The white stuff

Some parents are lucky - they manage to get one of those babies that just doesn't spit up. I believe the odds are that 40% of all babies prefer to share their milk feeds with the rest of the world instead of just keeping that white goodness in their little bellies.

We were not so lucky. The spit-up was the part of infanthood that I was really not looking forward to. I've never been a fan of milk. I was never one to ask for a glass of milk with my meal when I was a kid. So it's no surprise that I'm not a fan of milk in its regurgitated state.

In the first few weeks being regularly vomited on was just the icing on the "congratulations you are now a bobble headed poop machine's slave" cake. Eloise throwing up on me for the 7th time in the span of 3 hours could easily make me cry.

So you have no idea how happy I am to see the back of this spitting up phase.

Pictures like this one are finally a rarity.

We can bounce her around and let her lie on our bed linen without a muslin cloth under her head. We no longer feel the need to have 20 odd burp rags lying around the house.

Most importantly I don't spend all day smelling like week old cheese curds.

My body is a wonderland...

...if by wonderland you mean an amusement park that a small child has run around in causing havoc and irreparable damage.

They tell you that pregnancy and childbirth do a number on your body, I just figured that since my body already came with extra padding, I wouldn't notice the changes as much. Silly moi. You really don't know what you have until it's gone. For the first two months, my ankles felt like tooth picks, my hips felt like they could pop out of their sockets whenever I twisted my body out of bed and that ever sexy pelvic girdle? Non-existent. It's only been in the last few weeks that my hips finally feel like my own and not those belonging to a 93 year old.

I did push-ups for the first time the other day and I've never felt so weak. I used to be able to easily do 10 good push-ups - proper ones, not the stupid girl ones - this time I fell after 4. My core feels like a wet noodle.

A book said to wait 3 months after birth to start dieting or exercising, and I listened to that advice because 3 months sounded like ages and this way I got to gorge myself on ice cream and lemon cake without any guilt. If you're breastfeeding it is recommended that you eat 500 extra calories. I have made sure that those 500 extra calories come from the naughty part of the food pyramid. In three days though I will be at the 3 month mark. Out goes the bowls of Phish Food and in come the sit-ups and rice cakes. Turns out 3 months isn't that long. So I am looking for some ideas for a "last dessert" if you will. One calorific gooey mess of a dessert to end all desserts - something to keep me going until the next excuse/kid comes along.

Any suggestions?

Gee Whiz! I'm dreaming my life away.

Yesterday I laid Eloise down on our bed so that I could get some stuff done around the house. I turned on the radio to keep her company (Smooth FM - formerly Saga FM, the old people's station). The song All I Have to do is Dream by the Everly Brothers was playing. So instead of doing my chores, I did an impromptu dance for my child as she stared at me wide eyed and curious.

I used to dance to songs all the time when I was a kid - a pastime that was made all the more entertaining if I had an audience. At one of my birthday parties I once made all my friends sit in my room and watch me dance and lip-synch to the soundtrack of Stand By Me. And I cannot tell you how excited I am to have a stationary audience in Eloise. And how much more excited I am at the idea that one day she'll dance with me. And even more excited that one day I will do an impromptu dance in front of her and her surly teenage friends and make her die of embarrassment.

But I digress. The song All I Have to do is Dream reminded me of a blog post I had swirling around my head last week that I plum forgot to write. All about the pathetically literal state of my dreams.

Once I found out I was pregnant, I was pregnant in all my dreams. This was fine in the earlier stages, when I was naive and enjoying the state of being knocked up. Towards the end, when I was huge and miserable, waking up oh so many times in the night, I would have loved to have been able to close my eyes and imagine myself unburdened by the growing life inside me, long and slender (hey. It's a dream) and free. Instead my subconscious refused to give me even a mental respite from my physical state. Every dream I had I was pregnant in. Lumbering around in my dream world, just as unable to bend over and tie my shoes as in reality. Even in my sex dreams I was apologizing for my protruding belly, or if they baby accidentally kicked my lover and ruined the moment.

And then I had a baby, and I was excited that the pregnancy dreams would be over, and I could go back to normal. One would think. But no. Not little miss unimaginative subconscious. My first sex dream after having Eloise? I broke away from the passionate kissing to warn the guy to be careful of my stitches and to ignore the bleeding. Hot, huh?

And then there was none

Wahey! I am done. Finally finally done with the horrible shedding of blood that happens after you give birth. It took 6 weeks for my body to expunge the blood. And it is as horrid as it sounds. A 6 week long period to make up for the 9 months you stopped giving money to the Tampax people. Because you know mother nature gives us woman folk such an easy time already that it would be daft for us to think that a 9 month suspension on our monthly visitor would go unpunished.

No longer do I smell of rust. Just regurgitated breast milk. Ahh, the joys of motherhood, they just keep on coming don't they?

Want to prevent your teenage daughter from having sex? Have her read this post.

I have now been discharged by the midwife. She said that Eloise and I were both doing so well, that she didn't need to check up on us anymore. This is fabulous news, because she has seen tons of babies and tons of new mothers, and so I value her opinion over most when she insinuates that she doesn't think I'm the type of person to accidentaly sit on my child while trying to get a better view of the Jeremy Kyle show or try and feed Eloise peanuts from across the room when she's demonstrating that adorable rooting reflex.

On her last visit, I mentioned that my stitches were hurting more rather than the lessening of pain I was expecting (something about Time and Wounds...). And so I found myself lying on my side, staring at the back of my futon with my underpants around my ankles and my big white ass in my midwife's face - you know, something to remember me by.

And then she said probably the most horrific thing I have ever heard while having my lower half exposed so freely.

"I see why it's more painful" she said, inches from my nether region "the stitches have disolved but what is left is like a giant paper cut."

A giant paper cut. IN MY VAGINA.

I bet that unprotected sex you were thinking about having isn't looking so hot right now is it?