After my last post where I felt I had turned a real corner in feeling more positive and in control of things, someone up there decided to throw a spanner in the works.
Last week I felt super crap as I had flu. This made me feel emotional and a mess as I couldn’t cope with looking after the kids as it was too exhausting and I felt too awful.
Then last Tuesday my dear Gran died. She was very old, 95, so of course we expected her to pass at some point, but the time from her getting ill to dying was all very quick. She was able to die in her own home and was completely at peace and pain free which is a blessing, but my god am I sad that’s she’s gone.
My gran was Dutch so the funeral was obviously going to be in Holland, however I didn’t have a passport. So the day after my gran died, I was in Newport, with flu and two children and thank god hubby too, getting a passport. It was quite possibly one of the worst days I’ve had in a long while. We had to wait 4 hours before we picked up my passport, so just had to hang around. The kids were getting tired and grumpy and I was feeling as rough as hell. After getting my passport, the trains home were cancelled so we made our to the rail replacement bus service. What joy! My heart sank further when the bus dropped us off at Bristol Parkway but no trains to Bristol temple meads for hours. All of us were edging towards melt down so we just took an expensive taxi home. The best £20 I’ve spent in a long while.
Then on Thursday, my dear sister had her baby at 28 weeks. I had been trying to get Iris to bed, but she wasn’t having any of it, so I finally gave in and turned the light on and put her on her floor to play and thought I would check my phone. I had missed calls and texts from family and immediately called my brother. He told me that our sister had started bleeding heavily at home, was rushed to hospital and after losing 4 litres of blood, they had to give her an emergency cesarean. Thank goodness they controlled the bleeding and gave her two blood transfusions. Her little boy was taken straight to an incubator but unfortunately not in the same city as there were no spare ones. He was rushed to London, so when my sister was woken up, she wasn’t even able to even see her son for 3 days. We nearly lost them both, but because of the amazing staff at the NHS, both are doing fabulously well.
Without time to come to terms with what had happened that week, I was on a flight to Holland to my gran’s funeral. I had to miss my darling boy’s third birthday party to go to the funeral which broke my heart. I felt so torn between wanting to be at my sister’s bedside, going to the funeral and wanting to be there for my son’s birthday. I honestly couldn’t make a rational decision, so my other sister had to break it all down into bite size chunks for me to absorb and made the decision for me.
After returning home at 10:30pm from the funeral, I tried to get a good nights sleep so I could drive to London to see my sister the following day.
Being able to hug my sister was the biggest relief I’d felt that week. I didn’t realise how close we’d come to losing her until she re-told the story of what had happened. I’m so very grateful that they are both alive and doing remarkably well given how early he was born.
Now I am home with my babies and I feel a huge surge of relief. Obviously what my sister is going through right now is incredibly stressful and tiring so I feel like I don’t have the right to feel completely overwhelmed and exhausted by last week’s two major events, on top of having flu, but I do. I have felt so out of it this week, like I’m watching my life from above as a spectator. But having been home for a few days, I’m starting to feel back to normal again.
I am absolutely overjoyed to say however, that despite this being one of the most shitty week’s of my life, I felt in control of myself and how I reacted to the kids. If this had all happened a few weeks ago, I think the kids would have experienced a very snappy and short tempered mummy, but because of the corner I feel I have turned, they didn’t see that at all. They have actually kept me going and been a great comfort to me. At the moment I feel I have the energy and focus to offer my sister all the strength and support she needs to get through the coming months while her little boy is in hospital, gaining enough strength to be discharged.
Now, I’m ready for a bit of calm…….please.
