Maintaining and Repairing Old and Historic Buildings. John Cullinane J.

of a gypsy that I found out that I was carrying a girl. Just before Peter’s first birthday I spotted an advert in the Nursing Times for a gypsy project in Kent:

       Wanted: A Health Visitor to join a district nurse already in post to care for the travelling population of Maidstone district.

      Or words to that effect. It was such a tiny advert. When I imagined rural Kent, my mind filled with fruit farms, trees and fields. I’d had enough of the concrete jungle. Great, it’s a job I can do in wellies! was my first reaction; my second thought was that establishing trust was key to this particular role and from the experience of working in Lewisham I knew this to be one of my strengths. Kent Family Health Services Authority wanted to establish outreach primary care services for traveller families in mid-Kent. Put simply, someone had carried out a study and subsequently realised the infant mortality rate in their community was way too high: something needed to be done.

      Elvira was the clan’s matriarch. Traditionally, the matriarch of a site is responsible for sanctioning relations between healthcare workers and the gypsies. An amazing woman with waist-length, jet-black hair, she had a mother who lived with them whom I saw rarely but who seemed ancient as the woods. They lived in a tolerated site (illegal but hidden away, where no one would move them on) in the middle of some woods, up a dirt track. In the clearing were six mobile homes and one or two temporary caravans. Elvira’s own home was spotless: it was crowded with precious nick-nacks and china, lace curtains and a gorgeous wood-burning stove (a temporary caravan was next door for the men to sit in and ‘mess up’ after work). She had a pet jackdaw who would sit on the open door and come if called.

      One day, after visiting, I tripped slightly going down the steps.

      ‘Careful,’ she warned. ‘Take care of your little girl in there!’

      Stunned, I stopped in my tracks.

      ‘Sorry, I try not to do that,’ she said, looking embarrassed.

      I was exactly three weeks and two days pregnant with Clara but I had no idea at the time that I was carrying my daughter. Incredible!

      Three weeks before Clara was born, we moved into our new home in Beckenham. I had wanted a home-birth but was deemed too high-risk because of my MS. Luckily I’d already made friends with Diane, a senior midwife at Maidstone Hospital: a wonderful woman and a midwife in the best sense of the word. Diane believed in the benefits of water births and championed their effectiveness in pain management and the gravitational pull that enables the pelvis to open and the baby to slip out – and she was right.

      On 19 February 1995, Clara shot out like a slippery fish and was placed on my chest. The difference between the births of my two children couldn’t have been more dramatic. After the skin tears and cutting I’d had to endure with Peter, the experience of an underwater birth was bliss and so empowering. For the majority of the time Andrew and I were left alone to enjoy the experience of birth in a way I’d previously thought unimaginable. Afterwards, as Clara was being checked, weighed, and swaddled, I had the best tea and toast known to woman-kind. Ah, the delights of NHS hospitality!

      I spent the night on the ward. The next day Diane carried Clara out of the hospital in her car seat (it was the midwife’s job, that was the rule). Peter came running up and tried to kick her in the shins.

      ‘Leave my baby sister alone!’ he shouted.

      I couldn’t help but feel proud.

      Clara was happiest lying in her pram, looking up at the hanging vines. Our world was contained within that walled garden: we were oblivious to the racket outside – the busy main road, shoppers, cars and nightclub queues on Friday nights. Indoors, we installed double-glazing. Andrew built a tree-boat (as opposed to a tree-house) in two trees at the end of the garden so that Peter could sail to Timbuctoo. I covered the end of his boat with curtains made from cheerful striped cotton strung from a wire. It wasn’t long before Peter and his school-friend Simon discovered the best game in the world: shooting water pistols at unsuspecting passers-by on the pavement below.

      And of course, we had the trains. From the tree-boat you could see the roof of the Beckenham Junction station. What more could a little boy want?

      So why did I feel so blue? After the births of each of my children, I felt increasingly overwhelmed and with anxiety came depression. It wasn’t so bad with Peter but I felt its grip tighten after the birth of Clara. Trying to unravel the symptoms of MS from possible signs of post-natal depression and the normal feelings of life-change associated with motherhood can be very difficult.

      My reaction to the pressures of now having two kids was an urgent need for order: I was manic. By 8am, I’d have the kids washed and fed, the kitchen swept, the dishwasher on and would start calling people, while wondering, why aren’t they being more chatty? I went to see the GP to talk about my feelings of inadequacy and frustration, my mania, and she diagnosed post-natal depression and suggested a course of anti-depressants.

      Because of my MS I was allocated a community psychiatric nurse, who after two visits was signed off with stress and so that was that. I wasn’t unduly alarmed. Lots of mums suffer PND, usually in response to fatigue and a sense of being overwhelmed; it heals over time. I refused the anti-depressants and battled the depression until it lifted, which it finally did.

      Looking back, I don’t think I allowed enough leeway for the MS, by which I mean that I didn’t want my condition to impact on other peoples’ attitudes towards me. Perhaps I was in denial, maybe I should have had more support – after all, MS exhaustion is the sort of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t remedy. My exhaustion (made twenty times worse by the MS) in turn triggered feelings of guilt that I wasn’t doing enough.

      Driving the kids home one day, I fell asleep at the wheel. We were on a motorway. Thank God for the rumble strips at the side of the motorway, which woke me up! I parked up in the lane and took a deep breath, adrenalin coursing through my veins. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have been able to say it’s the MS, not me. Instead lodged in my head was a comment made by the GP after my first big bout of MS.

      ‘You need to break this sleeping habit,’ he told me. ‘Pull yourself together.’

      So I didn’t put it down to MS – I assumed it was my failure as a mother.

      In retrospect, I don’t think the medical community could have helped: you have to be pretty bad to be entitled to respite care. Besides, I wanted to look after my kids and I wanted to work. I wanted it all. Why shouldn’t I?

      Just as I did with Peter, when Clara was six months old I put her in a nursery and went back to work. I had mixed emotions but there was also the relief of being able to sit down, plan my day and drink a hot cup of coffee. This, however, was undermined by anxiety over how the kids were faring and guilt that I myself should be caring for them. I always felt better after I’d collected them, seen how happy they were and I learned how active they had been during the day. Anyway, I was still with them well over 50 per cent of the time, I forced myself to remember.