Dear Aoibh
For some reason, probably because talk has now turned to Christmas and the New Year, I have found myself thinking a lot about where we were this time last year.
It would be all to easy to say that 2018 has been an awful year and to long to be free of it as soon as possible. However this isn’t true for me because in 2018, in finding out that I was going to meet you, all my dreams came true.
To be honest this time last year things were hard for your Dad and I. We were stuck somewhere between England and Ireland. I had moved over but we hadn’t sold our house in Newcastle, we hadn’t found somewhere to settle in Ireland and your Dad was working in Scotland! All of this was compounded by my growing fear that maybe I wasn’t meant to have children, that maybe it wasn’t in the plan for your father and I.
Towards the end of the year I finally felt that things were beginning to change. We got an offer on our house, we found a house in Belfast and then, in early 2018 we got the greatest gift of all, two small blue lines that told me that our lives were about to change forever.
I had dreamed so many time of how I might tell your Dad that I was pregnant, in the end I couldn’t contain my excitement and told him as soon as I possibly could. I can’t remember a lot about that conversation apart from the vivid memory of telling your Dad that 2018 was going to be our year, the best was yet to come.
Yes, 2018 will undoubtedly be forever connected to memories of pain, loss, hopelessness and fear, but it is also the year that gave me you and in doing so allowed me to feel love like never before.
No one knows what is around the corner, and who knows what the next 12 months will bring for your father and I, I can only promise you that I will continue to battle through this fog of grief and try and embrace the brighter days as I know they come from you.
Forever yours
Mum xx
Dear Aoibh 