Mind Games

Good Day. The stars have aligned and I have a small window of opportunity to write.

If I have had the odd half an hour in the last few weeks I have been busy downloading photos, printing them out or trying to organise them in to a photo book online. I have always loved taking photos. Lots of photos. I still have a drawer full of around 200 photos from a school ski trip I enjoyed around twenty years ago - but with the arrival of newbie my penchant for photo taking has reached another level. A peak, I hope. I am obsessed with recording almost every day and every outfit of her life. I know I have said it many, many times before but because she is the last I have to document every day so that when I forget, I can wade back through 3000 photos and try and remember. Also I have to make sure that the amazing wardrobe she inherited (affectionately known as 'the collection') from the last five girl babies in the family, is fully appreciated. There are so many, many outfits I seriously do have to put her in two a day to get through them. She is growing at a rate of knots and it is no exaggeration to say that I feel slightly stressed from the pressure of getting some 'use' out of the collection. Kent sister is expecting a boy and Newly Married Sister does not want to inherit 'The Collection' as it is largely pink and all very 'pretty' which is not her taste. She wants white and black and 'high fashion' baby clothes. She would rather have a naked baby than one in Mini Boden or Cath Kidston.  Anyway, the point is Cybil is the last benefactor of the full collection and the pressure is on to get every possible outfit out and on the baby before she grows and it is dispersed throughout the land. 

Every time she grows out of an outfit I put it in the different piles (Kent Sister, Magician Godmother, Kent Godmother, Special box for the girls etc) and I can see how quickly the time is passing as the piles mount up. This too makes me anxious. My entire life up until this point has been about having babies. It has been my only 'drive' of any description. In fact my earliest memory is of a baby. When I was two and half I was taken to hospital to meet Baby Newly Married Sister.  Funnily enough she wasn't what I actually remember. Although I was there because of her, what I remember was walking in and turning to the right to see the hospital bed and a plate of cakes on the bed. I couldn't even tell you if the baby was in the room. But there and then my two loves were formed. Cake and babies. Actually my mum and dad were there too, so assuming the baby was indeed in the room, the reason I probably remember the occasion was because I was most likely at my very happiest. The baby was yet to steal my thunder or my toys, everyone was happy, I felt secure and excited and to top it all off there was cake. I doubt anyone was that concerned that I went straight for the cakes - at two and a half it was probably quite normal.. Miserably three decades later I have to learn to stay away from having babies and cakes. Poo. 

I am forbidden from having any more babies by K and a recent trip to the Doctors means I really do need to start weaning myself off the cake at some point too.  I wasn't really looking forward to my six week check with the Doctor as it is usually carried out by a quite irritating doctor who spends about 45 minutes on the appointment and spends a vast proportion of that time, talking about the importance of attachment parenting and keeping the baby close to you. I find that impossibly annoying as I tell him each and every time that I sleep, eat and bathe with the baby and most of the rest of the time is spent breastfeeding. I physically have to have them off me to cook, push in the buggy and go to the loo but other than that I'm not sure how much more 'attachment' I could do.  However luckily the annoying Doctor was not doing my final six week check, and instead I got the one I really like. I'm not sure why as he is quite brusque and not particularly 'warm' but I think it's his public school arrogance. I have no idea if he actually went to public school but I would bet that he did. Anyway, he is also slightly attractive so I was a TAD embarrassed when he whisked out the scales and made me stand on them. OUCH. He had just taken my blood pressure which was still frighteningly high (probably because I stopped taking the medication rather stupidly) and when I asked if it was anything to do with putting on 'quite a bit' of weight during pregnancy he didn't even pause before replying 'undoubtedly'. He then jumped up and dragged the scales over. Did I mention that during this time he called me 'Ma'am'? Throughout the entire appointment. It was most odd. (Perhaps a cultural thing?). It made me feel very old. And then he made me stand on the scales and confirm that I was fat. Fat and old. Nice. So, I now know that I have definitely put on three stone. (I have taken off a few pounds because my lowest weight was my PB, which isn't fair to count as a starting point for weight gain, so I have added on a few for a more usual weight and taken off a few from the top number for boob weight. They are huge and filled with milk as well as fat so that is totally not fair to be included in the end point for measuring my weight gain.) Mercifully due to his brisk nature my new obese status was quickly and efficiently dealt with and another prescription for my blood pressure pills was printed and, after we had ascertained that Cybs had put on a lovely load of weight, we were dismissed.

I got back to the car and calmed myself down. Luckily there were a few loose Eclair sweets in the bottom of my bag which helped me. As I sucked and then chewed I felt annoyed that I was already being instructed to lose weight by an 'official'. I had only 'just' had a baby. It was ridiculous to expect me to cut down on food already. Also, I reasoned, it was highly unlikely he had been sleep deprived for nearly seven weeks and as he has obviously never breast fed, he had no idea the hunger it induced or the need for edible rewards just to keep one going. Plus, I hate having my beliefs proved wrong. I had managed to make myself believe that I hadn't put on that much weight and my blood pressure would have rectified itself.  If I don't want to believe that something is true I am most excellent at creating an alternate reality where it isn't. My bathroom mirror is also very good at colluding with me and my reality. I don't know why, but it is truly magic. It is annoying that it wasn't there at the Doctors with me. If I don't want to believe that my children are ill behaved or have broken bones then I don't. If I don't want to believe that we don't have enough money for whatever it is I want to do then I don't. Do you see? So handy.  So, by the time I arrived home and finished all the Eclairs, I had managed to talk myself out of needing to lose weight. I went straight to the bathroom mirror, breathed in and reassured myself that I was right. I do have to keep going for weekly blood pressure checks but I have also managed to talk myself around to the idea that that will also magically reduce itself without me doing anything. My mind is a great friend at times.

At other times it is largely useless. I have been doing some quite ridiculous and/or embarrassing things recently. For a start, whilst at the Doctors I was standing behind a woman as I waited to return a form to the receptionist. The French woman, who did not speak English, was trying to communicate to the receptionist about making an appointment for her children. The receptionist was unable to understand a word she was saying. I decided to leap in and help and started speaking French to the woman with the children. She looked pleased that someone was helping. But my limited memory of the french language was not getting us any nearer to working out whether her children could make an appointment during school hours so I sat back down. It was whilst I was sitting there that I realised she was in fact Spanish and not even vaguely French and I should have waited to hear her speak more of her mother tongue than 'a' and 'la' before deciding on her nationality. The recepetionsist then said she didn't speak Spanish and couldn't help until an interpreter was available. I went visibly red. Luckily no one actively pointed at me and laughed about me butting in with my 'ecole' and 'les enfants' which was just as useless as the receptionist speaking slowly and loudly in English. This was the pinnacle of a long line of silly brain related let downs. I have never been a huge fan of the term 'baby brain' as it makes us sound like silly little women who are in need of being patronised but it would appear that I have one; I ended up at the school gates the other morning before one friend looked at me like I had two heads and kindly pointed out that I had failed to rub in my under eye concealer and had made the journey down there with two large and very obvious daubs of Touche Eclat across my face. I had obviously put it on, gone to the crying baby and then failed to rub it in before a very hurried departure; Last Friday I spent half an hour having a panic about my cash card. It was not in my purse, in K's wallet or anywhere at home. I finally realised it was still waiting for me behind the bar of the pub where I had gone for lunch the Friday before. For one whole week my cash card had been sitting patiently in their 'tab' folder. I had paid in cash, along with everyone else, so managed to totally forgot that my card had been used to start the tab; Shortly after I wrote the last post, I cooked mash and sweetcorn for the children. I realised, as it was cooking, that the mash and the water was looking an odd sort of brown colour. By the time it was fully and finally cooked (it seemed to take forever) I was very concerned and decided to taste a bit - it tasted hideous and left a lingering bitter taste and I was finally convinced that something terrible had happened and some chemicals had clearly got in to the saucepan before I used it so I binned the mash and served up 'baked bean soup' as a hasty back up. I finally realised, after things had calmed down sufficiently (newbie screaming, children complaining, heat from the cooker, music from the radio for Ted to dance to etc etc) that I had decided to make the most of a spare two minutes earlier in the day to 'de-scale' the kettle with a huge dose of citric acid. It had worked beautifully and the kettle was now limescale free, but I had obviously forgotten to empty the kettle and therefore used the water inside it with all the citric acid to cook the potatoes for the mash which explained the extremely bitter taste and brown tinge. I had also used a slightly watered down version for the corn on the cob. I made them eat the sweetcorn once I realised it wasn't life threatening. G didn't bat an eyelid. Bea complained; Anyhoo, these are the worst - but there have been many more incidents of me walking upstairs and not remembering why, making myself two cups of tea in the morning because I forgot I had already made the first one, washing the wool blanket I knitted for Ted in the normal wash and now it is half the size, forgetting to do up my nursing bra after a feed so I am walking around with one boob hanging considerably lower than the other.....etc etc. Newbie has most definitely taken the toll on my brain capacity. Either that or it is the lack of a night's sleep in nearly eight weeks. Maybe it's both.

So, not much to report except fairly peculiar behaviour and that I am now back firmly in the 'obese' category on the weight scale and I have to go through it all again - all the walks I walked, all the cake I declined, it all needs to be done once again to get me back in to my old wardrobe and back off the 'at risk' register. But not now. I am absolutely fine for now. I have only just had a baby. I can't do anything for months. Maybe longer. I just need to make sure I ask for a different Doctor from now on.

I need to get off and order Bea's birthday presents. I shall be back once my first baby has turned 8. Until then peeps. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx