Up and down

Firstly, just to clear up any confusion, I'm not. Cycle was also a bit shorter than it should have been this month based on when I thought my little egg made its way out so it ended up raining on Simon's 30th birthday parade. I'm going to the GP this week, I'll get some blood tests and I'll just try my best to relax and remind myself it has only been five months and that obviously, my body is not ready to do this again yet. Even though I am, my body is playing hard ball so all I can do is play along, keep doing what I'm doing and hope for the best. I'll get right back on that horse and just keep on going, because the way I see it, I have no other choice. I gotta finish what I started back in November 2007, and that is to have a baby. A baby to bring home.

So like anyone trying to make a baby, that unwanted visitor can only bring you down. And it threatened to flatten me this month. I felt ruined, and destroyed. I felt like this month was it, and because it didn't happen, I was never going to bring home a baby. I felt so defeated. As always, in my head, there was just so much riding on it this month. I wanted to give Simon a positive pregnancy test for his birthday and I also wanted to birth another baby before I was 30. And this cycle was our last chance to make that happen. This month, there seems to be nothing riding on it. February is not significant for us to conceive and November is not significant for us for a due date. So I can relax about not worry about things happening by certain dates so I can get these stupid happy endings I conjure up in my messed up head. It will happen when it will happen, and there isn't much more I can do about it. Having said that though, I really would like it to happen before the end of the year. I do have three more cycles to make that happen. I know I can't help myself....

And in the next few weeks, in order to try and keep stress levels low and our spirits high, we finally think it might be time to take a trip. A trip that all our friends assumed we would take within weeks of losing her - and they all chipped in and donated thousands of dollars to us to help the cause. Because so many thought that would help us to heal, make us feel better. We soon learned though grief is a common companion where ever you go, and that no matter where we went, it was always going to be with us, right at our side, dragging at our heels. So holiday plans got shelved. Our number one aim was to be pregnant again asap, but seeing as this hasn't happened after the longest five months of our lives, HAWAII HERE WE COME! At this point we figure why not? It can't hurt, and we deserve to have fun. Surely there is more fun to be had in Hawaii than on my couch? And thanks must go to some of the other loss mamas out there who planted this seed in my mind. I'd never thought about Hawaii as an option before. Now that the idea is in my head, I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be!

Yesterday, our spirits were also high. Simon had as good a birthday as you could have hoped for, under these shitty circumstances. He didn't wake to cuddles from a five month old but we did have a house full of family, friends and friends' babies and there was food, Simon's beer on tap (which everyone LOVED which made Simon grin from ear to ear) and Wii. I couldn't help but think back though, as I keep doing, to Simon's birthday last year when we annouced to our friends we were pregnant. Having told our families Christmas Day and having had a positive ultrasound in mid January, Simon's birthday seemed like as good a time as any to share our blissful news. I don't think anyone would have predicted we'd have ended up here by his 30th. Least of all, me.

Today, for the most part, was also another good day. A friend who was here yesterday left so many of her baby's things behind. I guess that happens when you have to pack so much stuff for the little munchkins that you're bound to forget a few bits and pieces. So with Simon at work, I said I'd take a drive around to her place to return her stuff.

The drive itself was great. I haven't driven much at all in these last five months, and when I have I usually haven't been alone. It was hot, and I flew down the freeway with the windows down and the air conditioner off. I had my favourite CD on, one Hope and I used to listen to all the time in the car and I sang my lungs out, not caring what the occupants of the cars I passed thought. It was nice just to feel the heat and the wind in my hair. And to not be able to hear my mind tick over with the music filling so much of the quiet emptiness. Even though when I'm in the car I often catch myself looking for her in the rear view mirror, giggling away in her car seat, sucking on a biscuit, today's drive was ok. I really did think she was in there singing along with me. I couldn't see her in the car seat, but I could feel her.

I arrived at my friend's house and one cuppa turned in to a few and before I knew it, I'd been there practically all day. We sat outside and just talked and talked and talked and of course she let me dictate the conversation. It was good soul cleansing conversation. The kinda conversation that makes you think you don't really need to pay shrink to help you nut out all your problems. I sat with her son in the sand pit. I helped feed and bath him. I 'spose I enjoy getting to play quasi mother for a day. And I know I give her some great perspective. He had a nasty cut on his lip from a fall he took in our lounge room yesterday, but she knew it could be worse. My story is always worse. I stayed at her place just until dinner then time then quickly left, as they had a pregnant relative coming over. I really do think the babies are harder to handle than those big bellies.

I drove home feeling happy that I'd just managed quite successfull to have two "good" days in a row. A first, for sure.

Then you get smacked down again.

Yesterday my brother's girlfriend was here for the party, but left early in a bit of a hurry. I had a fair idea where she was going, but didn't say anything. And after she'd been gone a few hours, I forgot all about it.

But tonight I got the call that confirmed where she'd been. Her sister (the same one we avoided seeing at her place a few weeks back) had a baby last night. Her first. And wouldn't you know it, a girl!! Little baby girl Lily. But for me, this is where the nightmare gets worse, and where I get to add another irony to my ever growing list.

Lily was supposed to be Hope's name.

The name I couldn't give my dead daughter. The name I saved for hope of having another daughter down the track. The name I'd had picked out years and years before babies were even on my radar. My girl name. MY girl name!

So my brother and his girlfriend get to be aunty and uncle to a Lily. But not my Lily. Because I don't have my Lily. My Lily got away. Instead I got my Hope. And my Hope is not here, and never will be. I have thought so much about names in the last few months. So much about whether I made the right decision. Whether Hope was the right name for my daughter, my daughter who while she carried so much hope, was almost the end of hope for us. Our little girl who would never walk, talk, laugh or cry. Our little girl who would only ever have her name written on a headstone. Our little Hope who never got to be our little Lily.

I make no secrets about the fact I want another girl. I need to use that name. I associate so much happiness and joy with that name (funny, as Joy was to be her middle name too, as it is my mothers). I need to get my Lily. My little Lily who will dance and sing and play and grow. My little Lily to dress in pink with her soft, curly blonde hair.

I can't help but wonder if the irony will keep on going, and that I will never get another girl. That Hope my darling missing daughter will be it. That I will never get my Lily. That maybe I'll just have boys like Simon's mum did and the one name we loved will go unused. And we never even agreed on boys names, despite the fact for 40 weeks and four days, I was pretty convinced she was a boy. The only name I was sure of, I never got to use. Hope wasn't even on our list, and never would have been. As our surname starts with H, so I didn't want a HH baby. But in the end, that's what I got.

More than anything right now I want my Hope back. I want her here. I want to reach behind and tickle her feet in the car seat. I want to see how soft and curly her hair would be by now. I want to know everything I don't know about her. Everything. But I can't. So right now. I want another pregnancy. And while I promise I will be happy with either a boy or a girl, I hope with all my heart for a girl. A girl so my brother and his girlfriend can be an uncle to two little girls named Lily.