Lego Rocks

It’s an exciting time. What were once random bits of plastic have become potentially interlocking units of an infinately metamorphosing whole. Sofia has had her Lego farm for 6 months but is only now learning how to stick the blocks together and build things with it. I think my own psycho-motor capacities are developing too. She asked me to make a house and instead of my usual chaotic assembly of blocks I found myself thinking through beforehand the best configuration of blocks to produce a window, a doorway and a roof too and then executing my vision. She was impressed. I felt triumphant; like a Dad who’s just knocked up a rabbit hutch with his bare hands. And all from the supine comforts of the sofa (from which I’m barely able to get up and make a cup of tea at the moment).

baby blues

I've been tearful most days since the birth. They are totally hormone-fuelled, nothing to worry about. Mostly they've been a welling up of intense joy and gratitude at having the opportunity to do all this newborn baby thing again without all the anguish of the first time round. With Sofia I had pangs of separation every time someone else took her to change her, cuddle her, dress her, stop her crying because I couldn't do it myself. I needed so much affirmation that she knew that I was her mum, and not the various others helping me out. This time I'm fine about others taking over. I just know I'm Rosa's mum and I know she will know it in time too, and I know more or less what I'm doing. Im aware that this tiny, crossed-eyed, floppy bundle phase will be over before i know it and i want to savour every minute of it.

Occasionally there are tears of pain for Sofia. All through this pregnancy I've been traumatised at the thought of having to be an even more diluted mummy to her than i already was. For two and a half years I,ve tried to compensate for my inadequacies by making her my absolute number one priority. Now that umbilical cord is completely broken. I've lost the plot with her. I don't even know if she's drunk enough fluid, weed on her potty. I can't put her first any more. For a while after Rosa's birth she wouldn't cuddle me or even go near me. Yesterday was the first proper cuddle again. sometimes her face looks so sad when i'm stranded on the sofa breastfeeding Rosa instead of eating my dinner next to her at table. If I dwell on it i break down into sobs. So i try not to. She's doing well. Her daddy is more than filling in for me. She seems to like her sister. Everyone tells me how lucky she is to have a baby sister.

Rosa Cecilia

Rosa Cecilia was born, as planned, on 7th September weighing 7lbs!

It sends shivers down my spine to type her name for the first time as I switch on the computer a week later.

The C-section was a breeze. A very nice birth experience with chatty anaesthetist, charming surgeon and Barry White playing on the radio. And me fully conscious and breathless with excitment.

So, right choice of delivery. But wrong choice of hospital. Rosa was born at a different hospital to Sofia and they managed to make the first 3 days quite hellish and then kicked me out before I was ready. More about that later though.

Now we're home and happy and I'm definately much further recovered than I was at this stage with Sofia.

I feel SO blessed to have the chance to do all of this again. The breastfeeding, the coping strategies, everything is so much easier now I know what I'm doing. In fact Sofia is still much harder work than our newborn. I'm in heaven and treasuring every minute of it.

Thanks for the good wishes.

The Seaside

My darling girl,

We went away for a week to your grandparents’ house by the sea. You threw stones in the water and ate moules and chips by the bowlful. You put your piggies in the cold sea. I was so proud because while your daddy had to work on the computer I managed to drive you to the beach a couple of times. Just me and you, sweetheart! Mummy and Sofia.

I’ve finally entered the happy, buzzy phase of pregnancy and was on my peak form for most of the week. We’re a great team now. You can – and indeed insist upon – climbing in and out of your car seat by yourself now. I just have to let you take your time, coax you along a bit when you get distracted from the job, and then strap you in and we’re off. The days of having to heave you into the back seat of our three-door hatchback are over. The world feels almost oyster-like.

The first time we venture out to new pastures together are always precarious. I can never predict what the hurdles might be. For example, you needed much convincing that the sand on the beach was even bigger and better than the sand you encountered in the car park. Another mum would have just parked you on her hip and brought you to the sea’s edge as proof. But I had to find the words to entice you across those metres of undulating sand over which the sparkling sea could finally be glimpsed. You’re so good at walking now that you're two, but you do need a good, well-argued reason for putting one foot consistently in front of the other, in a linear fashion, towards an often nebulous goal.

And I have to learn that’s it’s all very well in theory bringing a camping chair to the beach to support my back while seated. But if I can’t carry it along with the blanket, beach bag and buckets and spades and still be able to hold your hand, it’s worse than useless.

Then there’s the timing issue. After coaxing you across the sand dunes, setting up camp, dutifully smothering you in suncream, ensuring your correct attire against the perils of sun and wind and getting out of my own shoes and socks I was ready for a lie down. But you were just then bowled over by the grandeur of the ocean before us. So I couldn’t not take you there and then down to the breaking waves. And stand there with the lifeforce draining out of me, holding both your hands so the tide’s force wouldn’t topple you over. And share with you your first seaside thrill.

So by the time your daddy joined us I was prone and breathless on the sand like a beached whale. And I watched him teach you how to run away from the scary waves and jump into them as they approached. Not just stand there like me. And your confidence grew with your delight. And you soon forgot that first thrill of cold and enormity with mummy.

But the next time we went to a smaller, sheltered bit of beach. And our teamwork was perfected. The waves were tiny and there were lots of little stones and shells scattered about. So I could just spread my blanket near the water’s edge and lie down right beside you as you went about your all-consuming project of throwing stones in the sea. And when I was rested enough we walked a little, hand-in-hand, along the tide’s edge, kicking and splashing. We made a few little sandcastles. And when your daddy arrived we were just one of several little groups of mummies and babies, having a cuddle by the sea on a warm, clear idyllic May afternoon. I couldn’t have asked for anything more from life in that moment.

Relapse on the Horizon

Here's one I wrote earlier:
(Ironically, the relapse never actually arrived and I remained on the "plateau" til October.)

23 August 2006

It seems I’ve reached the end of the peak. Since the last relapse I’ve struggled to return to the blessed plateau of “health” (relatively speaking) where I can squeeze that little bit more out of life. I glimpsed another chink towards freedom. Now I’m crying inside at the thought of the little extra things I’ve been doing these last 3 or 4 weeks that I don’t be able to do a again until the next peak – next year sometime? Go to Costcutter with Sofia in the pushchair. Drive her to the park, and sit on a bench while she chases the birds. Cook dinner for us all. Manage Sofia all by myself at lunch time instead of always having to be helped by my parents. It wasn’t easy. All those things used up all my strength. But now it seems they’ve slipped away over the horizon completely.

I can’t stand the thought that these miraculous moments are just occasional blips in the unending cycle of relapse and remission. Why can’t my body just stay in that gear a bit longer, and then shift up into a higher gear. What is this awful ceiling that’s stopping me progressing back to health? I was able to carry Sofia for a couple of minutes longer than usual. There wasn’t quite the same tightness in my heart muscle and shortness of breath. It was impossible not to feel a surge of hope. Like that elusive higher gear was just around the corner. I almost wish I hadn’t had that hope. I’ve come to terms before with the notion that I’ll be disabled for the rest of my life. I will have to again.

The ceiling is descending on me again. Not all at once, but gradually. There’s the usual bowel symptoms, the nausea, the tingling down my spine, the tightness in my brain like I’ve been knocked on the head, the loss of power in my limbs, and, most tellingly, the tightening of my heart muscle and the shortness of breath. Like a paralysing injection working its way round my nervous system and my organs, seeping into every blood vessel. Like my body going into hibernation.

But I have to celebrate all that happened during the peak. I swam with my little girl in the Italian sunshine. I held her in my arms, for what seemed like hours, because the water bore her weight for me. I cradled her while she splashed and spluttered with delight. It was heaven. (Why didn’t I think of that weightlessness in water effect before?) We sat around idly by the pool with friends: other babies and toddlers and their parents and I was Sofia’s mum, just like the others.

And now that we’re back home again we all love each other more than ever. Sofia is learning new words by the day. It’s fantastic. It’s just as I thought, or hoped it would be. That once she started talking that terrible physical gulf between us would be bridged by communication. Now when I’m sitting or lying down she comes to me and asks for a “cuwwoo” (cuddle). She calls out to me, Mummy, mummy mummy! She listens to my every word and learns everything from me about the world. And at last I know for sure that I’m the centre of her universe, along with her daddy, and not just a shadowy presence in the background. I could cry with relief to know at last that the bond between us is real and strong and just like normal mums have with their offspring. For all those times when it felt like my not being able to carry her close to me caused a chasm in our relationship that couldn’t be bridged by words. At last I’m starting to feel more whole as a mum. I’m so, so glad we embarked on this adventure. It’s really paying back a thousandfold for all the hardship and the heartache that we’ve put in.

And no matter how deeply I sink into this relapse, Sofia wakes up bright eyed and bushy tailed every morning, calling out for me and filling my heart with love.

Mummy's Girl (19 months)

There may be trouble ahead. But while there’s music and CBeebies and me and my girl, I’ll face the winter relapse and dance. (Well, shake a leg now and again.)

Sofia and I are in a state of mutual adoration that I only dreamed of a couple of months ago. When we were on holiday with the in-laws I was so jealous of another mummy-friend whose little girl (4 months older than Sofia) never left her orbit and never tired of her cuddles. At that time Sofia barely registered my existence except to play up at mealtimes and bedtimes. It was Daddy, Daddy, Daddy closely followed by Aunty, Uncle and Granny. I struggled desperately to cope with a different set-up: stairs that I couldn’t carry Sofia up adding to my dependence; relatives who turned somersaults all day long to win over my little girl’s heart. Yes, I was reduced to a pathetic, insecure wreck: jealous and resentful of other people’s good health because their boundless energy for fun and frolics seemed to lure my daughter away from our finely-tuned co-existence around the sofa. I just sat helplessly watching the spectacle. Drumming home to myself how Sofia patently needed more fun and stimulation than I could ever give her. How sad and inadequate a mum I felt. Poor Sofia. I had to steel myself to intervene and drag her away kicking and screaming for her dinner or nap.

Now things couldn’t be different. She worships the ground I walk on and never wants to leave my side. She would happily cuddle up on the sofa all day long with me watching CBeebies if I let her. We are madly in love. A silly part of me is a little worried that it’s not healthy. Often she screams when I put her down to make her tea and demands constant “cuwoos”. Is my vegetative lifestyle impeding her physical development and curiosity for the outside world due to setting a bad example? But no. Come Christmas those relatives will surely whisk her away from me again with their turmoil of excitement and laughter. And I’ll try to be a little less insecure and less mean-spirited this time and not begrudge them their two weeks of Sofia-time. I’ll try to retreat gracefully, remembering that with toddlers everything is transient. And be thankful that Sofia has so many people who love her and whom she will grow to love too.

A Little Toe in Normality

I made it to a toddler group last week! What a bittersweet experience. Firstly, shellshock: the noise level and general pandemonium of 30 odd mums and their offspring in one psychedelically toy-filled room would have sent me straight home again if mum hadn’t already driven off at my bequest. But I found a quiet place to sit with Sofia and soon saw a familiar face who introduced me to some other mums. All very nice. The kind of women I instinctively felt I could be friends with.

From then on it was bliss, for 40 mins or so. My ME being the best it’s been since 1993 meant I managed to ride the noise levels and function normally for that brief window of time. No one knew, or needed to know, that I have ME and have lived a strange hermetic existence since the age of 23 and that I only manage a veneer of social normality through masterful skills of artifice. I looked like a nice new face, the sort of mum they wanted to meet too. With a gorgeous little girl wearing the cutest of shoes. And so I sat there making pleasant conversation under the giddy illusion of having a group of peers with the same experience, the same points of reference, for the first time since about 1991 when I started University. All without having to make any special effort to reach out to anyone.

I say illusion because that’s what it was. Today relapse looks like it’s kicking in, though how bad and for how long is anyone’s guess. And realistically, at no other time this year would I have coped with the noise and chaos of that setting. Today was one of those one-off glimpses into life in a higher gear; the peak before the relapse when the doors abruptly close again. I'll probably never meet these women again. They won’t become the casual day-to-day acquaintances I dream of having. They will be, as ever, out of reach. I will resort once again to desperately snatched phone numbers in my usual superhuman efforts to maintain some kind of contact with the “community” of my imagination.

I’m fed up. Of reaching out for people who have no particular need of me. Not because I’m not as good as others but because, for them, other mums are ten a penny. Because their friendships grow out of the encounters of their daily comings and goings. Not from going out of their way to keep up with someone they met once. And, for the most part, I won’t be coming or going anywhere.

26 May 2006

Sofamums are OK

This is a strange peace that is settling around me on the first full day with Sofia at nursery and nothing urgent to do. It’s scary, all this space for Me. I feel I can’t fill it. Anything I do feels frivolous. For over a year I’ve not had a moment to myself. Baby’s nap times and bedtimes which normal mums use to catch up on have been spent comatosed, praying she’ll sleep just that bit longer so my muscles can recover enough to move again. And now, suddenly, co-incidentally, I’ve got more energy than I’ve had in over a decade. Just a bit – nothing earth-shattering to a healthy person but enough to make my head spin with the luxury of it. And the subsidised nursery place we’ve been waiting for all through this hard, hard winter has finally come up.

Sofia has gone up a gear since starting nursery too. It’s as though after the anxiety of separation she appreciates the time at home with us much more. The joy of it is that Im just beginning to feel that I can lie on the sofa - as I need to do in between feeding and changing and keeping on top of the chaos - and it’s OK! It finally feels that to her, I’m her mum, and that’s what I do. The relief is immense. Now that she can walk she roams around the flat exploring her little world and brings me back her findings. Her new spotty giraffe, her shape-sorter. And I can make observations on them, or encourage her to put the shapes in the holes. Or if she plays her little dancing teddy tunes I can just make funny faces or wiggle my hands to the music and to her that’s mummy dancing and it’s brilliant.

Before she could walk I found sofabound motherhood agonising. The heartache of feeling disengaged from her world. Not able to give her enough love. Even though I tried to bridge the physical distance between us by talking to her all the time it felt so inadequate and she seemed so alone down there on the floor. The days were a limbo of endless exhaustion punctuated by dragging my bones off the sofa to do the absolutely necessary to keep us both alive. My little girl seemed enveloped in the suffering of those dreary grey hours of bare survival until her dad came home.

But maybe she wasn’t suffering after all. I still need to go horizontal a lot to pace myself through the day. And she seems so pleased to have me there, on the sofa, to chat to and potter around. It feels like we’ve come out of a huge tunnel, all of us, of not knowing whether this baby thing would be feasible or not. If only I’d known all through this terrible winter that as far as she was concerned I’ve been there for her and I’ve been her mum, only she couldn’t express it. It would have been so much easier.

It’s ironic having better health just when the help we so badly needed during my long relapse is finally in place. I keep asking myself why she’s miserable at nursery while I’m here writing my memoirs. I have to keep reminding myself that this plan is necessary in the long term. My recent few weeks of good health are certainly not the rule and we need a coping strategy for good and bad times. This is the best we’ve found.

She's Walking!

Things are looking up! The garden I have been dreaming of all winter is finally a reality. The grass is cut so Sofia can walk on it. It’s not too damp. I have a comfortable deck chair bought on the internet. Sofia has a trampoline to entertain her. And a car, only she can’t get in and out by herself which somewhat defeats the aim of Entertaining Sofia while Mum Sits Still. I have greenery to look at, even if half of it is weeds.

Initially the plan wasn’t going too well but yesterday we had a breakthrough. She found great delight in sitting at my feet and taking off my garden clogs and putting them back on again. Also hiding behind the deck chair and peeking out from either side. And she’s learnt to get on and off the trampoline by herself. I was feeling totally steamrollered by cold and insomnia but managed at least an hour in the garden of very pleasant time with Sofia.

May 2006