Bad MuthaBlogger

I’m back visiting the place I lived in before I had my baby. The place I called home before I met the F.O.B. and had my world turned upside down. I wanted to come down here and see what I had left behind. To say goodbye to old friends and make sure I hadn’t made a mistake by leaving so suddenly. I didn’t even tell people I was going, I just upped and left one day. Did a disappearing act. Hey presto! I’m pregnant and I’m gone! I didn’t really want to leave, but I couldn’t imagine living down at the bottom of the country, in this godforsaken, rugged, remote neck of the woods, being a single, older mum struggling to make ends meet. I couldn’t face it. The very thought filled me with dread.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a stunningly beautiful part of the country. When the sun shines (which ain’t very often) it’s one of the most gorgeous places on the planet. It’s steeped in legend and mystery, and filled with a spectacular display of light and dark on land and sea. The writer D.H. Lawrence lived here and summed it up nicely:

At Zennor one sees infinite Atlantic, all peacock-mingled colours, and the gorse is sunshine itself. Zennor is a most beautiful place: a tiny granite village nestling under high shaggy moor-hills and a big sweep of lovely sea beyond, such a lovely sea, lovelier even than the Mediterranean….. It is the best place I have been in, I think.

It’s the one place in the UK that I have truly loved. I belonged here. I knew everybody, and everybody knew me. I fitted in. I had a community. Plus my baby was conceived here. So I was really looking forward to coming back here and showing baby bun-buns around.

But now we’re here, it’s funny, but I don’t feel the same way about anything. I feel like I’ve walked into an old, crackly, black and white movie. Everything seems dusty and antiquated, out of sync. Nothing’s changed. The same people, the same land. But I’ve changed - so massively, that I just don’t fit in. I’ve outgrown it, there’s nothing here for me now. Zennor is an old snakeskin I’ve shed behind. Motherhood changes everything. Inside and out.

Since I arrived, it’s become crystal clear to me that this is no place for a baby. Today I tried to take bunny up to the coastal headland to look out over the sea, and we were almost blown over the 200 foot cliff edge by gale force gusts. It was either that or I was going to slip on the wet granite jutting out at all angles from the muddy footpath, and crush our skulls on rocky tors. The local footpaths that I once trod with love and passion, have suddenly turned into treacherous monster man-traps. It doesn’t feel safe, and without a walking connection to the land, I don’t feel at home.

There’s a plate glass window between me and the world outside. I feel alienated. What was once so familiar has, in a few short months, become a foreign country. I can feel some emotion deep down, a longing for something lost, a homesickness. But for what it’s worth I may aswell stay indoors out of the rain and wind, and dream of going back to California.

It’s odd being back home in England. I love it and I hate it. It’s a crazy affair. It’s home but I don’t want to live here. When I’m not here I miss it terribly, and then when I’m here I don’t know why I came.

The weather has been consistently, predictably miserable. Low grey cloud cover, intervals of slight drizzle and pouring rain, great gusts of wind cutting through your skin. Not the sort of weather you want to be out and about in with your little one. The countryside is green and lush (now you know why) and full of life, despite the fact that it’s all parceled up into neat little manicured fields bordered by hedgerows. The towns and villages are very twee, nestled into valleys alongside meandering streams and rivers, buildings of stone and brick and slate. It’s all very romantic, steeped in history and legend. It reeks of culture and class.

But now I have a baby, my God, is it different here. Suddenly my eyes are open to a side of England that I’ve never seen before. The pavements are all higgledy-piggledy, the cars drive like maniacs, everything’s muddy and wet, and there’s no bloody changing tables in the loos. There are babies and children everywhere running amok, and hardly any play parks. Mothers don’t seem as friendly as in the States, and there’s a whiff of suspicion in the air – watch out for that nearby bloke, he might be a child molester, flasher or abductor.

The strollers look different – they’re not strollers, they’re prams, pushchairs and buggies. There’s no jogging prams, and no one looks like they ever go jogging. I noticed quite a few Bugaboo Chameleons up in London, but not so many down here in the deep south. Down here I stand out like a sore thumb with my chocolate and cream Bugaboo summer canopy stroller, and my Hard Tail tracksuit. I broke out the Ergo front carrier this morning and created quite a stir in the nearby town. I don’t think anyone had seen anything quite like it before.

I can’t find any decent eco-nappies. I found some Tushies which are imported from America, and I have to say that they are absolutely useless. Bulky, ugly and last about 5 minutes each, leaking pee and poo all over my bunny’s clothes. Not a single gDiaper in sight.

In many ways this is a very civilised country, so much more cultured than the States. Yet I can’t imagine bringing a baby up here. It all seems like such a struggle. No wonder everyone’s down the boozer all the time. They need a stiff drink to cope with the stress of it all. But I must say it’s a blessed relief to know that if it all goes pear-shaped with the F.O.B. I can always move back here to England, have another sprog or two, sign on the dole, get free medical care, and live the life of riley for the rest of my days.

Baby and I have left London and gone south. But in my mind I’m still back at the F.O.B.’s house. I can’t stop thinking about his other children and the impact we’ve had on their lives. I close my eyes and I see angry, accusing faces. I know what they’re thinking: ”how could you?” “with our father“. They hate me. They hate the F.O.B. And I don’t blame them. I hate me too.

On one level, they’re bound to be on side with their mother. After all, she’s the jilted one. She who was wronged. The poor old thing that got put aside for a bright young thing.

But there are much deeper dynamics at play here. By having a son with their father, I’ve completely upset their family system. The youngest boy is no longer the youngest boy. There are no longer 4 but 5 siblings. A new baby has come along to steal not only their father’s inheritance, but more importantly his affection, attention and love.

When I first walked into the F.O.B.’s house, I was shocked to see that he had turned the place into an altar for our baby. There were photos of baby bun-buns all over the shop, in all the prominent places – on the mantelpiece above the fire, over his desk, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. There were even several pictures of me, which I found most disconcerting. His own children had been relegated to a few places on the hallway wall, but even there, photos of our son dominated the scene. 

I pointed out that he might want to tone things down. That all these pictures of our baby might be seen to be a bit insensitive by his other children, and perhaps he could place a few other photos of them alongside our boy? But he didn’t get it. He wanted to make sure that our son was in a forefront position, and not ‘brushed under the carpet’. He couldn’t see how it might be rubbing salt into their wounds. He can be so thick skinned at times.

The latest news (email from the F.O.B.) is that his children are very angry and hurt. They understand that our baby is an innocent in all of this, and they think he’s very sweet. They wish him no harm. But they don’t want to see me again. Which is fine. I don’t want to see them again either. In fact, I wish we’d never met.

Does it always have to be this difficult? Is there some better way to handle the half sibling from ex-mistress scenario? A win-win situation, where everyone feels loved and happy and secure? Maybe it’ll get better when he’s older. Maybe I don’t need to do anything other than fade into the background, keep a low profile back in Cal and do penance for my sins. Pray, lie low, and let the wind blow. And hope it will all die down in the end.

It’s been a rough couple of days. The F.O.B. wanted me to meet his 4 other children, and to introduce them to our baby boy. Their new half-brother. Stupidly I said OK, and then even more foolishly I relaxed into thinking it would be OK. When in fact it was not.

I vastly underestimated the impact of meeting the F.O.B. children. Naively I thought we would all get along, and maybe have a nice little chat over a cup of tea and biscuits, remarking how much baby looked like his father. Everyone would say how cute he was, and what a great mother I was, and how glad they were to meet me at long last.

I caught this naive, foolish optimism from the F.O.B. who somehow convinced me that everything would be fine, that his children were so looking forward to meeting me and baby, and that we could all spend a few days together getting to know each other. The F.O.B. can be very persuasive.

How wrong could one be? The F.O.B.’s children were stiffly polite, shifty-eyed, highly uncomfortable and couldn’t wait to leave. All of us were sweating like pigs. Afterwards I realised that they’d probably only come along because the F.O.B. had asked them to. Fools just like me.

And who could blame them for not wanting to stick around? In their eyes I was the Scarlet Woman. The one that took their father for a ride. The bitch that broke their parents up. The mistress. The bit on the side with a bun popped out of the oven. What makes the situation even more uncomfortable is that I’m closer in age to his children than to him. What must it feel like when your dad shacks up with someone who’s almost your own age? Someone who you might easily go out with yourself?

I feel dirty and wrong. For the first time, I realise that I have been totally selfish and utterly thoughtless to get involved with a married man. Even if I didn’t know he was married at first, even if he did say he was going through a divorce, as soon as I found out, I should have cut things off immediately. It was the sane and sensible thing to do.

Instead I made a pigs ear out of things, and pulled a whole bunch of innocent children into the messed up mix. God, how depressing. All I need now is for the F.O.B. to invite his ex-wife over for coffee tomorrow, to put the boot in while I’m down.

I’m finally here in Blighty. Back on English soil. The weather is shite, typical for a British summer. Pissing down with rain, big gusts of wind, and generally grey and dreary. London is particularly bleak, noisy and grubby, and tons of depressed looking geezers hanging about the streets in their rain macs and brollies. But I’m not here to complain about the weather, I’ve come online to complain about the F.O.B.

I’ve been here for 3 days, and already he is driving me round the bend. Yesterday I made him sit down to talk about the big issues that we need to sort out – the birth certificate, the paternity test, the child support agreement, what role he’s going to play in his son’s life. I honestly think he would avoid talking about all of these things for the whole month that I’m here, if I hadn’t cornered him and said: “We need to talk. Now.”

Once I got him talking, it quickly came to light that the F.O.B. had somehow convinced himself that we were back together, and that I would soon be moving back to England, where we would be buying a country house in Surrey, to go along with our London townhouse, whereupon we would be having a few more children, and living happily ever after. It’s astounding. And what’s even more astounding is that this happens every time I see the F.O.B.

I must have told him a hundred times that it’s over between us. He seems to get it at the time, looks hurt and shocked, disappears for a few days or weeks, and then bounces right back into the same place, where he imagines we are happy and in loving relationship again. When I point this out to him, he simply smiles oddly and says he’s an optimist.

For fuck’s sake, this isn’t optimism, this is full blown delusional psychosis. The F.O.B. has more than a few screws loose in there. He’s one sandwich short of a picnic. He’s lost the plot. Out to lunch. Nutso.

So yesterday I had to tell him again: “ITS OVER. Do you understand? OVER. WE ARE NOT IN RELATIONSHIP. We are FRIENDS. Nothing more.”

He looked as if I had socked him hard in the gut with a cricket bat. I felt bad, but what else can I do? How can I get the message through his thick rhinoceros skin? I made him repeat “WE’RE OVER” a few times so that I could be sure he got the message. And then I tried to pin him down on the big issues of child support. And you know what he said?

“Darling, I was rather hoping that things were going to go well for us, but since they’re not, I’m going to have to think about what is the best thing for me to do.”

It took all my strength not to scream “AARGH!!!!” and pull all his hair out (not mine, because it’s already falling out from stress).

We are going to get nowhere, I can feel it in my bones. I’m going to have to go back to Cal and unleash that bulldog lawyer of mine and set his dial to kill. Then write a note to the F.O.B. saying: “Darling, I was rather hoping that things were going to go well for us, but since they’re not, I’m going to have to go for the jugular. California Style.”

A quick blog before we leave for the airport. Turns out I wasn’t just feeling sick last night from the thought of visiting the F.O.B., but that I actually had food poisoning. No sooner had I finished my blog last night, then I had to rush to the bathroom for a fun filled night of puking and pooping my guts out. Both ends at once, which as you can imagine requires a special sort of skill. Fortunately my time spent in Asia fully equipped me in that department.  

Hey, ever tried to breastfeed while sick as a dog? Clutching baby onto a breast while you delicately try and chunder over his head? Worrying if the baby is going to get sick as well, but needing to nurse him because you didn’t have any milk pumped or formula in the house. and he’s screaming his head off for food? 

Yes sir, it was a long rough night for the both of us. Not the sort of thing you need before making a big long-haul trip overseas with your 5 month old baby.

That’s the last time I eat oysters. Or maybe it was that small bite of tuna I had. I thought it tasted a bit rank but I didn’t want to appear rude at the dinner table (we had guests) so I swallowed it down. Needless to say I never want to see any seafood again. It’s back to being vegetarian for me.

But want to know the good news, that makes it all worthwhile? In one short night, I lost a 3 whole pounds!!! Just in time for going back to Blighty!

I’m off to London tomorrow. For a whole month. I’m trying to pack all my stuff at the last minute, while the bunny is asleep. I can’t think straight while he’s awake, and right now I’m so tired I can hardly type. I’m sure I’m going to forget something really, really important, like my laptop.

What does one need for a whole month away? The weather’s bound to be all over the place, rain with sunny spells, cold and warm. They don’t make suitcases big enough for everything I think I need, and then there’s the baby stuff too. What the fuck am I supposed to pack for the baby? Bottles? Breastpump? Stroller? Car seat? Sling? Two-way radio? Blankets? Toys? How many diapers should I take on the plane, and how many changes of clothes? I’m completely overwhelmed, and I’m feeling so stressed out, all I want to do is check out, and go and have a pint and a ciggie down the local pub.

Another big source of anxiety is that this time tomorrow I’m going to see the F.O.B. and I’m going to stay with him for an entire week. Just the very thought makes me want to chunder. I have all kinds of horrible fears and feelings about seeing him again after God knows how many weeks. I don’t want to have to go through the same old bullshit about the birth certificate, child support agreement, and all that blah, blah, blah. Only to have him patronise me by patting my hand and telling me: “all in due course, darling” and “I’m just trying to do the right thing” and “What we need to do is ensure that you don’t develop an unhealthy dependency on me”. 

I think I feel a migraine coming on. It’s best not to think about these things, just keep in the moment, one step at a time. Otherwise I might burst a blood vessel.

I’ll leave you with this little snippet as an indication of how my day has been so far. Earlier this afternoon I lost the tube of neosporin. Bunny’s got some funny skin behind his ears, and the doc told me to put some neosporin on it. Only I couldn’t find it, that is until I went to get the laundry out of the dryer and there, to my horror, I found an empty tube. And what’s even worse, is that I put my $200 18th Amendment jeans in there, and now they are completely bolloxed. These are my new post-partum jeans that I live, breathe and sleep in. I take them off only to wash them. Now they are covered in dirty, greasy black splotches from toe to crotch. It’s almost as bad as the day I dropped my iPhone down the toilet, only this story doesn’t have such a happy ending.

I think I’ll go to bed, and try and sleep it off. Do a mad rush pack job in the morning with a clearer head. I’ll be back blogging when I land on the other side.

I’m not getting any, and right now that’s totally fine with me. Thank GOD I’m single. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a new baby, AND have a husband or boyfriend to take care of. I only need one boy in my life right now.

Five months later and my vagina still feels like a steam train ran right through it. I never want anything to go up there again. It’s all been rearranged and reconfigured. I’m sure my sexual organs are damaged beyond repair. They are never going to work the way they’re supposed to anymore. I can hardly hold a kegel. And even if it was all in working order, my sex drive is zilch. Not just low, but completely absent. I see attractive men in the street, but I don’t have a flicker of desire for any of them.

But if I did have a husband, and I wanted to keep him, then I would have to find ways of finding intimacy with him, i.e. giving up the goods, on a regular basis. Here’s a few tips that I picked up this morning from my breastfeeding support group, to enhance your postpartum sex life and keep your man happy:

• Don’t rush into it – you need to wait at least 6 weeks after birth before you can have sex, and sometimes longer if you had a C-section or other complication
• Be spontaneous – have sex when your baby naps, and don’t always do it in the bedroom at night, try the bathroom in the morning
• Get creative – even a quickie can be rewarding, use your imagination, try sex blindfolded, or have a candlelit bath together and kill two birds with one stone (get clean and have sex!)
• Find time to do sensual touch and massage, even if it’s only 10 minutes
• Put the baby in the other room  – it’s hard to get it on when your little one is next to you
• Nap when your baby naps, otherwise you’ll be too knackered for bonking
• Make time for your man – it takes special effort to be romantic, you need to put sex and love at the top of your “to do” list
• Remember your breasts will leak (if you’re breastfeeding) during sex - you might need to have a hand towel around
• Use birth control – unless you want to get another bun in the oven straight away
• Forget about doing the dishes, let things slide - your man is not going to give two hoots about the laundry so long as he’s getting laid

And finally, the single most important tip for all you ladies out there is: INEBRIATE AND LUBRICATE! A sure recipe for success.

I managed to squeeze in lunch with English Lizzie this week. I don’t know why we bother going to lunch. It’s never a pleasant experience for me. Lizzie always orders the smallest possible, lowest calorific appetiser (this time it was a few leaves and half a mini tomato) and then she spends half the time pushing it around her plate with a fork.

I, on the other hand, wolfed down a monster bowl of pasta and polished off most of the bread basket. And then felt guilty and sick about it afterwards. I’m borderline anorexic. Lizzie on the other hand, is just plain anorexic.

“You look great” she says, as I suck in my stomach. “You’ve lost weight.”

I tell her I’ve taken up running and am desperately trying to get in shape before I go back to England and bump into one of my exes. I mention how hard I’m finding it to lose weight. That I really need to shift another 15lbs and then I’ll be happy.

She pats her own concave stomach, just a bit of skin stretched taught over her intestines. “I’ve got a few pounds to shift myself. I put on a bit of weight when we were back in England last week”.

I raise an eyebrow in response. It’s hard to imagine Lizzie losing any more weight. If she turned sideways she’d disappear.

“I’m going to stop eating for a few days” she says, ”It’s the only way to shift these extra pounds”.

“Not eat? I mean, not eat anything at all? For how many days?? ” 

Lizzie assures me that she can lose 3 – 5 lbs in 3 days by not eating any food at all. Being an alcoholic, she still drinks of course. She also exercises every day like a fiend. I’m shocked, but then a few seconds later start wondering if that could work for me. If I wasn’t breastfeeding I might even give it a go.

The whole time we’re trying to talk about not eating, Lizzie’s little boy (who’s 6 months older than my baby) is whinging in the background, throwing his food at our feet, desperate to get out of his stroller and crawl around. Lizzie somehow manages to keep a straight face while periodically plugging a pacifier in his mouth, telling him to “shut his cake hole”.

She then pulls him out and plonks him on the restaurant floor, and he’s off scuttling around the table legs like a crab on speed. At this point our conversation is over, as Lizzie has to clamber under tables after him.

I’m watching this scene and thinking that’s going to be me and my boy soon. I’ve got to keep eating or I’m not going to have the strength to keep up with him. I don’t know how Lizzie does it. I need fuel or I don’t function. I guess that’s healthy. I’m not a wannarexic. I just want to enjoy my food and feel good about my body.

Next time I’m going to suggest we meet in the park so I can bring my own sandwiches, and so I don’t have to watch skinny Lizzie not eat.

One of the most annoying things about being a new parent is other people’s unsolicited advice. It seems that everyone has got an opinion about what I need to do for my baby. I don’t get it. I wouldn’t dream of giving anyone advice about their baby, so what makes people think they can tell me what to do and what not to do? Have I got “clueless” tatooed on my forehead or something?

There was the time in the card shop, when I was looking for a condolences card for a friend. A sad enough occasion, but the chirpy shop assistant was oblivious to my mood, and kept poking her nose in my baby’s pram making goo-goo noises, and saying “what a beautiful baby! what a cute litte smile!” the usual blah, blah, blah. Finally I plonked my cash down on the counter to pay, when she says: “How’s he sleeping?”

I’m thinking none of your business you nosy cow, but instead I plaster on a strained smile and say: “He’s not.” I mean for godsake, he’s like 2 months old.

“Oh? Really? Are you breastfeeding?”

To which I replied a terse: “Yes”.

And then she looked me hard in the eye, and dropped the bombshell: “Well, you’re probably not producing enough milk. You’re going to have to start thinking about feeding formula.”

How am I supposed to respond to that? I have to live in this town, and one day I’ll have to go back in that card shop, so I couldn’t really tell her to piss off (tempting though it was). Instead I just nodded sagely (as one does when facing a lunatic) and backed out of the shop, inwardly seething.

Another time I was in the Physical Therapist’s office, trying to heal from sciatica, when she asked how I was sleeping. I wasn’t. She asked if I was co-sleeping with my baby. I was.

Then she loomed over the table, and looked me square in the eye: “You’re going to have to get that baby into his own bed”.

Shocked, I replied: “I don’t have an extra room for an extra bed”.

To which she responded: “I have an extra bassinet you can have. I’ll get my husband to drop it off at your place this evening. Your back is never going to recover until you get that baby out of your bed.”

She then stepped even further over the mark, to add in a threatening tone: “Co-sleeping with your baby is dangerous. You could roll over and squash him.”

Then there’s the multitude of mothers who’ve told me I simply have to get a pacifier, what a great thing the dummy is, and how they could never get their baby to calm down without one. I’m thinking “I’ve got a boob right here, thanks, and in case you hadn’t noticed, my baby’s calm almost all the time, without a pacifier”.

Instead I tell them: “my boy won’t take a pacifier, he just spits it out”. It’s easier to make a story up sometimes.

Other unsolicited advice I seem to repeatedly attract is that I go out and get (a) an exersaucer (b) some Baby Einstein DVD’s (c) a Nanny.

But the final straw was the doctor today. I took my mum to the cardiologist to find out what she needs to do while we are back in England for a month, and the doc looks sharply at me: “Are you flying with the baby?” Er, Yes. Obviously. ”Well, the best thing to do is keep that baby awake all day, don’t let him nap until you get on the plane. That’s the only way he’ll sleep through to London”.

Now that has to be the most useless, downright stupid advice I’ve heard yet. Keep the baby awake all day? !! Even my sweet-tempered little angel would turn into a wailing, red-eyed monster if I tried that tactic. But instead of snarling, I smiled at the doc, and said: ‘Yes, great idea. Thanks for the tip”.

Who needs this kind of bullshit? It’s hard enough finding my own way out here, navigating the seas of parenthood, doing the best that I can, without having to deal with meddling muppets, giving me their two cents all the time. I respect people’s different parenting styles, I just wish people would respect mine.