Maybe tomorrow I will feel normal, as if I belong in the world again, rather than just being a me-shaped hole where something else is supposed to be.

Waking up like this, it’s as if the scales have dropped from my eyes. It’s overwhelmingly evident that I am a failure as a human being. Rotten wife, inattentive mother. All those new things I’ve been doing? I can’t do them. I don’t know why I thought I could.

I know these things are not true. I can’t understand why my mind shows me otherwise. I know one thing, but feel instinctively that the opposite is true. It’s frightening, and it makes no sense; I feel as if I’m losing my grip on reality a little.

I’m trying to get through today by making a list. I’m sure that if I can get through the things on my list I won’t feel so completely crappy and worthless. My list is:
- do the washing up
- clean Martha’s lunch off the floor
- take the things out of the dryer and put them away
- go to the shop, go for a walk, whatever. But buy milk.
- make a list of things to do tomorrow.

I know from past experience that when I feel like this, I have to make these lists, and do the items on them in order. If I don’t, I don’t do any of them, and then things are worse.

Hopefully, today is just one of those crappy days that everyone has once in a while.

We’ll see.

I find this whole thing astonishing. Surely if your child is healthy, how you get it to grow and thrive is immaterial? Why should I give a flying fuck whether the woman next to me in the under 1s group gives her child a bottle of formula? Still, there is much hoo hah on the interweb about women who do not breastfeed, and whether their reasons for not doing so are good enough.

The thing is, and no-one tells you this until you try it, is that breastfeeding is hard. Really, really hard.

At my NCT ante-natal classes we had a whole session dedicated to breastfeeding. A lovely woman came to talk to us about how breast is best, and really 99.9% of women are capable of breastfeeding. Apparently those who say they can’t are either wimps or deluding themselves. Sure, some women get mastitis, or thrush, or chapped nipples, but it’s easy to get over those minor inconveniences – they are rare, you are told. We received endless information about ‘latching on’ and different holds. Breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt if the latch is right. Chapped nipples? Just put lanolin on them and they’ll be better in no time.

After one week of breastfeeding, I wanted to hunt down that sanctimonious cow and take a cheese grater to her nipples. What would have been useful would have been more information about the support available, because without the many, many people who helped me over the course of five excruciating and emotionally draining weeks, I would have given the whole thing up, invested in a 10 gallon tin of formula, and never looked back.

There’s nothing wrong with investing in a 10 gallon tin of formula of course – it’s just that with all the propaganda flying about, the insidious judgmentalism and negative connotations in the press and in government policy about formula feeding, you feel that to resort to formula is to materially harm your baby’s chances of a decent future. The guilt is horrific. You feel like a failure – you’ve failed as a woman, and you’ve failed as a mother.

I struggled through breastfeeding, which at times was more like a horror movie (blood, pain, ripping flesh, screams) than the beautiful bonding experience I had expected. I didn’t even get mastitis or thrush, thank heaven. My boobs were simply shredded, rather than infected. I’m glad now that I didn’t give up, but at times I feared for my sanity. It would have made things so much easier if I hadn’t been racked with guilt and regret at the thought of giving up and resorting to a bottle. In the end a breastpump and a standby stock of formula saved me from chucking my baby across the room every time she wanted to eat.

My experience isn’t even uncommon. Everyone I spoke to at the breastfeeding support group had had some nature of problem. It infuriates me, however, that I wasn’t aware of this before I gave birth. I understand that people might not want to put others off, but had I known what might be in store, I would have been able to prepare myself emotionally. As it was, I spent the better part of 6 weeks in tears of pain, guilt and frustration.

Now, at 10 weeks, things are pretty much a walk in the park. Breastfeeding is cheap and easy. Hungry baby? No probs. Just whop out a boob and bingo. No mixing of formula, no sterilising bottles. It’s also turned into the lovely bonding experience that I expected.

Choosing to continue breastfeeding my daughter was entirely up to me. I wouldn’t judge anyone who chose to give up, or not to try in the first place – it’s none of my business. Far too much importance is placed on breastfeeding to the detriment of many people’s mental health.

What I’m trying to say is this: if you are reading this because you are considering giving up breastfeeding, don’t feel guilty about it. I guarantee it will be worth it if you carry on, but if you don’t, so what? Your child will not suffer, and neither should you.

That is all.

Right throughout my pregnancy, I wondered about my birth plan. All the books and midwives kept saying ‘Have you written a birth plan?’, which I hadn’t. Originally, my birth plan was going to be ‘give me any and all drugs please, and if necessary, knock me on the head so I don’t know what’s happening’. However, gradually, I became rather fixated on the idea of a natural, drug free water birth. I liked the idea of focusing through the pain, and allowing my body to do what it was designed to do, after which I would lie, beaming beatifically, on a bed, feeding my angel baby and wafting my hand at awed visitors, like the queen does on a royal tour.

Everyone we knew who had children kept saying ‘Have you written a birth plan? Don’t bother. May as well flush it down the toilet’, which as time went on I found increasingly unhelpful. Just because their births hadn’t gone to plan, didn’t mean that mine wouldn’t. I’m young(ish), healthy and there was no reason why things shouldn’t go smoothly.

So, just for your delectation, here is a look at my birth plan, as written, and what actually happened. Also, incidentally, my child was due to be born on 15 December. For several weeks, I had to resist punching people who said ‘ooh, you might have a Christmas Day baby’, as if this was a good thing. I was sure that she would arrive well in time for Christmas, and I REALLY didn’t want to spend Christmas in hospital, so when my waters broke at 2am on Christmas Day, I was, of course, delighted.

1. Positions for labour
Plan: I would like to be able to vary the positions in which I labour depending on how I feel. I would like to be as active as possible during labour, and to have physical support from Gordon. I will be bringing a birthing ball to the hospital. I would particularly like to labour in a birthing pool.

Reality: As soon as meconium (baby poop) began appearing in my waters at about 11am on Christmas day, I knew my birthing pool dream was out. The midwife sent me to the hospital, where they whacked a drip in the back of my hand to get the contractions started, and strapped me to a monitor. I wasn’t mobile, and couldn’t use my birthing ball because the monitor kept falling off and I thought the baby had died.

2. Pain relief
Plan: I would like to use water, and gas and air for pain relief. If I become very tired or distressed I’m prepared to try pethidine, although I would like to avoid this if possible, so as not to make the baby dozy when she is born. I would like to avoid an epidural, but have left the decision to Gordon should I seem particularly distressed.

Water – a non starter. For those of you reading this who are pregnant – GAS AND AIR IS THE SHIT GIRLS. Get sucking on that tube as if your life depends on it, and drop kick anyone who tries to prise it from your death grip. I loved it. I had the pethidine too, but it was a nightmare. By the time it had worn off I was yelling for an epidural, and cursing the anaesthetist, who I assumed was keeping me waiting while he had a fag break or indulged in some other such trifling displacement activity.

So, for someone who really wanted a drug free birth, I had the whole basket on offer. And I didn’t need any persuading either.

3. Assisted delivery
Plan: I would like to avoid ventouse or forceps delivery if possible.

Reality: I did manage to avoid a ventouse or forceps delivery -by having an emergency C-section, something I had been vehemently against, but which seemed like a fantastic idea when it was finally suggested at 2.00 in the morning on Boxing Day, when the midwife told me that after 9 hours of belting contractions I was still as ready to give birth as I had been in October. (Midwife: ‘You’re still only 1 cm dilated I’m afraid’. Me, wailing: ‘You have to be FUCKING joking’.)

4. Breastfeeding the baby
Plan: I would like the baby to be placed straight onto my abdomen once she has been born. I would like any examinations or assessments to be done while she is on me if possible. I would like to breastfeed the baby straight away.

Reality: While my child was fished out of the gaping wound in my abdomen, I was having a pleasant conversation with the anaesthetist about his home town of Bangalore, and how fantastic Indian food is, and how much I’d like to go back to India. I did get to breastfeed her once they’re sewn me up and wheeled me back down to the ward, but I was so out of it, I can’t really remember what it was like. There’s a video of me looking all swollen-faced and hamster like, tubes trailing from all sides, and a squirming baby on my chest, which I won’t be posting here. I didn’t have any lippy on, after all.

So, all in all, we may as well have flushed the birth plan down the loo as instructed. But none of it mattered – Martha Rose is here, and she’s healthy and gorgeous, and my god, has she got lungs.

I’m thinking of entering her in the town crier championships for 2010. I’m sure she’ll wipe the floor with the competition.

Martha Rose at 3 hours old

Niiice

My clothes are starting to become uncomfortably tight, and so I’ve bought some groovy two way stretch material with which to doctor my skirts. Now all I have to do is find the energy to… well, do anything really.

I’m stuck in a kind of personal hell. I am so tired and so lethargic that I can’t motivate myself to go out and swim. If I don’t go out and swim, and do what I actually want to do, which is lie on the sofa and eat biscuits, then I hate myself, and am covered by a settling gloom which makes me feel useless, fat and slobby. During these moods, I find it hard to believe that Gordon won’t just divorce me because I’m a disgusting slob who does NOTHING.

My hair is greasy, I have spots, and I feel sick 70 percent of the time. So far, I have to tell you, pregnancy pretty much sucks. Oh yes, I forgot about the constipation! Woo, that one’s a killer. A couple of weeks ago I nearly lost the plot because I hadn’t been for six days. And you wouldn’t believe how much trapped wind six days worth of unprocessed crap can produce. (I realise that this could normally be classed as Too Much Information, but fuck it. It’s my blog.)

I’m a joy to live with, and no mistake.

Roll on 12 weeks, when I can see the little critter on the scanning screen, and it all starts to feel real. It will start to feel real then, won’t it?

Well?

So instead, I decided to go the quickie route, and as I’m obsessed with Twitter at the moment, I thought I’d do 140 character book reviews. Unfortunately, they aren’t really book reviews. They’re just very short plot outlines. Still, what the heck. So far, I has mostly been reading:

Madame Bovary: Don’t marry a boring man, or you’ll end up as far as your ears in debt, and gargling arsenic before you’re 30.
Day of the Triffids: Humanitarian disaster, society collapses: What happens when out-of-control genetic engineering and military space debris collide. Oh…..
Carry Me Down: Oedipal Irish 11 year old unwittingly causes marital rift. Can he really tell when people are lying? Or is he just asking for a slap?
Crime and Punishment (so far, only halfway through) Moody russian student slaughters repellent pawn shop owner, then can’t decide whether he wants to get caught or not.
David Copperfield (so far – halfway through this one too). Rollicking read. Tragedy looms. Suspect it’s all Steerforth’s fault.
Moby Dick (given up on this one) – Whales. Whaling. Whale bones. Shiver me timbers, where’s me ivory leg? Find me a white whale lads, or I’ll have your eyes. Grog! Bring grog!
Mrs Dalloway: The clock chimes. Clarissa Dalloway muses attractively while her husband Richard dallies. A man in a park is suicidal. Ah, the flowers!
Candide: Everyone I love is maimed or dead, but it’s all happened for the best. P.S. God does not exist and the pope and his minions are charlatans.

Think that’s about it so far. Expect updates on David Copperfield and Crime and Punishment, and if I can manage to finish listening to Moby Dick in the car without causing a motorway fatality by spontaneously dozing off, I’ll finish that one too.

toodle pip!

A few times lately we have been to see Gordon’s grandmother, who is in her 90s, and whiling away her twilight years in a retirement home, which she hates with a passion. She’s a brilliantly cantankerous old lady – she doesn’t give a toss what anyone thinks, she just says what’s on her mind. Everytime we go there she tells us how awful everyone is, usually within earshot of several of them. So, we went to the pub, where, after insulting the landlord by saying that she ‘didn’t like his nasty face from the moment she walked in’ and that ‘you can smell people who are only after money’, she began waxing lyrical about how she can’t understand why anyone would want to have children, as they are a pain in the backside in general. We thought this would be a good time to mention that we were thinking of starting a family. Instantly she was excited for us – a turnaround so speedy I got whiplash just watching her face. She seems to have jumped straight from ‘we are trying to conceive’ to ‘the baby is due ANY MINUTE NOW’.

The other day she rang up and asked Gordon if I was ‘swelling’. He, of course, was confused, taking it to be an old-fashioned reference to conception. It made me feel a bit unsettled, and I had to check my face and ankles for puffiness, just in case I was actually swelling and hadn’t realised it.

Then yesterday, as we sat in the car on the way to lunch, she asked Gordon if it was a boy or a girl. “Is what a boy or a girl?”, he asked in some confusion. “The baby!”, said grandma. “They can tell you these things pretty much straight away now.” I don’t know how soon you can actually find out the sex of an unborn child, but seeing as we only told her we were going to try for impregnation just before Christmas, I think she’s run away with the timeline a little. I suppose when put up against 94 years, 9 months must seem like a tiny drop of time. We told her of course. I think she was quite disappointed, but I’m not sure she’ll remember.

As for me, I’m trying not to get to hopeful. It’s only month one. And pregnancy tests are expensive, especially when you use them far, far too early in an attempt to make yourself stop obsessing about how an egg might feel when it implants in your womb.

Honestly, it’s like waiting for Christmas to come around, when you’re about 4 and not sure whether it will ever, ever happen.

The only reason that it doesn’t give the plot for The Book of Disquiet is because there isn’t one. Nothing happens. Occasionally he cries and gnashes his teeth, and finds himself paralysed by metaphysical contradictions, but that’s it so far. It’s the kind of book that you need to dip in and out of if you want a taste of the, albeit beautifully written, existential ponderings of a man who feels his life has amounted to nothing. It’s most definitely a toilet book, in my opinion.

You know what though? That doesn’t do it justice. I found myself relating to alot of what he says, and marvelling at the beautiful way he has of saying it. His internal, fantasy life is so rich, that you can’t really say that he feels his life amounts to nothing – it’s just his physical existence that doesn’t do much for him. So, I can recommend it – just not all at once, which is why the book belongs in the loo.

Anyway, I decided to move onto Mrs Dalloway, which was interesting. I’ve never read any Virginia Woolf before – I always found the idea of her intimidating. Once I got used to her stream of consciousness style of writing I enjoyed it. The narrative skips from character to character, perching on one for a while, then moving on as if blown onwards by a sudden breeze. I read like I eat – with a tendency to gobble the food in record time without really stopping to taste it. I had to really concentrate on the prose in this book – every word seems to be there for a specific purpose, which can’t be said of alot of books I’ve read. Much of the pleasure comes from how she’s strung the words together, rather than the story they have to tell.

And then, once that was bagged, I started reading Candide, by Voltaire. Mercy! Voltaire! How cerebral! I was encouraged by the fact that it’s astonishingly slim – you could get through it in about 3 hours. It’s also excellent – a stinging satire on the idea of fate, and the belief held by many that everything happens for the best. It’s so irreverant. I love it. So, I won’t be astonishing party-goers with the phrase ‘Voltaire is so overrated’ tripping from my lips after all. How horribly disappointing.

Anyway, sorry if this post is on the dull side. I’ll try and make the reviews more exciting – perhaps I will inject some drama into them next time (well! I was reading Voltaire, and what do you think happened? Jellyfish invaded the earth! Anyway, I managed to finish….)

The place was in Putney – a hideous journey from where I lived, way across the other side of the city. We worked in a small office for a man who, when he interviewed me, didn’t let me get a word in edgeways and had breath so toxic that it made paint bubble on the walls.

One of our colleagues was a compulsive liar, who ironically ended up engaged to, and eventually estranged from another compulsive liar, who convinced her that he was a Harrier pilot. He’d call her up to tell her that he was off on missions, and that if he didn’t come back to remember that he loved her. She uncovered his duplicity when she spoke to his mother for the first time and found out that he was actually a cashier at the local branch of the Halifax Building Society.

Anyway, there were three of us there that were roughly sane and worth socialising with, or so we felt. One of them is still a very good friend now – one of my bridesmaids in fact. The other I lost touch with after she married a guy who didn’t like me, and whom I thought was an idiot, not least because just before the wedding he cheated on her with a winsome cello player who happened to be his secretary.

Before our estrangement, however, I went round there for dinner one evening. We talked a lot about books, because we all loved to read. I remember recommending a book to my friend’s fiancé, and he immediately dismissed it because, I kid you not, it was too modern. He said that there were just too many wonderful books written by people born before the turn of the 20th Century to bother with anything written by anyone born more lately than that.

Of course this sparked a rather passionate debate. I thought that he was missing out on some classics in the making, as well as many other books that are simply enjoyable. He thought all these Johnny-come-latelys were merely standing on the shoulders of giants, and were therefore not worth spending the time on.

It’s ironic therefore that the book he thrust up on me, and insisted I read was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who was born in 1918. “Read that”, he said “and tell me I’m wrong about your modern fluff. Read some classics, for god’s sake, you uneducated buffoon. Don’t you know that pain, injustice and drudgery are the cornerstones of great literature? ” I asked him if he’d ever read any Jane Austen, but he seemed to think that beneath him too. I still wonder if he ever got any enjoyment out of reading, or whether he was just a masochist. He probably used to beat himself round the head every day with Finnegans Wake for chuckles.

Anyway, to be honest, his description of the book put me off. It just sounded so… grim. This wouldn’t normally stop me reading a book, although anything with the word gulag in it should be approached with extreme caution, and easy access to vodka.

What has stopped me from reading it for the last 10 years is sheer bloody mindedness. I still have the pristine copy he gave me, unopened. I just can’t bear to have to admit that fact to myself that I would like it, because he was so bloody condescending.
And also an idiot.

So here we are, and One Day in the Life is on the list. And I own it. So I guess I will be reading it soon. He did ask me to let him know what I thought of it, so I’ll just have to hope that he stumbles across my review.

There are just so many books on the list, and so many wonderful ones that are not on it. In fact, I’m working from the 2008 edition. There are over 200 books from the 2006 edition that have been removed – what about those? According to Peter Ackroyd, ‘it has not suddenly become safe to die without having read Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello’, so presumably I have to include these too. Incidentally, I have read Elizabeth Costello, but there are about another 200 off that list alone that I’ve never even glanced at.

I keep looking at the list and thinking, “Why is Northern Lights/We Need to Talk About Kevin/26a/Sour Sweet not on the list?” and “What on earth were they thinking when they removed Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, but kept Sexing the Cherry?” I loved Oranges – it’s funny, bitter, sad and beautifully written. I loved it so much that I set about reading everything that Jeanette Winterson ever wrote, and let me tell you, I’m so glad I did, because it means that I don’t have to go near Sexing the Cherry at any point during this project. What a pile of over-written, self-indulgent bullshit. That goes for Written on the Body too.

And I’ve been wondering, not all books are written in order to entertain the reader, although that’s usually my reason for reading. I’ve never really liked books that require me to make a concerted effort, although I don’t like ones that insult me with their crappy writing and stereotypical characters either (Dan Brown, I’m talking to you). Reading is an escape for me. I think that Alan Bennett is probably right in that the more you read, the better at it you become and some of the books on the list will have to be left until I’ve settled into this more fully and stretched my mental muscles. Proust, for example. And Dostoevsky.

It’s so exciting though – I feel as if I’m training to climb a mountain, as if I’m embarking on a big wild adventure. Does anyone want to start me off on the foothills with recommendations for what I should read next?

It’s my birthday today, incidentally, and yesterday my best mate gave me a present. It’s a massive tome, entitled ’1001 books you must read before you die.’ This, coupled with my increasing desire to revisit the blog, gave me an idea for the project on which I am now embarking. I’m not the first person to do this, nor the first to blog about it I expect. However, I will be attempting to work my way through these books, and I will be documenting my progress (alongside other less cerebral commentary).

I’ve already read about 140 of them, and I won’t be rereading these books. It’s something I considered, but as Gordon said, I simply don’t have time. Even if I read 25 books a year I will be half-way through the project in approximately 20 years. It’s not the getting to the end that I am concerned with, however. It’s the journey. I’m going to be reading alot of books that I don’t like, I’m certain. The presence of Michel Houellebecq on the list has already caused me some emotional pain – you see, the rule is, if I’ve started a book but not finished it, I have to read it all the way through. I’m just interested in seeing where this takes me and what I learn. Hopefully some of you may be interested too.

So, there we are. I’m starting with The Book of Disquiet, seeing as I already own it. I bought it on a whim in Borders back in October, because it had a big sticker on it saying “The Greatest Book Ever Written”, or something equally hyperbolous, and I’d never heard of it. I’ll let you know how I get on.

By the way, you can find the list of books that I will be reading over there, on the right, under Bits and Pieces on th epage entitled 1001 Books. The ones I’ve read are in bold.