Letter to A 39 Week and 4 Day Old Ex-Embryo Or Alternatively a 3 Week Old Baby

Dear Tricky

We’ve got this weird timeframe thing happening where you turned three weeks today but you’re not actually due till this Friday.

Also, when we were walking home from the physio appointment today I saw the moon, all round and getting ready to be full and that took me right back to just before you started making your grand entrance.

But then maybe this is just the effects of sleep deprivation because holey dooley that sleep three hours, get up and feed, go back to bed, get up an hour later thing is quite a headspin.

We’re doing a demand feed thing with you at the moment, so when you demand, I feed and my, for a small boy you can be quite the demanding little muppet. (That should probably be ‘moppet’ but with your cute round head and your little dark shiny eyes and blobby little nose you could get a part on Sesame Street any day. Also, who has time to fix typos? I’m a mum! And I’m tired! And I’m feeding on demand!)

Your father is completely smitten and sniffs your head constantly.

I allow him to do this because I think it’s a good way to get rid of house dust or skin flakes that may have gathered on your scalp. He learned how to swaddle you at the hospital and has since developed this to a fine art, wrapping you tightly and binding your teeny limbs to your body. At the moment you seem to enjoy this, you settle down and often fall asleep, but I’d like to see him try it when you’re, say, thirteen.

Sometimes your father takes the swaddling too far, like on the second night at home, at about three in the morning while I was waiting to feed you and trying to stay awake and he was saying…let’s try this new swaddle, now how did it go again… and I felt like screaming FUCK THE NEW SWADDLE JUST GIVE HIM TO ME. He’s calmed down a bit now but I still hear him muttering to himself “swaddle, swaddle swaddle” and catch him wrapping bits of cloth origami style about your tiny self.

Each day I try to achieve small goals such as returning emails, or writing a blog entry (!) or perhaps trying to edit one of my previously rejected scripts. Today’s goal was to try and gently extricate an unsightly piece of dried snot from your left nostril and guess what? I succeeded!

Meanwhile, your goal seems to be to daily increase the volume of your screaming. Hey! It’s working! Also, the velocity of your pooing. Today you almost managed to hit your father in the chest but he sneakily leapt sideways and instead you hit the door and the floor in one explosive farty squirt.

And then there's the scowling! Magnificent! You furrow your weeny fuzzy forehead and beetle your tiny brows and attempt to focus your little shoe button eyes and direct tiny laser beams at those who incur your displeasure. As a baby, I too was a furrower and a scowler and it makes me proud to see that you have inherited these disagreeable qualities. The explosive poo thing though…that’s completely your father.

I’m both horrified and jealous at your power to excrete. A week after we came home from the hospital, the combination of no walking, lots of fine cakes and especially, NOT ENOUGH WATER saw me staggering about the bathroom in agony. I have never been so constipated in my life. It was hell. It was worse than giving birth and it lasted three days. In the end I had to use those squirty up the bum things AND drink gallons of water AND march up and down Bondi promenade AND eat a coffee meringue before there was happiness again.

When I mentioned this to various friends and family who have had babies they all recalled the same thing happening to them. “It made me cry”, “It was horrible, I was too afraid to push”, “I nearly put a fist through the wall” “I was crippled” I was aghast that no one had seen fit to share this with me.

Yes, I was told to drink lots of water while breast feeding but no one actually said: because if you don’t you won’t just ‘shit a brick’ you’ll be shitting the entire wall, the bloke who built it, his ute with the blue heeler on the back, and his esky. Yesterday a friend said that, although truly appalling, once the constipation was over, it was forgotten and that's why no one had thought to warn me. There's just too much other stuff going on.

I suppose that all this other stuff is just part of the strange new territory that C and I have entered.

This place called parenthood.

We’re kind of scared, I have to admit. Sometimes we watch you sleeping and you look so tiny and cute and fragile and our hearts just overfill with love and love and more love for you.
And it’s sweet, but it’s painful too because how can we protect you from all the ghastly horrible things in the world? There’s just no swaddle big enough or strong enough for that.

So it’s scary yes but most of all it’s wonderful. And C and I gaze at you and then turn and look at each other and make “can you believe it?” hand gestures at each other and raise our eyebrows quizzically because, frankly, we can’t believe it.

But then here you are. Neatly swaddled and blissfully asleep on our bed. So it must be true.

Your full moon arrives tomorrow night. Let’s watch it together during that three o clock feed. We can toast it with breast milk and a large glass of water.


With love.

Your very own OvaGirl
xxxxxx