Back down a bit today. There's no particular thing that's wrong, except maybe that missing Michael when he's away is a hundred times harder to deal with since Kat died. The first time he had to go away after she died I just remember crying on the phone "I miss you and I miss Kat and I miss you". Missing two people at once isn't fun.

Not that there's any reason for this, but I've found myself dwelling a little today on the things I wish people wouldn't say or do after a loss like this. Firstly, I'm not depressed - I'm grieving. Don't try to cheer me up or take my mind off it or suggest that being busy or a change of scenery is good for me. My daughter died. That is not something I will get over, it's something I have to live with. I am living with it and I think I'm doing a good job of it. I also don't think there's such a thing as doing a bad job of it. Grief is grief and we all deal with it differently. Sometimes I feel better and sometimes I feel worse but most of all I need to be allowed to feel whatever it is I feel at any given moment. Secondly, I did not have a miscarriage. I did not "lose the baby". My heart goes out to people who have had miscarriages; I can't understand what it would be like because I've never had one. I will always be in a high risk category for miscarriage because I've had endometriosis and each time I've been pregnant I've been very aware of that and have held my breath throughout the first trimester, expecting that any day it's going to be all over. But I have never suffered a miscarriage. My daughter contracted a virus when I was pregnant with her and she died in utero. I have tortured myself with questioning whether or not she was in pain, whether she suffered. I'll never know the answer to that. I can only hope that her body slowed down until it reached the point that it stopped and that she didn't feel anything. This, I imagine, will be the single biggest tragedy in my life and I find I just don't want people in my life who seem to have the attitude that I lost the baby and it must have been for the best. I will never believe that Kathryn's death was for the best. I will always grieve for the life she didn't get to live.

I'm feeling a little more light-hearted today. I finally went and picked up my ultrasound pictures from last week and read the report. We've been having lots of giggles about the report stating that our baby "appears grossly normal". My chromosomal abnormality tests came back with very low risk, which we basically already knew. At the ultrasound we were told that visually everything looked fine. And while previous (genetically) healthy children are by no means a guarantee, it's always been kind of a comfort that all of Kat's genetic tests came back clear.

I've been feeling the baby move for a while now. It's very early I know, but it's unmistakable. I felt Rory at 16 weeks, Sienna at 12, Kat at 13 and this one at 11. Well, I started feeling little flutters, very lightly, and the tight sort of gassy feeling that comes early on and I've felt them every day for a couple of weeks now. I had definite kicks (and heaps of them!) at about 12 weeks. I was lying in bed and I couldn't help just lying there laughing. It was very cool. And already, baby often moves when Michael rests his hand on my belly. That is uber-cool.

It's six months today since Kat was born. From here on out every day that passes makes it closer to years than weeks or months since she was with us. I have a very strange sense of the surreal today. It doesn't seem possible that for six months we have been going about our lives having gone through the experience of burying a child. It doesn't seem possible sometimes that I'm still breathing, eating, talking, sleeping, walking around, feeling sunlight. I've always been a person who thinks in pictures and when I think of the death of a child I see a messy, torn, gaping wound, like the maul marks of a lion or a bear. Something huge and wild, untameable. It's rough and dirty and primal. And no matter how much time passes, no matter if the wound closes over, the scar it leaves will always be a jagged and constant reminder.

Ultrasound was all good. Very relieved.

I went for a blood test today - the first step apparently before having the nuchal fold ultrasound. They do a blood test three days before the scan. I've spent the day teary and shaky. I cried in Coles for the first time since the first time I went there after Kat died. That day it was because walking around Coles was so... normal. I had a lot of trouble dealing with normal at first. So much of my life was routine as usual and all I wanted to do was scream and cry that my baby just died. Today it was emotion bubbling over about going through the medical processes of pregnancy. I was really shaky before my last doctor's appointment too. Otherwise I'm feeling pretty good and positive, but doctors appointments etc make me shake.

The day wasn't helped by being in the situation for the first time where I didn't tell someone about Kat. The woman who took my blood asked if this was my first pregnancy and I told her it's my fourth. Her response was "oh my god, you're STILL going back for more?" I'd already been teary on and off and I knew that if I said at that point "well, actually, my last pregnancy ended in my daughter being stillborn" I'd sit there and cry. And I didn't really want to. And this woman was laughing and I knew it would make her feel really bad and it just seemed easier to let it go. I felt awful. It turned out she has twins and was extremely sick, throwing up every single day of her pregnancy including in the theatre when they were born at 34 weeks. So for her, pregnancy was a horrible, one-off experience. That's where it was coming from. It's just that it was the first time I've ever just let it go and not told someone about Kat. I didn't like it.

Mother's Day

So it's Mother's Day today. It's a bittersweet one. Looking back over the last few: three years ago I had just found out about things Rick was doing and saying when I wasn't around, I would say that we'd been fighting for two days but really it was me crying and him ignoring me while feeling smug that my tears were proof of why he was justified in doing the things he did and on the Saturday night I told him that the kids were excited about Mother's Day the next day so we would have the day and then he would pack and leave on Monday. The only resolution that night ended up being that we weren't separating but he still wouldn't talk to me or acknowledge that we had been fighting/not talking for a year. I barely slept for the next two weeks before making the final split. Two years ago he was rostered off on Sundays in May so the kids were going to his place on Saturday nights. He offered to give up that Sunday so they could be with me on Mother's Day but because there was only that one month that they could see him each week I didn't want them to miss out on one. We did Mother's Day on the Saturday instead. I had been seeing Michael and it had been during the week before that we had said we were together and he met the kids. So I had a brand new honey so that was exciting but he went away for the weekend and I was on my own. With period pain. Last year I was in the process of moving in with Michael. It was a gorgeous sunny Sunday morning, as only sunny Sundays in the place we lived in last year can be. I was wrapped up in a new super-soft gown, had a new book to read. A yummy breakfast. I had a whole new chapter opening up before me. I knew we would be trying for a baby by the end of the year and I was so excited to think that the following Mother's Day I might be pregnant. Then of course, we started trying a few months earlier than planned and it happened immediately, so I was looking forward to already having another baby by Mother's Day this year. And now here we are. I'm 10 weeks pregnant and so very happy about it. Even though it's very early, I've been feeling little tickles in the same spot for the last few days and I'm sure it's our baby. Every day I am so thankful for the people I have in my life. I feel like my life is so incredibly rich and it's because of the love I give and receive every day. For me, it really is my family that fulfills my soul in a way that nothing else can. The losses I've experienced seem to make me appreciate what I have all the more rather than just make me sad for what's gone. But..... god I miss our girl. I wish with all my heart and soul, knowing it's the most futile thing I can do, that there was some way we could have had both Kat and this baby here. This child is always going to know that having them was my wish and dream to have four children come true. I would never want them to think or feel for one moment that they wouldn't be here if Kat had survived. But.... I miss her.

I'm counting the days (10 to go) until my first ultrasound for this pregnancy. I'm getting a little anxious about it and keep thinking - I hope everything's OK. Please let there be a heartbeat. Then I remind myself that before every ultrasound I've ever had I was expecting to hear bad news. Of course, now I've experienced hearing the worst possible news at a scan and that becomes a two-pronged thing going into another one. On one hand, as long as there's a heartbeat and everything more or less in all the right spots, nothing could ever be as bad as "no heartbeat". On the other hand - what if? Is everything going to be OK this time? I keep telling myself to relax. It's like a mantra - don't stress, don't stress, don't stress, don't stress. Every time I feel sick (which has really settled down again after just one bad day) I get a rush of - OK, I feel sick, I'm still pregnant, bub's still hanging on. Every time I don't feel sick I worry that it means bub's..... stopped. Every time I go to the toilet I expect to see that I've been bleeding. Even having said all that though, I'm still surprised that I'm not more nervous than I am. I really do still see what happened to Kat as something that happened TO KAT, not to us and I know that there isn't any reason to think it will happen again. Still nervous about getting into that ultrasound and not seeing a heartbeat though....