We have been brave and joined some friends on a camp, staying in a big hall by the beach. It’s been wonderful. Rose and were both pretty anxious about how Poppy would travel and sleep, but we were lucky on the drive here and she slept for a couple of hours in the car! Last night was tricky but not unmanageable. It’s been great to spend so much time with friends. 

Poppy is 9 weeks old now and simply adorable. I live for the moments when she makes eye contact with me and bursts into a huge smile. She also purses her lips and makes this cooing sound, like a dove, that makes my heart do backflips. She’s started blowing bubbles too, and is learning to use her hands to bring things to her mouth to suck on. I can’t get over how lucky we’ve been. 

Rose and I continue to recover from a million and one illnesses. We’ve recovered from almost everything except infected teeth/gums, nipple thrush (again, bugger it), the sciatica which is proving difficult to heal up, and one last skin abcess. This is brilliant, and as pain levels continue to slowly improve we are both much happier most days and more able to enjoy our lovely little family and our bigger, beautiful tribe. 

We’ve had a huge storm through South Australia this week, and prepared for disaster in various forms. The whole state was plunged into a blackout when major power lines went down. I cleaned up the house because walking Poppy around to calm her in near dark is a recipe for falling over a pair of shoes and winding up back in hospital. I also bought a bag of ice, more candles and extra milk and emptied the most needed items from the fridge into a couple of eskies so we could keep the fridge and freezer closed and cool throughout the blackout. Fortunately we have gas for hot water and cooking. I checked in with friends online to let them know people could visit us if needed, and went around to most of the neighbours to make sure they had candles, matches, hot water, and knew they could knock on our door if anything went wrong.

We cooked and ate dinner together by candlelight, no screens, phone batteries being conserved in case of emergencies. We talked and told stories and I took out James Herriot and read a few chapters… it’s a tradition in my family that books are read during camping trips, and Rose and I used to read each other to sleep most nights but since Star and now Poppy we’ve not had the opportunity. It was special. We talked again about family and rituals and values. Since then we’ve had a couple more dinners by candlelight together, and they’ve been beautiful. We’ve planned a trip away with friends in a couple of weeks, together as a family. We’ve celebrated Star arriving 8 months ago. It feels like something has changed again between the four of us, deepened, a sense of connection has grown stronger. It’s precious.

Rose and I are still recovering from all our health problems. She has been suffering from terrible pain due to sciatica and a tooth infection. She had a root canal started a week ago but things went badly wrong and she wound up with a severe infection that we were told was verging on life-threatening when a different, stronger course of antibiotics finally started to turn things around. Her face had swollen and blood and pus were dripping through the bored out tooth into her mouth. We’re both being told that we’re obviously run down and need to take time off to recover and get our immune systems functioning again.

I’ve had a bad bout of gastro (is there any other kind of gastro? – this one came with spasms that felt depressingly similar to labour contractions), I’m still got bad infections in my teeth and gums, as well as mouth ulcers and skin boils. We are both finally over the staph infections and a host of other problems though, so progress is slowly being made.

Our world is about basic needs at the moment – good food, as much sleep as possible, rest, affection, getting out in the sun when it’s around, staying warm, showers. We’ve made it to parent-teacher night, a myriad of medical appointments, and the occasional social gathering. We’re making headway on all the paperwork and admin that comes with a new baby, and making arrangements for Star to get her drivers license and a vehicle to learn to drive in.

Poppy continues to be spectacular. Every day she is awake a little more, a little more aware of and interested in the world. We get the most beautiful smiles and giggles. Breastfeeding continues to get easier and I’ve been able to process much of the trauma of the early weeks. We can now breastfeed in public, through appointments, and I can pump around 200mls for Rose to feed her so I get some sleep. I’ve made it past the 6 weeks mark – which means breastfeeding is considered established and we’re likely to be able to keep it going.

These two girls, Poppy and Star, are simply delightful. Our amazing girls, both with such lovely, loving hearts. Rose is a beautiful partner, we tag team and debrief and hold each other. I find it hard to believe that only a few years ago I lived alone, and now my world is this beautiful little family filling my every hour. They mean the world to me. My heart is full and my mind is stirring. The shutting down and enduring that happened through the end of the pregnancy has finished with, I can feel the cogs turning again and what I choose to concentrate on comes into focus. I can’t multitask as well as I used to but my mind is working again. I’ve read my first Terry Pratchett book since he died – something that was impossible before now. Death is present a lot of the time still but less overwhelming. I’m able to read and understand what I’ve read. The desire to write (if not yet the coherency) has returned and art is starting to call to me again. Nesting hasn’t left me – I still clean and do admin and organise and plan. I sometimes get days where thinking about what I’m going to next regarding work/business/career doesn’t make me panic, cry, or hate myself. This is a very new, fragile, and precious development. I’ve wanted my whole life to be a parent, and a huge driving pain about needing meaning in my world has eased. 

I find myself quietly haunted by how this could have gone if we’d been met with tragedy again – losing Poppy to miscarriage it stillbirth or early death, losing Rose or Star or other family or friends. I’m aware of the pain and bitter-sweetness my luck causes to those who are still childless and still hurting. I feel at times a sense of survivors guilt – it can be hard to give myself permission to let go and enjoy myself when I know so many still suffer on a road I’ve been saved from. At times I feel consumed by fear, waiting for the next crisis, the next terrible loss. Tragedy comes to us all. There’s only so much I can do to push it away. All I have is now, and all I can do is live in it, as deeply, fully as possible. This time in my life with my fledgling family is intense and consuming and painful and beautiful and exquisite. I’m here, giving myself to it, being as alive as I can be.

Here I am, hanging out on the couch, breastfeeding this gorgeous little bug and watching Blackadder. It’s not such a bad life. 🙂 
Rose and I are trading misery. I’m on the improve and actually having patches where I feel good! Rose is laid up with severe sciatica and feeling particularly awful that she’s in too much pain to be able to babywear Poppy. It’s been a challenging week in many ways. I had to ask for help the other night to get Rose to the hospital for pain relief and to hold Poppy for a couple of hours so I could get some sleep. It’s hard to need help! I feel ashamed and afraid that we’ll be judged, afraid of annoying people or burning out our support. I keep reminding myself that if the situation was reversed I feel good about helping my friends and don’t judge them, that genuine community relies on reciprocity otherwise it’s just a bunch of people treating others as projects they try to fix. I remind myself that is okay to feel scared and ashamed but I still need to ask for help and keep being open about where things are really up to, that this is part of what’s keeping us safe, and it’s also valuable for others who may face harsher reactions when they try to share the painful aspects of their experiences. But it’s still hard to do, hard to make eye contact, to say thankyou, to be gracious, to let go of pride and shame, to say “thankyou”  instead of mumbling “sorry”. I am practicing gratitude and lucky to be given the chance to do so. 

We were able to get Rose to a doctor and a physio yesterday and we are hopeful we have a plan and some better meds that will help her rest and heal up. 

We had a challenging night the other night with both our girls in tears, I held Star, and Rose comforted Poppy until she needed feeding at which point we swapped, Rose hugging Star on the couch and trying not to pass out with fatigue. We have been trying to arrange a family trip or for ice cream for over a week now with no success. Last night I explained the concept of the ‘fourth trimester’ to Star, how vulnerable and dependant human babies are, that things won’t always be this intense. I breastfed Poppy and helped Star with an English essay, wracking my poor brain to try and understand concepts like themes and literary devices. Then I stayed up watching Star Trek movies and was able to get Poppy to sleep in her pram bassinet and give myself a nap in the armchair. Parenting like a boss! 

The roller-coaster continues. My days plummet into black depths that can be terrifying, evoking memories of my terrible exhaustion just before taking pregnant with Poppy. I run as far and as a fast from that place as I can. I push myself past my limits and then sob because I’m horrified to feel so resentful and frustrated. I’m learning not to push myself so hard, that I have to make sure burdens are more equally shared. Small revelations make huge differences. Recently I ran over to Rose and exclaimed – the role of coordinating all the household jobs that need doing, and assigning then to people, and reminding people gently about them, and decoding when to let people off because they are sick or stressed IS IN ITSELF A JOB. It is a stressful job because people often resent it, because it’s not thought of as a job in the way that doing the dishes is, and because I didn’t want it and don’t like doing it but no one else wants it either. I wind up doing a lot of these kind of jobs, the ones no one else wants, and I don’t like them either, I find them stressful and tiring. I was so excited about this realisation because it means I don’t have to just take it on, we can talk about it, and I don’t have to feel guilty for asking people to do jobs – if that’s not working then we as a family can problem solve it and find some other way, and yes it takes time and energy and counts as a legitimate thing I do for my family, like washing the dishes. I feel a lot lighter and less burdened by it now I can see it more clearly. 

I felt the same way a little while ago when I decided that doing the household admin (paying bills, organising appointments, answering mail, filling paperwork, etc counted as a job too, not just something I do where I then try to ‘keep pace’ with everyone else by also doing cleaning etc. The invisible jobs, like putting everything left in the lounge room back where it belongs, like emptying the laundry cupboard and making new better places for all the linen to be kept, like talking bags of unwanted things to the op shop – the ones no one sees or appreciates, that don’t get counted or tallied when people are looking at shares of the workload, and that are not chosen or distributed but simply inherited by whoever is the bottom line in the family – these sap energy, motivation, and connection. Being able to see them, treat them as real, tally them, and possibly even share them makes a huge difference to me and to the quietly burning resentment that I work so hard to conceal when things are unfair. It feels like I can breathe. It’s one thing to take on a big share of a workload, it’s quite something else to take it on and have no one including  yourself realise that you’ve done so and that’s why you’re busy and tired. 

My family are wonderful. Everyone is working hard to adapt and be gentle with each other. I’m so proud of what we are creating, it’s imperfect and unbalanced but we muddle through and there’s a great deal of love. 

At 6am when I woke from a delightful sleep for the morning shift, Rose and I sat in bed with Poppy and ate porridge for breakfast. I remembered the porridge I enjoyed in the hotel at Port Lincoln, for the mental health conference where I thought I’d found paid work and a future. All those memories have been such a source of pain, a sense of humiliation and failure and bewilderment. This morning I let go of the hopes and dashed dreams and just remembered the experience. I met amazing people and learned fascinating things. I drove myself across the country, sleeping in my van. I watched the dolphins in the bay. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but it wasn’t a pointless waste either. I’ve had many amazing experiences not many people in my position get. And I have a family and I get to be a Mum! Letting go and taking hold.

The days are blissfuI and the nights are hard. Star is home again now, and all three of us are like things were when she first arrived – stringed instruments over tightened and quivering with tension. How are we going to do this? I don’t know how we are going to do this. Back at the start of her stay I called helplines daily to cry, I was so overwhelmed. I’ve returned to that place. I have no buffers, no cushioning emotionally, no reserves. I call and cry about how hard this is and how afraid I am it is too much for us. And then I do it anyway. 

Rose recalls a foster family who liked her until the new baby came, then decided a baby and teen was simply too hard and sent her back. It is too hard. Everything is too hard. Terror and inadequacy sit beneath everything else. Others around us see strength and hope and resilience that we cannot. They reflect us back to ourselves and we hold onto that like a lifeline. We are a strong family. We can do this. 

The nights last a thousand years and I try not to count every microsecond anyone any sleeps for longer than me and hate them for it. I do try. We will make it work. I don’t know how. Day by day. Through tears and fear and conversations that stick or hurt or flow and heal we will make a way. 

Today is the last day of my antibiotics. I am in the hell of healing wounds with thrush and tinea (‘jock itch’). I am allergic to tinea and my skin is sloughing into raw patches. Trying to breastfeed sitting up for hours at a time is a profoundly miserable experience. Pain levels creep up during the day and peak with sleep deprivation in the small hours of the morning. One more day. 

I hate the sensations of let-down, like lightning and ants under my skin. I writhe and Rose sits by me, rubbing my legs to give me other sensations to focus on. 

We are getting better at the latch. I am able to breastfeed in the bed, the bath, and my armchair. I can do football hold, side lying sometimes, and very occasionally a cross carry. Being able to feed outside the house remains my Everest; the goal I’m in training for. 

It will get easier. It will get better. It won’t always be this hard. Love is the balm that eases the pain, cools the resentment, soothes the fear. There is so much love here. Our tribe is so full of love and pouring it into our home. We will get through this.