When you’re revising a novel, it’s easy to lose objectivitybecome so delusional you can’t tell if you’ve just created a stinking mountain of goat poop or written the next Grapes of Wrath. Each scene starts to read like a passage in a holy text—or does it just feel that way because you’ve read it so many times the words are looping through your brain like a mantra?Fear not! INTERN is here to help. Here’s INTERN’s handy guide to figuring out when it’s time to hit the delete key and write that scene again.
10. The scene is not really a scene.
Your scene is not a scene if nothing has changed by the end of it.
Your scene is not a scene if there was no internal or external conflict, no matter how subtle.
Your scene is not a scene if you were too timid to let anything dangerous happen.
Your scene is not a scene if you were too cautious to let anything unexpected happen.
Your scene is not a scene if the reader is banging her head against the wall saying “What was the point of that stupid scene?”
Basically, your scene is not a scene.
9. The scene doesn’t achieve anything new.
Does your scene introduce important new plot information? How about new emotional information? Are the characters’ relationships developing? Or is this scene just rehashing material you’ve already covered in other scenes? You might have a case of scenis redundanitus (see here for INTERN’s post on that subject). If your scene doesn’t bring anything new to the table, what’s it doing in your story?
Generally when I go to a writing con, I try to read as many of the participants’ books as possible before I go. I didn’t read any of Debora Abela‘s books pre-con, because she’s best known for “Max Remy Super-Spy”, which is too young even for me (my reading level is about 9 and up 🙂 ).
But then she opened her comments by saying, “All kids’ writers face the problem of what to do with the parents. In Grimsdon it was very simple – I killed them.”
Naturally, that meant I had to read it. As a bonus, it’s set in a flooded city, and is written for a slightly older age group than her other books.
I was right to be excited: the world is haunting and brilliant (I especially loved the underwater scenes), and the obvious Global Warming theme is brought up without massive preaching.
The characters and writing style are great too, with plenty of tension between the young protagonists.
There’s just one problem: the plot. The book survives on the Rule of Cool – implausibility in fiction is fine as long as it creates a truly awesome situation or world – but the resolution completely backs off from coolness to good sense. Worst of all, it makes 90% of what the characters have been through utterly pointless.
I think non-writers would be a lot less sensitive to this flaw – at worst, they’d feel mildly disappointed by the ending. But it was a real shame all the same.
The book is winning a whole bunch of awards all the same.
Right now I’m re-re-re-reading one of the “Samurai Kids” series by Sandy Fussell, which is aimed at around 9-year olds while simultaneously being one of the best (even the most literary*) series I have ever read.
It’s a pretty, pretty Italian place in Woden (Canberra). CJ and I ate there last week in an effort to entice my body to take on more food. It worked well at the time.
I love all the wood, glass, and brick – with highlights of marble and steel. One of our friends did the lighting. This photo was taken with CJ’s phone, and doesn’t do it justice.
We took photos of the (rather nice) food, but I can’t stand to look at them again, sorry.
Pregnant women are infamous for vivid dreams. Last night, between 1am and 8am, I dreamed the following:
A pleasant afternoon with my long-dead grandparents; sneaking lemonade cordial into a radio station where I was due to read out 1 Kings (from the Bible); the pregnancy side-effect of mushrooms growing out of my hair, forehead, and the roof of my mouth (that dream also featured Lily and Marshall from “How I Met Your Mother) – oh, and my blood turned green; kissing a girl (who was displeased that I’d suddenly turned goth since we began dating); learning to drive a big rig during Christmas traffic.
These are/were my fears, in roughly chronological order:
1. Infertility.
Well THAT’S no longer an issue 🙂 I did gain 7 kilos from the mere thought, all the same (handily, I’m so sick I’m losing weight faster than a crash diet. . . yay?)
2. Miscarriage.
Not a big issue – plus, again, the intense nausea is reassuring.
3. Annoying strangers approaching me to tell their labor horror stories. My plan for this goes as follows:
Random stranger: Are you pregnant?
Me: Yep! Fifth time lucky – well, fifth child. Third pregnancy.
Random stranger: You had. . . triplets?
Me: Yep. See you later.
I’ll let you know if it works.
I gathered horror stories from friends pre-pregnancy (some are truly horrific) as a kind of innoculation.
Wacky conversations so far:
One friend seemed to suggest that I should go on a raw-food diet. To which I say HAH!
Another friend told me she was throwing up so much all through her pregnancy that she lost three stone and was eventually induced. (Had a great birth, though.) At the time, I thought, “Well, *I* won’t be constantly throwing up.”
One person (who has a gift for giving terror-inducing reassurance) told me (the pregnant woman with the anxiety disorder), “The most important thing about labor is you MUST STAY CALM. Otherwise your body releases adrenalin, and it hurts SO much more. And don’t scrunch up your face at all, either – that tightens things “down there”, and completely screws up the whole process.”
4. Labor itself (just not thinking about it).
5. Some kind of deformity (see two weeks ago for the squid baby – which CJ and I would love JUST AS MUCH), particularly one that took away Mini-Me’s chance to become independent one day (for his/her sake and for mine).
6. I accidentally maim or kill the child (or, less scary, something or someone else accidentally maims or kills them).
7. Colic. CJ was, and my niece was too (but she was treatable). I’m not a huge fan of screaming – and I hate the thought of my baby being in pain for months on end.
8. Kid is rude/rotten/mean/in pain/grows to hate me. Bound to happen. All I can do is my best, and choose to accept that they’re an individual in their own right. They’re my responsibility (less so as they grow older), but not an extension of me. I am not just a mother – I am also a wife, writer, friend, and human being.
9. Mini-Me is mentally ill – like me, my mum, and her mum. (I think I’m the worst – but hopefully that’s because my biodad was somewhat useless, and left when I was tiny. Which is enormously encouraging, because CJ is brilliant – very much the same type of man as my second Dad, who did a fine job raising me.) There are some things we can do to ameliorate mental illness and/or reduce the chance of passing it on. I can teach resilience by modelling, by letting my child fall and learn to stand up, and by valuing contentment over being unusual/special/hyper-meaningful (in my opinion, writing/art/dancing/etc is very bad for mental health). Whatever happens, I made the choice long ago that if they ended up like me, they were still a worthwhile individual who deserved to exist.
10. Kid has ADD – like his father and grandfather. It’s not a big fear, and we can help it by not letting them near a TV or computer screen for the first two years. (Or at least, we can try.)
That WAS my list. You’ll notice nausea didn’t even make the top ten. So much for that.
Today I’m at 8 weeks, which means I’ve dealt with two weeks of nausea and I probably have four to go. Next week I’ll be halfway.
I’m sleeping about twelve hours a day, which certainly helps. Thanks to Maxolon, I’m able to eat or drink something three times a day.
In unrelated unpleasant news, our younger cat Ana has been missing since Saturday. I don’t have high hopes for her.
If you are in the Woden area or Northern Tuggeranong, please keep an eye out. She is tortoiseshell and white, semi-longhaired, with two large bells on a collar around her neck.
This type of sandcastle requires a meeting of sand, water and something solid. You make it by scooping up very wet sand and drizzling it onto a solid surface. My mum taught me how.
The beach is Bar Beach (I think) at Merimbula in January this year.
Chuck Wendig did another brilliant post on his new baby, and I couldn’t resist reposting it below (remember, his blog is often MA). The original is here.
*PSSSHHcracklehisss*
“– you hear me? The stuff’s everywhere — black tar — came pouring out of diapers — could lay shingles with this stuff OH GOD HERE COMES MORE OF IT –”
*kkkkpsshhhhfsssss*
“– haven’t slept in days — seeing things — cherubs with wings, but not like out of a greeting card but like out of the damn Bible — so many eyes — fiery swords — chubby cheeks –”
*weeooooFSSHHHHcrackle*
“– think they’re cute but they’re deadly –”
“– energy levels low, rations dwindling –”
“– everywhere you go it’s always there watching waiting peeing –”
“– alert, alert, this thing’s got witch nails, it killed Samson, merciful Jesus it killed Samson! –”
“– we thought we controlled it, but no, no, it controls us! –”
” — such hubris, we thought we understood the parameters –”
*KKKKFSSSHHHHHBSSHHHH*
“– OH SWEET SID AND MARTY KROFFT IT’S CRYING AGAIN WHICH MEANS ITS HUNGRY — “
” — send sleep — vodka — baaaacon –”
CARRIER LOST
TheLittlestPenmonkeyBeseechesYou
The baby is well.
He’s covered in the acne of an 8th grade math nerd.
He’s still trying to tear off his own face with his komodo claws.
He still looks like we enrolled him in Baby Fight Club.
He sometimes smiles. He likes dancing to the Beastie Boys. His poop has transitioned from the foul black hell-slurry to something that looked like swamp mud to something that looks like deli mustard.
Monsieurs de Grandpre and de Pique discovered that their mistresses were actually singular, a Mademoiselle Tirevit cheating with both of them. Rather than kicking her to le curb they decided that honor – and sanity – both needed to be shot at. FROM THE SKY. They ascended to 2,000 feet in hot air balloons and started blasting at each other. De Pique managed to miss an entire hot air balloon with a blunderbuss and therefore deserved everything which came afterwards (de Granpire’s buckshot through his balloon and the ground through his everything.)
Be advised that although this article is pretty safe (PG for swearing and some amusing violence), the cracked.com site is often MA in both pics and words.
There’s a great deal of difference between a pregnant woman who claims she’s “really very, very sick” and hasn’t tried a single medication – and a pregnant woman who is on the strongest possible nausea meds and still throws up just because she walks past some food.
To all the medical personnel who gave me disbelieving looks this week – I told you so.
Being a vomit expert thanks to my days at sea (did I mention I threw up while working aloft? I did? Did I mention it was also raining? Well, it was), I already knew that the best thing about throwing up is the fifteen minutes afterwards, when your body actually thinks it’s solved the nausea problem and leaves you alone for a moment.
So I cleaned up my own chunder, drank water, and (gag) brushed my teeth.
I don’t feel better physically, but psychologically I’ve gone from a quivering jelly of patheticness to someone who is having a genuinely bad time and handling it pretty okay.
A couple of weeks ago, my nephew turned six. I enjoyed it roughly as much as he did. Here is his cake (and a toy he described blithely as a “turtle sharpener”, which for some reason made me think it sharpened knives. Those are pencil holes in its back, however):
The bottom layer is vanilla (with chunks of white chocolate). The middle layer is strawberry (with real berries) and the top is chocolate (with real chocolate chunks). There’s cream between each layer, and the top has chocolate icing, white chocolate swirliness, and sprinkles. Lots of sprinkles.
Dear rest of the world (USA, I’m looking at you): Public health care is the best idea ever.
Yesterday CJ and I spent seven hours at hospital (in the past, I’ve waited longer than that in the waiting room, which is the down side of a triage system – the sicker people get treated first – but pregnant women are always a priority) getting looked after by a doctor and two nurses. The only thing we paid for was food.
We wandered through the usual labyrinthine passageways to get to emergency, where I was assessed almost immediately. Since both of the antenatal (“antenatal” meaning “while pregnant”) triage beds were free, another pregnant woman and I were wheeled up to that department.
That’s right: I said wheeled. Awesome.
I settled into the bed with CJ on a chair beside me (we’d brought two books each – I read “Soulless” by Gail Carriger, not realising that CJ was deliberately watching my face during the naughty bits).
The main doctor and nurse gathered more information, and basically pooh-poohed my pleas for a feeding tube (I was so nauseous I could barely drink water, and so nauseous/phobic of food that even a picture or mention of food made me feel ill). They prescribed counselling (which, sorry, has been tapped out long ago in my case – but of course I’ll attempt it again anyway) and maxolon.
Maxolon is a tiny, foul-tasting pill with the exciting side-effect that if you take too much you get lockjaw and (this is the exciting part) your head turns itself to the side. Somewhat offputting to those not in the know!
Unsurprisingly, it is somewhat more effective than over-the-counter ginger pills. In about half an hour the idea of food was appealing once more (and the idea of a food tube shoved down my throat somewhat less so) and I began eating for the first time that day.
For the first time in weeks, my body didn’t immediately punish me for eating (not for about an hour). Hurrah!
At around that time, I gave the first of what turned out to be four different urine samples. The nurse tested it, and came back in at once to tell me I had heaps of very large ketones. “Ketones” is pronounced “key-tones”, and sounds rather like a sweet jazz notation. Sadly, they actually indicate dehydration.
I was put on a drip and monitored for another few hours. The drip was awesome. I liked having a painless plug in my arm – even if it is utterly nuts to put water (or whatever it was) into my veins. How does THAT work? Over time, I got better at shifting position without kinking the tube, and at peeing in a cup after dragging the five-wheeled IV stand into the bathroom with me.
As far as I can remember, I’ve never actually been in a hospital bed before. I’ve had stitches, but no broken bones. I’ve had food poisoning every time I go to Indonesia, but it never occurred to me to go to hospital (even when one bout – ah, Bali, how consistent you are – lasted three and a half months).
So, here’s a photo commemorating my first hospital bed:
As CJ keeps saying, “You know we can buy you new socks ANYTIME you like, right?”
Rather sadly, socks and I just don’t get on. These are the only socks I have that can cover a reasonable amount of leg without cutting off circulation (I have begun making forays into diabetic-approved socks, which are much better than the norm, but still not that great).
So that was our hospital visit! I’m still nauseous for nine out of ten waking hours, and I still dread meals (even with Captain Maxolon on my side, I feel sick soon after eating), but for the moment I can manage. One week down. . . five weeks of crippling nausea to go.
Sidebar – if any of you says any of the following, I will hunt you down and kill you:
Every pregnant woman gets ill, dear.
When I was pregnant, I didn’t have time to be sick – so I wasn’t.
Try [random cure], it will solve everything.
Oh, when *I* was pregnant I was SO sick that I. . . .
———————————————-
Oh yes. . . there was one more thing.
The doctor did an ultrasound – mostly, I think, just because they can.
The amniotic sac inside me was a clear circle, and on one side our little baby was a blurry dot perhaps a centimetre across. It flickered to its own beat – the beating of a brand new heart.
Ever since the ultrasound, CJ pauses every so often mid-conversation, reaches across to touch my hand or shoulder or belly, and says, “Heartbeat!”
My so-called “morning” sickness has lasted all day, every day since last Tuesday evening. Yesterday I hit the wall. I reached the point where I didn’t want to eat or drink ever again (even water makes me sicker) – so I went to the doctor. She told me to buy some morning sickness pills (which helped; I was able to eat some chicken soup last night) and told me to get acupuncture.
In my mind, the phrase “alternative medicine” translates seamlessly to “not actually medicine” but it was clear we were mutually not taking each other seriously – so I did what she asked (although she was kind enough to let the acupuncture guy use suckers instead of needles).
He put suckers on my knees, wrists, and belly – giving me “flower marks”.
Other than extremely mild discomfort from the suckers (which look like old-fashioned bicycle horns), there was no effect whatsoever. At least, not as far as I was able to discern.
The massage was nice, except that my neck and head are not the source of my stress.
I mentioned last week that it was pregnancy hormones making me like my doctor. The reason I don’t 100% trust her is that I get a very strong vibe from her that I should get over my anxiety disorder and focus on real problems. (Of course, I could just be paranoid – it comes with the territory.)
I am terrified of eating and drinking. Way more terrified than I should be. Back in the day I’d have sucked it up and got on with things (and by “things” I mean “regular vomiting” – just ask my sea-mates how I dealt with nausea back in 2006). But anxiety means I’m constantly running on an emotional backup generator, and after hovering on the edge of vomit for seven days there’s just nothing left. I’m shutting down on all kinds of levels.
The doctor’s advice was to eat, throw up, eat, and throw up again – every day for the next six weeks.
There is no anxiety treatment that is safe while pregnant, and very few nausea treatments (the pills are made of ginger and vitamin B).
I SHOULD be able to face a bit of physical illness. It’s really not the worst thing in the world. But I got nothing.
Chuck Wendig is a naughty, funny, dirty man. He writes very well (at about an MA standard).
On Friday, his son was born. He blogged about it here. This entry is PG.
Transmissions from baby-town
“I think something is happening,” my wife says.
She says this to wake me. At 1:30 in the morning.
The lights go on. Fan, off.
I don’t know what’s happening. Something. That’s what she said. Something is happening. Could be anything, I think. Leaky roof. UFO on our front lawn. Goblin invasion. Everything and anything.
“I think my water broke,” she says.
Oh. Oh.
She asserts that she has not peed herself. Which is always good news in any situation. I do this spot-check periodically in my day-to-day. “Did I pee myself? Mmm. Nope. Score!”
We call the doctor. They say to keep an eye on it. We keep an eye on it. The water, it keeps on coming.
Along with it: the mucus plug. Which has another name: “the bloody show.”
We have no idea how apropos that will be.
* * *
The wife, she puts on makeup before we go. I pack some bags, get stuff together: camera, chargers, reading material. Just in case, we think. We know this is not real. This is not really the something that’s happening. It’s two weeks early. And besides, conventional wisdom says: new moms have kids late. Everybody’s told us that. She just saw the Obi-Gyn Kenobi the day before and, in his words, “There’s no way this baby is coming early.” Except he must have — oh, just for a goof — put a small thermal detonator against her internal membranes, a detonator that went pop around midnight, because why else would her water have broken?
Thermal detonator, shmermal shmetonator. Baby’s not coming today.
We go to the hospital at 5:00 AM knowing full well that they’re going to send us home.
* * *
They do not send us home.
In fact, they inform us quite frankly: we’re having this baby sometime in the next 24 hours.
*blink, blink*
We’re in a little room. So small that the nurse is entering our information into a laptop, but her chair is a medical waste bin. Doctors and residents come in and out. The one doctor says, she’s not that dilated. And she’s not even having contractions. They say, “we’re going to get you started on pitocin.” We say, hold up. We’ve heard about that. If we need it, we want it, but we’re not sure we need it yet. We don’t want to get on the drug train, not so fast.
Hot air balloons were invented in the late 1700s – well before the Victorian era. Almost from the beginning, people attempted to give them the ability to steer – but it was only when diesel engines (half the weight of steam engines, because the process of creating power is more direct) were invented that airships really started happening.
There is one exception, however: Henri Giffard’s steam-powered dirigible was invented in 1852.
Today’s blog is all about a great article on peculiar steam inventions.
While manufacturers busied themselves with increasingly successful farm steam engines, inventors were experimenting with a host of steam machines many of them fascinating, some of them zany, and a few of them bizarre. Here is a look at some noteworthy steam devices culled from the pages of history.
THE GIFFARD STEAM DIRIGIBLE
On Sept. 24, 1852, French inventor Henri Giffard, using a steam engine for power, designed and flew the first full-size airship. His flight took him from a Paris racecourse to the small town of Trappes some 15 miles west at a speed of roughly 6 mph. Giffard’s airship consisted of a net surrounding a gas-filled, cigar-shaped balloon. A pole hung from the net, horizontally and in line with the balloon, and a gondola was suspended beneath the pole. The ship supported a boiler weighing 100 pounds and an engine weighing 250 pounds; relatively light, but still heavy for an airship. Aware of the potential for fire or explosion, Giffard surrounded the boiler’s stoke hole with wire gauze. He also pointed the boiler’s exhaust down and away from the balloon.
Giffard’s next experimental craft barely escaped disaster. Giffard tried to suspend a boiler and engine beneath what he hoped was an improved bag, but escaping gas caused the balloon to flatten. In turn, the gondola’s nose tilted upward, some lines broke and the balloon slipped from the net and burst. Giffard and a passenger miraculously survived with only minor injuries. Following this, Giffard planned a mammoth, steam-powered airship weighing 30 tons, but prohibitive costs caused him to scrap the project. Giffard is best known in the farm steam engine community as the inventor of the injector.
THE WINANS STEAM GUN
In 1861, Ross Winans, a locomotive builder in Baltimore, Md., manufactured a steam-powered gun invented by a Charles S. Dickenson. Winans welcomed novelty, a trait he was known for in his locomotive designs, and he applied his enthusiasm for innovation when he produced the steam gun that came to bear his name.
The idea behind the gun was to use steam to hurl a cannonball; his “gun” was supposedly capable of throwing 200 balls a minute (weight unknown) up to 2 miles, of projecting a 100-pound cannon ball and even of firing bullets. The Winans device could be considered an early machine gun, and certain writers have described it by that term. A hopper fed the pivoted gun barrel of the Winans gun, which itself ran on railroad tracks. Winans evidently hoped it might be used to bring the rapidly escalating Civil War to a quick conclusion.
Although born in Vernon, N.J., Winans was a Confederate sympathizer who was actively involved in Confederate politics. In May of 1861 Winans shipped his gun south from Baltimore to Harpers Ferry, Va., but on May 11, 1861, Colonel Edward F. Jones of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment under Brigadier General Benjamin F. Butler intercepted Winans’ gun. Three days later, Butler captured Winans in Baltimore. Had Secretary of State William H. Seward not interceded on behalf of the millionaire prisoner, Winans might have been hanged for treason. Instead, he was released, a fact that angered Butler for the rest of his life. Through the remainder of the war, the gun protected the Baltimore & Ohio Patuxent River Viaduct.
THE EBAUGH STEAM CIGAR BOAT
Nicknamed ‘Davids’ (with reference to the story of David and Goliath), these partially submerged Confederate cigar boats carried torpedoes. The moniker “cigar boat” describes the shape of the hull.
In 1863, David C. Ebaugh privately manufactured the first of these crafts at Charleston, S.C. Christened David, it was appropriated by the Confederate States Navy. On Oct. 5, 1863, David, steaming under the cloak of night, attacked the Union ship NewIronsides. Quite unexpectedly, however, David’s exploding torpedo set up a spray that extinguished the cigar boat’s fires, and a piece of shrapnel jammed David’s engine. Through the efforts of the engineer, however, the injured boat escaped. New Ironsides sustained damage but survived.
The following year, David saw additional action. . .
Literary agent and all-around nice lady Rachelle Gardner blogged an article today that asked the question, “How can you tell if your writing is any good?”
We talk so much about the business of publishing on this blog, but it always has to come back to the writing, doesn’t it? I can’t overstate the the importance of taking the time and effort to master the craft. So how does an author objectively know the quality of their writing?
People are constantly telling me how frustrating it is. They send their work out to editors/agents and get rejections but no feedback. How do you know if you’re headed in the right direction?
I think the answer is that you have to learn any which way you can. You piece it together. You take the lessons where you can find them. This could mean:
→ You read books on writing, and books in the genre in which you write.
→ You’re a member of writers’ organizations and online forums.
→ You take workshops offered whenever and wherever you can find them.
→ You take creative writing classes, such as at a local community college (although I’ve heard these can be a waste of time).
→ You have a critique group (this may or may not help, depending on the qualifications of your critique partners, as well as your own personality).
→ You submit your project to agents and editors, hoping for scraps of feedback.
Maybe it’s just the hormones talking, but I love my doctor.
Yep, it’s the hormones.
My doctor has a tactlessness about her which is quite terrifying to a pregnant lady. For example, she doesn’t open with, “The test results were normal” – she opens with, “I’d like to do more tests.”
But now I know her pattern, I can brace myself – saving my panic for when she actually says something is wrong (which has never happened, and probably never will).
The thing I love about my doctor is that on our first meeting (when I was still quite sick from some Indonesian food poisoning) she recommended that I cut out lactose and gluten indefinitely.
Not. Going. To. Happen. (This is not the bit I love, by the way.) Dairy is probably my favourite food group (other than chocolate) and I loooovvvveee bread. I’d just gone on my own one-week elimination diets of each group, and it was both horrific (I just couldn’t handle the change in routine) and pointless (I was still sick, and unable to eat the only healthy food I like).
By our second visit, however, we had conversations like this:
Doctor: I’d like you to switch to low-fat milk.
Me: No.
Doctor: Do you think you could. . . try it?
Me: How about I cut down on my chocolate a little instead?
Doctor: *sigh* Okay. And dark chocolate has less fat than milk chocolate.
Me: Okay, I can incorporate that.
Doctor: Fine.
A few days ago, I went for my first official pregnancy checkup. (Everything is fabulous, by the way.) While taking my blood pressure, she advised me to incorporate more fish and nuts in my diet.
“I have,” I said, reeling off three fish I’m eating that have low amounts of mercury (shark, sadly, is high in mercury – so no weekly fish and chip shop visits “for the baby”). “I’m eating a lot of nuts–”
“Especially walnuts.”
“Especially walnuts – I bought a pack of just walnuts to mix with the rest – and so many vegetables that I’m visibly bloated, see?”
She beamed at me with the shining eyes of a health professional seeing a patient actually eat properly while pregnant. I’ve never seen her look like that before.
She was still glowing with surprised satisfaction as I went away.
In other news, I’ve discovered ginger beer is useful for temporarily quelling nausea – so this morning, unable to face cereal, I drank ginger beer and ate weetbix sandwiches (that’s a wheat biscuit split carefully in half and spread with peanut butter and honey).
In news that I’m sure will be hilarious to some of you, the sight and smell of chocolate now grosses me out. To be fair, that’s true of almost all food (or indeed the thought of food, or a picture of food).
Every Wednesday from now on will be about the baby (aka Mini-Me) until he/she is old enough to need some privacy (it’s quite likely I’ll mention breasts, breastfeeding, and maybe periods – but that’s as gross/adult as it will get). I’ve also prepped literally dozens of blog entries in advance – awesomenesses, pregnancy thoughts, and book reviews – to make sure I don’t let you guys down.
I was irrationally terrified CJ and I would be infertile, but it turns out we’re quite the opposite. We had one month of just trying, one month with a chemical pregnancy, and now we’re pregnant for real. Most people take 6-12 months to conceive – not three.
What’s a chemical pregnancy? It’s an extremely early miscarriage – within the first five weeks, and often before the first period (I only know about it because I used Forelife brand pregnancy tests, which turned out to be MORE sensitive than the urine tests at the doctor). Chemical pregnancies happen when the baby is malformed somehow. Which means that if our second-month pregnancy had come to term, it might have looked a little like this:
But THIS pregancy will probably end up looking a little like these samples my associates prepared earlier (especially the first, my niece):
When are you due? January 18 (although that may change as doctors learn more about the baby’s size – and it’s likely I’ll be up to two weeks late, like my mum). As of today, I am at six weeks.
Observant readers will notice that January is always an eventful month in my life – CJ and I married in Janury 2009 (I had in fact told him the previous August that we HAD to marry in January, and my mum and sister and I had discussed it in detail for over a year), went to China and Indonesia in January 2010, and had a second honeymoon in January 2011. For me, Christmas holidays are a dark, empty period of no tutoring income for two months (and the excess of free time doesn’t help things at all). We timed our conception attempts deliberately to (hopefully) hit the Christmas holidays. . . and we actually did it. So the timing is GREAT. Plus, my sister will be here – awesome.
Are you concerned about miscarriage? Mildly. I know the chances of miscarriage are relatively high in the next seven weeks, but I come from strong baby-making stock so I’ll almost certainly be fine.
Do you want a girl or a boy? Yes.
Before I was married, I wanted girls (because girls mostly make sense to me, and boys mostly don’t). The more I get to know CJ, the more I want a boy. But then again, girls have smaller heads.
How’s CJ coping? I love change and CJ hates it – but he’s also naturally VERY calm (any calmer and he’d be dead), and surprisingly good at adapting when change happens. He’s quietly excited about becoming a father, but to a certain extent he’s not convinced Mini-Me is real (which is fair enough, as well as being handy for coping with the thought of the epic journey ahead of us). The first few days after we found out were probably the only time in our lives that I was calmer than him. I enjoyed that.
How are you feeling physically? Pretty normal, with a host of minor side effects so far – stomach cramps, pain, nausea, gastro, stomach-muscles twinging if I lift something heavy or reach for something high. Back pain. Sore breasts (I’ve already gone up a cup size, yay!), flatulence (yes, CJ, that was me – not the cat), dry skin, bigger belly (yes, already – to be fair, it was big to start off with), fatigue, emotional sensitivity (in every direction – exactly like PMS), and a cold. It’s fascinating how much pregnancy screws with everything in one’s entire body – but so far, it’s all extremely minor. Oh, I’m also extra unco and extra forgetful – no surprises there.
Since writing the above a few days ago, proper nausea has kicked in – particularly in the evenings. It’s just like being seasick, which means I have a pretty good idea where the increasing nausea is inevitably heading. Yo ho. . .
Actually, the most annoying thing so far is that on the steam train day I had another side effect: thirty mosquito bites all over my ankles and legs. Not a single other person I spoke to had any bites whatsoever. So remember, next time you go camping, to save yourself from insect attack all you need to do is pack a pregnant woman.
Here’s hoping my blood isn’t as delicious to vampires. Note to self: carry a stake (and/or exacto knife).
I also had a wacky pregnancy dream that I was a man (a sailor, incidentally – talk about foreshadowing) whose fiance gave birth to a large potato. After a careful discussion about whether smaller offspring would be bullied by the other children, we cut the potato in half – making it into twins.
Evidently, my subconscious skipped out on sex ed classes.
Have you thought at all about, ya know, having a baby – and how you’ll deal with that? Having a baby (child, teenager, adult offspring) is pretty much the point of the exercise, and it’s something I’ve thought about carefully for several years. I know it’s what I want to do with my life, and I also know it’ll be harder than I can imagine. There’s no way I’d have attempted this without CJ (quite apart from the difficulty of conception without his assistance), and I also know my mum’s obsession with grandchildren is the greatest thing in the world. Hello, free babysitting.
How’s that mental illness coming along? Very well, thank you. Oh, you mean How is someone with an anxiety disorder going to cope with pregnancy, and a real live baby?
Pregnancy is a lot like mental illness, but with physical illness on top. My tutoring workload is rather low at the moment – so I’m leaving it where it is until further notice (resisting the urge to earn more money while I still can). I’ve been madly stocking up on frozen meals – consciously planning for around six weeks of bleaugh and lolling around the house (I observed my sister’s pregnancy closely, and she was basically fine except for the second half of the first trimester – so I’m right on schedule). The good thing about my anxiety disorder is that I am very familiar with my own limits, and extremely aware of danger signs. I am not trying to be superwoman, and I’m certainly not going to attempt to be a supermum.
I’m already napping every day, doing less writing (I’m two months ahead on my quota anyway – did I mention I planned this?), and eating WAY more vegetables, milk, and protein. I’m also eating 30-100 grams of chocolate each day so that if I snap and have a binge it’s not a huge shock to the system (caffeine can harm an unborn baby, but since I don’t drink coffee I’m okay so long as I stick to my preference for milk rather than dark chocolate). My no-no foods are soft cheese, soft serve ice cream, raw food (unless it’s peeled and/or washed in hot water and detergent, ugh), paté, and processed cold meat. And (obviously) alcohol.
Most of the same prioritise-the-baby-and-be-good-to-myself principles apply to a new baby experience, except with way more assistance from CJ (who gets parental leave), my Mum, and everyone else I’ve ever met. My expectations are: emotional collapse on day 3, extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation for several months, lots of poo and vomit and screaming for several years – and joy and sorrow for the rest of my life.
I also honestly believe I can handle it (with all that help, of course) as well or better than the average new mum.
Why’s that?
When something is meaningful, I can handle it. When it’s not – I can’t. I can’t work in a shop (unless it’s a bookshop), but I can look after a newborn. The difficulty actually makes it easier for me mentally, because it makes me feel my life has purpose (yes, I’m weird, I know).
I also spend a lot of time with babies and kids, and always have. CJ and I each have an excellent set of parents, which gives us a huge advantage in knowing how it’s done. Most of all, I know my strength is limited – which is, in my opinion, the single most useful piece of self-knowledge for a mum to have.
Are you scared about labor? Not really. Firstly because it’s not until next year, and I figure I can save that fear for later. Secondly because the pain will likely last around thirty hours – and then end (pain with a purpose AND a specific timeframe is the best kind). I tend to deal with crisis fairly well (unlike ordinary life, which terrifies me), and labor definitely counts as a heroic endeavour (and an AWESOME writing experience).
Frankly, I’m looking forward to labor – it means Mini-Me is about to arrive.
Bungendore is a small town, and a classy one, so I’m betting they have several antique shops. This one is a half-acre in size. It seems small, and then you go through a door to the back – and there’s more. Then you go through another door, and another, and another.
It’s a little like the TARDIS that way. And also in its eccentricities:
Tomorrow: The most awesome, and life-changing, and blog-changing awesomeness of all time. . . revealed at last.
