Pregnancy: Looking back, looking forward
It’s been almost a year now since the horror show of pregnancy ended in the spectacular bloodbath of birth.
Okay, so I’m probably not meant to refer to birth that way, but it’s the simple truth. Ditto on my description of pregnancy.
Have you ever tried to meditate for, say, twenty minutes? The thoughtless thoughtfulness is really difficult.
When I think of pregnancy, I think of the zen-like state in which I held myself for weeks at a time. I needed to focus my mind in order to not throw up. Most importantly, I needed to not think about why I was concentrating so hard. So I spent weeks looking at my curtains, thinking over and over, “Look at my curtains. What great curtains. I really like those curtains.” Then I noticed the hints of orange in the curtains, and I couldn’t bear to look at them (because orange = spew). So I spent several more weeks looking at the pretty curly bedhead of my bed, thinking, “Look at my bedhead. What a great bedhead. I really like that bedhead.” Considering that my “morning” sickness was 24-7 for eight months; that I lost seven kilos in first trimester; and that I had difficulty drinking water/brushing my teeth/walking up the stairs – I threw up very rarely. Hurrah?
Sidebar: I was oddly disturbed to hear about Duchess Kate getting bad morning sickness. Then I resolved my discomfort by deciding that morning sickness will henceforward be called “The Duchess Disease”. Much more glamorous that way.
After about six weeks of focused not-vomitation, first trimester was over and I was well enough to watch TV (being that well? Super exciting). I watched almost every minute of the entire Tour de France (which, incidentally, was a spectacularly good year for an Australian to watch it). For those familiar with the event, you’ll understand that it wasn’t a great mental leap from, “Ooh, curtains” to “Ooh, look! Another castle. Oh, and bikes. Lots of bikes.” I still threw up a little bit, but oh well.
And there was muscle pain (the hormone relaxin makes all your muscles – most noticeably the back muscles – go smoosh so that your bones can move around to let the baby out – which is awesome, except that the effect kicks in months in advance), baby-kicking-me-in-the-guts pain, constant indigestion (especially at night – I didn’t lie down properly for months – which struck me as grievously unfair when I was so tired) and assorted other effects. In short, it sucked. Two hours after giving birth, I felt better than I’d felt since the first fortnight of knowing I was pregnant. I could eat, and drink water, and lie down, and everything!
Also, ya know, there was a baby around. That was cool.
I managed to get through both pregnancy and birth with no emotional trauma, but I do view the next pregnancy with some purely rational dread. How will we go financially when I’m probably unable to work for about a year? How will CJ handle having the entire weight of all household responsibilities fall on him (I would argue that he is mentally traumatised from the last experience of having an extremely sick wife) – again? What will happen to Louisette when her mum is too sick to pick her up for almost a third of her young life?
I am genuinely traumatised by breastfeeding. As a little girl I was taught that my private parts were private – I didn’t flash them around to anyone outside of my family, and I understood without being told that if anyone touched them without my permission then something was very wrong. It’s true that I’m not a little girl any more, but I’m never going to be okay with how public all my private parts have become. Birth at least only happens once: breastfeeding happens constantly; anywhere and anywhen the baby screams for it. There’s nothing you can do about it other than not breastfeed (sidebar: anyone who makes a woman feel bad for breastfeeding in public deserves to starve and see how they like being hungry and scared and not knowing when the food will ever happen again). Like everything else to do with the female reproductive system (the male system is all hugs and puppies – metaphorically speaking), it hurts. But for me the emotional side was the worst. I felt violated, and still do. I’m not actually crying as I wrote this, but it wouldn’t take much to tip me over the edge.
Sidebar: All the mountainloads of crap that Mother Nature gives to women are worth it for getting first dibs on being the stay-at-home parent. Seriously. And I’m not a baby person (there are good hormones, too – nature WANTS you to like being around your child, and basically gives you a high whenever you look at them. See Appendix A: this blog for the last year).
Physically speaking I was lucky; Louisette refused to breastfeed once she was a few months old – and before she had teeth. Next time I hope CJ will have six weeks’ parental leave instead of four (he’ll need to use holiday leave, of course); I plan to aim for three months of breastfeeding rather than a year; and I think it’s PRETTY unlikely I’ll be breastfeeding on any of the streets of Beijing this time. I also won’t take any milk-increasing medicine (especially the one that makes you gain weight – yeah, awesome, thanks. I didn’t feel horrible enough about myself before, apparently) and if I don’t produce enough milk I’ll just use bottles rather than expressing (often while the baby screamed to be held) multiple times a day. And after all that, if I want to stop for whatever reason, I’ll stop.
I’m in my thirties now, and 3 out of 6 members of our immediate biological families have had some kind of fertility issue with their second child – so I definitely don’t want to put it off too long. I’ve had some physical indicators that things might not be as easy conception-wise next time (but none of them actually concerning. . . . probably). Besides, I want to get the pregnancy over with (the good news is that we only ever wanted two kids). When I think of my future I see a time of peace followed by a time of “thar be monsters” (that’s pregnancy: all sea-serpents and whirlpools) followed by uncharted waters – because every child is uncharted waters.
I also don’t know what will happen to me after next time (let’s not even get into how the kid turns out). It’s normal to take about six weeks to recover from a birth – that’s probably about the amount of time I took to be “mostly okay”. Louisette was a giant baby (adorably, reassuringly giant, at 4.15 kilos – an average baby is 3 kilos) which was probably a factor in my back pain being pretty difficult both before and after she was born (imagine carrying two 2-litre milk bottles around with you every day and all night, and you’ll get the idea). The muscle pain took a very long time to wear off – five months or so – and just when I was getting a few days a week without pain my hip fell out of place (relaxin hormone being overenthusiastic, again – a common post-pregnancy issue).
I’m doing fine now hip-wise, but Louisette’s current ten kilos is way too much for me to lift safely (ever – of course I lift her anyway), and all my muscles remain a bit iffy – including, randomly, my wrists (another common post-pregnancy thing). There’s a few other things wrong here and there, some of them private and some not. Standing, walking, and lifting will probably be markedly more difficult for the rest of my life. Pregnancy and birth aged me abut five years, I think. Unfortunately, I can even see it in my face. I’ve been sick a lot this year too, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m suddenly much older physically or just because there’s a baby around keeping me from resting or sleeping when I need it. CJ has changed too, and his body hasn’t been through anything except the usual daily pummelling from an energetic little monster.
My body shape is drastically different than it was. It’s been eight months since I stopped breastfeeding but it’s clear my breasts haven’t got the message. After losing weight, then travelling overseas, then losing it, then starting a new job, then losing it, then getting quite sick, and now losing it again – I weigh about what I did a week after giving birth. Most of my pregnancy weight is still with me, as anyone can see just by looking at me.
Sidebar: It’s hard to motivate myself to diet because the body always says, “Arg! I’m starving!” and makes me physically shaky and miserable – and I know I’ll be pregnant again before too long, and all my work will be undone. But at the same time, an overweight woman is far more likely to have trouble conceiving. Trying to conceive is a strange limbo, and one I don’t handle well at all.
I have heaps of clothes I can’t possible wear, and I still have no idea where my body will end up. Shopping for clothes is a completely different experience, although I’m starting to learn some clothing methods that look better. I’ve also seen my waist return to me (somewhat obscured by lard but *I* can see it), so there’s hope that I won’t look four months’ pregnant (as I do now) forever. But no guarantees, especially with another pregnancy on the way some day.
Unsurprisingly, I’m nervous about where my body will end up.
It’s possible – even likely – that my second pregnancy will be a LOT better than the last one. Women who are stressed/busy (eg with a toddler!) tend to have milder pregnancies, and I won’t have the first-timer’s sense of sailing into the vast unknown (we’re loving the seafaring metaphors today, aren’t we?) But I’ve already begun battening down the hatches in preparation: I’ll grow out my fringe, make sure my dentist and doctor have seen me, set up online grocery shopping, and stock the fridge full of single-serve home-made meals (for CJ to eat, or possibly – hopefully – both of us). Before going off contraceptives, CJ and I will toilet train Louisette so she’s a bit cheaper and easier to maintain (for me or for babysitters – we’ll be calling in help from every family member and friend who doesn’t despise children), and CJ will build up a lot of flex-time at work. I’ll prepare CJ in advance to pay all our bills on time and correctly (literally the only household task I still did while pregnant, and although I tried super hard to get everything right I failed utterly. I just didn’t have enough mind left to enter numbers into a box on a screen). We’ll do our best to have a stable (and stair-less) home (not this one; it’s just been sold and our contract – which we cunningly renewed just before it sold so we kept the low rent – will run out in July) to live in until well after Puggle is born.
That’s right. We’re calling our second baby Puggle (that’s a baby platypus, usually) until we know if it’s a boy or a girl.
And I can’t wait until they’re here 🙂
A Pirate Born and Bred
When we were at the coast, we stayed at Captain’s Cottage in Longbeach. The “cottage” looks like this:
Yep, that’s a lighthouse. For reals. Inside it had all the usual beachhouse paraphernalia, plus a whole lot of really top-notch beachhouse paraphernalia, including a “bridge” outfitted with brass speaking tubes (soon to be connected to other parts of the house) and real pieces from a real 1930s cargo ship.
I took all four kids – bear in mind two were very sick, one is teeny tiny, and one is a toddler at nap time – dressed them in pirate attire, and had them pose in the bridge. This was the best shot of the results:
CJ and Louisette looked pretty good:
But (for obvious reasons) it’s this serendipitous sequence that made my day:
At which point CJ stepped in and rescued the little treasure from our scallywag – not for the first time, and not for the last either.
First Christmas
One of the excellent side effects of having a baby in January is that by the time their first Christmas rolls around they actually get it. Louisette mastered unwrapping in moments (sometimes using her teeth) but tended to actually look at and examine the contents (and of course the paper) instead of hurling it aside and plunging into the next gift. Does she not understand Christmas at all??
It was an excellent day(s), and we used up six camera batteries. Need I say more?
The grandparents were super awesome and asked us what we recommended for Louisette’s presents.
One side bought her a proper walker. She began using her car as a walker literally on Christmas Eve. Perfect timing!
The other side bought two of those cot toys that you hang on the bars – very important as well as fun, because she’s been getting nightmarishly difficult to settle, and having something mildly amusing (and, ideally, something that she doesn’t immediately throw onto the floor) is the best thing for keeping her sitting or lying inside the cot until she realises she’s sleepy. (We’ll be doing some serious sleep training these holidays, while CJ is here for moral support and I have barely any work.)
We bought her an “adventure” tent – two small tents with a tunnel joining them:
My mum was disturbed that I hadn’t asked for anything super expensive (not for Louisette, anyway 🙂 ) and when I saw Louisette’s 2-year old cousin playing with a cardboard box I said, “That! Get her a cardboard box like that!” It says plenty about her age group that Louisette absolutely LOVES it:
Sarcastic Christmas Letter
This has been a particularly well-photographed year, and a pleasant one, so here’s a superfast mostly-visual rundown of 2012:
January:Â Louisette was born. Being not pregnant is STILL exciting, outweighed only by the presence of Louisette herself.
February: Sleeeeepy.
March: And then we went to Hong Kong. Because international travel is what ALL the baby books recommend. The fantastic mountains + ocean and islands + skyscrapers of Hong Kong will always be a favourite world location for me, and we took heaps of photos with which to taunt Louisette when she grows up enough to complain that we never go anywhere exciting.
April: And then we went to Beijing (and of course the Great Wall) for the wedding of CJ’s brother. A brilliant trip (with some brief excursions into tiredness hallucinations/psychosis for me – Louisette travelled way better than I did) and the best kind of wedding – the kind where you’re delighted about the bride and groom getting together, and so is absolutely everyone else. This trip is probably why Louisette is so chilled out about changes in temperature, company, and noise. Nothing phases her.
May: I didn’t QUITE win $10,000 for my steampunk novel (I came either second or third in the Text Publishing Prize, and received. . . Â a hearty congratulations) – but I did have my first Mothers’ Day.
Yep, that’s me wiping up some spew.
Louisette turned out to be a surprisingly generous gift-giver, however, so it’s all good.
June: I cut back heavily on my writing – for the first time in my life, I had something better (and more fun) to do: watch Louisette take on the world. (This did not mean stopping twittertales, blogging, or sending books to publishers.)
I became a playgroup addict, going to three a week.
July: My sister and her family came back to Canberra from Perth, meaning that all Louisette’s cousins now live in the same city. Other than, well, having Louisette, this was the best thing that happened this year.
Make that the third-best.
I also began working a significant number of hours per week (babysitting with two primary-age girls and taking Louisette with me), and I’m still heartily enjoying my sharp increase in sanity (after seven years of crazy, that would be the second-best thing that happened this year**). The connection between “less writing” and “more sanity” has not been lost on me, although the sanity definitely came first.
The first picture is Louisette with all her cousins*, and the second is with my after-school girls.
*Watch this space 🙂
The fourth, fifth and sixth-place winners are, in order:
Louisette refused to breastfeed past a few months of age – THANK YOU, baby.
We have a new fridge.
Bil and Bonnie’s wedding in April (okay, yes, they’re outranked by our fridge. If you knew our fridge, you’d understand).
August: Louisette’s youngest cousin was born – her new favourite chew toy. Meanwhile, Louisette suddenly got mobile. She hasn’t stopped laughing maniacally to herself since.
September: CJ’s first Fathers’ Day. I began working full-time (four jobs altogether, all of which let me take Louisette along) – and, until I got bronchitis, it was awesome. (Since then two of my families have shifted but my workload is similar.)
October: Louisette was born with a tiny skin tag on her face. She had it removed – and was an absolute champion the whole time.
November: It became clear that independent standing and walking isn’t far away. Soon she will be a toddler – literally.
December: Beach trip!! Staying at a lighthouse!! With my my entire family!! (All my side, anyway – I have grandiose plans to get ALL our close family together just once in February – including Bil and Bonnie and Louisette’s godparents – all of whom live overseas).
All in all, an amazing year. Merry Christmas, everyone. Remember to eat a lot – but choose your food wisely. Glitter looks a lot better than it tastes.
PS I forgot (*gasp*) to post the month of daily photos this month, so that’ll happen on Wednesday.
Born to be bad (at housekeeping)
Reading this post made me so proud of my home. Here’s a sample:
“I love going to visit people in untidy, lived-in houses. They never look the same twice, like a landscape in changing light. I feel flattered, welcome, and comfortable when invited into a lived-in house. I feel that way because things have not been hidden. I have been allowed to step into someone’s life just as it is, and I take that as a compliment. . . .
I don’t know why, sometimes, when you go to someone’s house, they say “Sorry about the mess,” when their possessions are lying around. Why are possessions called mess? Why are they apologised for? They are evidence of living, of doing, of being, creating. They are nothing to be ashamed of. Unless there’s like a dead body under it all and the laundry has been carefully arranged to hide it.
In impeccably tidy houses, I feel incredibly uncomfortable. I’m never sure if I’m allowed to sit down and relax. I feel I’m messing the place up just by walking through the front door. If my mug is whisked away and scrubbed the minute I finish my tea, I feel it’s not okay for me to be there. Maybe it isn’t.”
———————————-
Random pic of our living room (literally the most recent I could find, in order to show the house at its most random/normal, including our zombie cat):
Pretty sure she’d like my place. I have friends over at least once a week and I never tidy up a thing. Sometimes, if a friend is allergic to cats and I remember in time, I put the couch covers (which is to say, several towels, a blanket and a mohair rug which surely can’t be good for anything else) under my desk while they’re there. The desk which is also in the same room.
Sometimes I tidy up the room-wide covering of toys after Louisette goes to bed. Sometimes not.
Look at Louisette not mangling the cat! The cat certainly looks hesitant, but it’s clear that she’d rather a (supervised) pat from Louisette than no patting at all. Poor neglected cat 
New Steampunk YA, featuring girls who (*gasp*) do stuff
“The Friday Society” sounds like it was blessed with a smart, thoughtful writer. Here’s some of what she wrote about her aims at Whatever.com:
“A lot is made of strong female characters. To the point where panels are created at conventions to discuss the topic. Yet it is most rare to see a panel on strong male characters. And by “rare” I mean, well, I’ve never seen one. The reason? We are still working hard to promote female characters as characters and not as female characters. Look at Soderberg’s Ocean’s 11. No seriously, look at it. It’s a really fun movie. I’ll wait two hours . . . Okay, you back? Notice anything? Each man in the film is a type. The sexy type, the nerdy type, the funny type – you get my drift. And then there is the woman type. A single solitary female. A bit like you tend to have a single solitary person of colour (POC). But that’s a whole other contentious issue.
Men are seen as people first, gender second. They are considered gender-neutral. They are the waiting forms into which you can pour your types. Women, on the other hand, tend to be seen as their gender first, people second. They are not a ready form for a dozen different types. They are all, inclusively, already a type.”
Rather ironically, what I’ve just done is say “Look! A book with girls in!” I’m already excited about this book, and I barely know the plot (it’s something about fighting crime). Still gonna read it, though.
Water Baby
You can see for yourself what Louisette thought of the sea:
That right there is what made this trip the most excellent coast trip ever. We were right on the beach, so whenever we felt like it we just took her out and dunked her in the sea until our arms got tired.
Digestive Tract Family Thrill Ride
Last week, my entire family plus all our spouses and kids went down the coast – twelve people altogether, in one giant beachside house. It was awesome. We looked forward to it for months, and it was everything we’d hoped for.
But more on that some other day.
A lot of events have more than one possible “story”. Is Duchess Kate glowing and delighted about being pregnant with a royal heir – or is she in a strange and horrible place as the whole world makes jokes about her throwing up?
Both are true. So today’s blog is about the strange and horrible experience that was one side of last week.
Louisette and I were both mostly – but not entirely – over our gastro experiences*. At the last minute I packed a few extra pairs of long pants for her, and lined the car seat with a mat that’s designed to catch accidents before they hit carpet. Pessimism rocks.
Our destination was at Bateman’s Bay, and when we had half an hour to go CJ and I both smelled nastiness from the back seat. Louisette travels best without breaks – she either sleeps or is at least in a dopey pre- or post- sleep state that keeps her relatively calm. We’d carefully timed our trip to coincide with her most reliable nap (which meant arriving two hours before the house actually opened, but limited the possibility of Louisette screaming at us for two hours). But if she’s taken out of the car partway through a trip, all she wants to do is explore, socialise, and – above all – move. So CJ and I discussed whether we’d be better off changing her in half an hour’s time or immediately. We chose to stop and change her, and it’s a good thing we did. She’d produced a startling quantity of pure liquid poo that had obliterated her pants and the improvised car seat lining (her pants had around 60% coverage, for the mathematically-minded among you).
It so happened that, flush with the thrill of being able to take more than international-airline-restricted hand luggage, we’d packed a great deal of baby paraphernalia including a rubber-lined foam change mat and a full-size nappy bucket (which has an excellent lid). And, like I said, spare pants for the munchkin in case of an Unusual Poo Event.
So we changed her, mopped up everything as well as we could, put her entire outfit into plastic bags for later washing, and put the nappy and contents into another plastic bag inside the bin. I happened to have packed a second car seat lining, because that’s how I roll. And we drove on. A few minutes later she threw up – actually threw up, not baby-style posseting – a LOT. It was a personal best for her quantity-wise. And it was chunky.
So we changed her entire outfit (60% coverage of the whole thing, or around 90% of her front, with some transfer to the back) again, put her in a third pair of pants, mopped up everything as well as we could, refolded the first car seat lining into place, and drove on. I had another pair of pants for her, but no third shirt (there was another onesie, but it was important that she remain in long pants until we had no other choice) so she went topless for a while.
She was sick several more times before we reached the house. She continued to be catastrophically, abundantly sick all that week and has only just begun to recover (oh, and guess what? She’s now teething, which means she’s in near-constant pain that will probably wake her at 3am regularly for up to six weeks). We’d packed seven pairs of long pants for her, and were constantly on the verge on running out. I did at least one load of washing every day, just to keep Louisette in long pants so that her poosplosions were partially contained.
But it could be worse, right?
It was.
On the first night, CJ threw up. He spent the next twenty-four hours barely awake (which meant I was a wreck for the 24 hours after that).
On the second night, my 7-year old nephew threw up. Then he threw up in his sleep. Then he had diarrhoea while throwing up. And then he was sick some more for the rest of the holiday.
On the third night, my sister-in-law threw up (the nephew’s mum). Then she drank some water and threw it up. Then she was sick some more for the rest of the holiday.
Early the following morning (the last morning) my brother threw up. Twice. Last I heard, he’s still not eating. I was also unwell that day.
So, to sum up, out of the twelve members of my close family:
Eleven out of twelve have been sick in the last month or two. Out of those eleven, nine threw up at least once. Six of us – that’s half – threw up at least once while on holiday. In the same very very open-plan house. With two toilets shared among twelve people.
So that was our holiday. It’s good to be home.
How did Louisette like going to the beach for the first time since she was an oblivious newborn?
Well, that’s another story 🙂
*I’ve never thrown up so much in one go. Ever. Particularly not while simultaneously – you know what? Never mind.
Flashback
Well, CJ was sick last night and recovering today (mostly sleeping), Louisette has regressed and is going through ten outfits a day, and I’m feeling the pressure – so instead of a longer entry here’s a flashback photo from when Louisette was six months younger.
Bit late for Wednesday due to technical problems, but oh well.
Our camera is broken
Luckily, we have an iphone. “We” meaning CJ. Which means all Louisette photos are currently taken when (a) I have my hands free, and (b) CJ is in the room. This is a pretty typical example (so evidently the loss isn’t the worst thing ever):
Felicity Banks 