Finding the pause button

This week has been challenging. My bank holiday Monday was spent in bed with a horrible stomach bug, which rolled into Tuesday. Wednesday was ‘eating food and recovering’ day, and by Thursday morning I thought I was good to go.

But half way through the toddler group I help run on Thursday afternoon, I suddenly felt dizzy and feint. And here we are on Friday and I am wiped out.

There are lots of things I wanted to do this week – visit a friend and squish her newborn, sort some house jobs out, do some writing work, take the kids out… But all of them will have to wait.

I’ve written before about finding it hard to pace myself when I have become used to a good level of health. This week I was forced to find the ‘pause’ button (you can’t really argue with a vomiting bug), but I am finding the aftermath very frustrating.

My tendency is to try and plan when I’ll be better. I tell myself, “Right, you can have one day to recover, then we’re back in.” But my body isn’t playing ball and I guess I’ll have to let it take the lead.

I’m not sure exactly what is causing me to feel so wiped out still and I probably never will. I am anaemic at the moment and definitely didn’t get enough sleep last week. So all I can do is be more deliberate about how to look after myself at this point:

• Cancel seeing a friend tomorrow (ouch, not what I want to do).
• Let the kids watch more TV than I’d like them to.
• Go to bed early (press that teeny tiny Netflix pause button!)
• Eat well (ah, was so looking forward to fish & chips tonight).

I’m also going to stop trying to force the recovery. When I’m feeling better, I’ll know it! Now to go and have a wee snooze while Tiny naps.