You Call It Preschool, I Call It Freedom!

Declan officially started preschool last Monday, I now have two days a week where I can experience the freedom of not having three foot of trouble hanging around my knees constantly. I spent the first day sobbing, the second day I was uneasy, but happy about how much he was enjoying himself, by the time yesterday hit I was delighted to ship him off to play with his friends and finger paint. As much as I love having him around, it’s like I’ve gained back a piece of me for two days a week. I have rediscovered so many joys since that first day, like peeing without an audience and eating food without having to share. If this keeps up I might even be able to do something really crazy, like take a bath ALONE!

Declan loves it, and by Thursday each week he’s already asking whether it’s time to go back to school. The ladies that teach his class keep on telling me how wonderful he is, how well he plays with the other children, how smart he is. I partially want them to see him at home stealing toys from his brother and slamming doors in my face because I’ve done something abusive and highly damaging, like telling him he can’t have a second cookie, but I also don’t want to ruin their image of how fab they think he is.

As nice as it is to get the break, it’s magic to pick him up, hear him scream “MUMMY!” and come pelting down the steps from the wendy house. He’ll run around the classroom and show me what he painted, and what he played with and tell me how wonderful it all was. His mouth is moving too fast for me to keep up and his enthusiasm is seeping from every pore in his body, it’s wonderful.

Pink, It’s Like Red, But Not Quite

Babies make you feel old, well, not necessarily babies, but one preschooler and one would-be-toddler-if-he-would-just-get-off-his-arse-and-walk make you feel old.

I decided to counteract this by dying my hair and calling back to my long gone days of college, late nights and doing assignments on the train into the city. Suddenly I feel magical, I don’t feel like everyone is looking at me and thinking how washed up I look lugging my kids around and wiping baby snot up with my sleeve, everyone is looking at me and thinking how ridiculous my hair is. Win.

Scabs, Lies and Videotape

Declan has recently discovered the joy of picking scabs, not one to deprive him of such pleasure I haven’t got massively out of my way to stop him – he’s the kind of kid that if I say no will just get even more excited about whatever activity I’ve banned him from. That is until I realised that this scab has been sitting on his knee for over a month now, barely being given a chance to heal before my son gets his little fingernails under it and rips it off delighting in the blood running down his leg. Ick.

The blood was there this morning, so I asked him whether he’d been picking, knowing full well the answer.

His face was sheepish, but his voice told another story, a flat out “no!” with a tone that was trying to tell me just how shocked he was by my accusation.

“Are you sure?” I asked him.

“Yes!” he said defiantly, then he bowed his head realising that the game was up “No… but you shouldn’t pick scabs.”

I don’t know whether to be shocked that he’s trying out lying to get out of something (particularly something that really isn’t going to get him into trouble) or to delight in the fact that yet another piece of his psyche has been formed, the part that will one day lead to him telling his teacher that his little brother ate his homework. It might not be the kind of thing the average parent jots down in a baby book, but ever so slowly the layers on my toddler are building up and turning him into a child, one that will one day be a teen and then eventually an adult.

I just hope that he doesn’t chose to take up a career as a lawyer, after folding that easily I don’t see him getting very far.

Twelve Months On

My baby boy turned one year old on Saturday.

One year since he shot out of my vag looking like a member of the Blue Man Group and entered the world.

One year since he was whisked off to the NICU before I’d seen him, with Dan following promising to return with a photo.

One year since I told Dan that he must have photographed the wrong baby because “my baby isn’t Asian!”.

One year since I learned that jaundice and swollen eyes from birth canal trauma can do funny things to your baby’s face.

One year of learning and growing and winding his older brother up

And yet it feels like he’s been in our lives forever. Not in an “oh god, when will this annoying house guest ever leave?” way, more in the way that he filled a hole that we weren’t even aware was there.

I’ve learned in the last twelve months just how different children can be. Declan and Connor have been raised in exactly the same way, and yet you couldn’t find two children less alike. My eldest will leap off a platform twice his height and just hopes that he lands well, whereas Connor will cling to you if you take the corner too fast whilst you’re carrying him to the bedroom. Declan will bounce off walls and demands constant amusement, Connor is quite happy to sit and take in the world. Declan started walking at nine months old and woe betide anyone who wanted him to sit down and chill out, Connor has only recently started to crawl and will happily sit down and cuddle with anyone that asks.

I love Declan with every piece of me, just as I love The Conman, but my entire pregnancy I was petrified of having two of him, two kids with that level of energy and gusto would have flattened me. From day one Connor was a different baby, he still has the stubborn streak that his brother has, and believe me, if he doesn’t approve of something, he’ll let you know, but he’s not the hellbeast that Declan was, and to an extent, still is. He’s calm, he’s quietly determined and he loves human touch. He is my little boob monster, my bed buddy in the mornings when he wakes up and wants cuddles, my living garbage disposal that will eat anything that looks like it might have at one stage been edible. The telly holds no interest for him, but he’s very aware of the world around him, and his play focuses more on mimicry, probably because he takes so much in.

I’m not sure how he’ll grow up, I’ve always said that Connor’s my rugby player and his brother is the soccer star, based soley on their build. I think he will be athletic and I think his silent resolve will get him further in certain elements of life than his brother’s brash way of taking on the world, I also think if he keeps on eating in the way he currently is we’re going to have to add extra suspension to the car.

So happy birthday my little Conman, thank you for filling that gap in our lives that we didn’t know we had, thank you for teaching your brother that he isn’t the centre of the universe and for teaching me that not everything is my fault, but that every baby is different from the next

And if you could walk sometime before college, that would be awesome.

Love always,

Mummy xxx

The Purple Pimpmobile

Declan attended his first day of preschool without me today (we did two “settling days” last week) and he had a blast. I on the other hand spent most of the day crying my eyes out. The purple pimpmobile was his treat for being so good and even taking a nap when the ladies there told him to. I have to admit it’s now officially my favourite out of all of his cars, if I was a centimetre high this would be my car of choice. Look at that glittery paint job and tell me it’s not awesome!

OMG! Facebook Has Targeted Ads!

Wandering around the interwebs catching up on my Idol gossip (*gasp* it’s been moved to a later timeslot! Dramaz!) I stumbled across this less than fascinating article on The Daily Telegraph about Facebook advertising.

I totally hope that there was a rush to get this to print, Lisa from the tech writing department was running down the hall yelling “STOP THE PRESS!!” and she eagerly thrust her breaking article into the editors hand.

Want to know something even crazier, during Greys Anatomy they have adverts for chocolate and makeup, when the V8s are on they tend more towards fast foods and autoparts stores. I don’t think that L’Oreal would be throwing up an ad on Channel Seven for their latest foundation in between the supercar laps, it makes just as much sense as advertising dating sites to someone who states that their status is married.

Advertising is targeted, if advertising isn’t targeted it becomes completely useless. Facebook is free to use, if you take away the advertising, you take away Facebook. It really isn’t brain surgery, and despite what the article may try and have you believe, there isn’t some lowly advertising exec sitting in his desk watching millions and millions of profiles to see the status changes, the magical bots scan the pages for changes and update your ads accordingly. Yes, Facebook is making money from your life, but you gave them permission to when you not-so-scandously agreed to their TOS.

Which brings me neatly onto my main issue with FB, if you’re going to bitch at Facebook for anything, then this is probably a good start: Stating in the TOS that once you upload any content, like that picture of Little Cousin Susie from your family reunion, you give them the permission to redistribute, adapat and sell YOUR FAMILY PHOTOS as they see fit…

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service.

Now, whilst I do think it’s highly unlikely that FB are going to start selling people’s snapshots from their online galleries, but the permission is there for them to do so. To me that’s a far larger issue than a bot knowing that you’ve got hitched recently and serving you appropriate ads, maybe I should be writing for the Sunday Telegraph!

My OB Said WHAT???

I have just discovered (with thanks to Alicia of Tattoos And Drool) the fabulous site, My OB Said What???.

Full of gems such as…
“Your Cervix Is a Little Dehydrated”
“The Vagina is a Very Dirty Place for a Baby!”
And my personal favourite, regarding the DANGERS of birthing in a standing position:
“…It Makes All The Blood Rush Down Into Your Vagina.”

I have had one entirely midwife cared birth, where I don’t remember seeing an OB once during my entire pregnancy, labour and post-partum care. Then my second where my entire antenatal care was done via an OB, who didn’t believe me when I told him as I was being hooked up to the Picotin that I was going to give birth at 3:09pm, bid me farewell, said he had some places to go and that he’d see me around six. So instead of birthing my son when he entered the world at exactly 3:09pm he was off gallivanting around town, leaving a superb midwife (and I feel so terrible that I can’t even remember her name now) and my husband to play catcher. Of course he showed up just after my son had been taken in a little oxygen bubble to the neonatal care and I had birthed the placenta, to tell me I’d done a fabulous job, and that I owed him $2,000.

Oddly enough I can’t think of any gems that he said. My main memory of my care was an almost creepy obsession with ultrasounds, every single visit I’d hop up on the table and have an ultrasound, it was quite a novelty at first but after so many you start to wonder what the point is, maybe he was trying to justify that $2k by showing off his flashy equipment.

My gem surprisingly come from my midwife care. At 38(ish) weeks after spending the entire day with either end over a toilet and complaining of backache, timing contractions and laying in the bath to see if they were valid or not, they eventually became 6 minutes or so apart and so we phoned up the birth centre and were told to come in straight away.

I explained my day to the midwife on duty (who, from now on, will be referred to as Nurse Satan), said that the contractions were slowly, but steadily getting closer together and I could feel definite pressure on my cervix.

“Hah! How do you even know where your cervix is?”

Strike one.

Last I checked lady, it was somewhere up my vag, unless I’ve been horribly confused all these years.

So I lay down on the bed, she berates me for drinking lime cordial instead of water and does a cervical check to see how far along I am. Only 1cm. She laughs and says the next thing that will stick in my mind forever.

“You’re not in labour, come back when you’re screaming!”

Strike 2.

So off we go back home, I take the prescribed sleeping pills which last all of an hour before my waters break all over our bed and we jump back into the car and go back to the birth centre, under their instructions to come in as soon as my membranes rupture to prevent any infection.

That was Wednesday night. It’s thought I’ll go into full blown labour within 24 hours so they just let me sit it out, eventually a doctor comes to see me on Friday, explains that I have an unresponsive cervix and I’ll be scheduled for an induction on Monday, but my body will probably figure out what to do before then anyway.

Monday comes, I’m hooked up to the IV, a couple of hours pass by and I’m in the throes of a unmedicated induced labour, in pops Nurse Satan.

“Oh, it’s you! Now you KNOW you’re in labour!”

Strike three.

That was when I turned around to my midwife and told her that if Nurse Satan came into the birthing room ever again I was going to impale her on an IV stand. She was informed of my feelings towards her and kept out for the entirety of my eldest son’s birth. I saw her occasionally in the hallway for my short stay after birth and she refused to even make eye contact with me.

So, it isn’t just the OBs who are completely lacking in bedside manner or even just manners in general, occasionally you’ll get a complete nutjob midwife too. Infact, remind me to one day tell you about the midwife from my second pregnancy who would use the room with the long term care patients as her bedbound bitching audience. Apparently she hated birthing Asian babies because “the mother’s vagina always smells of curry”.  Rarely a shift went by without her coming in to moan about “the smelly woman in room 16a” or “that fat one down the hall”. Delightful.

Step Away From The Baby

From ParentDish’s most recent post:

Thumbs Down. You spot a pair of tiny feet bouncing along in a stroller and can’t resist taking a peek. What cheeks! What big, brown eyes! What an adorable sign hanging precariously above the baby’s head warding me off lest I whip out the hand sanitizer! We’re not joking. The signs read, “Please wash your hands before touching mine” and come in red, blue and pink silicone rubber. They cost $7.95 and can hang almost anywhere. A well-intentioned mother who gave birth to a premature baby created the jarring baby accessory, so we understand why germs were an issue for the mom. But isn’t it a parent’s job to model good social skills for their children by graciously addressing strangers who like to innocently touch babies instead of relying on signs to get the message across?

Umm. No. How about teaching our children that if someone disrespects their private space will tell them in no uncertain terms?

For the first six months of his life everytime I was out with Declan in public I would lose count on the amount of people who insisted on touching him. In the pram, sitting on my lap, even in the sling, the child was not safe from the prying fingers of strangers. Fingers that I didn’t know the history of, I didn’t know what they’d touched prior to stroking my babies cheek, they’d be shopping right? How many hands had their change gone through before it hit theirs? Had they touched another baby before they decided to touch mine? DOGS! What about DOGS?!

So PD says I just need to graciously tell the stranger not to touch my newborn. Fair enough, but the kind of people that would listen to a gracious request aren’t the kind of people who are busy jabbing their fingers in my baby’s face. Those people understand that you don’t just wander around touching freshly birthed babies. The finger jabbers are the kind of people that when you say “Please don’t touch him, he’s asleep” the respond with “Oh just his cheek, it won’t wake him up!”, it might not, but when I crack your skull for ignoring my “gracious request” it will probably disturb his slumber.

So for baby #3 I would probably consider this sign, or I could just do what one of the women in my mother’s group did when faced with the ongoing barrage of strange hands reaching into her pram; place a fart machine in the bottom basket with the presser to activate it attached to the pram handles. If you think a sign is jarring, wait till you see them pull their hands away when your infant lets rip with a fart that measures on the richter scale. Suddenly the friendly coloured sign doesn’t seem quite so horrendous, eh?

Interestingly enough, Connor never got many touchers, maybe the slightly psychotic look of a frazzled mother internally berating herself for even CONSIDERING leaving the house with two children under the age of two scared them off.

CamWhore

My husband cruelly suggested as I was getting ready to go out last night that I was old, miserable and no longer able to take perfect camwhoring shots, lets just see…

Self portrait with camera at arms length. Check.
Slightly blurry focus to cover up any imperfections. Check.
Artistic MySpace angle, taken from above to cover the double chin. Check.
Pout to imply that I have fabulous cheekbones. Check.
Over processed with ridiculously high contrast, once again to cover up the skin imperfections. Super check.

I think you’ll find that I’ve still got it. Take that bitchez!

You Can Take My Life, But You Can Never Take My Caffienated Beverages!

There’s talk about NSW banning the sale of caffeinated drinks because some eight year olds have been chugging them down on the way to school. I am already coming up with catchy slogans for my protest boards, but can’t get much further that “Take Away My Caffeine And I Will Hunt You Down And Eat Your Face”. Catchy? No. True? Yes.