Month: February 2019

Stuck At Home Mum

~ savouringmydays ~ Leave a comment

I feel like the old lady at the start of Titanic…’it’s been 84 years…’

It’s actually only been four days, but it’s surprising how slowly time can go when you’re confined to the house. Our outings so far this week have been to the school bus stop and back, and to the playgroup and back. On Monday the poorly child vomited on the way to playgroup and on the way back, so we’ve avoided any other non-essential trips. Now this isn’t all a sob story, because I did actually get out of the house yesterday for a quick meeting and emergency food supply top up, and a cheeky meal out for Liam’s birthday (big shout out to the brave Aunty we left here to man the ship!). The meal was bracketed by the second poorly child being sick on our bed and all over me before we left, and us returning home to change aforementioned bed. By midnight we had two small people in our bed with us.

There are times when weeks like this have occurred, that it has felt devastating. I have sulked at cancelled plans, been jealous of Liam getting out of the house, and got increasingly annoyed at the universe and it’s injustice.

Over time I have become more accustomed to these episodes. The maths seems to say that the more children you have = the longer viruses live in the house for. I’ve worked out that if the pattern of first child getting ill on Sunday, followed by second child ill on Wednesday continues, then we’ll be at home for roughly a month. I wonder how many hours of Octonauts could be watched in a month? I guess we need to settle in and ride this wave.

I dart off in between clingy children, and do the essential jobs. I work out the budget. I send emails. I make phone calls. I’m itching to paint the landing, but the length of time between Calpol doses or the sad ‘mum I need a cuddle/drink/snack/telly’ calls isn’t very long and I fear that would be a foolish dream to try and achieve. But already my brain is starting to go a bit mushy. When I left the house yesterday, and we drove to the big city, with the big car park, and fancy restaurants, I was genuinely in awe of how many people were out! At night! Did they not know this isn’t normal?! It felt like a surreal experience of walking into a movie, I’m out in this world but don’t feel like I belong. I’m starting to forget how to hold a conversation or whether I brushed my hair.

I would be lying if I didn’t say the monotony or the challenge of juggling lots of small ill people doesn’t get to me at times, but I think there are definitely things that I can do to help my attitude. I’d seen last week that someone on Instagram was running a challenge about looking for joy in parenting. It seemed ironic timing, but actually it was helpful to be going into this week with that mindset, consciously looking for the good moments. Obviously the danger with too much time on social media is the tendency toward jealousy of all the people who I think are having more fun, but as long as I keep the perspective that we only show what we choose to show of our lives and no-one’s lives are glamorous all of the time, then I find some parts of it can be fun and even helpful. A reminder and challenge to look for the good, and to find things to be grateful for is always helpful to me.

I try not to have too many expectations – over how long the illness will go on for, how much sleep I’ll get, or what I might get done today. Roll with it, we’ll all get through somehow. If I’m stuck to the sofa under a feverish child with Paw Patrol on repeat I can probably manage to hold a book in the other hand and keep my brain alive. The key is to making sure I stop to make myself a cup of tea before committing to the cuddle.

There are times I might have to ask for help. This is my weakest area. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to hide my vulnerabilities. I’d much prefer to think I can manage alone, but why? There are people out there, if they don’t know I might need something how can they help? We aren’t made to do it alone, we’re made for community. I put a quick shout out on Facebook this morning to see if someone local would mind picking up some Calpol for us – the thought of dragging three poorly little ones to the shop wasn’t appealing. Some kind mum friends quickly got in touch and offered, and it wasn’t long before someone dropped some off. But I’d also reminded myself that if no-one did, that isn’t personal either. People don’t always see the message. Other people are in the same – or harder – position, and can’t help this time. That’s okay, if I have to do it anyway it might not be easy, but we’ll be home again in half an hour.

And then there’s that quote, ‘the days are long but the years are short’. Perspective can be helpful. I definitely struggled more with times like this earlier on in my parenting journey. Suddenly the little girl who was driving me crazy with her tantrums and sleeplessness and naughtiness is the same height as me, with a hilarious sense of humour, stealing my make up, and likes to hide in her bedroom. And now I’ve got to the days where she isn’t clinging on to my side, I’d quite like her back here, where I can know who she’s talking to, what she’s listening to, and what choices she’s going to make.

So here we are, washing all the bedding, one small person cuddled to sleep in my bed because he had a strop about the cot. There have been fights, refusals to eat, and more biscuits than is probably nutritionally wise. But outside the sun is shining, inside the small people are safe and getting well again, and there will be a day when we get to go out. Only by then I might have forgotten how to speak to grown ups, and there’s a chance I’ll still be wearing pyjamas. If you see me, I’ll be the one in sunglasses getting used to all the fresh air.

Birth days.

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Liam says my mum gives presents if someone sneezes. Actually, that’s not true, because loud sneezes are one of the things that make her really cross. But still, gifts are her love language, and I’m the same. So it was already an interesting dynamic that the man I met and love and married shares his birthday with the day St Valentine met his untimely end. Who gets gifts? Do we just throw out the commercial holiday made to bring more money to greedy supermarkets, or do I get him two gifts and he still sneaks out for flowers/chocolates/wine on February 13th (or 14th…or 15th)? In previous years, we’ve gone with the second option.

Until two years ago, when on this day, we were gifted another Valentine. I’m not willing to take responsibility for poor planning on this one. Granted, our family planning historically has looked like more family and less planning, but on this one we can’t take any credit. I’ve already talked about his arrival to our family on here, so suffice it to say that we had very little idea we’d be sharing our meal for £15 with a tiny newborn that year. But that day changed our family dynamic once again, with a new little one to be grateful for. But what do birthdays look like when you weren’t the one who gave birth?

The very idea of a birthday is to celebrate someone’s birth, their arrival into the world. And, like my mum, I’m definitely up for that. I love giving gifts, I love making that person feel special. And I’m also very nostalgic. I love remembering dates and days and talking memories. But the truth is, that for a lot of people, birthdays often bring a measure of pain in the memories too.

As a student midwife, I quickly learned that the movie idealised birth story, where the perfectly made-up mother with gentle devoted partner pops out a beautiful completely round-headed forceps-mark free baby who is immediately bundled into a pure white crocheted blanket is just that – a story. Birth involves pain. For many people, the pain of labour is put behind them, and they embrace life with a newborn. But I think for possibly the majority of people, there is history that comes with them into the labour room, and that will go home with them too.

In those rooms, I saw mothers who had waited for this day for many many years. They brought fear and anxiety into the delivery suite, and a brave hope that their dreams might at last come true. I saw mothers whose tears of joy were mingled with tears of loss – they’d lost their own mother, or father, a previous baby, or the father of their child, and the birth of a newborn was an intense reminder of that person they desperately wished was still a part of their life. I saw mothers afraid of who their partner was, but they were birthing his baby and clinging to the ideal that he would be who said he could be. I saw mothers who were children themselves, with their own mothers nervously stroking their hair. I saw mothers who hadn’t anticipated this baby, and didn’t know how they felt, how they would bond, if they even wanted to take it home. I saw mothers whose baby was born, and it wasn’t the perfect baby they had dreamed of, it would have needs they didn’t know if they could manage, and their world came crashing down. I saw mothers who knew the baby they would birth would never breathe. Their baby had left earth before it arrived, and those heartbreaking deliveries were sombre with intense, raw grief. I saw mothers whose baby was born far too soon, and they were afraid for its life. And I saw mothers whose baby would be whisked away, because it was too unsafe to send them home to the chaos and abuse and trauma there.

What I learned in those rooms, through my own experiences, and through being privileged to witness so many others, is that often the words ‘happy birthday’ are an oxymoron. Often a birth day is not pure joy and elation. Even in the births of my first three children, I carry buried pain alongside beautiful memories, whole stories in themselves. For my youngest three children, their birthdays are mingled with huge loss. Their loss of safety, of childhood innocence, of the only world they’d known, and the loss of the mother who gave birth to them. I can’t even imagine what goes through her mind on those days. And for me there’s sadness too – all the first moments missed, and all the pain I wish I could have saved them from. But this is life in a broken world, a whirling mess of joy and heartache, a see-sawing of hurt and healing, and with every birth delivered in pain there is promise of hope. A new life, a new story to be written. A new person gifted to this world for a reason, capable of being loved and held and dreamed for, and of loving and holding and dreaming.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the whole story, even if only to myself. I know I’m not alone in these days of mixed emotions. When we celebrate birthdays, I’m not pretending that all birth days are happy days. And I’m not trying to patch over a hard story. But I am celebrating this person. This gift of life. This day that marks another year on earth for them, another year of their unique personality and character and skills changing the world and the people around them because of their individual design. Despite the minor challenges of the two cake-making, double gift-buying, ‘where do I hang all the cards?’ issues related to the double birthday, I feel so honoured that we get to celebrate this little boy. People sometimes tell us that the children are lucky to have us. I don’t think lucky is the right word for such a start to life, but I feel incredibly privileged to have him, to be the one to wrap his presents, light his candles, and listen to him walking around the house still singing ‘happy birthday’ to himself, four days later.

As for Valentine’s Day, I still sneaked it in, with heart confetti on the dinner table and a chocolate for each child. I’m okay with letting it go for myself these days- I’m just hoping for double presents on my birthday to make up for it…

Defined by an Emoji.

~ savouringmydays ~ 2 Comments

I’m feeling meh today. It turns out that ‘meh’ is actually in the dictionary (thanks to the Simpsons, I believe), and given that it even has an emoji, it is clearly a recognised state of mind. Apparently it is defined as ‘expressing a lack of interest or enthusiasm, unenthusiastic, apathetic’ (Oxford Living Dictionaries).

On a normal day once I’ve pulled myself out of bed and woken up properly, I don’t stop. Until around 9pm when the older kids go to bed, I keep going, busying, organising, moving. But today I got up, got people dressed, made breakfasts and lunches, and that was it. I went up to get dressed but flopped on the bed and decided I don’t want to be an adult any more.

I’m not sure where it’s come from but the fog has been there for a few days now. I think the speeding ticket that arrived last week may have begun it. Then a small person smashed my favourite lamp and violently hammered the wall I’d just painted. Over the weekend I lost my Weight Watchers motivation and drank all the Prosecco and ate all the chocolate. The hall had been my project for last week, and downstairs is looking good, but the half painted stairway that I can’t reach anymore is nagging at me every time I walk up and down it.

Then Monday began badly. This week already felt stressful – Liam away overnight, a day of two birthdays sandwiched between hospital appointments, and a meeting I’m not looking forward to. I was trying to leave to meet friends and had a series of unfortunate incidents including a last minute nappy to change and a child’s fingers shut in the door, cue much screaming and reassuring.

So there was of course an irony in the smoke that started emerging from the bonnet as I drove down the dual carriageway. Accompanied by a rapidly rising temperature gauge in the car, an urgent diversion and parking up at a builders merchants, and all plans for the day being abandoned. So I cried, rang Liam, told the security guard my sob story, and the boys and I were rescued by a kind friend.

But the funny thing about my mood is that the car, which would normally be the biggest of my worries practically and financially, was actually a free and quick repair due to an error at the garage. So in theory, I should feel better today.

But I don’t.

So I started wondering about this as I attempted laundry, mindlessly and demotivated, this afternoon. The speeding ticket seemed to have kick started an emotional reaction in me, which followed along these lines:

I’ve never had one before, so I felt guilty, annoyed, and disappointed in myself. I should know better, be more attentive, be more careful, leave earlier, rush less, and not be distracted. Basically, I let myself down. And broke the law.

And now I can’t even finish off the hall painting job that I started.

Or stick to a diet which I avoided starting for fear of failing.

Or breeze into the week without worrying.

Or confidently manage two birthdays on Valentine’s day, complete with well thought-out gifts and homemade cakes of excellence.

Or be as good a friend as I’d like to be.

Or keep the house as orderly and tidy as Marie Kondo.

Or get myself out of a broken down car situation without feeling helpless and pathetic.

Or know in all certainty what the best way to handle a difficult meeting will be and how to make a wise decision in a seemingly Catch 22 situation.

The long and short of it seems to be this –

I’d like to think I’m superwoman. I place ridiculously high expectations on myself to be everything, do everything, and not make mistakes. And when I do, I wallow in guilt, self-pity, and disappointment at my humanity, and decide I’d like to give up.

The interesting thing is that when I see this in my children, I spend a lot of time reminding them – you’re human, you will make mistakes, it’s okay. We’re not God, we’re fallible creatures who will get it wrong. And we can rest in the arms of a kind God, who gave everything including His own Son for a relationship with us, who chooses not to look on our mistakes but at who He made us to be, and He declares that we are His design, and it is good. And when I remind myself of that, the mood starts to lift, and I can hand over the burden of worry and the pressure of perfection, and know that all I need to be today is me.

So it turns out I don’t need to define my week by an emoji. There is grace – for the mistakes of last week, the disorder of today, and the anxieties of tomorrow. And there is hope, in a new sunrise, a fresh start, and love that never fails.

And Weight Watchers can wait, because it would be downright rude not to eat cake on the birthdays anyway.