Peedie one is already in 6-9 months clothing, little beansprout keeps growing so quickly. What happened to that tiny little thing that just fit so gently on my shoulder, now there is a heavy little lump digging their chin into my collarbone.

As for sleep. What’s that? Joking aside a little someone has reached mega clinger stage and only wants me. Which is lovely in some ways, frustrating in others.

I make the joke that you loose all your dignity when you have kids, and it’s kind of true. I’m sure all mums know that solo trips to the toilet are a rare occurrence whether the kid can walk and follow you in or has to act like a parrot on your shoulder squalling at you like a little seagull. Except at 5 months you have to multitask a little more and provide some kind of entertainment or distraction to the kiddo even if that means playing a million rounds of peekaboo with a burp cloth.

Real talk. The anxiety is currently worse than normal. But I am not entirely “raw dogging” life as I’d usually call it. I have reached out and got on waiting lists for counselling. I’m beyond my baseline of shitty mental health so I am actively trying to make it more manageable.

That’s the thing though isn’t it? Being disabled, whether its dynamic or not, you’re always having to work out how to make things more manageable day to day.

I’ve had my first part of my assessment discussing the current issues. Things like disassociating and so on and so forth. The next session is my history. I am anxious as it is to do that, not in a good way like jumping at the bit excited to go get it done. Anxious in the dread sense when you visit the toilet something like ten times or more before lunch time. Stuff like that. I am not the first or last to suffer with anxiety, and it appears I’ve had a baseline of it from childhood that is now at a high baseline for what I consider to be “normal” for me (high/severe for a healthy person I suppose but it’s been that level for years.) with the increase I can’t ignore it.

Whether its hormones, having kids, sleep deprivation or a new part of the rollercoaster who knows.

What I do know is, something needs to change with that.

Yay a small miracle has occurred. I just hope I am not celebrating too prematurely.

So I finally managed to put pen to paper so to speak and got some words out. Whether they are good or not remains to be seen. But they are there, they exist. That’s always going to be the first step I suppose. Making something exist.

Surely that is a good enough start?

It’s hard to battle the urge to revise and edit as I am going but I am having to exercise some self discipline to get things done and just plow through the draft.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel for finishing this draft of MAC. Which is really exciting.

Then after that it is editing so it will be draft 2 of the revision. One step at a time. I just need to finish what I am doing first or I will wind up frustrated at not being “there” yet.

I am already itching to get draft 2 done and get some developmental edits and such done so that I can really work on getting it ready to query.

Also I think I have an idea for a spin off for one of my favourite side characters, so I might plot that to keep that world going in my head.

Something tells me doing this post partum updates monthly might be a little easier for my brain and negotiating naptime.

Well peedie one is still 25th centile for the most part. Going through a growth spurt and teething bless. The sun is out more so hopefully after this round of jabs we might go out a little bit more.

Not so peedie one is absolutely loving being a big sibling, I’m a very proud mummy.

Had a fair few sleepless nights now under my belt, I don’t think it’s getting easier that’s for sure.

Rolling is progressing however and peedie one is getting even chattier, its adorable. Loving our birds that come by on the bird feeder and fight over it.

Ready for a nap as soon as I can grab the chance as always.

There’s a massive difference in birth and postpartum this time, primarily keeping my remaining organs would have that effect. The support here is also incredibly different, I’m less stressed with potential boundary stomping and proximity to my main sources of stress. 600+ miles is bound to help that. Certain triggers for my PTSD related to that still are something I am tackling. Coming out of hyper vigilance is likely to take a lot longer than I give myself time or credit for. Its been a couple of years since our move and I am still healing and need to give myself grace and time to move forward.

I keep forgetting to book a debrief to go over the birth. I keep forgetting to do a lot of things at the moment. The joys of baby brain. The hair loss that goes with that too, brutal.

Well the day of the jabs was crazier than I expected.

I woke up that day with the most bizarre radiating pain in my stomach that settled in the lower right side that didn’t do anything but get slowly worse. So I did what any sane person would do, call the GP and see what they say. I wound up called in and poked and prodded, they were unsure if it was just a lovely case of Gastro or my appendix. So off I got sent to A&E.

Thankfully turned out after testing they put it down to Gastro. Little one went and got their jabs. Came home and we both spent a few days feeling sorry for ourselves.

Not long after that we wound up with a stinking cold too! So that was certainly not fun. We are slowly coming to the other side of that.

Physio has been a challenge but that’s kind of obvious.

Little one is getting bigger and is finally in 3-6 month clothing and rocking it.

I have yet to see what the bottom of our laundry basket looks like, its getting filled with tiny clothes and mine, someone has a penchant for puking all over my PJs and having more costume changes that Cher because of it. Fun.

Well, the next round of jabs are this week so I am expecting a tough few days later in the week. Doesn’t help that the poor sausage has had a streaming cold for about 4 days.

Week ten went by relatively smoothly although exhausted I am absolutely over the moon at just how well tiny tot and big tot are doing together. I definitely enjoy seeing them bonding and becoming best friends. Big tot wants to help with things for tiny tot, which is sweet but we definitely are trying to preserve their childhoods and not give them responsibilities like that as much as possible.

Week eleven, everyone’s had a massive cold at some point the last two weeks. Tiny started coughing and sneezing during the week. Had an early 12 week check for height and weight etc and Tiny is following the predicted path for the percentile, with a slightly bigger head. We’ve had to retire newborn and 0-3 hats very quickly.

Other than that the last couple of weeks have been fairly dull. Got rid of an armchair we had second hand to make some space which is absolutely needed thanks to the baby stuff everywhere.