No distraction is enough

by Veronica Foale on September 8, 2012

in Children, Me

We fell down the rabbit hole and then carefully, slowly, clawed our way back out.

And then my baby got sick again, and landed back in hospital.

I am stuck on that point. My BABY is SICK and no one knows what is wrong with her. No one can fix her yet and everyone just wants to poke more needle holes into her tiny precious skin. This child of mine who lived under my heart is sick and I cannot magically fix it.

She’s having seizures – we know that much. Tiny seizures that come again and again and again and exhaust her body and brain. Tiny seizures that make her face and eyes twitch and the muscles in her back jump like she’s being nibbled by ants. And yet, no tests show anything, denying the truth of what we’re witnessing over and over.

I spent three days sleeping on a recliner next to her cot in Paediatrics and then we were sent home on weekend leave, with no solid plan in place. The tests are the be all and end all and with negative results, no one knows what is happening and why.

My mama instinct tells me that this is WRONG, that there is something WRONG and why is no one fixing my BABY?

I can’t breathe, because my baby is sick and no one is fixing her, because no one can work out what is happening.

She’s asleep now. She’s always asleep now, exhausted by her muscles twitching when they ought to not be. But she’s asleep now and I type this and watch her and wonder what is happening here. How do I distract myself from worrying about brain damage and developmental delays and the fact that my baby is sick?

There is no distracting from this.

Not now.

Not yet.

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Down the rabbit hole

by Veronica Foale on August 27, 2012

in Children, Me

I had a baby and down down down I fell, into the rabbit hole of new motherhood and adjustment.

When Alice falls down the rabbit hole in the children’s animated movie, she floats down safely, spinning a little, landing carefully at the end.

Becoming a mother is nothing like that. Not for the first time, not for the third time.

I fell down the rabbit hole and landed ungraciously at the end, with my legs akimbo and my underwear on display. Figuratively, not literally – by the time my baby was born, there was no underwear for me. Or any clothes, really.

I was due to give birth this week sometime. Instead, my daughter is four weeks old and I have spent the last month trying to recover from the advent of her early arrival and the trauma of her first week of life. Not that it was traumatic for her – she was lucky enough to escape her premature birth with nothing worse than a plethora of heel pricks and a raging case of jaundice.

When you give birth to a well baby, at term, they send you back to the ward with your child and it’s sink or swim, baby. You change nappies and learn to feed, while eating your breakfast one handed and hoping that you can manage a shower before they stop napping. I’ve done this, twice. You’re an instant mother, making the decisions. On day two, or three (all going well) you take your child home and your new life begins.

A premature baby is a whole different kettle of fish.

I held my daughter for two hours after birth, feeding her and loving her, before I had to walk her around to NICU and leave her there with strangers. A stranger dressed her for the first time, while I sat in the chair next to her and tried not to cry. A stranger explained the visiting rules to us, and a run down of what would likely occur. A stranger stole drops of her blood. And then, a stranger smiled at me as my husband and I left our baby there, alone, without us, and went back to the ward.

I cried until my head hurt and that feeling of having accidentally misplaced something important lodged itself inside my chest. An hour later and I was alone on the ward, trying not to hate my body for expelling my child early.

(I was meant to keep her safe, my body was meant to keep her safe. Oh God, what have I done?)

Over the next few days, I became intimately acquainted with the special care unit and the nurses that worked there. No longer strangers, but still, they were the people making the decisions for my child. MY child, not theirs.

That feeling of unreality as you sit next to a plastic box, knowing that they aren’t truly yours, not now, not yet.

My daughter got better, fast. We were lucky that she wasn’t a sick child and in the end, probably not as premature as they suspected.

As a new mother, you’re meant to be overwhelmed and covered in spit-up. Not holding your baby’s head in place while they insert a nasal gastric tube, or dripping sucrose into the corner of their mouth while a nurse pricks their heels yet again. You’re meant to get covered in milk as your breasts leak, not blood, as the bandaid doesn’t quite cover their wound.

In the scheme of things, we were lucky. I fell down the rabbit hole and we all emerged relatively unscathed.

But I can’t say that it wasn’t (isn’t) traumatic.

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Frankly my dear, I’m failing to see how I ought to give a damn anymore

by Veronica Foale on July 4, 2012

in On Blogging

I feel like I’m a fish, stuck in a fish bowl. Only instead of being shocked by the same weed, in the same corner every time I swim past it, I continue to have the same conversation, about the same things over and over.

2009: Are bloggers ethical?

2010: Are bloggers ethical?

2011: Are bloggers ethical? (With a side dish of hand wringing and oh, won’t someone please, think of the community?)

Yet, here we are, in 2012, having the same old conversation, over and over. Ethics! Advertorial! Won’t someone think of the children!

The thing is, each time this conversation is raised, the people who raised it seem to think that they are the first to have noticed that bloggers occasionally run disclosed advertorial. They think that this is NEW NEWS and we’re all going to be shocked by their revelations.

Extra extra, read all about it: Sometimes personal bloggers get PAID to write about things! SHOCK! HORROR! HYPERBOLE!

And maybe they’re shocked by what they’re realising about blogging, but to everyone else this is old news, churned out in the same old way, bringing up the same old complaints, from the same old corners of the Internet.

Round in a circle we go, attacking and blaming, defending and discussing.

Are we ethical? What are the pitfalls of selling our writing space? Can we ever be trusted again? Insert hand wringing and a fainting couch here.

Uuuuuugh. Groan. <— This is me curling up in the corner with a headache and a block of chocolate. A block of chocolate I didn’t have to pay for, just to rub salt into the wounds here. Can you feel it burn?

Frankly, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the fishbowl conversations and the writers who think that they’ve suddenly discovered a Brand! New! Thing! and the detractors (“mums should be playing with their children, not writing online”) and the hangers on trying to leverage traffic (“you’re creating a MORAL PANIC”) and just everything.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who liked to tell stories. She told so many stories, with so many millions of words that eventually, someone asked to buy some of her blog space. Carefully she considered and agreed, disclosing to her readers that these particular words had been paid for. Everyone rejoiced. There was no Armageddon, no moral panic and the girl who liked to tell stories bought herself a new book to read, some fancy tea and fluffy socks. Also, power for the house and nappies, because this isn’t a fucking fairytale.

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Murmuration

by Veronica Foale on April 29, 2012

in Life

I was outside with my camera, watching the weather come in. The wind was quick and bitter and the sun was just disappearing behind the clouds. Winter is on its way, as the plants die back and the grass returns to green.

In a last ditch effort to reproduce, helped along by a few days of rain, the grubs have come out, and with them, the birds. Flying fast in a group overhead, turning together, there is beauty in their movement.

Murmuration

Murmuration

Look at them, flying together. Not one bird flying backwards, or attempting to move in a different direction. One group, one mind. I expect the birds that fly out of sync have been ostracised long ago, to die a lonely death.

Animals don’t like differences.

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On being ostracised for speaking my mind

by Veronica Foale on March 23, 2012

in On Blogging

On the Internet, every day, thousands of anonymous comments are left. Trolls and pseudonyms, all mixed up in a giant stew of anonymity, hiding behind a false name and a false face.

Sometimes, one of those comments is left on a blog of mine and oooof, goes the wind out of my sails, because accusatory comments are unpleasant, at best. Usually, anons cover their tracks well enough, but sometimes, an IP address is left unblocked and there is a virtual paper trail left to follow.

This is what happened to me a little while ago. I followed a virtual paper trail and found my anonymous commenter in a place where they really weren’t anonymous at all. I screenshotted the evidence and spent three days, riding the high of “I worked out who you are” before crashing back down to earth because, “I worked out who you are”.

It’s never nice discovering who dislikes you enough to say unpleasant things, hiding behind an assumed name and a veil of pseudo-anonymity.

**

I’m a nice person. I’m kind to animals, I smile at strangers. I offer to help people when they drop the contents of their purse on the supermarket floor and I will willingly give support to someone who needs it.

I genuinely like people. I like hearing your stories and listening to your experiences.

I am a good person.

I also tell the truth, stand up for myself when I think things are unfair and refuse to stay silent if I think something is a problem.

Being kind and being strong, these are not mutually exclusive things – however, being truthful on the Internet, being strong and standing up and saying there is a problem – this is not what people want you to do.

No, it seems that people want happy happy joy joy and silently whispered conversations. They don’t want to know what I truly think.

Taylor Mali said: I implore you. I entreat you. I challenge you. To speak with conviction. To say what you believe in, in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it.

[vimeo source]

Those words have stuck with me. I have the courage to own my own convictions. To stand behind my words and to say what I feel, when I feel it.

And I would like to not be ostracised for daring to have an opinion.

Because from where I stand, that’s what it feels like.

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