Parenting Fails,

I was recently talking to some other mums about parenting fails, and then it went completely out of my head until I had a corker of one today. 

The ones we were talking about are the moments that make you feel like the worst parent ever, like when the pram falls over, whether it be because you've attached things to the back of it (guilty) and miscalculated or something happens and you hit something the wheels won't go over, or kids just have a bit of an accident where they fall off of things because they don't know what gravity is or what heights are. Thankfully when the pram toppled over on me, I grabbed it pretty quickly, and could see little man was just hanging out because he was well strapped in and he actually thought it was a game...

Well, today I was trying to find out what little man weighed and the best way that I can do that is weigh myself holding him and weigh myself when I've put him down, so when I had weighed myself holding him I needed to put him down and the best place I could think of was to put him in his bath seat, because it was close by, and I didn't think about the fact that there is a dimple in the middle of the seat... which was full of water from his last bath...

So there's me pulling my kid out of his bath seat in a soggy sleep suit and a nappy that had been brand new five minutes before but was now soggy on the outside, so I had to do a full strip change on him, and because I couldn't strip him off in the bathroom I soaked my t-shirt getting him back to his nursery for a change. 

I don't know if this is just normal of parenting or normal of ADHD or normal of ADHD parenting or if it's just me being rather special because I have a bad habit of slopping yoghurt down my shirt because I accidentally tip the yoghurt bit of a Clusters too much. Hilarious stupidity is something I tend to do a lot of, though it's normally more things like falling over my own feet, falling over things I've warned other people about or forgetting to take a towel with me before getting in the shower and then having to do a mad, naked dash through the house whilst soggy.

Little Library,

No, my library isn't a Little Library like the type people have in their front yard where you can borrow a book, or do a take one leave one kind of idea or anything like that, nor is my library little when it comes to the size of it, but I was struggling with what to call this post and that was the best I could come up with, so sorry and all that.

Today (day of writing, not day of posting) I have been wandering around the house trying to find something. Today is just another episode of an ongoing sequel of me trying to find said thing which is currently missing, and during said frustrating sequel, I have found other things I had stopped looking for because I had solved the problem in a different way. Which is somehow more annoying. Probably about as annoying as me being so vague about the whole thing really. 

The original missing thing was my birth certificate, which generally isn't overly big of a deal because it's not like it's something I need on a regular or even semi regular basis, but I did need it for my and my partner's appointment to give notice ahead of getting married. As I don't have a valid passport, I needed my birth certificate and my mother's birth certificate, and because I had already lost mine and looked everywhere for the damn thing, I had to order another one, so insisted that my mum come with us to the appointment because it was bad enough losing mine, I wasn't going to lose her's as well. That appointment was about three months ago, but I finally found the birth certificate in the loft whilst I was up there looking for my expired passport, because you need the expired one to renew your passport. Who knew?

In the meantime I had also lost the V5 for my car (not my car I actually drive but my first car which has been sat like a large lawn ornament for a few months other than the few weeks my dad needed to borrow it) and I wanted to be able to sell it, and just when I was looking at ordering a new one, but then found someone who wanted to buy it, we found the V5, ordered a new one to update details and then had a nightmare trying to get the tax sorted so the new owner could actually take it home. Oh, and my car keys. For my actual this is the one I drive car. I had the spare, but the spare has a dodgy battery and no keyring loop on it, which means it's smaller and easier to lose (clearly an issue for me). Thankfully that turned up in the pocket of a jacket I barely use, after I had put the spare into a pocket of a bag I always have with me so I knew where it was.

In my head, I can see myself putting the expired passport down the side of a book. It's not into a book, but down the side of a book, with the idea that I don't need it now, won't need it later and it's not something I need to worry about. I wasn't intending to sort out a passport until after the wedding, because it just sounds annoying to have to add it to the already long list of things I need to change my name on, but then we changed our minds a few times about what we want to do as a honeymoon and several of the ideas we are happy with require me to have a passport, so I was looking into doing mine and my son's. Except I can't, because my old one has either crawled away and is laughing to itself (not literally...) or been taken by The Borrowers to be used as a tent for a camping weekend or similar. Seriously, I'm running out of places to keep looking for it.

You might be sat there reading this thinking, there's got to be another way around it and there is, of course, because I'm neither the first, the last nor the only blinking eejit to lose my passport or assume that an expired passport has no value, but having to cancel the old passport and have it replaced takes longer and we're already running into the time of year where passports take longer than usual. Or should I say one of the points of the year, so I want to try and get it to take the least amount of time as possible, though I appreciate that doing so is meaning that I am wasting the amount of time that would have been added on by the cancelling, but it's a bit of a sunken cost fallacy now and trying to convince myself to just abandon the search is annoying me, because I know that the second I have done it, the missing one will turn up and it will bug me.

What does this have to do with the library? Well for one, between my future husband and I we went through the... several hundred... books on the shelves to check that the passport wasn't between any of them, and it wasn't annoyingly, so today I put all of the rest of the books from the boxes in the front room onto the shelves so I could check between the rest of the books, and it was still not there. As I was unpacking everything there was a buzzing through my head about the number of books I have and all of the comments people make about the number of books I own (to which I say, shuddup) but, possibly as a byproduct from having watched The Testaments recently, but my head went Gilead and the fictional worlds of Christine Dalcher and how owning books was prohibited for women, and the world of V for Vendetta where owning certain books was prohibited, most famously the Quran. I remembered a moment of standing in a street in Berlin where a piece of artwork built into the floor depicting empty shelves to represent all of the books that were burnt why the Nazis. All of this is to say that there are times in history and times in fiction where owning books, or at the very least a certain type of books, is considered to be an act of treason or an act of rebellion. Obviously I like the rebellion idea a little better.

Now, I'm not trying to suggest that that's the reason I own them all, because it's not. Even before I was aware of having ADHD there were signs and signals for the right person to pick up on, even if no one did until I was in my thirties... When I started collecting books (to the best of my memory it started with Goosebumps when I was about nine) these ideas were completely alien to me, but it might be part of the reason I continue to own them, even though I have been making efforts to at least slightly slim down my collection. It's also worth noting that although, as I mentioned, some of these worlds are fictional, I wouldn't be the first or only person to draw parallels with certain political figures, parties, ideologies etc to those worlds, so it's really not that out there to think that it's possible that during our lifetimes, owning books, whether specific or any sort, could again be an act of rebellion. Just a thought.

What We Don't Know,

This might be a little all over the place because I'm working on very little sleep and trying to get it typed up whilst watching over my little boy in his bouncer, and also eating my lunch, because nothing teaches you to multitask like becoming a mum. Or a parent in general really, but when I think of it in terms of myself I always think of it in terms of becoming a mum instead of becoming a parent. Maybe that's just me?

I realise there is a privilege to being a parent these days. I'm not talking about the privilege of a relatively easy journey into being a parent and whether infertility rates are going up or we're just hearing more of it because people are more open about it, society is more accepting of discussions about it and because social media means when you've seen one video about something you see ALL OF THEM, but the privilege of the fact that when something seems... off?... you can do a quick search on Google (*other search engines are available even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes) or go to specific places such as communities on Reddit, forums on Peanut or similar apps for parents or even the NHSs own website(s) to reassure yourself that everything is fine or find information about what to do next. I've said a few times that these things aren't perfect, but then all babies are loveable little individuals, they're all different and none of them come with an instruction manual, so I get that most of these places are just full of people doing their best.

That being said, research is done with an idea in mind of what we don't know; it's a specific question being asked and hopefully answered whether it's a quick Google search, hitting the text books, medical journals with case files of things which have happened before or work in labs where there is a particular scope or question and the research is the journey to finding out the answer. So what happens if you don't know what the question is? Or what is you have what you think is an answer, but it's wrong? Well, nothing happens, which I think is why I love Tim Minchin's Commencement Speech when he says (I'm paraphrasing slightly) that opinions differ from arseholes in that, whilst everyone has one, yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined, because it's true, and also because it's Tim Minchin so it's funny. Unfortunately though people are very often only dispossessed of their erroneous facts and opinions when they're mocked for holding them in the first place, or upon being forced to be because they have been proven wrong, and honestly, it seems a little harsh. Is this a tangent? I promise it is not.

Recently I met up with a group of other women, all of whom have children, but ranging from my own at under a year, to some whose children are in their twenties, so they're probably closer in age to when they will or might become grandparents than their own experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and early parenthood, but the great thing is there is a universality to the experience of parenthood, even when there are so many divisions between us and there are some things you can only understand as a mum or a birthing parent (I know the two are not synonymous) or a non birthing parent, or a working parent, a single parent, a twin mum, a c-section mum etc. Even within those groups you'll have divisions, whether it be elective or emergency C-sections (reluctant C-section mums like myself) and there are obviously a lot that can intersect as well, which can further unite and divide us depending on where we fall.

I think I've previously mentioned - or perhaps I just wrote as part of my I'm distracting myself from the monotony and boredom of waiting for something to happen in the hospital - that when I came across a video on social media that stated that when you have a "month long period" after childbirth, it's not that, but it is partly because your body has a dinner plate sized wound where the placenta has detached from and your body needs to heal it and that comes with some bleeding or something that looks like bleeding and partly because your body is doing a bunch of things to go back to it's pre-pregnancy self (or at least your uterus is, or is aiming to). 

One of the ladies I was with mentioned she didn't think you bled with a C-section, but you do, because even with the best surgeon, they can't repair the wound from the placenta instantly and they can't do everything else to heal the body that the body does for itself. She then asked if it was when you were breastfeeding that you didn't bleed, and no, you do, and you can actually bleed more, because all the clotting that your body has to do as part of that healing process can be interrupted by the hormones which are needed for breastfeeding. Thankfully, I have seen enough information out there that says you don't need to go into the hospital about the bleeding unless the clot are bigger than the size of a lemon, and let's face it, you're going to remember that because it feels pretty shocking - lemons aren't small!! - but the whole experience is pretty shocking. I remember I knocked my belly somehow, it might have been whilst putting on one of those support belt things because my scar was tender and my back was still painful, and there was this gush... And I thought I had really done myself some damage, but no, it was completely normal. 

It sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but I often wondered when I was going through pregnancy if the reason you weren't told about certain things which happen or the frequency with which they happen was less to do with inadequate messaging or not knowing how to reach the right people etc and more to do with not putting anyone off of having a baby that wants to, because generally birth rates (I'm just talking in the UK here) are lower than previous, although some recent records show a slight, very slight, uptick. Given that fertility rates have been dropping (at least in what I read from 2021-2024) and people are having smaller families at a later stage, anything else which is liable to make more people reconsider having children is probably seen as a bad thing.

That being said, and it might be because I'm a thirsty sponge for information, I generally think that more information is better, and even if a person is never planning to have children, can't biologically have children or whatever their situation, more people understanding pregnancy symptoms and conditions like Hyperemesis Gravidarum, severe morning sickness (because it can be severe without reaching the level of HG) and pelvic girdle pain to name only a few, there might be a little more compassion and understanding for pregnant people. Granted there also might not be, because there are people who simply believe that pregnancy is a choice and if you make the choice it's your problem to deal with what you get with it, but I'm choosing to be optimistic about people's ability and inclination towards compassion, partly because I don't want to think about the issues which are still ongoing in America where choice and pregnancy are a very problematic conversation for other reasons. 

Well, That Was Clever,

There are decisions that people make that from the outside, other people can't help but look at and think, how does that work? Or how does that make sense? And honestly, most of the time it's because the reasons for something are completely different because we all have different perspectives and it can take a while for these things to be visible. Obviously, I have an example. 

Next year I will have been vegetarian for around twenty years, so we're past the point it's been over half of my life and a few other significant milestones. With everything with the pregnancy I've also been confronting a lot of my issues around food and the fact that even if I don't have an "eating disorder" in the classic sense of anorexia or bulimia, I definitely struggle with disordered eating and it's most likely connected to the fact I have ADHD, or possibly the fact that several of my mental health team have stated it's highly likely I'm also autistic.

It would be completely untrue to say that I didn't have symptoms of this prior to going vegetarian, but most of them were seen as me just being a fussy eater, but I'm not sure if the problems got better or worse when I went veggie. 

The thing is, I'm not good with change. Quorn and other meat replacements are pretty good because they are consistent and being consistent and reliable is a good thing for me. Knowing what to expect and being able to expect that every time eases some of the anxiety around food. The problem is over the last twenty years a lot of different brands have come into the UK market and released products that have been varying degrees of awful or incredible, but these products don't often stick around. I could write an ode of love to the faux prawn sandwich that Aldi brought out a few years ago; that thing was beautiful. They also previously made a faux smoked salmon that I adored, which came back for Veganuary and then seemed to stay, but I haven't seen it in a little while (but we're on the eve of Veganuary again so hopefully it'll be back in soon...) but equally there was a tuna replacement that I tried once that made me gag and Linda MacCartney sausages taste like rubbish to me because they're too dry and gross. I'm also not big on their freezer mock duck, but the tinned stuff in gravy by Granovita was just incredible, and even that has disappeared. There was the Like Meat Schnitzel, too, there one day and then gone the next... 

I understand that this is because these products get launched and there will be others like me that are reluctant to try them, or that are priced out of some of them because some veggie products are expensive and then there's the really annoying one of products being developed using egg whites, because apparently they're an industry byproduct, so products can be made more cheaply, but then vegans can't/ won't have them, and when it's something like Quorn Fishes Fingers or the other parts of their fish range that died a dead, pescatarians won't eat them either, because they'd just eat the fish... 

Within all of this you've also got the group of vegetarians who don't use meat replacements for various reasons (not liking the taste or the texture of meat, the dishes that they typically cook for themselves not 'requiring' a meat substitute etc) and those who go vegetarian for health reasons, who look on a lot of meat replacement products as they would chicken nuggets - too processed and too beige, so making a new product work in the vegetarian market is HARD. There are some places that do it incredibly well and some that try and fall on their asses, but even the really good ones aren't guaranteed to last. I don't think it's that many years ago (but my ability to timeline isn't brilliant) that Temple of Seitan in Camden was potentially going to shut, and that would have been a total shame because they are beyond incredible!! 

So, what does this have to do with me? Honestly, it's mostly the fact that even when I try new products, which can be a pain to make myself do, then there's no point getting overly attached to something brand new, because the likelihood of it serving long term is... well, it's not great. Though if people avoid it so as not to get attached to it in case it disappears, it definitely will...

Being vegetarian limits my food choices and when I struggle with food anyway, it was probably not the best decision, but it's a decision I made because of loving animals as opposed to hating meat, so the lack of logic between all the change in the vegetarian food market/ scene and my ND brain not coping with change and remembering how good LikeSchnitzel was however many years later wasn't even a little bit of a consideration back then. Now it's just annoying... 

Give Me What I Want,

Originally, I wanted to title this Gimme What I Want, but then I second guessed myself on the band for the song I was referencing and realised that Gimme What I Want is a Miley Cyrus song and Kids in Glass Houses (knew it was them, should never have second guessed myself) titled their song as Give Me What I Want, even though I would swear that they sing it more as Gimme rather than the Queen's English (King's English now?) Give Me... 

And after that brief tangent, let's dive in. A couple of people have asked me, in relation to the impending birth of my little one, when I'm going to have a baby shower, and it has always been a bit of a when are you having one rather than are you planning one, which I guess is to be expected because they are a pretty common occurrence now (as are the dreaded gender reveals!!) but honestly, I never  actually intended to have one, for a few reasons and the biggest one is most of my favourite people like a car ride, train ride or even plane ride away and it wasn't going to be possible to get them all assembled into one room to come and celebrate me and my little guy, sadly. 

Now, I would have loved to pull them all together and do some of the crazy traditions from different countries baby showers, I can't remember if the tasting baby food one was Canadian or American (taste it and guess the flavours, not just taste it for the hell of it, although if you want to, you do you...) but I think the sniffing the diaper (translation: nappy) and guessing what the fake baby poop was made out of was an American one. Apparently a couple of favourites are spread out Nutella in one and green mushy peas in another. Yuck!! But even things like having a guess the baby's weight, or whose eyes or hair or whatever they will have seems like quite a nice way of celebrating with friends before bringing this tiny human into the world, because it helps people think about what's beyond the bump and actually having the little person in their lives as well as the lives of their parents.

Except that very often, baby showers are seen as a bit of a gift grab and it does slightly drive me mad when there is a gender reveal and presents are expected and then a baby shower, and another gift expected, and then some people do something which the Americans have dubbed a 'Sip and See' (sorry, but not everything needs a damn name...) and some people expect presents at that as well, though I believe that's not the norm... Some people will genuinely use these events, and particularly the invitations to these events as an excuse to circulate their gift registry and honestly, I find it tacky for one thing, but also find the idea of doing it kind of knocks my autistic funny bone.

There are just some things that, whilst normal to other people, make me squirm and the best way I can describe them is knocking my autistic funny bone, because it's that same weird sensation you get when you. bang your funny bone that goes along with the pain, but also just makes your legs feel like jelly and your stomach feel like you're going to throw up. It makes me cringe but it's more than that. 

But then again, the NHS advertising screens in the antenatal clinic really encourage you to make an Amazon Wishlist so I did, like a good little soldier doing as I'm told, but then when people started asking me about it, I got the total ick with it. At first it was because I really didn't want any more STUFF to move with, even if it was STUFF I picked out and STUFF I knew that we needed. As it was, we had a VERY BIG truck and it was damn near full to bursting, so God knows what we would have done if there was more, but the bigger challenge of it now is, a, how to go back to those people and say, oh yeah, we've moved now - here's my list - or even sending it to people who are asking me for it now, I'm kind of embarrassed by it, as though I'm either asking for gifts or because I think people are going to judge me for things that are on the list or things that aren't.

Let's face it, the second part of that is really ridiculous, because the reason a lot of things aren't on the list isn't because we simply forgot them or because it hasn't occurred to us to get them for the baby - who needs a car seat for the bub? Just bungee strap him to the roof... - but because we already have them and sometimes, we already have multiples, but I worry that people will look at it and judge my choices. I think the high chair is on there - something I fully intend to buy myself but since the dinning room is currently a cluttered mess still from moving, I'm not doing it yet - but it's specifically a wooden one, and we've had a few friends offer us their old ones and I've declined because it's a plastic one and that's really not my preference. I worry that sometimes it comes across as very ungrateful, but it's not about that, it's about the choices we are making as parents and we really do want to limit his exposure to plastic or microplastics in his food. 

I have a love hate relationship with gift registries for this reason, because at least you know that no one is spending money on things you may or may not like, need or want, but I slightly feel like it does ruin gift giving, because the act of giving a gift should be something from the heart - here's something that I love and I hope you will love, too, or here's something which made me think of you... You don't get that when someone has sent you instructions on what to buy, but you also avoid the awfully awkward interaction when someone gets you something you hate and you have to smile awkwardly, control your face (I suck at controlling my face - it broadcasts every feeling I ever have and the bad ones are on loud speaker) and say thank you, but even worse with a baby, particularly when it's clothes, you're expected to USE the thing, make the kid WEAR the thing, and share a photo of the kid in the thing as evidence or something cute in lieu of a thank you card... And if you don't, you're ungrateful...  And that's even when there are some vile sloganed items in the world like a bib that says "Daddy only wanted a BJ and now he has me..." And yes, I have seen something like that, but no, thankfully it wasn't gifted to me. Hopefully people know me better than that, because that would not be going near my child.

Now, there is the possibility of the fact that Reddit is actually stressing me out a bit because there are so many stories on there of people being called ungrateful for not accepting certain gifts or wanting certain things etc and it's always a bit of a divide between people who think you should graciously accept everything you're offered and others who think you should be able to be very specific, but with the market flooded with baby products, some of which aren't even considered to be safe, it's surely understandable that parents want some element of choice in what they do want and what they will use? If we had had a baby shower and someone had brought a nappy cake, they might have been sorely disappointed to find out that we're actually planning on using reusables so I'm hoping we only need disposables in a total emergency and for baby swimming lessons, so a lot of those would end up going to waste, or being put onto the local Facebook Free group. In terms of clothes, honestly, we have hundreds which we have been lovingly gifted, but babies grow so quickly that I won't be surprised if he shoots through them so quickly that he doesn't have the chance to wear half of what he has for the first year, so doesn't it make sense to look at a list of things that includes books we want to read to him, or bath toys for a little bit down the line or Tonies figures, because as much as I want to be able to read him to sleep every night, I know that there is still a lot of value in having something like that, particularly when he's a bit older and he can just set it up and use it by himself? 

If this sounds like I've talked myself into a love of wish lists, you're sadly mistaken, because I still find them incredibly difficult in terms of sharing them etc, but this is just a bit of a peek into the internal struggle I have with them... 

This Is The Problem With Scheduling,

I had this whole little system set up and had this whole plan to make my life a little bit easier and I even wrote a whole post about it and how it was helping, and then I felt the need to write the post about Girlguiding (I only didn't touch on the WI because it's not something I have direct experience of so I didn't want to wade into something and make a load of assumptions, though I understand that they made the same decision for the same reasons) and then over today (Saturday) I have beeb wanting to write an extended version of what's been on my social media stories. 

Wes Streeting is launching an enquiry into whether there is over diagnosis of ND and mental health conditions and where there are gaps in the services. Half of that sounds like a really great thing because the simple fact of the matter is that the services are insufficient. Now, I do believe that there is not a quick fix with that, because training any form of medical professional takes time and money, so it's not like there are a bunch of nurses just sitting home that we can say, cool, you now have a job and it's working in an ADHD clinic supervising the medication of hundreds of people, partly because if they've no experience in that sort of clinical setting it's going to take a while to get used to the meds, the side effects, the symptoms that people have and the patients and how they behave, and ADHD is particularly tricky because the drugs that are used to manage symptoms are a controlled substance with a very specific set of rules around them. Another big thing which is becoming more of an issue at the moment is that the rate of underdiagnosis for ADHD predominantly affected women, because ADHD presents differently in girls than boys. The generation that are now realising they have this are of child bearing and child rearing age, so there's a lot of us having babies and breast feeding etc, which adds another layer of complication.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

I can't remember if I've previously written about my experience of getting to the point of an ADHD diagnosis so I'm going to put a brief summary of it below. When I was sixteen, I knew I had struggled with spellings for a lot of years, I misread things a lot and it caused confusion and one of the things that made it easier was coloured paper. All of those things are classic dyslexia symptoms, but when I was assessed at sixteen, by a member of staff at my college, I was told I couldn't possibly be dyslexic because I could learn. I think she had foot-in-mouth disease along with the health minister, but I would point out that even if she meant that dyslexic people couldn't learn to make less errors in spelling or other things they struggled with, she was wrong, because it is possible, it's just hard. It's mentally exhausting trying to do it with no support. 

When I was twenty I was really struggling at university, and I made the decision to repeat a year because it was the best thing for me by the point that I realised how much I was struggling. I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder, given medication and therapy and CBT and things got a little better, but there was always this undercurrent of this is making things easier, but it's still not right.

I was twenty five when I was assessed for bipolar disorder, mainly in connection with the cycling moods and struggles with depression that I was still experiencing even when my doctors had tried a lot of different medications with me. I was told it definitely wasn't bipolar, and was relieved, but still knew that there was something and it seemed like no one wanted to help me find out what that was. 

I was about twenty eight when I spoke to a GP and said I think I'm autistic, and the doctor told me I couldn't be because I can make eye contact and hold a conversation. It took me a couple of months to go back and see another doctor, and say I know that that's a perspective, but I think it's wrong and I still think I might be autistic. And he thankfully was a lot more informed about ND conditions, said that was a load of rubbish but also said he thought that the issues I had were less to do with autism and more to do with ADHD. At the time, I was so in the dark about ADHD, so I spent the next few months whilst I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more, learning about what it was, what it meant, how people dealt with symptoms and honestly, it was like a lightbulb coming on and I could see, because things just made sense! I was really lucky because, when I had been on the waiting list for about nine months, and was told that I was likely to be waiting another nine months before I was seen for an assessment, HR at my workplace paid for me to have an assessment, where they told me I did have traits of autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia, but I also definitely had ADHD, and honestly, it was one of the most difficult experiences of my life, but also one of the best. 

Now that I'm pregnant and under the perinatal mental health team (I just tried to call them perimental natal team and I'm not sure if that's an ND thing or a baby brain thing) the doctor has said whilst I don't have a formal diagnosis for autism, they're going to put everything in place for me as though I do, because it's clear that that is the case, and again, it explains a lot, but I will admit that conversation, though not a formal diagnosis, didn't hit me anything like as hard as the ADHD did, but I guess that's because I've known I was somewhere on that ND spectrum for a while and that essentially, the traits you have of each bit is kind of decided but using a sawn off shotgun to fire buckshot at said spectrum and see where the holes get punched. (I normally just call it the sh*t pick and mix, but either works.)

I know that I am really, really lucky because my workplace were able to cut the time I was waiting for diagnosis significantly by paying to have that done privately, and I'm not even one of the unlucky ones who is in one of the higher waiting time areas. Some clinics have so many referrals to get through that their waiting lists for first appointments and diagnoses are around the eight year mark. Whether you're in education - be it primary, secondary or higher education - or a workplace or whatever you are doing with your life, the likelihood is that referral has not been made on a whim. These referrals are made because people are genuinely struggling, and the majority of people aren't reaching out for that diagnosis so they can be signed off, or 'written off' as the minister said, but so that they can try and figure themselves out and understand themselves better. It's all well and good having a market full of products which are there to offer something to people with anxiety or neurodiversities, but it feels like self-prescribing in a way to get these things without first having a diagnosis. Also, products like compression hoodies and blankets, fidget spinners and all that sort of thing can only do so much to help people with their issues. I needed help with mornings, and coffee only does so much. 

There are some people who think there is too much focus on the label, but sometimes 'labels' are important. Many people waiting for autism diagnoses worry that they're not going to be diagnosed and that actually, they're just blunt AHs. I worried that I wasn't going to be diagnosed with ADHD and it was more that I couldn't shut up because I was trying to cover up how boring I am. Those intrusive thoughts are really damaging, and the 'label' is just an acknowledgement of things being a little bit different in your head to the vast majority of people's, and it's an acknowledgement that the way that the world is structured isn't geared towards you exactly. Knowing that is powerful, because it gives you the ability to understand what can be different, what can feel different and potentially why certain things might be uncomfortable, but it also gives you a vocabulary to speak about that with other people and try and make things better. 

For me, despite the fact that I got so much better on medication, and then got so much worse when I had to come off of meds to avoid the risks to my little guy, I still feel a sense of imposter syndrome with the ADHD and I still struggle to battle against it at times in ways that are exhausting and frustrating and down right tedious. This is also in spite of the fact that I have a wonderfully supportive partner that does what he can to help me, even when it means me waking him up and asking if he's mad at me for something I did that he's already forgotten about but I've held onto for hours or days or weeks at a time. Pregnancy hormones and ADHD has been something else entirely as well, and without a diagnosis, without medication and without the right support from the mental health team, I don't know how I would have got through it, or how we would have got through it. 

I know the minister has now said that he misspoke when he started talking about this issue, and the inquiry is, in part, to look to see if over diagnosis is a problem, but I don't know if he realises how damaging that in itself is. The narrative around neurodiversity and the conversations some people have are still often not positive. People say some really awful things trying to be nice and people say really awful things trying to be awful. People weaponise autism for their own agendas, like being against vaccines, and whilst they might not say it in those terms there are some antivaxxers that will go so far as to say they would rather have a dead kid than an autistic kid. Some people say everyone is a bit autistic or everyone's a bit *insert neurodiversity here* as to why there doesn't need to be specific diagnoses for things like dyspraxia, dyscalcular etc and some people will see something like fidget spinners and decide they need one for their kid, too, and they shouldn't only be for the kids with a diagnosis or whatever. Where these things are scarce, it annoys me as much as people using diabetes drugs to be able to lose weight, because need should come before want. If there was an abundance of everything and something makes you feel better or you enjoy it, cool, but otherwise, leave it alone unless it is a need.

We are still battling with the language around autism, particularly to do with high and low functioning and the use of the term Asperges', and in ADHD there are still people using the term ADD even though that is now outdated, too. People may think this only matters inside of a clinic setting, but it doesn't, and I would argue it matters much more outside of the clinical setting. ADD was particularly applied to women and girls because the hyperactivity is primarily internal (until I start Tigger bouncing through sheer excitement or anger, but that's not the point) and less on display. It's things like overthinking and anxiety etc as opposed to a lowered impulse control, though lowered impulse control is still a factor, but it again presents differently. Low and high functioning seems to ascribe a value to people, which is gross, but also commonly refers only to the person's capacity to verbally communicate with other people. Someone can hold down a job, be able to take care of themselves independently and have good emotional control etc, but because they're none verbal or have limited verbal communication skills, they're considered low functioning. Similarly, you can have university professors that can't iron their own shirts or remember to feed themselves, but because they can hold a conversation - as long as it's about a subject they're interested in - and they're intelligent, they're considered "high functioning". And Asperger was a literal Nazi.

I really hope that this inquiry doesn't start to feel like a witch hunt, but if they're looking for evidence of overdiagnosis, it does feel worrying and the rhetoric around the inquiry already feels quite worrying. People "other" that which they don't know or don't understand and that's something that happens a lot to ND people, and my worry is that this is going to do the same thing on a bigger scale. I know that a lot of people are going to see it as confirmation of their own biases and there's little that can be done about that, but it is concerning and it is upsetting.

I was going to put this blog to go out on Monday and then rejig everything for next week, but it's past one in the morning and I'm actually tired so I'm just putting it out now so I can post the link to it, and barring anything else "exciting" happening, there's a schedule for three blogs to be published this week at lunchtime on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Does Nesting Look Different?,

I'm going to be a total hypocrite for a minute here, and I know that. I hate the way mum's get divided, or the whole idea of competition, whether it's between who's child did something first, or the various debates between c-section and vaginal birth, bottle vs breast, pumping and not pumping, cloth and disposable nappies, vaccinating and not vaccinating etc. Actually, that last one is a bit different, but anyway, I hate the way it feels like battle lines are drawn and you have to pick a team in each one and it just seems to make your circle smaller and smaller, or your section of the circles smaller and smaller like it's some Venn diagram. It drives me mad. But... 

There are times when I really want to reach out to other ADHD mamas who experienced antenatal anxiety (I think that's the term but I could be wrong - it's not anxiety towards the pregnancy and birth just a heightened anxiety because of the hormones whilst pregnant) and ask them if something is normal, or ask if something is because of the pregnancy or the ADHD. I mean, obviously that's based on the assumption that they would know the answer and there is a high chance that they wouldn't, because whilst we may all have experienced pregnancy differently the one thing we've not experienced is being pregnant without having ADHD. Even if your pregnancy was prior to diagnosis, you still had it when you were going through that and it would still have had an impact.

I've mentioned before that I have been struggling with pain. Apparently having ADHD comes with a little side quest of hypermobility and that generally means a pre-disposition towards Pelvic Girdle Pain, so this condition was a bit like Thanos; it's inevitable. It's also wholly maddening, but apparently that's where we're at. 

The pain that I'm in means I've spent a lot of time either on the sofa or the bed and every chair in between, because paracetamol does basically nothing and doctors are reluctant, for good reasons, to use or prescribe other painkillers. Today though, I excelled myself. Even though I know I haven't taken paracetamol or anything to reduce the pain, and I know I'm feeling it because moving around is still a struggle, it's like I went into either ADHD sorting hyper focus mode or pregnancy nesting mode and I don't know which. 

You may be thinking, is it important? Well, no, it's not, because as long as I use it, stuff is getting done so why question where it came from? But also, yes, it's important, because if it's just an ADHD thing, it's just an ADHD thing, but if it's a pregnancy thing, it's progress in the pregnancy, another symptom and another step towards the point when my son arrives. Maybe it's because of the pain, maybe it's because I've always been impatient, or maybe it's my slight obsession with the idea that certain birthdays in December kind of suck because they're too close to Christmas for you to have a birthday party when you're still a kid, but anything that looks like progress makes me really excited and really happy, because I do just want him here and I just want a cuddle, and to some extent I want my body to feel like my own again. Whether it is or isn't nesting really changes nothing, but if I knew it was nesting that would be encouraging, mentally, and I feel like neurotypical people can't understand the confusion between the two things as well having not experienced it. Generally, of course.

What I do understand of it though is the nesting is going to look different at the moment anyway, because there is still so much unorganised STUFF all over our house. What sort of stuff? All sorts. There are boxes, there are crates, there are bags, there is furniture, because I can only do so much and my partner has been working some pretty long hours. Although his friends have been a delightful support, there is still quite a bit to be done, but then there always is when you move house, and moving house at 30 something weeks pregnant isn't exactly ideal. So nesting is going to feel more like organising, unpacking boxes and all that jazz, rather than bleaching the skirting boards, because your house is already clean, but you're feeling the urge to make it MORE clean.

I keep having to remind myself that making a house a home is very much like trying to be happy. It's not a singular point in time or a destination, it's very much a process and a journey, appreciating the things that make it happen and trying to not hold on too tightly to the things that get in the way.

Being Unhealthy Makes You Unhealthy,

I realise that sounds like stating the obvious; honestly, I do, but there's something more to it than just saying being ill means being ill. 

Over the past sixteen ish months I've learnt a lot about myself and some of it is stuff I was having to re-learn about living with anxiety and low moods, and some of it was learning about the issues I've had for a long time that were attributed to other things, like laziness. 

I took a period of time off work because I was not well, and it took me a while to feel better, and whilst I am feeling better in general these days, I am not back to "normal", I don't know when I will be and actually I don't know if I ever will be, because the normal that I was then might not be the normal that I get to when I feel normal again. 

In the midst of all of this, I'm realising that recovery isn't this perfect upswing; it's a bunch of tiny steps and back slides and then deciding to keep going and keep trying. Most of those back slides are going to be unintentional, because the brain is a weird little place and sometimes we feel worse than we did the day before just because. Those are the days that are the most difficult and on those days it is really difficult to fall into good habits which mean we make those little back slides in a recovery journey.

For me a big part of a good day is being able to focus on things, but I have a bad habit of hyper-focusing on things and it makes me forget to do other things, so I can end up forgetting to go and make myself food until I'm too hungry to think about it and I just want something I can eat in the moment, which means I eat a lot of ready in minutes things, which aren't exactly healthy, and I sometimes forget whether I bought bananas or not. (I also know that bananas aren't the answer to everything but they're pretty good.)

Thing is, when I forget to eat until I get like that, I end up eating late, which means I sleep late, because that's always been a thing. If I eat just before bed I won't settle, partly because my stomach won't settle and partly because it wakes me up. 

As soon as I don't sleep, whether because I've leant into the fact I was tired and haven't really moved much during the day, whether it's because I have eaten late, or whether it's because I just don't feel safe a lot of the time and that doesn't make it easy to sleep, it causes me to have other issues. I don't really know what causes me to feel like I'm not safe, but it's how I am, and it means that I'm going to lend the problems of one day over to the next day, because lack of sleep gives me headaches, makes me grouchy, makes me feel like I'm having a low mood and also makes me inclined to feel quite nauseated which doesn't help convince me to eat properly the next day.

As long as it's something you recognise and do your best to stop, as much as is humanly possible at the time, recovery is still possible. Sometimes that will be a monumental effort and other times it will be easier, but on bad days it's going to be the hardest thing you've ever tried to do, and what is worth remembering that the good days can outweigh the bad if you let them.

Saturday,

 I was going to write this as two different blogs, but the reasons for one of them are the reasons it's going to be one instead.

Today has been a great day because not only has the rugby been back on (it actually started yesterday with the joys of Ireland giving France a good walloping) but also England were playing WITHOUT FARRELL and they won, even though they made a hash of it (Italy got the losing bonus point because the England defence is utterly shocking at the moment) and then Wales got their heads out of their asses in the second half of their match to pull the game back to almost level and denied Scotland a bonus point by a last minute hold up. Whilst the ball wasn't grounded because it went down onto an ankle as opposed to because it was actively held up, the defence through the second half of the game had been incredible and in those last minutes of the game they gave it everything. And it was incredible. To me, even though I know Wales lost and they only got a losing bonus point, this felt like a massive win. I took much more joy from the Wales game than the England game, probably because I love an underdog story, and it was good to see the litany of newer players coming up, where England are still relying a bit too much on the older generation, and that does not bode well for the next couple of years. So yes, rugby, loved it, and not just because one of the players was working so hard to get a try that he didn't seem to realise he had his ass out to the wind for a bloody long while. Or because I got a bit overexcited when I saw one of the players was wearing Oddballs on the pitch.

The reason this is all one blog is because I am so tired right now. 

I started my ADHD medication a few days ago and whilst it is helping to give me a bit of clarity and honestly, this is the best I have felt in a long time and is definitely the best I have ever felt on any form of medication, one of the less fun side effects is tiredness. I was looking forward to being tired, because it meant that I would be able to sleep, and I have been able to sleep and that is great, but because I've not got to the point (because it's only been a few days) where I am getting up earlier, because of being able to sleep earlier and sleep better, I'm tired when I want to do things like write, or watch TV, and it slightly feels like the sort of tiredness that stops me from doing things. I know that consistency with my medication is one of the things which helps it to work better for me and I know that my head is in a better place with the medication than without it, I don't feel like I can live my normal weekend, because I can't drink if I'm not at home (or rather I won't drink if I'm not at home, because it feels too risky), I need to try and keep a similar schedule to my weekday so that I keep working towards functioning better at work, and because I like going out and getting lost in something and spending hours out, and I am getting too tired to be able to do that, because I need to focus on my ability to get home. 

But overall, the side effects I was warned of with the medication haven't been anything like as bad as they could have been, I'm not resistant to the medication that I need, and actually the fact that it's working is proving I wasn't misdiagnosed with ADHD, which was something I was very worried about. Whilst I know that it's early days and I'm nowhere near a hundred percent, this feels like a really positive thing. 

I Can't Believe I Finally Get To Write This,

A couple of days ago I finally got an appointment I was waiting to have for a very long time, and the result of it is finally getting some meds to try and help me manage the symptoms of ADHD that have been causing me a lot of problems recently. But saying it like that feels like glossing over some of what happened so I'm going to take a step back. 

I have been trying to get a diagnosis for what I struggle with for a long time, definitely since I was 16, but possibly longer than that as well without me remembering the details. In places I feel like I have had little support on this, and other times I've had support that hinged upon conditions. We can help you if it's this, but since it's not that, the support has now gone, and you need to look elsewhere, but we're not going to tell you where. It's not what we thought it was, but we're not going to tell you what we think it might be. Maybe that's because specialists are very focused on their own areas, and anything outside of that is kind of just the void. It was difficult and there were times I struggled with it a lot more than other times and plenty of times where I thought just accept that this is your life. The idea of advocating for myself wasn't something I really understood for a while, and it's something I haven't always had the energy or capacity for. 

I walked into the appointment that I had a couple of days ago with a coffee in my hand and a splitting headache because I had barely slept due to worrying, and because I needed to get up rather early to get there. I thought I was going to have to advocate for myself to be able to get the medication that will hopefully help me. Without trialing the medication I have no idea if it will work, but I honestly thought I was going to have a fight on my hands to get to trial it, because hey, there's a lot of other things we can try first, but then the clinicians pretty much told me that they know that trialing the medication is the best thing, that for eighty percent of people it works and the hope is that I'm in that eighty percent. They needed to run a couple of tests to make sure that my physical health could cope with the type of medication I would be prescribed, and then they got me the prescription. I honestly didn't expect to feel disappointed at not needing to fight, but I guess that I had worked myself up to it so much that I couldn't comprehend not having to fight. I guess that when I have spent so long feeling like I was banging my head against the wall, getting somewhere without having to argue, getting support without having to demand it just feels weird. It's not bad, of course, but it is weird. And unexpected. 

I'm writing this on the eve of beginning the medication, because I needed to drive today and I couldn't start a new medication and then drive, and on the day that I got the tablets it was too late when I had them for me to be able to then start them that day. (I also wouldn't have started them and then been driving the next day because that sounds like a recipe for disaster, not knowing how they would impact me overnight.) Obviously, I'm probably going to write something when I've had a few days or weeks to settle on them, but I guess that is dependent on how they make me feel and whether or not they realise my biggest fear, which is that the medication to help me function stops me from being me, or it limits me in how much *me* I can be.

Jesus Freaking Christ,

...I know I need the pressure of a deadline, but this one takes the biscuit. I'm in bed the night before returning to week after a... I was going to write blissful week of annual leave but I think that's wrong... we'll say complicated week of annual leave and I'm exhausted because of the lack of sleep from the last two days and everything I've done in between the two nights with little sleep (yes, it is possible to be exhausted after two bad nights of sleep, particularly for someone with insomnia and ADHD) and my feet somehow feel like blocks of ice despite the fact the electric blanket is on and I only took my slippers off thirty seconds before getting into bed, and there are a myriad of other reasons why my focus right now should be sleep, but I'm writing this blog, and why? 

Because my cognitive functions have chosen this moment to spit out a somewhat logical framework by which I can write one of the projects I have been trying to write for the last couple of years. The characters have been there, bit's of storyline have been there, there has been joy, passion and other emotions that have ebbed and flowed, but nothing has come out right, and AS SOON AS I SHOULD BE ASLEEP ahead of what will be another busy week, something in my head shouts coo-ey, have you thought about writing it like this? So. Bloody. Useful.

I need sleep. I need it, now, immediately, but I also know in the time it took me to walk from the bathroom to my bedroom that I lost parts of what I was thinking about possibly never to be seen again. I know that writing this blog is a distraction, but I committed myself to posting more and I'm determined to do it. And I know I need to be up at half past 8 in the morning because my car needs to be serviced, and it took me a while to get an appointment at the garage that I trusts so missing it is not an option. But I really want to write!! 

You might think I could just quickly scribble down notes and then that would prompt everything to come back to me in the morning or some time tomorrow *when I have more time* (jokes, I will not have more time tomorrow, tomorrow is going to be mental. And Tuesday is going to be even worse, presuming my car comes home from the garage fine tomorrow. (It not coming home tomorrow isn't really an option, but it is a possibility which is giving me anxiety and may be the reason I currently have a horrendous stomach ache.) Here's the problem. Memory prompts do not work well on me. I'm like the character from my beloved The Monsters of Gramercy Park: wake up in the night and scribble Ardilla on my hand, wake up in the morning and wonder why my nocturnal ponderings included Spanish squirrels. Imagine the kid from Paulie refusing to speak. 'Can you say but- ter- fly?' and all you get is a shaking head? As soon as I ask a question or start trying to recall something, it's like a little egg thief thing from Spyro grabs it, runs off and I'm having to choose between charging after it at high speed, use special flame throwing capacities (we'll say that's asking my mum... or Alexa...) or try and find another way to the same thing, because sometimes I just get frustrated because I can see what I mean, but I can't find the word and I can't draw to save my life so it's not coming out that way... The problem is, much like Spyro with me at the controls I end up banging my head into walls. Not going to lie though, liking the example where I am a dragon.

I don't want to spend some time, where I still don't sleep, writing something which turns out to be useless to me, but I also don't want to stay up all night trying to write it the way I want to write it, even just as a framework, because I already feel like I need match sticks to keep my eyes open. Sadly, the next time I have annual leave booked is also my birthday and I have plans to go and see Mr Big then (though whether that is on the day of my birthday or the day after is yet to be decided. Other than the fact the gig on my birthday is in Nottingham and that's a bit of a drive, I would be (am) really tempted to go to both since it is the final tour, and honestly, I'm not ready. I'm not sure I ever will be or would be ready for it to be their final tour, but I'm certainly not ready for it now. 

Clinically Naive,

Trying to write this sodding blog has been a classic example of my not being able to organise my own thoughts, partly because I'm trying to put it together in a way that makes some form of sense to other people and also because bits and pieces keep popping in and out of my head and it's a nightmare. I also keep getting a little, I don't know what the word is but some form of uncomfortable, that I mention the ADHD diagnosis a lot, and I do, but I also know that it's something that is a big part of my life right now, it's a big part of me trying to learn about myself, so I guess I have to suck it up through the bad feelings and just get on with it.

There are some terms that people use about those around them and you just kind of get used to and they're effectively ways of describing your ADHD or autism traits before you realise that's what it is. I've been called clinically naive, I've referred to something my assessor told me isn't dyspraxia (but I forgot the name of it) as my 'clumsy dumbf**kery' and I'm sure there are plenty of other things as well. Once I thought of myself as an eternal teenager, because of a few things, but since the ADHD diagnosis I kind of had this moment where I was like ooooh, that makes more so much more sense now. 

Some of these terms are really useful, and they really help to make some sense of the, quite frankly, mess inside of my head, and I'm sure it's the same for others. Some of these terms help to kind of describe what it feels like to deal with who we are and how our heads work, or don't as the case may be, and some are just other people applying phrases that might seem well meaning, but actually point out that we're different, or try and minimise those differences and make them seem like things we are lacking. Like, my 'eternal teenager'-ness was always blamed on an inability to grow up. 

I get that I can miss social queues, I believe in people for longer than I should and I try to see the best in things, even though it is really difficult. 

One of the things I really struggle with is I take the things that people say, even in off hand comments, to heart. I get upset about it, I get hurt by it, I have had to deal with people treating me like crap for standing up for myself against these comments before, and so I just kind of absorb them, I take them in and I effectively use them as a stick to punish myself with them. I don't do it on purpose, it's something I'm trying not to do, but it happens. 

I think the reason that I wanted to share this - that might be overstating it because I can't say it's the most comfortable thing in the world - is because whilst people think that saying things about ADHD being a band wagon, everyone having it, or it just being lazy girl syndrome for those of us who are just being diagnosed, it's harmful. It's really harmful and sometimes you can hurt people even when you mean well. And hey, that's okay, but if that person tells you that you hurt them, maybe just try to understand them rather than jumping on why it's not your fault that they're hurt. 

Sometimes, It's Not Even Being Tired,

I've already mentioned that over the last few weeks I have struggled a lot with a few things with the dreaded ADHD, and one of the biggest things with it, other than the slight identity crisis that it sent me into, was, or is, brain fog.

I am used to feeling tired. I have spent a long time being tired and not really knowing why, and it's in part because my sleeping pattern is massively affected by the ADHD, but it's also because a few things feel like 'tired' but they're not actually the feeling of being tired, so it doesn't matter how much sleep I get, those feelings or emotions or whatever may be there anyway, because sleep is not what I need in those moments. Sometimes, it's as simple as I need caffeine, because it is enough of a stimulant to be able to sharpen my focus a little bit and let me get on with what I need to do, sometimes, it's a bigger issue of being fully burnt out and needing to take some time out to do things that all me to reset a little and sometimes it is the beloved brain fog that I haven't really got used to and I don't really know how to shift, if there even is a way.

Mostly I am pretty good that I can drive even when I am having a bad day, but when I have a bad day with it, I really can't drive. Driving is like my base line because even though I've not been doing it for long, any time I render myself unable to drive because of medication or alcohol, I miss being able to use my car, and any time my car isn't there, I struggle without it. I'm rather attached to the freedom of just being able to go anywhere with it since I've done quite a lot of driving since I passed my test and not being limited to doing things I can get a lift or public transport to has been pretty great.

Over the last couple of days the brain fog has been so bad that I have kind of felt as though I shouldn't drive if I can avoid it, because caffeine isn't doing anything to make things clearer, sleep is doing nothing and I don't really know what else to try. Other people with ADHD have said that medication can help, but I would be lying if I said it didn't make me anxious because of all of the bad experiences I've had with medication for anxiety and depression. Honestly, the way I've been feeling recently feels like the early days of citalopram all over again, and nothing but time actually helped with that, and eventually recovering enough to come off of the medication all together. That also really helped.

Whilst I'm not sure what's causing it, I'm trying to battle through it and also realising that there is a problem with brain fog in that it makes me forget to do things like cook until the point where I get dizzier, I can't exercise because I already feel dizzy and don't want to go out on my own (as in, without another person) and if I took Chai then I would be concerned that if I fell over or collapsed walking her again then she would do a runner again (though when that happened, she had only been with me for a couple of weeks and may not have realised that her name wasn't China anymore when I was calling for her) and I can't remember what I've drank so I am more inclined to have coffee, given that it is caffeinated and the caffeine can help, but it is also very dehydrating so when the brain fog is even partly to do with dehydration, I'm at risk of making it worse. 

All of this makes me feel as though I sound incapable of looking after myself, and the truth is that sometimes I am. Sometimes I ask my mum if I can stay with her, or she can have Chai, because I either can't look after us both at that moment, or I can't look after myself if I'm focusing on her. There are times when I use things like HelloFresh, because they stop me from needing to plan or make too many decisions and their instructions are pretty simple. I can also tell that I've not been eating properly by how many of the recipes are sat around my kitchen. (I never said it was idiot proof.) Sometimes the things which have worked before don't work the next time things are hard and sometimes the things you think will work don't do anything. The whole thing is a balancing act between what I actually have the capacity to do and what will help me to focus less on things that I can get help for. I think that makes sense, but on the day I'm writing this I'm so foggy I'm not even sure. Then again, iced coffee, a banana and a packet of crisps have taken the edge off of the worst of it.