Sitting on my porch are three roses. They are my babies. Adele has the smallest rose which was planted just a few months ago. Her whenua (placenta) is buried beneath the apricot-coloured blooms. I hope that this will be a special plant for her in the future.
The white rose belongs to Taran, my special baby who grew inside me for only 13 weeks. We hadn’t planned to get pregnant but we were over the moon at the idea of starting a family. Those first 12 weeks were so hard, my morning sickness was unbearable. But then the sickness eventually faded and the excitement of seeing our baby at a scan took over. But Taran’s heart had stopped beating. The screen showed a perfectly formed little body, but no heartbeat. The devastation of losing our first baby was overwhelming. I despaired and wished I could join that precious life in heaven. But time heals. Taran’s remains are buried beneath the white rose.
And the pink rose is Jay. Poor wee Jay who didn’t have a chance at all. Jay was a blighted ovum. The shock of Taran’s loss was not present with Jay. From the very beginning I knew that we would not meet this baby. I never felt pregnant, there was no morning sickness and the pregnancy tests weren’t promising. But I certainly did grieve. I grieved for the loss of that life, and especially the loss of my innocence and the feeling that my body had let me down.
When I got pregnant for the third time, I felt much more confident that this time, things would work out. The morning sickness was even worse than the first time. Not just nausea but also daily vomiting. The awfulness of those first three months is still so clear in my mind. I was so ill I quit my job and Mike and I moved to Hamilton.
