January 2009 - "This is halloween, this is halloween, babies wake in the dead of night..."

[VerySpookyLennipillar]

A homage to the Nightmare Before Christmas song. DH obsessed with that film, we all (DD included) have to watch it on Christmas Eve.

Right. That is news. Wow. Not the worst news, that's what matters. The rest is dealable with. Good on you HKZ.

I'm glad you feel the right plans are in place and all is being dealt with. What a little star bless his boots.

HKZ - lovely to hear from you. I'm not sure what to say though, you are very relaxed about it all, I don't think I'd be coping quite so well with all the stress. I'm hideously relieved glad it is benign and seems straightforward to treat. Look after yourself though, and make sure you come and talk to us all if you need some support. Not easy having a baby be poorly - poorly the wrong word but ykwim. Are work being okay with you having time off? I hope so.

Work are being great, my head of dept is a really old friend and completely understanding and my big boss is great and has kids a similar age so is also pretty understanding.
DH is so bloody relaxed it has been driving me insane, I think I have been panicing big time beneath the surface. DH is very pragmatic adn 'We'll deal with it when we know what it is..its out of our hands' sort of thing....which is calming...but also BLOODY ANNOYING.
The neurologist told me to stay away from google, so I am trying to be good . The tumour is called a neurofibroma which is generally benign, so am just going to be positive unless we hear news that makes us think otherwise.
DD has been to great Ormand street before for her birthmark and they were brilliant, so its pretty reassuring to know we'll have some top notch dr on the case.
One other good thing is that the only symptoms J has are the weakness in his arm and pins and needles/itching, so he is generally on pretty fine form. It will be horrible having to go through MRI, GAs and surgery again, but he seemed to bounce back almost immediately last time, so hopefully he will be ok and not in too much discomfort.
Feel a bit bad for hijacking the thread with doom and gloom....
Tree....can I join you and Stripey in the utter skint club...DH needs to get his arse back to full time work, but it doesn't really make much difference financially with the cost of childcare etc... so we will have to suffer being permanently skint until both of them are a bit older... or until DH's field of work start paying proper wages that people can actually live off!
Gotta get DD from nursery and take her to the playground to kill some time burn off soome energy before bedtime....

hkz - i am really very glad and relieved that it appears to be manageable, fingers will remained crossed, figuratively speaking, until it is all sorted. we are still all here if you need to offload about it at any point.

hungry girl, back later

hkz - glad u have finally got an answer
received wheely bug it is so cute

HKZ, just logged on to see if there was any news. Its good that you have a diagnosis and can stop torturing yourself with what it 'might be'. I have heard of neurofibromas before and as far as I can remember, they are almost always benign one offs that are completely cured by removal. GOSH is a fantastic hospital so as you said, J is in the best possible hands.

As everyone else said, we are all here whenever you need some support.

i like your name, lenni

tree, i agree that it's a testament to the general fantasticness of c, that we find ourselves so taken aback by the thought of not being joined by another small one.
i can also see everybody's point about the (relative)irrelevence of genetics and the resilience of children, but also can see a situation in which a child with an uninvolved/unknown donor (which would be our only option given time constraints) would feel disappointment every time her sibling's father came to visit,and i think that would be hard to bear. and lenni, you are right, of course, we can't sacrifice much of c's childhood trying to acquire a sibling for us her. so we've decided to revisit in a few weeks when the initial disappointment has faded and see what, if anything, we want to do next about this (probably nothing but feel a little sad)

(sneezing all over my keyboard here, and feeling quite whiney)

so how is everyone? hkz, i am terribly sorry that we have to be in such a rubbish club. when are we going to get to join the more money than sense club, eh?

Aw bless you Stripey, you have been away, got a cold, and have this to process too. You must feel pants. When you say about C getting visits but not 'X' I can totally see that as an overwhelming aspect. C is so lucky to have such insightfull parents, she will surely prosper
Hope you are getting some rest this eve.

hkz so glad you have got a diagnosis instead of more uncertainty. Bet it's hard not to google but definitely the best idea - sounds like you are seeing the best docs anyway. And glad to hear you have full support at work too. Thinking of you even if I don't get to post so much these days. (Feeding time used to be my chance to catch up on the laptop, but N will no longer tolerate it unless he is half asleep!)

stripey really to hear your news and can only second what others have had said about donors and kids being resilient - kids grow up dealing with all sorts of strange and unequal situations, and I am sure you and MrsStripey will provide all the security and parenting necessary to make it all okay. They would certainly be a wanted child after all, which is the main thing. Better to grow up knowing you were wanted by two parents who had to use donated sperm, rather than unwanted by your natural parents, iyswim.

Busy here trying to get everything sorted; trying to get 70 horses away for the winter is no easy job ... but nearly there. Feeling dread and excitement in equal measures about going back to work but mostly trying to concentrate on the thought of being able to read grazia the paper on the way to work .

morning
quiet morning then sing and sign in aft and food shop tonite

stripey u r havning it tough!!

miss j - sounds fun good luck

Morning

Got a poorly ds2 home at the moment. He was off yesterday but other than a cough and very red cheeks he seemed fine. I was thinking maybe slapped cheek/fifths, but then he threw up everywhere in the middle of the night and again and again and again. Then again this morning - twice! He is very pale, but doesn't have a temperature and seems happy enough in himself.

Ds1 is continuing to be difficult/challenging. To be honest I am totally exhausted from dealing with him, the mornings before school are a constant battle with me asking him to eat his breakfast/have a wash/get dressed and him being aggressively oppositional. We have more of the same after school and lots of tears over the slightest thing. He has also fallen out with some of his friends and has been crying in class apparently. Its really testing my resolve to carry on as its so awful for him and for the rest of the family. Even at his worst he was never this bad 24/7.

On a more positive note, dd seems to have got her groove back and is back to sleeping through! Phew!

Re christmas. Both boys had asked for lightsabers, so I bought a couple of nice generic colour changing ones off ebay for £5 each. My reasoning was that they haven't seen the film and had wanted colour changing generic ones on bonfire night, so that should be fine - WRONG! Apparently they have both seen a friend's saber which is an official Star Wars three way one. It can be single-handed, double ended or one big-plus one mini saber. They are out of stock almost everywhere and cost £30 each in most shops. Fortunately they were reduced in Woolworths online and they still had stock, so I ordered them last night £45 for two plastic light up swords though! I think Nanny and Grandad can buy those for them!

Phew - slick work getting the toys Moose! Not toooooo bad for the big pressi I guess, though clearly totally over priced and a rip off. Blooming labels.
I dunno what to say about d1, you must be so ground down

Feeling inept, tired, uncaring, pissed off and totally robbed of a year with my baby at home myself. Its nearly a year since we were 3rd trimester and hoping to wind down when Poof! Shift work, leaving my old much loved job for the physical and mental beat up that is ward work, Redundancies, colic baby, relentless search for answers, car break downs, financial melt downs, constipation in both girls being a mare to manage, just stress and after stress. Which is bad enough.
But factor in to that that I am nearly at the end of what should be my golden time, the magic of maternity leave and I am really quite pissed off actually. I feel robbed.

And I'm going back to 13 hour days, weekends, nights, bank holidays, the scramble to try and get the annual leave you need, requesting days off to go to school events and weddings and not getting them......least in my old job I was set days office hours. The job I gave up because of DH's work. That he was made redundant from 4 weeks later.

Oh dear what a misery. WIll go eat worms and not be so selfish.

Hope babyHKZ is ok, no ill efffects from his busy busy week. x

poor u tree

mm - good pressy buying you are brave buying them make me nervous all that swishing

Aww Tree, don't feel down and pissed off. maternity leave the second time around is very different from the first...I remeber the first being quite dreamy and magic...this time it was...well...knackering and bloody hard work (with lots of nice bits inbetween). You have had a tough timeof it htough and it does seem like 'it never rains it pours'...but it will get better, its jsut adjusting to outside forces and events out there in the cosmos that take time (do I sound like a lentil weaver?)
That sucks about the job, is there any chance you could change back to what you were doing or work in a different area of midwifery? With more office liek hours? I remeber the weird sinking feeling you get when going back to work, but actually its been ok, you adjust pretty quickly. Lots of and {{{hugs}}} to you...now go and eat some G&B.
Moose: Hope DS2 has perked up. What is slapped cheek? As Ds and DD often have ultra rosie cheeks,but normally just on one side. Am very of the light sabers...I want one to swoosh around the house.

I'm at work so better get off tinternet before the bell and the arrival of skulking teenagers.

How well I remember bells and skulking teenagers, d'you know what, I miss it.

Tree - you have had a really hard time of it, a bad run of luck and a baby with colic. But as I've said many times previous DD was a pretty rubbish baby as they go and I still look back on my rose tinted memories just as fondly as I do DS's early months. Unfortunately you can't change the past, but you can change how you choose to perceive it. Why don't you get a cheap scrapbook from the post office, print out some pictures and collect up bits and bobs that you've got from the last few months and make a little scrapbook and write about it all. We do that often when we are feeling a bit glum - I guarantee you will be in floods of sentimental tears by the end, but you'll feel better. They are fab to look back on. We have a "Lenni Family Scrapbook" on the go at all times saddo.

DH just seen Coleen and Wayne Jr in the Trafford Centre! Now I'm I want to ogle a famous baby

Oh Tree my lovely, you are not a misery. You have had it really, really hard this year and been through so much. I know what you mean about feeling robbed. I feel like dd's first year has shot past so quickly, and we've lurched from crisis to crisis. I just want to press the pause button and enjoy her/it for a little bit longer.

I guess the only thing we can do is try and think about the next stage as a change in the flow of things, rather than an end. Family life does tend to adapt to new situations albeit with a period of adjustment each time. I remember sobbing when dh went from self-employed to full-time employment, I missed him so much every day and I was convinved I'd never cope at home with two dc's on my own, but I did. In fact I coped better without him around all day sticking his oar in.

I really don't envy you having to go back to such a hard job. Have you thought of going for community midwifery? You would be so good at it, you are such a good listener and great at giving support where its needed. You could then work around home commitments a little bit more easily and your work days would have some nice cups-of-tea moments with your charges. I'm probably talking rubbish of course, I know nothing of salary scales etc in this area.

Alternatively, is there some more higher education you could go for that would be eligible for a bursary so that you could put off work for another year or so? You could work as a doula in the meantime to make some extra bucks.

Another idea is perhaps becoming a private midwife and earning megabucks charging for your services.

Failing that, have you asked whether or not they would have you back in your old job? Even if they haven't got any current vacancies, it would be worth flagging up your interest to them so that you are first in line as soon one does arise.

If none of those ideas are any good, just hold your family close and try to enjoy the rest of your maternity leave. Try not to fret, it will be ok, you will adjust and so will your family, whatever happens. ((hugs))

Wish me luck - parents' evening tonight! [scaredy Mummy emoticon]

Oh sorry, HKZ Slapped Cheek.

Its basically a mild illness that ends with red cheeks that can look a bit like they have been slapped. The facial rash can come and go over a few weeks and sometimes there is a lacy red rash on the trunk as well.

Ds2 definitely hasn't got it. Still no temperature and hasn't been sick since 8.00 am this morning. Has eaten a quarter of a piece of toast with soya spread and had lots of sips of watered down apple juice. Seems fine in himself, so am not too worried. He's been watching back to back flipping Thomas the Tank dvd's all day Aaaargh!

I'm more worried about going to parents evening than I am about him at this stage to be honest.

You're all so lovely. I hear more sense here than anywhere in life.

On a totally non-misery driven note, Mamas and papas on line have some lovely clothes in the sale. Especially for blue babies

Moose good luck at parents evening...
I need the help of all you shoppers to find... nighties for DD who is now 2.7, but old skool jersey/flannel type ones...like the kind you can get at White Company /Jo jo ... but for a fraction of the price? Any ideas? I can't find any on ebay...

D'you know that Boden piss me off.

Have sold many nappies and stockpiled £25, with £10 voucher in sweaty palms - so head off very excited to buy Harriet the big teddy bear snow suit. No I have never liked snowsuit as I think they look uncomfortable and awkward, but I'm jiggered if I can keep her warm in the mornings so I gave in.

Sold out - not to be restocked.
Is summer just around the corner then?

Hello Dog, carry on everyone.