Rare window

Short of being a bad pun on one of my favourite Hitchcock films, it’s simply just been rare to find a window to do any blogging recently. The last month has been relentless. Granted, not all of it bad – we had a holiday, camping in Normandy, France, of which there are definitely some experiences to share; but my wife also had her long anticipated operation to investigate her endometriosis. As a result, that window of opportunity, late into the evening, to write down my thoughts has been hard to come by.

Firstly, we had a wonderful time camping in Normandy. We completely lucked out with the campsite itself with no prior knowledge and just a few positive (actually very positive) reviews to go on. We stayed on a site called “Chateau Monfreville”, literally an old castle-like chateau with large grounds on which to camp. It’s not the biggest with a pledge on their website that they’ll never take more than 25 plot bookings in order to stop it feeling crowded. It’s big enough to regularly meet new people but small enough to have a community. There are two, I think, cottages available, and a couple of gypsy caravans, but the bulk of the site is there for camping. Add to that you get a natural swim pond, a hot-tub, decent showers, a games room, a communal fridge-freezer, a washing up room and an alarmingly popular mobile phone charging station. You’re not alone either, there are a couple of horses, a donkey, two pigs, a very sweet dog called Hector and a splattering of chickens (who are usually very interested in your breakfast!)

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Piglet loved being surrounded by all the animals. In particular, feeding vegetable scraps to the pigs was a daily highlight for him. Feeding the pigs is so popular, apparently, that they have to start limiting the amount they get towards the end of the summer! Piglet also loved the communal games equipment that’s just permanently available in the middle of the camping field. A volleyball/badminton net, various racquets, balls, small football goals and, most importantly, hula-hoops. As is his want, Piglet had lots of fun mostly arranging or organising the equipment, clearly more important than playing with any of them; a message I’m not sure he managed to convey to the other families of campers around us.

I love camping. Waking up to the sunlight and being up and outside before you’ve even had your breakfast, cooking your dinner over an open fire, snuggling into a warm sleeping bag only to realise a pillow is not a luxury item and it would be quite nice to separate your ankles, etc… But when you’re camping with a little one it can be difficult to get the timings of the meals right. To our delight, we were offered a cooked meal for the first night that we arrived. Having been on a ferry for 3 hours and having unpacked every item imaginable from our car in order to set up our tent, we were very grateful not to then have to cook. (It turns out neither me nor my son travel particularly well by ferry – my wife, however, was fine). I say we were offered a cooked meal, in fact we were asked well before we arrived as they do chicken and chips every Sunday night. When I replied that we’d love to but couldn’t eat butter, or in fact milk or soya (or gluten in my wife’s case) I suspected it might be too much to ask of a campsite. I was absolutely delighted when they said they’d do one separately with vegetable oil.

The 3 meals they do a week (I’ll come on to the other two shortly) are all served in an open barn off to the side of the campsite. Where all the food was cooked or how they cater for some many people (there must have been 50 people in the barn one night), I’ll never know. I’m sure it was partially the fresh air and the hunger created by setting up the tent but that roast chicken and chips went down a treat! We demolished the entire thing between the three of us, my son doing a gallant effort on his third of the deal. There was also virtually unlimited chips – I lost count of how many times our bowl was topped up.

I should point out at this point that my diet – or should I say healthier eating, as I’d mentioned in a previous post, was mostly out of the window for this holiday. I tried to track my eating but made a conscious decision not to restrict what I ate too much on the week off. In fact, a combination of having no idea what weight of food was eaten and poor phone signal (to track the eating on my phone) meant I missed 4 days completely in the middle of the holiday.

The other two nights that food is provided on the campsite was Pizza on Tuesday and Moules + Frites on Thursday. When I saw that I sadly consigned myself to cooking alone on the fire those nights, not imagining how good those meals would have tasted. However, when I was asked on the Monday night whether we’d be joining, my reasoning was dismissed. They make the pizza there in front of you so you can choose what to have or not have (so a cheese-free pizza is easy) and although they can’t source it; the local supermarket does gluten-free pizza bases so we were encouraged to come along.

Further to this, the Moules + Frites night also doubled up as a sausage and chips night and they even cooked some mussels and kept them to one side before the cream was added for my wife to eat! It’s one of (or was one of, I should say) her favourite meals so she was over the moon when I told her they’d sorted her out. All three meals were delicious and consumed in high spirits in an almost party-like environment with the other campers. We learnt how to sing Happy Birthday in Dutch and spoke to a wide range of couples and families from all over the place. Piglet’s consumption of chicken and sausages became almost legendary.

Our final day on the campsite came round surprisingly quickly and we managed to pack up the tent and make the ferry with the bare minimum of expletives and stresses. How one family can fill a car and roof box so full, I’ll never know. The ferry back (a different route) took longer but was much more comfortable and Piglet loved being up on the top deck or playing card games or, particularly, being in the “kids breakout” area even though there was actually nothing to do as far as me or my wife could see?! A quick gluten free (dairy free) pizza back, rapid change of Piglet into his pyjamas and drive off into the night had us home before we knew it.

The following week was, well… a bit different

We had a single day (Sunday) to food shop, unpack, wash clothes etc… and then we were straight into the working week. For me that meant the beautifully ironic contribution of tight deadlines, high pressure work commitments and meetings about how – as a team – we’re possibly not needed and may be ‘at risk’ on the back of poor company performance and wide-ranging job cuts. I probably won’t find out for many weeks what this means in practice. For my wife, this meant a pre-op blood test and then surgery under general anaesthetic for her hysteroscopy and laparoscopy. Operations to find out how significant her endometriosis is, get a better understanding of whether she has polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and just generally help her stop being in pain like she’s been so often in the last year (although, realistically, to some extent since her teens).

The surgery went well and she was awake and eating (gingerly) a few hours later. Fairly significant levels of endometriosis were found and they made progress in removing much of this. What this did mean, however, is that she went through a fair amount of internal surgery and recovery has been slow. The first few days were a complete write-off and she was pretty much bed-bound (as expected). She’s doing better now but she’s still very fragile and quite weak. Any activity above reading a book on the sofa or watching Netflix in bed has to be followed by periods of sleep, although even daytime sleeping has pretty much gone in the last 2 days. I think we’ve both been a bit surprised by the extent of the recovery. We knew she wouldn’t be able to lift/drive for a period after the operation but the weakness and pain levels a week on were probably at the higher end of the range we’d been expecting.

One of the hardest things has been Piglet’s reaction to it all. We explained quite a lot in the build up about how mummy wouldn’t be able to give cuddles or pick him up, but there’s only so much logic or reason you can expect from a 3-year-old. He quickly learnt that this really did mean she’d be in bed and couldn’t come downstairs to build his train set. He seemed to get it quite quickly and would take pleasure in “looking after her” or explaining that she couldn’t do something because she was poorly.

I’ve got to spend a lot of time with Piglet in the last week and much of it has been lovely. But it does make some of the parenting difficult when the other parent is there but can’t help; much harder than looking after him alone. Any time he’d get upset over something he would run off to my wife and I would have to run after him to (for want of a better term) keep her safe. The last thing a tired and emotional pre-schooler (I’m not allowed to call him a toddler any more) wants is to be physically taken away from his mummy when he’s after comfort from her because of daddy’s decision in the first place! Also, I try and give him space when he gets frustrated or angry. When I tell him that he can’t play with the mains sockets or throw books down the stairs he doesn’t always like it; but I find that, if he wants to run away from me, he often comes back much calmer once he’s had a chance to digest it and cool down. However with my wife at home in bed, I can’t afford him that luxury and so when he tries to run away in frustration I have to chase after him, exacerbating the whole problem.

He has been upset and in particular mornings getting ready for nursery have been hard work some days. I think I’ve dealt with it fairly well, considering the circumstances, but there are moments when I wish I could have stayed calmer. Children have the most amazing ability to change your perspective; they are capable of creating the most powerful paradigm shifts. I think it was one evening when we’d both been tired: brushing his teeth had seemed like a Mensa puzzle and tensions were running high. He’d gone to hit me (simply because he didn’t know how else to show his frustration) and I’d reacted badly, restraining him because I couldn’t let him run away. Not long after, we were lying in his bed having finished his night time book and we were discussing his day. We do this every night – it’s called his “rose of the day”. We both discuss a thing that’s made us happy, a thing that’s made us sad and what we hope for the following day. Naturally we were talking about mummy and I explained that she was poorly but she should get better; in fact the surgery could make her better than she was before it. I asked him if he was worried about her and my heart shattered as he simply nodded. It never occurred to me that from his perspective his mum had disappeared one night and then not really got out of bed since – he had absolutely no idea what was wrong with her or whether she would ever get better. Any harsh word or lack of sympathy I’d demonstrated just 30 minutes earlier suddenly felt like the worst action in the world.

We’re still in recovery mode but things are getting better. We’ve also stayed with my wife’s parents for a few days which has helped immensely. Both in getting Piglet a change of scenery and different people to play with (by play with, I really mean boss around) but also just help/respite from cooking, cleaning etc… Hence why I’m able to write this post.

I am optimistic, cautiously. It’s far too soon to tell and I may never really know but the surgery removed a fair bit of tissue that would have been causing problems and confirmed what we’ve suspected for some time in that her pain levels are not normal. It could also help with fertility and help us understand what the next steps might need to be around solving this – particularly if PCOS is one of the key (and unknown until now) issues. But mostly, I am optimistic that my wife might be set free – even if just a bit. The long period cycles, the ovulation pain and the havoc it plays on her hormones have been hard – harder than I possibly realised or had given credit to – and I am almost excited at the thought that this may have helped with this. We will just have to wait and see.

•