The Fault in Our Stars

So Saturday was a sliding doors experience, but not in the way I'd envisaged.

Instead I found myself taking the boys to their usual Saturday morning swimming lesson, and chatting to another Mum there about school, and moving into the next stage of our parenting journeys (her youngest is Toby's age, so she's a little ahead of me).  Something that I know wouldn't have happened if I'd had a newborn baby in a sling.

Then at lunch time I dropped Chris at work, and on my way back home had an even bigger sliding doors moment, when I stopped at a red light at a pedestrian crossing and saw one a guy I recognised from The Infusion Bay (where I have my IVIg).  I sat opposite him at my last treatment.  He crossed in front of my car- in his electric wheelchair, while I waited, behind the wheel of my car, with full use of my limbs.

I got home and the boys started to play this really involved game of make believe that mostly involved spreading their toys across the entire living room floor to make "the sea" (also making it pretty much impossible to cross the room without potentially breaking a bone) so I picked up one of my library books...

Don't worry, I'm not going to give away any spoilers.  But I'm not kidding when I say, that aside from breaking to feed/water/clean my children and tuck them into their beds, I could not tear my eyes away from the pages of this thing until I finished it that evening.  I laughed, and cried and would probably have turned back to the first page and read it right through immediately after finishing had I not vowed to return it to the library because someone else had reserved it.

A book about cancer, when you have just lost someone to cancer, and have other people you love battling cancer, may not sound like an ideal read, but this book is different.  It's not even a book about cancer.  It's a book about people, and they just so happen to have cancer.  And that is what makes it different.  It is also what gave me my biggest 'sliding doors' moment of the day.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the outcome of my molar pregnancy, or it's due date, right up until I felt it on Saturday and here it is...an emotion you'd probably never expect to hear in relation to miscarriage: relieved.

Molar pregnancy is a form of gestational trophoblastic tumour, you don't need to understand the first two words to appreciate the impact of the last one.

The letter I received in November, informing me of my histology results told me there was a 1 in 10 chance that remaining tissue in my uterus would become cancerous and potentially spread to other parts of my body, requiring chemotherapy.  1 in 10 is of course still 9 in 10 it wouldn't, and that's what I kept telling myself.  But that same day I took a photo of my hair, my ridiculously unruly, curly-but-not-in-a-good-way hair that I normally hate, just in case I was about to lose it.

But I didn't, did I?  There was no remaining tissue, my HCG levels fell steadily, I didn't need any follow up treatment, my hair remains long and a source of constant annoyance.

I've always known how lucky that makes me, but on Saturday, after reading The Fault in our Stars, I actually really felt it.

There are a lot of brilliant quotes I could take from that book, but "The world is not a wish-granting factory" has to be my absolute favourite.  I am thinking of getting it tattooed somewhere on myself as a reminder, so that when I  start to feel like "It's not fair" I can look at it and tell myself to STFU.

Life owes us nothing.  We owe it to ourselves to make the most of the life we get. (My words, not John Green's!)

The Due Date

Tomorrow is D-Day.  The due date of the baby we were having, but aren't anymore.

The early scan we had at 7 weeks put us back a little, giving us a due date of 17th May, but by dates our baby would have been due on the 10th May- tomorrow.

Of course, in reality s/he would have come whenever s/he wanted, but if previous pregnancies are anything to go by (and I'm aware they're not a guarantee!) then I tend to pop my babies out in the 38th week, so chances are we would have a brand new baby already.

I'm not sure how I feel about that, to be honest.  Nor am I sure how I'm supposed to feel about that, or what to do about it, even if I could figure out what my feelings are on it all.

Which makes this a somewhat pointless blog post.  But I just wanted to acknowledge the significance of tomorrow, and the fact that it actually happened in the first place.

In August I peed on a stick, and found out I was pregnant...the same day I was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome.  And here's the proof, sat atop a copy of Juno magazine, which Chris had brought me to read in the hospital:

In September, there was an actual baby inside of me, with a heart beat of around 148bpm:

And then I was scanned again at what should have been 10 weeks and there wasn't.

Later of course we found out that the pregnancy had been 'doomed' from the start, as it was a Molar Pregnancy, meaning there was an extra set of chromosomes and our baby was incompatible with life.

Does that make the whole thing better, or worse?  Should it make me feel better?  Or worse?  I don't know.  I am still sending urine samples to Sheffield Centre for Trophoblastic Disease to monitor my HCG levels and ensure there isn't any molar tissue left in my uterus, so I have to say I'm inclined to say that the Molar aspect is scant comfort if any.

This isn't my first rodeo of course, having had two previous miscarriages, but I have never been in this position before, as with each of those, I was already (heavily) pregnant again by the time the "Would have been due dates" rolled around.

You never forget them though.  It's so weird.  My first pregnancy I worked out I would have been due on October 21st 2009...but it wasn't to be.  By the time October came though, I was waddling around with an almost full-term baby inside me, who turned out to be Toby.  So although I remember recognising the day quietly to myself, it wasn't with sadness as I was focused on the baby I was carrying, whose life wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't miscarried.

Likewise, my 3rd pregnancy had a due date of 20th July 2011, although as it was a twin pregnancy, it likely would have been moved forward anyway.  Again, it wasn't to be, although by the time the summer came, I was pregnant with Rudy and again, felt thankful for how things had worked out.

This time, the due-date is almost upon me, and not only am I not pregnant for a change, but I'm not even planning to be.  Which makes this a very different situation to the other two, and probably explains my whirlwind of thoughts and emotions on the issue.

I haven't really reached out to talk to anyone about my experiences, if I'm honest (well, apart from the handful of you reading this I guess!) but if anyone out there stumbles across this and does want some support then The Miscarriage Association is a good place to try.  And for those affected by Molar Pregnancy, you can click here to visit the Molar Pregnancy UK site.

As for me, I have a feeling that tomorrow will be a bit of a Sliding Doors experience (you know, that 90's film with Gwyneth Paltrow?) as I go about my normal day-to-day life with Chris and the boys, acutely aware of what might have been instead.

Filing Feelings

We finally got round to doing some 'filing' in our house recently.  That makes it sound very glam and like I was wearing a pencil skirt and following an index system at the time, when in fact I was wearing my pyjamas, and tossing old bills at the dog who would then rip them into tiny pieces (who needs a fancy shredder?!)

Yes in reality, filing is just when the desk starts to bow under the weight of unopened bank statements (I know, I know, won't someone think of the trees?! Blame Chris, not me, I bank online!) and appointment cards and nursery newsletters and the such, so that we finally have to do something about it.

Most of the stuff goes in the bin, and then anything worth keeping gets put in one of four box files. It's all very dull and necessary.  I actually found an unopened letter from our pet insurer which was dated the end of November, telling me that the price of Fudge's insurance was about to double.  That would probably have been good to know 4 months ago...*sigh* In my defence, a lot of shit was going down in November, and I spent a week of it in hospital, and even managed to get myself diagnosed with two rare conditions.  So perusing our renewal quote on the dog insurance wasn't really high on my agenda.

There's always shit left over, at the end of the 'filing', that has nowhere to go. Often times it ends up in the bin also but there's some stuff it's hard to be ruthless over...

Scan photos, from a pregnancy that didn't work out...

Pathway Plans, and minutes of meetings from when I was in care as a teenager...

An instruction booklet for a calculator my Dad gave me, that still has workings out scribbled on it in both his and my Mum's handwriting...

A Bliss DVD about resuscitation that I am supposed to have watched as part of my job- you know, the job I haven't been to in over 7 months...

What am I supposed to do with this shit?  There is no box file for "Things that make me feel weird" (an oversight on our part, it seems). In the end they sat in a pile on the table for a couple of days until I couldn't bear looking at them anymore and they got shoved back where they came from- the deepest darkest recesses of the desk (and my mind).

And then just a few days after our filing extravaganza this arrived in the post:

A letter, about the whooping cough vaccine, being offered to women who are more than 28 weeks pregnant. Yes, it would appear my GP surgery still think I am pregnant. 33 weeks pregnant to be precise. This is despite the fact that they have received my discharge summary from St Mary's Hospital, where I had my miscarriage medically managed last October, and correspondence from Sheffield Centre for Trophoblastic Disease who are still testing my urine every fortnight following my Molar diagnosis.

There was no doubt where this letter was going- straight in the bin.

If only filing my feelings were as easy.

Molar Pregnancy and Me

Welcome to the second instalment in the "and me" series!  Featuring myself and my range of rare medical conditions.  Ok, I actually have just the two CIDP and Molar Pregnancy.

Well, I don't have Molar Pregnancy, there is no having of Molar Pregnancy. But I am undergoing follow up for a Molar Pregnancy, and I know a lot of people don't really understand what that actually means so here I am, blogging about it.

Chris and I decided to add to our family last summer, sure I'd been having a few strange little twitches in my leg but we obviously had no idea of what was about to happen, otherwise we wouldn't have been contemplating trying for another baby.

When I say try, that's not really the correct wording. We're fortunate to be extremely fertile. The question is always whether the pregnancy will actually stick.

I discovered I was pregnant on August 29th, the same day I was diagnosed with having Guillain Barre Syndrome, and had all the usual doubts and fears, but an early private scan showed the teeny tiny beginnings of a baby, i.e. a blob measuring a week behind but with a clear strong heartbeat.

I've never had a miscarriage that followed a positive scan so I figured we were free and clear and concentrated on getting better i.e. re-learning to walk etc.

Unfortunately in this case I had definitely counted my chickens before they'd hatched. Literally. A scan at what would have been 10 weeks showed an embryo sans heartbeat. There was to be no third chicken.

Since my body is not always eager to admit it's failings and reluctant to let go of doomed pregnancies I had to have my miscarriage medically induced.

You'd think that would be the worst of it, right? So did I. Until 3 weeks later after celebrating Toby's birthday at Legoland, we came home to a huge thick envelope in the mail.

The histology results from the miscarriage were back and the findings were consistent with what is known as a Partial Hydatidiform Mole.

Fortunately I'd heard of the condition before, through work, otherwise I'd have been even more shocked and bewildered than I actually was.

In simple terms it means that at conception, two sperm fertilised the same egg. This should never happen, as eggs are supposed to form a protective barrier preventing a second sperm from gaining entry. So there was a glitch with my egg, and two lucky sperm got in. Unfortunately this meant that right from the beginning the pregnancy was not viable, and by viable I mean, could never have resulted in a live healthy baby at the end of it.

From the start there was an extra set of chromosomes- 69 instead of 46 (known as a triploidy). That extra genetic material causes the pregnancy to progress abnormally with the placenta outgrowing the baby. Partial molar pregnancy is a type of Gestational Trophoblastic Tumour.  Usually the condition is diagnosed at scan and the recommended treatment is an ERPC, which is surgical removal of all the pregnancy tissue. There is a risk that if any material is left behind it can embed in the uterus and develop into what is known as an invasive mole. Untreated this can lead to Choriocarcinoma.

Obviously I wasn't diagnosed as having had a Partial Molar until weeks after my medically managed miscarriage, and not having had an ERPC at the time, meant I was at slightly increased risk of there having been some pregnancy tissue left behind.  The idea of there being this random genetic material burrowing into my uterus and possibly becoming cancerous was pretty terrifying and I definitely struggled with the diagnosis more than I did with being told I had Guillain Barre, or being told I had miscarried, or even a couple of weeks later having my GBS diagnosis changed to one of CIDP. The molar was the hardest to swallow because it seemed so fucking unfair.

All we'd wanted was another child, how had it gone so wrong that I was now being sent pamphlets about Chemotherapy?!

Fortunately, all my stress and worry and research into whether or not I would lose my hair on Methotrexate proved to be unfounded. I have been monitored via regular urine and blood samples (I send a test tube of pee to Sheffield through the post every fortnight!) in order to check that my HCG levels are reducing.  In simple terms HCG is the "Pregnancy Hormone", so were it increasing, or even just sticking fast, then it might indicate that there was some tumour remaining and I would need further treatment. My levels started low and have continued to fall. My most recent level was 0.02. There really isn't much more NOT PREGNANT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM! you can get!

So it's all been pretty straightforward and next month (as of the 12th of April) I will reach the 6 Month Post Miscarriage marker and no longer need follow-up. Although were I ever to get pregnant again (regardless of at what point in the future, or the outcome of the pregnancy) I would need follow up afterwards, as it is always possible that the pregnancy hormone can "reactivate" the mole. Which sounds so sci-fi, I know.

I will finally be able to get life insurance (something I have been turned down for, due to there having been an increased chance of a cancer diagnosis these past 5 months) which will be a relief.

It also means that as of next month we will be given the "all clear" to try again, should we want to.

1 in 600 pregnancies is a Molar Pregnancy. Having already had one the risk increases to 1 in 100. Which is still pretty good odds of everything being perfectly fine, and in fact most women do go on to have successful  pregnancies and healthy babies following a molar diagnosis.

Of course most women do not also have a diagnosis of another rare and under-researched condition, like CIDP.  And that, is a whole other post in itself.

How I Am

Several lovely people keep checking in with me to see how I am. I think they mean "How I am feeling" as opposed to say, "How I am still alive after everything that has happened these past couple of months", although frankly that feels like a relevant question too.

The answer is "Ok". And also, "I don't know".

I'm able to attend to most of my daily needs- showering, toileting, getting dressed, eating and drinking, entirely independently. I can walk without help and without falling down. I can even manage the stairs with my trusty crutch. I left the house for the first time yesterday and that was totally fine. So really, when I think about it, I'm doing ok.

Certainly compared to this time 2 weeks ago, when a bruised and defeated version of myself lay in a bed on AMU hooked up to the magical 2nd dose of immunoglobulins that seemed to kick start my recovery. In fact some days when people ask me how I am, I feel like resorting to hyperbole and images flash through my mind of me cartwheeling around the room shouting "Spectacular!" and "Superb!" because physically, although I'm probably only about 85% back to normal, compared to how bad I was I feel about a million times better.

On the other hand, when people ask me how I am, I feel stumped. A simple question leads to a spiral of confusion. At any given point in time I find it almost impossible to identify a singular emotion that would cover my current state of being.

I feel genuine happiness at being home and reunited with Chris and my boys. I feel so much gratitude and huge crashing great waves of relief at how well my recovery is going. I feel stressed about our impending house move, and frustrated at the timing and how inconvenient it is and how little help I can be on a practical level. Although there is also a tinge of excitement mixed in there, of fresh starts and new beginnings. I feel worried about family and friends, who have their own struggles and who's battles, unlike my own are not yet definitely won. I feel terrified that this may yet turn out to be only an interlude in my own battle and that my symptoms might come back or I might wake up one day to find I can't move again.  I feel sad about the loss of our baby, about the plans we made that now won't be and the space in our future that now waits to be filled, or not. And occasionally I feel overwhelmingly and irrationally angry. I'm talking pure unapologetic rage. Towards people, towards things, towards life itself. It comes out of nowhere and in a flash it's gone again, leaving me wondering if a side effect of IVIG therapy is some kind of Banner-esque transformation.

The fatigue aspect of recovering from Guillan-Barre has been spectacular. Always inclined towards narcolepsy, in the sense that I have an ability to fall asleep any time any place (a distinct advantage when it comes to juggling shift work and motherhood) I now find myself like a cat. Delighted to be alive and yet unable to fully appreciate what life has to offer because I need to spend about 16 hours of every 24 asleep. Waking up is a several hours long process compared to getting to sleep which doesn't even require my eyes to be closed before the process begins.

Today I didn't get out of bed until 10am. I spent most of the afternoon sat on the sofa in my pyjamas wrapping ornaments and picture frames in bubble wrap and placing them in a box because it was the most "helpful and yet restful" thing I could think to do. Even so by teatime I was unreasonably exhausted and I fell asleep whilst putting Toby to bed, before even he himself went to sleep and woke up an hour or so later, summoning up just enough energy to transfer myself into my own bed before zonking out again.

Admittedly I'm awake now but that's only because Chris came to check where the hell I had got to and his presence in the room woke me up (and scared the shit out of me) so I decided to sit and drink some ribena and potter a little on my phone before falling asleep at a slightly more reasonable hour for someone (well) over the age of eight.

When I think of how I used to spend entire days from 6am until 7.30pm in sole charge of the kids and then go work a busy night shift before getting back home at 8am and then sometimes sleeping for a couple of hours or maybe not at all before continuing where I left off with shopping and cooking and cleaning and playing etc. It's hard for me to comprehend how I was even still alive.

These days all I can manage is some light packing and/or childcare duties (after about 12 hours sleep) and I'm done for. It's like getting used to a whole new pace of life. Pace being the operative word and something I think I am going to struggle with because I like everything doing yesterday and find it difficult to differentiate between urgent and non urgent tasks. Chris calls it "impulse control issues" as it often leads to me undertaking ridiculous tasks at the most inopportune times because I can't bear to just let it go for another minute. I know I am going to have to learn though if I want to keep the momentum going with my recovery without setting myself back. It's just going to be hard.

So, if you ask me "How I am" and it takes me a few minutes to formulate a reply. Or indeed if my reply is a garbled nonsensical string of words, then you'll understand why.

The Blow

Written on Wednesday 9th October

"I'm sorry". Two words you never want to hear coming out of your sonographer's mouth.

Our baby, who we saw less than 3 weeks ago, measuring 5mm with a nice strong heartbeat today measures 7.5mm but has no heartbeat.

My 5th pregnancy: my 3rd miscarriage. I can't believe this is happening again. And on top of everything else that is going on right now it seems especially cruel. Can my body actually do anything right?!

Written on Friday 11th October

Those of you reading this may be wondering what you missed. You may be tempted to scroll back through my old blog posts or facebook timeline looking for the "I'm pregnant!" announcement. Don't bother. There wasn't one. You see, the day I discovered I was pregnant was also the day I was diagnosed with Guillan-Barre. This baby was conceived when so far as I knew I had "sciatica" not a debilitating and potentially life-threatening neurological condition. So how do you make an announcement like that? "I can't dress myself but hey guess what- we're having another baby!" The answer is simple: you don't. So, for the past 6 weeks only our closest family members and friends have known.

The baby was very much planned and wanted and loved and has given us all something positive to focus on and look forward to.

It was also one of the reasons I wasn't treated with immunoglobulins during my 1st hospital admission. Not only were my symptoms quite mild at that point but the risks were too high.

Given my condition, and my history of miscarriage we decided to pay for an early private scan to ease our minds. In a tiny room in the centre of Stockport the wonders of ultrasound gave us a view into my retroverted uterus and sure enough there was a beautifully round pregnancy sac, containing the beginnings of our baby- a blob measuring 5mm with a flickering heart beating 122 beats per minute.

That something so tiny can have a heartbeat is mind blowing in itself. To see it nestled in there, oblivious to my struggles with Guillan-Barre and most importantly unharmed by them was amazing.

I have never had a miscarriage that started out with a positive scan so I felt pretty confident that all would be well. I decided that the most important thing I could do would be to concentrate on getting better. For myself, for my family and for the new little life inside of me.

After such a positive scan we decided it was probably safe to tell the boys. Afterall, we reasoned, Toby would soon guess anyway as we talked about it in front of him and in my last pregnancy I started to show at 11 weeks.

Toby was so excited. He's been begging for "a new baby" for months. Each day he'd tell me my tummy was getting "bigger and BIGGER!" (At 7 weeks pregnant- thanks kiddo?) and he was firm in his belief that the baby would be a boy because he wanted "another brother" Secretly both Chris and I thought the likelihood was he was right but took care to remind him that we couldn't actually choose and "a baby sister might be fun too..."  He was unconvinced.

I now wonder how I found it in me to be so blissfully naeive as to think it would all be that straightforward and easy.

After my readmission to hospital and my treatment with immunoglobulins I was told that this pregnancy would be considered "HIGH RISK" I grumbled to Chris "No homebirth for me then" but we both knew I didn't really give a shit. I loved my homebirth with Rudy but I love Rudy himself infinitely more. I was such a cliche: "All I want is for it to be a healthy" I'd say to the nurses who all assumed I was yearning for a girl after 2 boys. "Oh, and for me to be able to walk please!" I'd add.

I decided that if I could pull this off, recovering from Guillan-Barre and bringing another beautiful baby into this world then I'd have dodged a bullet and should never ask for or complain about anything ever again. Ever.

After consulting with obs&gynae the medical team decided I needed an ultrasound before home. Chris turned up to visit with the boys on Wednesday afternoon, just before the porter turned up to take me down there so I went on my own. I was feeling pretty confident right up until the sonographer said she'd need to do an internal scan. I've had a lot of scans in the past 5 years and if someone tells me at 9 weeks and 5 days pregnant that they can't see anything abdominally then I know it's not going to be good news. Retroverted uterus or not.

Sure enough, silence filled the room for the first few minutes of the internal scan and then came the "I'm sorry". A second sonographer came to repeat the scan but came to the same conclusion: There was no heartbeat.

They sat me in The Room whilst I waited for the porter. You know The Room. I looked around it and thought about all the awful things people must have been told in there. A room who's sole purpose is to contain all the sadness and tragedy and horror that an ultrasound can uncover. I cried and thought I was glad my situation wasn't worse and I was glad that Chris and the boys hadn't come with me.

Back on the ward I couldn't find the words I needed so I just shook my head at Chris. Between that and my mascara-lined cheeks it wasn't hard for him to guess the outcome. It was the first day in weeks that I'd felt bright enough to put make-up on. Which is somewhat ironic.

Toby asked why I was sad and I realised there would never be a good time or an easy way to tell him. So I had to explain to an almost 4 year old why we won't be "getting a new baby in the spring" afterall.

I told him I was sad because the scan had looked in my tummy and that the new baby had gone away. He cried and wanted to know why. I told him that we don't know but that sometimes it just happens and that it's ok to feel sad about it. He said "but I liked our new baby". I told him that maybe maybe when Mummy gets better maybe I could try to grow another new baby but even as I was saying it I wasn't sure if it was true.

Thankfully, he then spotted some blue pen marks on my wrist from the nerve conduction studies and asked about them so the conversation came to a natural end.

Of course I wasn't quite factually accurate in my explanation. The baby isn't gone. The baby is still there but it seems to have stopped growing about 2 weeks ago. Maybe when I had one of my falls. Or maybe just "one of those things". Like my last miscarriage though, my body is determined to hang on to it. It's a cruel world when your body can't even miscarry properly. I knew right away that I would want an ERPC. Unfortunately it's not an option for me. Too risky and apparently no anaesthetist in their right mind will go near me because of the Guillan-Barre.

So my options were to go home and wait and hope my body would eventually get the message. Or stay in hospital and have my miscarriage medically managed. So yesterday I was transferred from AMU in MRI to gynae in St Mary's (which in actuality are just down one long corridor from one another) and here I will be essentially 'induced'.

Maybe I was greedy to think I could have it all. That I could walk out of hospital, cured of Guillan-Barre and back into my wonderful life and have a healthy baby in my arms come May.

Still, I can't help but feel like I was robbed when my back was turned. The minute I stopped worrying about the pregnancy and started concentrating on getting myself better, it was over.

Except it isn't over. The worst is yet to come.

Love Mug

I know what you're thinking: She's going to tell us she loves coffee.  Well, don't we all.  After all, coffee is one of the ultimate parenting tools.  Oh no wait, she's British, so she's probably going to tell us she loves tea.  I do indeed love tea. And coffee for that matter, as much as that makes me a traitor of sorts ("Off with her head!")

But that's not what I want to talk about.  This post is about the actual hot drinks receptacle itself, that is to say, my love mug.

To explain, I have to take you back to Valentines Day 2009. On that day, I woke up to discover, with absolute certainty, that I was miscarrying my first pregnancy. A lot has happened in the four years since, but if I close my eyes I can remember with un-nerving clarity how I felt that day. It was an early miscarriage, we'd only known I was pregnant at all for a matter of days so primarily I was in shock.  I'd barely begun to get my head around the fact I was pregnant, and then I wasn't anymore.

That possibly should have made it easier and of course physically it was a million times easier than what some mamas must endure when their pregnancy progresses further before coming to a tragic end. But psychologically I was a wreck.  Emotionally I was devastated. No stranger to being let down by others, I am well versed in dealing with disappointment, but to be let down by my own body? It was the ultimate betrayal.

There was very little Chris could say or do to make me feel better.  There was very little anyone could say or do to make me feel better.  Their platitudes "It obviously wasn't meant to be", "There was probably something wrong with the baby", "There'll be a next time" were like the cold-water I kept splashing on my face in between crying fits, trying to orient me to logic, to statistics, to bring me back to reality, but like the water, they failed miserably.

We had never made a big deal of Valentines Day.  We celebrated our own anniversary, a date that was special to us and only us (and, alright, the probably millions of other couples who got together that day) but Valentines Day seemed like someone else's celebration.  A fortunate happenstance given the timing of the miscarriage, although despite our lukewarm feelings on the occasion, it did feel somewhat poignant to be spending the day in bed crying and bleeding.

But when Chris went to our local shop to pick up supplies (chocolate, paracetamol, more chocolate) he brought me back this mug.  It has "Valentines Day" written all over it.  Well, actually they're little pink and red hearts, but I'm sure you see what I'm saying.  I began using it immediately.  We have a bit of a problem with mugs.  Like so many addicts before us, we can always find some way to justify "Just one more" and consequently have not one, but two cupboards full of them.  I have nicer mugs than this one, bigger mugs, posher and pricier mugs.  But this is the single most beautiful and special mug I own.

The hardest thing about days like my 14th February 2009 is that awful, terrifying, hollowing feeling that nothing will ever be okay again.  Well I'm here to tell you that it will.  I'm not saying it's alright.  No matter what comes next, you will always have that experience, those memories.  That terrible thing, whatever it was, will always have really happened, and happened to you. But there are very few instances in life when things are unsalvageable, where a situation, or a person, is broken beyond repair.

So when other people see me drinking from this mug, they might think "She loves coffee" or "She loves tea" or "That is one tacky Valentines mug" but when I see this mug I see Love. When I drink from it I know that with love, anything is possible.

I wrote this post for Theme Thursday.  Feeling the love? Click the squiggly button above to read other bloggers entries :)

Happy Un-Valentines

Romance is tricky when you become a parent. I think people assume the word romance is synonymous with sex, but i'd like to be clear that i'm not talking about sex, i'm talking about romance.

Not so much with the flowers, as i'm a hayfever sufferer but romance in the form of dinner, and wine and talking, maybe watching a movie together, cuddling, holding hands...all stuff that makes single people want to vomit all over themselves basically.

When you're a parent you already have vomit all over yourself (probably) but it's unlikely to be your own (unless you caught your child's pre-school tummy bug that is) and dinner can be a fraught and hurried affair, one of the day's final hurdles in the race towards bedtime.  Wine is encouraged, but best saved until the children are actually in bed for maximum enjoyment and minimum social services involvement.  You can talk all day but no one is actually listening and there's constant interruption and questioning and likewise, movies are totally permitted but only U/PG rated, maybe a 12 at tops if you're a liberal family (as we are).  So, you see, romance has to be orchestrated.

We've never really celebrated Valentines Day if i'm honest.  I think the first couple of years we were together we may have exchanged cards/token gifts in a nod to the occasion but it was never really our 'thing'.  Then in 2009 i woke up on Valentines Day covered in blood and discovered i was miscarrying our first pregnancy.  And let's be honest, that kind of thing inevitably puts a dampener on anybody's mood.

I'm pretty philosophical about my miscarriages these days, i feel i have to be as if they hadn't happened then we wouldn't have our two beautiful sons.  Their existence would be impossible had i not miscarried just before getting pregnant with each of them.  So it's virtually impossible to mourn something that lead to, well, this:

But if Valentines Day wasn't our 'thing' before that year, then it DEFINITELY wasn't from then on.  So it usually goes un-celebrated, un-observed, un-noticed.

This year i saw it coming on the calendar and thought..."why not?"

Only this year i'm working. Ah. So we re-scheduled and had our very own fakeplastic Valentines Day last night instead!

We usually eat as a family at around 5pm ish, sometimes a little later but rarely after 6, but yesterday the boys ate at the usual time but we didn't.  They had fish pie and vegetables, well they were served fish pie and vegetables anyway, what happens after that i can't be held accountable for, apparently neither boy can see the appeal of broccoli or cauliflower, even after being given the news that "they're good for you".  I also dislike cauliflower so really, who am i to judge?! They had some carrots, so i don't have too much guilt.

Anyway, i digress, they had their dinner, and later, once they were fast asleep in their beds we changed out of our snot-stained, chocolate-smeared, dog-hair-covered joggers and into something a little smarter, and sat and had dinner all by ourselves, on our own.  Fancy pants Tesco finest meal deal dinner.  We went with salmon en croute as a main, and it both looked and tasted like salmon so i'm almost 100% certain it didn't contain horse ;) We also had these cute little chocolate cheesecakes in the shape of hearts (i can hear the single people retching already) and washed it down with some of this:

Yes those are (gasp) presents in the background too! I totally cheated and bought us both mugs from the Disney store when they were on an offer a while back, so all i had to do was dig them out of their (very good) hiding place last night and pop them in matching gift bags, knowing full well that Chris wouldn't have bought me anything (That isn't a dig at him by the way, like i say, we don't usually bother, so really, why would he?!)

We even watched a romantic comedy, all snuggled up on the sofa.  Take that romance!

So being in danger of totally grossing even ourselves out, tonight we're having the antidote to our fakeplastic Valentines Day- an Un-Valentines night with beer, nachos and playing House of the Dead on the Wii, because romance is all well and good, but there's nothing like shooting zombies and downing beers together to bring a couple closer ;)

Who says Romance is (un) dead?!