A Half Life

This time two years ago I was enormously pregnant, laying on a hard bed in Casuarina Cottage at Westmead Public Hospital and waiting for the tell tale signs of labour to visit. I wondered what it would feel like. Would I be able to handle the pain or succumb to an epidural? Would the labour go well or would I need a caesarean? I wondered intensely what my daughter would look like- I'd known she was a girl since my 20 week ultrasound and my partner and I had already named her Willow. I had all the same fears as any first time mum to be, but I also had the unnatural stomach-churning of terror that my child would die. I'd been in love with her from conception, adored her like the other half of my own soul without even meeting her. The very real possibility that I wouldn't get so much as a cuddle before she passed away kept my stomach in a permanent knot. It wasn't just the normal motherly worrying, it was a feasible possibility. Willow had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, one ventricle to work for two.
Willow was born on the 29th of March, 2009. I had succumbed to an epidural, and I had very nearly needed a caesarean, but eventually with some forcep assistance, Willow popped out into the world and eyed everyone with a silent curiosity. She consented to let me hold her hand while we looked into each other's eyes and then she was rolled away to the Children's Hospital with monitors stuck all over her. I didn't get that cuddle til she was three days old.
It's impossible for me to tell you everything about her 9 months of life in one blog entry, and it would be as overwhelming for you to read as it would be for me to recall. I got a lot of cuddles while she was alive, but there were weeks at a time where all I could do was touch her legs and arms or kiss her cheeks around the ventilator tube. I got to hear her beautiful giggle and become enchanted by her many smiles, but I also heard her blood curdling screams of pain with every new needle, cannula and procedure. My life with Willow was one of polarity, extreme happiness curtailed too often by raw terror and agony.  Life without her is much the same, blessed by the warmth of her memory and weakened by the tragedy of her death. It's a half life, somehow emptier now than it was before she was conceived, a strange duality I know many people share, and yet so few who haven't experienced the loss of a child seem unable to understand.
So I write this blog for the mums and dads grieving, but also for the people who just don't get what it feels like for us, the ones who tell us it's time to move on, or that everything happens for a reason, or tell us how blessed we are because now we have angels in heaven watching over us. If you have said any of those offensive things to a grieving parent, or you have heard them said to you, then I hope this blog will connect with you somehow. I don't have solutions or suggestions, I just have experience.
And really, if even just one other person besides me gets something out of this, I'll be happy.