Thursday, May 27, 2004

 
post 1003:

as I paused from trying to cook a Saturday night feast for several people and pack for the three of us (working bee in the country this weekend), anyway, as I paused to explain to A. that both the ring and the flap on the activity centre were orange, it finally began to dawn on me what a lot there is to being human. not human in the "oh the humanity" sense, just the practicalities of everything we need to know to get by in a Western country, plus the cultural stuff. colours. numbers. ADSL configuration. making a decent risotto. remembering phone numbers. English. Kurt Cobain. Mozart, Monet, Manet and Emily Kngwarreye. remembering birthdays. driving. the Westminster political system. and so on. and that a lot of it has be transmitted by one person, in this case me.

also I must rescue him each time he falls from his favourite new position: sitting up! so I will.

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

 
he's not weaned. he's NOT. he's just having a little rice pap for lunch, some at dinner and a tbsp of vegies (right now he's staring up at me wondering what that cool tapping noise is).

but my body, ignoring my state of nervous exhaustion and 5-6 breastfeeds a day, thinks I'm ready to have another baby. only seven weeks after his first mouthful of solids, I have my blinkin' period. I don't need the mess. I don't need the cramps. and I certainly don't need pmt on top of my edgy, nasty mood.

this is sacrilege, (sp?) of course, but right now I'm sort of not unhappy that because I'm a) infertile and b) not having sex more than once a month, at least I'm not likely to be pregnant into the bargain. yes I know women used to be constantly pregnant and feeding and dealing with babies. that is why many babies died and why women used to not be able to read/vote/drink even soy decaf lattes. or go to matinees.

this post is more incoherent than usual, no? yes!

and the grrrl? in form, while all about her lose their heads. she's a man, my son.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

 
except of course, to check in on a story that would be a great piece of drama if it wasn't happening to a real live oh-so-human.

(silent barrack)

 
you know what I hate? when the computer crashes, re-crashes and so on, then you spend 10 minutes trying to get the laptop and phone link up, then the computer and adsl come up just in time for the baby to wake up and you don't get anything written except a complaint about the computer crashing....

Sunday, May 23, 2004

 
warning: sleep whinge ahead.
between 9.30 last night and 6.30 this morning I was woken SIX times. two feeds, three sooks and a dog-next-door. I then slept again until 8, so that's seven wakeups if you count that one.

then sent dh out with the baby for a couple of hours so I could get an afternoon nap. this was necessary. this morning I tried to write the word "of" and came out with "fo". that is how disjointed my brain is. shortly afterwards I confessed to orchestrating the wmd program...

so dh was very tired and not up for a visit to Friends' New Baby, and I ended up going for a sleepy bike ride while he napped with A. now it's 5pm, the house is a bombsite, the baby grumpy from lack of good naps himself, and nothing has been achieved in a whole Sunday. I keep saying this, but it's true. this can't go on.

annoying article in the weekend papers about baby sleep wars, advocating that parents do controlled crying, bore the baby to sleep, etc etc. WE'RE DOING ALL THAT ALREADY!!

in fact we're doing everything right, technically. but he still wakes up 2-3 times apart from feeds. I think I may have to forget about my tattered purity (read the odd Valerian and lots of wine) and take up caffeine again. it's the only way I can have any life while this goes on. and on. and on.

(you were warned!)

Saturday, May 22, 2004

 
baby rowan heading home from China!

Friday, May 21, 2004

 
while I haven't been looking, heaps of new infertility/ttc blogs seem to have sprung up. I'm just having a surf while waiting for the evening madness to start, mulling over whether I'm safe now or not. those eight embies are tucked away safe and warm in the back of my mind (even if they're at a hundred below or whatever in the freezer). but still when people say "will you have another", I never say "yes", I say "I hope so, if we're lucky."

of course, we're already lucky...

 
the naked ovary

 
a whacking great pdf file with the latest Victorian IVF results figures - 2002. I guess my 10 eggs and 10 embies are included there; A. will be listed in 2003's report as one of the 1000+ human beings this wonderful technology allows to be born every year.

(actually, that's the two-page summary sheet. the full 44 pages with performance of different clinics can be go at via ita.org.au.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

 
quick post b/c my (*&)%$$ editor has asked for several new points in each of three interviews I've ALREADY FINISHED (ie, I have to go through the whole rigmarole again).

my cousin, who is a year older than me and was up to her fourth full IVF cycle is pregnant! I really had been sceptical of her chances - she wasn't getting many eggs and so on, though we haven't talked since her first cycle. she's 14 weeks and I surprised myself by having tears in my eyes when she told me on the phone.

that means, all going well, that me, my younger cousin on my mum's side and my older cousin on my father's, will all have had babies pretty much within the same year. happy, happy, happy, joy, joy, joy.

Monday, May 17, 2004

 
well, he's moving. backwards.
yes, my clever son knows that being on his front, resting on his hands and wiggling his legs will get him somewhere. he's just not going where he wants to. this is a today development, so I suppose he'll work it out.

Saturday, May 15, 2004

 
excitement here: my good friend has just had her second baby by planned C-section and I'm just hanging out for permission from my other good friend, her husband, to go and view the little girl. which gender I predicted, btw.

also a visit from very pregnant work colleague and her husband, whom I've also worked with. she's underwhelmed at being unexpectedly pregnant at 39. had the usual annoying story about thinking it was change of life and the dr saying "sit down". accidental pregnancy stories should not be allowed. I suppose she's allowed her ambivalence - we all have it, even the most "desperate" infertile woman, once pregnant - about the impact on her life. it's hard to remember that though, knowing how many others would crawl across broken glass to be accidentally pg at 39.

this post brought to you courtesy Jolly Jumper, and truncated courtesy mega-nappy.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

 
dumb comment of the day from the maternal health nurse: "going to hong kong will be a bit of a break for you at least"

to which I said "in what way is multiple plane flights and reestablishing my household a break?" I actually did. rude, but fair...

not a good afternoon; got to sleep and A. awoke, whingeing mightily. sometimes it's easier than others. early bedtimes must become a priority.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

 
you can have a clean house.
or you can achieve things.
you can't have both.
today I am choosing to achieve things - including dealing with a spate of calls from people wanting to rent out my country place while we're away. so I'm still in my PJs at 12.31pm. got a problem with that?

Sunday program
IVF agonising, part the two. I'm just reading the transcript; no time to watch the show.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

 
poor darling. he must lie up there thinking "not only are they letting me cry, there's another baby in the house also screaming." think I'll turn the monitor down. :)

sleep school has not in fact delivered all the answers. all their strategies are about resettling. I can DO that. it's the waking in the first place that gets me.

now we're supposed to cut back on the dummy, not feed him after midnight and a few other bits of tweaking around the edges that frankly, I have little faith in.

he's having trouble with this last nap of the day. off I go again.

Monday, May 10, 2004

 
whoa. don't know if I'm up to coping with a new interface. still, there it is; and I'm pushing 1000 posts, it tells me!

anyway, to more important stuff: baby sleep school tomorrow. my mothers' group has worded me up on the good and bad staff, the quality of the food (non-existent) and the fact that I "can always leave". so my hopes are not so high. after all, how DO you stop a baby waking up in the first place? he settles down after each time, it's the waking that's getting me.

still a mess. could hardly lift my feet when I woke this morning. I'm learning that I do improve, given time and caffeine. but I'm not supposed to be having too much of the latter.

on baby-related dietary limits: here I am, off to Hong Kong with its millions of yummy Chinese restaurants featuring crabs, mussels, etc: and what can't I eat? shellfish. blah. the things I do for my child, etc.

this week's project: somehow find two hours to get through a taped current affairs show on IVF. yeah right. maybe 12 10-minute blocks, but not two hours.

Saturday, May 08, 2004

 
tears and tantrums:

I used to think IVF mothers who talked about "tears of joy" were soppy, but the more I fall in love with this little boy, the closer I get to shedding them.

but this afternoon's were tears of exhaustion and frustration: long story, but dh managed to not help me as I needed with getting my afternoon sleep, then got all defensive because I started doing some housework he'd neglected, them moved on to the full body mock - ie imitating me in a derogatory way - and I know it will take a lot for me to forgive him.

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

 
if I were to collapse on the floor with some sort of horrible affliction, do you know what that baby would do? he'd laugh at me. every time I cough or sneeze he giggles. so I don't see why convulsions and wheezing for my final breath would be any different.

a half-formed post-nap thought: that though I'm hoping he'll get a good education and have vaguely been imagining a good private school, in fact the people at my private school were mostly prats and my true friends were poofters, actors, musicians and sometime drug addicts. that I should try to see things for what they really are and him for what he really is and try to match them up properly. otoh, that my private school's academic standards and teachers were very good for me.

I'm currently avoiding getting the replacement car seat out of the car, struck by a fear that it isn't quite what the airlines require either and that I'll have to make another trek out there to swap it over AGAIN. oh well, at least I got to the shop next door that sells aqua nappies.

cousin baby report: small. fragile. mewling. lovely. only five months younger than A, too.


Tuesday, May 04, 2004

 
the Sunday program offers some home truths on fertility....they're looking at IVF next week.

 
he must be teething. nonstop crying except when I picked him up and took him outside to see the trees - he loves to rip off leaves and chew on them like a little koala.

eventually I gave him his first dose of Panadol and miraculously got some sleep myself.

then by dint of dropping more stuff where it lay I got 30 minutes to write up my first (and easiest) of these four short profiles I've promised work. I like writing. I like consolidating a rambling conversation into a mini-narrative, under the contstraints of a limited word count and a brief to angle the piece a certain way. I think I'd forgotten how much I like it.

I don't really enjoy, though, the chatting-up, the trying to find stuff to say when the brief is pointless or the story boring. and there's too much of that in my line of work. and I certainly find it hard finding the time. writing, of all things, (and maybe mathematics) needs a clear mind and time to create and follow a thread.

 
two steps forward, one step back.

yesterday I Achieved. today it all unravelled.

our A. passport witness signed in the wrong box. so I had to cancel the appointment and start all over again.

the HR dept told me the wrong person to write to about extending my leave (seriously ditzy, IMHO). so now I have to start all over again there, too.

and it seems to be one of those days where things fall where they lie and stay there all day.

conducted my first interview since finishing work today. ended up in the laundry to get away from the sound of Play School, which I'd taped to distract A., despite my "only five minutes of TV, then only when we're right with him" rule. working - journalism - and small babies just don't mix. now I have maybe 30 minutes to decipher my notes and try to get a draft written - while cleaning the baby bath, doing washing and getting that HR mess sorted out.

Monday, May 03, 2004

 
also my blog's birthday. three years and one day today. and to think it all started in a drunken late-night internet session in Hong Kong.

 
double lapine darn! I forgot to say "rabbit, rabbit". and it's my birthday this month.

 
darn. I wanted to invent the self-swaddling blanket.

Dawn has shown me that and repeated an apparently US-specific term I had also heard on Sex and the City - "binky" for dummy. BINKY? what's the etymology of that? how did I remember a word like etymology? or is that insects?

 
I think I've said this before, but I do think it's a bit sad he won't remember all these good times we're having.

went to 21 Grams this morning at the cinema that has no one at its baby sessions and lets you take your pram in. much better. of course it made me cry.

one quibble: what was all that stuff about "insemination"? clearly the chick needed IVF, not some dodgy insemination procedure. and "signed permission" is always revocable when it comes to fertility - or any medical - treatment.

the dead-children theme was of course hard to bear. I think the bit in Spanish at the end was a sort of prayer to protect our children - or so I like to think.

 
oooh. he likes the Jolly Jumper. I've set it up in the doorway right next to the computer, so he's safely jumping about (and cooing and trying to undo the straps) while I type. I should get 2x10 minute computing sessions a day out of this toy.

so, briefly, the car seat saga. bought a seat yesterday morning. yesterday afternoon got talking on my bulletin board and researching online and realised that car seats can be put on planes. then realised it'd be better to have a car seat that turns into a layback capsule for at least the first couple of flights (dh's company will be paying the tickets, so I think A. deserves his own seat, for safety and his mothers' sanity - it's 8 or 10 hours to Hong Kong, overnight.

so now I have to take the seat back. a small thing. however, the number of small things I have to do seem to be multiplying, and his sleep is getting worse. hanging on for May 11 and the sleep school.

time's up.

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