I am cooking, and I am moving. And I am having surgery.

I am cooking like crazy lately.  I have started in November, when we got back from holidays.  We ate very well, in excellent restaurants, fresh food (South Africa has better climate than Canada) and when I returned I wanted to continue exploring new tastes.  I dusted off my Thermomix cookbooks, and started  there, but then I got a pressure cooker as a Christmas gift, and I learned a whole bunch of recipes by reading three books on the pressure cooking techniques of yore, and lately I have sunk deep into French cooking, in particular by following blogs of French ladies who post recipes of what they are cooking for dinner, as well as reading for education from the classics, like Julia Child's books.

I am eating very well.  We all are.  We sit down for all three meals, (MrH joining us for dinner on weeknights, for the rest it is just Emma and I).  We don't eat running around, we don't snack in the car or anywhere other than the meals at the kitchen table (and I guess the snack at the babysitter's at four-five pm).  Emma eats extremely well, probably because I let her get hungry before the meals.  She eats broccoli, chicken, a bit of fish, vegetable soups (all kinds: pumpkin, cabbage, leek), and of course she enjoys our decadent deserts.  This weekend I made a lemon tart, it was almost 100% butter by weight I swear, but oh so good, and Emma had about a fourth of it, despite it's relative tartness, which I thought would have deterred her (hoped...more for me, haha).

I have read an excellent book that inspired me to be more strict with mealtimes and meal rituals, I think it was called "French kids eat everything" or something along those lines.  I can only highly recommend it.  The old European ways are so comforting and ritualistic, I love sticking to them, even to the relatively late dinner time which allows me to cook after I come home from work, and to even sneak in some speed shopping for missing ingredients if I need to.

The latest news is that I am having the cerclage replaced transabdominally at the end of February in Vancouver.  I am not looking forward to the surgery again.  It feels like I am putting my body through a lot again, and it was nice having a brief break from all the operations.  But I guess it has to be done, or risk losing the third pregnancy like I did the first.

We are moving at the end of March to another town, and I have mixed feelings about it.  This is the town in which I have lost Adrian, and every time I drive past the funeral home I remember seeing the smoke go up when he was cremated.  Perhaps leaving is better, but I feel like I identify so much with my pain that I need to live close to where the streets and the buildings remind me of my trauma, or else I am lost.  Weird, eh?

I have fixed the comments section so hopefully will get less spam.  The amount of spam that I got lately was disgusting.  Hopefully the increased security settings won't deter actual readers from commenting.

Adrian's three year anniversary

Today is Jan 2, the third anniversary since Adrian was stillborn.  I don't have time for a long post, Emma is watching "your baby can read" on youtube while I am typing...

What better way to celebrate his lovely little life than to enjoy Emma and the motherhood that his death made possible?  Adrian's death made it possible to find out that I had incompetent cervix, and to get a cerclage, which allowed Emma to be born at term.  This is complex, and I know that it does not explain Adrian's death.  I don't try to explain it anymore, I just accept it.  But thinking of it in the bigger concept of the following three years, it helps to place it in a more meaningful context.

Usually when I celebrate someone's death anniversary, on that day I make a food that they would have liked, and offer it it my family reminding them of that person.  With Adrian, I have nothing to go by.  So little of him is left: his ashes in the urn, the memory of his movements, his little limp body etched in my mind, in particular his thin vulnerable neck that I remember so well.  Too little.  Certainly not enough to guess what he would have liked to eat.  So I will light a candle for him during dinner and we will say a prayer, but it feels like it is too little.  I wish I had the time to sit and meditate, perhaps I can ask the babysitter to spend an extra half an hour with Emma so that I can sit and feel his presence.

What do you guys do to commemorate your stillborn child's day?