1 Year On

Things may have seemed quite quiet from us since I last posted (shock horror) at the end of January. The truth is, like any family with kids, it's never really quiet. If I can't hear someone singing/shouting/crying then something is very badly wrong and my eldest is up to something he shouldn't be. That's just life. Silence isn't golden anymore - it's suspicious.

There has been a mixture of reasons for the drop in posts. Partly it is because I have returned to work and so am trying to squeeze a days worth of chores and parenting into 2 hours of an evening, but mostly it's because there genuinely isn't much to report. We have a couple of months until H's palate op so I have stopped stressing and am taking things as they come.

The weaning is going really well, he loves his food and we are starting to make things more textured for him. Hes not really into finger food yet, but it's coming. He is still on a bottle but Mr CD and I made the semi conscious decision to give the sippy cups a rest for a few weeks and come back to them when he's a bit more confident. I think we are at that stage now.

So, you may reasonably ask, why is there a post today. Well, I think the title says it all.

The day this post goes up, Thursday 23rd March, marks one year since our cleft diagnosis. One year since my husband, mother in law and I were sat in the tiny scan room and the sonographer said "I think I can see something".

I am writing this two days in advance, so I can't tell you how I feel today. Generally, I am feeling contemplative. We have been very lucky with the advice and support and the care we have had. We are lucky that it is 'just' a cleft. At my brief time at BCH I saw children who were much sicker, whose parents were trying to hide their grief for the pain their child was going through, and that they could do nothing to alleviate it. We are lucky.

But...

The memory of the fear is still there. The memory of the searing pain of not knowing, the anxiety, the sickness. It's all still there, buried deep down. I remember the pain of that Easter weekend more vividly than I remember the pain of labour.

I don't talk about it much because I feel like a fraud. Who am I to still feel these things? H is a happy and healthy little boy. The first operation was a success and I have every confidence the second one will be too. Who the hell am I to still feel sad sometimes.

But I do.

Sometimes I wake up at night gripped with the sickness and fear that kept me awake those first few weeks. I have to remind myself that H is here, that the fear is gone - or at least should be.

I try not to think about the future. About dentists, and speech therapists and more operations. About school and other children and their reaction to my brave little boy, who genuinely only stops smiling to eat. I don't want to think about things I cannot control

A picture that kept me going throughout the pregnancy showed the silhouette of Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, with the quote "What's coming will come, and we'll meet it when it does". I try to keep to that as much as I can.

I don't want this to sound maudlin - it's not meant to be. It has taken a lot of thinking and accepting for me to admit that the pain is still there. The fear and anxiety was so much that I think it will take more than a year to recede.

So contemplative it is. I actually think that I will feel it more around Easter because that was what was happening in our family and community while we waited. And waited. And waited. Easter will always be linked with that feeling of pain, uncertainty and fear for me. Even if I don't feel it, I will remember it.