After Greg’s positive scan results last week and the stress of my TED talk had subsided, I was looking forward to some time to slow down and relax back into life. However, Bay has had other plans…

So much of our focus on the girls has been on Dali; she is older and has displayed more signs of being effected by the chaos around her. Bay has always been the baby who gets on, she is a robust little character and in a typical second child scenario, she tags along with whatever we are doing. She is now two and a half and has dealt well with the rough times we’ve had as a family but now my little girl is kicking off in a big way.

Whether it’s her age, being affected by Daddy’s disappearances or picking up on the general feeling of unrest, Bay is showing us that she is unhappy in life. She’s unhappy that I have given her a pink plate instead of a blue one, that I’ve dared to offer her some breakfast, that I’ve then taken it away. It also comes out in the middle of the night when she wakes up screaming for me and wants to talk for hours about Star Wars and act out super hero stories as I sit on the floor in a crumpled, tired mess.

I don’t think this will be a surprise to any parent of a child this age, I imagine you will be nodding your heads in agreement, much like the silent nod of solidarity when you see another parent dealing with a screaming child on the floor of a supermarket. I have the normal feelings of tired resignation, annoyance and stress but I also have a different weight on my shoulders – the weight that cancer is eroding my baby’s childhood like it eats through organs. One of the most painful parts of our situation is thinking about how this is and will affect Dali and Bay.

As a mother, this breaks my heart in a way that I have never felt before. The knowledge that I can’t protect them from any of this, the anger I feel at the unfairness of their innocent lives being tarnished. I suppose there’s not much to do except sit in the dark and hold the hand of Darth Vader.