Today is my birthday.
Working at a university, it's such a busy time of year that I haven't felt the date approach at all and now here it is. It sucks but I can't stand being wished a happy day when this is yet another day that Saersha is not here. This is my first birthday without her and a reminder that I keep pushing through time and she does not.

The body

While I have never really fit societal ideals, I have, for most of my adult life, felt pretty good in my body. I cycled everywhere, I ran 10km races and then completed 4 half marathons. I took yoga classes and did outdoorsy stuff. I felt strong.

Then through these last 3 years of pregnancy, miscarriage and baby loss that feeling of strength has slipped away. It's not just that I have added 20 pounds to my non-pregnant set point, it's that I don't feel confident that my body will do what I need it to.

During my pregnancy with Saersha I kept up with fitness as well as I could. After I passed the first trimester and it seemed I might actually not miscarry, I attended prenatal aerobics, water exercise classes and yoga. I didn't feel the same as before of course but what I lost in actual fitness I gained in pride that my body was growing a new life, a daughter who I hoped to inspire to do things that made her feel strong.

Then my body proved even more cruel than I could have imagined. It let her go right when she was ready to be born, it failed us both right at the critical moment. Other BLMs have described feeling like their body is a crime scene and I can relate to that. Why would the placenta detach prematurely after working so well for months and building a beautiful 8.7 lb. baby girl? In this case no one has an answer.

Now this body is playing host again but I can't feel any of the pride I felt before. So now I am just feeling awkward and huge and all of the negatives of pregnancy without the glow of body love for the work that it is doing.

We were just away on vacation at a near by island with no electricity (i.e. no distractions). It was great in many ways, but it was time spent more aware and present in my body than usual. I realized I have been trying to ignore it in my everyday life but I feel ugly and I am stressed when I do anything physical or strenuous. Is it OK to ignore myself in this way while still of course eating well and maintaining health?

How can I love this body now? How can I keep from self-loathing on a physical level?
How can I trust my body to do what I need, and more importantly what this little boy needs?

I feel like the next most logical thing to do is write the story of Saersha's birth and death but I am not ready to do that yet. In the thick of grief I did write the story in a journal as far as I could, as far as the point where we had to decide to turn off the machines.

I have not written about holding her and having our only moments together as a family, or about the time we spent with her body after she died or her cremation. I have not written about being given the tiny handful of ashes and bone, with their little metal ID tag. I will write about these things, but not today. 

Saersha's time is when the leaves change colour and when there is a crispness in the air, then when it's dark and wet. Right now it's warm and sunny and life is focussed outwards, not in. But part of me is not engaged in all of that. Part of me is always in winter. Losing her has changed the meaning of time. I am drawn to do this writing but the season is wrong.

At the same time this new life is squirming inside of me and if it is indeed possible that he will live (which I am starting to believe) then I need to make the most of the time I have now to think of Saersha and write. Again I am thinking of the time until vs the time since.

So baby girl, know that I am thinking of you now and always, even though I haven't carved all of the memories into words yet. 

To Begin

It's been almost 9 months since my daughter was born and died, why start blogging now?
Other baby loss bloggers have noted the significance of 9 months growing their babies and then 9 months grieving them. It's a very painful symmetry of time.

The babies that were conceived around the time that she was born are now coming into the world. Anyone who has experienced the interminableness of pregnancy can appreciate that span of months. 

Really now I am just starting to feel like I can possibly write about what happened. It's taken 9 months to gestate my grief enough to put it out into the world a bit.

I wish that this blog could be beautiful enough to represent her, to be worthy of her, but I don't think I will be capable of that. Saersha deserves graceful and poetic writing, amazing you with wisdom. This will certainly fall short.

She was our so desired and loved daughter. It took us almost two years and 3 early losses before we were blessed with her. Finally things were right with the universe again. We were being reconciled after all the struggles and rewarded with a perfect healthy girl, until the morning that she was born and it all fell away.

I will write about what happened in more detail later, but in the simplest terms, the placenta detached too early and left her without oxygen when labour started. How could things have gone so wrong just on the day she was finally arriving? The pregnancy had really been textbook until that day and its blood and panic. Injustice doesn't begin to describe it.

In the insanity that is immediate loss all I wanted was to be pregnant again. It wasn't something that can be easily described. It was like a primal force. It was my fingernails digging into the cliff. It was the only thing that would help even a little bit.

On the fourth month it happened. Now I am blessed again with a healthy pregnancy and a normal baby so far. This will be Saersha's brother, who will be born almost exactly a year later and who I can sometimes convince myself will actually arrive screaming with life, get to sleep in the crib his sister never saw and share her things and our love.

This is also what has inspired me to write now. For all of the counting down I do to this baby's arrival, I am aware that it is also counting away from her. I yearn to go backwards and forwards at the same time. Only one way is possible of course and that will take its creeping pace, so I need to be present and to remember. Thinking forward and backward for my babies.