6 months old today!

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Beanie at 6 months old

I never thought this day would arrive. I love you so much Beanie!

She understands it perfectly

When my brother and his family and my mother were here in August, we went up together to the little lake where V and A's ashes were scattered. My brother had been there once before, when we held the ceremony for V. He pretty much flew over from the States for a weekend in order to be able to attend. My mother has been quite a few times.

My SIL and the kids had never been there but wanted to go. And I wanted them to go too, so that was good. When I picked them up they had flowers ready to put in the lake. We took some family photos and for me it meant that somehow V. and A. were included in the photos.

My niece has seen a picture of V. and clearly knows about him. She will be four in November. When she tossed her flower into the lake, my brother said, "This flower is for V." She asked why he died. And I answered truthfully and said I didn't know but that I thought that Dadaji* and V. had gone to the same place and had seen each other.

On seeing pictures of my father, whom she met and does vaguely remember, she asked, "Why did he die?" again. My brother said he was old and his heart wore out and reassured her that she wouldn't die for a long long long time.

When my mother went with her, my SIL and my nephew to the local playground, my niece and mother skipped ahead whilst my nephew MC (aged 1 and a half) toddled along with my SIL and stopped to look at fountains, paving stones, lampposts, walls, specks on the ground etc. My mother stopped and looked back, but the curve of the road meant they couldn't see them straight away.

"Mummy and MC have died," said my niece, quite matter-of-factly.
"No, they have NOT died," said my mother.

When we told my brother and SIL this, they weren't worried. Both said that she doesn't really understand what she is saying. It does seem a little as though she knows when she asks the question or uses the word she knows she will get a little extra attention.

However, my brother specifically said, "She just thinks when someone dies, they've gone away and are not coming back."

So she understands it perfectly. What else is there to understand?


*Dadaji = paternal grandfather, my father for my brother's daughter. Beanie would have called my father Nanaji, which means mother's father.

Growing up part 3

Look what arrived a few days ago:

and not a moment too soon. Beanie has become a seasoned roller and now nearly always sleeps on his front, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it anymore. Repositioning him usually results in him waking up and crying or not waking up but flipping right back over in his sleep.

And in a few weeks he will be - deep breath - going into his own room and sleeping all by himself.

So far courgettes seem to be his favourite, but in keeping with his easy personality, he hasn't actively disliked carrots or apples either. (Over here they say to start with veggies not with cereals. But some sort of cereal is coming up soon).

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What is healing?

I'm not sure what "healing" from the death of your baby is supposed to be like.

Since Beanie's safe arrival, I confess that I am now able to look at other babies with joy, gurgle and coo at them, make them smile, all without that heavy feeling, without being close to tears. I find other babies cute, no longer just representatives of what I do not have.

I suppose this could be considered as healing. In that case it took Beanie's aliveness to make it begin.

I feel as if I have lost touch with V. It feels like he is truly gone. As Janis wrote recently - he is a spirit, but I feel as though he is a spirit without a connection to me anymore. And that makes me very sad. That is what brings me close to tears. I have mourned my firstborn dead son, and now I am mourning the connection I used to feel with him. What will happen once that mourning is done? Will it be like he was never here? Please please, don't make it so. It is what I am so desperate for - I want it to never be like he was never here.

This feeling certainly doesn't make me feel healed, whatever healed means.

A. has been on my mind a lot recently. I still haven't got to writing that post about the events of last year in a coherent form. I am able to see that I took decisions within the context of my life at that moment, something which I am unable to see with V. The decision to term.inate my preg.nan.cy with A, thus ending his life, does not sit well with me. I am not able to categorically say that it was for the best, nor will I ever be able to. However, that seems normal. How could such a thing ever sit well?

regret: verb
1 a: to mourn the loss or death of b: to miss very much
2: to be very sorry for

regret: noun
1: sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair
2 a: an expression of distressing emotion (as sorrow) b plural : a note politely declining an invitation

I mourn his death. I miss him. I am very sorry for his death. I experience sorrow although can I say it was beyond my control? It is a distressing emotion. (I think we can ignore noun 2b).

So yes, I regret A's death very very much. I regret having to make the decision. But I don't know if I regret the actual decision. I will never know.

I don't feel healed with respect to A's death either.

Do you have an idea of what healing is supposed to be?

Thoughts for Brenda and her family

Please go and give Brenda some support - her sister is very ill in hospital.

Another first

Beanie is sick for the first time. It doesn't seem to be anything major, more of a little cold he picked up from a friend's kid yesterday. He did have a fever of 38 deg C which I've given him something for. He's a bit miserable and tired but not "apathetic" as my doctor's office asked. He's eating reasonably well. They gave me an appointment for tomorrow afternoon in case it doesn't get better.

Oh well, the first of many such episodes, I'm sure.

Rosepetal in the innocent days

Antigone Lost asked for photos of our tiny selves. Here's one of me! It will be gone soon due to my anonymity crisis. I think I am about 3 which would make this 1976. My mum probably made the pinafore (she made a lot of my clothes).

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Rosepetal in the innocent days

Curious

When they talk about teaching creationism in schools, do they mean in science lessons or in religious education lessons?

Remember couple B?

Today we are going to be meeting couple B, for the first time since that weekend almost a year ago. I still don't want to, but I female couple B has made an effort. She didn't know I was pregnant with Beanie and found out about him after he was born. She called me in the hospital to congratulate me.

This date has been fixed up for ages and it was their initiative (what with trips away, holidays, prior commitments, we couldn't find a date earlier). They wanted to invite us for lunch, which I knew would be a long, drawn-out affair lasting the whole afternoon. Despite female B's efforts, I have already given up on this friendship. I don't have enough polite chit-chat for a long drawn out afternoon. Beanie has gotten into a nice little daytime nap routine which is almost predictable and whilst I don't mind disrupting it on occasion, I prefer it to be for something I would actually like to be doing.

I guess it's just all too late for me.

So instead we are meeting half way for a walk in a park, at 4pm, with their two daughters.

By the ways, Couple C had their baby girl and she was thankfully okay despite the toxoplasmosis. Haven't seen them since that weekend a year ago either and I really really don't want to.

Growing up part II

Beanie had his first taste of formula last night. I am a bit wistful but we are going to go very slowly. Sometime in the next couple of weeks he'll be starting solids and moving into his own room (gulp*) and I don't want to start everything at the same time.

He has been on four feeds a day and none at night for quite some time now, and I am gently going to make the bedtime feed into a formula one. Last night he had 60ml (about 2 fl.oz) of formula and the rest from me. The other three feeds will stay breastfeeds for the moment.

He was a bit dubious to start with but then guzzled it all down and didn't seem to have any ill-effects on his digestive system. Tonight: 90ml of formula.

I want my cycles to come back which is why I'm starting this now, and also I have the time to go very slowly with it as I'm not going back to work until January - I've taken 4.5 months of unpaid leave on top of 4 months of paid maternity leave. Beanie doesn't need the breast to fall asleep which is a huge bonus.

My formula adventure didn't start very well - I bought some (Hi.PP) from the supermarket, only to find when I got it home that it was already 14 days past its sell-by date! I made a complaint and took it back, but there was none of the same type left (which I thought suspicious, like they were all past their sell-by date and they took them all off the shelves). I ended up looking in a few other places and no-one else seemed to stock that brand of formula. Conclusion: don't start on a brand which is hard to find. I ended up getting a different one (Apta.mil), and Beanie certainly doesn't seem to care.

*When he goes into his own room, he's pretty much going to be the same distance away from us as he is now, with his bed in our room. But it's still stressful thinking about it. I still get butterflies everytime we go in to check him. If it's my husband checking, I always imagine him shouting, "call an ambulance, quick!", until he comes out and says, "Everything's fine." I've ordered my Ange.lcare monitor now. Beanie's not going into his own room until I get it.

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Glow in the Woods - 6x6

Glow in the Woods 6x6

1 Do you feel as though a higher entity/supreme being/energy force has a presence in your life? What do you call it, and what makes you feel it exists?

I believe that there is more than "this" and that there is something after.
I have difficulty in believing in a Supreme Being.

2 Describe, in a word or two, the nature of your spiritual self before and then after the loss of your baby/babies.

(It's sad, isn't it, that the question has to say "baby / babies").

Before: in the background
After: more in the foreground

3 Do you pray, even if you wouldn’t call it praying? To whom? What for?

I don't pray, as I don't believe in a Supreme Being. So, no-one to pray to. I think I do believe in karma. After my father died, I remember sobbing to a friend on the phone that I must have done something really terrible in a former life.

***updated*** but I would like to pray. I just am not sure who to pray to. Maybe meditation is what I mean rather than prayer.

4 Is there a particular line of scripture/teaching/sentiment that you find particularly helpful? Or is there one that’s commonly referred to but is unhelpful?

No particular scriptural remark.

Someone once told me after my baby died that "That one was for God." I didn't find it helpful at all. In fact it was my old cleaning lady, and I fired her, mostly as she was ALWAYS late and her excuse was ALWAYS that she had been looking after a baby for another family, but the comment about God didn't help her case at all.

I also never found it helpful when people said, "he would have wanted you to be happy." How do you know? He would have just wanted his mother, like any newborn. Having a living baby has reinforced this feeling, although I now can imagine V as a higher being, not a baby.

My cousin, who I'm not very close to, sent me an email saying he believed V had attained moksha and only needed a very short last life on this earth before reaching it. It was the one thing at the time that I felt comforting. Hence the name of this blog.

Although imagining moksha is hard at the same time.

5 Did your faith offer rites, rituals or teachings that acknowledged your baby and your healing? If not (or if you didn't seek it out in an organized fashion), what rites, rituals or mantras have you adopted as your own?

He was cremated, as that is what should happen to a Hindu. On the other hand, he never had an official naming ceremony, which normally happens a few weeks after birth. We put his ashes in water (for a Hindu the best place is the Holy Ganges in India). I felt that the Ganges led to the ocean and so would the stream running out of the little lake.... eventually.

My husband and I each cut a lock of our own hair and put them in the lake with the ashes. We each read something. My father read a lament at it which deeply touched me. We scattered rosepetals in the lake (hence my online name Rosepetal). I wrote about it here

For my second son, A., also cremated, we did the same ceremony at the same lake. For A. I didn't know whether Hinduism would say that the soul had already entered his body at 16 weeks. In fact I asked my brother to ask the priest who conducted my father's last rites. I was concerned that A's soul could have been my father's reincarnated. The priest said it wasn't possible, that my father's soul wouldn't be reborn for a year at least, and that it was around 7 months gestation that the soul entered the body. But I still think A had a soul.

We go back to the lake relatively often, to put flowers or petals in the lake. Sometimes we light incense sticks and leave them there. But there is no marker, like a gravestone.

Beanie has already been there several times.

6 Some people say that in a foxhole (a desperate, life-threatening situation), there are no atheists. You’ve been in a foxhole. Discuss.

When I was younger, late teens, early twenties, I believed myself an atheist. But it's been some time, even before V's death, that atheism doesn't make sense to me. It can only ever be an assumption, what happens after death. So agnosticism would make the most logical sense.

I once read an analogy for Hindus which said that just like when we dream, it seems real, then we wake up and find it wasn't, the time will come when we will "wake up" from this life and realise it wasn't real either. This seems perfectly possible to me.

When V died, I wanted to die to, so I could find him and protect him. So I felt very strongly that he must continue to "be" somewhere else. I didn't always imagine it as a nice place. I imagined him crying for his mother and wondering why I didn't come.

Hello again

Inspired to be crafty

Inspired by all you crafty types in the blogosphere, I am intending to knit the sweater on page 9 of this catalogue for Beanie (sorry couldn't find the pattern in English).

It's a very very long time since I knitted anything - in fact I was a young slip of a girl when I last knitted a sweater. I'm going to have to learn some new French vocabulary to do this one. And I just had to remind myself how to cast on by checking some Youtube videos.

The wool is lovely, but expensive. Stupidly I didn't ask the price of the wool before buying it - and the total came to more than I would have spent on an actual readymade sweater for Beanie. Hopefully this will make me more determined to finish it.

In fact that is also why I am admitting to knitting it here. So I will be ashamed not to finish it. Feel free to shame me by asking in.... ummm.... a month's time? And if I do finish it, who knows what I may knit next - maybe something useful for someone else?

Knitting is indeed therapeutic and may help to make me less angry all the time (see last post).

I never learned to crochet in my youth for some reason, so that is still a total mystery to me.