The last 2 days have been focussed on my fear of a heart attack. To some that may sound far fetched: a 31 year old woman at risk of cardiac arrest? no way. But unfortunately it is yes way. I have type 1 diabetes and it is a fact that heart disease is one of the many complications that can affect a diabetic. And the scary truth that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in people with diabetes is starting to hit me bad at the moment. I am scared s***less about this. I have no idea why I have all of a sudden focussed on this. Which makes me wonder if it's intuition and it's something I need to follow up on or whether I am just letting my neurotic crazy head get the better of me. Either way I have become proactive about it and am getting all the necessary blood tests done and an ecg.
I have a feeling my worry is born from being a mother. I would not have thought of these worries 10 years ago. I need to be 100% healthy for my children's sake. They need their mum to be able to care for them, and not just in that generic way. I have Liam who literally needs me for everything. EVERYTHING. It would be selfish of me not to be selfish lol. That is how I have to look at it. I have to put my diabetes management first so I can put my children's needs next. If I don't then I won't be able to do ANYTHING for my children. This is hard as a parent, because we naturally want to put our children first and everything else follows. I am going to have to re-evaluate this...
This is also applicable to my mental health. I need to be gentle on myself. This seems to be another aspect parents find difficult. Us parents tend to push our mental health needs to the side and hope it will all be ok. But that doesn't serve our children well. We need to be stable for our children to feel stable. At the moment I am not seeing any professionals for this. In some way I would like to, but then I think about the bad experiences I have had in the past with counsellors (how some had made me feel worse!) and I decide against it. Instead I choose to speak about it with my husband or a friend. This is an important step for anybody with mental health issues to do and one in which fellow blogger Random Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum is very adament about. So please if you are suffering from depression, anxiety, fear, panic, deep worry... SPEAK. Words outloud are in a safer place than words stuck in your head, that can swirl and whirl, fester and feed on further fear and darkness.
3 comments:
There are only a few special people that have these bands (so far) and Lori from RRSHM will be thrilled when I forward this post to her. Your post and others like and These positive follow-on effects are the things that buoy her spirit.
I fear that every mother worries about possible ill health, not for themselves but for the care of their children. That fact that two of your babies do and will always require high care (with high hopes for Jack being high functioning of course) must compact and compound that maternal instinct.
Strength, and love my friend.
"It would be selfish of me not to be selfish". Every mother I know should print this out and stick it somewhere they will see it every day because it is so true. That's why the airline hostesses say we need to put on our own oxygen masks before we put on our childrens'. We need to be ok to make sure they are ok. What a brilliant post Yeran. xo
That is such a good analogy Misha with the oxygen masks!!! We need some stickers or t-shirts with these things written on them ;-)
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