Not really sure what to say.
I've been struggling for a few days now.
Next month it will be four years since my daughter died, right before Christmas, and in January it will be five years since my son died.
They were both babies, my son was stillborn and his loss was very out of the blue, all fine one minute and then suddenly being told he had no heartbeat. I hadn't felt any pain, no bleeding, there just wasn't any sign that anything was wrong with him. After he was born they couldn't find a reason for his death and they couldn't pinpoint the day he died, but I think it was on my birthday.
My daughter died following a car accident we were involved in, a lorry hit our car and injured me and although they did everything they could to prevent it, eventually I went into premature labour, developed an infection and they couldn't do anything for her or stop my labour and she was born just before 24 weeks and was too tiny to survive. I almost died too.
I'm not really coping with it at the moment. I just miss them and this time of year doesn't help, the anniversary to the accident is looming, then the memory of the time in hospital, her birth and death, Christmas, the anniversary of finding out our son had died and then his birth two days later. It all just gets a bit much and there are just six weeks between our daughter's birthday and our sons.
That first Christmas after both of them died was so hard. We knew it would be horrible because it was our first Christmas following our sons death, but the loss of our daughter just days before Christmas was such a blow, it was horrific, I can't describe what it did to us, and I was so ill and DH thought I would die. And he was back and forth to the hospital and sorting everything out for our daughters funeral and people kept telling him to "cheer up, it's Christmas" and we still get that now. You can't have one single sad moment at Christmas without someone telling you to cheer up or to think of our other child or stop spoiling things for everyone else. I think we do bloody well considering, and we put a lot of effort into making Christmas special for our other LO, our only living child, but it would take a stronger person than me to not have even a moment or two of feeling sad through some of it.
We have another LO now, who is 2 and a half, and he's been ill lately and I get so panicked and stressed thinking something will happen to him. He's had a virus and I have it too, so we are all feeling pretty tired and crappy, can't sleep properly because of coughing etc, hot and feverish, that sort of thing. LO has been in and out of hospital because his virus caused breathing difficulties.
And then last night I watched Downton Abbey where they all had Spanish Flu and one of the characters died. It was the way she died, talking one minute and then just gone.
It made me feel so helpless. That's how quickly my babies went, one second here, the next gone. It terrifies me that LO could also be taken from me in an instant and it hurts that my babies could just slip away like that and I didn't even notice. I walked around for days believing I was still pregnant with a healthy baby and no idea that he was already dead.
And my daughter fought so hard to survive, she was so tiny but she lived for over two hours. But she was so tiny it took a nurse to tell us that she had gone, all we could do was sit and hold her and wait for her to die, but by the time she did we needed someone else to say so.
Like I say, I don't know why I'm posting. I just feel so useless and hopeless and lost right now. Probably this virus thing isn't helping me to think clearly. But I just wanted to try and get it all out. Doubt it even makes sense. I'm just sitting here blubbing a bit and I just want to keep saying it isn't fair.