"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life" Proverbs 13:12




Saturday, January 29, 2011

Sharing my news

It is strang being in pain and being free to show it.

For various reasons Earl and I have decided to keep our infertility a secret from all but our good friends and close family. There are lots of different reasons. Because i work with Mum's and kids it's actually helpful that they don't know- because it means they feel open to share their struggles with me, without worrying about hurting my feelings.

It's also helpful because it means that we don't necessarily have to put up with heavy pity all the time, we can have a break from talking about it. And as much as I know it's stupid, there is a part of me that is ashamed, that feels abnormal and freaky that like's people thinking that we are just waiting a bit longer to try.

But because we are sharing with some people about our misscarriage- its been a nice change. Nice to have permission to be sad and weak, and not all-together. Nice to feel loved and cared for.

Below is what i put on my personal blog about our misscarriage. It gives a bit more details of what happened and how it made us feel.

It's been about a month since I last posted.

Not a very good month.

Three days before Christmas, Earl and I found out via Ultra-sound that our nine week old babie's heart had stopped beating. And after three horrible weeks of waiting for it to happen, I finally miscarried last Tuesday.

So not the Merriest Christmas. I went to bed at 10pm on New Years. I didn't want to think about 2011. 2010 had been tough, and we had such high hopes for this one. Now I can hardly face it. We'd been trying to get through one day at a time- to not think about the future. This gets progressively more difficult when my job at the moment is to start preparing for term 1 at church.

We miss him so much (we refer to him as a him. He just can't be an it, we love him too much). I don't think I've ever felt so lonely since we lost him. We are confident he is with Jesus now- and ultimately we want to be able to look back and celebrate his little life, rejoice that we had him for a little while. But I think it will take a long time before we are properly up for that.



I have good days, I have bad days. Yesterday was a good day. Earl and I had decided that while we weren't going to broadcast our sadness to the sky, that we wanted some people to know about him. I had already let a few people at church know, and told a few more yesterday. I've been overwhelmed by love and support that people have shown, love both for us and our little one. One friend at church started crying when I told her. That afternoon she dropped off some flowers and chocolates for us. "I had to do something" she said almost apologetically.

But if the last week has taught me anything- it's that this road isn't a road of steady incline back to normality. This is grief, and I can't predict how I will feel or when I will feel it. And that's okay.

I wasn't sure whether to write about it on my blog, but I have learnt so much, and the process from anger at God to crying into his loving arms (which of course is not a steady incline either!) has been something that I'd like to write about.

:'(

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A month on

It has now been over a month since we found out our precious Thumper had gone.

What kind of month?

A month of horrible pain. I don't think I've ever had a month where I've found it so hard to relate to God. I remember earlish on in the infertililty process I remember thinking "I know I love God, I'm just not sure he loves me". By God's grace I got through that period and he reminded me of his love, but unfortunately in many ways, and at many times in the last month I've been back there.

I feel like all my hard one strength for this battle with infertillity has eroded away. A good friend told me (balling her eyes out- I felt like I had to comfort her and not the other way around) that she was pregnant for the second time, and she found it so hard to tell me. That kind of thing would normally set me back for a day. At the moment that kind of thing sets me back a week. And given you hear about a new baby every few weeks in my line of work I am not sure how I'm going to go holding it together this year.

But it's also been a month of incredible love. We've been semi-public with the news. This basically means I wrote about it on my public blog but didn't put it on facebook! I also sent an email to close friends, and just friends that I thought would understand. We've been inondated with flowers, love, well-wishes, and tears for our little ones. We had friends who had an emergency Caesar birth the week we got back home from holidays with family. They worked really hard to look after us and morn with us- even though they had their own issues (there baby was fine. I held him an hour in the hospital and then cried and cried when I got home because I wanted to keep him!) Particularly in the case of Thumpers Grandparents- they really do see him as their Grandchild who they only got to see in an ultra-sound photo.

I miss him so much. I've never felt so lonely.

I am also inondated with longing for a child. I ache for one. I always have, but the "give and take away" nature of what has happened makes me so much more desperate.

We have 2 periods before the transfer of Embie number two of this cycle can begin. The nurse recons that with 3 great embies left- all from the same batch (oh I hate the kind of words they use- they're my babies!) as Thumper, we are a good chance to get pregnant.

But I'm so scared what a negative result might do to me.
I will post later on the post I put on my other blog.
LG

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Thumper is gone

I haven't looked at previous posts yet. I can't. I will write as much as I can handle and then I'll stop.

Thumper is gone.

We had our ultra sound for reassurance. And I knew. I saw the picture and he was gone. I could see the shape but there was no heart beat, no movement, no blood, no life. Our baby had died. We were in shock. We just hadn't really thought that this would be an outcome of the scan.

We are so very sad. Christmas was not Merry.
That's all i can write today.
Lady Grey