When Things Are Tough,

 When things get difficult, I find it hard to write. It's always been the case, it probably will always be the case, and sadly it's also the case that those are the times I could really use the emotional relief I get from writing things down. Over the last few weeks I've not had the time to give myself some space to write. I've needed as much sleep as I could get and the amount of sleep I have managed to get hasn't been enough and it's definitely putting pressure on me, as a mum, as a partner, but also as a person. The little guy comes first, of course, so I've been focusing on getting his nappies washed, his bottles sterilised, and every other thing I need to do to look after him, and honestly, it's getting harder and harder.

You might think, given that it's been a good number of weeks since he arrived, surely you should be getting better at it by now? Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you?!

When we first brought him home, he was a little dream. He'd take a bottle easily, he'd keep it all down, he would sleep and nap and I'm not going to say it was easy, because it wasn't, but things seemed pretty simple, other than the slight issue of constipation which meant that we needed to attend the hospital with him over the Christmas period. Since then, he's developed reflux and is a bit colicky as well, so we've dealing with him spitting up, which means more cleaning up, more attempts at feeds, and also a lot more cuddles. Cuddles sound lovely, but it's not so much when the baby is uncomfortable and cries even when being held. 

Midwives and health visitors have been focused on whether I'm depressed, which I don't think I am, and whether I'm at risk of harming myself, which I'm not, but what I am is burnt out, and I've been on the edge of burnout for a few days. It's the lack of sleep, feeling "touched out" and just needing to put the baby down and not being able to, and the inability to do anything for self-care, because when do I have the time? Very often the suggestions are to lean on your partner, but what happens when it's happening to both of you, or when they work long hours? What can you really do when there are so many demands on both of your time?

I know this is why people say that it takes a village, but that's not very simple either. (I'd love to make a joke that we live in a village, it doesn't help, but I'm too tired. Although I guess I did it anyway...)

There's Going To Be a Wedding,

Before everything with the house took a whole hell of a lot longer than we originally thought that it would, my partner and I were thinking about getting married at the same venue we went to for our first Valentine's Day together, but by the time we moved it was far too late in the day in terms of the pregnancy, particularly given the number of issues that we had been having, so there was no guarantee I was going to be able to walk, let alone dance, and the idea of having to plan the whole thing was going to be just too much ahead of little man's arrival.

Now that the little guy is here and we're starting to have some form of routine, we have been able to think again about getting a wedding together, and after some chasing around we've finally managed to get a date into the diary with the venue that we want to use, and it looks like we are actually going to have a wedding, and it also looks like it's going to be this year, but obviously that all sounds like it's going too simply, doesn't it?

Except it's not, because I'm suddenly about twice the size I have ever been comfortable being and the problem I have where the dresses I like and admire not being a style that suits me has been amplified even further. I love a good trumpet dress (or call it a wiggle dress or a mermaid dress or whatever you want to call it) but I've always been too short, not leggy enough and now feeling like I'm two miles wide, I would look ridiculous in one and the one thing I would really like to avoid is looking ridiculous. 

My partner, who I love dearly and deeply, (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be marrying him) doesn't want to see or know anything about the dress or any other attire until the wedding day, which is both nice and traditional, but also a giant pain in the ass. Why? Because we're not fancy event sort of people. We've not really been out together a lot to places where we needed to "dress up" so when we're talking about a wedding, even if it's only a mildly fancy one, the level of fancy where you just know that turning up in jeans is going to get you stared at for being the plonker (and as Amanda Bynes character in What A Girl Wants says, I wouldn't want to be a plonker) and you really treasure that moment when the groom turns around and sees the bride for the first time and you want it to be either a wow moment or just a look of pure love, and not, what the FFFF is she wearing, or a pained expression (27 Dresses did not make this moment, they just made it more obvious and more pressured!) I really don't know what to choose. I want something very me, obviously, but I also want something that is going to make my future husband look down the aisle and think what a lucky, lucky man he is, because I very often remember I'm lucky that he puts up with me, and I'm really lucky that we found each other. We both are, of course.

What I have managed to get out of him is that his preference would be that it's something white (or those white adjacent colours that most men will see as white even if it's called ivory, bone, champagne kissed, blush and all the other colour names that someone in the world is paid to come up with...) and I think from something else he's said he thinks it should have some form of train (which feels crazy since we're not getting married in a church, but I'll go with it, because they do look fun.) I get the impression that if it's traditional, it'll be okay, even if I'll be wearing a veil but not over my face because HOW DOES IT NOT GET STUCK IN YOUR LIPSTICK??? 

I've got the shoes already, an idea of what dress I would like in my mind, and a nail biting habit that I've never yet managed to break despite a lot of attempts and an unholy amount of effort. Sadly the stress of being in the hospital lead to another serious attack on the nails which would have been fine except the fact that little J's newborn photographs have my hands in a lot of them and whilst it might not be glaring to other people, it is to me, so I would much rather our wedding photos don't have the stand out of my nails looking like that of an anxious toddler. Some people hashtag their diet and exercise plans with Shredding for the Wedding, but I'm both not doing that in terms of weightless, but also trying for not shredding my nails in the next however many months, particularly since I know getting gel tips or false nails or whatever you call them is only possible with a certain amount of healthy nail to stick them to.

I'm sure there are about a million and one things I will stress myself out with between now and the actual event, but for now, at least it's happening and at least we have a date. 

The Endless Cycle,

This might be partly because we still have a tiny washing machine, but I feel like there hasn't been a lot of time over the past four weeks where our washing machine hasn't been running. When we made the choice to use reusable nappies we knew it was going to be something where we needed to run it a lot, but there are plenty of things I don't think we anticipated having to throw through the washing machine quite so often as we currently are doing, or perhaps it's more that I didn't anticipate washing some things as much as we are for the reasons that we are having to wash them so often.

Maybe it was a lack of faith in the reusable nappies that we chose, but I had expected to be washing his bed sheets more because he had peed on them, or perhaps because of a poonamia explosion, but most of the time we're washing them at the moment because my little windy boy is spitting up quite a lot, and somehow it doesn't seem to matter what we try to do to help him burp or what we do to help him fart (and sometimes he does not need help on that score!) he still spits up on himself or on his bedding, and then it suddenly all needs to be washed. Even when we are using the washable bed pads I got from one of those Chinese retailers that everyone makes noise about hating, the bed sheets still go over the top and then still need to be changed, but at least it means the mattress isn't left wet from spit up, whether it be on our bed or in the cot bed he doesn't even sleep in yet. Honestly he's only really going in there as a safe place he can lie down and we can then go away from, mainly because of things like washing our hands after dirty nappies.

Spit up has also been responsible for us having to wash pairs of jeans after only one wear, or jackets for the same reason, or having to change t-shirts multiple times a day, but we have been pretty lucky in that the reusable nappies have been pretty good so we're not constantly having to change his clothes because the contents of his nappy have escaped out of them. 

At the time that I am writing this, it's my first day at home without my partner. I'm trying to cope with everything I need to do for my little boy - nappy changes, bottles, bottles cleans, pumping etc - and everything I need to do for me - pumping, drinking enough water, eating enough to be able to keep producing breast milk, getting out of bed, getting dressed, everything self-care wise that seems to take a little bit of a backseat because the little lad comes first - plus everything we need to have done for the home and the family, like all of the washing, all of the hoovering and all of the other cleaning we need to do. I was trying to catch a nap in between bottles, changes and wash cycles, but that just didn't happen today and so now it's getting later in the evening I just want to go to sleep, but if I go to sleep too early I'm going to get woken up more times during the night for baby things, and the washing machine is still running anyway, so I would have to get up and sort that even if I went to sleep. 

I feel like the washing machine is currently my spirit animal, because it's just not stopping at the moment, and I feel like I'm not either.

Is It Just Me Or?,

Originally, I was just going to finish that sentence with 'is pumping really boring?' but then I realised that there were a few endings to that sentence as there have been to a number of others recently, with the next one that came to mind being, is there never a muslin around when you need one? or is everything fair game for cleaning up when you're pumping, because my God it seems like one day in at least every three or four, someone has moved the muslins that I keep by the bed for when I'm pumping, and I'm not mad about it, because I know it was either because of a boob leak or because our son was spitting up, or peeing, or in the bath or shower and getting cold, so we grabbed the closest muslin and then forgot to replace it for the other things it is needed for. Genuinely I just used one of the baby's bibs that's in our room for when he's being fed overnight in order to clean up whilst detaching from the pump and I'm not even sorry, because we just have to use what is to hand rather than leak breast milk over everything in sight or dribbling distance.

I should add another ending to that sentence could easily be, are pumping bras utter crap?? Maybe it's my fault for not stuffing breast pads into them, but it's hard enough attached and detaching from a pump without having another piece of material, some of which are actually a bit aggressive and scratchy, in my bra to contend with, especially because pumping bras seem to be either too tight with the pump in - especially if you're using a wearable - or too loose when not wearing or using a pump, or they ping back and flick your (already very sensitive) nipples, or they spring back and soak up any milk residue on your breasts and then they start smelling weird in the course of only a few hours and it's impossible to have them washed and dried for every time you need them without owning too many, and they're expensive as it is, so who can afford to do that? Maybe it's just me but they're starting to figuratively get on my tits as well as literally.

But I can definitely say is pumping really boring fits onto the end of that sentence, particularly because everything I've read about successful pumping, especially about power pumping etc, is to try and ignore the clock and ignore the amount of milk coming out, and there is only so much time you can spend massaging your own tits in the hope of helping the milk come out better or getting them to make more milk for the little human that they're trying to feed, but with a pair of bottles hanging off the front of you and a need to avoid knocking them so that they don't spill, or detach a little so they make fart noises and interrupt the suction, the options of what you can do at the same time get sort of limited. I feel like I'm spending more time on my phone than ever before, and trying to find things I can do during that which are productive, instead of descending into a number of mobile games or having another ill-fated attempt at learning a language with Duolingo. It's not that I don't think that would be productive, because it would, but I know I'm too tired to do it properly and it makes me more likely to fall asleep and then I am more likely to spill a lot of milk down myself and the bed or sofa I'm sitting on, and whilst the mess itself is frustrating, breast milk is the one milk you can cry over being spilt, because it is devastating.

I seem to get stuck in a cycle of sitting and watching the clock or thinking of all of the things I could be doing with the time instead of pumping, and I really wish I could get out of the habit, because I know that I'm doing this for the sole reason of feeding my son, and making sure he gets all of the goodness of breast milk, even when I can't quite cope with the feeling of breast feeding. I have managed to type out a few blogs on my mobile, but it's not the easiest task in the world and again, I keep falling asleep in the middle, so maybe I just need to accept it for the moment and think again of things to do when I'm getting just a little bit more sleep.

Why It's Breaks My Heart,

When my baby "gets sick" or spits up, it absolutely breaks my heart, but only some of the time... And why? Because it's not completely about him spitting up, it's about what he's spitting up.

For reasons I struggle to talk about without crying, my baby is mixed feeding, and whilst I would love to get to the stage where I can either breastfeed or pump enough for him to not need to have any formula, I also appreciate that the level of stress it was putting onto not just me, but also my partner, initially was just not worth it, so he has a couple of bottles a day of formula to make sure he's getting enough milk and also to make it so my partner can feed him without me having to be involved at all. 

When little man spits up formula, I obviously worry about why he's spitting up (did we overfeed him? did we not burp him properly? did we try too hard to burp him and we've made him spit up? you know, all that) but it's not anything like as hard as when he spits up breastmilk. With breastmilk, I obviously worry about whether something I am eating is making him feel ill, but there's also an emotional component to it where I'm not mad, but I'm frustrated and I'm upset because I know how tired and how hungry breastfeeding is making me, and I know how much effort I'm putting into pumping or trying to be awake for pumping, and it feels like some of that, or all of that, has gone to waste. It's why I don't tend to let other people feed him or burp him, because if they do it wrong and he throws up an entire feed, I'm going to get really upset, because I already feel like my body isn't making enough for him, so to lose any of it is just utterly devastating.

The first night after my son was born was pretty horrific, not because of the pain from my surgery (although that didn't help) or the emotional toll of having had to have a C section (which also didn't help) or the fact that my partner was at home and I was still stuck in the hospital with no idea when I was going to be allowed to leave (which really didn't help) but because the midwives and health care assistants that were looking after me were pretty arsey, and made me feel like I was the only new mum in the world with no idea what I was doing, and instead of feeling supported I spent the whole night feeling judged and as though I was hassling them when I was asking them a question or buzzing for them (even though they kept telling me to buzz for them if I needed anything or when I was feeding). What made it feel worse was they kept telling me that they had to observe me feeding my son, and that made it feel really invasive, even though the only way to be in a labour ward is to accept that you somewhat need to leave your dignity at the door... (Whilst we're on the subject, is it not really problematic that that seems to be the prevailing opinion, because it really feels it!)

One of the specific things that upset me was that when my son was cluster feeding, or rather trying to, and in the post surgical haze I had forgotten all about what cluster feeding was or what it looked like or anything like that, one of the midwives rather bruskly asked me if my milk had even come in whilst I was trying to breast feed, and I had no idea, because I had never done this before, and I was just trying to do what I was being told to. No one had really told me what to do if it wasn't, so I was stuck in a hospital bed feeling like the medical staff were accusing me of starving my son (she did actually say at one point he was starving, but it was in the colloquial sense as opposed to the medical sense) with no idea what I was supposed to do, so eventually I had to call my partner, because I didn't know what else I could do, and even if the suggestion was that I should get some formula to feed him, I couldn't physically leave the hospital, so I had no idea how I was supposed to do that. Ever since then, I've been really defensive about my milk supply, and I tend to get upset when we're running low on pumped milk in the fridge, and I get really anxious and upset when we use the last of it, even when I know we have formula or when I've been pumping a reasonable amount to be able to replace what we're using.

Obviously the reason I am putting myself through the stress of pumping is to be able to feed my son, so any time we're using milk to feed him it's a good thing and I'm happy I'm able to give him what he needs, but it's why any that seems wasted makes me feel prickly, whether it's what he's spit up, any where he's started a bottle and not quite finished it, so there's a tiny amount in the bottom of the bottle which can't reasonably be saved (and shouldn't be because if it's been in a bottle when he's feeding it has to be thrown out pretty quickly) or even just the drips and dregs that get wasted when I'm transferring between bottles from the pump to then be stored.

I honestly thought it was a cliche, the way people go on about breast milk, but I'm really starting to get it...

I Know I Should...,

There are so many ways to complete this sentence...

Ever since having my son, and yes, that still sounds so strange to me when I say it out loud, but also do natural that it's kind of scary, I've been having to prioritise, because it feels like days are shorter now, by virtue of having to spend many hours a day just admiring this beautiful little person I have been involved in creating, but also because the amount of energy I have to do anything is severely diminished. Partly that is parenthood, and partly it's because of recovering from surgery and lack of sleep from an extended period in the hospital. I had thought I would have been feeling better by now, but then we have had a few difficult nights where little man has been distressed and then also a few nights where the times he's been hungry have just been a little off and so it feels like we've spent more time awake than asleep, which doesn't really help the whole recovery thing.

I was partly joking about spending hours admiring his little face (but I'm sure any first time parent will admit it is only partly joking because it's hard not to feel immense love for them, fill your camera roll with hundreds of photos of them doing the most mundane things and just want to keep watching them, as though that will slow down time and they won't grow up too fast in front of your eyes. At the same time though, there are a lot of tasks that you don't need to do before there is a baby in your home that as soon as there is a baby in your home, or in your life, you have to do. It's not just the feed the baby, bath the baby, change the baby's bum and make sure the baby sleeps, but things like disinfecting the bath when you've needed to use that for cleaning up a blow out, cleaning up the changing table (including washing the covers that I don't really know when they became a thing because they make no real sense!!) from when the baby has peed mid change, or washing more pyjamas and muslins and cot sheets thank you can imagine because of the baby spitting up on them. There's bottles to wash and sterilise as well, and unless you want to shell out for a Momcozy bottle washer (which is another applicance to find room for and will set you back a couple of hundred quid - not going to lie, I would pay it, I have been considering it!!) then that's not a two step process, it's a two process job...

Most of the time that sentence is, I should be doing something but I'm far too tired, so you would assume I'm napping or something, but no, I'm wallowing in mum guilt for all the things I haven't been able to get done, or I'm starting jobs and half finishing them, or wanting to scream into the void because I don't know where to start.

It's one of the reasons I've been glad when my mum comes over because she follows the golden rule for visiting someone with a baby: either bring food or do a job for them. Sometimes she does both, and it makes me want to cry happy tears.

Now all of my pre-written blog posts have been posted, I might not be keeping to this schedule of three posts a week, going up consistently on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at midday (UK time) because I have no idea when I'll have time to write and of all the things I need to prioritise, it's not the top of the list, and I'm not getting very far down that list very often at the moment, but I'm still endeavouring to try. 

Making Life Harder,

It's late on in the day on Christmas Eve eve when I'm writing this, and I want to moan about Amazon and shops in general. Before you jump to conclusions and judge me (if you're sat there saying you won't and you don't, please, let's just be honest, we all do it), no, I did not leave all of my shopping until the last minute and then get mad that a present I desperately needed either wasn't in stock or wouldn't arrive in time.

A few days ago I had a baby, and for reasons I won't be getting into during this post, I had to have a C section. C sections seem to be one of these common Schrödinger situations, where they exist as two things which are diametrically opposed at the same time, because a C section somehow simultaneously a major abdominal operation and also the lazy way of giving birth. Equally, it's also "only" childbirth, so get over it. 

I'm not going to get into the detail of what a C section is because there has been enough of it thanks to the publication of the maternity statistics in December, but what I will say is that it was my first operation, my last choice and something that I'm not sure I would willingly repeat, even if that means that myself and my partner have a long and serious discussion about what that means for our future family planning as a result. 

One of the biggest reasons for the above is the recovery. When I was first wheeled out of the operating theatre, I was in a love bubble with my partner and my son, but I was still quite out of it. As I was going through the motions of all of the things I needed to do to be released from the hospital, I realised how much I had been affected by this thing that had happened, and how long some of the impacts would be. Some of it was as simple as having to take a laxative to cope with the pain medication and not make myself feel even worse than I already did with pressure and pain building up in my abdomen, and other things are more difficult and potentially more long lasting. There was already damage to my ab muscles because of the pregnancy, but the C section meant cutting into that area and directly separating those muscles, and holding them apart whilst the rest of the actions were taken. 

One of the difficulties that I am currently left with, one of the things I don't know when I will recover from, is how I sit up in bed, get up from a seat and anything else which involved my core strength and honestly, it's the getting up from the bed part that has been the most difficult. Whilst I'm not having to go to the bathroom as often as I did when I was still pregnant, I still need to go a couple of times a night, as well as get up and look after my son, and I can't do that without waking my partner because I can't go from being lay down to being sat up or stood up without assistance more often than I can. I don't know how I manage to do it some of the time in all honesty. I struggle with it because of pain, but also because there are times when I try and push myself and I just know I'm going to make myself feel worse later, and I don't want this recovery process to go on any longer than it already has to. 

Before going into the hospital, before I knew that I was going to be having a C section, I had seen a video online where someone used either a towel or a blanket tucked under the mattress or into the bed frame to slightly hoist themselves up using a different muscle group, and thankfully I remembered it, but what I have found since using it is that the fabric isn't amazingly secure, I don't have anything quite long enough and it's just not working out as well as I hoped, so I looked at getting an actual adaptive device like this and realised that Amazon stock them, but it wouldn't arrive before Christmas and I'm really hoping that by the time it did arrive... in another 4 days!... I won't need it as much, if at all, so I don't want to spend the money on it to not need it. I know some people would suggest returning it at that stage but I've always found Amazon returns to be clunky and cumbersome. 

I was sat here thinking, I get that this isn't how Amazon run their business model, but it winds me up that something which is an acute need like this isn't somehow able to be dispatched quickly, arriving same day if it's ordered before 5pm or whatever, because the only reason you are ordering something like this is because something bad happened and you need it, or something happened to your previous one and you need to replace it. My abs were damaged due to a medical condition (pregnancy and birth) and I need the help to be able to get out of bed, and I would think that it would be reasonable that anyone would want that help as quickly as humanly possible. 

I've been sat here trying to sort out something so that I don't have to spend the next few days struggling, making things worse and making myself feel terrible (because the hormones make me feel awful about feeling broken, they make me feel like a terrible partner and mother, and they make me feel like all of this is my fault...) when I could just have the product and be able to get up to go to the bathroom or stand up to get to my child when he needs me. Thankfully, I think I have found somewhere that does stock them, that will be open tomorrow and that my partner can reasonably get to without being stuck in hideous amounts of traffic on one of the worst shopping days of the year. But why is it so damned difficult? It seems like any form of aids are deprioritised, when really it's the sort of thing that should be a priority, because it makes people more able and more independent and stops whatever it is that is getting in the way of their lives from being a full on obstruction. If I use this thing, I'm still going to be in pain, but at least I'm not stuck in my bed and in pain. At least I'm not having to wake my partner every time I need to pee or stretch or do literally anything that involves either rolling over in bed or getting out of the bed. 

Yeah, it's idealistic and it's naive and all those sorts of things, but wouldn't it be nice if things which helped people be more able and independent were actually available when you bloody need them! and not just when they can turn up.