Lost

I’ve been planning the blog post I was going to write today for a while now.  It was going to be a lovely surprise for most of you, accompanied by a fuzzy ‘alien in a snowstorm’ ultrasound picture.

We went for our 12-week scan yesterday, full of excitement and tentative talk about baby names, to be told that there was a ‘problem’ with the pregnancy.  ‘What sort of problem?’ we asked.  ‘I can’t see a baby,’ replied the consultant.  Problem indeed.  In one split second my excitement at seeing our unborn child for the first time became a slow motion nightmare as I was asked to remove my jeans and underwear for an internal scan.  I felt weirdly calm – even cracked a joke as the doctor thoughtfully applied a Durex Gossamer condom to the probe.  How hideously ironic.  Was stoic as she uttered those immortal words: ‘it’s just one of those things, you didn’t do anything wrong’.  Asked the right questions – what now?  Left, dry-eyed, explained to the midwife on the way out that things didn’t go as planned.  Stepped through the green automatic doors on the way to the car park.  Fell apart – still falling.

Why did this happen – when? How?  Why did my body not let me know that our baby died, or rather that it never lived?  How can I still have sore breasts, a swollen tummy, a pathological urge to sleep and eat and pee at every opportunity?  Why is nature playing this cruel joke on me, on us?  Now we begin a six-day wait for a second scan to confirm what we already know, followed by God knows what kind of procedure to do the job my body didn’t.  In the meantime, we have to tell the people we already let in on our little secret – foolish, some might say, but I’m glad they knew.  I’m glad we had all acknowledged and anticipated this baby, this little coulda-woulda-shoulda been person, the one my body still thinks it’s carrying.  Because even though it never really was, we loved it and we need to mourn its loss with the same people who would have shared our joy if things had turned out differently.

Here is a post I began the day after I found out I was pregnant.  I should probably just delete it but it feels wrong, somehow, so I thought I’d share it anyway.

Yesterday we had some very exciting news.  The kind of news that makes you run downstairs barefoot with your dressing gown flying behind you.  The kind that makes you fling your arms around your husband, telling him what’s happened without saying a word.  The kind that makes your toddler crack up with laughter at mummy jumping around squealing like a weirdo.  The kind that means life has just changed forever.  I’m pregnant!

After I did a second test just to make sure, we all flopped on the sofa with cups of tea and a pile of hot, buttered pancakes in our normal lazy Sunday breakfast routine.  Truth be known we were watching X Factor on Sky+ from the night before and as I watched Bubs boogying in his seat to the music, I was almost swept away by my emotions.  We have been wanting this, planning this, for a while now.  And I am so thrilled to be pregnant again – I love the thought that another baby is safely snuggled up inside me, that special secret knowledge of the precious cargo I’m carrying.  The size of an apple pip and we love it already.  But in amongst the joy was some sadness; guilt that Bubs will have to share me with another child, sadness that the time when it’s ‘just us’ is drawing to an end, worry over how my heart will hold the same amount of love for another little person, over how I’ll cope with two – especially on the days when one feels like more than enough!

That small boy wiggling his butt on the sofa has lit up my life from within.  I never knew what love really was until I loved him.  The exhilarating, terrifying, life-affirming experience of the ‘first’ child; how we have despaired in the dead of night when he would not sleep, how we have been awestruck by first smiles, first words, first steps.  How we have learned, together, what it really means to be a family of parents and child.  And now there’s going to be another one.  Three will become four and I don’t doubt that everything we thought we knew about parenthood will change too.

It’s scary and it’s wonderful and I can’t quite believe it’s really happening.