Where am I and how did I get here?

While all three boys in the house nap, dog included, I thought I would try and formulate some thoughts on my life in the last month. Hard to believe our little man will be one whole month old tomorrow!

I really don't know where to start. But you sure as hell do go from being pregnant to having a newborn in the blink of an eye. One moment, I'm frantic, feverishly using the Doppler and worrying myself stupid, then, in a flash, I'm knee deep in nappies and late night feeds not knowing how on earth that ever happened and how I got there.

It is so insanely surreal. I have reached a point in my life that after 19 August 2008, I sometimes thought I'd never thought I'd never get to.

And let me say, as delicately as I can, without wanting to sound ungrateful, but this is hard. Really hard. Not nearly as hard as losing Hope, and my day to day life living without her and trying to make sense of her senseless death, and not even as hard as the crazy nine months I carried Angus but it is hard. A different hard, but still hard. Man, I am tired. I didn't know this kind of tired existed.

Angus however, is a delight. An absolute treasure. But we've had our trying moments. Moments where I'm crying right there along with him, absolutely pulling my hair out. Like stillbirth, which isn't spoken about, most people don't tell you how difficult caring for a newborn really is. I suppose I smugly assumed it might not be this hard. And the other thing is, I just never imagined we'd get here. I feel so bad for doubting him, my little boy, but on my very worst days in the pregnancy, I never thought he'd make it. I really did think he'd die along with his sister. I just lived that pregnancy moment to moment. I didn't read up on feeding or infant care as I could never imagine doing any of it. Doing the real live baby motherhood stuff. But wouldn't you know it, here I am. I'm doing it. Constantly doubting I'm doing a good job, but I'm doing it nonetheless.

So he's here. Oh boy, is he here. I have gone from being the girl with more spare time on her hands than she knows what to do with to the girl who doesn't have time for showers, eating or sending emails!

People are asking us what our plans for Christmas are. Christmas? Christmas? For the entire pregnancy, knowing he would arrive in November, we could never look ahead to December. Now it is here, and Christmas is almost upon us, but we haven't had time to stop and think about it. We'll do something low key with family, but there really are no grand plans. We're still just living day to day here. No two days with our boy have been the same. Routines be damned!

And as much as we are thrilled that this will be Angus' first Christmas, it will also be the second Christmas without Hope. The bittersweet life really takes on a new meaning now. Christmas and Hope sort of go hand in hand. It was just before Christmas two years ago we found out we were pregnant. And it was Christmas Day we broke the news to our ecstatic families. Seems incomprehensible that two years later, this is where we are in life. Two babies. One son, one daughter. One here, one not.

But we are happy. Yet I feel it is almost impossible to be as sincere and honest as I can be now, as I made it. I got the prize. My rainbow. Surely there is nothing to complain about now? Surely much of the sadness, pain and angst has abated? Much of it has, sure, but so much of it is still there. And now, its just been ramped up by hormones, or a lack of pregnancy hormones which surprisingly kept me much calmer than this. In a strange way, I do miss the pregnancy, as god damn scary as it was. I do miss that special close time with Angus, even though I MUCH prefer him here safely on the outside.

I do want to keep coming back to this place. I do know I'm always going to have so much more to say. This was and always will be Hope's place, for the most part, and I want to keep writing about how she colours my days and just how much I miss her. And with Angus here, these days that is more than ever. I really do wonder. I wonder so much. So much I will never know about her. In fact, there is nothing I will ever know about her. Angus has only been here a month and I already know so much about him. It is too sad for words how much my baby girl was cheated of.

I still also want to write Angus' birth story before it fades in to oblivion through the fog of my endless sleepless nights. I want to write more about him and how his tiny little smiles every now and then are lighting up our lives and melting our slowly mending hearts. I want to tell you more about the softness of his skin and his sweet baby smell, a smell his sister never had. I want to tell you more about his hair, which in the light looks like the colour of spun gold. The adorable little grunting noises he makes. His feisty little personality. The way he likes to sleep curled up on Daddy's chest. There is so much I want to tell you about my Angus Leo.

But it is all a matter of time now. And any spare time I have at this point goes to Angus, or sleeping or both, given he's doing the bulk of his sleeping in my arms or on Daddy's chest.

I'm tired. I'm happy. I'm overwhelmed. I'm grateful. I'm still sad. And I'm lucky. So lucky.