Family

Christmas with Kids 

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

… is shaping up to be everything we hoped it would be. My heart has been  doing somersaults with glee all week. I always treat this time of year as a season rather than a day, which takes a lot of the pressure off. We do several catch ups with different friends and families. A couple of weeks ago we sat down as a family and each shared something that makes it feel like Christmas for us. I wanted to bake something with cinnamon in it, Rose wanted cute clothes for Poppy, and Star wanted to see some Christmas lights. So those things we made happen and everything else was flexible. I’m learning that being a parent means letting things go and embracing what is. The goal has been to enjoy ourselves, and every time we’ve got stressed and frazzled we’ve re-jigged things to get back to that goal. It’s been wonderful. 

Poppy has finally cut her second tooth and just come out of a wonder week into a sunny few days. What delightful timing to have my happy little girl back again! 

All the new traditions! All the wonderful memories. There’s been lots of anxiety for everyone lately so we’re all in gentle mode with each other. My home is full of cuddles. Just now we’re off to our traditional Christmas Eve, games and treats with friends in front of Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Life is beautiful. ❤

Multiplicity and visibility 

/ Sarah K Reece / 6 Comments

Sometimes I hate my advocacy work. I resent being out – or worse, having to come out over and over again. I count the costs and look back at my decision to be open about multiplicity back in 2010 and ask myself if I would do it again, knowing what I know now?

Some days the answer is no. It’s no through tears, through gritted teeth, through anger and a sense of betrayal at every opportunity once open to me that didn’t work out.

Becoming a Mum brings me into contact with a whole new world. I out myself as queer. I out myself as many things. But mental health? Difference, disability? Back in my first public talk about multiplicity, I sat behind a table to deliver it because I was trembling too much to stand. After a lot of thought, I came out on this blog in 2012 with my post I am not Sarah. How the hell can it actually get harder over time?

Because now I have so much to lose.

The most challenging delivery of my Psychosis without Destruction talk so far was one I did for a room full of GP’s while I was pregnant. I was so stuck leading up to it, so blocked trying to rework the talk into the much shorter time slot. Frustrated beyond belief that I was struggling so much, I finally realised that I was simply scared. Our culture is not always kind to mothers who are different. We judge, shame, and fear diversity in mothers. In the back of my mind was the fear that admitting to psychosis in a medical setting might end with being bundled into an ambulance and sectioned.

Multiplicity? It’s the kind of thing people can lose custody of their kids over, and I have a kid now. It’s a conversation I don’t want to have with new mum friends every time. Because drumming up the courage and the ability to set the tone as comfortable and normal instead of strange or frightening takes spoons I don’t always have. Some days I’m all out of brave. I can hide this so well, why not simply walk away from that part of my life and start to blend in for a change?

And then.

And then last night, I get a phone call from an old friend telling me they think they have child parts. And I say – congratulations. Parts can be the most wonderful thing in the world, the closest and most beautiful relationship. Congratulations on discovering this, on being ready to know. Do you want me to send you a welcome pack? Two – one for you, one for your counsellor. No worries. You got this.

I think who else are people going to call to hear that? Some days I love my advocacy work. I love that people know they can reach out to me. I love that less people feel totally alone and strange and freakish. I love meeting others and learning from them. I love hearing the stories and I cherish the diversity.

When people email me to say they are not sure if there’s a place in the world for them – how can my answer be oh maybe there is, but only if you are good enough at hiding it. How can that be the only hope for people like us? When they say to me I make them feel that maybe there is place in the world for someone like us… All the costs are worth it. They seem so small, even petty. Peoples lives are made better by honest sharing.

I have more to lose, sure. And I’ve paid a price anyway, steeper then I hoped to. But beware of greener grass. A life hidden, secret, and isolated extracts a cost also, sometimes more subtle and harder to count, but there all the same. I’ve been lucky. Look at my beautiful life, my wonderful partner, gorgeous children, my tribe of strange, beautiful, good hearted people. I have been so blessed. If I’m not strong enough to have these conversations, if I’m not willing to hold this space, the burden falls to those who can’t hide it. Those with systems that are struggling, those where the loneliness is killing them, where the pain is like a bloodstain on their shirt everyone tries not to stare at. If they are not the first multiple people have met, not the first contradiction of the serial killer trope, then I have helped ease a little of their burden. It’s not much, but sometimes it doesn’t take much to make a difference.

I have known so many multiples over the past few years. We are so diverse, and so normal. We have pets. We have rent to pay, careers we’re figuring out. We get sick, we care for others who get sick. We watch the news and worry about the world. We fight with our neighbours. We stream movies and eat ice cream and get behind on our laundry. We switch and get stuck or  lose parts or  battle with nightmares or have complicated relationships with our partners. We navigate disclosure in a million ways.

Visibility and activism are such a challenge for so many of us. Think about it this way – there are many gay/lesbian/bi activists because visibility and recognition are key needs – to have our identity, or relationships, and our children recognised as real and legitimate. We don’t want to hide, we want to be identified as gay/lesbian /bi etc. There are far fewer trans activists because most trans people do not want to be identified. We want to live out our lives safely and unobtrusivly. Being identified as trans for some of us is stressful – it may increase the likelihood of discrimination, cruelty, and violence. We want to be identified as our real gender, not necessarily as trans.

For multiples, most of us have learned that imitating non-multiples is the key to success and safety. Our systems are hard-wired for secrecy and hiddenness. Our systems may be vibrant and diverse inside but outside parts cannot be distinguished from each other and switches may be merely subtle shifts in mood or demeanour. For some of us we have learned bitterly that others realising we are multiple can bypass most of the protections it offers and make us deeply vulnerable.

The challenges with visibility go deeper though. As a child I recall watching myself switch in the mirror and having no words to express the way my face was suddenly no longer my own. It was terrifying. For awhile I was convinced I was possessed by the devil. I also developed a deep fear of mirrors. Being confronted with the other inhabitants of my mind and body was intensely disturbing. Imagine coming upon a stranger in your home, in your room, wearing your clothes, your deodorant, your grandmothers necklace. Imagine them wearing your face, using your hands, eating your dinner, kissing your partner.

It’s taken me years to be okay with mirrors. Being photographed. Being video recorded. Having my voice recorded. After diagnosis I had to avoid all of them. Mirrors and reflective surfaces would trigger switches. I could start to identify who was in photographs, I could hear different voices and speech patterns, identify switches between us. For someone who was terrified this wasn’t ‘real’ you might think this would be comforting evidence. It was simply terrifying, falling down a black hole where my identity and existence dissolved and nothing was certain. On bad days I would avoid all these things. On good days I might, when feeling strong, stand in the bathroom for a moment and stare at our face, watching the eyes flickering. Here we are. Slowly getting used to it. Exposure therapy. The unbearable fear becomes over time simply a daily reality. Here I am, brushing my teeth, switching. Mirrors hold no terror for me anymore.

I’ve been out since 2010 and we still don’t share individual names with anyone other than Rose. We don’t sign blog posts or artworks, we don’t identify photographs. We use our group identity as a shield and protect us all behind it. We are so open and so hidden at the same time. We are slowly coming to bear being recorded. Visibility of a different kind. It’s still very disturbing to see ourselves on video. Voice recordings are okay on good days when I have some brave left. I cope pretty well these days with having writing and art on display, and photos of us.

All of these used to be impossible. People would do things like tell me that a piece of writing didn’t sound like me, or that they really preferred one of my artwork types over another (and inside someone curls up in shame that their art isn’t good enough, inside the fear of being found out sounds like an alarm, the impulse suddenly reawakens to police who ‘Sarah’ is, who we present to the world, to try and curate our public self for an impression of consistency). People would tell me that they preferred my clothing style one day over another and we would freeze inside, as embarrassed as when a friend’s mother used to compare me with her daughter as we stood in front of her as kids.

Loathing the ‘specialness’ of the sensationalism – ‘the holy grail of psychiatry’, the media full of terror (even an old teacher of mine was once planning a book where the investigator gradually discovers he is the killer), and the dehumanising of talking about us as if we share nothing in common with other people. We are human. We are people.

The opposite impulse is also present for us. Walking up to the podium to talk about multiplicity at the World Hearing Voices Congress a couple of years ago, a 10 year old part offering to switch out and identify herself ‘so then they’ll see that switching and child parts aren’t scary’ while the wounded one vulnerable to self harm screams with terror at being so exposed. ‘Thankyou, my love, but no, please don’t. You would be wonderful but we mustn’t scare the others (inside).’

I’m not the only multiple being visible, of course. Being visible about something people want to hide means keeping a lot of people’s secrets. It means flying a flag so those who have fallen down the rabbit hole of self have a person to reach out to – even better if it’s someone safe, who will balance sympathy and optimism. Someone not embedded in ideas of multiplicity as a crippling disorder, but not gung-ho about pushing an agenda or assuming their path will be everyone’s path. That’s what I hope to be, what I try to be. A safe starting point in that journey of self discovery. There are a lot of us out there, mostly hidden in plain sight. It’s far from safe to be visibly multiple for many of us. But it’s so important that some of us are.

Nursing Poppy

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Here is Poppy, enjoying a breastmilk ice block. She’s been teething on and off for a couple of weeks. 

Lying in bed nursing today I realised I’ve come full circle. I hated breastfeeding at first and found it very traumatic – to the point of having nightmares about it and crying through most feeds. Now I generally enjoy it and would miss it if it stopped. Poppy is cuddled up to my side, nursing and looking up at me with huge blue eyes. She pauses from time to time to sing to me, cooing like a bird. Sometimes she reaches out  and pats my breast. Sometimes she buries her face into it like a puppy. 

Now that it doesn’t hurt and I get thrown up on a lot less, there’s times like this where it’s quite magical. I’ve discovered that if I don’t eat any chocolate, she keeps most feeds down. If I indulge, she dumps entire feeds over both of us. I’ve no idea why but I’ve tested it twice and is definitely chocolate that upsets her. Things we have to do, ey? I’m lucky we found the support we needed to make breastfeeding work, because it was such a hard road at first and I was really unprepared for that. 

I’ve actually been working on my phobia of the media too, and talking with a local journalist about some of our experiences… We’re going to be in newspaper this weekend, so watch this space. 🙂

Poppy in the Park 

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Rose and I recently took Poppy to the park and sat by a river. Poppy enjoyed some time on her tummy and amused us by carefully licking the grass. 

Every day I fall a little more deeply into the role of being a parent. I feel my fear receding and I let go, going deeper, feeling myself change, my life change around me. I have not lost my art. I am not devoid of separate identity. Poetry has not fled me. I clean my home and tend my family and wash vomit from my hair… And feel whole. Give myself to this, wholeheartedly. Lie on the beach with Poppy asleep on my chest, and feel her breathing, skin to skin. I hold her and at times, I become her and my hand on her chest is that of my own mother, or my grandmother. 

Love rushes up and spills over. Star and I curl up together, talking about life. I kiss her hair, touch her face when she returns from school. She borrows my eye-shadow, stands beside me in the kitchen learning to cook, holds Poppy tenderly. On nights when she stays with friends, my heart waits to hear her return, like a dog sitting by the door. They have changed me, these girls. They light my world. 

Art with Love 

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

I’m still happily painting most evenings, given a chance. Last night I finished 6 ink paintings, as part of a larger project. These will illustrate a podcast I’ve recorded and be posted  online as a video slideshow. It feels wonderful to be creating. ❤

I’m also thrilled to be selling prints. My Etsy shop continues to reach people I haven’t heard of before, which is really wonderful. Recently I received a message over Etsy that truly astonished me.

I learned that people have been buying my print Waiting for You as a gift when a friend experiences a miscarriage. A woman contacted me to buy another print – a friend of hers had been gifted one, and that friend had given her a print, and she now has a friend who has  also miscarried, and she wanted to continue the chain of gifts. It’s so heartbreaking that miscarriage is so common, but to be a part of a spontaneous community response like this – it’s the most wonderful thing I could have hoped for. What an amazing development!  

It means that people are telling their friends when they are grieving, breaking the awful taboo of silence about miscarriage. It means that friends are finding tender ways to respond and connect to each other in grief. People are hurting in connection with their communities, not in isolation. They can hear about resources, they can offer compassion to the next person. It’s a very small thing, next to the loss of a child. Yet it’s also a very powerful thing. Learning that my art has become part of a spontaneous response to such a painful event makes me feel deeply honoured. This is the heart of my art, my peer work, what I love to do in the world. Thankyou all of you who read and share my world in some way, you are part of my tribe and you make this kind of connection possible. ❤

Bliss

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

We had a fun Halloween this year a dress up party with friends. I baked pumpkin scones, Rose made guacamole. Star dressed as a vampire, Poppy as a skeleton, and I went as Frida. Now we’re home (except Star) watching The Lone Ranger in our underwear. (it’s warm here) 

We are getting a little better at travelling in the evenings! We had a huge breakthrough the other night. We all went out to a family birthday which was too important to miss even though we were all dreading getting Poppy home again in the car seat of eternal unhappiness. 

For the first time, we actually made it all the way without stopping! We all sang together at the top of our lungs and that seemed to work some kind of magic. At one point we were singing Cave’s ‘Into my Arms’, and I remembered Rose and I singing that song on our way to the first scan to see if Poppy was growing okay, tears streaming down our cheeks and our hearts already broken. Here we all were, singing it to the most beautiful baby in the world, as I drove through the night: singing her home. I wept again, drove through tears. Such joy in this life together. In the space of a year, my life has completely changed. I have a whole beautiful family to tend, and they are my heart! Star has been with us for 9 months now, and Poppy for 11 weeks. I no longer fear the roles, I’ve come through the initiations and I am still myself. It feels like I’ve finally reached a place I’ve been homesick for most of my life. Beneath all the other feelings and goings-ons, contentment flows like the deepest river. It bubbles up into my days as the most heartfelt bliss. I am at this moment, truly fortunate. 

Away with Poppy

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We have been brave and joined some friends on a camp, staying in a big hall by the beach. It’s been wonderful. Rose and were both pretty anxious about how Poppy would travel and sleep, but we were lucky on the drive here and she slept for a couple of hours in the car! Last night was tricky but not unmanageable. It’s been great to spend so much time with friends. 

Poppy is 9 weeks old now and simply adorable. I live for the moments when she makes eye contact with me and bursts into a huge smile. She also purses her lips and makes this cooing sound, like a dove, that makes my heart do backflips. She’s started blowing bubbles too, and is learning to use her hands to bring things to her mouth to suck on. I can’t get over how lucky we’ve been. 

Rose and I continue to recover from a million and one illnesses. We’ve recovered from almost everything except infected teeth/gums, nipple thrush (again, bugger it), the sciatica which is proving difficult to heal up, and one last skin abcess. This is brilliant, and as pain levels continue to slowly improve we are both much happier most days and more able to enjoy our lovely little family and our bigger, beautiful tribe. 

Poppy in Spring 

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We pulled weeds in the garden recently. It feels like she’s starting to get her fill of cuddles and she’s actually wanting to be put down to explore the world from time to time now. It’s simply amazing to watch her develop. 
Is been a funny kind of week, rather wonderful and also quite distressing at times. The other evening, Poppy was unsettled through the early hours so I was up with her. I crawled into bed next to Rose at 9am seriously annoyed with the universe and ranted about how fed up I was about everything. Rose, wisely, kept quiet and snuggled in. Cuddles make everything better. 🙂

Then we went off to a babywearing group and I learned how to wrap Poppy, and still had my ranty pants on. Apparently that was quite welcome! I feel so much more comfortable in parent groups that are more alternative, it was refreshing. It has occurred to me that many of the Mums who approach parenting as a role they have to fit into and hide who they are to do well at probably have that approach to the rest of their lives too. That’s not how I live so it’s unlikely to play much part in my parenting either. Now that Poppy is here a lot of the fears and sense of being pushed into roles or to behave in certain ways have eased. I feel a lot stronger and less vulnerable to dumb advice. (not invulnerable, just less) 

I was thrilled to sell some prints through my Etsy store. I get great pleasure from wrapping and posting them. It inspired me tonight to clear a lot of boxes and things out of my studio and into the shed so I can once again reach my art desk and inks. I’m feeling inspired to create. 

I also touched base with some great people and secured a couple of public speaking gigs, which is always so exciting. Something about this work just makes my heart sing. 

I got some warm feedback about my authenticity being inspiring. 

I also discussed the possibility of holding my exhibition Waiting for You down south somewhere for those folks who couldn’t attend it in town. 

My life is incredibly hard work at the moment – loads of housework, admin, caretaking, providing emotional support, sleep deprivation, and the rawness of post-partum. At times intense frustrations and fears spill over. Other times there is simply the joy and bliss and pleasure of tending to my family and enjoying being a Mum. I’ve been inhibited by trauma and a kind of survivors guilt, always aware that I’m so fortunate and many others are still hoping for or grieving their dream children. It feels like I’m letting go of those things and sinking gradually more deeply into my own life, my own path and experiences. When I hold Poppy my hands wake up and feel alive, like they do when I make art. I’m so incredibly glad to be here. 

After the Storm 

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We’ve had a huge storm through South Australia this week, and prepared for disaster in various forms. The whole state was plunged into a blackout when major power lines went down. I cleaned up the house because walking Poppy around to calm her in near dark is a recipe for falling over a pair of shoes and winding up back in hospital. I also bought a bag of ice, more candles and extra milk and emptied the most needed items from the fridge into a couple of eskies so we could keep the fridge and freezer closed and cool throughout the blackout. Fortunately we have gas for hot water and cooking. I checked in with friends online to let them know people could visit us if needed, and went around to most of the neighbours to make sure they had candles, matches, hot water, and knew they could knock on our door if anything went wrong.

We cooked and ate dinner together by candlelight, no screens, phone batteries being conserved in case of emergencies. We talked and told stories and I took out James Herriot and read a few chapters… it’s a tradition in my family that books are read during camping trips, and Rose and I used to read each other to sleep most nights but since Star and now Poppy we’ve not had the opportunity. It was special. We talked again about family and rituals and values. Since then we’ve had a couple more dinners by candlelight together, and they’ve been beautiful. We’ve planned a trip away with friends in a couple of weeks, together as a family. We’ve celebrated Star arriving 8 months ago. It feels like something has changed again between the four of us, deepened, a sense of connection has grown stronger. It’s precious.

Rose and I are still recovering from all our health problems. She has been suffering from terrible pain due to sciatica and a tooth infection. She had a root canal started a week ago but things went badly wrong and she wound up with a severe infection that we were told was verging on life-threatening when a different, stronger course of antibiotics finally started to turn things around. Her face had swollen and blood and pus were dripping through the bored out tooth into her mouth. We’re both being told that we’re obviously run down and need to take time off to recover and get our immune systems functioning again.

I’ve had a bad bout of gastro (is there any other kind of gastro? – this one came with spasms that felt depressingly similar to labour contractions), I’m still got bad infections in my teeth and gums, as well as mouth ulcers and skin boils. We are both finally over the staph infections and a host of other problems though, so progress is slowly being made.

Our world is about basic needs at the moment – good food, as much sleep as possible, rest, affection, getting out in the sun when it’s around, staying warm, showers. We’ve made it to parent-teacher night, a myriad of medical appointments, and the occasional social gathering. We’re making headway on all the paperwork and admin that comes with a new baby, and making arrangements for Star to get her drivers license and a vehicle to learn to drive in.

Poppy continues to be spectacular. Every day she is awake a little more, a little more aware of and interested in the world. We get the most beautiful smiles and giggles. Breastfeeding continues to get easier and I’ve been able to process much of the trauma of the early weeks. We can now breastfeed in public, through appointments, and I can pump around 200mls for Rose to feed her so I get some sleep. I’ve made it past the 6 weeks mark – which means breastfeeding is considered established and we’re likely to be able to keep it going.

These two girls, Poppy and Star, are simply delightful. Our amazing girls, both with such lovely, loving hearts. Rose is a beautiful partner, we tag team and debrief and hold each other. I find it hard to believe that only a few years ago I lived alone, and now my world is this beautiful little family filling my every hour. They mean the world to me. My heart is full and my mind is stirring. The shutting down and enduring that happened through the end of the pregnancy has finished with, I can feel the cogs turning again and what I choose to concentrate on comes into focus. I can’t multitask as well as I used to but my mind is working again. I’ve read my first Terry Pratchett book since he died – something that was impossible before now. Death is present a lot of the time still but less overwhelming. I’m able to read and understand what I’ve read. The desire to write (if not yet the coherency) has returned and art is starting to call to me again. Nesting hasn’t left me – I still clean and do admin and organise and plan. I sometimes get days where thinking about what I’m going to next regarding work/business/career doesn’t make me panic, cry, or hate myself. This is a very new, fragile, and precious development. I’ve wanted my whole life to be a parent, and a huge driving pain about needing meaning in my world has eased. 

I find myself quietly haunted by how this could have gone if we’d been met with tragedy again – losing Poppy to miscarriage it stillbirth or early death, losing Rose or Star or other family or friends. I’m aware of the pain and bitter-sweetness my luck causes to those who are still childless and still hurting. I feel at times a sense of survivors guilt – it can be hard to give myself permission to let go and enjoy myself when I know so many still suffer on a road I’ve been saved from. At times I feel consumed by fear, waiting for the next crisis, the next terrible loss. Tragedy comes to us all. There’s only so much I can do to push it away. All I have is now, and all I can do is live in it, as deeply, fully as possible. This time in my life with my fledgling family is intense and consuming and painful and beautiful and exquisite. I’m here, giving myself to it, being as alive as I can be.

Hanging out with Poppy and Blackadder

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

Here I am, hanging out on the couch, breastfeeding this gorgeous little bug and watching Blackadder. It’s not such a bad life. 🙂 
Rose and I are trading misery. I’m on the improve and actually having patches where I feel good! Rose is laid up with severe sciatica and feeling particularly awful that she’s in too much pain to be able to babywear Poppy. It’s been a challenging week in many ways. I had to ask for help the other night to get Rose to the hospital for pain relief and to hold Poppy for a couple of hours so I could get some sleep. It’s hard to need help! I feel ashamed and afraid that we’ll be judged, afraid of annoying people or burning out our support. I keep reminding myself that if the situation was reversed I feel good about helping my friends and don’t judge them, that genuine community relies on reciprocity otherwise it’s just a bunch of people treating others as projects they try to fix. I remind myself that is okay to feel scared and ashamed but I still need to ask for help and keep being open about where things are really up to, that this is part of what’s keeping us safe, and it’s also valuable for others who may face harsher reactions when they try to share the painful aspects of their experiences. But it’s still hard to do, hard to make eye contact, to say thankyou, to be gracious, to let go of pride and shame, to say “thankyou”  instead of mumbling “sorry”. I am practicing gratitude and lucky to be given the chance to do so. 

We were able to get Rose to a doctor and a physio yesterday and we are hopeful we have a plan and some better meds that will help her rest and heal up. 

We had a challenging night the other night with both our girls in tears, I held Star, and Rose comforted Poppy until she needed feeding at which point we swapped, Rose hugging Star on the couch and trying not to pass out with fatigue. We have been trying to arrange a family trip or for ice cream for over a week now with no success. Last night I explained the concept of the ‘fourth trimester’ to Star, how vulnerable and dependant human babies are, that things won’t always be this intense. I breastfed Poppy and helped Star with an English essay, wracking my poor brain to try and understand concepts like themes and literary devices. Then I stayed up watching Star Trek movies and was able to get Poppy to sleep in her pram bassinet and give myself a nap in the armchair. Parenting like a boss! 

The roller-coaster continues. My days plummet into black depths that can be terrifying, evoking memories of my terrible exhaustion just before taking pregnant with Poppy. I run as far and as a fast from that place as I can. I push myself past my limits and then sob because I’m horrified to feel so resentful and frustrated. I’m learning not to push myself so hard, that I have to make sure burdens are more equally shared. Small revelations make huge differences. Recently I ran over to Rose and exclaimed – the role of coordinating all the household jobs that need doing, and assigning then to people, and reminding people gently about them, and decoding when to let people off because they are sick or stressed IS IN ITSELF A JOB. It is a stressful job because people often resent it, because it’s not thought of as a job in the way that doing the dishes is, and because I didn’t want it and don’t like doing it but no one else wants it either. I wind up doing a lot of these kind of jobs, the ones no one else wants, and I don’t like them either, I find them stressful and tiring. I was so excited about this realisation because it means I don’t have to just take it on, we can talk about it, and I don’t have to feel guilty for asking people to do jobs – if that’s not working then we as a family can problem solve it and find some other way, and yes it takes time and energy and counts as a legitimate thing I do for my family, like washing the dishes. I feel a lot lighter and less burdened by it now I can see it more clearly. 

I felt the same way a little while ago when I decided that doing the household admin (paying bills, organising appointments, answering mail, filling paperwork, etc counted as a job too, not just something I do where I then try to ‘keep pace’ with everyone else by also doing cleaning etc. The invisible jobs, like putting everything left in the lounge room back where it belongs, like emptying the laundry cupboard and making new better places for all the linen to be kept, like talking bags of unwanted things to the op shop – the ones no one sees or appreciates, that don’t get counted or tallied when people are looking at shares of the workload, and that are not chosen or distributed but simply inherited by whoever is the bottom line in the family – these sap energy, motivation, and connection. Being able to see them, treat them as real, tally them, and possibly even share them makes a huge difference to me and to the quietly burning resentment that I work so hard to conceal when things are unfair. It feels like I can breathe. It’s one thing to take on a big share of a workload, it’s quite something else to take it on and have no one including  yourself realise that you’ve done so and that’s why you’re busy and tired. 

My family are wonderful. Everyone is working hard to adapt and be gentle with each other. I’m so proud of what we are creating, it’s imperfect and unbalanced but we muddle through and there’s a great deal of love. 

At 6am when I woke from a delightful sleep for the morning shift, Rose and I sat in bed with Poppy and ate porridge for breakfast. I remembered the porridge I enjoyed in the hotel at Port Lincoln, for the mental health conference where I thought I’d found paid work and a future. All those memories have been such a source of pain, a sense of humiliation and failure and bewilderment. This morning I let go of the hopes and dashed dreams and just remembered the experience. I met amazing people and learned fascinating things. I drove myself across the country, sleeping in my van. I watched the dolphins in the bay. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but it wasn’t a pointless waste either. I’ve had many amazing experiences not many people in my position get. And I have a family and I get to be a Mum! Letting go and taking hold.

Poppy as a tyrannosaurus 

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Poppy is outgrowing her adorable froggie onesie and has spent the whole night wiggling her little fingers out  of the mittens. She can’t get any other fingers out, but no matter how many times I put her hand back in, she can get her baby finger out. Which makes her look like a tiny adorable tyrannosaurus! 

The mittens are a necessity for breastfeeding, otherwise it’s like trying to feed an octopus with claws. A frantic, confused octopus who attacks my breast and her own face while desperately trying to suckle milk from of her own arm. Gently wrestling the tyrannosaurus is definitely more effective. 🙂

Sarah & Poppy; what’s going on and what’s helping

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Well! This is our garden at the moment, bright with red poppies. 20160816_103851_wm.jpg

I use pseudonyms for my family members on this blog – just because I’m public about my life doesn’t mean they always want to be. I’m also very discrete about information linked to other people, so for example anything I write about Rose or that might impact on her, she reads and has veto power over before I publish it. That means little frog needs her blog name now she’s been born, and Rose and I have picked Poppy. 🙂

Poppy is going really well, she’s healthy and gaining weight well. I am still a bit of a mess and struggling to get back to health. Everyone was so sure that once I’d delivered bubs my health would improve, but heart-breakingly that hasn’t been the case! I am dealing with a stack of problems and making more progress on some than others. It’s taking a lot of emotional energy, keeping pain levels high, and forcing us out of the house (which I hate with a passion at the moment, it’s so hard on all of us) for expensive medical appointments and treatments. We are regular fixtures at the chemist at the moment and I am very fed up about it. Things are by no means all bad – we’re both making sure we get lovely moments of connection each day and Poppy is simply the most beautiful, adorable little tribelet in the history of the world, but this is the other side of things that it’s hard to put into words at times. Here’s my health stuff – skip it if you’re squeamish.

  • A grade 3b tear during Poppy’s birth. No one knows why, I was about as low risk for a tear as it was possible to be. Tears come in grades 1-4 (from grazing through to tearing into the rectum) Mine is pretty bad, I have torn through muscles and into sphincters. It was originally mis-assessed as a grade 2 tear and stitched by my midwife with a local that didn’t work. It was then un-stitched and I was taken to surgery for repair under a spinal block. It was not handled well and the whole experience was pretty traumatic.
  • Due to the tear, urinary incontinence. This was a huge shock to me and very embarrassing. Not to mention extremely painful, having urine burn into damaged skin and stitches. Severe pain, numb areas, and no bladder control at all for the first week caused horrible situation where I was peeing the bed or all over the floor without any sensation or warning. Needless to say, there were quite a few keen would-be visitors I was pretty distressed about seeing me in this state. Things are improving as the days go by and the muscles begin to heal.
  • Severe genital pain. Days of doctors telling me I shouldn’t be in as much pain as I was describing, contradictory advice about whether sitting on my wounds would heal them faster or slower, and my allergies to most pain killers made this a bit of a nightmare. Some of the pain may be nerve pain, which is not responding even to high levels of pain killers. Some pain is improving as things heal. I’m expecting to need pelvic physio care down the track.
  • Thrush, systemically. Genitals, nipples, and mouth. Extremely painful. My tongue swelled up and began to crack as doctor after doctor insisted it wasn’t thrush. Burning pain with every breastfeed from about the second day of Poppy’s life, that got steadily worse each feed. Three courses of antibiotics (for my skin infection, the tear, and then retained membranes) over the past month have destroyed my healthy bacteria levels. Now that all areas are finally being treated I’m seeing rapid improvements across the board – this has been the best news all week. The private lactation consultant we saw on Tuesday picked up on the nipple thrush and within 2 applications of anti-fungal gel I was able to feed for up to an hour without intense pain – I have literally been chewing on my hands to cope with the pain of breastfeeding while people kept telling me it was normal and my skin would toughen up eventually. They were wrong!!
  • Tinea (also known as jock itch, athlete’s foot etc, another fungal infection). This is a bit of nightmare for me because I’m really allergic to tinea. It makes my skin peel off and leaves me with horrible, painful open sores. I often get it when taking antibiotics, same as the thrush. I have it all over my genitals and in my armpits. One armpit has almost completely healed, the other is almost entirely an open infected sore, genital area starts to heal then sloughs the fresh skin a couple of days later. Wearing clothing/underwear is very painful.
  • The open sores caused by the tinea have been colonised with what my gp suspects is a staph infection. I have to be extremely careful not to infect Poppy. I am washing my hands so much they are starting to develop excema. The infections are painful, itchy, and difficult as hell to cure. I am trying a number of different things looking for something effective – often a treatment looks like it is working for a day or two then things flare back up and I have to add something else.
  • Urethritis/urinary tract infection
  • Fissure
  • Painful lumps in my legs and arms – we are unsure exactly what these are at this stage, possibly fatty deposits caused by a reaction to my high hormone levels. If they get worse or don’t go away after I’ve got the more urgent problems under control we’ll investigate further
  • Blocked milk ducts. This means large, hard, hot, painful lumps in my breasts, that could turn into mastitis (an infection). Rose, Poppy and I took a long drive up into the hills yesterday in sheer desperation to see a lovely physio who showed me how to massage the lumps and try to clear the blockages. I spent an hour face down in a hot bath last night doing just that.
  • Major breastfeeding issues. Poppy has been diagnosed with a posterior tongue tongue tie, a disorganised suckling method, and of course I’ve had nipple thrush. We also had latch issues for the first week and my milk came in late. Breastfeeding has been a special kind of hell. I am expressing using our breast pump and Rose is learning how to breastfeed Poppy herself using a supplemental nursing system and my milk. (she has not been able to induce lactation herself) It’s been a steep learning curve for us both and frankly after so many extremely painful feeds I’m pretty traumatised. We are still fighting for breastfeeding at this stage. Poppy is also cluster feeding which I have found really hard to handle, so for example I took over a shift from Rose at 6am this morning so she could get some sleep (we handle the nights in shifts now, the nights are really, really hard on us all) and she fed from 6am – 9am. For the first half hour it was calm and even pleasant. Rose woke to me pretty distraught and in a lot of pain by the second hour. Now that we’ve identified this as an issue we are working on making these less distressing. Half the problem is just identifying what the problems are!
  • Severe sleep deprivation and mental health distress. After 12 days of early labour disrupting sleep, Rose and I were short on reserves. No one got any sleep the night of Poppy’s birth, and the days in hospital following Rose and I managed less than 8 hours in total, over 5 days and nights. I was extremely concerned about harm to bonding and psychosis. Both have been present in small ways. For example, I’ve struggled to remember who Poppy is at times. Rose has gone out and bought some very feminine outfits for her because I find that helps. When she’s dressed in something more gender neutral and it’s night when I’m more tired, I find myself getting confused and thinking Poppy is Tamlorn, which is heartbreaking.
  • Grief. Grief, grief, grief, grief, grief. So many dead babies, so much fear of being judged, told we need to just be grateful, focus on Poppy and don’t think about it, and so on. Rose and I have waited our whole lives for Poppy. We love her so much our hearts burst. We adore being parents. And there is also pain and grief and darkness and fear. There are nightmares where we wake to find her dead. The black hours are really, really black, and we are looking after each other intensely to get us all through them.
  • Trauma. I’ve got a lot of stuff to process about birth and postpartum. I’ve been able to have a debrief with the midwife at the birth, and with our amazing doula, and both were painful and healing and desperately important for my mental health. I know I need more time and safe places to talk and that will be a priority at some point. In the meantime I’m debriefing and talking with people close to me and that’s a huge help too.

So, this has not been a regular postpartum recovery. We are getting help for the breastfeeding and seeing midwives, doctors, physios and so on for my health. We are very, very broke because we had no idea we’d need to save up for this time as everyone was confident my health would improve once Poppy arrived, and as I was so ill by the end of the pregnancy we spent our money on treatments and care then. Our tribe have been helping out which is simply incredible and has made such a huge difference. On good days we stay home and hibernate with our new baby and there are salt baths and naked sunbathing and cuddles and photos and a lot of bonding and hope. Those days or hours are only possible because of the huge amount of support we’ve had around us, and I’m so grateful!

We’ve had some folks not really getting why we have not been up to much in the way of visitors. Postpartum is a crazy vulnerable time for most (there’s a cool article here with suggestions about visiting people who have a new baby I can really relate to!), and for me it’s been extra stressful and vulnerable. There’s not a lot of people in the world I feel okay on any level about peeing myself in front of, being half naked while I learn to breastfeed, having nasty open smelly sores, crying every other hour, and dealing with a massive amount of blood and other bodily fluids of all kinds. It’s not about withholding access to the lovely new baby, it’s about protecting us in a really vulnerable time.

Some folks have been asking what they can do to help and I’ve found that impossible to answer. There are some ideas in that article about visiting, but I’ve also been thinking about what other people have been doing that has really made a difference to us all. Here’s the short list:

  • Meals/food is awesome. Really appreciated!
  • Doing a chore or two when visiting
  • Picking up stuff for us like a hand held shower rose for me to keep my wounds clean more easily, or milk, or filling scripts at the chemist
  • Helping out with our medical costs
  • Touching base via text or messenger and not taking it personally if we forget to write back. I get phone phobic when I’m stressed so don’t take that personally either.
  • Listening ear
  • Recommendations for helpful things (books, lactation consultants etc) and also not taking it personally if we don’t pick up on it/don’t find it helpful/see someone else
  • Clearly communicating things using small words and repeating them when we look glazed or fall asleep mid-sentence
  • Not taking anything personally really, we are in survival mode at the moment and things are tough and we are crazy vulnerable and doing our best to take care of ourselves
  • Goo-ing over photos and commiserating over the tough stuff. Rose and I keep getting stressed when it feels like we’re only sharing (or people are only hearing) one half of the amazing/horrible experience this all is at the moment.
  • Not mixing up the parenting stuff with the health stuff. The parenting stuff is tough and amazing and exhilarating. The health stuff has been a nightmare with no upside. People keep trying to commiserate by telling me being a new Mum is tough which is lovely (and true!!!) but also frustrating for me at the moment because frankly I want more chances to be a new mum and spend less time trying to pick my health up off the floor.
  •  Understanding the context of our lives with Poppy – there’s grief and trauma and a long history behind this amazing rainbow baby. That’s a different experience from what some people have, it’s a bit messier and darker and opens up some old wounds. I keep being told that being a new mum is the hardest thing I will ever do in my life, and I understand that’s coming from a  place of empathy and connection, but for Rose and I it’s not really true. This past fortnight has been crazy difficult, but I’d still say it was easier than some other things I’ve come through, and I’d definitely choose it again over experiences like abuse, homelessness, suicide, and miscarriage.

So there we go. Huge love to all our peoples. I hope it’s helpful to have things laid out more clearly than we’ve been able to until now. I swing between massive gratitude for the good fortune, good care, and love of our friends and even strangers (new friends!) we’ve received over the past few weeks – and feeling overwhelmed, guilty that so many new mum’s in our position don’t get this care, and swamped by self loathing for needing the extra support. It’s all very up and down, this postpartum thing! Thanks for being part of it with us. ❤

How to calm a distraught nervous system 

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I am sick and our post partum continues to be extra tough. My body is struggling, I’m emotionally overloaded, and my nervous system is strung out. So today I have:

  • Stayed in bed and got extra sleep
  • Cried with validating people 
  • Been reassured that I don’t have to start feeling better quickly, that it’s  okay to be where I am emotionally (black despair, fury, numbness) and to rest here awhile, I will heal. I don’t have to be scared that I’ll stay like this. Let myself stay numb but tried to be soothing too. 
  • Eaten very small meals that are comforting. Hot cocoa for comforting heartache rather than fennel tea for milk production. 
  • Handed over half the breastfeeding to Rose and expressed milk instead to give me a break from the pain. 
  • Gone naked and laid down towels in bed to give my skin a rest from the pressure of underwear.  
  • Cleared off the rocking chair and sat in it looking at the garden without thinking about anything much. 
  • Cleaned a few dishes so I feel comfortable in my kitchen and a sense of keeping up with things that don’t stress me too much. 
  • Ignored all my admin unless people text me as phone and emails are stressing me. 
  • Talked to the cats. 
  • Talked to the baby. 
  • Hugged Rose.
  • Put ointment on skin, taken meds, kept up with pain relief. 
  • Run a warm salt bath and prepared a chair out the back for naked sunbathing. 
  • Looked forward to a visit by someone I feel safe and comfortable being naked/vulnerable/miserable with. 
  • Drank my last Lipton chai latte sachet, slowly. 
  • Just breathed. 

The screaming muscle pain of an overwhelmed nervous system starts to ease. Occasional deep sighs replace muscle cramps and digestive pain. The sirens and screaming alarms in my mind and body start to calm. Get out of crisis. Just be. Just be.  

6am hell

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

The days are blissfuI and the nights are hard. Star is home again now, and all three of us are like things were when she first arrived – stringed instruments over tightened and quivering with tension. How are we going to do this? I don’t know how we are going to do this. Back at the start of her stay I called helplines daily to cry, I was so overwhelmed. I’ve returned to that place. I have no buffers, no cushioning emotionally, no reserves. I call and cry about how hard this is and how afraid I am it is too much for us. And then I do it anyway. 

Rose recalls a foster family who liked her until the new baby came, then decided a baby and teen was simply too hard and sent her back. It is too hard. Everything is too hard. Terror and inadequacy sit beneath everything else. Others around us see strength and hope and resilience that we cannot. They reflect us back to ourselves and we hold onto that like a lifeline. We are a strong family. We can do this. 

The nights last a thousand years and I try not to count every microsecond anyone any sleeps for longer than me and hate them for it. I do try. We will make it work. I don’t know how. Day by day. Through tears and fear and conversations that stick or hurt or flow and heal we will make a way. 

Today is the last day of my antibiotics. I am in the hell of healing wounds with thrush and tinea (‘jock itch’). I am allergic to tinea and my skin is sloughing into raw patches. Trying to breastfeed sitting up for hours at a time is a profoundly miserable experience. Pain levels creep up during the day and peak with sleep deprivation in the small hours of the morning. One more day. 

I hate the sensations of let-down, like lightning and ants under my skin. I writhe and Rose sits by me, rubbing my legs to give me other sensations to focus on. 

We are getting better at the latch. I am able to breastfeed in the bed, the bath, and my armchair. I can do football hold, side lying sometimes, and very occasionally a cross carry. Being able to feed outside the house remains my Everest; the goal I’m in training for. 

It will get easier. It will get better. It won’t always be this hard. Love is the balm that eases the pain, cools the resentment, soothes the fear. There is so much love here. Our tribe is so full of love and pouring it into our home. We will get through this. 

Big wins

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

(written yesterday) Today has been a big win for me. I got dressed in something more than underwear for the first time since giving birth a week ago. This is bloody exciting. 

Rose and I walked to the park with our daughter. I got to feel grass under my feet, sun on my face, the stitch in my side, pain in my yoni, so on and so forth. Post-partum recovery is a bitch. I hadn’t realised how much being in hospital was doing my head in until getting out. I felt actually human being outside.  Leaving the hospital the other night, I wept standing outside in the night, the first time out daughter had been outside in her life. 

When we got home I walked inside with our daughter, slumped against a wall and sobbed with relief. Bringing her home felt like the finish line of a marathon. Home and safe and back in the real world, my own daughter to love and nurture and protect. My milk has come in, and in a big way. I expressed 70mls today for Rose to use to give me a sleep! 

I have the emotional stability of a three year old at Christmas. Hysteria is one second away, as is intense happiness. Rose has been a champion at supporting me and baby girl. 

Breastfeeding has  been insanely difficult and very painful. I’m learning, and getting more feeds that don’t hurt happening, but I’ve had to stop everything else and really focus to do it. My whole world has revolved around it. All the skills I learned about feeding or daughter back when she was constantly underfed and hungry are redundant once my milk finally came in. She has had to figure out how to feed differently too, otherwise I drown her in milk. The whole two steps forward, one step back dance is emotionally wrenching. Breastfeeding is super easy for some people (and I hate of all them at the moment) but for me it’s been a crazy steep learning curve so I’ve done everything I can to make that curve less steep. I focused on learning only one position (football hold) in one location (bed) with one set of needed supplies (two pillows, burp cloth, moo goo, rolled up face washer, water bottle) and focused on getting a latch that didn’t hurt too much. It takes both hands, I need Rose there to feed or water me, and there’s often pain to manage in the way of chafed nipples and sitting on stitches, as well as muscle aches from days spent on bed hunched into weird positions tense and stressed. I don’t wear a top but live in a bra with soft nipples pads, and I swap a bracelet from wrist to wrist to remind me which side I fed on last time. I break a bad latch over and over to get a not too bad one or occasionally a really good one that doesn’t hurt at all. And I don’t try anything else until I’ve got this. 

Once I’ve started getting it consistently, I add in a new challenge, like being able to do it in low light at night, or being able to sustain the latch using only one hand so I can feed myself at the same time. Keeping that learning curve small as possible though because I need all the success I can get. It was a shock to get home from hospital the other day and realise I couldn’t attend my GP appt because I currently can only breastfeed at all in one way and one location, some of the time. I’m working on it! 

Our midwife visited recently and I was in a bad state, I’d been crying hysterically for most of the morning, the lack of sleep was shattering me, nightmares were incredibly distressing, and I’d found that I was starting to get out daughter confused with Tamlorn in my mind, which was scary and sad. My pain levels were intense and I was trembling with misery. She offered to debrief the birth and words just poured out of me, the good and the bad, tears and fear and stress. The jumbled confusion of experiences that were at once both amazing and terrible, surreal, sublime, and traumatic. The relief of being able to talk about it in the past tense, happened not happening, to start to sift and name and find words for it all was like having the weight of a house removed from my body. I had thought that the pain and exhaustion was physiological – hormones, sleep deprivation, fibro, post surgery pain. But a debrief took so much darkness out of my world. ❤

Our daughter was born 

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Describe… your mother. 

One week ago today, in darkness and pain. Our daughter was born. Every day that passes we tumble through a thousand worlds, moving further from that place. The memories are etched but they change, too . A sacred space opens and closes behind us, revisited in memory but no longer present. The story grows less complex with the telling, more complete but small details lost. I don’t want to go. Here in the dark at 7.05am, I sit with my love and we look at photos of the birth, my raw and naked body in labour, birth team holding me, face twisted in anguish and face at rest. Tears running down my face and milk weeping from my breasts over my vast, stretched stomach, like a baptism. Since the water in which I birthed I’ve been bathed in blood, urine, tears, milk, vomit, and sweat. Waves on a sandy shore. 

The days pass, bringing us back into the world where there are things to do, goals to meet, tasks to accomplish, people to interact with. Every hour taking us further away from something I can’t help but grieve the loss of. Grief and love and terror tangled in together. Dazed and bewildered yet somehow seeing her and myself and the world more clearly, sight dimming gradually. The only way to get it back is to let it go. Fall down the rabbit hole. It hurts, every time. 

I was so afraid everything would change when she was born. Now I cannot bear for things to remain as they were. 

Welcome to my world, little girl. I am your mother. 

Any plan is better than no plan

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Welcome to my world. Can’t give you a baby photo, light is too low and I’m not using a flash and waking her up for any reason on earth. 

Tough night last night. Screaming, distraught baby, 1.5hrs sleep for me,  and feeding for hours at a time. Breastfeeding is a serious set of new skills with a steep learning curve. My milk hasn’t come in yet and little frog is hungry. 

Rose and I have each had a big meltdown over the day and the midwives have been awesome with us. We’ve got some advice about the feeding and constructed a plan for tonight which is desperately helpful because after not much sleep through all the early labour, I’m so strung out the damn walls were throbbing this morning. There’s nothing quite like the sheer misery of sitting in your own urine for an hour trying to feed a baby with chafed nipples, stitches and torn skin burning, and bubs screaming with distress everytime you try to stop… ‘tough it out and hope it gets better’ is a plan I can only work with for about another 72 hours before things get hellishly bad. We’ve had plenty of little glimpses down some dark tunnels we are very keen to avoid travelling. No wonder people wind up in serious trouble. We’ve only had a taster. 

So we are changing tack now, getting lots of support for the breastfeeding, which is helping a lot – I no longer need to bite my fingers to stop myself pushing her away from my breast due to the pain. We’re having to concentrate hard – no distractions, no multi tasking, watch, learn, focus, ask questions, try it again. I’ve now had 3 hours sleep in 48 and I’m learning as quickly as I can. The sense of hope about having a plan and a sense of why things have been so tough is simply incredible. I can’t do this indefinitely but tonight I can do this. 

I’m also off the stronger pain relief which frankly sucks and it’s making keeping my head together tough as hell but on the other hand it’s easier to focus as long as I get lots of emotional support. I’m traumatised enough to be struggling with body memories of injections and so on and nerve issues with numbness and burning pain which will hopefully improve soon. Poor body. 

Bonding is good and intact, Rose helped me bath little frog, and get some skin to skin time, which I missed out on a bit due to needing surgery after the birth. Little frog is s simply the most beautiful thing in existence and worth every bit of effort and pain. 

Early days 

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

Today I had my first breastfeed that didn’t bring tears to my eyes with pain. Hopefully we’re figuring this out. To everyone who recommended Moo Goo balm – you are absolutely right, it’s good stuff. 

Still in hospital, it’s pretty intense right now. Little frog is perfect, I feel quite broken, physically. It’s going to take me some time and TLC to recover. Rose has her hands full taking care of both of us. (not how I wanted this to be) The hospital physio has been fantastic and a huge support. And the baby cuddles are amazing. 

Welcome to the world, little frog

/ Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

We are all doing very well. She was born at 7.05am on August 11th. We are still in hospital together as I had a pretty bad tear needing surgery and we’re navigating challenges with incontinence and my pain relief allergies. I have started to be able to walk short distances and we are hoping to be ready for home soon. Little frog is doing brilliantly and in excellent health, and Rose and I are figuring out breastfeeding and our new littlest family member together. 

Rose has the final say for her name which we haven’t announced yet as we’re still getting to know her and looking for a clearer sense of what it might be. We are dazed, overwhelmed, overjoyed, sore, bursting with love, full of grief for the other little ones not here, missing home and Star and sleep, anxious, content, and profoundly in love. 

I have been in a surreal bubble since labour and only this morning ventured out of my room for the first time and had the startling sense of being connected to the rest of the world again by doors and corridors and roads. We are incredibly busy learning and managing all these needs, finding a quiet moment for each other, to kiss or talk or touch base is difficult. Talking to the outside world is like sending morse code in a storm, all unpredictable and chopped up. 

She is finally here. ❤ 

Sensory overload in labour 

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I have a virus. Not dangerous, but pretty miserable. My sinuses are gunked up, my throat hurts, I have a really unpleasant cough. My gum infection has returned, which is setting off bad tmj (jaw) pain, and my mouth has dried out badly enough that my tongue is cracked and hurting. My face is a big mass of unhappiness and eating is a challenge. 

So when I’m also having contractions in this long, long early labour (12 days now) I’m getting overwhelmed easily. There’s simply so much input I can’t process it all. If I add in bright light and more than one or two other people, noise or conversations, my brain overloads. The pain is exhausting but the input alone is simply too much. 

I don’t have a lot of sensory issues generally, some fairly minor ones around things like needing to be completely dry after showers, not being able to tolerate tags on clothes or tight sock seams that are uneven. I didn’t really consider labour from a sensory perspective. The discomfort is manageable at the moment; my face is the centre stage for pain currently. The sheer fatigue gets to me at times. The difficulty of rest periods being occupied by other forms of pain to manage, so they don’t feel like a good rest. Dialing down the input and finding ways to ground and focus is helping. 

So last night, Rose went out to a lovely little dinner and I stayed home, because as much as I wanted to be part of it, I felt terrible and the prospect of trying to manage uncomfortable chairs, lots of people, tastes, smells, sounds, conversations overlapping on top of facial pain and contractions was too much. A friend stayed with me and we played a board game. 

Rose and Star are off running errands and I’m alone, with the lights dim and about to watch a Wire in the Blood to give me something to focus on.  It’s slow and sad and I know it well, the music is full of grief and it draws me into a calmer place where my breathing steadies. 

Earlier today as I started to overload I simply went and sat by Rose and asked her to hold my hand, tears running down my face. Sometimes adding one more soothing bit of sensory input gives me what I need to ground. 

There’s no way I’m the only person dealing with this. I haven’t seen much out there about it. I hope my observations might be useful to some. If you want to explore more about grounding and sensory supports, try 

Waiting it out

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I’m working on these two loom bead projects to help me manage the pain/boredom/frustration of over a week of early labour. The poppy design is a gift for Rose’s birthday coming up, she has a passion for these flowers since they bloomed all through our experience of getting pregnant and losing Tamlorn.

Still no sign of little frog, but everything is looking good and we have negotiated to have the inductions delayed by a week to give her and me a chance to go into labour naturally – which means a greater likelihood I’ll be able to manage contractions without needing to use methods of pain relief (ie meds) we know I have trouble processing. The week of early labour has been moving things along slowly, I’m 80% effaced and bubs is in a good position. Fingers crossed things keep moving along!

In the meantime I’m trying to figure out what project to pick up next – art, writing, study, employment… I put out a HVNSA newsletter the other day about the upcoming World Hearing Voices Day. For a year now I have strictly forbidden myself from doing anything on my networks other than maintaining the online discussion groups in order to focus my energy on paid employment. Giving myself a day to reply to emails and create the newsletter was actually a relief – in all the mess of trying to figure out income and the deep pain that topic causes me, I felt clear as an arrow to my chest, a strong sense of love for this work. This, and my arts, is what I want to be doing. This is where my heart is.

I have been delighted to have been approached by a number of people recently for public speaking work. I am booking in dates from September onwards. It’s good to have things to focus on I can actually do something about. 🙂

 

Ice cream for all 

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I’ve now been in early labour for a week, which is exhausting. I generally seem to have contractions overnight then everything goes quiet sometime before dawn. It’s very frustrating and I’m under pressure from the hospital to fit an induction around their schedule, which I don’t much appreciate. But Rose is taking great care of me, we’re doing acupuncture and getting physio and our doula is being very patient and supportive. It will happen at some point! (don’t bother with bringing on labour suggestions, seriously, we are doing or have done them all) 

Tonight we are off having gourmet ice  cream to celebrate Star living with us for 7 months. She’s been staying with aunts while I’ve been in early labour and we’ve stolen her back for a night because we miss her! It’s good to have a night together. 


40 weeks pregnant. Come on, little frog, we all want to meet you. 

Early labour

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

Back when Rose and I were at the beginning of this pregnancy, we made a plan that we’ve both been careful to stick to. Not telling people the exact due date. As we’ve moved into the third trimester we’ve stopped telling most people what week we are at, we’ve been vague about when full term will be, and the closer things have moved the less specific information we’ve put out in public. There’s a good reason for this – most women find that as their due date approaches, everyone and their dog gets in touch regularly to ask them if they’re in labour yet. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it can be horrible. Making the focus the labour rather than the woman or the family can really take the shine off the last weeks of pregnancy. It can add pressure, be extremely frustrating, and really create a huge disconnect between what she needs at that point and what she’s getting from all corners. A lot of women get extremely fed up and grouchy, and some become quite depressive. Many growl at the very support network they would normally turn to for nurturing, and feeling crap about that only adds to stress.

All good reasons to keep the due date to ourselves and navigate the end of pregnancy with just our closest people knowing that information. It was a good plan, and if Little Frog had turned up on Thursday night when I started having contractions, I’d have called it a success. However, as with so much else in life, labour is often very different to what we’ve come to expect based on the movies. After a solid 2 months of pretty exhausting Braxton Hicks contractions, I’ve gone into what is variously called early labour, the latent phase, prodromal labour, or stop start labour (there’s a great description of the process here). What that means is getting contractions that don’t build into the stage called active labour. So they might turn up every 5 minutes, with increasing intensity over an hour, then stop completely and be replaced by the very familiar Braxton’s for the next 6 hours. It’s labour as a marathon rather than a sprint. At any time it could move into active labour, or I could experience this for another couple of weeks and wind up needing to be induced. I’m having chiro and acupuncture to try and move things along.

So, that makes things a little challenging to plan around. And when so few people know what’s going on, I’ve found myself isolated in my own little bubble. So, while I don’t wish to feel harassed by enquiries or deluged with labour stories, hey. I’m due on Monday, and I’m in early labour.

Rose has taken time off work, Star is staying with aunts for the moment. I’m resting, reading, having hot baths, cooking, and making beaded loom projects to manage the pain and help me focus on other things. Contractions come in bursts and then fade away. I’m still struggling with dental pain and need a lot of leg rubs to deal with the swelling. I’m not driving anymore and not able to walk very much. I’m incredibly grateful for the workshops and talking and support we’ve had, particularly from our doula, to arrive at this point. We’ve had to shift our approach as the days have gone by, move into rolling with the various feelings that come up – tremendous excitement, focused energy, disappointment, anxiety and uncertainty, feelings of failure, frustration, exhaustion. We’ve found a groove for now which is to focus on building our reserves (food, drink, sleep, rest/exercise balance, company/solitude balance) so that when active labour kicks off we both have resources to draw on.

We’re also banking our emotional energy – it’s impossible to stay excited and energised through this process for days – purely on a physical level it’s extremely tiring, let alone the emotional ups and downs. So we make space to talk through feelings as they come up, box up things we need to not focus on at the moment (I don’t much care about anything anyone else is dealing with right at this minute and I’m doing my best not to take anyone else’s stuff on), and clear the blocks when they need attention. I’m finding my projects are essential to give the more obsessive part of my brain something to focus on. I’m also surprised by some of the feelings that have come up – like a sense of anxiety that I’m somehow blocking the labour process or failing in some way. I don’t buy into the failure story intellectually and no one is harassing me in that way, but still. We imbibe cultural ideas and they seep into our vulnerable places. That’s why we need our people to help pull those thorns from our feet.

I’m ready. I’m excited. I’m tired. I can do this. I’m a little bit lonely and a little bit sad. I’m strong. I’m clear and focused. I’m vulnerable. I’m breathless with anticipation. I’m resting in the quiet spaces, feeling my hands in flour, the house breathing to itself at 4am. I’m crying in the bath. I’m phobic of speaking on the phone. I’m cranky and growling at the dog because my skin is burning from all the swelling. I’m missing Star and ambivalent about not having her here. I’m being crawled all over by the cats. I’m glowing.

I’m in labour.

Joy

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I’m so happy. 

On the other side of the grinding chronic pain, the sense of disconnection, the humiliating vulnerability, the crushing fear, the darkness that sucks me dry…  is a strong, buoyant joy. 

It’s not ‘keeping my head together’. It’s not employing strategies to manage my thoughts or feelings,  or keep perspective,  or look on the bright side, or support my own mental health in the ways we usually think of them. 

It’s the aftermath of honesty, the raw pouring of heart into some receptacle – journal, compassionate ear, hole in the ground beneath a tree. We don’t have to claw our way up after unburdening the unspeakable weights, we simply float. 

It’s the pushing back against all the stories I’ve been told, what I’ve been told I will feel and think and how this will unfold – and my growing bewilderment at trying to fit my experiences to powerful master narratives that partly match up and partly do not. It’s clearing some space to speak my own story and claim my own truths about my experience, finding in those tiny, personal details the richness of life, the personal and unique in a greater story of what it is to live and be human and try to bring a child into the world. There in those details is my life, is what makes my life my own among the experiences of billions of others. There is where my meaning is found.

It’s also the flying of a heart that’s been caged by chronic pain and found some relief. Yesterday my gum infection flared and set off bad pain my face. Combined with the exhaustion and pain of prelabour I was swamped. I have searched back for what used to help me during the bad years of severe fibro when I couldn’t walk or drive but was brain awake enough to need things to do so the restlessness, boredom, and relentless pain didn’t make me self destruct. One of these things was skilled work with my hands that required focus. I learned embroidery and needlework among  other small, skilled crafts. 

So I’ve taken up bead loom work again, and there in the quiet space of following my pattern and building my design, I find some peace. The building distress eases, the sense of guilt that I am failing to manage my pain, that I know better and should handle it better, the painful self consciousness that my shattered attention is increasing my perception of it, drowning me in it- all those are left behind and my mind becomes still as my hands create. It’s not even a tainted capital A ‘Art’ where I’ve been criticised too often and get swamped by insecurity and justifications for spending my time and money this way, it’s an untainted lower c ‘craft’. Stepping into it merely requires me to tolerate the scorn that it’s too traditionally feminine, that anything that isn’t ‘real art’ is a waste of my time, and that adjusting to impairment, disability, and pain will mean I never recover. That’s easier from a place of vulnerability. Capital A Art for me needs an altered space or a lot more self confidence. 

Rose heats me a wheat pack and I sit by the heater beading, and for the first time in hours I don’t feel tortured. The rocking calms, my broken focus stills like scattered birds coming home, my hands thread and sew tiny beads. My breathing steadies. 

That night I lay in the luxury of a hot bath with beautiful scented oil Rose bought for me, reading by the candlelight, and the trauma state washes out of me. I don’t feel small, helpless, broken, and afraid. I feel beautiful, loved, content, and at peace. We share a quiet evening together, watching DVDs, talking about our daughters. She does a breast pump, I eat soft fruit with the relish of the newly awakened – delighting in scent and flavour, senses alive. The night is soft and gentle around us. My joy is effusive and my mind feels clear. 

My heart is full to overflowing. I’m so in  love with my family, these beautiful women, my lovely home. Rose and I watch our littlest daughter rolling in my belly, powerful and vigorous. I’m excited to meet her, and I finally feel ready for her birth – ready to meet the challenges of it, ready to wait for it. I can endure the uncertainly and the transforming vulnerability of the in-between space of prelabour when I can so clearly see my little girl is okay. With that star to guide me, there’s time for wonder and even joy. The love in my heart bears fruit on the vine and bursts within me. Rose and I lay in the dark together and breathe each others air, skin warming to skin, dreams nesting beside us like cats. 

I’m so happy.