Rose proposes

Apr 7, 2015Apr 7, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Yesterday Rose and I drove for about 6 hours home from our little get away. I don’t cope with coming home sometimes. By bedtime I was a mess, head full of noise, overwhelmed by emotional pain. We lay together in the lamplight and I pulled apart my heart in confession: “I feel so bad at times I would do nearly anything to stop it.”

“My thoughts are turning to suicide.”

“The contrast between glowing with health and hope in pregnancy and now not caring about my body and wresting with self harm is shattering.”

“I feel like I’m letting you down.”

“I feel scrutinised and under pressure to cope gracefully or at least to hide how much this is hurting so that I don’t seem ill. I feel in a double bind where wanting a child very much and loving them very deeply is seen as a sign that I would be a good parent, but grieving them deeply and being affected by their death is somehow a sign that I am worryingly ‘mentally ill’ and would not be a good parent.”

“I want to run away from my life. I want to hide under a rock. And I don’t understand it because I’ve worked so hard for my life. I love it. But right now I hate it.”

Rose stepped into that place with me. She didn’t argue or hush me. She shared her own pain and sorrow, her own desire to run, the sense of pressure to cope. “I thought you were coping so well and I was the ‘ill’ one.” And in that sacred place of shared pain, a relief. Illuminated by the fire from our burning dreams, we lay naked in darkness and shared our hearts with gentle, brutal honesty and I felt like I was breaking and I felt like I could breathe because I wasn’t alone. There’s a kind of nakedness that has nothing to do with clothes. She wiped tears from my face and on impulse, scrapped grand plans for a big romantic reveal. She dashed into the rain and found the ring hidden in the shed and sat on the bed with me to tell me how much I’ve changed her life, how deeply she loves me in my light and darkness, how privileged she feels to be so close to me, to all of us who are Sarah. She asked us to be her family and gave us this ring.

The ring is from the same jeweller that made hers, all the coloured stones are sapphires from around the world, and the diamonds are ethically mined. The rings are similar but different, just like us. Rose’s ring:

So there in the dark it shines on my finger. She loves me as I am, not just for my best days, my successes and triumphs. Even in darkness, broken-hearted and lost, she loves me.

“I don’t want this ring to be about pain or Tamlorn’s death. But it just felt right that you need a symbol now to take with you to remind you that I love you.”

This is our family. The rain crashes through the night. “If you have to run away, I’ll understand.” I tell her, “Run and be safe and come back to me.”

“If you have to run, just tell me.” She says, “We’ll find somewhere safe for the animals and run together”. We lay blessings on each other from one broken heart to another.

I proposed to her in a forest, at a time when our lives were bathed in light, full of hope and excitement. She proposed to me in a storm, at a time of deep grief and loss. They are perfect bookends. This is who we are. She loves us, and we love her.

Burns

Apr 1, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

(the child is this image is alive) Seriously proud of my people. No one in my feed tried this on today. I’m thankful for friends who are helping out, for sympathy cards, for tokens and gifts, for people sending in something heartfelt for the cremation of our Tamlorn, for those who offer something specific instead of asking me what I need, for people calling to say “I don’t know what to say but I’m here and I’m not avoiding you” so I can say “I don’t know what to say either and I’m sort of here and some days I may be avoiding you and other days I need you, sorry”.

Today was a little better, only 2 near hysterics. Rose bought some sinus meds on special for the meds box and I was tempted to take them just to shift the sense of being dead. I’m pretty sensitive to sinus meds, they’re a serious upper for me. That impulse didn’t feel good. Friends came round for dinner and played board games and we all got silly and ate chocolate biscuits and made each other laugh at dumb jokes and silly voices and my mood shifted anyway and I remembered I didn’t need the meds to do it, just hang on a bit and something will come along where I can breathe again for a bit.

Today Rose and I looked after a friend’s little girl. I’ve been watching the pain and the recoil in myself, looking for a moment when it doesn’t hurt too badly and the desire to connect is there. You have to look for such moments in times like this, to stop the aversion settling in. Like a wall that gets a brick higher every day, it gets harder over time. But if you push it too early it gets harder too. There’s a moment where its right and you have to look out for it and try to catch it when it happens. So today we went off and did baby wearing with a sweet little girl and got to smell her hair and wipe yoghurt off her hands and blow bubbles for her to chase on the lawn. And it hurt, but my arms weren’t empty and my heart wasn’t cold. And her Mum knows we’re hurting but she trusts us with her little one and that’s such a precious gift, such a generous act.

There has been so much bad news lately I can’t take any more in. I’m numbed, which is a relief. Today’s dose didn’t even raise a tear, just a sense of fatalism, a bowed head. We’ll get through it all, as long as I have her, lovely Rose, there’s still a future here, still hope. We’ll unpick the knots and fill in the pit traps and find a path through.

Only my hand aches, psychosomatic pain where the drip was badly placed. And my womb, cramping, pulling on ligaments, settling, taking my breath away in small bursts like labour pains.

I’m doing a lot of maths and admin, figuring our way through a couple of grand of debt we just found out about a couple of days ago. Stupid auto system errors like welfare changing the fortnight I get paid to match Rose’s and simply skipping payment of a week of rent. I’m making progress, it’s coming together. I can see where the errors are and I’m undoing the auto system and taking it all on myself so I can monitor it for the future. We’ll be okay. We’re not going to starve, we’ll be okay.

The funeral home sent a text to let me know Tamlorn is safe in their care, collected from the hospital. We can go ahead with the cremation any time. Doing it feels like willingly putting my hand in a fire. Not doing it feels like there’s no air left to breathe in the world. I guess at least burns heal in the end, hey.

Distraught

Mar 31, 2015Apr 1, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

I am shattered. 2 days of intense Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) type distress. I remember this, it’s like being 14 again (when I was first diagnosed). I jump at every little sound or movement. I’m still bleeding, so much blood. It flashes in front my eyes, I see it pouring from my opened wrists for just a moment, a flicker of it pumping from the drip site in my hand. This isn’t just grief, it is trauma. I feel like I’ve staggered into another world, I’m walking wounded with the returned soldiers from a war we’re not supposed to talk about that everyone pretends isn’t happening. I feel like a ghost. I feel like I’m dead. I’m slipping sideways into that detached place where I’m not sure what the hell is wrong with me or why I can’t just cope better, where nothing matters and nothing counts.

I’m reading about women miscarrying at work and not being allowed to go home early, about partners putting on pressure to get over it, about women who were treated with sympathy after the first loss but the fourth is old news now and there’s just frustration that she needs time off again, about women being treated brutally by medical staff, denied pain relief, denied the treatment of their choice, suffering through multiple internal exams, strangers trying to pull the last debris from their womb by hand. I’m reading about women who 3 years on still have flashbacks, can’t bear to be too close to another pregnant woman, can’t see her children without pain. And no one talks about PTSD or trauma, because no one has talked to them about it. Because ‘nothing really happened, miscarriages happen all the time and most women just get on with things and don’t make such a fuss and an early loss isn’t really a baby and it’s best not to talk about, not to think about it, not to make a big deal out of it…’ So we don’t call it trauma and we don’t call it dissociation or flashbacks or triggers we just call it some hypersensitive women not coping…

I’m at the limit of coping. Small things push me into hysterical distress. I can’t go more than a few hours without feeling absolute desolation and sobbing. My voice cracks, my heart feels shattered, there’s this keening howl in my throat when I breathe in. I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m drowning. I hate reading other people’s experiences but I can’t bear to be alone in this either. Their pain, their crazy-making pain, their trauma and woundedness and hopefulness and grief and sense of being alone give mine context. This is just what it is, this is what it feels like. I get it now, and when I feel compassion for them or rage on their behalf, a little spills over for me too.

I crave sleep and rest, time in the garden, in the sunlight. Other people’s children hurt to see, their babies are a physical pain in my chest, an ache in my arms. But I love them also, I want to be near them, to follow them, if they look at me or smile I feel like my heart breaks but it is bitter-sweet, a flood of love and hope, looking over at world where the sun is shining. I don’t want to avoid them yet. Maybe after the next loss I will be in that place.

Every time I have to talk about the pregnancy in the past tense I feel a fresh wound.

I find I crave touch. I want to curl into a hug for 6 hours and not get up again until the world hurts less. I want to hide in a pillow fort, under blankets until the monsters go away.

I want to run down the streets, naked and screaming, blood streaked, and set fire to the houses of the complacent people who don’t think this is a big deal.

This morning I slept in a little then got up to go to college. I dressed and got ready then opened emails from welfare. They have made major mistakes with calculations and we owe them a lot of money. The same thing has happened with housing and we now owe a lot of backpay rent too. I called a friend in hysterics. They came round and cleaned the kitchen while I called debt departments and wrote up excel charts to try and figure out how this happened and how we are going to manage it. I spent all day in admin between bouts of hysteria. I’m exhausted to the point of trembling.

People are sending in messages of grief and support from our Invitation. I read them out loud in bed to Rose at night. We kiss goodnight through tears. I’m so glad we did this, so glad we chose to handle it this way. It’s deeply meaningful to feel we are honouring other dead babies, other families love and grief too. I have to go back to college soon, to work on artworks and all I want to do is memorialise grief. All I want to do is make trees that weep for dead babies, monuments that speak for silenced grief.

I’m trying to keep my life running. I’m scared of dropping out of college, of losing my business, my networks, my friends. I’m scared that when I climb out of this black hole and there won’t be anything left. The world is already moving on, sweeping me along, demanding attention. And I’m still here, bleeding. I’m still here.

We invite you to grieve with us

Mar 28, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

We have arranged for the hospital mortuary to hold onto what they call the ‘products’ of my post-miscarriage surgery. A company I really respect, The Natural Funeral Company, are going to collect our little Tamlorn on Monday and make arrangements for a cremation.

It might seem silly to fuss over a miscarriage, over a baby who was so little and died so early. But for some people, it’s exactly the right thing to be doing. It gives a home to aching loss, rituals of grief are how we anchor the senselessness and bewildering pain. This isn’t the right way, the only way, the best way. It’s simply what Rose and I are exploring, step by step, as we feel our way through our needs.

Because Tamlorn was so tiny, we have been advised that they usually cremate such little ones with paper so that you can be given enough ash to scatter or bury should you wish. We decided we would like to gather some things of meaning to cremate with Tamlorn. We are aware that as we have been so open about our pregnancy and loss, there are so many others who have grieved with us. We know that many of you have felt the old ache of losses of your own, babies and other loved ones. Grief calls to old wounds of grief.

So we wanted to invite you to email us something (skreece1@gmail.com) by this Thursday April 2nd, if you wish, to be included in the cremation. I will print it out and take it along to the cremation with our own letters and poems. You don’t need to feel that you have the ‘right’ thing to say. Words come easily for some and others grieve wordlessly. Here are some ideas about what you might like to send:

A photo of your favourite place
A picture you or your child has drawn
The names or dates of your own angel babies
A favourite poem
A quote you find meaningful
Song lyrics that speak to you
Lines from a text sacred to you such as the Bible, Koran, or Torah
A letter to someone you have loved and lost
A brief message such as ‘With love from the Smith Family’

If this seems uncomfortable or strange to you, please feel welcome to let it pass by. You don’t need to send anything, it’s not about ‘proving’ that you care. We simply wanted to acknowledge the outpouring of love and sadness and for those who wish to be part of this, extend an invitation. For those of you who have suffered loss such as infertility or miscarriage, especially if you have not felt safe or ready to share, or not had the opportunity to remember them in some way, you are welcome to be part of ours and to remember them with Tamlorn. You don’t need to have been close to us to be welcome to do this, we are opening this up to our whole community including those of you who read here or have just heard about our loss through friends. If you feel moved to participate, you are welcome.

If you would prefer instead, you are welcome to send a small token we will hang on the peach tree we will be planting for Tamlorn. Items can be sent to PO Box 165 Brompton South Australia 5007. If you send something you wish to be kept private, please let me know so I don’t share it with anyone other than Rose.

Thankyou xxx

Love and grief

Mar 27, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Rose’s nieces heard I am ‘sick’ and drew me some gifts. Another friend brought chocolates and took 2 loads of dirty washing home to clean. I got the great game Pandemic as an early birthday gift. I’m miserable, depressed, and in pain, but getting lots of love.

Yesterday was rough. The pre-meds made me pretty incredibly unwell, which I wasn’t expecting. The nurse in reception was nasty to Rose. The rest of the staff in the surgery were really kind to me, but I had to listen to them treating another woman really badly in recovery. I was crying and so badly wanted to go over there and give her a hug but couldn’t walk. I was glad to get home. The pain was pretty bad. I used a hot pack which helped a lot but I didn’t notice that I was burning my skin so I couldn’t use it again today. I had a brief but very upsetting argument with someone on facebook telling us to be positive and look forwards and treat Tamlorn’s death as a ‘trial pregnancy’. I’ve never actually shouted at anyone in caps online before. I’m depressed and exhausted. I feel like I’m in a desert, everything is dry and flat and empty and tasteless. My stomach is flatter and my breasts ache. My arms feel empty. My womb feels empty. I called the mortuary today and arranged for the ‘products’ to be kept safe so a funeral home can cremate them. I can’t get an appointment with my GP for a fortnight. It doesn’t feel like it matters anyway, nothing matters. Going through the motions and trying to be kind to those who are kind to me. I was mean to a friend who was only being kind and said sorry and gave her a hug but still feel bad. There’s burning anger sleeping just under the surface of all the grief and that familiar broken apathy I remember from the early days of PTSD, the wondering why something so ‘little’ can have such an impact. Life is restraint. Life is breathing through the next moment. Making the next phone call. Emptying the bin, feeding the cat, touching my love’s face, holding her hand.

That moment in bed, late at night, when all the lights are out and the house is silent and we lie facing each other, breathing out, breathing in, breathing each other’s air, heartbeats slowing down to sleep, the closest we get to death. And her skin feels like silk, feels like linen clean and hanging warm on a line in the sun, feels like a cat sleeping on warm clothes fresh from the dryer and I’m glad to hold her in my arms, silent and broken hearted because I can feel it, like the moment of joy from a gift, the recognition of kindness and love in other’s shared grief, the warmth from reaching out. For these very small moments the world makes sense, and they are precious moments.

Surgery

Mar 25, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

Okay, surgery tomorrow. No more waiting to miscarry.

O.o

Not ready. Ready, but not ready.

Today was full. I moved very slowly. I went to sculpture class a record 4 hours late. My tutor is away sick and we have a new one! I talked to them and two other lecturers about my miscarriage and surgery. I went into this weird slightly hyper state to get everything done without crying. People seem to keep expecting me to be emotional in public but I don’t have a lot of shades at the moment, it’s nothing at all or all of it. So I keep a lid on it until I’m home safe. I hate that breathless feeling though, the cheerful, slightly hysterical note in my voice, the way people misunderstand easily and think I’m being flippant.

I stayed until 6 and finished my sculpture projects for the term. They’re placed in a corner, labelled and tagged so they’ll count even if I can’t go in next week and present them. I have worked so hard this term to stay up to date with the course work in case something like this happened and I am so organised and ready. I’ve never done 70% workload at uni before and I’m managing it. I’m so proud of myself.

Tomorrow is going to be weird and hard. I’m going to ask the hospital to give us Tamlorn’s remains. I’ve arranged a cremation with a local funeral company. Rose will not be allowed to wait with me before surgery or come into the recovery area after surgery. She is going to have a very long, lonely day floating around the hospital. She’s not even allowed to wait outside the surgery area – those seats are strictly for patients. A lot about hospital procedure has left a lot to be desired in this process, such as having to wait on hold for an hour to get through to the antenatal department to cancel our first appointment tomorrow, while someone on a looped recording gives me advice about taking care of my baby. Trauma, trauma, trauma.

And then home. Not pregnant anymore. Tamlorn gone. After the high and the busy-ness, the crash, the silence. I’m not ready. I’m ready.

After the miscarriage

Mar 24, 2015Mar 24, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Home today and dazed. I feel like I’m picking my way carefully through a harsh and dangerous land, trying to find a path through. Stepping stones across rapids. I didn’t attend college today. Rose made it to work for most of the day. I’ve been tackling the admin in the wake of yesterday. Cancelling the antenatal appointment, informing college about my absences, contacting parents who had face painting booked with me this weekend, notifying the others coming together to work on the networks Hearing Voices Network of SA and the Dissociative Initiative that I’ll be in surgery when we were planning to meet. There’s a thousand small decisions to be made.

These are the most helpful resources I’ve found so far:

Management of Miscarriage: Your Options Rose and I decided on surgical management. What I’ve experienced is called a silent miscarriage, that is, I’ve had no bleeding or pain. My body still thinks I am pregnant although the baby has died. The hospital explained to us that it may take up to 8 weeks for my body to let go of the pregnancy. I’m finding it hard to be aware of a dead baby inside of me, and the thought of not knowing when it will happen is distressing. The 10 day wait between our ‘it’s not looking good’ scan and our scan confirming death was gruelling. I feel exhausted already by waiting. I’m afraid of more trauma, seeing blood, tissue, tiny body, of pain. So this time I’ve chosen surgery. If I’m ever in this situation again a different option may feel like the right choice. I don’t judge anyone else’s choices. This booklet was helpful and didn’t make any option sound superior.
On Miscarriage – a personal experience by Clare This article is a first hand account of miscarriage. I keep coming back to it. Her thoughts about the taboo of miscarriage resonate with me.
The Natural Funeral Company are my local creative funeral company. I already had tagged them as possibly helpful people back when we were preparing to get pregnant and I wrote Preparing for the death of a child. I contacted them today, embarrassed and confused, to ask about my options if I choose to take home Tamlorn’s remains from the hospital. They confirmed that they will perform a very low cost cremation so we have some ashes to scatter or keep.
Funeral Planning for a Miscarriage It’s hard to think clearly when things like this happen. Checklists and suggestions from other people who have been here are helping me know what my options are and feel out what’s right and fitting for Rose and I and Tamlorn.

There’s a new peach tree in my front yard, waiting to be planted in Tamlorn’s memory, shedding leaves as autumn creeps on. We chose a variety that will fruit in March, blessings every year to remember them. Our community – readers here, our friends and family and workmates and friends of friends have poured out messages of love and loss and support. We have come through the very outcome that people counsel you not to share because of, and we’re still glad we shared. (It’s okay if that’s not the right call for you though) We’re also glad that we decided to tell people what would and wouldn’t be helpful for us to hear. Rose has had a much gentler time in conversations this time around than after her other 6 losses, and we think that had a little to do with it. Sometimes it’s hard to know how to be helpful and having someone tell you can make it easier.

We are hearing that some others affected by this loss have had some tough times with other people and that’s sad and frustrating. Grief is contagious, it links us to other experiences of grief, it reminds us of vulnerability, mortality, that the world is not just. It touches deep wounds. Frequently unpredictable and always a legitimate need of the heart. We shouldn’t have to grieve secretly, justify grief, or be afraid of our tribe when we’re hurting. We grieve for things that happen in other countries, for tragedy suffered by people we’ve never met. We’re supposed to. It’s okay if you’re feeling affected, more than you thought you would be, more than someone else thinks you should be. Rose and I don’t own this pain, you don’t have to be close to us, or related to Tamlorn, or have experienced a miscarriage to justify your feelings. If you’re grieving then you need to be, so please be kind to yourself, please ask trusted people to be kind to you.

There are people who think grief is straight forward, clear, direct. Concentric circles spilling out from a central relationship. I don’t believe that. There are people who think we only deeply grieve people we have known and loved for many years. People who think miscarriages are not something that should ever be grieved. (you don’t have to grieve a miscarriage, you will feel grief or not, as your heart needs. It’s not wrong to not feel grief. It is wrong to try and quiet someone who is grieving) People who try to rank grief, this loss is worse than that loss. I believe none of this. Grief is a deep aching need of the heart to weep. I have grieved lost hopes and dreams. I have grieved lost health. I have grieved losses of people I have never met. I have grieved for characters in books. I have grieved for pets. I have grieved for suicidal loved ones, for their anguish. I have grieved for whole cities, whole countries, forests. When I was 15 the river dried up and left shrinking pools of dying fish. I prayed to every power I knew and wove every spell I could with my poems, and carried them in buckets to swim in old cattle feed troughs and bath tubs and they still all died. And I cried like the world had ended, cried for days and days with a profoundly broken heart because I had just learned that some things are beyond my control even if I love with all my heart. Grief is part of being alive, part of being human. I don’t believe you choose to grieve or to live, grief and living weave in and out of each other. If you have ever loved anything or anyone, then one day you will grieve.

I can’t tell you how sorry I am that our shared joy has become shared pain. I’m sorry for everyone who is hurting, remembering other losses, feeling helpless, feeling torn. I’m sorry for those of you who have had terminations – who found yourselves with life that was not the right time or with the right person, growing in the wrong places, growing broken and unable to live – who grieve even if the decision was the right one, and can’t speak of your grief. I’m sorry that your loss is so often hidden in the shadow cast by the loss of a wanted child. I want you to know that I don’t hate you or judge you, that you are allowed to not grieve or grieve as you need to also. I feel like my grief and my situation makes people think we are enemies, standing on opposite sides. I want to say we are not enemies.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that you care, that you reach out, tell us Tamlorn’s name is beautiful, remind us we’re not alone, share tears with us. I know it feels like there’s nothing you can do, but listening and caring are doing something, doing the most powerful thing you can. As we listen and care for each other, fumble through rituals of grief for a loss not often acknowledged. I’m sorry we brought this touch of death into your lives, but I’m grateful that we’re not here alone.

The passing of our Tamlorn

Mar 23, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 23 Comments

Our baby has died. There is no heartbeat, no growth, no obvious abnormalities, they’ve just died. You can see them in this last scan, all curled up, head at the top and body tucked under in the dark womb. The painful wait is over and there’s no hope left.

We’ve had a very, very long day. We’ve just arrived home from hospital. We’ve spent all day in waiting rooms with pregnant women and new parents with tiny infants. We’ve decided we have waited long enough and will end this on Thursday with minor surgery to empty the womb. We’re exhausted and devastated.

I know it’s so hard to know what to say when people when grieving, and that grieving people are often distant, preoccupied, and angry. Here are things Rose and I are finding helpful and not helpful.

Not helpful:

At least you know you can get pregnant
You can always try again
At least it was only early
It’s natures way of protecting you from a damaged baby
Maybe you did something wrong
It’s God/The Universe telling you something
It will happen when the time is right
Cheer up/chin up/it will all work out

Some of these things we already know, others are attempts to cheer that just hurt more. Grief hurried through become lonely, twisted, dark. Grief given time will heal.

Helpful:

I’m really sorry to hear that
It’s okay to take time to grieve
Would you like it if I shared about my experience of loss/brought round some dinner/sent you a card/gave you a hug?

It’s okay to say nothing at all. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to sit with other people’s grief, to be silent and not try to make it to be anything but what it is.

We’re calling this little one Tamlorn, after a beloved child in a book by Patricia A McKillip. My Tam. Our Tam. We’re hoping to go out tonight and buy a tree to plant in their memory.

We will rest for a couple of months and then plan to start trying again. Our donor is still on board, so this is not the end of our journey. Thankyou all for your hope and messages of love and support.

Poem – So you’re in there

Mar 22, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

From earlier in this harrowing week. Our ‘viability scan’ is tomorrow. Frankly I’d rather put my fist through glass than attend.

So you’re in there, struggling
In the darkness, trying to grow
Without what you need
And you’re brave
And you fight hard
Wrestling heart beats back from death
A life counted in days, not years.

I know you’re doing everything you can
And it may not be enough
And it doesn’t mean a thing
It doesn’t mean you don’t want to be here
It doesn’t mean we don’t love you
I know what it’s like to give everything
And still fail.
I know where you are, little one.

These are our limits.
This is what it is to be human.
Sometimes we don’t make it.
Love doesn’t heal all wounds, doesn’t stop the bleeding, doesn’t reorder the genome
Sometimes we fly and
Sometimes we fall.

And I know to some
You are nothing, just tissue, just potential
Welcome to the world
So am I. Just a statistic, just a number
One in a billion lives, not particularly
Noteworthy, not powerful, not rich, not a player in history.
This is what it is to live: you must
Wrestle your identity from those who
Do not see you as human –
You must be human anyway.

I’m so sorry
You had to learn this so young
I want you to know
What it feels like to breathe
I want you to feel my kisses on your face.

I want you to know, I know how it feels
To struggle in darkness
To find that you’re not complete
Not put together right, that there’s more effort
Than seems fair to jump the gaps
That some of us learn young
The risks of living, the way
Not all us get it easy
Not all of us get our happy endings.

I love you.

Ink Painting: Lantern

Mar 18, 2015Mar 18, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Painted this the other day. I’m 9 weeks pregnant today. I can’t give you any updates about what stage of growth the baby is because all we know is they’re badly behind. The apps and books and reminders have rather lost their joy.

Rose and I play board games. We book in time with friends. We watch ER. We cook and prepare lunches for each other. We sing to the baby. We touch base over text throughout the day, checking in, “still pregnant”, trying to ease the breathless fear. We lie in bed and plan what we’ll do if this one dies, how soon to start trying again, how we’ll handle news that they are alive but catastrophically disabled, we cry about how we don’t just want any baby, we want this baby, we’re in love with them.

We pack the dishwasher and water the garden. Forget to buy cat food and go back for it. I get anxious texts if I’m longer than a minute in the toilet. Sleeping in one day I wake to missed calls and frantic worries that I’m bleeding out in my sleep. Friends answer the phone with a panicked tone. We’re all waiting for disaster.

I book in our scan for next Monday, the woman on the phone is curt and unhelpful. So you’re only 6 weeks pregnant? No, I snap back, the baby is only 6 weeks developed. Oh yeah she says, reading the form more closely. She hangs up without telling where to come for the scan and I have to call her back for instructions.

I arrange bills in order of due date and put them on the fridge.

For 5 hours one day I firmly believe the baby will be fine. I sing around the house.

Rose drives to work and sits weeping in the car park. There’s nightmares and flashbacks, we talk softly of the other times, other losses. I promise I’ll tell her the truth, even at work. She mostly believes me.

I sit in class, feeling pain and dampness, half convinced I’m miscarrying but desperate not to find out. I sit solidly at my desk, head down, working, until the end of class. I screw up my courage and go to the bathroom. False alarm.

Our friend who had visited over the weekend to celebrate the first scan goes home again yesterday. The house feels oddly empty.

The cat sleeps on me all night, snuggled as close as she can get. I’m constantly surprised by these little reminders that I am still pregnant, despite everything that’s going on.

Food aversions are in full force. I can’t bear salad or meat anymore. I live on cooked vegetables and fruit. Licorice settles my gut.

I’m still writing to my little one, sometimes as if they’re alive, sometimes as if I’ve already lost them. I feel dazed. Rose and I spend whole evenings sitting close, holding hands, trying to ease the sense of distance and bewilderment. We’re still here, there’s still love here. We hold on.

It’s not pretty

Mar 15, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Feeling sick.
Feeling angry.
Inks and poetry are my punching a wall. And music
Music lets me breathe
Especially Trent.

She shines in a world full of ugliness
She matters when everything is meaningless.
(this is the first day of my last days)

It’s not pretty, it’s life.

Still no news if the baby will live or die.

Walking lightly

Mar 14, 2015Mar 14, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

Rose and went to a follow up appointment at the local hospital today. The second opinion was sadly the same as the first, the odds are very against the survival of our bub. They were very nice. They’re taking over our care early, so they’re now the ones to call with questions or fears. We can turn up anytime if there’s bleeding or cramping. (must turn up, in fact, as I’d need an injection to prevent my body creating antibodies against the bub) They will do another scan in 10 days time, if we haven’t miscarried by then, and compare growth rate and so on to see if there might be some cause for more optimism. In the meantime we just wait.

It’s a hard place to be, we’re full of hope and despair in equal measure. We’re talking things very gently. Today I felt like company and Rose felt like bunking down at home, so she did just that, and I went out to Port Noarlunga with my sister and a friend. I had a raspberry sorbet and we went snorkelling along the reef. It was such a beautiful day, so bright and clear, the sky so blue. The water was full of fish and we saw a few crabs and starfish too. We’ve had dinner with family and we’re now watching Harry Potter.

It’s like the movement of a tide. Some hours are full of big emotions, others are the simple joy or needs of the moment. I feel a lot older and wiser about dealing with the movement of such string feelings. Less ashamed and bewildered, trying to control what I can’t. Better at rolling with the tides. It’s funny, on the way home today I thought about sharing on here what I’d done and I knew it would meet with the approval of those who would have advised me to not concentrate on the fear about our baby, just enjoy myself. That’s really not what I was doing today. I’ve had a lovely day after the sadness of the hospital this morning, but that’s not because I chose to think positive or decided how I would feel. If I had needed to curl into a dark place and paint myself with ink, or make dark art, or park my car somewhere solitary and scream, I would have done those things. I’m likely to do them sometime over the next few weeks.

It’s not about what anyone else would do or thinks I should do. It’s not about what a social worker might think of as the appropriate ways to handle this. It’s not about obedience or conformity or trying to make myself feel or not feel anything. It’s about listening to myself, unhooking from shame and loneliness and the other painful ideas that inevitably come with strong feelings and tough situations. I share them, counter them, unhook from them.

People are not rational in the face of pain. It’s normal. I find moments of shame when I’m feeling good. I find vague hazy fears that people like Terry Pratchett have died because we’re trying to bring a new life into the world. And when I can take these some place safe and unhook from them without shame, I’m just left with the feelings and needs of the moment, and I’m free to meet them. Company, solitude, distraction, expression, research, comfort, whatever. Whatever the feelings or needs are, it’s okay. I can navigate them, explore them, find a place for them. Rose can too. It’s okay when they’re not the same. It’s okay when they shift every 20 minutes. It’s okay if they’re different to how other people have felt or think they might feel in this situation.

It is what it is. Today our little one tasted the salty sea warmed by the sun. With what time we have, we’ll live. Fully, deeply, honestly, passionately. We’ll hurt and we’ll hope.

Some days are just sad

Mar 13, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 11 Comments

I woke up this morning to the news of Terry Pratchett’s death. I cried in bed. He was an incredible man, and his books have got me through some very dark times in my life.

Our scan today was more heartbreaking than reassuring. Our little one is there, alive, but far too small, and with a heartbeat slower than mine. The likelihood is that there is a significant problem with their development. We’ve been told to brace ourselves for a miscarriage over the next couple of weeks. Our first antenatal appointment is in a fortnight.

There’s still a small chance. It’s small but it’s there. The odds have been against Rose and I many times before. We’re horrified but we’re holding on.

This is them. We couldn’t hear the heartbeat but we could see it. The technician described the movement of it as ‘fluttering’. Like a tiny bird.

So. I’m trying to get through to the pregnancy support line and ask more questions. We have a an appt with our doctor next week. I’m not sure how to manage my work commitments – I can’t bear to spend a day painting children’s faces if our baby has just died. I’ll figure something out.

We’re home. They escorted us out the back door so we didn’t have to go past all the cheerful people in the waiting room. They’ve done this before. Our gp chose that place because they’re nice to you when they have bad news. The doctor told us he tells around 2 women a week their babies have died. We sat in the car and cried until I could put all my feelings away and drive home. We bought milk and bread on the way. I’m sad and scared and hurting and numb.

I’ve bought Terry Pratchett books online. We’re being kind to each other, moving slowly. Some days are just sad.

Heartache

Mar 13, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

Yesterday was really hard. Rose and I are both tired, busy and stressed. Our first scan is in about 13 hours. It’s so important. This is where we find out if there’s a baby in there or if we’ve already lost them, if they’re growing in the right place, if their heart is beating strong, so much rests on it. We’re scared, and trying not to be, so we’re flat and depressed instead.

Admin was horrible. After 6 calls and an hour on hold when my call to welfare dropped partway through I actually screamed in frustration. The college work load is scaring me. I have to keep reminding myself that the assignments are for visual arts students, not english student – they are not nearly as difficult to write! It’s not as hard as I think it’s going to be. The standards are not as high as those I set myself.

Dreaming intensely at the moment. Feeling raw. I’m reading about life with small children – you’re always tired, you never get time to do your hair, forget about finishing the housework, and you permanently smell of soured milk. With the exception of the last one I feel like I’m ready living that! Does that mean it will all get way way worse, or does that make it an easier adjustment? Don’t answer that.

Everything that feels monstrous and impossible now will feel like the smallest of bumps if the scan goes well tomorrow. I know that. I’m just deeply, gut wrenchingly scared. That’s okay. This is what it is. It’s a tightrope or a narrow ledge. I can touch life with one hand and death with the other. We’re used to having a little more room to breathe between them, but this is the road we’ve chosen. Bitter-sweet, painful, beautiful. My heart aches and aches.

8 Weeks Pregnant

Mar 11, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 8 Comments

Wow. We have our first ultrasound in a couple of days. If that goes well and there’s a heartbeat and a bub growing in the right spot, then we are through the worst of the woods! Down to a miscarriage risk of 1.5 – 2.4% (depending on the study). Very low, anyway!

At 8 weeks, the little one is about the size of a large raspberry. This week they transition from being called an embroyo to a fetus – this reflects the change in its growth. Embryos are figuring out all the different cell types they will need – brain, muscle, nerve and so on, and grouping them into what will become organs like the heart, lungs, liver, and forming arms and legs. The fetus has the building blocks in place now and is grow grow growing them.

This week they’re starting to grow fingers and toes, little webbed stubs. Eyelids have formed, and they will probably be taking their first little tastes of amniotic fluid. They’re growing fingerprints.

I am a huge pain to live with currently. Food aversions are driving me a bit crazy. I’ve been obsessed with salads until yesterday. Now I can’t stand them. Yoghurt is back on the eat list. Meat is off it, fruit is on it, potato salad I can’t even think about without getting queasy. Nuts are off but peanut butter is on. I’m driving myself crazy. I felt ill and off colour all day today. Rose woke up to me sobbing from nightmares and came home to me sobbing about a parking fine. I seem to have only two modes currently; ill and weepy, or ranty. Rose however is the one doing the throwing up, due to her fertility meds. We went out to a fringe show tonight and my poor love threw up in bins all the way back to the car and then in the garden when we got home. It’s hard to tell which of us is pregnant some days!

I’ve been reading about risks and options and stories from other mums about miscarriage. One thing really struck me – a woman saying that all this advice to not tell anyone until you’re through the first trimester meant that when she lost her baby she had no idea about it, no preparation, no knowledge of the options, no stories from friends she could draw upon. That’s in my head a lot at the moment, this idea of taboo and silence and secrecy and what it does to us. If you need any information, I recommend the Miscarriage Association they’ve got clear info and links to real experiences. The Heartfelt foundation are also screening a film here in Adelaide this Friday night about pregnancy loss.

Waiting for our scan. Holding my breath until we hear that heartbeat.

Dreaming of death

Mar 11, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

Woke from nightmares with a cry (her face was wet but she couldn’t speak anymore, so near death, she could give no more comfort and answer no more questions). I’ve cried so hard my face is swollen. I have to get up for class, my favourite today, sculpture. I want to turn out the light and go back to bed and try to dream sweeter dreams. I wonder if that’s what a brief life is like for a miscarried embryo, a sleep, a dream, and a sleep. I wonder if they ever get any other dreams. I can see the faces of people lost to me and the world itself seems fragile, paper torn in the wind. My hopes of safety, meaning, reconciliation all feel like a child’s dream. A sense of order where there is no order, only darkness, only loss. It seems unbearable to be human today. Our baby is safe, but we march into the future as if all will be well, as if there will be no cost. I feel friends falling like autumn leaves, into death. With dawn comes dusk. We love, and are consumed, and some day our arms are empty. A cold wind blows right through me.

No words

Mar 9, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

No words, no words, or none of the kind that need another, no back and forth of dialogue from where I am, somewhere between awake and asleep, a shuffling bewilderment, dawn that promises to come but does not come. I’ve no words here, no words for this place, no way to describe or explain, no justification. My eyes, my eyes, they ask questions I can’t voice, they look out of my face like dough, my flesh like bread, and there’s a kind of searching I can’t name, a sense of loss that the face in the mirror isn’t me. The tasks stretch before me like days, they are a thing I understand, I bend myself to them. The written word does not break the vow of silence, the secrets can be mumbled, I share them without sharing. I’m lost, wandering my house with the bread rising in the oven, I’m lost. Some shadow calls my name, some darkness clings to me from sleep. I dreamed of dragons, of a world flooded, darkness that moved upon the water. I dreamed of dragons. The bees are in the basil. The child is in the womb. The weeks lie before me with all their tasks. I’m here, trying to find my way to your world, the key that turns the lock and yet, and yet, I want to stay. This is not air that I’m breathing, all my words are in my hands, in the touch of my fingers. I’m caught between worlds, on the other side of the glass, out in the night where all things are naked and only themselves, out where the dogs cry and the moon is bone white in the sky. I could shake my head and shake the shadows from my eyes like dew, step over the threshold into the world of words, reassure you with a smile. I could take up limb, tongue, conversation without sacred touch. But I think I’ll stand here a little longer and listen to the other world. The sound that hearts make, yearning, even yours child, throat unstrung with harpstrings yet, in a place where longing is the only language.

Poem – Love song

Mar 6, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 6 Comments

I rarely share freshly written poetry, but this is an exception. 🙂

Little one inside me
All you know of the world is my body
So I take you with me and listen closely
Breathe it so you may taste a little of it.
These are waves, little one, they are
The heartbeat of the ocean
And these are stars, remote and beautiful
That feeling inside me is awe.
Alone in my bed, weeping; this is fear
My blood that calls your name before you have one.
This world at times is all shadow and sharp edges.

Here in my garden, I breathe in sweet basil
This drumming on my skin is rain
It’s autumn here, the jonquils
Push green fingers up through dark soil
They will bloom and die before you arrive.

That burr of softness is my sweet cat
Kissing and purring – your mama thinks
He knows that you’re here – he wants to be with me always.
In our own way, all these things
We are all singing to you
All in love with you, nameless one
All calling you home.

Lucky and happy

Feb 28, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

This has been my first weekend in forever that I took off and booked no face painting gigs. I have had the most wonderful day! I’ve lazed around in front of the air conditioning, done a little gardening, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, shared lunch with friends, chatted away to lovely people online. Rose is organising dinner with fish and avocado and I’m very excited about it! Mmmmm. Our new game of Ghost Blitz came in the post at last. 😀 I’m loving playing games together in the evening, it feels like a good family ritual to be developing.

I nearly forgot I had a shrink appt today until my phone reminder went off an hour beforehand. Living with dissociation has been significantly easier since I got a smart phone! It was a great appointment. I’m so appreciating the support I have around me at the moment. There are some wonderful people, my doctor, my shrink, my partner, friends and colleagues. People who are so excited for us and with us, people reminding me to enjoy this time, people making safe places for me to be afraid or sad, to fumble my way into this new role and find confidence that I can do this. I’m not alone!

At times I feel embarrassed that things are going so well, sad for those I know have tried so hard to have children, or lost so many babies, for those who are horribly sick through pregnancy and have so much stress and pain to deal with. I feel so lucky. I’m hoping to be sensitive to those who haven’t been. I don’t believe there’s more to this luck. I don’t believe people can’t conceive if the universe doesn’t think they will be good parents. Life isn’t fair. I’ve been lucky so far, not divinely blessed. And I know how much other people’s good fortune can hurt. Even beautiful, lovely, ecstatic Rose feels pain that I am carrying when she has lost so many. I hope I’m a sensitive partner for her, making space for those feelings too, for the shadow of such fortune that falls over some of us. And I hope our luck holds. 🙂

Passed all the first tests

Feb 27, 2015Feb 27, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

We went to see our doctor today and got the first round of blood tests back. Everything is looking great! All my levels are excellent, ditto my blood pressure, there’s only two points of caution. One is that I have no immunity to a couple of common viruses that are pretty harmless unless you are pregnant, so I need to be careful about snuggling up to sick kids, the other is that I have O- blood and the baby will most likely be O+ which simply means that I’ll need a few shots to prevent my body making antibodies to the baby’s blood. My GP is wonderful, she’s so happy for us and excited about the baby. She reminds me to soak it all up and enjoy it. 🙂

So everything is looking wonderful. I’m having a very easy ride at the moment. I’m craving salads, pickles, licorice, and salty crackers. I’m not having much trouble with nausea at all unless I eat rich foods. I’m tired but it’s pretty much the same levels as my fibro in this weather. I seem to be one of those incredibly lucky women who find pregnancy suits them – some women with fibro are the healthiest during pregnancy. Wow! Life is really going my way at the moment!

We had a bumpy couple of days recently when I experienced a little bit of bleeding. It’s not at all uncommon but Rose and I were both very anxious and she struggled with some flashbacks to her losses. It’s hard sometimes. We wound up talking each other through it by deciding that it wasn’t really possible to ‘not feel worried’, both of us were trying that and failing. So instead we went for ‘it’s okay to be scared, but until we definitely know for sure that we’ve lost this baby, we are going to be fighting for them and cheering them on’. That was something we could do. We also talked about a name, lovely but impractical, to give them if they don’t make it.

But things are settled and all is going well. We have our first ultrasound booked for a fortnight and we’ll get to hear the babies heartbeat. I’ve booked it for a day Rose isn’t working so she can come too. Just thinking about it makes me tear up. It’s funny, everyone keeps reassuring me it’s normal to be teary and hormonal – I’m pretty much always like this lol, emotional is what I do! In fact I’d say I’ve been the most consistently cheerful and content in the last fortnight than in forever. Rose agrees, although she has mentioned I’m also a little more irritable especially about anyone being an idiot or stirring up trouble. 😛 I’ll cop to that!

The Wishing Tree

Feb 25, 2015Feb 25, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

I’m 6 weeks pregnant today, and not feeling right, which is making me anxious. I went to see this exhibition yesterday, part of it was a wishing tree. We were asked to write a wish and tie it to the tree. I’ve written please let the baby live.

My favourite embryo

Feb 22, 2015Feb 22, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I’ve finished a happy weekend of resting and face painting. Face painting is a funny thing. You can have the best of worst day depending on who you work with. Sometimes you get lucky and the people are amazing, so friendly and welcoming it’s the best job in the world. Sometimes it’s frankly horrible, drunk aggressive guys who try to touch you or parents who hit their stressed out kids in front of you. This weekend was the great kind, and today Rose and I finished a lovely gig by heading home via a little crafty town and buying blackcurrant and lime sorbet and window shopping.

I’m still pregnant, and not particularly feeling it. I am eating lots of smaller meals of veggies and fruit and my tastes have sorted from being keen on sweet to interested in salty flavours, which is pretty weird for me. Nausea isn’t an issue as long as I don’t eat anything too rich or processed. I’m drinking loads of water, sleeping well, and generally feeling all glowy and content with the world.

Except for my breasts, which are larger and extremely sensitive. Trying to sleep on my side feels like I have rock melons taped to my chest. Being bisexual I’m usually a big fan of breasts but at the moment I don’t get why we don’t have just flat chests with milk ducts and nipples. What the hell is with the rest of the breast tissue? Why? Grr. Mine are currently completely off limits to Rose and for the first time in my life it’s less painful to keep the bra on at the end of the long hot day. O.o

Rose and I are connecting with other Mums; baby wearers, queer mum’s, mum’s who have experienced pregnancy loss or still birth. There’s so many people put there going through similar things, in so many different ways we are part of big communities.

We feel blessed and hopeful and afraid in equal measure. Some nights it’s all bliss, others our little room is a a Tardis, expanding to fit all the fear and pain of loss. There’s such an experience of being human, our helplessness and vulnerability, how fragile our hearts are. We hold each other in the night and tears fall like stars. I tell Rose there’s room enough here for her fears, her ghosts too. As she drifts off to sleep she tells me “goodnight my favourite person, goodnight my favourite embryo”.

On Cloud Nine

Feb 19, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

This was my attempt to record the most incredible sunset we had here last week. I’m having a fantastic day! I feel amazing. My tummy has the very tiniest swelling which Rose can see when I’m lying on my back. She’s taken to cupping it in her hand and singing to it. I’m eating mainly fruit and veggies which are sitting really well at the moment.

College is great! Pregnancy is great! Rose is wonderful! And my networks are coming together!!

I am meeting with people and having people reach out who want to get involved with the DI or HVNSA, want to share the load and mull the tricky questions and have a shared passion for people. I’m so excited I could burst! So humbled and fortunate to be meeting these people and gathering them together. Every time someone says something that I’ve been thinking, worrying about, or hoping for, my heart leaps that these are truly like minded people, diverse and different but with the kind of shared values that will make this possible. Our community is coming together and I believe we will be stronger for it. 🙂

Welding and pregnant

Feb 18, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I’m 5 weeks pregnant today! The little one is about the size of a sweet pea (5mm) and has a heart beat. At the moment pregnancy is like a slightly rough day with fibro, only a lot more exciting.

Today was sculpture class, which makes me feel so contented and at home. I learned to weld! We’re starting with brazing welding with the oxy-acetylene torch. I’m glad I’m pregnant in this class instead of painting – the fumes in painting can be a big issue as well as skin absorption. I made this little critter for my garden:

It was wonderful. I’m so glad I’m still doing this degree. I have no idea how it’s all going to work out, but to spend time with other artists in a studio learning new skills makes my heart happy. And we have the best tutors in this class. Something good will come of it. Tonight and tomorrow are HVNSA and DI meets, something also very exciting and at times anxiety producing. Hoping we create something good out of that too. 🙂

Things without name

Feb 17, 2015Feb 17, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

Appreciate darling Rose who had packed of lunch box of food unlikely to make me sick. I’m feeling nauseated a lot of the time, very tired, mad dreams. Pretty much like fibro really, being pregnant. I’m unsettled and feeling strange things that are hard to name. Oddly lonely.

Yesterday I was reading Idylls of the King by Tennyson for art homework. I also read a bunch of sites about starting Not for Profit orgs and setting up committees and so on, until the sense of displacement and anxiety crawled so high up my throat I couldn’t breathe anymore. Reading about Arthur, the ordained king and his knights in which he had such faith, their overturning of the old world and their bright hopes, all ashes by end, felt so fitting I cried. Of the original DI board, most are not speaking to someone else who was on it. We start things with such hope and end them in such ruin. And the ones that persist seem to lose all the glow of kindness and passion that brought them into life, becoming mechanical, unwieldy, inefficient, consuming. I have such hope but so very little faith. “Everything anyone has ever thought is true… I’ll be alright, and I’m going to die. Both of those are true too.” Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Phillip K Dick

Here I sit between classes, feeling the slight stretch and pull of my womb growing, eating these small tokens of devotion like a sacrament, feeling blessed, feeling humbled, feeling out of step with the world. In a place where things are not themselves, not as they seem, names that do not fit. Like you, little nameless one inside me.

Rose and I hold each other in the soft hours, away from the critics and the judgement, feeling the faint terror under all our days, the burning love. Do you think we will feel less afraid when the baby is here safely? No, never again, it is to live with your heart outside of your chest. I’ve been here, waking from nightmares where my family are slaughtered, or sitting by the bed of someone beloved who is dying, saying goodbye and trying to fix the details in my mind. I’ve been here, feeling alone and exquisitly vulnerable in the vast darkness and fragility of life.

“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”
Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful life, if you can find it.” Nick Cave