Life is like that...

There's a mixture of good and bad news today.

The good news is that the department of home affairs found our application for Nellie's birth registration and passport from 2006. This is also the bad news. Anyway, the file, with BOTH applications (the 2006 and the 2007 ones) in it is sitting somewhere in a pile at the registry office in Pretoria. It will take them a week to find it, and only then they can try to expedite the registration. I must ring again next week, after Wednesday.

AAAAARRRGGHH!!

Breathe, breathe, breathe. Count to 10. Do not attempt to murder the very sweet Mrs Joubert on the other side of the phone. Do not think about the fact that the passport application can only be expedited AFTER the birth registration has been expedited. Breathe. Relax your shoulders. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.

The other piece of bad news is that the problem with our car is indeed the catalytic converter and oxygen sensor. The good news is that our lovely garage man Keith has managed to find a replacement for us that is £100 cheaper than we thought it would cost us. Yay!!

The other good news is that our car's import permit and LOA (another permit required) have both been approved. The import permit is currently winging it's way to London. The LOA should be on its way by the end of the week. Thank God! That means we will (hopefully - I still don't trust the SA mailing system) have all the documents in time for the move.

I had my fasting blood test today. Now we wait another 2-3 weeks for these results. I rang my doc about the other results, but haven't heard back yet. Being at the hospital today was a trial. As I was waiting in a queue at the cash machine (to get money to buy breakfast after my blood test) a woman in labour was wheeled past me to the labour ward. At first I thought nothing of it. Then it hit me that she would (probably) have a baby at the end of it.

Trying not to think about that, I went off to buy breakfast. After sitting down, a woman with a newborn sat down behind me and her baby proceeded to cry. Newborns have this very particular mew - their cry isn't that loud (although first time mothers think it is) and it always has a particular tone or timbre or pitch (or whatever it is) to it. Hearing it upset me and I had to stop myself from turning around and yelling at the mother to shut her child up. I left soon afterwards, walking along the river to Vauxhall station.

As I walked, I cried (I'm sure the other pedestrians thought I was mad) because I was leaving the hospital. I know it sounds weird. I realised that all my memories of Zoe (bar her funeral) are linked with that hospital. Now I have this love-hate relationship with the building. I don't want to leave London because that means leaving the place where my little girl was born and died, leaving the hospital where I saw her kick, where I saw her heart beat, and the place where I saw her heart no longer beating. It doesn't matter that we have her ashes and she's going home with us. I feel like I'm leaving her behind. Is that weird?

Last night Nellie pointed to my tummy again and said 'baby'. She knows what a baby is; I know that because she's started talking about her 'baby' while rocking her dolly in her arms. So I know that she was asking about Zoe when she did that. I had to tell her, again, that while there had been a baby in Mommy's tummy, Zoe was dead. And this after a day of Nellie throwing up on both Graeme and I, and her just generally being miserable (so I was already upset and miserable).

So on my walk home this morning I asked God when this grief thing would be over. It's not that I want to forget Zoe, I just don't want to react to other pregnant women or babies like this. I don't want to feel the need to cry whenever I think of Zoe, or mention her. And yet, I find myself clinging to things like living near the hospital where she was born because it links me to her in some way, even though it's in these places that I encounter the very thing that makes me react. Silly, isn't it?