October

Autumn is my favourite season. I wasn't really expecting this October feeling.

October was the month Moksha was conceived. A whole year ago we planned to start trying to conceive and we prepared to try for one year before getting disheartened. We were surprised and oh-so-happy to find that Moksha came into our lives immediately.

Now it is a year later and Moksha was here and isn't here. I feel like I dreamt these past 12 months. Whenever I find myself doing a "normal" activity, like watching a film at home, I start wondering if it really happened. Did I imagine it all? Here we are, still just the two of us watching a film just like a year ago. Where did that year go? WHERE IS HE? WHY ISN'T HE HERE?

We saw the husband of a woman from our antenatal class today. The Saturday before Moksha was born, we had visited a friend in hospital who had just had a baby. On our way out, we bumped into this same guy and it turned out his wife and newborn daughter were in the next room. We dropped in to say hi. She had been induced a few weeks early as her baby wasn't growing anymore. Their little girl was underweight and quite jaundiced. The nurses came to take her away and put her under lamps whilst we were there. I remember feeling bad for her mother and at the same time thinking, I'm so glad that our baby already weighs more than that and I won't have the worry that she has. God I was naive.

Anyway, today her husband was picking up a prescription for something or other. He saw us and said hi. I think he was a little confused as we didn't have a baby with us. He said, "How's it going?". DH said, "I guess you haven't heard....uh, well, how could you have heard, our baby was stillborn". Shock and sorries. We asked how they were and he said, "uh... ok, it's not easy" and vaguely waved his bag from the pharmacy. I got the distinct feeling that their baby still has some problems but he couldn't top our baby being dead, so felt he couldn't say anything.

So much for my attempt at being less negative yesterday. It's like being attached to a stake in the ground by a piece of elastic. Stray too far and the elastic will eventually snap you back. I suppose that with time all that happens is the elastic gets a bit longer.