How it should be

Heading towards Angus' first birthday, I can't help but look back and remember Hope's.

It was everything a first birthday party shouldn't be.

If you took away the fact it was our dead daughter's first birthday, or the first anniversary of her stillbirth, depending on which way you chose to look at it, you could almost call it a perfect day.

We awoke in our tropical far north Queensland hotel room and opened mail from generous internet babyloss friends all over the world. We read the first of dozens of text messages that started to filter through.

We took a walk in to town and had coffee and cake. Not birthday cake though, just your regular, run of the mill cake. We read the paper and found a copy of the Melbourne newspaper to see a birthday/remembrance notice for Hope in there. My mum put one in as well.

We browsed gift shops and looked for things to buy. What is it that one buys on the birthday of a baby who never lived outside the womb? I was looking at trinkets. Something that said "my daughter died and instead of her I got this crappy ornament". I didn't buy anything. I just looked aimlessly at things.

We sat in a pub and ate lunch. Read more text messages. Looked a picture text message of a ladybug cake my sister baked. She called in sick from work as she couldn't bare to go on the day of her dead niece's birthday. It was sweet. I wish her niece was around to eat it.

We walked to the beach. Simon sat and read a book. I wrote names in the sand. I took photos, but they weren't great. I guess it was the thought that counted though. The weather turned foul so we walked back. My hat kept blowing off. Fitting really. Every other day of the holiday had been perfect.

Back at the hotel we used the pool. It was wet and windy, but still warm. And hey, we didn't have a one year old who needed a nap, so we had all the time in the world to just swim and swim and swim. Lucky us.

We planned to take a sunset cruise on the harbour, but called and cancelled at the last minute as I didn't think I could handle having to actually speak to anyone else on the day. I didn't want a single person to make chit chat with us and ask us where we were from and what brought us to Queensland. I hadn't even been answering my phone, not even when family called. This was why we went away - to escape the reality of what should have been happening back home. Party, cake, happiness, fun.

At the exact time of her birth, 4.35pm, we sat on the balcony of our little hotel room and played cards while sipping cool drinks. Simon had his bathers on, I was wearing a sarong. We took pictures to capture a moment I wish was a billion times different.

We walked back in to town and went to dinner. A gorgeous little Italian place, the sort of place we love to eat at. At the end of the meal there was cake of sorts. Tiramisu. Our favourite. But it was not birthday cake. There was no birthday to celebrate. By this stage of the day it was of course now painfully obvious. Nope, it wasn't a dream.

We walked back to our hotel. I think I spoke to some family on the phone at this point. I can't really remember. I rubbed lotion on my skin. I had mosquito bites all over me. That always happens to me in the tropics. I tried hard not to itch them, but I never have had much self control in that regard.

And oh, did I mention the Doppler? I used the Doppler a lot. Whenever I had a spare moment in the hotel room during the day, I'd whip it out. Because I was about 25 weeks pregnant again. 25 weeks is a long way along if you have a live one year old with you. People would call you crazy. I guess we were crazy to throw ourselves back in to pregnancy again like that but really, what choice did we have? We set out to be parents. Parents with an actual child to parent. So Hope dying was not going to get in our way of that.

So that was her first birthday. An almost perfect day. But really, an awful, painful, uncomfortable day. A day where we simply had no idea what to do with ourselves or how to act. The first of what will be many birthdays without her. This year wasn't much better. In fact it was a whole lot worse, and I've spoken about that before.

Things are different now though. And the big day looms for our precious little boy. There will be cake. Probably more than one. On more than one occasion. And singing. Laughter. Frivolity. Joy. Happiness. And an actual baby around at the end of the day to blow out the candles. While I am painfully aware of the fact we are not there yet, and I have to keep him out of harm's way for a couple more weeks, his birthday, all being well, will be everything her birthday should have been.

And that's simply because he's here. And when I think about Hope, that is all I want for her. For her to be here. I said to someone this week that if Hope was here, there would in all likelihood be no Angus. While that may be true, I still want both of my babies. Here. With me. And I don't think as their mother, that is too much to ask.