Love in Various Forms

Well, we all need a bit of cheering up after my last post, don't we? So here is some love for you, in various forms.

When I am making art, or writing, or wrangling a riverdancing baby into a highchair, love is generally what I am musing on, at some level. It's an important subject and also more interesting than wondering what I'll make for tea. Plus, if you have emerged into 2017 for even five minutes, you will have noticed that, not only has it been nearly Easter since Boxing Day, it also has been almost Valentine's Day all year. So here are some works of love and ink:

Falling For You original inks on card

How Beautiful You Are original, unique greetings card

I'm Loving You postcard

These have gone all over the world :)

Bee Paradise original, unique greetings card

Saying it with flowers :)

Good. Wares duly flaunted; now for an update on the people who benefit from and inspire my work. Currently, they are going by the names of Trumpet and Plumpet.

They are really enjoying each other, which is mostly down to Trumpet being very tolerant of Plumpet's new ability to be a danger to herself and others all of the time:

I am very proud of them both:

Trumpet has been taking lots of Thomasesque photos of stones and shadows and herself:

Having bought Trumpet a marvellous witch's hat to go with her lovely dress, she announced, with less than an hour before her school Hallowe'en disco, that she wanted to dress as a spider. We agreed on a Spider Witch, hence the eight eyes:

(Do you see that little desk all covered in books and boxes and a tangle of wires? That's my 'studio'; that's where I hunch right now.)

She has had some spectacularly bonkers moments. One night I found her sleeping tied to a balloon:

She can't do that any more, because I did this:

The mornings are so much easier :).

Following on from our potato-balancing fun, we have all enjoyed Plumpet playing Where's My Wafer?:

Trumpet has been spreading the love too. She made some beautiful cards with endangered animal designs and sold them at our local cafe. She raised enough money to adopt a snow leopard for her class and a mountain gorilla for herself with the WWF. They send a toy version and now she wants to wear her dressing gown all the time:

So, all good here. Art is actually happening, depending on how long Plumpet sleeps for (this post has taken four days worth of nap!) and other things are afoot (apen?) which I will share with you soon.

Thank you for all the love after my last post. Spring is coming!

Manna Manuka

Several times I have stalled a post because I still haven't told you about this:

Manna Manuka is out in the world! The labour was fast and wonderful. Ember (Pickle has decided I should use her real name too) was my birth partner for the first three hours, copying my 'funny movements' while I managed back-to-back contractions, fetching clean pants every time my waters broke (there was an ocean in there) and phoning Granny to let her know. Regardless of age, I couldn't have asked for a better person to be with me. She was calm but excited, did everything I asked and even made me laugh. With a big grinding crunch (yes, ouch), Manna spun round to the perfect position and the contractions got much faster, but also much easier for me. Gappy came to play with Ember and my excellent friend and neighbour Miriam came to take over as birth partner and get me to the hospital. Her husband drove us and we spent a looooong time in a traffic jam (tip: don't go into labour on a Saturday morning) while I tried not to groan too alarmingly, but we got there in time and Manna was born an hour later, weighing 8' 6". She was grey and floppy in a way which makes my heart tremble as I write. The midwife couldn't get her breathing, so the neonatal superheroes flooded in and after just a few puffs of the oxygen mask she was breathing fine. I lost a very messy amount of blood, which is why I can never have a homebirth - way too much cleaning to do afterwards, but I didn't need a tranfusion.

Once I had been stitched and had a cursory bath (why do my daughters feel the need to cover me in meconium at first sight?), I fed Manna her first bottle. I was sad I didn't have a breast to offer her, but the way she guzzled it down then looked so content afterwards reassured me this was good enough. And I knew I had milk from some wonderful women in the freezer at home. Ember wanted to be the first to know Manna's name, so I told her over the phone and she announced it to Gappy and my parents. This is the sisters' first meeting:

Ember has been such an amazing big sister. I didn't imagine she would be so unfailingly tender and understanding. I feel I am falling in love with Ember in a new way, as I fell in love with Thomas in a new way seeing him with Ember.

Manna herself is awesomely contented and smiley. She even sleeps! In the night! She had bad reflux and took a while to get her birthweight back and she struggles with colic still, but generallly she looks like this:

She is cute in both ways, always watching, learning; now grabbing whatever she can.

When she was three months I had my final surgery - ovaries and fallopian tubes out. It is a big relief to feel safer, although it has been tricky getting the HRT balanced, but I think I'm there now. I didn't have to stay in hospital overnight, so Gappy had a day with Manna. It was very painful to leave her for so long, but of course she was quite happy:

So now she is splendidly plump and already very keen to be up at the table with the big girls. She is so pleased with herself and merrily teeths on bell pepper or carrot, grinning all the while.

I am so happy with both my daughters. Of course it isn't always easy being a single mum with two children and there have been times of deep grief for the loss of Thomas too, but we feel like a complete and loving family, which is all I ever wanted. Our next adventure is to find a new home, but we'll stay in Chagford and maybe it will be a strengthening thing, in the end, to get some distance from the memories which overlay this house and garden for me. There are so many more memories to be made and I will do everything I can to make them very, very happy.

Baby Face

Happenings abound. Our annual Artisan Fayre was splendid as ever and very welcome as a dip in energies prevented me doing extra markets before Christmas. The big day itself was good and happy. Pickle and I stayed with my parents in a very damp and lovely part of Somerset for a few days. I was not permitted to leave the sofa (to be honest, I didn't put up much of a fight) and Pickle had a great time amassing wonders. Mum was a bit twitchy every time the phone rang because my sister-in-law was due to have their first baby on January 1st. Luckily she has stayed put well past National Hangover Day and we're all now impatient to meet her, particularly her mum.

Meanwhile I have been working and readying our home for my new daughter. My laptop is going through a tricky patch in its relations with my external harddrive, so I can't access photos, but I do have this scan picture:

I had an extra scan because her growth chart looks disasterous, but it seems that is because she is trying out a new position every time she's measured. I've told her my preference for head down, but you know how hard it is to get kids to listen.

So all is well. Pickle has gone back to school having not had enough holiday to really recover from last term and the excitement of Christmas, but she is happy to do so and I, while predictably tired and experiencing mild versions of various pregnancy ailments, am basically hale and hearty and deeply grateful that my family is growing in this beautiful way.

Wishing you all joy this year - not simply happiness (although go ahead and have a bunch of that too), but the kind of wriggling, skipping joy which makes it nearly impossible to behave sensibly.

Still Reaching For The Light

It is done.

It was a very happy thing to create (see my last post for earlier stages), but already Christmas is making demands and the baby is also making itself known with much writhing and thrashing about. So preparations for both are underway. 

Keep Saturday 5th December clear if you can get to Chagford because our Artisan Fayre is back with another wonderful mix of talented artists of all ilks, not to mention the music and teas and cakes and those very nice mince pies and... but really it's all about the art and not at all an excuse to hang out with some really lovely people in a sort of all-day party/market way. Do come!

The first load of very tiny clothes have been washed. Pickle and I had an unashamedly squealy time hanging them up to dry and it was fun to see her amazememnt at how very teeny some of them are. I'm not sure she really believes me that she was once just a loveable lollable blob of blubber which fitted into these clothes.

And space is needed (as it always is in our house), so I have taken radical action and offerred one of our sofas to whoever could carry it down our twisty stone steps on their head. No Gappies were harmed in the making of this photo.

There is a sadness in this crisp autumn air. Two young women friends, both with particularly warm hearts and generous natures, have died within the last month and another is very ill indeed. Also, I have recently made it through another wedding anniversary - a day I hope to celebrate rather than suffer at some point. Death brings gratitude to the living, as well as sorrow, and I am making the most of this gift each time I step outside, following Pickle with her new dinosaur backpack, to meet a new day. We continue to find ways to reach for the light.

For Bea. For Ella.

Reaching For The Light Supersized and Iron in the Blood

The sun is shining, the hips and haws are out and there is iron in my blood.

I realise there should always be iron in one's blood, but it transpired the reason I was struggling to cope with even the basics of our lives was that I had too little. I don't yet feel like The Iron Woman, but the house is less of a midden, some paperwork has been achieved, my current commission is progressing (more of that later) and I am here, reporting my emergence to all you kind souls who were so lovely after my last post. There is still some way to go, as this morning there was a moment of Mama-fail when there were no clean 'Wednesday' socks. Pickle has such high standards!

The school wheel is turning again and this year Pickle is balancing beautifully in its centrifugal spin, skipping up a reading scheme (a relief for me too) and generally benefitting from the calmer, more focussed atmosphere. She was particular about having 'proper shirts' (no comfy airtek for this girl) 'with wrist buttons'. See what I mean about standards? I'm tempted to buy her cufflinks for Christmas - they will blow her mind!

You can't tell from that picture, but Pickle's beautiful ponytail...

has become a beautiful squirel tail.

She is very happy about this and brushing her hair is a much happier time for us both.

Having felt so grim all during the holiday and only taken Pickle on daytrips (which were brilliant) and a few days at my parents' (which were also good), I was sad we hadn't managed a real holiday while it's just the two of us. That's the only reason I can come up with for why I agreed to go camping whilst pregnant in September. I'm very glad I did. We went as part of a gang of families from Pickle's class and my lovely friends put up and took down our big bell tent (which I currently can't even lift) and we totally lucked out on the weather, so a delightful weekend was had by all.

My sand angel found innovative new ways to become filthy

while I admired the view of blue sky and other people in really cold water.

 The children were very proud of the crab they found

and at the end of each day Pickle and I snuggled up and did lots of this:

Chagford has been temporarily renamed Chaiford for the Bangra finale to Chagford's famous film festival. An Indian/Bangladeshi restaurant has serendipitously just opened and their stall scented the Square and made me miss India. Pickle and her best friend (and fiancee) had had a sleepover at ours the night before and been mostly awake since 4:00am, so we didn't drag them round stalls for too long. We took them to the park and then to the pub for chips where our young friend smashed his apple juice bottle so spectacularly that the waitress smashed a tray of hot chocolates. We haven't been back. Bellies finally full of chips and children placated with hot chocolates and relay wees (why can't they all go at once?), we staggered blindly into the sun for the Bhangra flashmob and amazing elephant, which lead the procession.

And during all of that, in half hour bursts while I was confident I wouldn't vomit and Pickle was alseep and I had enough concentration, I have been slowly Reaching Towards The Light again. Someone saw one of my greeting cards and wanted the original, but it has long sold. So she commissioned me to do the same (I gave her the speech about how it will never come out exactly the same), but bigger. It's still not finished, but the Light is in sight. I had planned to take a smooth series of photos, but you will see I have forgotten for patches of time.

More greenery needs to shoot up and those flowers are no good to the bees without nectared centres, but it will be done soon and brightening a new family home, which pleases me very much.

Meanwhile, my new family member is growing apace (as am I). Lots of reassuring kicks and an anomaly scan in only a couple of weeks. Pickle and I can't possibly wait to find out if she will have a brother or sister. The citizens of Chagford are making their guesses. Add yours here if you have a hunch. I do, but I'm not telling...

The Blooming and the Bud

There is so much I haven't said.

The seven-week scan with the two blinking heartbeats. Two! The horror in the eyes of friends as they congratulated me. The planning for two of everything. Pickle's pride and excitement at being a big sister to twins.

Then the weeks of rolling nausea and exhaustion which left me barely able to care for Pickle, myself and my two growing beings, and entirely unable to to do any housework or stay awake for an entire day. Pickle has been amazing. I am very grateful for how she accepted and adapted to my less fun state.

The 12-week scan, my first chance to see them properly. But... one heartbeat. Just one now. One healthy and very active baby; one sad forever-bud adrift within me. No heartbeat and no future. We will never know who it would have been if the folds had been crisper or the edges more neatly aligned and the whole wonderful origami of evolution had - Ta dah! - made a baby, a human instead of this tiny cloven-brained frog with no jump. We will never know.

Very, very much (I have pinned my sanity on this), I hope we will know who this other baby will be as it and I bloom together towards birth. Because I am still carrying my little frog, there is a risk of losing both, but I want to spend all the time we have together, 70 more minutes or 70 more years, believing in this life and preparing myself for the full-frontal heart collision that is motherhood again. 

It is time for something really spectacular and wonderful to happen to Pickle and I. Twins seemed the miracle which promised us happiness and joy. One baby is miracle enough.

Trying Again

I am trying again. I am busy injecting myself, taking pills and supplements, drinking herbs and changing patches in a second attempt at creating a baby. (This is how you do it, yes?) IVF is perhaps not for the sane-hearted. You really have to want this so badly you are prepared to put yourself (and, in my case, the five-year-old I live with) through a brief menopause (waking up thinking, Why is my house so damn HOT?), then extreme PMT (be warned: this is where I am now, although mostly I'm just weeping rather than shouting) and all manner of undignified scans (although I love seeing my amazing insides on the screen). So, some time in the first half of March one of my snow babies (frozen embryos) will be brought home to my womb, hopefully to snuggle in safe and sound (which is what didn't happen last time). After the transfer is the epic two-week wait until I can do a pregnancy test.

It is a good time to be making a baby. The flowers are coming out; we have had a couple of days of strong sun; long-tailed tits are eating fatballs outside my window; a red admiral is against the pane; and my friends are having babies, just to prove it really can be done and Pickle wasn't some kind of fluke.

Not a fluke, but still a miracle which dazzles me every day. And so many days... Pickle is five now. Five whole years. We went to a puppet show at the theatre with one of her friends and had a little party at our house, with games and balloons and party food and the splendid diplodocus cake her Gappy had made with her (to Pickle's design).

Her actual birthday was a school day, so we stopped on the way home for hot chocolate, then a lot of present opening.

I hadn't expected Pickle to be at school on her birthday because I didn't think she would be going back after half term. She began in January, then quickly became really ill and missed the bit when her friends who'd started with her became confident. She hated it and was miserable for a long time. Holding to my belief that she would love school if she could get over this first insecurity, while constantly wondering if I was just putting her through hell for no reason, has been the hardest thing, apart from getting us through without Thomas, that I have done as a parent. There is such a strong desire to make her happy and I could have done that so easily. I could have quit at any moment and decided she wouldn't go to school. Pickle would have been delighted and I would have been very relieved. I came very close so many times, but held my nerve. I had seriously thought about home schooling, at least for the first few years, but her school has allowed me and other parents to send our children part-time. Pickle goes three days a week and enjoys it. She often doesn't want to get out of bed and she hates to be rushed getting ready, but she is full of good things when she comes home and is proud of what she is learning.

We do some home schooling still, but I'm happy if that happens in an informal way and trips out definitely count. Recently we went to The Eden Project with friends. The girls loved dressing up.

I failed to interest Pickle in some great sculpture.

We saw lots of wonderful plants and listenend to an accordian-playing storyteller with a beautiful throne.

In the tropical biome, the children took their tops off and discovered they could cool themselves by slathering cold mud over their bellies. They looked wonderfully feral but my camera couldn't withstand the humidity so no pictures.

So, my girl is now five. I am walking a very wobbly hormonal tightrope. A month from now I may be pregnant. Thank heavens for spring!

Solstice Lamp

The night - that last night - Thomas came home from hospital, I lit a lamp and hung it outside our gate so, as he was driven back to us, he could see home from the earliest possible moment. I couldn't wait those extra seconds for him to know how much we wanted him back.

The dark is good for me this year, a good time to be trying to brew new life.

But still, the tiny lengthening of the light feels like the world hanging out a lamp for me. I will get home. And if I am very, very lucky, I will see the sunrise.

A Time to Rest, plus Breasts, Beer, Boots - oh, and a Baby

So, my husband died and I've had a couple of years adjusting to the emotional and practical realities of single parenting while grieving him. I have stopped hoping that one day I will feel unmitigated joy again. Those times have gone. No matter how good, it would always be better if I could be there with him, or catch his eye at the funny moment, or tell him about it afterwards. Or see his pride in our marvellous daughter. Or hers in him.

But all is not lost. Being diagnosed as coeliac was a hassle I didn't want to confront so soon after Thomas's death, but I feel physically and emotionally so much better for being off the gluten which freaks out my body. I feel I am a new and improved person and I wish Thomas could have known me now.

The BRCA1 diagnosis a year in was a real blow and I wish I had known in advance it would take another whole year before the surgeon agreed to take off my breasts. But now I am healing beautifully  and my good girl is over the insecurity she felt when she saw the person who forms her bedrock so vulnerable. She has a new Big Girl bed and is relishing this rite of passage. It has confirmed to me how often unpleasant and difficult behaviour in children is a result of a need not being met - most likely not recognised, perhaps even by themselves. I doubt us grown-ups are much different. Who amongst us, with all needs met and held safe in a loving community against future needs, would rock the boat? No - then we call down the strong winds and sail on, leaving laughter in our wake.

So it's been a tough couple of years but I feel I'm over the highest hurdles. The grief marathon is always the most gruelling thing, but I have found a pace I can maintain and I have friends handing out water at regular intervals. I can do this. It would seem to be a time to rest and recuperate now. To focus on my creativity, on doing all those extra things I plan with Pickle. To really make my home the way I would love it to be and to read all those enticing books which line my walls. I feel I have earned a few years of just being, letting the sadness ebb and flow as it will and savouring all the good things I have summoned to myself as Pickle grows and learns and flourishes. I feel I deserve a bit of a life-holiday.

But that is just not my style. I am naturally more of a headlong-into-the-storm kind, so years of taking it easy just don't sound like fun. No. What I actually need in my over-stretched single-parent life, I have decided, is another child.

Yes! I hear you cry. What a sane and practical idea! We totally see how this will work out fine.

Great. I'm so glad you agree.

However, there is still the tricky matter of how. Although Thomas never acquired the organisational skills to keep a pair of socks within the same continent, he was all over the sperm-production side of things and so I rather left that to him and failed to learn how to do it myself. I can get very Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves about fixing stuff or re-pressurising my boiler or deciding a law is unjust and trying to get it changed (a story for another day), but this baby lark, which is what us women are supposed to be good at, has me stumped. I need help.

I was all set to adopt, but reading the blogs and message boards online gave me a more realistic picture than the one presented by the agencies and I felt it was too big a risk for Pickle, having already lost her Dada, to bring someone into our family who was damaged in some way and would need so much from me that I might have too little left for my beloved girl. I was sad to let that idea go and remain sad about all the children in such devastating need of love and security, but I no longer think I can help them. Fostering, some long way into the future, is still an option.

Of course then I thought of all the many ways I could find myself pregnant. Some felt immediately repulsive, others I took a couple of tentative steps into exploring before turning back. After years of essential oils and herb healing, living very close to the land and spending long times silent, of buying organic and loving nature with increasing devotion, I found myself left with one option: a clinic.

In so many ways this is not where I ever expected to be. Of course I thought I would have breasts my whole life. I thought my husband would live into his fifties and, if he survived his first heart transplant, into his seventies. I thought I would make children the easy and fun way. I thought a lot of things. What I think now is that the universe is clearly following some plan other than my own but I daren't ask for change because right now that plan includes my daughter being happy and healthy and bright and by my side. There is nothing I would swap for that.

But I am aware of Pickle's other side. Her lonely side. It would of course be best if Thomas were holding her other hand, or even if there were a little string of paper-doll children joining one of our big hands to the other. Many people, including me, think it would be best for Pickle if I had another relationship. I just can't. I'm not ready and I don't want to and No. Sorry but No. So what if she had a little sibling? Even a smaller person would bring complexity to our intense fire girl-fire woman dynamic and I think that would be a very good thing. I am aware of how desperately needy I am of Pickle. I try to hold myself tall and never lean, but I fear doing it and I would never want her to feel she had to supprt the weight of my need and my sorrow alone. What she needs is a friend and all siblings are great friends, right? Right. So, to the clinic.

I had visions of a no-drugs way, but have discounted that. I don't want to waste time on a process with such a low success rate (I will not really feel safe until my ovaries are out) and I don't want to spend thousands of pounds I don't really have. (Do please pop along to my Etsy shop!) But most of all I really do not want to go through the rollercoaster of trying and failing any more times than I have to because I cannot do that without dragging poor Pickle round with me. No matter how Fine thank you! I pretend to be, I look round to find Pickle face down on a shop floor screaming her heart out and I think, Yes, I feel like doing that too.

So, I have settled on the cosy-sounding Gentle IVF. Essentially, a much lower dose of drugs to force my blessed body to ovulate within office hours (a true fact!) and only one fertilised egg implanted at a time because a multiple birth seems laughably ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that it could still happen, but I hope not. One sibling for my girl. One more child for me. Then an oopherectomy (isn't that a lovely word?) and then all I have to do is raise two children single-handedly. Phew! And I said I didn't want a rest.

Meanwhile, Thomas is busy supporting this whole crazy enterprise with his artwork. Here is the latest addition to my Etsy shop, a combination of all his favourite things, it seems:

If I am able to bring a new person into this world, I know I will sadly miss having a strong partner by my side and keenly mourn the loss of my breasts too, but in my madness I somehow feel this new child will never be quite fatherless, even if they cannot or do not find their Donor Dad. There will always be a tune on the breeze from one of the finest fathers I have had the honour of knowing.

Thinking Negative

Pickle's going to be an astronaut and is quite serious about training. So far this has included eating extra green veg and walking further. I would love to find a way to include toilet training, after a bit of a relapse, but she has chosen the one profession where you really are supposed to pee in your pants. Two friends have agreed to join her, so watch this space for progress reports on our all-girl team to the moon. [At the time of publication, there is some possibility of her being a roofer instead. Either way, she's aiming high.]

I thought we'd have a spacious and relaxed summer this year, but we just can't stop having adventures. 

We've been to stay with my sister's large and wonderful family, which is an adventure in itself, and we all went to see Happy's Circus, which was brilliant. They're aimed at schools and I'll be trying to persuade Chagford School to invite them. The kids were all entranced and Pickle couldn't stop herself standing when something extra exciting happened.

With only one night to recover from that, we flew off to Jersey to see my good friend and her daughter. 

Always a fan of the budget holiday, we camped in their garden and had a lovely time.

We played in big rock pools (Pickle still not being a fan of the sea)

went rock climbing

spent a whole day at the Gerald Durrell Wildlife Park (I can't do zoos)

enjoyed the company of Uma the coral snake

went down huge slides

got genuinely lost in a maize maze

and generally had a very lovely time.

We flew home (Pickle opting to leave the plane halfway, but being talked out of it by me), washed some pants and drew breath, then off to my parents' home in sunny Somerset, where we had a ride on a proper 'woo woo' steam train

saw sheepdogs at various stages of training confuse a lot of sheep and ducks, and some amazing birds of prey, including this lannar falcon

and Pickle showed off her Forest School skills.

Meanwhile, I can now steer a car a bit, as long as I don't have to go round a corner while changing gears and have even done 70mph on the A30, then later discovered a bee in the car.

And as if that weren't stressful enough, I've got my BRCA1 gene test result this Monday. If it's positive, I think I'll have a double mastectomy as soon as possible, then my ovaries removed when I'm forty (in five years). So let's think negative :o).