Month: November 2008

Safe

I haven’t turned on the news this morning, but the world seems a very scary place right now.

Yesterday Emily, Clare, Mark and I were having dinner discussing threat and danger, and how threat perception becomes a different thing when you are a parent, our protective instincts drive us to irrational thoughts and sometimes actions. Now that the media brings the rest of the world into our living rooms, it becomes harder and harder to dismiss threats, real or imagined, when most of us can recall an incident of something nasty happening somewhere around the world. It is VERY unlikely that a child will be abducted from the streets, and very few of us will actually know a family that this has happened to – and yet we all fear it.

Luckily, no-one we know is stuck in Mumbai or Bangkok, and I hope all the people that were involved in the horror smash we saw on the Harbour Bridge last night are safe and recovering well.

And I hope that despite all the trauma in the world, we can continue to embrace the joy and love, rather than the fear and hatred.

One more day of racing around preparing for the infant birthday of the century (for me at least!), and I’ll be very glad to relax and celebrate a year of life with Inigo.

Halloween!

OK, this happened weeks ago, but hey, I’ve been busy.

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Everybody looked awesome, but these two would have got my vote if there was a competition.

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Jemima and Big Ted
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The Wicked Witch of the Westie, Nearly Headless Nick
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The Absinthe Fairy
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Bristol Palin & Levi Johnson

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Miss Helen
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The food was AWESOME. Must remember to get the baked beans recipe from Kris.
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Brains!

Breastfeeding Makes Kids Behave Better

According to a new study, referred to in this Washington Post article, breastfeeding has a positive influence on children’s behaviour, and it could be cumulative.

I know a few kids that were “full term” breast-fed that could challenge that theory – but maybe they might have been worse on formula 😉

And in other news, I also found an article that talks about PTSD in women after a traumatic birth experience.

I’m clearly doing much better now, but I think that PTSD (or something similar) is a much more fitting way of describing how I’ve been feeling for most of the last year than PND.

A dear friend had her 6 week checkup (something every woman has with a GP, 6 weeks after birth), and when her doctor asked how she felt, she said “it was awful, and I feel traumatised”. The doctor said “hmm”, and carried on with the exam. Take that sentence, and say it to a doctor in any other context, and I’d be stunned if there wasn’t some sort of medical follow up, at the very least a suggestion that the patient might want to talk to a mental health professional. But this doctor didn’t, maybe because it’s expected that women will be traumatised by their birth experience.

And that’s not OK. I wish I knew what to do about it.

Episode 497.5

2 X-Rays, no rock.

Either

a) I am delusional, there was no rock (I’m pretty certain there was a rock, despite my delusions), or
b) The rock has “passed” (pretty sure that I would have noticed), or
c) The rock wasn’t visible to the machine. It was quartz, apparently it happens.

Anyway, kid is full of the joys of spring, so its very unlikely that there is any harm done. Yet.

Episode 497 of “Inigo Freaks Out His Mother”

Good day today – Aqua-aerobics, kid had 2 good sleeps, got through some tough challenges on the wii fit. I even got a few loads of washing done.

I should have known I was asking for trouble when I tried to get some gardening done too.

Inigo was in his cage, I was killing grass in preparation for planting some parsley, when I noticed that he had a rock in his mouth.

I raced over, threw off my gardening gloves, and reached out to him, just as he toppled over backwards. I picked him up, prised open his mouth, and found nothing.

The little blighter had swallowed it.

I’ve spoken to my GP, apparently any nasty side effects should be fairly obvious, so if he’s in pain, or spewing (more than usual), we’re off to hospital. Otherwise, a trip to the GP tomorrow for an x-ray referral and check up.

Please keep everything crossed that I make it to Saturday.

Theatrical

What a week!

Ages ago, the lovely Emily gave us some tickets to A View of Concrete at the Belvoir St Theatre, because she and Clare were heading back to Old Blighty for a week of thrills and spills (or words to that effect). We asked my parents to sit on the kid for a few hours, and life was good.

And then on Monday, Kate rang to ask if we’d like tickets to another show on Friday. Is the space pope reptilian? Of course we would! Bev & Ted took the kid for round 2, who was apparently quite charming.

Both shows were great, but A Dissapearing Number was probably the best live theatre I have ever seen. Technical whizzbangery, great performances, a compelling, profound, and human story, and sublime music by Nitin Sawhney.

We’ve been so inspired that we’ve booked tickets to Rabbit for next year. Cheap ones, but hey…