Sadness and anger

Recently I've been crying a lot.

I've been feeling overwhelmed by sadness and anger. Strange combination, some might say. But for me these two emotions have been holding hands since Freyja was born.

The man who was the funeral director when Freyja died, Andrew, told us (after Freyja's funeral) that he and his wife had also lost two babies, both at around 20 weeks gestation. They are fortunate that they also have 3 living children.

Anyway, we asked him (in our then new baby-lost parent innocence) whether it ever went away. The sadness, that is. He told us that it never goes away, and that a day didn't go by that he didn't think once about his lost babies.

I guess in some way I thought that's what would happen. That I would think about my Freyja once a day.

Of course, now, three years later, all that innocence has gone. Even if I don't consciously think of Freyja and Kees every waking moment, they are a part of me, my daily life all the time.

I was lying in bed this morning, crying, saying to my husband that I'm sad all the time. That this sadness is with me all the time.

That doesn't mean that I can't appreciate life, because I can. I can appreciate a beautiful sunrise or a beautiful sunset or my gorgeous husband. But there's this element of sadness with me all the time. A sadness which reflects my reality that my life isn't the way it should be. A sadness that I know is caused because something (someone) is missing.

When Freyja died, all I could think was "why me?" And I was convinced that somehow it was my fault. Now I know that it wasn't my fault. There was nothing that I did wrong, and there was nothing that I did not do. She just died. As for the "why me?" ... now I know it was more like "why not me".

Babies die. For. No. Reason.

And nothing I do or don't do makes a difference. They. Just. Die.

And of course that's where the anger comes in. Because I still can't understand why it happened to me. Not once, but twice.

You see, my children were both healthy. There was no reason for them to die. They should not have died.

Freyja was stillborn at 28 weeks. She weighed 1.4 kg and was 39 cm long. The doctors found no reason for her death. She was healthy. I was healthy. Accessories (placenta, uterus, cord, etc) all healthy. Unknown cause of death. Case closed.

Kees died when he was 7 weeks old. Born at 37 weeks. He weighed 3.5 kg and was 52 cm long. He was super healthy and happy. His heart stopped and he just stopped breathing one morning when he was 6w5d old. He had been weighed 2 days earlier and had put on a whopping 2.5 kg since birth!!! The community nurse said he was blooming. My beautiful son.

The emergency medical team managed to revive our son and got him to hospital to the NICU. He stayed there for two days, but the doctors determined he was brain dead (lack of oxygen because the emergency medical team took too long to revive him) and decided to remove him from the machines. His heart stopped again (this time forever) whilst we held him in our arms. An autopsy revealed an infection of the muscle around his heart, with trace evidence of a virus. A virus that in normal circumstances goes to the lungs, causing a cold. But because it went to his heart instead, there were no symptoms, no reason for us to think there might be something wrong. The first indication that something might be wrong was when his heart stopped. What happened to Kees happens to 1 in 40,000 newborn babies.

Why me? Why us?

I cry for Freyja and Kees all the time. I could cry for them at the drop of a hat. But I don't. It makes people uncomfortable. And, after all, it's been so long. So I must be used to it by now. After all, must get on with life, hey??

But I haven't gotten on with life. The most I've done in terms of "getting on" is get pregnant again. And again. I got pregnant with Kees because I needed something to look forward to. The possibility of joy in my life. The possibility of a future. I couldn't bear thinking about a future without my Freyja, and if I couldn't have her, I would have her sibling.

Then that all went pear-shaped.

So then I did it again. "Got on with my life" by getting pregnant again. Because what am I going to do if I don't have a living baby???

Aha. That's it in a nutshell isn't it? What am I going to do if I don't have a living baby? I have no fucking idea. I think I'll have to reinvent myself. I can't be the person I used to be, the one before babies, because she's long gone. And I don't know who I could be. I don't even know what I'd be like as a mum to a living baby. I was only a mum to a living baby for 7 weeks, but I really liked it, and I think I was pretty good at it. But what on earth would I do with the rest of my life if all I got was dead babies???

And the anger. Yes, the anger. The anger is not just because my children are dead. The anger is also because other people's children live. I feel anger not just at whoever/whatever is responsible for my children's death, but I feel anger at EVERYONE who has living children. Get that. And I don't know whether I'll ever get over that anger. I read a comment on a blog recently from a woman who said she thought this would be a life-long battle for her. I think that's a good description for me too. I may well be battling that anger for the rest of my life.

I can be generous to people now. Whilst I'm still pregnant. Whilst there is a possibility that I might have a living child. I can be generous to other people in their pregnancies. And for their living children. But I know that should something happen to this baby inside me, that I won't be so generous. That in fact I will be overwhelmed and consumed by anger. That I will not be able to see babies and children and families without being consumed with RAGE that my children are dead, and those children are not.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want other children to die, I just want mine to live.

I said to my sister L months ago that I wish I could swap one of my children for hers. That instead of both my children being dead, that one of mine had lived and one of hers had died. She was horrified. She started crying just at the thought of it. And that's just it isn't it? Of course she thinks it's terrible that both my children are dead, but she's happy that hers aren't. And me suggesting otherwise is terrible and mean.

Simply put, she has absolutely no comprehension of my loss, my tragedy, my life. Just trying to imagine what it would be like to lose one of her children has her in tears. Just imagining. You see when she imagines it now, she tries to imagine ME, MY losses, MY DEAD CHILDREN and how I feel in MY life. But imagining it happening to HER and one of HER CHILDREN and HER life has her in tears. Just imagining. And she doesn't even realise that I really mean it. That if it had been an option (if it was still an option) I would swap the life of one of hers for the life of one of mine. In a flash.

I'm in limbo. Hope still keeps me going, but it's a battle to keep sadness and anger at bay.