Saying the wrong thing to my children (No 2,016)

There are times when I realise that I and my children exist on totally different planes.

Take this, for example.

Last Summer.  The day we got back from France.  The week before my period.  I hadn't slept for two days because I'd been sharing a bed (for which read bunk on a boat, the second night) with M.  He's adorable, but he's not the best of bedfellows.  B had had the other room in the hotel and cabin on the boat because he was doing all the driving, and because he had to work as soon as we got back.

So, anyway, we docked at 9 am. We got back here at 10.30ish.  By 11.15 B was back at his desk, leaving me with four (tired) children, and two weeks worth of unpacking, washing, post, shopping, phone messages, and everything that goes with them.  Oh, and did I mention the PMT?

All this is by way of justification for the fact that when, a few short minutes and about six loads of laundry later, I discovered that the the girls had destroyed their bedrooms as only a force ten gale or three small children can, I was perhaps not my entirely calm and rational self.

About a minute and a half of shouting later, I sank to the floor, head in hands, two parts ashamed, to three exhausted, to probably, if the truth be told, one still spitting bricks.

And L came up to me.  I don't know what she said, if anything.  I can't remember.  I just know I said, in tones of world weary, resigned exhaustion:

I can't do it any more.  Make a mess.   I don't care.

And she got up and skipped away, huge grin on her face, shouting with delight:

Mummy says we can make a mess!

Sometimes only your children can make you smile...

Warning: holidays may be bad for your health.

I'm going to give up going on  holiday.

I am going to sit here, stay here, and not go away ever again.

It's not because I don't have a lovely time.  Quite the contrary.

B and I spent this weekend in the Lake District.  We rented a fabulous, fabulous house (where friends of ours spent the first few nights of their honeymoon many moons ago. We even rented a silver Corsa to get there, which  made us feel even more nostalgic for those same halcyon days). We walked up hills.  We sat in pubs (it was raining, ok?).  We ate and drank lovely food.  We pottered around markets. We spent lots of quality time together (ahem). I even managed to have two baths.  That's more than I think I've ever had in this house.

The children (and my parents-in-law) stayed here.  

It was utterly wonderful from start to finish.

We got back yesterday afternoon, after a detour to see our new nephew (hooray!), and since then I have been unbearable.  I know this, because B has gone out.

I have been grumpy, and impatient, and simmeringly, irritatedly cross.  The weight of the world is sitting on my shoulders. Nothing anyone can do for me is good enough and everywhere I look things are accusing me: do me says the laundry, iron me says last week's laundry. Dry me says the teetering pile on the draining rack.  Fix me says the pin board I bought in a junk shop in Cockermouth, full of crafty inspiration, and now empty of time and energy to use it. The fridge cries Fill me and the week's meals say plan us. The emails I've ignored flash read me.  Deal with us say my work files.  Everywhere I look something else cries tidy me. Play with us whine the children and talk to me, the husband.

And I think  Stop the world! Stop my life! I don't want to do any of it any more.

And it's all the holiday's fault.  Because the holiday was a break from my life: which makes my life somewhere I don't want to be.  Even though, I know, I have an incredibly blessed and lucky life all told. 

Yet a holiday, and it was true of this one, and also, astonishingly, of our last family holiday, all six of us driving two thousand miles to France and back, makes no demands on me.  I wake up in the morning with nothing on the to-do list, whether that be lovely things to do (ring an old friend) or dull ones (fill in the tax return), and that emptiness is liberating.  That freedom is soul-lifting.  And so the return to real life feels heavy, as I though am weighted down again, however enjoyable the things I have to do may actually be.

I find myself yearning for another life.  On our return from France I found myself breaking down in tears and screaming for it:  how different it would have been had we not moved/moved somewhere different/if I did another job/ if B did another job/ if we won the lottery/if I were a better parent, and yet, of course, that life would be the same, because even in the Lake District, France or Outer Mongolia, washing has to be done, meals have to be planned and talking to friends remains one of life's great pleasures.

Getting grumpy with my life for being a life, my life, gets me nowhere.  But it doesn't stop me doing it.

I am hoping that writing about it will help.  Failing that I'll just have to stop going on holiday.

Pre-natal depression

Is this a thing?

Maybe it's a thing?

Please let it be a thing.  Because if it's not a thing, it's just me.  And somehow that makes it so much worse.

I'm not depressed.  I'm not someone who's depressed.  People who are depressed want to hurt themselves, or others.  They cry.

I don't feel like that.  I'm ok. I'm just tired. So tired and so sick.  It'd be ok if I could just stay in bed.  I don't know what I'm going to do if I get out of bed. How am I going to cope?  I've got the girls, and I can't think about what I'm going to do with them, what I'm going to feed them, what I'm going to say to them.

And then there's the washing, and the cooking, and the shopping. And I can't do it.  How can I do it? How have I ever been able to do it?

But it's ok. People keep telling me it's ok. People seem to think I should be happy.  Happy about this baby.  And they say that, and I paint on a smile, which I know can't look real, and I say "Yes, it's wonderful, I'm so happy".  And I know what they're really thinking.  Because it's what I'm thinking.  What my brain is screaming at me, every minute of every day.  How am I going to cope?  I can't cope with the three children I have, how on earth will I manage another one?  How can I be happy when I am failing already and all that's going to happen in eight months time is I'm going to fail more?  Fail harder.  Fail worse.

Go back to bed.  Hide.  Make it go away.

*************************************

I don't feel like this.  I really don't.  But I did.  For all of October and some of November.  And then it passed.  And now I am happy.   Happy and bumpy and looking forward to feeling my baby move.  But I wasn't.  I really wasn't.  And I couldn't say.  I couldn't say because I didn't want people to think less of me.  To think that I had gone into this with my eyes closed. Or, more importantly, that I was bringing a baby into the world that wasn't wanted.  Because it is wanted, so much.

And is it a thing?  Am I the only person who feels like this in early pregnancy? Because this isn't the first time.  I felt like this with L too.  I upset B enormously because I gave him the impression that at eight or ten weeks pregnant I didn't want our much wanted, much adored first-born.  I caused him to question me, and us, and our decision to have this baby.  But it wasn't any of those things.  It was just so hard.  So hard getting through those first few weeks.  And so much harder trying to pretend to be happy when everyone wants and expects you to be happy and when all you can do is try desperately to hold it together and not scream; "I don't know if I want this. I don't think I can cope".

I've called this post Pre-Natal Depression, and in so doing I am not trying to undermine the real seriousness of Post-Natal Depression, but just to share how I felt, on the off-chance that although this isn't something we speak about, and it isn't something the medical profession recognises, and it isn't, maybe, as bad or as serious as proper PND, that is is a thing, and that I (and anyone else who has felt, or is feeling, like this) am not alone.