It’s been a long week. I took Rose back to the hospital earlier for more xrays, this time they showed a small break and loose bone fragment. It was all pretty rushed and not exactly thorough so we followed up with her gp the next day and got some better pain relief (for her) and a referral for a cat scan next week.
I’m really tired, far more than I expected to be. I suspected a mild kidney infection but tests say no, it’s just fibro putting the boot in. It’s a handful trying to finish Christmas plans, keep work arrangements, and pick up the extra work of household chores and care for Rose. I was hoping to put up my tree and do some Christmas cooking but I’m trying to keep the pets and us fed, get the dishes done and find time when Zoe is indoors to hang a load of washing. A shower would be nice too. I have no idea what is going on with my gift plans, I just keep buying things and shoving them in a box in my wardrobe. I probably have 17 gifts for one person and nothing for anyone else. I certainly don’t have any chocolate. I usually like this time of year. Ah well.
Keep thinking what this will be like to deal with with a baby too, that’s a depressing thought. Can’t find time to blog or journal, snatching minutes to read before bed, pretty chronic pain and sleep deprivation, and carefully balanced plans where things get really difficult if the dishes don’t get done on time because the next 5 days are busy with other important things and now we’re all eating off paper plates and using the camping cutlery.
And just to illustrate the point that is hazily surfacing through this ramble of a post: ‘life is weird’, have a photo of an ‘ear lizard’ I painted on a kid recently. It was the kids request. No, I don’t know what an ear lizard is either.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Sarah K Reece 
Sarah, your comments regarding the realities of having a baby are great to hear and really important for those of us who are vulnerable to stress, sleep deprivation and all that sort of thing.
Our society has been engineered to ‘stimulate the economy’ and everything else is secondary to that. Buy a house – you need two incomes for that – child in childcare from birth if required so both parents can go back to work, spend all of one income on childcare etc, etc.
No stable/significant income? Options become very limited if a couple is doing the expected and struggling on alone if there is not an available grandparent or other source of ‘free’ support.
How can we do it? I think we need larger support structures than the nuclear family that are not tied to income and employment. So for me, preparing for having a baby now would include building a stable and committed network to support the mothers/parents of the babe.
Children raised in an extended community – is that a workable ideal?
Hakim
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I’ve been pondering your comment Hakim, I think that’s key, having family that’s more than nuclear… I mean when you think about it, it’s really a very strange idea the nuclear family, a primary romantic / sexual relationship, and all other ties blood or adoption. I have a very close friend who is like another sister to me and a cherished part of my family, and yet culturally she is not recognised as kin because she is not bound to me by blood or sex. It’s unusual for friends like this to live near or with each other and yet I very much hope to have her close by and involved in loving my children and likewise with hers. I think we need our tribes to raise children, and we need children to be in environments where they are allowed to bond and where their carers, paid or unpaid, are allowed to love them. The fall out of so many hard won freedoms in our culture – the freedom to leave abusive relationships, loveless marriages, to be independent of family even if you are sick or disabled – has been such fractured tribes and loneliness. We’re still trying to find new models of community that keep people free but also have connections and support. I don’t have the answers for what that looks like but I do have some experiences with small communities such as the hearing voices group that I’ve found deeply inspiring, and I’m willing to try and possibly fail in very painful ways, to be part of that kind of community for and with my children.
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