Misty breeze wraps about my shoulders, thinly clad. I shiver not, despite the coolness on my skin. Comfort, I now feel. Is it you my precious Angel?

[chipmonkey]

Starting a new thread for our angel babies
Sylvie-Rose 16/8/11 to 4/10/11 too short my love, too short.

So I think I'm finally cracking up. Have spent most of the day in bed with the most terrible head-ache, just weeping and having anxiety attacks. Can't think straight and just feel like I'm in such a hole I don't know how I'll ever climb out of it. I feel like this has been building up for a while. I think this might be what they call "nervous exhaustion". If I was a celeb I'd be packed off to some expensive clinic but I guess I'll just have to muddle through.

To make matters worse my well-meaning mum, who has been a huge help in terms of helping to look after DD, told me she thinks I'm "not really there" for DD at the mo. And there was me thinking I deserved a medal for holding together some semblance of normality for her but apparently it's not enough. You know, she's probably right, DD is being difficult and it's probably because she can sense that my mind is often elsewhere, but I really didn't need to hear that today. I felt like she was telling me to "snap out of it" though she didn't use those actual words. Just "you need to think of DD now". That kind of thing. Like I have some choice over how shit I feel. Maybe I do. It's been seven months. Should I be feeling a bit better than I do?

It's nearly 4 years for me now matilda and I'm still 'not really there' sometimes for DS. I had him after she died, so it was always a very odd bond, very different to that with her. I think I kept him at arm's length incase he died, but now it's sort of irreperable. I feel dreadful for it, I quit my city job to study medicine, for her really, but ultimately it will benefit him as well. The driving force was always her. I write and do other things, and am heavily involved in some committees.. for her... I am not really there for him when I'm so swamped with work and exams.... not helpful post from me, but 7 months is nothing with such magnitude of loss

Hi, all! Still reading and thinking of all of you. Just having a hard time as the first Christmas approaches.

I guess leaving my job and having to spend time apart from DS is the main guilt with that relationship.

As for how you're feeling. Can you take a break from DD? Can your mum have her, and can you take a week out to just let yourself sink and feel whatever you need to feel?

I kept a strong brave face on it for years but finally cracked because I never took that time, never. It was 2 and a bit years after she died and I had a proper nervous breakdown (at work, of all places, not good). I now have counselling every couple of weeks, just talking for 50 mins about anything gives me the space and containment I need to be on form for the rest of the week or so. I think it's terribly important you allow yourself to cry.

Hi expat. Christmas is pretty hard, especially the first one. Every card without DD's name, etc. bleurgh. Do you have plans for christmas? DS will be with my family and I am working for crisis I think. I've decided that next year though, I need to set a positive happy tradition for me and him and will be going on holiday :)

cafecito, IKWYM. For the past year, I haven't really been there for DS, who turned 4 last month. Literally, in that I stayed with Aillidh for most of her time in hospital, and emotionally since she died. DD1's a little older, she's 7 today, but there are still scars.

Thankfully, we'll be going to my family abroad for a bit and I can feel comfortable leaving them and getting some real space to myself and know they'll be anything but neglected.

On 7 December, she was 5 months dead.

Her stone won't be up until February.

Thanks for your honesty cafecito. Sometimes I wonder if it's best not to look too closely at the whys or hows and just tell ourselves that we are doing the best we can in the most awful of circumstances. I tend to bury myself in work when things are tough. If I didnt have work as a distraction I think I really might go under. I wish it wasn't this way.
Hi Expat, it's terribly tough this time of year isn't it? I'm struggling too xx

Next year we'll have to stay here, cafecito, but we're thinking of starting some more alternative traditions, like volunteering or perhaps doing a yurt camp or the like.

Yes my mum has offered to have her for a bit, I should probably take up the offer. I don't feel terribly "well" mentally or emotionally at the moment. I don't mean just sad, which is how I've felt for months, I mean unable to cope really. Today is the first time I've properly felt that way and it was quite scary.
Expat I hope you'll get some respite at your family's. You've had such a long hard struggle, I hope you will get looked after - or left alone, whichever you feel would be most helpful!!. xx

Hmm with me there is a marked problem with my relationship with DS, if I'm being totally honest. I just was never able to bond properly. I love him to pieces but it's as if there's an invisible wall and I just can't do it. I escaped by going back from mat leave after 3 months and working full time, overtime, all the time. I then had my meltdown, eventually. I know that I'm now doing what I'm doing for DS and when he's 6 or 7 I'll be qualified and when he's going to university, I might be a consultant or whatever. So ultimately I can provide for him and be a good example. But the real drive, the real perverse reason I left sucha good job to plunge us into poverty, the real reason I do 12 hour shifts all the time and take on so much extra stuff, is DD. It's hard trying to be a good parent to both children, still. And if I'm totally honest, it's the DD related drive that wins out. (but I would never tell anyone that :D)

expat, that's pretty fast for a stone to go up. Where DD is, I was told I had to wait at least a year. I feel awful but my DGM (does that make sense) was dying shortly after DD and said she wanted to pay for a memorial for her. But because of the year rule I said no, and I couldn't accept the money as she was so ill. She made me promise to ask for it to be paid ot of the estate but that never happened (despite it being split between 2 and each party being able to buy multiple houses) so I've never put a stone up for her, still. I feel really bad. I know I'll do it one day but I can't at the moment :(

At Aillidh's cemetary you can do it anytime because the concrete plinth is in place already. Sounds awful but her lair feels sort of left out without a stone, IYKWIM.

She was my little miracle. I thought I'd never get to have children.

matilda yes I think you should take a break, like a week or 5 days even. it IS scary when you suddenly feel that you really, for the first time ever, cannot cope. terrifying. It's crucial you take care of yourself. I remember feeling 'wow I cannot cope anymore' and I was desperately trying to call my GP to ask to be signed off work, but they had no appointments and I was sobbing to the receptionist saying don't you realise I can't cope anymore I can't go to work like this I can't do it, I even felt really suicidal at one point- but no, no appointments.. so I went to work..error!!! If I'd had that week off, none of what ensued would have happened. You need to take care of yourself so that you are able to take care of DD

I think I might have PTSD from witnessing A go through what she went through and how she died, and now, I, too, put up invisible walls in case I lose DD2 or DS.

They're so so young to have suffered such a loss.

oh expat :( DD was my miracle because I was told I could never have children- I was very ill in my teens. I therefore suppose that having that miracle made me think 'this is why I am here' she was my raison d'etre entirely. I know what you mean about being left out. Most of the others at the children's cemetery where DD is have memorials there. I don't live near there anymore so I can't even go very often, it's a few trains and a bus and a walk, but I went about a week ago. It would be nice to not worry about it so much as at the back of my mind I always have 'the flowers must be dead by now, it must look awful, it miht have all been destroyed by the wind..' or whatever. If she had a stone there it would remove some of the subtle panic that's always silently under the surface. I take her a new toy whenever I go, because I kept her favourite toy with me instead of burying it with her, so I kind of replace it with similar ones each time, at least they don't die (but theysometimes get stolen!!)

I'm also paranoid about them and feel uncomfortable if they are out of my sight in any non-routine setting.

We go once a month, cafecito, because we don't live close to it, either. But YY, her stuff gets blown around a lot and having a stone with a kerb set and two flower parts on the sides will help that.

I clean up other childrens' graves when I'm there.

I think I had PTSD. I think it only started getting better this year, actually. I had lots of intrusive thoughts, images of her suffering. When you watch a child deteriorate and you can do nothing to stop it - I can't think of a worse trauma. I never really told anyone, my GP was useless, but it culminated like I said in me TOTALLY losing it at work.

I'm sure you've already had loads of advice and have been given this winstons wish link already

I was so worried about DS from time to time as he wasn't very well a few times, that I was quite sure he would die. He had some eery symptoms as a baby and the consultant told me it couldhappen again.. I'm sure that's why I shut him off in a way (to the point where he has spent a lot of time living with my family, far away - when I've had exams and had to move house repeatedly to get away from ex P) it's almost as if, if he died, it's a self protective mechanism. If I were as close to him as I were to her, and he died - then I would absolutely be jumping in front of a train (I DO NOT ADVOCATE THIS of course) so I really do have him at arm's length because there's no way I could cope again.

The last two months of her life and, in particular, her near fortnight in ICU really messed me up. She was dying and I didn't recognise it.

It's hard for me to remember her even at the start of her treatment, when she was relatively well, or in the last round. I just remember how she was dying and the signals she gave that she knew it and I didn't recognise it.

Are you having her stone engraved?

I can't abide certain things. I have a list of things I can no longer see or hear or do or smell or eat or they trigger a panic attack. I can't even read some peoples' updates on FB, people I knew from the unit, not because I don't want other peoples' kids to do well but because I think, 'Why the fuck did she die?'

I live with enormous guilt. Sometimes I feel we were so robbed and fucked over and very, very angry.

Yes, cafe.

Here Rests All That Was Mortal Of
Aillidh -
19 June 2003 - 7 July 2012
Beloved Daughter of ExpatDH and Expat
Much Loved Elder Sister of DD2 and DS
Taken by Acute Myeloid Leukaemia

RESURGAM

And her photo in the lefthand corner of her heart-shaped stone. Matching kerb set.

It's a large cemetary and sadly, there are many children resting there.

I've been an insomniac since I was about 13 (I'm nearly 42). Needless to say, it can be extreme now.

likewise with the insomnia! your words are perfect, beautiful. I think having a photo is a brilliant idea, to see her sparkling eyes and beautiful face. It's something I'd like to do when I finally sort it out

the guilt when it's so medicalised can be really hard to deal with, I found anyway. I felt such guilt about things that I couldn't really have changed but the what ifs were all over the place, why did I sign the consent, why didn't I turn her then, why did I say that in front of her, why didn't I understand her lactate, why couldn't I stop them doing that, why wasn't I more able to get her pain relief, why this, why that, why didn't I save her.. it's probably guilt for not being a doctor that has driven me to do what I'm doing- because as a parent you're not listened to. But still the guilt is there no matter what I do, and guilt too for being alive when she isn't, it will always make me feel guilty