Month: May 2016

Today has been a funny old day. I decided to have a day to myself doing something nice rather
than working or doing the usual housework etc! This morning I went to yoga (I thought it would be good to have some relaxation time) and then this afternoon I got my hair cut and blow dried! I LOVE a good blow dry! Sounds great doesn’t it… And don’t get me wrong it was! But do you know what, I think it was the first time since Betty died I have done something like that where I have been out in company I didn’t know! Not that I havn’t been out until now or on my own, but I usually meet friends who know me well or only seem to bump into people who aren’t likely to ask me questions! I’m always out and about. But It was the first time (and it happened several times today) that I have been asked by a stranger ‘how many children do you have?’ ‘Do you think you will have anymore?’. I almost hadn’t thought about this happening so I was taken back a bit by the questions, I found myself lying! I told them about Archie and I just said yes we would like more, but I didn’t go into any detail. 

I felt awful as soon as the words left my mouth, why was I hiding Betty? It wasn’t because I am ashamed of her (far from it) I want everyone to know about her – but it’s such a personal thing that I didn’t feel A) the young hairdresser needed to know I have 2 children, but one is dead B) I’m probably going to make her feel bad for asking, how was she to know and she almost certainly wouldn’t have a clue how to react to my response (I know I wouldn’t) well actually I would now, but I wouldn’t have this time last year! And the lady who has just met me for the first time at yoga is definitely just making small talk, it’s not appropriate to bring that up!

In the hairdressers I could hear another woman talking about her new baby, happy, almost smug, so proud of her new baby and the fact she is a new parent, giddy because today is the first time she has left him and that she’s mastered breastfeeding – I was just sat thinking to myself that I’m almost sad I will never have that naivety in pregnancy or after having another child (if it happens) in fact never again. I know we can’t go through life thinking something bad is going to happen, it’s just not the way we are conditioned to think. But I feel like I’ve been robbed of ever enjoying again the lovely feeling of a newborn, I think even if we get another baby I will always be thinking in the back of my mind something might go wrong! But perhaps with time my brain will think differently and I will relax into things! 

So… What do I say now when people ask me the question??? Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh I don’t know! Why am I worried about making other people feel uncomfortable! But it’s that line between if your just having a fleeting conversation with someone I can’t go into what happened to us so why bring it up at all! But does this seem like I’m a bad person for not sharing my gorgeous baby girl! I think it will take me a long time yet to know the answer to this! I think for now I just have to go with what feels right at that moment in time and as long as I know in my heart how loved Betty is she isn’t going to mind if I don’t mention her to random people! Wow! Where’s that handbook to life when you need it… 

 Serious selfie of my new locks (trying to take a quick sneaky pic before anyone walked past the car) ha ha! 

Jen 

I don’t want my blog to seem all sad and upsetting, however it’s felt important to try and show people why I set it up in the first place; ultimately it is about Betty. What happened to her was and still is incredibly sad. To be honest everytime I write I think about her, in fact there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of her. I love the fact that this blog is giving me a chance to say her name more and people are saying it. We won’t have a home where her name will be called up the stairs to get dressed, share that toy, eat your dinner please. I suppose as time goes on her name will fade into the background, but hopefully through my blog this wont happen. I hope I have created somewhat of an introduction, an understanding to where you find me today – I don’t think I could ever have shared our story until this point in time. Right now other things like sharing her picture still feel so overwhelming I just cant do them. I hope in time I can share her with those who are following and reading intently.

Thank fully much of my day to day life revolves around Archie B! This is where this post finds me, on the subject of school uniform! Another weekend begins and I get the machine loaded up with the previous weeks wear ready for Monday morning (which will creep up before we know it) Since he started school in September I seem to be fighting the loosing battle of the uniform! I don’t know if it’s just me (or Archie) but we seem to be going through items of school clothing like underwear! Did anyone else think when their child started school they would buy a couple of sets of uniform and these would last them for the entire academic year!?

Maybe it is just my son, but so far we are on his fifth! Yes fifth pair of school shoes (will come back to that in a moment) third pack of polo shirts (I originaly brought 2 packs of 2), I’m contemplating wether to buy another pack as all the ones we have including the newer ones either have bolognaise stains on (he only seems to take his jumper off to eat lunch when it is a tomato based meal day – amazing!) Or they have been washed, vanished and tumbled so much they are developing holes and going grey, yes he does completely look like a vagabond child. I have to keep asking the teacher what he has been doing to be getting holes in literally everything in the hope I don’t look like an awful mother sending my child in looking so disheveled! Pairs 1 and 2 of school trousers, by Christmas these had gone through on the knees, I brought 2 new pairs and these are already starting to wear out. I recently brought him some school shorts for the summer term and sure enough his knees are beginning to look like his trousers! This week he had his first tumble and a bit fat purple bruise appeared on one knee! Oopsie!

(Healing nicely now – but he was feeling sorry for himself earlier this week) 

Now going back to the shoes – the shoes are just not standing the test of time one little bit. Unfortunately because Archie is extremely strong willed he would not wear the £50 pair of Clarks shoes on offer, they were ‘too ouchy’, actually they were just a properly fitted pair of shoes in comparison to the Crocs he had lived in all summer. Instead we opted for Next (I personally love next so didn’t really have a problem with getting them from there) but I did wonder if at half the price at £26 they would offer the same quality – well obviously I cant compare them to Clarks because he wouldn’t wear those shoes. Well, we got to November, at which point a large hole appeared in the front toe area! Having kept my receipt, I took them back and they kindly exchanged them for a shiny new pair. I kid you not the first day home after wearing his new pair and we had a scuff the whole width of the front of the shoe! What is this child doing at playtime? Walking on tip toes like a t-rex bearing his full weight down on his poor shoes… I’m still not sure. These shoes made it to January when I was too embarrassed to take another pair back so we opted for Asda, half the price again at £11 this time (maybe I really should have thought about this at the time) but I figured if they are advertising this footwear as ‘school wear’ it had to have some level of durability – surely!? Nope… these made it 6 weeks before a large hole right through to the inside opened up in both shoes! You guessed it… took them back, they exchanged them with no fuss, another shiny new pair. I think we got roughly about another 6 weeks before they went through again (this time even worse) but I couldn’t bring myself to take them back! It was obvious that Master Burborough was having some serious rough and tumble in his shoes. So change of tact, this time we go for good old M&S, we get a real leather pair, £30, 4 weeks in and so far so good, no scuffs or even worse holes! There is hope for the shoes yet! Needless to say come September I think we will be trying out Clarks regardless of protest.

(Check out his sorry looking shoes) 

I’m hoping by the time he starts Year One he will be more mature and just sit quietly at playtime. Yeah right! I wonder what the next school year will have in store for his poor uniform…

Jen 

I wrote this the other day on my travels. I stopped off on the Southbourne overcliff, the sky was clear, the sun was shining and all I could hear were the waves crashing on the sand – bliss. I love the beach – I find it a great place for thinking, there’s something about it that makes you feel happy, I think it has something to do with the feeling of being on holiday when you visit. It does of course depend on who you go with! If I go with Archie it’s generally loud, sandy, wet and slightly chaotic but fun all the same! But today I was alone.. 

For those who know me personally you know that I’m generally a happy, positive, friendly person. Over the last few months I have had to dig deep to find positive thoughts on all aspects of my life. After Betty died apart from Archie (and Scott) it just seemed like I had nothing in me to find positivity in. Yes I know I am extremely lucky to have a healthy son who is happy, a loving husband, a roof over our heads, food on the table – and an array of other things in our lives. But somehow it didn’t seem enough, I wanted and still want Betty. But we can’t have her. Trying to get a positive outlook on life back after something this bad has happened to you is really bloody hard. 

I am very lucky that myself and Scott constantly talk – anyone who knows me will also tell you that I don’t have a problem with talking! Ha ha! And that didn’t change even in light of our situation in fact some days I talk so much about what happened, I become so passionate about the subject that I worry others will think I’m going mad – that I’m getting carried away looking for an answer that isn’t there. Hopefully one day I can share with you what I mean by that.

But getting back to my point about positivity, anyone reading this who is going through a hard time, whatever that maybe, we don’t have to have something as extreme as death happen to us to feel like life is hard. We all have our problems – some more trivial than others but to that person they feel like a big deal and we cannot measure one another’s problems by who has had the worst thing happen to them. 

Sometimes we can think of what has happened to others, like in our case, to put the importance of our own problem into perspective. But sometimes things like that don’t matter when you feel you are going through a tough time, you can’t see anyone’s pain but your own. But, if you can dig deep, take each day as it comes and try to remain positive (even tho at times that is the last thing you feel like doing) in a week, month, year from now you will look back and think WOW! That was tough but I am still standing, I got through it and I can face anything. You may have changed slightly as a person from it but that’s not always a bad thing. The things life throws at us are all lessons that enable us to learn things about ourselves or others that we perhaps couldn’t see before. I have learned who my real friends are, how amazingly strong both our families are and how much they love and care for us. How lucky I am to have a child and that me and Scott can survive anything as long as we have eachother. The rest doesn’t matter – you will never have enough money, you will always want something you don’t have and you are always looking for the next ‘big’ thing to happen, be it good or bad, this is a fact of life. But you are living it and how lucky are we to be here and have the things we have? Sometimes the best thing you can do is focus on what you have and not what you don’t, however hard, painful and unfair that may seem.

Jen 

WOW! What an absolutely amazing response I had to my thoughts! Never in a million years did I think so many would read what I had to say! Amazing! And to see that people from all over the world have started to hear about Betty is just wonderful! 

I’ve never been one for sharing pregnancy news etc on Facebook, not because I ever thought something would go wrong but I just always thought once the baby was here it was lovely to share pics and news but until that time it didn’t feel right.. Just like when she died I never took to Facebook to tell everyone as the people who knew me best knew what had happened and it felt too sad to share with everyone else.. But.. At the same time I wanted everyone to know she was here – even if she hadn’t arrived safely as we had hoped. I wanted them to see how gorgeous she was and how perfect she looked but I just felt I couldn’t do this. 

We have some beautiful pictures of her which at some point I may share – but I’m longing to put some up around the house (anyone who knows me knows I love my pics, with many a funny face and lovely posed pic dotted about our house) we don’t have any of her anywhere, it’s so hard because we havn’t shown Archie a picture of her as we felt she looked too ‘normal’ for him to understand why she didn’t come home – we explained she was too poorly to stay with us and is now in heaven but if he saw her surely he would question what was wrong, because it didn’t look like there was, she just looked asleep. 

We talk about her still most days or mention something about her, be it sometimes just as a couple or with Archie; not purposely just naturally in different conversations – we don’t prompt him to talk about her we let it come naturally from him if he wants too and when he’s old enough I hope we can share what she looked like with him and take him to her grave to show him a place we can go to remember her. 

To me 5 is too young for that now. Some may disagree but I suppose we all have to do what we feel is right in different situations – no one gives you a hand book for when things like this happen, just like when you bring your baby home – they don’t come with a manual and you question everything you do, have I fed them properly, changed, winded etc well death is similar – we never know how we will feel we all grieve in different ways, we all take different times to feel ‘normal’ again different things will trigger our individual sadness and I am learning to go with my own instincts on how to tackle questions, feelings, emotions – it’s all new, even nearly 7 months on, don’t get me wrong things feel so much better than they did – if they didn’t I don’t think I would have started to share my thoughts through this blog, but this feels like the next step in dealing with what has happened to us. And more importantly sharing that we had a baby and she was amazing and we love her like we love Archie. 

We can talk about her and others can and know that we are not going to break or burst into tears if you mention her or ask us about her – we want to acknowledge that she was here and even tho we aren’t going through all the normal first year baby milestones we still think about her everyday. I can’t say it gives me comfort to hear of other people that have gone through similar experiences, it makes me sad to know others have had to endure this journey and pain but it is comforting to know we are not alone and although I don’t know or speak to many people who have experienced this those I have who are further along their journey than me have given me great hope that there will be happy times and good things for us again. Those people (you may be reading this) know that your strength and smiles showed me that it was going to be ok! Thank you for that.. 

Jen X