Anniversary dates.... happy and sad.

Beanie is smiling now! And making good eye contact again. So I learned my lesson that living babies change what they do every few days.

Yesterday was his three month birthday and V's 1 year 11 month birthday. We took Beanie up to the little lake (he slept through the whole thing). But it was thankfully about 6 deg C cooler than where we are. When it is so hot I don't feel that I can take Beanie outside between 12pm and 4pm and even at 11am and 5:30pm it's still too hot.

On V's 3 month birthday, we bought this statue (I've yet to take a picture that does it justice). It is in our living room. I look at it often and remember the sorrow it so accurately represents.

And this is Beanie on his 3 month birthday. It's a bit blurry but not easy to capture those brief smiles on camera. I found something which makes him smile. You give him a kiss and say, "Kiss Kiss" and he smiles 75% of the time.

[Photo removed]

No further comment necessary on the joys of Beanie.

It's f**king unbelievable

Another unbelievable story. This time the child died. I hope they rot in hell too. There really is no justice in the world when wonderful people have such problems having living children and scum, there really is no other word for it, can do this to theirs.

Sigh

Initially I wasn't going to respond to Brown Eyes' first two comments on my last post as I thought they were so ridiculously far off the mark that they didn't merit it. But there is now a third comment from this person and I will clarify a few things. I'm spending Beanie's precious morning nap time doing this instead of brushing my teeth and finishing the washing up from yesterday by the way. Harumph.

1. Brown Eyes fails to appreciate that this blog is not really a place I write about Beanie. The content of the posts here is of course skewed towards grief. That's why I started my blog. Another reason is that I believe my readers are made up to a large extent of others who have lost children, unlike Brown Eyes. Some have gone on to have other living children, others have not. I haven't yet decided that I will post about Beanie endlessly here, or the joys that he brings every day. Before he was born, with a few exceptions, it wasn't really what I felt good reading about. Maybe I will change that. Maybe I won't feel the need to write about him.

2. To answer Brenda's question - note, a question rather than a judgement - no, I don't think Beanie is suffering or will suffer. Of course he will be affected. But I don't think that is unusual - surely all children are affected by circumstances in the wider world from the moment they are born or even conceived.

Let's imagine for a moment that a child is born to someone who is somewhat over-confident in their opinions instead of wanting to listen, hear and understand. Is that person's children going to suffer? Probably not. Will they be affected? Of course! For example, they might end up feeling like their parent has unrealistic expectations of them to have a stiff upper lip no matter what happens since that is the example set. It's just a theory. It could affect them some other way.

All children are affected by their parents or caregivers. They are sponges absorbing everything around them. I mean, duh!

I fully intend to tell Beanie about his older brothers when I feel the time is right. There are pictures of all three of my sons in my home and I'm not taking them down anytime soon. Beanie is certainly not being "punished" in any way. I don't let Beanie cry alone whilst I weep at photos of V and A in another room.

3. I don't write about A as much here. But I view A as much my son as V. It's not easy to go through ter.min.atio.n and it's not easy to write about it. I think about A a lot and wonder if our decision helped him to avoid suffering or not.

I have a post brewing about A but it's a very slow brew. Opinions on the topic are extremely polarised, especially in the US where I also have a lot of readers. So a post about it has to be written carefully to try and maximise the understanding. Right now I don't have enough time to spend on writing it carefully enough.

4. "As a parent you are obligated to put your own emotions into a box and show your children unconditional love and appreciation." This could only be written by someone whose emotions have never been intense enough to spill out of those convenient boxes. And I don't actually even agree with the statement on its own. It makes you sound a bit like a Stepford Mom.

There are no conditions on my love for Beanie. I'm not sure where I've written otherwise. I thought the magic thing about love was that it grows to cover all that need it - it doesn't need to be divided in parts.

5. But the biggest load of crap written by Brown Eyes is the following:

"If god forbid any of my children died I would be heartbroken and want to die myself. I can not even begin to fathom life without the joy they bring me every day. But I would also know that my other children would need me to be strong...and for them...somehow I would try so hard. I would seek all the councelling in the world if it would help me to be able to be there for my other children. I would do anything. I would not simply accept that this is the best I get(which is obviously still very VERY griefstricken) and therefore the best the other living children get."

So this person cannot bring herself to even imagine one of her children dying, which doesn't surprise me. Yet she is so confident that she already knosw how she would deal with it, believes that counselling is a magic wand that will eventually wave all hurts away if you just stick at long enough and all this even though she would want to die! A true superwoman with limitless powers.

After the death of a child, when the moment of you wanting to die has past, you manage to get out of bed, you slowly begin functioning again (note I said functioning not living), and then one day you might be able to laugh with friends (the ones who haven't blindsided you with silence or their refusal to acknowledge what happened as it is too much for them) and can begin to start living again. The living is unlikely to be the same as before just a shattered vase stuck together again won't be the same as before either.

Now Beanie has woken up and I have to go. I actually agree with Brown Eyes' profile " I don't care if "its your blog, and you're entitled to your feelings", if you put them out there for the world to read...prepare to get some criticisms." Maybe that's why there is nothing in her own blog. You can't filter out quality comments from ridiculous ones on the Internet.

I turned off comments on this post as I don't think further comments discussion on this will bring anyone anything.

I don't even want to try

I made it for 9am for my psychiatrist appointment. I took the bus on my own (first time with the pram - normally I take the car). Beanie fell asleep in the bus, woke up briefly to look engagingly at the psychiatrist and then dutifully fell back to sleep for the whole appointment.

Afterwards I walked to a shop next to her office that I've been meaning to go to for ages where Beanie cooed cutely at the sales lady. Then we caught the bus back home.

It all worked like a dream and I was congratulating myself on finally managing to manage stuff with Beanie in tow.

Until I got home and realised that I didn't have my keys. DH had left slightly later that morning so that I could take a shower and eat breakfast and get out the door early enough, and we had all left at the same time. He locked the front door and I left my keys inside.

I had to call DH who was in a meeting and he had to come home from work to let me in. My in-laws have keys but they had left on holiday that very morning. Luckily I had the car keys so I could sit in the car, change Beanie's nappy and feed him (although the car seat was not in there at the time so I couldn't go anywhere with him. It was midday and extremely hot). DH was okay about it apart from not passing up the chance to give me a lecture. Well, I would have done the same.

********
At the appointment we discussed how my bridge to V is through sadness. And I find it very hard to let go as it makes me feel like I am letting go of V. I don't want to let go of him. I want my life to be marked by his presence and I want to bear the scar left by the wound of his death as it signfies his presence. I want that scar to be raised and ugly as it signifies how traumatic his death was and how much he meant/s to me. It sort of like a tatoo on my psyche, except it's not artwork and in no way beautiful.

So I'm not sure how to find something else which lets me be marked by his presence. I'm not ready, almost two years on. I went to a trial yoga lesson recently - the yoga ended up being WAY too advanced for me so I won't be going back - and during the meditation the teacher said "Dare to let yourself find peace." She wasn't addressing me in particular but I realised that I don't dare. I don't even want to try. Is this a phase or a permanent state where I have ended up?

Of course I have found happiness in Beanie. But I'm not ready to open myself up to large social gatherings where you go and have fun. I can still only deal with small groups of people and am generally sticking to the people I know and who know. I just can't be who I was before. I can't let myself go anymore.

I have made a lot of progress in the last 1 year 11 months from when I could not get out of bed and despite additional trauma. Now I think I'm on a plateau and I don't think it will be getting any better from here on in.

I'm not going to see my psychiatrist regularly any more. If I feel the need I'll go back. It's just that I could go on seeing her for another year - I would be able to talk about stuff - and I don't see what it will really change now.

Two years didn't just disappear

I am going to see my psychiatrist tomorrow morning, for the first time since Beanie's birth. Unfortunately the appointment is at 9am and I'm already wondering how I will manage to get up, both dressed, both fed, and me showered and on the bus by then, but I'm sure I'll make it work somehow.

Yes, I am taking Beanie with me. I spent so long talking about him to my psychiatrist that I wanted her to meet him and also otherwise I would find it hard to go at all - I don't have any childcare arranged yet. My in-laws have looked after Beanie a bit but they are going on holiday tomorrow morning.

It seems that most people don't really want to talk about V or A any more and don't expect me to either. As if with the birth of Beanie, the past two years disappeared. Well, no they didn't.

The other day I saw a friend who had a boy in the same hospital in which I gave birth, one week before V was born. She has been a good friend but uptil now I had only seen her son, T., once by accident when I bumped into them in shopping centre. On Friday I saw them both, and watched T running around, getting into mischief and generally being happy.

Who could help but think this is what my son would be doing now if he had lived? But no-one wants to really hear it. It's like the whole topic of V has suddenly become a bit old.

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At almost 12 weeks, Beanie is still a stingy smiler and I still worry about him having a problem but was glad to read your comments up to 4 months being normal. He's seems to be doing well otherwise.

Tagged by Brenda

I have been tagged by Brenda. Thanks Brenda, but it's pretty boring.

[Post deleted in a moment of anonymity crisis]

This meme has done the rounds already, so I won't tag anyone else.

Get well soon Theo

For those who have access to her blog, please go and give Kate some support as she deals with a sick Theo.

How come she has a two-year old?

I like to think of myself as generally quite liberally minded. But I find myself hoping that this woman rots in prison.

Update: my liberally minded self demands that I also hope the father gets punished too. Where was he in all this?

The same frame of mind

I'm sitting here letting Beanie whimper for a little while on his own, as he is supposed to be napping and I want to gently teach him to fall asleep on his own. He's not wailing or anything, but just whimpering.

This afternoon Beanie will get his first vaccinations - one in each leg :-( poor baby.

And all the while, I'm racing ahead, thinking what if he dies from an adverse reaction to the vaccine? All I will remember is how he was whimpering alone in his bed that morning.

I don't think about Beanie dying all the time. But today I am. I believe in vaccinations, but you can't put the possibility of a problem completely out of your mind.

Hmmm - some silence from his room (well actually our room). Has he fallen asleep on his own?

Ah. That would be a no.

*******
Update: he screamed and I cried with him in sympathy for the vaccines. He's not very smiley at all and the doctor said I had to watch this carefully over the next two weeks and bring him back if he doesn't get better at social smiling so his sight can be checked. Except I know he can see fine, and have been asking Dr. Google about late smiling and autism :-(

Physically he's fine - he's put on a kilo in one month and is in the 50th percentile for everything. He might have an inguinal hernia (common in boys) which I also have to watch carefully for.