Motherhood - not for sissies

Motherhood - not for sissies

Saturday 7 January 2017

You had one job.......

You had one job. I'm sure that most mothers of premature babies have thought these exact words at sometime during the beginning of the journey. You had one job. Grow, nurture and keep your baby safe for 40 weeks. One job. And you fucked it. It eats you up, those four words. They go over and over and over in your exhausted and exasperated mind. You had one job.

This has been another area in which I have really struggled to be understood by anyone other than a fellow premmie mummy. This self loathing. I still suffer badly with it now, yet I know to keep quiet about it - because people don't understand and can't understand, and there is very little that can be said to help. I'm told over and over that I saved her life, if it wasn't for me that she would not be here, if I hadn't acted so quickly that things would be very different. This is met with - yes but if my body did not fail her then we wouldn't have been in the situation in the first place!

Confidence has never been my strong point since I was a child. No idea why, had a perfect childhood with a lush family. I've spent my entire adult life working extremely hard and setting myself ridiculous targets and aims for some kind of competition I've had with my unconfident self! Bizarre behaviour! And now what little confidence I'd built up has been beaten out of me with a stick. 

How do you deal with it? I literally have no real idea but I started by trying to overcome my 'anger'. This was the suggestion from the hospital counsellor in early days;

'What are you doing about your anger' 

What anger? We hadn't even spoken about anger. I'm not angry???!!!! Yes following that simple question I realised exactly how angry I was. And at everyone and everything. At everyone for not understanding. At myself for failing my baby. At my husband for having more time with her in NICU as I was forever fucking pumping. At every single pregnant woman I saw. At every friend who had an uncomplicated pregnancy and full term brith. And at my cat, for deciding to become diabetic the week we brought E home! 

I dealt with the anger by running it out and punching my sofa cushions, and it really does work. I've never been able to do the last thing though - but maybe someone reading this will. She told me to write down everything I was angry about (I mean really is there enough paper?!), tie it to a rock, and throw it in the river - once done you have to let it all go. I just can't do that yet, it's far too final, maybe one day I will have the strength to, it's still early days after all. 

Flashbacks - they are a trigger for the self loathe - as they start, and everything runs through my brain again, and it finishes with - you had one job. The flashbacks are impossible to control, although thinking about it they haven't been so frequent recently, so maybe that is progress! 

The self loathe puts enormous strain on relationships. My closest friends just want to punch me I'm sure! My husband gets so frustrated at me. I'm really not doing it on purpose! There is absolutely no control. I am literally a shadow of my former self and I spend many an hour wondering if that self will ever return, or if I'll spend the rest of my life thinking myself in to oblivion. 

And really, I've been doing another job pretty well for the past year or so. My baby girl is thriving, in to everything, scaringly intelligent, and not letting anything get in her way. So I've not done a bad job at that I guess! I should maybe take a leaf out of her book. 

But for now - all I know is, I had one job. And I fucked it. And that will continue to haunt me I think for many years to come.