Which is why I said this:

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/rosevibe/status/45487922585141248[/tweeted]

A week should give me enough time to meet folks and I reckon the #lottoparty hashtag would be trending within minutes *grin*

So say I squander around £3m on the party, £1m on house and furnishings. What then?

Obviously Bella would need a £1m trust fund and we’d have to set aside £1m for the likely sibling to follow (hey, a multimillionairess can have kids without worrying about anything while a CFS ridden student can’t) £5m split between various family members £2m on taxes (probably) and £2m in savings to fund the house etc then the rest can go on a business venture.

Yup – a business venture. I’m damned if i’ll kill myself getting a 1st and then do nothing with my degree!
I even know who my first lot of employees would be: @elmundio87 for code duties and whoever he recommended to me that he wanted to work with, a lad I know called Meyrick for the graphic design (he’s a graphical genius) @musobubble for most of my musical needs and as contractors (since I’m guessing they’d not give up their own businesses to work for me) @philwoodmusic to fill the gaps @musobubble can’t and @loudmouthman for sheer genius and guidance.

..I’d also have to try and lure away a couple of my old tutors for the e-learning side of things; Natasha Khilji (database and all round tutoring goddesss) and Diane Bulmer (business, HR and solid classroom skills) then deprive the UoH LTI department of @sarahjaneflynn and then beg for another couple of contractors in the shape of @MarkRussell (he is the e-assessment king) and @audio for his experience in the E-learning arena; I’m sure other people would be added to this list but they would be the cream *grin*

I have a ton of ideas for e-learning tools, apps and web services; if I could get the right people on board then there’d be no stopping us!
..It’d be watch out Google! Rosevibe’s coming.. ;0)

So come on.. What would YOU do with a £17.8m lottery win?

But I’m practical. I chose IT because it allows a career that (hopefully) pays well and will work around my illness and family life.

Jewellery making and web design were the 2 ‘skills’ I had to choose from when I was planning out how to escape the benefits trap of the long term sick; the web seemed the likeliest method of gaining a decent income without a large financial layout.

I know that in the current climate having those benefits offers a type of security that working may not – especially in view of my health (the whole reason I’m on ‘em in the first place) some healthy folks even question why I’d bother since I’ve ‘got it good’ right now – I’m lucky they say.

..and I agree, in comparison to some families we’re doing well and ticking by.

But I’m fed up of always ticking by. I’m sick of the uncertainty of renting a pokey flat that we’re getting too large for by the day. I’m sick of not having the cash for a decent holiday or to buy the gifts I’d like or to make the things I sketch out and put in the ‘someday’ file.

Unlike a healthy person, being long term sick offers you no hope of improvement, no hope of progressing up the food chain, you’re stuck living on handouts and state charity and that SUCKS!

I dream of having a decent sized 3 bedroom house (all doubles of course) I want an office/ workshop at the bottom of the garden and a garage. I want the space to be able to grow my own food – not on a self-sufficiency level, but enough to supplement the odd dish. I’ll never be able to get that on state benefits.

I listed all the things I wanted from my ideal lifestyle and showed it to Stef; he laughed.

Apparently I want to be his parents – but with hobbies.

To be honest I don’t know why that was a cause for laughter; his folks are great – they work too hard in my opinion and could use some hobbies for downtime, but otherwise sure; I’d be them. Just more up to date *grin*

..and I’d be able to do any of this with my daughter;

• start a small craft club and have monthly meetings/ workshops
• create and sell tutorials from my own e-learning site
• create websites for small businesses and families
• have time and materials for serious crafting
• maintain a small kitchen garden
• throw parties

(assuming she wanted to)

Doesn’t that sound like the life to you? THAT’S how I envisage someone who’s ‘got it good’, I’m just trying to get there the best I can.

For the first couple of weeks I handled it just fine, yes there was some discomfort but the midwife, 2 health visitors and the breast feeding clinic lass said she was latching on just fine and since she was gaining weight (my god is the child gaining weight!) I figured it was just over sensitiveness on my part.

..then at week 3 the growth spurt hit.

Nothing can prepare you for that, she was crying to be fed 30 minutes after her last feed, each feed was taking between 1-2 hours at  time as she alternately mutilated my tender bits and dozed -  I felt like she was literally sucking my life away it was so draining, I had no energy to speak let alone come online or think about college.

It actually got to the stage where she’d finish feeding and I’d pass her to the nearest person and run for bed, bathroom or kitchen depending on which need felt greatest at that particular moment – then I’d avoid being near her in the hope she’d give me some respite – I approached those feeds with dread as the longer it went on the more painful it was becoming.

She developed the habit of latching on then clamping down – trust me, having no teeth was not a deterrent for the little madam in causing her mama pain, there’s strength in them there jaws of hers – and when coming off the breast or if troubled by wind (constantly) she’d screw up her face, pull her head back and worry my poor abused teat from side to side like a terrier with a rat. I actually had a nightmare about her becoming a milk vampire – in this dream I’d turned my back on her for a second to ready my nursing station and she flew from the cot and attacked me from behind, burrowing through my back to get at my breast.
That was NOT a pleasant dream.

I managed to grit my teeth and bear this for 5 days then I broke. At around 1am whilst she was once more mutilating me in her desperation for food, with tears streaming down my face I begged Stef to go get some formula and bottles from the 24hr Tesco.

While he and and the devil spawn shopped I cried myself to sleep. The next day I managed my first pain free feed – it was amazing, I managed to look down at that contented little face and feel love instead of pain, resentment and guilt (over the resentment) and instead of handing her straight to Stef afterwards so I could run and hide from her I enjoyed a real cuddle – the first in weeks!

The downside to this feed skipping was that I still needed milking; so we bought a pump.
I thought I had it all figured out, the occasional breast feed to keep up my supply, express the rest and alternate formula and breast milk feeds.

..Of course it couldn’t be that simple.

After 2 uses of the pump I developed blocked ducts and engorged breasts (ow ow ow ow ow ow OWWWW!) Which is when I discovered it’s possible to cook chilled cabbage leaves using breast heat alone (but they are effective in reducing swelling and easing the discomfort for anyone who needs to know..) So instead of expressing a full feed each time I started just taking an ounce when I felt full and intermittently feeding her straight from the breast – at least the break meant I could bear the discomfort.

I’m beginning to dread hearing the phrase “it will get better” because every time someone tells me that I get something worse.

This week it’s been mastitis – poor Stef spent 3 days looking after Izzy alone as well as cleaning away my bile filled buckets and attempting to make food I could keep down so I could take my antibiotics. They finally kicked in and the fever broke so I could at least keep down water, but the pain was unbelievable – and it triggered the menieres too so I literally couldn’t get out of bed due to the dizziness and nausea and ear pain.

..oh and my caesarian scar decided to start bleeding too, it’s all fun and games!

I was lying there in my sick bed, too dizzy to get up but dying for a shower; my 3 day fever sweat stench mingling with the smell of sour milk, cooking cabbage and old blood was knocking me sick again – when to add insult to injury this delightful cocktail of smells started attracting flies through the open window -  seriously, I felt like a corpse lol all I needed was to hear a ringing bell and the monty python lot outside the window screeching “Bring out your dead”
When Stef brought her in to see me after the fever broke I wanted to cry, in the space of a day or two she’dd already changed so much, her skins clearer, she’d filled out and was even more alert – and i missed it happening, she laughs and smiles at you and it amazes me that we have such a perfect little thing in our lives.

I now know if I continue to persevere with this I’ll never make it into college and in the long term I need to have completed this course with flying colours if I expect to get a decent enough job to afford the life for our little love that I want – I just have to accept that while breast may be best, the child has had 5 weeks of my milky goodness and selfish as it may seem, I’ve suffered enough! By the time she’s weaned away from the breast and my milk supply has dried up (please let it be soon!) It’ll be over 6 weeks and I’m supposed to be back in class full time then.

Now, lets just hope these last 2 days of antibiotics do their job – I’m really sick of being ill.

You see this post  was written on the 19th November, which according to my estimated delivery date falls within the possible conception time span, I can’t help wondering if the reason I was so content and tranquil that day was because my body knew something I didn’t.

It doesn’t take a genius to explain my dreams at the moment though, they are all concerned with having my baby then having someone take it away from me. I know I’m worried about how I’ll cope after the birth, I’m worried about how the ME/CFS will manifest under all that stress, pain and exertion, and the people who feature most strongly in my dreams are also the ones who have been the least supportive up to now so it’s easy to work out why they’d be the ‘bad guys’.

I’ve woken up screaming, crying and just lying there turning the dreams over in my mind fretting about everything they relate to, which is why I feel confident in saying pregnancy dreams are not normal.

‘Normal’ dreams for me, while vivid and complex, are confusing with no clear meaning. My pregnancy dreams are all too clear, they are just my real fears amplified and blown up into the worst possible scenarios (well, apart from the one where I went for an ultrasound and saw creatures crawling around the baby – they looked a little like the ‘bug’ inserted inside Neo in the matrix film, the technician tried to tell me it was just worms and that I had nothing to worry about but I overheard the doctors discussing ways of keeping me in until I reached full term so they could extract the specimens.. So glad Stef woke me up from that one! no idea what fear that was amplifying but it’s a doozy!)

So, here’s hoping these yoga relaxation techniques work and I can start having pleasant dreams instead – it’d be nice to concentrate on my hopes instead of my fears for a change..

It’s raining outside, sheets of water coming down in waves, one moment only a light drizzle and then a force to almost knock you from your feet – but I’m not fooled, I can see the blue sky hiding behind it’s rags of grey, I know it’s there because it keeps peeping through to see if I’m still smiling.

I am.

Who would have thought Russell Crowe would bring such a smile to my face, but it wasn’t really him, it was the vista he shared with me, Like something from the goddess art of Jonathon Earl Bowser the scene lit up my soul and brought a song to my heart. Today I carry a piece of paradise in my mind and the gift of tranquility it has spread within my thoughts is bounty beyond measure.

Yup, you could say that I’m a truly happy bunny today.