An Excuse for Every Occasion

There is a rich tradition in my family of making excuses.

Our first photo shoot in almost a year because I kept finding reasons not to go across town to the studio!

Excuses for not helping each other, excuses for not going places, excuses for not doing things, excuses for not working.

Our favourite thing to say is I can't because... when what we usually really mean is I don't want to.

I have a sister who regularly arranges to go to my mother's for dinner, or out to places with her, and then texts at the last minute to say I can't come because... when what she really means is I don't want to come out and play today.

If I suggest anything out of the ordinary to my mother (even something as simple as a new style of hand bag), her response will always, without fail, be I can't because... and then some random and not-entirely-valid excuse is wheeled out. My legs hurt, my arms hurt, I can't lift that, I can't reverse into that space, I can't walk over there, I can't, I can't, I can't. It's infuriating. My mother is registered as disabled; she has one of those badges for her car, and there are lots of things she can't do; but there are loads of things she probably can do if she tries. In contrast, I've a friend whose father is mostly confined to a wheelchair and is probably in a great deal of pain, but loses out on benefits because when the question of "can you walk the length of a football pitch" (or whatever that ridiculous question is) came up, his response was "yes!" - because he can... it'll just take him over an hour, and end in a lot of pain and probably collapse. But he can do it, and he doesn't want to lie and say he can't. When I heard this story, it made me stop and think about my own attitude.

I'm have a pretty terrible case of the can'ts  myself. Not because I don't want to see people or do things, but because it's an automatic response; a learned behaviour to always reply in the negative. Especially if what I'm being offered involves leaving the comfort of my sofa. This week I was asked to go to London (travel expenses paid) to have my photo taken, on a day I would normally work in the back office of a shop. I very nearly turned it down because I didn't want to have to arrange to change my day. Who does that? The photo in this post is from a shoot we had with friends last week. They take our photos for free because they are lovely. Still, it's been nearly a year since our last shoot because their studio is on the other side of town; a 10 minute bus journey costing around £2. Ridiculous, don't you think?

Often if I stop and think about whether I can (or want to) do something, I find the answer is yes. I listened to a speech by Loral Langemeier the other day; she's... well, she's a lot of things. She owns businesses in every sector you can imagine. She says that in business you should say YES and worry about the how afterwards. The important thing is to say yes.

I think that's probably a philosophy that translates to lots of other things too. And when you say yes to something you might have said no to, things happen that might not otherwise have happened!

So my plan is to start saying YES. To jobs, to people, to days out, to nights out, to dates. Let's see what happens...

Pity Party for One.

I feel sorry for myself a lot. More than is healthy, for definite.

My mother is an expert in the fine art of garnering pity/sympathy from others. I was brought up with it, and I used to do it too, because it was the only way I knew to get attention. 

When I was about 18, I read a book called The Celestine Prophecy. It's a weird story about lights and vibrations and hippie shenanigans, but there was this whole section on "control dramas," one of which was called "Poor Me" where a person makes people feel sorry for them in order to get attention. I recognised myself (and my mother) in this, and realised it was possibly not the best way to go through life. Since then I have tried very hard not to do that, not to make people feel sorry for me.

I hate to be a burden to people; I hate for people to feel like they have to help me or something. Even when someone offers to help me, I usually decline and feel very uncomfortable asking for or accepting help. From anyone. I also hate to feel like people are doing something out of obligation or pity.

Yes, on the one hand I am a single mother with not much money, living in a crappy flat in a less-than-ideal area. But on the other hand, I am perfectly capable of helping myself. And it's important to me to feel that I can do it on my own, that I'm not constantly needing to lean on others in order to get through day to day life. I've written before about how I don't like to ask for help and the points I made in that post still stand. I hate it. I hate to feel like someone is helping me because they feel sorry for me or think I can't cope on my own. But what I really hate is to feel that a person must walk away thinking "bloody Vicky, I always have to do stuff for her when I go round there..." 

I had coffee with a friend today, and he asked me about my breakdown and why it happened. I've written about my breakdown before; I'm fairly open and honest about it, how it happened, how I recovered. I don't often talk about the causes of it though, because... well, it's a long story.

Although it's a long story, it's not a secret. And after many years of shaking uncontrollably and getting horribly upset whenever I spoke about things in my past, I can (for the most part) detach myself from it now, and am usually fine talking about it. So I told him, briefly, of the things that led to my ending up a bit cuckoo. And I watched the look on his face change to that look.

This is not someone I know terribly well; we don't have other friends in common, he doesn't know any of my family or back story. Just the things that normally come up in day to day conversation. Now it feels like he knows too much. And too much of the wrong things. Instead of knowing I used to spend all day at work quoting lines from Eddie Izzard dvds and making filthy jokes with my friends, he knows about my parents' divorce. Instead of knowing about the mad nights we used to spend in Southampton at the Nexus, with UV hair and long drunken walks home across the Itchen Bridge, he knows about my dad's death. And that is bad because it gives the wrong impression of me. I would rather be thought of as happy, smiling, laughing, taking the piss, getting drunk and falling over with my friends, than sad, downtrodden, oh-you-poor-thing-however-did-you-cope. I hate for anyone to think that of me, especially a friend.

Shortly after my dad died, I was seeing a boy who lived in Southampton - about 30 miles from where I lived. I texted him late one night that I was struggling, my life hurt and I didn't know how to stop it. Thirty minutes later he arrived at my front door. And I immediately felt like a fraud. I shouldn't have texted him; my text had made him so worried about me, he'd come all this way to make sure I was ok. That was not on. And I know there's every possibility that man will read this post (we are still good friends) and either not remember that night, or tell me it wasn't a big deal. But it was a big enough deal to me that I still remember it nine years later. I don't want to be that person, I never wanted to be that person.

I don't want anyone to do anything for me out of pity, so I tend to avoid mentioning things that might elicit that reaction. I might tell you I had a breakdown, but I won't often tell you about the things that led up to it. I might mention my dad's death, but relatively few people know the detail of what happened. I tend to skate over the details and just say "and then this happened, and then that happened, and then this, and then he died." Everyone knows I was in an abusive relationship, but there are massive chunks of that story I will probably never tell.

I feel sorry for myself a lot of the time, especially at this time of year. I'm single and alone and basically unlovable and I miss my dad and I wish a lot of things were different. But I don't want anyone else feeling sorry for me. This is a private pity part, and you can't join in. Don't you even dare try.

A Post About My Dad

Today is 9 years since my dad died.

I've written and re-written this post several times. I didn't want the day to go unmarked, but I also don't want to drag it all up again. 

Me, my dad, and some truly wonderful wall paper.

The story surrounding his death is far too long and painful to go into here; it wouldn't be fair to my family, even the ones who have since insulted and disowned me, to recount it all. The short version is this:

He had a heart attack while he was on holiday in Spain in June 2004, and came back to the UK in a coma, with brain damage. They told us: "he's in a coma. He has brain damage. We don't know how much brain damage. We won't know until he wakes up. We can't guarantee he will wake up."

Once the local hospital had done what they could with regards his heart attack, he was moved to a specialist brain injury unit in Bath, where he appeared to be making a reasonable recovery. Then he was sick in the night, and inhaled it. He was too weak to cough the vomit back up.

I wasn't there when he died. I couldn't bear the thought of sitting about in that nasty hospital waiting for him to die, so I left and went to Southampton to hide at a friend's house. I stayed hidden there after he'd died too, and I spent Christmas there, hiding.

My dad was a lorry driver. As far as I know, apart from a brief spell working on roads, he drove lorries his whole life. He worked fucking hard. When I was small, he would often be away from Monday to Friday. If he did come home in the week, he would come through the door just as we were eating our tea, and be gone before we got up in the morning. When I was 9, my parents divorced and from then I only saw him on weekends.

My family is not close. We don't talk about feelings. There are ridiculous family secrets going back years that are then casually mentioned in conversation as if you had always known them. I have five brothers and sisters, but it's not unusual to go a week without hearing from any of them, or my mother. I am just as bad; I make little effort to keep in contact with my siblings. We have our own lives now and rarely socialise together. Two of my siblings don't even speak to me any more, and several don't speak to each other.

My dad's death did nothing to bring us any closer; if anything, it pushed us further apart. I hid in Southampton while my sister did what she did as his executor. I don't even know what happened to his things. I have some of his shirts upstairs, but they don't smell like him any more. 

Earlier this year, my older sister told me my dad was disappointed in me before he died. She said I only ever spoke to him when I wanted money, and it upset him. I've not spoken to her since, and I probably never will. 

Not long after S was born, a friend's mother, who knew my dad when they were teenagers, said to me, "I don't mean to  upset you, but if your dad was alive, he never would have allowed this to happen." She was right; I'd thought it often enough myself. 

I know my dad would have been disappointed that I allowed myself to get involved with a person whose family he knew (and not in a good way). He would be disappointed I allowed him to treat me that way; he would be disappointed I'd had a child out of wedlock. But he'd also be damn proud of me that I had the balls to do this alone. He'd be immensely proud of his granddaughter, and he would spoil her rotten. He would be the grandfather boring everyone else to death with photos and stories of his purported prodigy grandchild. 

And he probably would have been the only member of my family I would have seen regularly over the last 18 months.

Who Would Have Thought...

When I was in the middle of having my breakdown, I went to the beach several times. I think I thought the sun, sea and sand would make me feel happy and at peace, but it never really did.

Every time I went, I would look up at the balloon that goes up from the Gardens, and think, "you could just get in that, wait for it to go up, and jump..."

One time I went as far as joining the queue, but I didn't have enough cash on me.

The next time I was there, I was with a friend. I told her about my plan with the balloon. She looked at it and said, "you can't jump off that; there's a cage all the way round to keep people in!"

Fast forward three years. 

Today I went to the beach with S and two of my sisters. It was S's first trip to the beach, and I kind of expected her to not really enjoy it. Imagine my surprise when I took her down to the sea for a paddle, and she just kept on walking. I lifted her over the waves as they came, but I missed a few and they got her full in the face! No tears though - she just giggled and kept on kicking her legs and jibbering away to herself. 

In the end, I walked up to Primark to buy a cheap bikini so that I could take S into the sea properly. I left her with my sisters (with a list of instructions as long as both their arms), and set off up to the shops. That involved walking through the gardens for the first time since that time three years ago.

As I walked past the balloon, I looked up and thought, imagine if I'd done it.

My life now is far from easy. I'm constantly behind on my studying, the housework, blog posts, emails, Twitter. S is not sleeping brilliantly, I'm constantly knackered, am too tired and short of time to buy and prepare proper food for myself. But I'm the happiest, most contented I've ever been in my life. Instead of going to the beach in a vague attempt to pull myself out of the pit of despair, I was there to enjoy the sea and the sand with my beautiful daughter, who enjoyed the whole experience a lot more than any of us expected.

As I passed the balloon, I texted my friend saying, "hey, remember that time you told me I couldn't jump out of the balloon..." Her response? 

Who would have thought you'd be where you are now?

Certainly not me.

Lonely and Miserable or Just Tired?

The last week or so has been really tough.

I went  back to work.
S started nursery.
S is cutting at least 2 teeth.
S has had The Neverending Snotfest cold.
I have had a cold.
S has had trouble sleeping.

A rare occurrence.

With the weather being nice last weekend, and S being a screaming, snotty, clingy mess, I couldn't bear the thought of staying in the house all day. So I took her to my mum's for the day, thinking that might give me a bit of a break. What it actually did was make things worse. S went into meltdown when it looked as if I might leave her side, and nobody else could console her. When I went to the toilet, I had to take her with me and even then she screamed when I sat her on the floor next to me.

As long as she was close to me (as close as possible, preferably with one hand on my boobs at all times), she was perfectly happy . The only problem was, I really just wanted some time out to relax.

At one point I was desperate for the loo, so I got my sister and brother in law to come and sit with S on the blanket we were playing on while I literally ran into the house. S screamed as if the world were ending. When I came back out it took me 10 minutes to calm her back down. In hindsight it was probably predictable that my mother spent the entire time at the other end of the garden saying "oh you're so mean, you ran away from her! Poor S, she's so upset because you were so horrid to her!" In the end I had to tell her to shut the ***** up because she wasn't helping. 

This is the extent of the support I have received from my family whilst returning to work and doing my best to deal with leaving S at nursery, her teething and having a cold. 

Ok then, fine, I'll just get on with it on my own, same as I have for the last 13 months, for my traumatic pregnancy, for my entire life.

Yesterday I was so tired I spent the whole day walking around with a lump in my throat as if I was about to cry. This wasn't helped by S falling off a swing at the park, and my feeling like the world's worst mother for it. She was fine; I was most definitely not. This was followed by a ridiculous evening of alternating wailing and wanting to play, and no sleep until 11pm. By that point I was about ready to just get up and walk out of the house.

Having gone to sleep so late, S slept pretty well and didn't wake up until 8am, meaning I had some time by myself this morning to sort some things and have a bath. It was only about an hour, but it made enough of a difference. 

I've had some sleep and a bath, and I've tidied up some mess upstairs. Things are looking a lot better this morning. I might be in this alone, but I've survived the last 13 months so there's no reason I can't continue.

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Some Family Traditions Will Not Be Passed On!

My family is strange. We don't talk to each other. I mean, we say hi and ask each other how we are, but I don't think we really listen to each other's answers. And there are massive minefields of uncomfortable situations that we just don't talk about. Nobody mentions that my grandfather committed suicide when I was 5; I didn't even know about it until I was 30. Adoptions, divorces, arguments, trauma, fights, deaths, miscarriages. anything involving feelings, really, are a big no-no.

I recently found out a childhood friend had been adopted. She was pretty open about it, and was surprised I had never known; it's never been a secret for her, she's always known. The next time I saw my mother I asked her, Did you know this girl I spent a large part of my childhood with, whose parents you were good friends with, was adopted? Her answer? Yes. Why didn't I or my brothers or sisters know about it? Well, adoption is not really something you talk to kids about.The general rule in our family seems to be: If it's a bit tricky to talk about, pretend it didn't happen. If it makes you uncomfortable, pretend it's not there. Brush it under the carpet, turn your head away from it, stick your fingers in your ears and sing a loud song. Eventually it will go away.

When I was around 11 I had "the periods talk" from my mother. It went like this:
Mother: "you've had sex education at school and been told about periods, right?"
Me: "yes..."
Mother: "well here are some sanitary towels, take them with you when you go on your school trip next week, in case anything starts."
That was the first and last conversation I had with my mother on this topic.

S has been born into a fairly unfortunate situation, in that there are a lot of uncomfortable things I will need to explain to her as she grows up. Things like why her dad isn't around, the fact she has brothers and sisters she has no contact with, that she doesn't see any of her father's side of the family... and after recent events it looks like I may need to explain why random members of that side of the family turn up on our doorstep from time to time, demanding to see her. If I'm honest, I'm absolutely dreading it. How do you tell a child about that sort of situation without making them feel like they were a mistake or unwanted? How do you explain it without them thinking you are keeping them away from some magical, flawless absent family? Still, having grown up with the alternative, I suppose I had better start preparing my speech now. I'd rather she know everything, than be fed a stream of lies and find out the truth in an episode worthy of an Eastenders Christmas special

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What a Difference a Year Makes.

Today is one year since I had my 20 week scan. I remember the date, because it's also the ex's eldest son's birthday, and that's still written in my diary.

S&I at 23 weeks

It's strange to think about how much has changed since then. The day itself was not pleasant for me. I'd not been getting on with S's father at all, but agreed he could come to the scan. He arrived late, tried to figure out the sex of the baby on the monitor even though we'd agreed we wouldn't find out, and talked over the lady when she tried to explain things. We'd been arguing in the weeks leading up to it, and I think he'd only started being pleasant so that I'd allow him to come. We'd not seen each other for a while, and I found that I couldn't bring myself to even look at him. I felt incredibly sad that for most women the 20 week scan is an immensely happy thing, holding hands with their partner and looking forward to meeting their baby. I had none of that. While I was glad the scan showed a healthy, normal baby (and so relieved, after all the stress and worry I'd been going through), the day was mainly filled with sadness for me. I had hoped that when I had a baby it would be born into a happy, loving relationship; that we would be a family. Now it was becoming clear to me that there were problems with my relationship that could not be fixed, and I was bringing a child into a very difficult situation. I felt powerless to do anything about it, though. I was sad and tired and beaten down by it all. After the scan he handed me a wad of cash before getting a lift back to town from his ex, who had waited for him in the car park. Thankfully, I had brought my sister with me, so I wasn't alone for the experience. I was dismayed that he had chosen his ex, of all people, to give him a lift; especially when my sister had offered him a lift with us, and the buses run every ten minutes. Looking back, it was clearly a decision taken purposefully to put me in my place - something that became a theme of our "relationship" after that point. It is very telling of my mental state that, although I was cross about him bringing his ex to the scan, I only managed to be angry for about 2 days before just giving in and playing nice. Things were easier if I didn't rock the boat.

Not long after the scan, I went and stayed in Oxfordshire with friends for Christmas. It was an almost stress-free, peaceful Christmas, like being on holiday from my life. I felt like I'd run away to hide from it all, and was petrified of returning to my life and the myriad problems I felt ill-equipped to deal with. While I was away, the ex was texting me and being perfectly nice and reasonable, kept telling me he wished I was there, that Christmas wasn't the same without me. I found out afterwards that their Christmas consisted of going to his mother-in-law's house, where the adults got very drunk very early, and didn't cook a Christmas dinner, while the children presumably did their best to stay out of the way. This was my fault, obviously. If I'd been there we would have had a perfect family Christmas. The fact I went away for Christmas, took his unborn baby away from him for Christmas, was something I was still being chastised for in April.

As it was, my Christmas last year was surreal. Whenever I visit my friends in Oxfordshire, I feel like I've been teleported to a different planet where the usual problems don't matter. One night there, and all of a sudden my shoulders go back down to shoulder level rather than being bunched up about my ears. To be there over Christmas was a dream. Everything was so laid back; we watched movies with our feet up on the reclining sofa whilst eating party food, visited family, went to the cinema on Boxing Day. Christmas dinner was something everyone played a part in preparing, in between watching the Grinch and listening to carols. I almost forgot what a mess my life was in, and what I would be returning to the day after Boxing Day.

Now, looking back at that time, it feels like I'm talking about someone else. It all seems so strange, to have been in such an awful position, to have been so scared and felt so alone and confused. I felt like that a lot during my pregnancy and the first few months of S's life; it was a very trying time for me.

This Christmas though, my life could not be more different. S and I were invited to Oxfordshire again for Christmas, and I was very tempted to accept the invitation; except I don't think my mother would ever have spoken to me again! Instead, S and I are entertaining my mother and sister A for Christmas dinner. I have all the things I didn't have this time last year. I have the world's most beautiful, amazing daughter (biased? Me?) who will have no understanding of what Christmas is, but will no doubt enjoy unwrapping presents and being spoilt rotten by friends and family alike. I have an awesome, supportive boyfriend who will happily allow S to spend an hour clawing at his face if it'll make her happy. I have a home that, thanks to my fantastic brother (whose praises I will never stop singing), is now the sort of place I want to invite people to visit. We're having people over to visit throughout the festive period, and although that means I'll need to actually tidy up at some point, I'm really looking forward to it. I have the most wonderful, supportive friends around me who have proved their worth time and time again.

S&I last week

If you'd told me last Christmas, "don't worry, next Christmas will be a lot better." I would not have believed you. Stuck in the middle of it all, I could see no way out and felt thoroughly miserable about it all. I had nowhere to live, a turbulent relationship with the father of my unborn child, little support, no money. I spent most of my time around the festive period alone in my room in a shared house, drinking soup and wondering what the hell I was going to do. Now there is rarely a day I don't see someone I love and am happy to have around. My evenings are spent with HYM or wondering how the hell I'm going to wrap all these presents before Christmas morning (or how the hell I'm going to get S to actually go to sleep). I still have no money, but who needs money when you have what I have. Money can't buy this.

And now I've made you all gag at the sick-inducing schmaltz of it all, I'm off to cuddle my little girl and my handsome young man. Merry Christmas!

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Attachment Parenting For The Win!!

An example of why attachment parenting is the right choice for me

From day one, I’ve never left S to cry. She cries so rarely, in fact, that if she does shed a tear I know something must be really wrong. I hold and cuddle her as much as I can. I prefer the sling to the pushchair, and I talk to her all day, every day, about everything. In the evenings I feed her to sleep and she shares my bed. I think it will be a long while before I stop breastfeeding her.

From previous posts on here, I know this is far from “weird” behaviour, and a lot of my friends have a similar approach to parenting, which is refreshing and generally good to know.

This weekend, I took S to a charity sale in the local community centre where my mother lives. The place was filled with aunts, cousins, extended family and friends, people I hadn’t seen for a long time and many S had never met (all lovely, though). I handed S over to the first person we saw as we came in the door, and barely held her again until we left, more than 3 hours later. During that time she made friends with everyone and was passed from person to person without a complaint. In fact, the only times she made a noise were when she was bored of her current surroundings and wanted to be moved about a bit. She sat on one young girl’s lap for over half an hour, happily playing with her feet and smiling up at her – I think the girl in question is a distant cousin, but I’d not seen her for about five years. S didn’t care though; she had a friendly face and wanted to hold her, and that was good enough for my little bundle.

People seemed surprised that S was so sociable, and happy to be passed between people she didn’t know terribly well, or had never met before. I wasn’t, though. She had been brought there by me, and she has a secure bond with me. She felt safe because I was nearby, and was clearly not stressed or concerned at her being passed around different people. She did cry once, and it was a proper meltdown; but that was because she was hungry and I’d left it a little late to organise her lunch. Once she’d been fed she was fine.

There is an argument that if you hold your baby too much, always pick your baby up when she cries, never put her down, she will become clingy and needy and never want to leave your side. The counter to this argument is that by holding your baby as much as possible, you create a good attachment between you, so your baby feels safe and secure enough to go out into the world and explore things on her own. For me, this weekend ended that argument for me. S’s behaviour was a clear sign that I am doing the right thing by spending so much time holding her. Plus, I have killer biceps now, and my shoulders look fairly awesome too!

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Our Week: 20-27 October

Monday 22 Oct

Up early after a less than peaceful night’s sleep. Went for a walk to my old office to drop something off for a friend, and to pick up a toy from another friend. That was basically our day. Walked the long way home in vain attempt to get S to have her morning nap. Failed miserably so came home and dealt with a grumpy baby who didn’t want to eat her lunch. Afternoon nap did not go well either, so in the end I took her upstairs and had a nap with her.

Tuesday 23 Oct

Up early so went into town for supplies before a visit from a nursery nurse, who came to fix all of our sleeping problems. Back into town after S’s afternoon nap to pick up the things we forgot in the morning.

Wednesday 24 Oct

Up early and into town to pick up what we forgot to buy twice on Tuesday. Our Home Start lady came and played games with S while I made some phone calls and sorted paperwork. After lunch we went to see my brother and his wife, who gave S a big black bag full of toys, as well as one of those zebra thingies for when she is a little older. No danger of getting S to bed on time so put her in her bouncy chair in a sleeping bag… she slept like a log til I went to bed.

Thursday 25 Oct

Up and off to the out of town supermarket to exchange something I’d bought at the weekend. Really it was just an excuse to get out of the house. S fell asleep while we were walking, so I took a detour around the park on the way home to prolong the napping. Came home and spent the afternoon doing not a fat lot. Evening spent rocking her back and forth in the pushchair intermittently begging her to sleep. Didn’t work.

Friday 26 Oct

A nice little trip to town with the baby sling followed by a quiet afternoon and another evening like Thursday. This seems to be becoming the norm and I am not best pleased about it.

Saturday 27 Oct

Long walk with my sister, A. Workout in the park that hurt both of us, then a walk back again. Cooked stew and dumplings from scratch and was pleased with myself. S slept through Star Wars all afternoon. In hindsight I should not have allowed this to happen, as bedtime was a joke. She actually laughed at me. There has been a lot of crying and a lot of running up and down the stairs, after I decided nothing but bad habits could come of having her permanently spending the evenings in the living room with me.

Our Week, 15 -20 Oct

Monday 15 Oct

Up reasonably early and off to visit a friend who lives on the outskirts of town, up a big hill. Perfect workout for the legs and the lungs, only slightly marred by being rained on. Had a lovely visit with said friend, though she did give me the whole “look how far you’ve come” speech and make me a bit emotional. Afternoon spent playing, evening spent trying desperately to get S to sleep before giving up and having her sit in her bouncy chair until I capitulated and took us both to bed at 9pm.

Tuesday 16 Oct

Tiring day. S slept badly, which meant so did I. Got up late, breakfasted late. S had the world’s shortest nap and woke up grumpy, so I took her out in the pushchair thinking she’d go back to sleep. She didn’t, but I did bump into my auntie, which brightened my day. Came home, spent the afternoon trying to placate her after another pointlessly short nap. Put her to bed and prayed. Had about an hour of quiet before S woke up. Went to bed early and had a couple of hours’ sleep before she woke up, and stayed awake and grumpy until 9am. Far from ideal.

Wednesday 17 Oct

Day started about 5 hours before I would have liked. D, my Home Start volunteer, brought cakes, biscuits and a gossip magazine. Spent most of the day trying to get S to nap, or playing with her. She’s not big into doing anything on her own at the moment. No housework was done, and I really could not be bothered to leave the house. The only way is up… right?

Thursday 18 Oct

Desperate to get S to have some proper sleep, I took her for a long walk. It worked; she had a 2 hour morning nap. But no afternoon nap, and no proper sleep in the evening. Called the health visitor and a nursery nurse is coming out next week.

Friday 19 Oct

Another day, another walk to try and get S to sleep. Sort of worked but not much. Very short nap, followed by lunch and another very short nap, and then a visit from my aunt and cousin. Still going through the motions of the bedtime routine and putting S to bed at 6, but it’s largely pointless; she’s back in the living room by 7pm and we don’t go to sleep til midnight.

Saturday 20 Oct

Another restless night followed by an early morning. Up and out for a walk with little sis, then back home for visits from other little sis and her bloke, a friend delivering clothes for S, and another friend showing off a shocking new hair colour. Three messy meals necessitated Bath Night, followed by lots of frustration at trying to fall asleep. S had three naps today, all relatively short; am not sure whether this bodes well or not for tonight’s sleep. Cross your fingers please!

Counting my Blessings

As my recent blog posts may have hinted, I’m having a pretty rough time at the moment. Whenever I am awake in the wee small hours, I often find myself getting pretty angry that I’m doing this on my own. This is not what I signed up for. When I got pregnant I was in a relationship. When I gave birth I was in a relationship. I assumed that when my baby was 6 months old and having trouble sleeping, I would still be in that relationship, and would therefore have a bit of help and support in dealing with extreme stress and sleep deprivation. I also assumed that my family would be there to rally round, that I would have a whole hoard of people I could call upon to come and lighten the load, either by helping with housework, or looking after S while I had a break. The reality is that I assumed wrong. And when I’m so tired and so  fed up I can barely see, and I’m walking into door frames and pleading my child to please just go to sleep, I find myself pretty cross about that. Where are all these people who are supposed to rally around a new mum? Aren’t they supposed to be helping me? I’m not meant to feel this alone and isolated.

It’s times like this that I think I just need to take a step backwards and look at the facts, reminding myself why I prefer my current position to any possible alternatives. Count my blessings, as it were.

• I may be the only person having to deal with S’s grumpy moods, but I’m also the only one who gets her regular cuddles, smiles and giggles. All her love is just for me and I don’t have to share.
• As pointed out by numerous friends on numerous occasions, I’m actually doing pretty bloody well on my own. The whole “look how far you’ve come” argument really is valid, as evidenced by the “diary entries from early motherhood” posts I’ve put up lately.
• I know from bitter experience that sadly we really are better off without S’s father – and that even when he was here, he didn’t help out with anything I would find useful at 3am. He bought us a cooker and then he buggered off, and it was the best thing for all concerned.
• Most of my family might not be banging down the door to offer their help, but lots of other people are. My Home Start lady is truly amazing, and I have some of the best friends a girl could wish for, who I know will help if I ask.
• Despite the current blip, and even for fleeting moments during the blip, S is a happy, healthy baby. I’d rather have this situation than one where she is less happy, less healthy, or perhaps in an unsafe situation.
• I might be tired, but other mothers are dealing with much worse, more worrying and stressful situations than just a baby who is not sleeping well.
• From what I’ve been told/reading lately, all babies go through an unsettled stage at 6 months. And at the moment a lot of babies are not sleeping well. There are a lot of sleep-deprived mamas on my Facebook; I’m not alone in this!
• Despite having a hard time, I have not compromised my beliefs with regard to how I want to care for S. I have resisted the urge to dump her in the cot and run away! She has a slightly more frazzled, grumpy mummy, but she still has a mummy who gives her lots of cuddles and kisses.
• As per yesterday’s post, this is a lesson in patience and acceptance. I’m doing my best to learn to just sit with it, take a deep breath and do what needs to be done – a life lesson that will no doubt come in very useful a few more times before S is old enough to fend for herself!
• I’m knackered and fed up, but at least I’m not sleep deprived and having to get up and go to work in the mornings! If S keeps me up all night, I can always share her nap later in the day, or go to bed earlier the next night.
• Because I’m alone in this, I don’t have to make an effort to maintain other relationships while I’m this tired and fed up. I would imagine couples going through this end up having an awful lot of arguments about nothing even vaguely important, because their fuse is too short to do otherwise! If I feel crappy I can cancel my plans with friends or family, and therefore avoid sniping at them over nothing.
• There is nothing in this world more awesome right now, than the look on S’s face when she’s pulled a blanket over her face to play Peekaboo with me. And it’s just for me.

There are a million other blessings I could, and probably should, count, but I’m too tired to think of them. It helps to think of the positives though, and remind myself that right now I’m in exactly the right place, doing the right thing, with the right people around me. Everything happens for a reason, and I’m learning a lot from this experience. You learn a lot more, a lot more quickly, from uncomfortable situations.

I’m trying to keep telling myself this.

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Our Week, 8-13 October

Monday 08 Oct

After a rather unsettled (and somewhat screamy) night’s sleep, we got up and walked across town to pick up some baby clothes. We were also supposed to walk to an out of town superstore in another direction to pick up an order, but I couldn’t be bothered. We came home instead, and spent a fair amount of time playing. And then a nap, and then more playing. Bed time appears to have become a two-stage thing, where S falls asleep and I sneak out, only to find her awake and crying 15 minutes later. This happened again, but fingers crossed it’s not a permanent change!

Tuesday 09 Oct

Walked in the pouring rain to the big out of town Next to pick up an order. Turned up at 9:45 to find they didn’t open til 10. Got drenched. Came home, got changed, and went to see the health visitor. My one has been off sick for months so I saw yet another lady I’d not seen before. It’s a different one every time these days, and far from an ideal situation.

Wednesday 10 Oct

Our Home Start lady came and brought cakes for me and two teething toys for S. In the afternoon my sister Z came round with some rice krispie cakes she’d made and I ate until I felt sick. We didn’t leave the house all day.

Thursday 11 Oct

Up and out early to run some errands around town. Home by 11am to attempt housework, but S had other ideas. Her poor sleeping pattern over the last few days has been getting gradually worse, and today she had no naps at all, and then couldn’t sleep at bed time. Ended up bringing her downstairs and pushing her back and forth in the pushchair until she fell asleep, then camping on the sofa.

Friday 12 Oct

Another day where we didn’t leave the house. Had plans to go out for a walk with a friend but after another poor night’s sleep I cancelled in favour of trying to get some rest. S actually managed a morning nap, and was in a fairly agreeable mood, meaning I managed to get a fair few things done. Unfortunately her afternoon nap, during which I was planning to sleep, was interrupted by a loud knock on the door, and so I spent the afternoon trying to distract S from grizzling; no mean feat. Despite this, I still managed to do some decorating, cleaning and washing – so not a complete loss.

Saturday 13 Oct

A slightly better night followed by a lazy morning. When it became clear S did not intend on having a morning nap, I took her out in the sling instead. She finally fell asleep after half an hour of wandering around the shops, so I stayed out for as long as I could in order to keep her asleep. Certainly feeling her weight gain in my back these days! When we came home she was in an agreeable mood, and even had a long afternoon nap, so I managed to get a lot done – baking, stewing and pureeing foods, cleaning the kitchen, washing up, more decorating, posting a gazillion items on Ebay. She is now in bed, but I’ve been up to her twice already. Fingers crossed she stays asleep now, and I get to have a lazy Saturday evening after a somewhat stressful week!

Our Week 30 Sept - 6 Oct

Sunday 30 Sept

S slept fairly well the first part of the night, but I woke up after a few hours feeling ill. It took  me a couple of hours to settle back down, and just as I did, S woke up thinking it must surely be time to get up and play. It took another couple of hours to get her back to sleep. On the plus side though, she did let me sleep in until 8:30 this morning so I can’t really complain. We had a lazy day: lots of laying on the play mats and giggling. We had a brief wander into town to buy a paper, but forgot the paper and came back with baby clothes that had been discounted in Sainsbury’s instead. And as it was a Sunday, I had a massive roast dinner delivered to my door in the evening too. Perfect.

Monday 01 Oct

S seems to have developed a body clock that thinks 4am is the time to get up and play. This is happening daily now, and really quite annoying. We slept late again, which was nice but not terribly useful, since we had an opticians appointment to keep. Walked to the optician, located inside a large out of town superstore. They took a ridiculous amount of time to do very little, and then so as not to have wasted the trip we wandered around the supermarket a bit, and bought some food we could have done without. Since S fell asleep as I walked back toward home, I decided it would be a good idea to wander around town a little. She read my mind though, and woke up as we got into town. So we had a little wander, then came home and spent a lot of time playing. S decided she really did not need an afternoon nap, which was fine until about 4pm when she turned into Grumpzilla. A friend came round and finished painting the living room wall, while S whined and cried and rubbed her eyes and I assured him she really is a happy baby most of the time. Ended up putting her to bed at 5:30 again. Have capitulated and ordered a copy of The No Cry Nap Solution from Amazon in the hope of sorting out this anti-nap stance she has developed. Evening spent writing a blog post I had really got into, and speaking to my OU tutor, who approved of my first essay submission.

Tuesday 02 Oct

We were up almost hourly all night. On the plus side, 8:30am seems to be our new wake-up time, which isn’t too bad. Weather was rubbish and I had things to do, so we stayed in this morning. I put the furniture back after the living room wall was painted yesterday, moved the flooring into a pile in the corner, washed nappies and towels, moved half my (rather large) book collection upstairs ready for the floor to be laid, moved a book case upstairs for the same reason, broke the loo roll holder I only fixed to the wall last week, and stewed some apples for baby food. S sat in her chair, lay on her play mats, and had a brief play in her door bouncer, resolutely refusing to nap until tiredness finally overcame her early afternoon. When she woke up we went for a brief wander into town to get out of the house for a while, bought a nice babygro from a charity shop on the way home. S had a second nap when we got in, which was nice, and she still went to bed on time.

Wednesday 03 Oct

A better night, and a slightly earlier wake up. Our Home Start volunteer came to visit, bringing milk for our coffee and post biscuits, which was nice. She stayed a couple of hours, long enough for me to make some phone calls and sort some paperwork. Managed to get S to have a nap, which was good. Afternoon was spent doing washing, watching a TV show about breastfeeding and tidying. Yeah, I’m living the rock and roll dream!

Thursday 04 Oct

S was awake half the night, which was not much fun for either of us, but worse for her as she seemed to be suffering tummy pain. Set an alarm for the first time in months to ensure we were up, bathed and dressed before the man from the council came to fix our windows at 9am. Received a phone call at 8:30am to say sorry but the man was ill. Appointment re-booked for next Thursday afternoon. Had a brief visit from a friend who brought a toy over for S but then had to leave because her daughter was poorly. S had a rare morning nap, during which I did fun things like take the rubbish out and sort the washing, and then we went for a walk around town. Narrowly missed running head-on into S’s father and his new girlfriend and child, which was a bit of a nightmare. Bought some material to attempt a home-made dribble bib. Came home for lunch and attempted an afternoon nap; it lasted 20 minutes, and then we played and blew raspberries for the rest of the afternoon. My sister came to visit for a while, which was handy as she played daft games with S while I dyed my hair.

Friday 05 Oct

A much better night’s sleep, though I did wake up several times in a panic because S hadn’t woken up to feed! One time I had to put the light on and pull at her arms until she moved because until that point I couldn’t hear or see her breathing. Panic stations at 2am do not make for a restful night! S had no clue though, and was sound asleep. Went to visit a friend this morning, which was nice for all 3 of us. Stopped in town on the way home to run some errands, though am sure I missed more than one. S played with her feet on her play mat for a couple of hours when we got in, and even had a short nap, but then got super grumpy and upset about something and was inconsolable until bed time, when she went out like a light. I think perhaps she is having a Wonder Week.

There is no entry for today yet, as it hasn't happened! We are off on a road trip soon to visit Big S (who my little S was named after). We've not seen her for aaaaages (since S was about 3 weeks old) and we're both super excited. 

Squeaky Clean Like a Rubber Ducky

This week, I have been medication-free for a year.

I had something of a colossal breakdown in the summer of 2010, which resulted in my being signed off work for a month, and eventually taking voluntary redundancy. I scared a lot of people, lost a lot of weight, and developed a fairly ridiculous drinking habit (Pisang Ambon, anyone?) I tried a few different medications before finding one that seemed to take the edge off it, and after a couple of months things settled down.

When I fell pregnant and it dawned on me I would have to come off the medication, I was seized by panic. I knew there was no choice but to come off it, but I was petrified I’d end up going back to the comatose, suicidal heap I’d been before. I came off the medication, and between the withdrawal, the usual first trimester hormones, and problems with S’s father, my first 12 weeks of pregnancy were something akin to hell. My GP was keen for me to go back onto the medication as soon as I reached 12 weeks – apparently after that first 12 weeks it’s not such a big deal any more. I had an appointment with her, where she told me: “you can go back onto them, and only a small amount will get to the baby. It’ll only have a bit of withdrawal when it’s born, which will probably just mean it cries a bit more and you probably won’t notice that. Or if you’re breastfeeding, the drug will still be passed to it through your milk, so it won’t have any withdrawal.” I was horrified at this concept – I’d read articles previously about antidepressants and the argument over their being given to children and adolescents; the argument against that use was that a child’s brain is not fully developed, and antidepressants affect the way the brain works. The thought of feeding my baby a brain-altering chemical as it developed inside of me made me sick, and I refused point blank to go back onto the medication. Also, once I’d gone through the pain of coming off them once, I didn’t want to then go back onto them, knowing I’d have to go come back off them and go through it all again at some point. And so, instead of medication, I agreed to regular appointments with my GP (so she could check I wasn’t going mad, and do that ridiculous depression questionnaire they do), and to go back to the Community Mental Health Team for counselling. Both were rather useless when it came to day-to-day functionality.

Looking back, I would say the last 12 months have been some of the hardest in my life. This is not only because I was unable to fall back on self-destructive habits that had seen me through in the past (over-exercise, self-harm, weird eating habits, drinking, sleeping pills), but also because I was wracked with guilt over my responsibility for the life growing inside of me. Because of my situation I felt I had let the baby down before it was even born. Every decision I made now had to take into account how it would affect my unborn child. A lot of those decisions were, in hindsight, not the best ones – especially those involving S’s father.

At 30 weeks I lost weight two weeks in a row because of the stresses I was facing. I moved house at 33 weeks, and S was born at 35 weeks, when I had a chest infection. We were kept in hospital for 11 days, and when we came home the roof had leaked and we couldn’t spend our first night at home. Once we were home, I faced pressure in my relationship with S’s father, and looking after his 6 children at his house. I remember the health visitor sitting on my couch one day and saying to me, “you have to look after yourself better because you’re at quite a high risk for post natal depression.” I burst out crying and told her I thought I was already there.

I stuck to my guns though, and refused time and time again, often through floods of tears, to go back onto the medication. S is now nearly 6 months old, and I have to say I’m really quite proud of myself. I know that the medical profession advises it’s perfectly safe to use the antidepressants I was on after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and I know that nobody would have thought any less of me if I’d gone back onto them at any point between then and now – especially those who had faced the task of trying to deal with me when I was at my lowest. But I know what I am like, and I know that if I had begun taking them again, I would have blamed myself if anything was wrong with S, at birth or at 25 years of age or any point in between, I would have thought back to those pills I took while I was pregnant and breastfeeding.

I didn't just do it on my own though; I've had a lot of help and support, both from professionals, and from my friends. My health visitor and GP have been amazing, going above and beyond what I could reasonably have expected from two over-worked NHS employees, and my friends have reduced me to tears of gratitude and joy more times than I care to mention. People I wasn't particularly close to before S was born have gone out of their way time and again to help me both practically and emotionally. For that I am eternally grateful.

When I came off the medication, it made me horribly sleepy and out of it, and I had to tell my boss why I’d come off it because he wasn’t too impressed at the desk-snoozing I kept doing. He told me he thought having a baby might just be the thing to sort me out mentally. At the time I thought he was talking utter bollocks, but now I think about it, he appears to have been right. Don’t get me wrong, I do still have bad days when I feel awful and want to crawl under my duvet and hide… but you can’t do that when there’s a baby there wanting to be fed and changed and played with. I’m lucky; I know for a lot of people having a baby can make no difference to their depression, perhaps even make it worse. But for me, so far, I seem to be doing pretty well. 

Edit: since this post was published, the safety of using antidepressants during pregnancy has been questioned. It is now not considered as safe as the medical profession thought at the time. 

The Reality of Mental Health Issues in Pregnancy.

I had a nervous breakdown in 2010. While I was recovering, I met a man and fell pregnant. I wrote this in November 2011, when I was around 3 months pregnant with S...

I was on antidepressants for just over a year. I got a new job, I met a new man, I thought I was ok. I would forget to take my pills for days at a time, and still be fine. I toyed with the idea of coming off them for good, and even lowered my dose. And then I fell pregnant, and suddenly coming off them was more than just an abstract idea. I stopped taking them. I was fine. Yes, I was tired – but isn’t everyone in the first few months of pregnancy? Everyone said how well I was doing. I believed them. We were all wrong. The truth is that I wasn’t doing well; the truth is that when you’ve been on medication for over a year, it takes a while to come out of your system. And that while is like sliding down the sides of a very deep pit. A pit with a deep, sticky pool of quick sand at the bottom and no ladder to aid escape. And most of the time you’re not entirely aware you’re sliding, but every now and then you look and realise the sky and the sun are just that little bit farther out of reach; that smiling happiness you used to know is that little bit harder to remember. And then you hit the bottom. And you start to sink. And then you realise that everything that came before was just a sick joke, and that you’re back down where you were before.

Except before, when you couldn’t sleep or concentrate or speak to anyone or ask anyone for help, you could buy a bottle of vodka and get good and drunk. Or take a couple of pairs of sleeping pills and lose a weekend. And now you’re pregnant and you can’t get drunk or take anything stronger than bloody paracetamol. So 3am just becomes this horrible mocking thing that you just resign yourself to. And the tears and the despair and the horror and the panic attacks and the horrible realisation that you can’t even fucking kill yourself to end the misery, because now you’re responsible for another human being. And killing yourself would be tantamount to murder. So, basically, you’re fucked. I’m fucked. This is all fucking fucked. And I have no idea what to do.

This is how it happens. It’s not a sudden jump into a massive pool of crazy; it’s gradual. The madness creeps up, insidious. To start with you might have a few days of feeling ok; good, even. You can do this, it’s not so hard. Followed by maybe a half day of feeling like you’re Chicken Licken and the sky is falling in. And then, gradually, over time, you find that you have half a day, tops, where you feel like you could probably cope, if you really concentrate. Followed by a week and a half of unrelenting hell. I have fallen into the bog of eternal stench and there are no ladders to help me get out.

Madness is sneaky; it creeps in the back door while you’re busy doing other things. And once it’s there, it’s like the worst kind of unwelcome house guest, the kind that turns up with a bag of dirty laundry and stinky shoes, and you just groan and know it’s going to be a long while before it leaves.

I split up with the man I so idolised a few months ago. Then we get back together. And then we split again. And back and forth it goes, until I can’t remember why we were ever together, or why we were ever apart. He wants to “be there” for me, but he doesn’t understand what’s going on in my head. How can he, when I don’t even know, and have no hope of explaining it? For the briefest of times, I’m sleeping at his house once or twice a week, and he sleeps on the couch. We spend time together and it’s nice, and we make plans and agree on trying to Work Things Out and tell each other that This Time it’ll work, we’ve got it right. And then one of us panics over something and it stops, and then we miss each other and it starts again. And my brain is so fucked, I can’t tell if it’s him, or me, or both of us that’s being ridiculous and difficult and needs to just man up. I know that for both our sakes, I should just walk away and never look back – but I can’t because this is his child too, and he has a right to see it. So I have to suffer with the back and forth and the to and fro. One minute he wants us to be together, then he loves me but he just wants to be friends. Then he’s bringing me stupid little gifts at work. He’s worried about me, he cares for me, he wants to be my friend. I want to run for the hills. He doesn’t understand that while he’s changing his mind like a teenage girl, what I really need is to be stable in my environment. That the only way I have even a sliver of hope of getting through this is with boring, monotonous routine and reliability and stability. I realise later - too late - that the instability is his game plan. He deliberately never lets any situation remain the same for too long. Nothing in his life is predictable or easy to follow. It's how he controls me and others around him.

I have no patience these days. And when I say no patience, I mean absolutely none. People getting in my way in the supermarket, people on the phone at work who won’t just shut up, family members who ask too many questions, children who make too much noise. I spend my entire life biting my tongue, my jaw set, my blood pressure soaring and my heart pumping in my ears. I hate everyone. I hate everything. There is nobody I will not kill in my mind if they stand between me and wherever I’m trying to get to. One day, queuing in Marks and Spencer while a young child runs around and around the queue, I am reminded of something a friend said to me last summer, when I was mid-breakdown: that my rage over the tiniest things was a sure sign I should probably be medicated.

I’m over 12 weeks now. Apparently after 12 weeks the risks from the particular pills I was on are very low, almost negligible. My GP is of the opinion that, in my case, “the benefits outweigh the risks.” Apparently the worst that can happen is that the baby has a bit of “withdrawal” when it’s born. And if you’re breastfeeding, it doesn’t even get that because you’re still passing the drug to it in your milk. When they tell you these things, what they’re not saying is that if you give in and take the psychotropic drugs, what you’re essentially doing is feeding a mind-altering drug to a brain that is not even developed yet. And to continue feeding it to a newborn just continues to fuck with its brain more. They tell you there are little to no risks, that the baby will be fine, but really, what do they know. This is a drug not recommended for children under 18 because it changes the basic structure of the brain, but it’s perfectly fine for a baby? Fifty years ago they were feeding women Thalidomide for morning sickness with gay abandon, and look how that turned out. I know that if I relent and start taking these pills again, I will be pumping these chemicals directly into my baby’s brain, which seems ridiculous when I’m abstaining from alcohol and Ibuprofen and Vitamin A and a million other things for 9 months. If I can’t take Ibuprofen, which is 50p from Tesco, why is it fine to take Zoloft, which you can’t even fucking get hold of without crying to your GP and getting a prescription?

So I’ve decided, against the advice of my GP and my midwife, and probably the local mental health team, if I’d kept them informed, not to go back onto the pills. For one thing, last time they took a good few months to start working, and in the end it was a mixture of the pills, 3 months off work in a blur of alcohol and daytime sleeping, and help from the local mental health trust that got me back on my feet. There seems little point in starting up on the pills again, when I know they’re not a miracle cure, and they’ll take ages to work, and I can’t afford 3 months off work. Better to just try and soldier on as I am. 

And so, I plod. I go to work with a big mask on and pretend everything is fine. I laugh when they make jokes about me being a single mother and make oh-so-witty personal comments about my on-off relationship with the father and about his reputation for being a bit rough. I take it on the chin when they laugh at me for falling asleep at my desk. I pretend not to notice the impatience and loathing that bubbles beneath the surface whenever I’m off sick. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I go home and stare blankly at whatever is on TV until I can stand it no longer, and then I go to bed and stare at the ceiling. These days I’m more likely to cry for seven hours than to sleep for that amount of time. Experience tells me there’s little point in picking up a book to try and read in the middle of the night, so I just toss and turn and think about how shit everything is. Then I get up early for work, because I can’t sleep and I may as well just get it over with. Just like before, I turn into a robot going back and forth, around and around. My days merge into one, punctuated only by arguments with the ex and panic attacks. Some days, I’ll wake up feeling ok and think perhaps that fabled day where I get my pregnancy glow and am awash with oestrogen has finally arrived. But by lunch time, it’s gone again. 

I’m stuck.

I should just man up but I can’t.

I can’t enjoy being pregnant like normal people; I can’t just snap out of it like people think I should; I can’t just be like everyone else. 

And I also cannot just end it by jumping off the tallest building I can find.

Before, that was at least an option; something to comfort me in the middle of the night when the horror took hold: “if it’s still this bad at the end of the week, you can end it,” I would promise myself. Now I don’t even have that, and it will never again be a viable option. I have nothing. I try to think of the baby in my belly as comfort, but all I can think is that I’ve let the poor thing down already. I have nowhere to live, no money, no plan for how to sort everything, no idea how I am going to do this. Neither of us stands a chance. Plath’s Bell Jar has descended once again and this time there is no lifting it.

And the worst part is that I can’t ask for help, I can’t admit failure. Nobody wants to hear that a pregnant woman might be preoccupied with thoughts of throwing herself under a bus. After last year I can’t make my friends worry again like they did before, it’s not fair. I can’t tell people I’d really just rather not be here at all. They’re all so excited at the prospect of another cutesy baby to coo over, they could never understand how I could be so totally consumed with blackness and despair. I'm supposed to be excited. I'm supposed to be glowing. Why am I not glowing? 

Last time I felt like this, I couldn’t eat, and all I did was drink – so I lost a fair bit of weight, and that was like my consolation prize. This time, my waist has disappeared and my belly is ever-expanding. My clothes don’t fit me because my belly is too big for them. This is not cause for celebration and excitement. I can’t afford to buy pregnancy clothes and there is nobody to buy me new underwear when the bras I am wearing are cutting into my skin, leaving marks that are still visible after 8 hours in bed. I’m fat and frumpy, and I can’t go to the gym and punish my body for 2 hours to try and feel better. 

All the things I would normally turn to as a way of somehow relieving this are gone now.

There is nothing; there is no relief, no comfort, no solace.

All that’s left is this unending guilt I have for a child not yet born.

How can I offer this child a chance of a happy life? How can I take care of it and raise it properly, give it a good start in life? I can barely bring myself to heat a bowl of soup for my tea. I feel like I’m dying and yet still alive. I am convinced that, were it possible to expire through mental illness alone, I would be long gone by now. Instead I drag myself around, a wraith. The ghost of Vicky past.

The people at work start to notice something is wrong. I’m simply too exhausted to keep up the façade. My boss tells me I look tired and I tell him I’m not sleeping He pulls a face that says “ok I can’t cope with women and feelings, please don’t cry, let’s talk about movies.” I don’t blame him. 

Other people ask me what’s wrong and I don’t know what to say. Frozen with fear, I know I could never tell them the truth. I try not to cry when they ask if I’m ok. I stop laughing at the jokes they make about my life. Eventually they stop making them. I hear only snippets of conversation, and don’t bother trying to find out what they’re on about. I stop trying to explain to the young lad-about-town who sits opposite me why being housed by the council somewhere on the other side of the county would be suicide. That no matter how much I shy away from human contact, I still need to be close enough to friends and family that I could visit if I wanted. He doesn’t understand mental illness, and no amount of tears will make him. He represents the majority of people in this world, and I hate him for it. I’m sure he’s of the opinion I should just pull my socks up and get on with it. I know he’s not the only one who thinks this. I’m past the point of caring. It’s all I can do to wash my hair before I leave for work. 

These people don’t care about me; they’re not my friends, they just don’t want me to go off sick and leave them in the shit. My life is like Eastenders to them: cheap titillation between phone calls. They all have their opinions about what I should do; I feel like an interactive reality show. And when I don’t heed their advice and things are still shitty, they sit there with their arms crossed, thinking to themselves, “well she doesn’t take good advice, what does she expect.” Everyone, but everyone, thinks they know of something I’ve not tried or heard about. Either practically, to do with finding somewhere to live and a way to furnish such a place, how to resolve the situation with the ex, how to raise a child alone with no money, or metaphysically – if only I’d just get up and join a gym/go to a yoga class/pay for therapy/paint on a grin and pretend, everything would be peachy. Well everything is so very not peachy, and it never will be. They don’t realise that when you feel like this, you can’t see the silver lining, all you see is clouds. You can’t just pretend, because you’ve been pretending for so long that you’re just exhausted to the point of complete flatness, and now all you can think of is sleep and blackness and death and nothingness.

I am at that point now, where I wonder which is the real me – the one before the pills, where I was almost dead more times than I care to mention, where there was no hope, no sleep, no happiness, no enjoyment, no contentment? Or the me for the last year, reliant on a reasonably high dosage of a psychotropic drug, changing the very mechanism of my personality and making me able to get out of bed, to smile, to laugh, to enjoy things? Because when I look around me, other people are like that without pills. They just wake up in the morning and they know what to do, they know who they are and what to say and how to function. If I need a prescription medication to be like them, does that mean that’s not the real me? 

What if the real me is this insufferably miserable mess?

My refusal to find any enjoyment in anything, my constant negativity and Eeyore outlook on life is just another of the many things that wind me up and make me want to scream. I dread to think what other people must think – “just lighten up!” Is this me? Is this my true personality? Am I really this insufferably gloomy? Oh, good grief. I can’t even stand myself – no wonder I can’t keep hold of a man for more than 5 minutes! No wonder I’m pregnant and single and alone, with nobody knocking on the door! 

Then again, I feel so terrible I would only hide behind the furniture if someone did knock the door. 

They can’t win – and they don’t even try any more.

I’ve reverted to the mentality of a toddler. Come and show me some attention! Why don’t you want to know what’s wrong? Why don’t you care? Nobody cares, I’m all alone! Why are you here? Stop crowding me, I didn’t invite you, I don’t want to make polite conversation with you! I have nothing to say, leave me be! Go away! Wait, where are you going? Why aren’t you sticking around to try and fix me? Why won’t you fix me? Come back and fix me!

This story seems miserable, but it does ultimately have a happy ending. When I was pregnant, my boss told me he thought having a baby might be the thing that would sort me out. At the time, I thought he was bonkers. Now, I find that actually, he was right. I am one of the lucky few for whom becoming a mother saved me. Yes, I still have horrible days and low moods - but I also have a beautiful, bouncing child who never fails to make me smile. Even in my bleakest moments, S makes everything seem ok. And I know I have to make everything ok, so that she can have a chance of growing up happy.

Support

When you are a first-time mother, you have no idea what is “normal” for a baby – and when they are very small, the slightest thing sends you into a panic that you have broken them (or is that just me?) For mothers with a partner, even if that partner is also a first-time parent, there is somebody to give a second opinion: “did she have that mark there yesterday?” “Do you think that crying sounds different to her normal crying?” “Does this poo-filled nappy smell normal to you?” “Does she look a bit peaky to you?” “Do you think I should call the doctor?”

When you are on your own, there is nobody readily available to consult on such things. There’s also nobody to grab you a snack while you’re stuck on the couch feeding in the middle of a growth spurt and crying because you’re so unbelievably hungry and can see no light at the end of the tunnel – what if this baby is always going to be this hungry, and I never get to change out of this puke-stained t shirt?

To be fair, even before S’s father buggered off he wasn’t much support in this area. Still, when he finally went, I was completely bewildered, with nobody to consult as to what was normal, and what necessitated a trip to the doctor. I made numerous fraught Facebook updates, and had literally no clue as to how I would move forward in this.

My family has never really been very good at the whole touchy-feely thing. While I was mourning the end of a relationship I had thought was forever, missing S’s half brothers and sisters who I’d spent a year caring for, and trying to get used to being solely responsible for a tiny baby with no instruction manual, they didn’t really jump up to offer assistance as perhaps other families would. To be fair I didn’t really expect them to; it’s not like we’re a particularly close lot and the idea of suddenly spending lots of time with them makes me balk slightly. That said, I do send my sister in law at least one text a week asking a ridiculous new mum question and she rarely laughs at me for it! And I see my younger sisters regularly; but because they are that much younger than me I never feel that I could fall at their feet in a puddle of snot and expect them to help – I am the older sister, they shouldn’t have to look after me. I felt very alone in my battle to establish some kind of normality in my life, completely lost at sea. I didn’t want to burden people with my problems, but in some instances I felt that I’d been abandoned by those who perhaps should have been rallying round.

Luckily, the day after S’s father left us, a friend I’d not seen since we were in hospital texted to see how we were. I told her what had happened and her response was perfect: “this is the plan, no arguments. I’m coming round this evening, I will help you bath the baby and put her to bed so you can have some time to yourself. See you at 5.” She came round, helped bath S, got her to sleep, did my washing up, tidied my living room, and told me (repeatedly) I could do it on my own. She spent a lot of time with me over the next few weeks, helping me to put up net curtains, talking about what was going on with S’s father, giving advice and telling me the sort of things “they” never tell you about having a baby.

Several other friends came and made similar mercy missions: one friend came from her house 25 miles away to bring me home-cooked bolognaise sauce, brownies and a big hug and “you’re doing an amazing job.” Several friends texted, emailed, left encouraging comments on my Facebook. Friends I’ve not really seen much for a good few years have met me for coffee, given me lifts to pick things up or just gone on mad random road trips with me, listening to my whining and telling me everything would be fine, right when I needed to hear it. I will be forever indebted to a friend who stood in the middle of Homebase and said to me quite plainly, “you are making excuses for your ex and you have to stop.” One friend, a girl I’d actually not seen since I was around 12, sent me a message to say I was doing a great job and not to worry, and that she’d invited me to join this Facebook group she thought might be useful. Since that day, I have made hundreds of posts in that group, asking stupid questions, letting off steam about things that were bothering me, and squealing with delight when something good happened. The group is closed, so I knew that I could have a good old rant about whatever was bothering me, without the fear of anyone else seeing it. And the ladies in that group were so supportive; they made me feel that I was making the right decisions, that my gut instinct wasn’t completely off.

Some sources of support have appeared seemingly from nowhere. The day S’s father left the postman knocked the door to deliver a package, and it was the man who ran a church youth group I attended fifteen years ago. He arranged for a man from his church to come and paint over the damp patch on my bedroom wall, and also gave me a lift to the hospital one Saturday night when I was mid-panic about S. Strange though it may seem, having not been to that church for so long, I do feel very much that if I had a problem and someone there could help, they would – which, to me, is what Christianity is all about.

My health visitor, who had supported me since before the breakup, was (and still is) invaluable. She, her student, and her nursery nurse still all go out of their way to tell me I’m doing really well and bolster my confidence. One or other of them referred me to my local Children’s Centre where there were several groups they thought I might like to attend. A lady from the centre actually came out to the flat to talk to me about what services they offer, because they knew I wasn’t very confident going out just yet. They also suggested I join a counselling group for women in a similar situation to me with regards to my relationship. That group probably saved me and S from a great deal of heartache. Later, when I called the health visitor in tears after a street-based slanging match with S’s father, they referred me to Home Start, a charity based locally who are in the process of pairing me up with a volunteer who will come to visit us weekly, sit with S while I make important phone calls or come with us to appointments for the same reason. Being a single mother, you suddenly realise how easy you had it before when you had to call the gas board about a problem, or go to the council offices to go through some form or other. Babies don’t like to be ignored, especially when they are in their pushchairs, in a strange place.

I do feel that I’ve found my feet a bit more lately, but I still have episodes when I have no clue what I am doing. I have more support now, though. I know that I can post a stupid question on Facebook and, while some people will leave a jokey or rude (or sometimes judgemental or plainly unhelpful) response, I have a solid group of friends who will always help out by giving their own take on the situation, offering their own experience of it. This works well, because I know people who have raised, or are raising children in very different ways under different circumstances – so I get a lot of different advice to choose from. I still call my health visitor, but usually when I have issues with S’s father, rather than issues with S herself. More importantly, I am more inclined to reach out and call or text the people I would previously not have wanted to burden. I might not call up and say “help me I’m having a shitty day,” but sometimes just having a conversation with another adult is all you need to get you through.

The whole situation has made me much more compassionate towards other people’s suffering, especially where a new baby is concerned. I’ve found myself sending messages to people I don’t know terribly well, offering my support should they need it. My first few months as a mother were a lot less fun than I would have hoped, and if I can do anything to avoid someone else’s experience being like that, I am inclined to do it. My friends have set me a good example in that respect. And for the times when I don’t want to burden my friends with yet another whiney moan, I know there are other places I can approach for help. Things are looking up!