Thursday, March 29, 2007

Next Klezmer Rebs gig is 8pm this Saturday, 31 March, at the Paekakeriki Memorial Hall. (I'll be filling in on fiddle.) More details on the Reb's web site.

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have you seen this chicken?

Monday, March 26, 2007

It'd been a while since we'd had a family day out, so on Sunday, making the most of the lingering stunning weather and the fact that Mummy is still capable of covering reasonable distances, on the flat, and with a favourable wind, without puffing like a steam train, we wrangled Becca into the station wagon and set off for Staglands. Hadn't been since last summer, and little has changed at the park itself (although Moses the brown donkey whose enclosure, last year, bore the rather Dotheboys Hall-style placard 'This donkey bites', has been moved to a more secure location next to the Clydesdale; maybe it was a three strikes thing). However Becca's reception of it has altered in the space of a year from wide-eyed bogglement to knowledgeable running commentary as she ran around distributing food pellets to the grateful inmates. With, as they say, hilarious consequences, for what we thought would be one of the highlights of her visit, a turn around a field astride a wee Shetland pony, was soon eclipsed by a deer expertly muzzling an empty paper feed bag out of J's hand and then consuming it with obvious relish; this, evidently, is the funniest thing she has ever seen. In the whole world, ever (The deer ATE the bag!! That's SILLY, isn't it?!?! [raucous laughter]) and I have a feeling she'll be dining out on the story for years to come. That, and on her encounter with an avid peacock that gave her a slight peck while she was feeding it her sandwich. Cue floods of tears, and Mummy being enjoined to go and remonstrate with the unrepentant bird, which appeared unmoved by my pointing out to it that biting wasn't nice and that it had been a very naughty peacock. (Fortunately, you lose all sense of public shame fairly early into parenthood). After this incident, Becca did the rounds of all the other (identical) peacocks, remonstrating with each one individually for pecking her and recounting her fate to anyone who would listen. Then, in the deer area, she was mugged for her feed bag by a billy goat whose rapacity sent her literally spinning into Mummy's arms; cue fresh floods of tears and requirements for Mummy and Daddy to deliver further public rebukes to the impassive goat.

The map of the park, which we brought home for her, has photos of some of the animals, and since then Becca has been pointing at them urgently and exclaiming 'THAT'S the peacock that BIT me! And THAT'S the greedy billy goat!' She took it to crèche with her this morning, as evidence, apparently, as she was last seen brandishing it as though it were a set of police mug shots and regaling anyone within earshot with the tale of her brush with the Peacock of Death.

Still, on the whole, I think we got our money's worth.

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splishy splashy

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Took Becca swimming this morning: usually this is a daddy-and-daughter Saturday morning bonding activity, but there was a working bee on at her crèche and the activities on offer were along the lines of digging out tree stumps, so I decided that swimming was the softer option and packed J off with a backpackful of garden tools. Fortunately, my non-maternity cozzie still fits (an advantage to having an economy-size bump). Unfortunately, I'd forgotten how often guiding a metre-tall person through approx 1.2 metres of water, your hands linked gently under her armpits, gets you booted in the stomach, something I'm not keen to encourage in my present delicate condition.

Still, she's come a long way in the year since I started taking her to lessons. I didn't fancy the various branches of the Palais de Fungus chain when we lived in Cambridge, particularly as her eczema was much worse then, so she didn't actually get into a public swimming pool until she was nearly two, when we returned to NZ. Back then upon sight of the water she would limpet to me for dear life, wrapping her legs around my waist and digging her toes into my back. She could reluctantly be pried loose to play with the odd floaty toy, but refused to put her face anywhere near the water, or even to be held facing outwards. Now she doggy paddles around quite independently with a noodle (long tubular flotation device) tucked under her arms, goes under water without a fuss and takes the odd faceful (or even lungful) of water entirely in her stride, and with minimal theatrics. And after lessons she disdains the toddler pool (alas for Mummy because although it's only 20cm deep it's lovely and warm) in favour of the chillier 66cm learner pool, fighting the bigger kids for the floaty turtles and crabs, which she lies atop and propels herself around on. Then she comes home, devours an enormous lunch and passes out. Hopefully long enough for Mummy to get some work done; it's been a busy week.

Next term, having turned three, she goes up into the preschooler class. Which I guess means she's not a toddler any more. Blimey.

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we will redouble our efforts

Friday, March 23, 2007

Further to yesterday's post, I'm beginning to wonder whether, when it comes to children's telly*, parents don't develop a sort of Stockholm Syndrome towards the more (forgiveness, please) unbearable offerings. How else to explain that after five days I am feeling almost benevolent towards Bear in the Big Blue House?

In other news, yesterday, while being poked and prodded and measured, Beelzebump lashed out with a tiny indignant fooot and practically booted the sparrow-like locum midwife clear across the consulting room. That's my ... child of undisclosed gender!

Incidentally, for all those people who've commented 'oooh, you're not very big for seven months, are you...', Beelzebump measures 30cm, which is bang on for 30 weeks, so nyer.

And finally, I would like to extend special thanks here to my parents who, despite not having seen me for four months, and never having seen me visibly pregnant, have not once found it necessary to comment on the size, shape or configuration of the bump.

*We have only ourselves to blame, really: anything Rebecca watches has been selected and then consciously inserted into the DVD player or VCR by myself or her dad, since there's no TV reception where we live, and being a house of simply piety, we refuse to have it plumbed in (viz. we're too cheap to pay for cable).

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you might as well live

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

And the answer to today's bonus quiz question – 'What fresh hell is this? – is:

Bear in the Big Blue House.

(Help meeeee......)

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who could ask for anything more?

Friday, March 16, 2007

Rebecca is three today. She came hurtling into our room this morning and leapt into bed shouting 'It's my birthday today!! Am I THREE??' and then spent an hour bouncing around the house with her new Buzzy Bee backpack on over her pyjamas – this is her special birthday 'big girl' schoolbag and means I can snaffle back the nappy bag, which we've been using for crèche until now, for when Beelzebump emerges. More presents and celebrations to follow over the two-day Festival of Becca that culminates in her party at home tomorrow afternoon. Celebrations kicked off this morning at crèche today with a special morning tea, attended by her Gran and Grandad, who are down from Auckland for the week, and for which Jack made her a big pink cake in the shape of an R. I don't think I've ever seen her so happy as when the cake was brought out with her three candles alight, and her friends all sang her Happy Birthday in English and Maori. At this rate, by tomorrow evening her head may explode. As may mine too, as I am beside myself just watching her leaping up and down with her mouth open in a big Muppet grin. And all the more because my parents have shooed me into the study and are now cleaning the house like fiends. (And yesterday they bought us a clothes-dryer, which was the thing I most desired in the entire world.)

All this, and tomorrow there will be a cake in the shape of a piggy! Life is good. Happy Birthday, my gorgeous little three-year-old Rebecca.

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more bargain-basement advice

Monday, March 12, 2007

I told you I wasn't done with unsolicited advice, the worst type, arguably, being of the true but unhelpful variety. My fifth form Religious Studies class was taught by a nun whose favourite refrain was 'The only way not to get pregnant, girls, is NOT TO DO IT!' You see? completely true but, for most normal human beings, utterly unhelpful. Here's another: 'Pregnancy is not an illness.' Thanks, that'll bring me great comfort next time I'm puking my ring out while Becca hammers on the bathroom door howling 'Mum-MEEEE! Come OOO-U-UT!!!!' A hatchet to the back of the skull ain't technically an illness either, but it can certainly slow you up for a time.

For me, the nadir of the true but unhelpful is the gleaming nugget offered to every sleep-deprived mum of a newborn: 'you should sleep when the baby sleeps'. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard this, however I have yet to hear its logical corollary: '...and while you slumber, I will come over to your house, launder, fold, and sort all the poo and puke-stained garments (both yours and your child's), fill your freezer with casseroles, clean the kitchen, scrub the toilet, pick all the toys off the floor, change the sheets, answer the phone, pay your bills and what's more, without waking you I will give you a bed bath and then attach a milking machine to your sleeping form in order to draw off the emergency back-up feed for when you run out of milk during the 5pm–midnight feeding frenzy. Then, and only then, will I feel justified in spouting this piece of specious bullshit without blushing for shame.'

OK I think I'm done now. Ten weeks to go, incidentally, as the baby-extraction procedure is scheduled for 39 weeks. After last time (41 + 3-5) I'm choosing to regard this as time off for good behaviour. (Hey, I haven't actually thumped anyone yet...)

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heather's compendium of how to annoy new mothers: chapter one: talking shit - the basics

Sunday, March 11, 2007

OK, now I'm pissed off because the book on recovery after a Caesarean I got out of the library is packed with glossy pictures of beautifully coiffed, made-up and flat-stomached women, every one unencumbered by drips, drains, and urinary catheters, easing themselves smilingly (and in five easy steps!) into the accepted position for getting out of bed post-surgery without SPLITTING YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING ABDOMEN IN TWO. While, what's more, wearing WHITE SATIN PYJAMAS.*

(In general, if I were in charge of publications aimed at the pregnant – magazines, for instance – there would be less coiffing and more grainy photoessays featuring bloated yet haggard women with varicose veins on their eyeballs hurling into rubbish bins in public places of recreation.)

So since I'm in a ranting mood anyway, here's another one I've been fermenting (or should that be fomenting?) for nearly three years. It concerns one of the things guaranteed to make me froth the most profusely: unhelpful remarks. You know the ones: the sort of comments to which the only just and true response can be 'Even if that were true, but what the fuck would you have me do about it, precisely?'

An example of this is when Rebecca was an infant, during a hot summer, and was suffering with wet, weeping eczema that caused her to rend her skin with her tiny sharp fingernails until it bled. I well remember a stand-out comment from some well-meaning professional cretin: 'Is she bottle-fed? Because formula's based on cow's milk, you know, and she might be reacting to it.' 'Hmmm, perhaps,' I replied, meaning, of course: 'Actually, I breastfed this baby until I could breastfeed her no more. I would spend evenings in desperate tears on the couch while she sucked at me frantically and painfully for six hours, going from one breast to another without respite. I kept this up every day for weeks, because I had been assured by various professional and amateur LIARS that (all together now!) 'Supply keeps pace with demand!' It didn't, and I eventually had to admit that hours of sucking at my empty breasts was getting neither of us anywhere. I gave in, and began replacing the marathon evening sessions with a single bottle of formula. I wept as I gave her the first one, because I felt such a failure. However she began sleeping through the night, and so did I. I don't remember whether the eczema had started to show up before the first bottle of formula or not because the first few weeks had been such a sleep-deprived blur. No doubt I should have maintained better documentation. But since she is too young for solid food and I am still unable to produce enough breast milk for a whole day's feeds, precisely WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT ME DO ABOUT THIS ANYWAY, other than STARVE her until she is old enough to be weaned? And incidentally thank you for suggesting that my incompetence at nursing my child may have caused her to develop a distressing condition for which there is no cure.'

It's a good job I keep a tight lid on my internal monologue. That's enough rancour for today. In our next instalment on unhelpful remarks: 'You should sleep when the baby sleeps!'

*One word: lochia.

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straight outta sandford

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Further moments of joy and beauty: last night's free tickets to the NZ première of Hot Fuzz, a cop action comedy (I guess you could call it) that's the latest from the Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright/Nick Frost team of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead fame. (Spaced not so much, in fact barely at all, in NZ, unless you know someone with the DVDs: if you do, persuade them to lend it to you, although in many cases you may have difficulty stopping them). The event was sponsored by MySpace, and the film was presented by Peter Jackson, who has a cameo, and the lads themselves, who seemed sweetly baffled by the rapturous reception both before and after the screening. Film itself was a riot, with too much going on to take in on one viewing – as usual the lads had great fun with multiple layers of pastiche, and particularly impressive was the way they managed to combine the classic buddy-action movie (with all the undercurrents of homoeroticism that the genre entails) with the 'lone enlightened innocent in a hotbed of crazies' theme of The Wicker Man (and noteably, Edward Woodward plays a feature role in Hot Fuzz, batting, as it were, for the other team).

All this and a free doughnut too! And incidentally, many thanks to my sweet husband, who arrived with a folding chair he'd picked up from the Warewhare that lunchtime, so I wouldn't have to stand in the queue for nearly two hours.

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talking aloud eases my mind

Friday, March 09, 2007

On the other hand, there is still joy and beauty. Such as 'Nature' by Fourmyula, and as covered by the Muttonbirds, but sung in Yiddish. (Translation courtesy of Dave M's mum; 'doo doo doo's in the chorus replaced with 'oy oy oy', naturally.) Interesting fact I learned at Rebs practice the other week: while Yiddish is very close to German, it's written in Hebrew script, so any Yiddish you see written in Roman script is a transliteration. (Or, arguably, a sort of re-transliteration, if you think about it.)

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Have been assured that my experience of obstetricians may be more positive this time around because NZ medical culture is less paternalistic than that of the UK.

But then again, maybe not so much.

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the one that got away

Sunday, March 04, 2007

I was going to write a cheery little post about the funny side of having my insides messed up to the extent that it's too dangerous to have a natural birth. Yesterday morning in the shower, I tried to think of what sort of amusing spin I could put on the situation. My idea was to write something along the lines of 'Oh well, at least I won't have to try all the usual remedies to kick off labour, or to get the baby into the right position (all together now: 'head down, spine to the left!') I can ditch the cod liver oil; instead of perching on a birthing ball for the next three months munching fresh pineapple and sipping raspberry leaf tea, I can spend them on my back, eating pies. No need to waddle gamely over uneven forest tracks to jiggle the baby down towards my resolutely non-effaced cervix; nor for specialised yoga poses to strengthen my thighs in case I have a squatting labour; instead I will wallow and slob. Perineal massage? Don't make me laugh.' Etc.

But I don't feel like being cheerful. I'm knackered and anaemic. I have been sick and vomiting for six months and expect to be for the next three to come, and it will only end when I have painful abdominal surgery that will make me feel like a failure because I couldn't 'manage' to have a natural birth. (And natural births are better for the baby because they squeeze all the fluid out of its lungs, making breathing easier.) I won't be able to sit up for the first couple of days; I won't be able to pick up Rebecca, or anything heavier than the baby, for six weeks; I won't be able to drive. I won't be able to carry the baby in a sling. And when the baby screams in the middle of the night in the hospital, it'll take me ten increasingly frantic minutes to haul myself into position so I can tend to it before it wakes up the entire crowded ward.

But hardest to let go of is the redemptive vision I had of, this time around, the baby being placed on my stomach immediately after birth, and my feeling its warm sticky skin against mine, and its nuzzling as it tries to figure out where the boobie is. When Rebecca was born, I remember her first cries, but little else. I could see half of her outraged little face as Jack sat next to me holding her, but I couldn't move to take her myself. All I could do was turn my head to retch into a kidney dish balanced on my right shoulder, as the surgeons stitched me up. Then I went to the recovery room, and she went to neonatal intensive care, because the labour had gone on for so long that she was distressed and feverish, and needed to be assessed. She came back to me in the ward 10 hours later, canulae in her tiny forearms, a little round sticker on her back where they'd done a lumbar puncture, and only then was I able to get a good look at her, let alone to hold her properly.

The midwives on the ward attached a rope ladder to the end of my bed; not being able to use my abdominal muscles to sit up in bed, it was a question of grasping the end of the ladder and going hand over hand, using my shoulder and back muscles. But it was still very painful; the incision burned and pulled every time I changed position. Because of the haemorrhage on the operating table, a drain had been installed in the incision to draw off pooling fluid and prevent infection; this too hampered movement and prevented me from getting out of bed, not that I felt up to getting up. It was removed after a couple of days on the ward; inched out by a midwife who seemed irritated by my yelps of pain, which I tried to stifle. The drain, as far as I could tell, appeared to be stitched along the wound; it stuck painfully every time it was withdrawn another centimetre. I felt stupid, and wimpish, that I found this distressing, and wished I could be more staunch; this wasn't helped by the midwife's apparent belief that I was just being tiresome.

I conscientiously obeyed the directive to be up and about as soon as possible in order to speed my recovery, shoving the baby's fishtank along the corridor in front of me. But I felt pretty feeble: I wasn't given a blood transfusion until the night before I left the hospital, so there were a couple of times before then that everything went black and I had to be wheelchaired back to my bed by tutting midwives. Again, I felt stupid and embarrassed: even when I was trying to do the right thing it turned out I was being a pain in the arse.

Why I am I so disappointed that I have to have another Caesarean? Because last time the aftermath was debilitating, painful, protracted. I didn't see my baby for hours after the birth. Rational as I tried to be about the medical necessity of the procedure, and that the most important thing was that I had a healthy daughter, I still felt like a failure, especially when I heard her coughing up all the gunge out of her breathing passages, gunge that would have been squeezed out had I 'managed' to push her out through the birth canal, the proper way. And especially when I struggled to breastfeed because having her lying on my healing scar was so uncomfortable. I tried other feeding positions that were supposed to reduce pressure on my scar; lying on my side in bed with her next to me; tucking her under my arm with her head on my thigh. She just kept coming unlatched and rolling away, and then screaming with frustration.

This time, I'm told, things will be very different. I'll be physically and mentally prepared; I won't be at my lowest ebb after two days of trying to have the baby naturally. The whole procedure will be calmer, and less fraught. Civilised, even. And as I won't be as exhausted, the risk of complications such as haemorrhage will be lessened; in any case the surgeons, aware of my history, will be on the alert. Hopefully, the baby won't be distressed by a long, futile labour, and won't have to be taken away from me for hours to be assessed; instead I'll be able to hold him or her while I'm in the recovery room. This time I will have family in the country to help me look after my children as I recover (last time we were in the UK, and J had to go back to work a week after I returned from the hospital, leaving me on my own). This time I will know from experience to be more assertive about pain relief, to ask for help with breastfeeding, not to beat myself up if it doesn't work. To expend less effort trying to be a good patient.

I don't know how to finish this, so I can only end hoping for the best.

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incisive observations

Friday, March 02, 2007

Saw the obstetrician this morning and it turns out I am too posh to push. (Who knew that I would one day transcend my West Auckland upbringing in such a fashion?) She had been over my surgical notes from the UK, and it appears that my insides are rather more pre-knackered than I'd realised. Here's why, as it was explained to me:

During a Caesarean section, the surgical incision is made low down in the uterus, fairly close to the cervix. As it happens, this incision site is also close to the uterine artery, which supplies the uterus with blood. During the late stages of labour, as the cervix becomes fully dilated, the wall of the uterus, where the incision is made, is stretched thin and thus weakened, especially if you've been in labour for a long time. When the surgeons cut into my uterus, a tear developed on one side of the incision and extended into the neighbouring uterine artery. This resulted in a haemorrhage: the artery was repaired (at some speed, I imagine) and I had to have blood transfusion before leaving the hospital.

Unfortunately, tears and repairs of this nature leave the artery permanently weakened, increasing the risk of rupture if subjected to the stress of a vaginal birth: arteries being fairly high-pressure systems, they are are not the sort of structures you want to go pop. So there's no question of being allowed to attempt the vaginal birth I'd been hoping for: I've been booked in for a c-section on 22 May, and should I happen to go into labour before then, I should apparently get my pregnant arse to the hospital with all possible speed.

Clearly I must go with the safest option and, disappointed as I am, I accept this. But two questions trouble me. First: could this have been prevented? My labour was induced, and by the time the c-section was performed, I'd been at it for a long time: it took a good 36 hours to get me into established labour, which went on for a further 12 hours before the surgery was deemed necessary. By this time, I was exhausted and running a temperature, and Rebecca was in distress. According to my current midwife, I'd never have been allowed to go on for that long over here, and she thinks that this was a factor in the haemorrhage. The obstetrician seemed to agree; she also pointed out that given the position of the baby's head, the chances of her emerging naturally were fairly slim. Given this, why wasn't the surgery performed earlier, when my cervix was less dilated, and the risk of tearing reduced?

But what bothers me more is this: why was I not told at the time what had happened on the operating table? I first learned that I'd had a haemorrhage when I overheard one of the midwives use the term 'PPH' while discussing my case with a colleague, at the foot of my bed. When I asked her what this meant she said 'post-partum haemorrhage' and left it at that: no further details were offered, and it didn't occur to me to ask for any. I was somewhat knocked back by the whole process, and probably assumed that this sort of thing was fairly common. But given that the nature of the haemorrhage and the resulting damage to the artery have rendered any future vaginal births out of the question, why wasn't this explained to me at the time, and by one of the surgical team? Surely if something goes wrong during an operation, a patient has the right to know, especially if it carries such serious consequences. Did they forget to tell me? Did they not think I'd need to know? Did they just assume I'd find out if and when I came to have another baby? I am baffled, and angry.

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