Memories

I love scrapbooking! It a time where I can just be by myself, enjoy the quietness and let my creative juices flow! I have done a scrapbook for our wedding, one for my mom's 50th and one for my precious god-daughter for her 1st birthday! They are very special and I love sitting and browsing through them from time to time and remembering.

I also once made a scrapbook for a lady whose baby passed away 10 days after she was born. I knew how very precious those few pictures were to her and I wanted to be able to make her something that she will treasure forever. I found that process very therapeutic for me as well.

After we had the memorial for all the babies we had lost, I kept all the poems, letters and verses that people had brought with them. I appreciate the time and effort that people took to share that day with us and the time they took to bring something with of meaning to them and us. I wanted to keep those special items and make a scrapbook out of them. It's something that I am sure will be healing for me as well. Although people may think it was 'just miscarriages', it has been a major life-changing experience in our lives, and I don't think someone quite understands the impact and trauma unless one has been through it themselves.

It is a very personal and private loss that society expects one to recover from really quickly. I found my feelings surrounding the losses of the babies to be difficult to understand myself sometimes. I had nothing tangible to attribute my loss to. I technically hadn't 'lost' anything and I never got to hold my babies, but then why did my heart ache so badly. How can you miss something that you never knew or never met? However, anyone who has been pregnant knows the instant connection you feel the second you find out you are pregnant. The planning has already long begun.

The memorial was incredibly special and we felt very supported and loved by friends and family. To be able to share our grief with them was very vulnerable for us but yet completely freeing at the same time.

I decided to do a scrapbook containing the letters that I wrote to each baby just after they died and put the special tributes from friends and family in there too.












It has been over 2 years since the 1st miscarriage and I still have days where I just sob. Days where my heart literally aches with sadness. I think that the repeated trauma of the other miscarriages that followed hasn't helped the healing and it's just created one big mess of feelings. I would do anything to change what has happened in the last 2 years. I long to experience what most of my friends have or are experiencing. To be on the sideline as a spectator is incredibly difficult. The promise of life was there and then taken away. Repeatedly.

Lately things have been particularly difficult - anticipating yet another would-be-due-date. Its a total mindset change yet again.

I think there are many aspects and avenues to this healing journey of mine. Everyone grieves differently and in different ways. Scrapbooking the losses is just one way that helps me reflect and remember.

I think the next scrapbook will be called "The Gilmour's take on Singapore!" :)