Start early!
baby
And I feel as if my left arm has been cut off.
Blogging just doesn’t feel right without a photo.
Photo courtesy of my brother
Last night I went over to Mum and Dad’s for dinner. My brother, his partner and baby girl are over from Melbourne and it was my first chance to see her.
She was born exactly 100 years to the day that my grandmother was born – how amazing is that?
What a cutie.
So gorgeous – with my brother’s tiny ears and her mothers beautiful face.
I didn’t want to hand her back. 
I wish I had had my camera.
How beautiful is my new little niece?!
And how clever my sister in law?
Okay… and I know you had something to do with it my brother but lets face it – your real work starts now!
Love. Love. Love.
I hate it when people smoke around me – I hate it.
It makes my hair smell, my clothes smell. I feel dirty. I could be getting lung cancer.
So who made me say to Groover over lunch on Sunday: “I’d rather they smoke”?
A group of mothers with babies.
No they weren’t breastfeeding.
Well they may have been but I don’t find that offensive, just normal.
And I don’t have a problem with lactating women going out to share a Sunday lunch of fish and chips with their friends. No really, good on them.
What I do have a problem with is trying to sip my lemon, lime and bitters with the cloying smell of Johnson & Johnson babywipes mixed with baby poo wafting over me.
SERIOUSLY GROSS PEOPLE!
We’d got there late.
The pub was full to overflowing and the only table free was one in the corner next to a large table of mums and babies.
Personally I’d rather sit near the lactation crowd than a bunch of yobbos or even parents with active 4 year olds, so I was pleased when they pulled their stroller closer to them, unblocking the path to the table, and we sat down.
“Ohhhh isn’t she cute”, I said to Groover as we sipped our drinks (Does one sip beer… should I say slurped?), “Remember when ours were that little…”
We gazed fondly over at the crowd as we relived those fast dimming memories, and I also reflected on playgroup lunches… the sort you have when you become a member of the Bub Club.
Hugamuga was at work, and Dippity was volunteering at a local fair so we relished this unexpected opportunity for a middle-of-the-day date.
We started chatting about this and that… Groover’s new business, holiday fantasies, what we were going to do over Easter, the grocery shopping…
When…
“What is that smell?”
I was back – 11 years ago – that revoltingly familiar poo/babywipe combination.
I couldn’t taste the lemon or the lime or the bitters.
The window above our table was locked shut.
The stroller had slid back between the tables.
I was trapped.
And the mother had laid her baby down on the padded bench seat and was changing it’s nappy.
At the table.
In the restaurant.
While other people were eating.
How can she think that’s okay?
On which planet is that okay?
Tell me I’m not alone in thinking that there are places to change baby’s nappies and peak hour dining on a Sunday afternoon is NOT one of them!
I’d have honestly preferred her to light up a cigarette.
For one, the smell would not have been so offensive.
And also, I’d have felt less inhibited about telling her to stop.
Mothers. They can be intimidating. I know. I am one.
There is a high profile person in Perth who has recently become the father to a healthy baby girl (as opposed to a fully grown one). She is beautiful and the mother is by all accounts a very lovely and organised person.
The baby was born on the 14th March and to date the babe is not named.
Now there are probably very good reasons for that. Who knows what is going on with them.
But I find it hard to imagine going three weeks without naming my babes. I think I took one look at my babes as they were laid on my chest and said “Welcome to the world little Hugamuga/Dippity”, barely seconds old.
With Hugamuga we’d had a tulmultuous time… first births often are. I’d gone into labour two days before and after getting to 8cm and having my waters broken in the home birth centre at the hospital it was decided to transfer to the hospital proper – so I could have an epidural and a rest.
Things didn’t proceed well – the baby was posterior and presenting the widest part of his head – and I was transferred from the labour ward to theatre, prepped for an emergency caeser and they tried first to suction him out… yep, I got the cut.
I was pretty high on drugs at this point but what I remember is that the doctor was pulling on the suction thingy and the bed started going with it. The brakes weren’t on!
Then we heard a loud sucky sound and we thought – omg! Here he/she comes! Then there was a loud theatrical “pop” and the suction cap fell off and the doctor went flying.
The monitoring equipment went wild and it was decided they couldn’t wait for a caeser – they just had to rip him out. The student midwives observing at the back of the room visibly winced as the forceps went in and Hugamuga came out. (that’s not a good sign)
He scored 4 on his first apgar, and 8 on his second. He looked like a little blue frog with a squashed nose and bruises on his head both where the suction cup had been and by his ears – like sideburns – where the forceps were clamped. But he was okay. Safe. Yes a rocky landing but the plane didn’t crash. I was lucky.
Meanwhile at the other end of the bed the doctor was busy practicing his needlepoint. Third degree tear. 40 stitches. Please remember I’m still very high on drugs. “So you won’t be able to have sex for two months and you’ll need to take laxitives regularly for 6…” sew sew sew… “Oh,” says I, “So I guess anal sex is out of the question?” The midwives glare at Groover. I was joking! I think I’m hysterically funny. “Don’t distract the doctor darling”, says Groover, “you need him to concentrate at the moment…”
But I digress what were we talking about again???
That’s right. Names.
I don’t think I’m especially well organised but I did have the name thing organised. We’d agreed on both a boys and a girls name for Hugamuga… he would have been Madeleine if a girl.
And for Dippity we had a deal, Groover got to name the baby if a boy – Declan (hmmm not so much) – and I got to name her if she was a girl, which happily, she was. But again no delay.
So (finally) here’s my question. Did it take you a while to name your babies?
And if so, why?
Religious reasons perhaps? You’re the Crown Prince of Denmark maybe? You had the baby unexpectedly early?
I’d love to know your story…
When I was a first-time mum at home with a new bub I was adrift. I’d gone from a full-time full-on job with lots of contact with other people to – well – nothing. I was the first of my set to have a baby, my husband worked full time, I didn’t have a lot of contact with my neighbours. I was, in short, lonely.
How lonely?
I went to the health nurse every week, religiously. Even though my baby was perfectly healthy. Even though I had no problems looking after him, the breastfeeding happened.
I only stopped when she kindly said one day “You know, you don’t have to come every week. You’re doing a good job.”
That day as I walked back home pushing my son in his stroller, I reflected on how dependant I’d become on this regular weekly outing. How much I needed an independent witness to my motherhood. How much I needed that witness to tell me I was doing a good job.
I hadn’t had any contact with babies before apart from fleeting glimpses of other people’s babes. I wasn’t the maternal type. I didn’t yearn to pick up and cuddle them. I was the type of person who handed the baby back or on at the earliest opportunity and now here I was the 24/7 carer of this little human unit.
With no frame of reference – how was I to know if he was okay? If I was okay? If I was a good mother?
I owe this child nurse a great deal.
Happily last year I met her again. She’s retired now. I wished I’d had my little baby with me to show her that he survived into teenagerhood. But of course there was no need. She had enough faith in me to know he’d be okay.
Sometimes babies can get a bit worked up – you know, they just can’t stop crying, they don’t even know quite why they are crying, they just are.
You’ve changed their nappy, they’ve had a bottle, they are probably a bit overtired and there is just nothing you can do to settle them.
Mary – my health nurse – what a legend – suggested putting baby in a bucket.
The warm water, the confined space, must take them back to the womb. Whatever. It worked for us.
This endeths the lesson.
If you have some baby wisdom to share – please do!
I went to my first baby shower this afternoon. Not having been to one I guess I was a little at a loss as to what to expect. I kind of thought it would be like a kitchen tea – you sit around and hand over some cute little useful gadget for the kitchen – so I bought a groovy little practical thing for the baby to be.
There was a lot of food. The table was groaning with it. The mother-to-be, Miss Lithuania – looked radiant and very pregnant (3 weeks to go) and the room was full of goodwill. This baby will be a happy one with all the positive energy around today.
But we didn’t open presents – although one girl was telling me of a baby shower where they all sat around and opened the gifts and they were very expensive gifts too – then you had to share a pearl of wisdom.
I guess it’s another of those traditions that we do just because they are “tradition”. I mean it’s not as if these days you don’t already have a gadget drawer in the kitchen chock full of peelers, garlic presses and apple corers by the time you get married, and likewise by the time you get to the hospital you’ve pretty much got everything. We are so much more affluent generally than our parents were.
So if it’s not about the gifts, what’s it for? I come back to goodwill. You all hope for and wish for the best.
I kind of wish it was the sort of thing you do after the baby’s born though… I would have liked a cuddle.
Feline was there and we decided that we’d offer our baby wisdom anyway – even though it’s a long time since we’ve had our babies – via our blogs. So be warned… just occasionally… you’ll see some baby wisdom on this blog…
It also made me want to seek out my old photo albums and look at my two scallywags when they were newborn and gorgeous. (they still have their moments)
Warning: I do not think it amusing or charming when some people say “all babies are ugly except to their mothers”.
Boy 8lb 2oz
Girl 7lb 2oz
