't mean to but it just seems to happen.

    I love the little pull-along telephone, such a sweet toy and I know it will make a child somewhere very happy. But wish it were making your little Z happy.

    And I am still shocked to my very core that this happened, even now. Doesn't seem to go away.

    Love to you and Adzuki bean, I think of you often xo

    ReplyDelete
  7. dotalotDecember 24, 2011 at 3:53 AM

    i dress dot like a tom boy, still not sure whether its because harvey isn't here and was a boy, not even sure what that has to do with your post either!? it was a lovely thing you did for another child, you will have made a difference to their christmas day.

    it is a shock, it is shocking, horrific and shocking i have you and your little z on my mind at the moment, i am sure your little darling is close to you right now, she knows you need her strength. at least, thats what i think xxx

    ReplyDelete
  8. RenelDecember 25, 2011 at 12:15 AM

    I couldn't do it. I have thought about it. I feel mostly compelled to buy clothes. The cute little things I never will buy for her. Ugh. I never bought any girl clothes because we were waiting until she was born to find out the sex. Damn I wish we had gone shopping happily just once. Now all the little baby stuff just cuts my heart up. I am thinking of u as I often do. I wish your daughter was here to play with that phone and wear the jumper.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Bionic Baby MamaJanuary 5, 2012 at 11:32 AM

    love to you all.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2012 at 7:23 PM

    This completely unfair, unjust, nightmare happened to you not long after my daughter was born. I guess I just want you to know that the impact on your family was felt far, far away. I can't imagine...and I hope I never know.

    Much love to you all.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)