Time to face facts......

uuugghhh..... I seem to be riding an emotional roller coaster at the moment, one minute I feel fine and am enjoying the sun, my children, my hobby, hubby and life..... the next I want to run away from it all. So don't read this if you don't want , I just need to get a few things off my chest and by writing them down they might sink into my head a bit better too.

1: I have depression....... sometimes hard to admit, especially to myself. and this time has been no different. It's not the first time I have found myself here. I have suffered with PND after each of my children apart from my first and it never gets any easier to deal with. Since Elsie was born I have found myself in floods of tears most days.... but lately, I'd say over the past week or so, I've found myself becoming angry over nothing too, this is when its time to do something about it as my family don't deserve the monster that I become.

I took myself to the doctor last week.... I filled out one of those 'are you gonna kill yourself??' forms.... and as I know the symptoms of depression well enough by now my score was relatively low (which is a good thing) the doc kind of looked at me as if to say ' why did you bother coming in to see me???' ....... No I'm not as bad as I have been before..... but my words to her was I know how it starts and I don't wanna wait to go back to that horrible place before I do something about it.

she prescribed me vitamin B!!!! WTF is that meant to do???? as you can tell it has had no affect on me whatsoever I still cry at the drop of a hat, I still tell my kids off for doing nothing and I still blame my hubby for things that don't mean a thing. and im fed up with being fed up!!!

My plan....... doc said she was going to phone my health visitor when I left, so I am going to call my hv this morning to find out what she had said. I get on really well with her so I know she will tell me, and I can find out what bloody vitamin B's are meant to be doing???

2:My baby girl has an arm missing....... yes I have known this since she was born and people keep asking me how I felt when she was born and I found out..... well the answer..... Horrible. how else am I meant to feel???

I love Elsie Moo as much as I love my other children, she is a special girl, my special girl, and I will always be here for her. But... I need to face facts, she will never have an arm, im not gonna wake up one day and its gonna have grown. she will always need help with things, people will always look at her when we are out and nudge each other like they have already.and it will probably always affect me more than it affects her!

After speaking to Jayne the other day I know that these are all my problems, and that Elsie will more than likely be oblivious to half of my concerns as she finds her own way of doing things. but right now its hard to imagine how she will be, I need to get over the fact that she only has one arm and be thankful for the fact that it was only her arm that was missing. there are parents who don't even get to hold their baby alive.... whose babies are born with serious conditions.... with no legs or downs syndrome compared to them just having one  arm missing would be a godsend.

I should be more grateful for what I have ... I have a beautiful baby girl who will grow up with the love and support of her family and friends. I have a strong family who will make Elsie into a strong person, who will shrug off anything that comes her way and overcome all challenges that life throws at her. but at the moment I cant see past it. I hope it happens soon cause I want to enjoy my time with her as she is to be our last :(

3: Something needs to be done......... yesterday morning I sent Paul to have our meeting with the head of sonography at Southmead Hospital. I couldn't bear to go with him as I knew I'd be sat there crying the whole time and that would have got us no where so I made the choice to take myself out of that situation and let him handle things.

He says that things went better than we both expected, we thought he'd either be so stuck up his own ass that he would try and wriggle his way out of taking any responsibility for Elsie's arm going unnoticed. Or he would be so over the top nice that it would be obviously fake. Instead Paul said he seemed genuinely sorry that it had been over looked, he took full responsibility on behalf of the hospital for it being over looked and apologized also for the way we were introduced to Elsie in the delivery suite.

he basically gave us 3 options which we now need to think about.....

the first is to walk away form the whole situation.... take on board the fact that yes Elsie has an arm missing, it was no fault of ours or theirs and these things happen and just accept his apology for them not seeing it at the scans. This would be the easiest option for me to do cause I just wanna get on with life.

the second is to write a letter of complaint to him, which will then get passed onwards and upwards through the chain of command and in return we'd get a letter back from the hospital which had probably been written by someones receptionist and not even looked at by anyone who cares. what a waste of time this would be!

or lastly we could sue the hospital for missing the fact that she has no left forearm in the scan. 

this is the scariest option for me, having to have the ordeal dragged up over and over again, the whole experience was bad enough the first time around and having to explain it to new people makes me upset every time so dragging it out ad having to go to court etc would be horrendous.

but on the other hand if we get some sort of compensation for Elsie's future it might be worth it?!?!?!?

She is gonna need special stuff when she's older, she might even want a prosthetic arm at some point, who knows what she will decide but money would help us to help her.  

but I don't wanna look like im out for the money cause im really not but then if it helps Elsie in the future what sort of mother would I be not to try???

I'm torn, I don't really want to be reminded of the birth for months to come, maybe even years and I don't want to think about it longer than I have to but can I afford , for Elsie's sake, not to????

we are gonna wait for the letter from the top dog before we make any decisions, I hope we choose what is best for us as a family. 

what a horrible depresing post this has been but I have needed to write all of this down to figure out how to move on.

thanks for listening xxxx