Loneliness

I don't think that I ever anticipated how isolating the experience of having my children would be.

Before the girls were born, I was concerned that I would lose touch with friends who do not yet have, or don't want, children. That I would miss my work colleagues during my maternity leave. That I would not be organised enough to load both my babies into the car, with all their accompanying accessories and drive to visit friends who live a little further afield. That I would end up trapped in the house with two babies.

But I believed that those bonds would be replaced by stronger relationships with my family and with my friends who already have children. Even during my pregnancy, a few friendships which had cooled over recent years, rekindled and came back to life. I hoped to meet new acquaintances at antenatal classes, mother and baby groups, the local twin club. Friendships fuelled by the giving of advice, discussion over which pram, crib, highchair, carseat to buy, initiation into the mysterious secrets of labour and childbirth. That chuckle that those with children make when the childless fall pregnant and are so shyly proud. Oooohh just you wait, you won't know what's hit you.

Well I couldn't wait. They couldn't wait. And I still don't know what hit me. It's been over a year now and I still can't put a name to it. This turn of events.

And you know what? I never made those new friends. Not a single one.

Obviously I've never set foot in the local twin club.

I never made it to antenatal classes, I was due to start them three weeks after the girls were born. Bit late by then.

I didn't go to mother and baby groups over the winter for fear of germs, RSV, complications, setbacks that could land Jessica back in the NICU. The oxygen being a hassle to move around and to explain. Other little ones were fascinated by it but that meant they pulled at the tubing and wanted to fiddle with tank dials. Not good. Well, maybe Jess would have appreciated a blast of pure oxygen. Probably would have made mother and baby group a little more fun. Heck, I would have gone for a pure oxygen hit myself.

Jessica came home at 5lb 4oz, which to me with my distorted NICU eyes, looked absolutely enormous but was still small enough to attract attention. And I couldn't cope with attention or questions, I just wanted to be normal.

But my longing to be normal existed in constant, weird tension with this feeling that I wanted to tell EVERYONE what had actually happened, that this baby they were looking at used to be 1lb 7oz, that she has spent four months in hospital, that she nearly died, that she was a twin, that her sister died, that I watched her sister die, that she died slowly in front of me. I wanted to spew the whole lot up. At random strangers, shop assistants, everyone. I didn't though. I don't.

I go to the mother and baby groups now. I want Jessica to meet the other children, to see other children. I don't go for myself. I don't go to meet people, to make friends as I thought I would. I think the other parents probably find me standoffish or cold. But I feel a million miles away from them sometimes. My only experience of pregnancy and childbirth is so different from the one that they all discuss so eagerly.

Chances are that there is at least one parent in that room who has lost a child or had a birth that didn't go well. I think that there must be statistically. But I don't know which parent(s) exactly and I don't know if they would want to talk about it.

I will talk about Jessica's birth if I can't avoid it. I usually just say that she was born prematurely and had to stay in hospital for a bit. Most people, fortunately, don't really understand extreme prematurity. One of my husband's friends expressed some bewilderment when, about four weeks after the girls were born, he had not been invited over to our house to view Jessica. I gently broke the news to him that she wasn't at our house, that she needed 24 hour medical attention, that we didn't have an incubator, a ventilator or all the other gizmos that kept our daughter alive, that we couldn't care for her at home.

I generally try not to mention Georgina at all unless we get into a discussion of precisely why Jessica was born so early.

I just don't know how to handle it. I desperately want to re assimilate myself into polite society but I can't seem to manage it.

I want to be honest because
(a) I am an absolutely appalling liar and I blush and get all flustered when I try to lie
(b) I feel as though I am becoming part of the 'babies don't die' conspiracy and
(c) Georgina and Jessica are my children and I want to talk about them. It doesn't make any difference to me that Georgina is dead. I still love her. She is always in my thoughts. She is still Jessica's sister. She is still Jessica's twin. She is still part of our lives, part of our family. A much loved part.

But I don't want some unsuspecting person to ask an innocent question and have all this suddenly land in their lap. It isn't fair to them. I almost feel like I am asking for the responses that nobody in our position appreciates, well at least you have Jessica, well at least you know you can fall pregnant etc. People only say those things because they want to offer comfort, they say them out of kindness and because I've put them on the spot. But they still sting a little.

All those fondly imagined friendships I thought I would form, that little circle of mothers, all with children the same age as my girls. Sadly, I don't see it happening. I think they will remain imaginary. Like so much of what I thought would happen will. It makes me so sad.

I almost feel like I could peer over some strange space-time fence and see myself, talking with another mother with a baby. We are laughing and swapping tales of sleep deprivation and nappy contents. Sadly, in this other world, I no longer see myself with twins. Almost as though I have now accepted that I was never intended to be the mother of twins, not in real life. I see a world where Georgina never existed and Jessica was born 'normally'. That makes me sad, it makes me feel like I am wishing that Georgina had never been. But in this world I don't have to hedge and lie and pretend that everything is fine.

Yes, everything is fine. I enjoyed those months when Jessica was in ICU, I always knew she would make it, I always knew then and still know now that she will have no lasting health consequences, that she won't be developmentally delayed, I always knew she wouldn't develop cerebral palsy or blindness. I enjoyed my unbroken nights (people have never heard of the joys of expressing milk) and a few more months of blessed child free existence. I didn't mind Georgina's death. I've accepted it completely. I'm at peace with it. It was understandable that she died. It wasn't so bad watching the life support being turned off, watching my first born child take her last breaths. It was absolutely fine, I'm fine. I'm back to normal. Look I'm smiling and talking and breathing and walking around and purchasing goods and services and driving my car. Just look at me go. Functioning away like nobody's business.

I know that most people must be hedging and lying about something. I'm sure that most people have a terrible, sad secret in their lives. Something that preoccupies them. Something that they usually don't mention but which is actually at their very centre. I know that, at my centre, is a NICU and Georgina and tiny, red, shiny babies. That will always be at my core. This isn't to say that there isn't anything else there, that it won't be joined by other, happier things or that I won't add some pretty bits to my edges. But if I am ever to make another friend, a real friend, who I can speak my mind to I think I am going to have to let them in on this. Or they won't really understand me and I won't really understand them. I don't have to worry about that here, here I know you all understand. It comes with the territory, you wouldn't be reading if you didn't already know about that place, that place in me and that place in yourselves. But how do I handle this sort of introduction in the real world? Perhaps we should all write introductory blogs prior to meeting any potential new friend?

I just need to figure out how everyone else does it, how they keep it all in or shrug it all off as no big deal. Then maybe I could do it. I need to learn how to pull this one off or I suspect that I am not going to be a good mother. More a damaged one. One that doesn't like being around other people.