And so that was Christmas

We survived! This month has been difficult, the most difficult one since October. My grief came back to smack me up the head some more. Many say the first Christmas after loss is the hardest and I'd agree. In my case, I couldn't stop imagining my alternate reality, the one where I was the stay at home mum to a four year old and a newborn. It was hard to deal with the "could have beens".  It was even harder to answer the questions of people at parties who had heard that I was pregnant but didn't receive the follow-up news. I dealt with it by offering the simplest of answers and not entering into further discussion, throwing myself into other things and then collapsing into horrible crying sessions at home.

We attended a memorial service run by SIDS and Kids NSW in early December. Such a simple act, but one that brought us some degree of closure. P even participated in the service, by hanging E's bauble on the Christmas tree and joining in on a noisy rendition of Jingle Bells. It was a very bittersweet experience, to be surrounded by families all in different stages of grief, but watching all of our living children laughing and playing.  Christmas Day felt similar.

There were moments of brightness in amongst my sadness. P's increasing excitement was an absolute joy to watch. It's the first Christmas that he's been fully into it. We went to visit Father Christmas. We went to parties and watched P race around on sugar highs, laughing hysterically and talking about "toilet words". And on Christmas morning, I saw his little face beam as he got  his first present, a Star Wars sticker book out of his stocking. And then he went into overdrive when he saw everything else! That was fun to watch.

And now it is over, I have returned to my new normal. We have a lot of exciting things planned for the first few months of 2013.