Bad MuthaBlogger

We made a difficult decision recently that my mum would move out of my house, and into her own place. I don’t want her to move out, but things are kind of stressful around here what with a squawking, crawling monkey around the house, plus the F.O.B. shenanigans. Since mum had a stroke a couple of months back, she’s needed rest and relaxation, a stress-free environment, and we just can’t provide that at the moment.

She moves out this weekend. Just down the road, but far enough to have to drive. America is car country. Not like pedestrian-friendly blighty, where you could amble through muddy fields in your wellies, stop at a pub for a pint, pick up a paper at the corner shop and toodle down to your mum’s for a morning cuppa. 

One of the things mum’s taking with her, is the giant Sony Television, complete with theatre-style, surround sound. For most people getting rid of the family television would be unimaginable. But for me it was an easy move.

You see, I don’t have much love for that television. I don’t like the way it squats in the corner of my living room looking big, black and ominous. It dominates the room. It holds too much power. Whenever it’s switched on, all eyes are on it, no matter what trite is playing. It’s a big, bad machine spewing out drivel and commercial crap through all channels, and in all honesty I’m glad to see the back of it.

I don’t watch television, never have and never will. I blame television for the breakdown of our families and our communities, for the homogenisation of culture, for rampant consumerism, for poor eyesight, ADD, violence, apathy, depression, and many other horrors besides. Television kills conversation and it kills creativity. It steals time and it steals your soul. It’s the modern monster of our times, and I say slay it.

More than anything, I don’t want bunny growing up with square eyes and a manufactured mind. I don’t want a bunch of naff TV characters telling him what to wear, what to buy, what to eat, what to think.

I want him to think creatively for himself, to exercise his imagination through play. To make time for music, art, reading, storytelling. To play outside and connect with nature. To connect with the real world, with his family and friends. And I want to enjoy life with him.

For two whole months I’ve been waiting for this baby sleep specialist to come and speak at my local mother’s club. I need help. Bun-buns needs help. We both need help. We both need more sleep. Desperately. I’m reaching the end of my tether. The end of my rope. I’m starting to hallucinate in full daylight, and by the time 8pm comes round, I’m so tired I can’t see straight. Which doesn’t bode well if I ever want to go out on a date. Who wants to hang out with a zombie? 

So last night I was really excited about Angelique Millette coming into town and offering a 3 hour Sleep Seminar. I was soooo looking forward to it. Here’s what it said on the flyer: 

Parent coach, infant/child development specialist, doula and child therapist Angelique Millette will discuss baby/toddler sleep needs, and how best to help young ones learn good sleeping habits. Parents will learn about the importance of a baby/toddler schedule, and age appropriate limit setting. Relevant research will be discussed, as well as challenges to baby/toddler sleep habits, such as maternal depression. SIDS research and guidelines will be explained, as well as concerns parents may have about popular sleep training methods such as Ferber, and CIO (Cry It Out), as well as no-cry methods. Please bring questions related to crib/nursery sleeping, room sharing sleep, and co-sleeping/family bed, as well as questions about weaning, and how to find a balance between meeting baby/toddler’s sleep needs, and parent sleep needs.

Sounds good, right? I had all my questions lined up:

• Why does my baby struggle like a demon when bedtime comes around?
• When my baby goes to sleep (eventually) at night, why does he wake up exactly half an hour later, and then have to be soothed, fed and snuggled again in order to go back to sleep?
• Why is my baby still waking up every 2 hours in the night to nurse?
• Why does my baby only take 2 to 3 naps in the daytime for 30 minutes each?
• How can I get my baby to nap longer?
• Is any of this normal with an (almost) 8 month old baby?

Trouble was, I didn’t have childcare, so I had to take bun-buns with me. I was thinking he would go to sleep in the sling, since it was an evening event and well past his bedtime. I packed him in the ergo, and strolled into the lecture room, thinking I could just bounce him up and down at the back of the room, and he’d fall asleep like a good little boy, and I’d learn a thing or two about how to get us both some proper sleep. But alas, no. Bun-buns had other ideas, and that was the end of my dream night out.  

We spent about 15 minutes sweating (me) and squawking (bun-buns) in the room, with lots of people looking back at me to see what a bad mother I was for bringing my child out in the middle of the night when he should have been tucked up in bed, asleep. And then I spent another hour pacing about outside the room in the hallway, trying to calm down a hopelessly unhappy bunny, and stopping in between cries and squawks to catch a word or two of the lecture through the cracks in the door-frame. But mostly it was useless. We may as well have stayed at home, and got some sleep, which is pretty ironic when you think about it. It reminded me of the time we tried the meditation for mamas class. A total wipe out. A waste of time and energy.

Bunny eventually passed out through sheer exhaustion, and I creeped back into the room to catch the end of the presentation, but by then my brain was so frazzled I couldn’t even string a sentence together, nevermind understand what anyone else was saying. I couldn’t remember any of my questions. And I still don’t know what to do about our sleep problems. I guess I’ll just have to sleep on it…

My midwife held a potluck at her house this weekend for all her clients, past and present. I almost didn’t make it. It’s hard to get out of the house on time with a baby. I hate showing up late. I’d rather not show up at all than be late. I didn’t manage to make anything to bring along for the potluck either. It’s hard finding time to cook anything with a baby. Plus I didn’t have time to stop and pick anything up, or I would have been late, and like I said, I hate being late.

Feeling lame and dragging my heels, running almost late, with no food to offer, I showed up at the wrong house, and finally made it to the right house in a state of mild anxiety and panic. I didn’t know anyone there, apart from my midwife, and I hate parties where I don’t know anyone.

I immediately grabbed a plate full of other people’s food and began stuffing my face, because that’s the sort of thing I do when I’m anxious in a group of strangers. I hide behind food. Keep my mouth full so I don’t have to talk to anyone, with the added benefit that I look busy, and therefore I don’t look uncomfortable. I’m too busy eating this couscous and potato salad to approach anyone and make conversation. I keep my eyes on my food and that means my eyes don’t dart about the room looking nervous and shifty. It’s some kind of survival strategy from my distant past that seems to have outlived it’s purpose, but nevertheless lingers on in  my life.

Anyway, the midwife had us all circle up in the living room, pregnant women, women with 12 day old babies, women with 1 year old toddlers. A whole spectrum of mums and mums-to-be. There were about 30 or 40 all in all. With a few husbands thrown in. Then she asked us to share our birth stories, one at a time.

Oh No. I thought. Not blooming likely. Not me. I’m not reliving that horror story again, no thanks. Not with a room full of strangers. I kept quiet and melted invisibly into the sofa. Another useful survival skill I picked up along the way of life.

I listened quietly to other women tell their blissful birth stories. How they breathed into the pain, and their partners massaged their shoulders, and caressed their bellies, while they squatted in the birthing tub and pushed their baby out like an egg. And how their partners caught the baby with them, and cut the cord, and they both cried tears of wonder and more bliss as they looked into the wide eyes of their child, and what an incredibly powerful and erotic and amazing experience it was.

All the time I’m thinking, what bullshit. How am I supposed to share my birth story here, when it was such a fucked up experience? There were pregnant women in the room, expecting their first home birth child, I didn’t want to scare them with my nightmare hospital fiasco. I whispered to my midwife that I didn’t want to tell my story, I was just going to go home. But you know what she said? That it was very important that I did tell my story, because other women needed to hear that it wasn’t always a bucket of roses. That sometimes birth could be a bucket of blood, pain and shit.

So I plucked up my courage, and swallowed my shame of having failed the dream of a blissful home birth, and told my story, in all it’s full glory. Which you can read here, in another post.

The miracle was that once I opened up to my own pain and shame, and blurted it into the room, it allowed other women to open up to their pain and shame. Women were nodding their heads and murmuring while I spoke, like they knew what I was talking about, and after I finished a whole spate of other mothers shared their own home-births turned hospital nightmare. I wasn’t alone. Women were weeping and somehow we all felt a lot stronger together, like one big family. We were birthing survivors, one and all.

Bunny and I trundled on down to nearby town of Fairfax today, the heart of hippiedom, to see what a Green Halloween was all about.

I love Halloween. I love dressing up. I love carving pumpkins. I love pumpkin pie. I love trick or treating. I love the festive spirit of Harvest time. But most of all I love the spooky, mysterious, vibe of the dead. On this one special night of the year, the veil between the worlds grows thin, and the dead come back to speak to the living. I love that.

[Rant]

Unfortunately here in 21st Century America, the spirit of Halloween has been clubbed to death by commercialism to such an extreme, that it is barely recognisable as a Harvest festival of the dead. It’s more like a festival of cheap plastic crap made in China.

The shops are chock full of the most badly made Halloween tack I’ve ever seen. All manner of cheapo costumes for kids, adults and sex sluts (since when was Halloween supposed to be sexy?) latex-talking-skinned-severed-heads, plastic cauldrons, polyester black cats, skulls-on-a-stick, Styrofoam graveyard slabs, glow-in-the-dark severed limbs, and oh, so much more!

Most of this stuff is insanely inexpensive, especially when you think about the materials, labor and shipping involved. Some of it is priced for the rich (and foolish). For instance, for a mere $3,000 you can buy this toxic trickster who will pop out of a trash can, spewing fog and spooky music at your visitors. Or if you don’t fancy that, check out the inedible vomit barrel. What a treat!

America has turned Halloween into one big holiday, complete with gift cards and parties galore. Not content with being one special night, Halloween has sprawled out into the 2 weeks before the 31st October, so that we can cram in a few more trick-or-treat parties and lavish spooky events.

Apparently we don’t spend enough money at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and hey, we gotta keep those wheels of the American economy turning, so get yourselves out there and start buying up as much good ol’ Halloween gear as you can pack into your SUV. Your kids will love you for it.  Plus you gotta keep up with the Jones’s. The street displays for Halloween are out of control in this country. OTT. Over. The. Top.

I wasn’t going to mention the candy. But let me just say this: Halloween candy sales in the US are around 2.1 billion dollars. That is a LOT of high fructose corn syrup, artificial colours, pesticides, and chemicals going into our children’s bodies.

[/Rant]

I was quite relieved to come across Green Halloween, a grassroots community initiative that is doing it’s best to make Halloween good for the planet and good for people. It’s a tall task, but I’m grateful someone is having a stab at it. They have all sorts of creative ideas on their website to get kids to give up their Halloween candy for healthy treasures, to go reverse trick-or-treating, and throw green Halloween parties. Check it out and spread the word.

The event in Fairfax was small and not particularly well attended, but the vibe was positive and friendly. I didn’t hang about too long, as bunny was tired and he’s a bit too young for all this Halloween shenanigans. But I did notice that they had yummy baked goods, toasted pumpkin seeds, organic apple cider, music and dancing, costume making from all kinds of recycled and reclaimed bits and bobs, a free bounty of harvest vegetables and fruits, and a pumpkin carving contest for the local children.

The spirit of Halloween might still be alive after all, hiding out in places like Fairfax, waiting for the ugly head of Halloween consumerism to be chopped off by its own hand.

Bunny learned to drive today. Straight from crawling to driving. Atta boy. He managed to score himself his very own boys-in-blue copper car for the day, which chuffed him to bits. His feet didn’t touch the ground mind you, but that didn’t bother him. He was happy as a pig in mud.

Once I saw the writing on the door, however, I wasn’t too thrilled. I’m not a big fan of the filth. I’ve had a few run-ins with The Law over the years. And even though those days have long since gone, and now I’m an honest-to-God law abiding citizen, there still remains a shard of distrust deep in my bones for the ol’ ducks and geese (that’s cockney slang for police, in case you were scratching your head, wondering eh? What’s she on about now?)

Please God, I prayed to myself, don’t let this be a sign of things to come. We don’t want no fuzz in the family. I leaned over bun-buns and asked him if he wanted to be a policeman when he grew up. I think I took him by surprise.

Eh, what mum?! Not blooming likely! Gimme a break, I’m only 7 months old.

And then he leaned out the door and gave me a cheeky bun-buns grin.

I’ve been thinking about designer vaginas.

I haven’t spent much time looking at my own vagina, I have to admit. Frankly, I don’t particularly want to. So long as it functions and seems healthy down there, then I’m happy up here. But I did take a sneaky peek at some other women’s vaginas online. If you’ve got the stomach for it, take a look at these before and after shots and tell me what you think.

Now here’s what I think. Designer vaginas are wrong. Plain and simple. There might be the odd exception where surgery is absolutely necessary to help prevent a prolapsed uterus or some such thing. But in the main, these women are fucking with their vaginas, trying to make them smaller, tighter, neater and cleaner, for some fucked up reason that I can’t even fathom.

Why are women trying to make their vaginas look like little barbie dolls pussies? Isn’t it enough to shave our pussies, now we have to cut our labia and snip our vulvas to try and get back the pussy of our childhood? Somehow, that seems sad to me. Cosmetic vaginal surgery is a sad state of affairs. What a fucked up culture we live in. Sigh. The sanitization and infantilization of women’s vaginas. I tell you, our old pussies can’t live up to it.

I blame the porn industry. And men, of course. Not all men, but a lot of men. Most likely the ones that are buying and selling the porn.

What I’d really like to know is, how much does the surgery hurt, and what if it goes wrong? The vagina is super-sensitive. There are zillions of nerve endings down there. What’s the recovery time, and is it worth the pain? Who surveys the women afterwards to find out how satisfied they are, say, 6 months or 6 years after the operation? Is there follow-up care? Are there complications?

And is the sex really and truly so much better for women after the op, or are we doing it predominantly to please our men, so they don’t stray to a younger woman with a younger pussy?

Ladies, let’s think about this. Pussies are designed for birthing babies. Not just one, but lots of babies. And that means our vaginas are going to show a bit of wear and tear over the years. It’s only natural.

So here’s the big question: Are we really so unhappy with our genitals that we need to pay someone to mutilate them into what we think is a more fashionable shape and size? Or can we love our labia and vulva for what they are, and leave them alone?

When I was in England last month, I went to visit my doctor to see if I was alright downstairs. You know, in the nether regions. Down there. Inside my babymaker. I’m trying to be discreet here, without being too explicit. What I mean to say is, are my female reproductive organs in good working order, or are they fucked up from having a baby? Because in all honesty I do not feel normal down there.

It’s been over 7 months now, so I should be back to normal, right? But I have this feeling that things have been totally rearranged inside me. Like my uterus has been misplaced. Like tendons and muscles down there have been torn away and have then reattached themselves to the wrong place. Like nerves have been severed, never to regenerate again.

Then there’s my stomach. My stomach just looks wrong. It hangs over the edge, like an old bit of fatty chicken skin. That is not my stomach. It doesn’t belong down there. I’m starting to think liposuction.

Plus I still have this effing sciatica problem. Not nearly as bad as it was, but it’s there lingering in the background, a constant reminder that I really fucked up my body when I had a baby. Pins and needles, numbness, weakness, and an arthritic stiffness that just won’t go away. And then my big toe nail went black and fell off. It’s a dead mans leg, I tell you, and I want none of it. It belongs to that person with the saggy chicken stomach, not to me.

The doctor, who was absolutely gorgeous, refused to examine me. What a shame. He said that the only way to tell if things were OK “down there” would be to have sex. I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to make a move, which of course he didn’t because he’s a professional and I live in fantasy land.

He did, however, examine my black toe nail and confirmed that it was indeed about to drop off. He said there was no connection between that and my sciatica, but I’m not convinced. It’s too much of a coincidence. Same leg and everything. He also assured me that any nerve damage to my feminine parts was superficial. No major nerves were severed during my episiotomy. Even though the birth surgeon slashed me so deep I had over 100 stitches. Yeah, right. Superficial, my arse.

I told him that I hadn’t had sex since I got pregnant and I wasn’t planning on having sex anytime soon. Except I did tell him I was hoping to have another baby soon, and I wanted to know if there were going to be any problems like the last time. Which caused him to raise an eyebrow for a moment. I could see his brain cells ticking away (no sex? having a baby?) And then his professionalism kicked in, and he firmly stated that there’s no way to know if I’m damaged goods in the vagina and uterus department without (a) having sex and (b) having a baby. That’s the bottom line.

So now what? Stick a cucumber up my fanny and see if it hurts? Or maybe something softer like a peeled banana? Otherwise I could be in for an unpleasant surprise with the next guy I sleep with, if and when that day eventually comes to pass. Which is much more likely now I’m about to enter the dating game, so I’m thinking it’s best to be prepared.

Thank God, if things get really rough, I can always opt for some vaginoplasty and get things reconstructed downstairs. Get my vagina returned to a pre-pregnancy state, or better yet, get myself sorted with a designer vagina to go with these perfect teeth at half the cost. What a relief we live in the modern world.

I’m finally getting ready to market myself as wife fodder. Last week I had some professional photos taken. Which I’m not going to post here, because (a) I’m trying to keep a low profile on this blog and (b) I look like shit. Mutton dressed as lamb, as they say back home.

My teeth, however, look fabulous. Like a movie star. But what happened to the rest of my body and face? I took a look back at some old photos of me pre-baby, only 2 years ago, and I looked great. All slim and trim, with smooth wrinkle-free face, and long flowing hair. Now I’ve got saggy boobs, a Buddha belly, split ends, saggy jowels and a permanently furrowed brow.

Is this what motherhood does to a woman? Overnight aging into a middle aged hag? Will I ever be radiant again? Will I always be this exhausted and worn out? Am I destined to remain a mere shabby shell of my formal self? And more importantly, how the fuck am I going to score a top notch guy if I look like crapola?

One of the photos looks OK. It got me at a good angle, and now that I’ve soft focused it and turned me into black and white, I might pass in a pinch as a good looking babe.

So I’ve got the picture, now I just have to write my profile. Which is A LOT more difficult than having my picture taken, but this is my chance to talk myself up and snag me a big fish guy. Don’t want to scare him off mind you, so have to be careful with my words. Hmmm…tricky.

OMG. I’m about to enter the dating world.

The reality of that is starting to sink in, and it’s almost enough to make me want to forget the whole thing, and run back into snuggly single motherhood, just me and baby bun-buns living happily ever after. But there’s a small part of me that is determined to give this a go, to see if I can break the pattern of a lifetime and find me a partner to share my life with. I can’t help it, I’m a hopeless romantic. It’s the Libra in me. I blame all those ridiculous fairy stories I read when I was a child about princesses being rescued by handsome princes.

So last night I took a look at www.match.com and viewed the women’s profiles, to see what the competition was like. Not too bad. I think I could make myself stand out from the crowd with a bit of tweaking here and there. I could certainly come up with a more creative and alluring handle than most of the women’s names I saw. I mean, c’mon ladies…Veganmammal? RU4me? Sweetcheeks? Surely you can do better than that.

Then I took a look at the men’s profiles, and decided that I wasn’t sure I wanted to stand out from the crowd. The guys looked kinda lame. Then – SHOCK! HORROR! - I saw a guy’s profile skyfyre2 that I recognised. A blast from the long distant past. Someone I’d rather not meet again, under any circumstances. I don’t want to be reminded of those days. I’ve left them behind. Shut the door. Moved. On.

I need a pool of extraordinary men. Blokes of high calibre. Like the F.O.B. but not, if you know what I mean. I’m not sure I’m cut out for the internet dating game. I don’t want to stick my profile up there, and have some freak contact me, like skyfyre2. I need to stay sane and be normal in the dating game, because if I don’t I’ll attract other nutters into the playing field, and I’ve had enough of that game to last me a lifetime, thank you very much.

The F.O.B. is incommunicado. I’ve emailed him twice now, and tried calling him. Pointless. He’s never there when I need him. Never was there when I needed him.

For all he knows (or cares) me and bunny are bleeding to death in the back garden having been mauled by marauding mountain lions. Which might sound far-fetched, but this is exactly what I dreamed last night, and we do have big cats in these parts you know. There’s lots of deer in our garden, and where there’s deer, there’s big cats. Especially in winter when grub is short on the mountain.

About a month ago the F.O.B. emailed me a colour coded Excel spreadsheet with his itinerary for the next 6 months, so I had a look at that and it seems he’s in Singapore (olive), about to fly to Phuket (bright green) in Thailand. Then he’s off to Samui (still bright green, still in Thailand), back to Singapore (olive), onto Dubai (cream), then London (blue), Calgary (yellow) and finally stopping here in SFO (grey) for a whirlwind stay of 4 fun-filled days of mediation and lawyers. 

I might be reading too much into this, but why has he coloured us in SFO grey?? That’s not exactly a vibrant, upbeat, happy, uplifting colour is it? It’s a bleuch colour. A non-colour. The absence of colour. Boring. Mundane. Dreary. Depressing. A downer. Yukky old grey. I swear it’s some sort of sign. A bad omen.

He’s coming here in 2 weeks. Yes, he’s squashing in visits to all those other places listed above in just 14 days, which probably explains why I haven’t heard from him. Let’s face it the F.O.B. is a jet-setting, deal-making, ball-breaking BUSY BEE.

Me and Bunny are not high on his list of priorities. Woman and offspring. We probably rank about number 7 (Bunny) and 8 (Me) on his list of priorities. I guess we’ll have to bide our time and wait for him to get here for 4 whole whopping days.

In the meantime I’m getting a tad concerned about the mediation meeting he’s set up. I haven’t done this before, and I don’t know what to expect or how to prepare for anything like that. Is he bringing his lawyer? Should I bring mine? I haven’t even told my lawyer yet, he’s such a shark and I’m afraid he’ll bully me (like he did the last time I saw him) into coming to the meeting, and that just might fuck everything up.

What about that forensic accountant the F.O.B.’s supposed to have hired. Is he going to be there aswell?  Am I stepping into some kind of lions den? Hey, maybe that’s what my dream of mountain lions is all about! Danger! Watch out! Predators about!

God help me, I need guidance. Am I being hopelessly naive in thinking the F.O.B. might be reasonable, and we might reach an amicable settlement in just 4 short days? Is there any glimmer of hope that the F.O.B. will give Bunny and I what we need to survive and thrive? God knows, but in the meantime I’m keeping my fingers crossed and my eyes peeled for big fat cat attacks.

Taking a long, slow, hot bath used to be one of my all time favourite things to do. It’s one of those quintessential English things. We all love baths back in Blighty. Every house has a tub, no exception. Showers seem to be more of an American thing. Especially power showers. I like showers too but you can’t beat a bath for relaxation. I have very fond memories of splashing about in the tub, filling it up to the brim with bubbles, and staying in until the water gets cold and my skin is all wrinkly and squidgy. Bathtime bliss.

So I can’t quite get my head around the fact that baby bun-buns doesn’t seem to enjoy a good bath. WHY doesn’t he laugh and splash and giggle and play for hours upon hours? What on earth is wrong with him? It all started with his very first bath:

As you can see, not a happy bunny. I would have thought taking a warm bath would be like going back to the waters of the womb and all that. Reassuring. Soothing. Alas, no.

7 months on and we’re still struggling. We take a bath every night, as part of the bedtime wind down, and you’d think he’d be used to the routine by now. He’s fine right up until we hit the water and then he clings frantically to his little green rubber frog, stuffs it into his mouth and proceeds to suck and chew as hard as he can, while his eyes go black and stare wildly around. Then he arches his back and kicks his legs ferociously into anything he can make contact with, which is usually me and the sides of the tub.

It’s an effing nightmare. Not enjoyable at all. Like taking a bath with a rabid, demented frog. Only it’s not. It’s my precious bun-buns, and I love him dearly. All I want is for him to have a good time in the bath. Plus I need to get him clean after he’s been slithering about in the muck on my kitchen floor.

We’ve got little buzzy bee wash mitten in there, to make washing fun, but all bunny wants to do is suck the life out of him along with the rubber frog. We’ve tried bubbles, and peekaboo games, I even sing bath time songs:

Rubber Ducky, you’re the one,
You make bathtime lots of fun,
Rubber ducky I’m awfully fond of you,

Rubber Ducky, joy of joys,
When I squeeze you, you make noise!
Rubber Ducky, you’re my very best friend, it’s true!

Every day when I
Make my way to the tubby
I find a little fella who’s
Cute and yellow and chubby

Rubber Ducky, you’re so fine
And I’m lucky that you’re mine
Rubber ducky, I’m awfully fond of you.

I might as well be singing to the moon. He doesn’t give two hoots for rubber ducky. After about 5 minutes I’ve had enough bathtime wrestling and then the whole situation gets worse (if you can believe it) when we have to get out, dry off and go to bed. I thought baths were supposed to help babies relax and unwind, ready for bedtime. What a bunch of tosh. I’m at the end of my tether with baby bathtime, I can tell you.

According to www.askamum.com “with time and practice, bathtime can be a magical part of the day and a real chance for you and your baby to bond.” Er, right. What a bunch of hogwash and codswallop. What I’d really like to know is exactly how much time and practice is it going to take, because I’m running out of bathtime steam over here.