TWO DOWN, ONE TO GO

Today is the first day of my third trimester. I celebrated by having two lunches.

FRIDAY LOLS

Some valuable information for those with kids (courtesy of Doug)

AROUND HERE LATELY

• The 6 year old has learnt about Pinterest and has been keen to jump aboard (is that a pun?). Alas, to our dismay we discovered you need to be invited to join. Not by a friend, by the actual Pinterest dudes. Taking themselves a bit too seriously perhaps? In any case, we played along and have been awaiting acceptance with baited breath (I would like to say this just applies to the 6 year old, but I did feel the same longing to be accepted that one feels when waiting for a potential date to call, masked with the same feigned indifference of "I don't really care if I never hear from them again"). Finally tonight we received our official invitation, which delighted the 6 year old who has grand visions of pinning pictures of the "dream house". Back story: we have a running joke about one day being able to afford our "dream house". We all have slightly different ideas about details of the dream house (the 6 year old and I insist that the dream house must have a pool; Alex insists it must have at least one room dedicated to storing his bicycle collection), though we all agree that the dream house is, in essence, some kind of mansion that two of the three of us know we will never be able to afford. The other has already begun saving and has "30 or more monies" (30 individual coins, not dollars) in her piggy bank, which she believes is almost enough for a down payment. Bless.

• I have had recent doubts about what to do as far as a career goes. I am starting to realise that I went into my PhD with the aim to eventually become an academic, and never really entertained the thought of doing much else. Now, with the baby looming and my previous single lady freedom well and truly dead, I'm starting to question how realistic this goal is, especially considering recent funding cuts and increasing job competitiveness. Not really sure what to do post-baby. Perhaps I could get paid to blog??

• Speaking of which, I have discovered a fantastic "mummy blog" (apparently this is a phenomenon now?) of a woman who is much, much funnier than I could ever hope to be. Also, her life is a lot more interesting than mine. I'm struggling to produce even mildly entertaining material - there's only so many times one can write about weird pregnancy symptoms, and the 6 year old is shamefully well-behaved so not much material there.

• Along with wasting time reading aforementioned blog, I have been watching a lot of stuff on iview. My current faves are this and this (no judgement). There has also been a lot of Masterchef and Sailor Moon watching in the house, which is fine except for the fact that I often have a Katy Perry/Sailor Moon theme mash-up running through my head.

• We have YET ANOTHER head lice infestation. I've honestly lost count of how many times this has happened since the start of school this year. On the upside, we are now experts in lice treatment - I can name at least 3 different brands of lice shampoo (and which of those actually works), and we have the combing conditioned hair bit down to a fine art. We also have a nice collection of lice combs (5 and counting), which is going into the baby's dowry.

• I have been both excitedly awaiting and fearfully dreading the start of birthing classes (next week). Material to be covered in Class 1 includes: The 3 stages of labour (which was news to me, I always thought labour was just one long drawn-out process), when to come into hospital/what to bring, reason for induction, and role of the support person. Sounds like one of the more upbeat classes, as we have coming up in future weeks: postnatal depression, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, vacuum and forceps use during labour, and post-birth contraception. We will be paying particular attention to the last one.

AFTERNOON EYE CANDY

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

I would kill for a decent night's sleep. For a few weeks now, I've been waking up every three hours or so in the night, and feel wide awake. It takes a while to fall asleep again, and the sleep is never very deep because I'm constantly rolling from side to side (the roll is more like a three-point turn these days) trying to get comfortable, or trying to get the baby to stop kicking me or lying on my bladder. I feel like a wreck. I am barely cognisant most days. I feel down, I have burst into tears at the slightest emotional provocation - the other night I cried for half an hour after seeing the delivery of a premature baby on Offspring (a fictional show). It's like all the PMS I've missed from the past six months has finally caught up with me. If I read one more cheesy line about how the upshot to all this is At least you'll be prepared for when the baby comes!, I might vomit.

I'm sorry to whinge. I am keenly aware that in pregnancy, if you and the baby are both healthy and everything is going along according to plan, there is little worth complaining about. In the spirit of being honest though, I think it's important to document the vast range of experiences, not just the good ones. I don't take my or my baby's health for granted. I'm just tired.

IS BREAST BEST?

A fantastic documentary on breastfeeding - it gives an honest portrayal of the struggles women can face, while presenting both sides of the "Is breast best?" debate equally and without judgement. Cherry Healey is awesome.

For those who are interested, you can watch it here:
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/843481

ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE, OR HOW I AM ATTEMPTING TO OVERCOME MY FEAR OF LABOUR

Is it just me who thinks this is slightly terrifying?

I have to admit, I have a rather significant fear of childbirth. I wouldn't say it quite makes it into phobia territory, but it comes close. This coupled with my lack of appreciation (okay, minor repulsion) towards newborns does not inspire much confidence in me for my inevitable labour. Why am I having a baby in the first place if it's all so unappealing? you may wonder. I often wonder the same thing. I do comfort myself with the knowledge that almost every woman I've spoken to who has had a baby has admitted some fear of or aversion to childbirth. Many of them went back for seconds or thirds though, so surely that must mean something.

I read somewhere that a good way of preparing yourself for labour is to force yourself to watch a video of a child being born, especially if you haven't already seen one. I thought I was home free and clear with this one, as I have already seen episodes of the TV series One Born Every Minute. That is, until I realised that I had never actually sat through an entire episode and, more crucially, had never been brave enough to keep watching as the baby was being born. I always conveniently had to "go to the bathroom" or "get a snack" or "wash my hair" whenever anything remotely confronting came on (pretty much every scene from about halfway through).

So, given I'll have to watch a childbirth video in my birthing class anyway, I figured I may as well bite the bullet and force myself to watch one in the comfort of my own home.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Too sweet not to post.

Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine and looking forward to the long weekend! I'm having drinks (or at least, will be present where drinks are being had) with a dear friend to celebrate his birthday, and will also be seeing a couple of films from the Sydney Film Festival. That's about as exciting as my weekends come these days!

BATH PORN

So I'm at work sitting in a blood-stained shirt like a chump because I had a crazy heavy nosebleed earlier (another lovely symptom of pregnancy!), feeling generally gross and unglamorous.

So I have been cheering myself up by daydreaming about baths. Yes, baths. I don't have one at home and I often catch myself fantasising about stepping into a warm bath at the end of the day (what can I say, I'm easily satisfied).

THINGS I HAVE DISCOVERED DURING PREGNANCY

Would've been nice if somebody had told me this sooner.

1. Growing a baby is really fucking exhausting. I know all the books say it, and I guess it's fairly obvious, but I was still amazed by the sheer extent to which I felt tired. It's been unlike any other tiredness I've experienced. I'm a light sleeper and before baby, I can't remember the last time I slept through the night. But now, I will happily fall asleep at 8pm and be out cold until 10 or 11am the next day. And still feel tired.

2. With pregnancy and having a baby comes the onslaught of unwanted advice (from anyone and everyone, often people who have absolutely no experience on the topic) and strange/inappropriate comments. I have been told that the age gap between the baby and my 6 year old stepdaughter will be too great for them to have any hope of ever getting along. I have been forbidden from taking Panadol ("I think it's best if you don't risk it, don't you?") by someone is not a doctor and who has never had children, and despite the fact that Panadol is actually safe to take during pregnancy. I get questioned about my various bodily functions and shamed over my daily coffee intake. I even had someone ask me, in all seriousness, one Saturday night when I was out at a pub, "Shouldn't you be at home taking prenatal vitamins?".

3. Baby shit is crazy expensive. And there is no single definitive item that is exactly what you need - for example, there's no "best" pram, rather there's a million different types that are all similar but vary slightly and all have something not quite right with them. Why can't they just make one pram that has everything?

4. I realise I had (have?) a slight alcohol dependency. I wouldn't go so far as to use the word addiction, but not being able to drink has made it quite clear that I definitely drank as a sort of coping mechanism a lot of the time. Also several people have told me they assumed I must be pregnant when I stopped drinking, because why else would I not be drinking? Hm, feeling a bit like a degenerate now...

5. Prolapse. I miss being blissfully ignorant.

6. A bunch of other pregnancy-related terms/products/phenomena: doulas, muslin wraps, fundal height, mastitis, colostrum. Also a lot of scary pregnancy-related medical shit: your abdominal muscles can separate, it's common to get nosebleeds and sciatica during pregnancy, one in three women who have ever had a baby wet themselves, you can tear all the way through during childbirth. ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

7. You don't magically feel "like a mother" or a "fertile goddess" just because you're pregnant. At least I don't. You just feel like yourself, but with this weird difference that mostly feels like a strange medical condition, with the occasional lucid realisation of Fuck, there is an actual real living baby inside me that will one day come out into the world and want to borrow my car.

8. Despite all the bad stuff that comes with pregnancy, it is actually a pretty wonderful experience that makes you feel like you have this special secret (even when it's no longer a secret) that's just between you and the little kicking thing inside you.

FRIVOLOUS INDULGENCE

On a more lighthearted note, I totally have my eye on this:

Surely I will need at least one nice one-piece swimsuit for post-baby summer times?

ON BECOMING A YOUNG MUM

The first question I'm usually asked after someone finds out that I'm pregnant is, Was it planned? Although the way it's asked is often more like, It wasn't planned, was it? Most people I've told find it surprising that people could be so forward and, well, rude. In all honesty, I find it amusing more than anything. Was it planned? Hell no. I'm surprised people have to ask.

I never thought I would be a mother in my twenties. It's not that I didn't ever want children, but suffice it to say I rather enjoyed heavy drinking and sleeping till midday. Also for those who are wondering (and for those who have asked me, as a follow-up to the planned question), I'm certainly not pro-life and would have had no moral objection to not going through with an unplanned bump in the road... Though to my surprise, despite this, this was not the option that ended up feeling like the right one for me this time. And so here we are.

Certainly there are many positives about being a young mum. Having the energy and enthusiasm of youth is the first thing that comes to mind, not to mention a youthful body that will (hopefully) bounce back from the physical onslaught of pregnancy and childbirth without as much trouble as it may a few years later. There are times though at the end of the day, after having done my best not to fall asleep at my work desk then crawling home to do the nightly domestic chores, when I look at the clock, see that it's 9pm and surprise myself because surely it must be midnight - I am exhausted. And I wonder, if I feel this tired with all my supposed energy and enthusiasm of youth, how do other women do it? How will I do it as I inevitably get older?

I do worry a fair bit about money and, in only a vaguely related way, about my career - the latter has been a far greater source of anxiety than I had predicted in the early days of my pregnancy. After years of understanding the glass ceiling and the continued prejudice against women at an intellectual level, I finally understand this at a very practical level. The subtleties and nuances of discrimination that I have faced have astounded me. They have not come from a place of outright malice, but I see that where I was once highly respected among my coworkers and (arguably more importantly) among my superiors, I am now preemptively turned down on working on meaningful projects, I am not given due credit for tasks that I have worked on, I have been written off as though I have already gone on leave. I worry about being bumped off the ferris wheel of working life, and wonder how I will be able to get back on post-baby. Would I still worry if I were five or ten years older and already had an established career? Almost definitely yes, and maybe even to a greater extent.

For me, the one thing that I do come back to when I despair about potentially losing the "best years of my life" on child-rearing is that when my children grow up, I will still be young enough to relate to them in their young adulthood. I will hopefully not be too out of touch, and I hope that they will not feel a great generational divide as I did with my parents. And, maybe, I can reinvent my forties and fifties as the "best years of my life".

PREAMBLE

Hello. After a long stint of teenage angst blogging (okay, there was some early 20s angst blogging too), I swore off blogs as, for the most part, a bit of a self-indulgent wank. Not sure that I've entirely changed my mind, but I have discovered myself spending a fair bit of time thinking about, discussing and generally becoming adjusted to this whole having-a-baby thing. It seems maybe an outlet for these musings that's not my partner/mother/friends/co-workers/any living person who would rather not be regaled with yet another story would be beneficial for everyone involved. Also some nice peeps have encouraged me to start this, and god knows I don't need much of an excuse for finding another means of procrastination. So here goes. Enjoy.