Chew On This

Unfortunately, I have to announce that Tricky and I are officially at war, but only from 6pm to about 6.45 each night and sometimes for about eight minutes at 7.30 in the morning.


Our chosen weapons are porridge (in the morning) and a variety of delicious wholesome cooked meals (at night) featuring several vegetables and some form of protein. The battles are terrible and fearsome to behold and even Naughty Nephew 3 brandishing a spoon and a winning smile cannot halt the carnage, although last night NN2 whipped out a pot of vanilla creme yoghurt and a sudden truce was called.

The problem it seems, is the highchair. This is the almost-new, racing-car orange highchair with comfy leatherette-look seat and Evil Clipping Harness which takes small bites of flesh from the hands of the unwary and slightly distracted adult.



We bought this highchair just over a year ago at the local shopping centre and brought it home in a blaze of glory, elated and victorious, giddy with the thought that soon Tricky would be seated and elevated and harnessed into place. Also that we could easily wipe down the tray.

More than any other item, the highchair is the time capsule of baby furniture. You can spray and wipe as much as you like, but you will never completely remove the spinach stains, or de-egg the harness belt.

There are existing nooks and crannies that you could never hope to find with your Chux cloth or your q-tips dipped in vinegar and bicarb. These fissures are filled with the detrius of Meals Past and only a team of teeny tiny archeologists could find such remnants; the Blended Foods Era, the Baked Bean Period, the first evidence of Spoon Feeding Self, the Long Dull Week of Pasta Bake.

Even then they won't actually clean, they'll only dust delicately with little wee brushes and erect teeny string fences around the sites.

One year.

Just a few short months, from loving to loathing, yet here we are, at dinner time and there is Tricky in classic Screaming Tomato formation with additional arched back and stiff legs. He shrieks Nooooo Noooooo Big Boy Chair and in vain do I say This Is A Big Boy Chair because he knows that it's not, it's the chair he sat in when he was a baby, when his food was pre-mushed and his bowl had a suction cup to glue it to the tray.

And anyway he has written proof, a team of teeny tiny archeologists in his employ have just published a paper acknowledging that twelve months of meals lie lodged within the upholstery.

I feel like taking that damn chair and chucking it on the kerb alongside the dead fridges and cracked garden furniture for hard rubbish day except for something that happened a few days ago. N had picked up the boys from school and Tricky from childcare and was giving them afternoon tea downstairs. It all sounded quiet and calm so I kept writing but then I realised it almost sounded too calm. I crept downstairs and saw that Tricky was sitting up IN HIS HIGHCHAIR with his milk and his biscuit.

I could have made a big deal about this. I could have stormed over and raged about the Geneva Convention and the rules of engagement and WHY CAN'T YOU SIT IN THE HIGHCHAIR FOR ME? But instead, I crept back upstairs and kept writing.

This is a war over Breakfast and Dinner, I realised. Afternoon Tea is obviously no man's land.

So now, at nights, Tricky sits in a booster seat on a dining chair. He has a parent on one side to pander to his culinary needs and NN3 on the other to pander to his entertaining needs. He has NN1 seated opposite to encourage him in "Big Boy Eating" and NN2 at the other side of the table to get him vanilla yoghurt from the fridge when required. In the mornings he sits either in a little wicker chair or on a woooden stool with his name burned into the seat. I realise it's a slippery slope from here and any day expect him to demand a pipe, slippers and a plaid dressing gown with little tassels.

In cases of extreme Screaming Tomato-mania, he sits in Mummy's lap, while two other adults hover and administer vanilla yoghurt and tuna pasta in alternating mouthfuls, as happened the other evening.

As I sat there exhausted, holding his arms, feeling him slowly relax as he enjoyed both his dinner and his just dessert, and watching Daddy and Aunty N dive in one after another with their laden spoons, I realised Tricky may have won the battle, sure, but the war wouldn't be over for a very long time.

Three Playwrights Walk Into A Park...

At lunchtime I sat down in the park with two other playwrights.

One was a woman around my age, the other was a guy in his mid twenties.

We compared sandwiches and chatted about this and that and then I said to the guy:

"You know I couldn't help thinking about what you said in class, about when you were nineteen and you just suddenly made a decision not to take any more drugs."

He nodded modestly.

It was a class that had been full of various confronting but truthful revelations. "I made the decision not to take drugs anymore when I was 19"..."My dad died before I could tell him I loved him"..."I was infertile and hated all my fertile friends"... That sort of thing.

"And," I added, "I bet if your Mum knew about that moment she would be really really proud..."

"Yeah thanks," he said.

I wasn't finished. "And also, if my toddler grows up and finds himself in the same position, I hope he makes the same decision as you. "

There was a slight pause as we digested the image of my almost two year old saying no to bongs.

The other playwright sitting next to me nodded thoughtfully.

"I thought exactly the same thing. I would be very happy if my son grew up to be a young man like you."

"That's um...that's very nice..." he mumbled, turning red. "Thanks, both of you."

The other playwright and I looked at each other.

"You know you're getting old," she remarked, "when instead of fancying the young men in your class, you wish your son would grow up to be like them."

"God, you're right." I looked hard at the young man and he was certainly physically attractive, but it was his polite manners, tidy eating habits and sensible inclinations where imminent and ultimately debilitating addictions were concerned that made me find him truly desirable.

And even then it was solely for the purposes of creating a benchmark for my son.

I grimaced at the other mother playwright. Yet another confronting but truthful revelation.

"That makes me feel really old."

"Mmmm," she said. "But I mentioned that very thing to my husband last night, and then I asked him if he thought men felt the same way about the young women they met. Apparently, no."

Back To School

Teensy bit overstretched because I've been attending a weeklong playwrights' course.

It is the first time, I'm sure, that I have had such an extended period of grown-up time, 10 to 5 every day, no tears, no tantrums, except of course for my own when I fail to crack some crucial plotpoint or discover my character won't do what I want her to do even if I ask very nicely.

It is, as you can imagine, complete luxury. I'm writing theatrical stuff and drinking coffees and scribbling down notes in cafes before class and hanging out with my writer buddies and I even went to the pub and had a glass of wine last night and it is truly madly deeply thrilling.

The new play with the contrary character and the uncrackable plot points is, funnily enough, about infertility.

Well no, not infertility per se but it is about two couples, two infertile couples, and it comes out of some strangely familiar territory. With some strangely familiar emotional force behind it. And it's actually a comedy but also, as you would expect, a little...well...dark.

Today we wrote an exercise and had to read it back to the class and I wasn't reading anything particularly profound or revealing but I just suddenly started to weep and had to stop reading and gulp and snort and wipe my nose and eyes and then read on. It was very strange.

Except it wasn't.

Because what I had realised was that the impulse for writing this play came not from (as I first thought) the desire to make a very ugly emotional experience into something beautiful (although that is part of why I am writing it) but because I realised/remembered very very early on when our flatmates/friends had got pregnant while on holidays, almost without trying it seemed, and we weren't and had been trying for ages and how upset I was at the time.

This wasn't a new memory, what was new was that I realised (while doing these writing exercises) was that I nearly lost one of my best friends as a result.

This is someone I speak to nearly every day, someone I write with, someone with whom I have many (over 20) years of history and friendship. I was staying at her house when she had just started dating her now husband, she was acting in the same play where I met my now husband. When my mother died I bolted to her house in Melbourne for a week and then went home for the funeral. We have supported each other through career crises and boyfriend dramas and exploding car radiators all the way back to university days when she used to wear spotty leggings and I used to wear a bob and a miniskirt.

Her friendship is one of the most important relationships in my life and it was nearly destroyed because I couldn't get pregnant and she could and did. At the time, no one really knew that C and I were having problems, I couldn't even really admit it to myself.

We were all living together and the household split up several months after that and I can remember the four of us clearing out the kitchen and she was heavily pregnant and we nearly broke up then and there over a fucking lemon juicer, except it wasn't really a lemon juicer it was a hidious big green monster sitting over my head and my heart that kept shrieking over and over it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair.

When I think over all this and remember that monster and that black cloud that descended upon me, and how my reality became a skewed thing, a painful thing that dragged at my heels and pricked at my heart whenever I saw a baby or a mother or a pram or a bump or a...or a...or a... it amazes me that any of the relationships I had at the time have survived.

So this play, if it gets finished, will be for my friend.

Because even though she didn't know what was happening to me, and I couldn't tell her because I didn't understand myself, I always knew that she loved me and cared about me. And what I think now is that she actually did see that monster in me and she forgave me and it's because of her that we have remained close friends.


We had to write an exercise where a character makes a private speech in their last moments on this earth.

And this is part of what undid me:

...My best friend Meg, I guess that's where all the crying will come from, she cries at the drop of a hat - and that's before all the injected hormones; the guinea pig gonads and whatever the fuck else they crush up to stick into those little vials. She's like my sister, but in a good way, because I actually have two sisters and they're both cunts. Meg, if you can hear me, I forgive you for making me shoot up in a nightclub, I forgive you for fucking up your marriage - your perfect fairytale ending marriage- and I forgive you for hating everyone else with a uterus, even me. I know how hard this was for you, how much this broke you up.

As I say, not profound.

But I guess, for me anyway, it was revealing.

One more day to go...

Best Ever Dinner Out

Last night we had the Best Ever Dinner Out and so obviously this must be documented since oddly enough the last time we had dinner out was the Worst Ever Dinner Out where within thirty seconds of food arriving we had to abort table and convert operations to become Fastest Takeaway Meal Ever.

Every parent of a toddler must play this game, this crazy Russian Roulette type pick a meal which starts like this:

ooh look at the time, what do you reckon about lobbing down to (inexpensive but delicious restaurant where children are tolerated) and having dinner out as a family, we can take a bib and a bowl and I'm sure there's something that s/he will eat...

And your spouse stares at you with wide eyes and indrawn breath, shocked at the outrageous thought of dining out with toddler, and completely turned on by the thought that someone else will cook and serve you food of your choice and then clean up after you've gone.

Then, flushed with excitement, one of you will say...hey, why don't we go to that other more delicious place, the one that doesn't have high-chairs but does have wide seating which should surely be safe enough for our beloved offspring and WHAT THE HELL LET'S GET A BOTTLE OF WINE!

And so down you go, the three of you, to the other restaurant, the one that's actually not child-friendly at all but has much better food and, tellingly, is the place you used to go to all the time Before Baby, so the look, smell and dim sexy lighting conspire to remind you of that time... when you had all the sleep and sex in the world and STOP THIS MADNESS AT ONCE YOU ARE DELUDING YOURSELF THOSE DAYS ARE GONE.

The toddler falls from the wide comfy seats and screams, takes exception to having the candle removed from his fingers and screams, hates all the food you've ordered and screams.

The only consolation is that the place is so damn noisy (was it always like that?) that no one is perturbed by the noise and anyway it's still only 7pm and nobody's having dinner anyway except pensioners and sadly disappointed parents like yourselves.

Aha, but fast forward to Last Night when the sting of previous efforts had faded to be renamed 'mere inconvenience' instead of 'abject humiliation'.

We went back to previously described restaurant and once again we bought wine (yes!) and once again we enquired about a high chair (no!) but this time, Tricky stayed sitting beautifully on the wide seats and ignored the candle and ate rice with curry sauce and roti and drank from his sippy cup and we ate our dinner and drank one glass of wine each and it was PURE BLISS.

He was so gorgeous, so utterly divine, we then took him out to see the stars (current obsession: tinkle tinkles) and then took him to the icecream parlour and he was in bed by 7.30 pm and we were watching 6 Feet Under (series 2) by 7.45 and that my friends is the story of Our Best Ever Dinner Out.

Moral of the story is...GO EARLY AND YOU CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN.






It may never happen like this again, I know.
But for one night, it was superb.



ooh! and as if that wasn't enough... we got leftovers!

(*closes eyes and squeezes self with joy at the thought*)



PS This post brought to you by italics.

Quirk PS

re the post below, the following brave souls offered to part with their quirk. I acknowledge them here since attempting to add them to the behemoth of a post below seemed to upset poor little miss blogger and caused her to shout at me I hate you I hate you and by the way your html sux

QUIRK-MEISTERS:
jlo from ficklish
nic from Phred, Fwed? & Schweffel?
Em from Thirty Something
Louise from Aussie In The Orient

want to join them? C'mon c'mon you know you want to (except cal and Mima and Grit and all the other people who would rather stick a pencil in their eye)...

Mining The Quirk

Schmutzie, from the brilliant, if disturbingly monikered (and written), Milkmoney Or Not Here I Come has requested a meme from me me to be optimistically entitled:

Six Quirky Things About Me.

I sat down to write this last night and then stopped. Me? Quirk? What?

After a long long time of staring at the blank screen I decided to go to bed.

What’s something quirky about me? I asked my husband as I brushed my teeth.

Are you joking? he asked. He started saying something about how you never appreciate your own quirkiness because it’s only truly quirky to other people but I didn’t pay attention because I was too fascinated by the sight of myself in the mirror, brushing my teeth with the new electric toothbrush.

The new electric toothbrush is new in that, until the beginning of the year, we were a strictly hand brushing only family but then one day while waiting in line to buy a printer cartridge at Harvey Norman’s I saw a pile of Oral B electric toothbrushes, heavily discounted, and on impulse I grabbed one.

I find the new electric toothbrush a little intimidating, truthfully. I only use it once a week, preferring mostly to keep brushing with the humble non-electric. It actually took me a few goes before I stopped employing the regular old non-electric brushing movements with the new electric toothbrush and also stopped mashing it against my gums. For some reason, something deep inside me felt that my teeth could only be truly clean if I managed to remove the top layer of enamel.

Anyhoo, there I was, staring at myself brushing while C droned on about Quirk Ad Nauseum and all I could think was how ugly one looks when one brushes with the new electric toothbrush.

I saw the way it made my gaping mouth bulge and all the drooling and frothing and carry on and how it should really only be in the domain of the Truly Committed Couple because... erk... you could really go off someone if you saw that night after night. Anyway, it’s possible C threw out a few Quirks that I could have included in this damn meme but if he did I missed it over the roar of the toothbrush and the echo of my own profound thoughts.

But then, this morning I thought of a Quirk so I checked it with C on his way to drop Tricky at childcare and the boys at school and it was this:

1. I Never Finish Everything On My Plate.

Yes, he said, that’s true. Or your cup or your glass or your bowl. It’s like you have to leave at least a spoonful.

This is completely unlike C who likes to make fun of the fact that his parents were brought up in England during the war and are hence frugal non wasteful eat-the-mushy-bits-on-the banana people, yet both he and his brother clean their plates obsessively to the point that you can slip them straight back into the cupboard.

I, on the other hand, feel passionate about properly sorting the recycling but find it impossible to eat all the food on my plate.

C grabbed Tricky and wrenched the Naughty Nephews away from the downstairs tv and hustled them all into the car and I waved goodbye but inside I was thinking that this first Quirky Thing was pretty dull actually.

Well, said C, later in the afternoon when I brought it up again. What does she mean by Quirk, this person who so called “tagged” you. What does she consider to be Quirky?

OK, I said. Right off the bat she admits that she Cuts Her Own Hair.

We were walking by the beach and C was carrying Tricky on his shoulders. Tricky has this thing about wanting to see the stars lately, all the time, even during the day, and he gets very frustrated when he’s told there aren’t any stars, yet.

It’s sort of cute but when he’s frustrated he’ll try and hit you or if he’s on your shoulders he grabs your ears and yanks them and this is a bit painful. C was holding Tricky’s legs, bouncing him, and trying to distract him from the realization that although he could see the whole sky there were NO FRIGGING STARS, YET but I could see at the same time that he was a little taken aback by the cut your own hair thing.

Well yes, he said finally, that is pretty Quirky.

So I’m thinking the plate thing’s dull, not Quirky, I said. Can you think of anything else, please?

Hmmm, said C. There’s that Toot Nose thing.

Oh, I said slowly. Riiiight.

2. The Toot Nose Thing is something that only my very closest friends actually know about, so what the hell, have at it, y’all.

It goes thus: Sometimes, if I think I might have a little something in my nose and I wipe at it with a tissue and I’m still not sure if I’ve got it or not, I will turn to my husband/close friend in the know and say…Toot?

This is code for Is My Nose Clean? The answer to that if Yes, is: Toot, as in toot toot, clean as a whistle. If the nose is sadly, a little crowded say, than the husband/close friend says in a solemn voice: No Toot.

I have had two husbands and I’m proud to say that both were trained in the Toot Nose but I have to admit that this second one didn’t seem to get that the whole idea was that I was embarrassed by the snotty nose and the question and answer was meant to be a subtle sort of code and for many many years when asked Toot? he thought the Toot answer should be delivered as one yanks the horn on a Mac Truck and he would bellow HONK!

Are you sure that’s Quirky? I asked. Or just a bit disgusting?
It’s both, he said, comfortingly.

But you’ve given me a good idea, I said. I’m going to ring one of the Toot Nose friends and see if they can tell me any Quirks.

As we got into the car I rang George who is a long time pal and extremely good Toot Nose friend.

What are my Quirks George, I demanded.

He thought about it a bit and then he told me he didn’t want to offend me.

Ha ha ha I laughed gaily, no tell me I’ll be alright.

Well, he said. 3. You Annunciate Everything.

I was confused so he went on. You annunciate everything, everything you say is Very Clear and very…hmmm… precise. And I think I slur my words so when I’m talking with you I always remind myself to speak more clearly because you always go: Whaaaat?

What does George say, asked C.

He says I annunciate everything, I told him, and in my ear I heard George saying: and see you annunciated that.

But is that Quirky? I asked George, it sounds pedantic.
Or, I had a thought, is that why you think I have an English accent? I wonder if it’s because I’m actually a bit deaf?

George seemed to be laughing at me now so I stopped. But I do think I’m a bit deaf actually, I find it hard to make conversation in theatre foyers and I’m almost certain that’s why I’m such a crap networker and it’s like pushing shit uphill to get my plays on sometimes.

But again, that bit’s not Quirky, just a bit sort of…well, sad and not really anything to laugh at George, thanks very much.

The other thing I would say, said George, is that you um…well you’re very…

4. Drawn To Things That Are Child-like.

You know, added George, you wear rounded shoes and your clothing style is quite…

Mutton dressed as lamb? I prompted him, a little testily.

No no, he said. It’s not a fashion thing it’s more that you’re very comfortable in …

He seemed to be struggling here so I decided to help him out. Last week, I told him, a mutual friend I hadn’t seen in a while asked me if I was out of clean clothes and was forced to wear one of Tricky’s tee shirts.

Also, today I am wearing an old top and pair of pants cast off from my youngest sister. Also yesterday I bought a plastic bead necklace from a toyshop and I wore it all day until Tricky saw it and then we had a fight over who got to wear it.

Also I nearly bought a Jibbitz bracelet, but didn’t because it would take me too long to pick out what little plastic people things I wanted to decorate it with and that cop show episode I had waiting for me at home on the laptop wasn’t gonna write itself.

George was right. I thought about all the toys I still have, from my childhood, and the children’s books that I still read, regularly, especially if I’m down or depressed (most recently: fast read of Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes) even now, IN THE YEAR THAT I TURN FORTY.

Soon after that I ended the conversation. I felt a little down actually, I wasn’t feeling so much ‘quirky’ as ‘infantile’ and ‘purile’, although it was nothing a quick burl of Charlotte Sometimes couldn’t fix.

And also, I shouted to C triumphantly as we arrived home, I’ve just remembered, I LOVE SHOWBAGS AND GEORGE LOVES SHOWBAGS TOO– enough to actually fight with me, in a crowded train, over the contents of a Bananas In Pyjamas showbag after a hard day of ‘suit work’ at the Sydney Royal Easter Show (see book for full sorry take on this).
So who's "child-like" now, hey George? Hey?

I still have two more Quirks to go, I thought to myself mournfully, later in the evening, what am I going to write?

I’m messy? I regularly use the adjective “jolly”? Every year I write a Mother’s Day card to my dead mother? All true, but pfff so what? Even the card thing, while mildly interesting, could only be seen as Quirky if I actually addressed and posted it.

I do collect things like Batman cards and those pictures that move when you wriggle them but only if they’ve got characters from The Simpsons on them. That could be Quirky I guess but really, when it comes down to it, I know it’s only a Quirkal Subset, derived from Quirk Number Four which was the whole Child Thing.

5. Your Wedding Dress Was Bright Pink, C reminded me.

In some circles, he said, that would be seen as Quirky.
Yeah sure, I muttered, what “circles” are they?
Those ones where the bride wears a wedding dress that’s white, he said.

Even as I shook my head my fingers were itching to type it all down so I’d be just that much closer to the Sixth Quirk.

A little voice inside tried to suggest the pink dress business was just another deeply buried subset of Quirk Number Four but I was already annoyed with the scrubbing the enamel off the teeth so I kicked the little voice in its metaphorical face and it sank without trace.

It was late at night when I sent out the group email to all my Toot Friends and others who just gently let you know you if you get “a bat in the cave”.

Help, I said, What are my Quirks? Quickly.

PS Do not say Toot Nose, I have it already.

For the next ten minutes I pressed Send/Receive repeatedly as I made further probing phone calls in case any of them weren’t sitting in front of their computers and were actually having lives; sleeping perhaps, or picking up strange men, or watching theatre.

But there were no answers, and no texts and nothing but stilted voicemail messages.

So I thought, what the hell, I would treat my last Quirk as a sort of …resolution if you will, a test of emotional strength and fortitude.

Some may see it even as a sort of dare, which would annoy me because frankly that just takes me right back to Quirk Number Four, the Child Thing again, and I’ve already got the shits with George about that and I’m taking him OFF the Toot Nose list, although he won’t know that until one day in the future when I need a tissue and instead of happily Tooting at him, I’ll make a big song and dance about needing to Go To The Bathroom.

And then finally, hopefully he’ll learn a little something about people’s feelings and that round shoes are comfortable shoes not childish shoes and he won’t feel the need to ask me what I'm thinking and why I have suddenly started to:

6. Cut My Own Hair.









And now the rule is I have to nominate six bloggers, and link to them. But people, dear sweet people, I'm spent. Those six quirky fucking things have sucked the life out of me. So I'm going to ask for THE FIRST SIX PEOPLE TO COMMENT to accept this as their commission. If you do, I'll come back and write your names in here. And if your number 7 or something and desparate to do it, just say it in the comments and I'll put you on.

And if you're just lurking? And there are only like one or two comments FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TAKE PITY ON ME.

Horses For Courses

Tricky will be two years old in July. This is causing me some stress.

It’s not the actual birthday itself or seeing my baby grow up etc etc it’s the pressure of deciding which family members get to share in the actual day.

There are three potential locations for the blessed event. We live with the three Naughty Nephews and their parents in Sydney, my parents plus one sister plus one step brother live in Newcastle, and C’s parents plus one brother (who couldn’t give a flying fuck if we were there or Timbuctoo) live on the opposite side of the country in Perth. (After some consideration, I am ruling out New Zealand where my sister AJ and her family live and also Bulgaria where C's older brother and his family live.)

The Perth location wouldn’t play much of a part in the festivities except that this year we are actually going to Perth around that time to spend some quality family time with Gramma and Papa.

At first the criteria for determining the dates when we would be fleeing our fair city were simple:
-around the time of Tricky turning two (when we would have to pay for his seat)

and:

-during Youth Day Celebrations, which, despite the reasonable sounding name, actually lasts for a whole week and rather than just being just one Youth (which would probably be manageable) will actually involve many hundreds of thousands of bright eyed Catholic Youths all descending onto Sydney, in particular the region surrounding our house, and making merry with the Lord. The roads will be closed, the buses will be full and (oddly, I think) the racecourse taken over to help contain all that joy joy joy deep in our hearts.

I and my sisters were bright eyed Catholic Youths at various times of our lives but in an ad hoc, depending on location, sort of way. In Penang we were quite devout and managed to all get holy confessed and communed, whereas in Hoppers Crossing we were basically a tearaway bunch of godless heathens.

Yet, thinking back, that was also the time that my sister AJ and I attended a Catholic Ladies College. One term only. Thankfully. We had just moved back from Malaysia and the language I had been learning there was Indonesian. This was not part of the CLC curriculum. I could choose either French or Italian. This would have been ok except the other students had been learning their language all year and as it was now final term there was no way I could keep up.

Solution? Pop me into the English As A Second Language class.

Here I, and the other young ladies recently emigrated from countries where they did not speak English, practiced our conversation skills, matched flashcards with pictures, and now and then filled out stencils.

It was excruciating.

Yet, interestingly I found this class far more appealing than the actual English class where the syllabus for the entire term appeared to be a close read (without irony) of that entirely appropriate for 13 year old girls literary masterpiece: Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

Each lesson saw us painfully reading aloud together a few paragraphs (dictionary definitions where necessary). Every few weeks we had to hand in a list of written answers to questions on each chapter. One day, apropos of nothing, the English teacher asked us to write a poem on the moon. I nearly wet my pants in excitement. She must have left her novel at home that day. It never happened again.

Of course it is grossly unfair to base my prejudice towards the oncoming Catholic Youths on one term in a girls school and one extremely dull book but that’s the beauty of prejudice. It is unfair.

C asked me what dates he should book for our flight and I started dithering about nephews and parties and eucharists and Two Is A Milestone Year and rugby and fagging for Flashman.

C seemed oddly unphased by it all. He said that Tricky could have two, three, twenty three birthday parties if that made it easier to organise. Of course it did make it easier but then C didn’t make the cake last year.

In the final clash of the Titans, Mammon won over Jesus. We thought as long as the ticket was booked before the child turned two there would be no charge. Au contraire, flight had to be done and dusted before his birthdate. So now we’re getting back from Perth a few days before celebrations start – both for Tricky and the Pope. At least that’s one location struck from the list and maybe we’ll just go back to last year’s plan and have one birthday in Sydney and one in Newcastle, which would give us a good plan of escape.

Or maybe we’ll just bite the wafer and stick around to enjoy the ambience.

There’s a lot of love in that racecourse.

Mothers (day)

14 years since I lost one....

...2 years since I became one.

Everything I Know About Life I Learned From My Toddler's Scraps

C was feeding Tricky his dinner tonight, a delightful pasta and leftover soup combination with grated cheese.

Tricky likes his dinner both as fingerfood and on (several) spoons, variety of serving being the spice of life. (Similarly water must be available in waterbottle, sippy cup and Big Boy Cup.)

Everything was going very nicely until a piece of pasta slithered off one of the many spoons and ended up on the floor.

Tricky instantly twisted about trying to spot the lost morsel. Pasta! He called mournfully as if attempting to attract a mongrel dog. Pasta! Eventually C got fed up with all the pasta grief. It’s gone, I heard him say finally, can you just let it go? The Pasta is Gone.

How many times, I thought, have I had to say this very thing and using that very same tone to myself over the years?

The job I failed to get.
The play that never found a producer.
The boy I never kissed.
The boy I did kiss but deeply regretted it.
The tests on our reproductive organs we chose not to have earlier.
The transfer that didn't.

These are the limp fusilli* of our life and once dropped, they must not be fussed over, they must be Let Go.

(And either be eaten by the dog or perhaps turn up on the bottom of your toddler’s sandal next morning.)

*Or perhaps spaghetti. I think that boy I shouldn’t have kissed was definitely a rigatoni.

Letter To The Son Of The Boy With The Outy Belly Button

Dear Dylan

Can you believe that after all that pfaffing around with Google maps this morning and all that stressing about whether it was better to go along Anzac Parade or Malabar Rd I was actually a whole twenty minutes early? Twenty minutes early, that's some kind of record for me. Usually I'm at least five minutes late for these kinds of things and actually, one time, at a very good friend's wedding C and I were so late we only just managed to make the "I do" moment. And I was meant to be making a speech at the reception. But then that was a few years back now, so maybe I've learned something.

I thought your aunties were looking very beautiful today. And your grandma too in that embroidered blouse.

And your parents...

I remember your dad when he was just a little boy. Our families were all in the Royal Australian Air Force, so that meant we all got posted to different places every few years. But for some reason, your dad's family was often posted to the same places as my family, and so we would see each other fairly regularly over the years. Me and my two younger sisters were older than your aunties and your dad was the baby of the lot, at least until my youngest sister K was born.

The Place We Were All In that sticks most clearly in my memory was Penang, Malaysia.

In my mind I can see your grandmother making the kids sandwiches and giving us the choice of vegemite, peanut butter or a miraculous gourmet cocktail of the two, which from memory was both salty and sweet.

Malaysia gave up many more culinary delights, and there were plenty of shared family dinners, and it was the late seventies and early eighties so there were also things like 'steamboat' which was a sort of communal soup pot where you cook your own chunks of meat. And 'fondue,' and my dad's infamous disco parties with the aluminium foil stuck on the walls to reflect the coloured lights, and then your grandmother's famous cakes (sponge and fruit), but in my mind it's the vegemite-and-peanut-butter-sandwiches that we ate with your dad and his big sisters that seems to sum us up.

We weren't related at all but we called your grandparents 'aunty' and 'uncle' and your dad and his sisters did the same with my parents. So that made us like cousins. We were as different as vegemite and peanut butter, but we made a hell of a good sandwich.

I was the eldest with all the authority that entailed. I remember once pointing out your dad's belly button to the rest of the girls and instructing them rather grandly that the reason his belly button was an 'outy' was because it was the stump of his umbilical cord and it hadn't fallen off yet. I think he was three at the time. Sadly for my authority your grandmother overheard and interjected, her raucus laughter no doubt stunting my potential medical career at the age of ten.

It was probably hard being the only boy, and the youngest of this gang of girls, but your dad managed pretty well. It probably helped that he was a cutie, with his blonde hair and blue eyes and long eyelashes. Now that we're all grownups he's the only one that still calls me Professor which was what his dad used to call me. I don't really know why, it's not like I was particularly brainy or had a wild mop of white hair or anything like that. Although now that I think back to that time, I did have a chemistry lab set up in the back part of that house. So maybe that was it. It certainly couldn't have been my know-all attitude.

Anyway what I'm saying is that I look at your dad and though he's quite the grownup now, I still see that little blonde boy with the blue eyes and long eyelashes.

And why I think it hurt just that much more seeing him carrying you in your tiny white coffin today.

His face was tense and slightly crumpled like he was holding back all the pain and sorrow of the last two weeks and though your coffin must have been light, I could see the weight of all that pain, on him and on your mother walking beside him.

There was a lovely knitted rug and some blue tulle and a little blue bear where your coffin sat, before all the sad bewildered people who had gathered today. There was a framed photograph of you in a blue knitted hat, your eyes shut tight. For two days your brave mother carried you within her, knowing that you had died, and then labouring to bring you into the world so that she and your dad and your heartbroken family could hold you for the first and last time and say their goodbyes. Your gift to her: a beautiful, perfect birth.

And I never knew you, tiny little boy. I never even saw your mother pregnant and because we all lead busy lives I didn't hear from your grandmother about how the pregnancy was progressing, nothing until that shocking message last week to say that you had died. And then, my sisters and I, calling each other, confused, trying to work out how old you were, how many months was she, was she due, what happened?

What happened?

Your parents agreed to an autopsy if it would help another baby, another mother and father.

But they may never know.

You were 36 weeks. You were breech. Your heartbeat stopped.

Here's what I learned about you today. You had tiny beautifully curled fingers. You travelled in your mother's belly to South America. Your father like to play 'kick boxing' with you through the wall of her abdomen. Your mother said you were perfect. Your father called you my little man. Your birth was miraculously easy.

I think you would have been so proud of them today, their dignity, their grace. The two of them, strong and stable, like an island in that huge ocean of tears. When I hugged your dad, I couldn't help saying it's not fair and he smiled sadly at me and hugged me back and said thanks for coming Professor, it means a lot that you're here.

Afterwards at the cup of tea and cakefest, I couldn't help thinking about this beautiful family you were born into but had to leave. They believe in God, your family, and this gives them an incredible strength and peace. They are such good people. They care about others and they help out wherever it's needed and they put themselves at the end of the queue and it seems inconceivable to me that they should suffer in this way.

I get very angry, I said to them as we sipped our tea and munched on your grandmother's special fruit cake, with you know who and I pointed to the ceiling. Because so many.. I mouthed the next word to your aunties fucked things seem to have happened to you. They nodded. It was true. But your grandmother hugged me and said she always remembered her fridge magnet that said: God only gives me what he knows I can handle, I just wish he didn't trust me so much. Wry smiles all round.

But they know they'll see you again.

It was time to go and your grandmother pressed something heavy into my bag. It was an enormous slab of fruit cake. I made extra, she whispered at me.

I kissed your dad and your mum and your grandfather and aunties and uncles and your grandmother goodbye. It's so sad, said one of your aunties, that we only see you at events like this.

Well we should get together, I said, we should make the time, when we come to Newcastle next.

Your grandmother was pleased at the thought.

And I know just what we'll have, she said. I'll make a steamboat.

As I waved goodbye, I thought of my own family, and my 36 week baby, now a nearly two year old, waiting for me at home with his daddy.

And about love and about grief and about childhood and vegemite-and-peanut-butter-sandwiches.

And about the miraculous gourmet cocktail that is parenthood. Both salty and sweet.


Goodbye baby Dylan.


love
Vanessa
xxxx

Old Mummy, Old Daddy

My parents were 21 when they had me. C's were a bit older but still in their twenties. This as opposed to C and I of course who were 44 and 38 when Tricky was born.

Lordy.

Along with all the other happy thoughts I like to torture myself with is the concept that C and I will be old before Tricky finishes high school. Well, no, not old exactly (what is 'old' after all) we will still be young at heart, free spirited, fun loving hipsters, we'll just be more wrinkled I suppose. And possibly smell funny.

This is partly why I'm feeling a little reassured that Tricky’s New Best Ever Favouritist Book In The World is called “Old Bear.”

This book is written and illustrated by Jane Hissey. Kudos to you Jane, I see you have a range of books featuring Old Bear and his younger, sprightlier companions. I am intrigued by your surname and wonder if your friends laugh at you unkindly whenever you get cross and accuse you of having a “Hissey Fit”. I myself would find that intensely irritating.

But enough of asides to the writer, this is the story:

Old Bear is shabby and hideous, for all we know he also smells and hoards things, he certainly likes to get around naked. The limitations and enforced brevity of picture books being what they are, we simply learn that Old Bear is too old to be allowed to remain with the other toys and so he gets flung into the attic by…who? (The Humans we suppose, never mentioned by name but their destructive influences, and toothbrushes, are everywhere.)

Luckily the toys - the younger, sprightlier toys, reveling in their boundless energy and ruffled good looks- one day remember Old Bear and decide to Bring Him Down.

Cue a number of stupid (but touching) efforts by the teenage like Little Bear (who, rather suspiciously, sports mad red eyes and exhibits erratic behaviour) to try and reach the trap door in the ceiling. After various misadventures with towers of blocks, bouncing on bed and a pot plant (ahem), Little Bear is flown to the attic by Rabbit in a small red aeroplane.

In the attic, Old Bear is discovered, still naked and reading a book. He and Little Bear don their handkerchief parachutes and jump down, to be welcomed by a cheering crowd of Duck, Rabbit, Sailor and alpha bear Bramwell Brown.

Tricky likes to hear this story at 6.30 every morning and at 7.00 every evening. As he listens he clutches to himself C’s childhood teddy, still in original woolen blue overalls as knitted by long gone grandmother, recently discovered languishing at the back of the bookshelf. (Teddy, not grandmother)

Daddy Old Bear Tricky likes to say. Daddy Old Bear. Then he hugs the bear tenderly and picks at the buttons.

I feel heartened by this, both the story and the hugging. I’m hoping it bodes well for C and I and our hipster/hip replacement years.

Sensible Things To Do After A Failed FET

The first time I ever got drunk was in the local Woolworths car park at about 8.30 on a Saturday evening. I was 15 and meant to be at my friend’s house watching videos, instead we were knocking back a bottle of port and singing The Cure’s Love Cats.
Also dancing.

I used to cringe at this memory until I met someone who told me they got spectacularly drunk for the first time on a bottle of Brandavino at the age of 13 and the next morning caught the bus into the city. Quite soon after his journey began, he decided that vacating the bus immediately was a matter of great urgency. He rang the bell, the bus stopped, he got off the bus and vomited like a geyser by the side of the road. When he finished, he turned to find the bus, full of patient Saturday morning passengers, waiting for him. After a slightly awkward pause he wiped his mouth, got back on the bus, returned to his seat and continued on his way.

I ended up marrying him.

Losing our last chance embryo was almost shockingly upsetting, considering the yes but, no but sensations I had been experiencing leading all the way up to the transfer. Even so, receiving the news necessitated a certain response. That afternoon I ate a large meal of Not Recommended For Ladies Up The Duff sushi and followed that up with a Not Recommended For Ladies Attempting Or Achieving Up The Duffness latte and during the evening I enjoyed a Severely Frowned Upon glass of wine for the first time in what seemed years but was in fact a few fraught weeks.

The following day I had another latte but this time requested a double shot of espresso. That night C and I drank a bottle of champagne and two bottles of wine with our live in-in laws. I also ate some soft cheese and a piece of smoked salmon.

Following this trajectory I believe I shall be snorting coffee straight from the grinder and washing down my crack cocaine and raw meat fritters with a good slug of goon in the Woolies car park, by this weekend.

Because I am no longer a teenager and this is not the eighties I shall not be singing and dancing to Love Cats. It’s possible though that I may quietly hum the chorus.

Letter To A 21 Month Only Child

Darling Tricky,

This month has seen you start to realize that actually the whole world doesn’t belong to you, despite what your grandparents in Newcastle have led you to believe. You have started to identify for instance that different towels belong to different people, there is a Daddy Towel which hangs next to a Tricky Towel and high up on the back of the door is a Mummy Towel.



This process of identification extends to pillows, glasses of water and various bodily discharges, hence Mummy Wee Wee and Daddy Fart. Words have flown thick and fast this month, you have shouted for sandwich, biscuit, gingerbread, porridge, vegetables, underpants and a puppy and when we try to distract you with a glass of water say, or perhaps a hilarious Daddy Fart, you cut us off with a contemptuous No Way.


This is thanks to childcare of course, No Way being the signature tune of fellow attendee, Jack. Jack only stayed a few weeks after you started but it was long enough to pass on both words and attitude. Tiring though it is to have you constantly exclaiming No Way at a bowl of wholesome mashed root vegetables, or to having your feet cruelly introduced to a pair thick warm socks, I give thanks that it wasn’t Bite Me Mother Fucker or something equally distasteful.

In positive developments at childcare though, we have finally moved from Don’t Leave Me, Oh God Where Are You Going Please Don’t Leave Me This Woman Is The Devil And These Children Are Her Imps to the almost as heartbreaking Bye Bye Daddy and the happily climbing into his carer’s arms, because apparently the Devil gives good cuddle. The devil also encourages crafts and provides you with a hot lunch so who are we to complain. At any moment I can look up and see some of your special craft activities blu-tacked to our loungeroom wall: your blue handprints, your large orange paint blob. And of course, it goes without saying, I will keep these works of art for the rest of my life.


You experienced Easter this last month and although you were sick with some viral ghastliness at the time you got to join in on an Easter Egg hunt with your cousins. They very sweetly found eggs on your behalf and dropped them in your pile and despite the ruthless bargaining, and take no prisoners hunting that went on between themselves, you were positively showered with eggs.
But because I am Pure Evil and decided that you were too sick to eat Easter eggs just at that moment we avoided clueing you in to the concept that those brightly wrapped jewel like objects were actually edible. Instead you smiled at them, played with them, rolled them about the floor and then collected them up happily and put them back into their paper bag. You are a bit obsessed with marbles at the moment and I’m sure you just thought these were retarded marbles with one fat and one pointy end. However, I am not a complete tyrant (unlike you), when you were feeling a bit better you had an easter egg for the first time in your life and it blew your tiny brain. It was like the first time you ate ice cream and your mouth just kept opening and closing like a goldfish. You didn’t even pause to demand “More” like you normally do, you just let your demented gobbling goldfish mouth do the work. When you were finished I explained that what you had just eaten was chocolate. More chocklit, you said immediately.



This past month has seen some very lovely family time, you, your daddy and me, always involving cuddles, often in your cowboy tent or on the Big Bed. Our bedtime routine sees you selecting some well thumbed titles from the bedside shelves; Owl Babies perhaps or Gorilla or Big Fish, where the main character is the chief fish of a small pond and, as you like to firmly clarify; HE WAS HAHPEE.


After stories there are more cuddles. And several expeditions over the pillows to turn the bedside lamp off, no on, no off again. Perhaps a round of Rockabye Your Bear. And then requests for More Books. These are usually denied because it’s now past your bedtime and your father is desperate for the sweet sweet relief of alcohol. We zip you into your sleeping bag, kiss you all over, pop you into bed and back out of the room, muttering to ourselves as we do that you are once again proven to be The Most Delightful Boy In The World.

You are a delightful little boy, quick to laugh, adventurous, and, as I think about your various falls- off stairs and over your own feet, pretty hardy. You get whingy sometimes, you cling to me sometimes, you have temper tantrums when you’re hungry sometimes, and you have shouting spates when you’ve just woken up but you are, despite all this, a great kid. We see the best of ourselves in you and sometimes the worst too but beyond the bits of us are the uniquely special bits of you and they’re beautiful.

This was the month where we tried to make another baby, not another you, no, but another like you. A potential little brother or sister. It didn’t work. That tiny soccerball bunch of cells never did expand like the embryologist told us it would. The sadness currently in both your father and I feels so deep and complex, woven tightly with the memories of all the fear and despair that seemed to haunt us before we finally found you.

It's like we’re failing to provide you with something that was fundamental to the making of both your father and I…a sibling. Three brothers in your father’s case. Three sisters in mine. I don’t know how long it will take for that guilt and that sorrow to dissipate. But I do know that amongst all that sadness is a great deal of joy . You are our son, our baby, our beautiful, grumpy, funny, singing, book loving boy. You may be an only child, but you won’t be a lonely child. You have so many people who care about you. You may not have brothers and sisters but you live with three cousins who fall over themselves to pick you up and hug you even when you call them by each other’s names. You have aunties and uncles and grandparents on opposite sides of the country who adore you. And always you have us, Vanessa and Christopher, your mummy and daddy, who love love love you with all of their hearts.

Because you, you our darling boy, you make us hahpee.



Your very own
OvaGirl
xxxxxx

What A A Milne said...

John had great big waterproof boots on,

John had a great big waterproof hat.

John had a great big waterproof mackintosh

"And that," said John "is that."

Negative.

Confusion

Here are things I did in preparation for my last round of ART:

*went on strict no fat, no chilli, no red meat, no sugar diet as urged by the Chinese Fertility Goddess

*gave up coffee and alcohol completely
*had six months of chinese herbs and acupuncture
*surrounded myself in fertility dolls, gew gaws, holy water, symbolic pictures and lucky charms
*once IVF rollercoaster began in earnest was accompanied by my husband to every appointment.
*worried a lot

Here are things I did in preparation for this round:

*cut down on coffee and alcohol (although after the transfer I cut it out completely)
*tried to eat more vegetables
*had three acupuncture sessions with the Chinese Fertility Goddess

*replaced the whole boiling up herbs into Horrid Tea routine with a neat little jar of granules - two teaspoons in hot water morning and night. Still ghastly but so much easier to manage.
*Went to bloodtests and Dildo-Cam dates alone. (although C came to transfer)
*worried slightly less.

I have no conclusions to draw from any of this except that in the old days we didn't have a mortgage or a childcare bill. Also this time I have been alternatively more tired (and desperately wanted coffee) or more stressed (and desperately wanted alcohol). Also, at our old flat we seemed to have a lot more shelf space for all those bags of twigs and panda paws, not to mention the boxes of thinly sliced deer antler (yum).

At my last acupuncture session with the Chinese Fertility Goddess we had a quick whispered discussion about this as she inserted the needles.
I don't seem to be so wound up about it this time, I told her.
She nodded, you have a baby now, she said, it's different.
But it's not just that, I said, I'm so tired, I wonder sometimes how I could make it all work, if I did get pregnant.

This set the CFG off on a spate of concerned tutting and head nodding. In China, she said, they know your body is completely changed when you have a baby, it takes years to recover fully. Years.
Great, I muttered.
That is why the aunties come round, look after you, grandmother, mother, everyone helping, cleaning, cooking. Here, I worry, where is the support? Where are the aunties?

Of course Tricky and I had aunties akimbo when he was born. Aunty K and Aunty N were support people at his birth and Aunty N went on to do much of that helping, cleaning, cooking stuff that the CFG was talking about. Aunty AJ came over from New Zealand to do the same.

So it can't be the fear of lack of support.

I think I'm worrying about not worrying enough, or something stupid like that.

I worry that my body really has changed, really isn't up to another pregnancy, that my abdominal muscle separated belly, all papery skin and wobbly flab is a poor, second-rate sort of vessel to carry a child.

I worry that as worthless as I feel I am right now, this is it, this is my chance and yet that chance is so slim, so small, so fragile it could float right out from under me on the strength of a sigh.

I worry that I'm not strong enough, not grateful enough, not needy enough...

I worry that C isn't in the same headspace as me, that before, with all the needles he had to inject and the appointments we attended that he knew exactly where we were at, what cycle day it was, how hormonal I seemed compared to the previous 12 hours, he was a rock, a steadying, calming island in an ocean of turmoil. This time, busy with work and Tricky and more work, he seems only half with me, we're sitting side by side in the FET carriage just like last time but he seems distracted, like he's juggling his Cheese-On-A-Stick* with his Southpark Showbag** in one hand and trying to text a friend with the other.

This looks like a big hill we're going up now, I say nervously as the carriage rattles ominously. Mmm says C, can you hold the Cheese for a second, I keep dripping sauce on the Send button.

As a result we've managed to have at least three "heated discussions" in the past 24 hours.
Apparantly I'm being negative. Funny that.

Yesterday morning I did something that I determined last time I would not do. No matter what.

I peed on a stick and it was negative too.

As a direct result, in a very short space of time I have experienced shock, relief, sadness, optimism, denial and grief. Oh and guilt too, because I'm a lapsed Catholic and an Oldest Child and guilt is my birthright.

And then I lay down and read Ballet Shoes for a short time, it being my current Reliving My Literary Past Therapy.

See, you think you've got infertility sussed, you think you understand the nature of the stress behind it, the pain, the depths of sadness and uncertainty. But she's cunning! She's a mystery wrapped in riddle wrapped in an enigma! And also a chameleon! With rapidly changing coloured skin depending on whether she sits on a pumpkin or a potato! Or a turd.

I don't know really how I feel at this point.

My brain is custard.

Best just to go with "tired." This seems to sum up everything right now.

* and ** completely unfair analogy, C hated both the junk food and the showbags at the Show.

5 days past transfer

Tricky is 21 months now and that means a nice little letter with accompanying pictures, but with all the shrieking and gargling and steaming up the walls round here just recently, I got nothin'.
For now.

We have briefly decamped to Newcastle to visit with Aphwah (his grandmother) and Poppy(his grandfather) and Jimmy (their dog) because Tricky was shrieking their names out in the middle of the night in between tortured gasps and snot ridden snores and also because we wanted to steam someone else's room up for a change. Two nights of vapouriser and three nights of antibiotics have worked their steamy antibiotic ju ju on our child and apart from a slightly raspy voice and a taste for human flesh, there seems little other effect. Except for sleep. Last night he slept from 7 at night till 7 in the morning without a peep and it was magnificent. All that anxiety from watching his distress and feeling him sink his teeth into my shoulder has pretty much dissipated.

Today we went to see a kids show that I co-wrote with my ex-husband TWENTY YEARS AGO (for fuck's sake). It contains garbage monsters, a lost little girl and a foul mouthed seagull and features a strong recycling message. Tricky was excited about seeing the garba monsas but when they emerged from their piles of rubbish at the start of the show his lip was quivering and he uttered a few thin cat like wails. It was touch and go as to whether or not we bailed but he gritted his tiny teeth (including recently appearing molars and incisors) and soon settled down.

It was funny to see something I had written so long ago and from another part of my life, even though I had rewritten some of it last year for production. And it was nice to see Tricky watch something I had written, even though he spent at least the same amount of time eating banana bread and then scouring his seat for crumbs.

Today I am 5 days past the transfer. Next Saturday is my pregnancy test. I'm still chugging back the horrid tea and popping the progesterone pessaries. I'll try and see the Chinese Fertility Goddess when I get back to Sydney tomorrow. Last time, the time it worked, I remember getting waves of gentle nausea very early on, before the test. I felt slightly carsick or hungover.
This time I just feel tired. And constipated. And relieved that Tricky is getting better.

What I don't feel is anxious. It's like, this time round, I just don't have the time or the emotional energy for that shit.
This is going to work, or it won't.

Truly Madly Deeply Going Out Of Our Tiny Minds

Tricky, C and I have just spent the last 48 hours in Hell and it seems like we'll be making a weekend of it.

Tricky has never ever been so sick.

A runny nose during the week led to a "difficult" night of throat rasping old man type snoring and general off colour-ness. We went to the local after hours medical centre to be told he had a virus and apart from giving Panadol and keep up fluids, not much more to be done.

That night was hidious. The snot that was boiling away in his head was stopping him breathe. He would fall asleep then a few minutes later stop breathing and wake in a fright. This meant we were waking every five minutes or so too. We brought him into our bed but it didn't help. Instead, with all his usual writhing and kicking there was no sleep at all. Back and forth he went from the Big Bed to Tricky's Bed and amidst that was all the snoring and gargling and death rattling.

I was trying not to lift him, not to get up and down, stay in bed for at least half an hour after shoving in the progesterone pessary...all that Two Week Wait, easy does it, stay relaxed stuff, horribly aware of the cargo I was carrying. But finally, at the lowest point of the night when he started crying yet again, I snapped. As I launched myself out of bed, half asleep, I shouted Lie Down! I'm coming as fast again and so is your Embryonic Sibling!

I started stroking his back and he sank back down to sleep, gargling and rattling away. I felt like a complete arsehole. The next time he woke C took him out of the room and told me to go back to bed. The two of them "slept", I use the term loosely, in Tricky's cowboy tent which is set up in our loungeroom. It was quite comfy, C cheerfully told me later and nice and warm.

By the next morning Tricky was starting to look like a little crack baby, lethargic, eyes rolling back, could barely stay awake, mother becoming weepy and hysterical. Off to our regular doctor, Dr Jabs, who peered into his mouth and recoiled a little. Strep throat.Very nasty. Antibiotics.

When we spoke to Dr Jabs again, later in the day, he warned me about dehydration. The lethargy can be a sign of dehydration, was he drinking lots? Because otherwise he would need to go to hospital and go onto a drip. We had stocked up on iceblocks and various jelly crystal flavours, but, most unusually for a child who can hear a freezer door open from two floors down and shriek for icecream, we were finding it hard to get Tricky to have more than one. No he didn't want water, he didn't want jelly, he didn't want milk. By this stage I was getting ready to be hospitalised myself. Thankfully after holding us to ransom and demanding three Milk Arrowroot biscuits, he started drinking and made up his fluids again.

At around 1 last night it was C's turn to drop his bundle. We realised that Tricky was sitting up in his bed, half asleep, because it was easier for him to breathe. Inevitably he would have a few gargly breaths through his nose before the snot resettled and blocked off his air passage, then there would be silence for a moment, then a sort of shuddering choke as he tried to breathe through his mouth. This would usually wake him, or alternatively he would drift off to sleep and fall backwards or sideways with a crash in the bars of his cot.

C got out of bed, thinking, as one does, that it would be good to put him in the car because he would be sitting upright, he could go to sleep and C would just...sit in the car. Then we thought it might be better to but him in his stroller. Again he would be sitting upright, he could sleep and no one need risk their life driving about in a near-comatose state. Except...where were the car keys? Twenty minutes of increasingly frustrated storming about. I was standing holding Tricky who was screaming for his father and furious with me for keeping him from him. He let out a roar and suddenly sank his teeth into my shoulder. It was so painful and so obviously deliberate that I burst into tears. Finally the keys were found. In the car ignition. It was raining when we got back from the doctor's and we had sat in the car for several minutes before venturing in. As C dragged the stroller in and up the stairs at 1.30 in the morning, I was thankful that the rest of the family, Naughty Nephews and parents, were still away on holidays.

The rest of the night was a combination of stroller, holding Tricky upright on the couch, and lying in the tent. C and I took turns, having a couple of hours sleep before taking over from the other. It was the longest night of our parenting life. It was the sort of night where, in the morning, you say to your partner: Good Work, which means thankyou and I love you so much and look how much better he seems this morning and how the fuck will we get through another of those?

Tricky's been on antibiotics for nearly 24 hours now and I hope they really are as quick as Dr Jabs suggested they would be. In between the Dr visits, we've been dosing Tricky up on baby Panadol and some ghastly blue syrup that's meant to reduce his snot. These, and the antibiotics, are forced into his mouth using a variety of droppers. I've also been using saline drops and a thing I call a snot sucker to try and lighten the load. Every time we try and do this he cries miserably. It's horrible and it makes me feel horrible to see him this way. I keep thinking about that film Truly Madly Deeply where Alan Rickman's character Jamie is a ghost and died because of strep throat. "If only he'd had a wee suck of a Strepsil"... one of the other characters observes mornfully.

At some point during the night, as I was walking Tricky about the room, or perhaps crawling into his cowboy tent with him wailing in my ear, or just holding him, my precious beautiful baby, and stroking him and listening to him breathe, I remembered the 2WW thing again.

It's very hard not to feel like the universe is telling me something.

Truly.

Stranger Than Fiction

Squirty Up The Clacker Day dawned bright and early.

The House Of Groovy Love informed me late on Monday afternoon that I was scheduled for 8.45am which sucked for two reasons; firstly the Chinese Fertility Goddess wouldn't be open before 9.30 and I was hoping for a pre-transfer pinning and secondly Tricky wasn't due to start childcare till 8.30.

Luckily for us Tricky's carer was happy to take him half an hour early but the acupuncture would be post transfer only. This is apparently the one that actually matters and I had that session with the CFG the day before, but I am a Cancerian Creature Of Habit and since that was the routine last time which ended up in Tricky...well.... what can I say?

It was wierd beyond belief being back in the stirrups. Things felt, well...abnormal.

It had started with the strange Alice In Wonderland like rabbit hole that passed as a parking station, just opposite the House Of Groovy Love. Having squeezed into the bowels of the place we got into a lift fully expecting it to take us up to the street we had just driven off. Instead we found ourselves on the street behind. It took us at least a full minute of staring about before we realised which way we needed to walk.

Dr Lovely Accent was all smiles and warm hands, the fertility sisters were all caring words and pop your undies in your pockets and the embryologist had the most enormous eyelashes I have ever seen outside of a drag queen, but even so it all felt odd and discombobulating.

Last time our whole world revolved around what went in and out my lala.

Normality was spending every waking hour of every day devoted to mindful babymaking. We were on strict strict diets, both of us, no alcohol, coffee, sugar, fats, chilli... we drank Horrid Teas and we had regular acupuncture. This time, it seemed to have caught us up unawares. Somewhere in between the work and the child and the broken sleep I made some phone calls, had some blood tests, dated the Dildo-Cam and now we were about to have this tiny cluster of cells, like a soccer ball, the embryologist explained, her enormous eyelashes fanning the air as she spoke, inserted into the jam sandwich that was my uterus. She was telling me all about percentages of intactness and compressions and outer shells but all I could think about was what mascara she used.

And anyway, the good news is, said Dr Lovely Accent, no doubt clocking my bunny in the headlights stare, the embryo survived.

C and I nodded and smiled and followed him into the room, whispering to ourselves as we did.

Are you feeling alright? Dr Lovely Accent asked and I said yes, yes...but see this feels so wierd...and I tried to explain the strange non-normality of it all. He laughed and offered to give me a few more bloodtests if it would help. I climbed up onto the little seat and scooted into position, C sat beside me. The embryologist showed us our progeny up on the big screen and I felt my eyes prickle with tears. And that felt wierd too.

And then in went the speculum (thankfully not the plastic variety) and in popped Dildo-Cam for a bit of a look see, and a great wash of emotion swirled in my guts. Oh yes, my body was saying, it's this again, this having to be poked and have things stuck up you and swished about just so that you can have a chance at pregnancy. I was aware of what was happening but I was also aware of the pain I felt, not just for me, a general amorphous pain of infertility; why does this have to happen? The embryologist brought over the catheter and syringe with its tiny cargo awash in a saline sea. I reached out for C's hand. It seemed important that there was at least some sort of physical connection with my husband taking place while our last chance embryo was squirted up my clacker.

At that point C, nervous, also feeling the wierdness of the situation, said Is it good for you darling? and I began to laugh. It was one of those high pitched hysterical giggles heee heee heee... not advisable when one has a tube through the cervix. Dr Lovely Accent paused considerately to let me stop. I mustered all my strength, thought Stern Thoughts and managed to both repress the giggles and relax. I guess that means it must have been said Dr Lovely Accent suddenly and I laughed again.

I'm so sorry said C, it just popped out.

But maybe that laugh at the end was good, a quick Dildo-Cam check confirmed that the embryo was in a great position and we were good to go.

Except, unexpectedly, as we were leaving I thought I saw Dr Lovely Accent nick past us in sneakers and a pair of green satin running shorts. Surely not, said C, but as we stepped out of the House Of Groovy Love, sure enough, there was Dr Lovely Accent, shorts and all, not jogging exactly but certainly walking very fast as one might do if one was about to jog after one finished one's mobile phone call.

Within an hour we were back with the Chinese Fertility Goddess. Scarily there were at least four women waiting to go ahead of me, all lined up on the stairs. Eventually they moved themselves up into the acupuncture rooms. The CFG herself was in a consulting room with another patient. She had told me to knock on the door when I arrived but I didn't think that felt right. Instead I sat on a chair outside the office and waited. And waited. Finally I knocked on the door, apologetically. The CFG leapt up when she saw me, bustled me into a room, stuck me with pins and wrapped me in a blanket.

An hour later when I came out, there was a woman sitting in the chair outside my room and she was reading my book. I goggled at her and she waved it at me. It's great, she said. Congratulations. And good luck. Thanks I said smoothly, as if I was entirely used to seeing strangers reading my book in the corridor outside my acupuncture room, good luck to you too.

Twenty four hours, two cups of Horrid Tea, one pessary and a handful of forbidden chocolate later, I feel vaguely hopeful, generally apprehensive, reasonably worried and slightly excited.

Completely normal, I expect.

I just can't see it making the home reader list

As I write this I am sipping at a mug of "tea" which is simultaneously disgusting and soothing. It tastes like the black scum that gathers in the tiles under the shower screen, with a nice little lemony aftertaste.

Earlier this evening C and I prepared a hearty and warming soup for dinner. This entailed lots of ginger, lots of garlic and an organic chicken with its arse packed full of "herbs". These herbs looked like a selection of half dried berries, some form of dessicated peel, some twig type vegetation, a large turd and the ubquitous shavings of old foam surfboard.

These two incidents are indeed related.

Me, and the Chinese Fertility Goddess are on again.

This morning, after a brief spate of school girl like giggling on both sides, it was as if no time at all had passed since my last visit. Except it had of course, I had a beautiful toddler to prove it and then there was the...

Your book! You wrote a book!

Yes, I said, I did. Um...have you seen it?

I got your book! I bought it! Not finish reading it yet. My daughter reads it, she loves it, she laughs, says you are such a funny lady.

Mmm, yes, I said. Thankyou.

And, the Chinese Fertility Goddess giggled again, so many women come in to see me and they have your book! And they say...this Chinese Fertility Goddess, I think this might be you!

And it is, I say.

We laugh about this and she hugs me and I show her a picture of Tricky I have bought specially for her and also the copy of the book that I will sign for her. I tell her about living in The Country last year and the new tv writing gig and I refrain from asking her how many celebrities she's knocked up since I was there last.

She rushes me into the acupuncture room, so many needles, so little time.

I'm glad your daughter is enjoying the book, I say.

Yes yes, the Chinese Fertility Goddess pauses to wrap a blanket carefully around my legs.
My daughter is seven. You think it's ok for her to read?

Um...

I rack my brains to recall all the completely inappropriate bits for seven year olds. Several immediately come to mind.

There's a little bit of swearing, I say.

She looks at me... there's sex isn't there?

Yyyyes, I say...but I guess she knows what it is you do...?

The CFG nods and waves this aside and briskly finishes tucking me in. You rest now, sleep. Later make chicken soup with my soup herbs, drink H tea. Tomorrow, after transfer, you come back, come straight upstairs, I do acupuncture then you go home. And for two weeks, you rest. No cleaning. None. Leave it. Tell C I say: You Are Not To Clean.

Ok, I shrug.

And with that she bustles out the door. And I smile.

It's good to be back.

All Being Well: Lots More Prodding

News Flash to braindead parents at Daylight Savings changeover….feeding your child an hour earlier (ie at their pre-DS eating time) ACTUALLY WORKS.

Tricky was a dream, nay a cherub, nay a fully fledged angel of the lord with floaty frock and feathers. Having been a screaming, back arching, food throwing monster of the deep the day before, he was suddenly a miniature Noel Coward, all witty repartee and delightful table manners. The booster seat is at the ready but we’re holding off for the moment.

My youngest sister K is pregnant. Almost 12 weeks in fact. She was one of those I’m going off the pill now, whoopsie! women. She would be one of those women I couldn’t help hating except that she’s my baby sister and she also spent most of this trimester with her head in a bucket. She told us, her family, when she was about three weeks and when I started to speak all that All Being Well stuff she hushed me and said: I started saying that but now I’ve stopped because I believe it will all be well and I want to just enjoy the pregnancy.

I was stunned at her blind optimism but also jealous and then also kind of proud of her attitude, because, why shouldn’t a healthy young woman believe that her pregnancy will end happily? Isn’t that one of the things IF steals from you? Faith? Optimism? Belief in a happy ending?

I hushed up and instead packed a bag of books for her. I’ve got a great one that AJ sent me about Spiritual Midwifery, I told her and also a couple of books about nutrition in pregnancy. Yes, yes, she said, bring all that. But what I really need is a book of baby names.

I hugged her.

Other news: The House Of Groovy Love rang to let me know that All Being Well, the transfer will happen on Tuesday! This Tuesday! As in the 15th!! Because my girly insides are giddy and impatient like unbroken colts before Almanzo Wilder lays his strong experienced hands upon them and have thusly jumped the estrogen fence. Big Fatty Dominant Follicle had grown to the size of a small helicopter by the last date with the Dildo-Cam which sort of hinted gently that the surge was in sight.

My Whockety! It all seems to have crept up so soon. I have rung and made an appointment to see the Chinese Fertility Goddess on Monday for acupuncture, which will be weird because I haven’t seen her since my last transfer over two years ago. I didn’t even send her one of those thankyou cards with a picture of my baby on it because…well I don’t know, it was all too much, the whole sending out pictures with my baby on it. I was so sore I could barely sit down for weeks and so constipated the last thing on my mind was a little letter writing so of course now I’m stricken with worry that she’ll think I’m rude and obnoxious and don’t deserve to have a second baby. In the highly unlikely event that she will actually be as lovely and sweet and as positive as I remember her being, I shall also see her on Squirty Up The Clacker Day for post transfer needles.

Tonight, I start on those silver bullets of waxy progesterone goodness: the pessaries. They’re small, they’re handmade, they’re individually wrapped in silver paper and stored in a lovely old fashioned dark glass jar. I could only love them more if they were tiny dark chocolate truffles but then I wouldn’t be sliding them up my hoohah and waving my legs in the air for an hour.