How to sell baby clothes on eBay and not get too nostalgic

I keep seeing the baby on the Jolly Jumper box out of the corner of my eye. It's not just that his facial expression is somewhat reminiscent of a blow-up doll.

Alright, that's all it is.

Given that I'm not having any more babies, I've been selling all Luka's all baby stuff on eBay. Word to the wise, that shit is the shit. Admittedly, I did keep pretty much everything, and I have been selling kids clothes on eBay for a while before now (thanks, Savers). But not having to outlay for all the stock has been pretty good, I've made over $800 profit just from Luka's stash.

I have my own little rules for selling old baby clothes on eBay.

First, take a scalpel and sever the memories of your baby from the more valuable items. Specifically, if you have any Seed, Fred Bare, Ralph Lauren, Bebe, PureBaby, Grobag, Eeni Meeni Mini Moe, oh I could go on. Suffice to say, if you have a reasonable label, imagine your tiny googly tiny perfect tiny baby never looked cute in it, and instead imagine the quite nice quiet dinner in a restaurant without your strapping filthy "I WON'T and you can't MAKE me" 4 year old it could buy you.

Rule number two: Wash the item of clothing and de-stain it as much as possible, and dry it flat. Lay it out on a white sheet in natural light, and take a pretty photo. Fold down one sleeve in a devil-may-care manner, if you're feeling wild.

Rule number three: Keep your descriptions short and formatted. I have a template for my listings that basically runs like this:

Brand: [insert]
Description: [Keep it brief and try not to be too embarrassed about the exclamation marks. Eg. "This lovely boys romper features a dragon motif and is striped in blue and red. Fastens at shoulders and crotch with studs. So cute for winter! Winter is coming!"]
Material: [insert, eg: cotton/acrylic/polyester/steel mesh]
Condition: [If there's nothing really wrong with it, I go with "Excellent secondhand condition, no faults." Amend as necessary, eg "Very good secondhand condition, overall light pilling, one hole (neatly repaired) due to dire wolf incident"]
Size: [I always say "This item is tagged a size [insert]. If you require any further measurements, please ask." That way if the tag says 00 but it's based on Hodor-sized babies, you're covered.]

Rule number four: Have a returns policy. Mine basically says if I missed something then it's my fault and we can bargain. If it doesn't fit as your baby isn't Tyrion it's your fault and you should have asked because who knew things are tagged different sizes in different lands. If someone kicks a major hissy I usually just refund them, as the reputation of my house is more valuable than $5.50.

Rule number five: If you can, list about 20 items at a time, have them all end at close-together bidding-friendly times (eg. weekends late morning or after kiddy bed time or just after a battle), and mix good brand listings with ordinary stuff so that people, as I do myself, will think "Well, I'm bidding on this one quality item, I may as well fill up a Postpak to the full 500g to get my money's worth."

Rule number six: Post stuff fast. No one likes a Bastard Slow.

That baby is still looking at me, from the cardboard box of the Jolly Jumper.

I do remember Luka bouncing about in it. Incidentally, it kept us both happy in the same room for long periods, I played loud Beatles music while singing along and listing stuff on eBay, and he jumped about in the doorway in a puddle of his own drool, gurling the lyrics along with me in his own curious language. Possibly Dothraki.

But it's just a thing. It's a thing I don't need, and a thing that can make me money that I do need.

When I need more stuff to sell, or better quality brands to blend in with the Target/K-Mart stuff left in the current tub of Luka-clothes, we get on the bus together, as we've done since before he was born, and we go to Savers. Instead of being a swimmer in a belly, or a baby in a pram playing with a plastic Savers coathanger, these days he keeps himself happy in the toy section blaring up and down with a toy truck while I flick through the brands on the racks.

And when I've gathered together a stroller-handle-load of stuff to sell, I tell him to pick which toy he wants to take home that day, as they're cheap as proverbials.

He always picks the biggest toy car possible, one that he can't hold on his own lap even all the way back to the bus stop.

And we pay the $5 for it, get on the bus, and go back home.

In the mornings and evenings when he's asleep or away, I list the Savers stuff and our own old stuff on eBay.

Next week, some other baby might be dancing in a doorway to Twist 'n' Shout.

NYE V-Line

It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m about to embark on a four-hour train trip home from Every Country Town You’ve Ever Visited.  It’s been a few years since my buttocks have graced the Scotch-Guarded seats of a V-line dog-box. I’m pleased to find that the seats are still Scotch-Guarded (it saves me Scotch-Guarding my arse), and that blue, disposable head-bibs still adorn each seat-back, eager to absorb the scalp sweat and dandruff-paste molasses of the masses. 

I’m saddened to find that the carriages do still smell like a joyous marriage of elderly banana and elderly citizen.  

My mother has spent the morning singing coulda-shoulda-wouldas about the finer points of her Christmas potato salad.

“I should have bought the spuds from Safeway. The ones at Coles always look all right, don’t they? And then they’re just a bit floury. Do you think if I’d cooked them the day before they would have held together better? Next time I think I’ll cut them into halves instead of quarters, before I cook them. Do they cook much slower if they’re twice as big, do you think?”

I don't appear to be expected to answer any of these questions. By the time my train arrives at the platform, the glaze across my eyes is rivalled only by that of Sunday’s Christmas ham. “Sounds like a plan. Make sure you keep me updated on the potatoes, Mum.”

I heft my bag up towards the overhead luggage rack, misjudge the distance and perform a special manouvre known as “Trying Not To Drop Your Twenty Kilo Suitcase Onto Your Head While Simultaneously Making A Noise Like Brian Blessed In Heat”. Having achieved the requisite skinned knuckles and pinched nerve in my lower back, I tenderly lay my suitcase on the floor instead. I then tenderly kick it in the handle, and tenderly shove it as hard as I can into the far wall.

I settle my vulnerable bottom onto the impregnable seat and wait until the aged foam moulds perfectly to my weight. Once I can feel the tip of an errant spring hovering dangerously close to my anal sphincter, I know I am in position for the trip. I pull out my book. I have nothing to do and no children to look after for a whole four hours. Apart from the threat of having my rectum perforated by an industrial strength Slinky, it’s the perfect situation.

The sliding door of the compartment opens and a woman with a toddler bustles in, multiple plastic bags swinging from each of her elbows. I glance up from my book, and immediately recognise her from primary school. Fuck. It's Courtney Creeley.  Teacher-biter; prep-kicker; hurler of fists; swears of a calibre only matched by Deadwood twenty years later. There’s no polite way to say it, Courtney Creeley had been a complete and utter child-cyclone.

An atheist prayer: Please don’t remember me please don’t remember me please don’t remember me just because I’ve had the same hairstyle since primary school I can’t look that similar –

“Went to Abbey Street Primary, didn’t you?”

Damn. 

I look up. “Sorry?”

“Abbey Street. I was a year below you. Courtney Creeley.”

“Oh right, yeah, I went to Abbey Street.”

“Small world.” The town we are in has 700 people. I nod. Courtney hefts the toddler onto her lap, and drags a water-filled baby bottle from one of her many plastic bags. “You be good and quiet, right, sweet girl?” she says to the already silent toddler. The little girl nods, accepts the bottle, and continues to fiddle with a weathered plastic frog. I look back to my book. “You goin all up to Melbourne?” says Courtney.

I look up again. “Yeah, I live there now.”

“You workin?”

“Yeah, I work in a library.” I hesitate. The words in my book are reaching up to me like snakes from a basket, coiling hypnotically around my eyeballs and dragging my gaze back down to the page. I just want to read my book. “You live in Melbourne now too?” I say politely.

“Sort of,” says Courtney. “I been all over the place the last couple of years. Got pregnant with this one two years ago, I was fucked up. Drink, drugs, you name it. Fucked.”

I look longingly down at my book, and then meet Courtney’s eyes again. She nods. “Mum took me in hand, laid down the fucken law. Said I had to give all that shit up quicksmart if she wanted me to look after the baby. So I stopped, all cold turkey apart from smoking, and that was just normal cigs. I was a big girl, thirty kilos I put on.”

I glance out the window. There’s hours of this journey to go. Courtney Creeley. I wonder if I can fake getting off the train at an earlier station, and then I remember my oversized, novelty suitcase.

“Got them to put me under for the C-section,” says Courtney. “No way I wanted to be awake through that crap. Treat you like a bloody meat puzzle, doctors. Anyway, Mum took Elora for a year, then I took her back and went up to Jason’s in Melbourne. Jason’s the father. Said he’d have me back if I came without Elora, but I thought he’d come good soon as he seen her. Turns out he was just as much of a fuckwit as when he got me pregnant, bashed my face up so bad that night I couldn’t hardly see.”

“Jesus,” I say. My mind flicks back over my own past relationships, where the highest level of violence has been low-decibel arguments and moderate amounts of sulking.

Courtney shrugs. “Worthless piece of shit. Elora and I ended up at the women’s refuge on a mattress that night for a bit, but they were all about rules and shit.Wanted me to go to the police. So we nicked out the back window one night and hitched a bit of the way til I got onto Mum, and she gave me train fare the rest of the way home. I was pretty fucked up, got back on the booze after Jase did that. Mum said she’d take Elora off my hands if I wanted, raise her with my little sister and stuff.”

“What did you say to your mum?” I think of my own reliable fortnightly paycheck, and how I get pissed off if it’s a few hours later than usual. My book has slid a little to the left and rests half on the seat next to me.

“I’m not the best mum, I didn’t never want to be a mum. I’ve fucked stuff up and got in with the wrong people. But she’ll always get fed, an’ she’ll never get hit. I’d kill anyone who touched her.” The little girl leans against her mother and plunges a chubby hand down into Courtney’s cleavage. Courtney pulls it out firmly. “Hands out, Elly. You want boobs, you gotta ask nicely.” She looks up at me again as the train grinds to a stop. “We’re off here.  Me sister’s got a hearing, we’ve brought up her fare home again.” She hefts the little girl onto her hip and heaves to her feet, plastic bags banging into the door of the carriage. “Course, I love her now,” she says, and plants a rough kiss on her daughter’s blond head, which the girl scrubs away with a grin. “Said to me mum, I said: ‘She’s either gunna make me or she’s gunna break me.’ I reckon she made me.  Have fun in your bookshop.”

“Library,” I say, but Courtney’s already swung the door of the compartment shut. I pick up my book and stare at the top of the page.

The door of the carriage squeaks open again, and I glance up. A well-dressed man enters, carrying a prostethic leg over one shoulder. The leg has a boot on it.

Three years ago (Month of Poetry #17)

Three years ago he is heralded by
a tidal wave, breaking like something
in Hollywood they shoot. The white girl
first feeds him with all her insides and
he eats her up, smiling at her smiling.
Two years ago and she makes a prayer:
never may he have an accident.
Shaped like an umbrella with his arms
outstretched he learns all at once
to step the chasm between chairs.
Naps are mastered and performed:
routines are like a comfort blanket
for kids and parents alike. They mark
the beast of sleep, prop up the days.
One year ago she glances across at
the red light and almost doesn’t stop.
He says in his little voice: ‘You okay?’
She shakes her head and hands shake.
Later, she says ‘My God, I was a long
way down.’ Her tears run over his face
when she remembers almost leaving.
No years ago and we are all of us flesh
and blood and more entropy than
the second law of thermodynamics has.
A rather different status for time exists
when dealing with a three year old:
he finds extra moments in little corners.
Where someone else’s bid for immortality
goes unnoticed, he can pick up time
and tuck it away like a pocketful
of gumnuts. Every hour spent watching
a line of ants won back with a skipped
nap. Every minute spent experimenting
with your favourite seasonal fruits and a
plastic hammer leaves a new lifetime
of stains on the carpet. Every second
ticks back to three years ago when we
first taught each other to swim to the surface.

___________________________________________________

Today's poem is based on suggestions from eight people:

@_boobook_: “Routines are like a comfort blanket for kids” (Nicole Avery , Planning With Kids)
@matchtrick: 'They shoot the white girl first' (Toni Morrison, Paradise)
@_camer0n: "experimenting with your favourite seasonal fruits" (The CSIRO total wellbeing diet)
@spikelynch: "May he have an accident shaped like an umbrella" (Primo Levi, The Periodic Table)
@hannibal_: "The second law of thermodynamics has a rather different status" (Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time)
@ernmalleyscat: "little corners where someone's bid for immortality goes unnoticed" (Edmund White, The Flâneur)
@timsterne: "My God, I was a long way down" (Knut Hamsun, Hunger)
@gretapunch: "She glances across the red light" (Joe Dunthorne, Submarine)

Today is my wee boy Luka's third birthday. Happy three years, blondie :)

Friday is writing day.

To misquote Thomas Mann*, "A parent is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

Friday is my designated writing day. It's my one day off work a week. Luka doesn't know that. There are lots of things he conveniently doesn't know, like how sometimes he goes to daycare in what are technically pyjamas, and that batteries can be replaced. The day that fucking Elmo guitar with no volume control wore out was one of the best days of my motherhood.

Anyway, on Friday mornings I resist the urge to potter about the house in my pyjamas while my son creates a small yet surprisingly adhesive trail of Rice Bubbles along the lounge room tiles.

Up! Shower! Pants! Relatively clean bra! Top! Shoes!

(that's me)

Nappy! Clothes that may or may not have been intended to be worn as pyjamas! Hair gel so you can see out from under that mop! When did I last clean your teeth! Oh well we'll do them tonight! Shoes! Rice Bubbles!

(that's Luka)

"I want you to do it."
"You want me to do what? You want me to feed you your Rice Bubbles?"
*blonde head nods*
"But you can do that yourself! I need to comb my hair out."
He gently rests his forehead on the edge of the table and pushes the Rice Bubbles away.
*sigh* "All right."

I shovel spoonfuls of breakfast confetti into my son with one hand while running a brush through my hair with the other. Occasionally my multi-tasking limbs get confused and I run a spoonful of warm milk through Luka's curls. He thinks this is hilarious.

Right. We're ready to head to daycare. Then writing day will commence.

"Mum, I've got a big poo."

I stop at the front door, keys and four thousand bags in hand. "Really?"

He stand on his toes and shuffles towards me in poo-stance. I smell him before he gets to me. Birthday cake has a lot to answer for. Bags down, into the bedroom.

"Righto, lie down. No, lie down here, I can't reach you there. You can play with Thomas when you get home from daycare. Lie down here. Luka. Now. We have to go catch the bus, come on, lie down. No, dummies are for sleeping, you know that. Luka. Lie. Down. Now."

10 minutes later the poo has been dealt with. Back to the front door.

"Luka, where have you put my keys?"
"I made a hide-and-seek! You count!"
"We haven't got time, can you find them for me?"
"You count!"
*pause* "I'll count and you see how fast you can find them, okay?"
"Okay!" (Another thing that Luka conveniently doesn't know are the technical points of hide-and-seek.)
"One, two, three, four, five - leave that jacket there we've got another one in your bag - six, seven - you're looking for the keys, remember? Eight..."

Another 10 minutes later and we are successfully on the other side of the door.

"I'm a bit sad," says Luka in a small voice. I squat down.
"Why are you a bit sad?" I ask.
"In my face," he answers. I put a hand to his face. It's pretty warm. I put my hand up under his t-shirt. His back is pretty warm too. I hesitate.
"Do you want some medicine before daycare?" I ask. Maybe Panadol will head things off at the pass.
"Yeeeeeah."

Back inside.

"What do you weigh, Luka?" I study the dosing guide on the bottle of Panadol.
"Okay," he says.

One weigh-in, 9ml and another 10 minutes later, we have made it to the bottom of the stairs and Luka is clipped into the stroller.

"Right!" I am triumphant, we've made it out of the apartment and it's still only 9:30am.

"I want to hold my bag," says Luka.

I reach for his bag. I've left it in the apartment. I glance up and down the hall. There's no one around. "You just stay here, okay, I'll run up and get it?"

"No, I wanna go with you."
"I'll just be a minute, I'll just run upstairs and-"
"Noooooo I wannna go with yoooooou!" He starts to wail. I do some involuntary fist-clenching, followed by some voluntary quiet swearing.

"Fucking," says Luka. I glance around to see if anyone is proffering my Parent Of The Year award, but there are no gleaming statuettes in evidence.

With my teeth carefully pressed together, I unclip him from the stroller, unwind the complex pretzel of my handbag strap from the handles and hold his hand while he takes the stairs one step at an interminably slow time.

"Do you want to put your bag on your back?" I ask, once we're inside again.
"I've got a big poo."
"Really?"
"Yep."
"Can I have a look down your pants?"
"Okay."

Fifteen minutes and another nappy later, I am re-pretzeling my handbag strap around the stroller.

The next bit runs so smoothly that I am quite unnerved. We stagger up to the bus stop three minutes before the bus arrives, and I manage to wrestle my wagon-load of child, stroller and bags onto the bus while only gouging out a relatively small chunk of my calf.

The traffic is light. The bus stops right outside the daycare centre. This is going well.

"This is where we hang up your bag, this is Luka's hook."
"That's MY bag."
"Yep."

"Hi Luka! Our friend Luka is here, everyone!" Winnie waves to Luka and he waves back in that whole-body toddler fashion that threatens to take out any object within arm's length. Toddler arms are a bit like Labrador tails. Enthusiastic and fatal to heirloom china.

"That's a great top, Luka!" says Winnie.
"These are my monster pyjamas!" replies Luka.

Ah. Scratch one thing off the list of 'things Luka conveniently does not know'.

Forty minutes later I'm back at my apartment, cup of tea in hand, laptop on. I glance at the pile of breakfast dishes, but I don't let them distract me. I choose to believe that they will be taken care of at some point during the day by my invisible, domestic-hero boyfriend. He really is a dear, and always knows just the right time of evening to suggest I stop hanging up the washing, put my feet up and order pizza. (I have to order a large pizza, obviously, because there's two of us. Invisible boyfriends can really put away the slices.)

"Right," I say. I say 'right' a lot.

I open the story I have been working on to reacquaint myself with where I was up to, and wonder why my characters roll their eyes and nod so much. I think they need to say 'right' more often.

I've written four halting paragraphs when my mobile rings. I swear, press ALT-F-S (which can theoretically stand for File-Save or Fuck's-Sake) and pick up my phone. It's the daycare centre.

"Hello?"
"Hello, is this Anna? This is Winnie, from the daycare. Ah, was Luka unwell this morning?"
"Um, he seemed pretty okay, a bit warm maybe."
"Yeah, he's seeming a bit unwell today, I think his temperature is about 39, and he just want to lie down on the floor and rest all the time?"

I look at my laptop screen. There's a nice little standoff between Guilt and Annoyance in my head. Guilt pokes Annoyance in the eyes and pulls her hair. Guilt fights dirty.

"I probably should come and get him, shouldn't I?"
"Yeah, I think it would be good. Thankyou Anna, see you soon!"

I gently shut my laptop and pick up my keys. The weather has heated up. When I finally get back to the daycare centre, I'm a sweaty mass of frustration and chafed thighs. I stride through to the toddler room, and each step echoes like a diminishing word count. Annoyance has obviously picked herself up off the ropes and bitten Guilt on the nose.

"Hey, Luka."
He turns his soft face up to mine. He's so pale he's almost translucent, and the rims of his little eyes are red.
"I'm a little bit sick," he says.
I pick him up and he leans against me, resting his head on my shoulder. He's very warm, and I can feel his little arms quivering.
"Can we go home and have a little sleep?" he asks in a small voice.

Guilt pulls an AK-47 from her pants and efficiently obliterates Annoyance.

"Course we can, buddy. I'm sorry you're a little bit sick. Do you want some Tiny Teddies when we get home?"
"Okay."

I cuddle his hot little body a bit closer.

There's a Friday every week.

*In case you're wondering, the original is: "A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

You may as well start now.

“Do I have to write down a birth plan?” I ask. I’m seven months pregnant.

“Well,” says my obstetrician, “You can write down that you plan to give birth, if you like. That one’s a definite. But you can make up the rest as you go along. Unless there’s anything specific you want, of course. I had a woman once who was adamant that she needed this giant red oil painting in the delivery room to focus on and channel energy through.”

“Did it work?” I ask.

He frowns a little and gazes up at the ceiling. “I think by the time she entered transition, her energy was more focused on another channel.”

**

After scouring the pregnancy forums, I pick my OB because the words that come up the most are ‘laid-back’ and ‘non-alarmist’. Also the fact that he doesn’t do internal examinations ‘unless medically indicated’. I’m not a fan of internals. A few months later when I am in labour, I will kick a midwife halfway across the room as she quite roughly performs one on me. She will raise her voice: ‘Come on, be a good girl, it’s not as bad as the contractions is it.’ I will growl ‘YES IT FUCKING IS’ but be in too much pain to point out that given I am currently giving birth, I am obviously no longer a ‘girl’ and probably haven’t been a ‘girl’ for quite a while, thank-you very fucking much you patronising medical professional. Five hours later when I am attempting to push out a baby, I will accidentally shit on this midwife and not mind at all.

I’m getting off track here. Back to just-pregnant.

I phone up to make my first appointment somewhat apprehensively, as my OB’s receptionist has A Reputation For Being A Little Bit Difficult. “Um, I’ve got a referral to see [redacted name of OB]?”

“How far along are you?” comes the terse reply.

“Three and a half weeks,” I say.

“So you haven’t missed your period yet.” She sounds really annoyed.

“Um, no,” I say. I’m standing outside my GP’s office in the wind, and I’m a bit frazzled at all of this. I hate making phone calls at the best of times.

“Then how do you know you’re pregnant?” she accuses.

“I have a positive pregnancy test,” I say. I nearly add ‘it’s a bit of a tip-off,’ but I’m too intimidated to rise to my usual level of smart-arsery.

She sighs. “Hold on I’ve got another call.” I wait for the usual waft of on-hold music and am slightly perplexed to find I’ve been hung up on. I ring back.

“I was just talking to you and we got cut off - ”

“You’re the three-and-a-half weeks?” she says.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“24^th May at 2pm?”

“Uh. Ok.”

“See you then.” She hangs up, and I burst into illogical tears. But hey, I’m pregnant, I now have special dispensation to burst into illogical tears whenever the fuck I want. Also I get to swear as much as I like because once I have a two-year-old with a talent for repetition, I’m going to have to try to behave myself. I may or may not prove to be very successful at this, and my two-year-old may or may not prove to be very good at clearly announcing ‘fucking computer!’ at inopportune moments.

But back to the early days, when my future swearing blonde moppet is little more than a tiny prawn made of snot floating around somewhere a lot lower down than I imagine my uterus to be. Should have concentrated harder when the Life Ed van came round to my primary school.

I like my OB even before I meet him. This is mainly because he has a Playmobil operating theatre and hospital room set up on his office book shelf. I’m easily wooed by the presence of these little German pieces of plastic. When he does enter the room and begin to speak, I’m soothed by his soft voice. He’s kind of like a really nice dad. He’s probably in his mid-fifties, has inoffensive grey hair and wears chinos.

“I have heaps of Playmobil,” I say. “I asked for it for every birthday and Christmas present from age 4 up until I was way too old to still be asking for it.”

It’s probably not the usual first thing he hears from a new patient, but I’m not going to be a usual patient. I am going to be weirdly low-maintenance for a first pregnancy. I’ll have hardly any questions or worries (that’s what the internet is for), I’ll never call him after hours, or even during hours, I’ll never page him and I won’t have a single medical problem even when I go 10 days overdue.

“Do I really have to follow all those food rules?” I ask. “There’s like a million of them. And I really like soft cheese.”

He leans forward and steeples his fingers. “Look, you can be as cautious as you like about these things, really. I would say: don’t eat undercooked meat if you’re in France, don’t eat anything that’s off, other than that just eat whatever you’re comfortable with.”

I must look pleased. “Oh,” he says, “And you’re going to need to drink to get through your second pregnancy, so you may as well start now. A small glass of wine each day isn’t going to do any harm at all.”

It’s official: I am in love with my OB.

I’d like to say the next 9 months fly by, but they don’t. Increasingly, they waddle. I outgrow every bra size ever invented. I stare in confusion at ‘hospital bag’ suggestion lists that insist I pack thank-you cards so I can write my thank-yous while I’m still in hospital. Why don’t I just write a novel and find a cure for cancer while I’m learning to breastfeed?

I manage never to have heartburn or need to wee more often than usual (even when I’m 9 months gone I don’t ever have to get up at night to take a piss. I try not to mention this to pregnant friends or friends with new babies, because their eyes take on a certain murderous gleam that I vaguely think I’ve seen once before and I think it was during ‘The Hand that Rocks the Cradle’).

Pregnancy is weird. Everyone is suddenly interested in me, and a bit grabby (which oddly enough, I find I quite like). I do consider having a set of business-sized cards made up that say “January. Boy. My first.” in order to save answering the same three fucking questions from every single person on the planet.

I also note one weird pregnancy thing that no one ever told me about: when you’re really, really pregnant and your baby moves around while you’re having a poo, it feels like your poo is alive. True.

And suddenly I’m 10 days overdue, lying on the couch moaning about how I’m going to be pregnant forever. Then something…squirts. I don’t usually spontaneously piss myself, I think. I leap off the couch and in ridiculously stereotypical Hollywood style, my waters break spectacularly all over the floor. It goes everywhere. I get the giggles. “Labour doesn’t start like this in real life!” I exclaim, “I’m an episode of Friends!”

I’ll spare you the labour. It’s actually quite boring, for the most part. It hurts, it takes fucking forever, I get really tired, I kick a midwife, I have an epidural. Epidurals are awesome. Everyone should have one, maybe once a week.

Then suddenly it’s time to have a go at actually giving birth, and I can’t manage to push properly (apart from the aforementioned shitting upon the patronising midwife). My OB, who has arrived with his hair tousled from sleep, says kindly: “I think I might need to give you a hand. You have one more go, I’ll get the salad servers ready.” I assume he means forceps because I don’t recall ordering a salad.

**

I’ve meandered all over this blog post, not knowing quite how to end it. I can only think of one way how it ends, and when I mention it to @matchtrick, he replies: “Then that’s how it ends. You get very few chances to tell a story that ends that way.” He’s right.

**

I admire my stripy Juno-style socks as my numb legs hang in the air, propped up by stirrup thingies. I can’t feel a thing, but my OB appears to be tossing the salad. (This is not intended to be a euphemism, but I suspect it already is.)

A few moments later a curled up creature is slopped onto my chest, apparently covered in tinned tomatoes and cottage cheese. It’s not a bag of kittens after all.

One of his fists clutches around the strap of my nightie. He’s all shiny and gross and a lot bigger than I expected and completely amazing.

I burst into logical tears.

It ends with baby.

Not a rooster

It’s 5am. I get up early, but the small Tim Brooke-Taylor impersonater in my life gets up earlier. This morning, his blond locks hang over me in a similar fashion to my hangover. It’s draped gently over my brow, not a very bad hangover, more like having your gumline carefully stroked with a chisel made out of Wil Anderson.

“I want some Rice Bubbles,” says mini-T.

“I just need to have a cup of tea, and then I’ll get you some Rice Bubbles, okay?” I say. It’s safe to say at this point, I’m lying. I just need to have a cup of tea, 2 Codral Cold and Flu tablets (Original Formula), Vegemite toast, maybe four pieces, 1.5 litres of soda water, a text from my mother asking if I’ve sent my grandmother a birthday card, a funny ache in my leg that may or may not turn out to be middle-to-upper-calf cancer, a Lego brick embedded in the arch of my foot, another cup of tea, a scribbled note to myself from last night that reads “if you stand on the table you can touch the ceiling!!!”, and a small child patting my face with his tiny soft hand.

I turn my head towards him and he grins. Little shark teeth. Then his expression changes, he looks amused but somehow admonishing.

“You’re not a rooster,” he says.

My eyes dart about briefly, but the lounge room appears to be in its usual state: ie. mainly held together by fossilised Rice Bubbles and granola-type clumps of hair and cous-cous.

“Sorry?” I say.

He turns his small face up to mine. It’s still lightly flushed with sleep, and I brush his blond curls out of his eyes. He reaches out a hand and cups my cheek. It’s such an adult gesture, I almost blush.

He smiles and shakes his head. “You’re not a rooster.”

Kids say the darndest etc and out of the mouths of etc and never look a gift horse in the etc unless you fancy an equine-spit facial. But having a two-year-old cradle your face in his hands and gently inform you, apropos of nothing, that you do not belong to gallus domesticus, is unnerving.

I assume it’s from book he’s read, or a daycare song, or something. We don’t take it any further. I go get the Rice Bubbles, and douse my hangover.

A few weeks later, we get home from daycare one evening and embark on the dinner/bath/tantrum/fine/whatever/I don’t give a shit/no bath then/straight into pjs routine. We curl up on the couch and he picks out every single book on the shelf that features a digger. The heavy-machinery epic tale is prepared. He opens the first book, and as I draw breath, he turns his little face up to mine and rolls his eyes. He looks amused.

“You’re not a rooster,” he says. He turns back to the book. “It’s the yellow digger!”

At this point, I need more information.

“Hey, buddy,” I say, then pause. How to ask a 2 year old to explain this? “I’m not a rooster?” I ask.

“Nah,” he says. “You’re not a rooster.”
I struggle to form my queries. “Why am I not a rooster?” I ask. He looks confused. I try again. “I’m not a rooster?” He confirms this, and pats my hand consolingly. “What am I?” I ask.

“It’s the yellow digger!” he says, and points at the book.

I try again. “I’m not a rooster – is that from a book too?”

“Yeah,” he says. The problem is, he says ‘yeah’ to pretty much everything. “Are you just saying yeah because you don’t understand the question?” I say.

“Yeah!” he says.

“Is it from a song?” I ask.

“Yeah!” he says.

“How does the song go?” I say.

“Goes,” he says.

Once he goes to bed, I Google the phrase ‘you’re not a rooster’, hoping it’s a song from some show featuring a genital-free chap in an orange lycra jumpsuit whose name I would know if I ever turned on the tv. The top twenty Google results instruct me in rooster management. Which would be very helpful, but I’ve already been informed that I am not, in fact, a rooster.

A few days later, I bring up the subject myself. “Hey Luka,” I say.

“Hey Ma,” he answers.

“I’m not a rooster, am I,” I say.

“Nah,” he flashes his little sharky teeth. “You’re not a rooster.”

“Are you a rooster?” I ask.

“Nah. I’m a boy,” he says proudly.

“What am I?” I try.

“You a mother,” he says.

“Yeah, I am,” I say. I reach out and take his little hand. He closes his hand over mine. He’s two years old, and even now his grasp can barely encompass two of my fingers.

“You’re Ma,” he adds.

“That’s right,” I say. “I’m your Ma.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m gonna get my digger truck.”

“Okay,” I say.

He jumps off the couch and trots to the toy box. He turns back to me, grins, and the shine in his eyes just floors me. “You’re not a rooster,” he says lovingly.

“No, honey,” I say. “I’m not a rooster.”

Late that night, when everyone else is in bed, I think about what he’s told me. I’m a mother. I made a boy that I learned to love. I’m almost certainly not a rooster. But at only two years old, how does he know what I am, and what I’m not? And why does he tell me about it with such joy in his voice?

You have to be able to handle a lot of pressure.

There’s a large, plush Winnie-the-Pooh in the tree outside my bedroom window. I close the venetian blinds and open them again. It’s still there, propped in the fork of the tree. It’s got the NQR proportions of a skill-tester prize but enlarged x 30 (which, interestingly, increases the weirdyness by a factor of 1000).

And it’s looking at me. I pretend I haven’t seen all the Chucky movies.

While I’m still standing there debating whether to A) see if its eyes follow me around the room or B) put my pants on because I’m standing half naked in full view of the communal backyard, the decision is made for me by C)elia, my elderly neighbour. She shuffles into view in her bright yellow dressing gown and I snap the venetians shut again to rectify the pants situation. When I slowly draw the blinds open again, Celia has removed the toy from the tree and is scolding it in no uncertain terms. There’s finger-pointing, and eventually a bottom-smack. (Just to be clear, Celia smacks the toy, not the other way around.)

I’ve only lived in this flat for a month but it’s already become clear that Celia is a bit of an Interesting Person. She follows my cat around the yard and brings him back up to the house if she feels he’s getting too close to the road. (He’s been an outside cat for 6 years so he’s pretty much sorted out not to go near cars by now but whatevs.) She told me I should take him outside on a lead, and I informed her that if I had the time to be walking my cat he would be a dog. Once she turned up at our front door with him in her arms:

“He’s just done a poo on my bed, but it’s okay,” she said. That wasn’t entirely what I was expecting.

I took my cat from her. Her story seemed pretty unlikely as Tolly doesn’t even have a litter-tray inside my flat, he lets you know in no uncertain terms if he needs to go outside to take a dump (to the point of running across your head, claws out, if you’re asleep at the time). You’d actually have to shut him in and ignore him for a long time. But my initial question was: “Uh, why was he on your bed?”

“Oh, he likes to come in sometimes,” she said, “and play with my cat.”

This also seemed unlikely. A territorial male ‘plays’ with another male cat, on his home turf? But I apologised uneasily for the possibly non-existant poo, and suggested that she not let him into her house any more, ‘in case of more accidents’. Mainly I suggested this because I was starting to wonder if he might come back shaved or tie-dyed after his next visit.

The next morning I go down to check the mail and am startled to find NQR-the-Pooh nestled into the front hedge. I glace around, but there’s no sign of Celia. I wonder briefly if the toy escapes on his own each night and that’s why she was scolding him. I eye Houdini-the-Pooh for a minute. He looks back at me, as if to say ‘I’m a stuffed toy, for Christ’s sake, stop ascribing human powers to me like movement and speech.’ I tell him he’s probably right, but he doesn’t reply.

Celia ups the ante for a few weeks after that. She starts to make little window displays on her lounge sill, pulling up the venetians so everyone can see. They usually involve some combination of stuffed toys, her cat, and pictures cut from the Herald Sun. One time there’s a packet of Tim Tams and a carrot involved. Cousteau-the-Pooh continues to roam the garden, and I begin to think he might be related to that garden gnome in Amelie. Sometimes a large white teddy is sat out in the sun in a doll’s pram, which is gently tied to the wrought-iron balustrade with a blue ribbon. And Celia herself, shuffles about the gardens in her yellow dressing gown.

One morning I hear a funny metallic banging noise. I’m on my way to work so I’ve already waddled back into the house three times (umbrella, pre-natal vitamins, brain). As I approach the mail boxes, I see Celia, dressing-gowned as usual, gently lifting the iron flap of each of the 24 mail boxes one at a time and letting them fall back down with a clang. I try to scuttle past but I’m well into my non-scuttling trimester and she spots me.

“You have to be able to handle a lot of pressure,” she says. I excel at this sort of small talk. Throw me a curveball like “How are you?” and I’m stumped, but mailbox xylophone plus ‘you have to be able to handle a lot of pressure’ and I’m on fire.

“Um, yeah,” I say.

That’s the last time I see Celia.

Our communal backyard sports no less than eight Hills Hoists. It’s like someone was only allowed to pick one iconic Australian symbol for the development, but they could have as many of that one thing as they wanted. When the wind blows and they all creak around at night, it’s equal parts unsettling and soothing, like someone chanting ‘Bhagavad Gita’ over and over but in a Roots Manuva voice and every now and then replacing it with the word ‘Ryvita’. So you’re quite relaxed but you keep letting out nervous giggles.

A few days after I witness Celia Suggs performing Lady of Spain on her mailbox-phone, I open the venetians (this time with pants on because I am a fast learner. Also I’m really quite pregnant and if I can’t see my legs, no one else should have to). I gaze out the window.

There is a toaster tied to one of the Hills Hoists by its cord.

It swings in the light wind, secured by a simple under-over knot at the plug end.

I stand quite still and watch the gently revolving heater of bread. I wonder if you wash toasters on the normal or delicate cycle, and if you chuck in a scoop of breadcrumbs in place of detergent. By the time I get home from work that day the toaster is gone. A week goes by before I realise that unlike the toaster, Winnie-the-Pooh hasn’t popped up for a while. And Celia’s venetians are shut, which is also strange. Usually the cat gets a sunning and there’s at least some form of vegetable-and-tabloid-based window display. I start to worry that maybe she’s keeled over indoors and is being gradually devoured by her cat. I figure that cat would have some issues by now and might not be averse to some ex-Celia if it was attractively plated up on a yellow dressing gown.

I start to sidle up to her lounge room window, realise I’m wider in profile these days, and change my gait to frontle. One of the venetian blind blades has a broken piece, and I carefully put my face to it, half-expecting to find Celia’s bloodshot eyeball peering back at me. Or Winnie-the-Pooh. Or a cat’s bloody maw.

The flat is empty. All the furniture is gone, and the carpets are striped like freshly-steam-cleaned tigers. I remember a removalist van was around a little while ago, though I never saw anyone going in and out of Celia’s front door.

I step back from the window. I wonder about the toaster, and what she meant by it. I wonder if the toaster needed to be able to handle a lot of pressure too.

A week later, a young Filipino couple move in. The woman’s belly is almost as big with baby as mine, and in January we will come out of our flats holding the same orange government folder we got at the hospital.

We will smile, she will ask “How are you?” and I won’t know what to say.

Confession: I did several creative writing subjects in my university years.

I know, I know. But I was young. I had Intellectually Romantic Notions.

I thought that each tutorial I'd have my stories and poems ferociously torn apart by my fellow scribblers and my faults laid bare in revelatory fashion (possibly with evocative jump-cuts between me and the other students). Or perhaps rather than cowing to their superior knowledge, I would go on to argue a devastating Gregory-Peck-style case for why I’d written what I’d written. Then next week I'd help do the same for their writing. We would appreciate our conflicting views and fierce arguments, and come away ready to confront our writing in new and risky ways.

Like I said, I was young.

Also I'd watched too many films involving writing workshop sequences.

So as we all sat quietly around the table each week, tentatively murmuring "That was good, I like your images," and "I was interested in how you changed tense halfway through", I started to wonder what I was actually going to learn. I wasn't going to learn to critique others, and I wasn't going to get critiqued in the way I’d hoped for if we were all going to be so goddamn nice all the time.

But actual assessment would be different, I thought. My tutors were writers I admired, so obviously I would get the sandblasting I wanted. I’d get opinions about which bits of my writing were the written equivalent of Roquefort, which bits were Tasmanian Heritage camembert, and which were Kraft 'parmesan-style' vomit flakes that come in a shaker you don't even need to keep in the fridge.

I would think hard about their opinions, possibly while ordering a cheese platter, and then decide for myself what I thought.

My assignments generally came back looking like this [circa 2004]:

This form of assessment didn’t really fit with my anticipated cheese/writing analogy.

The ‘big tick scenario’ could have meant three things.

1. It could have meant that I was an absolute freakin prodigy at 19, and should have just quit uni and waited a couple of weeks for my first publishing contract to land in my lap. Obviously this one was correct. Ahem.

2. It could have meant there was just so much wrong with what I'd written that the tutor saw no point even starting a detailed critique because she was only paid a flat fee for marking, not per assignment and certainly not per hour.

3. It could have meant she was being sensitive about possible (but non-existent) neuroses about having my writing criticised. I’ve never been overly attached to creative pieces I’ve written, once they’re finished. I’ll rework pretty much anything, especially if it gets me a paid publication. As Jim Rockford once said: “There’s two things I won’t do for money. I won’t marry for it and I won’t kill for it. Other than that I’m open to just about anything.”

Anyway. What I wanted was for my habits to be trampled and bloodied and my awkward writing structures to be cracked in half over my head like Anne Shirley in charge of a slate. I wanted to be pushed and confronted and hurt.

But at the end of each semester I got: A Big Tick.

I gave up on university creative writing classes after a few subjects.

My writing habits varied enormously over the next ten years. In undergrad I wrote masses of poetry and letters and essays and mated flies and inoculated agar plates and finished my BA and BSc degrees. I didn’t eat much and I didn’t sleep much and was probably a bit nuts a lot of the time.

Then I quit English/Philosophy Honours after a month, graduated with what I had and studied for a library degree full time (night classes) while also working nearly full-time during the day. Assignments (and – kill me now – group assignments) were done very early in the morning and all weekend. This is not recommended. My husband will attest to my sleep-walking and talking at this time. I graduated.

Then I stopped reading, and only worked and watched films. Think I was a wee bit burnt out.

Then I worked and read and the only writing I did was book reviews and I'd accepted I probably wasn’t going to write creatively ever again. This lasted a very long time. Every now and then I’d force a poem out from between the cracks, because that was what I was supposed to be doing. But mostly I edited up my old stuff and that was the stuff (some of it 10 years old) I was submitting to journals. It felt horrible and I felt useless and if anyone tried to talk to me about creative writing I got defensive and pretended it didn’t matter to me. Did it fuck.

Then I got wonderfully, deliberately pregnant, had a baby, and what happened in that following year was…hmm? What? Can you hang out the washing? I’ve just been pooed on.

Then as my kid got older I read more, reviewed and judged writing awards more. I was busy. I didn’t write much poetry, and I didn’t write any fiction and I kept pretending it didn’t matter.

Then everything went to complete and utter shit for over a year and I went a bit nuts and didn’t eat or sleep but I wrote more than 200 poems and over 80,000 words worth of stories in 6 months. Don’t try this at home. Seriously. It means you’re mental.

Now I'm just trying to keep writing because I think if I stop I might never start again.

Conclusion: I tend to be all, or bugger all. How I do one thing is how I do everything.

But I did in the end learn something from writing classes at uni. I learned that I want there to be different streams of classes, to cater for different needs. It would have made me feel a bit less mental, then and now. In my pretty dream uni (where the coffee is free and Union House doesn’t smell like dead fish and feet), there would be one creative writing stream for people who want encouragement, gentle constructive pointers, and to have the good things they do firmly acknowledged.

And there would be a second stream for those who want the extreme version – the all or bugger all. To be let loose to argue and criticise without fear of slamming their feet into the kidneys of someone’s dream-child. To get into the messy details and debate single words in single sentences, and be able to say, essentially: This bit is awesome, this bit is parmesan-style vomit-shaker.

And it would be clear-cut – you’d volunteer for your stream, not be assigned. Tick a box, choose your crits.

I don’t actually think either stream is ‘better’, by the way. I hate the idea that being able to ‘take’ criticism is an indication of strength or superiority. Some writers don’t read reviews because they write better without them. Some writers do read reviews because they write better with them. If some form of counsel helps your improve or makes you want to improve your writing, then it works. If whatever it is doesn’t help: screw it. Ignore it. Avoid it.

But in terms of creative writing classes, the cautious and nice approach doesn’t work for everyone, just like cheese doesn’t always make an appropriate analogy for writing. (I initially was going to link my cheese imagery to how marking at Melbourne Uni was done on the bell curve, but then I looked at the words ‘cheese’ and ‘bell curve’ in the same sentence and decided against it.)

I’m not completely inhuman; I do like praise. I like a big fat tick on my assignment as much as the next scribbler. But I like it explained, or not at all.

Is it a Roquefort tick?

Or a Tasmanian Heritage camembert tick?

Or a tick that means “just put that vomitous parmesan-style shaker back in the cupboard”?

“Actually, I think it’s poo.”

I stare at my freshly bitten thumbnail.

“I did say you’d have to stop biting your nails before we had this baby,” my husband says.

I stare at my freshly bitten thumbnail. I would quote Fox Mulder right now, but beneath my cool exterior is one very distracting thought: It’s definitely poo.

But that’s Earth Motherly, surely. Ingesting my 6-week-old baby’s poo on the morning of my first mothers’ group is bound to make me some friends. Of course, they may be the kind of friends who eat placenta sandwiches and cry over episodes of Captain Planet, but I’ve been at home in 40+ degree heat, sans air conditioning with a new baby for the last month and a half, so frankly, have we met? I just want to buy some chips. What do you mean you don’t sell chips, what kind of dry-cleaners is this?

I leave the dry-cleaners and drag my body up the hill toward the Maternal Health and Something Nice About Children Centre. Everything is glaring hot and my stomach muscles feel like they’ve been twirled like chewing gum around someone’s finger (possibly Kylie Mole, but that’d be showing my age) and then splodged back into place. Seven of us stagger in with our seven little Bonds Wonder-Suits. I slam my pram confidently into the door frame, waking up my baby. I smile jovially at the other mums as his screams achieve a volume precisely calculated to wake their own sleeping infants, and realise that no amount of fingernail-poo ingestion is going to instantly rectify this particular event.

I have reached my first developmental milestone as a mum: I have pissed off more than five other mums at once. It’s listed in your horrible blue baby book, somewhere after “your baby isn’t putting on enough weight, you are a terrible mother” but before “your baby cannot use a cup or spoon, you are a terrible mother”. You’ll know it when you get to it.

But I’m staying for this meeting. I know why I’m here. I want to hear that someone else’s baby is worse than mine. I want to hear about more colicky babies, babies that sleep less in the day and less in the night, babies that scream for more hours, babies that chuck up more feeds, babies that refuse more and bite more and crap more.

Than mine.

We admire each other’s bundles of bunny-rug. Isn’t everybody’s baby lovely. But mainly we stare at our own babies. All they do is frown and yawn and crap themselves, but they’re like little lava lamps. We can’t look away.

I volunteer an ice-breaker. “I accidentally ate baby poo from under my fingernail this morning,” I say. My kid chooses this moment to make a dramatic violin noise from my lap. I gaze serenely down at him and demand: “Hungry? Sleepy? Tired? Pooey? Distressed about interest rates?” I get some tired smiles.

Another mother speaks up. “Yesterday, this one projectile pooed across the room into the slats of the electric fan.”

Another: “She only sleeps sitting up in her swing chair, but only if it’s in the kitchen. So I slept on a blanket on the kitchen tiles last night.”

A third: “He’ll only feed from the left side, so I lie upside down on the couch to feed him from the right side. Every hour.”

Then they all chime in:

“I fell asleep feeding her and woke up with bite marks all over my boobs.”

“My partner found me sleepwalking in the kitchen. I’d assembled the breast pump and had expressed 120ml.”

“I can’t remember how many bottles he has during the night. I can’t remember if I heat them up or not.”

“She vomited into my brother-in-law’s mouth when he held her up, and it was the best moment of my week.” Pause. “Possibly year.”

We stare at briefly at each other, away from our infants, and it’s almost like we’ve know each other all our lives. Then I feel suddenly warm and the other mothers gasp. I lift up my baby gently and more white milk vomit sprays through my hair, my clothes, onto the Maternal Health and Something Nice About Children Centre’s chair and all across the Maternal Health and Something Nice About Children Centre’s carpet. It’s pure milk, pure volume, and pure yoghurty stench. I’d rather eat all the poo under everyone’s fingernails.

Baby wipes appear from everywhere like magician’s doves. Unspeakable things are mopped up with fairly inadequate Aloe Infused! and Purely Sensitive! squares. The Maternal Health and Something Nice About Children nurse rushes to open the windows, diffusing the Something Not Nice About Children smell. We are all supposedly going out for coffee after this meeting, so I phone my husband at home and urgently ask him to bring me down a new top. Mine was white. It is now extra-white, but also extra-wet and extra-transparent.

“I’m covered in milk spew,” I whisper.

“That’s pretty normal, right?” he whispers back.

“Yes, but so is taking a shit and I don’t generally do that in the middle of a café either. Why are you whispering?”

Pause.

“I’ll be five minutes.”

He arrives, my knight in shining stretch cotton, gallant husband and saviour. Suddenly faced with six more new-mum pairs of eyes than usual, and six rhythmic hands patting six little romper-suited backs, he looks slightly panicked. He thrusts the plastic bag towards me and edges back toward the door, smiling and nodding.

The other mums murmur their approval:

“My husband would never know what to bring down for me to wear.”

“You’ve got a good one there, very quick wasn’t he?”

Oh yes, I agree, dabbing more vomit from my hair and collarbones. I peer into the plastic bag. I look away. My skirt is passable, doesn’t need changing. My hair could be just be sporting a new, somewhat chunky gel product. I peer into the bag again and smile brightly at the other mums.

I retreat to the bathroom, sniff the vomit-crusted horror I’m wearing once more, just to check, then stuff it into the plastic bag.

I hold out the clean top at arm’s length. My well-meaning husband has brought me down one of my summer pyjama tops.

I pull it on, and stride back to the milky circle of chairs.

Isn’t everybody’s baby lovely.

Coffee?

Luka (6 weeks) and I just before our first mothers' group.

Note the lack of vomit on me at this point.

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Luka is nearly 2 and a half now. When did that happen? I must have been asleep. Oh wait, no I wasn't most of the time.

His book-reading methods are *somewhat* different from the first time I posted a photo, and the last time I posted a video, so I thought it was time for an update:

Discovering which songs Luka knows from daycare has been really cute. Yesterday's discovery was Baa Baa Black Sheep, via a new book of nursery rhymes.

I can't wait til he's old enough to make up stories, so I can steal all his ideas.

1.38 metres of reading

I received the complete lot of books for judging today. 70 entries, 7 weeks til The Decision is due.

Luka very kindly helped me unpack the books:

I've judged this award once before, and I remember the stack of books was pretty tall, but I don't remember it being THIS TALL:

It's 138cm of books. Yes, I'm in my pyjamas. It's 7pm, aren't you in your pyjamas?

I'm also 179cm tall, which is pretty tall for a woman (or a man for that matter, but even more so for a woman) so having a stack of books come up past my boobs is kind of scary. Some of my friends only come up to my boobs. I'm not scared of them, though. That's different.

Looking back, in 2008 the stack was this tall:

I was about 3 weeks pregnant there, though I didn't know it yet. Aw.

There were 65 entries that year. Though there are only 5 more entries this year, it feels like a big difference in stack height.

Oh hey, but I'm wearing the same socks today!

Are books getting longer? Am I getting shorter? Can I get through 70 books in the next 7 weeks?

A different sort of Mother's Day present

This Mother's Day, Luka has decided to wean himself from breastfeeding. He's 15 months, he's definitely finished up, and I'm more than a little sad.

It's been a slow process really. Since he started sleeping all night (by some kind of freaking miracle) of his own accord by mid-February he dropped the night feeds. Then he dropped the feed after his daytime nap (which was great, as it didn't mean I had to express for Paul to feed to him on the days I was at work). But he had still been having his early-morning feed with great gusto until about 2 weeks ago. Then, suddenly, some mornings he'd want to feed, and some mornings he would complain, and just want a cuddle or to get up and play.

At that point, I kind of knew we were finishing up with breastfeeding. So for what is now his 'last feed', I took careful notice of everything.

I walked into his room, grey in the half-dark of early morning, to find him standing up at the end of the cot. When he saw me, he lifted his little arms up and I gathered his warm little face up to mine. I sat down on the chair next to the cot, badly aiming as usual and nearly falling onto the floor. I righted myself and tipped him sideways into the crook of my arm. It's a movement that I never thought would have become second nature, given how ridiculously uncoordinated breastfeeding was at first.

As I pulled my singlet down, he opened his pink mouth, wide, like a little bird that's seen food coming. Every time I fed him it reminded me of Sylvia Plath's wonderful poem"Morning Song" about being mother to a newborn: "Your mouth opens clean as a cat's". He began to suckle quietly, slowly opening and closing his eyes, and winding his fingers through my hair. He always pulled at my hair, it always hurt, and I never minded.

I stroked his arm, his cheek, his side. I registered every curve of him. Eventually, he was nearly asleep again, and just rested his warm hand, fingers splayed, against my chest. When he rolled off me, full, I stood up and laid him back into his cot. His eyes stayed closed, but he stretched in that wonderful "punching the sky" move babies have, then lay softly asleep.

And the next day, when I tried to feed him and he complained and just wanted to get up and eat toast, I cried. And I cried for a few days after, but I'm not going to cry any more.

I'd always intended it to be his decision when to wean, but I'd always assumed I'd get sick of breastfeeding before he did.

We had a very good run. I was lucky, and I acknowledge it. I had the usual scrapes, cracks and bleeding nipples but really, we got breastfeeding established early and relatively easily. I can't remember much about the days in hospital - apparently the day I gave birth I had lots of visitors, and I've seen myself smiling in the photos, but I don't remember any of it (possibly as I'd been awake for 36hrs, plus *oh yes* I gave birth).

But I do remember the midwives at Cabrini were a huge help (apart from the crazy Irish one that slammed shut all the windows in my room, proclaiming "You let in a fly, the baby die!")

I remember my favourite midwife stopping me when I was trying frantically to get Luka to attach and saying: "Look at him. See how he's looking up at you? He's getting to know who you are, what you look like, how you smell. Don't rush him." She moved slowly and with difficulty, and only had full use of one of her hands, but that woman could handle a newborn baby like she had 8 good hands.

Luka was a frequent feeder, sometimes getting up to 13 feeds in 24hrs (which, like a lot of Luka's habits, I thought was abnormal til I got on the ABA forums).

There were some seriously difficult periods of breast refusal that I didn't really talk about or let myself think about at the time. The first was at about 3 months where I had to force his head against me to get him to feed (in our house it became known as the "fighty feed"), but he was still little and I usually won, and was determined not to feel rejected.

At about 6 months he suddenly went through a period of feeding round the clock every 2 hrs, and then backflipped to screaming and screaming when I tried to feed him at night (though nothing else would settle him). Paul had to walk him around until he settled, and then sometimes I was able to slip him onto the breast, although usually it took several rounds of settling.

These aren't great dramas by comparison to what other mothers have gone through, but they were dramas enough at the time. I wasn't the sort of mother that falls in love with their baby at first sight. When he was born, I didn't want skin-to-skin contact, I just wanted someone to take him away so I could go to sleep. Feeding him was a big part of our getting to know each other. I wrote in my diary at the time: "I am learning to love Luka by breastfeeding him." If I couldn't have breastfed, I know I would have got to love him in other ways, but that was the way it happened for us.

We breastfed for 15 months, and I will miss it. I will miss his quiet body against me, the thought that I am nourishing him with no help from anyone else, and how useful it made me feel when I felt I couldn't do anything else right.

So, a different sort of Mother's Day present. We have lots of cuddles, still. But it's the end of something important.

We've come from here:

to here:

The boobs are off-duty til next time round. But I'm glad to have had this chance.