I totally forgot!

My sister had a baby boy called Bruno about a month ago. I'm so totally self-obsessed i forgot to put it on my blog.

Also i've had a vomiting bug which means I have vomited for four days in a  row and Jamie has had me on the World War Two diet, which is white bread, crackers and plain pasta. Hang on did they have white flour in the war? if they didn't it was more dire than i thought.  I branched out and had spinach pasta last night and it didn't go down to well, literally.

Another thing i'm not sure if you know but have you ever vomited  standing up? i recommend it. Not vomiting of course but if you have to, try it standing up. It's much more pleasnat. I vomited into the waste disposal rather than the sink as I didn't want to mush my hand around in the vomit to get it down the sick. but I think standing up makes your stomach contract less or is less cramped or something. Either way standing up vomiting is my new thing. Maybe I should let Kate Middleton know.

mackay knows his name 'Mac-Kai Frank Bennett' and my name 'Andrea' but he thinks Jamie's name is 'Babe' the other day he finished in the shower and said 'i'm ready to get out Babe' I think it is hilarious, jamie not so much.

Right off to have another water cracker, oh the excitement.

Well ...

No blog post in about 500 years and i am thinking of giving up the blog, I have been doing it for ages now, maybe about 5 years give or take and I think I am running out of things to say. And motherhood has turned my brain to mush, seriously speaking of words in more than 5 letters is a struggle. I've lost the love a bit actually and probably because my blogging is so intermittent, my audience.

I also notice how many blogs that mothers write revolve around their children, mostly with phrases like 'here we are at the beach' or 'My first piece of apple' and although i am guilty of this. lets be honest it's mostly really boring.

Also there's lots of stuff going down in the Bennett household that i can't talk about. Now by saying this i am not trying to encourage drama or for you to beg me to tell you what is going on. (Much like a Facebook friend whose status updates are 'I'm so angry' and then people ask why and she never responds, seriously is there anything more attention seeking!)  Just that there is stuff that I can't talk about because of national security reasons. This leads to a barrier between you my audience and me the narrator. And as i' m trying to live my life more honestly these days, (It's awesome you should try it) i find that being unable to write about these things means my blogging flow is blocked, big time.

And when you add into the mix Facebook and I feel like I am interacting with people on a digital level. Maybe i should put my Facebook posts on here. Maybe not.

Pack horse

Question: How much can I fit on mackay's stroller?
Answer: a shit load

And they say it's a thankless task ...

Today I was changing mackays nappy and afterwards he said 'thank you for wiping my bottom' he's a sweetie through and through.

Two best friends x

supportive issues

There were only three people at my weekly step aerobics class last week, all the other unemployed women, (other wise known as housewives) must have swanned off to the South of France on holiday. My gym is very expensive and all the woman  that go there are rich. I know this because there engagement rings are the size of my eye ball.

Anyway because there were only three people i was subjected to the sight of seeing myself all the way through the class. Usually i avoid this by standing in the thick of the crowd and by not wearing my glasses. But this week I watched myself in my full glory for the whole hour.

I have come to terms with the fact that i will never be co-ordianted, despite watching Dirty Dancing about a million times and thinking 'that could be me, I could be Baby and learn to dance awesomely in a few days' I could not. What i am still fighting is my boob bounce. I think it's the way i move. I have some type of torso/knee issue that mans when i do any exercise I get excessive bounce in the chest region. And i have tried every bra going, googled 'best sports bra' and bought all of them and i still get a lot of jiggle. I thought this was what everyone got until i saw a lady in my step class with similar chest size with no bounce and then i looked around and no one had any bounce. it was just me flopping all over the place. It happened when i run too, I also stick my bum out when I run, which is extremely attractive. (i know this because when I run past shops i check myself out in the mirror.)

I have no idea why i bother to exercise at all because i look like such a lemon doing it.

Also today Mackay went in the kitchen to get a cookie and Jamie said 'no more cookies Mackay.' He kept on walking and yelled 'Stop me!' back at Jamie. I laughed and Jamie said 'Has he never said that to you? He says it to me all the time.' Mackay has never said this to me and instantly I felt like a better parent than Jamie. success!

PND

PND is an abbreviation for Post-Natal depression, not sure why it's needs an abbreviation but it does. I had PND, (that's why there's an abbreviation, it takes ages to type!) for about 15 months I think.

Anyway it wasn't a pleasant experience and I should have sorted it out earlier but to be honest I didn't really know enough about it to diagnose myself and also I didn't get much help from health care professionals. A highlight was when I  waited for a doctors appointment for an hour and was crying hysterically when I saw the doctor, still he didn't think I might have overreacted to the situation.

But I think it went on for so long because I didn't know what it looked like. I thought that depression was lying in bed all day crying and towards the end it got so bad that I had a few days where I couldn't leave the bed, but mostly I wasn't myself at all. I was stressed about the littlest thing, generally quite mean to Jamie and so anxiuos. I thought this was just me adjusting to motherhood and some of it was, but a large part of this was the depression and it changed every part of my life. I just couldn't see the joy in anything. Every nice thing in my life was shaded by stress and anxiety.

And also did you know that baby blues last for about a week and then you should be feeling more normal? Well if someone had told me that fact I would have saved myself a whole lot of trouble.

I was hesitant to take medication because I felt like it would show weakness, and how i wasn't coping with motherhood or life in general.  And to be honest this feeling is still hard for me to shake. All i can say is that the medication solved my problem, I know that for everyone it doesn't work but for me it gave me a positivity and clarity to be myself again.

I started on a very light anti-drepressant when Mackay was 15 months and it was like someone had flicked a switch in my brain, I was on them for about 3 months and I think my brain just needed a little bit of a kickstart in the right direction. My life coach helped too and now when i get a negative feeling instead of pushing it out of my mind I participate it and feel it, even if it makes me uncomfortable. For me the suppression of a lot of feelings makes my mood really low. Although i hope i'll never go on medication again I wouldn't hesitate to go on it again if I ever found myself back in that place. And I definitely wouldn't wait until I was incapable of getting out of bed to pop a few pills to make myself feel better.

There seems to be a lot of shame in admitting you have suffered from PND, not for me I will tell anyone who will listen, it was something I went through that was hard and I survived it, I'm proud of myself and I'm really proud of Jaime who showed amazing patience and how much he loves me.

And this is a little quote I have beside my bed to remind me of what I have come through and where I am now and to have a little faith in myself.

You're braver than you believe,

stronger than you seem and

smarter than you think

xxx