Today, despite major pressure and stress at work, I took my planned half day off and participated voluntarily in a training course for midwives given by the state hospital.
The course was about dealing with perinatal death. I had a slot where I recounted my experiences of pregnancy and birth as a "concerned mother". It's something I had wanted to do last year but I had to drop out as it was too close to Beanie's birthdate.
About seven or eight midwives attended the two day course. I think they were mostly there because they had been confronted by perinatal death in the course of their work and had felt like they didn't know how to react to the benefit of the parents.
I told them mostly about V (as his story ended up taking most of the allotted time), but I also told them about A and about my pregnancy with Beanie and his birth. I showed pictures of all three of my sons on the overhead projector. They asked questions and I answered.
I was crying about 2 minutes in, but that was okay as both they and I expected this. They also cried a bit. I was glad to have the time to talk about V and A, as I don't talk about them much these days - no-one wants to really hear it anymore. On Beanie's birthday, we went up to the little lake where their ashes were scattered and left a couple of yellow tulips. It's been a long time since we went. I never used to understand that when I read of others not having visited graves and memorials for a long while. But life just takes over and there is very little time (this applies to blogging as well, apparently).
I'm very glad I did the training course. I'll probably do it again in October.
6 years ago