Silent Ref(l)ucks

Remember I said I would be writing more, and then I didn’t. And then I did…..but inevitably I didn’t. Well here I am again hoping I’ll write more. I have missed the cathartic nature of writing, I have needed it more than ever the last few months but the reason I’ve needed to write is the reason I haven’t been able to.

Finley is almost 7 months old, seven whole months. Jesus. The last time I wrote things were tough and I told you about crying in my yoga class. Well turns out that was the beginning of the end of my sanity! As I suspected our poor bub had silent reflux which is probably a symptom of his cows milk protein intolerance. Basically it means he (and we) spent at least 16 weeks dealing with acid travelling up and down his oesophagus (it’s silent because he swallows it back down rather than vomiting). Medication helped and stopped the nights of non stop crying however many more tears were to follow, evenly divided between me and my boy.

So straight up silent reflux is a temporary issue which babies grow out of. It’s not life challenging or life limiting, it didn’t require hospital stays for us and therefore it is minor, almost insignificant, compared to what other people face. I absolutely accept that and it was my mantra every day. What it did do though was send me to a place of exhaustion and stomp on my fingers every time I tried to climb out. All new parents are exhausted, you know that – we say it all the time. We say it so much it’s boring, what did we expect? We tell expecting parents with glee – oh just wait for the exhaustion, you think you’re tired now? We scoff. Well reflux tired is different. Reflux tired is being kept up all night by your tormenter and then tending to their needs every day.

Wait, stop. Finley is not a tormenter, I know that. Finley spends all day smiling and laughing. He holds my face in his tiny hands and kisses me constantly. Everything I do makes him laugh, he’s the most rewarding audience I’ve ever had. He is literally a standing ovation (well maybe not literally since he can’t stand, but you know what I mean). He takes his medicine laughing, he changed to bottles laughing, we should have named him Joy and just have let him deal with the consequences. However the first hour of the morning I've had to accept another new day and the last hour of night we have had to ready ourselves for the lack of sleep to come. I have had to remind myself that he is not a tormenter, he is my gift, an accumulation of every good we had done in our lives given back to us in a beautiful package. This is the greatest test of reflux, to separate the baby from the circumstance.

What has made it so hard though? Sometimes I don’t know. Tiredness is a tricky beast, it takes over everything even your memory. I know that every day I was exceptionally happy, I know that Finley never got the brunt of my tiredness but I know that Brian did. I know that the three of us danced in the kitchen together every night, I know that every day Brian got a picture of Finley being adorable, and I know that almost every morning he had to see me have one little cry to help me get it out of my system. We have been hellbent on not letting it take over our experience of Finley and it hasn’t. Day to day has been glorious still, but somewhere amongst it all I developed a slight anxiety of night times. The anxiety probably made them worse than they actually were because I started to fear the night and what it would bring, even the times when it ended up not being so bad. It also made me slightly unreasonable when it came to letting go of control and allowing Brian to help more.

Thankfully I think (please god let it be true) we have finally got Finley settled on the right formula, his medication has the reflux under control and so we moved him into his own room to see if it would help with his wakenings. I very quietly whisper this but it has. Due to a foot injury and being unable to rock him asleep I’ve also inadvertently started sleep training and the last two nights he has woken only once. Immediately things are better for me, which is where we are blessed that it was only reflux we have had to deal with. And that brings me back here, to write it all down and document another new part of parenting that I hadn’t expected. Parenting has been a struggle at times, thankfully though Finley, our baby, has not.

And you Reflux, you can go f(l)uck yourself.....see what I did there?

PS: my next blog is going to be such a happy one. It's going to be a giant brag about my life, so much bragging you'll need a vomit bag just to get through it.  

Movie Star Tears.

Today I am in a heighted state of pregnancy emotions. These emotions have led me to develop movie star tears which have appeared on and off since this morning. I am highly amused by these pregnancy tears; they gently roll down my face without any warning or sound. They glisten in my eyes, leaving no red rim, and thankfully do not harm my makeup. In typical Niamh fashion I have finally cracked the movie star crying code and yet I’m far too pregnant to break Hollywood (yes it is only my pregnancy that is preventing me from being discovered).

Anyways I think pregnancy tears are hilarious so have decided to bring you through my day so far. You may read these thinking there must be some exaggeration for dramatic effect but sadly that is not the case. Before you read them I would like to mention that I am in fact very delighted with life currently.

I cried movie star tears when:

• I thought my sleeping husband was annoyed at me. I had to wait for him to wake up in order to ask, turns out he wasn’t. Yes, I know, you’re right; it’s very hard for someone who is asleep to exhibit signs of annoyance however that did not stop me crying.
• I arrived at the bus stop and thought my bus had left early. It hadn’t, I got on it at the usual time.
• A lady was nice to me. My swipe card wasn’t working and she told me my day would get better when I had a coffee. That level of kindness was too much this morning.
• I got into the car after a packed Luas journey when no-one gave me their seat, even though I was holding my bump like the celebs do in magazines.

I wanted to cry when: (this means tears pricked my eyes but I didn’t let them fall)

• I wanted a muffin and bought one.
• I saw a picture of a premature baby born at the same stage as my baby is at now.
• I was worried that I wouldn’t love my baby.
• I thought about how much I love my baby.
• I had to ring my manager and was worried I would cry during the conversation.
• A lady power walked passed me during my lunchtime walk and I realised that she wasn’t really walking that fast.
• I saw children playing with swans in Stephens Green.
• I told my colleague about a day I forgot my keys to the office and it was raining outside.

While the movie star tears are most likely down to hormones, I am also slightly sleep deprived. Not only have I discovered the phenomenon of pregnancy tears but pregnancy dreams have also arrived full force. 

A few nights ago I dreamt that I was involved in a love triangle with Common and Xzibit (while still pregnant and married). We decided to work this problem out with the help of a mediator who turned out to be Robin Williams. Unfortunately the mediation came to an abrupt end when Robert De Niro shot us all. I rang my husband to say goodbye as I stood looking at the hospital he worked in. Sadly for me the hospital didn’t deal with those types of emergencies so I felt I shouldn’t go in and embarrass him. Not only was it a crappy dream but I woke feeling guilty about bringing Robin Williams back to life only to shoot him dead.

I’d like to think that tomorrow will be better, but I really shouldn’t think about it too much, just incase I cry.

It’s all lies, featuring 24 weeks in one short blog post

God I’m useless at blogging BUT I think I am going to get better so I wanted to do a quick update, a recap if you will, and bring everyone up to date on me, my pregnancy and the lies that are told.

I will be 24 weeks tomorrow which I thought was 6 months but now I think that 6 months is 25 weeks. It’s all very confusing and yet it probably isn’t but math was never my strong subject. We had our big scan (the scan is the same size as a regular scan however I feel I must use the terminology that has been shared with me) at 22 weeks.

Scans still scare me since we found out about our miscarriage during our first scan, however this time the big difference was that baby had been kicking and somersaulting for a couple of weeks and so I knew it was alive. Of course I didn’t know if everything was ok and I had a very quiet voice of fear accompany me on the day. The sonographer was lovely, she took us through each part of our gorgeous baby and I gasped every 4 seconds including when we saw the kidneys which truly are just grey blobs on a screen. BUT THEY ARE OUR BABIES GREY BLOBS. She let us hear the heart beat and persevered to get a profile pic when it seemed inevitable that baby would not move it’s gorgeous hand from its perfect face.

The scan finished with her telling us that everything looked normal. Isn’t that just the most wonderful word when looking at a scan of your baby? Normal! Ahh bliss. I let out a deep sigh of relief and then read about counting movements and immediately found something new to worry about!

I’m feeling good these days. I’m not as tired, not as bloated, not as nauseous and not as worried. However as the pregnancy progresses I have encountered a number of lies that have been sold me to by this maternity world, ones that I would like debunk now.

The lies, myths & inconsistencies

The 12 weeks myth –such were the promises of wellbeing at the 12 week mark that I woke up on the morning of it ready to start marathon training. I was sold tales of ‘bursts of energy’,’ no more sickness’, ‘easing of symptoms’. Hurrah I thought, life will be back to normal. I will stay up late and watch movies. I will high five people on the street and drag a comb through my hair looking into the mirror. Then my old foe, 2 o’clock, arrived on day 1 of week 13 and the feeling returned. I was miserable, I was tired and I was bloated. How could this be I cried? They promised I lamented. THEY LIED. It took until week 16 to start to feel better, week 18 to really feel better. Screw you week 12; you were but a mirage in a dry desert of despair.

You won’t even miss alcohol – oh how you make me laugh. I remember speaking to friends about how to survive without a weekend glass of wine, ‘you don’t even miss it’ I was told. THEY LIED. Sometimes, when I’m all alone, I sit and think of the condensation on a bottle of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. I hear the sounds of the cap opening, or the pop of the cork, and the glug of the liquid as it pours into the glass. I feel the glass between my fingers and the first rush of flavour as it hits. And then I realise the best I can hope for is a non-alcoholic Erdinger which is mostly head or a glass of orange juice whose only winning quality is that it isn’t water. I miss wine every damn day.

You’re gorgeous – look I’m not saying you’re not gorgeous but it takes many months for that bump to develop and until then you will be obsessed with trying to round off whatever fat has been deposited on your stomach. My bump is getting there now at 24 weeks, until this point it looked kinda fat, as did my bum, my love handles and my arms. I only recently passed the milestone of having my bump bigger than my bum.   

Choose a healthy diet-  personally I could not choose any diet. For the first 16 weeks my appetite was such that it went from ravenous and needing to eat all the carbs, to ravenous and not being able to deal with life let alone eating. When you are tired, bloated, emotional and need to eat every 2 hours it’s hard to keep going for the carrot sticks. One of my snacks was always fruit or veg but the one 2 hours later and 2 hours before was most definitely carbs. Your body is no longer your own and you must learn to feed the animal (albeit a really cute cuddly one) inside.

Body confidence is not technically yours either – so I am curvy, always have been and will be etc. I have days I feel crap but usually I’m pretty confident. Pregnancy has been interesting…I really promised myself I would not look at skinny pregnant women and wish I was them…celebs included…and I kept that promise right until I looked at a skinny pregnant woman and wished I was them. Again most days I feel good and am really embracing my belly, however I do feel different. I have given my body to a greater purpose and it isn’t as easy as I haughtily thought it would be.

Babies don’t come cheap –  I feel like I’m back in the world of wedding planning except this time I’m only getting bigger and the party I have to look forward to involves sleep deprivation, vomit and must be tolerated alcohol free (see alcohol point above) Everything is expensive AND even if, like me, you are anti-establishment and plan to go second hand e’erythang you will be terrified of not buying new just incase something happens, and your recycled buggy flops in on itself in the middle of the sanitary towel aisle in Tesco. The point is when you add baby or maternity to a product the price is ridiculous yet you will feel the shame of not being able to afford the best even though you have fought against that feeling your whole life.

Needless to say pregnancy is also wonderful and joyous etc etc but watch out for those sneaky lies and the sense of shame that they can create.

I may add to this list as they occur to me. I shall be the debunker of myths, the remover of hope, the renewer of misery. Or something like that.

More gas and a hairy bush

We went to Spain for a week in February, I decided it would be factor 50 weather so packed every light summer item I possessed and no jacket….terrible decision. Turns out February really is still February in Spain, go figure. As well as packing light I decided to lighten up my personal load too. We were meeting a friend whose body fat percentage is less than the Victoria Secrets model at the moment they step on the runway. She’s fit and gorgeous and tight. Considering at 20 weeks I was unfit, passable and soft I decided the least I could do was defuzz so when standing next to her in the bikini (which we obviously didn’t wear – see February above) I didn’t also add spider legs to the list of differences we have.

I am not prudish and would happily walk around naked except for the risk of chilblains and upsetting other people’s lunch HOWEVER it turns out bikini waxing when pregnant is not for the faint hearted. Not to give too much away about the drapery, heavens forbid, but turns out red hair is the thickest of the hairs (wait, did I just give it all away there?). This coupled with me slacking off on my personal styling when bump had cast a shadow to ‘that area’ (it’s a dangerous place to bring a scissors to blind) meant that the beauty therapist had her work cut out.

She was wonderful and did not seem fazed by the task ahead; it was her job she told me. I don’t buy it though….I know she didn’t walk in to beauty school with hopes of one day waxing a pregnant woman’s ungroomed ginger bush, and, if she did, she needs higher hopes or lower hopes but most certainly different hopes.

So the wax; it was definitely more painful than usual and to her credit she was very, very thorough. We talked a lot which was helpful, it distracted the pain somewhat until of course she touched me and I wanted to immediately reverse my decision to have a child. Thankfully I now understand waxing is clearly more painful than childbirth so I’ll be fine. Anyway, the talking was dandy except that as time moved along I was anxious to remain silent in order to let me concentrate on the rather more urgent issue at hand.

Fellow people who have grown a child may sympathise with the slightly increased amount of errr windy pops that the body produces. Mainly these pop right out my delicate mouth which I can furiously apologise for while everyone laughs at the cute pregnant pops. Other times they do not pop out of my mouth but instead find other ways in which to escape free. (Thankfully this is usually when sleeping and my husband kindly does not let me know it has happened for fear of me breaking down in a mortified toddlers crying tantrum.) Quite quickly, while holding my knees to my pregnant and bloated stomach, I had a very real sense of danger to what could happen next.

Have you ever held your knees to your swollen boobs while another woman defuzzed your hootenanny? It’s not fun, it’s not mildly weird, it’s not even bearable. By the time she was finished I had 15 different apologies ready for the inevitable pop off that I was destined to allow escape while she was working. I was sure that holding my legs, talking about a holiday whilst sweating profusely meant that something would have to give and it was surely my digestive muscles.

Time dragged on, as I said she was thorough; I willed her to quit while she was ahead, get out while the going was good, SAVE YOURSELF SWEET GIRL. Eventually the magical words ‘we’re done’ arrived; she was going to step outside while I got dressed. I had done it! Success! I was smooth and still had some dignity left to lose in the delivery room. However friends, I tell you most sincerely I kept those legs up in the air until she was a safe distance away. God only knows how much of the universe I had been gathering during the wax and I was not about to release the lever of my legs to force it all back out while she stood in the room.

Long story short. Bikini wax felt great however every moment of it is seared into my brain forever more. Spain was wonderful, friend was even tighter than the last time I saw her and I spent a week in too little clothes unsuccessfully trying to do pregnant Chrissy Teigen on holidays.

Have a pregnancy

On Saturday I passed the 15 week mark. It’s a funny time of pregnancy isn’t it? There is definitely a belly but it’s not too prominent. You’ve reached the high of hitting the second trimester yet you (I) still fall asleep by 9.30 every night. The promised land of symptom free post 12 weeks has not materialised and then you realise it was really only a ruse used to get to week 12 without tearing your hair out. I totally fell for it… yet here I am still tired, still feeling sick and now happily aware that neither of these things matter at all.

This has been the epiphany of my second pregnancy. How I feel these 9 months (or is it 10 months? Pregnancy math confuses the hell out of me) is completely irrelevant. Sick, tired, narky? It doesn’t matter. Itchy boobs, stretch marks, weight gain? Pfff what did you expect? I, bolstered by Hollywood/ Instagram’s perception of the pregnancy journey, had me expecting flowing skirts in hay fields with floral crowns, bralets and a big beautiful belly. That may still happen however I’ve come to realise that whether it does or doesn’t is inconsequential to the purpose of pregnancy.

Pregnancy is about life, it’s about a woman’s body bearing a child. It is a job your body has undertaken on a 9/10 month contract with a really stressful 12 week probationary period. Hopefully along the way you have fields of gold, and moments of eating cereal off a rounded moving tray, but if not….it doesn’t even matter.

I’m sure that for some people this sounds depressing, unromantic, harsh but for me it’s been quite freeing. Knowing that what I’m currently going through is not meant to be of benefit to me is a relief. It focusses me on July, when all of this sickness, this exhaustion will result in a new future. A new human has to be the result of hard work right? It could never be a walk in the park.

I am sure this frame of mind is largely down to my miscarriage. My first pregnancy was certainly more romantic. The telling of my partner, the rubbing of a belly that hadn’t started to grow yet…all moments that I hold so precious. However the romance of that pregnancy did not lead to a little person. This pregnancy, which was very practical and unromantic for the whole first trimester, will hopefully result in the family we have been planning for.

Just to clarify I’m not saying happy pregnancies result in miscarriage…clearly…I mean please you know that? What I am questioning however is what would happen if we released ourselves from the pressure of loving a pregnancy; of rejoicing in it and shouting about how much we welcome the sickness for fear of anyone thinking we are ungrateful for this gift? That release – for me – has let me enjoy the pregnancy even more! It has taken away disappointment from the days when I feel none of those things.

There are so many forums on pregnancy, and in every one there is a topic where a Mom-to-be discusses how hard she is finding it, and the guilt that this brings. Before she even gets to sharing why she is finding it hard, she apologises for doing so. It’s an internal pressure that is compounded by external forces. Those forces are many – media, family and friends, and people like me who had a miscarriage or are experiencing fertility issues. When I had a miscarriage I couldn’t care less how much your pregnancy hurt you, honestly I wanted you to shut up complaining and be grateful! Yes I was am my own worst enemy!

I know this pregnancy is a gift and I dare anyone to challenge me on how much I appreciate that. I speak to my baby, I do everything physically possible to make sure it is safe. I will buy the dungarees I always dreamt of wearing when pregnant. But I will also know that whether wonderful or awful, this pregnancy is not about me. It’s about bringing life into the world. And that is the crux for me – remove the guilt you feel about the pregnancy not being all you wanted. It is what it is. It is wonderful or it makes you feel terrible. The end result is the baby, not the experience.

Hint though – don’t moan to those who want to be pregnant and are not. That just makes you a bit of an asshole. If you want to figure out who you can moan to read this and follow the logic, www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407-story.html

So in summary what am I saying? My message is Have a Pregnancy and don’t stress about what adjective to use until the end of it.