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Surprised by time

Do you ever find yourself surprised by the speed in which time passes?  to try and write a blog and realise it was nearly a year ago I decided that I was going to have another go at writing my blog. Almost year?! I’m not actually sure where those 11 months have gone, but they sure have been full!

So wave two of trying to write a regular blog did not last for very long I got tied up by how best to write what things to say and let’s be honest having a six month old and never going to be go it go easily with trying to write a blog frequently. 

Ill try and give you a whistle stop tour of the past 11 months.

My children are now 1, 4 and 6 with two of them at full time school or nursery and number 3 firmly in my pocket. I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve had without her – 2 in case you were wondering! – in the past 17 months and that’s pretty exhausting but she’s amazing and makes me laugh a lot. She is also incredibly feisty and knows her own my mind. I often find myself thinking that I am in big trouble as she gets bigger. My 6 year old mostly loves school and it’s fun watching him learning to read and excelling at maths. The 4 year old started full time nursery school in September and he loves it. Plus just two school runs a day makes a HUGE difference to my day with the smallest one.

Since I lost blogged I’ve managed to lose 6 stone!! I mean that one probably needs a whole post about it. But I’ll just quickly mention it here. I am back to running anywhere up to three times a week and I’m hoping to run a half marathon later this year although I suspect it may be next year now. 

My business, Sprouting Butterfly, is still going and although it’s not as successful as I would love it to be it plays its roll in my own life and in the lives of my customers and for that I am grateful.

I had the incredibly privilege of being at the birth of my most amazing friends little boy. It is an experience I will never forget and such honour to be able to be by her side. She was amazing!

I went a course on how to tell your story and spoke about vulnerability at a women event in November in front a rather large cloud which was incredibly and terrifying in equal measure! Maybe I’ll post what I said at some point! 

I’m writing this post in the midst of a global pandemic (I mean you know that because you’re probably reading this in the midst of global pandemic too but I felt I should include it!) The country, and most of the world,has been shutdown because of a Coronavirus knows as Covid 19. It’s frightening, and isolating and terrifying and because of the impacts on our plans incredibly frustrating. We had been due to fly to America for a 3 week holiday over this time including a cruise to the Bahamas via Florida. As I type this I should be in the middle of blue seas and blue skies on a ship but instead it’s grey and cold and it’s a challenge to settle that in my heart. 

For the past 3 or so months I have been living with the need for two things to happen.

  1. this lost holiday – to get a rest, a holiday and an escape! The ship had childcare included which was just going to be so valuable and restorative.Plus the time with my husband and my sister in law and brother in law who are some of our best friends was hopefully going to be life giving 
  2. The one year old starting at the childminder. She had been due to start going two mornings a week after the Easter holiday and it was going to give much needed head space and rest. 

Unfortunately neither of those things are now happening and so I am processing disappointment but also trying to keep my mental health in check and balanced as much as I can. 

As an overthinking worstcase scenario thinker all I can tell you is that this whole pandemic is like living out one of my many and varied worst case scenarios but with no one to be able to tell me that I am being ridiculous which is tough. Interestingly I’ve spent a few weeks so overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions that I haven’t been able to engage with them. But I am slowly finding my thoughts becoming clearer and so that is where this new attempt at blogging springs from.

I hope you’ll enjoy journeying with me as I process random thoughts God places in my mind and also any interesting things I read or listen to.

Much love

Sarah

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Unformed and raw….

 

I keep thinking that I want to write out my emotions. I keep feeling like I want to share. And then I decide I’m too raw, I’m too weak, it’s too fresh and that people don’t want to read or hear feelings from that place. I recognise how those thoughts won’t be well formed or even linear because that entirely how my thoughts are. There’s this overwhelming fog that stops some level of process and function. Not so much that you can’t focus but so much that you don’t feel you always makes sense. Why would I put that down on paper?

But the reality is that maybe I need to do this for me, for our baby, for our family and for those who walk alongside us or others.

Our baby was ‘only’ 10 weeks gestation. We never even got to see that baby. We didn’t know if it was a girl or a boy, although in my head he was totally a boy because it is what I know. But what hits me so hard is how much love my heart has for our little one. I am flooded by this feeling of love I will never get to share with its recipient. Flooded with a sorrow that a part of family will always be missing. Devastated that a part of my heart will always be broken. When the sonographer confirmed our baby was gone a part of my heart shattered and though I am assured and understand that the rawness of that reality will go, the brokenness of that reality will always remain.

At 10 weeks gestation our baby was just a quarter of an ounce heavy and only around 4cm long. Such a tiny speck but the baby had our DNA and all of it’s arms and legs and a heart. At 10 weeks they were our baby as much as when they would have been 10 weeks post natal.

I fight the feeling to lessen the reality of this babies life. I fight the feeling people will think we are ‘over reacting’ in our grief since we had not met them, or seen them or held them. I fight those feelings because this baby was every bit our baby as Zachary and Solomon and every bit a part of our family and my heart.

I grieve the love we never got to give them and the fights they never got to have with their big brothers.

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Miscarriage processing

I want to write but my words feel lost. I feel pulled to write but I don’t know what to write. I’m nudged to put thoughts down but don’t know what those thoughts are. It’s like there’s two parts of me fighting over what I should do.

We were pregnant. For 6 weeks we knew about a baby who would join our family next April. We were apprehensive about the change that this baby would bring but we were excited. Excited for our boys to have another sibling. Excited that this baby would get to have our boys as it’s big brothers. We were excited for Christmases and birthdays and family holidays and weddings. We had dreams and we thought about practical things like bedroom arrangements and car seat positions.

At 9 weeks and 5 days pregnant having excitedly told some of our closest friends the night before about our new baby I discovered I was bleeding. I struggled to get the words out to tell Ross. My voice wouldn’t work. My brain could not comprehend. I tried to reason that this happens to so many women whilst at the same time being filled with this dread that I knew what was happening to my body.

We lost our baby over that weekend and I lost a part of my heart with it. Our family will never feel fully complete as there will always be a part of it missing.

1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. I knew that 1 in 4 end this way and yet somehow, despite a totally normal fear that we would lose the baby, I never dreamed that it would actually happen to us. I was comfortable being 3 in 4. It was safe there.