All for Love

On May the 24th, my sister got married in cyprus. We couldn’t go over for the wedding, so I sent an iPod with this speech on for a surprise…

Hi everyone, for anyone who doesn’t know who this is, Im Helens sister and a while ago I asked Helen if there would be speeches at the wedding, she replied “If anyone feels compelled to then they can”. Well guess what big sister, I feel compelled!! Bet you wish you’d gone for a blanket “No, no speeches” now!!

I’m not sure how Helen will feel about me doing this, because we don’t often shout or even talk quietly about things like this. I don’t suppose we need to really. But if I can’t say it on your wedding day, when can you?

When I started to write the notes for this I was fresh out of a disagreement with my husband, a recurring disagreement I might add. We have it every Wednesday night without fail. Because every Wednesday we watch OBEM and it forces me to raise the topic of more children with Tom. The disagreement we have is this. I want two more, Tom on the other hand wants one more. I f we have one more and it’s a boy he wants to leave it there. I want two more because I think that stands me the best chance of getting another girl. Anyway, that’s probably enough about my marriage, now I should get on with my amazing speech.

I told someone recently that Helen and Andrew were getting married, when I said I wasn’t going to the wedding they replied “Oh, aren’t you close to her?”. Now, I understand that assumption, I do, but its wrong. That’s not to say that we always see eye to eye but if you don’t understand how you can both love your sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time then you obviously don’t have a sister.

Another common misconception that is frequently made when it comes to me and Helen is that were different. Again, this is wrong. Obviously were not carbon copies of each other but the idea that were opposite ends of the spectrum is entirely false, we’re a lot more alike than people realise.

The first thing we have in common is our roots. We had the same start in life, we were brought up with the same morals and rules and we have the same parents, and what amazing parents they are. Truly, we would both be lost without them and owe so much to them. From them we learnt our strength and a lot of our best points and a lot of that makes us the same, not different. Yes, we have our roots in common and they say were sisters, but our hearts, our hearts say were friends.

And as sisters and friends we’ve been through quite abit. We’ve laughed louder, we’ve cried softer and we’ve lived stronger because we’ve stood together.

When I went out and got drunk when I was a teenager and I came home and got in major trouble from our parents, Helen got me a bowl to be sick in, laughed at me and then fought my corner with mam and Dad. Through the break ups she knew me, she supported me and she told me the truth, not what I wanted to hear. Because you might be able to kid the world, but you can’t kid your sister. As soon as I had my baby girl, I felt an overwhelming desperation to introduce her to my sister and when they met I saw them fall in love. In the same way that I fell in love with Caitlin and Ryan. And whenever one of the troublesome three causes some trouble or more likely than that, does something ridiculously clever, the first thing Helen & I do is ring each other- because what’s the point of news if you haven’t a sister to share it with? We could ring each other anytime, for any reason, tell each other anything and never be judged or thought of differently.

So to those who think we aren’t close, I’ll say it again, they’re wrong.

All of this brings me back to the One Born Every Minute, two or three children dilemma. I don’t want more children because two or three is the magic number. I want my daughter to have a sister because I couldn’t imagine my life without the unfaltering , unconditional support and love of my sister.

And some years ago now, my sister met her Andrew and she got everything and more that she had planned. Andrew truly is her man of good faith and I know that they can stand up to the test together. It’s a phrase too commonly used but in this case its true, he is her rock and I am so grateful they found each other and wish you the lifetime of happiness that you both deserve.

Ok, that’s about it from me. Thank you all for your very kind attention. Let’s make it all for one, and all for love and raise your glasses to Andrew and Helen.

Silent Sunday 19th May 2013

Silent Sunday 12th May 2013

The Routine Disagreement

Little Bean is 15 months old now. Around 17 months ago, Hubchin and I began to study various ‘baby books’.

My main concern regarding feeding issues before Bean arrived was the feed on demand concept. I was planning on exclusively breastfeeding and was totally expecting to feed baby whenever it needed for the first 6 weeks or so, even if that was every half hour. Continuing with such a full on feeding schedule for longer than this was a worry to me, so we researched (extensively I might add) routines. We didn’t find one specific routine that we decided upon before Bean came, impossible I think until you know what your baby is like. Instead we were mindful of little elements from each one that we wanted to try and implement from early on.

So along came Bean and thankfully we got to grips with breastfeeding without any major problems. This is not to say I think breastfeeding is a breeze, far from it, but in my experience it was worth it. I was relieved that I was able to manage to feed, I had always thought that it wouldn’t really work out for me and I’d have to switch to formula. All I’ll say (because I don’t want this to turn into a breast vs bottle post!) is that in my opinion its each to their own, if you want to breastfeed, try to breastfeed, if you want to formula feed, formula feed, it’s not for anyone to judge others on this one as far as I can see. I could talk about my breastfeeding experiences all day long, but that’s for another blog I think.

To my extreme surprise, Little Bean’s erratic feeding habits only lasted for a day or two and by the end of her first week she’d put herself into a 3 hourly feeding schedule (with the exception of growth spurts but don’t even get me started on them). She was a dream baby really, and from 2 weeks would go 5-6 hours through the night without a feed, dropping a night feed completely by 2 months old. And so, without much thought, the routine began.

Over time we realised that Little Bean was just one of those babies who needs a routine. That being said, no single routine lasted more than 4 weeks until she was at least 10 months old, they were constantly evolving as she dropped milk feeds, started solids and napped less. Since 10 months her routine has been this.

Get up at 7am

Have a small snack

Have breakfast at 8.30

Have a snack at 10.30

Nap in cot 11.30-13.00

Have lunch at 13.15

Snack at 15.15

Tea at 17.30

Bath at 18.30

Bottle at 19.00 & bed

Dreamfeed at 22.00 (dropped a few times, picked up during hungry spells).

This isn’t rigid to the minute. Some days she’ll get up at 7.30 so she’ll nap a bit later but still gets up at 13.00, other days she’ll get up at 6.30 so she naps at 11.00 but still gets up at 13.00. Today she got up at 7, but was engrossed in play at naptime so she went down a bit later, so I’m letting her have until 13.15.

On a Saturday night she often sleeps over at her Gran’s. At Gran’s house she has too much fun to go to bed on time so often stays up till 9pm then wakes at 8am instead of 7. On those days, the only nap she has is in the car back home, which is only 45 minutes, so half her usual nap. Often though the week we go out one day and she might only nap for half an hour in the car on the way back home. The days she is out of routine, she is a shadow of her routined self. Our normally very happy, content girl becomes a twisty little tinker, who can’t focus properly on anything, throws herself around, doesn’t eat properly and generally whinges and moans all day long. She just can’t handle it.

We could choose to keep her in it, strictly every single day but then we’d never leave the house! We do have a set of rules however, that we simply refuse to break:

• She never, ever wakes up in the morning after 8am.
• She never wakes up from a nap later than 2pm.
• Even when we’re out and about we try to keep her eating times the same each day.
• Once she goes up to her cot for nap or bedtime, she stays in her room until she is asleep.
• If we are in the house (visitors or not) she follows her usual routine.

(Obviously on special occasions, we bend the rules as much as we see fit, Christmas, Birthdays, Holidays etc)

And this is where the disagreement comes in.

Other people (people who aren’t me or her Daddy) just do not understand our obsession with Bean’s routine! As someone who can remember what it was like to not have a baby, I can understand how people without babies fail to understand this.

Other people don’t really mind the routine until it impedes something they want. Examples are  if someone wants to visit over nap time and thinks that just this once we should let her nap at a different time to suit them or they want us to do something that will involve Little Bean being in the car for over 20 minutes after 3ish in the afternoon. When it comes to these kind of issues people become really irritated at us that we’re not willing to compromise. We try to explain that if we do, it will mess Bean up for days but they seem to think we’re lying and we get ‘it won’t hurt her for once’ or ‘you and this bloody routine!’.

The thing that infuriates me the most is that for some reason Hubchin and I actually try to justify ourselves and appease people. We shouldn’t have to do that!! She’s our baby and it’s our choice to have a routine, it works for us and it works for her and it’s nothing to do with anybody else!!!!!

For the record….’The Routine’ (however restrictive other people may think it is) is not a hassle to us, we never find it a pain to plan things round it. Simply because by having it, we have a child who has always slept well, and who since 10 months old has been in bed by 7pm sleeping through till 7am bar illness without fail. We have what is for us a perfect balance of time spent as a family and also time for Mummy and Daddy to relax for a few hours every night. Other than the odd bad run, we have never been unfortunate enough to be terribly incoherent, unbelievably sleep deprived, reliant on enormous amounts of caffeine drinks to get us through the day type of parents. And most importantly of all, we have a happy, bright, energetic, well rested bundle of fun.

Silent Sunday 21st April 2013

Too Beautiful For Earth

Recently one of the nicest people I know suffered the greatest loss when her baby was stillborn. If possible, this was even more horrific as this is the second time this has happened to her.

I’ve struggled with the idea of writing this because the lady I’m talking about (who for the purpose of this I’ll  call Flower) isn’t directly my friend, she’s my sisters friend. I’ve met her numerous times throughout the years, been to her house, she’s been to mine and I’m a big Flower fan. But it’s one of those strange situations whereby I feel like I know her really well but actually what I know about her I only really know through conversations with my sister…? As a result of the time I have spent with her, if I ever opened my front door and it was Flower, I’d be happy to see her and would love to have her in for coffee (and for anyone who knows me, they’ll know that the people that would apply to is a very exclusive list!). Because I know her mainly by association I don’t really feel that I have any right to be discussing the tragic events she’s endured or how I feel about them.

When I tried to think productively about what to write, I realised that this post was actually going to be more about me than her, which is all wrong, I have no right to feel upset or feel grief for her loss, it’s her loss, for me to do that seems selfish. But the more I thought about it the more my opinion changed and I’m now thinking that as long as I’m aware of this, which I am, then actually this is the only way that I can honour her experience. I can only write this from my point of view, the view of an outsider and as I do so, whilst it may seem that I am dwelling on myself more than her, that’s not the case. But I can’t possibly assume to go about this is any other way because I have no idea what this must be like for her, I can’t begin to imagine any of it and to a large extent no words will do justice to even the tiniest fraction of her heartbreak.

Where do I start? Since learning of her pregnancy I’ve frequently asked my sister for updates on how it was going, I was so happy for her that she’d fallen pregnant and every time my sister told me things were going ok I felt relieved. She suffered the awful loss of Baby Alice who was stillborn in 2006 and since then has become a Mummy to a wonderful little boy, who’s now 3 years old and thriving. I got the call from my sister to say that the baby had died in the womb on a Friday afternoon at about 4pm, it was just days before he was due to be delivered. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I was making tea, Little Bean had every toy and book she owns strewn all over the living room and I answered the phone to my sister casually as always, probably ready to tell her a Little Bean story, when I heard her say “I’m just ringing to tell you Flower has lost the baby”. I had to put my hand over my mouth to stop myself throwing up. I remember walking over to the sofa and sitting down, feeling like the world had stopped turning. In the days that followed I didn’t feel like eating, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about her and what she was going through.

Looking back, I realise that whilst being aware that there was a lot more risk associated with Flower’s pregnancy, I stupidly, subconsciously had the idea that ‘It can’t happen again’ and hadn’t ever considered anything but  a happy ending.

I can’t even imagine how she’s found the strength to get through the time that’s passed since. Even if the days had been entirely normal run of the mill days, which of course they haven’t. Somehow, she’s managed to deliver her baby, to spend time with him and try and cherish that time, to help her partner and their young son to deal with their loss, to face people (some of whom haven’t treat the situation with any of the respect it deserves) and to bury her Little Angel. Even writing that list has reduced me to tears. There is no measure of her loss just as there is no measure of her courage, both are far, far too great.

I think what this has hammered home for me is the ease of hiding behind the term ‘stillborn’. From an outside perspective if you hear of a people who have had a ‘stillborn’ the term allows you not to think about the meaning. You know, what it means, but you don’t have to actually think literally. What it is, of course, is that someone has lost a child. This ‘stillborn’ term makes it so easy to box it off in your mind as a ‘thing’ instead of what it really is. A real human person, a tiny little baby who has died before it even really lived. The fact that the parents never knew this little one alive doesn’t make it any less valid, it doesn’t mean that they loved it any less. People will tell you they fell in love with their children the second they were handed to them, would this feeling cease to exist if your baby’s little heart wasn’t beating? No.

Nothing concerned with death is easy, particularly when it is the death of a child and there is surely no quantity to be put on grief. In what I’m about to say I’m not for a second suggesting that any parent who has lost a child is ‘luckier’ because they have had some time with them. All I’m saying is that just because people who have had a ‘stillborn’ and so haven’t had that time, doesn’t mean that their loss is any less. It means that they cannot cherish any memories, they can’t remember their baby’s smile or cry, they can’t remember what it was like to feed them or bathe them, they can’t remember what is was like for their baby to look at them or grasp their finger with their tiny little hand. And I can’t imagine that that is any easier than having those memories.

It’s been a few weeks since that awful day and what would be so amazing is if no-one ever had to endure anything like Flower has again. But because having a baby stillborn is more common than I like to think about, if I can make a plea it would be this. Flower has suffered a loss more than I can contemplate and whilst the people around her will, in time, go on with their lives, her life and those of her family will never be the same again. She is left with having to deal with her day to day life carrying around an unthinkable weight of grief. So if you know someone who has been through something similar please reach out to them. Over the coming months, Flower will have to deal with many painstaking ‘firsts’. The first time she takes her little boy to nursery, the first time she bumps into someone she knows while shopping…I hate to think of how much she must dread these firsts, so if you know someone who might have to go through them too, please don’t turn a blind eye. I admit, I might of before this. Not from nastiness, through misplaced ‘kindness’ if anything. Through the thinking ‘they won’t want to talk to anyone, they’ll want to be left alone’. Knowing Flower, that’s possibly the most unkind thing I could do. I’m not suggesting going up to someone and saying ‘So, how are you since you lost your baby?’ in the playground, but don’t let them be invisible. Show compassion and if you can, try to make one of their heart wrenching ‘firsts’ slightly more bearable. Afterwards you can go and get in your car, return to your life and probably not think about it again. But to them, living every second with their grief, it might make a world of difference.

For once, I shall make no apologies for the lack of flow to this post, I know I haven’ really composed a  wonderfully written piece, but there is no order this kind of grief.

As I said, words cannot do justice to what she has been though and what she continues to go through but I hope that this post shows that she is never far from my thoughts.

Sleep peacefully little Freddie with your sister Alice by your side, you will both always be loved and remembered.

An Angel from the book of life wrote down your baby’s birth and she whispered as she closed the book ‘Too Beautiful For Earth’.

 If you want to find out more about stillbirth or have been affected by it and need support, one of these websites might be a good place to start.

http://www.finleysfootprints.com/

http://www.uk-sands.org/home.html

http://www.tommys.org/page.aspx?pid=361

Silent Sunday 31st March 2013