Out in the cold

It’s been a while since I let my hair down, but that’s okay since, before I got pregnant, having fun had  turned into something resembling self harm. I needed a break- a chance to put on my goody two shoes and be sensible – boring even – for the sake of my baby – and my own health.

It’s been a long, what, nearly 10 months and in that time, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to feel martyred: a tee-total Fresher’s Week for my Creative Writing Masters, a sober wedding, birthday, and a brutal few weeks of pre- and post-partum torture (the person who described childbearing as inhumane wasn’t wrong).

So I was finally ready, last night, to do something for myself, and go out for a couple of drinks with people from my course to celebrate the end of a term in which I’ve given birth, yet somehow only missed a week’s tutorials, thanks to great support from Tom. But alas, it wasn’t to be.

We’d had a night from hell – the baby (I guess I shall call her Lana for the purposes of this blog) slept – waking for her feeds as normal – but I – tits shocking me awake at 3 am – was revisited by my old nemesis Insomnia, so couldn’t get back to sleep. I had to get up for college – Tom doing parenting duties from home, while also keeping up with work emails, such is the nature of modern life.

Somehow we got through the morning. Tom with an unsettled chickie learning the difference between boob and bottle at home, me trying to keep up with literary references and pinging breasts during a 2 and a half hour seminar that always overruns. It had been a long term, with many of the good bits (coffee with fellow post-graduates, socials and anything not strictly essential to the course) skipped over in favour of delaying my mat leave till the last possible moment, childbirth and its aftermath. I knew it would be thus, so didn’t mind, but was looking forward to a moment where I could be myself among my peers, and not be the crazy pregnant lady with a baby.

In the meantime, Facebook provided me with all the social life I could possibly need. I witnessed other people’s holidays, nights out, birthdays and weddings. Friends visited friends and a whole bunch of school mums went on holiday together. I mainly watched telly. I’m beyond feeling excluded, but it did rather feel like a slap in the face when the organiser of said holiday met me, recently post-partum in the street and said, sorry you were too busy to come with us. I hadn’t been invited but, being kind, perhaps she’d assumed (rightly!) I wouldn’t be able to go.

I am big enough (certainly I was huge towards the end) not to mind so much. I am not in my 20s, like I was first time round, where every photo montage of friends having fun without me online felt like a sucker punch to the guts after endless sleepless nights and physical pain. Said friends are now parents and perhaps have more empathy towards what I may have gone through, though an inability to form new memories makes new parents forget. So once again, I feel somewhat in this in my own,

Over the weekend, my one Xmas family get together – of relatives I’ve not seen for a decade, since many live abroad – looked unlikely since I’d ballsed up the date in my calendar. It turns out Jonah has a climbing comp that he can’t miss, and there’s no way as a family we can be in two places at once. I immediately attempted to correct my error, asking if there was any flexibility in dates and venues. But mea culpa, no one seems willing to accommodate me yet again.

Likewise, an alternative date I’d suggested for my college get together (daytime, coffee) was commandeered by an extended family member’s funeral. Although I wasn’t close to the deceased, it will be a rare gathering of my father’s side of the family, none of whom, including my father, has seen the new baby. Much though I fear the drive alone in our new SUV, I ought to go, since, again, I’ve not seen these people for nigh on a decade, and it may be my only, if not last ever chance.

But in general, family are mostly absent or inflexible, so I was pinning my hopes on yesterday’s drinks to help me feel somewhere approaching normal and get to know some of the people on my course. To prepare, Tom allowed me to rest in between feeds all afternoon while he took the strain of bouncing the baby. We juggled evening feeds, a quick tea and me getting ready. For the first time in months, I felt good about myself, slimmer than I have been in ages despite daily recourse to 3 pm chocolate, and given how little effort I put in, my makeup and hair looked good. I was about to walk out the door when the text came through-

Sorry, we’ve been drinking since 4 – don’t think many people will hang around until you can get here.

I was crushed. I crumbled. All my inner strength that I have pulled from my guts to carry me through the past two weeks dissolved. Reader, I cried. You see, this happens too much to me to just be a coincidence. People are crap, flake out, are late and just generally shit too often. My social confidence is at an all time low. This despite making every effort to accommodate other people a lot of the time.

In the seminar, I always sit in the same place at the back of the class- it had a bit more space for when I was pregnant and now, When I have to duck out to express milk lest my tits explode. Every class, I noticed that people don’t sit near me. There may be a whole bunch of reasons for this, but in my head it’s because nobody likes me. Probably it’s actually the oestrogen I’ve been prescribed to stop me falling into PND, making me more socially anxious and fragile than i might be without it. But the feelings don’t come from nowhere.

Having bought a book about autism for tweens and teens for the kids, I gave it a read. so much of it applied to me, I felt sunk. Rather than enlightening me about what I could do better (a lot, it seems), it just made me feel like a social failure who felt like giving up – which, in part, this pregnancy has allowed me to do. But I can’t be a recluse forever, worrying what people think and hating myself.

The real sting in the tail came when another person from the course got in touch to say that, in fact, no one had gone home and I should come out, but by then it was too late, and I didn’t really care anymore. The baby would need feeding, and I was fuzzy from the fizz I’d cracked open in a moment of sulking rebellion. So I stayed home, and we got through the night more successfully than the previous one. I woke to an apology from the girl who had sent the text, and an invitation to hang out tonight from Reprobate Kate, who last night was at a premier for a film Jonah auditioned for, back in his swiftly curtailed modelling days.

So in the end, I had the stamina to get through the morning in a much calmer frame of mind. I just wish my self-confidence would recover as quickly. After a lifetime of feeling left out, you’d hope I’d have a thicker skin when social occasions don’t work out. But the isolation of new motherhood, coupled with hormone swings and fatigue is once again playing havoc with my self-esteem. But it would be nice to be feel included once in a while, even if it’s me who has to say for a change, thanks, but I can’t make it this time.