Category Archives: Health & Wellbeing

Menopause The Boozical | Act 1

Two years ago, at age 45, I made an appointment to visit the GP.

“I’m menopausal!”, I declared. “I’ve put on a stone overnight, no warning, and my stomach is all squishy. Also, my periods are fucked and my hair is falling out. My things, my.. hormones.. must be acting up, right?”

He checked everything, took some bloods and said that my hormone levels were fine. It was declared that I was far, far away from being peri-menopausal. I put the weight-gain and belly squidgyness down to my fondness for ALL the pizza and wine, and vowed to start using my treadmill for something other than a clotheshorse.

Armed with my not-yet-menopausal smugness, I vadge-blocked anyone who gently suggested otherwise for the two years since. My acute tiredness? Kids, running a business, life. My shit skin? Psoriasis. My psoriasis? Kids, running a business, life. Restless sleep, lack of concentration, forgetfulness.  All of the above, just life. The doctor said so!

But in January of this year, a pain started in my leg. Not quite muscular, not quite sciatica but just.. deep, unrelenting, in the bone and keeping me awake at night pain. I started taking an anti-inflam painkiller right before bed just to get through the night.

And then The Feeling came with it. That something was wrong but nothing was really wrong because look at how lucky I am with my kids and my friends and my work and my roof over my head but GOD why hadn’t I done anything with my life and sure it’s too late now because your life is essentially over. You are MIDDLE AGED and you’ve FAILED.

Image courtesy of Meno-Me.com

Now that’s not like me. I’m generally a terribly excited person, terribly positive – loving life and grabbing it with both hands and being thrilled with myself for achievements big and small.

So I went to a different doc and tearily explained my symptoms. “We’re all about the menopause here!”, says he, and within seven minutes, I had a prescription for oestrogen gel and a feeling of regret for not starting it sooner.

A friend who started HRT two weeks earlier than me said that taking control of the situation and just starting HRT had had something of a placebo effect and that she was already feeling better. Less wonky within herself and less rage.

Image courtest of Balance-menopause.com

But I feel a little worse, for now at least. Because now I am middle aged woman on HR fucking T and not the 32 year-old I hang on to in my head. It’s not like I didn’t know that this was coming down the line eventually but I guess I was just hoping to maybe.. I dunno.. skip it?!

The pain in my leg is brutal this week. The acute tiredness has morphed into full-on exhaustion. And the rage is STRONG, my friends. Holy moly – how did this phase happen to coincide with having a pre-teen in the house?!

Perhaps I’m gonna need something stronger than the HRT in time but for now, we’re giving this a go. Week One down and Six until we hit optimum magical oestrogen levels.

I’ll report back.  I’ll bring the pizza. You bring the wine.

 

If you are experiencing any symptoms of peri menopause, including a distinct change in mental health, consult your doctor immediately and firmly request treatment. Being a woman is hard enough without being deprived of a simple fix to help you through. Don’t take no for an answer!

The Time Is Now! (Or Whenever Suits You, Honestly)

Welcome to The Era Of Motivation Overload.

The Age of Affirmations.

The 5am Club.

The Seize The Day Gang.

The Squad Goals.

The Ice Bath Brigade.

The Sun Risers.

The Sun Setters. Jesus.

The Hybrid Work Posse.

The Tough-Iron-Marathon-Hiker Gang.

The Weekly Sheet Maskers.

The Fucking Coordinated Family Outfit Wearers.

Someone Needs To Tell These Two To Calm TF Down

As someone who is, ya know, busy enough like the rest of us, I have never felt more inclined to believe that I am a complete underachiever every time I pick up my phone and see the content that is being shoved at my eyeballs.

Or that I can’t possibly have any semblance of happiness in my life if I don’t get up two hours before the rest of the family to clean the jacks every day.

Or that I’m not a real woman of the world if I don’t know how to use colour corrector or where highlighter goes.

Where is the content that tells you to curl up on the couch with a great book and a jumbo packet of Doritos on the weekends, delegate the jobs on that long list of shit you have to do around the house, eat pizza in bed and watch movies with the kids, deal with it tomorrow if you don’t have the energy today and be happy in YOUR OWN WAY.

Pals, that content is right here. I am here to tell you that no one knows when your ‘Now’ is except you. Or your closest friends and family. Or maybe even your incredibly insightful and fabulous hairdresser.

Let’s make a promise between us to get UN-influenced by social media and figure out how to spend our time in a way that is 100% true to ourselves and what really makes us happy.

For me, it has always been writing. How about you?

PS: I have no idea where highlighter goes.

Face, right?

Also.. Self-help Singh is all of us. Check his wisdom out ;o)

 

 

 

 

Operation: Hallowe’en

‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Yearr…’ we sing in our house as Halloween approaches.

We really do love it – from the second school is back in session we are planning our decorating theme, our costumes, the movies we will watch every Friday for ‘Movie & Pizza Night’ and genuinely, it’s pretty much all we talk about in September and October.

This year isn’t any different despite the fact that it is, well, different. We have our theme ‘The Witches’ and started building an epic cauldron from scratch which will take centre stage in the middle of the garden path.

I know I’m mad. I know. But.. Halloweeeeen!!

This is great for lots of different reasons;

A) it’s keeping the kids busy when otherwise we are, really, not so busy at all. Do you have any idea how tedious papier mache is on a large scale?!

B) When it’s done I’m going to wedge it between the posts of our garden gate so that it isn’t possible to come in and knock on our door this Halloween. It’s a Witchy Barrier, you see. Look, someone is going to try to call on doors in your neighbourhood and that’s is a fact – this is our creative way of saying ‘Bitch, you crazy?’.

Expected Completion Date: Halloween 2034

Making Halloween Day special is top of my agenda for the kids (and us!) – and it can be done with a bit of effort and some imagination. Some of our neighbours who also have small kids are talking about having a little parade of costumes up and down the road during the day which is cute. The kids will still have good reason to still get excited about costumes and face paint. If the neighbours all left treats on their walls the kids can still fill their bags and everyone feels like Trick or Treating somewhat happened. I’m going to get some Halloween choons going outside my house too, to cheer them on. Don’t worry, I won’t sing. Halloween is terrifying enough.

I don’t know if it’s very early, or if people are reluctant to bother putting up decorations in case it encourages unwanted callers on Halloween Night, but there seems to be way fewer houses with decorations up in our area.

Which is a shame, because, like Xmas, little kids love to walk around their neighbourhoods in the lead-up to Halloween and see the spookiness that other people have going on in their houses and gardens.

I say make the effort; decorate your home, drop some sweets to the doorstep of your friends and family who have kids, embrace the Pumpkin Latte and Ghosty Cupcakes of it all.

One-tenth complete. Four hours later (!)

You can still let people know that you are not available for knocking on doors Halloween Night – put Crime Scene tape across your gate, pop up a sign asking for No Callers Please. Just don’t forget all the other potential fun stuff besides just that – the little monsters are still all super excited. Let’s not let them down.

Periods of the Pandemic

When Lockdown The First hit us in March I instantly lost all sense of time and space. We closed our two Skinny Batch Bakery locations, sent all the engineers and staff home from Dynamic Ltd; as everyone locked the doors and pulled down the blinds while we waited for the CoronaZombies to fuck off.

I googled ‘Zombie Coronavirus Meme’ and Angelina came up. I need to get off the internet.

Which they did not. That sentiment of “I know the government said 2 weeks but I’d say it’ll be 5” whittled away and ultimately just got longer and longer as one day and week blended into the next.

What day was it? What week were we in? Was it still even 2020? I saw a few of my fellow parenting bloggers measuring the time in monthly periods and realised I had started to do that too.

“We are two periods into this lockdown now!” I would announce to Ass Monkey as he was shoved off out into The Scary Outdoors to buy tampons (the yellow pack, for my still average vagina, thanks for asking).

This is NOT Alan but I do love this guy hard.

But as dementing as the global pandemic has been, it is NO match for the change in hormones I have experienced around my periods this year. The raging, the wailing, the incapacitation (I feel like Vanilla Ice should do something with those lyrics if I’m honest) – and then the guilts that ensued afterwards when it was all over were too.. obvious to ignore.

As a woman who got her first period in the late 80s I can tell you that all I have been accustomed to doing is ‘getting on with it’ with regards to my monthly cycle. There was an unspoken blanket-ban on the mention of any of the following in my house growing up; blood, periods, tampons, pads, cramps, back pain, feelings, hormones, menstruation or monthly cycle. Jesus, I don’t think we even ever referred to them as ‘Women’s Problems’. The sad truth is; we just didn’t talk about it.

Just some of Erica’s wisdom on her Instagram page

So here I am in my 40s, just beginning to learn how the hell my body works. I’ve been to the GP, I’ve had my hormone levels checked, I’m taking supplements, I bought a book and I’m inspired by the great advice of Erica Quinn who, in her own words, is ‘Obsessed with Periods’. Finally, somebody is.

Me and My Middle-Aged Chocolate Spread

If 20s are the new teens and 30s are the new 20s, 40s the new 30s and so on.. when does middle age officially begin now?

I recently turned 42 and let me tell you.. all hell is breaking loose. If I compare photos from last year to this, there are outrageous differences – I have aged, people, really aged – in my face, on my body and perhaps, most regrettably, in my teeny, tiny mind.

Mentally flipping from ‘Hanging onto my youth, getting away with certain clothing and perhaps a trip to Ibiza passing for someone in my 30s’ has morphed into ‘I can’t believe my hot water bottle burst how am I going to survive, will I establish a neighbourhood watch group, oh my god I’ve turned into my parents’ – in the space of a few short months.

Ass Monkey and I decided to embark on ‘One Year No Beer’ in January, which also coincided with No smoking, No meat, No dairy, His entry into full veganism, and My vague, ill-informed registration for the Dublin Marathon 2019.

So off we set in January, doe-eyed and optimistic about how our lives were to be positively transformed from all these epic efforts – we sprang from our beds at 6am and went running, gymming, I took up dancing again and signed up for yoga, reformer pilates – anything to compensate for the huge energy void I was sure not drinking would leave behind.

I claimed I would be full of excess energy, now that those nasty hangovers would no longer be present, sucking the goodness of the day away with headaches and narkiness.

I claimed I would get my old dancer body back – toned, trim, nice bum and toned abs. Hell, I might even find my Madonna arms again with all that planking and dancing and Reformer-ing.

As the weeks wore on, I studied myself in the mirror religiously, waiting for the pay off. But the results were the opposite – the exact opposite of what I had anticipated.

How was I putting all this effort in and now beginning to look… well… like shite? My body seemed to be expanding rather than toning up, my eyes more wrinkled and tired looking than ever and – dare I say it – my arse looks like it’s starting to droop. THE HORROR.

In truth, a part of the problem is.. CHOCOLATE. Having previously held a ‘take it or leave it’ approach to the eating of chocolate, I find I am now obsessed with it. Thanks to my ‘new healthy lifestyle’, my sweet tooth has literally exploded and won’t be satisfied until it eats every bit of chocolate in the house.

I am a woman possessed – looking for it in the morning, dreaming about it at night, hiding my eating of it from the kids ‘coz I don’t want them to know where my stash is in case, horror of horrors, I might be asked to share it.

Is this my new alcohol? Am I now on the rocky road (mmmm…) to becoming ‘that’ lady who spends her days seeking out a nice slice of lemon drizzle cake, a tasty chop bun to accompany my pot of tea (that I will keep asking the waitstaff to refill but never paying twice).

The answer, from me and my expanding arse-line, is a resounding, ganache-filled YES.


The Good, The Blog & The Ugly

Eva starts school this September. We got the letter at the beginning of the year, asking us to nominate our school preference for her, and I thought, ‘They have this wrong. She doesn’t go until next year, right?!’

WRONG. Our baby girl turns 5 this July and off she pops then to school after the summer holidays.

But where did that time go? And have I spent enough time hanging out with her, doing girlie things and just staring at her perfect little face?!

 

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I’m not sure if Eva likes her new dressing table @presentcompanyskerries … (she loves it!) #shoplocal #localbusiness #supportlocal

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Of course not, so I did what any normal parent would do – freaked the f*ck out, tossed and turned with mammy guilt and anguish, pondered all of my options and.. cut her pre-school hours in half to spend more time with her.

Now, instead of collecting her at 3pm every day, I cram as much work as I possibly can into a 3.5 hour morning and get her just after noon.

And we’ve been having A BALL. We’ve hit all the playgrounds and cafes in our local area, we’ve snuck off to Smyths, we’ve done each others nails, we’ve danced to the Lego Movie 2 soundtrack (it’s actually brilliant) and I’ve stared at her perfect little face a LOT.

 

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What do you think @muamakeup_x – a makeup artist in the making? (I’m still trying to get the glitter off me today!!😃😂)

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The benefits of all of this to our relationship, I know, are endless, but on a personal level I’ve gotten so much more than I bargained out of it.

I’ve stopped for a minute. And I’ve realised a few things – for starters, I’ve bloody missed writing (so hurray! Here I am!!).

Then there was the stress I hadn’t realised I’d been carrying – and ignoring – for who knows how long. I went to the dentist with a sore tooth recently to be told that I was grinding my teeth so much in my sleep that I had essentially given myself a pain in my face (!). Slowing down with Eva has made me notice and deal with that.

 

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This little lady is always treated like a VIP at @blowdrysandbigeyes ❤️❤️❤️

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My house is finally getting some attention! I had been mostly ignoring the mess and the clutter and the unfinished-ness of it all for the past two years. I don’t know why. I used to be extremely house proud and just sort of.. gave up.

From hanging out at home with Eva a bit more than I usually would, and seeing it through her eyes, I’m starting to love our home again. I mean, I’m not quite Ellen O’Keeffe level (love her) but I am really putting effort into it again. And it’s making me feel good.

 

I’ll be 42 this year and the more that I think about this ole thing called life, the more I battle with what my life should or shouldn’t be like, the things I feel I should or shouldn’t have achieved by now (constant annoying thought process), the more I realise that really, at the end of the day, I just want to be in front of the fire, dancing with my family to Everything is Awesome.

Because everything IS awesome, right here, right now xxx

What To Do When Your Kid Gets Lego Stuck Up Their Nose

Yes, this is a real post and yes, this 100% happened yesterday.

As if getting our little darlings back to school wasn’t excitement enough, Eva approached me as I sat on the couch yesterday evening after dinner, with just a tiny bit of trepidation.

“Mam, I just wanna tell you something. I just sort of didn’t mean to do it but I just sorta accidentally stuck some Lego up my nose and I can’t get it back out with my finger”

And there she was, my beautiful 3-year-old, in her flower girl dress she insisted on putting on after school, trying to stick her chubby finger up that nostril and ultimately, make things worse.

Step 1: Internal Panic. Ass Monkey is working late for all of January because he has a RIDIC number of restaurant fit-outs. Mam and Dad are at a funeral all day. If you have to go to the hospital to get this thing professionally removed – YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN, goddamnit.

Step 2: External Calm. Reassure lovely daughter that everything is fine. Enquire as to the shape of the Lego piece. “Roundy”, says she. Well, that’s either a blessing or a curse. Time will tell.

Step 3: Sub It Out. Enlist the help of Big Brother Jacob. “Could you perhaps chuck the dogs out into the back garden please?” I nod knowingly at him, like it’s a big important job. (Mostly it’s because the new puppy just LOVES to jump all over Eva and distract her and I needed him out of the jaysus scene).

Step 4: Light Up. No, not a smoke, we haven’t gone that far into panic mode yet. Get lovely daughter up onto the kitchen counter so we can get a good look up that shnozz in the bright light. No sign of the Lego piece. Balls.

Step 5: Go Oprah On It. Soothingly reassure your worried maggot that everything is fine and get them to stop sniffing up OR sticking their finger back up there, which is all she wanted to do.

Step 6: Check Your Biology. This is honestly what was going through my head; “If she sniffs it all the way up, will it go into her brain? Or is that what happens if you stick a lead pencil up your nose and you whack your head off the table in school? Oh no, that’s it. The lead pencil. So if she sniffs it up will it come down and out of her mouth? WHY DIDN’T I PAY ATTENTION IN SCHOOL???”

Step 7: Breathe. Together, Eva and I practiced sniffing down instead of up, all the while watching Jacob struggling to get the two dogs out the back door (which never happened) until finally, happily, a tiny green ’roundy’ piece of Lego dropped from her nose and into the lap of her princess dress.

“Why did you put it into your nose?” I (still calmly, I was so relieved) asked her.

“Because I was holding it and I needed my hands and I had to put it somewhere” was her reply.

OBVIOUSLY, like.

Step 8: Fuck all the Lego out of the house.

Mara and Me – A Mother’s Story

On Halloween morning 2015, my childhood friend Melissa woke up to what would be a living nightmare.

Her daughter Mara, then 4, blonde haired and blue eyed and delicate in that most beautiful of little girl ways, had developed a huge lump on her neck, literally overnight.

“She wasn’t sick”, Melissa told me over a recent coffee (one that we held hands and mostly cried during).

“In hindsight, there were little things; night sweats, a runny nose, a cough – all the normal things that children get. Nothing that we were worried about”.

The journey from parental concern for Mara to full diagnosis of Hodgkins Lymphoma is rife with those all-too-typically-Irish-medical-system stories – under-diagnoses, misdiagnoses, it isn’t cancer, it is cancer, she won’t need chemotherapy, she will…

I personally knew very little about Hodgkins Lymphoma except that when Jacob started school in September last year, there was a little girl with a ‘Freddie’ in her arm because she was having chemotherapy.

Look how beautiful she is!

You burst into tears when you hear this, about this child who didn’t have cancer 11 months previously, your friend’s baby girl, the baby girl who is the same age as your baby boy…

Melissa tells me that it is the most treatable of the childhood cancers, the survival rate is higher than others but the chance that it might re-present within 5 years is also quite high.

Horribly, St. John’s Ward in Crumlin Children’s Hospital lost other children while Mara was a patient there, but our little hero Mara came through to the other side.

My friend burst into tears as she recalled how she and her husband Alex would have to help the medical staff hold Mara’s tiny body down to receive her chemotherapy, an image that I will never forget for her.

She tells me about Aoibheann’s Pink Tie. They were a huge support to Melissa and her family at the beginning – they gave them ‘Chemo Duck’ to help explain the process of chemotherapy to Mara (he has a Freddy too), as well as providing sound practical support when they needed it the most.

Mara and ‘Chemo Duck’!

My Jacob is a little bit in love with Mara, the now 6-year-old girl who no longer has a Freddie in her arm and who was aptly awarded Junior Infant Student of the Year at the primary school that they attend.

Yep, we all bawled then too..

In fact, all of the kids are quite in love with her. Even while she was still having treatment, she insisted on writing out and colouring individual Valentine’s Day cards for each of the kids in her class last February.

My heart.

Melissa and Alex are looking forward to a clear scan at Mara’s next appointment this month but are still processing all that they have had to deal with in the last 2 years.

Besides managing Mara’s illness and treatment, they also have two younger children to take care of. So not only were Melissa and Alec feeling miserable about Mara being unwell, they also had that all-too-familiar parent guilt that they weren’t giving the other kids enough attention.

Can you imagine?

“I’m still so angry”, my gorgeous, and very placid friend Melissa, tells me. “Why us?”

**If you are worried about any aspect of your child’s health, seek advice from your GP immediately. If you are not satisfied with the outcome, seek a second opinion. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month each year but let’s always think of, and support, those families who are struggling. Melissa tells me that the nicest things that people did were the simple ones – dropping over a dinner, cutting the grass, popping in to say hi.

Take care of each other x**

 

Burning Down The House: Part Deux

It’s safe to say this summer is a load of balls.

Yes, perhaps this does counter my attempt at positivity in another recent post BUT things have changed since then.

It was one thing when Jacob fractured his elbow and put paid to all our plans for summer holiday adventures and especially anything water-related.

It was another when Eva picked up a rather vile tummy bug that lasted for almost a week.

We’re talking full out-of-all-ends projections all day long – I literally had to boil wash and bleach everything that she even looked at.

The sitting room rug is currently still banished to the back garden and the neighbourhood is still under threat that I might just burn the fucking house down and be done with it.

But it is QUITE ANOTHER MATTER ALTOGETHER when both adults of this house pick up aforementioned stomach bug at precisely the same time.

I won’t go into the shitty details (sorry) but suffice to say that Ass Monkey and I are on Day 4 of no food, gross episodes and are both shadows of our former selves.

We’ve never both been simultaneously sick before so it’s a bit of a pisser for the kids that..well, that we’re their parents, frankly, at the moment.

Thankfully my own parents are taking them to the movies today so they can have something of a childhood that doesn’t involve having arts and crafts shoved at them while their parents wrestle each other like maniacs for first dibs on the bathroom.

Anyway, I’ve decided that when it’s all over, I may as well burn down the house and the entire neighbourhood now.

It is my social duty.

I mean, if I can spare just one family the bum wees…

 

 

Entertaining 5-Year-Olds With Broken Arms On Summer Hols

Don’t be disappointed but this isn’t actually a helpful, informative piece about what you should do if your 5-year-old should fracture his elbow on summer hols.

No. This is an appeal for HELP.

There are 5-ish weeks left to go before school decides to get over their (very tanned by now) selves and start back to educating our kids so WTF am I to do with the one-arm bandit until then?

@skinnybatchdeli pancakes being put to good use 😃

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He had a fall at my brother’s wedding (lovely day, jesus they really got the weather and all the gorgeous pics and we drank all the gorgeous prosecco too) – and Ass Monkey and I had to transport him to Temple Street at 11pm via taxi..

..because we were fairly shit-faced by then.

I managed to change into a t-shirt and jeans but still had a full face of makeup and false eyelashes on so I looked FABULOUS as I burst through the doors in dramatic fashion, insisting on carrying my son wrapped in a blanket who DID NOT have a broken ankle and was well able to walk himself in, truth be told.

(Although it was very late and cold and he was in a little bit of shock so I’ll forgive myself that one)

Anyway, featured elbow, they said. 6 weeks in a cast, they said.

FUCK MY LIFE.

I said.

He’s adjusted quite well, to be fair, and is rocking the sympathy vote with the ladies and anyone else who enquires as to the presence of the cast.

‘My uncle dropped me’, is the story he insists on telling everyone, which isn’t true but I’m enjoying the reactions so I’m saying nothing.

Me? I’m not adjusting so great. There is now only room for me, him and the bright blue cast in our bed at night.

Ass Monkey has been relegated to Jacobs bedroom – it is honestly the most use it’s gotten since we’ve moved into the house 3 years ago to be honest.

Kiddie camps have been a welcome relief until now, those 3 precious hours to yourself in the morning can never be underestimated.. but they finish this Friday.

Then what, people? Entertain the one-arm sympathy junkie by myself?!

HELLLLPPPP!!!!