Fiona: Right Where I Am 2013: 1 year 2 months 3 days

Right where I am is in the scariest place I have been for a long time.  Tomorrow I will be induced with my rainbow baby boy and the nearer that hour gets the more I miss Max.  Max was my firstborn and always will be and somehow it feels like going through birth again will be another step away from that great and terrible day when he was born, it makes me acknowledge that time doesn’t move on for him, the photograph of him in our living room will never change, we will never have to choose his school or buy him shoes.

Marking Max’s first anniversary felt like a momentous event, we let a sky lantern go at the time he was born, bought a new memory box and had a slap up meal (including a glass of champagne despite being pregnant.)  It felt so good to have a day that was all about Max and we both felt that it was a good opportunity to release our feelings about him.  It also felt like a huge milestone, we had survived a year, we had had birthdays, Christmas, our first wedding anniversary and survived.  But my grief is never far from the surface.  A couple of days ago I was taken unawares by a song that we had at his funeral, fortunately being at home by myself I could let the tears flood out and take some time to remember him.

Max he taught me so much that I am already a different parent to this little boy.  In this pregnancy I have found out everything I can about this person, his gender and had a 4D scan to see his face.  He has a name that we use all the time when we talk to him – which I do non-stop, including telling him about his big brother.  I used to think that if you didn’t know those things it wouldn’t be as bad if something went wrong, but now I regret that Max died before I knew he was a boy, before he’d heard his name and I know now that nothing could make losing a child worse so I’m enjoying all the kicks and wiggles and the way he gets cross when he has hiccups and the strange positions he always seems to be in at a scan!

I am scared about tomorrow, about today...  that something will go wrong and this baby will stop moving, I suspect that I will be scared for his whole life however long it is, but I will also be grateful, so, so grateful for every minute that he lives, and I’ll be happy, and hopeful..... hopeful that he will plan my funeral and not the other way around.  I’m determined that Max’s memory will live on and be part of family life and story, he was my firstborn and nothing will ever change that.

Fiona: 'Capture Your Grief' Photography Project

The Capture Your Grief project was started on the Carly Marie Project Heal website to raise awareness of pregnancy and infant loss during October’s month of awareness. It is also a creative tool that can by used by those going through the journey of grief after the loss of a child to express, heal and share feelings. Each day has a theme and photos are shared as privately or publicly as people want.

I decided to take part for a number of reasons… I haven’t done a creative project for a while or used the lovely camera my husband bought me for our first (and much sadder than it should have been) wedding anniversary.  I’m reaching the end of the house renovation project that has kept me busy for the last 4 months and I am reaching the 6 month anniversary of the death and birth of our firstborn son Max.  I put death and birth in that order as that was how they happened. At 39 weeks and 1 day pregnant, my baby stopped moving because his little heart had stopped beating and 3 days later I gave birth to him.

At the moment my grief is capturing me, it is enveloping me in shroud of sadness and tears that are beyond my control or management, it is leaving me crumpled and broken on a daily basis.  Capturing some of these feelings in photographs and sharing them has been a mixed experience.  It has given me the opportunity to take more time to think and look back at Max’s story.  Getting out all the cards that we received and reading again people's kind words was a powerful reminder of how loved we are, but also that I have not heard from many of those people since and that I don’t really want to.

I had very little to add to the “what not to say” day as we have been so fortunate to have such lovely people around us.  Even our neighbours have managed to say the right things at the right time.  Lighting our candles together on the 15^th October brought home to me how much closer my Mum and I have become and how much I need her. But at the project goes on I am realising how near the beginning of my grief I am.

I have so many plans of things I’d like to do to remember him but have had time to do so few.  Sadly I know that I have the rest of my life to do these things and trying to rush through them is neither going to bring him back or take me to some imaginary end of grieving.

So maybe each October I will be able to add a picture or two to the album as I make more memorials and get through more milestones, and maybe one day I’ll feel that I have captured my grief and, whilst always being part of me, it will no longer define me.