Update

It's been a while.

Things have happened. Nothing earth-shattering, just every day things.

:::

Our Freyja's (still)birthday came and went. It's been over 4 years now since that awful day. That day that started it all. That day which at the time seemed to be the day to end all days, but worse was to come.

Four years.

:::

We've had numerous sessions with a cardiologist. We've had numerous ECG's. Stress tests. Drugs pumped into us. And all concluding the same thing. They can't find anything wrong with our hearts. That doesn't mean there isn't some genetic thing there, maybe there is. But they just don't know about it yet.

:::

I read this morning that Denmark's Prin.cess Ma.ry is pregnant with twins. I read about it on an online news site.

And I have mixed feelings. Jealousy. Envy. And an incredible disbelief that someone, anyone, would announce their pregnancy to the world JUST LIKE THAT. Like nothing could go wrong. Like they think that waiting the standard 12 weeks will make it all ok. As if her being a princess will somehow make her babies safer.

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Craig and I bought a folding caravan. We've been tenting for the last year, but decided for various reasons that it didn't suit us here in Europe. Maybe one day, when we are back in Australia, we will tent again.

The folding caravan was a great option for us. Much less weight behind the car. Less wind drag.

It's an old little van. From 1981. But we love it. (We showed the photos to some friends recently, and they laughed at our little van. They said it was old and kitsch and weren't surprised we only paid EUR 500 for it. They laughed at our van and at us. I was mortally offended.)

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I can't wait to use our darling little van. We're going to the UK in a couple of weeks. We'll be celebrating our birthdays over there. The two of us. We're both going to be 42.

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42. With three dead babies. That's really awful.

And I haven't given up yet. On babies that is. But Craig and I are at an impasse there. He doesn't want any more babies, and I do. How do you compromise on that??? I don't think it's possible. Our impasse will remain.

:::

I was faced with some truths a few days ago. About being "friends" with people who believe different things to me.

Before all the dead baby stuff, acceptance and tolerance were big things for me. But not any more. Now I am much less accepting and much less tolerant.

For example, someone who compares their miscarriages to my losses -- that doesn't sit well with me. I don't think that's even comparable.

And the christian belief that life begins at conception. I used to believe that too. And I still do to some extent. I believe that Freyja, Kees and Jet began when they were conceived. However, I don't believe that a miscarriage was ever a person. I hope that some people can understand this difference.

I believe that there is a distinct difference between miscarriage and stillbirth. I understand completely why governments have made a distinction. I understand completely why they have tried to distinguish between a life which can only survive in the mother's womb and a life which can survive outside it. Even though it might need help.

I believe that the conception of a child is amazing. I believe that the joining and multiplying of cells, which then slowly become a living being, which then grows to a beautiful baby, is an amazing thing. I don't believe it's a miracle, because I don't believe in miracles. In my view a miracle is simply something which scientists haven't yet found an explanation for.

The views and beliefs which I have now, are very much influenced by what has happened to us in the last few years. The person I am now is very different to the person I used to be 5 years ago.

And some people find that very difficult to understand. Actually, it will be impossible for them to understand. Because they have living children, not dead children.

:::

I'm still struggling to find a future for myself. It's a huge struggle. I'm still well and truly lost in the maze of anger, grief, depression, disbelief and trauma which naturally follows multiple losses. Fortunately Craig is there to help guide me through the maze.

The beast inside

I mean the beast inside me.

I don't think that beast existed before. Before all our babies died.

This beast only shows itself sometimes. And only when I have no control over it. Like when I drink too much wine. Which I try not to do because I know that the beast might come out.

This beast says nasty things. Sometimes it does nasty things. It doesn't care that it might hurt someone's feelings.

Like I wrote above, I never used to have this beast inside me. And now I wonder if it will ever go away or whether it will stay with me forever.

I just don't know.

Going public again

I'll give it another go I think. Going public, that is.

Sometimes I look at other blogs, and sometimes I stumble across one where a rainbow baby has been born. And it's so hard. I feel so awful. Because I should feel happy for those parents, but I just feel sad for me. So very, very sad.

And that's the risk with going public. Letting other people into my blog again. Maybe random people who don't know what it's like to hold your dead child in your arms. Or people who do know what it's like, but who still have hope in their life. I am still hope-less. I'm still looking for hope. For a reason to hope. I'm still looking.

But. Let's see what happens if I go public.

Changes

I've made some changes to my blog. The name of the blog, for instance.

I've thought about making my blog public again. So the change of name (in both the name of the blog itself and the web address) is to reduce the number of hits it may otherwise get on internet search engines.

What do you think? Any advice about my thoughts of going public again? I'd appreciate any comments you have.

When trying to sleep ...

Sometimes, when I'm lying in bed, trying to sleep, I am instead thinking, whilst trying to get to sleep.

:::

Craig and I have been seen a new shrink recently.

After our first appointment, which we attended together, we were very hopeful about him. He seemed very professional and interested in how he could help us.

He decided at that first appointment that he should see us separately as well as jointly. So we each had a 45 minute appointment to see him separately.

At the end of my 45 minute appointment the shrink decided that he needed extra time with each of us alone. So we made an additional appointment for us each.

But then when Craig went for his double appointment (ie. 1hr 30mins), it only lasted for 25 minutes. Craig got a call in the morning from the shrink asking if he could come earlier because the shrink's family circumstances prevented him from attending at the appointed hour in the afternoon.

Craig was very surprised about the 25 minute appointment. He was also rather surprised about the discussion during the appointment. At the end of the 25 minute appointment, the shrink's conclusions about Craig were:

(i) he is depressed, but if he does exercise that should break the cycle of depression;

(ii) he should stop doing everything with me, and that should break the cycle of inter-dependency.

Right. Not very helpful at all.

I believe that this shrink is doing what most people do. He's treating our situation like other situations. But our situation is not like other situations.

Craig's depression is related to something very specific. It's almost an insult to him to say that his depression means that he is "sad".

I also suffer from depression. It's related to the trauma which we have experienced with the births and deaths of our children. It's related to the anxiety I feel about Craig's safety. It's related to the total devastation of our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions. It's related to the disappearance of the person I used to be.

:::

So while I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, I was thinking that my life at the moment is like a fall-out zone. A nuclear fall-out zone.

A bomb went off in our lives. The most awful, enormous, devastating bomb.

It destroyed everything.

And we're just trying to live with the fall-out.

The problem with this fall-out zone is that it's only visible to us. It's only our lives which have been destroyed. All around us people are still walking, cycling, working, making love, playing with their children, making plans, living their life. As if nothing had happened.

But that's not for us. Because something did happen. We are living in the middle of a nuclear fall-out zone, and we don't know what to do about it.

:::

Today we went back to the shrink. After an absence of several weeks.

He seems to have realised that what we have experienced, and what we continue to experience every day, is slightly out of the ordinary.

He seems to understand when I say that I worry for our future. Because I don't know how to build a future out of the ashes which are our past and our present. Because at the moment I don't know that I can build anything at all on this crumbling foundation which is us and our life.

Anyway, I hope that he will be able to help us.

:::

I started writing this post at the beginning of June. But then I sort of lost of interest, and then we went on holidays for two weeks. I read through the post again today and thought it was still worth putting on the blog. I finished it off today -- we saw our shrink again this morning.

That question. My answer.

My friend Birni wrote recently that many women who are further along in this baby-lost journey don't post on their blogs as often as they used to. I don't know about other women, but I know that I don't. My reasons for not posting as often any more are because I feel like I'm a bit of a broken record. I'm just repeating what I've already said. Maybe if my Jet were still alive I'd be blogging about being a mum to a living baby and how that is. But that's not what happened and that's not what I'm blogging about. I think people won't want to read my blog if I just write the same thing over and over again. And, to be honest, I'm sick of writing the same thing over and over again.

I've seen some baby-lost mums blog about the inevitable question that most couples get. "How many children do you have?" or "Do you have any children?" That question which used to have me in tears. Now I'm so stoic I can just about cope with anything.

I never avoid the question. Never. I never say "none". Never. I always tell them that we have three children, but that they are all dead. If people want to know more, I tell them. If they don't, the conversation stops there.

You see, for me to deny my children is impossible. Because they are all I have. There are no living children. There will be no living children. I can't offer up up a happy, breathing, healthy child and say "here s/he is!" --- I don't have that. I only have Freyja, Kees and Jet. So if people ask the question, that's who they get. Freyja, Kees and Jet.

I don't have a living rainbow baby that I can play happy families with. I just have Craig and me and of course, Freyja, Kees and Jet. They're always there. Always.

So some people get shocked. People who don't know our history, but who ask the question. I never think, "I don't know these people, so I don't have to tell them". Never. If people ask the question, they get the answer.

I suspect this is quite disconcerting to most people. Because dead babies don't really exist. They're not spoken about. People don't know that babies die. They really don't. People think that cot-death is a thing of the past. That was only babies dying because they were lying in their beds incorrectly. Amazingly, in some countries, bumpers for cots are still on the market. Amazing. They are a proven risk, yet people still put them in their baby's bed. Sometimes mums put their babies to sleep on their tummies because "they sleep better". Yet it was proven in the Back To Sleep campaign that it was a contributing factor when babies die. Unbelievable that people forget.

But I digress. Babies don't die. Didn't you know that?

The babies that die, they must have something wrong with them. Must be. When I tell people that my children died for unknown reasons, they don't believe it. I don't mean that they think we are lying. No. They simply don't believe that babies die for no reason. They always probe me with questions, just to make sure that I actually know what I'm talking about. Heart problems is everyone's favourite. Our children must have had heart problems. But when I tell people that the doctors found nothing wrong with their hearts, then they question the doctors capability. Must be something wrong with their hearts. No. There wasn't. People shake their heads and mumble something and then move on to another topic.

I'm always surprised at how few people actually know what SIDS is. In fact, the only people I've come across who know what SIDS is, are other baby-lost parents. My own family, who I always thought were quite intelligent, did not know. My mother stunned me when she said she hadn't known that so many babies died. This was after Freyja died. Suddenly people came out of the woodwork and admitted that they, or a daughter or a grand-daughter or a cousin had lost a child. My mum was surprised. She had had four healthy pregnancies and four healthy, living children -- she'd never encountered dead babies before. My youngest sister had the same -- four pregnancies, four healthy, living children. My sister L has three beautiful girls, but then suffered from two very early miscarriages. That was already shocking enough. My family still doesn't really believe it. That there was nothing for the doctors to find.

After Kees died, my boss was talking to me about the cause of death. She was either pregnant (in her last trimester) or her son had just been born. I can't remember exactly. Actually, her son must have been born, because we talked after we received the results from Kees' autopsy. She said that she didn't really believe it (the results) and that the doctors must have made a mistake. Not done something properly. I responded that they cut up my son's body into little pieces and put those under the microscope (so to speak) so I thought that they probably had done it "properly". She was shocked. It offended her that I said that out loud. That I said out loud that the doctors cut up my son's body. It was clear from her response and her behaviour that she thought I'd said too much - crossed the line - or whatever. And all I could think was, "You stupid woman. My son is dead. My daughter is dead. What could be worse than that?"

My dead babies are easy for other people, as long as they are not confronted by the reality of their death. As long as I keep everything neatly tucked away. As long as I can be "happy" for others and their healthy families. As long as I pretend.

So, when people ask me the question, I always tell them the truth. That I have three children. Freyja, Kees and Jet. But that they are dead. Yes, all three of them.

Auntie Flo

Today should be the last day of my period. I'm not really sure, because I'm taking the Pill all the way through. I'm trying to stop my period from coming back. But it's pretty persistent. Just keeps coming back.

Sorry if this blog is too intimate, but my period is something that reminds me every month of what a complete failure I am as a woman.

It reminds me that I've suffered this horrible thing every month for 27 years for nothing. Nothing. Oh yeah, for three dead babies.

It reminds me that any fears I used to have (back in my not-so-wild youth) of being pregnant were wasted fears. Little did I know that I should have hoped for a pregnancy. For a living baby.

But back then I didn't. Sex before marriage was "bad". Pregnancy before marriage was "bad-der". Abortion was NOT an option. My parents used to lecture my sister L and I about this continuously.

It was a different life. A different society. A different "norm".

:::

I was brought up in a christian family.

Sex before marriage was very, very bad.

Pregnancy outside of marriage was visible evidence that you were a "loose woman".

People "living together" was only for those very strange people. People like that (theoretical) great-aunt who'd been living with her partner for 60 years or so, but simply chose not to marry.

You didn't refer to your boyfriend or girlfriend as your "partner". A partner back then was a business partner, not a life partner.

Gay and lesbian couples lived under the radar. I didn't realise my uncle was gay until I was about 18 or 19. No-one ever told me. I just worked it out for myself. He'd been living with his partner (now his husband as they are legally married here in the Netherlands) for about 10 years then. No-one told me about it, because it was "bad". As if by ignoring it, or pretending it doesn't happen, it somehow becomes tolerable or acceptable.

(My brother came out of the closet about 4 years ago. He was in a serious relationship for a few years, and recently became single again. My parents met his partner and told him that they didn't believe in my brother's lifestyle. WTF??? Couldn't they just keep their mouths shut??)

Divorce was shameful. Really, really shameful. Never mind that one of my mother's sisters was separated from her husband and living with her boyfriend. She was catholic, so divorce was not an option. She never lived with her husband again, yet they were separated for 35 years. She lived with her boyfriend all that time.

So, given this environment, my sister L and I were lectured regularly about the evils and sins of sex outside marriage. I think at that stage my parents honestly believed that we would be virgins until we married.

(This is of course also at a time when they expected us to get married like good girls in our early 20's, as they did. But not to get pregnant before they got married, as they did.)

We were brought up to believe that sex outside of marriage would lead to pregnancy. And such a pregnancy would have to be borne. It could not be terminated. Termination was not an option for girls like us. Good christian girls.

There was never a discussion about safe sex. NEVER. Safe sex was sex in marriage. That's it.

There was no discussion about sexually transmitted diseases. Never.

People got AIDS because they had sex outside of marriage. Seriously.

The only way you could have safe, responsible sex was in marriage. That's it.

:::

Needless to say, my sister L and I went down a different path.

We never had discussions about sex, my sister L and I. She had several serious relationships (including an engagement), but she broke them all off. She married a lovely christian man, with the same beliefs as her, when she was nearly 32 years old. She's now been married for 8 years, and they have three gorgeous girls. She has a happy life. Lucky, lucky woman.

My younger sister J, she grew up differently. She was the youngest of us 4 siblings. She is my younger sister by 8 years. Amazing what a difference that makes. She started going out with boys when she was 12. She got a serious boyfriend when she was 15 (and she'd already had sex with other boys.) She was on the Pill then, and my mother knew about it. She nevertheless got pregnant at 16. She had her first child (my lovely nephew) at 17. She got married to my nephew's father 6 months later. (We all told her not to. We told her to take her time. She didn't.) She went on to have two other children with this man. Not surprisingly she was divorced before she was 30.

:::

The foundation of my parents' beliefs has been shaken significantly over the last few years. By my sister's divorce (marriage is sacred, therefore divorce is unacceptable). By her subsequent new live-in relationship (no marriage, therefore living in sin). By the birth of her fourth child (born outside of marriage). By my brother's gay-ness. By his gay relationship (he will of course burn in hell unless he repents). By the death of my three children -- who were all prayed for, so should have lived. By my turning away from christianity (surprise, surprise). The only one who still believes what we were all brought up to believe is my sister L. The missionary.

:::

I went on the Pill a few times during my single life. Never really for contraceptive purposes, more to reduce the pain and the flow. But I'm not very good at taking pills regularly, so that went out the window quickly. (I now take a raft of pills every morning -- Craig diligently supervises that I take everything when I should.)

:::

I was single until I met and married my gorgeous man when I was 37. Mmm ... was I celibate until I was 37 years old? Not likely.

I never had any serious relationships. Because I simply couldn't be bothered, and I never found the right man. But I did have flings. I mean, who doesn't?

But always my parents dire warnings about the evils and sins of pre-marital sex echoed somewhere in the back of my head.

I had a few scares -- where I apprehensively peed on a stick and waited for a result. But always it came back negative -- to my (at the time) great relief.

And I never caught any awful disease. Pure luck really. I didn't grow up with the sex education which kids now grow up with. Safe sex outside of marriage didn't exist in my family. No sex existed. There was no other option.

So my period always came back. Regular as clockwork. Usually quite painful. Often like a flood. And there was never any pregnancy.

:::

And now I'm 41 years old. My period is still there. It returned 4 weeks after each pregnancy. Do you believe that? My body is so bloody regular that even after the birth of a child, my period came back regular as clockwork.

Now I'm trying to get rid of it. All the literature says that you don't need to bleed every fourth week just because you are on the Pill. In fact, the literature says it's just to make you feel "comfortable", and keep you on the same routine a usual.

But, you see, that routine is not "comforting" to me. In fact, it is a very physical reminder every month that my period is just a complete waste of time. That the physical discomfort I have suffered for 27 years was for nothing.

:::

I therefore take my Pill diligently every morning. Because I don't want to get pregnant. I fear the death of another child. But I also fear never having another child. What a conundrum.

Craig and I have talked about him having the "snip". But I'm simply not ready to take that final step. That step which is forever. I'm not at that stage yet.

So I grumble every month when that nasty period comes back. No matter how many Pills I take.

I'm reminded every month that (despite my apparent fertility, even now, at 41) any baby I conceive will probably die. Just like the others.