Jo, that is so cute about "big babies". Did your kids see either Madison or Jack? Or they just knew that their baby brother and sister were born too soon? Gives me nice shivers to think of such young children being able to comprehend two such devastating losses and still have hope for a "big baby". They could teach us a thing or two!

I gave my niece a CD called The First Little Angels on Earth to try to sort of explain why Hamish left us. She asked DH if there are birthdays in heaven and we both wanted to cry.

Rozzie, Helen, Jo and Tildy, I'm glad we can talk about such feelings. For a while every time I heard about someone getting pregnant, I just assumed that the baby would die eventually. Or if I heard of someone having an early miscarriage I felt that they weren't entitled to as much grief as I am. I was so scared of my own feelings and didn't even dare to tell you guys. So I'm really glad that you raised it Rozzie and we counsel each other.

I don't think any of us are evil or selfish (OK, sometimes I really am!), these must be another expression of our loss and a way to protect our feelings. I hate that we can't all just sit around fatly complaining about normal pregnancy things but I am super grateful that we can share even our darkest thoughts.

I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse Rozzie, but when I saw your little bump and thought of your due date in April, I felt SO excited at that prospect of being pregnant again, at the hope that a pregnancy brings even though for us it will always be accompanied by at times crippling fear, and at the promise of a big fat crying baby, at last. And every time you and Tildy talk about heartbeats, Sue and her little bean's u/s and Katie's wonder girl kicking her way closer and closer to birth, I collect more little pieces of hope and stash them away in my Green Eggs box.

Green Eggs? Well, we nicknamed Hamish "Ham" even more we got pregnant and still call him that to this day so we've started calling our next pregnancy Green Eggs in anticipation because David is a Dr Suess fan and frankly we're very silly :-)

Katie, thank you for your understanding and concern. Your post was a good as hug. I tried the SIDs people once but I prefer you guys and my various "hippy" therapists :-)