The Wall

You are walking along fine with everyone else and the sun is shining and all is going ok and then you walk SLAM into a brick wall. And it hurts – really hurts. It hurts your head and your chest where your heart is and your stomach. And it shocks you as only slamming into a brick wall can. Stops you dead in your tracks. And you stand there thinking “How did I not see that coming ? What the hell happened ? How could someone just do that to me ?” And you look around and everyone else seems to be walking round the wall. They are carrying on like nothing happened and the sun is still shining for them. They don’t even see the wall. They don’t even know its there. And you realise you didn’t know it was there until you hit it – you didn’t even know there was a brick wall you could hit – not now, not at this stage. And slowly you pull yourself together. The pain in your stomach goes away but your heart still hurts and your mind is racing with questions about this brick wall – how, what, where, why ?? Mostly why ? Why on earth would someone make you walk into this wall – why did they have to put it in front of you and no-one else ? And you can walk again now the pain in your stomach and maybe your legs has subsided. So you slowly make your way round the wall and to the other side. But it doesn’t look the same on the other side. It’s greyer and emptier. And you know you’ve left something behind – something very precious and you want it back. So you turn round and there is the brick wall behind you and it seems to hit you with the same force again when you realise you can’t go back. Its blocking your path and it will always be there. You pummel your fists on it and cry and shout at it but it’s unbreakable and absolute. It won’t let you get your precious bundle back – that has to stay on the other side and you must carry on without it. You can’t go back to the path you were on before you hit the brick wall – it’s impossible. So all you can do is go forward and walk on from it. But its hard-going and your legs don’t seem to want to walk away from it. You know when you look over your shoulder it will always be there. It may fade a bit from view but if you look closely you will always be able to see it – even in the distance. And you look around you again and see all the people who never hit the brick wall carrying on too. You tell some of them about the brick wall and they sympathise – it must have hurt they say. You are looking well despite hitting this brick wall – you have no cuts or bruises on the outside because those heal. So you must be doing ok then now they say ? But my wounds are on the inside you feel like screaming. How can you not know about this brick wall – why couldn’t you walk into it instead of me ? And then you feel bad – you know you wouldn’t really want anyone else to walk into that wall. Some people are ok – maybe they have seen the wall themselves in the past or come close to it - maybe they are really good friends and family who close their eyes and do try to imagine walking into the wall. They are the ones who help you keep walking away from it. People tell you that you’ll never hit this brick wall again – it only appears once in your life. And you want to believe them even though you can’t be sure. Up ahead it looks like maybe your path does cross back into the sunshine again – the same sunshine that everyone else is basking in. And you can just maybe make out another bundle waiting for you to pick up and carry with you for the rest of your life. And maybe if you are strong and keep moving forward then you’ll reach it one day. But it’s not the same bundle as before – it can’t be. That one is behind the wall. The wall that’s always there if you look over your shoulder. And written on it in forever more is the message in letters a mile high, that only you can see – My darling baby. RIP

Absent Friends

....I guess that is what my husband and I now are...or are our friends the Absent Friends? Friends that once filled every day of our lives and now they are gone.  It's not through their choice, it's all our doing...well my doing if I am perfectly honest. You see, there are just some friends I can't see. Not won't. Can't. It's too hard. Too painful. I'm finding it hard enough to stay standing as it is, to withstand the storm of grief which still whirls around me. If I add anything else to the mix I'll topple over. I'm not strong enough to stay upright. I haven't been able to ground feet back into the earth just yet.

It's not an easy situation. I have seen some friends and I usually have a lovely time when I do. But the friends I have seen are the ones without babies, or ones that have older babies. I can cope with that. It's the other friends that are the problem. The ones with the new babies or the ones who are pregnant. They don't symbolise friendship anymore, to me they are just a giant flashing beacon of everything we had and have lost.

I honestly don't know what to do about it. This can't go on indefinitely or we'll lose them from our lives forever.  Out of everyone I am most worried about our best friends (if they would even call us that now). I've written about them before in previous posts - they had a baby boy five weeks after we lost William. It's not their fault. They've done nothing wrong. But their little boy and their family life is what we'd dreamed of, hoped and prayed for, and it's what was taken away from us.

I've tried to keep in touch with the wife over email, to share what has been going on in my life and ask after hers, but it has been hard. I feel I have to ask after her little boy but in reality I don't want to hear anything about him. I know he will be utterly gorgeous but to hear any real details about him would be like sticking a knife in my heart. I think my friend senses that and so she hardly ever mentions him, even when I ask, but it must be hard - after all, he is the most important person in her life now and she can't share that with me anymore.

In recent weeks the emails have subsided. She suggested meeting, without the baby, but I was just not ready. I said I wasn't sure and that I needed to build up to it and she suggested that sometimes things are worse in our minds than they turn out to be in reality. She asked how it has been when I've seen other friends. I didn't know what to say and I felt like she was pushing me. I couldn't be honest, couldn't say that it has been ok seeing some other friends....ok because they don't have a baby boy who is five weeks younger than mine should be. So instead  I just turned and legged it in the other way.  I haven't emailed her since.

I feel like I am losing her and it makes me very sad. She is such a lovely person and I know her little boy will be wonderful. But it's hard. Things have changed. I have changed. It will never be the same again. She has what I have lost and I don't know if I can spend my life watching her little boy grow up when I had to leave mine in the hospital.  I wonder if she thinks I have had long enough - it's been 7 months - does she think I should be over this by now? Does she think I should be capable of seeing her or her little boy by now? Does she think I have had enough time to grieve? 

I don't know the answer. All I know is I haven't had long enough. I am not ready. It is too painful. And whilst I hope I will get there one day, my biggest fear is that she might not wait for me and I will have lost her forever.

Just a quick note about....Jeans

I didn't put on that much weight whilst pregnant but after having William I was a long way off being able to get back into my normal clothes. I definitely didn't want to wear maternity clothes anymore.  The idea of wearing clothes meant for a mother-to-be when my baby had just died made me feel sick.  Unfortunately I didn't fit into anything else and so this made my sorry situation seem all the more depressing.

I didn't want to go shopping. I didn't want to go out in public. I couldn't be bothered to try on clothes. But, I had nothing to wear so I didn't have much choice. So off my husband and I trotted to a department store to try and find me some jeans. I had to try on about 15 pairs but I did manage to find a pair that fitted me and for the first time in quite some time I actually felt pretty good.

I was in a normal pair of jeans and, most importantly, NOT maternity jeans. They fitted. They actually looked nice. And I felt like me. Not entirely the old me. But a little bit more like me.

So, to anyone who has gone through this, I would tell you to go buy yourself some really great jeans. I know it may seem stupid, I know you don't feel like it, but as silly as it sounds, when you find a pair that fits, it will make you feel a little bit better. And at times like these, we have to try and find those little moments every chance we can get.

Keeping My Game Face On

....is so exhausting.  At the shops, on the tube, at work, in the doctors, walking down the street. To anyone else looking at me I look normal. They would never guess that I have lost a baby. At first glance they wouldn't see just how devastated I am inside.

I guess I could walk around with tears running down my face, bearing my soul to all but they would probably think I was a nuts and I am sure it would make everyone else feel more than a little uncomfortable. So, the Game Face is required. The one that smiles at the man in Starbucks when he's taking your order, the one that doesn't flinch when stood next to a mother with a pram in the queue, the one that makes the world think "She's ok".

I'm now back at work 3.5 days a week and so the Game Face is required more so than ever.  I cannot cry in front of people in my office. It's a law firm. A big corporate, male dominated law firm. Crying would be seen as weakness. Not that I really care if they think I am weak, but if I want to keep my job and my clients and for people to believe I am still capable of doing this job, then the Game Face has to stay on.

It is so draining and when I first started back at work, I would walk in through my door at the end of the day and burst into tears. It was like a massive emotional release of all of the emotions I have had to keep in check throughout the day. Emotions that build and build and build and build until I am safely in the comfort of my own home...and then they all come rushing out.

Problem is that sometimes you just can't keep that Game Face on. It can slip. It does slip. It's happened to me twice this week at work. First, I saw on facebook that another friend had had her baby, then today a colleague called me to tell me his wife is expecting. On both occasions it was just too much and I couldn't control the tears.  Thankfully, on both occasions I made it to the staff toilet and managed to cry my eyes out silently, in the privacy of my own cubicle.  I don't know if anyone realised but my blood shot eyes were a pretty good giveaway to those who saw me on the way back to my desk.

This Game Face thing is just one big act and it is so tiring. I wonder if it will always be this way. Is my life destined to be just one massive play with me as the central character, acting out a "normal' person's life? Will one day I really feel happy again, not always on the brink of tears, not carrying around this heavy weight of grief? I really and truly hope that one day I will feel happy again and my Game Face will not longer be required.... because I am not sure I can keep this act up forever.

Sometimes.....

I feel like I will never feel happy again.

I look at the photos of me in frames around our house and think that that girl is gone forever.

It seems like everyone else has their babies but me.

I find it hard to believe that I will ever have my own take home baby.

I worry what would happen if it happened again. Whether I would survive, could survive.

I think it might be better if I didn't, because then I would be with William again.

I think I am being punished.

I wonder if there really is a God.

I have to believe there is a God - that William is with him and that I will see him again.

I worry whether William will remember me.

I wish this had never happened.

I am glad that it has, because if it hadn't, I would never have known the joy of carrying William, seen how beautiful he was when I held him, and he wouldn't be waiting for me in Heaven.

I feel like running away, far away to somewhere like South America. Starting again and pretending this isn't me. That I'm happy and carefree. A girl whose heart hasn't been broken.

I have so much resentment and hatred inside I feel like it could consume me.

My heart actually aches for William. I can feel the physical pain inside my chest.

The grief overwhelms me and I cry just as hard as I did the day we lost him.

I wonder what this has done to my relationship with my husband. Are we closer for having gone through this together or has it tainted our marriage with a sadness that can never be overcome?

I feel betrayed by old friends who I thought would be there for me but who abandoned me when I was most in my time of need.

I am surprised by how wonderful some friends can be.

I find it hard to believe I am a Mum.

My heart fills with warmth when I tell myself I am William's Mum.

I find it hard to believe that I will learn to live with this pain and have any kind of 'real' life again.

I have to believe there is a happy ending for us, that my husband and I will have a take home baby. That we will be a proper family here on earth, not just in Heaven.

Will I ever get that happy ending?

After everything that has happened, I find it very hard to be positive. Now we've started trying for another baby, I am more aware of this than ever. Every month I tell myself it isn't going to work.  That I won't be pregnant (so far I've been right!). When we first lost William I would tell my counsellor that one way or another I would have another baby - even if the tests showed we couldn't have one of our own or had to use egg or sperm donors...I would even adopt. Whatever it took, I said we would have a family one day. Since we've started trying again I find that very hard to believe. In fact, I seem to have done a complete u-turn and now I don't feel like we will ever have a baby.

If I let myself believe for a second that we will, then I find it hard to believe that the baby will be ok. I keep thinking the next baby will have the same condition as William or something else wrong with it. All sorts of scenarios run through my head and every one of them ends badly.

I never let myself imagine the happy ending..my husband and I and a healthy baby in my arms.

To Pee Or Not To Pee

We've decided we're ready to try again for another baby. We have wanted to since we lost William but we had to wait for all of the genetic test results. I also had to get over the operation on my neck and feel physically capable of trying again.  More than that, we needed to feel ready emotionally. I had read that doctors don't recommend you try again until you are strong enough to cope with the possibility that something could potentially go wrong again this time around. I'm not sure I will ever be ready to face what we have been through a second time, but I at least feel like I can cope with all of the anxiety and worries that will come with being pregnant again.

We were very lucky that I got pregnant on the first tries the last two times (1 x MC 1 x William) and I have no doubt that we won't be as lucky this time.  I've partly convinced myself that I won't even be able to get pregnant again. Part this is a defence mechanism I suppose, to try and protect myself from the disappointment I will feel each month when my period arrives, but from a medical point of view, I also reckon my chances will be lower this time around. When I grew William my body also decided to grow a fibroid at the same time. Apparently this is quite common and it is the pregnancy hormones in your body which cause the fibroid to grow. They usually shrink after you have given birth and the hormone is no longer being emitted. I had a scan 8 weeks after having William and it showed that my fibroid had shrunk but it was not gone entirely.  Fibroids can cause problems when you are trying to get pregnant and so I have this fear that it's not going to let any embryo implant as it wants my uterus all to itself.

When I got pregnant last time I pretty much knew my cycle inside out.  For the first pregnancy which ended in an early miscarriage, I didn't pee on sticks, track my temperature, use an online calculator - nothing. I could just tell when it was the right time and we did it and I fell pregnant.  The second time was pretty much the same although I did pee on an ovulation stick for two days in a row just to check I still knew my cycle.

Since having William, I know my cycle is slightly different - the length of it is still the same but from the middle of my cycle until I get my period, I now get period pain type cramps every day and there is a lot of *ehem* CM (so sorry for the TMI!) which I didn't have before.  So, now I am trying to decide how far I want to take things in terms of tracking when I am going to ovulate to make sure we do it on the right days (yeah yeah I know we could just do it every other day for the whole month but my husband is a lawyer and I'm afraid that means a lot of late nights when he comes home totally exhausted so its not really feasible and will only add to his stress).

I know neither my husband or I are as relaxed as we were last time around and so I am concerned that peeing on sticks or taking my temperature will not only become a bit obsessive, but its also going to add a huge amount of pressure. We are both so desperate for me to get pregnant quickly that I think our lives could quite easily end up revolving around those few days each month when there might be a chance.  Everyone is always saying how you need to be relaxed to fall pregnant but I worry that doing all of these things to check we're at it at the right days will only stress us out.

On the flip side, I watched my best friend try for a baby for many months (most likely on the wrong days) and watched how disappointed she was each time her period came. Surely the disappointment each month upped the stress factors when they came to try the next time? It was only when she invested in an ovulation monitor and worked out when she was ovulating that she got knocked up almost straight away.

So, in summary, I guess its stressful trying to get pregnant, its stressful when you don't get pregnant, its stressful becoming obsessed with getting pregnant BUT you do actually need to be doing it on the right days if you are even going to be in with a shot. So I think this month I shall pee on a stick around about the time when I think I might be ovulating just to check (because come on - they are SO expensive - I'm just not doing it every day - its like peeing on £30 by the end of the month!) but that's it. No temperature tracking, no online charting, no CM checking, just the peeing. That is unless I am too stressed to even be able to go......

The Unanswerable Question

Why?

I used to ask this a lot in the early days - when we first found out there was something wrong with William. Why him? Why did it have to happen to us?

I couldn't understand it.  I still can't understand it. We so desperately wanted this baby.  There are hundreds of people who get pregnant when they don't want to, who drink, take drugs, smoke....not caring about the welfare of the little human being growing inside them. They do all of this and their babies turn out just fine. What did I do wrong? I avoided coffee and tea, didn't touch a drop of alcohol, I avoided pate, soft cheese, shellfish. I followed the advice to the letter. So why did something go wrong with our little boy?

I also seem to be SURROUNDED by friends who have had healthy babies. Not that I would wish this on anyone but none of them have had any problems at all. I mean literally nothing. They all got pregnant, they all sailed through their pregnancies, they all had their perfect babies. Why did they get to have their babies? Why did we have to lose ours?

I also stupidly thought my husband was untouchable. I know that sounds silly so let me explain. My husband has a brother who is disabled (his condition is completely unrelated to William). He also used to have a sister. That's right - used to - his sister was knocked over and killed by two motorbikes when she was just 21.  I would look at my husband and think - he's been through enough. He has had more than his fair his share of misery and heart ache. I used to think that when I was with him I was safe - that because of him we were invincible. Nothing bad would touch him now.... hadn't he already suffered enough? Apparently not.

My husband blames himself - he says after his brother, sister and now his son - he is the connection. He thinks that everything he touches turns bad. It breaks my heart to hear him say that. He is a wonderful person. He has a truly beautiful pure soul. He couldn't be the source of anything bad.

I think its me. The miscarriage, William, the tumour, my Dad's heart attack. I must have done something terrible to deserve all that. I must be a horrible person. This is my punishment.

It will be 6 months on the 20 April and yet last night I broke down in tears and asked my husband again...why did it have to happen to us? Why?

There are no answers.

Mummy's Day

It was Mother's Day yesterday here in the UK and to say I was dreading it was an understatement.  At one time I had been so excited about this day - after all, this year was supposed to be the year I would be receiving my own Mother's Day card and not just giving one.

After losing William, the day can now only serve as a reminder of what I have lost.  In the weeks preceding, everywhere I turned were references to Mother's Day - signs out side card shops, bouquets filling the entrance to the supermarket, hell, even the M&S advert was promoting a £15 Mother's Day meal you can buy and cook your Mum.  It feels as though the the entire country got together and took it upon themselves to have a special day to remind me (as if I could possibly have forgotten)

YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR BABY.

YOU WON'T BE GETTING A CARD. 

YOU AREN'T A MUM.

And perhaps its not just the entire country who is saying that to me. Perhaps, if I'm honest, it's the way I really feel about myself.  It's definitely the way I think my friends, even my very close ones, feel about me. If they were asked which of their friends were mothers, I don't think I would be included in the list.

My counsellor is always saying  "You ARE a Mum" to me. On the one hand I love hearing that but on the other I find it very hard.  It brings tears to my eyes every time.  You see, I don't really feel like a Mummy.  Deep down I know I am William's Mummy but I never had a chance to mother him. So now I have this title of "Mummy" but its a role I can't fulfil as William isn't here. It leaves me feeling stranded. I have all of this motherly love to give and no one to give it to.  It is a difficult position to be in and one which I don't think will ever change until we are lucky enough to have another child.

I am incredibly lucky to have an amazing husband who completely understands how I feel about being/not being a Mummy (I guess because he feels the same way about being a Daddy too). He knew I was dreading yesterday and he was very aware that the day was certainly not going to be anything like I'd imagined when I found out I was pregnant just under a year ago.

He knew I didn't feel like I deserved a card but he gave me one anyway and inside he told me that I was the best Mummy in the world for protecting William and going through all of this pain so that he didn't have to. He also gave me this beautiful Sweet William candle which we lit last night before bed and thought about our little boy.

As you can imagine, it made me cry, but as I was reading the words he had written in the card, I felt, for  perhaps the first time since I had held William in the hospital, that I was a Mummy. My husband was right.  Isn't the role of a parent to love and protect their child? To do what's best for them? To put the child's needs before their own? Isn't that what we had done for William when we sent him to Baby Heaven? We loved him. We wanted to protect him. We wanted what was best for him. And, even though its broken our hearts we chose to take that pain than for him to suffer for even a second. We made that decision as his parents. We made that decision as his Mummy and Daddy.  Nothing can ever change that.

Aversion Therapy

As you may have already read, I tend to try and avoid all pregnant people and/or babies as they are painful reminders of what we have lost. I don't see any pregnant friends or any friends who have young babies. If I get on the tube and there is a baby I get off and go and sit in another carriage. If I'm queuing to pay for something in a store and there is a pregnant person in the line, I go to another checkout.

Realistically, I'm not going to be able to do this forever. There are going to be times where I get on the tube or I'm in a restaurant and someone walks in who is pregnant or has baby.  What am I going to do? Stand up in the middle of my meal and just walk out? I am going to have to get used to be around bumps and babies or its going to get out of control. Plus, I don't want to cut those friends and family who have babies out of my life forever. I've already lost enough. I don't want to lose them all too.

So, I've enrolled myself in an Aversion Therapy course. I am the tutor and there are no other students (not surprising given I made the course up myself in the privacy of my own living room!) so I can pretty much dictate the rules and what the course involves.

There are five stages to my made up course which are as follows:

Stage 1: Learning to tolerate pregnant strangers.

Objective - student must be able to be in the presence of pregnant strangers without welling up in tears and staring at their baby bump. In order to pass stage 1, student must be able to sit or stand next to a pregnant stranger.

Stage 2: Learning to tolerate stranger babies

Objective - student must be able to be in the presence of stranger babies of all ages (including newborn). In order to pass stage 2, student must be able to tolerate hearing the baby cry and seeing the mother feed baby.


Stage 3: Hanging out with friend's babies who were born pre-William

Objective - student must be able to spend time with and play with the baby.  Student must be able to tolerate hearing the baby cry and be able to watch the mother interact with or comfort the baby. In order to pass stage 3, student must be able to hold baby...and then be able to give it back to the mother.

Stage 4: Hanging out with pregnant friends


Objective - student must be able to spend time with friends who are pregnant and have announced their pregnancy since William was born. Initially, the student will be expected to do nothing more than spend time with the friend and look at her from the neck up only.  Over time, student should endeavour to make general enquiries about the pregnancy (an example might be to ask the mother when she is due). In order to pass stage 4, student must be able to look at the friend as a pregnant person - i.e. someone who actually has a bump body below her neck.

Stage 5: Hanging out with friend's babies born post-William

Objective - student must be able to spend time with babies who are born after William was born. Student must be able to tolerate hearing the baby cry and be able to watch the mother interact with or comfort the baby. In order to pass stage 5, student must be able to hold baby...and then be able to give it back to the mother.

So far, I think I'm hovering around stages 2 and 3. I stood behind a pregnant person in the queue in Starbucks today and didn't freak out. That being said, I am not sure I could stand to sit next to a pregnant stranger on the tube. I can also walk past mothers with prams and have been in a cafe at the same time as a baby (although I did end up bursting into tears but that was because the baby was sat in the same pram we'd bought for William) but I can't stand hearing them cry. I've also spent time with and held two babies who was born before William came along.  Both of them were girls and about nine months old. As a result, they looked nothing like William and were able to interact with me as they were no longer little newborns. I didn't find it easy to be around them and when I left I noticed I had a nervous heat rash all over my chest so it obviously really affected me.  As a result, I think I need to work on this module and I'm not ready to graduate to stage 4 just yet.

I have had the odd mental moment where I have thought about taking this aversion therapy to the extreme and skipping to stage five which involves me going to John Lewis and just standing in the baby section watching all of the pregnant families around me. In reality, I suspect this is not sensible and it will only end in one of two ways:

(a) Claire breaks down in hysterical tears and has to be taken to the Manager's office so that they can call her husband to come and collect her;

(b) Claire is taken to the Manager's office by Security so that they can call the police as they suspect her of being a baby snatcher given she has spent the last hour not buying anything and staring at other people's babies.

So for now, I'm sticking to the therapy plan above. It will be interesting to see what happens when I go back to work next week. I know one of the secretaries at work is pregnant and I have a sneaky suspicion one of my friends at work is pregnant (although she hasn't told me yet).  Ordinarily I would avoid her but as she works in my office its going to be pretty much impossible so I might be moving on to stage 4 sooner than I think.

Baby Loss Buddies

This whole baby loss experience (for want of a better word) can be pretty isolating. Sometimes I feel like I want to cut myself off from the rest of the world and hide in my house with the curtains drawn. In reality, and especially if I do want to start trying to get my life back, I appreciate that that is not practical.  I do need to have some interaction with the outside world.

My husband and I are really lucky. We have some great friends who have been hugely supportive throughout this whole ordeal and offer to meet up with us whenever we want - we only have to ask. Here's the problem....they all (and I mean ALL) have babies or are pregnant. Some of them even have more than one baby. One of them has two...and she's now pregnant with twins (now that's just plain greedy in my view).

I find it too painful to be around babies or pregnant people at the moment - I'm already in enough pain without actively seeking out more by surrounding myself with reminders of what we have lost. So, I pretty much don't have anyone to hang out with in the outside world.

I mentioned this to my counsellor and she said "you need to get some new friends". I laughed and thought she was joking. I mean,  I'm 31...where the hell am I going to go and pick up some new friends?  Everyone already has their friends by the time they hit 30. I can't exactly walk into a bar and go and sit at a table with a bunch of random strangers and ask them to play with me...did she not see Bree try and fail at that in Desperate Housewives last week?

Turns out she wasn't joking and she wasn't proposing I pick up some new mates in a bar. She wanted me to get a new, very special kind of friend - the Baby Loss Buddy.  A Baby Loss Buddy is someone who (as the name suggests) has also lost a baby and so has been through the same experience as you. They are in the unique position of being able to understand exactly how you feel - without you even saying it - as they have been there themselves. With them you can say anything. There is no filter on the conversation as they will not judge you. They understand. Completely understand.

This sounded like a great idea but the only problem was, where do you find yourself one of these Baby Loss Buddies? My counsellor suggested getting in touch with a help group like ARC or SANDS and asking if they could put me in touch with someone.  As it happened, I am already a member of the ARC online support forum and someone on there had asked if anyone in London fancied meeting up for coffee. So, I tentatively replied.

Last weekend four of us met up for brunch. I was incredibly nervous when I walked into the cafe. Since hiding away at home for the past five months I've lost a lot of confidence and so meeting old friends, let alone new ones, seemed really daunting. I was also a slightly worried that we might all be a bit depressed and that hanging out together might bum us out even more.

I needn't have worried. All three of the girls were so nice and within a few minutes we were all chatting away like old friends. So many of the things they said resonated with me and it was a relief just to know that how I feel is normal. That they feel that way too.  It's too early to tell yet whether we are the types of people who would be friends were it not for the fact that we have all lost babies but for now, just having that in common is enough for each of us.

And when I walked out of the cafe it felt like a little bit of the weight had been lifted. I actually felt happier and definitely not so alone.  Losing William has been the worst thing I have ever been through and it is very hard to see any positives that could come out of this. But, perhaps I will now make a couple of special friends as a result and that would be nice.  I really hope that is the same for William too. Maybe the babies of my Baby Loss Buddies will make friends with William and he will have some mates to hang out with in Baby Heaven. That would be really cool.

Riding the Wave of Grief

For a while now I have been thinking of this whole grieving process as a bit like trying to surf (not that I can surf but I've watched Keanu in Point Break).  I feel like I am trying to ride a wave. There are really big ups and downs but I keep trying to stay up on the board and on my feet.

Every so often a really big wave comes along and knocks me off the board and into the sea. I swallow a shit load of sea water and find myself gasping for air, coughing and spluttering. I have to muster up enough energy to drag myself back up onto the board like a drowned rat and try and catch the next wave.

Until recently, I'd always imagined myself trying to scramble back up onto my feet and up on the board as soon as I've been knocked off.   However, this week I met a new Baby Loss Buddy and after explaining my surfing analogy to her she said that sometimes she feels the need to paddle for a a bit before climbing back up on the board.

For some reason paddling had never occurred to me before but thinking about it now, it seems like a good idea. When I'm knocked off the board I am so worried I'm not going to be able to get back up again that I try to get back up there as quickly as I can and it can be pretty exhausting. Maybe I should be paddling.....a little break might give me some time to think about my surfing stance and why I wiped out...as my Baby Loss Buddy, said we can just enjoy the scenery for a bit and miss a couple of waves until we feel strong enough to catch the next one. 

Baby Mourning Leave

I haven't been back to work since the day we found out there were tumours in William's heart. It has almost been five months but to me, it feels like no time at all.  Work have been great about letting me have as much time off as I need...although they didn't really have much choice. As William was over 24 weeks when he was born, I automatically qualified for Maternity Leave....or Baby Mourning Leave as I like to call it.  On top of that, I also qualified for sick leave as I have been physically unfit to work following the operation on my neck.

I am now starting to feel a bit better physically - I am in a lot less pain with my shoulder and am off all of the painkillers and I am a bit stronger emotionally and so in recent weeks I have been thinking about whether I should head back to work. I want to try and get my life back and I know I am going to have to go back to work to try and do that.

To test the waters I have been into the office a couple of times for an hour or so. I've been in to meet HR and also been back to see my team and my bosses. I was incredibly nervous and I found the whole trip into work to be very draining but it was not as bad as I'd feared.

The worst part is that people don't know how to treat you or what to say to you. The most common reaction seems to be to look at me as though they are a rabbit trapped in headlights. They ask how you are and make polite conversation but they don't want to hear an honest answer - you can almost see the look of fear in their eyes as you start to speak- will I mention the baby I've lost? will I tell them how I really feel when they ask? Of course not. You know they don't want to hear that! They tell you "you look really well" and you laugh....after all...appearances can be deceptive and if they could have a look at you on the inside, you know they wouldn't say the same!

Hopefully, this reaction will only be short lived and once I go back to work, people will stop looking at me like I am about to shoot them and will start treating me more normally. I suspect it will take a few weeks but I hope that longer I am there the easier it will be. I'm also sure that part of it lies with me and how I think people perceive me - I have this ridiculous idea that if I walk into the work canteen, everyone will fall silent and turn to look at me and the only sound I will hear is a fork falling to the floor. In reality, this is unlikely to happen but I still know I won't be walking into the work canteen anytime soon.

So I guess the biggest questions now is whether I am ready to go back to work. The honest answer is I don't know. How can you ever know if you are ready in this situation?  At some point, you just have to take the plunge, go for it and hope you are.

To Truly Understand These Shoes You Must Walk In Them

So I know most people have their own views on the whole pro-choice/pro-life debate and there will be some people who will simply not understand our decision to send William to Baby Heaven - even with all of his medical problems.  For a fleeting moment, the views of others was something which caused me concern - what would our friends think? Would they judge me? Would we lose friends over this?


Ultimately, as William's parents, we had to do what we thought was best for him and it didn't matter what anyone else thought. My husband would constantly remind me - "they may think they know what they would do in this situation but until they are stood there in that hospital room, talking about their own baby, they will never really know".


We have been really "lucky" in that we have received nothing but support from our friends and family and if any of them do disagree with our decision, they have certainly never let it be know.  However, it is something I do still think about from time to time most recently when I read another girl's blog entry about her own experience of losing a baby.


The girl in question lived in Ireland, and like William, her baby had had severe genetic problems and she had decided that she could no longer continue with the pregnancy.  As she lived in Ireland, she had been forced to fly to the UK for the procedure. This, in itself, I found very sad - the ordeal she was faced with was already traumatic enough and it seems unnecessarily cruel to force her to leave her friends, family and support system behind her and fly elsewhere for the medical treatment she needed. This aside, how she was treated upon her return to Ireland astounded me.


Like may women who have been through the deeply traumatic experience of losing a baby, she sought counselling to help her try and come to terms with what had happened. Thankfully, this was offered to her in her home town in Ireland. However, instead of the counselling sessions helping her through her grief, they proved to be extremely upsetting.  The sessions themselves were fine but each time the girl in question walked to or from the building where the sessions were held, she was met with a barrage of abuse from protesters outside.  On one occasion they cornered her and wouldn't let her walk to her car and continued to shout at her even as she broke down in tears.


Each person is entitled to their views and as I said at the outset, I am sure there are people within my own circle who disagree with the decision we made for William.  I am certainly not saying that the path we chose is always the right one, but it was the right one for our little boy.    What I do disagree with, however, are those who openly judge other parents for the decision they have made and berate them for it, especially when they themselves have never been faced with having to make such a decision.


I have not encountered one set of parents who were "happy" to have been given the option to bring the pregnancy to an end for medical reasons.  Whilst they may be thankful that they had the option to prevent their child from a lifetime of suffering the decision has ultimately been heart braking.  My little boy was very much wanted...more than that...he was desperately wanted by me and my husband. We loved him terribly and choosing to let him go has broken our hearts. We will never ever be the same again and we will never ever get over the pain of losing him. 


I am sure this is exactly how the girl in Ireland feels.  She is heartbroken. She loved her baby. She wanted her baby. She did what she thought was best for her baby.  The decision she made was one based on pure, unselfish love for her unborn child and it was heart braking   I am sure it takes ever ounce of strength she has just to get up in the morning, let alone to drive her car to the counselling offices and walk across the car park into the building whilst the protesters hurl abuse at her.  I wonder...would their reaction be the same if they had been faced with making this decision about their own child? I suspect not. 


Until you've walked in my shoes, don't judge me.

I wear a pair of shoes

They are ugly shoes

Uncomfortable shoes

I hate my shoes

Each day I wear them and each day I wish I had another pair.

Some days my shoes hurt so bad that I do not think I can take another step

Yet, I continue to wear them

I get funny looks wearing these shoes

They are looks of sympathy.

I can tell in others eyes that they are glad they are my shoes and not theirs

They never talk about my shoes

To learn how awful my shoes are might make them uncomfortable.

To truly understand these shoes you must walk in them.

But, once you put them on, you can never take them off.

I now realize I am not the only one who wears these shoes.

There are many pairs in this world.

Some women are like me and ache daily as they try and walk in them.

Some have learned how to walk in them so they don’t hurt quite as much.

Some have worn the shoes so long that days will go by before they think about how much they hurt

No woman deserves to wear these shoes

They have made me who I am.

I will forever walk in the shoes of a woman who has lost a child.

Catastrophising

As you'll already know if you've been reading from the beginning, my Dad had chest pains when he was at the hospital with me when I was having William. The same thing happened again when he was at the hospital when I had my tumour removed. After various tests, the doctors confirmed he had had a heart attack.

He had to go into the hospital for an angiogram to determine whether there were any blockages in his heart and to see if they could be treated with stents or a heart bypass.  Two blockages were found, one being over 90%.  Thankfully they could be treated with stents.

To say I took this news about my Dad badly would be an understatement. In the weeks leading up to his procedure I manage to convince myself that he was going to die.  I felt hugely responsible and that the stress I had put him under whilst I was in hospital having William and also during my neck surgery has caused the heart attack.  I also knew I would not survive if I lost someone else. I couldn't live without my Dad.

I would burst into tears at the mention of his name and began a countdown to his surgery....

"One week left with my Dad"

"Six days left with my Dad"

"Five days left with my Dad"

and so on.


This continued to the moment he was wheeled into surgery and as I looked at him on the trolley I thought "That is the last time I will see my Dad alive".

I spoke to my counsellor about this and rather than thinking I had completely lost the plot, she said these morbid fears were actually quite normal when you have recently gone through a traumatic experience. She called it "catastrophising" and gave me a little sheet which explained that we:

"Overestimate the danger we are in and underestimate our ability to deal with the situation. This is usually orientated towards the future in which the person is at liberty to populate it with terrifying scenarios"

Apparently, I had lost the ability to think rationally about the likely outcome of my Dad's surgery and instead was imagining the worst possible scenario which could happen. For me, having already lost William, it was the prospect that the Grim Reaper was also hankering after my Dad.

I'm not sure this explanation particularly helped me much because, as I said, when he was wheeled into surgery I was still utterly convinced that I would never see him alive again, but I felt slightly less nuts knowing that this was in fact a documented condition.

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Finding Your Happy Place

Sometimes, when I lay in bed at night, I can't sleep. It's not for want of trying but I just can't get my brain to turn off. It feels like its whirring and a million bad thoughts keep rushing through my mind....the scan appointment where we were told there were tumours in William's heart, the moment the needle was injected into my stomach, the physical pain I felt. Along side all of these thoughts are the endless questions which I keep going over....did he feel any pain? did we do the right thing? would it have been better to have him here, even with all of his medical problems than feel the pain I feel now at his loss?

In the weeks after William was born, I spent many a night lying awake in bed until 4 or 5am with all of these thoughts and the only way I would get to sleep would be to go downstairs and watch tv until I fell asleep on the sofa through exhaustion.

In the past, my pre-William days, if I couldnt' sleep I would think of my Happy Place and it would relax my mind and enable me to drift off. My Happy Place would either be the day of our wedding - in particular the moment I walked through the doors of the church on the arm of my Dad and saw my husband-to-be waiting at the end of the aisle for the first time or it would be us on the beach at Mnemba, the island we went to for our honeymoon.

Since losing William, I haven't been able to think of or access these Happy Places in the same way. I don't know why but part of me thinks it is because those memories relate to the old me. The me before all this. Before my heart was broken. I'l never be that same me again and so somehow I can't connect in the same way with that girl on her wedding day, or the girl on the beach. She is gone.

So, I needed a new Happy Place. One that related to the new me and which related to a new happy memory in the post-William days.  Those of you who have been through this will appreciate that in the immediate days and months after you lose your longed for baby, the happy days are few and far between. For me, it took leaving the country and getting away from my real life for me to be able to be able to find a new Happy Place.

A few months after we lost William and just before my tumour surgery my husband and I flew to Las Vegas. We felt like we needed a break and wanted to go somewhere which was as far away from our real life as possible.  I'd been to Vegas twice before and although I have no idea about gambling, I love the place. It reminds me of a grown up Disneyland for adults. It's somewhere where, no matter what is going on in your real life, you can't help but feel a little happy.

On our first night in Vegas we headed down to the Bellagio to watch the fountains outside the hotel....you know the ones...in the Ocean's Eleven movie.  Every time I go to Vegas I become obsessed with these fountains. They are just so beautiful to watch and can't help but make you feel happy and uplifted.

There are about 24 different pieces of music they play at different times of day and on the evening we first watched them, the song of choice was Time To Say Goodbye.

As we watched the fountains, tears streamed down my face as I thought about how poignant it was that this should be the piece of music they should play.  It also felt so right to be watching something so beautiful as I thought about saying goodbye to my beautiful son.  I felt sad to know that this really was goodbye, but at the same time, I felt happy - like my heart had swollen and was filled with pure love for my little boy.  It was in this moment that I found my new Happy Place.

When I think back to it now it only reminds me of how beautiful William was and how much I love him. It's not a sad memory, but a happy one and it makes me feel like he is settled and at rest. So now, when I can't sleep I picture these fountains in my mind and it relaxes my mind. All of the awful thoughts which once engulfed my mind when I thought about losing William are now overshadowed by this special memory of me saying goodbye to him as I watched something so beautiful.

And so what is the point of this post? Well if you have trouble sleeping like me or have moments where awful thoughts fill your mind and you can't think straight, then I would urge you to try and find your Happy Place.  It may take you a while to figure out what it is, you may even need to leave the country to find it, but rest assured you will.

Open Letter To Family, Friends And Kate Middleton

Dear Family, Friends and Kate,

I would be extremely grateful if you could all avoid getting pregnant before I do. I appreciate most of you are either already pregnant or have just had a baby and so this request is a little late in coming, but for those of you who have not, it would be really nice if you could just do me this one favour.

As much as I have enjoyed hearing your happy announcements of pregnancies or baby births, I'm really not sure how many more I can take. I'd really like to be next one making an announcement and so I need your help. If you don't have a baby, please don't try for one yet. And if you already have a baby, please don't try for a second. You already have one and I don't have any, well except William, but as you know he's living it up in Baby Heaven.  It's not fair for you to have two Take Home Babies when I don't even have one. Don't be greedy.

I appreciate this is a completely selfish request but after all that has happened in the past year and especially the past four months I think I am entitled to be a teensy bit selfish. I promise I won't ask anything else of you other than this. Just please don't get pregnant. That's all I'm asking. Not forever, but just until I have another baby in my tummy.

You see, I'm next. I have to be next....

And I should be next - not because I deserve to be but because all of you are either pregnant or have had babies already anyway. There aren't many of you left now who could beat me to it.  But in case there are any of you who have slipped through the cracks and haven't got yourselves knocked up before me. Then please don't.

Thank you so much in advance for your kind cooperation.

Much love,

Claire x

What's In A Name?

The other day I was browsing the website Not On The High Street and I saw one of those framed photos of a name and its meaning. It was for the name William. When we were choosing potential baby names we didn't really pay much attention to their meaning and so until now, I hadn't known that the name William means valiant protector.

I thought this was rather apt for our little boy.  After all, if it had not been for William, I would never have known about the tumour growing in my neck. And if it had not been for William, my Dad might never have had a minor heart attack and then found out about the serious blockages in his heart.

It's hard to see any "positive" side to all that we have been through in the past four months but I have to be thankful for this. Left in me, my tumour would have continued to grow and had the potential to become cancerous.  The arteries in my Dad's heart were badly blocked and eventually it would have caused a massive heart attack had he not had this early warning and had them treated with stents. As his surgeon said, he is "lucky not to be dead".

And so I am grateful to my little boy for protecting both me and my Dad. William is truly deserving of his name.

Rock Bottom, Fifty Feet Of Crap, Then Me.

So I pretty much thought I had reached rock bottom in this whole utterly shit situation but it turns out you can feel worse. Yesterday my best friend had a baby. The baby wasn't expected to arrive until the end of March but she was taken into hospital 6 weeks early as her waters broke. I knew she was in hospital and so for the last couple of days I've been bracing myself for the news that the baby was here.  Last night my husband walked through the door and told me the baby has been born. It's a boy.

I feel like my heart has been ripped open.

The news, although half expected, has devastated me. They didn't know the sex and so there was always a 50:50 chance it would be a boy but I have still been saying "please let it be a girl, please let it be a girl" every day.  If the baby had been a girl, it would still have been hard but the fact that it is a boy is so much harder.

It feels like just as I was scrambling to my feet, trying to get up off the floor, someone has come along and hit me with a tonne of bricks and knocked me over again.

Since we lost William I haven't seen my friend. The thought of seeing her with a bump when I had lost mine was just too painful. We were so excited when she became pregnant 10 weeks after me and had talked about all of the things we could do with our babies. I'd imagined our babies being best buddies and us all hanging out together.  So much of the future I had imagined for William was connected to their baby in my mind.

My friend could not have been nicer and said she completely understood why it would be too painful for me to see her. She said we would wait until I was ready before we saw each other again and in the meantime, we could keep in contact by email, which we have done.  It hasn't been easy. It's hard for her to support me when I won't even see her and I feel sad that I have not been of support to her too whilst she has been pregnant. This is one of the happiest moments of her life and I haven't been able to share it with her.

I've spent a great deal of time thinking about when the time might come when I could see her again. I knew it wouldn't be whilst she was still pregnant but thought I might be able to see her once the baby arrived. Now he has, I still don't feel I can.

As her baby has arrived early he is now only 5 weeks younger than William should be. It feels like I am being tortured knowing that for the rest of my life, I will watch a little boy grow up and reach every milestone at the same time that William should be. I don't know if I can face seeing that for the rest of my life.

So, that leaves me in a state of limbo. I've lost my baby. Am I now going to lose my best friend too?

I know it is my choice but in reality, it doesn't really feel like I have much of a choice. Self preservation dictates that I don't go out and openly seek yet more pain on top of that which I have already suffered. And yet I am torn. I miss my best friend.

Termination For Medical Reasons (TFMR)

What is it? Well, it's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. You decide to end your pregnancy because your baby is suffering from a medical condition so sufficiently horrendous that you think they would be better off dead than alive....that is if they would even make it out of you alive in the first place.

You can elect to do this at any stage of your pregnancy but if it's after 24 weeks, the hospital will only allow it if two medical consultants consent to it too. I was 26 weeks pregnant when we were told there was a problem with William's heart and that we had a decision to make. Before you even start researching the medical condition which has decided to afflict your baby, you know the outcome for the little mite isn't going to be good when they tell you as they told me....

"I would support you in your decision if you choose to bring this pregnancy to an end and I know there are several other people in this hospital who would also do so".

If you do decide to end your pregnancy the methods of doing so also differ depending on how far along you are. At 28 weeks (as I then was) the process of ending your pregnancy is two fold. It isn't pleasant but it's not something you can really sugar coat (although I will try) so if you don't think you are going to like reading about this bit you may want to skip onto the next post:

Sonographer man sticks a needle into your tummy and into your baby. The baby gets a hit of valium so he feels super dooper relaxed and stops kicking the hell out of you. Feeling all chilled and nice and cozy in your tummy the baby snuggles down for his final Mummy Tummy Nap. Whilst off in baby dream land the sonographer man gives your baby another injection right into his heart to send him to Baby Heaven.

I don't like to think too much about what was in that last syringe as the reality of allowing someone to inject that into your baby is just too horrific.  It's made worse by the fact that the medical professionals all refer to that bit as "feoticide" which is a term I loathe and which reminds me of homicide and murder.  Instead, I like to think of this last injection as a huge dose of love mixture from me and my husband and something akin to Red Bull. We loved William so much that rather than him suffer a minute of pain we gave him some Red Bull to give him wings.

The second stage is relatively simple in comparison. You take a tablet to soften your cervix and two days later go into hospital to be induced and give birth. The labour itself is like the birth of any living baby (so I'm told) although you haven't got all of those happy pain suppressing natural endorphins flying around your body and so it tends to hurt like hell once it all gets going. On the up side, most midwives don't want you to be in an physical pain given you are already suffering enough so they will pretty much offer you every drug they have available to them the minute you start to feel anything.

When we first had to consider ending the pregnancy I thought this process was so horrific that I didn't think I would be able to get through it. Even if it meant William being born alive and having a lifetime of suffering. I just didn't think I was strong enough and couldn't handle the pain of losing a baby.  Ultimately, however, I decided that I would feel more pain and guilt watching him suffer from the minute he was born and that my reasons for continuing with the pregnancy could not simply be that I was too much of a coward to do what might be the right thing for our baby.

Once the decision was made, I didn't want to know anything about William (I can't believe I even thought that now), didn't want to know the sex (we didn't know he was a boy at this stage) and I wanted to be knocked out, for them to take him out of me and for me to wake up, bump-less. I certainly didn't want to give birth to him or to see him or hold him. I rang every private hospital and asked if I could pay for a c-section as the NHS wouldn't allow it. They all said no.

I talked to a counsellor and they said the process was there for a reason. That I wouldn't come to terms with it if I went to sleep with a bump and woke up without one. I thought "what does she know" and that the medical profession were cruel, unbelievably cruel, for making women go through this process when they were losing their baby.

In hindsight, I can see the counsellor was right. It was hard, so so hard but I am glad I went through it. William went to Baby Heaven straight from my tummy and went to sleep when he was with me, all warm and safe. His birth was really really peaceful and gentle and as a result, no harm came to his tiny little body. It also gave my husband and I the chance to see just how beautiful and perfect he was and to hold him and say goodbye properly.  I can now say, without a shadow of a doubt, that holding him in my arms was one of the highlights of my life, no matter how sad the circumstances, and I wouldn't give that up for the world.

Note to William: Mummy may have allowed you to get your first hit of drugs when you were with her but getting high, even with a parent, is a big no no. Do not even think about it in Baby Heaven...even if its someone disguised as Jesus telling you to drink the special wine and eat his magic bread. Just. Say. No.

Top Ten List Of The Worst Things You Can Say To A Baby Loss Mummy

Below is a list of things people have said to me over the past three months. I have also provided the response that went through my head (naturally I was too polite to actually say that)...

1. "There is always someone who is worse off than you" 

Yes, cheers, thanks for that. I appreciate that there are such people in the world but if I am quite honest, I don't know how they haven't topped themselves as I can't imagine feeling any worse than I do now.

2. "Wouldn't the morphine make the baby drowsy during labour?"

Umm, given he was already dead at that point I am thinking "No"?

3. "You went to the Maldives? Wow, you are so lucky."

If you'd like to send your baby to Heaven and send William back down to me I will gladly fork out for you to go to the Maldives.

4. "I'm pregnant"

I hate you.

5. "I'm worried about giving birth"

FFS stop complaining. At least your baby should be alive at the end of it.

6. "What on earth do you want a big car like that for?"

Well we ordered it when I was pregnant and then after the baby died we thought the least we deserved was a new car....even if we have nothing to fill it with.


7. "Well let me tell you, you have been through a lot but I've been to hell and back"

My baby is dead. Your husband might have had surgery but he is alive. I think I trump you on the hell and back stakes on this one.

8.  "It's not all about you"

Thanks. It's been three months. Sorry I've been "making it all about me" for longer than you deem acceptable.


9. "We've all been through difficult times and have felt like that"

Right. I don't think you are fully appreciating this situation. I lost my baby, my BABY.  "Difficult times" doesn't even begin to describe it and rest assured, I don't think you have ever felt like this.


10. "It must be very worrying" [about the genetic tests and another baby potentially having the same condition]

Yes it is. Thanks for the reminder.

What To Expect...To Feel... When You Are No Longer Expecting

I recently read a beautiful post on a US website summarising how a woman feels when she has lost a baby. I've posted the link below so that you can read it for yourselves.

http://smallbirdstudios.com/2012/02/05/when-you-lose-a-baby/

If you aren't based in the US,  you'll no doubt have noticed that some of the comments don't apply. It got me thinking about what it feels like to be a Baby Loss Mummy in the UK. If I were to add my own thoughts to the link above, this is how it would read:

You're in a John Lewis and you want a cup of tea. You always have to walk right through the baby department to get there.  You get to the top of the escalator and then its eyes down. You walk past the prams, past the cots, past the numerous excited parents-to-be discussing the pros and cons of the latest car seat. As you reach the entrance to the cafe you think you've made it and then you hear a baby's cry ring out across the store. The waitress behind the counter asks what you want but you can't read the menu up on the wall. Everything is blurry as your eyes fill with tears.

You read the Daily Mail Showbiz section online and feel the resentment surge as you see yet another celebrity pregnancy announcement.

The thought of going on the tube (the underground to the non-Londoners reading this) fills you with anxiety. You used to take it every day to work and think nothing of it. Now, even the thought of going on there again makes your heart pound and your chest feel tight. You do not want to be crammed into a confined space with a bunch of strangers.

You watch One Born Every Minute even though it kills you and it always ends with you in tears.

You see stories of pregnant 14 year olds in the press or pregnant women outside bars drinking and smoking and wonder why they get to keep their babies and you lost yours.

You hate Facebook and yet can't terminate your account. You log on every day to see yet another baby announcement from a friend or pictures from their latest scan. You wonder how they can announce it all so freely to the world. You think "you have no idea what can go wrong".

You worry about Amanda Holden and Lily Allen and feel relieved when their babies are born safely.

Every hospital should have a room donated by SANDS (a soundproof, private delivery suite for those women delivering what will be a stillborn baby). You wonder how those women coped if they did not have this "luxury". Did they hear a baby cry as it was being born in the next room whilst they were delivering their own dead baby? How did they survive that?

The coffin, the funeral, none of it had to be paid for. The funeral directors refuse to charge for anything when a baby dies. This makes you smile. Not because you've been given a freebee but because there is still some humanity in the world.

People ask you how you are but you know they don't really want to hear the truth in response. That would be inappropriate. The English are always so polite and feel uncomfortable even at the mention of death. So, they ask, and you lie. You say "I'm ok" and then see the relief flash across their face.

You become obsessed with getting pregnant before Kate Middleton. If she announces her pregnancy first it will seriously piss you off.