6 weeks

Today our new arrival is six weeks old.

Today also marks six weeks of exclusive breastfeeding.  Yup.  Six weeks.  This blog isn't about breastfeeding, or even babies really..except for mine obviously, it being my blog..but it is worth mentioning because these last six weeks have been some of the hardest of my life.  I never thought I would reach four weeks at one point, let alone six.  But with a lot of advice and encouragement from my friends on Twitter and from my fellow bloggers (Gretchen I am pointing at you!) I have made it to my initial six-week target.  Now I am aiming for eight weeks and then...well, then we'll see.  The main thing is I am feeling more positive about it.  Now if I could just get some sleep things would really be looking up :)

I intend to review progress on the Big Happy blanket at the end of each month as we move through the year but I thought this little milestone would be a good time to have a look at how it's going so far...

Not bad, eh?

Ten and a half rows, six colours...

Looking rather sunny and happy and, of course, big!

I have very little time to work on it, but I try to squeeze it in where I can.  It cheers me to see the rows building up.  Lillia chooses the next colour if she is about when I get to the end of a row, she is excited about all of us snuggling up underneath it when it is finished.  So am I, I just keep picturing it months from now, finished, and a happy Future Me.

January

Despite the usual joys and festivities of Christmas coming to an end I usually welcome the month of January.  A lot of people find it a bleak time of year but I see it more as the gateway to a new year and the start of a new road ahead.

This year, despite the obvious difficulties I am facing, is no different.  January has me feeling almost optimistic.  I have a long year ahead - I need to recover, I need to teach a whole new person how to sit, smile, laugh, eat, talk, walk..sleep!  I need to learn to be a mum to two children, to balance their needs and be equal to both of them. 

These early January days are most definitely Baby Days...

Surrounded by the paraphenalia of baby care, I spend my days feeding and talking at a totally unresponsive newborn who looks at me with that withering newborn stare, as if to say, "what are you doing, woman?"

It's not easy.  Little sleep, little clue, lots of guess work and whys and what-ifs.  No smiles yet to give me courage in what I am doing.  Feeding is not without its problems this time around and Phoebe and I endure some miserable battles to feed.  But slowly but surely we are getting there, an hour, a day, a night at a time.

My "winter" candle holders are out on the windowsill.  I will light these in the evenings, what little I see of them, to bring a little festive light to the room and avoid everything looking too bare now the decorations are packed away.

And so begins 2011, I am hopeful for a rewarding one, it's going to be one hell of a 12 months!  I've been looking back at my blog posts over the last year...this time in 2010 I was making my matryoshka dolls and crocheting toilet roll covers.  I really must get around to doing a photo review of makes from the year..just as soon as I've finished changing nappies and shaking rattles of course :)

xx

The Big Happy

Anyone who reads this blog knows I love crochet.  I dabble in many crafty creative things but over the last year or so crochet has really come to the fore as my craft of choice.

I love doing it, I love seeing other people's pictures of what they are doing, I love learning new patterns and stitches.  I love the old fashioned simplicity of it.  I love that I use my great grandmother's darning needle to sew crochet squares together like she would have done.

So I hatched a plan.  If crochet makes me happy then crochet can help me out of the post-natal depression.  I'm not keen on taking the route of medication right now, especially as I am still desperately persevering with breastfeeding, so anything that can help is worth a try.

The next pattern in the Happy Hooker Backwards project is for an iPod cover. I had been rather looking forward to this as it presented a bit of a challenge, given that iPods have evolved somewhat since the pattern was written, so I would have to modify it and work out my own pattern for covering an iPhone instead.  However in my current baby focused, brain-adled state there is no way I would be able to take this on.  So this is on hold until I regain my mind.

Instead I decided I needed a Big Project.  Something huge yet simple.  Something that will take me a lonnnnnng time to do without taxing me too much.  Something that can be started now in the depths of my depression and finished many months from now by the happy recovered Me of the future.

Introducing the Big Happy...

This is going to be a mahoosive blanket.  It measures 2.7m wide...quite accidentally, I didn't plan it, I just hooked the foundation chain until it seemed long enough, oops.  It is a Granny Stripe blanket, a pattern from the endlessly delightful and colourful Attic24 blog.  Simple rows of double crochet (I work in US terms) clusters, endless rows of the same stitch in different colours.  The colours will be random.  This blanket is all about Not Thinking, just doing, just occupying my hands and creating colourful row upon row of soft and delicious stripes.  Something I can pick up to work on in any free minute I may find.  Until one day, months from now, it will be finished and I will look back on each row and remember the days and weeks and months I worked through to get to the end point. 

It will be my Big Happy blanket.

When it is complete I will be happy, I will be Me again.

Another Christmas

I love Christmas, it is my most favourite time of the year.  From October onwards I am usually planning and looking forward to the big week of festivities, eating, drinking and gift giving.  This year therefore has been rather tough.  I am not used to feeling down during what is usually my happiest time.  Depression, I am discovering, is a bummer.

Christmas day was undoubtedly the toughest.  Trying to engage in the fun, desperately wanting to play with Lillia and all her presents but instead sitting glued to a chair breastfeeding for hours, exhausted beyond description, with a dark sensation pushing down on me the whole time. 

Definitely not a Christmas I want to revisit.  Though I will, over the years, many times I am sure.  I will look back and remember and be grateful that I no longer feel that way, that I never again will feel that way at Christmas again.  This depression will be behind me, I will make sure of it. I've come through a lot in my 33 years, I can get through this.

Lillia had a wonderful Christmas being thoroughly entertained by her (now thoroughly exhausted) aunt and eating far too many pink smarties whilst watching far too much television.  But that's what Christmas is about, a little time out from the usual rules :)

I hope each and every one of you enjoyed wonderful Christmasses, and are still enjoying the Christmas week.  I was lucky enough to receive many new books so as soon as baby Phoebe starts feeding a little more easily I am looking forward to getting some reading done during those long wakeful nights. Amongst others I received A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, read many times years ago and then lost, I am so glad to have a new copy to re-read!  I also got Kirsty Allsopp's Homemade Home book, a couple of novels, two cookbooks and a book on seasonal gardening (is there any other type of gardening..?)  So there's plenty to keep me going should I ever get the chance.

On another note - despite all the doom and gloom and the apparent lack of productivity over here - I have actually been indulging in the odd bit of crochet time.  I have a plan you see, a Big Project.  Something that will play a part in dragging me out of this post-natal depression.  More on this in a day or two...until then, Merry Christmas xx

Snow days

Thank you for the lovely supportive comments on my last post, it is so wonderful to be connected to so many other mothers who can understand in some way what I am going through right now.  I am taking it one day and one night at a time right now.  Though to be honest night and day kind of blurs into one long stressy mess at the moment.  These early days of babyhood are so hard...soooo much guess work involved, so much unpredictability.  I do prefer some predictability, never been one for flying by the seat of my pants.  I could cope with the interupted nights of sleep if I knew for certain what was coming and when - could cope with breastfeeding at 2am for an hour if I knew with certainty that when I popped her back - warm, cosy, cuddled, comforted, clean, dry and well fed - into her basket she would then fall peacefully asleep...not cry instead.  It's moments like those that really baffle me, and in the dead of the night really stress me out.

The arrival of yet more snow here in our little corner of England  has also scuppered plans for any trips out and about with the buggy, even in the car.  Combined with a serious lack of light I find myself getting quite cabin-feverish.  I need to get out soon!

Lillia has been a real superstar, has been entertaining herself far more these days than she has been used to.  Making little camps with her ripple blanket.  The stool and cups are a "mulberry bush" apparently and she has been skipping around them singing quite a lot.  I do feel for her, all this being cooped up indoors in a tiny house with a crying baby and a tired mummy.  It's hard to feel at this point that providing her with a sibling has been a Good Thing.  Maybe in a few months when Phoebe is older, more smiley and interactive perhaps, when mummy is maybe getting more sleep, maybe then it'll all feel worth it.

All my crocheted blankets have been getting a lot of mileage these last couple of weeks.  There has been a LOT of sofa time, a lot of TV time, a lot of cold weather and being snowed in.  It has made me decide to attempt to start a new crochet project to keep me going along.  Something rather big.  But more on that soon.

Thanks so much again for the lovely messages of support, that really do mean an awful lot to me, I frequently check in to my blog from my phone and look at what lovely comments have been left - it gives me something to do at 2am when I'm part cow, part human, part zombie - they always make me smile.

One day at a time.

xx

"If you're going through hell, keep going"

The last two weeks have been...rather...tough.

I have said before that I like this blog to be a happy place to visit, but just occasionally a dose of hard reality seeps in; the kind of stuff that isn’t all about crochet and clay, crafting and cakes and tea. But I think we owe it to one another as women, because the majority if not all of the readers of this blog are, after all, women, to be honest about the realities of motherhood and life.

I have been diagnosed with post-natal depression. It is to say the least a bit of a shock. I had felt pretty damn terrible after the birth of my first daughter, the beautiful Lillia, and I had assumed that was how you felt when you had a baby –not full of the joys of motherhood and bonding, not singing the praises of the beauty of breastfeeding, not cooing and cuddling and enjoying every moment – but feeling useless, incompetent, exhausted, confused, overwhelmed and incapable. I assumed that was how people felt and that you just didn’t mention it...because you’re not supposed to feel that way, right?

So I said nothing and I pushed on through it alone. It took months before I felt human again. This time though my midwife immediately picked up on the signs, sent me straight to my GP, who assessed me and referred me to a specialist unit at the local hospital. It has all been very quick, very straight-forward in a way. I suddenly find myself surrounded in support – family, health visitors, midwives, and even my own specialist PND worker. Now I know that it’s not normal to feel this way, but it is very common. The hormones of pregnancy and birth have messed with the chemical balance in my brain and caused the issue, it is nothing more than an illness, and one which I shall apparently emerge from with help, with hard work, determination, maybe medication, and time.

Christmas is usually my absolute favourite time of the year, but it is hard to find the joy I usually do in the festivities this year. I am taking it day by day and week by week at the moment. Hopefully one day very soon I will feel myself again.

Until then I will check in here when I can, keep you updated and I’ll be sure to wish you all a very merry Christmas.

xx

Snow baby

Our baby Phoebe finally arrived on Tuesday 30th November :) 

Our St Andrew's Day baby certainly timed her arrival to make things interesting!  This is a long wordy post, the Baby Post, enjoy...!

This was my car on the morning I went into labour...

Baby Phoebe decided the day to arrive would be the day a massive snow blizzard hit Kent.  It had started snowing overnight and when we woke up we'd already had a couple of feet, and the snow just kept coming, it didn't stop.  The schools were closed so hubby set off to get Lillia to her Granny's whilst I stayed at home to handle the contractions.  Two hours later hubby had to turn back as he just couldn't get there - the roads were gridlocked.

By this time things were getting quite painful and the weather situation was looking a bit worrying, the snow just kept falling.  Luckily the traffic coming the other way from my mum's was ok and she managed to get to us in the end, making the usual ten minute drive in forty-five.  We set off for the hospital as soon as she arrived, me wired up to my tens machine and clutching a bowl in case I was sick! 

The hospital is usually a ten minute drive away - it took us just over two hours.  The roads were gridlocked so we had to resort to the motorway in the hope it would be clearer, but there were several lorries stuck unable to move and we couldn't get past.  At one point I thought I would end up giving birth on the motorway, I could almost see the local paper headlines! 

When we finally got past and off the motorway, negotiated a couple of gridlocked roundabouts and turned the corner on to the final stretch of road we were confronted with a long queue of cars stuck behind a lorry stuck in a snow drift.  There was nothing left to do but to start driving madly: hubby put on the hazard lights and we started our way up as far as we could on the opposite side of the road.  Then we pulled in, hubby got out and ran up the the policeman who was helping dig the lorry out, he explained his wife was in labour and we needed to get to the hospital fast!  The policeman initially offered us a lift in the police 4x4, but all we needed was to get up the hill and round the corner so in the end he stopped all the on-coming traffic to let us through.  One of the memories that will always stay with me is driving past that policeman, clutching my tens machine and breathing through a contraction, with him shouting "good luck!" and giving us the thumbs up.

In the end we made it in plenty of time.  Phoebe was born just before 11pm, with the snow still continually falling outside, much to our joy and relief!

We made it home the next day - the roads being snowy but no longer gridlocked - but the whole country had come to a halt and all we four could do was pull up plenty of blankets and hunker down.  No visitors, no post, no midwife visits, no getting out and about, no school!  We have been completely snowed in.

The thaw started on Saturday and visitors have started to trickle through, though the roads are now icy and dangerous.  We are hoping school will be back tomorrow so poor Lillia can escape the cabin fever.

It has been quite a week to say the least!  I will be back very soon, but for now I will be mostly crying, breastfeeding and feeling tired but happy :)