The elephant

Well, a few days ago I had my first PND therapy session with a nice lady called Sue. No point boring you with the details. It wasn’t particularly revelatory… I didn’t have a lightbulb moment where I thought ‘yeah, that’s why I’ve been feeling so crap and now, blimey, I’m cured!’ I found out that I’m not suicidal (I already knew that), that I’m feeling out of control (ditto), that I’m not very good at telling people how I’m feeling or asking for help (errr, yes) and then I was asked what I could do to help myself feel better. Well, Mrs Therapist, let me tell you… if I knew that then I wouldn’t be bloody sitting in this chair wide-eyed on Prozac wittering on to you, would I? Good God, give me some answers woman! Anyway, I now have a regular slot on Tuesdays at 3pm, which means I can get back in time for Deal Or No Deal. And hopefully Sue can get to the bottom of all this PND malarkey. She was right about one thing though — motherhood is a stressful, life-changing event where you find yourself doing things you would never have dreamt of before, like spending 20 minutes drying a sopping wet stuffed Mothercare elephant with a hairdryer. Yes Sam can’t do ANYTHING without his beloved elephant (for some reason pronounced Yayashant in our house), not eat, not sit in the pushchair and certainly not have a bath. So Yayashant now regularly has a sub-aqua experience, bobbing on the surface, looking disgruntled, and then occasionally dipping below the bubbles until Sam hauls him back up from the depths. Trouble is, Sam can’t sleep without Yayashant either, which is where the frantic hairdrying marathon comes in. Bloody hell, I don’t even have the time to dry my own hair, but somehow I always manage to find 20 whole minutes to gently dry the polyester fur of some ridiculous soft toy! Madness, I tell you, madness. Any wonder I’ve got PND? If you’re reading this, Sue, we’ll talk about it next week…