New year goals - an update

In January I wrote about what I wanted to achieve this year. In February I did an update.  I want to update again, so here goes.

Find a work/life balance

- Achieved.  I have been part time in a  new role since March and my mental health has improved considerably.  I still get tied up in knots and make stupid decisions but the balance is vastly, vastly better.

Spend more time with my toddler.

- As I now work 2.5 days a week only I get lots more time with my boy and it's wonderful.  I've got to know him much better, we do loads of fun things and he is much happier having me around more.  I've had a period of several weeks of frustration and crossness as he goes through a difficult phase, but that is far preferable to working full time in a job I don't like and can't do.

Teach the toddler to say thank you, tidy up after himself and like vegetables.

- He is now so polite! He says please, thank you and you're welcome in nearly every appropriate situation.  Other people comment on how polite and kind he is.  I'm in awe of his manners, he's better than me.  After prompting, he now tidies up with little complaint.  He is also eating vegetables now - that was clearly just a developmental thing and just took time for him to get there but he's got a better diet now.

Do yoga a few times a week

- Not managed this. But I have booked an outside personal trainer session for next weekend so we'll see how that goes.

Spend less money

- Given that I earn a lot less than I did I am now far more careful with money and I budget for and record everything I spend, so I am far more in control now.

Work on reducing my trichotillomania symptoms

- I started having electrolysis in August and my electrologist is amazing.  After my first session with her I threw away the tweezers.  15 years of relying on the damn things and I threw them away with not much concern. Since the start of August I have plucked on two occasions, which were each days that an appointment was cancelled.  Inbetween appointments I shave or trim my chin hairs and the only hair removal is by my electrologist at the appointment. I have just done 2 weeks without having any hair removed by myself or her (due to a gap in appointments).  I never ever thought I would be able to do that.  My skin is looking far better, far less pink, and the hairs are considerably finer and lighter in colour,  I am amazed.

Be more appreciative of my parents

- Hmm. I don't know if I do this, I can't be objective about my relationship with them.

Get my asthma and knee twinges under control

- Asthma is up and down. I took ibuprofen for a knee flare up and it made me wheezy.  My knee flare ups are less regular than they were, but I do need to work on strengthening the muscles.  Hopefully the personal trainer can help with that.

Cycle to work more - don't get the bus because it is easy.

- I usually cycle.  If my asthma is acting up, or my knee, I get the bus, but mostly I cycle.  I have realised how exhausted I was in my last job so actually I don't feel bad about not cycling in every day then.

Give up sugar for lent

- I did this. It was really hard, then easy, then hard again.  It hasn't stopped me wanting sugar but I go through periods of reducing my sugar intake. I'll do it again next year.

Boys Don't Cry and Wyrmeweald: Returners Wealth

A couple of books I have read recently.

Boys Don't Cry by Malorie Blackman
This was a good story about a 17 year old suddenly having fatherhood thrust upon him.  There were some inaccuracies about baby feeding which annoyed me. Fair enough to have them in the book but please please include a footnote giving correct information.

There was a coming out subplot which I take umbrage at. The character concerned gets beaten nearly to death by his closeted boyfriend. Coming out stories are important and they do have a place, but I am sick of reading ones that portray being queer as danferous, depressing, miserable, full of struggles and fighting the system/your parents/your peers. I would like to read ones written as a coming of age story like straight people get. Being queer isn't always horrible, and it won't get less horrible if people only read stories that paint queerness as difficult.

I think Blackman is straight and I imagine she thought she was being really sensitive and writing a thoughtful book. It's just that as a queer teen in the 90s all we bloody had were painful coming out stories. That's all anyone ever knew. I'd hope we had moved on by now.

Wrymeweald by Stewart and Riddle
This was better.  It's frontier fantasy woth dragons but the dragons come in all shapes and sizes and comprise most of the fauna in the area where the story is based.  They are hunted for pelts and meat and only one type bonds with humans. It was a different sort of fantasy read and I'm glad i read it but I'm not too fussed about reading anymore.

I am currently in the middle of reading Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu. An American high school girl gets really pissed off with the sexist shit at her school and anonymously starts a zine called Moxie. She is inspired by the Riot Grrl movement. It's pretty good so far.

Riots not Diets folks. 

Sugar free (ish)

I've nearly completed my Lenten fast of sugar. Tomorrow (thursday 29th march) is ky last day.
I've done pretty well. I have accidentally had sugar a few times but only in the following things:
Ketchup and brown sauce. I hadn't thought to check they had sugar.
Liquorice - i thought i was buying sugar free. I wasn't so i put the packet away after 2 bites.
Gravy - after the first time i realised sugar is an ingredient. I've since knowingly had ut two or three times because I was in a grump and didn't want a dry dinner.
Crackers - i have absentmindedly ate my son's leftovers, realising after one bite they are sugary.
Croissant - 2 bites of. First bite was automatically going for my son's leftovers, second bite was trying to persuade myself it was sugar free. It wasn't.
Cappuccinos- i kept forgettibg to request no chocolate. But when i was asked i said no.by week 3 i was requesting lattes instead.
Alcohol - i chose to not quit alcohol and have had my usual 2 beers, or 2 gins, or two glasses of wine one night on the weekend.

I have found sugar free chocolate, sugar free cereal bars and made sugar free scones. I continued to eat bread and didn't think to check the ingredients. I've eaten a lot of dried fruit and sugar free crisps. I have had honey on toast a few times. I discovered choc shots, like a sugar free hot chocolate but made with fruit juice, agave syrup and cacao bean powder.

The sugar cravings went at week 3. That was the point I stopped wanting to cry whenever I walked past the chocolate aisle. That feeling lasted a week then on the final countdown i have been craving cake again.

I would do it again, but I probably wouldn't fast on Sundays. Allegedly that's how the Catholics do it, and i was brought up catholic (it never stuck) so I wouldn't feel it was cheating.  I think i might end up eating less sugary stuff after this but i am not going to give it up forever.

It's been an experience and I'm glad I've done it. 

New year goals

I wrote about what I wanted out of this new year.  I was at quite a low point when I wrote this but it seems I have already achieved some things. Let's see:

• Find a work/life balance and Spend more time with my toddler.

Achieved.  I go part time soon.  I am so relieved.  I am already happier and planning things to do with my son.

• Teach the toddler to say thank you, tidy up after himself and like vegetables.

This should be achievable when I'm part time and have more energy to parent him.  Mind you, he's already started saying sorry and excuse me more, so part of him learning thank you and please and other manners is just waiting for him to get old enough to get it.  I also want to teach him table manners because right now he's atrocious and I don't feel like I can take him out to lunch.  Although going part time will mean I can't afford to take him out to lunch.  As for the vegetables, he's starting to broaden his tastes anyway, nibbling on the odd bit of green stuff.  I will be following the advice in the First Bite book I mentioned in my last blog post and hopefully he will have a greater range of tastes soon.

• Spend less money.

Going part time means I will have less money to spend, so this one should be easy...

• Get my asthma and knee twinges under control/Do yoga a few times a week/cycle to work more

My asthma is already loads better - preventive inhalers are the bomb.  When my asthma is better I should be less prone to chest infections which means I will be able to cycle more.  being part time means I will spend more time on my feet and less at a desk which should be good for my health and my knee and. Doing yoga will mean that my knee should get better as well. I have had problems these last few days so I did a few sun salutations and seated forward folds tonight and was a bit narked at how far I didn't move.  So, another reason to do more regular stretches.

• Work on reducing my trichotillomania symptoms

I've not done anything about this yet. I appear to be pulling less at work, which is good, I hope that will continue.  I plan to get electrolysis on my chin done too, if I can afford it.  If that gets rid of some of the fuckers then my trich should reduce.

• Be more appreciative of my parents

I'm trying.  I've certainly be more truthful (in a kind way) to them recently.

• Give up sugar for lent

This will happen from Wednesday.  I will give up all processed sugar, including savoury food that has sugar added to it.  The exceptions are that I will keep eating honey and I will have alcohol as normal.  So about twice a month then.  I might blog it.  It might not be interesting and might just detail my dreams of cake, but wevs.  My blog, my writings.

Books that I have read recently

Some thoughts about a few things I have read recently:

First Bite - How we learn to eat by Bee Wilson
This is a non fiction book I recently finished reading. I don't think I've ever been so enthralled by non fiction. This book is highly readable and absolutely fascinating.  There are 8 chapters - Likes and dislikes, Memory, Children's food, Feeding, Brothers and Sisters, Hunger, Disorder and Change.  It covers how tastes are formed, why babies and toddlers don't like certain tastes, how we can teach children - and adults- to change their tastes, the relationship between eating and hunger and how family affects how we eat.  And more.

Seeing as I have a vegetable refusing 2 year old this book was a real eye opener.  It's not a parenting guide, it isn't about getting your child to eat, but it does contain some useful info about eating well.  A lot of it is written from the viewpoint that a great majority of people have disordered eating patterns, that we don't eat purely to fulfil hunger and that anyone can change their tastes with time and repeated exposure to new tastes.  I took a few things away from it, which are:

• We should enjoy every mouthful we eat.  If we don't like what we are eating, we should change it.
• If you want to enjoy new flavours, try them.  Try them repeatedly.  Give yourself  20 or so exposures to them before you decide if you like them or not.
• Cooking and eating should be pleasurable.  You can learn to enjoy cooking and eating.
• Children don't like bitter food.  But they can learn to.  If they refuse vegetables, don't turn it into a battle, don't hide veg in the rest of their dinners.  Offer them tastes of things outside of mealtimes, a lick will do, or a tiny pea sized amount of it the new food, which they can put in their mouth and spit out again.  Reward the try with a sticker or similar, do not reward them with chocolate or other food.  persevere with new tastes.  They will get it eventually and they can learn to like bitter food.
• If we feed our children sweet things to cheer them up when they are little, or as a reward for doing a good thing, then they grow up to associate sweet things with feeling good, and these sweet things become comfort food.  If we were to reward our kids with healthy food they would grow up to associate healthy veg etc with comfort.  Wouldn't that be a fab thing.
• Children's formula milk is manufactured to taste sweet because that's what adults think children's food should taste like.  The tastes and likes of children are most heavily influenced between the ages of 4 and 7 months.  What they eat then has a correlation to what they like as older kids and adults.  If we flavoured formula milk with spinach or other veg they would be more open to these vegetables as they get older.
• Breastmilk contains the flavours of what the mother eats.  However eating lots of veg and other good stuff does not guarantee that the toddler will like vegetables.  Don't I know it.
• When a child or adult is disgusted by a food they are genuinely disgusted.  Force feeding them the food won't make them like it, it will just continue to disgust them. If you want to get over your disgust of a certain food you need to repeatedly an gently expose yourself to it over a period of time.
• Food is a joyous thing and it's quite sad that lots of people don't enjoy a wide range of flavours and textures.

Bike Topia - Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories in Extreme Futures
This is a brilliantly enjoyable set of short science fiction stories which involve the use of bicycles.  I think cycling is the most civilised way to travel, and in a future where there may be little petrol or diesel available it makes sense that people will rely on bikes.  And that those in power will control the use of bikes.  I enjoyed all stories apart from one, which I found quite disturbing, but that's down to my personal sensitive points.  Find more info about the book here:
https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/6675

Hitler's Forgotten Children by Ingrid von Oelhafen and Tim Tate
This is a non fiction book about the children of the Lebensborn - those with racially pure parents that were selected to be raised in Nazi ideology and to form the Nazi warriors of the future.  I'm halfway through and so far we have mostly covered Ingrid's early post war life and been given an overview of her adulthood.  As a young child she found out her parents fostered her and I have just got to the bit where she is discovering that she was a Lebensborn child and she is trying to track down her biological family.  This is a really interesting book that makes clear the horror of a government directed drive to create racially pure citizens, and shows how not knowing your origins can seriously affect your life.

Brilliant

(this is a post I wrote a few weeks back but only just found again)

I just read Roddy Doyle 's brilliant. It's set in Dublin and is a story about how the kids of Dublin defeat the Black Dog of Depression who is ruining the adults’ lives.

It's so literal. Kids are the only ones who can defeat the dog because they are the future. They laugh at almost anything and when they say the word ‘brilliant’ they take away the dog's power.


I didn't enjoy it, it's just too on-the-nose. I think of another book that made everyday words into metaphors - Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. His treatment of London tube stations is fairly literal, but it's clever, and nestles inside a clever book and the metaphors aren't the whole story.  Brilliant is described as a magical, moving, marvellous story. I find it too obvious to be moving.  It doesn’t feel magical, not if you have an imagination. It's simplistic, depression can’t be staved off and defeated by being cheerful and laughing.  Metaphor doesn’t work unless you follow it through, you can’t do halfway houses. 

Not a misery memoir

On Saturday I went to a talk by graphic novelists Nicola Streetsen and Una as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, literature weekend.  The title of the talk was 'Not a misery Memoir - gender, identity and overcomign trauma'.  Streeten has written and drawn Billy, me and You, a novel about her grief journey (sorry, I hate that phrase) after the death of her 2 year old.  You can see why I was interested in the talk. Una wrote and drew Becoming/Unbecoming, about growing up 70s Yorkshire when the Yorkshire Ripper was around.

I was expecting a talk about horrible, miserable stuff but that wasn't it at all!  Streeten started, and touched upon a few things in her book, the panels about marking people's reaction to her news, the funeral director's problem accepting they didn't want a religious service, stuff like that.  Una talked about feminism and how women's bodies are policed and judged.  But, most of the talk was about how art can show metaphor in a different (better?) way than words can.  About how we read the comics page and about how readers connect comics in a different way than they do to prose, so comics can be more beneficial than prose when processing traumatic things.  They talked about why they chose to do their story as a comic.  They talked about their art styles.  I think Streeten said her rough and ready scratchy style suits the depiction of grief, because grief is rough and ready.  Or maybe that's something I came up with.  There was some brief stuff about the technical process of comics too.  And, I keep forgetting this, they talked about these sorts of books being cathartic for readers, not the writers.  This is very true, I think.

Una comes from a fine art background and her stuff is beautiful.  I had not heard of her before, and now I think I'll be checking out Becoming/Unbecoming.  There's a lot of empty space in the art which I find quite emotional and nerve wracking, but that maybe because of where I'm at in my head (who knew 2 years later I wouldn't be back to normal and that grief taints every part of my day and mind).

They also talked about Laydeez do Comics of which Streeten is a co founder.

Of the audience, I was one of three women in their 20s/30s.  The rest were in their 50s/60s/70s and were there for the literature weekend.  It was very surprising to me but it felt lovely.  To be in a comics environment dominated by well to do professionals, no costumes, by hyperbole, no fuss, and to be surrounded by older people who didn't know anything about comics and were treating the medium and the other attendees seriously - I loved it.  The atmosphere was friendly and informal and I loved seeing Streeten and Una as older woman, and friends, doing comics professionally and chatting easily.

The day was being sketched by the founder (?) and definitely editor of Graphic Medicine, Ian Williams.  This is a tweet of one of his sketches:
https://twitter.com/WritersCentre/status/734015906825797633
His work was lovely!

Breastfeeding thoughts part 3

A long essay on breastfeeding and where I am with it.
If you come here for the comics discussion, sorry. I keep meaning to write some comics posts, but a newborn changes your priorities!

I don't like breastfeeding.  I like being able to.hold my baby close, but the act of breastfeeding is not something I enjoy, tho tbf i dont actively hate it either. Most of the time I am ambivalent, with no positive or negative feelings, but sometimes I veer between dislike and hatred. I have no idea what makes it all worthwhile, emotionally speaking.  Breastfeeding is exhausting.So we've started combi feeding (formula) to help me get through it.

I aim to give J no more than 4ozs a day,because I still want him to have majority breast milk, but it varies as to when in the day we give it to him.  We could be out in the afternoon, or it could be the evening feed, or the first morning one. I don't usually express to make up for it. I have had thoughts of going back to exclusively Breastfeeding, but I like the freedom that bottles give you.

We have had problem after problem.  When J was born he was little ,not small enough to be IUGR, not by a long stretch, but a small baby. So his mouth was small which meant he couldn't get a big enough gobful of breast, so his latch was poor, and it hurt, every time he fed. My nipples were misshapen after feeds and both nipples were cracked, although thankfully not bleeding (much).

At around three weeks he started getting better and we had some pain free feeds. Then I got mastitis which made me feverish. The mastitis cleared up with antibiotics, then a week later I got very sore again. I thought it was thrush, had a swab done which was negative for thrush and positive for stapphococlous, which causes mastitis. J was not gaining enough weight, in hindsight I know this was partly because I was scared to feed him because of the pain. Other reasons his weight gain wasn't as large as expected was us confusing hunger and tired cries. It's all very well to say put the baby on the breast whenever they cry, but when you are that pained you do what you can to avoid it.

At this 5 week point I had a meltdown, refused to breastfeed J and expressed for two days until I could cope again. In that time he got a mix of formula and expressed breast milk.

A second dose of antibiotics cleared the mastitis, and another swab showed we were born clear of he stapphococlous bug. Great. But by week seven I was crying during the night feeds and crying as soon as I woke up in the morning. Breastfeeding is really really hard and people had said it got easier by week eight but I didn't feel like we were making enough progress.  I was also getting vasospasms by this point - pain in your nipples and breast after a feed,caused by poor latch.

I'd paid for a lactation consultant to come out twice to help with latch and positioning and that was really really great. I knew I was doing all I could technique wise, but it still wasn't enough.

So when I decided to combi feed I felt far more relaxed and able to cope with things. Knowing I have the option of formula makes me a lot calmer about breastfeeding. I knew it wouldn't be easy but no one said how hard it would be, no one explained why.

The only thing that is instinctive is the baby's suckling. Everything else had to be learnt. It will hurt when you first feed, because you aren't used to having anything quite like that on your nipples, and they are sensitive. If they get damaged the pain increases, a lot. Breastfeeding drains you of milk, obvs, but also you will find yourself suddenly exhausted in the middle of a feed. Or suddenly hungry. Or teary.  It's draining in all senses of the word.

I remember asking, when pregnant, how long babies fed for, and the answer I got was it depends on the baby.  When J was jaundiced he'd feed for just a few minutes at a time, but he'd feed 10 times in the hour.  Then nap, then wake in an hour or two to do the same thing.  As his jaundice reduced to less concerning levels (and it took till he was 4 weeks untill it totally went), he would feed for between 40 minutes to an hour on one breast. Then fall asleep and wake again 1 or 2 hours later for another feed.  Mind you, I didn't let him go for much longer than half an hour, because it hurt.

Gradually he started going 3 or 4 hours between feeds, then the feed length would decrease, so now he can drain a breast in 10 or 15 minutes, but he always feeds on both breasts now.

Those are normal feeds.  Then you have cluster feeds.  Cluster feeds can be 20-30 minute feeds, with half hour breaks inbetween feeds, for 5 or 6 hours.  Or they can be 7 or 9 hour marathons, in which J would prefer not to have any breaks inbetween feeds but I insist on some breaks because I need to go to the toilet or eat my dinner.  I pretty much loathe cluster feeds, they destroy me.  But, they happen because that's just what newborns do.  They might be linked to growth spurts, but not always.  This crazy feeding stimulates your milk production so the day or two after a cluster feed your body will be producing more milk.  The plus side to cluster feeding is after a marathon session J can sleep for between 6 and 9 hours.   Which means I get between 5 and 8 hours sleep. But sometimes he wakes up after 3 hours wantu

The other thing about night feeds is that it's not as simple as waking just for a 30 minute feed. You're up for at least an hour because you have to do the nappy change, the feed, the burping and then get the baby back to sleep again.  Night feeds often take 2 hours.

This is bloody exhausting!  It's best for the baby yes, but it's really hard on me.  One of the reasons I chose to go with formula for some feeds is that at night I find myself dozing off, and that's just not sfae.  Feeding lying down and co-sleeping is not an option for me.  No judgement on those who do it, but I will not.

J is now 9 weeks old and I still have cracked nipples, although they aren't sore and they are nearly healed (until we get a few bad sucks, then they get opened again).  I wish I'd done my research before starting to breastfeed I'd have felt more in control.  Obvs I couldn't have done any research while pregnant with J, but I could have done while pregnant with C.

I would suggest that if you want to breastfeed you should:
Read the La Leche League book The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.
Get yourself onto some breastfeeding forums - read about everyone's problems and solutions.  Be prepared.  I'm on the Babycentre ones, they are really useful (although often infuriating as several members response to new posts is to not answer the original question and to tell you should fully breastfeed, without knowing your background),
Get lots of different pillows and experiment with setup and support.  Change the pillow arrangement as the baby grows.
Get a Thrupenny Bits portable pillow for breastfeeding in public.  I have the classic one because I am fuve foot three andJ is small. It's the perfect size for us.
Know about the mechanics of breastfeeding and common problems.  Inform yourself, then you can make the right decisions for you and the baby and you will know what questions to ask of midwives and health care assistants to help make it work.
Find a lactation consultant near you and book them in for a 1:1 early on so you can have expert advice to get latch and positioning sorted.  LCGB is the British governing body and you can find a consultant near you.

Get the number and opening times of the National Breastfeeding Helpline stored in your phone.
Know that for some families breastfeeding gets easy in week 2, in others it gets easy in week 6, in others maybe week 12, and in others maybe at 6 months.
Know that you will feel like you've gone one step forward and two steps back.  It's normal, but knowing it's normal doesn't help when you've had a painful stressful week of feeds.
Know that combi feeding or moving to fully formula isn't failing at anything, but is simply a change to the way you feed.
If someone tries to tell you that formula is 'just' food know they are probably smug and full of themselves.  Food is important to babies, there is no 'just' about it.
You can comfort babies through ways other that the boob.  Bottle feeding is for me, a far bigger bonding experience than breastfeeding, and quicker.
There is no shame in not enjoying breastfeeding, or in not wanting to put in 2/3/4/5.6+ months of slog to get the emotional benefits and enjoyment at 7+ months down the line.

Pregnancy after stillbirth: 33 week scan and a bit after

My 33 week scan went OK.  The baby is growing and blood flow etc is fine.  I agreed to being prescribed antidepressants after the birth as I think it's a good precaution.  They'll take a couple of weeks to kick in, so won't save me from the baby blues that I have been told kick in 3 or 4 days after birth, but they should stop me from giving up after that.  I have requested paroxetine as that seems safest for the baby, if I can breastfeed.  I'm planning to try to breastfeed, but if I can't I won't beat myself up about it (hopefully).  I'll get a carton of formula in just in case.  At least I know I can express colustrum so the baby will be alright for the first few days.

The day after the scan (at 34 weeks exactly) I decided I needed more checks, to keep my anxiety down.  So I booked CTG traces for that day, and more for the following week, with the end result that I have medical appointments (community midwife, growth scan, CTGs) booked for pretty much every day between that 34 week point and when I'm booked in for induction.

My mistake was in not making appointments for the weekend directly after the 34+0 point, because I spent that weekend super anxious.  Saturdays and Sundays have bad associations for me.  So now I'm going in on the remaining two weekend between now and induction, and conveniently enough CTGs on the weekend are done on the ward where I'll be induced.

I ended up having an emergency check at Delivery Suite (it's still vile visiting there) because the baby was moving far too much - increased movements are as concerning as decreased movements.  But at least when they are moving you know they are still alive.  Anyway, the check was a ctg trace and in total I was in there for 2.5 hours, which is pretty quick.

I'm now 35 + 1 and I went to the hospital today and it was pretty horrible walking into a new hospital setting, to a bay to be checked over.  I've never stayed in a hospital bay, but my partner did have a couple week stay a few years ago as he was hit by a car, and it wasn't a pleasant time.   The midwife who did the trace did tell me that for people in our situation they try to put us in a private room, which would be preferable.  However the private rooms may be being used by families in more dire need than us.  We'll see.

Physically, the baby is dropping and jeez I can feel it.  Actually I think the drop started a few weeks ago, I remember a day when I felt really heavy,  Since then I've been getting more groin pain, lower back aches and shoulder blade aches, and it's more difficult to get my legs and hips comfortable at night.  I have woken up with pins and needles in the arm I've been lying on, and it can take a couple of hours for them to stop.  My knee is playing up again.  There's a muscle on the side where it gets swollen and is painful to bend.  I think my foot arches have fallen even more as my feet ache in a new way when I walk.  When I leave the house in the morning, to go 10 minutes to the bus stop, my calves are awfully tight and I can't walk at any speed, it's pathetic.  However I'm not getting cramps at night, thankfully.  This hot weather is a shit because my feet heat up ridiculously, but at least they aren't that swollen. I guess that's all the water I drink and the sandals I'm wearing.

I've finished work now, and that's really helped with the physical stuff and my anxiety.

I can see the baby wriggling away under my belly, it's reassuring.  Even the thumps in the groin and the shifts onto my bladder are reassuring.  I got to show a friend the movements in my belly the other day, and she got to feel the baby too.  I'm glad I could show her.

Pregnancy after stillbirth: finding out.

So I did a pregnancy test and I got a pale second line.  For those of you who haven't tried for kids, a second line of any shade on most pregnancy tests means a positive result.  It was difficult to see it, but it was there.  I tested again the next day and the line was still there, a bit darker perhaps.

I knew that when I got pregnant again I would want to blog about it.  I need a way to get my thoughts out and I knew that I needed an audience that wasn't my fellow Sands members.  I go between furious and uneasy and baffled when I think that I didn't know babies could die in utero without any warning and I want more people to know that this happens.  It's important.  We all know about the dangers of the first trimester but no one talks about the death of babies in the second and third trimester.

If I want people to know about this then I need to write about it, not on a specialist child loss blog, but on my regular blog, where people follow me for my comics thoughts and other guff.  I want other bereaved parents to find these writings, to find them useful, and I want parents whose children are all living to know about this, and I want the childless to know about it too.

I write this on the second day of knowing I am pregnant.  I have no idea how I will cope with people knowing about this pregnancy, I found the pressures of being pregnant the first time bad, this time I expect it will be nearly unbearable.  If you are reading this then I have taken the decision to publish my posts, but I am probably in the second trimester now, that mythical 'safe' stage.

I don't know how I feel about being pregnant again. I'm not excited. I'm pleased, I guess.  I don't feel positive, or negative, yet.  I'm calmer than I was in the days before testing.  I had a panic earlier today as I had to tell my masseuse, thankfully she didn't say congratulations, she just said OK and let me talk/cry.  Right now I don't have a child, I have a clump of cells with the potential to be a child.  I might believe that I have two children when I have a scan (assuming there is something there and I haven't had a missed miscarriage).

I have only been pregnant once before, with my son, who I shall refer to as C.  I am 4ish weeks gone and I have the same symptoms as before - increased appetite, increased tiredness and twinges/cramps in my womb region.  Last time my cramps lasted for most of the first trimester but I was assured that it didn't mean anything was wrong.  We shall see this time.

Last time my pregnancy was pretty textbook and completely uncomplicated until one day I woke up and C had stopped moving and we went to the hospital and they told us there was no heartbeat. Later on we found out there was nothing to detect, there was nothing wrong and there was nothing we could have done.  Had we gone in the day before to get checked it is unlikely they would have picked anything up.  Babies die inside you for no reason - 1 in 200 in the UK.  If anyone tries to tell you that the longer they are in there the better you can tell them they are talking horseshit.  I was at 37 weeks and 3 days when C died.

I have been promised more care and checks this time but really, there is nothing they can do.  If there is nothing to detect there is nothing to treat.  It's pot luck whether this clump of cells will turn into a baby and will then live.  I have no idea if this can be any harder than the weeks of life after C's death, which I maintain are harder than the time I found out he died.  Weeks and hours and years and months will continue to be hard for the rest of my life. Another baby, should it live, will not replace him.  My boyfriend and I will simply have made a second human being, a brother or sister to C.

Samaritans radar

The Samaritans launched a new app on Wednesday, called Samaritans Radar.  From their website:

[Samaritans radar is] a free web application that monitors your friends’ Tweets, alerting you if it spots anyone who may be struggling to cope. The app gives users a second chance to see potentially worrying Tweets, which might have otherwise been missed.

Created by digital agency Jam using Twitter’s API, Samaritans Radar uses a specially designed algorithm that looks for specific keywords and phrases within a Tweet. It then sends an email alert to the user with a link to the Tweet it has detected, and offers guidance on the best way of reaching out and providing support.

The website for the app says 'turn your social net into a safety net'.

Purple Persuasion wrote about why the app is creepy.  Obviously I also have Ideas.

Let's take the description for the app - who is it a safety net for?  Safety nets are usually for vulnerable people, not friends of vulnerable people.

I have questions about who would use this app.  If you care that much about someone and are wondering if they are struggling, why not just look through their twitter feed. Send them a message. It's not hard to do.  If you don't care enough to do that why would you use the app.

I have concerns about how people will respond to notifications that someone may be in trouble, which is linked back to their motivations for using the app.  Do they just want to feel like they've done their bit.  Do they think that if they send a quick supportive message then everything is OK.  I kind of feel like anyone doing that is more interested in salving their guilty conscience than in actually helping people.

If the person you are following is not a good friend of yours, if you don't know them beyond a twitter persona, if you don't know much about the details of their life, then you aren't best placed to respond.  You don't know jack and you could make things worse.  Using the app doesn't make you more aware of people in crisis, it makes you ghoulish and voyeuristic.  What *really* are you going to do if you see that someone you don't know very well appears to be in crisis.  What could you do.  Unless you know them well, or are trained, you'd probably be better off butting out.

All in all, it's a ridiculous and creepy idea.  If I find out that anyone is using it on me I'll be having Words.

Live fats die yoganu

So it turns out I have a dodgy knee.  I knew this because it occasionally gives ways on me when I'm walking, sometimes painlessly, sometimes with a great deal of pain.  Sometimes I even get the pain when it's doing it's expected thing of supporting the rest of my leg.  Lucky aren't I?

Anyway, because of this, both my physio and pilates instructor have given me a range of leg exercises and stretches to do.  I am doing them.  They help, a bit.  At least the pain comes less frequently when I do the exercises regularly.  Unfortunately it means that I cannot return to running.  The last time I tried a run - a very short one that was basic interval training - my knee then seized up and wouldn't bend for a week.  That hurt.  That hurt a hell of a lot.

I miss running.  I like the feeling of it, the way when you run you can't think about anything except how your breath feels and how your feet feel, and fall, and it's so bloody hard everything else gets shoved out of your head.  I don't get that from walking.  When I walk, even when I walk fast, it is usually a magnifier for my rage, and it is not a calming activity.

But, back to the point. Leg exercises and pilates.  Pilates is wonderful.  It's hard work, but it's making my torso muscles work in a way they haven't ever done before.  I can feel the difference between them now and when I started it 6 weeks ago.  I hope it will make me stronger and slimmer and I hope that it will kick start my dreams of getting a visible six pack (though I guess I'd better stop eating cake and lose at least another stone and a half before that becomes even the merest glimmer of a possibility).

Back to the point, again.  I haven't done any form of yoga in about a year.  I bought a yoga mat about 18 months ago, intending to use it outside in the summer, and failed to do so this year.  I now use it, rolled up, for one set of my leg exercises.  Having started doing this, I remembered how I used to do sun salutations and how I found them enjoyable.  So I looked up various guides for doing them and found this one:

Image found here.

So I just tried it again and discovered a couple of things.
The mountain pose, the lunge and the cobra all feel pretty good for my back and legs.
The whole thing made me feel more open and relaxed.

I'm now going to add it in to my regular stretches/leg exercises.  I'm hoping to do 2 sun salutations a day.  If I set my goals too high I'll be put off and won't do them. But two full sets, so two lunges per leg, I can manage.

I also want to try meditating again, but I'm scared.. I know it will be good for me, it will clam me down, make me focused, but I'm scared of the silence in the meditation session.  I prefer to be busy and full of distractions.  We'll see what I manage.