Claire: Right Where I Am 2016: 4 years 3 months

Since losing Laura I've gone on to have twin boys who are now 2 and a half years old. They fill my days, often with tantrums and demands but just as often with laughter and squeals of fun. I talk to them about their older sister, although I know it will be years yet before they understand. They know where she is though. We visit her grave around once a week, often before I take them to playgroup, as the cemetery is on the same road as the Children's Centre. They say her name as we pull into the road. They say her name when I buy flowers. This much they understand.

Laura would be the age now that I was when I started school. She would have been starting primary school this September had she lived. I cannot help but wonder how she would have felt about this. Would she have be confident like her older sister, or would she have worried about being separated from me.

There is not a day that goes by without me thinking of her. Last thing at night especially I feel the need to think of her. Sort of like a mental 'tucking in'. I know nobody thinks of her like I do. I know people actually forget that she ever existed. I've come to terms with that now. That's their problem, not mine. I was lucky enough to have her. Lucky enough to feel her moving around inside me and lucky enough to cuddle her for those first precious hours before we realised she was so desperately unwell. She has changed me without a doubt. I have no idea whether anything exists beyond this life but I am actually ok about this. What else can I be?

On the days where my twins look at me and their faces are identical to their oldest sister, I wonder what my only dark haired child would have looked like. I miss her every day. I'm grateful for having had her, for the lessons loss has taught me and I'm grateful for the friendships I've made along the way with other mums that just 'get' me.

~~~~~

You can read Claire’s previous posts here:

Right Where I Am 2014: 2 years 2 months 3 weeks
Right Where I Am 2013: 1 year 2 months 2 weeks 2 days

Claire: Right Where I Am 2014: 2 years 2 months 3 weeks

It's been 2 years, 2 months and 3 weeks since we lost Laura. My life has changed immeasurably. As I wrote my entry last year I knew I was pregnant again but daren't mention it as I felt that something bad would happen yet again. Losing a baby does that to you... it makes you feel very vulnerable, like anything could happen. But the same is true for good things, and as I write this I'm nursing one of my 6 month old twin boys. The one that reminds me so much of his two big sisters (one here, one not).

Becoming a parent again has obviously shifted my focus. With twins I'm lucky to brush my hair on a daily basis let alone do much else, but one thing I always have time for in my thoughts is Laura.

I think of her often. Every day in fact, throughout the day. When I feed my boys I watch them and feel such sadness for her. She didn't have a chance to be tickled by us, be smothered in kisses, be smiled at and cuddled, but she is adored. I'm determined to tell my boys about their other big sister.

My older daughter (as I knew she would) is the best big sister to the boys. She dotes on them. We often talk about Laura and how it would be nice if she were here too running around and playing with the babies but the reality is that if she hadn't died, these two would most probably not be here. That's hard to reconcile in my mind. I hate the thought of being without them, I love them so dearly, but I also would love to have my girl here.

After all the heartache of the past four years (losing my Mum, my Father in Law, aunts, Mother in Law & my Dad's descent into Alzheimer's as well as losing Laura) I know I'm lucky to be here. I'm lucky to have my husband & a strong marriage, to have my older daughter & most of all to have these twin boys.

It was a difficult pregnancy that so very nearly ended badly at the last hurdle so I feel truly blessed to have them. I just miss Laura though. As much as anyone thinks or hopes that I will 'move on' from grieving her, I know I won't and nor would I want to. I don't ever want to forget her or stop talking about her. She was far too precious.

When you have a rainbow baby, people are relieved for you. Some even think that it fixes the pain of grief. I could see it in peoples faces when they saw I was pregnant. These babies are not Laura's 'replacements' though. No baby will ever take her place.

2 years, 2 months and 3 weeks ago my heart was smashed apart, now it's covered in scars but beating again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You can read Claire’s post from 2013 here:

Right Where I Am 2013: 1 years 2 months 2 weeks 2 days

Claire: Right Where I Am 2013: 1 year 2 months 2 weeks 2 days

The world has moved on a quite a pace since we lost Laura. I’ve grown a lot, as has my older daughter Georgia, who in 2 months time will be a teenager. A year ago I feared that the heartache we suffered as a family when we lost Laura would mould her and shape her, but a year on I accept that it has already done this but in a positive way. As a family, we are closer than ever, stronger than ever. The tragedies Georgia has witnessed in the last few years are shaping her into the most wonderful human being (kind, considerate, loving and thoughtful).

Laura touched the lives of family and friends in her short time with us. Yet, no matter what anyone says, nobody will love her as much as I do. From the moment I knew she was inside me, I willed her to be healthy and strong, to arrive safely. Now I know that as much as I want things to happen, that’s not always possible. What I would give, to have the time over again, to hold and kiss her more than I did in the precious few hours we shared. I guess I’m beginning to accept that I can’t control this crazy universe. No matter how much bargaining I do, it won’t bring her back. No matter how much guilt I load on myself, it won’t change what happened. I’m coming to terms with being the mum of a dead baby.

Each and every day, as accepting as I’ve had to become, I mourn for Laura. I miss that I wasn’t able to care for her. I am so aware of what developmental stage she should be at, and also aware that she may not have even reached it if she had lived because of her birth problem. Every night, when I sneak a kiss from Georgia on my way to bed, I think of Laura and whisper a goodnight, I love you to her too. I mourn that Georgia could not be the wonderful big sister I know she would be.

The mum of a lost baby - it’s not a club I wanted to join, but I’m here nevertheless. In some strange, twisted way, it actually has perks. I am thankful for the friendship of the other Mums I have met that are in the same club as me. They always know what to say, they never judge and only offer support. I savour every moment I spend with Georgia. I hear the news of every safe delivery of a baby with such relief. I see the smiles of the parents of newborns and will them to realise how lucky they actually are. 8 months after losing Laura we were delighted to become pregnant again, but this happiness was short-lived as I miscarried at 8 weeks. Had that baby survived, I would be 35 weeks pregnant at the moment, but life isn’t always simple and clear cut. I know how fragile life can be. I am grateful that I was given the privilege of becoming a mother to two beautiful girls, although in the bottom of my heart, I wish that things could have been different. That I could have been talking about my two girls and seeing them both flourish and grow. I’ll never forget my lovely little Laura ❤

Claire: The Sparrow

The 4th May marks the last of the firsts for our family. The 4th May 2012 was the day we held a funeral for our baby Laura. The day for us started with hopeful thoughts of seeing our little girl once more, and ended with the utter devastation that this was it... this was the last time we would see her, stroke her beautifully silky hair or kiss her soft cheek. The last time we would feel her cold hand or gaze on her pink fingernails with wonder. It was the realisation that she had gone; that she had no life.

The days that followed the funeral were hard. We had family staying at our house, so the three of us (along with Laura’s empty cot that I hadn’t had the heart to dismantle yet), me, my husband and my older daughter Georgia were all sleeping in the same bedroom – our bedroom at the front of our house.

A few days after Laura’s funeral, I walked into the bedroom with a heavy heart and was happily surprised by a little visitor at the bedroom window. Sitting there, looking in at me was a little sparrow. It gazed at me and I gazed at it, but it didn’t fly away. It stayed there for a few minutes and then flew away to a nearby holly bush. The next time I walked into the room, there it was again... the little sparrow just sitting there looking in at me. I called Georgia to take a look and there it stayed looking in at her. My husband came to see the little sparrow and what he said surprised me. Out of the mouth of such a rational, logical, believer in science, he said, “It’s little Laura coming to say hello.”

Over the next few weeks, the sparrow appeared on almost a daily basis. We started to leave robin food out for the little bird and it chirped away and fed only centimetres away from our hands. I began to do a little research about sparrows. It turns out that our little “Laura” was actually a male house sparrow and his arrival at the window was probably his attempt to see off the little bird he saw as a rival (his own reflection in our window). Still, in my research about little sparrows I found the following tale. According to ancient Egyptians, sparrows caught the soul of a recently deceased person.

Following Laura’s death I found it hard to reconcile my previous thoughts about spirituality, luck, karma and the like to the situation we found ourselves in. How could such a cruel thing happen to an innocent little baby? How could such a bad thing happen to me when I strive to be a good person? How could any God allow this to happen? Why? I have become more like my husband in the year since Laura died. I struggle to believe that things happen for a reason. I feel more that the universe is made from chaos. I could not control what happened to Laura, so I have to stop torturing myself with these questions. And yet, despite all this, the little superstition about a little bird touched me. As if by design, the little bird came back to sit in our gutter above the windowsill on 20th April this year, the day that should have been little Laura’s first birthday. I stood and looked at it with my husband and Georgia as we prepared to visit Laura’s grave. If there is such a thing as a soul, and if the little sparrow came to let us know that Laura was still with us, then we would welcome it and smile at each appearance.

June 2013:
I just wanted to add a quick post script...
My mother-in-law died last week quite suddenly although she had a terminal illness. About 20 mins after she was buried I was back at her house preparing tea/coffee etc for the family that were coming back to her house. The front door was open and I went towards it to see if anyone was arriving yet, when I came across a little robin almost at the threshold to her kitchen (it must have hopped in around 3m to get there through the open door). It stopped, cocked it's head, looked at me and then hopped out of the front door again - really warmed my heart :)

Claire: Guilt

Yesterday I sat and chatted with a dear family friend who suffered the loss of twins more than 45 years ago. As we chatted about our losses, it occurred to me that parents of lost babies suffer from a huge amount of guilt.

We both talked about how we had, at times, questioned whether something we had done had caused the death of our babies. She told me that the day before she had given birth to her twins she had stood on a low stool while her husband pinned up a maternity dress in readiness for alteration. After her babies had died a week later, and despite not even falling or stumbling off the stool a week prior, she had wondered whether this action could have led to their premature birth. I was saddened to see her eyes well with tears as she recalled her losses all these years on.

I remember accepting gifts for my Laura before she was born and irrationally wondered after she died had I jinxed her by doing so. The weeks after she died as we packed away all the baby clothes we had prepared for her, I wondered whether we had been too sure that she would have been fine, whether we had somehow been overconfident of her arrival. Ultimately, I wondered whether, in some way, I had let her down.

My daughter Laura was born with a congenital defect that would have been caused in around week 5 of pregnancy, in all likelihood before I even knew I was pregnant. I’m not a smoker, not a heavy drinker or drug user. I eat well and am pretty healthy and I’m in a good strong and happy relationship. I’ve been assured that nothing I could have done or not done could have influenced how this defect formed. Medical professionals still don’t know why this anomaly (present in approximately 1 in every 3500 babies) happens. Yet, still I wonder whether it was something I did wrong.

We torture ourselves with guilt, possibly because we care so much about our responsibility at becoming parents. Being an older mum, I worried a lot. I worried from before I did the pregnancy test. I worried through all the horrendous sickness. I worried right up to the 12 week scan. I worried all the way through the 20 week anomaly scan (and afterwards) and right up until my daughter was found to be breech. I worried about having a C section, I worried about everything, but in the end all my worrying could not alter what eventually happened to my beautiful little baby, who died aged 2 days old on the operating table during surgery to correct her oesophageal atresia.

My husband is thankfully a very rational, practical and positive man. Without his reassurance I am sure I could easily descend into a pit of guilt, which is such an unhealthy emotion. When I begin to head down that road again he pulls me up (sometimes harshly), and reminds me that “it just happened”. I guess this is part of acceptance. I truly struggle with accepting that Laura is gone, but I have to admit that it is true. The best thing that I can do for Laura now is to talk about her as my much loved daughter and keep her memory alive.

Claire: Congratulations?

“I see you’ve had the baby” – that comment struck fear into my heart and brought a sick feeling to my stomach every time I heard it, which seemed to be more than I anticipated in the days and weeks following the loss of our little Laura.

As we exited the NICU the day after she died, the receptionist arranged to let us drive out without paying for parking with a heartfelt “don’t worry, your baby is in safe hands, I’m sure they will be fine”. It wasn’t her fault, but the comment choked me and I sobbed in the arms of my husband in the lift to the car park.

One card of congratulations had landed on our doormat, followed with an apology for it. Over the days and weeks that followed there were hundreds of sympathy cards. It was nice to see them but so sad that the death of our little baby was being acknowledged way more than her actual birth.

By far the hardest thing to deal with though, was the face to face congratulations from neighbours, acquaintances and shop assistants etc. As other parents dealing with loss have said, it’s like dropping a bomb. You’re met with glances to your missing bump, smiles and that word “congratulations”, and then you have to have that awkward re-telling of the worst thing that has ever happened to you.

The news is inevitably met with shock, dismay and at worst some of the most utterly crazy verbal diarrhoea you could ever imagine to hear (but that’s a whole other subject of its own). I’d usually end up with my arm around the person that congratulated me, comforting them as they took in the news, or saying to them “don’t worry, it’s not your fault” whilst trying to get away with some dignity intact.

Thankfully, my wonderful husband paved the way for me with a lot of people as did a lot of my wonderful friends. However, last Christmas, eight months after we lost Laura, I received a handful of cards addressed to Claire, Enda, Georgia & ? along with “congratulations” and “you must be busy with the new addition”. It’s tough. I still have to “drop the bomb” to them. You wish things were different. You wish that all those cards that lined the window cills were congratulations cards rather than sympathy ones. In the past, I’ve never thought twice about offering congratulations to someone that looked as though they’d just had their baby. However, they usually have their newborn with them as that’s normally what happens isn’t it? Only one kind lady in our local bank behaved impeccably when she asked me whether I’d had a girl or a boy. Perhaps she read it in my face, perhaps my reply of “a girl, but it’s complicated” told her all she needed to know. Whichever it was, she was so calm and quiet, apologised for asking and told me that she’d be happy to hear what happened whenever I felt ready.

Since we lost Laura, I’ve taken nothing for granted. I now know that you can go all the way through a pregnancy and still come home with no baby. I know that dreams can be shattered, that hearts can be broken and I know that sometimes “congratulations” can be both the sweetest and the cruellest word.

Claire: The Pipette in my Fridge

We moved into our new house in December 2011 in readiness for our baby who was due in April 2012. All of us were excited; husband, daughter and me full of expectation. I began to adapt to living in a house rather than a flat. It was an easy enough adjustment. The only downside was having to waddle upstairs to throw up instead of just popping into the bathroom in our flat. I’d had horrendous sickness all through this pregnancy. My first pregnancy had been bad enough when I’d thrown up for around 12 weeks. This time round, things had been even worse. I’d thrown up every day throughout the pregnancy apart from about 3 weeks in the final trimester, and I had the most awful heartburn for the final 16 weeks too. But I kept telling myself that the sickness was a good sign. It meant that the hormones were high and that meant that the baby should be strong and healthy.

When we moved house we negotiated to keep the previous owner’s white goods. Only 6 months after we moved in the fridge freezer decided to give up the ghost, and that is where the pipette comes in.

My husband and his brother removed the fridge and put a new one in its place. The only concern I had was whether my husband would think I was mad for keeping the tiny little pipette that had been in our fridge since 22nd April 2012. Thankfully, he understood, and gently placed it into the top drawer of our new fridge unseen by anyone but us.

Our beautiful baby girl Laura was born by C section on Friday 20th April, seemingly healthy. We were so delighted to have her with us, so relieved to meet her, to hear her cry. But she wasn’t as perfect as we thought. As soon as she was born I tried to breastfeed her. My older daughter had latched on and sucked for dear life only minutes after she was born, but Laura seemed to struggle. She hardly seemed to suckle and when she did, she coughed and spluttered and eventually began to have awful episodes of not breathing. The night she was born she was diagnosed with a condition called Tracheo-Oesophageal Fistula. Overnight she was transferred to a top London hospital but as I had to have a C section due to her breech presentation, I had to wait in our local hospital until the morning to get discharged (there were no beds available in the hospital Laura was transferred to).

And so began my attempts at expressing milk for my little girl. My older daughter had been an expert breast-feeder and despite having problems in the early few weeks, she took to it well and in fact refused anything other than the breast, meaning that she moved straight onto cups rather than bottles. Because of this, I had never really experimented much with expressing. Now I was faced with this as the only current option, so when a midwife at our local hospital asked me if I would prefer to move to a private room until I could be discharged, I declined thinking that hearing all the other crying babies may help me concentrate on producing some nourishment for my darling little Laura. That, and the beautiful picture of her that I had taken only hours earlier on my phone.

In between getting discharged and visiting Laura on the Saturday, I massaged and tried to express every 2-3 hours, setting the alarm on my phone so that I wouldn’t miss an attempt. Most of these attempts led to nothing but a flushed face and sore breasts, but eventually at around 1pm on Sunday 22nd April 2012 while Laura was having her corrective surgery I finally began to see small drops (small precious drops) of colostrum. I was elated. I could finally look forward to giving our little girl some nourishment and protection when she came round from her operation. I was given dozens of little pipettes and instructions on how to collect this “liquid gold” as the neonatal nurses called it. Two small pipettes with drops of my colostrum were labelled and placed carefully in the NICU fridge alongside whole bottles of milk expressed by loving mums for their poorly babies.

At 6pm on the Sunday, Laura’s operation was still ongoing. We weren’t unduly worried (not openly anyway), so I went to the expressing room and had just begun to squeeze out some drops when there was a knock on the door and I was hurried away to the consultation room to hear the words that turned my life into a spin and eventually broke my heart. Our lovely little Laura’s lung had collapsed, she had gone into cardiac arrest and the surgeons were unable to re-inflate her lung. They had tried for 45mins to resuscitate her with no success and by now her brain function would have been zero. There was no hope of a positive outcome. We were asked permission for the surgeon to stop resuscitation and were rushed off to the Surgical Theatre to receive our still warm but bruised and battered little baby only moments after her time of death had been called – 6:08pm.

We stayed with Laura for hours after she died. Some of our close family came to see her and we removed the drips and tubes, washed her and dressed her and cuddled and kissed her.

The only thing we brought home from the hospital that day along with our sadness and tears of despair was the tiny little pipette with the drop of liquid gold that now resides in the top drawer of my fridge.