Joining in...

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a wee bit anti social. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be, I value friendships, I like to have people around me that I can chat about the Bake Off with, drink ale with and recommend books to, but I find it hard, really hard.

When we first moved to St Albans at the beginning of Summer 2016 I didn't want to leave the house. Ever. Partly due to some mild postnatal depression, and mostly down to me being extremely anxious. Grayson was still throwing up after and in between every feed, he still wanted feeding at least every two hours, he was three months old, not napping and still waking every 40 minutes to 2 hours in the night. I was exhausted. I wanted to be at baby groups, my heart ached thinking of all the daft plans I'd had in my head of baby massage with my tiny newborn. I felt so much guilt. I just couldn't do it though.

Push came to shove when I won a place on a short baby course, I had to get out of the house every week for two hours. Other mums were there. 6 of us. Once we even stayed afterwards and had a drink. And then it ended, that was it. I didn't go to another group until my son was nearly a year old.

It took a lovely lady at the Sure Start centre to persuade me to come along to a messy play class, I was getting Grayson weighed, she worked there and reassured me, she even gave me her number and said I could call her and she'd walk in with me so that I wouldn't have to enter alone. I'm not sure she'll ever know how much that saved me.

The baby and toddler groups in St Albans were big, maybe because of that no one really spoke to each other, in the 6 months that I went to the groups (two or three a week) I only had one other mum talk to me, everyone either seemed to know each other or just kept to themselves.

I think that it was because of this that I was so nervous about going to new groups in the village after having moved. During the Summer holidays nothing had been on. I went to a couple of socials organised by people on the Mummy Social app and that was pretty much it for the first few months. 

Then it was September and it was time to jump back in. 

So far I go to two groups, one in my village on a Wednesday that is mostly attended by childminders and one on a Friday in the village across the road that is attended by some of the loveliest mums I have ever met. The smaller groups mean that I am forced to be in the thick of it, there's no disappearing into the sidelines here, and so far that's doing us just fine!

3 Hours.

That's how much sleep I've had each night for the last four nights.

It's hard when your child just won't sleep. When Grayson was born it felt like everyone else's babies were settling into a routine apart from him. He still wanted feeding every 2-4 hours right up until he was eating 3 full meals and snacks at 10 months.

People would say to me "Have you tried just putting him down?" as if it was some sort of magical cure for a hungry, refluxy, screaming baby. We tried milk thickeners for his reflux, comfort milk and hungry baby milk alongside the breast milk as I was becoming paranoid that I wasn't providing enough fat to keep him full, it took a trip to A&E to get him prescribed with Ranitidine. It took the edge off for a few days. I became sick of people telling me that he would grow out of it, that I should let him cry it out and then the disapproving looks when I would try to explain that if he cried for too long he would violently throw up all over himself, sometimes choking on it.

I felt judged all the time.

I was tired from basically being  a walking boob. I'd be up during his worst periods 9 times a night. or just all night, because there wouldn't be any point in trying to sleep in between. I tried giving him some bottles at night to make it easier to put him down but I found myself falling asleep and dropping the bottle, startling myself and him awake. It was scary.

We tried white noise and a Sleepyhead, combined they gave us a little extra time each night. Once he started eating large meals he went to only waking twice a night. He would still neck a full bottle each wake up. Yet he's never been a chubby baby. It baffles me.

By 13 months he had finally started sleeping through the night regularly. I haven't yet dropped the bottles like the Health Visitor suggests. I just can't. He's 15 months old today and if we went out to eat he would easily wolf down an entire children's meal portion to himself, he usually eats two slices of toast and fruit for breakfast or a larger bowl of porridge than I would eat, he'll have lunch and dinner with a pudding, and healthy snacks in-between. So if drinking a bottle of milk helps get him down for his nap and sleep at night then I'm all over it. I just can't go back to being that zombie again.

This week has been hard, he's been up from 12am -3/4am for 4 nights in a row. Nothing will settle him. It's amazing how hard it becomes to function so quickly. Walking the dog in the morning goes from being a chance to get out to seeming like an impossible task involving far too much to get ready, carrying Grayson on my back feels like I'm being pulled into the ground with every step. I stop eating properly because after preparing him fresh food I just can't be bothered to do my own, so I drink my cold coffee and listen to him whinge and pray that the nap will last two full hours.

And then I'll spend that nap feeling guilty that I wanted rid of him but also dreading when he wakes up. 

It's just really not easy, so to any mum that's currently in the same position, whether your baby is 3 weeks, 3 months or 13 months, it might not always get better fast, but somehow you'll cope, and in the future you'll wonder how! And to any mother whose child does sleep, that's great, but please don't pass on condescending advice, if it was really as easy as putting the baby down, using a dummy or a warm bath, we'd all have amazing sleepers by now! Just agree with us that it's a bit shit and pass us the coffee because we bloody well need it!

Struggling Saturday

I acknowledge mum guilt. I know it's real and I know a lot of us suffer from it. I also know it's all a bit daft as long as Grayson is healthy then really he is fine. It doesn't make days like today any easier though.

Today is Saturday. Tom is staying away with friends this weekend last minute so I didn't make any plans and it's just me and Grayson all day. It's half nine and we've been up nearly three hours yet all we've done is eat breakfast and watch The Wiggles. We live in a lovely city with lots to do, I'm surrounded by housework that could do with some attention and the dog will need walking but I just feel overwhelmed and trapped. It's shit when you feel like your anxiety is affecting your family, when you have a million ideas in your head of what you want to do but you just can't make it happen. It sounds ridiculous, even typing it out makes me feel a bit daft but that's honestly how it is.

Grayson seems happy enough. I just don't think I'm being fair to him though. I feel like we should be out at the park, seeing friends, running around soft play, something that gets his mind working and gives him a chance to blow off steam. Not stuck in a playpen next to a useless mum who's wondering how she'll manage to get a single thing done today. It's a horrible way to be, knowing that you have a problem and not knowing how you can get past it today.

Sun's Out, Mum's Out

It's frustrating but I have to acknowledge it, I do much better when the sun is shining. If the weather is grey I can easily sink into a pattern of only leaving the house when I need food or some kind person notices and drags me out. It leaves me stir crazy and with so many guilty feelings for trapping my son indoors. The sun has been shining for 2 weeks now and we've been out every day.

It's not been easy as such, just much easier. We just walk - or in Grayson's case trike - along the cycle track behind our house, alongside a nature reserve and across the streets, stopping at the ruins of a local nunnery so that he can burn off some energy each day. It makes me feel less lonely even though I'm not specifically making any effort to see people, there's always people about. And that's enough sometimes.

A year on...

It's still surreal having been a mum for a year, I've gone from living at home with my parents to living with my partner in a new city. There have been days when I haven't wanted to leave the house, where I've felt like I physically can't, we dealt with reflux for the first 8 months of Grayson's life. More vomit from a tiny human than I ever thought possible. A&E trips, strangers making comments and no sleep.

It took me until he was a year old to get out to baby group. I'm not proud of that but now I see it as it is what it is. I'm lucky that when I went to get him weighed after his birthday I got talking to a worker at the baby centre who understood anxiety and encouraged me to come along to messy play sessions anyway. It was one of the most terrifying things at the time. Walking into a room full of strangers is my idea of hell. But Grayson loved it.

It took ten and a half months before he slept through the night. The worst nights he was waking 9 times a night. I thought I was going to die from tiredness. Now we get a night or two a week that he sleeps through. The most was five nights in a row. I didn't sleep for most of them, turns out no matter how much you want sleep, when your baby starts suddenly sleeping through the night you'll probably think he's dead. And check on him constantly.

So that's where we're at now, still learning, still dealing with being the odd one, but always searching for our next adventure!

One strong moment.

This was the moment I announced my pregnancy to my outer circle. I was already 4 months gone, had my first scan to gaze at every day for two weeks previous, yet it had taken me all that time to get to my one strong moment. It even came with a whole 'power to me, single mumma' caption, because I felt the need to validate myself.

I'd like to say that in the time since then I have gained all the confidence in the world, in myself and my parenting, but it wouldn't be true. The truth is I spend most of my time trying to get to these strong moments and they never seem to be around when I need them!

Finding my feet is a work in progress, it's hard to find your village when you're often too anxious to leave the house, but that's what this is all about, part reflection and part pushing forward - and 100% honesty.