Did you miss me? (What do you mean was I gone?!)
Had an excellent vacation (with huge apologies to those of you with whom I had tentative plans to meet up; it just didn't happen for various reasons including em being sick with a cold the entire first week!). It threatened to start out badly, as Mr B and I had to tell the Badeggs Daughter that her father had been arrested.
We knew it was coming. He has harassed me for 9 years now with awful, upsetting letters and the occasional phone calls, and Mr B has been on the receiving end for the past 4 years. It has got much worse in the past couple of years, culminating in police involvement during 2004, when our wedding was preceded by several letters commenting on everything from our choice of wedding day (11th September) to whether I was entitled to a church wedding seeing as I am a liar and a cheat. More recently his parents started sending things to me, and his letters became increasingly upsetting, and that's when we decided to involve the police again. He was asked by them to stop writing; his response was to start writing letters to the police! He was asked to stop again; final warning. He wrote a letter to me that actually threatened me (smart guy, eh?). So on 23 July at 11 pm he was taken into custody and interviewed for a few hours. His parents bailed him out, apparently, and his mother telephoned mine to tell her how depraved I am. Yeah, cry me a river.
Anyway, you can imagine how difficult it was to tell my daughter. We decided to do it ourselves, rather than risk having her hear it from her father or grandparents, who would of course skew everything so that it was all my fault (because the police are always arresting people on my say so, don't you know). It's hard for her because she hears her father say that he's only trying to start a dialog with me about her. She can't understand that his letters are nothing to do with creating a dialog or building bridges but are simply a vehicle for abuse. And of course she wants to believe her father is a decent person. Mind you, deep down I think she knows that he has problems. About a week before we left, she came down and spoke to both Mr B and myself (unusual; it's usually just me) and spoke of how her father is always talking to her like she is a stand-in for me. "I am worried he's going to end up in the loony bin," she said, "He's so paranoid."
Daughter cried when we explained about the arrest (hell, even I cried; I never wanted it to end up like this) and I told her it was OK to feel angry and upset with me and with the situation and even with her dad. She went to spend some time on her own, but within hours she was talking to me and acting normally. She had a lot of heart-to-hearts with my younger sister who has the gift of being able to temper bluntness with humour, and my daughter shared the content of those talks with me (or at least some of it). By the end, she was happy to simply let it be the grown-ups' problem. In fact, when her grandmother called towards the end of our trip (yes, they can never let the child just enjoy her time in America) she took the call in full earshot of my sister and mother and was heard to tell her grandmother: "I don't want to hear it, Grandma. it's not my problem." What a kid!
She's now in France for 10 days on a school water-sports trip. By the time she's back, we should know whether her father will actually be charged with harassment or just given an official caution.
Arrgh! Enough about the exes; now for the Oh!s. Yesterday was my 20-week scan (and I am officially 20 weeks' pregnant tomorrow). I've made it to the halfway point and baby has all his/her fingers and toes and everything else it needs. And the kid yawned, I kid you not! RIght there on the monitor. I guess we were boring it. (Ha! Just wait 'til you're born, kid; we're the most boring people on the planet.) We did have the gender 'confirmed' (they never give you 100% certainty, but they were fairly confident in what they saw/didn't see) but we're not telling. Only my sister and best friend know! I will try to get the photos scanned so that I can post them via a link, but our scanner's shot, so I have to find someone at work to do it for me. Don't hold your breath! (But I do have the cutest shot of his/her little feet!)
It was all very emotional. I didn't cry, but I kept thinking about all the babies we had to lose to get to this place. And though I know that they simply weren't 'compatible with life', as they say, that something in their genetic make-up had gone wrong and they simply couldn't have lived, it still makes me sad to think what might have been for those sons and daughters of ours. And it just kills me that there are mothers and fathers going through the agony of repeated loss or inability to conceive right now. I just wish so much that I could fix it for everyone.
It's good to be back. Work is busy and the broadband at home is down, so I may not be able to post very much for the time being. But you know where to find me.
