Right Where I Am 2012: Two years and five months

I'm glad Angie has decided to put on the Right Where I am Now project again -  my god it feels like so much has changed in a year.

Its a Sunday the 27th again, which makes it two years and five months exactly since I was strapped to a trolley in the emergency department, hand on my 34w pregnant belly, still hoping that we might hear Haloumi's heartbeat.  I'm back in hospital now - this time in the adjoining maternity hospital, but things are so, so different - and I am acutely grateful for that.  This time, it's our six day old baby boy, Ali, who is a patient in the special care nursery, but his outlook is the complete opposite to Haloumi's.  He's alive, to start with, and in rude health, but needs phototherapy for jaundice due to ABO incompatibility.  I'm sleeping on a recliner next to his isolette so that we can continue breastfeeding.  I'm still in a state of disbelief that we have a living baby who I can breastfeed, who gives me serious looks with his dark eyes, whose noises I wake up to in the night, thinking, "A baby is crying... oh, that is *our* baby". 

In the family lounge I talk to the grandmother of a baby girl born at 27 weeks, and I send out a silent thank you to all available deities for our chubby, healthy, full term little boy who looks so much like his older sister.  But where we only got still glimpses of her, he is here in real time - moving, making faces, clearly enunciating his "Waaaa" cry and drinking my milk - all the things I longed for so much  with Zainab.  I know now that all those possibilities are gone for her.  What she (and we) missed out on still makes me cry, but there's now an ocean of experiences which mothering her has given me.  If I had to choose, I would always choose for her to live, but none of us get the luxury of that choice, so I have to take what I can from being her mama.  And even if it isn't what I would have chosen, that is still a lot. 

It feels corny to try to enumerate what exactly to that is - to be honest, it feels as though my whole personality and belief system has re-shaped around being mama to Zainab.  It isn't that I've "found religion" or anything like that.  It's more that being mother to a dead child has meant that my love follows her into death, so I've had to think about what death entails - where is it exactly, and can I still connect with her while she's there?  I've come to realise that, if I thought of death as some separate, alien place that I needed to get to in order to be close to her, then being comfortable in the land of the living was just not possible. I didn't want to choose between being close to her and living - so I had to find her here - to inhale her softness with the rose petals, to wear her memory in my choices of jewellery, to let death sit comfortably at our table - feeling her existence each time we missed her.  And now, to notice all the resemblances between her and her brother. 

I feel like she is built into our lives now - we have our small rituals for her, and family and friends (mostly) acknowledge her as a significant part of our family.  The blanket my mum knitted for her - which she was wrapped in for much of the time we held her, is here wrapping Ali - especially on car trips, and exerting a protective warmth.  I like to think that they know one another - that her cells watched over his as he grew within me, maybe bossing him around a little like the big sister she is.  He's still in that newborn place where he seems to be in two worlds at once - staring at things just beyond my shoulder, making inexplicable but beautiful facial expressions.  I whisper in his ear, "tell your sister we love her".

Just as I refuse to choose between living and being close to Z, I've also realised that I don't need to choose between feeling the sadness when it comes, and enjoying pure joy when that arrives - even if they both tumble in the door at the same time.  It doesn't make sense, but I've now given up on trying to make sense of emotions - just feeling them honestly and genuinely is big enough. 

Looking back, my post last year touched on similar ground, but while I'd started to make friends with the intensity of losing Z, I was still so so sad, so much of the time.  I feel like my life has recovered a lightness since then. There really was a cruel little part of me that felt like I would never have a living child, that mocked me for wanting one so badly.  And yet here he is - soft-snoring, velvet-cheeked proof that the universe can be unimaginably good as well as unimaginably cruel.  I am so grateful that the odds favoured us this time. 

Archaelogy

There is a back corner of our garage where baby things accumulate.  It's where we hid away the little red suitcase of things we'd bought or been given for Zainab when it became clear she wasn't ever going to use them, along with the pram and carseat.  Over the last six months or so of this pregnancy it is where pre-loved baby things have washed up as dear friends have pressed them upon us.  Yesterday was a clear sunny day, impossibly warm for Autumn but a good washing day, so El Prima and I started our excavations.

We worked through boxes of baby clothes - washing and sorting them by size.  Tiny jumpsuits hung from our washing line like a cloud of white fluffy bats.  And we tried to imagine Adzuki's little feet - those little heels sliding regularly across the inside of my belly and giving El Prima well-timed kicks in the back - wearing some of these clothes.  It all feels quite unreal at this stage, but now that we've gotten past the same stage as our accident last time, some of the fear has lifted.  We're doing that crazy unbelievable thing - preparing for this baby to come home with us, and getting ready all the things we'll need to care for him as a living, breathing baby.  The part of my brain which tells me that I'm tempting fate, I'm hearing but not heeding.  Who knows what will happen, but I want to enjoy this bit of anticipation while we can.  

We started with the most recently stashed away things from friends, and then gradually dug deeper into the pile, finding the pram we'd bought second-hand for Zainab and pumping up the tyres, along with all the bits and pieces for it.  And finally we took a deep breath and turned to the little red suitcase.  I had imagined this as a little time capsule of all our hopes for Zainab - that we could open it, and while it might be sad, there might also be something bittersweet about her little brother wearing her hand-me-downs - a connection between the two.  I should have known from the weight of it that something was up, but the moment I unzipped it, we could smell what had happened - somehow water had got in and everything inside was mouldy and mildewy.  At first I just took a deep breath and started separating out the irretrievable things from the ones that might come good with a good soak, but as the extent of the damage became clear, we stopped and I wept.  That time, when we had felt Z kicking, and had bought these small things in anticipation - was well and truly gone - the new clothes we had bought then are no longer new but decaying.  The little gold sequined mardi gras shoes were still wrapped in plastic, so they smelt musty, but were mostly okay - the blue and orange overalls were so badly mildewed that the fabric fell apart as I pulled them out. The irretrievable things I packed back into the little red suitcase - it will have to go in the bin soon, but for now I needed some means of disposal that reflects the love and sadness we have for these mouldy little scraps and the baby who was supposed to wear them.

The other things, I soaked and washed and pegged out on the line - hoping that sunshine will help get rid of the smell, and that Adzuki won't mind if some of his clothes look slightly the worse for wear because they come from his sister.  Wednesday will be 36 weeks, so chances are, we'll be meeting him in the next month or so.  As scary as it is, we're putting faith in that thought. 

Holding onto the handrail

I'm sorry I went quiet there for a bit.  Just keeping up with full-time work, and staying sane, and safely gestating is using up most of my time and energy at the moment.  

Adzuki is 33 weeks today, and I can't help but replay where we were at this gestation with Zainab.  They were our last days with her, and we had no idea.  We were in the midst of packing up our house and moving interstate, and then the busy noisy chaos of Christmas and family.  This is why I linger in bed in the mornings when Adzuki starts moving - because we had so few opportunities to do that with Z in those last days.  I'm grateful that he seems to be a very active baby - whenever I start getting worried about him, I tune in to my belly and have been able to feel him move or hiccough. I'm trying to balance the fears - doing what I can to hang onto the handrail and stay as safe as possible - with the moment to moment experience of having this small person dancing in my belly.  I'm avoiding car trips wherever possible, and using a special seat that keeps the seatbelt away from my belly.  I know it's unlikely that the same thing would happen, but I also know how common car accidents are, and that even a less serious bingle could harm Adzuki.

And in just over a week (if all goes well) Adzuki will have been in my belly longer than Z ever was.  I feel frozen, uncertain of what to do.  I find myself procrastinating with my work - I long to hibernate in bed, to wait this out until I wake one morning and go into labour. 

I think our strategy for now is to mark 34 weeks as another anniversary for Z, and then to begin in earnest the preparations for Adzuki's birth - getting his space in our room set up, listening to the birthing cds, getting my head around the prospect of a pregnancy ending with a living baby rather than trauma and grief.  At least we really hope so this time!

Slow

I'm now 26w pregnant, and it is odd to be back in this visibly, publicly pregnant state - almost as big as I was when we lost Z.  And I'm just realising that, no, I didn't imagine it - my boobs really were this big last time, my belly really was this huge.  It's almost as though, when Z died, a part of me felt that because I hadn't managed to deliver a living baby, that my pregnant and post-partum body was somehow imagined - or worse, a kind of fakery, when really - there was no baby to show for it.  As though I wasn't entitled to have all this odd bodily paraphenalia of pregnancy.  As though her death cancelled out the whole pregnancy and turned all our plans and love for her into self-delusion.  Here I was, impersonating a mother.  Back when I started this job, I thought of myself as an injured person recovering from a car accident rather than a new mother of four months.  I was so focused on getting back on track so that we could get pregnant again -  grief was an energy-sucking distraction, an indulgence.  

I look back and I'm shocked at my own cruelty to myself.  It took me quite a while, but I've now properly claimed that title of mother to Z.  While it still breaks my heart that she's not here and whole, revealing her two-year-old self to us, I'm proud of her.  And I feel like I've learned a huge amount about being a mother because of her.  That I can survive the unimaginable, that I can feel that awful and still be me - even if it is a weepier, more fragile me.  That things can be completely, irretrievably broken, and mundane or miraculous at the same time.  I'm kind of stunned that I had this depth of love within me - to love a child who isn't even here, who gives us no tangible sign of  response, and yet who makes love spill out of me in such a way that I have to lavish it upon the stars, earth, sea and air in the hope that maybe some of it will hit one of her atoms.  She has, exactly as I feared, made me into a bit of a grief-struck crazy-lady, but in a much more whole and connected way than I ever imagined.  I even have some fondness for my crazy-lady habits, because that's how I know that I'm her mama - because I'm the woman who pauses on the street to stick my nose right into the heart of the rose, and inhales, whispering, l love you, my darling girl.   

We're at the point where we are beginning to plan for all the things we'll need if Adzuki arrives safely.   It feels ridiculously foolhardy to do these things - to accept gifts of second-hand baby baths, to go to a breastfeeding preparation class, to start moving furniture so we can fit a cot in our room.  A voice in my head constantly harps, Don't you know what happened last time?  What makes you think you'll be needing these things?  And the truth is, we don't know.  Nothing can guarantee that he will come home with us, living and breathing.  But I also know now that if all the awful things conspired and he didn't come home, I would still love him and he'd still be our son.  I won't kid myself that one grief fully prepares you for another, and I am still terrified of all the possibilities for things to go wrong.  But being able to sit with those possibilities also enables me to let in the good possibilities, and to appreciate that right now things are wide open, that for now I get to feel every kick and try to be awake to it - to experience the aspects of the pregnancy that are similar to my pregnancy to Z, and also those which are completely different.

El Prima and I are getting impatient now - mid May feels so far away.  And we know from Z that it could all happen much sooner than that.  I'm trying to hold onto the realisation I had while looking at the clouds the other day - that even when it looks like nothing is moving, if you give it proper attention, you'll see the slow shift of things changing moment by moment.

2012

You know that fresh, clean bit of the new year, when it really feels like ages until you have to go back to work?  When you really do think this is the year you will get organised and do all those little things that need to be done?  Yep, well that bit is definitely gone.  And I'm afraid that all the blog posts that were on my list of things to be done have evaporated into thin air - chewed up by the busy weeks organising and then staffing at a summer camp for the girls. 

The camp was an amazing, intense week, which reminded me that actually, I can organise things, I can run a team, and I can build yoga and quiet time into even the busiest of days, and that I have a beautiful support network.  The camp is also near where Z's ashes are, so I was able to visit her everyday, which I loved.  But I'm exhausted from the 7am-11pm days and from coming home to big fights with El Prima and a chaotic house with 7 members of El Prima's family staying over - including in our bedroom.  I mean, I'm taking the fact that they now come to stay as a lovely acceptance of our relationship (at last) but seven people as well as the four of us who already live there in a three bedroom house with only one couch and very little living space is very difficult!  

El Prima's eldest daughter has also come to stay - very welcome after a long absence, and she's actually been the most helpful and thoughtful of all the guests.  The rest of the family have now headed home, and we've got our house back, but there's nothing like in-laws to put a strain on things.  (There were also some unintentionally hilarious moments - El Prima's older sister seeing that I was pregnant and asking in a semi-scandalised voice, "Does your father know?"  I thought she was quite restrained, given that she's suggested on previous occasions that she could find a husband in Lebanon for me.) 

In Adzuki news, everything went well on our 20 week scan. For the benefit of my dad, and anyone else who doesn't want to know Adzuki's sex, here is a little spoiler alert image so that you have to scroll down to find out.  Just imagine some "oooooh-wah-ooooooooh" thinking music like they had on the 1980s Australian TV gameshow Perfect Match...

Image (and context, should you wish to brush up on your 1980s antipodean game show trivia) from here.

Okay, ......................................  drumroll........................................

..............................

He's a boy!


We had quite a hilarious ultrasound operator.  First, she asked, "Is there anything you'd like to know about this baby?"  And while I was temped to reel off a long list starting with, "where does this baby stand on the middle east crisis / circumcision debates / global warming?" and constantly punctuated with "will we get to bring this baby home living and breathing?", what we actually said was, "yes, can we find out the sex?"







To which she replied, "Well, there's the scrotum!" 

I'll leave the visuals up to your imagination, but let's just say there wasn't really any room for confusion on that issue.  I responded in quite bad mother fashion by immediately bursting into tears.  Distraught, sad tears, I'm ashamed to say. 

Let me try to explain this.  We are so delighted.  We are so bloody lucky to be in this position, with a healthy looking Adzuki kicking around my insides.  But one of the reasons I wanted to find out the sex despite being a big believer in surprises and non-gender specific baby clothing was that I knew that I was somehow imagining a little sister for Z, and that I had invested a huge amount of energy into the idea of having a living daughter.  I knew I needed time to work through all the emotions tied to having either a boy or a girl.  I had been so convinced I was having a boy when I was pregnant with Haloumi / Z, and was so fond of that idea, that I really associated finding out she was a girl with first seeing her face - and that amazing surprise of seeing your own baby for the first time.  Having a daughter was this amazing surprise gift from Z, that I didn't even know how much I wanted, even if she couldn't live.  I know none of this really makes sense, but I guess when you know so little about your own child, you hang onto the small bits of info that you have got, and her sex was one of those things.  And despite me knowing intellectually that Adzuki has always been a different baby to Z, that Z is irreplaceable - gone forever as the baby that we knew her - knowing that he's a boy is a clear confirmation that no, she's not coming back. 

And poor little boys - they have so much crap to deal with in this world (I know, little girls too).  But all those stereotypes about sport, and being tough and preferring trains / cars / mechanical un-empathetic shit....  I know that's not the whole picture for little boys, and I'm glad that we have such a beautiful diversity of gorgeous men in our lives - from my dad and brother, to El Prima's nephews, darling poet / engineer / loving dad friends and husbands / partners of friends and all our beloved gay boyfriends, including Z and Adzuki's donor.  But just knowing opens up a whole new field of worry for Adzuki, and how he might navigate this messed up world.   

The day after the scan was new years eve, and the kind of hot, dry day where just walking from the house to the car made you feel like every bit of moisture was being baked out of you.  El Prima and I braved the late afternoon heat to visit the local pool for its last half an hour of evening opening.   I did backstroke under the dry blue sky and wept into the chlorine.  When I looked up again, the clouds had re-formed, and directly in my line of vision was the cloud shape of a new baby's face.  Here he is, this tiny boy, completely dependent on me, and all I can do is weep because he's not a girl.  I know this sounds very flaky, but I think that was Z and Adzuki, conspiring to rearrange the water atoms in the sky to remind me of who it is here in my belly - my beautiful little son. 


(Z's day on 27 December deserves its own post and is next in line, but suffice to say that I now think it is pretty significant that one of the songs I chose for her play list (we hadn't had the scan yet at that stage) was "Here comes the Sun".)

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. 

Don't mention the bump

I'm still here, but have gone quiet for a bit.  It is so hard to capture everything going on at the moment.  I'm at that funny stage where some people will look pointedly at my middle and say, "Are you....?" and I'll have to confess, Yes, Pregnant, while others are still surprised when I tell them.  Either way, there is a lot of telling going on, because being the blathermouth that I am, I'm not likely to leave things unexplained or unelaborated.  And yet, it all feels so awkward, because so often there is a great yawning gap between their and my understandings of what all this pregnancy business means.  For me, this is not a easy topic about happy future plans and discussion of baby products, it is a hot ball of molten lava which is both an amazing, miraculous thing and a very dangerous and unpredictable substance.  I need to put on the fireman's gloves for that.  It is here, on the newsy surface of things which people feel happy talking about, whether they know me or not and yet it is chained directly to my heart, so that even just telling people I am pregnant feels like an intimate exposure. 

For people who don't know our story, this inevitably leds into variations of the question "Is this your first baby?".  I'm getting better at getting the words out.  No, our first daughter died...  car accident ... eight months pregnant.  And now that I've said it so many times, I can almost roll it out easily and move on with the conversation - out of self-preservation rather than callowness.  They usually apologise - this was not the territory they were meaning to steer us into.  So I need to sum it up so that we can move back to safe territory - "It's okay.  It just meant that getting pregnant again was a Really Big Thing.  Extra precious."  Which doesn't really even begin to sum it up, but that's the best I can do for chit chat. 

For friends and family who know the back-story, many have surprised us with the genuine intensity of their joy for us.  It feels like a gift in itself, but I can't quite meet them on that optimistic territory - I just stand there smiling nervously and saying, "Yes, fingers crossed". And I think for a second - am I actually pregnant?  Or have I just made a silly mistake?  And I have to prod my belly surrepticiously, feeling for that taut roundness of womb. 

Because, as amazing as it is to be pregnant again and to be feeling those first flutters, I have no illusions that this is a done deal.  Knowing how many things could still go wrong (and have gone wrong for other babies I know of) makes it all the more precious.  That bit is true, even if a small corny word doesn't capture the tenderness of it.  But there's still a part of me that wants to save the celebrations until this chicken is well and truly hatched.

Zainab would nearly be two by now.  Most of the babies who were belly-side with her are now speaking, playing games, running on sturdy small feet and learning to crack tantrums.  Our street is lush with roses at the moment.  I lean right in to smell them, crush the petals to my lips and talk quietly to my baby daughter.  Her star has reappeared, now in a different part of the sky.  The ritual of missing her is built into my life now - I stand at the dresser and consult her serious sleeping baby face on which brooch to wear, which earrings.  When things are hard, I sigh "Oh Khallila" for her comisserations.

So many cues are interwoven with the missing of her.  Wind in the gum tops makes me picture her as snugglepot and cuddlepie bush baby, learning to sing magpie warbles.  The startling orange-red of pomegranate flowers against grass green leaves - those are the colours I wear for her.  Poems, comic topiary, haloumi cheese, earrings - my link to her is cobbled together from so many little things.  Even the little time I hive away for writing or art - this is a part of my life she reawakened in her short path through it.  And every bit of being pregnant reminds me of her - suddenly I can recognise myself again as the mother-body who housed her.  I'm becoming familiar with this mosaic-daughter, pieced together from so many small reminders and memorial acts.  But I still hanker for her wholeness, and the thought of her dark-haired small form moving and making noise. 

Image from here.

Weary

Oh, the posts that have been floating around my head!  Sadly, I've had to direct my energy into marking two batches of 120 assignments - urk.  Meanwhile, my head is spinning with missing Z and being tentatively excited / worried for Adzuki, and alternately feeling guilty for letting doubt creep into this new pregnancy. 

Things seem to be going well.  We had another scan at 8 weeks, and there was Adzuki with a rockin' heartbeat, with the beginnings of arms and legs and measuring a few days ahead.  We've done crazy things such as book in with a midwife, and register with the hospital.  I had my ten week blood tests yesterday, and my GP had a poke around my tummy and proclaimed, "I think that's the uterus - it seems pretty big already", which was reassuring and alarming at the same time.  She's lovely though, as is our midwife, and I feel like we're in good hands whatever happens.  (*whatever happens*...  this is the kind of hesitant, tentative hope I'm holding onto at the moment.)  I'm glad I can blame my fat tummy on that old uterus, though, because I feel exceedingly lumpy already.  A student remarked on it today, and wished me luck! (Though I don't mind people wishing me well on the pregnancy so much when I actually *am* pregnant.  It was pretty awful when I wasn't.)

I've been delighting El Prima with continuing nausea.  She was very comforting but also a bit happy when I threw up my dinner the other night.  I'd forgotten the absolute desperation of pregnancy hunger, as well as the importance of eating slowly and being careful to stop eating when the nausea demands.  There is so much that feels just like my Haloumi pregnancy with Z, that it sometimes does my head in.  And yet the food I get hungry for is very different - all salty things.  So many little new bits of grief catch me by surprise - just the thought of explaining to a little child that her/his big sister died before she/he was born.  The thought that Z would in probability be talking by now, and how much that would delight my dad.  The thought of not having to explain to Z that she might soon have a little sister or brother. 

Just "gestating safely" and getting my head around the whole thing seems to take up so much energy, and yet this has been precisely when my work has stepped up and demanded more from me than I feel able to give.  I've also realised that I'm grieving the loss of my old job and workplace.  It was my choice, of course, but I miss my colleagues and a system that I knew my way around in. 

Our next scan is in two weeks at 13 weeks.  I don't want to wish that time away, because I started this pregnancy wanting to enjoy every moment of it, I know those are two important, beautiful weeks for Adzuki, but it is pretty scary too.  I'm trying to weave those two things together in my head - to know that this is the deal - this is what pregnancy after loss feels like - scary and amazing in equal measures.  I'm so grateful to be here, even if it scares the pants off me.

Adzuki Bean

Once upon a time, on that other planet I lived on before our baby died, I was an ordinary pregnant lady who had a little bit of an obsession for red bean buns.   I loved them so much that I had long conversations with El Prima about why I loved them so much, and why Haloumi demanded that I eat them on a regular basis.  I googled "red bean bun" so that I could discover their principal ingredients.  Because if I wasn't eating them, I wanted to be reading about them.  And I discovered that the red bean paste is made from beans called (by some cultures at least) "adzuki beans".  El Prima and I mused, if we ever had another haloumi cheese after this particular Haloumi Cheese was born, maybe we'd nickname him/her "Adzuki Bean" in utero. 

That thought just floated, until our accident happened, and Haloumi died and was born - and was suddenly a real particular baby girl we named Z, rather than a Haloumi mystery baby-bump.  Well, she was still a mystery baby - but one whose face we'd kissed, and who we had given a name.  One of the few things we liked to think we knew about her was that she liked red bean bun and wanted me to eat it all the time.  So the idea that she had somehow 'picked' the nickname Adzuki Bean for her sibling became very tender to us.  

All of this is a long round-a-bout way of saying - we saw a heartbeat this morning - we've seen the Adzuki Bean!  The whole 5.5mm of him or her!  A copy of the picture is posted on the page I've just set up, specifically named "Adzuki Bean".  Our usual IVF doctor was away, so it was a doctor we'd never met before who started by asking, "Is this your first?"  (Cue a deep sigh from me, and a joint internal eye-roll, before El Prima launched into the answer) But once we'd told her, she was very sympathetic, and as soon as she started the scan was immediately saying, "Everything looks fine".  At first, I couldn't see anything in the sac, and didn't really believe her, thinking we might only see empty sacs and blighted ovums.  But she insisted, and there, indeed, was a tiny little adzuki bean, a promising little blob, with its own thumping heartbeat. 

It is strange to be back in pregnancy territory, with the same symptoms as with Haloumi, but with a body and a self altered by grief and motherhood.  It is hard to believe that pregnancy could possibly work along a similar timeframe, or work in the same way as it did before.  But while we'll always live with the chasm between 'before' and 'after', we're no longer in the wild woods of griefland.  (Where are we then?  Maybe we've found that grief has its own village, not all that far from where we lived before, and that as it turns out, many of the people we love have been a resident of that village at some time or other.)  All the possibilities bundled into a pregnancy - I now know how many of those can break your heart.  But this is the thing with possibility, you can't pick and choose.  All we can do is recognise that we're at the mercy of all kinds of good and hard possibilities, and we'll experience whatever we get as open heartedly as we can.

There's such a long long way to go, but stick with us, Adzuki Bean, this could be so much fun!

Taking it slow

Thank you so much for all the whooping and dancing on our behalves - each little comment I got through my email made me think - Ooh, maybe this really might be happening after all!

I've been on a blog moratorium while I finished writing a presentation for work - it is so hard to focus when my brain is going around in little circles like an excited puppy: "Hmm - I wonder if I'm still pregnant?  What about now?  .... Now?"

Something about this feels real though - definitely feeling nauseous and super-full-body tired. I walked out of the train station the other day and could smell someone's dinner (fish), and then someone else's perfume.  Smells are distinct, separate, detailed.  It feels just like the early days of being pregnant with Haloumi.  Which is a lovely feeling, but also scary.  It's as though there's been a pregnant part of me that's been on-hold for the last 20 months, and I've just gone straight back to 'pregnant normal'.  A part of me wants to leap straight into that certainty that things will work out, that we can start planning, while another a part of me has trouble imagining that this could end up with a living child.

It's now four sleeps until the scan.  I've titled this post 'taking it slow', but I think that is an aspiration rather than a description.  It is so difficult not to tilt forward and start planning or worrying about the future of this pregnancy.  I dreamt last night that I had another baby girl - fairer than Z, with a squished up newborn face.  She was alive, and I was trying to put a cloth nappy on her, but using ordinary sized safety pins.  We were locked in a room with someone with a machine-gun, I was contemplating whether we might be able to hide behind the couch so that we wouldn't be killed.  I though perhaps if I could hide her she'd be safe.  Maybe this is my unconscious brain's clunky metaphor for pregnancy after loss, or maybe I'm just really scared.  I also dreamt that we took her to the pub, where a band was playing - no idea what that means. 

It's a reminder too of all the dreams I had of Haloumi.  Despite me being convinced during waking hours that I was having a boy, in every dream I had she was a girl.  And my dreaming brain was right.   It had a 50-50 chance of being accurate I guess.  Just like trying to conceive, pregnancy is such a huge exercise in uncertainty - but with such a clear timetable of 'successful outcomes' that it feels even more difficult to just take one day at a time.  But we're here now, in this queasy, uncertain spot, and I certainly prefer this kind of uncertainty to the other uncertainty that follows a BFN. 




 

Well, be careful of those home pregnancy testing kits...

Because sometimes they are WRONG!!

Blood test showed HCG 539.    And then the nurse told me two completely improbable dates - 23 September for a scan to confirm a heartbeat, and 16 May 2012 as an estimated due date.  I very nearly said, "Ha ha, as if!" but that would have been rude.  And also showing very little faith in this tenacious little embryo's persistence.  Oh, it is so so lovely to be proven wrong in my sad scared little theories that everyone but me was allowed to get pregnant. 

Who knows what path lies ahead for this pregnancy, but we haven't gotten this far since Monday 1 June 2009, when I stood with a positive test in hand, staring at the wall - Haloumi's entry point into our lives. 

16 May 2012.  The day before my little brother's birthday.  Yikes.  But right now, 10 September 2011 is enough to deal with. 

Thanks so much for all your love & encouragement.  You rock too! xxxx h

ps so glad other people could see the elephant too.

Nope

Not even a shadow of a second line.  Official blood test is tomorrow, so I really should hold off on the gnashing of teeth until then. 

And this... ?

This is the rock I found for Z's little garden.  I went rock-selecting last week at a landscape gardening supplies place, and as I wandered around the piles of slate and mountains of gravel I liked this one because I saw it as a little elephant shape - trunk down to the left, and feet standing strong. 

It's about a foot and a bit long, and maybe a foot tall.  Just big and round enough to hug, but too heavy to hold in your arms.  Woo hoo - so I can freak the neighbours out by hugging the rock in my front yard on a regular basis.  We're getting it engraved with Z's name and her birth/death date. 

Back in the game

Apologies for blog silence - I'm here, but just not feeling terribly verbal.

I think this photo kind of sums up the mood - whimsical old (slightly rusty) grater with a wonky handle and a goofy grin in the sunshine through the kitchen window. 

"Why yes, my handle might fall off at any moment, and yet small things, such as the smile-like turn of my cheese-slicer, still lighten my heart".  I'm a bit scared to jinx it by writing too much about it, though it's still punctuated with little bits of grief.  Yesterday I found El Prima's goodbye card from her work, with everyone's good wishes about our 'bundle of joy' etc.  I had a cry in the aluminium shed, then stepped out into the sun, cuddled the dogs for a bit under the plum tree,  and started preparing our tomato patch for this spring / summer.

In other news, we had our embryo transfer today.  One lovely looking blastocyst was welcomed into the hopefully friendly environment of my uterus.  Make yourself at home, sweetcheeks. 

This is our first go with a 5 day transfer (the others have all been 2 day embryos) so who knows whether that will make any difference.  Our doctor explained to us that he was very pleased that 11 of the 13 eggs fertilised (yay, go wonder eggs!) but disappointed that of the 9 that kept growing, only one made it to blastocyst stage by day 5 (alas, poor embryos, I'm sure you're trying your best.  Aren't you?).  We'll find out tomorrow whether any of the others developed enough to be frozen.  I suggested to our doctor that maybe the others were just 'late developers' - indeed my grandad hadn't grown to his adult height until he was 19, so there's probably a family tendency there.  That and procrastination, either of which are quite valid explanations, if not very scientific.  Meanwhile, we've transferred the little blastocyst that could. 

So, we're back in the slightly less than 2 week wait, and I'm back to humming my favourite little "who knows who knows" song.  Blood test 9 Sept.  And hope?  Don't mind if I do!  I think I'm just going to go ahead and hope this time, as there's no point pretending this doesn't matter to me.  Fingers crossed.