Please hold on

Friday 18th February

I've been free of the cramping for several days now. This feels like a relief and combined with last night's Yoga class has sent me off into a blissful calm place where the usual work worries can't reach. I am driving to work with Merry and we are putting the world to rights as usual when I get a gentle shooting pain through my tummy. This doesn't phase me, it's familiar and you've already proved you can survive worse.

Later I go to the toilet and when I wipe I see fresh pink blood on the tissue, it's a light pink tingeing a mucousy discharge. Your Dad said to be prepared for more spotting when he left. Although I thought I was I am not. I walk back through to my office and crumple. Merry pushes the door closed and tries her sweet best to soothe me. My heart is awash with sadness.

All along I have known just how fragile you are, I have read about the risks, I have told myself of the reality and yet I have also detached myself from it. I know I could lose both of you and I know I have an even higher risk of losing one of you. Yet you are within my soul already. From the moment I saw you in those delicate stages of new life my heart swelled as you swam in. It will be an empty cavity without you. I don't want to let you go. Either of you.

I speak to your Dad and he tries to reassure me but I hear the sadness in his voice too. I know Berlin probably feels like a world away from us right now.

I take myself home, I want to write to you and ask you not to leave. Standing on the crowded train I feel removed from this normal every day commute. I haven't felt such a quiet sadness like this before.

Home now I climb into my pyjamas and curl up in bed. I try and interpret the cramps but it's like trying to listen to a language I have no grounding in. In my head I pick for things that I shouldn't have done, the wine in the very earliest of days, the way I have insisted on going to the gym more than I have done in months, or maybe it was deeper, maybe it was because I kept thinking about you having some sort of abnormality and me worrying I would want you less. I grasp at reasons.

I have nothing to do but wait. Next Thursday's scan seems like an eon away.