Christmas: Blink and You'll Miss It

The silly season is done and dusted... 1000 rum balls have been consumed; nectarines, plums and cherries have been digested at rates fast enough to guarantee we all stay regular until well after New Years. I have personally eaten enough M and Ms, chocolate, mango smoothie, pavlova, trifle, ham and salad to last me a lifetime. And I have two big family functions coming up faster than I can say 'loosen that button please!'

Our Christmas Tree is still up and decorated. It will probably stay this way until school goes back. We have our house decorated. And it will stay decorated. Indefinitely. Several years ago, my mother bought us a fake Christmas tree, after I whinged and moaned about the ongoing clean up that a real tree necessitated. This is why I feel justified in keeping it up for about 3 months. The clean up is minimal. Eventually I will come to look at it as a giant pot plant. Only without the pot, or water, or soil.

This year we had Christmas at home. And the day began at 4:30am. We alternate Christmas between our families. My brother, sister and their partners joined us for three days of Christmas fun on the farm. We all squeezed into our little house, stocked up the cold room with drinks, fruit and meat, (in that order), and sat back by the pool and killed time. It was wonderful. And the weather was superb!

As far as tradition goes in our family, it's always about food. I ALWAYs glaze a ham.

Glazed Ham

We ALWAYS make a potato salad. We ALWAYS make a pavlova and trifle. We ALWAYS eat about 4kgs of prawns. SOOO GOOOD! So we did all those things. And we washed them down with a cool room full of alcohol - which we ALWAYS do. Daquiris, Mojitoes, Martinis and Cider were the beverages of choice this year. Mmmmmmm.

The children were over indulged again. Being the only children on both sides, they are spoiled terribly. And thankfully they are still buying my lies about the man in red. Or lady in red, as it actually is in our house. Santa Claus really outdid herself this year at our house! The lies get harder and harder.

"Sorry he got that swim suit size wrong girls... I'll email him and check his returns policy."
"I know the wrapping paper is the same as those presents from us over there... Santa must buy his paper from the same shop as us!"

Kids are so clever! (And now - two days later, also cranky and tired)...

Liv, out cold after the longest Christmas dinner wait, ever. It's all a bit much for little people.

The funny thing about Christmas this year was not having any parents in our house with us. Sometimes I felt like a child pretending to be a grown up. But more than anything, it made me realise that it's family that makes Christmas, 'CHRISTMAS' for me. It's the love, the laughter and the happiness I love. And the 'Christmas play' the kids put on. Yes, Sam is in a dress. Yes, Olivia bossed everyone around and told them what to do and say. Yes, Darcy is Lady Gaga. And not because Olivia told her to be... I love Christmas.

And now it's all said and done for another year. And I'll start the online shopping frenzy right after New Years. Only this year I'll have to hide my presents in better places. We had a few close calls this year...

What did you do for Christmas?

It's Not Morning Sickness

I have spent at least 60 weeks of my adult life staring into the bowl of a toilet. And that's not even including the four years I drunk my way through, whilst attempting to complete my teaching degree.

That's 60 weeks of riding the porcelain bus, doing the liquid laugh, calling Ralph on the porcelain phone and bowing before the porcelain God. Whatever you want to call it, I had the most severe morning sickness in all three of my pregnancies. The phrase 'morning sickness' causes me to roll my eyes in the most over exaggerated manner. Clearly it was a phrase invented by a man. Because any woman who has experienced this debilitating illness would testify to the fact that it is not only something you will experience in the morning. Below I have recounted the first 20 weeks of each of my pregnancies. 

Olivia

I learned I was pregnant (officially) at 5 weeks. I was up in St George with my friend Kym a day or so later and we stopped for lunch. I couldn't eat it. I should have realised something was 'out of whack' then. Anyone who knows me knows that I love my food. But I have really only been in tune with my body since having been pregnant 3 times. That afternoon I arrived home and felt nauseous. This lasted into the early hours of the morning. The actual vomiting started the following day. And then it continued for 20 weeks.  But let me get you into the head space of a woman who vomits every day for 20 weeks. 

Take the worst hangover you have EVER had. Remember that feeling of not being able to move or think straight. The feel of every movement you make causing the room to spin and your stomach to lurch. And then the actual experience of emptying the contents of your tummy into your little toilet friend. Then multiply that feeling by 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 20 weeks. And I was lucky. Some women have it even worse.  

I lost 6 kg in two weeks. And on my frame, that is really something. My face was gaunt and I looked like death warmed up. Sleep is your only respite. Your waking hours are spent counting minutes between your visits to the bathroom. If you can even make it that far. I became very well acquainted with a bucket. 

One morning I woke up and just cried and cried. I wondered how much my body (and more specifically my baby) could take? You get dehydrated (I couldn't hold down water, let alone food of any description), and that starts to do funny things to your mind. I was starting to wonder if any baby could possibly be worth all the 'pain'.  Of course, having had 3 babies, I know it is completely worth it. But in that time and head space, you really do wonder. I have an aunt who sent me a book on 'morning sickness' and potential remedies. Nothing was working for me. But the book did help, in that it made me feel like I wasn't alone. It even spoke of some women who cannot complete the pregnancy for the reasons I described above. I truly sympathise with those women. You can't imagine how horrible things can be for them. ANYWAY... On the morning I woke up crying, I decided enough was enough. I checked myself into the local hospital. I needed to be hydrated, or something! Several hours later I sat alone in my own room, hooked up to a drip, dosed up on Maxalon (an anti nausea tablet), and crying. CP had gone home and I was to stay here for at least one or two nights to be monitored. It was a low point.

I took time off work and spent the next few days learning to eat food again. Potatoes seemed a safe place to start. Twice a day, I would heat up a small potato in the microwave, and sprinkle it with salt and pepper. And that became my staple diet. 

I remember being curled upon the lounge in the foetal position during that period, staring at the television. Too weak to move, too sick to do anything. Penny Wong starred in an ad on calcium at that time, and to this day, even seeing that ad (or Penny Wong for that matter) takes me back into a dark space. I don't like it. Even writing it now is kind of giving me a headache!

This behaviour dragged on. Eventually I returned to work. I borrowed a bean bag from the library at school and used to have little naps in my lunch breaks. I was too weak to make it through a full day on 2 upright legs.  I took my 'Sheila Kitzinger Pregnancy and Childbirth' textbook into my classroom and was fully prepared to answer any and all questions my high school students would throw at me. To my pleasant surprise, even the worst students were sympathetic to my condition. It was lovely. I took a 'spew bucket' into my classroom and kept it behind my desk 'just in case.' I used to threated my students with threats like 'If you so much as put a foot out of line, you will have to come and sit up here behind me with the spew bucket.' It seemed to work. 

Gradually I was sucking on ice blocks and then biscuits and eventually things were back to 'normal'. The remainder of my pregnancy was incident free, and I would even go so far as to say I glowed. Nice.

Darcy and Sam

We had weddings we were attending in the early stages of both pregnancies. We had hoped to keep the pregnancies a secret until the magic 12 weeks, however morning sickness set in for these pregnancies as well, and since we didn't want to disrupt either wedding by having people speculate about my frequent visits to the bathroom, failure to consume litres of free alcohol and inability to eat, we told people very early on. 

I didn't require hospitalisation with Darcy, however I checked myself in for 'rehydration' with Sam. Maxalon became my best friend. And there is something really strange about having a toddler hold your hair back from your face and rub your back when you are lurched over a toilet. Goodness knows what Olivia or Darcy ever thought I was doing!

We renovated our house during my pregnancy with Darcy. My morning sickness factored into our designs. I insisted on an ensuite close to my side of the bed, so that my midnight and early morning dashes wouldn't be too far from my bed. 

Being in public is also traumatic if you are suffering from this infliction. You can never trust a public toilet. (Having to place your head anywhere near where people defacate is enough to make you vomit even if you aren't already feeling nauseous.) I could only do my grocery shop immediately after I had vomited, so that I knew I would have the time to finish it in one go. And given that we live an hour from the supermarket, my drives to town were fraught with frequent stops on the side of the road. I can still point out all the places I have ralphed. Charming. 

On the upside, the last half of all of my pregnancies were perfect. Perhaps that was my good karma for the first 20 weeks. I also have some of the best, fastest and easiest labours and births of everyone I know. I walk out of hospital weighing exactly the same as what I weigh when I learn I am pregnant. (Except that it maybe hangs off my frame a little differently). So everything equals out. The good with the bad. 

And all you have to do is look at that tiny baby once to realise that it was all completely worth it.

The Nanny - Part 2: And Then There Were Three

It was only a month or so into Yv's stay with us, when I learned I was pregnant. This is him. The first pic of our little Sam the man.

One day I will blog on the nature of my pregnancies, and how the devil I survived them, given how horrible they were for me, but suffice to say I do not do pregnancy well (or rather, the first 20 weeks of the pregnancy well).

When I learned I was pregnant, I told Yv immediately after I told CP. She would find out soon enough anyway. The conversation went something like:
Me: So Yv, it turns out I am pregnant again.
Yv: That's great news!
Me: Yeah, umm... it is. Eventually. But right now it's not all that good for a few reasons. You need to know that I get really sick when I am pregnant. In the next few weeks, when the nausea hits, I am going to be reduced to a blubbering mess, curled up in the fetal position either on the lounge or in my bedroom for the next 6 months. I won't be able to handle the smell of anything. I won't be able to care for myself, let alone the people who have come to depend on me. I won't be able to do anything. I will look like death warmed up for the foreseeable future.
Yv: Ohhhhh....
Me: And that's kind of why I need to tell you this now. When we hired you, in all fairness to you, you only signed on to 2 children. This isn't in your contract. So I won't be at all surprised, and I truly don't mind, if you choose to leave at Easter. Having said that, I would really love you to stay. If you want to stay, and can put up with doing a bit extra for a few months, it will totally pay off down the track. We'll give you more time to yourself in terms of hours to compensate for the overtime you'll be doing for me during the day...
Yv: Sure, that's no problem at all. I want to stay.

Could she be real? She would stay, even though I had just told her she would, in essence, become my slave, as much as I would become a slave to my own body? Nice!

And that's how it went. As I hovered precariously beside the porcelain bus in the bathroom, Yv helped cook, clean, feed and bath my house and family. I could not have planned it better. She spent the quality time with my children that I could not. She became the Mum. I often joke with CP about that time in our lives. The time when he had "2 wives". Two women who could nag him and make demands of him. Ad only one with benefits... except that there were no benefits from either of us, as one worked slavishly to maintain the family routine, and one slouched wearily over the toilet. It was far from a happy family at that time.

Did I mention that I turn into a heinous beast when I am pregnant? My hormones do strange and unusual things to my mind. So it was lovely having Yv to 'look after me' and 'listen' to my ravings. She was the 'wife' I needed at that time. I began to rely on her more and more.

Around the time I learned I was pregnant, we were also going through the initial stages of Darcy's treatment for her turned eyes. I was a mess. I was hormonal and being worried about Darcy didn't help either. It became obvious very early on in Darcy's treatment that she would have to undergo surgery on both eyes. This bothered me terribly. Whenever I was having a 'difficult' moment, Yv was there to help me put things into perspective. When I talked about the possibility of Dars wearing glasses for ever, Yv would remind me that it was possible to have quality of life even with restricted eye sight. She had survived quite nicely with sight in only one eye, after all... We all developed a soft spot for Darcy while she was going through her eye treatment. Yv did especially. I think they had a common bond over their eyes. This bond only strengthened as Yv stayed on. This is Darcy not long after she was first prescribed glasses. She was just over 1 year of age. Fun fun!

At some point near the mid point of my pregnancy (when Yv was due to leave us), she approached me about the possibility of staying on. Yv felt that she was still needed, and that (even though I was improving rapidly, and was a fully functioning adult female again) she was happy to stay until baby number 3 was born, just to make sure we were all ok. It sounded wonderful. And so it was decided, that Yv should stay until after the baby was born.

Yv was with us for other key moments too. She was there for Olivia's first day of Kindergarten. She helped wave goodbye to my biggest baby as she ventured off into the big wide world.

By the middle of the year, Yv had become a good friend. She was more like a sister to me, than someone hired to help look after the kids. We talked my way through my pregnancy (which was the most difficult pregnancy on my marriage). I am certain that without Yv there, things would be very different today.

Did I mention that Yv is one of the fussiest eaters I have ever met? No? She likes potatoes - but not mashed (because the butter and milk interfere with the taste), but will tell you (honestly) that my baked potatoes are the best she has ever eaten. She isn't a big fruit and vege person. She loves peanut butter on everything. She loves cruskits. She loves toast with that chocolate sprinkly stuff that dutch people dig so much! She likes meat, but not the stuff we've home grown. She loves sausages. But I never went out of my way to cook for her. In our house, we have a rule that one meal is cooked, and you either eat it, or get your own. (Unless you are a kid, in which case, you eat it or go hungry). Anyway... back to my story.

On November 3rd, at about 1am in the morning, I went into labour with my baby boy.  Yv came over to the house and stayed with the girls, while CP and I drove to the hospital. She stayed to help look after the girls for the days following, while I rested up in hospital. Upon my arrival at home, Yv told me that she wasn't very good with little babies. But she did just fine with Sam.

The day Yv left the farm was just horrible. We knew that leaving Darcy would be hard for Yv, so we arranged for their goodbyes to be done early in the morning, and then my in laws took Darcy out, so that she wouldn't be there when the actual departure occurred. It was going to be difficult regardless. As my in laws drove Darcy away, I sat in my room and cried. I cried for the real goodbye that Yv and Darcy would never have, and I cried for myself. For having to let go of Yv. We took Olivia to the bus with us. It was a very quiet  hour in the car. If I tried to speak, it would have betrayed my feelings. It all came spilling over as I hugged Yv goodbye one last time. And CP, Liv and I all stood waving at the bus. Crying. So very sad.

When Yv left us to go home, I wrote her a 'thank you' letter of sorts. I reminded her of the time Olivia asked if Yv loved her, and how Yv had said 'no'. I also reminded her that I knew that wasn't true anymore, because you don't feel so much sadness at leaving children you don't love. And she admitted it was true. So even though she started the year being the 'Nanny', she definitely finished the year as part of our family.

I know Yv loves our family. She was exactly what we needed in order to make it through 2008 in one piece. In 2009 she came back to visit. And she sends Christmas and birthday presents for the kids and hubby and I. And when I can remember, we send her token gestures too.

So Yv - sorry about some of these pics. Just wanted you to know that you are missed, and dearly loved too. And you are a big part of who we are today. You just have to look at Darcy and peanut butter to figure that out.