7 weeks later…

(Please be aware that this is not a happy post. It may be triggering for some)

I spend most my time in tears, days are a struggle and I am surviving hour by hour. Life seems pointless, empty, hopeless and I feel like a ghost wandering in my house.

I’ve been told losing a child isn’t like any other bereavement, it’s classed as trauma and I already carry so much trauma from my pregnancy, Ambers diagnosis, the months in SCBU and NICU and all that happened there, not to mention all that occurred when we got home.

I have so many happy memories of her too, I’ve been writing them down as I remember each one. Each a precious part of her and I and I don’t want them to fade with time, I don’t want to forget any of them. I can look back at them and hopefully they will make me smile rather than bring me to my knees crying as they do right now. I don’t want to lose any of these memories, they value is worth more than gold and in the midst of everything else in my head I need to cling to them and keep them protected.

But then there’s the other stuff, all the stuff which overwhelms me and seems to shadow my grief. The things that happened which won’t allow me to sit just with my grief and try to deal with her loss but that often overpower me with the despair of what she and I lived through. Of all the hideous moments that I can see in my mind. I’m having regular flashbacks and I can’t turn them off.

I can hear her screams the weekend she got taken so ill and rushed to Glasgow. I go dizzy when I remember how she whimpered as I’d tried to retape her tube and prongs on the Saturday but had to push in the tube a little as it was starting to protrude, not knowing that her bowel had been punctured the day before. I didn’t know, no one knew until she had her surgery on Monday, how could we have? I know logically it wasn’t my fault. I know that they only got a doctor to come to the room because I insisted that something wasn’t right, that she didn’t whimper like that. I know that I insisted I knew her better than anyone and that she was in pain and no, it definitely wasn’t constipation or a temperature. I KNOW this. But I still relive it, I still feel sick and go dizzy and feel guilty that I retaped that damn tube.

I sit on my doorstep on a night and smoke… (stupid stupid habit to start again having been quit for almost 4 years) and I can see the towering building and lights of Glasgow hospital in front of me from the end of the long path you walk down to get there. I can feel the exhaustion and despair I used to feel as I walked down that path, pushed aside by the eagerness and excitement of seeing my tiny daughter who I’d probably only been away from for an hour or so. I’ll never be able to walk that path again and see her but every night, there it still is as I sit on my doorstep.

Sometimes I can see the ambulance as it parked outside my house bringing her home. I can picture the sequence of events that day as clearly as if they were happening now. The terror of wondering if she’ll breathe as they took her out the portable incubator but the desperation to have her back in my arms. I’d had to leave Glasgow early in the morning without her to drive for 3 hours and then spend an hour trying to unload over 2 months of suitcases, medical equipment and four bags of medications from my car and get the house ready for her arrival. The picture is vivid.

The noise of the monitors as they flash and buzz and beep, the sound rings in my head in the early hours of the morning. They wake me in the darkness, as do nightmares that I can’t remember on waking but leave me breathless and crying. I lay and try to quieten my mind but there is no relief and there is no peace.

There is so much more, so many times that I can see, clear as day as if I’m there in that moment again, too much to list here, some I don’t want to write about in detail like having to resuscitate Amber on my sofa or the moment they took her to theatre.

All of it haunts me and I have no control over when these flashbacks come.

I’m struggling to get out the house much, it all really depends on that moment in time as to whether I actually get out the door or not. There’s times I can’t breathe or I panic and I just close the door again and leave it for another day. I was thinking I’d quite like a glass of wine tonight but today has been a particularly bad day and I’m not sure I can go out to buy any. So be it, it’s maybe not a bad thing.

My psychologist is calling tomorrow, she’s lovely and gentle but conversations are hard. She’s told me I have PTSD and so is going to try get me a referral for a therapist. How long that will take I don’t know but I’m starting to understand that it’s not just grief I’m dealing with, it’s more complicated.

When I started this journey with Amber I knew losing her was a possibility but I was never prepared for HOW painfully devastating it would be. How the pain is physical, how the physical loss of not having her in my arms would sweep me away and I’d lose myself completely. How I can cry for days almost nonstop and then go numb and emotionless from exhaustion for a few hours before the tears begin again when I look at Ambers photo or have another flashback.

It seems strange, writing this here and showing it to the world. I don’t mind those I love reading it though, I’m finding it hard to talk much right now or express how I’m actually feeling when talking, people don’t really know what to say. It’s hard when all I really want to say is ‘I want my baby back.’ on a repeated loop, so if I write it here they may read if they wish.

Maybe it may help another parent going through the same or similar too, perhaps make them feel less alone and like they’re not going crazy for feeling like this. Maybe help someone realise it can be PTSD as well as the already amplified trauma of losing your baby/child.

Partly because writing how I’m feeling helps get it out my head for a moment or two, makes ME feel like I’m not going crazy. This isn’t a post I’d intended on writing but when I decided to blog Ambers journey, something I’d thought about during those long days in the hospital, I’d wanted to be true to her and this is still her journey too. How I’m feeling now is all because of Amber and how much I love her. How my little girl was an incredible, strong, brave and unique soul. My little fox has a legacy, her impact on me is profound. She has touched hearts across the world. I want the world to remember her, how special and amazing she is. How I can still feel her around me at times, not as often as I want but I hope as time moves on I will be able to have contact with her more, perhaps if I can clear some space in my head it will be easier for her to make her way through.

I hope one day I will be able to read these words from a better place, know that I can cry a little less and smile a little more when I look at Ambers photo or watch videos of her.

I won’t ever be the same, I won’t ever heal from this. I know that. The only thing I want is the one thing nobody can give me, I want my baby back. I want Amber back in my arms.