That's where my mind is.
You would think that launching my new online store this week would have been enough to keep my mind off our latest TWW, that was part of the plan afterall. Truthfully, it does work of a lot of the time but it seems like my brain then tries to make up for the lost time by cramming all the worries into one short time!
I am currently 12dpo and at this stage would be expecting a positive if I was to test. So I did. Only problem is, I think the test was broken (not just because I got a BFN!). As I opened it, it was stuck to the moisture pack and tore a little. I was also torn in the actual test section of the strip.
In truth, I only tested because I had it there. Otherwise I am more than happy to wait for the predicted arrival of AF on Wednesday. I would have liked to think we had a shot this month, everyone keeps telling me that right after a miscarriage is when you're at your most fertile, but we only managed to dtd once, the day I got my positive OPK and it was a little awkward being the first time since the miscarriage... so my hopes really aren't that high. Having said that...
It's hard not to get my hopes up. This baby would mean more to us now than ever, after all the other things that have been happening in our families lately. It would just give us something peaceful and something positive to focus on. Instead, all we have is the void left by the loss of our last baby.
I am determined to wait this one out. I don't want to know about any possible chemical pregnancies or anything like that. I'll wait till Wednesday and if AF doesn't seem to be on her way I'll wait till Thursday when hubby is home from work to test again.
Waiting, waiting...
Sunday, 26 October 2014
Wednesday, 22 October 2014
When in doubt - craft it out!
As I have written about before, one of the things I do to keep me sane is crafting. I love drawing, painting, sewing, the whole lot!
With this in mind I have finally taken the plunge and opened an Etsy store and a facebook store to go with it =]
Most of the items for sale at the moment are Christmas related, but there are a few other bits and pieces I am working on. Also wondering if I should sell any of the various baby related items I have been working on - a fresh start might do me good!
Please stop by and take a look - and let me know what you think!
With this in mind I have finally taken the plunge and opened an Etsy store and a facebook store to go with it =]
Most of the items for sale at the moment are Christmas related, but there are a few other bits and pieces I am working on. Also wondering if I should sell any of the various baby related items I have been working on - a fresh start might do me good!
Please stop by and take a look - and let me know what you think!
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| Christmas Gift Tags |
Thursday, 16 October 2014
What happened when I told my world about our loss
Yesterday, being Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, I posted about our recent miscarriage on Facebook.
I don't think I was being brave, I was very scared to do it. But I felt that surely there are other people I know suffering in silence and I wanted to reach out to them. I also wanted our little Poppy to be acknowledged.
I don't normally post a lot to Facebook, I just use it to keep in touch with family and friends overseas. My message box is more full than my wall, if you know what I mean!
I thought this would be a nice, easy and non-threatening way to deal with the topic. One of the biggest fears I have about sharing is what people will say, this way I didn't have to deal with it in person. I know it also makes people feel uncomfortable as they don't know what to say, so what could be easier than clicking the 'Like" button, right? No need to say anything at all.
Only a very few people responded. Most of these were just a click on the Like button, but a couple added a few xxx for good measure. My mum wrote a beautiful message. I got a couple of "Thinking of you" responses from a couple of people I haven't actually spoken to in years. I also got a couple of PMs from my sisters and aunty, just to check in on how we are doing (we've since had a family member pass away, so really hard at the moment). Then there was one response I have so far chosen to ignore.
It started with a "Thinking of you" and ended with sharing that this person had herself lost a baby. It was the part in the middle that upset me. She suggested that the only reason I even knew I was pregnant was because of 'advances in testing' and that years ago I wouldn't have even known I was pregnant, so wouldn't have anything to be sad about. I really don't even know where to begin with this and just thinking about it making me agitated, so I'm still trying to ignore it!
The other upsetting thing was the family and friends who were obviously online, posting pictures of cats and videos of people falling over who didn't respond at all. Now I know that because I am very boring they may have hidden me from their feed or whatever, but it felt like they were right there and they chose to ignore us. I'm trying not to think about that, either.
To end with a positive, two of the people who responded (who have 4 children between them) then went on to post a status of their own saying that they were thinking of all their friends who had lost babies, which I thought was lovely.
Overall, I think I am glad I chose to share, and I will probably do so once each year, to keep our baby's memory alive.
I don't normally post a lot to Facebook, I just use it to keep in touch with family and friends overseas. My message box is more full than my wall, if you know what I mean!
I thought this would be a nice, easy and non-threatening way to deal with the topic. One of the biggest fears I have about sharing is what people will say, this way I didn't have to deal with it in person. I know it also makes people feel uncomfortable as they don't know what to say, so what could be easier than clicking the 'Like" button, right? No need to say anything at all.
Only a very few people responded. Most of these were just a click on the Like button, but a couple added a few xxx for good measure. My mum wrote a beautiful message. I got a couple of "Thinking of you" responses from a couple of people I haven't actually spoken to in years. I also got a couple of PMs from my sisters and aunty, just to check in on how we are doing (we've since had a family member pass away, so really hard at the moment). Then there was one response I have so far chosen to ignore.
It started with a "Thinking of you" and ended with sharing that this person had herself lost a baby. It was the part in the middle that upset me. She suggested that the only reason I even knew I was pregnant was because of 'advances in testing' and that years ago I wouldn't have even known I was pregnant, so wouldn't have anything to be sad about. I really don't even know where to begin with this and just thinking about it making me agitated, so I'm still trying to ignore it!
The other upsetting thing was the family and friends who were obviously online, posting pictures of cats and videos of people falling over who didn't respond at all. Now I know that because I am very boring they may have hidden me from their feed or whatever, but it felt like they were right there and they chose to ignore us. I'm trying not to think about that, either.
To end with a positive, two of the people who responded (who have 4 children between them) then went on to post a status of their own saying that they were thinking of all their friends who had lost babies, which I thought was lovely.
Overall, I think I am glad I chose to share, and I will probably do so once each year, to keep our baby's memory alive.
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day 2014
Pregnancy
and infant loss. It’s not something I had ever talked about, let alone thought
about. Sure, in my worst moments I thought that I would never be a mother; I
still have those thoughts now but for entirely different reasons.
When I used
to think such thoughts, it was more a philosophical reasoning. Maybe I would
never find a man worthy of being a father. Maybe I would be off travelling the
world and find that the time had passed. I thought that miscarriage was something that
happened to ‘other people’ after all, I had only ever known one woman to have a
miscarriage and she had been told not to get pregnant due to medication she was
taking at the time.
Now I am
filled with fear about recurrent pregnancy loss and I feel like part of this
was my total ignorance of miscarriage statistics. If I had known how common it
was, and that no matter how painful, many early early miscarriages are due to
the body’s natural detection of genetic abnormalities, I might not have
struggled with guilt. The SANDS website (see link at the end of this post)
says:
Each year in
Australia, approximately 150,000 couples experience reproductive loss;
about 147,000
experience a miscarriage,
1,750 babies are
stillborn
and about 850 babies
die in the first 28 days after birth.
I can’t tell
you the number of times I cried to my husband, apologising for killing his
baby. I can’t tell you the number of times he held me and reassured me that
there was nothing we could have done. He believed it because that’s what the
doctor had told him. I found it hard to believe because if it was so common,
how come no one I knew had gone through this?
My life is
full of amazing women. Most of these have children. In fact, the only women I
know who don’t have children are those who have told me straight out that they
aren’t ready yet. My husband’s three siblings have welcomed 5 children in the
last 5 years with another on the way. It seems that even within our own family
we are the 1-in-4.
It hurts me
now to realise that surely there are women who I count among my friends who
have suffered through pregnancy loss alone. Why do we do this? Why do we allow
our friends, sisters, cousins to suffer alone?
In my case,
I know that one of the main reasons I didn’t want to tell people was because of
a sense of guilt. That I was somehow defective because I couldn’t manage to
keep my baby alive. I now know that that’s likely not the case. Another bigger
reason was that I didn’t want to hear the crappy platitudes they would be
likely to give.
“At least
you know you CAN get pregnant.”
“You’ll be
able to have fun trying again.”
“It must be
part of God’s plan.”
“There was
probably something wrong with the baby, so it’s better this way.”
And worse
than that, I didn’t want to hear anything that turned the blame to me.
“You know
older women have a higher chance of miscarriage, don’t you?”
“Do you
think it’s because you are overweight?”
“Are you too
stressed? You need to relax and focus on your baby.”
“Did you eat
something you shouldn’t have?”
“You did
give up alcohol, didn’t you?”
“Do you
still let your husband smoke?”
I just wish
that people would approach the loss of a child, no matter the time, like they
would the death of any other family member or friend. I read on a miscarriage forum
the other day that the only acceptable response when someone tells you they
have had a miscarriage is, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I found a
beautiful “Wish list” on the Bears of Hope website.
Wishes of An Angel's
Mum & Dad
- I
wish you would not be afraid to mention my baby. Just because you never
saw him doesn't mean he doesn't deserve your recognition.
- I
wish that if we did talk about my baby and I cried you didn't think it was
because you have hurt me by mentioning him. I need to cry and talk about my
baby with you, it helps me heal.
- I
wish you could tell me you are sorry my baby has died and that you are
thinking of me, it tells me you care.
- I
wish you wouldn't think what has happened is one big bad memory for me.
The memory of my baby, the love I feel for my baby and the dreams I had
for him are all loving memories. Yes there are bad memories too, but
please understand that it's not all like that.
- I
wish you wouldn't judge me because I’m not acting the way you think I
should be. Grief is a very personal thing and we’re all different people
who deal with things differently.
- I
wish you wouldn't think if I have a good day I'm ok or if I have a bad day
I’m being unreasonable. There is no "normal" way for me to act.
- I
wish you wouldn't expect me to “feel better” in a few weeks, months, or
years for that matter. It may get easier with time but I will never be
"over" this.
- I
wish you could tell me you are thinking of me on my baby’s birthday,
Mothers Day, celebration times and the day my baby died. These are all
important and sad days for me.
- I
wish you understood that losing my baby has changed me. I’m not the same
person I was before and I’ll never be that person again. If you keep
waiting for me to get back to "normal" you’ll stay frustrated. I
am a new person with new thoughts, dreams, beliefs, and values. Please try
to get to know the ‘new’ me, you might even still like me.
Author Unknown
The last
point really resonates with me. As I wrote last week, I know that my heart has
been changed. I am still trying to work out what that means.
So I was
brave today. With my husband’s consent (because it’s not just about me) I
posted about our loss on Facebook. I want people to know that I am a mother,
even though I don’t have a baby here to hold. And I want the other women I know
who have suffered in silence to know that they have a friend who is sharing
this most horrible experience.
If you, or
someone you know is struggling with pregnancy or infant loss, you might like to
check out the following websites. There are many out there, I have found these
ones really helpful.
Tuesday, 7 October 2014
"Why?" isn't even important
I should have posted at least 4 updates since the last one. We were away on holiday but I was still writing, ready to post when we returned. I had a post about travelling with morning sickness and one about spotting in early pregnancy which I was reading a lot about. I also had one about my symptoms in week 6 and also the fact that my dad had totally guessed that I was pregnant due to the fact that I didn't drink the night we arrived!
Instead, I am posting about another miscarriage.
Looking back, a lot of little things probably add up to tell me that this was coming. My HCG levels were pretty low, only 38 at 14dpo and 111 by 5 weeks. Doubling every 2.4 days or a 77% increase in 48 hours. Still within the average, but on the low side.
Then there was the spotting. The first was at 16dpo, pink and watery and only twice when I wiped. Doctor reassured me that this was 'normal.' It started again the following week while on holiday, at 5w4d. This time dark brown, and only once and when I wiped. Then the next day, dark brown and only once when I wiped. The following day, dark brown but this time more often when I was wiping. By Friday, at 6 weeks I had a couple of red spots coming through. I panicked the whole way home on the plane, but when we got off - nothing.
Another thing I notice now was my symptoms starting to fade. I know that this can happen anyway and that they can come and go - but in this case I now know it's because they were well and truly going. From 5w4d onwards I no longer got up in the night to empty my bladder. I thought this was maybe because with all the travel I wasn't drinking enough (4 litres not enough?!). I was also able to sleep comfortably on my chest which for the previous week had been unbearable. I was still slightly nauseous, but at this stage I think it was more due to concern about what was happening to our little poppy seed, rather than hormones.
I'll post another day about what actually happened, and what has happened since; at the moment it's just too much to think about. All I can manage is a cold recount of the facts, and yet so much more than that was involved.
I feel completely broken, like I have been shattered into a thousand pieces and although in time I might collect them all up, I'll never be the same, I keep thinking of the activity we do with kids to teach them the power of bullying. You ask them to cut a piece of paper into the shape of a heart. Then you ask them to scrunch it up, that's the effect of bullying. You then ask the students to flatten out their paper heart, this represents a person apologising for their behaviour. The thing they notice is that no matter how much they flatten the paper, the marks remain. That's exactly how I feel right now. But my heart isn't flattened, it's still scrunched tightly into a horrible little ball.
Instead, I am posting about another miscarriage.
Looking back, a lot of little things probably add up to tell me that this was coming. My HCG levels were pretty low, only 38 at 14dpo and 111 by 5 weeks. Doubling every 2.4 days or a 77% increase in 48 hours. Still within the average, but on the low side.
Then there was the spotting. The first was at 16dpo, pink and watery and only twice when I wiped. Doctor reassured me that this was 'normal.' It started again the following week while on holiday, at 5w4d. This time dark brown, and only once and when I wiped. Then the next day, dark brown and only once when I wiped. The following day, dark brown but this time more often when I was wiping. By Friday, at 6 weeks I had a couple of red spots coming through. I panicked the whole way home on the plane, but when we got off - nothing.
Another thing I notice now was my symptoms starting to fade. I know that this can happen anyway and that they can come and go - but in this case I now know it's because they were well and truly going. From 5w4d onwards I no longer got up in the night to empty my bladder. I thought this was maybe because with all the travel I wasn't drinking enough (4 litres not enough?!). I was also able to sleep comfortably on my chest which for the previous week had been unbearable. I was still slightly nauseous, but at this stage I think it was more due to concern about what was happening to our little poppy seed, rather than hormones.
I'll post another day about what actually happened, and what has happened since; at the moment it's just too much to think about. All I can manage is a cold recount of the facts, and yet so much more than that was involved.
I feel completely broken, like I have been shattered into a thousand pieces and although in time I might collect them all up, I'll never be the same, I keep thinking of the activity we do with kids to teach them the power of bullying. You ask them to cut a piece of paper into the shape of a heart. Then you ask them to scrunch it up, that's the effect of bullying. You then ask the students to flatten out their paper heart, this represents a person apologising for their behaviour. The thing they notice is that no matter how much they flatten the paper, the marks remain. That's exactly how I feel right now. But my heart isn't flattened, it's still scrunched tightly into a horrible little ball.
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