Putting in an official complaint…

I am putting in an official complaint. This is NOT fair. Why do I still feel rubbish? I have an eight month old baby to look after on my own and I just can’t afford to be ill anymore.

I am sick of feeling sick. Started feeling worse again yesterday. Took Owen over to Tina and Freddie’s and the babies played nicely – well, mostly nicely anyway. Owen does tend to grab Fred’s hair or cheek, I have to assume that it is affectionately. Meanwhile I sat glassy-eyed on the sofa and had to shake myself occasionally to remind myself that I was supposed to reply when spoken to – at least sometimes. The world seemed to swim away, and that slick grey nauseous feeling started to wash over me again. This morning I felt sick and weak, my legs felt like jelly again and it was an effort to do anything. Owen is so active and energetic that even looking at him makes me feel tired at the moment.

I went to view another nursery this morning, and when we got back I phoned mum and I asked if I could take him round to hers, so she could entertain Owen and I could go and sleep in her bedroom. This is what I did, and it seemed to work. I felt 100 times better after I lay down for a couple of hours. I’m not sure if I really slept, but I dozed and didn’t have to worry about Owen because I knew he was in safe hands. Perhaps this illness really is just stress – there’s no respite is there, I have to be on red alert 24-7. I can’t ever relax, not even at night because he still wakes, two, sometimes three times. I have noticed that I wake with a jerk and my stomach turns over when I hear him cry in the night. At the moment I feel like I have permanent butterflies in there.

I also went to the doctors today. I got some hypoallergenic formula milk prescribed for Owen – I want to start introducing some formula into his diet now because I want him to take bottles and I can’t express enough. I hate the idea of stopping breastfeeding, but it is taking its toll on me and I worry constantly that my supply will dry up, particularly since I’ve been ill. I need to know I have something I can give him to replace it. I also spoke at length to the doctor about how I feel, my ongoing illness and my state of mind. He gave me a questionnaire to fill out about depression, and when I had done it he said he thought that I was mildly depressed but that this seemed pretty understandable given the fact that I have an eight month old baby and I am on my own, and I have been ill. He said that he wouldn’t recommend any treatment including counselling at this stage because he didn’t think I was actually depressed, just reacting to the situation in a thoroughly understandable way. I sat and cried and sniffed and nodded and didn’t hear half of what he said, but somehow or another I did actually feel better afterwards. As if just being in the prescence of a doctor could make me well again.

Which I agree with, and am relieved that he doesn’t think I am suffering from PND. But it’s so hard to see beyond the day sometimes, and when I feel so ill and tired I feel like this is forever, that I will never be well again, that all I have to look forward to is old age and illness… listen to me, what a misery I am right now! Please let me start feeling better soon, I mean properly better – I just seem to catch everything that’s going! It aint fair!

She giveth, and then she taketh away.

Today feels autumnal, although it is still amazingly sunny and hot. I don’t know what it is about changes in season but they always seem to bring up memories and I feel nostalgic and sort of happy/sad. I took Owen to his first Sing and Sign, and then to the playground in Tarring. It was very peaceful and warm, and flashes of childhood memories started to sparkle in my brain, the feel of warm tarmac and the crackle of slightly dead grass and leaves, the flash of sunlight through pine needles, the hum of a distant plane, a child’s excited cry far away somewhere. I watched Owen playing and wondered if these images and sensations are filing themselves away in his brain, so that in some far distant future, he too will recall vague memories at the first hint of autumn. Oh if only all our memories were so beautiful! But then we would live in permanent sadness at the loss of the past. I feel sad already at the thought of my little love growing up – and he is doing it so quickly! Every new milestone he reaches I feel both happiness and sadness that my baby is gradually becoming a little boy. How cruel nature is to mothers! She giveth and then she taketh away.

Getting better, slowly… crossing my fingers…

I am feeling a bit better today. I want to say, a lot better, but don’t want to jinx myself and also my stomach still does not feel quite right. This morning I still felt a bit queasy and couldn’t really eat very much. But I think I must be on the mend now, even if it is slowly.

Feeling better meant that I started doing more stuff again, and I think that was a bit premature. Today perhaps I should have just rested up, reserved my energy. But there were (and are) a million and one things I have to do. I have to baby-safe the house, for a start. Now Owen is crawling, nothing is safe and I have to keep running to intercept him as he heads into yet another risky situation. One good thing – I can hear him coming a mile off. His crawling tends to be quite noisy as he slaps the floor with his hands and legs, very fast. Thump-thump-thump-thump- yup, it’s Owen coming charging into the kitchen at light-speed crawl, to say hello to his friend the hoover again!

Yesterday we had another birthday party, and afterwards went for a roast dinner at Chris and Becki’s. This was not a great success as far as Owen was concerned – my fault, I took his booster seat but forgot the tray so he just grabbed handfuls of my dinner and stuffed some of it randomly in his mouth, and flung most of it on the floor. I felt knackered and a bit stressed, and it was a bit chaotic – there were nine of us there altogether including Owen and Becki’s two girls. I probably shouldn’t have tried to fit quite so much into one day really, considering I am still recovering from a squillion nasty bugs still.

Well hey ho. I have lots of stuff to do tonight, too, and I want to get a reasonably early night – hmm. Better get off here and go and do it then, really!

The Raison

The Raison

I love these sunlit moments

These little flashes of joy

From a party bag, I offer you

a raisin, you pick it up delicately between thumb and forefinger

(as if you had read the books),

place it delicately in your mouth,

chew it delicately for a few moments,

then spit it out undelicately, look at me and

smile a sunshine smile that dazzles.

 

Your nose wrinkles when you smile.

I love that.

 

(On watching Owen eat his first raison).

Still an Ill Bill.

Sigh. This illness seems neverending. Yesterday I felt better for the first time all week, although I had made arrangements to take Owen over to Chris and Becki’s house for the afternoon to give myself time for a little afternoon sleep. I decided to do this anyway, even though I felt okay and although I didn’t really nap, I did manage to lie down on the bed for a bit and read my book. Then today we had another 1st birthday party, and I started to feel really quite ill again towards the end of this. Everyone went inside to sing Happy Birthday, and I started to feel very tense, I made it through the cake cutting and then felt myself starting to well up. I walked back outside and just burst into tears.

I will try to explain how I felt. I felt like an intruder into a game of happy families. I felt like a fraud, someone playing at being a mum, not a proper mum who bakes cakes and stands smiling next to Dad who does DIY and drives a people carrier. I felt like everyone around me was cut out for this, and I was just cut out. The world seemed distant and remote. I felt useless, ill, tired, miserable. I went back in and kept my sunglasses on for a while, till I thought my eyes wouldn’t be so red, then I took them off but I knew that I must look terrible and sure enough someone mentioned that I looked like I had lost weight (half a stone this week, actually). Someone else asked if I was okay and that was it, I burst into tears again, and everyone was so nice, offering to take Owen for the afternoon or tomorrow. Half of me wanted to say yes, but I just couldn’t, not again, leave my little man with people he doesn’t know that well. I left him with Sue on Wedsnesday when I went to the dentists, and with Becki on Friday, and what he really wants is just to play in his space, with his mummy nearby. I took him home and luckily he did have quite a long sleep in the afternoon so I could have a lie down.

The thing is, I love him so much and it kills me to leave him. Specially with people he doesn’t know well, if it was mum it would be different (she’s in France till next Friday). I don’t know how I am going to deal with leaving him at nursery in January.

We got ourselves a crawler!

Yup, Owen is definitely now on the move, and rather speedily too! He started crawling on… Monday, I think – although the last few days have been a bit of a blur as I am really suffering from various ailments. I sound like an old woman (and feel like one too). So in the same week that I come down with some sort of ghastly enteritis, some sort of horrid cold bug and some sort of abscess in my back tooth (AGONY!), Owen decides that he is going to get mobile. This meant that while I lay groaning under a duvet on the living room floor, with CBeebies wittering away on the TV, Owen crawled manically all over and round me, and started discovering bits of the room that had previously escaped his attention.

No more! No more is the Virgin box and DVD safe… no more can I put salt on the floor under the dining table to shrivel up any slug that dare show its face… no more can I walk into the kitchen safe in the knowledge that Owen will stay in the living room. He followed me into the kitchen for the first time today, and then rather bizarrely started shouting at the hoover. I do vacumn the living room every morning and he always wrinkles his face up when I go to switch it on in the cutest way – so I think he was either trying to have a loud conversation with it, or was telling it off for being so noisy!

He’s doing pretty well on the standing/walking front too. He stands up easily now, holding on to things like the sofa, his walker, his table, the cot bars. And he can walk himself along the sofa, and swap across from the sofa to his table. I suspect that he will soon be able to stand without holding onto anything, he’s almost there now!

Enough about Owen. I have had a really crappy week. Started feeling a little strange on Sunday, and my tooth had already started throbbing so I was taking painkillers for that. After lunch on Monday started feeling really nauseous and just wanted to lie down and rapidly got worse until I thought I was going to faint. I phoned Rob and told him to phone me back in half an hour. Then I just lay on the floor with a duvet, feeling ill. At the worst moments I felt I couldn’t move and just wanted to throw up. I did throw up at one point. As the evening progressed I felt better although my tooth was also making me feel terrible. Tuesday was pretty much the same, but towards bedtime I also started feeling like I was getting a cold. This morning I woke up with a stinking cold, tummy was still bad and my tooth was worse than ever! God, how miserable was I?

Well, I had my dentist appointment today, although I nearly didn’t as stupidly got the time wrong. Luckily they were lenient with me and rearranged it for the same day. Sue, my mum’s brother’s wife, came over to babysit Owen so I didn’t have to take him in, which would have been a bit of a nightmare. Anyway, the dentist said that I do have an abscess (I know – I can see it!) and that I need root canal treatment. Aargh. I really don’t want root canal treatment. I’d rather lose the tooth. But I’ve already lost one tooth on that side, so I can’t really lose another. I shall have to be brave and just bite the bullet. Although biting bullets is probably not great for teeth either.

In his own room!

Owen went into his own room last night, after about a month of procrastinating and soul searching. I  knew in my heart that both of us would probably get a better night’s sleep once he was in his own room, but I just didn’t feel ready to be separated from him at night. Actually, once I had put him in there it felt okay, and when I went to bed I suddenly felt sort of liberated in a way! And although he still woke up twice, he actually didn’t cry very much, more sort of grizzled, and I probably should have left him to see what happened, but didn’t want him freaked out on his first night in there. So I fed him both times, but quite short feeds and he went back down again without any fuss at all. He also slept till just before 7am, and I heard him wake up and start playing with his toy, but he didn’t cry.

So, a success! I feel like I really did get some quality sleep finally, for the first time since he was born! The only problem is that I have a really really bad toothache that started last night and seems to be getting worse, aaargh. And I don’t dentist down here either, I will have to get one sorted tomorrow, not looking forward this but I really have to get this tooth looked at.

Oliver and Millie’s birthday yesterday, and Myles’ today – very busy social diary for Owen the next couple of weeks!

Grrrr… computer playing up…

Happy again today! I did have a bit of a stressful weekend but feeling much better now. I went to look at a few nurseries today. One I didn’t like at all, and one I liked, and one that I think I will really like, but haven’t seen it properly yet, will  be looking round it tomorrow. It’s very close to my house too, which is what I really like about it, I guess!

My computer is playing up, every five seconds or so it freezes and I can’t type anything. It’s really annoying and I don’t know how to stop it happening. It’s stopping my thought processes working properly and I’m going to have to sign out now, really can’t think straight when the cursor keeps freezing – grrr…. will try again tomorrow, if I get time.

Just realised that it’s not affecting the title text box, for some reason.

Meltdown x 2…

I have been feeling a bit spaced and stressed today. I am not sure why but I think that it’s partly to do with an evening out that is being planned by the mums from the mother and baby group. Maybe I am being paranoid, I don’t know. Anyway, there was a choice of two nights and I can’t make one of them, but could make the other as mum will be back on the Saturday so could babysit Owen. Well, they have chosen the Friday night, that I can’t make, and I am feeling a bit miserable about not being able to go. I have gone out a grand total of twice since January. Tonight is Saturday night and I have no wine, no cake, no Tangfastics and no crisps. I have a massive cigarette craving that I am trying to suppress. I did go out earlier and was going to get some wine and stuff in the supermarket on the way back but Owen lost the plot in Somerfield and I couldn’t face the massive queue with a baby who was trying to scream himself into the stratosphere.

Yes, I know that this was my choice, single motherhood. I did not enter into it lightly and I knew that there would be sacrifices I would have to make, and a social life would be one of them. To be honest I haven’t done too badly, I have made a lot of friends down here and seem to have a pretty busy schedule every week – but it’s not a social life. It’s daytime stuff, involving Owen. It’s the evenings at home on my own that sometimes make me feel like I will never have a social life again. I feel bad saying this – and I would not swap him for any social life in the world - its just that when an occasion comes up, an opportunity to go out and have a fab girlie night, and then is taken away from me (oh and they will be just around the corner from me, to add insult to injury!) I feel down, and miserable. And I also feel bad for feeling down and miserable, because it makes me feel like a bad person. I should just smile and graciously bow out.

Well I did smile – in sort of virtual terms – because I offered to babysit that night for one of the other girls who can’t make it on the Friday. I thought, well one of us can go at least. But she is working and can’t take me up on the offer anyway. I would have done it and it would have made me feel a bit better about missing the night out, actually. Oh well. C’est la vie and all that.

With all that on my mind, I wandered around town today feeling on the verge of tears, forgetting what I had gone out to buy, and not being able to make a decision to buy anything when I did remember. Finally I made it to a shop that sold picture frames and canvases, and bought unfeasible amounts of both, including one stupidly large frame that I could barely carry home. Then Owen had his meltdown in Somerfield and I wanted to cry again, and then I walked home and here I am now, Owen is busy trying to chew his way through an alphabet floor tile (Z, to be precise) and I feel like I might have my own little meltdown at any moment.

Need to make tea though so can’t.

Acrobatics, and busy-ness.

Owen won’t stay still for a minute this week. And this led to him having a minor accident on Tuesday. He was playing on the bed, and I was changing his cot bedding. I had moved the cot slightly away from my bed when I tucked my duvet in and forgot to move it back. The next thing I knew, I heard a ‘thunk’ noise and looked up- Owen had disappeared! I ran round and there he was, wedged between the cot and the bed, in a sort of headstand with his feet waggling furiously in the air! I was absolutely horrified and grabbed him and turned him back up the right way and he sort of looked agonised for a moment, then filled his lungs and absolutely screamed the house down! I put him to the breast, and after a ten minute feed he was smiling and laughing again and seemed to have forgotten about it all. But I felt terrible! I am not putting him on the bed now, not even for a minute, when I am not there with him. Even me being in the room is not enough – he’s too quick now and tends to launch himself towards the edge. I can’t change him on his changing table anymore, he just wriggles out of my grip and throws a leg over the edge, then flips himself over and sits up. I can’t stop him doing it – he’s much too strong, and determined. Every nappy change is exhausting now!

Last week was hectic. Went to Brighton to see Kelly (Owen had Thai red curry and loved it!), went to cousin Emma’s and also saw Emily and baby George the following day, Thursday was mother and baby group and then went to mums for lunch, Friday we went to see my aunt and uncle in the evening because they hadn’t had a chance to get to know Owen yet. Fi was down for the weekend and we went to Brighton on the Sunday which I mentioned in my last post.

Then this week, the busy-ness continued… Monday was a bank holiday and I met up with friends of my brother Becki and Chris. Becki’s band was playing in the Worthing festival so rolled up for that – but it was an absolutely roasting hot day and Owen started getting a bit irritable halfway through their set so I had to take him home. But then we met up with Becki and her two little girls the next day at an indoor play place and we had a good old chinwag while the girls ran riot. Owen did go in the ball pit for a bit, but it’s really for slightly older babies I would have said – having said that he seemed to really like the ball pit!

Today I had a guy come round to give me a quote for putting a lawn in the garden. He seems really nice, and had lots of suggestions for the garden – I’m really excited now and can’t wait to get it all done! It will be a beautiful, child-friendly garden for my little man come next summer!

Right, I am going to bed now. Going to try and get a couple of early nights because my work is sending me some work to do… seems kind of weird but I am actually looking forward to it… it’s only a couple of days. Oh, and my ex-boss who now works for Cambridge University Press emailed me today and said there might be some freelance work going there too… ouch – how busy do I need to be?!