Mastitis and falling in love with Max

I have never felt more ill than the two times I’ve had mastitis. For the past 36 hours I have been a feeble, sweat-drenched ball of misery and my left breast REALLY hurts.Treatment is no fun at all… keep feeding with your huge engorged excruciatingly painful breast! The more, the better! This whole childbirth raising kids malarky is masochistic. So I kept feeding, drank loads of water, took panadol, plonked a hot water bottle on the boob and a cold washer with vinegar on my head and hoped it would get better rather than worse. Def didn’t want to take antibiotics if I could help it, but also did not want to develop a breast abscess. Good god.. an abscess on your breast. They should really mention that the statistical chance of this is extremely low – like 0.2 per cent of women – every time they do those pithy web rundowns on mastitis.

Now the fever has broken and I am thinking that at least it gave me lots of time to gaze at Max, who is filling out nicely. He’s a calm little fellow, but he’s started to give me involuntary little smiles when I stroke his cheek or hand and it gives me a glimpse of a certain cheekiness that he might have.

Max’s arrival has brought a lot of conflicting emotions for me. I am so happy he’s here, and he’s healthy. And I am starting to fall in love with him, but it’s complicated by seeing Lola struggling with sadness over not getting as much of my attention. I feel so guilty. Time and attention are so important for babies… Lola has new words every day at the moment – she’s trying to really talk. And she knows the stories we read her are somehow contained in the words… she points to them. Max eats and sleeps and dirties a mind-boggling number of nappies a day.

A friend advised me to be patient… these first few months with a newborn are intense, but after that I should be able to find a rhythm that allows me to give Lola and Max the attention they need.

Latin America likes babies. And mums.

Here in Peru they play fast and loose with traffic rules, protest marches are only ever a tear-gas cannister away from becoming riots and there’s always a horde on hand to clearfell Amazonian rainforest to dig for gold or build a new shanty town on the desert coast.

It can be downright depressing.

But when it comes to being a mother, this is the place to be. In Latin America, people are nice to mothers. They let them take the fast lane at the bank, in the airport and many shops. They won’t actively try to run you over – at least if you have your child with you in plain sight. Waiters are happy to see you. Fellow diners and airline passengers don’t do the whole exaggerated eye-roll when they spot you with cherub in tow. Even the slouchy long-haired marijuana-toking teens hiding down by the clifftops dissolve into “oohs” and “aahs” at the sight of a baby, “How many months?” “Ooo look at her chubby legs!”

On days when I hate Peru, amid my ranting (no one EVER gives way for you on the footpath, it’s like a goddam game of chicken! Etc) I feel a certain amount of guilt that my whinges are first-world whinges. I grew up in one of the world’s most politically stable and equitable societies, where people are on the whole friendly, they observe road rules because there’s a policeman behind every bush, and there’s a strong sense of communal good because most people aren’t engaged in a rat-race to survive.

I almost certainly would not have the option of a nanny at home; it is a great luxury in the “first world”. But here, in a country where about a third of people still live in poverty, it is an option.

So my current quandary feels a lot like a first-world whinge, even though it isn’t.

I’m trying to decide on a nanny for Lola when I go back to work in February. I don’t want to go back to work at all, but staying at home is not an option. Back home this would mean childcare, and here it means a nanny.

A very nice lady has been helping in the house since Lola was born and she would clearly like to be here nanny. But I quiver at the thought. I don’t want to hand her over to ANYONE. I’m already jealous if this lady dives in to try and pry her away from me every now and then, and she’s just trying to help. And just know I found her feeding a grape to Lola! Lola was sucking away with great gusto, and all I could think was – “I wanted to give her her first taste of grape! Who told you you could give my child grape?”

I told her she should never ever give anything to the baby to eat or drink without asking me first. I wasn’t obviously angry. But inside I’m all whipped up.

She obviously loves Lola, and she’s a good person, very honest and straightforward, with initiative. And she’s a mother of two – but then she’s told me about all kinds of problems she had with her own children because she didn’t really know what she was doing at the time. And not just small stuff – her daughter was so sick she went to hospital. This is not uncommon in Peru – many children in poorer rural communities have malnutrition because their parents just don’t know what to feed them.

The other option is to trial some nannies that have been recommended by friends of friends. Ideally I want someone with LOTS of baby experience, and maybe even a nursing background. I think, post-grape, I’ll arrange for a few trials in the new year, and see what I think then.

Before Lola arrived, I thought having a nanny would be a great idea for balancing work and life. I could go back to work and Lola would have lots of one-on-one attention. Now I’m having a panic attack/fit of jealousy at the thought of her spending her days with some other woman. And even if this woman is highly qualified, will she be as patient as me? Will she be as thrilled as me by the small steps? Will she be as inventive with play? Will she be able to react to an emergency sensibly? Can I trust her to walk across a road with Lola (seriously, crossing a road can be a hazardous affair here).

I’m sure none of this will inspire much sympathy from fellow new mums or mums-to-be because many of you will be struggling with the same kinds of thoughts about childcare. And childcare means your child is sharing the attentions of a caregiver other than yourself, so even scarier!

There’s no pithy way to wrap this up… except to say I have been wondering how I possibly could stay at home. Would I be throwing my career (and our financial security) out the window if I worked from home or went part-time for a few years? Not that these are even options yet.

 

 

 

The loss of innocence

Lola did her first headbutt yesterday.

The little bugger likes to be upright, or at least almost upright, to see what’s going on in the world, and as I clasped her to me she raised up her wobbly head for a better gander at her favourite blue and white zebra painting, and … wham.

She lost control of that wobbly little head for a second and headbutted my breastbone. The shock was so great she screamed for a good while.

It struck me then that I can count on one hand the number of times this world has hurt her.

There was the birth, of course. Struggling down the birth canal and being wrenched out with the help of a vacuum on your tiny little head has to be up there on the list of stressful life events.

Then there is her time with the nurses and doctors before being passed over to me… lots of poking and prodding in a strange new clinical world.

Then the needle in her hand for initial blood tests, and two jabs in her heel for more blood tests. It was meant to be just one but the nurse bungled it.

Further down the scale there are the gassy stomach pains that cause her to whimper in her sleep or launch into a good long cry.

And then the headbutt.

It was just awful to see the look of betrayal on her little face as she sobbed. It wasn’t even a very big bang on the head; it was more the shock that things could hurt.

One of the most blissful things about having Lola in our lives so far is having her smile up at me – looking me full in the eyes with total trust and faith, and smiling her gummy smile; sometimes even laughing her funny little laugh. She does it in the morning – she’s so happy we’re starting another day again, even if her days still really consist of sleeping, eating and micro play sessions watching her blue ee-or donkey float above her trilling its tinny version of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” or tracking the progress of her Senor Vaca rattle with her eyes, or perhaps a quick spell pushing against her cyclindrical pillow and experimenting with the notion of self-propulsion.

We all lose that innocence somewhere along the way, and a world full of totally trusting childlike adults would be like living in some bizarre religious cult – imagine, legions of bright-eyed zealots who don’t want to think for themselves. We must all learn to question, to be sceptical and to explore the world, which means pain, disappointment as well as elation and serenity and excitement.

But without getting too dramatic about it, it hurts to think that that amazing gleam in her eye and that fearless joy is going to be shaped by the pain of scraped knees, more headbutts, trouble with friends, teenage angst.. and all the rest.

She is waking up now, her little podgy pajama-ed body squirming and her lovely little mouth making ridiculous shapes, and I can’t wait to see that smile again.

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Birth story

She’s here! And she’s beautiful. In 10 minutes she will be exactly four days old, and before I forget (people keep telling me hormones magically take the edge off the birth experience, otherwise women might never want a second child) I want to write about the day she arrived.

We went ahead with induction at 40 weeks and four days, on Friday, August 3. I was scared, to be honest. We went to the clinic at 7.30am where Dr E put a prostaglandin tablet in my cervix to start the softening process. When he examined me I asked him how far it had effaced and he said “Not at all”, which was not the answer I wanted to hear.

As we left, Rufus suddenly slapped his forehead and said, “What about the tablet?”

“Um, it wasn’t the kind you take by mouth,” I said, laughing.

So we checked into the clinic, managed to fight off Peruvian democracy in the form of hospital admin and nurses who wanted me to go to my room right there and then, and waddled off to a French bakery nearby to buy some snacks 🙂

Taking a gentle stroll around the park behind the bakery, the air seemed sweeter and the roses prettier. I had on a new green alpaca wrap my dad had bought me the day before, and even though I was scared I felt very happy. Rufus was nervous I think, because he kept saying inane things. Like, “That’s a tree, and that’s a flower.” Seriously.

We took a taxi the few blocks back to the clinic with our baguettes, mini quiche and lime tart and surrendered ourselves to the medical staff there. We left our things in our room and were transferred upstairs to another room inside the surgical wing. I was given a hospital room and a rather fetching silk robe, which I teamed with my own pale blue fluffy slippers with pom-poms. Never too early to start embarrassing your child, I say.

Thinking we would have time to go home before being admitted, we didn’t have my birth ball with us. But I did have a lavender burner and my yoga and prenatal belly-dancing DVDs. Monitoring showed the baby’s heartbeat was strong, at around 154 or so.

We called mum and dad to let them know it might be a good time to come in and sit with us for a while, as we weren’t sure how hard or fast things would progress later in the day. Also, I was pretty certain I wasn’t going to want them right there when things got tough, physically.

I started pacing the corridors, and had flashbacks to the One Born Every Minute episodes I had greedily consumed months before. Only in this case I was the only woman pacing the floor – everyone else seemed to be having caesareans! I bumped into the doctor who did my marsupialisation surgery a month ago, and he wished me the best. And I begged some hot tea off the nurses a few times – Peruvians are a bit bewildered my by  tea dependency.

When mum and dad arrived it felt quite festive – mum tried out my belly dancing moves with me and they started a little picnic with the bakery booty. A nurse brought me in some chicken broth and something else that I’ve already forgotten about.

I think about 1pm they hooked me up to a Pitocin drip, which ramped up my anxiety as I’ve heard so much about women being slammed by fast, suddenly strong contractions out of the blue on this stuff.

I don’t remember if the contractions began before or after the drip but I felt like it was manageable – breathing and rubbing my tummy did indeed help the feeling pass, even as it built up. I kept walking with Rufus, up and down the corridor, pausing to breathe out the pain every now and then. It helped to hug him and have him rub my lower back until the contraction passed.

We evicted mum and dad, saying we’d call later in the day to give them time to get back when we had a better idea of how it was all progressing.

Dr E came by, looking incredibly happy and pumped, and checked my cervix… we’d progressed to about 3cm by then and he asked if I’d be having an epidural.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy if I don’t, aren’t you?” I said.

He laughed and said, “Yes, absolutely!”

Getting from 0cm to 4cm was the slowest part, he said.

I said I wanted to wait and see how things looked a bit longer, and kept breathing.

All the while, the pitocin drip in my arm was ticking over, ramping up the dose bit by bit. Not long after Dr E left the contractions started coming faster and lasting longer. They also felt different – more of a circular clamping down, radiating around my whole pelvis, which I guess is to be expected.

This is when I started swearing.

I said “fuck” a lot.

It wasn’t an angry, “Damn-you-to-hell-Rufus-for-making-me-pregnant” swearing though – the kind you see in all the movies. It hurt, and it was hard to breathe deeply or serenely through it, but this was it! After everything, she was on her way.

Rufus was being great through it all, rubbing my back, reminding me to breathe, keeping his cool and helping me maintain some humour. The only “are you fucking kidding me?” moment came when he actually answered a phone call during one of my contractions.

I think it was around 4.30pm when I pressed the buzzer for the nurses and said “I want an epidural!” In about half an hour they were there, having me curl into a ball and sticking that needle in my spine. It’s amazing how unsqueamish a person can be about something like that when the contractions are really coming on hard and strong.

The epidural was magic. I know I’m supposed to be all Warrior Woman, I can do this without any drugs at all, but … why? I’d made it halfway without any drugs and it bloody hurt. It was only going to get rapidly worse with the pitocin dripping into my system.

The epidural going in felt like a cold, electric current down my spine, and the effect was greater on my left side, as my left leg felt very heavy. I could still feel the contractions, but not the pain. We put Bach’s cello solos on and I kept up the deep breathing, and thought a lot about my mother and her 48-hour labour without anything until they knocked her out on pethadine near the end so she could find the strength for the final push home.

Things went pretty fast from there on in. Dr E returned and said the baby would arrive within hours. We called mum and dad and got them back in a taxi heading our way. I tried to wrap my head around the fact that this was really, truly happening.

It’s already getting fuzzy, how things unfolded. At one point Dr E said I was fully dilated we’d go into theatre in about 10 minutes and it seemed like the most ludicrous thing to me. I was expecting the pushing phase to go on for hours.

Rufus went off to be scrubbed and dressed up like an ER extra. I found myself on a table with my legs in stirrups (unexpected surprise! but too overcome to quibble), and there was Dr E grinning at me in surgical greens. “Now you’ve got you labour face on,” he said. We talked over how he wanted me to push and the nurse said she’d count me in and tell me when to stop. I really thought we’d be in there for hours.

Rufus came in and I just wanted to keep looking into his eyes. I can’t say how I felt. Excited, scared, overcome, surreal, incredulous, very in love with him. All of those things. I went in around 6pm and she arrived ay 6.34pm.

Dr E told me to hold my breath when pushing and direct the effort into my butt, not my face. Of course my first push I puffed up my face like that fat kid from Charlie and the Chocolate factory and almost burst a blood vessel. I got the hang on the second. On the third he said he could see the head and I asked if she had hair – yes! On the fourth or fifth, she was there, being gripped upside down by the ankles in front of me!

Dr E had used a vacuum, and done an episiotomy, amid all of that – at the time I didn’t register any of it.

Just her, hanging upside down. In the world, with all of her fingers and toes, a little person. They put her on my chest and I could hear Rufus crying behind his mask as he leaned in to kiss her. Dr E had tears in his eyes too – he has known her since she was an embryo and without him we would not have her.

It wasn’t until right then, with her there, that I could let myself believe that this motherhood malarkey was really going to happen. Right now I am staring down at her as she feeds and I am still stunned by every little detail.

Lola’s playlist

Babies love music, apparently. But which music?

In a spectacularly unscientific way, I have been playing all kinds of music to my belly ever since I could feel those flutterings and kicks inside. Anything that warranted a good kicking I moved onto a separate playlist, so now, in the last few days before meeting her, I have Lola’s first playlist. I just don’t know if it’s a collection she loves, or hates, or both.

Top of the list is LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy and I know it“, which gets her moving every time.

But other big movement-enhancers include: Nick Cave‘s “The Ship Song” (maybe this is partly to do with a surge of hormones from me though, because I think it is the most romantic, beautiful song ever); Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” and “Feeling Good”; the Brazilian/French lullaby “Bonjour Pra Voce”; Simon and Garfunkel‘s “At the zoo”; Act 1 of Lohengrin “Elsa’s Dream” (This is weird because I never listen to opera and I was playing it just now Rufus came in and told me to change the sad music); “You got the love” from One Night at Moma; Kanye West “Gold Digger”; “Partons vite” by Kaolin; Pink Floyd “Another Brick in the Wall”; Kings of Leon “Red Morning Light” and”Penny Lane” by the Beatles.

One of the best pregnancy books I’ve read these past few months is Brain Rules for Baby by Seattle-based brain scientist John Medina. He seems like a very cool guy and he offers advice based on peer-reviewed studies. He tells a great story about a musician who as an adult hears a piece of music, supposedly for the first time, and realises he knows it intimately. Turns out it was the piece his cellist mother was practising when he was still in the womb.

I’ve played some Yo Yo Ma to the belly, and Bach’s cello suites got some kicks too. But “I’m sexy and I know it” got more.

When I was born my dad came to the hospital in his flary jeans, sideburns and moustache with a copy of the Australian band Daddy Cool’s first album, featuring “Eagle Rock”and “Daddy Who?”. The pale pink album cover was a prized possession of mine all through childhood and it’s still stored somewhere in my parent’s house (even though my mother is a ruthless discarder of stuff). Eagle Rock never fails to make me smile.

In the age of downloading, I think it’s still worth buying an actual DVD for Lola when she comes so she can keep it.  But which one?

 

Very bad hair day

I look like absolute shite today – could this be “labour face”?!

Not only do I feel like every tiny thing takes the most mammoth effort – barely got my shoes on – I look like I stayed up all night at a rave, took loads of drugs and have been deprived of caffeine, sugar or a big greasy English breakfast to try to make up for it.

My brain is foggy and fully capable of swooning if anyone asks too much of me today. Added to this, I am playing Kylie Minogue’s “I believe in you” as I write this and Lola seems to be enjoying it. My baby is low-brow!

Also I have a sore, very stiff back for the first time this pregnancy – I know! How lucky am I to have escaped this so far? I think it can only be a good sign.

Now that I have bored you all witless with my latest symptoms and death-by-water-torture style obsessive waiting-for-baby-to-come prose, I am going to go for a walk to try to encourage the baby to look at my spine instead of the world in general and save us both a lot of grief. Love and positivity to you all.

 

So far, so good

Lola is now weighing in at 1.140kg, more than a standard bag of flour.

We saw her today, bobbing around in there and I have to say she’s behaving very well so far. Head pointed in the right direction (phew), no deadly jabs to the ribcage (yet), and doc says she’s looking good. He even showed us an eight-week ultrasound pic of his own son, who is now 9, which I took as a sign of confidence.

We also went to see the hospital coordinator who liaises with international insurance clients, and she has promised to get pre-authorisation for the birth locked in over the next week or so, just in case there are any early surprises. This is a huge relief because bureaucracy here can be an absolute bitch. Trying to get an iphone out of the phone company ended in tears a few weeks back after they gave me a contract on Monday, rescinded it on Tuesday, offered it to me again on Wednesday, delivered the phone on Friday but then wouldn’t leave the phone with me because I only had two passports, various bills and the apartment lease to prove who I was.

I can’t imagine turning up at the clinic here early without having some kind of written authorisation to actually give birth – they’d probably put us out on the street.

We’re signing up for pre-natal classes this week, even though Dr E said he’s not entirely sure they’re necessary. They help calm anxieties more than anything, he says. I’m down with that.

I was feeling pretty anxious yesterday when it dawned on me that the first few months with Lola might actually be quite isolating. You see Rufus has always been around a lot – he used to work from home, and so do I, so we saw each other all the time. Since the start of the new year, he’s been in a new job, so he’s working from 8-8 most days, or even later, and I’ve been missing him. A LOT. He’s calling me “the limpet” because the minute he comes home I attach myself to his side. Last night the poor man had to eat his spaghetti around me because I dropped myself in his lap and wouldn’t leave.

The thing is, this new job of his is great news – the best – and the timing really couldn’t be better. With my own career going down the tubes thanks to the boss from hell, we needed more cash and more stability, and Rufus is delivering it.

But I realised yesterday that all those soft-focus dreams I had of us enjoying her first few months together need some adjusting. Rufus will be gone most of the day, every day, so it’ll be Lola and me. And my parents, God love them. My mother insisted on coming out to be here for the birth, and I tried to tell her she was crazy because the weather is awful at that time of year and if she waited a few months the babe would have more personality and the sun would be out.

Now I see I was the crazy one… I am really going to need my mum.

 

 

 

Miss you, kiss you

Rufus is off in the wilds filming native cocoa plants and I am all alone.

I never used to be sooky about being alone, or being the one to travel, leaving him “alone, abandoned and sad”, as he always put it, in that understated way of his. But now I am! I really feel it. I want him here with me. I wake up sad not to see his smile and feel his warm body snuggled up around mine.

And I just want to have a little sulk about it.

Anyhoo, no point in that, so I am about to launch into my day. So here’s some good stuff to dwell on as I do:

My lovely, lovely cousin, who has been battling infertility for five years with amazing grace and generosity, is 14 weeks pregnant. I really worried about telling her about our pregnancy, because I know that news is like a stake through the heart when you’re repeatedly banging your head against the wall of infertility. She showed only joy and excitement for me… which made me realise once again what a truly impressive and courageous person she is. And now they have had the all-clear on scans and it’s all looking good.

My mum is on a crazed mission to get healthy for her visit over to see us when the baby comes and she’s looking fantastic. She’s lost a tonne of weight, pilates has strengthened her body, and she’s obviously feeling a lot better physically (she has a lot of chronic conditions) She’s had a rough few years with her health (well decades really) so I’m so pleased for her.

Today is Thursday. I have a shitload of stuff to do but still, one day closer to the weekend.

Going to go for a walk now, breathe some fresh air, listen to some music, including this excellent song from Clarence Henry:

and then get lots of things DONE.

 

 

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Superklutz

I gave myself an electric shock again.

That’s two shocks, one near-fire and a squirrel bite since I became pregnant.

If I actually get to give birth to a healthy girl, this will be funny some day. But right now I am feeling all flattened and upset by my own ridiculousness.

I know this is probably a total overreaction. But part of being pregnant and feeling so goddamn grateful is being stalked by the fear that it’s all so fragile and easily lost. I suspect this is how parents feel quite often.

After last night’s shock – in which I fiddled about with the rice cooker plug like a total moron – I called Dr E, who assured me that if I was ok, then she was more than likely ok. So I carried on making dinner, trying to maintain calm and will little Fonzarella to give me a good internal battering.

When Rufus came home I greeted him at the door like the confirmed lunatic I am quickly becoming and confessed. He sang into my belly button to try to get a reaction, but – much as I love him – he’s no Pavarotti.

No kicks until after 11.30pm, when I felt a feeble flurry and fell asleep. Another few feeble nudges this morning. And now nothing again. Maybe I stunned her. Maybe the shock did something weird to her developing body (almost 23 weeks now).

More fretting, more little internal monologues about how it’s all going to be alright. No really. It is.

The thing is, I had a strange day yesterday and before I shocked myself I was feeling so proud to have pulled myself out of a horrible boss-induced funk.

He-who-must-not-be-named had messaged me blithely that morning to say he’d appointed someone to cover my maternity leave. This someone, I know, is very ambitious, and just the kind of person (ie man) my boss loves. He’s also someone I’ve helped a lot in the past, and I had a feeling they have been cooking this up for a while now, so add betrayal to my list of work woes.

He is going to stay on when I come back from maternity leave to cover one chunk of my job – a major sore point for me because I just know that with almost anyone else as a boss, my infertility troubles and pregnancy would never have lead to this scenario.

Yes, I am feeling victimised. And a bit sorry for myself.

That’s deeply unfashionable I know. “Don’t be a victim!” all the self-help books say. But what if you are? Or have been? Can I just feel like a victim for a little while?

Deciding I had to do something positive to combat this general crappiness I called a former colleague to pick his brains about his career changes since he left our group. I am so glad I did. He’s done some amazing things, from strategic communications to activist campaigns to crisis management in Haiti. At heart, and in outlook, he says he’s still a journalist, but he’s had a grand time exploring other options and skills and independent projects. Now I have a list of some project ideas of my own, and have signed up for a few skills courses in the meantime.

I also called my former boss about a project he is getting off the ground to register my future interest. Working on your own, far from colleagues, can make a person feel isolated. It was great to be reminded that I do indeed have a strong network of contacts and friends and colleagues, and I have a lot of options.

If I can just steer clear of wild animals and electrical appliances, things will work out.

Mother I’d like to…

Can I just say, right now, that I admit I am in the wrong here.

My mother-in-law is driving me all the way to crazytown because she is living with us for an entire month.

She is actually a very likeable woman on the whole, but sharing my home (and my office) with her right now is bringing out the brat in me. She keeps giving me advice. Or telling me how it is. The baby is a boy because my butt is big. I should be feeling the baby’s movements now – even though my doctor and every thing I have ever read on the subject says it will be weeks and weeks yet before I’ll feel anything. I shouldn’t drink anything with ice.

And the food thing. She is like the food police. She’s about a big as a sparrow herself, and started out at 45kg before her pregnancies, she never tires of telling me. She got to (gasp!) more than 70kg by the end. I suspect she is one of THOSE women, who like nothing better to talk constantly about how petite they are.

I am starting out at 71kg – wish it weren’t so but the last year or so of IVF and various treatments and drugs and general downheartedness did not bring out my exercise warrior. This should be obvious to anyone with eyeballs and you would think it might be indelicate to touch (let alone harp) on the subject.

I comfort myself with the thought that my BMI puts me just at the top of the “healthy weight range” and have braced myself for the obvious and necessary gain I’ll have in the next six months. Indeed, I am wholeheartedly grateful for it and can’t wait to see this belly grow.

But back to the MIL. She tells me constantly that she hardly eats anything but expects a cooked lunch everyday, and the moment I open the cupboard she’s there, like some kind of hungry retriever.

She tells me I can’t make potato salad because it’s full of carbohydrates (I just want something filling and bland with vegetables, and I used yoghurt as the dressing so how bad can it be??) And the list goes on.

I find myself shuttling from room to room trying to find space to work in between her incessant soap operas and phone calls (her bedroom is my office). She. Never. Leaves. The. House.

And tonight, I cracked when DH suggested a walk at sunset. I was looking to stretch my legs after a day inside, and he invited her along. She’s 74 and walks about the speed of a giant Galapagos land tortoise.

So I said I’d walk ahead and meet them on the way back. It was a beautiful serene evening and I got into my stride, imagining the 4cm little bubba bobbing away inside, wondering what the heck was going on. I tried out some baby name ideas, breathed deeply, enjoyed that last light of the day, and then met up with them.

It was obvious DH was pissed off with me. When we got back I asked and he suggested I just walk alone in future. So now I’m furious, and feeling sorry for myself, but at the same time ashamed at myself for not being able to nice to a little old lady. I know she actually means well with her advice. And she has been welcomed me into the family. But this family thing of DH’s suddenly seems so much bigger recently, what with the two teenage stepchildren, Christmas, New Year’s and the month long MIL visit. It’s just all a bit much right now.

And the worst thing is, he’s now packing his bags to go on a work trip for a week tomorrow.