Replacement

Following on from my earlier ramble about why I decided to have children, I'm going to go back to the issue of 'so-called replacement' children to borrow a turn of phrase from klepsydra.

I think that this an issue that is at once simplified and complicated by losing one of twins.

Simple because, after the girls were born, they ceased to be the 'twins' but became two separate, distinct individuals. My daughters. I loved them both. I wanted them both. No question of replacement. I may be deceiving myself but I think that I knew them, their personalities. I think my daughters were quite different people.

But more complicated because of the time frame. Everything happened at once, birth, death, motherhood, prolonged hospital stay, fear of continuing health problems.

I found that, after Georgina died, many people said to me, "at least you still have Jessica".

This angered me because the implication seemed to be
that Jessica was some sort of consolation prize,
that the absence of Georgina in my life could simply be patched over with the presence of Jessica,
that Georgina wasn't worth enough to be grieved over, that her existence could simply be dismissed by a chance of focus.
It didn't seem to do either of my children justice. That they could be so easily replaced or that I might not have the one I wanted but, hey, at least I had a child. I did. I do. I am grateful. But it doesn't stop me wanting the two children that I anticipated.

But I can see why people said it.
Given the circumstances, I am incredibly lucky to have any children surviving from a pregnancy that was cut so short.
I can't deny that Jessica's survival has helped me to recover from some aspects of the experience.

Events conspired to make Jessica feel like a substitute at times. I did not see very much of Jessica for the first few days of her life. Initially the girls were in the smaller of the wards, opposite one another. Georgina on the left and Jessica on the right. Because I knew her sister was very ill and would most likely die, I felt (perhaps wrongly) that the medical staff were encouraging me to sit with her. They kept telling me that Jessica was stable and one of the doctors in particular was extremely positive about her chances of survival. So I spent most of the first three days huddled over the incubator on the left and this culminated in my holding Georgina for the first time just before life support was removed from her.

I know I stayed with her body for some time, until her heart stopped beating. My husband and I bathed her and dressed her. Then we left her body and went back into the ward to huddle on the right hand side of the room with Jessica. It was a very peculiar thing, to walk straight back into that room where my other daughter had just taken her last breaths.

I think that I may use Jessica's survival to comfort myself. At my lowest ebbs, when I miss Georgina terribly, I do tend to take comfort in Jessica's physical presence. Even if she is sleeping, I like to go and sit in her room and listen to her breathing. To try and catch a little splinter of her sister. Just a tiny sliver of that daughter I will never hold, whose breathing I can never hear.

I think that there is a terrible, gaping hole in me. A void. An empty place. Where Georgina should be. And I don't think that anything or anyone else can ever fill that space. Her sister cannot fill it. She is busy occupying her own spaces. Another child cannot fill it. They will be in a different place. Anything or anyone I attempt to put there just gets swallowed up. That spot is for my Georgina. That specific human being. My daughter. She is irreplaceable. All children are.

And that is without counting the tangle between Georgina and Jessica. There lies a loss that I can never comprehend. I can attempt to give Jessica another sister. But it will never be her twin sister. It will never be Georgina, the sister that grew with her. The sister that accompanied her when she was only a few cells. She is irreplaceable.

When I contemplate that uniqueness, those strange chances, the impossibility that, from all those potentials, Georgina came to be. That she survived for 23 weeks in the womb. That all those cells came together in the correct places. That she had limbs and eyes and a face. That so many things that could have gone wrong before that point, didn't. And then I lost her. To an infection. That still makes me want to howl and howl and howl. In fury and despair and horrible, horrible sadness. And it makes me so angry. So angry on behalf of all our babies who came so far, some of them much more developed and healthy than my Georgina. So angry that they had that chance ripped away from them.

If I had another pregnancy, another child, it is possible that some of the grief I have could be assuaged.
The grief that I never managed to experience the third trimester of pregnancy.
The grief that my body let my family down and brought my husband and my family, not the incredibly happiness that we were all so confidently expecting, but a time full of so much heartache and terror.
The grief that the one experience of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood that I have diverges so dramatically from that experienced by the majority.
The grief I feel that Jessica, who is a twin, is an only child with no siblings at all.
The grief that I feel that I somehow wasn't a proper mother to my girls. That I failed to keep them safe. If I could have another try, to prove that it wasn't my fault the first time in a way.

But none of these minor gripes really touch the sides of the loss that sits where my eldest daughter should be. I can't replace her. I can't even hope to try.

I was listening to a programme about graveyards on the radio this morning and the presenter stated that most graves remain unvisited after an average of fifteen years. Don't ask me how they arrived at that figure but that was the length of time quoted. He said that he often visits a graveyard nearby and, in this graveyard, is the grave of a child who died forty five years ago. And there are still often fresh flowers on that particular grave. This didn't surprise me. Because I know I will always miss Georgina. My sweet little Georgie.

I know that void inside me will change. Time will erode the jagged edges that border it today. I may decorate it with flowers and candles. I may be able to hang some beautiful paintings on the walls. But it will always be there. A space where something irreplaceable and so, so precious to me once lived and breathed.

* * * *

I'm going back to work tomorrow. I have been on leave since the girls were born, nearly fourteen months ago. I feel quite anxious about how to behave. Do I try and pretend to be my old self? Or do I try and adopt a new persona? I don't think that my current mode of gibbering wreck is going to cut the mustard somehow.

I'm not sure what this is going to do to my blogging. I usually blog and comment whilst Jessica is taking her naps but, obviously, I will now be at work during that time. So if my rambling comments tail off a bit, it is because 'the toad work is currently squatting on my life' to steal a phrase from Mr. Larkin.

Perhaps I have run out of things to say anyway? I seem to be repeating myself lately.
Anyhow, here is a song about work . . .