Things Do Get Better

Anniki Sommerville - 11 Nov 16

Today I was going through the loft (full of junk, so much junk) and I found a photograph of my parents just after they’d brought me home from hospital. It’s a very faded, black and white shot but the expression on both their faces is unmistakable. Shock. Fatigue. Sort of out of it. I’d seen this photo a thousand times before but had never TRULY seen it.

Now I could appreciate that feeling.

After having my daughter,  whilst still in the hospital, I remember looking in a full length mirror (in the hospital bathroom) and my body looked like it had been in an accident. I was too scared to look down as I knew there were stitches holding stuff together and if I didn’t look too closely, I could pretend all was correct. I was on morphine. I had black eyes that made me look like an exhausted raver. When Mum arrived I asked her to go downstairs to the kitchen to make me some toast. I craved normality. Usually chirpy I struggled to make sense of everyday objects. I’d brought a lovely wash bag packed with Liz Earle goodies and aromatherapy oils but they seemed totally useless. I’d been gearing up for this massive event and now it’d happened and was AWFUL.

At night I was left alone with my daughter and positioned my phone at the end of the bed and tried to watch Gwyneth Paltrow in ‘Sliding Doors’ on the BBC IPlayer. I thought I was being normal but I wasn’t. Each day a different doctor came in and asked me if I was depressed. I wasn’t depressed. I just felt like I’d been shot out of a rocket and had landed in an alien universe (I didn’t tell them this. I was worried that perhaps that’d be a bad thing to say).

I came home and things got worse. My breasts were enormous but produced a thimble full of milk. I wore giant nappies that made me feel a hundred years old. My partner looked at me with a mix of pity and concern. I cried all day. Meals felt pointless when you couldn’t taste the food and felt so tired. I stared at my make up bag and thought how stupid the woman was who’d worn all this muck. So frivolous! So silly! I still looked pregnant and a man in the street asked me when the baby was due. When visitors came I felt envious of the fact that they’d brushed their hair and smelt nice. I wanted my life back. I wanted to clamber back into that rocket.

I have a close friend and I called her each day. She has three children and is a bit of an old hand. I asked her about feeding. I bored her about nap schedules. I sent her long text messages with times of feeds and asked if she agreed with these times. I cried as I did laps of the local park in the cold pushing the buggy (when my daughter fell asleep I listened to Radiohead which possibly wasn’t a great idea). I asked if she hated her partner as much as I did (on bad days I fantasised about hiring a hit man because he’d coughed in the night and woken the baby up). She listened. She reminded me of fun things we’d done and would do again. I couldn’t see FUN happening every again. Not ever.

‘Things do get better… honestly they do,’ she said calmly. 

It’s a fairly trite phrase isn’t it? And it’s not particularly insightful perhaps when you’ve got nothing much to look forward to. But nevertheless her words kind of helped me get a bit of perspective back.  And these words (or at least the belief behind the words) help if you’re coping with a newborn or if you’ve had a terrible month at work. They work if your relationship is floundering and if you’ve shouted at your toddler and thrown a piece of burnt toast at their head.

I have friends who have now moved onto baby number two and they’ve returned to that alien world. I see that familiar look in their eyes. Like the exhausted raver. The blank stare. The inability to see the way through. Whether it’s the first or the second time, it’s still your life turned inside out.

‘I want ME back again,’ my friend groaned, ‘I’m broken. Completely broken.”

I told her what would happen. It would start happening very soon. Her mouth lifted ever so slightly at the corners. Her face puffy from the lack of sleep. A sort of smile on her lips.For a moment, beneath all the confusion she remembered. It had happened before.

Things DO get better.

And suddenly that phrase seems kind of magical right?

(Image: http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/278660)

Anniki Sommerville

I'm Super Editor here at SelfishMother.com and love reading all your fantastic posts and mulling over all the complexities of modern parenting. We have a fantastic and supportive community of writers here and I've learnt just how transformative and therapeutic writing can me. If you've had a bad day then write about it. If you've had a good day- do the same! You'll feel better just airing your thoughts and realising that no one has a master plan. I'm Mum to a daughter who's 3 and my passions are writing, reading and doing yoga (I love saying that but to be honest I'm no yogi).

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