Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Four Cow Farm Giveaway

    This is not a sponsored post. I am doing this entirely because I love the products and the ethos of Four Cow Farm.

    A while ago, Delphinia from Four Cow Farm got in touch with me and asked if I wanted to trial some of their skin products. After reading the information she gave me, I was eager to try some, because sensitive skin and regular skin-care products do not mix.

    “Our little family enterprise started with my mum-in-law who began making them for my two little ones (who are now 4-and-a-half and almost-3. When they were babes.

    My daughter (who’s the 4-and-a-half-year-old) developed eczema as a baby and Nanna basically began making very gentle, all-natural washes, creams and balms to help soothe her very stressed skin. I’d tried all sorts of fancy brands but nothing seemed to work, and I basically turned to my mum-in-law in desperation!

    She’s a former midwife and is a huge natural remedies advocate (you should see her veggie/herb patch) and she began cooking them up right on her kitchen stove. We started giving them away to family and friends and it’s basically grown from there, mainly through word of mouth and mummies (and daddies) who’ve tried the products.”

    Del sent them out and in the middle of absolute chaos here, I started using them.

    First, the baby wash in Amy’s hair. Made from saponified olive oil, it is extra pure and incredibly gentle. I was immediately won over (as you can tell, because I’m writing about it here!) by how soft and silky Amy’s hair was afterwards.

    Her hair stayed clean for over a week and the tangles that usually plagued our mornings pretty much disappeared. Unlike other “gentle” baby shampoos that I had tried, this one didn’t leave a residue, or give her dandruff. I was incredibly impressed.

    I am so impressed in fact that I will be packing this in my hospital bag for use on my newborn. So much gentler than regular baby wash, or shampoo.

    I’ve been using the baby lotion on my skin – pregnancy makes me itch – and it’s soothing and lovely smelling.

    Isaac has been trialling the nappy cream for us and so far, no complaints from him, or me. Him not complaining is a big deal.

    All in all, I am loving the Four Cow Farm products. They’re gentle, all natural, soothing and absolutely amazing value for money. Not to mention, the products are all made on the farm still, which uses 100% green energy, and is part of the “Land for Wildlife” scheme. Definitely an Australian producer worth supporting!

    Because I enjoyed the products so much, Four Cow Farm have offered me three Baby Kits to give away. Unfortunately you can’t make your own baby out of them, but you CAN make the baby you’ve got smell good. Kits contain one bottle each of Baby Wash, Nappy Cream, Baby Oil and Baby Lotion.

    And if you happen to not have children, I have been *ahem* using these products on myself as much as I have been on the kids.

    To enter, leave a comment below telling me who would be using these products in your house?

    Competition ends 1st of May. Only open to postal addresses within Australia.

    If you’re not successful in winning a kit, or you’d like to buy something from the Four Cow Farm online store, they’re offering a 15% discount to readers who enter the competition, valid for a month. Just enter code “SWWSFARM” at checkout.

    And the winners are…

    Congratulations Marion, Mrs Kwong and Lyndal! I shall be in touch.

  • And the baby is a …..

    A baby! Well formed, with no cause for concern.

    Also incredibly wiggly, making the job of snapping pictures very difficult for the radiologists who were on call.

    She’s also very much a little girl, which will make Amy happy once I tell her.

    Isaac is refusing to hear anything about it however – it appears he wanted a brother.

    —

    In other news, my hot water cylinder died last night, and DESPITE having a 7 year warranty, will not be covered because it’s an electrical problem with the cylinder, not a leak. Only leaky cylinders get seven years of warranty.

    At least, that is what Dux told us this morning, when Nathan rang to enquire about getting it fixed, as it isn’t even three years old yet.

    This seems utterly ridiculous to me and I am torn between wanting to stamp my feet and complain about the job the plumbing company did installing it, and wanting to complain about the company that makes the bloody thing  and then refuses to cover fixing it when it dies.

    The prospect of having no hot water doesn’t appeal to me right now and we’re left waiting for an electrician to come up and have a look at things, before hopefully telling us that the problem is easily fixed and unlikely to cost extravagant amounts of money.

    Until then, you will find me boiling kettles of water and bathing in a bucket – reminders of my childhood.

    Fun times, you guys, fun times.

  • Facebook keeps telling me it’s her birthday

    That’s the problem with social networks. They don’t know when someone is dead.

    It would have been her 67th birthday today. We would have wrapped our Easter celebrations into a birthday celebration as well, and it all would have gone smoothly.

    Instead, it’s been almost three years since she died and there is so much she has missed. How is it fair, to have someone you love, miss some of the biggest milestones in your life?

    April 2009, we were moving through the cancer haze. A mess of appointments and treatment and long conversations in cafes. Of learning to read a CT scan report so that the doctors couldn’t gloss over the worst details. Of knowing, in depth, what metastasize meant in a real way, rather than an academic kind of way. Dropping cake crumbs on my new baby’s head, as he was carried to and fro with us.

    It’s never pleasant to walk the path with someone dying, and yet, we were honoured to be able to do it.

    —

    Winter is coming.

    It sounds trite and ripped from Game of Thrones – and you’re right. It is.

    But it’s also how this time of year feels. April heralds the beginning of the dark months, as we move through birthdays and anniversaries. I could read back through my blog and find out what appointments we were attending three years ago, but I don’t want to.

    April moves into May, which moves into June – the darkest of the months.

    Cancer moved from her lungs, to her lymph nodes, to her bones.

    Life moved on to death.

    That is how this time of year works.

    —

    Death leaves a hole in your life that is unfillable. It will scab over and eventually scar, but you will always miss them. Sometimes with a deep ache, sometimes with a smile.

    And sometimes, with piercing pain.

    —

    Happy Birthday Nan.

    I’m sorry you’re not here to watch my children grow up and life continue on – I think you’d be amused at how similar Amy is to Mum.

  • Redefining my version of success

    Sometimes, you’ve got to take a step back and reassess “success” as you thought you knew it. Like today, when I sneezed twenty times in a row and didn’t wet myself even a little bit, despite the fetus kicking me in the bladder.

    And earlier, when I managed to eat an entire breadroll (filled with bacon, cheese and tomato) for breakfast, without having to have any anti-nausea medication immediately afterwards. I also managed a cup of tea about an hour later, although in the end, that required a lay down, with some breathing exercises to keep it down. Liquids are harder to keep down than bread, apparently.

    The nausea continues, although it’s worse of an afternoon and evening, meaning that I am trying to pack in all my calories of a morning time, which is usually a poor time for eating anyway, due to the lax gastric system. I can’t really win, but I’ve managed to gain a kilo in the last six weeks, putting me at a mere two kilos lighter than my pre-pregnant (and finally healthy) weight.

    I’ve finally hit what I am calling the half way point of this pregnancy. At 19 weeks, 3 days I am half way there, based on my last pregnancy. It’s starting to become very urgent (inside my head) that things get DONE and SORTED and I’m pretty sure that I’m driving Nathan mad.

    Having the greenhouse built is a huge tick on my to-do list, because I’m hoping to have a few grow-bags full of spinach and herbs, so that in the post-newborn haze, I have some fresh veggies to work with. Not to mention somewhere quiet to sit and hide from my older children.

    Speaking of older children, it’s Easter holidays and success has been redefined to mean that no one needed copious band-aids, that meltdowns were minimal and held in a bedroom, not at my feet and that everyone ate at least one piece of fruit or veg during the day. My standards are super low and I am good with that.

    Success is also defined by the fact that I am still walking and mobile – albeit slower than usual, due to all my internal organs squashing my lungs. I can feel that I’ve lost muscle tone, which I can also deal with, considering the most energetic thing I can manage is pottering around the kitchen throwing things in the general direction of the sink, before giving up and having to lay down again.

    The big ultrasound is in less than a week now and I must admit, I’m excited to find out the sex of this baby. My money is on a girl, for the record. I’m determinedly not thinking about the possibility of heart problems, or the sub-chorionic bleed that was hanging around in there. I figure as long as there is kicking happening on a regular basis, then I can count everything a success.

    Right?

    SUCCESS.

  • This pregnancy is killing me. Figuratively.

    First, I will start with a disclaimer:

    Yes, I know how lucky I am to be pregnant. All of my pregnancies have been flukes and I am very grateful that I conceived naturally, despite being told that my chances were pretty terrible. But being pregnant was not the end result – having a real live baby at the end is. Thus, I reserve the right to hate the means and love the end.

    —

    Fourth pregnancy, third baby. I underestimated how hard this was going to be on my body.

    I have a disability, which I don’t think about very often, because this is just me. I pass it off as “dodgy joints” or “crappy genetics” but when you get right down to it, I have a disability and my joints dislocate spontaneously, leaving me writhing in pain. I also throw up, can’t regulate my own body temperature properly and have a slightly leaky heart valve, although it’s “nothing much to worry about yet”. I probably also have POTS, but having a complicated genetic disorder means that no one really wants to talk to me about the secondary issues that a fucked up genetic code causes.

    This is amongst other things that I try really hard not to think about.

    The good news is, my brand of Ehlers Danlos doesn’t come with spontaneous arterial rupture or aneurysm, and they’re pretty sure that if I’ve managed to carry two pregnancies to term without my uterus rupturing, then it’s unlikely that there will be any major complications with this pregnancy.

    I’m also incredibly lucky that unlike many other women with Ehlers Danlos, I have two and a half babies to show for my four pregnancies and we are incredibly hopeful that my success rate will be a whopping 75% by the time August rocks around. If I was a duck who’d hatched three babies out of four eggs, you’d keep me. A lot of women with Ehlers Danlos will go through miscarriage after miscarriage, failing to bring a child to viability at all. I seem to have missed that part and for that, I am grateful to my uterus.

    All that said, my joints are falling apart. At almost 19 weeks pregnant, the relaxin is firmly coursing through my system and my ribs have forgotten what their main job is meant to be. I keep dislocating my left shoulder while I sleep and my pelvis is more like a wobble board that a supportive girdle of holdi-togetherness.

    Last night, after running my children a bath, I turned around and felt my pelvis slip. One hip went one way and the other went in an entirely new direction, while I wondered if I was going to be able to walk again. A little bit of quick thinking and some serious remembering of what a physio said to me and I gingerly managed to get onto all fours and rock my pelvis back into place. The baby didn’t aid me in this, considering s/he wanted to lie transverse, with each end pushing on one half of my pelvis. I guess it was trying to make things roomier in there.

    I joked to one of the mums at school that if I can stay walking throughout this pregnancy, I will be incredibly proud of my joints and I am scared that it isn’t going to happen. The pain is pretty bad and somehow, panadol is pretty useless on the ‘your whole body is falling apart’ pain.

    Pregnancy is miserable, for me. The baby at the end is not miserable, but pregnancy is the hell I have to go through to get a baby. Even labour is not this tough, or this bone crushingly painful.

    My blood pressure and various autonomic nervous system functions are not working as well as they ought and I seem to spin between feeling moderately unawful, to wondering if the floor is going to come up and smack me in the head. (For the record, I’ve not passed out yet, but I’m well versed in laying down wherever I am, in order to avoid the blackout)

    It’s exhausting, feeling this crappy. Amy is at school full time and while the break is amazing, she keeps asking why I’m not doing parent help. I tell her it’s because I’m unwell, but really, it’s not all that pleasant to be the one who can’t do anything, because you’re too sick.

    I was reading on a “your guide to pregnancy week by week” site about all the symptoms of pregnancy that should have eased by now. The second trimester is meant to be the golden trimester and all I want to do is shoot the writers. The nausea should have eased! Your exhaustion should be a thing of the past! Headaches are caused by hormones and should stop by the second trimester! I want to shoot them, and then bring them back so that I can shoot them again. Pregnancy is miserable.

    Finally, in a moment crowning glory, the midwifery appointment that I was meant to have a few days ago – they wrote down the date incorrectly, so that I missed the appointment, because of an admin error. When they remade the appointment, instead of being at the clinic closest to my house, it’s now at a different clinic, a further 25 minutes drive away (40 mins away all up), at a totally inconvenient time, if I wanted to spend any time at home between school drop off and school pick up. I’d ring them and change it, only I’m scared that it will make things even more inconvenient for me. Better the devil you know, and all that jazz.

    It’s a good thing I can feel this baby wiggling and kicking around in there and that I wasn’t relying on the midwife to provide me with proof of life, isn’t it?

    I know that most of this discomfort will fade into the background once the baby is born and that by 6 weeks post partum, I should be feeling somewhat better. All of this will be a vague memory of discomfort and that is what I’m hoping for.

    In the meantime, I am just very glad that this is the last time I am going to be pregnant.