Synergies

There's been a lot of reflecting going on lately. Not entirely sure what to put it down to, but something about the nicely rounded number of four and the fact that many things this year are similar to the year we said goodbye.

It is a leap year, and of course time for the Olympics again. Hope was still alive when the Beijing Olympics started. I sat on the couch, belly bulging, days from a due date, and watched the spectacular opening ceremony. We went out for Indian for dinner about a week before doomsday and watched Australians competing in the cycling while we chowed down on our curries, hoping they would bring on labour pains. They didn't. Then when I laboured to deliver her still little body from mine, the gymnastics was on in my room. I came home to wall to wall Olympics coverage when we walked through the front door without her and a couple of days later, I felt a bit lost when it was all over. A self-confessed sports nut, I think I will go in to a permanent state of hibernation for the duration of the Olympics this year, which thankfully will be over before Juliet's first birthday and Hope's fourth.

And I think it is just that number four. I don't know, it just sounds so huge all of a sudden. So not three. Definitely not two or one. Such a big little person she'd be now. I really have no idea.

Hope would be starting kindergarten next year so this would have been my last year of having her at home with me, if indeed I was still off work. That fact is questionable though, because had my Grand Plan for life worked out, I'd have been well and truly back at work by now, or perhaps on a new bout of maternity leave with a new baby, as we did Plan on having a biggish age gap between our babies, because you know we thought we only ever wanted the two. Ahh, plans. How you make a mockery of me.

So this has brought me to some new conclusions - that maybe Juliet would have always been. Maybe she was always meant to be. Perhaps just like my sister who had her second daughter three weeks ago, maybe I was at some point destined to have two girls as well, three years apart.

More than I have in a long time, I am feeling so incredibly grateful for our little boy. He seems like even more of a gift than perhaps I first realised. He's growing up so quickly and now speaking in full, amazing sentences. He knows his dinosaurs, colours and likes to wait for the postman each day. He'd eat cereal for breakfast lunch and dinner if I let him, but when we go shopping, he wants to fill the shopping trolley full of fruits. He is cheeky and kind, funny and feisty and he's turning to such a gentle and caring big brother. I could go on, but any parent knows how wonderfully unique and special their own kid is. We simply couldn't be prouder of the little guy.

After losing Hope, we were so desperate to parent, and much of that desperation was for the chance to parent a little girl. Angus changed all of that though, and we of course wouldn't change him for the world, but even after he was born, there was still that yearning to hopefully go on and have another daughter.

And less than two years later, Juliet arrived and we still haven't been able to get over our good fortune. But after my sister gave birth three weeks ago to dear baby Ivy Jane, sister to Lucy Hope, I have been feeling an even bigger sense of profound gratitude for my son. I just know he would have never existed had Hope stuck around, as there is simply not a chance I'd have conceived again that quickly. He's a special little boy amongst all of our precious baby girls.

My bond with Angus is strong. As I said earlier, my whole roadmap for life was obliterated when Hope left us, and as a result I have stayed home with Angus for every day of his life, because work all of a sudden didn't matter and we've somehow been able to live off Simon's modest wage. He has not been in to any form of care, I've only ever had a handful of nights away from him (three of which were when I was in hospital with Juliet) and we're as close as close can be.

It is a trying job though, of course. There is not much down time. We do tend to drive each other up the wall at the end of a long week but we'd both be lost without each other. He comforts me by reminding me how blessed I am and, in return, I am his World. Whenever I sit on the couch, he bundles up beside me to touch my hair, which is the only security toy he'll ever know or need. In fact, he's here with me right now, looking over my shoulder and watching as I "parent" the sister he'll never know.

There is something else going on in my life right now, which I am a bit hesitant to talk about. Because this is not my story to tell. But friends of ours recently suffered a terrible tragedy. All I will say is there was a birth, then a catastrophic event, and much like our family three and a half years ago, things were all of a sudden most certainly not as they should be. A family has been left broken, a baby has been left behind.

So instead of making lasagnas and casseroles for these friends of ours, I have been donating my milk. I've never had much need to pump before as both of my babies have fed direct from the breast, but I realised how special it was for me to be able to provide for this baby in this way, because all I ever wanted to do was to feed Hope from my body, and it was one of the many things in life I never got to do for her. I've been so lucky that feeding Angus and Juliet has gone incredibly well. It is one aspect of my parenthood that has just clicked, and I needed it to.

I really don't think I will have any more babies. It seems my childbearing efforts will forever be punctuated or bookended by the 18th of August - the day Hope died in my belly and the day Juliet was born three years later. But at least now I will always be able to say my milk nourished three babies. Two girls, and one precious gift of a little boy. Just not my first baby girl, who I still miss so desperately every single day. And I get an extra whole day to miss her this year, as we approach the Olympics again and four full years without her.