dates...

Alice's due date was this week. 28th January.

I also miscarried a little baby at the end of January last year.

Minnie had her first day away from me at pre-school on 28th January.

This has not been an easy week.

So I cried and felt lonely and thought about all my babies that day. I drove and cried and busted a tyre on the gutter. So I sat and waited for the road side assist people and didn't cry so much. I came home and did housework like a whirlwind so I didn't have too much time to think.

Some beautiful friends sent flowers that I didn't expect. Flowers to remember Alice.

I should not be on this computer writing and reading. I should never have met you all. We should never have met each other. We should be doing very different things.

When Alice was born and died my dearest friend sent flowers and a card that said 'Sometimes life is Shit.'

She was right.

January

I knew this month would be bad. Of course is would. But once upon a time in a land far away January was going to be a wonderful month. It would have been the last few weeks of my pregnancy - I would have been big and round and hot and bothered. I would have spent a lot of time floating in the sea or the pool and sitting on the veranda in the sea breeze.

But you don't always get what you want. The Rolling Stones where right. You certainly don't.

I have a lot to write and I have nothing to write. I am not sure where I am with this. I am finding it hard to put down what I want. I am living in a parallel universe here. One blog is happy and shiny and the other blog is sad. So I think I will write here when I feel I can. I will visit you all often and email and post comments. I am not going. I need you all too much for that.

So January. I don't think it will ever be the same. My eldest daughter turned 3 on the 4th January and my other daughter, my baby, should have been born on the 28th. The month with a happy beginning and a sad end. That's how it goes. Happy and Sad.

I wonder if there will be some more happy?

back home...

We are back. I am happy that we are back here. The weather is lovely and somehow this makes me feel that this new year ahead will be a good one. A good one for all of us. With good things to look forward to and good things to celebrate. I know there will be happiness for all of us, in same way, whatever way that may be. Happiness and sadness at the same time. I guess this is how things will be for a long, long time.

Things went well. Not much talk about Alice. And sometimes I like that. I like to keep her for myself. Of course I want people to think of her and how sad her death is but sometimes I like to keep her all to myself - she is mine and sometimes I am like a spoiled child and I don't want to share her. Odd, I know. But that's how it is.

And sometimes I want to share her and sing her name from the roof tops. But that is for me to decide. I don't like being forced to talk about how I feel.

I thought about Alice as I watched Minnie play with her cousins and felt sad that Alice will never get to play with them. She wont get to play at my childhood home in the country. She won't get to sneak to the enormous gardens and pick raspberries and strawberries hot from the sun.

I am not religious or overly spiritual but you know, I think somewhere Alice will be with her new friends. Her most special friends that I can't meet, not until one day in the distant future... She will be with Ezra and Hope and Sam and George and Douglas and William and Ciaran and all the other babies that couldn't stay here.

I see their photos and hear their stories and feel their mothers pain and grief and anguish. They don't have their Mama's but I am sure they have each other.

I wish you all much love in 2009 and I am thankful that we have each other too...

away...

I am about to fly out to spend the holidays with my family. I don't want to go. I don't care about the celebration of the birth of Jesus. I don't care about it at all.

I don't want to see those people who couldn't find the balls to call me and say how shitty life has been. I don't want to sit and smile and eat and talk crap.

But I have to go. I have to go for my daughter that's here with us. I have to enjoy it for her. I have to smile and sing and pretend that its the most exciting time of the year. You see I have to do a lot of pretending these days. Of course we are sad in front of Minnie but sometimes I have to pretend that I am happy to be out of bed and happy to be at the park and happy to be hanging out with all those other mum's and babies.

I don't want to go because for the first time, I will be away from our little Alice. Away from her little box of treasures and away from her little urn. I am already anxious about it.

Fuck.

I am not in a good mood today, just in case you hadn't picked that up...

Fuck.

Guest Post: From My Three Ring Circus

From My Three Ring Circus

For Charlotte and Sophie and Alice

Spring.

A time of renewal and rememberance.

Babies who I will never know, would be friends and ponderings of how they might look, what their characters would be.

A time of blossoming.

A shedding of the bristled, thick coat of Winter,

moving onwards, into the sunshine with the flow of soft air cusping my cheeks and forcing me to cast my eyes to the blueness of the perfect sky.

The ground fresh with rain, crystaline and pure, the scent of change.

And yet…

and yet I am pulled by the rustle of feathered wings, soft and downy.

A mere whisper on the earth but for a day, a hope and a dream, a shattered promise.

Do not forget, never forget.

I do not think of him as often as I did, perhaps as often as I should.

He clings to me today in organza memories.

Floating, soft.

There is none of the jagged, raw ripping of my heart

but these little ones remind me

and I ache for him.

Sweet seedlings, caught up in the wind, scattering and sharing.

It is their way.

Their mother’s sorrow is a legacy to mine.

Do not forget, never forget.

Thank you.

I will not forget him and I will think of you too

September spirits.

This post was written by a dear friend of mine after Alice died. This dear friend knows about the pain of loosing a baby as her sweet William died only days after he was born.

3 months...

I am not really sure what to say. I am not really sure what I want to write. 3 months. Sometimes it seems like yesterday that I was in Room 5, waiting to deliver a baby that would die.

We knew that Alice would die - her problems were insurmountable. I don't believe in God or the power of prayer. There was no-one, present or not that could help our baby. The labour and delivery was fast and very painful and I don't want to remember much of it.

But what I will never forget is that beautiful face. That little top lip that I see everyday in her big sister. I catch Minnie's profile and my heart seems to pause a little when I see that lip.

I wont ever forget holding her all night, watching her taking those last tiny breaths.

In time I hope that I wont feel so lost and empty and helpless.

I have kept Alice's ashes as when I die, I want her back with me. Where she has been. And where she always will be.

there in indelible ink...

I knew what it was going to be. I saw the little card in my letter box notifying me that I had a registered item at the post office to collect. I knew what it was going to be. It was the day before my 35th birthday. I didn't want to spend my birthday at the post office collecting it. So I put the little red and white card aside and waited until yesterday to collect it.

They handed me the white envelope and I signed for it. I didn't want to take it. I wanted to mark it return to sender and tell them that they had it all wrong.

So I have them both now. One certificate is full of hope and joy and of life. If you didn't know the second part of the story you would read the birth certificate and smile - a little girl, a sister, the daughter of Rachael the designer and of Steve the engineer. Born on September 11 2008.

But I know there is a second certificate. The one that is full of sadness and loss and tears. A little girl, never married, no occupation, lived in the one place all her life, a little sister, the second daughter of Rachael and Steve. Died on September 12 2008.

There in black and white. In indelible ink.