Can I begin please with the elephant in the room? This Baby Loss Awareness Week I’m writing from a place we didn’t dare hope to be: parenting a live child. I have the simultaneous privilege and heart wrench of listening to our son’s cries, his colic and reflux being tended to relentlessly by his daddy.Continue reading “The Landfall”
Author Archives: Annabel S.
The Sabbatical
It was billed as a sabbatical, a 12 month break after many years in the work game. I was leading a high profile project taken on a month after silently miscarrying our first baby. Sixteen months later, a third failed IVF round had me, and other well-meaning friends and colleagues, scapegoating the job and stressContinue reading “The Sabbatical”
The Mother’s Day
How does time do it? How does it have this emotional rebound and distance function? Years can feel like yesterday. Yesterday like years. Everything yet nothing can change in twelve months. We spend a good part of our lives wishing we were in the next place, convinced it will come with exceptional cerebral bonus, that we’llContinue reading “The Mother’s Day”
The Exchange
One Saturday in 2021 I left the Maybehood mainland and didn’t even know it. A landscape and emotional weather system so familiar and engrained in me, I thought I was sitting peaceably on the beach when the boat for one had already pushed off from the shore. I assumed supplies needed were in the hull.Continue reading “The Exchange”
The Veil
When Professor Nick Macklon told me to get both vaccines and go and enjoy the summer, I didn’t need to be told twice. There was – literally – nothing else for it. First we went to Wales and climbed Snowdon. Then we were both beasted at work and I had to deliver a project withContinue reading “The Veil”
The Professional
It was like something out of Love Island, except I wasn’t fifteen years younger, didn’t have a swimsuit flossing my lady garden and Dr Alex George – presumably by virtue of his absence – was down the road at University Hospital Lewisham, hopefully not being rejected by his patients as he was by the ladiesContinue reading “The Professional”
The Nike
It’s the part of IVF that everyone hopes they’ll never get to. The round which you know in your bones is going to be your last. The one where you’ve been through so many iterations of yourself along the way you know there’s nothing and nobody left other than to turn up, check that bitterContinue reading “The Nike”
The Resolution
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even the Tilderbeast dreaming of a mouse. The thoughts, the longing, the fifth Christmas without, The presents weren’t there It wasn’t what this festive season was about. Gratitude, worry and fear Apart from friends and family, with Covid tooContinue reading “The Resolution”
The Demon
“I just listened to your BLAW week post on Sophie Martin’s insta and I am weeping in the kitchen,” the text said. “I am just so proud of you for doing this. What you’ve been going through is a massive mountain of grief and uncertainty and I wish so much that I could take justContinue reading “The Demon”
The Letter
Our darling Pumbaa, I cannot believe it has been four and a half years of what might have been, since I last felt and carried you. For most of our friends, this chronological time frame has seen a whole raft of life change: new homes, new jobs, new babies. I guess this is true forContinue reading “The Letter”
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