poco a poco

Well, my world did stop. In fact I sort of stopped it myself... I've been floored by a series of illnesses and minor ailments that have really made me take stock of how I have been living and the pressure I've been putting on myself. My body, it seems, is far more intelligent than my conscious mind. It'd had enough of me flogging it day after day and made me rest before I collapsed, or imploded, or something!

Over the last 6 weeks I've had a total spasm of my jaw- caused by night time tooth grinding or bruxism, a nasty lethargy "bug" thing, followed by sensitised nerves in my face and HORRIFIC moan and wince inducing toothache, also linked to tooth grinding. I'd go so far as to say it was the worst pain I've ever known, and I'm no wuss. This was followed by another dreadful cold/flu mucous fest and a general overwhelming sense of malaise. Now, I'm well aware it could be so, so much worse, but it's not been the greatest couple of months of my life....

I've been reflecting a lot about my sudden physical decline, and where I'm at generally. I've come to the conclusion that it's all mind over matter, and my mind was too darn strong. Despite me *thinking* I've been fairly relaxed and easy going I've actually been really stressed out and running on adrenaline for the last goodness knows how long, probably since Mags was born. I can see now that there have been a loads of stressful events piling up to trigger this physical anxiety. I saw an osteopath to deal with the acute jaw spasm who said "your whole system is very low, I'll give you a really deep treatment next time". Until then in my head I was completely robust, healthy and strong. In many ways I'm really grateful that she kicked that thought out of my head, or I'd have ended up really conking out sooner or later. I really hope I can find a spare £30 to go back for the follow up treatment soon ;(

Emotionally, I can also see that my confidence has taken a bit of a knock since M was born. Again, I hadn't really thought about it but now I look back I can see that despite being uber-assured in the ways I wanted to mother the new baby, I was, and still am in many respects, unsure of how to operate with the big one. My lack of corporeal zest since Magnus' arrival has undermined all the little "systems" I had going with Esme. I was never really aware of how much energy it took for things to be easy with her before M was born, which I suppose, is the same thing as not recognising what a bloomin good job I was doing. Typical.

Anyway, all these ruminations aside, things are getting better little by little. I am still absolutely knackered and recovering, and it doesn't take much for my internal alarm to register that I need to slow down at the moment. I can feel my strength, energy and confidence returning and I guess I just need to keep a lid on it and stop myself burning out again.

It's actually quite funny looking at my previous posts in the context of what I've just written. I can't believe I couldn't see this coming.....