The eve of September...my due date

Today is the last day of summer. I should have been huge by now, waddling around, taking it easy, ready to welcome my second child into the world in a couple of weeks. Instead, I'm readying myself for the start of another academic year, when now I should have started maternity leave proper.

I have dreaded September since that fateful scan on 1st March. As each month has passed, I've been reminded, painfully, how the world keeps on spinning. I've seen pregnant women walking around and i've compared myself to them (Would I have been that big by now? How come my baby was taken and not theirs? How come they are onto their 2nd/3rd/4th child and they don't seem to have any problems?)

Every time I think of September, I think of it as a hurdle to get past; it's a big red flashing sign in my head. I have dreaded this month so much that I don't know whether I'm going to have a break down this month, or whether the thought of it will be worse than the actual reality.

Will my issues with bumps-the-same-size-as-mine-should-have-been now change to babies-the-same-age-as-mine-would-have-been? I feel like i'm on uncharted territory. The one good thing is that, from the end of July, I have been feeling better in myself. From around May, my mood had taken a total nosedive. I was bitter, angry, anxious. Although to some extent those feelings still lurk around, I've noticed little things I've started to do that I couldn't do before. I held a baby (!), when I couldn't before even look at one. I started thinking about life with only one child, and whether it really was something to be upset about. I started living my life again and getting involved in outside interests instead of sitting in my house on my own.

I've not made any plans for what I will do on my actual due date, which is 2 weeks tomorrow. Part of me thinks perhaps I need, for my own sanity, to not mark it in any way. To get on with life and forget it, lest I get dragged down again the way I was a couple of months back. This is my greatest fear. But equally it feels wrong to not mark that little life in some way. I'm not sure the date will have any significance for anyone other than me. My DH's way of dealing with things is to just get on with things and not contemplate too much.

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I took my daughter to the library this morning. She usually picks books very haphazardly (often the first ones she finds!). Today she did her usual thing, then picked up another book from a different pile and handed it over to me. It was called 'The Bump', and it was a little tale about where 'she' came from and how her mummy grew to love'her'. Its quite a clever little tale, with the child at the end realising the story is all about them.

It almost feels like the timing couldn't be better. Again, I'm reminded of the blessings I have in having her and how I have the sheer luck in having a healthy child to love and love me back.

It is this that will carry me through what I know is going to be a difficult month.

Being thankful for what I have...

I remember a time in the not too dim and distant past. I've been married before. My ex husband was not a very nice person shall we say, but I was young, I wanted the marriage to work, and at 26 (!!!) I believed I was too old to find anyone else and that I'd better hurry up if I ever wanted kids. We'd been together for 5 years when we finally, stupidly, got married- after that we tried for 8 months for a baby before we finally, inevitably broke up. I was convinced I had a fertility problem, and I remember saying to the universe 'I just want ONE child, just ONE. I won't be greedy, I won't ask for anything else. I just want to know what it's like to be a mum!'

Fast forward a few years and I am blessed to have a beautiful 4 year old daughter. But until recently I'd completely forgotten this 'bargain' i'd made with the universe until I found myself asking again ' I just want ONE more, I just want her to have a sister or a brother. Then I swear, my life is complete and I won't want anything else'.

The above quote by Epicurus is something that I've called to mind time and time again in the (almost) 6 months since my miscarriage. I've never been a particularly positive person, but if any good has come from the miscarriage, it's the realisation of the good that is around me already, and the blessings I already have.

My daughter is healthy, and clever and gorgeous and I am a mum. How many people have I met in real life or on the internet who would give their right arm to say that? Even if the worst happens, and I 'only' have my daughter, then that should be enough for anybody. I am truly, truly blessed to have her. I don't think until my miscarriage and the stark realisation that her birth (and the birth of any child) was a true miracle, did I really appreciate what I had.

Tonight I remember the FACT that what I have now was all I once hoped for- a child, a good job, a loving relationship, a house that I love, friends that I love.

Whilst I still mourn what I have lost, this loss has also taught me a lesson about life.

The problem with School Holidays

When parents have moaned about long school holidays in the past, I've always been a bit sneer-y (is that a word?!)

For a start, I'm a teacher, and I make no apologies for the fact that I live for my holidays, and trust me, we all work so bleedin' hard during term time that we actually need them, for our sanity and health. As well as this, it gives me a block of time with DD who I see precious little of during term, and she gets her 'real' mum back, someone who's not rushing round like the proverbial blue arsed fly.

So in the past when people have moaned that they have to have their own kids for a whole six weeks, I've rolled my eyes and thought, you know what, you chose to have them. Some people would give their right arm to have kids to moan about!

That was until this year. I'm not one to sit around every school holiday and I'm usually fortunate enough to have a couple of holidays or short breaks lined up. This year however, we had a four day break right at the beginning of the holidays and the rest of the time it's been me and DD, as Mr Anon works nights and needs to sleep for the majority of the day. In practise, this has meant trying to keep an almost 4 year old quiet during the day (not going to happen), or taking her out to inevitably expensive, overcrowded places.

And for some reason, DD has chosen this particular point in the year to develop a tweenager attitude...the tantrumometer has been cranked up a few notches and I've literally felt like tearing my hair out a number of times. Nothing I do seems to entertain her, or make her satisfied. I'm running out of money...and ideas. The weather has been rubbish (British summertime...need I say more?), so even trips to the park have been off the cards. My with-child friends are all at work so we can't even meet for coffee while the kids tear strips out of each other. I always feel a bit guilty about dragging DD out with my childless friends, as they don't really want to hear 'Mum...mum...MUUUUUM!' while they try to have a conversation with me.

For the first time ever I am beginning to see the dilemma of the average parent. 

What's your opinion on the long summer holidays?

My Fertility Journey

Hello again.

I realised yesterday after writing that I hadn't really revealed much about myself in my first blog post. Perhaps I need to explain why I'm remaining anonymous. I work in a secondary school, and while I don't intend to write anything inflammatory, offensive or rude that wouldn't befit my job role, I do want this blog to be somewhere I can write about 'private stuff' that I wouldn't want just anybody (and particularly the kids at school) to know about.

So where to begin. I think I might as well start with the situation that has prompted me to begin my own blog. 

First up, I am a mum to an almost 4 year old daughter- something which, in light of events this year, I never fully appreciated until now. She was an accident (to this day I do not know how she came to be, given the circumstances), and so, when I came off the pill in April 2012, I presumed number 2 would come along just as easily. Not so.

While people around me seemed to fall pregnant at the drop of a hat, I waited month after month for that elusive BFP. Finally in January 2013, a breakthrough! I got my much awaited BFP on New Years Day- a sign that 2013 was my year! I had a scan at 7 weeks which showed a heartbeat and I settled into the pregnancy, much more laid back than first time round.

The date of my 12 week scan came through in late February. I'd already been told as a heartbeat had previously been seen, there was a less than 2% chance of miscarriage. And anyway, miscarriage happened to other people. So when the sonographer turned the screen on and showed me a baby lying there not moving, I went into shock and, I realise now, denial. On the notes, she wrote '10+5 with only a FAINT heartbeat'. I was measuring more than a week behind but I was sure of my dates. They wanted me to come back the following week to check if things had progressed.

To this day, I do not know how I managed to drag myself into work for the remainder of that week. I was in a daze for much of the time, but deep down I think I knew. I knew.

I couldn't wait a week. I had to know. So I booked a private scan. I remember the sonographer telling me he was sorry. I didn't cry. I asked for a photo of my baby. It looked like a baby. I could see its facial features, a button nose, it's little arms and legs. I've added this photo onto here- to me this poor baby existed and I wanted to remember. I did not fall apart. I remained calm while others cried.

I didn't know it then, but it wouldn't be that easy. I've always prided myself on my non emotional, practical mind, but life set out to teach me other lessons, and it's been a brutal few months. I could not imagine at that point the profound effect this would have on my life. I feel only now, 5 and a bit months later that I'm emerging out of the other side. But that journey will probably be left to other blog entries.

Which brings me to where we are now. Well, despite people telling me (perhaps in the hope that it would bring me some comfort) that I'd be pregnant again before my due date (which happens to be one short month away), I'm not. Since the MC, I've identified through charting that something isn't quite right with my cycles. My own doctor is worse than useless, so me and the Mr decided that we'd go private to find out just whats going on. And I guess that's where I am now.

Never, ever forgotten x

Losing my blog virginity

So, hello world!

I feel rather like I have to start off like a good book would. To create an arresting opening, you need to create questions that need to be answered, an interesting character or characters, an enticing setting and establish a genre.

Unlike your average half decent novel writer though, I don't actually have all those details to hand (well, perhaps apart from the interesting character ;-) ) . Truth is, I'm not sure quite where this blog is going.

I wanted to write about my experiences of miscarriage and grief because I thought it would be cathartic.

I wanted to write about my views on life and things I see in the news, because sometimes you can't fit everything you want to say on Facebook or Twitter.

I wanted to write about the little things that amuse, delight or interest me.

I wanted a place I could come and have a moan anonymously.

And here I am, feeling the pressure because I'm an English teacher and I should know how to write and what to write, for Goodness sake.

So I guess in this first 'chapter', I'm leaving you all on a bit of a cliffhanger. Who knows what happens next?