Still

I doubt in the two and a bit years that Hope has been gone there has been an hour go past where I haven't thought about her and her death. Quite possibly, there hasn't been a minute, maybe not even a second. Since we stepped in to that small, dark room and found out her heart had stopped beating, my thoughts have been saturated with her and the gaping hole she left in my heart. Every minute that passes now is tinged with grief, longing and sadness. I hate so much that this happened to me. The pain makes me feel dirty. I want to cleanse myself of it all but I can't.

Time does change things though. A live baby changes them ever more. But I strongly doubt that most people I know have any idea just how fundamentally different I am after all that has happened to me and how desperately sad I still am.

Lately, for one reason or another, I have been thinking so much about all of those nitty, gritty details of her death and birth - details which I need to record here more often, so I can keep them alive. Because as painful as they are, I don't want to forget them. With Hope, that is all I've got. I am not sure if it is because we are heading towards Angus' first birthday, as when I think back to Hope's first birthday, everything was raw and fresh and vivid again. Maybe the birthdays of my children will just always do it for me, I'm not sure.

The pain is exquisite. To think that my beautiful, happy, healthy, easy, joyous pregnancy ended that way still leaves me breathless. And to think that I pushed out a baby who I knew was already dead - quite simply I don't know how I did it. Thinking about the unfairness of it all makes me want to throw up. The what ifs are around every corner in my life without her. I still hold so much anger for the caregivers who failed us. And guilt still pules through me when I think back to all that I didn't do to save her.

My little family of three spent last weekend in Sydney. On the Sunday, we attended a fabulous lunch for the Stillbirth Foundation Australia (please donate to this wonderful cause). Getting ready to go to the lunch, I felt this huge sense of injustice. This was not a lunch I wanted to be going to. I didn't want to have a reason to know about this charity. I didn't want to be that person. That woman with the stillborn baby. But I am that woman. I will always be that woman. And because I have to now live this life, I am glad such a wonderful organisation exists.

Stepping in to a room full of hundreds of people from your own sad tribe, knowing that you wont have to feel uncomfortable for even a moment is a lovely thing. To know that if you are asked how many kids you have and you answer "two, but one is dead" and no one is going to walk away and stop talking to you is enough to make you giddy. In two years, I have never felt more at ease. These were my people and I had finally found them. And last Sunday, I was lucky enough to sit down to lunch with them all, even if I didn't get to talk to everyone.

I was then given a golden opportunity to put stillbirth on the map when the local TV network arrived to do a story for the nightly bulletin. They said they would lead with a story about the luncheon, but she did admit it was a slow news day.

And in the few minutes I had to speak to this lovely but slightly clueless reporter I wondered what it was that I exactly wanted to say that would sum up and make clear for Joe Public just what it is like to lose a baby. And there still really are no words. Nor is there enough time.

I did however say that if people thought the very act of delivering her dead body was the hard part, that they were sorely mistaken. That it was the continuation of life and the living day in, day out without her that caused the real pain.

Despite most of our interview ending up on the cutting room floor, I could have talked to the reporter for hours about my pain. If she had all day, I would have talked for two. Any chance I get, I will take it, because I want others to know. I am sick of suffering, and for the most part, in silence.

Yet in recent months, this blog has sat in relative silence. I have lost the will to write and lost all desire to keep sharing my thoughts and pain. It all feels so horribly self indulgent and there is nothing new to say. I'm tired.

I have also thought about ending this blog all together, numerous times. And other times, I have thought about starting some place new so I can air my thoughts in relative privacy again, just like when I first started writing here. But neither option feels right. My grief isn't going anywhere, so I don't think my space in which I write about my grief should go anywhere either.

Many people who lose babies and blog seem to stop writing after a certain amount of time, especially if a new baby follows the one who dies. And I think for all the new girls out there losing babies, they possibly want to see the reality of what it is like two, three, four, 10 years down the track. I know I did. And I'm not sure I thought it would look like this. I'm not sure what I thought it would look like. In those early days, when it was all suffering and a million tears before breakfast, I couldn't even manage to look this far ahead. But here I am. Two and a bit years. On the cusp of a first birthday for the baby who followed and at some point in the future, considerin another one.

I guess I want people to know that despite the happy smiling baby in my lap and how well life has turned out for me in the wake of Hope dying, I am still hurting. Anger, rage, jealousy and deep sadness are constant companions. I can laugh til I cry playing with Angus all the while thinking about holding a dead, cold, stiff eight pound infant in my arms. I can be the singing, dancing all-entertaining mummy to a happy little boy while thinking about lying on an ultrasound table in a dark room looking at a very still baby heart on the screen. I'm changing a nappy one minute then in my mind the next minute, I am sitting at my daughter's funeral staring at a tiny white coffin wishing so much it hurts that it is all a bad dream.

And this is not a shout out for sympathy. Like when I post about Hope on my FB page. I am not asking for reams of comments or virtual hugs, I am just stating it as it is. I know most don't or can't get it and I can't really blame them for that, but I want to keep putting it out there. For those I do know who still read here and those I don't. I want everyone to know that this is real and it is awful and it doesn't get better it just goes on and on and on. Stillbirth still happens and it is a tragedy in every sense of the word. There is absolutely no closure and no getting over it. It is what happened to me and it is who I am now. She's still my baby and this is still my space to write about her and how lost I feel without her.