Saturday, 4 December 2010
Anabelle's Angel Day
Last night I spent the evening with a friend and we started planning Anabelle’s Angel Day. The fundraising event will; raise awareness of stillbirth and break the silence surrounding it, raise money for Sands, supporting their Why 17? Campaign. (www.why17.org), and most of all will mark our daughters 1st birthday. Anabelle’s birthday is still 6 and a half months away, but this occasion is going to take some planning.
I cannot and would not let Anabelle’s birthday ever pass without acknowledgement. As with Christmas, whether she is here or not it will be her 1st birthday, the 21st June will always be her birthday. It’s important. As bittersweet as it is, we have to celebrate our daughter’s short life and the day we met her.
And so on the 17th and 18th June 2011 we are organising birthday memory occasions, honouring not only Anabelle, but the 16 other babies that were born sleeping on the same day as her, the 119 babies the same week, the 510 babies in June 2010, the 6500 babies this year. Remembering all angel babies. Raising awareness for all angel babies.
We’re aiming high, we have a big target. After yesterday I believe we can meet it. Within half hour of our Justgiving page being opened 3 generous beautiful people had donated £40 into our target.
We’re going to organise a “17 themed” sponsored walk on the 17th, and then on the 18th we’re searching for a function room, to hold our fete; with stalls, activities, raffles. We’re going to bombard companies, small local business’, everyone we know for their support, input and donations. The worst after all they can say is no, but even if they do say no we’ll have succeeded in making them think of angel babies, even if for a moment.
Today I feel a fire about it, we’re on a roll after our brainstorming evening. I want to and I’m determined to make a difference.
I want Anabelle to have cakes and candles, even if it is just for her memory. I want Anabelle to have a big day. I want all angel babies to be acknowledged.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
On This Date
A year ago today, 2nd December 2009, I got my BFP - for those of you who don’t speak internet that is a Big Fat Positive. A big fat positive pregnancy test.
I was bouncing! Definitely the most awake I’ve ever been at 6.00am and the wakeup call of his life for Jon! As soon as that beautiful word popped up the screen I was so excited to wake him and tell him he was going to be a Daddy. I think I was actually screaming!
A year ago today we found out Anabelle was there, she became our baby. Even then, when I saw ‘pregnant’ I felt a rush of love for the tiny tiny little baby that was already growing inside me. Anabelle growing inside me.
A family was everything we wanted. We were over the moon. Anabelle was the best Christmas present we have ever received and the perfect end to 2009. We’d been married for 4 months and now we were expecting a baby. Things really couldn’t get any better.
This date last year was the start of the best 32 weeks of my life. Growing our beautiful girl and enjoying every minute of getting to know her.
What a difference a year makes.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Tis' the Season
To be jolly,.. fa la la la la….. Only I don’t feel very jolly and I’m not about to start feeling jolly anytime soon. I know it is completely unrealistic and unachievable to cancel Christmas, but I would if I could.
Today is the first time since we’ve shared a home that we haven’t decorated it for Christmas on the 1st of December. Instead today we decorated our daughter’s garden; with a tiny pink tree, tiny pink baubles, sparkly stars and a tiny angel. Tomorrow I hope to add a photo for you all to see. Tonight it was too dark to take one.
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| Anabelle's Bauble - taken by my husband http://imageryinspired.blogspot.com/ |
Originally we were not going to even bother putting up the tree in the house. What was the point? What have we to celebrate? But then I saw a beautiful glass bauble – inside was an angel holding a star. Just perfect for Anabelle. I bought it, for Anabelle’s place on our tree this year. On the back we have engraved “Anabelle Violet, Our Sleeping Angel, 21st June 2010”. We’ve since decided we’re not putting up the big tree but instead a little pink one, dedicated to our daughter. She has a pink tree in her garden, and will have a pink tree in her home. The point of putting up the tree is including Anabelle.
There are parts of this Christmas we are avoiding though. We are not sending Christmas cards. I simply do not have it in me to sit there for hours writing 100+ cards without her name on them. Her name should’ve been on them this year. Throughout our pregnancy Anabelle had already been included on our cards; with love from Caz, Jon and Bababump, ( after we knew she was a girl and Belle). Anabelle was already included in our family greetings. Taking her name off is just too hard. She may not exist to the world but she exists to us. Leaving out a member of our family is not an option. Last year Jon bought me a card from “The Bump” – I was 8 weeks pregnant last Christmas, but I don’t get a card from my daughter this year.
Christmas Day we are not going to be joining our families. Neither of us can face putting on a face for a happy Christmas, to join in the opening of presents when Anabelle will never open any. Instead we shall spend Christmas quietly just the two of us and Fiz; we will attend church Christmas morning, we will visit our daughter in her garden, we will quietly eat dinner in our home, with Anabelle remembered and included at our table. She has a Christmas tree candle and an angel cracker to share.
So you see, we cannot cancel Christmas or even totally avoid it. Christmas is everywhere; and so we will survive it this year by including our little girl where we can. Whether she is here or not, this is Anabelle’s first Christmas.
Today we included her by making sure her garden is pretty for the festive season.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
The Year of Belle's Birth
This morning I noticed that my Bible is a 1985 copyright version. I like things like this – things that relate to my birth year.
The first present Jon ever bought me was 1985 related. 3 weeks after we started dating he went to Tenerife and brought me back a present. That present was a 20 pence piece necklace, the 20 pence had been made in 1985, cut out and crafted. It is beautiful. Jon saw it and thought of me, the year I was born.
Being reminded of 1985 this morning has made me think of 2010. The year of Anabelle’s birth.
Through our pregnancy we had been keeping a pregnancy diary and filling in a baby record book. One of the pages in the baby book was all about the year of birth and what the key events were. I started filling it in in January. It started with the earthquake in Haiti , over the months I’d noted other earthquakes, the general election and new primeminister, the hung parliament, the volcano ash causing havoc with air flights, the gunman and random murders in Cumbria. Our last entry was on the 4th June; I’d written about the ongoing oil disaster.
In Belle’s memory box we have the paper from the day she was born. The headline reads: The Minister for Hypocrisy – Top LibDem who dumped wife of 26 years when affair with PR girl was exposed shamelessly played on family values at election. I find it really hard to believe that on the 21st June this year that was front page news. I still haven’t read the rest of the paper yet. It’s going to take building up to, but one day I will. What happened on the day Anabelle was born?
I can barely remember any of these events happening now. Anything in the first half of 2010 seems such a long time ago. I can’t recall any world events at all since Anabelle’s birth, apart from the recent royal engagement.
The world since June has been such a blur. I can only concentrate on us and our daughter.
Monday, 29 November 2010
Photographs
Yesterday somebody commented on my blog post. I’ve already personally replied to the comment, but the issue has continued to play on my mind. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion but I feel the need to reiterate my response to Anonymous.
Out of everything in the comment it was the following points that I wanted to address again today.
However, I can see why photos of stillborn babies make people uneasy. They do not look alive, and some of them are quite distressing.
As I am unaware who Anonymous is, I believe this was a general statement, and not directed specifically at Anabelle. However, it is Anabelle who I am going to use as an example and defend. The only thing that gives Anabelle away as being dead is her colouring – and even that is slight. I will concede that I am biased, I am her mother after all. But from the pictures I’ve shared on facebook I really am at a loss as to what is so distressing about her.
She is not disfigured, she’s not gory or anything else remotely scary. She looks like any other baby, led in her moses basket, or in our arms sleeping. If there is any distress at all in her photos it’s that she represents myself and Jon, her grandparents and extended family who grieve her loss, and will always grieve her loss.
I made the point in my response to Anonymous that if someone feels a moment’s distress looking at Anabelle or any other beautiful angel babies photos then I hope it makes them think of the life-time distress of the grieving parents. For the few people who react badly and get distressed looking at an angel’s photo I would like to think the majority look beyond the “dead baby” and see somebody’s much loved, beautiful son or daughter. Sees the family, because that child is not just a “dead baby” to them. In my experience on facebook – Anabelle’s photos have had multitudes of beautiful and moving comments. The majority of people will always have compassion.
I can't help but think maybe it would better to keep these photos private.
And this is the biggy. Yes it is very easy to sit there in judgement and suggest what is “better” when you are on the outside and not the one living the situation. We and many other angel parents want and need to share our babies photos – and there is nothing wrong with that. Yes, the points were raised that some people don’t ever view dead bodies, or that you wouldn’t take or share pictures of your dead Grandmother, but the situations are so incomparable that I’m not even going to give it the time of day. But I will ask what is the fear of death in our society? A body cannot hurt you, and neither can a photo of an angel baby. But it can make you grow a pair, to stop, become aware and think.
Anabelle is not just a dead baby – she is a person, she has a face and a name and she is my firstborn child, I am proud of her and I refuse to hide her away and shush. She is and always will be a member of this family.
Anabelle has her photo up in our home, both of her Grandparent’s homes, her Great-grandmother’s home, her Aunt and Uncles home. Anabelle is included. If anyone has a problem with her photo on display in our homes, or on my personal facebook page then it is THEIR problem. Not mine, not ours.
If it’s that much of problem, simply don’t go and look. Don’t click on my photo album on facebook. By all means have a polite opinion such as Anonymous yesterday, raise your point of view that I can answer with how we feel, but there is absolutely no need to cause further distress to grieving parents by starting malicious hate groups – which was the point of my post yesterday.
We live in a society where stillbirth and baby death is a taboo subject. Even today when there are not many taboos left, this is one of the few that remain. Sharing our photographs and including our babies in our families gives opportunity to break that taboo. If they are to remain hidden and private then it only continues to feed the “sweep it under the carpet” attitudes of old. Things have come a long way from the days of old; while I am so thankful that Anabelle has the right to be acknowledged as the real person she is, that I can include her as one of my children, that I’m not expected to just ‘forget’ about her unlike years ago, I still think there is a long way to go.
I want to break the silence surrounding stillbirth. To raise awareness of the huge impact that a lost baby has on a family’s life. A child’s death, unborn or otherwise is not part of the natural order of things, we are living the worst kind of grief. It’s not a sweep it under the carpet matter.
And so today I’ll end my blog with a photo of my family. Anabelle in her Mummy and Daddy’s arms, holding her Daddy’s finger. It isn’t distressing. She isn’t distressing. But it is heart breaking.
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| Mummy, Daddy and Anabelle |
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Trolls
In this world there are some really spiteful people, true nasty pieces of work. The internet especially is littered with these types of people. Only on the internet these people are called Trolls. Trolls who say or do inflammatory things to hurt people, usually vulnerable groups. But most of all, I’ve learnt, they do it for the attention they get from their audience, thriving off drama and the distress they are able to cause.
At the end of the week I encountered Troll-like behaviour. On Facebook a group was flagged up by other angel Mummies. A group designed to cause hurt and distress, attempt to make our babies non-children again. The group was all about getting the pictures of angel babies off facebook. Only they were not referring to our children as angels, oh no, this nasty piece of work who created the group was calling them rotten, ugly, disgusting. The spiteful, I’d even say evil, creator also going on to say that the deaths of our babies were our own fault – and that we killed them by abusing pregnancy and deserved everything we got. Unbelievably it continued – an album on the group of the creators daughter titled “My beautiful gorgeous daughter who is alive because I looked after her.”
This Troll: pure evil.
This group at the time I saw it only had 50 likes; and from what I could see, mostly liked by angel Mummies so they could tell the groups creator exactly what they thought of them. The group stank of troll to me. I doubt the creator had a daughter at all, or really cared about angel babies and their photos that much, but that they had simply found a group of vulnerable people they could easily attack, knowing full well that attacking their precious babies would provoke the attention and reaction.
Friday I didn’t feel the need to justify myself or Anabelle’s photos to the Troll. I reported the page to facebook along with many other angel Mummies.
It angers me though that anyone, troll or otherwise, seeks to tarnish my daughter. How dare they? Although I realise this is the exact reaction trolls hope for from their intended audience.
Today I challenge anyone to walk just a mile in our shoes and then describe our babies as rotten, ugly or disgusting. The day our life-changing situation happens to the Troll, let them create nasty groups then. People have no idea.
My daughter is none of the things that evil person said. She is beautiful. I did not abuse my daughter and did not deserve the life that’s been given to me. I have as much right as every other mother to be proud of my daughter and to share her photos on my personal facebook page. My daughter is not scary. Anabelle looks like any other sleeping newborn. Anabelle is perfect.
I just wish that sometimes, people would ask to see Anabelle’s photo too. You know, when you’re in a group and people are sharing their children. I was at my Mums retirement evening a couple of months ago. There were people asking to see eachothers latest photos. No-one asked to see mine. I just wish people would include me in that. I have a child too. Anabelle is beautiful and deserves cooing over too.
Anabelle’s photos are so precious to us. They are the only photo’s we’ll ever have of her. She won’t grow or change, but she’ll forever be my perfect sleeping newborn girl.
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Today is Thanksgiving
Say not in grief that they are no more,
but in thankfulness that they were.
but in thankfulness that they were.
On Saturday just passed I saw the above quote on a memorial bench at Saltash Pass in Plymouth. It struck me as a beautiful saying, but a saying that is so hard to truly live up to. I am thankful that Anabelle was, but my grief and pain that she is no more on earth is great. I think it will be a long time before I am able to say not in grief that they are no more.
I’m learning a lot about grief. After all I’m living it. Grief is unique, lonely, isolating, angry, crazy, up, down, physical. Grief is all these things and so many more.
Grief is most of all unpredictable. I never know when the next intense low is going to hit me or what the trigger might be. Of course there are the times, dates, occasions I know I’m going to find difficult, but there is always the unexpected too. In reality I cannot know how I’m going to feel from one day to the next. Forward planning is almost impossible; how am I supposed to know if I’ll be able to do it when the time comes. There have and will be cancellations. There is a fine balancing act going on at the moment between a good day and bad; a good day can so easily be tipped over.
There is no time limit on grief. There is a process, it can’t be rushed. Maybe some people think I should be feeling better by now, or whatever time. Newsflash - I will grieve for Anabelle for the rest of my life. Maybe not as intensely as I do now, but there will always be some new reminder of what she and we are missing, something new in her life that wasn’t to grieve for. Yes, the say not in grief bit is long long way off. Maybe forever off. But I can be and am so thankful that she was. That she is, in our heart, our family and in heaven.
Today the American’s are celebrating thanksgiving. The fourth Thursday in November. A day to think about the year that has passed us and what within it we have to be thankful for.
Today I am thankful that I am a mother to a beautiful daughter, a wife to a wonderful husband, a daughter to loving parents. I say in thankfulness that Anabelle is.
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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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