Can I keep it together for the next nine months?
This week: I’m stressed, exhausted and trying not to be sick on a national treasure
‘I am rarely fazed when I meet famous people. But Stephen Fry is different’
There’s a well-known phrase about heroes, which I’ve adjusted for my current circumstances: “Don’t meet your heroes, but if you do then don’t be sick on them.”
Sitting opposite Stephen Fry in a corner of Cambridge’s student union, poised to record a podcast with him for the imminent launch of my mental health platform, Headcase, I am acutely aware of this catchy phrase. Now 12 weeks pregnant, I am riding the high seas of nausea. I swear it was never this bad when I had my older children 20 years ago.
I am rarely fazed when I meet famous people. But Stephen is different. He is Jeeves, and as such was a big part of my teenage reading, and Tv-watching, years. He is also what I believe is annoyingly called a “national treasure”, and I’m getting one-on-one access to the trove. I must just try not to be sick into it.
While he talks to me about mental healthcare in this country – a subject I’ve been affected by, and continue to be passionate about – I am also acutely aware of my own.
Despite my denial of many small but gradually increasing symptoms, my public portrayal to the contrary, and my determination not to fail at anything, my mind is starting to do just that – fail. Or at least, I feel it is soon likely to, if I don’t do what I’m always telling others to do to stay well.
As Stephen is talking, and I focus on keeping down my dinner, I think of my growing baby and how much of my mental health wobbles might be passed on. How much, I wonder, is genetic, and how much just circumstantial?
Despite the current obsession with “self care” and “me time”, I can’t honestly say that I’m any better at it now, having my fourth baby, than I was for my first 20 years ago.
The main difference is simply that I’m older, and much more tired. Mentally tired by life’s events and the passing of time, as much as physically. And I’m refusing to accept it.
Like many mums I know, I am terrible at getting help, knowing my limits, admitting that I can’t manage it all. Motherhood is especially prone to mental health strains, due to its sheer exhaustive power, topped with extra lashings of expectation, fear of failure, and guilt.
And now, having a baby in my forties, I feel the pressure not to fail is even greater than in my twenties – that anything I can’t achieve or fail at will be put down to “my age”.
As I push trolleys around Ikea and haul boxes of belongings up the stairs of our new rented house while trying not to be sick into them, work late into the night, help my eldest move back to university and take my youngest to weekend high jump competitions, I wonder just how much more I can take.
Finally, the big launch event happens. I drive to London, unload the car and spend 12 hours setting up, finishing at 3am. Hundreds of people come the next day, and I spend most of it either trying to keep the nausea at bay or hiding in the back room, crying. It’s a great success. I am sick on no one.
By the time it’s all over the next day, I’m so exhausted, I can’t get out of the car when we arrive back in Cambridge.
The house move is finished. The launch is finished. The first trimester is finished. And I am very nearly finished. I open my laptop, and book two flights to Venice. Two seats, for three passengers. Because if I don’t stop now, and take stock of everything, I really worry that only two passengers will make it back.
Next time: Can I bring la dolce vita back home from Italy?