Another year over, a new one just begun

I'm ringing in the new year with ringing in my ears.

I swear, I am about to cut off my head, at the neck actually, and be done with it. Our brilliant first "proper" night out - read: 5 hours off duty, not even the evening rollover feed to worry about - was dinner and a movie. Which was all well and good until 3.30 the following morning and a stabbing pain in my shoulder blade. My initial thought was that Steve was finally seeking vengeance and going me with a kitchen knife for all those times I nagged him about the lawn. But it turns out, it was the beginning of a nightmare weekend drugged up to the eyeballs on Panadeine which, in itself, is bloody fantastic (I feel invincible) but not necessarily my idea of healthy living. Also not great when they wear off after only a couple of hours and you're only allowed to dose up a few times a day.

Note to self: if you're going to have a migraine for the first time in, oh, EVER, don't do it over the Christmas/New Year period because no one gives a flying flexed tendon. Not until after the 3rd.

On a far more cheerful note, the universe, in its infinite way of surprising, has delivered to us a delightful gift. A babysitter. A keen-as-mustard, living in the same suburb, babysitter. And I'm not talking the kid next door (although she did offer and, despite being just 15, looked to be an appealing candidate until she was blown out of the water by the opposition). Oh no. Far more exciting than that.

I received a call out of the blue three weeks ago from Ruby (that's not her name, but I like it), the 2IC midwife at the Mother Baby Unit where the LGBB and I took respite in November. She was calling to see how we'd been getting on. What was, I guess, a fairly routine follow up call then took a turn towards trumpeting angels on high. Backlit. With sparklers. She confessed she felt we'd made a real connection and she felt she wanted to offer her services and babysit for us. Whenever we want. I had to stifle the sound of my humble jaw dropping to the (dusty) floor. I admit that at that point, even though the LGBB had been blessing us and herself with 12 luxurious hours of sleep per night, I was still not really back on the ball - and let's face it, who can really balance on top of that ball without excellent core stability which is completely lost after a baby? I hadn't got a handle on how to juggle her day napping and trying to fit in work and housekeeping in amongst these grabs of sleep and progressively longer up times she was doing.

So when Ruby offered, I cried. She told me I wasn't allowed to cry. So I cried more. HOW this happened is just so beyond me. For you see, not only is she a midwife. Her previous role was as a NICU nurse (at the very NICU where Ella was, coincidentally). She knew the nurses who cared for Ellanor back in 2004 and she herself had been there up until the month Ella was born, but she left on maternity leave. And gave birth to her daughter. Lauren. On the day Ella died. To the very hour. Now if that's not a person I was destined to meet, I don't know who is.

The afternoon of last Friday, when Ruby was due to come and scrapbook on our dining room table (the only payment she wanted was a big table to spread out on... and coffee.... both requirements I could fulfil), I started to get anxious. Really panicky. What if the LGBB wouldn't sleep for her? What if she freaked out so much that our night off had to be cancelled?

But then I smacked myself with each hand and said "Erm..... this is a NICU nurse coming to babysit a healthy 5 month old, you numbnut."

Turns out, Ruby had such a ball at our place that she's all too keen to return. So much so that I asked her if she was going to start ringing and nagging us to go out so she could come here again and scrapbook in peace (she has a decoy album on the go so that her two toddlers can "help mummy", the poor love). I don't know what the joy is about scrapbooking, though friends know I've tried to love it, but far be it from me to stand in the way of a gorgeous, big hearted soul if she wants to do it at our place.

Now I can intersperse her with offers from other friends and family. Aaaaah, the world has suddenly opened right back up again. Gee. What a chore: I have to get around to taking up everyone on their offers to babysit. What a difference to a few months back when I couldn't even entertain the thought of preparing to go out - it felt like such a huge task that it was easier to stay home.

Does anyone get that?

Café chic chicks

Mummy: Whaddaya reckon looks good, Lolly?
The LGBB: Mmmmmm.... Let. Me. Seeeee.

*scoffs* $13.95 for a burger? I don't THINK so.

Meh

If we hadn't explained their opportunity for 'umour, Christmas would have been a bust for the person who lovingly and generously sent some finger puppets across the miles.

We were not amused after the initial unwrapping. But, dang, if an elephant head wiggling on Daddy's finger isn't amusement-face-worthy.

What gives with the unwanted assvice?

I know this is a crime the world over. I have already taken my solemn vow never to be one to do it. And maybe this maternal enthusiasm for others' child rearing practices is just a "gift" I don't have. Or a sport. Perhaps it's a sport and I didn't sign up for it so I don't know how to play the game properly.

I speak of assvice given by other parents to parents when they're NOT asking for an opinion, merely stating (for conversation purposes) things that are happening with their baby in their situation.

Goddamn!

If there is ever any doubt in my mind, you can bet your sweet tootin' behind that it's due to someone casting a back-handed "Are you sure you ought to be doing xyz yet?" in my direction.

It was as simple as saying "The LGBB is starting on solids" and what I received were several opinions and a bit o' assvice that I never asked for. Hell, I know babies her age who have been on solids for weeks already. She's over 5 months old, yes she's mouthing at us when we eat, yes she is leaning in and taking more than a general interest. Add to this that my MCHN advised me to start *by*, people, by six months. I realise the current medical recommendation in this new millennium is now 6 months to start solids. I realise that in the '30s, the recommended age to begin solids was 9 months. I also know from my own health centre book, I myself was started on solids when I was 14 weeks old. Shit, maybe that's what's wrong with me?? In the '90s, it was 4 months and that's only 10 years ago.

What? Are babies these days new and improved versions of the ones that were being produced only a decade back? Is Babygut v466.0 a better model? Is that why it's so important that I listen to everyone and what they're saying to me because they know my baby better? I must have been a fool to think I'd know when (and why) I would start the LGBB on a bee's dick of rice cereal. My biggest factor, and maybe it's a no-no, is that I am going partly with my instinct and partly with the guidance of the health nurse, who said she should be on solids well before Christmas.... I thought that was a bit advanced, but given that most other babies in my mothers group are on solids (and all but three, LGBB included, have been weaned already), I think I've done a cracking job on getting my fully breastfed thriving girl to this mark. Why all of a sudden am I unsure because of a few people's comments to the contrary (as if they live here and see what she needs better than I)?

Honestly, I wish traps were kept firmly shut sometimes. If someone is already uncertain because they are new at a job or task, in the workplace you'd be left alone to get on with your job - no one would offer help (or fair few people, anyway), they'd all be busy doing their own work. But nooooooo, have a baby and suddenly everyone right down to the woman on the street corner giving it a bit of "current research suggests..." will give you her opinion. What would be more helpful than "Don't do..." or "Make sure you..." would be if people started their replies with "Hey good luck with that and if she doesn't take to it or appears not to be ready, you can always try again soon". When I do attempt to introduce something new to the LGBB, I'm sure there'll be times where I'm guided by her (who am I kidding, that'll be most of the time, surely) - but the point is, we'll work it out together. Having people already stamp their opinions all over what I'm doing, I feel too proud and not a little uncomfortable to go back and say "Hnnngh, we did xyz too soon so we're trying again next month". The fact is, I just want support, not suggestions or the feeling that I'm being told what to do. It's a strange ambiguity that I can be told what an amazing job I'm obviously doing, yet in the next breath have a bunch of instructions laid before me that I didn't ask for. Surely if I'm doing a good job, I can get by without that assvice... or at least, my sources are already taken care of if you think I might be cheating on the job and passing off LGBB's thriving as my own hard work.

I love my job. I'm good at my job and I'm proud of it. If I want help with my job, I'll seek it (and not necessarily from an assvice giver). I've always been like that. In my paid and unpaid work.

Look, I know. It's an age-old complaint and if I had a yawn-face smiley, I'd bung it right *here*. But it's my turn to complain about it. So please.... keep the lids closed. And step aside while I just get off this incredibly high horse, there's a dear.

She's not foolin' anyone

I picked this Portrait Place "complimentary" photo up yesterday. One of those deals where you pay $15, get the professional sitting but the first photo print is free - then they take shot after shot and invite you into a little room for a slide show and you ooh and ahh about how cute your baby is and end up walking out $600 poorer for it.

Well our Lolly decided to smile on the first shot (for Daddy) and then the rest of the time prettty much pursed her lips and looked at us all like we were crazy. Needless to say, none of the others were any better than candid shots we can take at home, so we ended up with just this one professional sitting pose. And I HEART it so much, I cried when I saw it.

MOVE IT!

AAAAARGHHHHH.

That's me. Just walking in the Christmas throng.

Seriously, is everyone walking deliberately slow? Three abreast? Far out. I'm going to invent pedestrian rear view mirrors. Shits me to tears.

Something akin to a bear slasher movie

I was thinking last night about what would/will happen the day something befalls the LGBB's prize toy - a stoned-looking pup named Marley (after Bob, of course) - if it happens before I can hunt down a back-up Marley. Kind of like when Peter Brady used his "twin" as a stand-in so he can date two girls on the one night, it will be a lesson in morals I'm sure.

I recalled the time when, as a child, my teddy had to go to the teddy hospital. I pictured a hospital with teddies and their legs in plaster, laying back on hospital beds with gauze wrapped round their fuzzy teddy heads and sipping water brought in by teddy nurses. In reality, it was probably some guy's garage.

I think Parby (hey, I couldn't say Pooh Bear, orright?) had lost an eye, or was seriously close to it. I was distraught, I remember that. And mum arranged for him to go to hospital and he was there for what seemed like months. Again, in reality, what's the bet it was just the time in between being picked up from school and picking him up... no it was longer than that. But it felt like an eternity.

We dropped Parby off and I said a teary farewell. Probably waved a white hanky as his train left the station and all that. And then I waited. What news of Parby? What of his eye? I think I must have nagged mum to within an inch of her tolerance about when he was coming home (from the wars).

And then the day arrived. A thick white package arrived. Oh the indignities.

"GET HIM OUT OF THERE, he probably can't breeeeathe!" I was desperate for her to cut the bag open and rescue my dear bear.

She took the "good" scissors and cut. Right before my eyes, I witnessed something a child never wants to ever see. Stuffing. Piles and piles of stuffing oozing out of the white tough-bag. I shrieked. I was horrified. Mum had gutted Parby on the kitchen bench. I think I swooned and smelling salts may have been involved.

Turns out, what mum was digging her hands through (had she sterilised, was she wearing a gown and mask, is what I want to know) was not the entrails of my beloved Parby, but the stuffing his "doctor" had used to pad the bag and keep him safe on his trip. Must have been like being back inside his mother's womb, all woolly and stuffingy and warm like that. Bwahaha.

I still have that bear today. I still cannot have him dishevelled or sitting uncomfortably. He was my first true love.

And if that dog Marley knows what's good for him, he'll keep out of mischief and keep himself good and clean. At least until I can find his doppelganger.

First kiss

It happened. Right out o' the blue.

There I was, walking her to bed. We were just about to stop at a big picture of Ella sleeping on her tummy (it's one of my favourites) - this is a bedtime ritual we follow now, we have to stop and say "Baby Ella is asleep, it's time for bed" and now she looks for the baby *sniff*, it makes my heart swell and burst - and she did it.

The LGBB turned her face in to my cheek, grabbed my hair on one side and my neck on the other and gave me a big wide-mouthed slobbery kiss. No smacking sound. Just that babyish awkward "I'm sure I do something like...this..." kiss.

Going to go and savour the moment now.

Message in a bottle

To whom it may concern.

This is a letter that will never be sent. I see no way how. Not at this time, anyway. Best to just leave this *out there* and you will come across it if you are meant to and, indeed, you know where to find it if you are supposed to read it. I won't hear mention of my sullying anyone's name. None have been mentioned. If it may sit uncomfortably with you, you can choose not to read it. But I have to get it out. And here is where I choose to. You remain anonymous, unless you respond, and only I can be judged by this letter I am writing out to the unknown cyberspace into which I'm sending it.

What a shame you didn't hold on just one more year to hear me say "I get you more now than I ever could have before." What a shame you didn't have more patience. With me, with yourself.

Things have been striking me like blows out of the dark these past months. I've stood on the brink of full blown depression and something keeps spitting me back out. But it's a cruel half-life to be living, one of immense ingrained sadness (melancholia) littered with days of feeling just so-so. Never completely, wholly joyous. It's come as a nasty shock to me, as I hoped I could just be left alone to enjoy this time with our baby. But life has had other plans.

I'm afraid to just contact you and say "Hey! I remember you saying this, I get what you mean now", because there is the inevitable point-scoring to be had by you. There always was. If it wasn't "Just wait until...", it was "I told you so" and I don't want to hear that. Who does?

I wish nothing even had to be said. I dream of a life with you where we just look at each other and we know. We just shake our heads and one says "It's just..." and the other says "I know". And we both know that we both know. But that won't happen. It never could have. Before, my struggle to conceive, which clouded my empathy, prevented it. Now, your lack of natural empathy does. Some people have this. Some people don't. Some people's hearts bleed so much for others it's hard to stem the flow. Others have hearts that are boundless but they don't give out wisely, yet they probably always feel like they are giving and they feel spent and wonder why, why did they not see how much I was doing for them.... I'm sorry if I never saw you were giving so much of yourself to me. I suppose what you gave wasn't what I required. I know I felt like what I gave you wasn't enough, but unless you were lying, you would always tell me how much I meant to you and that I was your "rock". It seems sometimes some people give a little of themselves and it's like receiving a flood, whereas others feel like they are giving an ocean's worth and it's only a drop at the receiving end. Is that a fault of the giver or the receiver? My answer to that would be "Neither". It's simply a case of poor pairing of energy exchange. One person's trash is another person's treasure - and maybe one person's drop in the ocean is another person's Atlantic.

I feel I protected you and those close to you from yourself and some of those now-recognisable harmful ways as much as I could. I'm coming at it from a new perspective now. Not one of "Why don't you just clam up and be thankful you even HAVE children", but of truly understanding what it is like to live the dream day upon day upon day. And herein is my latest challenge, which I know you would (at best) only attempt to understand for a brief moment but never really experience; that of the mother still aching from loss, wanting to make good this opportunity she's been handed to mother again - hating herself for not being happy (as if she's never satisfied, even now that her primitive instinct has been fulfilled, fretting that something in her is still preventing the joy and she's allowing it to be so), still not buying clothes too far outside of her baby's current size for fear of them not being required, beating herself up for not being "happier" but caught between worlds that leave her wishing she could just settle in and be joyous.

It should be noted that none of this is admission that I would do or say the same as you. We are different people and I express and give of myself far differently to you. It's what makes the world interesting, that difference. No, I am merely saying I understand where you have been coming from when I have witnessed what I have when it comes to you. And I am sorry if you ever felt judged. It was never my intention to appear to be judging you. I was more trying to understand (albeit defunctly) why you would do and say certain things, squirrelling away Notes To Self at the same time that I must remember never to "do this" or "say that". But it's far easier to stand on the outside and look, no? Now I am where you have been before me and I can say, it's bloody hard not to do the same as I've seen you do! And why we shall forever stand apart, because you can't possibly, conversely, experience what I have and put yourself in my shoes, step around in them and feel what it's like to walk around each day amongst people who appear to you to be squandering their "luck" at conceiving easily and having healthy, living children.

You once claimed I was "like this" (I assume that means rotten, evil, no good, mean, never nice to you?) even before Ella. Well, yes, our conception and miscarriage issues have been going on for years as you well know. Before that, I was a young adult learning my way in the world and figuring out who I was. As were you before me. Funny that all those past errors in you were always overlooked by me and absorbed into our relationship, yet mine were dragged out years after the fact to be used by you to (once again) point-score. It's sad. You'll never see. Never ever see what you are like, because you admit no fault. I admit too much fault! See? We're incompatible. Please don't think you have all bases covered where I am concerned and your knowledge of who I am and what I stand for. You don't.

There is still work to be done. I'm doing it. I'm walking it. I get it now. I get you more now. How utterly sad then, that you may never know. Sadder still that your pride will probably prevent you, even if you do find this and read it, from just allowing me to be who I am with this new experience - I sometimes wonder what it would be like to still have you in my life (as you have long since removed yourself from it) and think that by now, I would be caught in a web of deceit again, not allowing myself to be honest around you and tell you that your words sting and smart like cold sharp slaps across my face. But no, I was never allowed to tell you that - you labelled me "too sensitive" a long time ago, justifying yourself against my feeble protests and continuing on with your assaults unchecked. Your whole character goes unchecked, by everyone around you. People give knowing glances - I've seen them, not instigated them - and I am still told to forgive as you know not the damage that you do (to yourself, mainly). It's a stark contrast to the proclamations you have made of yourself that you are "nice".

Nice is not about setting yourself up in someone's life so they can be your punching bag, simply because they never disagree with you - perhaps to disagree was to receive more pain than they wanted to cope with so they simply let you go on. That is a fault of mine, I know. But your inability to accept the person you are, and not just the "nice" side of yourself (and you are nice, sure, I don't disagree), is what prevents us from being friends. It probably always did prevent it. You never really knew all of me. You assumed much of me, that's all. I was always too afraid to let you all the way in, you messed about enough with the parts of myself I did let you in on and only a fool will open their hearts all the way to someone they don't trust with it.

I just want to be with kindred people. And that's why I can't be with you at this time. It's not that I'm not allowing it. I think the universe (or a collective something/someone in it) is protecting me from you. If the doorway ever opens, it is because the time is right for me to move forward with this ongoing lesson you are presenting me with. I can only trust you are learning too so we can cross paths somewhere down the track and say "Yeah, I remember you. So... who are you now?"

Signs that your gardener may be gay..

..or at least in touch with his feminine side:

• There is a definite swagger
• He has a dog whom he claims is under 10kg (if its name is Precious, I am not going to be surprised, although I shall endeavour to lose this last bit of baby weight lest he lure me into his van, stick me down a well in his house and send me lotion in a basket to rub on "its" skin to make his tailored skin suit - Jame Gumm only chose the fleshy ones)
• He is exceedingly polite and non-macho (no "yeah g'day, no wuckas" from this one, despite his trade)
• He is very handsome in a non-rugged-gardener kind of way
• He is very softly spoken
• He is agile in the bush (this goes against the theory a tad)

But the clincher...

• He rinses out his coffee mug so as not to leave a stain when the dregs dry.... not even I do that. And they're my mugs.

Officially sad

Q: Ok, so what would be classed more sad than claiming to have had a celebrity sighting in your local shopping centre?

A: Confessing that the "celebrity" was none other than Harold from Neighbours.

And more seriously sad than that?

I didn't even see him, I just overheard two shop attendants having a giggle that they'd had a "celebrity sighting" in the Telstra shop next door.

Can we go lower? Make it officially sad? Why yes, we can, dear reader.

I actually craned my neck in an attempt to catch a glimpse of Harold from my seated possie and almost woke the LGBB in the process by knocking the pram.

The one song that complemented your formative teen years

For me, it has to be We Built This City.

Ok so I didn't like the way the guy and girl singers had matching mullet frizzes. And I couldn't stand the way she she sings "Cor-pur-ashunnn-games". Ugh.

But come on, with lines like "Who controls the wreckin' ball, into our guita-ARS", how could it not be an anthem of its time (approx. August through to November of '87, granted)?

I recall being morally offended (much like when I had to accept that ABBA was singing about snorting coke) when people started parodying the song and singing "We built this ciddeh on al-co-hol, built this ciddeh...". God I was a prude.