When your baby dies...

I spent an hour or so just sorting through paperwork from the bookshelf tonight.

Bank statements

Phone bills

Tax reports

Receipts

Coroner's Reports

When your baby dies booklets...

This is it. My life.

When your baby dies.

I feel a sense of impending urgency sneaking up on me.

We've still got quite a while before we actually move anywhere but I have a sense that something big is going to surface or perhaps shift when we do.

Not a leaving her behind kind of feeling but a moving on feeling.

I know somewhere in me I'm going to feel emotional or sad that we are leaving her place.

I'm nervous about the emotions it will bring. I'm anxious about feeling lost again.

I've sensed her lately

Her love is breathtaking

Her soul is Earthy and pure Goddess

Bigger than I could ever imagine

The tears flow not out of sadness but out of aching love

She is mine

I am hers

Working through it...

In some ways you can rationalise death. You can process it, understand it and perhaps even be grateful for it. We're all different when it comes to these processes too. It could take years to get there. Sometimes we don't. We stay stuck in one place for a long long time. I feel like that right now. I think it has a lot to do with the stagnant emotional state of those around me. There's a lot of tip toeing and not talking or expressing of emotion. There's also a massive lack of understanding. I worry about me and me only. I have to. I learnt that the hard way.

I'm really struggling not so much to understand but to process? No that's not right either. Maybe I mean to say "find peace" or the like with the reality that I had a hysterectomy and it wasn't something I chose. It was done.

I'm really struggling to grasp that.
I can say it."I've had a hysterectomy." but it really doesn't go deep.
I don't let it.
I feel the knot in my stomach, the ill feeling that washes over me.
The tight chest.
The sting of tears brimming to the surface.
Then I just switch it off.
Change the subject, even in my own mind chatter.

I've read the medical notes, I heard the surgeons explanation but it isn't enough. There seems to be no closure to this. It's not something you just move through. Or is it?

I didn't feel like I was dying. That's trauma. It's sneaky.

Maybe it was his opinion
his attitude
his disgust with me as a mother
as a woman
my choices
Maybe that has made this harder to accept.

Oh his face right there behind my eyelids.
Always.
Maybe he made the best decision.
Maybe he didn't.
Maybe he was angry and in a stressful situation.
Maybe he acted too quickly.
Maybe he did the best for me.
He'll never tell me
I'll never know

I am hurt that it was taken from me and disposed of.
It was mine and it should have been given back to me.

I try to seek support but it's always the same.
Oh you're so lucky! No more menstruation.
No! I'm not lucky.
I honoured my bleed. I miss that.
I want to feel that again.
I want my womb to ache.
I feel nothing but aching scars.
A constant reminder of my failures.
My disgusting body.
My hatred for myself.

I don't want it to be this way. I want to create beauty out of my pain. I wish I knew how. I can't paint or draw it. It never comes.

I was thinking about asking friends for a bead to represent how they feel about their precious wombs and then I'll connect them all and make a necklace to hold me together. To share with them what it means for me. I don't know. I'm feeling a wee bit insane, even as I type this.

The womb-less woman.

I am the loving nurturing goddess mother

Inside I am the angry womb-less woman

I am warm and passionate

Inside I am dead, black, empty

Inside I am broken

I am tied in knots

I am womb-less woman

Bitter and Broken

Angry and Confused

She waits for weakness

She captures me

She lives in the darkness

The depths of my despair

I am the angry womb-less woman

Etched forever into my skin

Scar after scar

Disgust after disgust

Pain after pain

I don't know what this is. I need to create with this theme. I need to get it out...

Fell off the wagon

Totally.

A combination of
life
parenting
work
lack of sleep
and life

all threw me off the wagon. I'm a blogger failure. Oh well.

I'm sure you really didn't miss anything amazing or wonderful or would have really learnt anything new.

Every time I sat down to blog, a million emails needed replying to, bills to be paid, houses to be looked at, removal quotes to be filled out and future schools to be looked at. Occupied much.

Every time I sat at the desk to blog all I wanted to say was how empty my arms feel.
How hollow my body feels without my womb.
How dead my baby is.
How I stretch the memories so far and wonder what she'd look like now that it hurts my head.

I've discovered how tired it makes you to change masks all day long.

Work cheery nurse mask
Mother mask
Partner/Lover mask
Dead baby mask
Healthy eating/ exercise mask
Fat Ugly want to eat chocolate all day mask
Keeping it together/I'm totally fine mask
Total mess mask
It was meant to be mask
Why me? mask
Accepting of my womb less-ness mask
Painful desire to hold another baby of my own mask

I can't keep up.
I can't talk about it.
I can't bring myself to say the words.
Help me. I'm drowning.
I can't just be.
Am I fighting too hard?
Am I not fighting at all?

Day 14 and 15

Day 14
More books...

A non fictional book that is meaningful to me. Hmm I think one that comes to mind that I've really used almost everyday is my Australian Bush Flower Essence books and cards by Ian White. I love the history, the stories and the knowledge that comes from the Earth. Flowers are no exception. Bush flowers have really saved me. They've pulled me through some of the darkest of days and supported my in processing of life in general really.

Today's flowers for me were Boronia and Sturt Desert Pea.

Day 15

Something about my house? Well I'm kind of in transition at the moment.
Home to me isn't here. My heart is elsewhere. I think it's what you create that makes home, not the actual home itself? Gosh how do you answer this question? I'd like to say I love the fact that my daughter was born here at home but I'm not really sure I do feel that way at the moment.
I have so many future hopes and dreams for our family home and right now we're not there yet. So perhaps I'll leave it at that.

Day 12 and 13

Day 12
Something you are OCD about.

I just want to say that the term doesn't sit right with me. I'm sure those suffering with this condition wouldn't feel comfortable with the representation of their condition as something to make fun of. It's like the improper use of PTSD and post natal depression or homo or gay or lady. I could write a whole blog post about the use of certain words and how they bug me. In no way is this post meant to be derogatory of those suffering OCD.

On that note...

I'm a pretty serious organiser. List keeper. Date keeper. Time keeper. I stress when things aren't done. It may have something to do with being a Virgo too.
I always have been like this.
If my very dear friend is reading this, she'll understand. In fact I'm pretty sure she'll be LOL'ing at this when she reads it.

It was greatly intensified after the birth of my second son. Trauma does that to you, did you know that? I learnt this at a Midwifery conference. It was one of those "OMG that explains everything, that's why I do that!" moments.

I clean. I put things in order. I have to make the beds every morning or I cannot function. I have to have a clean bench. I have to brush my teeth in the shower or I've not really had a shower...

I clean when I'm stressed. It's more of an angry whirlwind kind of cleaning. Or I get really uptight and irritated when the things around me aren't tidy.
It's about control of the environment around you because really I'm pretty lazy and like to keep stuff.

That being said my experience of losing Yuna made me a lot less uptight about the small things. Worrying about being on time or the mess made by the kids at dinner time seemed so unimportant now. Life is way more important than being consumed by that sort of worrying.

I think I do tend to internalise a lot of my "issues". Who doesn't? It's pretty safe to say anyone that's experienced the death of a child worries about their living children in a kind of morbid (to those who don't understand) way. Like not seeing them again or them not having any photos of their mother or what they'll remember of their sad grieving mother in years to come. I do that a lot. Thankfully I have very similar friends and a very dark sense of humour to get me through the tough days.

I still have my little tendencies about other things that I'll keep to myself or I'll come across even stranger than I already do.

Day 13
A fictional book that is meaningful now

Gosh I read such crap. Really I do. Well it's not crap as such because I love the writers. Their stories and books take up a good part of my life. There's nothing better than putting the kids to bed, making a cup of tea, lighting the candles and getting into my own bed with a good book.

I don't read heavy thinking material. If I did well, it would be birth related and that just spirals out of control into a hole I don't want to force myself into any more.
I read to escape. I read to relax, to imagine, to hope and to dream.
My favourites that I've read recently are The Mortal Instruments books.

So nothing really deep and meaningful or grief related. Perhaps you can recommend some reading material?

Bellycast

Today I was going to come home and take a nap. But the sun is shining and it's hot.

The past week or so I have been working on strengthening and painting my belly cast from my Blessingway when I was pregnant with Yuna. Yes that was a loooong time ago.

But today as I went to hang some washing out I just stopped, grabbed the oil pastels and started scribbling. Here's the finished product.