Author: Veronica

  • FINALLY, a Mother’s Day gift

    I’ve been a mother for nearly six years now and I’ve never received anything for Mother’s Day. I should scream and wail about this fact (and I’ve been known to), but Nathan is hopeless at gift buying and I accept this.

    Last year was the worst year, as I expected to receive at least a token item that Amy had made for Mother’s Day, plus a little something from the school Mother’s Day stall – only Nathan didn’t hide the present well enough and Amy ate my chocolates and the dog ate the handmade necklace and card.

    I may have been a little grumpy about this.

    Okay, I was a lot grumpy and rather upset.

    Bygones.

    Amy has matured a lot in the last twelve months and while I’m not confident that leaving her alone with chocolates is a great idea, at least I know that the card is likely to make it home to me.

    This year however, Ferrero Rocher offered to send me a Mother’s Day Hamper from their new online Boutique. Knowing that it was probably my only chance to get chocolate for Mother’s Day that I didn’t have to buy myself, I agreed.

    My only complaint is that there aren’t enough of the white coconut-type chocolates in this hamper and that I was forced to share the mini ferreros with my children.

    If your children are too little to make things and your husband is terrible at gift buying like mine, you can buy your own Ferrero Rocher Mother’s Day Hamper here.

    I was not paid for this post, although I did receive the chocolates above for free to review. I can happily say that I am making my way through them as I type.

  • Only Hearts Should Be Worn On Sleeves… + giveaway

    Only Hearts Should Be Worn On Sleeves: The snotty truth about motherhood is an eBook by the lovely and very talented Kellie O’Brien. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy to read and review, and eagerly settled down in bed the other day for a bit of light reading.

    Kellie is funny. Her take on motherhood made me giggle and remember only too well my first few months of parenting Amy.

    Taken from Kellie’s column in The Advocate, you can see why Kellie drew such a big following and had strangers in the street wanting to meet “Baby Ella” and congratulate Kellie and her husband.

    Below, Kellie talks a little bit about the ebook:

    Only Hearts Should Be Worn On Sleeves is definitely funny and I would say a must read for mums-to-be, or new mums. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I had to keep stifling my urge to send Kellie emails filled with commiserations and “I have so been there” type thoughts, as I reminded myself that Kellie now has a second daughter and knows exactly what she is doing.

    Heh.

    It can be purchased here.

    Kellie O’Brien can be found blogging at Three L’il Princesses, or on twitter here.

    And! Because Kellie is lovely, she is offering one lucky commenter a free copy of her eBook! Just leave a comment below to enter.

    Entries close 1st May.

    I wasn’t paid or compensated in any way for participating in this virtual book tour. I did receive a free copy of Kellie’s book.

  • The many faces of my stomach. 21 weeks

    This is also the post in which I start wearing proper maternity wear and remembering how comfortable it is. Why was I not introduced to maternity leggings a MONTH AGO? Internet, you’ve been slack.

    Even better, the leggings were super cheap, because I refuse to pay anything over $20 for something I’m not going to be able to wear again. So, pffft to you, boutique maternity wear stores, with your $150 jeans and $80 tshirts.

    I also made the move to a maternity bra this week. While they’re not as supportive as my adored regular bras, there is something to be said for both being able to breathe and not ending the day with underwire marks.

    Fetal expansion is well underway, with last week’s ultrasound showing both that the baby is a GIRL, and that she is growing perfectly on track with my dates. This is something that is both fantastic, and confusing, because the other two kidlets always measured between a week and two weeks behind. It’s possible I am actually a little further along than I think I am – but it’s not a huge issues. She will be out when she’s ready.

    Exhibit II – my belly button is popping out. The upside of this is that my belly button is sparkling clean, all of the time. The downside is that it feels weird and the kids like to poke it.

    While I don’t have any new stretch marks, you can see the ones left by Isaac and I’m sure they’ll start growing again soon. If I’m really lucky, they’ll continue on the same path and I’ll end up with stretchmarks that look like flames. Or zebra stripes – I can’t quite decide which.

    Stomach is also a strange shape. I blame those pesky internal organs, who insist on rearranging themselves around the baby.

    Internet, I feel very large for 21 weeks.

    New this week is reflux that is so bad I can’t physically function until it eases. I’m on a PPI for the floppy gastric system, but even Nexium is having a hard time keeping on top of this. Antacids are vaguely helpful, but the sensation of someone stabbing me in the breastbone and twisting the knife is not something I’m enjoying.

    If you’ve got any remedies for reflux, I’d love to hear them. Otherwise, how is your Sunday going?

  • Let’s talk about body love and obsession

    Through highschool, I was slim, with pert breasts and long legs. I couldn’t see these things – all I could see were the stretch marks on my hips and breasts, the dark hair that grew on my legs and the fact that my arms were freakishly long, with a tendency to wave around when I spoke excitedly. Not to mention the standard teenage pimples and that I thought I was horribly ugly.

    I was also smart and opinionated, with dark hair and eyes – not something that the boys in my school were lusting after. When you’re fourteen, your body image is tied up in what people think of you, and what you see in the mirror is not your reality.

    Like I overheard one boy saying “Nice enough body, but a shame about the face.”

    Being a teenager is not designed to make you feel good about yourself.

    The one thing I had going for me though, was that I didn’t gain weight. Somehow, inside my head, that became the most important thing about me. Of course, I had Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (undiagnosed) and a tendency to vomit up rich food with little warning, so that probably helped.

    Through high-school, I had a steady boyfriend who found me attractive, but I thought he was lying. It’s a hard time for girls, at the cusp of everything and having relatively little confidence in themselves.

    Once I finished school, with all of my self-esteem issues firmly intact, I met Nathan. Lovely, adoring Nathan, who thought I was gorgeous and didn’t see any of my supposed flaws. I thought he was blind. He thought he was incredibly lucky to be having sex with me. Win/win.

    It was later, after I got pregnant with Amy and was so terribly sick, that my body issues began to surface again. The fact that I lost all of my baby weight within a week of giving birth to her was apparently an admirable trait to everyone else and I was determined to stay as slim as I could.

    Amy made this job easier by screaming lots and effectively making sure that the first twelve months of her life included no sleep, long long walks and minimal food. My weight was one of the few things I had control over. I dropped down to 53kg – which on my 173cm frame, made me look like a skeleton.

    I wasn’t healthy, but MAN, I was skinny and that’s what people noticed – even Nathan noticed, although he wasn’t admiring, so much as worried that I wasn’t eating enough. He was right – but what did he know? Skinny was the new beautiful.

    After Isaac was born, it took a little longer to lose the baby weight and when he was a few months old, a family member commented on how great I was looking. She thought I looked amazing, whereas I thought I needed to lose weight. Incidentally, Nathan thought I looked just fine. I lost the weight anyway – losing weight has never been hard for me. It’s that pesky crappy digestive system you know.

    Late last year, I finally gained some weight. A combination of grief, well managed nausea and an excellent diet bumped my weight back up to the healthy range. All I could see was that my clothes weren’t fitting right and that I was softer all over.

    Complaining to Nathan did no good – with the extra weight I was carrying, all he wanted to do was take my clothes off and take me to bed. That’s how we managed pregnancy #3.

    I thought I was soft. He thought I was sexier than I’d ever been.

    I had an epiphany at that point. I’d always been able to see that curves were sexy on other women, but not on me – never on me. My goal was to be as slim as possible, all of the time. I didn’t even realise this – my drive to be slimmer was subconscious.

    It’s been hard to admit to myself, that yes, there was always that subconscious desire to lose weight. It never stopped me eating what I wanted, or made me throw up, but it was there, under the surface. My self-worth and body love were always tied up in how flat my stomach was. I didn’t actively think about this, or talk about it ever, but it was there. The subtle food choices, the exercise, the glaring at my stomach in the shower.

    When I miscarried pregnancy #3, I realised that being slimmer had never made me happier. That slimmer had, in fact, made me more miserable, and that slimmer was all about control, not about how I looked.

    I was nearly 7kg over my “ideal weight” according to my subconscious when I fell pregnant with this baby. Morning sickness made me lose 5kg really quickly and it was both a physical and mental battle to stop myself falling below 60kg. I managed it, but only because I was actively aware of my brain trying to sabotage my body.

    I’ve never spoken about this and it’s only recently that I’ve admitted this to myself. Writing this out has been hard. When “slimmer” is what is thrust at you, over and over again, it is easy to internalise “slimmer is beautiful” and hard to learn that confidence is beauty, not body mass index.

    This pregnancy has been good for me. It’s scary to watch myself gain weight, but I’m proud that I actually am and that I’m feeling relatively good about the whole thing. It helps that I’ve always found the curves of pregnancy sexy, even on myself. It’s post-pregnancy I struggle with.

    I learned some things about myself recently. One is that I am happier and healthier when I weigh more. That I heal faster and I bounce back from illness faster.

    Another is that curves are sexy. Even when they’re on me. That while my breasts sag after breastfeeding two babies, my husband really doesn’t care. He just wants me to go to bed with him, especially if there is no likelihood of my hipbones leaving bruises on him.

    I learned that my brain will play tricks on me and that it is very easy to become obsessed with numbers. How far I walked on the eliptical, what my weight is today, how many calories does this lunch contain. I also learned that I can ignore these things, eat my favourite cheeses and not feel guilty about adding cream to my fruit.

    I learned that what I look like inside my head, is not how other people see me anyway, and my version of weight gain will make some women hate me. I never said my subconscious was sensible, or rational.

    And finally, I learned that it is most important that I love myself first. That how much I weigh has nothing to do with how fun I am to be around, and that no one likes it when I am skeletal and sick, least of all me.

    Body love. It’s important, and it’s also really really tough.

  • I am too nice to get ahead in blogging. Obviously my future Internet fame lies in sex tapes

    A very long time ago, I started blogging on the Internet, instead of scribbling all my thoughts down into a paper diary. It was good fun, but the dinosaurs weren’t great at commenting and I was pleased to see a slow evolution taking place, bringing a lot of people to blogging with me.

    It was after the first blogging conference I attended that I realised, I was just too nice to get ahead.

    Unlucky for me, I genuinely liked people, I enjoyed both reading and writing and I suffered from pangs of guilt if I didn’t get around to reading my commenters blogs at least on occasion. As blogging exploded in Australia, along with blogging opportunities, I failed to get ahead. I wasn’t cut throat enough, or pushy enough, or able to effectively promote myself in a “I’m so much better than everyone else” kind of way.

    Even worse, I had a huge case of Ethics and Morals that were hampering my every move.

    It was sad and I was woeful, until I realised that my future didn’t have to be in turning my kids into online monkeys posing for the camera, or selling my soul for a piece of profit.

    NO!

    My future Internet fame could lie in SEX TAPES.

    Surely sex tapes were likely to gain me more exposure that mummyblogging ever could? If I flashed my creativity in front of a video camera, SURELY someone would notice me and send me lots of money, for very little work. It worked for Kim Kardashian, right?

    Unfortunately, my husband refused to help me storyboard my sex tape idea. He had “things to do” that involved fixing our lawn mower and hanging out the washing. I had such a good story planned for the teddy bears and toy goat too.

    Things got even wonkier when I realised that I had no idea where the toy goat actually was and I wasn’t sure a unicorn was going to cut it.

    But then! Inspiration struck!

    I found a partially clothed Barbie Doll and a Zhu Zhu Pet.

    And so, Internet, because my fame will never lie in cut throat mummyblogging, I give you Interspecies Barbie Doll Porn.

    What more could you want?

    Obviously my other failing is not having the patience to put together a stop motion movie.

    You’ll have to use that imagination of yours instead.