Due

19th of December. The day that, last year, Georgina and Jessica should have been born.

When I say sixteen weeks early, it doesn't sound terribly bad. Not an insurmountable problem.

It is snowing here today, on the 19th of December.
When I think back to Jessica's birthday, at the end of August, when we all sitting outside in the garden, sixteen weeks and some odd days sounds like a very long time indeed.
A sickeningly long time.
A time that could suck all the air from my lungs.

Sixteen weeks and three days. I wish I could have held on for longer.

Jessica had her checks yesterday. She did very well. Her consultant was quite curious as to what I have been feeding her. She has had some of the evil biscuits known as party rings (only once I promise) but apart from that I just feed her as often as I think she will eat something! I often feel like I am just hovering about her with a spoon, waiting to stuff something in the moment she opens her mouth. Poor child. She is now the average weight for a baby her age, slightly below average height. She passed all her developmental checks and has been discharged from physiotherapy. The slight weakness noted on one side last time seems to have corrected itself. Her lungs sound good, no wheezes or rattles. Only a little bit of 'caving in' under her ribs on one side.

On the whole she is a surprisingly well little girl. As the consultant said, the outcomes for 23 weekers are variable and, frequently, are not as straightforward as Jessica's. I have always braced myself for something, I couldn't tell you what, but SOMETHING to come squirming out of the woodwork and laugh at me. Saying 'ha, you might have thought everything was fine but it isn't.'

So I finally let out the breath that I have been holding on Jessica's behalf since August last year. I uncrossed my fingers, now stiff and clawed from being crossed. I untied the rabbit foot. I will no longer make the sign against the evil eye. I will no longer do all those pointless things that I did because they were all that I could do to keep my little girl safe.

Then again, maybe I won't. Fingers re-crossing right about . . . . now.

The doctor also mentioned Georgina. She said, it was like what I lost on the one hand, I gained on the other. I've had that thought myself although it is not a concept that makes any sense or one that I particularly like. But I think I know what she was getting at. It would be asking too much for Georgina to be alive and in as good health as Jessica. It simply wouldn't be possible. But that doesn't stop me wanting it. Because I am unreasonable.

I don't feel like I am coping very well lately.
I don't really know why. One of those strange, senseless downwards spirals that hit us all from time to time. Not seemingly triggered by anything in particular.

I feel nauseated. By everything.
And, sadly, this is not because I'm pregnant. Believe me, I have checked approximately five thousand, three hundred and twenty six times. Well, perhaps not quite that often (I'm a little prone to exaggeration) but you get the general idea.

I feel like I am fitting in better at work. I hope I am. But it seems that the only person who can fit back in the space that I left behind is . . . me. The old me. The one that faffed around the office and smiled and said yesthankyouiamfineiamgreathowareyoudoing? yesiwilldothatbymonday surenoproblem hahahaicantbelieveyouvesetupaspreadsheettoseewhoisgettingtheadventcalendarchocolate and laughed about the biscuit barrel being raided by the cleaners and my colleague's obsession with trains and loved to hear the stories of the guy's kids. My immediate colleagues are all men and all of them have young children so I hear lots of cute stories. I used to love hearing them. Now . . not so much. I just want to stick my fingers in my ears and go 'la la la la, not listening, don't care about your families with all their living children.' And these people are nice people, caring people who love their children and are just trying to break up the working day with a little bit of entertainment along the lines of 'kids say the funniest things.'

My immediate neighbour's five year old son asked him recently if people go on forever. He was relating this story and it kind of knocked the breath out of me. I just stared dully at my computer screen, trying not to make it glaringly obvious that I was crying. And L, my wonderful manager, if you gave me that window seat intentionally, for that very purpose, bless you.

The strain of doing all this is making me feel sick. To maintain the illusion of being the old me, I have to pay a price. My guts pay the price. I wake up feeling sick, I walk around feeling sick, I drive feeling sick, I work and click and calculate feeling sick.

As though there is something festering inside me. Something rotten. Something unsightly. A mouldy heart.

An e-mail was circulated on my last day at work with the subject 'cakes.' You know me, I'm a greedy soul and a sucker for cake so I clicked immediately. The cakes had been bought to celebrate a pregnancy. A successful twelve week ultrasound.

I couldn't say congratulations. I couldn't say anything. All I felt was fear. I saw that presence waiting in the corner, twiddling his thumbs. He was waiting in that same corner last year when I shyly presented my first ultrasound pictures. I don't know if this presence is death or misfortune or the fates or what you would call him, her, them or it. But I know that presence.

I left the building. I charged up the staircase in the multi storey car park. I got to my car and I rested my hand on the roof retching. I desperately wanted to throw up but nothing. I got in the car and cried. I felt as though I was in the centre of a crumpled sheet of paper and all the events of the past year were inexorably closing in on me. Life support equipment jostling next to breast pumps, tiny red children marching on feet bound with sats probes and lines, ventilators hissing and alarms beeping. Coming towards me. In a car park. I probably looked like I had gone completely insane.

If you remember All.y Mc.Beal and her dancing baby? Bit like that but not so funny. Not funny at all. Well, funny peculiar maybe. I am pretty damn peculiar from time to time since this happened.

I don't know what is wrong with me. Is it jealousy? Do I ill-wish others because my own pregnancy did not go well? Do I feel that everyone should suffer to get their children? What sort of person have I become? Some sort of twisted freak who can't even bear to see an ultrasound picture? I don't want to be like that. I don't want my first thought to be that the baby might die so you shouldn't be buying congratulatory cakes, not yet.

I've often wanted to ask my friend and my SIL, the other twin (living twins) mums that I know if they hated me, resented me. I fell pregnant with the girls on my first cycle. No fertility problems. No tests. No painful procedures. No disappointment. Just wine and roses. Until it wasn't.

My sweet girls. I loved you so much. I still do. I listened to this song of Nick Drake's when I was pregnant. Especially after 12 weeks it seemed so apt. When I knew I was expecting twins. It seemed so magical.

I never felt magic crazy as this
I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree
But now you're here
Brighten my northern sky.

There is something so very warm in Nick Drake's voice as he sings that second to last line, 'but now you're here.' It always reminds me of my girls. That moment that they were here. Both of them. When I was pregnant and when they were born, before Georgina died.

My girls. You do brighten my northern sky.

I wish I could hold on to the love I feel for you Georgina but I need to let everything else go.
The bitterness, the resentment, the anger, the endless questioning.
Why it had to be me.
Why it had to be you.
Why it had to be Jessica.
Why it had to be your sweet Daddy.
Why I can't help seeing you when I look at your sister. I can't help seeing you through the static. Shimmering. Glistening. Just on the brink of living. Then snatched away from me. It feels like it was so close. But I suppose it wasn't. Not really. You were always closer to death than life from the moment you were born. Of course you were.

But I wanted you to live so very, very, very much. So much so that my memory distorts the facts. So much that, in my memories, you were in with a chance. A real chance.

I'm so tired. Of all this bile inside me. This bitter, bitter gall.

And I'm editing to say that I know all of this sounds terrifically ungrateful. Maybe I am. I hope not.
I still can't believe that Jessica is doing so well and is so healthy, it didn't seem possible this time last year. I love her so much and when I think of how vulnerable she was, how close she came to death my heart seems to stop in my chest.

But I still love Georgina. I still miss her. I hope you understand.

Not all pregnancy announcements take me this way. I've survived many of them with just about complete equanimity. Nothing different about this one, only my reaction.


Anyway, this one is for you, my precious daughters.