Celebrating Milestones

Hey everyone I hope this post finds you well at the end of babyloss awareness week. I will be lighting two candles at 7pm for Bean and Passenger as part of the Wave of Light event. 

My week started off in a low mood, a pregnant colleague ran a local half marathon last weekend - she is 16 weeks. She claimed her time was very slow but still managed to complete it in my best ever half marathon time. It annoyed me, she was able to be pregnant and stay active. Whereas I have been banned by my husband and my mum. There's no medical reasoning behind it. Just because. I didn't run when I had Bean, I was way too exhausted but I did continue with Passenger. Surely that shows that no matter whether you continue to exercise the way you did before or decide to stop. It doesn't have any real impact on the outcome of the pregnancy.

I guess I'm just frustrated and jealous. My colleague has never suffered babyloss directly. She has never suffered secondary infertility, she fell pregnant and it was a surprise to her and her husband. I feel like she just doesn't have the same concern as I do, and that's ok but it's still frustrating to me.

I have tried to get back into crosstraining and yoga but they just don't give me the same pleasure and mind cleansing as running did. I'm trying to use this frustration as a tool for post-partum, a way of giving myself motivation to get back to where I was in terms of running.

Don't get me wrong I'd give up everything for this pregnancy, I would never intentionally put it at risk. It just frustrates me that others can sail through with no worries. 

But that is the price of pregnancy after loss. The constant fear lurking in the back of your mind. Almost stifling every joyous moment so as not to jinx it. Not daring to say certain things like names out loud in case this precious life is ripped from you again. My husband even didn't like us receiving any gifts before our 20 week scan in case something was jinxed.

I wish we didn't have these demons but they will be with us forever. And I'm starting to understand that most other people - no matter how close to us will not understand us feeling this way. The sooner I accept this misunderstanding from others who haven't experienced loss the better.

Luckily my mood lifted later in the week and I stopped sulking and I got back to appreciating that every pregnancy is different. I feel my bump has grown a lot this week, my skin feels tight and I'm starting to struggle to put on socks and shoes. I sent a bump pic to my mum and she said that I'd grown a lot.

I asked if she had any bump pics from when she was pregnant but she couldn't find any. It made me realise how easy it is now to document and record everything. She of course had pictures taken hours after giving birth and beyond, she was so slim after giving birth to my older brother! I wonder if I will take after her.

Earlier in the week I was feeling down but now I am rejoicing in the sheer elation and dreamy happiness pregnancy after loss brings. Words do not explain how I feel about getting this far in a pregnancy. It's obvious that any mother and father have unconditional love for their child, but Angel Mamas and Papas feel something more. They feel grateful and utterly in a state of dream-like shock even through the horrible of painful symptoms. I have never heard an Angel-Mama complain about morning sickness!

I was trying to explain to my sister-in-law how happy I was to be pregnant and she said it shows, and it will continue to show for the rest of my life. Bean and Passenger have made me the person I am today. It is solidified by Rob becoming increasingly vocal about our baby girl. He says "I love you both" instead of just "I love you" and it makes me melt inside. It gives me confidence when he feels confident enough to say things like that. I know now that he has started to relax and he is starting to believe The Pie will be our take-home baby.

At the weekend we started looking at travel systems. Admittedly we only went to one shop but the girl in there was extremely knowledgable. It's pretty mind boggling looking at them all! The research is definitely not over! I'm looking forward to seeing proper 3in1 travel systems as there wasn't any available in John Lewis.

We liked the iCandy Orange - really light steering, lots of storage space and folded up really small. I also liked the Bugaboo Cameleon which looked really nice and had lots of alternative travelling options. The problem with both, however, was value for money. Car seats are not included in either system and the Bugaboo is almost a thousand pounds! So I am looking forward to seeing other systems.

We also hit another exciting milestone last night, we saw Baby Girl kicking! It was truly amazing to see her bopping about in my belly. Some of the kicks I was able to feel under my palm as well which was magical. Rob managed to see a couple of movements as well and I was so pleased we could share that experience together. It is so reassuring that she is getting stronger with each passing week and the movements also mean her brain and nervous system are developing normally. Yesterday was such a fantastic day, I enjoyed ever minute of it. Although walking around town for 6 hours in heels was a mistake I will never make again!

Last night I had a weird dream where our little girl was struggling to breast feed. She was so tiny and I was trying to give her what she needed. I have a bit of a fear that I won't be able to breast feed. I have one inverted nipple and my other nipple is flat no matter my mood or the weather. I keep telling myself that it's not the be all and end all and as long as our baby is fed and that's all that matters but there is so much pressure on mothers and the slogan "Breast is Best" is always at the back of my mind. If I cannot breast feed I would love to be able to pump and I'm just hoping that Baby Girl will take to whatever I can give her.

Anyway, back to the dream. She was finding the nipple with no problems but nothing else seemed to happen. Then strangely enough she turns her little face towards me and speaks to me saying I need to angle my nipple for the let down reflex. It was pretty weird. I had a dream about a month ago where she talked to me like a teenager and we didn't know the gender at that point. 

At another point in this second dream she projectile vomited all over me and a nearby window. Not that unusual but it turned out that a load of kids had been feeding my newborn white bread! Like, what the hell is going on in my mind?!

The joy of pregnancy dreams!

The last bit of news I need to share from the week is that I've been selected for interview for a job in my current department. It's a fairly similar job to what I do now as it's still in the lab but there is a significant pay rise involved. I'm grateful I have been given the opportunity to give it a shot but I do not expect to have it offered to me. If I wasn't pregnant I would be more confident as I am sure I could do the job very well. But with me leaving in February for a year and three other internal candidates competing for the role I feel my chances are slim. However, I will not go into the interview with a defeatist attitude! I will give it my all and show that I am still very much committed to the department. I will let you know next week hopefully. 

So that has been my week, it's had its little low at the start but has ended on such a huge high from seeing our little girl kick. Such a wonderful experience.

Stay strong Angel Mamas and Papas xx

Our 20 week scan

Hey all! I'm sorry I've been a little quiet again, I'll be honest, I've found it hard to transition to a more diary-like blog rather than talking about the past. I have to keep telling myself that living in the now does not mean that Bean and Passenger are forgotten. Or that it means their stories are finished.

As we've moved into the month of October and Baby-Loss Awareness Week starting tomorrow, I've been naturally thinking more and more about Bean and Passenger. Particularly how Rob managed to help me through those horribly dark times. I still don't know where he found the strength to live two lives for us and grieve himself. A part of me still cannot accept that we have suffered two losses, I guess that could be the case for the rest of my life.

While part of my week has been remembering and grieving, the other part was full of joy and excitement (as well as fear and anxiety). Our 20 week scan was on Monday and again one half of my brain prepared myself for a horrendous fall, after all it is the anomaly scan, they are looking for abnormalities, they are looking for anything that is wrong. I took deep breaths as we waited outside the scanning rooms. A little later than scheduled a lady opened a door and indicated she would be a few minutes then she would call us in, it was none other than the young sonographer that had misdiagnosed Passenger's anencephaly at 10+5weeks. My heart raced, what if she missed something again? She looked too young to be experienced enough. My faith was slipping away. Even the optimistic side of my brain which had been excited started to fade away. 

Rob looked at me and said he'd recognised her, he saw the fear in my eyes. But again as he always does he brought me back to the moment. He said we would ask as many questions as we could think of. We wouldn't leave until we were satisfied and knew everything. We were beckoned inside.

I stood, sucking in another long, deep breath.

Moving into that room felt a little like slow motion, I almost floated along the ground. I made it to the bed and she put the ultrasound device onto my belly. We were greeted by our baby on the screen, I was able to let out a little sigh of relief. 

She proceeded to move along the baby's body, we managed to see it face on, the lips and nose were an utter joy to behold. Perfectly formed. The eye sockets, brain, spine again all beautiful. The heart, I held my breath again. Baby decided to wriggle a lot at this point so the sonographer couldn't study it properly, I hoped and hoped that the baby would stay still just for a minute so she could do her job. I was worried she would assume everything would be ok and move onto the next part of the scan. Luckily it calmed down so she could look at the chambers of the heart, all working well together. Then she looked at the blood flow and said everything was completely fine. My anxiety slipped away into a smaller and smaller ball to the back of my mind. 

Then the question, are we interested in the sex? Yes please! My confidence continued to slowly and surely rise, my heart thumped at the prospect of finding out whether I had a little girl or little boy growing inside me. I'd always had a girl feeling with this pregnancy since the 12 week scan, I felt the baby just had a girly face. But recently I had been getting boy vibes too! Of course we had no preference, a healthy baby is all we have ever wanted but it was always nice to know for future planning.

She positioned the picture of the baby to an under the bottom view, and I thought to myself it is a boy! She proceeded to tell us that the part which I thought was a willy was in fact, a leg. I'm so glad I didn't humiliate myself by blurting that out! She then pointed to where the genitals were and came to the conclusion that she could not see a willy or testes and therefore, we were carrying a girl.

My heart danced, just being told something by a professional made everything even more real. We don't know what sex Bean and Passenger were but being told that our Pie was a girl was massive. I went into a dream-like state as she moved down to the kegs and the feet and managed to capture a gorgeous footprint on the screen for us to take home. I fell in love with that footprint.

She continued down to check the placenta and my cervix and that's when things started to become pear-shaped. The sonographer was silent for a few moments and took a few pictures. The silence snapped me back into the fact this was an anomaly scan, they were looking for things that were wrong. Something was wrong.

We were told that my cervix looked "odd" and she wanted a second opinion from a colleague. She showed us the picture, where a smooth cervix muscle should have been mine was very much contorted and lumpy. It's very hard to describe my feelings at that point, I had just been told I was carrying a little girl and she was perfectly healthy only to be thrown back down to earth with this news a minute or so later. I was caught between elation and panic. 

She left the room to consult her colleague. I couldn't help but feel it was Passenger's dating scan all over again, the oddity followed by the second opinion, ending with devastation and pain. I turned to Rob, I can only remember him saying that we will continue to ask questions until we understand the situation. 

A short time later the lady returned, she suggested I go for a walk for a little while and come back to see if anything had changed. Before we left I mentioned I had been occasionally feeling pain on my left side during urination so she asked me to produce a sample for the nurse to test for signs of infection. I gave her the bottle to pass on and left to have a walk. 

As we strolled along I became like Jekyll and Hyde, one minute I was over the moon with carrying a girl and the next I would be in a panic as to what me odd cervix meant. Rob had asked a few more questions while I was producing the urine sample, the sonographer had assured him that the baby was well and healthy. And my cervix might have been in the middle of a contraction while the scan was taking place. A walk and a wee might help it to relax and go into its natural position again.

During my moments of anxious panic my mind went back to when I was spotting at the beginning of the pregnancy, the EPU had suggested I get my cervix checked by my GP. But when I went to see the GP she had refused to examine me as I was already pregnant and she didn't want to take the risk. My blood boiled, what if my odd cervix could have been seen earlier? What if that GP who refused care to a patient had missed a diagnosis? But then again why had nothing been seen on our 12 or 16 week scans? My head whizzed around with these questions.

We found ourselves back in the waiting room 15 minutes or so later and were ushered back in quickly. I assumed the position on the bed and she checked again, there is was, a smooth cervix in a normal position. It had been contracting while the previous scan was taking place. No need to panic.

Looking back now, of course it's no harm done and I'm so glad the sonographer didn't let us go home without investigating further. But really?! Why can't things be simple for once!? All I can do is carry on feeling amazed and lucky we are carrying a gorgeous baby girl. Today I have felt the strongest and most frequent kicks so far and I get so excited after every single one. We are getting used to saying "she" instead of "it" and we have settled on a name which we both absolutely love. 

Stay strong Angel Mamas and Papas xxx