for one and all > Queen Anne's Children
wow. i had no idea.
my mind and i could spend a lifetime poring over that list, imagining backstories, all that the charts and lists do not tell. but the scale of seventeen dead children over sixteen years...and the one survivor dying at eleven six months after the last stillbirth...i am left breathless, grasping.
Katherine, i hope you are able to find peace between your family's expectations and hopes and your own limits.
bon
My god, Katherine, I've been staring at that list, too. I don't know the history of your loss, but I do know that no matter what the reason (or maybe worse, what unknown reason), we all face another pregnancy with so much trepidation.
I won't say "you might be just fine" because, like I said, I don't know enough. But your heart won't be fine, and if you ever try again, it will make you feel vulnerable. I think given your families I'd want to disappear for a while from conception on... that must feel so claustrophobic.
Just remember that the way you feel is totally, completely normal.
Wishing you peace, too, and a light that might, just maybe, represent a beginning instead of an end.
glow in the woods
My goodness. And when I found out Jackie Kennedy had a stillborn daughter I was tripping all over myself... I wonder, in those ages, if this may just be the norm. Was it her duty to keep trying? No matter if it was duty or desire, my heart aches for her body, and her heart.
Katherine, I took hope you find that light will be a beginning, and not an end. I hope your body, space and heart will be respected. This must be hard. Hugs to you.
janis
Katherine..don't do it just for them....if you don't or can't go through it all again..don't....
And yes...I always loved history and Eng lit and it was because I kept thinking about the REAL lives behind the facts...the pain these women endured....sisters in history too
Crunchy Carpets
Name Birth Death
Stillborn Daughter 12 May 1684 12 May 1684
Mary 2 June 1685 8 February 1687
Anne Sophia 12 May 1686 2 February 1687
Stillborn Child January 1687 January 1687
Stillborn Son 22 October 1687 22 October 1687
Stillborn Child 16 April 1688 16 April 1688
William, Duke of Gloucester 24 July 1689 29 July 1700
Mary 14 October 1690 14 October 1690
George 17 April 1692 17 April 1692
Stillborn Daughter 23 April 1693 23 April 1693
Stillborn Child 21 January 1694 21 January 1694
Stillborn Daughter 18 February 1696 18 February 1696
Stillborn Child 20 September 1696 20 September 1696
Stillborn Daughter 25 March 1697 25 March 1697
Stillborn Child December 1697 December 1697
Charles 15 September 1698 15 September 1698
Stillborn Daughter 25 January 1700 25 January 1700
I found myself staring at this lately. There it is, a woman's pain laid out in a history book as cold, dead statistics. Were people that different from us in their view of children that she merrily dropped child after child and went on with life as usual? Somehow, I doubt it. And there's that Ben Jonson poem - people haven't changed that much. But how did she deal with her daily life and all of this? How did she keep trying to produce an heir, especially toward the end? That's what the charts and outlines don't tell me.
Everyone else wants me to "try again," wait 18 months on the Depo, use that time to "get things in order," working on the house and our finances, etcetera. I don't want another baby. I don't want to be pregnant ever again. I've tried to get that across but even my husband doesn't understand that, so I've had to continue having everything checked out, and since I'm the only one in both families who appears to be able to have children for one reason or another, the duty of two families falls on my shoulders (or another more appropriate anatomical reference), I understand that there's a biological drive at work as well as the cultural expectations and norms, but I just can't be their Queen Anne. I can't do it. But 18 months from now, I'll probably be sitting in the specialists office trying to determine what risk factors we can eliminate. But I have to set a cutoff. I will tell everyone that I absolutely will not have more children after age 30. I just won't do it. That way at least I'll know there's a light at the end of the tunnel.