A New Decade

It would be superfluous to call the last decade “life-changing”, given that I was 13 at the beginning of it. Nonetheless, there is no other way to describe it. I lost my brother and my Nan within 2 weeks of each other, met Karl, left school, gained a niece and nephew, completed college, got my first job, found a better job doing what I’d wanted to do for years and of course, had a baby. Life, death, milestones, personal achievement… it’s all in there.

I could try and make a guess as to what the next decade will hold, but I’ve not got a clue what the next year is going to mean for me so would probably find myself laughing at my own ideas in as little as 6 months.

It’s no understatement to say that I’ve had to quickly re-evaluate my thoughts, opinions, feelings, priorities — my entire life, even — in the past 6 and a half weeks. I’ve known for a long time that I’d be a good mother, but I had no clue exactly how strong my maternal instinct would be, and the massive impact that would have in going forward. I can’t really articulate what this means for my future, but suffice to say that the next 10 years will definitely be an adventure into the unknown.

And to think that this time last year, my biggest goal was to break 1,000 feed subscribers! How unimportant that seems now…

Posted on: January 1, 2010 · Category: Misc, Parenting

Low Iron, Absolutely Gutted

I’ve had the majority of my antenatal care through the local midwife-led unit. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere, a great team of midwives who’re all there for you and make you feel like you’re the only woman in the world currently having a baby. Clearly that’s not the case, but it’s nice to be made to feel that comfortable. Because it’s a midwife-led unit, they don’t have any obstetricians or doctors to oversee labour/birth and consequently, you are only allowed to give birth there if you are considered “low risk”.

The nearest obs-led hospital for higher risk pregnancies is much further away, some 40 mins or so by car (if the roads are quiet). It’s big, it’s very “sterile” and short of branding you, one almost gets the feeling that you couldn’t be any more like the member of a herd. In, pop baby, out again. Not only is it very de-personalised, it’s also where I went last year so not particularly full of fond memories for me.

Throughout the majority of my pregnancy, despite the early bleeding/etc, I’ve been classed as low risk and have therefore planned to have sproglet at the midwife-led unit. I’ve been very relaxed about it all purely because I felt so comfortable with the ‘service’ provided there. Unfortunately, blood tests at about 20 weeks showed that I was borderline low iron. Because of various guidelines and the risk (albeit low, but risk indeed) of bleeding complications post-birth caused by anaemia, I had to get my iron up to get back into the low risk category and thus “qualify” for the birth I wanted.

I was prescribed iron tablets, but suffered a very bad reaction to them and as such bought myself Spatone, which is apparently naturally iron-rich (it’s just water, comes in sachets, you take it with OJ for the vit C benefits). Lots of pregnant women rave about it, and several of the midwives were positive too. I started on the recommended dose and after two further blood tests discovered that it wasn’t actually doing anything… that is, my iron level was exactly the same as it had been previously. I upped the dosage (at the recommendation of the midwife) and had another test two weeks ago.

Somehow, despite the higher dosage (and my diet, which mostly seems to consist of cabbage, broccoli and steak at the minute) my iron has actually dropped. As I’m now 39 weeks (so 1 week until my due date) it’s too late for me to do any more ‘work’ on getting my iron up, which means I now have to go to the bigger hospital with the obstetricians on hand.

Although this means very little in the grand scheme of things, it’s such a shift mentally I really am struggling now with feeling positive. Absolutely flipping gutted.

Posted on: November 3, 2009 · Category: Misc

Personal Perspective

This is an odd entry in that Karl regularly chimes in (quoted). However, given that what I’m about to discuss affected us both, I’m sure you can understand.

If you’d asked me this time last year my opinions on ‘mommy bloggers’ and ‘mommy blogging’ I’m sure I’d have given you a cynical retort about the standards of these bloggers and where they could, quite frankly, stick their views. I’d have been firmly with the childless 20-somethings, stuck in the mindset of “I know best”, trying to impart my wisdom on things that seem obvious to anyone with half an education. Funny how 12 months changes things, though.

On the 13th of October last year I woke up, stumbled into the bathroom and chucked my guts up. I went back to bed, assuming food poisoning, but within a few hours had a very faintly positive pregnancy test in my hand and my mum on the way with something a little more accurate. Karl came home for a change of clothes on the way to a prior work engagement, I told him, he swore, I cried. It wasn’t the best evening of my life… waiting for the one person I desperately needed to hug me more than any other to decide whether or not he could cope with what I’d just told him.

(Karl: I did indeed swear, but it was more down to the stress of racing home from work to eat, shave and shower, then dress smart and race right back in under 30 minutes due to an open evening. I was a tad shocked, very unprepared, and quite unsure of how I’d make a good father figure!)

I don’t think either of us were prepared for that day, but it was honestly a piece of cake compared to what followed. The couple of weeks after that I was in and out of the doctors being plied with various pills and vitamins to try and keep the morning sickness (later realised as hyperemesis gravidarum) at bay. I missed most days off work, and by Friday 31st of October I was quite badly dehydrated, hadn’t kept food down in around 48 hours, was throwing up blood, and had lost nearly 20kg in weight. I was taken into hospital, hooked up to a drip and had blood taken by the bucketload.

I was kept in overnight and promised a scan on the Saturday. By the time I was finally called for the scan, it had honestly felt like I’d been hanging around for months. My mouth was dry, I’d not eaten in over 3 days and although the drip was supposedly sorting my fluids out I couldn’t recall a time when I felt shittier. The scan revealed that I was actually pregnant with twins. Twins. That’s two potential babies sucking every last ounce of strength out of me. However, neither had a heartbeat. They’d stopped growing at about 8 weeks. I cried a little, although they were tears of relief. Relief only for myself, because I didn’t want to have to go through 9 months of what the previous 2-3 weeks had thrown at me. Selfish relief.

(Karl: We both did, to be fair. It’s still a bit of a point I ponder in my more introspective moments – Never saw them, but they did exist for a while. Odd feeling, and one I do tend to mark in my own way.)

They gave me options for how to proceed. I could wait for nature to take it’s course, take pills to help things along, or have a D&C. I opted for the D&C. I just wanted everything sorted, I wanted to be back to normal… seeing Karl without that worried look in his eyes (Karl: worried I was. You didn’t see the state of Jem. Not a good time.), sitting on the Internet playing with my code, back at work with my colleagues, playing with my animals. Sunday came, 4 days without food, nil by mouth for the surgery. I remember chatting with the theatre nurse about twins running in the family. I remember the anaesthetist talking me through what was going to happen as I drifted to sleep, and then it was all over.

(Karl: During this time I was sat with my mother in the hospital canteen, talking about life and being very open about everything, including everything she went through with me in hospital all those times. It was quite a revealing time. Thank god for parents – I really felt at times like I was coming apart, so tired I couldn’t recall half the driving I was doing, and so on. I don’t think I’d have coped otherwise, especially not with getting the house ready for Jem’s return.)

I wasn’t actually going to write about this. Up until now, only a few very close friends and family had been made aware of what went on, the rest told of tummy bugs and viruses. Yet, as I get closer to my due date — 8 weeks to go — I can’t help but feel that not only did my experience have a massive impact on how I dealt with this pregnancy (which, as you may know, has not been without its own set of issues) but also made me realise that no amount of education, no amount of smart-alec Internet debates, no amount of thinking you know best can prepare you for what life is going to throw at you. Each step you take shapes your next, not what you think you know.

Posted on: September 15, 2009 · Category: Parenting

Thank You Internet Peoples

Thank you all for the well wishes, congratulations, advice and support on my last entry, and via e-mail/twitter. I can see that my bastard child has some expectations to live up to. ;) For the record, I’m sure that — despite the heathen, unmarried environment into which we’re bringing this child (with lesbian grandparents no less) and the clear lack of sex education in Britain which led to this terrible oversight — Karl and I will be able to manage just fine. Anyway…

I hate to disappoint so early, but I don’t have any intentions of becoming a ‘mommy blogger’. My thoughts on personal/familial privacy aren’t going to change because Karl super-spermed me. Obviously, like every other part of my life, it’s inevitable that I will mention my ongoing pregnancy and (hopefully) the birth/following years of horror/sleepless nights/all that other terrifying crap we’re in for, but I’m not going to suddenly dedicate my blog to the sprog. (Yep, that means plenty more cat posts.)

On that note: in totally unrelated news, Wednesday 29th was the 7th anniversary of my website. Go me!

Posted on: May 1, 2009 · Category: Parenting

I Told a Few White Lies

I have a small confession to make… I’ve been telling you all a few little porkies. I keep telling you all I’m sick — well, there’s no untruth in that — but I’ve fabricated as to why. There is no mystery sickness, there are no allergies, I’m not coming down with swine flu (hah). In fact, the sickness is all very “normal” for a woman in my condition.

I am in fact suffering from a bad case of morning sickness. And by morning sickness, I mean every minute of the day sickness. From the moment I wake up and bring up saliva and bile, to the point of the evening where I can’t move for fear of setting off crazy motion-induced projectile vomiting. Eating actually offers me some small relief, but only if I eat small amounts and often. The food has to be bland, and food that is safe one day may actually be sickness-inducing the next. Garlic is a total no-no, and I literally fear any food that may be slightly acidic coming back up, because it seriously burns. However, I have found that sweet tea generally tastes the same either way.

I am 12 weeks pregnant today. There have been some difficulties (some bleeding which required fortnightly scans; a possibly problematic cyst) and an endless stream of pretty standard symptoms (aches, tiredness, headaches, terrible dreams, wind, heartburn) but otherwise everything is positive. The constant waiting for appointments, improvements in the bleed, for the sickness to go away is incredibly tedious, but if all goes well, it should be worth it in the end:

ultrasound scan pic

(Excuse the dodgy quality, I had to take the picture of the scan photo using the webcam on the Acer as we don’t have a scanner. Don’t get your hopes up too much either, I have absolutely no intention of publishing any other pictures.)

So there you have it. Finally, all those years of doing the “I’m Pregnant!” April fools and it’s actually happening for real … even if it does look like a little alien :)

Posted on: April 28, 2009 · Category: Parenting