Before the early days fade

I haven't found the time to write, not for lack of intent. Life is full in a warm, rounded, content way. We have our sparkle back. But I am feeling drawn to record that first terrifying week when everything seemed to be going wrong...

On the second day after birth, Alder was quite snuffly and wasn't staying latched for more than a minute at a time. He seemed okay, and we took ourselves to the hospital for his newborn checks, and I spent the rest of the time just cuddled up with him feeding on and off day and night.

On the Sunday he cried all day. I couldn't get him to settle to feed, and was worried enough to sterilise a plastic cup and express some milk to try to cup feed to him. His cry changed, like nothing I'd heard before. Hoarse and weak. We called the community midwives out. They were just as puzzled. "He looks like a well baby, but that cry..." Then we weighed him. He had dropped a huge amount of weight.

And that's how we missed both Morgan and Talia's birthdays, in hospital with a tiny baby with low blood sugar. I expressed constantly and we cup fed him a little every three hours just to be sure he would start wetting nappies again. As quickly as he declined, he improved again. His cry got stronger. His nappies got heavier. We dropped the cup feeds.

It took a month more for me to relax about his feeding, and even now I'm prone to burst into tears if he cries at the breast. He has a tiny scar on the back of one hand from the worst of the blood tests (the one where blood went everywhere except in the test tube, Alder collapsed silently afterwards, and then the results came back "sample insufficient").

(Typing that takes me right back even though he's happy and plump and sleepy in my arms.)

The best explanation we have is that "something" (likely a mild cold) threw his feeding off and my supply tanked. After nursing four other babies, this one happened to throw a curve ball.

And now we're fine.

And All is Well

Last week was exceptionally, blissfully, peaceful. This week is going the same way. Sometimes I feel like I'm really used to fighting everything, and I don't know what to do with myself when life is so entirely wonderfully good.

Also, I whine a lot about the rough patches so I feel I ought to capture this while it's happening.

I am so lucky.

These kids, this life, this feeling of home and wellness. The greening leaves. The spaces between us. Walking out of my house at night while Martin puts the girls to bed, and looking up at the stars. The sounds of chatter (constant) and laughter. These days that will never come again.

On first journeys

It's a cold, damp, grey day. I put Morgan on a bus on her own for the first time earlier, and my mum just returned her home. These gradual transitions to independence seem different the second time around.

Morgan is so much steadier than Jenna was, but less articulate, less suspicious, less spiky, more vague. I used to worry most about Jenna deciding to take on a teenage boy for his use of the word "gay" as an insult between pals, or trying to run up the down escalator. Acts of bravado and inability to walk away from a challenge. This time around I worry more about Morgan getting lost, or walking face first into a plate glass door and giving herself a concussion. (All of these scenarios have occured in the past year.)

It was bitterly cold on my walk back to the house. I brushed off the what ifs with the light first drops of rain. She didn't even turn around to wave goodbye. But she did hug me when she walked back in, just now, with a huge smile.

Catching up: Picture Dump

There's a London road trip in there, and a week of guests. Christmas, and New Years. I've been in quite a good place. Too busy to wallow in the difficult moments. Making, doing, seeing people. Not fitting in everything I want to, ever.

Sometimes it's really great to stop and think that these adventures are getting easier, that at some point I've stopped forcing myself to say yes and started leaping at opportunities. (Sometimes, sometimes the leaping is harder and more coaxing and handholding is required.)

I've felt some resistance to writing, and have been painting instead. I'll probably try to drag myself back here a bit to document more of these days before they're gone.

This morning I was woken early, to the sound of my button box being dropped in the kitchen (the shelf collapsed "for no reason" apparently "we weren't touching it!")! I'd stayed up until midnight to pay our internet bill and get services turned back on, and then had weird dreams I can't quite remember clearly.

It's still dark outside, mist softening the houses opposite. The cat is sitting in the middle of our season table, clouded in blue silk and purring smugly.

I feel like I'm running behind with everything, not keeping up with myself, playing catch up with my life.

Wordless, again

It's done. I can't pretty it up yet or wrap the right words around the raw spiky places. As emergency surgery goes it was easy and she's fine now the half-teeth are gone. As fine as a stubborn and extremely miffed five year old can be when she lacks the vocabulary to express discomfort and just howls and howls for hours at a time.

I've been so anxious about this I haven't even written about her birthday, or Christmas knitting, or crafts, or the learning they are all engaged in. I feel really stuck. At least now it's more literally physically stuck what with trying to make her immediate world feel a little less horrible - rather than the emotional stuck of not-really-coping-with-anything and awaiting boiler repairs and surgery and landlord's inspection and more appointments at the same time as getting last orders out and saying goodbye to my mum as she flies out to Estonia to meet my new nephew...

Oh look, a few dozen words. Quick, shut them down before they overflow everywhere.

Seven Days in which I don't have time to remember my own name

1: Advent in full swing, Saint Nicholas Day shoes
2: Crafting
3: And craft fayres (two successful charity events in one week)
4: She might not love board game cafes or board games but she's certainly a fan of attached comic book shops
5: Incredible art at Derby QUAD ("What a Loving and Beautiful World")

I don't know whether I'm coming or going this week. So much going on, and I'm not fully on top of any of it (except posting orders out, I am up to date with that and only have one more bag to take to the post office before Christmas). One out of the two back-to-back birthdays. Two craft fayres. Assorted attempts to get the house chaos back under control. Yeah. My head is a bit of a mess; this year I have found each birthday really emotionally hard. Something to do with not being able to make them perfectly happy and perfectly peaceful any more. Something to do with being afraid that I'm not as good a mother as I used to be (or not as confident a person, or something, I don't know). The elusive feeling of striving for good enough and not being sure I'm ever close.

Seven days in which I coax Morgan to eat, and we mess around at a garden centre

1: Rowan cuddling her baby cardigan
2: Walking a friend to dance class
3: Life goal; I would like to live in such a way that I deserve an introduction like this
4: Candle making
5: Snowflakes and babysitting
6: The obnoxious worksheet book (which Talia loves) has stickers. She put a star sticker on my arm and told me it was for being a lovely mummy.
7: Helping Ash pick out her tree. Lots of giggling and silliness at the garden centre, abd a photobombing dino.

After her sickness last week getting Morgan to eat food has been a mammoth task. It was Tuesday before she ate an actual meal. So even though she was doing better, and was much perkier last weekend, I've still had quite a worried week. On the other hand I'm laughing more, and this bunch of sillies have been immensely delighted by Advent activities again.

Every year I wonder if this will be the last year Jenna wants to do these things with us, and every year she is delighted by the simple and ordinary sharing. I'm glad they're not growing toooo fast.

Seven Days during which I have a birthday and feel sort of lonely and quietly desperate

1: Gradients, because yarn makes things better (always)
2: Changed over Winter decorations in a fit of pique at it being rainy and bitterly cold, having a sick kid on a day I wanted to see people, and generally feeling blue
3: Stacking things
4: Birthday walk
5: The lights in town, photographed by a giddy Jenna
6: Snuggly not-a-baby excited about stickers
7: There's this Christmas fayre we go to every year which I loved as a child and tolerate as an adult. The children adore it, of course. Compensation in the form of vintage tea set.
8: Basically after two huge meltdowns this week (mine) I gave up and we decorated on the first Sunday in Advent. It worked. Prettying things and familiar traditions helped a lot.

I need a calmer week.

Beneath everything this week has been huge painful anxiety about Morgan. She was ill on Monday and better on Tuesday, but continued to refuse any solid food all week. Eventually I told her she had to have a bite of food every hour and her appetite gradually returned. I can't accurately describe the heartbroken sobbing every time I stood over her and insisted she ate something, but goodness, she was so floppy and listless. I'm not yet really able to sort it out into words. And I feel like a failure for coercing her AND for not coercing her sooner. But also so grateful she's perky again and asking for food.

What a week.

Ugly

I want to pour out words here about never feeling enough, about sabotaging good healthy friendships with this damn anxiety, about feeling like I'm always making excuses and ought to just "pull myself together"...

And every time I try to shape passages of real, raw, beautiful, healing, it comes out ugly and self pitying and dark.

Honestly things aren't actually all that dark. I'm as safe and supported as I've ever been, home and family are stable and healthy (bar Winter bugs). My mood has been better (I self-inventory, again, and worry that I'm thinking about it too much, again). 

Then, whahey, darkness from nowhere, petty triggers and insufficient sleep. And I lash out and hide, self protective and small, and what USE is it? I don't WANT small and safe. I want whole. I want to be kinder than I feel.

What does one do with this mess of darkness that clings and pushes and chokes?

I want it to be redemptive. I want to pour it into love and I fail at this over and over. I want it to mean something.

Seven Days during which I sort of start to kick anxiety's behind again

1: Doctor Who Club snuggles
2: Cinnamon playdough
3: Blue skies walking to an Into Film showing of Kubo and the Two Strings (following tears and anxiety getting out of the house)
4: Dissecting owl pellets with a friend
5: Knitting, Star Trek, general background adorableness
6: Board game cafe again, as an extra large extended family
7: Fireworks party

We saw friends every day this week, usually several friends a day. There has been much general Getting Out of the House. And it has been a lot of hard work. But after a fantastic and really busy Friday and then a restful evening, I woke up on Saturday feeling full of energy again. Just in time for monkey bread for breakfast at mum's, shopping with dad, and a huge fireworks party.

I do sometimes wonder if I genuinely just need to stop charting the ups and downs of my mental health. Where does noticing a pattern become reinforcing it? But then again, that could be the same old "it's your fault you are this way, you should snap out if it, you deserve to be depressed" that I can't remember ever not flinging at myself in some form. I don't believe my own inner monologue. It's not very reliable.

It's such a relief to wake up not feeling anxious though. To actually want to get out of bed and not think that things will probably be shit and pointless.