Beyond Closure: Nancy Berns at TEDxDesMoines

If you have a spare 17 minutes, I'd really encourage you to watch this. A number of weeks ago a dear friend but this on her facebook feed. I got around to watching it and it is so profound. I've just watched it the once and when I was finished I was sobbing. Nancy hits the nail on the head.

this weekend

When we found out we were moving to Whyalla, I knew I'd be away from old friends and would have to make some new ones...no biggie I've done it before. I was looking forward to hooking into some groups with small children and getting to know the people in our community. Then things turned topsy turvy and those ideas were put aside. I didn't have the energy to go out of my way to forge new relationships, especially people with small children.

Before we moved here I met Lisa...It's a bit of a random tale how Lisa and I came to know each other...it was through the blogging community but it turns out we have a 6 degrees of separation thing going on (which isn't unusual for SA)

It turns out we are in towns an hour away from each other. We caught up earlier in the year and then we finally got to hang out again on Saturday. Lisa drove over to my place and we sat, drank tea and chatted. And then we chatted some more and went to Spotlight and the lovely second hand store owned by the lovely Irish lady. 

She's a quality girl and it's nice to have a new friend (relatively) close by :)

last weekend

Joy in amongst grief
These 3 lovelies came and visited last weekend it was one of the nicest weekends in a long time...since before February 15th .

I enjoyed showing them around our new town.
The op shops, the cafe's...you know the important things
It was so lovely to have them here
xxx

time

image source

I had one of those days today where I just didn't know what to do with myself. 

I thought many times about doing something I enjoyed, sewing, knitting, going for a walk...but just couldn't get the motivation up to do anything but a load of washing and watch some TV I'd missed during the week. When I did finally get the motivation to do something I baked a cake. A recipe I have used a number of times. For some reason the consistency was different and I couldn't figure out why, I had added all the ingredients. I decided to just leave it as it was and put it in the oven. It took ages to set and I ended up getting it out a bit earlier then I though I should. It was only when I took the cake out of the oven I realised I had put double the amount of butter...250grams instead of 125grams...bummer.

I find I'm pretty hard on myself on these sorts of days, feeling like I should(could?)be getting things done. This usually happens after a few "good" days. We had a really nice weekend. One of my sisters (and her husband) came to stay with us. It was really nice to have them here. Jek and I spent some time moving some things around in the house. My crafty space is in another area of our house now and it works so well, I have found myself going into the space a number of times just to sit and enjoy the space. It's off of our kitchen and I can see into the space when I am at the sink. In time I think I am going to enjoy creating in that space.

After Jek and Dave left we started painting our entryway and hallway so that distracted me from them leaving. It took us a couple of days. One for the undercoat and one to paint. It looks so good now. It was a dark green and it made the hall so dark. It is now antique white and it is so different and great. We are looking forward to doing a few of the other rooms too, now that we know what we are doing.

Yesterday I went and had a facial, manicure and pedicure. It was a gift from 3 of my dear friends. It was so lovely and relaxing. I am finding it more and more important to set a few tasks each day, so I'm not at a loose end...being at a loose end doesn't feel very nice at the moment.

Getting back to today...something very nice happened, Tim bought me a beautiful bunch of bright flowers. orange Gerberas, yellow daisies, red roses and a flower I don't know but it is bright and happy. He got them just because. He's so wonderful to me.

My sister in law pinned this photo a couple of days ago and I thought it to be so true and quite comforting, that it is OK that our healing takes time and I don't have to rush. Even when I am having a not so good day and the motivation is lacking, it's all part of my healing process

xx

four on the fourth

 I know for a fact this last 6 months would have been even more unbearable if Tim hadn't been by my side through it all. Cuddling me when I was bawling, a voice of reason in amongst my crazy, his understanding in our grief. Even though it sounds a bit cheesy I feel like if we can endure what we have we can face anything together...I hope we have many more years together

Happy Wedding Anniversary to my love

xxx

the days in between

To begin I'd like to say a heartfelt thank you to all your lovely comments and emails since I last posted in May, We really appreciate your kind words and prayers.

It's been a bumpy couple of months. I've thought about when I may come back to blogging...I have come here to write a post a couple of times. I even hit publish on one of them a few weeks ago but had post remorse...if that's even a thing and then reverted it to draft a few minutes later...It was about how to help parents who are grieving, what to say to them and what not to say. I think it was after a day where someone had told me they knew exactly how I was feeling, having lost Isaac...because her daughter had lost a baby...she meant well but I'm not going to go into that. It wasn't the right time to come back. I have missed writing and from time to time I would read some of my favourite blogs...but it seems like everyone was pregnant, having babies...it was too much for me...some days it's still too much.

Since I was last here, we have been trying to start healing from the loss of our Isaac. Tim had a number of weeks off work and we went on a couple of small trips close by in South Australia, it was nice to be away and to stay in our pjs and eat chocolate and chain watch big bang theory. We stayed in Adelaide for a number of weeks until we had Isaac's funeral. But we eventually had to come home. It was hard coming home to Whyalla after being in Adelaide for so many weeks, around our family. Our house felt so big and empty...and I just didn't really know what to do with myself...

I have been seeing a psychologist which has been really helpful. She suggested I set little goals for myself each day. To start off with I set goals like get up and have a shower. She also suggested for me to create something special while I grieve Isaac. I haven't chosen one big project but I have been doing small projects to pass the time. I've also been doing a lot of reading. Some days that's all I could do. I've read some fiction and some books on grief; A force of Will by Mike Stavlund, Choosing to See by Mary-Beth Chapman, and a couple of books written by Bonnie Babes and Pregnancy loss Australia. The last two have been really helpful. They give accounts of other families who have lost babies and how life is for them now. I've shed a lot of tears while reading these books but it was good to let the pain out. I've also watched and listened to programs about grief. Radio National had a program on last week about still birth...which is different to what we experienced but I resonated with a lot of what the couple being interviewed said they felt. 

We had our follow up appointment with Isaac's doctor last week and it was a bit confronting. We had an autopsy done on Isaac because we never knew what had happened to our little bambino, and we weren't sure if it could/would affect future babies. The pathologist found a number of things in the autopsy that the doctors hadn't been able to find when Isaac was in my womb. It was hard to hear all these things but it also gave us peace about making the decision to deliver him at 31 weeks. Many times over the past couple of months I have wondered did we do the right thing. And from what we were told last week, yes we did. Our little Isaac never had a chance...if we had of waited he wouldn't have had a better chance, there were too many things that had gone wrong with his development. It was hard news to hear. But the harder news is that the pathologist and the geneticist were still unsure of Isaac's condition. 

They think it may be one of 2 things. One of them is a condition called Baller-Gerold syndrome . Dr Chris ("our" geneticist) isn't 100% convinced it's Baller-Gerold but there is a gene test to see if Isaac carried the gene for this syndrome. It's a test that is done overseas and will take 2-3 months for the results. We are anxious to find out whether it is this syndrome or not because if it is, the likelihood of this happening again to future babies is 1 in 4...so now we wait...some more. If it's not Baller-Gerold then Dr Chris thinks it is something called Disorganisation Sequence (which there isn't a gene test for), which should never happen again...if it is this then what happened to Isaac was a random stroke of bad luck.

It was Isaac's due date on Friday (28th June) which was very hard..actually that's and understatement, it was a horrible day. I was all over the place. Thankfully I had booked in to see my psychologist that day. It really helped me turn my day around. (Just as a side note I am a big advocate of people seeing a psychologist or counsellor if you've experienced some sort of loss, or are finding it hard to deal with life...if really helps talking things through with a professional who won't give you crappy token advice). It feels like getting through that day was a big step in our grief process. I do still feel very numb to life...the pain is still there but it's changed somehow...it's hard to explain. We are having more "good days" but grief is a funny thing and it can catch up with you when you least expect it. 

I'm not sure what Lozalicious is going to be in the future, I may even start a new blog to talk about my grief of lossing Isaac, and I don't know how often I'll be here but I hope I'll find enjoyment in blogging again like I used to...and I look forward to visiting all your corners of the net again too 

xxx

(the beautiful flowers are ones we received after Isaac was born)