Fierce with Love (Six Months without Haloumi Cheese)

27 June 2010
Something is different today. I woke in El Prima's arms, like last Sunday, but this time without sadness pulsating through my head to the tune of K's announcement that A had died. Today I can get up and decide what to do without tears, I can pull on my new, soft elephant t-shirt for the first time and think "maybe I can do this, maybe I can be like an mama elephant*, and be all the more fierce with love because of my loss".

So what happened to make this small welcome change? Partly the elephant t-shirt, a birthday present to myself. Partly spending Saturday night with friends, so that we could release balloons for little A, to mark his paris funeral. Partly having an hour holding our dear friend's 4 week old son, and drinking in his living baby features and living baby noises.

But a big part of it is also coming home to a parcel from sydney containing this:


I can't remember exactly when my friend Leo had started up our little stitch and bitch group - but it became a force of its own. Our formula was very simple - we'd lug sewing machines & sewing boxes over to someone's house, and spend the day eating pastries, drinking tea and talking, and eventually get around to sewing something.

Nearly every scrap of fabric in the banner I remember from a project - pajamas for Nik's son, a gift Leo was making, a dress for Cathy's daughter, the apron Belinda was making for her sister in law. And linking them all together - the green backing and the letter "O" is the fabric I found in a cupboard in a sharehouse in Brunswick over nine years ago. there was metres and metres of it, so at my last stitch and bitch before we left sydney, we cut it down the middle and I left them with half. As their little note said, Haloumi was a definite part of our stitch & bitch sessions together - both when we were wishing for her and when she was there in my belly, encouraging me towards another pastry. I wept, but my heart swelled and I felt humbled to be the recipient of so much stitched love.


* apparently a ridiculously huge proportion of first elephant pregnancies end in stillbirth, often after 22 months gestation. If you can find a reference for this then you are more dilligent than me. I promise you I read it somewhere. [<-- I would be in fits if any of my students tried to reference in this sloppy manner!]

When words failed me

and we were on opposite sides of the world, knitting seemed like the only thing I could do for K & N.



Flying home to this sad winter, with their baby boy in the luggage hold rather than bouncing in their laps, I thought a little bit of extra warmth wouldn't go astray.

Thanks P for the beautiful yarn.

Of Chickens, hatching and counting

** Thank you for your thoughts for our friends K & N and their loss of beautiful little A. We're resolving (as some of you kindly suggested) not to let this sink us further, but to hold strong for K & N and offer them all the love and help we can. **




Image from here.

El Prima got two job offers this week - very welcome news after months of searching. In my excitement I posted the news on FB before she'd received the formal offer, sending her into a spin of nervous worry that the offer would be withdrawn, that they would change their minds, that somehow, she'd have the rug pulled out from under her feet again.

It was silly of me, for we do not count chickens at our house anymore. But what do we do with good news - news that may still all go wrong, but for now, is worth celebrating? How do we celebrate it without jinxing ourselves, without inflating our hubris only for cruel-humoured deities to pop it at our expense?

We look at what we have right now, and we gently pat these warm, unhatched eggs. Not counting, just loving these little possibilities as they are right now. Who knows what will happen. Whether or not they ever peck their way out of their shells and into a chickeny future is not for us to know. But right now we have eggs, and we're going to enjoy them for their sheer eggy possibility.

F**K NO, Universe, you have to be kidding me

I've just found out that dear friends of ours living in France have just lost their little boy - he was just over 6 months old - to SIDS. He was due just a month before Z, and we were so excited when we found out that we were pregnant at the same time. He was born just before Christmas, and we saw the first photos of him on Facebook on Christmas eve at my dad's house - resting the laptop on my huge Z-filled belly.

And now he's gone - or is lying cold in a paris hospital, while K & N try and get their heads around the fact that their beloved first born son just will not wake up.

What is it about death, that it has to be so damn permanent and non-negotiable? There is no 'maybe' left, only 'never'.

So I hope his little spirit is somewhere warm, somewhere good. And that he might just bump into Z and make knowing baby eyes at her. "You too, huh?"

Poetry + Art First Aid

Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow 1 from here.

Yesterday I tried all kinds of things to quell the weeping, and this was the only one that really worked - to memorise one of my favorite poems:

WARNING TO CHILDREN, by Robert Graves

Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,

Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and cut the rind off;
In the centre you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,

Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string untied!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,

But the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee,
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives - he then unties the string.

It has provided comfort before, but there is something about being able to recite it in my head whenever things get too much that gives a settling feeling. I haven't yet memorised the whole thing - just the first two stanzas, but even that gives a little sense of completion.

I think I understand a link now between our loss and this terrible sense of being unable to follow anything through - it is as though my hope mechanism, my ability to imagine completing something, has been damaged. To take the hard small steps to get there, I need to be able to imagine getting there. And I'm hesitant to do that because all that we imagined for Haloumi was lost in a silly moment. I need a little splint for my broken hope bone, a poultice to lay upon it. And time for the bone to knit.

Here we are now

Most of the shock has worn off now, and we're just doing the daily grind of grief. The sadness is still huge, but we have to live with it now, work with it, breakfast with it and somehow go on.

Every now and then I think of a new part of the accident I hadn't processed before - my dad coming to the hospital, and I was so bossy telling him to go straight to El Prima (in another hospital across town) - when he must have been so shocked. He and my stepmum had been having dinner with family friends, and of course he wasn't answering his mobile during dinner when my sister was trying to call him to let him know what had happened. She had to ring around the family until she finally hit my stepsister, who knew where they were having dinner and called the landline.

Dad came to see me and then El Prima, and my stepmum went to the Children's hospital to be with the girls. She stayed there all night with them, until they were released the next day. Snazzy drew a picture of it later - of her and Snacky in their hospital beds, with our stepmama on a campbed between them, and tears on all their faces.

It still seems insane that such a tiny quick little moment of impact can send such huge ripples of loss through all our lives.

Corner - I am turning it!

It has all been so grey for the last few weeks, that I could hardly bear to inflict my sullen mood on anyone else but myself. But this week, I can not only see the corner, but am being happily dragged around it, primarily by beloved friends and family just coming and being with and sharing their sparkle.

In particular, here are some of the corner-turning things:

- Digging in the company of my dad and El Prima. The poor pomegranite is STILL not planted, but oh boy does it have a rolls royce hole to look forward to. We've just bought mushroom compost and mulch to mix in with the dirt, so planting is imminent. If I can keep up the digging, I think it can substitute completely for any SSRIs.

- Eating cake, drinking tea and extracting gardening advice with lovely new neighbours.

- This, courtesy of P. Plus, being plied with chocolate zuccini cake and home made anzac bickies!

- A farm visit with an old friend, and eyefuls of Mt Sturgeon, Mt Abrupt, wedge-tailed eagles and a ridiculously frisky three-week old foal.

- Tuesday night champagne with another old friend.

I know we might not be able to quite keep up this pace, but it does make things so much easier, being around lovely people.

This

is the kind of thing I need to get me through the pile of marking I have before me:

TODAY by Frank O'Hara


Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they've always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.


[1950]

It's better than a bottle of gin in the desk drawer, isn't it?

Tofu-induced meltdown

We’re sick of the house, sick of our own misery and sick of each other’s company. So what is the best remedy for this malcontent? Clearly, wandering around IKEA with legions of pregnant women and parents holding small children behind every Billy bookcase is a fabulous idea.

Things started badly this morning when I woke early, and read the last few chapters of an unmentionable “children’s” sci-fi book. I had thought, given the irresistibly comforting premise the book begins with – in which all humans have their own spiritually-connected talking animal companion – that I could expect a happy ending, or at the very least a Harry Potter-esque happy-and-safe-for-now ending. But no. Apparently author Phillip Pullman has other ideas, which don’t include rounding off my escapist bout of children’s sci-fi in a gentle enough way so that I can start my Sunday morning without feeling like Armageddon is around the corner.

We entered the IKEA play-house with two very simple objectives, and neither of them was to be reminded that even if we buy all this stuff, our house will never look like an Ikea showroom. I think it must be a genetic thing – either you have the tidy-decluttering-clean-lines-matching-furniture-Ikea gene or you don’t, and El Prima and I clearly don’t. I don’t want you thinking we are complete grots - we do Make An Effort, and temporarily fight back the jungle on a regular basis, but with three pets and two teenagers, as well as our own messy selves, there is quite a bit of jungle to deal with.

If you’ve been to one of those water theme parks which has a canal section where everyone floats around the same circular route on giant inflatable donuts, then you may as well have been at Ikea with us, floating along a twisting series of Ikea-ized rooms, bumping up against pregnant tummies and living babies at every turn. I’m not mortally offended by all this evidence of everyone else’s successful fecundity, but it is hard to concentrate on finding semi-essential soft furnishings while I’m constantly playing games of “Would she have been about that big by now? Or fatter?”

Eventually, the current brought us along to the cashiers, and we piled our small pieces of pleasantly-smelling wood and nordic-looking fabric into our ridiculously small reusable carry bags. By then, shopping centre fatigue had set in, and it only took one song to make me weep in the car. From there it was only a short hysterical step to melt-down-land when I got home and realised that there was no tofu in the fridge for the one meal I could imagine making – green thai curry. It is a sad thing when you feel like you are useless at everything, including feeding your stubbornly vegetarian self some kind of protein on a regular basis. (“What about those teenage girls though?” I hear you cry. What indeed? Don’t fuss, El Prima keeps them well-supplied with meat, to their great joy, so I don’t need to fear for their protein / iron levels.)

Somehow, the lack of tofu, and consequent nutritional failure was the last straw on top of the giant haystack of things I’m not managing to do very well lately, including finding decent work clothes to wear, cleaning the house, being an academic, turning all this terribly sad emotional pain into some half-decent art / writing and being a likeable stepmother. But you’ve just lost your child, only four months ago – give yourself a little break – as a beloved friend was telling me just this morning. Yes, yes. Four months. How long will it take before I can function normally? I was doing it okay two days ago, or at least creating the appearance of it. If things fall apart only every second day, is that progress?

El Prima was lovely – Ikea and shopping centres don’t seem to have quite the same enervating effect on her. She let me weep all over her in the kitchen, and suggested we order in pizza. Instead, I marched off damp-eyed into the dark to hunt and gather tofu from the supermarket just to prove to myself that I could do the adult thing and make dinner. It was a pretty ordinary green thai curry, but it did have tofu in it, so there is hope – isn’t there?

(It’s been a very rhetorical post, hasn’t it? My apologies.)

Hello again

A kindly postgrad student with a three wheeler trolley helped us take the boxes up to my new office and piled them up. A few hours later, once I'd met a few people, got lost on the way to the bathroom, and started doing some work, I could feel the boxes behind me waiting, so I took a key to the packing tape.

I think of pith-helmeted archaeologists cracking open Egyptian sarcophagi. When these boxes were sealed, it was a very different world. There's a small shock when I lift back the cardboard flaps. I inhale, as if breathing in the air I exhaled four and a half months ago could take me back. I remember packing this, but it was a different me - with a round living belly between me and the cardboard.

These are the things from my half of the laundry back at our old house in Sydney - my little make-shift office which always smelt of laundry powder and had its own toilet. I was in a hurry packing - I'd thrown in personal things with work files and books - a small stuffed lion that El Prima gave me years ago, pictures by Snazzy, hotwater bottles that really belonged to the laundry side of the room. Each object I lift out needs an explanation. Oh Lion. Something awful happened. It isn't what we expected. Not at all.

* * *

El Prima's been unpacking at home while I've been at work. Suddenly there are new spaces in our bedroom, more room to move. In the living room is something that wasn't there before. It is a small whiteboard - an IT freebie. I remember when El Prima brought it home - to that other living room in Sydney, in that other life.

It was July. I was newly pregnant and a friend of ours asked us to contribute a photo for an anti-homophobia project she was running. I tried out different messages until I came up with this one: El Prima did the text, and I added a picture.



I had my photo taken for my staff card today, and my face didn't look like that. No glow. And too much knowledge and weariness.

That same whiteboard in in my hands again, but it's got a different message on it now. I wrote this message about a month after the other one. One of El Prima's daughters was dealing with something unspeakably hard. I wished I knew a way to make things better. I came across this quote and wrote it on the whiteboard for her.

Everyone is broken by life but some of us are stronger in the broken places. (Ernest Hemmingway)

I read once that the Hagia Sophia dome in Instanbul is completely broken into hundreds of pieces, but is held together by its mosaic tiles, like a cracked eggshell. Apparently the brokenness is the only reason that it has survived various earthquakes over 1500 years.

Please let me be like that - stronger for my brokenness.

Is okay

Thank you so much for your love and concern.

Sorry to be so morose! Getting out of town and seeing a beloved old friend get married helped.

I really don't want to go onto antidepressants to get through this. I don't think there is really any dodging this sadness, I just hope that if I can look it in the eye and stare it down, it might gradually retreat to a safer distance.

Again?

This is my refrain: Again?

Just when I've worked up the energy to get up / cook dinner / go to physio / answer emails / pay bills, I wake up the next morning and it all has to be done again.

This qualifies as possibly the most whingey / obvious observation ever made, and I know I should be grateful that I have another day, and another before me, but right now it is all too hard. Now, even the art work I make, the words I write seem pointless and withering in my hands.

I know there is a tiny silver thread that leads me out of this dark place, but I can't seem to lay my hands on it at the moment.

The time has come

it seems, for nonsensical poetry (at our house at least).

I found an old book of children's poetry at my dad's house, and these were the poems which made the most sense to me, each in a different way.

THE PESSIMIST by Ben King

Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes,
To keep one from going nude.

Nothing to breathe but air,
Quick as a flash 'tis gone,
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on.

Nothing to comb but hair,
Nowhere to sleep but in bed,
Nothing to weep but tears,
Nothing to bury but dead.

Nothing to sing but songs,
Ah, well, alas! alack!
Nowhere to go but out,
Nowhere to come but back.

Nothing to see but sights,
Nothing to quench but thirst,
Nothing to have but what we've got,
Thus thro' life we are cursed.

Nothing to strike but a gait;
Everything moves that goes.
Nothing at all but common sense
Can ever withstand these woes.

I think that is quite hopeful, in a bleak way. Kind of sums up the pragmatic compromise of living with this sadness, but also gently teasing yourself for your bleakness and self-pity.

The second is more beautiful, a reminder that this world still holds things which sparkle.

WARNING TO CHILDREN, by Robert Graves

Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and cut the rind off;
In the centre you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string untied!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
But the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee,
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives - he then unties the string.

This is the aim, I guess. To be able let curiosity win out enough to untie the string, knowing that you will immediately find yourself within the uncontrolled greatness, rareness, muchness that spills out.

Everything seems quite nonsensical right now, so that nonsensical verse makes perfect sense.




[we saw the new alice film. Some parts were pretty, but otherwise, an awful rendering. Why Tim Burton felt it had to be jammed into a 'quest' format, I have no idea.]

On being a terrible blogger & new things

When I returned to blogging to start this blog (a long long time ago on the other side of the abyss), I promised myself that it would be guilt-free blogging. With my previous blog, that was what had killed it - the guilt and shame of not having posted for x days, which made it all too hard to actually post again. So this time, I promised it would be just about writing when I needed / wanted to, and not out of any sense of guilt or shame.

I'm not kidding myself that I have lots of readers out there waiting for me to post something - if anyone is reading this, then you are exceedingly patient and persistent - thank you xx But guilt-free blogging doesn't mean I don't feel sorry for the few of you reading - so my apologies for being a terrible blogger.
-----

Walking the dogs, we were wind-blown and on our grumpy way home. And there in front of us on Murray Road was a café that wasn’t there before – all new pot plants and fresh paint smell. But also a toasty cheesy smell – maybe we were hungry after all. We are greeted warmly into the place by – we’re guessing – one of its new owners. He’s excited to see us, he’s read us already – two women, two dogs, and concludes rightly that we’re “family”. Just like we’ve read him, his earring, his manner of speaking and his glances towards the man in the kitchen. He fusses over us, explains that there is only a limited menu at the moment as their in the process of converting the stove. “When did you open?” I ask.
“Saturday last”, he shines with all the enthusiasm of someone starting their own dream project. He’s not tired yet.

When we go, his partner comes out of the kitchen, they introduce themselves. I explain that we’re new to the area, and so happy to find a good little café so close by. “Come by whenever you want – sit and read, or write”, he says.

I’m excited, but also sad for what I’ll eventually have to tell them, if we become friends. We will watch their faces fall, shock unrolling from them – both at the awfulness of it and also that we are here, ordering coffee, as though life goes on as normal after a child dies.

Three month letter (jumping the gun)

We’re getting close to three months since the accident, and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I wanted to write a three month letter to Zainab. I'm not having a dig at those who write letters to their living children - god knows if she'd lived I would have been right on the bandwagon. It is a beautiful idea, that's why I just wanted a little taste of it, even though it isn't quite the same when your baby isn't here to record all the new amazing things they learned and you learnt about them in a month. But this is part of my task here, to accept that I don't get any more time here on earth with her.

It could go like this: (please excuse my attempt at humour - we do like to try and crack jokes in between the weeping. Ha boo hoo ha.)

My darling girl,

I’m trying to work out how big you might be, if this was your three month birthday rather than three months since you died. We saw a baby today on our way back from the market, probably a bit more on the newborn side than you would be by now. You'll be happy to know that I still haven't seen any baby that comes near you in the looks department, and we seem to be surrounded by them at the moment. They're lovely, they're sweet, but they're not you.

I’m hoping that wherever you are, in the non-denominational, vaguely agnostic Good Place where I like to think you might be “living the dream”, you are growing and learning. Those little legs would be filling out, and maybe you are giving your godparents some smiles, starting to focus on their faces and grin gummily at them. God, I wish we were there to see you and hold you, my love. I wish I could be feeding you and feeling some pride and amazement in your increasing fatness. El Prima would be making faces at you, doing her expert babymama thing, teaching you arabic.

But enough about your milestones, let’s talk about mine! I can now bend my knee well over 100 degrees. Woo hoo. And my quadricep muscle now responds when I want to move it. I can get in and out of bed without doing that weird robot-leg move I had to do before. We’re going for big walks – to and from the shops, around the park, with only one crutch – and I won’t need that for much longer. We’re sleeping through the night a lot more than last month. I think I’ll be starting my new job next month – beginning part-time and working my way up to full time by July.

Your sisters miss you. They are making friends at their new school, and have freaked them out showing them photos of our wrecked car. They were all geared to be the best babysitters ever, I hope you know that.

I won’t write you a letter every month, I hope you’ll understand. But I love you and think about you every day.

With all my love, xxxxx h

Breathing and (mostly) functioning

Here are some of the things that make it a bit better:

- the sound the cat makes when I accidentally sneeze on him. Both surprised and disgusted all at once.
- Rima being home, although she was kind enough to bring back a sniffy head cold especially for me.
- pulling my finger out and starting to sort out actual dates for starting back at work, even if the idea of it is still pretty scary.
- finding people who seem to have survived this kind of loss and are even "integrating" it into lives in which good things happen.
- random stories about otters from lovely people.

Mostly

I'm calling around getting insurance quotes for the new death-machine we are due to pick up tomorrow. It is not "new" new - just new for us. A 2002 Subaru - but one of the models with stability control and a ..... of airbags.

A prize for whoever can come up with the best plural noun for a group of airbags. A cloud of airbags? A reassurance of airbags?

The person giving me an insurance quote has to ask whether we've had any previous accidents in the past 3 years, "regardless of fault". I tell him / her - a 4WD hit us, head-on, yes, the car was written off. Inevitably, she/ he says, "That sounds awful. I hope everyone was alright?"

...

I don't know what to say to that, so I usually just say "mostly" in a tone which (I hope) firmly communicates - do not ask me any more about this. If they do ask more, I blather on a bit about broken knees, ribs, spleens, liver etc etc. That makes them uncomfortable enough.

I don't say, "No, we are not alright. My baby daughter died." I want to be correct and accurate and honest, and I want our loss acknowledged, but I have to make a number of these phone calls, get a number of quotes. My composure is stretched thin enough already. I have functions I need to perform today before I disintergrate into a weepy pulp. I can't go there - not for a flipping insurance quote, not with someone who only knows me as one voice in a call-centre shift. I can't risk the random responses the truth might evoke.

It feels ridiculous, shopping around for insurance when something like this has happened. Everything feels ridiculous, flippant. To continue to live and breathe is a cruel insult. I didn't realise I could become so bitter. I didn't really know the meaning of it. But bitter and interesting I could handle maybe, bitter and boring - trapped in this repetitive ongoing grief - is harder. I think this is why I've gripped so hard onto the idea of making a book, making artwork out of this grief. Nothing will compensate, but can't I at least make something beautiful from the ruins?

Things which don't help

- Not having El Prima around to tell me it is time I went to bed (she's in Sydney for the weekend).
- Staying up till the tiny quiet hours reading and weeping.
- When we decide to go for a walk to the market as a cheer-up, having a heavily pregnant woman ask "Are you pregnant?" (the second such comment in 3 days)
- Getting poured on by rain on the walk home.

Actually, I think the rain did help. There is something about getting completely drenched - as though the internal and external water levels reached a balance. I've lost all compunction about sobbing while walking along the footpath - rain running down my cheeks and fogging my glasses helps.

I'd worn a favorite singlet with a little red corduroy mini - I'd been happy with what I was wearing, and it made me feel better than in my pajamas. But once she said that, I cursed my choice, and that I had nothing with me to hide this belly. It has been nearly 8 weeks. I still look pregnant. I haven't made the t-shirt I wanted to make in hospital. The one that says "I'm not pregnant anymore. My baby has died. Please don't ask". I think I need to make it before I venture outside the house again.

What is worse, the shocked looks on people's faces when they read it, or their unwittingly painful comments?

Birth Certificate

We grabbed the mail on our way out of the house to have coffee with Aron, an old friend who did his history PhD on the Royal tours of Australia. I tear one envelope open and can tell from the feel of the paper that it is not a bill. This is thicker, watermarked paper. When I stare at it, I can’t tell if it is just my eyes or whether the colour of the paper changes softly towards the centre – from creamy white to pinky cream.

This paper certifies me as a “mother”, and certifies Z’s birth – that she was here – a human child, even if she never drew breath. [Why do they produce these certificates? Is she ever going to need it to get a passport? To get her driver’s licence? Will we ever need it to enrol her in school? Is this some kind of sympathy consolation prize just to make us feel better? The most comforting reason I can think of is pure administrative completeness. A child was here. She must be recorded.]

On paper, I am a mother, but there is no pram here, no noisy squirming baby. Only a flat two dimensional photo and this certificate.

I feel like one of those flat felt figures we had at kinder. You can peel me off this situation and stick me onto another scene. It makes a soft ripping sound as you do it – quieter than velcro. Here is my picture-baby, here is my piece of paper. I love her so much, but she’s now my two-dimensional child – stilled, flattened out on the page like a rare flower. I didn’t dream her three dimensional little life, she was definitely here (right here) – moving and being. But all the remaining evidence I have of that fact is unsatisfying.

The next envelope I open is an overdue fine from the library – Sheila Kitzinger, “Rediscovering Birth”. We have to go, to move on, we’ll be late for coffee with Aron. I fold these pieces of mail together and worry that I’ll mix them up or lose them – confuse the proof of my daughter’s existence with a library fine.

Today

is the day I decided I was ready to see the pictures of our car post-crash.



I'm still writing but the blogging thing is tricky at the moment. February has come and gone - a very different month to the one I had thought I might be having. My knee is getting better - at some stage in the next few months, people won't be able to tell how damaged I was/am from the way I walk. I'm not sure I'm ready to masquerade as a well person though. But I'm starting to face up to the things that need to be faced - work, publications, buying a new car, doing our tax return so we can afford all the freaking safety features.

Sending lots of love and congratulations to those who've got to meet their babies this month. And SO SO happy to see this news. See, the world is still an okay place.

Still here

I’m sorry I went uncharacteristically quiet for a while there. The sadness made me paper-thin, so that just breathing, opening my eyes and looking at my surviving loved ones felt so hard. Thank god for that automatic breathing reflex thing hey. Because I certainly couldn’t have bothered doing it consciously.

When a little more energy did well up in me, there were some other very big calls on it – trying not to turn on Rima and instead trying to hold hands, even though we were in very different places within our own grief, and preparing for the fortieth day memorial service last Sunday. On the Rima front, I think we hit the bottom and are now working our way back to the surface – trying to take care of each other this time.

And the memorial? It was hard but good – in that painfully satisfying way. We felt so loved, both by our loved ones there and by the loved ones who couldn’t be there in person but sent us so much love and support in other ways. It felt bizarrely like a wedding (perhaps because my dad & stepmum got married there nearly 12 years ago) – except for the volume of the weeping. While we’re still not allowed a legit wedding in this country, Rima and I are now wedded in this grief.
Somehow time disappeared and although we’d gotten there about two hours early, we didn’t get a chance to test the music system – with the result that none of the music played properly. We would get the first few stanzas and then it flickered in and out and was awful to listen to. I was cranky about it, but Rima was very philosophical and calmed me with little pats on the arm. Sadly, Kerri Simpson (an amazing soul singer and friend of my mum’s) had to taken her partner to hospital that morning, so she couldn’t sing as planned. And old friend stepped into the breach less than 20 minutes before the service, which was lovely, so at least we had some music.

An hour before things started, I left things in everyone else’s hands and hobbled off to the beach with Rima, my sister and my brother. Jez and I went in – him rapidly like an otter (his stubbly beard helps the otter effect) and me slowly, letting the water lap its way up my broken body. It was warmer than the usual antarctic temperature, crystal clear and very little seaweed.

I dived down and opened my eyes – feeling for the bottom with my hands. I came up, rolled onto my back and let myself float. How many days and hours since I last did that – but in Sydney in the ocean baths and with Haloumi also floating inside me? And I thought of the spectacle I presented then – my belly popping above the water like a fleshy island. The girls had thought it was hilarious when I took them to the pool and did backstroke – my belly sinking and rising with each stroke.

Now my fleshy island was just a wrinkly belly below the surface. I sobbed and let my tears mingle with the big salty sorrow of the sea.

And, as always happens when I float like that, I realised that I’d stopped being aware of time, and startled back into myself. But when I opened my eyes and rolled over, Jez was floating right there beside me.



Gratuitous otter pic from here

Histopathology

**Thank you so much for your beautiful comments or emails. I'm trying to respond to these individually, but it takes time - which is a bit scarce round our place at the moment as we're getting ready for the girls to start their new school on Monday, and for the memorial on the 7th. But I will get there. In the meanwhile, please know that your messages are hitting their mark and making us feel very loved xxxh**

There is so much to write about at the moment. Histopathology is my new word for the day - I promise I will explain why soon. But having harassed the media again in the last 24 hours with a letter to the editor, I feel like I need to explain that first.



Nancy Asani lost her unborn child at 38 weeks. Photo: Luis Enrique Ascui

We, or rather, Zainab, got a vague mention in the paper on Monday. It was in an article about Nancy Asani, a woman who was 38 weeks pregnant (also with a little daughter) when someone driving without their headlights on ploughed into her car, injuring her and killing her baby, named Meriem. (It feels so strange to know that someone has gone through something so similar to our accident - horrible that anyone else should have to go through it, but also some weird fellow-feeling - knowing that we're not the only ones. I think I will try and contact Nancy at some stage when we feel up for it).

Like the driver who caused our accident, the person responsible for Meriem's death could only be charged with "dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm" - ie in respect of the injury to Nancy. This was ten years ago, and since then Nancy has been campaigning to have the law changed so that causing the death of an unborn child counts as "dangerous driving causing death" - as is the case in other states such as NSW. I'm not sure if she would pick a gestational age when a foetus's is deemed to count as a "death" - that is probably a tricky question. I'm not sure how I'd want the law to work exactly, but I do think that this is much more than just an injury to the mother - or rather it is a particularly huge and future-destroying injury which might need its own special category.

The article linked Nancy's story to ours, and to that of the poor woman who had an accident about a week after ours and (this makes me weep even harder) lost both her baby and her husband.

I was okay with that linkage, and we would support Nancy's campaign, but the bit which made me throw stuff and fly into furious fits of letter-writing was this:

Australian Family Association spokesman John Morrisey said the inconsistencies in the state's laws appeared to exist because of ''fairly permissive abortion laws''.

This was my letter:

Letter to the Editor
27 January 2010
One month ago (thought it feels like another lifetime ago), I was 34 weeks pregnant and was driving home with my family. A 4WD hit us head-on, and (among our other injuries) caused my placenta to abrupt and killed my little daughter before she was born. I was so sad to read (“Mother vows to fight on for law change over road death of unborn child” The Age 25 Jan 2010) that Nancy Asani suffered a similar loss in December 1999, and that another woman also lost her baby this “holiday” period.

We would support Nancy in her campaign to have the law changed to recognise that dangerous driving causing the death of an unborn baby is not just an injury to the mother. It was an injury to me, but in a much more profound way than my other injuries. Our baby, had she been delivered before the accident, would have had excellent prospects of survival – she was already 2.5kg (around 5 lbs) and 48cm long. I can’t put into words what we have lost and what she has lost.

What I find offensive is that anyone could try and twist our tragedy into some kind of argument against safe, legal abortion. John Morrissey, spokesman for the “Australian Family Association” has done this in your article on Monday. How dare he try to appropriate our loss and turn it to his own political / religious ends. We were lucky not to be in a position where we had to consider abortion, but I have had a number of friends who have been in that awful position, and it is not something any woman considers lightly. Women are not stupid – we know that pregnancy is the process of turning a potential life into a living breathing child. That is what makes our loss so heart-breaking. To try and draw some connection between abortion laws and recognition of my and Nancy’s loss as a loss of life is offensive and ignorant.

I was lazy and once I'd gone to the effort to write the letter, and found out that letters are generally only accepted if they are under 200 words, I couldn't face editing it and submitted it anyway. When I mentioned to my dad why I was so antsy about him bringing over the paper this morning, he warned me they probably wouldn't publish it. Thankfully, they decided to publish it, and did the editing for me. The published version is here, (you'll need to scroll down, my letter is the fourth one down).

ASIDE THE FIRST... How is it that a homophobic, ... organisation which opposes IVF, contraception, abortion and sex education has somehow snaffled the neutral-sounding title of "Australian Family Association"? If you cut out all the families which the AFA don't count as "family" - ie those who have divorced or never married, single mums, same sex families, families who are not related by blood or legal adoption, then how many families are you really left with? And why do journos bother consulting them about anything family-related (in the genuine, rather than the prejudiced sense of the word)?

ASIDE THE SECOND... I still don't really understand why people who kill others on the road get charged with "dangerous driving causing death" rather than manslaughter. Why is there a distinction (and a lighter sentence) just because the weapon of killing was a car rather than any other implement or poison? My suspicion (and this may have been explained to me by someone once - criminal law is not my area) is that governments felt the need to introduce specific offences because juries would consistently not convict these people of manslaughter.

Why? Because (nearly) everyone drives, and most of us, if we are honest, would acknowledge that we have our moments when we are crappy drivers. Or angry, poorly controlled drivers. Or tired or attention-deprived drivers, even if we don't fall in the significant proportion of the population who also drink drive or speed. And because we've built our worlds around having cars, these death machines have become an essential part of our ordinary lives - as have our patchy abilities to control them. But still - why should manslaughter using a motor vehicle be in a different category than manslaughter using any of the other necessary but deadly tools / substances we use in our ordinary lives?

Things which are difficult to see

On thursday afternoon, we were sitting on the front porch behind the rose bushes when the postie came. Rima went and got the mail straight away - about the only time in our lives together when we've actually both been home on a weekday to see the postman. In amongst the mail was a postpack with 6 cds of images from the radiology department at Royal Melbourne. At first I thought that there were two different cds of images, and three copies of each, but then I realised that every cd contained different images.

We loaded the first one up - an exciting sounding title like "CT - Trauma series 1/3" - and it told us it had 2166 images on it. But it was the first one which stopped me. It was my whole body, neck down to about my shins, with my arms held up above my head.

I remembered this being taken. It hurt so much to lie like that, and you could see my pain in the awkward, lopsided way I was lying in order to try and not put pressure on the sorest, most broken bits of my body. I would post a copy of the picture here but if it was distressing to me, I'm sure it would be distressing to you too.

The time on the image said 20:26 or something like that - it was after I'd found out that my baby had died, but before they had operated to take her out and to repair my knee. And you could see her there, curled within me. To my un-medically trained eye, she looked for all the world like a beautiful, healthy living baby.

I put the rest of the cds aside after that. We looked again at some of them last night - so difficult. I'm going to have to corner a doctor when I go in for my next Trauma appointment and get them to explain what they all mean. I can't tell which bits are which (except for the obvious).

On Thursday night I had so many dreams it was hard to believe they could all fit within the one night. But best and hardest of all, Zainab visited me in my dream. I feel protective about the details - lest people think I am weird or macabre. But I was so happy to see her eyes and to hear her voice - it was the best thing which has happened since the accident (and since realising that Rima and the girls were alive).

How to help?

When our car came to a stop on 27 December after the 4WD hit us, I realised that the car was crushed around my legs and I couldn't get out. For a moment I thought, "oh god - how will I get out - there is no way I can get myself out of here". And then I remembered that the fire fighters also have equipment to cut people out of cars, and that it would only be a matter of time before they would come and help me. I was right, and they were on the scene incredibly quickly to free me.

People trapped by the rubble in Haiti are not so lucky. I’m sure that somewhere, in amongst the rubble, there is a pregnant woman in a similar situation to me, but with the big difference that she has no guarantee that anyone will come and free her, or that they’ll have the equipment to do so even if they can find her.

Nothing will bring our little girl back, but a few well-aimed dollars will help dig people out from the rubble in Haiti, and will give the children who do survive this disaster a chance at life. If our calamity touches you and you are wondering what you can do to help, here is something simple you can do which will give us comfort, send a message of love and do something useful – give money to Oxfam’s Haiti fund. You can do that here or by calling 1800 088 110 from Australia.

BTW: please don't fret about my legs. Somehow I managed to get pulled from that car with only a fractured patella (kneecap), a killer cork thigh and minor lacerations to my legs. (plus some injuries to other parts of my body, but still, I thought that was pretty good for my legs) And I'm healing up well and now hobbling around the house. Don't feel sorry for me - just give money to people in Haiti. Okay?

Summarize this

Remember this post? We used the poem I'd written for Zainab's funeral.

Here are the words to the song I was talking about, even more appropriate now than they were then:

Summarize – Little Birdie
Summarize what it means to be happy to you, and all that’s inside.
Summarize and I will take time to find you.
I am happy just lying here with you, I am happy here just lying here next to you.
Oh maybe, maybe I see you in my mind, maybe I see you in time.
Darling, I just need all of you, darling I just need a little
Kiss kiss, show me what you mean babe, bang bang, show me and summarize this.

Summarize and the moon is barking dangerously.
Summarize and I will take time to find you.
I am happy just lying here with you, I am happy here just lying here next to you.
Oh maybe, maybe I see you in my mind, maybe I see you in time.
Darling, I just need all of you, darling I just need a little
Kiss kiss, show me what you mean babe, bang bang, show me and summarize this.
Darling, oh I need you darling. Darling, oh I need you darling.
Summarize this. Summarize this.

Krabby Patties

You know when Mr Krabs Spongebob Squarepants' boss gets really angry and mean? C'est moi at the moment.

Here are some of the things which have turned me into a cranky bitch in the last 24 hours:

- The stupid Australian Open ("tennis" - apparently some people wish to watch this repetitive crap) being on the television.

- beloved members of my family wishing to watch the Australian Open pretty much all day from about 10 am until ... oh yes, that crap is still on the tv and taking over my living room right now. At 11pm at night. Is there no flipping rest from that crap?

- tripping over a sewing machine in the hallway. Why is it there? Oh yes, we are still unpacking our house and there is shit (i mean, all our precious belongings) everywhere.

- beloved stepchildren feeling compelled to tear a chewing gum packet (both foil and cardboard) into minute pieces, and leave them on the table on the front porch. The front porch being the one place I can escape from the "tennis" and from all the crap in our house.

- idiots who drive at 140km per hour (with a blood alcohol reading of 1.06 - hilarious) up a suburban road, managing to kill themselves, four of their best friends, and maim the younger sister of one of their best friends, in a car with only 5 seatbelts. Get a fucking clue people.

These things make me cranky. I'm sorry to be in such a bad mood. Tomorrow I'll have to write about how beautiful some people are, such as the dear friends and family who have been driving us to medical appointments, cooking us amazing food, doing our washing etc etc etc.

But for now crabbiness will have to suffice. Please stay safe and hold your loved ones tight. xxxxh

Home

We're in the house, and it is heartbreakingly lovely because everything is so perfect except for the one small part which is missing.

The lovely friends & family have set up beds, kitchen, living room and filled the fridge - we are so so lucky in that respect.

I didn't quite realise what a big fat emotional wall I would hit when I got here. It means I'm getting antsy about some small things which really shouldn't matter, and pissing off Rima as a result. Hopefully I can mend that today and stop being such a grumpy bitch.


*EDITED TO ADD* But the good news I was hoping for is here - Dokkoon has given birth to a baby girl elephant!



I can't believe how HAIRY she is! But so amazing. And a bit surprised-looking. Welcome to the world, little one! What a scary confusing beautiful place this is.

Question for Melbourne People re GPs

I'm about to have a nap - the same nap I've been meaning to have for about 2 hours, but have got caught up making lists of all the amazing friends who are coming to help us move house today & tomorrow.

But while I'm napping, if any of you live in Melbourne, and more specifically, in the north - I have a favour to ask. Do you know a good GP I can get to easily (ie hopefully without a car) from preston?

I'm not that picky, but would love:
- queer-friendly
- bulk billing (but i realise how rare this now is)
- family-friendly
- vaguely clued in re mental health stuff

Any tips much appreciated. xxxh

I really need some happy news

Even if it isn't going to be my own this time.

This is why I am so excited about Dokkoon, the Indian elephant at Melbourne Zoo, who is currently 22 MONTHS pregnant and due to have her baby any day / week now.


(Image from here)

What do Dokkoon and I have in common?
- we both got pregnant via assisted insemination.
- we've both had ultrasound scans, but neither of us knew before the birth whether the baby is a boy or girl.
- we have been doing yoga in pregnancy to stay fit. :-)

But this is where I hope our stories diverge. I hope Dokkoon has a wonderful last few days/weeks of pregnancy, and that her birth is smooth and amazing, and that her little one is healthy and opens his or her eyes to see his/her Mama.

I wish the same for all of you who are pregnant now, and all of you who are trying or hoping to get pregnant. I know you may be worried about how news of your conception / pregnancy / birth / beautiful baby will affect me given our loss - thank you for being so thoughtful. Of course I wish my gorgeous girl was alive so we could compare notes on her birth, her development and the things she would have done to make us laugh and gasp with awe. Oh I wish for that so so much, and I live in hope that wherever our baby is she knows how much I long to kiss her and hold her and care for her. But I can't. Nothing you or I can do can change that.

But I really need some hope and good news to keep me going at this time. I am so sad my baby cannot be an earthly or internet playmate for your babies. But please let me weep some tears of happiness for you too - it is a nice change from my own sadness. Not every grieving mama will feel the same way, and indeed, who knows if my own feelings on this will change, but right now I gain a lot of comfort from hearing that others'pregnancies (even in some cases after some awful losses) are progressing well and that their babies are healthy. It gives me some hope that at some stage in the future, we might be able to share some good baby news of our own, although that is probably some time away for the moment. xxxxxh

Thank you

Thank you so so much for all your love and thoughts. I'm so sorry that so many others share this pain, but it feels all the less lonely and scary when your thoughts are with us.

They published my letter on the front page. This article is much more accurate except for shoddy punctuation in the title (Mum's pain should be Mums' pain).

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/mums-pain-as-road-rage-blamed-for-crash/story-e6frf7jo-1225817155287

xxxxxxx

What happened

is still so raw and new that we are wrapping our heads around a new bit of it everyday. And also failing to wrap our heads around, and howling at that failure and our loss and the fact that our daughter will never open her beautiful eyes to see the people who love her more than anything. Here is an offensively inaccurate version of what happened which was on the front cover of a tabloid newspaper. This is my response to it:

Letter to the Editor

Eleven days ago I was 34 weeks pregnant and driving home with my defacto wife in the passenger seat and my beloved stepdaughters in the back seat. A 4WD came onto our side of the road and hit us. We were all badly hurt but our baby daughter died in my womb from the impact. My defacto wife (I can’t call her my wife because in this country we cannot marry) and I had spent nearly four years getting to know our sperm donor, undertaking tests and trying to get me pregnant using assisted conception (fortunately we did not need IVF). When the Herald-Sun reported the accident and our loss on 28 December 2009, (“LOST IVF ANGEL”), it mistakenly called her my “sister-in-law” and referred to my stepdaughters vaguely as “two children”. Many people reading your article must have been wondering about the relationships between a pregnant woman, her sister in law and these two children who were all hurt in the one car. I just need to clarify – we are a family. My defacto wife (what a clunky phrase that is) and I lost our little girl, and our big girls lost their baby sister. I don’t want our family to be invisible – we have enough pain and injuries to deal with at the moment.

Name & Address withheld

But in this wierd strange movie which is apparently now my life, the most genuine and real thing is the love we have felt around us from family, friends, and also people who may not know us in real life but have very real compassion for us (or worse, have been through equally heart-breaking things themselves). It is huge, and we feel so warmed by your love but at the moment we are still so broken – physically, and in our hearts, that we can’t respond to all the messages. I am out of ICU (yay), out of the Trauma ward (yay), and in Rehab. I hate being here – but am doing my best to heal and learn how to do basic things so I can get home and be with my beautiful girls and do the rest of my healing there. Rima & girls are out of hospital (yay!), but there are still various stages to go.

We will never ever be the same after this. I could never have imagined that the Haloumi who kicked and hiccuped inside me could be such a beautiful little baby girl. I am so proud of her and so so heart-broken. I am so thankful my beloved Rima and girls are safe. Thank you for your thoughts and love.

Tick!

Remember how I mentioned that great big list on our wall with things to do in order for the move to happen?

Well, I'm very happy to report that I have no idea whether we did indeed fulfil all those tasks, but we are here, in Melbourne (tick!) all our worldly belongings (ie the ones we didn't sell / put in the brotherhood bins) are here, and safe in storage (tick!), decrepit rental house is cleaned, condition report done and keys returned (tickticktick!), beloved beasties are staying at their quasi-rural cattery/kennels (tick!). We made it to Melbourne in good time for the Grand Gathering of the Long-Faced Kin (aka my extended family "cousin's day"), and enjoyed huge amounts of kissing of cheeks and exclaiming over my huge belly, whilst devouring traditional meringues and egg sandwiches. Tick! And we survived a significant number of hours in a suburban shopping centre, managing to gather small material tokens of our love for the family. TICK!

Each time we hit one of these milestones, El Prima and I bumped headed with relief, and murmured "tick!" - each of these taking us a little closer to getting ready for Haloumi.

The girls are managing like champions - putting in a huge effort to help with the packing and moving (and the multiple trips to the brotherhood bin) - though Snazzy was a bit sad on cousin's day because she missed family.

We've also gone for a birthing centre appointment - and met the Best Midwife Ever. We are really really hoping she will be on duty when Haloumi decides to make an exit. She was very reassuring, and said it would be good if I could do lots of sitting on kitchen chairs backwards cowboy-style in order to get Haloumi wiggling around to a proper anterior position. At the moment (or at the time of the appointment at least), Haloumi had his/her back towards my left side - which is not bad but things will still be easier if she/he can turn a bit to have his/her back at my front. And on Wednesday, we had an ultrasound just to check that my placenta is not low-lying. In fact, it is a good 4cm away from my cervix (yay!) and the ultrasound tech said Haloumi's head was very "well applied" to my cervix - not quite sure what that means, but I'm sure it is good.

We're now installed at my dad & stepmum's house in traditional christmas mode - has been lovely. But after having Mum stay for nearly 3 weeks, I miss seeing her every day. At least, for Christmas Day we're having her over for lunch at Dad's - which will make it the first time we've had them both at the Christmas table since 1987!

Wishing everyone a fabulous festy season & hoping you get a good break from all the normal things. xxx

Choo-Choo! (and a question about Chiropractors)

Thank you so much for your lovely encouraging words on my last post!! I feel like the little red engine chugging up the hill saying "I think I can, I think I can". (BTW - does anyone remember the "Oh my god" collaboration between Pink and Peaches featuring that line? *fans self* ahem...)

But we are getting there! After a crazy, hard week or so, the marking is done, the review is done, we have gotten rid of two stationwagon-loads of stuff at our local market (and made $250!) and put out lots of old / broken furniture for our council clean-up. The girls have been absolutely amazing helping with all the packing and market work. Thanks to my mum, much of our kitchen & linen is packed, and we're on the way with the girls rooms and our rooms. One week to go now! I'm up in Newcastle for various meetings, and just gave a research seminar. Next week I'll still have some research work, but can also devote a lot more time to packing and preparing.

In the midst of all the chaos, Haloumi has been kicking and moving around lots. I spoke to a woman yesterday whose daughter was born at 30 weeks - she spent her first 6 weeks in hospital and much of it in a humicrib, but was all okay. I'm very glad Haloumi seems to been quite happy to stay put - let's hope things stay that way until at least the end of January!

I found out a few weeks ago that a friend of mine who is living in France is about to have her baby any time in the next couple of weeks. So exciting.

On the recommendation of the midwife who ran the birthing course we did, I went to see a chiropractor on Monday (don't worry - she's also a midwife & is specialised in chiro during pregnancy). I guess I wasn't sure if the lower back soreness and stiffness I've been getting is just normal for pregnancy or whether there is anything much I can do about it. It was the first time I've ever been to one and it was quite weird. I've made a tenative appointment to see her again the day before we move but I'm in two minds about whether to cancel or not - partly because we'll probably need that time for packing and preparing for the move, but also because the treatment philosophy seems to be all about coming back for regular (expensive!) "adjustments" administered by the chiro, rather than about what I can do myself in the way of posture / exercise / stretches etc to improve my health & spine function. If you've had chiro treatment (especially in pregnancy) - did it work? Given that I'm really not in that much pain, I'd probably prefer to spend the same money on getting a massage... which will be more relaxing and enjoyable.

Stretch marks, Packing Tape and Deadlines!

Suddenly we've got less than 3 weeks until we move interstate, and I've suddenly been struck by The Fear - that we won't get things organised in time or that we've forgotten something essential. We've now got a big list blu-tacked to the wall and are ticking things off (and writing on new things we'd neglected) at a rate of knots.

The removalists are booked, the pet-boarding is booked, things are (mostly) sorted for the girls' new school, we've just booked a stall at the Marrickville Sunday Markets to sell lots of our old stuff... and yesterday we packed pretty much all the books in the living room / our bedroom / my study. Mum is back, and has been fabulous - helping clear out cupboards, sort stuff, go to the shops while we're packing.

But in the mean time, I've still got lots of work deadlines to deal with - a book review, exam marking, an abstract and amendments to an article... And somehow the more deadlines, the better I seem to get at distracting myself...

For example, by looking for pictures of galaxies which resemble the stretchmark patterns I'm developing around my poor distended belly-button:















At the moment, our daily mantra seems to be "We'll get there!"

And I'm sure we will.

Best feeling ever

Hiccoughs happening in my belly - and not mine!

That is all!

The Story of the Ever-Expanding Haloumi-Home

17 weeks

Once upon a time, there was a relatively modest-sized haloumi home. I'd definitely gotten to the stage where people knew I was pregnant, and could comment without running the risk of offending me. My belly button was doing this very weird thing - going from being a 100% innie to having a sort of "eyelid"... And the boobies!




















23 weeks: See those jeans - ah, that was the good ol' days when I could still *just* do them up. Mind you, I mostly had to unbutton them when I sat down, so it wasn't a very elegant look, but still. Soon after this, I got a package in the mail from my ever-thoughtful Mama, who had sent me one of those little elasticky button-expander things to put in my pants. Yay for being able to wear normal pants! But these jeans are still just a bit too squeezy even then...




















26 weeks: Nonchalantly trying to take a photo of myself. Pregnant - moi?

















28 weeks: Boing! Total basketball effect. 9 out of ten belly-speculators tell me that this is typical "boy belly" - all out in front, with not so much around the sides. But then my mum says she looked exactly the same with me and my sister around the same time. She said, "Oh, don't worry, you'll get bigger! I used to be able to rest a cup of tea on the bump!" I love that I am starting to get some bulge on the sides to make my poor scar (kidney operation, 1983) look like it is straining at the seams a little.

Listy-listyness

I'm sitting in my "office" (ie one end of our outside laundry, which has my desk & books in it) in my bra and pants and eating fruit icy-poles to deal with the heat today. I did have the option of going into the real (ie air conditioned!) office today, but the thought of finding something presentable/ comfortable to wear and dealing with public transport to get in there and home was a bit too much.

I feel like I'm finally catching up with myself after a few weeks struggling through day by day to get to the end of semester. Partly, the end of semester itself has made everything a bit more manageable, but I also got a blood test result from my doctor on Friday telling me I'm slightly anemic, which probably contributed to the "struggling" feeling. Since Friday I've been taking generous spoonfuls of an iron liquid supplement with each meal, and trying (more than I was before) to make sure I'm upping my intake of iron-rich foods. I haven't gone the red meat yet - though after 16 years of being vegetarian / fish-etarian, I'm feeling like I might try and do this a little bit just to sort out my iron / haem levels. But it is a very weird feeling when all my habits are quite well established in a non-meaty direction. If I am going to eat any red meat again, I kind of want to pick something really good too - but don't think I could handle the texture of most of it (and when I did venture in this direction a few months ago, this was mainly what grossed me out), so I'll probably end up chewing on a barbequed sausage.

So, aside from the anemia / carnivore issue, what else has been happening chez Sesame Seed?

- No gestational diabetes! Woo hoo! And I thought the sweet drink I had to have an hour before the blood test wasn't too bad at all - sticky lemonade!

- Loooooow blood pressure - which explains why I've had some woozy / nauseous episodes. Generally low blood pressure is A Good Thing - but I just have to watch out for the wooziness and if I feel faint, sit down. Does this give me an excuse to eat salt & vinegar chips to up my salt intake? What am I talking about, do I *need* an excuse to eat s&v chips?

- Reading this book - by Susan Ross - the midwife we did our hypnobirthing classes with. I really like it - she seems to draw on a lot of experience of all kinds of births, and comes from a perspective which is very affirming of birth as a normal, healthy event which most women are very capable of doing with minimal intervention.

- STRETCH MARKS! Already! So far, just around my belly button - I swear Halloumi has been sticking his/ her foot in my belly button for a bit of extra leg room! You know when you are on a long-haul flight and trying to get comfortable to sleep, and you discover that if you poke your toe in the seat pocket of the seat next to you, you can get an extra 5 cms leg extension? It feels like Halloumi is doing that! Will post a photo shortly.

- El Prima is away at a conference half of this week. It is funny how different the dynamic is when it is just me parenting with Snacky & Snazzy. They've been lovely so far - Snazzy made a special request to do moisturiser duties for my halloumi-belly while El Prima is away, and has been doing a superb job. I love that the girls always give Haloumi a little good night hug or pat, and are always asking me "how's haloumi?" I think Haloumi will be so lucky to have such wonderful loving big sisters.

- Gave our landlords notice today that we're leaving - in just over a MONTH! Yikes!! So so so much stuff to do! I've been gathering quotes from removalists, but I really just need to pull my finger out and book one. And start packing!

Musical Education

Now that Haloumi apparently has quite well functioning ears (and a developing brain to listen to the sounds collected by those little ears), El Prima's been keen for me to expose Haloumi to lots of music. And tonight she found the classical music CD which she used to play via headphones on her belly to her daughters through each of her pregnancies with them. We put it on, and El Prima's middle daughter came out and said "what is this music - I love it!" So clearly all that in utero listening had some effect!

We also noticed that our big dog (as opposed to the chihuahua mini pincer cross) who was sleeping on the rug opposite the CD player, seemed to be making little taps of his toes in time with the music. Presumably he was dreaming of being a great classical pianist!

Maybe I see you

Long before Haloumi came to be known as Haloumi, in the week I found out that I was pregnant, there was a song playing on the radio which made me cry secret soggy tears of joy. The chorus was “Baby… Maybe I see you in my eye… Maybe I’ll see you in time”* and it perfectly summarized that hesitant, contingent excitement of a positive pregnancy test. Maybe this meant we were having a baby – maybe our hearts would be broken. All these possibilities held within a tiny sesame-seed-sized something deep inside me. One of the first arabic words El Prima taught me was “aaineh” – literally meaning “my eye” but also “my darling” or “apple of my eye”. So when I heard those words, “Maybe I see you in my eye”, it was as though I was just starting to picture the possibility of a Haloumi – in my mind’s eye and with it, in my heart.

I hunted the song down – it was “Summarize” by Little Birdy – and El Prima bought the album for me when it was my birthday the week after our positive test. And today, on the train, I played it – with one headphone in my ear, and the other pressed to my belly for Haloumi to hear. Who knows whether kicking means Haloumi likes it or doesn’t like it, but it definitely got a reaction.



I’m still in that process of trying to picture this new “you” forming within me – a separate little someone – and all the possibilities that come with that. I know now that Haloumi is not a figment of my mind’s eye – even if something terrible and unnameable happens this will have been real – I will have had these little responses – this chance to meet and love and know Haloumi. I don’t mean to be morbid – and I know that our chances of the terrible and unnameable things is very very low, but this is my way of enjoying exactly what I have and hold here and now – without pinning my present happiness on a future possibility. Of course I am full of excitement about what I hope lies ahead for us. But at the same time I know what a powerful and unpredictable creature the future is – it feels foolish to emotionally second-guess it, even if we still need to plan pragmatically for it.

* And when I listened to the song after writing this, I realised that the words actually say “I see you in my mind” – not quite sure why I heard it as “eye” but there you go. In the fine tradition of “Cheap wine and a three legged goat”, “she’s got a chicken to ride” etc… (but not as funny)

Get your rosaries off my .... um... Birthing Centre?

This was going to be a nice little post about how during our hypnobirthing class on Saturday, my uterus decided to demonstrate Braxton-Hicks contractions* right at the very moment the facilitator started explaining about them. But then I read this article by Leslie Cannold.

And realised that the birthing centre where we are booked for Haloumi's birth is part of several "public hospitals", which, despite being publicly-funded, is subject to this edict from the Catholic Church:

"Catholic health-care institutions, whatever legal, financial or other pressure they are under, may not co-operate with abortion, sterilisation or euthanasia."

Cannold continues,

"Nor do Catholic-run health care institutions offer a full range of contraceptive services."

Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP, the Catholic church's episcopal vicar for life and health. Should this man be deciding on your obstetric care or your baby's perinatal care?

I don't want to even think about the possible situations where we could encounter this policy. But if anything went wrong with Haloumi, or with my pregnancy, I think we'll have enough heart-breaking decisions on our hands without the Catholic Church telling us that some options are off the table because of THEIR religious views.

I've just rang our birthing centre and had a chat to one of the midwives, who was lovely and did her best to reassure me that these policies only come up very very rarely in the most awful of situations and that even then, the hospital aims to respect the patients' (ie parents) wishes while also respecting "the sanctity of life". Which wasn't terribly reassuring to me, because I can imagine few things could make such an awful heart-breaking situation worse, but one of them would be to have someone telling you about the "sanctity of life" at a time when you have to make such awful decisions. She did, however, tell me that their hospital policy puts the mother's health before the life of the baby, and that if a baby is not showing any signs of brain activity, they will let the parents decide whether to continue life support. But that these situations are always complicated and decided on a case-by-case basis, but that in the end "it is in God's control anyway". Well... yes - depending on whether you believe in God, and whether in your understanding God has control or not...

So where does that leave us? So far, all the midwives and the one doctor we've met the birthing centre have taken our same-sex family in their stride without blinking an eyelid, so I would not anticipate we'd have any issues with them on that front. But it scares me that, if the worst did happen and we had to face decisions about whether or not to continue with the pregnancy, or whether or not to continue treatment / life support for Haloumi or me, that these decisions would be constrained by the dictates of the Catholic Church.

Yes, other hospitals also have ethics committees etc which may also limit our choices - but at least those ethics are broad, secular ethics, and not those of a Church which a) we don't belong to and don't believe in, and b) which has a number of positions we disagree strongly with.

I asked if I could get a copy of the Mercy's Ethics policy - she wasn't sure if they had such a document, but gave me the number of the Pastoral Care department so I could ask them. I will follow up, but I have lots of work to do, and I hate the sick feeling I get in my tummy when I have to think about these "adverse scenarios" when we could come up against Catholic hospital policy. I just wish I had known when we were choosing our care that some public hospitals have such limitations. Or rather, I wish that "public hospital" meant that only public health department ethics limits applied. (I've written a very grumpy missive to the Health Minister about that).

Blech. I don't really want to end the post on that rather depressing note - so will leave you with this cute misunderstanding from one of the dads at the hypnobirthing class while we were watching a waterbirth DVD:

dad: How long can they stay under water for?
facilitator: Well, they have been in water for 40 weeks...
dad: Forty minutes! Really?


*sorry, "practice labour" - part of the whole hypnobirthing approach is to use less medicalised language. And actually, "contraction" doesn't really capture what they are like - I had some bizarre idea of some kind of mini-abdominal earthquake. Instead, it was much less dramatic than that - my tummy went rock-hard for about half a minute or so, and that was it. Just like a big ol' muscle is wont to do now and then.