Talkin to the animals

Happy Happy Joy Joy!!!

Happy Mother's Day to everyone who is one! I was pretty unsure about this whole motherhood thing at the start, but now I am just super happy to call this little person mine. I think she's pretty much perfect!

Bored silly but in a nice way

Today I hung out at Tuggeranong Hyperdome for something to do. The home of ugly teenagers and parents aged under 13. It's funny how being a mum can be exciting and boring at the same time. I find myself doing inane things like combing the 2 dollar shops for god knows what piece of crap, and really quite enjoying it for the fact that it's so different from my usual work. Providing she's been fed and changed and isn't wanting for anything, there really isn't much to do but just hang out with her and wait for the next drama to unfold.

We went to the pet shop to see how much pondfish were. Quite a lot it turns out. That was about $420 worth of fish that died the other week! Nuts. She gazed at the wall of tanks and tanks of brightly coloured fish with the same goggled eyed stare she gives the telly. This morning I turned the tv off when she was doing that and she burst into tears. Think it was messing with her brain waves or something.

Hmmm. I'm finding myself with as little to say on this blog as I have to say in conversation to friends lately.

Judgement Day

This news story just makes me so sad:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25431081-5001021,00.html

I wish people could just lay off with the judgey advicey bullshit when someone becomes a mother, and I wish women who have been through this stuff could be honest about how entirely shit it can be. Why is it that it takes five weeks of new parents group before a mum feels she can safely, and secretly, confide to another mum that the first few weeks of parenthood weren't all that she hoped? In fact that she had really wished that someone would knock on the door and declare that it was all a big administrative error, so sorry for the inconvenience, we need to take the baby back to its real parents.

Where's the reality? Why can't we say how it really is? Why didn't anyone tell me what those first few weeks were like?

I don't mind saying that about a week or so into the experience all I wanted to do was get in the car and drive very fast, far far away. From the baby. From the claustrophobia of those four walls. From my ruined body. From the relentless responsibility.

And I don't mind telling you that I am glad as hell I stopped breastfeeding when it became too painful and traumatic to deal with anymore. And to the people who have since suggested that I "just didn't try hard enough" - tell that to the blisters you wankers. And tell it to the delirium of postnatal depression that cleared up as soon as the breastfeeding hormones left my system.

There's just no reason why a woman should have to suffer like this or why a woman like Katy Isden should feel so alone and miserable that the only way out she can see is suicide.