A Moment

I’ve been following closely the dreadful aftermath of Simon Thomas’ wife dying so suddenly of cancer last November. He has documented far more eloquently than I could ever hope his true desperation at carrying on without her and raising their son and I have been struck mostly at how everything can change in the blink of an eye. I knew this, of course, we all do, but it has been something that has almost plagued me for the past little while.

Yesterday, Isla tripped over her own feet and fell into our back step. We were on her way out and my sister scooped her up to hand her to me, and she was holding her hands up in front of her face. For a moment, I thought she’d broken her arm, it was the way she was holding it but as I cuddled her, I realised that she’d bashed her chin. It swelled up almost immediately and I applied some arnica and she had some calpol and whilst she was a little dramatic, it must have hurt, she was absolutely fine. But it was a moment. She could have fallen the other way, she could have hit the back of her head, she could have had concussion, she could have actually broken her arm, we could have spent the afternoon in A&E, not Asda.

It was a moment when J accepted this job and we shelved our plans to move to Yorkshire. It was a moment when this baby was conceived and changed everything again. It was that moment that led to this moment where I try to make a go of writing and accept that I won’t be working in retail for another few years. These are good moments, of course, but still seconds of time that change the direction of a life.

I moan at J at the way he slurps his coffee, it drives me slightly bonkers that he drinks it practically cold but there is something now that stops me. Because if something happens to him, would that be something that I wanted to remember, nagging him over soemthing so unbelievably petty. With my girls, now just seven months off starting school, and a mere eleven weeks from having their lives changed by a new baby, I am trying very hard to analyse when I say no and why I’m saying it. Why am I saying no to them getting a train track out an hour before bed? Does it matter that it will take three or four minutes to tidy it away? Of course it doesn’t.

For myself too, the girls stayed overnight last night at my parents and we painted their bedroom. It’s needed doing for a while and last night, we finally did it. They won’t be home until teatime and I am trying hard to just relax, not tear around like I do, trying really hard to just mooch. I might go and get a coffee soon, I might not. I might make a sandwich, I might not. I might even read my book instead of sorting through the girls toys (another job that really needs doing) but we are on the final countdown now and I should relax.

Shouldn’t I?

Blogging Fail

I started this blog to write. I know that sounds ridiculous as surely everyone who blogs likes to write, but for me it is absolute the only reason. I have always equated writing with a release. My sister-in-law runs almost obsessively, she has run a marathon and does 10k races at the weekend for fun, and the way that she talks about running is the way I think about writing. If I need to clear my head, I’ll write, I think up scenes/passages as I fall asleep, I take a line of a song and base a whole story around it. And I always feel better after I’ve written. Always. Even if what I have written is absolute tripe.

I have never planned a blog post, never had a list of things that I want to write about, never had a blog schedule, you know, just a photo on a Wednesday or a excerpt of fiction on a Friday. I wonder if I should. It sometimes occurs to me what I’d like to write about halfway through the day and I am genuinely excited to sit down after dinner and write. Sometimes it doesn’t and it is literally a stream of consciousness. Sometimes what I thought I wanted to write about isn’t and I’ll save it, thinking that I’ll write it later. I don’t usually.

It’s difficult to define yourself I think. I’d love to say that I’m a writer, a blogger and I suppose, by default, I am if I do. But I don’t make any money out of either. I have made about £6 from my book and nothing from this blog, and whilst that does matter, it doesn’t matter. I look at shiny, professional mummy blogs and wonder if I should go down that route, promote wildly and hope that I have a post that goes viral. But I don’t have the confidence to impart any knowledge. I have the knowledge, I have raised baby twins somewhat successfully for nearly four years but what do I know? So have tons of people, tons of mums. I don’t know what I’m doing any more than the next person and I almost resent the implication that any mum does know any more than another. We’re all struggling, all working harder than we’ve ever worked before.

I’ll carry on writing all the while I am having babies and then I’ll write when I can when I have to get a proper job again. Because being a writer should be something that is in your blood, not just a passion but a need. It must be a necessity to write, to clear your head of the jumble of thoughts, to sit and pour your heart out. Sometimes it’s really really hard, sometimes you don’t want to, sometimes it’s about forcing out the words when what you’d rather do is watch Netflix.

This is a stream of consciousness post. Can you tell?!

Imagine

“imagine falling in love with somebody only to find out that your capacity to love grows with every new thing you notice about them”

I read this on twitter this week and it has stayed with me ever since, it’s popped into my head as I’ve fallen asleep, occurred to me again as I’ve walked to nursery or been by myself for whatever reason and I wanted to share really.

Jody and I had an up and down first six months, we probably met three months too early really, both of emerging out of things that had left us emotionally scarred. But I loved him so early and we exchanged ‘I love you’s’ within a couple of weeks. There were dark moments, he would quite openly say that he wasn’t sure if he could stay in the country (he’d previously lived all over the world), he would be brutally honest about his feelings and there was a brief break-up that was something and nothing and which I dealt with surprisingly calmly for me, even now I think back on it and wonder where that strength came from. There is a part of me that thinks that it was because I must have known that we were meant to be together but it wasn’t that at the time, I don’t know what it was really.

We got over all of that and we moved in together seven months after getting together and it’s been largely plain sailing since then. There have been some moments where he has said things that have made me doubt him and his love for me, moments that have induced real panic but mostly, we are good. And the above quote is absolutely true. We had been together just over two years when we had twins. TWINS. Most people are still on the holidays and ikea trips by that point and we were doubling our family. Crazy but we did it. Next month, we will have been together for six years and that is amazing to me.

I love him more than I did then because he is my girls dad. And he is wonderful. Yes, he is impatient sometimes and he likes to ‘listen to the radio’ on a Sunday. AKA have a little nap. But he adores them and they him. I cannot wait to see him with our new little girl in April. Truly cannot wait.

Love is really hard. Relationships are really hard. But whatever happens, this relationship will be one that I will never, ever regret.

 

The Difference

Isla, our eldest twin, has/had plagiocephaly. It is commonly known, though it is not at all commonly known, as flat head syndrome. She was born with it, it is fairly common in twins, she was engaged at 32 weeks, her head wedged into my pelvis, her soft head just slowly going from round to well, another shape entirely. Nobody noticed, it was noted with amusement when we had scans, that Twin 1, as she was known, had her sister sitting on top of her, but now, though I place no blame, I don’t find it funny at all.

I noticed it at around 11 weeks old. I was slowly emerging from the twin fog and it was apparent that she looked different to Grace. I made a doctors appointment and was dismissed largely, it took going back again to secure a referral to a consultant at Bexhill Hospital. I don’t remember the time line exactly, it isn’t necessary to know but I am angry most at the complete lack of information. No midwife brought it up as a possibility, no health visitor checked either of the girls at any of the checks before being discharged from their service. Doctors didn’t know, and frankly still don’t, I have had to explain it several times to several GP’s and most recently, to eye specialists as we negotiate potential glasses for Isla.

I researched obsessively, of course I did, I do with everything, it’s both a blessing and a curse and J despairs of me. Just last night, I was googling why our in-utero baby had stopped moving as much. She’s tired, he said, just sleeping, and she was, waking up and flip flopping for an hour at 5am this morning. But anyway, in this case, it was needed and when I insisted on a further referral to a specialist after two fruitless visits to Bexhill, I got what we needed. I was told over and over that heads were rarely round, J’s head was felt and declared slightly asymmetrical and we were supposed to accept this. Yet, her eyes were in different places! One side of her little face protruded further than the other. My big girl. My baby.

We went to Great Ormond Street and we were listened to. We were acknowledged and validated and it felt good. It did not feel good to give your less than a year old an MRI scan, or go into a studio and have your baby photographed for progress checks like a science experiment. But it felt good to have a diagnosis and an action plan. We took her to see a wonderful osteopath who sorted out her misaligned neck, within two sessions, her face looked straighter, we had pillows that she slept on in her cot and different ones for the buggy, both designed to make sure that she didn’t gravitate to the more comfortable flat side. We changed her nappy so that she had to lay on the round side to see the TV or whatever book we were showing her. I don’t remember all of the details now, it is only very recently that J has stopped putting on her bedtime nappy with her head facing the ‘good’ way.

We went to a private clinic to ask about a helmet. This is a hugely controversial subject within the plagio community and I will only touch on what I think. If the plagio is mild and you catch it early then helmet your child. If your child, as ours had, has been seen at a world leading Children’s Hospital and has a diagnosis and a prognosis that her head will never be totally round, then don’t. I view Isla’s condition as a medical one, not something to be sorted by throwing money at it. It divided us, that helmet, J and me. He was for it and I wasn’t, for months afterwards he would ask if we had made the right decision and I would cry, as I did in the car the day we saw that no good, money grabbing salesman. Sorry, I’m sure that there are some good eggs out there, genuinely wanting to help babies get better but this man does not fall into that category.

Her plagio has led to eyesight problems, we think, though that could be coincidental. We know that Isla needs glasses, we are just waiting for a prescription. But most importantly, it has led to her looking different to her identical twin sister. Not in a bad way, I like it, in fact, that they look slightly different. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell, on first meeting them, no one can, but they do look different. Grace has a rounder face than Isla and Isla is a little more angular. You no longer see wonkiness, I can now put her hair in bunches or french plaits and they will fall evenly on both sides, she can now wear sunglasses as her ears are in the same place on both sides of her head.

She will never know anything more than what we choose to tell her. We will use medical terminology and tell her how brave she was, her big trips to London by herself while Gracie stayed at home.

A dent in a tennis ball is bigger than a dent in a football.

That is the plagio mantra, that her head may well be as wonky as it ever was when she was three months old but it won’t look like that. I repeated it over and over to people who asked why we weren’t helmetting her, what we were doing in osteopath appointments and with a physio. I believed that it would be OK in the end.

And it was.

The Next Little While

I enjoyed being pregnant for about a day. I looked on one website to see how far along I’d be based on my dates but I largely tried to ignore it. I knew the statistics, I was over 35 and I genuinely believed that I would be one of the many, many women who miscarry. I miscarried once about eleven years ago and although not the least bit traumatised by that experience, it did remind me of the details of it.

I went to the doctor, got referred to a midwife, did all the things I was supposed to do and I didn’t tell a soul. J and I didn’t talk about it, just occasionally if I was feeling sick, which I did a bit, and when I was overly emotional which I was a lot. We certainly didn’t make any plans, talk about names or anything like that.

I bled twice, both times a microscopic amount, no more than a stain and I had a lot of cramping. Both times, I thought the worst, cried and then it went away. Truth be told, I was almost relieved that it might be ending, the turmoil that I was putting myself through didn’t seem worth it for a thing the size of a grape, a thing I had no idea was developing or not.

I was offered an early scan because I had had multiples and I went alone, saw just one heartbeat and still, it wasn’t real. I was very glad that there weren’t two and if that sounds ungrateful, then spend a day looking after baby twins and come back to me with your thoughts. I favourited a website on my phone that worked out your risk of miscarriage as the days progressed and I read that once a heartbeat was seen, the risk plummeted but still, it was going to happen to me, of course it was, I didn’t deserve this baby, had never believed that we would conceive this baby.

J came to the 12 week scan, which became the 13 week scan as I’d apparently miscalculated my dates and it did then seem as if this might be happening. Still we kept it to ourselves, there was the Downs test to get through, more risk to be calculated and more potential decisions to be made. We have a niece with Down Syndrome, and this complicated rather than simplified things. Fortunately, the letter came quickly and the risk was tiny yet a secret it remained.

We told people at 18 weeks. When it was starting to get hard to hide, when it felt as if we’d hurt people’s feelings if we kept it a secret any longer. But the truth was, and is, that I’d have kept it a secret the whole way through if that was at all possible. My twin pregnancy was a medical one, scans and appointments every two weeks, then every two days towards the end. An induction, an epidural, constant monitoring and then a middle of the night c-section when Grace was in distress. This is MY pregnancy, one to relax and enjoy, one to savour, though I hope to have one more baby after this.

I am trying desperately to savour it. I wake routinely at 2-3am and I lay for a while feeling my baby, my littlest girl, flip flop about in my tummy. I want to sob when Izzy Biz pulls up my top to kiss her baby sister, to tell me how cute she’s going to be, and I look in amazement at the app that tells me there’s now 82 days until she is due.

There is still a risk, always a risk but I am trying to relax.

 

The Library

The library was the very first place I was allowed to go to by myself. I would go on a Saturday morning, down the long road with my little sister, return my books and select four new ones. Only four in those days, none of this twenty business and certainly no such thing as an e-book, but the library was such an important place to me then. I was a voracious reader as a child, had read almost everything in the school library, so the public library was a necessary part of my childhood, allowing me to discover Sweet Valley High and Judy Blume and a million other classics in between.

I stopped going in my twenties, work got in the way, days off were for sleeping and housework, if I allowed myself a day off, furthering my career being the be all and end all. I must have read, though what I can’t remember and then when I had a break up, the library became a sanctuary again, time spent selecting books on a Saturday morning, more books then, books that allowed me to believe in love again, albeit love that existed in quaint villages with tea shops and people called Finty.

And now, I take my girls. They have had a library card since they were less than a year old, they have gone from black and white board books to Julia Donaldson, from books with felt and fur to books that explain about dinosaurs and the cycle of the moon. We have now added long books to our story time, half an hour before bed, sacrosanct and done even when they stay with their grandparents. Most of what we read comes from the library, all over the county, helped by J now working for the library service, bringing home book after book that he thinks they might like. We go to the library of my childhood, it is one of our favourites, and there is something special about watching your own children do exactly as you did thirty years before.

This isn’t a political blog, though I am sometimes tempted, but I do feel strongly about libraries and their place in our lives and in our communities. In East Sussex, there is a proposal to close seven, and while there is probably a financial and just reason behind this, it strikes at my heart. The library is a place I can go when I feel overwhelmed by motherhood, when my children are driving me bonkers, when I can’t do soft play again, when I need to breathe. I am absolutely positive that I am not alone in this feeling.

This post was written in Uckfield Library, inspired by perhaps. And now someone is chewing gum at the next table, so I will have to leave. Libraries have their flaws too….

Borrowed Time

When I was twenty five, my brother died.

This isn’t said starkly to garner sympathy or to make a huge impact, it just is what it is. It’s something that I don’t think about that often to be honest, sometimes I am truly taken aback that it happened at all, it’ll hit me like a ton of bricks in the middle of the night or if I hear a particular song, grief is weird like that. You patch the hole in your heart but sometimes the stitches twitch and the hole is not quite exposed again, but jiggled, like the rain would make a long mended broken bone ache

When I was thirty one, my boyfriend dumped me.

I’ve mentioned this before and now, a number of years later, it is one of those things that I view as very minor in my life, a necessary thing and the thing that led me to J and to my life now but at the time. It was like losing a family member all over again. We had been friends since we were nineteen, best friends that turned into something more, and I know, as sure as the sun will set each night, that friends is absolutely what we should have stayed. But we didn’t and the break up was traumatic and drawn out, hurtful when it didn’t need to be, things said in anger and what felt like heart break but wasn’t.

There are a million and one things in between those things and now that take a swab at your heart. Your children being unwell, a missed opportunity, a job offer that never comes, your jeans not fitting, things that are tiny and huge but always a little heart breaking in their own way.

My thirties have been infinitely better than my twenties. Would I go back to my twenties if offered? Not in a million years. If I could take J and my girls with me, have longer with them, have all the time in the world, then yes, but it doesn’t work like that.

Time is always borrowed, have this time but then your children will start school. Enjoy this time, it’s the last time you’ll have a January Tuesday in the rain with nothing to do but watch Paw Patrol and make a space rocket out of tissue paper. Enjoy the feeling of a baby squirming inside you because this might be your last baby.

Don’t take time for granted.

 

 

A Tuesday in August

Or the first day, to be precise.

It was a Tuesday. Jody worked a late shift then, it was the last few weeks of his job but we didn’t know that then. We had been back from Leeds for three days, we had gone to check it out as a place to live as he had been offered a post grad place at the University there. We didn’t know then that he would turn it down, that he would go to an interview the next week for a job none of us thought he would get and he’d get it and we’d stay where we were, in the same house in the same town. At the time, I was imagining where we would live in Yorkshire, what we would do as a family, how I’d maintain the relationships we had here with our families when we were there. I wasn’t particularly thinking about pregnancy.

We had been trying to conceive for fourteen months. FOURTEEN MONTHS. The doctor wasn’t concerned especially, despite my age, and he had suggested trying until Christmas before even thinking about any further tests. We were under no illusions that we were to do it naturally or not at all. IVF was ruled out on the NHS because we had children and privately because we didn’t have the money. We had decided that we would have my eggs tested, a fraction of the cost of IVF, when we reached eighteen months. I was comfortable with the decision but, to be honest, I was getting used to the idea of it just being the four of us.

I had just published the book, it was going well (at that stage, ha!) and I was thinking about the future. The girls were coming up to three and a half, a wonderful age and we had some freedom suddenly, we had emerged from the twin fog into this place where we just had two children, not twins followed by many unspoken exclamation marks.

I had got into the habit of buying a pack of cheap pregnancy tests every month, the ones that cost literally £1, the little strips that looked like litmus paper. I would test too early, every single month, always hopeful, telling myself that I wasn’t, until it became obvious that it was another dud month. I’d then try a couple of days before my period and then, if I hadn’t got my period, on the day of. It was a comforting, if somewhat depressing, routine.

That month, August, I had tested on the Sunday, the day after we got home, and yet again, as per usual, it was negative. I hadn’t been as phased as normal, as I’ve said, I was feeling positive about life, and my own place in it as a mum of two. I’d wandered over to the newborn section in Next when we stopped on the way home and I’d spent a few minutes looking at the tiny clothes, holding a tiny pair of trousers covered in frogs in my hand and I’d sighed and walked away, had a coffee and that was that.

My period was due on the Monday and it hadn’t come. This wasn’t a massive deal, and in the morning, the Tuesday I had peed into a cup simply to trick my period into coming. This often worked, if I as much as uttered the word ‘symptoms’ to Jody, then I’d get my period, if i found myself clawing at my own boobs, desperate to find them in some way sensitive or tender, my period would come. So I peed, the girls eating their toast in the living room, Jody in bed because of the aforementioned late shift and I dipped and…

I was pregnant.

I told J immediately. He was his usual laid back self about it but texted me from work later, I was in the supermarket with my sister acting normal but hopelessly happy, asking me if I thought I was pregnant. I told him that I was, there was no doubt but that it probably wouldn’t last. I spouted off statistics, one in three pregnancies end in miscarriage, it was stupidly early, best just to forget it and live our normal lives.

And that was that, a wonderful day in August where everything changed. It’s very surreal that that morning has translated into this baby, kicking away inside me, and us, waiting anxiously for her to be born.

A wonderful day in August indeed.

 

Short Stories

Jody bought a leaflet home yesterday from work. He works for the library service so he often brings home all sorts, books mostly obviously but sometimes magazines and leaflets, things that we can do as a family, writing magazines that I flick through and then leave as they make me feel utterly despondent and this leaflet.

A leaflet for a short story competition. One I’d really like to enter and I’d really like to do well in it.  There are prizes but more importantly, there is a prize giving dinner for the top six (I think) and I’d really like to go to that. I’d like to sit in a room and talk about writing, perhaps even tentatively suggest that I might be one too. It would be lovely to feel as if I belonged somewhere.

The problem is, and this is a fairly insurmountable one, I have never written a short story before. I can’t remember the last time I even read one. I like novels, long books that have sequels so I never have to leave the characters I like. The book I’m writing at the moment is a sequel as I can’t let my main character go. So this is going to be some challenge. But maybe a good one.

I’m thinking of submitting two, one in my usual sort of style, quite contemporary and honest, probably something about love and then one that is unlike anything ever i’ve written before. Perhaps something in the third person which I don’t usually do, maybe something autobiographical as no one I know will ever read it.

This feels like homework, which is ridiculous as no one is making me do this, no one is making me step outside of my comfort zone, but I do feel like I need to do this. After the relative failure of my book, I think I need to just try this.

However, any story ideas are welcome 🙂

 

Success

I’m loathe to divide my life into pre and post kids but it does sometimes feel like the easiest distinction. It is slightly easier in my case, as I didn’t return to my job after my girls were born, so the division could very easily be before and after work. Not that what I do now isn’t work of course, but the perception of my life is and I think you’ll understand what I mean.

In my work life, I was averagely successful. I made a lifestyle choice when I met J, I could have continued on with my career as a retail manager, running bigger and more successful stores but all of those stores were much further away and, truth be told, I liked finishing work and hopping on the train, knowing that I had a good three or four hours each evening to relax and enjoy my home and my relationship. There were times within my career when I could have really gone places, really developed and there were times when things were really quite ropey, so I think, on the whole, it all balances out.

I loved my last job. I worked for a well known lingerie company that sold other bits and bobs,which I won’t name but you don’t need to be Agatha Christie to work it out. I had a fantastic team of people that I genuinely considered to be friends and it was a challenge. My job was added to and enhanced and I felt supported and excited by my bosses, it was a fun job, not different every day but different enough that I nearly always wanted to go to work. Telling my friends there that I was pregnant and then that there were two babies is genuinely one of the highlights of my life.

I regret often not going back. Not because I have ever regretted being with my girls, not at all, but because there is no barometer to success when you don’t work outside of the house. Nobody cares if your toddler is potty trained or when, there’s no performance related bonus, there’s far too much time and not enough time in equal measure, time spent staring at the walls in silence wondering if your babies are deeply enough asleep to risk turning the telly on, while you’re pushing your children in the pram along the seafront in an attempt to pass even a little time in an interminable day, the days when you realise that it’s two o’clock in the afternoon and you’ve not only missed breakfast, but lunch too.

The idea of talking to a stranger now fills me with dread now. I ramble to strangers if I d find myself needing to talk to someone, yet i crave having a conversation with someone new. I’d love to have just a little of my old self back for a few minutes, I’d like to briefly remember what it feels like to be respected and listened to. I wonder how I’ll feel next year, after the baby is born and old enough to go to my sister and to nursery and I do have to return to work, what will I say in an interview, that for four years, I have loved my children beyond measure, that I am more patient and grounded than I have ever been, that I will bring a level of maturity to a role that I simply did not have before.

Most likely I’ll say the wrong words and get laughed at.

Hey ho!