Man in labor

Browsing through Facebook posts this morning, and found a couple of videos of men having a simulated labor. Obviously, they only get to experience half of it, it doesn't end with the contractions and they also have the option to quit - a woman in labor doesn't. Both of these guys end the simulation very early, and it gets worse, much worse.

Add to the pain the knowledge you are giving birth to twins too immature to survive and the shock of going from a happy pregnant woman at less than 23 weeks to full labor within 24 hours - and you still won't have a clue what it feels like unless you've been there yourself.

Anyway, the videos were rather amusing and cheered me up :)



Norwegian version by comedian Dagfinn Lyngbø and Anne Cath Herland:

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Smoking

Every mother who smoked through their pregnancy felt guilty and miserable about doing so, well knowing of the risks involved. Most women swear they will stop if they become pregnant and some even become pregnant hoping they will quit smoking.

Imagine smoking during pregnancy and experience the worst possible of all the risks we are warned about actually happen,- premature birth and infant death. Well, that's what happened to me. I too was so sure I was gonna stop when I got pregnant. When I pPROMed I knew it could be because of smoking, and I also knew that the risk of infections were higher for smokers than non-smokers. Yet, I couldn't stop smoking in the weeks after the pPROM, and finally I got an infection that prevented the doctors from doing anything to hold back labor the few essential weeks necessary to be able to save my babies.

Even after labor and watching my babies die all I could think about was how I could get out of the hospital to have a cigarette, and one of the nurses kindly reminded me (irony) my smoking probably was the reason why my babies died.

To be able to remain fairly sane and not be so overwhelmed with guilt that I either develop some form of mental sickness or end up committing suicide I have to tell myself everyday that this happens to women to never smoked a day in their life too, and there is absolutely no way any doctor can conclusively tell me smoking was the reason and nothing else.

But I still absolutely hate my smoking habit and really want to stop. I want to try again to have a baby, but I can't allow myself to do that until I stopped smoking. If I continue smoking and loose another one I don't think I would be able to convince myself smoking probably wasn't the cause, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself .

I had success before with Allen Carr's The Easyway. Success meaning I actually stopped smoking, but got caught in the trap again a few weeks later. I'm reading it again, but this time the modified version specially designed for women. Then I come to the chapter about smoking during pregnancy and it says 'all women know that smoking can kill their babies'. Thanks again for the reminder. I fell apart again and cried and cried and just wanted to throw the book in the wall. Unfortunately the book is on Kindle on my mobile phone, and I can't afford a new phone right now, so destroying it didn't seem like a good solution.

After 13 cigarettes or so in a row, a bucket of tears and a lot of anger and wanting to throw books and phones and cigarettes in the wall I picked the book back up and finished it. It claims stopping is so easy with Easyway and that I should smoke one last cigarette now and make a ceremony out of it, but it still doesn't seem easy at all and I don't feel ready to go through that ceremony, as I am not convinced at all it will be my last one.

I just feel frustrated I don't get that euphoria they are talking about, and that I actually got the first time I read the book. I don't even know why I'm blogging about it, it doesn't seem to help me much either. Blahhh...

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At home at last

Rob and me agreed right away that we don't want a grave for Zoe and Kian, but rather have them cremated so that we can have them at home with us as long as we wish. Since none of us is actually from Montreal either it just didn't feel right to bury them here. We don't even know if we will stay here, and we don't want to feel tied to this city because of our babies grave site.

Personally I also find that there is something extremely sad and gloomy about leaving your loved ones in a dark hole in the ground. When we buried my grandmother a few years back both me and my mom heard her voice crying 'don't leave me here alone in the dark'. Just your imagination you may say, it's just their dead remains and not their soul, and I agree, but that doesn't change how I feel.

We were looking at a lot of different miniature urns for them at the funeral home, but none of them really 'spoke to me'. While sitting here one night in deep thought I suddenly got this wild idea.

When we were returning from our vacation in Norway we decided to upgrade our plane tickets to first class. My back was killing me and the price wasn't too bad, besides none of us ever flied first class before, and we figured it would be our last trip for quite some time and that we deserved a little extra pampering.


KLM gives their first class passengers small dutch porcelain houses with liquor inside, and I know a few people who collect them as they are part of a series of unique collectables. To us they are part of our memory from Zoe and Kian's very first journey and their visit in Norway. Besides, what better symbol than a house, a home for them. So I thought maybe we could use them for their ashes.

I suggested it to Rob, and he loved the idea too. It may seem a bit unconventional or even tacky, but to us it just clicked, it was so right and so unique, just like our babies. So we emptied them, cleaned them and dried them and painted over the KLM logo on the back where their names will go, and today we went to the funeral home to bring their ashes home in their new little houses. I also got a nice silver heart pendant with a tiny bit of each of their ashes to carry close to my heart at all times.

On our way home, while sitting on a bench outside the funeral home waiting for a taxi, I was holding them both in my hands, and it felt like the houses were radiating heat. I have a very dominant left brain, so I know it was because of the way the sun and shadows just happened to light up my hands, but the part of me that doesn't believe in coincidences found some comfort in it. As sad as I felt, trying not to cry and attract too much attention from people passing, it made me feel a sort of presence, as if their spirits were trying to tell me something, and it felt good.

When the time is right, we want to take them back to Norway and scatter their ashes at Verdens Ende (the end of the world) where Rob took our first belly picture. What better place could there possibly be for us to find closure, when we are ready.

The End of the World

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Certified

I did my Reiki Level 1 class today and am now a certified Reiki healer allowed to take clients and start my own clinic if I want to. It seems wild that you can do that in just one day, but the basic principles are astonishingly simple. Essentially it's all about the atoms around us that we call energy before they take form as a solid object. Physics 101, it even makes sense in the left part of my brain.

The concept of Reiki healing has nothing to do with special powers, mystical rituals or religion, but is all about feeling those energies and learning to direct them. We can't see the wind, heat or cold, but we still know it's there because we can feel it on our skin. The only difference is that the wind, heat and cold are commonly accepted to feel and we get confirmation from others every day that they can feel it too. Feeling energies however we are often told (in the west anyway) is just our imagination, or at least we're told were crazy if we  think we can do anything with them, so as adults we simply can't feel them anymore.

But it's a well known scientific fact that energies can change form and affect each other. Electricity can be converted to light and heat with a piece of filament in a concealed space filled with gas. The wind can rip trees from the ground. The sun can burn our skin or start fires. And it's all just energy. So are we, so is it really that strange that humans also can affect other energies or even the energies flowing within ourselves?

Now, I always felt these energies, so to me it doesn't really take much convincing. Reiki is simply learning to feel these energies and direct them, like a magnifying glass held in the sun. Then there are energy fields in our body we can direct that magnifying glass towards to encourage physical or emotional change in the human energies. And it's really that simple, you hardly have to do anything. After some tuning from a Reiki Master it just happens on its own. You can really feel something happening, even if you don't feel anything super special, you will most definitely feel heat. Becoming really good at it and learning where to focus that energy and so on takes years of practice though.

When I arrived at my Reiki master's office it turned out she has an 8 months old son who she had to care for today since her mother broke her leg and couldn't babysit as usual. Seeing her with him made my heart rate go up quite a bit and I felt a deep sadness. Then her master student who was co-teaching the course showed up - with a belly. Two months pregnant. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. Here I am, not even a week since loosing Zoe and Kian, stuck in a room with a pregnant woman and a toddler. Coincidence? I am not so sure. It was kind of bizarre that this class showed up when it did to begin with as I wrote about in a previous post.

After getting through the first few minutes, answering the question about why I was there wanting to learn Reiki and telling them my story I slowly calmed down. I am really glad there was only one other student there so I didn't have to deal with too many people at the same time.

After the introduction, theory and attunement it was our turn to do our first real Reiki session on each other and I was the first one on the table to be treated by Jeff, my fellow student. I didn't really feel much right away, except it felt good to lay down and relax a bit cause I was getting a bit tired. But when he got to my knees it was just something there that felt incredibly good. I didn't have any pain there before, it was more like when you carried a heavy backpack around for hours and you take it off, a sense of wonderful relief.
When he did my lower back on the other hand it was like somebody stabbed me with a knife through my spine and all the way to the front of my lower belly and uterus, but as he kept his hands there is gradually eased away.

Then it was my turn to heal Jeff, and the first thing we do is scan the body by moving your hands slowly over the client with our hands at a few inches distance. It has to be mentioned that Jeff was an extremely overweight man, and that I expected he would have problems with his heart, lungs or fighting diabetes or other issues often associated with obese people. To my surprise I didn't feel anything except for in the area around his liver, and even told him that I think he is actually in a pretty good shape. I did however feel that he is carrying a lot of mental baggage and I told him it feels like he is beating himself up a lot. He confirmed that he has been doing that his entire life, and that this is the reason why he became so fat. The teachers said that the liver and kidneys are associated with deep mental pain or grief and could simply be the same as the feeling I had about his depressions and self punishment.

During the healing session itself, he had similar experiences as me, but in his left foot and in his shoulders.

After the class, he offered me a lift back home since he was going that direction anyway, and we talked a little bit more, and he told me that he sees a doctor regularly to check up on his health while trying to change his life style and loose weight, and that he infact is extremely lucky to be 100% healthy and have no problems at all with either diabetes, his heart or lungs or anything at all. He said he was blown away by the things I picked up and how he felt when I was touching his foot and shoulders, and frankly I felt a bit blown away by that myself. I didn't expect I would be that right about someone at my first try.

After the class, when I got back home I suddenly got aches and pains all over my body. I could barely walk because my left hip was so painful and giving in when I put my foot down, and I was so tired I almost passed out within seconds after putting my head down on the couch. I gotta ask my teacher about that, if it is normal or if I did something wrong and somehow gave my own energy instead of just channeling it.

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Hello world

After giving birth to Zoe and Kian I had to have Kian's placenta surgically removed. Because the birth was so premature it didn't come out on it's own. The surgery was supposed to take 10 minutes according to the surgeon, but it ended up taking 4 hours, and I lost more than a liter of blood, so I was told to take it really easy when they finally let me leave the hospital.

Partly because of that, and partly because I just couldn't face the world outside I haven't left the apartment at all since Sunday, and the two weeks before that I was on total bedrest, so essentially I have just moved between bed, the couch and the bathroom for three weeks now, except for the taxi trip back and forth to the hospital.

Today I decided to come with Rob for a little walk, just down the street, I still get a bit dizzy sometimes. We walked down to the local art store and got some laminating sheets and some paint supplies, had a coffee at Starbucks and then walked back home. No biggie, right? The only problem is that this city is full of pregnant women and parents with toddlers. The toddlers doesn't really bother me nearly as much as I expected based on other women's stories, but the pregnant ladies are really difficult to watch, and they are everywhere.

I remember the feeling I had when my grandparents died in a fire back in 1996. It was such a huge shock and I had no previous experience with death, so it hit me really hard. For a long time after that the world outside just seemed completely different, as if I was watching it through a whole new set of emotional glasses. I also remember I would feel anger towards teenagers on the bus laughing and joking around. 'How can they laugh in a situation like this?'

I had a little bit of the same feeling today. Not really any anger, but as the world have changed completely, yet is exactly the same as before. I don't know how to describe it, it's such a weird feeling. But it was still quite nice in a way too. The weather was beautiful and the temperature wasn't too high, just perfect.

Back home I spent some time laminating the pictures of Zoe and Kian we got at the hospital, so that I can kiss their faces as much as I want without destroying the paper. I did the same thing with the footprint cards and the ultrasound pictures, just to make sure they won't be damaged or fade over time. It was a really nice little ritual for me, carefully applying the laminating sheets and stroking them inch by inch to make sure there was no air bubbles. Since I never got to care for my babies, it felt almost like a substitute for that. I'm an artist, and I put a lot of care into everything I do, but I never put so much love and care into anything as this.

Then I stroked their heads gently, kissed them both and put the pictures back into the box, like I would kiss them goodnight before bedtime if they were alive, and afterwards I felt quite good actually.

Rob and me also had some really good chats today and he finally got to tell his version of Sunday, how he experienced everything that happened, especially during the hours of labor where my memory is a little bit in bits and pieces. Then we talked about the future, about trying again, about Zoe and Kian potentially becoming a children's book and looked at some pictures from the mountains of Switzerland where a friend had lit two little candles for them.

Suddenly it was as if the entire apartment lit up. It actually did, cause the sun was coming around the corner of the building at this exact time, but it was also like this dark veil had been lifted, and for the first time since our babies died we laughed and smiled together for a while.

Then I think Rob finally got some emotions out too. It's been hard for him this week, having to take care of everything, organize with the funeral home and cremation, sign birth and death reports as well as looking after me, worrying about my bleeding, cooking and cleaning. Now that my bleeding has pretty much stopped and I was able to walk around town without any problems and even feeling almost happy, I think he finally managed to relax a little bit and focus a on his own emotions for a moment, and as much as I hate to see him hurt I think that is very good for him. It's a myth that men doesn't hurt just as much as women do, but they don't always get a chance to express it. For women there are a million forums and we get a lot of sympathy and are allowed to cry, while the expectations are quite different for men after something like this.

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Reiki

I've been told a number of times in life that there is something about my energies. I never really thought I can heal or have any special abilities, but I've always been curious about it. I've tried a number of times to heal friends, and some say that it actually helps a lot, but I am still not completely convinced.

After a Jose Silva Ultramind course taught by a famous Norwegian medium a number of years ago, she ended the session with hugging all her students. After hugging me she suddenly had to take a deep breath and said 'oh wow, that's a lot of energy'. I never got a chance to ask her about it, but I've been wondering for a very long time what she meant. Do I really have strong energies, and if so, are they good, bad, and what does that mean, and can I use that for anything?

The 'Spirit Baby' woman I talked to recently about trying to connect with Zoe and Kian also said she could sense that I have strong energies and an ability to heal, and said that it's my life purpose to help others, and strongly suggested I should learn Reiki. I'm skeptical, she may have just told me exactly what she thought I wanted to hear. This woman has a BA in psychology as well, so she knows very well that all humans has a need or desire to feel special in one form or the other.

It hasn't even been a week since I lost my two little angels, but one thought that keeps haunting me in between all the tears is there has to be something I am supposed to learn from this, or some kind of purpose to it all. It may very well just be a coping mechanism, but I always believed that there is a soul, and that the soul develops through many lifetimes and through a number of experiences. People used to tell me all the time when I was a child that I have an old soul, and I felt so many times that people I meet in my life has old or young souls.

I also had this feeling of unfulfillment for long periods of my life. I haven't felt it in some time now, but I used to feel that my job as a designer was meaningless and that I should be working with people, helping people in one way or the other. I signed up as a volunteer at the Children's Cancer Division at Rikshospitalet in Norway and tried a lot of different things without feeling that any of it was right for me.

I've always had a skill when it comes to helping people through difficult periods of their life, probably because I had such a rough life myself that I understand most human emotions and have found ways in my own life to deal with it all. Maybe it's time to do something serious about it instead of just being a good friend to people I randomly meet.

I talked to Rob about it. He is one of the people I've been trying to heal. He had a surgery earlier this year and was in a lot of pain and I tried focusing all my energies on him, and he claims it helped him a lot. Again, I am skeptical, maybe he just imagined it, cause I didn't see a solid proof, like the wound magically healing or anything like that. Still, he seem to think I have some kind of talent or skill and is encouraging me to explore it further.

I did some googling to see if there are any Reiki classes available in Montreal, and if you believe in fate, it definitely seem as if it's meant to be, cause there is a class this weekend just a few blocks from where I live. So Rob called right away and signed me up for it.

It's really early and it's gonna be a bit tough. I am still randomly bursting to tears, and they will probably ask me why I wanted to learn Reiki, and I will just have to tell my story. But even if this turns out to be just another thing that's not really right for me, a lot of people around the world say Reiki was life changing for them, and it may do me some good no matter if I choose to proceed with it later or not.

Just getting out of the apartment is probably good for me even though I know there is no rush, and it may even be expected that I don't really feel like doing anything for a while.

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Not ready to say goodbye

It's Tuesday night now and I am back home writing this, only 48 hours after loosing my babies. Needless to say I've just been crying and crying, sleeping and crying more since I got home yesterday.

Zoe's white hoodie and Kian's yellow.

They gave me a little box with their tiny hoodies, the blanket they were laying on, cards with their footprints and some pictures and I've been holding it all in my hands night and day, remembering the warmth of their skin against my chest, watching them being taken from my room, and I can barely breath or eat, just weeping uncontrollably. I have this huge black void in my heart and sometimes I swear I can still feel Kian kicking inside of me.

It's not even three weeks since I learned it was twins, and although I know I will be okay again some day it just seems impossible to imagine I can ever feel whole again after this.

Kian

People who never experienced anything like this may think it is a ridiculous self torture to write this and to keep clinging to the tiny pieces of cloth, but I don't even want to stop crying, cause when I do, even for a few minutes I just feel dead inside. At least as long as I keep crying I somehow feel that I still live. I was not prepared for this at all. I knew and realized everything the doctors have been telling me the past three weeks, but never in a million years I thought it would actually come to this.

Zoe

I'm not ready to hear quite yet that life goes on and that the pain gets easier to bare with time. I don't want life to go on, I want time to go back 48 hours only so I can hold my precious babies one more time. I love them so much, I never imagined I could feel like this at all. And I am so angry at the doctor who waited so long to talk to me about trying to save them, and in my pain haze convinced me not to do anything. It was probably the right decision, but I know this will torment me for a long time.

All I need right now is to write this and go through all the emotions and memories again and again.

Like the heroes they were named after (Baby names) they are my little heroes, but unlike the movies and games, in real life the true heroes always dies. My heart is bleeding, I love you both so, so much my dear heroes.

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