An emotional Halloween

It is Ron's first Halloween, but we didn't make a big deal out of it - we carved a pumpkin and watched scary videos. It was an emotional day however, as I realised that my hormones were causing me to see things in a negative light and I may need to talk to someone.

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Experience: First Halloween!
​​Parenting: Muddled perception

Wednesday 31st October

We went outside this morning for our daily walk in the common to capture a few little moments of "sunshine on your face". As soon as we were out the door Sam & Charlie jumped on and trapped an unsuspecting rabbit! It was a large rabbit, one that will feed the two of them for days and we were all very proud of them! It is proving to be a productive autumn!

Experience: First Halloween!

Today is also Halloween - it is Ron's first Halloween! Hoorah!!!

We didn't make it into much of a big deal. Samhain never is a big deal in our house. . .  In the morning, James carved a pumpkin with a scary face, lit a couple of candles, and then we silently remembered our family and ancestors. We published our YouTube pumpkin wine video and then, we looked at some scary YouTube videos showing ghost sightings, paranormal events caught on video, creepy dolls and the like. . . 

It seems appropriate to mention that James had been working on his family tree on Ancestry.co.uk for years, filling in some further gaps only this week. He has traced generations of relatives all the way back to when records began, sometimes even through myths - it is all very exciting! We know that there are two other Ronalds in the tree, including James's dad so Ronald is indeed a family name, albeit a rare one! It will be amazing to show the family tree to Ron when he is older!
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The afternoon has been. . . emotional! Let me explain. . . 

OK, so you know how I kept saying that I am trying to take a photograph of Ron's face every day, so that we could look back and see the gentle gradual changes throughout the first month. Well, I have been very good taking the photos, rain or shine, as they say. . . What I didn't realise is that our camera didn't automatically add a date stamp onto the digital photo file!
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So James has been uploading all the photos to Ron's Google account but they are all very much willy-nilly jumbled up without much of a way to tell what day they were taken! They are all safe, but they are just "shoved in the drawer" - a soup of photographs!!! . . . That really upset me!
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​Parenting: Muddled perception

I was disappointed in myself for not sorting them through as I went along, and I was upset at the camera for not doing it automatically (I mean, why wouldn't it?) but I took out my frustrations on James, who presumed that I was telling him off for not uploading them onto Google correctly. . . He got defensive, I got defensive in return, it was an emotional mess! A sleep-deprived, exhausted, frustrated emotional mess!

I felt as though I was a really bad mother to Ron, as though I failed him somehow. I was irritated and upset and I was taking it out on James. My poor James. . . This discussion about the photographs was a trigger to let out so many other feelings of inadequacy, of somehow letting my baby down.

Eventually, James explained that I had been irritated for the last couple of days. I didn't realise this was the case, but he said that my perception of words and events was greatly shifted. . . And I agree with him now. . . I heard everything in the worst possible way, even though it wasn't at all negative! For instance, James saying "let me help with the baby" somehow in my mind got translated to "you're not doing it right". Or him saying "the light is not good for filming right now" sounded like "this baby ruined my life" (you figure the correlation, because at the moment I fail to see one - but at the time it was literally what I heard, despite him not saying it?). . . It was really weird to realise that I had been so emotionally unstable in the last couple of days and then to realise that me being this way really affected James. He told me I may need to talk to someone about this (trust me, you don't want to see a "translation" of this comment!).

We were going round and around in circles, so I decided to have a bath. . . Calm down, take a minute to myself (a real luxury!) and put my thoughts in order. I am a passionate and emotional girl, which can mean I get vexed sometimes - but a bath always helps! So I had a good soak, but jumped out feeling just as angry and frustrated - as if my brain no longer had an off switch. . . This is how I knew that something wasn't right. Maybe it was hormones making a mess of my perception of the world, so maybe he was right all along - I may indeed need help! 
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I jumped out the bath, realising and accepting all this and highly aware of my shifted perception. I was calm and decided to have a conversation about it with James - without letting emotions take over again. That's when he said that I was being a great mum to Ron, but I was also not feeling right and not being my usual self. I agreed to mention it to the health visitor at the next visit and take it from there. For now, I was simply going to be mindful and aware of what was happening. . . I felt better!
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I felt better so we settled down for the evening and had a pumpkin and turnip mash for dinner, followed by a film and some nibbles. It has been a while since we sat down to watch a film in the evening - just relax and watch a film. . . It is usually - eat dinner, then back to whatever it was we were doing before. . . But today we decided to sit and watch an old classic BBC "Ghostwatch" whilst Ronnie was nursing and then sleeping on my chest.
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