I am mad at God

and I think I’m afraid to admit it.

But I am – I am mad at God right now.

I have been a long time believer that the Universe (aka God) provides. Not without work, and not without faith… but when God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.

I can’t find that window just now.

When we lost our baby girl, I figured there was a long-term reason for it. I had to really – the idea that “shit happens” for no reason at all doesn’t sit well with me. I’d failed at the whole creating a healthy baby thing, so I figured something else was planned.

Damned if I know what it is. I’ve put out quite a few job applications, gotten a couple tenative bites, and that’s it. Any interest fizzles shortly thereafter… I’ve been out of the workforce for 4 years and didn’t have much of a career to speak of when I left to have babies. There is nothing for me to go back to, and the economy is crap. Something looked like it was going to come through, I was excited about the prospect and looking forward to it, then that fizzled.

I know I have a lot to be grateful for at the moment. But the past several months have been full of the God showing me the way things could be, then snatching that away in the blink of an eye. I don’t want to play anymore. I am tired of being teased – if God could grow up and play fairly, then we’ll see.

Back to our regularly scheduled program

Normal life has resumed. Or so it seems by everyone around me.

I’m not sure I’ll ever feel “normal” again. Or rather, I’m working on discovering what my new normal is. The brief life and death of Marci has definitely changed me, I’m just not quite sure how, just yet. Aside from the obvious complete loss of trust in the wonder of pregnancy, that is.

Lately I’m just busy. Really busy. Purposely busy. Now, anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I’m not a total Stepford in terms of household domesticity… but lately the lounge is tidy, the kitchen gets a surface tidy / clean nearly every day, the table has remained not only visible but mostly clear nearly every day. The difference is, now when these things AREN’T this way – when there are toys scattered through the lounge, or dishes left on the kitchen bench, it eats at me something chronic, and thus usually gets taken care of. I’m not spending all day cleaning… but the ‘public’ areas of the house stay at a pretty presentable level. Meanwhile, the bedroom – the sacred place where I can relax, sleep, be intimate, and also close the door to from visitors…. is trashed. And that only bothers me a small amount – more frustrates me as it’s not highly useable for finding things or getting in / out of the closet etc. I think it’s a coping thing – if the public areas of my house are presentable, then obviously so am I. Meanwhile I fall to pieces in the bedroom, when needed, and it falls to pieces around me.

The other thing I’m doing lately is focusing on weight. Part of this is the simple fact that when we got back from the USA I felt bloated and fat and disgusting, and my clothes were tight. But instead of losing just enough to feel ‘comfortable’ in my normal clothes again, I’m going full gusto into the weight loss / fitness thing. Most days I do at least 45 minutes of intentional physical activity (albeit at a low to moderate intensity), some days I do up to 2 hours. It makes me feel virtuous and in control. My weight is only very slowly falling off – which admittedly frustrates me to no end – but it’s something.

And beneath it all lies the thought of pregnancy. I still feel like our family is not complete – but perhaps it will never feel complete, as there will always be a little girl missing. But the thought of pregnancy scares me…. the complexities of which aren’t really worth going into, and likely wouldn’t be understood by anyone who’s not been there before themselves. Furthermore now that I’m so focused on losing weight, pregnancy scares me because of that, too. If I get pregnant, I won’t be allowed to try to lose weight. Granted, I normally lose without trying through the first trimester, but I’m worried that the whole process of pregnancy – and 9 months of being “off the wagon” – will just put me back to square one. And I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Or, maybe I’m just looking for excuses why not to be ready for pregnancy.

Dear…

Dear Hubby,
Yes I am still sad. And when you ask me tomorrow, I will be then, too. How about when I feel good, I tell you, and you can stop asking me. Also, when I ask for cuddles at night and you say “but I’ve already spent heaps of time with you”, know that I still need the cuddles.

Dear Sister-in-law,
Thank you for the meals. Thank you for babysitting my children. Thank you for all the support. But I still don’t want to see you or your huge bump. No offense. You just get to be the scapegoat for my pregnancy jealousy right now. I will talk to you, eventually.

Dear Mother-in-law,
I know you’re excited about your only daughter having a baby, but I don’t want to hear about it. I was having one too and you never talked about that. Marci is no less your grandchild than the other baby will be.

Dear Random Acquaintances,
I don’t need you, and every other person I know, to comment on my posts or my facebook status. I understand if you’re uncomfortable or don’t know what to say. But if I then contact you for something unrelated, I do not need a big rambling explanation of why you never said anything. If you’re not going to say anything, then just don’t. I am not keeping a tally, and I hardly know you anyway.

Dear Real Friends,
Thank you for your support. Thank you for saying that you don’t know what to say but that you still care. There ARE no words that can make this better, but I really love you for trying anyway.

Dear Huggies Baby Club,
Yes, I really do want to unsubscribe. Your “Congratulations, you’re halfway!” email came at precisely the wrong time. Fuck off. I use cloth anyway.

Dear Christmas,
I don’t have time for you this year. Can you take a rain check? I’ll catch up with you later – maybe in July sometime.

Dear TV People,
Please put on more programs that aren’t about pregnancy, birth, babies, celebrity baby bumps, people who have a lot of babies, babies dying, and/or children being abused.

Dear God,
I’m still pissed off at you.

Dear Marci,
I love you and I miss you so much.

Remembering Marci Grace

Marci Grace was born Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 5:20pm after a fairly straightforward induction, and roughly 5 hours of active labour.

A scan on Nov 25th (at 21 weeks gestation) picked up that she had died in utero, and after time for arrangements etc was allowed, the induction was scheduled.

As indicated on the scans, she was born hugely swollen (for what she ’should’ be) and many of her features were indistinguishable. That said, she had absolutely perfect palms and feet, and perfectly formed little ears and mouth as well. She weighed 480g.

A service to farewell her was held today.

I was going to attempt to speak at Marci’s farewell, but I didn’t. Partially I chickened out… but mostly I just couldn’t put words together coherently in a way that would make sense to everyone.

not to mention I don’t like admitting pain, or particularly sharing the depth of it.

my pregnancy with marci was fraught with distress and worry. Truly, there was no time in which I was fully excited about the pregnancy. First there was the wee shock of the pregnancy as the timing was not 100% planned (tho even from the beginning she was very wanted, she just set her own schedule). Plus as I’ve had a previous miscarriage (despite a healthy pregnancy in between) I know it’s not fully ’safe’ to get all the hopes up in that first trimester. I did tell quite a few people early on, but most of the people either would help support me through a miscarriage should it happen, or at least would understand and not be insensitive.

what I didn’t tell many people was that I was fully expecting to miscarry. and it’s really hard to put into words my exact feelings about it all, because I know paranoia after a miscarriage is completely normal. My pregnancy with Katerina was directly after a miscarriage, with no cycle in between – but from day one with her I *knew* she was sticking around. Call it a gut feeling, or mother’s instinct. I didn’t have anything of the sort with Marci’s pregnancy – really, I think I knew all along that she would not be here for long.

she made herself known, though. with my previous miscarriage, I felt nothing. It may well have been what they unhelpfully term a ‘chemical pregnancy’, because I did not feel a soul hanging around me, and I had no pregnancy symptoms other than a missing period and a positive HPT. Of course I grieved when I miscarried, but it was grieving possibilities rather than definites, the loss of hopes and dreams and what might have been.

marci was different entirely. I tested with her before I was due for AF because I was feeling very pregnant, although not with anything concrete. It was more that gut feeling again. My sleep went to hell (which it did with Katerina too) and I was peeing all the time and my tastes had changed, tho no strong cravings or aversions. and I just knew, and got a positive HPT straight away.

marci’s was my roughest pregnancy too. it’s the only one in which I’ve actually thrown up (though I had mild morning sickness with both Zamara and Katerina). I had fairly severe fatigue, incredibly sore breasts (more than my other two girls combined) achy, shifty joints, ligament pain that wouldn’t let me twist hardly at all, and a finicky tummy. (not aversions as such, just would be halfway through a meal and get the omg-stop-eating-*now* feeling). although I definitely had the urge to nest, I never got the burst of energy that’s meant to go with it, just a slight lessening of the fatigue of before.

marci’s was also a magical pregnancy too. from very early on with her, I was ’seeing things’. That feeling of having something / someone move right at the edge of your peripheral vision – but when you turn to look, nothing’s there. It wasn’t so much an ‘I’m being watched’ feeling, but it was a definite feeling of presence. Really, it was as if someone was playing hide-n-seek with me but cheating in a friendly way.

Marci is not a name I would pick, myself, it’s not at all in the style I tend to prefer. But she told me that was her name. I decided to find her a name once we were given a tentative diagnosis. I wanted something meaningful but not tacky. My first thought was ‘Faith’ but in reading stories of others I found faith was a common name for babies that didn’t survive, and it didn’t feel right naming a still living fetus that. I looked for related names (in meaning) and found Mercy. I hadn’t decided on it at all, was just kicking it around in my head so to speak. But I found every time I thought about it, it came out ‘Marci’ and not ‘Mercy’ – including the spelling. After about two days of that I accepted she was trying to tell me something, and I wasn’t going to fight it. I then thought to look up ‘Marci’ and discovered it meant ‘war-like’. To me that was both more optimistic, and more appropriate, than the meaning of Mercy. Grace, her middle name, was automatic – my babies middle names always have been. (I don’t know why – but I don’t question it, either)

In utero Marci was incredibly quiet. I’ve had anterior placentas with all three of my girls, and never felt movements before about 17 weeks, but even after that with marci I felt very little movement. She did like to rest in such a way that, when I was lying down, it was like she was trying to poke out of my womb – I’d get a hard and definite lump on my right side (always the right) that was often uncomfortable. That trick babies (out of the womb) have of falling asleep on the parent when the parent is in THE most uncomfortable position – marci had that in utero.

I hired a doppler when I was about 16 weeks pregnant with her, as the prognosis given by scans were consistently getting worse, and I wanted to have a better idea of when and if she left. I felt a bit like I was spying on her. She got back at me by routinely hiding from it. Only about half the time could I get a strong enough heartbeat that the doppler would give me a BPM reading – most of the other half of the time, I could hear a clear heartbeat myself, but it sounded like it was coming from a distance. I never worried in those instances, because it was clearly a fetal heart beat – but she established a pattern of this ‘hiding’ from the doppler. There were several times I couldn’t find her heartbeat at all, but would try again later and usually find it quickly then. It wasn’t that she wanted me to worry I think… she just liked to keep me on my toes.

I knew roughly when she passed. It wasn’t a lack of movement, because she moved very little and it wasn’t at all uncommon to go a full day with no definite movements. The night before, I’d checked on her and gotten one of the quickest (in terms of speed of finding it) and clearest readings I’d gotten yet. It had been a really good day in general, and I went to bed feeling content and loved. As I lie in bed I thought about how every day I got a good reading on the doppler, I felt a little bit more hope that if she made it through this day, she could make it through the next, and so on. I talked to her that night, which I rarely did out loud. I told her that if she needed to go, she was free to – that I didn’t want her struggling and hanging on just for my sake. I told her that I did very much want her here with me – but that if that wasn’t meant to be I would accept it. And then I fell asleep and didn’t think on it. Until the next night, when I couldn’t find a heartbeat at all. As I put away the doppler, resolved to try again in the morning, I knew. I’m not sure if she’d actually gone then, or if she left overnight – but it was in that time period she left. Before when I couldn’t find the heartbeat, my first inclination was that she was hiding from me. This time… I knew this was it. That was the Sunday night / Monday morning. On Wednesday I had my next scan, which confirmed that her heart had stopped.

Since her spirit left her body, I haven’t had her toying with me in my peripheral vision. There were several times her body shifted in utero, which was mildly disconcerting, but she never again was pushing against my right side like a cat nudging to say hello.

My sense of Marci, from what she showed me in pregnancy, was that she would have been a truly awesome little girl. She had quite a different personality to either of her sisters, but I think would have meshed well. She would have loved hide-n-seek games, and lighthearted trickery such as ‘made ya look!’.

Her wee swollen body spoke of struggle. Her spirit speaks of play and strength.

Fetal Medicine appointment

Well, nothing’s changed really, but it feels like heaps has – I’m in such a different “place” today than yesterday.

Yesterday we were told that in all likelihood, bubs would die in utero, and it was a choice of continuing the pregnancy to let things happen naturally, or terminating and getting it over with.

Today we had the appointment with a fetal medicine doctor at the hospital. I expected her to come in and tell me about the doom and gloom of my pregnancy and “where to from here” which I figured would be a “recommended” abortion. However, it wasn’t anything of the sort. She came in, and after asking what I knew about Turner Syndrome (I knew a bit from Google, but I like to hear confirmation ) proceeded to tell me about it.

In a nutshell –

Babies born with Turner Syndrome are always female (the syndrome is the deletion of the X chromosome from the sex chromosome – so instead of XX it’s X0 / X- ; this can occur on only a few cells of the body, or on every single cell). And because they don’t have the complete set of female hormones, they are invariably infertile – they have the right organs, but the ovaries don’t work at all – regardless of severity of TS – so they’ll need hormone therapy at puberty (both to grow but also to develop sex charactistics) and they are universally short statured, tho exact height reached depends largely on how soon growth hormones are started (some girls aren’t actually diagnosed until puberty fails to happen).

The other main complication is heart issues – usually a narrowing of the aorta. This doesn’t happen in all TS cases, but whenever narrowing of the aorta happens they check for TS, as they’re that closely linked. The severity with which this occurs varies widely – can be an issue that causes death before birth, but it can also be light enough that it’s not a problem either at all or until adulthood. Regardless, there are things that can be done to fix / help fix this, so even this isn’t a death sentence, just something to watch for. And it can be picked up on ultrasound antenatally, too.

Finally, there are often mild – moderate problems with the kidneys – most commonly the kidneys either fuse together (so they become one) or one or both is oddly shaped. However, there is usually decent kidney function at least until adolescence, and although TS girls are at significantly increased risk of diabetes, this isn’t an absolute either – some TS girls have no kidney issues whatsoever.

Other than that, there’s some very mild physical differences – the short stature, commonly a wider neck, sometimes a low hairline, stubby fingers/toes and/or puffy hands/feet. Very little, however, that will immediately set a TS girl apart from her peers physically, and most TS girls only have a couple of these features rather than all.

TS girls also have no cognitive impairment and no muscle / movement issues, and can live completely normal lives.

So I took that in and said “well that’s great [and I knew most from my own research anyway] – but everyone has told me my baby wouldn’t live to be born, so it’s not that much of an issue is it?” The doctor thought about this and said “we [doctors] like to present the worst case scenario, so that it’s not a shock if it happens.” She went on to say that as far as the pregnancy is concerned, the biggest problem at the moment is the cystic hygromas, and there’s two main ways these can progress – either they gradually and randomly disappear on their own, and there’s no issue – OR – the fluid in the cysts starts migrating, and can interfere with the organs. However, the fluid / hygromas are clearly visible on ultrasound – so this can be monitored to tell what exactly is happening. The doctors can’t *change* anything… but they can warn of which way things look to be going. At the moment it’s just plain too early to tell; it’s all a matter of wait-and-see (story of my life these days!).

Soooo… hubby is much more optimistic about this because even though I told him most of it he had pictured a severely disabled person, that would need help getting around (??) and never be able to function independently, and this isn’t the case at all. Now he knows the facts, he’s a lot happier to support me in continuing the pregnancy, which is nice And I think he’s quietly optimistic about things too.

Myself… I am still ‘prepared’ to lose the baby, and that is still a very definite possibility. However – there seems a LOT more hope than it seemed like yesterday even though the situation is exactly the same. I knew yesterday there was always a chance of a miracle – but having a doctor tell me that there’s a chance, too, makes it seem more real. Right now it’s just wait-and-see. I’m classed as a high-risk pregnancy, though the risk is all to the baby and none to me (any more than with any other pregnancy). I’ll be scanned every 3 weeks or so from now on, including having a fetal ECG to pick up any heart problems so that we’re prepared for them, and although we can’t ‘do’ anything about the cystic hygromas, we can at least watch what is or isn’t happening with them. Finally, my midwife is still my midwife and my “main” carer – I just see the hospital a lot more in between.

My baby is real.

Though, of course, that’s not obvious to anyone yet.

And of course we still don’t have official word on what will become of what is currently the ‘fetus’, and in fact likely won’t have a full diagnosis for another couple of weeks at best.

But my baby is real.

I’ve started thinking of the baby as a her, though that’s really only based on the speculation that it could be Turner Syndrome (which only effects females). We’ll find out for sure either way, but for now bubs is a she to me. I have a name tentatively picked out for ‘her’ as well, though as yet no idea whether D will go along with it.

No firm decisions have been made, or will be until we have more official results one way or the other. However at the moment I’m leaning very strongly towards letting nature take its course, whatever that may be.

There’s a hope in me as well that even if the baby has no chance at life outside the womb, that she’ll be able to hold on until 20 weeks. The reason for that is multilayered… but largely that’s because that’s the date at which point the loss of the pregnancy is classified as ’stillbirth’ rather than ‘miscarriage’ in New Zealand. Babies born from 20 weeks need a birth certificate and a death certificate. They officially exist. Before that, the family can make whatever prepartions they choose to… but in the eyes of the government and medical people it’s just a ‘late miscarriage’ rather than a true loss of life. When I first found out the news, I was anxious to avoid the process of labour if the odds were we weren’t going to get a live baby out of it – but since then I’ve learned that most terminations done from 13 weeks gestation (of which I already am, nevermind the two weeks the CVS results will take) are hospital based inductions of labour rather than a surgical D&C. If I have to labour anyway, that’s one less reason to terminate, and I don’t have a lot of reasons to do so anyway.

In the meantime, we are still absolutely hoping for a miracle, but preparing for the worst at the same time. My emotional state changes on a daily basis, but today I think I’m kind of okay with it. By no means is this what I wanted or envisioned for myself and my family… but I can get through. I do believe there’s a reason for everything, and although I don’t know what the reason for this is, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I don’t know if it will make me stronger as such… but maybe it’ll show me that I am already strong enough.

The world is upside down

I don’t usually post very personal things here – personal thoughts and ruminations, sure, but I try to keep the mundane part of my life, the day-to-day, largely out of it all.

But that will change for this post, and likely for the following for awhile as well, just so I have a place to write and process things.

I am pregnant with my third child, and I had my 12w scan on Tuesday. I thought everything was going fine, sonographer showed me the head, the face, the little arms, the beating heart, the abdomen, etc… she mentioned she “wasn’t entirely happy” with the neck measurement but I took that to mean that she couldn’t get a good measurement due to the way bubs was lying (which happened with K1). She had the radiologist look over the films after she took all the pics possible, and radiologist brought me into her office and said that things weren’t looking good – she said the neck measurement was quite thick and that led her to think there was quite a high probability that there was a chromosomal disorder. She also specified she didn’t think it was Downs, but probably Turner Syndrome or another one (which she did tell me but I can’t remember). The paperwork she gave me listed a 1:4 chance of a chromosomal disorder of some type.

So I went home, with films and a copy of the typed report (which is slightly different to what they sent my MW as that one had handwritten notes all over it).

Midwife rang around 5pm, and asked if I’d been told the situation. I said I was told it wasn’t looking good but not details. MW then elaborated that as well as a very thick back of the neck, the sides are measuring ‘wrong’ too – basically the neck is webbed, the sides are connected still. In addition to that, there’s a posterior fossic cyst in the brain, something up with the lungs (she did tell me, but I had kids in the background) and part of the stomach is outside the body. Soooo…. it’s not looking good, and it’s really more than just a ‘bad measurement’. At this point the word from both MW and radiologist is that it’s probable the baby will not survive the pregnancy, and even if so will likely die shortly after birth. I’ve been referred to the hospital, where the plan is to do another scan, some blood tests, and probably and amnio and/or CVS. MW wants me to be seen this week – so ideally we should know sooner rather than later.

So, that’s the facts as we know them now.

The rest is…. everything else I guess.

Although I realise nothing is set in stone and there IS still a chance of either life and/or a good healthy life – I’m very much not ruling that out – I really need to prepare myself for the liklihood that’s NOT the case. Which means dealing with the fact that if the baby is not going to survive – be it til 40 weeks or 2 months old – what do we do? I never imagined I’d be in the position to have to consider aborting my baby, but that’s what we could be looking at. And it sucks, because I WANT the baby, but I don’t want to carry to term and go through labour to deliver an already dead baby. Nor do I want to give birth to a live baby to watch it die in the first hours / days of it’s life. I don’t know if I could cope with that. To me, it does seem easier that if those are our choices…. it’s easier to do it now, when there’s less bond with bubs, where I can feel even slightly more removed from the process. I’ve seen the heart beating and bubs bobbing away and on the one hand I treasure that.

My religion has been kind of self-defined lately (tho I still am very spiritual) but I’m freaking pissed at God / Goddess right now. I don’t know why shit happens – to me or anyone – but obviously it does happen. But I’m still unhappy with God.

I’ve been thinking, even before I was told anything was wrong, that this would be our last baby. I’m still thinking that – even if this one doesn’t make it one way or the other…. I think I’m done. I don’t think I could cope with all the heartache, worrying, and paranoia anymore. I’ve been blessed with two delightful, gorgeous girls…. and maybe I should just leave it at that.

I am nobody special

I was driving home from visiting a friend tonight, and passed one of the local high schools. The message board below the school’s sign announced the name of one of their students as having won a World Youth championship something or other.

My instant thought was – I’d like my name displayed like that, to be recognized for a stunning feat or achievement. And that’s when I realised, it never has been. I am nobody special. I was a good student most of the way through school, but never absolute top of the class. I’ve never broken any records, done anything truly amazing, been abnormal in any way really. Sure I had acheivements and accomplishments in my own right throughout – but nothing that wasn’t a totally run-of-the-mill thing. I’m not an athlete, I’m not a world chess player or a prodigy musician.

So, okay, no big news flash, right? But in a way it really was. My parents, like any doting parents building up their child, raised me ‘knowing’ I was special and gifted and wonderful, with a healthy dose of responsibility bestowed upon me. I was Intelligent, I was Gifted, and thus surely I would Become Somebody. It worked great in primary school – I figured I was the best – or at least among the best – and that was, of course, my natural position.

So when I grew up a bit, and more was required of me, and I learned to think for myself and to question, I saw myself as decidedly average. And ever since then I have believed that I am a tragic let-down, as I obviously haven’t come close to fulfilling my potential. Which, maybe, is true. Maybe every ‘normal’ child really has the potential to become the next Einstein, Picasso, Thorpedo or similar. But all I’ve seen is that I am not standing out, I am not excelling above the rest of my peer group, I am just humming along fairly smack dab in the middle. Of my graduating class, one of my classmates works for Congress. I’m not in active touch with her but I’ve always held her as an example of where I ’should’ be. Not that I want to work for Congress – but that I should have a similarly high-flying, top-of-my-field job. Thus, my staying home with my very average husband, raising children in a barefoot but not pregnant type situation was clearly me wasting my life. I have always reckoned that I am the epitome of a waste of potential.

Tonight I realised I’ve never had my name in lights. I have not tragically fallen from any platform. The only platform I’ve ever been on has been attached to my shoes – and when I fell from that, I tossed the shoes out and bought Crocs.

I’m not eating.

Okay, that’s not entirely true.

The past two days I have had a little bit to eat. Today more than all the previous three days combined, but still, not really eating. By which I mean, thoughout the entire day I had half a bannana, half a small-medium bowl of porridge, and half a small slice of mince and cheese pie. The ‘half’ of everything mainly because I share with K1. Though that is planned sharing, but I’m not dishing up portions like I usually would for myself – the portions in this case are something in between enough for Katerina and enough for me. So, she eats first, about half, and I finish off the rest.

That’s the technical side of things.

I have a suspicion there’s a giant mental trip going on behind the scenes, because otherwise I appear to be healthy. External stuff at the moment sucks, forces have combined so that we have very little food in the pantry and our food budget has been almost halved due to one thing and another. And I keep thinking about wasted food, and food that gets thrown out that doesn’t need to be. We’ve improved a ton in that regard in the past few years, by smarter storage and smarter planning and simply less buying… but stuff still gets thrown out. DH is worse than I am about it, OCD and gray areas in food hygiene don’t mix well. The bulk of what’s getting thrown out around here mostly is leftovers of cooked meals. DH has developed a snobbery against eating leftovers in the form they were originally (i.e., if I have leftover chicken that I turn into chicken soup or casserole etc it’s acceptable – reheating the chicken is, apparently, not) and with ’saving’ portions for him or for the kids for lunch etc, it’s getting wasted. And I keep thinking, well, not only should we not try to save anything aside especially (i.e., just eat it as we can) but if I didn’t actually serve myself a portion, but just finished the children’s…. that’s less wasted. And less cost overall. Instead of having a single slice of pie leftover and lonely, we can have half the pie left, which can be frozen and brought out on another night when we’re lacking motivation, and not seem so much like ‘leftovers’. Instead of throwing out half of Z’s cereal, if I ate it, then that’s breakfast sorted for both of us, no food wasted.

And there’s the final huge factor in that if I’m eating less calories, not serving myself huge portions, not eating mindlessly, but just small amounts here and there…. well, that should be good for my waistline and I can stop hating the way I look and the fact that size 18 stretch jeans never fit even first thing in the morning, because they need to be stretched to fit each time. Which just makes me feel fatter, each time.

The rational, or sensible, or logical, or whatever side of me thinks that everything about everything I’m doing is just wrong. But then, everything about everything I WAS doing was wrong too – hello, I’m obese. After going along for years doing things somewhat knowingly wrong – ‘right’ seems a very hard thing to achieve.

Married, with children

I am not a fan of my husband today / tonight…

Because I’ve been full-out studying, he’s had charge of the girls most of the time from Tuesday through Saturday (tho I did Friday by myself..). On Sunday morning I mentioned that the house – the lounge in particular – was a complete tip. Since he’d made the comment only a week or so ago of “THERE. I tidied up. Now keep it this way, okay?” I thought it was only fair that since he didn’t clean up through the day like he tells me off for… he could tidy up.

He said he would.

Tui ad anyone?

Nope, he didn’t tidy up. In fact, he contributed further to the mess by giving the two year old rice bubbles, to eat in front of the TV. Which of course meant that Little Sister wanted in on the ricey bubbly action, they had a war, and the carpet got most of the rice bubbles. Walking in the living room was seriously like wading through a sea of half-eaten toast, and rice bubbles, and I don’t even want to know what else… not to mention the cube of Duplo that had been tipped everywhere, or the various drawing papers everywhere, or the clean washing covering the couch and spilling out of the washing basket….

… which doesn’t take into account the overflowing dirty washing baskets in the laundry

Plus, he didn’t leave the house until 9:30, meaning he was guaranteed to be late home. His only ‘reason’ was that he couldn’t be bothered getting his A into G in a timely fashion…. as neither of the girls had their nappies changed, or were dressed for the day. So he was hardly all-consumed taking care of them.

So today…

I folded 2 loads of clean washing.
I washed and dried 3 others.
I did 2 loads of dishes in the dishwasher and one by hand.
I tidied up the lounge, including mopping up after Z2 spilled her orange juice.
I vaccumed the lounge.
I cleared the dining room table of stuff we need to / mean to sell, and moved it into the bedroom.
I tidied the bedroom (bar the above).
I photo’ed 27 items to list on TradeMe.
And I listed a bunch of stuff on TradeMe.
I prepared a lasagna from scratch (bar the pasta)

And I dished myself, and he then dished himself, and left the lasagna out. He came back about 10 minutes later to find that the cat had helped himself to what was left – over half of it Meaning of course that now DH wants to chuck out the rest.

Yes, dear, you’re welcome…. I love you too.