A Donkey on the Edge

So about a month ago we had a miscarriage. We were going to have a second child and then we weren't. Say like that and it's quite simple really.

I've been composing an ever expanding post on the subject since then, and it's grown and morphed in my head over the passing weeks and in the mean time I didn't want to say anything about all the other trivial little nonsense in my life.

Nicki had a miscarriage before having Clem. At the time I was disappointed, but in an abstract sort of way. I don't think I was very supportive of Nick at the time either... not by design or lack of care, simply that until you actually have a child, you don't truly understand the scale of the loss.

Also, and this is no insignificant thing, while I understood the reproductive thing in principle, I hadn't really stopped to consider the physical implications of a miscarriage. Essentially, once the baby dies, the mother still has to give birth to it. This can range from heavy bleeding for an early one, to something called a d&c which is euphemistic way of describing an invasive medical procedure where the cervix is chemically forced open and the contents of the uterus are scraped out--not something I would wish on any woman.

So I did my best to be a bit more help this time round (not sure how well that went but...) and have spent more time thinking about the event as well as talking about it.

As I write this, I realise that I've worked out in my head exactly how and what I feel about the loss, but in many ways, I still don't know what Nick makes of it.

The whole thing sort of spread over the course of a week, from bleeding, through to hospital visits, through to waiting for her to go through final birth stages at home. In the end, her body was able to get through it on her own, avoiding the surgery, which was a relief.

On the down side, I think the process of waiting for the 'birth' to happen (the whole cycle of dilation, contractions and birth in miniature) was very scary. She remembered the pain of Clemmie's birth but was sitting at home with no nurses, drugs or doctors present, just waiting for it to happen with the consultant's assurance that it would be ok... Frightening stuff.

We lost the baby just before our first dating scan was due, around 10 weeks. When Nick went to seek help after the bleeding started, we were given a scan appointment soon after. This scan was pretty horrific, and it's at this point I started to feel the full impact. The scan showed a tiny, empty bubble.

I've personally coped with this by imagining a little person--Probably a guy--in my head the same little Viking called Haldane that I had imagined would be joining us before Clem arrived. I can think about him and his very short life, even going so far as transferring his trip down the toilet into some sort of Viking burial involving a burning drakkar being sent out to sea...

OK. Seeing the above in print does make it seem weird. But it is exactly what went through my head. My point, is that by giving the little guy some sort of 'identity' I can feel sadness at his loss but not regret at his having tried and lost. He went for the struggle and didn't make it.

Nicki is pretty sure she knows the exact date and time he went on his way, but not of course the exact time of death. At first, I thought I would try and remember this date, in order to have a thought about that life that never quite got developed, but now I hope that this time next year Nick and I might be back in a maternity ward trying to help the next little guy into this world :-)

Jed writes about life as a Devon councillor

Wow! We just won one! That's so unusual I thought I'd tell you about it:

When you are lucky enough to live in a good place, you would like to keep it that way.

Developers, however, make their money by building new things--not by protecting the old. And they make a lot of money doing it, so they tend to be much more persistent than your average resident / protester.

In this part of the world, if the building project doesn't "fit in" (and most don't) The Town Council gets first vote--and in this case they refuse it. So it moves up the planning ladder to The District Council--who also refuse it.

The Developer (who wasn't expecting anything else) now takes the last and most expensive step--he appeals to The Department of The Environment.

Now that's a wonderful title ("Environment and all..") but what it really means is "John Prescott" who, in his office of Deputy Prime Minister, is in total control of all local government (stop and think about that for a moment).

Now, continuing the amazing magic trick of our Labour Government being more Conservative than ever the old Conservatives would have dared, John Prescott has decided that if it is a building application, it should not only be approved, it should be encouraged.

So, appeals, though costly to the applicant, mostly lead him to the approval he was seeking.

I have very few arms to fight this. But in this case, I was able to get the hearing moved to our local Town Hall rather than the Inspector's Offices miles away. Some judiciously planted local Press stories generated a large public turnout (40+ ain't much to you, but for a planning meeting here, that's a crowd!)

The Building plans (large block of flats on coast) had been discussed to death but by forcing them to look at the plot and not just the building I was able to show that they intended to tarmac the garden completely and provide parking for twelve cars--which would change completely the street scene from the small town tree-scape it is into an urban parking lot.

I thought we had lost it.

But just this week I got the notification--the appeal (against our refusal to allow building) was dismissed! Jubilation in Budleigh Salterton!

But the builder will, to paraphrase The Governor of California, "be back". Yes he will, but his next bid will be more in keeping with this funny town.

Cheers!
Jed

This material ?Jed Falby 2003

Muzac this week...

At Companies House dissolutions department : Madonna licking Britney's ear
Abbey National payment centre: Gregorian chants
Corporation Courthouse helpline: Hits of the Eighties

So I've been thinking about making wooden toys. Here are some shots from the Thorpeness Toys Ltd secret development lab, where engineer Clementine Luz Falby is taking Mr Nay Nay through his paces.

Jayne Iceton
Executive Assistant
Orange Communications PLC
Birchwood Drive
Braken Hill Business Park
Peterlee
Co. Durham
SR8 2RS

26 November 2003,

Dear Jayne,

Thank you for your letter dated 17 November in which you reply to my letter to Cynthia Gordon dated 17 October 2003.

I appreciate your quoting my comments back to me and addressing each of them in turn, which was very thorough of you.

If I/05/be so bold, I would like to ask you why you did not address the only explicit action point contained (in the last paragraph) of my letter:

\t Please arrange for me to talk to a sensible,\thelpful person about this matter\tand let's salvage our relationship.

If I had been in your shoes I would have at the very least replied:

Why not dial 150 on your Orange handset?"

Finally, it seems to me that your note states that I want Orange to provide telecommunications services to me free of charge.

As I am not a registered charity, I don't really understand what you mean by this?

For the record, I shall assume that you are suggesting I am either terminally misinformed, inexperienced, uneducated, naive, or just plain stupid.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to reply.

All the best, Dug Falby

About finally finding a bug and sending it off to the place from whence non puede salir.

In this case, the animal was a call to Javascript's .length method, a harmless little tool for extracting the length of a variable (dug = 3 or donkey = 6) such a small thing, but the incorrect value returned was being disguised by a much more complex and much guiltier-looking function that was doing unspeakable things with cookies.

Anyway, two weeks and 437 alert() calls later, I finally found it.

I feel lighter, younger, richer, more beautiful and overall more Zen about this project now :-)