11 Months

Sunday marked 11 months since loosing Poppy and it has been an awful few days. I felt like I was on this upward road…climbing out of the fogs of grief, seeing the brightness in the world again, but then the realisation of whats to come over the next few months caused me to trip up again. 11 months is quite a long time for some scenarios, but I realise more and more that for loss its really just the beginning.
You see, It hit me Sunday that that means we only have one month until her birthday and anniversary. It means that for the next 4 weeks I have dates to relive that are far more painful than the scan dates and diagnosis dates. I have to see and endure the date and know it was the day I tried to get a scan or monitoring but to no avail, the date I wished I had gone to the hospital but didn’t, the day after when I did and she was gone, the day I was induced to deliver my already passed baby and the day she was actually born. The day we carried our new baby in a casket and buried her. This month is going to lead me to the hardest yet, and right now I don’t know what I want to do to celebrate and remember the life she was.

The peak of clarity and sunlight I was aiming for has suddenly taken a nose dive and I suddenly feel VERY weak about facing all of this.

At this point I thought i’d be a lot slimmer for a start and then I was going to be returning to my job I told you about recently (here). But stress and emotional eating every so often means iv’e still another 7lbs to go, and then the reality of what has happened and what I want, really want from my life hit me and I realised that I am different now and that is no longer something I want to do in my life. It is something that reminds me of pain and my loss, it makes me anxious to think about, and I don’t want something I loved to be tarnished with all of that and I certainly don’t want to be in a position where I am “forcing” myself to do something…I want whatever I do to be a choice because I really want to and will feel happy and excited about it…so I made the brave decision to step away, draw a line under it and keep it as a chapter of life that was good for me at the time, but not so great for me now…and that’s okay. I don’t know what I want to do (other than have more kids) but I feel like when I am ready I will find it, so for now I struggle on and blog about the highs and lows of it all!

As I approach the year mark, thinking of who she might have been, how my life should have been and really how I am not where I want to be. I also hit the stage where I send my oldest to full-time school…exciting Yes, but also an emotional time anyway for any mother and then shortly after that Nath enters his final year of studies as a mature student at uni. My oh my, So many things are changing, so many things to deal with and so many things to celebrate too. It is another roller coaster point of life..many highs and many very difficult lows to go through.

At 11 months I expected to be stronger than I feel…at 10 I certainly was and felt ready to take on the world, but at 11 I have slipped down, I am scared of what’s to come, I want more direction and I want to feel less rawness, less anger, less exhausted and battered.

SANDS showed me yesterday that again this is all very normal and natural and to look upon the faces of mothers years on in their journey it brought back to me that pain and tears will always be associated with her name. Things will always draw me to reflect on her, but time will mean I will be able to find a tight lid to keep on it, that will fit and keep it all in for longer periods of time.
Would she be walking? Would she have any words? How many teeth would she have? What would we be buying her for her birthday next month? … We will never know!