Relationships

Musings on culture and madness

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

If you wish to experience (not intellectually understand, but in your body, feel) a culture gone mad, go and watch Mad Max 4. Preferably alone, on a large screen, with the bass up high. Preferably when you will come out of the theatre afterwards into the night, with the feeling lingering, the recoiling horror.

All my life I’ve been haunted by a powerful sense that the world does not make sense. All my life I’ve sought to understand this, to find where the flaw was, to unpick and rebuild the reasoning that led to unsolvable equations, data errors. Mad Max was a final piece for me, not known but experienced – experience being the key way we are designed to learn – mind and body in a feedback system of what is felt not just what is known. Into this space; the understanding of people as creatures of prediction, comes art, comes imagination.

Culture is our first, last and most powerful religion. It defines our beliefs. Our response to it, our acceptance or rejection or critical engagement with it determine key aspects of our lives. Culture tells us what is ‘normal’, and normal is holy.

Madness is the (often involuntary and destructive) rejection of culture. Common when the culture prevents a fundamental need from being met. In madness lie the seeds of our greatest strength – to reject the culture and to define our own.

All things have a culture. Your time in the history of the world. Your nationality. Your race. Your religion. Your gender. Your home town. Your workplace. Your family of origin. Your home. Your lovers. The inside of your own mind.

In all these places, normal is defined, holy is defined, insanity is defined. In all these places we succeed or fail, we fit or don’t fit, we embrace or reject, we obey or are excluded. In all these places, we are in a world unto itself, and must transition to the slightly different, or radically different cultures of the other worlds. Each world brings out a different ‘self’ in us, if we are adaptive. Each transition, each culture in context of another culture, creates tensions. Our plurality is both essential and potentially lethal, becoming deceit, two-faced, double minded, double-think, compartmentalisation not only of action and belief but also values. Or a terrifying simplicity of one value – to obey the culture – if this world tells me to love I am loving, if that world tells me to kill, I kill without regret.

Obedience to culture destroys freedom. Rejection of culture isolates and alienates us. To perceive culture as artificial, a construct, built by fallible minds, by accidents, by use and misuse of power, by the most glorious dreams and horrifying nightmares of human capacity is to take the first step back from fusing with it. No culture is ‘natural’. No cultural claim to truth, beauty, normality, holiness, or sanity is above examination. To grasp the power to shape culture, to assimilate that which seeks to assimilate us, is the work of a lifetime. To digest culture, embrace what is valuable, reject what is degrading, and bring your own wisdom to the challenge knowing you are also fallible, and to accept the costs of doing so, is a kind of freedom, and a kind of bondage.

What is it to be human? Culture gives us answers, so surely and subtly we don’t recognise we imbibe them. Culture is Kant’s Guardians who brook no questioning. Freedom and power and great suffering and loneliness lie in seeking or being forced to seek our own answers to those questions.

Mother’s Day

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

 

image

 

Love to all mothers, to those of us with hearts brimming over and those with hearts tattered and battered and torn. To those with hearts broken by yearning and sick with unrealised dreams. Love to those grieving, to those mothers who can’t or won’t use the word mother, who fall through the holes of our language into a silence, those who love dead unborn children, who mourn children lost, who love children they have no claim of flesh and bone and law to but love them anyway. Love to all women who love and give life to and grow something more than themselves.

Love to all children, to those of us with hearts brimming over and those with hearts tattered and battered and torn. To those with hearts broken by yearning and sick with unrealised dreams. Love to those grieving, to those children who can’t or won’t use the term mother for a woman who once bore them but did not love them well, who fall through the holes of our understanding into a silence, those who love dead mothers, who mourn mothers lost, who love women they have no claim of flesh and bone and law to but love them anyway. Love to all children and once children who love and are brought alive by and grow because of or in spite of a mother.

(thanks to Ellie Hodges thoughtful facebook post for the image)

 

Carpe Diem

/ Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

Sometimes life kicks you in the face and you fall over and have to curl up and lick your wounds. Sometimes it just keeps kicking you and at some point you get up and kick back. That’s where I’m at now.

Two days ago, we sent Tamlorn for cremation. We took all your beautiful sendings with us in a box.

2015-04-27 11.05.14-1

This is how mothers say goodbye – on their knees.

20150427_130817_wm

Yesterday we learned that our donor’s circumstances have changed and he’s no longer going to be part of our process.

Today I picked up Tamlorn’s ashes from the funeral company.

Tomorrow I’m going back in to the local welfare centre again to beg for help with these ongoing debt issues that no one ever returns calls about.

And I’m fighting back.

I’m sleeping. I’m cooking meals. I’m energised and throwing myself into life. I’ve started the new term of art college. I used the holiday to catch up on all the homework so I’m ready and focused. Things are different now I’m in second year subjects. This week I’ve actually felt like this isn’t a crazy waste of time. I’m getting some support for the kind of art that is meaningful to me, learning useful things about the history of art where I can place my own stress and ambivalence into context. I have a new sense of hope that there is a place for me and what I do in the art world, somewhere.

I am currently doing prep work for a gathering tomorrow of the potential board for the HVNSA and DI networks I’ve been care taking through my business. And I am excited! I’ve been reading a couple of books; Start Something that Matters by Blake Mycoskie, and Be a Changemaker by Laurie Ann Thompson. Social entrepreneur… it’s not a word I’m familiar with. I have painstakingly gathered business skills in my face painting business over the last couple of years. I am not good at marketing myself. I am good at giving things away for free to vulnerable people. But now at least, I can manage invoicing, tax, record keeping, and the basic admin of a business. And I am finding words for my passion for people, and models for what I’ve been trying to do. I feel less alone and bewildered and overwhelmed. The other board members are good people, conversations with them imbue me with hope about what we can do together. I am realising that what I most need at the moment is not to be doing this alone.

So, I’m burning with passion and my mind is clear and alert. I’m confident and imaginative and enthusiastic. I know this energy can’t last. No matter the cause, at some point the body needs to rest, the mind to recharge. That’s okay, I can do that. I’m astonished by my current state, grateful and relieved. I did not expect this. This has been an incredibly hard year. I’m determined to live fully, to embrace what I have and do what I can. I’m reaching out to country and interstate people about going and giving my talks – I’ve decided to offer some for free and ask for help to cover travel costs. I want to be out there, I want to be doing what I love, helping people. I don’t have a little baby in my arms, I may not even be able to try and get pregnant again this year while we look for and build a relationship with another donor. So I have a lot of love in my heart and there’s a lot of people out there who need a bit of love.

And when the night falls on my heart again and that flame of hope goes out… I want you to remember that one is not good and the other bad, one is not real and the other a lie. Pain, sorrow, anguish. They are as real and necessary and sane a response to my life as my current zeal. I am reminded of something I wrote a long time ago in Traumatic replay:

When awful things are happening I feel awful. I feel numb. I feel furious. I fight like hell. I feel strong. I feel helpless. I feel vindicated. And other people say things to me like “How are you still going?”, with respect.

When nothing awful is happening I still feel awful, numb, furious, but I have nothing to fight. I feel weak, helpless, stupid, pathetic, and full of self loathing. And other people say things to me like “What is wrong with you?”, with contempt.

Remember this day, tomorrow when I am broken again. They go together, the flying and the falling. This is the fire – I am forged strong, but I am also consumed and devoured by it. This is my life, ending one minute at a time. Carpe diem.

Poem – The Roar

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

We cremated Tamlorn yesterday. It was very hard to go to the funeral home, to face this painful thing. And yet, it was transformative. Unexpectedly, something shifted in me.

The scream behind my silence becomes a roar
I can breathe again, the weight lifts.
Perhaps it was not grief, but silence.

The silencing, the weight of a culture that says ‘do not grieve’
for fear of being accused of wallowing, or worse, 
public wallowing. 

Like cresting a steep hill, I inhale the view, deeply.
You were part of our family, dearly loved.
and we mourned you as we mourn our own.
Even the cats have graves – even little injured 
wild birds that die on the way to the vet.  

Something came and took you from us
into the night and I thought I’d never get you back.
There was just the void and a great silence.
A deep numbness. In that place, you did not exist, neither did I. 

But somehow, in this defiance – naming you
mourning you, cremating you, in some way we drew you back
from formlessness, you took on shape
became a part of our family, honored by our rituals, inducted as a member.
Part of a legacy.  

We are your home, love.
You are not a body washed up nameless on foreign soil
you are not a stray dog dying alone out in the bush
you are ours. We took you back. 
You lived and died in our body
we have sung you to life and back to death again
we have burned you with lavender and rosemary
the drum of my heart calls your name
you are here, you are here, you are here. 

Poem – Saying Goodbye

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

We are going to arrange Tamlorn‘s cremation tomorrow. I have been gathering the poems and sharings from other people, but finding myself wordless. It was very hard to find some way to say what I needed to. In the end, I wrote this poem. All will be burned to ashes with Tamlorn’s tiny body.

Whenever I try to find
A way to say goodbye
There’s no words in me
No poems or flowers that can speak for me
Just a scream rising up inside
If I let it loose, the sound would break the world. 

I don’t know how to say goodbye.
I can’t bear this.
I can’t bear to face you
And I can’t bear that life goes on without you
Everything is wreathed in pain. 

Are you there?
I don’t know if you are there.
I don’t know where you came from
I don’t know if there is any spirit left
After your heart wound down.
I can’t, with all my agony, pierce the veil
I can’t find absolution
I can’t find certainty
I can’t find hope. 

My abdomen has deflated like a soft balloon
My breasts sag gently onto my chest
My body remembers you, little one.
I loved you so very much and
I’m not sure that you knew that. 

There’s a pain in me that nothing stops.
There’s a terror in me that nothing eases.
I feel like running, screaming through the streets
Naked, tearing out my hair, like a madwoman
Screeching “We’re all dying! We’ve so little time!”
The end is coming for us all. 

I felt you once, so near, flesh of my flesh
Now I do not feel you at all.
I cannot hear anything over the harsh sound of my breath
Over the frantic beating of my heart
Life is brief and it is taken from us
I can’t find meaning in this. 

Who were we, I think, to love you so dearly?
Unknown, unmet, undeserving
When the world is full of loneliness and death
When so many children grow without love
My hypocrisy chokes me
I am ashamed. 

I wish I knew you and I’m glad I didn’t know you.
I think about babies dead at birth, or 3 months, or 2 years
Dead at 8, or 16, or 27 – it’s unbearable.
I keep dreaming my mother dies.
I keep dreaming of losing everyone.
And in the meantime, try not to tear my life apart
Cutting strings with my sharp pain
The brutal arithmetic of loss, the restlessness
The need to run, to make a mark, to change something
Here in this little life.
To make it mean something
That I lived, when you did not.
To atone. 

I loved you, and it was not enough.
I do not deserve life, as you did not deserve to die.
I can’t make it right.
I’m just here, wordless, choked
Terror, and loss, and love
Empty hands and heart screaming
This is what is left of love, little one
This silence that has a scream beneath it
These empty hands, this empty womb, my breast folded soft against my skin.
This is love seen at night, love on the cliff at the edge of the void and it’s unrecognisable
It’s sharp as knives and burns like poison and there’s no comforting me
It tears my dress and pulls out my hair and runs blood down the inside of my legs
This is love in the shadow of your loss, Tamlorn
It’s a mad and terrible thing
It’s a death, of a kind, a kind of despair
The keening howl of a wolf returning, who finds the den destroyed
There are no words here, no peace
This is love, my love
This is how mothers say goodbye. 

Running away

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

image

Rose has arranged a few days away for us both as a birthday gift. We’re running away from home, but we’re packing all our vulnerabilities, the broken bits of heart into our suitcase. Bringing all the demons along, the way it feels like I can’t quite catch my breath all the time. Bringing the nightmares, the portal into darkness and loss, waking with the memory of rope tight on my wrists, the burning lights of his touch in my skin. Bringing the dreams where I try to make things work out, dreaming the same dream a hundred times and no matter what I try it all ends in loss. Bringing the pain in the lines around my mouth and the futility in my hands at rest. I’m running away from the days that flip from good to dangerously bad without warning, from nights where I only go to sleep after checking with my love if she’ll be safe in the darkness. I’m running from the split in my world: it’s a beautiful day/I’m dying inside: because they’re both deeply true and tearing my heart apart. I’m running away from feeling so good, so loved, so blessed that I’m holding myself back from lying my head in friends laps and crying with joy. I’m running away from biting down on the scream in my chest because there’s nowhere in my world that could bear that kind of pain without catching fire. Running from the house full of tender soft baby things. I’m taking the self hate with me, sewn into every inch of my skin. Running somewhere with wide open skies and deep black nights, somewhere my heart can swell to its true size, feel all the love and all the pain without waking the street.

Grief and the book

/ Sarah K Reece / 9 Comments

image

I’ve been very sad today. It’s three weeks after the miscarriage surgery today. I feel heavy and tired and dazed. Plodding along in my own little world at my own tired pace while life moves on around me.

There’s been a lot of things to manage and arranging Tamlorn’s cremation keeps getting pushed back. I have a folder of beautiful and touching contributions by other people. I’m still wordless myself. I turn towards it and look at it and there’s just nothing in me. No poetry, no artwork, no words at all. Just a sadness, unfathomably deep.

I seem to have spent today weeping in cars after very nice visits with lovely people. As soon as I walk away there’s a terrible emptiness, a loneliness in me.

I keep working on the book. It’s something I can do. It’s an anchor when I feel lost. I don’t know that it will be worth anything, useful to anyone, worth all this time and love. I don’t know that anyone will read something so obscure by someone so unknown with so few credentials. Self published at that. I feel very small. There’s a weight of self hate like a blanket over me. I need to be doing homework, chasing up money issues because departments that were supposed to call me haven’t. But the words are flowing. My mind is teasing out the knots and puzzles of multiplicity and my life and my approach, constantly. Between emptiness, nightmares, moments of connection with others like candles being lit in a windy place, there’s the riddle to be solved. There’s just grief and the book at the moment for me.

Our greatest adventure…

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

imageRose and I went off to a baby expo on the weekend. We already bought tickets, back before we were pregnant. After the miscarriage we weren’t sure if we would go or not. In the end we decided to turn up and had a backup plan if staying didn’t feel like a good idea. We did stay, we walked through the whole expo and looked at everything. I bought a pregnancy protein supplement. There was nothing there about miscarriage or loss. There was a miracle babies group for premmies. They had painfully tiny dolls in humicribs with eye masks on. It was hard to look and hard to look away.

We held hands everywhere. People assume you are sisters or friends otherwise. You can feel really invisible. Holding hands got us a few stares and whispers. It’s always nice when people figure it out and take it in their stride. I found myself telling a lot of people about Tamlorn when it came up. Nearly everyone asked if we had kids or were trying. It felt really weird to talk about it and really awful not to. It felt really false to be talking about it without feeling or showing any pain, but I couldn’t let any of that out or I wouldn’t be able to breathe. By the end I was feeling really fragmented and tangled up.

We saw these tiny shirts with the lovely messages and went back for them at the end. They read “You are my greatest adventure” and “A smooth sea never made a skilful sailor”. Pretty appropriate. The lady at the store was really kind, didn’t offer any advice or tell us about her cousin/sister/friend’s losses, was just sympathetic and sweet. She ran after us and found us after we bought the tops and gave us the little dog. It was really touching. This is what being open does, you get the weird and horrible but you also get care.

I feel pretty mixed about going. It was nice to feel that we’re still trying to conceive, still planning and going to make this happen. But it also hurt and I still don’t know how to speak about it without feeling so disconnected and weird.

Today I didn’t know I was being brave, and that’s kind of worse. I went off to a henna gathering and it turned out everyone else there was a Mum and had brought their kids or baby. I came home in tears and found a post on facebook by someone who was upset that their efforts to cheer someone else up had not gone down well and “some people just need to be negative”.

Then I had a panic attack and went back to bed.

Apart from getting up, I’d say my biggest achievement today was buying a plant for Rose. It was a nice plant.

You know one of the most helpful things so far? Our GP being totally unsurprised that Rose and I are having rough days when we’re feeling suicidal. She wasn’t flippant but she was also unfazed – “of course you are! Your baby only died 2 weeks ago.” Weirdest thing but neither of us have had a day like that since. Oh I mean, there’s nightmares, and there’s panic attacks, and there’s hiding under a sheet on the couch. But yeah. Having permission to be really impacted without trying to get over it, recover, look like we’re coping. “Grieve all you need,” she said, “delayed grief is hard and messy. Let me know if you’re in danger but I expect you guys to be really hurting and that’s okay”. She called us mothers.

Just trying to breathe. I’m so tired.

 

 

How to tell it’s getting cold at night

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

image

Our three cats. Sarsaparilla hates sleeping indoors about as much as he hates Bebe. Sars is the black chap on the left, Bebe has the laser eyes.

image

Tonks is helping me write my book.

College is over for the term! I’m on a two week break. I have a fair bit of homework to do but I’m taking a couple of days off first. Saw my doctor today who was not fazed by depression or suicidal feelings, considered them all to be perfectly normal grief and trauma reactions, and that the fact that Rose and I are getting dressed and leaving the house most days and talking about Tamlorn are all really good signs. Her biggest concern was for us not to rush through it all but go at our own pace, as delayed grief is complicated. She didn’t mind calling them a baby either, and made it clear she considers Rose and I to be mothers. Good doctors are a blessing.

Rose proposes

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

image

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:

20141109_133402-1

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

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

11040852_10153195144805421_5464967661799978638_n(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.

11072749_10152790799547711_823498512_n-001Today 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

/ 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

/ 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.

22-DSCN1584

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

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

img355 img353 img354Rose’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

/ 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

/ 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

/ Sarah K Reece / 23 Comments

Tamlorn 9 weeks, 5 days wmOur 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

/ 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

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

image
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

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

image

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

/ 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

/ 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.

img346This 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

/ 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

/ 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.