The Great British Blog Festival- Friday Finale

Jun 11, 2010 by cafebebemama

And now…the end is near…and so I face the final curtain…Oh what a week we’ve had at Cafe Bebe!  Honouring the brilliance of parent bloggers far and near.  I hope you’ve been able to check on the other delightful hosts of The Great British Blog Festival…Littlemummy, Littlemumpreneur, English Mum and Me, The Man and The Baby.

So today I bring you a beautiful blogger who is going to share some of herself and how important blogging has been for her.  But first, a little bit about her…

IN A BUN DANCE is written by Ellen who declares herself as “journalist, writer, blogger, mother, wife and occasionally whole person. I started blogging about three and a bit years ago and have run hot and cold with it since then. Lately though, I’ve found my blogging mojo so I thought I’d write about how my blog helped me find the way out of PND. I suppose you could call it blog therapy.”

By Ellen Arnison

ellenarnison@hotmail.com

http://bundance.blogspot.com/

How I learned to blog away my PND

When my newborn baby was tucked under my chin – the way they are when you’re being stitched after a section – it should have been the happy-ever-after moment. Looking back, though, it was clear that things were not quite right.

I remember looking at his puffed-up, shut little eyes and thinking: “Just get him off me, I’m done. And don’t those wrinkles on his face look weird?”

I was happy that he was there, and alive, but I certainly didn’t get the hormone-fuelled rush of stomach-flipping love I got for my other two.

Then I spent the next week fretting that he actually had Down’s Syndrome or worse but no one had the heart to tell me – I was 42 after all.

It had been a tense and uncomfortable pregnancy that had read like a list of things not do do when you’re expecting. Don’t be pregnant three months after an 19-week miscarriage, don’t have a blood clotting disorder that requires daily injections, don’t have a resolutely transverse baby who keeps nutting you in the ribs, don’t have placenta previa that makes you too twitchy to go anywhere alone, don’t have irritable uterus that causes contractions every time you stand up, don’t have an uncomfortably unstable pelvis, don’t get an extension built while you’re pregnant and don’t be a freelance journalist during a recession.

On the way into the hospital the sun shone as I waddled and I remember thinking “if this is my last day, it’s a good one”… not perhaps the clucky maternal musing of most mums to be.

But it wasn’t my last day and 10 days later, the health visitor slipped her glasses down her nose and said: “He’s not gaining any weight, in fact, he’s losing it. You need to make him eat more or we’ll take him into hospital.”

It transpired he was too big and hungry to be bothered with either new-born size teats or an easy-to-digest-but-less-filling brand of milk. But after two kids I should have known, shouldn’t I?

But gradually he got chubbier, less wrinkled and I got more of the hang of it. I didn’t like the colic though – all that screaming, at me, in my ear, while the other children mooched and grumbled around the house neglected.

Then, miraculously, it seemed to lift like a hangover… for a day or two. I realise that this is starting to read like an especially lurid kind of airport novel, but, next, my brother died – unexpectedly at 38. This time the fog was a little more dense, the kind that stings when you breathe.

The same health visitor pushed her glasses down her nose and referred me to the GP sharpish. I got all the jolly good help that fine institution the NHS can give.

And then I started to write. First I won a place in the final of a columnists’ competition http://news.stv.tv/write-factor/ . I didn’t win but it did restore my scribbling mojo and got me lots of work.

And secondly, I grabbed my blog with both hands. I had fretted – among countless other things – about how my sons’ childhoods were passing while I sat in a gloom or snapped about in a grump. They are beautiful people and I wasn’t even looking at them. So my Things I’ve Learned From My Children evolved. http://bundance.blogspot.com/search/label/things%20I%20learned%20from%20my%20children%20today Recording something amusing, sweet or poignant about each of them in turn at least three times a week meant I’d think nice things about each of them at least three times a week. It was that simple – still my mind and live in the moment with a boy at a time.

I was amazed at how good it felt, not only was I thinking about them at while I typed, but all day, everyday their marvellous exploits were sticking in my mind… because I was going to blog about them.

So what I’ve learned from my blog is that my children are amazing individuals who will teach me everything I need to know as long as I take time to look.

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So powerful Ellen…thank you so much for sharing your personal experiences and how important blogging was to you as a mother and a woman.  Well done you…

Thank you so much to Erica at Littlemummy who put together the whole idea of The Great British Blog Festival.  The aim was for bloggers to share their knowledge about blogging to spread the word and the good feelings that blogging can bring.  I think we’ve more than achieved that goal!  Now that The Great British Blog Festival is over we can all focus our energies to helping ENGLAND to bring home that oddly shaped World Cup trophy (sorry USA, you’ve no chance!)…EN-GA-LAND!!!