An email

For those of you who don’t know me, I am Mirne's husband. As those of you who read this blog regularly will already know, I don’t blog very often. I tried it, and didn’t find it as cathartic as Mirne. However, there are some things which I absolutely MUST put out there.

Mirne received this lovely email today:

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From: Rachael. "<"versus_68@hotmail.com>

Subject: fucking insensitive cow!

Date: August 13, 2010 12:53:11 PM GMT+02:00

To: Blog

Yes you read that correctly. Get a lot of attention from your blog do you? Women like you shouldn't have any children

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Sometimes I wonder about the thoughts that go through peoples minds. There is no mention as to which blog entry, in particular, this email refers to, so I have to assume that it is directed to Mirne in general. In which case, I guess this “Rachael” has no feelings herself. Anyone who reads Mirnes blog must know that it is written by a woman in pain. A woman who has lost 3 lovely children, and is working her way back to some semblance of a normal life.

But, apparently, some people cannot see this. Some people feel the need to hurt others needlessly. I guess “Rachael” is the sort of person who would see a mugging, then go over to kick the person a couple of times, then rifle through their pockets to see if the muggers missed anything.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say. That, and please feel free to send abusive emails to the email address of “Rachael”. And to sign her up for lots of spam porn.

PS. Mirne sent a reply (quite polite, compared to what I would have sent) and this just arrived:

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From: Rachael. "<"versus_68@hotmail.com>

Subject: RE: fucking insensitive cow!

Date: August 13, 2010 12:53:11 PM GMT+02:00

To: Blog

boo hoo.....

From: freyja.kees.jet@me.com

To: versus_68@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: fucking insensitive cow!

Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:03:05 +0200

I beg your pardon? I don't know who you are and what you are on about. I only have dead children so that should answer your question.

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our beautiful children

Freyja, Kees and Jet

Think of them as living,

in the hearts of those they touched,

for nothing loved is ever lost,

and they were loved so much.

On Aug 13, 2010, at 12:53 PM, Rachael . wrote:

Yes you read that correctly. Get a lot of attention from your blog do you? Women like you shouldn't have any children

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To all of you who have supported, and continue to support, Mirne in a positive way: Thank you so much. It is always appreciated by her, and often lifts her when she is feeling down, and also helps me a lot.

Craig.

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.

:::

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.)

:::

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.

:::

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.