I had a hankering for dungarees, much to the amusement of a couple of my friends! I'm 47, I'm curvy (overweight) and I'm short, with short legs! Undeterred by these facts I went ahead and made myself a pair anyway, albeit rather half heartedly. I was convinced I would make them up, hate them and then having satisfied my desire for something I would hate that would be that!



Living up to my name "Lazy Seamstress", I threw these together without even looking at the instructions. (The pattern is WW11 Homefront 1940's Overalls by Wearing History, kindly loaned to me by my lovely friend Nim.)

I popped a zip in the side instead of button fastenings, and I added the pockets last as an afterthought...not terribly neatly!


I love them!! I really do, I might not be slim or young or tall, but these dungarees make me very happy...or they will when I have unpicked the pockets and put them on more neatly (and in the right position!). I'm also going to remove the bias binding used to face the bib edge with a denim facing instead, and taken in the back darts a little....
... will I learn my lesson? Probably not!!!





Photos taken at Lady Mabel's Wood in Wigan where our youngest daughter has an acre of woodland dedicated to her.



                          Florence Violet Wood 22nd July 2009, Too briefly in our arms....

Some days I need to sew, I'm certain I've mentioned that here more than once before. I sew for lots of reasons, because I prefer the fit of clothes I make to that of ready to wear, because I like having a wardrobe of clothes that are not like anyone elses, because I like the challenge and the process of making, and often because it is like a meditation, it calms my spirit, and eases my soul. Those are the days I'm so very glad I was taught well, and can make up simple garments without thinking. Those are the days I most need to feel the satisfaction of blades cutting through fabric, and that comforting hum of the sewing machine.

Yesterday was one of those days. This time of year is full of ghosts, bittersweet memories and too much sadness. I don't run away from the sad, it needs to be sat with sometimes, and I can do that better if I just sew.

 

I'd been thinking of making the Colette Sorbetto for a while. I had a small piece of the gorgeous cotton lawn I used last summer for my Hawthorn dress and thought I could squeeze a simple blouse out of it, luckily there was enough to also add sleeves.

I cut out a size 12, did my usual full bust adjustment (FBA), and removed the centre pleat. (If I make another I think I will add the pleat back in and make a faux placket, or perhaps pin tucks instead of the pleat.

The lace collar was salvaged from a ready to wear blouse I've had for several years and was getting rather tatty. I used bias binding made from the blouse fabric to finish the neckline.

 

Having finished the blouse I realised I had nothing much to wear with it, so fishing some lightweight wool suiting out of my fabric stash and using the By Hand London circle skirt app
I whipped up a simple circle skirt with a wide waistband, and left it to hang overnight in my shed.

 

This morning I nipped out there in my slippers and nightie to hem the skirt so I could wear the whole outfit today.

 

I'm really pleased with both items. How great is it that sewing helps heal my mood and I get something lovely to wear too? I know I can't be alone feeling this way, I'd love to hear from others out there who use sewing as their safe place.

Of course a circle skirt demands a certain amount of twirling too!

I have been meaning to try this pattern for a while, I wondered how the bodice darts would work for my shape. A couple of my sewing buddies had already made this dress and I really liked their dresses.
I used my high bust measurement and cut out a size 16, making a full bust adjustment, and then making a very rough toile, which seemed to fit ok, so I moved on to a wearable toile using this vintage duvet cover I bought some time ago in a local charity shop. I was never quite convinced I could pull off a dress in these colours, but actually I'm pretty happy with the results.



I decided to move the front pleats during making up. I have a fat tummy and smaller hips than bust, so I thought if I moved the pleats towards my hips, I might balance out my top heavy figure and give the illusion of a slightly flatter tum.
I think it worked!
Those darts I was concerned about initially are also really flattering. I'm not skinny by a long shot, and I've gained a lot of weight recently, but I think the darts show off what waist I do have.
I really like this pattern, and will make it again very soon.
I wore it today to go and get my long awaited memorial tattoo for my Florence Violet, if you want a nosey, check out this link to the lovely lady that tattooed me. 

After seeing the beautiful photographs a friend took of her four children last year, I have been inspired to try and do the same this year with my children.
Not so easy!
Firstly there is the problem of including Florence. I decided eventually that we will include her by including her little bunny that usually sits next to her photograph in my bedroom.
I thought maybe the bunny could be like the Usbourne duck, always included, but not always obvious....we'll see how that works out.
With a brief spell of good light in the lounge this morning, I quickly gathered the children together for a simple shot on the sofa...well it was meant to be simple!
63 shots later, and the pic above is the best shot, I think I've got my work cut out with this lot!

She's just not important to most people, not relevant, they don't need to know she even existed. It doesn't matter to those who ask about my family that I have five or six children, both are big numbers, both raise an eyebrow, but the dead daughter makes people shudder, and shift uncomfortably in their shoes, so I don't always mention her.
It doesn't really matter, except it does, because each time my heart breaks. My beautiful girl, my beautiful beautiful longed for, loved little girl, and she's just not relevant, not worth mentioning.
She was 9lbs, 3 1/2 ounces, she had a little red/brown hair, and long fingers and toes just like me. She had big feet and a round tummy.I think her eyes were blue....she is so so relevant, and I love her, I miss her with every fibre of my being, and I have to keep it in, speak the right words at official meetings, not upset anyone, but I want to scream, and cry and yell.
I want to say "yes, Sid is a reserved little boy, and yes he always was, but he's thinking thinking all the time. And did you know he held his baby sister in his arms after she died? Did you know, my beautiful boy who doesn't say much came to me the other day to tell me he knew why his sister died? He wanted to go and tell the doctors, it was because her heart stopped. He thought he had the answer"
I don't say that though, I say yes he's a quiet little guy, yes his writing is coming on, and his maths too.."
And anyway I don't want to scare his lovely new young teacher with stories of dead children, I don't want her to think I'm that strange woman who relates eveything back to her dead daughter...

Is it crazy to buy your dead child a book?
I've wanted to buy this book for Florence for ages, but kept stopping myself, then a couple of days ago I just did it.
Maybe I am crazy, maybe those people whose eyes glaze over when I mention her again are right.
I'm not sure I really care if I am. I wanted a book I could read quietly in my head to my baby girl. I know she can't really hear me, but it soothes my soul to imagine that maybe just maybe...

You are my angel, my darling,
my star...and my love will find you,
wherever you are.

I don't know why I didn't include this detail in yesterday's post. I didn't forget, but I think I'm still a little wary of that whole "signs" thing.

I think it was around seven on Friday evening when the heavens opened and the rain came. Ernest and I were in the loft, and the rain on the roof was deafening. Ernest had just nodded off on my shoulder as the rain cleared, the golden evening sunlight lit up the skies and there over the roof tops was this beautiful rainbow.
I know, so many would say it was a gift from Florence. Honestly I don't believe that, but I do believe it made my heart leap, and I dashed for the camera. (and one day I'll learn to take better pictures of rainbows)
Really it doesn't matter what I do or don't believe. Rainbows make me smile, and this perfectly timed rainbow lifted my heart for a few moments. x

And I'm ok. The run up to Florence's birthday was hard, so many ghosts. The day itself was calm and mostly ok.
We got up early,( I woke at 4.54am exactly) packed our picnic and Florence's flowers, and headed off to the cemetery via the balloon shop.


I almost burst into tears when the lady in the balloon shop asked if the balloons were for a birthday, but I didn't, and she quickly understood my mumbled reply and was very kind.

Of course, I should've bought spare balloons, not two minutes down the road and one had popped! Not really surprising with a car full of seven people, a picnic, a large bunch of flowers and eight helium filled balloons.



The cemetery was quiet, and sunny. We arranged the flowers, and the children blew bubbles left over from my brothers wedding. Then we let the balloons go.






We didn't plan it, but it just happened that we timed the balloon release for the time she died.

After the cemetery we headed off to Florence's wood for a picnic and a walk.





On the way home, both Woody and I were hit by a huge wave of exhaustion. I still forget just what a slog grief can be. Two years out and it's still so tiring, such toil.

Woody and I watched the sunrise on Saturday morning, and that's when the tears came.



I want to say thank you so much to everyone who remembered with us. We came home to flowers and cards, and messages, and they mean so much to us.



We love you baby girl x

fur·tive/ˈfərtiv/Adjective
1. Attempting to avoid notice or attention, typically because of guilt or a belief that discovery would lead to trouble; secretive.

I don't know if this is normal amongst babyloss parents, and maybe I'll regret outing myself here,but I am guilty of furtively browsing the internet, and scrutinising photos of baby girls. I don't really go looking for them, but if I happen upon a cute photo of a little girl who might be around the same age Florence would be now, I'll look closer...I'll wonder if that little girl has longer hair than Florence would by now,would I be able to put a little bow in it? Would Florence still have that touch of red in her hair? Would her eyes be bluer than the little girl I'm looking at, her wrists chubbier?
I feel kinda guilty doing this, like I'm stealing little bits of little girls and trying to build my own, make her alive, Maybe that's how Mary Shelley (a fellow babyloss Mama) felt when she wrote Frankenstien?
I know this little excercise is futile, I can't make Florence alive again, and honestly it's not usually an enjoyable past time, it stabs at my heart,but I still do it.
Yesterday, I almost came undone because of it. I clicked on a link,a little toddler in a beautiful little dress, and little red shoes. I told myself I wanted a closer look at the dress, research you see for future pattern drafting. I clicked through several photos,looking at seam details, and wondering to myself, then it hit me, the caption, the little girl in the photo with the chubby wrists, and the bow in her hair was called Florence. I had to steady myself by holding on to my desk, as the room span and I tried to stop the tears from springing to my eyes.
Regaining my composure,I scolded myself for looking,but since that moment,I've felt so guilty, and so very stupid.
I can't conjure her up,I can't know how she would've been, I can only know what she was,but that was so brief.
I look at her photos every day, sometimes I examine every little crease on her face and fingers, and sometimes it hurts too much to look too closely.
I expect I'll always look just a little bit too long, and a little bit too longingly at girls the age she should be, and I guess it'll always sting just a little to hear her name belonging to someone else.

Thanks to Angie for initiating this project. Read more here.

***

Twenty Two months and five days.



I miss her.
I think of her a million times a day, I'm still half expecting her to come back to me.I still can't quite grasp that forever is forever.
I'm heartbroken.

That's the bare bones of it, but that's not everything.

Mostly it's a good life, Woody and the children anchor me to this life, and there is joy,pure joy. Not something I ever thought there could be again.


"The deeper sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain."
Kahlil Gibran

I remember reading these words on the blog of a friend shortly after Florence died, and another friend reminded me of them again recently. As time goes by they have more and more meaning.

What I've come to realise lately is that there will always be good days and bad days. I will always miss her, my grief for her will always be a part of me, just as my love for her is.

There will always be unexpected triggers in my daily life, but these days they don't always make me cry, sometimes I can smile.

A sunbeam will prompt me to whisper "Is that you love?" and I might feel a moment of warmth.

I feel her with me, so much so, that I'm baffled when others don't see her. Walking to school with the boys, she's there toddling along beside me. In the evenings as I snuggle Ernest down to sleep, I can imagine her lying right there with us, or lately toddling off to the garden with Woody to say goodnight to the chickens.

Yesterday, Woody and I took the boys out to an aquarium for the day. The girls were at school. We felt very strange with just three children with us, but at the same time, it was nice to do something with just the boys.
And then my eye catches a little girl in the cafe, about two years old, her wisps of wavy hair pinned back from her eyes, holding on to her Daddy's hand, and waving to the fish....it's a kick in the guts...she's missing.
Just moments later, another little girl, this time in a wheelchair, severely disabled, her Daddy showing her some little toys from the gift shop, and I feel like the universe is forcing me to see that I don't know what I'm missing. Had Florence survived would that be her life? We'll never know.

Forever is forever, and we'll never know why. We'll never know why her lungs filled with blood and not air. Why she had to leave us....

Damn! I wanted to write something hopeful for those finding their way here soon after their losses, and here I am heading down that same pathway, the one I've gone over and over a million times.

It's complicated this life without her, sometimes I feel there are shadows of myself in different lives, all stemming back to 22nd July 2009. There is a huge part of me still there, willing her to live, hoping for a different outcome, and then I'm here. I see a different me in the mirror, an older, darker, sadder me.

I just miss her. x

Florence feels distant to me lately, it's as though she's just out of sight, a glimmer of her in the corner of my eye in a sunbeam,but when I try to find her she's gone.
Maybe I'm starting to accept she is gone? Maybe I've always thought she might be coming back?
I'm not at all sure of anything, except I think this current numbness may well be temporary. I certainly hope so, because I don't want to feel this way forever, I think I prefer the constant tears to this.


A wise person said to me recently that everything I'm feeling is normal, that maybe some of my grief was put on hold while I prepared for Ernest's birth, and again while I dealt with all of his feeding issues.
I think that's certainly possible.

Life doesn't stand still though, each time I think I might be catching up with the now, dragging myself kicking and screaming from July 2009, I find that life is still moving on.
Ernest is 9 months now, he's moving on to older babyhood. He's crawling and pulling himself up, and developing a sense of humour. He loves his Daddy and puts his arms out to him as soon as he's home from work. He's just so alive and wonderful.



I was shopping in the supermarket a week ago. I'd left Woody and the older children arguing over a dessert for dinner, and gone to find shampoo, with Ernest tucked in the sling.
An elderly lady approached us, and commented on what a beautiful baby Ernest is. She asked me if he was my first, and I replied no, that he was my sixth. She asked me if I was catholic, I'm not, but she said she was, though only had one child, then she corrected herself and said she had three, but she had lost two. My heart skipped a beat, and I wanted to say I understood, and my baby was gone too, but she did what I try to do, and she moved the conversation on before I had the chance. I guess she'd had a lot more practice than me.
We chatted for a while, and as we parted she said how much she'd enjoyed chatting, and that Ernest was far too much of an old fashioned name for such a beautiful baby.
I know I'll almost probably never see her again, I know it was just a random polite chat in the supermarket, but I feel guilty that I didn't validate her lost children, I didn't even say I was sorry.
I told her, I'd enjoyed our chat too, and I hoped she'd have a nice evening. I hope she did.

And this is how it is, a million small things,but there's no happy ending, no neatly tied up package. I think maybe I've been waiting for a time when all the grief is done and I'm just accepting.
She's been gone 21 months, and I'm still struggling with forever.
I'll always grieve, maybe sometimes harder than others, maybe accepting that is what I need to do.




I've been archiving all my posts about Florence, slowly going through them. I want to protect those thoughts, put them somewhere safe. I want to put Florence somewhere safe, a pocket inside my heart.

Like many babyloss mamas who blog I feel like a stuck record. Going through my older posts I realise I've repeated myself even more than I suspected I had. I don't know how much longer I can go on doing that here in this space, and still feel I'm keeping Florence safe.

My recent experiences have taught me, that outside of my bubble, actually the *vast majority don't give a shit, and want me to STFU already. To most people Florence was not a person, but "just a baby", and I'm all cured now having Ernest here.
Some people might even think I'm not grateful for what I do have, that I'm wallowing...it has been suggested.

I'm not going to remove my posts from this blog, I'm just putting them somewhere safe too, and pondering what to do next.





*I'm very aware that some of what I'm saying here might hurt and upset those of you reading that do give a shit, and do understand, that's not my intention at all. You are not included in that "vast majority".

For some months now I've been avoiding something, I've skirted around the issue, dipped my toes in the water, but hastily withdrawn again.

There is a fine line between grief and depression, I know from experience. My Dad died suddenly in his early forties while my brothers and I were at school.I was a month off my 18th birthday, my brothers were 16 and 15. My Mum was widowed at 35. None of us coped terribly well, but that's a whole other story.

I remember sitting in the hospital after Florence died, holding her in my arms and telling Woody I couldn't do grief again. I don't know if he remembers that or not.

For some months now I've been stepping carefully along that fine line, keeping, or so I thought, just this side of depression.

After Ernest was born, and I met our health visitor for the first time, before anyone had a chance to brief her on our history. I explained about Florence, ignored the head tilt, and tried to ignore the little alarm bells going off in her head. I vehemently denied I was a candidate for post natal depression. I had PND with Eden, I knew what it was, and it wasn't the same as grief. I reassured her, I would know if I was depressed, and I thought I would.

Am I now? I don't know.

I'm physically and emotionally exhausted, but show me a Mum of a baby that isn't?

I'm managing my anxiety better, the flashbacks are less frequent.

My house is as clean as you might expect, the children, are fed, and clean, and loved.

I shower, put on make up, blow dry my hair.

I make things.

To a casual observer I'm fine, I even smile and laugh, make eye contact and small talk....


....but inside I'm hollow, and I cry. I cry every day. Sometimes silent weeping, sometimes howling breathless sobbing. Mostly I cry in secret, when Woody is at work and the big ones are at school. I cry when I'm busy, and when I'm still...is that normal?

I admitted my secret crying to Woody the other day, a first step maybe? a first step to what though? Getting better? I'll never be better, I don't want to be. I have so very little of Florence, that this pain sometimes feels like the only connection.

I suppose I know I need to seek some professional help, but I'm not quite brave enough yet. I'm so terribly afraid of a diagnosis. I don't want to hear "post natal depression" , it seems too trivial to fit (And i know PND is not trivial at all, I've been there.). I want to hear "heartbroken", because that's what I am, even that phrase I hate so much, mentioned by my lovely friend in the early days, "complicated grief" would suit me better. (sorry K, you know I love you.)

But you see, I'm fine really. I'm crying now, but I'll dry my tears,re apply my mascara and head out to school. I'll smile and wave at the lollipop lady, I'll buy treats on the way home, then come home and hoover the floor, do the laundry...I'm fine.

But the simple truth? I miss her.x