"I will praise the one who's chosen me, to carry you"
-Selah: I will carry you

Sunday 31 March 2013

Easter Day: Renewed hope following despair

Church helped me again this morning. Easter Day, new hope, new life. After the black despair of the first Easter Saturday, they open the tomb to find He isn't there. Scary huh? But no, He isn't there because He is RISEN! New hope, fresh joy. Easter Day.  Spring.  The sun is shining, the birds are singing.....is new life coming to me?

I'm being reminded that I may be in Easter Saturday now, but my Easter Day will come. Have faith, hold on....trust.  I'm trying to, I really honestly am. It's hard. I've had my advent and never got my Christmas. Now I'm in Easter Saturday.....when will my Easter come? The longer my wait goes on, the harder it is to believe it will end.  I feel left behind, forgotten......abandoned? No, I am being continually reminded I am not abandoned.....and yet, where's the evidence?  Are things changing in my soil? Was my soil really that bad that it needed this many seasons to correct?

Waiting. So long to wait......and meanwhile, whilst I wait I feel so sad. Why do I have to wait so long? Why doesn't everyone else? There will be so much joy when my Easter Day comes. It will be worth the wait.....but still, I wish the wait would end!


Easter Day: Peace to all angel parents.  Your babies are enjoying their eternal life. 

Saturday 30 March 2013

"Sometimes the sadness is overwhelming...and yet somehow I'm still standing"


People keep on asking me to think positive......don't they understand that it takes all my energy just to cope?

When I've fallen off the top of the mountain yet again, when I get up just to discover yet another hurdle in my path, when it makes me question if God really wants me to be a mother again, when I have to try and cross it, whilst wearing my mask, building up my walls, growing a thicker skin, and rehearsing what I can and can't say in different situations......I have no power left for positivity.

I will think positively....when something positive happens.  I look forward to rediscovering the optimist I used to be before my life fell apart.


Thursday 21 March 2013

Getting an answer...

Wouldn't it be great if God sent emails? I mean, to open your inbox to find, there in black and white, an answer to your prayers: "this is what I'm up to in your life, and here's why:"  Of course, it doesn't work that way...but this week I did get an answer, of sorts.

Church this week was about healing- and praying for healing. Of course, I do have some issues with this, I prayed for healing for Bertie, and we know how that ended...but I tried to keep an open heart and mind and listened.  I found a lot of the sermon helpful, and afterwards there was an opportunity to go up and ask for prayer for healing. I took it. (You have to understand, this was not done in an American TV evangelist "I am filled with the holy spirit and healed", whilst thrashing around on the floor kind of way, but more of a reserved, British, come to the side and whisper the problem and I will pray for you way) So, I took the opportunity. Not something I would normally do, but I have been feeling so desperate, so apart from God these last few weeks, I thought maybe someone else's prayer for me may be more effective than my own. Anyway, through mounting tears and a closing throat, I managed to get across that I needed prayers for healing of my heart, since I was still struggling so much, 18 months after my son died, and also healing of my body, since we were now struggling to conceive again.

I was prayed over, at length by another member of the congregation (fortunately one who already knew my story so he didn't need to ask too many questions) whist I cried and tried to listen to what he was saying. Hate to disappoint any evangelists out there, but no, I did not fall to the floor and wail, though I may have felt like it on one level.....What happened as I walked away back to my seat was a rising sense of peace.  I felt God's love for me more acutely than I have felt it in weeks. Finally, I thought, He's heard, He's answering. 

Ok, it is not the answer I want, it is not the email saying "Ok Sarah, this time next month, you'll be pregnant...!" But, it's a start.  It's knowing that my prayers are being heard, and a feeling that God is working out my future, it's feeling safer, more at ease about everything.

I am trying to follow the example of the patient farmer, hidden deep in one of the gospels.  The farmer waits patiently through winter, seeing no evidence that his crop is growing at all....but he waits patiently knowing that amazing changes are happening beneath the soil that he can't see....and he knows that if he just waits for spring, he will begin to see shoots grow.  So, I am now living in hope that although it is currently still winter in my life, perhaps healing is happening that I am not aware of, and even yet, spring is on it's way.  Perfect timing to keep me hoping as our storm continues to rage and we begin our new journey towards our rainbow.

Sunday 17 March 2013

Self portrait in grief

This morning I came across a heartrendingly truthful quote that I would like to share with my readers:

"There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all its dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, despairing, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms." -Charlotte Bronte
This really epitomises the grief of child loss for me, in one sentence- if it is possible to do so.  As I read it, I pictured that canvas in my mind, and I felt compelled to attempt to put it to paper.  Forgive the crudeness of this picture-I'm no artist...but this is how I see myself in grief.
 
 


Thursday 14 March 2013

To be or not to be (an inspiration)

There are lots of incredibly inspiring women out there, living with grief, living after baby/child loss, who write about it, like I do.....but they write beautiful, inspirational things like "I choose to breathe in healing" or "I will live for both of us" or "I choose to see beauty not darkness"....do they? Do they really? It all sounds very lovely, but I'm not convinced.  I can tell myself that I choose all these things, but will it really actually make me feel it?  I do a similar thing, but for me it's the far less poetic "pep talk" Things along the lines of "just get through today, and we'll worry about tomorrow later" or, "things are going to get better, just keep going" or, "look how far you have come, how can you give up now?" I guess I'm more of a Winston Churchill: "If you're going through hell, keep going" than a Shakespeare: ""Make the coming hour o'erflow with joy, and pleasure drown the brim." (All's Well That Ends Well)

I do think some people, not all, but some in my life, think that I choose to wallow in grief and sadness.  They want me to "choose" happy.  Well, it would certainly make them feel better...but what about me? Would it really help me to pretend that life is yellow when really it is grey?  There's almost this expectation, when you go through tragedy, to become an inspiration. To deal with it gracefully and see the higher good. Take it on the chin and cope so well that people say "I don't know how you do it" Well, I don't want to be an inspiration. I didn't choose this life and I don't choose to pretend it's all fine when it isn't.  I am not wallowing in my grief, I am dealing with it the best way I can, for me, no-one else.  If I am honest, then people try to help me.  If I pretend I see butterflies and roses instead of moths and thorns...but then cry myself to sleep alone at night, how is that true healing?

You know, it feels like my choice has been taken off me. I didn't choose to be an angel parent. I didn't choose to have fertility issues...I chose to be a mum. What is God's will? What about my will. My free will to choose...what happened to that?  I feel I have lost all control over my life, and that is hard to accept, and scary.  I am now afraid to build up hope, because hopes dashed hurt so badly.  So, if I come across as negative more than I seem positive...bear with me.  It's self preservation.  Like the hedgehog who learns to curl itself in a ball and expose its spines to the world, I will put on my armour of honesty and tell it like it is.



Sunday 10 March 2013

So hard to keep going sometimes

I've been laying awake in bed for an hour now, thinking about our journey to be parents so far....and I can't help but think that it has been a series of barriers in our way, over and over. We get over one and another one slams down. Three years of it so far and we have nothing to show but a gravestone.  I have to wonder, are we just not meant to be parents?

I was 27 when we decided we wanted to try, we had to wait a few months due to travel commitments which meant we'd be in countries I did not want to be pregnant in, but finally the time came.  We had a tough time trying for Bertie, I knew there was a problem but a succession of doctors ignored my repeated requests for investigations, until at last a kind GP listened to me and ordered an ultrasound.  By some miracle we conceived Bertie before the appointment came round. We went along anyway as I still wanted to know if my suspicions were correct as it had implications for the pregnancy, and for the future. The sonogropher refused point blank to check for me and just had a quick look at the embryo, grumbling the whole time. Nice memory of our first glimps of baby to be there then!

Fast forward to 26 weeks and three days pregnant.  I go into labour for no explainable reason and Bertie is born, alive, thank God. Two days later, our world fell apart.  We left the hospital empty handed wondering if it was all a dream.   Because Bertie was breech, I had to have an emergency ceserian, so we were advised not to try again for six months. In the end we waited five, as we were so desparate to be parents again.  Now, it's 18 months on from Bertie's birth, 13 months of trying again and I have a diagnosis which explains why it's been hard, and a few months of first line treatment have failed.

Now we are waiting to see the specialist again to do further tests, stronger drugs.....and I have to wonder, will this work? How far are we going to have to take this journey, and will we ever get our rainbow? Or, will we go all the way to IVF and still be left empty handed? Could I even cope with the physical and emotional toll that would entail? And even if we do conceive......oh God what if it happens again?

Hope. It has got me this far, hope, and determination. The primal need to be a mother is in me and I can't give up until I am. But, it is so hard to keep clinging to hope when time keeps marching on, and you have nothing but heartache to show for three years of your life.   My favourite bible quote, Jeremiah 29:11 promises us that God has plans to give us hope and a future.   I know faith is about believing what there is no evidence for, but really, I am starting to need some evidence, I need something to start going our way to convince me that God's on our side with this, that we are not battling against the tide of devine will and that our time is going to come.  It is so hard to believe that this is going to happen for us when three years of evidence to the contrary are behind us.  If I was not successful at 28, will I be at 30, 31, 35? It is just so painful to build up hope again and again, to have it shattered, again and again.

Saturday 9 March 2013

Buying myself daffodils

So tomorrow is Mothers' day, here we are. I thought it was all going a bit too well, the meltdown came today.  It's partly hormone driven, as my body decided to mock me by choosing today to dash my hopes for another cycle, but it's mostly that I miss him, oh so much. And it hurts like hell.

Tescos today (probably not a good idea, but we were literally out of milk) and everybody is clutching flowers.  Another painful reminder that again, I won't be getting mine, becuase I don't have my son with me. I don't have my son with me and I am not pregnant either. And my head hurts, my heart hurts, my whole body hurts. My heart is broken, my ovaries are broken. My faith is cracking.

Continuing with my God on mute work, I've been talking to Him a lot this week. Asking him to align my will with His. If He doesn't want me to be a mum, please then, please alter my heart so I don't want it so much either? It hurts so much and I don't know how much more I can take.  Silence.

So many new mummies this year, so many celebrating their first mothers' day with rainbow babies, not me. A second empty, childless day for me.  I bought myself some daffodils, because I am a mummy too.  I like to think Bertie made sure I saw them, and nudged me to buy them. Maybe he thought the bright yellow would lift my spirits. But I look at them and cry.  I miss him so much.  And I wonder, will I have to buy my own daffodils forever?

Sunday 3 March 2013

A second Mothers' Day

I am so glad they were right. All the mummies on the road before me, who told me that the first year is the worst- once you are through all those milestones, the second time is not so bad. Here I am approaching my second mothers' day without my son, and it isn't nearly so bad as last year.  Of course, last year was a double whammy because it fell on the date he would have been six months old...but even if the date were the same this year I think I'd still find it far less acutely painful.

We still have a week to go, and I am not kidding myself.  I expect on the day itself there will be pain in my heart.  There will be tears, there will be an acute sense of his absence, there will definitely be avoidance of a certain social networking site....but at least I haven't had the weeks of terrible build up that I had to endure last year. At least I haven't felt afraid to walk through town, as if every shop window and every advert is there purely to remind me of what I lost. To be honest I have barely noticed it...and I very much doubt there is any less marketing, so the change must be in me.  I even bought two mothers' day cards without even thinking about it until I got home and thought..wow...I just did that!

For those advocates of "time heals"- reading this, nodding sagely and thinking "I told her so"...no, you didn't. I am not, and never will be, healed. It is not, and never will be ok that my son is not here. These milestones are, and always will be extremely hard. Time has given me experience- I've been here before, and developed a thicker skin. A baby's cry no longer tears me apart, but it does give me a little jab, adverts for flowers, and cards, and mothers' day gifts don't stomp on my heart but do make me sad....I've learned self defense against my own emotions and against the great marketing machine we live amongst.

And, even though the promise I made myself last mothers' day (that even if I wasn't holding my rainbow this year, I'd at least be pregnant) has not come to fruition...I am kinda/sorta/almost.....ok with that too.   Maybe Bertie's gift to me this year is peace.