A Bit of a Medical Rant

Those of you who are also my facebook friends may have noticed a little rant in my status update the other day following a visit to our new GPs surgery. It went something like this:

GP: ...and you're hypothyroid?
me: Yes, after having my baby
GP: oh! That's very unusual!
Me: er, no it's actually very common
hmm I feel a ranting blog post coming on as soon as I get time for a ranting blog post!

Well I finally got time, here's the ranting blog post.

Postpartum thyroiditis (PPT) is caused by the immune system, which is suppressed in pregnancy, coming back all over enthusiastic after the birth and attacking the mothers own thyroid. Exactly how common it is is up for debate, one study suggested that 16.7% of British mothers were effected although most put the figure at around 7-8%. Either way that is a lot of women and yet my GP thought it was a rare condition.

 It's funny how the medical professions and indeed the media are falling over themselves to talk to you about some aspects of pregnancy, birth and babies but other things you just never hear about. Breast feeding, pelvic floors, breast feeding, postnatal depression, breast feeding oh and breast feeding tick, tick tick, but had you ever heard of PPT?

The problem with PPT is the symptoms. Well ok that's the problem with most illnesses but you'll see what I mean if I list some of them: Tiredness, depression, weight gain/failure to loose weight, bad hair and nails, aches etc. During pregnancy you spend months listening to everyone (regardless of whether they've had kids or not) telling you that your body will be ruined, you'll never sleep again yada yada yada. Throw in a fairly epic labour, an emergency c-section and of course looking after a baby and I could just imagine the conversation with the GP:

Me: Ever since I had a baby I've felt really tired and rubbish

GP: er, yes, you were expecting what, exactly?

Fortunately for me I have a very eagle eyed medical student friend who spotted that I had a slight goitre (swelling in the neck) this is one of the few clear indicators of Thyroid problems (but one that doesn't occur in everyone) and after a few blood tests I was diagnosed and started treatment. The good part is that PPT is very easy to treat, I just pop a pill once a day and as this simply replaces something the body is missing  there are no side effects. I will have to have regular blood tests to check that I am on the right dose and to see if it eventually goes away by itself (which is the case for most women) but oh my goodness do I feel better! Before starting the pills I felt as though I had aged 20 years and had gone from a fairly young and healthy woman to someone dragging her aged body through life. now I'm pretty much back to my old (younger) self.

This all reminded me of another Mum I met a few months before my diagnosis. We got chatting and she told me how she felt constantly tired, aching and old, just like me. Also like me she attributed it to a difficult birth, an emergency c-section and being in her thirties, as her daughter approached one, she and her husband had decided not to have any more children as she just couldn't face going through it all again. I have no idea if she'd been to the doctor about it and had her thyroid checked, but I do wonder. 

My PPT is fairly mild, it's not some terrible life threatening thing but wouldn't it be sad to think that there are Mums out there who'd like another child, but just don't feel capable of it when all they need is one little pill once a day. This doesn't seem to be a condition that midwives, health visitors or GPs are on the look out for, or even aware of in some cases. I know there are a few of our friends who read this and are working on bumps of their own right now or planning to in the near future, just pop this in the back of your mind in case you need it. Better to have a doctor think you're a silly woman than to feel too worn out to enjoy your baby.

Kxxx

Meanwhile upstairs...

While all the work in the kitchen has been happening, we've also had Evelyn's room redecorated. This involved replacing the ceiling, which was at risk of falling down. That created enough dust to cover every surface in the house. But the end result was worth it. Since the decorators finished, Kirsty has been hard at work making it into a proper baby's room. For the first time Evelyn has a room that is really her own, not a multipurpose study/spare-room/nursery. Isn't it pretty?

Transforming our kitchen

We've successfully moved into our new house now and the work to improve it has begun in earnest. The previous owner had made only one alteration since moving in twenty years ago - a new bathroom - so most of the house looks very dated and some of it is defective. We can live with the dated stuff for a while and gradually redecorate, but with a baby who is on the verge of moving under her own steam, it was important that we get anything dangerous fixed quickly. The top priority was Evelyn's bedroom, where the old Victorian ceiling was seriously bowed and risked collapsing. After some pretty foul dust, and even fouler language from our Saaarf Lahndan (South London) builders, the room now has a new ceiling and the walls have been stripped. They start painting today, so the job should be done by the end of tomorrow. This will be a huge relief, as Evelyn has been waking up very early whilst she's been sleeping in our bedroom. And it will be lovely for her to have a room of her own, rather than study/store room/baby bedroom.

The next priority was the kitchen which, as you can see from the photo below, was very dated. What you can't see so easily is that most of he cupboard doors were coming off, and the washing machine and oven didn't work. (I really enjoyed carrying about 20kg of wet laundry up the hill back from the laundrette at the weekend!)

On Monday work started on ripping out the kitchen and as you can see from the next photo, by the end of the day it had all gone. I can't believe how fast that can be done. Along the way the builders discovered some pretty dodgy work. You can see most of these in the photo:

- missing floorboards

- wet rot, dry rot and woodworm in floorboards and joists

- illegal wiring

- half-rusted iron gas pipes

- lots of lead water pipes

- missing brickwork around the (leftmost) window

By the end of day two the wiring and gas pipes were fixed, the plumbing was half done and the missing bit of wall was replaced (look at the left most window: you can see how much was missing by the amount they had to replace). The builders had also raised the lintel in the chimney (right hand side), to create space for the cooker and cooker hood. Again, I can't believe how quickly they did all this.

While all this is going on, Kirsty and Evelyn have escaped to stay with Granny (very wise). I am still living in the house, surviving on a fridge freezer and microwave in the dining room, washing dishes in the bathroom sink and to be honest mostly living off takeaway. Fortunately the weather has been wonderful, so I can enjoy the lovely garden which - unlike the house itself - the previous owner took great care of.

I'll try to keep posting a photo of the kitchen each day.

Update 28 June

Sorry I have failed to do daily updates. Here are some more photos.

After day 4 the hideous fake brick tiles had come off the end wall and even more floor had been removed.

By day five the end wall and the whole side wall had been redone.

And by the end of today, day 6, the walls were done and the floor was starting to come back together again. But you'll just have to take my word for that as the builders have also disconnected the lights and it's after dark now.

Update 29 June

Today a nice Polish plasterer came. Now we have walls that are straight at last. There also seems to be a bit more floor, but there's still more to do. The builders are back tomorrow.

Update 4 July

Work has been continuing for the last few days. More problems have been found, and thankfully resolved. It turns out that not only were the floorboards and joists rotten, the bricks underneath them were too. Here is the kitchen on 30 June, as the floor and all its supports were being removed to get to the bare earth.

A day later the bricks have been rebuilt, the joists replaced and most of the floor is down.

And by the end of the second week of work, on 2 July, the floor had been completed. Who'd have thought it would take that long to get the room into a state where it was ready to have a kitchen put in it?! The morals of this story is that if you have a leaky tap don't wait 30 years to get it fixed, and if you have your floor relaid, make sure there's proper damp proofing in it. Or something like that. What do I know about building?!

Update 18 July

Work is still continuing in the kitchen, and is about to enter its fifth week, but now the end is in sight. The floor and walls have been tiled and had their first coat of paint, the kitchen units are in, as are the worktops and the appliances. Here are some pictures from Wednesday 14th.

Moving on

After an intensely stressful few weeks we have just exchanged contracts on our flat and on our new house! On Monday we will be leaving slummy towers after almost six years. 

While it's fair to say that I can't wait to have more space, a garden and a lovely park on our doorstep I will also be very sad to leave. 

This is where we rented our first place together, then decided that we liked the building (and each other) enough to make our first major commitment - a mortgage. This is the place we headed off from with our backpacks for adventures across the globe and where we returned to filthy, exhausted and pathetically grateful to our lovely friend Guy for leaving us bacon and OJ in the fridge. 

We've had parties in silly costumes and wasted far too many Sunday's playing Mario Karts while trying to recover from excessive  Dim Sum consumption. 

We came back to this flat after getting engaged in New Zealand, planned our wedding here and when the job was done Fred carried me over this threshold. This is of course also the place where I found out I was pregnant, where I sat about like a lead space hopper and where we brought our baby home to from the hospital.

It's been good times little flat.

I was thinking all this as I came down in the lift this afternoon. As I left the building a young couple were telling the concierge they were there to meet an agent to show them a flat. They looked nice, I hope they take the flat and I hope they will be as happy here as we have been.

Kxxx

         Friends "help" us move to our first flat in Slummy Towers, summer 2004

       Warming the new flat - Goldfinger party 2005

        New Years Eve/ Engagement party - Gold, Frankenstein and Grrrr 2006/2007

       New years 2008/2009 - Getting through the party season without letting on I'm pregnant

      Posing for some early bump pictures (17 weeks)

      Bringing our baby home

A Baby-Free Weekend (moo)

It is a very very strange feeling to board a train with only your bag (and a chocolate brownie) in your hands, sit wherever you like, read a magazine and have a little doze. At least it is when every trip for the last nine months has required military grade planning, careful selection of the only spot on the train with space for a pushchair and a journey spent bouncing, cooing, feeding and generally doing anything in your power to prevent baby meltdown. 

This time there were no silent looks of "oh no" from my fellow passengers, I was pleasantly anonymous on the 15.50 from Waterloo and it was wonderfully liberating.

The reason for this little adventure was that I was off to a hen weekend! A whole 48 hours of grown up conversations, fizzy wine and maybe even a lie in or two. Bliss! Oh and a jolly good send off into married life for a very lovely friend.

Of course in reality I hadn't just chucked my best drinking shoes in a bag and headed for the station, these two days had required several months of planning. The main issue being that Evelyn is still breast feeding. Fred is a pretty good hands on Dad, but there are limits, so I have spent weeks gradually building up the supplies in the freezer and although I am very grateful to the little yellow breast pump for all the help it gave me with feeding Evelyn in the early days, getting her taking boob or bottle and allowing me this precious weekend away, Oh My God I am sick of it! I really can not tell you just how very sick of it I am. It is about the most gratingly boring and undignified thing you can imagine, and this really isn't helped by the noise it makes. It moos. 

It did the job though and off I went, except you can't really escape that easily from the moo. To keep up supplies and my comfort levels the pump had to come along too so I was very grateful to discover that I was not the only one in this situation. Every so often me and another of the Hens broke off from the spa/gossip/wine/phallic drinking straws to turn our little corner of Centre Parks into a milking parlour. Classy. Is that TMI for this blog I wonder? It's amazing how you just stop noticing that line.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the hen do and was impressed with Centre Parks, although it was so full of little ones, many the same age as Evelyn, that once it was time to head home I was pretty desperate to see her. I did wonder on the train back if she would remember me or show any sign of being pleased at my return but I shouldn't have worried. When I met her and Fred at Waterloo on their way home from an outing to Great Grandpa's I got a great big little grin and some very excited arm waving and that more than makes up for all the mooing.

Kxxx

Meanwhile back in London....

                             Evelyn has her first go in a paddling pool

                         And makes another (failed) attempt at crawling

Vote Evelyn!

Tough on Parsnips, Tough on the Causes of Parsnips

With the election imminent we thought it was time to break out Evelyn's Boris pants, (Thank you Auntie Jo!)  She may be a little too young to vote but she can still try to demonstrate her opinions, although it is a bit unclear from this if she is throwing her weight behind the Tories or thinks they would be a bum deal for the country *insert additional pun of your choosing here*. Whatever your political affiliations, you've gotta wish you were in the meeting where someone pitched Boris Johnson baby pants. 

Disclaimer: Other political baby pants are available (although no Lib Dem ones I notice. I guess however well Nick Clegg did in the TV debates he'll never be as funny on a pair of pants as Thatcher).

Of course I should remind you all of just how very important I am to this election. If the media are to be believed *insert sarcastic comment of your choosing here* then this is the "Mumsnet election", the future of the country resting squarely in the chapped hands of the nations web-literate mothers. For the uninitiated, Mumsnet is one of a number of websites where parents can ask for advice from their peers, share experiences, form friendships and viciously attack any complete stranger who slightly disagrees with their opinions on dungarees. (In a variation on Godwin's law you can pretty much guarantee that a discussion thread will end in a torrent of vitriolic abuse as soon as the words "breastfeeding", "private education" or "Gina Ford" appear). Mumsnet has more recently become famous for the number of politicians begging to jump on the bandwagon come on the site and discuss their policies and choice of biscuit (or not) with any Mother who has time to listen to them. Supposedly this has all been very influential. 

So, has becoming a parent influenced my postal vote? Is my motherly self more invested, more knowing and more questioning of the political process of our great little isle? Have web-forums shaped my opinions in new and unexpected ways? Well no I don't think so, but then this time round I have actually posted said postal vote and won't have to shamefacedly take it to the polling station on election day, so maybe there is something going on after-all.

Kxxx

Have Baby, Will Travel

Having successfully dodged rail strikes, airline strikes, heavy snow and a very stroppy volcano we are now returned from our first proper family holiday with no drama what so ever! 

                                  

                    Evelyn plays bite Daddy's nose in the cottage

We spent a lovely week on the Island of Seil just off the West coast of Scotland near Oban. We had a couple of ulterior motives for this location, a wedding in Glasgow and visiting Evelyn's Auntie Helen and Uncle Bryn who have recently moved to Oban (and who's flat provided a handy mainland pit-stop for nappy changes and feeds). They also put us in touch with a family on a neighbouring island who very kindly lent us their off-road buggy and baby backpack and pointed us in the direction of some lovely walks. The Mum of the family actually writes a guide to buggy walks so I shall now blatantly plug her website: www.pushchairwalks.co.uk Actually while I'm at it this is where we stayed: http://www.isleofseil.co.uk/ our little house was ideal, coming complete with high chair, cot, lots of birds to stare at and (and this is the most important bit) fruit cake.

     Evelyn goes off road

In addition to the walking, general pottering and massive consumption of honeycomb ice cream, we also slotted in a visit to a sealife centre where Evelyn got her first sight of otters ( squeal! bounce!), seals (suck suck, oooo Seagull) and a giant octopus (snooooze) It was a shame she slept through the giant octopus as she missed it grabbing it's poor keeper and trying to drag him into the tank. 

After a lovely week on Seil we headed to Glasgow where we met up with Granny Angela and Grandad. Evelyn behaved herself pretty well at the wedding, my choice of a halterneck dress was however, with hindsight and breastfeeding in mind - not the cleverest! Oh well, a good time was had by all and attending a wedding with some handy grandparents was great as it meant Fred and I actually managed to get in a bit of dancing. That said our efforts were rather poor. We are enthusiastic but very amateur ceilidh dancers and were entirely put to shame by the folks in kilts! We used the excuse of a very tired baby to head for our hotel at 9.30pm, in truth I think all three of us were beaten at that point!

                         Some quality parenting in the Glasgow hotel

So that was that and it was time to head home. We travelled to/from Glasgow by train. First class - get us! I think I can leave it to you to imagine the look on our fellow passengers faces when we boarded the non-cattle carriage with backpacks and a baby, but Evelyn behaved herself very well, apart from being terrified of the changing table in the disabled loo.

                        Evelyn has fun in first class

Actually the only traumatic bit of the travelling was the London bus from the station to our flat, but I think I could do a whole post ranting about buses at the moment so I think I'll leave it there.

Kxxx