Disco Knitter

The coroner hasn’t found any reason. More results are pending, but no answers yet.

I’m still feeling like a complete train wreck. Disbelief seems to be the dominant emotion, followed by rage, nausea, desperation, and then fear. Because if this can happen to Anna and Rob, the nicest of people and the best of parents, it could happen to me. Or you.

It probably won’t. It probably won’t. And probably is about as good as we’re ever going to get. And though that isn’t nearly good enough, that is all we can hope for. Acceptance, and hope. Hope that it won’t happen to us, and hope that someday Anna and Rob will have joy in their lives again.

So I am taking this opportunity to share some joy.

Five minutes after “that” phone call last night, there was another phone call, from Christine, Mark’s sister, Ella’s mum. Ella is going to have a brother or sister later in the year, and that news couldn’t have been more welcome, or more badly received – due to it coming so hot on the heels of such devastating news. We are absolutely thrilled that Inigo is going to have another cousin. Ella and he are exactly the same age, so this is as close as he will get to a little brother or sister. Unless something radical happens!

Secondly, our family has been tossing around the idea of a holiday, mum and dad, Adam and Sarah, Mark and I, and Alex and Inigo, all in some tropical island setting, with beaches and daiquiris and pool boys relaxation. Yesterday, that became a concrete reality. Mum has booked flights to Bali, and we have 2 weeks here. More info here. It looks too good to be true. Throw in a driver and a childcare worker on top of the staff of seven, and I think I’ll be pretty happy.

And the other news? News so great that on any other day I’d be jumping up and down and shouting from the rooftops? Inigo is cured. No more reflux. No more antibiotics, no more tests, no more month visits to the expensive paediatrician. We have to see her once more when he turns two, and then probably never again.

Cured.

I’m off to drink myself into a stupor. Goodnight.

I don’t believe in prayers, but if you do, please pray. If you don’t believe in prayers, please send vibes, healing energy, good wishes, light, whatever it is you do believe in.

My darling friend Anna and her husband Rob put their little girl Lara to bed on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday morning she was dead.

I am still in shock as I write these words, and I know that nothing but time will make Anna and Rob breathe again. I also know that the next days weeks, months and years will be unbearably painful for them, but that they must go on for the sake of their other gorgeous daughter.

We celebrated Lara’s 3rd birthday on the third of May this year.

I read somewhere that if you want children to be involved in household chores, you need to start them young.

Of course, it took longer to clean up afterward than to shuck the corn in the first place, but he had a lot of fun. And that’s the point.

Today was the last day of the latest parenting course, but dad wasn’t around to stay with him in childcare so he ended up in the library with us. At the end, another kid joined us and Inigo excitedly chased him around the room. Xavier loved that he had a little fan, and they gave each other a cuddle every time Inigo caught him. Its a crappy picture, but you have to trust me, the cute is unbelievable.

Click here for a pic, I can’t get it to co-operate!

Squishy has had a rough day. But not nearly as hard as last week!

Thanks to Simone for coming with us, and for her superb sock puppetry, and for covering herself with mango lassi for our amusement. What a champ.

The Nursing Unit Manager was able to get the catheter in first time, and though it wasn’t fun, it was a million times less distressing than last week. And he got presents! Enya, the nurse from last week gave him a little toy, and a pile of books as compensation for his suffering. Lovely.

No results yet, but I am confident they got what they needed, so even if it’s bad news, we won’t have to go through that again for at least another year.

As for psychological damage, he is showing no sign tonight. Touch wood.

Yay!

So. iPhone.

I am so close to having a 3 GS, my head is spinning (and it gives me something to think about that isn’t scary).

So, I need some information. You guys that have iPhones, yes, all of you – can you tell me how much data you use a month, and wheter you use push or pull email, what sort of email volume you have, and how much internets you use?

Having never had a mobile internets device, I am unsure how much I will need, and I am hesitant to go on a plan that has more than I need.

I have an appointment at the Apple Store on Friday, so I hope to get some info before then.

Thanks!

P.S. Nasty test is tomorrow. Please send happy vibes for us around 1pm, and for Fe about half an hour later.

Labor Senator Cathering King had her toddler in the senate, but Greens toddlers are apparently not allowed.

The picture of Senator Hanson Young on the second link is absolutely heartbreaking.

And today had more than it’s fair share!

I’ve been stressing about today, I agreed to give a presentation at a Breastfeeding Education Class about positioning and attachment. To twenty people. Far out. Weddings are all about emotion, so while you’re talking to a hundred people, you have a script, and people are so high on the romance and joy of the day that they don’t really notice if you miss something.

Expectant parents are a very different crowd – some are very well informed, others know very little. All of them have paid money to learn a little more about the joys and possible pitfalls of infant feeding, and having to present factual information to such a large and enthusiastic audience was something that I was quite worried about.

Despite my intense nervousness, it went well. Two people left a comment on the feedback form saying that they really enjoyed my part of the presentation, which is far better feedback than I ever hoped to get. So I left on a bit of a high, and didn’t pay much attention to the fact that the car was almost out of fuel. I thought I’d make it to a petrol station on Parramatta Road. I was wrong.

Word to the wise – when waiting for the tow truck on a cold and raining night, turn off the GPS, turn off the radio, and turn off the headlights.

Or you might end up like I did after I was towed to the petrol station. A full tank, and an empty battery. Eventually, a lovely bloke gave me a jump start, and I got home to His Squishyness much, much later than I had planned.

They couldn’t get the catheter in. A nurse tried twice, and then they asked me if the should try again. I said yes, wanting to avoid bringing him back. He was so desperate, panicked and in pain, wondering why his mama was holding him down so they could torture him.

I said yes, and the doctor had a go, and she failed too. And when the catheter came out, it had blood on it.

All afternoon he was spontaneously screaming, while tears rolled silently down my cheeks, and I fought to maintain composure and a soothing calm manner. I sang his favourite songs until my throat was raw.

Eventually, he fell asleep, and aside from a temperature early this morning, is acting as if nothing happened.

And I’m a wreck. I don’t know if my immune system was weakened by the extreme stress of yesterday, or whether I was due for it anyway, but my throat is on fire, and my head is full of snot.

I think I’ll take a day off life.

Oh, and we have to go back on Thursday.

We booked in to have Squishy irradiated two months ago. He has to have a dye injected into his bladder (up the urethra), and then x-rays taken while he pees to see if he still has the urinary reflux.

Cue two months of increasing anxiety about a nasty medical procedure that I have to hold him down for, anxiety that increased day by day as the day grew ever closer.

Then on Tuesday, the day before the test, Westmead Childrens Hospital rang to say that they had run out of radioactive isotopes, and wouldn’t be getting any more for at least 6 weeks. And would I like to reschedule for late July?

When I expressed surprise at the late notice, she said, “well, I tried to ring you this morning”. I felt sick.

So I rang another hospital, spent almost an hour (no exaggeration) trying to convince the nuclear medicine people that if a test involves radioactive isotopes, then it is a fair bet that it’s done in Nuclear Medicine, not Urology or Medical Imaging. Really.

Finally, I was able to get through, and the test is booked for this afternoon. It will be painful for Inigo, and no doubt terrifying, and it will be my job to stay calm and soothe him. I just have to remind myself why we are doing this – because hopefully, hopefully, he’ll have grown out of the dicky bladder, and he can stop taking the antibiotics that he has been on for over a year now.

I don’t make this stuff up. Gizmodo does…

Just over a week ago, this blog turned five, and in late May, I hit 1,000 posts.

A belated hooray!

What’s Inside Palmolive Ultra, and why you might like to wear gloves.

Baby in the drivers seat

Cat on laptop

A darling friend of mine is pregnant. And absent. She decided that America, despite being full of Septics, was a great place to have a baby. Something about her support system being over there. Or something.

So of course I must knit something for her. My standard baby gift is a cotton hat, a simple pattern, machine washable, cute, and useful (I hope!).

This particular friend fell in love with a man from the Pacific. And many jokes have been made about head size, especially in relation to this baby, and his imminent birth. Since he will be born in the Northern hemisphere spring, I also thought that a larger hat would be useful for longer. So, a larger hat was cast on.

How big?

Big enough to fit the resuscitation dummy at our First Aid for Parents course on the weekend

This article talks about the good stuff associated with having to have a c/s. Mainly, a living baby.

The article raises a lot of issues for me – mainly because I still feel crap about not experiencing the labour I had imagined. And worse, experiencing a procedure that was about as far from the what I had imagined as it could be. Of course, having a live baby is very important, of course I would be feeling a lot worse today if I didn’t have the squishy guy around, of course I acknowledge that his life is of primary importance.

But if, for a second, we can separate the outcome for Inigo, and the outcome for me, the C/S was a horrible experience for me. Still 18 months later, I think of those minutes of fear, and huddles of medical personnel, the haste which overcame the importance of treating me like a person instead of a host organism, the LOSS OF CONTROL, and I can’t read that article dispassionately.

And when I hear of someone cheerfully planning a C/S, being upbeat about the positives (I can make dinner for my husband before I go in to the hospital!), I feel sick inside. I’m sure that a rational me would be fine about all of this – but that’s the point. I lost that rational part of me in the confusion 18 months ago, and I don’t know where to find it again.

I’ve bought “Birth Crisis” by Sheila Kitzinger, now I just have to psyche myself into reading it.

Tomorrow (Sunday 31st May, 2009), the Powerhouse Museum has a Hyperbolic Crochet Workshop on from 3pm-5pm. Free with Museum entry.

Edited to add – every month on the last Sunday of the month until August.

I will be spending approximately $6,000 (six thousand Australian Dollars) somewhere. If you play your cards right, and don’t commit one of the offences listed below, I might spend it with you. So you can buy a 2009 lime green ute to replace your 2008 lime green ute. Or something.

When I call and ask for a quote, telling me that “we don’t do urgent” won’t get you my business.

Waiting two days to return my call, and then telling me that “a lot of people don’t understand that the rebates will continue after this month” also doesn’t wash. As I haven’t washed, in my own home, for quite some time now. I’ve been going to Bev & Ted’s or Mum & Dad’s for showers for over a week at this point, I’m grumpy, I’m stinky, and I used to work in sales. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.

Telling me that system x is better than system y won’t wash. My uncle is an expert on solar systems, so even if I am not an expert, patronising me won’t get you very far. Clear information will.

The other thing that really impresses me? A pithy turn of phrase.

Wayne, who we eventually decided to go with, won me with this phrase.

“Go with me here luv, I reckon we put in the tank on Sat’dy, and then hook up the panels when we find some. That way, yous’ve got some hot warter in the meantime. We’ll do that sat’dy, unless it farken rains. If it farken rains, that really buggers us up.”

And today, despite a light sprinkling of rain, we have hot water.

Thanks Wayne.