A Poor Replacement...

So I am now 1 year, and 3 weeks down the path of child loss, or should I say..since my last child loss.
I woke this morning really upset, I miss my son.  There is never a day that starts without me thinking of him and his journey...there is never a day passes where I am searching in my brain for some positives in all of this, for some reason that would be good enough for what he went through...what we went through...not just Jim and I..but our entire family.
I am reflecting a lot about what happened and trying to make sense of my feelings.....this new 'me'.....I don't like so much about her...but some old 'me' creeps in now and again...I find that comforting.

I was told the other day..."when you are having a good day, let it happen"....I do, I don't stop it from happening..it just happens....but I am already preparing myself for the crash..because with every high, there is a low ready to grab onto it's hand for the journey.  I am becoming more used to this, I don't like it, this life now as it is, but I am slowly finding my way.....not every day though.

I was chatting to Jim this morning about our losses.  How when we lost Euan (our 20 weeker), we both cried desperately and wanted to try again asap.  When we lost our second, we still felt that although life had treated us harshly we could still try one more time.  That one more time turned into two more times...we wondered how long it would be before we accepted defeat.  Before we really couldn't face another loss.

We have both reached that place.

Often people I haven't seen for a while will ask if I have considered adoption...yes we have.
Often they will ask if I will try again...I explain I can't.
What about fostering? what about adoption though? surrogacy?......there are options available to us, but we want none of these things.

We both agreed that for us, this is our journey in life, for us another child would just be a poor replacement.
Regardless how that child came to us, regardless what process we would need to endure to get there.  We have now accepted, or should I say, we are now accepting that we will now be without a living child.  We realised today that neither of us wants to hold a tiny little living baby in our arms again.  Neither of us wants to take a little baby in our arms and see the sparkle of life in it's eyes....like we saw in our son.
It would only make us think of him.  Miss him.  Want him.

We both fear the days in the future where we may be expected to hold another tiny child, might need to take on a nurturing role with it...it will happen...We have so many sisters, so many brothers....it is inevitable..
Knowing that it WILL happen doesn't make it easier to cope with the idea of it...seeing the hope and fulfilment in another parent knowing that we felt like that...with our son.  Seeing the plans and dreams for another family unit....when ours has been destroyed...we don't envy or resent anyone else...we just don't like the sting of memories it brings, and the stark reality of our loss comes full pelt to our faces...we can't duck to avoid it.

We are in agreement.  Neither of us craves parenthood with a living child anymore.  We are finished.  We will be 'us' with Haydon, in whatever capacity he will be with us for the rest of our lives.
Because he will be.  He is still our son.  We are still his parents.  We still tend to him, just not in the capacity that we ever imagined for him.

An alternative would seem like a poor replacement.  We only want him.  What a change from before when all we wanted was to keep trying for our family.
And please don't get me wrong, and think that our 'family unit' now is just Jim and me...it isn't....it is Haydon too.
We created that little guy.  We watched him enter the world.  I fed him at my breast, I held him safely there.  His Daddy would whisper secrets in his ears.  I would often laugh at his noises and his expressions...but most times I would cry.  We then watched him leave.  No parent should ever watch their child leave.

So now...I might look the same..but I'm a big bit different now.

We have reached the end of our 'procreation' journey.  We are comfortable with that.  We never expected that we would be.

Mummy loves you bubba, she just does........completely.  And so does Dad xxxxxxxxxxxx <3