Secret Garden meeting for August

If you created a bedroom for your baby tell us what it was like.
Did you have it ready for them before they were born?
If so how did you cope coming home to it without your baby?
Did you pack it all away?
What is your baby's room now?
If you lost your baby after they had come home what is it like going into their room now?
If you are trying to conceive again, or are pregnant again how do you feel about setting up another room before your baby is born?

We had barely started preparing Luca's room when he died when I was 35 weeks pregnant. We were the same with our daughter. Her room was finished a couple of months after she came home. But there was no after for Luca. Our office was to become Luca's room. I had set up a new nappy change table and had his clothes ready in size order. I'd moved enormous piles of papers from the desk ready to dismantle it. His cot was still behind our daughter's wardrobe and under her bed. I had been putting Eliana's baby toys away over the months I was pregnant so they wouldn't be 'hers' when the baby came. I hadn't bought many clothes because my sister had a baby son who was six months old at the time and I knew she would pass his clothes on. I had not yet called in all my lent out baby items from Eliana and afterwards I wished I had, even though I didn't need them.

When Luca died I regretted not having finished his room. I think I would have liked somewhere to go and cry. Coming home without our beautiful baby boy was so difficult in so many ways. His things were all over the house - everywhere I looked there were reminders of the baby I should have with me. Even my own still swollen belly and my empty breasts were cruel reminders that I carried to every room in the house.

I packed away his change table a few weeks later, crying all the while. I packed away his clothes. I went through the clothes friends had lent us and returned them which was very difficult. Even packing away my maternity clothes was difficult. Months later friends still returned bits and pieces of my maternity wardrobe and I had to face the packing away over and over again.

Now I find the room very sad and I don't know how I will rid it of that melancholy feeling before our next baby is born. It has become the room where the junk goes. Spare wall insulation, appliances that don't fit in the kitchen, and all the other assorted debris of life, all the things we want to keep out of sight. When Luca first died I had plans to turn it into a guest room so that we didn't have the reminder of a nothing-room in the house, but I never did find the energy.

Now I'm 7 weeks pregnant. Getting the room ready for our new baby is not really on my mind at all yet. I finish my Masters research project at the end of October. I guess I'm thinking I'll do something about it after that, but honestly I don't know if I will be able to get the room ready until we have the baby safely home. Maybe Steve will help get me started. We'll find out whether we're having a boy or a girl and that might help me plan and imagine. Maybe I will find the hope in my heart to paint and clean and prepare.