Battling With Guilt: Taking Time Out

It took me so long to feel comfortable with Sofia being away from me at nursery all day rather than at home with me. I thought that if I had enough help with the chores I would be just like other stay-at-home mums looking after their babies all day. Why would I want two days by myself away from her if I wasn’t working?

But now I realise that if there’s one thing that normal stay-at-home mums don’t do, it’s stay at home! They can’t stand it. I know mums who get cabin fever if they stay at home with their babies for half a day. They push the buggy for miles to the shops to buy superfluous baby gadgets. They’re constantly meeting up for coffee or lunch with other mums and babies. Then pushing their buggies for miles through the park again, altogether. All these are situations in which they’re not interacting directly with their babies.

Normal mums can create situations like these where they’re not constantly face to face with their baby in a static environment. Not because they don’t love them or haven’t bonded with them, but because, as a mother, your brain needs the relief of following your own adult train of thought or socialising with other adults sometimes. Then you are refreshed and energised and have something to give back to your baby again.

Being housebound I couldn’t create any of those mental breaks for myself. I would do as much of the chores as I could then crash on the sofa in anguish because felt I couldn’t give Sofia enough quality time. I was on a downward spiral of guilt and exhaustion. When Sofia finally did start nursery it changed everything for me and also greatly improved our relationship.

It took a few weeks before she settled there and enjoyed it. 13 months is a difficult age to start. But now she comes home from nursery full of beans. She babbles furiously, dropping all her friends names. She learns new little tricks. It makes me so happy. I know she’s enjoyed herself. I know she’s had a good dose of normality, unconstrained by her mother’s disability. She has regular contact with the same 4 or 5 other children and is forming bonds outside the home. She plays with different toys and does painting and things that we don’t do at home. I don’t know why: maybe it’s my 13 years of solitary confinement due to ME, but it brings me so much relief to know my daughter isn't isolated just because I am.

And yes, I enjoy my days off too. I nourish my spirit with a little reading, a little walking, listening to the radio, pottering in the garden, writing this blog. It feels like total luxury. All these things are so much more precious to me since Sofia was born. Since my time off became scarce rather than just an endless stretch of time where I struggled to create meaning and identity out of being terminally unemployable.