Show us your bump mama

I finally managed to access our photo and video files today.  Then I saw a file marked 'xmas vids'.  I can't remember Christmas any more, that was my old life.  Simon points the camera at me and says "show us your bump mama" and I duly oblige.  I barely fit in the shot being the whale that I was, I was pretty big for 35 weeks.  I look tired, but so blissfully unaware.  Four days days later he was gone.  I replayed the video over and over, looking at my massive tummy desperate to see the outline of him.   But more curious than my obsessing over that, was how little I felt the desire to be pregnant again.  That shocked me.  Up until two weeks ago all I could think about was having another baby - though I suppose I should have twigged that I just wanted Freddie.  Desperately wanting another boy might have been a screaming siren but in my head it was justified with the practicalities of already having boy's clothes.  Get real girl!

This last couple of weeks I've found some zen, if you can call it that.  I've largely been in a bit of a trance. A Freddie trance.  I've gone down to his grave a lot, volunteered at the burial ground and have been able to go through his memory box and put things in frames.  This is parenting of a different dimension.   As this new phase has drifted in, the thoughts about another pregnancy have drifted out.   Freddie isn't coming back.   My counsellor has achieved her goal of making me let go of future plans, dreams and ideas and has put Freddie and I in the spotlight.  I now completely understand what she meant about this being a special time.  It's not special in a deliriously magical way, but it is an extension of our brief time together.  I have time to learn how to solidify our bond, how to forge a relationship with a baby who will never grow older.  

The video fascinated me because it's of him, he was there listening to us, it was his Christmas too, and he's there squished up in my tummy alive and kicking.  The last documented time it was all Ok.  And at the end of the video, after I'd wearily exposed my bump for the camera, Simon murmurs "it's beautiful, so very beautiful".   Yes he was just that.

To the memory of my beautiful son in my belly.  Now stitched inside my heart for eternity