Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • When things start to feel the same

    Well things with this pregnancy have been pretty similar to the pregnancy with Amy.

    I got morning sickness early.

    Morning sickness went away at about 12 (ish) weeks.

    I felt the baby move for the first time at about 12 weeks.

    I didn’t fit into my clothes comfortably anymore.

    My boobs got bigger and hurt lots.

    Stretchmarks in stupid places. Like behind my knees and calves.

    And the crowning glory?

    When I was pregnant with Amy, at about 21 weeks, I caught a stomach bug, puked all night, lost a ton of weight and never really recovered. It also made my pregnant belly look merely fat.

    Last night, at nearly 20 weeks, my body decided that SOMETHING had upset it. I then spent all night puking [in my outside toilet. In winter. How rude].

    This morning, I am still sick and exhausted, food looks disgusting (although I have forced down some easy tomato pasta and half an apple) and I seem to have lost 5kg (10lb) overnight if my clothes are anything to go by. I also don’t seem to have a baby belly anymore.

    I am just hoping and praying that this isn’t the precursor to having Amy’s pregnancy repeat itself.

    [When I was pregnant with Amy, because I lost weight due to the stomach bug, my CFS jumped in and promptly made my entire life miserable. I couldn’t eat more than 1/2 a cup of anything at a time, I vomited alot, I lost weight, I developed acne and I was so exhausted I spent most of my time in bed.]

    I already couldn’t eat more than 1/2C of anything without wanting to vomit, even before last night.

    I am already exhausted and just trying to keep on top of things enough (like weight gain and as much of it as I can get) so that I stay healthy.

    Cross fingers that it was just a freak coincidence and that tomorrow I will feel amazing and healthy and stuff.

    </end whining>

    Also, for anyone interested, here is the recipe for easy tomato pasta.

    ****

    Easy Tomato Pasta

    Grab yourself a can of diced tomatoes (400g [14oz]). Place the tomatoes into a blender (I have a bullet blender that I adore) with a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of sugar, some cracked black pepper and a tablespoon of good quality vinegar. (I used white balsamic)

    Blend until completely smooth.

    Cook yourself enough spaghetti to feed about 4 people (you know I throw my food together, rather than measuring anything, don’t you?) and drain. Throw the spaghetti back into the (still) hot (now) dry pot, and stir through the tomato mix.

    Serve with fresh chopped basil and maybe some grated parmesan.

    Mmmm

    ****

    It is good pasta. Trust me. I also added about half a clove of garlic to the mix when I blended it. Roasted capsicum, fresh herbs, chillies, or onions would also go nicely with it.

    Also, can someone tell me how Amy can eat 2 HUGE bowls of bright green spinach soup last night and tell me she wanted ‘more! YUM!’, and yet all she can tell me with this pasta is ‘YUK!’? She doesn’t even mean the yuk because she is finishing up her bowl of it right now.

    Toddlers!

  • Amy

    Amy is an entity all of her own. Seriously, the kid is a handful. A funny handful, but a handful.

    She has a pink ceramic dragon that she carries around alot.

    Amy – ‘Mummy! My monkey!’

    Me – ‘It’s a dragon. Say dragon’

    Amy – ‘Monkey!’

    Me – ‘But Amy, it’s a dragon. See?’

    Amy – ‘No, it my MONKEY!’

    Me – ‘Dragon…’

    Amy – [to her dragon] ‘Hi monkey, come here walk walk walk’

    Me – [to no one] ‘It’s a dragon.’

    [Additionally, I just asked her where her ‘monkey’ was so I could photograph it. She had it this morning, but I can’t see it now. Stupid idea, she is now running around the house crying ‘monkey! OH NO! Gone! MONKEY! GONE! OH NO!’]

    ***

    She sits next to me and asks ‘One?’

    ‘One what?’

    ‘Please? Have one?’

    ‘One what?’

    ‘One!!!’ [Starts to cry]

    ‘Sweetie, you need to tell me what one is’

    ‘PLEEEEEEASE…’

    ‘What do you want?’

    [Amy runs to cupboard and points to it]

    ‘No sweetie, we aren’t having any chocolate now’

    ‘PLEEEEASE? ONE?’

    ‘No sweetheart, no chocolate’

    ‘Mummeeeeee. OH NO!’ [tantrum]

    *sigh*

    ‘Nope, no chocolate today’

    [Amy loses her shit. No chocolate obviously equates to no light or love in her life. Heh. Whose child is she?]

    ***

    She turns 2 on Friday. Sorry, but how did I miss all that time passing? FRIDAY. TWO.

    God help me.

    Also? After a tantrumous Wednesday out in public, I want to get a t-shirt printed for me saying ‘She’s Two. That’s the problem’.

    I really REALLY want a t-shirt printed with that.

    ***

    But, aside from all the Two-ness that has stolen my toddler’s body, she is great fun. She eats anything and everything, but one of her favourite snacks is sliced cucumber with white balsamic vinegar. She would eat capsicum whole if I let her (unfortunately the seeds get everywhere) and she eats TONS of olives. Seriously, I think if I gave her a choice of olives and cucumber or chocolate, she would have a hard time choosing and would demand everything all at once.

    She runs and demands kisses at every opportunity. She climbs into my lap asking ‘hugs me!’ She growls at the animals in a perfect imitation of Nathan and I.

    And the crowning glory? The one I am SO not proud of?

    She says fuck.  Not very often, but when she does say it, it is used in context. Nathan and I nearly died the other day [laughing] because we were discussing ducks and Amy piped up with ‘Fuck a duck!’ Luckily she didn’t realise that we were laughing at her and hasn’t repeated it again.

    She’s Two. Christ.

  • 19 weeks

    19 weeks. Honestly, where does the time go?

    The little one is an active little bug, although not as active as Amy was. I can feel it wiggle and squirm, as well as bounce on my bladder.

    [Side note to baby: Dear baby, I would like to not have to pee every 5 minutes. I would like for you to not flump down onto my bladder every single time I stand up. I would like to have some pelvic floor muscles that I can actually use at the end of this pregnancy. Haven’t you read the same pregnancy books I have? You are meant to move UP from my bladder at about 12 weeks. Hmmph. Love, Mum.]

    I feel a little strange blogging about this pregnancy. It still feels a little unreal you know? I think it will feel a bit more real once we (hopefully) find out the sex. [Scan booked for September 11]

    And stretchmarks? I has them. We can all blame my poor genetics for that. (Thanks MUM).

    My belly button is trying to poke out. I am tired constantly. I am gestating a tiny human.

    I am so freaking thankful.

    Naked photo. For the pervs. Notice how I am hiding the worst of the stretchmarks?

    A few people have asked how I am doing in myself and you know, it’s hard. I don’t find pregnancy a time of butterflies and sunbeams, more likely a time of vomiting, exhaustion and constipation. Mum sent me a link to a site that explains what living with a long term illness is like. You can read it here if you are interested. Keep in mind that my CFS, while it isn’t Lupus, presents with almost identical symptoms to it, so much so that I have been tested for Lupus almost twice a year for the last 6 and a half years.

    21 weeks left. Bring on January baby.

  • Black Humour

    You know, there is alot of black humour in parenting.

    I mean, what else can you do but laugh when you are down to your very last change of clean clothes and your new baby pukes all down your back? And you were just about to get in the car to go to the doctors and you are already late and now the baby is screaming and you are wet and dripping and there is no time for a shower, but you really need a new t-shirt at least and there are NO CLEAN CLOTHES!

    So you wear your husbands t-shirt to the doctors, no matter that your nipples poke out of it and you try and ignore that your bra is a little damp and that you smell of eau de baby puke.

    Or when you stay in bed just a little too long, trusting the toddler to entertain themselves for 5 minutes and then you realise that the silence has gotten deafening and you jump out of bed, only to find that there is olive oil, salt and sugar all over the bench and that your toddler is finger painting in it because you were too lazy to get out of bed when they did and now you have a bigger mess and was 5 minutes really worth it? You think maybe it was.

    Maybe.

    So you laugh about it, as you run a bath, plop the toddler into the bath and then go about cleaning up the kitchen. While you are still wearing nothing but your knickers.

    Then there was that time when your baby needed a feed desparately, but you were driving, so you got your husband to drop into the nearest park so you could breastfeed in the carpark, only your boobs were hideously engorged and when your milk lets down you drown your baby, who pulls off spluttering and choking, while your other boob runs milk in little spurts all down your chest and it was the one day that you didn’t pack spare clothes.

    And you realise that the guys in the car next to you can see your naked breast while you are trying to convince the baby to re-latch. There is milk dripping and a nipple swinging about and you think that maybe they were busily getting stoned, but you have just ruined their groove because they now can’t look anywhere but dead ahead without blushing.

    OR, you know that time when you thought that your toddler was in their bedroom, only to find that they were actually in the study, drawing on themselves with permanent marker?

    And you might feel mortified while it is happening, but you get home and you DO laugh about your little one having a tantrum in the supermarket. Generally to someone who understands. Like the internet.

    Black humour.

    When I write about things that have frustrated me, or because I am at the end of my tether IN THAT MOMENT, it is generally because someone, somewhere will find the humour in it. Maybe someone else had just dealt with an exploding nappy, or with a toddler who was snuggling you, but just pee’d all down your leg. And the couch. And themselves.

    Maybe that is why Mummy and Daddy blogging is soley the domain of parents. Because people without children have a harder time finding the humour in bodily functions and breastmilk gone bad [or as was the case when Amy was a newborn, breastmilk gone everywhere].

    Sometimes maybe, when something is outside your experience, you have a hard time seeing that it isn’t complaining, or unhappiness, but black humour. Maybe you need to just relax and flow along and smile if you think it’s funny [that today, it happened to someone else and not you] without assuming that I need help getting over it.

    Thankyou.

    ****

    I took the weekend off and came back to find 144 146 spam comments. What am I, flavour of the week? (And they are still coming in, to the tune of one a minute or so).

    Also? Today, run on sentences are obviously my friends. Don’t pick on me for it.

    ***

    Gah, I’ve had to disable comments because of the huge amount of spam on this post. See my ‘contact’ page above if you need to comment here.

    xx

  • The Situation

    5 and a half weeks ago, Nathan had a job. It was a secure job, mostly and he had been working there for 3+ years. He would even have been due to take his holidays about when this baby was due, which was nice.

    And then, the company was sold and new management came in. Worker’s hours started to get cut and nothing management did seemed quite above board. New workers were paid in cash and not to the award rates. Taxes were looking a little dodgy.

    To be honest, I think this company has kept the Union in work single handedly over the last 6 months.

    It’s funny you know, looking back I can see all the things that were steadily going wrong.

    One night, while at work (Nat’s hours were 12-6am), Nathan got a little hungry. An office he was cleaning had an open packet of Pringles on the desk. Unfortunately, the office workers in this particular office were incredibly attached to their potato chips and they had set up laptop camera’s to ‘possibly’ catch anyone taking them. Their excuse was that their Tim Tams had been going missing and they wanted to know why.

    [Just a side note? Tims Tams are the one biscuit Nat WON’T eat]

    Caught red-handed (pringle fisted?) on an illegal camera setup, Nathan was in a little bit of trouble. The Client that he was contracted to work for asked that he not work on site (there are many off-site places he could have been moved to) until the matter was sorted.

    Unfortunately, Nathan’s supervisor had a personal issue with Nathan (men!) and fired him on the spot. DESPITE the Boss not wanting him fired. DESPITE Nathan not having done enough to warrant sacking. DESPITE us now having a good case for unlawful dismissal.

    He was fired.

    Out of work.

    So, that was nearly 6 weeks ago.

    The only reason we managed to not go insane was that it happened at the exact same time as our tax return was cleared. So financially we were fine.

    Mentally though? His supervisor had no right to fire him. He wasn’t in charge of the hiring and firing and was told specifically to NOT fire him.

    After a phone call or two from the Union, trying to get shit sorted, said supervisor changed his phone numbers and refused to talk to the Union.

    The head honcho declared all his hands tied and said ‘I’ll see what I can sort out’. He never did. He also changed his phone numbers and refused to call anyone.

    You know what I find even more ironic though? Nathan’s supervisor, Mr. I-Have-All-The-Power, was recently sacked for mismanagement. So was his second in command.

    And slowly, slowly, we see Nat’s old company going down the drain (so far down that fucking drain) and we’re thankful that Nathan is out of there.

    Because you see, as stressful as it all was, Nathan starts a new job very shortly. A DAY job.

    I am thrilled. A little apprehensive about how I am going to go with a newborn and a toddler alone, but hey, I’ll cope.

    And dude, anything that got him away from that company can only have been a good thing. No matter quite how it came about.

    All over a few (seriously, he took FOUR) pringles.

    Fuck me!