21/52

 

19/52 Exploring

18/52 A Little Monster

17/52 New Skills

16/52 Dressing Up

Silly fibs and naughty fibs

The wonderful Snoo and Me has been revealing some extraordinary lies that her frankly worm-sounding ex spun, and has invited us all to join in the fun in fibs that we have been told. Although these are not terrifically juicy, here I some I have dug up that I have been told and told myself in the past, that range from the ridiculous to the obvious, yet still annoying.

1. My school friend Jenny: "I once ran over a cow in a combine harvester"

Yes, you read that right. And she wanted us all to believe her. The last time I saw her, a few years ago, she was still swearing blind that this was true. Although the combine harvester had changed to tractor. I really wish that I could remember some of the other beauties that she came out with, but she was one of those people that compulsively made things up to be the centre of attention. This was her signature fib though. After leaving school, we both went to the same art college but quickly drifted apart. A few weeks in, I overheard a conversation in the union bar, "I met this proper rad girl. Ran over a cow in a combine harvester she said...." "Noooooo mate?! Really?!" "Yeah, hard as nails."

Survival

My family, I reckon, are born fighters. 


Between my immediate family between us we have survived pneumonia (repeatedly and in varying severity), multiple organ failure, sepsis, cardiac arrest and a stroke. The worst culprits are my father and my daughter. 


Three years ago my father wound up in Intensive Care after taking a turn for the worst with what his GP thought was gastric flu. After progressively deteriorating, he was taken to our local hospital where they grew increasingly concerned. Gastric flu or not, they were concerned about his heart and decided to transfer him to a larger hospital with an outstanding surgical team. It happened very quickly; I was travelling down from university as fast as I could and throughout the few hours of my trip he was sedated to preserve his energy and I arrived just before the ambulance did, to transfer him to London up the motorway. We were prepped as to his immediate emergency surgery to repair his heart, which had been damaged by staphylococcus and not gastric flu at all, that was ulcerating and eating away at the muscle. There was a 33% chance of success, but without it, the doctor gave him 24-48 hours. That train journey my mum, sister and myself took was fraught. We were on a knife edge and raced to get to St Thomas' hospital. Once there, we discovered my father was not. We were distraught and immediately thought the worst. A phone call revealed a delay; the local hospital wanted to stabilise him before starting out to give him the best chance.

Inspired: Room for a Wriggles

This weekend, I've been having a super clear and sort out of the flat. Until now, I have shacked up with Wriggles in her bedroom. When we first moved, she was only just 5 months corrected and had just had a major infection, so I slept in the same room to adhere to SIDS advice and for my peace of mind. As she was frequently ill, I stayed and by the time we emerged into the healthier period we are in now, with the worst behind us, I have stayed out of convenience. One of the most annoying things about being a singleton is that you need to wait for kindly friends to pop over to give a hand with moving heavy furniture or DIY jobs!

But. Moving time is here. We both now have our own bedrooms and to celebrate, I would like to jazz the neutral walls up a touch (neutral is an understatement. They are generic cheap-as-chips magnolia with sandpapery cheap sludge colour carpet, as can be found in most inexpensively kitted out places by landlords trying to cut corners!) and give our rooms some personality. I love the Inspired linky that Dear Beautiful Boy has been running, so joining in, here are some of the items that I am coveting and drawing inspiration from to give Wriggles a room fit for a queen.

I love this bold tree print; it is a fabric from Swedish favourites Ikea. Not only is it affordable at £4.99 a metre but it is thicker than many cottons, so I have been thinking about attempting to whizz up some curtains. Note; "attempting" is key here. In theory, I know how to run up curtains having watched Kirsty Allsopp's 'Handmade Home' programme and internet tutorials, how I would actually fare is another matter. Oh and that time thing to. But I would like to!

The room has a short but very wide window so any curtain will be quite a feature. I do not want a super girly room brimming  over with fairies and pink, so would like to keep with more green and blue palette.

And while I'm looking at birds, I have utterly fallen in love with this owl in a teacup print by illustrator Heather Scott. Heather sells on Etsy and Folksy under Sparklehen. Her prints are vibrant and whimsical and I already have several bought over time. The teacup reminds me slightly of Alice in Wonderland, and the colours are perfect. Who wouldn't want to share a tea party with a stray owl?! Loons. And it's not strictly a room accessory but I'm sure Wriggles could make room for this crochet owl in her cot!

 Being in a rented flat, it is too much faff to start painting and wallpapering, so these new-fangled wall stickers sound a good plan of transforming a wall and adding some colour. Keeping with an emerging woodland vibe, I saw these designs on Not On The Highstreet which caught my eye.

Whilst I was also browsing there, I saw this rabbit lamp by Little Ella James. Wriggles is not scared of the dark and has rarely slept in anything lighter than pitch black, so for the moment I doubt a nightlight would be needed, but it is so sweet. Maybe I could "borrow" it for the time being! I saw these fabric Love Birds which look adorable perched on a branch (surely attaching a branch to a wall must be easy?)

 

So all I need to do now is win the lottery and channel my inner Laurence Llewelyn Bowen. Easy! Hop over to Lucy's blog and see what anyone else has been looking at this week.

A New Start

I love this picture; to me this speaks of a new start. It is not obvious to anyone but me, but this was taken in my new flat (aka, my home). The only furniture is Wriggles' bouncy chair and a wooden crate pretending to be a coffee table; there are not yet any appliances like a cooker or washing machine, the walls are bare and I think this was taken before the official removal van and moving in day.

When Wriggles was born prematurely, I had not yet had time to sort out moving from a professional flat share into a more family friendly private space, as she came so quickly. I would have had 3 months further to play with if she had stayed inside but it was not to be. Unfortunately things became complicated as she came home on oxygen and so it was with trepidation, that I took her back to what resembled a student flat that I had to share. During the few months I was there, I became very desperate. More than anything, I ached for some precious privacy with my baby.

Finally, somewhere came up. Before moving in came around, we had the Intensive Care shenanigans which brought everything very clearly to me. Once we were out of the danger zone, the hospital felt safe. Although there were people in and out, it was more private and comfortable than my flat. It was bliss being able to shut a door and I dreaded returning home. Thankfully, when I did go back, it was merely days before I could move.  My mum had come up while Wriggles was in hospital and stayed to help us move. She felt closed in on too, and we were so eager to leave to pastures new, that the day before the removal van was booked, we packed large rucksacks and laundry baskets of essentials like the kettle, biscuits, Wriggles' chair and milk, the sterilizer, toys for Wriggles, and an airbed, and got the metro over to the new flat and spent the day in a barren place. We must have looked like lunatics on the platform with binbags of belongings shoved under the pram and on our backs, like refugees. There were ladles sticking out of coat pockets, cushions stuffed in coats and teatowels worn like scarves. It was a cold and drab April morning, but we practically skipped up the road and ran into the bare and empty building. It was bliss. It was so quiet and secret, I felt like I could breathe again. It felt like playing house, proudly organising the few belongings in the bare rooms. We stayed for hours until the sun set and night began to creep in. Reluctantly, we left to put Wriggles to bed, spurred on the the thought of being there the next day. When we moved, it felt as if finally, seven months on from the birth, our life as a family was starting.

That first weekend there, my aunt, uncle and cousin came to help organise the flat. We still had no cooker, washing machine, sofa or chairs, so spent the weekend sat around on the floor, microwaving vats of soup my aunt brought over from her home in Cumbria to eat, inbetween putting up curtain rails and unpacking boxes. We pegged and sellotaped duvets and bin bags as curtains and sat on crates, got lost trying to find Homebase, lived off cups of tea and instant soup-in-a-packet and biscuits, and played and played with Wriggles who adapted marvellously quickly to her new palace. When appliances arrived, they sat in the middle of the floor for weeks like large traffic islands, waiting to the installed. I didn't care one jot. The disorganisation was laughable but yet heavenly.

Having my own space meant the world to me, it meant that finally I could establish a routine, do things as I intended to as a mummy, speak when I wanted to, and deal with everything in my own way. I could ask for help to deal with the depression that had engulfed me, safe in the knowledge that I was allowed to have bad days and that I wasn't under the watchful eyes of people, who had the best of intentions but would never look away. And so I began to find myself as a mummy. With furniture at last.

Brrrrr winter time

Brrr the cold snap is drawing in and I have left my gloves at the office. Silly mummy. Just before winter sets in, I get all excited and start eagerly unearthing woolly knitted items, thermals, slippers and hats from the depths of my wardrobe and Wriggles'. This is her second winter, but feels like her first as last year she was newly-home and teeny tiny, so we stayed in most of the time as she was on oxygen and it was snowing.

So this winter was full of jumpers and fleeces and still-small gloves. The latter did not last long. Wriggles is at the throwing everything stage and I have lost count of how many gloves we have lost over the side of the pushchair. Ditto hats; she will not tolerate things on her head and flings these gleefully into the road.

She does however tolerate her penguin slippers, our favourite winter accessory. These were bought from Next in December and have barely left her feet since. You can tell. They are clearly scruffy, bobbly and grubby: the marks of a well loved item! When not wearing them she will happily throw them about and share at the faces. 

For more diminutive adorable small-people winter accessories, head over to pretty.little.things this week hosted at Mummy, Daddy and Me Makes Three.
 

Showing the penguins off with Great Grandparents

Separation

Imagine your child can't be home with you.

Imagine, just imagine. Imagine leaving your child, having to say goodbye and walk out the door. It's hard isn't it? I'm not talking walk out the door to go to work, to have a haircut, to have five minutes peace, but to walk off for the night and not return until the morning leaving a vulnerable child. I don't have to imagine, I know all too well.

Wriggles, my baby daughter is 16 and a half months old, 488 days. Since the day of her birth, I have spent 72 nights apart from her. That is almost 15% of her lifetime, not being there in the dark hours to attend to her every need. 15% forfeiting motherly duties and feeling helpless and guilt that my child may well be scared, being looked after by strangers. Of those dreadful 72 nights, 61 were spent in Neonatal Intensive Care and then Special Care as a neonate, needing to get to the optimum stage of getting home. The last 11 were while she was 6 months old in Paediatric Intensive Care. Between the remaining 85% of night times, we have spent numerous nights in hospital wards. I don't care to specify numbers or days, all I know is that it is quite a lot. Thankfully, those nights I spent sharing her bedside or cubicle in a pull-down bed, a fold out chair or a camp bed. They were tough, yes, but I was just so grateful to be with her I couldn't give a hoot. Because leaving your child at bedtime and not coming back is, well I can't find words for it.

Bizarre.

Heart-breaking.

Wrenching.

Guilt inducing.

Surreal.

Shameful.

They maybe are a few, but they don't even come close to summing up the well of loneliness and emptiness that you carry with you. Never have you feared silence so much, never have you keenly felt the emptiness of your arms.

There is no etiquette either for how to act. When Wriggles was in Special care and not in any immediate danger, there were the conflicting assumptions: 1) that life had to go on and 2) I should be by her side. It is not physically possible to spend every waking minute beside an incubator, for some parents it is not possible to spend every single day. Yet the times you are not there, you are in a daze, a sort of no-mans land. Time is not as you know it. During the SCBU stint, I had one night where I went to the ballet, taken by a friend who thought I needed distraction (she was right, it turned out to be a crucial night for straightening my thoughts. My premature daughter never left my mind throughout the whole performance, and it was this that really hit home just how much everything meant. As the saying goes, you can run but you can't hide) and for four weeks when I went a little potty, returned to work 20 hours a week in the office. That definitely was a mistake. I could barely concentrate at work, I resented being there however much I needed the money knowing that imminent single-parenthood was around the corner and a long stretch of time off work caring for a child on oxygen, and I ran myself ragged trying to simultaneously be at hospital and office and continuously running (literally, I must have looked mad) between the two, which luckily where a fifteen minute walk apart. I also had to collate all baby items that I had not yet bought in that time and rapidly sort out finances and living space. I would stay at the hospital late into the night and would sleep with a increasingly crumpled photograph of my daughter on my pillow. It was no replacement.

Intensive Care was different; her health was an utterly different state of affairs and the experience was far harder. Again, I knew she was in the best hands and separation was a medical necessity but sleeping away from your critical child is not something that is easy. In fact, sleeping may be an overstatement. Can you imagine going to bed without hope? Waking with a hollow dread-alone? A bed had never seemed bigger and night seemed cruel.

We still share a bedroom now, thankfully back in our cosy flat. At first, after the times apart it was a comfort to share a space and know I was not even metres away from her, but could reach out and brush her cot with my fingers. Now she is getting older, I just have not had time or spare hands to move my bed in my own room and give us both some grown up space. I will do very soon, it is time to move on and put some of the past to rest. The bad times are over, and we pulled through, Wriggles triumphant. Now I sleep every night with my snuffler and I love it, whether through the baby-monitor or my own ears.Until she is old enough for sleepovers or I have gone mad with baby-chatter, I will be uneasy unless we are under the same roof each night. It makes me feel safe to know she is nearby. There has been enough separation. 

This is part of the Yummy Mummy campaign for CLIC Sargent, raising awareness for children with cancer. Visit www.yummymummy.org.uk for information and fundraising ideas and search Twitter for #dosomethingyummy. No one ever expects it will be then, but what makes the difference if it is, is knowing that there is help and support available.

Go to Nickie at I Am Typecast to view others and see what she has to say.

Going Home Outfits

Going Home.

The beginning of the adventure.

There really is nothing like it, the dawning realisation that you are being let loose with a real life human being and no one is going to check up on you. Unless you have a really nosey Health Visitor.

Such an occassion needs a special outfit. It gave me something productive on a frivolous level to think about when sat in Special Care in the time leading up to discharge.

 Wriggles did not actually go home in her official New Home outfit. Although by the time we were ready to leave she was a whopping 5lbs 4oz, she was a titch and all the alleged 'tiny baby' and 'up to 5lb' prem baby clothes hung off her. She must have really heavy toes or something. Her new home outfit was going to be a white babygrow covered in red flowers. As it was, we went home in a plain white babygrow that was donated by SCBU and a little yellow knitted cardigan. As it was November and freezing, she had a furry white sleepsuit with ears on the hood, like a tiny polar bear. It meant something as I had bought it; so silly but with all the presents we had very kindly been given, all I had contributed was some nappies, a changemat and some Infacare. So this felt like I was making my mark. Her toy who had lived by the incubator with her, Mouse, also had a new hat for the occasion, off an Innocent smoothie bottle. Mouse stayed with Wriggles in the car seat to make sure she wasn't scared.

Have a look over at Dear Beautiful Boy for more first outfits as part of the new pretty.little.things linky. (I cannot work out how to add a badge yet!)

Ready for the Off

Special Delivery! Mouse looks quite a large toy, she is actually the size of my hand, legs included.

Too exciting....bether have a nap!