Grief in Three Parts: My Bump

The last few weeks of missing Posy have been the hardest yet. Struggling to come to terms with the idea of never seeing or holding her again is all-encompassing and it has been the strangest feeling of discomfort. Nothing feels right. My arms are empty, my body is empty and my heart has a gaping hole right in the middle. I can feel myself being crushed by the weight of my grief but I am slowly starting to better understand it. Not only am I mourning my Posy, but also my bump and my motherhood. It is a strange concept and I only truly understood the complexity of my grief when I was sitting down to write this and saw that it was quite clearly split into three parts. There are two more posts which will follow on from this one so forgive me if my writing is a bit jumbled, I’m still trying to make sense of it myself.

I had nine months of my baby bump, before my two weeks of Posy and before I was introduced to being a mum, so it is totally understandable that I am longing for my bump again; for the time when I was growing my baby girl; for the closeness with my daughter. The feeling of being pregnant has been ingrained in me and my fleeting time with Posy only exacerbates how much I miss it. How much I miss the time that it was just me and her, when we were a little team and she was safe in the little bubble I had created for her.

Michael went back to work last week and, although I found it much easier than expected, it was still a shock to the system. He finished work for paternity leave nine weeks ago - obviously his two weeks had been extended with everything that happened - and since then I have been so well looked after. So much so that, when he left the house on Monday, I realised I hadn't really been left on my own for any extended length of time since Posy’s death. Suddenly, having a good few hours to myself everyday seemed a complete and unnecessary abundance of me time; quality time which had been so loved before. The never-ending flow of coffee; the copious amounts of chocolate; the binge-watching; the retail therapy; the occasional good read; the inappropriately timed naps; all the meaningless attempts to busy myself now just feel uncomfortable. It’s not that I would prefer to be around people all the time, (my introverted side would not appreciate it, despite the extrovert in me saying otherwise!) but, instead of using the time for any form of self-care, it was spent with me stuck in a feeling of unease and discontent. And then it hit me. Even in the nine months before Posy came into our lives, I was never truly alone. My favourite little person had been keeping me company the whole time!

When I found out that I was pregnant with Posy in June last year, I was overwhelmed with the idea that she was living inside me, overcome with the fact that I was her little home for the foreseeable future. This feeling, of course, was intensified when I began to feel her kick and move about. I loved the feeling of getting to know her, bonding with her and protecting her; I couldn’t get enough of it. I would sing to her and read to her and I lived for the times when she would dance about - albeit this was usually when I was trying to fall asleep! I imagined what she would look like, grow to be like and I dreamed of the day when we would dance together around the kitchen - like utter goofs of course. I enjoyed my pregnancy so much more than I ever anticipated and I am so grateful that I have only good memories to hold onto, of our precious time together in our own little world. Even so, the emptiness I now feel is immeasurable.

I am constantly feeling like I am missing something. In the times when I do manage to go out, I have this overwhelming sense that I have left something behind. You know that feeling, if you’ve ever been unlucky enough to have experienced it, when you arrive at work only to find that you have left your phone at home. That feeling of ‘Oh crap! What am I going to do without that stupid thing’; the fear of ‘what if I miss that life-changing, all-important, phone call’; the sheer despair of feeling naked and knowing there’s really nothing you can do about it (obviously while questioning whether it’s acceptable to make the drive home and pick it up). Well multiply that feeling by a thousand and that’s a fraction of what I feel at any time. Now, I am in no way comparing the loss of my daughter to leaving your phone at home, but that intense and shocking feeling of missing something is definitely comparable. When I was pregnant I couldn’t see her but I knew she was there the whole time; now I can’t see her and I know that she’s not here anymore. I have grown so used to having my little girl with me all the time and, particularly when I was pregnant with her, she was such huge part of me that now the rest of me is struggling to exist without her.

Yesterday, Michael and I took our mums out for lunch and I was sitting there the whole time feeling like I’d forgotten something. I looked around and saw all the families enjoying their Saturday lunch dates together and I could see how ‘whole’ all the other mums were. All I kept thinking was how no one would be able to look at me and know that I have had a baby. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror and even I couldn’t see anything about me that says that I have had a baby. Then I noticed all the pregnant women in the restaurant (my awareness of them must be heightened at the moment) and it was as if I was getting phantom limb pains, (my Grey’s Anatomy education making itself useful once again). The ache of mourning my baby bump at that moment was excruciating. I felt hollow.

I considered that I might not have been the only one sitting in that restaurant who has experienced this feeling, with all the devastating ways that a mother can lose her baby. I realised how unfair it is that the only reward for pregnancy is the baby you then get to hold in your arms and how cruel it is that, if your baby dies, you have don’t really have anything to show for the nine months you spent growing them. So I decided to change my own attitude and alter my view, so that it might make it a little easier for me to leave the house and that feeling of forgetting something a little smaller. I know that I was pregnant, I know that I have given birth to an incredible little girl and I can be thankful to my body for those nine months.

It’s only when I’m getting changed and see my reflection that I remember that my pregnancy wasn’t just a dream and I mourn for my bump all over again. I never thought I’d be saying how pleased I am to have stretch marks and how much I love them. After constantly moisturising and oiling my baby belly throughout pregnancy, when they started to make an appearance towards the end, all I felt was frustration. My bump was growing so fantastically large that my taut skin couldn’t take it and had a monumental strop. However, following Posy’s birth and in my immense gratitude for the amazing work that my body has done, I am incredibly grateful that I can look at them and see them for all their wonder. They are my only visible evidence that I was ever pregnant, that I ever had a baby bump.

I feel that I have slimmed down rather quickly; this is probably down to the trauma of losing Posy and my total lack of appetite. Losing the pregnancy weight was something which, ironically, I was really hoping would happen but, needless to say, I’m really wishing it hadn’t; I wish that I had more evidence of becoming a mum and that I wasn’t able to fit into my pre-maternity jeans yet. This isn’t how it should’ve been and I don’t doubt for a second that if Posy were still here, I would’ve struggled to shed the weight. Nevertheless, I don’t have a bump anymore, I’m not breastfeeding so I don’t have any milk coming in and I definitely don’t have a baby in my arms. All I have to show for my pregnancy are these stretch marks and they are amazing. They are an intricate map of my daughter’s life; an imprint of her journey; a stamp of her existence. They are beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there will come a time when I am happy that they have faded, when I am glad to feel confident in a bikini again, but for the time being I will treasure them. They are my secret motherhood, they are my daughter, they are my bump.

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Becca

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