Mirena recoil

Last night I had a barny with Tom, which is only to be expected after nearly 3 months on Gina hours. In the morning, Jonah patted me on the knee and said, “it’s alright Mum”. I cried in shame but not for long. He knows it’s been tough. He appears to have matured, over the last two months, into the perfect son, empathetic, funny, kind, clever. He’s podiuming at every climbing comp he attends and only suffering a minor breakdown when something doesn’t quite go to plan.

I, on the other hand, have been ranting and raving about the Mirena coil, which was inserted last month by an overzealous doctor keen to avoid another “surprise”, at every opportunity. Mainly I resent the lack of control I feel, and the feral irritability, hot flushes and handfuls of dropping hair that may or may not be a side effect of the progesterone. The estrogen gel, which I rub on my already lumpy – still pregnancy pudgy and genetically unsvelte – temporarily soothes me, aiding my sleep, calming me like stroking an angry kitten. But the dose I’m on, regulated to maintain my breast milk, which has in any case dwindled by half on my irritable morning express, barely touches the sides.

The osteopath who treated my seized-up shoulders, locked after a row with my neighbour after 6 months of noisy building work, having woken my baby prematurely from a hard won nap on the final furlong with wood sawing by floor layers, said she’s never treated someone so tense since she cracked the back of a single mother. She treats racehorses so she should know. Her firm hands elicited more clunks from my spine than Rock ‘n rollercoaster, the kids’ favourite rude from our budget trip to Paris four years ago, but the booking of which, for next week’s Disney trip, no doubt created a few additional bubbles of stress acid in my knackered joints.

The aim, over the next week is to get into the right mental shape to undo our painstakingly fought for routine, and visit my mother in Florida, who was too poor to buy a plane ticket to see her new granddaughter or buy my children Christmas presents but not too broke to go on an Antipodean cruise for the whole of January. We shall cross paths at the airport, and stay the night in her Tampa residence before departing to the theme parks for an attempt at family lols. I anticipate 10 days of little to no sleep, so it’s just as well Tom’s unexpected PPI payment covered our costs so we’re not paying for teeth-gritted fun at the expense of much needed rest and relaxation.

Speaking of which, I’ve already devoured my holiday reading of the same name by Ottessa Moshfegh: my Wednesday morning creative writing seminar at Goldsmith’s are a hotbed of frustrating literary recommendations that I have so little time to pursue. Amid the breast milk disasters and scheduling issues we’ve encountered trying to make my masters work, I nonetheless feel convinced this it was the right path to take, however many people look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them I doing it on maternity leave.

But my life, pre-baby, had to change one way or another, and, busy, hectic and often stressful though life is at the moment, I am fulfilled in a way I haven’t felt in a long time, when my boredom-induced naval gazing and angst-driven, often self-inflicted sleep deprivation got in the way of knowing what I really wanted from life. I still don’t (save publishing a book and getting my parents somewhat interested in me and by proxy, their grandchildren) but I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere, but perhaps that’s because I’m not currently having to work for someone else. The challenge will be maintaining my motivation when I’m juggling other people’s priorities with my own, plus a soon-to-be-toddler to boot.

But, in the meantime, I’ll carry on juggling my own, because while I’m concentrating on the needs of another and too busy to live in my own head, the world, most of the time, feels like a much better place.