sun baby

Look Away Now

So, I was out having coffee with two local moms today, while our 4 year olds were in "ballet" class. (As far as I can tell, they run around pretending to be butterflies, or fairies, do good toes/naughty toes and call it a day.) Somehow we got to trading birth stories. I usually manage to freak people out with either a) the manual placenta removal and ensuing hemorrhage story or b) the Bell's Palsy horror. But one mom, let's call her Mary, kicked the ass of my stories. To summarise: her baby was born

-breech
-vaginally
-WITHOUT AN EPIDURAL.

And, it turned out afterwards, she wasn't fully dilated for the birth (of a 10 pound baby), her placenta wouldn't birth itself, and she had a massive hemorrhage. She actually tore her cervix. After the birth she went into surgery for 3 hours, and as she puts it, a torn cervix is not easy to repair. (As the perineum presumably is?)

At this point, I nearly excused myself to go to the ladies' room to hyperventilate. She went on to say that she lost 75% of her own blood and was given transfusions. And, I learned something new today: blood transfusions make blood go to all kinds of inappropriate places in your body, making your feel completely discombobulated. (Is discombobulated a word, or did my mom make it up? I should check on this.) Mary was unable to move or see the baby for 48 hours. I had been wondering why she wasn't breastfeeding - it would have been impossible.

The bizarre part is that a month after the birth I saw her skipping around ferrying her daughter to Montessori and so forth, weighing around 90 pounds and looking gorgeous with her long blonde hair and fashionable tracksuits. How on earth can this happen? I'd like to start a sweepstake on whether she goes for a third child - it's all the rage in Dublin these days to have three. (It used to be 6+, but that's another story.)

all going well

This weekend, so far, is going much better than last week's. Last week it poured rain the whole time, and we spent Saturday watching Yuri hammer chunks out of the hardwood floor to stop it popping up, and Rostyk shake his head over the state of our laptops (which are riddled with spyware.) The guys that do, and have done, all the work on our house, are trained computer engineers and from the Ukraine. However, they have found that there is a lot more money in Ireland doing things like installing heaters and hammering people's wooden floors. Rostyk is about 5'8", built like an acrobat, and has absolutely no hair on his head, including eyebrows. Yuri has hair, and Janet fancies him; I heard she even had a dirty dream about him last week.

Anyway, my little baby is teething, and was in a foul mood all last week. He pretty much cried all weekend, except for when I was nursing him or when he was being driven at high speeds down the freeway. It was like we were back to square one again, with an impenetrable newborn. I found myself craving vodka. Fortunately there was none in the house, and I had forgotten about the bottle of absinthe behind the bran flakes.

So things are going much better now. Both children seem happy today, and I even kept my little girl away from the TV for almost the entire day. The best news is I found a babysitter, who is a lovely girl with loads of nanny experience and is studying complementary therapies. She hasn't actually babysat yet, but the comfort in finding her is immense! I have just booked tickets to Mahler Symphony No. 2. Celebrate good times!