Monday, July 6th Dear Sebastian, It’s that time of year, when you are up at the surface of my heart. A week ago, at book club, someone asked about you. We were discussing Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (my pick, because I love her), a story in which the main character experienced baby loss as…
Tag: pain
Thoughts on the Humbling Experience of Extreme Lower Back Pain
For the last four days, I have been dealing with my first truly humbling episode of back pain. And when I say humbling, I don’t just mean that it put things in perspective, though it totally did. It also literally put me down – on all fours – for the first part of both Friday…
Raising a Daughter in Scary But Hopeful Times
Recently, I had the chance to catch up with an old friend whose family was expecting their third child: a daughter, after two sons. [Actually, I started this post more than a month ago, and as it happens, said daughter was born TODAY, early this morning! So read on, in honour of wee baby EC’s…
8 Unromantic-Sounding Ways I Know Our Marriage Will Last
“How’s your relationship these days?” is not a question most of us ever ask people. I’ve probably only ever asked it of newlyweds (where it’s more like “How’s married life?” nudge-nudge) or of very close friends with whom I have a precedent of relationship discussions. It is a bit odd, though. Among parents, there are the constant…
Trans Day of Remembrance – November 20th
Today is November 20th. It is International Children’s Day, which is well-known. Less well known is the fact that it is also Trans Day of Remembrance. Last Thursday, I went to a Professional Development workshop on Safer and Inclusive Schools, regarding the LGBTQ community in our education system. It was a fascinating day, led by an…
Things I’ve Learned About Being A Baby Loss Mama – Three Years Later
It’s October 15th: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. On July 9th, 2011, as you know, our Sebastian was stillborn at 35.5 weeks’ gestation. I have learned things, since then, about mothering an invisible child. Although I don’t presume to speak for other babylost parents here, some will relate. It gets easier. Functioning day-to-day, compartmentalizing to…
How Fine the Line
We had awful, awful news at our school last week. A five-year-old girl died after returning home from school one afternoon. One of our own kindergarten students. It’s like a punch in the gut, a slap in the face that makes you see stars, and makes the colours all weirdly bright. Suddenly danger is brilliantly…
Wishful Thinking for the New Year
Happy New Year, lovely Di-hards. I’m making wishes today. This one is for you: I wish for your baby to be born so sweet and healthy that the whole world smiles. And you: I wish for that project you’re working on to grow wings and take off (with you in the pilot seat, of course). And you: I…
Ladders from Dark Places
This past Thursday, October 10th, was World Mental Health Day. Please, let’s talk. Mental health, or lack thereof, is a subject very close to my heart. Several people who share my blood have struggled with depression and similar mental illnesses. So has my husband. In fact, my Hubbibi was suffering from depression when we first…
Here we are. Two years.
It’s here. This day has been homing in on me for weeks. As I begin to write this, at 2:21 p.m., it was exactly two years ago that my husband and I wandered around the mall with my induction prescription in hand, wondering how we’d manage family phone calls to tell everyone that the baby…