Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Wedding Anniversary

It's our wedding anniversary tomorrow

We have been married 4 years

Our first wedding anniversary was 10 days before Thomas was born. We went to a friends place for a meal but we weren't really up for celebrating. The Doctors had already found worrying signs of Thomas' condition. The scans had shown up a high S/D ratio (blood pressure) in the umbilical cord of 5, it was supposed to be around 2 or 3. Also I had a very large amount of amniotic fluid, its a condition called Polyhydramnios, we were being monitored with the fetal heart monitor every couple of days and they were trying to get Thomas to 38 weeks before delivering. We got him to 37 weeks and 5 days. I wondered (after) if the high S/D ratio was an indicator of his extreme pulmonary hypertension, but I am told that it probably wasn't. The over abundance of amniotic fluid is an indicator of his unconventional digestive arrangement, but it can indicate other things too. No one informed me about this, I did a very long internet research shift to find some information that gave me a whisper of things to come. Then I was too scared to ask.

The second year I don't even remember, except, I know we were trying to coordinate a bathroom renovation that dragged on for 12 weeks. I have thought about it and I don't have any recollection of any kind of event to mark the day. We were so sad. And the house was such a huge disaster. Everyone kept on saying to us, "you must be so happy/pleased to finally get it done", "is the bathroom great/are you enjoying picking out the fittings?", "it will be great when it's done". I felt like screaming at them, " I would rather have my son living here with me, a renovated bathroom does not fix my grief, no I don't love my new bathroom, its a big pain in the ass to not shower in your own home for 12 weeks, I hate everyone who wants to force the good side or bright side of any situation out of me" I didn't understand why people couldn't allow me to grieve, I think that they made it worse by trying to be bright and not allowing me to talk about things. My family has a history of not talking about things.

Last year was a different kind of sad with a fair bit of angry mixed in, we survived last year by prayer and a fairly big measure of stubbornness. A wedding anniversary was more of a joke than a celebration. I was very angry last year.

This year is year 4, it has been our best year yet and we are actually going to celebrate. My Husband has bought Theatre tickets, so we are going out. He has taken a day off work. And he has sourced the tickets from the internet, we are going to see Milkwood. We have the Melbourne Fringe Festival on at the moment, Milkwood is part of that festival. I better find something nice to wear, and put on some makeup.

This is a nice picture of us taken last week when we visited Marysville Vic to see how the town has recovered after the devastating Black Saturday fires. This is what 4 years of weathering devastation looks like on our faces, older with a little bit of hope for the future.



3 comments:

  1. Hello xoxo What an honest, identifiable post. Happy (belated now!) anniversary, I hope you had a really engaging and connected time. I completely sympathise and recognise a lot of what you say in what we, too, coped with over the years. I can hardly believe we are about to count our 7th :( And the melancholia is now mostly to do with the fact that, after 7 years, well SURELY there's no effect on us! That we can't still be having 'bad' days... The difference now is, when we have a bad day we can't attribute it to anything to do with this huge shift in our lives that our baby dying has left us with.

    Amazing, how other souls affect your life when they are trying their best to 'lift' you out of your 'doldrums'. Ugh!

    Thank you for being so open in your post, it was an honour to read.

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  2. i wonder where and how i will be years down the line in my loss. Thank you for bein so honest. Happy belated anniversary.

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  3. Hello my dear beautiful sister i have known you for 41 years of my life but I hardly know the person you are yet I feel more connected to you than ever and i rejoice that you celebrate your 4th aniversry and belated happy aniversry to you for you deserve all the happiness in the world and to spend it with your beautiful husband whom I have been guilty of judging in the past without even having known him either. I am sorry for asking the questions about your bathroom rennovations but at the time it was all i felt we or i was able to talk to you about because the monumental loss you had suffered could not be discussed and it was easier to sweep under the carpet. Well I just wanted to say I love you and take care of yourself and your blog is so beautiful. Love and Light Nicholas

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