A Mummy’s Story

I think it is incredible how much you can hide behind a smile.  I was waiting for a bed to be prepared on the ward for me, feeling numb. I would need two steroid injections, 24 hours apart, to encourage the development of my baby's lungs. Your lungs are the last part of your body to form when you are in the womb so, as our baby was arriving 8 weeks early, intervention was required to give baby the best possible chance of survival. I had been warned that the steroid injections are particularly painful and they are administered to fleshy part of the lower back. The midwife took me back into the room where I had had my scan for the first injection before I moved to the ward. I was so anxious. I had no idea how painful this was going to be and I felt very shaky and sick. Aly was by my side, holding my hand. I did make it known how nervous I was to the midwife whose response I have never forgotten: "Now come on, you want your baby to be ok don't you?" I look back now and t...

  So it was the holiday season again. I wasn't going to be able to run away like we did in 2019; there was a global pandemic (just in case any of you had missed that fact!) Boris did not put us up North in tier 4 over Christmas so contrary to the above photo I had no real excuse to hide away either. I say that as my therapist is very much challenging all of my avoidance strategies and I have a lot of them. One of the hardest challenges is breaking the cycle of not truly feeling my pain, sitting with the horrible feelings. I avoid the bad feelings and avoid situations which I know will hurt the most. Thing is anxiety based avoidance makes us more fearful of the event / thought / emotion we are avoiding. Imagine a diving board. Every time you come to the edge to divebomb you stop yourself as the water might be too cold. By stopping yourself from jumping as you think that water might be too cold you have negatively reinforced the idea in your head that you saved yourself from the cold...