Well November is nearly past and it is time for another reflection on what was going on a year ago. I think this will be the last of these “a year ago reflections.” After this there were not too many events of note. Just the long and slow grieving process which is still continuing of course…
…In the months following Abigail’s death we were pretty much in a daze to be honest. Read More…
Posted in conversations, friends, grief, hospitals, infertility, my story, stillbirth | Tags: Abigail, babies, baby, blood tests, busy, c section, christmas, chromosomal, chromosome, conceive, conversations, daze, december, decoration, doctor, due date, egg, email, family, fertilise, grief, holiday, infertility, joy, lamentations, maternity, normal, november, pain, perfect, platitude, PM, post mortem, pregnant, recur, results, sperm, tests, tree, triploidy, ultrasound, work
Since Abigail was born still certain music has had a very special place in my heart. It was hard to plan a funeral service for a baby that we never got to know, or even meet, but songs helped to express what we were feeling on that special day. And, in the months that followed I kept coming across new songs which made me think about my beautiful baby daughter and how much I missed her.
More recently, I made a playlist of songs that spoke to me about Abigail as a gift for my lovely wife. This was a good way to honour both of the special girls in my life.
Around the first anniversary of Abigail’s death I felt so much emotion but not the release of tears. It was music once again that broke through my emotional reserves as I eventually sobbed my heart out listening to one particular song.
Anyway, I thought I would share here some of the special music that reminds me of Abigail. Read More…
Posted in faith, funeral, grief, music, stillbirth | Tags: 20 good reasons, a little more of you, Abigail, annies song, anniversary, as high as the heavens, ashley chambliss, at the foot of the cross, baby, beauty for ashes, beauty will rise, blesses be your name, blog, chasing cars, child, cinderella, cry, daughter, daughter of heaven, diamond rio, died, dixie chicks, emotion, father, friends, funeral, gerrit hofsink, go rest high on this mountain, god of grace, gone too soon, grateful dead, grief, guns and roses, heart, heaven is the face, high, honour, how deep the fathers love, i will always love you, i will take you home, jesus draw me closer, jesus loves me, john denver, josh groban, kate rusby, keith getty, kristyn getty, lighthouse family, love songs, matt redman, michael jackson, michael w smith, music, one more day, phatfish, playlist, righteous brothers, run, snow patrol, somewhere over the rainbow, song, songs, steve curtis chapman, still, stillbirth, stillborn, sweet child o mine, tears, thanksgiving service, there is a day, thirsty merc, to where you are, unchained melody, vince gill, whitney houston, wife, with hope, without you, you never let go
One of my early posts when starting out in this brave new world of blogging was this baby loss meme. It helped me early on to be asked some challenging questions which perhaps I wouldn’t normally be asked. It was also liberating to be able to answer them completely honestly rather than conform to polite social requirements.
I was made to think by Caz’s recent post taking up the challenge to answer these same questions too. It made me wonder how my thinking has changed over the last few months so I thought I would answer them again and see how things have moved on. I hope it isn’t a sign of desperation that I cannot think of new ideas for a post or new things to say! You can judge. Read More…
Posted in adoption, blogs, friends, funeral, grief, stillbirth | Tags: Abigail, adopt, anniversary, ashes, assessment, babyloss, balanced, better, blog poem, capacity, challange, changed, child, daughter, fair, family, father, fear, forgotten, future, hill, life, love, make, meme, mosaic, music, name, obsession, photo, pot, precious, project, questions, rituals, stillbirth, wife, wonderful
Forgive me if I continue in fairly philosophical mode at the moment. There is something about our culture in the west that likes, no more than that… needs to be in control. We are deeply uncomfortable when things are spiralling outside of our control.
Perhaps one of the reasons stillbirth and infertility are taboo subjects in our culture is that as well as being painful and scary they also remind us that however we deceive ourselves, we are not as in control as we thought we were. People don’t like to be reminded that their best laid plans can be dashed at any moment. That they do not control their destinies. Read More…
I found myself (bizarrely enough) in a lecture yesterday in which it was noted that the latin root for communication is communicare from which we get “communist”, “common” and other such words. The key to good communication is having something in common.
For my blog to communicate to you we need a common language (my red dot map shows visitors mostly from the English-speaking world). It is probably a common experience that brought you here in the first place – the death of a precious baby most likely or perhaps ongoing struggles with infertility. And it is likely that the blogs and posts we most relate to are ones demonstrating a shared or common worldview – perhaps more Christians return to this site and perhaps non-Christians are put off by some of the content.
This is one of the reasons why we struggle when engaging in the real world. Stillbirth and Infertility are massively formative experiences. Read More…
Posted in blogs, conversations, friends, grief, infertility, stillbirth | Tags: infertility, communication, superficial, baby, christian, blogs, pregnant, internet, language, common, shared, worldview, struggle, formative, different, mirage, miscommunication, wish, petrified, experiences, bridges, community, ghetto
Well, I have finally succumbed to the ‘gentle persuasion’ of Mr Livingintherainbow to post on the blog. Read More…
This is not a political post and I am not especially political myself. I have just been thinking that the current Prime Minister of the UK and the Leader of the Opposition (and probable future Prime Minister) have both suffered the death of a child.
Their loss doesn’t seem to get them much of a break in the public eye or in the media. They were given a few weeks space to grieve and then the mud-slinging match began again. I wonder why politics is like that and why people in the media are like that. I wonder what it was like for them and their wives to be in the public eye during and after such a terrible loss. How did they come back to work? How has it shaped them as people. Will they be better leaders of this country as a result of the tradgedies that struck them? Read More…
Posted in grief | Tags: brown, david cameron, eyesight, gordon brown, ivan cameron, jennifer jane, letter, note, prime minister, uk
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