The Post That I Cant Say Out Loud So I Will Write It Instead

**Warning: this is a LONG post. It is not a happy post. It is not a post to read if you are pregnant.**

The trouble with reading other blogs is that they may one day contain something that is very close to your heart. And that makes you think. And you may not like thinking.

Then in order to avoid thinking about it all the damn time, now you find that you have to write about it and you didn't ever want to write about it but here it is, in your head, so it wants to get out.

I'm looking at you, Madame Bipolar and MrsWoog

So. Here we go.


From the very beginning, the existence of my daughter Ella is very much caught up with negative events.  She was not, unlike Felix, tried for and desperately longed for. She was the "you have got to be fucking kidding me!" baby, the "how the fuck did this happen?" baby, the "anniversary" baby.  Not planned, not even considered to be a biological possibility after the hoo-hah surrounding Felix's conception. We "came to terms with" this baby.

November 2007 was marked by 3 life-changing events.

1. Monkey Boy and I went out(!) on our own(!) to a Crowded House gig (!!!) which was magnificent and wonderful as you would expect.
2. At that concert, I sat down and made the mistake of "chair dancing" which is a bad idea at the best of times because you look like Steady Eddy but more so on this occasion because my back went "Even I know chair dancing is wrong."
3. 2 weeks later it was our anniversary. 'Nuff said. 2 weeks after that I knew, even before peeing on the stick...

So I had managed to rupture a disc in my lower back, by sitting down. Normally this could have resolved itself over a number of months with rest. When you’re pregnant and you have the joint-loosening hormones released, and the additional weight increasing right at the level of the rupture...well, not so much on the resolving.


By the time I was 12 weeks pregnant, I could hardly walk. By the time I was 20 weeks pregnant I was taking Panadeine Forte and seeing the hospital physio, which didn't help at all. By the time I was 26 weeks I was taking PanFortes 2 hourly, round the clock, and begging for them to take the baby out so I could have decent pain relief. I couldn't walk, I couldn't stand, I couldn't sit.  At 33 weeks I finally got an MRI which showed the disc herniation. I knew what it was from the start, having had one before (and had surgery to fix it. Same disc, other side), but no one would take me seriously, not until the MRI.  Even then, to get the decent pain relief, I had to cry hysterically and act like the crazy female and swear at my obstetrician that this state of affairs was unacceptable and if he didn't help me I would take my own life. I was serious.  I was given Endone.  I was referred to the Mental Health Midwife, who marked my file with all sorts of big red stickers.

Endone allowed me to sleep. Blessed blessed sleep, no longer on my hands and knees, rocking on my bed, back and forth back and forth all night while wet fire engulfed my leg as it was torn off via my big toe.  I still needed it two hourly but it gave me some relief. I loved my obstetrician from that point. At 38 weeks we all decided enough was enough. Two hourly Endone, and I can still barely walk and the pain is constant, it never stops not for a second. Ella will have to be kept in the NICU for at least 5 days and be monitored for Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome - or withdrawal from the narcs to you and me.


So I am induced. Have a read of this post and this one  to see how well that worked for me the last time.  Or more to the point, I am induced (Day 1), and induced (Day 2), and induced (Day 3), and induced (Day 4), and had my waters broken and was put on a Syntocinon drip and 21 hours later of 2-minutely contractions (Day 5) I am still only at 4cm dilation. I will never ever forget the doctor’s face as she looked at me and told me we had no choice but to do a C-section. The next half hour is full of memories that I can’t even write. Memories of distance and of pressure to do what I don't want to do, of fear. Raw, primal fear. Memories of things once done and said can never be undone. Of the end of things. Of a line drawn in the sand.

And then there is the operating theatre. And the yellow paper curtain in front of my face, hiding things to awful to see...  And the woman at my head, the anesthetist. Monkey Boy next to me.

And then pain.

White hot searing pain.  Stop. Stop Stop Stop.

I don't know if I screamed it over and over out loud or just in my head. The epidural had worked at surface level only. Once the scalpel had got past the first few layers of skin...  Monkey Boy started yelling at them to stop. "We can’t go on like this" I remember hearing someone say. MB being told he had to leave. Leave? No! Saying goodbye, I thought I was going to die. Then the mask, and I didn't care if I died. "Breathe, just breathe."

She was born - without her parents even aware of it - blue, the cord wrapped around her neck twice, meconium swallowed and inhaled and not breathing. I lost 1.2 litres of blood.

I hear "it’s all over, you've had your baby." Am I in the 1950s? A young child is screaming in a nearby cubicle (tonsils) but he is not my child. Where is my child? Is she ok? Why isn't she here?  The epidural line is still in and they bump up the level because my pain is too much, but the epidural didn't work you fuckers! What is the point in doing this??  It meant I didn't "get my legs back" for over 24 hours.  Utterly stuck. Can’t move. My legs are not mine, they are lumps of meat that are pinning me to the bed.  This causes even more pain in my spine and my legs and feet are now swollen to the point where the skin almost starts to weep.


And Ella. My baby. The one for whom my soul was dragged to hell and left there.  I don't see her for 7 hours. MB held her in the NICU.  He had to ask the staff where the hell she was. No one told him. He took photos, and a short video of her, and I look at them over and over.  When she is brought in and I get to hold her for the first time, I am allowed 20 minutes together. I won’t see her again until her first proper feed, in a few hours. When she screams or when they have staff. If they have staff.

I feel like I went through all that time and pain and damage to my body for nothing. I am alone, no baby. Just pain and immobility. Then suddenly we get caught up in the hospital admin game of finding places to put people.  We get shunted from room to room. Labour Ward is full, women are in full labour in the corridors. 4 times we were moved, with all our stuff. A ridiculous amount of stuff really, but 5 days in the Labour Ward...


The catheter and epidural line are removed after 24 hours. (Day 6)  The catheter has damaged my urethra: It feels like my urethra is being pulled out continuously. (This is a feeling that doesn’t stop until close to a year after delivery.) The doctor comes in to tell me that I am borderline for needing a blood transfusion because I lost so much blood in delivery. Because it is borderline it is my decision whether to have it or not. If I don’t, it will take about a month for my iron levels to come back up to normal and I will feel shit for that month. Who the hell lets a delirious woman make judgement calls like that? After what they have done already, there is no way I am going to agree to more interventions.


I start taking tentative steps, but I can’t do it. I need a wheelchair to get to my baby. Get me a bloody wheelchair! And so I go to the NICU and I see what will be her home for the next 5 days, and see all the other babies, babies who have been there for weeks and will be for weeks more. Not mine not mine please god not mine. We learn their observation and coding system for NAS, we learn the procedure in the Breastfeeding Room, and I hold my baby girl for the first time. She is so beautiful, so soft, and yet I feel nothing.

While MB is in the hospital with me, I can be in the NICU as often as I want. Once he leaves, I am up to the dictates of the hospital and staff levels. By Day 7 I can walk, very slowly, painfully, with much help. I can’t get my slippers on because of the swelling, but I can get to my baby under my own steam and I'm bloody well going to. The NICU is a 2 minute saunter for a normal person, for me it is 10-15 minutes.


She won’t latch onto the breast properly. She snuffles around trying desperately to find it but will not latch. So she isn't eating. Here's another failure to add to the growing list. She is on formula via a naso-gastric tube. They decide to give her antibiotics because she swallowed poo. She has a line in her nose and another one in her hand, securely bandaged like a big boxing glove. There is so much stuff attached to her, I can’t get to her at all.

MB has been sleeping in the hospital with me, on a camp bed. He went home one night to make sure Felix was ok with Nanna. Sadly for me, he chose Day 3 to do it.  Everyone knows Day 3 is the killer after delivery: the tissue box will be too hard to reach and you will start bawling. I had no baby with me, the delirium of 5 days labour and no sleep for 8 days, the trauma of the C-section, the pain of my spine, the pain of the C-section, and no baby with me. Ella’s NAS scores are borderline, which means that she may have to stay in hospital for another 2 weeks and be given morphine.  And there is an awful ruckus in the room next door. Furniture being tossed around. Hushed voices in the corridors. Then Police. Every staff member is in the nursery, around one baby. I have no idea what happened, but it scared the hell out of me. I find out months later the mother had killed her baby. 

This is the start to the Day 3 Baby Blues. For me it was the start of psychosis.

The phone calls from the NICU are incessant this day. There is no MB to wheel me down there and seemingly no staff either. One trip is enough and now I have to make several, on my own. No help from the hospital for the woman who can barely walk.  By 10pm I can no longer cope. The phone rings after I just get back into my bed from being in the NICU for a feed. She is crying again, come down.  WTF???  Thoughts reel through my head: stick a plug in her face, give her a bottle, give her Phenergan, go away, just go away I can’t deal with her.

So I call for a nurse who never comes. But the NICU keep ringing. Incessant.bloody.ringing.  (Fucking deal with her yourselves, I can’t bloody get there.)  Still no nurse, so with incredible pain and utter exhaustion I drag my arse out into the corridor and hold onto the railing, and I just can’t make myself walk down there again. And the tears start rolling, as they do.  A nurse is coming, asks me if I am alright. Bloody stupid question. I try to tell her but I can’t get much sense out of my mouth. Pain, walking, bloody baby, NICU, can't just can't.

"Well there's no point crying about it, is there? Is there? That won’t make it any better." 

Is this woman for real? It is the final straw for me. If I had enough spirit left in my body at that point I would have decked her. The best I could do was look at her and cry more. I silently beg for my mental health nurse to come and rescue me. But she never comes .

Nurse Hardarse rang the NICU and asked them to bring Ella to me. Great, fine, but they leave me alone with her. That's sensible, right?  Distraught mother with known mental health issues left completely alone... (I wonder now if that is what happened in the room next door...)

I fed her. She wasn't really interested. I needed to go to the toilet. She started crying, and it seemed the part of my brain that was used to babies crying and knew i could leave them for 30 seconds had been removed.  I dragged her bassinet on wheels contraption into the toilet with me. Why?? I don't even know. She wouldn't stop screaming and my how that echoes in a tiled room. 

I wanted her gone. I didn't want anything to do with her. And I hated myself for it.


I have no feeling in parts of my right leg.  No one knows why. (Try the epidural placement, numnuts.)  They put me through another MRI.  Have you had to get into an MRI machine 3 days after a C-section when you can’t feel your feet and your back feels like it is folding you in half all by itself.?  I can’t stand, I can’t sit, I can’t lie down. The MRI shows the herniated disc. Wow, yes it’s still there. They don't know why I suddenly can’t feel big patches of my legs: Sudden Onset Post-Partum Patchy Leg Syndrome, first case ever reported.  They are all idiots.

With Ella’s NAS scores so high, we are looking at not going home with her. We ask for the Parents' Long-Stay Room.

Nope. You can stay in this room here, but that means that you are not actually a patient in the hospital and no nurse will come to help you.

I live a 1 hour drive away, which I can’t manage anyway because I have this spinal injury and I can’t sit in the...

 Nope. Other mums do it.

Other mums don't have my spinal injury.

Express your milk and have your husband bring it in every day. 

Eventually they realise that they need to check the nerve responses in my legs (checking for damage from their fucked up epidural) so I get discharged to the “Non-hospital Room” and then readmitted within the space of 3 hours.


Day 10, and Ella is finally given a clean bill of health. Nothing on her blood screens at all, apart from all the drugs they gave me during delivery. No narcs! No Endone! I didn’t harm her in utero!  It frightens me that she came so close to being put on morphine for 2 weeks on the basis of an arbitrary and subjective scoring system.  Its 5 days since delivery and I am so delirious I am unable to see clearly.

My discharge meds in the morning consist of two Endone tablets, which is a four hours’ worth of pain relief.

What’s this?

It’s all we are going to give you, mums aren't normally sent home with Endone

Most mums don't come in here ON Endone…

You will have to see your GP.

And we were sent home. No mental health evaluation, no post-trauma counselling, no referral for post trauma counselling, no social worker visit, and no "we're sorry". 10 days, 1 baby, 1 new source of PTSD, 1 case of Post-Partum Depression, 1 case of Post-Partum Depression in baby's father, no family supports at home. 

The red stickers on my file were never looked at. The fact that my labour was 5 days long was never written in my file. The fact that I was inadequately anaesthetised and could feel them cutting me open was not written in my file.

“Length of labour: no labour” it says.  

It was all a bad dream. My file says it never happened.


So we went home, taking with us much more than we bargained for.  Within a week I was thinking up ways I could get rid of her. (I know, we all joke about this when they are being little shits, right? I actually wanted to get rid of her.) I considered the options: Its cold outside at night, she wouldn’t last long. Hide behind a bush; no one would see what I did. (What was I going to do? I didn’t think that far, it’s pretty obvious my thinking was totally fucked at this point.) Give her to MB's parents.  Just get her away from me! I felt no love, no connection. I didn’t hate her; I just thought she would be better off not with me. I felt sorry for her because she had me for her mother.  I looked for signs that she might love me: anything. I didn't see a thing. To my mind she hated me. Fair enough too, I thought.
And then, after a week, the panic attacks started whenever we were out. I wanted to scream, I wanted to vomit, I wanted to run run run and never stop. I felt like I would explode. The fear, the inescapable fear would grip me from nowhere and toss me on a sea of anguish from which there was no escape.

No one wanted to assess me. We had a CAFHS Nurse and a Mothercraft Helper in our home every week.  No one did anything, even though they both reported to the hospital they were worried about me.  I knew that I was not right but I couldn’t communicate this to anyone. My GP notices after 2 months that I am severely depressed.  She asks how I feel but I dare not tell her about my thoughts towards Ella.  She checks my thyroid and I have  Post-Partum Hyperthyroidism. I have lost so much weight, I am running around like I run a meth lab, I don't want my baby and it takes 2 months to pick it up???

With hindsight, it is clear that I should have been in an institution for Nutter New Mothers I look back with red hot shame at the things I thought of doing. When I see photos of Ella at 3ish weeks old, she is clearly smiling at me, clearly looking at my face with love. Yet at the time I couldn’t see it, not one bit of it. It wasn’t until she was about 3 months old I recognised a smile from her and thought “Ok, now I can mother this child.”

Thankfully, there is a lot of information freely available about Post-Partum Depression. Signs to look for, what to do if you need help, support groups, celebrities opening up about their own experiences, etc.  How about we also take a good look at one of the potential causes of PPD: how we are treated in the days immediately following the birth of our child. How much support we are given by those caring for us, whether we are listened to at all, whether we are given a chance to “debrief” particularly if the birth was a traumatic one, whether anybody stopped to ask “How are you? Are you coping? Is there anything you need to talk about?”

Not one person in that hospital bothered to ask me how I was. How did I feel???  I was in shock. I was severely traumatised. (I still am.) I wanted to die.

Had someone allowed me to process what had just happened to me, in a supportive environment with trauma counselling, maybe I wouldn’t have gone home with thoughts of killing my own child.

\

Hearing Voices

I don't believe I'm worthy, the page in my journal reads.

"Piffle" my friend Lioness offers from Portie-Land, and asks me to think of all the reasons why my friends do love me now, why I AM worthy.

yes yes, plenty of reasons blah blah

But when my head is reeling with noise noise noise that I just want to SHUT UP, its not so easy to hear the distant whispers of those positive words. This noise is so persistent that it is indecipherable, all encompassing and constant.

I want it to stop. I want the silence.

Pink wrote in her song "Fucking Perfect": Change the voices in your head/Make them like you instead.

 
Listening to this song for the first time while in hospital, I came to realise that's what they are, these incessant noises: voices.

Voices of people long gone.
Voices of people dead.
Voices of people dead-to-me.
Voices of people with their own pain, that they never acknowledged or dealt with.
Voices of people who would project their feelings about themselves onto me.
Voices of people with no love to give, even to me, who should have had it.

These voices are loud, constant, persistent, unrelenting and lifelong, starting at birth and continuing through bullying at school and then into relationships. They have had me shy away from friendships that might be positive, or worse, not nurturing them as they needed to be. Shying away from the people that wont treat me like crap. Persisting with those that do, whilst begging them to change.  Rejecting those that love me to pursue those that can't love me and never will. Then I do it to my own children too, rejecting them in favour of things that have no value in my life.

I feel like whale shit at the bottom of the ocean because this is not what I want to do, this is not the mother I want to be.

And the panic, the panic that those voices can instill in me...  The intense cell-level need to flee, to get away from the conflict that is coming, the negating of what I have to say, the denigration, the PROOF that my mother was right. Anything to avoid that...

My psychologist asks me during my session this week about my early childhood (no, not that, do we have to talk about that??)  Who did love me, if not my parents?  And I think.  And I shrug my shoulders and the tears fall.  Because the answer is unsayable. The answer is "no one."

Imagine that?

She explains that if a child has just one person to show them affection, to nurture them, provide care, to show love, make them feel safe and wanted, then their brain will develop to expect that relationships are positive, safe, good things.  If the child doesn't have that one person, then the brain develops completely differently. Relationships are a source of danger, and are to be avoided or sabotaged.

Without that "one person" to show me love when I was no bigger than my own children are now, it is no wonder I behave the way I do, react the way I do, expect the things I expect from people. The voices, they repeat the things that hurt the most in my childhood. The way I react to them and the way I relate to people is result of my brain development.

Does that make a difference?  I know now that my childhood is not something I "should just get over." I know that there is no point in beating myself up for the way I react in certain situations - its like hating on myself for breathing. I know that with self-knowledge comes the ability to change.

I know that when my heart is pounding and every cell in my body screams "danger! love approaching" that my brain is going to try to fuck things up for me.

I just don't know how I'm going to stop it.

Home Is Where The Pizza Ordered By The Five-Year-Old Is

I decided to check myself out of the hospital yesterday morning, even after the MASSIVE panic attack I had over the AA meeting non-event and the subsequent suicidal ideation. I was alone in the room, with the door shut and the nurse not likely to come around for at least half an hour, and I started having plans...  The fuck???

But I pulled my shit together, I really did. I DID SOMETHING. I realised what was happening, realised it was BAD and I made a change to the situation I was in.  I opened the door, I put the lights up, and I decided I needed Milo from the patient kitchen.  My mood changed. The thoughts went. I calmed down. Lets all hear it for Milo! It potentially saved my life that night.

Packed with B Vitamins and the Will To Live

Despite the alluring option of staying another day and feeling worse because it was more time alone, I chose the Get Out Of Jail Free card.

I do feel strange. Strange to be home, strange to be out of the regulated environment. Strange to have new feelings come up because I am no longer squishing them down with the booze.

Strange to look at my kids with new, clearer, eyes.

Strange to realise that I cannot be left alone at the moment due to intense, out of the blue flashes of aforementioned suicidal thoughts.

The best thing about being home is that Felix decided that as a surprise for Mummy when she comes home, they should order take-out pizza from the store around the corner, because Mummy loves that and it is something everyone is happy with.

I'm sure the kids have changed in the last week. Or maybe I am seeing their behaviour with clear eyes and a clear head? 

Nah, a week ago Felix wouldn't have cared what anyone else wanted for dinner.It would be Macaroni Cheese with Bacon all the way.

Home. There is no place like it, and we'll take it one day at a time to see if that's a good thing or not.

All Alcoholics Are Created Equal

When I lived with my previous boyfriend, who we call Fuckhead round these parts but whose name was John, I had a close-up hands-on experience of alcoholism. When we met he had already been engaging in serious drinking for a few years, and by serious I mean bottle of Scotch in an hour every day serious. Bottle in the filing cabinet in his office at university. He was an academic. He was brilliant. He was - then - a high-functioning alcoholic.

Lets not get into the myriad reasons why I wanted to enter into a relationship with a person who was clearly - and I do mean clearly- a complete write-off mental health wise. Lets just look at the alcohol.

When he lost his high paid academic job (due of course to the alcohol) and could no longer afford the scotch, he turned to the cheapest source of alcohol above metho, which was a 5 litre cask of wine. To this day the sight of a Berri cask of white wine fills me with anxiety and dread. Said cask would be consumed in one night. Or sometimes starting earlier in the day, if it was a bad day, in one afternoon. It would inevitably lead to other forms of abuse. This would happen every single day and we were together for four and a half years.

That level of alcoholism renders one unable to function, not only in the real world but in your own house too. The stories I could tell you of the filth he chose to live in when I was not there to clean up the detritus of another night's binging...they would make your stomach turn.

Of course I tried to get him to stop drinking, and as a good deal of alcoholics will tell you, he said "I'm not an alcoholic. I never drink before 12."  Or "I can stop drinking any time I want!"  What I didn't realise then was that he couldn't stop drinking because he already had Korsakoff's Syndrome which had rendered him brain damaged. I only discovered this only 12 months ago, when I was told that he had died from Korsakoff's.

I mention this story because this is my only experience of alcoholism.  Extreme. Brutal. Deadly.

So when I drank my one, and then two, bottles of wine each night, the word "alcoholic" did not enter my consciousness at all.  After I had Ella, I never drank to get drunk again. Unlike before, where there are many stories of friends holding back my hair in the UniBar loos...  But I digress.

I drank because it helped reduce the pain. I drank until I was relaxed. I always drank white wine because red made me a depressed and melancholic drunk, but white wine has no such effect. At the point I could feel that I was getting slightly tipsy, I would stop drinking and usually toddle of to bed, knowing that I was relaxed enough that I would sleep as well as my non-sleeping kids would allow me.

And this went on for three years. Every night. No one knew, except Monkey Boy., Sure, people knew I liked to drink wine, but that was it.   Eventually though, I got to the point with my pain and my limitations that I was truly suicidal. I had a plan, which I thought about often. I didn't believe any good could come from my being alive. I truly believed my kids would be better off without me.  So of course, my doctor was told about the alcohol, and wanted me to stop drinking immediately.  And I went into a major panic attack.

In conjunction with our social worker, it was decided I would taper my alcohol consumption in the same way I would taper down a dose of medication before stopping it, which at the time seemed logical.  But I couldn't do it. MB was in charge of doling out the exact number of mls each night, and it was torture. Having a little when I knew that I "needed" a lot, and not being in control of what was happening was just not going to work. So I faked not being suicidal anymore and went back to drinking, and I was still thinking that the alcohol was just a form of pain relief.

But then I would start to panic if we were down to the last bottle in the house. I would panic about when we would be able to get to the bottle shop to get some more. I would be in major distress (which I masterfully hid, or MB is blind to my distress) when MB said "Cant you just wait til tomorrow? I'll pick some up then."

I started to look at the clock mid afternoon and wonder if 2.30 was too early to start drinking. Some days it wasnt. but I never drank before 12!

I started drinking when my son got home from school. I would refill my glass as soon as it was empty, and kept doing this all night.  Then I began bringing the bottle into the living room and sitting it next to me so I didnt have to keep getting up to get another drink. Saving myself the pain of getting up and down I said to myself in justification.  Then it occurred to me that John used to do exactly the same thing with his 5 litre cask.

When I got to the point of drinking two bottles of wine every night just to feel "normal" of an evening, and I would wake up shaking each morning, I knew something had changed.

What I realised was that I had become physically dependent on this drug, and that if I continued it would kill me as surely as it killed John. I also knew that I had no idea how to stop.

My doctor gave me Valium to get me through the anxiety I would surely feel, but because of the cocktail of narcotics and anti-depressants I take I was certainly no candidate for the drugs that are used to block the desire for alcohol.

And it wasnt until I stopped, until there was no alcohol in my system at all, until I had gone a couple of nights without touching a drop, and I started to feel SO low, so sad, so anxious, so depressed, withdrawn, unable to stop crying, and so scared that once I had got through these physical effects of stopping, I would still not be able to have just one or two drinks, that I wouldn't be able to stop myself once I started...it wasnt until then that I realised the awful, shameful truth.

That I had become an alcoholic.

That there was no difference between John and I, except for what stage we had got to with our drinking.  Had I continued...I would end up in the same place: liver damage, brain damage, death.  We started for different reasons: he refused treatment for his bipolar disorder and self-medicated with Scotch. I tried every medication available to me and still nothing was working satisfactorily so I tried to use the alcohol to "kick along" the other meds into working better.

For me, the knowledge that I am no better than him is devastating. It tears at my soul, it makes me want to scream, it makes me sick to my stomach.

I am a person who must remain in control of what is happening to me. Knowing that I have no control at all in this situation, that I am controlled by my addiction is terrifying.  I am controlled by something I thought, in all honesty, would help me.

I am controlled by alcohol: I am an alcoholic.

I have been sober for 14 days, but I am a mess, I am having panic attacks, I am frightened, I am sad and I don't know how to get through this withdrawal.

How The Fuck Did I Get Here, Then?

I know there was a time when I was happy.

Somewhere in between meeting Monkey Boy at the age of 33 and the shit going down with his mother over our wedding plans, I was happy.  Deliriously happy, as one is at the start of every relationship I suppose, but even more so because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was The One.

Unfortunately, I was at the end of a 9-month drug binge at the time we met. A binge that was helping me forget the incredibly abusive relationship with a brilliant and talented man who unfortunately had Bipolar Disorder with psychosis and self-medicated himself with 5 litres of cask wine every night. A relationship that had ended only with a Restraining Order after 4.5 years of trying. A binge that was helping me forget that my youngest brother had committed suicide one month before I ended that relationship, and that he was the second of my brothers to make that choice.  A binge that helped me forget that people I considered my friends sexually assaulted me in a hotel room the week after I ended that relationship and that the police would do nothing about it.

So I think its fair to say that I was well fucked up around that time. *Actually a gross understatement of the matter.

Being at university, drugs were freely available, always on offer and (it seemed to me) the perfect answer. *They are not and never will be the perfect answer to anything.  And they certainly did help me "forget" my troubles. When you are high on speed and ecstasy almost every weekend, and the good old green every day, you are having a damn good time in your own head.  But the bills aren't getting paid, and there is no money for food and everything else is falling to shit around you because all you do is party.

So when you meet someone who is nice, and decent, and the brother of your best "party friend" and he LIKES YOU, and he meets every criteria on the list you wrote down in your diary (while on drugs) re qualities the perfect man must have, well its rather easy to make some decisions that in hindsight might have been better made...well..sober.

Never mind, the decision was made and we were married. And because there was a passive-aggressive showdown about our wedding plans courtesy of Monkey Boy's mother, (who has several posts in her all to herself) his family did not come to the wedding.

Strike One.

Two days later, on our honeymoon I had Prolapsed Disc #1 followed by six months of unbearable pain that my doctor seemed unconcerned with alleviating in any way. Monkey Boy was halfway through his Honours Degree, which he had to give up so he could look after me.

Strike Two.

I had surgery, finally. Hurrah! It fixed the pain, by taking away part of my spine in a procedure called a Hemi-Laminectomy. Ok, whatever, at least it didn't hurt anymore.

So then I thought: lets have a baby! Fabulous idea, especially for someone who never ever wanted to have children (me) with a loudly ticking Biological Clock.  Then comes the miscarriage..

Strike Three.

My brain is OUTTA HERE!  Major Depression comes and overstays its welcome.

Our lives become a hell of TTC and HCG and TWW and OPK and Semen Analysis and timing sex and heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak.

Until, almost two years later, on the day we are at the IVF clinic being told we will be starting our first cycle in a couple of months and we are freaking out about the whole idea, we were completely unaware about this.

Hooray! We have a baby, and he's awfully cute and healthy and we loved him heaps. He was the impetus for a reconciliation with Monkey Boy's family. But we have no idea what we are doing with the strange little creature though, and he doesn't sleep, and he doesn't feed properly and he doesn't put on weight and I cant produce enough milk no matter what I do so now of course I am a failure, and there is more stress and no sleep.

But somehow,  after 18 months, there was enough sleep to produce some rather unexpected changes.

The thing was, we were not planning on another child. At all. Felix was the miracle baby. Another child was statistically impossible. Goes to show what you can take from statistics.  The other thing was that the very first day of the pregnancy I managed to prolapse a disc again. Same disc as before at L4/L5 but on the other side. The surgery that fixed the initial injury in 2004 had created a weak point, and my stupidfuckingspine decided "wheyhey! Lets smoosh out that way".

So imagine, if you can, a ruptured disc that presses on the sciatic nerve and causes indescribable pain happening at the very beginning of a pregnancy. All those long months ahead of you with increasing pressure on the back, on the pelvic joints, the loosening of all the joints thanks to stupid hormones. The doctors saying "well you're pregnant, you cant take anything."  Imagine pain that starts in the lower back, courses through your buttock and down the side of your thigh, hot, burning hot liquid pain, that then heads to your big toe, where it feels like your toe is being pulled so hard your leg is being ripped off.  Imaging this 24 hours a day. Imagine pain that makes you rock back and forth on your knees for hours on end in tears, unable to walk, or sit, or lie down, heavily pregnant and screaming with pain at times and desperate, desperate, desperate for anything. Even for the pregnancy to be ended there and then so they would give you decent pain relief.

Imagine also that you are dealing with all of this with an 18 month old son, a husband who cannot cope with what is happening, and no support. Imagine your husband grabbing your son, pointing to you while you are in obvious distress and yelling at him: "Look! Look at what you've done to mummy!"

My heart broke right there and then, and I realised that there was a choice to be made and that I would always always make it in favour of my child. Looking back, that was the moment, the very moment that our marriage died.

Nevertheless, I am pregnant and still completely disabled and dependent.  It wasn't until I was 33 weeks pregnant that I was finally given an MRI and some halfway decent pain relief.  To get this I had to scream hysterically at my Obstetrician who wasn't quite understanding that if he didn't prescribe me some decent drugs RIGHTNOWFUCKYOU I would kill myself.  I was given Endone for pain relief, and the MRI showed what I knew it would all along, a disc protrusion on the right at L4/5 impinging on the sciatic nerve root.  Right there that produces a whole new set of complications for the pregnancy and delivery. 

The boffins all said it would be right as rain once I had delivered. That once the pressure of the baby had been relieved then the disc would heal itself. Well we all know that boffins are full of shit, eh?

So delivery, with my back in this state? Horror show. Again, that's a story for another day, if I can bring myself to write it.  Suffice to say at the end, I had more pain in my back from the epidural, pain from the emergency c-section, a baby in ICU being checked for narcotic withdrawal (it turned out she was completely fine) and hospital staff that clearly never bothered to read my file and treated me like a "normal" postnatal woman, when very clearly I was a fucking wreck with very high needs.

I left hospital with severe PTSD from the delivery as well as severe PND which nobody seemed to pick up on even though I knew I had both but was so fucked up I literally couldn't say anything to anyone.  I was completely unable to care for my new daughter and what's more, I didn't want to. This is another story. It was BAD. It was so bad that it let to a complete disassociation from Monkey Boy's family. Again, another story for another day.


I think Ella was at least 12 months old before I got to see a proper Pain Specialist. In the meantime I took a combination of every painkiller on the market, including continuing with the Endone, and I took all of them at doses far greater than was recommended.  It was extremely hard for me to breastfeed because of the pain, and we had been comp feeding since the hospital anyway, so by the time she was 4 months old, she and I preferred to use formula.  I was over my high and mighty stance on breastfeeding. I had to do whatever it took to survive.

And once I was no longer breastfeeding, I decided to try "potentiating" my medications with a glass or two of wine each night. And it worked. It really did. I wasn't drunk, I wasn't even tipsy, I just felt less pain. I had greater ease of movement. I could get some sleep. And so it went on. And on. and on, for almost three years.


I changed medications frequently in an attempt to find the right drug and right dose and right combinations, under the supervision of my Pain Specialist, until we eventually hit on a combination of 4 different medications that, for most of the time, kept the pain at a bearable level. But the alcohol, unbeknown to him, remained part of my secret strategy.

I knew it helped the pain, so I drank from late afternoon (the time of day when I would have used all my energy reserves just coping with being alive and a mother) and I drank until I went to bed.


Three MRI's later and nothing had changed for the better. Quite the opposite, in fact. The L4/5 disc has "dessicated and sequestrated" and there was now also some spinal stenosis and retrolisthesis. There were "white matter lesions" on my brain which still may or may not be MS.  Much talk of Degenerative Disc Disease and permanent and spine is failing and wont operate too risky and I am just tuning out once we get to the word "Permanent".

So my life is a routine of pain medications that would knock most people out, doctors visits, neurologists, pain specialists, psychologists, and social workers whom I BEG for help and yet none is forthcoming beccause I dont fit into any of the right funding pigeonholes. Too young. Wrong type of spinal injury. Not disabled enough. Have someone at home with me therefore no need for extra help.

Except the person who is at home doesnt do all  the things he is needed to do. He takes his stress out on the children and on the person he is supposed to be caring for.  If this were a professional relationship of Carer/Client, he would be fired. Except it isn't, and one cant fire one's husband.  One cant even divorce one's husband when he is your Carer and there is no one else to do the job.

Stuck, with pain, with permanent pain, with a life on narcotics, with a life of dependance and limitations, and with the inability to care properly for my own children, with the inability to work. Stuck in a marriage I desperately want out of and with no clear way out.

How the fuck did I get here? Even looking at all that history, I can see how I end up in a situation where I become an alcoholic, but I cant see how WE - Monkey Boy and I - end up in the position of contempt for each other, and he behaving in damaging ways towards our children, when we started from a position of such love and respect for each other.  I have changed, of course I have, but I don't take my grief and anger and loss of hope out on my kids. 

Or did I miss the signs that were there the beginning that, had I not been drug-fucked, I would had realised meant trouble down the road?

Is this a hell partially of my own making?

My nane is...

Hello.

Posts for the next little while will be very difficult to write. .  My doctor todat increased the doses on some of my pain killers. and the combinatuin makes a fun and interesting spectator sport, no doubt. But from this end, it is a struggle to stay awake long enough to write ledgably. Ledgiblu. See?


So. Just a quick now. now.,,k

Hello. My name is Sharon and I'm an alcoholic.

I have been drinking 1 - and more recently 2- bottles of wine a night every nighhhhht for almost 3 years, in order to deal witj my paim

I have been sober for 8 days.

I would kill for a drink.

this post has taken me one hour to write.

My name is Sharon and I an an alcoholic.

cant retrieve id

The title of this post is an error message that was sitting there in the Title options bar, being all eerily appropriate.

Cant retrieve identity.

How did I get to this place, where I am nothing, I can do nothing, I see no one, I am not interested in anything, and I know that nothing will change.

Cant retrieve identity.

The discs in my spine are so badly degenerated that there is no hope of getting better. Yet I am "not bad enough" that a surgeon will touch me due to the serious and real danger of being left paralysed if they operate. I am left here, stuck here, waiting and hoping in some macabre nightmare that things will get worse, so that they may get better.

Cant retrieve identity.

I am nothing, in limbo, in a life I loathe, in a marriage that is dead, dependent on someone who isn't dependable, support-less, passive, sad, angry, watching my life being wasted.

How bad does it have to be, if this is "not bad enough"?

So Where Did That Year Go?

Or the last 10 years, which is how long I have now owned my house that still doesn't have a decent kitchen.  Or the last 20, which is how long I have been dealing with a debilitating medical condition that may now turn out to have been something else all along.

In the intervening time, the year, the 10 years, 20 years, nothing has gone the way I thought it would.  When I was 21 I certainly never imagined myself in this place.  A year ago I didn't imagine myself in this place.  A year ago I hoped desperately things would be different, that with love and hope and good intentions they would be fixed.    To all intents and purposes they are not.

I have a couple of new friends, some new social outlets, have re-engaged with my love of sewing, have found that my daugher loves me fiercely and I her, and that I will do anything - absolutely anything - for my kids.

The thing I wanted most to change hasn't, and I'm not really sure where the hell I can go from here.  I am in quicksand, and I'm sinking.

Birthday Wishes

It is very quickly approaching the anniversay of my birth, and of Ella's birth.

Both are significant birthdays. Ella's because she will have survived her first year of life and remains the happiest baby ever, so long as you give her food every 10 minutes. Mine because I will have reached that age where "they" say life begins, and I wonder.

I'm sure some lives do begin at 40, with a newly-found acceptance of self, of freedom from the responsibilities of parenting. But mine...?

I find myself on the brink of 40 with limitations that cause me both physical and emotional pain, with trying to be a "good enough" mother to two beautiful children who deserve more than I can give them, and being wife to someone who is clearly not coping (and why would he?) with the difficulties that my condition has placed before him.

What exactly is life going to give me now that I am, give or take, at the middle of my life? Physically, for me, it seems to be all downhill from here. I resign myself to the fact that I will never be able to run with my son the way he wants me to. I will never be able to lift him up and twirl him around the way I see other parents do with their child. I feel as though I will always be on the sidelines in the lives of my children when I long to be there right in the middle of things, wrestling or bike riding or just sitting on the floor and playing a game. I want to pick up my beautiful Ella Bella Mozzarella and hold her close for more than the few minutes available to me before my back is telling me that any more will mean a week without walking.

I want to drive my own car. I want to have a whole day to myself. I want to drive this way and then on a whim drive that way and, in the words of my son, "see what I can see". I want to have a functioning brain that is not addled by the cocktail of pain management medications I must take every day. I want to not be a burden to those I love. I want to know that my condition is not permanent and that there is some hope, somewhere, of leading a normal life.

I want to know that the white matter lesions in my brain are not Multiple Sclerosis.

In Which We Descend Into The 11th Circle of Hell

The System. You cant beat it. Even if you join it you cant beat it because you dont want to get your ass sued. And even if you make it to the top of the system and cant be sued then you still have to work within legislation which those in REAL power wrote so they would get re-elected and not so it would actually work for the benefit of those whom it covers.

The System: 1. Panda: Nil.

And normally I would be kicking and screaming all the way to the District Court yelling as loud as I could to anyone that would listed about how completely FUCKED it is to allow two people for whom there are "grave concerns" about their wellbeing and ability to cope at home TO ACTUALLY GO HOME and about HOW can one make a determination about someone's mental incapacity when it is acceptable for that person to REFUSE a psych assessment and therefore an application for Guardianship is denied because there isnt enough evidence AND how is it even ethical to do so when that person is the CARER for someone who has been deemed to have a mental incapacity but no, HE doesnt need a Guardian either because this woman over here, THE ONE WHOM WE CANT ASSESS BECAUSE SHE REFUSES BUT WE'RE HEAPS CONCERNED SHE'S NOT QUITE RIGHT IN THE HEAD, HEY, she's going to be his carer.

Normally. But now I have a Small, Somewhat Burrito-Shaped Item who kinda needs his mamma to be around and not be climbing the walls with frustration and RAGE at this system that gives carte blanch to old people to go home and die.

So my parents are at home. My mother hates me and has even gone so far as to make the statement to the Board that I "never did anything to get them help" [A-HEM], the social worker, who while very nice and I'm sure the best thing mum could have at this point, is very naive about how my mother operates and is in for a rude shock, my father is oblivious to the whole thing, and my brother... Well, my brother is about to get the following email. I hate him like poison.


Dear Fuckhead,

Today you said some things that I have to address, if only to get them out of my brain so I can get on with my life and not keep dwelling on how angry I am.

You based your allegation about my suitability for our father's Medical Power of Attorney on what exactly? My behaviour at the hospital the night my parents were admitted, you claimed. What behaviour was that exactly?

• Was it the fact that I stayed at the hospital until midnight in Emergency with my 6 month old son?
  
• Was it the fact that I made sure someone was with him once our mother had been taken to hospital so that he was not left to fend for himself alone for a whole weekend because the doctor wouldnt do anything for him?
  
• Was it the fact that I called an ambulance in the first place so that our father was not at home choking to death?
• Was it the fact that I made sure that the hospital had as much information as I could give them about their medical status and history?
• Was it that I made sure the doctors were aware that the growth on his face needed to be looked at? Lucky I did, hey, since it was cancerous.
• Was it the fact that I had to request an ACAT Assessment be done for them to make sure that they werent just sent home?

What other decisions have I made that havent been in his interests? Was it being the person who pushed and pushed to get a diagnosis for him? If I hadnt insisted upon a referral to a specialist, there would STILL be no diagnosis. If I hadnt taken him to all his appointments for the majority of my pregnancy he would not have gone.

Your transparent attempt at maligning me fooled no-one today. If you want to make allegations that I cannot be trusted to make medical decisions for our father they'd better be backed up by some damned good evidence next time.

Truly, you are diabolical to me. I cannot understand your need to deny our family history. What do you gain from trying to sweep decades of abuse under the carpet? Do you somehow asuage your guilt by doing this? Is it the only way you can live with the fact that you knew what was happening to our mother and you knew what was happening to me when I was a child, yet you did nothing to protect us? Even Warren had the guts, the sensitivity, to apologise to me for not being there for me when I was a child.

It makes me sick to think that you want to rewrite history and pretend that it was a mere "difficult relationship" that has now "weathered the storm". Domestic violence should NEVER be ignored in this way and I cannot believe that as someone who has been called out to surely countless DV incidents is so willing to ignore it and diminish it in his own family. Our parents have not "weathered the storm". Our mother was battered by our father since the very early days of their marriage. The ONLY reason this stopped is dad's decline from dementia. As his dementia progressed his personality changed and lucky for mum it was into a placid, doddering old man. The way you minimise the dysfunction in their relationship and our family is so reminiscent of the behaviour of the perpetrators of the sexual assault on me 5 years ago that it makes my skin crawl.

I dont know why you have such a low opinion of me. I have never known and I probably will never know. At this point I dont even care. I scratch myhead about it and wonder in an anthropological/psychological exercise kind of way, but that remains the extent of it. I doubt that even you could tell me. I know I have absolutely done the right thing with regard to ensuring the welfare of our parents and somehow I have managed to rise above my upbringing and become a decent, well-adjusted human being despite my family.

Methinks that when you have yelled at me that I am just like our mother (and you mean that in a bad way) that in reality, you are projecting your beliefs about yourself on to me. I see so much of mum's behaviour in you (particularly the denial of reality and rewriting of history to fit your agenda) that I really hope your kids have been paying attention to whats been going on here. I fear that this will be their story in 30 years.

Good luck with the Administrator role. I hope you can sort out the financial mess.

I'm done here.

4 Months, Surgery and Why I Should Move Cities.

Lets start with the feel-good stories.

Spudly is now 4-and-a-bit months old. At yesterday's weigh-in he was 6.74kg and 64cm long. This explains why he is getting far to heavy for me to carry around, and why no matter how hard I try to stretch them, his cute little star suit and bunny onesie just.wont.fit. He's growing up, before my eyes, and while I delight in all the little achievements he's made, it just reminds me that one day he wont be a baby anymore. He'll be going to kindy and then school and dealing with Other Children and Other Adults and they wont necessarily think he is the most wonderful person on the planet and wont make him the centre of their universe. I KNOW! How is this possible? It just aint right.

Two achievements of the last week stand out. On Friday he discovered the joys of sticking out his tongue. Yesterday he discovered that if you stick your tongue out and then blow it makes FANTASTIC NOISES and sometimes even LOTS OF BUBBLES and this is the MOST EXCITING THING EVER!!!!! Today, in response to his increased formula intake, he has started on solids. Yes! Solids! Though why some bland mush is termed "solids" I'll never know. Spudly gave the appropriate facial expressions (what the hell is this crap and why are you putting it in my mouth???) but he did eat it. And then he opened his mouth for more. And more. And some of it went down his front but mostly it went in his gob and he didnt complain about it so I can only put that down as a Success.

Moving right along to My Role As Nursemaid... Monkey Boy now has two lovely incisions in his shoulder, a sling and a prescription for morpheine. I didnt really appreciate how much I rely on him for help with Spudly until he wasnt available anymore. Nor did I realise exactly how demanding Spudly is. He likes attention, does my boy. He likes attention and he likes it NOW. And no, I dont want to wait until you've gone to the loo and I dont want to wait until you come back into the room with my bottle, I want ALL MY PEOPLE HERE, RIGHT NOW! Monkey Boy will have the sling for another week, and will be out of action for another 4-6 weeks. By which time the rest of my hair will have fallen out.

And now for the number one reason why people want to leave this city, made only too obvious to me recently.

There may be one million people here but you can guarantee that there are only two degrees of seperation between them all. You cannot do a bloody thing without running into someone you know or finding out that someone you know knows someone else you know but through links you didnt know existed. And sometimes that person is someone you've tried damn hard to get out of your life for a long long time. And sometimes the person that knows them is family.

And so it was for me when we last had a family lunch with the rest of the Monkey Boy clan. Monkey Boys elder sister, Vegan Girl, mentioned in passing people she had brought down to the parents property in the country, people who'd hated it because there was nothing to do in the country. Then she mentioned their names. It was like a kick in the guts.

How do you know Skankface and Dr Evil? I asked. (and yes, thats their real names). She works with Skankface. Is very very VERY good friends with Skankface. Has a lot of RESPECT for Skankface. My sister-in-law. Respect. For the woman that almost 5 years ago took advantage of our friendship and my alchohol-sodden unconscious self and sexually assaulted me.

What does one do?

Well, first one freaks out totally and absolutely.

Then one gets home and gets on to gmail chat and freaks out to Lala who gives excellent advice.

Then one does the next hardest thing and goes to see parents-in-law and tells them the situation. Because a) Vegan Girl has to know that Skankface cannot under any circumstances know that VG and I are now related, where I am or that I even exist anymore. b) VG and her partner must know because the stories she was telling about Skankface made it abundantly clear that she had not changed her attitude to the appropriate/inappropriate behaviour distinction and they were therefore both at risk, and c) VG, being in the past prone to outbursts of uncontrolled anger, may not react at all well to what we had to tell her and therefore the inlaws had to be forewarned of the possibility of major fuckuppage as far as that relationship went.

The greatest fear for me was that VG would react the way so many of my friends did at the time of the assault. It took me a long time and a lot of therapy to accept that the way they handled it was unacceptable. You dont say to someone who has just been sexually assaulted by a friend "I cant believe that she would do that. There must be some mistake. Lets give her a second chance. Oh and by the way, we've invited both of you to the same parties so make nice and dont cause a scene." Okay no-one actually said that last bit, but it was still there, hanging in the air.

So while I was lunching with two internet buddies, Monkey Boy was lunching with Vegan Girl. Who not only took it much better than expected, but also wanted to know if we'd like to take out a contract on her. I dont want to know if she was serious. Not that I have the money anyway. But y'know... if you're a hit man with nothin to do...*

The truly worst thing about this is that I felt safe within the Monkey Boy clan. They are like a high wall protecting all within from the worst the world offers up. Until one of the worst things my world offered up to me managed to get inside, and now I know that no matter what I am not safe.

I'm thinking I might go build on my real estate on the Moon.

Erg. Heavy. Too heavy. Look at the pretty...




* I am joking. Dont come raid my house and arrest me n stuff.

Reality Bites

Truth be told, I have never looked in the mirror and really seen my body. I, like so many other women, look and see what I think it looks like. It’s not true that I never had a weight problem. I never had an overweight problem. I had have a “body image problem”, an underweight problem, a…okay I have an eating disorder.

I never binge and then throw up food, nor do I think that every morsel of food that goes into my mouth is going to make me fat. I’ve only recently had it described to me as a form of OCD. My thing, that I didn’t even realize I did until last year in therapy, is that in times of stress when everything in my life seems to be going out of control, I stop eating. The only thing I can maintain any control over is what is going in to my body, so I stop putting anything into it. How fucked up is that?

For a number of months before I met Monkey Boy, I was so proud of myself for getting through each day on a glass of fruit juice and a toasted muffin with jam and cream. That was it. Oh, and the cigarettes that I chain smoked in order to conquer my appetite. I was 5’8” (173cm) and weighed 8 ¾ stone (58kg). My hip bones stuck out, my ribs were clearly visible. I fit into size 8 clothing. SIZE 8. (For you Time of Charlemagne types, this is the smallest adult dress size). I looked in the mirror and was not horrified by the skeleton before me; I saw large thighs that could use a few inches off them and a butt that was no longer pert.

I did gain weight once I was in a safe relationship. I went back to my normal size 12 and you could no longer count my ribs from across the room, but the disorder was still there. Much to my horror it remained even after I realized it existed. Apparently, knowledge of the existence of a problem doesn’t just make it go away. What’s THAT about? I was so sure that since I knew what the issue was and what the triggers for my hunger-strike were, I would just be able to recognize when I was doing it and stop.

Hmph. Seems it doesn’t work that way. Why not? is what I’d like to know. [Sidebar: yes, I have now accepted my status as a total control freak since I was angry I couldn’t control the eating disorder that manifests when I don’t have control. Help.me.]

Let’s face it; having a new baby is probably the situation in which one is going to feel the least in control, but not even breastfeeding and needing to increase my caloric intake made me able to stop. I couldn’t even make myself eat properly for the Spud. I really scratch my head and wonder why I can’t choose to exert control over this disorder with as much willpower as I clearly have to control my food intake.

When I look in the mirror at 3 months post-partum I REALLY don’t recognize the body I see. Not only have I retained 6 kilos of pregnancy weight (that’d be the éclairs) but the belly is all saggy baggy and definitely NOT about to be shown off in skimpy little midriff tops like it was when I was 30 weeks pregnant. Nor are my thighs ever going to see the light of day again. Actually, I’d prefer it if they never even saw the dark of day again: it’s just too horrendo. I think I’ll stay fully clothed at all times. I’m at the high end of the proper weight range for my height. It just seems like all that weight has now deposited itself between my navel and knees. I dislike the way my body looks now more than I’ve ever disliked it before, and I worry that not even upping the dose of Prozac [excellent OCD meds] will stop the hunger-strike returning.

Consequently, there was a moment of serendipity today when I came across a blog called Shape Of A Mother, where women can post pictures of their pregnant and post-pregnancy bellies and their stories of how their bodies changed after childbirth. If “mommy blogs” are all about telling the truth about motherhood, about “keeping it real”, then this is the ultimate in reality checks. Saggy bits, stretch marks from hell, its all there. It was a relief, a real relief to see my body in the photos posted by other women and knowing that they all look in the mirror and don’t recognize themselves either. So it’s not just me. We all look like this. This is what pregnancy does. This is what childbirth does. This is what breastfeeding does. This is the price you pay for becoming a fully-realized mammal.

I’m guessing that the price you pay for being a mother is relinquishing control.

I’m also guessing Spudly is going to teach me more than I’m going to teach him.

"They Wont Remember A Thing"

It's one of those ever-so-useful platitudes that people like to trot out whenever your baby is undergoing some painful procedure like immunisations or being made to dress up like a caribou. Like most platitudes it is supposed to be helpful, alleviate stress and/or guilt, reassure parents that they have done the right thing (well, maybe not the caribou suit) and make the person who said it feel better. Like most plattitudes, it does none of these things except the last, and it isn't true.

Here's the thing: they may not consciously remember their first needle or that time you spilled red wine on them (okay the time I spilled the red wine) or the fact that mum and dad were not getting along too well or the time you left them to Cry It Out, but you cant tell me that it doesnt affect (affect? effect? I never bloody know) them and leave some sort of mark upon their personalities.

Babies' brains are blank slates when they are born, and their earliest experiences shape the physical structure of the brain itself. The process of interacting with its people and its environment stimulates various parts of the brain, impacting not only on the number of brain cells and the number of connections between them but also the way in which these connections are wired. Over-stimulate the part of the brain that deals with stress responses and you will develop a brain that reacts as if a stress response is required even when it isnt.

When I understood this (for I didnt even realise this was the case until a few weeks ago) it had a profound affect on me. For two reasons. Firstly, the realisation that every.single.thing I do shapes Spudly's personality. Everything. Crying every evening because he was starving and we couldnt figure that out: some brain cells were stimulated and others died because of it. Holding him close for the better part of every day and responding immediately to his cries that mean "my butt's all poopy" "I'm gassy" and "I'm unsettled and feel like a grizzle" stimulate the warm and fuzzy pathways. On the whole, I think the warm and fuzzy pathways are winning out, but what a totally awesome (in the true sense of the word) responsibility. Obviously, I understood before that how we treat Spudly affects how he behaves in the world and how he feels about himself and others, but I didn't consider that how we treat him physically changes his brain so that he wont be able to respond differently to how WE hard-wire him. Fuck that's huge.

Secondly, it made me realise some things about myself. Since Spudly was born I've often ruminated upon what life was like in the House of the Mini Panda. My mother has told tales of being home after her 6 week hospital stay (following pre-eclampsia, 7 day labour, emergency c-section, baby born not breathing and not being able to see her for 3 days, and not having any milk to feed her) and being expected by the Husband and the Three Teenage Sons to pick up where she left off, i.e. her rightful position as their personal slave. She cried into the bucket of nappies on a regular basis from what I gather, and had to deal with not only the expectations of four less-than-enlightened males but also a baby who wouldnt stop screaming or go to sleep without the addition of Baby Valium (I shit you not). Knowing my father and brothers as I do, its not hard for me to picture the atmosphere in that house. The tension, the arguments, the screaming (not just from me) and more than likely the physical abuse. Is it any wonder that that baby grew up into a child and then adult with severe anxiety issues? Is it any wonder that she has suffered depression most of her life? Is it any wonder that a sudden loud voice, whether in anger or in fun, sends chills down her spine and does weird squidgy things to her guts?

For so long I put these things down to the things in my life that I could remember. The physical abuse my mother and I suffered from my father, the abuse I suffered from my mother, the violent relationship I ended up in with Fuckhead. The depression and anxiety disorder I put down to me being somehow weak or not made of strong enough moral fibre. I'm not denying the profound effect my remembered experiences have had on my personality, but what a shock it is to realise that the things I cant remember have had the biggest impact of all.

I'm not even sure how I feel about this. Relieved. Disturbed. Angry. Sad. Mostly relieved, I think. It goes a long way towards explaining why now that I'm in a loving, safe and supportive environment I feel like I'm out of my comfort zone and have to continually remind myself that this is a Good Thing. My comfort zone is that which was hard-wired into me in infancy. And its not a place I want to or should stay.


Speaking of the things they wont remember, here's some evidence for later court trials:

Mamma and Spudly do that 'net thing

Spudly says "Lemme see what you're doin..."

In case you cant quite read his t-shirt...

The "F-Word" Strikes Again

Well today is yet another day on which I have to come to terms with the fact that my body is completely fucked and wont do what its supposed to with regards to babies.

Spudly only put on 50g over the last week, despite the fact that I had done everything the same as the previous two weeks when he gained 100g per week. The Child Health Nurse said that since I was being worn down from the constant feeding and he wasnt gaining enough we had no choice but to introduce complimentary formula feeds inbetween 3 hourly breastfeeds. The theory is that if I can get him to go 3 hours between breastfeeds then he'll take more from me, stimulate me better than he does while snacking and I'll get enough rest to increase the fat content of my milk too.

I know this isnt the end of the world and formula-fed babies do just as well blah blah blah, but it would be nice if SOMETHING would go the way its "supposed to". So far, everything that I've been totally against I've ended up having to accept: drugs during labour, intervention during delivery and now the formula that I've been so vocally against for so many reasons. Truly, the thought of giving Spudly anything but breast milk makes me feel sick, and like I've failed him.

Late-night Realisations

Before I met Monkey Boy, I was involved with someone I shall call Fuckhead (for that is what I call him) for 4 years. Fuckhead is a violent manic-depressive alcoholic. I knew about both the manic-depression and the alcoholism when I got involved with him. I learnt about the violence later. For most of our relationship, I tried to figure out ways of leaving. I was scared, both of him and of being alone for the first time in my life. I knew from the very begining that this would never work, but I felt like I owed him some sort of duty of care. No-one else wanted a thing to do with him; his mania and alcoholism had burnt almost all of his bridges. I was the only one left who was prepared to help him get the professional help he needed.

As time went on, it became increasingly apparent that there was no helping him. By this time, however, I was so emotionally battered that I didnt have the energy to fight anymore. I blamed myself and felt so stupid for having stayed so long in such truly horrible circumstances. Everyone says "If my partner ever hit me, I'd be out of there so fast..." blah blah blah. But the thing is, as with so many other major life events, you really have no idea how you'll react until you're faced with the situation. It has taken me another 4 years to come to terms with what happened to me and why I didnt just end the relationship when it was obviously a Very Bad Idea to stay in it.

Recently, with nothing much else to do, and a desire for whalebone corsets and crinoline, I've been devouring the classic novels. I've just finished the last of my Austens, and I'm now starting on the Bronte collection again. The current selection is Anne Bronte's The Tennant of Wildfell Hall.

Last night, after being woken by thunderstorms, I picked up the novel and began to read. The following passage struck me like the lightening that was striking the ground not so far from here. Nothing that I could write would be better able to elucidate how I felt during that relationship. Strangely, the writing of a devout Christian woman of elevated class, some 180 years ago, tells my story:


Since he and I are one, I so identify myself with him, that I feel his degradation, his failings, and transgressions as my own; I blush for him, I fear for him; I repent for him, weep, pray, and feel for him as for myself; but I cannot act for him; and hence, I must be and I am debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes, and in the actual truth.

I am so determined to love him - so intensely anxious to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and laboring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice and almost a partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me now seem only natural. I know then to be wrong, because reason...delares them to be so; but I am gradually losing that instinctive horror and repulsion which was given me by nature, or instiled into me...

Perhaps, then, I was too severe in my judgements, for I abhorred the sinner as well as the sin; now I flatter myself I am more charitable and considerate; but am I not becoming more indifferent and insensate too? Fool that I was to dream that I had strength and purity enough to save myself and him! Such vain presumption would be rightly served, if I should perish with him in the gulf from which I have sought to save him!

Thankyou, Miss Bronte, for showing me myself.

The one about my crazed hormones, or Why I Like Prozac

A few people know this. Most dont. I dont think anyone apart from Adam and my wonderful GP understand it.

I'm going to write about hormones. Specifically, my hormones, why they dont like me and I dont like them.

I went on the Pill when I was a tender young spud of 19. I tied a few different types out, and after being unbearable bitchy on the biphasic and triphasic ones, I found a monophasic pill with a high dose of progesterone that suited me just right. I stayed on this for about ten years, I guess. I stopped bleeding as the progesterone dose was so high, but big deal, right? So I just kept taking the active pills constantly.

Then we decided to have a bash at this babymaking caper. I came off the Pill. I figured it would take ages before the Crimson Bitch would return but it only took 5 weeks. Groovy. Yeh, until the first proper cycle got underway. I'm a bit thick really. It took me 6 months to figure out what the hell was going on. But here it is.

Around 5-7 days after ovulation, I went absolutely psycho. I screamed, I threw things, I threw things AT THE MONKEY. I wanted a divorce. I said terrible things. Unforgivable, horrid, vile things. I would start an all-out-war over there not being any cordial in the house, one that would last for 3 days. Cordial, people! I cried like I had never cried before: those gut-wrenching cries that make you feel like you're going to cry out your internal organs. I screamed like I had never screamed before, imagining that causing myself physical pain would be preferable to the emotional pain that I was feeling. Then, about 5 days later, calm would descend again on the Panda, and everything would be okay.

Except, of course, everything wasnt okay. Monkey Boy was distraught at the things I had said and done, and was scared to do anything that might set me off again. I know he still carries the scars. I know he's scared of it happening again.

Things came to a head after the miscarriage. With both of us suffering depression, our ability to cope with my psychotic moments was ZERO. Thank jeebus, I had found a leaflet at our local doctor's office about Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. I read it, and saw myself described on the page. I showed Monkey. He agreed. Time to talk to the doctor.

So we had a diagnosis. It turned out that I'm not a horrible heartless evil wretch. My hormones are fucked. My brain chemistry is fucked. Oestrogen drops, Panda becomes a Psycho Bitch-From-Hell with an out if she's ever charged with murder! It wasnt until I had this diagnosis and an understanding of what my body was actually doing that I realised I have had this since I hit puberty. It was poorly controlled with some of the varieties of the Pill that I tried, and completely controlled with the one I finally settled on. So all of a sudden I had an explanation for what I had always thought of as a nervous breakdown. I wasn't nuts, as my father would have me believe. I wasnt possessed by the devil, as my mother would have me believe (I kid you not), and I wasnt a useless failure as my brother would have me believe. I was just a kid, with bad brain chemistry and really fucked hormones.

Interesting aside: this was how I knew I was pregnant - the weeks after ovulation I didnt go psycho.

Despite the fact that we were trying to get knocked-up, I went on Prozac, which is NOT, as most people think, an anti-depressant. Its an anti-anxiety drug. In low doses it is extremely effective in controlling PMDD. I didnt want to be on drugs, but nor did I want to feel like killing myself every 28 days, nor ruin my marriage. So I took the Prozac.

Best thing I ever did. Within two weeks I felt like I was functioning as a normal person. Not once have those psychotic episodes returned. Sure, I've got grumpy, sometimes I've even over-reacted to minor stuff. But I havent screamed, I havent threatened divorce, and I havent wanted to die. Unlike anti-depressants, I can still feel the highs and the lows of life, though there aren't so many highs around as I'd like, but ya get that with this whole "cant seem to get knocked-up thing".

Prozac: this girl's best friend.

Where are they now?

These thoughts have been going around in my head for a long time. They sear through my body and make every cell scream. I cant articulate them verbally. I feel physically ill when I think about it. There is no way that I can make these words come out of my mouth.

Only now, almost twelve months after I conceived, can I write them.

I wrote the following as a comment on Thin Pink Line after reading Manuela's emotional story of her miscarriage. With her permission, I publish them here.

*******

When a woman has a stillbirth or a late term miscarriage, or a neonatal
death, there is a body. A physical presence, a person that they can hold, and
love, and grieve over and have a funeral/memorial service for, and bury. They
know where their child is.

Where are our children? I cant bear to think about it. I hate to think
that to others they're merely "products of conception". Goddamn it, no they
aren't. I cant bear to think about you having to place your child in the
waste bin. I cant bear to think of mine being placed down the toilet
like a goldfish.

I wish that there were some ritual that we could perform after a miscarriage,
that acknowledges the grief, the love, the importance of that child in
our lives.

I wish we knew where our babies are.

************