May 27, 2010
A TEETHING BABY, AN ESCAPEE CAT, AND A MISCHIEVOUS DOG

While Dan is away, Harry will play...up!

… and so will the cat and the dog.

This week any nostalgic thought I was clinging to about being the baby of my family has been thrown like a dead weight off the roof. My responsibility as a parent now lies splattered on the front porch, unavoidable to anyone who comes to my house and has to step over the mess as they enter the front door, and my god is there mess...and noise!

Harry is teething, the dog is escaping, and the cat is trying to. I tell myself 'I can do this'.

When did I grow up?

I feel like one minute I am begging to go to Kim Harrison's high school party, the next I am chasing my cat through neighbouring yards at night wearing little more than a nightgown and oversized male slippers.

My cat has just discovered if she twists this way and throws her body that way she can clumsily mush her body through the verandah slats, making me look like a crazy woman as I pace the elderly neighbour's yard at night trying to catch her without setting off the sensor lights and sending the poor woman into cardiac arrest. Why couldn't she have figured this out before Dan went away?

I repeat my affirmation; 'I can do this'.

I try to hang the washing out this morning and the dog escapes. I change out of my nightgown this time, load a screaming grumpy Harry into the car and prepare to go looking for him. As I turn from my unimpressed baby, who should be lying panting at my feet? The dog.

'I can do this'.

Harry has developed a cry that sounds like an old man who has smoked most his life, and he has a face to go with it (a sad face that is, not an old man's face, that would just be weird). He has begun to jut out a trembling bottom lip and let a few tears trickle down his fat baby cheeks. It is his prelude to the agonising baby screams. It gets me every time.

Waking 2 to 3 times a night to his pained cries, and with no-one else here, I can't help but think I. AM. IT. It's a pretty sobering thought.

Then in the middle of all this chaos the cat curls up on my chest and purrs. The dog greets me with a big old sloppy kiss from beside the bed. Harry with his little red face and pouting lip looks up at me, and with baby tears still rolling over his flushed cheeks he pauses for a second, and gives me an ear to ear smile.

I realise then that a second is all it takes. A second is all it takes to know I can do this!

At least for 2 more nights...

May 25, 2010
PREGNANT WOMEN ARE SO NAIVE
I was wrong. There I said it.

I thought I knew it all; how to breastfeed, how to put a baby into a routine, how to be a mum . Then I gave birth.

Turns out most pregnant women are cocky and confident when it comes to the question of how to best raise a child, that is until they become mums.

My advice to pregnant women? Forget antenatal classes and baby books, go to a mum's group.

All the breathing techniques and baby routines in the world will never measure up against the brutally honest tongue of a new mother. If you want the truth about what to expect post pregnancy, a tired, sexually deprived new mum who hasn't had a chance to shave her legs let alone have an uninterrupted shower in weeks will be sure to deliver. She will slap the truth down like a cold fish in a fine restaurant; forget etiquette, if she has something to say she will damn well say it.

I think schools should abolish sexual education and instead make it mandatory for students to attend a mum's group. I guarantee that after hearing about botched caesarian, stretch marks, and baby faeces (in detail) there would be a reduction in the amount of parents who had to hear their daughters mutter the words “Woopsy, I'm pregnant”.

Perhaps if I had not been such a cocky and confident pregnant woman myself, I would not have been so adamant about certain things, like thinking mum's groups were lame.

Once again I was wrong.

I have now had to eat those words. I have had to force their pointy hypocritical corners between my tight lips, down my presumptuous throat and into the guilty depths of my unforgiving stomach. I have had to admit that mum's groups were in fact my savour.

They opened doors for me into a wonderful world full of other irate, over protective mothers who helped to validate my own sense of sanity, however false that may be.

They understand what it's like to have a child that won't stop screaming, to be thrown up on while trying to dine in a cafe like a civilised person, and the humiliation of discovering 20 minutes into a supermarket trip that your top is undone and your breast exposed.

Mum's groups have led me to the conclusion that in the same way pregnant women don't really want to know what lies around that birthing suite corner, nor do new mums really want advice on how to best tackle their parenthood issues. New mums just want to share in the company of other sympathetic mums who struggle at parenthood just as hard as they do.

Preferably, more so.

May 20, 2010
GETTING TO KNOW MY SON WASN'T EASY
When Harry was born he was a stranger to me. Nobody told me that could happen. That this little man who'd gone everywhere with me the past eight months could be so unfamiliar.

When Harry came there was no pushing, instead there was panic.

He was not placed onto my chest, instead his was compressed as they tried to get his little heart beating again.

When his heart did start his cot was not placed beside my bed for me to watch over him, instead he lay alone in a bright sterile room with only midwives to watch on.

We didn't leave the hospital that week with our new son, instead we went home alone.

That night and for many more after, our two kilo Harry lay in a room that did not know night from day, whilst we lay in our bed trying not to think of the empty nursery on the other side of the wall.

When he finally came home it wasn't much easier. I tried to love breastfeeding, but it felt like a job that robbed me of sleep and made my nipples hurt. People would stare at me feeding him, and with soft far away voices and glazed over eyes they would reminisce about their breastfeeding days.

I thought there was something wrong with me. I felt so alone.

It was never about not loving my son; I loved him from the moment I saw those double lines on that supermarket pregnancy test. It was about getting to know him, and getting to know myself as a mum.

Now when I look at Harry, if I am very quite I can almost hear my heart sigh. When he nuzzles in to my neck and I smell the milk that has pooled in his baby rolls, my legs feel as awkward as a child's beneath me. When he turns towards the sound of my voice and smiles because he recognises his mum, my blood runs a little faster through my veins.

I know I have no right to feel disappointed about a birth that gave me a healthy little boy, and a hospital that cared for him in the beginning in a way that I was not equipped to, but I do.

These things are not supposed to be said, which I presume is why no-one ever said them to me.

But I wish they had.

May 16, 2010
INTRODUCING MY BOY

Daniel was preparing to jump into a tank full of sharks. Our baby was due in six weeks. I still wonder if these two events were mere coincidence.

It began like so many labour stories do, but with one difference. I was convinced the excruciating contractions which sent spasms up my back and around my pelvis, had me breathless and clambering for a sturdy shoulder to lean on, were nothing but a figment of my imagination.

That and we were at Underwater World.

It took 24 hours of this – the contractions that is, not Underwater World – for me to admit it might be the real deal.

Why did it take an entire day to come to this conclusion? Let me explain.

As a child I was a hypochondriac.

I once wanted crutches so badly that I tried to cut my ankle open with a small blunt blade that came in my 54 piece children's art kit. My brother caught me.

When I had a sore leg (which may have been more often than not), I would pull out my dad's squash rackets and use them as crutches. I would hop in full seriousness down our hallway past some very amused older siblings and slightly concerned parents who still to this day feel the need to remind me (and every boyfriend I have ever had) about my embarrassing obsession with squash rackets.

My mum once washed my hair with lice shampoo, disregarding my cries of pain because they were an all too common sound in our house. The next day I woke with no skin on the back of my neck. Mum hates when I tell that story, but not as much as I hate it when she tells the squash racket one.

Needless to say, I have been brought up to think that I sometimes (only sometimes) over exaggerate my condition.

So 24 hours later I finally made the hospital call, and two days, three nights, countless positions, several cocktails of drugs, an emergency caesarian, a hysterical family, and two proud parents later, little Harry Freund was welcomed into my world.

It wasn't pretty and it wasn't planned, but the delivery of our baby boy marked the beginning of something special.

The next month was marred with a monotone lactation consultant, a scar that resembled a crooked smile, and a dog with a dislocated hip, but I might leave all that for another night.

May 15, 2010
THE MAKING OF HARRY FREUND
To Harry. My little man. My son.

My son.

Your mother.

That word, mother, still evokes an emotion within me that I find exciting.

It's as if I am in a room full of people and I am trying to convince them all I am a doctor or an acclaimed author, except I have no idea how either of those people would act. I have had no training for this role, and feel it is only a matter of time before the curtains fall at my feet exposing me and the charade I so unconvincingly uphold.

Let's pull that curtain down now and paint the picture of who I really am.

I am a 25 year old girl who fell in love with a 27 year old boy. I have no idea how to be a mum, but I know exactly how to love, and my gosh do I love you and your daddy.

I always wanted to be a young mum, to not have forgotten how to dance, sing and play with my babies. If you have laughter and love, surely the rest will come naturally.

I hope I am right. I know they say not to put all your eggs in the one basket, but heck, I'm not that partial to eggs anyway.

So how do I begin the story of Harry? As cliché and predictable as it may be, I guess the best place to start would be at the beginning.

The Normanby. Respectable heritage listed pub by day, overcrowded sweaty meat market by night (hey, if I am going to tell this story, I am going to be honest). To be fair, it is only Sunday nights that respectability jumps down a notch or two, and it just so happens that this story begins at the Normanby on a Sunday night.

It was January 2009, I was single and having the time of my life. The past month had been a blur of parties, music festivals, friends, and lets be honest, a little too much alcohol (and little Harry, you are not to use these words against me as a teenager trying to justify the bourbon in the bottom of your wardrobe – ha! To think of you as a teenager blows my mind). This night in particular I was eager for a dance, and my friend Sophie begrudgingly indulged me my wish.

It would be a good time now to make it clear that I was not there to pick-up, get laid, score, or whatever other phrase your generation may come to use for sex... I can only imagine!

I was there to have fun.

Whilst standing under a beautiful old tree, whose huge twisting trunk fought up through the tiled bricks and loomed over the intoxicated youths that stood smoking at it's base, I noticed a young man who looked over at me from his seat and smiled.

That smile changed everything. That smile was the beginning of Harry Freund.

The young man came over and said “Hi” and conversation could not have flowed smoother had it been scripted.

The second I met Dan I knew I liked him. I asked him to come dancing with me at the Down Under Bar, an equally seedy, but much more lively backpackers bar in the city. No more than 10 minutes after meeting, I hopped into a taxi with a relative stranger and headed for the wild and gritty underbelly of Brisbane.

We entered the bar to find a disappointingly mediocre atmosphere. The usual scene of scantily clad travellers dancing on tables, cheeky boys too busy ogling fellow backpackers to notice their cheap beers spilling on the sticky lino underfoot and ridiculous bar comps like throw the hoop over the bulls horns, had given way to a desolate dance floor and too many self conscious tourists. It seemed the tourists needed some locals to show them how it was done, and we were happy to comply.

We looked at each other and knew what we had to do. We agreed to meet on the dance floor in 10 minutes.

Frantically we rushed around the dimly lit bar, encouraging anyone we could to join us. True to our word, we reconvened on the dance floor 10 minutes later, this time accompanied by an entourage of tourists who seemed befuddled as to how they had ended up thrashing their hips and screaming along to the trashy tunes.

Proud that we had accomplished our endeavour to get the better part of Europe jiving to the beat of Jessica Simpson, we came together to share our first dance and our first kiss.

It was a terribly romantic scene.

Your dad took the next day off work (once again, this is not to be used to condone any love induced sick days taken by a teenage Harry Freund) and we went to the beach.

I felt I had known him forever.

The similarities were uncanny. We both had a sister and a brother, had had a dog called Billy, had long term exes who we'd broken up with the year before and who had both moved to London, we'd both worked in video shops, and most importantly we both loved to laugh.

We were inseparable from this day forward.

Within a week we'd met the parents.

By one month we were holidaying in Fiji.

Two months we were sharing a mortgage.

Three months we were pregnant.

10 months we were engaged.

One year later we were parents... and so the story of Harry Freund begins.

Love
T