No thanks. I want to get off now.

Do you ever get that surreal, almost unconscious feeling of having changed your mind? As if it was ever a choice that was consciously made, but now you've decided you want it to be a different way?

Let me try to tell you a little differently. Sometimes I catch a thought, or maybe a feeling from deep within, that has decided to do it a different way.

"Oh actually, God/universe (insert your believe), if you don't mind I think I'll just go back to the way it was meant to be. Yes, please, just send him back. Oh thank you, thank you."

Ok, obviously my unconscious, or semi conscious doesnt think quite so articulately, but the feeling that accompanies it is what's important. A moment of perhaps relief (?), however fleeting, as I decide I'm not going to do it this way after all.

But followed by a feeling if sick to the stomach as I realise its just not going to happen. It's not a decision I made. It's not even a challenge I accepted. It's life. Make the most of it. Enjoy. Touché.

And of course, I do. Or I try. Especially now that I have my foot in both worlds. Sometimes the sorrow and heartache for the one who isn't here is overwhelming. I never lose sight of how lucky I am, but motherhood is a super tough gig, so when you put two dimensions into it... Of heaven and earth... Well, it's a wonder any of us cope at all really.

Oh, looky. There's that super word again (cope). We won't enter that discussion.

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One of my closest baby loss buddy's journeys ended yesterday. Her baby boy died in utero four and a half years ago at 39 weeks. A natural conception. A problem free pregnancy. No reason. It just did.

They've endured four years of IVF. Failed stim cycles. Failed donor egg stim cycles. An ectopic pregnancy.. And now their last embryo transfer has given them another bfn. Negative. It's all over.

If anyone was meant to be a mummy, it was her. She's a kindy teacher, and a natural. What do you say? I feel guilty that I have Toby, but I am so grateful I do. But what do you say? My heart aches for her. Some in this world endure so much more than any mother should (and I'm not just talking about this friend).

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It's been a baby loss sort if week actually.

The leader of Toby's music group is pregnant. I think I've mentioned her before as she is about 4 weeks ahead of me. I would be around 16 weeks or do now. Hard to believe, and I don't keep tabs. There's no joy in that. But with this girl I have a weekly visual reminder. And since I've started off making it sound like a loss story I will say everything is just fine with her belly babe.

But this week she sought me out. Sat down with me. I asked her an obligatory "how ARE you", as obviously any question of such, even with no emphasis, is going to elicit a pregnancy answer.

She ummed and ahhed, and screwed her face up, concluding that she was "doing not TOO bad".
I expected that she was referring to the aches and pains, the struggle with dealing with a toddler on top of it. You know how it goes. And don't worry I'm not discounting it, given that I don't do pregnancy gracefully, and even at 9 weeks I could see how much "fun" I was going to have as a toddlers mother as well!! But it wasn't a reminder of what I wasn't doing that I was feeling like facing.

But she surprised me. Not in a good way. By telling me that this was her third pregnancy, and this was coming up to the time she lost her first daughter. 22 weeks.

I realised then that she had actually sought me out. She said she was feeling as though no-one gets it, but that she thought of me, and thought "Bir will get it". And yes, yes I do.

You never can guess another person's journey though, can you.

And two days ago an online friend sought me as she attended the still birth of her besties son, sleeping at 27 weeks due to placental abruption.

I can't believe that there was a time when baby loss was foreign to me. When the best I might have come up with was "oh how sad". (Maybe not quite but you know).

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But the most emotional for me, maybe because I'm somewhat hardened by the death of babies, is corresponding with the lady from Toby's DIG who lost her 16 month old, essentially to SIDS, just three months ago.

We've been writing, and I've been hoping that by knowing me and my journey through grief might help her. But in everything I write I am conscious of the little boy, three days different in age, who is here with me.

It strikes fear into my heart, her loss. It's validated for me, my helicopter mothering. It's allowed me to not feel guilty or over protective for having Toby on the movement monitor still, or in the cot beside my bed, still.

She mothers three other young children and has eight weeks to go with her pregnancy. You can imagine how she has no time to allow herself to grieve for her girl, or the emotions of all sorts surrounding the impending birth if her son.

And we talk tough gigs.

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Christmas looms. I don't suffer the same sadness as I did. And I look forward to Toby's second Christmas where he will have a certain level of understanding of the joy (albeit if Santa and presents but there is time for him to learn the reasons for our celebrations). But of course there is the one who isn't here. And Christmas time was when he was conceived. He "became". And somehow that Christmas I knew it. It's the only pregnancy I've known, and that was from conception. Maybe even before conception. I have never 'known' a pregnancy since.