Anniversary dates

It’s 2 years since I was pregnant with Kora and Ava. I can’t quite compute this. In one way it feels like longer with everything Neil and I have faced in those years but it also seems to have suddenly arrived.

We took the test on the 16th May 2018. I find, I always struggle around this time of year. Not only do I struggle with the loss of our beautiful identical twins but it also my mum’s birthday on the 2nd of June. This somehow compacts and exaggerates my grief. I’d long to talk to my mum right now or get some much needed guidance (not that she would have been any good at that)!

I remember someone saying to me that I seem to have a lot of anniversaries in relation to the twins. It’s true I remember every significant date including when we tested, when we were told they had no heartbeats, when we delivered them, the date they were due and the date they would have been delivered by c section.

I think about the other babies and the significant dates. I think about how we have even less to hold onto in relation to these. We don’t even know their gender.

The comment got me thinking. I often publicly talk about the girls as it’s so important to me that the world becomes more accepting about pregnancy loss so I post the dates and my feelings, I talk about it to whoever will listen. I bare my heart and soul to the public. I want their names to be spoken with the love I feel not the hesitation or remorse that I so often receive.

I guess when you have a baby that is delivered at term who continues to blossom you end up remembering just the due date and celebrating their birthday (which may or may not be the same date). This becomes the most significant date and from there on you rejoice and celebrate milestones and developments.

For Neil and I we have so little dates and memories to hold onto. Our scan photos were accidentally thrown by the midwives so we only have copies sent to my mobile. Our babies were so small we have ink prints of their feet and hands (which if you didn’t know what they were you would think it was a black smudge). We have a few photos of them in the basket when they were delivered but that is it.

We were not blessed with capturing their first smile, the week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks old and so on photos. We will never know whose colour hair and eyes they would have. We would never get to watch them grow and develop. We did not get to hold them in our arms but rather our palms. We went to their funeral and sent them off with so much love and gratefulness for everything they had given us.

Without fail every year I think about how old my children would have been. I wonder how we would have celebrated if they were here compared to how we mark the anniversaries now. I wonder if we would have accidentally fed one twin twice as they were identical. I think about how we would have met the challenges and just how blissfully happy we would have been to hold them not only in our hearts but in our arms (something I feel the world can understand how difficult this is when at the moment so many can’t hold their loved ones – even if for them, this is only temporary).

So I guess for us all those anniversaries are hugely significant. They are all we have to hold onto and whatever our future brings these dates have changed us forever. We will always remember and share these anniversaries. For me Kora and Ava gave me, my first experience of being a biological mum. They have shaped me into a different person who I hope has even more empathy and understanding. A person who is more resilient then ever before. So please speak their names, talk to us about our girls, the other twins (one, whose heartbeat we saw on the scan) and the very early miscarriage.

Let them live on and never be forgotten. Let’s talk more about loss and life without our babies. Let’s not shy away from the grief that so many of us face or experience. Let’s embrace those like me that mark the anniversaries. Let’s make this grief less lonely!