What have I been up to?

That's a good question. I keep forgetting to write about my Real Life on the blog.

We are on the move again and have just moored up near a station yesterday which is leafy and lovely. Also good for The Doctor to commute to London. We've got a bike trailer last week which I've started to use to take the girls to nursery: "Faster mummy, faster!" It's great on the roads but hard going in the squelchy mud on the towpath.

I'm still learning to drive once a week, and am about to begin the dull activity of learning for my theory test. A while ago I made a Pinterest board I will pass my driving test. In the last week I have managed to do my years accounts, and start my tax return. I have finally come off the antidepressants which was really tough as I went through some depressing withdrawal symptoms, (depression, paranoia, despair, anger, teethgrinding, anxiety dreams, and disassociation) yaay! It's been 20 days since my last pill and I'm starting to feel happier.

I keep making notes to create my first e-course which is about making a wish, putting it out there in the universe and seeing what happens. At the weekend we went to a four year old's birthday party on a farm; took a trip to the boatyard, emptied the toilet tank and filled up the water tank. Our friends came for the boat journey and I drank lots of wine and our four kids ran up and down the boat having a great time!

So, I'm doing ok with focussing on my goals as all of the above helps me aim towards This Years Dreams.  I have worked towards; increasing brand awareness and sales for my clients using social media, passing my driving test, blogging, having fun with the kids, cleaned out the kitchen cupboards and spent time with friends.

What about you? Can you condense everything you've done this week into a few words?!

Crying on the Commuter Train

Alone and crying on the commuter train in the morning I considered calling the doctor, either for advice on Citalopram withdrawal, or an urgent prescription for more Citalopram. I stopped taking them because of the short term memory loss,  but I intended to cut down slowly as recommended online. (Everybody knows that busy mummies  should source all their pharmaceutical advice from online forums right?) But then we broke down and so actually we left the old boat in a bit of a hurry. I forgot to pack the pills. Short term memory loss wasn’t so bad; but being so short sighted is. Memory loss is better than my serotonin levels plummeting like a wilful lemming¹. For all the rolling stone inner criticism Mothers Little Helper was obviously quite quietly really helping me along. Now I cannot accept honest criticism from friends. I mull over last weekend’s drunken argument and take it all to heart. “Nobody likes me,” thought Mog” (the forgetful cat ²). The woman in the mirror is underweight and overtired. She believes a lot of things that make her lonely. At home, kisses from her eldest child softly break through the mist as her tears fall into The Doctor’s lap. Big Sister pauses, stands back and reflects on the result of her work so far. She asks,

“More?”
Mother smiles through the tears. The child nods thoughtfully.
“Yes, a few more,” prescribes the junior doctor.
The Boat-Wife resolves to call up the doctor and arrange to get her negative beliefs surgically removed. ³

1) My imaginary friend Stephen Fry has begged me to interject that the wilful lemming is fictional; indeed lemmings as a rule have as much self-preservation instincts as the next creature.

2) Mog the Forgetful Cat – by Judith Kerr

3) If the pills hadn’t stolen her short term memory she might have remembered to just listen to her own 20 minute self-hypnosis download.

Mother's Little Helper

I’m breaking it off with Mick, a bit at a time. I’ve gone down to a half. I’m not taking the Jagger little pills to the new boat because I want a new start. I used to grind my teeth when I started taking them. Now I grind my teeth when I forget to take them. My short term memory is terrible lately and I’m blaming Mother’s Little Helper. I kept forgetting to look at the leaflet to see if memory loss is a side effect of Citalopram. Eventually I remembered to check: It is. It is what? My short term memory is terrible.

For me the withdrawal effects were nausea, teeth grinding and strange vivid dreams, but it varies for each individual. Some people have none.

Ronnie

20th January


We were listening to ‘Gotta Get Away’ by The Rolling Stones. The baby held her arms up to be lifted and danced around the boat. Whenever Mick sang ‘Baby’, she laughed with recognition and delight and pointed at her chest. She said,
“Baby!”
“Baby... I don’t want to live here no more.”
Mick was sitting on the back steps in the kitchen.
“What a drag it is getting old,” he said sarcastically as I swallowed a pill with my coffee.
“Doctor please, some more of these.”
“It’s Citalopram Mick,” I reproached him. “Not Valium or barbiturates. It’s all different today.”
“We used to call them ‘Yellow Submarines’,” said Mick. “But the doctors call them Nembutals.”
“Well I don’t think serotonin reuptake inhibitors are the same thing.”
“I’m just saying, who’s driving your brain?” asked Mick, cheekily. “Are you in control or is it driving you insane?”
You don’t know what it’s like in my head, I thought to myself. A sofa here, a bean bag there, an Indian throw, maybe a floor cushion... These little white wonders make my brain a more comfortable place to live.
My imaginary friend had over stepped the mark a little. That day he had brought along his own imaginary friend.
“This is Ronnie,” said Mick. Ronnie was leaning against the kitchen sink.
“Pleased to meet you Ronnie,” I said grumpily. (Hope you guess my name.)
“Ronnie and his brothers were the first generation of his family to be born on land,” said Mick. “Water gypsies.”
“Really?” I feigned disinterest, but I was intrigued.
“Yeah,” said Ronnie, swigging from a bottle of Chivas Regal. “My mum and dad were born on barges in Paddington Basin. My dad’s family’s barge was called the Antelope, and my mum’s family was on the Orient tug, docked opposite St Mary’s Hospital.” He passed the bottle to Mick.
“But you were born on land?” I asked him. He nodded.
“I grew up in a little council house in Yiewsley, just down the canal from Uxbridge.”
“Ooh, I know some right characters on the Cut around Uxbridge and Cowley!” I smiled, to think of them. Ronnie nodded slowly.
“My granddad Sylvester Wood worked around that stretch of canal and down to London. He dressed like a Chigago gangster dandy: trilby, waistcoat, watch on a chain and a carnation in his lapel,” he grinned. “He had a tug, pulling barges of sand, and he had several wives. Apparently he kept a second family further up the Cut in Stratford-upon-Avon, and maybe a third one in Manchester. ...”
“She’s thinking of giving up boating,” said Mick, accusingly, nodding in my direction. I jumped to defend myself.
“Well, it’s so much harder when you’ve got kids, you know?”
Ronnie nodded again.
“I can imagine. My dad was one of eleven children and Mum was one of eight,” said Ronnie.
“My mum wore hand-me-downs, and had disfigured feet from her bad shoes. She would walk miles to school and back with my Nan, and they pushed the smaller kids in a wheelbarrow. It was a hard life back then.”
“Wow. At least I’ve got my double push-chair! I don’t think I could push my kids in a heavy wheelbarrow.”
“My mum was small, like you; about five foot tall. Someone said to her once, ‘Stand up, Mrs Wood,’ and she said, ‘I am.’”*
“So you’re looking for a house then?” said Mick.
“Yes Mick. This little Rolling Stone wants to gather moss. Can I have a bit of your Scotch Ronnie?” I asked. But they faded away. The baby looked at me, puzzled. I have got to stop talking to my imaginary friends. We were listening to ‘Not Fade Away’ by The Rolling Stones. The baby held her arms up to be lifted and danced around the boat.

“Well love is love and not fade away
Love, love is love and not fade away .”

(‘Not Fade Away’ - Petty/Hardin)

The ‘Not Fade Away’ lyrics are the property of the respective authors, artists and labels. If you like this song, please buy a CD or MP3 to support The Rolling Stones.

*This article refers to the autobiography ‘Ronnie’ by Ronnie Wood.


“Matey and conversational, it reads as if Ronnie is sharing a bottle of Chivas Regal with you” The Times

Not Perfect

3rd January 2011

“The statistics say that roughly 20 per cent of women suffer from some form of depression in the year after giving birth, but the true incidence is probably far higher, for postnatal depression is often missed or misdiagnosed since it can be provoked or compounded by unavoidable aspects of motherhood such as exhaustion, poor health and changes in marital relations. Women are often reluctant or simply too tired to consult doctors. Sometimes they do not know that they are depressed until they emerge from the fog and look back on those grey days.

Postnatal depression is not something that happens to a small group of unfortunate women at the very end of the spectrum who cannot cope. It is a sliding scale, starting with the ‘baby blues’ affecting 80 per cent of women, and ending with majority of women sit somewhere on this scale, and the extent to which a woman suffers depends on her individual psychology, her ability to tolerate stress and the amount of emotional support she enjoys.”

(Kate Figes, Life After Birth).

“Motherhood, for me, was a sort of compound fenced off from the rest of the world. I was forever plotting my escape from it. “ (Rachel Cusk, A Life’s Work, On Becoming a Mother)

In her introduction to Buddhism for Mothers, Sarah Napthali writes “Books about the inner lives of mothers tend to be depressing reports portraying us as victims suffering a lifestyle that nobody warned us about.”

What about when depression goes beyond the postnatal period? Perhaps you’re not depressed but you just have a feeling that you are somehow failing to live up to your own, or other people’s expectations? The website Netmums wants to lift the expectation of being a ‘perfect parent’ from our shoulders by starting the Real Parenting Revolution. Accept that you are ‘Good Enough’. The campaign urges us to be honest with other parents about the challenges we are facing, and be more accepting of each other’s different parenting choices.

For me, sharing the challenges and difficulties with other new mums over coffee helped me through post-natal depression. As a new mother I was confused by conflicting childcare manuals, doubted my own intuition and lost self confidence. I’ve had to learn to have more realistic expectations of myself.

The Real Parenting Revolution says get R.E.A.L

R Relax and trust yourself

E Enjoy being a parent

A Accept each other’s choices

L Look out for each other

I’m also interested by Linda Jones’s question, ‘Does depression contribute to a messy living environment (through not having the get up and go to get up and clean) or does a messy living environment add to depression?’ Find out soon when her article appears in One in Four magazine.

The Silence of Snow

November

We are experiencing the earliest cold snap for nearly twenty years. The canal has frozen already, and that usually happens in January. When the canal is frozen the boat doesn’t rock when you walk about. Usually there is a very subtle rocking of the boat as it bobs on the water. After the big freeze came the magic of the snow. It drifted silently down among us turning London mysteriously Dickension. Cars became carriages and the silence made the streets timeless. Little Timothy Cratchit noiselessly slipped off into an alley way, supported on a single crutch. Under the arched bricks of the Victorian canal bridge, icicles hang suspended, glistening, dripping into the cut, beautiful and grimy all at once. My daughter asked what they are and I explained.
“Disgusting!” she giggled.
I’m enjoying my children now. I take one day at a time. There is no monologue, no mental ‘To Do’ list, no incessant internal criticism and no Rolling Stones: just a beautiful silence as the snow softly falls.
“God bless us, every one!” hisses the ghost of Tiny Tim.

Jagger Little Pill

I’ve now been living with Mick for about two weeks. My mouth is dry and I grind my teeth a little bit but I feel more chilled out. His disembodied voice drifts around the boat, “It’s all so different today, I hear every mother say.”


The doctor did some blood tests for diabetes and other things and found everything normal except my sex hormones are really low, which explains the lack of sex drive. She said this is caused by only recently stopping breast feeding, and also by the weight loss. I am such a narrow Boat-Wife. She is concerned that I’ve lost about a stone, which she said is almost fifteen percent of my body weight. I have also seen a mental health worker at the GP practice to help me with stress. Some people don’t agree with the pills and counselling approach to life’s difficulties, but everybody has their own way, and The Doctor’s is wine and TV and mine is this. Since I’ve been on the little white pills I feel normal again for the first time in months and months. My self-critical inner monologue is taking a break from telling me that I’m under achieving as a wife and mother. I’ve been less tetchy with the children and I think I‘ve been nicer to The Doctor too.