It’s life Jim, but not as we know it

And through light, darkness is clearer

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First things first, this photo is actually from the previous holiday in which I started to feel that the black dog was starting to gnaw upon my doors once more.  I’ve known for a while that the signs of depression were creeping ever closer but I have been in utter denial.  Partially because I’ve been in the metaphorical hole so many times that I was sure that falling back in was impossible and partially, in all honesty, because I’m stubborn as fuck.  I have a tendency towards depression.  Always have.  Just writing those words makes me want to punish myself somehow but it’s true and always will be, no matter how many times I pretend to the contrary.  It’s a part of my make-up, these misfiring neural pathways and somehow I’m trying to own them.

I’m just back from a joyous few days in Portugal with an old friend who I knew I could trust with a bit of a meltdown and who wouldn’t judge.  I flew out with my daughter and was greeted with warm hugs and understanding and for the first time in over two years was able to fall asleep in someone’s arms.  It was so beautiful and relaxing and emotional to actually allow myself to just be held and sleep.  And that’s how the rest of the days progressed; playing with my daughter and beach trips galore followed by friend therapy, hugs and wine in the evening.  It took me all of 12 hours to start crying on him.  Sometimes, when you’re low, kindness is the thing that tips you over the edge…

Anyway, I must have known that this was coming as at some point, about a week ago, I got back in touch with my therapist who saw me through an extremely tough few years a long while ago.  In these times of black, she is almost the only person I trust and certainly the only person I feel I can legitimately sob to for an hour.  And that’s what I did today, on full moon, on Beltane on this turn of seasons and pagan festival of yore, I bawled my wee eyes out until we had a mini action plan and we had laughed that basically all I need to do for a modicum of sanity is plant some lettuce.  Sometimes what you need is really fucking simple.

Not that I’m saying lettuce is the answer to all psychological problems because you know, that would be ridiculous but actually, is there any situation that isn’t at least a little improved by getting your hands in earth and growing something?…  The thing is, I’m really happy as a mother.  I love my daughter, I love being able to spend this part of her early life with her and I’m grateful for every giggle and every snuggle.  I’ve just lost myself as an individual and have somehow allowed all of my tendencies to expect failure as standard to re-permeate my existence.  I have no job, I have no lover and I can’t even grow a fucking lettuce!

So, today, I see in Beltane with a whisky in hand and a tear in my eye and I pray that the blossoms of spring will carry me with them as they turn to the light and radiate it from within.  I search for surety within this flux, to know that I can reroute these neural pathways once again and to believe that I am worthy and I am enough and to run with the dreams I have and to believe that they too, are enough.  So for now, I’m taking all the Bach remedies that seem appropriate, sitting in lotus and drinking my national spirit and trying to access the strengths of ages past.  I do believe that recovery is entirely possible, perhaps it’s just time to accept that I need to balance potential relapse into my future.

Darkness is just the other side of light, it’s what comes before dreams…

IMG_3297

The end of an era?

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My daughter hasn’t breastfed all day.  She refused this mornings feed although, she still wanted to sit with my nipple in her mouth and the same has happened this evening.  I’m both heartbroken and hopeful.  Why does parenting always seem to result in such a dichotomy of emotions?  No wonder we’re all a wee bit barmy!

I mean, for anyone who has practised baby led breastfeeding and gentle parenting, self-weaning is the dream we hope for.  It’s the thing that many people tell you is impossible… ‘Oh, you’ll still be feeding her when she’s at school’ and ‘she’ll never stop by herself’ and ‘you’re babying her’ and other such choice parenting titbits from the wankers who always proclaim to know better.  Well, my just turned 2 year old seems to have decided that she’s done.  She clearly still wants the closeness and was insistent upon cuddling up to my naked torso.

5 days further in and she now calls them boob snuggles.  Still no actual feeding though.  I do wonder if this is one of those ‘feeding strikes’ that one reads about and in a few days she’ll want to restart.  I guess time will tell.  I’d have thought the milk will remain for a while.  From my perspective, I’m finding parenting a wee bit of a struggle without the defined 20 minutes of breastfeeding that used to bookend my day.  I miss the closeness and the warmth and the feeling of her relaxing into my body as she nursed.  I miss knowing that I could settle her from trauma with my breasts.  Like the time she fell down the stairs and was pale and scared and I just breastfed her for a few minutes and it was as if it had never happened.  Magic boobs!

I miss my baby.  I love my toddler.  She’s getting so grown up already.

If I had a husband, I’d be trying for another baby right about now.

Wanting to breastfeed again can’t be the worst reason anyone has ever had another kid, surely?

But, as a 38 year old very single parent, I am trying to come to terms with the fact that this may be it for me.  I’m so grateful for how easy it was for us and for every moment of special bonding that we got to enjoy together and for the feelings of overwhelming love when she made her little happy dinosaur noises as she fed, which way surpassed the pain of engorgement in those early days.  The frozen cabbage leaves were still vital and I did remain topless for 2 weeks (my postie still can’t look me in the eye!). I’ll tell her all about it when she’s older and hopefully one day, this will be a joy that she can experience with her own children and I will reminisce with pride.

Exposed

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It’s been a long time since I’ve been held by anyone.  Just held and stroked and allowed to relax into a warm body and strong pair of arms.  And yesterday, it finally happened for me again.  I allowed myself to be held, to snuggle, to give and receive reassurance, to murmur whatever the semi-platonic version of sweet nothings are and it was so lovely.

The last time someone held me was when my daughter was around 2 weeks old. She’s just turned 2. The last person to hold me was my daughter’s father before he decided he really couldn’t bear to be around us any more.  So it’s been nearly 2 years in which I have been the giver of many hugs, have held and soothed and reassured and loved my daughter over and over again.

I wouldn’t change those years but the truth that remains is that I haven’t been able to let go in that time.  I’m never off duty.  Always there, always listening, always loving and at the end of the day it’s still just me, alone, listening to her breathe over the baby monitor as I watch netflix until I feel myself pass again into a numbness from which I could potentially sleep.

And always accepting that loneliness was a part of single parenting but never really allowing myself to feel it as a burden or indeed engaging with it in any way other than in passing. But after yesterdays cuddles with a man of whom I think highly, today has been filled with tears and longing and a real sense of exactly what it is that I’m missing and with no real idea of whether this will ever change.

So this evening for me is about watching a sad movie and doing the ugly crying and allowing myself to feel as utterly alone as I am.  Then I’ll wash my face, get some sleep and wake with gratitude for my daughter, I’ll resume pretending to myself that I’m not lonely and the show will go on.  And maybe, hopefully, someday soon, I’ll be lucky enough again to have a moment or three with someone who can throw light into the darkest corners and remind me where my edges are.

 

Still me, still standing

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Sometimes, being a single mother is gut-wrenchingly lonely.

I sit here, alone of course,  with face dripping as I finally release and let the tears flow.

Mostly, I just don’t find the space in which I can allow myself to fall into sadness, I have a baby to take care of and her needs come first and I don’t have the time to indulge in my own emotions.  But today, today has been different.  Today I realised that I was developing feelings for a man who has been messaging me daily for a matter of months.  Real feelings, real hopes, real me, real future.

So, the question that I have been avoiding because I didn’t want to pop the bubble, ‘how is tinder life going?’ I asked and he replied ‘Well, I went on a date last night and she’s still messaging me so I must have done ok’, I nearly threw up on the floor in Waitrose.  Spontaneous physical response to emotion is not a sensation I have experienced for a long time.  And despite the sensation of my insides heaving, even then, I found gratitude for experiencing such a real feeling that was just mine to breathe through.

Thing is, having a baby rips down all your barriers.  You are so in love with this little person that everywhere you go and in everything you do there is love emanating from you and you are free.  Free in the oddest sense really as on a daily basis my routine completely revolves around my child.  But free in the sense that there is a little person who needs you so completely and whose needs you fulfil so completely, that there is no need for the sort of barriers and walls that we all tend to create around ourselves when it comes to fully experiencing love.

And yes, obviously, the love one has for their child is of a different sort to the kind that one might experience with a significant other but there is a commonality.  And I found that I let this man in, which is not something I do as a general rule, in my entire adult life I can only think of one relationship in which I ever allowed myself to need.  It ended horribly.  Anyway, the point being is that I’m finding myself to be more open than ever before, because of the depth and nuance of the relationship with my child.  And what that means is that my barriers seem to be gone.

And so I’m hurt, a little deflated and lonely again.  But actually, I’m still happy, I still have an amazing child and somehow, I’m still able to experience all the joys and all the heartache involved in letting someone in.  I’m so unbelievably grateful for that.

I am grateful that I met this amazing guy who ticks so many of my boxes and I am grateful that he has let me down somewhat and I am grateful that I still miss him and I am grateful that this journey has led me to crying in my meditation practise on the living room floor.

I know that I’m alive.  I’m fucking buzzing with life.  And I’m excited to know which sensations this new me can experience next.

It’s now the next night and yes, I’m still fucking grateful for this experience.  I do, however, feel as if I’ve experienced a break up and so duly got round one of my oldest friends and drank two and a half beers and smoked three whole cigarettes.  Which was also fucking amazing.

I guess what’s really happened is that I’ve realised that I do still have feelings that are just mine and that don’t relate to my child.  I’m still me.

And that’s just the best revelation I could have asked for.

The circle of love

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I have had my faith in humanity restored so many times over since having a child and today was no exception.

I have probably dwelled on the somewhat cynical side of life ever since first researching acid rain for a school paper when I was 10.  That sense of pervading despair at humanity only heightened when going through puberty, and a lifetime spent working in the environmental sector is enough to sometimes make even the most hopeful feel like there is little point.

I would have called myself a pragmatic realist if you had challenged me on my cynical ways a few years ago.  Probably because it sounds kind of cool and probably because I felt in many ways that cynicism as a word seemed to have connotations of falsities not backed up by rational thought with depressed tinfoil hat wearers lurking at the extreme end of the spectrum.

Anyway…

Since then I have found yoga and had a baby.  Both of these have profoundly affected my state of mind.

I attended yoga classes sporadically for years but it wasn’t until an abusive relationship sent me pretty close to the edge that I came to rely on it for sanity.   But my practice gives me more than just sanity.  It gives me hope.  And clarity.  And peace.  Even when I was smoking a spliff on the way to class, listening to metal at high volume and then chowing on a mars bar before class began, I always found peace in the asanas and the harmony between breath and movement soothed my soul and gave me light in a a very dark place.

And it still does.  On the worst days, being on my mat for even just a couple of sun salutations brings that lightness of being.  Even if it feels as if it disappears the second the mat is rolled up, I know that it doesn’t.  Because I am different now.  I find hope everywhere.  Sure, I’m still cynical about politics but that really is pragmatic realism!

Sometimes trying to maintain a daily practice is difficult but I read a quote from someone that has helped me ever since I read it.  It went something along the lines of;

“It’s still yoga if all you do is sit in child’s pose for 10 minutes”

When I read that, my life changed.  Sure, some mornings I go all power vinyasa and break out the arm balances and feel all kinds of awesome but, I have learned to not judge myself for the days where I really can’t be fucking arsed and instead, to thank myself for getting on the mat in my pj’s and snuggling into child’s pose.

Which leads me to my child.  She brings me into the present all day, every day.  I have been shown such kindnesses from total strangers since having her that my formerly cynical heart is being cracked open in a way that no relationship has ever managed. Nobody told me that having a baby could make life this wonderful.  I know that sounds all Disney and like I don’t ever cry in the shower whilst manically rocking the pram because the baby just won’t sleep, but honestly, life has never been so good.  I have never been so good.

Today, after a long walk around town, I was weak on my feet and stepped into a cafe to sit and recuperate and feed the baby.  This cafe had two booths with benches ideal for allowing the baby to lie on and several small tables with stools.  The booths were both taken and I looked around despairingly as I knew that the small tables wouldn’t work for us.  I turned to leave and a woman called after me “excuse me, take my booth, I’ll sit at the bar”, I asked if she was sure but she was already on the way to the bar.  She just smiled at me, said that she was a mother herself and she understood and not to worry at all.  I will be forever grateful to that woman.  And if I am ever in the same situation a couple of years from now, then I will do the same and I will pass the gift of understanding and appreciation to the next mother.  The circle of love.

A few weeks ago, whilst I was sat in a beer garden drinking a half pint of ale and breastfeeding my baby, I felt a little like I should be being judged.  Perhaps I was judging myself, I always was my own worst critic.  Anyway, just as I was getting ready to leave, I saw an elderly lady approaching me.  My stomach kind of dropped, I was expecting judgement.  This lady came up to me and said “Dear, I just wanted to tell you well done for being brave and breastfeeding in public.  When I had my children 56 years ago I used to get told it was disgusting to be feeding my babies and that I should be doing it behind closed doors” she paused and then said “I was discreet just as you are and it was a shame for me and my children but I wanted to tell you how proud I am of you for doing it here”.  And she walked off.  Leaving me with tears pricking the corners of my eyes as I felt that somehow seeing me feeding had helped her put some demons to bed and by speaking to me she had helped me to feel proud of myself even in a beer garden.  It’s the circle of love.

Two ladies who I couldn’t pick out of a line-up even now and yet, they have both touched my soul and I will be eternally grateful for the kindnesses they showed me.

Show kindness to strangers.

Grow the circle of love.

 

Samprati Hum

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I am gratitude and I am grace.

I really am.

I am in such an imperfect situation yet every single day I find myself counting my blessings.

My daughter laughs and I am happy and I am grateful.

My daughter smiles at a stranger and engages me inescapably in the outer world and I am happy.

I walk under trees wearing my daughter and as she gazes up through sun-dappled leaves with an expression of pure wonderment in the moment, I am happy.

She brings me to the present in every moment.

And I have never felt so at peace.

I find time for yoga twice a day and for that I am grateful. In the morning I do a few rounds of surya namaskar b with my daughter on her playmat beside me. My expression of downward dog is apparently hilarious for her, which makes me giggle and somehow, being forced to giggle through my morning practice allows me to relax into asanas in a deeper way than the morning practice would normally allow.

Because I’m happy?

Because I’m grateful?

Either way, by the time I have put her to bed in the evening and find myself back on my mat, I am so filled with love that my practice seems to flow deeper than ever before.  I find my mind is far more in sync with my body and as breath and flow combine I am grateful for all that I have and for all that I haven’t and for all that I am in that moment.

And when she cries mid-flow and I have to attend to her needs before mine, I realise that somehow, her needs have become mine and I am humbled.

And I am happy.

And I am grateful.

I am love.

Fantasy land is not like fantasia…

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I sit here in silence having conversations with people in my head.  I imagine scenarios and then run with them until they become too silly, too dark or too involved and I actually start talking out loud and gesticulating.  I’ve always done this.  I’ve never been sure if it’s normal or not.  I think it’s just something I do to process situations and to try to prepare myself for certain possible (usually slightly odd) eventualities.

Eventualities like;

One day my baby daddy will marry a teenager and have a baby who he will love properly and I will get old and lonely and be single forever yet somehow have to rise above it all and be sagacious and benevolent.  Which, given the levels of malevolence I currently seem to be harbouring, may be a little difficult.

and

At this wedding I have to go, my ex from a long time ago will be there and will ask me if I have wizard sleeves for labia after birthing my baby and I will tell him he owes me more respect because we used to love each other and I terminated his child so actually, we could have been parents but I chose differently.  This ex is prone to inappropriate statements so this is actually semi-plausible.

and

Also at the wedding, an old friend, the one who got away, will sit next to me and tell me he thinks I’m beautiful and he always liked me and wants to see if we can have a future.  To give you an idea of the life fantasy levels, I first met this guy when I was 19 and the second I saw him, a little voice in my head said ‘that’s the man I’m going to marry’.  Bonkers. Unless we do get married of course…

When you say things like ‘I have an active fantasy life’ people tend to get a bit excited imagining some scenario where Snow White meets 50 shades of grey.  I rarely have sexual fantasies.  I have a certain couple of men who I do have sex dreams about but only as an afterthought to a usually protracted and puzzling, intellectually stimulating adventure. Sapiosexual?

There was a guy my friend dated for a while and I developed this crazed life fantasy around him.  I couldn’t even talk to him because I was so in love with this guy that I had never had any contact with other than passing a spliff at an after party.  He was really skinny, had some dodgy tattoos and may have had more than a passing whiff of a heroin habit.  Did I mention my taste in men is notoriously bad?!

My baby daddy is someone who I had a whole crazy life fantasy attached to without even meeting him.  I was lonely a few summers ago and he posted something on facebook that made me think we were meant to meet.  I knew my life would change when we met.  I spent a week or so walking the hills and imagining conversations, where we would live, where we would travel to and the friends we would make.

Needless to say, the reality is turning out to be somewhat different.

And therein lies the crux of the problem of blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.

I guess it’s akin to putting someone up on a pedestal except for it’s putting a whole relationship on a pedestal.  A whole relationship with someone you’ve never had a real conversation with.

Bonkers.

All the guys I have life fantasies about have songs attached to them.

The one who got away: Arctic Monkeys and Do I Wanna Know

My friends ex who I never spoke to : Madonna and Beautiful Stranger

I’ve actually forgotten the song my baby daddy had attached to him.  Maybe that’s what happens when you blow a fantasy out of the water.

I have also experienced the other side of things with my lovely ex.

When two people buy into a fantasy it becomes a reality and it’s so amazing that you keep searching for things that are wrong with it and in so doing you jeopardise the best thing that’s ever happened to you.  To be fair, I think he was as guilty as I was about projecting the life fantasy, he certainly held me on a pedestal that I did not deserve to be on.  But, who’s to say, we at least still love each other and perhaps, just perhaps, despite, or in fact because  of the other man’s child, we will still get to live out our life fantasy’s together.  Or maybe we’ll figure out how to live and love in reality.

To be present in our own lives.

I’ll keep you posted.

Put down that banana!

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Maybe it was inevitable I would end up writing about food at some point.  I have a mixed relationship with food.  Well, maybe that’s not quite true.  It might be fairer to say I have a complex relationship with food due to various associations and experiences but I truly love to eat.  I love to experiment in the kitchen, I don’t think I’ve ever viewed a recipe a a set of rules, more as vague guidelines from which to fly freely.

Sometimes it works out.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  A bit like life.  But every failure teaches you something… I will never again mistake bananas for plantains after the sweet garlic bananas of ’06.  And every success teaches you something…dates and nuts, just say yes kids.  But, in the kitchen as in life, experimentation is key to learning what you like and how to get there.

I’m having a green smoothie for dinner most nights at the moment, partially because I don’t really have the time to cook, partially because I’m trying to lose some of the baby weight and partially because it is one of the easiest ways to up my vegetable intake on a daily basis.  I’ve been stuck in a smoothie rut.  Every day the same blend of spinach, celery, cucumber, pear, passion fruit, a half banana, some fruit juice and some additions of barleygrass, cacao, hemp and brewer’s yeast.  This is a delicious combination and especially good if you have the fear of the ‘green’ taste as the banana pretty much overpowers even the meanest of greens.

But yesterday a friend broke me out of my rut.  With coriander!  And I feel amazing and excited and my brain is fired up with new combinations to try.  I’ve put parsley in my smoothies before as it’s meant to have detoxifying benefits but never even considered coriander.  Considering I always have it in my fridge (or dying in a plant pot…) and I love it, I’m surprised it’s never occurred to me to utilise it.  I know some people hate it so this won’t work for everyone but for me it added a beautiful, almost citrus flavour to the veg. I’m also now adding almond butter for a little extra protein and minerals.

So, my new recipe, to be viewed also as an evolving guideline and not as a set of rules is;

Spinach, celery, cucumber, pak choi, chard, kale, red pepper, passion fruit, coriander, nut butter and fruit juice.  And the previous additions of random powders.

And not a banana in sight!

And it’s so yummy.  Granted, perhaps a bit more ‘green’ tasting but really yummy none the less.  And coriander is meant to be excellent for skin conditions so maybe it can help with my eczema too.

For the record, I do love a good banana but I have a whole one with my breakfast every morning and it feels good to be breaking out of the shackles of the yellow fruit.

Who would have thought that something as simple as changing your smoothie recipe could be so invigorating?

Leap out of the rut people.

Tear up the rulebook.

Get rid of your own impositions upon yourself.

And fly my pretties, fly!

Where is he?

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So, after all the dramas of the previous week, last weekend I finally went on my date.  We went for a walk along a beautiful beach and then went for lunch in a village pub.  Sounds good right?  It was.  Mostly.  I mean, from the second I saw him walking towards my car in the passenger side mirror, I knew he was a slightly broken shadow of his former self. Something in the walk gave it away.  Like someone who was trying to remember how to swagger when once it would have come without thought.  But, I still felt a wee bit excited, was still intrigued to know more and was just looking forward to a lovely afternoon with a man who wasn’t my Dad.

We got on fine, he’s good company, conversation was easy but it became really clear that he’s just lost his mojo since his wife left him for a woman.  I don’t know if any of you have ever had to embark on the mojo hunt for yourselves but it is an intensely personal journey and one that to some extent no one can help you along.  Once you have been on that journey yourself, you can always see when others are going through it.  I hunted out my mojo a few years ago, it took me several years of intense therapy, facing myself and going on adventures to get where I am.  He’s at the start of that mojo hunt, having self-medicated with drink for a while, he’s starting to realise that booze isn’t the answer, or so he said. And so before we had even walked back along the beach I knew we could never be more than friends.

And then to lunch.  He drank three pints over lunch.  The first he met like an absent lover. Like he had been longing for it, like there was no other taste that could satisfy.  He had drunk half the second pint before food even arrived.  Now, I may well have drunk three pints over lunch before but certainly not with a date who wasn’t drinking. In those circumstances, one is perfectly acceptable but any more than that seems a little rude at best.  And he changed, as the alcohol caressed his brain, flashes of the cocksure man he used to be re-emerged.  And I remembered why I had first liked him.  And I realised that I liked him much more now when he was sober and vulnerable and honest and a little bit broken.  But now, I didn’t fancy him at all.

Anyway, I figured we could be friends.  We kept messaging.  And then we broached politics.  I told him I would be voting Green.  He told me IN SHOUTY CAPITALS that I had to vote Scottish National Party.  I told him shouting like a crazed nationalist and refusing to discuss anything only made me surer.  He unfriended me!!  And that’s where we still are.  I’m sure we’ll meet again sometime and I hope that he will be further down the road of his mojo hunt.

Anyway, that all aside, it was really lovely to spend an afternoon with a man who is definitely a man’s man.  He was chivalrous, he bought me lunch, he helped me fasten the baby carrier, he held doors open, he held the baby while I went to the loo.  I’m so accustomed to single parenting at this stage and so ferociously independent that allowing anyone to be ‘the man’ was both a surprise and a treat.  It made me yearn for a partner in crime.  For someone to lean on.  For someone with a big hand to hold.  For someone to mock me.  For someone to help me even when I don’t need it.  For someone else to take charge for a change.

And then that evening, my travel husband came to visit.  I loved this man from the moment I met him in Johannesburg bus station.  I loved him all through our crazy Mozambique adventure.  And I love him now.  I told him to leave his girlfriend and come and play baby daddy and I was only half joking.  He told me it was beautiful to see me as a mother which still makes me well up just to type it.  And he told me he was proud of me. We played backgammon as we always did.  And I won as I always did (that bit might not be strictly true, he claims he won more, but perspective is an odd thing).  But mostly, why I fell in a heap and cried my little eyes out when he left was because he walked into my house, picked up my baby and other than one feed I gave her, he held her all night and she fell asleep in his arms.

I want for my baby girl to grow up knowing a man with arms that she can feel safe enough in to just fall asleep.  I want that for me as well.  It’s not that I need him.  I don’t.  We’re doing just fine without this man figure.  And women do it all the time.  And women cope. Because that’s what you have to do.  But oh, I would love for these circumstances to be different.  I would love for my baby daddy to have tried to at least be a friend to me and a father figure to her.  I would love to have someone to talk to in these long evenings after my baby has gone to bed.  I want to feel desirable.

And so, a date with a broken man and a reunion with an old lover, all in the same day, made me face these things and realise certain inalienable truths.

I want a husband.

Where is he?

Tinder?!

I guess anything is worth a shot…

Well, that was intense

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I’ve had very little sleep over the last 48 hours so this may be a somewhat incoherent brain dump in which I write about shit a lot. Please excuse the indulgence. It’s necessary for my sanity.

My 14 week old daughter has had diarrhoea for 3 days. Actually, possibly for 6 but the first three were only 3 poops a day so I thought maybe there was some new developmental phase of the sphincter occurring.  The last three days there have been over 10 poops a day. That’s a lot of poo to clear up.  It’s a very tender bottom for my wee baby.  It’s a horrific amount of nappies going to landfill.  I do try to use reusables but when faced with three pooey nappies in as many hours there is just no way to keep up with the washing.  It’s also very fractured sleep for my wee one, who usually sleeps through the night.  I seem to have the mythical sleeping baby, 10-11 hours is the norm.  I have to only mention that to close friends as announcing that kind of information in yoga class gets you a combination of dirty, envious or disbelieving looks from your peers.  Thing is, even with a baby who sleeps that much, I’m fucking exhausted.  Baby rearing is a relentless pursuit.  No rest for the wicked.  And certainly no rest for the single mother.  I’m sure a certain section of society equates those two things nicely but frankly, those people can kiss my white ass every day and thrice on Sunday.

Anyway, I seem to have digressed already.  I feel like I’ve had my first real ‘Where is the nearest adult? Oh fuck it’s me’ moment.  So, to resume my shitty tale, on the second day of diarrhumpi I had to take my daughter for her MeningitisB vaccine because I’d already missed the previous appointment. I wanted it administered separately from the combined vaccine as they are apparently less likely to develop a fever and therefore less likely to require dosing with Calpol which is full of noxious E numbers.  Fuck only knows why they put things that are known to have ill effects in medicine for children.  I have some tinfoil hat wearing types of friends who would say that the whole pharmaceutical industry is a massive scam purely interested in perpetuating, if not sickness, then certainly drug dependency.  Do conversations of the type  ‘Oh that additive has been linked to hyperactivity disorders so maybe we should remove it from products for children…oh no let’s not because then we can sell more of those ADHD drugs that we conveniently also make’ really happen? I would like to think not but drugs companies making obscene profits must lead to some conflicts of interest.  Either way, when your baby’s temperature hits 39.5 degrees Celsius you hit the panic button and for most people I know, that means grabbing the Calpol syringe.

That’s what happened to us yesterday.  Went for a nice lunch after vaccinations with the ante-natal ladies and Nessie slowly got grumpier and sleepier so we came home.  She continued with the sleepy/grumpy (babies seem to embody each of the seven dwarves at varying stages!) thing for a while then slept for a few hours with me neurotically checking her temperature every half hour or so.  I was feeling a little pleased with myself as she had no fever and so I had escaped the E number roulette wheel.  And then…then it was 39 degrees and my evening changed from smug to panicked.  I got her from her cot and stripped all her clothes off.  She was pale, clammy and burning hot to the touch.  And screaming so loud.  So loud.  Up half a degree from the screaming and I went and found the Calpol, having hidden it in my pre-emptive smugness and loaded the syringe.  I then misjudged the force required and spurted it onto her chin.  I called nhs24, the notoriously annoying helpline and got through to some woman who was clearly just asking me a long list of questions from a script and wouldn’t transfer me to the doctor until  I answered.  All the while trying to drip Calpol onto her tongue so she could lap it and not choke or vomit.  And all the while she was screaming so loud.

By the time I got off the phone she was 40.0 which is way too hot for a baby of this age.  It can trigger seizures and a whole host of other awful reactions.  The nurse had told me she ‘managed to get me an appointment’ in 90 minutes and seemed unconcerned by the temperature.  She had even asked me if I could give the baby to someone else because she couldn’t hear me over the screaming.  No.  No, there is no one else.  There is only me and her and she is screaming and I am holding her impotently.  Waiting for something to change, to worsen or to ease and just hoping the screaming would stop for a good reason.  I tried damp swabbing her which made her scream more so that the temperature went up.  And then, then it started to drop.  And I cried.  And she cried.  And she shat.

All the way through this she was shitting copiously.  And continued to do so every time I managed to get her to sleep thus waking herself up and so the screaming would start again.  I sang her to sleep, I spooned her to sleep, I nursed her to sleep, I cuddled her to sleep over and over until finally we got a 3 hour sleep.  And then a big shitty nappy.  And then more sleep.  When we awoke just before 11am she still had a mild fever and was still shitting.  Which is how today has passed.  I think the fever has finally broken…not so sure about the shitting.

It’s now two days later and the fever is gone but the shitting continues albeit at a slightly slower rate.  Not every fart is a poo and not every nappy change is because of a poo.  So she must be getting better.  I’m exhausted.  I missed my date.  Not that either of those things matter particularly, they just are.