Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' could fetch $80 million at auction

Ha! So one of the four versions of Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' is to be sold, and could fetch $80 million at auction, according to press reports. If you read one of my early posts, you'll know that this picture summed up my state of mind when they found abnormalities in our second baby boy. To an extent, the inside of my head is still represented by that picture, though the sheer terror I felt at the time has ebbed and been replaced by other (unhelpful) feelings.

Since I don't think I've got a spare $80 million the last time I looked, I'll have to leave it to the international art world to pick up the tab...

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9095836/Edvard-Munchs-The-Scream-to-fetch-80-million-at-auction.html

World Gets Smaller

Amazing, have just found someone who used to work at the same company as me who has a balanced translocation. She had a series of miscarriages before identifying the BT problem. She then went on to have three cycles of IVF with PGD and now she has a baby boy. The world seems to have got a little smaller.

Impact of Baby Loss Poorly Appreciated, Part 2

I've found this blog a very good, and healthy way of venting feelings & emotions that wouldn't otherwise be aired. I thought I'd write about a few of the things that have been bothering me in an effort to exorcise those particular demons. Today's post is about an email I received from a friend, someone I used to work with a few years ago. We live in the same town and got pregnant around the same time, so our babies were due within two weeks of each other and we were looking forward to bringing them up together. But of course, mine died end May 2011, and hers was born 12 weeks later as expected. Here's the email she sent me shortly after he was born.

Hi X,

Not sure if you've been on FB - XXXXX XXXXXX was born last Sunday. It was quite a long and drawn out ordeal getting him out and ended up having an emergency C-section after days of contractions and then forceps but I still couldn't push him out.

Still recovering this end but was all worth it though as he's adorable. Apart from my dark hair hard to tell who he looks like yet as he's changing by the day.

How are you? Has DH gone back to work yet? What are your plans?

No I haven't been on Facebook to see your happy photos of your new, live family. I avoid the dratted thing like the plague. If it's not baby photos ,it's sodding scan pictures.

I think this email clearly highlights how unbelievably unappreciated the impact of having a dead baby is. If my husband had died, do you think this friend, or anyone else for that matter, would be sending me pictures going, 'here's my husband!', 'he took his time proposing, but I got a wedding in the end!' No, of course you wouldn't, because it would be crassly insensitive.

But with babies, especially those who die before term, the same rules evidently do not apply.  I don't think it could have occured to this friend for a minute that I'd be upset to receive news or a photo of her baby. To be honest, when I got that (somehow I knew she would email me and it was an email I was dreading receiving) it would have been quicker and less painful if she'd simply come round and stabbed me in the heart. 

Despite giving birth to one dead baby, let alone your second, it still feels like you are meant to be delighted at everyone else's baby; the concept of grief for your own is just plain bizarre.

Impact of Baby Loss Poorly Appreciated, Part 1

In the same vein as the previous post, I thought I'd list all the other instances where my losses appear to count for nothing. I apologise in advance, as this is typical female-who-can't-let go-brings-stuff-up-ages-after-its-happened.

• We were in a restaurant with my in-laws, my husband, one of my brother in laws and his wife. She was pregnant with what became the Boy Wonder. She and my mother in law COULD NOT stop talking excitedly about the pregnancy. On and on they went. Both of them knew full well that I had lost two pregnancies at that point, but how I might feel about things didn't enter their minds. I couldn't actually concentrate on having a conversation I was so upset. My hands were trembling and I could only just about hold the cutlery. I felt two things 1) that I desperately wanted to vomit in the toilets, 2) like I wanted to walk out into the middle of the street, hoping that there was a suitably large, fast truck coming in my direction. But I sat there being English. When that awful dinner was finally over, I went home and just bawled my eyes out. But what I feel is wrong and I am being unreasonable.
• When my in-laws put pictures up in their house when the Boy Wonder was born. It absolutely broke my heart. Why wasn't it our baby they had pictures of instead? And as time has gone by they have put up pictures of all the other babies that have since been born into the family. I cannot bear to go round there anymore because of those pictures. In fact, when we stayed there for a week in June after our most recent loss (they'd gone on holiday) I took ALL the pictures down. I was SO relieved. :-)
• When Boy Wonder was born and my in-laws started buying all sorts of things for him. My heart kept breaking. Why wasn't it for us? Why did Boy Wonder get to live and be doted on and mine become a pile of ignored and forgotten ashes? Christmas was awful. I had to sit there as present after present was unwrapped for Boy Wonder. I don't think anyone noticed me disappearing to the toilet to cry.
• When it was announced that mother-in-law was now going to babysit him once a week while SIL went back to work. Why why why. I was heartbroken. I wanted to say, please, please don't. Please don't.
• At the wedding of my other brother-in-law, eight weeks after the loss of our third baby. Remember that both my mother-in-law and father-in-law did see this baby. I arrived at the church and saw my mother-in-law and chatted with her. Saint sister-in-law arrived with the Boy Wonder (he was the only baby/child allowed to the wedding) and a welcome party of doting maiden aunts crowded round them. My mother-in-law instantly forgot I was there, turned on her heels crying out 'oh my sweet little boy'. Reader, I am sorry to say, but from that moment I truly hated her.
• Still at the wedding, filing into the church: I overhear sister-in-law point to BW and say 'Look what happened since we got married!!'. I would have quite happily murdered the both of them there and then. But my only weapon was a handbag, which was hardly deadly. So I sat down and tried to keep smiling even though there were tears in my eyes.
• Wedding reception: Out of 10-odd tables, yes, you've guessed it, I'm on the same table with SIL & BW, right in front of them. Sister-in-law CANNOT stop showing him off. He is the only baby allowed at this event, and she is going to milk this to the maximum. I spend as little time possible sat at that table, and when the meal is over, I spend most of the rest of the wedding crying under a tree. I'm not aware of anyone wondering where I am.
• Later at the wedding: I sign the guest book, a record of congratulations for the newly married couple. I flick through the other entries, and come across one signed by my husband's younger cousin and his wife who were also sitting at our table. It's signed from them, their baby daughter and 'peanut'. So she is expecting No2. I twig that everyone in the family must know about this and they are too afraid to tell me. Feel pleased.
• Some weeks later, myself & mother-in-law go out for coffee. We do touch on the subject of my loss and i say I am still seeing the bereavement midwife/counsellor about this (At one stage i was seeing her weekly, I was that bad). She seems genuinely baffled and implies that talking to my friends should be enough. The place we are at is packed with babies and toddlers and I've done my best to zone them out. But she helpfully points out one particularly cute newborn to me. I guess he'd be as old as our baby if he'd been born at term. It's at that point I really realised that she genuinely has no clue as to how much I find that upsetting, or indeed that I would find it upsetting on any level. I should have said there and then that I thought it insensitive, but the moment passes.

Now I wish none of those things had bothered me, but they do. I totally understand if you think I'm being childish and/or bitter, and I'd agree with you. I think the strongest feeling that comes out most from the above is the sheer strength of my jealousy. I wish those events hadn't felt like they were stabbing me in the heart and that I was more grown-up about it, but this isn't how things are panning out.

SIL PG With No2

I couldn't write this before now. But SIL1 (mother of the Boy Wonder) is pregnant with No2. When I was told, my reaction was unprintable, but it's safe to say it involved lots of unladylike expletives & mutilating of voodoo dolls. Why she gets all the luck and we're stuck in this hell I have no idea. It just compounds the hurt.