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.