Bee made roast dinner Saturday I hold it together for most of the day, but when we go swimming I start crying.

Nearly 20 weeks. 5 months preggers 🙂 . It is so awesome. I can feel her move and kick now! I couldn’t wait to put this picture on facebook, which I do as soon as we get home. (We are camping on East Lake Reservoir with Anton and Fedi.)

This is one of a couple of T-shirts I have bought myself. It feels sort of bad luck to be buying things before she is born, I have completely resisted buying anything for the baby yet – but I have bought a few tshirts and pair of leggings for me (both pictured here). My tummy is starting to push out of all my other T-shrts. I think I will be able to wear my jeans for a couple more months yet. Mikol bought me 2 huge bags of community prego clothes, so I don’t think I will have to splash out money through the rest of the pregnancy.

18 weeks preggers. Just over 4.5 months. I can’t wait to meet her! This skirt buttons at the waist and my clothes are finally starting to get tight. People at work still haven’t noticed I am pregnant, but I have told all of my friends. I am still going to crossift, but I am wearing a heart monitor and being very careful with the running and the lifts.

Still less only 4 months preggers here – but I can see her. Trying to wear clothes to work to show her off. I am pregnant, dammit, I am pregnant. I am so happy I want everyone to notice!

3 August. Only just over 3 months preggers here. Taken at Trevor’s parents house. The day after we told his mum and dad. We waited til the last minute to tell them until we got the results back of the CVS. There is no Down’s Syndrome, no trisomy 13, no trisomy 18. Trevor and I both have extended generics test (some are blood tests, some are spit tests that we have to send away.) All the signs show clear and healthy baby. IT IS A GIRL 🙂 We are going to call her Grace.

During our first pregnancy, I had already seen the baby, but Trevor hadn’t. When we went in for our 13 week scan (same “stage” this photo was taken at), we knew something was wrong immediately. They couldn’t find a heartbeat. The baby was dead. I don’t think I cried then, but I couldn’t stop as we walked back up the hill to the car. Literally during the D&C for the first baby, they recommended we switch to IVF due to my age.

Although the doctors told me it was impossible, I fell pregnant again immediately. Unfortunately, that week coincided with 4th Julplaya and I didn’t treat my body very well.  They called that one a “chemical pregnancy” and I was only able to keep it 2 weeks 😦 .

Finally they did another set of scans on my body and tell me I have a “heart shaped uretus”. It sounds good, but it isn’t. I had to have that surgery (you are comletely unconcious for that one), and heal from it before you can try again

I’m sorry the way that this started as a place to store pix of the baby, and ended up as a blog.  It is really inconvenient for people to read this way and a silly way to blog. I think I just needed an outlet.  It is funny, I used to write a lot as a kid, and I have let that slip away over the years.  I might pick that back up.  (It doesn’t matter if nobody reads anything, at least I will have written. I am finding it incredibly cathartic – even if it is all about me!)  Now I have realized I might be blogging for a bit, I am moving everything from smugmug to WordPress.

This is the first photo we have of Grace. She was our third pregnancy. And she was our last.

I have experienced more despair than I thought possible (or reasonable) for such a “small thing as the loss of a child”, I have learnt some humility and more humanity – and I believe I have had some kind of epiphany about the beauty of life and the strength and value of friendships.  This is the story of the loss of our baby.  Her name was Grace Somers.

In the beginning, there was: 

This didn’t start as a blog.  These early entries are cut-and-pasted from my Smugmug account – before my life fell apart.  Before I ever conceived I might need a blog.  And outlet for my madness. 

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18th July 2016.  Finally, I am pregnant again.  My first 2 pregnancies were natural ones, but i didn’t manage to hold on to either.
I at 40 now (birthday was in May). I got pregnant naturally twice last year.  Literally in the middle of a D&C the doctor, whilst he was vacuuming out my baby and I was crying, the doctor suggested I go straight to IVF as I was “getting on a bit”.  Although his bedside manner left a lot to be desired, we decided maybe he was right.  We did 4 rounds of IUI and 2 rounds of IVF before I finally became pregnant for the third time.  I lost that baby at 5 months.  I think with the stress and the unnaturalness of the Chlomid, all the hormones, the invasive IVF may have contributed to my body revolting and not getting pregnant.  As soon as I get my first period after this loss, I am going to try at least 3 months the natural way.

Anyway, this photo was posted in July. I don’t think we even knew the sex yet. She was just over 3 months along. Although this was our third pregnancy, this is the first time Trevor has actually seen any of ultrasounds. She finally looked like a baby.  In the first few – she just looked like a jelly bean doing flips in space!  We didn’t tell anyone yet.  I was past past the first trimester, so we were safe from miscarriages probably, but we wanted to do the CVS (genetic testing) before we told all of our friends.