Resolution 1 - Be a fantastic mum

[Please note - This blog post was pre written in advance. I have used a Blogger tool to schedule when these posts appear. Pre written posts will appear once a day until they run out! I may go into labour any day now and am not necessarily monitoring this blog, able to publish or respond to comments or correct errors. Normal service may or may not be resumed depending on how this whole being a mummy thing goes]


In my previous post I outlined how I was planning to behave in 2012 and what my resolutions are. Just to recap they are as follows.

1. Be a fantastic mum
2. Have a well organised home
3. Eat healthy meals most of the time
4. Help my husband as much as I can
5. Get out of the house occasionally and make some friends

I also have two general principles which I'm going to stick to. 

• Principle One: Don't try to do anything else. Stick to the 'big five' resolutions.
• Principle Two: Keep things as simple as possible. Take the easy route where I can. 

Resolution 1 is the most important of all of them but its also possibly the most vague. What does being a good  Mum actually mean? How will I know if I've achieved it? 

To be honest I don't know yet. I suppose I'll get feedback from my husband and family. I imagine the baby might have a few things to say on the matter as well. Other then that there is really no way to measure how I'm doing. 

Ultimately I think this resolution is pretty much well tied in with the other four so I suppose how I perform in those will have the biggest impact. The baby was paramount in my decision to pick those five resolutions. 

Having an organised home will help me to be a good mum. It means my baby will grow up in a comfortable environment and hopefully with a relaxed mummy who knows what needs to be done, doesn't waste time and can therefore devote herself to her baby. 

Resolution 3 will be important in the first few months as I'm planning to breastfeed. I'd like to think that my breast milk will be filled with nutrients and I've got a better chance of achieving this if I stick to a healthy diet then I will if I survive on takeaway pizza and the odd mars bar. Also I'm hoping that by eating well I'll be able to combat some of the new mummy exhaustion that is heading my way hot on the heels of the pregnancy exhaustion that I'm currently 'enjoying'. All the handbooks warn you to have a lot of food to hand and that's what I intend to do. 

Resolution 4 is key to the babies financial and emotional future. Supporting my husband in what ever way I can as much as I can means practical support for the business as well as more generalised emotional support. These are obviously essential for keeping our marriage afloat which has to be good for my little one.

Resolution 5 is a bit more vague but I want to get out into the world so my baby will be well socialised. Research has shown that isolation is bad for mothers and if I can get out into the world and meet other mums in particular I'll probably get loads of useful advice that will help me to raise him well. 

When I get to the end of 2012 I'm hoping to have a baby who has met all his milestones and seems emotionally well adjusted and secure. If I can do that I think I'll have managed Resolution 1 pretty well. 

How I intend to get organised and become the kick arse New Model Housewife I'd always intended to be and why I think my plans will work and not descend into total anarchy.

[Please note - This blog post was pre written in advance. I have used a Blogger tool to schedule when these posts appear. Pre written posts will appear once a day until they run out! I may go into labour any day now and am not necessarily monitoring this blog, able to publish or respond to comments or correct errors. Normal service may or may not be resumed depending on how this whole being a mummy thing goes]

So looking forward to 2012 this is what I intend to do.

Non numbered reason. Give birth if I haven't done so already.

1. Be a fantastic mum
2. Have a well organised home
3. Eat healthy meals most of the time
4. Help my husband as much as I can
5. Get out of the house occasionally and make some friends

It all seems so simple when its in a lovely neat little list like this doesn't it. I've even done the classic list makers thing of putting something on the list that is fairly easy to do and will soon be crossed off. Lets face it, I'm giving birth whether I like it or not! Also even though its a short list many of the items on there are huge and cover big expanses of time and action. 

I'm determined to make it work however by sticking to two core principles and I've already started planning with these principles in mind. My principles are

• Principle One: Don't try to do anything else. Stick to the 'big five' resolutions.
• Principle Two: Keep things as simple as possible. Take the easy route where I can. 

I already know from past experience that Principle One works for me. At the start of 2011 when things were going wrong in my life I cut right back and focused only on my 'core functions' and placed all my attention on the things I had to do. This worked well and I was able to keep my life going through my mental health crisis and therapy. Now that I'm enjoying good mental health I'm confident that Principle One will continue to work for me. I won't be focusing on superfluous things that I don't need to do or splitting my time on activities that, though worthwhile and fulfilling such as volunteer work, leave me spread too thinly and unable to focus on the main things in my life. 

Principle Two is more complicated and is not something I've been able to live by before. I have often been a very ambitious and overcomplicated planner and I have set myself a series of impossible standards and goals that I've been unable to keep. Aiming high is all well and good in some circumstances but only if you don't aim so high you find that gravity works against you and you drop the ball and hit yourself on the head. 

I have definitely dropped the ball on my head several times in the past. 

For example when I first became a housewife I set myself a rota of tasks. Not only did this rota plan what I was going to do each day but at each half hour and for how long. It included many tasks that were frankly superfluous such as cleaning the windows twice a week and vacuuming the carpets twice a day. In the long run it was far too complicated for me, I turned away from it, and as a result I became demoralised with myself and with the whole idea. I'd set myself up to fail and rather then face the failure I slunk away from facing it and  buried myself in other things. 

A similar problem applied to my cooking. I planned elaborate menus of recipes that involved significant amounts of time and effort. I spent a small fortune in some cases getting all the ingredients I needed. I spent hours looking at cookery books imagining myself capable of living up to the lifestyles they promoted. To this day I will happily spend an hour or more watching these lifestyle type programmes and imagining that I could be like that. 

Of course I set myself up to fail again. The exhaustion of pregnancy made planning cooking easy but actually preparing food difficult. Ingredients went to waste in the fridge and I would walk past feeling ashamed of my wastefulness while ordering in take away. I didn't consider my husband's needs or wants either. I'm a food lover and he isn't. For him food is largely fuel and he has simple tastes. I hadn't realised this about him until a few weeks ago when I watched him put away a meal of chips, baked beans and vegetarian sausage with twice the enjoyment and relish he'd shown for a more complicated aubergine curry I'd made the month before. The former had taken roughly 20 minutes of my time and been assembled from ingredients easily obtained from my freezer and the pantry. The later had taken hours of research and planning and then more then an hour in the making. 

It was these experiences that led me to realise I needed to apply Principle Two to my cooking. What's the point of preparing a fancy meal when your husband is happier with something that takes you half the time and effort? I've also realised that once the baby is here I won't have the time to plan weekly menus like I used to and I won't  have much time for cooking either. However if I want to eat well and have an organised home I need to plan.

To achieve this my husband and I have agreed that we will stick to one weekly menu for at least the first few months. Yes it means we will eat the same 14 dishes every week for a long time but at least it will be easy. 

I've already drawn up a weeks meal rota and these are the reasons I think it will work whilst helping me stick to the big five resolutions and general principles. 

• I've done my research and ensured that it will provide us with a balanced diet which covers resolution number 3. I've ensured we are getting enough protein, 5 portions of fruit and veg a day, enough portions of calcium and plenty of fibre. I've even planned it down to each cup of tea to ensure I'm drinking enough fluid which has been one of my health pitfalls before. 
• The meals I have chosen are really easy to prepare. Easy in terms of simplicity but also in terms of speed. The lunches are pretty much bung it all in a bowel type meals. The dinners are bung it in the oven and some veg in a pan type meals. I could even do much of it in a microwave if needs be. This means on really bad days my husband can cook them. It also means I won't be too over faced and find myself wasting ingredients and cooking a simpler meal or being tempted by the takeaway because I've given myself too much too do.
• One day I'd like to eat as much fresh food as possible but for now I'm utilising all the frozen and tinned ingredients that I can. This means there shouldn't be any waste or at least less waste then before. It also allows me flexibility if I need to make changes. This means I shouldn't go into a wasted food shame spiral which causes me to give up the plan altogether. 
• Having the rota means I won't be spending time thinking about cooking or wasting time in the kitchen. It will even make shopping easier. As I wrote my plan I also wrote a shopping list of what I will need to buy each week and what I'll need to check on to see how my supplies are going. I already do the majority of my grocery shopping on-line, so this should be fairly easy. It should hopefully mean that this part of my household is organised too and I shouldn't for the most part find myself running out of things. 

I appreciate that cooking and organisation is difficult when you have a new baby but I really believe that I've found the best solution for our family. I don't want to make myself ill because I haven't been organised enough to get myself some decent food. We won't have a fortune to spend on last minute type food and takeaways anyway. I really hope that I've found a happy compromise between ease and organisation and I hope that the time I've invested in planning this now will mean I have more time in the long run. 

Next time - The big five resolutions, Numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5.

Baby shaped wrecking balls - 2011 in review

[Please note - This blog post was pre written in advance. I have used a Blogger tool to schedule when these posts appear. Pre written posts will appear once a day until they run out! I may go into labour any day now and am not necessarily monitoring this blog, able to publish or respond to comments or correct errors. Normal service may or may not be resumed depending on how this whole being a mummy thing goes]

So in my last few posts I reflected on how 2011 has been a time of great change for me. I had to refocus my energies and change my life and I started the ultimately successful road of CBT therapy. In these ways 2011 has gone very well.

It would be wrong however to give you the impression that everything in 2011 has gone smoothly and ended up smelling of roses exactly as I'd planned it.

Long time readers of this blog will know that when I started blogging I had a grand scheme in mind. I was going to become a successful housewife. Not the kind you see in kitsch 1950s adverts but something new and different. A 'new model' of housewife who would not just look after the home, but support her husband in his business. I was going to spend my days cooking healthy meals from scratch and then catching up on his admin work. I'd even planned a rota for myself, looking at what I would do on any given day. I might even have been a tinsy-winsy bit smug.

Well it turns out that tinsy-winsy smugness comes before a flipping great vomit and pain ridden fall.

The first month or so wasn't great. I didn't achieve what I'd set out to and I couldn't get myself into a routine. The house was not nearly as clean or homely as I'd envisioned it would be. Further more, complications in my other half's life meant that the business didn't get off the ground as quickly as we'd thought so I found myself totally structureless and at a loose end.

I didn't worry too much because we had the stress of an upcoming wedding to deal with and I found plenty to focus on in that. I was sure I would restructure things and begin again post the wedding.

The wedding came which was lovely; but unfortunately so did my husband. This wouldn't have been unfortunate under normal circumstances had I not

1) listened to the hysterical articles in the media about how female fertility declines rapidly after the age of 25 and believed that I didn't stand a snowflakes chance on a fire of getting pregnant or
2) believed I could start using fertility awareness as a method of contraception without trying it out for a few cycles first (otherwise known as 'winging it')

Fortunately while a surprise this pregnancy was not an unwelcome one. I'd wanted a baby for a long time, my husband was pleased too and we'd both agreed to a not trying not preventing sort of stance. We weren't going to try to get me pregnant but if it happened it happened.

Still I found myself in the middle of April with a baby shaped wrecking ball smashing my previous plans to smithereens.

I think I would have been able to rebuild things again if it hadn't been for the fact that the pregnancy has sucked the life out of me and left me extremely ill for the last nine months. Between vomiting, anal bleeding, two hospitalisations, tiredness, a general feeling of trying to swim upstream in a river made of raging torrents of sewage and extreme exhaustion its safe to say that I haven't gotten much done lately.

This is largely why I haven't blogged much. Despite appearances to the contrary I didn't start this blog just to hear the sound of my own voice and talk at length about my life. Well not entirely anyway. I'd planned to use it to reflect on what is now a somewhat unusual position for a women in the modern world - that of the housewife. I wanted to talk about my failures and successes, to interact with other housewives and to reflect on how we are viewed by society at large.

I haven't been able to do any of that because I've been sat on my arse doing nothing but being ill for the last nine months.

Well sat on my arse for five months. Then a pair of feet migrated up to my ribs and since then I've been largely laid on my side to cope with that development.

I haven't been anywhere near the kind of housewife I intended to be and had very little to say on the matter. I haven't put into practice any of the things I intended to do. I am not organised and my home is not a tightly run ship. I don't even cook any more since the bump got to big and heavy for me to get near the stove. Now my husband does it. The last month or so he has done pretty much everything. He is his own housewife and he looks after me too.

I can't pretend that I'm not really sad about this and disappointed. I'm kind enough to myself to realise that had it not been for the wrecking ball things might have been different and better, but I still feel regret for the way things have turned out. In dark times I feel that I've let my husband down and it's hard not to feel sorrow when I see how stressed he has been and still is.

More to the point I realise that 2012 can't go the way 2011 has. Despite the fact that I could go into labour before I finish this blog entry, despite the fact I'm taking on a huge new job - that of mother - any day now, despite the fact everyone tells me that my life will never be the same and I will have no control over my time for the next few years - I now feel that my New Model Housewife project is more important then ever.

Once the baby is here it will be more important then ever to be organised. It will be more important then ever to ensure I do my part to make my husbands business a success. Goodness knows we'll need the money. The house must be run smoothly to ensure we don't collapse under the weight of dirty dishes and laundry. I have to try and have some sort of routine just to provide myself with some sense of normality.

I know that to many people baby = chaos. No doubt that somewhere there will be a new mother reading this and cackling hysterically at my ambitions. People have tried to knock me off my perch already by convincing me that my carefully laid plans will go to waste after five minutes.

I however am determined to prove them wrong.

Not because I'm stubborn, which is a factor, but because I don't have a choice. I don't want to live in total chaos. I don't want my husband to feel any more stressed then he needs to. I don't want my child to grow up in a chaotic home. I want to live with some semblance of order for my own happiness and mental wellness. So I have no choice, the only path open to me is to get organised and become the kick arse New Model Housewife I'd always intended to be.

Next time - How I intend to get organised and become the kick arse New Model Housewife I'd always intended to be and why I think my plans will work and not descend into total anarchy.

Therapy - 2011 in review

[Please note - This blog post was pre written in advance. I have used a Blogger tool to schedule when these posts appear. Pre written posts will appear once a day until they run out! I may go into labour any day now and am not necessarily monitoring this blog, able to publish or respond to comments or correct errors. Normal service may or may not be resumed depending on how this whole being a mummy thing goes]

So in my last post I reviewed how at the start of 2011 I spent much of my time trimming back my life and my commitments, refocusing my energies on the key areas so that I could focus my remaining strength on my therapy.

Long time readers of this blog will know that my path through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy wasn't straight forward and that I faced frustrations along the way.

Firstly was getting treatment. My G.P was sympathetic and put me forward for treatment straight away and I was quickly assessed by the mental health service and got the green light for treatment. Unfortunately due to an administrative error I fell off the list and ended up not having treatment for some months.

Once I'd got over this hurdle and begun treatment I faced other problems. A surprise pregnancy and the bitch curse that is morning sickness made some of my early sessions very difficult. Also, as previous posts will attest, I found the pace of therapy slow. At times I wondered if my therapist really understood my needs and I had doubts that the process, with its narrow focus on current problems rather then wider general issues, was really going to be of any help to me at all.

However my last sessions, which happened a few months ago, changed all that. The process my therapist taught me started to work. It was a combination of relaxation exercises and techniques coupled with small tiny steps to work through my anxiety problems. I applied the steps to my life and found myself able to do things that OCD had prevented me from doing before. Simple things I couldn't do before like preparing a cup of tea for someone else was now possible.

The sense of liberation and feeling of confidence that I gained from these little victories were highly significant for me. Before this I'd felt a sense of hopelessness about my condition. I'd freely admitted at the start of my therapy that I had serious doubts that it could work. I doubted the process and I doubted myself. I'd struggled with my condition for so many years and found the demon so strong that I couldn't imagine a life without it.

However winning those tiny victories over OCD proved that I now had a working tool I could use against it. I had been given a way to change myself so that the OCD couldn't hurt me as much any more and I could use it to live my life in the way I wanted to. I saw that I could use the same process against my OCD in whatever guise it took on. In short there was a way out.

As a result of this the me who started 2011 is totally different from the person I am now. The difference is striking and as I lay in bed yesterday trying to breath through this horrible cold even I was surprised at the change in myself. I've come to take the 'new' me for granted and I'd forgotten just how much effort and struggle I'd had to put into changing.

Since my therapy ended I've been using the techniques I was given and applying them whenever areas of anxiety or OCD like thoughts and behaviour have occurred with complete success.

Just as the life of the caterpillar must seem almost alien to the butterfly the life of someone crumpled by OCD seems almost alien to me. I'm now a new person with a new life and that's a really good thing.

Next time - Baby shaped wrecking balls.

The year in review

Yesterday was Christmas Day, a day which should normally be spent loafing on the sofa watching mindless TV and eating too much. A day of relaxation and self indulgence, of fun and frolics. Well to be fair that's the non religious British version of Christmas Day - no doubt true Christians view it differently!

My day was different then normal because I was ill with a horrible cold and I spent most of the day in bed. I wasn't in the mood to distract myself with food and I've found this years TV offerings to be dire. I ended up in a reflective mood and started to think about the past year and what I want for 2012.

My first thought was - crikey! It's been a heck of a busy 2011 and things have really really changed!

This time last year I was facing a serious mental health crisis. My undiagnosed OCD and generalised anxiety disorder held my better self firmly in its cold steely grasp. Over the previous decade and more I'd just about survived and limped through the days, but now I was really starting to struggle. The combination of not seeking treatment, not really seeing that I needed help and a combination of other pressures in my life were pushing me down the slippery slope to a complete breakdown.

Funnily enough it was Christmas 2010 and an incident with Christmas cards that got me to see that I truly needed help and needed to make some changes and at the start of 2011 I started on the path to get the help I need.

It was a painful and horrible path on which I have had to face many demons and make many sacrifices. The most painful and difficult thing was acknowledging that I was weak and that I needed to take time out to heal. It's here that I began to see that I'd internalised so many of the prejudices that our society has about people with mental illnesses.  If someone has a serious physical illness no one thinks badly of them if they need to take time out to heal themselves. It's acceptable to retreat and focus on healing. However if you need to do this for a mental illness in many peoples eyes it's 'weakness'.

I realised that I am weak and that if I was ever going to get better I couldn't let the feelings of shame or inadequacy that others tried to impose on me from stopping me getting the help I needed. I needed to refocus my energies inwards rather then outwards and while I was healing I needed to focus what little energy I did have on the areas that mattered.

So over the next few months I retreated on many fronts of my life. I completely surrendered one volunteer position I had and almost completely gave up another; reducing my support down to the one thing I could do  from my own home.  I made the choice to give up working outside the home so that I could focus my remaining energy on helping my husband in his new business. I made the commitment to start treatment and to be open with the people in my life about my illness so that I wasn't wasting energy on hiding it any more.

Now that 2011 is coming to an end and I look back on these decisions I'm really really glad I made them. If I were to write an autobiography the chapter covering 2011 would probably be called 'The breakdown that never was' or 'How I stopped my self falling off the cliff into the abyss by the strength of my fingernails'.

I truly believe that if I'd continued with my life in the way it was shaped at the end of 2010 that I'd have had a full and total breakdown and possibly required hospitalisation. I just couldn't do it. I wasn't just at the end of my tether, my tether was fraying and about to snap in that very dramatic way it does in films when someone is hanging off a cliff. (Not like in 'Cliff hanger' though. That film was rubbish. Who climbs a mountain in a string vest for goodness sake).  At best I would have limped on as I was limping on before, making myself and others around me more and more unhappy until some sort of crisis emerged.

As it was, cutting back and retreating helped to stop all of this. I guess its a bit like spinning plates (sorry I've run out of rope metaphors). I made the choice to keep a few key plates spinning and letting the superfluous ones fall to the ground. Doing this meant that I kept my life going and didn't damage myself or my mental health further. It meant that I could continue to take pleasure in the world while having therapy for my illness at the same time.

I think my Grandma could have summed it up best with a saying she loves. 'A stitch in time saves nine'. (That's practically a rope metaphor by the way, sewing thread is like rope only smaller). 


Next time - Therapy and Baby Shaped Wrecking balls.