Getting over it

So, not only did I have to endure the panic of yesterday and a stand-in doctor (our regular was away; this guy was at the same clinic) who spoke of things like meningitis and fibrile convulsions, but it also turns out that my own doctor – whom we saw today – would have been much calmer. We saw him today, and it turns out that we froze Julian unnecessarily at night (reg. doc says to keep ‘em comfortable, but the stand-in had him sleeping in next-to-nothing in a cold, wintery room), didn’t need the cold bath (unlike stand-in, reg. doc said it should’ve been tepid, and as a result of yesterday’s ice-a-thon, Julian screamed in dismay when he saw the bath today) and were over-zealous with the pain medication (only use it if baby is miserable; Julian wasn’t but stand-in told us to use it, anyway). Sigh.

We are also now the owners of about six brand-new thermometers, including a talking forehead one, two digital ones for underarms, one digital for the ear and two old-fashioned mercuries. Guess what? Even with all that innovation, it's virtually impossible to take the temperature of a strong, willful 9 and a half month old.

The good news is that Julian is much better today. Still not eating much for him (although he loved dad’s chicken soup) but he is happy and in good spirits.

Fever

I don't know when Julian started getting signs that he was coming down with something. A week ago, he had diarrhea, but we put it down to teething. A red rash on his cheeks a couple of days ago? Also teething, we thought. Today he went off his food, but even though he's the kind of baby who could normally down a trucker's dinner, we thought, teething. He felt a bit warm to the touch - teething again, we told ourselves. He was irritable - and, well, you know the drill.

"Let's take him to the doctor just to check it all out," I said. We ummed and uhhed. I rang people up for second opinions. We made an appointment, cancelled it, made it again. Five minutes before the appointment, still undecided, we took him anyway.

"Your son has a fever of 39.5," the doctor promptly told us. (That's 103 for you Americans.) In fact, his temperature was so high that there was a danger of fibrile convulsions - we wouldn't be able to take him home until we got his temperature down. So, right there and then, we had to suddenly douse him with cold compresses. Don't forget, it's winter here. And my poor baby had to lie naked on the doctor's table, being soaked with wet towels.

The good news is, he's much better now. We got his temperature down, and he's sleeping off the virus in his cot. We have to still keep him cool, so he only has a thin muslin thrown over him. It's heartbreaking to see. Every two hours through the night, we have to go into his bedroom and check his temperature. I'm just glad he seems to be over the worst of it. If his fever returns, we have to plunge him in a cold bath. We've already done it once tonight; he looked very confused as he entered the bath - normally his favourite place in the world - only to realise how unwelcoming it was.

You know how parents always say that they wish they could be sick, instead of their children? Well, it's true. But, he's sure to be better in the morning. And the scary thing is, we didn't realise how high his fever got. Even in the doctor's waiting room, he was flirting with all the other patients.

Up in the air - 9.5 months

Two teeth

Clumsy

Hopefully Julian will inherit David's coordination, 'cos I'm not the person he wants to take after. You see, I have broken my finger. This comes three weeks after lopping the top of my thumb off while cooking. (it's almost grown back). To make a long story short, I got bumped into while stationary in my car by an elderly lady in her car. When I got out to see if there was any damage, I closed the car door - with my finger still there. Off to the hospital, had it x-rayed, and yep - it's broken.

Expect only brief blogging for six weeks! And hopefully no more tales of finger injuries.

Teeth!

We interrupt this blog with a major news story: Two New Teeth Today. My little baby's all growed up.


Check out my teeth!

Tom Waits

Earlier on, I mentioned that David doesn't like playing la-la nursery rhyme-type music for Julian. No Baby Einstein for my son. Instead, he's drummed in the rhythms of Tom Waits into his ears, and shared his favourite CDs with his offspring: The Doors, Pink Floyd, George Benson. I don't know what Julian makes of all this - although he does seem to love Tom Waits.

Last night, I took my mother to see Boulevard Delirium, a one-man show starring Paul Capsis. It's almost indescribable, except I will say this: Capsis is a drag-gy kind of personality, a cabaret-like singer who channels Judy Garland, Bessie Smith, Sid Viscious, Marlene Dietrich and Janis Joplin in his act. At one point, he sang Somewhere, which originated with West Side Story, but has been sung by Barbra Streisand and Tom Waits, among others. Julian knows this song very well. So, as I'm watching this peculiar man in braids and sparkling eyeshadow sing his heart out with a lullaby that my son knows by heart, it did make me wonder - what kind of crazy childhood memories will my kid have?

Nine months one week

Those Mothers

Scene from today's swimming pool lesson:

Random Mother: Oh, your baby is so cute. He's such a good smiler.
Me: Yes, he is.
RM: He really has the best smile of all the babies here.
Me: [After it occurs to me that I better return the compliment] And your baby is so...so...[said baby is screaming on the change table at the time] vocal. I mean, determined. I mean - wow, doesn't he have a whole lot of personality?

I have turned into one of those mothers. I'm not even sure what "those" means here, but I know it's not good.

Baby's got big eyes - 9 months 1 day

Luck

Nine months today

When I was younger, I used to think of myself as an incredibly lucky person. I always won competitions. Well, not always, but I did win a raffle kind of thing on a kids' TV show that was drawn every Saturday morning (so your chances each week were heightened as old entries were kept with new ones). I thought I was pretty lucky then, even though the prize was six months' worth of McDonald's food, free, and we were kosher. (My parents let me eat the fries.)

Once, when I was nine, names were put in a hat from my school to determine who would get to meet the Queen. And I was picked. I had that sort of luck.

Later on, I fell into a lot of luck. My first published article was something that inadvertently got sent to the newspaper, even though I had no dreams of journalism. A few years later I got short-listed for an editor's job in Sydney, and it was down to me and another girl - even though I had only sent my CV to the publisher so I could pitch articles (that CV got mixed up with the editor applications).

In my late 20s, I hit my first batch of true bad luck, when I had a road accident in Thailand. I nearly lost my leg, and then my life, but I saw it as good luck, too: I didn't lose my leg, or my life, never mind the fact that I spent three months in hospital and had half a dozen operations.

But after that, it seemed like my luck had finally run out. I could not conceive a baby, no matter how badly I wanted one. For four years of infertility, I wondered: had I used up my quota of good fortune?

These days, I appear to be lucky again. I have Julian, thanks to the wonders of IVF. And he is a truly special baby, ptt ptt ptt (the sound of me spitting superstitiously three times). But, I still have to be reminded, and the other day, I entered my name for a prize at my local chemist. The prize was a Winnie the Pooh tunnel thingie, for crawling babies, and you could win this tunnel by buying a gazillion Huggies nappies and assorted products, and then sending a fee into Huggies, and one would be sent to you. I had been cutting bar codes out of nappie packets for months, but still I didn't have the requisite amount. When I saw that my chemist was offering one in a raffle, I entered. They said they would draw it on June 1.

A few days after the draw date, I walked into the chemist. "I guess someone won that tunnel, huh?" I asked. "Actually, we're about to draw it," said the salesgirl. I left the store, only to be called down with a wave a few minutes later. "It's absolutely bizarre," the girl said. "You had just been asking about it a few minutes before, and then your name came out..."

So, I have my Huggies tunnel. As I said to them, I truly believe I won it because I wanted it more than anyone else, because I willed it to happen. Or maybe my good luck never really stopped; perhaps I've been lucky all along, without recognising it. These photos are proof.


With daddy at Jake's first birthday party - 9 months today

Products

This is what I hate about baby stuff: you pay a lot of money for it, and it outdates before you can say "last season's Prada bag". Take my pram (please, I wish you would): I paid a gazillion dollars for it, enough to keep me in Manolos for half a decade. Today I bumped into a girl I know whose baby is a mere four months younger than Julian. She has the same pram. No, wait, it's not the same pram: it's the new, updated model which omits the exact two features that drive me bananas on my pram. Even her pram sun-cover was a newer version of mine. It's like computers and mobile phones: there's almost no point in buying one, because you're gonna want one that's on the market in about two weeks' time.

On the other hand, there's a lot of baby stuff of yesteryear that I really wish was available, but isn't. For instance, those crocheted bouncy chairs that I used to lie in as a kid: it took me forever to find one of those, because every big baby store carries an ultra-modern "rocker" that proposes to do the same thing, but doesn't. And high chairs - my mother has shown me my old one (she throws nothing out), and it's padded and sturdy and easy to clean and...everything that mine isn't. Only you can't get ones like hers anymore.

Also, I realise now, when I bought every conceivable baby item in a flurry of wanting to be armed and prepared, I was too hasty. I bought these things - rockers, baby mats, mobiles - with the kind of tunnel vision that made me believe that Julian would be using these things forever, or at least for the next ten years. I would never have believed that time would zip by, that he would outgrow everything so quickly, and that there would be another mass of new product to buy that will also last me a nanosecond. Case in point: I recently bought a baby bath. A second baby bath. And literally two days after I bought it, I realised that Julian had outgrown it. Luckily, there was a way to position him in it to make him fit comfortably (instead of sitting in the mould made for newborns, you turn an older child around and have him straddle the mould from the other side). Phew.

The great self-feeding experiment of 2005

Thorpedo

Today Julian had a grand adventure: his first swimming lesson. Because mummy wasn't game to go into the pool (read: looks terrible in bathers), daddy stepped up to the plate. Since it was geared to babies, the session included doing the hokey-pokey, and singing an abridged version of "The Wheels on the Bus" ("The babies on the bus go splash, splash, splash...) The teacher told us that Julian did excellently for his first swimming pool encounter: apparently most babies are in one corner, screaming, whereas he laughed the whole time. Of course, now we think he's the next Ian Thorpe.

Slogan Tee

Photopalooza!

In this photo, Julian is wearing a t-shirt that says "where's the party?" in Spanish. Actually, there's a cartoon drawing of a pram, with a balloon coming out of it, and the words are inside. My friend, from whose store I bought it, assured me it was cool. In fact, there's so much cool stuff for kids now, I don't know where to start. But here are some of the slogan tees I've seen/ heard about for tots recently:

Benevolent Dictator/ Bald is beautiful/ Milk Addict/ I Stink Therefore I Am/ Kid Vicious/ Chick Magnet/ Today's Sleep Has Been Cancelled (okay, I have this one, too)/ Out On Good Behaviour/ Bitch Better Have My Bottle/ It Ain't Gonna Change Itself/ An Accident.

Funny? In bad taste? Perhaps a bit of both.

In six days, I'm 9 months old!

Say it loud and say it proud

Books

Everyone's got a pet peeve. David doesn't like crumpled up towels (although he's perfectly happy with crumpled up clothes and underwear). My friend Lisa hates it when someone wants a packaged food she's eating and sticks their hand in the package. She'd rather tip it out to their hand (not touching it) because she's just a tad germ-phobic. I've got other friends who need to write in black pens only (of a certain type), or have a ritual when it comes to new purchases (one girl I know has to wear any new pair of shoes to bed after she's bought them).

Me, I've got a thing about books. I'm a fairly disordered orderly person; if you saw my desk, you'd think it was a scrap heap, even though I know where every bit of paper is. Mind you, there are plenty of things I own that I don't know exactly where they are. When I find them, it'll make logical sense where I've put them, but I couldn't tell you where to find them this second.

Books are a whole other story. My books are lovingly alphabetised, in wall to wall bookshelves I recently ordered. Fiction is first, then there are categories, such as memoirs, celebrity biographies, books on writing and grammar, historical non-fiction, animal stories. I have lots of books - around 1200 at last count, and that doesn't include the several hundred I have at my mother's house.

I don't really like to lend books out. For starters, I don't borrow books myself. If I want to read a book, then I want to own it. If I've loved a book, I want to keep it forever. I hate it when my books go missing; sure, I can replace them, but I like to have the edition I'm familiar with, the cover I've chosen. I like to look at a book and see whether it's fallen in the bath (crinkled), read on the beach (crumply) or still pristine (me being careful). When a book of mine has gone missing in the past, I see it as a glaring hole on the shelf. I am aware of it, always, until I have to finally go out and purchase a new copy. Which is never the same as having the one I read.

Anyway, I do lend out books to some people. A friend of mine recently borrowed a book, and because she asked to borrow it, and because I dislike refusing people (although I probably wouldn't have offered myself), I gave it to her. (Two, actually - one she wanted, and one I suggested as its companion, which tells you how fond I am of her.) I catalogued the transaction on my computer, which is how I know that I've also lent out several books to my sister of late.

You can imagine my horror, then, when said friend dropped one of the two borrowed books back in my letter box. "Um, where's the other?" I asked when I phoned her. She said she thought she'd given it back already. Then she followed this with an email, saying she was sure she'd dropped off the book in my letter box previously.

And, because we're talking about my books, I know this cannot possibly be the case. I may not know where my shoes are at any given time, but I can tell you where my books are.

So now I have to go out and buy the same harcover copy from Amazon, because I don't like the paperback copy available here with a different cover. Clearly, I am insane. And it does make me wonder: what kind of pet peeves will Julian have? (Probably: having a mother who is obsessed about her books.)

Standing still

It's funny: babies we know who are much younger than Julian are crawling, sitting up, doing loads of things he can't yet do. They've got teeth (he has none), they're mobile. It's easy to feel like I'm at a standstill with this baby, locked in a point in time where we're going to stay for awhile. Logically, I know that's not the way it works with babies - I may not be aware of each and every step forward, but it's happening, every day. Yet I'm not complaining about the seeming lack of progress - it gives me the illusion that I can hold onto this time more effectively, that time has given me the good grace to march forward very slowly. I don't mind time standing still for now. Not when I have Julian to stand there with.