Lauren: Right Where I Am 2014: 3 years 8 months

Gosh has it really been that long since I held my baby girl. On some days it feels like an eternity since those long never ending days of darkness. On others it feels like yesterday, the emotions and the hurt still raw and unforgiving.

Time has moved on for me as with everyone else. I'm happily married, have two boys, a new home, a thriving business. To the outsider who didn't know me, my life would be perfect. But it isn't. The deep, bottomless hole she left behind when she left us will never be filled. Although now I'm not afraid to look at the emptiness, into the abyss and think of what life might have been. I've become stronger. Those dark weeks became dark days and finally dark hours. They never stop completely but fewer and further between. I can have a quick cry in the kitchen while DH is weeding the garden and the boys are eating their dinner and no one need know. No one notices, I wipe my face and carry on.

We've been talking about getting her a head stone. My husband made her a cross that on the morning before her funeral he went to put in place. It is starting to wear now; time marks it. I know we won't be able to for a while. I shower my boys with love and possessions knowing the only thing I will ever buy her now is her head stone so I want to do it right and not skimp.  My eldest boy will start to ask soon why we go to the cemetery. I have no idea what to say when he does.

I wonder what my daughter would have been like as a toddler. How would she have got on at nursery? The love that my three children would have shared. My youngest was the spitting image of her when he was born, maybe they would always have been alike?

I think my husband would like to try again but unless I'm convinced that he wants a baby and not just a girl I refuse to contemplate it. Some stupid individual asked that now I've had two boys, 'Am I done? Or would I like a girl?' I ALREADY HAVE A GIRL. I wanted to shriek but as this person knew I'd lost my daughter so I couldn't be bothered with her insensitivity. I am expected to 'get over it'. Some family and many friends have the attitude of 'oh well, you have the boys now'. Or worse at the time 'better luck next time' or 'at least you know you can conceive'. Like that gives a grieving mother comfort. She was supposed to be my rainbow after having 2 miscarriages the year before.  She was supposed to transform us from a couple to a family. Instead her pregnancy lasted 35 weeks and 5 days and she died because the placenta had avascular villi. Sounds so clinical. I felt so much guilt at the time. It was my placenta, the support system from me that failed her. I failed her, I should have known. I have almost come to terms with that or at least as much as I ever will.

You don't get over it, you never do. But you adapt. Almost like finding a new way to draw breath. You find ways to cope and in my case find pleasure in my boys and family. I watch my boys play and wonder what their sister would be like. There is always one missing, a child down. I could have many more children and still not be complete.

So right where I am now 3 years and 8 months later; I'm still grieving but found a new way to cope and live.

This part of a poem summed up how I will always feel and I thought I would share it.

A million times we’ve wanted you.

A million times we cried.

If love could only have saved you,

you never would have died.

It broke our hearts to lose you.

But you didn’t go alone.

For a part of us went with you…

the day God called you Home.

Goodnight and God bless my Angel x x x