If you look hard enough you can always see a faint second line, and true or false, whatever it may be, I needed to stop pregnancy testing before my period was due – because faint line or not, my periods were still coming monthly. They were painful and most likely early miscarriages but I needed to believe that our rainbow baby would find their way to us once they had finished spending time with our little Louis and all the angel babies he had befriended along his journey.
The new job was working out well with both Charlie and I finding our feet, granted we still had our bad days, but that was the normal life of mothering a ‘threenager’.
Charlie had started speech therapy and was being referred to an occupational therapist, and I was due to start with a local naturopath who was going to use ‘emotional release therapy’ to which I was excited for! She was also a natural fertility counsellor which may come in handy if we continued to be unsuccessful moving forward.
Easter was approaching and ideally, we had hoped to be pregnant by now and I was determined to see our luck change. Dave and I had been feeling hurt, sad and angry by the hand we had been dealt and consequently been feeling a disconnect toward each other – which was not ideal for making babies! But it was more than that, our lives were shit and we weren’t happy, and we had accepted that not only would no one ever understand our grief but we also would never understand each other’s own pain. We were both trying so hard to make each other happy that we were neglecting our own needs and to be honest for me was the biggest let down – we just weren’t the same people we once were – not the people we were before we lost Louis.
It was early April and the weather had started to cool but the sun was still warm and Charlie and I were home recovering from gastro. While Charlie played in the yard, I found peace crawling around in the grass looking for a lucky four-leaf clover – something I had done for many years now and never been successful. For two days I spent hours shuffling through thousands of three-leaf clovers, wishing to find just one small piece of happiness to encourage us to keep going! I never did find a four-leaf clover, but what I did find was something better, something bigger – a sign from our little boy. Louis had sent us not a four-leaf clover, but a five-leaf clover, and although I didn’t know it at the time, the legend states they are even luckier and rarer than the four-leaf clover.
Alongside the traditional hope, love, faith and luck, the five-leaf clover is said to bring the addition of financial and spiritual wealth. They also signify transitions and new adventures.
The days that followed saw Dave come down unwell also and I was left to step up with Charlie and I was exhausted! But two incidents stuck with me from these events, one; Charlie randomly reached up and kissed my belly, and two; later that same day, he stated the words that sounded like ‘my brother gone’.
Charlie used to state things like this all the time but he hadn’t for a while now and it was both comforting and rattling – but what did this mean? Had we missed something?
Returning to work after a week of unwellness brought with it a strange tension within the centres four walls. It was Kinder holidays therefore we had different children within the room, including four of our own children.
Days with Charlie in the room were a struggle for me and due to also having a week off I was feeling a bit lost, therefore I made the decision to focus on him during these periods.
I did however break the ice with one co-worker who I had yet to have much to do with – turned out she knew a lot about people who were now in my past.
She was a valued educator and had seen a lot of educators come and go over the years – one educator in particular seemed to bring both our eyes to narrow as we tried to foresee what the other was thinking.
When she questioned why the change, I openly stated that we had a baby that didn’t make it home and we just couldn’t go back. I expressed that the last centre was supposed to be our new start but again, she understood entirely why we couldn’t stay there either.
Our story just seemed to roll off my tongue now and before I knew it, I was telling a parent about Louis. I had since learned that they were a close friend to one of the girls from mother’s group and when I mentioned the connection, she asked if Charlie and I had been at our friend’s daughters third birthday party last year. This was the day Louis was born. And it just came out, ‘no unfortunately, we had Charlie’s baby brother pass away last year and that was the day of the party’. What I didn’t expect was her pairing honesty, stating ‘I feel you! this is our tenth pregnancy and my first born was stillborn,’ she said.
And just like that I felt like I belonged.
>>>>
Things had come to a head with Charlie’s behaviour and I was feeling overwhelmed. On the one hand Dave and I were seeing improvements with his speech, listening and understanding daily and on the other hand my concerns were growing each day. The local speech therapist was amazing and one of those people who you could tell loved her job by the way she interacted with Charlie. She was able to gently guide him to expand on his words and would look up at me with a smile when he was able to confidently add another word to the sentence. We agreed to continue on with the suggested strategies at home and check back in in a few weeks’ time to see if he had progressed further. But it was when she asked if I had any questions that I stumbled – I just couldn’t put into words what continued to play on my mind. Was it Charlie’s speech that was holding him back and causing him to act with aggression towards others, or was there an underlying diagnosis that was the cause for the delay? She didn’t have the answer, however she ensured me that we were doing all the right things.
The following Maternal Child Health appointment on the other hand really derailed me! It was Charlie’s three-and-a-half-year check-up and it was with a nurse who had been a part of our journey from the start. But she didn’t hold back and Charlie was in full form! He didn’t want to play the games and he was completely overstimulated from giving his all during speech therapy – defiantly regretted booking one appointment after the other. Charlie mixed his colours up and struggled to answer the nurses’ questions, getting confused and mimicking her words. She asked about his toileting while he continued to play up, refusing to sit at the table and throwing himself at the floor. I explained that the past four months had been a shemozzle with finishing up at Nathalia, starting and leaving one centre and finally finding our feet, however only recently. Her response was ‘are you intending to start him with four-year-old kinder next year?’ And I leapt to his defence! I had spent years advocating for Charlie’s wellbeing and the fact that he was constantly being held back in Nathalia – now he was finally in with the older kids and making progress and this woman was suggesting we consider pulling him back again?!
But also, you can’t do two years of three-year-old kinder so she really didn’t know what she was talking about! She then asked if I was still working in Childcare and confirmed that I was working in Nathalia when I ‘lost the baby’. She followed by asking if Charlie showed understanding when we spoke to him and I burst into tears!
Charlie scored 39/100 on paper and the nurse explained that anything lower than a score of 49/100 were referred to NDIS which would help cover with costs for specialist appointments. She explained that Charlie was showing signs that indicate a possible diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and although hurt by the bluntness, I did want answers and I wanted to help Charlie in the best way I knew how – accepting help from the professionals.
'Our Little Louis' 