Drinks with the devil.

  Strangest dream last night. My husband and I were at a bar...and wait...that wasn't the strange part.
I bumped in to a girl I know called P.  She told us about a better, more exclusive bar that you can only enter if you pray to the devil and find his money.  Clearly we did just that (my Catholic mother would be horrified).
 Suddenly, we're on a dark street where I find a small pile of what looks like black carbon paper fillagreed in gold. I pick it up and it crunches and partially crumbles in my hand.
  Ahead, we see an old house in the process of renovation - scaffolded and such.  We discover a bar concealed inside the scaffolding. The music was rich, sexy, experimental melodies.  The patrons all looked like the types I used to know - social climbers dressed in well arranged combinations of exclusive labels and op-shop chic.
  We had a drink with the devil, who had beautiful, youthful, blue eyes in an aging, beaten up face and spoke a little softer than Tom Waits.  He's only of average height by the way.
  The devil was witty, charming and friendly in an aloof kind of way.  I almost felt like he was slightly intimidated.  He counselled my husband and I on our relationship.  Everything he said made sense and it almost seemed like he cared.  Then he told me "You have to be careful pretty girl, I can see scars inside you, particularly around your lungs."  In a matter of fact way, as if I'd expected him to say something like that, I replied;  "Lung cancer right?"  He nodded with pseudo-sympathy.  Then I laughed and said "Is that the best you can do?"  My husband put his arm around me and said "What a wanker". I woke soon after.
  So, Tuesday night drinks with the devil...I wonder where I'll go tonight.

The anniversary of birth and death.

 Today is my son's first birthday and the anniversary of his death and mine. 
We have been to hospital to have his hips x-rayed.  An appropriate place to be today I suppose
- our old haunt. 
Unconciously, til now, I'm wearing the shirt I wore a year ago, minus the arch where a belly would have been til 8.44pm tonight.
 Memories tearing shreds off me right now.  Next year, I hope they will have faded, but unlikely wonder-soaped away like the sweat stains on said shirt.  Speaking of...laundry!  I am well behind on pooh-cloth bleaching.

 

My son

put death in its place.

In his heart

He lifted his tiny head

Raised his tiny arm

And said

Later

When I've lived.

When I've learned to say the word.

When I've mastered it.

Cake and trolleys

  When the baby's asleep, there's quiet, but very little peace because you always have to be one step ahead. I should be thinking of what I will feed him when he wakes and preparing syringes for his nasal gastric tube, should he decide not to eat anything. Instead, I'm planning a cake he won't get to enjoy, for a first birthday he may be too uncomfortable to celebrate.
  Husband is using his small window of emotional and physical semi-freedom to brave the most depressing, lower socio-economic shopping centre in the city. He'll calculate the value of each meat pack and fresh vegetable, while obese families of 6 fill their carts with cans of coke, chips, alcohol and cigarettes.  I used to feel sorry for them, now their ability to degrade the healthy bodies they were born with just pisses me off. They don't know the luxury they were born in to...she says as she sips coffee and smokes cigarettes.

Tidy house, tidy mind.

  If one more therapist or husband tells me I'm crazy, I'll show them crazy.
I mean, among the things people need to get them through the day, is a tidy house really such an unreasonable expectation?  I could be waking up to whiskey or worse, but all I require is some semblance of order and a little domestic dignity. 
  God save me from people who think filth and chaos is sane!

The best of 3 nightmares.

  I have a choice to make for my son.  Do I:
a) Have a nasal gastric tube inserted - a non-surgical procedure that will feed him food, drugs, fluid, but destroy his enjoyment of eating.
b) Go ahead with a gastrostomy next Monday - surgical under general anaesthetic.  It allows feeding, fluid and drugs while he practices eating by mouth and should put the focus on enjoying food rather than making sure he's getting the nutrition he needs.  The downside being the wound can get infected and leak, plus, he's one year old and risking another death.
c) Do nothing and hope he starts eating and stops losing weight.

Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't love our children?

Changing the subject...

  Feeling a little bit the way you do when you've told a guy you love him after the first date.  Thank you all so much for your beautiful comments, but please let's not forget that I'm also just a mum and a woman who wants to laugh at the absurdities of this role we find ourselves in. Sure, my genre can seem like Tragedy, but the very Chick Flick moments since have mellowed it to Black Comedy I think.  Wouldn't mind a bit of Rom Com while we're at it and could certainly go some porn. It's just not easy to strap on your dirty mind when every inch of the house is dotted in baby paraphenalia.
  Well would you look at me? 2 days into 35 and the whole sexual peak thing rears its eager head!  I wish my husband would realise the up side of early to bed.

How I died...

   I'm aware of the gaps, so I'm going to fill them in. Mainly because it makes it hard to write a post daily if a huge part of my daily life is omitted.  But first, I'd like to make it clear that my experience doesn't isolate me from motherhood or the mothers therein.

As you know, I died almost this time last year.  The actual date was April 26th - the day my son was born.
At 37 weeks, having felt looming dread all day, I was admitted to hospital with severe abdominal pain, and I mean puking blood, sweating tanks SEVERE.  Baby's heart sounded good, as did mine. They thought I had extreme colic and gave me an enema. Hilarious in hindsight.

On my return from the toilet, I was feeling better until extremely bad luck shot a white, hot poker through my spine and out through my stomach. It felt as if my blood was draining through my toes and I told my mother to call the nurse before collapsing on the floor.  I came to to chaos.  Baby's monitor sounded like someone beating a door down, nurses were calling out crashing stats and the words "We have to operate now!".

As they began crashing my bed through swinging doors, I thought "Fuck! I'm going to die! This is shit!".  Closely followed by; "If you're there God, please forgive me for disrespecting my own life.  Don't let it count against me.  If the baby dies, please look after him and...if possible...please let me live for my husband's sake."

By the time the surgeon was standing over me, I was experiencing the most profound calm of my life.  He told me he was going to have to perform an emergency c-section right away.  In my mind I answered; "I'm in your hands, I hope you're good."

A day later, I came to in a room full of machines.  They were keeping me alive and I could have kissed them for it!  As it turned out, I'd suffered a splenic artery aneurysm.  I'd lost my spleen, part of my pancreas and 2 and a half times my full volume of blood - a record that has only recently been surpassed by a surviving patient.  I'd technically died three times on the table and yes...there does seem to be something out there.

I was supposed to be brain damaged - the jury's still out on that. Other supposed-to's include coma, unable to produce milk, in hospital for 3 months and so on.  My recovery was miraculous because I didn't know for months just how sick I was.  All I wanted was to see my son.  I didn't for a week and when i finally got to his side, his state of health completely overshadowed mine. 

He was supposed to be dead the night he was born.  Then they said, he might last the week.  At 4 weeks, they decided he wanted to live, but that the winter would probably kill him.  He's nearly a year old now. He's absolutely gorgeous, angelic and smart, but a little bit trapped inside a body that shows signs of cerebral palsy. If I could have chosen a birth with no pain or sadness, I would have, ofcourse, but if it meant I couldn't have him, I choose him.

So that's the story.  The beginning anyway.  Can someone please fart now for brevity's sake?

Birthday

    I've just turned 35. Champagne, pizza, presents and amazing women. The kind that read your blog and surprise you with clothes and Film Noir by MAC.  Covergirl will have to wait a bit longer...Why? Because I'm fucking worth it!

East vs West

 I've been seeing my Korean accupuncturist weekly for needles, massage and wisdom. As she attempted to knead all the heavy lifting and unnatural bending out of my sacrum, she informed me that depression is considered a normal part of life in the East.  Only in the West do we label it, medicate it and call Lifeline from the garden at 4am whilst drinking hot toddy, smoking cigarettes and deciding which tree branch is low enough to hook a rope from.

  Of course, the down side of the East, is that a lot of seriously fucked up people end up swinging from said rope having been told the Korean, Japanese or Cantonese equivalent of "harden up". The down side here out West is that we take anti-depressants when good girlfriends, exercise and regular naps might do the trick. 

I don't want to die, but I could do with the rest.  And if, like me, you're prone to smashing your fists against a wall because the dogs dropped leaves all over your newly swept floor...wouldn't it be nice for your husband to say "You've been up breast feeding all night. Go and get some sleep"?   But it's..."Fuck off angry woman! Come back when you're medicated!"

Ironically the Japanese, much like our babies, used sleep deprivation as a form of torture.  Regardless, I wouldn't mind being part of a culture that sends me to bed instead of therapy.

So much to look forward to.

Monday morning: Go against all instinct and don't breastfeed baby for 3 hours prior to radiology, where you will attempt to feed a baby solids while they're investigating why he won't eat solids.  Not only will I perform this contradictory task, I'll perform it with him lying down inside a terrifying, whirring, beeping tube.

Next Monday: Go against massive claustraphobic tendencies and lie inside similar tube for 40 minutes while toxic dyes are pumped through my veins seeking out aneurysms.

At least I can say I'd never put my child through something I wouldn't go through myself.

The wee smalls

Daylight savings switched to winter hours at midnight last night.  In the fantasy world that is single life, this means an extra hour to sleep in. In the parental world, this means it's 5:30 and I've been up since 4:30, but baby thought it was 5:30.  I've fed him and put him back to bed until 6, which baby will think is 7.  So he atleast gets a sleep in.

I will then try to juggle baby, breakfast, medication, dressing, dogs, pram and exhaustion as silently as possible so that husband can sleep in til 9. He worked til 2 with a raging virus and what's worse, they've taken pseudoephedrine based cold and flu tablets off the shelves.  Goodbye Mummy and Daddy's little helpers. Fuck you P-heads.

Rubbish

This was the carnage last night - my credit card dismembered and rendered useless. It was my husband's idea. I heaved with tears as I made the cuts and kept waiting for him to say: "April fools! I'm actually rich and here...have this platinum card instead."

As the pieces of plastic slipped from my grasp, my sense of self did too. Husband thinks there's no financial freedom in debt and I know he's right, but what about the confidence that comes in the shape of a new pair of stiletto's? Or the shade of a good lipstick? Am I going to have to say goodbye Film Noir by MAC, hello Enamor by Covergirl? 

The maternity savings account is drained and I've gone from main bread winner to the bread line.  We just got home from buying bulk cleaning products: a jif bottle the size of my thigh, a persil bucket the size of my stomach. The upside - enough time spent on said bread line and I'll have limbs comparative to bottles of French perfume.

Ness

Whilst rushing on skincare and make-up and preening what has become a deadly arsenal - my toe-nails, I started thinking about my name.  What are we saying to people when we introduce ourselves?  What does our name mean to us? Are we ever even aware of it?

In that silly movie, You, Me and Dupree, Dupree talks about a character's "Carl-ness". Do I have a "Ness" or is it just a label for me, like Butter? In fact, when we say "butter", we know what we're talking about.  We know what constitutes butter and it sure ain't the same as margarine. So butter has a "ness". Do I? And if so, have I lost it?

Is it possible to integrate this new part of my life called "motherhood", into my ness? Or is it the thing that killed it?
ps: new skincare is a revelation!