Moolies

Tooth update

Sigh.

I saw it, you know. The dentist showed me my hollowed out tooth in a hnd mirror, shaped like a wisdom tooth. I could see the hollow creamy yellow shell of what was once... well, two weeks ago, a fully fledged gnasher. That, and the pus ridden sore directly above the inside bloody gum.

It took another three days before the antibiotics kicked in. I ended up with prescription pain killers. Now I have another temporary filling stubbing medicated gunk in to the hole until the infection has cleared. Now the hole in my gum feels like just that - a small hole, instead of the swollen blistery vileness of mid-week. The trouble with antibiotics clearing up pus based infections, is it denies you that basic human right, held dear since childhood, of pricking your abcess / boil with a pin and feeling the instant relief and nausea of gunk removal. The urge to force this gunge expulsion, I can reveal is almost as desperate as the urge to push.

Unfortunately, the temporary filling seems to be wearing away very fast indeed, and with no dentists appointment next week. Jolly good!

It gets worse

Fairly disgusting dentistry related post. You have been warned.

Dental terror incident

You get free NHS dentistry for 1 year after sprog birth.

A dentist has destroyed my tooth. He drilled too close to the nerve and didn't put a protective lining in before fitting a white filling.

Yesterday, went to a different, emergency dentist, and at one point felt him CLEANING OUT THE DEAD NERVE FROM THE INSIDE OF MY TOOTH.

Fucking fuck!

I hurt.

Quinn's wonderful short piece re: SF City Hall

I didn't get the significance until it hit me two or three lines down. Of course - same sex marriages.

toward the end of the line, couples were huddled keeping warm in the wind underneath a contemplative statue of abraham lincoln. that's when i started crying. I haven't completely stopped.

Amazing. Brilliant.

Meanwhile, in Nora-land, she held on to a wooden rattle today forever. I had to prize it out of her hand. Tomorrow we go on a day out - full on. The works. Worried? Me? Obviously.

"To Kill a Mockingbird"

Saw it for the first time since I was a little kid last night. What a magical film. Truly wonderful.

If you haven't seen it for a long time, rent it or buy it. Meanwhile, my beloved has just woken up, you must excuse me...

Trouble in babyworld

As you may have gathered, I'm a reasonably sensitive person to worry or stress. Not too bad, but noticeably so, I would say. So, when overtired or stressed, I tend to become irritable and frustrated.

Anyway, I'll quit the waffling preamble. Mackay and I had a huge row because I overeacted to a situation where he let me (and by extention in that situation, Nora) down - as it turned out, by accident, and because he doesn't like to be told how to do some baby tasks that he'd been doing a bit cock-eyed.

We are in an unusual situation, he and I (relatively so) in as much as, slowly over the next few months, he must take over the reigns of being parent number 1 so I (cash cow Hurley) can go back to work. This, as any new mother will empathise with, is all very well in theory, but in practice it's frankly horrible. I realised whilst thinking about the row that I had relegated McK to the level of almost "divorced Dad" in that I have been doing absolutely everything with her, and passing her over to him for a quick play before taking her back in to my cosy world - experiencing all the pain and frustration too, but the point being exclusively so. Which is an exaggerated picture of events but you get the drift.

And of course, the last thing I want is for that to stop. But it has to. McK needs to have a strong relationship with her, and I need to get used to not being with her every step of the way. Even the thought of that at present seems confused and wrong. But I'm her Mum! I have to look after her! I love her too much to leave her!

All of which regularly passes through my conscious and unconscious mind.

Anyway.

So she talks quite alot now. Not in words, obviously. I think that might be a little frightening at ten weeks. But it's no longer the case that crying is the first resort. Sometimes. There is a recognisable "Look, I'm irritated / pissed off / fed up with whatever it is you're doing to me" speech pattern. A yodelling yell. It means only very occasionally does she get as far as crying to make a point. Occasionally as in about 5 times a day but only small squibs in comparison to the wailings of yesteryear.

More later.

Imagine if you will...

The astounding nature of pure breastmilk and formula poo all coming out of a baby's bowels after 4 days of nothing.

4 days.

Believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to be there.

Immunisations and a two month old birthday

It's 10th February, which means Nory Dory is two months old today. She celebrated by taking two hours to get to sleep and continually losing concentration during feeding in order to smile huge, heart stopping smiles for no apparent reasons apart from to make me laugh back.

McK has taught her to stick her tongue out, and every so often whilst grinning like a loon, a small, dagger tip of a tongue emerges, hopeful of a reply from Mum. To my lack of shame, I reply with huge waggling tongues back. Her pupils dilate and I'm sure mine do too. It's a mutual love fest that leaves me feeling elated and astounded.

Yesterday both legs were invaded dreadfully by two massive needles injecting her full of goo. If it weren't for the fact that the horrors she went through with jaundice when she was four days old were more unutterably miserable than any other medical intervention I can think of in the short term, I probably would have burst in to tears with her. In fact, she stopped crying.... no, screaming her head off, in a couple of minutes, and during my breastfeeding to calm her down and give her warm body snugs, she stopped in order to distract herself by giving me more of the big, moviestar smiles. No - that's wrong. they are wonderful, open, innocent, beaming smiles like lighthouse beams.

Later, however, the fever kicked in. A great deal of gentle holding and comfort breastfeeding, as well as the obligatory Calpol let her get to the point of having a few moments of happy flail lying on her gym.

Today, a baby massage class managed to loosen her colic ridden bowels and oh, wonder of wonders, a decent home massage for me. So good, in fact that it loosened all the muscles holding together the horror of my lower back, such that I couldn't actually stand up for several minutes after struggling off the massage bed. This is not an exaggeration.

Dooce's first post since the birth:

"I’m running out of time before she wakes up for her next feeding, so I wanted to say really quickly that I have never been more fulfilled in my life and I mean that in the most un-hip, earnest way possible. My life before seven days ago feels like it happened decades ago, and I never knew I could love someone or something so intensely or so achingly. I spend several hours a day just listening to her breathe. I can’t stop smelling her neck or gobbling up her little frog feet. She is the most perfect creation in the world, the most innocent bundle of coos and yawns and mumbles, and my heart breaks every time she focuses on my face. I am so in love with my baby that I’d be willing to pass an entire mountain range out my ass just to watch her wake up in the morning.

...told you she was a great writer. And how familiar this feels.

Sad thing

On the day after 19 people were killed in Morcambe Bay and an 11 year old boy was killed in the bombing of a Palestinian that the Israeli's wanted to get rid of, it's the pictures of this little munchkin who was born with the head of a conjoined twin attached to the top of her head. It's bleedin' obvious that I would feel enormous empathy but it's compounded by the fact that she was only slightly younger than Nora, and even has Nora's "universal baby" looks. That first picture of her she looks like a lovely little girl. She died in the operation to save her from this mutated head which was going to seriously curtail her own brain development.

Makes you wish you could reach out to her somehow. Reminds me of how I felt when I miscarried - the impossibility surely that such a small, vulnerable person could have been snuffed out so suddenly. Sometimes, a belief in heaven would be preferable to the norm.

I was reminded of Joe Sacco's book, "Safe Area Gorazde" the other day whilst listening to a news item about a woman in Bosnia who had been continually gang raped during the war, and for a second thought of the horrors inflicted on children in front of their parents or despite of their desperate pleas for clemency in a situation as appalling as that. Suddenly, those thoughts and more to the point, those actualities are now more gross, more obscene and very terrifying. Not long ago, I saw two army helicopters flying over London and felt that "civilisation" is such a tenuous state of affairs. It could be broken in a matter of a couple of days under the right dreadful circumstances. Now that we have a small beating heart we have to take care of with our lives, I know what real devastation would be.

All rather morose and fearful unfortunately, but then I'm overtired and sad. I hope that little girly felt love while she lived.