Flight of a Hummingbird

Two more speech moments...

2009-07-19T22:02:57Z

I spend a lot of time with the Spud singing, talking, listening to voices on the radio, making silly sounds. She loves it, loves listening to stuff. Consequently her speech and communication skills are developing just fine, and she's starting to attempt to "talk" back to us now. This is leading to a few cool things. For instance, this weekend we started getting yells instead of cries. Instead of crying because she wanted something, she started yelling at us, with quite clear intonations and variation of pitch. We still didn't know what she wanted, which made her a little grumpy, but it was a definite change of emotion and action to normal. And a good one, because it means crying will continue to be for problems/discomfort/upset rather than just general communication.

Two particularly cool things from yesterday:

I told her we were going out to the Organ Pipes National Park, because there was lots of cool geology out there, and said "Can you say 'anticline'?". She gave me one of her happy smiles and said "Aaaaaa". James cracked up and said "Well, that's the first syllable". I started laughing too, and said "Close, little spud, close. Now, can you say 'polysyllabic'?"

Then, last night, James and Sparrow started having one of the becoming-more-frequent conversations. She'll say things in murmurs and coos and it's usually just reactive, but *this* was an attempt to actually say something more abstract and not just an emotional communication. So after they'd cooed and murmured at each other for a while, James said to me "You know what's weird? We just had a conversation and I think we understood each other for all of it. And the weird thing is that we were both talking in Baby."

Visiting Brian

2009-07-19T10:13:46Z

Sparrow and I visited ozraptor4 on Friday, to say a last hello before he heads to Perth and then to a job in China. It was great. James and I already make a game of saying to Sparrow "Can you say XXX?", where XXX is any word that is unreasonably long with a complicated meaning that has to do with what we're talking about at that moment. Like "secondary industry", or "statistical deviation", or "recalcitrant" (that was a description of me :-). Mostly they're terms from maths, physics or psychology. With Brian suddenly the biology and nature sciences got a huge look in. Sparrow was a little wriggly when we arrived, so he started picking up random things to distract her. I think it was a model Diplomystus she was introduced to first, before we got into lunch - but that was after meeting Drake the Morelia, or carpet python - and gosh, did that generate smiles. On Sparrow's part, that is - Drake seemed a little puzzled by the tiny funny-smelling human. But Sparrow loved him. Can you say "herpetologist"? Brian and I had our lunch, as usual two very different kinds of sandwiches... can you say "ecological niche partitioning"? Then she needed a change and a feed. I couldn't help but laugh. Next to where I was sitting feeding her Brian had a pile of fossils on the floor that he was packing up, and he started picking them up and showing them to her and explaining what they were, how and when they lived and all about them. She was so fascinated she kept forgetting she was in the middle of feeding. They were just the coolest thing EVER. I was amused by this, but what got me laughing was when he ran out of fossils and picked up the next thing immediately to hand - a can of Brut deodorant - explained it with the same kind of style and scientific detail, and she gave it exactly the same fascinated this-is-better-than-a-nipple look that she'd given the fossils...

For the grammarians...

2009-07-18T04:30:37Z

I saw this bumper sticker the other day:

I'd Rather Be Fishi'n Not Working

and I thought, well, *I'd* rather be driving a car with rocket grenade launchers behind the headlights so I could erase that sticker from the face of the planet. But hey, we all make sacrifices.

And another story...

2009-07-18T00:39:38Z

Here is Samoyekhre. Like the others, I wrote this pretty much in one hit, then sat back, looked at it, said "I can't believe I had this in my head" and refused to have anything more to do with it. No submissions, no looking for publication, just filed it as "writing practice". I don't like this story. Well, that's not quite true: I love the setting, the character interaction, a lot of the little details. It's a very vivid place and time. I just don't like the story's premise. I prefer things that are a little more lighthearted or joyous, and this one's blacker than I like by a long way, and not in one of the "nice" black ways either. If you're like me in that regard by all means read this story, but stop when he leaves the restaurant and don't bother with what happens next. For me that was the ruin of the story, even if I was the one who wrote it down.

Here's one of those unpublished stories if you want to read it

2009-07-16T22:27:38Z

Doing the first lines meme reminded me that I had this story to do something with. I finished it over two years ago, but never submitted it anywhere. Firstly, I wasn't sure it was good enough - it's sort of a curious style and I'm not sure it hefts enough mass somehow, though maybe that's me being culturally sexist and not sufficiently valuing a feminine manner of story construction. Not sure. The other big reason for never submitting it was that shortly after I wrote it, a very well marketed and prominent piece of pop culture media was released that had a sufficiently similar premise to the twist in this story to make the story suddenly entirely predictable to a reader instead of potentially surprising and interesting. It's now been long enough that it might possibly be less predictable enough to be worth reading. Maybe. I'm putting it up online anyway, for those of you who feel like reading something short and fluffy instead of working today :-) Enjoy (or not -grin-)!

First lines meme

2009-07-16T08:51:05Z

As on angriest and dalekboy: first lines of published works and works in progress (note that "works" is fiction, not including my science writing):

(published)
Birder
When I first saw the yellow flash out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was a bird.

(finished but not published, or not submitted anywhere)
The Interview
The sign wedged into the door said "Kronos Trucking – We Run On Time".

Samoyekhre
The street was the usual mix of lights and grime, people coming off duty and going on duty, staggering home to bed or heading out for a party of a night.

You Can Take It
They were wrong.

Red Jacket Man
The two boys crawled up the bank, pushing through the prickly bush.

The Song of the Dark and Cold
Darkness.

(in progress far enough to have a first line)
The mysterious art of Genka-fui
When my new neighbour moved in, I said hello over the fence.

(Huh. Seems that the key stories I have in my head, like the Scrambles kids or Kingston SE, are still only in scrap form, without a real beginning yet. Not surprising, though - I tend to write short stories in very intense bursts that leave me with something very close to a complete first draft in one hit.)

The future ruler of the world begins her training...

2009-07-13T02:12:51Z

New photos here, of us wandering around with Grandma, visiting Parliament House and preparing to take over the world...

Sand (in the movies)

2009-07-10T21:56:25Z

We watched Spaceballs the other night, for the first time in a long time. Certainly the first time since I started learning to track. You know how they've parodied a dune sequence, with the characters stumbling through the masses of empty baking desert until they find the secret hideout of Yoghurt? I laughed most of the way through it. Once you start paying attention to things like tracking, these scenes look so different. Tom Brown Jr mentions this in his Case Studies of the Tracker book, about how after working as technical adviser on the movie Hunted many of the movie crew who'd been paying attention to what he did with tracks, tracking and cleaning up had picked up enough understanding to be able to count takes in some movie scenes. And this scene was the first time I really got to do that myself. If you watch the shots carefully, you'll see that they've tried to hide anywhere where they've done multiple takes. They've tried not to be obvious. But in one shot when the light on the sand is glaring white so that no outlines show, watch the edges of their shadows as they ripple behind the characters. There's tracks aplenty in that. In another shot you can see where they've smoothed out the sand to hide evidence of a previous take - probably by running a sheet of cardboard over it or similar, and not very evenly. I spent most of the dune sequence laughing, and for a completely different reason than James (who turned around afterwards and said "Tracking geek!"...). So yeah, if you want to practice spotting tracks in a movie, that sequence isn't a bad one to start with.

To drug or not to drug...

2009-07-10T03:06:14Z

I've always been of the rough opinion that giving infants painkiller drugs like Panadol was overkill and more often about fussy parents than an actual problem of the infant's. And then yesterday I for some incredibly stupid reason in hindsight decided to book Mum and myself in for High Tea at Parliament House, having been invited by the Sarjeant-at-Arms no less, on the afternoon of the day that Sparrow had her first vaccinations. Sparrow followed a fairly typical pattern for babies who've just been vaccinated - cried when it happened, settled down with a feed, went to sleep, was drowsy for a few hours and stayed fairly settled - and then about five hours later woke up with a grizzling, inconsolably howling vengeance. This awakening coincided pretty much perfectly with our arrival in the hushed, ornate, 23-carat-gold-leafed and Edwardian-painted beautiful halls of Parliament House and our settling down into the leather benches, red velvet chairs, dark wood panelling and white starched napkins of Strangers' Corridor. After much walking up and down with her, changing her nappy, attempting a few times to feed or provide something to suck, it became obvious that she was tired and hungry, but too achy, hot and uncomfortable to either sleep or feed. Twenty minutes and one bare-minimum-dose of baby Panadol later, she'd settled down to the point where she could smile, and then fell asleep and stayed that way for the rest of the High Tea, our following walking-tour of Parliament House, our walk through the city afterwards and most of the train journey home. It would have been the entire train journey, but we got Connexed so there was an extra half-hour transit time in there.

So, as described by the nurse and other mums, baby Panadol is certainly a magical thing in that regard. I had it with me at the nurse's recommendation, as it's what they suggest if she starts to run a fever, just to bring her temperature back down to a safe level. The nurse also said that while you don't give it as a matter of course, if she gets to a point where she can't feed it's worth it to settle her down so that she doesn't dehydrate. She wasn't in danger of dehydrating yet, but it did bring her back to a point where all the vaccination reactions were manageable for her. So I think giving her the dose was definitely the right thing to do. She only had the one, and has stayed mostly OK if a little more unsettled than usual since.

But I still have questions of myself. And the answers aren't necessarily internally consistent, having disliked painkillers generally but having never had to face this situation before.
For instance: if we had been in a university cafeteria instead of Parliament House, would I have gone ahead and drugged her to sleep? I'm not sure. There was a certain degree of social pressure, not applied by others but perceived by us, that in such a formal setting howling was inappropriate. So perhaps I moved to give her the painkillers sooner than I would have in someplace less formal and more noisy like a cafeteria.
Would I have dosed her if I was at home? Maybe not - I would have accepted the howling for a much longer period, and perhaps she would have cried herself to sleep given another half hour. Another half-hour wouldn't have bothered my nerves at all at home, but it did given where we were.
If it was an animal and not my daughter, would I have dosed her? Instantly. I don't believe in giving animals unnecessary pain, especially when it's not got an obvious cause - it had been five hours since the actual vaccination, and how would you explain to an unhappy dog that something five hours ago was causing the uncomfortable hot achiness they felt now?
Why do I feel differently about animals and infants? I don't know. I just know that I have more of a tendency to say "Toughen up, Princess" to humans, even ones that can't talk yet.
Would I drug her for something else if she was in pain? Not necessarily - most ordinarily-encountered pain is probably something she can and should learn to weather through. But a vaccination has that problem, as above, of not easily linking cause and effect so there's an obvious-to-parent cause of the pain (and a reason which is probably worth treating), but it's not obvious to her. She's just unhappy and uncomfortable.
Am I happy with having given her Panadol? In this case, yes, though it does give me reason to ask these questions.

Two other things I've found hard

2009-07-06T03:14:07Z

I didn't have the right words for these in the other post about hard things, but now I think I do.

The next thing I've found hard is, as I'd expected, the relentlessness of it. I've never been great at long-term commitments, be it research projects, permanent employment, or relationships. Y'know, play, work or love. Doesn't matter, they're all things I've had trouble dealing with if they come with the "until forever" clause, or even just a "do this and nothing else for at least two years" clause. I have a compulsive need to do as many things as possible, variety and diversity, all at once, high energy, broad focus. My marriage to James survives largely because I had to admit to myself that if I still liked him this much after twelve years we might as well make a habit of it and I shouldn't be afraid to sign up for lots of adventures with him just in case I got stuck with him. Cos, you know, I'll probably like all the adventures I have with him so more is OK, really. The other reason our marriage survives easily is because he's very patient, and understands that I'm not really containable, I just don't want to go anywhere else. He's very good at encouraging this attitude too. (Was I supposed to admit that I know he does that? Oops... never mind.) Thing with Sparrow though is it's really All The Time. 24 hours, 7 days. I knew this, I knew it would be hard, but the reality of it is just occasionally a bit challenging. As long as I'm her sole provider of food I need to be around, or carefully arrange the times that I'm not so that she's covered. I'm also, because this is what "food" means, the primary provider of warmth, cuddles, attention and security, though James does as much of that as he can as well. The last bit is the hardest - I am not really security-oriented, and looking to me to provide that is an exercise in silliness. But she doesn't have a choice in needing it from me, and so help me I don't have a choice in providing it either. Even if what I really want to do is sleep, read, work, exorcise the stories from my head, or go worship quietly in the forest. So much for solitude, and for getting the noise of people out of my head. She will always be there now. I find this a bit stressful, not least because it has no end.

The other thing that's been hard is that I have trouble finding myself sexy. Classic post-natal issue, I know. But so much of my life's been built around a very confident and sexy self-image, and now the sexy half of that really isn't there. I can't really remind myself that I'm sexy either, at least not in the normal ways. For instance, I have to work fairly hard to strike a pose in front of a mirror that I think shows my current curves in any kind of glamourous light. I can't wear any of my lingerie because none of it fits. (To be fair, a lot of it didn't fit already seeing as it was bought when I was 18 and a size 8, but there was still plenty of more recent stuff that did. Now it's all too small, tops and bottoms.) My stomach muscles are still pretty shot, and my fitness low and my back sore, so my movement's pretty ordinary and highly restricted - none of the half-dancing walking or hugging that a lot of you would associate with me. I just can't do it. Instead I walk around the house trying desperately to uncrunch myself enough to stand up straight and not wince with each step. So the strategies I use to tease and flirt aren't really there. I went out for a walk the other day and realised that I was wearing black stretch pants stretched a little too far, a skivvy, and a big bloppy blouse open at the front that hid the lines of belly and thighs, and thought "Hey, this is exactly the classic overweight-middle-aged-woman's outfit stereotype". That led to a certain amount of misery, because at the moment between my excess weight and the frequent need to breastfeed it's all I can wear comfortably. And I don't think it looks good, it just solves the problem of what to wear at this time and season without me having to go buy a whole bunch of new clothes. So, meh. I will be going shopping at the ABA's shop in Malvern next week, I think, and possibly studying the offerings online at Hot Milk, because I know it's possible to dress a lot more nicely than I am and I'd really like to do that again.

Old photos

2009-07-05T22:59:17Z

I pulled out the photo album from my first six years, looking for a comment my mother had made about wearing stretch shirts to include in a different post. I haven't found that yet, but I did find some interesting things. First, Sparrow definitely looks a lot more like James than me at this age. Her cheeks are much rounder and chubbier. Interestingly, I also look like I had longer legs at eight weeks, but that may be more of a difference in the nappies - while we're both photographed wearing cloth, I'm in the old folded flannel style, folded in a form which looks like it's about to fall off and which my mother comments is a way of folding she's stopped using because it wasn't working so well but that's how the hospital had done it. Regardless, I've got my legs out straight. Sparrow tends to be a bit bandy-legged in the nappies we have her in, and that hides her actual leg length. I also noted that as an infant I looked very much like my father. I grew to a face shape that is distinctly that of our female line, mother to daughter for at least four generations, but the influence of my father's appearance is quite strong.

The last thing I noticed was a comment from a photo at my first or second Christmas, probably second. There's a big blue inflatable plastic elephant next to me, and Mum comments that it was my present, but I haven't really played with it because I prefer real things to toys. I still have this preference to give children real things to play with rather than faked-up or artificial toys, and I thought it was an adult opinion that came from my experience with education and early childhood and science and stuff. You know, a rational thing based on providing rich and complex stimuli with subtleties that relate directly to experiences rather than strong-but-over-simplified stimuli that don't relate to the world around you. But no, apparently I've believed this since I was only a few months old. Heh.

Because I'm still thinking about it

2009-07-05T00:59:12Z

angriest asked if we'd won the 90 million in last week's lotto, what would we honestly do with it? It's something I've thought about on a number of occasions, though not usually with as high an amount. Now, I didn't win anything - I paid the tax on people who don't understand statistics like most people. But because I've spent plenty of time thinking about it, a lot of the details are starting to form. So I thought I'd put my answer here, or at least where it's up to.

There's three stages. The first, like most people, is to stabilise the housing arrangements of ourselves and senior relatives, though with the added thing of setting them up sustainably water- and energy-wise. So, buy a house and redo/renovate it for sustainable living someplace where we'd actually want to live, cover outstanding mortgage debts or set aside money to do so when my mother hits retirement age in a few years, install water tanks and solar panels or wind turbines, rebuild for passive solar, etc etc as needed.

Second stage is to gift in the direction of certain non-profits that I support. Focused gifts, to help them try and achieve certain of their aims. CERES, to employ an appropriate green technology person and keep going on some good projects as well as renovate / maintain some existing ones. The Alternative Technology Association, for some of their high-urban-penetration projects like the distributed wind power research they've been doing (and again, include salary). And lastly the Tracker School, in particular to support them running a standard course in Australia (if that's what they honestly want to do) - which involves a bunch of capital for the local research, shipping and instructor flights, and to set up the basic infrastructure to host a full class of 100+ students for a week's intensive without damaging whatever bush area they're in. Each of these three non-profits does good work at getting large numbers of people to improve their life quality, increase their sustainability and reduce their impact on the Earth.

The third stage is the big one, and where most of the cash would end up going. The overall aim is to support the small communities of Western Australia to increase their sustainability and reduce their reliance on the greater infrastructure. There's several things I could do, depending on how much money I actually had, and what projects local councils were willing to get involved in - I'm not one to force new development on people because then it doesn't get used. The projects would also include funding for training locals to maintain utilities and provide services, if locals willing to undertake the training were present - the aim being to make whatever goes in something that can continue to be used for twenty years.

Some of the possibilities that I've thought through for this third stage:

* Set up a research project, fund and company to design, engineer and build appropriate and sustainable power sources for interested towns in the WA wheatbelt, to create distributed power sources and make shires as self-sufficient energy-wise as possible. (I'm thinking solar thermal ponds using salt water from the groundtable, biomass using oil mallee plantation leavings, wind power, or whatever seems appropriate for each area.)

* Convert Narrogin into a Solar City with solar panels on most houses and businesses. (I worked out once it would be possible to do this with I think it was about one million dollars, if the townspeople were willing to be part of such an initiative. I know the council would support it - they said so when I asked them for details for doing the math.)

* Develop a series of electric car charging points at suitable distances down the Albany Highway, Brand Highway and SouthWestern Highway in WA, that were solar powered but grid-connected. The project would involve local councils and also include training people in local towns for electric car repair/support.

* Build self-powered / self-watered nursing stations in the smaller places, that can be used either by permanent nursing staff or by a district nurse on a regular circuit as the council thinks appropriate. (I can't provide the nurses or fix the shortage, but I can make sure the infrastructure is in place to provide an outlet for basic health needs).

* Invest in communications infrastructure in country areas, so that there's less cherry-picking in who gets the better services. What I mean is, you don't just get the good quality services in the places where there's a high density of people to pay/compete for them. This could also include support for 24 hour health-related phone support lines, in a combination with the above point.

Sure, I can't do all of this with 90 million. But I figure I could get a few five-million 1 MW power stations around the place, and some new nurse stations to boot.

Milestones

2009-07-04T04:48:02Z

Some folk record baby's first this, or baby's first that, be it shoes, babycino or (shudder) drink of Coke. Fair enough, we are too. So what are we recording for Sparrow? Uhh... well... today for the first time she attempted to sing along to Daddy doing Swedish Chef noises, and for the first time heard the phrase "quantum tunnelling" used correctly in a sentence. Today our daughter is eight weeks old. -grin-

On another note, this morning a group of roadworkers were installing speed humps in front of the new crosswalk out front of us. So I took Sparrow out in the grey light of a Melbourne winter dawn to watch the cars, buses and trucks maneouvering around all the bright fluorescent orange markers and people. This led to me giving Sparrow a discourse on the atomic physics underlying fluorescence (which is where the quantum tunnelling mentioned above came in). Eventually she started getting restless - fair enough, it was cold. I said to her "Shall we keep watching the men in funny orange shirts while Mummy discourses on atomic physics?" and she said "Wak!", which is Sparrow for "Stop getting distracted and pay attention, Mummy". She says that to me a lot -sigh-. So we went inside to the warm for another course of breakfast.

Sparrow helps with the housework

2009-07-03T01:41:32Z

Sparrow helps with the housework - photo and story page

What I've found hard

2009-07-01T01:14:07Z

There are a lot of things new parents are supposed to find hard, and I get asked about these a bit in casual conversation. Easy topic of conversation, you see, especially from people who haven't had kids themselves. Understandable, I used to do it too. They aren't the things I've found hard though. Sleeping? I get plenty of sleep. The first two weeks were rough, but after that it's been fine - I usually get between six and seven hours of sleep, and after the first month that was only broken up into two blocks most nights, so that's been plenty. Nappies? No issue. I keep cycling the laundry through in the same way I used to of a morning, just on a lot more mornings. The poop doesn't really cause any grief, it's just there. And only there, it doesn't tend to spread to everywhere. Time management and doing stuff? Easy-peasy after the kind of jobs I've held. I'm quite used to holding ten projects in my head, breaking them down into tiny steps, and doing each step at any opportunity that presents itself. Give me thirty seconds to three minutes, and I'll have done one or two more things that needed picking up, moving around, sorting out, fixing, preparing. So the house stays mostly tidy and organised, the garden's in good shape, I generally get exercise time and all my meals made and eaten roughly on time give or take an hour, she stays entertained, and I get one or two major tasks done each day on top of the daily stuff. You just have to be willing to take each thirty seconds as they come, and I've been doing that for a long long time before she came along. Even that old saw of "you can say goodbye to frequent sex" hasn't really been true, though it's taken a little more preparation and a willingness to put aside plans to spontaneously take advantage of free moments.

So all of that's really been fine. I don't feel rushed, stressed, unclean or tired, and I'm getting laid. What I *am* struggling with is quite different, and predictable if I'd thought about it beforehand.

The first thing is attention. I suddenly have all this performance and extrovert energy that's not going anywhere. I'm not on a stage in front of people, I'm not leading guided walks and answering public enquiries, I don't have people chasing me up to find out about things, I'm not making speeches or writing words that will be seen by thousands of people on TV or in newspapers. Being mostly housebound for a few weeks (and usually quite tired in the evenings) meant that for that time I also didn't go to any big social things where I could socialise with lots of people at once. If I go out for a walk, I get plenty of attention but it's secondhand - people stop to talk to the baby. I'm good with that, but overall I have this surfeit of energy that just doesn't have a channel. About the only channel I have is making and reading comments on LJ posts -grin-. I am thinking that when she's a little older I will try and join the local theatre group, or maybe one of the local choirs, so that I can spend some of that performance energy usefully. I should also try and find out about mothers' groups so that I have another potential social outlet. Melbourne's always been bad for me in the social regard - I have very few local connections, the workplace connections are a little random and loose because of all the partime and short-term contract work, and the other friends I have I don't tend to see a lot of. No particular reason or problem, it's just that Melbourne is a big place with a lot on. If you want a good party culture, you need a smaller city where people live closer together and there's less competition for social time. So now I need to work more on the local connections, I guess.

The other thing I've found hard to get is creative focus. I occasionally get bits of story in my head, but that's where they stay. Same with paintings and drawings. I don't tend to get an hour of uninterrupted time ever, and an hour is about what I need to drop into fugue, create madly and intently, then slowly pull out of it. This is awkward because again it's a type of energy that gets blocked up, but also because the fugue is a form of rest for the rest of my brain. It keeps me more alive, aware, active; lets me see the continent of forest with all its great interconnecting systems instead of running around under the tree branches sorting the fallen leaves. Without it, I find myself a much less interesting person. And I miss it.

A butterfly whispers its secrets

2009-06-29T10:18:06Z

At the butterfly house, at the zoo. Sparrow was fascinated by all the flying fluttering things, and they got closer, and closer...

Weird cordial

2009-06-27T10:40:19Z

The bottle is labelled Sharbat Rooh Afza, Summer Drink of the East. It's the first cordial I've seen that is made in a laboratory, lists the ingredients by their scientific names as well as common, and gives the quantities of each in mL per 50 mL.

Adding to the curiosity is that I only recognise around half of the plant extracts they've put in it (outside of the sugar syrup and pineapple juice base), and those that I do recognise are, um, not exactly common cordial flavourings.

In order: coriander, carrot, large-leaf portulaca, Citrullus vulgarus, spinach, mint, loofah (!), Cichorium inkybus, Vitus vinifera, white sandalwood, Indian vetiver, Parmelia perlata, Nymphaea alba, Onosma brachteatum, distillate of Keoria, orange juice, distillate of Citrus medica, distillate of rose damask.

The ones still in italics I don't know, though some I think I should and just can't remember - for instance I think the Onosma is a daisy or lettuce relative, not sure. Vetiver I don't know the flavour of. I've never heard of Keoria, and I have no idea which of the weird and wonderfully convoluted citrus family medica is. Then there's the things I *do* know. Coriander and sandalwood are more commonly found in perfume than cordial, as is the damask (though that's more believable in food if you like turkish delight). Carrot cordial is only slightly more believable than spinach cordial. Portulaca is a succulent, but even the large-leaf type would take a lot of squeezing to get much extract. And finally, loofah? That's the bitter melon they dry out and throw all the flesh away to get the inside for sponges. Sponge cordial, mmm mmm.

I haven't tried the cordial yet. I opened the bottle, James and I each sniffed it, and he said "Take it far far away from me", and I agreed. I will still try some at some point, very carefully. But for once, given the things I normally eat without blinking, I'm extremely cautious. -wanders off muttering "loofah..." under her breath-

(Edit to add: I've gone looking up the ones I didn't know. They include watermelon, citron (of one sort or another, there are lots of kinds), white lotus, chicory and the common wild grape. Still an odd mix of flavours and contents.)

More useful baby stuff

2009-06-26T23:23:42Z

(Because I wasn't going to remember it all let alone write it all in one hit!)

Baby monitor
My mother bought us this, after repeated rounds of "I want to buy you something useful, what do you need?" Once James went back to work, I finally realised that this was going to be essential. It means when she goes to sleep at around 9:30 am for what will most probably be an hour but may be only ten minutes, I can go sew, wash the dishes, prepare ingredients for lunch or dinner - anything that requires two hands and takes me out of earshot of where she's sleeping. I was still doing these things without the monitor, but was having to stop every few minutes and go back to listen/look that she was still sleeping. So the monitor's great. It also meant we got to leave her asleep and go off to the bedroom one afternoon without worrying about trying to keep an ear out, which is kindof essential at those moments. We got the cheapest one on the shelf, because as far as I could work out they were all pretty much identical other than in appearance, at least as far as the functionality we'd use went - they all covered the distance in our house, used a charger and rechargeable batteries, were about the same size and had a belt clip. I managed to break it the third time I used it, as the belt clip doesn't attach well to any of Mummy's soft clothing and it dropped and fell onto the laundry concrete. Thankfully all that had happened was the battery cord disconnected, and we were able to fix that easily enough with a bit of determination. It does strike me that building a better /simpler / "home brand" type model for low-income-families would be a good community project for a bunch of TAFE students - the one we have, even at cheapest / least flash, is still a little silly and overpriced.

Calli's porridge sachets recipe
Ju sent this to me just before I went into labour. It's been great. Oats are kind of a mainstay staple, very good for nutrient balance given the amount of milk I'm producing. And instant porridge makes a quite palatable breakfast that I can fix at speed and eat when I get the chance. I haven't actually ended up following the recipe process exactly, not as far as making up my own sachets. That's a time issue, but also a decisiveness one. It's been easier for me to make up a general mix and keep that in a box, then throw a scoopfull plus hot water plus anything I feel like adding into a mug. This is easier because I tend to have a lot of dried fruit, nuts, LSA, spices, syrups and sugars all on hand on the counter anyway, so I can just grab whatever sounds good that day. Cinnamon myrtle plus almond meal is a nice combination, as is sesame/amaranth/coconut. But so far I seem to be having chocolate chips and maple syrup far too often...

laundry basket
I hadn't realised that when you are collecting enough laundry to do a load every one to two days, you will start collecting the new load of laundry while the basket is still in use moving the just-washed stuff to line and back. I used to just use the one basket to collect, take out, bring back. But I know better now. So, new basket it was.

night lights
First time I needed one of these was when she was only two days old. The night feeds were just so awkward, and the hospital clock wasn't illuminated. Knowing what the time is lets me sleep a lot better and recognise when I'm waking up three times in ten minutes or three times in three hours. I'm still finding them useful, for evening feeds when I need to see what she's doing but I don't want to turn the bedroom light on. We have a Gimmo LED light in the bedroom that my mother bought, that shifts through colours. It annoys me because it uses the sequence RGB, which I find incredibly unharmonious and jarring even if it is part of the total sequence RGB-MCY-W. Why they didn't do a proper blended rainbow sequence like RMBCGY I don't know. But it works well enough. Less useful has been the LED-artistic thing on sticks that Mum also got, which turned out to be blue LEDs and not white. They are simply too bright, and the colour is too disturbing to my eye - too much UV, and too cold and harsh a colour. It bothers your night vision too much to make an effective night light, though it's a really pretty decorative thing. I am still looking for a night light that I like, that will be low energy, not some silly kind of unreplaceable bulb, an appropriate color and a brightness that doesn't blind us when we have 2 am nappy changes.

Baby carriers
We have two: an Ergo, and a five metre length of fabric ala wearyourbaby.com. We didn't get a pram for a bunch of reasons, including having to carry it up the stairs (which I wouldn't have been able to do for the last six weeks), the constant social pressure from people assuming that it was essential (I'm stubborn like that) and also the sheer complexity of the decision. Just too hard. The carriers are nicer. The Ergo is a great thing, comfortable enough and suitably technological and masculine for both Dad and Grandad to get chuffed about being able to carry a small child. Neither of them would be seen dead in the very feminine earth-mother-style fabric wrap that I accidentally got in pink. So sue me, I thought it was a more peachy-orange under the shop lights and was in too much of a hurry to check it properly. I can try calling it a nice peach and yellow plaid, very soft and welcoming, and that's good enough for me, but no red-blooded male would fail to spot its essential pinkness. I like the fabric wrap. It's simple, very cheap, and more comfortable than the carrier - it puts the weight in a different spot on my back. The Ergo is supposed to be very good for your back, but I think I'm just the wrong shape to wear it right. This may change as Sparrow gets big enough for the back-carry position though.

Rock salt
Salt water baths = best thing for nappy rash bar none. Dunk her little butt, swish and splash (with a pause to kill ourselves laughing at the totally confused look). We tried creams, ointments, powders, switching to disposable nappies, and this is what worked. It's rock salt because that doesn't have the fillers and flow agent additives that table salt does.

syringes
Expressing's well and good, but how to get the milk in them after? They say to not use bottles for feeding in the first month to avoid nipple confusion, whatever that is. Instead, feed via a syringe. Great for knowing how much milk they're actually drinking when it's only measured in millilitres. Great for trying to collect colostrum off a nipple as it slowly trickles out drop by drop in those first two days. Great for handing to Daddy along with a cup of breast milk and a screaming baby and saying "You do it, I'm off to some isolated Cuban beach for the weekend." Just great.

600 ml cups and auto teakettle
A teakettle that turns itself off when it's boiled - essential. You never know when and how the Code Browns will occur, or any other minor disaster. The 600 ml cups are great for cold drinks. I try to have one always full on the table next to the rocking chair. You're just always so thirsty, and you pump so much fluid through.

Watching her develop emotionally

2009-06-26T11:39:57Z

It's curious to see how things start to fall into place for Sparrow, emotionally at least. Take fear, for instance. She's been having bad dreams since early on, where she wakes up crying, and it's an upset kind of cry. The other cues she gives show that the emotion occuring is along the lines of grief and sadness, the very personal kind that accompanies hunger. Specifically, food being taken away or not being available. So those have been her bad dreams - until a few days ago, when for the first time I saw a fear dream. She was dreaming, then went into a whole-body startle, pulled a fearful face, and burst into howling tears. As it happens I can make a pretty good guess what that dream was about, because the day before I'd accidentally lost my support on her head when she mega-wiggled in the bath, and suddenly her face got dunked in the water. With her mouth open. This was not a happy experience, and as far as I know it's the only adrenalin-type-fear-thingy she's experienced so far in life. So now she knows fear, and specifically the sudden-panic kind of fear as opposed to slower, more chronic fears like fear of loss, or fear of eventually dying in a car crash without clean underwear on. (Not that she's anywhere near comprehending the latter one yet; just giving an example.)

Another emotion I've seen signs of in the last couple of weeks is boredom. A definite sense of "OK, I've exhausted the stimulation potential of everything I can see from here now". Some of this comes from the fact that she's now awake enough in the daytime to have time for other things beside feeding and being changed. She's not up to playing with toys - can't grasp them, can't reach for them - but is willing to look at them when proffered. They give her maybe thirty seconds of distraction. As does anything I show her or talk to her about as we wander around the house together doing housework. She is definitely starting to find our living room boring, I think, because she's spent so much time there, mostly on her back staring at the ceiling - she has only just started to turn her head herself to find other things to look at. So I am starting to work with that, to take the desire for interest and stimulation and start directing it or playing to it.

The most fascinating one though is a kind of fear of being left alone, or of loss - and what's fascinating about this is how it relates to vision. At first, when she couldn't see, she didn't really show too many signs of panic about you being there or not being there. If you were touching her that was good, and sometimes if you weren't touching her she wouldn't realise you were there, but whether or not you were in visual range was irrelevant. Now, she can see, and pick things out from across the room (especially nipples). But like I said she's only just starting to deliberately turn her head, which means you can quite easily not be in sight. And what's developing is the whole idea that if you can't see it, it doesn't exist. I find it fascinating that a child has to learn that things you can't see are still there, when they started out knowing that because they didn't have operative vision. It took me a few goes to realise that some of the time she was howling now was because she didn't realise I was still next to her, because she'd turned her head away and couldn't see me anymore. I can stop some howls mid-squawk by simply turning her mat so that where I am working is within her immediate field of view. Then she sees me, and everything is OK. It's a bizarre misconception.

More photos including total cute and awesome

2009-06-24T11:17:10Z

New photos on the Sparrow page - Sparrow meets Oma and Grandad. There are some nice shots of all the family. The last one catches James in the tender way that I often see him :-) The very first photo is possibly my favourite. It's texture and meaning all in a very simple composition, and I will probably take a high-quality version of it, print it and title it with Grandad's firm, heartfelt and repeated statement to Sparrow, "You can count on me".

Poem

2009-06-22T00:24:31Z

I will possess you with my eyes

My mother is the universe
I snuggle against her heart
and feel the love of a billion suns

I hold tight with my eyes

Baby clothing

2009-06-20T21:48:32Z

We are learning a lot about baby clothing - what works, what doesn't. It was a bit bewildering to deal with while pregnant - so many things you could dress them in, so many overpriced suits (several that cost more than the baby's body weight in chocolate). And the sizes - trying to guess what size you needed, when they might grow out of it in five days or three months... all bewildering. In the end I borrowed four boxes of baby clothes off a friend, so that we had a few sizes handy and a few different kinds of clothes to try. That was something I will be eternally grateful for. I went through those boxes and sorted them into sizes so we could work our way along as needed. We also got given a lot of clothes, and they got added to the box of the approximate size.

Results:
* Sparrow came out a 4-0 at birth. So I ended up not needing any of the 5-0. My friend's son had been a 5-0 for maybe ten days or two weeks.
* Sparrow has now grown enough that most of her 4-0 jumpsuits no longer fit her, though the 4-0 singlets do. So we're on the 3-0 jumpsuits now. The jumpsuits no longer fit both in leg length and in trying to get over the nappy (more below).
* Mostly, we're dressing her in a singlet with a one-piece jumpsuit over the top. No little shirts, no little pants. Just one combination of clothing that is very easy to buy, apply, remove. It's keeping her quite warm, and we can change the nappies quite easily.
* Most baby clothes are not constructed to fit over a cloth nappy, at least at this size range. Sparrow might actually still be a 4-0 under those nappy layers (though I think her total length is probably at 60 cm now which is getting into 3-0 size), but we can't get most 4-0 clothing over them. That's why she's not wearing any trousers - they just don't have enough butt room built in. She's not wearing anything that has to be fastened around the crotch area to stay on, which includes all the leotard-type singlets, because they won't go on unless she's in disposables. The jumpsuits are supposed to be fastened around the crotch, but they also fasten around the legs so we can do up those fastenings and leave the crotch open and they still stay on and keep her nice and warm. She looks a bit like a little marsupial, with this (relatively) giant nappy coming down to her knees and little fleshy bandy legs poking out around it. But she has enough room to wiggle and hold her legs straight in this clothing arrangement, so we've kept it.
* At this season, the best clothing has been things we can get to her nappy through without having to remove layers from her torso. It's cold. Icy cold, even. So it'll be a season at least before we try her in overalls.
* We have managed to mostly avoid pink, which really just means that her wardrobe is a balanced range of colours instead of entirely pink and purple. I managed to hold my tongue when MotherInLaw said that you should dress girls so that they looked like a girl. Uh-huh, sure. And who defines what looks like a girl, exactly? (I also resisted getting out some of my more, uh, *female* outfits for comparison. But I am tempted to prepare a miniature Catwoman suit for some time in the future if this conversation comes up again. James will probably let me dress Sparrow in studs if I ask him nicely.)

And one final thing, after trying all kinds of different ways to fasten things on and off, I find myself in full agreement with Kaz Cooke when she says "Don't even bother with things that fasten up the back". Too right. They're just too much trouble on the change table, which can be a bit of a wrangle at times as it is.

A fey mood this morning...

2009-06-19T21:51:31Z

At least one of the council nurse sheets I have talks about helping your baby's development, and encourages you to talk to them, sing to them, make noises at them, all to help them explore sound and learn to make it. It is also very encouraging of you to just do normal things, but tell them what you're doing as you do it. Now, I think what they expect is things like "Here's your bath! Look, a bath!", or maybe "I've got your foot! Well, I *had* your foot. Give me your foot! No, baby, don't stick it in the poopy nappy, give me that g*ddarn foot!". However, Sparrow does not have entirely normal parents. I found myself this morning saying the following:
"Mummy has finished her porridge. She'll be much more stable today now. Mummy likes to manipulate her own biochemistry. Can you say biochemistry?"

Diary of a pregnancy and birth - the labour

2009-06-19T02:14:34Z

The short version:

Sparrow Lorelei was born at seven minutes after midnight on Saturday the 9th of May 2009, by emergency caesarean section at Werribee Mercy Hospital. She weighed 3.72 kg, measured 52 cm from head to foot and had a 34 cm head circumference.

The longer version is under the cut. It's not my tightest piece of writing, being written over a period of a month in between feeds and sleeps, and to some degree being reconstructed. Now, admittedly, every time I describe an experience here it's to some degree reconstructed out of memory - but this is different. My dominant senses are vision and touch/feel, and both of these were inactivated by pain, drugs or natural biochemistry at various points during the process. My sense of time was also screwed with severely. Those being the three senses I normally rely on to reinvoke an experience in memory in order to retell it, this description's a little different. To know what happened I have to rely on sense of hearing, sense of presence, memory of emotion and the fragments of other things I managed to commit to long-term memory during the narrow window before the short-term buffer self-erased.

On Thursday night the 7th of May gutter_monkey came over for dinner. He and (of course) statnerdery were my two support people. James already knew about as much as I did about what would happen, which is not that much -grin-. I wanted to talk through with Scott what would happen so he could be OK with it. We had dinner, chatted, showed him the stuff about the various phases of labour, said we'd give him a call when I was in the early stage so we had time to coordinate, said I was expecting this to be somewhere between the 16th and 21st most likely. By the end of dinner I was in a lot of discomfort - I'd been standing a lot, had spent a lot of energy, and my back was complaining. So by about 7 pm I was reduced to lying on the floor. That's not been unusual these last couple of weeks. It was more unusual in that I really couldn't get comfortable, but that's not unexpected either when you're the size I was. I figured it was partly bowel movements seizing things up, as they'd been quite painful the last two weeks or so - there just wasn't much room down in that area for things to pass through. Got rid of some of it, but not enough to stop the pain completely. -shrug- You get that.

Overnight, the back pain didn't improve. Usually it settles a little when I sleep, but this didn't. I ended up getting up in the middle of the night for a while, but going back to bed just because James was adorable to cuddle, and I slept some more then. In retrospect, I was really glad of this. I had a small amount of breakfast, and continued to try and empty my bowels a little bit at a time. It occurred to me that this was the kind of back pain a TENS machine would be good at dissipating, if I had one I'd try it now, and I should really get on and ring to sort out how you book one for labour when you don't know when your labour will be. I made a note of it on my "to do today" list, for a little later when the hospital physio dept would be open. Just after 9 am I started working on installing my phone software on James' laptop, and it decided to take more than half an hour to install the drivers (bloody Vista). So here I was actually watching the clock, with some impatience - gods that little green bar took a long time to move across the screen. And I realised that the back pain was coming in waves, the waves were approximately nine to twelve minutes apart (told you the install was taking bloody ages), and that this was a lot like pre-labour or early labour symptoms even though I wasn't feeling any contractions. It was definitely worse than normal back pain - enough to make me whimper and grumble at the universe for being so difficult when all I wanted was my phone to know people's numbers. So I was suspicious, but it seemed like it really was just back pain. Hindsight makes this assumption seem awfully daft.

Then, just after 10 am on another one of those trips to the loo (which were now coming every five to ten minutes and frequently for naught), I felt slimed, checked, and there was some khaki-greenish slime coming out of my cunt. Huh, says I, guess that's probably waters breaking. So what was that acronym we're supposed to record... COAT... colour - icky, probably old meconium. Odour - musky-ish. Amount - a teensy bit, enough to cover the palm of my hand (funny, but I thought it'd be more than that). Time - 10:10 or so. I grabbed the cordless phone, the birth centre number from the wall by the phone, gave them a call to let them know things were happening. As I was describing it, I got the next gush, and suddenly I've managed to drip green goo across several metres of carpet. Guess there was more after all. Dammit. They said to go ahead and come on in so they could monitor and make sure everything was OK at this point with the baby, which is standard if your waters aren't clear when they break. No immediate hurry, time for James to come home and get me, time for me to pack my bag, but come on in. So I rang James, got him to come home, and wandered around thinking of any last minute things I'd meant to put in my bag but hadn't yet (like the dressing gown, which I was still wearing).

This is a change from what I'd hoped to be able to do. My preferred approach would have been to stay home as long as possible through the early part of the first stage of labour. That's where the cervix moves around from back to front and thins out so that it can start dilating, it's one of the longest parts of labour, but pain-wise it's supposedly not too bad compared to either the main part of the first stage, the first stage transition or the second stage (which is where you're actually pushing). This early phase is the time where in theory I could have hopped in the bath and stayed there for a couple of hours, or listened to focus-music and done some of my focus-meditation kata-dances to keep me physically distracted, or finished writing a report between painful bits, or made a cup of tea. Any kind of distraction really. There's very little point in going into the birth centre that early normally. But green meconium in the waters means a need for monitoring, so I didn't get that. I did take a shower, which felt great, but when there's regular gushes of green goo running down your leg sitting in a bathtub doesn't have the same appeal.

James and I got to the hospital around 12 noon. At that point the waves of pain were coming at intervals between three and five minutes, so two to three in every ten minute period. They were bad enough I couldn't talk during them, and they were lasting about thirty to fifty seconds. They were still only back pain, not contractions. Being on my hands and knees helped, so of course the position I had to be in while they hooked me up to the monitoring machine was on my back on a soft bed - the least comfortable possible. But they got some graphs, enough to work out that I was definitely labouring and that there were contractions going on (there were? Oh...), then they left me there to get a birth room ready. I got off the bed immediately and took to the floor. There's something really awkward about being put on a bed that's too high for your feet to touch the floor, and I couldn't move easily on it - the mattress was soft and there was nothing to grip on to when the pain hit, so I felt like I was floundering. No point in putting up with that if I didn't have to. Hands and knees or just lying on the hard floor was much easier to manage. And it was painful, but at that point not unmanageably so.

While we were waiting for the birth room we also got the TENS machine organised. The physio girl was somewhat amused at the timing, how I'd been going to call that day and organise it, when she came down with a machine for us. She showed James how to apply and use it - I wasn't taking a great deal in at that point. I later found out that when she turned up she looked at me and figured I was already just about past the point where it would be much use, judging by the look of the contractions I was having. But she didn't say that at the time, which is probably just as well. So we had the little box, instructions, and a set of electrodes that (as it turned out) were completely different to the ones described in the instructions. But I figured I'd hold off on using it just yet, seeing as we'd be moving to another room shortly. I could tough it out for a while yet. Some time later the admitting midwife came back to tell us the birth room was ready, and she seemed surprised that I was on the floor. I don't know why she was surprised. All I wanted was something firm to press against, to brace myself against or to hold onto, and to be in a position where gravity helped rather than hindered. On your back doesn't give you that. Also in that time she was sorting out paperwork, and asked when labour had started. I told her that the back pain had started the night before, around 7 pm. She said that they couldn't take "back pain" as the start of labour, so I needed to say when it *had* started. A very tiny corner of my mind wanted to say "But back pain is what I have now". I wasn't that coherent though. What they meant is when the contractions had started, but I didn't feel any contractions even then - the only clue I had that there *were* contractions was the little graph printing out beside the bed. In the entire time I was in hospital I think I only felt contractions for about half an hour or an hour. They were happening, I just didn't feel them underneath the waves of back pain. We ended up picking 9 am as the "official" start time, which is when I started working on the software stuff and just before I realised that the pain was in semi-regular waves. I don't know if it had been in waves before that. I don't know if I even got to the main part of the first phase during all the time I was in the hospital, which is when you're supposed to officially count the start of labour from I think.

The next few hours were a little blurry - I'm writing this some weeks later, and there really isn't much to punctuate it. The afternoon-shift midwife had a lot of common sense, she made sure I had a wireless monitoring belt on. Two of them, one for my contractions and one for the foetal heartbeat. That way I could still move around. I spent a lot of time on the floor, on hands and knees, lying over a beanbag, positions like that. Scott turned up sometime shortly after we got into the birth room. I don't remember seeing him, I just know he was there. It's funny how your vision becomes a very unimportant sense - it hasn't formed memories nearly as accurately as it normally does when I go places or do things, though other senses have recorded fine. I was glad he was there, though. If all you are really aware of strongly outside your own body is the presence of people, he has a good presence to be around. I don't know that James and Scott were able to do much, but they were there. In some ways, that's not unexpected - I tend to focus inwards at times of stress, I'm not much for external support from people as a general rule. And it turned out that labour was not really an exception to this. But they were there, which was probably what I needed more than anything most of the time - and they were also a helpful distraction in the resting minutes between waves, which was also a great help. You start really wanting and needing that rest.

Pain relief techniques were a little iffy. I remember at one point the midwife tried massaging my back during a contraction. I made flappy waving motions at her with one hand. Thankfully James was able to say what I couldn't - the other big role of a support person - and tell her that I can't bear being touched when I'm in pain. There was a reason he and Scott were standing way back from me during each contraction, and it hadn't occurred to me to say this before, and I couldn't say it during. We tried the TENS machine. It was quite hard to use. James put the electrodes on, which is when we discovered that the instructions for putting it on did not actually match the equipment we had. I think they even had another midwife who was more familiar with the TENS machine stop in in the next half an hour and check it for us, and she hadn't seen one of that style either so she was just as baffled as we were. The biggest problem I had was that I was trying to turn it off between contractions, and only turn it on during. There was a magnitude dial, and a push button. I thought the magnitude dial was what you set it with, and then you pressed the button for "on" when you needed it. It didn't seem to work like that though, because I could feel tingling without pressing the button, and when I did press the button it was way too intense to bear. I also couldn't turn it on to the right magnitude setting once a contraction had started, because the switch was too fine motor control for what I had available under that pain loading. So the operation of the machine became a very mental thing, at a time when I just didn't have the mental space or ability to work it out. It turns out that you were supposed to have it on all the time using the main wheel, and just press the button during the worst of the contractions to boost it up a bit. However, it boosted up so much that it was unbearable. So we ended up taking it off so I could try having a shower instead. That worked much better.

The shower was nice. Because my waters had broken I couldn't use the bath, but the shower was reasonably effective. This was the other reason the midwife had got a wireless monitor on me - I could wear it in the shower. The only problem was that the curve of my belly was such that the foetal monitor kept losing contact with my skin. I had to kind of hold it on. That's not easy when you're using both hands to grip the metal bars in the shower during a contraction. For a while I was able to use one hand to hold it in place, but the pain waves got strong enough I just didn't want to have to use a hand for that. Scott and James helped hold it in place as well when I couldn't - they could hear from the machine when it was losing contact. Neither had thought to grab shorts or boardies they could wear in the shower with me though, which made it more awkward. I have a vague recollection of Scott and James being nearby, helping hold the monitor on while somehow managing to stay out of the water stream, but there were limits on that -grin-. I also remember that either Scott or James was always nearby / within visual range, though usually at the doorway of the bathroom so they could also see the clock - the midwife had left them counting and timing contractions. The other problem with the monitor belt was that it put pressure exactly where I didn't want any additional pressure, so I started wanting to try and hold it off me during the contractions - which was exactly when they really wanted to be seeing the foetal heartbeat. So that monitoring wasn't working too well.

During the shower was when I started shaking. Uncontrollably, hard. The midwife asked if I was cold, and I really wasn't. Wasn't scared either. She didn't say anything at that point, but I was able to tell that it was sourced in something other than normal temperature reactions. Later she said it was adrenalin, and another midwife said it was an oxytocin reaction. I don't know. All I know is that it was a chemical response not triggered by any of the normal things that get you shaking but by an overload of some control hormone. I kept getting bouts of shakes all the way through, until the very end and after. They were exhausting too. Made it harder to stay still sometimes when I needed to.

After a while I left the shower - it was better than anything else, but there was something else I was supposed to be doing I think, and also I didn't want to wear that solution out in one hit. I did stop to throw up first though. Love the way the digestive system empties itself. I went back to the bed - I think they were looking for better monitoring, and also an internal exam to see how things were going. The internal exams were funny. I think across the course of the labour I had two or three. Each time, there'd be some form of request along the lines of "Non-essential visitors should leave now". I don't remember seeing the people who said it, vision recording being switched off the way it was. But I remember being completely aware of all the layers in the speech, and knowing that however it was phrased it was a request for Scott to leave the room, intended to preserve my dignity. And I knew that this was unnecessary - he'd been there while I threw up, cried, collapsed naked and whimpering on the floor, and I'd asked him to come along for this (wo0t! what an invite :-). I specifically asked him because I have no concerns about my dignity where he is concerned, both because I trust him and because I've seen the stunts *he's* pulled. So I thought it was funny that the internal exam was considered somehow more undignified than everything else he had been helping with and that this was the point where they wanted to protect my privacy somehow. I also knew from the phrasing though that the only person who could permit him to stay was me, so managed to find the consciousness from somewhere each time to keep insisting "Scott can stay".

The results of the internal exam were not good. The cervix was still at the back, and not very dilated. There was a long way to go, and not very much happening. They decided to put me on a hormone drip to try and get the labour moving. That meant being in the bed again, unfortunately. They had trouble working out where to put the bunt - the midwife couldn't find a good place in the back of my hand. They got a proper needle-person in to do it, who I flailed at a bit because she was trying to put it in while I was having a contraction. Thankfully the midwife kept stopping her, I heard her say on repeat (possibly from the far side of the room next to Scott and James) "Just wait a minute, there's no hurry" while the needlegirl was trying to be soothing at me and get me to let her have my arm nice and peacefully (are you f-ing kidding?). She ended up putting it in the crook of my right elbow. The midwife afterwards said "*I* could have put it there", with the implication that she'd been looking for a better place. At first I didn't know what the problem was, but then I worked it out pretty quickly - having a bunt in the crook of your elbow means that that whole arm needs to stay mostly immobile. While you're having contractions. F*ckitty f*ck f*ck f*ck. I was not too impressed with the whole pain situation by this point. The pain was definitely ramping up, and I was now locked to the bed with limited movement. The bed had a flimsy and high headboard that you couldn't grab onto, and there weren't any edges anywhere. Thankfully there *was* a cupboard right next to the bed with a handle, so I had something to grip.

Again, time is a little erratic for this bit. To my surprise, my obstetrician came in and had a look at what was going on. I hadn't expected to see him, and you often don't if the birth is progressing fine. That was my first indication that there were really any issues big enough to worry about, though I still didn't particularly think so. He screwed an electrode monitor into Sparrow's head through the cervix opening. That eliminated the belt that we'd been having problems with, and gave them clearer readings. It also meant that I was having my movement limited more and more, though that wasn't a great change at that point. I think this was around five o'clock.

By five-thirty I was really struggling. Not being able to move meant I had nothing to be aware of during the contractions except the pain, and that was increasing. The hormone drip had changed things sufficiently that I was now feeling the contractions across my abdomen as well as just back pain. It was only a mild improvement, in the sense that the abdominal pain was slightly easier to deal with but because it was on top of the back pain rather than replacing it it wasn't really much of a help -smile-. We tried the TENS machine again, and that had much the same problems as before. The midwife and I talked through nitrous oxide, and I tried that. I had trouble sucking enough of it in though - I couldn't suck during a contraction, I just needed to pull in more air. The midwife had noted something I'd said earlier about panicking when not being able to breathe, and was keeping the nitrous proportions low for that reason. Which was the right thing to do, definitely. It did mean though that I wasn't getting enough nitrous to have any effect as far as I could tell - all it did was get me panicking because I could only breathe through a hose. I tried to make it work for a few contractions, but each time could never manage more than a few breaths through the pipe before throwing it away and gulping air in panic. Instead I'd be on my side, trying to hold my right arm completely still while grabbing at the cupboard door handle with my left hand, keening. Sound became a focus for a while, making sound as a replacement for shunting the pain anywhere physically. It wasn't as effective as trying to move the pain somewhere else, but it gave me something to release with when I didn't have anything else to use as a release. Then they shuffled equipment around, I don't remember why, and had to have the cupboard open to reach certain gear inside - and then I didn't even have anything to hold onto. James was on the bed next to me, offering his arm to grip, but I didn't - I wasn't sure he could resist my pull stably enough. Thinking back on it I should have tried it, but I didn't want to break him.

This is the point where I caved, and started begging for the pain to go away.

I knew that an epidural was the next step, and I was ready to take it. The midwife made me ask for it explicitly, she wouldn't guess what I was on about (which is sensible), but she didn't argue with me either. I found out later that she'll often try to dissuade ladies who aren't really at the point of needing it yet and for whom it might prove a hindrance, but in my case she didn't argue because she thought it might relax me enough to get the labour progressing better. Of all the forms of pain relief they offer, an epidural is (usually) the one that actually removes the pain, as opposed to just distracting you from it. And at that point, that's what I was after. All I could think was that I was at the end of my endurance and ability to withstand pain, I was so tired, it hurt a lot, and given where the labour had got to it was likely to take another ten hours to get through it all. Plus the implication was that if it hurt this much now and nothing had really started yet, my GODS what were the later stages going to be like? If it hadn't been much longer now, I could probably have toughed it out. Maybe. I'd like to hope so. But knowing how far there still was to go... I caved. I didn't really even fight myself on it.

It was five thirty when I asked for the epidural. The anaesthetist was in theatre, so she wasn't going to get there fast. We'd been told in the antenatal classes that this might be the case, and that it was often an hour between asking for the epidural and getting it. So I was prepared for this. And it was an hour - the epidural went in at 6:30 pm. I was glad I had asked when I did. At the end of that hour, I was just about done through. It hit and went past every limit of pain resistance I had, and I was sobbing and keening for most of it. Again, memory is odd - I have very little visual memory, and also virtually zero memory of my co-primary sense, touch/feel. They say you don't remember the pain of labour, and in this case that's kind of true. I have no physical recollection of the pain and no ability to reinvoke that feel-memory like I normally can with a touch/feel encounter. What I remember blindingly clearly though is the emotions surrounding it. I know exactly how it was making me feel, and from that I can interpolate rather more than I wish.

The anaesthetist was a very good presence, very pretty, very intelligent and very sane. This is the non-visual description, remember. Visually... she might have had dark hair -shrug-. She went through the explanation of the epidural and the (very minor) risks with me, made sure she had my informed consent. She also took the time to make sure I understood that the pain wouldn't vanish instantly - they'd start me on the smallest dose and move it up over a few contractions until it hit the right level, so that I could be on the lowest dose possible and still retain enough feeling to be able to do what was needed when the second stage of labour hit. And she apologised that it would take a few contractions for the pain to go away. So she put the needle in my back (like she said, the biggest mosquito bite you'll ever feel), and then they waited for the next contraction and for me to tell them how much the pain had reduced. After a few minutes they said "You need to tell us how much it's reduced" and I said "Ok, when there's a contraction" and they said some equivalent of "You're having a contraction now". Oh. When I thought about it, I could feel a tightening. But only if I paid attention to it. Out of ten, it had gone from a seven or eight to maybe one-half, in one hit. So it turns out I need extremely low doses of painkillers. Around this point I remember looking at James' face, and literally seeing the colour drain back into it as he realised my pain had stopped. He'd gone so very very pale.

The anaesthetist also moved the bunt in my elbow to the back of my other hand, which was much better. They didn't take out the first bunt, I think they might have thought they might need it later, so I still couldn't really move that arm - but it was a lot better. Then slowly, everyone began to relax. I encouraged Scott and James to go out and get dinner, and they did - they went over the road to a little pizza restaurant and had a sit-down meal, and I went to sleep. I was exhausted. That sleep went a long way to restoring the energy I'd spent just trying to deal with the pain for the previous twenty-four hours.

Once awake, I chatted with the midwifery student who stayed in to keep an eye on things, and the main midwife. I think they always have someone in to keep an eye on you, but I can't now remember if there was always another presence nearby. I think there was, be it Scott and James or one of the nurses. This part of the evening was where it almost started to get boring, though that was still an improvement on earlier. We were simply waiting. I marked the time by the epidural doses.

By the ten thirty mark, I could feel that the drugs were starting to wear off a little faster than they were being replaced. I was definitely feeling when it was time to put the next dose in. That's also when they did the last internal exam. It had been going to be at eleven or eleven thirty, but they brought it forward. The constant beat from the monitor on Sparrow's heart was starting to dip more often, and take longer to speed back up. It still wasn't worrying me unduly, but James was reacting to it a lot more. The nurses were keeping more of an eye on it too. The midwife doing the exam said that nothing had changed since the last exam - the cervix had moved forward with the drugs, but basically since they'd stopped me moving, the dilation had halted at three centimetres and quit out. They took some of the graphs from the monitoring machines and went to fax them to the obstetrician, then talked to him on the phone. When the midwife came back, she said "You're going on a road trip". I had no idea what she was talking about, and she clarified - the obst. had decided on a Caesarean. They showed me the main problem - that Sparrow's heartbeat was going down not just during the contractions but also between them, and struggling to recover. Her distress levels were getting too high, and with no sign of the rest of the labour getting anywhere soon they needed to pull her out. James' presence was a lot more terrified than usual, even before they came back with the decision.

That's when I threw up again. The midwife asked if it was because of hearing about the Caesarean. I was able to tell her, I think, that no, the C-section was OK. And it truly was. All that stuff about listening to your body? And for me, listening to the flow of things and knowing what the right path to follow is? This was the right thing, and I knew it, and my body knew it. If it hadn't been, I'd have argued or fought it. But it needed to be over, and soon. The throwing up was part of that - although I couldn't feel pain in the contractions, my muscles were still working hard - and they were close to exhaustion. It was the kind of chuck you do when your muscles are so fatigued they're about to collapse.

So there was a bit of prep, and explanations and paperwork. The anaesthetist (that good clean sane presence) was the one who did most of the explanations, who described what would happen and what was going on as it happened. I liked her description of the surgery feeling like someone was washing dishes inside your abdomen. That turned out quite apt, as they kill the pain sense but not the pressure sense so you still feel what they're doing. The operation itself was fairly straight forward, although I admit to panicking slightly when they first moved me onto the bed - it was a four person lift and roll, and they start by moving you backwards - so for a second I thought I was heading onto the floor instead of the bed in front of me. Scott waited in the birth centre - only one person goes into the theatre with you, and that was James. He got dressed up in all the clean-scrub gear and sat on the other side of me from the anaesthetist. Before they started I asked him how he felt, and he admitted he was terrified. I really wasn't. It was all OK, and happening as it should. There was a brief blur of time, the words "She's a big one", and a baby's cry. That was the point when I think James finally felt relief. One healthy baby, out into the world and onto the pediatrician's trolley.

They checked her over, clamped the cord and had James cut it (kind of rubbery like thick squid, white with green streaks from the meconium she'd swallowed in utero), finished their checks and brought her over to me to hold, with James, while the anaesthetist took a photo of the three of us. As this was all happening, I was being stitched up again behind the curtain. Eventually they took Sparrow away again and put her in a mobile bassinet, and James took her back to the ward room where Scott was waiting. The adrenaline took hold of me again at that point - it had never really gone away - as did the drug reactions, and I started really getting woozy and nauseous. They finished stitching me, and took me to the recovery ward to keep an eye on me for a while, adjusting the drugs as they went and adding more to deal with the side effects of the first ones. I was still getting the adrenaline shakes really badly, but during that recovery period they finally started to settle down. Which was a bit of a relief. Instead I was just groggy, trying very hard to stay awake. When they finally brought me back to the ward I was supposed to hold Sparrow and start her first feed. Thankfully very little's expected of either of you in that feed, because neither of us really had much conscious awareness of the world at that point. I could barely keep my eyes open. I remember saying thank you to Scott and James, and I love you, but I don't know if either of those came out aloud. James kissed me on the cheek, and they left for the night.

Edit to add: the official count is that I was in labour for 15 hours, and I add 14 hours of pre-labour before that to make a 29-hour period all up.

As heard late at night...

2009-06-15T22:03:44Z

T: (gratefully and a little weepily) You're pretty tough.
J: *Pretty* tough? I think what you meant there was *amazingly* tough.
T: (lovingly, with a grin) Yep! Amazingly tough.
J: And funny. You forgot funny.
T: (now laughing) You are. You're witty, and you have a great sense of comedy, um, of comic, um, thingy.
J: Timing.
T: Comic timing, yeah. Say, do you want to write the rest of my compliments for me, so I get them right?
J: Studly. I'm definitely studly.