I'm feeling quite good today and I think regular exercise has a lot to do with it. I've been making a more conscious effort to exercise in the last couple of weeks and in the last couple of days I'm feeling much more energetic and well. As soon as Kat died I knew that I wanted to feel healthier before going into another pregnancy. I've been sick through three pregnancies now. Strangely, Kat's was the best physically for me out of three. Which meant I was only throwing up every second day instead of daily. I don't realistically expect to have a fantastic pregnancy with my track record but I wanted to at least start my next one feeling good and knowing I'd given my baby the best start I could. I want so much to get through just one pregnancy feeling at least OK.
I'm feeling so sorry for Michael at the moment. He has been physically just depleted for such a long time. The last year especially he's been exhausted all the time. The last two months of last year of course were just awful and at the moment he's empty. Every little sniffle hangs around for weeks and he just keeps on pushing. We're both eating fairly healthily - I want him to try and get some more exercise and also some acupuncture for his back. I know that I still feel as much pain for Kat as I did last week but I feel so much better able to go about my day to day life at the moment. I want to see him also feeling more like - if not at his best then at least not so beaten down. I hate seeing him down.
There's a photo of Michael and me on the side of this page. It's my new favourite pic. I took that photo the night we heard that the kids' new baby sister was born (their father's new daughter). It was 10 weeks to the day after Kat died and was a particularly rough night for me. I don't give a toss about their father having a baby with someone else, but the pain that night was two-fold. Firstly, the kids' new baby sister is such a harsh and obvious reminder of what we so recently lost. Secondly, for me there is the bitter memory of all the years I wanted another baby and he denied it to me. After we separated I knew very early on that having another baby was more of a possibility for me than it had been before...and I felt all warm and fuzzy about that. He meanwhile was still adamant that he would never have more children. Even after he was with his now-wife he was still saying he was never getting married again and definitely never having more kids. Two years later he's married with a baby and I'm feeling keenly the unfairness of it all. So, it had been a rough night. Michael was exhausted. We were just about to go to bed and I saw the camera on the coffee table. I picked it up to put it away then put my arms around Michael and snapped this photo. When we look at it we both only see two people who are happy. I think he looks happy and so incredibly content. He thinks I look happy and so much in love. It embodies the dynamic of our relationship. Kat's death was just the start of the tidal wave that hit us in the last two months of 2009. Two weeks later his business partner terminated their partnership and went overnight from a trusted and supportive friend to someone who treated him with animosity and contempt. Three weeks after that Michael's parents were injured in a car accident. The accident happened when we were on the second day of a holiday and we drove 12 1/2 hours to get back to them. (By that time we were in fight-or-flight mode. It was another month before I felt myself come down from that heightened sense of waiting for the next thing to jump out and grab us and then I went into gibbering mess mode.) With each thing that happened Michael and I turned to each other for love and support but also as team-mates. Each time we sat together and quietly discussed what we needed to do. Then we did it. Together. Each time the strength of our relationship was reinforced for us. If I had have been asked before Kat died I would have said that I couldn't possibly love Michael any more or feel any closer to him and that we have a very good relationship and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Now I still know all those things are true but for the rest of my life I will know that when we are down we will be here for each other. And there will be so much love.