Category: Random Musing

My dearest Levi and Lola,

Yes, these are your real names my babies. You must be wondering why you’re no longer Apollo and Artemis…afterall the names are rather apt being twins and all?

Well my darlings, remember when mummy and daddy said we were going to keep your names for your future siblings? Well, as it turned out we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do that – because Levi and Lola were the names we had been calling you while you were still swimming in my belly. Recently we finally got our bums around to register your birth certificates, so we decided to go with your intended names.

Can you believe it babies, it’s already 2 years since that fateful day. A lot has changed since! For one, you now both have a little sister named Lily. Lily looks just like Lola, but with a bigger, chubbier head haha. Thank you for gifting mummy with Lily, my dearest as she’s the magical salve that soothes the wounds you imposed on me. No more hard feelings!

August 18 2017

Typing this from my hospital bed. It’s almost 1am and I suddenly figured I should jot this down for memory’s sake.

This morning, I underwent a minor but still pretty grim procedure called the “transvaginal cerclage” or TVC. An anaesthetist put me under and then my surgeon masterfully sewed a tape around my cervix to keep it shut. All these done via my vaginal canal, yikes! Glad I was blissfully unaware while it was taking place. To add on to the excitement, I was also 12 weeks pregnant!

As you regular readers know, it’s been a roller coaster ride since losing my twins last year. The miscarriage that happened earlier this year did not help matters. It felt like everything was staked against me and all I wanted was just to be a mummy again. To hold my own baby in my arms and take in the same, intense love I felt for Liam when I first set eyes on him.

This pregnancy is very different from the last. I feel ready, I feel sure and I feel confident.

Throwback to four months ago – April 2017. I just had the miscarriage and decided to take a vacation. We went to Japan, where my primary reason was to visit Hakone, the location of the famous baby tree. I had to touch the tree. Unfortunately, long story short, we couldn’t make the Hakone trip and naturally, I was really upset. Instead of Hakone, we were back in Tokyo, so we visited the Meiji Shrine. They sold these lovely charms for different purpose and of course I got one that’s for “safe birthing”. They also have these wooden plaques that you could write wishes on so I got one and started writing wishes to Levi and Lola.

While bending over a table writing the words, I started to break down and cried. I cried like I’d never cried before. I was ugly crying and I didn’t care. It’s the very first time that I sobbed uncontrollably in public. I couldn’t stop myself. I was shaking so badly that Gareth had to help me continue writing on the plaque. Luckily I had already written down what I wanted to put on the plaque on a paper so all he needed to do was to copy my words onto the piece of wood.

I felt so much lighter after that episode. I spent the rest of my holiday in a peaceful, blissful state. I believe that it was the very moment that I let them both go. They had left me, along with the tears I shed at the shrine. I was finally ready to move on and step forward with my life. 

After the trip, we went on to conceive our daughter and here I am, on this hospital bed.

Hello nobody.

I assume nobody is reading this space of mine anymore. That’s okay.

It is all about the microblogging and social medias now isn’t it? Well, not for me it’s not. Not this year anyway.

I’ve cut down on Facebook – curating my feeds to only contain positive and value adding updates, keeping only the joy-sparking stuff, to borrow a line from Marie Kondo’s famous book.

I have deleted Dayre from my phone (one of my favourite apps) because I want to consume with intent. “Consume with intent” – that’s the magic phrase, isn’t it? I am trying to pick up the pieces of my life and mindlessly reading about 100 other people’s daily happenings whether good or bad isn’t really going to help, is it?

I have kept Instagram though, because I can curate what I want to see on my feed – it’s now filled with crafts, beautiful things and sewing stuff.

So after all that, here I am. With my old blog. I am back here because I realise now with this space I don’t have to consume anything mindlessly, cause it’s all mine! I can share without fear of being inundated with for lack of better words, #firstworldproblems that frankly aren’t really amusing or interesting to me anymore. Not to say I’ve lost my sense of humour (maybe I have), but maybe my patience for non-issues have depleted so significantly that I’ve chosen to just not be in their paths.

It’s rather difficult to articulate what’s happening to me and Gareth but suffice to say that the loss of our babies last September has brought a (long time coming in fact) change to us.

Since it happened, we have been seeking ways to fill up the voids which means we have been occupying our time with Liam and various hobbies. We have also been somewhat obsessed with achieving our authentic lives – intellectually, physically and spiritually. Gareth has since lost over 20kgs, I am so proud of him. January hasn’t even ended and I’ve read 3 books. That’s 3 more than in the past few years put together! I am sewing more, painting more and currently trying to pick up yoga (thank you Youtube).

Pity that it took a tragedy to get us finally moving our butts but unfortunately that is what it took. Call these shifts a distraction for the mind if you’re cynical or silver linings if you’re a romantic but for us they are what feels right, right now.

Anyway, I think I will be writing here a lot more, mostly about Liam of course because I’m not done with documenting his developments.

Updates will be sporadic and casual unless I have something proper to share like a recipe, travel post or something.

Thanks nobody for reading. It’s only appropriate to end this update with a picture of my son quietly playing with his trains while I was writing this.

Happy new year.