How the light gets in

It's Christmas day and I'm holding my newborn son, warm in his blue sunflower romper, and I'm thinking of Polly.

I've been thinking of her a lot over the last few months; one of the few people who really know the hell of hyperemesis and the crushing darkness it can bring to a time with so many expectations of joy and lightness. I have been lucky, so so lucky, that the moment Alder arrived I felt that rush of relief and the whole ten months faded instantly. The midwife who had been trying to coax me to drink sent Rowan running for a cup of water and I drained it in one and said, "it tastes like water!" The past two weeks have been all the lightness and joy I could have wished for, in spite of everything. I'm still crying allll the time but it's relief and happiness. I wish I could share this with Polly. She'd cry for me, too.

When I bought the sunflower sleepsuit months ago I thought of Pol. I knew I'd think of her every time I dressed my baby in it. Clung to that sunshine, light through darkness, she'll be remembered with sunshine, this long long grieving pregnancy will end with light.

I have food poisoning. I spent part of my Christmas afternoon being sick. And part of it talking to a suicidal stranger on a comments thread. I have no idea if she's still with us and I might never know. I told her although we're strangers, we're sisters, and I meant it fiercely. Holding my newborn son, remembering a dear friend for whom nobody could hold it all together no matter how much we loved her. We never really know for sure if the love we send is received, if it helps. We love anyway.

Love and loss and pain and fierce joy. The sounds of my children arguing, giggling, eating all the food. Morgan brought me a plate of crackers upstairs so I didn't attempt to sleep on an empty stomach. This was not the Christmas I planned, or the update I planned to write, and yet here it is. Imperfect. How the light gets in.

A month, feeling heart-achey and exhausted

1: Window sill

2: Rosliston

3: Baby Loss wave of light candle

4: Huge pouty face for the dry arms

5: Gritty floor, mama's journal

Another whole month and I have barely taken any more photographs than this. When I created a new blog space for myself it was with the feeling that I wanted to journal my own creative explorations more, start finding the courage to post my poetry and art, begin to accept and enjoy the lovely and liberating aspects of moving out of the baby phase of family life.

I feel like I've spent seven months using a series of placeholders to chart an ongoing feeling of panic and disbelief. I wanted another baby. I chose this. But I didn't *expect* it, and every part of it. Impossible, exhausting beyond anything I've ever done, a series of "life spiralling out of the familiar and safe". Hyperemesis whilst attempting to keep a creative business alive, home educate four children, and not give way to the lurking depths of depression and anxiety which I'd so thoroughly shaken off before this awful sickness. This isn't what I expected to be writing about. Feeling. Experiencing. 

I'm tired of my own misery, bored of trying to articulate it, sick of trying to justify it, worn down by trying to minimise it.

Where the hell has this year gone? It feels right now like so much failure and wasted time. I feel like I should be feeling strong, prepared, grateful, any number of things other than sad. I wanted a better year for my children. I wanted a better "one last" pregnancy for everyone. I wanted to approach birth feeling optimistic and joyful.

Just a little longer.

Getting there

1: Rowan, play area, bee shorts
2: Blessing the wriggly creature, and mothering the mother
3: Jenna, woodland, baby Torin
4: Henna fading, new pyjamas
5: Morgan with a pancake sandwich because reasons
6: Talia and F chalking their names in town

The midwife is still telling me off for losing weight, though I do honestly feel the hyperemesis is improving now (albeit still really tiring and emotionally draining). Martin is gradually recovering too, and we're finally able to leave the house a little more. It has been a seriously strange few weeks really! We've had a heck of a lot of help getting through it, and of course I have cried a fair bit about not deserving these beautiful people who show up time and time again. Smallest human is mainly head down now, and I am finally starting to feel like I can survive another two months.

Another month on

1: Accidentally coordinating outfits.
2: Making paints with berries and flowers.
3: Cat love. (Yes, Morgan is obsessed with those dungarees.)
4: We *could* be making bird feeders. Orrr, the peanut butter is nice for sticky sensory play...
5: Gloop, arts festival with friends.
6: Painting in the Silk Mill.
7: Birthday arcade.
8: Bunny child loves sweetcorn.
9: Gorse, heather, bump.
10: View from the sofa, on another day when I just couldn't.
11: Leaf.

(Still here. Still hanging on by a thread. Martin has had his hernia surgery and is slowly slowly in less pain. I am pretty low on coping, but trying to find the bright moments.)

Thirteen

The ways in which you drive me frantic with worry and frustration are all the same things I deeply admire and respect in you. You've never not been a spark, little wildfire. And now you're almost adult sized and articulate enough to pass for older than your years. There's no taming you, only my attempts at ensuring you think through which consequences you can quite handle. There's no stopping you, only my reminders to look before you leap.

Honestly the next couple of years scare me a bit. If the proof is in the pudding, has my mothering been spent wisely?

You're brave and you know yourself. You're caring. You have boundaries and you know how to stand your ground. You're so filled with passion and wonder and life. I don't want the world to squish you.

Happy birthday, Bean. I hope I can be the person you need for these last precious years of your childhood.

Almost a month in not very many pictures

1: Dinner at my mum's house, giggling
2: Pot painting
3: Cookie dough
4: Stickers and babysitting
5: Some of Rowan's beach collection
6: Park climbing
7: Blue hair, blue tunic, blue icecream at the board game cafe
8: Jenna entertaining Talia, in between a week away at camp and another week away in Estonia (she's having all the adventures)
9: Talia has been taking Milly the Monster out for walks, taking very seriously Jenna's parting instruction to look after her toys for her while she's away
10: Muddy community garden play

(Mainly I am sick and exhausted. Mainly I am not coping with everyday life. I don't really know what else to say, except that I'm very glad of all the people doing things with the children and looking after us.)

Sometimes we go outside

1: Cuddles with Roo
2: Ice cream
3: Middle kids ready for a boat trip
4: If she can borrow a baby, she will
5: Park community gardening
6: Very rained-on coffee stop

Polly

Two years have passed. Two years ago we didn't know yet. We thought you were safe. All I want to do right now is go back in time, find the magic words that would have saved you. There weren't any magic words.

http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/polly-161005

I miss me

One thing that I have completely underestimated about this pregnancy is how much of my self esteem is dependent upon what I'm able to do, achieve, and produce. The vision of myself as someone who is more resilient and healthy than ever, who is more capable of carrying on doing the things I feel needs doing through another difficult period of illness, turned out to be a complete illusion. I was feeling so much better, emotionally speaking, because as my children got older I was simply able to see the results of the work I was doing. My life was more measurable, and hence I was more mentally well and strong and all of those things I thought were due to some inner work I had mastered, some level of peace I had won.

I have had a difficult reality check. Not only hyperemesis and its accompanying exhaustion and mental burden. But also much worse sickness, and longer lasting, than in my last two pregnancies (I had utterly convinced myself that each pregnancy was slightly better than the previous and therefore *surely* I would only be a vomity mess for about sixteen weeks this time - wrong)!

Even though medication has reduced the sickness to a level where I no longer feel like I'm dying (not an exaggeration) and am able to stay hydrated enough not to worry for the safety of my baby, I am still utterly wiped out and prone to needing a nap lest I start vomiting again later in the day in spite of the medicine. This week I have had bad days, where medication and indeed everything else I consumed didn't stay down. I have spent more time horizontal, and not gracefully. I have resented the heck out of it.

I am extremely unproductive. I'm behind with work. I'm trying not to look too closely at the piles of laundry and general crunchiness of the house. I dropped out of Index Card a Day after less than a week. I haven't journalled or even written a page in my bullet-journal-ish household notebook for weeks. I'm in bed by nine almost every night. Some days I can't point to a single thing I actually did.

Yes, I'm taking it quite hard.

Call this my training for being glued to a needy tiny human for a few months, if you like. Though I have to say that will feel significantly more voluntary than this does, albeit due to the same tiny human. I miss being able to predict what I will be able to get done. I miss feeling like a reasonably good parent.

I miss the sense of self I gained from doing.

More of our June

1: Wildflowers
2: Midsummer
3: Tree climbing on the park
4: Tali's new umbrella
5: Drawing from Animalium

Returning to myself

1: Post-sunny day evening treat, wildlings laughing and jostling, feeling very lucky.
2: Leicester visiting, my dad is recovering from surgery for cancer, we stopped by the pump house museum on our way over.
3: Tiny weavings, I'm building up to doing regular activity with the children who have been hanging around bored and worried a lot of the time I was really seriously ill. I have a lot of guilt about not being more present through this, but I'm trying to practice kindness to myself. Being so ill is hard and I'm lucky it's fairly temporary.
4: A long walk in heavy rain to the library.
5: Book festival wildlings.
6: And we met Mog, too. Rowan was terrified and squeezed my hand tight.
7: Flower bashing (hapa zome craft in the community gardens). I can't even express how lucky I feel to be vaguely back to doing things again.

In related news I'm now 17 weeks pregnant and starting to feel little goldfish wigglings. The middle kiddos came to my midwife appointment and heard the heartbeat last week, and now they are all competing over who can talk to (and kiss) the bump the most so it will be well socialised to being pounced on by siblings by the time it arrives!