Category Archives: Motherhood

Let’s talk about sex

23 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Divorce, Love and sex, mental health, Motherhood

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So, let’s talk about sex, baby!

Let’s talk about all the good things, all the bad things, that, well, make me… ME.

The advice I’ve had from many different places, on breaking up with my partner of 20 years, has been to rebuild me, spend time on me, learn who I am again, be on my own for a bit – that I don’t need a man to make me happy.

Etc.

I struggle with advice.

Mostly because I want to take ALL of it, because I’ve learned over a number of years that I’m wrong and stupid and unstable, and should therefore cede to a higher authority.

But advice is like new clothes. You have to hold it up to a mirror to see if it suits you, maybe try it on, but be careful not to remove the tags and commit to buying it (or into it) until you’re sure it’s really for you.

And this advice just didn’t… sit quite right across the shoulders.

One of the things that most upset me about the split, was the overwhelming fear that it meant that part of my life was over. For good. That I wouldn’t get that chance again – of love, of connection.. of SEX.

Some part of me knew this was catastrophising. But it FELT real.

The plain fact is that being a c40 year old mum is very different to being a c40 year old dad. Parenthood simply does not take the same toll on the body, mind or day-to-day life of men as it does on women. It just doesn’t. It can’t.

And I genuinely thought that no one would ever want what was left of me after all that – the saggy, empty bits. The mad, angsty bits. The scarred, broken bits.

The unfairness and loss of that was part of the black hole that at one point threatened to suck those broken bits in for good.

But it turns out that part of my life isn’t over, after all.

And what I’ve come to realise is that sex is one of the things I needed to help stick the broken bits back together.

Sensuality and physicality are part of my GLUE. They’re part of what makes me feel like ME. A part that had been missing for a long, long time.

My relationship with sex has been – let’s go with screwed – but not in the good way. Look, if you need connection to have sex, and that connection erodes, what you end up with is… wrong. Really wrong. And that’s gonna mess with your head. (And other parts of your anatomy).

Putting that right again is an important – and ongoing – part of healing. Or at least it is for me.

The fact is I DON’T need a man/partner to validate me. I DO need to learn how to re-establish boundaries so I don’t get eroded again.

But I also need to be me.

And sex is part of me FEELING like me.

(Or at least – now that instinct has resurfaced – of feeling like a teenage boy with ZERO CONTROL over his libido. One of the two).

At the end of the day, it’s about balance. Or rebalancing. Picking up ALL of the threads that made and make me myself, and weaving them back into something whole.

A rag rug, by the hearth.
Scraps of memory, beauty, and colour.
Tied tight again.
Glued at the edges for good measure.

Help.

23 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in mental health, Motherhood

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Sorry Elton, but sorry isn’t the hardest word. (As that sentence proves). The very hardest word is HELP.

Help, and its root source, kindness, has been missing in my life for a long time. I learnt not to ask, and not to expect.

Relearning that I actually deserve kindness, and how to ask for help, has been one of the very hardest things in a year of very, very hard things.

It has been harder even than learning how to establish barriers and boundaries, how to demand respect, and how to weather disrespect.

But I’ve been regularly floored by how much kindness there is out there, and how help often comes in quite unexpected forms…

Sometimes help looks like someone coming round to open the latest divorce papers, because you can’t face them by yourself.
Sometimes help looks like being taken on a night out for a treat.
Sometimes help looks like a Marks and Spencers voucher.
Sometimes help looks like taking the kids for an evening slumber party so you can get to a hospital appointment.
Sometimes help looks like someone reminding you it’s not you.
Sometimes help looks like someone reminding you it IS you, but that you should forgive yourself, and that it’s part of growing.
Sometimes help looks like medicine.
Sometimes help looks like advice.
Sometimes help looks like a compliment.
Sometimes help looks like a babysitter.
Sometimes help looks like a chat.
Sometimes help looks like a cup of tea.
Sometimes help looks like cheese.
Sometimes help looks like a tissue.
Sometimes help looks like a hug.
Sometimes help looks like money.
Sometimes help looks like sex (more on that another time).

And sometimes, help looks like a free silver-smithing workshop…

The latter was offered by a lovely lady called Alison, who saw this blog and thought I needed cheering up. Alison happens to be Mrs Handmade In Nether Edge, is a glass and jewellery designer, and runs workshops from her Nether Edge studio.

This involves rocking up to her house, shooting the breeze about life (and boy, has Alison LIVED), being fed homemade comfort food, and inbetween being taught how to make jewellery from precious metal clay (she also does glass workshops too).

If you play your cards right you might even get a cuddle and a few words of wisdom. These are worth worth than their weight in, well, silver. And glass.

Some people might get renewal from a spa day or a massage, possibly with a group of friends. I’d rather take that group of friends to see Alison, get lost in a bit of creativity, and come away with a full belly, something beautiful you can keep, a sense of achievement, and a vague feeling that life really is worth living, isn’t it?

I will never get married again, but I would LOVE a Handmade in Netheredge Hen Do (another of Alison’s services).

So thanks for your help, Alison, and all the other helpful and kind people of the world, and in particular of Sheffield.

Thanks for showing me that kindness rules, how to accept it (sometimes even without becoming teary – progress!), how to EXPECT it, and increasingly, gradually, how to ASK for it.

(No, I’m not asking for another free workshop, I’m still high from the first one and will be saving up for my second 😉 ).

Repeat after me:

Can. You. Help. Me. Please?

It’s getting easier every day.

As, indeed, is everything else.

Mumonthenetheredge
xx

Blind date – BLOW BY BLOW

23 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Humour, mental health, Motherhood

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So who wants to hear about my first date in more than 20 years??? My first BLIND date ever.

Brace yourselves.

There was bonding.
There were tears.
There was laughter.
Things got really real, really fast.
Hell – there was actual BITING.

And I’m about to give you a blow by blow account.

Go get a cuppa. You’ll need one.

Back?

Okay, so I MAY have slightly oversold things…

Because my first blind date wasn’t a result of the Great Online Dating Experiment. It was with a woman I met through this blog.

Lots of people PM me. These are mostly people going through similar stuff, who’ve read a post and identified with it, but can’t really comment in front of family and friends. Those messages mean a lot to me. But I’ve always shied away from meeting anyone – possibly because I’m afraid I’d be a massive disappointment in real life, where I’m much less amusing, witty or deep.

However, now I am a YES woman. I say YES to stuff. I explore. I put myself out there.

And I go on blind dates, apparently.

*Mae* had had a similar break up to mine. Two kids, of similar ages, also struggling to varying degrees with their new split life; the new woman, the new routine.

What we recognised in each other was loneliness, I think. And not single parent loneliness – but the loneliness of being emotionally isolated for a really long time, in the company of the one person who used to think we were sunshine, but came to dim us.

What’s most upsetting, possibly about any break-up, is that it tends to be the very things that someone fell in love with that they come to hate the most. That your best bits are suddenly the worst to the one person you fully entrusted them to. That the beautiful parts – the very brightness that drew them in – are the parts that turn dark and ugly in their eyes first.

Kind of like moths coming down with a gradual but severe attack of photodermatitis. 😉

The word that came up most with Mae was CONNECTION.

Connections, for both of us, were lifelines.

Connection is why all those PMs mean so much to me. Why I started this blog in the first place.

And the lack of connection in our marriages had started to erode and rot other connections and relationships in our lives too – feeding tubes cut off through isolation, confusion, death, mental ill-health, and just plain old circumstance. And it has left both of us reeling, gasping for air, for meaning, reaching out in the dark – trying to remember our sunshine.

Trying to connect with ourselves again. And needing those connections to do so – to feel real again.

This wasn’t a man-hating session. It was about sadness, and loss, and growth, and solidarity. A lot of it focussed on our kids and how to help them – again relationships we both base on connection, and we talked about how hard a line that is to walk and hold alone.

I like to think what we found in the park was a connection. And that it was important to both of us – two lost fireflies passing each other and glowing brighter, just for a bit. And maybe stronger as a result.

I don’t know if I’ll see Mae again. We were both raw. Both busy. Both preoccupied. And obviously I don’t want to look too much like a massive weirdo stalker by insisting she become my friend (although if she reads this, yes please!)

I do know I learnt a lot from her in just a short amount of time.

She’s further down the break-up line than me. And more sorted and more wise than she thinks she is.

When the poor Small Small got bitten by another feral toddler vying for the slide (I promised we’d get to the biting bit!) Mae had an emergency lollipop in her handbag that fixed everything in super-quick time.

I have always wanted to be the kind of woman that has emergency lollipops in her bag, but it has always felt like a sea-change of personal development, organisation and adulting that I’m simply not ready for.

Mae made me believe that perhaps I could just pick a couple up the next time I pop into the corner shop.

And THAT’S what connection can do for you.

BLOW BY BLOW.
As promised.

It may not have been salacious, but I hope it’ll do anyway.

Happy Sunday.

Mumonthenetheredge
x

The Packing Of The Bags

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Parenting

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The Packing Of The Bags.

This, more than anything else, epitomises for me what’s now called the ‘mental load’ of motherhood.

And I’m afraid it is Mums who cop for The Packing Of The Bags, more often than not.

Everyone knows that as soon as you have the baby the physical load of what you have to carry round is frankly enormous. Nappies, spare clothes, change mat, wipes, bottle, dummy, sanitisers, warming holders, spare bottle, food, food options, the one spoon they’ll actually eat from, muslins, bibs, scratch mitts, hat, toys, nappy bags, pram/buggy, umbrella, etc etc.

But it’s not the fact you have to leave the house carrying slightly more than the SAS on 3-day exercise drills that’s so draining – it’s the thinking through the day’s eventualities for each and every member of the family – day in and day out.

It is debilitatingly exhausting.

And misunderstood.

“It’s just putting a few things in a bag, what are you making such a fuss about?”

This is a direct quote, and fairly typical of the mystified reaction of, let’s face it, Dads.

I once (perhaps twice) threw all my toys out of the pram (metaphorically) and told HIM to pack the bag for a change. I was told it was harder for him as he doesn’t do it that often and easier for me because I do it all the time. WHICH IS EXACTLY THE POINT.

All. The. Time.

The minutiae of everyday, step-by-step, running through your head on a loop. Who’s got to be where by when. What they need with them. If they/you can carry it. Where the car seats are and when they can be swapped round. All of it.

It’s like constant crisis, contingency and inter-dependency planning, in your head.

And it’s NOT easy.

When you’ve got more kids you’ve got the school bag, too. **Shudder**.

Not to mention your work bag and handbag.

And no, just because it’s now the school holidays DOES NOT MAKE IT ANY EASIER.

Because now you have The Packing Of The Picnic and The Packing Of The Suitcase too – GOD HELP US ALL.

Even in regular term time, it’s not like it’s the same stuff going into The Packing Of The Bags every day.

A consistent groundhog day would actually be comparatively easy – but this really never happens.

* On a Monday it’s swimming, so pack the kit – not THAT towel the other one – and don’t forget the snack for afterwards.
* Oh, and they’re painting at nursery so there needs to be an old t-shirt in there somewhere.
* Bring £1 for sports day/wear green day/wear spots day on Tuesday.
* Might be sunny, so don’t forget hats and suncream – all labelled.
* And raincoats, because Britain.
* Small has ballet later and we might not get back to the house so need shoes and tutu in there.
* Don’t forget Baby!!!!!!
* No not that one – the other one. No, she was the favourite LAST week, apparently.
* Play date after school so there needs to be a change of clothes – Sarah’s bringing her bridesmaid dress so something like that.
* Library day – don’t forget the library bag.
* Return the X form by Y in the book bag. No, not the library one, the other one.
* The new school shoes rub a bit so put the trainers in as back-up, just in case.
* More pants for nursery, please, she came home in spares.
* Return the spares, washed.
* Homework is due. Ask other mothers what the hell it is at on the WhatsApp group and scramble to put together in the morning before school.
* Multi-sports/dancing/jazzercise club after school so another change of clothes.
* Nursery are walking to the library – don’t forget sensible shoes and permission slip.
* Bring in plastic bottles for the recycling sculpture.
* Packed lunch day, and we need to buy more jam for sandwiches. No, ham will not do.
* Nursery needs more medicine! So call Dr, call pharmacy, collect and deliver.
* Dress down day at work – bring in home baking. (LOL).
* Period – throw in sanitary towels – once wrestled as novelty play items from the children.
* No, tampons are not cat toys.
* Even if you draw a face on them.
* Big external meeting on Thursday – find ancient lipstick and bag-sized hairbrush – probably in the Barbie box.

I could go on. But you get the picture. You probably LIVE the picture.

And now your picture involves outdoor entertainment and sustenance supplies, too! JOY!

During The Packing Of The Picnic you must cater for every taste, take pains to appear relatively healthy if you’re in public, include pudding unless you want to be stung for another ice cream, a full size rug, bin bags for the debris, all of which must all pack away into a bag you can carry solo, alongside the toddler who won’t a) walk or b) buggy, and two scooters/bikes, for an unspecified distance until a suitable picnic spot is found. And back again.

Oh, and you may need kites/footballs/wet play stuff too.

Don’t even get me started on The Packing Of The Suitcase. This was a previous blog, where I take you through the process in approx 181 simple steps. Go look in my page archive. You’re welcome.

THIS is the mental load.

Right here.

Now the instinct of your average Dad, is to try and SYSTEMISE this.

Because, MEN.

But in a highly unscientific survey of Mums I Happen To Know, this systemisation is resisted, seemingly in some kind of unspoken yet instinctual last ditch feminist stand.

I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure this is what the first wave of feminists were trying to achieve…

I’ll give you an example.

“My mother,” said Dadoffthenetheredge, helpfully one day, “used to do HER washing on regular days, and plan out all the meals for the week beforehand.”

Obviously, this is just what every wife wishes to hear.

I believe this is the same conversation where I was told I was “underperforming at washing” (direct quote). I can’t imagine why we split up.

I tried to explain, to his bemusement, that I would rather DIE than live life like a 1950s housewife, with a whites wash on a Monday, coloureds on Wednesday, and fish supper every Friday.

It literally makes me want to poke my own eyes out with the one plastic spoon the baby would eat with.

So does the thought of keeping laminated lists of what everyone needs on each given day, and ticking them off one by one, as I diligently pack the bags the night before and line them up neatly at the door – presumably wiping my hands on my apron afterwards in satisfaction, setting my curlers, and possibly ironing a newspaper, for reasons no one has ever understood.

It might make life easier; it would also make it INFINITELY MORE DEPRESSING.

So here’s a radical idea. What if we didn’t systemise the mental load – what if this summer, we SHARED it?

Whoah.

Rad.

What if The Packing Of The Bags was something both parents both did – perhaps on a rota system if you really really can’t live your life without management systems?

I’m pretty sure that’s the way the SAS operate.

No man left behind:
No woman left bogged down by the unexpected but very real weight of family administration.

Until that happens, though, good luck with The Packing Of The Picnic and The Packing Of The Suitcase.

Only 6 more weeks of Summer!!!!

😉

Do you hug other kids?

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by in Motherhood, Parenting

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Do you hug other kids?

I don’t really.

Even the ones I’ve seen pretty much weekly since the Big Small was a baby.

I high five them. I look at and admire/sooth injuries and missing teeth. I lift them in and out of swings. I play chase. I pick up the crying ones and return them to their main care-giver. I may stroke a small head or two if it’s hovering at hand-level, usually on my way down to eye-level for a conversation.

If a hug occurs naturally then GREAT.

But for the most part, it just doesn’t.

I think the rule is, they initiate.

And there now seems to be some science – or at least recognised psychology – behind this.

Small children tend to know that a hug MEANS something. And they will seek out that comfort when they need it, or share that joy with trusted people – often in a hierarchy of who is around at the time. (So the nursery key worker unless Mummy is in the room – etc).

By insisting children kiss Granny goodbye, or even by opening our arms to a semi-strange child in invitation, we are teaching children about the ‘social’ hug. Manners over instincts – how to fulfill expectations and play a role assigned to them.

These are not real displays of either affection or acceptance.

And the gap between what is natural and what is forced – by expectation or endorsement or reward – can be dangerous.

This is really the first base of consent. And that’s been in the news a lot lately – #MeToo #TimesUp

By confusing what is instinctual about touch and what is social nicety, we are robbing children of a very important and organic barrier that is really very valuable.

So they know if something actually feels right, or if it just feels like the right thing to do.

Or if, God forbid, it actually feels wrong.

If you can no longer tell the difference in reward between genuine oxytocin or pleasing the adults around you, where does that leave you?

Telling children what to do with their bodies, how they feel about touch, and then praising them for what feels weird just isn’t quite right, is it?

Some children are naturally more affectionate than others. (I know a 3 year old at my music group who dishes out hugs like a Las Vegas card dealer deals cards). But others are slow to bond, and precious of their personal space. In these children swift affection could even become a sign of anxiety.

So how do you tell the difference?

They initiate.

Every time.

And just because they hugged you the last time doesn’t mean they’ll hug you again.

Boom! We’re right back into the consent narrative, aren’t we?

I’d love to hear how it works with your friends’ kids.

(NB. on this post. Yes, it was precipitated by the Other Woman. Who sat in my family car. On my family drive. On the first time she met me, and the third time she met my kids. 8 months down the line from a 20 year relationship ending. Commanding them to tell me what they’d had to eat at their lovely family meal out. And then insisting Big supply a hug before she left. So she seemed…. nice).

The other family

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by in Divorce, Motherhood

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So how does it feel to have another woman start being the family that you wanted, with your husband and kids?

Tonight they’re out for a family meal, with the kids and my ex in-laws of the last 20 years.

So I’m going to go with, well, pretty rubbish, actually.

I should be zenning my way through it. But I’m just so frustrated about the SILENCES in my life – which have shaped it for the worse since the Smalls came along.

You know. The things we’re all not supposed to talk about out loud.

Things like birth.
The awfulness of new motherhood.
Mental health, depression and anxiety.
Incontinence.
Prolapses.
Fissures.
The complications of relationships after children – sex after children – careers after children… All of it.

Because so much of it is about minimising and dismissing women’s emotional or physical pain as somehow unseemly.

In this case, talking about your break-up and how awful it feels really isn’t the Done Thing.

It may be the subject of 90% of all pop songs, but in real life, it tends to feed straight into the narrative of all ex-husbands all over the world – that the woman they left is ‘a bit of a psycho’, possibly ‘wild with jealousy’, has certainly ‘lost the plot,’ and definitely needs to ‘get over it’ by now.

One of the most terribly unfair things about what’s a terrible and unfair thing in general, is that the only route really deemed acceptable for an ex-wife is the high road. You basically have to sit back with as much dignity as you can muster and watch – pretending it all doesn’t hurt like buggerooney.

Or you’re just cast as the madwoman in the attic.

The only exception to this rule is indeed the world of pop, so if you’re lucky enough to be Pink, or Rihanna, or Adele, you suddenly get a free pass to sing out your pain from the rooftops (which have traditionally, and coincidentally, always been ABOVE the attic – go figure).

But unless you have a two octave range and a forthcoming album to fill, forget it, love. Shut up and put up.

The thing is, it DOES hurt. And I don’t WANT to have to pretend otherwise.

I have to do that for my kids, every day, because they’re 6 and 3 and they don’t need to know anything but that Mummy and Daddy love them very much but don’t live together any more.

But that’s not the tale I have to tell the rest of the world. Why should I?

Because I’m not over it. Not by a long shot. (I mean, it happened 8 months ago). You don’t get over this sort of thing – you get through it. And I am getting through it.

I AM also jealous – but not of her, or of him. I’m jealous of the family unit I worked for and tried to achieve, and begged him to join in on. The one currently out to dinner.

For their very first meeting, he took *Jessica* and the kids to a play centre and restaurant we used to frequent as a family. Slotting her right into role, but playing his counterpart far better than he ever did for me. For us.

How is that not supposed to hurt?

How could any human being feel otherwise?

That’s why I don’t think that any of this makes me a psycho. Or the madwoman in the attic. (Nor, sadly, Pink, as I’m tone deaf).

Feeling emotional about the demise of your long term relationship, the break up of your family, and being away from your kids is NORMAL.

Boringly normal.

Not feeling emotional about it would be kind of, well, abnormal, surely?

I would have liked to have met her, first, though. And I think that’s normal, too.

But they didn’t want to do that unless they could do it together. When Dadoffthenetheredge and I are already not communicating well, I just couldn’t see that working. I still just can’t imagine how it would have looked – the three of us sat there opposite each other, in a bizarre interview situation. Gah! It’s just too awful.

Now, I COULD see a coffee shop or a pub in which she and I could have spent a slightly awkward 10 minute conversation about each other and the kids. (This is how other people I know seem to have done it).

I’d like to know the woman they come home talking about – just a bit. What she does for a living. For hobbies. That sort of thing. (Just like I like to have a cursory conversation with the new key worker at nursery, or the new teacher, or the folk who run Catonthenetheredge’s cattery).

I’d like to see her as a human being, and for her to see me as the same. I actually think it would have helped all of us – mostly the kids.

Also, it would have avoided what will now be an excruciating first meeting – probably in front of the kids – as they play happy families at the local park/farm, and I ill-time a walk or run. Or a trip to Tesco. Oooooof. I get palpitations just thinking about it – rounding the bread aisle and walking slap-bang into them… My family minus me. And I’ve got no idea how the kids would react.

Anyway, for now what I get to do is smile and coo when the tales of *Jessica* come home with the Smalls – this stranger living the life I wanted, if only part time.

It’s weird.

And then I get to mop up the Smalls’ wobbles and tears and bad dreams, which come inevitably with more change, all without letting my mask slip.

So here it’s slipping.

Here, in this space, I want to be able to say: Ouch.

Ouch.

Ouch.

OUCH.

Sometimes I do read these stories online, from women further down the line, grateful for the other woman loving their kids as her own when they’re away from her. Maybe one day I’ll be there.

I’m already grateful, in some ways, that she’s inspiring him to be better than he could be for me. Because that’s good for the kids, in the long run, isn’t it?

And then I think about my still pudgy-round-the-edges smallest Small waking up in the morning and climbing into bed for cuddles with a woman who isn’t me, and my whole soul weeps. Very much like it did when the Big Small first came home from her first full day of nursery smelling of Another Woman.

That got better fast.

I’m sure this will, too.

Until then, though, I’m going to give myself – and anyone else who needs it – permission to feel emotion about quite clearly emotional things.

Channel your inner Pink/Rihanna/Adele.

It’s okay to acknowledge things suck. And you don’t even have to sing about it in order to let it out!!!!! No, really. (But hell, if it helps, go for it).

It’s okay to feel weird.

It’s okay to feel sad.

It’s okay.

We’ll be okay, too.

We’re still rock stars.

Or at least Mums.

And sometimes that’s the same difference, right?

Who am I?

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood

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I’m somebody, I’m somebody, who am I?

This is a game we used to pay in the car when I was a kid. So you pick a character, action or thing and others have to guess it while you say just ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Are you a human?

Yes.

Are you a boy?

No.

Etc.

Today the game appears to be called ‘What’s Up?’ and is flipped so you wear a crown with a mystery card in, and have to guess the character/activity others have chosen for you. (Same difference inside out).

For me, the phrase ‘I’m somebody, I’m somebody, who am I?’ has an addictive rhythm I keep returning to. Because the truth of the matter is; I don’t know.

I can answer the first two questions I’ve posed above, and then I’m basically stumped.

I was somebody, once. But I really can’t remember much about her.

The bits I liked best about her are faded or fuzzy. And I don’t really know what happend.

I suppose I got muddled by motherhood.

I got broken by work.

A bad relationship eroded me, piece by piece, a frog in a pot. Suffocating without realising.

There has been so much loss in general – and bits of me came away with each one. I didn’t stop to pick them up.

I have continued to run on momentum, necessity, and adrenaline – for years.

I’m so used to battening down the hatches, rolling with the punches, getting through, making it to the end of a day – that my brain can’t do long-term thinking anymore. It’s stuck in panic mode.

Or maybe I’ve just learned to think my brain is crap and that I’m rubbish and lazy. I don’t know. One of the many things I’ve lost is the truth.

I DO know that I have been surviving, not living. For a long time.

I have been terrified of change because the line I’ve been walking is so fine. A nether edge…

It has been easier to say No, to everything, because No is safe. No is the status quo. No is not more to overwhelm me, to cope with, to upset a very precarious balance.

And when I haven’t even been able to say No, it has been easier to say nothing at all. At first I thought I was picking my battles. I ended up losing my voice.

But like it or not, change is happening – and I have to learn how to live again. And how to do my own narration.

I mean, survival is good, but even Bear Grylls doesn’t want to live on nettles and yak wee ALL the time, right? (And he always, ALWAYS does his own narration).

Time to jump out of the pot, frog. And hop off into the sunset!

So I’m on a mission to ask myself more Yes and No questions about who the hell I am, and what the hell I like to do. And if – no WHAT – I’m actually good at.

For a lot of the time I’m a Mum. And that has to take precedence still. I need to help the Smalls process THEIR change. And mostly, for the first time in a long time – I’m pretty confident I’m doing a good job of that bit. I’m a better Mum than I’ve ever been, and finding more joy in it than I ever have.

While there is fulfilment there, it is not the sum total of who I am. It can’t be. As much for their sake as for mine.

Now I have pockets of time now every other weekend where I get to be me. Just me.

Just somebody I don’t know.

What I CAN tell you already, is that this mystery woman does NOT like cleaning the house, making the beds, sorting all the washing, and pining for the children all weekend.

So it’s high time to find out what sort of somebody I am.

Am I a walker? A runner? An artist? A yogini? A gym bunny? A writer? A lover? A friend? A performer? A career girl? A dancer? A fashionista? All of the above? Something I’ve never thought of – or tried – before?

I’m somebody, I’m somebody, who am I?

For a start, I’m somebody who is starting to say Yes.

And I am somebody who is open to suggestions…

So if you’ve got an activity, a club, a self-help book, a Me Time ritual that works for you, ANYTHING YOU WANT TO SUGGEST, I’d love to hear about it – and give it a go.

What makes you feel like you? What makes you the somebody you are?

I want to try new stuff. And old stuff. And I’ll write about it on here.

(Just please note I already know I can’t stand heights, so I’m not throwing myself off any high shit, K?)

Thoughts on a postcard. Or comment. (That’s probably easiest).

xxx

Let’s talk about birth. Properly.

17 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by in Breastfeeding, mental health, Motherhood, Postnatal depression

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“Ahhhhh, Congratulations! Girl or a boy? How much does she weigh?”

These are the questions that typically follow the magical creation of life.

They are the wrong questions.

Because sometimes, a bundle of joy comes out as a bundle of fear.

The questions we should really be asking new mothers include: “How are you? Did you get enough support? Do you want to tell me about it? What do you need?” And possibly, if you know them well enough, “Has anyone talked to you about pelvic physiotherapy?”

I often tell the Big Small that she’s the best thing that ever happened to me. This is because it’s true, and also because everyone deserves to hear that from someone. (Now I get to smile when I hear her say the same thing to Catonthenetheredge). 🙂

But the best thing happened in the worst way.

Her birth was not what I imagined, to say the least. And for me, postnatal depression began in the labour room.

I thought I was prepared by my rather airy fairy NCT classes to power through the pain and be empowered by it. I thought I’d read-up and watched-up on it. I genuinely believed in the birth plan (I was so cute!) and I genuinely thought I’d tough it out with a tens machine and a bit of a massage…

Ha ha ha ha!!!!!

Instead my birth story was a tale of mistakes and over-stretched midwives, shift changes, and ultimately long, long hours of a back-to-back labour stuck on my back with a monitor on, and no pain relief. The epidural had failed, but no one noticed and I was treated like I was making a terrible fuss over nothing. All followed by an emergency c-section.

BIG FUN.

That particular combination of impotence and injustice is pretty huge to deal with, and is something I still grapple with today. It somehow takes you right back to being a child, doesn’t it? The powerlessness, rage and fear of it – nameless and hopeless swelling in your chest. The knowledge no one believes you and no one will help you.

That sudden understanding that when it really, really comes down to the wire – you are fundamentally alone.

The loneliness of motherhood started there. Right there. And thinking back I can still taste the blood and metal of it – that very moment – under my tongue.  

Not being able to control your own body or your fate is pretty scary for anyone. Not being able to do what millions of women have done throughout time is pretty disappointing, too. And it all came with a sense of distance, and inadequacy, and isolation, and desperation like I’ve never known.

None of that actually left my body with the placenta. It didn’t just disappear – how could it?  It all stayed inside. And it made the bits that came next even harder.

It was all still there as I struggled to adjust to motherhood, to feed the baby (intent on starving itself – another story), to manage, to love every moment, to join in, to be joyful – to feel myself, to feel REAL again. I was overwhelmed by it. I thought I had made a huge mistake. That I couldn’t do this. That I’d let the baby down and didn’t deserve her.

Now, I’m one of the lucky ones, because in the midst of all that I was still violently in love with her. That doesn’t always happen.

And no bloody wonder.

Even the births that go right are huge physical events that change your body forever, followed by huge responsibility, no sleep, and massive hormonal fluctuations. And there is so little support. Your partner goes back to work after two weeks, and you are left broken in a fog, in charge of a tiny person you have no idea how to care for, with endlessly conflicting advice and everything you’ve ever known fundamentally altered.

And yet it is so universal…

So how can it be that we are still sending women into the breach (sometimes literally) so woefully under-prepared and under-supported?

And how can it be that we still don’t talk about postnatal depression, or birth trauma, or the horrors of early motherhood?

How are we still not asking women the right questions?

There has to be a line somewhere between scaring expectant mothers stupid, and giving them the coping mechanisms, tools and knowledge to help them take control of their bodies, and their babies, and make informed choices – even when things start to go wrong.

I don’t think we’ve got the balance right.

Today is Father’s day, and fathers are to be celebrated. But the day fathers became fathers was the same day that mothers became mothers (pretty obviously), and there’s no point pretending it wasn’t a day that had a far bigger impact on HER life than on his. It’s a combination of biology and society.

The real question is how we make that impact more positive.

If you had a traumatic birth, there’s a great organisation that’s there to help – The Birth Trauma Association. They do fab work to support women (and men) after traumatic birth experiences.

And if you’ve got an experience you’d like (or need) to share, I’d like to hear it.

 

The need to squeeze – love in the palms of your hands

03 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by in Motherhood

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Today, I need to talk about children’s bottoms, and how ridiculously adorable they are.

Also their thighs, right where they meet the knee. And arms – at the elbows and wrists.

Basically all of the squidgy, pudgy, squeezable bits. I want to fill my hands, and my eyes and my soul with them.

This is probably partly because a friend of mine has had the perfect, rounded, deliciously chunky baby and OH MY GOD THE NAPPY BOTTOMS, how could I possibly have forgotten the solid, round, rightness of a nappy bottom???

It’s probably also because I don’t get to lay my hands on my children every day, and I’ve found that a lot harder than I thought I would.

Missing them isn’t just cerebral, it’s physical.

This need to squeeze really never happened to me before I had kids.

But I can remember the exact moment when it started – which was the exact moment the Big Small was placed on me, skin-to-skin, after my c-section. And I wanted to absorb her back into my body through my chest, and store up the imprint of her in my palms forever.

It was the very first time I’d felt love in my HANDS. (I imagine it’s the same feeling Queen Elsa gets when she’s making snow and ice). It’s a sort of fullness and emptiness all at once that can only really be relieved with touch.

Pre-kids, if I thought of children’s bottoms at all I would have been repulsed by the thought of anyone willingly wiping up another human being’s faeces direct from source.

How times change. And actually, it’s very hard to explain that change, and the physicality, the WEIGHT of that sort of love to someone who doesn’t have children.

It’s a hollowness that burns your palms, a swelling that flips your stomach, bulges your eyes, closes your throat, seizing you, freezing you – clenching everything inside for an expanding, throbbing, impossible, HUNGRY moment.

That probably makes no sense to you if you’re not a parent. And do you know what?

I’d have HATED that, before I had them.

That stupid, groundless disdain of the parent for the non-parent – like they have some smug secret to life or some level of feeling that you can’t possibly understand just because you’ve not squeezed a human being out of your nether regions. I mean, get over yourself.

But I look at them now, the whipper-snappers, the young folk around me, with their daily concerns and thought patterns and lives, and think, God, if only you KNEW.

And it made me think about the things that you really can’t pass on. The things that hold the human race back, because we cannot communicate them to the next generation. Not really. Things so weirdly universal, but that have to be experienced to be understood – really, truly understood. The need for experience is a very human burden, isn’t it?

Arrogantly, I thought it would be different with my own kids – something else that I could only learn the hard way. Because the truth is that as their parent you don’t really get to impart wisdom to them – in fact you are the last person they will hear. All you get to do really is to try SHOW them the way in your actions and reactions, and hope for the best. Because they will learn the biggest and hardest lessons their own way, as all people will do, for all time.

And I suppose one of the biggest and hardest lessons is love.

I will never be able to explain to my children the thunder of love that blocks my hearing and fuzzes my vision – his heavy mass of a thing I both long for and struggle with. They won’t know it unless or until they have their own children.

Love hurts, the saying goes. But no one ever told me how very palpable that hurt would be. Or that it wouldn’t necessarily be someone breaking my heart, but me labouring to carry it around so very full.

When it really overwhelms me, I will say to them, “Hey. Have I told you how much I love you today?” The Small Small will say “Yes!” and roll her eyes at me. The Big Small will always say “No” – slightly coyly – and make me say it again.

Some days I think love was my undoing.

Other days, I think it’s made me.

It has certainly made me lead by example – even when it’s been the very, very hardest thing I’ve ever done. I could not, for instance, let them grow up thinking love looked like the relationship I was in. I had to show them a better way.

But sometimes I worry, because I’m conscious that it is my burden to carry, and mustn’t weight them down or hold them back from the lives and experiences they deserve and NEED to live for themselves. Because, well, they’re people. Their own people. And as they get bigger they will be less and less mine to squeeze anyway.

We’ve been swimming a lot this half term. And in a swimming costume, it is obvious to me that the Small Small is really not so small any more. She is losing the squidgy bits. She is stretching out like her sister – a lean whippet of a girl whose body is all amazing muscle and sinew and LIFE that makes me marvel every time I see her dance or leap.

The babies that taught me what love was, are not babies anymore.

I think it’s okay to mourn that stage, especially at a time I’m still processing so much loss. Because even as I mourn it, I am learning to welcome the next stage.

At the pool, the Big Small pressed herself to me suddenly, and gripped me with an unabashed force I recognised, and said to me with shining eyes, “I think we’re the best family here.”

Later the same night, the Small Small, on the edge of sleep, cupped my face in her hands and squeezed and said, “Have I told you today that I love you?”

And I saw their easy expression of love, their joy in it, its depth and ferocity and purity. And I knew that they had learned that from me. By example.

And for the first time in a long time, love didn’t feel quite so heavy anymore.