Hi Everyone,

As of today I'm moving my blog to wordpress. All my posts are transferred and i will have a new post up tonight.( 05/06/2016 8pm) Our dairy and gluten free take on meatloaf and potato bake. Pop over take a look and let me know what you think.

yumfreeblog.wordpress.com

Thanks
Kelly

Does Mummy Guilt Make You A Better Mother?

Mummy guilt is something I experience most of the time. I can usually add a few more things to list I feel guilty about every couple of days. What I feel most guilty about at the moment stems from last year. The second week of reception Master J had received an award at assembly for settling well into reception. I wasn’t there to see him stand up in front of the school and accept his award. It hurts to think of how proud he would have been and I missed it. I don’t know if he looked around for me but if he did the disappointment he must have felt makes me want to tear up every time I think about it. He again received another award later in the year and yes I missed that one too. I missed these assemblies because I was sick but that doesn’t make me feel better or replace me at these important events in his life.

Then there are smaller things I have done or haven’t done that I feel guilty about. I’ve been sick the last three weeks and in those three weeks I haven’t sat at the dining table with my boys. Instead of reminding one to eat and enjoy some family talk time I have been sitting in the comfort of the living room in recliner watching television and eating my dinner. The nights I have fed Master T early I have fed him in the living room not in the dining room in his high chair. I should take comfort in the fact that he had a healthy filling dinner but I don’t.  Have I spent too much time on my phone lately? Yes I’ve done that. Have i spent a lot of time on the floor playing with Master T? No I haven’t done that.  Those are two new things I can add to my mummy guilt list.

There are lots of posts out there about not judging other mums and I totally agree with that and the only person I’m judging is me.  I have heard somewhere we are our own worst critics. So the big question is does mummy guilt make me a better mother? That’s a hard one to answer. I think in some ways yes and in some ways no. I went to assembly last week with respiratory infection hoping Master J would get an award and I would be there to see him stand up in front on everyone and walk up and receive it with a big smile on his face. He didn’t get an award but I was there and he knew I was there. Mummy guilt forced me to go out in the cold, in the rain while sick just in case I missed another important moment in Master J’s life. Other times mummy guilt just makes me feel worse about me, my decisions and my actions as a mother.

What do you think about mummy guilt and what are things have you done or not done that make you feel guilty? This is a judgement free zone and a place for open discussion.

Depression update

Yes it’s been a few weeks but I have been dealing with sickness and medication withdrawal.  I had to come off the medication I was on for anxiety before I could start the new medication for depression and insomnia.  I found the medication withdrawal tough especially in the evening.  The first couple of nights I had to deal with nausea with resulted in me taking anti-nausea medication to just get through the night. The next couple of days I felt I down right horrible. Feeling constantly sick and the only that would help a little was eating. I didn’t enjoy the constant snacking. Complete lack of being to concentre on anything and the emotional meltdowns which were happening every couple of hours. This lasted a couple of weeks with the first week being the worst and had me considering just taking the medication to feel normal again.

Then my oldest son Master J had a nasty cold which lingered for a couple of weeks so our school holidays weren’t that great. Then I had gastro and have developed an upper respiratory infection from the cold I had. So I write this with a very fuzzy head and a very nasty cough. So back to the depression medication. I wasn’t able to start it till I had my blood test results back for my liver as the medication can affect the liver. I wasn’t expecting to anything to come back and wanted to start medication I wanted to feel normal I wanted to have feelings again not numbness.  Before I saw the doctor I had said to Mr C after watching a short documentary on depression that I wasn’t sure if medication was the way to go. I don’t like the way I feel when taking those type of medications and the whole point of being prescribed the medication was to help me feel better and I wanted to feel like me and I knew the medication wouldn’t help with that part. So I started thinking about other things I could do to manage the depression.

The last few nights before my doctor’s appointment I actually started sleeping eight hours straight and this hadn’t happened for over six months. Maybe it was linked to the anxiety medication.  So I went to doctor described my plan of action that I didn’t want medication just yet , that I wanted to try things like exercise (get those the feel good hormones going) and seeing a counsellor and my sleep continued that way it had been going the last few nights it had to help.  My blood results came back saying that my liver was working overtime (my doctor’s words). So the medication I had for depression was no longer an option for me.

So the exercise part hasn’t begun yet or seeing a counsellor which I really need to get on to once I’m over being sick. And how am i feeling? I feel somewhat normal in the emotions area. I’m defiantly feeling more in control sometimes and according to Mr C no big mood swings. So hopefully in time I will feel more like me. Even if I’m still trying to figure out whom that is. 

Unwanted Reunion

I felt sick today. Maybe it was due that fact that I had to stop taking my anxiety pills (in preparation for a new medication) or maybe it was because in just a few minutes I had to see my ex mother- in -law. It had before four years since I had last seen her, and it’s been four years since she had seen Master J. That was entirely her choice, but now I had to take my son to see a woman he doesn’t know. I didn’t want to do this. For the six years I was with her son she put me down in every possible way. Every contact with that woman who I will call Mrs D filled me with dread and today I felt it over again.

The last time those Grandparents had something to do with my son was he was two years old. I had been separated from their son for over a year by that time and I invited them over to have birthday cake and spend some time with Master J. I wanted to keep family connections open for my son no matter how much I didn’t want to see them. I wanted to do what was best for him. After the cake and they went on their way I didn’t hear from them for a long while. They knew the door to their grandson was always open as long as I received a call to make sure we were home and we lived only five minutes away. We heard nothing and their son (my ex-husband) was in and out of my son’s life.

Should I have contacted them again regarding my son? I didn’t think it was necessary.  You want to be a part of my son’s life fine but you need to make an effort.  I had to contact them a few times to get their sons ever changing phone number and Master J was never asked about. The conversations were always about her family’s drama. I didn’t want to hear it, I was done. I tried to establish a relationship with one of her daughters for my son’s sake but again it was never about my son from their end.

So a few months ago my son received a card for his sixth birthday and I a letter where she wrote about her family again and supplied a number for her son who isn’t a part of my son life, his decision. I replied that I don’t want anything sent to my address again. I was really mad. My safe place where I don’t have to deal with them my house they now had my address. I let my son have the card and the money gift that came with it. But how I can explain who these people are and why they choose not to see him. I don’t want to confuse my son and I don’t want to disrupt his life negatively.

I received a letter claiming she wanted to do mediation so she could have contact with son. My first thoughts were how dare she after all this time want to just pop in to Master J life. We have moved on. I’m engaged to someone who my son refers to as his father and Master J also now has a little brother who he adores.  Why does she now want to see my son? So I rang her and over the course of a few weeks made a time to see her. I sat down with my son and her and gave her the opportunity to connect with him. What happened? Not a lot. Master J doesn’t know her so he barely spoke to her. He was polite and answered any questions she asked. She showed me pictures of her other grandkids briefly spoke about her family and that was it. I accepted her request for a further meeting because it is about my son and not about me.

Toddler Sleep

When pregnant with my first child some friends recommended buying a porta-cot instead of a normal cot. The reasoning being it was easier to move around and didn’t take up as much space. Having a small and an irregular shaped room to be used as the nursery I decided it was a good idea. It also had the bassinet insert. However Master J seemed to hate the sleeping in that so I brought a traditional bassinet and moved him into our room till he outgrew the bassinet and moved back into the lowered part of the porta-cot at five months.

Fast forward eight months and my Master J still hated the cot. It took hours for him to go sleep and I felt like I had done everything possible when a friend suggested maybe he hated being confined. I thought maybe just maybe this person was correct but what was I to do? I couldn’t move a thirteen month old in to a bed could I? After a couple of weeks I decided I would buy Master J a single bed. I brought side rails to stop him from rolling out and was prepared to set it up when I was called by the hospital for my son to have an operation so I held off setting up the bed a moved the porta-cot in my room to be close to my son during his recovery period.

When Master J had recovered at fourteen months I set up the bed in his room beside the porta-cot which left hardly any room to move around but I wanted to cot in case the bed didn’t work out. He didn’t seem to notice the bed in his room. So after two nights I put him in his bed and followed our routine which at this stage was to stay with him until he fell asleep. It worked, he fell asleep cuddled up to his favourite bear. Apart from Master J being a terrible sleeper since birth up until about 19 months he settled into the bed quite well.

Now for Master T who is a fantastic sleeper and has been since we came home from the hospital. He also used the bassinet up until 5 months at which point we moved him to the cot that was given to us by my grandparents. It was good solid drop down side cot. Master T started having day naps in it from about four months and made the transition to sleeping at night with no problems. He was sleeping through by this time and I would have preferred he stay in my room for a bit longer but there isn’t enough space for a cot in our bedroom.

We then put Master T into a porta-cot just before his first birthday due to him constantly hitting his head against the bars of the cot which would result in him screaming. So we moved into the porta-cot and he was fine after about three nights.

After his first birthday I removed the side of the cot to turn into a toddler bed with a side rail and while he sleeps in the porta-cot at night he has his day naps in the cot turned toddler bed.

Now at almost fourteen months the question I ask myself and Mr C is when we transfer him to the toddler bed. Now or closer to age two when we buy him a single bed?

I’m interested in knowing when you moved your toddlers to a toddler bed or single beds.

Depression

I have actually thought for some time now I’m might be depressed but was waiting for the signs to appear just as they did when I was dialogised at age sixteen. The feeling of no light at the end of the tunnel, getting through each day on co-pilot, just no joy in anything. Well this time those feelings and emotions didn’t come up like that. So I would reassure myself that I’m completely fine. It’s just the insomnia that’s making me feel tired, emotional and to a certain point completely numb. My relationship with my sons is great and this was confusing as I expected this change. I expected my other relationships to be affected but these two relationships were what feel like normal. I expected with depression that this wouldn’t be case so this was another reason to reassure myself you are fine this isn’t depression.

The main relationship affected was my relationship with my Mr C. This is the relationship with my fiancé.  It changed my feelings towards him and our relationship. I felt disconnected from him emotionally. I didn’t feel like we were people who ready to get married even though that was the one thing I had wanted to do since he proposed.  I didn’t know when it happened and whether it was sudden or happened over a period of time. Our youngest was only ten months old at the time. So we had been very busy as it expected when you have children. I know I didn’t feel this lack of connection during the pregnancy.  I hate to admit it but I felt numb towards him at times and I can’t explain how terrible that feels. To have him say he loves me and not sure how to answer.

I’ve had insomnia on and off for six months now since a case of laryngitis. I have seen doctor a quite a lot of times explaining I just can’t sleep and its effecting it me a lot. We have tried several medications to try to deal with this. Though I’m not a fan of taking medications it had gotten to the point that taking Master 6 to school and looking after Master 1 was becoming extremely difficult and Mr C was having to taken a lot of time off for work to help with this.

My recent appointment has ended with my doctor diagnosing me with depression and also resulted is being prescribed medication for both my insomnia and the depression. It’s still sinking in that yes I have depression. I don’t how to feel about that. I spent so long telling myself I was fine this is just a rough patch. So I continue to work on my relationship with Mr C and hope that soon I start to feel like me again. I know depression doesn’t mean I’m weak and I know that I don’t have control over this but I do have control on how I can be proactive about my treatment.

I will be back with an update about my depression in the future.

Signing off for now

Kelly

                                                   

The Big Chop

                                                                                                                                                            

Friday night after looking at many pictures of pixie cuts I told my Fiancé that I was thinking of getting the chop. It would be the shortest haircut I have experienced in my 29 years. I decided to have a look at some YouTube videos and came across an interesting one about a home haircut which resulted in a very short shaved hair style. I watched it twice before sharing it with Mr C and getting his opinion. He has always said he likes short hair on women and this was really short. It was something I would have never chosen for myself previously but I really liked the style and convinced Mr C to cut my hair for me. I knew if I didn’t cut it then I would chicken out if given the chance to think about it.

 Once we got past the initial cut and moved on the clippers was when I felt a little sad. I had imagined having long flowing curls for my wedding in October. There was no way my hair was going to be very long anyway but clip in extensions were an option.  My sad feeling was short lived and I started to get really excited about how this hairstyle would look on me and hoping it wasn’t a complete disaster. I normally don’t make impulse decisions based around my hair.

 Once we done I was completely shocked by how short it was but how good it looked. It gives my face a rounder softer look. I was hoping it would age me a bit. Who on earth wants to look older at 29. I do I always look really young. It’s a pain and has been since I was 17. I cannot wait for the day when it pays off. Maybe when I’m 40 and someone says I look like I’m in my early 30s. (I can hope right). I’m still getting used to the whole short hair style. I go to take my hair out of a bun before bed and shocked to find the bun not there or still using too much shampoo and conditioner and feeling the cold wind on my neck it’s a very odd feeling.

I have only received very good comments so far from family but tomorrow is school drop off and I have to admit I actually looking forward to showing it off. I feel way more confident than I usually do and I don’t know if that is completely haircut based  or not but it’s a good feeling not to be so insecure for once and I’m sure Mr C is happy not  getting a complete mouthful of hair. So what I have learned?  Sometimes you have to be brave and do something different. Who knows you may enjoy the ride.

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