My invisible family.

From the moment a woman sees her positive pregnancy test she feels a rush of love. Ultimately, after love, she feels fear, anxiety, excitement and a little more fear. But the overriding feeling is love. No matter what family you already have before you see those two pink lines, that new bundle of joy that is going to explode into your world is your family. Whether you are single, married, on your first child or your seventh, this new life breathes love into you. No matter how strong the fear, the love takes over.

The biggest gift a woman can have is the opportunity to be a mother. It is not a right for a woman to have a child, it is a privilege. That privilege can be taken away in the blink of an eye. That heart-wrenching moment, when you realise that life you are growing inside isn’t going to make it, is truly horrific. To be sent to an ante-natal department, seated with all the pregnant women, for a sonographer and a midwife to tell you that it “isn’t good news” is the worst thing an expectant mother can be told.

In my, unfortunately extensive, experience, miscarriage is harrowing. Somebody has ripped out your heart and thrown it under a bus. You have failed. The one natural thing your body should be able to do and it has failed. Your womb should be a comfortable home for your new child. Instead it is a hostile environment; life cannot cling to its walls any longer. People tell you how sorry they are, how you can try again, it just wasn’t meant to be, life is just so unfair. Do you really want to try again? When you know how easy it can all go wrong? Can you mentally cope with another loss? I have asked myself those questions more times than I should have had to.

To answer them, yes I did want to try again and no I probably couldn’t deal with that all over again. But I tried anyway. And failed. And failed. I was a failure.

But then I succeeded.

I so wanted to be excited, to feel the emotions a ‘normal’ woman would feel. Miscarriage has robbed me of those feelings. It has marred everything. I became anxious, almost to the point of depression, I couldn’t go out because people would see I was pregnant, then when the miscarriage that was bound to come along soon did actually happen I would have to un-tell them. I would have to hear their sympathies and their condolences. I would have to see the pregnant women that had become my enemies because they had what I so badly needed.

But it didn’t happen. Thank God, it didn’t happen again.

I will always remember those babies I couldn’t help, those babies I couldn’t grow to term. They are my invisible family. Nobody can see them, nobody feels them the way I did and still do. Nobody grieves for them the way I do. I wonder what they would be doing, whether they would enjoy reading, or painting, or climbing trees. These things I will never know.

Here’s to my invisible babies. My children I will never have the privilege and pleasure to know.

 

Pictures hold so many memories…

I have spent the morning with a friend looking back over pictures of my children as babies. They grow up far too quickly. We have been laughing about how bald my daughter was until she was about two years old, chuckling at my sons chubby cheeks and his multiple chins. There were pictures of all their ‘firsts’: smile, unaided sitting, weaning, crawling. Funny things like having pots and pans on their heads and the embarrassing pictures of them using the potty that all parents keep as ammunition to show first boyfriends and girlfriends. I can’t imagine my children being old enough for a boyfriend or girlfriend! It makes me feel so old. Every parent says that their children grow so quickly. My mother used to say it about me and I didn’t realise how true it was until my daughter was born five years ago.

My children’s lives have been documented to such a degree that I have thousands of pictures all stored across different media types; on my phone, a USB drive, the laptop, good ol’ fashioned prints in an album, on the wall, in frames. Everywhere. I must take at least one picture every day. I do ask myself sometimes if I take too many but I just can’t stop. Why do I do it? Maybe deep down I feel the need to preserve their youth. I know when they reach their teenage years they will shy away from the camera instead of posing and performing as they do now. I need to keep my memories alive. I need to recreate that moment in my head, remind myself how I was feeling at that particular moment. The pride you feel when your child does something new or funny. When I take that pictures I am momentarily pausing time.

I don’t really have many good, fun memories of my childhood. I can remember a few holidays and a few really poignant moments but not really any of the little, random things most people remember and take for granted. We get complacent about our lives and often we are only reminded of something when looking back over pictures. All the best memories I have aren’t from when I was with family and that makes me feel quite sad.

Technology today allows us to document our own lives, and our children’s, so much more than in the past. My mum doesn’t have many photos of us, not half as many as I do already, and I often wonder how many good memories are stored in her head. Is it better to have them privately stored in your brain-bank than it is to have them there in front of you? Nobody can see inside your head, nobody can see the pain that goes with bad memories and nobody can see the joy from the good. She never really talks of any and I sometimes think the bad has totally outweighed the good for her.

I would love to see a picture of my mum truly happy, truly smiling. I’m not sure one exists…