From my table.

Our table has eight seats and one is always empty.

He’s missing from our lives.

He should be there, amongst the noise and the blur of colour, hands in with the others, hands in the mess of fish and chips.

Hands greasy, mouth full of fat- laden -weekend comfort food.

He’s missing from the weekend activities, the ball throwing, the friendly banter of comfortable siblings, the ebb and the flow of everyday life.

He’s missing from the conversations with grandparents enquiring about what each child is up to.

He never rates a mention.

Not anymore.

There are no progress photos of him lining the hallway, no portraits of a little guy with fuzzy blonde hair and an impish grin amongst the freckles, a painted masterpiece in the background.

There will be no preschool graduation for him and no proud, tear stained eyes as he reaches the important milestones.

He is missing from the constant move forward in this thing that we call life.

He will always be William, the boy who hardly was.

Frozen in time, a baby of five days.

There will always be that missing person.

There will always be an empty chair.

I go there most days.

It is a place I feel as though I belong.

A place I can grieve.

Every day if I want to.

I can reflect on the feelings that interrupt my day, instead of pushing them away. 

Six questions have been asked and today I will answer them here.

Today because I am reading William’s notes that our doctor smuggled away for me.

Today because I have sick babies curled up, under piles of blankets, wishing away the Winter with me.

Today because I am fragile and I am having a day of self loathing and flagilation.

How would you describe your relationship to fear before and after the loss of your baby?

Fear.

I have always lived with it. Not in the same way I do now.

Before William died, I had thought I had triumphed over many of my fears. I thought I could stare fear down and it would retreat.

Now fear and I walk hand in hand most days.

When I was pregnant with Ivy and Noah I made myself quite crazy.

With fear.

I still do.

I could not lose another child and survive.

I know I could not.

It took and still takes every ounce of strength that I hold in my being to overcome the death of  my son.

That is my biggest fear; that I will lose again.

When people insinuate that I am over protective of Ivy because I lost William it hurts.

Partly because it is true.

Mostly it’s because I’m frightened.

Is your lost baby/are your babies present in your life? In what way?

William is with me everyday. I see him in Noah and in Ivy.

I have all the physical signs that a baby boy was born four years ago, keepsakes, photos…things but the most vivid and obvious reminder of William are the babies that came after him.

Especially Noah.

It’s pretty complicated, multi faceted if you will.

I look at them and I can’t imagine a life without them. I love them so much it hurts but the harsh reality is that, had William lived, Noah and Ivy may never have been.

I don’t have to make that decision.

That was taken away from me but I wonder often, if I had to choose, which would it be?

Perhaps they would be here too, who knows. It is a hard thing to think about.

They won’t live in his shadow because they are their own people but they do remind me of the boy who hardly was.

Tell us about something said or done after your loss that left you feeling nurtured or supported.

I remember going back to my in laws house after Will had died. David’s parents and his sister Amy were there, the girls and homemade chocolate chip biscuits. That memory is so clear. There was nothing to say but just being with family and those biscuits made me feel loved.

The other thing that really stays with me is that the minister who married us and who had christened the girls also went out of his way for us. He had moved on from his the church to take on a position in the Police Force. We asked him to christen William for us and he did, he came up to run William’s service for us. He was there that night when we came home from the hospital. Open and honest. I will appreciate that forever.

Tell us about something said or done after your loss that left you feeling marginalized or misunderstood.One of the things that really got to me was people trivialising his death. People telling me it was Mother Nature’s way was the pits. The women up at the school, physically getting up and moving to the other side of the room, like I had something catching.

My father, who had been through the deaths of his own two sons. He didn’t get it. He never did.

   What’s taken you a long time to do again? How did it feel, if you have?It has taken me a long time to trust again. Myself mostly

and doctors. I feel very cautious handing over my trust to anyone.
How would you describe yourself as a partner before, and after?Before William, I think I was a good mother and a good partner. I was good at looking after everyone. Organised, in control.

For me, keeping David happy was something that was important.

Post William me is different.

Somedays it’s all about self preservation and David and I have a different bond now.

I love him and I think he still loves me but we grieved differently and some of our relationship was lost in that.

I would not say I am a good wife now.

I’m often disorganised.

Definitely more needy.

I would say I am  an adequate partner, that I listen less to the little things because sometimes I think he didn’t  hear my big issues.

In some ways we are closer but in others we are yard sticks apart. Maybe that makes me seem less caring, I don’t know.

It’s just the way things are some days.

Not just any dentist but the best dentist in the world.

She was lovely. thorough and has brought us one giant step closer to havivg a type of Ectodermal Dysplasia for Ivy and Imogen.

I’m not really sure what having a ‘type’ will mean, aside from the fact that I have been able to access all kinds of journal publications about Rapp - Hodgkins and have a better understanding of the ED process. I am very thankful that they have a mild case and I am also thankful that their teeth can be looked after by our new paediatric dentist.

The practice also has three dental nurses, all were lovely and they were not phased by twin toddler tornadoes.

At all.

At one stage Noah mosied over to a nurse who was looking at xrays of a jaw. He looked at her and then pulled himself onto her lap.  She hugged him close and then explained the picture that was before them. It was totally sweet and so unlike anything I have experienced in professional rooms before.

*************************************************************************

Today I am going to read William’s notes again.

It will be the last time.

I have been trying to access them for over six months.

Am I nervous?

Yes.

I want to take everything in, commit it to my memory for one last time.

I don’t want to forget the little things.

There is already so much of his birth that I can’t remember.

A whole significant portion of his birth that I have lost,

that I can’t piece together, no matter how hard I try.

For whatever reason, my brain cannot process it and so I have to read the notes to help.

I promised the obstetrician this would be the last time.

I am hoping for the sudden onset of a photographic memory…

I know you all know I’m crazy, right?

So it will be totally safe to tell you that I have been having these awful nightmares and you will accept that just as you accept that I am as nutty as a fruitcake.

Nightmares are a recent addition for me, as an adult. Sure, I had them as a kid but as an adult they were few and far between (unlike some people, who have recurring dreams about ghost cats in a haunted house - not mentioning any names, but if I said wonderhusband, you would all be smiling and nodding knowingly behind your computer screens, wouldn’t you?). 

I started having vivid dreams when I was pregnant with William and the worst part was, they came true. So, when the nightmares come the hair on my arms prickle and I sit up and take notice.

Just a little legacy from Will’s time with me.

Yeah, crazy, right?

Anyhoo, these dreams are freaky and they are about Ivy, of course.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Ivy sleeps in my bed.

She just does, ok.

I don’t like it, it’s squishy and I often ache in new and interesting places, so that I can share my space with the girl but ever since she’s been sick, I’ve stopped fighting it and just let her be. I figured, she’d become a teenager one day and not want to sleep with me anymore.

These dreams come in the small hours and they are about the girl, not breathing.

At all.

They are very graphic and detailed and in the night I get them mixed up with reality sometimes.

The prednisone keeps her temperature very low and as a consequence, she is cold to the touch, even though she is perfectly fine.

And I panic, okay?

There, I said it.

It’s scary and it’s not doing either of us any good.

Or David for that matter because I cry out and wake her and wake him and ask him to get my stethoscope just so I can listen to her little heart beating away and then I can’t get back to sleep for fear that she will, you know, just stop breathing.

I know where this is heading.

It is insomnia inducing and breakdown worthy but what I don’t know is what to do about it.

It feels crazy and yet it doesn’t.

I can break it down. I know just where all the fears are coming from. I know it has everything to do with William dying and with all of the stuff that is going on with the girl, well, it’s just me trying to protect myself because I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t survive. 

I can’t even say it.

When those fears whisper in the back of my mind I push them away, make them not so, because we all know if you don’t think about it, it will never ever happen, right?

There is some sense to it all, if that makes…sense.

So here it is; out in the universe, floating around, my sanity (or insanity, depends how you look at it) hanging by a thread.

Be kind, okay,  because I haven’t had much sleep and we all know that kind of deprivation makes a girl emotional.

The kids all came home from school with tales of a friend, whose baby brother had died,last week, at two months, from SIDS. They didn’t know when she would be back at school but they did know how strange it would be for her.

They all came to me seperately with questions and memories of when we had our own dead baby.

They told me how weird it was to go back, how everyone treated them like they were the new kids in school, all over again.

They wondered what they might say to their friend to help to make things better for her, because not alot that was said to them gave them any comfort.

They said it was worse for the girl, who had had two whole months to get to know her baby brother, whereas they had only had five days. They couldn’t imagine, they said. How bad it was.

Last night, my heart was heavy for that mum, of the baby, who died from SIDS, at two months of age because it is awful and it is unfair and it is a heavy burden to carry, when you bury your dead baby. I wondered if there was anything I could do, having been there a whole four years ago and realised there was nothing.

I can make food.

Food was the one thing that David and I could not do when we got home and we were lucky that people cooked for us and kept the kids with meals for about a month because I had forgotten how to make a cheese sandwich, in those first few weeks.

So, I will cook but it won’t help the way I really want to help.

I can give her books and support groups.

I read everything I could in those first few months. Anything about dead babies and how to cope. I soaked it up, trying to imagine the people who had written about their time, trying to see into their souls and if they ever really did recover.

I trawled the forums and support sites and spoke to anyone who would listen. Anyone who could identify with being part of the dead baby club was my friend. I could be real.

So, I will give her my books and a list of all the groups that helped me but it still won’t be what this mum needs.

What she needs is her baby back. What she needs is to take back time and stop history.

I can send a card and say I am sorry. I know all the things to say and not to say because four years ago I had my own dead baby and I was hearing all the same things.

It won’t help though. None of it will.

It’s not that she won’t appreciate it, not that she won’t hear the words. In four years time, she will be thankful that people reached out but not now.

Nothing will help her now.

Her heart will be shattered and even though she has other children, it will be so hard for her to get up every day. It will be hard for her to carry on and bring normality to the others. It will be hard to look at them without fear of losing them too, creeping into her existence.

Her mind will be filled with what if’s and why’s and going over the day that she walked into her baby’s room and found him not breathing. She will rummage through all her photos and find keepsakes that still have his scent and she will cry. Not just cry, she will weep, that sodden, deep, soulful mourning that only a mother, who has a dead baby, can. It will come from the very depths of her being, so deep, in fact that she will wonder, in later years, who that person was and where those heavy guilt laden sobs came from.

She will feel selfish and greedy when she can’t let her other children hold or have his favourite things, things that she will hold close to her because that is all she has now. Things. Memories of a much wanted baby boy.

She will learn who she can rely on, talk to, be open and honest with and who she will need to put her happy mask on for. Because people can only pretend to want to hear about a dead baby for so long. She will not be allowed to grieve forever in open society. This is a lesson she will learn quickly.

She will crave normality when there is nothing normal about her life at all. She will wish to be the woman she was before…before her baby died.

This morning I can’t seem to move her from my head. This Mum, who is now part of the worst club on earth and my heart is heavy because I know; grief lasts forever.

We were able to hold him.

Feel his weight, take in his smell, wonder at his features, commit them to memory.

Were were together for the first time in days and for the last time in this lifetime.

We dressed him in his ‘going home’ outfit and took him off the ventilator.

My heart broke and I knew that I would never ever be the same person again.

David carried him out into the sunshine for the first and last time.

He said later, he didn’t want William’s last breaths to be inside a stuffy hospital room.

I can’t describe it adequately.

It was awful and it was beautiful all at once.

To let him go, to free his spirit, in the early afternoon sun of April, was an amazing feeling and while I was so overwhelmingly sad for me, I was happy that he would have no more pain, happy that he was free from the prison that was his body. It was like releasing a butterfly into the sky and watching as it flew as high as it’s wings could carry it.

Wild and free.

I had been so consumed but when he was gone I looked around and found family and friends and my girls and my husband and I felt a soft breeze on my cheek, reminding me that I was alive.

I wasn’t going to hold him but I changed my mind and what was left of my resolve to stay strong tore away from me.

My long awaited boy.

My resolute protector.

My William.

He was gone.

It was a discovery by accident.

The neonatologist had come to us and said his heart was not beating properly but that they would give him medication to fix it. We had experienced a wonderful day with William awake and responding. I was hopeful that things were going to be alright.

Not to be.

The medication closed his only way of getting blood to his heart.

A mistake of great magnitude. I will always wonder why they didn’t do a cardiac ultrasound before they gave the medication.

They resuscitated him, intubated him and told us the news.

Then they transferred him out and we made the scariest road trip of our lives down to the Children’s Hospital.

We arrived just as they were setting him up but to me, he looked different.

 Not there. Not present.

We were ushered to a small room while they finished up with our boy. We were exhausted.

A neonatologist came in. As soon as he introduced himself, I knew there was no hope. I knew him, this doctor. He had written many books and done much research on the importance of dealing with a dead baby. I knew it was over before it began and I wept. I wept so hard as I listened to the words coma and die explode from his mouth. He said William would never open his eyes again.

Not my boy! Not my son, not me, not us! No. This. Is. Not. Happening.

We went to look upon our child, this miracle, this boy and I knew that he was going to die.

I accepted it in all of it’s horrible reality, it’s bleakness. I looked at him and my  mind started to work through all we needed to do…

and I felt awful.

While David refused to believe that William was going to lose his life, I knew he had already given up.

My baby, my poor baby.

And so, we did what we needed to do.

We still had not held him, tended to him as parents were supposed to. We would not feel his weight until the day that he died but we had to organise things.

We called David’s  parents, who came with our minister.

I called my Mum, who was angry and my father who brought the girls down to Sydney for us.

I called my friend Anita and our midwife Carolyn and others who would slowly make the journey to Sydney to farewell our son.

When Anita arrived  I let it all out. I killed him! I killed him. It’s my fault!

They hugged me. They all did. They held me tight as I hated myself, hated the doctors, hated the universe.

We had William baptised and the nurse had dressed him in a gorgeous gown.

He was given his name and given to God and as David and I held his hand and told him how much we loved him and thanked him for his strength and told him it was okay, we understood he needed to go away, he gave us a final miracle.

He opened his eyes.

He looked straight at me and then to David.

For seconds he held us to his memory and then his eyes closed, never to see our world again.

That one moment in time.

David and I will treasure it always.

William knew too, this was his last full day on earth and he wanted to say goodbye.

I had not prayed in such a long time but when I did; when I finally closed my eyes and spoke to whoever that higher power is, I asked for strength and peace to get me through what needed to be done. I asked that it it be quick and that my boy, my son, not be in any pain as he took his last shuddering breaths.

And I got all that I asked for and more.

I have regrets. Oh yes, I have many but I don’t regret not asking for his life.

Wow, you’re four years old. Where has that time gone? It has disappeared into the days, months, years since you came and left. Five days is not alot to have you in my life but they are five days I will cherish forever.

It’s hard to imagine what you would look like now, although when I look at your little brother, I get an idea. You would definitely have had those eyes that all the others have and that cleft in the chin. Yours was quite pronounced, like Imogen’s. They say that means the person is flirty…yeah, I can see you that way. Noah is flirty. He likes the brunettes, perhaps you would have too. I imagine your hair might have been wispy though. I don’t know why I feel that when I think of you. I have nothing to base it on. All the other kids have thick hair but I just get a feeling yours would have been different.

It’s your nature, your personality I will never know, something I will always have to guess, until we meet again of course.

When I close my eyes and think of you, I imagine the sweetest little boy, not an ‘old soul’ as Ivy is but a little guy who looks at the world with new wonder. It might be the smallest thing that amazes you, a bug, the clouds but I imagine the world would surprise and even bewilder you sometimes. I think you would be like Maddy that way. A little niave about things and trusting too. It’s a nice way to be, son. It was my way too.

I know you would have loved your cuddles, all my babies do. Even Lily, who is the least demonstrative, will sidle up for a quiet snuggle. You would not have been any different there.

If you were anything like Noah and your Daddy, you would have a mischievious streak as well.

I think about you alot, you know.

Not as much as I should.

Not as much as I would have had you stayed here with us but alot and I think about whether you would like books or TV or if you would adore the outside, like Noah does. Would you love music and sing? That seems to be another family trait. Would you be artistic, as all the girls are or would you be a gadget boy, like your Daddy and your brother?

I can ponder these things but I will never know.

I know I haven’t been up to visit your grave for a long time. I am sorry but at the moment I can’t.

It hurts too much.

I used to go all the time but now I can’t feel you there anymore and I can’t remember your smell or the weight of you and that grave is a very physical reminder that you are missing.

I hope you can see that I still love you more than I can express.

While I’m saying sorry can I just apologise for not being able to bath you after you died.

I just couldn’t do that one thing for you. I blew it and I will regret it forever.  I know the nurse washed you but that was my task as your Mummy and I just couldn’t.

Sorry son.

I wish for all the world that I could take back time and do that one thing for you, Lord knows I let you down in every other way as your Mum.

I hope you had a lovely birthday, Will. 

We celebrated for you, as best we could. It would have been better if you were here.

Thanks for sending me the little man and the Ivy-girl. They certainly helped to piece my heart back together.

There’s still a hole though.

There always will be. 

Mummy xxx

After alot of worry and tears we settled on  a late lunch on the beach. We had a cake and we sang happy birthday to our angel boy.

It was sweet.

He made his presence felt with the very low fly over of the Westpac Helicopter, the very same that was supposed to chopper him out to Westmead on that fateful night. The sound of that helicopter always makes me shudder. ALWAYS. Apparently it’s all a part of this traumatic birth deal.

After lunch we had professional photos taken. A lovely, lovely photographer, Renee Moore, was patient enough to capture the Seven Little Australians. I can’t wait to see them. There were even some with David and I.

Wow! If you ever need a photographer, and you are in the Newcastle area, we can highly recommend her.

The evening sunset was glorious on the beach and the weather was beautiful. We let the kids go in the water for an evening swim and as I watched them together, I couldn’t help but feel melancholy, for the little guy who was missing and alot of love for the earth angels.

They have kept me going, kept me mindful that it’s not just me who is hurting.

They have lost too, a brother, parts of their childhood, parts of the old Mummy.

They keep me grounded. I am thankful for that and for them.

Ivy started the Dapsone today as well and so, I have just one ask for my angel boy tonight and I know it’s his birthday but if he could just grant me this wish…

Please watch over her. Please. And keep her safe.

Happy Birthday, gorgeous boy. I love you.