The progression of life

Throughout this pregnancy I’ve had 5 scans and each time I’m amazed at how life progresses.

This is a photo of Sticky’s 3 main stages – 8 weeks, 12 weeks and 19 weeks. When I look at far she’s come since that first blob, I am truly gobsmacked. Pregnancy is an interesting experience because you see how big you’re getting on the outside, but you have no comprehension of how big the baby is getting on the inside!

Now, she is a real little person. In looking at this photo, I suddenly realised she has chubby cheeks, a podgey nose and my long fingers. Even at this early stage, I can see resemblances. Seeing that makes my heart break as my Grandmother had a stillborn at exactly this stage – 20 weeks. She didn’t have the magic of scans back then so she wouldn’t have had any idea what the baby looked like. I actually think that would be a blessing.

Any miscarriage or stillborn is devastating but I think seeing your child makes it so much harder. While I haven’t experienced a stillborn, and I hope to God I don’t, I do think that my miscarriage was made easier because I never saw Peanut. Even when I had the miscarriage, Peanut was the same blob shape Sticky is in this photo.

In looking at the blob shape, you can see the start of arms and legs. You know it’s your baby and you have an instant connection to it. But for me, seeing the blob was seeing my “baby”. Seeing a fully formed child at 12 and 20 weeks was seeing my “daughter”. Those two terms make all the difference.

It’s funny though, I heard myself speaking to my Mother last night and referring to Sticky as “the baby” and “it”. A book I’m reading says not to do this once the baby is born as it doesn’t respect them as a person – you should refer to them as their name. I whole heartedly agree with this but it’s a bit different when they’re not here yet because we are no where near coming up with a name. I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that once Sticky is born, I’ll still call her Sticky. My husband doesn’t like it but we all have nicknames we don’t like!

When she asks why her nickname is Sticky, I will simply tell her that before she arrived, I lost two other babies and I wanted her to stick. And, when she arrived, and she was a baby I still wanted her to stick. And now she’s a little girl, and will soon grow up to be an adult, I still want her to stick. In fact, I want her to stick forever, so forever, she will be Sticky to me! I’m sure she’ll get over any issues she has with it, after all, I’m nearly 40 and my Mum still calls me Mouse!