The fog is lifting

It's been a totally crappy few weeks. Bf and I seem to be permanently snapping at each other. I'm crying, lots. Whatever virus hospitalised Jambeans has passed onto the rest of us and we all have nasty, phlegmy, hacking coughs and runny noses and it's taking its toll physicially. I'm trying to juggle some freelance work. It's the kind of stuff I was doing about 7 years ago. It's dispiriting but it pays the bills (or some of them at least) and when I'm there it's balanced out by the great set of people I'm working with. But it's simply NOT what I want to be doing, and its getting me down the rest of the time. Felix and Jambeans have taken turns to vomit and cause havoc and wake up at stupid hours. My Dad, who's been in hospital for a month, was transferred to a nursing home and we got less than 24 hours notice. He didn't have so much as a pair of pants to keep him going and we haven't got a clue where the money's going to come from to ensure he has long-term care. It all adds to the stress. And of course, we're so so so so so soooo tired.

So we took time out yesterday, got a babysitter in and went to see Star Trek at the flicks. And it totally rocked. And this morning, I felt as if the fog was finally lifting.

Luxury birthday part 1 - the injustice

Our much-needed, long-anticipated, 35th birthday luxury jaunt to Bishopstrow House started with my head down the toilet bowl puking my guts up with food poisoning. Cursing our shitty luck, and after a terse argument about inadequate travel insurance I retreated to bed and the discomfort of my aching limbs, wondering if I was going to die, whilst the others sat tight (inasmuch as a toddler and a baby know how to do that) and waited to see whether we would have to cancel, lose our mini holiday and still have to pay for it, or whether we should risk it and go. After a vomit- and diarrhoea-free couple of hours we threw some bags together and got in the car. Felix screamed at full volume for roughly half the journey down so we arrived in pissy, stressy and achey mood, turned the corner and were immediately struck by the breathtaking stature of our country manor - home for the next two nights.

shitty christmas

it's been a very long time since i've written anything in the blog. mainly, i've not had the energy. but also, i've struggled to know what to say, or how to say it. but also, there's been a BIG THING i haven't been able to say. a big stressy rubbish shitty thing and it's just inhibited me from saying anything about anything else really. more on that later...

good stuff that happened in the run up to christmas:

1. our washing machine broke but got fixed again. (note where this starts. this is the GOOD things list. and it's CHRISTMAS. this list of the best possible things i can say starts with a washing machine.)
2. it got warmer
3. i spoke at a local council meeting against the proposal to redevelopment the house behind ours into flats, and we got a result: planning permission not granted. babymomma equals skill. many people come up to me after and ask if i am a lawyer (?) - apparently i spoke that well they assume it's a professional skill. babymomma is chuffed ;-)

shitty stuff that happened in the run up to christmas:

friday 19th december:

babymomma wakes up feeling awful. goes to work feeling awful. head-achy-body-achy-nauseous-extra-tired-type-awful. believes it is related to the takeaway curry consumed the night before. spends much of the day with head on desk. attempts to leave work early but gets hit by a deeply shite friday afternoon work crisis. doesn't leave till 5pm. leaves with heavy heart.

on tube near home, babymomma receives message to say jasmine has chicken pox. aaaargh.

saturday 20th december, morning:

jasmine seems ok. bf seems ok. babymomma feels ok-ish. felix has diarrhoea. by the time 9am arrives he has pooed on me once and vomited on me 3 times.

desperate for outing we venture to whipsnade zoo. it's cold and windy. at the penguin pool jasmine has deep panic her hair is 'falling off' and insists on being carried everywhere. poo from jasmine's wellies is smeared all over babymomma. babymomma is haunted by acrid poo smell that no number of baby wipes can erase. (babymomma IS the acrid poo smell no number of wipes can erase). we struggle on regardless. see some giraffes. have lunch. babymomma flakes out. home. coma. boyfried manfully looks after everyone.

saturday 20th december, night time:

jasmine comes into bed with us, upset, uncomfortable and itchy with spots. tosses and turns against me all night = no sleep

sunday 21st december, morning:

Felix is doing early shifts (as in pre-6am) and after our crappy night's sleep bf and I feel like total shit. Jasmine, oddly, is totally well in herself and being an absolute angel. Felix is a bit on and off. No diarrhoea today but he won't eat properly - just wants milk. He seems ok for the best part of the day until we give him a square millimetre of chocolate biscuit and he grabs it and palms it and shoves it in his mouth and giggles and coughs and smiles and jiggles on daddy's lap and then OH MY GOD he does the most enormous vomit everywhere. Bigger than the Witches of Eastwick. Worse than the Exorcist. Not a surface of either daddy or the sofa is spared. Babymomma is too busy drinking tea, eating biscuits and laughing her head off to be of any assistance whatsoever. Bf is agog with disbelief. Felix is smiling innocently and gurgling with satisfaction. Not even a spot of vomit has landed on him anywhere.

Monday 22nd December, wee small hours of the morning.

Middle of night. Babymomma wakes up feeling... a bit weird. Spends the next 7 hours running to the loo every 15 minutes with the most horrendous you can guess what

Monday 22nd December, day.

Bf is feeling queasy, achey, nauseuous too. We bundle Felix to nursery and take it in hour shifts to sleep/look after Jambeans

Tuesday 23rd December

Bf still ill and stays at home. I still feel like shit too, not having had any time to recover from whatever bug crawled up my bottom and died there. Jambeans still covered in spots and in quarantine. Felix still not 100% and still being bundled to nursery. Babymomma's company gives notice to appoint administrators today and I, effectively, lose my job. My supposed career defining move hasn't lasted 3 months. It's 2 days before Christmas. I had known since Friday it was coming but it still feels like shit when I hear the news. When I pick Felix up in the evening I am informed he has had diarrhoea today, and therefore is banned from school tomorrow.

Wed 24th December

Exhausted, sick unemployed babymomma looks after two moaning sick kids. It is Christmas Eve.

Is this rock bottom?

So the good news about this week just gone is that I'm recovering nicely from the op - soreness has subsided and I'm much more mobile and able to do things for myself. The excess glue from around the wound (no stitches this time - some new-fangled superglue instead) is beginning to come loose as the doctor said it would. I was told to rub my tummy well in the shower and let it come off, but to be honest it comes off more easily when it's dry. The bits that come off look like a cross between dead skin and copydex - mmmmmm, nice - and I've started to indulge in slightly disgusting, childlike behaviour by seeing how long a piece I can peel off before it makes me wince.

The bad news about this week just gone is just about everything else. The bf's meagre two weeks of pat leave finished oh so quickly, so he went back to work last week. My mum very graciously took some time off her work to come and stay and help out while I was still recovering. Unfortunately her visit coincided with me hitting the fed up button as the realities of what my life will be like feeding on demand for the next few months begin to sink in and I've just acted like a stressed out bitch to her for the best part of a week.

On a normal day I'm pretty obsessive about keeping my household in good order, but absolute control freakery has taken over since Felix was born (not a new thing - it was much the same after Jasmine too) so in true Monica Gellar style I have been completely and utterly anal about how to handle baby/help me breastfeed/ clean stuff up/ wash things/ stack stuff/ tidy up/place things/ do pretty much anything and everything. I've also been a bit of a Nazi about when to do it. ie IMMEDIATELY. NOW. PREFERABLY YESTERDAY. As opposed to the saccharine world of American sitcom, however, there is absolutely nothing funny about my control freakery, and I am quite relentless in my "requests" for stuff to get done "properly" so I wasn't the easiest person for my Mum to be around. And that's putting it politely.

But what made me particularly snappy and stressed last week was my continuing sense of concern, anxiety and guilt about any negative impact that Felix' arrival into our home might be having on Jasmine. I actually think she's very cool with it all, and is handling the change just fine, so my worrying about it all is taking more of a toll on me than it is on her. In all honesty it's mainly a drama that is playing out in my head and nowhere else, because if I entertain the merest thought that something I am doing might lead Jasmine to feel a bit neglected or left out then it simply breaks my heart, and I can't deal with that feeling. What it does mean is that I try to overcompensate by lavishing attention on Jasmine when I can, which is not very often because I'm knackered all the time, so I expect absolutely everyone else (aka my mum) to be equally focused on her when they're here. This is particularly true when I'm feeding Felix, which is just about always, so instead of feeling calm and relaxed and enjoying it, as I'm supposed to, I just feel tense and edgy and wired about how Jasmine feels seeing me feed him all the time. So I try and feed Felix and at the same time talk to Jasmine or read books with her, which is exhausting and difficult, so when someone else is here, aka my mum, I just end up barking instructions at her to get on the floor and dedicate some quality playing time to Jasmine. Which of course Jasmine doesn't always need and my mum doesn't always want to (or indeed have to) do. And it all just makes me feel more and more stressesd.

Everything came to a head last Thursday. Jasmine had a crappy cold and was being particularly clingy. She gave her cold to my mum and me. I was still pissed off with my mum for no good resason. And obviously I was dog tired, not having got used to snatching a couple of hours sleep here and there to last me through. The bf came home quite tired and scratchy and we snapped at each other over "do you want dinner on a plate? or bowl?". Apparently, I was "nagging" over the plate or bowl question. Which I really don't think I was, but I'm allowing for the fact that I could have been because the thing about being utterly exhausted is that every fibre of your being is so focused on getting through the rest of the day and hoping, praying, dreaming that you might be able to go to bed soon that you have absolutely no grip on what you're saying, how you're saying it or how you come across. And your emotions are terribly raw, and everything seems more intense than normal.

So when the bf said the N word (nagging) something inside just snapped. First I felt super angry, with both him and my mum, for being the two closest people to me and for being right there in the house with me and yet having absolutely no idea about how my life wasn't covered in a rosy, glowing, new-baby-hue, but was more akin to a solitary living hell in which everyone else got time to be normal and do normal things like read books and check email and play games and watch TV and sleep, but where I was exempt from those rules and just got to look after children, do housework and generally feel like shit.

Then pretty soon after that the anger turned into doubt and a total loss of self confidence. Over the belief that it was probably me and not them, and that I probably had been acting like a bitch to my mum without her deserving it, and that I probably had snapped plate or bowl at the boyfried unncessarily and then that appallingly destructive feeling of self pity mingled with self loathing washed over me terribly. And the tears came soon after that.

But they didn't come over dinner, or during Jambeans' bed time because I managed to stuff them back in, but they started flowing pretty heavily as soon as I was on my own - which happened to be when I was giving Felix his next feed. So there I was, sitting alone on my bed, in the dark, holding a two week old baby, and hating myself, hating my life, feeling alone and like nobody close to me understood what I was going through or why I was so miserable, all rounded off with a heavy dose of guilt that my negative feelings were all going to rub off on the bub. I was physically exhausted, emotionally spent, and I remember asking myself "Is this rock bottom?"

Which I guess it was. I felt so awful about how I had been treating everyone, and convinced that I was being a total bitch all the time (which I probably wasn't - it's just that I had no grip on reality) that on Friday I fessed up to my mum, amid yet more tears, about how shit I felt about being a nasty, snappy, bossy cow to her all week and about how I didn't feel in control of myself at all and that behaving like that made me not like myself at all.

And then she did the best thing - the thing that only mums can do.

She gave me a big cuddle and made it all right again.

So then we had a chat about everything, and she gave me lots of emotional support and I started to feel better about everything.

That's not to say that it hasn't continued to be fucking difficult. My cold is a bit of a stinker and is making it hard for me to sleep even when I do have the chance. And in the few days that have passed since Mum went home I've still found it hard to cope with how desperately lonely and boring breastfeeding round the clock can be (not to mention extremely painful on the nipples).

And when I'm at the beck and call of a small baby who doesn't understand anything than his constant need for food, sleep and new nappies, irrespective of what my needs are, then I have felt extremely resentful towards the other adults around me, namely the bf. And I know that's not particularly fair, but I feel it anyway, and then I waste valuable sleeping time calculating how much sleep he gets a night (ca. 6.5 continuous hours) compared to me (average 4.5 hours in 90 minute shifts) and I hate how still finds time to do his hobbies (ie reading, gaming or tinkering with the pooter) when I still haven't read a Heat amgazine that I bought 4 days ago, and even when I do get round to it then even looking at the pictures feels like a real challenge.

But generally, I do feel better and am beginning to enjoy the new mum thing again and I will get easier.

Jambeans steps it up a gear

OMG have we all been sick or what? We did the mammoth trek down to the West Country where Uncle Mary and Auntie Leon were hosting LEH Christmas this year. They hired out a huuuuge B&B in 't country for all of us with loads of bedrooms for everyone - so it was a bit like being on campus at uni but all grown up and with a bunch of kids. Had a giggle, ate too much and laughed loads etc. etc. Early doors next day for the huge trek home when all of a sudden, bleuuuughhh, vomiting at the first stop, then bleeeuuugghghh, vomiting at the second stop, and bleeeuuuuggghhh, vomiting in the front garden (yes - again - but i am beginning to think regular doses of my chunder is what is making our pampas grow to enormous proportions, and no, we are not swingers, and no, when we bought it i had NO IDEA pampas grass outside your house was a sign that you were.)

Jambeans, by this time, had developed the usual snot, fever and chest wheezing symptoms of a nasty virus. So we all flaked out on our bed, when at 1am the boyfried, who is NEVER ill, got a temperature... so there we stayed for the whole of the next day, and pretty much the day after that too. I went back to work on Wednesday, but flaked out halfway through and had to come home I was so wiped out.

But we're all fine again now, including the mammoth bump i am hefting about the place. Yaaaay. And Jambeans is on super naughty form. Favourite games at the moment are:

• turning the oven on
• taking things out of the kitchen bin to play with
• shredding tissue paper
• throwing anything
• climbing anything, especially if it is precarious
• switching the PC off
• being territorial about toys
• refusing to eat fruit, veg, bread, cheese etc. and making us think she's not hungry, then happily wolfing down anything sugary or chocolatey

she's a proper toddler now. sigh. i am so proud ;-)

neglecting jambeans

jambeans, poor little thing, has been a bit neglected on the blog front. bit of an outrage since it's really her blog. so here's the rumpus:

exciting news is SHE'S WALKING. She can do an entire width of the living room quite confidently. Such an amazing milestone I can't believe I haven't rushed to the keyboard before now to mention it.

and she's trying to climb up/in/out of things.
and she's doing red indian impressions.
all seriously cool stuff.

not so exciting news is she got another virus hot on the heels of the last one. no bad chest this time - relief - but 2 full days and nights of 40 degree fever with calpol/ ibuprofen rejection coming towards the end of day2 and all on a weekend when the bf is on call. now i have caught whatever lurgi she had and doubtless bf will succumb before too long. it's been demanding to say the least (= babymomma is hanging by a thread).

in usual baby-bounce-back fashion she's been on good form today. we haven't, but as if we hadn't all suffered enough, pre-molar teething has also kicked in which is really painful. so her good mood and, most importantly, her sleep have been interspersed with serious bouts of shrieking and the inevitable meds rejection.

other thing is she's terribly clingy at the moment. she's deep into separation anxiety territory. which isn't so bad apart from the fact that it's exclusively mummy she wants. quite touching at first, in that 'mummy is best' kinda way. but that sentiment very quickly evolves into weariness at having, literally, to shoulder the baby burden. 'clingy' has reached levels of ridiculousness i wouldn't have thought imaginable, like having to take over from daddy doing the bath yesterday, because it was no good having mummy sit just outside the bath, a mere 15 cm away. No, it had to be mummy IN the bath so the bub can get as close as possible. but it's times like that you remember there's no reasoning with a littlun.

we keep telling ourselves we're going to be firm and ride out the toddler tantrums when she doesn't get her cuddle NOW. but then she screams so loud and her face goes bright red and she looks imploringly into my eyes, arms outstretched, with snot and tears pouring down her cheeks and into her mouth and i just succumb and think: 'next time. next time i will be an evil-gina-ford-type cow of a mum. right now i will reassure my little girl.'

avoid death this weekend

my back is so fucked i can barely move in the mornings. find it hard to haul my own sorry ass out of bed and wash/ clothe myself let alone do it all for the bub. just keep popping painkillers, being grumpy and trying to push on through it all. swimming makes it worse so am missing out on my weekly peace haven.

went to doctor's today to get a referral so sorting it out but totally stressed as means more precious work time wasted.

jazzie's party looms. the forecast is for torrential rain. it's the same weekend as glastonbury. we should have worked that one out.

we have word that bf's grandma is slowly slipping away. she's in her 90s i think so definitely has had a good innings but i will be so bloody angry if she chooses to die this weekend when it's jazzie-time.