24,000 hours. 1,440,000 minutes. I don’t even want to google the seconds. I can’t say how many of those early days felt like 1000 days had passed in a 24 hour period, and how sometimes weeks went by and I wouldn’t even really notice, numb to everything, even time. Its been a while since I’ve written a blog (I won’t google the amount of days on that one!), mainly because I haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to really contribute beyond what I’ve already wrote about, whether that be blogs that make it to this site or just for my own personal venting space. I feel over time I’ve wanted to grieve more privately than before, in the early days I felt like I wanted to shout from the roof tops, to make sure my voice was heard and Clay’s name was everywhere I could see, to validate (in my own head) my love for him and my longing for him. As time has passed I think I’ve felt like a broken record, and in some ways I am, my love for Clay will never diminish so how I talk about him won’t change much either, I suppose I just do that more privately than I once did. Maybe that will stay the same, maybe it won’t. Grief is weird and what works one day or week might not the next, unfortunately I have the rest of my life to ride the waves of emotions that come with grieving a loved one.
It was about a month ago when I was writing an Instagram post and I googled how many days had passed since Clay was born and died, and I was surprised to see it in the 900+ range, that’s when I started thinking about writing this blog, about how my grief has changed over time. How these past 1000 days have moulded and changed me, since the thought first popped into my head my notes in my phone have filled up with ‘points’ I want to write about, when I write blogs I tend to just empty my thoughts onto the pages, leave it a few days and then re-read, because not only do I do this to help spread awareness I also do it because it helps me organise my extremely jumbled mind. I’m not sure if my mind will ever be organised again to be honest.
Days 1-365
Fuck me, even thinking back to this time period is tiring. So much happens in that first year of grief, so many firsts, so many obstacles, so many tears, so much pain. Even 1000 days in the pain doesn’t get easier when you think about it (or it rudely springs into your mind… usually mid drive to work or food shop for me!).
Thinking back to that first year, we learnt so much new terminology no new parents should ever have to think about; post mortem’s, HSIB, funeral arrangements, cremation or burial? Would you like a picture on his casket? What songs do you want at the funeral service? Coroners office, coroners court, instructing a lawyer, cause of death 1a and 1b. The list goes on, it feels never ending. A cruel twist of the knife when your brain cannot literally compute that your baby has died, you are then made to have to really listen and engage and remember all of these important conversations. I’ve spoken about my labour and Clay’s death and been through every detail so many times that now it feels like I’m telling somebody else’s story, it’s usually the only way I can get through it without bursting into tears (which sometimes does happen). There are some important ‘days’ during that first year that stick in my mind, ones that I feel are key factors in how my grief has changed over the past 1000 days. Some of the more obvious ones, his funeral, first Christmas, first mothers day, first birthday etc of course spring to mind but I wanted to talk about a few others.
12th October 2020 - Day 90
The day I met Cora’s mum & Amelie’s mum in person for the first time. We’d been chatting for a few weeks, after stumbling across each other from searching the depths of hashtags on Instagram. You don’t expect to find best friends when searching hashtags such as ‘neonatal death’ and ‘baby loss’ but alas. Clay, Cora & Amelie died within a month of each other, all within a 30 minute drive of one another and all in similar circumstances. ‘We’ve never seen this happen before’ we were all told, yet sat around a table we sat and discussed our 3 beautiful babies, all whom should have been there but heartbreakingly weren’t. To the outside world we probably looked like 3 old friends meeting for a catch up before another Covid lockdown struck. But for us, it was a lifeline like no other, a chance for us to be completely raw and open and unfiltered. To cry unapologetically, to say how we were feeling without having to then try and explain what that actually means. And last but certainly not least, to make each other laugh. A group chat was formed and since that day we have never been more than a few days without speaking to one another. I owe a lot to these beautiful mamas, and their beautiful daughters. Nobody, ever (ever, ever, ever!) Would choose the path we had thrust upon us, but I am grateful to have found 2 best friends to help walk it with. If you are reading this and have yet to find your ‘loss friends’, I hope you mange to find at least one. They are invaluable and provide light on the darkest of days. Of course I have since met other great friends through baby loss who have also made (and continue to make) a big impact in my life but my life would have undoubtedly been 1000x harder these past 1000 days without Han & Hannah so thank you (I know you will be reading this!)
16th November 2020 - Day 125
The day I took a pregnancy test and a very faint positive looked back at me. Little bean. When I say I was in disbelief I mean it, I didn’t even trust the test to be positive and went straight to my Dr’s for my HcG levels done to confirm if I was pregnant or not. Even thinking back to this time I cannot truly remember how I felt in that moment, shocked, scared, nervous, guilty (that it had happened so quickly for us and others I knew it didn’t), relieved. But at this point we hadn’t had Clay’s post mortem results back and I was nervous in case something came back on them which was genetic and meant we shouldn’t try again naturally. I was so desperate to have a baby at home that I just thought we would deal with whatever was thrown at us. I was grateful we had been lucky enough to get the opportunity so soon to be on the road to hopefully bringing a baby home but I had lost that naivety that a positive pregnancy test results in a living baby.
1st December 2020 - Day 140
We knew it was coming, we had been expecting it for months, but the moment the phone rang and an unknown number came up, my heart flew into my throat and I knew before even answering it, it was the coroners office with the results of Clay’s post-mortem. We had been told countless times “prepare to receive no answers” “over 50% of baby deaths come back with no cause”, and my heart goes out to those families who choose to have a post mortem/have to have one through the coroners office and never find out a reason why, because my mind ran away countless times in those four and half months before we received his results as to what could have happened and I can only imagine how hard not having answers must be, especially in the early days of grief. The first words she said “there is a cause”, followed by telling us his primary cause of death (otherwise known as 1a on a post mortem) was “skull fractures in context of instrumental delivery”, she went on to explain what that meant and how their would now be an inquest opened as it was an unnatural cause of death. I won’t go into my thoughts and feelings about his post mortem results and the care we received in the hospital as I talked about it a lot in my Our Son- His Story blog. But that phone call will forever be etched in my brain, the day our thoughts of what might have happened were confirmed and the long legal battle that has since commenced, and continues to be ongoing. It is another level of draining and an additional complex layer to our grief.
15th December 2020 - Day 154
The day I miscarried little bean, and with it the hope to end the year with a shred of hope vanished. I had been bleeding for a week prior to having my miscarriage and the bleeding had got consistently heavier so I semi expected it, but still I held onto a thread of hope that it might be ok, that we might be one of the lucky ones. I wrote a blog about miscarriage after neonatal death where I talk about what happened in more detail. But to this day, every now and then I will sit and wonder what our life would have been like if little bean had made it home with us. Who they would be, a now nearly 2 year old. To think, in a parallel universe we may have been blessed with Clay (nearly three), little bean (nearly 2) and Quinn (nearly 1) all at home with us, granted we probably wouldn’t have planned our family with those age gaps but they all could have been here, earth side yet only 1 has made it home and my heart will always, always ache for the what ifs.
13th May 2021- Day 303
Our interview with BBC news. We had been contacted a few weeks prior by BBC Panorama who were making a documentary into hospital secrets, they had uncovered reports which should have been made public but trusts hadn’t been making them public. Unfortunately for us one of those reports was into Doncaster & Bassetlaw Trusts Maternity Services, and quite a lot of the points raised in the report dated 2016 were issues we had raised in our care during Clay’s labour. You can read the report they wrote here. I can remember just thinking that Clay’s death, even more so, should never have happened, improvements should have been made and the trust should have been held accountable but they weren’t, so if we could tell Clay’s story and put some pressure on the trust to make some much needed improvements and also raise awareness for baby loss and what happened to Clay, we had to do it, how we got through the interview without completely braking down I don’t know, I can only think and believe that in that moment the strength of being parents shone through, one of the few times it could when your baby isn’t earth side and like any parents you would do anything for your child and for us that meant speaking out and up for Clay, which we will continue to do whenever we get the opportunity.
14th July 2021 - Day 365
Clay’s first birthday. Emotions I cannot put into words but what I wanted to write about was the ‘birth’ of ‘Kindness for Clay’, I had spent hours and hours googling ways to honour your baby on their birthday, what can you do to celebrate a baby that is with you every single day but not in the physical sense. I came across parents doing random acts of kindness in honour of their babies. And so, Kindness for Clay was born, it is single handily the best thing we could have done as a family on his birthday. Of course there were tears, but there had been tears every single week (if not every single day) in that first year and we knew it was going to be a sad day, reliving the moments from the year before. Thinking back to the naivety of being in labour and thinking the only outcome was bringing our baby home. Kindness for Clay gives Clay’s birthday a way for all our family and friends (and even strangers it transpired) to honour Clay and celebrate him without us having the added pressure of having to see and socialise with people on his birthday. Seeing the love and kindness being spread in Clay’s name was heart-warming, and it truly made our hearts happy on a day we didn’t think possible. We will continue doing Kindness for Clay every single year on his birthday until we are reunited with him, and even then I hope it passes down to his living siblings. Because of Clay, kindness and love will be spread far and wide every single year and that truly is something to smile about.
Days 366 - 730
The second year of grief. Most people you talk to will say in some ways its harder than the first. The support trails off, the messages of checking in get less, people think because a year has passed you should be more ‘ok’, the sense that you should try and move forward with life, which sometimes internally feels like it means moving on (spoiler alter; it isn’t). For me, going into the second year I still wasn’t pregnant, I kept setting my self mini ‘targets’ for when I wanted to be pregnant by, Clay’s 1st birthday for some reason being one of them. But it came and went and with it the cycles continued and TTC life consumed the majority of my thoughts. I wrote more about it in this blog.
In some ways, the second year of grief is easier in the sense that you've learnt how to deal with a bad grief day better, the daily crying has mostly stopped (replaced with the ability to disassociate, yay!), you start to feel less guilty when you laugh and have a good day, knowing that these breaks in your grief are very much needed to survive. For me, I could enjoy some of my life again, happiness resurfaced in some ways, but learning to sit comfortably with two emotions simultaneously (happy and sad for example) is something, even now, I am navigating how to do. What I think people don’t quite understand is in some ways, the further you get away from your loved one dying, the harder it hits when you do have a bad day or moment. It takes your breath away, you momentarily forget how to function, you want the world to swallow you up and take you to wherever they may be. Yes you learn to deal with it better and that feeling might not linger for as long as it once did, but the fundamental feeling of reliving the moment you’re told they’ve died will never, ever, ever get easier, and on top of having to deal with that feeling of doom, you are faced with a society who on a whole doesn’t get it. A society who thinks you can put your emotions and feelings in a box and move on from something so tragic.
I am lucky that the vast majority of my family and friends are extremely supportive and continue to be, they remind me that no matter how much time passes I’m a grieving mother and the fact my son died will never get any easier. They include him on special dates, write his name in the sand and message when something makes them think of him. When your baby isn’t here, their name can sometimes go unsaid for days, obviously not in your own head but when you don’t hear their name being said it can feel like they are being forgotten, which is something that I think any grieving parent will tell you they are scared about. So if you know somebody who has lost their baby/child, please don’t be afraid to bring them up, whether its something that you’ve seen that made you think of them, a message on important dates, a name in the sand or just a simple message to say you miss them, it doesn’t make us sad, we never go a day without thinking of them and knowing somebody else is also thinking of them will only make us smile and breathe a sigh of relief.
6th September 2021 - Day 419
Clay’s inquest. There’s not many situations in life where you have to sit in a room full of people who’s decisions ultimately led to the death of your child. There’s even fewer situations ( I would imagine) where said people stand up and try and argue that they did nothing wrong and accept no responsibility for what happened. That they apparently did everything right which must mean that Clay’s skull just fractured on its own accord (and just by chance in the same location that the forceps were applied?). The Doctor who preformed the forceps attempt and my c-section even left half way through the second day (of the 3 day inquest), under the guise of needing to fetch a cardigan, yet never to return. I can only imagine because she couldn’t listen to anymore, but even the fact she walked out ironically symbolises how she can just remove herself from the situation, too much to deal with. Yet we are left reliving the moments time and time again, dealing with the fact Clay isn’t here every single day of our lives and they can walk away and close the door. To start with, the majority of the health professionals involved didn’t even have the decency to come to the coroners court itself, instead squirrelling themselves away in a room huddled together at Doncaster hospital, hiding behind the laptop, it was only because the Coroner herself said how ridiculous it was that they weren’t there in person (a mere 10-15 minute drive away) that the proceedings were halted and a bus was sent to bring them down to the court room in person. The more we’ve learnt from my labour, the more harrowing it is at how many opportunities were missed, for the revolving doors of our lives to have swung a different way and Clay have been born alive and healthy. No matter what anybody says there will always be a part of me that feels guilty, that feels like I should have done more, said something, that I should have known Clay was in destress. The Coroner ruled Clay’s main cause of death to be multiple skull fractures in context of attempted forceps delivery and c-section. It’s the outcome we expected, but nothing prepares you for sitting through an inquest into your own sons death, we came away being able to breathe a little easier knowing the inquest was behind us, although we didn’t anticipate 1000 days on to still be dealing with the legal side of Clay’s death.
30th November 2021 - Day 504
The day I was lucky enough to take a pregnancy test and see 2 lines staring back at me instead of the one. Although acutely aware that a positive pregnancy test doesn't necessarily = a take home baby, I cannot lie and say I wasn’t excited to finally see those two lines again, along with pretty much every other emotion you can imagine. Pregnancy after neonatal death and miscarriage is a whirlwind of emotions, the 1st trimester felt like we were wading through treacle, I had bleeding on/off from week 7 to week 10 and I was convinced every single time I wiped that I was going to miscarry. I had weekly scans and to be honest I would have probably had scans twice a week in that first trimester if logistics had allowed! Each day felt like a mini win, as I knew no day in pregnancy is guaranteed. I wasn’t necessarily worried about Quinn dying in the way Clay did as I knew that was pretty much impossible due to having a planned C-section, but when you become part of the baby loss community you find out all the heart breaking ways babies can and do die, so no part of the pregnancy feels safe. I did try and let myself enjoy moments though, we picked a name, bought clothes, we physically prepared for his arrival, but mentally was another picture. I found I could ‘do’ stuff, plan, organise as if he would come home, yet I couldn’t picture the moment at all, I couldn’t actually imagine life with a living baby.
Days 505 - 730
I know, I’ve jumped from day 504 to 730, that's not because there wasn’t any memorable dates between these days, more so because the whole time from finding out I was pregnant to Quinn's arrival was a blur of just getting through. I tried to write about pregnancy after loss and didn’t get further than the first two paragraphs, unable to put into words how I was feeling and how I was coping. Partly because getting through pregnancy after loss is so, so individual and I couldn’t explain how to get through, because I was winging it myself daily, just holding onto hope and wishing Clay was here and I wasn’t having to experience pregnancy like this, because I absolutely loved Clay’s pregnancy and I will forever be grateful of being able to experience pregnancy in that way. Grief days still came, and with it my coping mechanise of copious amounts of chocolate and really shitty, cheesy, teen Netflix films (99% guaranteed to be free from baby chat!).
I’d say the biggest shift in my grief during year two was how I started to want to grieve a bit more privately, I felt that the fire in my belly from shouting Clay’s names from the rooftops, from writing my blog and being quite active on Instagram start to diminish. Not because my love for Clay had changed, I just think as time passes and life undoubtedly resumes (no matter how hard we try and fight against it in the early days) over time you find yourself participating in ‘life’ again, most of time because you’ve learnt that smiling and enjoying the moment are the things that get you through those bad grief days. So when they do hit you know they are just a day (or sometimes a week+ of course) but you know that you will laugh again, not only that but you will smile and mean it, you will enjoy the moment and all of that is ok, the worst thing in the world happened to us but that doesn’t mean we have to have a bad life forever more. Life will never, ever be perfect or what we would choose for it to be, and it will take a lifetime to accept that fact, but each moment of joy is a welcome relief that life can (and will) get better again. If you are reading this and you are in the early days of grief you probably won’t believe what I’ve just written, and if you aren’t anywhere near being able to do that, that’s ok too. But just have hope that one day you will. When everything else feels too difficult, just hold on to hope.
29th July 2022 - Day 745
Quinn's C-section date. We had been given this date back in April (a lot earlier than you normally would be I knew it wouldn't be long after Clay's birthday and I needed to know, to have something to count down to). The last week of Quinn's pregnancy I actually started to get bouts of excitement and happiness, edging closer to the infamous finishing line and starting to believe that we might actually be able to bring Quinn hope. I felt like I could physically prepare for his arrival, the hospital bag was packed, the clothes washed, the nursery near enough finished, this was import to me because I felt that Clay had made his stamp on the house and I wanted to do the nursery so if the worst was to happen and Quinn didn't get to come home then we would have the nursery where it would feel like Quinn's space as well as Clays. I had asked to be first on the list for the c-section (as long as there were no emergencies) and it was quite surreal having a photo on my phone just before we went down to theatre and then a mere 30-40 minutes later a photo of Quinn safely earth side with us. It was surreal, magical, emotional and incredibly daunting being back in theatre and the familiar sounds and smells of the worst moments of our lives but this time what thankfully turned out to be one of the best moments of our lives. We will forever be grateful to the health professionals that guided us through Quinn's pregnancy and safely delivered him into our arms. I don't think we will ever trust health care professionals on a whole again but we truly felt we could trust the select few that were by our sides during Quinn's pregnancy and I know it would have not been the same without them.
Bringing Quinn home came with its own emotions. So much of it felt so similar, yet so different at the same time. Quinn looked so much like Clay in the early days, especially when he was sleeping and we arrived home he was sleeping in his car seat, we came through the doors I sat in the exact same spot I did when we returned home after Clay, the house remained quite in the same way, my mum made me a cup of tea just like she did after Clay, and I sat and cried. Those first two weeks after Quinn arrived I cried every single day, I felt so low and in the same minute so happy and grateful. My thoughts betrayed me for how I expected to be thinking and feeling when I was pregnant with Quinn, I couldn't put into words how I felt and I was truly scared I would never feel the same again. Luckily after about 2-3 weeks this fog started to lift, the wave of a mixture of grief, the realities of having a new born at home, guilt and plummeting hormones seemed to finally crash and I felt I could come up for air a little and I was grateful for the respite in the daily rollercoaster I felt I was living.
Parenting after loss - Days 746+ The below section is going to be about parenting after loss which some people may find triggering to read so please protect your heart, I'll put 2 ** to signify the end of this section if you want to skip it.
Looking back to trying to conceive after Clay and being pregnant with Quinn I definitely romanticised what it would be like to have a baby at home. Don't get me wrong, it is amazing, it is magical and rewarding and fills my arms with love and keeps my mind busy. What I didn't anticipate was how hard it would also be, I think from losing Clay my mind would only let me fantasise about the joyful moments of having a baby at home, my mind didn't prepare me for all the other stuff that comes along with it. Sleep deprivation is hard, I already knew that because of Clay and having to take sleeping tablets to be able to actually fall and stay asleep. Sleep deprivation has a different spin on things when you add grief and looking after a new born together. I felt like I was second guessing every single thing I did, unable to make a decision myself in case it was the wrong one, Quinn had to be readmitted to hospital on day 4 due to losing too much weight and being borderline for jaundice treatment, before the decision was made to readmit us I can remember a midwife asking me 'well its up to you, your his mum what do you want to do?', I looked down at Quinn frozen with fear, I didn't know him, I had only 3-4 days with him and I was so scared about making the wrong decision. And that's how I've pretty much felt at some point everyday since, terrified of making the wrong decision and somehow losing Quinn.
Unsurprisingly, grieving and parenting don't really go together, my coping mechanisms that I had relied on before Quinn was born were now impractical so distraction and disassociation became my main coping mechanisms, but with that came new challenges. I struggled (and still do) to give Quinn my full attention 24/7, I quickly realised that as much as I love Quinn and we are very lucky to have him at home with us, I struggled to cope with being with him constantly and not having any space to breathe, to feel like I could think and mother Clay in the few ways I do. I felt like I was neglecting Clay in a way, my time should have been split between a 2 year old and a new born yet it wasn't, Quinn consumed every day life and I loved it and craved a break in the next breath.
I think this came to a peak February-May time. Looking back and speaking with my dr I think I had mild postnatal depression, which on top of PTSD and general anxiety it's not necessarily a cocktail that you'd be eyeing up on a night out. I felt like I wasn't being a good mum, that Quinn was much better being looked after by Dan or my mum, I felt like I constantly needed a break and breather and felt like I was suffocating with all the responsibilities that come with being a mum. This time coincided with weaning which I absolutely hated and sent my anxiety through the roof. I had also slowly started cutting down on breastfeeding and having spoken to a few friends I know that can cause havoc with your emotions. I cried near enough every day, and sometimes I didn't even know why, I felt like I was constantly on edge and for the majority of the time I wanted to hide away at home. For a good month or two I got to the stage where I spent most of my days just wishing them away and hoping that I would feel better the next day. I had some really scary intrusive thoughts and felt so guilty and not fit for the job of being a mum to a baby at home, I can vividly remember thinking and saying out loud that I didn't know how to be a mum to an alive baby, I only knew how to be a mum to a baby in the sky and with having a baby at home I felt like I couldn't be a mum to Clay in the ways that I had learnt to be. Mum guilty consumed me from all angles and I had a constant voice in my head telling me what a shitty person I was for not being able to enjoy every minute of everything we had wished for since Clay died (my therapist suggested I named the negative thoughts/voice so I named the voice in my head "dickhead" so I can just say "that's not me thinking, it's dickhead").
This is the main reason that now, 1085 days later I am still writing this blog. I have never written a blog retrospectively before and when I started this blog in March, I found writing about the early days incredibly triggering and hard, so that on top of my mental health at the time didn't go hand in hand. Writing for me has always been an outlet, a positive thing to help me make sense of my jumbled thoughts and hopefully helpful for others to read too. I had set myself a "deadline" for getting this blog complete and as the day loomed, I knew I had so much more I wanted to write about I was getting so frustrated with myself for not being able to write, but the words I was trying to find just would not come out when I typed. Even now I've just reread what I've written and I know it's a watered down version of my actual thoughts. I wanted to write about the first 1000 days without Clay, for Clay. When I didn't achieve that by the date I wanted to I felt like not only was I letting Quinn down because I couldn't be the mum I thought I would be, I was letting Clay down too.
**
So now, as we approach Clay's 3rd birthday next week, and then Quinn's 1st birthday 2 weeks later, my emotions couldn't be any more conflicted. The sadness that surrounds this time of year hasn't diminished, if anything having Quinn at home and the many happy moments that have come from that have only amplified the Clay shaped hole that is missing in our lives and everything we missed (and continue to miss) out on. I closed my eyes as I cuddling Quinn to sleep last week and just for a moment imagined that it was Clay I was rocking/cuddling. I feel like I've lost track of how big he would be now, I try to picture him in my mind but all I see is him as a baby. I find tears bubbling just beneath the surface every single night, my breath caught in my throat and my thoughts caught in a dream that will never be a reality.
Then on the flip side, losing Clay like we did really has made me realise how truly fragile life can be, and I want to celebrate Quinn and the life we are lucky to live with him at every opportunity. I know emotions can and do exist side by side but I have also experienced moments of just pure happiness and joy, and those moments give me hope that maybe that will be the case in the future too. I know most of the time I will live an "and life" (happy AND sad, joy AND pain) but it makes me feel exhausted thinking that it will be that way forever.
I'm just feeling like I'm getting to the stage where I want to start trying to "heal" from Clay's death, for nearly 3 years now I associated healing with losing the love for Clay, the pain of his death for me went hand in hand with the love I had for him, how do I separate them when him coming into the world was him also leaving it as well? I still don't know, but all I know is I feel like I want to work on diminishing that pain and concentrating on the love.
I am lucky to have two sons I get to love, not a day goes by where I wish this wasn't our reality and not a day will ever go by where I don't think of Clay and wish him to be here in every moment and in every memory we make. Life will never be complete without him here, but it can be full of happiness, joy and laughter. And I want to experience it all, although I know I'm not there yet, but I hope I get to that point one day, and all I can do is get up each day and try. If I can try every day, I'll be proud of myself for that. I'm under no illusion that trying will take on many different forms, some days trying will be making sure I eat, have a shower and allow myself to cry, whereas other days trying might be attending a child's birthday party.
As I sit and write this last paragraph, I have a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. To be honest I don't know if I'll write anymore blogs. I feel like my ability to write about my feelings is diminishing and 3 years down the line I'm not sure how much use my words now are. So if you've read this far, well done because this was boarding on needing chapters! 1000 days is a drop in the ocean to the days I hopefully have left on this earth, I'm sure the next 1000 will bring new challenges, life changes and memories but every single one of them will contain Clay in one way or another, whether in our thoughts, in our words or in the acts that we do to remember him by. He will be all around, always.
I love you to the moon and back Clay, forever and always, until we meet again my gorgeous boy, mummy's forever sending you a virtual hug and kiss.
