Infertile Fantasies

Blog From Scratch

2012-01-09T01:02:00.000+10:00

When we arrived back from our recent holiday in Australia... wait. Recently, we went to Australia to visit the family for Christmas. We got back on New Years' Eve, to find (to my disgust) that the shops had already removed the Christmas decorations they trotted out over a month before the start of advent and had replaced them with the trappings of Chinese Spring Festival. Thankfully, at our apartment building, where they seem more concerned with tradition and less concerned with whether or not they have an upcoming opportunity to sell us crap, they waited until January 6th to remove the tinsel and silver bells and replace them with red and golden lanterns and dragon motifs. One great thing about living in Singapore is that Chinese New Year is a major celebration. So if, like me, you weren't quite organised enough for the Gregorian version, you get a do-over a few weeks later.

I finished Mel's book. I liked it. It's chick lit. It's not usually my thing. But I liked the way the characters bantered with each other, and I admired the fact that she slipped fertility storylines into the background of the plot (along with, at one point, a public service announcement about maternal aging). But (spoiler alert, highlight to read) OH MY GOODNESS MEL WHAT ENDED UP HAPPENING ABOUT HER BROTHER'S COFFEE TABLE BOOK? It has left me, however, with a sort of incongruous need to blog about food.

This morning I had a narrow window of child-free opportunity to shower, change, google a recipe and maybe read some blogs. Guess which of those I didn't get time to do? Read blogs. I blame America. You guys seem to have this obsession with adding sugar to every decent recipe under the sun, such that now when I google something like "zucchini bread" I waste half an hour clicking on recipes that cannot be served up with a crisp side-salad and maybe a dash of balsamic vinegar. BAM! My blogging time, down the toilet. Some of these recipes called for chocolate chips. I ask you!

And you needn't think this is an isolated incident, either. It happens to me all the time. For my American readers: what the fuck have you done with food? Can you leave nothing unsweetened? To set things straight (and in the vain hope of raising its google profile), this is how you make zucchini bread.

In the end, I didn't make zucchini bread, because I didn't have any zucchinis. I used the leftover vegetables I did have - sweet potato, capsicum and tomato - with the oat flour I also had, but forgot to add baking powder to, because I was so engrossed in PB's plans to travel to England in search of mermaids whilst simultaneously worrying that he was about to accidentally egg my kitchen. And so I made, pretty much, disgusting and inedible half-baked vegie slop, but at least it didn't have chocolate chips in it. Then I looked at my enormous pile of dishes and unfolded laundry and thought about the myriad other housechores I had left and said, more or less, screw it - let's go to the park and fly kites and shit.

We went to West Coast Park. When we arrived the adults were starving and the children were bursting to get on to the awesome play equipment so we took turns supervising/going to MacDonalds, which is the only nearby eating option and, you know, the McCafe food is no worse than any other cafe and anyway, I don't have to justify my choices to you who asked for your opinion anyway?

Mr Bea had a Prosperity Burger. "I saw it there and all of a sudden I wanted to know what prosperity tastes like," he explained. "Black pepper, in case you're wondering." I wasn't. I was hankering after a Himalayan tea latte. Do they have Himalayan tea lattes at your local MacDonalds? It's more or less a chai latte by another name, except sweeter. (Which is, by the way, a perfectly legitimate place to send in the sugar. Unlike pumpkin ravioli, which is no such place. This is how you make pumpkin ravioli. It already has biscuits, for gosh sakes.)

Lately, I have become concerned about our cash flow. It turns out raising kids costs money! Who knew? People who weren't shelling out so much money for fertility treatments or stressful pregnancies prior to the birth of their first child that they never even noticed the change in their budget after they took kid #1 home, that's who. Me, it has taken a little longer. It has only just happened this year, with the addition of a second child, conceived and delivered without complication. So there you go. Raising kids costs money, it seems, and I have started worrying about our cash flow.

"Other people we know seem to have more than us," I stated recently to Mr Bea, trying not to sound complaining. "They live in posher quarters, take five star holidays, employ live-in maids, send their children to expensive schools and expensive peri-school activities, own properties in expensive overseas locations - and often in more than one location - have expensive gym memberships, eat at expensive restaurants and wear designer labels. How come we don't?"

"Do they earn more than us?" Mr Bea suggested.

"Well, maybe, and I'm ok with that. We are not poor. We are probably doing better than I expected to do. And maybe they are more comfortable with higher debts and lower savings, and that's fine, too. But what if they are just better with their money? I'm bothered because I'm not convinced we're being as good with our money as other people." It's the same sensation I have when I see what other people manage with their time, or their hair. How can she have her shit together like that, and I don't?

Earlier this year, I was talking to one of these glamorous folk with the time and the hair and such and we wandered onto the subject of holidays. She was off to Phuket. "Nice!" I was saying, in so many words.

"We're staying at hotel X," she informed me.

I shrugged. "I've never actually been to Phuket," I told her apologetically.

Her reaction threw me. "Oh, I know it's not supposed to be the best place to go," she said hurriedly, looking a trifle embarrassed and insecure all of a sudden. "I know they say it's overly touristy and whatnot but I sort of booked it on impulse because it seemed like a good deal, I mean perhaps it wasn't, but we got this time off at the last minute, and I thought with the kids, and..."

"No, it sounds good," I said, surprised. "I just mean, I don't know that hotel at all, because I've never been to Phuket. I'm sure it's very nice. We will have to try and go ourselves one day. You should tell me about it when you get back." Although the holiday I'd been dreaming out loud to her about was a backpacking trip through Vietnam - hardly the five-star beaches-massages-and-martinis holiday she was lined up for. Could my breezy backpacking (with young children, no less) talk have somehow given her the impression that we'd had all the five-star beaches-massages-and-martinis holidays we could handle and were ready to move on to something else?

Her maid was on leave for two weeks over Christmas, during which time her husband stayed home to help her out. When I saw her last week she looked excessively tired, and quite stressed. Much more tired and stressed than I look on the average day, I'm pretty sure, and I'm single-handed. Her hair wasn't even that great, although probably her floor was still cleaner. As I sipped my Himalayan tea latte at the park this afternoon, I reflected on these instances and wondered which of my fellow diners had actually done their dishes and folded their laundry before skipping off to the park, and which of them just knew when to throw their hands up and say screw it, turns out I suck at making non-zucchini bread even if I do know not to put sugar or chocolate chips in it, let's go fly kites and shit. How many of them realised that the Prosperity Burger was actually just a normal burger but with black pepper sauce?

In the end we flew kites and shit and I resolved to open a proper savings account to better manage the cash flow. We ate sandwiches for dinner. It was nice.

Looking forwards to 2012

2012-01-02T01:13:00.000+10:00

First, let me point you to Life From Scratch by our very own Melissa which was on my Christmas list but sadly not gifted by anyone. Then I found out that it was temporarily on sale for 99c! At 99c I can probably get away with gifting it to myself. Duly downloaded and can't wait to read it.

--
Two thousand and twelve could be an interesting time. I may be making some long-awaited moves on my career. I have ideas for a couple of other projects. I have the optimism of a twenty-year-old when it comes to my ability to pull it all off. I love having my self-belief back, misguided though it may be.

I once heard someone in blogland say she preferred blogs where people wrote about what they'd been doing from day to day, rather than - I can't remember how it was worded at all - basically editorialising on some topic or other.Really? I thought. That explains a lot. Like, for example, how come people whose posts always consist entirely of a laundry list of events which have occurred in their lives since the last post can sometimes have quite the following.

Not only that. I have friends with whom I never seem to discuss anything but stuff which has happened to each of us since we last saw each other. It's pleasant enough, don't get me wrong. But my whole life, I'd been assuming we weren't really very good friends, until I read that comment, whereupon this occurred to me: perhaps that's how some people do friendship! It's an astounding thought.

Some bloggers, sooner or later, are forced by a commenter to write a post along the lines of, "Hey! People! This is my place to whinge, ok?" In the past, I have agreed wholeheartedly with the poster. Your space is what you want it to be, and for some people, what they want is a spot to put the nasty stuff so they don't end up inflicting it on anyone they know face to face. It doesn't mean they spend 100% of their lives whinging, and they shouldn't have to change the way they blog. Are they forcing you to read?

I guess I still agree with that. I'm not talking about those whose lives (at least as they're writing) are such a suckhole of suck that the odd bit of cheer is completely overrun by the mountains of suckitude - those people you can't help but feel for - I'm talking about those who just plain don't see the need to post the good bits, whilst seeing all the need in the world to post the bad. That is absolutely a valid way to blog. I'm a bit sad that they don't know anyone face to face who can handle them without the edges taken off, or (in a different way) for those who don't know anyone with whom they feel comfortable displaying their edges, but if blogging fills that gap, so be it and I'm glad the internet exists. It's pretty lonely, though, to be the person inside the computer who only hears about the rough patches and never gets to share the joys.

For myself, I blog to think. More than that: I connect to think. But in a world where everyone is rushing to and fro with work and family and houses and hobbies and social engagements and travel delete as appropriate blogging seems to fit the bill better than rambling conversations in late night bars or coffee houses or, afterwards, on park benches situated halfway home - more's the shame. I've been trying to work out why I don't seem so motivated to post now that infertility is behind me, and I'm pretty sure it's because I don't have a big mess inside my head to untangle any more. Or rather, I do, but it's cheerfully disorganised as opposed to actually squalid, and I don't have a chunk of time just now to put it all back in order anyway. I am pretty much resigned to just stepping over my thoughts where they lay until I dependably get not only a full night's unbroken sleep, but a few hours of regular solitude, and I'm ten thousand miles removed from going out of my way in search of new thoughts. (Melissa - are there many new thoughts in your book? Prepare me.) I am just not at a blogging stage of life, at least not blogging in any way that resonates with me.

Here's my thing.

I have made friends in this community, and I don't really want to lose touch with everyone I ever knew. And I can't rely on facebook or anything, because I suck at those sorts of places, and I guess I'm just afraid that, one by one, you'll all stop blogging and one day I'll think something and there'll be nobody left to mull with me. Is it inevitable? I'm not finished with this space - or at least I'm not finished with a space. It's just my thoughts - my reasons for being here - are few and far between at present.

I'm not going to make any promises to blog more in 2012. I see no purpose to such a promise, to blogging for the sake of writing something down (and yet I know some blog for that reason, too, and God bless). I guess I just want to have somewhere to reflect on things at my own pace and time, and to have my reflections understood, and I am increasingly afraid that 2012 will take me further from it. Even as it brings me closer to other things.

I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

Incidental Thoughts

2011-11-06T00:19:00.000+10:00

A couple of weeks ago I was sick. Not badly sick, just a little queasy and off my food. Heartburney. Bloaty. Tired. Blah. Heavy-and-crampy-feeling in the abdomen. And just a smidgen nocturic. Also, I was having some insanely vivid dreams, largely of a sexual nature. It went on like this for nearly a week.

There was a time I would have believed that nothing but IVF would help us conceive. That time was before Surprise Baby. Now, apparently, I am willing to believe that strange things can happen, even though they usually don't. I believe it enough, at least, to use a pregnancy test even though I am still breastfeeding and amenorrhoeic, we have been using two types of contraception (one of which is "teething baby"), and our track record at getting knocked up is not exactly stellar by most people's standards.

I sat in the bathroom staring at the unused test for a long time, just hesitating. I realised eventually that I was trying to work out how I'd feel about either result so I could brace myself appropriately. I'm not really sure I could handle another baby so soon. But I'm not so far removed from infertility that I could honestly think of an unplanned pregnancy as anything but miraculous and exciting. In the end I couldn't resolve the question either way, so I took a deep breath and piddled on the stick.

It was negative. Even then, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Over a week later, I'm still not sure.

--

I finally managed to catch up with a book recommended by Miss E (password protected): Motherstyles. It's based on the Myer's-Briggs personality typing system. "I just can't work out if I'm perceiving or judging," I said to Mr Bea.

Mr Bea regarded me for a few seconds with a raised eyebrow and a bemused smile. "Can't you?" he said mildly, and then went straight back to what he was doing. I narrowed my eyes.

The next morning, I tore myself away from the conversation I was having with The Prata Baby about electricity to clear the breakfast dishes. I had just picked them up when he requested I read him a book about sharks. "Oh that's right!" I said, setting the dishes back down on the table again. "I was going to sticky-tape that torn page back together and I never got around to it! Let's get the shark book right now and do that."

I collected the necessary supplies together and we sat down at the coffee table to perform the surgery. Struck with inspiration, The Prata Baby requested his "special scissors for people in my agegroup" and the roll of tape. "Yes, great idea!" I affirmed. "We can do some cutting and sticky-taping. What can we cut up? How about... this piece of junk mail?" I suggested, picking a furniture catalogue up from where it lay, just nearby. PB thought that was a great idea. I glanced around for something to stick our cuttings onto, and noticed the cereal box still sitting on the table. Soon, I had torn it from around its contents, flattened it out next to us, scissored out a picture of a storage-box-cum-stool and a cup of coffee, and stuck them down onto our cereal-box "house".

"Box," I said for Surprise Baby's benefit. "Coffee." She cruised around the coffee table observing everything with keen interest. I gave her the sticky tape.

"Now," I said to both members of my audience, "we should choose some furniture," and I started flicking through the catalogue, naming various items for SB, discussing several tenets of interior design and decoration at length, listening carefully to PB's plans to fill the structure with water and sea creatures and have all the people swim around it in scuba gear, and googling for information on dolphins. After twenty or thirty minutes it suddenly occurred to me that no dishes had been cleared, the cereal was, if anything, less away than when I'd started, everyone was sitting around in their underwear, the stroller was completely unpacked, and we were already running several minutes late in getting out the door to kindy. And the worst part of it was that the only headway we had made on our pretend house was to add (at PB's suggestion) a second cup of coffee and a babyccino, as if I was deliberately trying to make a statement, in collage, about art mimicking life.

I figured I was probably perceiving.

It may be why I have trouble fitting in much blogging these days. I have tried, as you know, to find ways to carve out more spare time, and I have even used your suggestions, but somehow anything I save seems to slip through my fingers. On top of that, as an INTP, the social and feeling nature of the ALI community is a lot for me to handle after a full day's being social and emotional at home. I find myself wanting to shut off the computer in favour of some frothy TV sitcom. Maybe it's nothing to do with Myers-Briggs. Maybe I just don't drink enough coffee.

Gifted 2

2011-10-31T01:25:00.002+10:00

I posted a thread on a messageboard about this, and have had a few interesting thoughts.

Firstly, I should clarify a couple of things. This post... is kind of about my in-laws. I didn't want to say as much in so many words, but it may be best if I do. It isn't true that every gift I receive is a burden. One of my sisters has a particularly high hit rate, some friends seem to have a knack for thinking of the right thing, and as a group, internet friends have been particularly talented - testament, probably, to the introspective and considerate nature of this community. So this is pretty much all about my in-laws, and the cultural clash between my views on gift-giving and theirs.

Yes, I have tried telling people that a gift isn't necessary at all. To some people, it is. My in-laws are part of this group of people, to the point where we actually receive wedding anniversary presents from some of them, for our wedding anniversary. It is touching to know they celebrate each successful year of our marriage, but I am hard pressed getting wedding anniversary presents for my own husband for our own anniversary, let alone someone else's. I have no hope of convincing them that a Christmas gift isn't necessary. This is me trying to work within their framework.

The other thing I should clarify is that I only give out a "want list" when asked directly. Good grief, I do not mail an unsolicited Christmas registry to all my relatives and expect them to stick closely by it and have everything delivered in golden giftwrap at my appointed hour. No no. Perish the thought. But I usually get asked what I would like for Christmas this year, and in such cases I will sit down and hash out a bit of a list, which usually reads: 1. Charitable donation; 2. Um... food? I think part of what has been getting me is that people will ask me what I want in order to completely ignore what I say in response. It's not as if these gifts are coming out of the blue, or even as expected, but without consultation. "Oh here's an idea," I think as I try to displace the guilt of not using yet another kindly-offered but ultimately unwanted present by turning all curmudgeonly for a moment, with a few Bah Humbugs thrown in for kicks. "Why not give me the gift of being listened to?"

Then again, I recall being guilty of the same thing once or twice. It goes like this: you decide to buy a gift for someone, but you're not sure what you should get. "Why not ask them?" you wonder to yourself. You can't think of a reason, so you do. And when you have received your answer, the first thing you belatedly realise is that you can't get them any of those things now, because that would show a distinct lack of imagination and thoughtfulness.

In other words, it's the thought that counts after all.

Here's my new proposition: I refuse to give out want lists, under any circumstances. I should talk instead about my goals for the coming year. When someone asks for my want list, I should tell them I have several resolutions for 2012, and maybe they could get me something to help me out with those. One of them could be to end 2012 with less stuff than I started with. And then... there could be others. (I will work on this.)

Any thoughts (or list ideas/resolution ideas) are appreciated.

Gifted

2011-10-29T00:57:00.001+10:00

So I guess Kung Fu Parenting isn't as funny to other people as we think it is in this house. That's ok. Let's move on! I need your advice, because as the shops have already started to remind us, Christmas is happening again this year, with all the excesses the season heralds. But this isn't specifically about Christmas - so don't stop reading yet if you don't celebrate - it's just Christmas has triggered it, as it tends to be the biggest gift-giving occasion in our household. This, however, is about gift-giving in general. Here's my problem.

We move often. We live in small houses. We have most things we need and want, under the circumstances, and if anything else comes up, we do - like most people - tend to buy it ourselves if the next gift-giving occasion is still a long way away. Or at least that's true of things within the usual gift-giving price range. Still and yet, people keep buying stuff for us.

What happens to these things? The pattern has become clearer as the years go by. With rare exceptions, gifts given to us by our relatives tend to languish in forgotten cupboards until they break, perish, or are given away in the next move. I have started trying to shorten that cycle in order to prevent the breaking and perishing outcomes, but even so it tends to be a waste of time and money. The op shops are lucky to make half the original retail prices if I give it to them, and tracking down someone who values the item sufficiently is time-consuming and sometimes impossible. And what about the efforts of the gift-giver in obtaining the item? I can only hope they enjoyed it, but I rather doubt that can be absolutely the case. Christmas shopping tends to wear on even the most dedicated shopaholic, and the average person ends up finding it a chore. Besides which, it makes me feel bad when I don't use somebody's gift myself, as they intended.

I have tried suggesting a Secret Santa arrangement, where we draw names at random and only give and receive one item per social group, but it doesn't seem to wash with the in-laws. (My family are actually not so much the problem. We grew up with the rule that, come Christmas, all the gifts go to the youngest generation of your household. In other words, only people without children - a lot of whom are children - get presents. Although I guess there are also the gifts from children to their parents. At any rate, I am fine to continue this.)

For about five years running, I have been suggesting charity gifts, such as the ones in the Oxfam gift catalogue. Do you know how many takers I've had on that? None. Zero. People are not comfortable with donating to Oxfam in lieu of buying me a present, or let us say - because I certainly see it the latter way, and not the former - as a present. I don't know how to make them comfortable with this idea. I want to know. One year we even bought exclusively from charity gift catalogues, thinking that we would afterwards reap what we had sown, but to no avail.

I now have a low-clutter "want list" which seems to work... sort of okay I guess... as long as you don't honestly expect people to follow your want list very often. And living overseas does help. The postage, you see. But I'd really like to have at least one more crack at getting people to gift me some sort of charity thing. There just has to be a way to make it palatable to them. This is where you come in.

Do you buy charity gifts? If not, why not? You won't be judged (you can always go anonymous) - my instinct leads me away from them as well, and I'm just trying to figure out why so I can overcome that instinct.

What would make you buy a charity gift for someone, instead of a material item? What could they say or do to make you feel that it really was fine? Would you feel better about it if it was only 50% of the present and the other 50% was a small item, a token object to make it feel like you'd wrapped something up, same as always? Would you feel better if the person asked you for a specific charity item, and not just "some sort of charity gift or other"? Would you feel better if the person asked people to pool together for a large charity gift - a bicycle ambulance, for example, rather than a chicken?

Any thoughts, please share them.

Kung Fu Parenting

2011-10-26T00:52:00.000+10:00

When we started our battle with infertility, I tried to be strong like a stone. I nearly cracked. Over time, I learnt to be strong like bamboo - bowing over in the face of the storm, but never breaking; perhaps even growing to stand taller than ever when the fine weather returned.

So it's not the first time I've cashed in on all those hours I spent watching martial arts cinema. And people tried to tell me I was wasting my time.

This is a parenting philosophy I developed myself, based on my recent reading*, so take it as you will, but it seems to work so well that I thought I'd put it out there for other parents who have seen Chan Long through more than one Police Story. I call it "Kung Fu Parenting". The central thesis of Kung Fu Parenting is that the key to resolving your parenting problems lies in the answer to one simple question: if this scene was part of a Kung Fu movie, who would be playing which role?

There are, from what I can see, three basic choices: the Young Student, The Evil Tough Guy, or the Old Master**. The idea is to make sure that you, the parent, always play the Old Master, and you don't have to be overly familiar with the formula to see why. As the film starts, the Young Student is prancing around making a lot of noise, high on his inflated sense self-importance. Although he might win a few rounds here and there, he is prone to getting smacked up throughout the film, either by a group of evil tough guys, or an Old Master. The Evil Tough Guys are more likely than the Young Student to win out in the early part of the film, but in the end they really have it coming to them and anyway, who wants to be evil? The only character who kicks arse for the entire film is the Old Master - and he barely lifts a finger to do so. He is, like, way cool. I mean, yes, occasionally he dies in the final showdown, but even then he still "wins" in all the non-getting-to-live-on senses of the word. Which totally counts.

To be the Old Master, you must first act like the Old Master. The body language of this character tends to be passive and low-energy. Drop your shoulders. Bend a little, as if you must hobble with the aid of a bamboo cane. Make your face impassive; inscrutable. Your expression should be ever so slightly weary, as if you have seen it all before and long ago figured out the answers, and are vaguely saddened by the knowledge that those around you have yet to achieve the same. Squint near-sightedly if you must. Resist the urge to command, and instead give some sort of vague advice. Then walk away as if you don't care whether anyone follows. No really. I swear.

Around our house, we have taken to reminding each other to "be the Master". When we hear ourselves say, "You do this thing right now young man!" - a classic Young Student or Evil Tough Guy line - it tells us to breathe out and try a different tack: "You can do that, or you can do this. But think hard and make a good decision, because otherwise you might not like my response." There's more to it, I guess, but it tends to be nuance. The Old Master isn't always an easy role with an obvious script, and reminding one's self to play it may seem like the first of an overwhelming number of steps, especially if you're winging it on a half-remembered version of Carl Douglas' hit song. But if you can claim multiple viewings of Karate Kid, you are probably good to go.

I was going to say something else, on a completely different topic, but it absolutely eludes me.

--
*Specifically the Love and Logic series, separately recommended by both Serenity and Melissa. I personally think Practical Parenting Tips for Birth-Six Years is by far the better book of the two I've read so far (the other being Teaching Responsibility). You don't have to know anything about Kung Fu to appreciate it.

**I am discounting the comic relief, the love interest or the innocent bystander, because these roles aren't directly involved in the power struggle at the centre of the plot. And as we all know, there is often a power struggle at the centre of the parental plot, especially when you are about to lose said plot.***

***I must also admit to over-simplifying an entire cinematic culture in a way that is very nearly criminal. I probably deserve a good flying kick for that one.

Disconnected Notes from the Diary of the Mother of a Frazzled Three-Year-Old Bully

2011-09-06T00:08:00.007+10:00

It's been a rough few weeks. The Prata Baby started kindy and "we" did not take to it like a duck to water. Or maybe he was like a duck to water, that is, kicking furiously.

I admit I was upset, embarrassed. Mortified might be a better description. And especially so after I learnt that other parents had been down to the school to complain about my child. My child beating up their child. I think every parent worries about bullying, but usually their concern centres around the prospect of their child as victim. I was unprepared, and I was horrified. And then I was angry, I guess, at him. At The Prata Baby. For making me horrified, or for being the kind of kid I didn't want him to be, or... I don't know. Does it matter?

--

I wasted the first couple of weeks reading up about homeschooling and alternative educational methods, and therefore missed the whole point. Then one day we had a particularly horrible morning - it was, in fact, the day before the day I posted about here. I had just dropped him off at kindy with a combination of relief, dread, and guilt on account of the relief, when a friend phoned for a chat. Naturally, she asked how I was and of course that led directly to her hearing about the whole thing.

"What... PB?" she asked, astonished, when I'd given her my troubles in a nutshell. "But he's the quiet, gentle one!" I think that was the turning point. I mean, it took twenty-four full hours for me to actually take a proper step back and start seeing the bigger picture, but I think that was the spark.

--

I want to write this down in case I ever need it again. I need to remember that The Prata Baby is a sensitive little boy who struggles, sometimes, to handle his emotions. I remember him at birth, crying as if to say, "Too much! Too much!" Not like Surprise Baby, who lay in my arms and blinked as if to say, "Huh, brighter than I expected. Interesting." I remember him at six months old, shattering my nerves to the point where I could barely make it through a day, let alone a week, with his constant, frustrated shrieking about all the things he wanted to do but couldn't. Not like Surprise Baby, who reaches for a toy and wriggles this way and that with nothing to say about it except for a few quiet grunts of determination.

Somebody else had to point out that my kid was "the quiet, gentle one". The sensitive soul. If there's a next time, the person who points it out should be me.

--

I need to remember to look for the subtle distinctions. The teacher described her transitioning method - a countdown, followed by the instruction to S! T! O! P! Stop what you're doing! I nodded and told her this was exactly how we did it at home, plus or - well, minus - the spelling out of words. But over the weekend I noticed that it's not really what we do at home. Because at home, after the countdown, I never say "Stop!" I say "Go!". Go pack up. Go get dressed. Start putting your shoes on. I don't transition him away from the activity he's working on, I transition him towards the next one. In fact, I often go a step further than stop vs go. I am the master of the segue, making it seem as if, somehow, what we're about to do next is some kind of extension of what he's currently working on. If we're drawing, for instance, and I know we need to get ready to go shopping soon, I will start drawing groceries so I can soon say, "Now it's time to look at some real vegetables at the supermarket," like everything I learnt about parenting came directly from watching endless episodes of Playschool. I didn't even realise I was doing it. I certainly didn't realise how much difference it makes.

--

Earlier this year, he started falling asleep unattended, but we have to be careful. If he does it for more than one or two nights in a row, we will pay for it at 2am when wakes from his sleep needing comfort. If we sit with him as he dozes off - at least, say, five times a week - he sleeps through.

--

One day he really didn't want to go to kindy. He shows his distress with a lot of loud bravado, hyperactivity and, apparently, bullying tactics, so the teacher didn't appreciate his behaviour as a sign of distress until I told her that it was so. Even then, she gave me this face. You know the one. The one where the person you're talking to can't even talk for a moment because they're using all their mental power to stop themselves sighing heavily and rolling their eyes at how fucking ludicrous you're being. She saw a child who was tearing around the classroom, pushing himself to the front of everything, throwing things, ripping things, shrieking and yelling, beating people up. I saw what was left when we got home - the sleep disturbance, the lost appetite, the bedwetting and thumbsucking, the uncharacteristic tiredness and moodiness. The clinginess. The wanting to be spoonfed like a baby and carried around everywhere. The unwillingness to turn up to kindy.

"Why don't you want to go?" I asked him.

"I don't like the other kids."

"Why not?"

"They push me and shove me."

"They push and shove you? Well that's not nice. Why do they do that?"

"I don't know."

"And what do you do?"

"I kick them."

"You kick them after they shove you?"

"No, before they shove me."

"So you kick them, then they shove you?"

"Yes."

"And you don't like being shoved?"

"No, I don't."

I paused for a moment, and blinked a few times. Sometimes he's younger, more naive than I think he is. I mean, he seems bright in other ways - he has taught himself to read several words, like "hot" and "cold" and "in", and he recognises most street signs. He sees something that looks like a no-smoking sign and deduces that it can't be one, because it doesn't have the red line through it. He wants to know about the age limits on cigarettes, and carries on an intelligent conversation about autonomy and paternalism to the surprise of the lady behind the counter at the 7-11. He invents things. Lots of things. Especially involving transport. He realises that it is difficult for him, with his short legs, to get on and off buses and he muses that passengers in wheelchairs must find it even harder and he comes up with the idea of a ramp that tucks up inside the bus and folds out onto the footpath when needed and asks me if I think that would work? He speaks well - people always comment. He picks up Chinese and Singlish with accents and tones, and even makes up his own, private language - for when he doesn't feel like talking to anybody. He asks the big questions about life, and about death. But he doesn't seem to work out, unprompted, that he could spare himself the unpleasantness of being shoved by not throwing around the preceding kicks.

I prompt him.

--

He doesn't like being bossed - finds it undignified. If you want him to do something, you are better off asking him nicely than delivering it as some kind of command. And it works to use positive language, telling him what to do, instead of what not to do. I got him to stop pulling things off shelves in the supermarket by changing the instruction, "Stop touching that!" to the request "Can you please put your hands in your pockets?"

--

The structure of kindy frustrates him - he doesn't really know why he should do everything in blocks of less than half an hour and then rotate to the next thing. Instead of packing up, he throws things forcefully around the room to indicate his discontent.

I don't know how to handle frustration well myself, so I google. In the end, I decide to try a sort of cognitive-behavioural technique. When he screeches at something because it refuses to obey him instead of the immutable laws of physics which bind the very fabric of our universe together, I sympathise with him as usual. "Oh, you're trying to do make X do Y? And it's not working? How frustrating!" But then, instead of pointing out that he is trying to defy the immutable laws of physics which bind the very fabric of our universe together - as I did in my previous, completely ineffective script - I say, "And at the same time, how very exciting!" He looks at me quizzically. "You've just made an important observation about the immutable laws of physics which bind the very fabric of our universe together! When you try to make X do Y, Z happens! I wonder why that is?" Then I muse theatrically for a few seconds, before drifting back to whatever I was doing before. It works. Instead of shrieking more and more loudly with each failure until eventually I confiscate the source of his displeasure, he repeats the action thoughtfully, over and over, in silence. He is no longer being thwarted. He is experimenting - and there are no failed experiments*. One day, I hope, he will internalise this script. In the meantime, his mood lifts almost instantly. His remaining frustrations are more easily put aside now that the feeling comes less frequently.

--

Mr Bea works hard to get home earlier and help out with bedtime. Everyone starts sleeping better within about four days. Coincidence? I decide not to get scientific enough to find out.

The extra time together also gives me a chance to inform Mr Bea that half PB's problems are down to our advice. We have told him to be nice to the other children, and he is terrorising the class with his bear hugs. The next morning, Mr Bea suggests to PB that he shake hands with his classmates instead. He has a relatively good day.

I think we are starting to internalise my cognitive-behavioural script ourselves.

--

I can't work on everything at once with him. If I work on everything, I work on nothing. I must focus on one or two behaviours, and learn to either let the others go, or eliminate the opportunity for him to engage in them. If we fight too often, he gives up trying to please me.

--

I got excited one day when he came home from kindy and tried to blame his baby sister for his misdeeds there.

"And then she shouted at the boy, 'Go home! Go home!' and then she kicked him."

"You're telling me Surprise Baby did that?"

"Yes."

"I see." I paused a moment and looked at him. "The thing is, PB, I know you're not telling me what really happened. The reason I know this is because Surprise Baby can't talk or deliberately kick people, and also she wasn't there. Is it possible you were the one who did those things?"

He gave me a long, careful look. "Yes."

"Ok. Well. When you say something like that that isn't true, it's called "lying". And you'll find that, for lies to be effective, they should at least be plausible. Now. There are a few exceptions to that rule. Advanced liars sometimes use what's known as the "double bluff". This is where-" All of a sudden I cut myself off. "You know what? The most important thing for you to know right now is that lying is generally wrong, and I don't want you doing it."

I bit my tongue before I started to confuse the issue by launching into a philosophical discourse based around the classic murderer-at-your-door conundrum. At that moment, I just wanted to enjoy the thought that he had demonstrated a major milestone in his social and cognitive development - one that, though it might not always be welcomed - could deepen his understanding of why he shouldn't kick people. Somewhere, he had cottoned on to the knowledge that other people have their own, unique viewpoint, which might be different from his own. From here, maybe we could make him properly appreciate that when he kicks people they hurt, even though he doesn't, and that making them hurt is bad in the same way that it is bad when someone hurts him.

--

We are walking home from swimming when I turn to find that he has stopped following me through the park, and is instead running towards a very busy road. I make after him, but I am carrying nearly 9kg of baby plus a swim bag and he has one hell of a head start. I call out to him, but get no response. Behind me, a woman starts shouting in panic, and my heart goes into my mouth. Then suddenly, he veers. He bolts around by the footpath and, when he gets to a driveway, he stops short and holds his hand out for my assistance with crossing. He seems surprised that I am flustered. Don't I believe he understands the road rules?

A week or so later, I am talking to a friend in the shopping mall when The Prata Baby wanders off into a nearby coffee shop and starts browsing the display case. I keep an eye on him distractedly, and after a minute or two he speaks briefly to the woman behind the counter, and walks back out to where I'm standing. "Mum, I'm hungry," he states calmly, "so I have ordered some raisin toast." Then he starts rummaging through my market trolley.

"What are you looking for?" I ask.

"A library book," he explains, pulling one out and holding it up in demonstration. Then he returns to the cafe where he seats himself on a couch and proceeds to engross himself in his reading material. Whilst he waits, you see. For his raisin toast. Which he is sure they are just now toasting.

I check the time. It's a bit past morning tea, so it stands to reason that he would be hungry. My friend pipes up in a bemused voice and says, "Well, he's got that all sorted out, hasn't he?" and at the same time my eyes fall on the display case and I notice something.

The raisin toast is on the third shelf, above his head height. To choose it, he had to stand on his tippy toes and ignore a wide selection of various cakes and biscuits, some of which had smarties on top. He has chosen something he might plausibly be allowed to eat, and then, without pulling on my skirt or whining or sinking to the floor to beat his fists in a three-year-old tantrum, he has calmly and optimistically ordered it and sat down quietly to wait. I start to think that maybe he is doing alright.

Maybe I am doing alright.

--

I develop a theory. Perhaps when children start driving you crazy by testing all their boundaries, it is time for those boundaries to be reviewed. I mean, gosh. Isn't it what I want, for him to become independent? How else does it happen?

I decide that there are several issues on which I should stop fighting him and start letting him take care of himself. Suddenly, plus or minus a few bumps - a soiled set of clothing here and there, for instance, because he hasn't yet learnt to make a good decision when I tell him it's his last chance to use the toilet for a while - we are just about having fun. And honestly, a bit of skanky laundry is nothing compared to the arguments we recently had to have over going to the toilet before leaving the house.

--

The kindy teacher seems to decide she believes me. She works with him as if he is, basically, a good kid but scared. On the last day before the holidays he gets a sticker. "He is still kicking the chairs sometimes, and he has trouble sitting still, but he hasn't been fighting with the other children." I tell her that sounds pretty much perfect to me. Especially since, I notice, he has actually made a kindy friend. When school finishes for the mid-semester holiday, I am genuinely looking forward to having The Prata Baby around. I want to ask him about that stroller invention of his with the electric motor and the running board behind with the chair on it for mum so she doesn't have to walk and the roof over the top to keep her dry in case it rains.

--

I need to write these things down so I remember them. I may need them again, when he's four. Or perhaps when he next changes schools. Or even with Surprise Baby, different though she seems to be. Next time, I want to be better prepared.

--

I have a couple more book reviews. More along the parenting lines this time. Bear with.

--
*There are no failed experiments, only failed hypotheses.

Four Hour Work Week, (part two)

2011-08-31T14:57:00.007+10:00

I have a few extra thoughts on the four-hour work week before I shelve it, both figuratively and literally. At one point in the book he tells that story of the fisherman in Mexico and the Harvard MBA. You know the one. The Harvard MBA is on holiday in Mexico when, late one morning, he meets a fisherman on his way home. He asks the fisherman why he is knocking off so early, and... well, if you haven't heard it, here it is.

What Tim doesn't say in his book - he seems a smart guy, so I will assume he realises it in real life - is that you could easily substitute "Mexican fisherman" for "nine to five office worker" and "Harvard MBA" for "Tim Ferris". In the final chapter, he talks about what to fill your life with, now that "earn an income" isn't the only thing on your list. And he suggests you might want to live your life in service to others, and he suggests that you might want to take up full-time employment of a different (more meaningful) kind. Well and good. What he doesn't say - or at least not explicitly enough - is that you may already be doing everything you need to do, you just need to recognise it.

As someone who resents the drive to consume that underlies much of our culture, I would have a hard time following his business model - which is based around shipping product - without feeling like a hypocrite for most of my day. I'm not saying I couldn't find a way, I'm saying I may be better off finding a way to get paid directly for the life of service I aim to live, rather than shipping product in order to earn the income which frees my time to... live that life of service. I am, in effect, the Mexican fisherman in my relationship to Tim Ferris' book.

Am I glad I read it? Yes. Although I have ultimately rejected much of what he suggests I should do, it has helped clarify things to me. I can even recommend it, not to those who are satisfied with where their life is headed, of course (why would you even feel like picking it up?), or even to those who are truly just overflowing with genuine aspirations (although it is of some limited use in this situation, see for example my last post). If, however, you are in the process of re-evaluating your life, if you are thinking of changing directions, if you feel that you are trapped or stuck and there is no way out of the place you're now in (which, in the reality of the free world, is unlikely), then I recommend it. You may find it gives you the tools and the courage to shut off the constant buzz of your never-ending to-do list and to recognise and evaluate your options in the clear light of day.

Book review over, but I am still looking for comments, tips, advice on my previous post.

Edit: I have been wondering, since I wrote this a couple of hours ago, whether a personal crisis such as... I don't know... infertility? might aid in the process of focussing on things of value in one's life and breeding the courage to act on that focus. Hm.

The Four Hour Work Week

2011-08-30T23:51:00.004+10:00

I don't know if you've read The Four Hour Work Week. For most of the book, I thought the author was an egoistical freeloader with a limited sense of both social responsibility and depth of character who'd been fired from most employee positions he'd ever held. The last part is true - he has been fired from most employee positions he's ever held. Having read the last chapter, I'm not as sure of the first part as I used to be. Are you thinking of reading the book? Well, let me ask you a question he asks half way through to help you decide.

If you won a fortune in the lottery tomorrow, what would you do with your life after that? If the answer is, as with many people, "Turn up at the office, same as always," then you need not pick this book up. There. I saved you hours of your time. If the answer is (as with many people) that you would change everything, or at least a lot, then it may be worth a read.

I read it, not because I felt I would change a lot, but because I am feeling pushed for time lately. As such, I'm not sure I gained much. Yes, there is a chapter on efficiency, but much of it does not apply to parenting. Save time by limiting interruptions, he says? My entire purpose at present is to respond to interruptions. Ooh, there's another one - hang on.

Solved. Now. Where was I? Yes.

Here's a non-secret about parenthood I'll tell you for free: parents aren't busy because they have a lot to do. Parents are busy because it takes for-freaking-ever to do everything. And here's another non-secret, a kind of two-for-one deal: even if I do manage to skate through my errands and chores in record time, it doesn't free me to do whatever I want. It frees me to spend time hanging out with my children. And I have to pause here to emphasise that hanging out with my children is not something I consider an eternal punishment, but at the same time it doesn't get me any closer to completing my plans for ~~world domination~~ saving the dolphins. My reading list is getting longer, not shorter, and there's only so much to be done by batching or going on a low-information diet. Clearly, I have too many dreams for one day. Lately it is occurring to me that I have, really, too many for a lifetime, but that's a whole 'nother barrel of posts.

Right now, I want to focus on the fact that even a small gain is still a gain. Perhaps, at least, I can find a way back to semi-regular blogging, or commenting, or some such. Or reading Life From Scratch (hi Mel!) which is just one of the books on my ever-growing list. So here we go, and this is what I'm hoping you can help me with.

Focussing On Important Tasks
There is this whole bit about discarding unimportant tasks. I find that I am often sucked in to performing unimportant parenting tasks, and I want you to help me illuminate unimportance where I may have missed it so that I can deploy my energies more effectively.

For example, who dresses their children twice a day? Oh, uh, me too. I mean, yes, I dress The Prata Baby at least twice a day, because things would probably go awry if I tried to put him to bed in his kindy uniform, at least in the short term. In the long term, I'm sure he'd learn to rely less on pyjamas and more on other sleep cues to settle himself down, and there's really no other reason apart from social protocol that he can't sleep in what is, essentially, a T-shirt and pair of shorts, just like his pyjamas. As it is, I don't tend to go through pyjamas-then-day-clothes-then-kindy-uniform-then-day-clothes-again. On kindy days, he wears his kindy uniform ALL DAY. Do I dress the baby twice a day? Only if the first outfit gets ruined with some sort of bodily waste. She gets bathed and dressed, and that's it until the next bath. As for me, I sleep in my underwear. Saves dressing time, saves laundry time, just by eliminating a change of clothes each from our day.

What parenting stuff do you NOT do, that everyone else seems to, or that you are sometimes tempted to do?

Batching
Who cooks seven days a week? Yeah, um, me too. To be honest, I aim for three, double batches every time, with one takeaway night (courtesy of Mr Bea). In practice, I often find myself cooking more often than that, due to lack of forethought. I should forethink more, it could save me a bundle.

I have also started batching my paperwork. I was in the habit of paying bills the moment they arrived in my letterbox, then filing them immediately. I have recently started putting them away in a folder and sorting everything out together on Saturday. Overall, it's faster.

Then there's the laundry. I have to put a load on every day, otherwise I run out of drying space, not to mention children's attention spans. But whereas I was folding it three or four times a week, I am now experimenting with twice (once is not enough).

I have also started batching the dishes. Once a day now. The Prata Baby never would have stood for it, but it turns out Surprise Baby will. This may fluctuate with age.

Which domestic or parenting tasks do you batch - save up to do all at once - to improve efficiency?

Outsourcing
I continually fail to outsource. It's a common problem, and a common complaint, that nobody else seems to be up to scratch. On the other hand, Mr Bea's not actually incapable of looking after the kids for a while even without my micromanagement. What's the worst that could happen? (Don't answer that, especially not with anecdotes.)

The one place where I shine at outsourcing is with respect to cleaning floors and bathrooms. A year and a half ago I realised I was doing this myself on a Saturday morning whilst Mr Bea and The Prata Baby were at the park, and I was hating most of it. I told Mr Bea I would rather work Saturday mornings at my chosen profession whilst he went to the park with The Prata Baby, and use my earnings to pay someone to clean my house during the week, even if I made no financial gain by doing so. Turns out I was not only happier but financially better off. Nobody wants to work Saturday mornings, so I could hire myself out at a premium, then pay standard rates to my cleaner during the week. And damnit if they didn't do the job better than me. It's not that I can't clean floors or bathrooms as well as the next person, but I suffer from a severe lack of motivation. I really, really hate it.

Oh, and I have pretty much given up chopping my own meat.

Do you have any tips for avoiding household micromanagement and/or handing household tasks to outsiders?

They are my questions three. Even an extra hour a week would be welcome.

Acrostic

2011-08-21T22:11:00.012+10:00

F is for Fed Up. Lately, The Prata Baby pushes my buttons every day, all day. But the last couple of weeks it has taken a particular toll, because we have had the added bonus of a "teething" baby. I'll use the word "teething" because I'm not sure exactly why she's started waking on an hourly basis (at best), refusing to sleep anywhere but held upright against someone's chest, or crying inconsolably for up to two hours a day, chiefly around midnight, so by my mother-in-law's reckoning it must be "teething". (The first few months it's always "wind", then it's "teething" until such time as they can actually articulate some alternative.) If you ask me, she needs to see a doctor - and tomorrow, we will. But in the meantime The Prata Baby is pushing everyone's buttons as hard as he can, seemingly just to see what happens. By Saturday, I was badly overtired and fed the fuck right up.

A is for Angry. That's what everyone within a hundred metre radius could tell I was as I carried The Prata Baby under my arm, kicking and screaming, through the shopping centre in the afternoon. He had played happily in the playground with Mr Bea whilst I ran a few errands, but the trouble started as soon as I said we were heading across the mall to the supermarket to pick up some groceries for dinner. I don't mind a bit of dawdling and a bit of window shopping, but this time he was darting into just about every shop we passed, hiding amongst the merchandise, and throwing it onto the floor. I dragged him out of one shop, then another, replacing things onto shelves and tossing apologies around as fast as I could. I stripped privileges one by one. Mr Bea tried to give him time out at the front of one store, but he just laughed at us and rolled across the floor, nearly tripping half a dozen shoppers over on his way. In the end I told him he was going straight home to his room and staying there for I-don't-know-how-long-but-it's-going-to-take-a-long-time-for-me-to-calm-down-that's-for-sure. Then I picked him up and marched him to the door of the supermarket where I thrust him at Mr Bea in exchange for Surprise Baby and stormed inside to do my shopping.

I is for In Your Room. Somehow - though I guess it shouldn't surprise me - even though Mr Bea took PB straight home and I went on a detour through the supermarket with a baby for a week's worth of groceries before following them, I still managed to beat them to our front door. When they arrived I gave PB a clipped, "In your room," and ushered him there, and locked the door. With a key. Because these days, it's the only way to ensure the whole time-out process doesn't turn into a prolonged and completely ineffective game of springing in and out, arguing at every turn along the way. Not that giving him time out that far removed from the offense was completely effective to start with, but I suppose it kept me from throttling him at least.

He cried, of course. And yelled.　And banged on the door. None of it was very coherent and all of it was expected, so I gave SB to Mr Bea whilst I went to prepare dinner - sausages and frozen vegies (it was a "no cook" kind of day). Whilst I put the perishable items in the fridge and the sausages in the pan, PB stopped yelling and started singing instead. It was a high-pitched, wavering kind of song, as if he was trying to console himself, so I decided he had served his time and I let him out of his room. He came out waddling and saying he needed to go to the toilet. Turns out he had both wet himself and dirtied his pants.

I am the worst mother in the world.

The worst ever.

L is for Level. That's how I kept my voice when I went in to discuss things with Mr Bea. "I'm going to say something and you may not like it," I began, and before I could draw breath to get out the next bit he cut in.

"You're going to say I'm a terrible father. That I don't know how to handle my son. That I'm unnecessarily mean and nasty to him and that it's my fault he's out of control lately."

"I wasn't going to say that at all," I replied, a little taken aback. I had been thinking it - but about me, not him. "I was going to say that the last thing we need to do tomorrow is visit the zoo." We'd organised to meet friends there for a day out with the kids.

"Do you think that's effective punishment, though?" Mr Bea asked dubiously. "I mean, he misbehaved over an hour ago, and now you're going to tell him he can't go to the zoo tomorrow."

"It's not really about punishment," I said, "although if he chooses to take it that way it's fine by me. But this is about setting him up for success instead of failure." I corrected myself: "It's about setting us all up for success instead of failure. If we go on the zoo trip we'll have to stress to get everyone out of the door early, we'll be taking him to a new place where he doesn't know all the rules and which is exciting enough to erode his currently-limited impulse control. On top of that, we'll be investing not only our money, but our scant reserves of time and energy, which will only serve to raise our expectations of his behaviour. It's a recipe for disaster. It's just not a good idea. We should do something low-key and familiar, just the four of us."

I'd been thinking about the discussion I'd had with his kindy teacher on Friday. I'd been mortified to hear he'd been kicking the other children, but when the teacher told me she'd also had to pull him up for his enthusiastic hugging and kissing (it scares some of his classmates) I figured he just needed some guidance in terms of his interactions with peers. But then she'd told me about the destructive behaviour - kicking of walls and furniture, ripping plastic covers off desks and shredding them to pieces, throwing toys and smashing them around. I think she'd expected me to take issue with him then and there, but instead it had given me pause. "Thanks, I'll talk to him," I'd said, and she'd hesitated, then she'd nodded and said her goodbyes and we'd left. I'd been slowly getting the pieces together since then.

Six months ago he was praised everywhere for his placid and easy-going nature. Sure, he would get a little unsettled if we tried too many things in a row. At one point I had a rule that there would only be half a days' excitement in every forty-eight hours, as it seemed to be all he could handle, but I thought he was growing more resilient with age and experience, and he was cooperative and happy. Then he got a new baby sister. Then he moved into Grandma and Grandad's house for a month. Then he moved overseas. And of course, he turned three, and that never helps. Then we went home for a visit and came back and he started kindy four days a week for the first time and he started swimming lessons one day a week and Surprise Baby started "teething" and we all got tired and cranky and impatient and... somewhere in there we started spiralling out of control. Somewhere along the line it all started coming undone, and it was time to take a step back, simplify, return to basics.

We needed to take Surprise Baby to the doctor, for starters. On the one hand, this was exactly what The Prata Baby went through at the same age and there was nothing to be done about it except survive, but what if? What if we were missing a treatable ear infection or something? It was worth checking out. There were things we could re-organise around the house. Toothbrushes off the bathroom bench, laundry off the couch and into the spare room, breakables in a cupboard or out of reach. I find it hard to deal with regressions, to childproof our house back to when we had an eighteen-month-old because damnit, isn't he supposed to be twice that age now and know better? But backward steps are part of growing up, and we all have the ability to revert to childish behaviour in times of stress. Set him up for success. If you can't stand to pick your clean laundry from fifteen corners of the living room twelve times a day, put it somewhere out of sight and mind. He obviously can't handle the responsibility. And I resolved to take him out of kindy one day a week, at least for now, because these problems always seem to crop up on the fourth day. And I asked Mr Bea to reorganise his work day so he can help me through the bedtime routine because the screaming infant interruptions which happen every ten minutes and take twenty minutes each to resolve can spin it all out til 9pm or later - well past The Prata Baby's bedtime - and that doesn't help at all. And apart from that, I told myself to remember to keep it simple, low-key and familiar. I need to focus on achievable goals. I need to set us all up for success.

That night, last night, I lay down beside him, put my arms around him, and told him I loved him very much. I wanted him to realise I still do, even on the many days I am one big parenting FAIL. He grinned and hugged me back, and we exchanged kisses. But then he ruined it all by whinging about every little thing I did - the speed I sung his bedtime song, the order of the verses, the angle at which I was lying down and how I'd plumped his pillow (to name but a few) - until eventually I sucked a deep breath in through my teeth, kissed him on the forehead, whispered goodnight, and closed the door behind me on the way out. Over the next twenty minutes I listened to him weep himself into a fitful sleep and I didn't really care.

--

W is for Wakeup Time this morning. I told myself to start with a clean slate, but I could feel that some resentment had followed me through to the new day regardless. Try as I might, I could only push it aside so far. When The Prata Baby whined through breakfast - everything I did was wrong - I had to force myself to count and breathe before telling him I couldn't understand him, I could only hear whiny noises. Then when that didn't work I had to force myself to count and breathe again before opining that he must still be tired and what about going back into his room for some extra rest?

"No! I'm not tired!" he yelled.

"Feeling unwell then?" I suggested. "That needs rest, too."

"I'm not sick!" he yelled even more adamantly.

"Oh good," I said calmly. "So if you're not tired or sick, and you have food and drink in front of you so you can't be hungry or thirsty, and you've already been to the toilet this morning so you don't need to do that... then I can't think of a single excuse for you not to talk properly to me." He started whining again. "I'm going to give you three seconds to stop whining before you go to your room," I announced placidly, getting the hang of it now. "One!"

The whining stopped. The resentment dissipated slightly. The next couple of hours weren't too bad.

I is for Incidents. We had a few of them over the course of the day - he threw a toy at his sister and I scooped her up and pointedly left the room, closing the door on his protests. But I had to let him out temporarily with a pang of guilt - did I say pang? was that the understatement of the century? - when he complained that he needed to go to the toilet, and I know we will have to work to re-establish the rules of time out because of where we went wrong yesterday. He got himself into trouble again for hitting his father with a toy and again for biting him, and he had a colossal meltdown before bedtime.

And that is what counts as a WIN these days. I call it a win because at the end of the day it was a soft and gentle voice with which I put my foot down and told him he couldn't possibly need to go to the toilet again, and he left off and fell asleep in my arms.

N is for Never. That's when I get to stop trying anew. That's when I get to stop wiping the slate clean, taking a step back, looking for an untried solution. That's when I should lapse in consistency. That's when I should forget, when I should let him forget, that he still means the world to me. That I'm glad we have him, that it was worse, so much worse, when we didn't know we would.

Questions Three

2011-08-04T23:17:00.007+10:00

Three is the age of questions, so they say, and The Prata Baby has certainly come out with some big ones so far - usually at the most awkward moments. A while back now we were riding the bus when he piped up with, "Mum, is there another little tiny baby in your tummy right now?"

All around us, bemused passengers turned to look pointedly out of their windows. "Right now?" I replied. "No there isn't. Why do you ask?"

"I want there to be another little tiny baby in your tummy," he said with conviction. "A little brother this time." My, my. Thanks for your input, I will take it on board.

It was only a matter of time before the big followup came. "How did Surprise Baby get made?" he asked one day, out of the blue. We were visiting family at the time.

"Um... what?" I responded, intelligently.

"How did she get in there?" he said, pointing, and then as if the question needed further clarification, he immediately rephrased: "How did she get into your tummy?" I told him that it was a bit complicated, and that he should ask me again at bedtime when it was just me and him and I had time to answer properly. He hasn't brought it up since, possibly because someone else got to him first. Later that day, I heard him explain to his toys, on his older cousin's authority, that the Baby Jesus had put Surprise Baby in my tummy. For a while I wondered if I should force a more scientific explanation upon him, but he seems satisfied, and I'll no doubt get my next chance too soon anyway.

Then yesterday, he came out with the hardest one of all, and at the most awkward moment imaginable. We were sitting at home, on the bed, just the two of us, with nowhere in particular to go in any sort of hurry. I saw it coming, like a horrible car crash, knowing that I had no excuse to dodge or escape; that I was going to have to answer in full, to PB's utter and unhurried satisfaction. "Boo used to say Dadda," he stated, repeating something Vee had said a few weeks before on our visit. "But why doesn't he say Dadda any more?"

He was grinning when he asked it, and I saw that smile slip from his lips as he took in my sombre expression. I took a deep breath. "Because a bit over a year ago, Boo's Dadda died," I told him gently, but simply.

"Died?" he asked.

"Yes. He got very sick. So sick, the doctors couldn't make him better again. Then he died. It's very sad."

The Prata Baby cocked his head on one side and considered this information calmly. Then he wanted to know more. Did Boo's Dadda go to hospital? Did they give him medicine? Did he sleep overnight at the hospital? Did the doctors cut his head open? (Mysteriously to us, PB has gained the knowledge that doctors sometimes open people's skulls to perform neurosurgery. The idea has, let's say, stuck with him.) I answered his questions calmly, gently, and truthfully. Yes, he went to hospital. They gave him a lot of medicine. He even slept overnight. But he didn't have the type of sickness that would benefit from having his head cut open so the doctors didn't perform that particular procedure, no.

There was a pause after that, during which PB fiddled thoughtfully with his fingers and I waited patiently for his next response. Eventually he looked up at me, studying my face, as if trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say. Then in a small voice, he asked, "Mum, is Boo's Dadda going to come back to their place?"

And I had to tell him. "No, darling. When people die they don't come back."

Over the last twenty-four hours I've wondered why I didn't think to soften it a bit for him. If I can let him believe, without other explanation, that the Baby Jesus puts babies into people's tummies, surely I can let him believe - without other explanation - that Boo's Dadda "went to heaven" or some such thing. Or perhaps I should have added a few thoughts about the ways in which our loved ones stay with us after they die, even though they are no longer here in the flesh. I'm not sure. He seemed to cope alright with what I said, so perhaps it was best to stay blunt and simple for now. No doubt I'll get my next chance too soon anyway.

Trip

2011-07-27T22:11:00.003+10:00

Last time I visited Vee was the first time I didn't see Max.

That's mostly what I remember from our trip last year. His absence - at least his physical absence - caught me off-guard when I walked through the door, even though I knew (of course) that he was gone. There was something about... seeing him not there. I'd met Vee face to face a handful of times prior to that, and I'd never seen him not there before.

This time it seemed more normal. So did Vee - that is, in a certain manner of speaking. Whenever I see her she seems to be holding it together abnormally well, but last year was especially awe-inspiring. She was not just functioning. She was actually coping. Or perhaps she was just distracted by the way I got so horribly lost I turned up for her home-cooked lunch closer to dinner time, then somehow managed to throw it all around her lounge room. I guess if I was that busy concentrating on remaining graceful and accommodating whilst setting up trundle beds and portacots for my hours-late guest and - I might add - facilitating doctor's visits for her son and then shampooing tomato out of my carpet and easy chair I probably wouldn't have time to fall apart either.

Still, there were brief moments when it bubbled to the surface, and in those moments I wondered how she kept from spilling over. This time, it was... well, the not-spilling-over seemed more like a given. Something she does with ease, every day, but not (I'm sure) all the time.

We visited her home, their home, the one she shared with Max and then also with Boo and then only with Boo, in the final week before she emptied it of its contents and headed for higher ground - higher both geographically and, I hope, emotionally. This time I marked our agreed time of arrival down in my calendar as several hours earlier than our actual agreed time of arrival, totally baffling Vee when I turned up on time babbling about being horribly late. She took some great photos she's not happy with but everyone else is, and she taught me a new recipe which I am yet to try and have so far not thrown onto anyone's carpet. PB enjoyed being at Boo's house even better than riding on the bus or giving Surprise Baby "train rides" in her cot around the hotel room or even chasing helpless pigeons whilst making a horrid, loud, and highly irritating screeching noise, which I thought was his favourite thing ever. And we enjoyed ourselves, too.

Thanks, Vee - you're a wonderful host and an amazing woman. And despite what you might feel, a darn fine photographer, too.

Transform. Exchange. Repair.

2011-07-21T21:11:00.005+10:00

To heal, first and foremost, you have to want to heal. It sounds trite, and more than a little dismissive, as if everyone hurting is doing it on purpose for the attention, or perhaps to annoy. The thing is, some of the time we are doing it on purpose, but usually for a different reason. We carry our grief, our anger, and our resentment for further than is necessary when we haven't yet decided what to do with it. We have, after all, paid dearly for our pain. It's not reasonable to expect us to part with it easily, even though it is ugly and burdensome. Tossing it aside - "letting go" or "moving on" - is not our goal. Instead, we seek a transformation; a suitably valuable exchange.

A friend asked me this week to talk with her about IVF, as it has just been recommended to her as a course of treatment. How does she feel? I haven't met up with her yet, but from initial accounts, not great. She tells me I don't have to agree to the discussion - perhaps I'd rather not go over that period of my life again. Perhaps I am trying to put it behind me, to forget. I tell her that is not the case. I want her to understand that if I can transform any part of my sorrows into something that helps her along her path, we can both end up closer to healed.

And the truth is, I am ready to be healed. It took a long time after the birth of The Prata Baby for the process to start - I had to consciously set the task aside for a while in order to focus on caring for a newborn, and I think I underestimated the amount of damage I'd sustained. I was going well, you see, I was coping ok with our infertility in the leadup to his conception. I mistook that for being able to, afterwards, listen to conversations on gender disappointment or ideal age gaps without wanting to snap people's heads off, either figuratively or literally, and I was wrong. These days, however, it almost warms me to hear such naivety, as if I'm reassured by the notion that some parts of the world, at least, are running as we'd like them to run. And there is a practical sense in which infertility has lost its hold on me. Yes, we still have to go back for those frozen embryos, but since Surprise Baby's birth I have been feeling fully content with our lot and willing to surrender the rest to the will of the unknown*.

But I'm worried about this meeting, all the same. My friend already has a honeymoon baby, and is experiencing secondary infertility, which I have never really known. Second time around, I found it far, far easier to front up to the fertility specialist and set the wheels in motion, and everything fell into place a short time later. I am trying, in advance, not to shrug her off because of that. I am trying to remember that she isn't pre-adjusted to her membership in the infertility club like I was when we started trying for number two, that it's the first time around for her on this crazy, sometimes terrifying ride. And that anyway, she's not me, and can't be expected to react in exactly the same way as me at all times.

So I'm trying to figure out what I can possibly say - if, indeed, I am called upon to say anything at all other than, "Hmm... oohhh... gosh... dear me..." which, I suppose I mustn't forget, is entirely possible. Does she want practical information about medications or procedures? Does she need help deciding which path to take? Is she expecting me to give her some magic balm to make the confusion go away, because honestly, I don't have one, despite my prior experience and a great deal of wishing one into existence for the benefit of myself and others. All I have is the belief that she will, on a day too far away into the future, find herself smiling to hear fertile folk talk of trivial concerns, her heart warming with the reassurance that some part of the world, at least, is running as she'd like it to run. A belief that someday, she will find herself ready and willing to transform the pain she is now feeling into something better, to exchange it for something equally valuable, but much more gratifying.

Your input is appreciated.

--
*This may change. We'll see.

Boots and all

2011-04-27T21:46:00.006+10:00

I am putting the final touches on our moving arrangements - we are due to reunite with Mr Bea in Singapore next week - and today, I gave away my boots.

I have to explain to you that these are great boots. I bought them a smidge before IVF Jul/Aug '07 - the one which resulted in our first live birth - and I have continued to like them ever since. They are just so me. Whenever I look at them... sorry, looked at them... it hurts a fraction to speak of them in past tense but I should start doing so... Whenever I looked at them I wondered where they'd been all my life. As someone whose wardrobe has long been plagued by well-meant gifts, hand-me-downs, regrettable shopping choices and Things My Mother Would Like To See Me In, it was refreshing to have something that was so seamlessly connected to the person I believe I really am. I mean, I loved these boots. I just couldn't keep them anymore.

We're moving to Singapore, for one thing. I don't know if you know much about Singapore, but if you know anything at all, what you probably know is that it's stifling, sticky hot. Not really boot-scootin' terrain. More like mould-growing terrain, in fact - with leather goods being a prime target for said mould, as I found out during our first stay before getting rid of almost all of our leather goods. If I'd taken those boots to Singapore they would have done nothing but sit in the cupboard creating housework for me, and I'm too busy for that. Anyone's too busy for that.

"But you could keep them here in case you want to wear them on a visit," MIL kindly offered, as I took them from the cupboard and held them in a sad and lingering gaze. But no. The stiletto heels are not the kind that will allow me to carry my infant or chase my toddler with the necessary ease. It will be several years before I am able to wear such things again, and who knows where I'll be or what may happen in the meantime. I can't hang on to them any longer. They suit me, but not this phase of my life.

I put them in the car and drove them around with me all day on my errands, looking at them whenever I had the chance, wondering if I was really going to do it. Eventually my errands took me to the house of a friend, to whom I explained my situation.

"Show me these boots," he said, and I did. "Wow. They are great boots, and in really good nick, too. I'm actually kind of sorry they're not in my size. Are you really going to give them away?" And I explained my reasoning, the move to Singapore, the kids, and he nodded and agreed that it all made sense. Then he said, "You know where they sell a lot of this kind of thing? The Vinnies at West End." Aha. A charity thrift shop in a trendy suburb where lots of young student and arty types hang out. He offered to come with me.

When we arrived it was raining and Surprise Baby had fallen asleep in her seat, so I gave my friend the boots and let him off whilst I circled the block. Afterwards, he relayed that the shop had had a run on boots lately with the onset of winter, and had completely sold out earlier that day. The girl at the counter had seemed very pleased for the donation and had assured him that they would quickly find a good owner.

I'm not really writing this post for the boots, of course. When I got home, there was a bill for me in the mail, from the fertility clinic, for the next six months' worth of semen storage. We had it stored the first time we moved to Singapore, to help solve any logistical problems with long-distance cycling, and also - secretly - to allay my fear that Mr Bea's sperm count was on a one-way expedition to Zerodom, and we were fast running out of chances. We have never used it. Now that we have two children and a bit more confidence in our sperm count I have to ask myself - why are we holding on to something that is doing nothing but sitting around, unused, creating work (to the tune of $450/year) for us? Are we really so committed to having a third child that we will pay that money over just in case we want to do another IVF cycle and Mr Bea's count drops to zero - both of which, frankly, seem unlikely? The answer - I'm pretty sure the answer - is no. It has always been yes up til now. Up til now, I have always been the kind of person who will spend $450 on that kind of insurance against not having the fullest possible range of family-building options.

I still am that kind of person, really. Just in a different phase of my life.

Even when the answer is obvious, it's hard to let go. I sit here gazing at the bill with the same sad, lingering look I gave to my favourite boots only earlier today, not quite ready to take the final plunge. Maybe I just need to drop in on an old friend who will give me the confidence to go through with my plans. Will you come with me when I phone the clinic?

There Should Be A Reference To A Nineties Grunge Song Here

2011-03-08T15:56:00.008+10:00

First of all, I would like to thank the collective artists of nineties' grunge for making a vast array of music that reliably puts newborn babies to sleep within the first couple of verses - if not bars - of each song, and keeps them that way. Then, I would like to curse the collective artists of nineties' grunge for adding so many swear words and adult themes to their music that I can't play it in front of my toddler for fear that he will start singing his great-grandmother rather colourful pieces about masturbation.

**

I would like to say that Surprise Baby is more settled than The Prata Baby was at the same age, and to some extent I think that's genuinely true. Number of times she has screamed as if having a limb amputated whilst preparing to dirty her nappy: zero, just to choose one example. But undoubtedly part of it is the benefit of experience, that is, mine. It works in two ways. Most directly, I have learned a trick or two. PB was - what? - six or perhaps even eight weeks old before we discovered the magic of grunge, whereas this time we have enjoyed its benefits from the very beginning, even if we have had to scramble to clean up the playlist a little. Or a lot. But even where things are unfolding much the same as before and there's little I can do to alter them, I find myself better off. For instance, when the Prata Baby was three weeks old, I suffered constant frustration due to my unfulfilled expectations of daytime naps. This time I have no such expectations. I am, therefore, experiencing a relatively benign sense of resignation as I walk continuously around the house wearing SB in a sling, wishing I'd bought the for-radio version of International Superhits! by Green Day. As if "bleep masturbation" is really a more suitable serenade for Great Grandma.

**

So far, PB is adjusting well. I have heard a lot of people advocate age gaps of less than two years because you don't want your eldest to "get used to" being an only child. I have concluded that this is bollocks. There are good reasons in favour of small age gaps, and perhaps the above is a fair reason for not wanting an unusually large gap, and at the end of the day I find the whole "ideal spacing" discussion kind of tiresome and irrelevant on account of the infertility and the being glad to have subsequent children at all, but I distinctly remember PB screaming in anguish when, at fifteen months, he saw me holding someone else's baby, whereas these days he seems more or less fine with it. At less than two years, PB desired my exclusive attention in a way he just doesn't anymore. These days, he is Mr Independent, Mr Helpful, and Mr Sociable all rolled into one. His catch phrases are, "I want to do it by myself!" and "I want to help!" and "Hello! Come play with me!" Far from being "used to" having the household to himself and peeved that this is no longer the case, he is, instead, at an age where he is developmentally ready to share life with a younger sibling. Or at least one who spends a large part of the day sleeping, and who doesn't try to play with his toys. I'll let you know how this pans out over the medium term. If things deteriorate, an unedited grunge playlist may not be the biggest threat to our social interactions with Great Grandma.

**

We are fine here, if busy. There's only a few weeks left before Mr Bea and all our household goods leave for Singapore, and the rest of us leave for my parents' house. We'll be following in early May, the idea being that Mr will have organised a house and unpacked at least the more vital of our possessions by then. I'm already behind on blog news, I'm likely to get even further out of touch over the next few months, and for both those things I apologise. This community has meant a lot to me, especially the continued friendship and support I've received during this too-good-to-be-true journey to our second child, and particularly considering what some of you have been through over that same period of time. I'll do my best, and we'll catch up properly sooner or later, though I hope it's sooner. In the meantime... you know, there should be a reference to a nineties grunge song here, but they're all so angry, and these days, I don't have a reason to be.

There's a new post up at Prata Baby, too.

Moot (A Birth Story)

2011-02-20T21:46:00.008+10:00

Almost a week ago, I was waiting for someone to call me about an induction date, whilst trying to figure out how to negotiate my way through our various options with BOB. My deliberations, however, soon became moot - like many parts of this surprising journey. The carefully-laid plans for an FET. The alternative birth options we researched and living arrangements we put in place when floods overtook our city, leaving us to evacuate our house in the eighth month of this pregnancy. The backup sleeping spots I organised in case the bassinet mattress failed to arrive in time. All moot, to name but a few.

Because the FET never had to happen, and the floods subsided, leaving our house high and dry and pregnancy intact, and the bassinet mattress turned up more than half a week past our estimated due date but days before the baby arrived. And in the case of my ponderings over the induction, they were moot because labour started later that night, and by the morning our little girl was safely in our arms.

Let me tell that bit to you from the start.

In Monday's report, I mentioned that I was having haphazard cramps, kind of like period pains. And that I had become so irritable and fed up with The Prata Baby, who wasn't really misbehaving, that I had called Mr Bea home from work an hour early to give me a break. Around ten pm, whilst watching TV, I noticed that the cramps were becoming more intense. I found myself closing my eyes until they passed, but they were irregular, and I was still able to keep one ear on the program in front of me. I decided, however, that things were starting to get underway, and that it was a good time to catch some sleep before I lost the chance. I had a shower and went to bed. I ordered Mr Bea to bed, too. Ordered, apparently. He said that, in hindsight, it was a sign he should have heeded more seriously. I may not have been doubled over with pain or breaking my waters throughout the house, but I was irritable and bossy and that should have been a warning. He's probably right.

Somewhere around midnight, having dozed on and off for nearly two hours, I started absent-mindedly counting contractions. When I woke up properly, around one, to go to the toilet, I calculated that they were probably coming around ten minutes apart. Or not, depending on how reliable you thought my counting had been, given that I was three-quarters asleep. Then I lost the mucous plug, and I decided to tell the entire internet about it before going back to bed, and sleep. But my plans were never carried through, because when I stood up I had a succession of rather intense contractions quite close together, which I rode out in various positions in the living room. When things quietened down a little, I decided to wake Mr Bea.

Mr Bea was quite reluctant to be woken. I got extremely frustrated with him and started bossing him around forcefully, which didn't work either. He was wandering around in a daze, taking ten minutes to complete simple requests that should have taken one, whining and arguing the point every step of the way. At about 1:30 I asked him to bring me the cordless phone and after I wheedled the action out of him (it took maybe ten minutes), I rung the hospital to speak with someone about when, possibly, I should come in. Mr Bea's attitude changed slightly at this point - apparently he had not realised that I was in labour. He must have thought I was waking him in the middle of the night and asking him to gather hospital supplies for kicks or... look, the guy was half asleep, let's not judge. We can all be really, alarmingly dense between one and two in the morning.

As soon as somebody answered the phone on the other end, the contractions started to ease off. I spoke to the midwife for a while, as she timed the duration and frequency of a few contractions, and tried to assess their intensity from my tone of voice over the phone. I could still speak through most of them, and through the others I was taking deep, slow breaths or producing softly audible sighs. She told me I should get my parents around to take over care of The Prata Baby, and maybe have a snack to eat whilst I waited for their arrival. She suggested toast. I thought toast sounded great, so I asked Mr Bea to make me some and this time, he got right onto it. I was to call them back when we were ready to start in.

On my way to the kitchen, things picked up. I dropped onto my hands and knees twice before I reached the end of the hallway, and one contraction was so strong it sent shudders through my body. I used the hypnobirthing techniques I'd gleaned from the book - deep breathing and visualisation. In my mind, I pictured my cervix as a big, shiny ribbon, gently unravelling before my eyes. I pictured my body dissolving, leaving only the sensations of labour, then I focussed on causing the sensations of labour to dissolve away, too.

When I got to the kitchen, toast sounded less appealing than a cool shower to take the sweat off my suddenly-heated body, so I made my way to the bathroom and hopped in. I worried briefly about how I would look to my parents when they arrived, and then a new series of contractions sent me to my knees in the tub. These ones were powerful enough to make me switch to the vocalisation techniques we'd gone through in yoga class. I opened my mouth and produced a low "aaaahhh" sound, sliding it down through the scale like a trombone. I remember feeling compelled to press forcefully against the bathtub with my arms, and I knew I should head for the hospital, but I wasn't really sure how to get out of the tub. I tried to plan a sequence of movements in my head, but it was hard to concentrate with the contractions coming one of top of each other as they were.

Then all of a sudden - it didn't seem like more than a few minutes later - I felt a change. And all at once, I knew these concerns were moot, too.

Mr Bea was hovering uncertainly by the bath, bringing me the news that my toast was ready. "I feel like pushing," I said simply. He made some sort of alarmed noise, but I didn't hear what he said, because I was having another contraction. I fought my instinct to push upwards with my arms and say "aaaahhh" and instead lowered my chest and puffed, to slow things down. When I could talk again, I said, "It's alright. It's fine. Everything's ok."

It's always amazed me how well that technique works. If you ever feel like taking charge of a situation that has everyone in a tizz, follow this advice: appear calm, authoritative and reassuring. Tell everyone firmly that things are under control, no matter what the truth may be. They will instantly decide - although decide isn't quite the word; the reaction is less deliberative than that - to follow your every instruction. Immediately, and without fuss or question. Try it and see.

I assured Mr Bea that everything was okay, then after a short pause (to allow this hard-wired human reaction to take effect) I went on to say, "I want you to go into the living room and get the cordless phone and bring it straight back in here." He left. Immediately, and without fuss or question. I had another contraction. This time, I felt the baby moving down the birth canal and knew we didn't have much time.

"Can you see anything?" I asked when he got back. He told me he couldn't see much - just some blood. "Okay. I want you to remove the redback spider from the wall in front of me."

"The what?"

"The redback spider. There is a redback spider crawling around in our bathtub in front of me. Please get it out." After a moment of stunned disbelief, he did this, whilst I had another contraction. Puff, puff, puff. Soon I could speak again.

"I want you to call triple O and ask for an ambulance," I told him.

He started dialling. I heard him give our address as I fought my instinct to bear down during the next contraction. Then I heard him say he could see the head. This seemed to alarm him somewhat, and he started shouting in exasperation at the person on the other end of the line, who was obviously still going through the initial, routine questions. "What? How old is my wife? I can see the baby's head! It's happening really fast!" he was saying.

A new contraction started, and I knew there was no way I could keep her inside any longer. "The head is coming," I said to Mr Bea, and I eased her out as gently as I could.

"The head is out!" he shouted down the phone.

And I asked him, "Are you ready to catch the baby?" I think I asked him several times, and I never really listened to the answer, but I heard him get into the bathtub behind me and I saw him under my armpit, ready and waiting with arms outstretched.

There was one more contraction and Surprise Baby was born. "Have you got her? Is she pink? How's her breathing?" I asked Mr Bea. I heard muffled infant noises.

"The cord's around her neck," he said urgently, and I turned to look and saw that it wasn't, really, it was going over her shoulder and around the back of her neck, well away from her windpipe.

"It's fine, it's not obstructing her airway," I assured him, but I had to say it several times. "Give her to me and grab that towel." He did. I unwound the cord in order to bring her to my chest and bundled her up, wiping her mouth and nose with the towel as she stared up at me in wide-eyed disbelief. Mr Bea was talking down the phone again.

"She's making soft noises. Yes, my wife's doing that. Yes, she's doing that, she's doing that. Um, I don't know, we haven't checked yet..." I checked... "A girl, it's a girl. Thanks. Yes. Ha!" He was babbling with relief, and grinning wildly. Then, "I have to go and let the ambulance guys in," he said to me, and he took off up the hallway to the front door.

There's not too much more to tell. The ambulance guys came in, they clamped the cord, they checked us both over, placed the very Adam and Eve of all maternity pads under me and escorted us to the ambulance waiting outside. They suggested they snap us a quick picture. Then Surprise Baby - how aptly named! - and I took off for the hospital whilst Mr Bea made a cup of tea to go with my uneaten - but still slightly warm - toast, and waited for my parents to arrive.

The Prata Baby, bless his tender little heart, slept through the whole thing.

Thus endeth the tale.

Surprise Baby

2011-02-18T13:00:00.002+10:00

Baby girl, born early Tuesday morning, all is well with everyone. Full details to come - but didn't want to leave you hanging any longer!

Progress

2011-02-15T00:51:00.002+10:00

Definitely getting there. Contractions about ten minutes apart, just lost the mucous plug. Not rushing anywhere yet, but might not update again before we go (never did look up that twitter password/etc). See you on the flipside, I suppose.

Stretch and Sweep

2011-02-14T17:13:00.002+10:00

There's only so many ways you can compose a post to say, "Nup." I have, therefore, largely refrained. Today, however, I had a marginally more exciting stretch and sweep and we discussed booking an induction in case that doesn't work. (The receptionist was supposed to ring me back to tell me which day we were going to make that, exactly, only she hasn't, so I'll have to chase her tomorrow. Sometime towards the end of the week, only, hopefully not because hopefully things will happen before we get to that point.)

Here's the thing. Last time, as you probably don't recall, I had the stretch and sweep and the prostin gel at the same time and it all kicked off nicely. This time BOB says there's no point in using the gel because the cervix is already nice and soft and ready to go (apparently he can stretch my cervix out to 4cm without any trouble at all, by which I presume he meant trouble on his part) so the gel won't really won't add anything to a stretch and sweep. And I'm sure he's not making that up or anything. He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who likes to make up medical facts for fun, or because he's too lazy to ask someone where they keep the prostin and can he grab some, please.

But it's hard to shake the thought that it worked so well last time and I guess I'm just not a big fan of going straight from here to ARM or a pitocin drip and I'm wondering... can it hurt to humour the batty patient? So I'm rehearsing a little speech in my head where we do it anyway, just for fun, just in case it's the mystery ingredient my body needs to nudge it into labour, and see where that takes us for an hour or two (it worked within an hour or two last time) and then we can maybe move on with his plan if need be. It can't be - in fact, it isn't, from what he told me about the reasons for his running over an hour late this morning - the craziest thing he's heard all week.

At the same time, if he's right and it wasn't actually the gel last time (and my body responds similarly this time) then I should be in labour any moment now from the stretch and sweep alone. It's not completely out of the question - although I have to say I'm not obviously in labour like I was this many hours after the stretch+sweep+gel combo of yore - because I have been having haphazard... cramps? dare I say contractions? often enough to call Mr Bea home early from work and help out with the bedtime routine. Not because I am physically incapacitated, as such, but because the cramps are strong enough that I am getting rapidly fed up with being crashed into, pestered, pummeled, whined at, or otherwise interfered with in the middle of them. I mean, heaven forbid I try to close my eyes and breath deeply during a particularly sharp one. I will instantly get my eyes poked and Somebody will shout in my ear, "Mum! Mum! Don't pretend to sleep, Mum! Muuuuuuum!" and after several hours of this sort of thing I was starting to go... well, it was ruining my Zen. So Mr Bea is doing teeth cleaning and I am taking a break and he will finish off his last hour of work from home later on, when all is a little more peaceful and icecreamful.

Which is something that will only happen if I duck off now to acquire said icecream.

I'll let you know if anything escalates, or if someone calls me back with an induction date, or whatever. 40w8d, and heading for the end game...

Nothing

2011-02-08T13:18:00.004+10:00

I am mainly posting because people are asking for updates. I don't actually have an update, however, so this is more of a non-update.

Nothing has happened. The plan is still the same - if still nothing by next Monday we might start doing things. And then if that doesn't work I guess we'll do other things. And in the meantime I have googled the sorts of things we can do on our own, and have started doing a lot of them.

Sorry to get you all going with news of contractions, but that doesn't seem to have led anywhere at this stage. My to-do list now contains items such as "review superannuation", so... mainly thumb twiddling... although I am still waiting on that bassinet mattress... we'll see... 40w2d and signing off...

Embryos Unlimited

2011-02-04T22:30:00.006+10:00

I have just paid our latest embryo storage bill.

Did you know that in some states of Australia, embryo storage times are limited, perhaps to as little as five years? Or at least they were last time I heard, which was admittedly several years ago now. You might like to check my facts.

The point is, I just paid our latest embryo storage bill, and in doing so I paused for a moment, because in so many other ways I live in the conservative backwaters of assisted reproductive and alternative family-building legislation. I'm not trying to imply you can't use third party reproductive techniques (including surrogacy), adopt, or become a homosexual or single parent, but our brothers and sisters in other regions seem to fare much more easily on those fronts. When it comes to storing embryos, on the other hand, well, bless us one and all. As long as I pay the fees, they'll stay in the freezer, no questions asked. Which means that if, for example, one has embryos left over from a disastrous OHSS cycle performed in early 2006, which generated enough almost-rans to sink most reasonable people into some degree of panic, depression and/or financial disarray, such that it was decided to start fresh in mid-2007 and leave those last embryos for a later, saner time, which - praise be! - ended up being necessarily deferred until after the birth of a healthy child and then - praise and also astonishment be! - until sometime after the birth of another, completely unexpected surprise baby... just to pluck a set of circumstances from thin air... if this were to happen to you, and you weren't particularly keen to up and bin the whole batch on the spot just because some bureaucrat couldn't see why it would possibly take anyone longer than five years to use a frozen embryo, you don't have to jump through any legislative hoops or fill in any forms explaining your circumstances or justifying your decisions in triplicate to any legislative body in order to have your wishes granted, especially when you might have other things to do like, maybe, give birth*.

You just have to pay your bill. And they stay right where they are, in the freezer. As they should.

--
*Or not. I did have mild, yet regular contractions for an hour or so last night, between about 3:30 and 4:30am - about 30s each, about 5-10mins apart - but that all seems to have gone by the wayside. Bets are still wide open. My eyes, on the other hand, are not. Sleep awaits.

Wall

2011-02-01T15:06:00.003+10:00

My to-do list is looking decidedly undaunting all of a sudden. Perhaps it's because of this that I feel as if I've hit a bit of a wall the last few days. I think I'm starting to recover - I suspect I just need a couple of afternoon naps.

There is no news. Surprise Baby still looks fine at 39w2d and is even back in an optimal position, after a brief flirt with a posterior presentation last week. BOB advises that the risks of induction are lower for women with a proven record of vaginal delivery, which is heartening, although he is still inclined to wait it out til after 41 weeks to give things a chance to start off on their own - all other things being equal, of course. Then (as long as conditions look favourable) he'd probably start with stretches and sweeps and the like before moving on to anything more serious, or keep waiting til 42 weeks, whichever we prefer/seems appropriate at the time. I think stretches and sweeps from 41+ weeks under favourable conditions sounds fine based on our discussion today. So that's where we're at. Current plan is two more weeks for things to hurry themselves along, and then we start nudging. If we get to that point. I'll keep you posted.

For those who follow Prata Baby there is a new post up there, too. Behind the password as it discusses infertility stories of friends who have not given permission to be publicly blogged about.

Shopping and prepping (part two)

2011-01-27T20:24:00.003+10:00

Thanks for all the feedback so far. It's been very reassuring.

Clothing:

I have enough hand-me-downs from Nephew to cover the clothing angle in the short term. I might need a couple more lightweight things as Nephew was born in a colder season, but I suspect MIL will be onto that before the first week is out (she probably already has a gender-neutral pile going and is just waiting to find out the sex so she can really go on a spree), so I'm not too worried.

Feeding:

Last time I got by with just breast. I do have a manual pump and a couple of bottles if need be and I even know where they are. Mr Bea can pull them out and wash them off at a moment's notice, and if I need anything more motorised I know where to get it as I go along. Burp cloths and bibs - check. I even found my warm-or-cool gel packs and I have nipple cream because I've been using it as lip balm for the last couple of years. Other people do that, right?

Sleeping:

Yeeeeeees. Well. Although you can house babies in drawers and cardboard boxes, we are hard up in both directions. We left a lot of our furniture (the stuff we're not taking with us in the move) under my Grandmother's house after the whole flood debacle, including pretty much all our drawers. Our cardboard boxes are mostly full of spiders by now, although I'm sure Mr Bea would take one for the team by consuming enough beer at short notice to empty out a sparkly fresh one, and although we have a bassinet, the mattress went moldy in all the rain and as it's an unusual size and what with all the businesses that have had to close up shop temporarily due to inundation, we may not have a new one for up to two weeks (it is currently on order). For those counting along at home, this is half a week past our estimated date. On the up side, MIL owns a portacot, so again I am not too worried - unless you count the fact that we don't really have room for a portacot. I seem to recall The Prata Baby mostly using our bed during the first couple of months anyway. I'm sure it'll work out. At least we are ok for sheets etc.

Calming:

The first time around, I didn't realise this was a whole category on its own, and a really, really important one at that. For some reason, the baby shopping lists I had led me astray. However:

- muslins, check
- miracle blanket, check
- vibrating bouncer, check
- sarong sling and ergo, check
- dummy, check
- iPod and speakers, nineties' grunge playlist, check
- rocking chair... hm... I seem to remember this being exquisitely useful last time around, and although I have the fitball so I can at least rest my legs, I might have to look into buying and/or hiring one, if I can work out where to put it.

Outings:

We have both a car seat and stroller that can be used from newborn, although the former has not yet been installed, but that's quickly sorted. I'm not sure I'm ready to lose the spare seat in our car for another week or so, til I'm more confident we've finished carting items around.

Changing and bathing:

I need to pick up a bath from my SIL which I will do tomorrow. I am actually more worried about where the rest of us will bathe, since our bathtub (we have a shower-over-bath) CRACKED FROM SIDE TO SIDE and water pours out through our floorboards whenever it is turned on now. This is happening to us two months before a major renovation project which involves completely dismantling the bathroom, and I am still trying to decide if I need to do anything about it and if so, what. Feel free to give your opinion.

Back to babies, however - I seem to have a lot of free samples of soaps and nappy creams, enough so that I am pretty much good for the next couple of months. I have one hooded towel, plus our ordinary towels, and I am inclined to leave it at that. I have facewashers.

I have plenty of cloth wipes for messy jobs and a few packets of disposables. I have a couple of packs of disposable nappies - I am planning to return to cloth, but not until after all the moving is over and done with, especially considering the latest post-partum business trip developments happening over here. (To keep tally - flood evacuation, birth, house falling down around us, moving internationally, business trips/temporary single parenting, major renovation. Maybe I should throw a major course of study into the mix, or...?) I have the change mat from the nappy bag, and am thinking I'll just use that on the bed rather than try and get fancy with change tables etc. I may have to think about how to organise all the stuff so I can use it easily. Shoeboxes, perhaps. Somebody, somewhere, must have a spare shoebox.

I might need a few Q-tips.

First Aid:

- thermometer, check
- standard first aid kit, check
- there's not a lot else you can give a newborn without proper, medical supervision, although for what it's worth I do also have infant panadol. I found gas drops to be useless last time - I know some swear by them - but I am not planning to restock ~~until~~ unless I get desperate enough to want to try anything.
- relevant contact numbers, check

Playtime:

A couple of people have given us toys, there's a toy rail on the bouncer, The Prata Baby will hopefully share some of his more suitable items, and also provide live entertainment. Right?

So to recap:
I should think about getting a rocking chair. Or, I dunno, borrow parents' hammock, since the front verandah is about the only space it could possibly go anyway, and then only if I remove a side-table and chair.
Buy packet of Q-tips. Pick up hand-me-down bath.

Unless someone can think of something else, that seems pretty sorted. Hurrah!

Preparing For Baby

2011-01-26T19:36:00.003+10:00

Summary: I ask for help with my newborn shopping list.

So I did it. I unpacked the house again, and it is so much better because it is now devoid of a number of pieces of clutter that would have just made my life harder if they'd still been around.

So now I am starting to set things up for this baby we're probably bringing home (it feels good to say that, even with the precautionary "probably") in a couple of weeks' time or whenever (!). The fact is, I got rid of most of our baby stuff when we moved from Singapore. I couldn't bear to ship and store something I might never use again, and I stand by that decision - some of it would have broken or spoiled, and all of it would have detracted from my mental health. Not only that, but now I've unpacked what's left, I can't for the life of me think what the rest of it actually was.

I mean, I have hardly any baby stuff here, yet I really don't know what else I could possibly need. Am I missing something? What have I forgotten? At this stage, I really only want the bare essentials to get us through the first couple of months, because (after all) we are moving again come April. (Did I update you on when that was happening? It's going to be April. Actually, the house should be packed up in late March, Mr Bea will go to Singapore to set things up and we will go to my parents' house for a month, and then go to Singapore in late April or possibly early May. By the end of May I should be very, very good at moving. And quite, quite disinclined to accumulate unnecessary stuff.)

So for those who've done it before and can remember better than me: what's on your "essentials" list? I'm a bit worried I've missed something vital and I'd rather sort it out before the birth.

Blue Like Yours

2011-01-25T05:53:00.007+10:00

Summary: a short list of what's going on now, followed by musings on eye colours and what it means to be family. Lots of mentions of children and pregnancy.

***Appointment update** - went well. Boring. Fine. Hurrah! ***

News in brief:

I am almost finished unpacking the house again. Just over a week to unpack a house after a move is some kind of record. I may even get around to doing up a hospital bag before labour begins.
I have my thirty-eight week OB appointment later today. I'll let you know.
Everything is rapidly going moldy and mildewy in the post-flood heat and humidity. Everyone here is battling it. The Prata Baby's mattress and the one from the bassinet have both fallen victim, amongst other things. Every time I turn around there is more growing on the walls or ceiling. Incredible. Insane. Inconvenient. I am just flat out keeping up with myself at the moment and my to-do list keeps on growing.

The Prata Baby and I were chatting at the supermarket yesterday, and for some reason we got onto the subject of eye colour. I asked what colour eyes he thought the new baby would have, and he said blue, like him. I agreed that this was possible, and then mused that they could be a different colour, too - perhaps brown, like Dad's? Or Hazel? The Prata Baby affirmed his guess of blue, and went on to opine that the new baby's Dad would have green eyes. I stopped and peered at him. "The new baby's Dad is your Dad," I explained carefully. "You'll have the same Dad."

Whoa. Whoa. Obviously this hadn't occurred to him. There was a moment of stunned silence, followed by a rather longer period of thoughtful fingernail-picking. Then PB tentatively asked about the new baby's Mum and I had to break it to him that he'd be sharing one of those, too. Blue, brown, hazel or green - he was prepared to accept the outcome. But the realisation that someone else would have the same Mum and Dad as him? It, like, totally blew his mind.

I used to think I'd be sensitive to conversations about where my children got what genetic traits from. Apart from a sort of general squeamishness on behalf of those who wouldn't be passing on their genes, I wasn't sure if a hypothetical Next Child would be genetically related to the same extent as the first. I remember having a complete change of perspective the first time The Prata Baby met my Grandmother. To my grandmother, idle chit-chat over eye colour is for amateurs. Even before she and PB met, she had dug out a pile of family photos showing infants around the same age, and was keen to lay them on the table and hold them up one by one, analysing everything from general build to subtle facial expressions. And that's not counting all the other information she'd collected about our family history, no matter how old or peripherally-relevant.

All of a sudden I knew she would do the same no matter where the child had come from. Whether we'd conceived with the help of donors or adopted from The Philippines, she'd be there with pictures and books and magazines, retelling and guessing and predicting and - above all - looking for commonalities between the child and ourselves. She has a very loose definition of family, my Grandmother. To her, it's not so much about blood ties as about showing up and joining in. To her, discussions of this type are about finding connections, rather than separating "us" from "them".

Perhaps I would feel different if our family had been built differently after all, but since then I'm not sensitive about discussing the baby's eye colour. Even the Prata Baby knows it doesn't really matter who shares that.

Diary of a flood evacuee - the final installment

2011-01-17T21:05:00.003+10:00

We got back in last night, albeit without internet access.

I am buggered. Absolutely buggered. Thirty-seven weeks pregnant in the middle of summer is not the time I'd recommend to move house twice within the space of a week. In fact, moving house twice within the space of one week is insane under most circumstances. Nevertheless, it has all been good, the flood did not actually reach us after all, I am overwhelmed at the amount of support we received, and we are probably three quarters of the way towards putting it all back together again. Then we really must start getting ready for this baby.

Despite everything, I actually feel as if, personally, I've had a good week. Others obviously not so lucky... but as far as our four (thankfully flood-free) walls are concerned, the care we've been shown far outweighs the inconvenience we've experienced.

I have not been able to read blogs much these last few days. Please update me! Whilst I shower and crash into bed.

Diary of a flood evacuee

2011-01-14T07:10:00.004+10:00

In the end, the flood waters were a lot less severe through our town than the worst predictions. This was, basically, because the weather stopped dumping torrential rain on our catchment areas at just the right time, allowing the hydologists to stop releasing water from the upstream dam. The dam was already doing a lot to spare us from the more dangerous flash flooding which occurred upstream and in other parts of the state, and in the end it was able to spare us from waters high enough to reach our house, as well. Our neighbour, who elected to stay (their house has three stories compared to our one - still, they stayed up til high tide at 4am Thursday morning just in case they needed to pile into the car and leave), reports that the flood waters stopped a good block or so away and are now receding.

Earlier, they were talking about the possibility of more flooding with the king tide next week, but as the waters reached us, the media stopped discussing anything that wasn't of immediate concern. I think, now that we've experienced our longest period without rain since... gosh - in months? - and the medium-term forecast is looking a bit more accurate, this concern has subsided. However, I am having trouble getting confirmation on this. Apart from the same, basic desire to know what's going to happen next that everyone must be experiencing, my nesting mind wants to know when we should put everything back in preparation for the birth. At present - and due to the absolutely amazing efforts of our helpers who whisked the entire contents of our house away between dinner time on Tuesday and lunch time on Wednesday - it is squirreled away in four separate locations across a twenty kilometre radius and I don't really know what's where. On the plus side, I think I can actually get to the hospital I'm booked into again now, and possibly even meet my own obstetrician if need be. Yesterday it was looking very much like my choices were either telephone-guided home care, or nearest emergency room. Which is not the worst possible set of choices, but "in person with own OB at intended hospital" is much better.

At any rate, today is going to be a day for cleaning. The extreme humidity this summer has caused (I discovered once the house was empty) mildew to grow behind most of our furniture, and there doesn't seem much else for me to do today except keep an ear on the radio and take the opportunity to scrub down the walls. And maybe try to find where I left my shorts. Or at least Mr Bea's shorts, which fit me nicely at the moment. And the Prata Baby's kiddy toothpaste, which he misses very much.

Evacuated

2011-01-12T19:38:00.003+10:00

Everyone and pretty much everything is safe and dry. With predictions getting ever more optimistic, at this point it looks like it will all be wasted effort, but never mind! We will sit it out for a few days and see what happens and make plans from there.

Evacuating

2011-01-11T17:31:00.003+10:00

The latest flood reports are predicting levels well above 1974 levels. We have decided to self-evacuate, tonight and tomorrow morning. If one more person instructs me, jokingly, not to go into labour for at least another couple of weeks, I will... thank them for their concern and well-wishes, of course. Still, if the comments keep up it might start getting old. Wish us luck!

Flood Update

2011-01-11T08:51:00.005+10:00

**Update to update**
Predictions have worsened slightly, but we still expect to be ok. They have started evacuating parts of our suburb, however, so I have left laundry and Prata Baby with MIL and come home to do a few things, including pack a suitcase. Thursday now looking dodgier than Wednesday, so we'll see how we go over the next couple of days, but really, we should still be above the waterline.

**

Just a quick update from us.

Yes, our city is "next in line for flooding" and the council is issuing alerts.

Yes, our suburb is one of the "at-risk" suburbs.

No, our street is not on the list of streets expecting/experiencing closure.

No, our house did not flood in 1974 (although the property itself did - right up to the floorboards! - so if that happened again, we wouldn't be able to really live in our house or park our car anywhere near where we live) which is good news, as the floods are not (currently) expected to be as severe this time due to changes in infrastructure. I think we're going to be good, and the hundred-year flood report on our property combined with predictions about floods to come over the next couple of weeks says life will almost certainly go on more or less as usual for us.

The one exception is our shed is quite damp, with water across the floor, which is a bit of a problem because with our small house we are actually using it to store important things. We have evacuated some stuff (I started on some of the baby stuff last week anyway) and nothing has been ruined (although I suddenly have an awful lot of laundry, but luckily MIL has a dryer which we are shortly going to avail ourselves of). Mr Bea is just off to do another check of the shed to make sure everything important is either in our living room (which is getting quite crowded at this stage!) or on top shelves, well clear of the ground (thank goodness I invested in some great shelves and also plastic storage boxes a year or so ago! Thank goodness also for our decluttering efforts over the last two years - we have a much more manageable amount of stuff and don't have to worry about things that aren't at all important to us! Yay me!)

But overall, for those watching the news, we are almost certainly going to be fine in our household and ditto for family (I'm still chasing up friends but pretty sure they're all good, too). At present, worst days are expected to be tomorrow and next Friday, so I can let you know then, but in the absence of news, expect that we are ok.

Synchronicity

2011-01-08T13:12:00.006+10:00

First, this:

Then this:

Now this: (summary - my feelings as I start into the last month of this pregnancy, and how they compare to last time)

Surprise Pregnancy is progressing well, if quickly. Technically, I am into the last month, although having been fifteen days past dates last time I find myself unable to take that estimate very seriously.

It's impossible, of course, not to compare my feelings this time to last. Last time I was feeling... what? "Emotionally exhausted" is probably the best description. I did not feel excited. I did not feel relieved. I did not feel nervous, or impatient, or wistful. I felt... I think I described myself as "patiently waiting to see how things turned out". I guess I felt detached. I believe I could have persisted in that state for approximately ever and ever, if that had been an option, neither moving forward to the future nor revisiting the past, but instead existing in that narrow window of emotional stillness. I had not had the opportunity to experience such stillness for the longest time.

This time, I am not still. I am somewhat restless, in fact. I am frustrated by my inability to get things done at a worthwhile pace. I am frequently tired. I am heavy. I am irritable. I feel hot too easily. I can't think or concentrate well. I have too much to do, and I am not confident in my ability to do it all. It's downright annoying, is what it is. This must be what normal women feel like towards the end of their pregnancies, when they complain of being "over it". Have I gained the sympathy I previously lacked for their "plight"? No. If anything, I have lost a little. Good grief - get a problem. See, I am even annoyed at my own annoyance.

That is, except when I am marvelling at the human body's ability to reconcile our souls to the inevitable. There is a peace in my restlessness that didn't exist in the detached stillness of the last pregnancy. I really may not do this again, and yet I find that I am more or less willing to move on. The tiredness, irritability, and other symptoms help, as does - no doubt - the prospect of a second live, take-home baby, but I don't think it's really that, or at least not just that. I am moving through the normal, emotional cycle of pregnancy in a way that eluded me before. I am living in synch with myself.

Greetings of the Season

2010-12-23T07:14:00.010+10:00

Our Christmas tree is, like, six and a half feet tall. Perhaps, to some of you, that doesn't seem so big, but when you look at it in the context of our teeny-tiny cottage, it's enormous. If I want to be able to access my back door, or the computer desk in the corner of our living room, I have to set it up so the back half is squashed into the corner, the branches bent upwards as if they never came out of the box. I can only decorate half.

And they're such adult decorations, too. The baubles and floral arrangements are insanely fragile and almost painfully refined. No bold primary colours here; no cheesy but unbreakable Rudolf figurines. Instead, we have delicate bouquets of golden leaves, glimmering, rust-coloured berries and little tiny harps. None of it is right for our house, or our lifestyle. None of it makes sense at all - except to us.

On the twenty-second of December, 2006, I wrote about our family's hierarchy of trees - the biggest at our Grandparents' place, where we all gathered to exchange gifts on Christmas morning, my parents' slightly smaller version, and our own, little desktop tree - just big enough for two. I wrote about how, over the years of our marriage, I had looked forward to upsizing our tree as we built our branch of the family, and about how, that year, I took it upon myself to re-evaluate our status in the scheme of things, to sit down with infertility and renegotiate what it could and could not have, and to, basically, buy a fucking big tree with a whole stack of very adult-looking decorations. Which is no longer right for our lifestyle.

But I put it up anyway, because it means something to me, this tree. It means something to me when The Prata Baby - bless his little heart - unpicks the very delicate, very refined bouquets in the earnest misunderstanding that the individual pieces are supposed to be separately distributed amongst the other decorations, or when he brushes against the very delicate baubles in his rambunctious charging around the house. It means something to see the playgroup craft activities taking over the branches, one by one, cutting an as-yet small, but nevertheless unforgiving line through the tasteful cohesiveness of the display. It even means something when I lift a broken decoration out of storage and wistfully place its pieces in the bin. Life is changing, and evolving; the past is gradually being chipped away. But I can still see the imprint of our history. And I can still taste how it felt to draw that line in the sand to say gosh, infertility, I can't stop you taking this or that. But these things here - they're mine. They're mine and you're not having them.

Merry Christmas to all, and special greetings to those still waiting for life to smile on them.

2010-12-16T08:00:00.001+10:00

See Prata Baby.

Worst Case Scenario

2010-12-14T14:01:00.002+10:00

That's one other thing that happened in the prenatal class. The midwife was doing a brief overview of possible complications and signs to call the hospital about. "So if you notice any of these signs of pre-eclampsia, or even if you're unsure," she sub-concluded at one point, "it's safest to just give us a call and get checked out. Pre-eclampsia can be serious. Worst case scenario, you might even start having seizures and we'll have to admit you." Uh, no... worst case scenario, you die and your baby dies, too.

But, see, it's awkward to bring that sort of thing up.

I've been taking a prenatal yoga class. I was kind of just looking for the exercise, like I got last time, but for logistical reasons (see: work, babysitting, transport arrangements) I ended up taking about a quarter of this whole yoga-based prenatal course. It's a pretty useful format for prenatal yoga, actually, and I recommend it to anyone who can stomach instructors with high-pitched, breathy tones of voice who use oracle cards to the same extent as they use plastic pelvises*.

Last week, the topic was "dealing with the unexpected". We heard the story about ending up in Holland, rather than Italy, and then we were asked to sit with a partner and discuss our worst case scenario as a prelude to an empathy exercise. At first I tensed - I can think of some pretty bad scenarios, and it's not very polite to freak people out. "You go first," I blurted clumsily to my partner, before we'd even properly sat ourselves down.

"Damn. I was going to say that," she replied, and sat thoughtfully for a moment, before stealing a hesitant glance in my direction. "Well, this is my second time around," she explained, "and after what happened last time, I realise how useless it was to spend all that effort worrying about how I might handle the pain or about various interventions that may or may not be needed. I think as long as my son survives-" she touched her belly- "that's really all that matters."

I nodded gravely. Then, as gently as I could muster, I ventured, "It sounds like things didn't turn out well last time."

"Oh!" she hastened to assure me. "No, they did, they did. Everything went perfectly, in fact. No no no. I just realised, afterwards, how short and insignificant the birth experience was in the grand scheme of things. This time around, I know we'll be ok as long as everything turns out in the long run. That's all. So yes - my worst case scenario is that my son dies. Er... what about yours?"

"Well, it's hard to choose," I replied, feeling a bit reassured about my natural response. "I mean, your baby dying - that's bad. But then what if you died? Or both you and the baby? Or one or both got a very serious injury - in extreme cases, that sort of thing might even be worse." I stopped myself short. "Basically, I agree that I'm fine as long as it turns out ok in the long run. I mean, in the story, everyone actually landed, after all." As we were nodding, the instructor chimed the bells to signal the end of the activity and invited us to assume the lotus position and re-centre our energies using deep, cleansing breaths**.

But I couldn't help trying to think up ever wilder scenarios all afternoon, and when Mr Bea came home, it was his first instinct, too.

"What would be really bad," we found ourselves musing, "would be a coordinated terrorist attack on the hospital during the birth, wherein you and your partner and baby were taken hostage, tortured, and then eventually and horribly killed in some grizzly way or other..." there was a pause here whilst we ran through some grizzly modes of death inside our heads... "one by one and in front of each other. For an ignoble cause you were violently opposed to."

It's not just us, right?

---
*Although naturally cynical, I tend to think most of this hippy-dippy stuff is just one way of expressing otherwise perfectly sensible ideas. Which is kind of what my mother said when she saw my oracle card. After she stopped sniggering.

**Or in other words: everyone sit down now and shut up. See what I mean?

Refresh

2010-12-11T06:20:00.007+10:00

Short Version: we went to our prenatal refresher class at the hospital.

So. Anyway. Let's refresh the page on that old sleep debate.

We went to our prenatal refresher class this week. Last time we didn't take the hospital class, instead choosing a privately-run series geared towards expats living in Singapore. We chose this course for two reasons: the content was created specifically to bridge a few gaps for people used to other hospital systems and western cultural practices, and also we could actually get to the classes without having to rearrange our entire lives or spend a fortune on taxis.

This time we took a hospital class. We mainly wanted to tour the hospital, and hear what they had to say under the heading "coping strategies for dealing with siblings". I was a little disappointed in their coverage of the latter, but there were a few good suggestions as well as some references for further reading, and in any case I am less worried about that subject nowadays. The hospital tour was very worthwhile. I was comforted to note that their foetal monitors are much harder to tip onto the floor in an amazing cacophony which causes staff everywhere to leap around in fright than the one we used last time. Also, they served great biscuits.

I was amused by their talk on pain relief. Granted, the last class was a full series with much more time to discuss details at length, but last time we learnt about a range of techniques for managing pain, from breathing and massage, to TENS machines, to prescription drugs. This time, just the prescription drugs. "You have three options: gas, pethidine, epidural." Uhuh. Because I remember doing a lot of things last time, and none of them involved pethidine or epidurals, and I only used the gas mask to beat against the side of the bed and throw across the room* - which wasn't a mode of use they even suggested. Perhaps a quick-list of other options wouldn't have been overloading things. In any case, that doesn't worry me at all, because I can always bone up on my breathing techniques elsewhere, and I am not sure I'll bother hiring a TENS machine again anyway.

What stuck out for me - apart from the quality of the biscuits** - was the bit where everyone introduced themselves and told us a bit about their family. There were eight or ten couples, and all of us had a single toddler at home, in the two-to-three-year age bracket. After all that, after everything that's happened... how did we get to look so normal? Sometimes it's as if someone took our infertile lives and hit "refresh".

--
*I tried it over my face and couldn't stand the sensation. It was interesting to learn that they have dispensed with the mask at this hospital because apparently I am not alone. You can now get your gas on a T-piece, which means I might actually be tempted to breathe some in this time, who knows.

**Tim Tams. Mmmmmmm. I played the pregnant card heavily on those ones.

My Priceless Advice

2010-12-10T15:05:00.010+10:00

Short Version: discussion of parenting techniques as related to sleep.

We went to our prenatal refresher class at the hospital last night. But that's not want I want to talk about.

I want to talk about a sleep article I couldn't finish in one of the magazines they gave us in our sample bags. I couldn't finish it because it made me mad. Now, a lot of people follow a lot of different philosophies when it comes to sleep, and I'm ok with that. What I'm not ok with is people presenting one particular philosophy as if it's The Answer To Sleep Issues Everywhere. This is a huge disfavour to uncertain parents and causes untold (not to mention unnecessary!) distress to both parents and children.

I have binned the entire magazine in disgust, which I kind of wish I hadn't because it would have been more productive to write this to them, but so far as I read the article and for what it's worth, I would like to supply what I believe to be the correct answers to their quiz questions.

1. Rocking your baby in arms is not wrong and is not habit-forming. The baby was rocked frequently in utero and patted on the bottom by your beating heart 24/7 for nine months straight. By the time your baby is in arms, that horse has well and truly bolted, and nobody is to blame for that. Given that the baby is born used to being rocked through no fault of your own, there is nothing wrong with either continuing indefinitely or weaning your child more slowly onto self-settling techniques, if you choose to do so. I know one or two parents who swear by the cold turkey approach to rocking and patting, but they would both agree that, in the short term, it is the most difficult approach and that it won't suit everyone - parent or child alike. Almost all parents I know (not to mention a huge proportion of well-qualified experts) prefer something between the two extremes of cry-it-out-from-birth and give-them-anything-til-they-grow-out-of-it. Do not be afraid to choose an approach which involves rocking - there are pros and cons to all approaches and you will have to weigh it up in the light of your individual situation. Never forget - they will all sleep eventually, so the only thing you have to worry about in the long term is surviving the short term! The answer, therefore, is in fact b) it's fine as long as you're coping with it.

2. You do not "have to" start with the daytime sleeps. A lot of experts suggest - assuming you want to work on sleeping at all - that you start during the day time rather than at night, because that might be easier on you. If this is true, then by all means start with the day sleeps. A lot of parents find that they are more alert and patient at lunchtime that in the middle of the night. However, other parents will find that it is easier to work on bedtime or night sleeps - they will be equally tired more or less around the clock, may find that their child settles better at night when the environment is less stimulating, and/or may find it easier to stay calm when a second parent is at home and able to help out. The correct answer, therefore, is d) none of the above - assuming you want to work on sleep, you should start at whichever time is easiest for you, whatever time of day that is.

3. There is no bedtime. In Singapore, it is considered normal for children to take long afternoon or evening naps, then stay up until 11pm, then sleep in. In Australia, it is considered normal for children to take long morning or lunchtime naps, then go to bed by 7-7:30pm, then rise at the crack of dawn. These ideas persist year-round, regardless of changing daylengths or sunset times. Parents in both countries drive themselves spare trying to make their babies and their lifestyles fit these cultural norms. There is no good reason for this self-berration.

Some children do sleep better on certain "schedules" and I encourage you to consider starting with what is "normal" where you live - not so much because you'll get fewer busybody comments, but because this is no doubt a joint venture between nature and nurture with nurture playing an undeniable role, and the "normal" pattern where you live has probably evolved to fit in with the usual pattern of day to day activity where you live - both within your household and within its immediate vicinity. The likelihood, therefore, is that the "normal" baby schedule where you live will, indeed, suit your baby better than something borrowed from halfway across the globe. And who knows? Maybe there's also an early-riser gene and it's more prevalent in Australia than in Singapore, and it's just that I happen to have missed out. However, you should see the "normal" baby schedule where you live as a starting point or a guideline, to be adjusted according to the needs of both yourselves and your baby, and readjusted whenever normal development, a change of season, or a change of lifestyle demands. So the answer, dear magazine editors, is e) go fuck yourselves.

Gah. That's as far as I got.

Feel free to add your own priceless sleep advice in the comments, just in case one of their readers drops by.

Handshake

2010-12-07T21:29:00.006+10:00

Short version: finding secret sisters in infertility.

Sometimes the things people say make you wonder. At a party, several months ago, a woman noticed I wasn't drinking. "You don't drink?" she asked, by way of polite smalltalk.

"Usually, but at the moment I'm pregnant so I'm not drinking," I replied.

She smiled broadly. "That's really great!" she enthused.

"Thanks, yes, we're pleased."

But she wasn't finished. "It's just really wonderful news. I'm so happy for you. I just think every child is such a blessing, really," I nodded, accepting her kind words whilst thinking uneasily of all those who wouldn't agree so far. Then she said it: "You're really lucky to have the chance to fall pregnant and to carry a child like that."

It makes you wonder. Sometimes it makes you follow up, but only if you can work out how. In another situation, as background for a particular anecdote, somebody described this couple they knew whose eldest child was adopted, and whose youngest was conceived the old fashioned way, long after they'd given up on that possibility. "That happens so often," said someone else. "People conceive naturally after they've adopted because they stop stressing about it." And that was the last thing the second woman said, because the first woman corrected her at some length, quoting statistics from several studies on the incidence of spontaneous conception in infertile couples, both in the presence and absence of adoption, as well as on the role of stress in infertility.

Wait! I forgot. That first woman was me.

Later that day, a different colleague stated that I must be feeling tired and heavy now that I've hit the third trimester. "Not that I'd know from personal experience," she added. "Never having been through the third trimester of pregnancy." She looked at me keenly and continued. "First trimester I've experienced four times, and even bits of the second on one occasion."

"Oh. Gosh."

She looked down. "It was ages ago. I'm over it now."

"It must have been horrible."

"At the time, but I'm over it now. It was ages and ages ago. I decided I just wasn't meant to have children."

"Still, an awful..."

"It was ages ago," she said brightly, looking back up. "I'm over it now. You must be starting to feel tired and heavy, though."

Like a secret handshake. Sometimes, I'm not quite sure how to return it. I'm always glad for those who are.

Vestiges of Babyhood

2010-11-22T07:49:00.004+10:00

Summary: The Prata Baby gets rid of babyish things as we prepare to pass them along to his younger sibling.

People had been at me to cut The Prata Baby's hair for the longest time. I remember it was the first comment a friend of ours made when we returned home last September. "He needs a haircut," B stated, ruffling his fingers through PB's curly mullet. I could only reply by looking at B askance, until he added, "Hey - I cut my dreadlocks all the time!" and then hauled their ends from somewhere near the small of his back to present them as proof.

"And I suppose that's a very carefully cultivated 'unkempt' look you have going on with your face," I supplied pointedly. He rubbed his cheeks and looked mildly sheepish. PB's curls continued to grow.

And despite increasingly consistent misidentifications by the general public of PB as a girl, they continued to grow, right up until that first ultrasound scan which showed (to my amazement and shock) a live, ten-week-old, intrauterine pregnancy. I think that was the exact day I first entertained the idea of actually taking the Prata Baby for his first cut. Also, I went out and bought a potty.

It's easier to let go of these vestiges of babyhood, knowing round two is probably just around the corner. Nowadays, not only are the nappies safely tucked in storage - day and night - but the high chair is gone, too, and the long-neglected cot has been completely packed away. One of the final pieces fell into place yesterday when we took his convertible birth-to-toddler seat out of the car and replaced it with a convertible toddler-to-child seat. We've told him that the baby is going to use his old seat later on, and so far he hasn't objected.

There's just one thing I can't bear to part with - the bedtime cuddles. I still lie with him on the futon every night as he drifts off to sleep. And whilst I sometimes wonder how I'm planning to be in two places at once, if the new baby is fussing over PB's bedtime, I always kind of conclude that we'll just have to cross that bridge as we come to it. We'll somehow muddle through - either Mr Bea will be home to help, or the baby will be cooperatively settled (it might happen), or PB is just going to have to learn to wait or do without. In any case, why would I withdraw every night's cuddles to save myself a few nights of hassle, especially when withdrawing those cuddles is going to present a hassle in itself? No - we'll somehow muddle through.

He's growing fast enough as it is.

List

2010-11-11T22:37:00.008+10:00

A few notes I've been meaning to write. Topics for each paragraph are in bold for ease of skimming:

Thanks. Your good wishes are, as always, appreciated. I keep meaning to email back to all commenters and not really getting around to it. Sorry about that.
Sorry for not commenting better on blogs lately. Google reader has been stuffing me around. Besides, I have been busy with life lately, and PB has stopped sleeping properly due to suddenly-extending daylight hours (I'm pretty sure) and so I am sleep deprived with much reduced leisure hours and I have missed loads. Also I screwed up at work and it seems to be sorted now but it hogged all my time and energy and computering for days. I am in one of my feeling slightly unhinged periods again.
Thanks for words of encouragement on hypnobirthing. They helped. Music suggestions were also greatly appreciated, although I think, in the end, Betty M's husband is the clear winner of the Bands That Sound Like Portishead competition. I have made a shortlist based on samples I listened to that gave me the right mood.
Thanks for advice and positive stories on introducing younger siblings to older siblings.

I have started reading a couple of books about the subject to PB. There seemed to be a lot of suitable bookds around when we were just thinking about trying, but now that I actually want one, I have discovered that a lot of them are narratives about children who are worried about or resentful of the arrival of a sibling. The feelings are resolved at the end of the book, of course, but I have no real reason to believe that's what we're dealing with at our house, and I am loathe to introduce such concepts where they are not already present. I am after more of a textbook-for-two-year-olds on pregnancies and babies - just the facts, presented in a fairly neutral way - and I have found them harder to come by. So far I can recommend There's A House Inside My Mummy (subject: pregnancy) and How To Be A Baby (subject: infants). Other suggestions are appreciated.

PB seems to be coming along with his understanding. ("There is the little tiny baby and up there is the milk. And when the little tiny baby is born, he will come out of mum's tummy and the milk will come out of mum's chest. And mum will give him a drink of milk in a red cup. And he will not turn into a possum.") He has also been patting, kissing, singing songs, and delivering erudite instruction on the nature of trains and various construction machinery to the sibling in utero.

I have decided I just don't like this business of buying the older sibling a present "from the baby". Babies can't choose presents, nor can they giftwrap them or present them in any meaningful way. The whole thing doesn't make any sort of... narrative sense to me. And with Christmas coming up, I cannot imagine the Prata Baby will be short of toys any time between now and, like, ever again. I am (still) trying to declutter our two-bedroom worker's cottage in anticipation of hopefully keeping four people in it, and a gift "from the baby" will not help with that. And I'm not at all convinced the momentary pleasure of getting a new gizmo will have any lasting effect on the relationship between the two. And it would kind of feel like we were valuing any concerns PB might have about the changes to our family at about, what, ten? fifteen? dollars or so, which seems kind of... dismissive. At the same time, I understand it's the latest thing to do and other people who've tried it will swear by it and I certainly don't think it harms or that people who do it are doing the Wrong Thing per se, but the idea just doesn't gel with me and I don't think I can bring myself to jump on board with it. Watch me stand corrected later on, but there it is.

Here's my current plan: it's the baby's birthday, so we'll have a little birthday party. Which makes much more sense to me, because it is in keeping with long-standing cultural traditions, and a concept PB has come across before. It is also a more realistic representation of the role he will play in his relationship with the new baby over the short to medium term. PB will choose a simple gift, probably a onesie or a bib or something we actually do need, and he will wrap it and present it because he's old enough to do these sorts of things, rather than it being a completely artificial construct. This will make him feel Involved and Important. PB will not get a gift but he will get his share of birthday cake or something, and he will be more than happy with this treat, especially since it will underline one of the advantages of being old enough to eat cake, viz, cake eating.

In summary: feeling much more confident about the whole sibling thing.
Latest appointment with BOB was fine. All things are behaving normally, except my haemoglobin, which has actually risen since the beginning of last trimester, which seemed to surprise everyone but in a good way. Probably this is due to the fact that I have been craving half a chicken for breakfast every morning, and half a cup of milo - I'm not talking about the mixed drink here, I'm talking about the dry powder, as in, I make it up with about five teaspoons of milo to only slightly more than five teaspoons of milk - each night. The baby seems to be a "good size" again - these were actually SOB's words from the last pregnancy. BOB said something more like "bigger than average, by the looks". I think I prefer SOB's phrasing. Glucose tolerance test was fine. Yada yada it's all fine. I am fine. The baby appears to be fine. Nothing to see here.
I started prenatal yoga again, but everyone seems to be going on summer holidays right when I need them, so I am still looking for December/January classes or it could be short-lived.
I am peeved because there have been changes to the Bogan Bribe (incentives and tax breaks for having kids) which basically mean we will miss out compared to what we would have been able to claim if we hadn't taken years on end to have kids in the first place through no fault (and with much anguish) of our own. This is a really petty complaint, because we're not struggling and my official position on taxpayer-funded welfare is that it should be reserved (first and foremost) for those who are (evidence-supported arguments about gender equality and returning parents to the workforce so they can pay more taxes conceded), but I sometimes can't help thinking about all our just-as-financially-well-off-if-not-better-off friends who I had to see having consecutive children whilst we went through infertility AND they got all this extra money via the government for being so damned fertile, as if they weren't already luckier than us enough. ("Well, we did get at least an equal amount of funding via the government in the form of partially-claimable IVF treatments," Mr Bea pointed out not-helpfully. Uh, thanks - fail. That so totally isn't as fun as free cash.) Just a tiny bit of left-over pissiness about the suckitude of infertility. Also, maybe I am feeling less than enthused about the main reason we won't be claiming a fat cash bonus, that is... oh...
Moving back to Singapore. Mr Bea's boss has asked him to. We are going to go sometime early next year, probably six to eight weeks after our current estimated due date. I know, it sounds insane to me, too, I swear it makes sense if you talk about it for hours and hours and hours and hours on end. Or maybe you just stop caring about sense. In any case, that is the plan, sense and taxpayer-funded baby bonuses be damned. I'll let you know how it goes.
The post sort of descends into angry muttering, but the impression that gives is false, I promise. My general mood is appropriately upbeat. It's all good.

Twenty-Five Weeks And Three Days

2010-10-28T07:30:00.005+10:00

Today I'm 25w4d. One day further along than my cousin was, earlier this year, when she gave birth to her daughter at the same hospital I am booked into.

The child is doing well. Cousin still carries oxygen everywhere, but is hoping to drop to nights only within the next couple of weeks, and the doctors are generally very happy with how things are progressing.

I would like to cook this baby for at least a couple more months, of course. But yesterday it struck me that our chances of a good outcome are starting to get decently high. Which is a nice thought.

Hypno

2010-10-09T17:46:00.011+10:00

Short version: I talk about hypnobirthing techniques. Yes, already, yes, I know. There is a request for music suggestions at the bottom, specifically, music that has a similar sound to Portishead.

Last pregnancy, I didn't start thinking about birth until I was into the third trimester. This time, in a different part of the world, immersed in a different culture, I have been forced to start thinking of it already. A midwife rung a couple of weeks ago to conduct my pre-admission interview. The paperwork for the hospital is in. I was advised that the prenatal refresher classes are almost all booked out from now until well after baby's estimated due date, and have therefore already reserved a place. And I was told that, from now until the end of the pregnancy, any emergencies will be handled not by the general emergency department, or even the antenatal unit, but by the labour and delivery ward itself. Because although s/he's barely half-cooked, s/he's big enough that the only way out is via an actual, honest-to-goodness birth.

I guess I may as well start thinking about it then. Especially since it takes me about ten thousand times longer to read up on things these days than it used to.

Last pregnancy, I considered taking hypnobirthing classes, but when it came to the crunch, I couldn't go through with it. I was all on board with the concept of using relaxation and visualisation to help deal with the process of birth - however that might come to be - but I was scared off by the rah-rah woman-power talk. There was a lot of rhetoric about how producing a child was an entirely natural event that my body would instinctively navigate, the half-spoken caveat being that I had to believe it hard enough. After years of infertility, IVF, and pregnancy loss, I didn't think there was any way I could be made to believe that it was all just mind over matter. More than that, I was a little insulted, as if Mongan had given me the old "just relax" and started going on about how low sperm count was simply a manifestation of widespread cultural conditioning and perhaps some sort of subconscious expression of fear. I guess I just couldn't bear to learn a method which might - in the event of a less than calm, natural, and uncomplicated birth - leave me feeling as if I was personally at fault for any sort of calamity*. Plus, when I first heard the term "rainbow relaxation" I couldn't stop sniggering for days.

However, in many ways (I realise, now that I am reading Mongan's book for the first time), infertility was the perfect preparation for hypnobirth. Had I gone for it, I may have had to forcibly stop my instructor from referencing the "effortlessness" and "intimacy" of conception as either a) evidence that the body knows what it's doing or b) a model for how birth should proceed, lest I collapsed into the puddle of helplessness and despair I was specifically hoping to avoid, but I nearly laughed out loud when reading the techniques for breathing. How could I have made it through nearly two years with a fertility clinic if I hadn't figured out how to keep inhaling and exhaling, slowly and deliberately, learning to welcome each wave of treatments as bringing me one step closer to the child I so earnestly looked forward to greeting?

For that matter, how could I have retained any sort of paralysing awe in the face of complicated medical terminology - or, for that matter, personnel? How could I have failed to master the art of choosing a suitable practitioner, or negotiating an acceptable approach to to my treatment, drawing on the expertise of my specialist to make properly informed decisions? How could we - Mr Bea and I - have come through infertility treatments without discovering how to work in harmony together, even though the physical burden fell exclusively to me**?

As for fear of childbirth, and especially the pain of childbirth - there wasn't really any there to release. Temporary physical pain seemed far too trivial a thing to concern myself with, and the rest was squeezed out of me, not so much by positive affirmations that all would be ok, as by the sheer emotional exhaustion that came from having finally used up my almost limitless supply of anxiety over things I could not, ultimately, control***.

I'm not sure that I will attend an actual hypnobirthing class. It would be a big logistical effort with our current lifestyles, including the need to arrange childcare, and I'm not convinced it'd be worth the expense. There's too much I have to rephrase in order to make the philosophy work for me****, and I daresay that'd be much harder to do in a live class than whilst reading from a book. Also, the relaxation CD irritates the absolute fuck out of me, which is not at all relaxing*****.

But at its core... well, there's a lot of tricks I really believe will help with labour and birth, and a surprising number I've already tried out and found to be highly useful. And I'm really pleased to realise that, thanks to infertility, I've had a lot more practice than most couples out there.

--

*I have to give Mongan her due. I didn't read the text the first time around, or attend a class. A lot of this came to me through the filter of various marketing materials or internet forums, and some of it is just my own baggage. Mongan does acknowledge, explicitly and repeatedly, that some couples will find themselves facing "special circumstances" through no fault of their own, and that this is a good place to bring on whatever manner of intervention is required. Couples can still use self-hypnosis to aid them in these circumstances, and proceed as needed without blame or guilt. But she says this, and then in the next breath she displays a degree of confidence about a couple's level of control that makes me catch my breath. I am having to mentally edit the bravado into more of a zen-like acceptance of fate in order to make it work for me.

**I get that wanking in the "men's room" must be difficult, but I can't really see it as a physical burden.

***I also used to use visualisation a lot to get me through infertility treatments. Mainly, however, I would visualise the people who upset me with nasty or thoughtless comments tripping over and falling flat on their faces, so, I'm not sure if that counts.

****Nothing, for example, makes me more nervous than someone repeatedly assuring me that it's all going to be ok. Not a person on earth today actually knows that, and when they make me point same out with their perkturdy optimism, it just magnifies the negative possibilities in my mind because all of a sudden I'm having to talk about them. Forcibly and, perhaps, a lot. Admit you have no idea, that it could all fuck up and everyone could die, and then we can all gain some appropriate perspective and move on - that's what I need. I'm not certain hypnobirth practitioners roll like that, but I'm guessing not.

*****I actually have a question for you on the subject of music. Last time, I really found Portishead (Dummy and Portishead) to be exactly the right mood. Slow-paced, with that absorbing baseline; gentle, yet emotionally powerful. The music wasn't dismissive of the occasion, lightheartedly saying to sit back and take it easy, like a lot of 'relaxation music' tends to do. Instead, it was inviting the listener to quietly succumb to something too big to fight against. Plus, it sounded like something you might want to listen to, and not fucking irritating.

However, two CDs don't last that long, even if you do repeat them a few times over. On the offchance the style seems appropriate again - and if it doesn't, I'll still have some worthwhile music for general listening purposes - what can you think of that sounds a bit like Portishead?

Jumble of Words

2010-10-05T20:43:00.011+10:00

Short Version: Talking with The Prata Baby about pregnancy and siblings.

Sometimes I have trouble communicating with children. One example comes to mind: when Nephew came to visit us in Singapore, we took him through a museum, and at one point he asked me to read him the blurb attached to a particular photo. The photo was a grainy, old, black and white picture of some working-class Chinese immigrants who, the blurb said, were often deceived into making the journey from their homelands to Singapore on the promise of good jobs and comfortable living conditions, only to find a much harsher reality on arrival.

"What does 'deceived' mean?" asked Nephew.

"It means, sort of..." I floundered for ten seconds or so before inspiration struck. "You know how we were reading that book about The Gingerbread Man this morning?"

"Yes."

"Well, you remember how The Fox told The Gingerbread Man he was going to take him safely across the river, but instead he ate him before they reached the other side?"

"Yes."

"Well you could say The Fox deceived The Gingerbread Man."

Nephew blinked at me a couple of times. Then he looked at the people in the grainy old photo. Then he turned back to me, his face grave and his voice reduced to a hoarse whisper. "You mean all those people got eaten?"

I've been having similar troubles trying to prepare The Prata Baby for what is likely to come. Not that I have somehow led him to believe that this whole baby-making business involves cannibalism - though, actually, who knows how he figures this foetus got in there - but my attempts at explanation seem to produce rather unexpected ideas in his head.

The first time I told him, we were lying on his bed reading a story. He seemed to notice that my stomach had become a funny shape, so I explained to him that the bump he was looking at was actually a baby. He lapsed into thoughtful silence for a minute, then slowly said, "There's a baby..." whilst pointing at my tummy. A few seconds later, he snapped out of his reverie and demanded to get on with his book. And that was that, until the following night.

The following night he lifted up my shirt and patted my stomach. "Are you patting the baby?" I asked him, and he flashed me a cheeky grin.

"It's not a baby, it's your tummy," he announced, as if it had taken him a while to figure out the game, but he was wise to it all now. "There's a baby! No! It's my head!" he continued, giggling furiously. I gave him a rather lengthier and more detailed explanation (at one point using pillows and blankets as props) which produced another thoughtful silence and abrupt return to the pursuit of bedtime reading.

A couple of days later, apropos of nothing, he lifted my shirt and pointed to my stomach. "There's a little tiny baby in there, behind your belly button," he informed me. I agreed, glad to have finally procured his understanding. Then he continued, pointing upwards to my chest. "And look! Two more babies!" Further explanations ensued.

At last the day came when, lying on the bed reading a story, I felt a succession of good, solid kicks. Taking The Prata Baby's hand, I placed it on a likely spot and told him that his brother or sister was kicking, and if he was lucky, she or he might kick his hand. And as we waited, it indeed happened, several times in fact, producing that same, silent thoughtfulness in PB, followed by that same, sudden desire to return to the bedtime narrative already underway. A full week later, in the car, out of the blue, PB announced that he didn't like the baby to kick his hand. Kicking, you see, is "not nice". We have told him so, many times, often sharply, and the baby, if s/he was doing it to PB, wasn't being very nice to him at all. After some furious backpedalling, we have agreed that the baby doesn't kick, s/he moves, taps, or pats. Gently and lovingly. So, so lovingly.

I keep wanting to prepare The Prata Baby for what is likely to come, and the truth is, there's no way I can. As hopeful parents, we tried to brace ourselves over a period of years of painstaking research, carefully sifting through whole libraries of information on the subject. That, in the light of complicated, adult thought patterns and a wealth of observations and life experiences. And in the end, how many of us got it exactly right? How many got it halfway right? The Prata Baby's got no hope at two, no matter how many books entitled Sammy Gets A Sibling I track down in the children's section of the library - my own explanations having proved to be thoroughly misleading, and sometimes rather gruesome.

I'm sure, if of nothing else, that the period of adjustment will be strange and confusing and upsetting and unsettling for him, and my heart breaks a little on his behalf, for having to go through it. I won't be alert enough to give him the attention he gets now, to play together like we used to or to go the places we used to go. What time and attention I do have will be sorely divided. And younger siblings - I know, I've had them - can be a damned annoying pain in the arse and a burdensome responsibility.

But then I also know he'll adjust, like I did, like I will. And I think, in the end, he'll be glad, like I am. And although I believe he would have been fine as an only child, I think this alternative life will have rewards to offset the initial setbacks, and sweetness to complement the sour. I just wish I could make him understand it all now.

But my track record isn't good, even for basics like a simple dictionary-style response on the word "deceived". It looks as if he'll find out the hard way, after all.

Surprise Baby

2010-09-16T08:39:00.005+10:00

We had our gross morphology scan. Already! I know. There were no nasty surprises - everything looks fine. And I can announce that the baby is... either a boy or a girl. They certainly seemed to think it was one or the other.

I don't know how many of you recall the day we found out the sex of the Prata Baby, but to quickly recap, we were caught completely off-guard by the question at our sixteen week appointment, before we'd had a chance to discuss the matter at all, and after twenty seconds of umming and ahhing, Mr Bea gave a sort of shrug which I interpreted as not having any real opinion on the matter, so I confidently turned to SOB and told him to spill.

Apparently, however - and this would have been explained on my blog at the time if I wasn't so busy having an unnecessary freak-out about the Prata Baby's measurements - that non-committal shrug should have been interpreted as a mere continuation of the series of displacement actions already underway, and if I'd waited for the series to come to a close, Mr Bea would have expressed a preference for not finding out the sex of the baby.

This time, he expressed his preference early. He does not really want to find out ahead of the birth. And given that I had my way last time, I have ended up letting him have his way this time. So we don't know.

I have mixed feelings about this, the most prevalent of which is ambivalence. All the important bits - the bits that contribute to ongoing life and health - appear to be present, in the right places and proportions. What else is there to care about?

On the other hand, I do admit that it took a while to re-orientate myself after finding out that PB was a boy. I had it in my mind (I realised afterwards) that we were having a girl. Probably this impression was born of a) a dream I had and b) the slightly noddy "logic" that if Jester was a boy, then the next one was sure to be a girl, 'cos, boy, girl, boy, girl... you know. Although maybe Twin A was a girl, I'm not sure. In any case, it's not that I was disappointed to find out PB was a boy, it's just that it kind of felt, all of a sudden, as if there was a stranger in there, instead of the baby I'd been expecting. It took a few weeks to "get to know" him all over again. I was glad that happened during the pregnancy, rather than after the birth, and I'm feeling ever so slightly nervous about having to do it after the birth this time.

On the other hand, it seems very fitting to leave it shrouded in mystery. This baby has already given us the shock of our lives just by being there in the first place, and we really have no idea how it happened. It's our surprise baby, in more ways than one, and as long as they're all good surprises, I can be happy to roll with each and every one.

Nice and Intense

2010-08-24T20:46:00.004+10:00

If I had to use one word to describe pregnancy after infertility, it would be "intense". I mean, wonderful, yes. Filled with joy and relief, but also anxiety and uncertainty, and sadness for those left behind. Perhaps woe, at a perceived drift from the tremendous community who helped me there, and a little touch of guilt, too. And wistfulness, that this might never happen again. And confusion, over how to build a new identity. And humility and thankfulness, with anger and bitterness and unresolved grief. Trepidation. Self-doubt. Love. Exhaustion. Happiness.

Intense. It was all pretty intense.

I don't have that this time around, and there is the slightest sense of missing something. It's not that I wanted to go through all that again, or even that I would have chosen to, if it had come to it. It's certainly not that I envy those whose second time around is more difficult than ours. I have always admitted that infertility had its gifts as well as its costs, even whilst concluding that the price was way, way too steep, and I suppose I am in the process of appreciating one of those (disproportionately small) gifts in a new light.

It's like Diggers, on ANZAC Day, standing around and reminiscing about the war long ago, and concluding that, although it was hell and they'd hate to go through it again, at the same time, good lord, people knew they were alive in those days, didn't they?

That's what it was - it was a sort of knowing that I was alive. It was knowing my baby was alive, not tomorrow, not at forty weeks or next year, but right now, at least, as the ultrasound transducer hovered on my belly, or as he kicked me from the inside. It was accepting that right now was all we really had, and choosing for it to be enough. It was profound. It was splendid.

I don't have that this time. It's a shame.

What I do have instead, I realised as I brushed my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror last night and glimpsed the start of a proper-looking bump under my top, is a genuine like for pregnancy. Last time, it was hard to disentangle the pleasure of being pregnant from the joy of not having to do another cycle of IVF (at least not yet) plus the gratitude I felt for having got so lucky (at least so far). Those feelings exist again, of course, but they are less, well - intense. My feelings towards pregnancy per se are relatively uncrowded this time, and as a result, much clearer. I like it. I just really enjoy it. I love what oestrogen does to my mood (if not my focus or intelligence) and the tell-tale curve of my belly. In fact, I love all the extra curves, from my thighs to my cheeks. I love the softness and glow of my skin, and the boost to my sex drive and... did I mention oestrogen does good things to my mood? Good things, people. Great things. Lovely things. It's... nice.

And I'm glad I had the chance to realise that now, because this time really might be the last.

Correlation

2010-08-18T22:45:00.005+10:00

We are not that original when it comes to family-building. We started trying for our first child only just before all our friends started trying for their first, and then, as you know, we watched them have one child after another whilst we continued to struggle. The logical mind concludes, therefore, that the reason we know someone whose baby was born around every single last one of our would-have-been-due dates was coincidence, pure and simple. We were enduring consecutive losses, at the same time as everyone around us was having consecutive babies. It's just blind statistics.

What most of you also know, however, is that the mind in crisis is not always logical. The mind in crisis wants to make sense out of senselessness, as if doing so will magically cause the suffering to cease, to be replaced by calmness and order - or at least the intoxicating illusion of it we always used to believe in. My mind in crisis - for a fraction of a second, before reason was able to assert itself firmly once more - somehow managed to picture a connection between our would-have-been-babies and our friends' babies of the same age. I began to superstitiously dread pregnancy announcements almost before I had started to dread our followup beta. I was convinced... no, not convinced. It was ridiculous, I told myself, over and over. I didn't actually believe it at all. Yet, in the absence of any rational explanation for our failures, the irrational explanation that a closeby pregnancy was the thing that would sound the death knell for our little embryos was the only thing I had. So I waited and hoped for the month that I, alone in my circle (excluding, for some reason, the blogosphere), was blessed with that second line. For surely, that month would be the month things finally went our way.

It never happened. What did happen (we found out later) was that an infertile friend of ours conceived around the same time as us, but lost her pregnancy whilst ours continued along.

I found out recently that friend - who is still childless - had a second miscarriage earlier this year. The baby would have been due just before our current estimated date.

Two out of five things

2010-08-15T17:09:00.007+10:00

One of the things I wanted to talk about was our renovation plans. We were very excited, last week, to get some sketches from the architect, and we are busily trying to decide between options and work out a few refinements. Hurrah! How awfully thrilling.

At the same time, this process has brought up, once again, the issue of our future plans, including family size. Which brings me to one of the other, rather lengthier things I want to talk about.

We still have those eight embryos left, you see. Originally, we were going to ~~watch them fail~~ transfer them later this year, then reassess depending on what happened. Way back when, before all this started, we were both keen to have two kids, with maybe more, providing it seemed to be going alright. As of a couple of months ago, we were unsure if we'd even try very hard a second time around. Now we're thinking two, with any luck, but what are we going to do about those embryos? Neither of us have really made up our minds, but Mr Bea was assuming we'd donate them.

"Well apparently we can make our own now," he said. Uh, yeeeeaaaaahhh....

I'll gloss over the myriad issues of third party reproduction, such as donor anonymity laws and genetic heritage, or the psychological feelings of the donor towards any ensuing offspring etc etc - not because these things aren't important, but because by the time you'd read through to the last "h" of "yeeeeaaaaahhh" you'd already listed them all off in your mind, as if by rote. Or in fact by rote.

Thing is, they're not the only issues I have. Most of those embryos are from a batch affected by OHSS, and so far their fellows have provided us with the joy of multiple chemical pregnancies and a miscarriage. Hardly something I want to inflict on an infertile couple who has endured many years on a waiting list for donor embryos and who-knows-what-else beforehand. If they were good quality, I might consider it harder. As it stands... well I guess I'd assumed we would transfer them at a later date and then see what happened.

"That just seems strange," Mr Bea said, shaking his head. "Why would we go back to IVF after having a natural pregnancy?"

Well, because we want to get pregnant again but we're still infertile, perhaps. Having conceived naturally doesn't mean your fertility is safe forevermore, less so in our case, where our problems are long-documented and our current luck is almost certainly the exception, rather than the rule. Especially given it still took us over a year to conceive this time around. (It's not as if we rushed out for contraception the moment the now-over-two-year-old Prata Baby was born.) And then there's the fact that we have, you know, all these embryos left and we're going to need to make some sort of decision about them, one way or another, and one option involves another round of treatment or two.

"I just... I guess I just thought this meant we could put all that behind us," he admitted, finally. "Because, you know, it sort of sucked."

Oh. So. That I understand.

And whilst I feel that donating embryos is a somewhat poor strategy for putting infertility behind you - even rubbish embryos might turn into fully-grown people, after all - I can sympathise with wanting it to be all done, already, and I suppose the knowledge that we've managed it on our own did seem a bit like a ticket out, no matter what the future holds.

None of this has to be resolved now. Nobody's doing anything other than continuing to pay storage fees for a good while yet. But I guess the architect's sketches have forced us to re-imagine our possible paths through the next five to ten years', knowing, as we know now, that there is a statistically good chance of a second child, plus eight embryos left in the freezer, and it's just... it's just strange, is all. Strange and unexpected.

2/300th Roundup

2010-08-07T16:11:00.006+10:00

It's here! The occasion for the 3... 200th Roundup! Since it falls during ekka time, I had to substitute ekka strawberry sundaes for cake. I had one today - ah, childhood memories. Unless you're currently in Brisbane, you'll have to make do with feasting your eyes:

Well done, Mel. This - the roundup, of course, but I am also referring to the whole community - is an outstanding community. Through it, I am saner and wiser.

BOB, the OB

2010-08-06T21:34:00.004+10:00

Today I had my first appointment with my OB. Let's call him... BOB. Well, I had SOB for Singapore Obstetrician, so why not BOB for Brisbane Obstetrician?

My cousin actually recommended me to a midwife-led birth centre. "I can just see you there," she enthused, and I was completely sucked in right up until the point where they mucked me around for over a week and eventually reduced me to tears on the phone. Then I realised - I am not a birth centre person. I can see how my cousin made the mistake, with all the drug-free birthing, babywearing, cloth nappying, extended breastfeeding and cosleeping and no-cry whatever whatever, but the truth is I don't tend to react well to that kind of womanly care. No - give me detached, scientific reasoning any day. I'm an obstetrician's girl. Also, I need to be with someone I can reliably contact, who I trust to give me correct information, and who doesn't seem to spend most of their time buckpassing, blameshifting, and just generally being mean. (And whilst I will freely admit that the actual crying was a bit over the top, and can largely be blamed on hormones, the hormones aren't going away before the pregnancy ends, so, I really need a solution which deals with that.)

The downside is that I have ruled myself out of a water birth. And you know, I would have liked to keep all options open at this stage, but there are so, so many steps between me and a water birth, from "not miscarrying tomorrow" all the way up to "actually desiring a water birth, given the choice, at the requisite and still-hypothetical moment", that it just doesn't seem worth it.

In any case, I have decided to see BOB, who is fine, even nice, is happy to do things much the same way as last time (in terms of management technique, I stress, not in terms of the actual course of events which is somewhat out of our control), was able to confirm that our risk of screenable problems is too low to make any real recommendations for further testing beyond the gross anatomy scan at 18-20 weeks, and that the baby was, as of afternoon tea time today, still alive and kicking. And then he wrote me a form for some routine blood tests - the infectious diseases profile we were going to get done at the beginning of the FET cycle, for example - and the above-mentioned gross anatomy scan, which will happen mid-September.

When?

Last time, the twenty-week scan came around so very slowly. It took, literally, years on end, and they were long years, full of long days and long, long hours and minutes. This gross anatomy scan is coming up in slightly under a month and a half. It's going to take a little while to wrap my mind around that one. I'm not sure I even have the time left to do so. My mind may have to go into it unwrapped. (Or is it "unwrapping"?)

There are five more things I want to talk about. I am still hoping to go through the ones I can remember which still seem relevant by Sunday, so stay tuned.

P.S. 13w5d.

Running update

2010-08-04T20:55:00.003+10:00

Keep those tales of what you've been up to coming. I am wading through about a hundred tons of laundry and other housework and various stuff and this week is looking pretty darn hectic so I'm going to catch up as and when I can but in the meantime... everything looks fine here. I don't have the odds from the nuchal translucency yet, but if you recall that was one test we decided to live without last time, so I'm loathe to put a great deal of energy into sweating those results this time, when everything else looks pretty much on track at this stage.

All for now. I have... five... wait... yes, five different things to write about, but... wait, no it's six. But honestly the chances between now and next week are slender, what with running around doing several of those things, so it will just have to wait.

Please keep telling me all I've missed!

Back!

2010-08-03T15:33:00.003+10:00

We are back from our holidays. You didn't even know I was gone, did you? You just thought I was ignoring your blog again. But I wasn't! I was away on a not-skiing holiday, from which we are now back.

Tomorrow is our next scan.

In the meantime, what did I miss? Tell me your news.

Waking Up Pregnant

2010-07-14T06:36:00.007+10:00

It's an oft-reported desire: "I wish I could just wake up one day and be X weeks pregnant." X varies from one person to the next, depending on personal history, exposure to the misfortunes of others, and general nervousness of disposition. Some would be happy to confirm rising betas, others want nothing less than a healthy, take-home baby in their arms. Most people want to get past the point where everything's fallen apart before. But one thing we have in common is our collective sigh at the end of this reverie, the one we make as we regretfully admit that it's an impossible ask - a wish that could never come true.

Except, holy crap, I just woke up one day and I was already nine weeks pregnant. And now everything looks normal at ten, and we've never lost anything before that looked normal at ten weeks. Which doesn't mean (she adds quickly, before the powers of the universe can so much as draw breath to say, "There's always a first time,") that things couldn't go wrong from here on in. Heck, some days that still occurs to me even as I watch the two-year-old Prata Baby, formerly known as The Foetus Formerly Known As Twin B, formerly known as Twin B cavort vigorously around the park. Always, forever, each day is a milestone and a triumph. In this uncertain life, it never stops.

Will I be relieved to reach the end of the first trimester? Yes. For that matter, I will be a hundred times more relieved if we get a healthy, take-home baby, or past the main risk period for SIDs. It took a whole 0.000005 seconds in the ultrasound room yesterday to go from "Yes!" to "Ok, now we have to make the next step..." But. But. And yet. We have never lost anything that looked normal at ten weeks, and there comes a point at which you're doing yourself a disservice to wish away those precious moments just to spare yourself from their uncertainties. For us, that point is - about ten weeks. I can't believe that, in addition to falling pregnant without treatment, I got to skip that more-stressful-than-it's-worth first half of the first trimester and just wake up to find it over and done with and everything looking dandy.

I just don't know why we should be this lucky.

I guess luck never has a reason.

Ten Weeks, Two Days

2010-07-13T08:43:00.000+10:00

All looking fine.

Thankyou. Thankyou so, so much.

Surfing the Wave

2010-07-11T23:07:00.003+10:00

It's amazing what I've learnt since I first stepped into a fertility clinic in 2005. On Friday and Saturday just gone, I found myself distinctly a-flutter. On edge. Tense. In times gone past, I would also have felt slightly out of my depth. "How am I going to cope with this rising sense of panic until Tuesday?" I would have asked.

Five years and many test results later, I simply thought, "Of course - it's 3-4 days until the test which will tell me what I am waiting to find out. If I concentrate on breathing for the next 36-48 hours, I'll feel fine again."

I went to work. I came home. I actually got around to putting away the pile of laundry that's been inhabiting the couch for longer than I care to admit. We have a second couch again now! It totally transforms our living room. I did a lot of dishes, I arranged an expedition to the shopping centre for... a single packet of breakfast cereal. I suggested a home movie night, complete with Pixar animation and popcorn, and set off to the rental shop. I shuffled around, packing Mr Bea off on his latest business trip. I breathed. Slowly. Carefully. Deliberately. And tonight, at only t minus 36 hours, I can feel that wave of tension subsiding again - just like I knew it would.

The last twenty-four hours are easy. You just have to learn how to surf there.

So yes, to back up a bit, Mr Bea has gone off on another business trip to a place many time zones away. Yes, this was one of the chief reasons I wanted to get this over with last week, together with the I-have-to-wait-how-long-for-an-answer factor. The whole process would have been a lot easier with his logistical and emotional support, but what can you do? Except get your child up before their natural rising time, drag them to the clinic in their PJ's with a picnic breakfast, and then hope the timing works out so you can catch your husband by phone as your ships kind of pass in the night afterwards? If the result is good, I'm not worried - everything else will just have to work itself out. I don't have a plan B for if the result is not good, but I am toying with the idea of going completely to pieces on my blog. Consider yourself warned, and if you have any other ideas, let me know. Bad scan results with husband out of town is one situation I never really learnt how to cope with.

T minus 4 days

2010-07-09T02:54:00.003+10:00

One of the first things the GP said to me on Monday was, "Are you a nurse?" I had just given him the potted summary of my reproductive history, up to and including that morning's beta hCG result.

"No, why?" I answered.

"You just seem to be very good at throwing medical terms around."

I shrugged matter-of-factly. "I think most patients with chronic medical conditions get pretty comfortable with the language after a year or two." He nodded. Score one for the team, I thought.

One of the last things the GP said to me on Monday was, "So... is this... does this news make you happy?" He seemed genuinely confused.

"Yes! Yes. Oh, yes," I replied, emphatically, but from his expression he remained slightly less than convinced. Probably it's more accurate to say that the news so far - a positive urine test and a good, solid pregnancy panel - made me happier. I'll save "happy" for later on, when I feel more confident of how things stand.

At the moment, my worries seem to be focussing themselves around the issue of clexane. Clexane, if you remember, is what we used last time, because of our recurrent early pregnancy loss. I imagine it's not to late to jump around and get someone to prescribe it for me, but I haven't done so, for several reasons.

The first is that nobody has ever been really convinced I need it. The most likely explanation for our losses has always been a fault with egg quality, owing to excessive ovarian stimulation. Obviously, no such problem here. Secondly, we are very probably already at the point in the pregnancy where our doctors suggested we discontinue the medication. Although I insisted on injecting myself up to a full thirty weeks, and although they went along with it on the basis that it was unlikely to do any harm, the longest anyone actually recommended we keep going was up to the end of the first trimester. I've been thinking about my cycle since I got it back around PB's first birthday, and I've been very, very regular - 4.5-5 weeks each time, a calendar month plus a couple of days. The odds, at this point, are probably shortest on finding out I'm about 11-11.5 weeks already - which is too late to bother starting. (How can I have walked around that long without even suspecting? Testament to the depth of my expectation that it just couldn't happen to us.) Even if we're as early as eight weeks, we're beyond the recommendation of at least one of our specialists. And we're just... the numbers are so high. So unprecedentedly, for us, within the usual range. So very normal. Not that the last is any sort of rational reason for anything.

Still, I need something to focus my concerns on. At least for the next four days. And counting.

Reassurance

2010-07-06T19:21:00.003+10:00

I had a brain wave earlier today, just after my last post. I remembered that my cousin, in addition to being an all-round top gal, is an experienced midwife/lactation consultant who currently practices (part time) in my very own home town.

Unfortunately she can't get me scanned any quicker.

But! she was able to talk reassuringly about my options for care, and I think I understand the system a bit better now. She was also able to give me an OB recommendation, and will do some delving for a few more names, based on the "profile" I gave her in conversation. At any rate, she managed to do the sort of professional hand-holding I missed out on due to my FS and my usual GP and my backup GP all being away on holidays, all at once, just when I wanted them.

**

Something has been playing on my mind. When I fronted up at the fertility clinic yesterday morning, I hadn't quite worked out how I was going to explain myself. Then I realised I still had the pregnancy test in my purse, where I'd put it the previous day on account of the fact that I was on my way home from dropping my sister at the airport when I used it. I mean, I didn't use it on the actual way home, obviously. I can't recall ever peeing in a car, even when really desperate, especially not a moving one containing other people and whilst driving? impossible, not even counting the part where you have to fiddle around with the stick - and the scenarios only get weirder when you consider our other transport options. No - I used it in a toilet at the airport before getting in the car. It would be more accurate to say I used it just before I started out on my way home.

The point is, I had it with me, so after opening and shutting my mouth a couple of times at the reception desk, I just pulled it out of my purse and sort of held it up, and the receptionist squinted at the two little lines and said, "I've never seen one of those before... are you telling me you've got a positive pregnancy test?"

And at the time I just nodded, still not quite able to speak, but afterwards I thought, hang on a moment - you've never seen one? I mean, I get that you prefer to go by blood tests, but in all your years as a fertility clinic receptionist (at the place with the best stats in the state, I might add), not one, single patient has ever thrust something under your nose after first soaking it with her own urine?

Do other people consider this... unseemly? I've never been at the forefront of social graces.

Tuesday morning freakout

2010-07-06T06:41:00.007+10:00

OhmygoodnessI'meighttotwelveweekspregnantandIhaven'tbeendoinganythingright.

This is what I thought about all last night as I lay awake nursing the headache I got through either all the excitement of the last twenty-four hours, or perhaps the sudden caffeine withdrawal. Despite hours of wakefulness, I still can't remember how many months ago I bought the two-month supply of prenatal vitamins I still have one months' worth of left. Since I have ended up getting only a couple of hours sleep and still have my headache, I am seriously thinking of avoiding the pregnancy-unfriendly workplace hazards I have been merrily striding forth to face without any special sort of concern or precaution these past few months, and using my pre-arranged childcare to nap it off instead. Or panic about more of my recent lifestyle choices. You know, whichever.

T minus 7 days.

Arrrgh

2010-07-05T15:36:00.002+10:00

In the absence of my fertility specialist, who would have finished doing the ultrasound about eight hours ago now, they are treating me like a... like a normal person. I ask you!

I can't get in to see anyone for an ultrasound til next Tuesday, shaving a whole twenty-four hours off my wait for FS to return from his holidays. I took it, because there's little else I can do. (Believe me, there was a whooooole frenzy of phone calls to see if there was.) I mean, twenty-four hours is twenty-four hours, right? It's still a gain... and eight days is still better than a two week wait. And with a beta of 96 000, my odds are a bit better, too. Or at least that's what I'll be telling myself til next Tuesday.

Thanks for all your comments. They help, a lot.

This morning

2010-07-05T09:09:00.002+10:00

My hCG levels were about 96 thousand - consistent with a pregnancy of 8+ weeks according to this site, which I hastily and rather sloppily googled just now.

The "bad" news is that FS is on holidays, so I can't get an ultrasound with him until next Wednesday, although I may be able to do better through my GP. Certainly it won't be today.

This is good, but I want to see a heartbeat.

I'm not sure

2010-07-04T17:13:00.003+10:00

I'm not sure how to say this.

I'm pregnant. (Huh. That turned out to be a lot more straightforward than I expected.)

I'm not sure how pregnant. At least five weeks, because Mr Bea's been away on some business trips and I have to have conceived whilst he was in the country, but given that my last period was about three months ago I guess I could be... up to three months. But if I had to guess, based on my symptoms, I'd say about six weeks. But I'm not sure.

I'm not sure how it happened. I mean, yes, I know it must have had something to do with that "special cuddle" a daddy gives a mummy when they really, really love each other, but... we have no sperm. Right? I mean, last I checked that was true. We did four semen analyses over a period of five months, not to mention the checks they did every time Mr Bea was sampled during our over-eighteen-months of treatment and... there's not too many and none of them swim. They didn't even recommend normal IVF for us. They said we would have to do ICSI. And I didn't believe them, and I demanded to see the reports for myself, and I took them home and brooded over them and pubmedded myself into a frenzy of denial and disbelief before I gave in and accepted that it was true. I'm not sure how it could have changed.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. Stunned, mostly - I only did the test this afternoon, after two weeks of feeling "yuk" which I thought, at first, was a tummy bug the Prata Baby had dealt with only a few days before my nausea started, but which I had started to become slightly curious about. The final straw was the homoerotic dream. I mean, the cramps, the nausea, the tiredness, the heartburn, the nocturia, the food aversions, the occasional dry retching, the sore and enlarged breasts, the bloating - these come and go as part of my normal menstrual cycle. But the only other time (I mused upon waking this morning) I've ever had homoerotic dreams was during my pregnancy with the Prata Baby. Oh just do a test and put yourself out of your misery, I told myself with a roll of my eyes, and that's how I expected it to go down. But it didn't. It came up positive. And even though we had plans to start treatments again next month, I didn't really expect to be pregnant any time within the next six months, at least, and I had made a whole stack of plans based on this assumption. Travel plans. Study and career advancement plans. Renovation plans. And now I am confused, and I am up in the air, and I don't know what's going to happen any more. And I am scared, because we have had a lot more positive peesticks than we currently have babies. And I am elated, because I didn't think this could ever happen, and because no matter how things turn out, this conception will always be a miracle. And I'm almost daring to hope that we may have avoided IVF in the foreseeable future. And I am a little overwhelmed (I haven't stopped trembling since that second line appeared) and just a fraction teary. And I'm not sure how to feel all this at once.

I'm not sure how this is going to unfold. I'm planning to turn up, unannounced, at the fertility clinic at approximately the crack of dawn tomorrow morning and grab myself some blood tests and hopefully also an ultrasound. By tomorrow afternoon, I should know whether things look hopeful or not. I'm not sure what they'll find. I'm just not sure, of so many things. I'm not sure how this news will find you who are reading - in some cases trying, unsuccessfully. I just don't know.

I'll tell you more as I find out.

Just A Little Bit Harder Than It Should Be

2010-06-23T20:56:00.009+10:00

So how does it feel to go back to the fertility clinic?

Mostly, it feels too far away to worry about. I haven't yet been reunited with the phlebotomy table* or the ultrasound room. I don't have a calendar of events. (I haven't actually had a period for over two months**.) Nevertheless, I am struck by one, particular feeling: a vaguely sinking one.

I thought we had two decent blasts from the last cycle, and I thought they were frozen individually, which would have given us more and better-looking options. We don't, and they're not - they're ok-to-freeze-but-not-waste-a-whole-two-straws-on blasts. And suddenly, I remember: everything has to be just a little bit harder than it should be.

It's never the end of the world, or at least it hasn't been for us***, so far, but it's never quite as good as you'd like it.

You never ovulate on time.

Your protocol doesn't yield the ideal number of eggs.

Or if it does, fully half those eggs aren't mature enough to ICSI.

And of the others, nearly half don't fertilise, or don't grow.

And you lose a couple more in the freezing.

And your thaw rate is below average, nevermind optimal.

And you get horribly sick during your luteal phase, which is a bit spotty.

And your beta isn't great, and it doesn't double well.

And your ultrasound - if you get there - is measuring behind dates.

And along the way, you get just about every unpleasant side effect, and at least three minor procedural complications.

Just a little bit harder. Just not quite as smooth. And with each step, you have to ratchet down your expectations just one more notch. Just one more notch. If you're not careful, it's the slow road to abject despair.

Nealy three years ago, I quipped that if I started titling my posts Just A Little Bit Harder Than It Should Be, pretty soon nobody would be able to tell one from the other. Then I went on to have a cycle where I couldn't collect the drugs when and where I'd planned, couldn't get plane tickets on the dates I needed, didn't ovulate on time, didn't have a good percentage of mature eggs, didn't get the expected number of decent embryos, got struck down by a horrible case of diarrhoea during a spotty luteal phase, had a marginally ok beta with a poor doubling time and embryos measuring several days behind on ultrasound, had a spotty first trimester, and lost one twin, after we'd seen the heartbeat. Just a little bit harder than it should have been. But ultimately (I try to reassure myself, desperately, over and over) every bit as successful as we wanted.

How does it feel to go back to the clinic? In a word, it feels deflating.

But I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

---
*I always had to lie down.

**I'm toying with the idea that maybe my cycle is in a spin because I weaned the Prata Baby. I had been perfectly regular for twelve months until I did that, then all of a sudden... nothing. I know breastfeeding is supposed to suppress fertility and weaning should reinstate it, but this zag-not-zig is just the sort of malarkey my reproductive system likes to pull.

Or maybe it's the decreasing daylength after all.

***Although it has been the end of the world for a number of our embryos, at various stages of development.

Kids at the Clinic

2010-06-14T14:01:00.005+10:00

I've been asked how it felt to go back, and I'll get to that, but I need to write this post first, for reasons which will eventually become obvious, if you're prepared to hang around that long. It's about taking kids to the clinic.

Before PB came along, my opinion was that parents should make reasonable efforts to avoid bringing their kids to fertility clinics. I always went on to say, however, that I understood that sometimes these things just have to happen, and that probably hurling actual firebricks at either the parents or offspring involved was taking your hurt feelings just a smidge too far. (Silent glaring and the odd foot "accidentally" stuck into their strollerway is almost certainly enough.) Here, on the other side of the fence, I maintain this view.

PB came to the clinic with us the other day. I expect it will be the first and last time. This is because, in future, Mr Bea will not be required to come along, and I will go alone, like I used to - how in hell do couples ever organise to both go at that notice, anyway? - leaving the Prata Baby home with his Dad. In the future, you see, my appointments will be before Mr Bea's usual working hours.

In the future, it will also be more desirable to leave The Prata Baby home, because my appointments will be during the hours that FS sees the bulk of his appointments, before he skips off to the day theatres to start retrieving eggs or popping back embryos. They will be during the hectic, morning rush-hour, when the clinic throngs with activity, and toddlers would get severely in the road, both physically and emotionally. In the future, my appointments will involve blood draws and vaginal ultrasounds - neither of which are child-friendly scenarios.

On this occasion, however, my appointment was in the middle of the day, when nobody much is around, except the pregnant people waiting to see the obstetrician next door. Mr Bea's presence was required. The only other babysitting option was my MIL, and she would have had to madly rush halfway across town from her usual Thursday morning business, then she would have commenced a deep and particularly vexing course of maternal worry that would have continued forever and ever, until the end of treatments, and possibly beyond. Given all this, I decided it was reasonable to bring The Prata Baby to the clinic, this once. In fact, I decided it was unreasonable to expect us to do it any other way.

We came upstairs immediately before our appointment time. We were in the waiting room for less than two minutes, and we saw one other patient on the way in. She was a fertility patient. She came out of FS's room, went straight up to the desk - which placed her with her back to the waiting room - paid, and left. I'm not sure she even noticed the toddler tucked around the corner, near the toy box, quietly looking at a book. When we came out of the room, there were two obstetrics patients in the waiting room. They both smiled at PB and said hi, then Mr Bea took him downstairs again whilst I paid and finished up.

Sometimes, it's hard to see where the other person is coming from - especially when your world is in crisis. Sometimes, it's just as hard to remember how you used to feel once the crisis is behind you. In this case, I think I've managed alright on both counts.

Now obviously, having the Prata Baby there coloured my view of the clinic and the appointment, which is why I wanted to go through this first. Next post, I'll get to the D&Ms you asked for.

The Lowdown

2010-06-10T13:46:00.003+10:00

The appointment went like this.

First, we went through our file with the nurse, who did a quick audit of our embryos. Six two-day-olds and two blastocysts - all frozen in pairs. The FS asked if we'd like to do a single or double transfer, and we said we'd lean towards a single, but since they're all frozen in pairs, if we ended up with two on the day we'd transfer them both rather than discard the "leftover". And then he said, really? they usually do freeze them singly, because we like to promote SETs. They only freeze pairs if they're not good enough to fly solo. Let me look at your file... oh... well... don't worry, we get a lot of pregnancies from all types of embryos. But what we'll probably do is thaw out some day twos and grow them on a bit and then see, just in case. But we'll also note down that if we have one decent embryo, that'll do, and we won't go crazy thawing lots more to ensure that we have a double transfer.

Then he said how is my cycle because isn't it a bit screwy, and I said well, not really, only when it sees you coming. For example, it has been like clockwork for over twelve months, set your calendar by it, except for this month, when it has decided to get, yes, screwy. I am on day I've-lost-count-maybe-fifty-something. (I've actually accrued enough years' worth of data now to suspect that I'm only seasonally polyoestrus, because I really don't cycle much from mid-Autumn through to the winter solstice, but then otherwise I am pretty much ok, unless I'm living near the equator, in which case I'm fine all year around, but I didn't mention this because it sounds whacko which, as an interesting aside, is how I get by February if I'm living in the UK over winter.) Anyway, to his credit he didn't make me do a pregnancy test, he just asked me what sort of protocol I'd like to start out on when I begin my next cycle.

Not much has changed. He still recommends a natural cycle for those that naturally have textbook cycles. He said I might like to choose a medicated cycle, though, which involves a protocol of the usual - basically oestrogen, followed by progesterone. Then I said, what about the OI cycles we were doing last time? and he said, we did what? oh right, flick flick flick, yes, so we did, I wonder why...? but everything did work very nicely didn't it, except that one time when we bumped the dose up and started a bit early and got too many eggs... so yes, if we did the same thing as we did those two times and look, you actually did get a bit pregnant, which is encouraging, isn't it? And I said that, all other things being equal I would stick with what I know, and he confirmed that all things were indeed equal - that the real reason they usually don't use OI with puregon is because (given that ovulation is not required for an FET and that women respond to such a wildly different range of doses) it's easier to take over the whole cycle than to tweak the FSH so you ovulate only a single follicle, and that as long as the oestrogen is right and the lining is good and the progesterone is afterwards what they'd like to see it is all the same, which I can understand, and so since, in our case, we seem to have figured out how to manage an OI/FSH cycle with approximately as much accuracy as a fully-medicated cycle and more than a natural one, that was that, except for the bit where we all laughed and said how my ovaries will probably respond completely differently to the FSH nowadays and therefore throw it all out the window.

And then I asked about clexane, and he said why the hell not.

And he wrote down FET, 1-2 embryos (from day twos), OI with FSH, clexane.

And then he said call me on day nine of your next cycle, and I said we were going to wait til after our July ski holiday because I don't want to be pregnant on the ski fields, and we laughed, and then I said no seriously though, we're going to start after the holiday, and he said fine, whenever, he's away for a week in July but after that he's all mine and I said good.

And then we left.

No wait - first we signed some new paperwork and paid more for our consultation than I remember paying several years ago.

Then that was that, til August.

Ready

2010-06-07T10:50:00.000+10:00

I have a new referral letter. It says that my GP is sending me back into the capable hands of my FS, because I am "ready to have another baby". I keep getting stuck on that line. It's not exactly what's going on.

Not that I haven't spent a great deal of energy thinking about timing, but I haven't spent much of that energy pondering over pregnancy, birth, or newborns. Instead, I've been thinking about being ready to try. I've wondered whether I'm ready to face treatments again, whether I'm ready to drag myself into the clinic at fuck-o'clock in the morning, endure repeated blood draws and self-injections, and make nice with the dildocam. Whether I'm ready to live, once again, the hurry-up-and-wait, plans-on-hold lifestyle that ART treatments demand. Whether I can handle the emotional tension of a cycle whilst staying adequately and appropriately engaged with the child I have now. I've thought about whether I can bear to open the can of worms that using up one's embryos might bring - once we start again, will we be able to stop at a sensible point, or will we get sucked, by degrees, down the vortex of I've-come-this-far-and-I'm-not-leaving-without-a-baby? I've wondered how our finances will go, with the burden of treatments, which cost - by the by - more in a month than our last little addition, and that's with excellent insurance coverage. And of course, somewhere in this, I've considered the possibility that the treatments might actually work, but to be honest, I've quickly dismissed it as being the least of my worries.

Am I ready for another baby? Truthfully, I haven't bothered answering that question. If it works out that way, I'm confident we'll cope. If it doesn't? Well, that's what concerns me.

Then again, this time I have something I didn't have before - and I'm not talking about the Prata Baby, although he is also here, it's true. What I have this time is experience. I am not bewildered, or fearful. I am not lost or anxious. I am stronger, and less brittle. I have learnt so much about coping, and recovering. I don't know yet if this will be enough to see us through, but perhaps it is enough to begin with.

I have a new referral letter, and an appointment on Thursday. I think - and I hope - we are ready.

Chicken a la Moondance Max - bon appetite!

2010-05-16T19:52:00.008+10:00

Alex wanted donations made to Rainbows for Kate, instead of flowers, at his funeral. If you would like to do something for Max/Alex and Vee, you can make a donation here. If you have a cancer charity in your home country that you prefer, I'm sure it would be similarly appreciated.

If you like the look of this dish, you can find out the story behind it and how to cook it here. Please take a picture when you're finished and help spread awareness of and raise funds to battle sarcoma.

Cook's notes:

I used 4 chicken thighs (deboned); about 2-3 tbl butter; maybe 5tbl of lime juice; 1 tsp crushed chilli (would have used more, but PB was eating it), about 2tbl cheat's chopped coriander leaves (from a jar - should have used more); maybe 1/2 tbl sesame oil; four pineapple rings (from a tin), and about 4-5 tbl of sultanas just covered with rum.

I also used a bit of the pineapple juice from the tin, added at the simmer stage, and reduced after simmering, covered.

The green stuff is julienned cucumber and some spinach leaves, which needed using up. They went in the leftover juices at the end, for maybe a minute (just until the spinach was wilted).

All juices left in the saucepan were drizzled over everything at the end.

I was initially sold after hearing "chicken" and "butter" in the same recipe, but even so I was surprised at how tasty it was. I didn't find it too sweet at all, and I'm sensitive to that sort of thing, but I did use a fair bit of cous cous and maybe I went light on the pineapple and rum.

Chicken a la Moondance Max

2010-05-15T15:39:00.006+10:00

It's funny. It's not really funny.

All week I've been opening my reader to look at the blogs, and then more or less just closing it again, a couple of minutes later. My eyes are kind of sliding off the posts. I haven't heard a word anybody's said.

Away from the computer, it's different - busy, bustling, self-involved. I have the luxury of being able to put the lid down on my laptop and thus gain a little precious distance, unlike Vee [invite only], who has to live wholly entangled in the day to day of having Alex gone. Me - for me it's moments like these, when I try (once again, again) to figure out what I'd like to say. I'm not sure what I'd like to say.

I've never been good at this. Others have written touching blogs, and Vee has the most heartbreaking post of all [invite only]. I keep searching, not so much for something to say, but for something to do, and it's eluding me somewhat, but here's a shot.

Alex wanted donations made to Rainbows for Kate, instead of flowers, at his funeral. If you would like to do something for Max/Alex and Vee, you can make a donation here. If you have a cancer charity in your home country that you prefer, I'm sure it would be similarly appreciated.

And if there's something more you want to do, how about joining me in this? Just over a month ago (on March 20th, to be exact), Vee sent me instructions for a dish Max concocted during a moment of respite [password protected] from the burdens of his illness. I'm going to the shop in a moment, to buy the ingredients. I probably can't recreate the exact dish, as it was sort of ad libbed in Vee and Max's kitchen as they went along, and I certainly can't recreate that day itself, complete with all its cast and crew. But I'd like to honour that moment, by putting this dish on my table over the weekend, and I'm hoping you do, too.

Here's how to join in:

Read the instructions below, and shop for your ingredients.
Cook the dish, or something close to.
Take a snap of your dish and post it on your blog.
Please leave this message at the top of your post:
Alex wanted donations made to Rainbows for Kate, instead of flowers, at his funeral. If you would like to do something for Max/Alex and Vee, you can make a donation here. If you have a cancer charity in your home country that you prefer, I'm sure it would be similarly appreciated.

If you like the look of this dish, you can find out the story behind it and how to cook it here*. Please take a picture when you're finished and help spread awareness of and raise funds to battle sarcoma.

*Alternatively, write your own tribute, including the recipe and instructions for joining in.

Links:
Rainbows for Kate - http://www.rainbowsforkate.com.au/
RFK Donations page - http://www.rainbowsforkate.com.au/donations.html
This post for recipe and instructions - http://infertilefantasies.blogspot.com/2010/05/chicken-la-moondance-max.html

Recipe

Ingredients:
- lime juice
- sesame oil
- fresh, chopped chilli
- fresh, chopped coriander (cilantro)
- sultanas
- rum
- chicken
- butter
- pineapple
- cous cous

"I can tell you that we marinated the chicken the night before in lime juice, a dash of sesame oil and fresh chilli & coriander. Also soaked the sultana's in rum the night before.

Then cooked the chicken in butter just so it gets a nice golden brown...( yes not very health conscious we never used butter but gosh it tastes so good!)

Take chicken out of the pan and cook pineapple in chicken juices.

Add a bit more butter and then throw in sultanas with rum (you can add extra rum if you like at this stage) and sit chicken on top of pineapple and sultanas and put a lid on the pan and let it simmer for a while so chicken cooks through.

Serve with couscous.

It can be quite sweet but if you eat it all together then it tones down the sweetness down a bit.

And an after thought we should have garnished the plate with a coriander leaf and some chilli...but hey Alex has been watching too many cooking shows!"

What If?

2010-04-30T21:23:00.025+10:00

What if, because of the years lost to infertility, we miss important parts of our son's life?

---------->>>>

"Just gone?" I was standing on a footpath by the side of a road with Mr Bea, holding the handle of The Prata Baby's stroller, watching a red car disappear around a corner. The driver's last words - said with an eyeroll - had been, "You know how it is when you have a kid. Two years of your life - just gone!"

"It's not like twenty-four months are just sucked out of you for nothing," I complained.

"Yes, but, I'm sure you've noticed," Mr Bea replied patiently, "the first couple of years can be pretty all-consuming. You don't get much achieved apart from raising your child."

"I don't deny it, but at the end of those two years you have a two-year-old to show for your efforts," I persisted. "You haven't wasted those two years, you've chosen to spend them raising a child." Mr Bea patted me (rather condescendingly, I thought) on the shoulder, and sighed, and agreed that I was right, of course. We didn't have to delve further into it. We both knew I was comparing the act of raising a child to the years of failing to conceive one in the first place. There was no need to explain, to either of us, how infertility can eat up your time and energy and put your life on hold. How it can stop you from advancing a career, or experiencing that must-see travel destination, or renovating that house, or even just getting that dog, on the basis that the next cycle (or the one after that, or surely, at the outside, the one after the one after) will be the cycle that changes your lives forever - til one day, maybe two years later, maybe more, you look back and realise you've progressed more or less nowhere at all.

I say "more or less" nowhere. Of course, there is always one type of progress we can't avoid - the progress of time. We started trying at twenty-six years of age, not old by any means, but the end of my life only got closer during those years of failing to conceive, and that knowledge leaves me with a thought I can't quite shake, even now: infertility has robbed us of several years as a family. What if that means we miss an important milestone in our son's life? What if, because of those years lost to infertility, we miss the publication of his first book, his appointment to public office, or his graduation from Oxford? What if we miss his wedding, or never get to meet our first grandchild?

What if, because of those years lost to infertility, we're not there when he needs us most - during his mid-life crisis, personal bankruptcy, or marital breakdown? What if we're no longer there to see him through a life-changing medical condition - perhaps even infertility itself? We've no good reason to believe he's more likely than the next person to be the one-in-eight who suffers as we have - the fertility specialist guesses Mr Bea's ultra-low sperm count may be the result of a virus he caught as a teen, and The Prata Baby has already been vaccinated against that one - but infertility can strike randomly and without warning, so there's no reason it couldn't be our child, either. What if, because of those years lost, there's nobody to help him through, as only a parent can? There are some things you just can't get back.

But time is not only a thief. Whilst our lives were on hold, others were making remarkable progress in theirs, and I'm not referring to all those friends who managed to have two, if not three, consecutive children as we chalked up fruitless treatment cycles, one right after another. I'm talking about reproductive scientists the world over, who were working hard to try and fill our every question with an answer, even that pitiful one we cried during the dark hours after yet another loss: why me? I saw significant changes over the two years we spent with our clinic - new drug protocols to reduce the risk of hyperstimulation syndrome, improved embryo culture techniques, better pregnancy rates per cycle, new information on the causes and treatment of miscarriage. Because of this, as I gear up to transfer our remaining embryos sometime later this year, a new question dares to play in the back of my mind: What if, someday (soon?), assisted reproductive technologies just... work?

This week Resolve (U.S. infertility association) organizes National
Infertility Awareness Week. Get basic information about infertility here.

Mel enlisted the blogging community to give an insight into the various
ways infertility impacts people's lives, expressed so aptly by the two
words "what if?".
Part One of Project IF
Part Two of Project IF
---------->>>>

I want to tell you one last story before I go.

When we started IVF, there was a woman I knew of through a message board. Like us, she and her husband had started trying to conceive in their mid-twenties, and like us, they unexpectedly ran into male factor infertility. Unlike us, they ran the gamut of infertility treatments without result, and turned to inter-country adoption, which was no better. Ten years, they spent, pouring tens of thousands of dollars into a state-run system which invaded their privacy, tied up their lives, and then pulled the mat from under them just as they thought they were getting close, by suspending programs or simply shutting them down. With their fortieth birthdays looming on the horizon, they returned to their fertility clinic, half-hoping for a miracle, half-hoping for closure. They were battered and worn, and felt no closer to parenthood than when they'd started treatment over a decade earlier.

But after reviewing their history and running some tests, their doctor gave them this rundown: age had turned against them, so he couldn't guarantee anything, but a lot had changed since they'd last tried IVF, and he thought they still had a fair chance if they were willing to give it another go. As a bonus, IVF had also become more affordable since they'd last tried it - thanks again, to advances in technology - so they decided they had little to lose. Only a few years later they were a complete family of four - mum, dad, and two, consecutive IVF children, born two years apart, without complications. What a difference a decade makes. If I wasn't so busy trying to soak up what I have here and now, I would say I can't wait to see what the next one will bring.

Was It Worth It?

2010-01-27T08:51:00.011+10:00

I remember lying in hospital with OHSS, tubes everywhere, unable to rise without assistance, throwing up because I'd taken morphine for the pain and it wasn't agreeing with me. My mother was by my bedside. And one day she looked at me and said, "Is it really worth it?" And I looked back at her - rather cruelly in hindsight - and said, "Well you tell me, mum." She never answered. How could she?

Was she going to tell me I should keep trying again and again til I nearly killed myself, if necessary, and if it still didn't work that I should just know, for the rest of my life, that I had absolutely missed out in a quite enormous way? Or was she going to stand there and say, "Look, dear, I like you ok and everything, but I'm not that into you." That's the first reason I have trouble answering this question. I can't stand here and say something which might be misread as not loving my child enough, nor can I bring myself to perpetuate the myth that happiness is only to be found through procreation - for my child's sake, for anyone else's, and also in the name of truth.

These quibbles, however, are relatively easy to overcome. Without a bustling nurse to interrupt the awkward pause and set the conversation onto a new track, I could produce a cohesive version of the reality. I could talk about the many worthwhile things one can do in life, how parenting is one of them but not the only one, the strength it takes to overcome great odds in pursuit of great dreams, and the equally great strength - and wisdom - it takes to know the right time to walk away. I would rabbit on for a bit about how, as complex individuals, we will find that a variety of things satisfy us. Then there would probably be a few cliches - doors opening as others close, opportunities coming in strange guises, etc etc - and although I would stop short of waxing lyrical about silver linings, I would probably feel compelled to philosophise for a bit about the nature of love, the unknowableness of alternative paths not taken, and the extent to which someone who doesn't exist yet can have interests, and if so, what would those interests be?

But here's where I'd come unstuck: I wouldn't be able to provide a means by which to weigh any of this shit against any of the rest of this shit. And the reason, basically, is because we always have to answer the question in the absence of key information. And that's exactly where Julie also came unstuck earlier this week, when someone asked her the self-same question, and she tried, so honestly, to answer.

It's easy for the hopeful infertility patient to focus on their lack of information about the future. Of course it's impossible to predict what will happen, but where it really gets tangly is your uncertainty over how you'll feel about it. No matter how much you hear, read, and observe about parenthood, everywhere you will hear it said: "You don't really know what it's like til you've been there." This is, of course, true for any experience, technically speaking and to a greater or lesser extent, so much so that it's almost not worth noting out loud. I can buy a cafe latte every morning from the very same barista at the very same coffee shop and I can never really know if drinking it will feel the same tomorrow as it did today. Parenthood is, of course, a slightly more profound and altering experience - if anyone thinks otherwise, please tell me where you get your coffee - and so the expectation gap between what you envision and what you get is probably going to be a lot larger, or at least more significant. It is true, to at least some extent - and it weighs heavily on those still waiting - that parenting is yet another of those experiences you can't totally foresee*. And with others' responses to parenthood covering such positive and negative extremes, it's hard not to be at least a little nervous about where on the spectrum your own, personal feelings will lie. So we lack a lot of information about the future, but of this, we are almost painfully aware.

What is less obvious is how much information we lack about the past. Julie touches on our natural forgetfulness - that wonderful human inability to conjure up the full depths of our past unhappiness. I remember what it was like, from time to time, prompted by one thing or another, but no matter how vivid those memories feel, it's not the same as being there, living it, every hour, every day, with no end in sight. How can I possibly sit where I am now and weigh what I've got with what I went through, when I can't accurately recall what I went through? Even if I read through my own archives, tears in my eyes, there's always a little voice in the back of my mind singing, "It's ok - it's over now." No - it's impossible. It's lost. It's information I can only approximate at this point in time.

Even less obvious than our lack of information about the past, is our lack of information about the present. Have you ever read those psych studies where they get groups of undergrad students to perform certain tasks under various arrangements of threat or reward, and then conduct complicated questionnaires and interviews with them? Paradoxically, people tend to believe more earnestly in the inherent worth of a task the less they can see a corresponding reward - and they don't even know they're doing it. What this means is that, no matter how careful and honest I try to be with myself, I can't be quite sure how much my subconscious is adding in the background. And with a couple of years of infertility hell added on to the wails and dirty nappies of the "downsides" end of the equation, I suspect it's adding doubly hard. Woman is not rational, but rationalising, and I want, so badly - for our sake and our son's - to say yes, this is great, we love it, we're all in love, it's perfect, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Was it worth it? Is it worth it? The truth is that nobody can accurately weigh the effort against the outcome, because from every standpoint we lack the precise information needed to do so. Nevertheless, I have an answer.

Did you ever watch The West Wing? Did you see the one - I think it was season six - with Penn and Teller in it? Josh stops them in the hallway to question them about a trick they just performed at a private party in the White House. He wants to know, did they actually burn an American flag, or did they just make it appear as if they had burnt an American flag? "What difference does it make?" is Penn's answer, and he shrugs.

Do I really think I gained more than I lost through infertility, or does it simply appear that way from where I stand now, with the past paling into the background and my subconscious doing who-knows-what to close any potential gaps? What difference does it make? I am here, it is done, we are glad.

I have no idea what kind of person Julie's reader is. Perhaps that's not the answer she wants to hear. If not, there are plenty of others to choose from, and I guess she can take her pick. I do know that Infertile Bea of days past would have found immense comfort in hearing what I have written now. Upon finishing, she would have sat back and breathed out, feeling the world come back into focus as her head and heart gradually ceased their frantic spinning. Then she would have concluded: it's time to stop worrying so intensely about whether we're about to get it right. It's time, instead, to find peace in making the best choices we can with the information - incomplete and uncertain as it may be - we have here, at this moment in time.

--
*I say this, although, to be honest, my biggest surprise regarding parenting is that it's almost exactly like I thought it would be. Someone asked me at one point how I was finding it, and I said pretty much like I expected, which I didn't see coming at all, which means that, really, it isn't like what I expected because I was expecting it to be different to what I thought it would be like, but then again, the unexpectedness of this fulfilment of expectation means that it probably meets my expectations of unexpectedness after all. Which is pretty much what I expected. Which...

Creative for a Cause

2009-07-10T09:47:00.001+10:00

Vote for Vee's photo in the Canon "Creative for a Cause" competition.
If she wins, $60k goes to a cancer research charity (Rainbows for
Kate). Voting ends today so hurry! More info on Vee's blog.

Or go directly to the voting page.

Thanks.

Rainbows for Kate

2009-06-30T01:28:00.001+10:00

...for more info.

So Close - book shower for Tertia

2009-05-03T13:37:00.010+10:00

On page 20 of So Close, Tertia has a moment where she predicts that her journey to parenthood may be more difficult than she thought even though nothing has happened yet to point in that direction. Have you ever had a moment of premonition like that and if so, did it come true (this moment of premonition can be about fertility or any other aspect of life)?

A lot of people claim to have had premonitions like this about infertility. I had a premonition like this about my mother's breast cancer. Well, not about that precisely, I just felt a vague and impending sense of doom, and looking back, I think it was, and it wasn't, some sort of magical extrasensory perception. Magic, they say, is just something sufficiently complex that you can't quite fathom it out at the time.

The first factor to account for was that I had been on a pretty good streak for a couple of years, and I knew it was unlikely to last, based on brute statistics. That didn't mean my mother was about to get cancer - if I'd had a couple of bad marks on my school assignments I probably would have connected the two just as easily and moved on to better times. But as I looked around me and saw how lucky I was compared to others, I suspected that, since I wasn't actually charmed, sooner or later it would probably even itself out somehow. By the same token, I imagine a young and happy couple, married just long enough to have sorted through the initial adjustment, moved into their first little home, settled in their jobs, brimming with domestic bliss, feeling ready for a baby, and thinking somewhere, in the backs of their minds: how long will our good fortune last? Knowing, deep down, in a vaguely uneasy way, that this luck is not deserved, and that the troubles they see around them could as easily fall on their doorstep, too. So that was the first thing.

The second factor to note was that my mother discovered the lump some months before she let us know. There was an anxious time of deciding whether to go to the doctor or not, the going to the doctor, the tests, the results, the consultations with specialists, the formulation of a treatment plan... and finally, before it all swung into action, the telling of the children. You can't keep a secret from someone you live with and care for on a daily basis without them twigging that something is up. It will come through in your moods, your body language, the thoughtful little pauses you make when you think nobody is looking. At fourteen, I was too self-absorbed to figure it out fully, so what I got instead was a vague but intensified sense of impending doom. In the same way, I imagine the woman with undiagnosed endometriosis or PCOS, not knowing that something about her body isn't quite right in any way she can describe, but at the same time nevertheless knowing that something about her body isn't quite right. And perhaps it's sometimes the same for male factor infertility, too. Perhaps there was an incident in the past - an illness, say - which may have affected the system, which turns itself into a niggling worry long before any diagnosis is pursued. It wouldn't be the case every time, but there are often clues to be found in hindsight, and premonitions are surely how they trouble our foresight. So that was the second thing.

The third factor, I believe, was just garden-variety existential dread. It's a big thing, turning from a teenager into an adult - a major leap in one's life. Things will never be the same again, and you can't really be prepared for how they'll change. There will be responsibilities to handle, strange new problems to negotiate, and people depending on you, when you are used to being the carefree soul whose world revolves around herself. Under the circumstances, who wouldn't feel an impending sense of doom - one born out of nervousness alone? The leap into parenthood is similar in so many ways. It's a new transformation. So that's the third thing.

Afterwards, reflecting on my premonition, I had to admit one more factor - as proof, this time, rather than explanation. The truth was that some of the fourteen-year-olds I'd grown up with had experienced this impending sense of doom, and some of them hadn't. And some of them had hit hard times shortly thereafter, and some of them hadn't. And there seemed to be very little relationship between doom expected and doom eventuated - to a great extent it was a load of old bollocks. Later, on the journey to parenthood, I noticed the same thing. Some friends expected problems and some didn't. Some conceived easily and some didn't. There was relatively little connection between expecting problems and experiencing problems when it came to conceiving children. I began to see it as a mere conceit and then, later, after I'd lost a lot of my bitterness, as a simple reflection of personality. Some people respond to good fortune by growing uneasy. Some people read subtle signs more readily, or more pessimistically. Some people worry to a greater extent about what's to come.

I had an impending sense of doom before my mother's diagnosis of breast cancer. I also had one as we started trying to conceive. I think it was, and it wasn't, some sort of magical extrasensory perception. Magic, they say, is just something sufficiently complex that you can't quite fathom it out at the time.

Question(s) for anyone who manages to still read here and hence finds this:
Do you think ESP exists, and if so, is there a rational explanation for it? Also, have you read Blink, and if not, why not? Ditto So Close?

Learn more about Tertia's book shower at Stirrup Queens. (She has a book too, but it's still in the post.)

The Baby Doctor: Explaining IVF To Children

2008-09-06T12:51:00.002+10:00

I was offered a copy of this book to review, and I said yes, because I just thought it was a top idea. There are two aims. The first is to help you explain your child's conception to them - a sort of alternative birds-and-bees talk - openly and at an early stage so they can grow up knowing they're just another type of normal. The second aim is to help explain to your older child what's going on in mum and dad's life as they try again.

I was especially impressed with the second aim. When my mother discovered a lump in her breast I was already in my mid-teens, and even my youngest sister was as old as nine, but I believe it when people say that all children, regardless of age or maturity, are affected by upheavals in the household, and I am firmly of the opinion that age-appropriate communication, rather than hushed whispers and inexplicable tears and outbursts, is the kindest way. And when I say "firmly of the opinion", I mean "let me try to think up a whole other sentence just to emphasise how much I believe that". In fact, I would even go so far as to add two sentences, just to be on the safe side. There.

The book tells the story of a particular family who are trying to conceive their second IVF child. There is a brief and simple explanation of IVF itself, but most of this short tale is devoted to life outside the petri dish - the reasons for the treatment, the daily injections and frequent appointments and blood tests. I love the way it portrays the usual feelings of IVF as normal and not-the-child's-fault, and I applaud the subtle suggestions it gives in terms of how to react, both of which things are woven neatly into the storyline. On one page, the teary mother is sad coming home from the clinic after her blood test, so the little girl tries to cheer her up by offering her a lollypop. On another page, there's a chance for Grandma - or other babysitter - to take the hint by helping the older child craft up a get well card for mum on EPU day. Very clever and constructive.

I did an email interview with Leah Bryan, the author, although this is not to leave out Sara Riches, who has illustrated beautifully. Both of them come from our side of the stirrups, with Sara being the proud mum of two IVF sons, and Leah being the proud mum of embryos and reader extraordinaire to foster kids.

Leah's inspiration came one morning, and when she investigated, she found a clear gap in the literary offerings. "There was one in America where the characters are bears and that's supposed to help explain IVF. I thought that just made it more complicated," she said. By setting the story in a plain old family of three, it's all straightforward.

She's also kept the details deliberately simple, so parents can start reading it early on, but intends it to be used as a foundation, so parents can add information as circumstances or agegroup require. "I think that IVF parents know all too well the details of an IVF cycle so I made the book as simple as possible to empower the parents to add in details such as ICSI, frozen cycles, assisted hatching, donor eggs or sperm - any additional details that apply to their family and they feel their child is ready to hear about. Equally they can skip over some of the words and make it even simpler if they want to."

The book contains an album section at the back, where you can add your own pictures, or someone else's pictures, if your clinic was too stingy to give you an embryo photo like mine was, because to be honest, they all look roughly the same at the six-cell stage anyway. This personalises it, of course, helping to continue the dialogue, and also makes it seem that bit more special for the child. "I imagine it could be used regularly as part of storytime from when the child is a baby so that they'll always know how wanted they were and how loved they are," says Leah.

The book won't, of course, cover the many nuances of each individual case, but as she explains, "It does introduce the subject of IVF and makes it easier for parents to continue talking about it. Even young children are good at understanding real versus pretend." If I have one criticism, it's this: I wish the family in the story had names. As a reader, I find it easier to separate myself from the fiction if the author hands me a character complete with identifying moniker. This is probably just my thing. In any case, I'm going to call the little girl Leah, after the author, and poof! the problem has gone away. I'm sure the real Leah wouldn't object. After all, she's the one that said, "IVF is a very special way to make babies who otherwise might not be here and that's something to be celebrated." Obviously a woman after my own heart.

The Baby Doctor is available from Nunhouse Press.

Closing The Book

2008-05-28T22:21:00.007+10:00

Short Version: plans from here on out.

My mother asked what my plans were for returning to work. "Plans?" I thought. "Oh yeah - those things. I remember them now." I remembered them so well, in fact, that soon I was devising a quite elaborate one with Mr Bea, involving talk of frosties, breastfeeding goals, adoption, career choices, more international moves, and the astounding array of pros and cons that complicates family building with infertility.

"What would you prefer to do," he asked me, after we'd tied ourselves in knots via that old, familiar routine of looking for a perfect solution that doesn't exist.

"I'd prefer..." and I trailed off to consider my answer. "I'd prefer to take the rest of 2008 off being infertile. Let's pretend, between now and New Year's Eve, that we can fall pregnant again any time we want. I'll plan on finishing this degree, you'll plan on continuing your job here, we'll organise our holidays like people who aren't thinking about treatment cycles, we'll watch our son grow up as if nothing ever threatened to keep him from us, and we'll come back to these confusing questions in 2009." It sounded good to both of us. It still sounds very good. And it brings me to the purpose of this post.

Anonymous reminded me - and rightly enough - to move my blog out of blogher's trying to conceive category, and into the parenting one. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to, because I'm not planning on turning this into a parenting blog. Since the beginning, this has been the tale of our struggle with primary infertility. It has not been the tale of my career, my hobbies, my family and friends, my full autobiographical history, or my everyday perambulations through the town in which I live. Such things have been mentioned, but only as tangents to the main story. And I feel like the birth was part of that story*. But I also feel like everything to come is not. And despite flirting with the conceit that I want to close this blog in order to "give the infertility blogosphere a happily-ever-after ending" - which is what I came up with when I started drafting this post in my head - the truth is I just want a break from being infertile.

I'll keep this blog open for posts on general infertility or the infertility blogging community. Our personal story is going password-protected (email me, but I'll have to know who you are), although I can't promise the frequent updates you've ~~slogged through~~ enjoyed here. I plan to keep reading and commenting - I would love to see everyone I've come to know resolve their infertility, one way or another, and keep up with the friends I have made along the way. I may be back. Perhaps I will pick up the thread again on a quest for #2. Or perhaps - well, who knows? These are questions for 2009.

In the meantime, thankyou. Thanks for the comments, the emails, the pressies and cards, for coming on board with some whacky activity or other, for linking, for talking, for reading, for being there, for making this doable. I'm not sure what the journey would have been like without you, but I'm very sure it would have been much, much worse, and fuck, it was bad enough already.

And because I never know quite how to sign off on these things except by falling back on a lame cliche - all the best. I hope happiness finds you, or you it.

--
*After some deliberation, I chose an obvious title for that post. I didn't want people "accidentally" clicking over to find a birth story. I wanted a title which announced, in bold, neon writing, that it was not a post for a bad day. Perhaps just seeing the title upset some people. I didn't honestly think I could get away without causing any upset to anyone at all - infertility can be too sensitive a place. Hopefully what I chose was the best possible compromise. Apologies if it still stung.

The day the baby came

2008-05-27T13:30:00.014+10:00

Short Version: Birth Story.

For the first half a week I kept thinking, gosh, I haven't felt the baby kick for some time, I hope he's alright in there. Then I'd remember. He's out here. Our infertile fantasy has become reality. A blurry, fast-paced reality full of appointments with doctors, obstetricians and lactation consultants, hospital stays for jaundice, out of town visitors, and short bursts of activity punctuated by shorter bursts of sleep.

Labour was long, and it took several days to recover. Meanwhile, BayBea (damn, that sounded wittier in my head) got his first bout of nappy rash, and grew jaundiced and sleepy, leading to painful breast engorgement and subsequent cracked and bruised nipples. We were readmitted to hospital, where I had to fight tooth and nail to room in and breastfeed on demand, despite the paediatrician being on board with this plan. Everyone was "concerned that I wouldn't get enough rest" with the bright phototherapy lights and the fussing and unpredictable feeding patterns of a newborn. One night, after my least-favourite nurse tried to get me to succumb to her three-hourly, in-nursery, mum-gone-home-from-hospital feeding schedule by implying that I was an ignorant newbie who was going to harm my child, I found myself sobbing in bed. But they weren't tears of defeat. They were only tears of release, as I contemplated that after years of infertility and pregnancy loss, she was really fucking underestimating us if she thought we would roll over that easy.

Mr Bea brought me a travel mask, a pair of sunglasses, my breastfeeding guide, an armful of midnight snacks, and a wealth of freshly-googled information about newborn jaundice, and by the end of week one we had staked out our territory with the ward staff, and were getting into the swing of it all. Today I am thankful for the luxury of a cleaner. My housework got done this morning whilst I sat, and fed, and traced my finger around the line of our little boy's jaw. As I blog, he sleeps peacefully on my lap.

But I've missed a bit. Let me go back and give you the birth story.

The prostin gel was applied just before lunchtime on Friday the sixteenth. The Braxton Hicks-like contractions I'd been having started to get stronger and more regular within the next couple of hours, and with boyish excitement, SOB told me he'd be delivering our baby that night. I went home, napped, blogged a bit, and waited. Just after dinner, the contractions started becoming noticeably more intense. We popped some music on and I sung my way through a couple of albums' worth of cervical dilation, and then we both went to bed until 2:30am. That's when we made our move to the hospital. I lost my mucous plug on arrival, and they informed me I was 5cm dilated and The Foetus was doing well. Thus satisfied, we proceded to labour gently for the next several hours until SOB popped in on his morning rounds to see why I hadn't delivered yet. At that point I was 6cm dilated and The Foetus was doing well. We continued calmly.

At 1:30pm SOB turned up again to see why I hadn't delivered yet. We spoke about rupturing the membranes to get things going, but when he examined me I was at about 8cm, and The Foetus was fine, so we agreed that it wouldn't be long now and we would leave things alone. He also introduced me to his colleague (SOBC) who would be covering for him until the birth. The next couple of hours saw us going on yet more walks around the labour ward and using the TENS machine which, I had earlier discovered, seemed to intensify the contractions and bring them closer together, rather than providing any relief. Soon we knew transition labour had begun.

At 7:30pm SOBC popped in to see why I hadn't delivered yet. I was at 8.5cm dilated and The Foetus was fine. We went ahead and ruptured the membranes, and the fluid was nice and clear. The midwives were asked to page him when I started feeling the need to bear down, an event everyone agreed was an hour or so away at most.

I think it was about 9:30pm when I started losing my cool. The whole "breathing through contractions" was getting old, so I decided to try screaming instead. At 10pm the midwife examined me and said I was 9.5cm dilated. I asked for some gas, but it made me feel like I was suffocating, so after the first half a breath I just used it to hit against the bed, until after a few contractions something flung off across the room and Mr Bea quietly took it away from me. About 10:15pm I finally found the urge to push.

At 11pm I started asking why I hadn't delivered yet. I was tired of people telling me how close I was - they could tell me our baby had blonde hair, but it seemed to want to stay where it was, ie on a head jammed securely in my pelvic canal. But The Foetus was still doing well, wiggling into new, different, and sometimes counter-productive positions right up until the last minute.

At 11:30pm I started noticing the contractions getting further apart, and less intense, so I decided to call for assistance whilst I still had some strength left to play my part. The ventousse was brought in, and they turned me over into lithotomy position which oh good lord why would anyone give birth that way? My tailbone protested so strongly that I leapt off the bed, sending the foetal monitor flying onto the floor in a terrific crash where it continued to blip cheerfully as the attending staff jumped this way and that in startled panic. After they'd taken stock of the disarray, the bottom half of the bed was dropped down. The equipment was reorganised. I mumbled some lame remark about having not destroyed anything after all, and people laughed. We awaited the next contraction.

The first application of the ventousse nearly did it. I could feel him starting to crown, and when SOBC told me one more push would see him born, I actually believed him, despite the last day and a half's experience. "I can do one more push," I said, with sudden resolve, and in another couple of minutes, I proved myself right. Everything gets kind of jumbled after that. They told me the head was born, then the shoulders. To my utter surprise, someone put a baby on my chest. He felt heavy. And the kicks - they felt exactly the same from the outside as they had done for months on end.

SOBC asked Mr Bea to cut the cord about four times in a row, and Mr Bea dithered awkwardly. I sobbed uncontrollably and asked everyone in the room, individually and sometimes twice, whether the baby was ok, and never really took in their answers. At last I heard Mr Bea confirm that he seemed fine and the midwife said she'd help the baby latch on. Somewhere in the background SOBC was delivering the placenta, and telling me I'd torn a bit and he was going to put in a few stitches. I got an oxytocin injection. I made a passing comment about how weird my belly looked. I saw the baby latch on and suckle.

And then, for the trouble he'd caused us, for all the stress and the grief and the uncooperatively not wanting to be conceived or born despite every effort on our parts, I gave him the biggest serve of his life for some time yet to come, which everyone seemed to think was hilarious except for me.

At some point, all the others evaporated and left the three of us alone in the delivery suite. "What do you think?" I asked Mr Bea. "Shall we keep him?"

"I am way too tired to go into that now," he replied. "Let's talk about it in the morning."

Stats: Born 11:47pm, 17th May, 42w1d, 36hrs after prostin gel applied, head 37cm, length 54cm, weight 3.81kg.

Photos and Name: check the pwp blog later in the week.

On A Friday In May

2008-05-16T12:13:00.007+10:00

Update re: twitter at bottom.

Thanks for all the emails, comments, and even gifts that have arrived this week. It's been enough to bring more than one tear to my eyes.

The Foetus and I are still doing fine here. This morning's monitoring showed everything to be as normal and healthy as at the last visit, and, in fact, there was so much movement going on last night that I ended up making a casual remark about him "having a fit in there". And shortly afterwards sitting down for several hours to google "intrauterine seizures".

SOB asked what I wanted to do. "I want to do whatever is safest," I told him firmly.

"Well, with everything looking so good, we can continue to monitor," he explained, "but at this stage, and with such a favourable-looking cervix, the potential benefits of a gel induction probably outweigh the potential risks."

Enough said.

So I had a dose of prostin, took the train into town for a meaty and sustaining lunch, and returned for more monitoring. Because The Foetus still looks fine and the Braxton Hicks-like contractions are starting to get nice and regular - although not yet painful - we have left it at that and I've come home. The nurses studied the CTG trace and unanimously predicted we'd be arriving at L&D between 10pm and midnight. SOB agreed, but asked me to front up first thing tomorrow at the latest. You'll have to excuse my lack of stats. Since the machine was recording everything, I chose to focus my mental energies on fashion magazines, so I really can't tell you exactly how far apart anything is or anything like that, however, I do think you should watch out for this season's floral prints.

I feel like I should say something profound, or meaningful, but I'm coming up short. Yesterday, I bought some groceries. The cashier asked, "How many years of marriage before get baby? One year?" and she waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

"Nine," I replied.

"Oh. Nine years," she repeated, her face becoming serious. "You try try lah, or just wait?"

I drew breath to answer before I decided what to say. "It's been a bit complicated," I admitted after a pause, and she managed to nod in a way that conveyed sympathy without a trace of pity or awkwardness. Then, as she handed me my change, she looked at me directly and sincerely. "Then I hope it goes very very well for you."

Yes. Well. Amen to that.

(Further updates probably through twitter, right sidebar, sorry, never did get around to fixing that.)

--
(Update re: twitter - it's 9:30 here, and things do seem a bit more intense, but I'm guessing it'll be more on the "midnight" side of 10pm-midnight.

Anyway, I dropped in because a couple of people have asked about twitter. You should be able to see updates on the sidebar as I text them, just like reading a really short post, in a sidebar. Otherwise, click a bit, see what happens.)

Billy vs Bobby vs Benjamin

2008-05-13T15:54:00.009+10:00

Short Version: latest appointment update, probably inducing Friday if no progress. Then some musings about the fundamentals of marriage, during which I discuss infertility and baby names.

I suppose I should update you on our latest appointment. After monitoring everything possible, no problems have been detected. I am feeling reassured for now. If nothing happens by Friday, however, we will probably try to induce. I rung Mr Bea to report on the appointment and told him that, whatever happens, he should avoid scheduling work meetings early next week since he'll no doubt be on paternity leave. This seems to have made him irritable. Husbands.

--

"The trouble with all your name suggestions," I said to Mr Bea, "is that they're far too common."

"One of my requirements is that the name be recognisably common," he retorted.

Seeing the impasse, I pressed my fingers to my temples and said, "I wish you'd told me your baby naming policy years ago. I could have gone off and married a whole different person."

He looked at me strangely - carefully - as if deciding how to react. Then he broke into the grin I was expecting and turned back towards the computer to google the biography of the most famous person to hold the name under current consideration.

It was a flippant comment, til he paused. I guess, in hindsight, it's kind of strange. You know, what with the male factor infertility and so forth. What with the IVF and the OHSS and the years of misery and loss and so forth. I'll admit I sometimes thought about how different our lives might be if he was fertile. I even remember asking myself, once or twice, if I'd trade him in for a different model with proper sperm. It never took long to answer no, of course not. It was like asking if I'd prefer to die than to struggle with infertility. Fertile or infertile, I always thought of him as the right choice of husband - there's more to the package than genes, after all. There's being able to navigate the maze of challenges life can throw at a marriage. You can't just pick that up at a sperm bank.

Baby naming, on the other hand - now there's something to make you consider your alternatives. I mean, this is the first time we've differed fundamentally over an important parenting decision which will affect our child for the duration of his life. These things, so seemingly surmountable next to the years of barrenness and grief, these are the real tests. It's not the biggest crises you have to watch out for, but the problems which most show your weakness and differences. The creeping catastrophes; the questions upon which you just can't agree. Sometimes the deal-breaker isn't donor versus IVF versus adoption, it's Billy versus Bobby versus Benjamin. On the home stretch of an apparently healthy pregnancy, it's worth keeping that in mind.

(Thankfully, we have made headway on a shortlist.)

A Foetus By Any Other Name, and Fun With TCM

2008-05-09T20:14:00.006+10:00

Short Version: last-minute name crisis, and labour-inducing TCM.

So, several months ago - like, four or five months ago - we decided on the perfect name for this baby. Wait, no, that's the fantasy version we've been caught up in. What actually happened was we both thought we'd agreed on the perfect name for this baby, when in fact we had misunderstood each other entirely. Only recently did we discover this fact, which has led to much starting all over again from scratch. Obviously a good time to be starting from scratch on name choices, what with the baby overdue and visitors in the house and the subsequent not-having of private conversational moments. Does anyone know what cultural tradition withholds the name announcement for the longest time? Because I'm thinking of claiming that cultural tradition.

--

Everything is still fine enough in there to continue waiting, apparently. I've got to admit, this is starting to make me nervous. Mostly, I'm worried about the safety of The Foetus in utero, but I also have minor concerns about the level of intervention I'm looking at if labour doesn't happen as it should, mainly because I'm worried about the safety of The Foetus during a highly medicalised birth. Basically, I'm worried about the safety of The Foetus. I just think we'd all be better off if everything went normally, don't you?

This has led to much googling of terms such as "what does a mucus plug look like" and "ways of inducing labour". In terms of the former, it seems mucus plugs (should you see one prior to labour at all) can have anything from a distinctly, well, pluggy appearance, plus or minus a tinge of blood, all the way to the other end of the spectrum which is very nearly indistinguishable from globs of semen. The problem with which is, of course, that globs of semen are also very nearly indistinguishable from globs of semen.

On the "inducing labour" front, having ticked off all the at-home methods, I found myself reading about acupuncture. One article, based on an interview with an acupuncturist, raved that when labour-inducing treatment is given from 41 weeks, about 80% of women go into labour within 72 hours. The remaining 20% are given a followup round of treatment, and nearly all them will go into labour within 72 hours of round two. "Wow!" I thought. "So what he's saying is, nearly everyone he treats goes into labour by forty-two weeks! That's incredible!" So without pausing to so much as cynically ask what happened in the control group, I marched me off down to the clinic in Chinatown recommended by my yoga instructor.

I don't know what you're picturing here. I know when someone says "TCM practice in Chinatown" to me, I get visions of crowded and narrow alleyways punctuated by incense-spewing temples, wooden shopfronts decorated with lanterns and dragon motifs, mysterious little doors with bells on them leading into cluttered, poorly-lit dens, wizened old Chinese men with crazy beards and crazier mannerisms, and racks of pungent-smelling dried stuff, the origins of which you don't want to know.

It would be more accurate to picture a doctor's surgery. You know - blandly-coloured waiting area, polite nurses in crisp uniforms, practitioners strutting down the hallway in neat, white coats to their neat, white consult rooms with computer screens and tidily-framed certificates on the walls, the pungent smell of rubbing alcohol... doctor's surgery. I registered at the reception desk and cast around for a magazine. The nurses took my temperature and blood pressure, and I was called in by a young, female practitioner with neat, black spectacles, to whom I explained my situation.

"I see," she said, and wrote something in Chinese on my neat, white, patient card. "Could you stick out your tongue, please? Uhuh." More notes. "Now let me check your pulses..." What followed was a history of a vague range of medical conditions or complaints, at the end of which she announced that she would recommend a session of acupuncture, followed by "some herbs". You've gotta hand it to these TCM dudes. They don't hold with any of your new-fangled concepts like Explaining Things To Patients.

The acupuncture happened in a treatment room, and was augmented by a scary electrical device turned up high enough to make all four of my limbs twitch with every pulse. "Any pain?" she asked.

"It's not pleasant..." I replied diplomatically, hoping she would make it stop.

"Yes, but if no pain, then ok." And she left the room. For a loooooong time. And lo and behold, if my uterus didn't start to cramp and contract*.

Eventually she came back, switched off the ~~torture~~ device, and released me with my powdered... whateveritis which I am to take twice daily for four days, in a small amount of warm water, thirty minutes after a meal, and definitely not in conjunction with any "western" medicines.

My uterus stopped contracting on the way back down the hall.

I'll let you know how it goes.

--
*Although it has been doing this at random anyway.

One View of the Cathedral

2008-05-07T18:28:00.007+10:00

Short Version: conversations with the fertile world: how I feel about "getting my body back".

I have an email sitting in my inbox and I don't know how to reply. It's from someone who's due just after me, and she chats merrily about how, like her, I must be looking forward to "getting my body back". I feel like I only just did. I'm more afraid of losing it again.

I don't have to explain it to you. I don't have to explain the tyranny of non-functioning organs and hormones. I don't have to explain the helpless pleading to follicles, eggs and embryos. I don't have to explain the gradual, humiliating submission of my self to my LH or P4 levels, despite expensive and painful efforts to whip them into line pharmaceutically. I don't have to explain the unbidden and unwanted anger, jealousy, frustration, anxiety.

To some of you, unfortunately, I have to explain what I wish you all knew yourselves: the triumph of winning the battle against one's own body. For some, this means refusing to be controlled, any longer, by a menstrual cycle, or defined, so completely, by infertility, childlessness, or loss. For me, it has meant lucking out in the treatment lottery. This pregnancy has been a leash on my errant body, a tattooed symbol of power and ownership. For the first time in a long time, my body has been doing what I want. I have it back. Now, this moment, I have it back. Who knows what happens from here?

I realise that even amongst those who have been pregnant, not all of you have experienced pregnancy in this way. At least since Twin A, I've had things go normally (touch wood) and that makes a difference. Still, I think all of you - however different your path so far - can draw on enough common ground to appreciate my point of view, and can see why I'm not feeling impatient to "get my body back". So I don't have to explain it to you.

I wish, though, I knew how to explain it to her.

Twitter Updates

2008-05-06T13:48:00.003+10:00

Check it out! I'm on twitter. Not to sound blog-obsessed or anything. But you can now check out the sidebar (to the right! to the right!) to see if I've updated with any exciting news.

Baby-Making Sex

2008-05-03T10:35:00.003+10:00

I saw one, tiny glimmer of light when we got our MF diagnosis. Whatever lay ahead of us, it wasn't going to involve the type of lacklustre sex that has no purpose beyond that of producing a baby.

Let's just say I'm experiencing a sense of irony.

--

Almost forgot - there's some nursery pics up at the picture site. Don't get excited - we haven't painted and decorated (being a rental property) more just purchased and organised.

Idle (and Non-Idle) Chatter

2008-04-29T00:27:00.004+10:00

Short Version: 1. Post-partum depression act, please read. 2. Maternity clothes discussion. 3. Baby kicks. 4. Warning of impending absense due to visitors.

First, for the Americans: this about post-partum depression legislation (via Rachel, who provides info on post-partum depression and infertility).

--

"I'm busting out of my maternity jeans," I announced the other day.

"Too much belly?"

"I'm busting out around the thighs."

"Oh... ah... er..." Mr Bea trailed off, looking panicked.

"It's probably all muscle," I hinted.

"Absolutely!" he agreed, with relief. "Bound to build up the leg muscles with all that extra weight you're carrying." He paused and looked at me. "I've stuffed that one up, haven't I?"

At nearly forty weeks, especially after infertility, I am disinclined to rush out and buy more maternity clothes. So it's on, people: the race against time and fabric.

--

The other night, I was lying on my side on the beanbag when The Foetus gave a nice, solid kick. And I heard the beans go "shush". All of a sudden, it felt like he didn't just exist inside my own body, but as part of the world. That little shush somehow made him a good bit more real.

--

My parents-in-law are arriving tomorrow. If I drop off the face of the earth, try not to read too much into it.

Just Another Non-Manic Monday

2008-04-28T18:03:00.004+10:00

Short Version: general Monday update, everything fine and the same, random observations.

Do you know what it feels like? It feels like The Foetus is trying to physically push his way through the cervix by bracing his legs against my ribs and diaphragm. Not gunna work, little buddy. You have to set off this whole hormone cascade and actually dilate the thing first. Trust me.

--

Today I saw SOB and everything is still fine, although I got that feeling again where... well, before he palpates my abdomen he rubs his hands together vigorously to warm them so I don't get a shock when he touches my bare skin, which is all very good and professional and everything, but as I lie there watching him do this, him towering over the exam table, I just can't help but expect him to throw his head back and cry, "Bwahahahaha ha haaaa!" It's a mite disconcerting.

--

Today, SOB signed off on my birth plan. I know! First labour, and I have a birth plan. How cute! The thing is, though, we're giving birth in a foreign country, with its own cultural practices, and no-one, including SOB, is inclined to wait until I'm 7cm dilated to have an argument over my fong.

--

People keep commanding me to be things. "You're so close! You must be excited/nervous/impatient/etc!" At this stage, I find I'm neither excited nor scared. I'd describe myself as quietly waiting to see how it turns out. It seems infertility beat my sense of anticipation into such a pulp it has not yet recovered. As for patience - we've waited this long, another couple of weeks seems easily doable. I'll get back to you on all these. They may change.

--

I've also been asked if we're ready. I'm never very sure how to answer. The best I can do is tell you that, give or take a cot, a carseat, and a cute little cloth nappy stash, we're about as ready as we've been for several years. Which is to say ready enough, I hope.

--

New pictures up on our picture site. Email me if you want to see and can't.

The Cramping Phase

2008-04-26T15:43:00.003+10:00

Short Version: as the title suggests, really. Pretty sure it's not going anywhere fast, though.

So I wouldn't call them contractions. They're twinges. Cramps. They're uncomfortable enough to make me slow down my walking and, every so often, to suck in my breath. Last night they disturbed my sleep. But they don't last more than a few moments, and I get the idea a contraction, as such, should hang on for, at the very least, what? ten or fifteen seconds at a stretch? If not much, much longer. So I think this is more of an irritated, my-pelvic-floor-is-squashed-now response to having The Foetus sit so low, rather than an actual onset-of-labour type thing. Plus it seems to happen in response to either a) The Foetus moving or b) me getting up to walk around or c) my bladder and/or bowels becoming full, but never d) just spontaneously off its own back. However. I thought I'd mention it.

The Hoarding Phase (And P.S. Note)

2008-04-24T10:08:00.008+10:00

Short Version: perhaps you'd call it nesting, but I think it's more accurate to call it hoarding.

"Check out our freezer," I said to Mr Bea. "It's half-full of frozen food, and the other half is coming soon."

"Excellent thinking."

"Then I had a sudden urge to stock up on toilet paper."

"Well, we do have a lot of guests arriving, that's for sure*. And we don't want to run out of toilet paper."

"I've also started hoarding beer."

"Oh."

"You don't seem pleased. I thought you'd be pleased about the beer."

"Beer is pleasing, I'm just not too keen on the picture I'm getting in my mind of my nearly-nine-month-pregnant wife struggling uphill from the shops to our apartment with her little grocery cart chock-full of beer, whilst the neighbours stand around and tut and whisper behind their hands about how I probably beat you when I'm sober."

"I didn't see any tutting or whispering."

"Nevertheless. Maybe you should leave the beer-hoarding to me."

--
*We are booked solid with guests during May and June. I also have my uni exams somewhere in there. And something else might be happening... what is it...? Oh yeah. We will probably be taking care of a newborn. If you don't really hear from me until July, you'll know why.

--
P.S. If you were in Australia last night, or for some reason had access to Australian news, you might have noticed that my clexane video from IVF Shoot 'Em Up made a news montage about the recall of said drug. My belly was on national news! Cheers for the head's up, Jules.

Changes are a-foot, a-breast, and a-pelvis

2008-04-20T13:56:00.000+10:00

You can't get a good bitch-slapping round here even if you ask for it! You guys are sweet. But I don't want to lose my perspective - it's one precious thing I've gained from the infertility - so those who offered to bitch-slap if asked, I hope you're prepared to make good on your offer if and when.

Short Version of this post: stuff is happening. Don't get too excited - I think I still have a good couple of weeks to go.

Question: hypothetically speaking, if your husband comes to bed late despite prompting, would you say a proportional response involved a) a small amount of verbalised irritation or b) beating him out of the house with a pillow in a wild frenzy, then locking the door, forcing him to sleep outside on a sun lounger under a sky threatening to rent itself apart with a violent, tropical storm? Hypothetically speaking?

I think my hormones may be fluctuating again. I've woken up with the same kinds of hot flushes I experienced in the first trimester; my breasts have suddenly gone up another cup size, with accompanying tenderness; my pelvic cavity has regressed from a cheerful, hardworking body part to a whiny, toddlerish body part ("Slow dooooooown!" "That huuuuuuuurts!" "I need to go to the toooooooiiilet!" and so on - pretty tolerable, but it does seem heavier down there); The Foetus seems restricted, more or less, to squirming rather than kicking; and I just feel, kind of... restless. Like pre-menstrual restless. I'd say it's my nesting instinct kicking in, but to date I have only progressed as far as getting grumpy at the standards of tidyness and cleanliness around the house, but not as far as doing anything about it.

So I'd say my hormones are starting to fluctuate. Suddenly, it really does feel like the end is coming close. Which I think, together with the fact that the storm didn't actually break until 6am (by which time I had relented and unlocked the door), is why Mr Bea has decided to be patient and forgiving with me.

As if I could make up for it somehow

2008-04-16T12:38:00.007+10:00

Short Version: invitation to a bitch-slapping. The bitch would be me. Subjects discussed - birth, infant care. And infertility, again.

You know how, sometimes, what you need isn't unconditional validation and support, but a good, stern talking-to from a friend? This is one of those times. It's about the birth. Well, it's not just about the birth, that's the whole issue - it's about the infertility. It's always about the infertility.

Every so often someone asks me why we're keeping The Foetus' sex a secret (except from you guys), even though we know ourselves, and I say something flippant about how much I enjoy teasing my mother, but that's ~~not it~~ only ~~a small~~ an initially small but steadily increasing part of it. If pushed further, I will add that we wanted gifts in a more imaginative variety of colours than the traditional pink or blue, but that's really nothing to do with it. When Mr Bea and I discussed it together, our reasoning was two-fold. First, there was this sense in which we were still feeling trepidacious about letting people know we were "having a baby" at all. We were far too scared to commit to having this baby.

But we also just... well, we just wanted to keep it a surprise. It was our private information, and we controlled it. Infertility made that precious to us, having taken so much of our privacy and control away. Even if we had tried to keep as much as possible of our journey a secret, we would have needed to tell our GP, our fertility specialist, his nurse, his reception staff, the phlebotomists, the scientists and lab assistants, the anaesthetist, the hospital admissions people, the clinic's nurse counsellor, the chickie who comes in twice a week to freeze semen, the accounts department, the claims staff at two separate insurance agencies (one state, one private), several pharmacists, the security staff at the airport who checked my needles through, and any number of people at the clinics in Sydney (where our recurrent miscarriage specialist works) and Singapore.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Girl, if you're complaining about a loss of privacy and autonomy, you're talking to the wrong face. You had insurance, two sets of gametes, a functioning uterus, and a partner who was on the same page. Come step in my shoes and we'll see just how violated you feel." I'll cop to that - it's true. Infertility doesn't treat us all equally, and so far it has treated us relatively well. But although it takes more from some than others, there's no doubt it gets a certain piece of us all. It has robbed me of my desired level of privacy and autonomy.

And, God help me, I want it back.

Somewhere in my presumed-fertile past I didn't much care about my birth experience, and not so long ago I had whittled my aspirations down to a single, live, take-home baby (bonus points for being healthy). So when, and how, did this new transformation occur? When did I start worrying about the fact that I might want pain relief or need any number of interventions? When did I gain this ardent passion for exclusive breastfeeding? Why do I feel such a need to prove that I can do it alone? And how, when there are genuine things to worry about, can I be afraid of simply... needing more help?

Also, where the fuck do I get off even wanting these things? Did I not get beaten down hard enough, that I've bounced back so quickly and with so many extraneous demands? Have I learned nothing? Have I forgotten it so easily?

I want to be ok with whatever has to happen. My head has my priorities straight - I'll be fine, it says, with anything that brings The Foetus home safely. I just want to be sure my heart will agree.

You may start speaking sternly now, I can take it and won't hate you, I promise.

Finishing Touches

2008-04-14T19:08:00.004+10:00

Short Version: Another appointment, everything fine, officially at term now with SOB saying he doesn't mind when I go into labour from here on in. I discuss my labour preparations.

"I don't know why the prenatal class teacher spent so long drilling us on pelvic floor exercises," I said to Mr Bea the other night. "Every time The Foetus headbutts my bladder I get practice pretty much automatically!"

"Er... yes," he answered, awkwardly. "Is that the kind of bawdy, intimate humour you have girlfriends and a blog for?"

Based on that conversation, I'm supposing he doesn't want to hear about the evening primrose oil capsules I've decided to stick up my neveryoumind. Do you want to hear about the evening primrose oil capsules I've decided to stick up my neveryoumind? Wouldn't be the worst thing you've read on the blogs today, would it?

I've got these evening primrose oil capsules. I've heard you should stick them up your neveryoumind on a daily (or is it twice daily?) basis, starting from about thirty-six weeks or as soon as you get around to it afterwards. Ideally, this should be combined with perineal massage, which is something else Mr Bea would be embarrassed to discuss, although I would like to point out that he's man enough to actually do what he has to do. (It was the same all through fertility treatments. We have this unspoken agreement that the sperm samples he obtained in the clinic "men's room" were produced more or less by magic.)

But bless him he will, for example, brew up a nice hot cup of rasberry leaf tea, which he doesn't like talking about either, but that's more because it bores him. So I've got the rasberry leaf tea, the pelvic floor exercises, the perineal massage, and the evening primrose oil up the neveryoumind, but I am in two minds about one matter: sex. You see, I've heard that the prostaglandins in semen are most efficiently absorbed through the gut. Then again, you won't get any perineal massage or pelvic floor workout that way, will you? Things to ponder. And perhaps to discuss, but only with girlfriends and blogpeople.

So have I missed anything?

The Moral Dilemma of the Second-Hand Cot

2008-04-09T13:45:00.008+10:00

Short Version: Cot purchase and safety/environmental/animal welfare announcement in one.

I nearly posted to ask you to resolve a moral dilemma for me, except then I thought of the perfect answer. So now I'm posting to boast about my answer under the pretense of keeping kids safe by disseminating information about the hazards of cots. Let's face it - most of you are well-versed in this stuff already, being the info-savvy, long-prepared, safety-conscious people you are. Frankly, if anyone knows this stuff and takes it seriously, it's an infertility blogger, think about it. Then again what the heck, you can't repeat an important safety message enough times, and there's always the chance you'll tell me how wise and clever I am. Therefore on with it.

It started when we saw a second-hand cot for sale. I know, we have the bassinet for starters, but it won't last for long, and I happened to see this at a good price, plus, hey! recycling! so I arranged to view it, tape measure in hand. Why a tape measure? Because I wanted to make sure it conformed to safety guidelines (pdf), and for that you need a tape measure to figure out how big all the gaps and things are. Happily, the cot passed the test and we arranged delivery to our flat.

That's when the dilemma started. Because the people wanted to get rid of not only the cot, but also the bedding, and they were using far more of it than is recommended by Sids and Kids in their safe sleeping FAQ (pdf). There is also the issue of using second-hand mattresses, which is discussed in the above brochure, and although the SIDS people haven't found enough reason to recommend against using one provided the mattress is otherwise safe, I am paranoid enough to want a new one anyway. So my dilemma was this: so much bedding, so little desire to use it. What does one do with two cot bumpers and five tiny pillows that one considers to be a death trap for infants? As well as a second-hand mattress which is arguably safe, but you never know?

When you have things to get rid of you have several choices: you can sell them, you can give them away, or you can chuck them. Now, whilst chucking them seems wasteful, selling them or giving them away involves a high risk that someone else will use stuff on their baby which you consider to be below acceptable safety standards, and there's something not quite moral about that. Profiting from their ignorance (by selling) does seem worse than passively accepting their ignorance (by offloading for free) but it doesn't really make the second option right.

Of course, ultimately there's a limit to my responsibility for other people's parenting decisions. I don't, for example, feel the need to picket stores that sell cot bumpers and baby pillows, or accost strangers wheeling prams in order to grill them on their tot's sleeping arrangements. On the other hand, I am clearly responsible for advertising used equipment as "used" and for being honest about my reasons for getting rid of something if asked. If I were to make up some reply about not liking the colour, that would obviously cross the line. But am I required to explain myself to people who don't ask me? If I am, is that enough, or should I go further by refusing to hand over the goods to anyone intending to use them for a baby, contrary to safe sleeping guidelines? If the second, am I required to ensure, absolutely, that the products don't get used for someone's baby in the future, or is it enough to gain reasonable satisfaction of such? What about my responsibility to the environment - to recycling and reducing landfill?

These were the questions I was going to pose to you when the answer hit me. The perfect place for unwanted and unsafe baby bedding is the local animal shelter or vet clinic. (Or, if you know someone, a neighbour with an elderly dog.) Why?

Cot mattresses are ideal surfaces for medium to large sized dogs with mobility problems (including those with arthritis or those temporarily bed-bound from illness). The soft cushiness will help guard against debilitating and potentially dangerous bedsores, yet the surface is close to the ground and therefore relatively easy to get onto and off. Depending on the make of the mattress, it may also include protection against leaky bladders and drool.
Small pillows can be used in clinic settings to prop patients into good positions - for comfort, ease of breathing, attachment and use of IV lines and other equipment, extra protection of wound areas, or positioning for x-rays.
Cot bumpers, with the help of scissors, needle and thread, can be turned into mini-mattresses for small patients, or a number of thin pillows.

Any way you look at it, vet clinics and animal shelters can make good, safe use of your unwanted baby bedding, and I feel that by handing it over to such an organisation for that defined purpose, I have made a reasonable enough effort to ensure that no harm comes from their future use. So that is what we have decided to do. Perhaps you can think of further ways to safely dispose of unwanted cot bedding (and if so, please add them in the comments).

To sum up, there are a few reasons I went ahead with this post:

I wanted to remind people to check their safe sleeping guidelines when setting up their nursery. These guidelines can save little lives!
I wanted to remind you not to dump when you can recycle! The planet (and your local vet clinic, animal shelter, or whatever) wants to put your unwanted stuff to good, safe, alternative uses.
I was feeling smug about my solution and wanted to display my smugness publicly.

So there you have it. Goodnight and sleep well.

Proof That I Listen To Advice, Sometimes

2008-04-07T12:51:00.005+10:00

The IIFF Awards have been handed out. Head on over to the ceremony!

Short Version: I admit to the wisdom of my readers, and start nesting a little. Oh, by the way, I had another appointment and everything is normal. Weekly appointments from now on.

You were all right. Those of you who said it was no big deal and that it would work out either way - you were right. However, those of you who encouraged me to try and smooth the road by being prepared - you were also right. And those of you who pointed out that a bag packed by Mr Bea is a dubious proposition... well, let me take you back to our honeymoon, and a lesson I should have already learned.

In the hurly-burly of our wedding preparations nearly, gosh, nine years ago now, Mr Bea was assigned the task of packing a honeymoon bag. Long story short, he did quite well except for the underwear. Now, whilst I'm sure we can all find amusement in the fact that my groom forgot to pack any underwear at all for his bride to take on our honeymoon, I'm not so sure I'd be laughing about it in the maternity ward.

So I have packed. More accurately, I have thrown what I would like to pack into a plastic bag and dumped it into the bassinet, which is now out of its box and set up. I have also managed to drag Mr Bea to Ikea to buy dinky little storage solutions, and I have sat down and, well, I guess organised is the only word for it, the baby stuff.

"So that whole pregnant/nesting thing - not a myth?" Mr Bea said, poking his head into the nursery last night.

"Apparently not, from what I've read, although I do wish my instinct would kick in," I replied, stuffing a onsie into a drawer along with other onsies of arguably similar size*.

"Right..." he said, looking pointedly around the room.

"All these other people are way organised. You should see the Spock's nursery, with its ocean theme, and its boat-shaped bookshelf, and its drawers upon drawers of thrice-washed cloth nappies and infant clothing."

"How many pre-washes are you up to?"

"So far? Zero. Although, in my defence, most of our nappies haven't arrived yet."

"Yes... I do think you made a good choice when you decided against a legal career."

"Are you going to poke fun, or are you going to come and learn about the organisational intricacies of my changing system?"

"Will you hit me if I answer honestly?"

Anyway. I haven't got anything photographable yet, but at least I can see what we've got and where it is. And I'm in with a decent shot of being hygienically-clothed in the hospital. For now, I think we're good.

--
*"0-3 months" really does cover quite an eye-opening range of sizes, doesn't it?

Congratulations! You're a Sponsor!

2008-04-04T17:31:00.007+10:00

I just sent my last Blogher payment to Team On The Road. Which means, if you're reading this, you're already a sponsor! But you could always top it up...

Why You Should Donate to Team On the Road
(and join the team yourself)

Of course, if you'd rather try and win stuff on eBay, that's fine, too:

Take Back the U.T.E.R.U.S.

Still Thinking It'll Never Happen

2008-04-03T16:12:00.006+10:00

Short Version: I wonder whether I need to be getting more organised.

Tell me if I'm wrong. By the time most of you wake up in your respective time zones and read this, I will be thirty-six weeks pregnant. I have, you know, stuff. After yesterday's car seat purchase, I officially have the sort of minimum requirements needed to get us through the hospital stay and, say, the first two days at home. It's not washed. It's not neatly laid out in a cute, fully-decorated nursery. It is, in point of fact, stuffed into the built-in robe in the spare room such that I can close the door and no visitor will know we even have stuff.

I haven't packed a hospital bag. Mr Bea asked when I was planning to pack a hospital bag. "I guess sometime..." I said, equivocating over whether to delete another 500 words of the essay on surrogacy I've been rewriting over and over again for several weeks now. "Damn, I've gone and contradicted myself again. I'm going to have to completely restructure this whole argument. We also have to pre-wash everything at least once, but you know, they say first stage of labour lasts eight to twelve hours, and is it just me, or is that heaps of time to throw some stuff into an overnight bag and put on a couple of loads?"

"And maybe arrange the nursery, set up the bassinet, put a few spare meals in the freezer, that type of thing?"

"For example."

"It depends. Are you also going to be rewriting your essay still?"

"Ah! I think I've worked it out! Do we own a copy of anything by Kant?"

Probably it'll all get done in a flash when my nesting instinct kicks in suddenly, any day now.

Right?

IIFF4 - Finding Out, Letting Know, Realising

2008-03-29T19:14:00.002+10:00

We had a small field this time, but a great one! Go check out the entries (including mine).

Boogie Woogie Baby

2008-03-23T18:41:00.018+10:00

Short Version: another no-news/good-news appointment, and then I talk about baby kicks. And don't forget the IIFF!

I had another no-news appointment this morning. I am now at the same weight I reached at the peak of my OHSS. I thoroughly recommend that anyone who wants to stack on over a dozen kilos does so over a few trimesters, rather than a few days. Also, I love my exercise ball! I am back to not feeling achey and stiff, although I do still have to be careful about moving around, stretching and changing positions.

--

When I returned from my latest "IVF Holiday", back in August last year, I decided to watch Saturday Night Fever on the plane. They say babies start learning things long before birth. The Foetus seems to have picked up some disco moves. "Ah, ah, ow, ooh... staying alive." I'm telling you, he's been simultaneously jabbing me in the upper right rib and the lower left pelvis, just like Johnny T on the dance floor.

I've been meaning to describe how it feels for a while now. For some reason, I kind of expected the kicking to be a pleasant sensation, and, well, it is and it's not. I mean, fundamentally, it is. It is because it tells me he's still alive. Heck, it is because it reminds me he's in there at all. I like thinking about his little hands and feet as they pummel against my insides. "That was a foot," I think, and I get a wonderfully giddy sensation just thinking about these feet.

On the other hand, I am surprised (even though I shouldn't be, now I come to think about it) to find that the physical sensation itself is not really what you'd call pleasant. Put it this way: if I didn't know it was being caused by a baby, I'd probably say it was irritating. So did I, in the throes of our battle with infertility, spend one too many days thinking how great it would be to feel a baby in my belly, and not quite enough being logical about the whole thing? I was pretty sure I hadn't done that. I was pretty sure I had things in perspective, and not in some idealised, rose-coloured view. Luckily, I still feel I would have done it anyway. It's one of those "hurts so good" things.

"What does it feel like, exactly?" asked Mr Bea.

I tilted my head to the side and considered. "It feels like..." Bubbles? Pops? Gas? "It feels like..." Dancing? Mini earthquakes in the belly? Shocks? "It feels like a small creature moving around inside my abdomen."

"Illuminating."

"But not just any creature. Not, for example, like a large mouse with scratchy, tickly nails or anything like that. More like..."

"A pre-term human baby?"

"Right!"

It might be more comfortable if I could teach the little Disco Monkey in there to moonwalk, but I think Staying Alive is a much better theme than Thriller.

The pain of aches

2008-03-19T10:54:00.006+10:00

Short Version: I am beginning to feel physically uncomfortable, but I'll cope. Everything otherwise fine.

Extra note: don't forget to put your entries together for the upcoming IIFF!

It's finally happening. I guess it was bound to sooner or later, although, actually, scratch that - I can think of a whole range of scenarios in which late-pregnancy discomfort doesn't happen, and I think I'll take the backache, thankyouverymuch - but nevertheless it's here, so I am writing to sigh resignedly about it.

I can't do things for long. This is somewhat annoying. For instance, my back gets sore when I sleep. I'm still getting enough sleep, it's just happening in shorter snatches over a longer period. My back gets sore - in a different place - when I sit. I am still working on my course, but it's happening in shorter snatches over a longer period. My feet get sore, and sometimes swollen, when I stand. I am still doing the housework, shopping, etc, but it's happening, well, in shorter snatches over a longer period. The leg cramps have come back. It's distracting, and just not nice.

My work area looks like some kind of low-impact, executive gym (but with much cheaper decor). In addition to the laptop, books, notes etc, there is an exercise ball, a yoga mat, and an airer with towel and swimming togs hanging over it. Add a beanbag and a few cushions and you get the idea. This is because, over my long period of getting things done in short snatches, I need to stop and stretch the achey bits out, rest them quietly, and eventually immerse them all in water for twenty minutes so they can go back to their normal size. This leaves much less time for goofing off, and goofing off was so one of my favourite things. I suppose you could say this is nature's way of reconciling me to the end of pregnancy, the process of labour, and the start of infant care. Nature is such a bitch sometimes. She couldn't think of a nicer way?

Nevertheless, with a little extra work, I am still able to keep the symptoms under control, which is one more thing to be thankful for on top of everything else. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and be thankful for it on my exercise ball.

You know it's baby-brain when...

2008-03-16T10:39:00.003+10:00

...your initial thought on a message in your spam folder entitled "make her all wet" is that it's nappy-related information.

Our First Baby-T, and other tales of the weekend

2008-03-08T17:59:00.020+10:00

Short Version: 32wk appointment, hospital tour, prenatal classes, shopping list - all coming along fine.

The Wardrobe Begins

A couple of days ago, we got our first baby clothes. My sister sent them, and they arrived in the mail. One T-shirt says, "If you think I'm cute, you should see my aunt." Apparently she considered, but eventually decided against, writing her phone number underneath.

When I took the clothes out of the package, Mr Bea took them to look at. "They're so tiny!" he breathed. "Are babies really that small?" I had to gently point out the tags that read, "Size 3-6 months."

My mum and mum-in-law also announced purchases, so I gave in and bought a few cloth nappies to round out the mini-collection.

Prenatal 101

Saturday was our first prenatal class. Friday night, Mr Bea asked if there was anything he should have read up on beforehand. "I think the purpose of the class is to learn stuff, rather than to show off your knowledge," I responded. Nevertheless, when I arose in the morning, he was already on the couch studying Breastfeeding Made Simple. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he said, "Hey - this could totally be on the exam."

In this first of three classes, we discussed normal labour, starting with anatomy.

"This is the cervix," the midwife said, referring to her poster. "In this picture it's closed, as it has been since it let through that tiny little sperm who swam up your reproductive tract and fused with the egg to make your baby." Um, yeah, whatever.

There was a run-through of the stages of labour. "Early signs might include nesting behaviour such as cleaning and tidying..."

"That'll be easy to spot," Mr Bea whispered from the corner of his mouth.

"...or irrational displays of emotion..."

"No help there, though."

Lastly, we learned some massage techniques. Mr Bea was instructed in light massage, sacral counterpressure, hip and pelvic massage, head and jaw massage, and various pressure points. "So how did you all feel about that?" the midwife asked when we were done.

"Maybe you should set him a homework assignment for practice," I replied. "After all, massage is going to be on the exam, right?"

The Fortnight Zone

We have hit SOB's fortnight zone. No more monthly appointments for us - the longest I'll go without seeing him from now til the end is two weeks. Next appointment we get to discuss our "birth plan", which in our classes is more accurately referred to as our "birth philosophy". Everything is fine, except that the boy, who is apparently already big enough to fit into newborn nappies, has decided that the normal presentation he's been dutifully displaying on pretty much every ultrasound so far is getting kind of old, so he's trying out breech. We're not to worry about that until next appointment. I think I'll be not-worrying in cat-stretch position, for what it's worth.

Tour of Delivery

After the appointment we went on a hospital tour, and learned all about hospital policies such as immediate bonding and breastfeeding, rooming in, free lactation advice and consultation, etc etc.

"Is it your first baby?" the tour guide asked us, and I affirmed that it was. "It'll be very exciting for you!" she enthused, to which I answered, "Not too exciting, I hope." Everyone laughed except me.

Near the end, we went up to the fifth floor to see the VIP suit where local celebrities and other people who have much more money than we do stay. The fertility clinic is on the fifth floor. A couple excused themselves as they shuffled from the back of the lift through our tour group of half a dozen heavily pregnant women and their doting partners and down the hall in the direction of the IVF centre. Most of the group moved aside absently and continued listening to the tour guide. Mr Bea and I turned to watch them disappear round the corner.

I hope they get here one day.

Newsflash - I don't care

2008-03-06T16:30:00.005+10:00

Short Version: complaint story about a restaurant's chef.

Sometimes I forget to specify that I want my meat well done on account of the pregnancy and the parasites and so forth, and sometimes the wait staff forget to ask. And sometimes I mistakenly assume things, like that crumbed, fried fish will come thoroughly cooked.

This is no problem.

But when I apologetically explain that I should have requested it well done in the first place and could you humour me by just please putting it on for a little longer til it's cooked through because, you know, doctor's orders, the long-term welfare of my unborn child, etc, there's something I want you to understand.

I don't care, chef, if you feel insulted for some unknown reason.

I don't care, chef, if your "professional opinion" is that this is how the fish is supposed to be cooked.

I don't care, chef, if the fish will end up tough, or dry.

I don't care, chef, if it will take too long (and thanks, by the way, for deliberately making me wait forty minutes until others had finished and were getting restless before serving my revised meal, and I hope that made you feel better about your inadequate penis size).

I don't care, chef, if you send the dish backwards and forwards from the kitchen via an increasingly uncomfortable and apologetic waiter with fresh arguments as to why I should just eat it like it is.

I don't care, chef. I don't care. Why would you even think I'd care?

You see, I'm too busy, monsenior fricking chef, considering the fact that I don't want to risk ingesting live parasites that might cause permanent disability to my child. It's what you might call an "overriding concern". If you think I'm going to stop caring about that for long enough to bow to your overly-weighty ego (or perhaps your insecurity complex?), then you are profoundly confused in your thinking.

And just, like, deeply, freakishly stupid.

And a prick.

Holy Fuck

2008-03-05T23:51:00.001+10:00

The hospital just mailed me my admission forms for delivery.

I wouldn't want to live next door to me just now, either

2008-03-03T12:49:00.005+10:00

Our neighbours moved out a couple of weeks ago, and so far, no-one else has moved in. On the weekend I was just stepping out when some prospective tenants came to view, and in a prospective-neighbourly way I said hi.

"Hello!" they responded, and then, giving a downward flick of the eyes towards my belly, one added, "Do you live next door?"

"Yes, we've been here about a year now*," I told them, turning the key in the door and pressing the button for the lift. "You're looking at moving in, then?"

"Well, we're just having a look," they replied, as the real estate agent grinned woodenly in the background and vaguely tried to usher them inside. The lift came, we said our goodbyes and I stepped inside.

I wonder if, two seconds after the door closed, they turned to the agent and said, "You know what? I think we've seen enough."

--
*Tenancies in Singapore are generally two years long.

Bubble and Squeak

2008-02-26T18:54:00.005+10:00

Short Version: leftovers cooked up - recording pregnancy signs, arguing over trifling organisational matters to do with nurseries, plus thanks for the comments on the last post.

Thanks for the breastfeeding advice. I feel reassured. I'm still thinking about the pros and cons of various buying/renting options as per suggestions, but in a much more relaxed and informed way. Also, cheers for the extra book suggestions. And the tips! Some really great tips.

Today, however, I need you to weigh in on a much more important subject: should a reference book on parenting be classified under "book" or "nursery item"? I say "nursery item". Mr Bea says "book". Having to move them backwards and forwards across the house in a passive-aggressive ritual of unspoken marital defiance is getting kind of old, but at the same time I know from experience that it could go on more or less forever before one of us gives in.

--

I haven't been recording signs and symptoms well this last month, and I feel like I might regret it, or not, who knows? In any case:

I started getting Braxton Hicks contractions around the beginning of the third trimester. Mr Bea witnessed one and expressed surprise over how it looked. Apparently he was expecting my stomach to go inwards with each contraction. I pointed out how muscles get hard and bulgy when they contract and tried using my arm muscles as an example, but unfortunately I don't have any arm muscles.
I started being able to feel daily foetal movement from, say, 24-25 weeks. Gradually I started being able to feel movements more than once a day. At around thirty weeks the movements have become fairly regular and frequent, and much more varied. This chain of events didn't build steadily - rather, The Foetus has had wriggly and non-wriggly days. Even now he has quieter days where I have to concentrate a bit more to make sure he's moving enough. I can't feel as much when I'm walking around.
I got swollen ankles this one time. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't had OHSS. When I had OHSS I tripped over the carpet in the hospital and went crashing to the ground with my drip stand. I broke the tubing and fluid and blood went everywhere, but it looked and sounded more dramatic than it was, which, by the way, is always the best type of accident to have, especially when the nurses are already running around like chooks with their heads off and you've just added extra jobs to their list, because they'll look upon you with sympathy and appreciate your "bravery" instead of clicking their tongues at your clumsiness and refusing to bring you your pain meds on time.

However, I did manage to hit my shin on something as I fell, and the other night I noticed that I had an indent where the scar is. Except it wasn't an indent - just everything else was outdented. But only slightly. I went for a gentle swim and that seemed to help. It hasn't happened again since.
I am coping in this heat. I have been using the fiendishly clever trick of adjusting my physical activities to keep myself within a comfortable range. I do pretty much all of my exercise in the aircon (yoga/shopping centres), in the pool, or after dark, and I never overdo things. I don't, however, know how much longer I can cope with people asking me how I'm coping in the heat. On the other hand, thankyou for your kind concern, and please don't think I'm ungrateful for it. I only sound ungrateful. Ok, fine, I'm an ungrateful bitch, but it's the hormones. Can we get back to the book classification question?

Companion Guide to "Conception Made Insanely Complicated"

2008-02-24T15:26:00.016+10:00

Short Version: I had another appointment, doppler scan, all fine, stopping clexane. I then embarked on research into breastfeeding. Includes book review for Breastfeeding Made Simple.

So I was standing in this shop the other day after my appointment.

Wait. Let me go back a bit. I had another appointment to do the doppler thingy and decide what we're going to do about this clexane business. Upshot - all the relevant blood vessels, placental structures, and associated bits and pieces (such as the amniotic fluid, kidneys, etc) look fine, so SOB suggested it might be time to wave the injections good~~riddance~~bye and maybe transition to low-dose aspirin only, or maybe not, considering there's no discernable medical need for it in my case but it might make me feel less freaked out about stopping meds. Anyway, after much frantic googling I decided to go hands-free. I've just had my first medication-free twenty-four hours since... mid-July 07. I am nervous enough to keep having to sit down and do a kick count for reassurance, but the fact that I can sit down any time and do a kick count for reassurance is making this a tremendous amount easier than other parts of the process have been, so all in all I'm ok. But what was I talking about? Yes - after the appointment.

To celebrate, I dropped in to buy more baby stuff on the way home, just a couple of sheets, nothing fancy, except suddenly I found myself in conversation with a sales assistant on the subject of breast pumps. I wasn't actually in the market for a breast pump, and she thought that very cavalier of me. "If you want to breast feed, you need to buy a good-quality pump before the birth," she warned, sternly.

Now, I know this isn't true, on account of the fact that the practice of breastfeeding predates the invention of the breast pump by some hundreds upon thousands of years. Which isn't to say I'm convinced I'll never need a pump, or that I think it'll all come naturally if I just shut my eyes and really believe, but starting out on the assumption that a prenatally-purchased breast pump is the only way I'll ever achieve my goal when I don't, at this time, have any reason to think I'll be worse off than the average mother seems a little... whacky? I'm looking for a more appropriate word, but I can't find it. It sounds like someone trying to earn a nice commission off a $700 breast pump, is what it sounds like*.

In response, I decided to go out to a bookshop and buy a book on breastfeeding, because as we all know, if some biological process isn't working out for you it's probably just because you're ill-informed, as any Aunt Jane will attest. In any case, I was dismayed to find that the first two books I picked up both espoused the same opinion - that a prenatally-purchased breast pump is essential for successful breastfeeding. They also went on about how different types of pumps serve different purposes, but failed to say how you'd know which to buy ahead of time when you don't even know what your supply's going to be like yet. Both turned me off further by promptly following this with dire warnings about using a fail-safe method of contraception whilst breastfeeding, although, to be fair, we were planning to use the failsafe contraceptive method of not doing IVF, so perhaps I'm on their side with that one after all. Anyway, I ended up shelving both of these and instead buying Breastfeeding Made Simple, which I wish to review even though I haven't finished it yet.

First I'll say this: be careful with this book if you're going to beat yourself up in the event that, through no fault of your own, things don't work out. The authors do acknowledge that special situations can stuff things up - they even have a whole chapter on physical or health issues - but first you'll have to read about how much stupider and less healthy formula-fed babies become not to mention the importance of the breastfeeding act, as distinct from the milk itself, and to be honest I think they cross the line at some points and enter into the realms of breast-feeding hysteria**. And they needn't think I'm impressed by their constant quoting of studies, because I happen to know that you can find a study saying almost anything if you really look***. So whilst, yes, I'm on board with and motivated by the idea that breastfeeding is a good first choice - I already bought the book, didn't I? - I'm just not convinced that adding a little formula or a bottle here and there is going to cause the world to end, or the baby's head to spontaneously combust.

If you can get past that, however, the rest is good, common sense. I like the way they talk about the history of breast-feeding and the evolution of certain practices and myths. I like the little notes on comparative cultural and species practices. I like the way they explain the normal, mammalian physiology and how their advice stems from it - in short, the way they want you to understand breastfeeding, rather than just learning it by rote - and I like the way this flows naturally into the area of trouble-shooting. I love that they don't mention breast pumps until page 188****. And I love the fact that, despite being a US publication, they realise that most of the rest of the world uses the metric system. Because seriously, what the fuck is an ounce, anyway*****?

Through my reading so far, and putting the "motivational" scare tactics about the importance of breastfeeding firmly into perspective**, I have started to gain confidence that, if things don't work out the way we want them to, it won't be my fault. It won't be, for example, because I didn't purchase the right breast pump at the proper time. At the end of the day, that's exactly what I was after, and I couldn't really ask for more from any publication. I guess we'll just see how it all plays out in real life*.

--
*If you have assvice about feeding or other books, please feel free to comment. I'm not hostile to assvice, I just reserve the right to ignore it at my own peril.

**I don't want to frighten you off. Almost all of the book is quite sympathetic, they acknowledge and try to provide information on (and extra references for) specific problems, and the amazon reviews have people saying it helped them with their "breastfeeding baggage" and was "encouraging and empowering". It's just some of the stats they quote at the start about the importance of breast milk might be a bit hard on those who ultimately can't make it work.

***Actually, I am a bit impressed, just not as impressed as they seem to think I should be.

****The book is some 250 pages long. This is many more than the other books. The pages are also bigger and with smaller type. Mr Bea raised his eyebrows when he read the claim that it was "making things simple", but this sort of ground-up approach always takes a lot of space to put forwards. Anyway. I'm a geek. It fits.

*****Don't answer that. I don't feel like I should have to know.

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P.S. New belly pic up. Email me if you're confused about where.