Month of Poetry

One of my New Year's resolutions was to write poetry. When someone tweeted that they were joining a month of poetry challenge I thought it would probably be a good start. I've signed on to write a poem every day in January (I missed the first two days. I have terrible commitment issues so it may all come to nothing, but I have written one poem so far which is as many as I wrote all last year).

Anyway, because blogging more regularly is another one of my new year's resolutions, I thought I'd post my poems here. Fred made banana choc-chip muffins this morning, we bought her a cupcake maker for Christmas (like a big sandwich press). In some ways it's kinda silly (it's not that different from making cupcakes in the oven but Fred has a wonderful sense of ownership and productivity when she uses it, and it does actually make especially nice muffins).

My Seven Year Old Daughter is Making Muffins

1. Ingredients

Flour scatters the dust of itself

Milk runneth over

C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ (sucrose molecules arranged by science

In orderly cubes) tumble across the bench

Chocolate drops are measured out covetously

(You are jealous of the riches of your own creation)

Butter, a banana grown old and almost beyond usefulness

And lastly a single brown egg laid by your own hen

(Each warm discovery still a surprise

Like the same astonishing secret told over and over)

2. Making

There is more substance here than in the making of you

You began out of nothing

Merely there was two specks of indifferent matter

Meeting in darkness

3. Eating

You bring me confections

Made of stuff and air

Made of gravity and weightlessness

Of heat and alchemy

Of the labour of the body

Of the transcendence of spirit over matter.

2010 wrap up

I had a baby.

And did some other stuff.

An Eglantine Christmas

This is one of those muzzy catch up posts with no particular point, so if you're hoping to find the meaning of Christmas I suggest you look here or here (depending on where your spiritual beliefs lie).

December began with Martin working, me at home with Avery and no car or public transport and the problem of getting Una to and from kinder (which is a ten minute drive on open roads at 80km/h and so not at all walkable) in the lead up to her kinder play (in which she had a Very Important Role) and a fugitive on the loose in our town. Somehow I got through it with minimal upset, despite sleep deprivation and crappy weather and a few days of acute cabin fever. Most of my Christmas shopping has been done online, trawling through websites until my tired eyes are dry and squinty. Luckily we have lovely neighbours, which means I've been able to regularly interact with people who are not me. And good friends who have taken the girls out or fed them dinner. And good family, including my mother in law who has regularly driven up from Blackburn to do the school and kinder run.

Despite everything (or because of) we have attempted to keep up the Advent activity house tradition. Popular activities have included: making Christmas pinatas, making and decorating gingerbread houses, playing parlour games (he said, she said which was HILARIOUS and featured a lot of toilet humour), and getting the girls to write their own activity together (they agreed on the zoo with no fuss).

Una was brilliant in her kinder play, in which she played the lead (if not the title) role of the bossy emu in Wombat Divine, and then she graduated, with a hat and everything, which would have been extremely tacky if I'd been able to see it through the TEARS. Fred was great in her school play too - though her role was part of the chorus she proved that there are no small roles, she was really switched on and clearly knew exactly what she was doing. She sang in a clear, sweet voice, which carried over the little community hall (oh yes, all right, I am a Proud Parent). The funny thing was the topic of the play was wobbly teeth, and a few days before the performance she got her very first wobble (and a day after she lost that tooth, which she tells me led to an impromptu encore performance of the play in class - aww).

Avery also got his first cold last week and on Saturday night developed a nasty wheeze and cough and seemed to be breathing a little fast. We were sure he was probably fine, but rang the maternal health line, and then Martin's mum (who used to be a nurse) and in the end took him to Box Hill Emergency, dropping the girls off at their Nana's first. They seemed to think it was Something. We were lucky enough to be put in a private Infectious Diseases room (woohoo!), sealed with a glass door, with our own ensuite, and a kitchen round the corner with sandwiches and hot milo. Avery's breathing improved pretty much the moment we arrived at Emergency so we relaxed and enjoyed our Saturday night date. It turned out he had bronchiolitis, but all his stats were good so we were sent home, with strict instructions to ring an ambulance if he was having trouble breathing. But it was obvious he was on the mend, and he has continued to improve. He even slept for five uninterrupted hours last night.

And now it is holidays and we are all at home. We are waiting on our tax returns so we can get a car loan and then a car. We are Christmas cooking and scowling at the rain and smiling at the sunshine. We are getting on each other's nerves and singing Christmas carols in the car and busying ourselves and playing games together and reading books and eating dinners and going for walks and to the library and cooing at the baby. Martin and I are quietly buying big screen televisions. Avery is prodigiously growing and even Una and Fred look bigger. We are grocery shopping and some of us are eating too many lollies and some of us aren't because some of us have to book in a diabetes test for next week. We have encountered the odd Santa (both in the occasional sense and in the weirdy sense) and continued to add decorations to the Christmas tree and opened many cards and forgot to send any and I bought shoes on the Internet.

AND THAT BE THE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS (oh look, there it was, all this time).

Normal Services Returning Soon

This be the tale

On Sunday the 14th we had a day of busyness and reflection. Martin went and picked up the St Andrews Cradle, a beautiful tradition for the babies of the area, which deserves a blog post of its own. He finished setting up our room for the baby and washed our bed sheets. I wrote that last blog post about being ready. We pottered around home mostly, did a quick drive to Diamond Creek to top up on a few things (including some new needles and paper strips for my blood monitor, which are now sitting unopened in the kitchen).I'd felt different for a few days - a little weepier for one, and irritable with the kids, and for the first time since I'd altered my diet for the diabetes I found myself inclined to having short naps. If I'd been a cat I would have found a cardboard box in a cupboard to hide in. The baby's head was lower (he "engaged" at about 38.5 weeks) and I was feeling calm about the approaching birth. I was suspecting I would not get to my due date (on which I had a doctor's appointment to talk about the possibility of an induction, about which I had very mixed feelings).

I made a chicken curry for dinner to use up the remainder of a roast, very mildly spiced, with a quick homemade apple and sultana chutney and corn on the cob and rice for Martin and the girls. I went for a walk. Not a long one. Some nights I'd been walking 5km or more, but over the past few days I'd found I didn't have as much energy for long sustained walks. I took some photos in the bush, almost as if I knew that these long last days of pregnancy were coming to an end and I wanted to record this experience – the evening walks will be some of my most cherished memories of what will be my last pregnancy. I came home. Martin was bathing the children, Fred was hiding in the lounge room, shushing me not to give her position away. I slipped off to bed. Just before Una went to bed she came in, all pink and clean, and gave me a long cuddle on the bed, pressing her head against the baby, and we talked about what it would be like when he was born.

After she went to her own bed, I drifted off to sleep. I woke up to a text from Martin. "Coming home soon?" I texted back: "Look harder." He came down to the bedroom to find me, stroked my forehead, and then sat down at his computer in the little study off our room. A few minutes later, I felt a prolonged liquid trickle.

"I think my waters are breaking," I said to Martin who immediately leapt up. I got up too (not so much with the leaping) and went the toilet to investigate. There wasn't the floods that came when I went into labour with Fred, but something had spilled. We called the hospital (I had tested positive for Strep B, one of those annoying but unserious complications, which means you have to have antibiotics every four hours in labour and you need to get two lots in if you don't want them faffing about with your baby afterwards). They said to come in and check it out. Martin rang his mum and Lisa, our lovely next door neighbour, came over to watch the kids until their Nana arrived. The kids were asleep.

We got to the hospital and the midwives and registrar played fun games with speculums until they decided that yes, it was my waters (probably just a little leak of my hindwaters). Then we had the Fun Conversation with the birthing suite docs about how because I was strep B I should be induced, but luckily I'd had this conversation before, since the same thing happened with Fred. I knew I had 18 hours in the birth centre to progress into labour on my own, and this is what I chose to do. They were closing down the birth centre, as we were the only ones in it and the birthing suites were understaffed. But we got to stay anyway, and eerily enough had the whole birth centre to ourselves. After some more jiggery-pokery with needles (they put a cannula in my hand for the antibiotics) and a bit of baby monitoring, we had our evening milo and went to bed, Lauren the midwife leaving us her extension in case something happened. I couldn't resist a quick tweet before I went to bed.

I slept on and off, contractions getting more painful, coming and going, about 6 minutes apart. I got up for a while in the night and sat in the eerily deserted lounge of the birth centre.

I woke Martin up at about 6, ready to get the show on the road. The contractions kept coming, sometimes intense, sometimes a little milder, not exactly clockwork, but regular enough for me to know I was in labour. Now here's the weird bit. No matter how much I talked about contractions, frequency, intensity none of the midwives really thought I was in labour. Right up till about 11 o'clock they were talking about sending me down the hall to the birth suite to be induced. I put this down to hypnobirthing - I'd done a course because labour with Una had been so long and the second stage so protracted and a little brutal, I was actually shitscared quite anxious about the birth (for the first time). The course had been good, we learned some different positions for labour, practiced calm breathing, ran through some visualisations. And many of the things we learned and talked about came back to me during labour. The relaxation tape had a woman with a funny old British accent and I've lost count of the number of times Martin and I made fun of her saying "limp and loose and heavy". And yet that mantra ran through my head in the early parts of labour and helped me to relax through each contraction. Later on I counted down from eight with each long breath, knowing that the "surge" (nice way of saying pain) would peak at about 6 or 5 and that after that it would subside with each breath. If I got to one and the contraction was still going, I would just repeat one over and over in my head (and the word one is quite a nice word to meditate on). The midwives kept hassling me to get up and get moving to "get things started" but I kept ending up on the bed, breathing through the contractions.

At about eleven, a little fed up I asked the midwife to give me an internal. I said I thought I might even be near transition, since I was ready (if she told me I hadn't made any/much progress) to nick off down the hall to the birth suite and get myself an epidural. Though quietly I knew I was in labour. She said "I don't think you're in transition, but I can always give you a stretch and sweep." (which is something they do to induce you before you start really dilating). And I said I could feel the pressure in my bum and she said "wouldn't it be funny if..." and it was funny because as she examined me she said "Oh! You're about 5cm dilated, no 6, oh...maybe even a bit more..." Which meant no more talk about inductions. "I can feel your forewaters bulging," she told me. "Do you want me to break them?" I thought about it. I had a suspicion that once my waters broke it would be all over red rover, and I decided to give the baby and my body more time. I tried the gas, it did absolutely nothing, but holding onto Martin was perfect, so with every contraction I leaned into his chest with my arms around his neck and took my strength from him, breathing 8, 7, 6, 5... Amazingly at this stage I actually nodded off between contractions, having strange flashes of dreams: red and white checked tablecloths hanging on a stone wall.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, about an hour or so later, feeling the baby was ready, and feeling the urge to push, I got Martin to get her and she got all the stuff ready to break my waters. It seemed to take ages for her to gather it all together. They lowered the bedhead, she poked inside me with her poking stick and broke my waters and a tidal wave came out. Seriously. She was almost washed away. I've had the line from Where the Wild Things Are in my head ever since: "And an ocean tumbled by..."

And I flipped over on my stomach and began to breathe the baby out. And (at this point another midwife had come in, the same midwife who had helped Una be born) they said "maybe just a little push to get him round the bend" (female anatomy is a funny thing) and so I pushed and out he came. "Stop pushing!" they cried. "Breathe! Breathe!" He stuck his head out, opened his mouth and shouted while the midwife fiddled around with the shoulders and then more fluid and then he was there, out in the world and it was over. And despite all the oogidy boogidy predictions through the whole pregnancy:

big baby...

fourth degree tear...

blood transfusion...

episiotomy...

he was a teeny 7 pounds 11 ounces or 3.61kg, I didn't bleed, didn't tear and everything was perfect.

Today is Monday. He is one week old. We are home alone, Martin has gone to work, Fred is at school, Una is at creche. Avery is sleeping. This is my life now. This is the world I live in. Lucky me. I even love the nightfeeds, creeping out to the loungeroom with Avery, listening to Agatha Christie radio plays as Avery feeds and watches the dark with careful eyes.

As for me, I feel clear-headed and well, though I am still recovering and taking it easy. I haven't come home and binged on all the forbidden fruits of a gestational diabetes pregnancy - instead I've been enjoying the luxury of eating a WHOLE wholegrain roll for lunch with avocado, tuna and green leaf mix. I am so glad not to be testing my blood sugar anymore and feeling that little rhythmic anxiety between my blood drawing up into the strip and the beep-beep and flash of the tell-tale numbers. I'm enjoying not having to spend quite so much time thinking about what I can and can't eat. I am already back to the weight I was when I got pregnant with Avery. At six weeks (which happens to be my birthday) I have to do another glucose challenge test (ack ack horrible drink) to see if I am diabetes free. Whatever the outcome, I think the way I eat now is a lesson I've learned for life, and I hope to keep up with it, albeit to a more moderate degree.

Avery Miles Russon-Jorgensen

Born November 15th just before 2pm, 7lb11oz (or 3.61kg), 52cm long.

Will post full story later, promise. And more pictures.

Little Decisions

We've decided on a name (I think).

We've decided on a birth plan.

I've decided on which non-GD friendly treat to pack in my labour bag (Green & Blacks 70%, so not entirely out there - I think I will need some deprogramming before I can attempt a chocolate filled croissant).

We've decided to use disposables instead of cloth, at least over summer. Fred and Una were both exclusively cloth in their first year and mostly in cloth after that, so this isn't a light decision, but we have a tank that's built for 2 and we already struggle keeping up with the laundry for 4.

I've decided on a position to give birth, should the stars align and the baby want to come out that way.

We've decided on a car loan, after my Nissan died a sad but probably timely death, on the upward rise of a hill, in school traffic between two blind corners and I had to be rescued first by a kindly V drinking very thin man in blue overalls who rolled my car backwards down the hill and parked it for me, and then by Karen who came and picked me up from the side of the road and then picked up Una from kinder and Fred from school. We have decided to wait till after the birth to buy another car. I can't drive Martin's car because it's a manual and until March I am only licensed to drive autos. Yesterday's rain and two fighting kids conspired to make me feel rather low, but today though overcast the rain has stayed away and I've already managed one walk. The kids are still driving me nuts - they're tired, and strung out, waiting for the baby, and thrown by the sudden loss of the car and the subsequent interruption to routine.

I've also decided I'm ready (a week ago I wasn't ready for a baby at all), but I am happy to wait too. There's no reason to think I'll go early (Una was 2 weeks late). I have an appointment on Friday the 19th (my due date) to talk about inductions, but the last word on that is that because my blood sugar readings have been so good and there are no complications, they are happy for me to continue (with monitoring). The only thing is that being monitored might be complex, considering I have no car, Martin will be working, and there is no public transport out here. But, like any overdue pregnancy, we'll take it one day at a time.