24 hours

24 hours ago, I was holding Jet.

He was awake.

I was breast feeding him. Jet and I were both learning.

24 hours ago he was restless and consequently so was I.

He was still alive.

I was grumpy after having been awake with him all night. I had woken Craig to burp Jet and it didn't seem to have worked - Jet was still grizzly.

Craig told me to go to sleep.

I had sore breasts - they were like rocks and were burning. My milk was "coming in".

Now, 24 hours later, I wish, I wish, I wish, that my little Jet was still here in my arms. That I still had something to be grumpy about. That he was still grizzling.

Instead I'm sitting here blogging in the middle of the night. With a horrible headache from all the wine I drank. To forget my son. To forget my grief. Grief which I know doesn't go away.

Oh my little Jet.

** Jet ** 29 August 2009 to 1 September 2009

We rejoiced so much on Saturday morning. Our son Jet (Jethro Craig Wilhelm) was born here in the Netherlands at 4.25 am. He weighed 3.210 kg and was 51 cm long. He was perfect. Just like his perfect sister and brother. We rejoiced that his birth went smoothly, without stress, and with much support.

This morning I woke to the sun's light coming through the curtains in the hospital room. I immediately knew that something was wrong. Jet had not woken me for his feed. I rushed to his hospital cot and felt his face. I saw his lips. I knew we had lost another one.

My heart feels like maybe it is irreparably broken. I hope not.

I hope that I have the strength to remember this little one. Our Jet. Our son. Our third child. That wonderful combination of Craig and myself. A boy who looked like his sister and like his brother, and most of all like his mother and father. It appears that Craig and I make gorgeous babies together.

I hope that I will be able to remember these three days of his life with joy. Maybe one day. At the moment these memories only make me weep more.

I wish that I could stand on the street and howl his name. I wish that I could.

I hope that you will all mourn our loss with us. That you will forever remember our Jet, our third child, our second son, brother to Kees and Freyja. Son to Mirne and Craig. Cousin, nephew, grandson. Much loved and much wanted. Forever remembered. Forever missed.

Maybe in the next few days I will be able to share some of the images of his too short life.

Honest Scrap award

I've been given an Honest Scrap award by Amy.

This award is about bloggers who post from their heart, those who write from the depths of their soul. Thank you Amy.

There are some simple rules to accept this award. Firstly, pass the award on to 7 other bloggers and, secondly, list 10 honest and hopefully interesting things about yourself.

Therefore, I pass on the Honest Scrap award to the following bloggers:

Birni at All the little ponies

Karen at Busy hands

Kristy at I love you to the moon and back

Beth at Safe in this house

Akul's mama at Aaajaa akul

Lindsay at La la land

Isla's mommy at Too beautiful for this earth

My ten honest and hopefully interesting things are as follows:

1. I am a "Trekkie" - yes, I must admit I love Star Trek -- not the original but all the subsequent movies and series.

2. I've driven around the US - that's right, after Freyja died, Craig and I rented an RV (that's a recreational vehicle for non-US readers) and drove 13,500 miles around the entire country.

3. I've run from elephants in Africa (yes, they really were chasing me) and also from hippos -- its amazing how fast you can run when these huge animals are charging you.

4. I am over 6 feet tall.

5. I smoked (yes!!) for 23 years, then I got pregnant and stopped instantly. Un.be.liev.ab.le. I'd tried to quit numerous times, but pregnancy was an instant success.

6. I climbed Ben Nevis in Scotland in vile weather (it was mid-summer, ha ha!). Not something I will ever willingly repeat.

7. My last two cats have been named for politicians. Nelson (black cat) and Blair (never shuts up). I should note that both cats came to me with their names -- I did not choose the names!

8. My husband and I were born in the same month and the same year (but not on the same day) approximately 4 and a half hours apart - but on other sides of the planet. It took us 37 years to get together.

9. I have lost luggage several times - or rather incompetent airlines have lost my luggage several times - usually when I'm on the other side of the world with nothing other than the clothes I'm wearing. Holidaying in dirty clothes is not great.

10. I have tasted (and looooooved) Camembert cheese in the Normandy region in France. Now no other Camembert will ever come close. (I love cheese.)

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On another note, I am 37w6d today.

Tomorrow morning, at some unearthly hour, Craig and I will drag ourselves out of bed, get on to various modes of public transport, and make our way over to our chosen hospital. The plan is to be there by 7.30 am. I'm so not convinced about this time because it means we'll need to be up and about by 5.00 am!

However, this means I won't be blogging for a little while.

I want to thank you all for sharing this part of the journey with me. You've all been very supportive and I feel that you've made this part of my journey much easier simply by being there and sending me your caring and understanding comments. I hope to be able to share the next part of my journey with you too.

I hope that the next time I blog, I shall have Freyja's and Kees' little brother here at home with me.

Hopefully.

Missing Kees

I'm missing Kees today. I mean, I miss him every day, but today I miss him more.

When I walk through our hall, I see his photos hanging on the wall, and I touch them, and I miss him.

Maybe it's because this time, these days, these hours before his brother will be born, remind me so very much of those hours before Kees was born. Those hours, those days when we worried. So much.

We wondered what he would look like. Who he would look like. Whether he would be healthy. What colour his eyes would be. What colour his hair would be. Whether he would look like Freyja.

Craig worried that maybe our baby boy wouldn't be gorgeous. He worried that maybe he wouldn't be beautiful. I wasn't worried. I'd already seen Freyja and I knew she was gorgeous. My two sisters between them had produced 6 children, all of whom were beautiful.

And I was right. See for yourself just how beautiful our boy is/was.

He was just getting the hang of sucking his thumb, was our Kees. He liked his dummy/pacifier but he really preferred his thumb. But new babies, they're not very coordinated. So he spent the first few weeks stabbing himself with his fingers and his thumb in the face, in his eyes, in his nose, nearly everywhere but his mouth. But he was learning. There were some successes.

I took these photos on March 8th 2008. Kees' heart stopped whilst he was lying on the sofa at home on March 19th. He was revived, but was pronounced brain dead and removed from the ventilator on March 21st.

Our beautiful, beautiful boy.

No matter how beautiful or special his brother will be, I will always miss my gorgeous son Kees. I could shed thousands, millions of tears for him, and it would never be enough. I will miss him forever.

A tight-rope

The smallest things cause me huge amounts of stress these days.

Some of you may recall that we've had a leak in our apartment (see my post here). Well, we had a temporary fix done in May, and (until today) we had no further problems.

But today it rained. Quite heavily. And our leak returned. It moved about 1 metre to the right in our ceiling, but it's back.

Back in May we had agreed with our co-operative owners that we would get a temporary fix and also obtain some quotes for a roof replacement. But we'd heard nothing of the progress. So Craig rang our fix-it man today to find out what was happening. I won't go into all the details, but suffice to say that nothing is happening.

You may have heard that the Dutch are notoriously tight with their money. Stingy. Penny-pinchers. You get the idea. Well one of our apartment building's co-owners acts as chair-person of our little co-owner group, and he sometimes takes it upon himself to "save money". He is the stereo-typical Dutch tight-arse. It appears that he feels that getting (i) a quote and (ii) a roof replacement, will be too expensive so he's apparently decided to not go ahead with either. Without consultation with any of the other three co-owners. Right. (By the way, I am Dutch, as well as Australian, and I've grown up with stereo-typical Dutch tight-arses, so I can say these things without meaning to cause offense. It's just the way it is.)

So we're staring right at autumn and winter with a (once-again) leaking roof.

I'm a bit over it. Actually, I'm a lot over it.

I feel like I'm walking a tight-rope at the moment. Every little thing which is out of the ordinary stresses me out. Every. Little. Thing.

For the last few days I've had a recurring head-ache and I swear it's stress related. It first appeared when we went to the hospital very late on Saturday evening because I was concerned about some fluid loss. Then it returned the next day when I had more fluid loss so went back to the hospital. Yesterday it came for no apparent reason, and this morning it came back again. (By the way, the fluid loss appeared to be nothing more than a pea-sized bladder over which I have zero control any more. Perhaps because there is an enormous head constantly pushing into it.)

I can't cope with anything out of the ordinary. I can't answer the telephone. I can't answer the door. Email is about the only form of communication which works for me at the moment because there's no pressure, no confrontation, no requirement for an immediate response.

My life is a bit like walking a tight-rope at the moment. Everything is so finely balanced, that it doesn't take much to make me a bit wobbly. Or much to make me fall. And if I didn't have security of knowing that Craig was there to hold on to me or to catch me if I fall, I think I'd go mad. Completely.

And now I worry about our roof. That our bloody roof will topple me.

I will want to go back to Australia at some stage, and that might be sooner than we think. And I can't sell this bloody apartment when it has a bloody leaking roof!! You should see the ceiling in our lounge room -- about two square metres of yellow marked ceiling and wall where the water has left stains.

I really don't need this right now. Living in an apartment sucks. I've done it now for about 10 years (in Australia and here in Amsterdam) and I'm over it. I want my own house with my own walls and my own roof and my own property. I want to be able to make my own decisions about what I want to do and when I want to do it. At least then the stress is about something that (hopefully) I can control.

Today is Tuesday. Bring on Friday. Please. I want to get off this tight-rope.

Sleeplessness, hope and defeat

Carly posted about this recently. Sleeplessness. Lack of sleep.

Sometimes I think that a pregnancy after a loss is all about the lack of sleep.

I mean, for me pregnancy at any time is usually not great. I've suffered from morning sickness in all three of my pregnancies. All differently. With Freyja I vomited every time I stuck a toothbrush in my mouth. The smell of fried food made me gag. With Kees I vomited least of all, but I had a vile metallic taste in my mouth for the entire second half of my pregnancy. I ate goodness knows how many Ren.nies. And with this one, I think I lost weight in my first trimester because of all the vomiting.

But, yes, lack of sleep. Doesn't every pregnant woman suffer from lack of sleep?

Every evening I'm so tired. Really, really tired. I can't wait to get to bed to sleep. Except I don't. I get into bed and read a few pages until I can't focus on the words any more. By this time Craig is usually snoring away next to me. This despite the fact that he generally protests that he's not ready to go to bed - that he's not tired yet. Hmmm. So he's snoring, I turn out the light and try to go to sleep. But I don't. Go to sleep that is.

I lie there and think. And rehash stuff. And worry. And stress. And wake up. And then I get pissed off. That I'm lying there awake and not being able to sleep.

In the meantime I've crawled out of bed several times to visit the toilet, because of course when you're enormously pregnant that's what happens.

Then I crawl back into bed and I think about Kees. And I think about his too short life. And I think about those few lucky people who met Kees who don't even bother mentioning his name any more. Who don't even talk about him. Who seem to be pretending he didn't exist.

So then I get angry. And sad. And all the while I should be sleeping.

I'm so tired. Really, really tired. But most of the time I just can't get to sleep. Eventually I fall asleep of course. But it's more exhaustion than anything else.

Some mornings I wake really early and can't get back to sleep any more. And I'm still exhausted, because I didn't sleep until late, and then I didn't sleep long enough.

And every night when I'm supposed to be sleeping, I lie awake worrying about this baby inside me. I worry for him, but I also worry for me. Because I won't be able to cope if something goes wrong again. I really won't. I'm so close to being defeated right now. Only the hope of this living baby keeps me going.

When I was pregnant with Kees, his death was a real possibility. I guess most people would find that incomprehensible. But it was a real option -- after all, his sister's death was our only experience with pregnancy and birth. And it was Craig's greatest fear too. But his fear was more for me than for our unborn child. He feared that I would not cope with another death. He feared that death would defeat me. But I knew that it wouldn't. And I was right.

I'm not so sure now. Hope and defeat are doing battle at the moment, and I'm too tired to do more than stand on the sidelines. I'm just waiting to see which of the two wins. And hoping to get some sleep.

Aw.ay We Go (by Craig)

We went to the movies yesterday. It was Mirne's birthday, so her choice. Today it is my birthday, so we'll probably go to a movie of my choice. Either way, we have pretty much the same taste in movies so it doesn't really matter who chooses what we see - it's just nice to do it this way for our birthdays. Anyway, we went to see "Aw.ay We Go". A word of warning for any babyloss mamas and papas out there whose nerves are still super raw (they'll always be raw - I mean those of you for whom this is a relatively new thing) - there is a scene in the movie with a babyloss couple.

CAUTION - spoiler alert for the plot of the movie. If you haven't seen it and have read the warning about the content above and still want to see it, you might want to see it before reading the rest of my post.

The movie is about a young (well, they're in their thirties, so they're young to us) couple, Burt and Verona, who are having their first baby. They moved to some out-of-the-way place to be near his parents, and then his parents decide to move the month before the baby is due. So, they decide they will move also, and the movie is about their search for the perfect place to bring up their (unborn) child. Terribly optimistic, we all know, but that's what most people seem to do when they get pregnant. They visit many old friends and family members, some of whom are very quirky.

The crunch time comes when they visit Munch and Tom in Montreal. They have an adopted family of about 5 children of varying ages, but I knew there was a reason for this when Munch asked Verona if there had been any problems yet. I knew immediately that she was a babyloss mama. Anyway, the couple go out and have a lot of fun, but they end up at a bar with a kind of Karaoke thing happening with people doing dance acts as well as singing. Anyway, Verona goes to the bathroom (as you do when you're 6 months pregnant) and we see just the two men talking. Tom looks around for Munch, and we finally see her pole dancing, but in a very slow, sad, and poignant way. The song being played is Oh! Sweet Nuthin' by Velvet Underground, which is perfect. Part of the lyrics say:

Oh sweet nuthin'

She ain't got nothing at all

Oh sweet nuthin'

She ain't got nothing at all

She ain't got nothing at all

Oh sweet nuthin'

Tom explains to Burt that Munch has just had her fifth miscarriage. There is no explanation of how pregnant she was, or whether this was a miscarriage or a stillbirth (most people don't seem to know the difference), but it is obvious that he is deeply affected by this. He stares at Munch, sadly, while she dances, sadly. He can barely talk, and it is obvious that he feels as useless to help her as I always feel with Mirne when she is feeling particularly sad. It is a beautiful scene, which I think many people will not understand, but if you want to show your non-babyloss friends what it is like, if they just don't get it, send them along to see this film and tell them that if anything, this scene is a little under-done in the grief stakes.

I found myself crying uncontrollably in the cinema, to the point where I was so sad I almost felt that I had to leave. I'm glad I stayed for the rest of the film, because it is quite cool (and quirky, as I mentioned), but I was so sad I think I will have to see it again to really know what happens. In fact, I might need to see it several more times before I can remember the scenes immediately following this one.