The three 'wise' choices.

I suppose this should carry a warning: 

Some aspects of this post may be upsetting to read, both emotionally and in the graphical description.. 

When you lose a baby (lose, like you accidentally mislaid it somewhere, wrapped in the knitting or the fish & chip paper or something...)

When you have a baby die before it is born and it's far enough along to be distinct they give you three options. 

Option one: 

Stay in hospital and take drugs. (Bonus!) but no - they're the drugs that make all the 'products of conception' come out quickly. (They can't say 'baby'. They say it once during the scan when you know something is wrong but you are still looking for the baby, but then after that they say 'products of conception' when referring to the baby and miscarriage when they are referring to what has happened to you.)

So with option one you stay in over a few days, you have lots of very heavy, lumpy, clots expelling from your insides and then they send you home, tickety boo.

(Too much information with the lumps and the clots? That's sadly what it's like. Identifiable parts. Placenta, amniotic sac, actual child. My baby was nearly ten weeks old and they do a lot of growing by then.)

Option Two:

Have a D&C. For the uninitiated a  Dilation and Curettage) means scraping out all the bits of baby and baby survival parts (sorry, products of conception) out of the uterus during an operation, those parts then get taken away for testing and eventually thrown in the bin. You can choose to be awake or not awake for this. And straight after it you can go home and its all over, hygienically dealt with, no blood to see, a quick hand sanitizer on the way out and we will see you soon hopefully Mrs Stokoe, good luck with the next one!

Option Three:

Go home, wait it out and grieve. Going home is not for everyone. You have to think about how you will deal with it all. Will you look at what comes out? Will you flush it down the loo? It hurts, it's painful. It's exhausting. When will it come? It's a lot of cramping and bleeding. WHEN will it come?

If you physically look at what comes then you will have your baby's blood on your fingers and a lot of people can't deal with that. How will you deal with that? 

You have to take a lot of painkillers and spend a small fortune on menstruation pads. You do a LOT of sleeping.

And. Whether or not it it true, you will still feel like you smell like death whilst the baby is still inside you.

You'll think why didn't I do this the clean and hygienic way? When you're running to the loo, and in between your legs is stuffed with tissue but there's blood everywhere anyway you'll be screaming for the D&C and the neat and tidy, and the 'permanent floor runner on the cream carpet' 21st Century version of how to have a miscarriage. 

But not us. Of course not us. We chose the hard way, the natural way, the messy, sobbing, bloody, ancient, timeless, traditional, historical, ritual way. 

It was the only way we knew.

We were sitting at the kitchen table and I said to husband, there's a lady in the Birch tree, can you see? "Come up and see me sometime". She's got her arms wrapped around the tree and sometimes the leaves are her hair blowing'.  'Birch, Berkana, Holda.' he said. He saw her.

And then my body knew what to do. I felt a pull and a big heaviness and cramping, horrible pain. I ran upstairs half undressed to the toilet and when the baby (the products of conception) came we scooped her up and wrapped her in tissue, carried her downstairs with the dogs in tow like a little funeral procession, dug a hole under the Birch tree which was all ready to welcome her with open arms and I laid a Camellia flower with her and Mag laid a block of slate onto her. 

Camellia for perfection and love and because that was the nearest beautiful thing we had to hand. 

The Birch Tree already has the placenta from Solly. It likes it. 

We did the right thing. 

 

 

Starting from the beginning

I'm in the crappiest place. I've lost the baby, my knee is still fucked and I've put on about two stone because of not skating and the pregnancy. 

I don't know what to do. I'm so sad. 

It's sunny outside but I just feel paralysed with deciding how to move forward. I haven't gone to work for two days. I need to pull myself together and sort myself out but I don't know how. 

Things to be happy about:

1/ I've got two lovely children already

2/ It's sunny. 

3/ We are having a multi-fuel Eco stove fitted. 

4/ I am going on holiday in August.

5/ We can try again for another baby.

6/ I finally have a Physio appointment booked on Monday. 

PISS. 

Yellow rooms always bring bad things.

This particular room was yellow with a hint of pale grey, more of a weary, washed-out lemon than all-out holiday citrus. 

The last one was vibrant and joyous yellow as far as I recall. I'm not sure why anyone would choose to paint a 'quiet' room such a vivid and hopeful colour; perhaps I have misremembered it and actually it was the same weak and ineffectual shade as this one. If it was me I would paint it a wistful sea blue or a gentle olive lichen or even just reflective, contemplative white.. 

Regardless. 

Last time I was in a room of this colour it brought the news that my father had terminal cancer and was dying. 

This time I hear that my unborn baby had died, that all the bleeding had been a miscarriage and that what I had left was the 'articles of conception' which was causing all the pain. 

But the colour, in the end, doesn't matter it seems other than to act as a visual reference. It doesn't matter how yellow or green or pink the room that you hear the bad news in really. 

Or maybe it does matter. For in my house where all our laughing and living is done I shall never, ever paint a room the same colour as the hospital 'quiet' room where they take you to tell you all about death. 

Catching the train after twenty years of trying.

Last night I dreamt I caught the train. 

I dream of trains all the time and I never, ever catch them. In fact I don't think I can remember catching one in all the dreams I've had. What normally happens is the train comes but I am on the other side of the platform and run but miss it, or it comes but I have too much luggage to load on and things keep falling out on the platform, or it comes but my legs aren't working and I can't quite manage to get on it in time. Something frustrating and horrid like that anyway. 

Then, last night the train was coming and we were driving alongside it racing to get to the station and I was thinking, "Ahhh this old 'not catching the train' chestnut", but as it actually pulled into the station so did we, and unloaded our things and all piled on. Messily, it is true; some luggage was basically thrown into the cabin, but still. We caught it. 

I woke up this morning thinking, Holy shit! I can't believe I caught the train! 

I've been trying to catch that train for all my adult life and quite a lot of my childhood too. Thank fuck I finally have.