A lost boy

It is that time of year again. I can feel it washing over me. It always creeps up softly at first then, with more force, it pushes and bumps then knocks me sideways. Having a miscarriage is a misunderstood condition. People can be cruel. They try to make excuses for you, some think they are being kind (they mean it to be sympathetic) but phrases like 'you weren't meant to have that child', 'there must have been something wrong with it', never mind, you can try for another' don't help. After a number of miscarriages the remarks intensify ; ' you are not meant to be a mother', 'maybe you are just meant to be an aunty', 'if you want children that much, why don't you work with them'. Then the really hurtful, 'you must have done something bad to deserve this', 'it's karma getting you back for a past life misdemeanour', 'at least you can get pregnant, there are many who can't', 'try again, you are young enough!' Someone in work, who had 5 children, tried to joke ' to lose 1 is upsetting, to lose 8 is careless.' Thankfully the rest of the office chose not to laugh, they just sort of shuffled paper and put their heads down. And then after my stillbirth ' you must have done something wrong or eaten something or stretched too much , etc .... '. (as if it was my fault) 'you got this far, you can always have another!' 'Why are you so upset. It's not as if you knew it properly.' 'When you have the next one you can forget all about this one (and all the others ) and put them all behind you.' How dare they suggest that one baby can wipe out the loss of another. No baby can be replaced. Every baby left a print on my heart. Any baby following it left their print next to the previous one. This week is the 28th anniversary of our stillborn son. The fact is, nothing prepares you for the death of a baby. Every girl from early childhood who has ever played with dolls, expects to be able to grow up, fall in love, get married and have a baby; well maybe not all of those or in that order, but certainly if you get married it is generally presumed that a baby will follow eventually. Not even the eight miscarriages I had over the 6 year run up to his conception could have prepared me for the wave of grief I felt losing this baby, this perfect child, that I had carried and grown to love for months. Even more cruel than the previous lost pregnancies was the knowledge that this one was THE one. The one who would survive. I'd had the tests and discovered I had an immune problem. My immune system didn't recognise a pregnancy, and was rejecting it. Pushing it out of my body. Fighting it. But the hospital university staff had a new weapon. They took cells from tissue from placentas (afterbirths from women who had just given birth) and they made a serum that they infused into my system to teach the antibodies to recognise a pregnancy. I was a guinea pig on the trial of this new wonder serum. Ten of us had the treatment then all we had to do was sit back, rest and wait for the baby to grow, be born and live happily ever after. My happy ever after didn't happen at that time. I was the only one who delivered early. Not the university hospitals fault. My cervix had weakened after so many miscarriages and couldn't hold up the weight of the growing boy. A simple stitch at 14 weeks rectified that in my next pregnancy, but at the end of this one I was left without a baby again. A son. A perfect beautiful son. Nothing wrong with him except that he fell through a loose trap door far too early. The trauma that followed has stayed with me for life. The staff were busy. They were in a hurry, they didn't know my history, I was in a different hospital. They didn't offer for me to hold him and I was too dazed after 6 hours of contractions without pain relief (the drs were too busy to check me and prescribe it) to ask to hold him. They held him up in front of me then put him in a bucket and took him away. He was two weeks too young at that time to warrant a burial. The guilt of not holding him and telling him I loved him and the grief from watching the way he made his departure from the room has stayed with me for twenty eight years. It doesn't get any easier. I am suffering more and more from the constant 'what if' syndrome. It haunts me . Don't get me wrong. I went on to have a beautiful daughter and a handsome son not just in looks but in everything and I love them both very much, but I feel that I let my first boy down. That I didn't insist on spending time with him, holding him and telling him how much we cared for him and loved him. I didn't tell him that I would miss him and never forget him. I let myself be intimidated by the impatience of the nursing staff, and not wanting to be a nuisance and stop them from getting on with their care of the other patients, I didn't demand my moment. These days they can save babies born as early as mine was, they also ask if you want a proper burial/cremation and photo of your stillborn now too. I have a special place where I go to remember him each year. The Liverpool catholic Cathedral has a chapel dedicated to babies with no resting place. I can sit there and light a candle and fill in a slip of paper with a message to him and put it in their file for prayers to be said. I am not a catholic, but it is a comfort. I also have a place by a river where I leave him a card in a hole made by roots of the tree. I sit there quietly and meditate and ask the angels to look after him although in truth I am sure he is really up there looking after me. http://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/

The woodpeckers song

The woodpeckers song.

The first thing I saw in the living room was the squat lamp, with its light glowing warmly from a fat shade, sitting on the dark stained, low, chunky wooden table in the corner.

I sat down in the comfy two seater sofa and picked up the country living magazine from the coffee table next to the sofa. The front of the magazine had an attractive golden orange and brown wreath on a cottage door as an illustration but as I leafed through the pages it was the article on the Pendle Witches that took my attention. I settled back to read it. It was interesting to see Alice Nutter portrayed from a journalist point of view. She of course was the main, most famous witch from the Lancaster Witch trials.

It was about three thirty in the afternoon and the light was dimming outside. It was the perfect time of day for a coffee and a relax with a magazine, being the interval between the daily chores and the preparation of the evening meal. 'My guilty pleasure' time, as I called it. The house was warm and cosy.

 I looked up from the article in the magazine and my eyes were taken with the clock on the wall. It had been bought n a trip to scar top at Haworth and the first time my husband and I had fallen for a piece of wall art at the same time. The setting sun was sending it's last fingers of light to the burnished metal and the colours it revealed echoed the autumn colours outside. Warm reds and oranges, golds and glints of green, all added to the ambience and relaxed me further.

 The woodpecker was tapping in the woods. I could hear him quite well even when indoors, with all doors and windows shut. When we first moved in I used to think it was a visitor at the door and regularly went to answer it. What a fool I had been, a regular towny. Now he is my friend and neighbour and I listen out for his visits and look for the flashes of colour.

 Through the French windows I spied the woodpecker on the peanuts that were hanging from a bracket on the fence. The bracket was in the shape of a witch. My husband had crafted it for my birthday and joked that he had made it in my likeness.

I slowly got up out of the chair even more slowly, made my way to the window to look more closely at him. Usually he would catch me approaching and fly off, but he just stayed there. I moved closer, he moved off the nuts and sat on the witches broom. I moved closer still, until I was right up against the window. I could have sworn he winked at me. I winked back.

 My border collie chose this moment to enter the room. He came to the window and looked out in the direction of the hanging peanuts. He gave a low growl and tilted his head to one side, then he backed off slightly and growled again this time from curiosity. The woodpecker replied by spreading its wings out, but not to fly, it looked like an embrace.

 It was all very strange. I had a deep feeling that it meant something, that this was not a normal day. What I had witnessed in these last few minutes was not an isolated incident but the beginning of a series of events that I would later think had been a dream.

But do not worry dear reader - I will not end this story with; ' and then I woke up' - but instead I will tell you the whole unbelievable tale.

The next challenge and a new toy

So... I started the 100 k words in 100 days challenge on first January.

It's amazing to find how many words I actually write !
My lovely hubby bought me an iPad for Christmas when he saw how serious I was about writing . I think the 50,000 word completion of Nanowrimo convinced him.
So now I have this wonderful invention ... The iPad, ...and a great app.. Writing spot.. And on it over the last 10 days I have added ideas and plots for 19 novels and 5 short stories , yes that is right, and altogether just writing on the writing spot app comes to over 14,000 words.
Pen and paper- I am going to make you part time accessories now that I have my full time writing equipment.
 What did I do today? I went to the gallery to research for my next novel.
I am leaving the Nanowrimo novel for a month or two before going back to it, because that way I can read it with fresh eyes and correct delete and add to it .
I am really excited to be starting the year on such a positive note.

Happy 2013 everyone.

Here's an interesting question (for me anyway)

I took on the nanowrimo challenge full of self doubt and expecting to fail, but I rose to the challenge and 50,539 words later, I won!

No one could be more surprised than me.

 But here's the 'thing'...

When I won, I felt like a winner.
When I got the certificate, it proved I was a winner.
I bought the T shirt to look like a winner.
When I wear the T shirt I act like a winner.

Does wearing a T shirt boasting of your achievements make you a Loser?
(Aside from having to pay for the unflattering, shapeless thing, plus customs duty! )

Will anyone staring long enough at my boobs, to read the message printed on the T shirt there, even care ?

The funny thing is... after I won nano, I was full of ambition. The further away the finish date became, the less I felt like a winner and the 'who am I to think I can write anything worth reading' devil jumped on my shoulder and shouted down any attempts I made at striding for a goal.

Now, like Superman and Dumbo, when I wear the (awful, shapeless) T shirt, I can do anything.
I wore it to go for a walk at 7.15 this morning and ended up jogging! I never jog.
I was only ever a 100m / 200m sprinter, even in my young and fit days I couldn't jog or run over 400m. Today... wearing the T shirt I jogged a mile and power walked just under 3 miles before returning home at 8.30 am :)

Now I'm saying i will do that everyday, but today I achieved something else too...

The feel good factor.


I'm off to type some more novel .......

On the 29th November 2012 I reached over 50,000 words of my novel on Nanowrimo. This was a great mile stone for me and I am still finishing it off before I edit it ... but a HUGE chunk of it is done and I am so relieved :)

I've been away from my blog for a while , but hope to keep updating from now on.
I am doing the Nanowrimo and have reached 25,560 words so far and still going......

Short story

I am still working on my short story. I am half way through and hope to finish it tonight. I already have a plan written for the next one ...... Let's hope I keep it up . # am writing