Counselling

When you have a baby, one thing you do not normally associate is starting counselling sessions soon afterwards that are in direct correlation to these events. Then again, for too many parents "normality" is thrown out the window. When you have a sick or premature baby or a traumatic birth, the rule book is ripped from your hands and it seems someone is laughing cruelly. You have all the same tools as everyone else but something is missing that you cannot quite grasp. I imagine even the healthiest baby, smoothest birth and both fleeting of baby blues produces a confused, knackered, upset and bewildered parent. But tweak some factors a little more and it can feel like you are walking between nightmares and the best thing in the world. You know you are blessed, are grateful beyond belief, can tangibly reach true love...but that is only one half of it. And that fact casts you even deeper down a path of gloom, grief or blame. Sometimes all three.

I was first referred for counselling whilst Wriggles was still on the NICU. We were beginning to be on the home straight which adversely became the patch I began to fall apart. I could not fathom being able to care for my baby at home in the way the hospital did. I got nervous. I got emotional. I cried.  lot. When I was trained in resuscitation and infant first aid, I broke down completely because it was too close to home to the CPR I'd had to try on my minutes-old daughter before the paramedics arrived. Then it was confirmed we would go home on oxygen. The sky fell in. Any notion of being able to turn our backs on prematurity, run for the hills or grasp in the dark for any kind of normal baby-magazine like existence was snatched and I was going to the dragged kicking and screaming into the acceptance.

Initially, I was not overjoyed about being counselled. It seemed like another thing to chalk up to failure. You can't even just have a baby? What sort of a mother are you? That first session I was very mechanical. I had got to the point of facts, just facts. Name. Age. Date of birth. Feelings? No, feelings are tied away. Locked away and thrown the key into the abyss. I don't recall a lot, but I do recall the kind lady saying with clarity at the end "you need to allow yourself to feel."

But I couldn't. I would have the odd breakthrough crying sessions, I would tell our story, I would go through the motions, but it was like there was a solid wall. I was talking but there was nothing behind the words. I would not let how I felt about what I was saying out. It was too dangerous. There was a torrent of emotion somewhere that could quite possibly destroy me. Then after we got home, my daughter got sick and then we came home again, I went downhill very fast. It was like a swift plummet, being winded in the gut. I did ask for help then because the only glimmer of rationality left told me that if I didn't things could get ugly and I was the sole person responsible for my daughter and owed it to her.

I was even less overjoyed about the idea of taking medication. To have to be medicated for being a mother? Despite gentle professionals saying but a mother who has been to hell and back, it just didn't sink in. But I took them, thinking what had I to loose. To my surprise, they helped to dent the cloak I had surrounded myself in. They let in tiny chinks of light and slowly rescued some energy, some drive, some routine... Alongside this I also saw a very well meaning counsellor who patted my knee, passed the tissues and said "Oh goodness me, I couldn't have done that" a lot, and also thankfully stepped up sessions with my original counsellor who had importantly been with me the whole time. She has seen Wriggles at the point of being critically ill, in NICU, at home, playing-she had seen the highs, lows and mundane of our lives. And that went a long way, not least is gaining my trust. She had also had her own premature baby twenty years ago and didn't need telling twice about what followed. She listened to me, said some very wise things and never once told me I was a bad person.

Did she fix everything? No. Did she make things more bearable? Very much so. She embarked on a long quest to try and stop me blaming myself and inflecting blame, guilt, remorse and turning these things into long strings of anxiety and fear. She didn't put a full stop to it all, but she did greatly stem the tide and genuinely seemed to care that I wasn't putting myself in torturous circles. The day before Wriggles' second birthday, she turned up at my flat with a birthday present and card despite not seeing her for months. I was so touched that she remembered and cared enough when essentially we are but a handful of her clients. It is little things like that which slowly help pick back up the pieces and restore your sanity bit by tiny bit. Couselling may not be a magic answer or quick fix but it is a service I believe that all parents or family members in difficult situations should be entitled to as just reaching out can remove some of the bricks of your burden. Without it, I fear I would have fallen very low and very badly. I don't know how things would be now if I hadn't have had that chance.

I wish I could say that presented with the tools of good counselling, the caring arms of supportive friends and family and a good overview of CBT that I am completely all done with the past. But this little blog is testament that I am not. Nothing is that simple. Things may be a lot better but there is always one foot still in the past, stuck in a puddle of murky memories. And sometimes I slip and fall straight back in and need a helping hand in climbing back out. All too quickly, the tendrils of anxiety, paranoia and remembrance can curl round your being until you are caught fast in a trap of fact and fiction and have to unravel what is reaction and what is irrational. These last weeks I have been struggling again, feeling the fight ebb out of me. I guess the difference is that I know this isn't forever because things have improved before and will again; not that it makes things feel any easier day to day until we have ridden this out. The mind is a powerful tool indeed.

My Happy Place

Two Years On

Dear Me-Two-Years-Ago,

Hello, it's me from the future. I think you need some help; you're feeling very alone. You think you're grown up at 23 with a brand new surprise baby, albeit in an incubator and trying to Do The Right Thing. You will. But right now the weight of the world is on your shoulders, or at least of your world and that of the little girl in the neonatal unit. 

She's doing so well, isn't she? She's growing as she should be, she is breathing air by herself. But it's so hard to relax. So many ups and downs. Tomorrow afternoon you will try kangaroo care for the first time. I know it's scary, but it's the most special thing having the warm skin and the butterfly heartbeat placed against your bare skin. Try and enjoy the pure magic of it. Weeks down the line you will crave it, hang on to every second. I'm afraid in a few days she will start requiring oxygen again which she will not be able to manage without until she is 6 months old at home with you. Yes that's right, at home with you where she belongs. Your homes will change but one thing won't, and that is that by your side is her rightful place and it always will be.

I know you haven't come to that decision yet. Everything has been so sudden, so unexpected and so many factors are up in the air. You haven't yet sorted things with work. You haven't yet sorted things with her father. You are so far from sorting housing and finances. You have been told you have to wait until her 6 week head scan which is a few weeks off yet, to see if there has been any lasting brain damage or haemorrhages visible at this stage which may affect her development and if you feel you can manage if there is. Right now you are so badly trying to do right by her, you aren't letting yourself truly acknowledge how deep your feelings are. In the very near future you will realise that actually letting your heart rule over your head is not a black and white choice. Because sometimes your heart and head are in compliance, but it will take time for the fog of your shock to subside. Be kind to yourself, you are playing catch up in emotions what you would have otherwise had near 28 weeks to process internally. Love is the strongest of them all and will give you the power to achieve what else needs achieving. Don't be afraid to love and don't be afraid of the future. I'm not saying it will be easy, but once you have love on your side nothing is impossible. Fear isn't a failing.  Listen to people, but listen to your heart. No one else can tell you the truth but yourself. 

You're so worried about being able to provide for her if she is strong enough to pull through and come home. She will be; she may need some extra support which is a theme that will crop up again and again, but it is not as hard as it looks. You think that you ahve already failed her once so why wait to see if you do again: you haven't. 60,000 babies are born too small or sick each year in the UK. If you wouldn't call each of their mothers failures, why call yourself one? It was different, that was all. You're so concerned that you cannot give her what a richer or more traditional family set up could give her. If it helps, I'll show you a secret:

Does that look like a child lacking in joy? In curiosity? In happiness? In love? Children don't care about second-hand or third-hand, about whether the outing was free or cost money and any such prejudice is years off. You can cross that bridge when you come to it; I still haven't yet but I am less scared to now when it comes. But what you need is security and I'm telling you that you can and will provide that. It's so much more intricate than you think and yet so simple. This evening, that same little girl threw her arms around my neck and pulled herself into my lap presenting me with her favourite book. She snuggled into my neck at 8pm, sleepily. Every time I think that someone else may have had that privilege my heart nearly stops. Please let yourself feel, your breed of "rationality" is so far removed from your actual life that it will do you no good to torture yourself with your perceived shortcomings. You are a mother and that is enough. I could tell you all her favourite things, her quirks, her progress, about her funny faces, her noises, her likes, her dislikes, but I'll let you have that fun for yourself.

I can promise you will never ever regret it for a second. You may be tested again and again, you will know grief and sorrow and true fear but you will also know the greatest joys and the most wonderful feelings in the world.

With all my heart,

Me-Two-Years-On

xxx


A bit of background: in the days and weeks following Wriggles' surprise appearance I struggled with the idea that I could be any kind of a parent and provide for her and briefly looked to adoption or foster care, such was my conviction that I would never be able to give her the future I had once dreamt of giving my dream "first child". The further the process got, the clearer I began to actually feel things and realise exactly what I would miss out on, and how that dreams are just that: dreams. That we can create new and better dreams and try and find a route back to our old ones through a different path. And I am so glad I stopped trying to be so "rational" and realised that there is no such thing as perfection, except possibly your own child, who is thankfully only metres away from me asleep now!

Two Tomorrow

Two. She's going to be TWO tomorrow. TOMORROW. TWO.

I can't believe it.

I feel intermittently delirious with excitement on her behalf, and sick with fear as the memories race through my head.

Two years ago, I was pretty much without a care in the world.

Today, I have a bundle of giggles who also requires a higher standard of care than other two year olds.

Why hasn't there been a fanfare, why didn't a bell toll two years ago? How can it happen so quietly, so unassuming? One day a singleton, the next a mother. One day at home, the next in hospital. And conversely, one day in hospital, the next at home. 

Two years ago I knew little of heart ache and far less about love than I would have liked to think.

Two years later I know the dizzying heights of sheer joy and pure adoration and that love is not soft, it is fierce like a tiger. I know the line of despair, terror and consuming guilt.

A little under two years ago, I bought a book roughly around the time my daughter was in NICU or possibly just came out. The Heart and the Bottle, by Oliver Jeffers. I loved his illustration style, but the book made me cry instantly. It was far more grown up that his previous works, and dealt with love and loss. 

"Once there was a girl who was much like any other

Her head was filled with the curiosity of the world

With thoughts of the stars

With wonder of the sea

She took delight in finding new things

Until one day she found an empty chair

Feeling unsure, the girl thought the best thing was to put her heart in a safe place

Just for the time being..." 

And so, the book examines how when your heart is in a safe place, say a bottle, it seems to fix things at first. Maybe at first it is necessary. But as time goes on, it dulls the world around you. You start to think less of the stars, see less wonder in the sea, and new things are left undiscovered, the world slowly drifting further and further from your island. 

After the shock, and I hate to say it, but trauma, of having Wriggles, I was very afraid to feel. I was afraid to grip any emotion head-on for the fear it would consume me whole for breakfast. All through NICU, I was so desperate to feel something, anything. I felt protective, I felt fiercely protective, but I also felt numb. I felt like I was in a bottle, looking out clearly on the world but with a sheet of glass between us. I could shout but no one could hear me. They could see me, and waved cheerfully. But I could only stand, pressed up, and wish to be free yet afraid of what was out there. I wish I could say that when I brought Wriggles home, the spell was broken. I think very slowly it began to break, but I still felt so fogged. I knew I was in love, but who knew love was so painful, so fragile, so vulnerable and so closely entwined with a deep seated guilt that threatened to destroy things? 

I can't pinpoint when the moment was that things changed, and I found the key to unlocking things. In the book, the girl finds a little friend on the beach who easily unplucks her heart for her. In my life it was not so simple. I was slowly emerging back into the world and allowing myself to sink completely into a devout love with my child, free of any terror or hauntings of the past months of NICU or birth, when she abruptly ended up slap bang in PICU. I knew then what I had to loose, once she was there and it set a terror deeper than anything when I realised that the most precious thing to me might be ripped away again. It was so clear how much she meant to me then and that maybe I hadn't been being true to us both, when I had felt too afraid to love her without abandon. Those days until she was out of the critical period were the worst I have ever felt. Going to sleep with no snuffler by my side felt so bleak, as if the world had stopped turning and lost all it's colour, smells and sounds. I felt bereft, even walking to her cubicle, without her by my side. That moment, weeks later when she came out of her induced coma and I could hold her again was in glorious technicolour. Oh she was floppy, she was pale, she was weak. But she was mine. Mine, mine, mine. I will never ever ever let you go, baby girl. 

Of course, it wasn't as simple as that was that. Having my baby back with me, being back with her all the time was the most wonderful feeling ever and affirmed how much I had given over to her, but when we got home I struggled to deal with how things had gone and fell deep into a state of mental unrest coupled with cripplingly guilt that I wasn't making the most of things. I would walk along and cry for no reason, convinced that however much I loved her it would never be enough to make up for her little life so far.

I don't know when that stopped, but it did or at least got to the point of being manageable and I was able to tell my inner jimminy cricket to sod off from time to time. I began to go to baby groups again, to venture to exotic lands like The Park, The Seaside, Coffee Shops. And suddenly things improved. I began to have conversations with fellow mums and not feel a fraud or a headcase.  I saw my baby for being my baby, not a fragile being with too many miniature scars. I began to see that there was a chance, no a fact, that she loved me back. Last birthday was still a struggle. I was doing better but nearer the date became flustered with too many memories and kept nearly blacking out. This birthday, I think I am better. I am excited. I have done present shopping. I have blown up balloons with a faulty balloon pump: now that is love. I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve now most days. It's frightening because there it is, right there, free for the taking. It's not protected, it could easily be broken or damaged. But it's better than locking it away, isn't it? Better than locking me, us, away. I think. I'm not sure every single day or in every single situation. But right now I am.

Happy birthday in a few hours, baby girl.

Birthday

I had one yesterday.

It just crept up on me slightly unannounced. In fact, had it not been for the few cards that plopped through my letter box, it is entirely likely I would have forgotten the whole affair until probably the weekend when I would have been in a huff for forgetting it. Anyway, I didn't. I was going to ignore the whole thing but in the end had really quite a lovely little day with no fuss.

I live fairly near the coast, so we went to the seaside. It was really quite nippy and windy so we didn't sit on the beach, but did go to the playground opposite the seafront and I showed Wriggles the big blue sea and she got to try out the swings. We also went in and out of several charity shops (I love charity shopping and bargain hunting) and for £1.98 bought four books and also a stuffed camel to post to my crackpot parents who collect them. As my treat, we went to a ceramic cafe and had a go at doing some Art together. Wriggles was not too keen. Under sufferance though, we did paint a plate full of our multi-coloured handprints which I will be able to pick up from the kiln next week and see what a mess we made of it! Two friends came round in the afternoon and eager to show off, Wriggles made my day by taking two supported sideways steps-her first attempt at cruising.

Birthdays are a bit flat though once you are older and especially if you are on your own. I have to say, Wriggles has very few faults but one major one is ignorance of birthdays and special events. I had to make my own tea and breakfast and everything! Birthdays are quite exciting when they are for other people; there is something quite lovely about focusing on someone and thinking something to make them smile, be it a gift, an outing, some kind words or a small token that they mean something to you. Children's birthdays are definitely the best, although so far this applies mostly to other people's offspring. 
Wriggles has only had one birthday and it was a very mixed day. Obviously I wanted to celebrate her and rejoice that a year on she was here and healthy with me and had pulled through all of the bad patches. But it was also an intense day of bad memories. Her birth was not a happy occasion and the immediate period after was very fraught and traumatic, for both of us in very different ways. It isn't that I didn't want to celebrate the day she came into the world, it's just that that particular day is still very raw and there have been many happier days since. Once you get older, birthdays are far less about the birth day and far more about the person as a whole, especially for other people celebrating with you. I certainly have never thought on the way to a friend's party that this is the anniversary of their birth in anything less than the abstract sense. Birth is something which can be very idealised which in actual fact is quite primitive in that it is a sweaty, slightly gory and very physical and also emotive event that often surprises people. I find it hard to associate myself once being born years ago on my birthday, especially now having gone through birth myself. 
 
I still feel quite separate from birth; I know I have given birth but when I hear people speak about labour or I watch One Born Every Minute there is no flicker of recognition at all and it is as if it never happened to me. It is as if it happened to another part of me that I have lost or become separated from. I'm still in the early days of parenthood but I think for me, it always will be tied in with birth. Is this just memory tidying things away or is it the subconscious burying traumatic events to dull the pain to enable you to carry on with life? Is it more common after 'birth trauma' or a difficult aftermath-I frequently wonder if I would really differently if I had had a more typical birth of get baby out-get baby placed on you for skin to skin-hold baby whenever you want. My baby was whipped away non breathing. I didn't see her for hours. I didn't know what sex she was for hours. I didn't know she was still alive for hours. I didn't hold her for days. And that all still really hurts. I don't think it won't, but I do expect it to fade over the years as her birthday becomes more about her: who she is now and what good things have happened and are yet to come. I hope I am correct!

First Birthday