Nanna Hats & Other Signs Of Growing Old

Friday night was our first Friday in several months that we didn't have Jack's rugby training and I can tell you, John and I were quite giddy with all the Friday night possibility that lay before us. Where shall we go? What shall we do?

In the golden days of part time children and heady romance, a Friday night knees-up might involve smart cocktails and designer beers in a Balmain wine bar followed by a swanky dinner in town at 9pm and a nightcap and long chats into the wee hours of the morning.

How things have changed. On Friday, I dug a voucher out of the bottom of a green Coles bag for 50% off main meals at the local pub and off we went at 5.30pm with the little kids in tow. In an attempt to capture the sophisticated recklessness of the Ghost Of Friday Nights Past, John ordered me a very large caprioska and indulged in a designer beer himself. And oh! It was delicious!! The vodka limey wonderfulness of that cocktail loosened me up and we had a fun hour eating our half price pub meals and chatting to our neighbouring diner (who happened to be Shannan Ponton from The Biggest Loser with his adorable new 9 week old son) and letting the kids eat ice cream.

And then we were home and it was still only 7.30pm! The kids were in bed and the possibilities of our evening spread out before us like an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Pre-Kid Saloon!

A movie! That's what we needed. A fabulous grown-up movie. With subtitles. Perfect.

I'm fairly sure I watched the opening credits but don't quote me. Take a tired mama, a caprioska and a little too much giddy anticipation and you have a soundly slumbering woman on the sofa at 8pm.

Not quite the result my husband was hoping for when he plied me with a cocktail and agreed to watch a Pedro Almodovar movie instead of Friday night football.

Falling asleep on the sofa, at a time when most of the crazy kids are only just starting to get ready to go out, is only one of the ways in which I appear to be growing old. But I'm not sure it's a bad thing. I've replaced partying with practicality.

Last Sunday I did* the Pub2Pub with three girlfriends. Sure, I could have worn a sporty looking cap. But a cap doesn't cover your ears or neck from sun exposure. No, I'm afraid only a wide brimmed hat would do. A nanna hat if you will. Yes it is daggy. Yes it makes me look un-sporty. But the other great advantage of getting old is that I don't give a shit. It's all about practicality. And no sunburn.

Not that there's ever really a question of how sporty I am. You're reading a woman who fell down her front steps a week ago. Just missed a step and bang, two bloody knees and scraped hands later I'm making a call to tell my mother I had a fall. A FALL! Ninety year old ladies have a 'fall'. Toddlers quite frequently have a 'fall'. Forty three year old women are not meant to have falls!!!

Other recent indications of my increasingly geriatric tendencies:

• Being on the back stairs, I got distracted by Francesca and stopped, not to wonder what I was going upstairs or downstairs for, but whether I was going up the stairs or down the stairs. Now that's just plain scary.
• Accidentally saying 'the' Facebook the other day. As in "I've put those pics up on the Facebook". Soooo baby boomer!
• When I'm not listening to ABC local radio or reading the Women's Weekly, I'm listening to Smooth FM. And knowing all the words, even to Carpenters songs. But how is it I can remember all the words to Close To You and can't remember buying the roast chicken I found in the fridge last night? Frightening.

On the plus side, however, I am more tolerant these days. Tolerant of fools, toddlers that insist on carrying around bowls of rice bubbles, people who turn left from the centre of the road, husbands who snore and nine year olds who still think farts are hilarious. But I am less tolerant of bubble-bursters, naysayers and bullies. I used to put up with it. Now I don't.

And when I woke up early on Saturday morning after my caprioska induced slumber, I felt great. No hangover from too many wine bars and night caps and late night talkfests. No self-recrimination about what I may or may not have said in the throes of alcholic abandon ("We'd make bewdiful babies doncha reckon?").

I woke up on top of the world! (But not looking down on creation. That would be an indication of a near death experience and I'm not quite that old. Yet.)

* By 'did' I meant I strolled the whole 13kms talking to my friend. But it was definitely a fast(ish) stroll.

Can Acupuncture Assist IVF Success?

After my first unsuccessful round of IVF, I decided to include acupuncture in my treatment plan. You can read about that here.

In doing so I also achieved a previously unrealised dream of becoming a human pincushion. Because it wasn't enough to stick a needle in myself every day with hormones and have a nurse stick another needle in every other day to extract blood. That's only about 10 needles a week! Patooie!! I needed at least 20 needles a week to fulfill the pincushion dream and that's where acupuncture came in.

Seriously though, I firmly believe that acupuncture helped me have a successful second round of IVF and now the medical world is on the way to backing that up with actual sciencey facts. This is a good thing.

I was interviewed by UWS journalism graduate Tina Ngo earlier this year as part of a video she was producing to examine the association between acupuncture and success in IVF. If you're undergoing IVF or thinking about it, or just want to see a particularly pronounced case of kinked ponytail hair and some awesome casting on of stitches for a knitted beanie, you'll find this video interesting.

Tina spoke to IVF doctors and scientists who confirmed there is certainly a benefit in including acupuncture as part of your overall IVF treatment plan. Her chat with me was the 'human story' angle of the piece. It's all very 60 Minutes. Except without any annoying journalists or mud raking or awkward celebrity walkouts. But I think you'll agree the light was more than flattering.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on acupuncture in the comments section below.

Advanced Fertility (Lessons from Baby Central)

Baby Sebastian is now 7 weeks old & likes napping, sucking his fist and being cute. He also has a thing for pom poms.

 It's raining babies here on Sydney's northern beaches! Seven of the girls in my mother's group are pregnant or have just given birth (seven!!) and I'm excited about that because:

(a) Nothing beats the scent of a newborn baby and I've got it on tap for at least the next year

(b) I can sniff away to my heart's content and give the babies back when they start crying or pooping or reciting the entire plotline of the latest Cars movie in a meandering, non-chronological monotone (oh wait, that's the four year olds)

(c) Because it means the message is getting through. You know 'the message' don't you? I'm talking about The Fertility Message. The one where women make the sensible decision not to delay child-bearing because of the mistaken belief that there is plenty of time and you can easily have babies in your forties. Because, you know, Madonna and Iman and the redheaded one from Desperate Housewives, and even sensible Susan Sarandon did it in their forties so it must be easy right?

That theory is so turn-of-the-millennium. All the modern girls now get it and they are jumping on the baby bus in their twenties and early thirties. Like the girls in my mother's group. I applaud them. I am in awe of their baby-smarts. I only wish I had been as smart. I might now have had two children in school and not still be getting up at 5.30am or changing nappies or tiptoeing around the house during the all-too-short nap time or finding mashed banana smeared on the plasma. At 43, I should be drinking Cosmopolitans at lunch time and reading my Kindle on the beach and working on my mummy porn manuscript!

Not that I'm complaining. I think you all know by now that Francesca is the icing and cherry on my cake. But there's no denying that it would have been nice to have all baby and toddler related tasks over and done with by now. Like a decade ago, when I was 34 and not nearly 44. Not to mention all that conception business!

One of the reasons I started this blog (apart from being a legitimate, uncensored outlet for my alarmingly addictive use of adjectives) was to get the message out to all you wannabe mamas about fertility, particularly about the rapid decline of said fertility at a time in your life when most of us now want to conceive - our 30s.

I discussed it here and here if you fancy a trip down bloggy lane.

The media has played a huge part in getting that message across, as has social media. Some might complain that social media is responsible for an epidemic of over-sharing, but in the case of spreading the word about declining fertility, over-sharing has been of enormous benefit. This is real 'news' - news that affects many of our lives - and blogs, facebook, twitter, etc have made this kind of news so much more accessible to so many more people. As a chronic over-sharer, I heartily approve.

A good example is the blog No Missed Conceptions. This isn't a blog written by a medically ignorant, fertility challenged, over-sharing, adjective lover (who????). No. This is the blog of Dr Mark Bowman, one of our country's leading fertility and IVF experts - a professor no less - and also my IVF doctor. Anyone with an internet connection now has access to a broad range of information about fertility and IVF, as well as a way of communicating with the good doctor. Some women may dream of getting a tweet reply from Keith Urban (something that is now possible) but a woman with a serious egg deficiency or a hostile vagina* can also tweet/follow/post Dr Bowman and gain access to an incredible wealth of knowledge.

This simply wouldn't have been possible a decade ago. It blows me away. As do my girls. I can't wait to hold your beautiful newborn babies. And hand them back with a smile.


* I have no idea if a 'hostile vagina' is even a proper medical condition but it was the reason Charlotte from Sex And The City couldn't get pregnant so it must be real, right?

Cannulas, cannoli and a whole lotta coughing

Waiting in the Emergency Department. Both baby and teddy not doing too well at this stage.

So here I sit, in a ward on the sixth floor of the concrete box of a hospital staring out at the billowing blue blanket of the Pacific Ocean while my 19 month old daughter sleeps next to me, her pink blanketed bottom poking through the bars of her cot, her right cheek mooshed into the mattress. She's all at sea in the giant white hospital cot.

It is day 3 of our stay in the paediatric ward at Mona Vale Hospital. Francesca is riddled with a determined virus that has dossed down in her tiny body and refuses to budge. In her 19 months of life she has been ill for approximately five minutes. We've had none of the usual coughs, colds and bugs, apart from one runny nose last December that looked like it might become a cold but never developed. Now, however, woah! She's doing illness BIG TIME. She's decided to be the Olympic gold medalist for being ill. Our little over-achiever. Bless.

But the antibiotics and steroids and our girl's feisty gumption will win. I have no doubt about that. After all, it is common knowledge, is it not, that fish and house guests go off after three days. We have dropped hints. The virus is not silly. It is sulkily packing its germy bags. But rather than leaving hair in the sink and drinking all the good wine, it's left our little Franny Beth with croup, a nasty ear infection, a swollen trachea that makes breathing difficult, and drug-toxic bowel movements that have got the golfers teeing off on the 18th hole at the adjacent golf course warily checking the bottom of their shoes.

There is much to dislike about hospitals. Cannulas for one thing. The nasty needle tube poking into the soft blue vein of our baby's chubby little hand delivers the fluids and drugs needed to help her get better. But it's an ugly, awkward thing - needle, valves and tubes looped around her hand and strapped in place along her forearm with a splint. Every time she forgets it's there and rubs her eyes, or rolls onto it in her sleep, the IV drip backs up and the machine begins a chorus of annoying beeps, waking the baby and her cranky mother. The only thing I like about the whole cannula rig-up, apart from the fact that it is delivering lifesaving drugs into my daughter, is its name. Cannula. Rolls off the tongue. Sounds like cannoli. Which I am now craving but have no hope of satisfying. This is an institution where broccoli the colour of khaki is not frowned upon. Delicious Italian desserts are as alien as the concept of soft toilet paper.

The IV machine connected to the cannula. I and this machine with its annoying beep will never be friends.

Which brings me to the food. Bad hospital food is a cliche, but I see your 'bad' and I raise you an 'inedible ghastliness'. If you like your scrambled eggs to look like lumpy ear wax soup and your fish mornay to resemble cat sick, then this is the restaurant for you. Sure, you have to be sick to get in here, but if you can fake it till you are admitted, you are guaranteed to be genuinely sick after meal three in this place.

Banana smoothies were Francesca's preferred sustenance whilst interred. I hope Janine Allis enjoys her new house extension.

The only other con is that, despite my own hacking cough, aching head and running nose, the staff here are unable to supply me with any drugs. I'm like the kid in the proverbial candy store with not a dime to spend. This was only a problem for the ten minutes it took me to scrounge around in my cesspit of a handbag to dig out a mangy panadol capsule and the next morning the Codral cavalry arrived along with fresh knickers and my toothbrush so all was well.

HOWEVER . . .

The pros far outweigh the cons at Mona Vale Hospital and here's why.

Firstly, the view is outstanding. Having 180 degree views of the ocean, dunes, headlands and golf course is most conducive to recovery and very calming on the nerves of frazzled, worried parents. Mona Vale Hospital may be uglier than the love child of a Rubik's cube and a Soviet vodka factory but it will always have this magical view.

The staff are, quite simply, wonderful. They are a happy, kind, warm & totally professional bunch which brings me to the conclusion that they are well trained, love what they do and obviously bring their own meals from home.

The paediatrician is a young (about my age so yeah, totally young. Ish) professional doctor with a beautiful bedside manner (Francesca was 'darling') and clearly very good at what he does. He also works at Sydney Children's Hospital and has consulted with the ENT specialist there regarding Francesca's case. I love that collaborative approach. It gives us enormous comfort, knowing that our baby girl is in great hands. At no time have we felt that we're in some medical backwater being treated by retired GPs and junior registrars. No offence to retired GPs and junior registrars. I'm sure you're all lovely and good at what you do. But this illness cries out for 'specialist'.

So who cares if the handle fell off our ward door today. Or the tap in the bathroom runs like a . . . um . . . a tap. Or the chicken nuggets resemble sawdust-coated erasers.

We're in the best possible place while our lil Cesca-Luna battles this lurgy. And win the battle she will.

So I sit here, not feeling worried, but feeling lucky and incredibly grateful. I will get to take my baby home and this illness will be a distant memory in the not too distant future. There are children that spend more time in hospital than out. Like my brave and beautiful cousin who, in her 27 years has had to endure endless procedures and operations and even organ transplants. My admiration for her and my aunt and uncle is almost tangible. Then there are children that don't get to go home at all. And of course, the parents who do go home, but without a child. There are also millions of children who don't get the benefit of a hospital at all, or medical care of any kind. And my heart breaks a little bit as I think about all these children and their families.

So I'll bundle up all my inconsequential first world problems and blow them away across the car park and the grassy dunes where the dogs and their owners stride about, out into the endless blue of the Pacific where they will sink without a trace.

I wrote this (on a piece of paper! with a pen!!) while Francesca was in hospital last weekend. She came home on Tuesday after 5 days at Mona Vale and has made a full recovery. Apart from a few hiccups with her sleep routine, we are all back to normal and eating broccoli a more palatable shade of green. Oh, and I had a cannoli with my coffee this morning and didn't think about cannulas once!

Cold Turkey In Collaroy

Warning: This post falls under the category of 'potentially off-putting' so if bodily fluids offend you (or your name is Virginia and you live in Cairns - hi again hon!) Sorry my blog has taken such an unsavoury turn. Promise to write something you can read without retching soon. Nip along now and go see what's happening on Pinterest.

Remember that ad for Viva paper towel where the mum and her kid are shaking up bottles of soft drink and spraying them all around the kitchen? Totally lacking credibility in my opinion.

The mere spray of a hastily opened can of Fanta is a hideous, sticky event where droplets can be found on window panes ten feet away three weeks later. To shake up your 1.5 litre bottle and spray it recklessly around the kitchen ON PURPOSE is not only stupid in the extreme, but takes on the proportions of a fizzy orange tsunami which no amount of Viva applied by the most ardent paper-towel-packing mama could possibly hope to contain.

See? Not credible. No mother I know would ever indulge in such shenanigans.

Picture this as a plausible alternative: [Start Scene] Breast feeding mother decides in a spontaneous fit of madness to wean her 18 month old daughter by going cold turkey. She manages to deflect, distract and cajole the baby away from the breast all day long and finally gets the baby into bed, without a feed, at 7pm. Hurrah!

BUT! She has been so busy worrying about the baby's emotional wellbeing that she ignores the swelling, pressing tightness inside her bra - her own personal dam, if you will. Because her body is used to demand feeding several times a day, there is a serious backlog of breastmilk threatening to burst through the dam wall, that she has forgotten to pump off during the day. Twenty-four hours worth of breast milk welling to DD proportions and not a breast pump in sight. So she grabs a wad of Viva paper towel and hand pumps breast milk into it. Millilitres of the stuff. Practically a cup full! And by golly that Viva paper towel is amazing! It absorbs every last drop. Happy days! [End Scene]

Okay, so that particular scenario might not have been completely accurate. There MAY have been a glass of chardonnay involved. There MAY have been a few teary moments where the mother suddenly realised that she would never get to breast feed another child ever again. Never. Ever. There MAY have been a moment when the woman's husband's eyes nearly fell out of his head at the size and shape of his wife's bust.

All in all, the weaning has gone surprisingly well and I think going cold turkey was the way to go. Dropping a feed here and there and dragging it out would have been too confusing to my curious, enquiring, very sharp little girl.

There was one melt down on day two when I put her down for her daytime nap and ended up having to cuddle her to sleep. There have been a few tugs on mummy's top (see picture above), to which I've just told her that "the milk's in the bin" (she understands "bin" - lots of things that are, and aren't rubbish end up in the "bin"). There have also been some wistful looks at the Breasts-Formerly-Known-As-Food-Source as she toddles into the bathroom and sweeps the shower curtain aside with a smiley "Hi!" while I'm in there. But all in all, I'm so proud of the way she has handled it.

Fortunately, I also had a continually running support line from my mother's group tribe who stayed with me that first, emotional night on Facebook and kept me strong in my resolve. Thanks gals!

So there it is. The end of an era. And I don't know about you, but I like to end my eras with wine. Lots of lovely, guilt-free wine. A totally unexpected and unanticipated benefit of weaning *clears throat*. Who knew?

To Wean Or Not To Wean . . .

Could YOU say 'no' to this face?

. . . THAT is the question. And really, I've been too busy breastfeeding to answer it.

But finally the time has come to ponder whether tis nobler to give the breast the flick, or suffer the slings and arrows of outraged onlookers who don't like the look of a boob in a mouth that can talk.

I've been weighing up the pros and cons of continuing breastfeeding for awhile now and here's where I'm at:

CONTINUE BREASTFEEDING . . .

• I adore the unique bond I have with my daughter when I breastfeed her. I feel so close and connected to her. Her mouth fits perfectly and as I watch her suckling, I marvel at how clever she is to be able to draw nourishment from my body so painlessly and effortlessly. I'm pleasantly addicted to my daily oxytocin hit.

• Up until getting a runny nose last week, Francesca has not suffered a day of illness in her 18 months on this germy, virusy earth. She seems to have the constitution of a Masterchef judge which I like to at least partly attribute to her voluminous consumption of breastmilk.

• I have become rather used to filling a B cup bra, indeed sometimes even SPILLING OUT of a B cup bra. Breastmilk is nature's silicon implant. It's free, looks natural and if it leaks? Hey ho, no problemo. You don't have to sue anyone! The moment I stop feeding, I'm destined for the A-cup and chicken fillets and that's just sad.

• Baby bumped her head on the coffee table? Boob. Baby grumpy because you've been at the mall all morning? Boob. Baby's ears blocked on the descent into Melbourne on the 9.20 flight from Sydney? Boob. Baby starts crying just as you've finally got through to Telstra after being on hold for 40 minutes? Boob. Trying to finish watching last night's episode of Offspring and the baby won't leave the annoying Fisher Price baby piano alone? Boob.

• I will never be this skinny with this great a cleavage again without a lot of sweating, celery and a scalpel.

QUITTING . . .

• Breastfeeding is tiring. I'm tired. I've loved every minute of the last 18 months but I'm starting to feel drained by it. I think my body is telling me something.

•  Now that she's walking, Francesca is entering a more independent stage of her life, but she is still a clingy mama's girl and I think that has a lot to do with her breastfeeding habit. And it is a habit. She no longer needs the breast for nutritional value and often pulls at my top in social situations when she is feeling unsure of herself. This is not always convenient and is, I think, creating an association for her that isn't beneficial. She needs to learn to cope with low-level social uncertainty, not reach for the nearest nipple.

• Have you seen the latest push-up bras? Quite pretty. I've lived with them before and I can learn to live with them again.

So despite the almost overwhelming urge to continue feeding Francesca until she's 4 just to continue pissing off the outraged onlookers, I've decided it's time.

I just hope that Mistress Menopause isn't waiting around the corner ready to pounce on this woman who tried to cheat nature by getting knocked up in her forties.

Baby Spit A La Mode

So I was talking to a friend on the phone recently, lolling around on the sofa in a bra and knickers (think matching Victoria's Secret on a Miranda Kerr-like body. Or mismatched baggy old K-Mart undies and completely shapeless breastfeeding bra on a sagging forty-something body. Whatever.)

Francesca was on my lap eating cheese and babbling incoherently. Because she hasn't quite mastered the "don't eat and talk at the same time" rule (or just the "eating" or "talking" come to think of it) a piece of cheese flew out of her mouth and into my belly button. Without pausing the conversation, or even thinking, I picked it out of my navel and put it into my mouth.

Delicious.

Are you grossed out yet? Little bit? Stay with me.

The reason this incident with the cheese now springs to mind is because the internet has been all outraged and indignant about the video of Alicia Silverstone chewing up food and spitting it into her baby's mouth, much like a mother bird.

Now whilst I don't judge Alicia for how she feeds her child, I've never done "The Alicia" and don't plan to, mainly because I've never been in a position where I've had to. I've always had a tube of Rafferty's purees on hand. Or a boob. And also, it's a little bit icky. It crosses a line for me.

But then I had to have a stern word with myself because really, where do I draw the line? I may not have chewed up food and spat it directly into the baby's mouth, but I've certainly bitten off small chunks of apple, taken them out of my mouth and put them into hers when we've been out. It's kind of the same isn't it? We didn't lock lips but there was definitely some spit transference.

A friend of mine (let's call her Virginia* - hi hon!) cannot bear the idea of baby spit.

You know when your baby is eating, say, a hastily grabbed yoghurt tube in the supermarket (because it's dinner time and you forgot to shop for said dinner and the baby's wails are starting to draw unwanted attention in aisle ten) and, due to not having any baby wipes about your person, you drag a thumb across their mouth to scoop up excess yoghurt and then LICK IT OFF?? Well, Virginia would rather listen to Chinese opera while dragging her fingernails across a blackboard than lick that excess yoghurt. Because it would have baby spit on it and she doesn't do baby spit.

Don't get me wrong, Virginia is one of the world's best, most devoted mothers and I have seen her do all the other gross things mothers have to do daily (post-Easter-egg nappy anyone?) She also builds furniture for her home, which has nothing to do with doing gross things for your baby but is about four billion kinds of awesome so I'm mentioning it anyway.

But me? I have no such qualms. I am shamelessly nonchalant when it comes to a baby's bodily excretions. 

In addition to picking masticated cheese out of my navel and wiping yoghurt off the baby's face with my finger, I may or may not have also done the following:

• Peeled or bitten off the baby's fingernails when I haven't had a pair of scissors to hand (or was too lazy to get up off the sofa and get them)
• Licked yoghurt directly off her face when the damage has been too extensive for a mere finger swipe and had no wipes to hand (or couldn't be bothered delving blindly into the dark depths of the baby bag with one hand while holding the baby in a position where she couldn't wipe her face all over my shirt)
• Picked a booger out of her nose (because babies can't blow their noses and you CANNOT leave a booger hanging out of your baby's nose. No. You. Can't.)
• Put my hand over a sudden stream erupting from a baby boy between nappy changes to try and contain the water damage to the change table and not wall, floor and self.  

So come on, spit it out (ahem). What have you done to or for your baby? Where's your 'line'?

* Because that is her name.

Photo courtesy of Sijanto