1 in 4

It’s been almost 4 months since my last blog and a lot has happened in those four months. Mostly good things. Happy things. But one very sad, unsettling and definitely-not-on-the-happy-scale thing.

So first things first…I am now a MRS! It has been the happiest (albeit stressful) experience! We had the most magical time and the day couldn’t have gone better! The months of planning were well worth it and it was fantastic to have our nearest and dearest around us to help celebrate our love.

The theme was peach, and funnily enough that was the same colour scheme my mother had at their wedding, which was rather serendipitous. I made my own bouquets, name cards and favours, wanting a personal touch to compliment the hotel wedding. I had found the most perfect dress and felt like a princess! And to top it all off I was clearly marrying the best man in the world! It really was the best day!

Rewind 12 weeks…after months of trying, we had just found out I was pregnant with our second child! We were absolutely over the moon! We couldn’t wait to tell our friends and family, and especially as one of my close friends was also pregnant with her second and we were going to be preggy buddies again!

So we dressed our little lad in a T-shirt saying ‘I’m going to be a big brother’ and the family took absolutely no notice of it so we ended up having to point it out! But when they realised, it was happiness all round! This time was so different from the first time where everything had been tainted by Cancer and it felt wrong to be happy. This time we could do everything right!

The only difficulty now was the fact that I was due to walk down the aisle in less than 3 months! I decided a corset dress was the way to go, as that would give me a bit of room for growth and we set about finding the perfect dress! I tried on tons of dresses and ended up going for a totally princessy one! Not at all what I had imagined myself in, but it was the dress that screamed ‘this is it’ to me, so that was the one I chose.

I remember the day I picked the perfect dress, as it was also the day I started to lose our baby. I had felt incredibly bloated that day and had thought to myself ‘well at least I know the dress will fit in a few weeks when I start to show.’ I started to spot and felt cramps starting, but by that evening the cramps had gone and I thought my tummy had just popped as I now looked pregnant! I even sent a photo to my best friend telling her I was starting to show.

Over the next week, I continued to spot until one afternoon I saw what I call real blood. It was like I had started my period. I rang the midwife and they said if I was still bleeding the next morning to come in. The bleeding then slowed that night and by morning it was very light. I called the midwife again and they asked me to come in for an early scan. I was optimistic that everything would be ok, but as I sat waiting to go into the scan room I couldn’t stop the tears starting to gather in my eyes.

The sonographer started the scan, explaining she would have a look first and then tell me what she sees. What she saw was a baby there, in my womb, but without a heartbeat. She said she would have to get a colleague to come and confirm what she saw and left me to my thoughts. I felt like I was suffocating. The second sonographer came in and performed the scan and confirmed that our baby was no more.

I hadn’t brought my fiancé with me, as we never for a minute thought that this would be the outcome. I had to call him and tell him. I had to tell him that the precious little soul we had only just begun to love was never going to come into being. He was heartbroken. Two years before we had overcome my Cancer and gone through my pregnancy whilst fighting Cancer, and now when it was supposed to all be going right…it suddenly wasn’t.

Time for me

I’ve spent the last two years focused on my boy – I was luckily enough to be able to take 11 months of my maternity and spend almost every day watching my boy grow. Then I went back to work and was again very lucky in that I went to working only 4 days a week, giving me that precious extra day just me and him. We had play dates and snuggles and I spent the days just soaking him in.

Now, 2 years on and I feel like I need time for me. I feel like I need to have some uninterrupted time that is mine. So I have enrolled him into nursery for that extra day. This will give me one day a week where I have no call on my time. No baby to care for. No naps to work my schedule around. No baby, housework and sanity to juggle.

Before I had arranged it I was psyched! I thought ‘OMG I’m going to be able to have a bath and wash my hair in peace. Or paint my nails. Do the weekly shop. Or even get really daring and do the housework without a child attached to my leg!’ But the minute I got the email from the nursery saying yes there’s a space and he can start this week I wanted to burst into tears. The guilt I suddenly felt was overwhelming. How could I want to have time away from my boy? How could I even dream of putting him into nursery on a day when I don’t HAVE to work.

Am I being selfish, wanting time to myself? To pick up extras hours at work, or get my hair done, or just watch a film without the Toot Toot cars wailing in the background. Is it wrong of me to do this? Am I a bad mother?

I think of my friend who went back to work 5 days a week after only 9 months and how hard it was for her. How it almost broke her. And how lucky I’ve been to have this time with my boy. But I also think about how hard it is to be at this small little person’s beck and call and how for my own sanity I need a break from work and from being a mom, even if it’s just for half a day a week. To have a few hours where I don’t have to even speak to anyone if I don’t want to.

It’s his first day tomorrow and I have such mixed emotions I can’t even begin to decide how I feel…so I suppose only time will tell if I’ve made the right choice.

A time for reflection

So today is exactly one year since two things happened. Firstly I went back to work…and secondly my little one started nursery. Naturally it’s made me feel a little nostalgic – thinking back to simpler times – as I’ve found the last few months incredibly hard. I realise now that the things that came easily and that I thought I had nailed, such as my boy loving every bit of food you put in front of him, or travelling longer distances with no problem, could change without a moments notice.

He was…is…a happy baby. He absolutely ADORES nursery. From that very first day he’s loved being there and I feel proud that we have raised a confident and independent little boy. He will happily kiss me goodbye and wave me off without a moments hesitation. If anything it’s me who is left feeling a bit lost and missing him. Almost 2, going on 22!

In the baby room he played nicely with others or on his own. He would lie down happily to let the staff change his nappy and he would eat practically everything put in front of him. A few months in he got Hand Foot and Mouth and he refused to eat anything. He didn’t even want his milk. We regressed and started feeding him purée pouches as it was all he would have. Then after a couple of weeks he finally started to eat solids again.

However it seemed that the damage was done, as when a short time later he moved up to the toddler room he would eat literally nothing. We would pick him up in an evening with the same report every day of ‘he’s not eaten anything today’ and it started to worry me. When we got home he’d eat a jar of cauliflower cheese and a couple of pouches or maybe a bowl of cereal. I took him to be weighed and his weight was spot on. I was told not to worry, which is easier said than done! It’s true his weight was fine, but when your child is refusing to eat anything except puréed fruit pouches or cauliflower cheese it can get very stressful. Too much fruit and he got the runs and too much cauliflower cheese he would end up with stomach cramps and windy as hell! Throw in a bit of lactose intolerance and you have a difficult combination.

Then came the car sickness. At first we thought it was possibly because he was now facing forward, but even when we turned him back around he was still sick. Anything from 10 minutes into the journey to going a full 2 hours without being sick. There was no rhyme or reason to it – you just had to hope for the best! After about 6 months of it we finally had it down to a fine art of catching the sick in his blanket. This definitely makes for more stressful car journeys…take driving to Scotland for instance. He was sick 7 times on the way up. Seven!! I was ready to give up except short of camping on the side of the road there was nothing we could do but keep going. But then we had the trip back to consider as well and I can’t say I was looking forward to it. The brave little guy seldom complains and just sits there with his little face all scrunched up and waits for mommy or daddy to help him. It’s heartbreaking.

So I resigned myself to the fact I have a child who won’t eat…although again there is no rhyme or reason as today he may love beans, but tomorrow he will cry and push you away if you even so much as show him a bean. Same goes for blueberries, and bananas, and yoghurts…and pretty much anything. Even the cauliflower cheese was getting refused! Also I was resigned to having a child who gets car sick. But at least he plays nicely with others…

I honestly was one of those moms who think to themselves that kids who hit or push or bite (mine does all three!) are not disciplined and allowed to run riot and that is why they do it. It’s not. I mean there are kids out there who are left to their own devices for sure, but I have rules. I have the naughty step. My child will say sorry and give you a cuddle after his time on the naughty step. But he still does it. It makes play dates super stressful. You feel judged. You want to shout out but he’s not even two he doesn’t know any better! Or sometimes it’s their child who pushed first and because yours stands his ground he looks to be the bad guy as no one saw the first push! But you can’t say anything without looking petty so you just have to pull your child aside and tell them off and pray to God they don’t do it again within the next five minutes.

Luckily the biting seems to only coincide with teething spells and usually the hitting or pushing is only once or twice and then he seems to settle into what’s going on and play happily alongside his friends. Still the tension is there and you are on constant high alert. It’s almost enough to make you want to bypass play dates altogether!

So today my child ate a handful of snacks at nursery, and once he got home he proceeded to cry and roll around on the floor saying no to anything I suggested. He asked for juice…I made him juice…I handed it to him and he threw it down crying noooo juuuice. He then asked for a nana…I peeled a banana for him…and again he cried saying no nana noooo and threw it into the sink! I can’t seem to please him no matter what I do. I’d give up…but you can’t. You can’t quit. You can’t take a day off. You’re it for the next however many years it takes until they can look after themselves!

Sometimes I long for the days of a simple baby who only drank milk and slept through car journeys. Who woke like clockwork every three hours for a feed, but you knew it was coming and you were meant to be giving them a feed so you didn’t have to have that internal battle of whether your almost two year old should be having night feeds or not and if you could just find the energy to get through one night it may break the routine and he’ll stop wanting milk.

I thought I had it sussed! And maybe for a split second I did, but then everything changed and tomorrow it will probably change again. On one hand the first year is the hardest because you have no idea what you are doing. But the second year feels just as hard…yet by now you should know what you’re doing right? So for now I’m just trying desperately to cherish every moment. Every tantrum. Everything about this precious soul who is growing up just too damn fast…

The big C, baby and me

After what seemed like years, but was actually only a couple of weeks, my consultant told me that because they had removed the tumour they felt I could postpone the second operation for a year and have my baby. I was now considered ‘low risk’. I felt relieved, but I had already distanced myself from this unborn child and found it hard to reconnect.

The pregnancy was hard. I suffered terribly with morning-noon-and-night sickness and the underlying Cancer concern meant that everything was that much more complicated. I had countless consultant appointments and scans. It was great that I got to see my baby so much, but it was also a constant reminder that once he was born there would be something else to focus on.

I had been told that once I had the operation to remove the remainder of my thyroid, I would need to have Radio Iodine Therapy, which would mean almost three weeks away from my newborn baby. I thought the best way to handle that was to accept that it was going to happen and prepare myself mentally. I knew it would be best for him not to be anywhere near his radioactive mother, but it didn’t make it any easier to accept.

So after a hectic labour (see my previous blog ‘So it begins…’) I finally had my child in my arms. I was in love. I knew this was the most important moment in my life, but part of me held back. I had to keep a part of me separate from my boy, ready to face the struggle ahead. This resulted in a certain detachment from him. I knew I would give my life for him because he was my son and that’s how I should feel but I felt like something was missing. Being the type of person I am I never let it show and I did everything I could for my baby those first few months…even if it felt like I was only playing a part.

He was almost 3 months old when I had my second operation. I recovered so much quicker that time around. I put it down to the fact that I had my little one to care for and so didn’t have the luxury of indulging in weeks of recovery. I had to be back to being super-mom within days. Of course I had the support of my significant other, and as I was no longer breastfeeding he could now be involved with every aspect of our boy’s care.

I had intended to continue breastfeeding after the 24-48 hours of pumping and dumping the milk, but as I anticipated I would be having radio therapy within a few weeks it seemed like the natural progression of things to let it fizzle out now. In hindsight (oh to do things over with what I know now!) I should’ve continued.

Months later – after more consultant visits, blood tests and checkups – I still had not had the radio iodine therapy and was given the option to take part in a Cancer Research Trial. This meant I would be randomly selected to either have the radio iodine therapy…or not…and in the process I’d be helping fight Cancer! I ended up in the ‘not’ group.

I received a phone call about 5 months after my operation to say which group I was in. I remember hanging up the phone and bursting into tears. My first thought being ‘thank God I don’t have to go through this’ and the second being so so angry at having spent the first 8 months of my baby’s life in this bubble of anxiety. A needless worry that had hung over me for the last year and a half.

After that I started to feel the bond with my boy deepen. I didn’t have to harden and protect myself from having to leave him. I didn’t have to worry that I would miss out on anything. I could finally stop playing a part…

The big C, bump and me

So it’s taken me a while to put what I have felt and been through into words…all the emotions I have experienced over the last two years have been exhausting and it’s taken a lot of focus and work to get to where I am.

We started trying for a baby 10 months before I was diagnosed with Cancer. It was earth shattering. Those words are ones you never expect to hear about yourself. Everyone will know someone who knows someone else who’s been affected by cancer, or personally know someone who’s been affected, but you never expect it to be you.

I was diagnosed in the beginning of June, after a operation to remove a lump in my throat. I had spent the previous year having various tests done, but the results had been inconclusive and so the only way to get a definitive answer was to remove the lump, along with half of my Thyroid. I was confident the prognosis would be ‘benign’ and I would go on with my life as planned. It wasn’t.

I could feel my eyes filling as the doctor spoke and it was the first time I had seen my mom, who was with me for the appointment, unable to hide the concern as she digested what was said. I could hear her voice crack and see the pain in her eyes as she tried to ask the doctor some questions. If the news was upsetting my mom, my rock, the woman who could handle and had handled everything life had thrown at her so far, then this was bad. I felt like I was looking down on myself and it wasn’t really me. I asked the doctor a couple of questions and then left, in a daze, tears running down my face. I had to wait for a further appointment and another operation to remove the remainder of my Thyroid and any lingering Cancer cells. I also had to stop trying for a baby.

I wasn’t sure what was harder to handle. I did what I needed to to cope, and that was to adopt an ‘it is what it is’ attitude. I took the approach that I was lucky. I had the type of Cancer that had a 90% cure rate. If I had this operation I wasn’t going to die. It had turned my life upside down but there were people who had it worse. So I told myself to suck it up and get on with it. I was advised to hold off on the baby thing for at least a year. I decided ‘ok, this means we can do all the things we would find harder to do once we had a baby’. We decided we would plan a trip to New York and we would build the extension on the house. I didn’t realise how badly I had wanted that baby until much later.

Fast forward a month…We were on the way to my parents house when something made me realise that I hadn’t come on my period two days before as usual. I put it down to the stress of the last month, but we stopped and bought a test anyway. We got to my parents, said hello and took our stuff upstairs to get ready for a meal out. I went to pee on a stick for what felt like the hundredth time, and like all those times before I expected a negative result. I hadn’t even finished wee-ing when the little blue line appeared. I went through to the room and waved it at my partner and promptly started crying.

It was all wrong. This wasn’t meant to happen yet. I had spent the last month adjusting to the fact that I couldn’t have a baby yet and now I was pregnant. I was angry, confused and worried. What were we going to do? We held each other and I cried. Then we went downstairs to tell my parents. We couldn’t keep it a secret with everything that was going on – they needed to know.

It wasn’t how I had planned it. Nothing was going my way and I was devastated. This was their first grandchild and I had planned to get them Granny and Grandpa coffee mugs to announce to them when we eventually got pregnant. It wasn’t meant to be such a bitter sweet moment, more bitter than sweet. It was meant to be one of the happiest days of my life and it wasn’t. There wasn’t joyful hugging and laughter, there was concerned looks and tears. There were so many questions surrounding what would happen about my Cancer. Would I still have the operation? Would the baby be ok? Little did I know there was an even tougher question coming.

I rang my Consultant the next day. He was very practical and direct and advised me that he would have to look at the risk to me and the risk to the baby. So basically if the risk to me was higher then I would be unable to carry this child. I had never even contemplated that that would be an option. How could I make the decision between me and my unborn child. I had to distance myself from my pregnancy emotionally and think of it in terms of ‘a baby would be pointless without me here to care for it, and if I couldn’t have this child then it obviously wasn’t meant to be’. I put everything I felt into a box and locked it away. I told him that I understood and I waited for his call.

Brotherly Love

One of my biggest worries when we found out we were expecting was how to break it to my step-son. He was five, and had been the only child in the family for the first 4 years of his life (and didn’t particularly relish having a younger cousin) so we had our work cut out.

We wanted to wait until we were over the 12 week mark, as although we had told close friends and family already, we felt that should anything go wrong we didn’t want a child to have to try to comprehend it – so by the time we broke the news I was 14 weeks along.

We sat him down between us and said we had something very exciting to tell him. This laid the foundation for him to anticipate exciting news, so he was already in the mindset that something good was coming! We told him that he was going to be a big brother! He was quiet for a moment and then suddenly a small smile appeared and it slowly grew wider and wider.

I explained that I had a baby growing in my tummy and that this baby would be his little sibling. He seemed excited at the prospect of being a big brother, and seemed to grow with the anticipation of the responsibility that entailed. Once we found out we were having a boy he started telling us how he will be able to show him how to play with cars and dinosaurs and teach him footy. As far as he was concerned this baby was relying on him to teach him the ways of a little boy.

Because we had gone about telling him the way we had, I think he felt he was gaining something important in his life and so he was excited about it. I definitely feel that if we had said we were having a baby instead of the fact that he was becoming a big brother, it would have made him feel like his life as it was was being intruded upon by this un-asked-for baby, but instead he was becoming something special – a big brother.

We would look at baby books together and he would rub my belly and say good morning and goodnight to his baby brother. He got to feel him kick and he would talk to him and tell him about his day and his toys and what we were going to have for supper. The bond between them was growing right from the start.

You can see the love between them – the air of protection that the eldest has over his younger brother. It’s a very special bond and one that will be with them for life. It’s so very important to lay down good foundations, to avoid jealously and resentment towards the new baby. Because of this great start my step-son is so very proud to tell people that that’s his little brother.

‘Just a Mom’

That first week, the start of the rest of my life, was what I thought to be the hardest week I’d ever experienced. It had topped all other milestones in my life – the embarrassing awkwardness of your first boyfriend, starting a new school without any friends, getting your first job. Even immigrating to a new country didn’t hold a candle to the life changing moment when I realised that this is it for the next 18 years.

It hit home on the first day it was just me and our baby. Our friends and family had gone back to their own lives and my partner had to get back to work and suddenly I was on my own with this precious little fragile baby. I knew it was coming, I thought I’d be fine as I had just spent the week before acing this new Mom thing! I kissed my man goodbye at the door and me and the boy went to the window and waved until Daddy was out of sight. Then suddenly this dark cloud descended and I could feel the panic rising. I tried to keep a level head – after all I had my milk now, I could change a nappy and I had somehow managed to keep this baby alive for the last week, so why would today be any different?

I’m a great believer in your baby sensing your stress and had spent my pregnancy with a ‘I don’t care’ mentality as I didn’t want anything to stress me, and subsequently my baby, out. So far he had been as cool as a cucumber, but today he must’ve sensed my panic and panicked himself. Shortly after Daddy had left he had developed hiccups. Nothing serious, but an hour later he was getting upset and therefore I was getting upset and then he was getting upset (you can see where this is going!)

I spent the day in almost tears (you know when you can feel them bubbling there under the surface and the smallest thing tips you over) until I rang the midwife (then the tears actually did spill out) and I explained that I didn’t know what to do and he had had hiccups for the last five hours and I was just a mess. They told me hiccups is actually a good thing and probably isn’t bothering him too much and to keep giving him Infacol with every feed to get the wind out. Eventually I pulled myself together and thought to myself ‘There’s no going back. If you have a hard day then you know what, tough, you have to get through it! You have to keep going. This is something that is non negotiable. YOU HAVE TO DO IT!’

Of course the minute my man walked through the door that evening I burst into tears. He found it hard to believe I was so upset over hiccups, but really it was more than that. It was the realisation that this was my life now. I was a Mom. And at that moment I wasn’t a high flying career woman, I was ‘just a mom’…and I wasn’t so sure how I felt about that…

Here comes the milk…

So being small breasted, I was surprised when on day 4 I woke up looking like Dolly Parton! My milk had come in! I was so excited and couldn’t wait to feed my baby! I felt immense relief that everything was ok and I could continue our breastfeeding journey.

Now that my milk had come in, I was very fortunate in that it had come in in abundance. I had what one of my friends later referred to as ready, aim, fire boobies. Every morning I could literally feed my baby with one boob and, whilst he was feeding, I could express almost another whole bottle from the other (this was great as it meant I could freeze the extra milk ready for when I was due to have surgery a couple of months later). The minute I got ready to feed my boy it was like a switch had been flicked and the milk literally shot out. On more than one occasion he got a spurt of milk to the eye!

On one hand it was amazing to have so much milk with which to feed my child, but it also meant I leaked all the time. I went through 3-4 sets of breast pads a day and constantly had wet patches on my tops – I soon learnt to layer my clothes and stick to dark stuff! I suffered as most woman do with the pain of breast feeding, and anyone who says it doesn’t hurt has been very, very lucky. I combatted the pain issue by watching Netflix while I fed (due to the sheer volume of milk he only fed for maybe 15 minutes at a time) and that took my mind off it. It was this weird, painful, drawing out feeling and after about a month it started to be less painful and more just an odd sensation. I was fortunate in that my little trooper latched beautifully, and so I didn’t suffer with blisters or bleeding. I personally think that’s the trick to successful breast feeding– if your baby can latch on right then it’s unlikely that you will get blisters, and no blisters = less pain. I also used tons of nipple cream. I tried different brands to find the one that worked best for me and found there were two – Lanolin, which was great for a good soak before bed, and Bennetts, which has the same consistency as Savlon and so was really soothing when I was feeling a bit raw.

I won’t lie to you, it was hard. Some days (or more specifically nights) I would sit there feeding my baby and feel the weight of the responsibility crushing me. Every time he cried for milk it was on me, but I knew this was the decision I had made and I had to stick to it. I had tremendous support from my other half and that made it possible for me to continue for as long as I did. He would do all the burping at night, allowing me to wake up, feed and then go back to sleep while he settled the boy.

I was only able to breast feed for the first 3 months due to needing surgery and possibly radiotherapy, but working as a team we were able to stick to plan A and give our son the start we had wanted and it was the most amazing experience for me.

That first night home.

So because he slept soundly his first night on the outside, in his Perspex box in the hospital and had to be woken up for a feed at 2:30am, I assumed I had a good sleeper! I was confident I’d get him home and he would snuggle down happily in his Moses basket and I’d not hear a peep until he wanted feeding.

Oh how wrong could I be!

Now for me co-sleeping was a big no-no! The fact that I then spent the next three nights sleeping on my back with my arms wrapped around my precious child, just so he would settle, was neither here nor there. I told myself he needed to feel safe and this was the way to do it.

I had tried putting my pyjama top in the Moses basket with him – that made no difference. I had tried a dummy – uh uh…not for him. I had tried rocking him to sleep and placing him gently in the basket – well yeah that worked for all of five minutes. He didn’t want to be swaddled but he didn’t want to be free either.

Coupled with the uncertainty of breastfeeding and I suddenly felt very much out of my depth. I still didn’t like the idea of co-sleeping, as I think it is important to have time with your significant other away from the kids, but needs must and for now it was the only way I could get him to sleep.

And there came compromise number two.

Over the course of the next week we went from him sleeping clasped tightly in my arms, to laid on the bed next to me, to eventually snuggled happily in his Moses basket. I had worked out the issue – and that was that he didn’t like being deep down inside the Moses basket. I stuffed a pillow inside to raise him up and he was as happy as a lamb.

Finally I could start to relax…