Let’s not dwell on the vomit shall we? It’s never good to dwell on the vomit. All you need to know is that were all doing it and it was horrible and I never ever ever want that to happen again because I don’t think I’ve ever felt so just awful in my life. And it’s over. We’re eating again and drinking again and it’s all staying in our (streamlined) tummies. Let’s never speak of it again OK? OK.

In the middle of it all though came something a little bit special. A whole lot special. A promise of things to come?

And that’s where I get stuck writing this you see because to me it was massive and right here this is small and my fingers are tapping and just how do I convey the moment as it deserves to be?

I sometimes find myself stuck in this rut now when I want to blog about my PND; some moments are huge avalanche like things that blindside you face first into the carpet and suck all the breath out of your body with their impact while every nerve tingles and sings, but these moments are normal moments. Normal everyday moments that we all have sometimes several times each day. And it’s hard to write about something mundane – a smile or a cuddle or building a particularly extraordinary Mega Blok creation – without it sounding all a bit ‘and what…?’.

Because that’s what this post is about. A cuddle. That’s it. A snotty, teary cuddle one evening before bed. No big deal right?

Maybe there’s a gap in the ol’ linky market for a This Was A Fucking Big Deal Ok?! type thing. Because, PND or not, some mornings it’s a big deal that we manage to crawl out of bed. Or that we cooked something other than fish fingers and beans for tea or kept smiling through a kicking screaming shouting hitting public tantrum. These things are big deals sometimes. Celebrate the ordinary people! Pat yourself on the back for the mundane. This shit is hard.

Anyway. The cuddle.

This requires a brief trip back to the sicks. There were a lot. By the time bedtime rolled around I had been in bed all day and every single part of my insides were no longer inside. It wasn’t pretty. As a result, I was technically 48 hours without any medication. And there was no way I was about to take that days dose and see it again as it bumped it’s way back up for an encore, no thank you.

So there I lay in my sick bed, feeling sick and pretty tripped out sans medication, floating away on my own little cloud of nausea and a weird sense of out of bodyness. Beans was downstairs and her whines and whinges drifted up the stairs and hovered around me. She was tired and poorly and tired and didn’t know what to do with herself.

I listened as her little feet patted and thumped up the stairs and echoed along the hallway before stopping just outside the door. ‘Mama?’ she asked in a tiny voice. Followed by the compulsory sob. ‘Mama!’ Her pale face and big sad eyes peered around the crack in the door. Hello baby.

‘Mama!’ her arms outstretched and her fingers splayed, grabbing at the air around her, she toddled across to the the bed and climbed onto me. ‘Mama’ she sighed, burrowing her warm face into my chest as she clung to me tightly, the half light of the lamp making her messy hair look golden.

She sobbed and cuddled and I shushed and stroked and then SMACK.

SMACK SMACK SMACK right in the stomach and the heart and hot tears spilled from my eyes.

Fucking hell I love her. I love her with fierce, protective, all consuming power. I hold her tighter and breathe her in and my tears make little salty pools on both of us but I’m smiling. I’m smiling and I’m crying and I feel.

She pulls herself up, cups my face in her sticky hands and kisses me. ‘Bye Mama, seeeee soon’. And off she plods, grinning. And it’s all over, just like that.

Mundane, ordinary.

Amazing, incredible. Love.

I lay awake for the next few hours, watching rubbish on TV and gingerly sipping water past my parched lips. Every now and again a weird feeling built in my stomach and rose to my chest. Not sure what it was I checked for the reassurance of a bucket in close reach, just in case.

But it wasn’t sick. It was a laugh. Rubbish TV was making me laugh out loud and I’ve forgotten how that feels and as giggles fell from my mouth I started to try to remember.

I popped one of the chalky tablets out of the blister pack and turned it around in my fingers. It feels weird to be taking drugs that cause nothingness. In my brief and extremely limited ‘trying’ period in my youth I learned that drugs make us feel something – happy or relaxed or clever or silly – it seems weird to take something to stop you feeling those things, to stop you feeling.

Could I have finally got to the point where feeling is OK again? Where it won’t all hurt and I need that attachment to reality again because it’s positive and bloody lovely too…I think I might have.