Defining and Achieving Success

I wrote a post a while back about how everyone's definition of success is different.

For some, it's the fancy pants job with the corner office and the latest new car. For others it's opting out of society entirely.  

For me... I'm still not sure exactly what it is.

Parenting-wise, I think I actually consider myself to be fairly successful at the moment. Several things have happened lately that have made me feel really proud of S; silly little things like sharing her food with me, without my asking, or saying thank you without being prompted. Or the bigger things, like moving rooms in nursery and being completely un-phased by it, or sleeping through her first night away from me & not having a massive midnight panic. Things like this make me think, yeah, I'm doing a pretty good job with this at the moment; things are good. That's not to say I know how I've achieved these things, or how I can replicate them in months or years to come, but right now I'm really very proud of my daughter.

Personally, things are up and down. The weeks leading up to Brit Mums Live were a massive panic of trying to get everything done before I left. I only had one day off work - and even then I was checking my emails at the hotel - but still, I was super paranoid about making sure I didn't let any clients down. I promised myself a million times that things would be less chaotic "after Brit Mums..."

I also promised myself that once I got back, I would do some serious self-development work and try to sort myself out. I have some fantastic clients, and I love the work I do - but I still have points in the month where there's no money in the bank, and that bothers me. It's ok if I know I have this invoice outstanding, or I need to send an invoice for this, but sometimes I have neither of these things, and I'm left panicking about what S and I will live off for the next week or so.

I am frankly tired of being in this position, and I know I need to do something to change that. Before I can do that though, I really need to figure out exactly what it is I'm aiming for here!

Several times over the last few months, and especially at Brit Mums Live, I've heard people extolling the virtues of a business plan. You need to have a business plan; you must make a business plan. I don't have a business plan, and I find it hard to put what I do into that sort of framework. Nevertheless, I need to just sit down, get my head down and get on with it.

I know that I need to make a proper plan, name a goal and then break that down into smaller goals. I need to have something concrete to aim at because I've been coasting along now for a few months, and I'm making very little headway.

So this is where you come in, dear fabulous readers. If you are self employed, in whatever guise, and you can offer any sort of wisdom, guidance or support, please do! You can leave a comment here, email me, Facebook me, Tweet me, send a carrier pigeon. I would genuinely love to hear from you on this!

Thinking About Business

A few things have happened lately that have made me think about my "business".

For one thing, I saw a couple of speakers at the Big Business Event in Salisbury, including Lara Morgan and Hugh Vivian. If you've never heard of Lara Morgan, you really should click that there link. She's amazing, and really quite the inspiration - not least because of her ability to talk on the phone whilst breastfeeding, whilst in a meeting. 

I tend not to think of what I do as a business - it's just me and my laptop, sitting at an increasingly crowded desk in my living room and trying to think of something profound to say.

But realistically, if I want to do more than just coast along, I probably need to start thinking of it as a proper business. Which is why I attended the Big Business Event in the first place. Considering I've lived around here my entire life, I barely knew anyone in the room. It made me think perhaps I should be... networking!

The majority of the work I do is for people who aren't around here. The articles I write are all online; the blog posts I write are for companies up and down the country. One of my clients lives in Italy. But does that mean I should ignore the local community? And not just to get more business, but to be a part of the community.

These are hard times for business. A lot of high street shops have closed lately; independents are really taking a hit. The independent businesses are what makes any town or city different from every other city filled with chain stores. I don't want my city to be the same as every other one. I love the diversity we have here. 

Lydia Evans, me, Amanda Foster and Ali Osborne at the Salisbury Big Business Event.
Photo copyright Simon Ward Photography

I had an email the other day from a prospective client, a local company. They had looked at my advertising page and it turned out, we had several people in common. They don't call this place Smallsbury for nothing! It's nice to know the people and businesses around you.

At the end of the day, if I want to be successful at what I do, I need to treat is as a business rather than a passtime. And since I'm surrounded by hundreds of successful businesses, I would be stupid not to be a part of this community.

Copy Writer with Writer's Block

When I first agreed to give up interacting on social media for Lent, I was worried about how this would affect my blog traffic. I resolved to be a lot more conscientious about the blog during Lent, so as to make up for not being able to spend time on Facebook and Twitter. My plan was that I would post every day, schedule tweets, and make a daily effort to share my posts in all the places I usually forget to.

So far, so good.

On the other hand though, I'm a freelance copy writer these days. I spend a great deal of my time writing copy for other people. In the last few days I have written pieces on Tahitian pearls, the importance of taking supplements, implementing a sleeping routine for a baby when you return to work, fancy dress costumes, the importance of hygiene in salons, insomnia, self storage, Gwyneth Paltrow and Pimm's. Several of those were written in the last 24 hours.

I think I've used up all my creativity; I can't write about anything else without regurgitating at least a few lines from something I've already written this week. 

Usually, I'll have four or five ideas for blog posts buzzing about my head. I'll compose them in my head as I walk to and from nursery or do the washing up.

Today... nothing. I'm out of ideas. 

Incidentally, I would dearly love to regurgitate some of the copy I have written in the last couple of days; I am very proud of some of it, and a little gutted I can't just post it here and claim it as my own. But really, 500 words on Pimm's, on a blog whose previous post was about alcohol free wine, from a woman who actually doesn't  like to drink... it wouldn't really fit!

So instead, I give you... a post about having nothing to post about. I hope you've enjoyed it.

As an added bonus, here is a photo of this time last year. Happy Friday.

Ponderings on Self Employment & Career

I'm not officially self employed until 8th November. At the moment I'm on gardening leave from my old job. I have a few clients set up and ready to go though, and some I was already working with before I was made redundant. Despite the constant low-level panic about not being able to afford nursery bills come the end of November, it's going well.

I've been reading a lot of motivational, self-improvement based books and articles lately.

One of the books asks the question:

If you were starting completely fresh, in a world where anything was possible, what would you love to be doing?

The thing about being a free agent is that I'm free to do whatever I want. At the moment I'm doing social media marketing (and some accounts) but if I decide next week that I want to try doing some other type of work, I can give it a shot. The possibilities are endless!

When I sit and think about my "ideal job," what I would love to do, what would make me truly fulfilled and happy, it's writing.

But when I sit down and think, I shall write!! I usually come up with a big fat blank. I can update my blog easily enough, but I don't see this as something I could translate into a viable source of income. This is not content people would pay to read!

I love blogging. I love putting together a post and seeing how people respond to it. I love seeing the number of daily, weekly and monthly hits slowly creep up. I really love it when it becomes evident someone has actually read and maybe even enjoyed what I've written. Or when someone from the BBC calls me up and asks me if I'd like to be interviewed on their radio show - as if anything I have to say is of any importance or gravity! But none of this is going to pay my nursery bill!

I've thought about writing a book, but I'm not sure that's entirely viable either. These days, precious few people are able to actually make their living from books. Self-publishing on Amazon means that realistically you can only charge a couple of pounds per book and, only keep 70% of that charge.

Don't get me wrong; I'm enjoying the work I'm doing now, but mainly because of the freedom it gives me to fit my working hours around time with S, housework and the occasional bit of me time. The work itself is interesting because I'm learning about different clients' businesses... but it doesn't really set my heart on fire.

So my next big challenge is to figure out how to make a living from writing. A good enough living that I don't have to do too much of it!

Gingerbread: Make it Work for Single Parents.

A while back I wrote a post called The Benefits Trap, with the idea of showing people how difficult it can be to get off benefits and back into work. It seemed to be well received; people seemed to appreciate what I was saying. And then someone commented on another post I'd written that showed an example of someone trying to get off benefits. They seemed angry with me, accusing me of promoting being on benefits, and telling me "everything you own has been paid for by me..."

Leaving aside the fact this person was incorrect in most of what they were saying (they were clearly unaware, for example, that until my breakdown I was in a reasonably well-paid job, and that I do in fact have a job now as well), what was said bothered me because it seems that these things are what a lot of people think. 

They see me: single mother, lives in a council flat, walking around with a buggy in the middle of the day (I only work 3 days a week), and they think: benefits scrounger. Lives the high life with a flatscreen telly while I work my fingers to the bone to pay for it.

The fact of the matter is: yes, I do claim benefits. My childcare bill swallows my monthly income whole, and if I want any chance of surviving, I need to accept help from the state. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it, or that I'm not doing what I can to get myself into a position where I don't need to do it for the rest of my life.

There is also an issue here that's not often discussed when the media bangs on about feckless single parents living off the government. How easy do you think it is for a single parent to find a job? How easily did you find your job? I was very lucky in that when I returned to work, my boss allowed me to tell him which days and hours I would work. How many employers do you think are like that? 

If you don't have a child, and you want a job, you can look in the local paper, send your CV out, whatever. You can arrange an interview for whenever is convenient, and wander off on your merry way to impress them with your mad skillz in whatever it is you are interviewing for.

Imagine being a single parent looking for work. You need to find a part-time job that pays more than minimum wage. It needs to be (for argument's sake) only from 9-3 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays because you've already spoken to the nursery, and those are the only days they have available. You can't work weekends, because nurseries don't open on weekends and you don't have family locally with whom you could leave your child every single weekend for a whole day while you go to work. When you've found this Holy Grail of jobs that fits in with your childcare arrangements, you have to think about what you'll do when your child is ill. It's a well-known fact that when a child starts nursery, whatever age they are, they will catch every bug and cold and ear infection under the sun. In my first month back at work, I spent more time at home with a poorly S than I did at my desk. How do you think a new employer will view that situation? Do you think you will last out your probation period if you're never at work because your child has caught yet another bug?

And does any of this mean you are stupid, incapable of work? Does it mean your degree, your professional qualifications, your on-job training, your years of knowledge and experience are somehow null and void? Does being a single parent automatically mean you are only capable of menial, low-paid jobs? No. Does it mean that's all that's on offer to you? Usually, yes.

Gingerbread currently have a campaign running called Make it Work for Single Parents. Their goal is to get 250,000 more single parents into work before 2020, and they have been campaigning for changes that will allow that to happen.

Contrary to the picture the media portrays, and to what a lot of people seem to think, the majority of single parents are not sitting at home in their grubby dressing gowns, smoking fags and watching Jeremy Kyle. 

The majority of single parents are scouring the jobs pages of the local paper, looking for that mythical job that will help them get back into working life again. 

The majority of single parents hate to be seen as spongers living off other people's taxes. 

The majority of single parents want to claim benefits as a hand up, not a hand out. 

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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My Working Day

As you know, I recently went back to work.

I now work three days a week. On those days, this is what happens:

6am: alarm goes off. Get up, have a bath, put on an old t shirt, dry my hair.

7am: put S in high chair and give her breakfast. Do make-up while she eats. Also get all our stuff together to take with us: my handbag, S's nursery bag, my packed lunch. S's coat and sling ready to go.

7:30am: get S out of highchair, dress her in a clean outfit I prepared and brought downstairs last night. Leave her playing in the living room while I go upstairs and get dressed.

7:50ish: bundle S into the sling. Make sure I've got my handbag, packed lunch, coursebook for lunch time study, S's nursery bag.

8:am: Arrive at nursery; spend a few minutes sitting on the floor with S and her keyworker to make sure she is settled.

8:15 stop at Costa to make myself feel better for abandoning my child

8:30 start work

Midday: half-hour lunch break, spent sitting in the rec room (or outside if weather permits) reading my Child Development course book

This is my lunch time view.

3:30: finish work. Mad dash around to any shops necessary

4pm: collect S from nursery. Chat to keyworker about how she's getting on. Coat on, sling on, out the door, walk home.

4:30pm: tea time.

5pm PJs time

5:30pm supper and stories

6pm bed time

6:30pm wash up, tidy living room. Clean high chair. Prepare packed lunch for tomorrow. Re-pack nursery bag to include clean clothes and enough nappies. Sort out S's outfit for the morning. Take some fruit out of the freezer for my breakfast. Ensure there is something kicking about that can be used for tea tomorrow. Attempt some studying before passing out.

All of this assumes S stays asleep once she goes to bed. Usually she wakes once or twice before I go to bed. Just lately she's not been so keen on sleeping before I'm in bed with her, and it's been very... interesting trying to fit all the essential gubbins into my evening

Catching up on missed cuddles

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You may find it interesting to compare this post with this one I wrote before I returned to work.

Single *Working* Mother Ahoy!

Today was my first day back at work in 13 months.

Thirteen months spent getting dressed when I felt like it, mooching about, watching daytime telly (or CBeebies), not needing to brush my hair, not needing to worry about the snot and ground-in rusk on every item of clothing by mid-afternoon most days.

Almost thirteen months of spending all day, every day with my little pickle. Of talking in silly voices and cuddles on demand and perhaps sharing her mid-morning nap if I was tired, and playing with her teddies and mucking about in the ball pit and reading story books and very occasionally sneaking off somewhere for a couple of hours (usually for something delightful like a doctor or dentist appointment).

Thirteen months away from work; thirteen months away from the office, from the logins and the phones and the programs that are used on a daily basis, and the office banter, and the knowing who's who and the knowing the gossip and the whispers.

Clearly knowing something was afoot, S was awake and wriggling by 5:30 this morning. She was a happy little wriggler though, and we actually managed to get out of the house early! This was good, as it meant I had time to sit and play with her at nursery and make sure she was really settled before I left. 

Us, this morning

Work was interesting. It was weird going back there, not least because all the desks and teams have moved, and most of my team has left and been replaced by new people I don't know! It was a nice day though, getting to know new people, catching up with old ones, trying desperately to remember what all the different programs were for. It went fairly quickly.

As soon as 3:30 rolled around I was up and out of the door and off to pick up S, with a quick stop in Tesco to pick up her favourite for tea. I had called once during the day, but was scared to call again - because if they said she was crying I knew there was no chance I'd want to stay at work, and that realistically they need to be able to calm her without me being there - and she needs to get used to them doing that! 

I was let in the front door and rushed up the 2 flights of stairs... as I put my head round the door S looked up and immediately put her arms up to be picked up; she looked like she might cry! I gave her a big cuddle and her keyworker came and had a long chat with us (S joined in) about what they'd been up to. 

S's daily feedback sheet for today says:

S has had a lovely first day. She has been a little sad at times, mainly when she was getting tired. S had a much better afternoon sleep and has been very happy and chatty this afternoon. S went to sleep in a pushchair this afternoon and we have been enjoying having cuddles during the day. S has been very confident in going off to explore the room by herself.

The feedback sheet also informs me she had chilli, rice and garlic bread for lunch, though her clothes were relatively clean, and the bib I put in her bag was apparently unused. I am unsure as to the witchcraft they have used to get food into my child - but I want them to share their secrets!!

All in all, I don't think I could have hoped for a better first day back at work.

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Further Adventures in Benefits

This post follows on from one titled Adventures in Benefits, wherein I explained the fun I'd had claiming Income Support. This is what happened next...

I made an application for Income Support at the end of January, after I'd received my last payslip from  work - as I was told to do when I phoned in the middle of January. I was told to allow 14 working days. On the 14th working day I'd heard nothing so I called them. My application had been declined because the money I was paid at the end of January would last me until the end of February. I could re-submit my claim again at the end of February.

Now, I understand that they don't want to be paying me benefits while I still have wages - that would be stupid. But... well, when you start a job, you work a month in hand, right? Your monthly pay is a month in arrears. And benefit payments are also made fortnightly, in arrears. So realistically the money I received at the end of January covered January and not February, and I should have been entitled to benefit from mid-February. That probably sounds a bit money-grabbing, but it is also basic logic as far as I can see. 

I called back at the end of February and re-submitted my claim. They sent me a form to sign again, and I sent it back again. And so began the 14 working day waiting period. Those of you keeping up with this may have noted that by this point, I have gone a month and a half without money. The Working Tax Credits people don't take 14 working days to process the fact you are not working; that money was stopped from the day I called to tell them of my change in circumstances.

Eventually, after 14 working days, my claim was processed and I was awarded Income Support at £71 a week. The claim was back-dated to the end of February, and a payment was sent - by BACS, which takes 3 working days. So that's now 17 working days.

In the meantime, it was a particularly cold spring, and I still have a hole in my ceiling from the earlier issues with the roof, which means that my heat mostly goes out of the hole and into the roof space. My bedroom is never warm, and I have an electric oil-filled radiator in there at night to keep S from freezing. My gas and electricity could not wait 17 working days for me to top them up and a lot of the money I did have went on that.

My daughter is currently munching her way through as much as she can get her hands on. I tend to be picky about what I let her get her hands on, so my money was going on making sure she had decent food to eat.

Towards the end of that 17 working days, when my bank balance was practically non-existent and the

kitchen was looking a little too Mother Hubbard-ish for my liking, it occurred to me that benefit reforms are due to come in. Now, aside from whether I think they are a good idea, or I think I will be better or worse off with the changes (really, they're so opaque about how these things are worked out who knows until the new payments are made?)... does anyone realistically trust this government to make the transition to Universal Credit smoothly? I sat and thought: do I want to be relying on these people for the only money I have coming in?

This was not helped by the fact that when it got to Day 17 and I checked my bank account, it was decidedly bare. When I called to enquire as to where the hell my money had gone (perpetually paranoid that my application would be turned down and I would be penniless), I was told by the call handler that she simply didn't know why the payment had not been sent, but she would send it now. Doesn't fill you with confidence, does it.

And so, I decided that I would rather go back to work and have benefit help me pay for childcare, than stay at home and rely on benefit to live. It's not very reliable, as it turns out, and that makes me nervous. It was ok to be skint and live off rice and beans when it was just me, but I have more expensive and varied tastes for my daughter. 

From the end of April I will be Single Mother At Work. Expect a lot of griping on the blog as I come to terms with leaving my precious little S at nursery, with getting us both up and out of the house on time, and with covering baby food marks on my work clothes. The nursery settling in session start next week, and I am petrified.

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Work and Benefits for a Single Mum

Last week, I was offered a job.

That makes it sound a bit like I was headhunted doesn't it. A friend knows some people who are re-opening a local pub, and he gave them my name for a job. I went in to speak to them about it the other day, and did a trial shift on Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours.

Of course, I have just put in a claim for Income Support, and really don't want to be in trouble for benefit fraud. So I called up and spoke to them. They were as helpful as any government department when you're trying to get a definitive answer on a specific point. The first five minutes was spent with "well you've not done any work yet so it's not a problem..." and "yes but I want to know where I stand before I do the work and potentially commit benefit fraud!" followed by "but you're not committing fraud because you've not done any work yet" and "*headdesk*"

The situation seems to be that while I am claiming Income Support, I can only earn £20 a week. I will need to submit "a few" payslips to show this. Anything I earn over that £20 mark will be deducted from my benefit so that I've effectively not earned it.

I have no idea what sort of job one could get where £20 would be regular weekly earnings. I'm guessing there aren't many around.

Whilst I understand that it would make a mockery of the system for me to be claiming benefit whilst simultaneously working and earning a small fortune, I don't think £20 is a realistic limit in this day and age. Minimum wage is £6.19 per hour I believe - which means I can only work 3 hours a week. Since I can't claim help with childcare until I'm doing 16 hours a week, this means I need to rope in a friend or family member on a regular basis to baby sit so that I can work... but will be unable to pay them to do this, what with my only earning £20 a week.

This also means that if I decide to stay on benefits, and not go back to work in May when my maternity leave finishes, I will potentially have 5 years with no work experience at all. Nothing to help me "keep my hand in" with the working world, nothing recent to put on my CV, no experience or familiarity with working life when S turns 5 and I am suddenly expected to go out and get a job. This can't be a good thing, surely? After five years of CBeebies and Jeremy Kyle, would anyone have the confidence and skills to go out and find a good job? Surely we should be encouraging people on Income Support to try and maintain a small part time job in order to keep them ticking over?

As it is, the people who offered me the job are fairly accommodating, and only really need someone to cover the odd busy period - so they are fine with me only working 3 hours a week. I sincerely doubt I would find the same situation if I applied for a job in Tesco or Sainsburys though.

The way I see it, there should be some sort of middle ground, where people like me can work maybe one or two shifts a week at a small job, earn a little extra money to pay for bits and bobs, and be more likely to then go on to find a "proper" job when the time comes.

The alternative, as far as I can see it, is for hoardes of parents to just be moved over from Income Support to Job Seekers Allowance when their youngest child turns 5.

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The Work Debate

I'm still trying to decide whether to go back to work, and to make all the mini decisions that go with the larger one.

Last week I finally bit the bullet and made some calls to some government departments. After a morning listening to Vivaldi, I'm fairly sure that all benefits are paid from the phone charges. If they're not, they should be. We'd all be rich.

If I go back to work:

Artist's impression of me at work

• My pay will stop in January, but they will hold my job open until May.
• I will need to find childcare for S. If I use a childminder, this is around £100 a week. Despite several phone calls and messages, I've not been able to get a response from the nursery closest to me as to what their costs would be
• Regarding payment for childcare, there are two options. My employers are part of the childcare vouchers scheme, which is a salary sacrifice set-up. I can opt to have a maximum of £243 per month taken from my pay (before tax and NI) to be paid to my childcare provider. Or I can have my Working Tax Credits help with childcare costs. They will pay "up to" 70% of the cost of my childcare. But if I do the childcare vouchers thing, I can't get Tax Credits for my childcare. Unless my childcare is more than £243 per month, in which case I can apply for Tax Credits to pay "up to" 70% of the difference. It's almost as if they're trying to trick you into being out of pocket.
• My employers are obliged to provide me with a place I can express breast milk for S while at work, but only until she is a year old - so April. After that I suppose everyone thinks she should be fully weaned, and to hell with whether she actually is or not.
• As far as I can tell, I will be earning just enough that I won't qualify for Housing Benefit, or Council Tax Benefit. 
• I would qualify for free prescriptions, eye tests, dentist, etc.
• From a pre-tax pay of around £200 a week I will have to pay £85 rent, £25 council tax, childcare, gas, electricity, food, water... I'm no mathlete, but I can't see how that adds up. Little bit worried. It's difficult to get any sort of prediction as to what my Tax Credits would be.

This is what staying home entails

If I don't go back to work:

• Income Support is £71 a week.
• I would get Child Tax Credits, but (obviously) not Working Tax Credits.
• I would qualify for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit
• I think I would get some sort of vouchers for fruit and milk.
• I can stay on Income Support until S is 5, if I so wish. The thought of five years of daytime telly is a bit horrid though.

One thing I need to take into consideration is that I have signed up to do this OU course, and want to do a good job with it. I also want to finish as soon as possible, which means taking as many credits at a time as I can - which means having the time to study them!

I spoke to the Income Support people a few times last week, and discovered that between February and May, while I am technically employed but receiving no pay, I can claim benefits as if I were not employed. 

For the moment my plan is to do just that. From February to May I will claim Income Support, and see if I can live reasonably on benefits and not go mental. By that point I will have been off work more than a year so I may well find I really need to go back to work. My bank balance may agree with me.

So what I've basically decided to do is to postpone making a decision for a few more months. Good work, Vicky.

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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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A Change in Priorities

When I was pregnant, a friend whose baby had not long been born warned me: don’t worry about the birth; the thing you need to try to prepare for is afterwards. I thought she was ridiculous: I had no worries at all regarding my abilities as a mother, and was sure everything would be fine once we’d got the scary business of the birth out of the way.

Turns out my friend was more right than something that is really very right.

Since having S, everything has changed. My priorities are totally different. And I think all of these changes have been for the better.

The first, most immediate change was simply that I could no longer just pop out somewhere: wherever I went, S had to come too. From that very first day in the hospital, it felt wrong to be away from her, even if just for a shower in the next room. When she was in NICU and I had to leave her there overnight while I slept on the ward, I felt like I’d left a limb behind somewhere. The day after we came out of hospital, S’s father gave me some money to go out and buy some food, telling me to just pop out and leave S here with him. It was the shortest, most horrible shopping trip I have ever been on. It just felt wrong to be wandering around without S; the last time I’d walked around town was 2 weeks previously, and I’d been carrying her in my belly. Now I had no bump and no baby, and I rushed around the shop as quickly as I could in order to get back, convinced that something bad would happen while I was away. When I came home, she was still fast asleep and completely unaware I’d even left the room. Since then, I can probably count the number of times I’ve left her anywhere on my fingers.

There was the time I left her with my mother while I went into a salon: she cried the whole time and my mother didn’t come to get me.

I left my sister Z pushing her around town in the pushchair while I had my hair cut a couple of months ago, and spent what is normally an enjoyable experience hoping it would be over soon so I could get back to my baby.

Since then, I think the most I’ve left her for is playing in the living room while I go upstairs to the toilet, or stand outside on the balcony chatting to my neighbour. My friend tells me I have First Baby Syndrome; others tell me it’s not healthy and that I need some “me” time, that I should leave her with a sitter and go out with my friends. In all honesty though, I don’t want “me” time. In the evenings when she goes to bed, more often than not I come downstairs and after ten minutes I miss her. A couple of hours in the evening to read and study is plenty for me. I’m not interested in going out drinking or for a meal. Occasionally I wish I could go to the cinema of an evening, but I know that if I went I wouldn’t enjoy the film because I would be thinking about S the whole time.

I used to laugh at the cliché you always see on TV shows, where the parents go out and leave their child with a babysitter and a massive list of instructions, then spend their entire evening on the phone checking everything is ok – now I am worse than that.

When I fell pregnant I had not been in my job for long, and I only worked 4 days a week. I would often take on overtime working in another team on my day off, and sometimes on weekends too. I wanted to do well in the quarterly development meetings, to go on training courses and progress as much as possible. Although I knew I would be off work for a while when I had S, I figured I would go back and just leave her at a nursery or with her father or a family member. Now the idea of leaving her in a nursery, even the best nursery in the world, for that length of time, on a regular basis, terrifies me. While I was walking through town yesterday I overheard a lady with a pushchair telling a friend, “well my job will still be there if I want to go back, but I didn’t have a child so that I could leave it with someone else…” I have several friends who are returning to work after having a baby, and several of them have said to me that if they could find a way to afford being a stay at home mum, they would do it. On the other hand, though, I have another friend who suffered with Post-Natal Depression and knew that she had to get back out to work or she would be in trouble. She seems to enjoy her job and her children seem, if anything, brighter and happier than a lot I’ve met.

As for me, I’m still undecided as to whether I will go back to work. But if I do, it won’t be on the same hours as before; it’s likely to be considerably fewer.

Becoming a mum has made me more confident in myself, with the realisation that actually, I’m doing this on my own, S is doing well, I’m doing a good job. But it has also made me endlessly paranoid and worried I’m doing it all wrong. The other day while D, my Home Start lady was here, S was lying on her play mat and I noticed a mark on the side of her face. I was horrified: what could have happened to cause a massive bruise like that? I knew that if  D saw anything in my home that gave her cause for concern she was obliged to report it to the charity, and to my health visitor (everything is confidential unless it’s something like a massive bruise on a baby’s face; then they are obviously obliged to report it). I sat there on the mat saying, “oh gosh, look at that, is that a bruise? Oh no where can that have come from, what’s happened, oh no…” Then S moved, and it turned out it was just a shadow from the way she was laying. D looked and said: babies will always get little bumps from time to time. She told me that when her son was little he was completely fearless but very accident prone, and eventually the staff at A&E told her if they saw him again that year they would have to call social services. That reassured me for a while… until I found a couple of scratches on her leg yesterday afternoon!

I have definitely become a lot more health conscious, and my diet has improved massively. For a few weeks after coming home from hospital, I was living off crisps, microwave meals and chocolate. I was only taking my supplements as and when I remembered, which was not on a regular basis, and I generally felt like crap. All the while, in the back of my mind, I knew that if I improved my diet I would feel better; years of experience of eating junk and feeling awful have taught me how much difference the old 5 a day can make. Then one day I realised that as S grew and started to take in what went on around her, she was likely to begin to think that all food came either from a crisp packet, or the white box that goes ping in the corner of the kitchen. That day I went shopping and had a salad for lunch instead. Since then, I still eat a lot of chocolate (like you wouldn’t believe!) and my eating habits are definitely not as healthy as they could be, but I try to always eat as much fruit and vege as I can. I also feel that I need to be healthy, not just to set a good example to S, but so that I can be as healthy as possible to be a good mother to her. After all, if I die of heart disease at the age of 50, where does that leave my daughter? When I look back at my childhood, one thing that stands out is that my mum and all her friends were always on a diet. They we either starting a diet or breaking their diet or talking about the next diet. My auntie had a fridge magnet that said, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow… tomorrow… tomorrow…” One time my mum did a sponsored weight loss for charity. In the eighties everyone was on about diets and weight loss; nobody thought anything of it. But I don’t want S to look back on her childhood and see the same thing

I saw a documentary on TV about foods that are marketed as healthy but are actually just as bad as many others, and when I saw a brand of drink that I and a friend both enjoyed featured on the show, I texted her: “oh wow, that drink actually has more calories than a can of Coke!” I was really surprised. She responded that she was completely uninterested in the calorie content or healthiness of any foods. This really surprised me; this friend has a toddler, and I had just assumed that she would have the same “I need to be healthy for my child” feeling I had. I thought everyone had it. It’s not like I have a blind panic of “must exercise, must lose weight” or anything like that, but the thought that I need to keep myself healthy is always there, in the back of my head. In the past I have been somewhat reckless with my health. My diet has always been questionable and I was never one to read the instructions on a pack of medication. Now I read the instructions, the list of possible side effects, check whether it’s compatible with breastfeeding, and more often than not put it back in the cupboard and make do without it. As my health visitor pointed out to me very early on, S is entirely reliant on me, so while she is my first priority, I need to be second on that list and ensure I am fit and healthy enough to do a good job of looking after her.

This is a weird one, but I feel like a grown up now I’m a mother. I’m 31 years old, I moved out of my mother’s house when I was 20 and have spent a number of years living alone, paying my own bills and fending for myself. I’ve had jobs where I was responsible for the financial affairs of an entire company, or where I managed several other people’s workloads. And I spent last summer playing house with my ex and his six children. But that’s exactly what it was: playing house. I still feel a lot like I’m playing house now; every time I do a load of washing it feels like a complete novelty to me. Having S has made me actually grow up and behave like an adult though. I can’t just not wash up (well I can, but only for one day); I can’t just not get out of bed if I don’t fancy it. I have to get up, prepare food, change and wash nappies, clean things, make sure bills are paid. Before, if I ran out of money part way through the month I would just make do with living off whatever was left in the kitchen or go hungry. Now I have to be careful with my money and make sure it never runs out, that there is always credit on the gas meter.

Every time something else for the flat is sorted out (painting a wall, putting curtains up or a floor down) I feel like I’m one step closer to being a proper, actual grown up, with a home and a floor and curtains and a loo brush and bins that have to be taken out. The fact that S has to have two lots of supplements every day adds to this: they have to be measured out in a sterile syringe, and given to her at the same time every day. She can’t do that herself; I am responsible for it. It’s not just me any more, messing about and maybe tidying the living room every other week. I am entirely responsible for another human being, who has nobody else to rely on and I take that responsibility very seriously. Oh good grief, I’ve grown up.

The way I feel about my body has changed. Before I got pregnant, I was constantly worried about how my body looked, whether I looked fat, whether this outfit made my belly look too big. I exercised a lot in order to improve the way I looked in my clothes. I used all manor of lotions and potions on my skin and spent a fortune on hair care products. When I got pregnant and my bump started to get bigger, there was massive relief that now my belly was supposed to be big, so I could wear tighter tops and let it stick out. After having S, I just wore whatever was hanging around; I’d moved house shortly before giving birth, and it was a long while before I sorted through all my clothes so I didn’t have much to wear, and I didn’t much care about how I looked. So what if my belly was sticking out, I’d just given birth. Now, six months down the line, I think I probably have a healthier relationship with my body. My belly does stick out, but so do most people’s, and really nobody’s ever looking are they; they’re too busy worrying about their own lumps and bumps. I like the way my legs look these days, but I’m more impressed by how well they can carry S and I around and up and down stairs all day without collapsing. I would like to lose a little more weight, but I doubt that will happen before I stop breastfeeding, and I’m not going to stop just for that reason. And these days I’m more likely to just use the baby shampoo that’s on the side of the bath than to rush to Boots to buy the expensive stuff I used before. Who really cares whether my hair smells of a rainforest? I’m just glad on the days it doesn’t smell of baby sick! I do occasionally have days where I’ll wear make up, but that’s mainly because I still have a reasonably bad (for a 31 year old) case of acne that probably won’t clear up until I stop breastfeeding. I’m too lazy to put makeup on every day though; it’s only for really special occasions, or days when the bags under my eyes are just that little bit too dark.

It’s a very strange experience, to suddenly be responsible for another being. Because S’s father is not in the picture, I am acutely aware that I am all she has. If I don’t do something, it won’t get done. When I first got pregnant my boss told me: “I think having a baby might just sort you out.” What he meant was: you can’t sit about all day navel gazing and pondering the futility of it all, if you have to get up and change a nappy and sing several rounds of Row, Row Row Your Boat. I hate to say it, but he was 100% right, just as my friend was when she told me everything would change after S was born.

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.

To Work or Not To Work?

I’ve been thinking about going back to work.

I’m entitled to stay off work until May, but they will stop paying me at the end of Janaury – so technically, I need to make my decision and either go back in February, or resign.

I like my job. The people are nice, it’s a friendly company, and being yelled at on the phone occasionally is more than made up for by the large amount of sweets and cakes usually available. I’m fairly sure they would allow me to cut my hours, change what days I work, whatever, in order to facilitate my return to work. It’s a big company with a lot of mothers already working there and my boss is something of a legend (I can say that because he doesn’t do reading or the internet, so he’ll never know I said it). Whether I like the job is not the issue, though.

I have so many friends who have had babies and had to go back to work before they felt ready. I’m sure lots of them would have liked to quit their job and stay home to look after their child for longer, but they couldn’t afford to do that. In fact, I think that’s most of my friends.

This is where being a single mother actually has advantages. If I stay off work, I will receive Housing Benefit and Income Support, and probably various other things that I’ve not really looked into but maybe should have by now. If I go back to work, I am led to believe that my Working Tax Credits will increase enough to more or less pay for child care, but I will be earning less money and may or may not qualify for Housing Benefit. Either way, it’s doubtful that I would be well-off. In fact, I’m likely to be decidedly skint in both scenarios. This gives me a choice most mothers don’t have: be skint at home, or be skint at work.

For most of my childhood, my mum didn’t have a job. She was there if I ever had to come home sick from school, and we spent our school holidays at home with her. As far as I was aware that was the norm. Now that I am a mother, I feel very strongly that if I decide I don’t want to go back to work until S is a little older, I should be able to make that choice. I have paid my taxes up to this point for that very reason. I believe every mother should have that choice, and the task of looking after a child or children should be seen as a job. After all, we are producing the next generation, and I’m sure everyone would rather they got the best possible start in life so as to not be a burden on the state later on. Not that I’m saying children who go to nursery or other forms of childcare will turn out to be delinquents; just that if a mother would rather look after the child herself, why shouldn’t she be able to?

I am well aware that if I opt to stay home with S for the next couple of years and live on benefits, I will be seen as one of those mothers: the leech on the state, living in a council flat and bleeding the government for all she can get. I am told I look younger than my years too (when I’m wearing make up to cover the bags under my eyes, obviously), so that doesn’t help with the prejudice. I remember last year S’s father pointing out to me how many of his neighbours had children who were around four years apart in age; inference being that they had gone and got pregnant again specifically to avoid having to go out to work. And actually, yes, a lot of the children in that area did have brothers and sisters exactly four years older and/or younger than them. I was aghast. I had no idea that people could be so cynical and calculating with something as important as creating another life. Do people really do that? Incidentally, I’m told that these days the government don’t make you come off benefits and get a job until the child is seven, so that should please a few of these women if they do in fact exist.

People do play the system, of course they do. And ultimately, it’s the mothers who are forced to go back to work earlier than they would like who pay the price for that abuse. I know there isn’t exactly spare money in the economy to fling at these things, but wouldn’t it be nice if the attitude was, Ok, go and have a baby, look after it, take your time, have enough money to live on comfortably, go back to work when you’re ready. Obviously that sort of system would have to be monitored to ensure people weren’t having a child and then leaving it with a relative while they got drunk all day and night on their benefits. I would have no problem with someone coming round to ensure I’m putting a lot of effort into bringing my daughter up well, if it meant I could have enough money to live more comfortably. As I said before, treat it like a job – because ultimately that’s what you’re doing, and you do it for longer than 8 hours a day.