Friday, November 14, 2003

Its time really...

I've avoided doing this for so long. Its not that I don't enjoy pouring the contents of my head onto the keyboard, I do. It's not that I have not had time either. I have. Lots of it. I guess life has been rather topsy turvy of late and I wanted to wait till it righted itself before I committed my ramblings to the screen. And I guess this is as right as it is going to get for a while.

In mid August, much to our surprise and chagrin we found ourselves pregnant. Hooray I hear you cry and indeed it was a rather happy and exciting discovery. I was tired all the time, ravenous all the time and terrified only some of the time. To our knowledge all was going well and we were chuffed!

As I mentioned in my last post, in mid September I contracted a rather nasty viral infection and was down with it for almost 3 weeks. Much to my surprise really as I have never, ever been that sick for that long. Understandable was the fact that a woman's immune system is somewhat taxed while pregnant as the body does not have the resource to fight infection and create baby toes, knees and eyebrows at the same time. Apparently. However, I recovered and returned to work.

I guess what we now know is that the virus may have been the reason our little bean is no longer with us. We found out a month ago during our first ultrasound scan that the baby had not grown much beyond the 5 week stage and I had effectively miscarried. What followed was a rather long and sad few weeks where we have cried and grieved over the loss of our much missed baby.

I have deliberated about writing this next part here but I feel need to in order to expel some of the sadness that still surrounds me at times.

We both felt our baby was a boy. Neither of us had voiced this but after we found out we had lost him we talked about how we would commemorate his short existence and passing. Ian suggested we take the name we were hoping to call a son if we had one and give it to our baby.

So our first baby is named Jordi which is Spanish for George.

We also wanted to do something by way of tribute and memorial for Jordi and a way of helping us say goodbye to him. We booked ourselves a long weekend in Barcelona a while back and next Thursday is when we fly out. Connecting Jordi's name and our trip to Spain, Ian came up with a wonderful suggestion that we go to the Cathedral there and light one of those beautiful coloured candles that we will leave to burn there in his memory. I am acutely aware however that this is not going to be easy for either of us. I have held off the grieving in some ways as I have anticipated the trip to the Cathedral to be helpful but did not realise that in doing so I have pent up some very strong feelings.

The strong feelings I avoid are inextricably linked to thoughts and I realise that as a result I have not been thinking too much of late. Somehow I have tucked my thoughts away. In fact the only thought I seem to entertain lately is what colour candle I want to have burning in my son's memory in a church in a city hundreds of miles away. To think about much more is simply too hard.

The sadness that is part of all of this is strange. It was only after we found out he was gone did I realise how much I had invested in him. Somewhere in the back blocks of my mind he was a person, with a present, a future and an essence. The vacuum his absence has left within me is insatiable. I did not meet Jordi, I did not know him but his existence is one of the most powerful encounters I have ever had. His life has been deeply impressed on mine and has set in my bones. I am changed in ways I can not articulate. In places I did not know I owned. I can not believe he is completely gone for, he is and always will be, a part of me.

Listening to: Song for a Sleepwalker, Something for Kate
Reading: Dragonfly in Amber, Diana Gabaldon