Feel like i'm vanishing

Things had been trundling along very happily then bang - total shocker of a week. Jambeans got knocked sideways by another virus, only days after getting over a previous one - so for 3 nights she was up and crying and then in our bed in the small hours whilst we dosed her up on Calpol and Calprofen and Karvol and Tixylix and so on. She's got into the habit of snuggling up as close to me as possible and land-grabs any spare bed quite impressively so yet again I find myself "sleeping" on the far edge whilst she takes up more than half of our Superking - quite impressive for a sick 2 year old. She'd normally settle down by about 3am, but the second half of the night is when I need to get up and attend to Scrumble Minor. I pulled a muscle in my shoulder 2 weeks ago and it still hasn't mended fully so the night time feedings are painful as well as exhausting. Then we sprang leaks so I've been trying to get those sorted out. It hasn't helped.

Jambeans' recovery has been slow. For the last couple of nights she's been sleeping through in her own cot but getting her to go to bed in the first place has been a real nightmare and can take a good couple of hours of Jo Frost type behaviour. It's also like the 2 scrumbles have worked out some evil plan between them to either take turns to scream all evening, or do it simultaneously at top volume when we're feeling dead and hungry and desperate.

As a result I've been a total wreck for the last 3 or 4 days - angry, snappy, resentful, just can't function at all - can't remember what I did 5 minutes ago, can't speak properly, search for the most basic words, find myself staring vacantly into space, nod off at ridiculous moments, like in the shower or when I'm walking. Each day I've felt like my thread had snapped and it couldn't get any worse and that the next day would be better only to wake up having to do the same again on less sleep. There have been tears aplenty.

But it's beginning to feel worse than just a week's blip. Something Ely said on Thursday about only just beginning to feel like herself again after 4 plus years of being a mummy (ie twice as long as me) really struck home. It made me realise something that I have been feeling for a while, which is that I seem to have vanished completely. All that's left of me is a housewife and babymomma in a lumpy body. I haven't had any me time for so long it's making me depressed and angry and resentful.

All I do these days is feed kids and clothe kids and entertain kids and stop tantrums and crying fits and change nappies and express milk and lug buggies and load dishwashers and hang clothes and wipe spills and do the shopping and put bins out then go back to the beginning and do it all again only this time with moaning and the following time with tears. AND I smell of baby sick permanently. I don't think this about going back to work either, because that just entails me giving up another part of myself to the Powers That Be at work. I just need some space alone.

If someone offered right now I'd probably sell my children for the opportunity to have a weekend off and go swimming and skiing and sailing and read books and have a massage and a manicure and a pedicure and maybe a facial too and browse for clothes and get my hair cut and watch a film and have lunch somewhere dead swanky, preferably with someone like Morrison or La Gitane, and sleep in the afternoon and read a newspaper and play 80s music really LOUD and have a boat trip and then go dancing, all without my boobs exploding or even leaking just a little bit and without having to answer to children or grandparents or boyfriends or sisters or babymomma friends or anyone.

I'm totally fed up. I don't do anything. I don't think anything. I don't have energy. I don't have time. I don't have a life. I don't exist.

Okay, so I do exist really. And I know I'm just having a BIG moan. And what I'm feeling is so not new it's embarrassing. And now I see it in print I realise I'm being quite pathetic really.

So I think I'm just gonna ignore this all and belt up.