I’m Calling Our Next Baby Iris

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Ah music, the invoker of memories, the inspirer of moods, food of love, understanding comfort in floods of despair…

Music used to be the prevailing background noise in my life but was all too quickly replaced by a louder internal monologue of self loathing so really (not really), I consider myself lucky to spend the amount of time that I do waiting rooms at the moment.

Waiting rooms always have the best music, the kind of stuff that is so ironic it means you have to laugh or you’ll cry.

This place has a newly installed intercom thingy, one of those microphones that means that the receptionist can hear you from the other side of the safety glass as you declare yourself arrived from an appropriate distance because safety first in these offices potentially dangerous mad people.

“Sorry, the microphone isn’t working” she bellows, gesturing at the speakers on her side.

“…not working” she points and then does that mime thing like she’s cutting her throat.

“Did you say 3 o clock?”

It’s 9:55am. I shout back, from my safe distance that “no, I said 10am” – holding up my fingers to indicate ten but at the same time probably looking like I’m showing that I have no concealed weapons.

I sit down and wait to be called while the receptionist resumes her conversation with the man who has come to check the microphone. Through the thick glass. Shouting.

“I’ll put the music on out there and see if I can hear it in here” she yells, annunciating sharply: ‘mew-zick‘.

She pushes some button somewhere in her office behind her glass and the dulcet tones of Now That’s What I Call The Best Mental Health Unit Album In The World Ever Vol.582048 drifts from hidden speakers.

Whut whut, put your rave hats on patients. Psych yourself up for that dreaded psychiatrist appointment as you sob-laugh your way along to Track One.

I mean, I do love this song. I am yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love this song. Thank you Goo Goo Dolls for helping me through some rocky times but there is a time and a place and really, this is neither.

When everything’s made to be broken…

Chuckle chuckle, sob sob, wringing of sweaty palms.

You bleed just to know your aliiiiiive…

Brilliant.

Somewhat disappointingly I’m called through before I’m able to find out what the next song is. Gutted.

I had a psychiatrist appointment last week, a private one. No suicide soundtrack in that waiting room and a ninety minute delve into my psyche. That’s a party in itself let me tells ya.

This dude was NHS and therefore not costing me the equilivant of a months rent. But free did unfortunately mean not quite scraping the top layer from all of the layers from the top of the iceberg. It meant a different diagnosis and different advice, all of which I am still processing.

I’m not great in these appointments. They make me nervous and reciting everything makes me hurt and above all the pressure bares down hard because I need this, I need this to get to the next step so that I can get better. My brain chooses these times to go on sabbatical, deciding to recline on a  towel on a sandy beach and work on its tan leaving me totally in the lurch. Thanks brain.

I struggle to take in much information on the spot and it’s usually hours and days before it sinks in properly, once my brain is back with its tan lines and holiday photos and has finished unpacking.

It’s not the best sign though when thirty minutes in I find myself thinking I’m going to have to do this all on my own, all over again.

It’s not great when a bombshell is dropped that is so destructive that whoomph this is all you will take away from these forty five minutes of purgatory because everything else is just shrapnel now.

For confidentialities sake I’ll call him Dr Fuckwad* (PHD). Dr Fuckwad with my thick file of notes with my maiden name crossed out in biro and my married named scrawled below in felt tip and all of his questions and the stifling suffocating atmosphere of his office with his name on the door.

I have generalised anxiety disorder he deduces, not depression at all. He is pleased that I am not self harming because, says Dr Fuckwad, it would be much harder to help me if I was so I should keep not doing that please.

Dr F confirmed that the six weeks of hell I endured was indeed withdrawal *ahem* I mean discontinuation effects and that I should stay on the medication because it works and sure, I can’t actually feel emotion or hunger or anything, nor can I poo – I mean like at all. I haven’t had a good poo for over two years and that is exhausting let me tell you – and as a result I have piles that honestly deserve their own names (ideas on a postcard please) and possibly even hand embroidered little outfits.

The bombshell is coming. Wait for it.

Really, I promise it’s worth it.

Now, my reluctance to stay on these meds for any period of time boils down to:

1: all of the points above
2: they numb me and therefore how can I learn how to deal with any emotional issues that arrive once I stop them?
2b: how can I get better from something that I can’t feel?
3: they are not a cure
4: they are not a lifestyle choice but a tool
5: the longer I am on them the more brutal the withdrawal *ahem* I mean discontinuation will be
6: because I said so

I know I need them now. I know that for whatever reason I am a very, very ill person without them. So, Dr Fuckwad, I dutifully swallow one every morning of every day while I endure all of this and while I struggle to get well again. I know that I am not well now, that my life is, and has to be, on hold until I am well again because that is what is right and what is fair and good and proper. For everyone. I’m not happy about it but I’ll do it, deal.

But, the quicker I can get my nervous sweaty mitts onto some other treatment of the non chemical kind, the quicker I will recover thus saving myself and my family a lot of pain and the NHS a lot of time and money and for that matter, the benefit system too.

So, Dr Fuckwad, mate, lets do this shit! Lets be positive and proactive. Be my cheerleader, tell me I can do this and I’ll be OK and we’re going to get me the therapies that I need and it will be tough but it will be worth it because I can get back to life and myself and my baby. Yeah? Yeah!

My life has been on hold enough already, the husband can’t work, we would have had more babies – we wanted more babies by now – if I was well so lets just focus on getting me well. Lets do this thing.

“No more babies for at least six years please” says Dr Fuckwad.

(That’s the bombshell right there *thwack*)

Now I’m not one to shun medical advice, to put people (or babies or already made children or husbands) at risk but nor am I one to be dictated to. I mean fuck, six years! Am I going to be like this for six years, at least six years?

No. Nononononono.

Please no.

* I can’t even pretend to take credit for this name, twas my muse; a gorgeous vision, an epic writer, a local freakin’ celebrity and reader of my l-o-n-g and garbled text messages of doom.Cheers dude x

Running

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She stands stock still while tides of people wash around her in waves of bright colours and candy floss and rosy cheeks from a day spent underneath hot sunshine. Her hunched shoulders covered by a faded quilted jacket, a glimpse of scalp visible beneath thin grey hair combed elegantly into place.

Her feet point inwards and her eyes point downwards and her smile radiates warmth stronger than the afternoon sunshine as she watches my daughter. My daughter who is running her toddler run, golden curls trailing behind her, ice cream cone clutched possessively in her ice cream covered left hand.

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

She watches, shuffling with tiny steps so that her eyes can follow as she sweeps by and her smile grows and grows, all teeth and dusky pink lipstick and creased eyes and memories of her own babies or of how it felt to be young or…or was maybe nothing at all, nothing more than the moment.

In the dappled shade of the park at that moment and surrounded by hoards of children and parents coming and going and shouting and careering it was mine that she saw something in before she dragged her eyes back to the path and slowly faded away into the crowd.

Bounce!

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Is there anything better than being young and outside and free, leaping and jumping and bouncing into the sky while limbs flail wildly in the air and hair blows in the breeze?

Beans doesn’t think so. My goodness, this child loves to bounce. In fact, she wants to bounce all the time and she wants to jump high enough to reach the moon, arms stretched up as far as they will go and little fingers pointed into the sky.

Currently trampolines are the best thing ever for so many reasons; for her it’s the obvious – flinging herself wildly high, and for me, it’s good old fashioned safe (the enclosures are brilliant and so reassuring when jumps become really enthusiastic!) fun that gets us outside now that (at last) the sun has remembered how to shine a bit of springlike warmth onto our pale, winter warn faces.

Although my propensity for leaping has waned somewhat as I have got older (even swings make me feel a bit queasy now and I spent the majority of my childhood back and forth, back and forth while the chains creaked) it is just as much fun to witness the delight of my very own little person having the time of her life with fresh air and exercise included as she perfects her jumps.

But the benefits go far beyond fresh air and acrobatics, the humble trampoline is actually does wonders for kids and adults alike (if you have a stronger constitution than me that is).

It’s clear just from watching a two year old throw themselves up and down for a good hour that they’re getting a great workout – which is usually followed by a great nights sleep, hurrah! But, importantly for little bodies the low impact nature of bouncy fun means an optimum muscle workout while joints are protected by the shock absorbing trampoline pad.

Jumping is also brilliant for improving balance, spacial awareness and anticipating what will happen next, all really important skills for rapidly growing children improving their gross motor skills daily.

There are role play opportunities too which is a great way to nurture and encourage budding (if occasionally crazy) imaginations. We bounce to the moon and then back down to earth. The trampoline takes on all kinds of forms as different games and challenges are created.

Plus, they never get old do they? Bouncing is fun and valuable exercise for children of all ages so it’s certainly one toy that doesn’t have a mere six months of use before being discarded as babyish.

Turn taking skills, cause and effect, balance, strong bones and muscles, endorphin boosting, a damn good workout and a good nights sleep plus touching the moon, I kind of want to disregard my protesting motion sickness and take up trampolining myself!

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How Will I Know?

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Once again I slide awkwardly across the seat of an oversized and uncomfortable plastic upholstered chair while it creaks in embarrassing accompaniment to my every twitch.

Whitney Houston blares from the radio, piped in through speakers set into the ceiling somewhere, the disembodied voice an attempt to muffle the coughing and spluttering and miserable receptionists and sound of germs multiplying.

My left foot taps along with the bass line, fuelled more by agitated anxiety than love of the song. Although it is catchy.

How do I know if he really loves me?

Because he says with me during major depressive episodes and brings my child up while I contemplate suicide alone upstairs, that’s how. *

* This may not be the correct lyric, don’t quote me.

Seven weeks ago I quit the meds and in that time I have spoken to three different GPs and my therapist and my mum christened the newly operational 111 service on its very first day because once again she had to mercy dash to mine (it wasn’t snowing this time but it was 1:30am, sorry mum) when the mental took over and once again the drop from my bedroom windowsill looked particularly inviting.

I went back on the meds five days ago by the way – I’m not that much of a glutton for punishment. I know when enough is enough and I’ve battled long and hard enough to want to draw a fast, firm line through such fucked up thoughts.

The thing is, antidepressants take time to kick in.

On the day that I relented made the ‘positive decision’ to start them again every breath was like sucking setting concrete up through a narrow straw. (I don’t like straws as a general rule; someone always swipes my drink for ‘a sip’ and the next thing I know I’ve got the mangled, gnawed end of a bit of plastic someone else has chewed in my mouth).

Breathing shouldn’t hurt, having a brain inside my skull shouldn’t hurt, moving my eyeballs shouldn’t hurt…Everything hurt so much and it was terrifying and I was exhausted and, well, terrified so I pushed the little while pill up through the silver foil and held it between my thumb and my index finger and literally begged it to work

please. Please work, please help me. Please take all of this away. Please work

before washing it down past the lump in my throat with half a glass of Ribena.

The super fun (lie) bit about antidepressants, aside from the total all consuming numbness, is the waiting game while they make everything worse. Sure, taking that tablet did ease things a little but given the following should be the editorial on the leaflet in the box things are still far from awesome.

Suicidal intention? Depression? Anxiety? Hate yourself and your life and feel shitter than shit? In so much physical and mental pain that you literally can’t take another single second of the torture?

Take this magical pill!
We don’t know too much about it or how or why or when but we can tell you that they will numb you enough to plod through your days!
But first!
While they rebuild your broken brain up a little, they will in fact increase your suicidal intension, depression, anxiety, self loathing and pain infinity fold!
Hang on in there, don’t do anything silly, they’ll work in the end! Kinda.

The appointment was not fun (true). For someone so verbal about things when I can articulate through a keyboard from behind a screen I clam up hard and have to stop myself choking on every word that I force out of my mouth in person.

I also get total mind blanks and answer half of the questions I’m asked with a series of single syllable noises and ‘eeeeeeerm’s. The answers always come to me as soon as I close the door behind me afterwards, obviously (thanks again, brain).

It is beyond awkward sitting before a stranger as their gaze burns holes in my hot, sweat slicked flesh while trying to answer questions about Not Very Nice Things.

I’d rather have a smear test. While every boy that I have ever kissed, that blonde girl who bullied me in school and my ex boss (the one I had a bit of a crush on) lined up to watch.

Not because I’m embarrassed about saying how I feel (and not because I’m a big old vagina show off) or because I’m ashamed or because I think that the poor bloke stumbling over the questions that he has to ask, feeling just as awkward as me, probably, has never heard similar before but just because it’s hard.

So hard and so exhausting and it leaves me feeling like I’ve run a hundred thousand miles. Saying things out loud makes them real, it often begs explanation or expansion or explanation or reason and I have none of that.

And, y’know, that I’m obviously quite British and when asked how I am I’d rather reply a bright and breezy ‘fiiiiiiiiiine, and you?’ than a monotone and spluttered ‘I have all I have ever wanted but I want to jump out of the window and leave it all behind…and I don’t like when people chew the end of my straw’.

On the plus side, I am (finally) being referred to a psychiatrist.

Flying

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With pyjama bottoms tucked into boots dusted in freshly falling snow I picked my away across the garden to the car, leaving behind my baby tucked into bed and my husband watching from the door.

I didn’t know what else to do. It was like a chasm had opened in my mind and it was pulling me in and although I was clinging onto my sanity with all that I had I just didn’t know, I couldn’t trust myself.

Earlier that night I sat in bed in my nest of pillows and blankets and one minute I was fine and the next…?

I don’t know what happened.

I had a pen in my hand and I knew exactly what I would write because suddenly everything was clear and yes this is exactly what I should do right now.

‘I’m sorry’ I would write. A cliche but true because I am and I always will be.

‘This is all I can do to make things better’ because it is isn’t it? It’s the fairest and kindest thing to do, set my family free from me and set myself free from the pain.

I rolled the pen between my fingers and in that moment the reality dawned and its cold plastic became red hot. I dropped it behind the headboard, the household wasteland of things never to be retrieved.

Out of nowhere in some crazy out of body experience I saw myself sailing through the air, snowflakes falling around me, smattering themselves through my hair and onto my cheeks, a picture of calm.

It was a relaxing thought and that’s what added another level of terror. So peaceful and resolute was the image that I mentally reacted in the same way as I would if I was offered another cup of tea. Yeah, that would be really lovely, thanks.

I stared unblinking through the gap in the middle of the curtains at the snow and the waving branches of the tree and the darkness, stuck in a space between blind panic and resigned necessity.

And so, an hour before midnight and in the middle of an icy blizzard, my mum pulled up outside to take me away to be safe.

Caption the Honk

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Three women, one team and a tonne of money (and awareness) raised.

What can we say about that really? Without overuse of the word amazing anyway. There aren’t the words, right? They really are that awesome, right?

Team Honk you are all incredible woman and we bow down to you…by captioning this beautiful screenshot of Mummy Barrow keeping her cool where many a lesser woman would have crumbled into the delicious arms of the delicious Russell Brand…

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I’m in the Kitchen

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tulips

Ah, my kitchen. The room once described as ‘like being inside a huge vagina’ by the ever eloquent – and also mega handy with a paintbrush - Anniesaurus.

The textured mauve walls and the dull light earned it such an accolade and y’know, it was kinda vagina like. It also had actual excrement up one wall and a beautifully interpreted penis sprayed gloriously on the window and a plethora of other delights.

You all saw (and boked) at the old photos but here is a glossed over reminder of what we moved into.

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The kitchen v1 photo credit

And here is what a bunch of bloggers can do…between tea breaks and cake breaks and gossiping.

photo 4 (1)

The kitchen v1.1: White out

The transformation from vagina to kitchen took a Long Time and an understandably huge amount of work. We painted and we cleaned and we cleaned and we cleaned and then? Well and then, out of the blue, we had to pack it all up and move it all out and watch as it was undone and taken apart and put back together again.

But, thankfully, lots of pain and blood and sweat and tears doth a kitchen make.

Cluttered and cosy but unequivocally a kitchen

Cluttered and cosy but unequivocally a kitchen

We cook and we eat and we play and we bake and we do ALL of the craft in here. The awesomeness that is the Tripp Trapp means that we can all sit around the table together and eat or draw or anything. It is slowly becoming ours with the addition of pictures and things and my view out of the window is improving slowly too (hey, at least it’s not a cock any more).

Drawings and stuff and things...and a bowl of sweeties

Drawings and stuff and things…and a bowl of sweeties

jam

…more things

Much better, no?

Obviously and as always all of the thanks in the world to every single person who made this possible or easier for us in any way. And I promise to show you the rest of the house over the next week or so.

Cauliflower

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You don’t have to understand. I understand that you want to but you don’t have to.

It’s OK not to understand. It’s ok to be totally at sea and bewildered and confused and just totally fucking ignorant to it all ok?

I am.

You don’t need to understand to care or to support or to squeeze my hand or to push back my hair to look me in the eyes and tell me that really it will all be alright.

It’s because it’s emotional isn’t it?

It’s made of the same things that ask what do you mean you’re scared of clowns? What do you see in him? Why are you crying about that film? How can you not like kittens?

If something is a made of emotion it is so often assumed that we have a choice, as if we wake up one day and think, yeah, I’m going to be properly shit scared of yellow flowers, just because I feel like it.

You can’t help who you fall in love with and you don’t decide to hate cauliflower or love the smell of cut grass or that you’re gay or straight or just not really bothered. These aren’t decisions but things that are engrained into our selves. They go by, for the majority I hope (because sure, there are some people who perhaps have slightly bigoted views out there) unassuming and unnoticed and unquestioned.

Because no one, on learning that the person sitting opposite them cannot stand cauliflower, leaps from their chair sending cutlery flying through the air to exclaim oh holy shit. This…this isn’t going to work. This…we…we can’t do this anymore. I mean, I just don’t understand. It’s cauliflower dude. What…how…I mean, cauliflower. How can you not like it? Why. Why have you made a choice to have these feelings and emotions and how can I overcome all of my misunderstandings so that I can still look you in the eye.

There’s a lot in life that I don’t understand. A lot. Like how I lived with a boy at university when I was a teenager and he had a ridiculous Tasmanian Devil towel and I ironed his shirts (even then) and he taught me to play poker while we watched the Lion King on DVD in my cupboard sized bedroom – that boy and I somehow managed to create and subsequently sustain human life. I’m shaking my head in disbelief because, I mean…

The same goes for why I love pineapple so much or why my little toes curl rebelliously making my feet wide or exactly why one eyebrow is millimetres higher than the other naturally but even with all the will in the world (because I like the snark) I can not make it raise independently to the other.

Who gives a fuck right?

Who cares why so and so doesn’t like biscuits or loves the feel of cotton wool, who cares?

There are people in my life who I have seen transform from healthy to nothingness. I have seen the effects of illness and disease and the devastation that it brings in its wake.

There are others who I watch live their lives with something, some ailment or illness that they have to manage or control or simply try to push firmly into the background and use all their energy to give real life it’s rightful place in the spotlight.

All of the above are crap. You would wish suffering on no one. But I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why that bit is wrong with this bit and those tablets do this so that this bit can keep working…

I don’t understand and I don’t need to because not understanding doesn’t stop me from being able to talk or laugh or cry or hold or, well, anything really.

So why the fuck do people feel such a need to understand mental illness?

It’s not a choice, it’s an illness – that is literally the beginning and end of it and all the information that you ever need to know in order to continue to associate with someone unlucky enough to suffer.

Maybe I’m naive, lucky that I have never seen someone close to me suffer badly from any illness. Maybe if someone I loved dearly was desperately ill I would feel that I needed to understand as much as I could so that I could deal with it better, I really don’t know.

All I know is that although I have never, ever had to explain myself to my family – although I often try to and want to explain how I feel – I certainly have had to justify my illness to others.

If you were told that a friend or an acquaintance or the son or daughter of that nice bloke you bump into at the chip shop every Friday evening while you wait for your cod to fry had a broken leg or any physical illness you would never, ever act in the same way as if it was a mental illness.

If you don’t understand, it really, really doesn’t matter. Can you honestly say that you understand the common cold from genetic make up to transmission to the way the germs interact with the antibodies in the blood and how and why because I really, really bet that you can’t. But does that stop you buying oranges and magazines and cuddling someone you care about through their snotty sneezes and as it sounds like they are making a valiant attempt to cough up a small country? No, right?

No one decides to catch a cold or the flu or break their neck or develop diabetes or arthritis and no one decides to get mentally ill, just for a laugh/attention/to be cool/something to do.

I promise.

An illness is an illness and no one suffering really wants your understanding, your reassurance and your presence is all that’s needed.

Hold their hand, don’t make them justify the unjustifiable.

Please

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Every single time that you hold your
baby close and inhale their brand new scent, that they wrap their tiny fingers around yours and cling on tight.

Every time they snuggle into you for cuddles or shoot you a radiant smile or shout ‘more’ through fits of giggles or stroke your face with clumsy, sticky toddler fingers.

Whenever they wake in the morning and every time they wake at night, just for cuddles and lullabies because they miss you.

When they ask ‘why’ to everything and when they refuse to eat their dinner and when they grab you by the hand and insist that you go with them.

The times that you look at them and could burst with love and want to scoop them up and hold them tight and never ever let go because they’re so beautiful and clever and big and you’re so proud and in love.

Through all the tantrums and the cuddles and the walks in the park and trips to the doctors and everything in between.

All of the splashing in puddles and singing and dancing and building towers that climb impossibly high.

Every single moment when you can just exist, breathing the same air as your baby – no matter how tiny or how grown up – every single time you see them, day or night.

Sitting side by side in the exhausted fog that the end of the day brings, waiting for bedtime to come.

Please, please don’t take it for granted.

Please.

I would give anything to enjoy every last mundane moment. Anything.