My invisible motherhood

Lately, I have been trying to figure out who I am and how I fit in to this big, bad world now that I have finally assumed the roll of a mother. A mother who actually gets to mother, that is. Not a mother just because I got pregnant, stayed pregnant, gave birth then buried a baby. That is not the sort of mother I ever wanted to be or ever wanted to remain as.

It is hard to know whether it is still grief, shock, sadness, missing, longing or just the extraordinary demands of early parenthood, especially when the super cute baby of yours is actually also super fussy, that makes you feel like a complete and utter basketcase who can barely remember or manage to complete the simplest of tasks each day before stepping out the door. That is in fact if I even step out the door on any given day. With winter almost upon us, Angus and I are having more and more vomit-soaked pj days to pass the time away.

My life these days feels so defined by my motherhood. And my motherhood still feels utterly defined by my dead child. People ask me how I am, what I've been up to and while I will always answer with any number of responses about how I am raising Angus and marvelling at his every move, it is always the thoughts of Hope and her gaping absence from our lives that weighs me down and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I can't keep telling people how sad I am and how much I miss her. There are those who just know and who don't have to ask but I feel for many others, there is no point jamming it in their faces anymore. They have moved on and I suspect they wonder why I haven't as well.

Even with Angus being cranky, fussy and seemingly allergic to sleep for any decent amount of time, he's still the perfectly happy and regular little baby I wished for. I never wanted him to be my "miracle child", "healer" or anything more than Hope might have or could have been. I just wanted a baby. I just wanted to be a mother. I think for me, with losing my first, it is not that I saw it to be worse than someone who lost a later child, it is just that I feared I would never be a mother. At least not in the way the rest of the world sees a mother. I just feared she'd be it. That she was some sort of fluke, and she died so I'd never know what it would really be like. So he's here now. I am a mother. Even if he dies tomorrow, I finally got to mother. I know what it is like, even if I am no way near done yet. I have done it. I at least wont die wondering now.

But losing Hope just makes everything so different. I will only ever parent after loss. It makes his fussy periods harder. It makes the sleep deprivation seem a bit more torturous. You'd think it might work the other way, and in a way it does. I am certainly more appreciative than many mothers out there, that's for sure, and I'm not complaining about his little character traits that make him a bit of a firecracker of a baby, but I'm still so sad and so tired from missing Hope that I know I'm a long way from being as happy as I could. Angus a perfectly normal little baby boy and I'm a normal mummy - everything looks so good from the outside - but everything still feels so broken on the inside. The death of my firstborn, on most days, just seems too huge for me. It has been almost two years and while her loss has been integrated in to our lives now, I still don't understand it. I will still never make sense of the senselessness of it all.

So in order to keep our lives and our little household ticking over, I have accepted a part-time freelance writing position for a local parenting magazine, not yet launched, and I start in a month or so. I will be able to work from home, and the work will come through slowly in dribs and drabs, so I wont have to leave my Angus. Seems like the perfect arrangement. I'm pretty excited about it.

Of course the first story I am writing is a first person piece on pregnancy loss. Surprise, surprise! This is always the first thing that comes to mind for me when I think about parenting and specifically my role as a parent. I could of course write about breastfeeding, cloth nappies, sleep deprivation, easy baby puree recipes and at some point I probably will, but it is pregnancy loss that I gravitate towards, because being a grieving mother is still the main way I see myself even if others don't.

The rest of the world, however, just sees my Angus. My smiley, cheeky, completely adorable Angus. They see a young couple who went to hell, but they assume we came back. Most days I still feel as though I'm sitting on the brink, dipping my toes in to the fire. Just yesterday, I took Angus to watch Simon play baseball. I went a couple of times last year while pregnant with Angus but pretty much ran for cover as soon as anyone came within 50 feet of my bump. The last time I went and interacted with people I was about 485 weeks pregnant with Hope. Full of life, round and blissfully happy. I assumed I'd be back in a few weeks time with babe strapped to chest. Yesterday I arrived, and did in fact strap Angus to my chest, and everyone was beaming and happy to see me (us). In their minds, the two years that have passed since I was there last have just evaporated, along with the baby who died and was born in the midst of it. I mean to them, I was pregnant, two years passed and how huzzah! I am finally there with the baby they'd all been waiting to meet! No matter about that little blip of the first baby dying. Whatever.

Someone said to me yesterday when they came over to say hello "so, everything is ok again now?" And I said yes. I actually said yes. This time last year, I probably would have written a whole post on this very statement and lamented over the fact the guy is clearly and idiot, and should know better, blah blah blah. But he's not an idiot. He's a nice enough sort of guy. He's just one in a long, long line of people who doesn't get it, never will and is just stumbling for the right thing to say (and for the record I'm sure he thought he nailed it). I can't hate people forever for being this way. I know they don't mean it. It is just so endlessly tiring. I'm sick of feeling so very different from everyone else. I miss the old me.

I have such an obvious role as a mother now. I can wax lyrical on the joys of getting up a couple of times a night to feed. I can rejoice in stories of how my very clever little boy can now sit up, roll over (when I mention these things, sometimes it really does sound like I have a new puppy!) and laugh at us dancing like crazy fools in the living room. But it is the invisible part of my motherhood that to me seems to define who I am. I'm happy on the outside, but still feel as if I'm rotting away on the inside.

I know my grief has always ebbed and flowed with the seasons, but with winter just days away now, I can't help but feel this is going to be a tough few months as we roll on to August and birthday number two. Those who said all the "firsts" are harder were probably right, but doing everything without her for a second time seems to hurt just as much. I really do just wish both of my babies were here. It doesn't seem like too much to ask. I wish I could be that normal, happy mummy with two normal, happy babies here. I wish half of my motherhood wasn't so invisible.