I shared this photo on my 365 project yesterday, and also uploaded it to my flickr account, and now I'm sharing it here.
I was actually shaking when I uploaded it to my 365 project. I felt sick. I haven't allowed any photos of Ernest feeding from a bottle. In fact Woody got quite cross with me at Christmas when I suggested he tell his mother (who takes 100's of unflattering candid shots)no photos with a bottle in shot.
Yesterday though, I was feeding Ernest and we were having a lovely snuggly time, so I allowed India to take this photo.
Honestly I still have mixed feelings about it.
I just thought that Ernest deserved a photo to look back on and see he was fed with love, and perhaps one day I'll be able to look at this photo and not feel shame, but just remember our times together on the rocking chair.

Last week we "celebrated" reaching six months of "booby in a bottle". I'll be honest and say it felt good to reach one of my goals, I'm glad I can at least provide breastmilk for Ernest, even if it is in a bottle.

I've become accustomed recently to making the best of things, for being thankful for what I do have, but oh how I long to breastfeed.

I remember being pregnant with India, and knowing I would breastfeed, despite not being breastfed myself, and only ever seeing one other woman breastfeed while I was growing up. She was a hippy friend of my mother's, and everyone said how strange it was that she was still breastfeeding a toddler. I thought it looked wonderful.
I was lucky, breastfeeding India was easy, not without tears, and a bout of mastitis, but easy, and so it was with Eden,Angus and Sid. By the time Florence was born I had been pregnant and/or breastfeeding for 13 years.

Florence didn't breastfeed. I wished she had.

I remember as I held her in the hospital telling the midwife I wanted to donate her milk. They offered me drugs to dry up the milk, and I reeled in shock. My baby couldn't have my milk, but I needed to see it,to know I was a mother of a newborn, and I hadn't imagined it all.

I donated my breastmilk for six weeks before it dried up, and while I know and understand that for many many bereaved mothers that would not be an option, it was right for me.

In those early days I would bargain with the universe to let me have Florence back, I would say "even if I've missed her life up until now", "even if I can't breastfeed"...."please I just want her back."

There was no question, Ernest would be breastfed, but that hasn't worked out despite our best efforts, and believe me it's been an effort.
I've only just stopped crying every day for the loss of our breastfeeding relationship. I'm only just getting into a rhythm with this new way of mothering.
I don't think of myself as a breastfeeding mother, my baby has breastmilk provided by me, but he's missing out on so much more.
There have been so many times he's needed comfort and all I've been able to offer is my arms, because the breast is not a place of comfort for him, it was painful for him to try and breastfeed, and I'm afraid this mother's breast has not been a happy place.

I found this photo on my phone,taken back in August, Ernest trying to breastfeed.


I was forwarded this wonderful blog post recently, it made me sob with recognition.

I haven't been trying Ernest at the breast very often at all over the past few weeks. I hate that I haven't,but also I recognise that I'm calmer and more able to enjoy our time together. Ernest's babyhood was whizzing by in a fog of pumping,feeding,washing,sterilising,trying nipple shields,biological nurturing,nursing weekends,finger feeding....stress stress stress. (Not to mention grieving mother, and four older kids who need me too.)

The breathing space has been welcome, Ernest and I do have lovely skin to skin times, we co sleep, we babywear, we shower together, and he is always with me, maybe it's not too late, maybe he'll try to breastfeed one of these days, but I'm also much more accepting of the fact that maybe he never will breastfeed.
I'm still bargaining with the universe, "just a comfort feed at bedtime", or "please let me be able to provide milk for him until he's two."

I don't take anything for granted anymore, and I don't expect anything from the Universe, except maybe another kick in the teeth,so we'll do what we've been doing for the past eighteen months, we'll keep on keeping on, and I'll try not to feel like I've failed.

There is a stillness at this time of year that I find unsettling and invigorating in equal measure.
Last year, I was so desperate to hold on to 2009. I was so afraid of losing Florence's year, and although the turning of another year takes her further back in time, I'm not dreading 2011 quite as much as I did 2010.
I think it might seem strange to many that I dreaded 2010 so much when i already knew I was pregnant again. And maybe it seems strange that I'm glad to leave 2010 behind when it was the year our beautiful Ernest was born.
2010 has been exhausting. Grieving one life, while growing another is probably the closest I've come to losing my mind. Follow that up with breastfeeding problems and hospital stays, and then just the general terror of mothering a newborn after a traumatic loss, not to mention trying to mother four growing and grieving older children; I think it's no wonder that these days I find myself walking a very fine line between grief and depression.
I'm not alone I know, with feeling lost with my grief. I'm tired of myself,and am not at all surprised that maybe others are tired of me too.
My grief has changed, I don't get flashbacks so often and so unexpectedly. the grief is burrowing deeper inside, less obvious to everyone else, but always there, always hurting.A relentless ache with no dignity.
All this, unyet I'm so lucky, and don't think for one moment I don't realise how lucky I am.
I'm typing this with Ernest nuzzled into my neck, sleeping on my shoulder. I don't expect him to cure my aching heart, but he's a joy all of his own, and so loved.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Khalil Gibran

It's cold, and set to get colder. The light this morning was blue, the sky full of soft whipped cold blue clouds. The sun shone a little, and when that cold golden sunshine kisses my face between the buildings on my walk home, I whisper "hello darling", but I know it's not really her.

They say it might snow.

I wish I could unravel and begin to put words, meaning to the feelings I've had since Ernest has arrived. I can't.
I'm not sure there are words to describe how it feels to have him here and not to have Florence.
It's either very complicated or so simple I can't get it.
I could pluck words out of the air,words like guilt, joy, fear...but they just don't work,they only describe tiny fractions.
I look deeply into his eyes, his open blue blue eyes, and I love him for him,and I miss her for her, and every day is a reminder of everything she could never be.
Sometimes it feels like I lose more of her each day I notice more of him.
Sometimes I have to conjure up even the horror of her last hours, or moments and beyond just to connect, I hope that's normal. (I'm not sure it is.)

We are going to the sea side this weekend.I hope it will give us all time to take a deep breath and just be. I wish she was coming too.

This little cardy has been very almost finished for a while, last night I finally stitched on the collar and buttons.
Pattern from Baby Bloom, by Erika Knight, yarn Rowan Cashsoft 4ply.

Trying to get a good photo was tricky!



I've enough yarn left for a matching hat, just haven't found the right pattern yet.

We might be settling down a little, getting into a groove, a rhythm maybe. I hope so.
I think something in my head has shifted just a little, again I hope so.

Twenty one years ago almost to the day I moved up north and started college in a town I'd only heard of a week earlier. I thought Stockport might be by the sea, but checking on the map told me otherwise.
My first day at college and the first person I met was Jo. I'd started the course later than everyone else, friendships had already been formed, and everyone was already working on their first project.
Jo nervously showed me her sketchbook and talked me through the brief to design blown vinyl wallpaper. I think at that point we both wondered what the hell we were doing at art college designing something so bloody awful.
I knew immediately that Jo and I were going to be friends forever.
Jo, now lives far far away, I only see her, her hubby and her gorgeous little girl once a year, and this year she got to meet Ernest. This music box was a gift from Jo, and Ernest loves it.

Ernest and I are very popular lately. We have visitors most days. I think everyone is just so relieved he's here safe. I guess things will settle down soon. At least having lots of visitors stops me just sitting and thinking...not that Ernest gives me huge amounts of thinking time. Sometimes, even the "dead baby dead baby dead baby" monologue stops for a while when I'm having tea with friends, sometimes the "failed breastfeeding" monolgue briefly pushes out the "dead baby " one.

I'm running out of words lately. I have so much to say,but I can't form any of my thoughts into anything coherant. No words I can conjure up seem to do Florence or Ernest, or my parenting of them both alongside the big ones any justice.

There is a lady who lives on my road , we would say good morning when she walked her dog and I walked the children to school. Last year shortly after Florence was born, I was leaving the house and she shouted over to ask about the baby. I had to tell her Florence had died.She went quiet and said "it happened to me". I could see she was very upset.
Later that day she brought me a huge bunch of sunflowers and told me I could talk to her any time. Her first daughter died 22 years ago.
I saw her the other day, and she admired Ernest. She said "it does make it easier doesn't it?" and I thought for a moment. It does, of course it does. It would be so much worse without him,but I miss her, I ache for her.

And really, that might be all there is to be said.

I've commented before how it's bittersweet to pull out clothes made for Florence and dress Ernest in them. This outfit was made while pregnant with Florence, for her to wear to my best friends wedding.I've kept the outfit wrapped carefully along with the matching bootees and bonnet, not quite sure what to do with them.
Yesterday's funeral seemed to be the appropriate time to dress Ernest in them. The bootess didn't fit, and the bonnet was a bit much, so they are both tucked away in Florence's memory box, while this outfit will eventually go into Ernest's. (All my children have memory boxes) It seems appropriate that they get to share.


This pair of Saartje bootees went well instead.



Oh, and we wore this sling.

This one was made when I was pregnant with Florence.
Ernest is snoozing in it right now, and I know sensibly I should join him for forty winks, especially since I've been awake since 4am.
I've lost count of the people this week who have asked me if he's a "good baby" or if he's "sleeping through". I never know quite what to say.I usually just mutter something about not expecting an eight week old baby to be sleeping much at all at night.
I don't say what I'm thinking, which is that a years worth of insomnia and nights filled with terrifying flashbacks have prepared me pretty well for sleepless nights with a baby.
Actually, the exhaustion of looking after baby, and of course having him living breathing in my arms have stopped a lot of the middle of the night flashbacks.
These days, I get unexpected little snapshots instead. Sometimes it's his feet, I'm instantly transported back, unwrapping Florence's legs, desperate to see all of her. Or a glint of blue eyes, and there she is on the table, a hint of blue peeking out before the morphine shut them tight again.
Ernest is so very definitely not Florence. He doesn't look like her, not really, he looks like her brother.

I think I find myself wondering how much longer everyone will tolerate my constant referrals to Florence. I've noticed others who have trodden this path with their rainbow babies wondering the same. A year and a new baby, maybe I should just shut up, be more discreet with my grief, just stop going on, keep it in?

Ernest had his first visit to a cranial osteopath today, and his first ride on a bus!
He was telling Daddy all about it when we got home.