|
So, the baby had a rough afternoon. Midwife visit which meant health checks (which he hates) and a bit of schedule disruption. By about 5pm he was a bit overtired and ratty and wouldn't settle down at all.
I decided it was worth seeing if he was overstimulated, so I took him upstairs to my room and basically had him in a dim, quiet room (I had white noise on until there was a risk I'd fall asleep because it's the white noise I usually sleep to) and he finally settled down.
He really needed to sleep, so... three hours of lying on my bed with him sleeping on my chest for me!
While I was doing that, I called my dad (speaking softly) for some information I urgently needed.
The baby made a little noise while I was talking to Dad. Just one of those little baby noises newborns make.
My dad - who is, normally, kind of a robot, he's never been officially assessed but we're pretty damn sure he's autistic - broke off mid-sentence to coo and get audibly choked up about the existence of his grandson. Who has, and I quote, "Won [his] heart."
I'm having feelings of my own about it.
Dad's going through a rough time with his cancer right now and a friend of his died last week. I think the baby might be giving my father a reason to keep going.
And just... my daddy loves my baby.
|
|
So my concussion specialist is currently giving me a break from pretty much all of my brain exercises, because the combination of stress and excitement about the baby is basically guaranteed to be frying my brain.
Braining is really hard right now. I should experience significant improvement once V and the squirmloaf are safely separated.
The baby is very squirmy. He is also very loaf. He's still horizontal - at 38 and a half weeks, this is unusual - and various movements make V's tummy form a very emphatic loaf shape. So for these last few days: squirmloaf.
We're pretty much ready for him, which at least has stopped my stress levels from increasing.
However, my uncle died this morning.
Not my biological uncle, but the uncle first-gen kids have who is probably also first-gen - mine's Italian - who is much, much closer than your biological family.
It's hard to even process. I think because my brain is so fried.
My physio told me yesterday about the conversation he had when he was doing handover to one of my other physios - at varying frequencies, I see three, at the moment - and there was a bit that has helped me put into perspective my frustrations with the slow progress of my rehab.
Physio 1: She had this surgery on this date, and this surgery on this date, and then a few months ago she had surgery on her lung.
Physio 2: So she's in a wheelchair?
Physio 1: No, she'll just walk right in.
Physio 2: Are you serious?
So even if I can't walk that far or stand that long (currently I can walk longer than I can stand, it's a thing) I'm probably doing quite well actually.
(I said as much to Physio 1. He said YES, YOU ARE DOING GREAT.)
Maybe by the time the kid is running around I'll be doing okay for keeping up.
|
|
Christmas was EXHAUSTING.
I come from a first-generation immigrant family. Christmas growing up was my parents and sister, maybe we go see some family friends.
Quiet. Peaceful. Admittedly somewhat dull.
This year? THIS YEAR? Hoo boy.
Obviously it's somewhat my own fault, what with how I got myself into a committed relationship with a partner who not only has a family but also has a husband and he has a family, so on Christmas Day we had V's older sister and her husband and kids over for morning tea, then her younger sister and her husband and kids and their parents for lunch, and then my parents for dinner... and then on Boxing Day we went to C's family lunch.
V's brother and one of C's brothers weren't even there. Still kinda overwhelming!
With the help of V's sisters and one of her nieces we've made substantial progress in getting the house ready for the baby. We're talking about plans for decorating the nursery. So far in terms of Unique and Special Decorations all that's really there is a little drawing of a Totoro on the wall inside his cupboard, it's super cute and I'll have to show a picture of it at some point.
I drew it. Helpfully, I got paint markers for C's family's secret Santa.
The baby is, of course, continuing to grow and be more active. Highlights in externally observable development:
- I startled him. I didn't mean to, but I was lying with my head in V's lap and I was being performatively outraged about something for her entertainment and I was maybe slightly loud. He had been asleep, but he jumped.
- Last night, he was very active, but it was getting close to V's bedtime and I've been encouraging him all along to make sure he doesn't keep her from sleeping. I sang him a lullaby... and it worked. He stopped kicking and moving around.
- Today I had to sing him two lullabies. He'd been quiet during the first one, but started kicking again as soon as I stopped singing. The second one he stayed quiet.
- Sometimes he presses and holds against V's tummy instead of just kicking. If you press back gently a couple of times, he stops. (It gets uncomfortable for her.) I'm not sure it's required to say, "High five, baby! High five!" when you do it, but I do.
I still suck at reading my reading page. In my defence the last couple of weeks have been rough for concussion stuff. Going through all the stuff for reorganising to clear baby room is a lot of memory things that are still very taxing for me, and then So Many People and so many screaming children at Christmas.
I'm not sure I could have managed Boxing Day, actually, but for the first couple of hours I wasn't out with the crowds, I was in one of the bedrooms playing Lego with one of the nephews.
Before that he gave me a tour of the house (or at least, of all his toys in all the rooms in which they were located). As he was showing me around, he noted: "You're very big! And fat. But really big!"
It is hilarious to me that he clearly wanted to be clear that he wasn't calling me fat... by specifically drawing the distinction between the fact that I am fat and the thing where I am very big, because he is three feet tall (and four years old).
|
|
ugh
|
Feb. 9th, 2023 @ 09:37 am
|
|---|
|
So last time I posted I was like "wow I lost my password"
I also mentioned "so I have a concussion"
GUESS WHO HAD NO IDEA WHAT SHE CHANGED HER PASSWORD TO AND JUST HAD TO CHANGE IT AGAIN
Concussion recovery continues. I'm seeing the guy. It's currently bad again because the weekend was too draining for my bruised brain - five hour drives each way to go to a funeral, crying for four hours straight, that kinda thing, very hard on brains.
I have a vague recollection that I used to want to use this journal more just so, like, I'd forget things less? But the last few years have been hard. I don't know. I think I've been running from the self-reflection involved, also every time I go to my reading page I'm horribly confused because people are casually referring to things I now don't know about and then I feel terrible and overwhelmed.
Right now I am still being an asshole who isn't reading my reading page because, as mentioned, concussion, I have a lot of trouble with reading things.
Anyway, in re: not wanting to forget things:
I noticed L (age 3 and a half) kept looking at me during the funeral. Afterwards, his mother told me that he could see I was crying and kept wanting to bring me tissues, but she didn't let him because she knew if she let go of him she'd have to chase him to stop him just running around in a way that would be quite inappropriate at his grandfather's funeral.
I still think that was just so sweet, though.
Later that evening we all went to have fish and chips at Emu Point and I was feeling a bit rubbish (the wake got very loud and my brain kinda shut down, concussion sucks) so I lay down on J&T's tarp blanket thing and L hurled himself onto my tummy, oof. (His dad called him back after he ran off again immediately so he could apologise, while his aghast mother checked I was okay and was like "if it makes you feel better he only does that with people he really likes and feels comfortable with! We're so sorry!" Apparently he usually only does it with them and she had not anticipated it at all and I have never seen someone radiate so much I know you had surgery not that long ago I really hope you're better oh my god did my son just kill you energy.)
I am not upset and L is still one of my favourite humans in the world, I adore him so much. He's just such a delight.
I also met ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) velithya's brother's kids for the first time in their lives and they're great. Also got to hang out with her brother himself - we've met before a few times but hadn't really had a chance to hang out, that was nice.
One of C's brothers sang a song at the funeral and it was so affecting I currently can't listen to songs that have vaguely similar themes without crying.
I took this picture that evening:
Description: Foreground: white beach sand and some long grasses. Beyond water of a bay, and beyond that hills below a near-sunset sky, the almost-full moon visible.
(I had to edit this post because I'd left the image way too big.)Current Mood:  listless
|
|
Man, there've been a bunch of things I wanted to post about, and things keep getting in the way. I was sick. While I was sick I injured myself. Then after that I nearly broke my wrist and typing was problematic for a while.
And now, well...
SO ABOUT THIS WEEK
My father started chemotherapy this week.
And then my sister, who is in England, had emergency surgery. It turns out the NHS is a trash fire without compare, because despite the *critically necessary* nature of her procedure, they still couldn't even give her a bed to recover in - no, it was, "So who's going to look after you when we send you home immediately?"
The answer, in the short term, was a friend of hers who rearranged his life for a couple of days, and then in the medium term the answer is our mother, who flew out on a day's notice to go to England and take care of her daughter.
My mother is terrified of flying. Terrified. But my father, apart from anything else, started chemotherapy this week.
I feel like my family just caught fire kinda out of nowhere but we're managing and I'm totally not going to panic about any of it. It's all being handled. Just.Current Mood:  distressed Current Music: FFXIV OST - Shadowbringers
|
|
Sometimes I leave my phone in my bedroom. This is extra-likely if I'm feeling fragile. The way I see it, if someone wants to get in touch with me by phone (which, in the evenings, is rare), one of the following will be true:
1) They have the home number, and will call that.
2) They have Dean or Chas's number, and will call that.
3) It won't be urgent.
4) They'll be someone I don't want to deal with.
In not unrelated news, last night my mother and sister spent a chunk of last night in a panic, around the time I was having dinner and chatting to housemates.
When I went to bed, I heard my phone buzz its "you have an SMS, you negligent fool" reminder, found and checked it, and uncovered this sequence:
Message One: My Father
Help! Please call me. I am in an emergency.
Now, I have seen this before. This is a function of his phone - you trigger the emergency alert and it sends this message to people you've specified (in his case, me, my mother, and my sister), and also switches to a mode where it automatically answers when called.
I knew I had subsequent messages, however, so I did not immediately react to this.
Next message: service provider notification that I have a voicemail. I'll check that in a second.
Message Three: My Father
I an fine (sic)
Message Four: My Father
My apologies for the alarm. It somehow got triggered while the phone was in my sports bag. Setting it up seemed like a good idea at the time ...
Ladies and gentlemen, my father.
The voicemail was from my mother, explaining that everything was okay, but she and my sister had had a half hour panic. Just to check, I called my parents. First I spoke to my father, and mocked him for the fact that his phone has an emergency panic mode that a) he has now triggered by accident twice and b) he cannot remember how to trigger on purpose. So all the emergency alert system actually tells us is that my father is almost certainly fine, just, you know... thing!
I laughed at him a bit for this.
Then I talked to my mother for a while. (Opening statement when she took the phone: "You know you married an idiot, right?" "Yes.") As I suspected, the panic was the time mother and sister spent trying to find out if Dad was actually in an emergency. Mum tried to contact the leisure centre he was playing squash at, but they were having a problem with the phone system... so she called one a couple of suburbs over and explained the problem. The helpful receptionist at Craigie e-mailed Heathridge, and when Heathridge's receptionist checked her e-mail, she was able to call my mother back, and make contact with my not-emergency-experiencing father.
Meanwhile, my sister was also in a tizzy about what was happening to her daddy that set this off.
I suspect that around this time, I was reading out viola jokes to my amused housemates.
Mum and I talked for a while, and some of it was probably good and important communication, and I was very sympathetic... but sympathy in my family is often accompanied by snickering.
The moral of the story is twofold: First, I am possibly a bad person to consider an "emergency contact", at least if you're relying on my mobile phone; however, since the only person who lists me as an emergency contact is my father, who only emergency-contacts me by accident, this really doesn't amount to much. Second, if you do need to get hold of me and I don't answer my phone, call the house phone or someone I live with.
|
|
|