We took jman into town to see the fabbo windows and st Mary’s cathedral light show on Saturday night. Totally unplanned outing.
It was beautiful. Gorgeous. Just the kind of thing I’ve looked forward to doing with our boy in tow.
We got the ferry in. What a great Xmas night out. We decided to top it off with a late dinner at the Sheraton on the park hotel.
Which is where jman started shrieking.
It was funny at first.
Then it got scary.
Then we were freaking, waiting for a bus as the carols by candlelight crowd descended on the meagre public transport offerings that is late night Sydney.
Sunday, it got worse.and worse. It got to the point I was having a meltdown every time it started. Jman was happy, joking,laughing, and then the screaming would begin. It ramped up to breathless ear splitting shrieks. It was godawful. We drugged him up to his eyeballs, at least that’s what it felt like. I’m against anything unnecessary…but this kid was in Pain, with a capital P.
And it coincided with hub in boots doing a night shift for brownie points. Which meant I had to a) keep jman quiet for night shift sleepy time and b) I had to handle him relatively alone.
Long story short, jman and I have spent the last 24 hours in emergency. Hub in boots and my sister joined in the fun this morning, and my sister helped out with lifts last night for hysterical mother. At first they suspected hysterical first time mum syndrome. Then they were considering a bowel intussusection. Then they looked at an ear infection. Babies and health. It’s like the the worlds longest multiple choice question.
Why is baby j screaming? Is it
A) he’s being an ass
B) teething
C) a bowel problem
D) a urine infection
E) an ear infection
F) did I mention teething?
G) colic (whatever the hell that means other than ‘random collection of unexplained baby crap’)
H) noting, hysterical parent
I) something really bloody serious
J) none of the above ?
It turns out it was J. He does have inflamed lymph nodes in his tummy, so there’s something going on. And it took them 24 hours to eliminate all the others and select j) go home with your screaming baby, and by the way, merry freakin Xmas.
But we’re glad he’s ok. I’m pretty sure my left boob is full of red bull, because jman is up for a party tonight. We missed mass at the local church, which I was upset about (because it involves a petting zoo , primary school kids dressed as angels and shepherds, a stubborn donkey and a live crib scene) …but for a good reason.
And he’s still not quite himself, his and daddys wagon isnt yet put together (oops. photos later), but I think he’ll be ready to tackle his first Xmas tomorrow.
Merry Xmas y’all. Try and avoid emergency departments. Peace and love to you and yours. Sing a daggy carol. Eat fattening food. Drink anything with bubbles. Hug an ugly uncle. Say ‘I love it’ about a lame present. Enjoy the spirit, with your family, real, invented, past or envisioned in your future.
New to the baby shopping channel this week: the Tiny Tyrant Turn Taker.
There are moments in every new parents’ life where you are both laying in bed, just on that lovely edge of sleep, and the baby starts to cry. Can you feign sleep and get the other person to get up? Can you stubbornly refuse? The question remains: whose turn is it?
As kids, we learn all about fair play, about sharing, sticking to rules, and turn taking. It is part of socialisation, so we don’t become the one with the “does NOT play well with others” t shirt. But something about parenthood turns you into a social cannibal…it is acquire sleep at all costs, all turn taking and fairness out the window. Survival of the fittest.
This is where the Tiny Tyrant Turn Taker (tttt) comes in. Using a complex logarithm, it analyses parenting behaviour, inputting all the known variables into its calculations to solve for the unknown x, where x = which parent is on duty. Batter up. No longer do turn taking decisions need to be the creator of the great relationship rift, no no. The decision is out of your hands. A buzzer sounds and the tiny tyrant turn machine lights up: HIS or HERS.
The model in this amazing calculator takes into account such factors as:
* bonus points for breastfeeding, extra if the feed was recent. Sadly this means dad is always behind
* level of relative partner fatigue
* general health of each partner
* sobriety, with personal preference settings either for the sober partner or for the inebriated one
* recent tasks. Bonus points for dirty nappy change with outfit change, bonus points for getting up between 1-5am, bonus points for getting peed on or chucked on, bonus points for an attempt at settling extending beyond 20 minutes or interrupting a fave tv show
* points can be counted for cooking tea, washing up, hanging out washing or taking out the garbage, all with the flick of a switch on the unit
* the receiver of a projectile vomit can declare all other points null and void
The circuit breakers override the standard logarithm. These are a safety feature, taking into account stress levels.
If one partner appears close to weeping or is standing too close to an open window with the baby, the default setting turn goes to the other partner.
In addition, if dad arrives home and mum has not managed to get out of her pyjamas or have a shower all day, it is dad’s turn for quite some time.
If she appears to have aged 10 years since he left for work, it is again dad’s turn.
If dad has had micro sleeps at red traffic lights all the way home from work, it’s mums turn.
If dad fell asleep at work at his desk and drooled whilst on the phone to a customer, it’s mums turn.
If its a school night and after 1am, it’s mums turn so dad keeps bringing home the bacon…
…unless mum is close to having a nervie.
Other personal settings and preferences are possible, and it comes in three great colours to match your decor. In case of parental tantrums, the unit is coated in Unbreakable Titanium.
For only three easy payments of $99.95, the Tiny Tyrant Turn Taker can be yours today. Order yours now.
I am not talking a little sick up here… I’m talking “who turned the fire hose on?”, and “how did he get THAT wet, its three feet away?”.
It was totally like the Exorcist, it literally sprayed in a single direct stream all over me. Only he drifted off into a deep sleep immediately afterwards. Whilst we changed him (fourth wardrobe change in 12 hours thanks to peeing up his back skills), his bed, our bed, me , his wrap, the outside of the bassinet, the carpet ….
Ah, with the heart attack inducing sound of your one month old being forcefully ill at 6:20am, who needs an alarm clock? We both sprung out of bed like we’d been set on fire, the noise got us moving that fast. I grabbed the baby and got him upright & made sure he wasn’t choking, hub-in-boots went bolting for nappies & towels to mop up the chaos.
I had this dream the other night about being in this rocky place that was all boulders and cliffs and narrow crumbly paths. I was trying to get from here to a lookout, and there were other people with me. We were in Kirribilli, Sydney, a harbourside suburb in Sydney, but like many dream landscapes, it didn’t look anything like Kirribilli. It was sort of an organised holiday, but badly organised.
We had a short time to leave our holiday tour, and go independently to this lookout on a treacherous hike. The lookout we were trying to get to was, we thought, across this big body of water. But when we got to where we thought the water crossing would be, there was only more paths and brown cliffs. It was strange. There were other people with me. I think hub in boots was somewhere there, but always behind me, somehow on the walk I was always alone. Alone, but with a couple, E & J from boxercise, (who in real life are 22 weeks pregnant as I write this we are 11 weeks).
When we got to the lookout I was with E & J, and there was this gully down to the left. In reality if we were really in Kirribilli, there should have been harbour views as far as the eye could see, and we would have been near the foot of the harbour bridge. But in dream landscape, there were these lush lush valleys of trees, deep rainforested plains, and off to the left this one incredible gorge. It reminded me of views you get from some of the lookouts up the Blue Mountains. It drew our eyes with water running down a rock wall, and like a little garden of eden it had all of these amazing green trees, every shade of green you could imagine. Where we were was hot, and dusty and rocky and dry – down below in this gorge was like an oasis of green cool.
Then E & J were gone, and I knew they’d gone to the gully, and somehow I was again alone, struggling to find my way through the rocky hot dry crumbling dangerous paths to the lookout I had just lost. I lost some of the sequence of the dream, but i remember thinking I’d never get there. I was so hot, and so thirsty, and so lonely. The walking was so hard. The path crumbled, my feet slipped.
Towards the end of the dream, suddenly, I made it. I thought I’d still be climbing, and I was there. The lookout was smoother, not as rocky as it had looked the first time. And there were the miles and miles of trees stretched out before me, and below and to the east, the gully. I could see it, and although it looked slightly different to the first glimpse of it, I knew I was going there, I was on my way to the gully.
I woke up with an enormous sense of peace.
Today 1 August 6pm (the horses birthday!)
E & J had their baby boy a little while ago (6 weeks?)…..and last weekend us and our Gumby reached full term. So I guess I’m at the lookout, looking towards that gully now. Geez that dream has stuck with me since I had it. On the worst days, I’d look back at this draft post I typed at the time, and I’d hang on to the mental image of that lookout.
A friend from work knows someone who gets “messages” about the future, often via bible verses. A ‘message’ was sent for me around the same time as I had the above dream, she sent a message to have faith that we’d make it, that we’d have our baby, but there would be more bumps and turns in the road. These turned out to be more hemorrhages and gestational diabetes diagnosed very shortly after the call. Then Wednesday last week, another message, this one stating Gumby would not need to be induced, he’d come soon, in his own time, and all would be well. Just like dreams, I am not sure if I believe in this sort of thing, but I also don’t actively disbelieve it. Sometimes this kind of insight can be comforting, if nothing else. I’ve thought about it a lot this past week.
And today, something started happening. Maybe it’s pre labour-y. Maybe it’s early labour. Maybe it’s just boring garden variety braxton hicks contractions amped up like a chinese olympic swimmer and I was just looking for an excuse to couch the f$%& out watching sport for the last 13 hours?! They might continue, they might change, they might fizzle out. They start low, they radiate upwards and around my hips to my back. They are often regular for hours at a time, but haven’t really “progressed” a great deal…45 seconds ish every 10 minutes. Crampier than braxton hicks, uncomfortable, some pressure, nothing major. I sent hub-in-boots to work, had a chat to the midwife at the obby’s office, and took it easy all day, hitting the contraction timer app on my iphone when I had the focus. (Can I just say the look on hub-in-boots face, and subsequent blanching as he lay in bed and heard I’d been timing for over 2 hours, was completely priceless? I should have taken a photo. I’m surprised he came home tonight instead of buying a one way ticket to La Paz).
We’re not quite sure what it is yet. A friend said this stage is like listening to a radio on a really low volume, so you can’t quite hear what song is playing…and he’s so right. But if I figure out the tune and start to sing along, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Well we’re here at 35 weeks 4 days today… And we never thought we’d see this kind of gestational age.
I’m feeling a little better this week, with good sleep at least half the nights and although gumby is sometimes hurting when it feels like he’s burrowing in ( into my hip right now as I type, into the back of my navel, into my pelvis) and now regularly gets the hiccups (just started) for long periods of time, we’re getting on ok. His sleep wake cycles are so regular you could set your watch by it… Every 40 minutes. Nothing like the two to three daily periods of activity he had about 8 weeks ago. It’s amazing how things change. All activity just about can be seen from outside: my abdomen moves in crazy waves, has jolts, you can see the hiccups from across the room, things stick out that might be a knee, bottom, or elbow. My belly warps in funny directions, flat in one spot and a huge bulge on one side.
If gumby was born now, they wouldn’t need to give me steroids for lung maturity. If he was born now he’d probably crack 3 kg, as he was an estimated 2.76kg (6lb 1) 10 days ago. These things are comforting. He’s head down, at last check not engaged, though a bump drop yesterday (and new difficulty bending and having an easier time getting out of a chair) tells me otherwise. I’m putting on weight now… 2.5kg this pregnancy. One good outcome in a sea of hard yards!
In myself, I feel a little better, with not as many flat days and flat spots not lasting as long.
My blood glucose is still good despite ridiculous new developments in chocolate cravings that occasionally beat me down into submission. The weeks of roasted chickpeas and walnut snacks and control control control are making me crack! My HB1AC (average glucose reading of sorts) is still only 5.3 though. Still eating loads of veg. Still on a red meat bender, with much improved iron levels. We’re doing good.
I’ve had my first encounter with criticism in real life of what I blog about, which surprised me. I figured just don’t read it if you don’t like it…?? It stopped me blogging for a while. I’ve seen this happen to other bloggers, and I always thought how odd it was. If a reader doesn’t like a book they don’t tend to send aggressive emails to the writer. They just put it down. Or write a bad review. And don’t buy the next book. It’s like ignoring a dumb status update on facebook. We all see them. It’s not hard. There is so much more I could say here, but really, it isn’t worth my emotional effort. Let’s just say that apart from slamming Dr north Korea (who deserved it), no one cops it on here that I haven’t personally spoken to about a given issue in real life.
The one thing i will defend is criticism of hub in boots on here. Infertility and pregnancy puts a big strain on relationships, as those out there in blogland know all too well. It is important to reflect on this, and if reflecting on my OWN overreactions & irrationalities in relation to him in a public place helps others in a similar situation, that’s excellent. If blog readers comments and feedback on similar issues helps complete that picture, even better. Hub in boots and i have talked, resolved, and continue to love each other very dearly, and a bit of online “oh my god, men!!!” will not affect my very funny thick skinned optimistic man one bit. If it did, i’d whip it off in a flash. If i didnt know him as well as i do, I’d never mention him on here. He reads my blog, he reads it regularly, he proudly promotes it, and we usually chat about posts before, during and after. He comes up with funny titles. He suggests topics.
And i think the slow honesty of a piece of writing in this long hard haul has, mostly, opened up many many conversations and much emotional closeness between hub-in-boots and i. Sometimes the blog has comforted him: months ago when he walked in and i was teary after an all day hemorrhage, but had posted that day about knitting and the twenty bonuses of bed rest, well at least he knew there was a little bit of humour and life still in his wifey somewhere, and could even draw on that to lighten the mood.
Sometimes there were things that took a long time to write about & think about, and frankly the burden of those conversations on our evenings would be too much, too onerous, if hub-in-boots had to be the luggage handler of every bit of my infertility / pregnancy baggage that came up. Instead, this way, I dump and deal, and together, with my reflections laid bare, we pick over the important bits and we talk about a few small high/ lowlights, or his perspective on parts of the picture i’d missed. Importantly, we talk after we’ve both had time to reflect. Sometimes he emails me after reading a post. It gives our face to face interactions more quality, more insightfulness, and I think it’s really helped us to weather this storm. Together, in the middle of the crap, he’d crack a joke as a 10inch needle was about to be jabbed into my abdomen, and we’d joke about how we could write about this in the blog. In the worst moments, thinking of a funny tagline took us out of the shitty experience and made us laugh. It was a reframing technique. It still is. It’s a collaborative effort. We have never been stronger or more united.
On the dealing with pregnancy front, I have likened where we are now to a break between sets in a boxing class, maybe a set of “crunch n punch”. The worst thing about crunch n punch (sit ups with hitting the training pads) is not doing it, or even trying to avoid farting (yes, hub-in-boots, here’s looking at you, kid) it’s the break between sets. It’s when you stop that it hurts.
When you’re going, you can lose yourself in action. When you’re going, the movement takes your mind off the effort. It’s when you stop that it’s hard. It’s hard because you have to mentally process the effort it takes. It’s hard because after that, you have a very short time to get ready to go again, at a time when muscle fatigue makes the next set harder, and hurt more.
35 weeks 4 days for us is a break between sets. The dramas are behind us. There is another set of pregnancy weeks ahead of us, then we will move on, to a new (and apparently pretty challenging) exercise: parenthood! This place in between is not always as easy as it seems it should be. I feel like I should be relieved and grateful and elated. But I don’t always feel that way. I actually feel a bit out of breath, and tired, and spent and put through the ringer. A bit resentful of all the time spent waiting, which is mad, because it got us here. And bloody hell I’m grateful that we are here. Grateful that this boy is kicking the bejesus out of me day and night. And annoyed at myself, that after weeks of being relatively zen on bedrest, now that I can move, I’m impatient.
The effort it has taken to get here is largely invisible, the adrenalin and momentum of that hypervigilant state of hanging on kept us moving forward, the effort lost in the movement of the weeks. Now, at times, I am feeling it catch up with me. It is hard to turn a hypervigilance off when it is switched on for such a long time. It becomes like a stuck light switch. I have anxieties about the birth, about Gumby arriving safely, anxieties founded in the real life recent losses of others. Some days, the “what ifs” begin their whispering game, and what a waste of time and energy they are.
I think now that I’ve sat down and thought, “ok, everything is going fine now but you’re feeling worse, and that’s ok”, my stuck switch is ceasing to be a problem. I’m back to sleeping ok and I’ve got better energy. I’ve still gone with the precaution of a visit to a professional next week to ensure I’m in a good headspace for what’s coming, and to ensure there’s someone who knows what they are doing to catch me if I’m not. After all, there’s another set to do! We pause, regroup, and get ready to go again.
Oh, and if you’re giving me the “Oh my GOD but you have NO IDEA how hard it is to be a PARENT” line, or even “birth horror stories 101”, this is me sticking my fingers in my ears and giving you the big “La la LAAAAAAA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” I’m not interested in your war stories. We just fought our own war, and we have (she says, crossing everything) just about won. So bugger off. Please, nicely.
Or, as hub-in-boots says, “I’m getting myself a big glass of shut-the-fuck-up. Would you like one?”. His other helpful suggestion is “Ladies and gentleman, apologies, but the Captain has illuminated the sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up light.”
If this 35 weeks IS a break between crunch & punch sets, I’m quite looking forward to the bacon sandwich and strong coffee we get after class….
In other news, Gumby attended his THIRD fancy dress occasion, this one at 35 weeks. Look at these photos!!!
That has to be a pregnancy record. The boxing crew had a fancy dress bowling night. I’m crap at bowling on an ordinary night, on an 8 month pregnant night dressed as a pirate, I suck balls. (Note: The best thing about a strike is not having to get up & play a second frame!!!)
Oh and bump update. Yay 35 weeks. Over and out.
34 weeks: pregnant pit crew racing for the finish line
Yesterday, I woke at 4am. I was bored. I couldnt sleep. I wanted to see how Cadel did in the tour de France time trail, my pregnant eyes refusing to stay open the night before. The Internet was down.
I got up late after hours of lying awake, figured I’d catch highlights on sbs. Tv lost sbs reception , for no apparent reason (this has happened before).
So do what the doctor ordered. I went up late for an updated blood test, on my iron & hb1ac (average blood glucose). I was fasting, tired, not a cup of tea to my name, oh and in hub-in-boots’ ridiculous two door low slung convertible, as he was getting the car seat installed in my car. Try getting out of a 20 year old convertible at 40 years old and 8 months pregnant. The day was not panning out well.
I strike the royal bitch of a receptionist at the pathology place . I had to take a number & wait to be called, even though there was ONE other person waiting. It STILL took them 30 minutes to see me, even though there were TWO people collecting and only two patients went in in thirty minutes.
Back home in the freaking convertible, complete with its non self cancelling indicators & permanently fogged up windows. Finally get my porridge & tea.
Yeah this was panning out well.
I thought maybe hub in boots could email our neighbour & find out if he was having similar aerial troubles with sbs . No, too hard to find the address. Right. Finally he did it. The neighbour is ok, it’s just us, ring the real estate.
I thought maybe he could ring the real estate… No… I’m the at home dogsbody. Apparently that’s my job.
I thought perhaps he could ring the Internet provider. No. He forwarded me the EMAIL of the user name and password, then gave it to me on the phone… Because you can’t GET freakin email when the net is down.
Ok. Breathe. He IS getting the car seat installed at the good place that we’ve already used for the pram, in his lunch hour. He’s busy getting an important job done. He will make sure he understands how to move it in and out, and show me how.
I spent 50 minutes on the phone to the Internet provider. We reset the whole modem. To no avail. I spent 15 minutes on the phone to the real estate, then another 15 trying to send them the ‘please send us your the tv aerial is stuffed request in writing’ email over the iPhone network, in our little reception black hole. Hell, half the time I can’t send an SMS here. Yes, of course I have to confirm it in writing when THE INTERNET IS DOWN.
I didn’t want to stay here, I am so over these four walls…but I didn’t have the energy to do anything either. Cue the iron lull. So I totter out with my sister, who is on school holidays, to the shops. Thank god she fed me lunch during the internet saga.
And as I’m leaving, the Internet company calls. I run back inside. Follow more instructions. Still no dice.
At the shops, neither of the baby things I needed are there. Cool. And of course, I look like shit, i havent showered or done my hair, have no makeup on, and run into someone from work.
I get home, and the Internet is working! Hurrah!
The Internet company calls, gets me to check it, it’s not working. Booooo.
Oh and by the way they can’t fix it. The problem is intermittent. They don’t understand the problem.
So they’ll send us a new modem.
In several days.
But they don’t know which day.
And then I’ll have to re-do the hour on the phone set up process.
And have no net in the meantime.
And have to wait around for delivery.
Hub in boots arrives home. We all traipse out to check out the car seat.
He just went to the ‘I install one car seat a month mechanic’, not the ‘all we do is install car seats and help nervous parents’ place down the road.
He very confidently goes to show us how to move it.
It quickly becomes apparent a ) he has no idea b) he picked it up from the apprentice who had no idea and showed him nothing, nada. C) it does not click in and out, but rather has a complicated impossible to adjust non removable tether strap, so you can only remove the capsule by;
* a lengthy lessening the tension on a tether,
*unlooping it from hooks on the capsule,
*leaning across to the middle of the car and destroying your back, and
*performing a level five yoga pose and sticking your tongue out.
I begin to cry. My sister and hub in boots are calm, trying to reason it out in thr pitch dark back seat of the car, but really, I’m done. My bump won’t fit in the confined space and my hands don’t work properly with pregnancy hormones so I can’t grip the clips properly. I come inside and cry half a box of tissues.
One part of my head is screaming “He had ONE JOB. ONE FREAKING job. Out of that whole list of getting ready for baby, one job. Sixty bucks and a box of Kleenex later, we are back where we started”. The other part of my head is saying “we’ve both had a rough trot. He forgot why I wanted to go to an expert fitter, not just a mechanic who fits occasional seats. He’s tired and stressed, and he showed up with flowers (and tim tams i love but am not meant to eat)”.
After I calm down a bit, of course I’d like to look up manufacturer’s instructions. But did I mention THE INTERNET IS DOWN????
Luckily my sister’s iPad is on a different network Which occasionally gets reception here. There are no videos on YouTube to help& I find one PDF describing how to install the current model, but of course the words won’t stay in my head. My head seriously will not work . Baby brain. I go back to the car, to find that the $60 installation has installed the whole thing on a random back cushion I had kicking around the car. With no explanation. So the base of the capsule is not even touching the seat. I also find they haven’t even closed the cover over the tether hook. Or basically done anything.
I slept in the spare room. Afraid I’d wake in the night and just try and tear hub in boots apart. Poor hub in boots. I thought about just getting in my car and going, i had this run away urge. Still do. My sister backed out of the house before round 2 with the car seat, leaving her ipad, with the facial expression of someone leaving a very active minefield.
I am still laying in bed in the nursery. And hoping like hell today is better. I think all the keeping on going, all the oh my god are we going to lose this baby days that went on for months and months have just hit me all at once. I think every bit of low iron, and pregnancy hormone weirdness, it has all arrived. I suppose the question is what I do with it…sit and wait for it to pass, write or talk it out, look for professional help which I may or may not need. I know what the problem is.
The problem is the maths of this fucked up pregnancy,
4 weeks then a positive test+
5 weeks standard first trimester breath holding +
15 weeks of almost miscarriage/almost late pregnancy loss/almost severely preterm labour and bedrest & no life of varying degrees of difficulty+
10 weeks of oh we’re going to be parents are we ready for a baby?
This equals 34 weeks, but it also equals 9 months worth of normal first baby complex emotional processing (plus the geez that was a close one aftermath )in 10 weeks flat. Little wonder I feel not depressed, not anxious, but just bloody overwhelmed. It’s kind of like teachers that always get sick in the first week of holidays… The stress hits after the fact.
I saw you at the Sofitel hotel bar with another woman, and I couldn’t take my eyes off you. When I’ve met you in the last seven months, you had terrible taste, but tonight…well I just knew things would be different.
It was a brief encounter, and I planned at first to only spend half of it with you, then hand you over to another woman. But you were so smooth, and looked so good in the waiter’s hand, and the way you chased around the wasabi peas and complimentary peanuts on my palate, I was powerless. Gumby started kicking when you sat down and joined us.
Now I know that they say that no level of alcohol is safe in pregnancy. And you are the seventh glass I have spent time with these past 7 months. The first was on the worst day of my life, the 1:21 risk of downs and painful cvs placental biopsy and why not have another hemorrhage while we’re at it day, the second was the very next day (champagne) when we got the all clear, the third was on our second wedding anniversary (champagne), the fourth was at viability (champagne), the fifth at thirty weeks (champagne), the sixth at Gumby’s happy hour last Sunday whilst unwrapping gifts (champagne, are we sensing a theme here?), and you, my friend, were the seventh. You were possibly the last.
In my defense, lest I sound like I’m really getting around, it’s been a rough pregnancy. And, by way of counterattack, my mother was quite committed to a one or two beer consumption and a bit of chateau cardboard most evenings during her pregnancy with me, and as a double degree qualified uni lecturer I think it didn’t do too much damage for me in the IQ department, and if it took me down a couple of points it was probably a good thing saving me from certain social ostracism.
After I was done with you, Cockfighters Ghost, a brief but torrid 2008 vintage affair, I moved on upstairs to the restaurant and took up with a decent sized rack of lamb, a ratatouille stack, and some dauphinois potatoes. Don’t think that I forgot you though. You lingered on my palate. The lamb had to be well done, so while it was amazing, it wasn’t the forbidden fruit that came with your territory. My niece decided to have a bit on the side; there were chips with white truffle oil . (Which coming from my chick pea lentil and low GI low fun diet and foodie history were like lacing my meal with crack cocaine).
All too briefly it was over, the blood glucose sitting quietly just under the safe ceiling, the memories of your middle palate (and slight heartacheburn) waking me in the night as I lay in my pillow fortress, a thousand miles from hub-in-boots and memories of our fling at the Sofitel hotel. I hope we catch up again soon.
Quick update: gumby doing well at the ob visit today. He’s cracked 5lb 5oz (2.3kg)… A big boy for 32 weeks but growing evenly & steadily. He’s still head down in my pelvis and booting me mainly on the right side, hips and ribs. Apparently the madly rapid fluttering is probably hiccups. Weird kid. He’s been busy in there. I still think he’s building something.
All ok with me too…blood pressure ok, the repeated braxton hicks contractions are nothing to worry about (just fatigue, dehydration and stage of pregnancy related), and he expects it’s just been the low iron whooping my tired ass. Since I’ve upped the iron tablets on the midwife’s suggestion on friday, I feel much better. Wed to friday were such hard yards… The weekend we continued the mad decluttering and luckily my energy came back to help. A car boot FULL of books and other gear to Vinnies.
My walk today was ok, just getting a bit slower.
It was the first visit I’ve been to on my own, and the doc was actually very nice. It was a quiet day in the practice, and he spent a bit longer with me. He said at any stage there is no problem with heading to the hospital if the contractions get me worried, but now that I understand what they are they don’t make me as nervous.
Had a fun wander in the shops after the doc, and it was the best kind of shopping: that with other people’s money!! I had gift vouchers from my birthday in October to use, and got new comfy pj’s x 2 and a fossil watch! Even hub-in-boots scored, with some Peter Alexander robot pj pants. Now he has the appropriate outfit for dancing to 80’s music on Rage. 🙂
The mental nesting continues as I washed everything on the bed today before heading to the doc, including the blankets & mattress protector. Thank goodness my nesting has corresponded with good washing weather!
Well as I hinted in my last post, we’ve had a busy week. Hub-in-boots had a week off work to assist in the world’s largest declutter and nurserify project. I hadn’t really started as I know myself, and I know that I would start tidying one shelf, and forty minutes later I’d be up a ladder hurling around enormous bags of clothes like a “what not to do in pregnancy” occupational health and safety diagram. So I just didn’t start.
Of course, we had to approach it using the hub-in-boots method of cleaning and decluttering. Hub-in-boots thinks getting things a little bit cluttered or cleaned is just pointless, and limiting your energy to one shelf or one space is just counter-intuitive. No no, he likes big apartment wide craziness. For example, if he goes to do the washing up, there are dishes spread across every counter, the floor is awash with water, there are baskets spread in the lounge room in a seemingly unrelated expanse of housework, wet tea towels find their way to the bathroom, random mops appear in buckets in corners. So you can imagine the fun when we emptied a whole room.
The flat became an unnavigable labyrinth of plastic crates, pieces of furniture with drawers removed, strange mysterious giant cardboard boxes that appeared out of nowhere and stacks of books. AFL football tracksuits seemed to grow from every surface and every cupboard. But being unable to lift much, or move much, I bit my tongue (mostly), and just went with the five days of total chaos that rapidly spread to every single room like a virus.
Hub-in-boots worked like a dog, Monday driving my brother’s van over to a friend from school’s house that I hadn’t seen for years and years, a friend who’d kindly offered us a Boori chest of drawers and matching change table. It was unreal seeing her and her family, including a particularly mad three year old girl who had us in stitches. We have now both met her bunny rabbit flopsy, inspected her princess bedroom, seen her sister’s room, and seen her new table and chairs and met her dog. I don’t know how anyone keeps furniture that impeccably after two kids. Impressive! And so so generous.
Tuesday we did a bed swap, moving my old double bed to my sister’s place, and swapping it for her king single. We’ve managed to get the single into Gumby’s room so there’s somewhere to flop and do night feeds, as well as a spare bed so relatives can hang out here and help when Gumby is born.
Wednesday was a mad day of doctor’s visits and our first hospital pre natal class. I booked hub-in-boots in for a manicure and a full body scrub. He was pretty happy. Topped only by the beers after class….
Thursday we went and organised Gumby’s Happy Hour shower at the local pub and saw Dr North Korea. We decided to lash out and pay to have the event with drinks and finger food at the pub, without the cleaning up or stress. I’d love to host it here in our yard on the water, and cook cute things, but we’re weather dependent and the effort carrying stuff up and down is a bit beyond me.
I am not very keen on baby showers, and I tend to think all female occasions with games involving nappies are a bit creepy, and I hate anything that comes across as present gathering. To me, that’s not what it’s all about, and Gumby is Stew’s baby just as much as he is mine.
I don’t want Gumby to be a kid with STUFF, that needs loads of stuff to feel happy. He’s a baby. He doesn’t need things or brands or everything perfectly matching. He just needs time and love. I do love it when a gift is a wonky handmade something, or a bunny rug with twenty something years of history, or a blanket I can remember wrapping my niece in and holding her, or a bassinet that practically every baby in the family has slept in for the past fifty three years, that started off pink, and faded, was repainted white and used, stored for twenty years, and reappears like magic from a garage rafter across Sydney. I like that today we bought Gumby a pirate bib and rattle, mainly because his father likes sailing and would like Gumby’s first word to be “arghhhhh”.
And of course, if I don’t improve my appalling habits, as my mother keeps telling me, his first work will actually be “shit”.
I like that we have bought each other kid’s books over the years that are now in Gumby’s room, and one, Dog Loves Books we stood and read together in Shakespeare’s bookshop on the Rive Gauche in Paris, on our honeymoon. And another is an alphabet book called M is forMetal, to open up pre verbal discussions on ACDC, groupies, punks, Ozzy Ozbourne, The Who and why boy bands are bad for you. Now that’s education.
I like having someone’s friend’s daughter’s baby bath, and Lou Lou’s cot and pram and everything else. And art work our friends gave us for a wedding present in his room. And Jeffrey Smart, hub-in-boots favourite artist.
So things with meaning, I like that. Stuff for the sake of stuff for a baby? Yeah not keen.
But I felt after what we’ve been through that there needed to be a time when we actually celebrated, and saw our friends and family, and said “hey, we are ACTUALLY having a baby, isn’t this exciting?”. So we went for a mixed event, drinks at the local, grown up conversation, nibbles, cute cakes.
Here’s the invites:
Gumby’s Happy Hour invites
Friday was more de cluttering, cot pick up from our major sponsor, Angus, and cot construction. Hub-in-boots has two problems with a task like this: inability to construct many things, and a complete lack of spatial reasoning (when it comes to moving stuff). Luckily, after much debating in our relationship, it’s now a given that construction projects are led by me, and he does the grunt work. I read the instructions, I do most of the screwing in and hammering. And when it comes to lifting things, I make suggestions, and he does the lifting. Of course, this evolved into me crawling around the floor bumping my belly into everything as I screwed in the nuts and bolts on the cot, and hub-in-boots stood patiently taking the weight and moving panels when instructed. It works very well, and we didn’t argue at all. All week. I think there needs to be some kind of relationship therapy involving self construction furniture. I swear flat pack furniture will make or break a marriage.
We also discovered a Bavarian Bakehouse on the way back from the cot pickup, tipped off by a sign on the main road that said “These pretzels are making me thirsty”. What a find. We could have done with the giant pretzels at Eurovision, but still. And of course I could hardly eat anything they sold, but that didn’t stop us buying loads for everyone else, and me having one bite of everything. Homemade gingerbread, pretzels, mustards, big heavy loaves of bread. Oh yum. The whole place is on the post pregnancy menu planner.
The room wasn’t working after the cot was finished, so when my sister arrived I cleared out and left hub-in-boots to mull it over. He sorted it out with a bit of bedroom tetris, shifting things around, and back, and around again, and he got it just right. It seems his lack of spatial reasoning is limited to removalist type tasks. He did brilliantly.
The flow of the room is now just perfect and very functional to boot. We are so happy with it.
We followed this up with an enormous Mexican feast at our local restaurant with my sister and brother in law. I pretty much emptied a plate as big as my head. Like I said, we’ve been working hard. Impressively, I kept my blood sugar within limits.
Today was the fun stuff. Today we handed out the first of our invites, and went to Leichhardt and bought decals for the nursery wall, and sheets, and a cot mattress and a curtain valance. This was the first time we walked into a baby shop together and bought something. It was really nice. It felt like something kind of monumental, that I’ve been waiting a long long time to do.
Then we hung up the curtain topper, stuck up the decals with detailed discussion on the placement of each cloud and letter and bee. We keep running in and out of the room to check it out again, to check that it’s real. It’s gone from our dark dingy room-o-crap to somewhere for a little boy to grow up. And at 29 weeks, after not that many weeks of actually counting on this pregnancy, it is nice to feel at least semi-ready, and to be able to do nice things together to prepare.
And here’s the result:
(I’ve never figured out how to do a slideshow on here before. How exciting!)
Ok. It’s time for bump photos. There’s a cartoon in our borrowed Kaz Cooke book, “Up the Duff”, about how not to choose your obstetrician. I found it very funny when first pregnant, and since then hub-in-boots will sometimes look up as I walk into a room, and announce “hello fatty”.
We do have a viking helmet at home, so if we have any labour ward issues, I’m getting hub-in-boots to wear this outfit and follow our doctor around.
He gets away with the hello fatty thing, mainly because I am still a kilo or so lighter than my pre pregnancy weight, despite the burgeoning bump that tends to enter a room several seconds before me. Make that just about to hit / surpass pre pregnancy weight. Bugger!
Put it down to the strict diet (that is getting tighter and tighter) to keep my gestational diabetes blood sugar within the guidelines. It gets harder as pregnancy goes on. Anything that is not a low GI carb, anything sugary or fatty, any eating a second helping, and it sends my blood sugar sky rocketing within 2 hours, (with the added benefit of finger pointing & head shaking from one of the three health professionals that checks out my glucose diary every fortnight). Consequently I’m pretty bloody careful. It’s a catch 22, as the dietician is worried about my lack of weight gain, but the blood glucose stops me eating any more.
My sister asked me the other day do people notice i’m pregnant when I am out and about, and I’d say generally, no, unless I’m wearing light colours. To the point where i had several old ladies elbow me out of a scarce seat at an event on the weekend with a huffing sense of entitlement ! Because of our situation, I’ve been in pretty limited interactions outside friends & family I guess, so people not noticing surprises me. It won’t be long now til I’m impossible to miss! 27 weeks: Ok this just got ridiculous. At Dr South Korea today, the receptionist tried to itemise my invoice for a gynaecological appointment, not obstetric, and when I corrected it asked twice if I was pregnant!
28 weeks: Addendum: at almost 29 weeks, that bump is pretty hard to miss. Old ladies smile at me now. Though at dinner tonight, after I finished a plate of fajitas bigger than my head, my sister kindly informed me I “just looked a bit fat”.
We didn’t take early bump photos, mainly as there didn’t seem to be a lot to see, (and the whole bleeding like a stuck pig routine kind of cuts into your photo shoots & tends to take priority). It still surprises me when I scoot past a mirror on the way to the shower or something, and catch a glimpse of this funny thing attached to me. My head hasn’t quite caught up with the ‘hello fatty’ state of the world.
19 weeks: nothing to see here21 weeks 3 days: illegal outing. still not a lot to see in the bump department!23 weeks 4 days24 weeks25 weeks 4 days26 weeks: helloooooooo fatty.27 weeks: off to the Brandenburg Orchestra
Gumby continues to move to a scary degree, looking like a fish moving under the surface of water or something out of Alien, most of his movements are clearly visible from the outside. He’s already a big boy at 1.3kg (2lb 10oz). 28 weeks: no idea how much he weighs now.
Things have been quiet on the blog this week. Little reading, little commenting, no posting. Because we been BUSY.
Hub-in-boots took a week off work, and in an action packed frenzy of decluttering, charity donations and filling the entire apartment block’s bins, we are three quarters of the way through cleaning up the flat and getting a nursery ready. A nursery pic post to follow. It feels amazingly wonderful to have a space ready. Deeply satisfying.
There’s also been a run of doctors appointments, all with good and /or little news…fantastic blood glucose readings, happy dieticians (that want me to eat more. A dietician TOLD ME TO EAT MORE.), and a visit to the doctor formerly known as Dr North Korea.
Ok, he’s still Dr North Korea, but he’s not being badly behaved. So we’re sitting tight. Possibly stupid, but it feels right. He brought us a long long way from the dark old days of BASTARD the clot and a rather dire prognosis. I’m able to disconnect from him a bit now, and not feel bullied about. The power is most definitely still with us in this relationship. Possibly because we haven’t paid his bill yet. And are not going to, until the very last possible minute, say the 29th of June? Any sign of bad behaviour, and we’re out of there like a rat out of aqueduct. But I reckon we can do this with him on the team.
There is still talk of possible natural labour. Exciting.
Gumby was in a fully engaged position this week. Head down in my pelvis. Freaky! Doesn’t the blood rush to their heads? Apparently he may move out again, but is unlikely to turn breach from that position (unlike my good self, who greeted the world ass first). I’m very happy about this. He’s moved from a big scary 91st percentile for gestational age, to 77th, which is good. So instead of being the biggest boy in his class, he’s now only bigger than three quarters of the other kids. Hopefully this means the diabetes is not affecting his growth too much. After a slightly worrying quiet few days, he is back to being completely mental in the action stakes, making very very visible kicks pokes rolls and flutters in several manic sessions a day / night. He is busy in there.
Hub-in-boots survived his first hospital pre natal class on Wednesday, which was relatively free of the almost at german porn level of videos we’d been warned about, and featured a “fresh one” in the form of live and kicking two day old Hamish. He was very cute, and his mum looked unreal for a 24 hour old caesarean! The midwife educator was excellent. The hospital seems to have a very natural birth / let mum and baby bond focus, is very pro breastfeeding, and everyone we’ve encountered there is easygoing and kind. I am very very comfortable we’ve chosen the right place for us.
Here’s the bump 28 weeks just prior to Eurovision. I look happy because I found non alcoholic German beer for the party by Bitburger. Yum.
28 weeks hello FATTY
You’ll have to wait 24 hours for the megapost involving Eurovision, 29 weeks, nursery makeover, Gumby happy hour and a Gumby gear stocktake. We’ve just been out for a giant mexican nosh up, we’re bloody full of damn fine food, and as to the flat, we got us some cleaning up to do.
maybe baby, J-man & the adventures of hub-in-boots 