In my head, while the kids (well Osh anyway; Isabella is far too young to understand) don't know anything - I can pretend it's not happening. But as we're now less than a week away from D-day it's totally unfair on him. Deep down I know I need to give him time to get over the shock of what we've told him and be around to support him as he deals with it and to answer any questions he may have.
But it's a conversation I don't want to have. I don't want to tell him Mammi & Daddy are going away for X amount of weeks and
that his Baby sister isn't well.
How do you tell a 7 year old? More importantly WHAT do you tell a 7 year old? How much do they actually need to know.
I've said before Osh is such a "thinker" - he needs cold, hard facts - he can tell when he's being fobbed off. He remembers everything you tell him and uses it against you when you thought you'd gotten away with it!
I don't want him to worry, I don't want him to think about anything at all if I'm honest - I actually want him to be "blissfully unaware" that anything untoward is happening. But if we are away too long he will start to get suspicious, he will sense that the people around him are upset/ worried and he'll be asking them where we are; it's not fair to leave them to deal with it either.
So...the plan??
Tonight, we're going to sit him down and tell him that we have to go to London to have Martha because the Doctor thinks she might need a little bit of help after she's born, and our local hospital isn't equipped to help her - so we're taking her to the hospital we took him before (screening for a family heart condition that I am a gene-carrier for) because it's the best hospital in the world. And of course he can visit with his Auntie and Sister when Martha is strong enough (after she's had the op)
That's another thing, my Mother want's him to visit her in-between the birth and the operation. But I'm so scared of her not making it through the operation that I don't want him to have formed any kind of attachment to her, I don't want him to have a mental image of her that will haunt him forever. I'd rather he didn't get to meet her and could move on and forget about her. God, that sounds harsh, but I don't want him to be traumatised by the death of a sibling at the young age of 7 years old.
But I also know I will do more harm than good by not being honest with him.
Mark is happy for me to decide what to tell him, I wish I could also pass the responsibility on to someone else. But as him Mammi - it's up to me.
Wow this is hard :-(
Wish us luck...
GM
x
My precious Boy :-)
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