Heaven’s Net is Wide: Lian Hearn’s Otori series #1 of 4.5
This book is the prequel to Lian Hearn’s brilliant and beautiful Otori trilogy (there is also a fourth book, but although it’s still beautifully written I think it ruins the series). Fantasy has an (undeserved) reputation for being pulpy trash, full of adjectives and clichés. This series is top-notch literary fantasy.
The rest of this review is at Comfy Chair, where I get paid for it.
Reunite with a food friend
PS: Oops, I posted tomorrow’s entry today. Welcome to the future.
Regular readers will know I’m a fan of home-made lemonade – and that I have a stolen mint plant. I wasn’t able to eat either during pregnancy, but I certainly can now! Plus it’s totally a serve of fruit. Hey, I don’t wanna get scurvy.
Coming next week: Awesomenesses that aren’t to do with food or baby!
Well, maybe. Tune in and find out.
Baby Talk
Wow, it’s been almost 48 hours since there’s been a fresh picture of Louisette. Better remedy that, stat!
Breastfeeding is continuing to improve, and I have the pulsating breasts to prove it (and now you know what having milk come in feels like). The midwife advised me to cut down on formula and “see what happens” (ie signs of hunger, signs of dehydration – that is, less wet nappies – and so on). Since her birth I’ve been keeping extremely careful records of when she feeds (and how long), all her nappies (and what. . . er, type of nappy), and when she’s particularly tired or genuinely awake (and if it’s grumpy or happy wakefulness). She has about seven feeds a day, and it used to be a breastfeed followed by a bottle. More and more of her feeds are breast only now (it is VERY clear when she is still hungry), and there is a clear pattern of one less bottle each day (smaller bottles, too). At this rate, she will be on breastmilk alone within three days! She was weighed on Monday and had gained 200 grams, which clearly indicated she is flourishing, not starving.
Eeeexcellent. . .
On the other hand, she had eleven feeds yesterday – so, not so good. Being used to a bottle, she often doesn’t have the concentration to do a full feed.
My note-taking has really come into its own over the past few days. I can actually see a fairly clear routine developing naturally among the 3/4-hourly feeds.
Louisette wakes up around 8 or 9 at night and is generally a bit grumpy for anywhere between half an hour and four hours (at which point I’m at my grumpiest, so I sleep while CJ looks after her – or if she’s asleep, we watch some TV). She has a couple of big feeds around midnight, then sleeps for a solid 4 or 5 hours (I base my life around those 4 or 5 hours, as you can imagine). She sleeps pretty well most of the morning (ditto, between feeds), then wakes up for a similar period of time in the afternoon, feeding three or four times in quick succession (I’m pretty awake and cheerful then, so I look after her a little). Then she sleeps deeply until about 6 or 7 (while I blog, shower, and maybe even run an errand – with or without her).
Ignoring the fact that she rarely opens her eyes, this routine roughly translates to a morning nap, an afternoon nap, and a single night-time feed. Of course it’s not as clear-cut as that description makes it sound.
She’s also developing her crying skills – the closest thing she currently has to a language. When she’s hungry, her cry is higher in pitch, like a squeak (accompanied by opening and closing her mouth like a fish, throwing her head from side to side, snorting, and kissing noises – it’s impossible to mistake her intentions). When she wants a nappy change, the rhythm of her cry is much quicker – four beats to a bar instead of two. Her bored/existentially depressed cry is the classic “Waagh! Waagh! Waagh!” that you expect from babies. And when she’s distressed it gets ragged.
She’s getting more facial expressions, and reacting in more complex ways to the world. She shows surprise, dislike, curiousity, and concern. I’m still very fond of her fart face and the oddly philosophical look she gets when trying to feed.
She is already able to turn on her side (by the power of sheer squirminess). At any moment the balance will tip and she’ll end up on her stomach, deeply startled.
One of the things I feel strongly about is that children – especially babies – shouldn’t be overstimulated. In babies it just frightens them. (I’m sure Louisette benefited from our careful rationing of visitors during the first two weeks.) I also think the most interesting thing in the world to a new baby (other than feeding time) is the faces of his/her parents. So when Louisette was awake, CJ and I spent plenty of time looking at her, and talking or singing. But yesterday I realised she was over us and needed more. So I grabbed “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” off our shelf and began to read. She LOVED it. I must have read it a dozen times. (And so it begins. . .)
I’m now able to drive quite comfortably, but it’s not wise for me to stand up for long, or walk very far, or exercise at all. It’s also not smart for me to lift anything heavier than Louisette – when I do, I feel muscles pulling ominously in my belly. But as long as I don’t do anythng stupid (like breastfeed eleven times in a day), I feel good.
Turkish Feast
Welcome back to your regular programming: Daily Awesomenesses on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I happen to have several saved up, but I’m sure Louisette will feature once or twice too (and of course she’ll be the focus on Wednesdays until she’s old enough to ask me to stop).
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Food is awesome.
Here is (from roughly left to right) Turkish bread, beetroot dip, hummus, sis kebab (lamb skewers), tavuk gogsu (char-grilled chicken breast), kabak mucver (zuccini puffs with yogurt and dill dip), tavuklu pide (pizza filled with chicken, parsley and cheese), salad, and baklava (filo pastry layered with walnuts, cashews, and syrup).
Nom nom.
Man, Woman, Child: Who does what?
I have a friend whose husband is nervous about bathing their child – so she does it. He doesn’t have a single child-specific task that is just his. She plans and prepares the food (even on the days he stays at home and she works), cleans the house, and generally bears the weight of parental responsibility.
I have another friend who moved in with her boyfriend. They planned to always have one person cook and the other wash up, but when she cooked there were only a few dishes, neatly placed by the sink, and everything else was put away. When he cooked, the kitchen was left in chaos. One thing led to another, and now she cooks and washes up almost every night.
I have another friend whose partner does no chores – his job is earning a living, and doing the gardening. Nothing else. They have several children. When he comes home, he is at rest. She is never off duty – ever. They made this agreement before moving in together, and it is satisfactory to both parties.
When CJ and I first married, I felt the urge to create a 50s-style fantasy world where our home was always beautiful and peaceful and he never had to see and solve the dirty side of running a household. I resisted. I made sure our division of labour was (to my mind at least) fair, partly so I didn’t feel like CJ’s servant (it is difficult to respect someone when you pick up their dirty washing from the floor, place it in a basket three feet away, then wash it, dry it, and put it away for them), and partly so CJ didn’t ever get the impression that while he was out working hard, I was lounging about in a perpetually clean and happy fantasy. When a man cleans a house – even a little – it helps him to understand that there is more than one type of work. It also helps a woman to feel that she is married to an adult, not a child. To me, this is literally the most important element of a happy marriage.
When a child is born, everything changes. CJ and I are lucky: we live a very simple, introverted life that fits a baby comparatively well. My own work is writing (which is extremely flexible) and tutoring (a few hours in an afternoon, often from home – and I already know my remaining student’s parents are fine with Louisette being in the house during lessons). It was never very impressive financially (sidebar: if I’d been able to, I’d have worked more so I could contribute more money). The choice of who stays at home with the baby was never in doubt, and neither of us would want to switch places anyway.
Would you want to spend your day in an office, or with her?
I’m sure many of you WOULD rather work in an office than look after a baby, but luckily I feel differently. VERY luckily, since nature tends to defy feminism to a certain extent.
Louisette is taking a lot less formula now (to be specific, we’re giving her less formula, and seeing how she goes), which is extremely encouraging but also means she’s spending more time breastfeeding. There was a four-hour period today when she was breastfeeding for a total of two hours. It’s an unfortunate fact that everything about motherhood so far involves physical pain, illness, or both. Right now all my girl parts are aching.
To be fair, fatherhood so far mostly involves a whole lot of extra chores, two months of nausea (miraculously gone once Louisette was born, as CJ and I both suspected would happen), and a whole lot of poo and getting screamed at.
We’ve developed a pretty good system under the circumstances – I deal with nappies at night, so CJ can sleep, but he deals with almost all of them during the day. He also handles Louisette when she’s unhappy – and I often sleep during those times (particularly between dinner and midnight, which seems to be her worst time). Even when I’m having some awake time, grumpy Louisette is CJ’s Louisette just as hungry Louisette is mine.
CJ is doing more physical chores – dishes, grocery shopping – while I’m continuing to do most of the administrative jobs of the household – which at the moment are greater than usual, as we (I) deal with a multitude of forms. But the forms are nearly done and my physical pain is lessening. Parenthood is both extremely exciting and extremely draining at the moment. When I get tired I get jealous of CJ, who spends hours surfing the net and playing a computer game, while I have to carefully herd my spare time into the longest possible periods of sleep so I don’t go mad. On the other hand, breastfeeding is not difficult – I spend the time reading and eating lollies to stay cheerful/awake.
There is no doubt in my mind that being pregnant, giving birth, and breastfeeding are all difficult things and they all fall on the mother. I am lucky enough to have a husband who really does do everything I ask of him and more.
Nature has trapped us into our roles – I am physically bound to Louisette, and CJ bears the financial weight of three people virtually alone – but the woman’s role is the one I prefer (CJ’s ideal life is a job with a certain amount of flexibility, which he has). It is too great a priviledge for the physical cost to change my mind. I’ve always felt that way, and I still do.
Lego + Steampunk
Welcome back to Steampunk Sundays.
I can’t put the pictures in here, because all rights are reserved, but for CJ if no-one else, I must must post you this link to ruined Victorian-era houses. . . made out of lego. It’s hauntingly beautiful AND fun for the whole family.
Hmm. . . no picture today. Whatever shall I do? I know!
Self-publishing disappointment
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-your-self-publishing-service.html
Writer Beware (a group that exposes those who are scamming innocent/ignorant writers) often hears from self-published authors who are convinced they’re being ripped off by their self-publishing services–but it’s more likely that their expectations were unrealistic.
Kids, major publishers aren’t out to gleefully reject you – they WANT to publish good books. They’re just aware that the market is lacking. Self-publishing is certainly not going to change that fact.
And here’s a picture of a cat, as per usual – but with a bonus baby and CJ, as our family gets used to one another:
“The Affinity Bridge” by George Mann
First things first: Louisette’s fart face (babies tend to smile when they have wind, and don’t learn to smile for pleasure for about six weeks).
And now, your weekly book review:
It’s clear Mann likes Sherlock Holmes, and has imitated Conan Doyle’s work – with certain deliberate differences.
This review has been moved to Comfy Chair, where I get paid for it.
This is the last steampunk book review I have prepped. I haven’t forgotten that I promised a map of the literary steampunk scene. It will have links back to a number of steampunk reviews, hence me posting them now rather than later. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.
Simplify your life
CJ and I live in a two-bedroom flat, and one of us who shall remain nameless (but isn’t me) has a little bit of. . . well, stuff. Uni textbooks and random paraphernalia and so on. We cunningly realised we’d need all the space we could get when we had a child, so when we bought a bed (wedding present) we took a ruler to the furniture shops to measure the clearance underneath. That way we could make sure we could fill the entire space underneath with plastic storage boxes. Cleaning out CJ’s study for Louisette was a moderately epic process last year, and that space under the bed was brilliant.
In general we have a very simple lifestyle designed fundamentally to avoid housework or any unneccesary exertion (for example, we don’t own an iron – CJ’s shirts drip dry on the line, and I avoid buying clothes that wrinkle). Almost the only additional thing I could do pre-baby was to grow out my fringe, thus avoiding the need to use a hair straightener each day. It’s a good thing too, because even brushing my hair was sometimes beyond me while I was pregnant.
And, we bought a dryer. So, so useful on sick or rainy days.
I stocked up before and during pregnancy on frozen meals, and on pretty much any food or household item that doesn’t go off in a hurry – soap, toothpaste, tinned tuna, frozen meat, and so on. Again, very handy.
In January last year I went crazy with my writing and by the time I fell pregnant I was several weeks ahead on the twenty-hour weekly writing quota I’ve stuck to since the beginning of 2006. Those extra hours were meant to cover the early days of motherhood, but instead I used them up during pregnancy. I did finish last year’s quota, however, and decided it was time to finally give up my precious twenty hours a week. Which is not to say I’ll stop writing (hah!) – I’ll just write when I feel like it, and not worry about the amount of time I spend doing it. (Some people would stop writing under these conditions. As this blog shows, I am not one of them.) That takes the pressure off.
I also gave Gimli and the smaller of our two fish tanks to a friend. She enjoys having fish, and I have slightly less pet maintenance to do.
I should probably mention that Gimli is a fish. . .
My friend bought him a harem of female guppies to keep him happy, which they most certainly did.
The moral of this entry is that simplifying one’s life is indeed awesome, particularly when preparing to have a baby.
In utterly unrelated news, I’ve lost another four kilos in the last week as my body says goodbye to all the excess fluid of pregnancy. That makes me feel pretty good. I can wear my shoes (with considerable difficulty) and yesterday I managed to jam my wedding ring back on my finger.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t the greatest plan. I removed the ring immediately after taking this photo (soap and cold water was involved). Presumably this means I’ll continue to lose weight rapidly for a bit longer. I’m certainly not complaining.
And now for your cuteness quota of the day. I like to call this photo “Ninja Baby” and presume that if an enemy approaches her in this position she will punch out their lights before she opens her eyes.
It’s a skill for life.
Observant readers will notice that this entry has appeared only a few hours after last entry. Yesterday I ran late; today I’m running early (like, “midnight plus thirty seconds” early). Tomorrow (Friday) there’ll be another book review, since I THINK I’m now finally finished all my pregnancy/early baby days entries. Or at least I’m up to today.
For now.
Milk and Mental illness: ten days as a mum
I am very, very good at being rational. The odd thing is that it’s a skill I’ve learned because of mental illness. I always work hard to sort my feelings into rational and irrational. For example, I felt afraid I’d never give birth and would be pregnant forever – which honestly had me on the edge of a panic attack at times. But I could tell it was irrational, and that kept it under control. (Usually, rationality isn’t as black and white as that.) I habitually sort my positive feelings into rational and irrational too – for example, I feel that Louisette is the best and prettiest and most charming baby I’ve ever seen and I’m bewildered that anyone could be in the room with her and not spend all that time watching her face. But I can tell rationally that, like all newborns, she looks mostly like a potato – and that the person she most resembles is E.T. I can also rationally say that she is way above average attractiveness for her age. The fact that I know I’m right makes that last statement all the sweeter.
Observe, and judge for yourselves:
I mentioned in that epic labour entry last Wednesday that giving birth wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The real hardest thing I’ve ever done is to endure seven years of mental illness (which, may I say, I’ve done spectacularly well, keeping almost all of my friends and never causing harm to myself or others – plus I somehow managed to snare CJ in there, which is definitely my most impressive life achievement thus far). My anxiety disorder has made me unable to support myself financially (which unfortunately has always been my concept of adulthood, and far less than I planned to do with my life – I was going to devote myself to the poor in Indonesia, and had consciously prepared and trained to do so for twelve years). But I was right: it gave me certain skills.
All of which is to explain the full context (ie my mind and body) of the following journey:
From late Tuesday (day two) breastfeeding was very painful, and something I dreaded. With each suck I felt unpleasant faintness in my whole body, as if someone was hitting my funny bone over and over. By Wednesday it made me feel like I was about to faint and made my whole body shake – an echo of the way it shook with the pain of childbirth.
When the midwife visited on Wednesday (day 3), we discovered that Louisette was dehydrated due to my lack of milk. Apparently it’s extremely rare for a woman to produce so little milk that her newborn is in danger. Not only did this mean we had to give her formula (which I was well aware would make the problem worse), but it felt awful. One of my peculiar foibles is that I tend to think in symbols and archetypes – so much so that I’m unable to give blood, because blood is too powerful as a literary symbol of life itself (ZOMG, the vampires are TAKING MY BLOOD!) So finding out MY BOOBS DON’T WORK AND MY BABY WILL DIE WITHOUT MEDICAL INTERVENTION was devastating. So the faintworthy pain of breastfeeding was accompanied by devastating depression.
I’d heard a great deal about the hormone crash and painful arrival of milk on day 3/4 after birth, and had carefully and repeatedly announced that I’d see absolutely no-one on those days. Thank goodness for that.
I’d been feeding Louisette on demand, and on the midwife’s advice immediately switched to feeding her (or at least trying – she is one extremely sleepy baby) every three hours – twenty minutes of breastfeeding (so my breasts were still getting the signal to produce milk, and would hopefully tune in at some point) followed by a bottle. From that instant, Louisette’s health improved – and I began to live in three-hourly bursts. I’d slept fairly well (between feeds and crying) on the first night, but had been so excited and happy since then that even when I lay down to sleep I tended to have trouble dropping off. I was vaguely aware that this was a bad thing.
On Thursday we went in to hospital for a variety of health checks. I was perfectly upbeat in the morning (still so excited between bouts of sobbing that I couldn’t get myself to sleep properly when I had the chance), and took the trouble to dress Louisette in an especially gorgeous manner (the red dress and booties). The midwives in the birthing centre nearly came to blows over who could claim her as “their” baby.
I saw a lactation consultant who said various useful-type things. Towards the end, I mentioned I’d been trying to stimulate more milk production with a breast pump and with my hand, and neither had produced a drop. I showed her the pump, and she explained it was the wrong type for early breastfeeding. When I showed her my clumsy attempt at hand expressing, I saw a look of, “Oh, how VERY stupid” flash across her face before she caught it – and explained how to do it properly. (The birthing class demo – with an attractively knitted prop breast – apparently didn’t work for me at all.) Within moments, I saw a couple of drops of milk – my milk, real milk – for the first time. This was enormously encouraging, and I went home delighted.
My midwife is aware of how much my bad pregnancy has cost in financial terms, and whenever there is something we need she does her best to get us a free one. She gave us nipple shields to reduce the pain of breastfeeding, and lent us the hospital’s clanky but effective double electric breast pump (double = takes half the time, and electric means it will help stimulate more milk production rather than simply taking what’s already there).
Artist’s impression of the breast pump:
It was a very long hospital visit because there were a variety of people we needed to see. The lactation consultant had told me to use the pump for 10-20 minutes each hour in addition to everything else. She’d emphasised it was vital for me to think loving baby thoughts when I used it, or my milk wouldn’t flow.
As soon as I’d attempted to feed Louisette I attempted the pump for the first time. It was very awkward to hold it in place and all I got for my twenty minutes’ of muscle pain (muscles still aching from giving birth) was a couple of drops of milk. Cue more desperate, helpless crying. So much for loving baby thoughts. The long hospital visit had brought back my labour-exhaustion shakiness, even when I lay down in bed to sleep. Louisette had also suddenly developed a very gross eye infection – yuck.
Thursday was similar. Plenty of sobbing and almost no sleep. Finally around midnight, after another pathetic feed (as Louisette grew noticeably less interested in my breasts – a very bad sign for the future) I lay down to sleep. Addled by sleeplessness, hormones, and depression, I had an episode that reminded me strongly of a schizophrenic woman’s description of a psychotic attack (in an Andrew Denton doco). I fell into a kind of dream of mother and baby, but I wasn’t asleep. In my dreams I’m often a different person (every so often I’m Buffy, for example – or a man) but I always have a sense of self.
I had no idea who I was. I was fairly sure I was a one-week old baby, helpless and confused by the world. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know where or who I was. All I knew was that something was wrong and I couldn’t fix it myself. Rather intelligently, I said, “Help, help” until CJ woke up. Even more intelligently, I explained what had happened as well as I could (and later reported it faithfully to the midwife, despite how stupid it all sounded in daylight). Even more more intelligently, I decided to skip the 4am feed and let CJ just give Louisette a bottle.
That night, my body remembered how to sleep again. I was still very depressed the next day, but the worst was over. I’ve had a couple of times when I woke up and didn’t know where I was for just a second (as if I was on holiday), but I’ve been more careful about my sleep (within the realm of the possible – last night I had four hours in a row, which is very rare; a mix of luck and planning) and all the depression is gone.
From Saturday, I began to see genuine improvement in my milk flow, thanks to that breast pump (it’s nice to have measurable progress, and we’re getting along fine now). Since then, Louisette has been taking a little less of the formula. This means she’s getting more milk.
She also has a blister on her lip from her inability to attach properly, but that should go away soon (her eye infection is long gone). Yesterday she had her tongue tie cut (an operation about as complex as cutting one’s fingernails), and she seems to be much more patient with my breasts (now she’s getting a better flow), although the different shape of her mouth is confusing her a little.
Things are good mentally. I believe I’m being rational when I say that the last week – including labour, and including the lack of sleep and my first ever true break with reality – has singlehandedly made up for the last seven years of seemingly meaningless pain. I also think it’ll help me feel better about my novel writing attempts (there’s an epic tale there, but it’s long, boring, and depressing) for at least the next two years (by which time hopefully I’ll have a major publisher signed for at least one of my books).
I’m also cautiously hopeful about how my mental illness will react to my being a mum. It was noticeably dampened during pregnancy (weird but true: I was less anxious while pregnant than I am usually), and I began to wonder how nine months of intense chemical goings-on would affect what is, after all, a chemical imbalance in my brain. Perhaps pregnancy would hit a kind of “reset” code. Many women become mentally ill because of chemical goings-on and major lifestyle change. I may just head in the opposite direction.
Maybe. We’ll see. Either way, I have plenty of rational reasons to be happy. I have a beautiful, extremely pleasant little girl, and my life has a sense of purpose I lost seven years ago, and have badly missed ever since.
Felicity Banks 