Pregnant adj.
1.Carrying developing offspring within the body.
4. Having a profusion of ideas.

For a while I was both.

Fuck I thought, as the first suspicion grew. Fuck fuck fuckety fuck when the pee stick instantly showed two bright pink lines. Seriously, was the universe playing some gigantic joke?

Joke #1: Not long before, in a conversation about third children with friends, I had said I was done, and for the first time ever, I meant it.

Universe: Ho ho, a definitive statement.

Joke #2: I had honestly thought there was no chance of this. No chance, because we weren't methodically trying to conceive, like we had to for Téo, Lukan and the embryo in between that didn't make it. No chance, because of my age.

Universe: Tee hee, by someone who seems to have forgotten her sex education!

Joke #3: In the last six months or so, we've passed on pretty much all our baby stuff.

Universe: Chortle, chortle, it just gets better.

Joke #4: In our end-of-year letter, I made a quip about our new au pair that could have been interpreted to mean we were having a baby.

Universe: Chuckle, chuckle, let's see her field questions about 5th household members while actually pregnant!

Joke #5: In February, I am stepping in as a maternity replacement for 7 months for one of my best clients.

Universe: Ha ha ha, a maternity replacement who, ha ha ha, is pregnant! Won't the client be thrilled!

Yeah.

But then, even knowing the hurdles to cross before a baby was in our arms, as the days and then weeks passed and physical manifestations of pregnancy became apparent, I couldn't help but skip ahead. To practical issues: cars, bedrooms. The speed of the birth. To unimportant, but irresistible, imaginings: hair colour, gender. Names.

All that ended at the first doctor's appointment. No heartbeat. A streak of tissue the size of a 5-week embryo, instead of a 9-week fetus with arms and legs and a head.

It still seems like a cosmic joke, only crueler now.

Cruel joke #1: The embryo died pretty much at the same time I discovered I was pregnant.

Cruel joke #2: I was fine, truly fine, with only having two kids. Now I'm back to wondering.

Cruel joke #3: The extra doctor's appointments and hospital visits, on top of all the other appointments I'd already scheduled to get out of the way before I start my new full-time job, and on top of the several other projects I need to finish for other clients before then.

Cruel joke #4: Even the term for this kind of miscarriage, "missed abortion", which seems to imply that I missed something, that I should have known this past month that the beginnings of our baby had died, instead of seeing every bloodless day as a sign of hope.

So. Here I am now, no longer pregnant in any sense, blindsided by post-D&C hormones, mourning the idea of a new baby, wishing this one was still alive, struggling to accept the end this miscarriage means to my reproductive years, an end that somehow seems more awfully final, more finally final, than simply believing I was too old.

Sad, in other words, and a bit weepy. OK, but sad and a bit weepy.

Smooth landing

At midnight local time, after a 14-hour flight in which you got little sleep, in a foreign city where you now have a 9-hour stopover, after an extremely long queue through passport control, when the taxi driver taking you to your hotel is a recent arrival with no idea of where he is, and your motion-sickness prone son is spewing his poor little guts into the median-strip vegetation after a few too many missed exits on various roundabouts, you begin to think it would have been better to have waited out the stopover at the airport.

But actually, this was not the case.

Despite too long getting to the hotel, despite only getting a couple of hours sleep once we finally arrived, and despite travelling alone with the kids on the second leg home with no further sleep, I have never arrived back from Australia feeling so good. So completely fine. So effortlessly able to jump straight back into life over here.

It's possible there were other contributing factors - the sky was high and blue instead of low and grey, the starting of our new au pair the next day meant there were appearances to keep up, and the absence of a husband meant those appearances were all up to me - but instead of the usual blech of exhaustion and surreality of no longer being in Sydney, in just a few short hours I had unpacked, done a load of washing, and gotten the kids into bed. Without any yelling, even. And then, when jet lag woke me at 5am, I got up and started work. No procrastination, no faffing about, just right back into it.

Methinks a hotel stopover is now mandatory.

First things first

Happy new year!

'Tis the season to be busy

So I started this post two weeks ago... but yes, you guessed it, was too busy to finish it before leaving for Sydney. And now here I am there, with Lukan, who is having a very good time with his cousins and as an only child, as evidenced by this conversation from last night:

- Mummy, are we staying in Sydney until Christmas?
- Yes! And who's coming on Christmas Day?
- (Blank look)
- Who's not here from our family?
- Gwandma?
- Well yes, Grandma will be coming over to Uncle M's and Aunty J's on Christmas Day, but who else isn't here?
- (Thinks for a bit) I dunno.
- Have you forgotten you have a brother?
-(Face lights up) Teo!!
- And who else?
- (Blank look)
- Have you forgotten you have a father?
- No, I don't got a fah-ver.
- You don't have a papa?
- (Face lights up) Papa!!

At least he wasn't disappointed to remember the rest of his family.

In which my insistence on the Whole Truth leads to an awkward moment

- Mummy, you're playing with my zizi*!

- No I'm not, I'm washing you.

Hmmm, this could be a good teaching moment.

- You know Lukan, it's OK for me to touch your penis while I'm washing you in the bath, but it's never OK for anyone to play with it. Not me, not anyone. OK?

Oh cripes, I don't want him growing up thinking it's off limits for ever.

- Well, until you are an adult. When you're an adult it's OK. 

Wait, that's not entirely right either.

Well, if it's your choice. It's only OK if it's your choice.

Jeez, this is not exactly very coherent. Let's get back to the main point.

 But it's never OK when you're a child.

OK, well, hopefully he got something out of all that.

- Mummy, do you let papa play with your zizi sometimes?


* French for willy, as well as female genitalia.

Interlude

So that last post was a little disingenuous, me moaning about the cold and grey when in fact I was only days away from escaping it. And a lovely escape it was, a solo trip to Sydney for a wedding and some one-on-one time with my Aussie family.

I got back on Tuesday. It seems even colder and foggier... but over the muted grey I see the blue of jacarandas and the light of a stronger sun... which should keep me going for the next 3 weeks, until I return to Sydney again.

Schism

I've mentioned this before, but late autumn leaves me feeling deeply divided.

On the one hand is the cold and the grey and the fog. These are unwelcome enough by themselves, but knowing they are merely a mild harbringer of what's to come makes them even more unpleasant. My thoughts don't easily skip to joyful anticipation of snow and skiing and chalets and wood fires - which is kind of sad, as I love all of these. Instead, I find myself hunkering down, steeling my mind for the long wait until winter is over. Or else actively planning for spring:

But then, when the sun finally clears the fog, the sheer beauty is undeniable. And for a couple of hours - or even a whole day if we're lucky - I wouldn't change anything for the world.