Right Now

You have all been so lovely the last few days. The comments on my post about the Health Visitor’s worries about Kai have been endlessly comforting and supporting and I am so grateful for you taking the time to respond so thoughtfully. Thank you.

I had a bit of bad day with it all yesterday. Actually, I had A LOT of a bad day. There were moments there were I could genuinely have opened the front door and run as fast as my legs could carry me.

I didn’t, obviously. Instead I wrestled the ferocious ball of frustration and bad-temper that is my son till bedtime, put him to bed without a bath and went downstairs and cried. And cried. And cried some more.

I doubted everything yesterday. EVERYTHING about myself, about Kai, about my abilities and suitability as a mother, about my perception of my life and how perhaps that differs from reality.

And do you know what scared me most? That maybe there is absolutely nothing wrong with him at all. That he is just spirited, and wilful and frustrated with the world  – no different from most other toddlers.

And weirdly, this made me feel like shit.

I convinced myself that every toddler is like Kai, that all mums have to manage behaviour like his, and as such, the fact that I’m struggling to cope with it so much means I am just weak, neurotic and failing miserably. You probably have three children like Kai. Ten. And you still manage to do normal things like brush your hair, and eat, and go out.

Everyone tells me he is delightful, and fun, and charming and he IS! Maybe what I endure behind closed doors I have blown vastly out of proportion.

Maybe I am just not cut out for all this at all.

No, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want there to be anything ‘wrong’ with Kai. It’s just that the thought that it is supposed to be like this, supposed to be so impossibly hard and feel so unmanageable ALL THE TIME just made me go cold.

Luckily, I have good friends. Good, kind, honest, supportive friends who listen (and I could list hundreds of you, thank you so much).

I have a husband who has been through it all with me and keeps me grounded.

And after being told an awful lot of sense, I realised this.

Do you know what? Kai is hard work. He is really, really hard work.

I’m not saying its some kind of competition about ‘who has it the hardest’, or that other parents don’t find it hard either,but the reality of life with Kai is incredibly challenging and I don’t think anyone could question that.

He’s always been hard work – early months of constant crying and refusal to be any where but attached to me, followed by endless battles getting him to cope with transitions and change and him resisting everything. The speech delay and the near-constant tantrums and the freak outs at the slightest thing are just a continuation of something that’s been going on from the beginning.

He can be lovely of course. He is obviously bright, and can be so much fun and entertaining. He charms everyone around him and can be fabulous company. He plays beautifully, when in the mood to, and if you get it right with him you get it SO right and it is wonderful.

But this is offset by the most rigid personality I have ever come across. It is offset by moods completely dependent on things being just how he wants them to be and endless frustration and tears and anger when they are not. And I can honestly say? The hard times far outweigh the good times right now.

I am not enjoying motherhood right now. It’s not much fun to be honest.

A vast proportion of my day is spent ‘coping’ with Kai, managing his moods and single-minded determination and enduring the frequent screaming, crying, hitting, pulling, outpouring of his emotions. Every single day involves a good deal of time listening to long bouts of crying. It’s incredibly draining, exhausting. And I defy anyone to not find it hard.

And the speech thing IS worrying. The constant, weird, babbled gobbledegook? The fact that has somehow ‘forgotten’ how to say the odd word he could say a few months back? That he makes NO attempt to imitate words yet will copy the sounds he hears himself making on recordings? Of course it’s worrying. I’m not saying it won’t right itself, I’m sure it will, but obviously it’s going to be a concern to me. What kind of mother would I be if it wasn’t?

Whether he fits some kind of ‘label’ or not, whether he is like other kids or not, whether I find it harder than you or anyone else? It doesn’t really matter. Deep down I know it will be fine. I know that he will be fine, that he will grow out of most stuff, and we will survive. I know that really I am very lucky, he is healthy, so am I. I know it could all be so much worse.

But it doesn’t change how hard it is right now. It doesn’t change how much I am struggling.

What matters is I love him. I love him so much it actually hurts me to think about it. I see so much positive in him, despite all the bad stuff, and I am so enormously proud of him, of his fierce strength and passion.

I know I am doing the best I can, I know I am doing a good job, even, because I care about all this stuff and I think about it and I want to make Kai happy.

I just want to be a better mother for him.

I want to figure out what is he needs that I seem to be missing.

Mostly, I just want to see him happy.

And I want to see me happy too.

Writing Workshop #8 – Addictions and Epiphanies

Morning all. First of all,  I need to say a huge thank you to everyone that took part last week. I was overwhelmed with how many of you took part and so touched and humbled by the beautiful letters that so many of you wrote. Thank you for sharing such personal and moving moments with me – I feel honoured to have shared them with you, and your bravery in facing difficult memories gave me the strength to revisit a few myself.

So, it’s a new week, and one that I hope will be just as creatively inspiring and challenging.

For all your newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works… I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to have fun with it!

Prompts each week will take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.

So here they are:

1. What are you addicted to?
- Inspired by Kat at Slugs on the Refrigerator and her yarnaholism.

2. Tell me of your proudest moment.
- Inspired by Tara at Sticky Finger’s beautiful post ‘Jumpers for Goalposts’

3. “Have you ever had an epiphany, when you realized that something you’d long believed wasn’t really true?”
- Inspired by Amber Strocel’s recent post that asked this question and made me think.

4. Put yourself in the mindset of someone else, someone you see on the news, or read about in a book, or see a photo of in a magazine, or pass in the street. Perhaps even someone you know. Write about the world from their perspective, imagine how they must feel.
- Inspired by Heather from Notes from Lapland’s moving piece of writing based on her empathy for the victims of the Cumbrian Floods.

5. Have a good rant. Go on! You know you want to… get whatever has been bugging you off your chest. But you must be honest and not afraid to go against the grain!
- Inspired by ME! and my Christmas rant this week.

Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and Wednesday. On Wednesday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please.

Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Wednesday’s round-up.

Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:

<a href=”http://sleepisfortheweak.org.uk”><img src=”http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj90/flowerfairy82/WritingWorkshopBadge.jpg”></a>

Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.

See you Wednesday then!

P.S. And if you fancy plugging this workshop on the social network of your choice? Then that would be fan-frigging-tastic.

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This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.

Bah Humbug – A Christmas Rant

Gah what is it with all you people and your determination to make Christmas last as long as possible?!

Not only have I had to suffer Christmas hitting our high street before Halloween this year, now December 1st has rolled round I’m suddenly met with endless accounts of people with their tree up, presents bought and wrapped, and Christmas cards written.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas. But I just start to think about it on the 1st, using the whole advent period to gently warm up to the idea. I put up Kai’s advent calendar last night and got my first little Christmas tingle filling it with various disproportionately sized plastic animals for him to find each day. By the weekend I might just start thinking about doing some Christmas shopping. In another couple of week’s we’ll put the tree up and try a think of a way that we can ensure it survives three weeks of toddler attention. I probably won’t even eat a mince pie for at least another fortnight. This way my excitement builds slowly up to an uncontrollable hysteria on Christmas Eve (where my brother will come and we will play board games and eat our body weight in buffet food), a night lying awake wondering if that sound I just heard really was Santa, not daring to move and thinking that all those unbelievers are going to feel such eejits when they don’t get a Canon SLR under their tree, and then be up at the crack of dawn for a few days of festivities and more food and mulled wine than should probably be legal.

If I started with it all too soon, my excitement would have peaked and waned by the time we gotten half way through advent and I’d be bored and disinterested with the whole thing by the time the big day rolled round. Now fair enough if you personally have the energy to maintain your Christmas Spirit for endless weeks at a time, I just don’t have it in me.

And, for me, having Christmas last a whole month, or even longer, kind of throws out my whole rhythm for the year. Christmas is a specific day, or a few days at most, which is proceeded by ADVENT. Which, if you’re of the non-religious persuasion as I am, means a time of getting ready. If you’ve already got ready then what the frick is the point? You’ve lost all the build-up, all the magic – all you’ve got to look forward to is three weeks of novelty chocolates which I swear are made up of the ground up cardboard of last year’s advent calendars.

*sigh*

I’ll stop ranting now. I don’t mean to wee on your Yule log or anything like that.

I’m just saying, let’s all calm down a bit shall we. We’ve got 24 days people, let’s enjoy them.

Please Send Wine and Cake

*WARNING: In line with my honest disclosure policy and commitment to blogging with integrity, I should warn you that this a whiney post*

Kai is going through a phase.

At least, I think he is. It could be teething, it often is. I fear not, however, I fear that this is just HIM.

I never realised this about babies, before I had one that is. I figured that they grew and stuff (obviously), but I never realised THEY changed so much. Their needs, their personalities. That periodically they would become demon children from hell as they transitioned to a new stage.

Kai I think is in one such transition. After he started walking we had a month where he was absolutely delightful – everything was fun and exciting and interesting. We’d spend all day going on adventures and discovering the world from an upright position and all the many delights it had to offer – puddles, pidgeon chasing, running with wild abandon through the shopping centre and trying to steal things from shops. I loved it, and, as I always do I stupidly, rested on my laurels and thought “Ahhh this is lovely. THIS is what Kai will be like now. Life shall be good from now on”.

And then came this week.

This week where the my lovely, smiley boy was replaced with Lord of the Nazgul, complete with ear piercing shriek which he proceeded to unleash, with tears and biting and hitting and thrashing around, roughly every 7 minutes.

Here he is in all his glory:

NOTHING has pleased this boy this week. He doesn’t want to play, he doesn’t want to go outside, he doesn’t want to make dens on the sofa, or build things, or colour. He most certainly does not want to take a nap. All he wants to do is shout at me with nonsensical words, throw things, attempt to scale the furniture and get his mitts on every type of easily breakable thing in the house. Every trip to a public place has resulted in a prostrate, screaming child, and me trying to wrestle him, plank-like, into his pushchair by pinning him with my knee and fending off well-aimed kicks to my head. I am THAT mother, smiling wanly and embarrassingly, as the world looks on slightly pityingly obviously wondering why I seem unable to control my child and worrying that his head seems to be covered in rather nastly looking bruises (from throwing himself backwards and hitting it on every protruding edge in sight).

Our routine has gone to pot. Again. This is the other thing you don’t expect as a parent. You are told that routines are important for a child so you do your upmost to settle into a consistent rhythm of eating and sleeping. And it works, beautifully, for about 6 weeks. Two months max. Then you find they suddenly change the rules – they want to get up earlier, or aren’t ready for bed at the same time. They need less naps, or shorter naps, or more snacks. And you are left running to keep up.

I HATE these times. They never fail to make me feel incompetent, insecure, useless and doubt every single aspect of my parenting.

Of course, it will settle again, it always does. But in the meantime I am in my own personal hell and miserable with it. I’m still so tired anyway, with my blood pressure all over the place (turns out that’s why I keep falling over), and I’m having to spend my days wrestling with a small, ferocious ball of rage.

The worst thing is that he is always as good as gold when in the company of others, like his grandmas, so meaning they don’t really understand what all the fuss is about or why Ant and I periodically take on a grey, shrivelled look and look at our child slightly fearfully, worried he might ‘go off’ at any second.

God only knows what’s up with the child. I fear a lot of it is frustration – we had a similar patch just before he learnt to walk. He is obviously so desperate to communicate, babbling desperately and earnestly at every moment. Shaking his head and gesturing wildly. But what ever developmental thing that needs to ‘click’ to make talking possible just hasn’t happened yet. He struggles to formulate more than a handful of basic words although understands nearly everything you say to him. You can almost see him, trapped in this little body of his that hasn’t quite caught up to his brain. It’s no wonder he’s so angry really, I think I would be too.

Luckily time heals all ills, no doubt he WILL learn to talk eventually and this frustration will ease and all will settle again. Until the next thing of course.

And in the meantime, I’m left with this…

Please send cake. And wine. I mean it. For the love of god. Please.

I’m sure you’ve all been there. Any advice always appreciated xx

Fatigue Wars Episode IV – A New Hope

First of all, can I just say… how lovely are all you lot??! The answer is VERY lovely. Very lovely indeed. Thank you so much for all the comments on my last blog post and the many emails and twitterings you have sent my way.

I’m back from the doctors minus two great big vial’s full of blood with that wonderful Tony Hancock sketch running through my head. And since all nine of my pints have been seriously compromised this morning by at least a foot’s worth I am having a sit and a bacon sandwich to make up for it.

I’m feeling much more positive. The doctor rightly pointed out that, given my history, if my Fibromyalgia was relapsing she would expect my pain levels to have increased along with the fatigue and for me to have crawled into her office begging for drugs. And this is a good point as, actually, my pain levels are ok. I did a lot of walking around yesterday and although nearly fell over a couple of times and had to prop my eyelids open so as not to fall asleep in my over-priced under-heated microwave burger at the Blue Planet Aquarium, I did make to the evening without much pain. More importantly I didn’t wake up with ANY which if it had been the Fibro would have been very far from the case, given it’s tendency to make a 20 minute leisurely stroll one day feel like you’ve been run over by an 18 wheeler truck the next.

So we’re testing for low iron and thyroid function and liver function and WI Christmas Tombola and Beatle Drive function all the other usual functions they need to test for in these cases. Results will be back on Tuesday so I’ll keep you posted.

And I am stopping panicking. Chances are this is fixable, just a blip on the radar of my unstoppable plan to write a best seller by the time I’m 30, or, at least, be the first person to achieve world domination through the power of Twitter.

In other news, I made a big decision this week. It is probably not beyond the realms of possibility that my low energy levels are not being helped by the fact that a certain little 16 month old has still been breastfeeding up to 7 or 8 times a day, day and night. Lets face it, he does NOT need this much milk any more, whatever his opinions are on the matter. He eats well and is a big grown up boy now who could probably make pigeon chasing into a successful athletic career, can do all the actions to ’round and round the garden’ AND ‘wind the bobbin up’, and could show you the difference between a train, a tractor, a digger and a car without even blinking. His separation anxiety is significantly better; time away from me now being more treat than trauma. His independence and self-confidence is growing more and more by the day.

It is time. I am ready. Weaning Kai off the good stuff has begun.

I’m not expecting him to stop feeding completely but I am expecting him to substantially cut down the amount he feeds to just 2-3 times in 24 hours And guess what… he’s done it. Nearly every day this week he’s gone from early morning to bedtime with lots of snacks, good meals, distraction and lots of cuddles, and NO distress. Which proves to me that he’s ready too, in a way I hadn’t expected. Kai now has a good breastfeed before bed, one in the night, and then one in the early hours (after which he’ll sometimes go back to sleep). My plan is that eventually we’ll drop the night-time one (when I’m feeling VERY brave and not so tired!) leaving two feeds a day, which is plenty for a boy his age and will still be giving him all the lovely nutrients and immunity boosting benefits that longer-term breastfeeding still offers.

That gives me ALL DAY for my body to do something other than make milk and get to work doing more important things like digesting large quantities of cake and stopping me from falling asleep at random and inappropriate moments.

And the best thing? I look forward to sitting and feeding Kai now. Rather than it be a draining chore that I resent (which is what it had become) with my mind wandering to what I would rather be doing, I sit and I am present and I enjoy the feel of him close to me and breathe in his baby smell and relish every second, re-connecting after a long day of adventures and growing up in which he seems to need me less and less.

I am so proud of him. And so proud of me too. This is a big step for us but the right one.

So there we go. Now, I’m off for a sleep. My bed right now is more alluring than blogging, than twitter, than eating biscuits, and that’s saying something – I must be really tired. I am tired, I’m exhausted in fact. But hopefully only temporarily. And thanks to all of your wonderful supportive words and positive encouragement I am NOT going to let it get me down, whatever this is.

Onwards and upwards. Or sideways and downwards as is more the case for me right now.

Whatever. BA-DOING!! (that was me bouncing back)

x

A Sad Goodbye

I had a blog post planned for this weekend. It was going to be lovely: in it I was going to tell you about the sense of peace and real happiness that came over me this last week; a real feeling of rightness that I haven’t felt before. Not contentment, that is something I am not so good at, but happiness: yes.

Firstly, I was going to tell you about submitting my first assignment for my creative writing course… on time! OK, I stayed up till midnight the day before but I work well under pressure and always have: nothing like a looming deadline to get those words flowing. Competing my first short story, from seed thought through the research and exploration process through to finished piece, was one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve had in a long time. I was quite breathless by the end, the story building and twisting till finally those few last words came tumbling out. And the best thing? I love it. I love what I wrote. Those of you that read this blog know that doesn’t happen very often. I don’t even really care about the mark to be honest. I just want to write some more.

Then I was going to tell you about the Great Toy Guide, about how well it is doing, with mentions in two national papers in the last week and on the Asda website. About all the great features we are working on, about the sense of purpose it’s given me and how much I’m enjoying it, despite the fact that dealing with PRs sometimes makes my head feel like it might implode.

And then, finally, I was going to tell you about Kai. My beautiful boy who is now walking like a pro and at every given opportunity. And not only walking but squatting, twisting, bending down, falling over and getting back up again; working into a little shuffling run and swerving round corners in a way that makes smile every time.  About our week of playing in the winter sunshine, and treats of hot chocolate and cream scones, shared just between the two of us and we grin and chat in a language no one else would understand. I might even have mentioned the fact that the night before last he finally, blissfully and inexplicably, decided to sleep from 7pm to 7am with only one brief wake up at midnight.

I was going to tell you about all those things. In excited, enthusiastic tones.

But then, on Friday, as most of you know due to the overwhelming number of lovely, sympathetic messages I received on Twitter, I finally had to say goodbye to my precious old cat Beth. So this is not the happy post I had planned.

I am really trying not to be too sad. Beth was 18 years old; she had had a long and comfortable life, much loved and much cherished. She didn’t suffer, having just one morning of very quickly going down hill as her kidney’s failed, but then being put to sleep as I held and stroked her, falling away so quietly and peacefully with no pain and no distress.

But she has been my little shadow for 18 years. She has watched me turn from 10 year old girl, to stroppy, rebellious teenage; she was there as Ant and I first began our relationship, moving with us as we moved into our first house, watching me through years of illness and recovery, through pregnancy and the introduction of a brand new little person into our household.

I shall miss her. Tremendously.

So I leave you with memories of Beth.

Of me, in my wisdom, falling in love with the runt of the litter of kittens we went to view for my 10th birthday and insisting she was the one for me.  Her as a teeny tiny scrap of kitten who had to be drop fed milk; surviving cat flu, swallowing a whole needle and thread and having it removed from her stomach, and mysteriously disappearing for nearly a fortnight before arriving back home, timidly peeping from behind the back door: I can still see her little scared face as we tempted her back.

So vividly I remember watching her bravely stalk a mouse across our front garden, only for the mouse to turn, raise up on it’s hind legs and chatter at her ferociously as she  almost fell over herself in her rush to get away. I kid you not.

My girl, who was never once vicious or nasty, submitting to cuddles like a newborn baby with a deep purr like a cement mixer. Who went slowly do-lally in her old age, forgetting where she was and when she had last eaten and turning into the epitome of a cranky old lady who just wanted to sleep and have her meals served on time.

And watching her with Kai. Kai, who loved to sit and stroke her with the most gentle, loving touch you could imagine, and twist her ears like a transistor radio in a way that was a little less gentle yet still met with only purrs and indulgent, half-closed eyes. Kai, who chose this week of all weeks to learn how to say her name and now points to every cat with excited cryies of ‘BU BU’ or ‘ETH’.

Yesterday we laid her to rest in my mum’s beautiful garden, under an Azalea bush named ‘blue tit’. My scrawny girl, who couldn’t have caught anything if her life depended on it, has finally got her bird.

Night, night sweet girl. We will never forget you.

xxx

Holy Crap

I sat down to do some study tonight.

Text books opened, pen dutifully poised. I worked out my study plan for the weak – writing exercises, reading and an assignment to do by the end of the week. Not a difficult one, but still… going to require some effort. And some time. This week’s focus has been on sensory perception, observational writing and being inspired by the everyday – developing the regular, often mundane but persistent habit of writing, writing, writing. About everything you see and feel and taste and hear. Building up a store house of images and metaphors and observations to draw on in your more formal writing endeavours.

And as I was reading and thinking I had a Holy Crap moment. It went like this:

“Holy Crap. If I want to be a writer I’m going to have to fricking well write aren’t I.”

and then

“I mean (holy crap) that I’m going to have to develop a lifestyle of writing. Of having a pen surgically attached to my fingers and scribbling my flawless and whimsical observations of life, it’s people and all it’s many colours and flavours at every given opportunity”.

and then

“How the Holy Crap am I supposed to do that with Kai???! He doesn’t even let me do a wee in peace!”

There then proceeded a period of general wailing and “Holy Crap”s and “I’m never going to be good enough”s which I won’t bore you with…

But the point stands. I am going to have to write aren’t I? Or at least, write more.

I am not ashamed to admit it. There is a teeny (ok, not so teeny) part of me that is so in love with the idea of writing, of filling notebook after notebook with long, sweeping prose, that I would happily wish for all the housework to disappear, for Kai to suddenly become completely self-sufficiant and start sleeping 12 hour stints, for Ant to not need me in any way shape or form and for the rest of my friends and family to make no demands on whatsoever. Ever again. Just so I can write. Write with no constraints and no obstacles.

I imagine that that must be what ‘real’ writers lives must be like.

Which is stupid. Obviously.

Because writer’s are people. With lives and responsibilities and a demanding toddlers who spend most of their day either posting things, or trying to insert themselves, through the cat flap and screaming loudly and persistently when you refuse to hold them up to play the ‘light switch game’ for the millionth time that day (On! Off! On! Off!). At least, I assume ‘real’ writers have all these things to contend with… or some of them in any case.

Writer’s must have other jobs and families and small kitchens that are impossible to clean. And they still manage to write somehow, and, more importantly, to have successful writing careers.

So I’m just going to have to find a way. A way to free up more time and space for committing to the one thing that finally feels completely right to me, and is what I KNOW I need to be doing right now. I think it’s going to take some compromise and so creative thinking (and possibly some kind of Dictaphone) but dammit I am going to figure this out.

I have to.

Footnote: I was watching Tim Minchin in between writing this post. He seemed like an appropriate Holy Crap image. Love you Tim.

It is hard not to want

It is hard not to want a bigger kitchen when you only have one work surface, two drawers, three cupboards and a cooker that only works if the planets are in correct alignment.

It is hard not to want proper plumbing when a hot shower is rarely guaranteed and seemingly dependent on the washing habits of an entire street.

It is hard not to want some new clothes when the jumper you are wearing is on it’s third owner.

It is hard not to want to see the world when it is so beautiful.

It is hard not to want to be successful at something you love so much and think you maybe, MAYBE could be quite good at.

It is hard not to want that thing you love so much to make you some money when you live so close to the wire.

It is hard not to want your baby to sleep better when you are so unbelievably tired.

It is hard not to want to be more self-sufficient when you rely so much on the generosity of others.

It is hard not to want an extra couple of free hours in the day when there is so much to do.

It is hard not to want to be pain-free when you have an army of tiny microscopic beavers gnawing at your joints, crapping in the resulting orifice and then lighting that crap on fire.

It is hard not to want a peaceful neighbourhood when the soundtrack to your life is a dog’s incessant barking, idiots arguing, car stereos blaring and doors slamming.

It is hard not to want to swap the view from your son’s window from this:

to 

… or to change the first thing he sees when he steps out the front door from this:

to 

It is hard not to want

BUT

I have.

SO much.

A home, food, warmth.

More love and friendship than I know what to do with and hardly deserve.

The companionship and unconditional love of the world’s most patient man.

The soft and perfect form of my boy with his head on my lap as I type.

A bright future ahead of me, full of promise and potential, and the exhilarating feeling that the best thing about being at the bottom of the pile is that the only way is up.

My words.

These things make the universe stop spinning for one second, and the bills stop worrying, and the housework seem so unimportant.

They make me stop wanting. And just be.

For a while.

Until I find myself wanting once more.

It is hard not to want.

I wish I knew how.

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What do you find it hard not to want?

Not what I thought

Postscript: 19th October 2009

It’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote this post and I still can’t quite get over the incredible and supportive comments left in response. I didn’t think before writing this – just poured it out and then had to summon up all my courage to hit the ‘publish’ button. Thank you so much.

My friend Scary Mommy is running a ‘Search for a Scary Mommy’ contest:

What is a Scary Mommy, you ask? I believe a Scary Mommy is a mother who doesn’t leave the house wearing lipstick at all times. A Scary Mommy loves her kids to death, but will admit to feeling totally overwhelmed and exhausted by the gig. A Scary Mommy doesn’t really care what other people think, and a Scary Mommy thinks that all mothers win when we admit our weaknesses.

I think this is my Scary Mommy post.

I hope you who are reading it for the first time can relate to it – seems like a lot of my regular readers could. And hearing that “yeah me too” made me feel more ok with myself than I had done for a long time.

Thank you for listening x

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Before I had children I had an assumption about how it would go, how I would feel.

I would love them. I would love them totally, utterly, unconditionally. My patience would know no bounds, my selflessness would be instinctual and ungrudging. This magical connection would happen instantaneously the second I clapped my eyes on them and it would last a lifetime. No challenge would be too big, no detail of their lives would be too small or go unappreciated.

I never knew it would feel like THIS.

I read a post by a fellow blogger recently that made me cry. The lovely Insomniac Mummy wrote a beautiful piece about the love she feels for her son, describing unconditional love and the many perfect intimate moments between the two of them. It was the kind of love that I had dreamed about having with my child.

But it made me cry because I found it hard to relate to the way she felt, the feelings she described.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love Kai. Oh god do I love that boy. In fact I completely under estimated just how much I would love him – it has knocked me sideways these last 15 months. It is almost painful the deep love I feel for him; that tangible connection I feel to him; that sense that he is mine; as much part of me as my own head and as essential and fundamental to my existence as breathing.

And yet it is not a fairytale love. At times it is dark, it is agonising, it unravels me and balls me back up again over and over, every minute of every day. It has changed me, and continues to change me. Challenging the very nature of who I thought I was. For although I feel that deep sense of connection, that feeling of ‘knowing’ him so completely, at the same time he sometimes feels like a distant, unreachable, unknowable mystery that I will never fathom. He is separate to me in a way that is isolating and confusing.

I don’t know how to be a good mother to Kai. That is the truth of the matter. Since the very first day he was born he has pushed the limits of my patience, tolerance and empathy, descending on our lives with the force of a unstoppable hurricane, turning our heads and our hearts upside down. His needs have always been so intense, so uncompromising. My whirling ball of energy and curiosity, forward motion and fierce independence, uniquely co-existing with a fundamental dependence and need for closeness, contact and comfort that I never could have imagined.

Sometimes it is so easy to love him, with his infectious smile and spark that has everyone around him glowing. His affectionate, attentive nature, constantly surprising and delighting us with the strength of his personality; his dogged refusal to be anything but himself.

But at other times it is not so easy. The battles and the refusal to compromise, expressed through tears and screams and bites and flails and fights. The unrelenting neediness and constant demand. These are the times where my love for him is tested, where my worth and suitability as a mother is brought to bear.

I feel I fall short in these moments. I try, god only knows I try and I push through it, but dealing with the inevitable feelings of anger, impatience, frustration and failure are some of the hardest tests of character I have ever had to face.

And yet…

And yet. There are moments of stillness. Moments of tired heads rested on laps, of soft hair and soft cheeks. Of little hands that seek out and grasp my own, holding on with a tenderness and a pure need that melts my pain away. Of intimate smiles and tender kisses, of foreheads that fit with perfect synergy into the nape of my neck and I know that there is no where, no when I would rather be, or am meant to be. Right here, right now; holding desperately on to this boy I love so much and wish I knew how to mother.

I wouldn’t change him. Not one tantrum or one sleepiness night. I honestly wouldn’t. He is perfect in his imperfection, in his complexity. He fills me with both awe and bafflement and pride in equal measure. And the fact that I get to be the one to watch him grow and mature and learn and develop feels like a privilege and a gift I would never pass over.

So no. I do not have a fairytale love for my boy. I cannot hold up as a bright example as do some mothers that I so admire seem to able to do with so much integrity and conviction. But it is unconditional. If only because I fight so hard to make it so, because I refuse to let it be any other way, however much it tries to pull me off course. It does not come easily. But it does come – I hope that is enough.

The eloquent Nobel Savage tells me it gets easier. She too faced dark places in her journey with her girl and she’s stepping blinking through the tunnel and out the other side.

I hope so.

But in the meantime I am happy to be here. Happy to be on this adventure with my beautiful, perfect little monster.

I really am.

A hell of a set of balls (in more ways than one)

There’s been a lot of talk this week in the virtual world about the ‘Mumpreneur’ – women successfully combining at-home businesses with raising children and family life. I’m not all that comfortable with the label myself, something that Sally at Who’s The Mummy? also questioned recently sparking an interesting debate. It’s not even one that particularly applies to me as I don’t run my own business. But lately I feel I am beginning to move into the realm of the ‘Work-at-Home-Mum’ and issues surrounding women, business and enterprise are likely to be ones that effect me for some time to come.

My creative writing course has started in earnest now. I have turned into that fledgling writer with a notebook and pen surgically attached, lying awake in the small hours consumed by ideas and endlessly spiralling words and images, plagued by feelings of hope and potential and doubt and worthlessness all in equal measure.

At the same time I’m trying to expand my ‘freebie’ work, getting writing experience here, there and everywhere I can. This blog is becoming more than just a pet project, it’s becoming something that matters to me, something I feel the need to invest time and effort in, with the hope that it may springboard my writing somewhere new and exciting. The Great Toy Guide is keeping me busy too which I love, opening up a whole new world of PR contacts and confusing media lingo and a different kind of creative thinking.

The irony is that none of this is paid of course. Perhaps I’m over-reaching myself even calling it work, probably ‘work’ would be more descriptive and less pretentious. But my hope is that by putting the ‘work’ in I may one day get some work without the inverted commas, probably not anytime soon, but one day.

I’m coming across like a complete douche aren’t I? I did have a point somewhere.

Oh yes. Here it is…

I had been under the extremely naive and mistaken impression that working from home would be easier than going out to work. That combining a working day with taking care of your children would be simpler, most cost effective, and magically combine the two worlds of motherhood and career woman in one beautifully harmonious enterprise.

You’re laughing right. At least, the WAHM’s are laughing…

Turns out the reality is a little different.

My days and nights at the moment are left frantically juggling Kai’s (demanding) needs and my own desperate need to write and grow in a direction other than being ‘just a mum’ (oh and with the odd cursory bit of housework thrown in for good measure). When I’m doing my ‘mum’ bit I’m thinking about writing. When I’m writing I’m feeling guilty about not giving Kai my 100% one-on-one attention. I can’t win. Oh and of course – add into the mix being so sleep deprived I can barely remember my own name and you’ll probably have a fairly accurate picture of my state of mind right now.

Lately I’ve even wondered whether Kai would even be better off in nursery for a few hours a week, that maybe I’m depriving him of enough stimulation and attention, that maybe being at home with me ISN’T the best thing for him as I had always thought it would be. But of course (it’s the ironic bit again), I’m not earning anything and we don’t bring enough in as a family to make it an affordable option.

So here I am. Desperately trying to keep all these different conflicting balls in the air. And not managing it very successfully (the ‘hoovering’ ball I dropped a while back and seems to be festering in amongst the dust bunnies under the TV cabinet).

All of which is my rather long-winded way of saying this. Mumpreneurs, entrepreneurs, work-at-home mums/dads ,  self-employed writers, artists, craftspeople – what EVER you choose to call yourselves. I salute you. And admire you immensely. I am only beginning to realise how hard your working lives must be – and I’m still only ‘working’ at working.

Please tell me. How on earth do you do it?