I changed things up this week. Story time remains at bedtime for C, but E and S now have stories after S has a morning feed and before breakfast. And, without any pushing from me, E has started doing stories at bedtime too. Win!
Tonight after the big girls had finished their bath, E went to the bookshelf and pulled out her current favourite book, a board version of The Gruffalo’s Child, and started reading it. I haven’t read it to her very much. In fact, I don’t think I’ve managed to read it entirely yet as she keeps turning pages for me and getting to the same page and saying the same phrase, over and over, looking very worried, and I don’t know what she is saying but this is clearly very important. I didn’t read it to her tonight though, because C found the Frozen book after months (MONTHS!), months of searching and all was well with the world. She sat on my lap and I started reading it, then E came over and snuggled in and I had my two big girls cuddled around me as I read to them and my heart melted.
Stories in bed in the mornings have been a mix of sensory books and paper story books. Tickle Tickle Peter (a very sweet Peter Rabbit book for S) and That’s Not My Reindeer which always starts in front of S and mysteriously ends up in E’s hands, just like any Bluey book (Bob Bilby is pictured). A new one for E is Cuddles and Snuggles (aww), and both girls are enjoying one of my dearest books, Zin Zin Zin! A Violin! There is a long backstory of how it came to be in our family (I won’t go into that here), and it was the first book that made C smile when she was a baby. All of my girls love it and are really engaged when it is read.
I realise I should document what C borrows from the school library, too. She gets such a kick out of being able to borrow every single week. This week she brought home two princess books. Of course. Princess Beatrice and the Rotten Robber (Elizabeth Honey), and Barbie Princess Charm School. One I love and the other … I don’t love it. Unfortunately, C feels the opposite. That said, she has picked plot holes throughout the Barbie book so I’m not too disappointed.
I was at a nearby shopping centre yesterday. I had to walk past people trying to talk to people about I don’t even know what. Dinner delivery service or something. This will make your dinnertime so much easier, she called. I smiled and shook my head and kept walking. And then realised: she assumed that I did the cooking. That I would be the one making dinner, maybe prepping it during the day and putting it together at dinnertime while juggling at least one child and the bedtime tired and the end of day hungry. Ha. Wrong!
No, instead I am married to a man who loves to cook. Who is a fantastic cook. Who will find a recipe on Instagram that he wants to make and then he will just make it. Who has favourite chefs and will find their top tips and recipes and follow their advice. We enjoy lovely food in our family.
At the end of week 2, C came home from school with homework. Oh the excitement! She sat down right away and did most of it in about 10 minutes. At the end of week 3, homework included a sheet with ‘bonus homework activities’. These were things like taking a walk along your street and noting all the places that you could find numbers, or teaching your family hand signs, or asking parents and grandparents where they are from, or helping out at home by making your bed or cleaning your room or helping make dinner. (Side note: I love these teachers!)
After a couple of weeks of thinking, oh we could do one of those extra things… maybe next week…? I finally made a decision. C would help me make heart-shaped pizzas for dinner on Valentine’s Day. And she did! We had a great time and she ate a LOT (rare for her).
Then, this week, I thought about the green mac and cheese that I’ve been wanting to make for months and decided that Tuesday night would be it. And C would help me. And we might make this into a thing, a thing that we do. C helps mummy make dinner on Tuesday nights.
Because this is a new thing, it is still a totally and utterly crazy thing that makes me question my sanity. Why am I trying to do this when I have a baby doing a short nap? Or needing to get the baby to stay awake because she has clearly decided not to do an afternoon nap because we are in that annoying stage of nap-dropping? Why am I trying to do this when I have a responsible and helpful 4-year-old but also a very enthusiastic just-turned-2-year-old who wants to help with everything and will almost but not quite burn herself at every step of the way?
That said, I think this is a really important thing to do. I have long been a big believer in the benefits of baking and this is just the savoury equivalent. It is teaching me as much as it is teaching the girls. Life skills are important, as are maths skills and creative skills and problem solving (being realistic here, it won’t be long before we start a dish without having all the right ingredients). Learning how to mix different substances while keeping as much of it as possible in the bowl is not something I could have imagined I would need to teach 5 years ago. Yet here were are.
I don’t have a plan for a dish for this coming Tuesday but I DO know that I will be prepping as much as is humanly possible during the day. Also, recipe suggestions welcome!
E is two! She’s finally, actually, really two. And, just like it has felt like she’s been two for months anyway, it doesn’t feel like there was much birthday. The day was marked to show she was now officially older: I sent some mini cupcakes along to daycare; and we had a very small celebration involving cake and balloons with my parents and a family friend. But we didn’t have our usual special breakfast. We didn’t do lots of presents. The presents that she has received have been totally ignored, or accepted like they were just meant to be, or railed against with tantrums.
And wow, were there tantrums. I wouldn’t let her eat cupcakes on the way to daycare. I wasn’t daddy. Daddy was trying to put sandals on her feet when there were balloons to play with. There were no more blueberries. The cake was not yet in her mouth. I wouldn’t let her eat all the M&Ms off the top of the cake.
There were, of course, also utterly delightful and lovely parts of the day. C and E sitting quietly together on a chair to watch ABC Kids. C leaning over to give E a kiss on the forehead. E climbing onto the bed where I was feeding S and getting right up close to S and staring into her eyes before giving her a kiss on the cheek. The little shivers of happiness when someone said happy birthday. Seeing her daycare teacher when we were heading home and being shown such a sweet photo of E, totally overwhelmed with delight as she sat in front of the cupcakes. Cuddles and ‘wuv you’s and kisses on both cheeks. Her face when she saw the cake. The excited screams from C and E as they played Keepy Uppy, or tried to run past daddy without being eaten.
All in all, a happy day. Happy birthday to our funny and utterly delightful E. Two!
Or, ‘Well, That Was Unexpected’. Except you can’t start anything about Valentine’s Day like that, can you? People think either something wonderfully good (‘you got engaged?!’) or something wonderfully bad (‘he broke up with you on Valentine’s Day? Oh that’s rough…’). Neither of those things apply here. Already married. Still married. Still in a relationship that we both consider to be loving and supportive and respectful.
And although we don’t really go in for the big Valentine’s Day hoo ha (for want of a better word), it does not go unnoticed. Flowers and chocolates were given, a special breakfast made, the things that often go unsaid were said.
And although I feel that Valentine’s Day is perhaps a day more for grownups than for 4-year-olds, I did a few heart-themed activities with the girls in the last week or so. C drew a whole page of hearts that she then started to colour in and assign each to a classmate. E happily painted on some hearts that I drew for her. I made some heart-shaped hair clips for C to wear today, and cut her strawberries and her peanut butter sandwich into hearts. We made heart-shaped pizzas for dinner.
And although I planned on taking the girls straight to the shops after the school pickup, the weather had other ideas. I knew that this would happen eventually, that a school pickup would coincide with a thunderstorm on a day when I had no choice but to take the younger girls with me in the double pram. Thankfully, my girls are up for adventure. I kept thinking in my head that we would get to the shops, but there came a point where I had to admit that this was just dangerous. Unavoidable, but dangerous to do any more than was absolutely vital.
Unfortunately, to be safe means crossing at a set of lights instead of jaywalking a major road near the crest of a hill. Unfortunately, by not jaywalking we were forced into taking a detour then another to avoid flooded intersections and roads. We still had to walk next to a flooded road and we witnessed some cars being sensible, taking turns, driving slowly, driving near the middle of the road, being mindful of our presence. And then there were others, who drove close on the tail of the car in front, who stayed near the curb, who didn’t slow down and seemed to enjoy the big wash of water they produced.
Fortunately, we made it home in one piece. As the rain was starting to ease. And just in time for the Bureau of Meteorology to send me a notification: Severe thunderstorm warning. We laughed and laughed and laughed.
Fortunately, school doesn’t start until 9am. I predict tomorrow morning will be spent with the hairdryer: homework folder, homework book, leaflet on fundraising, and school shoes are all sodden. What fun.
It feels an age since I’ve shared what we’ve been reading. I’m putting this down to E being such a different child from C, on top of our home life being a wildly different home life. C would always have a story or five before bed. E was resisting more and more until I just gave up. It makes me sad to say it but it was just too hard. There was only so much I could force her to sit with me and read so I put her story time on the back burner, knowing that we would come back to stories at some point.
And we did. At this point, I would like to thank Blue. E was given Verandah Santa and Bob Bilby last Christmas. Throughout the year we were also given Sleepytime and Hammerbarn. These books are soooooo well-loved. So much so that I’ve had to remove Sleepytime from sight as E would get obsessed with it and turn the pages too quickly and we all know how that goes. We haven’t found our groove with story time just yet but I am relieved that books are being rediscovered.
C has continued to have at least one story a night and – great excitement – was finally allowed to borrow from the library at school last week. Three nights since then, I went by her bedroom when she was meant to be asleep and heard her telling her toys all about what was in the stories. Libraries are fantastic. She’s a bit sad that she has to return the books tomorrow but rather excited that she can then choose MORE books to borrow! Bliss.
That brings us to S. I am sure that her experience of books is much more interrupted than it was for either of the older girls. “Here is the blue sheep, and here is the WHAT WAS THAT? What was that sound? Ok put that down… And here is the red sheep. Here is the bath sheep E, stop, get down from there, thank you, and here is the bed sheep. But where is no, I said NO, hands off! Gentle… gentle… no sweetie she needs to breathe. Thank you, maybe we can play with it next? But not shoved into her face like that…” etc. That said, this week has been especially lovely. E is past the stage where she pulls so enthusiastically (or intentionally) that any flaps from lift-the-flap books are ripped off. S is in the stage of knowing that this bit of coloured cardboard moves and there’s another picture behind it and ooh look! It’s an elephant! So I have been able to read Dear Zoo (Rod Campbell) to both of them, together, delightfully. This coming week we will also revive some of our other flappy books and I may even get inspired to fix the no-longer-very-flappy books.
Other books that have been read often this week are Kissed by the Moon (Alison Lester), and Where is the Green Sheep (Mem Fox and Judy Horacek). The former was for S from the Christmas Eve Book Fairy. It was one I borrowed from the local library when C was a baby and I love it. I have read it a few times with all girls around me this week and that is possibly one of my highlights. A beautiful wish for my babies. The latter had been hiding under a sofa for a time so its rediscovery has been a joy. Every pair of sheep brings smiles. Every reading brings smiles.
Is it possible? Surely not. E turns two in less than two weeks. This small person, who takes up so much space in our lives and our hearts, who is showing so much development and growth on new levels every day, who is so capable of so so much – she’s only one.
This small person, who loves drawing and painting but not so much on paper, who will maybe draw a little bit on a scrap of paper before scrunching it up and, preferably, dipping it in any nearby spilled water before sliding it to the floor then dropping all the pencils to the floor while saying ‘uh-oh’ as she watches each one hit the floor. Who will tell me each colour as she chooses it, or asks for it, or hands me the pot or the tube saying ‘blue, lid, o? Peeeeese’ with fists up and out and elbows in. Who consistently goes straight to mixing blue and red then tells me, when I ask, that her favourite colour is pur-pur.
This small person, who is turning babble and nonsense syllables into understandable sentences. Who has evolved from the very sincere, very dramatic, totally unintelligible streams of sound. Who will now say ‘nigh nigh, wub youuuuu’ or ‘she you layer, love you’ and totally and utterly melt my heart. Who will go to the step ladder and hold its side and say, with a Please Face to rival Bluey, ‘mih?’ (mix), hoping that I will consent to some baking. Who will be dancing at the kitchen entrance, be asked to take C’s water bottle to her, have it handed to her from the freezer, and toddle – that particular toddler movement that is faster than a walk but not quite a run – look down at the bottle in her hands and exclaim ‘ooh, fweezy col!’ Who will spend a good 10 minutes of a post-school-drop-off walk singing out ‘daddyyyyy…. Where are youuuu?’ Or tell me, pointing at daddy’s sofa, ‘daddy were’ (daddy work). Or go to where she thinks I am, exclaim ‘huh!’ when I’m not there and then call ‘mummy…. Where ARE you???’
This small person, who will see that daddy has snacks in the kitchen and she will run away down the hallway to the bedroom while saying, almost to herself, ‘co’ (cot’), coming back to a slightly mystified daddy to put on that Please Face again for some chippies please as she has just put her dummy in the cot, where it belongs. A pant of excitement, ‘dadyou’ (thank you), and toddling off with her cracker or chip or blueberry to sit on one of the child-sized chairs to eat her prize. Who will hand you her finished yoghurt pouch saying ‘hinny’ (finished’) or just go to the kitchen and put it in the bin herself. Who will amaze her daycare teachers by clearing her plate and cup after eating. Who will ask, repeatedly, day after day after day, for ‘ah, ah, oooh?’ Which is, of course, an ice cube? And she will often make sure she has her bowl (‘bo’) for us to fill with ice cubes.
This small person, who will climb onto our bed, or remove a lid, or reach something we thought was out of reach, and exclaim ‘I did it!’ Who will be in the bath and lean out and point to toys and when I get it wrong will say ‘no-no’ and keep pointing to what she wants without getting frustrated until I get it right and she nods excitedly and takes it saying thank you. Who will be holding something and say ‘ready, deddy, gooooo’ and you just have to be aware that she is about to throw and she can really throw and although she often throws down the hallway she sometimes just throws a plastic play picnic plate across the living room to clock you on the nose.
This small person, who loves loves loves singing and dancing. Who will hear the start of the Encanto! soundtrack and seize up in excitement, shake her hands in front, and sing and dance along to the music. Who will scream GOOOOOOOOOOO!! like a banshee at the same point, every time, in Let It Go. Who will sing, in tune, the last word or two in most of the songs from a handful of Disney movies. Who will sing the last word or two or three of every phrase in her favourite tv show tunes.
This small person, who knows her way around an iPad. Who will say, with that killer Please Face, Bluey? to ask if she can watch shows. Who will ask to get out of the cot when it is still too early for anything, give me a cuddle, ask to get down, pick up the iPad from the chair, try to pull my charging cord from my phone but allow me to do that so I can plug it in to the iPad then unlock it and launch ABC Kids. Who is only allowed to use an iPad for ABC Kids and can pause an episode and press the X to exit that episode and press the arrow to go back to a different selection of shows. Who apparently has favourite episodes of certain shows, and regularly picks (saying the correct name) ‘Dark’ for Bing, ‘Rain’ for Bluey, ‘The Dentist’ for Peppa Pig. Who is actually only allowed to use it for ABC Kids but has been known to leave that app and launch all sorts of other apps including, her favourite, the Music app when she sees the Bluey icon up there but will get upset because she actually really wants to keep watching Bluey and not just listen to the music. Who has been known to get the split screen happening. Who will quite confidently get onto the YouTube app and start scrolling through Cocomelon and Wiggles and Laurie Berkner and Super Simple Songs and Frozen and Frozen II and Moana and Encanto!
This small person, who mostly likes to just wear a nappy because the weather is hot, but can take off that nappy and say ‘toi, lee?’ and then goes through all the steps of going to the toilet before running away from any fresh nappy, squeak-laughing with mischief all the way. Who can half get her own clothes off and on. Who gets herself in and out of the bath with ease, whether or not it’s what she actually wants. (I know. Toddlers.) Who replies with utter mischief and cheekiness. Hm? Whaaaat?! Lear-lee! (Really!)
I am in the ocean. A wave will approach and I can see it approach and I can feel the inevitability of its arrival, the crash as it breaks over me, the busyness of the swirling water, the pull as it returns to the ocean only to be replaced by another after a brief spell of calm. It is glorious, delightful, exhausting. When the sand beneath my feet starts to crumble things begin to be unsteady. Move too far away from the shore and there is zero respite from the energy required, no breaks even when there is no crashing wave because just to stay alive means staying on top of everything, treading water or clawing back to the surface.
Floating is not an option.
This is parenthood, family life for us right now. There are things I would love to do but even getting everyone to the shops (a 10 minute walk) is momentous these days. And although I love love love this ocean, it is hard to contemplate swimming farther afield. Swimming farther afield involves carrying, to varying degrees, children. I was never great at towing people when lifesaving.
A few weeks ago, Glenn applied for a few days off work. We could go on a holiday! Take the girls to the Gold Coast and let the younger two experience the beach for the first time! Or, ok, maybe not as far as the Gold Coast but maybe the Wynnum and Manly foreshore. Or, yeah, being more realistic, maybe South Bank? And its fake beach? Yeah.
In the end, while feeling like it may involve a mammoth amount of organisation, I didn’t prep anything at all beforehand. No hours the night before prepping snacks, nappy bag, towels, sunscreen, spare clothes, hats, drinks. We managed to do all of that in the morning – and still leave in the morning. Amazing.
When there, we were part of a crowd. Not so much of a crowd that it was unbearable, more like the size of crowd that makes you feel like you are part of the story, some of a whole lot of people doing the same thing at the same time at the same place. A family outing to South Bank on a hot and humid and sunny Sunday summer morning, for some beach time and water experience and ice cream. It felt like we were being … normal.
Did the girls enjoy themselves? Oh. My. Goodness. Did they ever.
C knew what was coming and was excited in anticipation then just loving, absolutely loving, the whole experience of beach with sand and water and splashing and water and playing and water, then crazy fountains with unpredictable water, then ice cream, ICE CREAM!!! She was allowed to have rainbow ice cream, with sprinkles, in a cone, and what’s this? You can eat the cone? And it’s delicious?! Wow!
E had no idea what hit her. A first beach experience. She must have thought this was the greatest bath ever. The screams of anguish as I pulled her out and dragged her over the hot sand onto the hot path were nixed when we arrived at the crazy fountains. The rollercoaster of emotions is such a toddler thing. Total and utter delight when the water worked. Total and utter sorrow when the water stopped. Repeat. Then, annoyance at being contained in the pram again but ooh what’s this? Rainbow ice cream in a cup? With sprinkles? I will eat three mouthfuls. That is all. Thank you but no more.
S was very much S. Fell asleep just before we arrived at the beach, so… no beach for her. Woke when we were at the fountains. Stayed very chill. I held her for a bit and she checked out the trees and the water… and the trees again… (I’m not sure if it’s a normal third child thing, but I didn’t take any – ANY – photos of her. At all. Thankfully, Glenn took some of me holding her. )
Did our girls sleep well that night? Er…. No. I thought C would be worn out, thoroughly exhausted, but still she didn’t sleep until around 8:30. E missed her nap so actually fell asleep in her high chair after dinner, stayed asleep as I picked her out and changed her nappy and put her in pyjamas and got her into the cot but then she was coughing and coughing and waking frequently until after 10pm.
Did we find it hard? Yes and no. It was in some ways, mostly because it was new and different and uncharted territory for us, but we also just got in and did it. No major disasters, or anything crucial left behind at either end, or inexplicable tantrums, or injuries or disappearances or even sunburn. In the post-outing rundown, it seems we did ok.
Did we feel proud of ourselves? Why yes. Yes we did. Our first big family outing, purely for pleasure, to a busy place with lots of people and two potential runners. And, most of all, we made our way to a different spot in our ocean. It was tough, it was different, it required both of us being totally switched on and on board, but it was also really satisfying. We did something that families DO. We made memories. We took fantastic photos. We got out of our comfort zone. Still glorious and delightful and exhausting but so, so worthwhile.
There have been so many starts. Consequently, so much of the stuff of our life has been missed here.
Like C finishing preschool and 4 years of childcare and going to prep transition mornings and finding out her big school class and teachers and starting to get uniforms. Like E moving from kisses being sometimes a little peck but sometimes ‘wahwah’ to always a little peck, moving up to the toddler room and now to pre-kindy, knowing all the actions to songs, singing the last word or two at the end of every phrase in songs from Frozen and Frozen II and Encanto! and Moana. Like S being fascinated by her hands and rolling both ways and revealing herself to be a definite redhead and smelling deliciously of burnt biscuit. Like the huge event of me taking girls to church, for the first time in 3 years, so that people keep getting confused about which girl is which as E is the age most people last saw C.
Like, Christmas. The joy of making things for everyone. The spiritual calm that comes with going to church in the lead up to Christmas so that the day is not just about getting things and eating food and hoping girls sleep on Christmas Eve so that mischief can happen.
Like, New Year’s Eve. Glenn only playing one concert so being home in time for us to be together at midnight for the first time in 5 years. But also C staying up painting with glitter glue so that she could watch the fireworks and running down the hallway shouting I’m so excited!!! then being rather disappointed at the skimpy view available from her bedroom. And E going to sleep relatively easily but then having a very unsettled night because of those 4 teeth still working their way through and then the bonus of loud, very loud, louder than they’ve ever been here, fireworks startling her and keeping her awake. And S, who normally sleeps through once she’s had a feed after her bath, waking at 10:30 and just not going back to sleep until well after midnight. What a fun start to the year.
And, why? Why have there been so many starts but no completions? Mostly E. Partly me.
E has taken to waking early. A couple of times in the last few months she has woken after 6 but usually she is awake before 5:30. Sometimes – like this morning, yay – way before 5. This morning she was awake just after 3, then S woke and wouldn’t resettle (teething, groan) and E kept looking out for her then was just… awake. And just after 4am C woke and wanted to come into our bed and suddenly the whole family is awake and there are yelps of you’re touching my leg and screams because someone is in the (perceived) wrong spot. Eventually, every morning, E gets to a point where she gets my iPad and hands it to me so I can set up ABC Kids and she watches shows and scrolls to other shows and occasionally leaves the app and gets into stocks or mail and will say ‘uh ohhhh’ repeatedly until I fix it and take her back to shows.
And I have been keeping my sanity through all this crazy time by making things. Staying up very very late and making things. Crochet. Craft. Sewing. I love it. I love creating something, especially if it is made from something that would have otherwise been discarded. Especially if it is made with love for someone I love. It is great for my sanity and self esteem. It is less great for the sleep or writing. But, new year and new plans… we’ll see. Here goes!
And, if you are keen to support me in making things do check out my sites:
These days are hard, you know? As I write this I am enjoying a rare spell of calm: big girls are watching ABC Kids on my iPad and not getting in each other’s way, I’m brewing a cup of tea and have just had the most delightful cuddle coo and smile session with my littlest. I am also permanently tired, yesterday finished at 11pm(ish), there was a toddler feed just after midnight, today started at 4:10am, I have a good whack of baby vomit on my shoulder and toddler snot on my skirt and smears of peanut butter here and there and very little patience for the rude behaviour that my biggest girl is exhibiting I think in anticipatory nerves about big school next year. Yikes.
There has been so much in our life in the last few months. Much of it medical, some of it wonderful and some… not so wonderful. But it all makes a life, all makes our life.
There has been Covid and associated hospitalisation and worry and never-ending coughing and rivers of snot. There has been the birth of our new baby, still very new, still amazement in my head that she is here and we are now a family of 5 but also that feeling that she was always meant to be here and now she is. There has been post-surgical infection with hospitalisation and worry and intense pain and weeks and weeks of nurse visits and reinfection and more pain and more antibiotics and being attached to a machine that flashes and buzzes and cannot get wet. There has been brain fog, intense brain fog that wasn’t really apparent until it started to lift. The sort that had me finally filling in the enrolment form for C for next year and stopping at the very first item – Name – and not being able to work out which name to put there. The sort that has me unable to do the simplest of crochet rounds. I no longer take for granted the ability to think things through and remember to respond to people and do more than one thing in a day.
I’m hoping that our medical life can go back to normal now. I’m hoping I don’t have to be at the doctor again until the 4 month checkup at Christmas. I’m hoping I can have more space to enjoy this time, hard as it is.
Space to enjoy and marvel at the new life that has joined us. Such a new person, with hair and eyes and nose and chin and cheeks and amazing fingers and soft skin. Space to enjoy snuggles with a little bundle, plump tummy with relaxed floppy arms and legs bent, heavy head falling into my shoulder. The warmth of a little baby, so new and delicate, needing to be close. Space to discover little things like eyelashes and eyebrows and hair and eyes and fingernails and toenails and elbows and dimples and facial expressions.
Space to enjoy and delight in her big sisters being big sisters, stroking her hair and replacing a dummy and holding her hand and getting down on the floor with her in tummy time and feeding her a bottle and being excited to see her in the mornings and after daycare.
Space to enjoy and be present in play. Taking all the girls outside or to the park, baby asleep in the carrier, big girls running around and dancing and scooting and walking along walls and picking leaves to give me ‘money’ or make me a ‘cake’ and doing ring-a-ring-a-rosie and removing sandals before standing on prickles then looking at me with a wobbly lip of betrayal.
Even though today has been tough, I am sitting here writing while the baby sleeps in her bassinet nearby and the big girls are playing calmly together with blocks and I have tears in my eyes, happy tears that this is my life. How lucky am I?!
I haven’t been able to write for a while. The stuff of our life was just too much for a bit. I’m hoping to get back into it, but I couldn’t let today pass without writing something.
One year ago, I had an accident with E. She was 2 months old, just shy of 9 weeks. I was out walking with her in a carrier, down a street in which I used to live, and tripped. I fell on her, breaking her femur.
When it happened I was sure I must have damaged her grossly and irreparably, that she would have damaged organs and broken ribs and internal bleeding. And because she was so little, it was so hard at the hospital to work out the extent of the damage. No way to know what was sore, where to check first. But the staff – what felt like a huge cohort of staff but was actually probably more than usual but not the dozens my emotional memory remembers – the staff were wonderful. Calm and thorough and reassuring. In our emergency bed area, E was checked over thoroughly and I was asked questions and they narrowed it down to a broken leg. Which still leaves me gobsmacked, that what felt like the whole of me including excess pregnancy weight fell on a tiny baby and all that happened was a broken leg. A very fixable injury. I stayed with her in the hospital from the Monday until the Thursday morning when she underwent non-invasive surgery to have a double leg hip spica cast put on. It stayed on for just under 4 weeks and now we just have checkups every 6 months. That’s it.
And, as we moved through the horror and fog and new reality of those few days, we came to realise that although it was horrible that it had happened to such a tiny and helpless baby, it was much better for it to have happened to her at that stage of development instead of later. She was still in the sleepy newborn stage so I wasn’t battling naps or trying to tire her out so she would sleep. She hadn’t started walking or crawling or even rolling so there was nothing to try to control there. She was still so little that hoiking her around with the cast on wasn’t such an effort.
So, there was much that turned out for the best. The best, considering the initial moment that began the whole thing and was an accident and unavoidable but still something we would rather not have had to go through.
But, my goodness. So much in my head of the memories of that time and the horror and the panic and the pain and the relief.
The relief that I had delayed her 6 week checkup due to a lockdown and she’d had it at 8 weeks instead, so she was still up-to-date with her vaccinations but we also had a recent weight for her.
The relief and gratitude we felt that, unlike C as a baby, E took a dummy and she took formula in a bottle and she didn’t need to be held or fed or rocked to sleep and she was much more of an on-schedule baby.
The relief and gratitude we felt for the kindness of the staff. Volunteers like the one who came around calmly with a Medicare form and only asked for Glenn’s name and date of birth and then took care of all the rest. Or the daily parade of volunteers offering to be with E if I needed a break when the last thing I wanted to do was leave her but they were so kind nonetheless. The nurse who took care of C in the emergency department, making sure she was fed and entertained and cared for. The succession of emergency department staff asking if I was ok and should I have an X-ray myself, actually? The different women who had to ask me on subsequent days how I was, or what happened, seeing my uncontrollable tears and put an arm around me and helped me feel like a person who had had a terrible accident and not just an auxiliary person attached to a baby in traction. The night nurses who didn’t wake me when E needed a feed but fed her themselves from the stash of expressed breastmilk or formula.
The confusion – which persists – as to how I fell on my right side but somehow still managed to break E’s right leg. The horror and panic and relief, all mixed in and simultaneous and hasn’t gone away yet, when the triage nurse asked about E’s head, had I protected it, held it as I fell, landed on it or did it hit the ground, what sort of surface was it that we landed on.
The physical pain, like the sting of hand sanitiser being my first indicator that I too had fallen, or, hours later, finding the mud all down my side where I’d taken the fall, or growing numb in my forearm as I held E still for nearly 4 hours while everything was sorted out like finding traction weights small enough.
The panic, like wondering what number to call to make a hospital appointment in an emergency. Or forgetting E’s date of birth or middle names.
The horror of putting a newborn in such pain. A shaky cup of tea that I nearly spilled all over myself as Glenn took C to the Starlight Room and the staff applied a nerve block to E and I was finally alone with myself for the first time all day and the enormity of what had happened kicked in: I went for a walk and nearly killed my newborn.
And then, how to tell people? ‘Nothing to worry about’… no. ‘Everyone’s ok’… no. Not really. ‘Please don’t worry, but’… Everything I tried was hard and wrong.
The saddest memory I have though is not being able to hold her. She was already a snuggly baby, and the natural instinct when a child is hurt is to hold them, but there was none of that. At most, we could hold her hand, but the traction and then the cast made anything else difficult. And I longed to hold her close to me, feel that heavy weight of a sleeping newborn and heal us both.
We both healed, of course. I had marks on my hands for a time where the scabs had been but I can no longer see them. Because E was a baby, all her body was doing was growing and building so she was cast-free within a month and then doing all the normal baby things. The last few months she has started climbing everything she can, and has started walking in the last few weeks. It’s amazing what can happen in a year.
The Stuff of Our Life 