Wednesday 11 April 2012

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.


Thursday 5 April 2012

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......



Monday 2 April 2012

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.