Mumumental

After looking into my mental health, and writing a blog about it. I found a website where you can put in your specific needs for a therapist. So I ticked trauma, because of the childhood trauma from my Biological father leaving. You put in your area, days you can attend, etc. Then you will receive an update to your account with the local qualified therapists and their prices. In my case I actually received a phone call from one of the therapists, recommended by the website.

I spoke to her for about 20 minutes on the phone explaining what it was I wanted to work through, and I cried straight away. It was so weird actually saying out loud, all the things I’d been through. I realised it was a lot and she was very helpful just on this phone call, so I couldn’t wait to meet her.

I explained that I had been looking into my mental health and I had come to the conclusion that I had some kind of abandonment issues, from my biological father leaving at the age of 2 / 3. That I believed that this had caused trust issues and caused me to follow repetitive, destructive patterns in relationships. She said I had already done the hard work for her and that I was half way there. She said a lot of people don’t realise what the trauma was that caused their behaviours later in life, and that getting them to realise what their particular trauma was, in order to work on it, can take quite a few sessions on its own.

I was apprehensive but excited to go to therapy. I won’t discuss everything because it’s very personal, obviously. But one part that I wanted to share, purely in case anyone has been in the same boat, and didn’t quite understand it. Was the trigger that took me back to being that 2/3 year old little girl.

Whilst I knew my biological father leaving has caused me particular hurt and issues over the years, I didn’t realise that the reason I took this recent breakup so hard, was because it had caused a trigger in my brain, and was causing me to relive the pain of being abandoned as a child, all over again.

Obviously any break up is awful and hard to go through. So I knew this would be the case, especially being recently engaged. Sharing children and being madly inlove .. on my part. But I really struggled. I struggled to get out of bed. I would cry from when I woke up, to when I went to sleep. My ex and family members had to help with the kids so that I didn’t constantly breakdown in front of them. It was literally like I was experiencing a death. And at the same time I felt like I was dying. I didn’t want to go out, out of fear that I’d bump into someone and they’d ask after my now ex. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. I literally only told 2 of my friends and my Aunty, for the first 2-3 weeks. I just couldn’t handle it at all. I didn’t want to take my engagement ring off. I just didn’t want this to be my life. I wanted to go back in time and prevent the break up somehow, which I know now is ridiculous. I know now that our relationship was not healthy. No matter how much I loved him, our relationship was not working. So to go back and change it, all i’d be doing it sweeping issues under the carpet, not fixing them. I know now we would both need to have gone to therapy separately to work on our own issues, before we could ever have had a healthy relationship.

But I’d never taken anything in my life this hard. This breakup was honestly the hardest thing, other than losing my Nan, that I felt I’d ever been through. The thought of my kids kept me going. They were the only thing that kept kept me going. But there were even times I wasn’t sure if I was good enough for them anymore.

Going to therapy and speaking about all of this and learning that the reason it was particularly bad for me, was because it triggered that early abandonment made so much sense. It was like a weight lifted. I thought I was going insane and being almost pathetic letting a breakup affect me this badly. For months now. But I now knew that there was real reasons, that it had hit me harder than usual, and was taking me longer to get over than it might for others. You convince yourself that you’re worthless and stupid for taking longer than others, but when you realise there are actual reasons, it just makes you feel that bit better about it, and takes the pressure off of trying to move on quickly.

If you have certain behaviours or issues that have impacted your life, please try and look at what could have caused them and work through it. If you want to change them I really think you can. Fortunately I’ve been able to go to therapy as someone else, has offered to pay for it for me. But if you can afford it, I really recommend it. The lady I go to is £45 for the hour. I really believe now that I have a better future ahead because I am working on resolving my issues and behaviours.

I have written a very long blog continuing on from my blog, “First Year as a single mum, dating and meeting “The one”.”

I’m 90% sure that I will eventually post it, but right now is a tricky time.

It’s all about the start of my relationship. So I’m sorry if it feels like there’s a chunk missing between blogs, but it’s because there is. As much as I want to share everything with everyone, the good and bad. And ultimately yes it is my choice, but I’ve chosen to delay for a while to keep the peace.

So the very, very short version of the start of our relationship was that it was very fast, we fell very hard, we were both very passionate people which ultimately resulted in a lot of lows, with the incredible highs. We both made mistakes, I had trust issues which I have had my entire life, which were amplified in this particular relationship by many lies I had been told, that started coming out left, right and centre. We were either amazing, laughing all the time, having the time of our lives or we were rowing. There didn’t seem to be an in between.

3 months into the relationship, and after realising that the pill made me MENTAL. We decided to try fertility awareness. This meant I wouldn’t have to go on anything with hormones that would make me even more hormonal than I already was! It was just a case of tracking your periods, and taking your temperature every morning so you could tell when you were ovulating. Then you either didn’t have sex, or you used protection around the ovulation period. Sounds simple! And I thought I’d make it simpler by just ordering ovulation tests. Easy peasy!

One night we went out when the ovulation test said I was ovulating, we got very drunk, came home and did the deed. But … the condom had split. This had never happened to either of us before. So the next day, off we went to get the morning after pill from boots. No baby for us, no thank you!

I took the pill the next day, and a week or so later I started spotting so I took this as my period. It lasted about 5 days but was just very light. We were in Liverpool at the time and I said to my ex “My period is really light”. But we both agreed .. at least it was a period and I wasn’t pregnant.

Around a week or so later we had a date day, which was amazing. We took Dylan to Dave’s to stay with his mum. We went go karting which was wicked, we had such a laugh. Then we went back to mine to get ready to go out, I did an ovulation test which was positive. We both had a little cheer “woooop not pregnant” 😂 then went out for dinner, and drinks. It was the best date day, and night. So many funny things happened that night, it was wicked. I loved every second. Then we got back to mine, drunk. And we were not careful. We went online to order the morning after pill. Then the next day I was reading the order form list which tells you how to take it and what to look out for. It mentioned if you have a light period after taking the pill, that must do another pregnancy test. I thought that was weird as I’d had such a light period, after the last one. But then I remembered I’d done an ovulation test. So I couldn’t be pregnant.

Then suddenly it dawned on me. “Oh my god, oh my god. There were a couple of pregnancy strips mixed in with the ovulation ones” I remembered and actually said out loud to myself. I ran to the drawer and saw a pregnancy strip packet, here is what they looked like;

They were all mixed up together, but we were rushing to go out and I didn’t even think about the pregnancy tests being in there. I just quickly did what I assumed was an ovulation test. Got a positive, and carried on as normal thinking I wasn’t pregnant .. because I couldn’t be. I was ovulating in my head!

Now, realising this could well have been a pregnancy test that I’d done, I panicked, grabbed a pregnancy test strip packet…. on purpose this time, and went off to the toilet. Dave was at work. I did the pregnancy test and it was positive. I was in shock, I burst into tears and started shaking. I emailed Dave asking him to call me, he called and he thought I was joking. I was not. I begged him to come and see me and he left work. We spoke for about an hour, both in utter shock.

The reason I had cried is because as much as I loved my boyfriend, and I really did. Whole heartedly. We were very newly together, and we did have issues. It wasn’t smooth sailing. Looking back now it really could have been smooth sailing. The things that went wrong were so easy to avoid. Dumb, stupid, selfish choices. I will share all of that with you at some point. But hindsight is hindsight, and we can’t go back and change the mistakes we made. And I wish they’d never happened, but maybe my now ex doesn’t even think that way. Maybe in his eyes he wanted to make the mistakes he made. I don’t know. But I wish we had both been better to eachother.

We both decided that we had to keep our baby. The pressure was insane, on our relationship. We’d avoided contraceptives with hormones because of how crazy they made me … but now I was pregnant. And the hormones were REAL.

Although the pressure was on, I will say I felt like it did actually change my boyfriend for a while. I was lucky in the sense that if I asked him for anything at all, he would get it for me. Even if it meant going to the shop. He stuck by me through hormonal rants, but one thing he said he appreciated was that when I calmed down, I would always see sense and apologise. He was there every step of the way. And while there were a couple of huge arguments, which were not my fault in the slightest, which I can’t go into right now .. overall he was amazing. I’d never had anyone do that for me the first time round, so it was nice. I was being looked after.

The scans were amazing, being with the other person who had created this life growing inside of me, who was as in love with this little bean as I was. The way he loved my growing bump. He loved and was as excited feeling our baby’s kicks, as I was. It was a completely different experience to my pregnancy with Dylan, but both were equally as amazing in their own way.

Here was our pregnancy announcement picture;