Depression

I haven’t posted for a while because I’m not very well.

Hold on, that’s the meat and drink of this blog. That’s what it’s all about. Why have I been so reticent?

Because the nature of this illness means that I don’t want to do anything. I can’t do a lot of the things I used to, like smile or cope or cross the kitchen to turn off the execrable Call You and Yours.

I have depression.

It was inevitable that this would come round again at some point. I've had it once every year, give or take a few, for fifteen years. It isn't triggered by anything external, and the only thing that makes it better is ECT.

But even though I had ECT in my last pregnancy, they won't give it to me this time, because the anaesthetist has concerns. I am now on the NHS, rather than being seen privately, which shouldn't make it a difference - but it does.

However, although we felt fully reassured last time that there was no significant risk of having the treatment once I was in my second trimester, I don't want to go back and have it done privately because the concerns have scared me a bit. And because I am crap at making decisions at the moment.

So I have started some new pills, despite the fact I have had pretty much every pill under the sun in the last 1.5 decades, and none of them have worked. But everyone's mad keen on this one. (I'm less keen, especially on the side effects - nausea, jitteriness and heartburn like someone has poured acid down my throat.) But realistically it is all they can do.

Well, the other things the mental health professionals do is to ring me up every now and then to remind me not to kill myself (apparently my family would be 'devastated' - which would never have occurred to me), and do other helpful things like inform the health visitor that Logie has a depressed mother and report me to Social Services as being a pregnant women with 'a problem'.

But I stress to them, and everyone, that it is not affecting Logie. I am looking after him fine. I don't cry in front of him, we get out of the house every day and do something physically tiring, he is fed and watered and generally as happy and bouncy as ever.

It's very very hard, but I do it. I don't doubt that if I didn't have him, I would barely get out of bed. Don't even ask where I've got to with Christmas shopping. But I look after my son. I love him, and even though he is an exasperating handful quite often, he also is a source of love and humour that touches me in a way that nothing else does.

So the upshot is that I'm sitting it out, and feel increasingly less like confiding in any of the medical professionals. It took a while to get the NHS cogs moving and for them to take me seriously, but now they are grinding relentlessly through various admin procedures, none of which actually HELP me, all of which make me cry more (has anyone ever asked you if you are hearing voices? In a totally conversational 'do you like mince pies' tone of voice? I find it humiliating every time, even though I know they have to ask) and some of which add to my worries, eg Social Services.

Then again, look at it from their point of view. What else can they do? Depression is a hard thing to treat. Medication is the standard, and it works for a lot of people. I am pregnant, so my treatment options are limited. And even though my depression has never been caused by life events or hormones, maybe this once it is linked to my circumstance: I have been pretty wobbly and moody through this pregnancy.

So long as I am not suicidal, starving myself or shitting the bed, they won't class me as severe enough to have ECT. The waiting list for therapy is months long, and probably wouldn't be useful to me at this stage anyway. They are massively under-resourced, and judging from the type of flatulent, noisy, scary people in the waiting room they have much more severely troubled people to worry about than me. I have the backing of a loving and supportive family and group of friends - many don't.

So they medicate, monitor, and pass the parcel between departments in order to cover their backs.

Meanwhile, I have a constant sob in my throat, that threatens to choke me (what the marvellous Sally Brampton calls the throat monster - something I thought was peculiar to me til I read about it in her memoir of depression, Shoot the Damned Dog), I feel sad and numb and paralysed and tormented all the time. I sleep barely four hours a night.

People ask me if it helps to know that it will pass, because it has before. Not really is the answer. And it's not the right question. If someone was holding a needle to your eye, and you were shouting 'ow ow OW' all the time, having someone in your ear reminding you that it might pass in a few weeks or months isn't a great comfort.

But my friends and family (especially Jon, without whom I would be utterly lost) are what keep me going. It's just that I find it hard to tell people. Initially because I don't want to admit that it's happening, and then because I don't want them to worry. Or because I don't really want to have to pretend to feel better than I am.

But I feel an awful fraud, because I bang on about depression when I'm well, write articles about it, give advice and am generally clear-headed on the subject. So it seems that this should stave it off, or at least help me cope when it comes back. But it doesn't, because that's the nature of the beast. I feel embarrassed. And helpless.

But at least I've written it down. It was very hard to do.

In order not to leave this on such a bleak note - and thank you for bearing with me during the longest post I've ever written - I'll include a few details about Logie and his words. They are suddenly coming on apace. Wellies are 'wallies'. Satsumas are 'hahumas', like some sort of Hawaiian delicacy. Trucks are 'tyghhhucks' like a guttural German command. Smoked salmon is 'ham' - which amused my friend so much this morning it's become her West London middle-class quote of the week.

Also, here's a picture of him, the first I've ever posted, just to prove that I am not making him unhappy...

Unprescribed antidepressants

Some nice things happened last week that cheered me up.

Normally I get quite cross about newspaper articles stating that antidepressants are being overprescribed, or that most forms of depression can be cured by a brisk walk, eating sprouting broccoli and taking nothing stronger than a deep breath.

They may well have a point about trends, and some of the advice is jolly useful for some people. Whatever works for you, is my motto. But if you’re suffering from moderate to severe depression, do you have any idea how unbelievably crap it feels to read that sort of thing? Basically, it makes you feel like you’re lazy, and you brought this on yourself. And that you’re choosing to continue feeling miserable, when you could just opt to pull yourself together, if only you were made of sterner stuff. And really good at yoga.

It’s incredibly damaging. Depression’s siamese twin is shame, and making people feel ashamed about how they feel only makes it worse. People with serious mental illnesses need serious medical treatment. The reason antidepressants are prescribed is not just because they get you out of the GP’s surgery within your 7-minute slot, but because a lot of the time THEY WORK. Does anyone really have anything against feeling better?

It’s not dissimilar from the annoyance I feel when people wax on about the importance of natural childbirth, how it doesn’t hurt if you breathe properly*, and then utter that blood-boiling phrase: “Women have been doing it for thousands of years”.

Well, yes, but they’ve also been dying in childbirth for thousands of years. And so have lots of their babies. The after-effects when things go wrong are devastating – heard of fistula? The idea that all these women in mud huts much prefer the way it’s been done in their village for centuries is absolute bullshit, and one of the most breathtakingly patronising things anyone who lives in Fulham or California could possibly say.

I actually know a bit about this because I used to work in Africa, with women in very poor or war-ravaged countries, who had nothing. And I can tell you that not one – literally, not a single one – would say “No thanks, I’ll stick with boiled banana leaf and and sing my special magic birthing song really loudly”. They are desperate for proper, medical help. So desperate that they will go days without food or sell their bodies so that they and their children can see a proper doctor.

I’ve got slightly (thousands of miles, even) off the subject, because as it happens I’m not depressed at the moment, or taking antidepressants. Though I probably wouldn’t be quite so melodramatic about the baby in my tummy having the audacity to be a boy if my mental health was 100%.

So I’m not really talking about alternatives to antidepressants for properly depressed souls, just the unexpected things that happen when you’re a bit below par. They don’t fix anything, but make you think – ‘Well, perhaps I’ll give the Shakespeare soliloquies a rest, whizz through a few chores pretty badly but at least they’ll be ticked off, then it’ll be rioja o’clocka in front of Strictly It Takes Two’.

Watching Logie dance in front of the telly is insanely heart-warming. His standard moves are fast running on the spot (until you fall over), turning round and round (until you fall over) and the arm movements from the Thriller dance. I taught him those, in front of the Halloween Strictly special, before I put my back out. He looks a little bit like a 1950s schoolgirl doing ‘moving to music’ exercises, and it also makes it quite hard for him to see out of more than one eye at a time, but it’s a great party trick.

The nice things that happened to me were 1) a muffin basket 2) friends 3) getting an e-mail from my hero.

I crossly hobbled to answer the door on Thursday, in time to discover a man getting back in his van and a basket of baked goods on the mat. Now maybe this has happened to you, or at least in your office, but this has never happened to me. NEVER. I thought it was a mistake, or a dream. They turned out to be from some people that I have only recently met, and just started hanging out with in a worky capacity. They barely know me! Which doesn’t mean they are nicer than people who do know me, but perhaps that my woe-is-me-ing works better on fresh meat. It was the kindest thing that anyone has done for me since my husband proposed – and I basically guilt-tripped him into that, so this was a genuine surprise.

Friends. I had three batches come to visit while I was ice-packing my back on the sofa last week, and several more messages of support. It’s extraordinary how okay they make everything feel. Not necessarily better, but as if life might just conceivably go on. They are like me (though mostly thinner with careers), they sympathise, they don’t have any answers, but they help. “Yeah,” they say, “I’d probably feel exactly the same too. Have a malteser.” And I perk up.

Esther Walker. This blog is basically a poor man’s version of hers – Recipe Rifle. If I were you, I’d unsubscribe from mine and sign up to hers. She’s funnier, and food makes much tastier reading than conjunctivitis and mood disorders. Last week I eventually got up the courage to e-mail her, and she e-mailed me straight back, which made my day. I won’t say any more, as sycophancy is so unattractive (and rare for me) but it gave me a real boost.

*I can’t help noticing a theme in this post about breathing. Clearly I’ve been doing it all wrong, and it is the key to everything working out just tickety-tonk in life. Can you do it with a blocked-up nose? I did once try an 8-week course in mindfulness meditation, which focuses a lot on breath. I mainly fell asleep, or spent the sessions climbing my internal walls, silently screaming to get away from the noise of other people breathing. But it is one of the trendiest, non-pharmaceutical mood-lifters recommended by doctors for depression at the moment, so like I say – whatever works for you.

Prolapsed disc

After last week’s self-pity-fest, I thought it might be a good idea to give myself a genuine problem to get my teeth into. So I slipped the disc in my back again.

Actually, that’s not quite accurate, but it’s a quick way of summing it up for people that conveys the seriousness of the situation. Here’s how it works.

Discs are like round baby sponges that sit between the vertebrae of your spine, and allow it to bend. Ideally, they are full of fluid. When they start to wear out, they dry out, or become desiccated. (It’s such a joy sometimes to discover a new use for a word that you thought only applied to coconut.) Just like those ramer baby sponges that go weirdly rock hard when they dry. NB ramer, not ramen like the noodles, as I previously thought. Let’s have a food theme today.

They can also start to bulge, a bit like when you ice the bottom layer of a carrot cake right to the edges, then put the top on and realise your mistake as it all squidges out the sides. Now this isn’t necessarily a problem, or a cause of pain in itself. Discs don’t hurt. But when they press on nerves they do. And then they get really malicious and start a chinese whisper with the surrounding muscles, which get all uptight and throw complete spasms.

A prolapse is when is a significant bit of the disc pops out of its usual jelly mould. So if you were to look down at a cross section, that disc would look like a round thing with a marble attached the side. Or a child’s drawing of a snowman.

This is also known as a slipped disc, and it’s what first happened about a year ago, when I got up from half an hour sitting on the floor at a 1-year-old’s birthday party, and fainted with pain. Apparently I managed to lay Logie elegantly on the floor next to me before I passed out.

Sometimes they go back in, but mine didn’t, as we discovered in May this year. The pain came back, the MRI showed that it was still out, if not slightly more so. Lifting Logie into the car (actually, on that occasion I couldn’t, and had to wait for a stranger to come near enough in the car park to rescue us) set it off again.

After both those incidents, I got some seriously brilliant painkillers (the sort that drug dealers charge extra for on The Wire) until I could have a steroid injection into both the nerve and the facet joint around the culpable disc (L4/L5, since you ask). Steroids can’t make the disc go back again, but they reduce the screaming inflammation in everything around it. And it worked like a dream.

On Thursday morning, I was giving Logie his breakfast and turned to face him slightly on my chair. Something felt wrong. I tried to stand up, and get him out of his highchair, and I couldn’t. Not ‘I couldn’t because it hurt too much that I knew I should stop’ but I physically couldn’t do that movement. So I rang our totally amazing lifesaving nextdoor neighbours, who let themselves in with their key and rescued us. Got Logie dressed, took him off for the morning, gave him lunch and put him to bed. Got me to the sofa, brought me some clothes while I waited for the emergency GP.

So nothing dramatic triggered it. The situation is so knife-edge, the distance between the prolapsed (or herniated – that’s what you call it when it’s permanently prolapsed) disc and the nerves such fractions of millimetres, that anything can set it off.

The pain is blinding, the smallest of movements seemingly impossible. Because of being pregnant, I can’t have anything stronger than paracetamol and codeine (a bit like trying to feed 34 toddlers with two fish fingers and eight peas). I can’t have a steroid injection, because it needs to be guided with a scanning machine to get it in the right place, and you can’t expose the baby to the harmful stuff that imaging machines use.

What I need is a microdiscectomy – an operation to remove the pesky bit of sticking-out disc. Obviously that’s not on the cards until after I’ve had the baby. We did talk about having it before I got pregnant, but I was wary, because the surgeon said he’d need to go in through my stomach rather than my back given that the prolapse is unusually central – ie, pushing directly backwards, rather than out to one side.

If only I could have a c-section and a a microdiscectomy at the same time, but although I keep making that as a ho ho passing joke, no one seems to think it a good idea. Clearly it’s not, but having one op, recovering from it, then wash rinse repeating a few weeks later, hence not being able to lift or care properly for my newborn baby and toddler for months, is a total ball-ache.

But let’s look on the bright side. It is getting better. Five days later I can walk fairly normally now, though from room to room only. The pain is more like 5 or 6 out of 10 than 8 or 9. The diazepam they are giving me to try and make my wretched buttock muscles relax means I’m actually getting some sleep at night. I haven’t any loss of sensation in either leg (unlike last time) or problems with my waterworks (unlike last time).

But I am miserable. It distracted me from boo-hooing about the boy baby discovery, but now that’s back with a vengeance and I can’t stop the water coming out of my eyes. I am worn down with pain. Frustrated that I can’t do anything, especially grab Logie and squeeze him a bit too hard, woodpecker kiss his podgy cheek and eat his neck, or pick him up when he put his arms up to me and implores ‘Mumma?’.

And that’s what I need to do right now, more than ever, to stop all these ungrateful feelings. To grasp solid evidence of the utter brilliance of a small human just like him. To feel the solid-gold weight of how lucky I already am. He didn’t want to come to me this morning, and just clung to Jon. I guess it’s confusing for him, my not doing the things I usually do. But he did give me a good lying-down cuddle before his lunchtime sleep. And gave the baby a lovely kiss. He is the best medicine.

20-week scan

It’s a boy.

We thought it was a girl.

But it’s another boy.

If you are having problems getting pregnant at all, or have a seriously ill child, then don’t read on. (This wipes out about half of my readership.) You are right, I am wrong. All that matters is that the baby is healthy and happy.

But I wasn’t prepared to feel like this. Shocked. Upset. Unable to think about anything else. Like I’ve lost something. And terribly ashamed of feeling like this.

Here are some of the reasons for my boo-hooing:

1)      Because now we can’t call it Daphne*

2)      Ballet outfits, velvet shorts and tights, shopping for things I could never pull off as a teenager, wedding dresses. (This is bollocks actually. I hate shopping and am really bad at clothes.)

3)      Long phone conversations when nobody else wants to listen to me witter on – or even better, being on the receiving end of irrational wittering for a change. When a love life is going wrong, or university is too hard and home suddenly seems comforting. I want those witters.

4)      Because I was all set to pitch some smug magazine articles about the Shettles method, which we used to try and make it a girl. (It’s to do with timing around ovulation and girl sperm living longer than boy sperm.) And this pregnancy feels so different to the last one – I’ve had horrible morning sickness, bleeding gums, hair falling out, spots, mood changes that seem to be about hormones rather than depression. So I had a stupid basis for my stupid hopes. And everybody kept saying they thought it was a girl because of that too.

5)      I won’t ever be Number 1 Granny

I know that most of this isn’t necessarily true. That every child, and every relationship with a parent, is different. And that everybody knows example of pairs of brothers who are legendary friends and close-knit families. I know some too. I know some who aren’t. Who knows how they will turn out?

And of course this isn’t about boys per se – after all, Logie is quite clearly the best child that ever lived. And another Logie would be amazing. Hilarious, stunningly beautiful, so full of joy. And when this new little boy arrives I will love him with my whole heart and wouldn’t swap him for the world.

But this feeling of loss is something separate from that. Can you try to understand that? Because we are stopping at two, that means our family is going to be one thing, rather than something else. I have to readjust my set. Yes, we could have a third, but we’re pretty sure that would stretch us too far in every way, and we haven’t even lived with two yet. Anyway, we wouldn’t be trying for a third baby, we’d be specifically trying for a girl, and that doesn’t seem right. What if it was another boy?

It’s something you can’t control (although I can’t help feeling like it’s partly the sonographer’s fault – why couldn’t she just have said the other word?) and perhaps a little more religion would help me too. Oops, there go a few more readers.

The practical benefits are of course substantial – all the same clobber, less to pay for weddings and you can practise things on the first in the hope of getting it right with the second. Like the ‘why it’s not okay to snog a girl then ignore her’ chat.

While I was secretly snivelling on the sofa in the middle of the night last night, I looked this situation up online. Turns out there are six billion threads on mumsnet about ‘gender disappointment’. The general consensus is that it passes – it’s a very specific feeling, at a specific time. That helps. Haters who say that’s why you shouldn’t find out don’t. The advice is to find a name that you really love, and buy (the baby) a new outfit.

That’s a tough one, because I've been lusting after a colour palette of dove grey and soft pink for ages, and we can’t think of a single boy’s name that we really like. Not one. Loads of girl’s names though. Here, you might as well have them now: Daphne (Daffy Duck and Logie Bear you see – I know, a narrow escape), Phoebe (how cool is Phoebe French?), Celeste, Jemima (Mima), Cordelia (Cordy – she’s an actress I think).

They also say it’s often about recreating a relationship in your life. I can see that. Maybe it’s about repairing one too. The granny thing, which is really top of my poor-me list at the moment, is certainly to do with how utterly brilliant a granny my mum is. And how close I was to my granny when I was little.

But I also adore my dad, who can do no wrong in my eyes. And I was utterly vile to my brother when we were growing up – honestly, I can still feel and hear the hollowness as I punched his skinny back as hard as I could. My nextdoor neighbours’ two boys are some of the coolest and friendliest teenagers I know. They’re in a band together, for god’s sake. And maybe one of mine will be gay. Or at least a world-famous fashion designer.

Watching Logie and his little brother play together will surely dissolve all my prejudices about a decade of washing semen-stiffened sheets, grunts instead of conversations, computer games instead of Strictly and diary battles with daughters-in-law. These are random what-ifs, and none of them help.

I just thought that writing them all down might make me feel better, because that’s what I do. I’m sorry if it offends. Like I said, these selfish, indulgent sadnesses aren’t something I’m proud of. Am I going to find it hard in future when friends have girls, especially if it gives them dual-sex offspring? I guess that’s just a tiny flavour of what it must be like when friends get pregnant, and you can’t. I am hugely lucky.

I just need a bit of time to get used to the idea.

If I was Henry VIII’s wife, I would be getting a f***-off bit of jewellery right now. Perhaps a county of my own too. Instead, I am Jon’s wife. Jon, who is just about the loveliest husband and father in the entire species. He thought it was a girl too, but is over the moon that it’s a healthy boy, and getting all excited and saying all the right things. Not things like ‘My kind is going to be outnumbered three to one’.

He even took me into Tiffany’s on the way to the cinema last night, to try on eternity rings. Turns out he’d have actually bought one there and then! But I think it should be for my birthday, if at all, after I’ve delivered the goods, and have stopped being so ungrateful.

Wow, that last bit really sounded bad. Let me leave you with a different image instead. Logie has learnt how to put on his coat ‘the montessori way’ at nursery. It’s a little bit like President Barlet's jacket technique in the West Wing. Or a trainee superhero getting tangled up in his cape. But it’s so unbearably sweet, and proud-making. I can’t wait for him to teach his little brother.

*can we?

Restless leg

There are many ailments I complain about that lots of other people have, but just soldier on with. Bad back, depression, permanently blocked nose at night. None of these will set the world on fire. But if you’re reading this, I guess you’re slightly interested.

Maybe you have one too, but inexplicably don’t write about it on the internet. Because you have better things to do with your time. But as you’re still reading, it might give you a frisson of one-upmanship to identify with something, then carry on with your much busier day.

I have this thing at the moment called restless leg. I rather like the name. A bit like tennis elbow, or housemaid’s knee. I’d quite like to invent a few of my own, eg twisting-in-car-seat-to-reach-crying-child back, or stepmother headache.

It is apparently quite common in pregnancy, and blimming annoying. I tend to get it at night, as I’m trying to drop off. Suddenly, you can’t keep your legs still. Or if you do, they sort of burn with desire to move around.

It’s like the blood in your calves is itchy. You can’t ignore it and it’s totally not restful.

My sister-in-law gave me a good tip the other day. She had it quite badly when pregnant last year. You should get up, stand by a wall, then stand up on tiptoe as high as you can go and down again. Repeat til your legs are knackered. Fall back into bed. Try to go to sleep before it starts again.

This sort of works. Sometimes I try a cheat version and just lie in bed pointing my toes hard then bending them back again. (Remember ‘good toes, naughty toes’ at ballet when you were little? I have very few ballet memories because I handed in my resignation quite early on, when I realised that a) my bottom was bigger than everyone else’s and b) we weren’t allowed to wear tutus until we were something stupid like 12, and could actually do ballet. What’s the point in that?)

But it doesn’t always work. So coupled with having to go to the loo at least three times during the night (for once, I’m not exaggerating) I’m not having brilliant amounts of sleep at the moment.

However, it’s a very small problem in the scheme of things. I’ve just started doing a little voluntary work with Cancer Research recently, so am catching up with ‘Stand Up To Cancer’ that was on Channel 4 on Friday. Watching their appeal films puts an awful lot into perspective.

Can you imagine if your child, your small person into whom you pour so much love, and would do anything for, got a life-threatening illness? And if the treatment that might or might not treat them actually made them iller and in more pain in the short term? I find it unbearable to think about, though once I start I can’t stop.

So if you want to donate, to fund new research and turn it into readily available treatments more speedily, you can do so here. It’s money well spent, and good for addressing restless night-time worries.

Etiquette

I’m a bit short of medical news this week, although I do think that people with etiquette problems have a gene missing.

However, it is sometimes acceptable to do something a bit cheeky. Recently, I found myself in the extremely rare position of a) having a smart, work-ish dinner to go to around Green Park b) being early. So I rang up a great friend (who has asked to remain nameless – you’ll see why in a minute) who works nearby and she suggested we have a quick drink at a frightful Eurotrash bar on Berkeley St, for reasons of proximity.

Gosh I felt out of place. Probably because I am the sort of person who says gosh.

It was practically pitch black, with several categories of waitress geisha who could show you to your very low seat, or hand you a 28-page drinks menu, but couldn’t take your order.

But they did provide a big bowl of rather nice nuts. So big in fact, that there were still quite a lot left. As the incognito friend had other friends coming for supper later, we joked how convenient it would be if she could take them home. If only we had a suitable container.

Aha! Suddenly I wasn’t out of place, I was in my element. I may not wear heels, or make-up newer than two years old any more, but I can be relied upon to have useful crap in my bag. And thus it was that I discovered the world’s first genuine use for a parking ticket.

The little plastic, resealable bag they come in. Perfect for stealing food from restaurants! Women of the UK, breathe out. There is a (tiny) silver lining to having got that penalty charge notice. There is a way to to make it add a (miniscule) bit of value back into your life.

So we did it. And maybe it was rude, and wrong, but I don’t care. So is charging £5 for a glass of fizzy water.

What are rude and wrong, though, are bad swimming pool manners. I have wanted to write about this for some time, but have held back for fear of confirming myself as London’s most small-minded blogger. Seeing as I’ve blown that with ticket-bag-nut-gate, I’ll crack on.

I swim twice a week, fairly early, and usually in an outdoor pool. Partly so as to wake myself up and organise my thoughts, as I have some of my best (okay, only) writing ideas whilst swimming. But mostly so I can casually drop it into conversation later on that day, to accidentally impress people and help me nurse a kernel of virtuousness that will see me through another three biscuits.

But lordy, is it a minefield when it’s busy. It is a fascinating study in human zoology to see who will move over when another swimmer enters the pool, and who pretends not to notice.

I tend to stay away from the serious swimmers – you know, the ones who wear hats. And have water bottles at one end. But there is a man in our pool who is, quite frankly, not on. He looks a bit like Crocodile Dundee’s bad-tempered older brother. He is thin, weatherbeaten and WEARS A WETSUIT. It is a heated pool.

Not only does he never move over, sometimes he swims unnecessarily close to you just to prove a point about staying exactly on the length he was on. Twice he has touched me, as he flapped past. Me, a pregnant lady!

Now, there are rules about touching strangers in public. We all know the ones about the tube. It’s absolutely fine to meld your entire body into someone when you’re both standing up at rush hour, and not say a word. But as a stander, if you even nudge the foot of a sitter, while you’re trying to balance all your weight on one foot and hold the rail in a way that doesn’t show your armpit sweat mark, you must apologise.

Crocodile Grumpee has even been observed to pause at one end at say ‘Disgraceful’ when some poor unsuspecting woman has the gumption to start doing careful backstroke next to him.

In the summer, a Frenchman came into my lane with his son, aged about eight, I’d say. For a while, papa would give some instructions, then do a demo length with garçon in tow. Or garçon would go first. Fine.

Then, as I turned at one end, I saw them swimming side by side towards me. It was parallel lesson time. I swam towards them. Exciting, incredible, what would happen?! I gave in. To avoid collision, I stopped and stood aside to let them carry on, still abreast, around me. We did this two more times, with my anti-French spleen rising, then bottling, before I moved as the next lane emptied. Is it pathetic to have found this so extraordinary?

Perhaps there’s a way of giving them a special opposite-of-parking ticket, sans useful bag, posted into their locker.

Cyst on eye

Actually, it turned out not be a cyst, but I like to have a dramatic title.

Logie woke with a red eye on Sunday. But there was no gunk (we live in fear of another bout of conjunctivitis, as nursery have a militant banning policy) so I brazenly and firmly deposited him in the infant room on Monday morning. With some eye infection drops that I’d bought the day before JUST IN CASE, you understand.

I have learnt my lesson with nursery and illness. I once rang them first thing to ask their advice about bringing him in, as he had a slight temp, but seemed fine in himself. I was barely halfway through the first sentence when they said uh-uh, no way, any hint of a temp is an automatic ban. Similar to doing more than 30mph over the speed limit, I imagine.

But since then I’ve felt little frissons of annoyance every time I sign the medicine book for teething, and see previous entries for other children where their parents have requested calpol for ‘temperature of 37.5’. I can only deduce that they just turned up and presented the situation as a fait accompli. So that is my new MO.

When I collected him that afternoon, the eye was even redder, and there was an alarming white spot in the corner. Now, growths are not good, in my book. Unless you’re George Osborne.

So we gave swimming a miss on Tuesday, and toddled off to the doc instead. Logie literally toddled – he has a new ladybird backpack with a sort of dog lead on it. I know some people are very anti reins. I used to be dubious. But dear God it is a genius invention. I can stop him running into the road and prevent his certain death! I can stop him picking up fag butts on the street with a single jerk! I can even help him up if he falls over by employing the crane technique! And he really likes it.

Anyway, it was unusually calm at the surgery. When we checked in on the touchscreen, it said we were seeing ‘Dr Urgent’. Which sounded like a good superhero name. Logie played fairly nicely with a little girl with a ponytail called Josie (who later turned out to be a boy called Joseph) – it’s pretty impressive how much entertainment there is to be had from going in and out of a knackered plastic playhouse, sticking your head out the window and saying ‘Ha!’.

The GP said it wasn’t infected (no gunk, you see, I was spot on) and merely inflamed. Impossible to say why. And that it wasn’t a new spot – there are all sorts of bumps on our eyes that you don’t normally notice til they get inflamed and thrown into contrast by a red bit. So he said he’d prescribe some anti-inflammatory drops.

Then he got his book out, and started looking them up. I know it’s mean, because they can’t be expected to memorise the details of thousands of medications, but I feel slightly uneasy when the bible comes out. Unfairly, I want them to prescribe things they know inside out – and possibly even invented.

Eventually, he looked up and said “So the drops I was going to prescribe aren’t licensed for children...” and did a significant pause. Well, I felt it was significant. I am sensitive to pauses. I wasn’t sure if this was my cue to say “Never mind, we’ll have them anyway,” or “Oh that silly old licensing authority – don’t you just hate them?”. Or perhaps “Don’t worry, I won’t mention your ill-conceived plan to anyone, for example on a blog.”

Perhaps if he’d been a convincing regular doctor, who said he’d done this a thousand times before, I’d have been happy with the adult ones. After all, I know someone who has shared eye drops with their dog (much cheaper).

But instead we settled on an oral anti-inflammatory solution. And when I volunteered that we had infant neurofen at home already, we abandoned the whole prescribing thing. So just another of those instances where you don’t know what caused it, they can’t give you anything special for it, and you’re told to hope it goes away on its own. If not, come back in a week. It’s not the doctors’ fault – it’s just the nature of childhood illnesses. But it’s unsatisfactory, and makes for a very mediocre blog.

On a separate note, it’s important for me to put in writing that our gas bill has gone up by £41 a month. That seems like quite a lot, doesn’t it? Golly, I don’t know...energy prices. Lots to say about them, isn’t there?

The reason I mention it is because Jon revealed last night that he has two more work jollies (sorry, important events) coming up – taking journalists to see England v New Zealand at Twickenham, and then some ATP Masters tennis at the O2. And other halves are not invited. Why not?

“You’d have to be a journalist...” he explained, then hastily added as my indignant mouth opened “...who writes about energy”. Perhaps he could see my cogs grinding, as he finally concluded “You’d have to have written something about oil or gas, and had it published”. So excuse me while I press my Publish button.

Buttocks

I am icing my buttocks.

This is in part inspired by the Great British Bake Off. Don’t you just feel safe when you watch it? Like everything is benign, and the smell is wafting through the screen.

My ultimate way to watch it is on Sky+ so you can whizz through the boring history bits – merely padding to get the cost per minute down, presumably, or a way to tick the box of some sanctimonious BBC department, ‘Thought for the Day’ style.

Obviously, one also needs something delicious to eat whilst watching. Something treat-like. The problem is, you want something that mirrors what they’re cooking. No good eating chocolate if they’re doing wellingtons. I like an icecream cone or morsels of mature cheddar with special chutney.

I think there is a business opportunity in setting up kitchens equipped for hen parties and work awaydays to come and do technical challenges (well, easier ones – sausage plaits perhaps). Much more fun than ten-pin bowling or electro-zumba-pole-dancing.

In fact, as I type, there is an item on Radio 4 about how GBBO is boosting sales of kitchen equipment everywhere. Apparently it has almost twice the number of viewers of any other BBC 2 programme. And business in Lakeland is going through the roof. (How I used to love the Lakeland catalogue – spatulas and flat whisks are my kind of porn.)

I don’t want Brendan to win. Sorry. I’m sure he’s very nice, but in one of the VTs even his neighbours seemed fed up with him – they just took his proffered cake off him and closed the patio door. You could practically hear them saying ‘It’s that camp old guy from next door with some baked goods again – I just haven’t got time for him today’.

But back to my buttocks. In fact, I simply have an orthopaedic ice pack on them, because they are unbelievably painful. It is a close cousin to my back pain, and the whole area is feeling very knife-edge. I can’t take any decent painkillers, and rest and ice is the only temporary solution. The other key thing is not to lift Logie, which is pretty tricky. His affront is legendary, and produces real water tears and a koala cling to my legs, making it difficult to walk.

He also has a buttock issue at the moment. We see a lot of them. Because he often throws a complete shit fit when having his nappy changed, and refuses to put on trousers. It reminds me slightly of my brother Toby, who when having a tantrum when he was little (approximately seventeen, from memory) would start to strip off, regardless of where we were. Even in the supermarket. I’m so glad I accidentally mentioned that to his best man once, so it could be shared with all his wedding guests this summer.

I am a bit embarrassed about having buttock pain. Cos what I really want to say is ‘God, my bum hurts’, which sounds a bit dodge. Apparently it is a classic symptom of pelvic girdle pain in pregnancy, but even if I have got a touch of that, the real culprit is the prolapsed disc, sticking out and annoying the nerve like Logie taunts one of his friends who is trying to play nicely on their own.

When I first started this blog, Toby (who doesn’t read this blog, so far as I know, but I guess I’ll soon find out) kindly offered to share his minor ailments, and revealed that his physio has deemed that much of them are due to problems with his left buttock. I was delighted! Cos my left buttock is also the troublemaker. What a coincidence – as if we’re related or something. Thanks Mum and Dad for the left-buttock gene.

Perhaps we should do a survey of the rest of our family, to see how far it goes back. Was it caused by being Vikings who always had to row on the left-hand side? I wonder if there’s a history-medical-diversity department of the BBC who’d like to make a documentary about it.

16-week antenatal appointment

I didn't have any decent medical updates last week. Well, I burnt my hand on a pitta bread. So I went to sleep with my palm on a cold pack. It gave me a bit of a fright when I woke in the night and brushed against it.

And true, my friend Charlotte cut her finger on a yoghurt lid and it got so infected she was almost admitted to hospital. She said it looked so bad she was ashamed to type at work, and was considering a metal finger thing a la ‘The Piano’. But it might've been a bit noisy.

Jon’s right ear was a slightly blocked, but he only remembered to ask me to put drops in it once we’d said good night and turned the lights off.

See?

So I waited til today, my 16-week antenatal appointment, and it turned out my blood pressure is a fraction on the low side. Which is quite ironic given the blood-boiling three hours I spent at the antenatal clinic.

I was seen, eventually, by a midwife called Marcella. I fear I am predisposed not to like people called Marcella, as the only other one I’ve ever known turned out to be a wolf in friend’s clothing.

At my hen weekend, organised to the n^th degree of loveliness by my godsister Jules, she was rude to all my friends, refused to eat anything cooked by Jules, got shitfaced, went to the pub on her own in Chipping Norton while the rest of us were at the beauty place and had to be coerced into paying her share for dinner at the Kingham Plough. Apparently she insisted on inspecting it squiffily, then still wouldn’t hand over her credit card, stating in a very loud, American (which is pretty heretical in itself in the Cotswolds) voice “You girls need to learn to read a bill!” To which my now sister-in-law Emma, who is the sweetest-natured person under normal circumstances, somehow found herself replying “Well you need to learn to...be more polite!”

I wimped out of confronting her about it in the remaining weeks before the wedding. Which obviously wasn’t much to her liking either. Despite being spotted early on at her designated table (she had fiercely insisted on being seated next to her boyfriend) they must have suddenly decided to leave, but without saying anything. So the waiters patiently served their food, and took it away again, untouched. My mother took over a special gluten-free cake she had thoughtfully made her for pudding, and left it by her chair, just in case.

Marcella never referred to it, and I managed to be smiley but too busy at every subsequent encounter, which was a little tricky seeing as we worked together. We didn’t have many meetings together, but she always seemed to be in the loo at the same time as me. Then she left (in mysterious circumstances) so my cowardice breathed out.

Anyway, midwife Marcella was a perfectly nice person, she was just baffled and fairly weary. These appointments are basically an exercise in administration, and if your administrative system is based on photocopies and guesswork, it’s an unuplifting experience all round.

Together we marvelled at the fact that I have yet to be contacted by the 1-to-1 midwife, who is meant to have taken over all my appointments and care. Marcella filled out another referral (by hand, on a photocopied bit of paper) and said she hoped I got a phonecall before my next appointment. But she said it in a resigned, powerless way that one might say in October ‘I hope it won’t rain for the rest of the month’.

I am meant to have this 1-to-1ery because of my psychiatric history, which I suppose makes people explode six feet off their chair. The words electric shock therapy tend to have that effect. Although it would be very nice to have such support, I am doing much better in the mental health stakes (though prob not 100%) and would actually like it because a) the last time I was pregnant and had such a midwife she was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and I wanted her to Be My Friend, which she sort of was for a bit, especially when we had lunch in Carluccio’s and I dripped prawn oil on Logie’s head whilst doing that overambitious breastfeeding whilst eating in a public place thing, that I never normally did, I was just trying to impress her. And b) it would solve all this buggering about trying to sync up appointments.

Because Marcella, bless her, didn’t have much of a clue about what days various clinic were held on, it turned out once I got back to reception. And she didn’t take too kindly to my probing questions like “Why do I have to go to the VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean – I’m sorry, both the acronym and the full name are squeamish) clinic after I’ve seen the obstetrician if she decides I need another c-section?”. Poor Marcella folded too easily, clearly just wanted me out, admitted that it didn’t really matter which ‘clinic’ I went to, they were all in the same place, with the same midwives.

I’m having a diabetes test at 28 weeks, because Logie was such a big baby, need to see the anaesthetist at 32 weeks, because of my prolapsed disc, and have a showdown with the obstetrician about an elective c-section after the 20-week scan in a month. It’s the last one that I really mind about.

Eventually Marcella, having left the room four times to get different photocopies, lifted her head from my notes and asked “Have we covered everything we need to in this appointment?”. I mentally checked my many years’ medical training as a midwife and gave her the reassuring answer she clearly desired.

It all reminded me of last time, when three separate failures of information-sharing between hospital, GP and midwife after Logie was born turned out to be due to fax problems. FAXES?! Who uses faxes these days? Michael Winner?

When I finally got back to the car, I had a parking ticket. The receptionist had given me a letter, in case this happened, because I was seen almost two hours after my appointment time. He said that it would negate the charge, so I didn’t need to nip back and put another pay-and-display ticket in. In fact it said that I’d had ‘unforseen problems with my pregnancy’ and that they hoped the authorities would ‘take this into consideration’ which makes me feel both guilty and unreassured.

However, one system which is working tickety boo is nursery. Logie started in the infants' room today. It felt like such a big day I even brushed his hair.

When we got there, he beetled off as usual, but was diverted from the stairs to the baby room and steered towards the older children. He went to the side independently, collected his cereal in a bowl from a carer, carefully carried it to a table (on his own – there were two other little boys sitting at two other tables – is that a thing?), pulled out his little chair, sat on it properly and started eating his breakfast nicely. I mean, HELLO?! I was dead proud, and even a bit misty, but not entirely sure this wasn’t a clone they’d created just for my benefit.

I stood for a while by the door, open-mouthed, and he turned around and spotted me. He cheerfully shouted ‘Mumma!’, gave me a boastful wave and turned back to his breakfast.

On collecting him, he rushed up to show me proudly that he was still wearing his George Pig wellies, made a spirited attempt at pilfering a scooter and ate a whole chicken drumstick with a flourish when he got home. He’d had a successful day. Maybe nursery could organise my maternity care. It would be far more efficient – and I’d get snacks.

Morning sickness 2

Here is one of the things I forgot to write about morning sickness.

I hugged this fact closely for a while, and proudly offered it up to people, because it is about science and therefore made me feel valid.

We had a private scan at nine weeks, because I was beginning to think that feeling so intensely nauseous and ill meant there was either something wrong, or it was twins. And, frankly, I was going a bit mental.

Having mentioned to the sonographer that the morning sickness was bad she pointed out that I had an ‘active’ corpus luteum. Which either causes or at least correlates with above-average nausea. Something to do with hormones, and the lining around the follicle that produced the egg being thick. Look, the details aren’t important. What mattered was, I had PROOF! That I wasn’t making it up.

A little bit of science is a dangerous thing to a hypochondriac. I felt so pleased, I bravely managed to go with Jon to Pizza Express afterwards and eat three courses, which was unusual and foolish.

Even better, when I googled it, I found some article that said bad nausea was usually associated with an active corpus luteum (I’m going to abbreviate this to ACL, because I’m going to mention it again, and because we love initialising things down in our family) on the right hand side, as opposed to the left. Guess which mine was on! Happy days.

Sadly it didn’t disappear for good then and there, which disproves the Lorraine Kelly theory. But it is substantially better now, at 13 weeks, which backs up the ACL theory. Once you get into your second trimester, the placenta takes over making the progesterone and all the busy stuff, so your ACL can relax, slim down and watch a bit of X Factor on Sky+, whizzing through all the blah bits.

The Lorraine Kelly theory was told to me, by Lorraine Kelly, by coincidence, when I was first pregnant. Apparently some study has shown that lots of women find their morning sickness disappears after they’ve had their first scan. Something about seeing the foetus is reassuring. Obviously this was never very appealing to me as a theory, because I don’t like any sort of ‘all in the mind’ inferences, and I wasn’t nauseous last time. But as Lorraine is officially the nicest and most sensible woman on telly I would repeat it. Also because I got to mention in passing that I’d had breakfast with Lorraine Kelly (porridge, toast and marmite, since you ask).

Anyway, we have now had the regular 12-week scan too, where the bean gave us a big wave, and things have been perking up ever since. But I think the timing is just a coincidence. I only tend to get the quease in the afternoons or evenings, which is partly why I am making the bol for our lasagne this morning. Such early prep makes me feel like quite the little housewife.

The other reason I am doing it now is because the carpet and sofa-cleaning man has been here for over two hours making The Most deafening noise, so I can’t do any work. It’s so bad that I just spelt deafening wrong twice, and had to think hard before working out how to correct it.

I have just been into the sitting room to have a pointless conversation. He wanted to show off his handiwork at removing some of the stains from the cream sofa (yes we have a toddler and we both tend to spill whatever we eat, but it’s a really nice sofa and it came from the Harrods sale, and my mother even haggled for it, while I hid in the loo) and to ask me what the dark brown marks are that wouldn’t come off. We ruled out chocolate, because he was pretty sure he’d got some of that off elsewhere on the cushions. With hindsight, I realise the point of this conversation was to shift some of the blame back on to me, rather than it being his fault he couldn’t remove some stains, at great expense, off a sofa he had previously scotchguarded to prevent marks staining permanently, at great expense.

Oh god, this is dull. This is a really bad post. I’m sure I used to be funnier. I heard this woman on the radio the other day, and her words have been ringing in my ears ever since. She basically said she went back to work after having a baby, because it was a choice between that and staying at home and writing a blog about poo.

It’s because of this noise. The industrial hoovering is taking place on an epic scale. It is audible nausea.

 I have now assembled the entire lasagne, because I can’t concentrate on anything, and to prevent me from eating the component parts. I’m quite pleased with how it looks, and the possibility that my culinary ability may have returned – last week I muffed up roast chicken, which shouldn’t really be possible at my age.

But noise is better than nausea, and cooking is better than feeling too sick to contemplate it. Moreover, I am jolly lucky to be pregnant. So it’s time I shut up.

Morning sickness

Sometimes, food takes on extra significance, that bears no relation to its quality or how hungry you are.

On planes, for example. Why is the trolley starting at that end? Will they run out of the chicken? Can I have your bread roll?

At weddings. We’re standing in the wrong place for the canapés – we must ditch these people and get over by the door, in the direct flightpath of the waiters. Mm hmm, uh huh, you met the bride’s mother on a cruise around Canada – why aren’t they coming over here, don’t they realise we’ve been here almost an hour and only had two? Oh god, those prawns look really nice, we’ve only had honeyed sausages so far, will there be enough left, don’t give them any more they’ve had loads, THAT MAN’S TAKEN TWO!

Logie has formed a habit of having a banana in the car on the way home from nursery. It gets him into the car more quickly, it’s pretty healthy, and it’s one of the few words where I am confident we are describing the same thing.

I peel it down two-thirds of the way, so he can eat it like a monkey. Sometimes there is a lot of shouting from the back when he needs the rest peeling, and it’s a tense few minutes til we can get to a red light (okay, sometimes just a traffic jam, surely policemen with children would understand) and I can turn around.

Sometimes he just sticks his snout into the bottom and manages to slurp the rest out using purely the pressure of his hand. Sometimes he continues to be so hungry that he starts nibbling the peel – though that might be because it gets a good reaction from me.

On Monday, disaster struck. There was a brown bit two-thirds of the way down and the banana snapped. He was inconsolable. This was tragedy like no other. His life was basically ruined.

I explained that it would taste just the same. I gouged out the brown bit with my fingers, despite not having checked I had something to wipe them on first. He wailed “NANAAAAAA!” all the way home at top volume, like someone outside a courtroom. Tears coursed down his face. Interestingly, when we got back, he had actually eaten most of it, which is puzzling and impressive as I don’t recall the noise dropping below a constant ten decibels at any point.

My relationship with food has had a new light shone on it in recent months because I am pregnant, and have been suffering from dire nausea. Morning sickness isn’t entirely accurate because it was pretty much all day, and I didn’t vomit – unless dramatic retching in the streets counts.

Happily, it is beginning to subside. Life is returning to normal. But it’s been very hard not writing about it, because it’s been so overwhelmingly the biggest deal in my life, and I am not good at keeping my own secrets. But I didn’t want to jinx things.

So basically, every post in the last 13 weeks has felt like a sham. When I started this blog, it was meant to be about how one’s baby seemed ill all the time, and then you got it too. With a shocking but moving personal twist about depression and ECT. But then the pregnancy nausea started and the thing seemed tailor-made. And I couldn’t write about it.

In fact, I couldn’t do pretty much anything. Like be cheerful, or do any effective work, or anything that didn’t involve staying perfectly still.

I went to the GP. She gave me some anti-histamine pills. I felt like a complete wimp – everyone else seemed to have had it (usually much worse, they pointed out graphically) but they coped with it much better. Permanent nausea began to feel like anxiety. I slept badly. I did a couple of near faints.

I saved up lots of funny things to say about it, and anecdotes to recount, when I was safely in my second trimester and could write about it. I have forgotten them all. Apart from the nice foreign man whose wife made him give me his free vitamin water on the way to watch Olympic tennis at Wimbledon. I’d been doing the retching. I said thank you so much, it’s because I’m pregnant. He shrugged and said something unintelligible that I nonetheless understood perfectly to mean ‘I know. It’s obvious. My wife was a complete drama queen too and if I don’t give you this bottle I’ll never hear the end of it.’

But food-wise it was very interesting. Because obviously when you feel sick you don’t want to eat. So for a few weeks, I didn’t, and lost a few pounds. And then I realised that eating something did sometimes make me feel better, albeit briefly. Either because of the blood sugar, or the distraction, or the way gluttony is hardwired into me.

So I have been on carbfest like no other. Biscuits, toast, pasta, pizza, baked potatoes. Thinking about food, and putting lots of it in my mouth, was strange when I felt so sick. But somehow I managed.

But, thank the Lord, it is fading, and I am getting my mojo back. In the scheme of things, it is just a broken banana incident. The important thing to remember is that we are incredibly lucky to have got pregnant again so quickly – if at all – and the new bean is due in March. And an excuse to eat for two.