It's been over a year since I wrote this blog and before I pick it up again, I thought I'd publish this entry I found in my drafts recently. It was written last June, 2012. I can happily report I no longer feel this way. If you do, I promise you, there is light at the end of the tunnel. If you still feel this way after a year, I suggest buying a Celine handbag. It worked for me.
I
lost my mojo for a while, Gina, do you mind if we call it loss-of-mojo rather
than the dreaded, unspeakable, let’s brush it under the carpet POST NATAL
DEPRESSION? I just went back to work having had ten months off. I've got to admit, the past few weeks have been a bit weird so I went to Selfridges and bought a Celine tote. Praise the lord, Gina, I
feel a little more alive with that baby on my arm.
A
three cm by three cm card landed on my doorstep the other day. I instantly recognised the
familiar swirls but couldn’t comprehend the words.
‘You don’t seem happy, I want the old you back, she was ace’, the card chimed. The writing was as familiar as Marmite on toast but read like it belonged to a total
stranger. I began wondering what I used to be like, what made me so ‘ace’, I needed to know.
I
opened it one Sunday morning after a busy week at work – my seventh back in
the office and it immediately drove me into a heavy gloom.
A bit like the time I did a lot of preordering at Fashion Week because
it didn’t feel like shopping, until I got the bills.
Baby was having his nap next door. Fingers of summer sun tapped on my
bedroom window attempting to entice me outside.
I snapped the blinds shut sending them off to bother somebody else with
their golden rays of positivity. I lay on my
bed, bright white stripes trying to sneak under slats of shuttered-tight-blinds
‘she was ace’ ringing in my ears.
I
can only be the person I am now, right, Gina? I’m not the person I was but nor am I the person I think everybody wants me to be. I have to compromise and that compromise
cannot be to the detriment of my baby.
‘You weren’t happy on maternity leave and now you don’t seem happy being
back at work’, the friend continued on text message after I 'thanked' her for her
card. ‘Maybe you should see somebody’. Who, I thought? Christopher Kane? Richard Nicoll? Mary Katranzou? Should I wear more print? Will that make me jolly? Pass me the spring florals and everything will be ok!!!!!
I
got out of bed, left my boyfriend to look after the baby and went for a walk. Why have I been
so reluctant to change, I wondered? I love
my son (a love I had no idea even existed); I have a partner whom I adore and
want to be with forever. We’re doing up
a house that we plan to live in for the rest of our lives. We talk about getting married and I’ve never
done that before, I even found a dress on Net-a-Porter I might like to wear and
it was even white (a shocking colour at the best of times). I like my job. I adore my
friends so what the fuck is wrong with me?
After
ten months out of the office I’d finally got into the routine of maternity
leave. I was used to the slight
loneliness that nipped at the outer edges of my being, throbbing like frostbite
but not quite bad enough to lose a limb.
I was ok with pulling on an oversized cardigan of tiredness every
morning. I had routine and grew to like
it, eventually. My pregnant body had
grown bigger than I could have ever imagined.
At fourteen stone nine pounds I looked like an inflated version of
somebody I once knew; I looked like a new mum but a big one; I was one
step away from Pleats Please by Issy Miyake. The other day a friend from ante-natal class said ‘wow, look at you! There was a
slim woman underneath all that fat and water retention!’ Gina, whatever happens, don’t tell Tom, he’ll
go totally ape shit.
I
looked like I had an abundance of milk.
I was so large, my breasts looked like they could have supplied
the whole of London’s premature baby units with fresh breast milk on a daily basis. But
I had none. ‘Chronic low milk supply’
wrote the doctor three weeks in and medically what could be described as ‘el baskito case’. ‘Would you like
to try a month’s worth of antidepressants?’ she asked, sympathetic eyes peering
over a pair of Boots’ own spectacles. My
bloodshot eyes stared back at her, I resisted the urge to comment on her choice
of eyewear; 'Tom Ford does great opticals', was on the tip of my tongue. But I was too knackered for fashion. Jesus, I must be ill. Before I knew it I was walking out of the
doctors’ surgery, my mamas and papas clad thighs rubbing together, clutching a
prescription for a months worth of low dosage antidepressants. I threw it in the bin as soon I got outside.
I
checked out Facebook daily, looking at other mothers’ pictures, marvelling at
their joy. The pretty back gardens
decked with bunting and colourful cupcakes in honour of the Jubilee. Family gatherings, Christenings, birthday
parties, mummies in pretty floral dresses, smiling babies, Pimms and Lemonade,
happy summer days. Eventually I stopped
looking; their version of events made me too miserable.
I went to Westfield
to sit in the Prada store instead. Much better.
As my oversized ass sank into the pink pouf of the Prada chair, baby
asleep, Fatima’s coffee (she works at Pret in Westfield) would jolt me back
into action, galvanise me into starting my day.
Baby and me were inseparable for the most part and he seemed to enjoy
little jaunts to TopShop, Dior and Prada where I would look but not try due to
being so oversized.
I
joined a music class, thank God for the music class. I met a mum a year older than me who'd just had her first child. Her son was twelve
weeks old when we met and she looked unbelievable; happy, smiley and jolly
but in a sane way, not like she’d just snorted a line of Cath Kidson. She looked physically fit enough to cope
with how strenuous new motherhood can be. I'd break out into a sweat trying to pick up the car seat.
I met all sorts of women at the
music class and went for coffee with some of them afterwards. It felt like being on a blind date. My armour was off, I was just a mum,
an overweight one, perhaps a mildly deranged, overweight, highly strung one. ‘I’m stabbing in the dark at this whole
motherhood thing and I’ve only got one jumper that fits’! I splurted after
coffee number two hit my bloodstream. That’s
when you separate the wheat from the chaff, the Bodum from the Bananas. That moment of absolute honesty is when you
figure out who is on your ‘team’. Nobody was. Nobody else was depressed.
The
class continued for six months, after which time the babies were crawling and
the mothers getting ready to go back to work.
One of them decided not to go back at all. Previously an art dealer, she’s retraining as a therapist for women going back to work after babies. Must find her number. Another, a music producer plans to go
back three days a week and is already thinking about her next baby. Another has
gone back three days a week but had to quickly change her days to four having realised she couldn’t manage her team on three.
Me?
I’m back at work five days a week.
Something I’ve always done. I’ve never
not worked. Is work working? Well, my
lack-of-mojo seems to be slowly disappearing but I miss my son. Monday is great, I skip out of the door giddy
to be able to buy a coffee without a small hand covered in porridge pawing at
my Prada. Tuesday is fine, too. By Wednesday I leave the house with small stabs
of pain flickering in my heart. I jam my
body onto the tube at 5pm where I would normally wait for a quieter train. I put on trainers so I can run home. Thursday
is more of the same. By Friday morning I
wake up anxiety ridden. Being on my own
in a coffee shop feels lonely and pointless, my heart is seemingly attached to my son’s with string or a piece of elastic. The string is too short and if I go too far
it pulls me, jolting me back into the reality that is knowing I don’t want to
leave him for this much time during the week. But I can't be at home full time either. I'm stuck. I don't know what to do.
I’m
sorry I’ve not written for a while, Gina, but things have been a bit
difficult. I’m readjusting to a new
world order. I’ve lost five stone though. It all came off in the end. I bought some Miu Miu trousers to
celebrate.
Best wishes,
Etc etc...
P.s Don't tell Tom about the weight gain.
