Holy Shucking Fit
Where has time disappeared to?! Who stole last week?!?
This lapse in my time/space continuum might have something to do with Sir Fartsalot. He also drinksalot as it turns out. This means school homework, cuddle time with Laughingboy and basic sanity is on hold until the child sorts out his boob routine. It’s amazing how, from birth, men are obsessed with breasts.
As stressful as babies may seem however, mother nature has her gifts… I’d forgotten about that buzz, that amazing release of oxytocin breastfeeding gives both boober and boobee. A plane could crash right outside the window, but all I would muster would be a roll of my eyes and a “Meh… I’ll clean it up later.” Poor house. Poor family. Poor blog. I’ll get ’round to you all eventually.
In the meantime, we’re going on holidays next week just to throw some gratuitous action into the mix.
Cork is about to be very, very sorry it was ever born.
Awesome
I am in awe of so many things right now.
Midwives. Unsung heroes with an amazing ability to see you at your worst, your most base, with fluids erupting from every orifice to choruses of endless abuse and profanity. I can think of no other person who, with no formal introduction, you will so quickly drop your knickers for with no worry about intimacy or pride.
My own midwife last Sunday pushed the bed out of the way and brought me a physio ball, an oversized beanbag, and a tank of nitrous oxide. She pushed me into a hot shower and held my hand through my own personal hell, of which I can remember virtually nothing of. I begged her for drugs, I pleaded with her to stop being mean, I screamed at her for making me breathe and I told her that I wanted to die and that it was all her fault.
When my baby was born, she kissed me and I as I thanked her for the experience and moreso for not listening to me, it struck me that she’d have to do this all over again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Guiding women through horrific experiences with the same sweet ending… that reverend silence as a brand new baby is placed on its mothers breast and all pain is forgotten and tears of relief and gladness trickle onto sweat-stained pillows. What a truly awesome job.
Homoeopathy. They put me into that horrible ward when first admitted, and told me I was not yet in labour despite two days of contractions. I lay on the bed and listened to seven other women puffing and sighing and keening through their pain, sleep an impossibility. I listened as several poor souls attempted to drink water only to throw it right back up again as their helpless husbands mopped and sighed. Every now and then a lonesome howl would erupt from behind an anonymous curtain and sneakered feet would run towards it. I wanted out of there, sharpish.
I popped two Gelsemium 200c pills from my homoeopathic kit and two minutes later my waters broke. POP – off to the labour ward with me! I find it hard to consider that a coincidence. As soon as baby was born I popped a few Arnica 200c pills and within an hour of the birth I was washed, dried and eating a full plate of chicken and asparagus smothered with gravy. They offered me a painkiller but I honestly didn’t need it – my body had fixed itself thanks to those useless little placebos.
The Accidental Terrorist. I can’t imagine the helplessness a man must feel as a birthing partner. I didn’t consider the fact that he was on his feet for seven hours straight without a sniff of a smoke break with his bad back while I was huffing and puffing. He massaged me, played me music on his mp3 player, said beautiful and supportive things to me as I thrashed and mewled like a severed demon from the bowels of hell.
At home he stayed out of sight but left a trail of cleanliness behind him. I’d wander into the kitchen at 5am to find it all re-arranged and spotless. The garden suddenly became transformed into a haven of handsome wooden flower boxes and brackets intended for hanging baskets, even the statue of the three nude ladies which he’d pfaffed at before were hung lovingly by the back door. Beading suddenly appeared by the skirting boards and the laundry pile vanished. His nesting instinct drew an awe in me that I’d never seen before, a renewed love that won’t be forgotten in the arguments to come.
We named him Tom, because it was TAT’s Grandad’s name. Whenever he speaks of the man, he does it with such childlike adoration and always with a quirky smile hidden below the surface of his face. Though I know countless people will say ‘Ahh, a good normal name’, or ‘Play it safe with a standard name, you do right’, as they have done already… I don’t care. Tom is what feels right, every man I’ve known who the name belonged to has been the salt of the earth and you just can’t mess with that. Tom. Tom Thumb. Ground control to Minor Tom.
Henceforth known as Sir Fartsalot.
The wonders of nature
A guest post by Grandad
I have never written a guest post before, there has to be a first time for everything.
There again, K8 didn’t ask me to write it, so it’s not exactly a guest post – more of a hi-jack post?
I was woken in the early hours of this morning by my phone beeping at me. It was a message, but it was one of those sound file things, not a text message. I played the sound and it was of a very new baby crying.
Only half an hour old and the baby is being subjected to the Interweb and mobile phones!
Our K8 is now the mammy of a bonny bouncing 8lb 3oz baby boy.
Mother and baby are fine, despite their refusing her any sort of pain killer. Heh! Serves her right.
I spoke to her a short while ago. She is rearin’ to go home already. I asked her what the baby looked like [a stupid question - we all know that all babies look exactly the same].
“He looks like his daddy, so his daddy won’t eat him” says she.
There’s logic there, and she does know TAT better than I do.
Ain’t nature wonderful?
Robbin’ Robin
A trip to the National Garden Exhibition Centre today with the mammy inevitably led to an urgent case of the munchies and a craving for cappuchino. We sat outside by the waterfall and basked in the warmth of that rare ball of gas in the sky and picked at our sangidges contentedly until suddenly mum exclaimed loudly and made me jump the height of myself;
“Look! Brave robin – hello robin!”
Sure enough, a little red-breasted dude was perched on a nearby chair with his head cocked, watching us sharply. I picked some crust from my sandwich and placed it at the far edge of the table.
Turns out that robins in Wicklow have more gourmet tastes though. Crusts bedamned… he hopped over to the edge of our plates and began to persistently rob bits of egg salad and chopped tomato until his teensy belly was full enough to merit us worthy of a quick song which he sang loudly from table centre. He might have expected a tip, but I’m not sure what the tipping etiquette is for garden birds.
Pass the salt, luvvie?
Household chemicals- not just for making bombs out of.
Being a 30 something fun-lovin’ chick with a hectic social-life, I chose last New Year’s Eve to clean out Laughingboy’s fishy bubble-generator. That was when I discovered that distilled water is more expensive by the gallon than petrol for some reason. I decided to innovate, and got to boiling kettle after kettle of normal water and sat patiently all night waiting for it to cool down. The excitement was pants-wetting.
Four months later, and I discovered that I’d grown a very magical but totally useless algae-garden which had swamped the air-pump and rendered the bubbles obsolete. Bugger. There goes the idea of putting REAL fish in there.
Last week I re-hashed the whole process and got clever with kettles again, this time adding two capfuls of pure bleach to the water as I poured it into the tube. I was so smug at my smart-arsednedness, I was sure I’d cracked it, but no.
I turned around from administering Laughingboy’s meds on the fishy bubblemaker’s maiden voyage and was met with this disturbing entity:
It would remind you of going to a pub in the UK and watching the barman pour a pint of Guinness. Complete bubble fail.
Back to the drawing-board, then.
Smell ya later
My pet hate of the day is the farting air-freshener.
TAT brought one home last week and as much as I bitched and moaned about his having been duped by Godawful fake smellies and the fact that the refills are thrice as expensive as the gizmo that farts them, he set it up anyway.
It’s like a big stupid white dildo on the shelf there, reminding visitors that we stink.
I hate it.
Whenever I walk into the room it farts at me. This is okay during daylight, but at night it’s a whole different story. I reserve the right to wander into the kitchen at 3am for my nightly fix of chocolate biscuits and milk without having the bollix scared out of me by a farting air-freshener. It sounds just like a cat, hissing violently at me as I walk past. It gets me every time. Sometimes it sees me coming and farts directly into my eyes, scaring me and blinding me in one fell swoop. Other times it waits until I’ve just passed it, then hisses at me behind my back, causing me to scream in blind panic in my sleepy state and whirl round jiu-jitsu style to face my combattant feline attacker. Then I just feel stupid.
I moved it to the shelf above the TV yesterday. That didn’t work, it just farted on my TV dinners. This morning it got moved to the computer table and messed up my mouse’s mojo with its sticky effluent.
Tomorrow the farting air-freshener faces death by pressure cooker. Pine fresh my arse.
Eastery Artistry
Easter Holidays. A time to reflect about how much fun school actually is. A time to figure out ways to entertain one’s children without involving the television or the outside world because it’s feckin’ snowing out there for some reason.
I thought about making something chocolaty but given that I’m pregnant, it turns out there isn’t an ounce of the stuff left in the whole house. I thought about glueing eggshells back together but eggshells are flaky things and refuse to stay in tact under the pressure of a five-year-old’s grasp. I’d hard-boil them, but hey, we’re in a recession.
It was Puppychild who suggested an Art Attack. It’s one of her most favourite TV shows, bar Supernanny and Spongebob Squarepants. I showed her the website and guided her through its archives, asking her to pick an art project to do. I expected her to choose something involving fairies or fashion or something pink at least, but no.
She chose the severed hand.
I’m so delighted she’s inherited my sense of the macabre. TAT objected that this art project isn’t exactly Easter related but I disagreed… it does have loose connections to the theme of resurrection, if you think about it.
In a world where sanity is a commodity
This is a blog post which probably should go without being written, but given the cathartic nature of blogging, fuck it.
Echinacea failed me last week for a change. I found myself standing in Laughingboy’s bedroom in dismay as our family doctor spoke on the phone to the ambulance crew in the background and my little boy fought to squeeze oxygen into his clogged up little lungs. Auto-pilot took a while to take over, but next thing I knew, the bag had been packed and I was riding in the back of the ambulance with the sirens blaring. “Hey dude, they’re playing that for you! How cool is that?!” The irony hit me that ambulance sirens are only cool when you’re not on the stretcher, so I shut up to the quiet amusement of the paramedic.
He’s home now, fully oxygenated and saturated with antibiotics. I was getting used to his hospital room, it was peaceful in there, apart from the odd 3am emergency helicopter landing outside our window.
I had a rough night last night… I dreamed of wading through rubbish-dumps full of rotting corpses, and trying to hawk two black bags full of household un-want at a car boot sale, also full of dead people. It’s strange, but Puppychild losing her blanket has affected me far more than her.
One of the people who babysat her during our wee trip to the hospital took it upon herself to decide that now was the time my five-year-old must grow out of her comfort blanket, see. So, it went in the bin. I thought it would have been a proverbial bin, but it wasn’t. By the time I had phoned to retrieve it (to stash in the attic until Puppychild reaches twenty one), the bin-men had come and gone, apparently. Gutted doesn’t even come close. It’s amazing how like a pet a raggedy smelly old blanket becomes.
I’m thinking that some people actually deserve to have their toilet-seat superglued.
Earlier today a woman behind the counter in Avoca Handweavers smiled at my swelling belly and asked me how long I had left. I hear that question a lot, and the answers are getting frighteningly short so today I changed tack, because I was in the mood. I gasped in indignance and retorted at the top of my voice; ‘ARE YOU SAYING I’M FAT?!?’, and stormed off with a big smile on my face. It felt good. I think I might leave that as my standard answer from now on.
Human milk rules
When I had Laughingboy eight years ago and came face-to-boob with a myriad of problems caused by his developmental delay, I had no idea where to turn. The nurses in the maternity hospital were less helpful than they were physically violent… it’s a weird thing entirely having your delicate lady lumps viciously man-handled by a bearded nurse, and being woken every two hours to ‘try again’ when I was severely sleep deprived wasn’t very nice. They put me off the whole idea to be honest.
There are various local groups and enterprises that are there to help in this situation, but the vast range of opinions can be confusing, so I’m delighted to see this new parent-orientated version ‘Friends Of Breastfeeding‘ evolving.
“Friends of Breastfeeding was formed by a group of mothers who met on online parenting forums. Many of these mothers found the internet to be the only place they could access true support and reliable information and advice about breastfeeding. The need for two things was clear to everyone involved – better understanding of breastfeeding across the general public, and improved access to good breastfeeding support in Ireland for women who want to breastfeed their babies.”
—
Feeding Puppychild was an entirely different, easier and much more lovely experience. She and I would retreat to a quiet place and she would make the back of my neck tingle as the flow commenced… we would sit there for as long as she needed until her eyelids drooped. I can’t describe what an addictive feeling that is, it’s a maternal opiate. They told me when I had tonsillitis that I had to cease breastfeeding while taking antibiotics. Turns out this was complete bullshit, and the horrendous rip through the sacred bond that followed was totally unnecessary. I wish parental support and advice could have been around back then.
Now I have a new problem. Puppychild now realises that this new baby won’t be fed by magic glittery bottle like her doll babies are, rather he or she will get milk from mummy’s boobs.
Puppychild is fine with this. Her curiosity is encouraging, in fact. A little too encouraging.
She asks me every now and then if she can have a go, and is perfectly accepting of my reply that there simply isn’t any milk yet, until the baby actually appears. But, there will be a day when she will be entirely more insistent that she have a go of my boob, straight from the tap as it were.
I’ve never heard of anyone else dealing with that problem before. I don’t want her to sense my revulsion at the idea, and I definitely don’t want the relationship between Puppychild and her new sibling to be founded on jealousy… it’s a horribly awkward position to be in, and yet it must be breezed through like a hot knife through butter.
I suppose the problem lies in society. The YouTube clip below creeps the hell out of me, it makes me gag and retch that a child so old still breastfeeds, but Puppychild wouldn’t flinch. She’d see it for the natural act that it is. So – is this my problem or her problem? I’ve no idea.
Insecure
He dropped her name into conversation a little too casually and made my ears prick up. He told me about how beautiful she was, how sound, sitting in his taxi surrounded by shopping bags. I gave out to him for not finishing his sentences properly.
“She’s really funny though…”
“But not as funny as -” I prompted.
“But not as funny as you, of course. She has lovely hair, too.”
“FINISH THE DAMN SENTENCE!!!”
I got given out to for being touchy. Now on Sunday nights during ‘The All Ireland Talent Show’, TAT locks himself into the bedroom with the television wearing only a dressing-gown, and won’t let me in. I hover with my swollen body trying to think of a good looking Irish male television presenter I can glean revenge with. I fail miserably.
I don’t know whether I’m insecure because of Miss Perfection, or because The Accidental Terrorist’s viewing standards have slipped so low.
