The Next Little While

I enjoyed being pregnant for about a day. I looked on one website to see how far along I’d be based on my dates but I largely tried to ignore it. I knew the statistics, I was over 35 and I genuinely believed that I would be one of the many, many women who miscarry. I miscarried once about eleven years ago and although not the least bit traumatised by that experience, it did remind me of the details of it.

I went to the doctor, got referred to a midwife, did all the things I was supposed to do and I didn’t tell a soul. J and I didn’t talk about it, just occasionally if I was feeling sick, which I did a bit, and when I was overly emotional which I was a lot. We certainly didn’t make any plans, talk about names or anything like that.

I bled twice, both times a microscopic amount, no more than a stain and I had a lot of cramping. Both times, I thought the worst, cried and then it went away. Truth be told, I was almost relieved that it might be ending, the turmoil that I was putting myself through didn’t seem worth it for a thing the size of a grape, a thing I had no idea was developing or not.

I was offered an early scan because I had had multiples and I went alone, saw just one heartbeat and still, it wasn’t real. I was very glad that there weren’t two and if that sounds ungrateful, then spend a day looking after baby twins and come back to me with your thoughts. I favourited a website on my phone that worked out your risk of miscarriage as the days progressed and I read that once a heartbeat was seen, the risk plummeted but still, it was going to happen to me, of course it was, I didn’t deserve this baby, had never believed that we would conceive this baby.

J came to the 12 week scan, which became the 13 week scan as I’d apparently miscalculated my dates and it did then seem as if this might be happening. Still we kept it to ourselves, there was the Downs test to get through, more risk to be calculated and more potential decisions to be made. We have a niece with Down Syndrome, and this complicated rather than simplified things. Fortunately, the letter came quickly and the risk was tiny yet a secret it remained.

We told people at 18 weeks. When it was starting to get hard to hide, when it felt as if we’d hurt people’s feelings if we kept it a secret any longer. But the truth was, and is, that I’d have kept it a secret the whole way through if that was at all possible. My twin pregnancy was a medical one, scans and appointments every two weeks, then every two days towards the end. An induction, an epidural, constant monitoring and then a middle of the night c-section when Grace was in distress. This is MY pregnancy, one to relax and enjoy, one to savour, though I hope to have one more baby after this.

I am trying desperately to savour it. I wake routinely at 2-3am and I lay for a while feeling my baby, my littlest girl, flip flop about in my tummy. I want to sob when Izzy Biz pulls up my top to kiss her baby sister, to tell me how cute she’s going to be, and I look in amazement at the app that tells me there’s now 82 days until she is due.

There is still a risk, always a risk but I am trying to relax.

 

Funerals are Weird

Today, we went to a funeral. It was J’s grandmother and, for reasons not suitable for the internet, I never met her. She never met the girls and, as far as I know, she didn’t know about the new baby. We went to support J’s mum and I’m very glad that we did. I love watching her patently adore her boys, her boys who are 42 and 39, and she is so very proud of them. It’s lovely to see.

I should also point out that I am not at all religious. I was christened as a four year old, went to Sunday School and then didn’t. There’s probably more to it than that and perhaps one day, there will be a time where it is comfortable to talk about things like religion, particularly in a country where religion is a touchy subject at best and a case of lighting the touchpaper at worst. Anyway, this was obviously a religious funeral and that’s where I found it all very odd.

I love the prayers and the psalms. The writing is beautiful and somehow familiar, in that way that you know a Beatles song, or the characters in ET despite having never knowingly seen the film. It is somehow inspiring, it fills you up with something, optimism perhaps and you, or I found myself fervently hoping that what the vicar said was true.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was something more, if this was just our life on earth, just the beginning and we did leave here to go somewhere better? Would it make the idea of mortality any less scary, would it allow your average person to think more deeply when the thought strikes you in the middle of the night and you are paralysed with fear, would it make people who are going to die, knowingly about to die, more at peace?

I found the words uplifting, the idea of a woman living for 90 years, a widow for 40, with 29 great grandchildren, in a room full of people there to say goodbye. The songs were incongruous, jarring you out of the words but the doors opened and the sun streamed in and with it, any feeling that I had of higher beings or other worlds.

Theology fascinates me, the history of the bible, the values behind other religious writings, but does spirituality? I’m not sure, but I do know that my views have changed since having children. Transience is not as scary before little parts of your soul walk around in the world with you, but it terrifies me now. I haven’t taught them enough yet, haven’t had enough ridiculous conversations about favourite wild animals, the best ice creams, haven’t kissed them enough.

This is a post that doesn’t end easily or succinctly, as it is simply too big for my brain sometimes. It is something I need to ponder and mull over and not when I’m tired and missing my babies who are with my parents because of today’s funeral.

What are your thoughts?