Look! Look at what my father did for us today.
Before:
What you can’t see in this photo are the scratches, pockmarks, holes and stains in the laminate surface. You also can’t see that it’s way too short to work at comfortably.
This is what we have now, care of a piece of pine from my uncle and an awful lot of work from my father.
After:
Now we just need to reline the kitchen, paint the godawful purple and replace the cupboard doors.
Eventually.
I’ve been resisting writing this post for a long time, but here it is.
I was a teen mother and pregnant as a teenager twice. Amy was born when I was 17 and Isaac was conceived when I was 19, and born two months after I turned 20.
There is my bias, disclosed.
When you are pregnant as a teenager, you are subjected to a certain amount of harsh treatment. This is deemed acceptable by society, apparently, because no one disagreed with family acquaintances calling me a slut and no one thought anything of the midwives at the hospital treating me badly. Nor did anyone listen to my complaints about the doctor who attended Amy’s delivery shouting at me, or the brusque treatment of the midwife in attendance, who provided no support, merely barking orders at me.
That kind of treatment is to be expected when you’re 17 and obviously too stupid to keep your legs closed.
The treatment from medical staff didn’t change once my daughter was delivered and I was chastised for feeding her too much, for attempting to breastfeed too often, for undressing her, and for co-sleeping and for not agreeing to midwife home visits for the first 6 weeks post-partum.
When Amy went on to scream and refuse to sleep for her first months, it was apparently because I was a teenager mother (or maybe because my milk wasn’t good enough – depending on who was asked), rather than certain ASD qualities and a preference for being awake.
I was made to feel stupid and lesser, by all but one professional I came into contact with. The exception being an older clinic nurse who had seen it all and seemed merely impressed that I had a supportive partner and breasts that lactated magnificently. A far cry from the later clinic nurse who we stopped seeing.
If you’re a teenager walking with your newborn baby through a supermarket, shopping isn’t all about the strangers cooing over your gorgeous baby. No, it’s about the sideways looks, the slight sneer and the almost palpable relief that people exhibited when they saw that I was with a partner.
My second pregnancy was fraught with similar issues. The only thing worse than being a teen mother, apparently, is being 19 and pregnant with your second baby.
No one cares about your backstory, or what you’re doing with your life, or your plans and goals – no, as a young woman, your entire worth is tied up in your reproductive system and what you’ve done with it.
And lest you think that I am alone in these observations, a quick conversation on Facebook showed that if anything, I was treated quite well, in the scheme of things.
Think about that for a minute.
People were telling me that midwives would refuse pain relief to teenage mothers, in order to “teach them a lesson” and prevent future pregnancies.
Stories of judgement, of being made to feel unfit, of terrible treatment – these are the stories that young parents bring to the table.
Isn’t that a spectacularly crappy way to start your parenting journey?
Frankly, it saddens me. Teenage parents are not any less capable than older parents. Parenting is a great levelling field, where ostensibly, everyone starts off on an equal footing. Young parents do not love their children any less fiercely, nor is their age a barrier to being a good parent.
Anyone can be a great parent. Age does not change that.
My children have an obsession with Peppa Pig. This pink, snorting, grunting, talking pig, has invaded our house.
It started with the very occasional showing on ABC4Kids. Then, they discovered ABC4Kids online and spent hours watching the same episodes, turning the computer back on, every time I turned it off and hiding in corners with my Tablet.
Then they started to act out the episodes.
This is including, but not limited to:
Giant chunks of Peppa Pig, repeated over and over,
Pretending to be the characters (this means Isaac stops talking and starts whining)
Pretending to cry, like George (causing my brain to explode)
and
Creating and jumping in muddy puddles (my poor, poor washing pile)
It’s a bit wearing.
But the biggest problem really, is that every time I watch Peppa Pig, this is all I can see.
It’s a real issue.
Last year, I spent some time seeing a pain management team, which included a pain management physio. This was a SPECTACULARLY crappy experience, ending with me being handballed off to a psychologist before my physio would work with me again.
Of course, I’ve since finished therapy, having worked out that my feelings of anxiety and impending doom are actually a physiological problem, not a psychological one. Basically this means that I’m fucked, but that it’s my screwed up nervous system’s problem, not my brain.
My brain is fine, thank you.
The reasoning behind me needing to see a psych was something along the lines of needing to get my license, to make getting into the city easier. But I’m too scared to drive because a major dislocation while driving is life-threatening, at best. Even with braces on, I dislocate in and around them. Which is so much fun.
All of this is to say, I’ve been dumped by my physio, who hasn’t been in touch since sometime last year. I’m sure as hell not chasing him up, as his reasoning on EDS was pitiful at best –
[Joint dislocations shouldn’t hurt because they’re not causing any trauma, because you’re bendy already. It’s just a fear response to perceived damage. To which I asked what about the torn muscles and ligaments that sometimes accompany bad dislocations? He changed the subject.]
– and I decided that he was simply an arsehole.
He was my third physio – the first one deciding that I was too complicated for her to manage and sending me away, the second being lovely, but part of the public system and I have no idea how I fell through the cracks of her system, and the third being a fuckwit.
Now I’m pregnant, which requires management by a good physio.
Which I don’t have.
Insert maniacal laughter here, because of course I don’t have a physio when I need one. OF FUCKING COURSE.
It’s like the time I had to cancel an orthotics appointment because I’d dislocated my knee the night before and physically couldn’t walk. They said “we’ll call you back with another appointment” and I never heard from them again and the next thing I know, the clinic has moved and I am lost in space.
But I digress.
Pregnant with Isaac, my pelvis started to separate sometime after week 20 of pregnancy, causing excruciating pain. The pregnancy physio associated with maternity saw me, put my pelvis back together, braced me and gave me the info about my joints that I needed to get my diagnosis changed from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.
I am 10 and a half weeks pregnant now and I can feel my pelvis falling apart, which is causing a trickle down effect through my lower back, ribs, hips and knees. I was hoping to avoid this until after I’d been referred and seen by Maternity at the hospital (with access to their, frankly amazing, physiotherapists), but here we are.
At 10 weeks, I am falling apart.
BUT (and here is the good bit) I predicted this might happen (albeit, not this early) and planned ahead, by buying an elliptical trainer. Something recommended for low impact exercise and pelvis/hip/back/leg strengthening.
I think it’s helping.
And when your motivation to exercise is staying out of a wheelchair, it’s pretty hard to make excuses.
I write here, a lot. In fact, WordPress tells me that I have published 1061 (now 1062) posts here in the last four and a half years. Hundreds of thousands of words, hundreds upon hundreds of stories.
But some things are not my story to tell and so I walk away from the computer, tired with real life and unable to sink into storytelling like I otherwise might.
There’s things going on at the moment, family things, and while I could blog them if I get permission (and may, yet), it’s Nathan’s story, not mine.
I’m tired, Internet. I’m tired of dramas and pitchforks rabblerabblerabble and feeling like everything I mention online requires weighty substance. I’m sick of justifying why I’m not blogging about charity X Y and Z, or why I’m not donating time, or making more noise, or Doing Good Works.
Can’t I just write stories, without feeling the pressure to give them a moral resolution.
(Yes, yes I can and I will burn my guilt on the pyre of your pitchforky flames)
And in the scheme of things, are our Internet rabblerabblerabble’s terribly important?
Tired.
Out of energy.