A TV day

Linnea will be quietly watching television all day if I can manage it. I've spoonfed her her porridge, so that she doesn't take huge mouthfuls, and given her breastmilk and a little water.

Her overnight nappy was dry this morning, until she had diarrhoea. Now there's a damp patch on the carpet where I sprayed the leak with dettol. She's not dehydrated - the diarrhoea was very fluid. But it's not comforting at all, that dry nappy.

I feel queasy and dizzy, too, but I'm not as sick as she is. I must stay hydrated myself, so I can keep feeding her through this. Breastmilk is definitely staying in her system, and there's no guarantee that anything else is. We know one other baby who has this right now, and one who had it over a week ago.

Today is softplay day, too. Bah.

Motherhood: swallowing one's own vomit while cleaning up that of one's offspring and not minding until later because one is so worried

It's so sad

Linnea is sitting still and being quiet.

Linnea.

If you look at it sideways, it almost makes sense

I was booking a trip to Ireland to (a) see my mother, and (b) avoid the central heating installers, and I looked up all the info available from http://www.sailrail.co.uk/ for train and ferry fares and noted that they have a through trip to Galway, from Reading, for 78UKP return.

That's pretty good going. Except that the ticket doesn't allow me to stop overnight in Holyhead or Dublin, and it's a 12-hour journey.

And the return trip starts at 11 am in Galway and includes a 3-hour stopover in Newcastle. At 2 am.

Luckily, it's cheaper to buy a ticket from Reading to Dublin, and then a seperate ticket form Dublin to Galway, anyway. So now the actual travel is sorted out, I need to see who I'll visit while in Dublin. Offers?

(Oh - dates - I'll be in Dublin the nights of the 17th and 25th).

What it's like to have had a traumatic birth and PTSD, II

Further to this post, made almost a year ago, I'd like to say a little about what it's like to live with truamatic birth and PTSD now.

Physical and mental symptoms, in a bit of a hodge-podge:

• I still can't go to the toilet without manual intervention.
• I am no longer in constant pain but I am frequently in discomfort.
• I am not as continent as I would like to be.
• If I walk or stand for very long, bits of me bulge out into my pants and chafe against my clothing and my thighs. Not pretty. Not pleasant.
• If someone grabs my butt in an affectionate manner, the squeeze is quite likely to stretch scar tissue in an extremely painful way, especially on the left side.
• I am forgetful. I can remember some things very well, and hold long discussions on intervention births including statistics, and ten minutes later forget not only the statistics, but that I had the conversation. Luckily, I can blog. Someone recently put this well - it is a bit like vertigo, living with the constant knowledge that all the information in my head could fall out any minute.
• I forget words - simple vocabulary I use fairly frequently. This makes me look stupid and/or uneducated in company.
• I am tired - I can't meet any but the least stressful, friendliest people. I can't cope with other people's problems at all, especially not their gynaecological ones, though I try to sympathise. Reading the phrase "it's not good for my sex life" makes me cry or see red, depending on mood.
• I am afraid to talk to women who are pregnant in case I terrify them. What happened to me is a freak accident - a bit like the woman who was struck by lightning while pregnant - and is extremely unlikely to happen to you. You are much more likely to be run over by a bus. But I am still afraid of other people's births - I focus on advising them to be as assertive as hell and keep politeness to the minimum necessary to avoid rudeness, since I remain convinced that a bit less deference in my attitude would have changed things a lot.
• I cry when I hear of anyone who has a good birth. In a good way, but I cry.
• Television or radio representations of women in labour make me panic.
• I panic if I have to go to the doctor or the hospital, even if it's only to accompany someone else, such as my daughter.
• I am a bore about it. I go on and on and on. But you know, it goes on and on and on.
• I can't have sex, or use a tampon. I almost forgot that!
• I wasted money on a Mooncup which I can't use. Sad.

And that's what it's like now. It was a lot worse a year ago.

Sick baby

Linnea is wide awake. She's just been sicker than I've ever seen her, all over the dining room floor, sofa, etc. We've cleaned up - her, the floor, us - and she's watching TV quietly with Rob now.

She peed a total of three times today. She went overnight at least 16 hours without a pee. She had a huge diarrhoea nappy and this huge vomit. She's very very quiet and refusing most food and fluids except breastmilk and ginger biscuits.

Rob is working from home tomorrow, if he's working. With her this sick, I can't manage - I have this bug too, though not as badly.

It's terribly sad, her being sick like this. It has changed her whole personality. We may well take her to the doctor again tomorrow.

But she has new words - Orse (Horse) and Dish (Fish).