Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #2
(#1 #2)
The ‘outie’ phenomenon.
Apologies to all Omphalophobics out there… you may want to look away.
It comes as a terrible shock to one day look down at your navel to find that it has turned itself inside-out. It’s an even greater shock to stick your pinkie finger in there to find there’s a hole that leads to somewhere possibly very intriguing. Offering to have other people stick their fingers in there is not a good idea… the resulting scream of “EW!!” tends to make the foetus jump, which is a high price to pay for personal sadism.
It makes one realise that there are certain things one shouldn’t do if they ever intend to be pregnant;
- Navel Piercing: I had my belly button pierced during a rosemantic getaway with my fella once… I did it to soften the pain of his tongue piercing. I never really wore jewellery in there, it kept getting hooked onto my belt buckle which is not to be sneezed at. I let the hole close, which never really happens with a belly-button piercing, especially if you get yourself in trouble. I remember being in labour with my first child, and sharing a room with a young male midwife who almost passed out when he spotted the gaping maw of my self mutilation. When he asked “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?!”, I replied via ventriloquism using the piercing wound. He was not amused…. not even when I sang ‘Blue Moon’ with it. Nitrous Oxide is wonderful stuff.
- Tattoos of dolphins ‘jumping over’ your navel: That is, unless you also like Humpback whales. Humpback whales who have been through intense orthopaedic surgery, for that matter. It’s not pretty. Any sort of tattoo is a bad idea in the belly department for that reason, for while everything else might shrink back to normality, tattoos don’t. They disobey logic in all its forms… maybe this is where Picasso got his inspiration?
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #1
(#1 #2)
Thrupenny bits
Yes, I mean those two girly lumps stuck to the front of you that you’ve grown to know and love… from the early weeks of duff’ness, they develop their own personality altogether. Welcome to the anomaly that is alien pregnancy boobs.
You may notice at first that the straps of your favourite dark and lacy number suddenly dig into your shoulders and leave deep tracks where there never were before. Then the rest of the bra suddenly begins to tear under the strain of growth… they threaten to spill their contents on every bend-over… they create a weird muffin-effect that makes your chest look like it’s perpetually frowning. Time to go shopping. Not only for a new cup size, but a bigger (horror!) chest size too – we need to make room for all that rib-growth and baby weight, don’t we?! Katie Price, eat your heart out.
(Scroll to the end of the post to see an amazing pair of tits*)
High beams
Don’t even start me on the raspberry ripples… you could pad that bra with re-inforced titanium and those things will still find a way to poke through and stare at passers-by. Full beams, baby… get used to woolly sweaters. If the darkening of their colour doesn’t alarm you, their sudden sensitivity will… it’s like somebody came along one day and re-wired them completely. If you have fillings in your teeth, and have ever accidentally experienced the sudden shock voltage of chewing tin-foil accidentally, you’ll have an idea of what an brief brush with those nipps feels like. Electric shocks, when you least expect it… takes a lot of getting used to. This does of course also have its advantages, but that’s for a whole other post.
There are ways to ease the boob situation of course, that you don’t always find in books. If you don’t want to roll over and trap a nipple under your elbow while you sleep; thus making you hit notes that Kiri Te Kanawa herself would be jealous of, wear a bra to bed. This over-the-shoulder-alien-boulder-holder also helps to stop the formation of shuddersome stretch marks that never go away, and gives you something to put cabbage leaves into when things get overly hot and stuffy in there. Yep, a good bra is your best friend, and so is that lovely lady in the lingerie shop that will fit you out properly… when your thrupenny bits are in order, that’s a quarter of the battle of pregnancy sorted, right there. Oh – and stay away from tight white tee-shirts… because you just never know what might leak, or from where. That panic you feel when you realise that things have gotten so bad even your boobs need nappies – that’s normal. It’s not pretty, but somebody’s got to do it I guess.
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*…there’s nothing quite like the sight of nuts nestled between lovely tits.
Conduit for Kismet
I thought it was all about me yesterday, but it wasn’t. I thought the mysterious turn of events that held me in its favour was payback for a good deed I had done, but it wasn’t. I was just a conductor for a greater power.
This is how it happened.
I got into the car to go shopping for a few bits… the dodgy CD player in the car worked first time, which never happens, normally it would quite literally drive me to distraction. Every single one of the fifteen traffic lights I encountered on the way into the town turned green, just as I approached them. When I got to the supermarket, there was one basket left with my name on it. There was one jar of coffee left on the shelves which happened to be the brand I love, in the size I would normally buy it. The queues for the tills were at least five people long when I finally got to them, but just as I went to join the nearest one, a new till opened up and beckoned me forward… I went through during the supermarket’s busiest hour in less than three minutes.
Then, happiest of all happinesses, while purchasing an eight-pack of Guinness cans at the off-licence, I got carded.
Ask any thirty-year-old female out there… to be mistaken for an eighteen-year-old in an off-license is an unbelievably good thing. They almost didn’t sell me the alcohol because I couldn’t produce identification, but I wouldn’t have minded at all. I was grinning from ear to ear as I left the premises, which is when I got ambushed by a bloke with a sponsor card on the street. Apparently he was an ex-heroin addict who had kicked the habit, and was cycling to Cork to raise funds for Drugs Awareness. I was so happy, I gave him twenty euros which was slighly more than I could afford, as I discovered shortly afterwards when it came to paying for my parking ticket. I stood for a while wondering what to do, then I saw the wallet lying on the parking machine. An ID card lay inside.
“LINDA!!!” I shouted into empty space. A lady turned around from the other side of the parking lot, caught luckily by the accoustics, and returned to reclaim her wallet very thankfully indeed. She gave me three euros… more than enough to pay for the ticket. Strange.
Later on, I won a game of poker at home against The Accidental Terrorist, and Billy the Stoner. I won because my good day had given me the confidence to bluff well, and wound up with twenty euros in my back pocket.
So… effectively, Billy the Stoner paid for an ex-heroin addict to cycle to Cork, and THAT, boys and girls, is Kismet.
“It’s only a little prick”
K8 the Gr8. K8 the host of a 16 week old foetus, K8 the mother of a disabled child with a tendancy towards chronic chest-infections, K8 the mother of a school-aged child… K8 the skeptic.
I am at risk thrice over from this swine flu (H1N1) pandemic, and I’m forced to make a very bloody difficult decision indeed.
To vaccinate, or not to vaccinate?
The death of a pregnant woman earlier this week touched the hearts of the nation, she had contracted the virus and was unable to fight it. She is me, I is she… I couldn’t help but bite my nails when I heard the news. The vaccine was rolled out in Laughingboy’s school a week or so ago, but I refused permission for my son to have it. After all, the last time I allowed him a flu-shot it knocked his immune system so badly, he ended up with pneumonia. Santa at Christmas Eve in a ward full of sick children is a very sad sight indeed, a sight I’d rather avoid in the future.
I consider the facts as far as I can delve… this current vaccine seems to be the same vaccine that has been used for the same flu virus for the last twenty-odd years. Call me naive, but I figure that this H1N1 virus is slightly more intelligent than Mary Harney… I figure it has the ability to evolve, to mutate into a sickness that may, in all probability, flip the birdie at a vaccine that’s nearly older than myself.
“It is generally agreed both nationally and internationally that potential complications associated with H1N1 in pregnancy far outweigh any possible risks associated with vaccination in pregnancy.” www.rcpi.ie
The problem is, they don’t really know to the full extent, what those complications are, because it hasn’t been tested that thoroughly yet. My mother summed it up in one very highly intelligent (if not slightly scary) word; ‘Thalidomide‘. She’s right – there is always that possibility, no matter how remote. I am being asked to allow a toxin into my system… a system that is already slightly more volatile than it normally would be. Who is to say that my child won’t develop leukaemia or cancer or some other sort of miasm as a result of this foreign toxin? Nobody, it would seem.
From a truly sceptical point of view, there’s a chemical company somewhere with an enormous wadge of cash in its kitty as a result of this scare… whether this is a coincidence or not, I’d rather not guess. Is it a coincidence that companies in this financial climate need money now more than ever? I’m just saying, is all.
This whole thing smacks a little of a Stephen King novel – the media pulls no punches when it comes to scaring the bollix out of people like me.
To quote today’s Evening Herald:
“The vaccine is currently the best defence we have against the pandemic – and that message needs to sound loud and clear.”
I beg to differ, and I have the advice of not one, but two doctors behind my theory.
I wasn’t met with shock when I announced my decision not to be vaccinated, instead I got a warm smile. I was assured that viruses of all shapes and sizes are common in winter months, and they don’t all make the headlines. Ever heard of Clostridium Difficile? This is another bug making its rounds. Then there’s the famous Vomiting virus… that seems to have conveniently disappeared into oblivion, but I’ll bet my left boob it’s still hanging around.
No, the best defence against H1N1 for a duffed-up woman like me according to these doctors, is just to take care of myself. I am to eat proper food… raw fruit and vegetables, well cooked meat, three eggs per week, wholemeal bread and rice. I am to take a nap whenever the fancy takes me, and I am to think happy thoughts. There is no need for Pregnacare, or extra vitamins (bar the inevitable Folic Acid during the first month) or any of these prettily packaged gimmicks with happy pregnant bumps on the front, aimed at mothers who just want to do their best… they’re completely unnecessary as long as you follow the pyramid. I can do that!
I am happily considering the fact that the Health Service can keep their little prick.
So marks the famous last words of K8 the Gr8.
Mind the bump
There’s nothing like a bumper shopper to make a dull task more interesting. You know that other person who just randomly happens to start their shopping experience at the exact same time that you do? You get that awkward laugh as you both find you need to weigh your broccoli at the same time… you gaze over their shoulder to see which baked beans they prefer out of sheer bored curiosity? Maybe both of us have children who, without any need for introduction, choose to play hide and seek together. That’s a bumper shopper.
Today I got one of those rare nemesis bumper shoppers… they’re much more fun. She annoyed me when she didn’t say ‘thanks’ as I held the door open for her. She pushed past me to get the better pick of the trolleys. My mission throughout the shopping trip is therefore to piss her off in return. There are so many ways to do this – dropping tubes of KY jelly into her trolley when she’s not looking, or maybe I might use her temporary absence to shake up one of her bottles of soda to exploding point. Maybe I’ll snap open a tin of sardines and drizzle some fishy oil through the innards of her handbag while we’re queueing or poke my finger through the cling-film on her juicy steak chunks so that blood trickles through her shopping and onto her stupid shoes, it really depends on my mood which will be highly volatile until roughly April next year.
Pregnancy is a good enough excuse for anything… technically I could murder someone now, and get away scot free! For now it’s mainly being used as an excuse to watch porn and eat enormous amounts of toffee ice-cream and raw chilli (all at the same time). Hey… anything to distract me from unhealthy vices is good, right?
Canis Castratum
It’s a horrible fact of life that you often don’t realise you’re in love until it’s too late.
Maybe that’s the definition of love. When suddenly a soppy film which you ardently took the Mick out of before, makes total sense, enough to make you cry because now you know what it might feel like to lose your husband, or your child, or even your dog. Your empathy forces the point home.
101 Dalmatians did it for me. I watched Mr. Whatsit celebrate the birth of Pongo’s puppies with pride and glee and suddenly I cried and had to switch it off. I gazed at Wouldye lying on his blanket, once a dog as black as tar, now tinted with silvery shades of white and grey. It hit home that there would be a day when he would find it hard to get off that blanket… a day when he would no longer have the enthusiasm to leap off a ten foot boulder into a river to retrieve his stick, and would no longer have the energy to switch to vicious alert on hearing a strange noise outside. Someday I’ll lose my best friend and now I shed tears because of the day I gave the command; “Off with his balls!”
I should have thought twice about exactly how much of a pain in the ass his testosterone was when he was a puppy. It would have been entirely worth it if I had just put up with that infuriating enthusiasm, and waited for a batch of puppies or two to appear (which makes me wonder… exactly how difficult would it be to pimp out your dog?) I doubt Grandad would have put poor Sandy through the ordeal, though how amazing those puppies would be – it just doesn’t bear thinking about!
Poor Wouldye. I’m so sorry, dude. I should have given you at least one romantic fling before I condemned you to solitary. There’ll never be another one like you.
P.S. Good dog.
God be with the days before Christianity
I’m reading ‘The Mists of Avalon’ right now, a book about Arthurian legend from his mother and his sister’s point of view. In them days, it was all about appeasing the Goddess and natural ritual and Bardic poetry and such other lovely stuff, as Christianity and convents slowly crept into their consciousness.
I can’t help but be slightly jealous at the constant mention of the Bealtaine fires. May first every year, everyone in the community douses the home-fires, then celebrates life and re-birth during a giant hooley by a huge fire. As part of the ritual, it’s required by the Goddess that random people should couple up… so named the unity of the Great Mother and her young horned God. Not an orgy, no no, just appreciation for the exuberant healing powers of spring. It’s not just at Bealtaine either… they get to do this every quarter of the year to celebrate the ever-changing stages of life and death. This is most likely the origins of bonfires at Hallowe’en, then? Can you imagine loads of skobies all dressed up as Gardaí and Zombies all shaggin’ away after their sugar rush because the Goddess wants them to?
Pity they didn’t have Youtube back then!
Scandalliss!
I don’t get it!
I just joined a group on d’Fb called ‘Campaign against cutbacks in Crumlin‘ and did a bit of mooching to see what all the mammies and daddies had to say.
Small children and long waiting lists… cuts on cardiology and Orthopedics, to name but one or two, the coiffers apparently empty. I remembered suddenly a flashback of a news article about a brand new hospital in the City Center, due to start at the end of next year. How can that be? It’s to be a state of the art sort of place, with ‘up to’ 399 beds (each with its own en-suite bog), entirely covering an area of one million square feet of shiny angles glinting all over the kip. €750 million is how much they *think* it will cost, but given that the Luas’s grand total outweighted a space mission to Mars, I’m a dubious on-looker.
Pants. I’m not a patron of Crumlin, we attended the other two. It all started for us in Temple Street Children’s Hospital, a bizarre building full of stairs and corridors and lifts that can’t remember where they’re supposed to be. Statues of Mary and prettily hung pictures of pasta and paint and glue adorn the place and it has that oh-so-familiar smell of cafeteria and pee.
Then we were promoted to Tallaght Hospital for sick young ‘uns and were introduced to a mecca of enormous corridors and lifts that served us coffee. All you need to do is zoom in on the M50 and you’re laughing.
This new place is pretty much next door to Temple Street though. Just one hospital, to swallow up the existing three, in the worst place possible, right smack in the middle of Dublin City. It’s a complete bitch to get to, what with wrestling one-way streets and badly timed traffic lights and busy traffic sludge… with the added stress of trying not to crash into Luas drivers who shoulda gone to Specsavers… it’s a nightmare.
I’m sure it’ll be very pretty an’ all, but the only catch is, they have to sacrifice a load of today’s babies through lack of care, to do it. That’s sort of Satanic if you think about it.
And we’re all just standing here watching and saying ‘Ah jayzus isn’t that scandalliss?’.
I don’t get it.
Sister Ghandi and Violin Karaoke
Apart from attending weddings and helping with school libraries and hunting in vain for knee length socks and stitching costumes back together and carving halloween pumpkins and knitting nothing in particular very fervently in an attempt to (yet again) quit smoking, this week I be mostly reviving my violin.
It’s been lying inside a dusty box in various parts of the house untouched for the last twelve years which would make my Grandmother twist in her very pretty grave high up on the hilltop if she knew.
See, every time I consider opening that case, I would remember my teacher and suffer from huge pangs of guilt and would walk away and close my eyes and hope the guilt would dissappear under the bed again.
My teacher was a nun, a very small nun who reminded me of Ghandi and who was at least 125 years old if she was a day. She would make me go limp like a powered-down robot before every lesson, and told me that pressure was a waste of time, that I could only be as good as I am, so why worry?
I remember enrolling for classes with her at some stage during my school life, and picking up a violin and making it screech horribly. I could already read music, that wasn’t the problem, it was the damn bow not doing what it was supposed to do and the fact that the notes on the strings are entirely invisible. With a piano, at least each note is pre-defined, a black or white key to either be pressed, or not. A violin relies on the ear of the player, a finger slid slightly too far south makes the music sound a bit like a vomiting goat.
After a few months of learning scales and arpeggios and chromatics and the like, Sister Ghandi told me I was to do an exam. It was at this point I wondered if she actually switched on her hearing aid at all during lessons, surely no examiner would want to entertain me after just a few months?!? No matter how much I protested, she went ahead and enlisted me for exams anyway, not for some low grade warmer upper, no no. She went right ahead and booked me up for Grade SIX.
I had an impossible modern mumbo jumbo piece and an increadibly weird hungarian dance to learn in a tight space, but she had faith in me and made me do it, no matter how much I complained.
I passed it, too. I did really well, and became leader of the band geeks, of which I was entirely proud.
Then I left school after my leaving cert and never looked back.
I could have called the convent to see if she was still alive, but I never did. I could have checked in on her to thank her for all her hard work, but I didn’t. I couldn’t handle the fact that if I did call the nuns, they would tell me that she had shuffled off the mortal coil and was now fiddling at the Lord’s right hand side in heaven. I just couldn’t bear to hear that.
Which is stupid, because there is a slight chance that she’s still alive. I’m just too afraid to find out.
So, in her honour, I am attempting to re-tune these tired old strings and learn all over again via Internet Karaoke.
Internet Karaoke?!?!? Again poor Granny turns in her grave!
Via www.virtualsheetmusic.com, I found the following video on YouTube:
Which might not make a whole lot of sense as it is, but if you fiddle along with it, it might sound something a little bit like this:
Someday hopefully, at least.
No one gets hurt if they don’t act funny
There’s a very excellent scene in Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ – I’m sure you know it. The Fun Lovin’ Criminals robbed a sound byte for their ‘Scooby Snacks’ track it’s that cool. Skip to 1:20 in the following video if you have no clue what I’m on about.
I was reminded of that quote tonight.
I stole Pacino’s cat. I fear that if it had been left with him any longer it would soon be an ex-cat. It’s tail is, for the want of a more scientific term, pretty crusty. It looks like you could break it off and smoke it.
I heard Puppychild giggling in the bedroom earlier… I went in to investigate to find her upside down, her upper shoulders dangling under the bed – she looked like a decapitated pink chicken. I heard the engine-roar of a large cat’s purr from the darkness somewhere.
“What ya doin’?”
“Playin wit the cat!” said a muffled child’s voice.
“Are you torturing that poor animal?!”
“Torture? That’s a good idea!! I like that!”
