The Old Apartment

I was in Reading over the weekend, doing a weekend study workshop thing as part of my nct course. In the run up, it was mildly stressful – I had to devise a facilitation exercise to do to my peers as well as revise for n exam In the final couple of days, the 2 original tutors both dropped out (for various reasons) and tbh, I half expected to get to Reading to discover it was cancelled or something. But, no, not cancelled, just shortened somewhat. Instead of a 2-hour Friday session, we had nothing formal, which was actually far better than doing the usual session, because it meant the students could all get together over dinner and get reacquainted (we all did an introduction workshop on Valentine’s Day) and then get an early night in preparation for the next day.

It was an intense Saturday. After the exam at 9am (and, wow, there is still nothing worse than turning over that exam paper and realising you can’t answer the first question!) we spent the next 8 hours (with breaks of course) doing our faciliations. There were 8 of us, and as well as demonstrating our own, we had to participate in the others. And this was the intense bit. Because we’re running groups for new mums, we all had to be in new mum role playing mode for the day, because obviously the parenting issues we all have now won’t really come into the course and we’re all massively different as well – some have older kids, everyone else had at least 2 kids. My own facilitation went quite well. I was given feedback on the exercise itself as well as my own style of facilitating. I was nervous, although not as nervous as when I did it in tutorial 2 weeks earlier, but my fellow students said that after a couple of minutes, they couldn’t tell and I cam across as quite confident. There were a couple of things to think about but nothing major, so phew! I may actually be able to do this.

But a day of being a mum of a 6-month old takes its toll, emotionally. Zoe’s first few months, really til around 8/9 months were really dark times for me and although I’ve been through all the usual reflection and discussion that is necessary as part of the course, it was hard to not recollect those times whilst talking. One exercise in particular, asking when we felt like we’d become a mother, was very hard – I didn’t feel like Zoe’s mum, or anyone’s mum for that matter, until I was out of that fog of PND and beginning to get to really know my daughter. I mourn in some way for those newborn days, which were hard, but I barely remember them and they are over so fast that I hate that I can’t remember when she first smiled or anything really other than the monotony and the desperate need to escape in some way from the whole thing.

By Saturday evening, the whole mood of the group was low and I think everyone felt emotionally drained. We escaped an evening session because of the tutor issues and, again, this was a great thing because we were able to decompress a little bit without feeling under scrutiny from the tutors. Sunday was a better day – the tutor was my own tutor so I already knew her style and it was nice to hear that other people really appreciated her rather honest approach. The tutors are skilled in facilitating groups of new mums but it sometimes seems that they forget we are students who need direct answers sometimes and there is often a feeling of being facilitated ourselves. Of course, after such an intense weekend, I had a long journey back up north – 5 and a half hours on a busy train, but that was still preferably to a shorter journey but one that would have taken me through and across London.

I think what I got out of the weekend, apart from some confidence and a better idea of the practicalities of setting up and running my first course (September/October is pencilled in at the moment) is the thought that it doesn’t matter how much I reflect on my experiences, sometimes, it’s still gonna come up and slap me in the face.

Until there is a next time…
xx