The L Word

Well well well, friends. It’s been a while. You’d think with a life in lockdown I’d have all the time and motivation in the world to get blogging. I had visions of binge watching many series on Netflix. Giving my house the deepest of cleans. Reading all of the unread books sitting on my bedside table. Starting a 7 step skincare routine. Sorting out our wild garden. After all, that’s what a lot of people on my social media seem to be doing at the moment with this enforced “time” we have on our hands. However my reality couldn’t be further away from all of these things… I honestly just cannot find the motivation to do anything.

If you do, I bloody take my hat off to you. I wish I was doing all of the things. The productive and organised side of me is having a daily internal battle with the opposite side of me which has just switched to survival mode. Sleep, eat, shower, repeat. I find that the days go in so quickly, SCARILY quickly when you think about the christmas holidays for example, or the summer holidays when you were still at school, and how they seemed ever lasting and never ending. Time feels slower when you are living in the moment, which brings me to another big bag of guilt that I am constantly wishing the days away. Wishing towards the day where I can hug my family and friends, when Reuben can go to Nursery, when I can take Juno swimming for the first time.

I hate myself for wishing these days away, I feel like my mind is bolting towards the finish line, struggling to keep the light at the end of the tunnel in sight. I feel ashamed for feeling so selfish. My family and friends are all healthy, happy, and coping with the current climate in their own way. We stay connected via phone calls and face time. We send birthday cards via moonpig, flowers that fit through your letterbox, and lots of delicious baked goods via local businesses who have adapted and found their feet in a world where they can’t operate their services as usual.

Pete reopens the shop tomorrow as takeaway only. He’s probably one of the last cafes in the surrounding area to reopen, and he’s confident that he can do so safely while adhering to government guidelines. It has been amazing having him at home all this time, we have bonded so much as a family and laughed a lot together. So from 8am tomorrow morning I’ll be flying solo with Reuben and Juno for the first time properly since she was born. This is fine, I tell myself. People have 2, 3, 4 kids and manage it. However this has turned into a maternity leave like no other, and unfortunately due to the restrictions in place at the moment, all your usual forms of respite when you have a baby have been completely thrown out the window. No baby groups, no swimming, no soft play, no coffee dates, no popping round to see family and friends, no nursery, and no one out side of your household allowed to visit. To hold the baby, give you a big cuddle and let you go for a piss in peace.

We had a few quiet blissful weeks after Juno was born, before the lockdown started. During that newborn bubble I felt like we had all the time in the world, so we decided to take things a bit slower in terms of visitors compared to what we did when Reuben was born (that boy had a steady flow of loving visitors every single day, which I LOVED but in hindsight it was the most exhausting thing to do when you are adjusting to having a newborn) I was recovering from a c-section again with Juno, but wanted to establish breastfeeding in peace without worrying about tucking my boobs away for the next visitor who walked in the door. I wanted to nap as much as possible when the baby napped so that I had more energy to give to our toddler. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. If I had known what was about to happen, I would have welcomed more of my family and friends round to see her in those mega early days. Because now, 16 weeks later hardly anyone has met her at all.

The funny thing about hindsight is that some things you just can’t predict. A global pandemic being one of them. I couldn’t have predicted that most of my family and friends wouldn’t get to meet my baby while she was a newborn. I couldn’t have predicted that a few days after I stopped expressing my breastmilk, there would be a panic in the shops over formula milk with none left on the shelves (queue me, hauling the breast pump back out of the cupboard, trying desperately to see if my supply hadn’t diminished completely) I felt on cloud 9 after Juno was born, to the point that I was able to come off my anti-depressants for the first time in years. Then lockdown hit, and my beautiful cat Dexter died. This completely broke my heart into tiny pieces. I may write about this in a future blog post, but it’s still a bit too heavy for me to write about right now. We welcomed a new fluffy lady into our lives a month ago, a little Ragdoll kitten called Peaches. This was sooner than expected. I knew we would get a new cat eventually (the house felt strangely quiet without a feline presence after having one for 8 wonderful years) and we figured why not just go ahead and do it while we are always home and have the time to get her settled. She is absolutely lovely! I do miss my blue eyed boy every day though, and we have a beautiful wee memorial for him in the garden where we buried his box of ashes.

I should add, those of you who have been on medication for anxiety and depression will know that even starting to take them can be quite a difficult/wobbly process until your body gets used to them and they are fully established in your system. So for that very reason I’ve not went back on them after all these months, despite really wanting to at times. I know the current anxiety I feel is very much situational. I would be feeling the anxiety of the unknown, of a global pandemic, even if I was still taking Sertraline every day.

Tomorrow Nicola Sturgeon will be addressing Scotland in her daily briefing around lunchtime, and I am hopeful that she will be able to move us into phase 2 of lockdown restrictions being lifted. This would mean that my Mum would be able to visit my house and come indoors, with physical distancing and hygiene measures in place. So although I can’t hug her just yet, I’ll be able to spend time with her in a way we’ve not been able to for months.

There is so much going on in the world right now which I can’t even begin to scrape the surface of in one little catch up blog post. I’m staying quite active on instagram at the moment, so please come over there for more daily brain dumps. I have loved being able to chat to folk and get to know them more via that platform during this time. Sharing ideas, support, education and solidarity. To the people fighting their own battles every single day, I see you. Our situations may all differ and I have never walked in your shoes before, but I see you. I may not know you or ever understand your struggles, but I see you. Solidarity is the key word getting my brain through what is going on at the moment. I may not have much motivation right now, but I count my blessings every day and that manages to help me keep the light at the end of the tunnel in sight.