Restarting Life After Loss 

We are at the end of a really shit week.

The shock and pain of this recent loss hasn’t been felt to our core, to each and every fibre of our bodies, like how we felt the loss of Leo. That alien feeling stayed with us for weeks, months even.

Now, we just feel stuck, in limbo, with no direction and clinging on to hope as if it’s the last thing keeping us going.

Four weeks and one day ago, I took this picture just after finding out we were pregnant again. I cannot believe it’s actually been that long – again, time is a foreign language to me.

Next week will mark six months since Leo was last alive, died and was born.

Needless to say, this six months has been the most difficult either of us have ever faced, and hopefully, will ever face. We miss Leo every single day – the word miss doesn’t really do that sentiment justice.
We are slowly realising that the attempts of establishing a new normal aren’t going so well – we do not remember who we were pre-Leo, the muscle memory has been lost. Nor do we have any idea who and what this ‘new’ version of us looks like. We are trying to find something that we’ve never seen before, and we don’t know what it looks like. We are still living day by day, week by week. This isn’t just a pregnancy that has been lost, it is so much more – Leo is our child, and with loosing him, we have lost ourselves, the ease of socialising, of leaving the house, of even just getting out of bed some mornings. Our worlds have changed in look and feel, beyond measure.

As with many people experiencing loss, ‘just having another baby’ isn’t an easy process for us obviously. It is time, a heap load of money, and so so much energy. We are three and half years into actively trying to having a baby (and bring them home with us) and we haven’t taken any intentional break during that time – other than what the clinic has advised us, as in, three months after IVF cycles. It is a long, long process. We have now completed six cycles, all self funded. That is an incredibly reasonable house deposit.

Trying to make sense of this loss isn’t just processing having a miscarriage and another baby lost, with the dreams and aspirations that go with it – even though thats bloody hard to do. It is about processing how we pick ourselves up and keep going, especially when the ‘keep going’ feels like it has so many barriers.

I feel so isolated and lonely. Even from myself. Is that possible. To feel that you are so absent from yourself, you are making yourself lonely?