Out and about

On Saturday, my mum took me and my daughter down to visit my sister in Reading. It was an absolutely fabulous day of "doing lunch" and shopping. None of us are particularly girly, but it was lovely for the three of us to get out and gossip like we used to when my sister and I both lived at home.

It was great for us to have some "fun" time - and for my mum to relax a bit - as things with my grandparents have not been great. My grandfather has had a pacemaker fitted - which is good, as he now seems to be incredibly well, but he only had it fitted because he collapsed at home, which was scary. My grandmother has had a fit (we feared that it may be another stroke) and is even more confused than before. It is hard work for my mum and aunt looking after them on top of it being very upsetting to see my once fiercely independent gran reduced to needing help with washing, dressing, using the toilet and so on. However, things there seem to be stabilising for now, so we all keep our fingers crossed and pray daily for small miracles on their behalf.

It was also incredibly liberating for me to be able to go out with my daughter for a whole day without having to dash back home to feed her. Although I ended up giving her her lunch on a bench outside M&S, we were still able to be out for the best part of 5 hours without too many problems. Suddenly I can see me getting out a lot more once N goes back to work.

Sadly for me, N will be back at work in 3 weeks. I'm really going to miss him. It's great that he's got himself a job, and I know he'll really enjoy his job there, but I have absolutely loved the last 6 months of the two of us being at home together with our daughter, and I'm really sad to be giving that up.

It's only because we were both made redundant before our daughter was born (me voluntarily, N compulsorily) that we could afford to be at home together, but I am so glad that we could. Apart from the fact that N has kept me sane and we have helped each other through the difficult patches, it has given us a chance to spend the quality time together that I thought we would have lost due to the unexpected pregnancy. We had originally planned to be married for a year before starting a family (but our daughter had other ideas!) and one of my biggest fears was that we would lose part of our relationship because we didn't have the year to enjoy being married that we had planned to have. Having this time off though, N and I are now closer than ever and I'm suddenly very conscious of just how much we have going for us.

I'm aware that we're extremely lucky to have even been able to have this time, and that it will be good for us to get back to what will be long-term normality, but it is going to be a major change and I will miss it, and N, hugely.