 These last few years have seen me become the poster child for, 'What happens when you don't look after yourself'. I'm no Martyr, it's not an intentional thing I do. I simply put it down to 'Mum Syndrome'. Everyone else in the family gets organised and cared for first, and mum brings up the rear. You see, just yesterday I was sitting across the desk from my naturopath (yes, I have one...), I was telling him about what's been going down, and how I've been feeling, and he says,
"Yep, I see this all the time. You are suffering from 'Mum Syndrome'"
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 ‘Mummy blogger’
It's often a term that often comes with a very negative connotation, and is synonymous with other derogatory terms such as 'attention seeker' and 'over sharer' - or at least it is to the haters. We're a waste of the seemly limited *sarcasm* space within the (absolutely limitless) world wide web. It's a term that makes me cringe when writing - and t's certainly not a term that I would voluntarily choose to describe myself, except, that's EXACTLY the category I fall into. By Kirsty McKenzie  1. Low, lower, Lower than low...Lower your standards. Otherwise you will most definitely send yourself a little crazy. When I say ‘lower your standards’ I mean a lot. Take your current standard, and halve it. If you have more than one child, halve that again, and again, and again. And if, like some mums I know, you have 6 kids, just be happy that they’re eating lunch... even if it’s just this morning’s breaky still sitting on the floor (because you’ve been too busy to clean it up).
 So many of us go through life, without giving much thought at all to our fertility.
We spend our youths doing everything we possibly can to prevent falling pregnant, never giving a single thought to the possibility that one day down the track, even when we want to – we won’t be able to. With any luck, we won’t ever have to consider it. Luck.  I was afraid.
All I had ever heard people talk about, were the negatives associated with C- sections; The pain, the lengthy recovery, and the possibility of infection, to name but a few. The topic was surrounded by negativity. And here I was, facing the possibility for myself. I can’t help but shake this feeling lately. The time has come to pack away our baby things. The blankets, wraps, onesies and even the bassinet, it’s time to go. Except this time, I know it's the last time I'll ever use them. It's like the end of an era. My baby making days are through, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.   When my beautiful big girl was a baby, I found myself standing on the edge of postnatal depression. It was almost as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into a big black hole, just waiting for it to consume me. Like every day I was living on a razor’s edge. I didn’t trust myself with my own child. She deserved better than me.
I sat in the car, tears steaming down my face. I'd finally hit breaking point. So for a brief moment, I was alone, save the two sleeping babes behind me, and I let it all out. I'd been holding it together for so long, really only allowing my husband to catch glimpse of how I was really feeling... but why?  It's taken me three babies, and four long years to really learn how to trust my gut. To figure out that the little voice deep in the back of my subconscious, my intuition, is actually pretty spot on.
When my eldest was about 3.5 months old, I took her to my local GP. Her ears were red, and beginning to split, her gums were swollen, cheeks were flushed, and she was chewing on everything... not to mention the drool! I wanted to check up on her redding ears, just to be on the safe side, and rule out an ear infection. I mentioned this to the doctor, and told him that I was fairly certain she's just teething, but wanted to some reassurance. His response startled me. He said, 'No. It's not possible. She won't start teething until she's at least 6 or 7 months old' And then he promptly sent me on my way.  Our beautiful Hannah Rae... There's a part of me that honestly cannot believe that I'm sitting here typing out my third and final birth story... ok, not that I've ever really put pen to paper about the first two, I suppose I should at some stage. It's just, I won't be doing this again.
Those of you that have been following me for a while will know that throughout the pregnancy, the possibility of this baby being delivered via Cesarean was highly likely. You'll also know that at times, this caused me great anxiety. Mostly due to the perceptions surrounding Cesarean birth, the comparisons between how we choose to give birth, and the judgement that comes along with that. What I have since learned, is that for me, those perceptions were entirely my own. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about how I gave birth, what matters is what I think about how I gave birth... in the end, that's the only perception that matters. |
Behind the blog...‘The Mummysomniac’ is a lifestyle, motherhood and most recently, pregnancy blog, founded in 2015 by Kirsty McKenzie. She’s a mum of three, blogging about the highs and lows of motherhood, with a straight forward and honest approach, as well as a little bit of humour. Kirsty is passionate about sharing the realities of #MumLife, not the cookie cutter, high gloss version
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