July / Birthdays


birth, babies, bodies, breastfeeding

This month was a well of nostalgia. July always is. I am thrust back to the past, however hard I cling to the present. However hard I work I’m hurled with my broken nails into maudlin reminders. A month of anticipation and worry, niggling silliness. A week, two days, 24 hours until the anniversary of […]

25th July 2012

Not in the mood to be mental (milking it)


depression

I am travelling back from Edinburgh to London after a three days away for work. I don’t often blog on the go, so this is a new experience for me. Nevertheless I’m tired and grumpy and missing my boys. I’m totally in a snark, even though the trip in many ways feels like a success, […]

10th October 2011

Bad births


birth, babies, bodies, breastfeeding, depression

I know lots of pregnant women right now. I am so excited for all of them. Squealing, practically, for a couple. In that face-achey, find yourself smiling at nothing, can tell your eyes are sparkling, could well-up in a sympathetic hormonal fug for them way you do when someone, or several someones, who you love […]

16th August 2011

Either that tea towel goes or I do…


depression, hope

When Spider-boy was little he didn’t smile a lot. I used to think, in the dead of night, it was my fault for not smiling enough when he was tiny, a dread fear that I’d broken him by crying too much on my maternity leave. I’ve been persuaded he just had a bit of ‘tude, […]

15th March 2011

Lucky Stars


depression, hope

I realise I’ve posted a good bit about remembering – remembering the good and remembering the bad. I saw my Mum this week and she told me that memories faze and fade, and that everyone with larger families, or older children, has melded memories and has forgotten much of the minutiae of early family life. […]

20th February 2011

Moving Images


depression

I love American Beauty. I remember seeing it with my then boyfriend, now husband and, knowing it would be a shoe in for best picture, planning an Oscar party. We transformed our flat with apple juice in sample pots in the fridge, scarlet (paper) petals in the sink and obscure home-made videos playing on our […]

8th February 2011

For Crying Out Loud


depression

A couple of days after my second son was born I was walking along my hallway and I burst into tears. Full heaving sobs which took me quite by suprise. I’d suffered from sever PND after my first son, and antenatal depression and complications including SPD/PGP with my second pregnancy. In fact, if I’m honest […]

11th January 2011