Junior doctor – Mother in the House

Railway relaxation …

So I am on the train. I. Just me. Well and a train full of other people but none of them are my responsibility. There is just me and a classy can of G&T.

I’m heading to meet an old friend, to go out for dinner, have a conversation (maybe even finish it) and generally relax.

I have been excited about this for weeks and the really sad part is that I have been super excited about the train ride. Just a few hours of uninterrupted escapism watching the world go by, not being mauled, reading, listening and not actively being mum. I have planned this out, I booked a seat – forward facing and in the quiet coach, got my G&T, got my book, downloaded some podcasts. This should be heaven.

Only it’s not. The train was 30mins late. No biggie, had a little lunch at the station. But then I have boarded the train and it’s gone downhill.

I am in the right coach. Coach A. The quiet coach. It’s definitely not a quiet coach.

Some overly affectionate youthful couple are canoodling while watching an episode of something on a phone, with no headphones in and the audio turned up antisocially high. Again – no biggie. This will not get me down. I will just pop my head phones in and ignore it….Only then I realise I forgot my headphones.

I look for my reserved seat, hoping that it will be a suitable distance away from said couple. It is. Only it has someone sat in it.

Now, this is sort of situation that makes me very British. Yes I reserved that seat. Yes I selected it especially for its forward facing window view. But no. I will not stake my claim. Instead I will sit on the only other vacant seat in the coach, just adjacent to said touchy-feely couple, which is also reserved. So I will not relax. At each station I will panic that the rightful owner of the seat that I am sat in will board the train and stake their claim forcing me to stand up – correctly evicted from the seat to find my own.

My initial thought is that I will obviously just ask the person in my seat to move. This will be fine. It will be clear I am doing it only because I was forced in to it. However, I look more closely as the thoughtless, rude, seat thief and realise that no, I am just too British. I cannot evict the sleeping 5 yr old from my seat.

Instead I glare at said child’s mother, who is also sleeping (I wouldn’t risk confrontation with a glare that might be seen) and resign myself to a journey of anxious unease resting on my derrière until I have to go stand in the smelly toilet vestibule.

Damn children. Who’d have them?!

Punctual, Proud and Peeing…

The Girl has started school. The school do a very gentle induction of half days for a whole week. Which is of course a total nightmare for childcare and for my child who is used to 10 hour days at nursery. It is somewhat painful all round.

Anyway, accepting this, Phil rose to the parenting challenge and took some annual leave. As did I, as I wasn’t missing the first day of school obligatory photo shoot either! But on the Friday I had a course to go on.

So I swanned out of the house at 7.30am being a strong and independent woman, going to work and leaving Phil to have the Stay-at-home-dad experience. As we have long established, time keeping is not Phils’ strongest point so I left him fully briefed and and crossed my fingers.

But I needn’t have worried. Phil is a new age independent man. He’d got this. And he really did. He dropped the girl off. He fed The Boy, he returned at lunch time to collect The Girl. He told me with great delight that he spoke to lots of the mums at the school gates, he tells me he was a proud dad and he didn’t stick out like the only dad at the gate, he did the school run and enjoyed it. In fact he was so on time that he managed to collect The Boy’s prescription milk (because cows milk makes his insides bleed) from the pharmacy before he went to the school.

The Boy’s milk supply comes as 7 tins of formula. Which they kindly put in a box to make it easy to carry.

So Phil went to the school gates and mingled like a pro with a huge, bright purple, clearly labelled, Tena lady incontinece pads box under his arm.

Now when I realise that this has happened I have mixed emotions.

Firstly I’m mortified that every parent at the school gates is going to think that I have incontinence issues. I’ve had two children, including a 9lb 1 chunk of a boy so it’s not entirely unreasonable that people would think this. But I actually don’t. I’m lucky enough to have a husband who is a urologist and therefore kindly offered frequent reminders to do my pelvic floor exercises. Which to date have proved very effective in maintaining my ability to pee on demand.

But then again. Why should I be so distressed that people are thinking my husband is collecting my incontinence pads? I mean what a guy to do that?!

And, so what if I do need incontinence pads? What’s the big deal? It’s a common problem, why should I be embarrassed? Why shouldn’t we say it loud and proud “I carried 2 children and popped them out of my fanny. My body is amazing. So let’s cut it some slack and forgive it for being a bit leaky.”

Maybe Phil proudly chatting away with the Tena Lady under his arm will make someone else think. Maybe it will normalise this. Maybe it will encourage someone else to seek help. Maybe us ladies should stick together and breakdown the stigma. Maybe we can help each other out.

And maybe we should all just do our pelvic floor exercises now.

Right now!!!

But maybe, just maybe, nobody noticed the Tena Lady box after all….

Fitbit Failure…

Unfortunately Phil picked up on my very subtle hints regarding my desire for a Fitbit and as such I was the lucky recipient of one on my birthday. Alas, Phil had forgotten how target driven I can be. And had not considered how irritating that would be for him.

For those unfamiliar with a Fitbit it is like a watch which records your activity. You can then check on your phone how active you have been and see if you are meeting the suggested targets, like 30 mins of exercise 5 times a week, 250 steps an hour and 10 000 a day. When you hit such targets the Fitbit will flash and vibrate on your wrist and you feel an enormous sense of well being and pride.

So, in order to hit my 250 steps an hour I frequently jump up at 10 mins to the hour to pace on the spot or run a lap of the kitchen (I should point out the kitchen is not large it adds about 17 steps, max, and subsequently I get quite dizzy trying), I have been known to cycle rather than drive and there have been occasional evening constitutionals to get my step count up. So it appears to encourage some healthy changes. There have however been a few moments when I have questioned such a device…

1. Marching on the spot in the lounge while eating a packet of crisps.

2. Deciding to take a smaller portion of chocolates from the naughty cupboard, thinking that at least I will get some extra steps in when I return for my second helping.

3. The Girl having a tantrum on the walk home because I was walking too fast and I genuinely wanted to make her understand that I had targets to hit otherwise the tiny computer on my wrist won’t flash and vibrate to reward my success.

4. Realising that it had taken me over 2000 steps to put the kids to bed. This was confirmation of a tough evening and legitimised a large glass of wine.

5. Realising that when my alarm went off at 6am I had already managed 267 steps since midnight simply by attending to my snotty little darlings.

6. The one that has really made me question my commitment to such a device and wonder if in fact the Fitbit is the work of Satan. It flashing up on the screen to tell me……”The average Fitbit user wakes up 23 mins later than you on a week day and 1 hour 10 mins later than you on a weekend.”

1 hour and 10mins. Why? Why would I need to know this? I know I haven’t had a proper lie in for 4 and half years. I know I get woken up every morning by a not-so-small-anymore child, (who has seemingly spent the night sharpening her elbows and knees) clambering over me to get in to my bed. I know that any time after 5 am is fair game for The Boy to start hollering for his morning milk and stand in his cot shouting at me until I deliver him his cup of milk, and good god if I don’t get there quick enough I know he is going to throw his little self around that cot in a hungry rage. I know that even when the day starts with an S, I still get up and have a full of day of “work” ahead of me. I know that there is no option of rolling over and going back to sleep. I know that I am permanently sleep deprived. I know how much I would love to sleep for an extra 10 mins, never mind 70 mins!

So why, oh why, does my phone need to tell me how crappy my sleep is and how everybody else does it better? Damn you stupid Fitbit. You can take your statistics and shove them where the sun don’t shine. I’m done. I’m out.

Although I do quite like the party on my wrist when I do 10 000 steps…

Shhh, Shhh, Shower…

I thought I had showering sorted. I finally thought, 16 months after birthing The Boy I had eventually got to grips with the process of showering, while also parenting the 4yr old drama queen and the tiny destroyer.

The approach involves confining them both in The Boy’s room (the least hazardous room in the house), locking the child gate, leaving the bathroom door open and speed washing.

Now, on this particular day – The Deputy, (my friendly but very over involved retired neighbour) rang the door bell. The kids are restrained, I have negotiated the terms of The Girl’s release, I’m naked and literally stepping into my hot running shower. So I ignore it .

The first time.

The second time.

And on the third time it crosses my mind that maybe he isn’t disturbing me to offer me vegetables (he intentionally grows an excess of lettuce so that he can constantly disturb the entire street to share his produce). So I do a naked dash to my bedroom window and spot The Deputy’s wife watering her back garden, and decide that there is no medical emergency and my shower is back on.

Just as I get myself into the shower and dare to breathe a quick deep relaxing breath. Then the shrieking begins.

“Mummy!!”

I ignore it. Just 1 more minute.

“Mummy!!”

Deep breath. Just one more minute.

“Mummy!!” And she is in there in the bathroom. Right there, just one minute in to my shower.

Now, The Girl is 4 years old. We have negotiated this, every non work day, for the past few months. She knows the rules. She does not leave the bedroom for fear that The Boy will immediately make a run for the stairs through the, then open, gate and I will have to do a mad mid shower gallop to grab him.

So I’m not that happy right now.

“Mummy!!”

“Right…” and I’m ready to give her some stern words.

So I turn to look at her. Obviously if I’m going to tell her off I’m going to be an A+ mummy and make eye contact with her……but then I notice something on her face. A big brown streak across her forehead and down her cheek.

“Erm, What is that on your face?”

“I thought it was peanut butter Mummy but it came out his nappy when he crawled over my head….Mummy I think it’s… POO!!!”

There we are. All I wanted was 5 minutes in the shower. 5 minutes alone (admittedly with the door open and my ears on).

Instead, I got 2 mins of doorbell ringing (it turns out because The Deputy needed to tell me the window cleaner was here-like I wouldn’t have noticed myself), 1 min of shrieking and the grand finale of my daughter having a faeces face mask courtesy of her little brother.

Yep I got this down.

Back to the dry shampoo.

Diarrhoea Despair…

Firstly, it needs to be said I share the following delight of an experience, not in a search for sympathy but purely for light hearted entertainment. The episode has now passed and I can look back and laugh heartily – with a much more acceptable risk level of soiling myself.

I got ill. I got the mother of all stomach bugs. I had explosive, incapacitating, diarrhoea. And of course it struck when Phil was on call.

I called in to work sick, for the first time in years. I did get sent home sick once while The Boy was a passenger, because I was definitely sicker than some of the patients, but had attempted to do that typical doctor thing of not wanting to let down colleagues – actually I probably just spread the lurgy, in hindsight it was a bad decision and I should have known better. In this case there was no doubting the sick call had to be made.

Being that I hadn’t left the toilet since 3am and my bum was clenched and burning, Phil called a colleague to say he would be late and took the kids to nursery. I waved them off from the confines of my bathroom and proceeded to let nature take its course.

By mid morning I had managed to leave the bathroom – stocked up with toilet roll from the airing cupboard supply and got myself a glass of flat lemonade. I went to bed cuddling a bucket to cover any top end mishaps.

I tried to nap. The belly cramps were slowing down but a pump was still a very risky business in the white bed linen, so frequent trips to the loo continued.

Unfortunately mid afternoon came and there was no sign of things letting up. I contacted Phil but of course he was on call…

Nursery pick up time was rapidly approaching and I was still experiencing torrents of diarrhoea.

Now in this scenario I decided my options were as follows:

1. Abandon the kids at nursery and let social services bring them home.

2. Call Phil, demand he returns home at once. If someone has a testicular emergency he will need to explain that he is AWOL and the testicle is to be sacrificed so the surgeons wife can maintain her dignity and not crap herself in public.

3. Get one of The Boys nappies, nappy up, wear a long top to cover up the bulging underwear situation, clench, get to the pharmacy buy a truck load of Imodium, take immediately, have the most terrifyingly tense drive to nursery, apply alcohol hand gel copiously, grab both kids and return home (driving in an assertive but safe manner) and immediately hide in the toilet again while CBeebies keeps the kids in one place.

All undeniably appealing options.

Clearly, I went for option 3, and whilst doing so, mentally prepared a business plan for an emergency Imodium home delivery service….

Wife of the Year…

Its Phil’s birthday. He is the ripe old age of 32. So it’s not a ‘big birthday’ as such, but it’s a birthday. A birthday I forgot.

To put it in context, it’s a Monday and I have been away all weekend on a hen do for my very good friend. I consumed unknown quantities of prosecco and gin, and after doing so threw myself around the dance floor. In my mind I was demonstrating Rihanna-esque moves and oozing sex appeal and rhythm, but in reality looking a lot like a 31 year old married mother of two who has been released for the weekend and thinks that she can still party like her slimmer, perkier, trendier, younger self. So, as a result of my exuberant celebrations I’m not on top form. I’m tired, I’m aching after a hoola hooping master class and so my patience is running somewhat thin.

I’ve known Phil’s birthday was coming. I’ve been aware of it coming on the same day for the past 12 years. I was aware that I should get organised and in fact last week added it to my to-do list. Phil (ever the optimist) even told me a couple of weeks ago that he wouldn’t look at the Amazon account so that it wouldn’t spoil any surprises.

He needn’t have bothered.

Somehow it has suddenly, out of the blue, crept up on me and it’s here. Today. Not tomorrow. Today. Now.

Thankfully, I have a get out of jail free card. Phil is on call. 24hour on call.

So at 6am I sleepily tell him it’s actually his birthday tomorrow and wish him luck writing the date in patient notes – anyone who has worked their birthday knows you will write your date of birth at least once – and wave him off from our bedroom where The Girl has already crept in and started kicking me out of bed.

I attempt to enter super mum mode. We successfully have porridge and The Girl announces she wants to go to playgroup- which starts in 30 mins – so I have a shower and get the three of us ready in record time. At play group I fuel myself with caffeine while the kids run in opposite directions, The Boy terrorising the baby area, and The Girl charging extortionate prices in the shop. I mention to a fellow mum my slight oversight, “You had better get a cake then”….

This had not crossed my mind- and yet she is right. If not for Phil’s benefit, for The Girl’s. This leaves me with a dilemma. Either I get home, stick the kids in car and brave the supermarket – jeopardising any chance of The Boy having a nap in his cot (and therefore any chance of me having a moments peace). Or, make a cake. It’s a tough call but with encouragement from The Girl I begrudgingly agree to bake.

Phil loves a Victoria sponge. Which suits just fine as I definitely can’t cope with icing and we happen to have all the required ingredients in the cupboard. Delia Smith makes some comment in the recipe about this being the easiest cake to make and anyone can do it….unfortunately not if you forget to put in the baking powder.

The ‘cake’ looks like two thick pancakes with jam and a slightly out of date dairy free equivalent cream, shoved between them. The Girl says it’s “A-mazing”. I’m confident Phil will not say the same.

Whilst The Boy naps and The Girl watches some far to smiley TV presenter do some dancing, I panic buy – utilising our free next day delivery and praying it arrives early doors tomorrow. Phil will be devastated if his new pillow isn’t here for bedtime I’m sure.

I then tackle the obligatory homemade birthday card from the children. Once again, I thinks Phil’s delight at a card with two “blackberries” made from finger prints in poster paint with the tag line “We love you berry much” will go down a storm.

There was a time when for a birthday we would have rearranged shifts, got thoughtful gifts, gone out for dinner, maybe even socialised with friends and had a drink of something special.

But some things change. Phil is working his birthday, if he gets to come home he will find left overs of the casserole he made yesterday awaiting him in the fridge, he won’t be able to have a ‘proper drink’ and he will stumble over the array of duplo bricks lying in the hall. He will see a mountain of washing up, new paint stains on the kitchen table and if he manages to check on the kids (who had better be sleeping), he will see The Boy (having face planted in to a door frame today and a coffee table at the weekend) has such a bruised forehead that he is starting to resemble something from Star Trek, The Girl – who is sleeping next to a helium balloon ready to deliver to ‘yesterday’s birthday boy’ first thing in the morning, and tomorrow, he will be the proud recipient of a pancake cake, a new pillow, a homemade card and an IOU.

I would say it’s all part of fatherhood but I’m pretty sure this doesn’t happen to every dad. This dad just got unlucky, with a wife trying to have a weekend off and not spending the preceding month getting organised for it…

We Are So In Love …

Yet another Facebook baby announcement – “We are so in love”. Are you? That’s great. I wasn’t. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t a crappy mum (I don’t think). I was normal. My child was normal.

I was of course delighted that The Girl had arrived safely but in those first few weeks, were we “in love”? No.

The Girl arrived in a hurry, meaning she got a bit stressed (so did I – just a tad) so the crash alarm went and 40 ppl arrived in the room and I was consented to be knocked out and the baby delivered by c-section. Someone started to list all the things that could wrong…

“Do whatever you need to. I’m medical this is informed consent!!”

Phil, looking like a bunny in headlights backed me up “Yep just do it”.

On my arrival in theatre, I was greeted by the anaesthetic consultant who a week before had been supervising me giving spinal anaesthetics for elective sections. “Don’t worry I’m staying at the head end” he might have been but the rest of the crowd weren’t.

As a medical student I saw a lady have a 4th degree tear and another with a placental abruption who nearly died. Those were the only births I ever saw. I remember telling Phil that we would adopt as I couldn’t go through it – and genuinely meaning it. Then I spent the next 4 years ignoring anything childbirth related and another 9months pretending that Dumbeldore would arrive and magic the baby out when the day came.

Well, if Dumbeldore is an obstetrician and his wand is a ventouse then it all came true.

So having literally crapped myself in a room full of my colleagues in a terrifying whirlwind 1 hour labour to get The Girl out, in the most traumatic event of my life, my primary emotion wasn’t love.

I’m not sure what was. Relief perhaps. I was alive and so was The Girl. This was my mission accomplished. Job done.

But then there was the baby. Tiny. Beautiful. Perfectly formed. With tiny toes and fingers. Lucky. I definitely felt lucky.

But the baby had a tiny mouth. A mouth which constantly opened to scream and cry or to grab my nipple and gnaw on it for hours. This tiny little thing which was entirely dependent. For everything. Watch a baby elephant being born and before you know it it’s running around, feeding and meeting its own needs – not a human baby. This baby was 100% relying on me. Me and my body. Day and night. For the foreseeable future. Overwhelmed. I was certainly feeling overwhelmed.

The baby was like the worst ever bleep – it went off constantly, it had no off switch, not even a volume control and couldn’t be passed on after a 13 hour shift. It would stir from its sleep and scream, the sudden noise would trigger an adrenaline rush to course through me. Anxious. I was definitely anxious.

It’s one thing being responsible for a ward full of patients but another being responsible for this tiny little being. This tiny little being that was my passenger for 9 months was now there. What if I do it wrong? What if she hasn’t eaten enough? What if I fall asleep and drop her? What if I smother her with one of my huge milk filled baps? But then again what if it’s not milk filled? What if I’m starving her? Scared. I was definitely scared.

Then there was my mummy body. I had to sit on a donut cushion and people would ask how sore I was. They were asking about my vagina. Now, I’m medical and so this should be matter of fact (I would chat about a sore head or leg) but discussing my broken lady garden with every Tom, Dick and Harry took a bit of adjusting to. Embarrassed. Smothered. Awkward. A combination of all three.

I recall coming out of a rare shower to be met by Phil holding The Girl, hungry and screaming. I sat on the bed wrapped in my towel and latched her on. She fed. Milk came out of one boob…and the other….my uterus contracted and something else starting coming out of there…and I cried and laughed all at once. I had stuff coming out of almost every orifice (I wasn’t crapping myself on this occasion) and couldn’t have resembled the front cover of a parenting magazine any less. There isn’t a word for this feeling, even 200 words couldn’t sum it up. But it’s definitely not “in love”.

But does it matter?

I met The Girl’s needs. She was fed, cleaned and cuddled. I responded to her every need. I did everything I possibly could to nurture her and help her thrive.

People kept saying “enjoy every minute”. I absolutely did not. Some bits were bloody awful. In fact some bits were the absolute worst. But I survived. The Girl not only survived but blossomed. And Phil didn’t leave me. So actually it was a raging success.

In hindsight I can see it, but at the time I questioned myself. Do I not love her enough? Why am I not enjoying EVERY minute? Why am I not updating Facebook with how totally in love we are?

Why? Because I’m normal. Because I’m honest. Because I’m me.

So, in this week of maternal mental health awareness I want to highlight a version of normal.

I want to say it’s normal to just survive those first 8 weeks. It’s normal to not be “totally in love”. It’s absolutely normal to NOT enjoy every minute.

And for the record, now, I couldn’t love The Girl more, or The Boy. I didn’t know it was possible to have so much love for these little pests with their mucky faces, their whining voices and their constant unreasonable demands. Despite this all consuming love, there are also occasions when I just want to list them on eBay- for free. But you know what, I think that’s normal too.

Under Pressure…

The exam is done. Well the first attempt is complete. And no. I don’t know how it went. It was an MCQ, and I’m human, so out of the 200 questions I answered, I keep remembering the 3 I got wrong. I could have got all 197 others correct (I didn’t, but theoretically I could have) and I would still only remember the 3 astoundingly irrelevant ones. I could have revised day and night for a lifetime and I would still never have got those right.

Now, in my younger days before children and responsibilities when my time was my own and how hard I worked was down to me- I would be anxious about the results- could I have done a little bit more? Should I have done those extra few questions? Should I have approached it differently? But now. Well, what will be will be.

If I pass it’s because I am amazing. It’s because I worked so blinking hard. Its because I arrived an hour early for work and my lunch breaks were spent alone in my room reading NICE guidelines and the BNF. It’s because I put the kids to bed each night and hid in the spare room answering question after question. It’s because I packed off my children to any willing relative and knuckled down with the cool kids in the library. Its because I sat down with the GCSE and A level candidates and the uni students. Its because I sat surrounded by top knots and high tops, exposed mid drifts and teenage angst. Its because I sat opposite the younger version of me, and watched as she shared her pens with her boyfriend, swapped medical books with each other and had lunch lying on the grass outside together.

Its because I wondered. I wondered what the hell possessed me to still be doing this. Why 12 years on I’m sat in the same library revising again but this time on my own? Is this really what I signed up for? Didn’t I work hard enough when I was younger? Could I not have taken an easier option? Could I not do something else?

No. No I couldn’t. I know nothing else. And so, I got on with it. I gave it my best shot. Therefore, if I pass, it’s because I am ace.

Well, that and the fact Phil put his work on hold and didn’t once moan about the fact that he was bottom of my priority list, my mum basically moved in for a week and became my house keeper and chef, I let the neighbour mow my lawn, I paid a lady to clean my house, a man to cut back the garden, my sister in law took the children to play group, my dad taught The Girl to ride her bike and picked her flowers that made her “sooo happy” when I couldn’t, making my heart swell and break in equal measure.

They say it takes a village and I’m incredibly lucky to have mine.

And if I fail? Well, I tried. I did my best.

So yes, being a working mum and revising seems pretty tough. So many people have remarked on how challenging it is to do all this with kids. But in some weird way it actually makes it easier and less stressful. Somehow having children gives some perspective, a limit to how self absorbed I can be, and constant reminder of the bigger picture.

The Girl told me today, “Mummy you’re going to be a winner, you have worked so hard, you’re going to be a winner”. So I may not have learnt enough to pass this exam, but it looks like The Girl learn something pretty important.

Then she puts on the toy stethoscope and tells me she is going to be a doctor. Actually, maybe she learnt nothing at all…

Always Look on the Bright Side…

In need of a sunny day? I have a fail safe way to ensure glorious sunshine….

1) Arrange to spend the day sat in your local library revising.

2) Ensure your children see you leave the house so that you can depart to the enchanting sound of wailing and screams of “But I love you don’t go”.

3) Sit in a window seat (thinking it will lift your mood to at least see the beautiful blue sky) but make sure that the radiator positioned right next to you is on full whack. That way you can pretend you are sat in a greenhouse.

Done.

Trying to be positive, at least I am getting a break from playing “Post Office” with The Girl. There are only so many letters a mummy can post before before she is wishing she can post a Molotov Cocktail in the letter box…

#5daystogo

#whyhaveimadethesechoices

#thishadbetterbeworthit

#juniordoctors

Old School…

I’m revising. The last time I did this properly I was a student. My stationery was supplied by my parents (Perhaps acquired from their respective places of work- the plus side to teacher parents!), my time was my own. I had access to so many libraries – of which I used maybe one. Once. And my biggest issue was fitting it in around meeting friends for a cheap glass of wine.

This time it’s all a bit different. It’s postgraduate General Practice exams. I have had to purchase stationery. Everyone who has ever sat an exam (successfully or not) knows it’s all about the stationery. I invested this time, I’m revising and earning (theoretically although my wage is solely to pay the childcare bill which if I didn’t work I wouldn’t need…so why I am working is a question I dare not dwell on).

So my stationery shopping trip resulted in:

-A selection of highlighters.

-3 brand new biros with the little clippy bits at the top so I can have 4 different colour biros encased in one slightly more girthy shaft just like my school teachers of the 1990s.

-A rainbow assortment of fine tip felt tips, some it turns out are too neon to be written with but too fine to be a highlighter, so actually an entirely useless item.

-A rather fancy faux leather post-it note selection holder, half of which are too tiny to write anything of any value on and the others so large, I may as well just fill a page in a notebook.

It’s a truly magnificent set up I have invested in.

To complete the kit, the creme de la creme is a hard back, A4, Looney Tunes notepad which I won in 1998 by sending a postcard in to the address in the back of my “Fast Forward” magazine and subsequently deemed too precious for everyday use, so I have moved it from house to house over the last 22yrs and it is now, officially, in use.

I also had to spend £100 on a subscription to a revision web site advertising nearly 3000 questions, like thousands of questions is a great thing… which yes it is, but equally it’s totally horrifying to think I’m going to spend weeks of my life trawling through these thousands of questions in a vain attempt to hope I get lucky on exam day and manage to scrape a pass.

So on top of the £500 exam fee and this whole experience is quite the investment. In an effort to not have to pay for it all again in 6 months time, I need to pass. To do that I need to revise. A concept entirely wasted on my children.

So last weekend in an attempt to knuckle down and do some work, I made arrangements to drop the kids off with the in-laws and head to a local library (it goes without saying that Phil was at work!). I took with me my backpack, computer and stationery, because revising isn’t revising unless you are making pretty pictures.

So, I settle down at the only available desk in the silent work area (if silence is an option I’m totally going to take it) and set myself up. I look around and see that I am sitting beside an acne ridden (moderate severity if my revision serves me well) teenager who is revising for his biology GCSE. Next to him are two girls studying for their maths GCSE and an AS level geography student behind me. There is officially no one over the age of 20 revising. I am sat in a library, on a sunny Saturday, as a 31 yr old married mother of two, surrounded by teenagers studying for school exams…..How have I ended up here?! I think I have made some bad life choices.

None the less, I crack on with a couple of questions before the afore mentioned spotty adolescent next to me turns to ask me if he can borrow a phone charger. Unfortunately glancing at my neatly arranged work station he appears somewhat distracted. No, not by my magnificent array of stationery, but by the fact that on my computer screen is a larger than life up close photo of a vagina – covered in genital warts.

Needless to say I explained I didn’t have a charger and then after an awkward pause proceeded to attempt to explain to the hormonal, awkward and perhaps now mentally scarred school boy, why, in a public library, I am looking at a close up photo of a vagina. Nothing like a spot of freelance health promotion…

Despite this slight mishap I did manage to get a couple of hundred questions done. So provided that I’m not struck off the GMC register for showing inappropriate material to a minor, I will continue with my revision in an attempt to edge closer to the much desired mirage of exam freedom…..Although perhaps saving my sexual health revision for the privacy of my own home.