Advice for friends who are about to become parents.

Posted on July 4, 2015 by borysSNORC

I’ve been thinking about this for you a bit lately and this is what I have come up with so far… unfortunately (or fortunately, I don’t know) this is something I could write about for hours. But I will try not to! 🙂

We went through a lot of IVF and god awful crap to have our one little miracle, and when he got here, we were incredibly grateful to have him at all – so even the hard stuff was good stuff in my opinion. He was born four weeks premature, which comes with its own issues – he was only 5lb 7oz and his tiny little hand fit through my wedding ring and his head was about the size of an apple. He wouldn’t breast feed (suppressed suck reflex) so I was pumping every feed and he was getting a bottle and when I did try and put him on the breast he would go into what is called Infant Shutdown Syndrome (he would go from crying and struggling and hungry, to eyes rolling up and going floppy like a rag doll – like someone had flicked off a switch) which happens when they are expending too much energy to get food, but without reward. This was scary as all shit btw, but no one ever tells you about things this until it happens to you and you’re ready to call an ambulance! All I had to do was wait patiently and rub his cheek a little until he was crying and hungry again, but the first time it happened – I freaked the fuck out. So mostly his early weeks were spent just worried he wouldn’t put on weight and would end up back in hospital on a NG tube… eat, sleep, eat, sleep. It was a bit overwhelming – he went from 24 hour, round the clock care of professional NICU nurses, to being sent home with US. Crazy talk. I didn’t bond with him immediately, to be honest, I was mostly just scared of the little bugger – scared he wouldn’t put on weight, scared he wouldn’t thrive, scared he’d catch the flu and his immature little lungs wouldn’t cope… there is such a thing as ‘too educated’ in these situations. When you are aware of everything that can go wrong – you will worry about all of it going wrong. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been so stressed – the little buggers are extremely resilient and he was never at anything even remotely resembling risk, cloistered in our cosy living room and his warm cot.

He was a really good baby – especially once I gave up on the breast pump and reluctantly switched him to formula at about the ten week mark… it was a self preservation move, but one that I beat myself up over nonetheless ( the breastfeeding nazis are hard to ignore). Both Mr K and I had been attending to every feed – he would feed the baby while I sidled up to a cold breast pump at 11pm, 3am etc. In the day time, I would feed bub and then while he was sleeping, spend the next half hour pulling out the next feed. It was never ending, very time consuming and meant both of us were sleep deprived. Not long after we switched to formula, he started sleeping through the night and unless he was unwell, he has slept through ever since. There are a couple of things that I think helped him be a good sleeper… one, we had a dimmer switch in his room, and would never turn a bright light on at night or take him to a brightly lit room, and two, when he woke for a feed in the middle of the night I wouldn’t talk to him much – he would get a feed, get a fresh bum and I’d hold him and rock him a bit and then straight back to bed. No playing, no singing, no visual stimulation, just dark and muted and quiet. If he fussed, I would hum to him, or ‘shhh, shhh’ him quietly but there was a very distinctive difference between what day time looked like (bright, colourful and playful), and what night time looked like. I think it really helped. But… I have since read articles that claim good sleeping as an infant is genetic – if you were a good sleeper as a baby, then chances are your offspring will be too… so what the hell do I know? 🙂

After the tiny infant stage, parenting for us was pretty easy compared to what some people describe. He was just a little person who lived in our house and was expected to live the way we live. From almost the very start, he was never treated like a ‘baby’. That is, we didn’t ‘baby’ him like some parents do. He got all the love and cuddles and affection and fun that a child needs, but we spoke to him like a little person – I never baby-talked at him and used my usual vocabulary from dot. From about 12 months old, he would constantly amaze me when he did things that demonstrated he totally understood the things we said, even though he wasn’t able to verbalise comprehension yet. By the time he was four he would ask me to explain whenever I said a word he didn’t understand, and would say things to the doctor like, “I am rather concerned about my sore throat”… kids are little sponges and can absorb so much more than we give them credit for.

Even from when he was as young as one year old, we would set an example of what is expected of him to live here, with us, and it was a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ situation. I’m a bit OCD, so I probably didn’t let him feed himself as early as other Mums do because I couldn’t stand the mess. I didn’t give him food to eat in the car, or in his pram either, because I didn’t relish the idea of teething rusks being smooshed into the upholstery fabric. I also didn’t want my house to look like a BIG W toy sale had exploded in it, so we had a cupboard in the living room which housed all his toys, and together we would always put all the toys back in the cupboard before going onto another activity – even if that was just to go have lunch or go have a bath. All other toys belonged in his room, so they weren’t constantly scattered all over the house. He got used to cleaning up after himself which is a good thing to try and drill into them early – for years now it has bugged him when other kids come and mess up his space. It is amazing too, how much shit kids these days accumulate, even if you are not buying it for them yourself – he had more toys by the age of three than I had my entire childhood. Unbelievable. And in those early years – they would honestly be as happy with a pot, a wooden spoon, a bucket full of clothes pegs and some tennis balls, as with the fancy expensive newest Fisher Price Whatever. They don’t know, they don’t care, they won’t remember. Keep the toys to a minimum if you can, because you’ll be giving them away when they grow out of them within months anyway.

Behaviour? Well, he was never one to throw a tantrum, because the first time he tried, I just wasn’t having it… he would start to wind up, and I would say things like “Well, that is very interesting, but it is not going to get you what you want”, and if it was safe, I would turn away from him. Or he would see other children having tantrums and decide to try it on for attention and I would respond by saying, “We don’t do that.”… and it very quickly got to the point where he just didn’t bother, because it was a waste of effort. Actually “We don’t do that” is a very useful phrase for all sorts of things, but the best thing I ever did was shutting down the tantrum thing before it ever really started… we got to the point somewhere around age three or so, where we would see other children throwing tantrums and HE would look on, confused, and say “Why is she doing that?”

Shutting down the tantrums and introducing very early the concept of actions and reactions – that his actions had consequences were probably the best parenting tools we had. “If you do that, then this will happen.” And always following through with any threats of consequences, whether that is early bed time, no games, no dessert, no stopping by the toys shop… or if you’re pulling out the Big Guns and threatening a smack. Not going to go too in depth on the whole smacking/non-smacking thing here… but we were smacking parents. It was always the last tool in the box, but we used it when he was too small to respond to logic and reason. He never got smacked a lot, but when he did it was always in a reasonable and considered manner – never when one of us had lost our temper, which I believe is the worst time to be smacking your kid – and it didn’t take long before the threat of the smack was all it took to alter behaviour because he knew we would follow through.

I think we managed to get through the infant and toddler years relatively unscathed compared to what some people relate. Sometimes I think this is because we had an ‘easy’ child – he had no developmental issues, is completely normal and actually has a rather easy going of temperament (thankfully took after his Dad there). Other times I think that things went well because we were firm and consistent with him right from day dot – he always knew what was expected to live here, in this house, with us, and we never changed up the rules on him without there being reason or logic and discussion surrounding what was, and was not, allowed. As a result we now have a teenager who is smart, thoughtful, caring, considerate, aware, well spoken and can negotiate the hell out of any given situation. 🙂

I’ve already written way too much and I don’t have all the answers – no one does… but one thing is for certain, your lives are about to change enormously. In amongst it all, try not to get swallowed up in your new roles as Mum and Dad, try to remember who YOU are. And … good luck!

I Grew Up in a Polyamorous Household

Posted on June 3, 2015 by borysSNORC

Interesting article penned by Benedict Smith. I find different peoples views on polyamorous lifestyles to be very interesting – though this is the first article I have found written from the perspective of a child reared in a household with open relationships.

Few cultural symbols have as much heft as the “traditional” nuclear family. You know the one: two heterosexual parents, two kids, one dog, two tablespoons of white picket fence, whisk gently. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that—it’s just not how I was raised.

My parents are polyamorous, a Greek/Latin mishmash word meaning romantic non-monogamy with the consent of everyone involved. As a kid, I lived with my dad, my mom, my mom’s partner, and for a while, my mom’s partner’s partner. Mom might have up to four partners at a time. Dad had partners too. I was raised by an interconnected network of grownups whose relationships weren’t exclusive but remained committed for years, even decades.

They first explained it to me when I was about eight. My four-year-old brother asked why James, my mom’s partner, had been spending so much time with us.

“Because I love him,” Mom said, matter-of-factly.

“Well, that’s good,” my brother replied, “because I love him too.”

It was never really any more complicated than that. Looking back, that’s what I find most extraordinary about our situation: how mind-numbingly ordinary it all was. I almost wish it were more exciting than that—a wide-eyed kid, stumbling into amphetamine-fueled sexfests to find a gaggle of ass-naked circus mimes, nuns, and poultry—but we were just as run-of-the-mill-dysfunctional as every other family on the block.

I never resented my parents for hanging out with their partners. We all went on trips to the movies and narrow boat holidays together. Having more adults around the house meant there was more love and support, and more adults to look after us. Dad and James didn’t get jealous or resent each other either, far from the alpha male antler clattering you might expect. They were good friends.

I do remember the first time James told me off. I was eight and had almost toddled into traffic, when he pulled me to the pavement and shouted at me for not looking left and right. I remember thinking:Oh, this grown-up is allowed to discipline me too? But it didn’t take me long to realize that it also meant that another grown-up had my back—and would keep me from being flattened by oncoming traffic—and that this was a good thing after all.

It’s fortunate I was living in relative familial bliss at home, because school was a living nightmare. I had a stutter and a penchant for 80s power ballads—telling anyone about my domestic situation would be to give myself a wedgie by proxy. I mean, one kid got picked on by (weirdly patriarchal) bullies just for having a stay-at-home dad—I wasn’t about to profess that Mom had four boyfriends. I had only one best friend (any more would’ve interfered with my spiritual path of devotedly studying Star Wars encyclopedias and reveling in epiphanic early masturbatory experiences). He was the only one who knew about my parents, and he just shrugged it off.

Our church community, on the other hand, did find out about my parents’ arrangement. We were very close to our parish at a local Anglo-Catholic church in East London—my mom even taught at Sunday school. We never lied about our family dynamic; we just didn’t want to broadcast it. James was called “a family friend,” which worked for a while. Eventually though, we were outed. Someone trawled the web and tracked down my mom’s LiveJournal page, and word got out that my family was poly.

Most people tried to understand, but not everyone could. One family was so condemning of our parents’ lifestyle that they forbade their kids from playing with us. This later escalated into a particularly nasty phone call to social services, essentially conflating polyamorous parenting with child abuse, and sending a swarm of social workers into our home. I remember sitting on the living room floor with my Robot Wars toys, Hypno-Disc in one hand, Sir Killalot in the other, trying to convince them that my parents weren’t hurting me.

“Good parents are good parents, whether there are one or two or three or four of them. Fortunately, mine were incredible.”

Nowadays, if I mention to people that I have poly parents, reactions oscillate between “that’s so weird” and “that’s so cool.” Most people enjoy the novelty of it. Some feel threatened, but they’re usually OK once I reassure them that it’s not a criticism of their monogamy.

All in all, my upbringing shaped my personality for the better. I got to speak to adults from all manner of varying backgrounds, whether they were my parents’ partners, or parents’ partners’ partners, or whoever. I lived with people who were straight, gay, bi, trans, writers, scientists, psychologists, adoptees, Bermudians, Hongkongers, people of wealth, and benefits claimants. Maturing in that melting pot really cultivated and broadened my worldview, and helped me become the guy I am today.

I never envied my friends with monogamous parents. I knew kids who lived with two parents or one, or stepparents, or grandparents, or aunts and uncles. So what I had didn’t feel odd. I’d imagine there’s very little variation between the ways monogamous and poly parents fuck up their kids. Good parents are good parents, whether there are one or two or three or four of them. Fortunately, mine were incredible.

I don’t think polyamory is superior to monogamy in any way—it’s just different. But I wish it wasn’t so stigmatized. Only 17 percent of human cultures are strictly monogamous; the vast majority of human societies embrace a mix of marriage types. There is no traditional family. In his book Sex at Dawn, author Christopher Ryan argues that human monogamy only dates back as far as the agricultural revolution. Prior to this, we lived in small foraging communities and shared our property (food, shelter, wooden clubs, saber-tooth loincloths, etc). Then, post-agriculture, monogamy developed, out of concerns regarding paternity, and the inheritance of material goods. Ryan argues that our modern romantic attitudes are needlessly puritanical, “an outdated Victorian sense of human sexuality that conflates desire with property rights.” Since the 20th century, many of us have begun to return to ourpolyamorous roots, following the sexual revolution, and feminism, and by extension the increased financial independence of women. This upward trend will only continue.

A lot of people ask me whether having poly parents has shaped the way I look at love as an adult, which is hard to answer. Growing up with polyamory as the norm, monogamy seemed alien and counterintuitive. We can love more than one friend or family member at the same time, so the idea that romantic love only worked linearly was befuddling. I’m in my 20s now, and I tend to have multiple partners (though that’s more my libido than a philosophical conviction). I don’t consider myself poly, but I am open to having either multiple partners or just one.

Life is mostly pain and struggle; the rest is love and deep dish pizza. For the cosmic blink of a moment we spend on this tiny dust speck of a planet, can we simply accept that love is love, including love that happens to be interracial, same-sex, or poly? Discrimination against love is a disease of the heart—and we get enough of that from the pizza.

Reposted from Vice (mainly because the Vice article is full of ads and shit and a really stupid Slutever video has been embedded int he middle of this interesting article – you can find it here if you want the same content surrounded by crap). Drawing by Kelsey Wrotten.

Bad things happen to good people.

Posted on June 1, 2015 by borysSNORC

I have to get this out of my head, it has been causing so much anxiety and stress for the past two weeks… and yet I have not written about it, nor have I put it on Facebook or anything like that as I do not wish to elicit undue sympathy from the people around me – because ultimately, while this terrible tragedy has been unfolding and is affecting me quite deeply, at the heart of it, I feel this is not actually happening to me but more to people who I love dearly.

Two weeks ago, on Sunday May 17th, my cousin Neatsi had a very bad asthma attack. I heard about it on Monday morning when my mother rang in tears to tell me that she was in the HB ICU. It seems the attack was so severe that she suffered both respiratory and cardiac failure (though I am still unsure which caused which). The extended family, who were able, rushed to HB to be with the immediate family, and a loose roster soon began as people took turns sitting at her beside, waiting for her to wake up and not wanting her to wake alone. I was unable to go with them, as I have had a ridiculously bad flu that hasn’t been responding to treatment, and the last thing someone with respiratory problems needs, when on a respirator in an intensive care unit, is someone coming to town and giving the entire family support network some sort of flu bug thing.

So I have been stuck at home feeling completely impotent, phoning as often as I could while not wanting to make a pest of myself, and waiting, waiting, waiting for news… convinced that when it came, surely none of it could be good. Neatsi was experiencing fevers and having seizures, despite being heavily sedated, and at the beginning, was not breathing on her own at all. I was so fearful that they would determine that she had suffered brain damage and that the life support would have to be turned off… the idea of which was just horrific.

However, a few days later her sedation was reduced and she was breathing occasionally on her own. Her CT scans to determine the extent of any brain damage were inconclusive, as the neurologists said there was too much swelling on her brain to be sure what state her brain was in. I was also told by a friend in nursing, who I trusted to give it to me straight up, that the sedation needed to be lifted before a CT or MRI could show adequate brain function, as the sedation itself significantly suppresses normal brain activity and thereby giving inaccurate results. As the first week wore on, I found myself worrying about what seemed (to me) to be an even worse outcome – that she would start breathing on her own but with little to no normal brain function remaining and not be able to be turned off! This whole thing was turning into nightmare after nightmare and me still not able to go north to give the family what little support I could.

I have about 38 first cousins (I say ‘about’ because one of my aunts had about 13? or maybe, 15? children… I honestly don’t know how many, as I lost count and certainly can’t remember their names), but this family, this aunt and uncle and their three children were quite honestly the ones I have the most fond memories of. We spent many happy holidays together and while I was closest in friendship with their middle daughter, I have lots of wonderful memories of how outgoing and happy Neatsi always was. She always just seemed so carefree and happy-go-lucky… and to think of her in the ICU, in a coma has been just gut wrenching. I will say without hesitation that my aunt and uncle, M&D, who were going through this ordeal are my favourite relatives, and I feel I have not been there for them. Yes, I know we are not supposed to voice such things, but it is true. I used to be quite concerned growing up that M&D were my elder sister’s godparents and if anything happened to my parents, in my young mind, my elder sister would get to go live with the favourite aunt and uncle and I would end up living with my godparents, who were most definitely NOT my favourite people. Even though we spent a lot of time together as small kids, and grew up quite close, over time we have gone on to have very different lives. I would not recognise Neatsi’s husband in the street and barely know him at all, and could hardly recognise or name her four children. For me, this ordeal has been focused less on Neatsi, and more on her mother and father, her sister and brother… and I have been worrying excessively for them to the point of causing me anxiety.

Towards the end of the first week, Neatsi’s sedation had been reduced, and she was moving quite a bit more – twitching, eye fluttering, yawning, breathing more on her own. However with the reduction in sedation, she also experienced more fevers and continued seizures, even though she was showing no signs of infection. Last week, on Monday, Neatsi had another CT scan, and a meeting was set between her doctors and the family. The doctors informed the family that Neatsi’s brain damage was as severe as everyone was dreading. Her scans showed no function other than involuntary functions and one doctor was apparently so blunt as to offer that, ‘her brain is completely mush’. It was of course the worst possible news.

With the risk of passing any horrible flu onto my cousin through her visitors in the ICU now a moot point, I hightailed it to HB to check in on everyone to see how they were coping, even though I was still coughing and spluttering and was still having inexplicable high temperatures of my own. :/ When I got there, I found the family in varying states of denial, acceptance, putting on a brave face and delayed shock, even though it had been 10 days since Neatsi’s asthma attack. My mother and my aunt M looked exhausted… and while I was able to offer nothing more than a hug, a shoulder and an ear, I was glad I went and was able to see for myself how everyone was holding up. Being stuck at home anxiously waiting for the phone to ring has been harrowing.

The next day, Wednesday, the family had to face turning off the life support systems that had been keeping Neatsi’s body alive, and as predicted, she was now breathing on her own, so her body did not expire straight away. It was a full 28 hrs later that she finally stopped breathing… I was in a another waiting room of another hospital waiting for Mr K who was having a small procedure done when I got the call that Neatsi’s body had breathed its lasts… I honestly feel she has been gone the whole time she was in the ICU.

In some ways I was thankful and relieved (and feel very guilty at feeling relieved) that it was going to be over soon and that everyone would be able to grieve and hopefully begin to heal. But I have also been feeling mortified for her four children who have just lost their mother.

Unfortunately this episode is not going to fade into memory easily – Neatsi’s husband has made a complaint to the Qld Ambulance Service. It seems the security cameras on the front of their home have determined that Neatsi was not given oxygen for quite some time after the ambulance arrived. Neatsi was conscious and talking when they were called and when they turned up, and had been using her own nebuliser in an attempt to manage the asthma attack until they arrived. Her husband claims that the ambos did the same thing – put her on a nebuliser and did not put her on oxygen until she went into respiratory/cardiac arrest… some 40 minutes after their arrival. Two ambulances attended the incident from two different despatch areas, one arriving 35 minutes after the first. I don’t know. I don’t have all the details, but I am sure the QAS would not have failed to see the seriousness of the situation and I strongly doubt they failed in their duties – they have such a difficult job, I would not ever criticise them without knowing the facts. But Neatsi’s husband is looking for someone to blame, which I guess is understandable, but this will have the unfortunate side effect of not allowing the family to start the necessary grieving process until it is resolved. It now seems Neatsi has been moved to Brisbane for an autopsy as part of a full coronial inquest, which no doubt means the delay in her funeral is only one problem, as an inquest can take many months to reach determinations.

For my part, I am not even there, and this whole thing feels like it is happening not to me directly, but to a handful of people who I love dearly, and I feel quite keenly that I am not able to offer them any useful support whatsoever. These last two weeks have drummed home how futile and useless the ‘thoughts and prayers’ etc., we tend to offer at these times really are. At the moment I can only hope that the bureaucracy that must be endured will turn it’s machinery swiftly so that Neatsi can be laid to rest and the family can start to heal.

Neatsi honey, if you are out there somewhere, I hope you are at rest… and I sincerely hope you know how much your children and your family are going to miss your gentle heart.

The Child Who Was Never Born

Posted on February 28, 2015 by borysSNORC

“The Child Who Was Never Born” by Martin Hudáčeka

mortified

Posted on November 29, 2014 by borysSNORC

My mother got drunk last night on champagne. Which is not a frequent occurrence, and quite frankly doesn’t really take a lot of effort… she’s what you would call a one pot screamer. Most of the time when she gets a little tipsy, it is not a big deal – she gets a little loud, laughs a bit more than is warranted at her own silliness and is generally a very happy, cheap drunk.

Last night however we were at a birthday party for a friend of ours whom we have known for about 20 years with all her friends and family here, none of whom had I met before. I mean of the 40+ people moseying about, I knew three. My Mum, the usually happy little drunken camper at some point quite late in the night went for a wander with an extremely chatty, also somewhat tipsy lady named, Gel (or something like that). I thought it was very likely that Mum was going off tell her that smoking is a bad thing – it’s not like my Mum to go hang out with the only smoker in the room… but apparently, their exchange was nothing like that.

Gel came back to the table and said, sat down and said (and I quote), “Your Mum is amazing (very true), and she has been through so much, what with your Dad and all. And I know all about your story too. You’re so strong.”

My ‘story’? An instant feeling of fight or flight rushed through my body.

Apparently in amongst telling this complete stranger about how much she misses my Dad and having a cry on her shoulder, she also told this woman about my infertility problems. OMG. What the actual fuck? So now I’ve got this slightly drunk stranger, who also happens to be infertile, telling me that no one really understands what that is like. Yes, she’s correct – infertility is one of those horrid life experiences that other people don’t really ‘get’ unless they have some personal experiences with it themselves… but did I want to be talking to a complete stranger about my infertility at a party with about ten other people in the conversation – FUCK NO!

I changed the conversation as soon as I was able to and quietly fumed at my happily tipsy mother for the next half hour or so. Mum eventually went to bed and we remained outside chatting for some hours further. At some point Gel turned the conversation to miscarriage (Gel is a midwife… what a perverse career choice for an infertile woman?!) and she turned to me and said, “Miscarriage is another of those things that people who have never been through it totally don’t get it, but people should be allowed to grieve their miscarriages and not just shrug them off as if they were nothing… you (meaning me!) are so lucky to have been surrounded by your Mum and Dad and your sisters and husband when you had your miscarriage in New Zealand. At least you had all that love and support when you went through that.”

WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK DID YOU TELL THIS WOMAN, MOTHER?

So, now I am really pissed. Not only has she told this woman about THE worst experience of my life, but Gel has gotten all the facts completely wrong and I’m just appalled that I am having this conversation (which I haven’t even really had with many of my nearest and dearest, most loved and trusted friends!) with total strangers at a party?!?! I told, her that no, that was not actually correct. That I have had the misfortune to have five miscarriages in total, but by far the worst one was the the one my mother alluded to which did not happen in New Zealand, but rather I was pregnant while in New Zealand and came home to find the foetus had failed to develop and I had to have a D&C. And no, my Mum and Dad were not there, they were overseas. And no, my husband was not there either because his arsehole employers actually threatened to sack him if he took the day off, and accused him of making up the miscarriage ‘story’. And no, my sister (who was sitting right beside me as I was saying this, and had the good grace to look sheepish), was not there because she had a paediatric appointment for her own baby and was too busy with all that to be with me at the hospital. So I spent that entire day staring at the ceiling crying, BY MYSELF, and went through the D&C surgery, BY MYSELF, and after it was over, went home to be BY MYSELF, until my husband eventually got home from work that night.

The Gel woman was just drunk enough to not hear the terseness in my voice, and misunderstood my setting the record straight for some sort of willingness to engage in the conversation further and blathered on some more about how horrible miscarriage is and what ever else… I have no idea. I am just at this point absolutely flummoxed as to how the worst day of my life and the most deeply personal and horrid experience I have ever had to endure had turned into social chit chat between my mother and this appallingly indiscreet woman. Needless to say I left the table very shortly after, and had a great deal of trouble falling asleep – in spite of quite a bit of alcohol, some valium and other pharmaceuticals.