Due Date

I couldn't sleep this morning so I wrote this and posted it on Facebook, but I'm wanting to bring this blog back to life and here's a good place to share it too.

Dear Olaf Albert & Elsa Hilda,

I'm missing you hard right now.

Today could've been your birthday, and while I know that due dates aren't an exact science, it's just another little reminder that you guys aren't here.

But it's not the only date in your short lives which means something to me, in fact it's probably the least important one because who's to say that you wouldn't have shown up early, or late, or one on either side of midnight.

You might never have seen your due date, but how many people know the exact date their offspring were conceived because I do (along with the thousands of other women having IVF/ICSI treatment, of course). It was the 16th of June, though we didn't know for certain until the following day.

You were so special that we put you on ice and didn't get to meet you until the 6th of November. How many other people have time travelling babies? (Again, apart from couples having the aforementioned fertility treatments. And pandas).

You might have been tiny little bundles of cells, but you were the most beautiful bundles of cells I'd ever seen. I know, I'm hugely biased, but it's true.

I'm sorry you never really got proper names until after you were gone. Olaf and Elsa was meant to be a cutsie joke, because you were Frozen, get it? We added the names of one each of your great-grandparents only after you'd gone. It made you feel more real somehow.

Sometimes I still have to remind myself you were here because November last year feels like a bit of a dream. So few people knew about you and your time was so brief that it would be easy to forget.

I'll never forget.

We waited so long for you; five years, eleven months, and two weeks to be exact, but who's counting. And the time we had together was so short.

But I loved every minute of it.

I loved watching what I did and ate because I was responsible for more lives than just my own. I loved the crazy insomnia you gave me, knowing that for those two, or three, or four hours I lay awake at night, I wasn't really alone. I even loved the beginning of the morning sickness and the fact I had to pee. All. The. Time.

They were never annoyances, well, okay, the peeing thing and the midafternoon crash caused by the mad sleep patterns weren't exactly thrilling. But I just enjoyed knowing you were in there and my body was doing this most amazing, natural, impossible thing.

You were worth it all. All the crazy hormones. All the injections. All the hospital appointments. All of it.

Your daddy would probably even say it was worth getting woken up at 2am by the crazy woman who couldn't wait one minute longer to take a pregnancy test!

So while today is a sad day because it's another reminder that I'll never get to hold you in my arms, I don't want to feel too sad; we packed so many happy memories into such a short space of time and I want to focus on those, not some arbitrary date when you might have been born.

And I just wanted to share some of those memories today, on this essentially arbitrary date, because people don't talk about these things nearly enough. I'm that one in eight women who struggle with infertility; you were the one in four pregnancy that ended in miscarriage. And it totally sucks that we got to be part of both those statistics, kiddos.

But I got to have you for a little while, a painfully short time, but a little while nonetheless. While I'll never get to sing you a lullaby (badly, I'm afraid), or tuck you into bed, or watch you negotiate the tricky world of school and relationships (also not one of my strong points, to be honest), I know you existed and that you were real.

I got to be your mummy for those few weeks and I carry you with me in my heart everyday, my special snowflake babies.

Every day.
xoxoxo