ugh, barf

I really want to post about something totally gross that one of our dogs ingested and excreted, explaining the last three days of doggy diarrhoea, but it's so disgusting I can't bring myself to type it, and thinking about it is making me sick - so watch this space and come back and be grossed out.

Ok, so I'm brave now - one of the dogs had extended diarrhoea for a few days - it finally clicked that it might be connected to the chicken she'd bin raided (well, I'm hoping she didn't climb on someone's table and make of with their dinner). She might have a chicken bone stuck, or something. But no, worse than that - my brave husband was down the side of the house (thank god, we'd just had the garden done, so they've been banished to the side - Jack Russells apparently shit 2/3 of their body weight daily, and I'd well believe it!) and was manfully cleaning up poo, when he found, to his disgust and horror - a WHOLE CHICKEN CLAW INA POO. My dog had seemingly swallowed the whole claw, and excreted it.

BARF!!

I think I'll leave it at that, what more can I say - this is horrible, but at this stage, husband and myself are really just waiting for our dogs to die. Preferably at night, so we don't have to deal with it!

I know that sounds horrible, but we spent a grand trying to keep one brother alive a few years ago, only to have to put him down in the end. Having kids has stopped me being a dog person for some reason. I hate myself for it a bit, but I'd just like some freedom at this stage!

sleepyjo

Sometimes I stay up late because I don't want the new day to begin, I don't want to confront the feeling of time running out, of more jobs piling up, of new demands (and old ones) on me. Little responsibilities overwhelm me sometimes - I know that being tired will make it all harder, but Lost was on late tonight and here I am an hour later, having been unable to resist he temptation to turn on the computer!

What am I doing at 12.55, I have Pilates in the morning and so much correcting to do for the next few days - I did a lot today but I kept literally falling asleep (I work in bed). I couldn't keep my eyes open, zonked from the rigours of the birthday party - will blog about that soon, when I get round to uploading a picture of the hedgehog cake!

But now I've procrastinated enough, I'd better get to bed - my eyes are getting that tiredy fuzz in front of them.

I am looking forward to a baby shower/night out in town the week after next, and have decided to go have my spa day by myself instead of struggling to make it into quality time with my husband. I think I'm going to give up on that one til the kids are grown! I don't think he likes me very much at the moment as I'm too irritable, and to be honest, I can't really put up with him either. So I@m just going to let it all drop instead of worrying about it! And I will buy myself a good book and repair to the Spa on my own and not worry about having real conversation with him, feck it.

Anyway, to bed...

TV3 Or not TV3

I have a dilemma, a quandary... a production company approached me looking ofr a homebirth fmialy for a diary documentary series - our episode would be on birth. We did a 'screen test' for them last week and apparently they like the look of us, and will get back to us in a week or so if they want us.

I think it would just entail a few visits here - one or two before the birth, perhaps during a midwife visit, then (and this is the tricky bit) just after the birth - which the producer vaguely (yet firmly!) said would maybe be a couple hours afterwards. I don't think they really understand what this means - they're happy not to film the birth (which I wouldn't have had anyway!) but they will want to be chatting to me, in my bedrom, over my off-spring who wil be a few hours old!

The problem with this is it slightly goes against the intimacy and peace of a homebirth (Jesus, peace, there's a horrible little dog yapping enlessly outside, which is driving me nuts. The magpies are pissing me off too at the moment, I thinK I need a pellet gun. You can tell I'm pregnant, I'm ususally a peacenik animal lover). The whole point of a HB is just having your chosen nearest and dearest around you and a lovely baby mooon after. Significantly, how can I keep my mother-in-law at bay this time if I've just invited a film crew into my bedroom?

The reasons I would like to do this are to promote a postiive view of a natural homebirth, and because I wanted nothing more, after the crap I received during my first pregnancy, than to tell everybody my birth story, and say, see, this is what it can be like. I didn't need the epidural, I didn't endanger my baby, listen to this great stry. I suppose telling my birth story on tv with my newborn in my arms would really let me feel I'd done that!

On the downside, I'm worried that keeping my house clean enough to go on TV will cause me immense stress, which I need to avoid. Also they want to get in on the Christening, which I have done nothing about planning yet! I also have yet to discuss this with my midwife.

I woke up worrying about this this morning - I feel it could go either way - be absolutely fine, or mess things up competely and I'll feel silly and regret it forever.
More to come on this - I'm off to watch the Lost finale!

ouch, sniff

I fell over tonight - I was standing on the sofa washing the windows, it's my daughter's birthday party tomorrow. I stood down on to her new toy car, which slowly slipped from under me, taking one leg with it and I, fairly slowly, fell back onto my bum. Hurt my foot and elbow and got a fright.

Then my daughter, alarmed by my scream, started shouting downstairs to ask what was wrong and why I screamed, and wouldn't accept my answer, or my husband's, who'd wandered in from watering the lawn - after the third time I shouted at her to just go to bed and he got pissed off with me for shouting - she's shouting back that she won't listen and she hates me. So he just fucked off leaving me to sob in total shock on the floor.

Now I have a bit of tightness in my lower back and a bit of pressure under my bump - not enough to worry about, I don't think, I might not notice if it wasn't for the fall - I might be making it up. But I still feel shaken and tearful.

I think if I'd just had a moment to collect myself, and maybe get a hug and a hand up. But it all went nasty - I've taken an aconite and I still feel shocked and weepy - it's such a scary thing.

And I have so much to do to get ready for this party, but I don't think I should now.

I'm not sure what the point of blogging this is, really. I suppose just how vulnerable you are when you're pregnant, how huge the responsibility is. And I feel so lonely about it. And all I have in my immediate future is washing the kitchen floor.

bump touchers

www.mothering.com/articles/pregnancy_birth/birth_preparation/touching.html





I have to confess, I'm guilty of the crime of bump touching myself. I didn't realise how strongly women felt about this, this desire strangers have to fondle pregnant women's bumps until I read a thread on Rollercoaster.ie where the practice was driving women mad. And I do understand - it feels horribly intimate to have a stranger come up and touch your unborn baby - like they're reaching into your womb... and insult is added to injury by the way people feel compelled to give you random patronising advice, or worse yet, tell you horror stories of their own or other people's labours.

A little tangent - when I was first pregnant, and nearly due, I told a crowd of my father's wife's middle class lawyer's wife type friends at his wedding ,that I was having a homebirth - cacklingly, they hissed 'you'll be begging for an epidural!' at me, like a coven of bad fairies left our of the party. And at a recent children's party, a friend's friend told me the gory details of her first birth - the 10lb baby, the doctor pulling at the ventouse with one leg up on the table til it slipped, and blood spraying the wall.

But I've also heard stories of women giving birth naturally to 10lb and 12lb babies without a tear, without an epidural, etc, etc, so I choose to believe that I can be like them, thank you.

But back to the point - I've always been obsessed with babies, and other people's pregnancies come into that arena - my mother once suggested, if you want Jo to come visit, just have a baby. Well it's true - I'm so drawn to the magic of pregnancy and birth, and I commit the sin of feeling a sense of shared ownership and responsibility for the mother and child - hence the bump-feeling. It seems to me to be sort of like giving and receiving a blessing at once.

And for me, as a person who is usually ashamed of her fat and wobbly stomach, the thought of someone touching it is humiliating and horrifying - but in pregnancy, it becomes fine - there's a lovely solid bump - it's quite liberating to be able to allow people to touch your belly without embarrassing you both with acres of soft flab. I also quite like the feeling of becoming public that pregnancy and labour brings. That you can stop feeling ashamed of your nakedness, that it has a purpose. Doctors or midwives will see you, but with a view to birthing your baby ultimately, and you can confidently participate in that. similarly breast feeding forces you to see yourself differently, and you can bare yourself with someone else's needs in mind. Physically I find the whole thing very liberating (in direct contrast to the physical limitations of pregnancy, which are really frustrating me. Breathing, sleeping, getting up... ugh).

Also, during pregnancy I crave touch much more than usual - unfortunate for me as my husband is pyhsically undemonstrative and I can't afford massages :( Even cooking at the oven or grill feels great (apart from the aching feet and back1) as the heat just feels so wonderful on my crotch and bump!

But at the end of the day, you have to Ask First - a refusal shouldn't offend. One woman suggested she was going to start grabbing the boobs of women who touched her bump without asking - eek! That would get the point across, alright. And I do remember getting pissed off with the French colleague whose wife was pregnant giving me endless, censorious advice - climb out of my womb already, dude - though I think it was because he was a man, to be honest, perhaps that's really not fair....

When I was pregnant, my cranio-sacral osteopath said that she got a sense of silvery, sparkling energy from the baby, who she thought was a girl - she was right on both counts, I think. And I have to say, I once put my hand on my friend's bump without warning, I think surprising her (sorry Deirdre!) but I was rewarded with the most incredible sense of that same sparkling, electric energy, quite incredible. I'd love to know if I could feel it again. But I'll have to choose my test subjects carefully.

water mama

Just a quick post, to share how much I'm looking forward to having a birth pool.

http://madeinwater.co.uk/pool.html

I was sitting beside one of these at the homebirth conference and I felt so drawn to it - it's so deep blue, it seems all mysterious and watery, even empty - I really wanted to just climb in. I think I might get mine early and sit in it and listen to my hypnoborth cd!

Does anyone remember the title of the book of feminist anthropology - it's a sort of feminist answer to 'The Naked Ape'. One of the theories is that at some point, people spent a lot of time in the water, just off the shore in warm lakes, etc. Women needed bigger breasts so they would float in the water and they could feed the babies, and the babies could hang on (not because males were turned on by bums, a la monkeys, and therefore when epeople started walking upright, women needed bums on their chests to keep the males interested...)! Also why our hair grows long, for holding onto, and out skin is less hairy - and why women don't go bald!

The idea was it was safer in the shallow water, not so many predators. It also ties in with whales and dolphins going back to the water and giving up their hands, which I always find moving in a fairy tale way, like the Little Mermaid in reverse, I suppose.
I like this idea - I think I could cheerfully spend my day floating about and having chats with other women - I always get this image of a group of happy hippy people, standing in a circle up to their shoulders in the water. I'd have to eat shellfish, though...

midwife fiction

...She never charged, nonetheless, for assisting at a birth. She enjoyed bringing babies into the world: nothing could compare to the moment when the infant's head emerged from between her mother's bloodied legs. She offered her services as a midwife in isolated farms and in the poor areas of small towns, especially Negro neighbourhoods where the idea of having a baby in a hospital was still a novelty. While she waited beside the mother-to-be, she hemmed diapers and knitted booties for the baby, it was only on those infrequent occasions that her boldly painted sorcerer's face grew soft. The tone of her voice changed as she lent support to her patient during the most difficult hours and she sang the fist cradle song heard by the babe she had helped into the world. after a few days when mother and child were well acquainted, she would rejoin the Reeveses, who were camped nearby. As she said goodbye, she wrote he child's name in a notebook; it was along list, but she called them all her godchildren.

Isabelle Allende, The Infinite Plan

I had Petit Pierre at home, in my grandmother's bed. My grandmother, Béatrice, who spent her life fighting for the right of French women to vote. The low wooden bed that was built for the house in the century before last and has never left it. The bed in which my mother was conceived and into which I myself was born.I ate well throughout my pregnancy and went on long walks all over Paris, nearly every day. My father and mother, after overcoming, to a remarkable degree, their normal outrage, racism and shock, showered me with advice and affection...

...I had the most sought-after midwife in France - my competent and funny aunt Marie-Thérese, whose radical idea it was that childbirth above all should feel sexy. I listened to nothing but gospel music during my pregnancy, a music quite new to me, and to France, and 'It's a High Way to Heaven' ('...nothing can walk up there but the pure of heart...')was playing on the stereo during the birth; the warmth of the singers' voices a perfect accompaniment to the lively fire in the fireplace. My vulva oiled and massaged to keep my hips open and my vagina fluid. I was orgasmic at the end. Petit Pierre practically slid into the worked at the height of my amazement, smiling serenely even before he opened his eyes.

My aunt placed him on my stomach the moment she lifted him from between my legs, waiting to sever the chord until he could breathe on his own; and so, our heartbeats continued together as they had while he was in my womb.

Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy

Home Birth Conference

I spent the day at the home birth conference today. A good day. Inamay Gaskin, the amazing American midwife was there, and spoke twice. She's trying to rescue vaginal birth in the U.S, currently with the help of Ricky Lake and her publicity birth video (people who think this is a publicity stunt on RL's behalf are missing the point - it's a publicity stunt for natural birth, to remind women what their bodies can do).

Inamay was one of the original hippies, who reinvented homebirth - travelling the country in a convoy of converted school buses, delivering babies on instinct, and learning more than any obstetrician knows about women's bodies and the psychology of birth in the process. She fears that US hospitals are pushing for a 100% Section rate, at her birth centre, the Farm, in Tennessee, it's about 1.5%. When she was catching babies in school buses in sub zero temperatures, they had about 250 babies born before the first C Section (for transverse baby) was necessary, and another 300 more before the next...

She's wonderful, grey haired, full of humour. She so reminds me of my mother, with her face shape and Americanness, her humour and her outlook. My mother could have ben her in a different life, I think. I wish she could have gone to see her, she would have loved her.

Another thing she talked about is the hushed up maternal mortality rate in the States, which has not improved in thirty years - in fact it's worsened, and as the country's medical system is run for profit, maternal deaths are effectively hushed up. She has a quilt project with women's names on it, and her stories are tragic and enraging. Caesarean sections are contributing on the rise of the death rate, yet women continue to be sold them as safer options.






We also heard great birth stories, had the tasty tofu curry with dhal from Govinda's for lunch - I failed to win the birth pool (or anything else) in the raffle, for god's sake but I met nice people, old friends, new faces, people I don't know very well, and saw some very lovely homebirth babies! I saw a great hypnobirth video too. The last couple conferences had more packed in, but this seemed more relaxed - I don't know how much information I could have taken!

Bernie from the Committee recognised me from Rollercoaster - and was v complimentary about my posts - which is nice - someone may yet punch me in the face when they find out who I am, I hope that doesn't happen!

In many ways, birth in Ireland is facing a crisis. This seems selfish, but I am so glad I am having my (presumably) last child before they take away the midwives' insurance in September. The wrong-headedness and hostility of the obstetric profession takes my breath away. I fear that if the independent midwives go, more women are going to decide on unassisted birth, which just is not a good option.But I can see why they would.

I hope this is the storm before the calm, and that my daughter will be able to have a beautiful, affirming, positive birth experience. Thank god for the HBA and the work they do, which is nothing short of mighty. When this baby is bigger and things are less hectic, I will join the comittee! For now, I'm just concentrating on a homebirth worth publicising!

liddle notes

Working too hard to post, though Lost was fab tonight, Gotta love that Sawyer - remarkled to friend that he was like a fine little Arab racehorse after the ep where he was wearing a lovely baby blue T and jeans. I just love the intense-face-closeups from under his lovely blond hair. Mmm!

My husband is away, sleeping in a small hotel room with two young men! Meanwhile, I thought I'd miss him, but I'm loving the snore free, big bed. Maybe I'll have to start building that new wing after all.

And finally, the reason for my post - I found the bag/blanket/tagie website I've been looking for - Google found it for me, it was there all along!

www.happybag.co.uk - sounds nice already, non? If you're a wealthy business person/altruist and wish to buy an anonymous mother a gift, vouchers this way please!

funniest ad campaign ever

Dublin is experiencing a building boom - fairly crap apartments with a veneer of 'style' are going up everywhere, seedy areas are fast becoming popular. This ad campaign has been in the news, and I passed the actual development site i North Dublin the other day - not really where I'd want to live.

Before now, I've taken offense at ads for salubrious South Dublin apartments that sell a preposterously unrealistic, James Bond-style lifestyle - a full page in the Irish Times Property section, depicting vague out of focus apartments in the background, in the foreground is a semi-headed man in a sharp designer suit, with one hand resting proprietorially on a young, slightly Asian woman's bare shoulder - she whereas and expensive looking dress and diamonds, very straight, groomed hair, beautiful, obedient - and inevitably, there is flash black car in there somewhere to? Want to be this guy? Just buy an apartment in Stillorgan - and as my husband pointed out, it's available to all the young idiots who will spend every last penny on the 100% mortgage they have to get to get it - for the next forty years. This is Celtic Tiger Ireland as far up its own arse as it can go.

But the Belmayne ads just crack me up - www.belmayne.com/ - these are so funny - obviously aiming for a different class of aspiring young pimp, they sell a bizarre vision of mirrored ceilings, cocaine and prostitutes, surrounded by sating draped walls and roulette tables. It's so ridiculous I feel quite fond if it!

Want to be a high class hooker or besuited pimp in Northside Dublin in 2007? Move here!

single shoes by roadsides

I've always found this such a sad sight. One, solitary shoe, lying either in the middle of, or by the side of the road. I see it time and again. Is it always the result of drunken stumbling? Where is the other shoe - discarded elsewhere after the first one goes, to make others ponder the same thing as me? Perhaps I'm seeing the second, rejected, useless one, not the first lost one.

Am I alone in seeing pathos in people's discarded shoes? Ive just reminded myself of a holocaust documentary I watched where they showed footage of mountains of shoes; men's, women's,children's. I found it far more upsetting than the footage of the mass graves, horrible as they were. The shoes were the perfect metaphor for a human life, thousands, millions of discarded human lives.

Hmm, I didn't mean to go there, but the shoe in the road always makes me think along the same lines. How hard must it be to lose a lace up shoe? Has anyone ever lost a shoe? Tell me why!

To end on a funny note, my friends and I used to hang around in the church yard - one once threw a boot of mine up onto the light fixture over the church door, and the vicar came along, and grumblingly fished it down - we scarpered, but I had to go to the vicarage later and shamefacedly apologise and ask for it back - how bizarre and embarrassing - I was too mortified to go, but my sister strangely found the whole thing amusing and was happy to go with me and ask for it.

I don't know how to end this post. Suggestions?

I'm an auntie!

This is a two part post - one with my musing about Caesarean birth as I nervously wait for news of my Sister in Law's op - and after, when everything is fine!

My sister in law has just had a C section this morning and I am waiting for news,

I was talking to my husband and we were sensible coming to the conclusion that they’re looking after her, and N’s brother is holding the baby, lost in awe and not in any position to make phone calls.

The fact that he’s not calling yet is good, as it means my mother in law hasn’t grabbed the baby and shoved him out of the room!

I’m very conflicted – the whole process of a Caesarean leaves me very emotions – my SIL won’t be able to hold her baby straight after its birth, or put it to her breast and have skin to skin contact for an hour. She’ll be having the hole in her abdomen stitched, which may or may not become infected. And being medicated with drugs that may make her feel weird and trippy and not herself for days. What are the chances that breastfeeding will be successful, if she feels up to trying – with the pain of the wound and her faintly suspicious feelings about it from the start.

Will the hospital tell my BIL about skin to skin contact, and give him a quiet place to stay with his child, so that somebody is holding them, talking to them. Imprinting a sense of love and security in them?

Is it a boy like we think?

These are all my fears about having a CSection – though I know L was worried herself this morning – how could you not be when facing major surgery? And on the other hand, the baby was not engaging, was not staying in one position even, but flipping from the dangerous transverse, to head down to breech – if that had gone on they might have worked them selves in to a fit, and the baby’s chord could have got caught – all in all, perhaps the section was indeed the safest option,

It’s not what I would have done, I don’t think. I would have to be convinced that my baby was in danger, before I gave my birth process over to that medical version, and lost out on so much of what I feel is central to the experience of birthing. But not everybody feels like that about it, or knows they do.

And I have read more than one very positive C-section story that started out as hypno or homebirths. Stories that retained the awe, the wonder and the peace of a homebirth.

Well, updated news – my baby nephew (!) has been safely born, weighed 8lb 12oz, the same as my daughter, and has been named with the same beautiful name as my first ever love! My MIL did not gate crash the party, my SIL is doing fine, and is breastfeeding successfully! More power to her – I‘m so happy. We’re going up to goo and coo tomorrow. How lovely to have a new baby in the family.

So in retrospect, I think this was probably the best course for everyone - even the reluctant baby on one level, because it was sounding like he would have got himself into trouble if he'd tried to come naturally. If he was my baby I would be very conscious of his reluctance to get into position and be born - how would I handle that? I don't know, I wouldn't force rebirthing on the child, but I would treat it with remedies, osteopathy? lots of carrying him in the sling. I don't know what else. But I'm sure his adoring parents will make him feel very very loved and happy to be here!

:(

I left my handbrake off this morning and thought, oops, you always do that twice, makes sure it doesn't happen again - this afternoon I went to collect maternity jeans I'd ordered from stupid Next - but I didn't bring my confirmation letter, and they wouldn't give them to me, even though I got the reference no from a friend, who got her friend to log into my inbox. Arse! Like I'm some opportunistic size 16 pregnant woman on the roam to pick up and pay for other people's maternity clothes.

Then I got home, stopped the car, opened the door and rolled back into the gate post(I stomped on the brake but missed!) and bashed my door. It wouldn't close, but my skillful husband fixed it by hitting it with a mallet! (Possibly with some more delicate mechanical manoeuvres too).

This is my punishment for getting carpet people to come measure for an estimate for new carpet tomorrow. My wonderful, generous godparents gave me a generous, generous cheque for my birthday and I thought I'd see what a carpet might cost. But it seems like every time I get a little extra money, I bash the car - the last time I got tax back, was going to buy a bed, and scraped the door off the neighbour's gate, as Cassia had been screaming bloody murder for 40 mins, and my neighbour had parked his ambulance in the driveway.

Sigh. I'm a dolt. And even when the pregnancy is over, I'll still be in a breast feeding, sleep deprived haze for six months. I need a minder.