Meet You At The Sunset - January

For the first meeting of the month we thought we would speak about the holiday season and how you coped. What was it like for you? Did you do anything special in your childs memory?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matilda's 4 days of life ended on November 3 2009 so the holiday season arrived when our grief was very new and very raw. I'd read posts on other blogs about people hating all the Christmas decorations and songs in the shops and feel lucky that because my grief was so new I didn't have to go out and face these things. I stayed home and pretended it wasn't happening.

My family lives in NZ and while I was still pregnant they'd booked flights over for Christmas. At that stage, we thought it would be our first Christmas with Matilda. Because we'd had an in utero diagnosis we were expecting complications after Matilda was born and didn't really know what to expect on when she would be delivered and how long she'd be in hospital. My Mum asked me if I was still comfortable with them coming and I said yes because however things were going (I was thinking the worst case scenario would be that Matilda was still in hospital) that I would want to see them by then and for them to meet Matilda (my Mum was always coming for the birth but my Dad and sister weren't going to come until Christmas). Instead we'd already seen them at her funeral and my Dad and my sister never got a chance to meet her.

So they came for Christmas and so did my husband's family. Matilda was the first grand-child on both sides so there were no other kids to pretend for. The whole idea of Christmas and being around everyone made me very anxious. I just tried not to think about it and told everyone I wanted to pretend it wasn't Christmas.

The day came and as often seems to be the case now, wasn't as bad as I expected. We ate, talked, laughed, and when I was alone I cried. My aim was to survive it and I think I surpassed my aim.

We didn't do anything in particular to honour Matilda - I didn't feel strong enough to bring the idea of this up. I hope that next year I can.

On New Year's Eve, we went to bed with the desperate hope that 2010 has a better ending for us. And I was glad our first holiday season without Matilda was over.