Lately, on my iPhone

Life has contracted of late. Little Madeleine's heart condition puts her at increased risk of lung infection, and even a simple cold could have serious consequences. So while we wait until she is old enough to be immunised (and thankfully she is on a 'heart patient' list for extra help throughout the winter), our lives are relatively solitary. Much of my life is lived inside our small house, and on gentle walks around Melbourne, visits to cafes and pubs only if they are quiet and with Madeleine's pram suitably draped in muslin cloth.

At the same time, life has expanded beyond all comprehension. The addition of this wonderful, warm bundle of baby to our home and hearts has changed absolutely everything, and suddenly the entire world is not big enough to contain the love I feel.

And to be truthful, the solitude has been kind of a special time. Apparently a lot of cultures spend the first six weeks of a new baby's life in relative isolation, to heal and grow and bond. I can understand this. Aside from my very real anxiety over Madeleine's health, having this 'bubble time' with her is something I will look back on as quite special.

Perhaps it is a less aggressive transition from being pregnant (when she is all mine) to after the birth (when everyone wants to hold her): I get to keep my baby MOSTLY to myself a little longer.

Last night

Last night I walked a whole block-and-a-half and back to get milk, BY MYSELF. It was the longest time I’d been away from Madeleine in her little life. It felt so… partitioned. Like something essential was missing. And finally I could admit to myself that I was no longer pregnant, that I was just and only me. It was a funny feeling of independence and physical freedom and loss and lightness. Another sensation: I was rugged up in a coat and gloves, so all of me was cozy, toasty, except my face which took the full, icy slap of the winter night on the cheeks. It was kind of glorious. Alive! I could smell rain a-comin’ but when I looked up, up, up, stars made mockery of the city lights, just over there.

When I got home into the light and warmth and shed my layers, Mr B handed Madeleine to me without a word, as if he knew. He knew. Madeleine snuggled onto my chest, nuzzling her head under my chin in just the place she loves the most and I love the most. She was divinely warm. Her jaw slowly dropped open and she started to snore, soft little snuffles. I hugged her close and thought, Wow.

The office

With Madeleine just three weeks old, I had to go back to work last week, part time. On the up-side, I find my colleagues to be rather cuddly.

Feels like

What does it feel like being a mother? Being Madeleine's mother is a whole new kind of love, something I couldn't ever have imagined, a love so powerful that it threatens to burst out of me at any moment, as though flesh and bones are not enough to contain it. Also, it feels a bit like this. Especially the squeeze part in the middle. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw4KVoEVcr0]

Positive thinking

Sometimes you just need a little positive energy in your life. A little hope, a glimpse of that light at the end of the tunnel. Wouldn't you agree? I can't thank you enough for all your kindness and thoughts and prayers on this post. With all my heart I want to tell you how much reading your words in the comments has helped our family stay hopeful and think positive.

One day when Madeleine is older I will show her your comments so she can know that she was thought of and loved by friends and strangers alike throughout the world at a time when she (and her mama) truly needed it.

Underneath and overhead

You have never been so afraid. Your daughter looks up at you from the crook in your right arm, makes a kissy face and then a smile and gurgles happily, pink and plump and blue-eyed. She is the picture of health. And though you try to fight them back, you feel the hot tears spill over your cheeks. They fall onto her upturned face and you wipe her dry, then tenderly stroke her soft hair.

You try to take it all in as the doctor talks on about the hole in her heart, the one that is half a centimetre wide, that is pumping blood into her lungs that shouldn’t be there. Your precious baby girl. She is only 17 days old, how can you protect her?

“Probable,” he says. Probable is the word he chooses to describe the likelihood that your tiny baby will need to undergo open-heart surgery in six to eight weeks. There is a moment in which you think you are going to be sick but instead you bring up a sob that is as hard as stone, and drop more silent tears onto your daughter's little face. “Although she might surprise us,” the doctor adds.

When you get home she cries and cries, over-tired and overwrought, so you swallow your own tears to try and comfort hers. Eventually, her dad sings her to sleep. You tip-toe into the room and look over her as she slumbers, her face relaxed and lovely, her dreams trouble-free.

But everything has changed. The joy you felt this morning from watching her sleep is gone. Now you know that underneath that peaceful face, those eyelashes that softly quiver, is her traitor’s heart, a heart that even now is pumping blood where it shouldn’t go, pulling your daughter into danger.

You wonder how you can ever be normal for her, in the days and weeks to follow, while there is nothing to do but watch and wait. I wrote the piece above yesterday after returning home from the hospital with Madeleine's diagnosis ("ventricular septal defect" is the official term), as a way to express the grief that overwhelmed me.

I wrote it in the second person because I just couldn't stand any closer to the fear. I didn't call my friends or tell a soul, because I couldn't (and still can't) talk about it. So my words on here will have to do instead.

But I want to end this post on a more positive note, with the double rainbow that stretched overhead like protective arms around our family when we took a walk together on the weekend.

There is good reason for us to have hope, among the fear. We discovered the defect in time, thanks to the vigilance of one of the midwives at our maternity hospital who picked up an anomaly the very night our baby was born. We have one of the best health systems in the world, and Madeleine's care will be limitless and free, thanks to our tax dollars at work. All three cardiac surgeons at the children's hospital are world class, and each performs this operation on babies several times a week. And after her operation, Madeleine will be well. No suffering. No more danger.

Yesterday I let grief take me. Just for one day. Now I will be positive and full of that hope, because that is what my little girl needs.

While we watch for symptoms to appear and wait for the operation she will most likely have to have, I will dedicate my hours to giving her love, making her laugh, ensuring she feels safe, and dreaming about her future.

Peonies

You could be forgiven, if you spend any amount of time at all reading blogs, for sometimes feeling the need to express the odd bout of what I like to call “peony fatigue.” Peonies are undoubtedly favourites of bloggers at every corner of the Internet, and these lovely flowers can show up in almost every conceivable iteration. This is especially so at the moment, as the northern hemisphere slides happily into early summer (that's peony season, folks). Blogger + peony = somewhat of a cliché, it is true. But if that is the case then I guess I’m a cliché*, too, because I adore peonies. Links (peonies on Etsy): 1-photographic print 2-letterpress stationery 3-terrarium necklace 4-granny squares 5-oriental print 6-cupcake toppers 7-white peony root 8-bubble bath

I love how gloriously big and fulsome and womanly peonies are. They are delicate but not demure. Feminine but not frail. They are the Rubenesque ladies of the floral world. I love the heady fragrance they carry. And I love that when peonies are pink, they are wholly and unashamedly pink.

Last week I spent 11 hours on a hospital bed, toiling in a labour of love to bring my beautiful daughter Madeleine into the world. Around mid-morning a nurse came in, her head and torso hidden beneath a floral bouquet, overflowing with roses and lilies and an abundance of buds and half-opened peonies. They had been sent by Mr B’s team at work, assuming our baby was already born. The nurse put them on a table directly in front of me, and I focused on those flowers as each new contraction tightened.

Later that night, after I was wheeled into the ward and lay in a fresh bed with my child in my arms, overcome with exhaustion and love and wonder and shock and pain and awe, they carried the flowers into my room, too.

At 4am when I woke to feed my child, I could smell the blooms.

And at 7am when they brought in my breakfast and opened the curtains to the cold Melbourne morning as my little girl curled warm and drowsily on my chest, I saw the peonies had opened. Another birth. They were magnificent.

Mr B came in not long after and bent to sniff them. “What did you say these are called again?”

“Peonies,” I told him.

“What? Penises?!?”

“Peonies!” Yeesh.

Once the name had been clarified, we agreed that they were beautiful beyond any flower. “For the rest of her life, peonies will be Madeleine’s flower,” we said.

Madeleine and I left the hospital to come home on a windy morning four days later. The last of the yellow oak leaves whirled in gusts along the tramlines and pathways, and winter clouds scuttled across the sky in an ever-moving patchwork of sunshine and shade. I sat in the back seat with Madeleine, but I could see Mr B’s face in the rear-vision mirror. His smile was as wide as mine.

The front gate creaked as we opened it onto the herb garden that fronted our little house, and Mr B reached into the letterbox to check it as we passed through. Inside was a postcard from my new friend Kate, who I had met at a blogging conference a couple of months back, welcoming Madeleine into our family. Kate is sending out 100 postcards in 100 different Pantone colours. Guess which colour she happened to pick to send to us? *I read once that a cliché only becomes a cliché because it is the best way of expressing something. There could be something in that, don’t you think?

And one more thing: THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for your sweet comments and wishes on this post. I feel truly blessed to have so many friends met and unmet, near and far.

Meet Miss Madeleine

My baby girl. She has a head of dark hair, eyes the colour of a storm at sea, and a bottom lip to die for (and kiss). We are both recovering in luxury, well cared for by her proud dad and big sister, both of whom were magnificent during labour and delivery.

I look forward to bringing you tales of Madeleine's adventures very soon.

The thing about Emily Rose

Emily Rose is my stepdaughter, although none of us like to use that term since it seems so cold, and doesn’t even come close to conveying the sense of family that we have. Next month, she will be 14. Emily Rose is beautiful, intelligent, complex, passionate, affectionate and deeply loyal. She drives me crazy. Crazy with a love for her that makes me feel so proud, so possessive, so fiercely protective of her that I am churned up in a constant internal battle of emotions versus reality ("I cannot be her mother. I should not be her mother. She already has a good mother. But, dammit, I feel like her mother").

Are you a step mother or step father? Do you know this beautiful, terrible, unquenchable conflict?

Emily Rose is wonderfully creative, and she and I share a love for many projects, like photography, film, writing, cooking and craft. We also share similar tastes in movies, television and some books, something that I like to think makes Emily Rose particularly mature, rather than me immature. Disagree if you dare. We drive Mr B crazy on road trips, telling and retelling our favourite moments from Flight of the Conchords, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Harry Potter movies, comparing new music we've discovered, and sharing where we’re up to in the latest Frankie mag or The Hunger Games.

But Emily Rose is also a teenaged girl, which means she comes with other attributes. She has strong opinions on everything and isn't afraid to share them. She is incredibly messy, unceasingly hungry, tireless when it comes to shopping for clothes, has about a zillion friends, and is obsessed with taking photographs of herself and said zillion friends.

You can’t predict Emily Rose. From her father she has inherited a palpable charisma, an entertainer’s love of humour and performance, a head of stunning curls, and a furnace-like temper that’s as quick to flare up as it is to subside.

Sometimes I find it hard to navigate these extremes, both in Emily Rose and in Mr B. I’m a slow burner. Slower to rise in temper but, I am ashamed to admit, a lot slower than either of them to apologise or forgive. It takes me a lot longer to understand my own emotions, let alone anyone else’s, and the ‘thinking time’ I require in the interim teeters dangerously close to the edge of sulks (and has been known to tumble over at times).

Anyway, the thing about Emily Rose is this:

She is to blame for the splints on my hands that make it so difficult for me to type this post. For the fact that I am sitting in a rocking chair with one leg elevated and a thigh under an ice pack to ease the searing pain. She is the reason that I cast a shadow roughly the size of a garden shed, and have to pee just about every half hour.

You see, I never wanted children of my own. I liked children, I just didn’t think I could give a child the life it deserved. And I lived such a rich and wonderful life, full of love and travel and adventure, that while I knew I would miss out on one experience by not having a child of my own, I still had so much for which to be thankful.

Emily Rose changed all that. Through her I had a taste, just a little taste, of what it would be like to be loved by someone for whom you would lay down your life. Because at the same time that I was discovering that I loved Emily Rose more than I ever believed I could love anyone, she gave me her love, too.

From the day I met her, in London when she was just nine years old and her beautiful sister Meg was 14, Emily Rose welcomed me into her family. In time, that welcome turned to friendship, and then love. And the sweetness she showed me, her affection, her acceptance, completely changed my outlook on parenthood.

So when my little Baby B enters the world, she can thank Emily Rose not only for being the best big sister a baby girl could desire, but also for her very existence. Because Baby B is as much a product of my love for Emily Rose as she is of my love for Mr B.

On eternal life

I finished work this week, so I celebrated by schlepping around in my tracksuit with no make-up and unwashed hair, reading books with my feet up on the couch, cleaning the house, doing a bunch of yoga stretches, setting up the baby's nook, and packing the baby's and my suitcase for hospital. This was good timing because Baby B also reached full term this week, meaning that even though the due date is still a couple of weeks away, she could choose to arrive at any time and not be premature.

It is also rather nice because I can now use some of the 20 percent use of my hands the physiotherapist tells me carpal tunnel has left me to write blog posts and work on my novel, instead of writing for my clients.

However if I’m honest, I’m still probably pushing things a bit. I’m wearing great big splints on both hands (Mr B says I have “cyborg arms”), and I’ve lost most of the feeling in my right hand as I type this. The pain woke me up again last night despite the splints, the massages, the ice packs and the regular visits to the physio.

Another reason I’m kept awake of late is that Baby B is pressing on a nerve in my pelvis, which creates a sensation not unlike a searing hot frying pan resting on my thigh. There are moments when this sudden burning has brought me to my knees, almost vomiting from the pain.

Yet, I suspect that if this is the sum total of my pregnancy suffering, I have fared very well indeed.

And then there are the other sensations.

Like when, mid numbness or searing pain or both, Baby B rolls over and elbows me in the ribs. Or kicks me hard in the side. Or I feel my entire uterus constrict in those strange ‘practice contractions’ they call Braxton Hicks.

And I think, WOAH, there is an actual HUMAN CHILD growing INSIDE me. And she is ALIVE.

And I am overcome with wonder.

From the start, my body knew how to nurture this child into life. Baby B is big and strong because my body took care of her. It knew what to do although I had no idea.

And now my body is preparing to send my child into the world and straight into my cyborg arms. I cannot wait.

Baby B's kicks are a reminder that I am playing my own part in the miracle of eternal life.

So it is with these lofty thoughts for company that my little neurological ailments come to mean almost nothing at all. “It’s only pain,” I tell myself, which is all it is. Just signals from my brain.

If I were a genius I could probably even turn those off, too. Or change them into pleasure signals, or something.