That Angry Chick

Last Friday, Australian Remembrance day, I got to thinking about the concept of immortality. I was thinking of this because of the nature of the day, and as we said goodbye to one of our most recently fallen soldiers, LCPL Luke Gavin.

What does it really mean to live forever? Do we look too much into the physicality of living? 

To be immortalised is really quite simple: it is to ensure you are remembered.

To live your life in such a way that you love and are loved in return, for so long as you are loved and remembered, you will live forever.

My great-grandmother will have been gone for 10 years in June, yet I still regularly think of her, tell stories of her, and tell stories that she told me. As do the other members of my family. One day, my children will be old enough to remember the stories of their great-great-gran, and they too will pass them on to their friends and children.

To be gone yet never forgotten, that is to be immortal. 

And so I say to all of those who have lost loved ones, you have lost their physical presence, their conversation, their touch. Such a huge loss is the physicality of a human being, that we often forget what we still have of them. Every time you tell a story of them, they are there, every time you remember them in a moment of quiet solitude, they are there, every time you reflect on the love you bear for them, they live on in your heart, your mind, and your soul.

Through you, they have become immortal.

So I finally took the time to see what the whole ‘boycott Nestlè’ nonsense is about. It was pissing me off not knowing about it, and people seeming to assume that I must.

For those who like me until today, have no idea what I’m talking about, basically a bunch of people and NGO’s boycott Nestlè because in the 70’s they advertised ad provided infant formula in lesser developed countries (LDC) like many of those on the African continent, as well as in Southeast-Asia. The problem being that they didn’t educate illiterate or poorly resourced mothers enough about how to use it properly, so they were making it with dirty water and infants were dying.

Not that it isn’t tragic that babies died, but I do think we need to consider the following:

1) In many of these countries, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, and other equally as serious and life threatening diseases are unfortunately common. Diseases that can easily be passed through breast milk, if not already passed to the baby in utero. This means that tragically, the child’s chances of survival are diminished no matter the method of feeding, especially when the mother may not be aware that she is infected.

2) Breast milk and its contents are effected by what the mother eats and drinks (eg. if a mother eats dairy and feeds a child who is allergic to cows milk protein, the child will have a reaction). Therefore, if the mother is drinking dirty water and is infected with Cholera, it is possible that any breast milk given to the child is also infected, passing the bacterial disease to the child, once again meaning that the method of feeding is irrelevant. While the mother may survive a bout of cholera, the chances of an infant surviving are sadly low.

3) The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The chances that the Nestlè corporation intended to harm infants by marketing and providing infant formula as a breast milk substitute to these LDC’s, are slim, let alone the notion being completely fucking absurd. On what planet would it be in any way logical to intentionally damage one’s brand by doing something so socially abominable? Nobody is that stupid, not even Qantas. Many people make huge mistakes that have negative consequences, when their initial intent was simply to help, and I believe that this is likely the case.

4) Natural selection is a cruel and heartless bitch. Did it ever occur to anyone that nature is trying to tell us something? That these lands are not exactly prime for inhabitance? Before man became the main cause for the extinction of most species, disease, famine, predation, and harsh environments were the main culprits. Like Dr.Malcolm in Jurassic Park points out, ‘nature will always find a way.’

My point is that sometimes shit just happens, and it sucks, but its not necessarily anybody’s fault, nor does it happen because there were malicious intentions at play. Not only that but Nestlè is a multibillion dollar corporation, what do these people honestly expect to achieve by not buying a Kit Kat once in a blue moon? 

Sometimes you just can’t win.

Like I said here the time would come when once again my blood would boil over the whole breast vs. formula feeding issue.

That time came on Tuesday morning at approximately 10.34am. (I know because I could see the clock in the background, but that’s besides the point.)

To bring you up to speed, the formula we feed the girls does a bulk discount for multiple parents. To take advantage of it, you need a note from your doctor saying you are formula feeding your children. Our doctor is away until next Friday, and I’m fucking sick of being gouged $20 a tin when I could be getting it for $10, so I email them and ask if I can get the note from anyone else. Turns out I can get it from a registered nurse, child health nurse, or midwife. I got that email response Tuesday morning and thought ‘Perfect, the CHN will be here in half an hour, I’ll be able to get one today!’

I was wrong.

Why was I wrong? According to the nurse ‘Queensland Health is a baby friendly organisation.’

Apparently, by choosing to not breast feed, I am classed as not being baby friendly.

I was told that she couldn’t write me such a letter without clearing it with her superiors because Queensland Health will not condone formula feeding unless there is extenuating circumstances, and simply having multiples doesn’t constitute that.

I have never felt so fucking insulted in my entire life - and in my own home, in front of my parents who were visiting for the week. I am very rarely lost for words but in that moment I was so speechless I couldn’t even make a sigh.

I don’t breast feed because I had hardly any milk anyway, and I think its more important that my children have a mother that’s sane, rather than a mother that’s going round the bend trying to feed them, spending all her time with either a baby on the breast or a pump on the breast. I know my limits and that would’ve been a swift path to post natal depression for me.

According to this nurse, that means Queensland Health think I don’t deserve the same level of support as my breast feeding friends do.

I thought that by feeding a baby, changing it, bathing it, loving it and generally caring for it would constitute being baby friendly. 

Apparently not. Apparently I’m not baby friendly. Apparently I’m a terrible mother.

Never mind the fact the girls are thriving and have doubled their birth weight. Never mind that little C is about 2 degrees away from rolling onto her tummy all by herself at the tender age of 7 weeks instead of 7 months. Never mind that I may possibly have the two most content babies in the universe.

None of that matters, because I don’t breast feed.

Excuse me while I go say my hail Mary’s for being such a fucking terrible mother.

jayrard:

This.

That’s right, one day you will inevitably die.

So what better way to be reminded of this every five minutes of every day, than by being shown fucking thousands of life and funeral insurance ads. I would seriously pay a tax to get them off my TV. Don’t even get me started on how incredibly fake and scripted they are!

As a stuck at home mum, I watch a lot of day time TV. In one ad block where there were seven ads, five of them were for some kind of insurance that relates to your untimely, inevitable, fucking-over-your-loved-ones-so-much-you’ll-become-nothing-but-a-pain-in-the-ass-and-they’ll-resent-you-forever demise. 5/7! Thats fucking ridiculous!

Not only is it overkill, but its pretty fucking inconsiderate and down right rude in a way.

What if you’re a terminally ill patient stuck in hospital, and all you have to do is watch tv, and then every 5 minutes you’re reminded of the fact that you’re dying? Nice, just what you need, that’s going to reinforce the power of positive thinking that is.

What if you’re that patient’s family or friends, constantly being reminded that you’re about to lose a loved one? And then being reminded of how much its going to cost you, what the fuck are you going to do with their stuff, all the cold hard bitch lawyers you’ll have to deal with, and that you have to organise what’s really just a morbid party, all before you even get to shed a real tear over it all!

Then there’s the old people who just plain don’t have much time left anyway constantly being reminded that the sand is almost all in the bottom half of the hourglass, so they better fork out their last dying dollars so they don’t become a horrible, inconvenient, life ruining ‘burden’ on their family. (On a side note, that little marketing point is really quite moot considering how many people already consider most of their family members a horrible, inconvenient, life ruining burden.)

If you want to avoid it then you better love the ABC.

You know what? I don’t even think its worth it either. Funeral insurance is to cover the cost of a funeral but…

Its called a credit card. I’m sure someone in the family will have one. We put both my grandparents’ funerals on my mother’s visa. Not only that, but funeral home people kind of deal with tough situations all the time, I mean you only go there because someone kicked the bucket and that’s pretty shitty. If you need more time, chances are they’re not going to tell you to have the money by Friday or they organise for you to have an ‘accident’ (which would coincidently be great for business so perhaps you should consider yourself lucky).

As for general life insurance…isn’t that kind of painting a target on your back? Is that not the motive in at least 20% of the murders on Law and Order? Why bring yourself the trouble. If you go before you’re of the magical retirement age, then your super will take care of it, if you go after that time, chances are you’ve got a fair chunk of money anyway or you have grown children with a fucking credit card.

And then, at the end of the day, why do you even fucking care? You’re kicking back, sipping a margarita and nibbling on tappas behind the pearly gates with Elvis and James Dean, and do you know what that means?

For once, its finally not your fucking problem.

Fucking hell I’m so glad I don’t live with her.

She came to stay after the girls were born to help out around the house and be my chauffeur for a bit, because thats the kind of saintly angel she is, but holy shitballs is she a pain to live with! No wonder my sister-in-law never came home for days at a time when she was living there! 

Now don’t get me wrong, she really is a lovely, beautiful person, but nobody’s perfect - myself included. For instance, I don’t go to another persons house, family or not, and leave my used teabag in the sink every single morning. Especially when the bin is right there under the sink. I also don’t walk around someone else’s house in my underwear and a t-shirt even at my age, so I certainly won’t be doing it at hers!

I don’t insist on buying a fucking broom to sweep with when there’s a perfectly good, made for tiles, bagless, very fucking expensive vacuum cleaner to use instead. The broom doesn’t get up the dog hair, it just pushes it from A to B and then as soon as there’s a slight breeze its all over the place again, you need to vacuum it, woman! I live here, I think I know just a little bit more about how to clean this house than you!

I don’t just leave the recyclables to pile up for days on the kitchen bench when there is a perfectly good bin designated especially for them just on the other side of said bench. 

I don’t shut out other people’s dogs who are allowed in the house, for hours and hours on end for no good reason.

I don’t complain about what a crappy cook I am, and then continuously badger someone I know to be an extremely good cook about whether or not they want me to take over in the kitchen. No. I don’t. You put too much salt in everything, I’m not Dutch, I don’t like a side of food with my salt. In fact, I don’t like salt period.

The thing about it is that I feel so bad for getting shitty at her for these things because she is one of those super nice people who just don’t deserve anyone being shitty at them.

The even worse thing than that? That makes me even more shitty at her!

Talk about a fucking vicious cycle.

So, we had a random blackout this afternoon for no fucking reason according to the local news. During this time, when all appliances were silent and televisions were off, we got a pretty good glimpse into the kind of people we have for neighbours.

I realised that there’s a common theme when it comes to neighbours. The street/block seems to always be made up of a staple composition of households. These include:

The people with an endless number of children:

Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve had those neighbours who seem to just either not know how to use a condom, or are devout Catholics because they have this endless stream of kids hanging around their place. Of course, they could just really love kids, but who am I kidding, after 5 or 6 of the little demons, nobody loves kids anymore.

This also means there is an endless amount of screaming, balls flying over the fence, and a dicey game of ‘dodge the kid’ every afternoon when you get home from work, because the little fuckers are playing all over the street.

These people may be the good kind of overly efficient breeders, who are good parents of well behaved children, and who are considerate of their neighbours. Unfortunately, the ones we live next door to now are not those kind. Their little brats spend hours every afternoon running up and down our fence stirring up our dog, and just about giving her a fucking heart attack. I also assume the parents know nothing about dogs, because we have a rottweiler, and even though she’s the biggest failure of a rottweiler ever, I’m still pretty tempted to invite the little douchebags over to play with her, and tie meat to their butts, just to see what happens. We’ve asked them politely to reign in their hell spawn many times, but sadly, it would seem that the grandparents were also shitty parents, because courtesy doesn’t seem to be in their vocabulary.

The chatty Kathy/nosey parker

You know the one, the neighbour who always is on for a yarn and seems to just know everything about everyone. You know once you get sucked into their - usually HER - tractor beam of verbal diarrhoea, that you’re not going anywhere for at least half an hour, and whatever plans you had for the afternoon can be considered fucked with. 

The thing about this neighbour is they are usually a genuinely lovely person, which makes it kind of hard to be truly pissed at them, or you feel guilty if you do think a bad thing about them. That is unless of course they cause you to burn your dinner even though you can both smell its on fucking fire. Then she’s a bitch.

The ones you consider calling community services on

Also known as ‘those people who were having another domestic last night.’ These neighbours are fans of yelling abuse at each other, their children, their pets, and in one weird case I swear I heard one yelling at their lawn mower. Sometimes, its harmless, just lost their temper bullshit, but sometimes you get the extreme end where you are seriously thinking whether or not you should call the cops, child services, or PETA.

We have these neighbours at the moment, and their dog is constantly yelping in panic, they’re constantly swearing at their kids who swear back, and the things they say to each other would make even Bobby and Whitney blush.

I’m seriously about a bee’s dick away from calling the animal rights people about the dog. They scare me.

The morally questionable ones

Though you don’t really have any solid reason to think it, you’re probably convinced they’re dodgy motherfuckers. They keep odd hours, have ridiculous numbers of guests that also seem to keep odd hours, they get really strange packages or deliveries, they seem to have way too much money to be living in your neighbourhood, and they may or may not be a different ethnicity to you.

Of course, sometimes they really are criminals. My parents once lived next to who we think may have been members of the local mob. I suppose it explains the amount of razor wire we saw disappear into their garage, not to mention the strange 3am dealings that took place in and out of their mailbox. Last time I checked, the postman didn’t come at that hour. One night the cops came around asking questions about them and the next week the house was on the market and they sold it for less than what they paid for it, in spite of what would have been about $70K worth of renovations they did on it. Nothing suss.

The dickheads with a really annoying habit or hobby

This is the fuckstick who doesn’t realise their stereo has a volume knob, or that not everybody loves hearing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture on the cello for 4 hours every day, or that that buzzing noise their remote control car makes is fucking annoying, not to mention the fact that they insist on driving the fucking thing on the road is just plain dangerous.

The thing I do love about this person is you very rarely feel bad for hating them. Especially the stereo challenged douchebag. I never get sick of calling the cops on their ass as soon as it hits 11pm and I can still hear Cradle of Filth blaring at 500 decibels.

Ever.

So, the plumbers came to our house on Wednesday to check if our shower was leaking or not. Turns out it wasn’t, which is great, but when my husband went to have a shower that night a new problem had manifested. A problem that has become an infuriating part of daily life for many Australians…

The fucking water restrictor.

An infernal piece of red plastic, surely forged in the depths of hell, designed to restrict the flow of water through a tap, shower head, and sometimes toilet. Good idea in theory when your country is in a drought, but thats only if you don’t take into account that you end up using the same amount of water, if not more, because it takes you three fucking times longer to do anything when one is in place!

At our last house I tried to wash my hair - which is long and very thick - under a shower head that had a water restrictor fitted. After 30min when my hair had only just gotten sufficiently wet for me to even contemplate shampoo, I gave up. Too hard basket.

So, once again we set about removing the bastard.

Last time we just flicked it out with a knife. This time, it took an hour and we ended up having to break it out with a screwdriver and hammer, using a chisel type approach. Talk about ridiculous.

The thing I don’t understand is EVERYBODY hates them, including the plumbers, so why do they fucking install them?! I have not met anyone who hasn’t removed one of the fuckers, and hasn’t had a million bad things to say about them. If I ever did meet someone who didn’t hate them, I’d assume that person was bat shit insane, or jealous of my locks since they would clearly have to be bald. 

So to the dickwads who tell plumbers to install these things, and the even bigger dickwads who manufacture them, hear this - the people of Australia want and deserve a decent shower, so take your red plastic medals of douchebaggery and shove them up your asses you batshit crazy, bald wankers.

Grrr.

The thing about being pregnant is that eventually that baby, or in my case babies, will  need to be born. Which is exactly what happened almost 3 weeks ago on August 22nd.

With that, here is the story of how our two precious little girls entered the world.

My mother had called a couple of times during the day Sunday, and C answered since I was sleeping, and told her I was feeling nauseous. Later she called back after speaking to her midwife friend. She told me that Robyn had said that feeling nauseous at this stage could be a bad sign and I should call the hospital just to be sure. 

I had a shower and called the hospital. They asked me to come in just to check me out and make sure there wasn’t anything wrong. We got to the hospital around 6pm, and were taken through for tests. My feet and hands by this point were certainly swollen - something Dr. Sam had been monitoring. The midwives became immediately concerned about the fluid retention and hooked me up to an ECG before taking my blood pressure.

My blood pressure reading was 160/103. I’d just been see Dr. Sam Friday and there it was a healthy 120/80, just a little bit up from the 110/70 it had been in previous weeks. The midwife couldn’t believe her eyes and had four other nurses come in and check the reading. All of them got similar results. Straight away they called the on duty obstetrician - Dr. Lucy - who gave the order to admit me. Immediately they organised for bloods and took a urine sample, it was all happening so fast! My urine tested positive for significant amounts of protein, and by 1030pm was established that I had developed severe pre-eclampsia and it was beginning to effect my kidney and liver function.

Dr. Lucy told me that I should call C (who at this point had gone home since he had a 5.40am start) and let him know it was very likely that we would be having the babies tomorrow! I was also now not allowed to eat anything until further notice - this particularly sucked since I already hadn’t eaten since midday. She told me that Dr.Sam would be in at 8am the next morning and to be ready to make a decision.

I was awake all night, partially from the stress and partially because I’d been asleep all day! When C called to say he was going to go into work to see what they would say about him leaving to come and help make the biggest decision of our lives so far. I wish I could say I was surprised when he called me at 7am to tell me it was unlikely they would let him leave. I was livid. That’s when they took my blood pressure again - 165/96. Luckily they let him go 30min later. Dr. Sam told us straight up that today was the day, our girls were strong enough that they would be fine to come into the world, which was what needed to happen in order to make sure I was kept safe. 

He knew how badly I wanted a normal delivery, and since the girls had been heads down for the last several weeks, he was willing to let me try - if my cervix had at all softened. It was still hard as a rock. The words hit me like a tonne of bricks and then some. For my safety we could not wait the time an induction at this stage would take, they would need to book me in for an emergency c-section.

My everything went numb and I bawled my eyes out. I was angry, and sad, and terrified all at once. This was the one thing I didn’t want, the one thing I felt strongly about! Sam did his best to put my mind at ease and help me understand why it needed to be this way. I could see the pity in his eyes, but at the same time I could tell he knew this was something I could do. He booked us to go to theatre at 10am to give me some time to process the huge development.

I felt like a complete failure. My girls were fine, this was all happening because of me. My body wasn’t good enough to carry them through to the end. My body couldn’t to give them the entrance to the world they deserved. I was the one at risk. I was the one who had let them down. Nobody but me. A failure as a woman, and as a mother.

They started to prep me and I went to have a shower. I couldn’t stop crying. C was amazing, he listened when I told him how I was feeling, he didn’t tell me I was being stupid or say what I was feeling was absurd. He reassured me that none of this was my fault, nobody knows what causes pre-eclampsia, it just happens. He reminded me that by making the decision to do this, we were doing the best thing for our girls and our family, and in doing so we were in no way failing, rather quite the opposite. He washed my back and gave me a massage, all the while telling his blubbering, crazy haired, stretch marked, fat lady how beautiful she was, how proud of her he was, and how much he loved her. I’d never loved him more than in that very moment. This was what a marriage should be, and it was mine. For the first time that day I felt lucky, even if it was just for a second.

They got me into my gown and my bed and it was time. Due to a previous back injury resulting in compressed lumbar discs, the anesthesiologist had warned me that we may have some trouble with getting my spinal block in. Fantastic. I started to cry again. Once again I was a failure. I just wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

I tried to joke my way through my pain but ended up crying all the way to the theatre. The theatre staff could see how upset I was and all made the most amazing effort to ease my worries. When it came time for the spinal though, that took care of that situation! It took 4 attempts to find an area where access to the necessary space was possible. The first attempt was agonizing, she hit a nerve that made me feel like someone had poured acid all over my left leg. I screamed like a little girl! The subsequent attempts were painful, but had nothing on that. Finally we got into a space a bit higher up than the usual, and the comforting numbness started to set in - I became practically giddy!

Then it was down to business. C came into the theatre, they got me onto the table and cleaned me up. The screen went up and Dr. Sam set about his work to bring our princesses into the world. 

In spite of my giddiness, I was still deeply upset that this was happening. C could tell and was comforting me the whole time, reassuring me that we were doing the right thing for our family, and that everything would be okay.

Then we heard her. Our little S burst into the world at 11.16am. As soon as I heard that first cry all of my woes melted away. All the bad things I’d been feeling all morning were about as significant as a single grain of sand in the desert. None of it mattered, my first daughter had entered the world and she was alive, and breathing. They cut her cord and bought her over to me. She looked at me with those big blue eyes and smiled, and I kissed her precious little noggin. I’d never seen anything so beautiful, and to think, we made her.

Then came a second cry. Little C had arrived. She was alive, and breathing, and relief washed over us both. We had two healthy baby girls. They bought her up to me and once again I saw a pair of big blue eyes and a cheeky grin. I kissed her forehead through tears of pure joy. My beautiful girls were finally here.

They took them away to be measured and weighed and have their apgar’s done, and get cleaned up a little all under the watchful eye of Daddy. Dr. Sam popped his head over the screen and congratulated me on our beautiful healthy babies and let me know that they were stitching me up and that the procedure had gone off without a hitch.

C came back with a couple of the midwives and our girls and we took our very first family photo with our precious bundles. I couldn’t stop crying I was so happy. It was as if the stress of the morning never happened.

I recovered in the theatre since there was ‘no room at the inn’ in the recovery area. It was nice because it was private and quiet, and I could actually have a chat to the nurses who were cleaning up, and we were all able to ride the high together.

On my way back to my room from the theatre we stopped by the nursery and I got a quick cuddle of my Little C - S was getting an IV put in so I didn’t get a cuddle of her - then it was time to rest up back in the room, and settle into the feeling of ‘mum.’ 

Our girls were born at 11.16am and 11.17am respectively. S weighed in at a healthy 1930g (4.25lb) and Little C at 2050g (4.51lb), and both had apgar scores of 9 at 1min, and 10 at 5min. They continue to go from strength to strength, and as I write this they are in the special care nursery, but out of the humidicrib and in normal cots. They are feeding through tubes but have both developed a good sucking reflex. 

They have big hands with long skinny fingers like Mummy, and quite a lot of thick sandy blonde hair like Daddy. They have Daddy’s ears and nose, and are already very different little girls. Little C is a curious little monkey, and is always taking in her surroundings and letting us know what she thinks - just like her Mummy. She hates it when someone makes her sister upset, or takes her away, and is very protective. S is laid back and loves to nap, and is more than happy to have individual time away from her sister - just like Daddy. 

Our two little princesses are perfect in every way, and while the last 48 hours have been the most epic roller coaster we’ve ever been on, I wouldn’t change it for the world. The staff here have been amazing and are so supportive of all of our decisions. They are just as in awe of our strong little girls as we are. Dr. Sam checks on me every morning and always smiles when we give him our updates. It seems wherever our girls are happiness follows and spreads like wildfire.

We thought we knew love before, but it was just the beginning. In fact, I think I might go and bask in it for a while, before I blink and its time to go to kindy.

Written 23rd August 2011

Our girls are now nearly ready to come home. They’re feeding normally like full term babies, and have packed on the pounds in a big way! 

I also found out that my condition was a lot worse than they let on at the time. Several days after I wrote that story, the nurse who took my observations that morning told me that they had not expected me to last the night without fitting, and that I’d actually gone fully eclamptic. They had a surgical team on standby that night, as well as a transfer ambulance ready to take me to the intensive care unit at the bigger hospital if necessary. I apparently could have died.

The kicker is nobody knows why.

Pre-eclampsia, and eclampsia are conditions that medical science is no closer to knowing the cause of now than it was a century ago. The only cure is delivery. We know its more common in first pregnancies, multiple pregnancies, women of African descent, women with existing high blood pressure, and women over 30, but none of this tells us the actual cause, or how to prevent it. It can also manifest in a matter of hours or days like it did for me.

I’m just lucky I had people watching out for me so they caught it in time - there are many women who aren’t, and its those women who I now think of every day.