glitterisevil-blog

[glitterisevil-blog]

Angel Cake - a short story

“Just keep the shelves tidy, help customers find things, make sure they know they can borrow books as well as buying them…oh, and make your boss a coffee now and again!” said my new manager, Cath.

It wasn’t my dream career, volunteering in a community bookshop on Trafford’s quietest high street, but that Duke of Edinburgh award wasn’t going to award itself. So here I was, being shown the ropes (and the kettle) by Cath.

I was killing some time reorganising the teen fiction, when he tumbled through the door. The fierce January gale threatened to blow him away along with his hat. He looked seven stone wet through, with tracing paper skin and a faint smell of tobacco that clung to his weather-worn overcoat.

He moved frustratingly slowly, dragging a frail finger across each shelf, squinting through his thick glasses to make out the words on each spine.

“Go on then, don’t just stand there gawping at him – go and help him!” said an exasperated Cath.

“Can I help you with anything?” I said in my friendliest and most efficient voice. I had to say it again, only much louder the second time.

“Do you have a cookery section?” he almost shouted. “I’m baking a cake this week. Never made one in my life! The wife thinks it’s hilarious that I’m attempting my first ever angel cake aged eighty-seven!”

I directed him to the cookery section, and proudly thrust Delia Smith’s Book of Cakes into his hands.

“What Delia doesn’t know about making a cake isn’t worth knowing!” I joked, as he took the book from me and started to thumb through the pages with a look of abject concentration.

“Special occasion?” I enquired, hoping for the sake of the recipient that it wasn’t. I was sceptical at how this virgin attempt at a complicated, multi-layer sponge cake would actually turn out.

“Wedding anniversary” he beamed back at me. “Fifty years on Sunday and never a dull day” he grinned.

“Wow fifty years - is that gold?” I asked.

“Yes, I suppose we are quite old” he replied wistfully.

I flushed crimson and went to correct him, to assure him that I wasn’t casting aspersions about his age. But he seemed so beautifully lost amidst pages of meringues and roulades that I decided to stay quiet.

He fished in his pocket and found a crumpled note which he handed to me; his eyes hopeful that it would cover the cost. It didn’t.

“You can borrow books from here too you know?” I offered, hoping he’d consider this as an option. “Just leave us a few details, and then once you’ve made your cake, you can return Delia to us!”

He produced a pen from his breast pocket, jotting down his name and address in a feathery, shaky scrawl.

“I hope he comes back with that book” said Cath once he’d left, “I can just about make out his first name as Bill. The rest of it… not a clue!”

And come back he did! Bill tumbled through the door again the following Tuesday, book under his arm, ready to expand upon his chef skills.

“How did your wife like the cake?” I asked.

“She said the sponge was a bit dry but she loved it all the same” he said proudly.

“Well, it sounds like it wasn’t bad for your first attempt” I joked, “she’ll have you on that Bake Off show next!”

“She’s certainly got a taste for my cooking now” he said. His eyes suddenly dropped and he became a little less jovial. “I’m doing a lot of the cooking at the minute; her health isn’t so good you see. Anyway, she always says that good food is the path to good health. Let’s hope so eh?”

I helped him seek out a book on pies, which he faithfully returned the following week along with a new request for something on stews and casseroles.

The bookshop grew gradually busier over the coming weeks. I did some social media posts so people knew about us. We even began to serve coffee and tea as our little book-hive began to buzz with more footfall. But I mostly looked forward to Bill’s Tuesday afternoon visits and updates on his cookery projects. The benchmark of success (or failure) was always his wife’s brutal appraisal of the dish.

We’d gained some new regulars too - notably two surly older ladies who drank endless pots of tea and made scathing comments. Cath (secretly) dubbed them The Sisters Grim as they always pored over the local obituaries to see who’d died that week, and then embarked on an Earl Grey fuelled assassination of the deceased person’s character!

We were edging cautiously towards Spring when I’d suggested one week to Bill that he might like to give breadmaking a go.

“I think that Doc Hollywood chap off the telly’s done a book, hasn’t he?” asked Bill.

I smiled and dutifully went off to find what he needed. I’d maintained my habit of never correcting him.

The shop was busier than usual the following week, so much so that it was nearly 3pm by the time I noticed there’d been no sign of Bill. I wondered if he - or possibly his wife - had taken unwell. I hoped they were both alright.

Another Tuesday came and went, but Bill still hadn’t been back to see us.

As I flipped the door sign to CLOSED and cleared away teapots, I saw that The Sisters Grim had left their newspaper on the table. A notice caught my eye:

APPEAL – We’re trying to trace the family of Bill O’Donnell (aged 87)

He sadly died at Cresta Close in Altrincham on Wednesday 9 February. There are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

His late wife Jean (a retired cook at Springwood Primary School) passed away in 2018 and was his last known relative. Anyone with information about his next of kin should contact Trafford Police.

[glitterisevil-blog]

Life and after loss - my story

I was finishing my last conference call of the day and putting on my out of office message. Our bags were packed and all we had to do now was collect our son from nursery, have some tea and then get a very early night, ready for the 5am flight to Greece the next day for our very much needed family holiday.

But there was one thing I knew I needed to do. I’d missed a period this month, but I was super busy at work so it was probably just that, right? I just wanted to rule out pregnancy so I could relax, and maybe enjoy my holiday with a few beers thrown in on the beach. After all, my periods had always been erratic so I was sure it was nothing.

But then there they were. Two lines. I took the second test in the packet just to be sure and this time the lines were even stronger. I made Christian go to Tesco to get a fancy one that told you how many weeks. No denying it now, I was 2 -3 weeks pregnant!

Shocked but overjoyed was the best way to describe our emotions. We’d always thought we’d be happy with our amazing little Jude…and we were… until we found out that he was about to have a brother or sister and then we knew that this was exactly what we needed to complete our little family. Our holiday took on an extra special meaning, and I didn’t even care that I was missing out on booze on this all-inclusive holiday, because we had something so amazing around the corner that far outweighed anything else.

One morning I swam out to a big rock in the middle of the sea to watch the sunrise. I sat on the rock, stroked my belly and talked to my baby. I told him/her how surprised we were but how excited we were to meet them. I told them all about Jude and how he’d be the best big brother ever, and about all the things we’d enjoy as a family of four. This time around I vowed that I would be more relaxed, less stressed and I promised I would try and be the best mummy in the world.

When we got back home life carried on as normal. We trudged through a typical rainy autumn in Manchester, but it was tinged with a kind of “Ready Brek” glow and we both marched round with soppy smiles on our faces – I was sure people could tell! We went for a private scan when I was 6 weeks and there was our beautiful little butterbean developing nicely. The sonographer even showed me the tiny little heartbeat!

We drove home from the scan with grand plans about the future – there was so much to consider – names, what we’d need to buy, where the baby would sleep. I was happy, healthy, and confident that everything would be just fine. I’d had a textbook pregnancy with Jude and breezed through it with very minimal symptoms other than feeling a bit tired. It was still early days yet, so I told my sister and a few close friends, but it wasn’t the closely guarded state secret that it had been when I was pregnant with Jude. After all, he got here safely so I could relax. Why would this time around be any different?

Then one day, I started to get some cramping. Dr Google told me that this was perfectly normal and I remembered I’d had them with Jude so I was very relaxed about it. It was very likely to be a bit of ligament pain and even when I started getting some light spotting, I wasn’t worried. I told myself it was probably implantation bleeding which was pretty normal at this stage so I ignored it, hoping it would stop.

The following day the bleeding had got a bit heavier so I booked a private scan, again just for reassurance. I arrived at the clinic and confidently told the sonographer that I’d had some bleeding but I just wanted to check it out. She nodded kindly and asked me to lie down on the bed while she rubbed the freezing cold jelly on my stomach. Thinking back, my mind was totally preoccupied with how soon I could get myself sorted and just get out of there. I had to go straight from the clinic to collect Jude from nursery, and if she didn’t hurry up then I knew I’d hit heavy traffic and be late.

As she moved around my stomach she asked whether I was OK to have an internal scan “just to make sure” and I agreed, but I wasn’t expecting that there’d be any issues. Again more cold jelly, a bit of discomfort and a bit of angst about the time ticking away. Then she said something I was completely unprepared for…

“I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat”

I still struggle to find words to describe how I felt at that moment in time. The only way I can describe it is like when you have one of those dreams where you’re falling and you wake up with a gasp. But this time the falling sensation continued and there was no waking up from this one. I think back to that day now, and I remember thanking her for checking. I was apologising, saying how sorry I was to have put her in the situation, and how horrible it must be doing her job when there’s news like this to deliver. I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. I felt too shocked and numb. I just wanted to get out of there and go and get my baby boy from nursery and hold him and smell him. I called Christian on the way back and he was worried. He told me to just get myself home safely.

Sure enough I hit the dreaded traffic as predicted. I was in such a state of shock I’m surprised I even made it to nursery in one piece. I was just on autopilot. I arrived at nursery, plastered on a smile, chatted politely to Jude’s teacher, and listened in a vacant daze on the way home as he shared all the tiny details of his day. By the time I arrived home he was asleep in the car seat, so I carefully extracted him and laid him on the sofa to finish his blissful nap. I remember thinking at that moment how beautiful he looked, and then I was overcome with an immediate, overwhelming feeling of grief as it hit me that I would never ever know what his little brother or sister looked like and would never get to see their face.

Christian and I cried a lot that night, and there were a lot of clandestine crying sessions in the kitchen or bathroom so we could hide it from Jude. There are only so many times you can pretend you've hurt your toe, or that you just feel sad because it’s bedtime – toddlers may be little but they’re not stupid!

The next few days passed in a total fog as I found myself feeling completely lost and without a sense of purpose. So I did what I always do to anchor myself and threw myself into work, where I felt safe and where my world hadn’t completely changed. We were planning a big event and I distracted myself by delivering goodie bags all over Manchester, listening to the radio to keep myself distracted. I knew that I needed to call someone and find out what I needed to do from a medical perspective but I just wasn’t sure what to do, or who to phone, or where to even start. There was no guidance on any of this, and the hospital website or my midwife notes don't tell you what to do if your baby dies.

I wish this was the bit where I could say that the NHS were amazing and wrapped their arms around me, guiding me skilfully through a seamless process of management and support – but this couldn’t have been further from the truth.

This was now November 2020 and we were still in the peak of the pandemic. Things weren’t looking good as infection rates were spiking and the writing was pretty much on the wall for Christmas – we knew another lockdown, or at least more tough restrictions, were just around the corner. This meant that our NHS was feeling the strain and things were already very broken.

I was passed from department to department and given different advice about where to call or who to speak to. Nobody seemed to know what to do with me. I was given one phone number that was supposed to be for the Early Pregnancy Unit but it just rang out continuously. One day a man answered and in sheer exasperation of speaking to an actual human I just blurted out “Hi, not sure if you can help me but I’m 8 weeks pregnant and my baby has died and I don’t know what to do”

The phone went very silent, and he sheepishly explained that he worked at the hospital but he was in the finance department and the switchboard had mixed up the phone lines. It was all just so surreal that I joked with him about how he’d have a lot of women discussing their vaginas with him today unless he got the issue fixed! There I was again – cracking jokes and trying to make other people feel better because I just didn’t know what else to do or how I was supposed to be handling everything.

Eventually I rang my GP and spoke to the receptionist and told her what had happened to me, and asked if I could make an appointment. “I’m so sorry to hear your news” she said. It completely broke me, and I sat there on that call and realised why. “Thank you” I said to her “because you are the first person in three days I’ve spoken to about this who’s actually acknowledged that I’ve lost my baby and has been kind to me!”

I won't rake over the catalogue of errors and lack of support from the hospital because on reflection, I’ve processed it all now and I guess they were just trying their best, desperately trying to keep their heads above water in the middle of Covid like the rest of us. But pretty much every interaction with the hospital was painful and draining and I had to explain again and again what had happened. What shocked me most was how the people I spoke to displayed pretty much zero empathy and understanding. You’d have thought I was calling up to talk about something like removal of an ingrown toenail, or book a flu jab – it just all felt so impersonal.

Eventually I was given three options:

Wait and see whether nature took its course, which would mean my body rejected the baby naturally

Have medical management which was essentially a pessary to bring on a miscarriage

Opt for surgical removal of the womb products (yep - that was actually the phrase that the doctor used… womb products!)

Option 1 was out of the question. I didn’t feel I could bear to carry on day to day, knowing that I was carrying a dead baby inside me. And as for “nature taking it’s course” well – me and Mother Nature were barely on speaking terms by this point. I was furious at how callous and cruel she’d been, so why should I trust her now?

Option 3 involved sedation and possible general anaesthetic and I really didn’t want to spend any more time than I had to in hospital in a pandemic, so I opted for medical management.

The idea was that you insert a vaginal pessary with a tablet, go to sleep and it brings on labour within 12 – 24 hours. I knew this would be hard and horrible but I braced myself for the fact that I was going to go through a delivery but at the end of it I wouldn’t have an exhausted but smiling photo for social media with a cute wrinkly baby pressed against me. It all just felt so unfair that I had to go through that pain but have nothing to show for it. Still, I got home from hospital, had a big glass of wine, a nice bath, tried to relax, used the meds and waited. And waited. And waited. I went to bed and expected to be woken by labour starting but it never came.

Another trip to the hospital a few days later and I was asked if I wanted to give the meds another go. I agreed, and set off home again to repeat the process all over again…and once again, nothing! I was furious with my body – why could it not get anything right? So it couldn’t manage to carry my baby safely, but it wasn’t willing to do what it needed to deliver it either? Why could it not even do the simplest thing to help me out? I blamed myself completely and became so angry and resentful of my body. What was wrong with me?

A few days later I was back at the hospital again where I sat anxiously in the grim waiting room. By now we were approaching Christmas and one of the staff was merrily hanging tinsel on a tree in the Early Pregnancy Unit and whistling festive tunes. I remember one poor woman coming out of a side room sobbing (presumably having had horrific news about her own pregnancy) just as the sound of Noddy Holder screaming “It’s Chriiiiiiistmaaaaaaaas!” reverberated across the ward thanks to Heart Radio! It was just the most surreal thing and against my better judgement I just started to giggle at the utter contrast of this completely bizarre situation I’d been catapulted into. When I told Christian the story later that day, I realised that this was the first time I’d actually laughed in weeks!

I eventually saw the doctor and was told that surgical removal was the only way, but I still couldn’t bear to think about my baby just being sucked up into a machine and disposed of as if it never mattered. I begged and pleaded with the doctor to let me have one more try with the medication and she reluctantly agreed, but told me that if this didn’t work I’d have to undergo the surgical removal under anaesthetic or I'd be at risk of infection.

I don’t know what was different about this time, and whether it was physical or mental but it was a case of third time lucky. I began to get strong contractions at about 11pm that night and lots of very heavy bleeding. I took painkillers and tried to get some sleep but it was just too painful and I laboured for most of the night. Eventually my baby was delivered in its amniotic sac, next to the placenta at 6am on 1st December. Tiny and perfect, but sadly just never to be part of this world.

What were we supposed to do now? Because a baby is classed as a foetus before 24 weeks then there’s no obligation to register a death and medically it's viewed as a collection of cells. When I eventually found the strength to call the hospital to tell them I’d delivered the baby, and asked what I should do now, one of the nurses said it was up to me but I could dispose of it in the toilet if I wanted! This really shocked me, and I’d love to say I gave her some very astute feedback about how insensitive she was. However I’m afraid to say that I just put the phone down and took myself off to bed where I stayed all weekend, crying and looking at my scan photo. I wish I'd had more strength now to tell her how awful that was.

We eventually planted a beautiful bay tree in the garden and buried our baby under it in a little ceremony. We also buried a little note alongside him to tell him all the things we wished we could’ve said to him. I always say “him” because whilst I don’t know for certain, I always imagine that we would’ve had another little boy, a little carbon copy of Jude. My note that went alongside him apologised over and over again as I blamed myself and my body for letting him down and not being able to bring him safely into the world.

As weeks passed, I threw myself into my job and kept busy. Things were fine when I was busy and I would work ridiculously long days and then do things after work with Jude to distract myself, because when I stopped I had time to think. And when I had time to think I got sad. REALLY sad. I dreaded bedtime when I’d lie there awake, alone with my thoughts and my sheer, all-consuming sadness.

Thankfully I stumbled across The Miscarriage Association website, which shared very open but heartbreaking stories of miscarriage and loss. I began to realise that all these feelings were perfectly normal and gradually I stopped blaming myself and hating my body. I decided that I would channel my energies into something positive, so I signed up to do a half marathon in September 2021 which I wanted to run to raise money for The Miscarriage Association.

The half marathon was not to be…as in March this year I found out that I was pregnant again. This brought the same shock, but this time the excitement was replaced by terror. I already knew that two blue lines don’t always equal a baby, so I spent the first 12 weeks in a constant state of anxiety, convinced that my body wasn’t up to the job and that the same thing would happen again.

Anyone who has had a pregnancy after a loss will understand the panic and worry that each new days brings with it. Rather than thinking “I’m a day closer to meeting my baby” you think “today is the day that things are bound to go wrong” and I’ve spent the last 7 months checking for blood, freaking out at every ache, pain and twinge, and feeling an overwhelming sense of dread at every scan – convinced there won’t be a heartbeat again. My brain continually tells me that it's only a matter of time before the worst happens again.

I have eight weeks left until my due date, and I wake up every day convinced that I’ve just borrowed him for all this time and today will be the day he’ll leave me. On top of the usual pregnancy tiredness, I’m exhausted through carrying the constant guilt about not enjoying this pregnancy. I feel selfish and ungrateful when so many people in the world just don’t fall pregnant again after a loss. I know I'm one of the lucky ones though, and my heart truly goes out to those people who desperately long for a healthy pregnancy.

Miscarriage is still so taboo and it makes people really uncomfortable to talk about it. When Meghan Markle talked about her miscarriage (which happened around the same time as mine) I was shocked at how cruel people were towards her, saying she’d made it up for attention and other disgusting things. I can only assume that they reacted like this because her willingness to discuss it so openly made people uncomfortable and they just didn’t know any other way to deal with it.

There definitely needs to be more support and understanding out there for women who’ve lost pregnancies, and for their partners. This could be something as simple as teaching medical professionals about respectful and empathetic ways to connect with women who have experienced pregnancy loss, or learning how the language they use can have such an impact.

The Miscarriage Association and Tommy’s do some fantastic work in this space and I hope, all being well, to be able to run that half marathon for them next year. There’ll be some tears at the finish line (a combination of emotion and some pretty mean blisters, probably!) but my experience has made me determined to raise money and awareness of this.

[glitterisevil-blog]

Outrage Against The Machine

Inhabitants of Britain were once described by philosopher Adam Smith as “a nation of shopkeepers” not as an intended slur, but more as a light hearted observation on the nature of the British public.

If he were to try and form a more modern evaluation, I think a “nation of outraged knobheads” would be far more accurate.

Because let’s face it; we’re not happy unless there’s something to be completely, needlessly overly outraged about are we? I don’t mean the usual po-faced moaning that we all like to indulge in from time to time. You know – the cancelled trains, the rainy bank holidays, the uncollected wheelie bins. No, I’m talking about the seething, irrational level of outrage that causes shallow breathing, increased pulse rates, and veins to pop on foreheads as we type furiously and venomously about it all over social media.

Now don’t get me wrong, our current government consistently gives us some pretty solid material when it comes to sparking outrage. From preposterous expenses scandals, to deporting people who have a right to live and work here, to illegal wars overseas….all compounded by the fact that we have a half-witted, self-serving, real life version of Tim-Nice-But-Dim fronting much of it, in the portly misshapen form of BoJo. And he’s one of the more educated ones, scarily.

In today’s era of social media, we have developed a myriad of colourful, creative ways to voice our outrage. Every other day sees petitions ignited on Facebook, rows started on political threads, and memes circulating Twitter depicting Trump’s various spats with North Korea. And it allows for the slick organisation of protest marches without weeks and weeks of prior notice: Save our NHS, give our teachers and nurses a fair wage, don’t drop bombs on Syrian children….completely agree with all that, along with how it’s expressed.

But what about when good old British outrage spills over? What happens when the outraged become the outrageous in their blind-sighted, blinkered quest for all that (they feel) is right and fair and good?  What about when a person is so determined to be outraged that it defies all known rules of logic and common sense?

Take for instance the recent case of the intruder who was stabbed, and later died of his injuries when he broke into the home of a pensioner. The British public were outraged – outraged I tell you – that the police had the audacity to take the pensioner into police custody for questioning. Because we all know that in the event of finding a dead burglar, any decent policeman would have had the good sense to simply nudge the corpse into the nearest hedgerow with his foot, and say nothing more about it. Forget the fact that there’s probably some quite firmly established protocol around finding a dying, bleeding person with stab wounds just yards from an obvious crime scene, he should’ve just politely ignored it, given the pensioner a cheeky wink, and gone about his other policing business.

And come on, it should’ve been obvious what had happened. The burglar would surely have had the good sense to be dressed in the globally identifiable burglar uniform of a striped jumper, mask, and a sack entitled SWAG draped over his shoulder as he staggered from the property? So it’s disgusting that this pensioner, upon reporting that he’d stabbed someone, should have been asked to go to the police station of his own free will, and answer questions about what went on in his kitchen that had led to the rather stabby death of another person. #Outraged

Because an Englishman’s home is his castle isn’t it? Any decent, civil human being would’ve done the same. And nothing shows the world how decent and civil you are than ripping down floral tributes left by the burglar’s family and stamping on them in the street like you’re performing some kind of Native American rain dance.

And so the whole debacle ended up with a turf war between the burglar’s family and outraged residents, causing even more anxiety for the pensioner. Well, that doesn’t matter – because we are outraged that floral tributes have been left for someone who we don’t think deserved them.

So it’s causing a media circus that’s making the pensioner and his wife fearful of returning to their home? Doesn’t matter – we are English, and therefore we reserve the right to remain jolly well outraged about it all, and we are staying right here in the thick of this media frenzy, feeding the press with quotes (outraged ones of course) and jumping up and down on bunches of fucking chrysanthemums to show just how outraged we are!

Because it goes without saying that anyone who’s committed any offence, ever, should immediately rescind all rights to be loved by their children. I once nicked some hair dye and a foundation from Superdrug when I was fifteen, during the school holidays. In view of this atrocity, I’m guessing Jude won’t so much as shed a tear when I pop my clogs, never mind want to write me a card or buy any flowers. After all I am, by definition, a criminal. So the best I’m holding out for is being left out in a bin bag in the hope that Trafford Council will just incinerate me along with the dead foxes found on Carrington Spur, and the fly-tipped armchairs. Although based on the frequency and effectiveness of our current bin collections, I wouldn’t hold out too much hope.

 So on to another Great British #outraged moment – the Windrush scandal. In a recent poll the majority of the British public were deeply upset about the whole thing. They were incandescent with fury at the treatment of these families who had done nothing more than hope for a better life somewhere else. The families who came over on HMS Windrush uprooted their lives and left behind their culture to travel to Great Britain. To a country where they felt their families would be welcomed and their skills and talents would be nurtured, put to good use in the armed forces and the NHS. And now look! Despite the fact that they have a legal right to work here, and have propped up the NHS, and the whole thing will have caused them immense worry and sleepless nights, they might get sent back! We are outraged!!

Erm…..can someone just remind me again what percentage of people voted for Brexit? Was it fifty one percent? So fifty one percent of British citizens are absolutely fine with 2.9 million Europeans in the UK (Who also came for a better life. And are also propping up the NHS. And who will also feel anxious and unwelcome) being put on a ship and told to fuck off back to where they came from? But they’re simply outraged that it might happen to 57,000 people from Antigua?

“Oh, but these people are from Commonwealth countries” the Brexiteers will protest.

Ah right I see, that’s OK then. As long as we’re not extending the same level of empathy for any of those bloody Poles, or Lithuanians….coming over here with their degrees, and extensive medical skills, and surgery specialisms, taking all the clinical jobs that the NHS are struggling to fill.

I doubt most people in this country could describe what the Commonwealth is, or name the countries in it. But don’t let a little thing like hypocrisy get in the way of your right to be #outraged eh Great Britain?

My above point doesn’t seek to delve into the rights and wrongs of Windrush, or even Brexit – but more to examine the attitudes and behaviours of a nation of people for whom being outraged has become a national passtime, along with football, watching Bake Off, or tinkering down the allotment of a weekend.

The most prolific example of when this need to be outraged eroded all common sense and basic human decency was the protests taking place outside Alder Hey Hospital about Alfie Evans. Because nothing stirs up a bit of #outrage more than when sick kids are at the heart of it, right?

I’ve no doubt that the protests began, the way these things always do, as a peaceful group of well meaning people who wanted to stop waxing lyrical about it on Facebook and instead turn their strong feelings into something practical, like being at the hospital to show support for Alfie’s parents. Absolutely fine. 

So how the fuck did that end up with hospital worker’s cars being pelted with eggs? With doctors being spat on and called Nazis and murderers? With security being ramped up at the hospital to such an extent that it’s costing thousands of pounds per day to protect the staff, other parents and other children who are patients on the same ward?

I’ll tell you how: because simply turning up and making your feelings known in a measured, civilised way with a placard and a flask of tea just doesn’t cut it these days, does it? 

So to show just how much you believe Alfie’s parents should be allowed to do their best for their child, you cause the lock down of a hospital wing that prevents another parent from being with their critically ill toddler. To demonstrate the strength of your support for this poor little boy, you deny several other children the opportunity to convalesce in a quiet, calm hospital environment.

Because you are simply outraged about it all aren’t you? Because on top of the stress of having a critically ill baby, his parents absolutely need to be aware RIGHT NOW of just how upset all this has made you, don’t they? After all, if this was your child you’d expect the public to be so outraged that they’d be willing to assault medical professionals over it too, wouldn’t you?

Again, the point above doesn’t attempt to pick a side in the Alfie Evans case – because that’s kind of the whole point. Sometimes you don’t have to pick a side. You don’t have to be #TeamAlfie or #TeamAlderHey if it’s possible to understand the merits of both sides in what must be a horrendous, heart-wrenching situation for all involved.

It doesn’t mean you’re disrespecting the pensioner, or siding with the burglar because you can clearly appreciate that his death probably made his family a bit sad. It doesn’t make you some kind of leftie apologist, just a human being with a measured, rational view of how the world works.

You can have opinions, you can feel things about issues and hey, you’re even allowed to be outraged about some things. But before you go all #outraged on social media or in real life, please just check that your actions aren’t going to end up being more offensive than what you were outraged about in the first place.

[glitterisevil-blog]

It’s a Numbers Game

I’ve always been a measurer. I’ve gone through life selecting hobbies that were supposed to start off as fun, but which have ultimately ended up with me measuring success against progress. And the quickest way to suck all the joy out of any hobby is to start attributing numbers to it.

I may have been eating fresh, healthy and adventurous new meals inspired by my slimming club… but there’s a number on the scales that’ll tell me if I’ve succeeded or failed each week. Improved my life expectancy by doing a Saturday morning parkrun? I’ll be given a time later that day that will tell me how fast I was. Whilst parkrun is a run and not a race, it won’t stop me poring over the time, wondering if I could’ve gone a bit quicker, and vowing to improve upon it next week. Fun is dead – long live the statistic.

So it was hardly surprising that with a new baby arriving on the scene, I would naturally start to measure a whole host of new things surrounding this monumental life change. Alongside the technology I’d installed to track how many feeds he’d had, or how many wet and dirty nappies I’d changed (yes there are actual apps for these things!) the key statistic I became fixated on was the amount of sleep – or lack thereof – that I was getting.

My trusty Fitbit, ever helpful with its sleep tracking feature, would assist me in this task, monitoring how much shut-eye I was actually getting and then presenting me with my results in the morning. If I’d miraculously managed 7 hours (For clarity - this is 7 hours cobbled together in bits and pieces over the night) then I’d be praised with a little green star on my home page…. Congratulations! You met your goal! It would say. And I’d be chuffed to have smashed a stat, hit a target.

If Jude had one of those nights where he woke up and cried every hour because he didn’t quite understand the world yet, then I might’ve scraped 4-ish hours. You didn’t meet your sleep goal blinked a little sad-faced emoji.

But don’t worry…to conquer the lows of being sleep-shamed by my own electronic device, I’d have the option to click on a link where I could peruse some “helpful” hints and tips to achieve a better quality sleep.

Apparently I should be going to bed at the same time each night, misting my pillow with lavender, ensuring all distractions are eliminated (might struggle with that one seeing as babies are for life, not just for Christmas) and be mindful of my caffeine and alcohol intake. This last one made me laugh the loudest.

Ultimately, I knew precisely why I hadn’t slept well and who was responsible. I would bury my nose into the neck of the beautiful little sleep-thief curled up next to me and inhale deeply, stealing all of his new-baby-just-woken-up smell. A smell that only a mummy could love; the scent of fabric softener from his tiny pyjamas, mixed with the slightly acidic aroma of night time reflux. And despite the fact that my eyes felt grittier than a Lynda La Plant drama – all was immediately forgiven, no matter how many sad faced emojis I’d accrued.

Not that this stopped me obsessing over the amount of sleep I was getting, mind. When I upgraded my Fitbit I got one that could give me even more stats to fuel my obsession. Oh yes, this gadget could even tell me what type of sleep I was getting! 3 hours light sleep, 1hr REM sleep, and only 12 minutes deep sleep! What?! Isn’t deep sleep is the one that restores all your brain cells? 12 minutes? Jesus, how am I not medically dead? Maybe I’m on the brink of death – or a breakdown. Maybe that’s why I found the TV remote in the freezer last week, or why I couldn’t remember my own date of birth when I had to fill in the electoral register form.

So, with this wealth of data available to me at the touch of a button, I approached “Project Sleep” with gusto, delighted that I now had all these slick stats at my disposal.

Lovely Patient Husband (LPH) has been in the spare room for a good few months now. He’s not been banished or anything. It’s a mutual decision that we’ve arrived at because this arrangement allows him to get a full night’s slumber so that he can come home after work and take over kiddo-duty. Some nights I have literally thrust our son into his startled arms as he’s walked through the door, and stomped upstairs for a bath or a snooze, before he’s even had a chance to put down his laptop bag.  

A good night’s kip also allows LPH to function in his job while he’s there. Oh, and to drive to his place of work without falling asleep at the wheel and colliding with a lorry  – something else that my mind likes to play out at about 3am. Another top tip to help with restful slumber (strangely, not featured on the Fitbit’s Sleep Insights) is to not continually re-enact the tragic death of your partner at ridiculous hours of the night. Who knew?

So back to being knackered and very, very ratty. So ratty in fact, that you could stick some whiskers on me and relocate me to a sewer. One night at 9pm I yawned out some words that sounded vaguely like “God I’m knackered!”

“You must be. I know how you feel, me too” proclaimed LPH. Bless him. He thought he was showing empathy. Maybe even a bit of solidarity in a right there with ya buddy kind of way. Oh, what a mistake.

Because f**k right off! Nobody was going to steal the exhaustion crown from me! It was mine and I’d bloody well earnt it with every unsociably timed breast feed, every time I woke to a cough or snuffle in the night, every time I got up for a wee and couldn’t drop back off to sleep until I’d heard him breathe for a bit. This title was mine, and I wasn’t up for sharing…

“You f****ng what?!!” I scoffed. “You don’t know what exhausted even is! Look at this…. Go on…look at it. LOOK AT IT!!” I yelled as I thrust my phone, with its affirming Fitbit sleep stats in his face like a demented banshee. “18 minutes of deep sleep! 18 bastard minutes!”

As LPH stared at me with a look that I can only describe as imminent fear for his wellbeing, it dawned on me that perhaps tracking my sleep when I had a new baby could actually be doing more harm than good. After all, if you’re tracking your weight, or waist measurements, or run times then in theory there’s an element of control there. You can usually exert some influence to make the numbers swing in the direction that you want. With a baby, it’s all totally on their terms – do I realistically have any control over how well a newborn sleeps? Probably not – I’d be a multi millionaire if I did! So why am I punishing myself by bothering to measure it?

Sometimes I feel like I’ve had a decent night’s sleep. I feel refreshed, alert and ready for the day. Then I check my stats – CRASH – back down I come. Only 5 hours. Well that’s it then -  I can’t possibly feel this good on 5 hours, it must be a false positive. Activate ratbag mode.

 I sometimes wonder whether ignorance is, in fact, bliss. Are we better off being in the dark about certain things?

Recently two of my good friends have been totally on point with their diets and exercise routines, to the extent where their before and after pictures would be totally Insta-worthy, if they were the type of people who’d spend time Insta-bragging about it instead of just getting on with it, obviously. Their body shapes have transformed beyond recognition and they’ve needed to buy teenier tinier clothes. So they’re ecstatic right? Well yes, they were….until they made the fatal mistake of playing the numbers game.

“I felt thinner today” sobbed one friend. “My clothes felt looser, I wasn’t bloated, so I was convinced that I must’ve lost at least a few lbs. Stepped on the scales – EXACTLY THE SAME!” she lamented.

“That’s nothing” exclaimed my other friend. “I haven’t weighed myself in nearly two years, but I had to be weighed at Boots today and I’m not much different from when I started my fitness journey two years ago! It’s actually soul destroying. What’s the point?!”

You’ll kindly note that both of these ladies have dropped several dress sizes, have seen their times to run a 5k plummet week on week, they’re smashing it on the fitness front, and have built so much muscle that I’m surprised they’ve not had to get planning permission…yet despite this, the scales hover judgementally in the background like some kind of pagan god, needing to be appeased and obeyed with human sacrifice.

So why are we always looking to piss on our own party? Why can’t we just enjoy things for what they are, without trying to obsessively measure things?

Once upon a time, a retrospective measure of something really killed the joy for me, when it turned out that the marathon I’d done in 2015 had actually been measured incorrectly and as a result, no longer stood! Oh yes, for three years, from 2013 to 2015 the Manchester Marathon route had unwittingly been 380 metres short, meaning that over 24,000 people (me included) hadn’t technically done a marathon! Do a marathon – nobody can ever take that glory away from you, they said. Ahem….

Now rationally, I walked (ok, hobbled) WAY more than 380 metres back to the car park after the race, and had also walked a significant distance to actually get to the start line. So did I cover 26.2 miles on foot that day? Yes I did. Did I well up with tears when I saw that my mum and sister had made a good luck sign near the halfway point, which spurred me on to keep running? Yes I did. Did I feel amazingly proud of myself when I crossed the finish line, despite all my blisters and chafing? Yes I did. But did I run a marathon? No, I did not. And in the blink of a measurement, my achievement disappeared quicker than the Mars Bar in my post-race goodie bag.

I guess the moral of this tale is that measurements are great for some situations (like, erm, mapping out a marathon route!) but completely pointless in others. If it’s not within your sphere of influence, or if it will inevitably lead to you feeling worse if the numbers don’t swing in your favour, then step away from the stats – your self esteem and your sanity will thank you for it!

[glitterisevil-blog]

Mother’s Gonna Work It Out

So I had a KIT day today. That’s a Keeping In Touch day for those unfamiliar with the term, or for those who thought it was maybe something to do with Kit Harington. Or KitKats. Sadly it’s neither.

I’m lucky enough to work for a company who are extremely supportive of those on parental leave, and KIT days (whilst not mandatory) are wholly encouraged. They are a good opportunity to do the odd few days here and there, and to get a feel for what’s going on so that when you do eventually return to work, you don’t feel like an H&M-clad rabbit caught in the headlights.

For me, it was mainly an opportunity to indulge in some minor smugness at how the place has (surely) crumbled to dust without me in the office every day. I expected to walk into something that resembled a scene from Mad Max, with burnt out vehicles, explosions going off, and everyone running around screaming.  Disappointingly (but also, secretly  – thank CHRIST!) the place is still standing. Rather boringly, all the stuff that I waddled away from in May is completely under control. And whilst my entire world has altered beyond all recognition since I last logged onto my laptop, everything back at the office is pretty much business as usual. Except they’ve changed the supplier of coffee in the canteen. Meh….

“Going back into work for the whole day? Oooh you must be dreading that” said someone to me recently, as though I’d just told them I’d elected to undergo root canal surgery with just a shot of rum as an anaesthetic.

Dreading it? Are you effin’ kidding me?! I was bouncing around last night like Buddy the Elf on Christmas Eve. Despite the fact that yes, it’s “just” going back to work, here’s why today was so bloody brilliant:

 1.       Someone asked my opinion today. Yes, I know! Asked ME my opinion! About an actual THING! A WORK THING!!  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t anything major like which aircraft should adjust its altitude to avoid a mid-air collision (I wonder if Air Traffic Control do KIT days?!) but it was still nice to be asked my opinion about something.  Actually that’s a bit unfair. I’m asked for my opinion at home all the time. However such tenders for my wisdom tend to be along the lines of whether I think that yellowish mark on the duvet is shit or vomit, or whether it’s worth starting a new episode of Game of Thrones before the Calpol wears off.

 2.       There were biscuits. But not just that – they were chocolate biscuits. And I ate one, and so did other people as we discussed what had been happening and what projects were on the horizon. And as I watched people eat biscuits I realised something truly liberating – when the crumbs fell on the floor, it wasn’t down to me to ensure those crumbs made their way to the bin! Whilst it’s true to say that none of my colleagues were exactly tidy with biscuit crumbs, it was also nice to note that nobody attempted to shove an entire biscuit into their mouth, orally maul it for so long that it resembled wallpaper paste, and then spit it back out onto the floor.

  3.       I had an adult conversation. Now, you’ll note that this is distinctly different than merely “conversing with adults” as in mum-world, these two things are not the same. Clearly I speak to people at baby groups, but the conversations are all around whose baby is or isn’t sleeping/teething/crawling/rolling over and all that bollocks. It’s lovely to chat to other parents at baby groups, it really is, but I’m yet to come across a scenario where anyone sits down, wipes up a patch of baby vom from their t-shirt and opens with “A bit of sick – ha! Not as embarrassing as the latest leaked Brexit report eh?!”

On the whole I find the dads in the groups a bit more game for conversation that’s NOT about our respective semen-demons. You can throw in something general about the football transfer window, and as soon as they realise you’re not about to talk about your fanny, or show them your episiotomy scar then they’re generally willing to open up a bit….no pun intended.

 4.       I earned some money. The beauty of KIT days is that you get paid for them…..hurrah!  And I can’t exactly say it was one of the most stressful days I’ve ever had in my life (see above points about chatting and eating biscuits) so I got to dip into the world of paid work without bringing any of the stressful malarkey back home with me.

 5.       I appreciated my little guy all the more for being away from him. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I firmly believe this is true for me. I knew he was safe with his Aunty Danielle – the main risk was him being kissed to death – so I could forget about him (in a good way) for 7 hours and just look forward to seeing him when I got home. And as most of my meetings finished by 4:30, I made sure that I really tested out this absence/fondness theory in full, by calling at the supermarket on the way home. It was amazing to be able to browse leisurely around the fruit aisles without having to stop anyone grabbing and biting into Conference pears that I had no prior intention of buying .Oh, and also:  just a sexy, bijou little shopping trolley for me tonight - no big bulky child seat trolley on THIS shopping trip, motherfuckers!

 6.       I felt a bit like the old me again. It’s true to say that I had a fair few “brain fart” moments where I completely forgot the names of projects, people and terminology that was once second nature to me. But I defy anyone to hear the Paw Patrol song every bastard morning and not find themselves a few functioning brain cells lighter than they were previously.

So there we are – work trousers are in the wash, wine is poured and I’ve got another KIT day arranged for next week. Although this time I will make sure that there are definitely KitKats.

[glitterisevil-blog]

What Christmas Means to Me

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year” or so the song goes. But not if you’re someone who has mild Aspergers, OCD, or an awkward combination of the two. Even as I write this I’m acutely aware that I’m about to make myself sound like the biggest arsehole known to mankind, but I wanted to share this post to give people a bit of an insight into the way my brain works, and so that when I’m being particularly “un-festive” in the run up to Christmas, there’s a bit more understanding around why. I’m not just being a twat, I’m really not. There are elements of it that I genuinely struggle to cope with.

 Anybody with an Autism Spectrum Disorder or anyone who has a family member on this spectrum will know how difficult certain life situations can be. I’ve read about families who can’t have a Christmas tree, or can’t unwrap presents because they have children with severe Autism who find the whole thing far too stressful. 

Now, at no point here am I implying that this is my situation, nor am I looking to enter into any sort of woe-off contest with any readers of this post. This isn’t about me wanting sympathy; it’s about being able to express my feelings. Year after year I’ve been labelled a Grinch because I’m not skipping through Tesco whistling Jingle Bells whilst cheerfully stockpiling boxes of Quality Street, nor will you find me watching Muppet’s Christmas Carol the minute that Bonfire Night is done with. And I need to explain why…

 As long as I can remember I’ve found the concept of ambiguity quite stressful, and I detest having a lack of control over things. Everyday stuff that most people do without a second thought can cause me untold degrees of angst.

For example, imagine I had to park in a car park in an unfamiliar town, in order to catch a train somewhere. It wouldn’t be enough to just turn up and park there, oh no. I’d need to look online to see how many spaces the car park had to evaluate my chances of getting a space. I’d then need to understand the payment system in advance. Do I take a ticket and pay upon exit? Or do I pay upon entering? If so, will they take my card or will I need coins? Does the car park have a one way system or not? If that car park is full, where is the nearest back-up car park and what’s the distance from the train station? Should I just assume the worst and leave the house twenty minutes earlier than planned in case I need to use that back up car park and then have to walk to the station to get my train on time? It’s unlikely that I’d sleep particularly well the night before the journey either, with much of this going around in my head.

And inevitably, I turn up with plenty of time to spare, grab a coffee on the platform, and catch my train, just like all the normal folk. Everyone just assumes I’m really organised. It takes a lot of cortisol for me to appear this organised.

 So, onto Christmas…descending on us each year like a giant, expensive, tinsel-covered cold sore that we all felt erupting but had no power to stop. Here’s the bit where I make myself sound like a moaning, ungrateful bastard as I list the things I can’t cope with about Christmas. To all those “Buddy the Elf” types amongst you – pin back those pointy ears and brace yourselves….

  Christmas cards

I can’t even express how delighted I was a few years back, when the trend to donate to charity rather than send Christmas cards became a thing. I seem to recall that there may have been some actual air punching involved! Perhaps I’d now be spared the ordeal of cards infiltrating my home over December, sneaking in slowly and nestling themselves Trojan horse style between the electricity bills and bank letters. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to see as many of them lying there on my doormat alluringly, expecting to be unsheathed, admired and displayed in my home for all to see. Well no, I’m not spared that ordeal. Because the majority of people will still send cards, because they think it’s nice for me to receive a card, assuring me that they really want me to have a merry Christmas.

 Someone should pass an Act of Parliament that forces manufacturers to make Christmas cards a uniform size, shape and colour, and then perhaps I might have a chance at a merry Christmas. As it goes, I spend most of December putting them up and continually rearranging them in some semblance of size and shape order, until a new one appears in a random colour or format (a fucking purple star shaped card this year – seriously?!) and throws the entire display into chaos. Don’t even get me started on cards with glitter on FFS.  If you want me to have a merry Christmas, just tell me via text, email or Facebook and then I’ll know that you really mean it.

 Christmas trees and decorations

One day I will live in a mansion that could easily be the main feature article in Ideal Homes magazine. It will have a lounge the size of a church hall, with sleek polished wooden floors that would be the envy of any bowling alley. This lounge will contain nothing but a large sofa, a wall mounted television, a coffee table, and a textured rug. When this day comes, I might consider the concept of a massive, brightly coloured, flashing Christmas tree encroaching on my space. Whilst I live in a modest house, with a small lounge, that looks like an overflow warehouse for Toys R Us due to the amount of baby-related shit that already takes up an entire corner, I’m not entertaining one.

Based on my feelings towards a tree, I’m sure you don’t need me to explain why I won’t drape tinsel round my windows, or have a 2ft high, battery operated snowman in the house that talks to you each time you walk past it.

 Presents

This is the bit that carries the most immense guilt for me because it’s the part I really wish that I could enjoy. Those amazing people that you love dearly and who love you back, have taken time out of their busy week to spend their hard earned cash on choosing a gift for you. They’ve taken the knowledge that they have about you - the colours you like, the interests you have, your shoe size or body shape – and have used it to select a gift that’s just for you. That’s just lovely.

Except its not lovely if you’re me. Because now, a collection of unfamiliar items that I didn’t need or ask for have invaded my “safe space.”

And as well as now having to find homes for all these items, I’m also expected to show delight and gratitude to the giver of each item, and make up nonsense along the lines of “wow I’ve wanted one of these for ages!” when presented with a fucking spiraliser. This, my husband tells me, is what polite and normal people say at Christmas when presented with a gift.

Spoiler alert: I’ve not wanted one for ages, I’m sorry to tell you that this is a barefaced lie. Had this been the case I would already own one, as by now I would’ve identified some deep, primal urge to carve courgettes into the shape of spaghetti, and then trotted along to John Lewis to buy whichever gadget best made this happen.

So we can all safely assume that the fact that I didn’t already own a spiraliser means that I didn’t really want a spiraliser. But that’s a moot point because now I have one. And I have to store it somewhere in my house logical enough to convince the giver that I will use it (like the cutlery draw) and not somewhere unconvincing (like the wheelie bin) but each time I go to get a fork from the draw, seeing that bastard spiraliser sat there taking up space will remind me that I’m a horrible, ungrateful person who doesn’t deserve nice people in my life.

Now, gift cards are great, because they mean that I am in full control of all the purchases that will come into my house, and such purchases will cross the threshold following a great deal of prior consideration like whether they are needed, where they will live, and how they will be used. The beauty of the gift card is that if it happens to be for somewhere that I won’t ever shop, then I can simply choose not to use it, or re-gift it to someone who will. Yes, gift cards are good.

 Food

Franz Kafka once said that so long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being. So based on this logic, during the month of December I must have solved more questions than The Beast, The Governess, and The Dark Destroyer from The Chase put together, because I literally DID NOT STOP EATING.

Food and drink are my Achilles heel, cheese especially so. Wine definitely. So having copious quantities of them around the house within easy spreading and pouring distance makes for a very difficult and uncontrolled time of year for me.

If I could merely enjoy them for what they were, and worry about the weight gain in January like everyone else does then it wouldn’t be as stressful. But that’s not how someone like me works, with my daily (sometimes twice daily) weigh ins, or my need to exercise excessively at the gym to erase the calories from a “bad” food day. Food should be enjoyed and respected. It should be shared with friends and family. It should be fuel for exercise. Food should not take the form of a tin of Roses, shovelled with wild abandon into your mouth, one after another, until you feel so violently ill that you have to put yourself to bed to resist the urge to throw them all up and start again like some sort of Roman emperor.

My unhealthy relationship with food can pretty much be kept in check from January to November because at no other point in the year do people find it acceptable to bring home a 24 pack of mince pies every time they nip to the garage for diesel. At no other point do we give ourselves carte blanche to get as fat as we want because we’re supposed to “eat drink and be merry” at this time of year. The entire concept of excessive Christmas eating, for me, dredges up far too many demons that I’d rather not face. Except not only am I expected to face them, I’m expected to welcome them in, pour them a Baileys and offer them a Ferrero Rocher because these demons have Christmas fucking jumpers on. It’s bollocks.

 So there you have it, a little glimpse of what it’s like to live inside my head over the festive period. And nobody needs to remind me of how unbelievably lucky I am to have these “problems” at Christmas because I already know this to be true, which only serves to compound the feelings of guilt that I feel when I read some of this back.

Next Christmas my son will be 18mths old and will want the WORKS! A huge tree adorned with glittery ornaments, Santa’s “snowy” footprints stomped out in the lounge, gaudy stockings hung up on the fireplace. So it’s possibly time I addressed all of these issues. Or at least some of them. I draw the line at tinsel.

[glitterisevil-blog]

Regrets, I Have a Few....

Feeling unsettled about your completely transformed life with your newborn? Wishing that you could wave a magic wand and just go back to the way things were? You could be suffering from WHID Syndrome.

Which of course, is a completely fictional, unrecognised condition - but as everyone seems way more comfortable if a new mum’s feelings can be labelled as something, then let’s call it WHID or What Have I Done Syndrome for now.

Throughout pregnancy I was told countless times about this overwhelming rush of love that I would feel upon meeting my new baby. By the time my due date was approaching, I’d imagined what this amazing rush would be like. I suspected that if it didn’t arrive the second he was born, then it would catch me up later. I’d be doing something fairly mundane like hanging out washing, or perusing varieties of digestive biscuits in Tesco when all of a sudden this luminescent, ethereal figure would descend from the sky, sprinkle me with magical dust and I’d get this amazing glowing feeling that would leave me tingling from head to toe. Once I’d been sprinkled, I’d know I’d felt “it” for sure and I would never see, hear or feel things in the same way ever again. I would then spend the next few years floating around in this loved up, post-partum haze of joy.

And then he arrived. Ta-daaaa! And all I felt was knackered, emotionally hollow, and like someone had punched me in the fanny whilst wearing a knuckle-duster.

But I wasn’t too concerned about the absence of the love dust at first. It’ll all come after you’ve had a bit of sleep, they assured me. So I slept….nope, still nothing. Sore fanny – check.  Knackered – check. Emotionally hollow – check. And that was it.

For the next few days I just stared with bewilderment at this tiny human who I suddenly found myself sharing my life and my boobs with, feeling a steadily growing, rather uncomfortable mixture of resentment, regret and…well, just nothing much else really. Where was this massive thunderbolt that was supposed to happen? Wasn’t this thunderbolt/magic dust/rush of love the only thing that would help me get through the trauma and the sleep deprivation and all the crying? Why had Mother Nature fucked up my order?

I turned to my trusted pal Google for some answers, creating a browsing history that would surely have seen me on Trafford Social Services watch list had it fallen into the wrong hands;

Not bonding with newborn

Don’t feel love for new baby

Hate new baby

Missing old life post-baby

Regretting having baby

British Airways flights to New York (yes really – at 3 am one morning, I contemplated a flit to another country as an actual feasible solution to all of this!)

A trusty internet search engine can normally solve most modern day problems, from what the fuck “on fleek” actually means, to how to cook the perfect Beef Wellington. However on this occasion it just wasn’t coming up with the goods. Nobody else seemed to be in the same place as me, feeling vast amounts of nothingness, mourning a life left behind and just generally feeling, well, a bit sad.  

Everybody else on the internet was either having very serious feelings on a clinical scale, or else they were more loved up than Hacienda-goers circa 1992. Why was there no middle ground?

Let’s start first with those happy, loved up baby-bearers. Social media was full of friends, acquaintances and celebrities who’d had babies around the same time as me, but nobody seemed to be finding it that hard to adjust. In stark contrast, the rest of the childbearing world seemed to be cracking on very nicely with new parenthood thank you very much. I trawled through all the Instagram pics of smiling mums in fresh pyjamas, clutching their new additions with grins as wide as their c-section scars. Every hashtag compounded the fact that I was clearly just crap. Each #Blessed felt like a smack in the face. My hashtag would’ve said #thisisfuckingshit

Then there were the people who were at the other end of the spectrum. I read article after article about that condition that I might’ve had but dare not speak its name in case it came true. It was like Candyman – if I said Post Natal Depression out loud then it might just appear. Did I have PND? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t deliriously happy about the arrival of my baby, so surely I fell into this category? Did I have to pick a side? After a week of going through symptom checklists I eventually came to the conclusion that I probably didn’t have it for a variety of reasons. And so I continued, and just got up each day, cared for my baby in a functional way, but felt no connection whatsoever with him because I just wanted my old life back.

I was one of the lucky ones, I was reminded. I’d had a textbook birth, which resulted in a beautiful happy healthy baby boy, I should be happy. I should be grateful. Didn’t I know about all the people who longed to have what I’m so nonchalant about? Of course, I knew this was true, but it still left me unable to explain why I felt so empty about everything. The only answers I could find lay in chat room discussions at ridiculous hours of the morning, because let’s face it – 4am is the witching hour of the new parent! I discovered a myriad of mummies (and a few dads as well) who were speaking out about how they felt about the arrival of their new baby and – just like me – they weren’t particularly over the moon about the disruption, the chaos or the sleep deprivation that had been thrust upon them. One mum wrote something like “We planned our baby, she is well cared for and loved but I wasn’t prepared for how much she would dominate our lives. I continually find myself missing how things used to be and feeling I’ve made a huge mistake that can’t be undone now.” Another lady described it as all the pieces of her life being thrown up in the air and falling back down in a random mess that she just didn’t recognise.

Yes, I thought! This is me, and exactly how I feel! As I read further, more and more people were saying the same thing. Once someone started off sharing, it gave courage to all the others that were previously afraid to speak. Here we all were at 4am - Selfish Arseholes Anonymous. One mum of a three week old baby owned up to having a packed suitcase full of essentials in her car boot, ready for the day when it all got too much. 

But just like my unbooked flight to New York, she never quite made it either. Once the murky mists of sleep deprivation had passed, and once the 4am outpourings had been shared we all had one thing in common; we all got up in the morning and carried on. We fed, we changed nappies, and we tried to do our best to keep our new hatchlings alive and well for another day. And whilst we did it we probably cried a bit, or shouted at our partners, or possibly even both because deep down we were wishing we could just go out for a spontaneous run, or nip to the pub, or sit down and watch TV for half an hour completely uninterrupted, and have a brew that we actually manage to drink before it goes cold. I’m fairly sure that nobody ever stares at a shitty nappy thinking they’ve totally won at life. No, we actually feel a bit pissed off and a bit sad that this is our life now for the next few years at least. And actually – what I wish someone had told me is this: It’s OK to feel a bit sad because sometimes, being a parent IS a bit crap and life pre-baby WAS probably much easier!

So if you’re reading this at 4am, staring at your baby and feeling shit that you’re not in the New Mummy Delight Club, and worrying that you might have PND because of this then relax – embrace the diagnosis of WHID Syndrome and be assured that there are some easy ways to treat it:-  

1.       Firstly, accept that it’s pretty normal and that you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. It doesn’t make you ungrateful or a bad person for lamenting over your old life. Your old life was probably a pretty great one involving gin, a disposable income and being able to go for a shit in peace. Well who wouldn’t miss that?!

2.       Keep the channels of communication open with your midwife, your health visitor and your partner/friends/family. Contrary to popular belief, health professionals don’t have social services on speed dial, on standby to whip your baby off you the minute you admit you’re not loving life. They actually recognise that this upheaval is pretty normal. If they (or you) spot anything that just might be PND then they will be able to support you. Similarly your partner or friends might actually be relieved to hear you say “Christ this is grim” and then everyone can drop the façade that becoming a new parent is all just snuggling your baby and eating lemon drizzle cake all day, because it’s actually fucking hard!

3.       Disregard all social media posts that depict the perfect life and the wonders of being a parent. It’s not reality and serves only to make you feel as though you’re doing it all wrong. In the same way that nobody’s Facebook profile picture is ever a photo of them hungover, vomiting into the cat litter tray with their Disney pyjamas on, nobody is going to show the gritty, shitty side of new motherhood which usually involve eye bags you could use for your entire Aldi shop, and the toilet bowl looking like a scene from Hostel every time you attempt a poo. It’s all bollocks, and in the words of Public Enemy “Don’t Believe the Hype”

4.       Do what makes YOU feel normal and ignore the Should Sharks. You know the ones who say things like “Oh, you should go to Baby Massage and get out the house because you need fresh air really” or “Going back to the gym so soon? You really should rest you know, because new mums shouldn’t exercise so soon…blah blah fucking blah!” So go to baby massage, or don’t. Go to the gym, or don’t. Abseil from a building dressed as Batman, or don’t. Stay holed up at home, or go out and paint the town – just find your normal, whatever that happens to be.

I got through the worst of my WHID Syndrome by having frank and open chats with my Health Visitor, staying off Instagram for a bit, and establishing a near-sexual relationship with white chocolate Magnums that lasted most of summer. I’ll never be completely cured though, as WHID is recognised as a chronic condition that will probably stay with you until the day you wave your baby off to Uni and turn his room into a walk-in wardrobe. I’m afraid to say that symptoms can only be managed and not completely eradicated. Things that are known to cause the odd flare up are:

-          Those rare English sunny hot days, which result in the temptation to sit in beer gardens and drink Corona all day rather than breastfeed/be responsible for a child

-          Indie bands from your youth getting their act together for a comeback gig that’s not in your hometown but technically still near enough for you to attend. If you could stay away for the whole night, obviously. Or get really pissed on Red Stripe. Or were able to do Britpop-style bouncing up and down without your uterus falling out in the middle of Leeds Academy.

-          Awareness of purchases that would have once been doable. Admittedly extravagant purchases that would’ve meant beans on toast for dinner until the next payday, but still doable. Sort of. But on maternity pay? Massive LOLZ!!

So when an attack of WHID strikes, allow yourself a bit of wallowing time (anything from an hour to a day is OK, any more than that and you might want to have a chat with your Health Visitor ) and then I’m afraid you’ll just have to suck it up buttercup. That Corona isn’t going to be sipped in the sunshine, that designer bag isn’t coming to live with you, and you might just have to download the band’s latest album on iTunes. Your time will come again, but those things aren’t gonna happen for you right at this moment. You have a far greater and more important task to focus on, and you’re the centre of that little person’s universe. That’s feeling has got to taste better than warm Red Stripe!