Toddlers feelings

age 3!!!

Tabitha had a really nice birthday, we went to the Yorkshire sculpture park with family and friends, and did lots of running around and climbing and looking for trolls and had a big picnic with a pink birthday cake that she helped decorate. all in all a lovely day. Tabitha is growing so fast! shes really tall and so so clever. she can now count to 10 fairly reliably and her vocabulary and imagination is growing daily.

Also...Congratulations little sister on the birth of your baby!!! Welcome to the world little Isla!!!!

Any way...

Children's feelings.

Its really easy as an adult to see kids emotions and reactions as not as valid and real as adult emotions. and lets be honest, when your toddler is having a meltdown because I refuse to let her eat gravel, its pretty funny, and reacting to the frustration of toddler crying with humor is perfectly valid.
but to the child its real, and the upset is real. children don't have the same sense of perspective as adults have, they haven't experienced the same rejection and disappointment as you have. little pains are big to them because they haven't experienced the pain of wisdom tooth removal or broken bones, to them falling down and hurting their knees is literally the worst pain they have any memory of feeling. And the same goes for emotional pain. it may seem really silly and funny to us to get upset over something little, but small children haven't felt any big rejections or traumas yet. as an adult I have watched friends die slowly of cancer, I've had long term loving relationships ending, I've not got into the university I wanted to go to...but to kids you saying "We don't have time to play right now, we have to go to nursery" IS a big rejection and disappointment.

Children also simply don't have the language skills yet to explain their feelings and reasons. Maybe she never intended to actually eat the gravel, maybe she had spotted a pretty little stone in there that she wanted to clean in her mouth and then keep it. but then I made her drop it on the ground and be lost forever. She would have no way really of accurately telling me any of that or explaining. She doesn't have the words or the knowledge to explain that she had a bad nights sleep and is feeling fragile right now. She doesn't have the language to explain that though she enjoys nursery once she's there, leaving me for a couple of hours still feels scary and intimidating. she doesn't know how to say that she worries that mummy might stop loving her if she also loves daddy.

I think the real killer is aiming the accusation at children that they are only crying for attention or manipulation. saying they are faking or doing crocodile tears. Children are capable of emotional manipulation, but their aims are simply to get love and approval from the people around them. telling them that their tears or upset is fake and funny would be desperately hurtful to a adult, and the same goes for children. no one wants to be told that their emotions and emotional reaction isn't valid or real. because to you, it is real. if a child is crying, it is because they want or need comfort. You should still hold firm on things, but you can do that while still validating that theirs emotions are very real "I'm really sorry I'm saying you can't play right now, I know it makes you feel sad, but you will have a great time at nursery and I promise we will play when we get home" or "I know you really want to see what that stone tastes like, but its been on the floor and is dirty so could make you feel sick" it also helps to give them the vocabulary to slowly learn how to express negative feelings and to deal with them by talking and explaining rather than feeling they have no other way of coping other than hitting or screaming.

how depression and anxiety feels

3 very very soon!

I have been going through a really tough time recently. I had some of my benefits reassessed, which is massively stressful, and then we are going to have to appeal it...

Anyway. its left me in a really deep nasty spiral. the worst I have had in a long time. it was pretty horrible. I've been referred to getting a CPN (community psychiatric nurse) I've had my meds upped and been prescribed some tranquilizers for when I have panic attacks.

I feel kind of obligated to add a trigger warning to this post, as I do talk about suicide and self injury.

so yeah...


TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!


The way it feels
It feels like you are tumbling headfirst down the white rabbits hole, but the world you are coming out in is dark and threatening and completely unrecognizable. it feels like a shroud being wrapped over your thoughts and mind, everything feels dark, your thoughts slow down to a crawl and everything is tinted in shadow, but at the same time as that, some of your thoughts are speeding and tumbling and spiraling, every negative thing you have ever said or done comes back to you, everything feels like it is terrible and you can't stop thinking about the worst possible outcome of every situation and interaction.

When I am reasonably well I have thoughts like "you are stupid and disgusting and pathetic and everyone you know and love actually hates you, strangers despise you and there is no one more ugly than you" but I can tell they are "sick thoughts" and I try to ignore or dismiss them...when I am really ill, those thoughts become my thoughts, they feel like real facts to me. it feels like my very existence is a stain on the universe and that everyone would be happier if I was just gone.
This time round I actually found myself thinking "Tabitha and Coyote will have to put up with you and your craziness for the rest of your life, its selfish to stay alive. if I died it would be much better for both of them" and that thought felt really really reasonable and logical.
Feeling like this is almost physically painful, it hurts in your chest and stomach and mind. you stop sleeping well, and are always exhausted. it feels so absolutely wretched that literally every other feeling is better than that...and the thing that blots that feeling out better than anything else is physical pain. drinking till I throw up and then cutting myself till I have blood loss actually feels much better than the emotion torment of depression. putting a cigarette out on my skin feels better than that. overdosing on medication and then spending days throwing up blood feels better than that. seriously. I have actually managed to mainly resist doing anything really destructive to myself in a while, but that's only because I get a huge amount of support from Coyote and just couldn't do that to Tabitha.

And the anxiety is a whole other thing. The whole world feels terrifying to me. filled with danger. and its not something I can rationalize away. I know objectively that there is nothing scary about the supermarket or a phone call or letter. I know that objectively. but that really doesn't help the situation, because they feel like things that are verging on life threatening. lights are too bright and sounds too loud, every movement startles me. Coyote comes in to give me a hug and I freeze like he's going to hit me (he has never and would never do that, but try telling my stupid brain that sometimes). when I am having a panic attack I start crying and can't stop, tears pour out of my eyes without any level of control, and my lungs start feeling tight and small, I can only breath in small gasps, or hyperventilate. I can't calm down, I can't control it. I want to and sometimes end up, curling into a fetal position, frozen and crying. The worst thing about these kinds of anxiety attacks is that I can't necessarily predict them or even explain them. I had a big panic attack in a hospital once because I'd had my wisdom teeth out, but needed them checked again because of an infection. I was expecting a long wait for the appointment and had to go by myself. I thought I could handle it...but then I was taken in to be looked at much faster than I was anticipating, and that scared me. the dentist then didn't give me the diagnoses I was expecting (the diagnoses was actually much much better than what I had anticipated) but during the appointment I was scared enough that I started to cry...and then I was horrified that I was crying at nothing to complete strangers, which made it worse...in the end I had to hide in the hospital chapel gasping, crying and trying to hide from everyone. it is degrading and humiliating.

so that is how it feels, or at least that's the best way I can explain it.

though someone else wrote a poem that sums it up better than possibly I can:

I Am!

BY JOHN CLARE

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes—

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes

And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life or joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;

Even the dearest that I loved the best

Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod

A place where woman never smiled or wept

There to abide with my Creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie

The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

just a poem

I was trying to nap on the sofa after having not enough sleep and a poem wouldn't get out of my head, so I wrote it down. here you go:

My body is a temple

This body, oh this body of mine.
A broken temple... Or so it seemed.
Built of pain and scars and other people's enjoyment.

Then came a heartbeat. Then came a life, a light, a hope.

And I was reconstructed.
Built of hands to hold and arms to carry.
Curves made to be pillows.
For this child I love.

Our wedding

Nearly 3 years!

so things have been a bit poop for me recently, in the crazy brain department. I've been referred to the community psychiatric nurse team, put on stronger meds...and slightly terrifyingly given some Valium to take when I get really anxious.

so any way, all that is poop, so I thought I would write instead about our wedding. mine and Coyotes. because it was in fact one of the happiest days of my life.

The biggest thing that I wanted for our wedding was that it be relaxed. there seems to be an awful lot of unnecessary stuff people throw at weddings (mostly to make money it seems) that make everything more complicated and stressful. I did not want any of that! I wanted a day that was relaxed and fun and personal to me and Coyote. Nothing too formal. I also wanted to keep the costs down.

We got married in the same registry office as my step dad and mum got married in, and we used a house that is owned by my step dads family for the party after. which meant a hell of a lot to me because my step dad has passed away, and I wanted to feel like he was there with us.

I bought tons of the stuff for the wedding online, I tried to go to wedding dress shops and do the whole "bride" thing...but it felt massively uncomfortable to me, I hated the fact that most places only really catered for brides who are skinny, and I hated the fact that most places didn't show or say what their prices were! I tried on a couple of wedding dresses at a charity shop to get the feel of them, but I also discovered something about myself...though I do actually look quite good as a white princess...it feels massively wrong to me. I wanted to feel like ME still. So I actually ordered a modified prom dress from Etsy.com (seriously, Etsy is amazing for wedding stuff) that was black and red and white and awesome. I also got my very shiny glass slippers (ok, they weren't actually glass, but shiny silk white with crystals on them, but to me they looked like glass slippers) and my tiara online. I also got Tabitha's dress online and let Hermione choose her own bridesmaid dress.

in the same vein as reducing costs and stress, we ordered paper flowers for the wedding, which are much cheaper than fresh flowers, and we could get them far in advance and then just keep them in boxes till the day.we also decided to ignore traditional catering and have a hog roast to eat! we also ordered lots of the decorations online and just ordered a bulk amount of wine and sparkling wine and Jura whiskey online!

anyway, in a lot of ways it felt like the wedding started the day before, we went to stay the night in Tadcaster at Alex's families house, and a lot of people actually showed up to stay over too! which was great fun, we went swimming in the little out door pool and a particular family of amazing munchkins (*waves to jenny, and hazels and Ivy and jamie*) helped do most of the decorating (they made the place look amazing!) and then that night we ordered a big indian take out and all sat round together eating curry and drinking wine and gossiping and enjoying ourselves. me and Coyote stayed in the same room that night (literally from when we got engaged we came to the agreement that we were not going to spend the night before such a big and stressful day apart!).

the next morning is a bit of a blur getting the last things ready and putting on my pretty things and Ania and my mum helping me sort out my hair (straighteners and red ribbons through my hair), and Hermione turning up and getting Tabitha dressed and trying to get her hair tied up (never did manage that one) and trying to avoid Coyote from seeing me in my dress! the Hogroast people arriving to set up and the bouncy castle arrived (did I mention we had a bouncy castle!!!!!!!)...and yeah, we did absolutely manage to leave late for my own wedding! we were 15 minutes late! luckily Coyote had got a lift from his best man and everyone else made it on time!

though nearly the first thing that happened when we finally arrived was being told that the music CD my maid of honor (Jay, my male maid of honor, to go with Coyotes female best man) had made didn't work!!! so I had to randomly pick from the CD's they happened to have. I pretty much picked songs at random because they made me smile...we left the registry office to "tainted love".

I walked up the aisle carrying Tabitha (which was just what I wanted, and she wanted me too).

the ceremony was lovely, it was relaxed and casual, people laughed and Tabitha stole the show by playing with the flowers and trying to play with the sound system and then insisting that she should sign the wedding certificate too. we used a couple of poems we loved and a poem that I had actually written specially for Coyote. I couldn't stop grinning, and neither could he. it was a loving and warm ceremony that felt amazingly special.

the weather had been predicted to be ok-ish. just about 10% chance of rain, but cloudy...but the first half of the day was bright and warm sunshine, it was perfect for a quick round of photo's (taken by a wonderful friend of ours) and eating my big pig sandwhich and cupcakes sitting on the grass outside (we didn't have any kind of organised seating, so people were free to wander and eat and chat, and we didn't have a wedding cake, because I don't like fruit cake and they are ridiculously expensive, so instead my mum, step mum and Ivy all made cupcakes for people to eat, and they were yummy!)

the weather stayed lovely till after the speeches (short and sweet from everyone, but wonderfully personal, even I did a speech!) 

and then the heavens opened in a massive and dramatic thunderstorm that sat right over head and had big rolls of thunder and lightning flashes and a massive amount of warm rain! me and Tabitha went to bounce on the bouncy castle in the rain and lots of people did swimming in the out door pool in the pouring rain...it was amazing. everyone was chatting and enjoying themselves, there was even a big card game that continued through most of the day, just changing the people involved occasionally. we used our own little sound system and our own music, and some people started dancing (though not really us)...and generally everyone seemed to have a really relaxed and happy time.

it was amazing. the happiest day of my life.

p.s. http://www.thetravellingpig.com/ are the people who did our food, and they were amazing!!!

Feeling like I am winning

2 years

The other day me and Tabitha and Hermione (my ex boyfriends daughter, not her real name) all went swimming together...

and it felt like I won.

The prize was watching them joyfully play together, enjoying each others company and their time together.

but it really felt like a win to me.

I have been in Hermione's life for...about 11 years now. The first time I ever saw her she was covered in chicken pox and sitting in the bath at about 2 years old. she is now 13 and nearly taller than me!
I dated her dad for roughly 8 years...and mine and his relationship was kind of complicated and not really easy. but in that time I never stopped caring for his daughter. I saw her pretty much every weekend, I looked after her over school holidays, we went out on regular "girly days" together where we would go and do something fun (like cinema, or museum or swimming or even just to the park together) and I would spoil her rotten. we had some really amazing times, like going to the playground in the heavy snow and going on the ziplines, like making a paper rocket that reached all the way to the roof of the media museum, like helping her learn to swim...I read her bedtime stories and changed her nappy, we went on holidays together, I went to her parents evenings and put her in time out when she needed it...

I would say I was like a mother to her, but that's not exactly correct, because she always had her mother as well, and I really did try to make sure that they had a a good relationship and that Hermione thought of her mother fondly when we were out together...I always thought Hermione herself described our relationship best when she turned around and told someone that I "was her Kat". it was just that simple.

I kept her relationship with her dad going much longer than I probably should have given the issues we were having. but I was terrified of loosing the bond I'd built with her. I couldn't imagine life without our time together. the last time that I left her fathers house, knowing I would be gone for good this time, I cried all the way home.

but I tried really hard to stay in her life. to begin with I sent her post cards every week, not saying very much, but I decorated them myself, and just told her that I loved her, missed her and said a little bit about what was happening in my life. she was 9 and without a phone or really any other way of contacting her easily...but eventually she got a phone of her own, and then she was old enough to get more involved with social media, so our methods of communication increased...and finally she got old enough and independent enough to start making her own choices about who she spent time with and when, and we have finally started having girly days that we organised ourselves!

When I had Tabitha I was really scared that she would feel abandoned or replaced, especially because having a small baby and then a toddler really did limit my time and energy and what we could do together when we did see each other. but I kept trying, I kept reassuring.

so seeing Tabitha and Hermione playing together happily at the swimming pool felt like a win. all the time and effort spent building and maintaining my bond with her, so she thinks of me happily and WANTS to see me, she wants to keep being in my life and wants to enjoy time with Tabitha...that's a massive win in my eyes.

(Hermione and Tabitha and our friend Ivy!)

p.s. Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Marathon and not a sprint and other things

2 years

I had a thought about parenting...my thought is this: its really easy in parenting to just think about the short term consequences. to focus on whats happening right now. You want your child to eat all their vegetables immediately, you want them to sleep through the night right away, you want them to obey you and listen to what you say all at once...and in all honesty, you can make a child do those things. you can force feed them vegetables and spank them whenever they do something you don't like. and you will probably get some great short term benefits from it...

but I don't think that is where your focus should be at all. I think what you should be trying to do is help to build the adult that your child will eventually become. the adult who thinks and understands and is caring and healthy. and a lot of quick short term fixes won't help to create that adult. spanking Tabitha might help in the short term to get her to be obedient and well behaved. but in the long term I think it would irreparably damage our relationship and turn her into an adult who thinks that hitting is an acceptable thing to do.

and here are some other random stuff:

• Whenever we call Tabitha "our baby" she says "I'm not a baby! i'm a Tabitha!"
• Tabitha's favorite phrase in the world is "I don't like it" *sigh* its tiring
• Tabitha is doing really well at nursery, shes settling in really well and doesn't seem to be missing me as much any more
• though she is doing really well at nursery generally, she has had several biting incidents, including once when she managed to break skin. this made me feel like poop. we are working on it with nursery.
• Her favorite movies right now are "Corpse bride" and "Jumanji" I love both these films, so that's excellent!
• she loved Halloween, and she went from starting to get really scared of the dark to wanting to go out in the dark all the time so that she can look for skeletons and monsters!
• My little sister is having a baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so so so so so so so so exciting!!!!!!!!!!!
• Tabitha is already talking about Christmas, and saying "I can't wait till Christmas!" and I have to admit, I'm really looking forward to it too. it'll be the first year that she really understands whats happening and can fully enjoy it.
• I have filled Tabitha's bedroom full of glow in the dark stars, during the day you can't tell. but in the dark suddenly the walls are filled with butterflies and hearts and fairies and stars glowing.
• Tabitha has started to love "reading". shes can't actually read, but she memorizes whole sections of books and then "reads" them to us.
• married life is still very wonderful, full of love and happiness. my husband means the world to me, and hes an amazing man and father. marrying him is still the best decision I have ever made.

                                                      Tabitha in her Halloween costume!

Being the favourite

2 years

I am Tabitha's favorite person in the whole world. which sounds like a boast...but actually is pretty much just a fact. I'm the stay at home mum who wakes up with her every morning for cuddles, I read her stories every night. we go to the park and splash in puddles and chase balls, I take her swimming, I am willing to make a mess in the kitchen to do some painting and sticking, I have baths and showers with her. and I've breast fed her, which gave me a massive advantage in terms of bonding from her birth.

This isn't necessarily a good thing. I do NOT want to loose the close bond we have by any stretch...but it does cause some problems.

the biggest problem is that it hurts Coyotes feelings, when she automatically goes to me for hugs, when I get kisses goodnight but not him, when she literally tells him to go away... its not her fault, and its not his fault. but being occasionally rejected by your own daughter has got to sting.

its also problematic because I am the only person that she lets carry her, I'm the only one that can comfort her if she wakes in the night. its much harder for me to get time to myself and get a chance to sleep through the night than it is for Coyote. which becomes a real problem when I'm ill or want to go out by myself.

we are slowly trying to readdress the balance in this. Coyote has started comforting her in the night if she wakes up half the time, and I do still go out by myself or with my mum or friends so that they do get a chance to spend some daddy daughter time together. Coyote also does the pick up from nursery most days, and he says that the moment when she spots him and yells "DADDY!!!!" before throwing herself at him and then holds his hand tight all the way home is the highlight of his day.

but its a slow process.

I keep hoping that one day the tides will turn and suddenly daddy will be her favouritest person in the whole wide world, and I'll be boring old mummy. It would make Coyote so so happy to have that feeling. the feeling that I have now.