Belly VS Belly
I figured it was about time I began the series of obligatory “Look how pregnant I look” photos – but I decided to do so with a twist. In some of these photos I am pregnant, and in some I am not. Can you tell which is which?
This, dear reader, is why you must never, ever, ever ask a woman if she is pregnant. It should be noted here that other, far more pregnant-looking photos have been taken – but they’ve also been thrown away.
Quintuple Chocolate
Some people reckon triple chocolate desserts are impressive – to which I say HAH!
Triple chocolate is merely the canvas.
I began with triple chocolate Cadbury ice cream – chocolate ice cream with real chocolate chips and ribbons of chocolate sauce throughout.
I added choc mint ice magic (a brilliant invention that turns hard when drizzled on ice cream).
I garnished the dish with one-qurter of a dark chocolate cherry ripe.
This, my friends, is what quintuple chocolate looks like:
I considered also sprinkling this concoction with Milo (which, for you Americans out there, is like Ovaltine but a million times better – mainly because of a distinct crunchy texture), but I decided hey, I’d hate to overdo it.
The up side of nausea
If you’re sick enough, doctors advise you to eat anything you can – literally anything. Sadly, at that point there’s generally very little you can even look at without feeling ill.
But then you improve a bit. And a bit more. And then comes the shining day when chocolate goes back on the list of things you can eat.
From that point on, you’re in a grey area. At some point, you need to focus on health rather than just “Whatever doesn’t make me nauseous today”.
So yesterday, having dreamt (literally and metaphorically) about junk food bingeing for three months, I celebrated the impending end of the grey area by eating about 70 grams of chocolate*.
As you may have gathered, I am improving – so there’s still hope I’ll be well before January. But if that does happen, then I’ll be eating healthily (oh, the horror). To be fair, I am actually eating pretty well at the moment (excluding green vegetables, which are still pretty much impossible to eat without a lengthy recovery time) – and this week I gained 0.8 of a kilo, which is about what I was hoping for (it means I’m gaining roughly what I should, thus proving that I’m not over-eating).
In spectacularly exciting news, I AM reducing my medicine (very very carefully), I’m able to drive to work and home again (with careful planning), and – wonder of wonders – I managed to grocery shop a little yesterday (very impressive because it means being around food AND standing up for more than three seconds at a time), and I’m now doing two minutes of extremely slow riding on my exercise bike most days.
Nausea still runs my life, but I usually have two or three hours to myself each day. And I find out in eight days whether I’m having a boy or a girl!
*And yes, it made me nauseous. But not as nauseous as what I would consider a “true” binge – which could be as much as half a kilo of chocolate and lollies in a day. Hopefully I won’t do that again for a good long while. Or, possibly, never.
Shopping Spree
There are two awesome things about being pregnant. First, you get a baby at the end. Second, you get free stuff.
Some of my relatives and close friends have already given me various items, but it was the parents of a student of mine that decided to clear out their storage. . . and send soooo much sweet sweet baby loot my way. This is only the first section – a safety chair, a play mat, and a vast pile of girls’ clothing*.
I sorted through five bags, and took out some of the items I found the cutest.
Pregnancy is a lot like engagement, in my view. It is a time when a huge chunk of overpriced merchandise is sold to women at their most emotionally vulnerable, who are forcefully told that they MUST spend thousands of dollars or their future family is doomed.
My reaction is to take it as a personal challenge to spend the tiniest possible amount. So far, the total I’ve spent is $0 (excluding hundreds of dollars on medicine). I’ll let you know how it goes – but I suspect I’ll do very well (I have a mother who expresses her love through gifts; I have a baby shower coming up; I have no shame and well-known poverty; and I have a late-pregnancy Christmas).
*The boy clothing is on its way. They asked if I wanted to wait until I knew which gender Mini-Me is, and I said no. Whatever happens, we plan to have another child (and I suspect second pregnancies don’t involve as much free stuff, so I’m making the most of the time I’m in).
It’s aliiiiiiiive!
I gained a kilo and a half this week (“normal” weekly weight gain is meant to be an average of around half a kilo, but I guess my body is trying to catch up from losing seven kilos). The baby was very clearly growing yesterday, as I felt hungry every hour and had to eat almost constantly (which is really annoying since I’m still nauseous).
Under the heading “Pregnancy tales of woe” I drank over a litre of off milk this week due to the assumption that it tasted funny due to pregnancy wackiness (it was well within its use by date; I later discovered there was an issue with the delivery truck). That, combined with the return of a nearby-but-not-actually-in-my-house student this week means I’ll be putting off my attempt to reduce the amount of ondansetron (zofran) that I’m taking.
The good news is that, on Sunday night just after CJ fell asleep, I think I felt Mini-Me move for the first time. It was as gentle as the touch of a hand – but nausea and cramps don’t feel like that. I didn’t wake up CJ (it’s not like he’d be able to feel anything anytime soon), but just lay still feeling incredibly special.
Here’s a random picture of a sunset from a day or two ago, so this entry isn’t all text:
I’ve been unable to read scary books or watch scary TV (the slightest tension makes me sicker – one of the curses of having a great imagination + being sick), so I’ve been reading baby and child-raising books (which are sometimes even scarier, but oh well). There are some aspects of parenthood that I am dead set against for various reasons. Here’s a selection of five.
1. Home births.
If the “Worst-case scenario survival handbook” taught me anything, it’s that birth is usually a largely automatic process. Unfortunately, the key word is “usually”. One of my best friends had her first baby just under a year ago. Throughout her pregnancy, her blood pressure was normal. During labour, it shot up. She had pre-eclampsia, and her organs began to shut down. Her baby was hastily removed, and my friend went into surgery and was basically dead to the world for three days.
Since she was at a birthing centre, the reaction to her life-threatening condition was to put her in the lift – within minutes, she was with doctors and surgeons. Two weeks later, she and the baby were fine (although three days on the bottle meant the little one was unable to adjust to breast feeding). If she’d had a home birth, the reaction would be to call an ambulance. She would probably have died en route.
When things go wrong during labour, they go wrong quickly. Sometimes the result is the loss of both mother and baby. This is why I am against home births.
2. Co-sleeping (that is, having the baby sleep in the same bed as one or both parents).
This is a SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) risk for numerous reasons. Heavy sleepers can crush their babies (far more likely after taking drugs or having a few drinks), or the baby can get stuck or suffocated by the bedding. Like #1, this is a no-brainer that will probably one day be made illegal.
3. Lying about Santa.
The idea of a heartfelt belief in Santa being a vital part of childhood means that childhood must also include the growing realisation that every trusted adult in your life has been lying to you for years. That’s not a realisation I want my children to go through. My own parents always said that Santa was “a game we play at Christmas” and that never posed the slightest problem for me or my siblings. It also meant we didn’t give away any secrets to other kids.
PS Also, Santa is just scary for many little ones – he is, after all, a strange man whose face is almost entirely concealed )by artificial means). Santa photos are definitely not worth tears and trauma.
4. Raising gender-neutral children.
Until relatively recently, my nephew’s favourite colour was pink. None of his extended family ever “corrected” him. That’s stupid. But they did dress him in male clothing and refer to him as “he/him/handsome/a boy”. We all know that young babies are impossible to recognise as male or female (leading to many a fractional pause as a friend describes the infant as either handsome or beautiful based on the parent’s timely advice), and it makes very little difference outside of a nappy.
Except that it does. Countless psychological studies show that we treat children differently based on gender from the first hour of life (girls are cuddled more, boys are bounced more roughly, etc). Some parents go to extreme lengths to try and prevent this different behaviour from touching their child. Since our society is so obsessed with gender (it’s often the first thing we notice about new people, for example) I think it’s best to let my kids have that socialising effect from the very start – and then let them choose when and where to defy it.
And yes, I’ll be skipping that awkward baby moment by dressing my kid in gender-specific colours most of the time. Mostly because gender is very strongly linked to attractiveness, and I want my child to be treated as beautiful/handsome as much as possible. Also, at a certain age children feel that their clothing decides their gender, so it becomes desperately important for them to dress to exaggerate their gender. It’s cruel not to let them do so.
I don’t see any connection between childhood gender-based behaviour (or the opposite) and homosexuality.
5. Peer pressure.
Parents in particular often think of peer pressure as extremely harmful – linking it immediately with drugs, binge drinking, teen hatred, and lots of underage sex. Yes; there certainly is a link. But peer pressure also helps our kids shower regularly, hold conversations that other teens find interesting, and feel strongly that kicking a dog is a bad thing. So peer pressure actually has a lot of value – it’s what holds society together, and I wish I’d followed the crowd a bit more when I was young.
What child-rearing or birthing techniques do you find noticeably nutty or downright harmful? (Please stay polite.)
Done and done
Want to know the most stupid movie cliché?
It’s the whimsical writer character who’s secretly poured their heart and soul into a book* that they’re too afraid to let anyone read. As the movie plods towards its happy ending, the writer finally finds the courage they need to send their book to a publisher**. They are instantly published.
If someone told me they’d peed on one of my cats, it could hardly be more offensive.
Writing needs editing – by you, by an HONEST friend (who tells you it has enormous flaws – because it always does), and by a professional.
Writing a good book takes time and practice. This almost always means THROWING AWAY that first, treasured book. Personally, I’ve thrown away several. Most people take five to ten years to get vaguely competent at writing – which seems crazy, because any literate human can, technically, write a book. The problem is that you can’t measure good writing, so people tend to vastly overestimate their own skill – hence the need for real editors.
Getting a good book published isn’t a given either. You need a little bit of luck to hit the market at the right time and place (which includes learning the stylistic writing fashions of the day – which are constantly changing, hence the need to read modern books in your genre). In practice, this means writing more than one book.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The average book has a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting published. If you really love writing for the experience of writing, that’s no problem at all.
Which leads me on to what I’m actually celebrating today. Two months ago, an industry person asked to read the full manuscript of my YA steampunk novel. Unfortunately I needed to write an extra scene – something that would normally take me a day or two. I was too sick to sit up for more than a few minutes at a time, so I was forced to put off the industry person. . . for two months. If I’d been well at the time, I’d know her answer by now (argh!) – she is one of the rare people that replies when she says she will (in this case, within two months).
But.
YesterdayI finally reached the point where the book was good to go (and I used my extra time to also have CJ check it over from cover to cover and make several suggestions, some of them quite large – that’s the best kind of editorial suggestion), and I sent it off yesterday.
I happen to know my chances of an “I want to work with you” response are now 1 in 10 – which is a huge improvement. On the other hand, that also means there’s a 90% chance she’ll say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
It doesn’t particularly matter. The thing that excites me most of all is the pride I feel in knowing I’ve written a really good book – because I’ve been writing for so long, I actually CAN tell that the writing is good (the whole “requesting of the full manuscript from the first person who saw it” is also a handy clue).
Since early this year, my writing area has been slowly spreading and overflowing with information on duelling guns, historical architecture, steam engines, character sheets, and clockwork rats. Since the book is now polished to a shine, I can FINALLY tidy all the notes and pictures away for a rainy day – which is to say, the next round of editing.
I can’t wait.
*often written by hand or by typewriter, which is even more offensive – because it means they’ve done no editing whatsoever.
**sometimes after showing the book to a close friend, who tells them exactly how wonderful it is.
Place your bets
On 7 September (if not before), I will be announcing whether Mini-Me is a boy or a girl (or indeed a hermaphrodite cthulhu). Place your guesses here, and I’ll pick a winner.
I should admit there’ll almost certainly be no prize other than personal satisfaction. . . but you never know what I’ll feel like doing on the day.
Pets = children?
Today marks seventeen weeks, and (thanks to medication) I feel okay most of the time. I gained just over a kilo this week due to eating almost exactly like a normal person.
Last Friday I met my primary midwife (I will be giving birth at a birthing centre attached to a hospital). We got on very well, and I now have an idea of how the rest of the pregnancy will go (in terms of how many times I’ll see her, when birthing classes are, etc). I have also booked my twenty-week ultrasound for early September. . . and yes, I’ll be telling everyone the gender here the following Wednesday (if I can resist sharing for that long).
Here is a list of what my cats have taught me about parenthood:
1. Life = cleaning up a variety of bodily fluids from both expected and unexpected locations.
2. Injuries in small creatures cost a lot of money, usually at 2am.
3. Biting and scratching is cute when they’re young, but if you don’t train them they will injure you regularly for the rest of your life.
4. Never forget: you are not the only one who needs food and bathroom supplies from the grocery shop.
5. Looks of scathing hatred from your dependents are part of being a parent.
Dance like THIS
Back when I was talking about the Tour de France, someone mentioned the Midnight Oil song “King of the Mountain”. CJ showed me the clip. This clip.
Watch it, my peeps – not for the song, but for the seizure-like rock moves of the lead singer. In my opinion, he and Freddie Mercury both have the gene of sheer attractiveness-defying rock and roll awesome.
The best part? That man now holds a prominent position in the Australian Federal Government.
Tiny Socks
As of today, I’ve reached sixteen weeks. Mini-Me is over 11cm long (not counting his/her legs), and I could begin to feel movement any time from now on. The ondansetron is working; I am now eating a small selection of vegetables and meat, and today I was able to do some minor household chores including a load of washing that included some of these items:
Of course, now I’m exhausted and I need to lie down.
Do you, dear reader, plan to have children (assuming you don’t have kids already)? Why/why not?
I don’t think having children is a particularly rational thing to do. Theoretically, it means someone will look after you when you’re old – but that’s hardly guaranteed. You’d be better off saving your money and hiring a nurse.
Biology has a lot to answer for (and not just for “surprise” babies). The reason I want to have kids is because there’s a space in my heart for the love of a mother, and I can’t resist the urge to fill it (regardless of the cost). Also, as I’ve mentioned before, it gives my life a sacrificial focus that I crave. Raising children is one of life’s greatest, hardest, and most epic adventures.
Felicity Banks 