After Anabelle

Weeks ago I posted about music being a big part of our pregnancy with Anabelle. (Wriggly Baby) I reminised about the evenings we'd spent playing her her baby classical music CD and watching her 'dance', I wondered what CD we should buy for Alexander. 

Well as it turns out we still haven't yet bought him a CD. That doesn't mean we haven't  been playing music to him though; he's had the big headphones on plugged into his Daddy's phone and experienced a whole varied range of music. Alexander appears to have VERY different tastes to his sister! 

Anabelle always responded to classical music; she was especially wakeful when listening to the playtime disc of the two. Alexander on the other hand has been a bit nonplussed by classical music, barely a movement. Instead, as Jon has scrolled through his extensive music collection, Alexander has responded consistently to "metal-head" stuff!  This is much to Jon's delight; Alexander has apparently already become a bit of a fan of Marilyn Manson and Metallica.  

Jon's take on it; he's already a head-banger like Daddy. My take on it; he wakes up, rolls around and kicks really hard in an attempt to get away from the awful noise! Haha! 

Whether Alexander really likes the "metal-head" stuff or not its been lovely for Jon and I watching him dance around like Anabelle did. Getting to know him, interacting with him and falling totally in love with him too.  

Keep dancing around little man; you've got just over seven weeks of cooking left to do. 

It has been a long time coming; two months on from Anabelle's Angel Day and the final figure has been collated and ready to reveal! 

Santander this morning confirmed that they have sent £3500 to Sands in Anabelle's name. Only last week another donation was kindly contributed on her Just Giving page; because of a connection I've made through blogging. More kindness from strangers.  I think I will just leave her page open for the time being; I have a feeling its work is not finished! 

So excitedly, adding it altogether today; an enormous £9320.74 has now been sent to Sands. NINE THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY POUNDS AND SEVENTY FOUR PENCE! 

My baby girl has inspried an enormous amount of generoristy from so many people. It is mine and Jon's hope that it will be a valued contribution to the continuation of the services Sands provides for bereaved families and help with funding research to stop babies of the future dying. 

Nothing can bring Anabelle back. She can't come back; but even in her death she has been involved in something so huge and has made such a difference. £9320.74 is a figure that was beyond all our expectations. I never in a million years thought we would achieve anywhere near so much. It really is quite precious. What a legacy for Anabelle Violet Morgan! 

So who thinks we can make it to the £10k mark by her second birthday?! 

I just wanted to share my current favourite photograph because I can!

It was taken on last Saturday evening, when I was 28+4 weeks pregnant with Xander.  Today we are 29+1. Every day counts; a little celebration that he is that one day older and still with us. My next big celebration will be on the 18th September, when I hope that I will be 32+5 weeks pregnant, and Alexander will have been alive longer than his sister was. Anabelle died at 32+4 days old. 

Alexander being 32+5 will be a celebration, hopefully the most properly pregnant I've ever been. I'm sure it will be a painful emotional day too; reminders, living through another point. The hospital kept counting the days after Anabelle died until she'd actually arrived. My notes say Anabelle was born at 33+ weeks. This is not true for Jon and I. For us our pregnancy stopped at 32+4 when Anabelle grew her wings. It was only a physicality after that. 

The 18th September is currently the day I'm looking towards as our next biggy of a milestone. After that, I guess we only have reaching his long awaited hopefully happy birthday to go. 

The last two weeks I've realised something, well a couple of things; and I feel in a really uncomfortable place. 

Despite being a 'second time' mother, the actual reality is so very far from that. I feel a pretend second timer, and that is because I am a pretend second timer. Oh I've done the pregnancy and birth thing before, of course, but not the actual being a mother to a newborn bit. 

The pregnancy and birth bit before are a bit inconsequential to what comes afterwards and I'm really a first timer. A first time mother in a second times body. I hate it. A big part of me feels it takes away from Anabelle as my first child; and she IS my first child, not Alexander. He of course has his own special place as my first son, but he is not my first child. She should've been the one I did my learning with. I should already know how to do newborns. 

I have absolutely no idea how to be a mother to a newborn.  Not a single clue. My first newborn only needed me to dress her once, that's all she needed of me. No settling, no comforting, no feeding, nothing. Anabelle didn't even need me to hold her, not really. I needed her; I needed to hold her and love her but Anabelle was already gone, she didn't need me. Not in the way she would've if she'd been alive. Anabelle needed us to plan her funeral, that was all. 

So what do I really know about babies? The cry, they feed, they sleep, they poop. That is the extent of my knowledge, that and how to change a nappy already. 

2) If I'm really honest I'm a little bit scared of Alexander.   

Fourteen months on from Anabelle's death and I still struggle on many occasions to 'deal' with a crying small baby around me. I'm instantly on edge, I instantly want it to shut up, I can feel anxiety radiate through my entire body.   Crying babies never bothered me before Anabelle died, but she was so silent. The first thing you expect to hear after you've given birth is that cry and the cry was obviously never going to come. So instead silence deafened us. 

I still cannot cope with crying babies and it bothers me. It bothers me how I might react to my own son. As much as I'm desperate to hear that first cry to reassure me he got here alive I am at the same time very nervous of it. What happens if the reaction I currently have to crying babies automatically takes over and I freeze? What if I cannot comfort him or remotely cope with the sound he is making like how I am now?  

I haven't held a newborn tiny baby since the last time I held Anabelle. Partly because I just cannot do it, I have absolutely no desire to hold anyone else's brand new baby and dread the day someone tries to pass a tiny to me. But mainly because I want the next new baby I hold to be my own again.

But now, mixed in with the desperation to hold Alexander, my baby, I'm becoming increasingly aware he is likely to look a lot like Anabelle. The scan pictures, both 2D and 3D indicate he has her likeness. How will I react to that in real life? I've no idea. This was not an anxiety I had anticipated. 

My head is a whirlwind of these thoughts, a bit tormented. There is no way on this earth I would ever intentionally reject my son, not after everything we've been through. God knows how much I love my children.  I don't want to be nervous of him, or nervous of my reaction to him. I want to enjoy him from the very moment he makes his appearance. 

How on earth do I come to terms with these worries and put them in a place where they won't matter? 

Its been a long old week since I last blogged. I'm not really sure where the time has gone; I didn't realise it had been a week until yesterday. Time is passing by in a bit of a blur again.

Minor pregnancy ailments are catching up with me; I don't know whether it is the additional emotional strain taking its toll this time or just how things generally are during a second pregnancy anyway.  I'm not sleeping very well at all, between the numerous toilet trips through the night, heartburn rearing is ugly head and foul dreams it just all feels very disturbed. Like I can't switch off anymore.  The pain in my hips and groin area is worsening and also contributing to the restless nights and causing me problems during the day. Its intermittent, and some days are worse than others, but I've now been referred for physiotherapy.

I can endure all of this; don't get me wrong this is nothing if its what it takes to get me Alexander and he comes home safely.

I guess I'm just feeling more and more vulnerable. Emotionally I'm not feeling particularly strong anymore; this was to be expected and I'm sure is contributing to struggling more physically than I did with Anabelle. Everyone tells me I'm looking well; far healthier than I did when I was pregnant with Anabelle but I'm really starting to feel more exhausted. The bags under my eyes from the broken nights are something else! 

Tuesday was particularly stressful.

My routine weekly midwife appointment day. Unusually Jon attended with me and the lady I normally see wasn't there so I saw the stand-in lady. I'd only met her once before; the day before Anabelle died.

It was just as well Jon was there. Tuesday she found a heartbeat on the doppler but spent what felt like an eternity deciding whether the heartbeat she had found was mine or Alexander's. The heartbeat she'd found was on the slow side for a baby and all but matched my own heart rate other than being out by a beat she said.

We felt sick. The look on Jon's face was fear; we'd been here before. The whole mine or baby's heartbeat. Baby's heartbeat slow. I hadn't been concerned before, I'd felt him move, or I thought I'd felt him move; panic obviously descending my mind into chaos.

Anyway, she decided she was happy and sent us on our way.

She may have been happy; we on the other hand started to crumble to bits. The echo's of losing Anabelle had hit us full force and we were right back at a place we were terrified to be.

We phoned the hospital and asked for reassurance monitoring.  This in itself was traumatic; the journey there spent imagining the worst, that our boy was struggling or worse he was dead. Then walking through the day assessment unit and through those doors into labour ward. By now I was barely holding it together; scared of what the CTG trace might reveal and walking down that corridor towards the room where Anabelle was born and eventually being put in the room opposite.

Then there my little boy was on the trace. No mistaking it was him. Strong, normal heart-rate and regular. His movement went crazy - I don't think he liked being listened into for so long. Just like the baby books say babies normally behave when monitoring starts. Relieved does not remotely cover it.

The midwives at the hospital said it is very possible that the doppler at my appointment hadn't picked up his heart-rate at all and had only found mine as I had thought. That he could've been in a position, tucked away and out of range.

They were as always gentle with me; I cannot fault my hospital care. Going out of their way to reiterate again that if I am ever worried about anything or more anxious than normal that it is not a problem for me to go up and spend an hour on a trace to be reassured, any time day or night. The Doctor came and said the same.  

Its just as well really they are so open to me needing reassurance because something tells me that won't be my last visit being teary and scared.

My next scan is next Wednesday, and it cannot come quickly enough now. I want to see my boy. The hour of doubt on  Tuesday went to show than neither Jon nor myself could possibly emotionally survive losing another of our children and just desperately need the next 9 weeks to pass smoothly, safely with smiles at the end. 

Come on little man. Keep with us, its a single figure countdown now. 

So today I am 27+2 pregnant. Officially now into the 3rd, and final trimester.

At this point in my first pregnancy it felt like I was on the home stretch. I was excited; the final countdown. I wanted it to go quickly because I just couldn't wait to be Mummy.  We'd made plans to have our last weekend away before the impending arrival of Anabelle. So at 27 weeks we were in North Wales enjoying our 'babymoon'.  

There is no 'babymoon' planned this week. 

Then just weeks into 3rd trimester, at 31 weeks, we were knocked off our feet with a threatened premature labour.  Completely unexpected and terrifying. We'd gone to the hospital because Anabelle had been quite and I felt uncomfortable. I thought we were over-reacting initially, but decided the worry had got to the stage we should visit. 

I thought she was quiet because the baby book was telling me she was running out of room and the uncomfortable feeling was braxton hicks.  Never did I dream I would be hooked up to a monitor and within the hour have a Dr telling me that they were not braxton hicks but regular tightenings and that I was threatening prem-labour and our daughter's heart rate was dipping with the onset of the mild contractions.  

We went up to the hospital expecting to have the quick once over and be on our way home again within the hour; the baby books said it is always better to go and get checked, but that nearly all babies start behaving as soon as they are on the monitor.  Instead a Dr was telling the midwives to prepare equipment and me for theatre just incase they would have to deliver Anabelle early in the next couple of hours. 

I was admitted to hospital, treated to stop the threat of labour, treated to mature Anabelle's lungs with steroids 'just incase'. After 3 days we were allowed home again. All was ok. We were SO relieved the treatment had worked and she remained what we thought was safely inside. 31 weeks so too soon to be born; I was scared of the prospect of SCBU, all the potential premature difficulties and what it might mean for her future. 

A week later Anabelle died. She wasn't safer inside me after all. 

I've been promised the the prem-labour and her death are unlinked. Just a horrible coincidence in timing. But the niggling doubt that the prem-labour was our warning sign continues to dog me. The week before we were relieved she had been kept inside me; now days later we wished they had delivered her. They might've had a chance of saving her. Anabelle died silently inside me. She'd had another quiet day but because we had listened in the heart monitor and knew she was there, we decided to wait to see how things were in the morning. The morning was too late; I let her down, the hospital had no chance of saving her. 

What happens this time if I threaten prem-labour over the next few weeks? What decision will be made? What will be in Alexander's best interests?  Already I'm obsessed with his movements and braxton hicks. I'm torn; my instinct still tells me early 30 weeks are too little to be born if it can be prevented and I might be setting him up life-long difficulties, but my heart is saying I will want him out so at least the Dr's could have a chance at doing their thing. Lots of babies are born around that gestation and are absolutely fine.   

There is so many what if's all around. 

I've already asked the consultant and of course she couldn't answer. It would have to be assessed at the time. I'm as scared of another threatened prem-labour and the wrong decision being made as I am of my baby dying inside me again. 

Third trimester doesn't feel like the home stretch this time.  Yes there are 'only' 10 weeks to go until my induction and it doesn't sound very long. But this is by far the scariest part of this pregnancy for me. The part where it all went wrong and Anabelle died.  I don't trust my body and I don't trust me.  This time, I want it to go quickly for my sanity. For Alexander to survive, come home. 

We don't know how the next few weeks will pan out. As always we don't really know anything, the Dr's don't really know anything. All we can do is see the midwife weekly minimum, consultant regularly and hope that my body does the job it is designed to do. 

Hope that Alexander cooks smoothly until 37 weeks when we want to meet him.