Wave of Light Memorial Service October 2017

Sunday 15th October marked the end of Baby Loss Awareness Week. An amazing week where the topic of baby loss received great mainstream publicity. It really felt like the message for getting out there that we are not alone. This was also evident at the memorial service held at St Mary’s church in Banbury. Over 75 people came together to remember our babies and light a candle as part of the global Wave of Light. It was a very special service –  the first of its kind in Banbury. I spoke at this event what I hope was a message of hope for the future so here are my words for those of you who were unable to attend on the night.

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I’m a survivor. I’m a survivor of baby loss and often I feel I wear that badge with a heavy heart. You see your world stops when you loose a baby. It slams into a wall with the full inertia of all your hopes and dreams, expectations and love you have for your baby. We loose a lot when we loose a baby.

Having children is the craziest, richest part of life. Full of highs and lows, it’s ridiculous and sublime, testing, fulfilling and purpose-giving. But for parents like us it is so much more – there is more pain, more sadness, more grief, more regret, more tragic memories, more difficult decisions regarding our babies, funerals, post mortems, spending time with them or not. We know how precious life is.

It is also less – less an entire person, the lifetime of the baby/child/adult that we lost, loss of friends, relationships, time, loss of innocence, loss of a sense of peace, loss of faith perhaps, loss of what could have been.

Those first days, weeks and months, even years can be a dark place, a lonely place, a frightening place. We gathered here today know all about those days. We recognize the weariness of those days, the longing for happier times, for joy. But we can feel robbed of turning our minds to the future when our hearts are in the past. Frozen in time, when the clocks stood still and we laid our babies to rest. The thought of turning forward, to hope, to plan, can feel like turning our backs on our babies, leaving them there as we move on. But I want to say to you today this is not true. We carry our babies in our hearts with us into the future. They are ever present, as we remember and honour them. Their future is with us and we must have a future.

When you lose a baby you do not lose the right to happiness, joy, purpose or fulfillment. Your future does not have to be ruined by your past even if your present still hurts like hell.

It is a truth for all of us here today that we can still go to lead joyful, happy, purposeful and fulfilled lives. It will take time and we survivors of baby loss will feel like it’s a fight for joy after loss. But it is possible.

I want to make you a promise today, wherever you are in your journey of grief, however long ago you lost your baby, you will find happiness and joy again. You will find hope. Fragile, wisp in the wind hope that will become stronger and clearer until you can grab hold of it to wear as armour as you forge ahead, your baby in your heart, to dare to hope for better days, a family, life again, a new normal.

#Wave of light

In the rich tapestry of life there is sadness and there is joy, there is anger, regret, excitement, anticipation. They all go hand in hand but for us, we can feel heavy and full with these emotions, thoughts and feelings.

I feel I’ve felt that full spectrum of those emotions, you see I’m now a mum looking after 2 children. Florence is only 5 months old, Poppy is nearly 5, and my oldest Evelyn would have been turning 6 at the end of this month had she lived. I’m like every other parent in the sense that I have children that I’m actively caring for and yet I am not like them. I am alone, separate, different, changed. I am a parent of a baby who died. Who has seen things, experienced and felt things, gone through things that most will never know.

So one of my fights is the joy of life with children, just as I fight to minimize the sadness. And even for parents like us there is joy to be had – not that I would have believed it for a long time after Evelyn’s death. The bittersweet quality of our lives is ever present. To begin with more bitter than sweet and we have to fight to swing that pendulum further away from the bitter and more towards the sweet. And what a fight it is. When you have had thoughts of ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save you’ about your own child everything else can pale into insignificance. But there is still joy to be had like the wonder of nature, a rowdy football match, time with friends, a favorite film watched on repeat or a personal best at the gym; we don’t want to be robbed of that too, to loose that too.

Also I think some of being a parent after loss is having to fight for the right be a ‘normal’ parent who is tested and gets tired and gets annoyed at their children and who gets down from time to time from the daily grind of family life. It can feel complicated when you are faced with the normal challenges of parenthood when you’ve lost a baby.

For me, honesty time, I’m finding it hard having a 5 month old and a 4 year old, juggling their different needs, lack of sleep or time for myself, worrying I’m doing a good job. But for me, it’s really hard to admit to myself that I’m finding it hard. Harder to admit to others that I’m finding it hard and hardest of all to admit to you fine folk that I find it hard.

You see I don’t want to appear in any way to be ungrateful for having these children with me. I know how lucky I am to be doing this at all. I know how I longed to be looking after a baby after I lost Evelyn. I would have given anything to be up all night with a baby crying. And yet I’m finding it hard. I found our recent holiday hard – juggling a beach day with heat and a very fussy baby who wouldn’t feed well and a four year old who wanted to go rock pool exploring and got grumpy with tiredness and hunger.

But all this can reside side by side – being grateful to be a parent but finding the challenge of it difficult. Feeling excruciatingly sad that our baby died but also fantastically happy and joyful at a first word, first day of school, first dance. All this is life, real life. It’s ok to feel overwhelmed by the very thing you longed for. It’s ok to laugh and feel joy even though you lost your baby. It’s ok to embrace life and look to the future. Take you babies, nestle them safe in your hearts and look to the future and see what wonderful things come of it. We all stand together, bravely piecing our lives back together, we understand our loss, we understand our fight for joy.

Until next time, do what you can to find your smile

x

 

And then there was three! Learning to trust again

We are proud to announce the safe arrival of Florence Iris Eliza Berry, born 4th May 2017. She is perfect and we are so in love with our tiny bundle of joy!

Having taken a break from my blog to have another baby I wanted to fill you in on the last year. I decided that rather than throw myself into blogging while pregnant I would focus on just living it. Life is busy when you’re increasingly pregnant with a nearly full-time job and a four year old; however now the time has come to talk some more.

It was not an easy decision to get pregnant again. I had endured a very difficult pregnancy with Poppy in a time of immense anxiety and stress so I wasn’t in any hurry to go back there. But the truth I started to understand was that I could not go back to that time. I could only go forward and carve a new pregnancy which, although deeply informed by my previous experiences, would be new and special in its own right. I had done so much grief work and physio that my mind and body were not going to be in any better shape for the journey ahead so we took the plunge down the rabbit hole once more.

On the whole the pregnancy was smooth and I was surprised at how little anxiety I felt compared to Poppy’s pregnancy. It seems the intervening years had helped me regain some sense of calm in the sea of fear and risk that I now see as a normal part of having children. Sadly for me having a baby is not a purely joyful time, it brings up memories, regrets, sadnesses and pain that I have to deal with anew. The end of the pregnancy did have a big challenge in the form of gestational diabetes which was a real curved ball for me and made me feel like I would not ever have a stress-free or pain-free time having children… unfortunately I was proved right with Florence’s delivery.

I have to have c-sections now – a legacy of losing Evelyn to shoulder dystocia. I could give birth naturally but the anxiety of the risk of it happening again would be prohibitive so major abdominal surgery it is. I was so afraid of the spinal procedure to get you ready for having the baby and sadly it was horrible – they took 5 attempts to get the spinal block in, we were one more failed attempt from me having to have a general and not see her being born. They final got it in and I was able to hear to most beautiful sound in the world – the cry of my new baby daughter bellowing out across the room as she took her first gulps of air and glimpsed through tiny eyes her mummy and daddy. It was magical and amazing and everything I’d hoped for. She was mine, we had done it. I’d grown a human and kept her safe and alive, who was now in my arms weeing on me! #Motherhoodgoals

However, I then felt pain that couldn’t be controlled and I was forced to have a general the finish the c-section. This had several consequences for me. It meant I came round hours later in excruciating pain, barely able to acknowledge my baby let alone care for her or feed her. The next day I contracted two very severe and painful complications, which rendered me in so much pain that I couldn’t talk or move, oh or care for my baby. Finally, I was treated poorly by the staff on a busy night shift who didn’t diagnose me for hours, got me high on morphine but didn’t address my complications and separated me from my baby who I couldn’t look after anyway. My husband had to care for her while I writhed around in pain for hours until finally everything was brought under control 30 hours after the birth of my daughter. My care once I was brought back up to my own room which we had to beg for was fantastic but up until then the combination of pain and poor care was horrific.

All of this has left me with more feelings of anger, hurt, sadness and failure that I really wanted to avoid with my last foray into having children.

I don’t think I’ve fully processed what I think and feel about it all but it does give me a heavy heart that for me it seems in different ways having children has been quite frankly shit. Don’t get me wrong, I love Evelyn, Poppy and Florence with all my heart but when your pregnancies and births read like a horror story of death, anxiety, missed precious time, oh… and lot and lots of pain with them all, forgive me when I don’t gush about it. I’ve noticed I don’t even refer to Florence’s arrival as her birth – I call it her delivery. I can’t safely birth my children so I have to defer to medical professionals to remove them from me. I know I need to change this view as it robs me of the right to say I gave birth to my children but it’s very difficult for me to conquer.

This brings me to the idea of trust. We trust in ‘mother nature’, whoever this chick is, to guide our bodies through pregnancy and childbirth, and most of the time this works. Our bodies instinctively know what to do and hormones – the amazing and powerful chemicals that course through our veins – turn cells into a baby and helped our bodies birth that baby, giving life.

But for me I lost trust in my body when Evelyn died. The process of her being born is what killed her – how can that be? She was just trying to be born like everyone else and yet in trying to start her life, it ended.

For mothers like me, your baby lived in your body, grew and formed. If you had a pregnancy loss it means the baby probably died in your body too. It’s hard to trust your body again in any way when it was supposed to produce and protect life and instead it was where death occurred or where a traumatic birth led to death. How many deaths of a loved one occur in your own body? What a bizarre and life-altering experience to go through.

What I want to say to myself and to any other mothers out there, like me, struggling with traumatic births and neonatal death, stillbirths, pregnancy loss, and difficult births where the baby lived, is this:

Please know that your body wanted this for you too. She was rooting for you, hoping with you and doing everything she knew how to do to protect this baby with you. She grieves too. It is not your fault. Do not turn your anger and pain inward to punish yourselves, despite the temptation. We mothers, strong and courageous, can destroy ourselves with the strength of our belief that the buck stops with us; if no other cause is found then it remains as our fault our baby died or had a traumatic birth. Let us turn our self-inflicted conviction from a life sentence of failure and guilt to a life-long journey of acceptance that we are not to blame.

So as I look forward now to family life with two children here to care for and one to remember, I need to heed my own words and internalise what I find so hard – my mental wellbeing is paramount to my own purpose, my children’s and my family’s. Ultimately, it does not do to dwell on how they entered this world but that they did at all and they are here with us in spirit or in body. There is a time to think on it and process, grieve and be in the depth of our sorrow and there is a time for joy and celebration, gratefulness and forgiveness of apparent failure. Maybe one day I can write that I have achieved this state of mind, but I think the reality is that I will strive each day to make the choice on how to spend my time either grieving, laughing, quiet reflection or loud joy.

 

Until next time, do what you can to find your smile

xx

Mother’s Day – 5 things to get you through

Today is Mother’s Day, a day when the focus is rightly on us mums. A day when we hear how much we are loved and appreciated by our children, a day for smiles and lots of love. The tender moments of watching your children express their love for you is so heart-warming and priceless, but what about mummies like me where there’s someone missing?

I’m fortunate to have a second child so I still get my fix of scrummy cuddles, cute slobbery kisses and breakfast in bed – which I have to share with said child because she’s a hobbit and needs 4 breakfasts and couldn’t bear to watch me eat something in peace and by myself.

But as I sit up in bed to be presented with my lovely card and lovingly prepared food there’s a sadness that lingers, dwells in the background, mixes with the air into a bittersweet perfume. ‘There should be two little girls with me now’ float around me dripping with my tears as I smile at my family trying and succeeding to make me know how proud they are of me.

Part of me can’t let the sadness wash over me, can’t tap into the grief to let it out and ease the pressure for a bit. I want to be normal today! I want to just be happy and smothered in love today. I don’t want to be sad and angry about what life has dealt me and robbed me of… but how to I do that without pretending Evie didn’t exist or denying that however I dress it up today is hard because I have to stare in the face the fact that one of my children has died?

1. Be kind to yourself. Take things slow today and at your own pace. If you’re loss is recent then today is going to be horrible – there’s no other way of saying it. But today will pass, you will survive it and you will get through this time. For those of us a little further down the line and who have other children then it’s a mixed one -the bittersweet joy of having someone calling you mummy and saying how much they love you but the shadow of what would have been haunts the day. Don’t criticise yourself and feel guilty for feeling happy or despair for feeling deeply sad. Try to think about how you are feeling today and think what if my best friend said these things? What would I say to comfort her? Then try to say it to yourself.
2. Do what feels right, not what you ‘should’ do. There’s so much hype around today – expectations society, the media and marketing put on us on how this day should look. An Instagram picture-perfect Mother’s day is unobtainable for most families let alone a family that has suffered a devastating loss. The tea spills, the kids scream and fight and the beautiful Sunday lunch at local restaurant experience has only served as a powerful contraceptive to everyone else in the vicinity. There’s no ‘right’ way to celebrate being a mum; if you want to do it quietly then do it! You want to shout from the roof tops about your children – all of your children, then do it! Putting extra pressure on yourself to act/perform a certain way when you are already in an emotional place just makes today a day to dread.
3. Express yourself. If at all possible share how you are feeling with your partner, mum, friend – anyone who is close to you. Just saying it how it is can be very freeing, especially on a day like today where there’s lots of mixed emotions. They say a problem shared is a problem halved. Well grief isn’t a ‘problem’ but it does weigh us down, so sharing it with someone does lighten the load for a while – which can’t be a bad thing. Expressing how you really feel can be very freeing – you don;t have to put that smile mask on and pretend everything’s fine when it’s not. Try and see what happens!
4. Be in the moment. When you lose a baby you feel like you will never smile again. Never laugh, feel joy, feel ok and feel happy. And for a time that may be true but as you get more accustomed to your grief then you realise that you can feel those wonderful emotions alongside your sadness. It’s a weird balance but you get used to it bit by bit. Something that my Evie has taught me is to be in the moment. To treasure the precious times for what they are. Not letting my mind be distracted, learning to turn off the internal monologue that continually says – this is sad, why me?, why is vie not here, this is horrible, I want to be normal, this is sad, why me? – you get the point. By tuning into what’s happening right now in front of you means you can truly experience life not watch it. In a way, see it that you don’t want to waste the life you’ve been given that was denied to your baby. Revel in the moment and see what beauty comes of it.
5. Feel the love. You are a brilliant mum!!! Feel it, let yourself feel it and let yourself be pampered and doted on for the day! If you are anything like me you spend most of your time flitting between thinking you are a horrible mum for wanting to put nail varnish on, by yourself, let it dry and it not smudge; and then thinking you are not doing a good enough job because the other day your child picked their nose, you yelled, they cried and the neighbour you were talking to slinked back to their house, eyes widening with what looked suspiciously like judgment. But you know, all of that doesn’t leave much space for thinking and feeling that – you know what?… despite it all I’m doing my best, my child is loved and that’s enough – that’s more than enough. So FEEL THE LOVE TODAY. You’ve earned it!

Until next time do what it takes to find your smile again.

Lydia

x

 

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Listening is loving

 

Maybe I’ve been afraid of life and through Evie’s death I’m learning to live it.

Those who fear death, fear life

Consequences of losing a child – have I changed?

This is something I got obsessed with – how I’d changed or not because of what happened was a constant newsreel in my head. Every decision about jobs, reactions to family and in particular the parenting of my second daughter has been scrutinised as part of my ritual need to see proof of the awful consequences of Evie dying.

Something that unfolds over time are the multitude of consequences of losing my first child. Many are obvious but many more are often only really apparent as the months and years march on.

• Having our second daughter so soon after our first
• Having a c-section with our second pregnancy rather than natural
• Withdrawing from our social lives
• Going on antidepressants
• Countless sleepless nights
• A general  feeling of “everything is out to get me” and anxiety

These are some of the consequences of losing Evie. They are a mixture of negative, necessary and inevitable consequences of such a bereavement and not all of them are long-lasting or permanent, I can see that now. It’s the permanent ones that interest me the most, as they will be the permanent mark on my life that show how I’ve altered as a result of losing my first baby.

I do feel at times like I’m playing make-believe

I do feel at times like I’m playing make-believe, that this title of mummy is temporary and when the grown ups come back I’ll have to take off the heels that are too big and set aside the dressing up clothes of parents to rejoin the ranks of the immature. I don’t feel qualified to do this children malarkey and in some ways that is a good thing because it keeps me on my toes and fresh to adapting my parenting style to be to best I possibly can.

However I also feel like this parenting gig is temporary because I know the harsh reality of how precious life is, how short and how easily it can be lost. There is a big part of me that still thinks – “how long will I get to keep Poppy for?” “how long can the dream last?”. I still think it could all be taken away, she could die and I be back with nothing again. Just because I’ve had an awful thing happen once doesn’t mean it can’t happen again. I shouldn’t be so presumptuous to assume I can have what I want when it comes to having children. For those of us who live this reality of having our worst fear actually happen to us, we know how perpetual fear and anxiety of potential bad things happening to our children takes its toll on our souls and state of mind.

When Poppy was first-born I genuinely thought to keep her here it was my job to be close at all times and some how keep her heart pumping and her lungs breathing. It was exhausting. As the months have turned to years and she has proven she can stay alive I have slowly relaxed… slowly. I believed that if I stayed vigilant, alert and anticipated any and every potential illness, accident, bump and cough I was doing my duty to protect from harm my living child as I couldn’t with my first.

The truth is that you can never do it enough – and it doesn’t work. They still get ill, fall over, get hit by another child and bang into tables despite your best efforts. The best we can do is find a balance between our heightened sense of anxiety about our children’s health and well-being and a “normal” amount of worry. We have to tell ourselves we know the likelihood of them catching meningitis is small so don’t spend time every day worrying but make sure you know the signs. Remind ourselves we know they will very likely fall over when they are learning to walk, put pillows down, be with them and rub any bumped knees – they will be alright.

One consequence many bereavement parents find hard is that you cannot say to us: “don’t worry they will be fine, nothing is going to happen to them. This pregnancy will be fine, it’s not going to happen to you. It’s such a small statistic so don’t worry”. We have seen that the worst can happen, pregnancies can be fine and then not: we have been that statistic.We are very hard to comfort in the respect and have to manage a much bigger slice of fear than others might.

Surprisingly I believe there is one way my altered self is better now than if I hadn’t lost Evie – I do not take my second daughter for granted, not one bit. I marvel alongside her when it rains and stand awestruck at the magic of bubbles just as she does; I laugh at Bagheera’s head ringing when Baloo shouts for him at close range in the Jungle Book (a current favourite film) and learn the words to The Gruffalo’s Child slower than her sharp young mind.

I wonder at her development as the months progress and she masters the shapes and sounds of words and the art of stringing them together to be understood. Her indignation as another child pushes her and her effortless ability to forget how that felt when pushing others, both amuses and angers me as I educate her on the need to be gentle and kind. I hold close to my heart the knowledge of how fortunate I am to be doing this at all, how privileged to be responsible for bring up this beautiful child in this imperfect world.

I have a respect for my daughter that gives her a voice and right to her own feelings; I try to teach her emotional intelligence not just counting and animal noises but words like angry, sad, happy and I’m full. I love how opinionated she is and assertive, I’m excited to see how her fledgling personality and character traits will thrive and develop as she grows. I will enjoy her like I cannot enjoy my first and not get caught up on a mark on the carpet or whether the washing is put away. I will devote myself to her for both her and my own sake. I will take an interest in her in all things. I will soak her up like warm summer rays, take her in like nourishing broth and drench myself in her like an exquisite perfume.

The daughter that lived

Until she is fully grown and can possibly understand such things, I do not know if she will grasp how much she has inspired me to embrace life without Evelyn. She is my motivation to carve out the best life I can for her, myself and for my family. She makes me strive higher, work harder, moan less, understand more, and generally pushes me to achieve what I am capable of, an ability I thought I had lost. She has reignited a lust for life that I thought had been extinguished. A heavy burden indeed for such small shoulders but I hope she will understand it is more a gift she has given me purely by being here and there is nothing she must actively do that will ease my sorrows and patch me up. Her existence is enough to cheer and soothe me and I sincerely hope I do not make her feel under pressure to live up to my expectations of the “daughter that lived”.

You see these are my worries: that the ultimate consequence of Evelyn dying is a warped parenting full of pressures and expectations that are harmful or damaging to my second daughter. My sister told me that after she had her second child she realised that with your first you don’t know what you should be worried about so you worry about everything and with your second you don’t have time to worry about anything other than the stuff you know you should worry about. I can see the logic in her wisdom but for me it is not really applicable, if anything, worrying about my second supersedes my worries for my first. Nothing can hurt my first, I can do nothing more but there are many, many things that could go wrong with my second, too many possibilities for harm by others or by my hand that if I’m not careful it will paralyse me.

I remember one example of trying to balance my gratitude that Poppy is here at all and trying to be a balanced parent who doesn’t let her get away with everything. One day I shouted – yes I know it’s awful – but she was driving me mad by not listening and generally being a nuisance while I was trying to cook tea. I had banished her to the living room in a desperate attempt to continue the cooking – and an even more desperate attempt to ignore the judgement in my head that I was winning worst mum of the year hands down – when she came back in. She climbed up onto her kitchen stool, sidled up to me, leaned in and told me she loved me. In that instance my heart melted, all my frustration from the day vanished and I realised she loved me unconditionally. She didn’t care that I had been cross, she didn’t judge me or think I was a bad mother who couldn’t teach her to be a model two-year old (they exist, don’t they?); all she cared about was that I was hers, I was her mummy, that was enough.

Seeing me through her eyes was inspiring, it stopped me in my tracks and it dawned on me I needed to bank this moment in my memory for future reference when I was having a bad day and thought everything was wrong. This fleeting mystical moment would be my proof of everything that was right with me and my daughter, my ‘little treasure’ as I tenderly call her, my little beacon of light in the darkness of the past few years.

Keeping a constant check on whether my decisions, reactions, instructions and example for my living child are balanced is a tiring occupation but I do feel it has largely paid off. I do not think I am over protective above and beyond a normal parent, I think I am sufficiently laid back that she can explore and find her own way without me hovering over like a helicopter, nor do I think I stifle her or express over the top fears about the world around her (in fact sometimes Poppy having a bit more of a health fear for the world around her wouldn’t go amiss!).

SO I guess what I’m saying is that despite my tendency to doubt my own abilities and my battle for sanity since losing Evie, when I really think about it, I do believe I am doing a good job parenting my second daughter in the way I believe is right. Even saying that out loud is a huge achievement and one not lost on me.

Until next time… do what you can to find your smile

Lydia

x

My little treasure

First comes love, then comes marriage and then comes a baby in a baby carriage. Part 2

Matt and I on our wedding day, 5th December 2009

It was a glorious summer as we embraced our new-found status as expectant parents. We fell into an easy routine of me taking to my bed in the evenings in our rented terraced house in Bournville, Birmingham, and Matt studying. The previous September he had enrolled at Birmingham City University to complete a PGCE, with the view to becoming a secondary school music teacher. It would be a realisation of his dream to work in music, albeit not as a hot producer or singer/songwriter in a London studio, but it would be in the right direction and would be using his music degree more directly than his previous recruitment job.

I think we both felt quite settled in our new and emerging roles. Matt was changing career, enjoying his studies and doing extremely well despite the challenges that teenage school children create. He also made some friends that are still dear to him now, one of whom has just got married. We attended the nuptials with our second child in tow. I too was changing career – from PR to PA and from wife to mother, I was as thrilled at the text book pregnancy I was having as I was at settling into my new job – both fitted like a glove.

Arriving for the wedding

Having put our life plan into action we set about planning to move back to sleepy Chipping Norton, where I grew up. My family moved there when I was 7 and it has been a permanent fixture in my life ever since. I met Matt at the secondary school there, I had many friends still living in the area and Matt’s family lived 7 miles away in an even sleepier town called Charlbury. It was the perfect place to bring up children, a reasonably rural, small Cotswold town with both sets of grandparents on our doorstep and a comforting familiarity that would allow me to focus on learning how to raise my child. It fit the ideals we both had for our child or children to be brought up with a sense of family and place in the local community. It was in many ways an idyllic place to grow up compared to the suburbs of a big town or city we thought; as country bumpkins ourselves we had nothing to compare to apart from our time spent studying and living in Birmingham and the experience had left us cold to anonymous city living.

My parents owned a large town house in the centre of the town; it was an unusual set-up with a furniture shop at the front and the family home occupying the rest of the building above and behind it. The easiest access to our front door was through the shop which was piled high with beautifully crafted and accordingly priced oak and pine furniture, decorated with trendy shabby chic knick-knacks strategically placed to catch the eye of passing custom. The shopkeeper had run the business for many years and was a well-known, well-loved face in the local community; through the week he would host a stream of regular chats with townspeople who did not come for his wooden delights but for his delightful company. His distinctive laugh ringing out perhaps more often than his till but his popularity and solid client base kept him securely ensconced on the High Street, between two large branches of national banking chains.

When my parents found out I was pregnant and the initial excitement had been replaced by even more excited planning and organising, they agreed we could rent the apartment which was the top part of their house. It sat above the shop and looked out over the centre of the town. For a nosy-parker like myself it was heaven to sit in the large open-plan living/dining/kitchen, peer through the old windows into the bustling streets below and people watch.

The apartment was in the oldest and original part of the building which was Georgian. It had been added to over the years resulting in a rabbit warren of rooms and passages spread over 4 floors. It was quirky to say the least with charming time-worn wooden windows and archways. As a teenager it was fantastic fun to bring friends round after school and see them flounder with the layout, throwing their hands in the air declaring they were lost. I was the eldest of four children so we relished the room we had in this house compared to our previous 3 bedroom semi-detached estate house. In the town house we had the luxury of a room each and no less than three bathrooms to use between six of us. It is a house that had been moulded by us over the years through adolescence and now as I turn thirty this year it has seen the joys and heartaches of my twenties too. Our fingerprints are evident in the structural changes to the property, which allowed us to make the most of the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of the floors. In short, it was a delight to return to my family home to start my own family and thinking of the months ahead I was nothing but thankful to have my mum downstairs from me, on hand for any baby emergency.

The apartment was already being let so the soonest we could make the move was in July, I was due on November 7th, my mum’s birthday, so we had plenty of time to settle in before the arrival of bubba. The only stressful part of the move was that I couldn’t very easily commute from Chipping Norton to central Birmingham every day for the rest of my pregnancy so we had to come up with an interim solution. Matt had finished his PGCE by the summer and gained an outstanding first, I was so proud of his achievement as was he. However, the reality of finding a music teaching position in Oxfordshire or surrounding counties in what is traditionally a small department proved futile and he scampered to find a job in recruitment to ensure he could provide for wife and child. With dragging feet he found one helping people claiming job-seekers allowance find work; it was hard and largely unrewarding but it paid the bills and was stable.

With Matt settling into his new job I still needed to work until my maternity leave which started when I was 27 weeks pregnant; including unspent annual leave, it was the earliest it could start so I had to stay in Birmingham for a month while Matt lived and worked in Oxfordshire. A dear friend from my university days and her lovely husband hosted me and I was truly spoiled by their generosity throughout my stay. I had home-cooked meals and was allowed free reign on the TV channels while they went about their business in the evenings after work. My evenings were spent leisurely resting up and ended with a nightly phone call from Matt to say goodnight to me and bump.

Happily pregnant at my friend’s house in Birmingham

We’d swap stories from our day and wove our ideas for the baby room decorations and favourite baby names into such a rich tapestry it was hard to see where we ended and it began. Each time we had a thought or hope for our baby, our new life, we would delicately stitch a little more into the fabric each day. The cloth grew larger and more intricate as the months went by just as our baby developed and grew. I had a day by day pregnancy book that I poured over, in awe of the female body and what it could achieve. I hungrily read ahead wishing the time away until I could meet Bubba Berry and at the same time trying to savour every part of this fabulous process. I was, quite frankly, nauseatingly happy and content with my situation and would gladly tell anyone that would listen; indeed, if I had been asked I could have seen myself on some pregnancy advert quite blissfully demonstrating the benefits of some cream or other for mums-to-be. Yes, I was that into it.

16 weeks pregnant with my mum on my sister’s wedding day

The final few months of my pregnancy were spent answering the phones for my brother-in-law’s company and stockpiling cooked meals in preparation for a time when cooking would be the last thing on our minds and require more focus than our tired minds would allow. I absolutely embraced impending motherhood and tried to morph into a domestic, maternal goddess who knew her way round the kitchen and the cleaning equipment – and more importantly revelled in her status of home queen. I think I was trying to fit that image I’d seen promoted in TV, fiction, facebook, instagram and pinterest of the yummy mummy – informed yet fun, inventive and proud. Sadly now I do tend to feel much more of a fraud if I’m honest, perhaps I’m not so much a natural nest builder. But there we were drifting, lounging on the raft of pregnancy, floating along being carried by our optimism and anticipation, little did we know we were careering towards a waterfall of epic proportions…

Until next time… do what you can to find your smile

Lydia

x

So where did it all start? First comes love, then comes marriage and then comes a baby in a baby carriage. Part 1

So where did it all start?

Having been focused on getting my career started after leaving university and being newly married, I didn’t have much time or inclination to think about having children.

My sister had a son and being an aunty was quite enough for me.  So for someone like me that was not really inclined towards babies, this had definite contraceptive properties. I was content with my life as it was 1+1 = 2 and I was in no hurry to make it = 3.

I was still thrilled to say ‘husband’ not ‘boyfriend’ and tried to get it into conversations as often as I could. My husband (see what I did there?) Matt, and I had met at school, he was 16 and I was 17 – yes I wooed a younger man. We had been together for 7 years when we got married near our Cotswold home in a hotel. A beautiful grapevine, from which the hotel took its name, ran the length of the ceremony room where we lovingly said our vows in front of all our friends and family.

We were excited about all life had to offer and the wind felt full of potential and opportunity. Sorry that sounded a bit Jane Austen or something, but it was true. We both had new jobs – our first ‘proper’ jobs – and we were using all our energy to navigate the choppy waters of the ‘world of work’. I found it hard not to take everything personally and would often get my knickers in a twist about small and sometimes insignificant episodes at work. The idea that I had done something wrong or didn’t understand something was clearly shameful and obviously any criticism was tantamount to a dismissal and would surely indicate my last day in the job. (oh my stupid brain!)

My perfectionism frequently got the better of me in those first few year of work, but now I must say that with my new perspective on what really matters I am somewhat more relaxed about work. While still seeing it as important (clearly) I can just separate myself from it better and be more matter of fact about the task in hand. Any way back to neurotic Lydia… I loved being a working gal with my cute office clothes and heels, going to after-work events and mingling, I mean networking, with other young professionals. It suited my love of conversation and mildly flirtatious nature, I thought I’d made a grand choice in PR as a career and enjoyed the writing challenges it gave me. So we were two Oxfordshire newly-weds living in Birmingham making our first forays into work, owning a car and generally doing grown up stuff.

So far so good.

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Baby in a baby carriage

In the summer before we had our first foray into parenthood, we decided that it was a journey we wanted to undertake.

I was unhappy in my PR job (shock I know) and wanted a change. Living in Birmingham meant we missed our families in Oxfordshire so with a little one on the way moving back home felt right. It was the next chapter and we were excited and giddy at the thought.

We were blissfully naïve to the consequences of our innocent choice to start a family. I had spent my youth taking every precaution not to get pregnant and surely now we had made the decision to have a baby it would happen very quickly, wasn’t that how it worked? I’m sure this notion of getting pregnant being easy came from secondary school where us girls were taught that if you did not actively prevent pregnancy it would definitely happen. So now as a responsible adult it surely couldn’t be simpler, you chose to start a family and it happened.

For us, thank goodness, it was rather simple; it took 6 months to conceive each of our girls. However, I must at this point just say that since losing Evie we have meet many people who have lost their babies, some of whom getting pregnant in itself was a cause of grief. It has taught me that having children is not a right; it is not deserved by some and not by others, the biological mysteries of who can and cannot is beyond all of us, in spite of scientific advances.

So we put our plan into action and life become fuller; indeed, I became increasingly large with expectation literally and figuratively. I had a new job as a PA and found out I was pregnant the week after joining the company – not ideal but I embraced the change in pace and growing belly. I was nauseous for 3 months straight and only emerged from tiredness and the toilet bowl at around 14 weeks, I was round but not obviously pregnant and I felt that cliché glow of a mum-to-be. I really did feel I was carrying a VIP, well a VILP – very important little person – and I proudly stroked my tummy, discussing the latest pregnancy factoid I’d learnt as if I alone had discovered the miracle of childbearing and as a leading expert was duty bound to share the secrets.

I realise now that I approached this pregnancy – my first – as if it were a module at university. I studied hard and felt calm and confident, reassured by my knowledge of what was happening to my body. I had mastered the process and therefore was in control of it. I was convinced knowing the theory was enough to pass the practical with flying colours. I felt entitled to this little baby, it was mine and it was an absolute certainty that I would meet them and look after them in 9 months time. Pre- and post natal issues and labour difficulties were for other people; faceless people I didn’t know who lived far away. They were not for the likes of me – (special people who get what they want, perfectly as they planned it). Oh how that thought makes me chuckle now, chuckle in a 1950s cartoon villain kind of way that is.

To be continued…

Until next time, do what you can to find your smile.

Lydia

x

You were mine

We spent so many happy hours choosing our daughter’s name and it feels so unfair to not be able to say her name every day, all day as we would if she were here. In these pages I have used her name liberally – Evelyn, Evie, to try to even the score, bump up the number of times her precious name is mentioned. I like to think that every time someone reads her name here it is another brick in her memorial, another link to this world, something to root her here.

To help me make her real in the months after she died, to tell myself she was here and she was mine, I wrote down everything I could think of that made her exist. I’d like to share my list with you:

Evie – the facts that make you real

1. You lived for 38 week and 3 days inside me and 55 minutes in the world.
2. You liked to kick every evening when daddy was home from work. But every time daddy tried to have a feel you’d stop! But daddy did feel you lots of times too.
3. You liked music, daddy would play Coldplay’s ‘fix you’ and you would try to kick the phone away.
4. In your 20 week scan picture you wouldn’t show us your face, you peered over your shoulder like a Hollywood movie star denying your fans a picture.
5. You didn’t cause much discomfort to mummy, other than your feet in my ribs on the right-hand side!
6. You always stayed in a good place for labour in the final few weeks.
7. You grew really well and were a good weight – 7lbs 8oz.
8. You had beautiful long limbs and big feet!
9. You have the colour of daddy’s hair and my waviness.
10. You have the shape of daddy’s eyes and ears.
11. You have mummy’s nose, cheekbones and chin.
12. You were cold and limp.
13. You were injured on your head and bruised on your nose.
14. You were stuck too long and didn’t get oxygen.
15. You never opened your eyes.
16. You never cried.
17. You didn’t see your mummy or daddy.
18. You died in a hospital 20 miles from home.
19. You never saw your home, your bedroom, your clothes and toys.
20. You aren’t here now.
21. You are buried under a beautiful garden.

I also wrote down everything that made me really her mum. This was particularly important before we had our second daughter as I was a childless parent until 14 months later we plunged once again into parenthood. Again I’d like to share it:

How am I a Parent?

• I love Evie with my whole being, unconditionally, an all-consuming love of a mum
• I gave birth to Evie, let them do what they needed to get her out no matter what the cost to myself.
• I carried her for 38 weeks and 3 days. Nurturing her, talking, singing to her.
• I passed our love of music to her because she would kick when she heard certain songs.
• I felt her kicks and moved her around so I could be more comfy.
• I bought Evie everything she needed to live comfortably with us.
• We named you Evelyn Kay Rose –  you are named after your two grandmas – each of your middle names.
• I had hopes and dreams for Evie, what she would become.
• I had hopes and dreams of what we would do together as a family.
• I thought about how I would raise Evie
• I hoped this journey to bring a new life into this world would make us better people
• I wanted to devote myself to Evie and what she wanted and needed.
• I wanted a family and family life.
• I planned to have a baby, I was so happy to be having a girl – I knew we were having a girl.
• We keep her memory alive through donations, Evie’s garden and displaying her pictures.

And now…

• We talk about Evie to our second daughter Poppy. She knows your picture and helps us take care of your garden – she eats the strawberries we grow there!

Evie and Poppy – my precious girls x

Until next time, do what you can to find your smile again.

Lydia

x

The pursuit of Happiness: Grievers guide

When we have such a enormous dollop of grief to deal with it can often feel like you will never be happy again – never see the silly side of life or be able to smile and seem carefree. For a while this may indeed be true, but you have to cling onto the hope that you will, one day, feel better and you will be able to smile again and enjoy life – this new life.

But getting back to when things are much harder… Being and feeling happy when you also feel so sad is intolerable. Your mind cannot compute how you can hold such despair, sadness, anger and hopelessness in one hand and laugh or feel joy in the other. It is a skill in its own right. Never before (potentially) have we had to do this – carry the weight of grief and continue with our every day lives where funny things happen, joy is given by one of your living children or a work colleague or something on the tv. Some of the main questions we have are:

• How can I laugh when my baby has died?
• Does this mean I don’t care about my baby?
• Will other people think I don’t care or have ‘gotten over it’?
• How can I be a good parent/human being if I laugh when something so tragic has happened?

And the answers are:

• Because it was funny! You have a sense of humour that has not been lost in the fire (as it were) you are still you and certain things will make you laugh. It’s good to laugh – makes you feel good and gets the endorphins coursing through our veins – much needed at times of deep sorrow.
• MOST IMPORTANTLY you are NOT laughing at the fact your baby died. and no one will think you are; it is a given that you care deeply for your baby. Laughing at something and your baby dying are separate things and this will take time to get used to, you will get there. You can see it in terms of your baby would want you to feel joy – like they felt when they were with you, warm, no cares in the world – loved. They would want that for you and you should want that for yourself.
• OK firstly – who care what anyone else thinks? They haven’t got a clue what you are going through and have no right to judge, so screw them. If they are true friends they will not judge you but support you (and probably laugh along with you). But, if you’re like me… I do care what other people think about my love for Evie. I can’t demonstrate it like I can for my other daughter – it is evident I love her by the way I care for her every day. But with Evie how can I show my love? Well by grieving – crying alot, declaring my love for her on facebook, in texts, on my blog, helping other to come to terms with their own grief…but mainly it is hidden. It’s in my heart and it resides in a very personal and private space. And that can be hurtful and upsetting that we cannot outwardly demonstrate our love for our baby without it being a ‘down’ emotion – sadness/anger/despair/depression. Our great challenge as bereaved parents it to demonstrate our love in positive ways – ideas on a postcard please!
• COMPASSION – is the buzzword here. Ask yourself, what will it achieve if I beat myself up about laughing or feeling happy? It will make you feel guilty, low, worthless and undermine your self-esteem – and what’s the good in that? Be kind to yourself and forgive any ‘sins’ as you might see them. Your worth as a human and as a parent are NOT linked to whether you laugh of not, how well you cope with your loss and how well you outwardly or inwardly grieve your baby.

The pursuit of happiness starts from the inside out.

Perhaps when you start to emerge from the fog of grief (this can be a different length of time for each of us) and you can say you feel a little more clear-headed and ‘normal’ then it may be time to ask yourself this question:

Who is in charge of my happiness?

The perhaps not so obvious answer is: YOU.

You are in charge of your own happiness

This is something I find very difficult to fathom. I think for a few years I wanted someone else to take responsibility for it – it was too hard. By deciding it was my family, my husband, my friends’ job to make me happy it meant I could blame someone else when I was not happy or content, thin enough, successful enough. To admit and accept I am my own master of my own happiness is a whole lot of grown up that I’m not sure I’m ready for.

I think this is especially pertinent to bereaved parents of babies. We rail at the pure injustice of what has happen – and someone has to pay! Sometimes we direct our focus on the NHS, care givers, friends who weren’t ‘there’ for us, parents who didn’t understand us or said the wrong things, partners who didn’t get our demonstrations of grief, and if in doubt you always focus blame on yourself.

This is sometimes a very necessary short-term phase that we have to go to – we are dealing with some big stuff here and it takes time to work it out – how do I function and lead a fulfilling life after the death of my baby? This is no small question.

The problem arises when this short-term strategy becomes habit and part of your ‘new normal’ (I’ll talk about this in another post). We can actually start to become the main obstacle in our own happiness which is good for no-one.

There’s a great article on Psychology Today which talks about why we don’t let ourselves be happy. They list 5 main reasons:

1. It disrupts our sense of identity
2. It challenges our defences
3. It causes us anxiety
4. It stirs up guilt
5. It forces us to face pain

Each one on the list resonates with me and here’s how:

1. Having Evie and my grief for her death is a part of my identity now. Being Evie’s mummy is very positive and should be part of who I am now but the mechanisms and strategies I developed to help me grieve may have welded to me and harming rather than helping me. But they feel like they are a part of who I am and I feel like my identity has been battered over the last few years – who am I now? I a huge question I’ve asked myself (I’ll talk about that in another blog post). So it feels scary to shrug off what appears to be a part of me.
2. I had developed defences through my life to cope with situations and people, which is entirely normal. Losing Evie made those defences kick-in in the extreme – my need for control and protecting my own vulnerability from people who may say something that upsets me. But these defences could now be becoming detrimental to my happiness rather than helping me survive…something to think about.
3. If I let go and enjoy myself, it feels like I’m leaving myself more vulnerable to hurt, loss, and disappointment. If I have more happiness because I’m more fulfilled then I have more to lose. It’s very scary when you have already lost so much.
4. Feeling happy now can make me feel guilty that I’m not where I was 2/3 years ago. If I cling to those sad times I feel I’m closer to Evie, in those sad times I was closer to her in chronological time but I need to get my head around being close to her now in other ways. It’s difficult to see the time your baby was physically here and with you slipping away – you feel distant from them. I do still feel close to her but just not in time but that’s ok, just.
5. Being happy now in the present is such a contrast to the sorrow I felt in the first months and year when Evie died that actually feeling an extreme high of happiness can be a stark contrast to that sad time and make me feel upset. It’s upsetting to remember when I was so sad and hopeless and to see the difference in me now can actually be really hard to see. As the article infers feeling more of anything means you feel everything more. You feel your pain of loss but you can also feel joy; trying to block out pain blocks out all emotions not just to difficult ones. I want to try and be brave to face my pain so I can feel joy too. Now what tends to often happen is we have a lovely day with Poppy and family and then in the evening I may have a cry because it emphasises that Evie wasn’t there to share it and I wasn’t able to enjoy these moments with her – it still is heartbreaking.

For the full article please read: Psychology Today: 5 reasons we don’t let ourselves be happy

As ever I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic and find out how you’ve deal with these issues, please ‘like’ and comment.

Until next time, do what you can to find your smile again

Lydia

x

And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to… how to stayed married when you lose a baby

Loosing a baby is a very harsh lesson in perspective. It really levels the playing field in terms of what is important and what just isn’t. When you can say ‘well it’s not as bad as my baby dying’ then everything falls into place…or does it?

I know I’ve just said that experiencing such a tragedy makes you really not sweat the small stuff but I must admit there were many times when the little things were all I could think of.

My pregnancy with my second daughter was a contradiction of not being able to see anything but the bigger picture and focusing on tiny annoyances.

The pregnancy was tough for many reasons:

• my body had not recovered from the deliver of Evie and getting pregnant only six months after meant the hormones coursing through my veins played havoc on my stretching muscles.
• It was a constant battle to keep me mobile and independent. By the time I got to 19 weeks I started having physio at the same hospital where Evie died. The almost weekly trips to have painful muscle massage to help me walk for the rest of the week were exhausting.
• Trying to control my anxiety was also a constant battle. Managing my fear of losing this baby and trying to function threatened to bubble up and drown me at any moment.
• I was trying to hold down the new job I had got at the University of Oxford, do my share of the housework, cooking, oh and appear sane and not let on that I was going mad.

SO… quite a list really!

I often found the enormity of the ‘big picture’ just too damn scary, the realities of death and the genuine possibility of babies dying was overwhelming. So in a way the ‘little things’, like whether my blessed husband had put the towels back properly in the bathroom, became much more of a priority. It was easier to be swept up into petty arguments to distract from the grim reaper permanently sat in the corner of the room.

I’m sure you’ll agree the whys and the wherefores of how much cleaning each person has done that week are insignificant in the scheme of things, especially when compared to – is this as bad as Evie dying? Honestly though, I really do think it morphed into a competition between my husband and I to see who could be the most tired or hard done by. We irritated each other frequently in our independent struggles to keep going. I think I nearly drove my other half mad by rearranging the fresh washing he had spent half an hour laying out. This was exacerbated because increasingly he had to take on the lion’s share of household tasks as I drew nearer my due date. He also had to navigate my Jekyll and Hyde mood swings which would give UN Peace Keepers a run for their money – (I blame the hormones, oh and the huge stress I was under). So part diplomat, part housemaid = being my husband in 2012, and was a feat worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize – God bless my husband.

People don’t talk about the strain losing a baby puts on a healthy relationship

It was a very intense time with reality and our senses in a constantly heightened state. Our nerves were raw and frazzled and we had little reserves or resources to cope with the little curved balls life always throws at you (parking tickets, dropped jars of jam, bad driving of others – you get the picture). It felt more like a haunted house ride with one fright or scare after another or Total Wipeout (naff TV show with obstacles presented by Richard Hammond). Life had gone from feeling reasonably easy and straightforward – a ramble through country lanes if you will – to full on attempting to summit Mount Everest.

Now for the pseudo – psychology – wisdom according to me…

Within a healthy relationship there is a normal ebb and flow where each person needs to take from the other and both are happy to give to the other. This flow of support from one to the other and back again can be for small and big things, for example:

1. Man reassuring woman regularly that she’s beautiful no matter her size and woman supporting man through applying for a new job.
2. Woman putting man’s clothes away that have been there all week and man taking out the bins weekly.

In scenario 1. He may be annoyed that she doesn’t seem to hear him when he tells her she’s gorgeous but he loves her so will tell her as many times as she needs. She knows he’s shy about talking about himself and his achievements but he wants the job so she’ll talk interview tips with him and say how proud she is of him until he feels ready for it.

In scenario 2. Both parties are compromising to help the other and get the chores done. She doesn’t like doing the smelly kitchen bin so he does it. He’s often deals with work calls in the evening so doesn’t get chance to tidy and she is happy to help keep the bedroom tidy for both their ease.

In both scenarios neither partner feels compromised and both feel their efforts are appreciated, recognised and add to the overall well being of the household. Crucially neither feel taken for granted.

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When a baby dies there are huge discrepancies between what each person needs at any one time in order to survive the day, moreover asking for what you need becomes ten million times harder.

So you’ve got two people who were very happy, felt equal and valued in their relationship who experience a trauma that tears at the very fabric of that well stitched union. Both want to take support from the other without being able to return the favour – something’s got to give.

Relationships can feel like a tug of war

For us, initially I was very needy both physically and emotionally. I was a support leech; you would offer it, I’d take it, and I wouldn’t be able to give you anything in return. But perhaps more significantly, after the first 2 years when my physical needs lessened, I still felt the dire need for emotional support and that it was my husband’s job to give it to me. I didn’t realise it but I believed he owed me. He owed me for suffering the physical trauma of our daughter’s birth and getting off without a visible scratch. I weighed our suffering and ruled my was more/worse and so he had to make up for this huge injustice and inequality of pain.

In essence my daughter’s death created an imbalance between us – a black hole that threatened to drag us down. There isn’t a statistic on how many relationships in the UK breakdown after the loss of a baby but it doesn’t surprise me. The strain can be intolerable at times and take you to breaking point. The long-term effect of me believing that my husband had the responsibility of making me feel better about what happened could easily have spelled disaster but it is not all doom and gloom.

Grace – sometimes it’s all you can have for yourself, your partner, your relationship.

This is what I think grace means:

Grace is the free and unlimited favour given to someone regardless of whether you feel they deserve it. It means forgiving and understanding someone when they cannot necessarily see the consequences of their own words and actions on you or others. You can also demonstrate grace towards yourself.

I truly believe this is what saved us – grace.

We needed it in spades but by hanging on in there when it was really tough, by remembering why we ever loved each other and holding on to the belief that we were stronger than this trauma helped us muddle through the darkest time of our lives and our relationship. We did not want our daughter’s death to come between us and destroy all the good between us.

The most difficult thing to tolerate is each person grieving differently and not understanding the other person’s demonstrations of grief. This is where grace can be a light in a dark place.

If you are reading this and feel you can relate to anything I have said, remember this:

You are not alone in your grief, you will survive this time, you only have to be good enough and try your best – it is all anyone can ask of us and the most we can asked of ourselves.

Relationships are so private and unique to each pair of individuals but I wanted to share what needs to be talked about so we can support each and not feel alone. I’d love to hear your comments if you feel the same.

Until next time, do what you can to find your smile.

Lydia

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