Chelle's Corner

[chelle2467]

Hi
Ok, as i am having a good day today i decided to start my diary. I named it my corner because i just like to hide away sometimes and sod the rest of the world. I feel comfortable in my corner!!

Right now im having to type this in the semi-dark while Sophie, my 6 month old daughter, tries to get to sleep on a blanket on the floor. I would take her up but trev (my husband) and Jamie, our 3 year old son, are both up there as Jamie is ill at the moment.

Well where do i begin?
Right, our family consists of me, my husband Trev and our two adorable children, Jamie and Sophie. They love each other to bits, even though sophs is at that "eye-gouging, hair pulling, nose poking" stage. We live together in a one bedroomed flat on the 2nd and 3rd floor of an old converted building. i think our front room would have been a bedroom at one point. We have to climb 4 flights of stairs to get to our front door and there is another set of stairs inside the flat. (its better than the last place -we were in a studio flat when jamie was born!!)

I have always been a bit of a strange person!! I only had a few close friends and they dwindled off as school got further and further on. I have a huge problem trusting people, even trev, because i had such a hard time as a child / teen where i would trust someone and they would throw it back in my face. Now i use comedy as a canvas to block my real feelings. only 2 people know how i realy feel most of the time and that is trev and my best friend. She lives hundreds of miles away in scotland and we havent met properly before but we are so close that she is even going to be godmother to Sophs in may.

MY BACKGROUND
Me and trev havent really had it easy the last 5 years, i will admit. We move in together "officially" in may 2003 and then i was pregnant a couple of weeks later with Jamie. we decided to move to wales to raise the baby (we were living in wiltshire at the time in the town i grew up in) so ended up moving a month earlier than planned, as i fell ill with the pregnancy. i get really sick when pregnant so i was trapped 160 miles from home at trevs parents house which didnt help as they are 4 miles from town and i couldnt get in the car as it was summer, dont travel well as it is and was vomiting what felt like every half an hour!!!

we were homeless through Jamies pregnancy for 4 months, and finally got a place of our own when i was 6 months gone. Things seemed ok untill about 4 weeks before my due date. I mentioned to my midwife that trev and his dad had been teasing me about my "hobbit" feet, so she had a look and told me to pack a night bag and get to the hospital for about 2pm that afternoon. I wasnt too worried, pre-eclampsia was mentioned but as i had been focused on where we would be living and where our next meal would be coming from (aged 19 btw) i had just continued to do so even when we had a place of our own. I ended up staying in for 6 days, until they finally decided to induce me as the situation seemed to be getting a little worse each day. Jamie was born 3 weeks early weighing in at 4lb 14oz, after a 5 hour 35 minute labour.

i was really depressed when I had Jamie. Not the normal "baby blues" but it was so bad i would just want to lie in bed all day. thankfully trev was at work all day and as our front room and bedroom were all in one, i was technically still in the front room so didnt see a problem!! y health visitor was an arse and he didnt like young people. Bearing in mind he was a local councillor for the welsh party (plaid cymru) and wrote intot eh lcal paper that students shouldnt be allowed to vote as they couldnt even spell the county we are in (this is a main student town, the uni is massive). He made it quite clear to us he wasnt keen on young parents as he would blabber on for what seemed like hours about crap and then said that we had to follow the book on everything for Jamie. He even told trev at his work one day that he thought i was extremely childish and i needed to start bonding with Jamie (who was about 2 or 3 months at the time). That was mainly because when jamie had his injections a few days before i had started to laugh a little - maninly because of hte depression and the non bond yet. After a few months things got better between me and jamie. mainly because we stopped goingt o see teh health visitor.

2 and a half years later we finally decided to try for another baby (thinking we would get moved from this place into a new one -haha that was a good joke) it took only 4 months and 3 tries to fall pregnant!! 2007 was hell on earth for me. I was so ill over xmas 2006 that jamie had to go 160 miles down to my mums and miss the last 2 weeks of playgroup. It wasnt too much of a problem as mum was coming up for xmas anyway. I was put on 3 different anti-sickness pills before they found one that worked. I ended up in bed for 36 hours not holding anything down, not even water. In january things looked up a little. i wasnt bed-ridden and i was still vomiting every morning, afternoon and teatime, but i could go outside and walk around, go shopping. Trev had just gotten over his depression and suicidal thoughts so he was able to help me and support me again. When i had my scan at 19 weeks, it was discovered the babys kidneys were dilated. That meant 4 weekly scans for that and to keep an eye on her size as Jamie was born so small. We went to the scans and the kidneys were getting bigger, when the sex was determined as a girl i got really stroppy and nasty to trev (he wanted a girl, i was determined i was having a boy!!) and i was still vomiting badly every day and half the night. At 29 weeks, she decided to try and make an apperance so I was given steroids just in case she arrived. Thankfully she stayed put and i was released a couple of days later. i was in the maternity ward every other weekend from then onwards with pre-eclampsia problems. while still having 4 weekly scans!! At 36 weeks i was admitted offically until the baby arrived. The same deal as with Jamie. it turned out that i should have been admitted that weekend but as i had mentioned in passing to the midwife i was going out with my friend for her birthday to a tapas bar. She let me go out and as i was going back the day after to drop off a 24 hour urine sample they could get me then!!
I was told to go choose a bed and i managed to get the same one i had when i was in having Jamie. i stayed there (by myself as the ward was more or less empty most of the time) for about 8 or 9 days, having blood tests most days, scans almost daily and i was on the ctg monitor about 3 times a day!! they finally decided to induce me as things werent going down again and Jamie fell ill with chicken pox. my mum was rushed up to wales to lok after jamie and trev came into hospital with be with me. I was in labour all day, i had a drip put into my hand "just in case" and after my waters broke, they brought me from the bathroom into a side room to check me over. they told me i was 2cm dilated (after being in agony for 8 and a half hours) and gave me a shot of pethadine and a canister of gas and air. 39 minutes later i decided i needed to push. the midwife said that she would be surprised if i weas going to push this early but checked me over anyway. as she bent down to get ready, apparently trev says she yelled OH MY GOD THERES A HEAD QUICK EVERYONE GET READY!!! sophie shot out of me after 2 pushes and weighed only 5lb 12oz.

sophs came home after 2 days and her kidneys ended up all ok. unfortunately she has been ill on and off since birth and we dont know why. thankfully jamie gets on really well with her and she has now gotten used to him.
well that was alot longer than i expected. im sorry if i have bored you all to sleep!!

[winegirl]

Hi Chelle

Thank you for sharing your story with us! You really have had an eventful couple of pregnancies there! i hope you don't mind me butting in your diary? Please say if you would rather not,

Your children are BEAUTIFUL, you must be very proud.

I hope we can support you through this hun and you find this diary section useful x

Take Care

WG xx

[chelle2467]

hi winegirl
no i dont mind you "butting in", it will probably help me in way.
i have decided that mainly becaue i was so ill in pregnancy i can not cope with another one. trev doesnt mind so much, esp as he has his daughter now" she is the 3rd girl to be born into his family in 221 years and the oldest is now 21. so she is very rare!

[gizmoracer]

Hi Chelle

I just wanted to pop on here to welcome you and say I hope you find the diary section useful. I find it has helped me loads. You certainly sound as though you've been through it over the last few years but I'm sure things will soon start to look up for you. Heres to a great new year ahead.

[cheshire]

Hi from me too Chelle,

Hope you find this section usefulx

Hopefulx

[sianyc]

Love the weaning picture - very funny x

[chelle2467]

thanks sianye

well today isnt too good. i went out saturday afternoon with a friend to see stardust at the cinema and it was brilliant. i was child free and i could be an adult, a person again. sadly about about half an hour after getting home, things hit rock bottom and i burst into tears for no reason at all, i couldnt cope being in the same room alone as the kids and had to have trev with me all the time. things havent looked up since. i have been ill the last few days too - sore throat, blocked nose, headache, generally feeling like crap. me and jamie have slept most of today adn possibly yesterday. he is off playgroup at the moment as he is ill too. Sophie is being a pain in the backside at night now too so we are having to do controlled crying with her, which means jamie either gets disturbed or we bring him downstairs, make up a wee bed on the floor and he kips down here till sophie finally settles. (i love having to live like this, in one bedroom while i read not 5 minutes ago that 2 million houses are looking at being built for foreigners. i have nothing against them , i just get angry that they get 2 or 3bed houses thrown at them while me and my famiy have to live in such cramped quarters). we have been offered a few houses but have had to turn them down as neither of us drive and they are simply too far out. we could use the bus service but its impossible as the public transport here in mid wales is diabolical. i wouldnt recommend it to anyone. besides, local here could mean anywhere up to 25 miles out lol

ok as to why i didnt want a daughter.
my relationship with my mum was, well lets say different. yes she loved us both, she never let us go without - to the point where she was anorexic from the age of 19 after giving birth to me - but she was secretive. Most of whats going to be typed here is from what i have learnt from my dad since she left him once i moved out of home 5 years ago. Dad was on a good wage at work, but he was working most of the time. he was on continental shifts so it changed every 3 weeks over the 24 hour period. he was a printer and did things like tesco bags, andrex packs, harrods bags etc. he ended up as a team leader after many years and even got hmself 2 gold awards. sadly me and my younger brother grew up terrified of dad, because mum had somehow turned us against him. sub-consiously we were taught to lie, steal, hide things and that it was normal to cheat. we hardly had anyone back to the house, but mainly because dad slept on the couch because of his shifts. (or so we were told). we thoguht it was normal to get the postman to hide the mail under the mat in the porch. mum said it was in case the letter box woke dad up but years later we found out it was because she was hiding his mail.every week she would go tot he bank, take out money from dads account (he trusted mum as she did the shopping every week and she knew the PIN number) and tehn go over hte road to another bank and put money into it. to this day she claims she has no idea what we are talking about and doesnt remember where the money went that was meant to pay the rent, electricity and water for at least 10 years.
i was always being ylled at for something and being accused of starting arguments all the time, even though i know for a fact my voice was never as stroppy as she ade out it was, yet my younger brother (2 years younger) was getting away with alsorts. i hated him at one point and even told him recently when we were chatting but he knows that is definately not the case now. she would walk into my room without knocking, even when i was a teen but when i asked her to knock, she would just tap the door and still walk in anyway.
at the age of 14 i joined the army cadets and found myself much more comfortable in the "male" world of the army. i hated all things girly and didnt even mind when i was called away to go on shooting weekends on mothers day or her birthday a couple of years running. she of course was upset, but as i told her, they cant help it, its those dates that have come up and they dont do it to annoy you deliberately.

As i grew up and i had more and more late night chats with dad after he came home fromt eh pub with a large pizza, i discovered what a bitch she really was. she was just like her own moher who, well lets just say was offering her services to the delightful young squaddies on the base, while her daughter (my mums half sister) would cook them a delicous full english breakfast the next morning. It was so bad that a soldier who had only been in town 12 hours had asked my dad one night in abar about this place he had heard about from some of the other soldiers and dad said "yeah thats my mother in law, heres the address"
mum turned out to be just like that, though stopped for a few years whens he had got caught one night midshag by one of my dads mates. she turned up at home 3 hours later. she has tried to get peoples jobs lost because she doesnt like them or in one case, was sleeping with this bloke (while sleeping with his brother too and both were friends of dads) and she tried to get his girlfriend fired from her job for some stupid and pointless reason that i cant even remember what it was now. she was really pleased with herself for doing this.
every sunday, she would go down town to have breakfast with her friend in safeways cafe befoer they wetn shopping. i ended up going too, in the last year or two of me being at home. one day i remember clearly asking mum if it was still alright for me to go with her and she completely lost it, yelling and screaming at me, accusing me of starting an argument. at this point, me and my brother werent exactly the best of friends but he even stuck up for me and asked her why she was yelling at me and that she was the one starting the argument. she went OTT and started screaming at him yelling that we were both against her and we were ganging up on her and she bet that dad had put us up to it all. I gave up and stayed at home that day. but as furious as he drove me mad, i was alwasy thankful and grateful he stuck up for me that day.
when teh time came for me to leave home, i did so within 5 months of dating trev. half my stuff was alreayd over at his flat anyway, so it was just easier. wjhen i went to pick up my stuff, i was 2 months from my 19th birthday yet still scared of dad. i crept up the stairs as hew as it he bath scared incase he came out and saw me. i now know he was waiting for me to say goodbye or something and, this is really upsetting to type and admit and im nearly crying as this is coming out, but he had no idea what was going on inside my head. ireally do wish now that i had said godbye to him. i was still going to see him, but it was the final time i was int hat house while still living under the roof.
i also found out thatw e were evicted 3 times but mum somehow managed to sort it so that we were ok to still ilve there. when dad found everything out, he came across a letter addressed to him recently asking him to go to court. mum had hidden it. along with all the bills and final demands etc. she had left dad when she waled out with loads of debts that he was responsible for even though he tried to track her down. she wouldnt answer any of his calls and kept calling me up to cry down the phone to me that dad was harrasing her.
ok i have probably lot you a bit now. basically mum walked out a week or two after i moved to wales, pregnant. dad and rob had no idea what was going on so it was a bit of a shock tot hem when she stsrted spreading round town dad had thrown her out mercilessly out into the street. she was acting liket he victim yet again. now i know my dad wasnt perfect, far from it, but he told me that he regretted everything, from losing his temper and beating her, to staying away from the hosue alot, to not making savings etc. he was even sleeping with his friend he had known since they were 12. i forgive him for that as, although he hasnt admitted it to me, and they are now a couple now he is no longer with mum, i know the shit he went through. he even knew about mum sleeping with his friends while they were together. he had no grudge againt his mates though as they werent cheating on him and i respect him immensly for that. (or it could be that im still a daddys girl!!) but mum is still acting like the victim, even though she has now married my stepdad and will be moving out of hte town with him to a new town where he has a new job. out of the army. even 4 years after mum left, dad is still getting demands for payments that he thought were cleared up. but she is refusing to pay them.
like i said she still acts like the vixtim though, and yes, though dad hit her and beat her a few times (which is damn wrong) she acts like she was completely innocent and it was unprovoked and for absolutely no reason. i have to sit there and take it all though as she is highly sensitive and gets upset even when i say that she cant have the kids for some reason because she is moving in a few months etc. yes most people would get upsert, but she goes overboard and cries to her friends that we hate her etc.
she even slept with a solider, 15 years younger than her on my dads bed while he was at college. then text me the next morning to brag about it. great fecking role model.

I know i have babbled on but i do not want to end up liek her or i will be (as i said to my brother over msn one evening) 3rd generation slut. i havent had a close bond with mum, im glad she is 160 miles, she gives the guilt trip everytime she is around or phones for something. i was never taught about make up or shaving, i had to go my aunt for that, then had to teach mum how to shave when i was about 17.
i seriously dont understand that mother daughter bond as i have never had it and i really do envy my friend when i see her with her mum. i went out with them on her hen night and it was so strange they were mother and daughter but acted more like friends. that sort of thing baffles me. i didnt want a daughter as i wouldnt know how to cope and im still worried even now that we will end up like me and mum as i have no base to work from.

alot of people have told me that there is nothing to worry about and i will be a great mum to sophie, but i dont want to be just a mum, i want to be something that my mum never was. its one of the reasons i am still with trev, because if we hadnt have moved away, we would have split up and i would probably be in adead end job, sleeping with whoever. great prospects, hey!!!

[nishka]

Hiya

Just wanted to say hi and that I have been reading your diary and you have a lot to deal with!! I don't blame you for moaning about your housing, it must be very hard to have to live in a one bedroomed place. I think you are doing well coping with it all. It seems you have a lot of issues with your mum understandably. I hope writing in your diary helps you to get everything out, it helps me a lot anyway.

Nishka xx

[chelle2467]

Thanks nishka. we have been here 4 years this summer so its kind of something we have gotten used to lol

well my cold still isnt getting better. i am all bunged up and have now resorted to sitting here in my jumper with my scarf as it seems the best way to keep warm. I also have vicks on my chest. That seems to work too. A little!

I burst into tears last night as i was watching baby borrowers on bbc3 as my friend is on there tonight. (sarah with her son george for any of you who want to watch tonught and tomorrow!!! 10.30pm) and as i know george well, i was getting upset over the bloody teenagers who have no idea what they are doing. Trev ended up coming to bed early so we could hug. He is also taking me to the doctors at the end of the week (friday is the best day as jamie should be better by then and will be at playgroup all day) so we can discuss upping my meds again as he says he has seen me get worse the last week or so and im alot more teary than normal.

[Scarlet]

Hi Chelle,

I was going to watch BabyBorrowers and I turned it on, but was so tired that I had to go to bed, so only managed to watch the first 5 mins. What is the programme about hun?

Let us know how you get on at the docs on Friday.

Scarlet
xxx

[chelle2467]

i will do
it is a few teenage couples who have to look after a baby/small child for a few days. there is so much help behind the scenes though - nannies on hand in case something happens, teh parents are behind too - but basically the teens have to do what we do on a day to day basis. it has been going for acouple of years now i think, but this year it is the baby borrowers on holiday. they are in cornwall and have to go through the whole thing in 4 weeks, from "being" pregnant, all the way up to caring for the elderly for a few days. it is on every night till friday i think. this is the bbc link www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/programmes/baby_borrowers/index.shtml

[nishka]

Agh! I can't bear to watch that programme!! It makes me cringe!! Eeek!

Hope you are okay. Hope the doctors is okay tomorrow. Let us know what they say. xx

[Scarlet]

Thanks for the link Chelle, looks interesting, if I can stay awake next time I will definitely have a look.

How you feeling today?. Hope your cold is better. I use vicks on us all when we have a cold, I stock up on it. We have escaped colds so far this year, but I know it's going around. Let us know how you get on with the docs tomorrow.

Scarlet
xxxxx

[chelle2467]

Well i have just got bsck from the doctors. turns out i ahve the same viral infection that jamie had last week. FUN!!! I also have an infected belly button.

As for the depression side of things....... she cant give me any higher doses than what im already on as apparently im on a high one already. (doesnt feel like it) she is reffering me to the local mental health hospital. im not too keen as they dealt with trev in 2006 when he was depressed, agoraphobic and suicidal. they basically made out hewas a liar and it was all in his head. they told him tog et over it and that he had to be better in 6 months as that was when they were discharging him no matter what. sure enough, they did. My doc says that they have had a change around in the support area in thelast couple of months but im still very apprihensive about it. I dont really want to see acounsillor. i just want the tablets and carry on with everything

[chelle2467]

well im feeling ok at the moment. i have made jamies tea and just because i felt like it, i gave him 6 little snowman shaped bread and butter pieces to go with his pasta!! he thinks its amazing and is very happy about his "posh tea" lol
i found his cookie christmas cutters and equipment trevs mum and dad got him last month and as we hadnt used them yet, i decided to give em ago. well its still partly winter so why not!!!