Thursday, June 28, 2012
when I was a kid...
Something that has really really been bothering me lately are the huge changes in parenting over the years. Now, I'm not an expert, so as you read my post please understand that these are my reflections from my perspective, and I am in no way trying to criticise other parents, I am just stating an observation... only time will tell what long-term effects (or lack of long-term effects) modern parenting will have on children and what others choose for their children are their own business. I don't care what others do (well other than when you are talking about parenting that is clearly abusive or going to have clear negative long term implications for a child), but it does bother me that parents look at me sometimes as if I am crazy to parent the way I do and yet in comparison to some previous generations what I do is sooooo tame?!
When I was a kid only the minority of kids had a birthday each year. And when there was a birthday party there was generally a handful of kids invited, not the whole class. Parties in which the entire class were invited were a rarity!
When I was a kid birthday cakes were usually straight out of the Women's weekly cake book. Unless you had a Maccas party... then you had icecream cake with sprinkles.
When I was a kid my mother was more protective than others. Other kids rode their bikes around the streets and disappeared for hours. We rode ours around the court only. We were not the average.
When I was a kid playgrounds were awesomely "dangerous". The seesaws went THUMP and the point of them was to try to get the other person to fly up in the air! And yes I was winded on a seesaw. Monkey bars broke multiple arms. There were these awesome spinning things that you hung onto that bobbed up and down in the air as they swung in a full circle. There were trees to climb. We all copped a few footys in the face. And our parents did not follow us around every item at the playground.
When I was a kid parents were (a little too!!) relaxed about seatbelts in the event you had an extra person to fit into the car and not enough seatbelts. As long as you bobbed down far enough that the cops wouldn't see you you were fine.
I lived too far away from school to walk to school... but hey, when I was a kid parents didn't fret over their kids walking to school. Even preps could be dropped off in the school carpark to find their own way to their classroom (and we didn't get lost!!). And when my mum was a kid they would walk in from miles away to get to school. And when my grandma was a kid her and her brothers would be packed onto the back of a horse and rode that in for miles to get to school!!!
When I was a kid it was ok to leave your kid in the car while you ran into the shops to get a few things (provided it wasn't too hot and the doors were locked).
When I was a kid disappointments were a normal part of life. If you missed a party or a sleepover coz you were sick, it was disappointing but you just had to deal with it. If you didn't win a competition or top a test well that's just how that worked out. If you desperately wanted a new bike or toy of some kind and your parents had no money, you were told so and you had to revise your dreams because money is a fact of life that you have to learn at some point.
When I was a kid we were not rewarded for basic good behaviour. Respect for others was an expectation not an extraordinary effort on your part. If you were told off by a stranger you then copped it from a parent too rather than the stranger copping it from your parent.
When I was a kid I was given opportunities to learn from my mistakes. I learned the rules of gravity first hand. I learned that money has to be earned, and that although I am equal to others, I may not always have the same resources or opportunities as others but that's ok because I need to focus on what resources and opportunities I do have. I learned that my behaviour towards others has consequences. I learned that there are boundaries that when crossed have big consequences for my life. I learned that no matter how I may have felt at the time, sometimes parents or others DO know better than me. I learned to fight fair. I learned that I cannot simply have everything in life that I want - and some things in life I will want and never have. I learned to deal with that!!! I learned to deal with the fact that sometimes life isn't fair, that sometimes things happen that I cannot control and that my parents cannot click their fingers and rescue me from ALL situations because sometimes that is not possible. I learned resilience. I learned independence. I learned perseverance. I learned discipline.
And sometimes I can't help but wonder if my children's generation are going to be given opportunities to learn the same.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Joshua's birth journey
I wrote Chloe's birth story down last year, and now that I am on a break I think I better write down Joshua's story before I forget it! I'm getting old ;)
Joshua's journey starts back early in 2007....
Chloe was roughly 7 months old when I came down with some kind of virus that made me feel extremely tired and nauseaus. After 2 weeks with this virus I decided it was time to visit the doctor to find out what the deal was!!! Knowing that the first thing they would want to rule out was pregnancy I decided to conduct a pregnancy test first - we had had a lot of trouble falling pregnant with Chloe, so I figured my natural tendency to not fall pregnant combined with breastfeeding would make this extraordinarily unlikely but hey... better to buy the test than waste time at the doctors. So, I took the test... and lo and behold it was positive!!!!!! THAT explained the fatigue nausea and extremely low supply of breastmilk!!!! I had absolutely no clue whatsoever as to how pregnant I would be so we had an ultrasound which dated me for being due 23rd January 2008 (Chloe would be 15 months). We were a little surprised but over the moon!!
I had a completely smooth easy pregnancy, no problems, no issues!! At 20 weeks we had a scan and found out we were 99% likely having a boy!! After much debate we finally settled on a name, and started buying bits and pieces of boys clothing etc.
From about 30 weeks I started having intense Braxton Hicks contractions. I was quite concerned by them but was reassured by the doctor that my first being born early was random but not at all likely to happen again with the 2nd, and then the midwife told me I was just being a sulk and that she finds way too many 2nd time mums are oversensitive about aches and pains
Late November we moved out of our tiny 2 bedroom shoe box into a 3 bedroom place to make room for our new addition. We decided to move early to ensure that Chloe had time to adjust to that first change before the next big change!
Couple of weeks later I was 34 weeks... on Monday 9th December Chloe became violently ill with some kind of nasty gastro. She spent 2 days awake all night vomiting... and so I spent 2 nights awake with her cleaning up and trying to settle her. Not at all fun when you are feeling big and fat and pregnant and tired!!! Wednesday she finally picked up and we had her cousins over to play (who had also been sick with the gastro). Thursday morning my mum and youngest 2 brothers dropped in to say goodbye on the way to their holiday in Venus Bay. Normally they took their holidays in January but given I was due late January and had been early with Chloe, they had decided to holiday early so they could be around for the birth. I joked around telling mum I would call when the baby was born - she wasn't too impressed at that idea! Later that day Chloe fell ill again so once again I was up all night with her. Friday my dad left for Venus Bay too (as he had had some work to finish up first). Friday evening I began to feel dizzy and nauseaus myself. Before long I was vomiting, and was so sick I could barely lift my head and needed help to make it to the toilet. Later that evening (about 11pm) I started to have regular but gentle contractions. I mentioned them to Steve and we ummed and ahhhed over them for some time before deciding to call my mum to let her know she should leave her phone on just in case. Steve then decided "hey let's pray and if the contractions haven't stopped in 5min we will call the hospital. So he prayed, and he fell asleep within 2min so I ignored the gentle squeezing contractions and fell asleep in no time at all.
4am (sat morning) I woke up to an intense contraction. I stumbled my way out to the loo, and then on the way back to bed felt my waters come gushing! I woke Steve up, and we immediately called the hospital who told us to come straight in. We called an ambulance because at last check bub wasn't engaged (so high risk of prolapsed cord which can be fatal) and called my mum who said she would head back as soon as it was light enough to drive (she can't drive in the dark) and then called my brother John's mobile over and over and over and over and over again until we finally managed to wake him up (actually I think Jo ended up waking him telling him to answer it lol) and poor guy had to come over at 4:30am (and still had to head to work later that day... sorry Josh owes you big time!). Chloe remained asleep thank God as Steve stumbled around packing a bizarre mix of things while we waited for the ambulance (devastatingly we forgot the cameras so were unable to take any photos of our new baby).
The ambulance came and I had an uncomfortable ride to the hospital (do NOT take one of those in labour unless necessary, NOT GOOD!). They rushed me into maternity (bout 5:30 at this point) and they established that I was definitely in labour and was 3cm dilated already. The nurses told me that I would be having my baby that day, and that he would have to stay in the special care nursery for about 4 weeks. As I was in labour I really didn't care what was happening later!!!!!!
The labour was pretty easy and so the midwives mostly left us unsupervised, but made it very clear that we needed to press the emergency buzzer as soon as I entered the 2nd stage (pushing). Just before 8 I needed to pee so asked Steve to get the midwife to disconnect me from the monitoring machines so that I could head to the toilet. He called the midwife in but somehow instead he headed off to pay for the car parking (machines don't operate before 8) while I lay there fuming and feeling increasingly hostile. When he returned I asked him icily "Can I NOW go to the toilet?" and I was unhooked from the machines to finally relieve my bladder! On my way back I was hit by an intense contraction and then a complete panic as I felt my baby heading down and out at a very fast pace!!! I started screaming at Steve "push the buzzer push the buzzer!!!" as I stood at the bed wondering how on earth I would ever get back up there?! Steve didn't push the buzzer so I angrily did myself (I hadn't seen that the midwife had walked in and rushed off herself to grab the team... oops). Then it seemed like absolute chaos broke loose - they got me up on the bed and I looked up to see a team of 5-6 people watching me waiting for me to push the baby out?!!!! Not surprisingly I suddenly found myself completely incapable of focusing on pushing out a baby. I was very blessed to have a wonderful midwife who made me focus on her and distracted me from all that was happening in the room.
I was on my back but hunched forward and was absolutely gobsmacked to see my baby's head crown and watch my Joshua Aiden enter the world (at 8:21am). A midwife dumped him on my stomach, and I reached my hand down to touch him, but he was immediately snatched up (he was only there while they cut the cord) and whisked off to a station thing in front of my bed where 5 people awaited to work on him. They shoved the vaccuum down his throat over and over again, and I started asking over and over again "Is he ok?" but no-one would answer me and the midwife (unsuccessfully) tried to distract me from what was happening (as if I could be distracted from my baby?!!). At the 1min mark they did the Agpar check (while continuing to vaccuum his lungs) and I watched as my blue unresponsive baby's hand was lifted up and just dropped lifeless back down. At that moment a growing sense of horror began to build as I realised that maybe he might not be ok. At the 2min mark he finally gave a cry and then continued to cry incessantly for the rest of the short time he was in with me. They wrapped him up, and let me have a short hold, but they had to get him out to the humidicrib for oxygen etc so I had to say goodbye to him, knowing that because I had gastro it'd be 48hrs before I would see him again.
The next 48hr were a blur for me. I was given photos and videos of my baby, but I could not see the real baby, could not hold the real baby, and had to helplessly rely on others for updates on him. Worst of all was seeing the videos of him in distress as he fought for each breathe, knowing that I was not able to offer him any comfort.
Sunday evening, the night before I had been promised I could finally see my baby, Joshua started to become more distressed with his breathing. He was on the highest oxygen saturation levels allowed for a humidicrib and they said if he didn't improve in the next few hours he would have to be transferred to Monash to be put on a ventilator. I was devastated - my baby might be transferred so far away when I was so close to finally seeing him?!!
Steve got the word out to all our friends and the church, and a lot of prayers went up for him, and his breathing settled and he stayed at Frankston :)
Monday morning arrived and FINALLY I could see my baby boy!!! Steve took me through to the SCN and over to his little humidicrib. He had a big drip in his head, bruises all over his hands where they had been unable to get a drip in, monitors all over him... but he was still absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. He had at this point been unable to have any milk at all because anything in his stomach would have effected his breathing. I was finally able to touch my baby, so stuck my hands through the little holes, only to discover that touch of any kind, not matter how gentle, distressed him. He would jump in fear and shrink away - but I was reassured that it was just because he was early and is common for prem babies to overreact to touch. He was brought out of the crib and I finally got to have a long cuddle with my baby.
The rest of the story is a blur of needles, drips, nasal tubes, expressing milk, losing over 500g of weight to weigh 2.2kg and then the journey of trying to feed him up to reach his birth weight again etc etc... but the short version is that he improved so incredibly quickly that we were able to take him home only 15 days after he was born - 2 weeks earlier than expected by the staff!!!
And that is my boy's story :)
Joshua's journey starts back early in 2007....
Chloe was roughly 7 months old when I came down with some kind of virus that made me feel extremely tired and nauseaus. After 2 weeks with this virus I decided it was time to visit the doctor to find out what the deal was!!! Knowing that the first thing they would want to rule out was pregnancy I decided to conduct a pregnancy test first - we had had a lot of trouble falling pregnant with Chloe, so I figured my natural tendency to not fall pregnant combined with breastfeeding would make this extraordinarily unlikely but hey... better to buy the test than waste time at the doctors. So, I took the test... and lo and behold it was positive!!!!!! THAT explained the fatigue nausea and extremely low supply of breastmilk!!!! I had absolutely no clue whatsoever as to how pregnant I would be so we had an ultrasound which dated me for being due 23rd January 2008 (Chloe would be 15 months). We were a little surprised but over the moon!!
I had a completely smooth easy pregnancy, no problems, no issues!! At 20 weeks we had a scan and found out we were 99% likely having a boy!! After much debate we finally settled on a name, and started buying bits and pieces of boys clothing etc.
From about 30 weeks I started having intense Braxton Hicks contractions. I was quite concerned by them but was reassured by the doctor that my first being born early was random but not at all likely to happen again with the 2nd, and then the midwife told me I was just being a sulk and that she finds way too many 2nd time mums are oversensitive about aches and pains
Late November we moved out of our tiny 2 bedroom shoe box into a 3 bedroom place to make room for our new addition. We decided to move early to ensure that Chloe had time to adjust to that first change before the next big change!
Couple of weeks later I was 34 weeks... on Monday 9th December Chloe became violently ill with some kind of nasty gastro. She spent 2 days awake all night vomiting... and so I spent 2 nights awake with her cleaning up and trying to settle her. Not at all fun when you are feeling big and fat and pregnant and tired!!! Wednesday she finally picked up and we had her cousins over to play (who had also been sick with the gastro). Thursday morning my mum and youngest 2 brothers dropped in to say goodbye on the way to their holiday in Venus Bay. Normally they took their holidays in January but given I was due late January and had been early with Chloe, they had decided to holiday early so they could be around for the birth. I joked around telling mum I would call when the baby was born - she wasn't too impressed at that idea! Later that day Chloe fell ill again so once again I was up all night with her. Friday my dad left for Venus Bay too (as he had had some work to finish up first). Friday evening I began to feel dizzy and nauseaus myself. Before long I was vomiting, and was so sick I could barely lift my head and needed help to make it to the toilet. Later that evening (about 11pm) I started to have regular but gentle contractions. I mentioned them to Steve and we ummed and ahhhed over them for some time before deciding to call my mum to let her know she should leave her phone on just in case. Steve then decided "hey let's pray and if the contractions haven't stopped in 5min we will call the hospital. So he prayed, and he fell asleep within 2min so I ignored the gentle squeezing contractions and fell asleep in no time at all.
4am (sat morning) I woke up to an intense contraction. I stumbled my way out to the loo, and then on the way back to bed felt my waters come gushing! I woke Steve up, and we immediately called the hospital who told us to come straight in. We called an ambulance because at last check bub wasn't engaged (so high risk of prolapsed cord which can be fatal) and called my mum who said she would head back as soon as it was light enough to drive (she can't drive in the dark) and then called my brother John's mobile over and over and over and over and over again until we finally managed to wake him up (actually I think Jo ended up waking him telling him to answer it lol) and poor guy had to come over at 4:30am (and still had to head to work later that day... sorry Josh owes you big time!). Chloe remained asleep thank God as Steve stumbled around packing a bizarre mix of things while we waited for the ambulance (devastatingly we forgot the cameras so were unable to take any photos of our new baby).
The ambulance came and I had an uncomfortable ride to the hospital (do NOT take one of those in labour unless necessary, NOT GOOD!). They rushed me into maternity (bout 5:30 at this point) and they established that I was definitely in labour and was 3cm dilated already. The nurses told me that I would be having my baby that day, and that he would have to stay in the special care nursery for about 4 weeks. As I was in labour I really didn't care what was happening later!!!!!!
The labour was pretty easy and so the midwives mostly left us unsupervised, but made it very clear that we needed to press the emergency buzzer as soon as I entered the 2nd stage (pushing). Just before 8 I needed to pee so asked Steve to get the midwife to disconnect me from the monitoring machines so that I could head to the toilet. He called the midwife in but somehow instead he headed off to pay for the car parking (machines don't operate before 8) while I lay there fuming and feeling increasingly hostile. When he returned I asked him icily "Can I NOW go to the toilet?" and I was unhooked from the machines to finally relieve my bladder! On my way back I was hit by an intense contraction and then a complete panic as I felt my baby heading down and out at a very fast pace!!! I started screaming at Steve "push the buzzer push the buzzer!!!" as I stood at the bed wondering how on earth I would ever get back up there?! Steve didn't push the buzzer so I angrily did myself (I hadn't seen that the midwife had walked in and rushed off herself to grab the team... oops). Then it seemed like absolute chaos broke loose - they got me up on the bed and I looked up to see a team of 5-6 people watching me waiting for me to push the baby out?!!!! Not surprisingly I suddenly found myself completely incapable of focusing on pushing out a baby. I was very blessed to have a wonderful midwife who made me focus on her and distracted me from all that was happening in the room.
I was on my back but hunched forward and was absolutely gobsmacked to see my baby's head crown and watch my Joshua Aiden enter the world (at 8:21am). A midwife dumped him on my stomach, and I reached my hand down to touch him, but he was immediately snatched up (he was only there while they cut the cord) and whisked off to a station thing in front of my bed where 5 people awaited to work on him. They shoved the vaccuum down his throat over and over again, and I started asking over and over again "Is he ok?" but no-one would answer me and the midwife (unsuccessfully) tried to distract me from what was happening (as if I could be distracted from my baby?!!). At the 1min mark they did the Agpar check (while continuing to vaccuum his lungs) and I watched as my blue unresponsive baby's hand was lifted up and just dropped lifeless back down. At that moment a growing sense of horror began to build as I realised that maybe he might not be ok. At the 2min mark he finally gave a cry and then continued to cry incessantly for the rest of the short time he was in with me. They wrapped him up, and let me have a short hold, but they had to get him out to the humidicrib for oxygen etc so I had to say goodbye to him, knowing that because I had gastro it'd be 48hrs before I would see him again.
The next 48hr were a blur for me. I was given photos and videos of my baby, but I could not see the real baby, could not hold the real baby, and had to helplessly rely on others for updates on him. Worst of all was seeing the videos of him in distress as he fought for each breathe, knowing that I was not able to offer him any comfort.
Sunday evening, the night before I had been promised I could finally see my baby, Joshua started to become more distressed with his breathing. He was on the highest oxygen saturation levels allowed for a humidicrib and they said if he didn't improve in the next few hours he would have to be transferred to Monash to be put on a ventilator. I was devastated - my baby might be transferred so far away when I was so close to finally seeing him?!!
Steve got the word out to all our friends and the church, and a lot of prayers went up for him, and his breathing settled and he stayed at Frankston :)
Monday morning arrived and FINALLY I could see my baby boy!!! Steve took me through to the SCN and over to his little humidicrib. He had a big drip in his head, bruises all over his hands where they had been unable to get a drip in, monitors all over him... but he was still absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. He had at this point been unable to have any milk at all because anything in his stomach would have effected his breathing. I was finally able to touch my baby, so stuck my hands through the little holes, only to discover that touch of any kind, not matter how gentle, distressed him. He would jump in fear and shrink away - but I was reassured that it was just because he was early and is common for prem babies to overreact to touch. He was brought out of the crib and I finally got to have a long cuddle with my baby.
The rest of the story is a blur of needles, drips, nasal tubes, expressing milk, losing over 500g of weight to weigh 2.2kg and then the journey of trying to feed him up to reach his birth weight again etc etc... but the short version is that he improved so incredibly quickly that we were able to take him home only 15 days after he was born - 2 weeks earlier than expected by the staff!!!
And that is my boy's story :)
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