I'm almost myself, just not quite

It's been touching to have a few people check up on me as I've been absent, particularly those who don't know me from Adam in real life (thank you Rachel and The Boy and Me).

I sat down to write many times in the last seven months and each time found myself an hour later staring at a blank page. I didn't understand why. There was so much going on in my life - back to work, two children to bring laughs and experiences into my life - yet I had nothing to say. That was reflected in my personal life. I could happily talk about nothing with work colleagues and acquaintances, but conversation ran dry with old friends.

Looking back now I can see that I had simply lost myself. I could function, I looked after my children, I threw myself back into work full time. There simply was nothing else left. Looking back at my year of maternity leave I can now see that I went into full avoidance mode: I started a peer supporter course when Badger Cub was three weeks old (obviously taking him with me); I volunteered at a new mums group at a local children's centre and spent my time listening, sympathising and giving information and advice in as unbiased a fashion as I could. If I concentrated on sorting out other people's issues then I didn't have to acknowledge my own.

Thankfully this has changed.

Maybe it was the Sertraline? I have been taking it for seven months, six of those at the relatively low dose of 50mg per day. A month ago I decided (after much research) to lower my dose to 25mg. Timing it with the onset of PMT probably wasn't the best idea but we survived the emotional onslaught and I've levelled out on the other side. The "brain zaps" in the first ten days (apparently a common withdrawal symptom) were unpleasant but have passed. I'm going to leave it at least another month and then try to come off it altogether, only not coinciding with PMT this time!

Maybe it was the CBT? I certainly think it has helped the personality in me that adores process and checklists. Being able to recognise my thinking errors and core beliefs has stopped the downward trend of negative thoughts.

Maybe it was the counselling? That was eight hours of my life I'm never going to get back... Possibly the most awkward I've ever felt, but perhaps that's the point? Having a stranger sit and wait for me to talk, to spill over with emotion, to watch me not talking. If nothing else it identified that I was angry. I was angry over the way I had to fight to break NHS red tape and birth my baby the way I wanted. I was angry that NHS policy could be so blind, so fearful of litigation and blame that they'd prefer to cut him out of me. Rather than confront that anger I diverted the energy into breech support forums, into peer support work, into anything that meant I didn't have to deal with it. The anger is diffusing. Still there but fading.

Maybe it was a combination of all of these, and also the relief that I had acknowledged the problem and was doing something about it.

I'm not quite there yet, not quite found, but I'm getting there.

Image courtesy of Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Black Dog On My Shoulder

I've been feeling this way for quite some time: lacking energy and drive; regretting not putting more effort into friendships, new and old, but not able to do anything about it; crying; non-existent libido (why does that feel like the hardest one to admit?); angry; generally not enjoying maternity leave anything like as much as last time. I talked to Father Badger about it a few times, but we agreed that it must be down to the pitiful amount of sleep I was getting - Badger Cub has always woken multiple times a night, and at eight months I could count on my fingers the times I'd had a block of four hours sleep. The FBI would probably stop short of this level of sleep deprivation.

Then three weeks ago a switch flipped and Badger Cub started sleeping. Not reliably all night, but most nights (with a few notable exceptions) he has slept eight or nine hours with one waking, and a couple of times with none. The problem is that I didn't start feeling any better. In fact I probably felt worse as I had the mental capacity to start thinking about the emotions.

I met up with a friend and her six month old baby for lunch and coffee. We chatted about many things, mostly baby related, and then she told me about her postnatal depression and how the antidepressants and counselling were helping her. I didn't realise it, but she had obviously spotted something she could identify with in the way I was talking. By the end of the afternoon I had opened up to her, shed a few tears and agreed that I probably ought to find some help rather than continue to try and deal with it myself.

I know there is no shame in depression. When my friend opened up my immediate thought was her strength in telling me. I still struggled to accept it as my situation though - I've always been the strong one, thick skinned, bulletproof. I must remind myself that I don't have to be strong; that my children deserve to have the whole of me.

It took another week for me to gather courage to talk to Father Badger and use the label - postnatal depression - so difficult. He agreed, was amazingly supportive and the following day I went to my GP. To be honest it's been a bit of an anticlimax. I told the GP that I wasn't comfortable with taking antidepressants and she referred me to Talking Space, the Oxfordshire NHS mental health service. I've been booked onto an initial telephone assessment next Friday - TEN DAYS after calling them. The average wait time for the first talking therapy session is four weeks. That takes me to the start of January, just one week before I return to work, full time.

It took a lot for me to go to my GP. A lot. I laid myself bare. I feel as though the NHS has calmly nodded, confirmed that I'm not about to top myself or put my children in danger, then cast me to the bottom of the pile.

I would rant, but I've run out of words and energy.

Image courtesy of Felixco, Inc / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The one where I whinge a bit

I'm having one of those days. It peaked when I found the cat peeing on the door mat. There's nothing quite like clearing up still-warm cat pee while a baby shouts at you from behind the stairgate (left there because he'll want to "help").

Father Badger took both children on the usual Saturday morning walk with his mum, sister and their dogs. In theory that means I can get an extra hour sleep, but realistically by the time I've helped get them ready I am far too awake to go back to bed, however tired I am. (And I am tired.) He took Baby Badger off to a birthday party at noon, then off to Oxford for some shopping. I had strange irrational dreams of Badger Cub having a nap for a couple of hours while I got stuff done. Nothing urgent or even important, but just stuff. Instead I've been feeding (expected), playing bricks, stopping him eating DVDs and having my knees chewed all day. And no nap.

I know I should expect to be doing these things with a nine month old baby, but just once I'd like to be me again. I dream of having the house to myself for a whole day. No preschooler asking for help at the toilet. No baby sucking my jeans, crying because I've taken two paces towards the door. I feel really selfish for these thoughts, but I am slowly going insane.

Just in case you're interested, he's still awake. Other than a few ten minute naps, he's been awake since 6:30am (ELEVEN HOURS AGO). You're thinking that at least he'll sleep well tonight, but you'd be wrong - I predict at least four wakings. That's him in the photo, strapped to my back in the Ergo so that I can at least leave a room without carrying him in one arm. He's keeping himself entertained trying to pull my hair.

Sigh.

A lullaby I used to know

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all

This always struck me as a bit of a rubbish lullaby: I'm going to stick you up a tree and leave you there, but when the storm arrives you'll plummet to the ground. Not the reassurance I would want. I guess it's a good thing that baby doesn't understand the words!

I've always sung to Baby Badger, partly as a way of keeping myself sane during any bouts of crying but mainly in the hope it brought her some comfort. As she's grown older we still sing, and she loves it: she has a good sense of rhythm and drinks up lyrics, teaching me all sorts of new songs she's learnt at nursery. Father Badger is a little less inclined to sing after being told at primary school to mime in assembly (an unforgivable thing for a teacher to do) but is coming out of his shell in the comfort of our own home.

Baby Badger's bedtime routine has evolved somewhat. I say routine - the time she goes to bed is anything but regular, but we do try to go through the same tasks in the same order: potty & nappy, pyjamas, teeth, story, YouTube.

Yes... you heard right. YouTube. She's crazy about animals and we found out about six months ago that a couple of BBC Earth clips were a valued reward for getting everything else done. They are generally three to four minutes long and cover a wide variety of animals: orangutans, lions, Deadly 60, Walks With Dinosaurs. Would you believe some of her favourite clips are of big dinosaurs tearing apart little dinosaurs?! We were slightly concerned when we overheard her talking in her sleep one night: "meat eating dinosaurs...".

A new favourite is competing with the animals: a certain Belgian-Australian singer. Every night it's now one "animal" (although that is sometimes a dinosaur), and "The Drawing Man". So, we nominate Gotye as our top lullaby. Enjoy...

This post is inspired by Jennie over at Edspire who is campaigning for The Lullaby Trust after her own tragic loss earlier this year. Please go and show her some love.

New Day, New Badger

I've not blogged in a long time. I always said that if I had nothing to write about then I simply wouldn't: I'd rather not write drivel. In truth, life is busy. I work full time, and by the time we've done dinner and bed time, it's quite often nine o'clock! Needless to say, Baby Badger is not the best at getting to sleep but we're slowly getting there.


I now find myself with something to write about... there's another badger on the way! He or she is due at the end of January 2013, and it's quite exciting! The only question is, what should his or her blog name be...?

45/366: poorly bunny

So tired from being unwell, she keeps falling asleep wherever she lands!

Flying Solo

I've been worrying about this weekend for a little while. It's my first go at flying solo overnight. Two nights and three days, to be precise. Father Badger is at the other end of the country for a long weekend, which leaves me in charge overnight for the first time with Baby Badger since those early few days in hospital, and I had NHS staff to help back then! I had visions of a baby that didn't want to sleep, of screaming fits (baby), of gradual meltdown (me)...

So far, it seems, I had nothing to worry about. Yesterday we did Sainsbury shopping in the morning (trolley rides are so exciting) followed by a chat and a cuppa with some of my NCT friends and their babies. Dinner was home made pizza with olives on it: Baby Badger ate all the olives, demanding to steal them off my slices! Today started with a nice walk over the hills with baby on my back in my Ergo followed by lunch with my parents. Baby Badger then went to my mother in law for the afternoon whilst I went to the theatre daahhrling where she had a second lunch! I think she must have worn herself out playing because she was ready for bed soon after we got home!

Assuming we get through tonight unscathed, I've just got tomorrow to get through and I'm looking forward to it. I feel like supermum.

Image: www.ergobabycarrier.com

It's finally happened...

... It's the last day of my maternity leave. Baby Badger is at the nursery until 2pm and I'm sat having a relaxing lunch (salad to be healthy followed by crumble because I can) and wondering what next week holds.

I blogged before about my concerns regarding going back to work, and they've not really changed. She's had a practice day with each set of grandparents and took no more than a couple of ounces of expressed milk, preferring to hold out for the source at the end of the day. She is adventurous with food, but still not eating large amounts. Taking into consideration that she's only put on 5oz in two months, I'm a little concerned: hopefully today's lunch at nursery will have gone a bit better than the first settling in session. If not we'll be continuing to shovel down full fat yoghurt after every meal (which she loves)!

I've been feeling quite upset about going back to work recently. The thought of leaving her with someone else, when she's been used to me pretty much all of every day for the last year. She's changing so much now, sometimes on a daily basis, and I'm loathe to miss out on it. She is so close to walking and I'd be disappointed not to see the first independent steps.

On a more selfish note, I've been dreading it because I'm expecting to be dead on my feet for the first few weeks. I hate mornings, and it's going to be a 6:30 start and out of the door at 7:30, with all three of us clean, dressed and fed. That seems like a herculean task! Then follows a day at work (where I spend my lunch break expressing in the medical room) before collecting Baby Badger on the way home. I'll be back before Father Badger most days, so I'll be flying solo for a while looking after her (which I assume I'll be looking forward to) and trying to get dinner sorted. And that's before I consider how on earth I get the vast quantities of laundry done.

This week, however, I've been feeling more positive. We've done several trial runs at the morning, getting up at 6:30 and ready for 7:30. We managed, although I'm pretty tired. Other than not eating enough food, the first two hour nursery session went well, as did the practice days with grandparents.

I think she's going to be ok. I just hope I am.

Image: Phiseksit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Who covers for Mum?

I'm on day eight of the cold from hell. I've gone through sore throat, stuffy head, tickly cough, stuffy nose, lost voice, snotty cough, and I'm quite frankly fed up of it!

My first mistake was being Mum. Baby Badger came down with a cold last Wednesday, and the poor thing was sneezing snot everywhere and really not happy about it. The stoopid voice inside my head was grateful that I'd only got a sore throat and had obviously escaped the full force - Hello! Seriously, I thought that?! - and she came into bed with us for the night for some extra comfort and unrestricted booby milk. It did, of course, mean I got much less sleep than normal as our bed is simply not big enough for the three of us, and the cold took hold. Bah!

My second mistake was attempting to carry on regardless: I had a full week of evening activities that I didn't want to cancel. A couple of years ago I could have done it. Apparently now I can't. Bah!!

This wasn't intended to be a rant about feeling unwell, honestly! It is, after all, just a bad cold. I guess my main point here is this: who covers for Mum when she's ill? I had one relatively recuperating day while Baby Badger was still ill so we spent most of it in bed together feeding and sleeping, but for the rest of the week I've had a bright and bushy tailed 11½ month old wanting stories, games, food, carrying around and general full-on awake attention while I've worked my way through mountains of tissues (which I then had to stop her from eating).  Exhausting! It was such bad timing: family members were either away or unavailable; Father Badger wasn't able to work from home at all.

So... what tips do you have for low effort entertaining? Not that I intend being this ill again, but it's always best to be prepared.

By the way, I was amazed at just how quickly Baby Badger recovered from the whole thing - yey for booby milk! I'm actually quite jealous that I'm taking so much longer to kick it - I've had a few people suggest that I express my milk, shove some up my nose and drink the rest. That doesn't entirely appeal, but if it's not gone in a few days I may be reduced to giving it a go...

Image: Paul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Happy Birthday to me...!

Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday dear ****!
Happy birthday to me!

No, I'm not telling you how old I am, but it's somewhere between 30 and 40 and it's not a prime number.

For the last few weeks I've had the usual questions about what I want for a present, and the honest truth is nothing. There's nothing I'm itching to have and nothing particularly I need, and I really don't see the point of people buying me something for the sake of buying me a present.

I had a lovely pre-birthday. Yesterday, as their "present" to me, Father Badger's mum and sister came round and helped me weed a flowerbed. You've not seen the state of my neglected garden, so you don't really get the scale of their generosity! It's gone from three feet high nettles, goose grass, twitch and other assorted weeds to neatly isolated plants surrounded by bare earth. Wow. I say again: wow.

I also had a lovely birthday today. Father Badger took the day off work. He and Baby Badger ran errands this morning, leaving me to lie in until 9:30, I had breakfast cooked for me and then I relaxed in a lovely hot bath to melt away the aches from yesterday's gardening. Once I was up and dressed we went off to a local farm centre to show Baby Badger dexter cattle, geese and alpacas (but mallard ducks waddling past, quacking, were definitely her favourite). We had a lovely lunch at the cafe, with Baby Badger happily scoffing our peas, potatoes and spinach (and a sneaky bit of chocolate pudding). It has truly been a lovely family day together.

As an added bonus to the day, I stepped on the scales this morning to see my change of attitude this past week has paid off: 4lb lighter than last Monday! I've enjoyed a day off with extravagant breakfast and pudding at lunchtime, but I'll knuckle down again tomorrow and see what this week can achieve.

Image: Rawich / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Steps, sleep and missing my mocha!

Baby Badger has now been in her cotbed in the nursery for two weeks, and is doing remarkably well. She has been sleeping from 11pm until 7am quite happily, so I decided it's now time to work on an earlier bedtime so that we're established with a good night's sleep and a 6:30 start in time for my return to work in June. Obviously, it was never going to go smoothly.

Monday evening went well: she was in bed asleep at 7:45 ready for my mum to babysit for an hour or so, but woke soon after 10 (luckily I was home) screaming at the top of her lungs for milk - screaming so hard that she gave herself hiccups! I got her back off to sleep again, and she woke again at 3am. I've reminded myself that compared to a few months ago when she was waking 2-3 times per night, this was actually a good night! After the recent luxury of a full night's sleep, it didn't feel so good...

I'll put forward my excuses now: after a disturbed night, day two of the new healthier me was not quite as good as day one. I had two biscuits at Baby Signing, but I did skip my usual (much enjoyed mocha) and get a  mug of tea instead. I'm not sure that entirely balances out, but it's a step in the right direction! Speaking of steps, I managed 5,777 of them, again with a 20lb Baby Badger strapped to the front of me for most of them. She did do her best to help me make up for it however, as she ate going on half of my chilli pasta bake at Baby Lunchbox! Don't you just love Baby Led Weaning?!

Image: Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Silent Sunday - 8 May 2011

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Reasons to be Cheerful: sleep, splashes and family time

I thought it was about time I joined in with Michelle's Reasons to be Cheerful blog hop, especially considering what a lovely week we've had.

Father Badger has been off work since last Thursday, taking advantage (as millions of other people have) of the extra bank holiday to get lots of time off work for minimal annual leave. A full seventeen days as a family! It really has been lovely to spend so much time together, even if a lot of it has been spent catching up with jobs around the house. We've had a day out in Bath shopping, we've spent hours doubled over holding Baby Badger's hands while she walks around, we've spent time with family and gone on walks. I really don't want it to end after the bank holiday.

Today we went swimming, all three of us. It's the first time we've taken Baby Badger to a swimming pool. I know this is rather late in the day at almost eleven months old, but for months she hated baths and my reasoning was that if I couldn't keep her in a bath for more than thirty seconds without screaming, attempting a swimming pool was not going to be a winner. She loved it! Our local pool has a beach effect where it starts incredibly shallow and gradually gets to a depth for swimming. We spent the first ten minutes or so sitting in the shallows while she splashed and gradually went deeper. She was pretty happy being pulled forward on her tummy with my hands under her arms, not at all keen on going onto her back, however she was supported, and forgave me for dunking her under four times!

I decided a little while ago that I would like her to be in her own room by the time I go back to work in June. She'll be a year old and doesn't seem to need night feeds any more, and I think we'll all sleep better - we won't need to tiptoe, we won't wake her up turning over in bed, and I'll probably sleep better too. Last night we had her in her big girl room for the first time. How did it go? She slept soundly from 11 until our alarm went off at 7am. Hooray! I wonder if she'll do it again tonight...?

Silent Sunday - 24 April 2011

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