I cried again today

I cried again today.

I haven't cried for so long, and this weekend I've heard it coming, it's been whispering at me since Friday. Waiting for me to listen. Waiting for me to fall.

I cried again today.

I really want to go back to feeling numb, but I know I was closing down connections when I was numb, so I had to claw back until I could feel, and now the feeling is too much.

Looking Forward in Terror

Our hopes of owning our own place creep forward. This is pretty key to having a baby - owning somewhere that has space enough is the first pre-requisite on Husbit's list. The flat we're buying is only a one-bed but it's a start and it's a decent size one-bed and once you own anywhere it can be easier to move up. So I keep telling myself. Compromise sucks. I hate that I've waited so much longer than I wanted already, for the sake of having things in order first. I've realised my childhood assumptions that money wouldn't be a big deal - that it would be easy for my partner to earn enough that I didn't need to earn at all and we could still own a house by the time I was 25 - were childish and that was a painful moment (and continues to be painful every time another dream bubble pops beneath reality's feet). I'm accepting that I will need to stay in work and that we will need to make more financial sacrifices than I'd thought or wanted to when we finally get there. And that's where the fear comes in. I want to be having babies but I'm afraid that we will have to sacrifice too much and that it won't work and that triggers off all the other fears - that I'll be a bad mum, that I'll have a terribly difficult pregnancy, that I won't bond with my children, etc, etc, etc. I don't want to be scared about something I desire so much, especially when it's still so far off. I'm trying to be realistic and enjoy those parts of my life that I won't have once I have a child, but sometimes I need to rant.

Spirit baby

Trigger warning - miscarriage

I have never, to my knowledge, suffered a miscarriage. However, as has often been discussed on these pages, there are months when those first few spots of menstrual blood pull me into despair. A few years ago, when trying to find some solace after a particularly bad month, I was surfing the internet and came across a story that has stayed with me.

Spirit Babies - Chapter Excerpt from Part IV of Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife

You will cry. I cry every time, even when I steel myself and know what is coming.

But what does this story mean for me? I've not lost a child, but I still have my circle of babies. As I said I first read this some years ago, so I have no idea how much it has affected my psyche, but I have noticed an odd phenomena in recent years. To fully explain this I have to go back again.

My SO and I have discussed children since the beginning of our relationship, but a few years ago we had a discussion about names. I don't know if this was a mistake but it has made "them" a lot more real to me; at my worst (or best depending on my mental state) I can hear them, feel them, see them. I used to think I knew who was coming first (we'll call him J for now) but recently I've noticed that it changes, sometimes B seems to be "closer". I always thought of B as the younger one, but I'm not sure that's the case any more. I think they take turns now... maybe B was getting tired of waiting. It worried me the first time it happened, I thought J might have gone to someone else, but ze (gender neutral pronoun) was still there, just not the eldest any more, not first. Then next month they'd changed again.

So now I see my babies floating around me, close to me, waiting until they can join me in this realm. Sometimes they are so close I can feel them brush against my cheek. Just waiting.

Just waiting.

Waiting.

Easier to Write..

I have this email sat in my drafts folder... trying to decide whether to send it or not

---

Firstly let me say I love you.. With all my heart, and more than I can ever show you or tell you. I don't let you know enough and I don't want you to ever doubt it.

I know I've been snippy at you. I'm desperately trying not to be, but sometimes it slips through.

So since when any of this comes up I end up in tears, I'm giving writing how I'm feeling a go. That way we don't get the endless circle of me crying then you feeling bad then me feeling bad etc etc.

I try not to bring up the baby stuff too very often (it may not seem like it but this is me trying). But it is always first and foremost in my mind.. If I can get through a day without being in tears at some point it's a good day. It tears me apart and don't even get me started on how I'm feeling as my period approaches :-\ (really, don't, it approaches messed up and makes me feel more insane than usual).

I don't blame you, please don't think that I do. I know you're being sensible (and one of us needs to be in this case) and ultimately I'm glad that you are. I'd rather have someplace to live.

But I have no one aside from you this side of the pond to share it with, to vent at/with and who understands how I'm feeling...

I guess it's made me more aware that I don't really have any true friends over here... I just hang out and tag along with your friends, it's not that I don't like them but there's nobody that I'm as close to as I was in Aber. I can talk online with [Rosslyn] and [Fern Kali], but it's not quite the same... And it's probably my fault, I've never been much good at making friends.. And I don't exactly go out of my way to meet new people :-(

I'm not sure what to do. I'll try hard not to snap at you, I really will. I'm not sure what else I can do

Timing

The house hunt has gone well and we're looking to move in a couple of months. This is exciting but has given me time to start thinking about the babyless situation that I have been able to keep out of my mind for the past few months. At around the same time, I had my 27th birthday (a kind of private deadline on being pregnant), our local family planning clinic has halved the number of free condoms you can have in a month, meaning we've had to research the rhythm method (more efficient than people realise when done properly, but doing properly means knowing your fertility well and that's a little painful), talking to new parents and hearing about others and having a friend tell me she's pregnant again.

This last is way and away the most painful because this woman told me she wasn't planning on having a baby yet when I was last miscarrying and, judging by the birth of her first, must have fallen pregnant within weeks of this. My mind keeps going back to her text and I haven't been able to bring myself to conbgratulate her because it would be hollow.

Every time I feel like maybe we'll be able to afford it soon, things change.

Husbit watched one of the Naked Gun films recently, the one that starts with the wife of Lesley Neilson being in a court room filled with nursing mothers. He thought the joke was that it meant the court room was biased until I glanced at the screen and went "yeah, I have days like that".

Why do babies all arrive together? Is it a perceptual bias, that something triggers a bit of baby crazy and then you see every other instance of it? I guess it must be but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like victimisation.