If ducklings knew anything about the Internet, this one would be shouting “FIRST” in triumph, as the other eggs are only just starting to crack.
I’ll keep an eye on the nest and make sure she sits long enough, but I’m not terribly worried – last time she sat for four days after the first baby hatched.
So, sixteen weeks.
There’s not a lot of anything new to update. The nausea and exhaustion continue, as does the expansion of my uterus.
My joints have gone to shit and I succeeded in sleeping badly last night, waking up with my left shoulder fully dislocated. I’m sort of glad that I was half asleep relocating it, because I don’t remember much, except that it hurt and all of the muscles around it were spasming.
The muscles in my neck are swollen this morning and my shoulder blades ache, but that is nothing unusual.
Still no weight gain, but I seem to have stopped the weight loss, finally. Eating is becoming easier, provided I don’t forget to take the maxalone and my EDS nausea doesn’t flare (which involves remembering to take my PPI medication every morning).
Apparently the baby this week is the size of an avocado, which merely makes me crave avocado and toast and doesn’t speak to me of a baby kicking around in there.
Oh! And movement – from the small flutters I’ve been getting, we’ve transitioned upwards to definite pokes, some of which can be felt externally. Amy is very eager to feel the baby kick and I’m hoping I can indulge her in the next few weeks.
Isaac however just wants to kiss and pat my stomach, which is very cute at lunchtime and not so cute 30 minutes after he’s been put to bed.
My breasts are huge (you can see me trying to contain them) and starting to leak. This I find incredibly unfair – I didn’t have to deal with randomly leaking breasts until I was 7 months along with both other children, so what the hell body?
Yet again, I can repeat that despite the nausea, exhaustion and broken joints, this is my least eventful pregnancy.
It’s a bit bizarre, in a good way.
This morning it was fine and this afternoon we found this:
All I can wonder is, what kind of noise did it make?
When we moved into this house, the backyard was a wasteland of cushion stuffing, holes, dust and rubbish. It wasn’t fantastic and we’ve spent the last few years trying to get the garden up and running.
On one hand, SUCCESS!
On the other hand, now the weeds actually grow and my pumpkin vines appear to have taken over the path, fence and gate. Which would be awesome, except they’re also vicious, resistant to being trained and despite five metres of viney wilderness, there are only two pumpkins in there.
I’m contenting myself with the fact that where the pumpkin vine is growing, there aren’t too many weeds.
Which is more than I can say for the rest of the garden, which is growing lovely lush grass, while my greens get eaten by grubs.
Grumble grumble.
The mint is doing rather well however. As are the prickles and the couple of apple trees I grew from seed.
The best bit about all the work we’ve put in however, is seeing the return of the natural eco-system. My perpetual spinach is the favoured hunting place for my frogs, the pumpkins and tomatoes have drawn in the bees and there are butterflies coming in as well.
It’s nice to watch – even if the frogs now mean that I can’t cut back the (seeding) perpetual spinach that has taken over half of a garden bed.
Otherwise entitled, “Why so judgey, Internet?”
Yesterday, 93.6 Hobart asked on their facebook page, what we as parents do to combat feelings of isolation or guilt. There were some great answers and the lovely Sallyanne and I agreed that online communities are an excellent way to keep in touch with friends and family when real life doesn’t enable you to do that.
My stock standard answer, whenever anyone asks me what I do to keep myself sane is “I blog.”
And it’s true. This little community here has saved my sanity on more than one occasion.
Sure, I do other things to make myself happy – I take time out to read books, I daydream, I buy delicious loose leaf tea and refuse to talk to anyone while I drink it. I take the smallest things and savour them and I laugh, a lot.
Mostly though, my sanity saver is blogging.
However, social media is a very new thing and it wasn’t available to a lot of parents. Something that people are all too willing to remind us.
And really, flippant comments like “We had no time for sipping lattes and babycinos in trendy cafes” are not adding anything to the conversation, except a bucketload of guilt that apparently, mothers nowadays are doing it wrong.
I could rant and rave about judging people (how do you know that mother in a trendy cafe with her baby isn’t taking her first time out in 6 months? how do you know it isn’t her one outing this month? HOW DO YOU KNOW?) but it wouldn’t do any good – people would still be judging and mothers would still be getting landed with a large guilt trip over “not doing it tough enough”.
Guilt is a useless emotion. It doesn’t do anything except make me doubt myself and when Amy was a baby (screaming, screaming all the time) I promised that I would not guilt trip myself. I would refuse to feel bad for sneaking a coffee at a cafe with my mothers group and I would refuse to feel bad for things I could not control.
Nowadays, I don’t “do” guilt. But it doesn’t stop me wanting to explain myself and my unique set of circumstances to every single judgey person out there. Should I explain about autism? About Ehlers Danlos? About how the Internet has very truly saved my sanity?
Sure. I could.
But I’m also pretty sure that it wouldn’t make a difference to people who want to play pain olympics and talk about who has it tougher, or who is the most selfless mother, putting themselves last always.
Here’s the thing:
I take good care of my sanity, because for a while there, I consistently put myself last and not only did I nearly have a mental breakdown, I nearly had a physical one.
It took me a long time to recover and I am reluctant to ever let things get to that point again.
Things are better now. I take time out to look after myself.
And sure, some days that time out is merely sitting in my bedroom alone for 10 minutes while I drink a cup of tea.
Other days, it’s taking the time to feel the sun on my face while I remember to breathe. Or turning the music up really loud and not caring what anyone else thinks of my musical tastes. Or leaving the children with their Daddy, while I attend events in the city.
I’m not a martyr and I refuse to be one.
Life is hard enough without carrying around a backpack full of guilt.
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I would love to know, what do you do to preserve your sanity? Any tips for parents (especially new parents) who might be struggling?