Monday, 10 January 2011
Clothes and Things
14:27 | Posted by
Caz |
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Just before the New Year I had a clear out. I do this occasionally; go through our wardrobe and drawers and bag up older or clothes no longer worn to put into the Salvation Army textiles bin at the tip.
This time going through all of my clothes, I found two items of maternity clothing still in the bottom of the drawer. Two items that linger from the Anabelle pregnant part of my life.
After Anabelle was born it took just 10 days to fit back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. All the lovely things I’d bought to wear while I was pregnant quickly became redundant, along with everything else we’d bought pregnancy or baby related. I collected and washed all my maternity clothes and put them in a pile inside Anabelle’s room; out of sight. I did consider getting rid of them all, but that seemed rash and silly considering how much money we’d spent on my maternity wardrobe and that if things were different they would’ve been kept ready for number two anyway.
So now, I’ve found two more things to add to the maternity clothes pile, sat there waiting until they are needed again.
They haven’t quite reached the pile yet. Since I’ve found them they have been draped over the upstairs banister just outside the nursery door. We find it difficult to go in there, however briefly. Like with many things in this new life, opening Anabelle’s nursery door takes some building up too.
When you open her door you can still smell the freshness of the pink and lemon paint; finished just hours before she died. The tape that had been put down around the edges of the carpet to protect it while the skirting board was painted is still there. Her room is filled with boxes of furniture; her cot, wardrobe and chest of drawers that were bought but never built. The nursing chair Jon had built in the few days before her death sits in the corner, her pram and car seat covered with sheets to keep the sun and dust off them, boxes full of her clothes I’d washed but she never worn, bags filled with toys still in their packaging.
It is hard going into that room and seeing the love and preparation we’d put into being ready for our baby, seeing the beautiful room we wanted to turn into a princess palace for our girl, seeing the things that mean so much to us.
Anabelle’s room is full of pregnancy reminders, full of her belongings, but she never got to see any of it.
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Choosing a Headstone
22:07 | Posted by
Caz |
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No-one ever thinks they will be in a position where they are required to choose a headstone for their child. Of course, we all know babies, children and young adults die, but the thought that our offspring will die before us doesn’t cross our minds, after all it goes against the nautral order of things, against all our expectations about the circle of life. A baby or child dying is the sort of thing that happens to other people.
We are the other people. Our baby dying happened to us.
Today we had our first appointment with the lovely funeral director who looked after Anabelle to discuss the process of ordering a headstone for her garden. It is a relief in all honesty that the funeral director also happens to be a monumental mason, having to employ somebody else would have just added to the enormity of an already distressing thing to decide; he knows our situation, he remembers us and our daughter. I don’t suppose you forget the deceased baby and the parents that entrust them to your care do you.
It felt surreal almost today, back at the chapel of rest where we last saw Anabelle. Of course, we were in the offices, not the chapel, but for a moment as we parked outside I had to compose myself. I felt nervous and sick and had to take a few deep breaths before we went in.
I’m nervous because this really is a mammoth task. It is important. We have to get this right, no, more than right; this has to be perfect for Belle. This headstone will mark the place where our daughter’s little body is buried and more than that needs to reflect how much we love her, how much she matters to us.
Months ago we were given booklets to look through. It has taken months to build up the courage to look through them properly. In fact, after the initial flick through, they have just been sat inside Anabelle’s memory box untouched. Untouched, because the reality that we had to choose a headstone for our daughter instead of new clothes and toys leaves me feeling sick. It is all too huge. In the last couple of days the booklet has been taken out and given a more serious consideration.
In this one booklet there are literally hundreds of designs, many stone types and colours to choose from. There is even a whole section of it dedicated to stone designs more appropriate to honour children.
Choosing the design was actually the easy bit. From the start hearts have been important to us and Anabelle. Her nursery was planned to include hearts in its theme, it seemed only appropriate that her garden would carry this theme too. Adapted from one of the stones in the children’s section of the booklet, Anabelle’s headstone will in the shape of a heart, sat on a cloud.
That bit is decided.
We’ve also decided today it will be made from rose white granite. A black headstone was in no way appropriate for our daughter. I was worried what the options would be other than black or marble (which doesn’t weather well), I needn’t have worried – there in the office was another booklet with a multitude of colours to choose from. Rose white granite was the obvious choice; it is a soft delicate colour, perfect for our girl and turned the other way around white roses mean something to us. A white rose is our flower, it was the theme of our wedding and it is ‘nice’ to have a little something else to connect to her, something else that makes her special.
Style, colour and design decided.
What is more overwhelming is deciding the wording; the words that will be forever etched upon that heart declaring our love for our daughter. Where do we even begin? The love that we have that is as vast as the universe contained onto a small stone. How can it even begin to do her justice?
It doesn’t have to be set in stone yet (pardon the pun) but we have written down a general idea of what we might like it to say; it is personal to her and us, but somehow it doesn’t seem quite enough. I don’t think it would ever seem enough. We’ll never stop trying to find ways to honour our daughter’s existence and impact she has left on our lives forever.
A headstone is just a small piece of it.
Friday, 7 January 2011
Mumsnet
18:40 | Posted by
Caz |
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The arrogance and ignorance of some people never ceases to amaze me.
Over the last few days I’ve been following closely and contributing to discussions on Mumsnet surrounding the Eastender’s storyline. The majority of people ‘get’ why it is so distasteful and why bereaved parents especially are upset by the storyline. (I reiterate I am not upset about the cot death, I think there has been a golden opportunity lost to educate people. I am upset about the sensationalist headline and rating grabbing ill-conceived baby swap).
But there are those (aren’t there always) who are rude, crass and vile in their response to our protest. We, as a group of bereaved parents and those who support us, have been told by these small minded idiots (no other word for them) to “get a grip”, “it’s not real”, “it is only a TV programme”, “turn it off if it upsets you”, “its entertainment” among others, oh and get this one “people die, life’s a bitch”.
The more I read these comments the more infuriated I’m becoming. Now I’m not naïve, and neither do I expect everyone to have the same point of view as me. However what is becoming increasingly irritating is the belittling and blasé attitude from some regarding our experiences and why this current storyline is damaging on so many levels.
So for the record; Eastender’s is turned off in the Morgan household, that is the easy part. No I don’t have to watch it and I don’t intend to. That is not the issue though is it. This storyline has portrayed a newly bereaved mother as dangerous. I and many others have the intelligence to know this is not true to life; however, there are also a significant amount of people who will be watching this plot unfold and believe that this must be what happens to a woman when a baby dies.
It may only be a TV programme but the power of influence it has over our society is immeasurable. Soaps pride themselves on tackling and raising the profile of difficult issues. They proudly claim they research their stories thoroughly and carefully to deliver the content in a realistic to life manner. Eastender’s have done none of these things in this current storyline. Instead, because of its influence ill-informed people remain ill-informed at best, at worst their first experience of a bereaved mother is that of baby stealer and now hundreds of vulnerable women up and down the country will in all likely-hood, be viewed with suspicion through their grief.
Please do not tell me to get a grip on reality and that it is not real. I know IT is not real, I know IT is only a TV programme and believe me I have a very firm grip on reality. I live the reality of a baby’s death every single day. It is not me who needs educating about the reality of a baby’s death.
You see, my life IS real, my daughter being dead IS real. That IS my reality.
It’s entertainment we’ve been told. How disturbingly worrying that someone could consider the tradegy of a baby dying, real or otherwise, entertaining. But Eastenders were way off the mark with informative, maybe it was entertaining they were going for instead… But enough with me being facetious.
Most disgustingly of all we’ve been told “People die, life’s a bitch” - words actually fail me. How very dare someone be so blasé about the death of my child. Vile.
I think I smell a couple of trolls.
I should step away from these threads, they are doing me no good. But I’m still there. Why? I am there because I am furious that a bereaved mother has been portrayed in this manner. You may think melodramatic but it could give people justification to be wary of me, incase I have a complete meltdown and become unhinged. Because there are actually people out there who will think it to be true because Eastenders said so.
I’m furious because no-one has any idea what Jon and I went through and yet the biggest evening programme in the country saw fit to make a mockery of what happens when a baby dies and that even one person finds its content entertaining.
I gave birth to Anabelle on the labour ward of the hospital. It was a slow process, an induced labour that was failing to progress until my waters were manually broken at the end of the fifth day. For two of those days I was kept on labour ward, unable to be shielded from the screams of other mother’s in labour or shielded from the cries of the other babies on the ward.
Finally at eight minutes into the sixth day after she died our beautiful daughter was born sleeping. You’ve no idea how in those hours after her birth how hard I willed it all to be a bad dream, how I willed her to breathe, to move, to cry. All a new mother wants is to hear her baby’s first cry. Only I never heard Anabelle cry. Holding my silent daughter I was surrounded by the cries of other newborns, and I hated them, I just wanted to get as far away from them as possible.
Not once did I want to go and swap Anabelle for one of those screaming babies in the rooms surrounding us. I didn’t want them, I wanted her. Anabelle was mine and I’m so very proud of her. I held her for hours not wanting to put her down, knowing that these few hours were the short precious time I was ever going to be able to hold her or look at her. I remember trying to fight a drug induced sleep so that I didn’t have to take my eyes off her. I didn’t want to take my eyes off her.
Handing Anabelle over to go to the mortuary after 12 hours was soul destroying. Even that felt like I was abandoning her. I wanted to keep her with me forever, even just as she was. Equally, walking away from her in her tiny pink coffin in the chapel of rest the afternoon before her funeral was literally heart breaking. I didn’t want to give my Belle up, in that moment I felt like I could die with my daughter too.
That is the reality.
It has been irresponsible, insulting and damaging of Eastenders to insinuate it could be any other way. But apparently the reality of a bereaved family does not have enough dramatic effect as it is, and that is the point of making our voices heard.
Thank you Mumsnet for hearing our voices. Thank you for taking the time to listen and using your influence to campaign on our behalf.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Phantom Kicks
21:35 | Posted by
Caz |
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I’ve not been pregnant now for 6 months, 2 weeks and 2 days. That’s how long it is since Anabelle was born. Yet even now I regularly feel ‘baby kicks’. Of course I know they are not kicks at all. I know what I feel is a weird sort of wind movement; but even now I notice the sensation straight away, the popping feeling that makes my insides jump. Not only do I notice but it causes me to pause and remember how it felt having my beautiful Belle move around inside me.
The first time I felt little Anabelle movements I was 18 weeks pregnant; like little bubbles popping in my tummy. The next week I started feeling definite little kicks. At exactly 23 weeks pregnant Jon finally felt his daughter kick too.
Anabelle responded to us, she was aware of the world outside her growing place. The first time those definite little kicks were there we had been playing her music. We had bought a baby classical music CD a couple of weeks before and we put it on for her with big headphones over my bump. And there she was; kick, kick, kick.
Music wasn’t her favourite sound though, her Daddy was. Without fail, every time Jon spoke to Anabelle she would kick and move. Anabelle already loved her Daddy; he got many an affectionate boot in the face as he led there talking to her. These are such special and precious moments we shared with our daughter.
I never tired of feeling and watching her move; my stomach moving in a wave like alien rolling way or the big jumps that poked out. I never minded being woken up in the middle of the night – I always found it reassuring that she was nice and busy. Although I will admit I did wish her off my bladder on many occasions, the number of times I didn’t think I was going to make it to the toilet in time as she used it as a punch bag or squeeze toy!
I can look back on these times with affection. I miss my daughter. I miss her and am left with a physical emptiness I’ve not been able to shift. I am left with phantom kicks; bubble pop kicks like when Anabelle was 18,19, 20 weeks grown, kicks that remind me what it felt like when she was there, while taunting me because she is not.
But I don’t want Anabelle back inside me, I want her in my arms. Everything has been left empty.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Visiting London Town
23:43 | Posted by
Caz |
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The first Christmas Jon and I were together we made a little trip to London between the Christmas and New Year festivities. We’d been together for 9 months and it was our first little romantic mini-break. We had a really lovely time and definitely one of my favourite early memories with Jon. It is a happy memory and a happy place.
I loved the hustle and bustle of the big city, the atmosphere, never being short of anything to do, how you can be anyone you want to be and no-one bats an eyelid; A melting pot of different cultures, languages, outward personas. The pace and rush of life was exhilarating for a few days; I was particularly marvelled by the tube system.
London that first year together was exciting.
In the run up to Christmas we decided that we would try and go again over the holiday period. Re-live as it were those happy memories. So Christmas Eve we looked at hotel prices and booked a stay in London for the bank holiday weekend (Sunday-Monday).
Our second romantic mini-break there hasn’t failed to be just as lovely. Having two days of uninterrupted time with my husband, not having to put on a face or make any effort for anybody else but him. No-one takes any notice of you in London, we could be how we wanted to be. Zero pressure to have to be all joyous around other people; the opportunity to be completely ourselves. Evidently, on the whole, it has been just the break we needed after having a very difficult day one of the year.
We have been to the London Dungeons, visited Covent Garden and discovered a girly girl shop called Sass and Belle, shopped and drank champagne cocktails on Oxford Street, spent hours in Harrods gawking at prices and beautiful things and popped in the Science Museum. The break from routine has been warmly welcomed and we now plan to return for a second 2011 visit to London for our birthdays in early March.
As much as we’ve enjoyed our visit to London, it is yet another example of something we shouldn’t be doing now. We wouldn’t have even have entertained the idea of going to London for two days if Anabelle had been here. I looked around me while we there, wondering how anyone with a pram, pushchair or small child was managing to cope in the crowds. Yes, I’m often quite daze like now, but I felt like I was in a pin-ball machine being pushed from pillar to post and barged past. Doing that with a pram didn’t look my idea of fun, we wouldn’t have taken Anabelle to London while she was so small. I found myself feeling nervous for the babies on the tube incase they got hurt by all the pushing and shoving.
Before my beautiful Anabelle I probably wouldn’t have really even noticed the babies were there. Now I’m instantly on edge around babies. Especially those who are newborn and those who look around the same age as Anabelle should be. My coping levels are pushed to the maximum around them when often all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry, block them out. I wish so much I had my daughter with me.
On the tube yesterday we were sat next to a family with a baby girl who looked around 6 months old; as old as Belle should be. She was enjoying a game with her Daddy, playing peek-a-boo with her toys and giggling. I hated sitting there near her, I know Jon did too. I kept willing them to get off at the next station. Finally they did and I relaxed again.
Will it always feel like this around babies now? The problem is babies are everywhere, literally. Maybe it is because I am a mother now but all I ever seem to see around and about is prams.
You’ve no idea how I wish things were different, how I wish I was pushing Anabelle around in her pram… Instead her pram is in her room, covered by a big sheet to keep the dust off it, stop the light from fading it. Never used.
Will I ever push be able our pram around? Will Jon ever be able to play peek-a-boo games with one of his children? Will I be able to keep our unborn children safe long enough to allow them to be born into this world alive?
This is something that tortures me daily.
There isn’t a day that goes by when we don’t think of Anabelle, very few days that pass without something in this world triggering another avenue of grief to explore. Something new that catches us unawares.
Even in our ‘escape’ to the big city.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Day One, Month One, Year 2011
20:06 | Posted by
Caz |
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So how did you spend the first day of the year?
I have spent the afternoon at the Wales Millennium Centre to watch the musical production of Mamma Mia. It had been planned for ages; Mum had bought the tickets back around Easter time. Back then there had been a discussion about which would be the best performance to go to; and we had decided that a matinee would be better because of my young baby. Planned all around Anabelle and what we were expecting her needs to be around 5 months old. We imagined that she would’ve had her lunchtime feed and that by going to see the show in the afternoon it would enable me to be home for her bedtime routine.
Only Mamma Mia day has arrived and there was no baby to rush home to. An activity that had been carefully planned around her and as is always the case now; we had the activity, we don’t have Anabelle.
It is not the first time I’ve watched Mamma Mia. I saw it for the first time on stage in London, a month before Jon and I got married. I loved it, which is why I didn’t mind going to see it again so soon. I thought I knew what to expect today, after all I know the storyline, the scenes and what is going to happen next.
But tears caught me by surprise today. I had ‘forgotten’ about something, or hadn’t realised how it would impact on me now, watching it again 18 months later. Things are very different now though aren’t they.
And there is was, the scene where the mother helps her daughter to get ready for her wedding day, and sings a song about her daughter growing up and “slipping through my fingers all the time”.
It caught me completely unawares, but I welled up and silent tears rolled down my face. Anabelle completely slipped through my fingers didn’t she. We will never get to share her wedding day, the excitement of going dress shopping, planning together. I will never get to be the proud Mother-of-the Bride, not for Anabelle.
And so there, in the theatre, it hit me again. I haven’t just lost my daughter’s babyhood, I’ve lost her whole life.
"Happy" New Year
01:18 | Posted by
Caz |
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So it is here then; the “Happy” New Year. I’ve felt strange for most of the night, I’ve tried hard to view this symbolic passing of one day to another, one year to the next as a new start. But it isn’t at all. How can we possibly have a new start? New start means erasing the old, and that simply cannot be done.
Since 11:55pm when the countdown began I’ve just started to feel more and more teary. I’m deflated, my whole body feels like a dead weight. My baby girl wasn’t there to start 2011 with me, the only way I could include her was to write her name with a sparkler. I was in a room full of people, surround by my family, but really I felt so very alone.
2011 is completely unknown. It makes everything that has happened to us “last year”. I don’t know what is expected of us now. I don’t know what to do, what we should do. What can we do? I’m feeling so very lost.
The difference between how I felt this time last year, and how I’m feeling now is immense. There is a huge empty void where excitement and anticipation used to be. I’m struggling to hope tonight. I don’t know what we have to hope for. The future is just one big scary place of unknown, and all the New Year has done has highlight this in glaring lights.
Where do we go now? Tonight it hurts.
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- After Anabelle - Raising Rainbows. I'm Caz, Mummy to beautiful angel Belle and my wonderful rainbow boys, Xander, Zachy and Luc. Wife to Jon. Twitter @cazem Instagram @cazzyem
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Written by C.E Morgan. Powered by Blogger.