My sister inlaw is pregnant again.  Baby #3 is due 10 December.

As expected, it was a really tough day and I spent much of it fighting off tears and trying to keep busy until it was time to leave for the cemetery.  The funeral was as beautiful as we could make it and we were surprised by some of the people that came to support us (though I noticed my best friend didn’t come, very disappointed).  We’d decided to arrive right at the time the service was due to start so we could avoid any chitchat on the front steps – I just knew I wouldn’t be strong enough for it.  As it was, I cried from the moment we left our driveway and was a mess by the time we reached the cemetery.  I held onto Klaus as we met my sister, brother, sister inlaw and father who were waiting outside the chapel.  They gave us hugs while we tried to prepare ourselves for entering the chapel.

I don’t think I mentioned this before but a few days ago, a woman that I work with (just a colleague, nothing more than that), phoned me and asked if she could put a plastic fairy that belonged to her mother into my son’s coffin.  I really wasn’t keen for this (why would she want to put something into my son’s coffin???) and explained that we weren’t having a viewing and that it wouldn’t be possible.  So there I am, in a five-way hug with my family when this woman suddenly appeared and sort of pushed herself into our huddle to give me a hug.  She told me that “Nicholas has his fairy now” and I tried to pull away.  She had her arms around my neck and wouldn’t let go.  It was really really uncomfortable, my family had no idea who she was and so they were all looking at me with puzzled faces as I was being half strangled.  I gave the husband a pleading look and he said something about needing to go in and I was able to prise myself out of her grip.  I’d already asked my sister to sit with me and the husband, and for my brother and sister inlaw to sit next to my husband – fortunately there were only five seats in the front row otherwise I’m sure she’d have sat in with us.  It was really horrible.  The funeral attendants greeted us as did the priest and at this point my co-worker went into the chapel.  The funeral attendants were wonderful and were instructed to remove the fairy from his coffin and discard it before he was cremated.  I didn’t want that thing with him.

As soon as I walked in the door and saw Nicholas’ tiny white coffin at the front of the chapel, I burst into tears again.  We’d ordered a white floral arrangement with blue butterflies for the top of his coffin, and the ladies had arranged it so beautifully.  They had put an extra butterfly on corner edge of his coffin — it was very touching.  And there, next to his carefully arranged flowers and butterflies, was a plastic pink fairy.

Words cannot describe how much I wanted it gone.

Klaus walked me to our seats and I sat with his arm around me and my head on his shoulder, my sister held my left hand and my brother held my right hand.  I couldn’t have gotten through the service without them.  My sister inlaw read a quote from the book of Jeremiah and my mother inlaw read the responsorial psalm.  The priest included our first son Max in the prayers which meant a lot to me (little Max wasn’t baptised and I thought it might cause problems).  For the reflection, we’d created a DVD of our favourite photos and used photos of the pages of the memory book my midwife had scrapbooked to “tell” his story.  The whole thing was set to “Real Love” by John Lennon.  It was very beautiful and left everyone reaching for the tissues.

When the service ended, the priest closed the curtains around my little boy and it was time to go.  I didn’t get up, I just kept thinking that after I left the chapel our little boy would be gone forever.  My family got me on my feet and lead me outside.  I held onto Klaus and cried.  As everyone filed outside, the funeral attendants handed me two white balloons, each bearing our little boys’ names.  We held them for a moment and then let them go.  I didn’t watch them fly away but my father told me later that he watched them until he couldn’t see them anymore and that they soared so very high.

We had arranged for afternoon tea at the cemetery’s cafe (the cemetery is massive — it’s the biggest necropolis in the southern hemisphere), and had twice as many people there than we’d catered for (most of my department from work were there, as were a bunch of people my husband use to work with) but the cafe was so ridiculously generous with their servings that there were six boxes of cakes and sandwiches left over. As everyone was leaving, that same bloody co-worker gave me a hug and asked for a photo of Nicholas.  I pulled back and told her that I didn’t have any and she said she could get one from me later.  I really feel she’s gone too far now and is being very obsessive.  When my husband said he was going to give the reflection DVD to my inlaws, it got my back up because it was made for his funeral — not for my inlaws to show their neighbours, etc.  My baby is not a curiosity or gossip fodder and I have an overwhelming need to protect his memory.  So there’s no way I’m going to give her a photo of our little boy.

Everyone left as the cafe closed and our families came back to our house for another cup of tea.  At one point I went outside to stand on the front path to get some fresh air.  Klaus appeared beside me and gave me a big hug.  It had been threatening to rain all day, but the sun kept poking through — at that moment there were a lot of dark clouds in the sky above us and to the east but the sun was beaming in almost perfect blue sky to the west.  And there, directly above the cemetery (we live a couple of blocks away from it), were two of the most vibrant and perfect rainbows I’ve ever seen.  :)

I skipped my appointment at the hospital this week because I’ve had a cold and really just wanted to stay in bed instead.  The midwife was great, she asked all of her normal questions over the phone and is happy to wait until next week to see me again.

As you can see from the photo, my little Nudgie-bear still hasn’t dropped.  And I’m still wearing my regular bellybutton bar because I still have an innie!  Besides plenty of braxton hicks contractions, there’s really nothing else to report.  I’ve been feeling sad with the inevitable end of this journey getting closer and closer, and I’m finding it rather boring to be just sitting around at home all day.  I spent the first week of my maternity leave cleaning.  I cleaned everything that needed cleaning and everything that didn’t, then went back around and did most of it again.  The highlight of my day today was making a raspberry and honey semi-freddo.  It was a bit fiddly but dead easy.  The best part was getting to lick the bowls myself — that’s a treat usually reserved for the husband!

My grandmother came to stay last week and we spent a lot of that time visiting with other family, celebrating my niece’s second birthday and working on our family tree.  My brother and I have been working our way along different branches and have discovered all sort of interesting things.  Firstly, we’ve discovered that we are 6th generation Australians, and have some interesting connections to explorers, convicts and a bigamist but so far, no long lost inheritances!

I started my maternity leave on Monday — it’s weird being home during the day. Yesterday I put a massive effort into a client’s website redesign and only stopped because my feet and legs became so swollen. It’s hard to make fluid retention look sexy. I did try to rest and put my feet up but that’s a whole lot easier said then done. By the time my husband arrived home from work, I’d done some laundry, polished all the timber furniture, cleaned the kitchen cupboards and the fridge, made a pavlova and had dinner in the oven. No wonder my feet were so swollen.

My husband made me promise that I would try to relax today so I scheduled a mani/pedi for 9am then met with a friend for coffee (tea for me) at 11am. While waiting for the salon to open, I stopped in at Big W and found the most adorable baby mobile to hang over the cot. It has safari animals on it and plays “It’s a small world”. Of course I bought it, because it’s a perfect match for the nursery and because I am obviously mental. Why did I buy a mobile for a baby that won’t be coming home from the hospital???

Anyway, my toenails are now the most shocking shade of candy floss pink and I am full of tea and hot chocolate. Gillian and I started our catch up with a quick stop at Lindcraft. I bought two knitting pattern books (both baby clothes because, as already mentioned, I am frigging mental) and the press-studs I need for Nicholas’ burial gown. Meeting with Gillian was good but I was a bit miffed that she didn’t ask at all how I am, or about the baby. We’re both in pretty shitty places right now — a month ago she was diagnosed with a brain tumour and underwent surgery to remove it. She’s now having radiotherapy and chemotherapy but ultimately has a 25% chance of being alive in 18 months and 10% in 24 months. I understand that what she is going through is horrible and harsh and completely unfair; it just would’ve been nice if she could’ve asked me how I am, you know?

I have a hospital appointment this afternoon and came home to have a quick lunch and write this update. And now I have something else to mention. I’ve just started spotting. It’s super super light (two tiny bright pink spots on a liner, but nothing on the toilet paper) and I have absolutely no pain or cramping and I can feel some light movements from the baby. Egads. I am really not ready for this to be over. I phoned my husband at work earlier and he was telling me that it’s horrendously busy there so I won’t bug him with this new development. I’ll just go to my appointment and see what the midwife makes of it all.

Wish me luck.

__________

Edited to add:

I’m home from the hospital.  I saw both the midwife and the obstetrician; neither were impressed by my tiny two blood spots and neither think I’ll be going into labour before my due date.  This week the baby is measuring a perfect 37 weeks so the chunky monkey has bulked up a little since last his last measure.  He hasn’t dropped at all which explains the dreadful reflux I’ve been having – my stomach is basically somewhere over my left shoulder!

We invited ourselves to my brother’s house for dinner on Saturday night and my adorable not-yet-two-year-old niece was in her high chair, just finishing up her dinner when we arrived. I stood in front of her and we chatted, mostly about how her daddy was going to fix the puppy dog when he gets home (she had dropped one of those bobble-head toys, and broke it’s head off). She seems to get stuck on a particular event and uses it as a conversation starter for the following week. Last week her big conversation starter was “mummy fell in the bath!”. Poor mummy!

She was pushing pieces of pear into her little mouth when she looked me up and down, cocked her head to the side and pointed straight at my belly and said “Baby?”. Whoa. We’ve never mentioned it to her but the perceptive little miss worked it out on her own. I said yes, that it was Auntie Tamtam’s baby. She raised her chin at me and said “Show me the baby, I want to see it”. Umm? My sister-inlaw quickly explained that she just wanted to see my tummy, having been through a similar thing with her little brother (he is now six months old already). I showed her my tummy and she gave it a rub and exclaimed “Baby!!”. Happy with that, she finished her pears and I cleaned her up before bringing her into the lounge room with the adults.

She dug around in her toy box and pulled out a little dolly and brought it to me. “My baby”, she explained. Then she pointed at my tummy again and said “Auntie Tamtam’s baby” then she pointed at her little brother and said “Mummy’s baby”. That kid has it all figured out and isn’t even two yet. Un-freaking-believable. The next part just about killed me; she put the dolly up under her shirt and grinned like a fool before announcing that her tummy was the same as my tummy. Indeed.

I’m not sure how we will explain when Auntie Tamtam’s baby is gone. I hope she just sort of forgets about it…

We drove up to the Central Coast yesterday to have lunch with my dad and his partner. They asked about the baby and we tried to explain everything that has been happening. They were both horrified by the treatment we’ve received, particularly with the changing of the MRI report. My dad’s girlfriend was great about it all and said that in light of all the grey areas, as far as she is concerned, everything is normal until the baby is born and something definite is determined. Her own sister is very sick with a fairly rare and mostly untreatable illness, and she manages most of her sister’s healthcare so she was able to understand what we’ve been dealing with from all of our different specialists. I asked if she and dad wanted to see Nudge once he is born and they were very emphatic that they want to be kept in the loop and would love the opportunity to hold him, whether he makes it or not. That meant a lot to me; my dad came to the hospital after Max was born and he held him for a couple of hours with us. I’m glad that he will get to meet another grandson too. So that’s all of my family asked and everyone wants the chance to meet him. The husband hasn’t asked his family, I’m not sure that they will want to see Nudge at all but maybe they will surprise me?

I’m home from work at the moment and these idle hands are restless. It’s too hot to knit and I have no one to knit for anyway. I can’t do any nesting but did manage to finish painting the safari design onto the wooden T-O-Y-B-O-X letters for the baby’s toybox (it was the toybox my brother, sister and I had as kids). I just need something to do besides thinking and distressing about our situation. I’ve been collecting medical journal articles that I can use to convince our doctors to do something more. I really feel that our doctors have given up on us, that it’s just all too hard for them. They could have been doing amnio-infusions right from the start which would’ve helped our baby’s lungs to develop. That’s the first and biggest hurdle – if there’s no lung development they won’t be able to ventilate him. And I’ve found so much literature on peri-dialysis in neonates, and plenty of successful case studies of renal transplants in children under 4yrs. And there are hundreds of thousands of people living with artificial bladders (either internal or external). There’s even been successful transplant of artificially-grown bladders in the US over the last 3 years.

OK, granted it’s a horrible start for any child but I’m just finding it very difficult to just sit and do nothing. It’s made worse by the recent news here of the successful separation of conjoined twins. Not to belittle the good work done for those girls by all involved, but I really feel that it’s a sad state of affairs that they can get better access to health care than me. I can’t even get my geneticist to give us the results of the tests done two months ago!

Our plan for the coming weeks is to get back to the GP and ask her to repeat the glucose test (although this might be pointless if the baby has stopped growing, based on fundus measurements taken at 26 and 30wks) and to book in to see the geneticist so that she might be good enough to give us the effing subtelomeric test results from 2 November. Hmph!

This is what my husband brought home for me today.  He said it was just because he loves me and he wanted to bring me some joy in a week that has been so horrible for us.  I love you Klaus xx

I’m still around but you probably wouldn’t know that given that my last few entries have been set to private.

Bullet points, because they’re cool…

• The new uni semester has started and I’m all about Administrative Law these days.
• We hired a new full-time admin officer but are still waiting for recruitment to run the necessary child protection and criminal record checks. It took six weeks last time to get a start date. Le sigh.
• I actually left the house last weekend. Twice! It was my SIL’s birthday so we headed over there on Saturday for a BBQ lunch, some adorable niece time (I taught her to say ‘faster’ while pushing her on the swing set) and a game of Risk. On Sunday we went out on a friend’s boat for a few hours then back to his house for a quick lunch. It was a very long and tiring day but lots of fun too.
• We both have Monday rostered as a day off. I’m suppose to get one each month but this will only be the second one I’ve had all year. I cannot wait!

Another bullet point post, because that’s how I roll.

• Having a new car to drive is wonderful. It is so comfortable and easy to drive that sometimes I feel kinda guilty for not missing the old car. We went past the dealer last week and saw they had the Golf in their used car lot for $8999! That’s more than double the trade in price they gave us. Ouch!
• Speaking of the new car; I’ve had my heart in my throat several times when random and unexpected objects have come dangerously close to hitting the car. The first item was a full beer keg. I had just dropped the husband off at the train station one morning when a beer keg that was being rolled along the footpath from the delivery truck to a pub’s cellar door got away from the toothless gimp delivery guy and bounced off the kerb then rolled merrily within half a foot of the driver’s door before the delivery guy stopped it. Gah! Then the next morning I was most of the way to work when a delivery truck fully laden with empty blue wheelie bins rounded the corner some three or four cars ahead of me. Foolishly some idiot had elected to ride in the back of the uncovered truck so as to attempt to hold the tall stacks of bins steady. Inevitably as the truck rounded the corner two stacks of bins fell off and bounced along the road. Myself and the other drivers had to take evasive action to avoid hitting them. The last item to nearly hit the car was a moron attached to a leaf blower. Again I was on my way to work and there had been a car accident earlier on that had just been cleared. For whatever reason, the Road and Traffic Authority Guy was walking along the median strip with a leaf blower in his hand. I was just a few car lengths from him when he changed the angle of his grip and the length of the leaf blower stuck out well into my lane. I braked and just as I was about to pass him (and go *clunk*), he suddenly changed the angle of his grip again so the leaf blower was pointed in front of him. Emergency diverted!
• I’ve been really stressed these last few weeks with work and uni but the final exams were this week and now that it’s all over (at least the study part is, the work part hasn’t changed) I feel like a new person. The biggest weight has been lifted from my shoulders. The exam itself wasn’t particularly hard, there was just one question that I wasn’t sure about but when I went back to it after answering the rest of the paper, I had an answer for it.
• Speaking of work, we’re gearing up to do another round of interviews. There were 41 applicants that I’ve culled down to seven. Two look really worthwhile, one looks interesting and four aren’t suitable but met the criteria so therefore we’re obliged to interview them. I really can’t wait until we’re fully staffed again. I’ve got mountains of paperwork piling up and while my assistant does try very hard, she just doesn’t have an eye for detail. The sooner we can get someone else on, the sooner I can get my assistant onto tasks that better match her skill set and the happier I will be! The husband and I are even toying with the idea of taking a holiday. It’s not far off first wedding anniversary and with losing the baby shortly there after, it really feels as though it’s been many years since our last break. I guess ultimately it will depend on how long it takes to appoint and train up the new recruit as well as any developments with the swine flu hamdemic. Good times.
• Babies. The (in)fertility treatment doesn’t appear to be doing much. Meh.
• My sister inlaw is pregnant and due to give birth in August so to help prepare my little niece for the arrival of her little brother, the husband and I gave her a newborn Cabbage Patch Doll. She instantly fell in love with it and delighted everyone by giving it cuddles, drinks from its little plastic bottle and naps in its little plastic capsule. Adorable! She even had a mini-tantrum when my girlfriend’s ten month old daughter picked up the CPK’s bottle to play with. Hilarious! I was so happy that I could give my niece her first CPK. I have found memories of my own and while she’s far too little to remember receiving it, it’s still kinda special. :)
• I celebrated another birthday a few weeks ago and can honestly say it was one of the best. The husband asked me what I would like for my birthday dinner and I decided to have my favourite meal — Christmas dinner. Turkey, baked vegetables, cranberry sauce. Lovely! The girls at work had a morning tea for me and gave me a variey of birthday cards (and a gift voucher for the local department store). The husband, bless him, turned the event into an extended celebration by giving me a little gift each day for a few days either side of my birthday. One of the gifts he gave me was House of the Dead 2&3 for the Wii — it was my favourite game on the Dreamcast (remember that thing??) and I loved reliving the zombie blasting fun so much that I couldn’t grip a pen properly for a day or so afterwards. Stupid trigger finger. Heh. He also gave me Call of Duty 4 which I’ve been loving. For a day or so I tried to convince the husband that I really was Soap MacTavish, SAS and awesome. He wasn’t buying it.  I finished the single player campaign very quickly; in what seemed to be just five or six hours.  It ended just as I was really getting into it which was very disappointing.  I guess I’m just use to massive roleplaying games like Oblivion that take 200+ hours to complete.  Speaking of Oblivion, I still have the Shivering Isles expansion to finish.  I love this time between uni semesters!  Game on!
• What with it being Winter and all, I’ve made a scientific discovery. It would appear that the degree of sluttiness of the skirt plus knee length boots combo can be directly correlated to the percentage  of body fat of the wearer. It appears that the sluttier the skirt/boot combo; the greater the volume of body fat, particularly in the thigh/arse regions. I wonder if this is a local phenomenon or if it’s global? Clearly I should apply for a research grant.
• The first prize in Ozlotto is $90M this week. Lemme just spell that out for you: A$90,000,000.00 Jesus wept!

I have always detested Mother’s day. My own mother did an awesome job of being horrible to myself and my siblings for as long as I can remember, and having to honour her on this day each year by playing happy families and pretending she was number-one-mum was just as traumatising. I don’t speak to my own mother anymore and in recent years, Mother’s day was just another day but now I find myself hating Mother’s day because it represents what I don’t have.

My appointment at IVF Australia was interesting. To cut a long story short, the doctor found 6-8 cysts on my left ovary but none on my right ovary. He isn’t convinced that I’ve been ovulating at all so he is running with the diagnosis of PCOS. I have been prescribed a course of fertility drugs and instructions to return to discuss my options if I am not pregnant after three more cycles.