Isobella's little face at 35 weeks and 4 days...

Here we are! Here's the little face at the growth scan yesterday...


She's measuring in at about 6lb, give or take - according to the (notoriously inaccurate) ultrasound. Mind you, I totally believe that is true - minus perhaps an ounce: and apparently, according to the studies, the mother's point of view is more often than not more accurate than the ultrasound. Some people reckon she's going to be big at birth; some people reckon the same size as Josie.

I think she will be just over 7lb at 38 weeks: so, if that's when it's go time, I reckon we'll have a 7lb 2oz - 7lb 5oz baby. Josie was 6lb 6oz, but I do feel bigger now than with her...


Anyhow everything is looking GREAT with the placenta, cord, measurements, kidneys, tummy, head, abdomen, everything. Nice, active baby and it all seems to be stacking up nicely. She's flipping between right and left occiput anterior, which is fine. I called ROP before going into the ultrasound room and was correct! Yay for external palpation!

She is VERY far down in my pelvis now, hence the half head shot - we would have had to go down into my pelvis with the wand if we'd wanted to see her whole head. As a result I am getting wonderful pressure sensations and twanging pains as my body gets ready for delivery. It's all good. It's doing what it ought to. My hips have gone from being in different states, to different sides of the world, however, and I click whenever I walk - something to do with relaxin influxes so frequently in the last two years (that's the hormone responsible for loosening the joints in advance of birth). So that's a bit uncomfy, but, it's not the end of the world.

Anyhow there we are - isn't she a doll!

35 weeks and counting...

Here I am again, at 35 weeks and one day! I missed my deadline for pics by one day. But really, how much difference did it make? Probably not much. So, here I am on Tuesday of this week...



What have I done this week in terms of baby prep? Well, I allowed myself the luxury of once again obsessively going through all the baby clothes, arranging them this time in size, just like I did with Josie. I told myself I wasn't going to go that nuts this time, but hey presto, here we are at 35 weeks, and I am totally that nuts.

I also took the bedding off the crib, and put new bedding back on the crib. Here's the evidence to that little venture. Plus, I (uselessly) set up the baby monitors and switched them on for no reason. Actually there was a reason: so I could stand in the kitchen later at night (H goes to bed earlier than me most of the time as he has to get up earlier) and chuckle at H snoring and making funny noises... Ah, the boredom of late pregnancy.

Can you spot the little butterfly hanging up there on the right? If you like, you can check out one of the first posts I ever made: it had a picture of Josie's crib in it (the same crib of course) and you can see the similar butterfly hanging up in hers...


I also packed the hospital bags. Here is our cat, Smokey (one of them - we have four) sitting with the socks, booties, mittens and blankets for Isobella. Since it's winter here in MN, we need to make sure that she is well bundled...


Here is the selection of teeny tiny clothing we have for her. Might seem like a lot, but there's only so long I want her wrapped in a scratchy hospital blanket: and if they keep us for the full three days, she ought to have a few bits and pieces in case she gets bored wearing the same thing...or has a poo explosion...or something! Okay fine - I just could choose. But the pink thing on the left is a really warm snowsuit. Since it's going to be extremely cold, she'll need that. The bundle on the bottom left is a baby cocoon and matching hat made for Isobella by a really good friend, Shelley - thank you Shelley!


Here is the extent of Isobella's wardrobe. Isn't it disgraceful how many clothes she has? I mean seriously, this is pushing the extreme. Plus, there are a few more outfits in the closet. But honestly, I don't feel bad because just the joy of getting to dress up a a baby is...well, it's going to be so wonderful. It really is. Poor thing will probably change outfits seven times a day, though. That rainbow onesie was made by another really good friend - Shannon - thank you Shannon!


So, that's the size of it. I have an ultrasound tomorrow. We're going to be checking on placental issues and all the rest. Then, non-stress tests for the remainder of the pregnancy once or twice a week.

I am so glad tomorrow is nearly here: honestly, I've spent the last 2.5 weeks since the previous doc's appointment just praying she'll make it to this ultrasound. It's completely irrational really, but this stage is rather scary. I have no real reason to be concerned. But I so want her to be alright. I just can't wait to visually see this placenta firmly attached. I just hope the cord is still completely free-floating: goodness knows I don't need another reason to stay awake at night, even if it's a benign, and common issue. Somehow, nothing seems benign or common any more.

Hopefully soon I will be just another "common mother" with a "common" and healthy child...

34 weeks and thinking...

Well actually, I'm technically about 34 and a half weeks now: it's taken me this long to get my act together and post!

I was thinking yesterday about the way we all process things, depending on our genetic and environmental coagulation throughout the years, and my thoughts drifted onto child loss - most specifically, how child loss is processed differently by different people.

It is curious, as I look around, at my immediate family how differently I see them going through grief - or not going through grief. I have seen religion play a major role here, in my immediate surroundings, where religious beliefs have been used as reasons for things happening, or not happening. Or, where religious beliefs have been used as a means to get the person through the grieving process and life in the aftermath of child loss.

I myself am a total Earth worshiper. I believe this Earth is magical in itself, and gives to us everything we need. I look around me in every season and see what beautiful things are produced - from snowflakes in the winter, to bright summer evenings, to the fruits we love to harvest in the autumn and make things out of (I love elderberries and apples, around here). I see the magic of love between people on so many different levels; the communication between us and the animal companions we have and for me, that is evidence enough for wonderful things going on in the world. I've never really in the whole of my life felt the need to belong to a mainstream organized religion - but, that's just me. Conversely I don't see anything wrong with wanting to belong to any larger religion: it's just not me.

So for me, life and death are interwoven: they're intrinsically joined to one another, faded into one another in a gradient and to me, neither can be separated from the other. Trees die, and their wooden bodies add mulch to the surrounding forest floor. Plants die, adding minerals to the soil. Animals die, also adding nutrient. We are animals, in the end. Then, plants spring up from the earth; we eat the plants; we grow. We live, we die, the whole mechanism goes on and on.

Emotions also come into play, naturally. I suppose if the mechanical aspect of the continuity of life is the black and white outline, emotional components would provide the color within. We feel love, sadness, joy, despair...all of this. So, tied up in the natural process of birth, death and rebirth we have the colorful washings of emotion.

For me though, it's important not to let go of either the outline or the colors within. As important as the emotions within, the outline of life is the factual, tangible truth. Life and death happen. We conceive new life; and there is death.

So, in my mind, qualifying the death of Josie was not impossible. I never found her death impossible to believe, beyond the normal scope of grief and the associated mental injury of the grieving process. Her death was what it was: my brother had died of the same cause. She had died. She was now in the earth along with all the other things, animal and plant, that had died in the past.

Along the same vein, I never had trouble with blaming anything other than the literal source of blame - ever - again, beyond the initial grief. By that, I mean I did not ever sit about and wonder why "God" had "done this" to me. Since I don't believe the Devil is real, I never had trouble with the belief that something "evil" had happened, either. I didn't have a deity to be angry with. The only deity I believe in being our mother Earth, who is naturally black and white and gray and everything in between: I couldn't be "angry" with her because life and death is in her nature.

So for me, acceptance was not something I had trouble with. Not at all. I felt at peace fairly quickly with the death of my daugher - but of course, that does not mean to say I felt at peace with her being gone. Do you see what I mean? There is a difference, I think. I miss her terribly and especially now at the end of this pregnancy, with all the hormonal influences, I cry over her sometimes because of a combination of sadness that I can't hold her, and remembrance of this time in my pregnancy with her. The love never, ever leaves you. It's the same as holding a living child: that child is forever with you, but empty as air - there's nothing to pour your love into, so you have to find something else to hold the love.

I choose art, and writing, and talking, and just a little extra love for other people as my outlet for the love that would have gone to Josie. Perhaps that is why they say "losing a child will turn you into a more compassionate person" - you have this leftover abundance of love that keeps flowing throughout life. But, that is, only if you reach a level of acceptance. Without acceptance, you're pretty stuck really.

And that's what I see around me: varying levels of acceptance. Some are like me - not necessarily the same religious or spiritual beliefs, but they're come to a level of understanding. However, many haven't. Including some people who are really close to me.

I see this frustration with "God" all over the place. This "why did He do this to me?" and "I'm really pissed off with God" and "I don't understand why this had to happen to me." These are all questions that I never really thought of. I've never really had the mind to have to find a reason for everything. I suppose it gets very hard if you do believe that "everything happens for a reason" - because then you have to justify something awful happening. Can you ever really be sure your justification is correct, though, or are there perpetual, lingering doubts?

I've had pressure from some extended family members and acquaintances to get married before the new baby arrives, as though we, as a couple "owe" something to a God. Or, as though, curiously, a God took our last child because we were not married. Naturally that makes no spiritual or logical sense to me at all. How can it? At the same time, they profess that my daughter is an "angel" in "heaven" or that "God wanted her back because she was too perfect/wasn't meant to live..." Again, these explanations make no sense at all to me - they're foreign to me. They might be nice for someone else but as far as I am concerned, my daughter isn't sporting wings, watching over me or protecting me. She's at peace forever, that I am sure of - and I'm happy with that. What's so bad with being at peace forever?

Anyhow, so, around me, people are stuck in various stages of the grieving process because they have been hampered by their own spiritual beliefs. Unwilling to let go or change their minds about their beliefs - because they are afraid that these beliefs are the only things getting them through - they find themselves trapped in terrible wranglings between themselves and the God they were always sure was out to protect. I feel very bad for these people. I can only imagine the mental pain that must inflict.

Alternatively I do also have people who believe that a God is there to be with them through the pain. I find, looking at these people, that their realities are much more relaxed; much more peaceful.

So I suppose it can go either way. Perhaps it's just best to be flexible in one's spiritual outlook...

Anyhow enough ruminating: I am 34 weeks and 3 days pregnant today. In my pregnancy with Josie, I'd be the equivalent of just over a week away from the day I realized that my body was not tolerating the stress well at all - 35 weeks, 4 days, losing my plug and having some indications of early labor - which led to my being released from my crazy ex-job two weeks earlier than previously planned.

We're reaching the end of this journey here - it's not long. I can remember everything I was doing at this stage of my pregnancy with Josie - almost day by day. The last week of work would be spent getting up at 3.30am every day (driving two hours to a location just outside the cities), and going to bed sometimes as late as 11.30pm. Finally, my request for help had been granted and help had been sent - but by this time, it was almost too late. The problems in my district had been ignored for far too long - upper management had been making serious mistakes... I was going to pay for it in a lot more than a corporate-slap-on-the-wrist sense. After all, shoving blame and too much responsibility on to colleagues further on down the line only works until someone dies...

So here I am at 34 weeks exactly... It won't be long now...

Josie's life...

Giving thanks for Josie's life with us here - one Thanksgiving beyond her birth and death. We may have lost her, but we will never fail to acknowledge her as a little person...

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Giving Thanks...

It's really only been recently that the meaning of this festival has properly hit me. We don't have it in England, and all the "Pilgrims plus Native Americans" stuff didn't really strike me to begin with.

But nowadays, I get it. I also get the newer message - that of simply giving thanks - and I like it. We don't have a day simply to give thanks in England: we have a harvest festival many times, but it's not on a set date. So for me, Thanksgiving is much like a harvest festival. I sat there this year, gobbling food and really, feeling good about life. Here are a couple of pictures of my family, being thankful on Thanksgiving...



Last Thanksgiving...not so much. Actually last Thanksgiving hurt - a lot. It really stung. Christmas wasn't so bad - my sister N and brother F came to visit and it was lovely. But Thanksgiving was pretty awful. I remember being in a lot of emotional pain. My mother had just left a few weeks previously and I had no baby to hold.

So, when the adverts, or the people, or the stores said "think of what you're thankful for this holiday!" I had some real trouble. Remaining positive was possible on every other day than Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving itself, the walls came kind of, crumbling down, so to speak.

I remember telling H I really couldn't be thankful that year. I couldn't think of anything to be thankful for. Not on that day. Every other day I could be grateful to be alive, but not on Thanksgiving.

I drove out to the cold, cold graveyard where my daughter slept under the ground, and left my car running next to her plot. It was dark by this time, and I'd just taken off and left everyone in my house because I couldn't hold the tears back any more. I drove out there and listened to public radio, sobbing and sobbing into a box of Kleenex next to me in the passenger seat. The heater was warm; the temperature outside was freezing.

Suddenly, a medley of Shaker hymns, arranged a Capella by a composer called Kevin (can't remember the last name) came on the radio and they were just beautiful - rich, warm voices filling my ears.

I opened both windows and turned the music up for my baby, who couldn't hear... I turned those Shaker hymns up for all the babies in "Babyland" where she was buried and played them out across the dark, cold evening. I sat there and cried the whole way through. When the hymns were over, I put the car into gear, rolled up the windows and with one final look at the semi-fresh earth of my baby's grave, I drove back to the house.

Isobella's Birth Plan...

Well, I gave this to my very wonderful doctor this afternoon and he accepted it all! The only glitch, he said, would be if I went into spontaneous labor on my own in the middle of the night and came in - the staff on duty would probably want to c-section me and there'd be a fight. But, apart from that, here it is...

__________________________

J's Birth Plan - baby Isobella Mai

Hello lovely ALMC medical professionals! Welcome to my birth plan. I understand you probably get a lot of these but very much request that you read this and please, try to accommodate me and my baby as much as humanly possible. Please understand that this plan is written from two perspectives: a mother, wanting a natural, vaginal birth after a cesarean; and a mother wanting a natural, med-free birth after the death of her daughter from complete placental abruption on October of 2008. I really want the most natural, normal, loving circumstances for this birth, and for this child to be brought out into the world in a calm, peaceful way as opposed to a dramatic, traumatic way. This birth plan then, is written with the intent of making this as likely as possible.

With that said, I understand more than many how unpredictable life can be. If I should need surgery, we will come to that when we come to it. In the meantime however, here are the thing that I feel would make birthing really great for Isobella Mai (my baby) and I. Thank you so much for reading and I appreciate all you do.

• Please - no constant asking about pain meds or epidurals: I will most certainly ask for these, should I feel I need them. I would much rather have support in my natural childbirth, and a little cheerleading!
• Please use "pressure" instead of pain whenever possible because I am using self-hypnosis (Hypnobabies) to help me with birthing, and want to allow myself to think of the contractions as a lot of pressure, rather than abject, sheer pain and terror!
• I would like to wear own clothes - sarong for comfort (will still allow doctors access but will make me more comfortable).
• Please let me have an extra long drip so that I can move around.
• Please give me the freedom to use the bath or shower, the birthing ball etc.
• Please give me the freedom to labor in any position.
• Please, give me the freedom to push the baby out in the position I feel most comfortable in. I promise I won't try to give birth on the roof, but I'd like to be able to, for example, give birth in a squat if that feels right.
• Please, no episiotomy - I would much rather tear.
• If at all possible, I would like to be able to dim the lights.
• When pushing, I'd like to be able to push when it "feels right" - as much as possible. Please, please, no counting to ten...
• Please let my birth partner catch the baby if he can!
• Please let the umbilical cord stop pulsating before it is cut. I'd really like Isobella to get all her blood.
• When baby is out, please place her on my chest - I want to bond with her straight away unless there are emergency medical reasons why this cannot be so.
• Please, when she is out, do not whisk her off to "give me a rest". Ideally I would love to be able to breastfeed to allow the placenta to come out without a problem.
• Also, because of the circumstances of the last birth, I really would like Isobella and I to be allowed to bond for at least a few minutes before weighing, measuring, and all the rest of the standard procedures. I really want to be able to spend those first moments looking into her open eyes.
• After baby comes, I'd love to be able to be the one to dry her off and wrap her up. Please don't bathe her and dress her for me - again, these moments are not something I got the chance to experience before, so I'd like to be able to do this myself.
• I'd like to room in with my baby at all times. There will always be someone there with me if I need to rest.
• If Isobella should happen to have to be taken to the NICU for any reason, please let my birth partner go with her and be with her as much as possible.
• If I should happen to have a cesarean, please, once again, let me be with my baby immediately afterwards as long as no complications exist. As you can imagine, the last time was very traumatic and I would not like to be separated from my child this time. I'd like to be able to breastfeed as soon as possible after the birth.
• I plan to breastfeed!

I do believe that is about it: as you can tell, I strongly believe in the natural power and the natural progression of birth, even though it did not go as planned the last time. I feel calm about this birth, unafraid and very much ready. Thank you once again for reading and for helping me!

Lights in the darkness...

I bought something today. Recently, buying things has been...not happening very much because my income hasn't allowed me to go out on any large shopping trips that didn't involve buying groceries. But, it's not been a problem for me because I don't really want much in my life - my needs are very few. I prefer experiences - always have. A karaoke session in a nice bar with nice people; visiting a beautiful place for the first time; seeing people I love; watching a wonderful movie with someone special...spending time sitting on the beach at sunset when there's no-one else there.

But yes, I did buy something today.

When Josie was buried, we had to make the heart-stopping decision of what to dress her in. I was told at the hospital what they chose - on the morning of the third day, I think - the Sunday. Her funeral was the Monday. She wore this beautiful fancy dress and underneath, a pair of white, velvety sock-pants with bunnies for socks - ears and all. It had a little white bobby tail on the tush and was so sweet. I remember looking at them, holding them up and washing them in baby soap during my pregnancy, because I couldn't wait to dress Josie in those little pants in particular.

So, she was buried in them. H's ma took pictures but I've never seen them. She wore makeup and her little soul had gone. One day I'm sure I'll see them: but who knows.

Anyway the children wanted to bury something with her as well. It was this little Carter's light-up butterfly. It was very soft and tied onto the crib. When you pulled it's tail, it twinkled red in the wings and set off the music box, which was not electronic - played Brahm's Lullaby.


The children wanted to bury it with Josie because it lit up, and they thought it would be very dark and scary underground. They're so practical.

So we buried it with her and every now and again - the more I get to the end of this pregnancy - I thought of that little butterfly twinkling away down there, with it's little red lights. I wanted another one just like it for Isobella - some connection to her sister.

The more I thought about it, the more I really wanted it. The more essential it became. Then of course, the item was so hard to find - nobody had it any more - it wasn't even being made. But the other day I happened to find it on eBay with the help of a dear friend of mine... Today, I bought it. I have to wait now to pay for it until I get paid again, but it's going to be there for Isobella.

And you know, I feel so emotional about it. Out of everything we buried with Josie, that was the most poignant. Twinkling and lighting up in there forever, in the dark, under the ground. I somehow knew that if I didn't get another one it just wouldn't be right. Something should be Earthside as well - something just like what was buried, like some kind of...baby monitor...something to connect to. Like Inanna's servant, Ninshubur. Except of course, little Inanna/Josie isn't coming out of the underworld - she's gone to a different place...