Quiet.

I am currently having a fair amount of therapy. Some of it my Christian friends don't entirely approve of, but, I am delighted with the results of it so far. I feel better. I am finding that the inner voice that constantly tells me negative things has, well, shut up. Or rather, I am more able to shut her up more often, which is huge for me.

I should feel really crap tonight. I just found out that our last cycle of the current treatment didn't work. Again. This means having that scary op that I really don't want. This means a twelve week wait to even HAVE that really scary op I really don't want.   I should be a sobbing wreck. I should be saying it isn't fair over and over and over as two more people in my life announce easily-won pregnancies. But I'm not. I feel.....quiet. Peace. My mind is changing. The therapy is working.

I feel God is working things out for me. I can hear Him louder, clearer.  I still have a few issues with His timing, and His apparent unfairness in dishing out the miracles....but we are going to get ours, I believe it now. I realise that I didn't for a while there.  It helps enormously that we have had some really good news this week...not THE news of course, but great news all the same. News that almost makes it OK that I am still not pregnant.  And I can't help but think...maybe, just maybe we will be that couple who after months of infertility treatment, manage to get pregnant once they stop.   

Maybe.

Babies everywhere I look

I'm at work. I never usually blog from work, it isn't what I'm here to do, but right now I just need to take five. Or maybe ten.  It's peads clinic this morning, and it's a huge list. And it seems like more than half of them are babies today. Everywhere I look there's another happy parent holding their baby. It's tearing me apart.  I was doing ok, I even saw one or two of them earlier, but it's getting to me now. It's such a torment. Work, the one place I can be distracted and NOT think about what I don't have. The place I can wear the professional mask with pride and excell at what I do.  Not today. Today I'm reduced to greiving, infertile mother who is not a mother. And it hurts so bad.

I saw a quote yesterday, "Envy: Blowing out someone else's candle won't make yours shine brighter". This is true. I don't believe that is how my envy is though. I don't want to blow out anoyone's candle. I don't want them to NOT enjoy their babies, or not have them even.  But I am jealous. I just want my candle to burn too. I just want some of it to stop hurting. The Bertie pain will never go, I know that, but the pain of infertility is just an added cruelty, which can be removed from me, if only my prayers would be answered.

Doing well and coping amazingly.

I've just been through the tough month. The month that feels like life is nothing more than a series of hard dates to get through, and then one more.  I've been told a lot this month that I'm "doing well" or "coping amazingly".  My boss' favorite when I tell her that a particular something has been hard that day is to tell me "yes but Sarah, six months ago, you wouldn't have even done that". Big whoop! Aren't I doing well? Aren't I coping amazingly! Well I don't want to any more. I don't want to do well and cope amazingly. Or rather, I don't want to have to.

I want more.

There has to be more to my life than this. There has to be more to come for me, surely? Can I really be destined for a life where my biggest achievement of the week is not crying when a colleague brings in her almost one year old, reminding me of just how long this road has been for me? Reminding me of the early days of grief watching her bump grow. Can I congratulate myself on how far I have come and be satisfied with that? Of course I can't. So why do people expect me to be pleased with my "achievement" of coping? Especially, when society's definition of coping is not crying, it seems. So, what we are basically saying is, "well done you for not crying, have a coconut!"

Forgive me for not feeling like the cat who got the cream. I'd rather have won the fish.

Feels like it was yesterday

I didn't expect to blog today. I didn't expect the immense pain I feel today. Two years since we said goodbye, and it feels like it was yesterday. It's hit me incredibly hard. I've been catapulted back once more into The Pit.  I am absolutely distraught. I can barely type through gut wrenching sobs. The grief wave is back and it's a tsunami. I'm not even reliving it- not like I did last year,

I just miss him, completely, with my whole self. 

I feel how I felt then, lost, empty, alone. Despite being surrounded by so much love, I feel absolutely alone.

Time is not healing, it's getting worse.

Year two anniversaries

Here we are again, in September. It's different this year, not easier, but different. One big difference was in the number of people who remembered, and acknowledged what yesterday was, it seems people are finally realising that I WANT them to mention him! I was overwhelmed, actually, by the outpouring of love, messages, textx, and even cards and gifts that came through yesterday, before I said anything about it. They remembered. And they mentioned it. Thank you, thank you thank you to all those people, after my "obligatory sympathy" post last month, it was a very welcome surprise.

As I said though, it has not been easier. I am not sure why, but I have a few ideas. It could be because society expects it to be easier this year, it could be because I expected it to be easier this year. Of course, it isn't easier. He's still missing, he still is not in my arms where he belongs, and I've missed out on a second birthday party for him.  I think, in addition, it's the feeling of being another year away from holding Bertie, yet no closer to holding my rainbow. Time is passing, but life is not moving forwards.

I want to try and explain to you readers, how this journey feels to me.

Imagine you are walking a long journey.  You have already been walking a very long time, you are tired, physically and emotionally exhausted, because even though you have been walking for a very long time, you have no idea where the finish line is. That's tough, and tormenting, because you can't pace yourself. You don't know if around the next bend in the road you'll see the end, or if there will be another huge hill to climb.  You fear it's the latter, and the thought makes you despair, because you are so tired, you don't know how you will find the strength to make it up that next hill. You beg for it to be the end, just one more bend in the road, then no more, please.  But you know it's futile, the road is as long as it will be, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

There are people along the way, some being supportive, some pretending they can't see your struggle. Some walk and share your journey for a while, but then they reach their ending and leave you on your journey alone. Some try to advise you, they tell you to stop, relax for a while, stop walking and then you'll get to the end. Of course you won't! If you stop, you are just prolonging the journey, you have to keep ploughing on.

Now imagine you have an army training backpack on. This huge weight that you cannot shake off, that is pressing down on you, slowing your progress further. Part of you wants to just take off the backpack and leave it on the road, carry on without it, surely that would be easier? But, that backpack contains your most precious possessions, memories, love. How can you leave it behind? You just want to make it to the end of the journey, and you cry because you don't know if the end is 500 feet away, or 500 miles.

My life.

Two

Two

Ride on toys and tiny shoes
Tantrums- the "terrible twos"
Missing you, and missing out
On learning what being a parent's about
We cannot watch as you grow and play
But where you are, you're happy, I pray



For my son on his second birthday in Heaven. Happy birthday gorgeous boy, we love and miss you as much today as the day we said goodbye. xx

He never fails to suprise me

This weekend has been very happysad. My brother in law got married on Saturday, it was a beautiful day and we all had a wonderful time. It's also a day I've been dreading for some time, dreading because I knew it was going to be a very hard day of missing Bertie, like all family/celebration days are.  I spent all day imagining him with me, in his little suit, running around on the dancefloor with all the other toddlers, photos with the bride, keeping him entertained through the speeches, saying goodnight early as he has to go to bed.....none of that happened, of course, becuase he was missing.

I coped admiriably, I think.  There were hard moments. The prayer in church that they would be blessed with children, twisted the knife as I remembered the same prayer at my own wedding.
The fact that it seemed we were the only couple there our age without children, and of course, just the fact that the whole family was there, and Bertie wasn't.  I managed. The mask was superglued on, and I did enjoy myself despite the pain in my heart.

The following day, we went to visit Bertie.  This was our last chance before his birthday next week, so we wanted to decorate his forever bed for his second special day. There had been a spare buttonhole left over from the wedding, so we took that to him too. As my husband wedged it in between the carriges of his train, the tears began.  He shouldn't be leaving a buttonhole at his son's forever bed, he should be pinning it to the jacket of his first tiny suit. It was such a bittrersweet moment, so wrong.  He was included, but not included as he should have been. And that was it, the floodgates were opened, the mask was off.  All the pain, all the hurt, all the missing him of the day before escaped from my eyes in a torrent.  Maybe it's the build up to his birthday again too, all at once that's a lot to deal with. 

Then an amazing thing happened. A little robin appeared from behind Bertie's stone, and it hopped along right infront of us, as we sat there. It came so close to us, and jumped all on Bertie's flowers and stone. It stayed for ages. I felt he sent it to tell me, don't cry mum, I'm here. And that, of course, made me cry all the more.

Such a precious boy.  I love you xx