Dating : Night Feeds, Brain Inflammation, and Hope

A night in my life.

My alarm rings, dragging me from disturbed sleep.

No… no… no, it can’t be.

I blink, groggy, as I peer at my phone.

3.30am.

I rub my eyes. The time stays the same, doesn’t change.

It’s time to feed Holly. Even if it only feels like a minute ago when I last went out to her.

I am half-asleep as I pull on a hoody over my pyjama top and switch the pyjama bottoms for jeans. I grab the bottle of milk powder and the bottle of water and stumble into the kitchen where I flick the kettle on.

My eyes feel too heavy and I blink several times as I grab Holly’s spoon and jug.

My nostrils curl as I make up the formula. I cannot stand the smell.

“You doing the next feed?”

I am so tired, I haven’t heard my mother coming down the stairs. She’s staring sleepily at me.

I nod and tell her about the last feed in nonsensical words that just pour out of me.

“Good luck,” she says, disappearing.

Disappear. I want to disappear back into the realms of sleep. This is the second of Holly’s night-time feeds.

I finish mixing the milk, ensuring no lumps of powder are still in it, then I grab the kit.

I don’t put a coat on, even though rain pounds down. I think it will wake me up.

It does – and it makes me long even more for my bed. The warm, the dry, the comfort. The sleep.

But this is for Holly.

She needs this.

I reach the farmyard. I have the big torch with me, and it makes all the shadows look deeper, darker, like monsters are hiding just beyond.

The barn door creaks as I open it. I hear Holly and her mother moving about.

“It’s all right, it’s only me,” I call out.

I scrunch my eyes again as I reach their door and set the kit and milk down on the upturned trough we’re using for a table. The two bales of hay are next to it – bales I now need to move into the stable.

Holly’s mother, Bluebell, puts her ears back as I untie the top half of the door and then slide the lower bolt back. She turns her back on me, ready to buck or kick, to protect her beautiful baby from me.

“Come on, Blue. Holly will be hungry.”

I edge my way in, then open the door wider, dragging one of the rectangular bales with me. Bluebell snorts and whips around. Holly is her shadow.

It takes me several moments to get the bales in place so they’re blocking off a corner of the stable. I put the milk and kit in that corner, and balance the torch on one of the bales.

Then I set about catching Holly.

She’s a Shetland foal, a few days old, and though her mother’s still feeding her, the milk production has slowed a lot. We’re not sure why and tomorrow the vet will give her an oxy injection to encourage her to let down more milk.

I chase Holly around the stable for a few times, avoiding Blue’s back legs, before I manage to grab the baby. In the dark, everything seems more difficult, more challenging.

I hold Holly’s body against my chest as I lift her up, my back straining with her weight. She’s 25kg – over half of my own weight — and she’s strong, kicking against me. I angle her so her hooves can’t get to the phone in my pocket. The screen of it is already broken thanks to a previous encounter with her kicks.

Holly neighs for her mother, and Bluebell barges against me as I step over the small rectangular bales and into the now-cornered-off section.

I place Holly on the ground and sit on the edge of a bale. Holly knows the routine by now and stands between my knees, facing the same way I am facing. I lean over her and gently tilt her head upward, so her position mimics the same posture she’d use for feeding from Bluebell.

With one hand, I hold her chin upward and with the other I hold the bottle upside down so she can reach the teat.

The milk is calf colostrum, even though Holly is a foal. It was an emergency last night when we realised Holly’s mother had stopped producing milk and the duty vet left the milk powder and instructions in a key coded box outside the surgery. Tomorrow we’ll get equine milk replacement.

Holly drinks greedily, and Bluebell neighs at me. In the streaked torchlight, framed by silhouetted pieces of hay sticking up from the bale, I see Bluebell’s ears go back.

“It’s okay,” I say to her, but my attention is back to Holly.

She’s dribbling milk, and I remove the bottle for a few seconds, cupping my hand under her chin to catch the milk that pours from her mouth. It’s hot with her saliva and breath and feels slippery against my palm.

I marvel at this. Just this moment. I am sitting here, on a bale of hay, bottle-feeding a foal.

I am not scared of animals.

I have not got a hat on to protect my hair.

I have not got any gloves on.

There is milk all over my hands, wrists, and arms. It is on my skin. My jeans are stained with it, and there are strands of hay stuck to my hoody.

I have come along way since my severe episode of OCD, the result of a Paediatric Acute-Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome, an autoimmune encephalitis condition that also affects adults, despite the name. For months prior, antibodies attacked my brain, causing inflammation which continuously activated my fight-or-flight reaction, destroyed my sense of balance, reduced my motor control, made me terrified of doing anything, and gave me severe OCD.

I could barely touch my ponies, yet now I am bottle-feeding Holly. I freaked out if anything touched my skin, but now I am soaked with milk. I had to change my clothes eight to ten times a day, and here I am wearing my “milk clothes” – an outfit I wear each time I am bottle-feeding Holly, clothes are stained with milk, damp, and smell of horse.

And I do not worry about putting these clothes on — that is the best part. I am able to forget that I’m wearing these clothes, clothes the small OCD voice I still have tells me are bad.

But I can ignore that voice now. It is quiet.

I know it is not me.

I do not put a hat on anymore. I am not afraid of the air touching my hair.

My hands are no longer red and raw and constantly bleeding from washing and scrubbing them more than forty times a day.

I have my phone in my pocket. I’m not afraid anymore to take my phone out of the house.

I can look at the bright torch without getting blinding headaches.

I am not falling over, barely able to balance or sit upright.

My head is not spinning. My mind is not busy.

I am not afraid of contamination and I don’t feel as if everything is a danger.

I am tired – exhausted by these two-hourly feeds throughout the day and night – but I feel calm as I feed Holly. This is not a feeling I ever thought I’d feel again, many months ago. Then, we did not know that my behaviour changes and OCD were caused by antibiotics attacking my brain.

Since starting treatment – a rigorous programme of long-term antibiotic, ERP therapy, immunotherapy, an anti-inflammatory diet, and SSRIs – I have got my life back.

It hadn’t been easy. I’ve had relapses, and I’ll never be free of this condition.

But I am myself again. I can enjoy my life.

Holly wags her fluffy tail as she drinks more milk. Then she pushes the bottle away and neighs.

Bluebell answers, but Holly neighs again, looking at me.

“It’s okay, Holly,” I say, my eyes heavy. “I’m here.”

And I am.