Sleepless Nights

Blog

  • 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!

  • Some Things Are Only Meant To Be Exit Holes

    And no, I am not talking about anything dirty.

    At least, not today.

    Tonight, Amy was happily eating her dinner while I sat in front of her (in a death defying stunt, risking thrown food and a plate to the head) in the beanbag, reading.

    She started to whine.

    ‘Nose Mummy! Nose!’

    I got up (I’m well trained) grabbed a tissue and had her blow her nose. Happiness reigned, at least for 2 minutes.

    Until she started again.

    ‘Nose! Mummy, nose hurts!’

    I thought about it. I hoped that it was just a cold, but I suspected otherwise. You see, Amy had been sitting behind me eating the last of her dinner. A dinner that had peas in it.

    You see where this is going, don’t you.

    I picked her up and promptly tipped her upside down so I could see inside her nose. Sure enough, there it was. A bright green pea, wedged into her tiny nasal cavity.

    I sat her upright (just in case the forces of gravity could possibly pull the pea into her brain, just by me thinking about it) and grabbed a tissue.

    Wheedling and coercing her, I got her to blow her nose. No luck getting rid of the pea, but she did hand me a good deal of snot from the other nostril.

    Cue the crying. Her, not me.

    ‘Hurts! hurtshurtshurts!’

    By this stage, Nathan was sitting next to us, using his awesome powers of Daddy to try and get the pea out as Amy used her toddler powers of nose picking to shove the pea in deeper.

    [IE: he was trying to get her to blow her nose while she was showing her fingers up there instead]

    I rang Mum to find out if we, as children, had ever stuck anything up our noses. No luck.

    I rang the doctor (on Mum’s suggestion) to see what he had to say.

    He suggested tweezers to mush the pea. Luckily the pea in question was a cooked pea and therefore mushable. His reasoning was if I mushed it, she would either sneeze it out, or sniff it back [ewww].

    Which was exactly what Nathan had suggested to me before I made any phone calls. Kudos to Nathan for having brains while a crisis was happening. Me? I just wanted to laugh in disbelief.

    Amy was laid back on Nathans chest and he held her arms and head [nicely of course]. I prepped my tweezers by making sure I had the blunt pair in my hands and squeezing them in the hope that they would fit in her nose.

    I shone a torch up her nose and she relaxed back into Daddy.

    And thank fuck, but the pea was easily removed with tweezers and Amy didn’t even wiggle. I was dreading any poking I might have to do to turn a pea into mush. Not to mention the pea snot that I was likely to get covered in.

    So now I say to Amy.

    Baby? Some things are only meant to be exit holes. Your nose is one of these things.

  • Dear Self

    Shamelessy Sassy has just written a letter to herself at 18 and I am shamelessly stealing her idea. (She won’t mind).

    Dear 18 Year Old Self,

    You need to remember that Vitamin E cream is probably the best thing for your episiotomy scar. I know that you gave birth 10 weeks ago, but by my count you will probably spend the next 3 weeks in a good amount of pain. Also, buy Nathan some porn and a box of tissues, because sex is going to be painful (and boring because your libido has run away with the fairies) for at least another 6 months.

    I want you to try really really hard to not get uptight about trying to conceive another baby. Trust me, it does happen eventually, although not without alot of stressing on your behalf. Maybe just lay back, take it easy and grab as many orgasms as you can in the meantime.

    You daughter doesn’t sleep. Don’t worry, she won’t sleep ever. I still know exactly how you feel, athough giving a 10 week old a boob is much easier than having to reason with an almost 2 year old about WHY it is still night time. Revel in the silence giving boobs.

    Shortly you will move closer to your parents. Don’t give yourself any ideas about days without a baby attached to you though, you still have another 10 months before she will consent to leave your presence without a meltdown. I know colic/clinginess/general amyiness is hard but just power through it, because eventually? Amy does turn into a pretty easy going toddler.

    [Then she loses that easy goingness to the toddler terrors of two, but hey, we don’t need to scare you yet]

    As much as you don’t sleep (and never will) and feel like you have no time for yourself, don’t worry. You do end being happy. You also don’t strangle Nathan at any point, despite the both of you having trying moments. Eventually he realises that staying home with a baby is hard work. Eventually.

    Also, please remember to do your damn pelvic floor exersises. Having to remember them when you already have a baby in utero grinding on your bladder is not the best thing. Clench and HOLD. Clench and HOLD. Repeat 10 times an hour at least. Remind yourself that this will make things better later. You really don’t want to have to get up to pee 10 times a night [although, so far I have managed to avoid peeing on myself].

    Take it easy. Lay in the sun. Take time out for yourself. Even 5 minutes will leave you feeling less murderous towards other people who don’t have a baby attached to their front 24/7.

    AND… if you really loved me you would buy a large stash of chocolate. At least enough to keep us busy for 3 years. Save it up or something, because nowadays? We don’t live so close to the supermarket, petrol is fucking expensive and I just ran out of the last of my stash. If you could do that for me?

    Lovely.

    Love, Me.

    [***Also, I just noticed and HAD to point out, it is the 8.8.08 today and this post? It’s permalink is #888. Loving the coincidence]