Two Years

I cannot believe it has been two years since our baby George's heart stopped beating shortly before he was born into this world. Our beautiful, much loved boy.

Our rainbow baby, a girl, was born in early March. One bittersweet thing is that a friend of mine from where we used to live had emailed me last summer to ask if I was pregnant. I was - but I wasn't telling anyone because my husband had been laid off (without severance pay - a nightmare). I confirmed I was pregnant about four days before he was laid off and I decided not to tell him we were going to have a baby until he had found work. I kept it a secret for almost the whole summer. So when this friend asked, I sidestepped her question. She said she had a dream the previous night that George came to her and told her I was having a baby and that it was a girl.

Part of me is envious that he came to her in a dream....I long to see him again. I had a dream of him shortly after he died that was so vivid and so peaceful. I was holding him and he was nursing and he looked up at me with lovely deep blue eyes, just like those of all his siblings. Oh, how I want to see and hold my boy again.

I worried and wondered the whole pregnancy whether our rainbow baby would arrive safely and the irony is that she did but I nearly died a few hours after she was born. My uterus threw in the towel really. The doctors called it a "lazy" uterus after six births, not contracting as it should. I prefer to think it was overtired. It was frightening how quickly I lost over half my blood volume. I kept telling the nurse I felt tired and weak - not the normal post-birth rush of energy. My uterus it turns out was filling up with blood so essentially my body hid the fact I was bleeding out.

Three blood transfusions and a whole lot of rest later and I'm feeling nearly human again - and ever so grateful for our healthy beautiful little girl Margaret. Her birth is healing for all of us - as our third son says over and over, "It's so much more fun to have a living baby than a dead baby, Mum."

We're going to celebrate George's too-short life on his birthday of May 19th. We're going to have cake for the cake-eaters and pie for the pie-eaters. We are a family divided when it comes to special desserts so we'll have both for George. And I'm going to get bubbles for the children to blow to the sky.

Oh, how I wish our son was here with us. A sturdy little toddler like his older siblings were. Talking and laughing, ready to enjoy his birthday dessert. So many people moan about the terrible twos and I've never understood that because I love the toddler stage; I understand how they get frustrated when they can't do or say what they want to and aren't yet capable of doing or saying. No, for me, the only terrible two in my life is marking the second year since our fifth child died.

Forever loved and forever missed sweet boy.