My Christmas Message

It’s not been the best year. I started 2010 housebound, trapped inside by snow, pregnancy and SPD. I was in unbearable pain, resenting the baby I was carrying, frustrated with myself for feeling such resentment and self-pity. Even when Dimples arrived, the pain didn’t stop, the resentment didn’t go away, the frustration lingered. And so I wallowed in misery, struggled with a newborn and a toddler and tears that refused to cease. I hardly felt like getting up in the morning, never mind checking in with the blogosphere. Instead I did the sensible thing and called in the professionals.

Post Natal Depression is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I know that I’m not imagining things, because I have been here before and know that it can be treated, that it should go. A curse because it feels like I am a failure, like I did something wrong, like I can’t even enjoy my newborn like I should. The early days were spent in a maelstrom of emotions, tossed toward love then hatred in a breath. I wanted to run and hide but it isn’t an option when you have a Pocket Dictator to keep up with. And so I became a machine: I went through the motions, said what was expected, did what was expected, and, once the drugs had taken effect, felt nothing. Feeling nothing is so much better than feeling worthless.

As the SPD improved and the help left, I learned to juggle my two children on my own. I took them on holiday, stopped breastfeeding, encouraged them to start a new school. I did the ironing, cooked the supper, created a routine. And as I kept doing it, things became easier. Until I found a gap in the day for me; a moment or two where I could do something, just for me, and my thoughts turned to a much-neglected blog.

When you come back to a blog, dust off the cobwebs and get going again you have a lot more work to do than start from scratch. It’s a bit like going away for a Gap Year, because you forget that life has carried on in your absence and you have to find a way of fitting back in again. In addition to ‘putting yourself out there’ you have to convince old readers that you are back for good, apologise for dumping them, and generally grovel for a period of time. You find out that the blogosphere has changed in your absence: that there is something called a Cybermummy, a MAD and *gasp* dads who blog. You find that small blogs have become big blogs, new things have become massive things and that people who started blogging when you did have become very successful.

If SPD and PND hadn’t dented my confidence enough, then stepping back into the blogosphere certainly did. But slowly it got better, in much the same way that my life is slowly getting better. I found that old bloggers were happy to see me again and new bloggers were pleased to meet me. I was encouraged, day by day, with comments and tweets and even the occasional prize. I have felt nothing but warmth and encouragement as I added myself to McLinky lists. I have found a community which doesn’t judge, which doesn’t criticize, which probably doesn’t understand me most of the time but that’s no reflection on them, since most people in my life don’t often understand me. And I say that with a mother and husband who read this blog.

So today, on Christmas Day, when we traditionally celebrate the gift of Baby Cheesy (recently overheard at PD’s school) by giving and receiving of gifts, can I thank each and every one of you for the gifts that you, the blogging community, have given me this year: Confidence in my abilities. Hope that I will get better. Belief in myself. Thank you. And Merry Christmas.

Enough of the schmalz: I’m going to gag in a minute. Who’s hidden the chocolate and the TV remote? That’s what Christmas is really about after all……