I’ve never
been blasé about the merits of being able to touch type. Ten years ago on MSN,
it facilitated high velocity MSN conversations, and today it allows me to write
this blog with my eyes closed on account of the vertigo.
Today in my
appointment, which my mum had driven me to, I found myself feeling increasingly
unwell. My thoughts began to flit from the conversation, at first missing only
a word here or there, and then missing whole chunks. Where am I going to throw
up? My mind obsessively probed the room. Aurelia was out of her car seat, and I
was bobbing her up and down on my knee to keep her from crying, the motion
intensifying my nausea. For some sick reason, my mind saw the bowl-like shape
of the car seat and seriously considered it as an option, before spying a bin
under the desk. While trying to produce the right amount of ‘Mmm, yes, yep’
sounds, which I can only assume were not being dispensed at appropriate moments
in the conversation, I was fixating on that bin. I could grab it easily, it was
perfectly nearly empty, the beauty of a morning appointment. It would be faster
than trying to get a plastic bag out of the nappy bag, although the plastic bag
belonged to me, and the bin did not. I was beginning to perspire, thighs stuck
to the chair; it is so hard not to hurl when you need to. At last I managed to interrupt,
“I’m sorry, this is a bit off topic, but I’m not feeling very well and was just
wondering where I should go if I need to throw up?” And as I had hoped, she
immediately offered the bin and placed it closer to me.
It has been
eight weeks since I shuffled into Emergency holding onto Ben. The nurse who
called me from the waiting room looked at the notes, and then the pint sized
baby. She said, “So, she’s 24.....” and she was about to say ‘days’, but knew
couldn’t be right based on the size of the baby. Then it clicked that I was the
one with the problem, the new mum, and no, it wasn’t a haemorrhage as she
suspected. I performed like a drunk when asked to walk and tiptoe, and as my world swooped
around, I was grateful for the testing and the validation that yes, I had
vertigo. Why, I asked? Is this a common post partum experience? The doctors said that sleep deprivation can have unusual
manifestations in those with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and they thought it was
one of them. Common? No.
But of
course!
Some days I
feel well, almost vibrant. But if I have a bad night, this combined with the
last seventy nights {that is a lot of nights}, brings on the swaying, as does leaving the house. I
stagger to the toilet holding onto door ways. I am nauseous, with lack of sensation
in my hands. There is no cleaning, driving, crafting, or walking. But there is
a trail of guilt. Guilt that family members haven’t seen much of Aurelia,
because of me. Guilt that I am always an apology at events, always delaying catch
ups, always needing a lift, always spending money to get help, always perceiving
an obligation to share my beautiful baby and needing to keep her in my arms at home.
‘Stuff people,’ says my husband, who is the
antipathy of a people pleaser and unchanged in fatherhood. It’s the nicest thing to say to a new mum with
vertigo.
A new
chapter has began.
The one where I have to re-learn how to live not only as a
woman, but as a mother, in a society designed for the busy. Like that mother
and baby group I’ve been put in, which meets at 1.30 in the afternoon. Are you actually telling me that mothers are
awake at that time? And the maternal and child health nurse genuinely thinks
that my three month old needs the socialisation? Because I kind of think we
could all do with toning it down, and sitting in peace in the sunshine, and not
doing from time to time. Maybe in some painful way it is good that I still can’t run on the western
conveyer belt, so that I can show my daughter what it is to just be, and to be
at peace with being not performing*. If she hops on, she might struggle to ever
hop off. And who said the conveyer belt
is even headed in the right direction?
* If I can ever grasp the concept for more than a week.
