It all started so innocently. A bit of afternoon painting to fill up the time in between coming home from preschool and eating dinner. Sounds great right? Whatever could go wrong.

Allow me to present a photo essay of what could go wrong:

Declan likes to consider himself a post-modern impressionist.

He decided he needed a different application method.

I should probably make a crappy joke about being caught red handed here.

Right about this point I made the silly mistake of turning around to get Connor some milk. I turned back to see my eldest has moved on from paper and is now turning himself into an installation piece, smearing paint over his face and arms. Cue a quick dash to the bath with strict instructions not to touch anything.

Despite his protests I eventually convinced him it was going to take a little more than washing his hands to get rid of all the paint.

I’m not sure what’s worse about this photo, the state of his face or just how shaggy his hair is getting. The kid looks like he’s waiting for Fagin to contact him about an opening in the petty crime career path.

Lesson learned – never turn your back on a three year old when he’s armed with poster paint.

Little Conman was less that impressed with all the chaos.

Yesterday I sat down and sorted a pack of sprinkles into colours. It didn’t occur to me until Dan asked what the hell I was doing that this might be a little strange, I just didn’t want the decorations on my cupcakes to clash.

The day that I’d planned to make Declan’s cupcakes for his preschool birthday celebration was the same day my waters broke and I went into hospital, and then when I had Robyn on his actual birthday it obviously put something of a spanner in the works. As such Declan’s third birthday has managed to be dragged out over a month with the various celebrations and trips out.

Fortunately this is the last one, his birthday tea at preschool. Ten minutes where he is the focus of everyone in the room followed by the consumption of cupcakes, the only way it could get any better would be a personal appearance from Spiderman – we’re saving that one for his fourth birthday though.

I am slightly obsessed with junk food.

I’m also slightlyfairly overweight.

These two things may or may not be related, but I’m thinking they probably are.

This pregnancy was my hardest and my heaviest. Again, I’m thinking that’s probably related. One of the big goals I’ve set for myself this year, and before we even consider trying to have a fourth baby is to get healthier, get fitter and drop the pounds that I’ve put on through poor food choices and not working hard enough after each baby. I’ve managed to put on 60lbs since Dan and I first met, going from a Australian size 10-12 to a 14-16 and I really didn’t realise how bad I actually looked until I joined in with a weight loss challenge with my online mum’s group and had to take photos in my underwear.

That’s photos OF me in my underwear, not taking photos whilst wearing just underwear, which would be odd yet exciting all at the same time. I propose a movement towards partially nude photographers.

I have back boobs, my bum is barely small enough to fit into my flesh coloured granny panties and I have bingo arms to rival my Nans. I don’t look, or feel, like a 23 year old.

I’ve been working hard on eating better and eating less since giving birth, and I’ve already lost eight pounds, but I feel the need for a definite challenge.

And this is where the fast food comes in.

I vow to not eat any fast food or takeaway until my 24th birthday, on the 21st of August.

That means no KFC, no takeaway pizza (homemade is allowed), no McDonalds, no kebabs, no Chinese, none of it.

Sushi is allowed, as is going out to a proper sit down restaurant or cafe. But every single meal we eat at home must be homecooked.

Our last pizza was on the 21st of February, making it an even six months without take out. I’m hoping this is long enough to completely put me off the taste of fried food and hopefully get me out of the habit of ordering out when I can’t be bothered to cook.

I also worked out, based on our average weekly spend, that this should save us a little bit over $1,000, which of course will go directly into my Lime Green Sofa Fund.

I am putting this out there in public so I can be held accountable (and also because Dan doesn’t think I can do it, in fact he finds the entire idea of me not eating KFC for six whole months hilarious – which is probably is, but damnit, I’ve promised the internet something now so I have to stick to it.

Dan and I sat and waited for a room to clear out on the ward. We finally, after much debating, decided on both a boys name and a girls name. We laughed about how unprepared we were this time around, we still hadn’t bought a bouncer, and we needed a double pram because Connor still refuses to use his feet. He left early to clean up the lounge for the carpet cleaners, promising that he’d come in the following morning with Connor.

They found me a room not long after he left and I got settled in, I wrote a book review for CraftBlog, ate dinner (well, ate the potato from my plate and then went to the hospital cafe to find something more edible), watched American Psycho and went to bed.

The midwives checked me and gave me anti-bs at 12pm, 6pm, 9pm and again at 12am, baby was always around 150bpm, my temp never went higher than 37* and my blood pressure was excellent. I threw up the antibiotics given to me at 6, so they gave me another dose to make up for it, as well as some anti-nausea meds.

I fell asleep early, slept a few hours and then tossed and turned the rest of the night, the air conditioning was rattling, the baby in the next room was screaming and my own little one was kicking me over and over again in the ribs, I remember shifting my position to try to move her down so it wasn’t as painful. I turned my phone on to check the time, 4am, I put some scrunched up tissue in my ears to block out the sound of the air conditioner and fell back asleep.

The night shift midwife, Macca, came in at 6am with a cheery good morning, set my antibiotics down and got to taking my temp and blood pressure whilst we chatted about me getting a day pass to get out to celebrate Declan’s birthday.

When she placed the doppler on my stomach and didn’t pick something up straight away. I wasn’t concerned in the slightest, I’d felt her moving so much during the night that I figured she’d just found a new spot to lay in, I joked that the baby was just like its Dad and liked to lay in, I said that I was glad one of us got some sleep through all the noise of the ward. She pressed it into my stomach over and over again, having me roll from side to side. She said it was probably just an issue with the batteries and went out to change them.

I lay in bed and poked my stomach, had a chat to my belly and told the babe to wake up otherwise they were going to make me drink a tonne of orange juice, and that would play havoc with my heartburn.

Macca returned with fresh batteries, and another five minutes of prodding. She assured me that the baby was fine, she could hear a heartbeat, but she wanted to get a clearer one to reassure me, she showed me the readout saying 120bpm and told me it was the baby’s. I remember thinking at the time how low it was, my previous BPMs usually sat around 160, only looking back did I realise that she was probably showing me my own heartbeat as I started to panic.

She explained that it was probably just her being tired and not being able to find the right spot, so she called in a second midwife, and CTG machine. I was still waiting for them to find the magic spot, I wasn’t thinking about the baby, I was getting annoyed that they were putting so much ultrasound gel on me that it was getting all over the sheets as I moved into different positions, I wanted to go back to sleep once they found the heartbeat and now my sheets were cold and wet with blue gunk.

The second midwife explained that she was just going to give the doctor a call so she could do an ultrasound and make sure all was okay. Macca asked if there was anyone who could look after the boys at short notice, I wasn’t sure why she needed to know, she told me to call Dan and tell him to come in straight away.

That was when I clicked that this was more serious. Though I thought that the baby’s heartbeat was  just low, that it was in distress the same way that Connor was and that they were going to take me in for an emergency c-section. It never crossed my mind that it could be dead.

The doctor, Minka, showed up, she also did my initial appointment, I was so glad to see someone I already knew instead of yet another fresh face. I apologised and said how sorry I was for making her come in early. Macca stood next to the bed and held my hand, I remember hating it, I don’t like people touching my hands, not even Dan.

My belly was already drenched with the ultrasound gel, the doctor didn’t need any more. She put the wand on my bump and there was just silence in the room. I looked at the baby on the screen, it’s spine was at the top, my 20 week ultrasounds had all been with the back at the bottom on the screen, like they were laying down. This baby was suspended in mid air, limbs hanging down, no pulsing blob in its chest, no movement. I looked over at Macca and she had tears welling up in her eyes. Minka explained that the image currently on the screen was a close up of the chest, and she couldn’t see the heart beating. Suddenly that hand holding mine didn’t seem so bad. All I could think of was that I had to call Dan and tell him to hurry up.

My one regret was telling Dan over the phone. I needed him here immediately, I needed him to know how urgent it was, to not stop to talk to his Mum or anything. I asked him what he was doing, he was just packing the kids into the car and asked if I was okay. All I could say was “the baby’s dead.”

I was certain that someone had stayed with me whilst I waited for Dan to come in, but he says that I was alone when he showed up. Minka returned and said that she’d booked me in for 8am with the hospital ultrasound so that they could confirm and make sure there weren’t any other issues that may affect the birth. My room was right at the back of the ward, the midwives were gathered in a huddle half way down the corridor and totally parted for me as I walked through them, I was convinced that everyone was staring at me, everyone we passed, even down to the guy cleaning the carpets, they all knew I was the one with the dead baby in me, and every one was looking at me.

I didn’t even look at the screen on the second ultrasound, just at Dan. I’d wanted to find out the sex then, it didn’t feel right having a “it’s a boy/girl!” moment with a stillbirth. Dan didn’t want to, so we didn’t.

I didn’t so much walk as run back to my room, everything was going fuzzy, I had an IV that I bumped into everything as tried to get away from everyone staring. The bumping made me think that I was attracting even more attention to myself, stressing me out more, making me go faster and making me crash my IV into more things. We got back to the room and I said there was no way I was giving birth, I told Dan I had to have a c-section, that I couldn’t go through the pain of labour and not have a baby to show for it.

The rest of the morning is a blur, my in laws came in, with Connor, and I cried a lot, midwives that had treated me over the last 24 hours came in and said how sorry they were, and I cried a lot, Dan and I sat dumbfounded and together we cried a lot.

The doctors finally came to see me at 11am to explain what the process was, I don’t remember much, just how adamant I was that I wanted a full autopsy. I was so scared that it was something genetic that could be replicated in any children we may have in the future, or lying dormant in one of the boys. The doctor kept on using the phrase “drop off the tree”, there’s still a lot of Australian phrases I don’t know, so this one baffled me, I saw it on a par with “drop off the twig” which isn’t exactly the most compassionate colloquialism. Dan later explained that it’s actually a euphemism and is a nice thing to say, but the entire time she was talking to us I just blanked out and focused on this phrase.

As we waited to go to the delivery ward I cried because I hadn’t taken a 36 week photo, I’d been taking one every five weeks, and had 15, 20, 25 and 30, but I’d forgotten to do it the previous Friday and had instead just put it off until I was 36 weeks. I wanted a photo but I didn’t want a photo of me with a dead baby inside my belly.

12pm I walked across the corridor to the delivery ward. I sobbed the entire way and told Dan that it wasn’t meant to be like this.

We got settled in the birthing room, there was one of those faceless clay figurines on the shelf, a happy mother and father looking down and cradling a newborn baby. It made me bitter and angry, I asked Dan to hide it.

I’d asked for an epidural and we were waiting on the anesthetist, they got everything laid out and set up, only for me to change my mind at the very last minute and go for a Patient Controlled Anesthetic instead. They don’t normally use Fentanyl during labour, it makes the baby too dopey and sleepy, but obviously this wasn’t an issue. Suddenly it became very important for me to feel the birth, I didn’t want that feeling of being completely disconnected.

One of the things that bothered me about Connor’s birth (where I had an epidural) was how distant I felt from it, I didn’t feel the contractions, I didn’t feel him come out, then when they whisked him away so quickly to special care I just sat there totally confused. I’d had a baby apparently, but I hadn’t felt it, and I hadn’t seen him, so I wasn’t entirely certain.

The pitocin began at 1pm.

The PCA did an awesome job of taking the edge off the pain without completely dulling it. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to get through this if I even thought about the fact that the baby wasn’t alive. So we all carried on like it was a completely standard birth, Dan and I chatted to the midwives about where we wanted to travel, we laughed and joked and it felt normal.

I spent the first half of the labour sitting on the bed with my legs crossed underneath me, rocking through the contractions.

At 2pm, 1 hour after the induction begun, Jedda, my midwife, checked me and I was already 4-5cm dilated.

Tiredness was kicking in from my restless night as well as some dopey-ness from the meds, so I stayed laying down and dozed in and out as the contractions came and went. I clicked the button on the PCA every time I felt a contraction beginning and by the time the peak hit it just took away the sharpness. I remember trying so hard to stay peaceful, I was humming through each contraction at the begining, as it went on the humming got more animalistic though – I don’t think I could ever be a silent birther.

I loved being left alone with Dan to just focus on the labour, at one stage when Jedda came in and checked me she rubbed my thigh to help me through a contraction. I have no idea what she did, but it helped so much, I spent the next half hour trying to direct Dan on how to rub my thigh properly to ease the pain and getting frustrated at how he wasn’t doing it right. At one stage, just as I was coming into transition based on my reaction, Dan moved the PCA so he could get closer to the bed and accidentally clicked it off. I don’t remember much of my reaction, just how I felt, most of which was pure anger, I don’t remember saying anything, but according to Dan I completely exploded at him and it took Jedda to calm me down.

Not long after that the PCA hit its two hour limit and ran out of meds, a midwife went to call the anesthetist to either get her permission to readminister the Fentynal or to get her to come and do it, I have no idea. I’d switched to gas by this point to cover the gap, I was sucking in so much during each contraction that I was going into those little gas dreams where everything spins and everyone is repeating themselves.

That’s right about the time I told Dan I had to pee.

Hindsight tells me I should have clicked what that feeling was, and it wasn’t pee, but I didn’t. I felt like I was going to wet myself so I hurried to the bathroom, Dan trailing after me pushing the IV and the PCA stands that were still hooked up to my arm.

Then it goes black.

I don’t know if it was the gas or just my brain trying to block it all out, but I only remember flashes.

Watching Dan walk away to grab the gas I was demanding and screaming at him “the baby’s coming”, I felt this intense pressure and reached down to find her fully crowning.

Black.

Holding my hand over my crotch trying to support the head so I didn’t tear. I was still sitting on the toilet, I wanted to push, I wanted to go back to the bed and I wanted to wait for the midwives, but they seemed to be taking so long.

Black.

Looking down and seeing Jedda, she was talking to me but I couldn’t understand her, I was angry at her, her mouth was moving but it was like she wasn’t making any sound.

Black.

Someone helping me stand up, feeling the baby leave me with a final push.

Black.

Looking down and seeing her in my lap, I was sitting back down on the toilet. I thought it had been a mistake, I remember thinking so clearly that she was alive, she just didn’t look dead, she looked like a normal healthy baby, just asleep. I wanted her to wake up so badly, I was still convinced that they’d all got it wrong, that she was fine and was going to surprise everybody. As soon as I realised that wasn’t going to happen I wanted someone to take her away, I didn’t want to touch her.

Then nothing.

I don’t remember delivering the placenta, I have no idea how I got back into bed, just a massive empty hole. I woke up, laying on my side, my arms wrapped around her, swaddled in a pink and blue blanket with my face pressed into her head, she smelled amazing, sweet new baby smell. I heard Dan on the phone, sobbing as he told his Mum that we were calling her Robyn.

Robyn Jade was officially born still at 3:15pm, weighed 3.1kg and was 50cm long. I don’t remember if there was an “it’s a girl!” moment, it seemed like everyone just knew. I’m glad we didn’t find out at the ultrasound and I’m even more glad that I birthed her instead of opting for a c-section, she deserved that. It was my favourite labour experience so far, I felt in control, I felt supported, and I enjoyed feeling each contraction.

Dan and I spent the afternoon cuddling and holding onto our little girl, the midwives bathed and dressed her for me, took photos and hand prints. Midwives came in and out to hug me, my in laws came to visit and cried as they held onto her. It was truly the most surreal experience of my life.

___________

The following morning I asked for her back so that we could say our final goodbyes. I took off her booties and hat to save in her baby box. Her cheeks had turned pink overnight and she was wrapped in a warm blanket, she looked perfect until I opened up the blanket to take her booties off and her legs were blue and purple, and there was a smell that I could never forget, not overwhelming, but the best I can compare it to is when you open a pack of chicken breasts and you know they’re just not good to eat.

I swaddled her tightly, my overwhelming thought was that I wanted her to sleep soundly, and not have her arms go up and scratch her face. I needed to put a hat on her because I knew that she would be going to the morgue and I didn’t want her to be cold.

I asked a midwife to take a photo of the three of us, in the same way that I have photos of each of the boys as we prepared to go home. It felt weird, and I didn’t know whether I should smile, but I’m very happy I have it.

I kissed her head, laid her down in the little plastic hospital bassinette and told her how much we all loved her, and reminded her how wanted she was. I placed a pink blanket over the top of the bassinette and called in a midwife to wheel her away.

Dan and I held each other and just cried, probably more than I ever did over the previous 24 hours. Birthing her was easy, saying goodbye was the hardest part.

_________

This was just two weeks ago today, my bleeding has all but stopped, my breasts are completely empty and my stomach has gone. It’s like the last nine months have been some kind of crazy dream, sometimes I feel like I was never pregnant, although often I wake up in the night and in my half awake state I think I still am pregnant. I want to remember all of this, but at the same time I want to forget, I want to move on, but I want to mourn at the same time.

I feel like a walking contradiction most days.

The fog is begining to lift, but I’m still struggling to see clearly. I still feel exactly the way I did walking down the maternity ward corridor, like I have a sign on my forehead, like everyone I pass in the street knows that I’m the one with the dead baby. I think people feel like it’s contagious, or if they mention it to me I’ll break down sobbing.

For now I have to just focus on healing, physically there are no issues, but mentally I still feel like someone has taken a hammer to my self confidence and strength.

I’m just dreading the first person who asks me how many children I have.

In hindsight, I do not recommend it.

One grumpy one year old, and one hyperactive three year old (that has no concept of fear whatsoever) combined with the rainy weather of the last week causing everyone and their dog to have the same idea to bring the kids to play and get the sillies out of them. Lets just say none of it did much to help productivity.

But Declan playedran around like a headless chook and Connor got to eat a cupcake, so I’m fairly certain they considered it a raving sucess.

One thing I keep on hearing over and over again since Robyn’s birth is how “inspirational” I am.

I feel like a fraud.

I certainly don’t feel inspirational, in fact I think I feel pretty much everything but that.

Today I felt jealous. The green eyed monster planted himself firmly on my shoulder in the early hours of the morning and has resided there for most of the day. I’m jealous that suddenly everyone seems to have a baby but me. I crave a little newborn to hold and cuddle, I long to feel movement in my belly again.

I wake at 3am most mornings and lay there staring at the ceiling willing myself to fall back to sleep. I’m shattered most of the day but can’t bring myself to nap. I shouldn’t be suffering from sleepless nights because of the thoughts that run through my head, I should be suffering from them because I’ve been awake all night with a baby attached to my breast. The spot in front of the window where the cradle was meant to be haunts me.

I have so much hidden bitterness to the world around me right now, that I’m trying so hard to contain, that I feel anything but inspirational.

I’m still trying to put together all of the pieces of the last fortnight, it still seems like a crazy dream, and I can’t honestly work out how I got from the excitement of Thursday morning, my waters breaking all over the bed and making our way to hospital joking about everything we still had to buy, to cremating our daughter eleven days later. This isn’t something that happens to you, it’s one of those things you just hear about, a friend of a friend experienced it, but not in any of my pregnancies did I worry for a moment about my baby dying inside me in the last few weeks of pregnancy.

This entire experience has made me look at life in a new light, see things that I previously took for granted and appreciate them more, it’s made me want to make the most of this gift I’ve been given and to achieve so much more with my time on earth.

Midway through the service today everyone there stood up and placed a present or a flower on Robyn’s casket while Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears In Heaven’ played. I’ve always loved the song, but now it feels even more poingant, in particular, this part:

I must be strong
And carry on,
‘Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven.

That has stuck with me through the past few days and given me so much strength. When I wanted to curl into a ball and never face the world again, that was all that went through my head. I need my life to carry on even though hers hasn’t, I need to celebrate Declan and Connor (even when they drive me up the wall!) and I need to look after myself and make the most of my own life.

Tomorrow is a fresh start, I have new goals for CraftBlog, I need to lose about 50lbs and get much fitter and I need to not dwell one what could have been, but instead enjoy every moment. I’ve learned how precious and fragile life is, and I don’t want to ever look back and think what I could have been, I want to look back and be proud of what I have achieved.

Our very unexpected baby died in utero in the early hours of the morning on February the 19th, at spot on 36 weeks gestation. I was induced that afternoon and delivered a baby girl weighing 6lbs 13oz and 50cm long at 3:15pm. We named her Robyn.

There’s currently no rhyme or reason for what happened, although initial testing did pick up an infection in the placenta, it’s too early to determine if that is the cause, we have an appointment on the 16th of April to hear the full post mortem results.

It’s now been just over a week and both Dan and I have run through every emotion you could possibly imagine. I am focusing on the positives, I already have two beautiful sons, we’re lucky enough to not have any fertility issues, and I have my health (physical at least, mental is still up for debate).

The funeral is on Monday afternoon. I’m both dreading it and looking forward to the closure that I hope it might begin to give us. I’m still in shock more than anything, this just wasn’t something I was prepared for in any way.

The next few months will probably be talking about what’s happened a fair bit, I also want to write up a birth story, and, when I feel able enough to move them off the camera, I will be posting some photos of her. I know this is a sensitive topic, so I wanted to give some prior warning so that those who felt too uncomfortable could avoid the blog for a while, or take me off their reader.

This is me “turning my son gay” if my husband is to be believed. He doesn’t approve of the lilac nappy, the dark purple one is okay, it’s “like Shaft” apparently, but the lilac is just one step away from transforming Connor into Carson Kressley.

Inspired by this beautiful diary on Kikki.K I have resolved to empty my brain on a daily basis and give those currently wandering thoughts a home where I can make a little more sense of them. Unfortunately, I know that if I drop $30 on a book with nothing but numbers and a pretty cover I’m going to freak out about using it, the perfectionist in me will rise up and it will sit untouched forever more.

Instead I’ve gone for the McValue meal version: one $3 Derwent sketchbook and a sharpie, no new notebook=neat writing guilt, no beating myself up if I miss a day, just focusing on making my mental state a little more stable and clearing up the debris that is currently fighting for attention within my cranium.

I do hope that 2010 will be 365 days of awesome for me and for our little family. Although in comparison to the mental clusterfuck that has been 2009, even a mediocre year will look like peaches and cream. I know that nothing will magically become wonderful in three days time when the clock ticks over, but  I can’t help but feel excited about the fresh start, and hopefully this little book will be part of it.