Emma Belle

Little dot! 3 months! Where has this time gone? Here are some pictures taken by at 8 days old and 5 weeks old..

Time is slow and fast all at once 🤍

Our precious little Dot, The longest and shortest days of our lives have happened since you arrived.

The first 8 weeks were wild and relentless and now we are starting to settle in to something that feels a little more manageable 🙏

Every day I have the absolute privilege of falling more and more in love with you. Just like your sister, I loved you before I met you and now I get to hold and love you every day.

Before you, the days were the longest, slowest and hardest in a completely different way, unending unknowns, unending hoping, unending waiting, continuously feeling my spirit breaking over and over again never knowing if we would ever have an earthside family of our own…

Little dot, this season with you is a whole new hard, one we hoped and wished for with every ounce of our being… I used to dream of being at home up to my ears in dirty nappies with sleepless nights…. Now, we oscillate between feeling broken with tiredness and exhaustion to overflowing with love and thankfulness to be able share our living days with you.

You are slowly helping our hearts to feel less empty, less broken and our daily lives to look a little more like we had always hoped they would.

Utterly grateful 🙏

📸

2 months of you little Dot!

Grateful AND tired 🙏

In support of my friends new page

If you’re partial to a matching outfit then give her a follow! She has so many! This one is from and and both have the same 😆

Sending you all lots of love this Christmas, I know for those who celebrate during this time (and any special occasions) and are in the trenches with infertility/loss it can be heavy and you can feel like you just want it all to go away and be any other normal day.

This isn’t because you’re not positive enough or grateful enough, it can be because you’re hurting beyond measure, not sure how the next period of your life is going to turn out (despite your hardest efforts) and you now have to brace yourself for another special day not looking how you had hoped it would… the last 3 Christmas’ for us have been overshadowed with infertility and loss with us wanting to have our holiday season be a certain way and it being nothing like that. We have watched on as others around us share it with their living children, create magic and post pictures of their family, whilst hoping that one day we too may get to enjoy putting up our tree, taking a family photo and creating magic with our very own living children.

So here we are, grateful and tired about to have the first year of what we hope will be many more with our first living child to create some magic with and start watching the world through her eyes and see where she takes us x x x

The last episode of series 2 of ‘Let’s Talk Bipolar’ by is out!

Melissa Duncan and Jihan Gabart - Melissa was diagnosed with Bipolar 1. Jihan has been her best friend and carer to Melissa, living through 9/11 and navigating Mel living with with bipolar.

In our last episode of the series 2 I am joined by Melissa Duncan and Jihan Gabart - Melissa was diagnosed with Bipolar 1. Jihan has been her best friend since the age of 14 and they have lived together and Jihan is a carer to Melissa to support her whilst living with this diagnosis.

They were childhood friends and then moved to New York City together to be college roommates at the age of 17 and 18 and lived through the 9/11 disaster on just their second day living in New York. Living through this traumatic event as well as living together whilst Melissa was living undiagnosed with Bipolar was truly friendship changing.

Head to link in bio/stories to listen and we will be back with series 3 in summer 2023! Recording for series 2 starts at the end of January 2023, so if you would like to be a guest please email me on [email protected]

Thank you for listening 🙏🙏

I am a Mum of 2 precious girls, physically holding them both in the only way I can, both in my arms, one in person and one in ashes.

Willow, if Edwards syndrome and the many other health complications hadn’t been part of your story you would be here with us as a part of our living family of 4. Instead you are woven within our family and life in different ways, Baby D’s older sister in the stars, the one who made me a Mama and the reason that was created and now helps so many parents trying to continue to live their lives after

Our journey to parenthood has changed me, infertility and loss has changed how I am to my core and changed how I parent our now living child.

Some parts are harder and I often wish for more ease and some parts hit home in a different way now, ways I could never has seen of felt before this heartache.

I will never be happy about the hard things along the way (asking/expecting people to be grateful for their pain is a bizarre and invalidating request at best), nor do I wish them upon myself (or anyone else) again AND I am truly grateful for where we are today.

So here is a photo that is so special to me; holding both of my babies close to my heart 🤍 (heartbeat ring is the one I had made of Willow’s heartbeat)

10 months in 6 pictures!

There is too much to write about all the emotions that came and went in between each of these photos..

What I do know though is I did it in survival mode and now I’m in a new type of survival mode as I navigate the 4th trimester.

and is going to every appointment hoping for the outcome to be LIFE and bracing yourself for the possibility of death occurring within you once again..

Postpartum with a living baby is different to that with a baby that has died… with Willow I had the horrendous night sweats, weeks of bleeding, sore hips, stretch marks and ‘nothing to show for it’ these symptoms can not be made softer with the saying ‘but it’s all worth it’ in the same way I have heard so many others say and I have now said myself whilst navigating living newborn parenting…

The sleepless nights, not knowing how I would ever know who I was again after my with Willow were cold and empty and not made softer by the presence of a living baby to give me a reason to keep going…

I’m not sure where I’m going with this share, I just know that the chapter I am in is a lot, it’s overwhelming and exhausting AND it’s magical and amazing and it goes without saying we are deeply grateful.

Comparing it to my postpartum after loss kind of blows my mind as so many mixed emotions are coming up for me for so many reasons.

I hope to be able to better convey them soon, but right now i’m scrabbling together the remaining half a brain cell I think I have left!!!

Also, wouldn’t it be good if pregnancy after loss was as easy as these 6 pictures may appear… for anyone doing this or who has done this, I know you will know it’s far from easy! Thank goodness for connecting with you all on these squares! You have made hard chapters a little lighter, thank you 🙏

Oh and any tips on how to navigate parenting after loss, I would love to hear your experiences x x x

Baby D, our little Dot ✨

One month of you!

It’s been amazing, overwhelming and exhausting all at once.

We are running in survival mode, wondering when we might make it up for air…

AND

we are forever grateful for your safe arrival and to be back home re-settling after our little bump in the road at the hospital last week, looking forward to getting to know you better.

✨D recognises her Mama and Papa
✨Smiles when she hears her Mama and Papa
✨And even had her first little ‘coo’s’

You’re magical

We love you 🤍

The next episode of “let’s Talk Bipolar’ by is out!

Anastasia Mclean - Diagnosed with Bipolar II in 2015 when she was 20 years old after seeing psychiatrists since the age of 9, also lives with Narcolepsy and PTSD.

Anastasia was seeing psychiatrists since the age of 9 so her journey has been a long one and coming to terms with her diagnosis was hard as all she had heard was fear and stigma around the diagnosis. After some research the diagnosis brought relief and made things make sense.

Head to link in bio/stories to listen!