I’m not sure when the anxiety returned, maybe once things had started to settle down after the funeral and anniversary or maybe the pregnancy was starting to take its toll. It was definitely winter, cold and wet and coping understaffed on a day when we had to keep the children inside was a nightmare! We were all struggling and in turn short tempered. I came home and just had nothing left to give my own family, I was just exhausted and uncomfortable. But whatever the reason, when things felt too much at home, Charlie was acting out or Dave was moody, my mind would retreat to life while pregnant with Louis. All the stress, all the tiredness, all the physical pushing to make it through each day and the guilt that this was the reason we lost our boy. The anxiety was that if I were to succumb to the same level of stress, physically and mentally, history would repeat itself and we would lose this baby too. I couldn’t shake it and I didn’t know what to do about it.
On top of everything we had received news that this baby, like Louis, too had a marginal cord attached to the placenta – my heart shattered into 1000 pieces. Although this wasn’t the reasoning for our loss, to me it was all connected and I was disappointed that with all the medication I was taking, there would still be complications. Regrettably a complication I had ignored while pregnant with Louis, or rather had been misinformed of the seriousness.
I was now starting to realise that my anxiety was a combination of all of the above and come Monday morning I struggled to even get out of bed – I didn’t want to even go into work. I hated that I felt this way because I knew it could be so much better and I really did love my job. I felt respected, connected and valued, but the past few days had brought out the worst in all of us and the kids copped the front of it, including our own. That wasn’t the educator, person or mother I wanted to be – I just didn’t know what to do about it.
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Charlie and I were back at the doctors this week with a skin infection that just didn’t seem to want to budge – he really was my child – the poor bugger! Myself needing a new referral as we had finally decided to birth our little rainbow in Shepparton. Our first hurdle was getting through all of my current care and history (my pregnancy with Louis had been erased during our last visit remember). Now I was back with my regular Doctor and he was very empathetic and apologised for the added trigger of the medical block on my file – I suggested they revise their dropdown outcome box to include ‘stillborn’ rather than having to erase the entire pregnancy. Louis was now back on my notes – as he should be!
Unfortunately, it just seemed to be one of those weeks for reminiscing, but after my doctor’s appointment I was all medicalled out, so when I went to pick up my scripts and the pharmacist had questions – he was met with limited answers and was probably really confused. This pharmacist had a tendency to ask questions about the medications prescribed and it was irritating at best. We all knew he meant well and was obviously very invested in his job, which is more than you can say for most pharmacists – but I really wasn’t interested in explaining why I was on blood thinners again. I explained while Charlie was mucking about the register, that I was on the blood thinners as a precaution due to a blood clot with my previous pregnancy. The pharmacist responded with ‘oh so Charlie’s going to be a big brother! That’s exciting! So, you had the blood clot with Charlie but it’s gone now?’
Argh I was exhausted. ‘No not with Charlie, my previous pregnancy, but yes the blood clot is gone.’ I could see the confusion on his face, but I just didn’t have the energy. We had already had the conversation about Charlie becoming a big brother and the blood clot while pregnant with Louis and yet here I am again, pregnant, with Charlie but no baby in my arms – you could understand why there were days were I just couldn’t face the real world. Maybe there was a way to add a note on the scripts, ‘blood clot in previous pregnancy, resulted in stillbirth, blood thinners as precaution for entirety of current pregnancy.’
I did also consider sending through a complaint but again, I just didn’t have the energy.
To be honest if the lady at the post office sent her condolences when she saw the baby announcement in the local paper, then the pharmacist didn’t really have an excuse.
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The week that followed saw my monthly catch up with Sarah, although I struggled to put into words how I had been feeling. I disclosed that I was confused by my reaction to the last baby announcement and that I was annoyed that was the news that tipped me over the edge. Again, we discussed giving myself permission to ‘not be ok’ or be ‘annoyed’ by others ignorance, but I needed to then let it go and move on. This was the step I now needed to work on, because even though I felt I had let several emotions go, by talking things through and voicing my pain, I had not, because it had come back with a vengeance at a very inconvenient time. Yes, I could be sad for our loss and I forever would be, but I would need to grieve, let it out and put it behind me, because it would never really be gone.
I just wanted to know our rainbow baby was ok, I wanted to feel him kick and move around and hear his little heartbeat – I was getting desperate.
We were currently at 15 weeks and four days, apparently, we needed to be at least 16 weeks to hear the heartbeat, but regardless I was still checking daily with the doppler and had been from nine weeks as the movement noises were reassuring – but now that wasn’t enough.
I just wanted our baby boy to arrive happy, healthy and safely. We all needed that.
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It was only a few days after my appointment that I realised I just needed more space. The pregnancy announcements annoyed me because it was all just too much. The congratulations, the joy, the hope for the baby’s safe delivery and future together with their families.
For us there was a lot of confusion from Charlie about his rainbow baby brother in Mummy’s tummy. ‘Baby brother Louis’ he would say, and we would have to explain, ‘not baby brother Louis, rainbow baby brother.’ Things just would have been easier if our rainbow was a girl so we could say, ‘not Charlie’s baby brother Louis, your baby sister!’ Not that we would change things, it would have just made things a little easier, so I was disappointed that there was yet another layer we had to battle.
Secondly, call it selfish but I was scared to see a friend go through what had, the loss of a child – that would really hurt. I also worried that I may find it hard to visit all these babies when they arrived, all the celebration, all the happiness of a newborn – I just didn’t know what that would look like and that was hard to put into words to those who had been there for us when both the boys were born. To me I felt that I owed it to the them, to be excited and be in the present with them as they were for us, but things just weren’t the same as they had been before.
I didn’t want to hear about pregnancies and gender reveals or god forbid attend a baby shower, but that wasn’t fair on those who were excited to be expecting. It wasn’t their fault we lost Louis – but that was it – we had lost Louis. We had forever lost our little Louis and the pain would always be there, and the truth was, some days we would cope and some days we wouldn’t, some events we would attend and some we wouldn’t – that was our forever now.
'Our Little Louis' 