Baby

Stay at Home Mum is Okay

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A funny and strange thing is just coming to surface and I’m going to try my best to tease it out and allow it to flow here in black and white. I think I bought into the idea of how hard it was to be a stay at home mum because I was doing it myself and I wanted to prove that it should be valued and that in order to be valued without being paid with money, that it had to be hard. It wouldn’t seem fair if it were fun and you were just staying home with your baby while your husband goes out and works his butt off so you can be at home frolicking with your child. It’s like if it’s hard, then it’s okay to justify the stay at home mum role. However, if it’s something that you actually enjoy and get into the flow and find your rhythm that becomes a new version of easy for you, then some how that isn’t okay. It’s like I’ve been trying to justify me being home by viewing it and sharing with others how hard it has been. Granted, it has been very very challenging, and definitely harder than anything else I have ever done, especially for this long. There was a turning point though, where I really was feeding into a loop that wasn’t so healthy while I was dealing with my own post traumatic symptoms after having a baby, which definitely include the role change and not feeling useful, which was compounded by not being able to provide breastmilk and not being as physically capable as I had been, so many things were tied up in that really.

I’ve come to it now that it’s mostly quite enjoyable, I really do enjoy hanging out, playing and enjoying time with my soon to be two year old. He’s really pleasant, he’s smart, he really brings out all of my emotions and I get to grow in ways that I haven’t before, all through my relationship with him. It’s really awesome actually. I do feel guilty that I am not providing financial income to my family, but I know that I am providing way more in terms of how my son will be in the world and how we will all be affected because of that.

So no more leading on to how hard it is, it only makes it harder. I’m now going to focus on the happy bits more, the fun and joyful parts of this role I am in. It’s okay to enjoy it. There are hard parts too, all the time. However, It’s such a privilege that I even get to do this, I’m now changing the page to where I look at it through eyes of playfulness, love, and joy.

Witnessing Aggression

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In general I do a really great job of limiting my time and eliminating negative people and situations out of my life. I know that if I continue to put myself in an environment where negativity is, that it only takes me down with it, and I’m entirely too sensitive for all of that.

Lately I have been struggling though, and it’s with a situation that seems to happy with every encounter and I am having a hard time breaking from it. The situation is a little more delicate I think, but perhaps I think that because I am so close to it and I don’t know truly what she is going through. It has to do with a mum and a bub who my bub and I have spent a considerable amount of time with for the last year. Her bub is super high energy, and aggressive. Before it was all about helicopter parenting to keep an eye on them and ensure that he wasn’t biting my bub. Now it’s full grown into pushing and biting for no apparent reason. My friend is at her wits end as to what to do and has started giving a smack on his hand with an explanation of why he’s getting it. The last time this happened, we all took a break of about a week after her bub was consistently aggressive towards my bub and I could see that my bub was showing signs of fear from him, which is not okay.

In that break, my bub and I were socialising with another bub who is also a pretty easy going toddler and they played just fine for a couple of hours and it was great. I felt so much more relaxed and at ease, my bub was happy, everyone was happy and easy going. I noted how it felt so different when my friend and I met back up to take a walk and talk and it hurt her. I didn’t mean for that to happen, but truly there is a marked difference when her child isn’t around and I feel really bad that this is the case, but from my perspective, it really is. So I’ve just started to notice at social events if there is a difference and surely there is. Even when I have other bubs over to play, it’s not intense like it is when they are here, and I honestly feel really bad about this.

Why do I feel bad? I feel bad because I really like the mom and I like the child, but I love myself and love my child more and know that we have to come first. When we did get together for a play time, sure enough it was intense and we had to be like hawks over them. I even noticed that my bub was acting wilder than normal around her bub. Then came the aggression from her bub to my bub and what ensued has stayed with me since. I know the mum has the best intention and is really trying to sort it all out, I know this. She quickly pulled him aside and told him why that action wasn’t acceptable, and said he was going to get a smack, and then she did it, and put him down on the floor, where he wailed for a few minutes, until he got back up and was almost back at it again.

The thing is that this time I saw my child watching closely at what was happening, he was actually witnessing violence in some form from an adult to a child. I cannot shake it out of my mind and it makes my stomach hurt when I think about it. So now the situation as it stands is that my child becomes fearful of her child because her child is aggressive to mine. I am tense throughout it all. She is tense. She reprimands him physically and verbally, and my child AND I are witnesses to this and have to feel that energy in our space. I am not okay with this, and it doesn’t feel good at all. In fact if a friend were telling me about this I would advise her that she needed to take a very long break away from them. The truth is that my child, myself, and my husband are the most important in our world, period. I am so particular about what I consume mentally, who I am around, what I experience, and all of a sudden I have a parenting style that I am not okay with, right in my nest, in the home that is to be our sanctuary, our oasis, our retreat and safety place. This must not continue.

Maybe we can play when we are out as a group, but I really don’t want to be a part of that nor be affected by it any further. It’s really hard because I care about them but I really care about us more and this is my own, my very own family and I will do whatever I possibly can to make us the best and to protect us as I can.

 

Not Meant as a Single Parent

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Seriously I am not meant to be a single parent. Specifically, I am certainly not meant to be a person who has to solely look after another person who is dependent upon them. It is too much. Add to that the additional tasks of looking after elderly people and I am at a breaking point. I literally broke down in tears as I just couldn’t do any more. There’s a thing where I can hold it all together to a point. Then it will be something minor that is the straw that breaks the camels back. Today it was the criticism of too much salt in the meals I have been making after I was some how given the task of being the meal creator for everyone else along with myself and my little person. I am stretched too thin as it is. Not having family support due to geographic location and the rest of the family not being so family oriented, leaves the whole raising of the child to the parents. Then when one parent is away, it’s just that one person. Then to add more to that workload, it’s too much. Too much.

Also people forget what it’s like to have their first child. They also forget what it’s like to have only one child. It’s a big freaking deal. No one else occupies their time, no one else plays with them, it’s all left to me. It’s all, every thing, left to me. We have had a demi pair in the past and that has helped to alleviate that, but at the farm that isn’t the case. Everyone is so stretched here, and that is just the way of land, but now, for me at this stage of my life, it’s more than I can handle.

Exhale. This is me venting. It’s okay. It’s all okay. I’m also so frustrated that I can’t fix the issues here, I don’t have the money right now to afford a million dollar property to help everyone out. I don’t have the means and it’s so frustrating. I feel like it’s all slipping away and I’m too taxed personally to do anything about it. Also being at the beginning stages of making a family it’s at odds with being at the beginning stages of building a grand fortune. I chose to have a baby with intention. I chose to have a baby so that I can experience this, so that I am there with the child. I don’t want to give that experience away to someone else, that isn’t what I want in my life. The solution isn’t just to send the baby to daycare so that I can work a full time job and bring in income and then see my baby for maximum 3 hours of wake time a day. It’s fucking bullshit. I am not doing that, I am not doing it that way and it makes me feel so frustrated that I can’t seem to find another way. Sure getting another demi pair will help. that will alleviate some time, but for christ sakes, when I don’t have the money to pay the freaking person, then i get someone who isn’t really qualified and I don’t trust them. So I have to be on hand, with my ear out all the time anyway. I don’t know how to win at this right now without having the financial resources.

This post isn’t really about being a single parent, it’s really about being frustrated with the limitations in my life, the lack of income, and the additional load of looking after others. That’s what it’s about. It’s that I feel this life is out of our reach. It’s that I need to just let go of the idea of buying the farm because it’s not going to happen. How on earth would I magically get 1 million dollars and then how would I then have money to do anything with that land after that? It’s too much and I can’t do it.

My husband is away at the moment and looking after bub full time all day every day and night, when he is not sleeping, is really wearing on me. I need help and if I do have another person in looking after bub, i want them to be an actual au pair, and one that I don’t then also have to clean up after, because that’s bullshit too, exchanging looking after one person to then look after another. This doesn’t make sense.

Additional thought after venting and 15 minutes:

Now that I’ve had a moment, the thing is that the farm needs help. They need help to maintain the farm, to maintain the egg business, to maintain the processing business, and to maintain the animals. On top of that my husband’s parents also need help. They need help by someone cleaning up the house. They need help by someone cooking meals. They need help for my mother in law who will likely have to have a heart operation. They need help to look after my father in law who has parkinson’s. They need help anyway because they are in their 80s. I also need help as I have a small child and that seems so minor when looking at everything else here that needs help, but I need help too. I need to realise that the farm is not mine to fix. It is my mother in laws, and she always says that it is a family company so it’s everyone’s even though no one else seems to really care other than my husband and I. It’s not enough. I am not the superhero and I need to understand that my position in life right now is as a mother to a toddler and as a wife to a husband who works non-stop. This is what it is. This is where we are, this is where I am, and somehow I just need to accept this so i don’t get into these big emotional meltdowns about it all. I am too attached to it and without help myself I certainly cannot help the rest.

I guess selling the farm is the right move. Then my parents in law can afford the help they need. They can stop doing the egg business and just focus on this small property. They can have a single woofer to help them maintain the yards and garden, and then it’s done. Maybe it really is for the best. Sure the person who buys the rest of the land may very well build their new house directly in front of this house, and that would be there right and then the view would be lost, and in turn this last part of the land would lose its’ value, and you know what, that would suck, but it would have to be fine too. Sure the person who buys the land might protest about having a chicken farm next to them, and it would be there right, and all of the money we have put into it would be for naught, and that would suck, but it would have to be fine too. Maybe all of this has to be let go after all.

Sleep

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It is amazing how sleep affects my life. It is more so an issue when I don’t get enough sleep. Having a baby is almost a contract to say that you vow to not get enough sleep for the rest of your life. At least, that is how having a baby has effected my sleeping patterns. If I am sleep deprived, I am more emotional, moody, I eat and drink more than I normally would, and I really struggle. I can certainly make it through, but it’s not my best, and it doesn’t feel good at all to scrape by like that.

My baby decided that 4am was the right time to wake up after a night of being up and down every hour or so since a short while after he went to bed. That’s a big deal. It was like this when he was a little baby and there was a point where my husband and I took shifts to so the other could sleep. So now when he’s 18 months old and a night comes like that, albeit it’s not as often as it was when he was brand new, it still carries such a weight with it. That weight is felt in my eyelids the next day, and even this evening as I type this out. That weight is felt in my body as I eat another burrito, and another tea. That weight is felt in my gaze as I drive, and it’s felt with every step when I heave him up to hold him on my hip.

It’s a big deal feeling slightly like a heavy zombie who has a dependent who cannot speak words and only demands via grunts and loud cries. You see, the baby is also sleep deprived. He also had a bad night. The poor guy. The situation with teeth coming in is rough. Almost any new growing pain that comes along can be really challenging for the little guy. Most of the time I realise this, but when I am also really tired, it definitely tries me.

I had to step outside with him at 430a into the starry autumn early morning just to jolt a change that would be different from crying inside holding him because nothing else I was doing was working. It did work, it helped us both actually. Isn’t the night sky amazing? I mean really, its so vast, so peaceful, so humbling. It’s hard not be taken aback a bit and feel that sense of awe and wonder, especially so when in the countryside where the sky is so clear and every star seems to be in it’s sparkling brilliance.

Sleep. I love you. Baby I love you. Now let’s have the things I love, love each other, please 🙂 Thank you. I promise I’ll be better tomorrow.

 

 

Sleep

Autumn Farm Grown Mandarins

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Earlier after we arrived at the farm, my mother-in-law, my son and I went out to the mandarin trees where hundreds of the laying chickens are. It was in the afternoon and the autumn weather was absolutely perfect, maybe 25 degrees, with blue skies. The chickens gathered all around while we picked and ate them right there on the spot. How sweet life is.

My darling son learned that he could feed the chickens and they would come closer to him, so he would grunt for me to give him a piece of mandarin, he would then put it in his mouth and then give it to the chickens! So funny that guy is! He did this all from his pram before we moved on to the other fruit trees. One chicken even pecked his toe, and from angle it looked like she had his whole toe in her mouth for a split second, but it didn’t phase him at all! I on the other hand encountered a spider when reaching through the mandarin tree and dropped the mandarin and let out a squeal!

I love sweet moments, sweet country moments like this. They warm my heart and my soul. I also really love getting to spend this kind of precious time with my dear Mother-in-Law and her 18 month old grandson. It is so sweet. I can literally feel my heart pounding as I type this. We don’t have much family around, and it’s so nice when we get to spend some time together.

Pre-Motherhood Judgey Bitch

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Whoa. I used to be the biggest judgey bitch about how other people were handling, or not handling their children in public. It was not beyond me at all to roll my eyes, give dirty looks, and sigh heavily when I would be around a child melting down or wild children running about reeking havoc in the grocery store. I used to always ask to myself and sometimes loud enough to where they probably could hear… “why can’t they control their children?!”. I am certain that I was not the only single person in the history of single people to have said something like that or have behaved so appalling. I was just as bad and I certainly did not make the situation any better.

Fast forward to now, where I have a baby and know very intimately what it is like to to a child into the grocery store, or any shop for that matter. There are times when my child is just so over being in his pram, or in the grocery cart and he lets everyone around know. My baby has an incredibly strong voice, his projection is something that amateur theatre actors would love to have, and for him it just comes naturally. Oh so naturally.

Now when my baby has a melt down and demands that i give him a squeezy yogurt in the shop, you know what? I do! I give him the damn thing. I let my child eat the food in the grocery store before we even pay for it. Yes, I am that person. I am also that person who is trying her best to concentrate on what has the least amount of sugar so I can give it to him all the while he is yelling and sometimes producing real tears. It’s crazy. It’s so crazy that I know I am putting off a vibe for everyone around to move out of my way while I try my best to stay calm, take deep breaths and carry on. I do my best to stay composed and I do, I really do. Underneath though… oh lord. However, I know that I need to not give him the attention, or whatever in that moment, I just need to make sure he is taken care of. I don’t want a tantrum thrower, please, not one of those!

The interesting thing is that when I see other people with kiddos, especially while this is happening, I can see the compassion, they totally understand. Then I see the oldies and they may have forgotten and seem kind of shocked. Then I see all the singletons who are quietly judging just like I did. Just wait singletons… just wait until it’s your turn.

 

Better Body After Baby

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This is going to sound crazy. My body seems to be better after having a baby. Better as in, slimmer than before and stronger. I wonder if I have been naturally toning my body because I lift my baby, my top of the chart in weight baby, all day every day. If it’s because I am constantly picking up things from the floor, moving around and bending over regularly.

I was lucky, bitter sweet advantage of having a baby 32 weeks along versus 40 weeks, but it was really easy for me to lose the baby weight, I had hardly gained anyway, and within two weeks I was back below what I had started before getting pregnant. This then fluctuated with lack of sleep, crazy eating patterns, stress, and the whole transition into being a mum, but overall my weight stayed the same. My body however felt pudgy, untoned, out of shape. It even created such a concern to me that I tried a ridiculous body wrap which in turn caused more trouble than any good, I was self conscious. Fast forward about six months, and baby is now about a year and a half old, and seriously my body feels like it’s in pretty good shape. I have endurance, I have strength, I am flexible, and I feel strong.

So maybe this isn’t a fluke. Maybe this is what happens to a lot of moms but the media seems to focus on diet this, diet that, or how to “lose the baby weight” which all of those do more harm than good. I didn’t do any diet, I have just been aware what I have been eating, gotten more sleep, and I play with my baby on the daily.

So Much Love

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The amount of love I have been feeling for my baby, err toddler, is out of this world. Seriously, the dopamine must be pumping through my veins, as I feel euphoric a lot of times just cuddling with him. Gosh that feeling is amazing, it’s overwhelming at times, it’s like the feeling when you first fall in love and it feels so very warm, decadent, inviting, encompassing, and so very dreamy. I feel all of this and so much more when we are just cuddling on the chair. By cuddling, I really mean that he is sitting on my lap and I have one leg crossed so that I am holding him into place, and he lounges back onto me, essentially I am a cushy chair to him, and I happily oblige!

Interestingly this also corresponds with the recent notice that I can tell he is understanding me AND that he has a response for sure to what I am saying about what I am saying. It’s different than before, it’s like a click has happened in his head, and between us, and it’s so nice. He still grunts a lot and makes sounds but he does have a few words that he says that I know he knows what they mean, like when he says ahnana, for banana when he sees it. He also says dada and knows that is his dad now. He says mama, but certainly not as much as I would like for him to! 🙂

Also he has THE SWEETEST smile there ever was. I know I am biased because I am his mum, but for real, he does. He plays peek-a-boo with you, he shines that big beautiful smile where his entire face and being lights up, it is so precious. He garners the attention in a really subtle way where everyone just gives it to him and enjoys it too. It’s so sweet and certainly not look-at-me, over-the-top at all, he has a nice gentle way about him.

I just adore this baby, this little person, this unique being that I am blessed to be with on this life journey. How lucky did I get in life that I get to have this sweet boy AND an amazing husband. My cup runneth over and it’s wonderful.

One on One Time

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My husband has been away for work, so it’s left time for just baby and I to spend together. Now that he’s older and perhaps because I’ve resigned that when we are together, that is our time together and not me trying to do something else, which invariably doesn’t seem to work out so well for my projects, my online ordering, or my own personal sanity. So as long as we are both fed, have slept, and are engaged in some way, life is good, life is really exceptionally good. We have been out traveling abroad in Ireland and have only been home a week and a half, so maybe it’s the readjustment to being back at home and kind of bunkering down for a moment, but it’s nice, it’s all so nice.

Also since daylight savings + jet lag creates a new natural bedtime at 530-630p, this allows me to actually have time on my own in the evenings! This is a revelation! I am happy as a clam to spend some alone time, having dinner by myself and reading or listening to something that engages me. It’s nice, it’s all very nice.

The only component that is missing is my husband, so now, to incorporate him back into our lives so that we keep with this sweet spot, that would be lovely.

Birthing a New World Part 1

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My son was conceived on a glorious day of love, a celebration of my marriage, which is also my birthday, specifically on our wedding day. We intentionally created him with love, had just weeks prior made a wish at a Shiva celebration asking for a healthy, fun, baby boy. We offered up our milk, ate some lovely Indian food, and made love each time with full intention and presence.

I started to get sick on the honeymoon, but didn’t think I was pregnant, just thought the circumstances of stress from the farm, getting over a flu, the exhale moment when the wedding is done and life moves along, and being out on an island in the Whitsundays taking trips out in the Great Barrier Reef.

By time we got back home, I knew I was pregnant. I still took a test to confirm at 4am with my first mornings urine which is supposed to have the best rate of truth, I wanted to be sure, and I was. I woke my husband up and told him excitedly, he smiled at me and then we went back to sleep. I was pregnant and it certainly didn’t take long, I had only taken my IUD out less than a month before hand. Everything was happening very quickly!

I had what seemed like a mini period after that, which caused concern, even though I was feeling nauseated. The GP suggested I go in to the radiologist to have a sonogram as soon as I could, so I booked the next appointment I could, and went in. As I laid on the table, I was scared, what if I had lost the baby? I was so new to all of this. My husband wasn’t available to come with me, so I was there alone, and I felt just that, all alone. Then all of a sudden there was a heartbeat, and I was both relieved that it was there and also sad that I couldn’t share this first heartbeat experience with my husband. I saw my insides on the monitor and baby looked like a little dot amongst it all, but alas baby was there. It turns out that was implantation bleeding, which can occur for some women when the egg plants itself into the lining of the uterus.

For the rest of the first trimester, I experienced the most nausea I have ever had in my life. I took ginger, I went to acupuncture, I ate small bites of food regularly, and it never subsided. I really pride myself in the fact that I can avoid puking if I want, every so often I just cannot handle it and I have to vomit, but in this case, for weeks, months actually I was so sick but never actually vomiting. I was hot, like burning up hot most of the time. The acupuncturist would try to lower my heat from my upper body into my legs, and it did work a bit, it at least gave me peace of mind and I was able to cope a little better. During that first trimester I had to really take it easy, but I couldn’t, not really.

Also during the first trimester, the climax of a big dispute of the processing plant tenants at the farm came, it had been building as they had not been taking care of the animals and we even had to intervene and feed the starving animals ourselves on the eve of our wedding night. The whole time during our honeymoon, we, more so my husband, had to deal with the issue, and it was intense. When we got back my husband had to get to work in Sydney, so I was there at the farm with his parents and a few woofers trying to make a presence and not let anything happen. They were hostile and very volatile and we did not trust them at all to leave peacefully. I was on edge and I know that certainly did not help my pregnancy. Along with that, the farmhouse upstairs has this incredible way of syphoning all of the cooking smell from downstairs to the upstairs where the rooms are. So every day I would have nausea and have to smell cooking flesh on the stove, it was almost more than I could bear. I had to ask the woofers to wear deodorant, but only a non fragrant kind. Nausea and farm life really don’t go so well together, with animals being slaughtered, carcases decomposing, and all of the chicken poop and animal smells that come along with a farm.

It was so hard for me to be away from my husband, but I did not want to move to Sydney. I did not want to raise our son in the city, I did not want to move away from the group of friends I had made in country, but I missed him so much, that eventually in the 2nd trimester, I made the move down with him full time. As soon as I was in Sydney, in our new penthouse apartment, I hardly had nausea or morning sickness. By the way, whomever called it morning sickness may have been thinking globally at the time, because it is certainly not contained to one morning in one hemisphere, mine lasted all day and night every day at the farm.

During all of this, I had many different projects going on. I had hired on a coaching team to help me build my own business from scratch, which was becoming harder and harder to manage with my fluctuating levels of energy, feeling unwell, and a totally spacey head. I had a very candid conversation with one of the coaches, and she told me to stop doing it, if there was any advice she would give it would be to stop and not do it, being a soon to be new mother and trying to start a business at the same time was a disaster recipe, and that the most important thing was my child and to not make the same mistake she made by trying to do it all. She also suggested getting a really comfortable reclining chair to live in with the baby. I took her suggestions on board and she was right, although I will get back to it and finish what I started, when the time is right.

We also had the closing of the abattoir at the farm, which was a very big deal. There was also an internet business that my husband and I were getting into, which long story short, over a year of being dragged along, paying out our noses and still not getting to the point where we could sell the internet to others, Telstra finally got back to my husband with the contract. It’s such bologna that any independent resellers have to go through the one company which owns all the lines in Australia that were actually paid fro by the people before they fave it over to this private corporation, who more or less has a monopoly over all the lines across the country. Of course they don’t want competition, there is no reason for them to help someone compete with them, it’s a very flawed system. We didn’t think it was going to be such a big issue, but it was, had we have known we wouldn’t have been stuck into it as long as we did with our finances draining by the month.

Along with this I was still contemplating whether or not to take up the offer for Honours at University and to teach the Digital Marketing class part time. It would have to be all out of pocket as I didn’t have PR, and was considered an international student. The next question was whether or not I would be able to handle having a newborn, living in the Northern Rivers while my husband was in Sydney and trying to do it all. This had to wait as well.

I also started up a mini little network marketing business to help generate some income, which ended up me just spending a lot of money in the way of their products, which while the dollar was one to one, it wasn’t so bad. I sent out heaps of greeting cards and that felt really good, until the realisation that the only way you make money is not by having others buy your greeting cards, but they have to be distributors as well, it felt a bit strange, and I found that it didn’t work as well in Australia, especially as the US dollar increased in value, it became really expensive to keep this going. Eventually I stopped paying and my account has just enough to send a few more cards and then its done.

So there were all of these projects happening, lots of stress, and then a move, to a place I didn’t really want to live, but did because I wanted, err, needed, to be with my husband.

I started trying to figure out where to do antenatal classes that fit in with my husbands rotating schedule, I didn’t get into this alone and I didn’t want to do it alone. I found a birthing from within program in the Northern Rivers and it fit the dates in my 3rd trimester, and I felt better. I had luckily gotten in to the caseload midwife program at the local hospital near the farm where I could have a water birth and be assisted by lovely experienced women with the security of having the hospital as well just in case anything went awry.

There was still a lot of stress regarding the projects we had going on, but I was getting everything sorted one by one. Then at one of the ultrasound appointments, I was told that my placenta was low lying, and that if it didn’t move up, then I would have to have to have a cesarian. This was the opposite of the midwife assisted water birth I had planned to do without any kind of medication. I kept hoping it was wrong and was misdiagnosed due to me not drinking enough water so they could see inside properly with their machine. At the 20 week scan, we saw that my son was not shy at all and was showing his parts in full glory. I was going to have a boy. It was all pretty surreal and was happening.

After a quick trip back to the farm, I got back on the plane to Sydney and was required to show my letter stating I was okay to fly. I honestly didn’t feel very good at all. The day before I had spent a little time in the healing waters of Lake Ainsworth, a nearby tea tree oil infused lake, which happens to be my favourite lake in the world. I was told later that it was an aboriginal birthing lake, which maybe somehow my body knew that.

We landed in Sydney, I met up with a Uni friend and strolled the open gardens on a lovely spring day at Westmeade hospital, and I was tired, very very tired. I had only just finished my 2nd trimester, the baby wasn’t due for another almost three months, but I was so exhausted. That evening, I went to the toilet and found that I was bleeding, a lot of blood. Interestingly only a week or so before, as a precaution I booked into the local Nepean Hospital just in case I needed anything while I was in Sydney related to my pregnancy. We called and they said to come in, and this was the first of many experiences I had with the birthing suite. They wanted to monitor the baby’s heartbeat and to make sure everything was okay. Turns out everything was okay, and that bleeding was par for the course when it came to having a low lying placenta. After a couple of days they let me go home after it was clear that I wasn’t bleeding anymore. I was relieved and very tired.

Since we lived in penthouse apartment that was a walkup, that meant I had to somehow make it up 4 flights of stairs to my bedroom. It was horrendous. We had to move. We had to move for other reasons as well. We had these two older Sri Lankans who totally leached off of us for more months than I care to admit. My husband didn’t want to deal with it as he had his plate absolutely full, and they kept promising they would pay rent. We took on two additional housemates on top of them to help pay the rent, so there was a full house on top of it all. We started looking intently for another place to live that was clean, nice, and not too expensive. I had been looking when I would come to Sydney from the farm and just couldn’t find anything that would work, the one place that did was then pulled last minute and rented to a friend of the owner. By chance, we were directed by a real estate agent to a place we hadn’t even noticed online, and it was the right one, so we signed on, things were looking up. It was a ground level, stand alone two storied town house with three bedrooms and three bathrooms with a a cute backyard. Perfect for what we needed and it was brand new.

I had another bout of bleeding a week later and again, we rushed to hospital, this time there was more blood than I’ve ever seen rushing out of my body.

To be continued.