motherhood

A friend of mine is waiting for her daughter to arrive and she, like every first time mother, is marinating in fear. And I get it. OH MY GOD do I get it. The promise of it is so damn scary, but being now what I feared becoming then ie a MOTHER, it is honestly like every other mother has already ever said. You hold your baby and the fear melts away.

When I had Daniel, it was like I'd gained access to a world I knew existed, that ran alongside The Rest Of The World, that didn't have a secret handshake or anything, and that we all knew about anyway. Suddenly I BELONGED there though, and what no one had told me was that in this parallel world, the light was different. Everything glimmered under that light, so prettily, I wish I could describe it, and under that light, the world I'd always lived in suddenly made sense.

THIS is what my life was about. This child was who I'd been waiting for.

I don't know when the fear left. Sometime between "I'm not ready to have this baby" and "Well, HI!!".

And the world still shines more brightly today. I'm used to it now, but when I look again, it's still like diamonds have been finely crushed and sprinkled over everything.

All experience motherhood differently, but each experience will have such depth of feeling, and each will be no less profound than another.

Motherhood is all I ever imagined, and an infinite, ever changing amount more. We're told so often about how hard it is, how the sleepless nights get to you, how hard THAT is, how the crying and the always being on duty and the this and the that and the everything else is SO HARD. Man, I remember CRYING when one of my friends tried to "prepare" me for The Task Ahead Of Me. Then I got here and found out this is the EASIEST job I've ever done.

No one ever mentioned it could be easy.

Maybe because we all (we being the alreadymothers) don't want anyone else knowing our lives consist of Judge Judy and an obscene amount of chocolate and pedicures, and that raising an infant under these circumstances largely consists of tossing a teething rusk over your shoulder whenever the baby starts grousing.

Oh, I JEST.

But, the point being is that this job isn't necessarily difficult. It sure as shit is DIFFERENT from anything else I'd ever done. I wonder then if for those who find the transition hard, if it's adjusting to the changes rather than the new way of life that is hard?

We're literally born to do this, so if a bird with a brain the size of a lentil can make an engineering nightmare work out of a mess of fluff and twigs...and...I've lost my train of thought. YOU GET THE IDEA THOUGH.

To summarise, yes it is scary, but it's not.

SO DEEP.

random

We went to the Thomas The Tank Engine show last month because I needed to dwindle my bank account substantially in the shortest amount of time, and Daniel needed to indulge in his love of That Cheery Little Fucker. Also, photo opportunities! Because who doesn't LOVE seeing their kid posed in front of cardboard cutouts of their greatest love?

Daniel is such a sucker for seeing himself on camera though, that the minute I produce any image capturing device, he jumps (you have no idea how descriptively accurate I'm being right now)(but you will) right around behind it to see "DAYOO!". Of course, Dayoo isn't there because he's HERE, behind the camera with a whole lot of NOTHING going on in front of it.









And this next one was uploaded in error, isn't related, but counts for something. HAR.

get a load of THIS pile of shit.

I got a text message from my mum today.

Joyous.

and she was all "SIL needs support, your brother has been a hero* in a car accident in tokyo. Is okay, but all are shaken"

so, regardless of how much support they've given me lately ie NONE, I called because I AM that much better than the rest of my family, aka That Bunch Of Buttfucks.

Not that there's anything wrong with DOING the buttfucking, I guess, if you're into that kind of thing, but in the interests of being insulting etc

side bar: my boy is in the toilet (oh OKAY. The BATHROOM) grunting out a poop like a REAL man. It's totally all "ooh, aah, eh, EH" from in there. Now it's all "THAT'S MAH BIG POO. BEND OVAH!".

*waves crash on beaches*

Jaysus, dude wasn't lying

ANYWAY

What the fuck is wrong with me that I'd lay my neck on the slab AGAIN?

My SIL was all "...." and I was all *uncomfortable silence*.

eventually I learned that he's okay, she's okay, and the team's okay. Which I knew they would be.

Note to mum: SO NOT A SURPRISE.

So they can go fuck themselves.

Seriously.

Until the next time the family phone rings and the instructions are to care, because I always will, regardless of their worth to me, because I'm this idiot hippy that recognises THEIR worth in the big scheme of things, and I can't escape being human.

Even if they can.

(meow)





ps this in, from the Less That Three Feet Tall members of the family:  

(why does HE know how to do that groovy making square stuff and I don't?)


* her artistic license

in other news

Remember this?

Safire, from Living In Maryland, got her prize!

All I need now to make this a TRULY momentous occasion is a giant foam finger.

Yeah!

addressing the big questions

observation

The irony of grief is that it's further down the track, say six to nine months or so, when the enormity of loss truly sinks in. Before that, it's all practice as your mind lets in a bit at at time, and only as much as you can handle on that day.

That much time later is when all the snippets of reality come together, and it's that much time later is when later is when most people have forgotten how SAD their friend was because now they're relieved for them, saying "[Grieving person] is okay now, it's been a while since [insert name here] passed away. Thank God time heals, eh?".

Meanwhile Grieving Person is at home gasping for air and finally fully comprehending the giant hole left in their life, and NOT talking about it because, c'mon, it's been SO LONG, no one wants to know how they feel anymore.

And the irony of THAT in re THIS, is that six to nine months after a miscarriage is pretty much when you'd planned to take a baby home.

suck X a thousand

It's SUNDAY and after almost ten days of this shit, my immune system needs to be taken out back and SHOT.

Fricken' useless thing.

I'm going to the doctor because whateverinfuck is taking place of OXYGEN in my lungs has got to go. I literally sound like your wheezey old uncle. The one who STILL smokes his sixty Malboroughs before lunch each day, and I don't look much better either, what with all the coughing and spluttering and deprivation of Oh Two going on around here.

And, oh yeah, the grieving, because that shit only gets WORSE before it gets better but I haven't heard DICK about THAT part of the equation yet.

I'm a bit freaked out too, by the drugs I'm no doubt going to be infiltrating my system with in t minus one hour because I haven't taken an antibiotic for, like, fuck, ten years. Fifteen. More maybe. I've had scripts filled then taken them home and tossed them merrily aside before letting my immune system kick some VIRAL ass (note to script happy doctor: TAKE A NOTE) which it DOES, pretty fucking tout suite too, everytime, thankyou very much, but this time? MY GOD. SO not so much so.

Daniel has been holed up at home with me for the ENTIRE week too, and while I'm loving hanging out with him ALL DAY (no, really, true story) the dude must be getting bored of all this...hey, you know that Dali painting. The one with the clocks? Yeah, THAT has got to be boring him senseless.

Though he's not actually complaining. He even kept his peep hole shut when I spent a good part of Friday morning tick tocking my way languidly on the sofa, OBLIVIOUS to him building a branch line (AH GOT MAH TWAIN TWACKS!) on the floor next to me for AT LEAST an hour (or, as time is measured in the Bee household lately, as long as it takes for one complete viewing of the Playschool concert on DVD) while I periodically swatted him away and mumbled encouraging remarks like "hrrm, snffrgmph, phlrrrt". Some would call it snoring, I like to call it I Wasn't Asleep And My Child Was Completely Supervised.

He's an absolute delight, this child of mine, and that's quite apart from him being my child and it being my job to think he's awesome. He really is. No lie, which is why hearing "well at least you have Daniel" kind of doesn't help.

Nor does my asshole back which, since my encounter with trolley boy, is COMPLETELY unstable. I bloody well YAWNED earlier, and now my entire left shoulder and neck is in spasm, as is - and get THIS shit - my left ankle. I KNOW. What THAH? Exactly.

time, bla bla

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for a while,
leave footprints on our hearts,
and we are never, ever the same.



I'm doing okay.

I'm also not going to do a series of updates on Recovering From Pregnancy Loss because the general theme will likely never change: The Sad hits hard from time to time, it never leaves, but sometimes it shuts the fuck up.

And it will eventually become a quieter voice, and one that doesn't as frequently whack me upside of the head and steal my oxygen.

Nights are worse, as are those moments during the day when I realise my hand is gently and protectively placed over something no longer exists.

I get through though. Each time. Because what else is there to do?

Then the times I'm okay are hard because then I feel TERRIBLE then too. How can I be okay? I ask myself. What kind of mother am I that I can be EVER be okay?

So it hurts when I hurt, and it hurts differently when I don't.

Grief.

From where I'm sitting, it's all about being a total assbag to yourself.

I would assume that in the next day or so I'll also be hit by the Sudden Drop In Hormone Levels Crankies, which will possibly be complicated by the also hormonally fueled Periodic Pits Of Despair.

I assume this because I'm a deducer, as in, *observes facts, strokes chin, deduces*

Elementary, mah dear.

I mean, the initial spotting lasted about ten hours and was gone. Then after two days or nothing, it came back last night and brought some some glorious cramps along with it.

Deduction?

The initial spotting was from the "procedure", and the spotting now is now more like a period, in that it's happening because my progesterone levels suddenly dropped.

See?

And it's this kind of SHIT running in my head keeping me sane, for some insane reason.

THIS kind of SHIT does not: Ashermans's syndrome, because why not throw some intense concern about REALLY throwing my fertility out the window into the mix?

I make scar tissue, as my STILL NUMB chin, cheek and other parts of my face would attest to, ergo I'm going to be one of those lucky motherfuckers whose uterus is COMPLETELY ruined by this one single procedure.

"Procedure".

The simple way of describing ten minutes that changed me for ever.

Then there's the lung tumah which might only be a weird chest thing but which FEELS like a tumah stuck RIGHT THERE, and that my head hurts. Especially because that last bit is from being smacked in the back by a train of shopping trolleys, and that pisses me off.

simple things

Daniel's most beloved toys are the boxes and tubs and buckets and cartons and egg cups and bags full of "collectables" he's gathered.

He's like a tiny little curator and has built up quite an impressive assortment of Objets d'Art.

Or, as I refer to them, Loads Of Crap.

His ENTIRE day is spent emptying out and examining each particular collection before systematically moving on to the next.

MY days are spent wondering where in heck my floor went.

We've been working on the One Pile Of Junk At Once, Please system, and it works like this:

IT DOESN'T.

But I persist and one day it WILL work.

Or I WILL end up stuffing him headfirst into that one little boy sized tub with the lid on top. The lid that has the potential to be LOCKED.

what it's like

The hardest part about THIS, the procedure, not the loss, per se, has been that it was all so simple.

No pain and a half day of spotting, and it's done.

My belly has gone, and my boobs are no longer tender.

Already.

ALREADY.

It's over.

Done.

A life time of dreams gone like they never existed.

And the hardest part about tonight is no longer being able to hold my belly like I was holding my babies. There's nothing left there to love, and that really REALLY sucks.

twenty minutes

Procedure today at sometime between 10am and 12 noon.

It's 8.15 now, and we're leaving as soon as I hit "publish" to take Daniel to childcare and me to admitting.

I'm okay (and Daniel is watching cartoons on TV so he's FINE), because today is a beginning, not an ending. Today I start again, is what I'm saying.

The best that could possibly happen happened a little over seven weeks ago, and the worst that could ever happen came a little over a week ago.

I've been incredibly lucky, and while I've also been crazy unlucky too (seriousy, TWO blighted ova? Diagnosis? "one of those things". Twice over. FGS), I wouldn't have been unlucky if I hadn't met parameter A in the first place.

Then again, you make your own luck and this *gestures widely in reference to whole Making Babies plan* wasn't luck.

I put myself here so it would be a bit ridiculous to start complaining now because I didn't get the outcome I wanted.

Having been pregnant, and having started making plans and thinking of names (clue: Girls', 2 contenders, Boys', nil, zip, nothing, NADA) and look forward to life with another child allowed me to realise I don't only want this for Daniel. I want it for me. I mean, I knew I wanted more children, but now I REALLY know I do.

And if I don't add a Bee or two more to the global database, at least I didn't sit at home twiddling my thumbs and wondering what life would be like if life had been different.

Make it different.

If you have a dream, chase it. Setbacks and hurdles and roadblocks and unforeseen dramas and circumstances don't happen to stop you, they're a reminder of just how much you want it.