A Confused Mummy

Today I am a confused mummy. Well,  most days I am a confused mummy but today I am struggling with some of my feelings.

I wonder what it is like to have an "average" baby.

I wonder if there is such an encompassing thing as an "average" or "normal" baby or experience of having one.

There are daily reminders that I have a premature baby who has had some struggles. She is brilliant and amazing and as feisty as the next temperamental feisty madam but as sole parent and carer I am feeling a bit swamped at times both with all the information I have to take on board and all the running around to appointments I still have to keep. Is this normal?! I frankly have no idea any more. 

Wriggles, or her new temporary nickname Noisebag, is a little over 16 months and 13 corrected. To date we are currently under neonatology, paediatrics, neurology (luckily her consultant paed doubles up as this to reduce clinics!), dieticians, physiotherapy and are awaiting the referral from speech and language. Thankfully we have now been released from community nursing, respiratory and social work, (which we were automatically under as she had spent a certain period of time in hospital so you automatically get a helpful form-filler-er, not because I am incompetent; at least that is the information I was given....). We also have to attend very regular weigh-ins as Wriggles/Noisebag still generally refuses solids or gags about 70% of the time and as I have had a few blip-y moments along the way, I have to report every now and then to the GP and Health visitors to affirm I have no intention of jumping off a cliff or do not wander about Sainsburys wringing my hands and howling for England. My HV has decided that obviously it has all come about because I do not regularly attend infant massage groups. I can tell her that I have no concern about my bond with Wriggles but am just exhausted from weekly hospital visits until I am blue in the face but she still keeps turning up at my front door with a grubby plastic doll and sunflower oil trilling about the benefits.

 At present, excepting the weekend, every day I am not at work, I am attending an outpatient clinic for Wriggles, ferrying around to appointments or pacifying a nude Noisebag in the community scales at the Postnatal Centre. Now time is moving on, we have started receiving invites for groups of "additional needs" children also, which gives me very mixed feelings. I do not see Wriggles as having additional needs. Lags/delays yes, I fully accept that, but additional needs? She doesn't need extra care or specific skills to look after her at present. She might be doing things at her own pace but so far there is nothing I think she won't do and as far as I am aware this view is shared by the doctors. It really is a hard one; obviously I wouldn't give two hoots if she did need extra care and help, as she is my star and I love her unequivocally. I don't want to seem selfish as I am very aware we are lucky to be in 'the system' and in an area where there is a range of activities for children of all stages and have some professionals that go above and beyond their jobs. It is great that there is help to nudge her in the right direction and iron out some bumps as they show up, really it is. Honest. I'm sure if we didn't get these opportunities then I would be on my soapbox grumping about exclusions and worrying frantically that she wouldn't catch up or ever eat more than a bit of mashed banana once a month.

The "problem" if indeed there is one and I am not utterly crackers, is that when we go to a "normal" Mother and Baby group, I still often feel like I am from another planet and when we go to a "special" group I feel a complete fraud. Throughout year one of having a little creature, I spent the first two months in hospital followed by three months as a hermit with a baby on oxygen in the winter months when RSV was rife and my road was closed off due to snowdrifts and ice. There was then a marvellous hiatus of a few weeks when I began to go out and about, had more visits from friends, began to wean her with success and began to address the impending return to work. Then we abruptly wound up in intensive care and spent the next six months being in and out and in and out and in and out and in and you get the picture. Thankfully things have calmed down after birthday numero uno and I have deliberately made two term-long booking at baby groups on my days off to make sure that we get out, socialise and do normal things between the dreaded appointments. We have been for coffee with mums and babies and began to find our feet on days off together and it is a teeny weeny bit scary but marvellous. Tentatively, I have even told the 'story' to fellow mums I see, against my HV's 'advice' that I will scare them off and they will avoid us-so far this has proved to be utter codswallop and no one picks friendships in this way, especially given that whatever has happened, what is happening now is that we all have increasingly chaos-inducing mess-making becoming-independent darlings/monsters/I-could-have-sworn-she-was-a-tiny-baby-only-yesterday's and all feel like a bit of a joke every now and then even with a beautiful house and a Mr Darcy lookalike husband. I just wish there were more days in the week, or that no one had to work, to be able to spend more time doing this and less time sat in the waiting rooms clutching medical notes. I miss the year I lost out on swanning around to groups and gazing into my baby's eyes as it feels like I spent a lot of it sat anxiously at a cot-side in hospital.

I know in my heart of hearts that most people feel like this. So many of us are torn between mummy duties and well, the rest of life. Faced with the media, literature and swathes of advertising portraying Perfection, all parents, all people stumble around trying their best and adjusting their ideas like crazy to find their own corner of reality.

The main thing is I have a very nice baby and generally, life is pretty good.

So my new New Years Resolutions are: 

1. spring-clean brain

2. stop grumbling
3. look forwards not backwards (you WILL trip over or walk into a proverbial lampost)