Dreams

Tuesday night
I died in my dream
I didn't wake up beforehand
Like I normally would
I plunged over the edge
And the dark water surrounded me
And filled my lungs
And I stopped breathing
And it was all darkness
I awoke with a heavy feeling on my chest
With a dark cloud around me
Gasping
When I came awake enough
To realise I was alive
The feeling of death and darkness
Was still so heavy and permeable
I padded on bare feet
To my baby's room
To listen to him breathe

Xander

(photo courtesy of Andrew)

I love
The way your tongue curls when you smile
The fact that you smile as you fall asleep
Your warm brown eyes
Your pouting bottom lip
The way you wrinkle your nose in disgust when I kiss you or intense
concentration when you're looking for a feed
The way your tiny hands hold on to me
Your serious little expressions
The beautiful noises you make when you are content
The way you completely relax as you fall asleep in my arms
Everything

Also

I have put my house up for sale. Wish me luck.

Xander and ToTo

Toby is Xander's younger cousin. He is 8 days younger. Here are some photos of them together. For those who find all babies look alike - Xander is the one with the monster on his clothes (the extremely good looking baby - no bias here) and Toby (ToTo) is the one with the lion on his clothes (he's cute too). The bald babies at the end who now have pin feathers belong to Oscar and Pepper.

ToTo tried to hit Xander, but Xander just attempted to suck his arm.

Eyes

The baby birds eyes opened yesterday!

Update on all my babies

Pepper and Oscar's babies are still alive - mostly due to Pepper who is always feeding them. Normally a well groomed bird who takes a bath when you first put water in the cage every morning - she looks terrible. She is white and her whole front in the morning is stained with regurgitated food. Oscar guards the cage - which means he tries to bite me when I put food in - not that helpful in the way of parenting.

Xander is also alive, and I suspect to most people I look rather similar to Pepper - stained shirt and a little ragged around the edges. Matthew's input is more helpful then Oscar's. He does bathtime, and many nappy changes, and calms Xander when I can't. Here are photos to update - but they are from my iphone so the quality is poor.

Bathtime with daddy is Xander's favourite time of day.


Walking on an almost rainy day, we decided not to risk it, and the raincover went on the pram


Even in his sleep, he is very thoughtful.


Multitasking I was breast feeding lying on the floor whilst fixing a problem on my mum's laptop, Xander fell asleep.


BBQ Geddes


After a disasterous morning at home, I gave up and went down to the lakes for a walk and a coffee. There Xander put on his "perfect baby" show. Faker.


An early picture of his "oooh" face

New Babies

Oscar and Pepper became parents again today, hopefully this time it will last longer then last time!
Two little baby birds - as ugly as can be.
One angry Oscar as Bec looked at his babies

Our verandah and street through Oscar's eyes

Alexander (Xander)

I have a beautiful baby boy, Alexander, he is now 11 days old. He was only 2.77kg born. I was induced at 39 weeks, got to 9cm, and had an emergency caesarean section for foetal distress. However he came out perfectly healthy. He is pretty much the most beautiful thing in the world. He keeps me very busy at the moment, so I haven't been on the net really much at all. Hopefully when we're in more of a routine things will improve on that front.

Chocolate Fudge Cake

here you are Kirsten...

Ingredients:
6 eggs
1/2 cup brown sugar
400g cooking chocolate
cup thick cream (48% fat)
2 tablespoons cointreau
2 tablespoons orange juice

Instructions
Grease tin (22cm round)
beat eggs and sugar
gradually beat in melted chocolate
combine cream, OJ, cointreau
stir the cream mixture into the chocolate mixture
pour into the tin

place pan in baking dish which has boiling water about half way
cover with foil
bake in moderate (180) oven 30 minutes
remove foil bake 30 more minutes
cool
turn onto plate

More Leunig

I have been reading my Michael Leunig books again. So rather then bore you too much with what's happening in my life, I thought I'd share someone else's insights into life with you.

------------
From Michael Leunig's book "When I talk to you"

Dear God,

We struggle, we grow weary, we grow tired. We are exhausted, we are distressed, we despair. We give up, we fall down, we let go. We cry. We are empty, we grow calm, we are ready. We wait quietly.

A small, shy truth arrives. Arrives from without and within. Arrives and is born. Simple, steady, clear. Like a mirror, like a bell, like a flame. Like rain in summer. A precious truth arrives and is born within us. Within our emptiness.

We accept it, we observe it, we absorb it. We surrender to our bare truth. We are nourished, we are changed. We are blessed. We rise up.

For this we give thanks.

Amen.
-------------

Last week of work

Well I have one more week of work left before I stop work and rest or nest or somethingarather. I was going to keep working past next week as I was feeling so well that it didn't seem like stopping work was necessary, however I have decided I will stop after all. I still feel well, but I did have a little overnight stay in hospital last week to observe my blood pressure which was perfect in hospital, but had played up at the obstetricians a little... Anyway when I was back at work on friday, I got the impression that some people thought I should be at home resting given the recent hospital visit. I am following my obstetricians instructions and monitoring my BP twice a day and checking my urine for protein daily, and it has really been fine. However the hospital trip did motivate me to start washing all those baby clothes just in case!

__________
I am re-reading "The Curly Pyjama Letters" by Michael Leunig. The first "entry" seems very appropriate.

Dear Mr. Curly,
I have not written to you for quite some time, I suppose because there has been very little to report. My journey appears to have developed into a process of steady plodding which I rather like. When you plod, everything seems to take forever and forever is a lovely thing once you stop being scared of it.

Strange, how something that takes a lot of time can give a feeling that there is a lot of time - and a lot of space and a good measure of ease. So onward I plod, through beautiful things and terrible things, too numerous to mention, with my duck ahead of me and my gargling angel to protect me from above. I am well and I hope you are too.

Best Wishes; yours truly,
Vasco Pyjama

PS Is it "gargling" angel or "guardian" angel? Somebody once suggested it should be "guardian" but I grew up believing it was "gargling" - "My gargling angel" and that's how I think of it. Oh well, whatever; it seems to care for me!
_________

Update

This is just a boring update, because somehow I seem to have just not been on the internet for a month. Sometimes life just seems to flash by at an incredible speed. I don't know why.

First, I am getting very fat. Matthew keeps reminding me it's a baby, but I'm feeling quite round in the tummy. Being short, I don't feel that there is a lot of tummy space for a baby to grow in, and I'm starting to doubt the wisdom of another two months of incubating.

Secondly. In good news, I have so far tested negative for tuberculosis. I do have to have another test in about two months, but I'm pretty sure I'm fairly safe to be around. Is it wrong to hope that the doctor who saw the patient before me and gave them symbicort and sent them away does get just a little mild case of tuberculosis? Honestly, take a history! A five year history of cough, in someone originally from an asian country, who's parent had tuberculosis when she was 13 and you didn't even want to at least do an xray???? Despite no history (personal or family) of asthma you thought treating them for asthma (without testing for it) was where the money was at??

Turns out I can't particularly think of anything else that's been going on. Matt and I had our 6 year wedding anniversary. There was all that rain which was good for the dams, bad for the people it flooded and meaningless to the rest of us because despite what they said they haven't changed the water restrictions because the government likes to suppress people and take away their choices (as well as only give them watering times that the unemployed can use). Not that I'm feeling bitter or pissed off at all.

I think I need a nap.

Epilepsy Action Australia

Whilst all my patients are coming in distressed about all the media coverage of swine flu, I am distressed about a different news story that has had far little coverage. Epilepsy Action Australia has had a major decrease in corporate donations, causing concerns that they may have to cut services.

Obviously at this time a lot of non for profit organisations are struggling financially. I am concerned about this one on a completely personal level that has little bearing on my chosen career as a doctor. My sister died two years ago at the age of 28 of "sudden unexpected death in epilepsy". This was after struggling with epilepsy for many years. I have two cousins who also have epilepsy and have struggled with all the issues this brings along.

Epilepsy is not uncommon. People with epilepsy face a lot of struggles and problems. The difficulties they face depend on how well controlled their epilepsy is. In my sister's case: She couldn't drive. She couldn't swim unsupervised. She couldn't take a bath because she might drown. She had to take medications that caused side effects and problems. She had multiple trips to the emergency departments around Brisbane. She might wake up on the street, on a bus, anywhere, surrounded by concerned people with no idea what was going on. She struggled with the stigma and misunderstanding that occurs when people know someone has epilepsy or witness a seizure. She struggled with low mood (in recent changes to the precautions on a lot of epilepsy medications increased suicidality has been added as a side effect of the medication). She struggled with multiple disruptions to her studies and her life.

It's not just the people who have epilepsy who struggle, it's their families. Imagine being a parent. Never knowing when a seizure will occur, how long it will last, what injuries they might sustain. Imagine sleeping with the doors open so you can hear if they have a seizure in their sleep. Imagine every time you hear something drop or fall, running to see if your child is having a seizure. Imagine taking them to specialist after specialist trying to get things under control. Imagine trying to drag your child out of the water whilst they thrash (now I know - three adults are probably required to swim with/supervise one teenager with epilepsy because keeping someone above water who is having a seizure is pretty tough work). Imagine them getting older and struggling with how to keep the balance of keeping them safe and having a "normal" life.

The support that some of these foundations give to families and people who suffer with epilepsy is crucial. The education, the understanding, support networks, information, training. Things that as a doctor we can't provide in the same way. Epilepsy Action Australia gets less then 3% of it's funding from the government.

If you got "stimulated by Heavy Kevie" as my other sister keeps referring to the $900 government stimulus package, consider redistributing some of that government money to a worthy cause.

Disappointment

Disappointment, as defined by Bec "planning a kayak trip for ages for when you're 23 weeks pregnant because soon you'll be too fat to kayak and after that you'll have a small baby and won't be able to kayak, spending your entire day off packing everything into dry bags and shopping for those final things you need, then receiving a phone call from the EPA to say that they have closed the upper Noosa River because of a weather event (ie some flooding)"

Matt and I both organised to have friday off so we could drive up close to where we were going on the Thursday night, stay in a cheap hotel and then kayak off in the morning. Apart from the pest of coordinating a day off like that, this was kind of my last chance, my last hoorah before my life is consumed by parenthood. We had organised to hire some nice fibreglass kayaks from Rosco - a local family business. We had borrowed Matt's parents 4WD. I had borrowed some lures to catch bass with from my boss. Had borrowed my brother's favourite rod and reel. We had booked the campsite (campsite 8) - only accessible by kayak

I had bought freeze dried food that you just rehydrate with hot water seeing as we had limited space and weren't going to be able to keep things cold - amongst many other foods and camping things we bought.
And finally on my day off on Thursday, whilst Matt worked, I gathered everything together, checked and rechecked lists, packed things into dry bags. All the while dutifully not watching the news, not reading the internet, interrupting my brother when he tried to tell me that the sunshine coast was flooded and not listening to the radio, because I didn't want to hear anything that would stop me from going, because this was kind of my last chance. If only I hadn't answered my phone either....

After throwing my 1-2 hour temper tantrum, I did calm down somewhat and manage to have a nice weekend. Friday Matt and I started driving to the sunshine coast hinterland, but stopped at Alma Park Zoo instead (we didn't get very far). We then meandered homeward. The next day we went to the kayak demonstration day that Rosco had so we could try all their different kayaks. Matt fell in love with the arctic raider. I got mildly sunburnt. Oops. Matthew tipped the kayak over and went in the water whilst trying to "edge" (whatever that means). That was incredibly funny and certainly one of my highlights from the day. Personally I stayed in wider, shorter, stabler kayaks and didn't try anything fancy. Matt looked like he had more fun. I still enjoyed myself but when you're really not very experienced (ie not at all experienced) and there are heaps of experienced kayakers standing on the shore watching you try the kayak, including the guy who makes the kayaks and has been doing so since the '60's, I find that a little less of a comfortable situation, which is why hiring them and taking them away and having fun with them out of the watchful eye of others seemed a better plan.

We went and looked at Matt's brother's house which is currently being built and the display house that shows us the finished product. Then we had lunch with Matt's dad and aunt at a yummy seafood restaurant at Scarborough.

Sunday was more of a lazy day where Matt went to uni to work, and I went to church and then flitted about having coffee with people.

Today I woke up felt like I must have put on 100kgs since getting pregnant, so stepped on my wii fit (which is the only set of "scales" I have at home) to see how bad it was and it told me I'd gained 1.8kg since getting pregnant, but I think it was just being kind, I suspect they really aren't the most accurate way to weigh yourself, but seeing as it had a before weight recorded, it seemed the easiest way.

Still trying not to think of the adventure fun that could have been this weekend.

Good Day

Ahhh, the mood swings of a pregnant woman! Today is a good day. Ignore the angst behind the song, it's just a good day!