“Grimsdon” by Debora Abela
Generally when I go to a writing con, I try to read as many of the participants’ books as possible before I go. I didn’t read any of Debora Abela‘s books pre-con, because she’s best known for “Max Remy Super-Spy”, which is too young even for me (my reading level is about 9 and up 🙂 ).
But then she opened her comments by saying, “All kids’ writers face the problem of what to do with the parents. In Grimsdon it was very simple – I killed them.”
Naturally, that meant I had to read it. As a bonus, it’s set in a flooded city, and is written for a slightly older age group than her other books.
I was right to be excited: the world is haunting and brilliant (I especially loved the underwater scenes), and the obvious Global Warming theme is brought up without massive preaching.
The characters and writing style are great too, with plenty of tension between the young protagonists.
There’s just one problem: the plot. The book survives on the Rule of Cool – implausibility in fiction is fine as long as it creates a truly awesome situation or world – but the resolution completely backs off from coolness to good sense. Worst of all, it makes 90% of what the characters have been through utterly pointless.
I think non-writers would be a lot less sensitive to this flaw – at worst, they’d feel mildly disappointed by the ending. But it was a real shame all the same.
The book is winning a whole bunch of awards all the same.
Right now I’m re-re-re-reading one of the “Samurai Kids” series by Sandy Fussell, which is aimed at around 9-year olds while simultaneously being one of the best (even the most literary*) series I have ever read.
*without ever being boring.
Belucci’s Restaurant
It’s a pretty, pretty Italian place in Woden (Canberra). CJ and I ate there last week in an effort to entice my body to take on more food. It worked well at the time.
I love all the wood, glass, and brick – with highlights of marble and steel. One of our friends did the lighting. This photo was taken with CJ’s phone, and doesn’t do it justice.
We took photos of the (rather nice) food, but I can’t stand to look at them again, sorry.
Pregnant women are infamous for vivid dreams. Last night, between 1am and 8am, I dreamed the following:
A pleasant afternoon with my long-dead grandparents; sneaking lemonade cordial into a radio station where I was due to read out 1 Kings (from the Bible); the pregnancy side-effect of mushrooms growing out of my hair, forehead, and the roof of my mouth (that dream also featured Lily and Marshall from “How I Met Your Mother) – oh, and my blood turned green; kissing a girl (who was displeased that I’d suddenly turned goth since we began dating); learning to drive a big rig during Christmas traffic.
*shrug*
The fears
These are/were my fears, in roughly chronological order:
 1. Infertility.
Well THAT’S no longer an issue 🙂 I did gain 7 kilos from the mere thought, all the same (handily, I’m so sick I’m losing weight faster than a crash diet. . . yay?)
2. Miscarriage.
Not a big issue – plus, again, the intense nausea is reassuring.
3. Annoying strangers approaching me to tell their labor horror stories. My plan for this goes as follows:
Random stranger: Are you pregnant?
Me: Yep! Fifth time lucky – well, fifth child. Third pregnancy.
Random stranger: You had. . . triplets?
Me: Yep. See you later.
I’ll let you know if it works.
I gathered horror stories from friends pre-pregnancy (some are truly horrific) as a kind of innoculation.
Wacky conversations so far:
One friend seemed to suggest that I should go on a raw-food diet. To which I say HAH!
Another friend told me she was throwing up so much all through her pregnancy that she lost three stone and was eventually induced. (Had a great birth, though.) At the time, I thought, “Well, *I* won’t be constantly throwing up.”
One person (who has a gift for giving terror-inducing reassurance) told me (the pregnant woman with the anxiety disorder), “The most important thing about labor is you MUST STAY CALM. Otherwise your body releases adrenalin, and it hurts SO much more. And don’t scrunch up your face at all, either – that tightens things “down there”, and completely screws up the whole process.”
4. Labor itself (just not thinking about it).
5. Some kind of deformity (see two weeks ago for the squid baby – which CJ and I would love JUST AS MUCH), particularly one that took away Mini-Me’s chance to become independent one day (for his/her sake and for mine).
6. I accidentally maim or kill the child (or, less scary, something or someone else accidentally maims or kills them).
7. Colic. CJ was, and my niece was too (but she was treatable). I’m not a huge fan of screaming – and I hate the thought of my baby being in pain for months on end.
8. Kid is rude/rotten/mean/in pain/grows to hate me. Bound to happen. All I can do is my best, and choose to accept that they’re an individual in their own right. They’re my responsibility (less so as they grow older), but not an extension of me. I am not just a mother – I am also a wife, writer, friend, and human being.
9. Mini-Me is mentally ill – like me, my mum, and her mum. (I think I’m the worst – but hopefully that’s because my biodad was somewhat useless, and left when I was tiny. Which is enormously encouraging, because CJ is brilliant – very much the same type of man as my second Dad, who did a fine job raising me.) There are some things we can do to ameliorate mental illness and/or reduce the chance of passing it on. I can teach resilience by modelling, by letting my child fall and learn to stand up, and by valuing contentment over being unusual/special/hyper-meaningful (in my opinion, writing/art/dancing/etc is very bad for mental health). Whatever happens, I made the choice long ago that if they ended up like me, they were still a worthwhile individual who deserved to exist.
10. Kid has ADD – like his father and grandfather. It’s not a big fear, and we can help it by not letting them near a TV or computer screen for the first two years. (Or at least, we can try.)
That WAS my list. You’ll notice nausea didn’t even make the top ten. So much for that.
Today I’m at 8 weeks, which means I’ve dealt with two weeks of nausea and I probably have four to go. Next week I’ll be halfway.
I’m sleeping about twelve hours a day, which certainly helps. Thanks to Maxolon, I’m able to eat or drink something three times a day.
In unrelated unpleasant news, our younger cat Ana has been missing since Saturday. I don’t have high hopes for her.
If you are in the Woden area or Northern Tuggeranong, please keep an eye out. She is tortoiseshell and white, semi-longhaired, with two large bells on a collar around her neck.
Sandcastle
From my not-so-secret vault of spare awesomeness:
This type of sandcastle requires a meeting of sand, water and something solid. You make it by scooping up very wet sand and drizzling it onto a solid surface. My mum taught me how.
The beach is Bar Beach (I think) at Merimbula in January this year.
Throw Up
There’s a great deal of difference between a pregnant woman who claims she’s “really very, very sick” and hasn’t tried a single medication – and a pregnant woman who is on the strongest possible nausea meds and still throws up just because she walks past some food.
To all the medical personnel who gave me disbelieving looks this week – I told you so. Â
Being a vomit expert thanks to my days at sea (did I mention I threw up while working aloft? I did? Did I mention it was also raining? Well, it was), I already knew that the best thing about throwing up is the fifteen minutes afterwards, when your body actually thinks it’s solved the nausea problem and leaves you alone for a moment.
So I cleaned up my own chunder, drank water, and (gag) brushed my teeth.
I don’t feel better physically, but psychologically I’ve gone from a quivering jelly of patheticness to someone who is having a genuinely bad time and handling it pretty okay.
A sixth birthday party
A couple of weeks ago, my nephew turned six. I enjoyed it roughly as much as he did. Here is his cake (and a toy he described blithely as a “turtle sharpener”, which for some reason made me think it sharpened knives. Those are pencil holes in its back, however):
The bottom layer is vanilla (with chunks of white chocolate). The middle layer is strawberry (with real berries) and the top is chocolate (with real chocolate chunks). There’s cream between each layer, and the top has chocolate icing, white chocolate swirliness, and sprinkles. Lots of sprinkles.
Nuff said.
Captain Maxolon saves the day (ish)
Dear rest of the world (USA, I’m looking at you): Public health care is the best idea ever.
Yesterday CJ and I spent seven hours at hospital (in the past, I’ve waited longer than that in the waiting room, which is the down side of a triage system – the sicker people get treated first – but pregnant women are always a priority) getting looked after by a doctor and two nurses. The only thing we paid for was food.
We wandered through the usual labyrinthine passageways to get to emergency, where I was assessed almost immediately. Since both of the antenatal (“antenatal” meaning “while pregnant”) triage beds were free, another pregnant woman and I were wheeled up to that department.
That’s right: I said wheeled. Awesome.
I settled into the bed with CJ on a chair beside me (we’d brought two books each – I read “Soulless” by Gail Carriger, not realising that CJ was deliberately watching my face during the naughty bits).
The main doctor and nurse gathered more information, and basically pooh-poohed my pleas for a feeding tube (I was so nauseous I could barely drink water, and so nauseous/phobic of food that even a picture or mention of food made me feel ill). They prescribed counselling (which, sorry, has been tapped out long ago in my case – but of course I’ll attempt it again anyway) and maxolon.
Maxolon is a tiny, foul-tasting pill with the exciting side-effect that if you take too much you get lockjaw and (this is the exciting part) your head turns itself to the side. Somewhat offputting to those not in the know!
Unsurprisingly, it is somewhat more effective than over-the-counter ginger pills. In about half an hour the idea of food was appealing once more (and the idea of a food tube shoved down my throat somewhat less so) and I began eating for the first time that day.
For the first time in weeks, my body didn’t immediately punish me for eating (not for about an hour). Hurrah!
At around that time, I gave the first of what turned out to be four different urine samples. The nurse tested it, and came back in at once to tell me I had heaps of very large ketones. “Ketones” is pronounced “key-tones”, and sounds rather like a sweet jazz notation. Sadly, they actually indicate dehydration.
I was put on a drip and monitored for another few hours. The drip was awesome. I liked having a painless plug in my arm – even if it is utterly nuts to put water (or whatever it was) into my veins.  How does THAT work? Over time, I got better at shifting position without kinking the tube, and at peeing in a cup after dragging the five-wheeled IV stand into the bathroom with me.
As far as I can remember, I’ve never actually been in a hospital bed before. I’ve had stitches, but no broken bones. I’ve had food poisoning every time I go to Indonesia, but it never occurred to me to go to hospital (even when one bout – ah, Bali, how consistent you are – lasted three and a half months).
So, here’s a photo commemorating my first hospital bed:
 As CJ keeps saying, “You know we can buy you new socks ANYTIME you like, right?”
Rather sadly, socks and I just don’t get on. These are the only socks I have that can cover a reasonable amount of leg without cutting off circulation (IÂ have begun making forays into diabetic-approved socks, which are much better than the norm, but still not that great).
So that was our hospital visit! I’m still nauseous for nine out of ten waking hours, and I still dread meals (even with Captain Maxolon on my side, I feel sick soon after eating), but for the moment I can manage. One week down. . . five weeks of crippling nausea to go.
Sidebar –Â if any of you says any of the following, I will hunt you down and kill you:
Every pregnant woman gets ill, dear.
When I was pregnant, I didn’t have time to be sick – so I wasn’t.
Try [random cure], it will solve everything.
Oh, when *I* was pregnant I was SO sick that I. . . .
———————————————-
Oh yes. . . there was one more thing.
The doctor did an ultrasound – mostly, I think, just because they can.
The amniotic sac inside me was a clear circle, and on one side our little baby was a blurry dot perhaps a centimetre across. It flickered to its own beat – the beating of a brand new heart.
Ever since the ultrasound, CJ pauses every so often mid-conversation, reaches across to touch my hand or shoulder or belly, and says, “Heartbeat!”
Alternative Medicine
My so-called “morning” sickness has lasted all day, every day since last Tuesday evening. Yesterday I hit the wall. I reached the point where I didn’t want to eat or drink ever again (even water makes me sicker) – so I went to the doctor. She told me to buy some morning sickness pills (which helped; I was able to eat some chicken soup last night) and told me to get acupuncture.
In my mind, the phrase “alternative medicine” translates seamlessly to “not actually medicine” but it was clear we were mutually not taking each other seriously – so I did what she asked (although she was kind enough to let the acupuncture guy use suckers instead of needles).
He put suckers on my knees, wrists, and belly – giving me “flower marks”.
Other than extremely mild discomfort from the suckers (which look like old-fashioned bicycle horns), there was no effect whatsoever. At least, not as far as I was able to discern.
The massage was nice, except that my neck and head are not the source of my stress.
I mentioned last week that it was pregnancy hormones making me like my doctor. The reason I don’t 100% trust her is that I get a very strong vibe from her that I should get over my anxiety disorder and focus on real problems. (Of course, I could just be paranoid – it comes with the territory.)
I am terrified of eating and drinking. Way more terrified than I should be. Back in the day I’d have sucked it up and got on with things (and by “things” I mean “regular vomiting” – just ask my sea-mates how I dealt with nausea back in 2006). But anxiety means I’m constantly running on an emotional backup generator, and after hovering on the edge of vomit for seven days there’s just nothing left. I’m shutting down on all kinds of levels.
The doctor’s advice was to eat, throw up, eat, and throw up again – every day for the next six weeks.
There is no anxiety treatment that is safe while pregnant, and very few nausea treatments (the pills are made of ginger and vitamin B).
I SHOULD be able to face a bit of physical illness. It’s really not the worst thing in the world. But I got nothing.
Today CJ is taking me to hospital.
Someone else’s baby
Chuck Wendig is a naughty, funny, dirty man. He writes very well (at about an MA standard).
On Friday, his son was born. He blogged about it here. This entry is PG.
Transmissions from baby-town
“I think something is happening,” my wife says.
She says this to wake me. At 1:30 in the morning.
The lights go on. Fan, off.
I don’t know what’s happening. Something. That’s what she said. Something is happening. Could be anything, I think. Leaky roof. UFO on our front lawn. Goblin invasion. Everything and anything.
“I think my water broke,” she says.
Oh. Oh.
She asserts that she has not peed herself. Which is always good news in any situation. I do this spot-check periodically in my day-to-day. “Did I pee myself? Mmm. Nope. Score!”
We call the doctor. They say to keep an eye on it. We keep an eye on it. The water, it keeps on coming.
Along with it: the mucus plug. Which has another name: “the bloody show.”
We have no idea how apropos that will be.
* * *
The wife, she puts on makeup before we go. I pack some bags, get stuff together: camera, chargers, reading material. Just in case, we think. We know this is not real. This is not really the something that’s happening. It’s two weeks early. And besides, conventional wisdom says: new moms have kids late. Everybody’s told us that. She just saw the Obi-Gyn Kenobi the day before and, in his words, “There’s no way this baby is coming early.” Except he must have — oh, just for a goof — put a small thermal detonator against her internal membranes, a detonator that went pop around midnight, because why else would her water have broken?
Thermal detonator, shmermal shmetonator. Baby’s not coming today.
We go to the hospital at 5:00 AM knowing full well that they’re going to send us home.
* * *
They do not send us home.
In fact, they inform us quite frankly: we’re having this baby sometime in the next 24 hours.
*blink, blink*
We’re in a little room. So small that the nurse is entering our information into a laptop, but her chair is a medical waste bin. Doctors and residents come in and out. The one doctor says, she’s not that dilated. And she’s not even having contractions. They say, “we’re going to get you started on pitocin.” We say, hold up. We’ve heard about that. If we need it, we want it, but we’re not sure we need it yet. We don’t want to get on the drug train, not so fast.
Read the rest here.
Make your doctor happy
Maybe it’s just the hormones talking, but I love my doctor.
Yep, it’s the hormones.
My doctor has a tactlessness about her which is quite terrifying to a pregnant lady. For example, she doesn’t open with, “The test results were normal” – she opens with, “I’d like to do more tests.”
But now I know her pattern, I can brace myself – saving my panic for when she actually says something is wrong (which has never happened, and probably never will).
The thing I love about my doctor is that on our first meeting (when I was still quite sick from some Indonesian food poisoning) she recommended that I cut out lactose and gluten indefinitely.
Not. Going. To. Happen. (This is not the bit I love, by the way.) Dairy is probably my favourite food group (other than chocolate) and I loooovvvveee bread. I’d just gone on my own one-week elimination diets of each group, and it was both horrific (I just couldn’t handle the change in routine) and pointless (I was still sick, and unable to eat the only healthy food I like).
By our second visit, however, we had conversations like this:
Doctor: I’d like you to switch to low-fat milk.
Me: No.
Doctor: Do you think you could. . . try it?
Me: How about I cut down on my chocolate a little instead?
Doctor: *sigh* Okay. And dark chocolate has less fat than milk chocolate.
Me: Okay, I can incorporate that.
Doctor: Fine.
A few days ago, I went for my first official pregnancy checkup. (Everything is fabulous, by the way.) While taking my blood pressure, she advised me to incorporate more fish and nuts in my diet.
“I have,” I said, reeling off three fish I’m eating that have low amounts of mercury (shark, sadly, is high in mercury – so no weekly fish and chip shop visits “for the baby”). “I’m eating a lot of nuts–”
“Especially walnuts.”
“Especially walnuts – I bought a pack of just walnuts to mix with the rest – and so many vegetables that I’m visibly bloated, see?”
She beamed at me with the shining eyes of a health professional seeing a patient actually eat properly while pregnant. I’ve never seen her look like that before.
She was still glowing with surprised satisfaction as I went away.
In other news, I’ve discovered ginger beer is useful for temporarily quelling nausea – so this morning, unable to face cereal, I drank ginger beer and ate weetbix sandwiches (that’s a wheat biscuit split carefully in half and spread with peanut butter and honey).
In news that I’m sure will be hilarious to some of you, the sight and smell of chocolate now grosses me out. To be fair, that’s true of almost all food (or indeed the thought of food, or a picture of food).
Worth it.
Felicity Banks 