3 years on after losing my baby

3 years ago today at 1.45am I delivered you. Our tiny 10g baby boy. We named you Orion for the constellation. I wanted to be able to look up at the nights sky and always see you there.

Coming home from the hospital after giving birth without a baby is the absolute worst thing I’ve ever experienced. At the time I literally couldn’t see how I would ever be able to be okay again. 

How would I ever laugh again? 
How would I ever be happy? 
How could I ever do anything without you ?

Despite the fact that I couldn’t imagine my future, the time passed anyway. 

Three years later my heart still aches when I think of you but the pain is dull and muted now. It’s no longer sharp and all-consuming like it used to be.

3 years.
2 more losses.
Countless counselling and healing sessions.
A break.
Many, many breakdowns and aparts.
Pages upon pages of writing out my hurt.
Of muddling through and trying again.
Carrying and birthing Luca.
Healing some more.
Learning how to do life with three boys and all the while still feeling that little ache in my heart for the one who never got to join us.

3 years that both passed in a blink of an eye and also felt like it lasted for an eternity.

3 years spent loving the idea of you while learning to love the reality of you.

 3 years of re-learning how to love myself in spite of how my body failed you.

3 years later, I’m hitting publish* on something that feels a little like cracking myself open for the world to see. 

My first book. My heart on a page. In honour of you and your siblings who followed you.

Watering the flowers, a guide to find healing and hope after the loss of a baby is my story and your story. And the story of all the other mothers out there who ache for the baby they can’t have or won’t ever have, or maybe would have had if only things had turned out differently.

3 years of learning that even when life doesn’t turn out exactly how you wanted it can still be really bloody beautiful anyway. 

3 years of being your mother. 

3 years on after losing my baby.

If you’d like to read more of my story. My book Watering the Flowers – a guide to find healing and hope after losing a baby is available in Australia here. Or internationally via Amazon.