Blogging

Only a month ago, I left this comment on Jess's amazing blog 'After Iris' about the loss of her beautiful second daughter, Iris.

'I don’t blog myself because I feel like I couldn’t possibly do my daughters justice. I don’t have the eloquence to untangle this clot of words that sits in my throat. Amazingly generous others here in internet land do that for me so I don’t choke and die.

I had twins extremely prematurely, one died and one survived. They were my first pregnancy. I don’t think I could describe the internal conflict that rages inside me and I don’t have the grace to handle the situation with the care I feel it needs. And like you say, I feel others do it so beautifully. I would hate to hurt anyone by seeming ungrateful for a child who is, in medical terms, all other terms and especially in her mother’s eyes, a true miracle. A fluke. And I wanted two miracles. Greedy mama that I am. And due to some on-going medical issues with my surviving baby and my own state of mind, I hardly left the house or saw anyone for the first four months of 2009. Believe me, I NEEDED the blogs.

I totally understand the whole ‘over sharing’ thing as well. Sometimes I wish I could get into every blog I’ve ever commented on and delete all my comments. And I’m so scared of accidentally hurting people who have been hurt so much already. There’s been some discussion recently about people congratulating the baby lost on subsequent pregnancies and how much they hate it. I think to myself, pants I did that. Big old clumsy mouth.'

Yet here I am. Tentatively starting a blog myself. I'm not really too sure what my motivation is. I think it might be because I've stopped seeing the counselling service and, nearly ten months out, nobody actually wants to talk about it anymore. It's old news.

I've been extremely lucky in having a wonderful mother and sister who have listened to me ramble on for hours about the events of last year. But it is selfish of me to keep dragging them back to that awful time. My mother lost her first grandchild, who she loved and wanted so very dearly. My sister lost her first niece. They went through the traumatic experience of suddenly being thrust into the world of the very premature baby with its attendant crushing blows, fits and starts of wild optimism and sadly, in our case, the death of a much loved and cherished baby. The threat of a second death. And they both had the double agony of watching me fall to bits in front of them. I think they need (and deserve) a break.

And it is so very boring. It is so very boring for everyone who knows me. But I don't actually think about anything else. I don't really have any interest in talking about anything else. I'm trapped, going round and round in those four days of August last year. An endless rendition of the same sorry sequence of events. Even I'm sick of it but I can't stop going over and over and over it. Wishing it was different. Trying to identify the point at which everything fell apart.

I noticed that I was reading more and more blogs. That I was leaving longer comments (which worried me, fretting that people might want to tell me to push off and get my own blog)

I obviously had some kind of need to write about it all. So here I am.

I don't know how much I have to say. I'm sure that none of it will be particularly original or eloquent. I miss my little girl. I miss her so much. Perhaps writing it all down will help me get rid of some of that frustrated love that jangles around inside me.

It is so very lonely and isolating. Such a strange type of grief. For such a short little life.