I told C about the baby yesterday. My MIL had returned a huge box of baby stuff & C wanted to know why. So now she does.
She was, as I expected, absolutely overjoyed - asking loads of questions, looking at scan photos, listening to his heartbeat, sorting through the baby clothes. She spent the afternoon chanting ‘Mummy’s having a baby’, ‘My baby brother’ and ‘Hello J.W.* I love you!’. The very first question was ‘will he die?’, to which I answered ‘we hope not, we don’t think so, he’s much bigger & stronger than E was, but sometimes very sad things do happen’. I didn’t cry at all. Then she said she was sure he would be okay because the doctors helped the little girl with her stomach on the outside (omphalocele) and all the babies that are born too soon; and hopefully his sac wouldn’t break like E’s had done.
Then she wanted to call S & tell him - ‘did you know Mummy’s having a baby? It is my little brother & he’s called J.W. and I’m going to give him baths and hold him but not change his nappies and he might not die’. S just cried.
I left her playing with baby stuff and ran a bath & sobbed for half an hour. Then I came back with a smile on my face & answered more questions.
I called my midwife and asked her to drop by because he was quiet (we both hate the heat), there wasn’t anything that particularly worried me, but I was still worried. She came over & all seems well - he has grown she thinks (I’m officially large for dates & probably have a glucose tolerance test looming), active, vertex presenting & ROA, he has a lovely reactive heartbeat. She told C to talk to him so he would know her when he’s born, ‘hello J I’m your big sister C’, I managed not to cry then & plastered a smile on my face.
Today has been more of the same, lots of happy questions interspersed with ‘but will he die?’, I somehow answer them all and show her pictures of all the baby things (cots, prams, baths, nappies) that I can barely bring myself to imagine. I don’t cry at all when she could see me.
I’ve been pondering Thalia’s why do pregnant bloggers stop blogging question. What can I say? I have nothing to say beyond I am so terrified I can’t breath - I’m scared for the life of this baby, I’m scared for my mental & physical health, I’m scared for my marriage. I am terrified for my daughter; she bloody well shouldn’t know about babies dying - I can’t protect her from grief anymore than I could protect the babies that we’ve lost.. The stakes are so high. How many ways can I say that? Who really wants to read that? I read blogs of pregnant infertiles & much of the time I can’t relate at all - yeah there’s fear at the beginning, disbelief, but most of them move on from that to baby grows & nurseries. Even the recurrent miscarriers seem to get over the fear eventually.
A couple of commenters said that they wanted to hear about the good things to keep them going, provide hope - well I’m not very good at that. Until the day that I have a living, breathing, healthy child put in my arms there is nothing good about pregnancy; and yes I am fucking angry about that.
*miraculously we’ve decided on his name.
