Thursday, March 29, 2007

Bad News

Couldn't decide when / how / whether to announce this, but thought it best to get it out of the way asap.

I'm just back from the hospital, where we discovered we've lost the baby. Everything was fine until this morning, but it went downhill from there.

Please don't worry about me though, I am a bouncer-backer.

Cheers
Clare
xxx

All the Miscarriage Posts

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Friday, March 30, 2007

Aftermath

I wasn't looking forward to telling Felix. We arranged for the next door neighbours to have him after school so we had a bit of respite, but at 6.15pm the moment arrived.

I arranged myself carefully on the sofa, took deep breaths.

"We have some bad news. The baby has died."

"But I was really looking forward to getting the baby." He bursts into loud sobs. "I want my baby!"

I thought it would make me cry, but all my attention was focused on comforting him. I was calm, and tearless. We told him that we are sad too. I worried that he wouldn't believe us.

He was inconsolable.

He was inconsolable for five minutes, but then he was distracted by hugs, and tickles, and giggles, and hot chocolate, and Shrek II. He made me feel so much better.

Later, the doorbell rang. A friend, running errands, being useful. Felix answered the door, and before she had taken a couple of steps, he made the announcement.

"Er," he said authoritatively (like a confident person getting the attention of a waiter. "Er, excuse me...")

"Er, I think we have some bad news," he said loudly. "Our baby's dead!"

It made me laugh, bless his little cotton socks.

It made me laugh.


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Friday, March 30, 2007

Half Pregnant

I'm in this weird half-pregnant state at the moment.

I still have sore boobs, still have a big belly, still need the loo all the time, amd still permanently hungry.

I still have a baby inside me, it's just that it's a dead baby and it has to come out, and I just have to watch and wait.

It's 2cm long.

Sorry. Sorry you had to read that.

But this is how it is. This is what's happening.

Sorry.


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Saturday, March 31, 2007

Don't Make a Fuss

I took Felix to the cinema recently, and he dropped his popcorn all over the floor.

“Never mind,” he said instantly. “It doesn’t matter.”

He gets that from me. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t worry. Don’t sweat the petty stuff.

Before we went into hospital on Thursday morning, I went to the toilet again. I hoped there'd be something to see, because otherwise I'd have been making a fuss about nothing.

When the nurse asked questions about the blood, about the pain, I found myself wanting to exaggerate. Because what I had to report was so small, so vague. I didn’t want to waste her time.

After we’d found out the fuss we were making was about something and not nothing, we went home. That night, we got pissed. We got pissed and stoned and we made jokes to each other.

I was worried that one of the literary agents might read the announcement on my blog; might delay getting in touch out of respect. I wanted to go back and edit: “P.S. If you’re a literary agent, don’t let the fact that I’ve just lost a baby put you off. Call me!”

We both thought it would be funny. But people wouldn’t get the joke. They’d be appalled.

When bad things happen to people, everyone tiptoes around them. Don’t mention death, or babies, or blood. Don’t make jokes.

That’s fair enough: it’s hard to know what’s right. It’s your job though, not ours. Why should we be pussyfooting around our own selves? But we are. There’s a strong sense that we should behave in a certain way. We’re not allowed to get over it and move on, not allowed to make jokes, not allowed to be drunk and silly, not allowed to be ourselves. We have to mourn.

And of course we do, we are, we will. But...

We ended up posting this on the Big Chill forum, and it made us feel a bit better.

Still, I feel bad about what I posted last night, drunk and stoned and depressed. It seems wrong, somehow. But why?

This morning I found my other post wasn’t shortlisted for Post of the Week, and it hurt. I was glad when it was nominated. Why? I’m not sure. There’s the ego thing, of course. But it’s not just that. And I’m not making any claims for the quality of the writing, really I’m not. I can’t begin to be objective about that: When I read it, all I see is the content - and even that through a salty mist. But I can’t help wondering... was it decorum that saw it excluded from the shortlist? Did the POTW editorial team think it wasn’t appropriate? Did they feel the need to protect me? Or their readers? Or maybe it was just a rubbish post.

We watched the pilot episode of Six Feet Under last night, which we have on DVD. There was a lot of death, mourning, blood, funerals. Nate and David, fellow sons of a funeral director, had a fight about propriety around a grave. What kind of grief is acceptable, appropriate?

And can you call it grief when the dead body is so tiny, so unreal? Was never actually a person?

And it wasn’t. I seem to have a deep-rooted instinct for self preservation on that score. I could never believe in Felix as a living human being until I held him in my arms - and even then it took a while. My mind bounced off all thoughts of babies, and I didn’t want to look at baby clothes or, in this case, use the name Felix gave it.

It’s the promise that’s lost. Not a human being, but the potential for one.

My mum said that when it happened to her, she thought about writing an article for the Guardian. She still remembers what she was going to say: that it wasn’t the loss of a person, so much as the loss of a way of life. She was in the middle of something, and then suddenly she wasn’t. And all those plans dissolved.

I have similar plans, maps and calendars in my head. All gone.

But I don’t want to make a fuss. Don’t want to be a nuisance. Don’t want to upset anyone, or do the wrong thing.

And right now, I think people might be annoyed with me. Because I told the whole world, before I reached twelve weeks. And it wasn’t ignorance - I know full well that a high proportion of pregnancies don’t make it past the first trimester. I reasoned that if anything went wrong, I’d rather people knew - and that way I’d be more likely to get sympathy and support. I’d heard that people regret having told nobody, because it means there is noone to understand.

And I have, I've had an astonishing amount of support. Emails, texts, comments, phone calls. You're all lovely. Please don't think I'm not grateful.

But perhaps some of you are thinking, “What did she have to go and tell us for? We could have been spared all this.”

And here I am, making a fuss.

But don’t worry, it’s only popcorn. It doesn’t really matter.


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Saturday, March 31, 2007

"Woo-hoo"

I just logged in to Twitter online for the first time in several months. There was a message waiting for me, a very old one. Congratulating me for being pregnant.

I guess there's going to be a lot of that kind of thing. Another argument for not telling people until you reach the magical 12-week point.

I was talking to a friend last night, who lost a baby at four or five months. She said for months afterwards she would bump into people who didn't know what had happened, and would ask after the new baby. She said it was always worse for them than it was for her. I can believe that.


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Saturday, March 31, 2007

Non Pregnant

It was a relief when it happened in the end.

Even though it happened in the toilets at our local Asda supermarket.

Well, it happened in the checkout queue, but I had chocolate biscuits and hand-cooked crisps sitting on the conveyor belt, and I wasn't about to lose them.

And the scene I will describe sounds horrific and will probably make you sad, but I was floating in some different plane, detached and vaguely intrigued.

I had assumed this moment would represent the height of my grief. That's been happening with spooky consistency. I am unable to predict my reactions. I thought I would be fine; I haven't been. I thought I would cry when Felix heard the news; I didn't. I thought I would cry the most when it finally came out, but in fact I calmly washed it off, tried to examine it, tried to make it look like something, but could see nothing but a hand. A small, squashed, webbed hand.

So I flushed it down the toilet.

The placenta was rather beautiful. Like a perfect pebble, or a Werther's Original made of jelly.

I've been unexpectedly depressed today. I woke up this morning miserable. I had that torpor you get with low mood. Walking in a shuffle. Standing and staring at nothing in Asda. Staying in the same seat, gazing at the same digital TV channel, until twenty-five past healthy.

But when I walked out of that toilet, I had a spring in my step. It's over. I don't have to go into hospital. It's gone.

Of course now I'm bleeding everywhere and everything hurts and I'm off my face on every painkilling substance I can get my hands on, but hey. I'm on the other side.

I'm on my way out.


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Monday, April 02, 2007

Random Feelings

Images. There are pictures associated with all this stuff. A foetus curled up on a computer screen, a tiny hand in a public toilet. When I contemplate their impact, I think of initial reactions. To the first: curiosity, followed by sobbing when the picture was joined by explanations. To the second: detached curiosity. What I forget is that images stay with you, to be re-examined, often whether you like it or not. And reactions can change. The level of distress caused by the image is not constant or predictable.

Curiosity. I come from a family of scientists; questions are bred into me. I think it does Ally's head in sometimes. I can see why. I keep asking about things which might seem, well, tasteless. I'll spare you the detail, but there are a lot of biological matters and, well, matter, to be curious about. I know a lot of people would react differently.

Words. In a conversation with Ally last week, I wanted to make reference to the first image mentioned above. The one on the computer screen. I couldn't find a way of referring to it that wasn't loaded with pain, pathos or bad taste. In the end I just said, "that thing we had to see".

Pain. Yesterday I found myself hoping the cramps would start again, so that I could take more co-codamol. And then I realised the tablets were treating more than one kind of pain. But still I refused to cry.

Reactions. I felt as though a friend was chastising me for not exhibiting more pain. She was worried that I was repressing my emotions, that I was pushing myself too hard. I am stubborn, I'll admit that. Determined to be strong. Sympathy, in the flesh, standing in front of me and not giving me the choice to respond at leisure (as it does when it comes in email or online form) makes me impatient and squirmy. I cry when I want to. Not on demand.

Today. Another scan. "Retained products of conception". It doesn't mean much - just that it's not quite over yet. A bit more ickiness to come, but the worst has passed. Not enough to prevent us going to Wales. This means we are now in "Conservative Management of Miscarriage" territory, and have opted out of "Medical Management". I object to the terminology. I have never been conservative in my life.

Waiting Rooms I. This time we read, and didn't talk. Occasionally I laid my head on his shoulder, just to say Yes, I'm here with you, you're important. Physical contact can mean so much. I've started reading The Plain Truth, which I love. Interestingly enough, it contains the term "retained products of conception", which I read therein yesterday, and was intrigued by, all the more so when I saw it reappear on the radiologist's report today. The Plain Truth contains subject matter which is disturbingly connected to my own life right now, but it's everywhere. Babies, pregnancies, small children. You can't escape them. They're part of life.

Waiting Rooms II. A fascinating exchange between Farting Burping Mother who had just had a hysterectomy, and Shouting Daughter who was angry with the whole world, including her mum, including the taxi driver who drove away because Shouting Daughter had nipped out to buy paracetamol for Mother, who claimed she had Gone Shopping. "Shopping! Where are my shopping bags then, eh? Shopping!" and "It's your fault for making me buy paracetamol!" and "Shut up and stop whingeing!"

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Tidying Up

I've been tidying the house today because my parents are coming to stay, and have come across various pieces of pregnancy evidence: Midwife notes on the hall table; a file bursting with birth info waiting to be weeded out.

I've hidden them away, but not because they upset me - although they do, a little. No, because it might upset them. And they might not know how to react. The thought of them being upset about me being upset is more upsetting to me than just being directly upset in the first place.

The irony is that my parents have started reading my blog, so they'll see this anyway.


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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Brief Update

Warning: This post is only of interest to people like me who love medical detail. Otherwise, best to avoid.

We're just back from the hospital. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, we now know that there's a whole load more gunk left to come. I'd been hoping it was over, but apparently not. We're going into hospital for the day on Friday, for "medical management of miscarriage" which involves shoving a load of drugs you-know-where. It's actually the same procedure as is used to induce labour. Well, technically that's exactly what it is (although also-technically I have already given birth).

Anyway, by Friday the majority of it will be over, although there could still be bleeding and pain for a week or two afterwards.

This is the third time we've been offered three choices:

(a) "Conservative management," i.e. leave well alone and let nature take its course,
(b) "Medical management," i.e. shove some drugs up your wotsit,
(c) "Surgical management," i.e. general anaesthetic and an internal scrape.

We originally chose the second option, but nature beat us to it, so the second time we were asked we chose the first option, but in the intervening week nature has gone all bone-idle so we're going for the second option again.

At any point we could have opted for surgical management, which would have been the quickest and cleanest choice - but also the most risky. General anaesthetic always carries a risk, but there is also infection to think about, as well as possible perforation of either bladder or uterus. Not good! That's why we're avoiding it. And, messy though it is, I like to trust my body to sort itself out wherever possible, although granted I've now run out of patience and am giving it a helping hand.


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Friday, April 13th, 2007

Brave and Strong

Many thoughts, I have been having, about courage and all that. About how I'm Trying To Be Brave, and about whether this is good or bad, and which is the most important to avoid: Wallowing or Repression? and about how good I am at accelerating my own depressions, and if I can find myself a Something In The Middle.

But I like it when people tell me I'm brave, snd strong. I guess if I'm honest that's partly why I'm blogging this in the way that I am. I want you all to stoke my ego and tell me how ace I am.

And the best part is, when it all falls apart and I stop being B & S, and collapse in a puddle of grief instead, as long as I tell you all about it, you still call me S & B, for being so honest. Bargain!


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Saturday, April 14, 2007

See, I told you... Rubbish!

Oh, for fuck's sake.

So they said we could do drugs or operations or nothing, and we decided to do drugs, but then my body beat us to it so we decided not to do drugs after all, except that my womb was having a good old larf and took the opportunity to shut down and do absolutely fuck all for a week or so, so we plumped for the drugs option again, and stuffed me full of this-actols and that-exes and the-other-ums but STILL nothing happened and now here I am...

Here I am. Having had contractions all day and nurses examining every squirt, splodge or gromit that issued forth from my nether regions, no matter how smelly or vile, but none of it NONE of it has been blood or guts or womb linings, and they say it'll probably happen over the weekend but the contractions stopped hours ago and I just know that next Friday when they scan me again they'll tell me it's STILL not over, and after over three weeks of blood and gore and pain they're going to tell me that it was all for nothing and I'll have to have a fucking D&C* which is what I was trying to avoid all along and may as well have had in the first place.

Or not.

I mean, this may well be what is known in the trade as A Catastrophic Thought, or Several Disastrous And Utterly Paranoid Ramblings, but, well, you know.

Pah.



*Surgical procedure. Apparently quick and simple, but many risks involved.


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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Boring Update With Details and Stuff

I've been posting a lot of guff lately, little twiddly posts between great long Important Ones, and the page turnover is very fast, and some of you are new here, and some of you don't visit very often (don't feel guilty, I do that too). So here is a rundown of Where I'm At:

I was pregnant, and then I wasn't. Every time we visit the hospital, they give us three options: (1) Let well alone, and That Nature Thing will sort it all out. Maybe. Probably. (2) Take drugs to force my body into a sort-of-almost laboury-type thing. (3) Have a D&C, which is where they scrape out the inside of your womb under general anaesthetic.

At first we chose option 2 (take drugs), but then Nature stuck her oar in before we had a chance, so we decided to go for option 1 (leave it be). But then Nature got bored and fell asleep, so we went for option 2 again (on Friday 13th, which I thought was pretty hilarious), but it didn't work. Currently I'm having period pains / cramps / contractions / labour pains (I'm very confused about all these terms, and could write a whole bloody post about it, and probably will, but I think they're all basically the same thing) most of the time, and barely notice them any more (they're quite mild), but it means I'm not really my normal self. Oh, and my hormones are all over the place. And I'm sleeping a lot. And I'm getting strange pains in my left hip. But apart from that, I'm fine.

There's still a load of gunk in my womb though, and we're going in for yet another scan on Friday, so unless I start bleeding between now and then, I think we'll finally opt for option 3 (womb scrape under general anaesthetic). I'll be glad when it's over.

In other areas of my life, or rather the other area of my life, I wrote another book, I sent it to four agents, three of them said No, one of them hasn't got back to me yet.

A literary agent is like an estate agent. They take responsibility for finding a buyer for your book, and if they find one they get a cut of the proceeds. Selling books is a complex business, and a LOT easier if you have an agent on your side. They're much nicer than the house-selling kind. I'll probably have to send the synopsis out to a whole load of new agents, and hope one bites. And then I'll have to find a publisher. It's all a bit of a pain.

To be honest, I was rather hoping I'd be well on my way to a second baby and a second book deal by now, but hey ho. Life is never simple.

And now I'm all sleepy again, so I may go back to bed.

Sorry for raking over old ground like this - I just realised it was hard for the casual reader to work out what the hell was going on in my life.


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Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Weight

Money, future, work, novel, writing, babies, health... these are all things that are getting me down, but one of the big things is my weight.

I'm a woman, and a cliched one at that, so I have that relationship with my body that so many of us have. I get fat, something or somebody (a doctor, a friend, a mirror) brings it to my attention, I do something about it, I get thin again, I get fat again... blah blah.

I hate the fashion industry, the slimming industry, the fatty-haha culture that makes people hate themselves and have unreasonable ideas of what could or should be possible. I have militantly hairy armpits and when I diet I refuse to weigh myself, count calories or punish myself if I don't lose six stone in a nanosecond, but still I fall prey to all the shit...

OK, enough already with the excuses. Here's how it is: I was a virtuous exercising yoga-ing fatty-treats-are-rationed-for-weekends-ing kind of a gal, had even managed to fit into the first size 10 jeans for a decade... but then procreation beckoned, and I thought fuck it. Not only is a bit of cushioning good for unborn children, but I was fully expecting to vomit until I bled for weeks on end, lose two stone and end up on a drip, like last time. So I reasoned that Pregnancy Hunger was my body giving me a message: Eat Everything In Sight, Because This Meal Might Be Your Last For A Long Time.

And I was "showing" weeks before my womb had even parted from the small of my back, and proudly parading my bump wherever I went, my bump which I knew full well was nothing to do with pregnancy and everything to do with fat, but I Didn't Care, and anyway biscuits are nice.

And now, and now...

None of my clothes fit. I get out of breath climbing short flights of stairs. My knees are playing me up again, and I am fat fat fat fat fat. I look rubbish, not least because none of my clothes fit so I am stuck wearing the same old tired old maternity dungarees week in week out, and I refuse to even think about finding something else to wear because every time I open my wardrobe and find yet another old favourite piece of clothing which doesn't fucking fit I feel a little more crap, so I pretend I'm not even thinking about it. Until I get drunk and break down and sob about it all.

And now I'm having a crap day and I feel down and today I ate two Expensive Organic Chocolate Biscuits and they were yummy and I cracked in the biscuit shop and bought two boxes of even-yummier triple-chocolate cereal with flakes of real Belgian chocolate and oh my God it's just about the best stuff I ever tasted, and I said I would only allow myself to eat it on Saturday mornings but who the hell am I kidding

and I want some and it would make me feel better and so would the beer except that it fucking won't because I know it'll make me even fatter and more unfit and my knees will hurt even more and fewer clothes will fit and I will be even horribler to look at than I am already and

the spam keeps arriving in my email inbox you're fat, buy this product and your fat friends will envy you, God you're so fat and I watched the Super-Skinny-Me program and it just made me want to diet

but I'm desperate for chocolate because it will make me feel better

but it won't

but it will

oh fuck.


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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Still Here

I've several times read the annoyed words of people who are exasperated to have read yet another blogger apologising for not posting anything. Who are they to assume people are hanging on their words? And they have a point.

But I know people keep coming here, and they keep finding nothing to read. And part of the reason for that is - paradoxically - that I know there are so many of you out there, waiting for something, and that paralyses me.

There never used to be so many of you before I had the miscarriage. There are three or four times as many of you now. That's pretty daunting all on its own.

I'm not someone who gets all depressed about the human race when confronted with evidence that we are interested in each other's misery. I slow down to look at car crashes, just like most other people. I don't think writers should be ashamed of themselves for finding their first impulse, when facing tragedy in their own lives, is to fish out a pen and document it.

It's a natural humnan response. We care about each other, and even when we don't, we're fascinated. We wonder how we would react in similar circumstances. We thank our lucky stars and not-so-lucky Gods that we're free of whatever misfortune we're witnessing, or we remember the times we weren't. That's fine, it's part of how we cope, what we are; it's confirmation of the connections we all share. It's better than ignoring one another. I've visited blogs several times a day when the blogger was experiencing something tragic or dramatic - been drawn to it all.

So anyway, I keep thinking things are, or should be better, but then I keep finding they're not. Physically I'm out of shape after months of increased eating and decreased exercise, and mentally I'm, well, unstable I suppose. I don't feel in control of my life.

But I'm muddling through, and don't seem to have much to say about it, or maybe just the energy to say it. I'm still here, and there are still plenty of smiles in my life.

Um. I wasn't intending to post anything - this just sort of snuck its way out of my fingertips when they were reaching for the "Shutdown" button, and now I'm taking them to bed.

Good night.


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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Gay Paris

Oh flippin' 'eck, why is there always so much to do??

Well, the good news is that I'm sort-of-maybe-almost feeling a bit normal again, although as a good friend pointed out, there's no such thing as normal. Everything changes. But I've been off sick from work for the past few weeks, and that's affected my blogging.

I went back to work after the miscarriage, but I didn't last longer than a few days. I just couldn't cope. With anything. And then the doctor signed me off for stress, and then I felt all awkward about blogging. I didn't really want to go on about the stress, but I didn't feel much like writing about anything else, and anyway what if Someone Important read the blog and said "Ner ner, she's not sick, or how could she blog?" Which is obviously ridiculous - just because I'm ill, doesn't mean I can't blog - but still, it just feels kinda... argh, whatever, I'm going back to work tomorrow anyway.

We went to Paris at the weekend, which is another of those things you think maybe you should keep quiet about if you're Officially Ill, but it was of course very therapeutic. We were Manic Tourists on the Saturday and ran around Paris with a map in our hands going "let's go there! And then there! And then there!" We walked everywhere and didn't set foot in or on a single piece of transport until the evening, when we finally gave up and got the Metro to Montmartre. We didn't go in anything much, in fact - we just looked at things. We went in a few churches though, cos you can nip in for free, walk round the whole thing and back out again in double-quick time. There's something to be said for only having one floor and not bothering with internal walls. But we're both atheists, and Ally got a bit freaked out by all the churches - particularly when we got caught in the middle of a gigantic Catholic mass. Personally I just like the buildings.

Actually, that was interesting. We were in St Sulpice, and a mass was just coming to an end. Everyone was dressed in their best, and there were tons of kids and laughter and chatter, and I was thinking how much better a church felt when it was full of humanity having a fun day out. I was also admiring the stunning architecture and liking the combination of the two. Then Ally tugged on my sleeve and asked if we could leave, because he was getting freaked out. I thought it was all that demonically-Godful iconography that was getting his goat (I've always thought it all pretty scarily demonic, particularly when it's Catholic; it never feels particularly soft or loving or good). But anyway, it turned out it was the happy people that were doing his head in. Churches should be filled with quietly reverent miserable people, apparently. Anything else just isn't right. He was brought up in Calvinist Sunday schools in Scotland, that's his problem. For myself I just find it reassuring that most churchgoers just see it as an excuse to get dressed up and see the family, which is much better than some of the alternatives.

So anyway, we did the following, in super-fast order: Belleville, Les Halles, St Eustache, the Louvre, paddling in the fountains outside the Louvre, Jardin des Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, government buildings (can't remember the name - something like Assemblee Nationale?), Hotel des Invalides, Montparnasse, La Closerie des Lilas (a shockingly expensive bar where Trotsky used to drink - very beautiful, but not the best choice as one of the few places we went inside), Palais de Luxembourg and its lovely gardens, and a free art expo in one of its buildings (rather good), St Sulpice, Sorbonne, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, Pigalle, Moulin Rouge (outside not in), Belleville.

Walking a lot is very good for your calf muscles, but not so great if you've put weight on and are wearing a skirt. Two words: Chafing thighs. Ouch.

Then on Sunday we were hungover after drinking tons of wine in Montmartre, so we trugged desultorily around one floor of the Pompidou, then went and played Backgammon in Parc de Belleville and ate in a great little cafe/bar in Belleville. Oh, and we lost each other whilst searching for Pont des Suicides (Suicide Bridge, which is apparently where people have been known to kill themselves even when they weren't planning to) and I thought Ally had been seized with an uncharacteristic nihilism. But he hadn't. So that was all right.

Oh arse, it's time to pick Felix up already. Many thanks to Petite for letting us use her studio - Belleville is a great place to stay. Oh, and Tadpole is even more adorable than you'd think she would be, and a joy to read bedtime stories to.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Second Thought

OK, bored of crying now. And anyway - even though repression and denial are bad, wallowing ain't much good either. And I refuse to worry about hyperemesis. And why do I always have to go from one extreme to the other? Why can't I just be somewhere in the middle? And I can't believe I scheduled the grieving in - that's just typical. As though I could spend a week crying and then never have to cry again... idiot.

Oh, and I know suffering shouldn't be competitive, but really. There are an awful lot of people have it much worse.

So, what shall I do for the rest of the week? I'm torn between hot baths and good books versus day trips and picnic blankets, or maybe I should just spend the week blogging.


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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Unexpected Tears

In the dark of the cinema, unexpected tears come. Afterwards, I sit in the Cornerhouse cafe, where I should be happy but I am sad. I like cafes. I like coffee, and “tarte au chocolate” (an extraneous E there, surely?) and watching the view, and reading a book, and suddenly sensation is all I have, as my eyes wander from the text and my fingers discover the texture of coarse cream paper and my hand stretches out, amazed, happy to find itself the focus of my attention, five-starred-perfect, warm, bodily, bodyesque. And my sister had her baby yesterday, and I am a sad old aunty with a stretched warm hand, and I remember how I folded and stretched, folded and stretched in the cinema seat.

My shoes came off, my legs parted wide and I sat like a man, one foot in the aisle, then not in the aisle but crossed on one knee, then the satisfying thigh-pull of a cack-handed lotus, restricted by seat arms but testing muscles, like “good pain”, like yoga, and I remembered. How simple and base my body is, lacking in potions, flabby, hirsute, comfortable, holding me instead of me holding it.

That’s how a body should be: A hand, a leg, then a finger, smoothing the grease on a forehead and liking it.

Even the tears.

Liking it.


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Sunday, July 01, 2007

Dry

I'm a bit... drained.

We went to Scotland for the weekend, and it was lovely, but... well, it was North East Scotland, which is significantly far away from Manchester, and a long way to go for a weekend, and my mind, or my body, or my soul, or all three, were playing up.

All this New Life Stuff (I think I'll be allowed to let the cat out of the bag soon, don't worry) is a bit scary, and a bit difficult, and a bit Totally Different, and apparently all Big Life Change is stressful, whether technically Good or Bad or Indifferent. I mean, like, according to clever Psychological Sciencey types wot do experiments and like to be empirical and all that, winning the lottery is just as stressful as going bust, and christenings are as hard as funerals, and I may well have mentioned this before, and yadda yadda yadda.

And then I find myself having massive mood swings, and my head going all fuzzy and bussy and my insides wound tight like a tightly wound thing, and the obvious conclusion is PMT, or maybe stress, or pregnancy... and then I start getting headaches, and waking up in the middle of the night with bile in my mouth or nausea and raging hunger, and getting REALLY ANNOYED about nothing in particular, or crying for no reason, and having intense heartburn, and again, it might be pregnancy, or it might be stress... or PMT...

And if it IS pregnancy, I might get ill, really ill, and if I don't get ill that might be because there's something wrong like last time, and then I might have another miscarriage (and how fucked up is THAT - that the surest sign of a healthy pregnancy would be vomiting to the point of life-threatening dehydration - fun, I don't think), and I've only ever been pregnant twice before, and both experiences were utterly horrendous for totally different reasons, and anyway I might NOT be pregnant and that too would make me sad, which makes me utterly fucked whichever way up you look at it...

...and then there's the Big Life Stuff...

But it's not healthy in the least for me to stress and obsess, so I have to breathe deeply and skoosh the negative thoughts away and tell myself everything will be fine, and stop fixating on the future and enjoy the present, but that's hard cos I keep bursting into tears or having my head threaten to explode, and I don't know whether that's because I'm stressing and obsessing and not thinking the right way about things, or if it's hormones (either she's-pregnant hormones or she's-not-pregnant hormones - again, fucked from each end and sideways) and therefore outside my control...

But fuck all that. I refuse to worry. Que sera. Everything changes. And I'm sure there's a whole bucket of cliches just waiting to be mined for all of it.

And anyway, it rained all day today, all the way from NE Scotland to NW England, and this was a VERY GOOD THING, because as I explained to everyone when they kept tutting over the weather forecasts, I would far rather drive in rain than in hot sun. Seriously though, why would anyone, even a sun-loving person (which I am not) want to sit in a small tin box in early July sunshine? Rain just means you have to drive a bit slower sometimes. It doesn't affect your whole body. It doesn't give you cancer. It doesn't turn an already-grumpy woman into a seething mood-boil of unlanced anger pus.

So, there you go. Hurrah for rain.


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Friday, July 13, 2007

silly things

Stupid little things set me off. Browsing goodness direct and seeing "New Mother Maternity Pads," I wonder whether I should get some in. Because I need tons of them, a few weeks ago.

My head goes on one side and suddenly I forget what I'm doing, and the little sad part bobs up to the top again.

Push it back down, carry on.


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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Big Stretched Sighs (and Thighs)

Some snapshots:

1. Felix is eating his tea on his own in the kitchen. I am in the room next door, sobbing in a silent hiding-it-from-the-innocent kind of way, dabbing at tears with bog roll, hoping my eyes won't be too red when I emerge, hoping I won't snap and wince and cringe.

2. Felix is chattering away in the back of the car, and I am getting that stretching feeling of despair, as the inside of my face elongates desperately with the contrast of His Happy Chat and How I Am Feeling.

3. Yoga, tonight. Not able to do it, and this is a first. I can always do yoga. It's good for me. It makes me feel better. But tonight the can't-be-bothered don't-care want-to-hide-in-a-hole me was obstinate and sulky and refused to find the energy or motivation. Would only move slowly. Stiffly. Couldn't relax and breathe.

4. Big Sighs. All the time. And eyes with sagging lids, and a downward-pointing chin.

So, I'm acknowledging that I'm maybe, probably, you know, a bit depressed.

And it makes me grumpy and vague and fucking hell, but looking after a young child is hard when you feel like this.

The other weekend I couldn't work out why I was so vague, so confused, so forgetful, so clumsy. So terribly-terribly tired. So tearful. So unable to make basic decisions. I, experienced hypochondriac that I am, had a list of possible causes: 'Flu, perhaps, or pregnancy. And then I thought, well, these are all symptoms of depression. But nah, I wasn't depressed. I mean, I knew I collapsed the week before in tears so extreme I couldn't walk or talk and had to run away in the middle of cooking tea so that I could sob for an hour in my study, but... well, that was a one-off.

And then last weekend I went camping, and complained about how stressed out I was, how difficult I was finding everything, and my friends said yes, Clare, you're depressed. Go easy on yourself.

And that's all very well, and I keep trying to do that, pull back on the demands, relax the schedule, give myself a break.

I have a schedule, you see. Things I must do to make a living from writing. It's got a lot of stuff on it, and I expect to be able to do it all in a short space of time, and it's terrifying me. And I can't prioritise, can't decide which things are most important, which ones really matter. It all really matters. And I keep coming up with an order of priorities, and then changing my mind, and changing my mind again...

And then I decide on Ways Of Coping. Like when I said I was going to sack all the admin and Just Write, because that would make me happy. But I didn't do it. I kept coming up with excuses. Because one of my many fuck-ups is a collapse in confidence. And when I don't think I can write, I can't write.

So then I decided the answer was to take all those timing estimates and double them. And then I thought maybe I should chuck them out the window, just Do Stuff, then time it and see how long it takes. And then I thought, fuck it, it's the summer, I'll just do stuff that makes me happy and worry about the serious stuff in the autumn. But nothing makes me happy. And, goal-driven future-living woman that I am, the one thing more guaranteed to make me more miserable than anything else is Being Idle. And everyone keeps telling me off for living in the future, and telling me I need to learn how to live in the present, and that I should be happy because this redundancy is bound to be a good thing, and objectively everything is fine, and really there's nothing to worry about...

...except that I lost a baby, and a job, and my book still isn't published.

New Year's Eve, 2007: My Grand Plan, to have a baby, to publish my book. I failed. It doesn't matter that I can still get pregnant, that I might still find a publisher. I failed. And the only other thing in my life that was certain, the job, the career in IT... that's gone too. And all I'm left with is maybes and possiblys that I can't believe in. And I don't know what the future holds and I feel like I should be sorting it out, like I always do, except I don't have the faintest clue how. Don't want to. Want to hide.

And I say to myself things like Be Nice To Yourself, and Get On With It, and Just Do Your Best, cos that's all you can do, but how do I decide between Taking It Easy and Being Productive? How do I know whether to Stop Wallowing or Stop Denying My Emotions? How do I know whether I'm only depressed because I'm constantly examining myself for signs? What if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy? What if I wasn't depressed until people told me I was depressed?

People say to me, of course you feel sad, you lost a baby. And I think, but that was three months ago, I should be over it by now, I'm sick of it, I want to be over it, and anyway I don't think it's as simple as that. Yes, I lost a baby, and it hurt, and it still hurts. But I also lost a book, and a job, and a future, and all my fucking certainty. And I still don't know whether I'm denying the feelings of baby-loss because I don't believe it should be a big deal. Because it was never a baby, because I can still have another.

And I can't relax, because the sums don't add up. The redundancy money isn't enough to cover a float for the late-paying clients and the start-up months and sick leave during pregnancy and maternity leave.

And then there's my body. Fat, refusing to get any thinner, and I want to comfort-eat but I can't cos I'm on a diet which is doing no fucking good and I'm not losing any weight, and I'm knackered just climbing the stairs, and I'm not getting enough exercise, and if I were to wait until my mind and body were ready I'd never have another child.

And what about babies? What about illness? What about the devil (60% chance of debilitating illness for months during pregnancy) and the deep blue sea (miscarriage)? What about the fact that NOT being ill can be a sign of a pregnancy gone wrong (as it probably was last time)? What about the fact that stress is bad for pregnancy, bad for babies, bad for mums? What about the fact that the day before I was offered redundancy my plan was to go back to work, put everything else aside, keep my head down, live a simple life and recuperate? What about the fact that every plan I've made this year has fallen through spectacularly?

And I'm wandering through life like a zombie, the tears hovering constantly, my concentration shot, my worries constant, my brain full of pain and cotton wool, telling myself no, don't succomb, it doesn't have to be like this, it'll go away, it always does, you can do it, you always do, ignore it, tell it to go away, keep going and sometimes I catch a glimpse of beautiful sky or an earful of saturating chords and the loveliness makes me ache and only hurt the more.

And now I've let it out, so maybe I can make it go away. Or should I just give in, let the tears have their way? Purge or wipe?

Pah, harumph and oh bloody hell.

That's all.


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Saturday, August 11, 2007

Moments of Sadness

They keep jumping up at me out of nowhere, and I'm sick of it.

Depression is something I stopped suffering from in any serious sense many years ago, and it's really pissing me off that it's back in my life. It's only mild compared to what many people experience - I'm not clinically depressed or anything - but I keep getting sad and tearful, and it seems to be all about the hormonal / procreation thing.

According to CBT, which I'm always extolling the virtues of and used so successfully against debilitating anxiety (and anxiety and depression are very similar in many ways) I should just tell it to go away, not give in to it, counter the catastrophic thoughts. I'm just not in the habit of doing that in relation to depression. So time to try changing my habits, I guess.

This whole making-babies thing is a pain in the arse. Well, apart from the actual making-babies thing - that part is nice - it's all the peripheral stuff that's the problem. Disappointments every 28 days, then pregnancies that go wrong. I just want to get it all out of the way, move on.

But the book stuff is great. Actually that's partly what's pissing me off: I want to be all excited about the book, and I am, but it keeps being tainted by all this lingering miscarriage sadness and monthly menstrual merry-go-round.

Pah.

All the Miscarriage Posts

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I'm a little flower, short and stout...