motherhood

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.

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.

 

Friday night is party night

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Or it used to be anyway, not so long ago.

This evening, I had a green smoothie for dinner in an attempt to shed the baby weight and then ate an entire Easter egg to myself because lets face it, I’m breastfeeding so obviously burning loads of calories and because, well, since when did a smoothie constitute dinner?!

I’ve then bathed with my beautiful daughter. I usually get in with her because it’s a lovely bonding experience and it’s the closest thing to a relaxing bath that I get these days… Anyway, I digress.  This evening, as we sat down in the bath I heard a farty bubbling noise and then smelt the whiff of baby poop and, as the waters around me slowly turned yellow, I realised she had shat in the bath. For those of you who have never experienced such a joy, it’s like the world’s worst bath bomb! Needless to say, bath turned into shower pretty quickly amidst much hilarity from me and baba.  It’s just as well she’s cute!

I’m sure there was a party in Glasgow one night where someone did actually shit in the bath.  Someone certainly shat on our doorstep after we kicked him out of the party.  God only knows what we kicked him out for, all manner of craziness was de rigeur those days, I blame the buckfast personally.

So, with my child in her bedside cot, I’m working on the theory that she will sleep through as she usually does and I am having a wee glass of Malbec and trying to figure out how to blog. Today has been a little odd, pretty lonely to be honest, sometimes it really is a struggle to keep a smile on my face.  I love my daughter so much but lets face it, at 3 months old she isn’t providing me with much intellectual stimulation. My brain is also slightly mushy in this post partum phase, completing a Guardian crossword the other day was a fairly major achievement.

I figure that I should declare my hand so to speak, and explain how I got to be here, on a Friday night with my blog and a baby next door.  I registered for this site last year after a few illuminating months in Bali where I did a lot of yoga, my teacher training in fact, I did a lot of surfing (pretty badly!) and I did a lot of partying and played with a lot of men.  But mostly, what I did was just be present in my life.  I gave up trying to plan, I gave up worrying about the past, I forgave myself for just being me instead of being some wondrous unicorn type A overachiever. And I was happy.

And then I ran out of money and came back to a pretty good job for the summer, roaming around surveying birds in scrubby woodland, with plans to return to Bali in Autumn.  I was lonely then and quite isolated in my living arrangements (a wee cottage in the middle of the woods!) so after a cocaine fuelled weekend in Edinburgh, I arranged to meet up with a friend from facebook that I had never met in reality.  There had been a lot of flirting and fairly sexual chat and needless to say, one thing led to another.  And it was good.  So we did it again the next weekend.  And the one after that.  And then I found out I was pregnant. And I was happy.  Terrified but happy.  I knew I would keep the baby despite the far from ideal circumstances, because she was a person to me from the second I found out.  I have had terminations before and had no qualms whatsoever but this was different.

And then he freaked out.  He vaguely tried to be enthusiastic for a week or so.   And then resumed freaking out.  And that’s pretty much where we still are.  I didn’t see him from the time I was 3 months pregnant until 3 weeks before I gave birth.  He wouldn’t speak to me on the phone, would only message me and kept telling me that I should have got rid of my baby until I was 31 weeks… Suffice to say, he made my pregnancy a lot harder than it would have been if he had just left me alone.  I invited him for the birth in the hope that perhaps it would trigger some actual emotion in him.  And I think it did.  But he won’t/can’t/doesn’t express himself.

Having a baby rips you open both physically and mentally and those first few weeks are exhausting, exhilarating, terrifying, hilarious and everything else in between.  And you need told that you’re doing well.  If you know any new mothers, and them and their baby’s are alive, then tell them they are doing fucking amazingly.  And do their washing up.  And tell them they are beautiful, even if they are flabby and covered in random stains which probably originated at one end or another of their darling child.

So, my baby daddy, to use the modern parlance, isn’t interested in pursuing a relationship with me.  He doesn’t even want to try.  He doesn’t tell me I’m doing well.  Which kind of breaks my heart a little bit.  My sister asked me the other day if I was in love with him.  I told her ‘No, but I want to be’ and then cried quietly during my facial, hoping that the cotton pads would absorb my tears and the beautician would not notice.

And that’s it.  That’s where I am.  I am finding new strengths as well as new vulnerabilities.  I am finding the feeling of love I have inside me grows with every day. When my daughter laughs I am happy in the very pit of my stomach, which is not a place I even knew you could feel happy.  And that, that feeling, will carry me over anything.