I’m writing a book on my phone

The subtitle of this post should be: “How parenting a high needs child is completely at odds with being a writer”. I made the excuse a while ago that I hadn’t been blogging because I was busy transcribing my granddad’s memoirs. And that was true, a while ago. I got to the end of the first 90-minute recording which equated to about 10,000 words, and discovered that the other three even longer recordings are barely intelligible. I scoped out some software to fix the sound quality (turns out we already had it on the computer). But before I could do anything, the Dude decided to mix things up a bit. No more going down for sleeps! Therefore no more uninterrupted showers and no more computer time. We soon got the stroller on his first birthday so I’m now taking him for walks every day and he usually sleeps then. I’m pretty sure this is some kind of premature transition to one sleep a day. And he’s close to walking and talking, plus his molars are due any time now. So I can forgive him for being out of sorts.

The problem is, I can’t sit at the computer to write for more than ten minutes. He hates it! And that’s fair enough, in basically ignoring him. But the fact remains that I no longer get any writing time. I’m writing this on my phone. It’s frustratingly slow as I’m a touch typist so can more or less type fast enough to keep up with my brain.

I know this may be a short period, and it’ll pass soon enough, but I’m finding it very frustrating. I must have a dozen posts half written in draft, and all these ideas punching me in the head every day but I just don’t get any opportunity to write.

How do others tackle this? I guess the majority of people have babies who actually fall asleep fairly predictably.  Babies that calm down and relax when given a bedtime routine and lots of milk. Babies that don’t smack you across the head and then laugh within two minutes of waking up.

So instead of wallowing in misery (not really, slight exaggeration there), I’m going to think positively about this. Perhaps I’ll be the first person to write a 50,000 book entirely on a hand-held mobile device!  Imagine what Dickens or Tolstoy would think about that!  They’d probably think it was nonsensical and ridiculous. Aside from being confused as to how one can write a book on something the size of your palm. Technology is pretty cool, let’s face it, and I can safely say my iphone (actually Samsung Galaxy SII now) has saved my sanity millions of times while I lie for hours trying to get the Dude to stay asleep.

But the fact remains, parenting has gotten in the way of my writing, my passion.  And it’s not just general parenting, it’s the kind of child I have, his personality, mixed with the way I’ve chosen to parent.  Oh God, should I really say it, should I really attach that term to myself? Shit, I think I already did. Yes, Attachment Parenting.  I’d never heard of it until after I had the Dude, and frankly I thought it was all a bit of a wank.  Not the principles of AP per se, those make sense, but more that people are yet again being sheep and just going with a certain theory or way of doing things.  Of course many so-called AP parents will tell you that they just do what comes naturally and have fallen into the AP category.  I’m one of those.  And I actually refute the assertion that I’m AP.  It’s a label. We know how I feel about those.

I had the Dude at home, as readers of this blog may be aware, and I had no interventions in pregnancy and birth.  Well actually that’s a lie, I had three ultrasounds (all of them completely unnecessary) but yeah, no real interventions.  I’ve still never been to hospital in my life, apart from when I was born.  I plan on keeping it that way!  I don’t vaccinate my son, never been done myself actually. He has only ever drunk breastmilk and water.  We know about nutrition and natural ways of helping the body thrive. We don’t take drugs like paracetamol and ibuprofen. We like homepathics and they work for us.  Dude enjoys the ergo regularly, and previously enjoyed the Hugabub and even a ring sling for a short time. We generally like to avoid regular mainstream doctors as our experience has been that they have little idea what they’re talking about and recommend toxic chemicals that just cover up symptoms and don’t help the body heal. Oh and we co-sleep.  Now I’m sure I’ve said before, co-sleeping was not really my plan.  I was totally against it when my midwife first mentioned it, but once the Dude was here it was the only way I ever managed any sleep.  He’s a crazy dude.  His cot has been side-carted to our bed for the last nine months but he’s pretty much never slept in it.  Occasionally he’ll squirm into it half asleep and pass out there, usually with half his body still on the bed. But generally speaking, he is right next to me; taking up half the bed to himself. He’s beautiful and I love having him right there but I would LOVE to have my own bed again.  I am very touch sensitive and find it hard to be comfortable with someone right up next to me.  I even push my husband away when I’m going to sleep sometimes.  I like my space.  Which was the whole reason I had an issue with co-sleeping in the first place.

Anyway, because of this attachment style parenting we practise, and because the Dude is so full on, I don’t get a lot of time to myself. Now let’s be clear here: if I was into letting the Dude cry it out and leaving him in bassinets to go slowly insane or fobbing him off to childcare centres, I’d be in a worse situation.  Yes, okay, we might have more money because I might actually earn some, but the Dude would be miserable, we’d be sleep deprived and he’d probably be sick a lot. I’m sure about my choices. And I’m not asking for sympathy for them or for my predicament. I just think it’s ironic that I slacked off for so many years, sat around watching Seinfeld repeats and eating Sarah Lee Honeycomb and Butterscotch icecream instead of writing my heart out when I had the chance.  Things will change. This will pass. Before I know it this little crazy blonde dude currently sitting on the floor next to me destroying daddy’s uni notes will be asking for lifts to concerts and sneaking vodka from our liquor cabinet like we wouldn’t notice half a bottle of it slowly but regularly disappearing. The old ‘evaporation’ explanation never worked.

Dynasty (aka why I have slacked off on blogging recently)

Today my grandad would have been 86. The fifth. Always the fifth in our family, so many of us born on the fifth of the month for some odd reason. Grandad died in 2003. On the fifth. In fact it was on my birthday. I turned 25. My boyfriend at the time and I we’re over at my mum’s place feeding her dogs when my dad called to tell me grandad had collapsed and this was probably it. He was crying. As soon as I got off the phone, I burst into tears. Weird, as death usually doesn’t make me cry. It was just so sudden, but that’s grandad, we all knew he’d just pop off one day when it was time. He was 77. Doesn’t sound very old but considering his own father died at about 60, it’s pretty good going.

About a week ago, my dad mentioned he’d drop by to bring me something. It was a memory stick. And on it, are four sound files, between 90 and 120 minutes each. My uncle had digitised them from tapes my grandad had recorded. Finally, I’ve got his story in my hands!

I knew grandad was writing his memoir and I remember seeing a huge ream of typed pages once, which he said was his book. He had an old typewriter, and he’d type with two fingers. There we’re always murmurs about the book, but none of us ever read it. Grandad’s book. After he died, I asked around the family to find out who had it. Denial from all parties. People in my family tell tall stories and are terrified of the truth. Harsh, I know, but it’s genetic, we can’t help it!

Finally I discovered my uncle had the book. But when I quizzed him about it, he said it was just a bunch of silly stories we’d all heard before, nothing really interesting, just a few pages of ramblings. I was disappointed. And angry! I knew that was bullshit. I knew because I’d seen the book and somehow I knew my grandad had something important to say. He never wasted time. He wouldn’t have sat around typing away on that old typewriter, and later an old PC he got from the Salvos,* if there was nothing to be achieved.

But what could I do? I’m one of at least a dozen grandchildren, I love hundreds of kilometres away from my uncle and I seem to be one of the only people in the family who believes grandad had something important to say, was worthy of a voice. I thought about the book and I never lost hope that one day I’d read it and perhaps edit it so it could be published.

And now I have it, in sound form. He recorded it at Christmas in 1996 and he mentions the number of times he’s already written it out. “This is my story.” That’s how he begins. I was going to listen through once and then transcribe but I’ve decided to just transcribe straight away. Lord knows how he typed it out with two fingers! I touch type about 65 words a minute and I’m still not finished the first recording of about 90 minutes. It’s already nearly 10,000 words! There are stories within it that I’ve heard a few times and it’s nice to hear them again after nine years. There is a lot I’ve never heard and it’s giving me such an insight into who my grandad was. And it’s a good story!

So that’s why I haven’t blogged in a while. Every spare moment I have on the computer I use to transcribe. It’s compelling, addictive, and I can’t wait to hear what happens next. I’m right at the end of WWII now, about 1944, so I figure there’s lots more to come in the next three recordings. So exciting! What a story!

*Yes, you read that right, a computer from the Salvos. It actually worked, even though it was some kind if old skool Windows 3.1 OS and grandad couldn’t get the concept of saving stuff to the hard drive, so he became fixated on floppy disks… I wonder what happened to that computer?

Nearly five months

Gosh, has it really been that long since I’ve updated?!  So much has happened!

So the Dude is going to be five months on Sunday (I think he’s 22 weeks this week, kind of losing count).  He rolled from front to back for the first time at 19 weeks and has since done it a handful of times.  He mostly doesn’t do it though, when I put him down for tummy time.  He does stay down longer than he used to, without losing it, but daddy still hasn’t seen him roll!  And then yesterday for the first time I witnessed him roll from his back to his front!!  I couldn’t believe it, it was awesome, he just did it with a little effort.

I took him to visit a friend yesterday, who has a little girl two months older than him, and she is really wriggling about, twisting and turning over and over, pretty much crawling.  When I put him next to this little girl, however, I suddenly realised just how massive he is!  He is slightly bigger than this little girl, even though she’s so much older.  And she’s not a small baby, I’d say probably around average.  But he just sort of lay there and watched her wriggling about in awe, like, wow, why can’t I do that?  ha ha!

So speaking of his size, I did take him for his first check up.  We went to the doctor as I’d had a blocked ear for ages and although I’d killed any infection in there with onion juice, my ear just wasn’t clearing.  I finally relented and went to the doctor (the same one I’d gone to when I was first pregnant).  She’s a nice woman but god she’s so ignorant!  The things she said to me during the appointment, I had to really make an effort not to laugh.  She actually started telling me how to ‘discipline’ my four month old baby and she even referred to babies as being ‘like puppies’!!  Can you imagine!  She didn’t help my ear problem either.  She just looked in it, confirmed it was blocked beyond syringing (der, that’s why I went to see the doctor!) and then told me to go and get Ear Clear from the pharmacy!  Seriously, I could have just gone and asked the pharmacist, what a waste of time and money that was.  She weighed the Dude (which is main thing I was interested in) and he was 8.14kg!  So he’d doubled his birth weight!  He is in the 97th percentile for weight, height and head circumference, so yes, he’s a biggie.  She asked me if I was practising ‘attachment parenting’ and I was like, erm, I don’t actually like to apply any labels to things, I just do what I do, but I guess it’s along the lines of attachment parenting.  She thought we were co-sleeping because it was AP, but it’s got nothing to do with wanting to practise AP, it’s just about what feels right and what’s simplest and easiest.  She also asked if I was vaccinating and I said no and got her to sign the conscientious objection form, which she had no issue with (yay!).  She looked at his skin and advised me to get a cream with cortisone in it!  I didn’t say anything but there’s no way I’d put it on him – I wouldn’t put it on my own skin, let alone a baby’s!  Anyway, so the only good things to come out of the appointment were finding out how much he weighs and getting the form signed. Ho hum.

You’ll be happy to know my ear has unblocked itself (although the infection soon arrived in the other ear, which I killed with onion juice again and the blockage is just about gone there too).  No thanks to Mrs Useless GP!  She means well, she’s not a bad person, but gawd, ignorant as hell!  I could provide a better service and I have no medical qualifications!

I don’t want to wish time away, as there’ll never be another time where the Dude will be little like this, but I really can’t wait for him to be more mobile and to sit up by himself.  He gets so frustrated that he can’t, I can tell.  Anyway, it’ll come soon, he’s almost there.

His skin has been pretty bad, comes and goes, so although I didn’t think he had intolerances I think the dairy does contribute to his skin so I’m going back off it again.  My eating, that’s a whole other story and not for this post… anyway, he has what seems to be eczema, and also recently started getting red blotches with white dots in the middle randomly on him, and they’d disappear as fast as they appeared so I think he’s allergic to something, possibly the wool fleece my mum bought him.  I am just keeping an eye on it really, I think it’ll come and go as his constitution works itself out.

We had a couple of very successful osteo appointments where there was total relaxation achieved twice, it was great, and he’s been much more relaxed since.  And we took him to a wedding about five hours drive north, and that was fine, we managed, although I was quite illegal a few times and just took him out of his seat to feed him while we drove.  Meh.  I used to sit on my mum’s lap for every long trip we ever did and nothing ever happened, so I’m not worried.

Must stop, as he’s just woken, I can hear him chatting to himself in the bedroom.

One month on

I can’t believe it’s been a whole month since the little dude’s birth.  It’s been longer than a month actually, but this is the first time I’ve had two hands and enough time to sit down and write a blog post.

The first week I more or less didn’t move from the bed, under strict instructions of the midwife.  I think I probably went out to the lounge two or three times in total.  It was great though, being waited on during that time!  Husband of course ran himself ragged, forgot to eat or look after himself in any way.  My mum stayed for the first three days, then headed home to give us a few days just the three of us before husband had to go back to work.  It’s funny, that first week is something of a blur now.  It was nice knowing the midwife would come every day and I could chat to her about the baby and the birth and everything in between.  There was so much to learn!  In fact the whole thing is a massive learning curve.

I don’t really remember which day I finally went out of the house, but it was really only out the front door to give the little guy some sun as he had a fair bit of physiological jaundice.  The milk came in about day 3 – I was sitting on the bed chatting to a couple of friends who I’d planned to meet up with that night but obviously couldn’t head to the city, so they came to me.  And as I fed him, suddenly I began to leak milk from the other breast!  It was quite a surprise but pretty cool, nice to know things were happening as they should.  That night things really ramped up!  I got a fever, and my boobs swelled and were so hot and tender, it was crazy.  I took a really hot shower before bed and then crawled in shivering, which is really unlike me as usually I’m too hot.  But I wasn’t too concerned, as I knew this was what happens when the milk arrives.  That night was pretty uncomfortable and sweaty and fussy, and the baby was the same, just sticky and feeding furiously but feverishly.  I think we still had the heater on in those early days, so the room was warm and the air was dry, not a great combination.  It had settled down by the next day, and although I was still full, I was no longer painfully engorged and I only had sore nipples to deal with.

Speaking of breastfeeding, it hasn’t been the biggest challenge of all.  It’s been painful and confusing and a little difficult at times, definitely time-consuming, but overall I’ve managed pretty well I think.  I realise I’ve learnt a fair bit about breastfeeding.  I must admit it still pisses me off to read all this shit about how breastfeeding is an art, how you have to learn it, bla bla bla, it doesn’t come naturally.  WTF?!  It’s natural!  Why are we perpetuating this ridiculous myth about how much of a challenge breastfeeding is just because so many women are so out of touch with their bodies and nature that they need to feel validated about finding breastfeeding hard?  Seriously, get over it, nature is a bitch but that’s because we’re stuck in our heads, our intellect rules us, and we’re taught that pain and physical ordeal is unnecessary, unnatural and to be avoided or dulled.  It’s bullshit.  Yeah okay, my nipples were so freaking sore there for a couple of weeks, and they got better and then went tender again, but I’ve dealt with it.  Coconut oil saved me in the first couple of weeks, then my mum bought me this nipple cream by Weleda which is great.  And both that and the oil are odourless and tasteless and non-toxic, so don’t have to be washed off before feeding.

I’ve already dealt with some up-chucking, initially as a result of some reflux I think, mainly because, well, he’s a baby and babies have immature digestive systems, but I also realised I wasn’t burping him after feeds really.  I felt bad disturbing him as he’d always drift off so peacefully after a feed!  But then one day he really vomited, a huge amount of milk, and it was semi digested too, all curdled and a bit sour-smelling.  So I knew it would be like reflux, and I realised I had to be more disciplined about burping him, which is not such a logistical nightmare and doesn’t require special moves or equipment or fuss, it’s just a matter of making sure he’s upright after feeding and perhaps giving his back a little rub or pat to help the air bubbles make their way out.

I began feeding him in a more upright position and soon the reflux wasn’t really an issue, only lasted a couple of days.  But then the wind began, and that’s been quite hard, or was initially.  I did end up googling to look up what it meant when baby writhed and wriggled while still attached at the end of a feed and pretty much tried to rip my nipple off.  He also started crying a little while feeding, which I didn’t get at first.  Through some surfing, I discovered he probably had wind and there wasn’t a lot to be done really.  I just tried to be more vigilant about burping him more often and properly, so the air had less chance of getting down, which has worked somewhat.

At the end of the first week, baby I weighed his birth weight of 4kg, and by the end of the second he was 4.5kg.  The midwife and I were both very pleased.  He began to get longer and every day he’d change.  His jaundice went eventually by the end of the first week, and he started pooing and weeing quite nicely.  We were rather intrigued to note that his hair has remained reddish blond – must be the Irish in my family!  I suspect his hair will change colour shortly anyway.

So last Monday it was four weeks and a couple of days ago it was one calendar month since the birth.  I took him for a couple of walks, the first with husband, who carried him in the Ergo carrier, which has been a real godsend.  If I ever want him to sleep I just put him in it, and he is alseep in a few minutes, provided I’m moving about.  He’s awfully long and getting longer by the day, so I don’t know how long the newborn insert is going to suit, but we’ll see.  His first ever outing was to the bench near the lighthouse where we had walked the last time, while I was in labour, the day before he was born.  Then we went up the coffee shop a couple of times, which was good, nice to get out.  Then the other week I took him for his first trip in the car – to Double Bay to get some money out of the ATM and to the supermarket.  He slept all the way there, slept in the Ergo as I did what I needed to do, then cried all the way home.  I feel so bad hearing him cry and not rushing straight to his aid, but I know he makes it sound worse than it is.  I was very proud of myself for making it there and back without any real dramas!  I next took him to Bondi Junction to get his birth registered with Medicare and drop off some dry cleaning.  He was again good as gold on the way and during, but on the way back he cried all the way home again.

I discovered just the other week that I apparently have an ‘oversupply’ of breastmilk.  Pfft, whatever.  I don’t think there is any such thing, not in the long term, and I’ll explain why.  I’m demand feeding the little man because I know he will feed when he needs it and will in turn regulate my milk.  So if too much is coming out and choking him or causing him to make that clicky sounding suck, it’s because it’s not bloody established yet!  I read all this shit about women having too much or not enough milk, and worrying about baby getting foremilk or hindmilk or whatever, and I just think, FFS, why worry about this crap before the milk has even regulated itself and before baby has settled in and sorted out what’s what.  Baby knows, the body knows, chill the fuck out already people!  Okay okay, I know this is probably the ideal and women do have serious issues breastfeeding and I’m bloody lucky because my body is working so well with my baby etc etc… yeah, true I guess, but I do believe that just relaxing, not getting pent up about things, trusting in nature, and taking care of yourself can really go a long way to sorting stuff out.  I know the little dude’s latch isn’t fantastic, yeah, but he’s still fairly new at this, and he’ll get it.  I know he’s often not latching well because too much milk is flooding out and choking him, so he regulates it by attaching cautiously just to the nipple where he can control the flow.  My nipples are alright anyway, and I figure he’ll get it by 6 weeks or so and things will settle.  I must admit, I was heartened by reading The Feminist Breeder’s six week update on her daughter (I guess she’s a couple of weeks older than my I man) all about how the baby has just switched into this other ‘happy’ mode after having some issues not dissimilar to what I has gone through.  That’s where I worked out about oversupply actually.  I’m not expecting miracles, don’t get me wrong, but I know this will pass and dude will have more moments of lucidity and unbroken sleep (and in turn we will too!)

The Dude’s birth: post script

Our little Mr I, aka The Dude, was born on Monday 9 May 2011 at 7:57pm in the pool at home.  The birth was transforming, as expected, but beyond anything I could have imagined.

There are a few key lessons I learnt from this birth.

First, my relationship with my mum completely transformed.  During the pregnancy I was able to identify the fact that I’ve not relied on anyone for a very long time, since I was a very young child in fact.  I’ve always been independent and headstrong, and I had some kind of complex about relying on others, probably because I couldn’t be sure they were reliable.  No one had shown much in terms of reliability.  It wasn’t so much anyone’s fault, it was the situation, the circumstance.  My mum, through no real fault of her own, let me down somewhat because she didn’t stand firm with me.  It was hard, I was clever and angry and strong and lacked empathy; I’d be so adamant about what I wanted and she found it impossible to stand firm against that, she actually needed to protect herself.  So when, during the birth, I lost control, lost faith, lost hope, and was running from the very thing that would bring the baby down and out, my mum did something heroic and unlike anything she’d done before.  She stepped up.  She didn’t let me escape.  She wasn’t mean, she just supported me and she didn’t let me down.  She was there, no matter how long it took, and she was prepared to go through it with me and be my rock.  And I needed her, I really did.

Second, I couldn’t take shortcuts.  All my life I’ve been really good at most things without exerting as much effort as most people.  I was always healthy and strong, tall and flexible, clever and funny, and I managed to cruise through most things others would consider a challenge without much effort.  When I had to put effort in, it would be half-hearted, and if I wasn’t great at something firs time, forget it, give it away, not worth doing anyway.  I didn’t take direction well and would ignore teachers at every interval, from the ice-skating teacher I had at age 8, to the maths tutor I had at age 14, to the flute teacher at age 16, I wrote them all off, did whatever I wanted, scraped through and escaped the challenge.  My mum always said, ‘you’re living small’ and that made me angry.  I know my dad could see it too, as he does the same thing.  But this labour, this was by far the biggest challenge of my life, and I couldn’t escape it!  There was a way out; hospital, intervention, drugs, disappointment.  I couldn’t do that.  I knew that was wrong for me and for baby.  So I did it, I rose to the challenge, I pushed through pain a hundred times beyond anything I could even imagine feeling, and I achieved a huge goal.  I overcame this without any shortcuts.  I don’t ever want that feeling to go away; I want to always remember how it was to beat myself and overcome this, so that I can achieve really great things in life and not wimp out or make excuses like I have in the past.

Finishing work

I’ve been looking forward to finishing up at work for a while now. It seems great, right?  Fantastic, I don’t have to drive in peak hour traffic any more, I don’t have to get up early, I don’t have to do that 9-5 thing every day! I’m free! I’ve always been very lazy, lacking in motivation, and if I had the chance to avoid any kind of work or effort, I’d do it.  But now I have the chance to potentially not work for the foreseeable future, just in the last week (my final week at work) it’s begun to get scarier!

It’s really crept up on me, suddenly I realised this is it, this is the end!  Everyone says, oh but you’ll have plenty of work when baby arrives, but it’s not the same.  As lazy as I am, I’ve been earning my own money since age 18 and I’ve been self-sufficient for so long.  I might have written about it before but I felt growing up like no one was there for me, and I had to fend for myself, at least emotionally.  I wasn’t happy to go along with the way my mum did things, I didn’t want to eat what she ate or do what she did, so I found my own way.  And she didn’t rein me in, she let me go as and when I felt like it.  I’m not sure if this was good or not really, it might have seemed like the right thing to do for a kid like me.

So this is the first time in my life when I’m really going to hand over the practical reins to someone else.  And I couldn’t have chosen a better person that my husband to do it, he is so incredibly organised and so supportive, just an awesome person all round.  But wow, is it hard or what!  I’m not going to be earning any money (no maternity leave, given I was on contract), so any bills and payments for my house will be my husband’s responsibility.  Which is okay, given it’s his house too, now we’re married, but still, I feel uncomfortable about placing that burden on him.

Today was officially my last day at work.  Last night, it really hit home in a big way.  Husband was off at happy hour at the pub, as he normally is on Thursday nights, and I encourage him to do it if he wants to, especially as he might not get to do that stuff for a while once baby arrives.  But I really needed him to be home and comfort me, just tell me the money situation will work out, somehow.  I was poised for one of my famous meltdowns, which have come upon me at random throughout pregnancy.  And the absolute worst thing I could have done is watch Revolutionary Road… but because I wanted to delete it from our digital recorder, where it’s been sitting for many months, and I knew husband wasn’t too interested in watching it, I decided to watch it.

Great movie, don’t get me wrong, good acting from both Leo and Kate, although I was slightly unconvinced by them as a couple – she seems a bit older than him or something, I can’t quite work it out.  But wow, I couldn’t have chosen a more upsetting movie to watch in my fragile state.  Imagine, I’m almost 36 weeks pregnant, and I’m watching a film which ends *spoiler alert* with a woman attempting to give herself an abortion and bleeding to death!  Not to mention the comments the movie made about relationships, communication and trust… it was great, but not good to watch.

So by the time husband finally arrived home, slightly intoxicated and armed with a couple of meat pies he wolfed down upon arrival, I was in a pretty delicate state.  All I wanted was for him to ask me what was wrong, to listen to me, to hug me and tell me everything would be fine, and take me to bed, but instead he began one of his ranty, drunken one-way conversations which involves me just shutting him out, due to sheer frustration.  The problem is, when he’s drunk, he thinks he’s fine, but really he’s completely impossible to deal with and his conversations make absolutely no sense although he is completely adamant he’s saying something really important and profound!  Normally I just roll my eyes and ignore it, but this time I stormed out after shouting at him and took myself to bed.  Of course he came and apologised, and he apologised again today, and I forgive him, it wasn’t entirely his fault.  It was just the intensity of my fear around finishing work that really frightened me, and I needed some help to deal with it in the moment.  Which is rare for me, I usually just get over things alone.

Today was an odd day, strange to be finishing work and knowing I’m not going back, not going to another job, saying goodbye to a really great bunch of people and an easy yet interesting job.  I have been extremely lucky really, to get to where I am, and it’s just not getting maternity leave that’s contributing to the freak out even more.

As I parked and got out of the car this morning, and I heard a hissing noise; I looked down and noticed the back tyre had a huge bolt stuck in it, and was going down in front of my eyes!  I couldn’t believe it, what random bad luck, and why now, why here?  I’ve had that happen one other time, almost ten years ago now, when I was driving manically to be at the birth of my good friend’s baby.  I heard something and felt the steering change, and I knew my tyre was flat but I had to get to her place, so I just kept driving on a flat tyre and somehow I made it without damaging the wheel (even though there was a scraping noise every time I went round a corner)!  I remember I called my boyfriend at the time and he and his dad came round and changed the tyre for me.  So this time, I realised I’d have to call roadside assistance.  Normally I’d never dream of it, I can change a tyre; but being so pregnant, it’s just not an option.  So I thought, well, I’ll worry about it at the end of the day.

I gathered my things together, submitted my final timesheet, and called the NRMA about half an hour before I planned to leave, thinking it’d take a while for them to get to me in peak hour traffic on a Friday afternoon.  As I prepared to leave, my phone rang and the guy was only a few minutes away!  I told him I’d be there as soon as I could.  I said my goodbyes, feeling entirely surreal and not having enough time to take in my last views of my office and the university grounds, and I walked as fast as I could to the car, parked about 10-15 minutes away.  The guy was there when I arrived, having already jacked up the back side of the car, and I handed him my keys.  I noticed straight away he had the kindest, loveliest young face, and his manner was so calm; he wasn’t in the least bit put out at having to wait, and was more concerned that I stayed curbside and away from any oncoming traffic.  Of course he asked about my pregnancy, saying he’d ‘been there, done that’.  And then something clicked; he began to tell me that literally days ago he’d turned 30 and the day after he’d found out his wife was pregnant!  Only 4 or 5 weeks along.  What was especially interesting was that she has Crohn’s disease.  I don’t know a lot about it, but I know it’s debilitating and doesn’t go away.  We just got along, chatted about having babies, and contraception – he blamed the ‘franger’!  He said they’d been together 10 years, never had a problem, but suddenly the world had shifted and somehow she was pregnant.  He said she’d also recovered from leukaemia, so had a bad run of things health-wise.  I normally would think things but not say them, however this time I just blurted out, ‘well you never know, maybe the pregnancy will help her Crohn’s,’ and he said funny you should say that because pregnancy actually cancels out the disease all together; that had happened during the last pregnancy.  It was an incredible connection we had because we didn’t know each other, yet we were telling each other these relatively intimate things.  Normally you’d wait and not tell people about pregnancy until that magic 12 week mark.  I ended up telling him about how random our conception was, how I couldn’t believe that it is possible to be on the pill for 18 months solid and get pregnant within four days of being unprotected!  And we both talked about how we know lots of couples who are trying so hard to fall pregnant, seemingly nothing wrong, yet somehow it just doesn’t happen for them.  It was an incredible conversation we had, as he changed my tyre, quite surreal, and I know he had the same experience.  When he was done and we said goodbye, he looked like he wanted to hug me, like we’d bonded in a few minutes, had this amazing connection!  It was just utterly bizarre.