Gemma: Right Where I Am 2013: 2 years

I’ve found this post harder to write than I thought I would, 2 years has been both an eternity of minutes, hours, days, weeks and months and now I am into counting years and yet at the same time it seems like such a very short time ago that they took away my hope and told me my baby had died.

In truth I’m still in mourning, the loss of my first born child and my first chance at motherhood.  I have accepted the fact that I am a different person to the one I was before Isaac died but I still feel bad; I’ll never really get over the fact that my baby died while he was supposed to be safe in my belly – I have accepted this, but it is still with me.

Where am I now? I am struggling at the moment; I’m anxious, torn, hopeful, excited, guilt ridden.

I am anxious, torn, excited and guilt ridden because I am expecting my rainbow baby. I am 22 weeks pregnant and I’m delighted to be pregnant; it has taken me longer than I hoped it would to conceive again and I thought it would be easier than it is, but I am terrified that this baby will be born sleeping too, I simply don’t think that I could survive the loss of another baby – I don’t have it in me to pull myself through another loss and so I try to enjoy being pregnant and step away from the thoughts of what could go wrong that stream through my head; I try to find hope again and sometimes I succeed. When I hope though; this brings a new raft of emotions I wasn’t prepared for – the guilt that I am pregnant again when my son is gone, I feel guilty about having another baby in case people forget about Isaac; people seem to think this makes it better and it will never make it better.

I watch my husband and possibly for the first time I can really see how much the loss has affected him – its etched on his face and yet he has never faltered when I have needed him, even now he is my rock as we get through each day at a time without our little man. I am so grateful to him, and our marriage is stronger for our loss – I’ve allowed myself to depend on him so much that I have moments of panic where I worry about something happening to him.

To be honest I am tired too, I am so tired of being strong. Over the last year so many people have told me how strong I am, and I try to explain that I am not strong, there was no choice for me but to survive – to put one foot in front of the other and try to remember how to breathe in and out, try to wait out the painful initial throws of grief and get through to where I am now – the quiet grief that slips in and grabs me when I am least prepared.

I want to tell people it’s still hard, each day is still hard – I still don’t like to speak on the phone, I don’t like to go to parties and if I don’t consciously leave the house then I’d stay at home indefinitely.

I get through on the weight of other people’s expectations of this so called strength, this is how I cope. I get up every day and go to work even though some days like today my first thoughts were of Isaac and his approaching birthday and I wanted to pull the duvet over my head and cry; I pretend that I’m OK so that my husband doesn’t worry about me, and because I know that weeping and wailing won’t bring Isaac back though I can’t say how much I wish it would.

I am still sad, I am sad every day that he isn’t here with me – I should have sticky fingers on my walls and toys littering my floor and instead I still have emptiness; I still wish I had heard him cry – just once, or had the chance to feed him but I hope that he will watch over me as I have the chance to do all of that with his brother or sister.  I sometimes feel he is with me in those quiet moments when I am alone and thinking of what might have been.

On the 18^th July I will be 2 years from the day that they told me that my baby had died and I’m still here, I’m still standing.