being an awesome parent

off the back of my last post 'we have become those parents' I really wanted to discuss this next topic, and in actual fact I think it was the catalyst for the previous post, I had to get through that to get to this post.

a couple of weeks ago I read a post on facebook - the knower of all things- that had a picture of a woman lying in bed pulling at her hair with a worried look on her face, and all these words around her head about what was going in on her mind, like:
am I kissing my kids enough
am I kissing them too much
when am I going to get time to do this or that
what should I do here
oh I should have done that... etc

and then  pic of the dad huging his child with the words Im such  good dad above him, and the caption was what goes on in the minds of parents.

and I decided 2 things when i read this.
1. that I woud ask the men in  my life who have kids if this is true because I know most women do already think like the picture indicated, and if not please let me know.
I did ask one of my clients, and he said pretty much yes, when he is with his kids, he is with his kids and not thinking about other things, butIi would very much like to know if most ment think this way
2. That I would make a concerted effort to be more like the dad in the picture.

Now please let me explain more about no# 2
I §truly think more people should be like this dad. Thats not to say we shouldnt get things done and planed and get on with our daily lives, but that when we are with our kids we should make more of an effort to be with our kids.
how often do we allow everything else in our lives to take time away from our kids.
And more importantly what does it say about our own self esteem and value of self worth when we know that the women in our lives feel that they cannot afford themselves the space to think 'I'm a great mum', and just sit in that.
Because you know, I am a great parent, and I think we're doing an awesome job. And I encourage you to make this statement to yourself and see what it does, see how it changes how you feel, and see if when you are with your kids, if it make the moments somehow clearer and brighter.
I can feel a hippy dippy mungbean rant coming on so I'm going to stop my self here. (please note I managed to avoid the word mindfulness)
instead i'll shrre a pic i drew this morning of me and squeaky inside my awesome parent bubble.

my awesome parent bubble

be awesome
and know that you are awesome
J

we've become 'those' parents

A couple of months ago we were at Sofi's folks place for dinner, and the subject of cutting squeaky's hair came up.
our little boy has never had a hair cut, now to be honest he really didn't have that much hair for his first year of life anyway, but his hair is getting long, and really needs a cut - or does it?
and as this discussion went on it hit me all of a sudden 'OH MY GOD WE'VE BECOME THOSE PARENTS!'
Were the ones, you know the boy with the long hair who has two mums who use cloth nappies and dress their kids as gender neutrally as possible and who let their kids run riot because they are merely expressing them selves in the best way a 2 year old can.

OH DEAR GOD NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

So I sit here having a good ol laugh at my self because I have indeed become one of those parents.
I laugh when squeaky blows bubbles in his milk, because I remember when I was a kid doing that was heaps of fun, I also remember my mother yelling at me for it (no doubt we were in public somewhere).
 I am constantly having and internal battle with my mother who comes out in social situations, like when were at friends houses and the 2 year olds are jumping on the lounge. I start to say 'Stop that you'll ruin the lounge'
and they will and my friend sees this and we laugh because it will ruin the lounge but they are having so much fun and we had fun doing the same thing when we were 2, and so, as adults we let them run riot and discuss the plans to buy a new lounge when the kids are old enough to stop jumping all over it - so when they move out basically.

And as I filter my mother (who is an awesome lady might I just add) I try as hard as I can to remember how much fun it is to be 2, and also how hard it is.
and to remember how hard it was for my mum, and how much fun she was too. (don't worry dad you were awesome too)
and I try to be the best mum I can be.
I hope that one day my kids will come to this conclusion:
'your parents do the best job that they can with the tools that they have'.

If I can do as good a gob as my parents then the kids are going to be ok.
and hopefully have some wonderful memories about blowing bubbles in milk, jumping on lounges and being that crazy kid at daycare who had long hair.

So if you're one of 'those parents' stand proud and if you're not, stand proud too, because no matter who you are I'm sure you're doing the best job that you can.

J

our birthing experience

so Christmas has come and gone and holidays are over, and its time for me to get back to work and writing and other things.
but i feel that my first blog post for the year should be on of sharing our birthing experience just because it seems appropriate for this time of year.
You see our little Squeaky was born on Christmas day.
And he was just a little unexpected.
In the lead up to Christmas 2011 we were very busy with our lives and looking forward to a break after Christmas for which we were pretty much putting everything off that we could, to do in the month before the baby was due.
Not to mention waiting for the January sales to buy most of the stuff we would need for a new baby.
And so here we are at Sofi's folks place on Julafton, or Christmas Eve, getting together with the family to celebrate and have what is always a great time, much food and alcohol, laughs memories presents and much much more.
Given Sofi was pregnant I know I have a built in designated driver and so enjoyed my evening very much.
At about 9 pm Sofi wasn't feeling so well so she went and had a lie down, not long after the Irish coffee came out, (these will keep me going all night).
Then at about 10 pm Sofi still wasn't feeling so well so we thought we would go home, and we left.

She was experiencing some contractions and we thought that well maybe its just 'pre contractions' and when we got home she had a nice warm bath, but this didn't seem to help.
Eventually we rang the hospital and they said yeah you should probably come in.
In some kind of mad drunken panic I rushed around the house packing a bag with fresh undies and well you know stuff you would take to the hospital - or so I thought.

So here we are
my 8 months pregnant wife driving herself to the hospital because I'm still too drunk to drive (it was the Irish coffee - I swear to God they were more Irish than coffee), we had to slow down to 40 kph on the free way because she was experiencing some very strong contractions, by the time we got to the hospital her contractions were 45 second long and less than 3 mins apart.
We went into the emergency birthing place and they hooked her up to 'the machine that goes ping' and monitored her for about half an hour, after which they said ok were going to admit you and took us into a more comfortable room where they hooked Sofi up to more machines and we tried to be calm.

After some more time passes the nurse gave Sofi something that was to try to stop her from going into labour, this however did not work and the nurse informed us that she was infact going to give birth today.(deep breaths very deep breaths)

As this I happening I'm starting to run off in my head all of those things that we left to do until after Christmas when we would have more time

• clean the house
• pack bags for the hospital
• do the course that tells you what to expect when having a baby - oh yeah that was a big one
• buy a car seat
• baby clothes
• change table 

the list goes on and on.

So here we are in the hospital and I'm sobering up as Sofi is lying in bed moaning and groaning with contractions some woman in the room next to us is screaming like a banshee, and the day was not yet at its most surreal moment.

At about 8 in the morning of the 25:th of  December the medical team came in and let us know that they are not getting a good enough reading on the baby's heart rate so they're going to have to put an electrode on the baby's head.

At this point I would like to add that I had only been in Sweden for 2 years and my language skills were not that good, especially at 8 in the morning when I had no sleep, was still trying to shake off that irish coffee, and couldn't help my self but have a go at the nitrous, anyway I was trying really hard not to panic because all this wasn't supposed to happen for another month yet.

And all of this was happening in Swedish so I was only picking up bits and pieces on the way.

I remember asking, so how do you get the electrode on the baby's head if her water hasn't broken yet?

to which they said that they will need to break the water. 'oh...ok'

the medical team swarm in and around Sofi and I'm forced to find some place to stand, from memory I think I ended up behind Sofi holding her hand.

This is where the action starts.

At some point Sofi turned to me and said did you understand that if this doesn't work it will be and emergency ceaser. again 'oh...ok'

The doctor breaks the membrane and out comes the amniotic fluid, but with is come a whole lot of blood as well, honestly it was like someone was standing between her legs and threw 2 or 3 buckets of fluid all over the place, but anyway back to the blood, his was somewhat unexpected.
Judging by the look on the faces of the medical team they were not expecting blood either.
And it is on.
These people worked with such efficiency and purpose at he time I had nothing to do but be there for Sofi and trust these people.
They wrapped her up unplugged her wheeled her into the hallway, pressed and alarm (this was the most alarming part, I wasn't expecting an alarm) around he corner into the lift out of the lift around the corner through the doors into theatre, this whole time I can see panic starting to rise in Sofi's face and I'm trying to be as calm as possible, I remember saying to her 'baby its going to be all right this is what these people do there the best, everything is going to be ok'.
Through the doors and then all of a sudden there is a woman standing in front of me handing me a disposable gown and shoe covers and a cap and she said to me in English you stay with the baby, the doors to the theatre shut as I see them moving Sofi from her bed to the table.

I am holding back panic as I put on my disposable gown, as I'm buttoning it up a very kind nurse tries to help me.
I looked her in the eyes and said 'this is the only thing I can control in my life right now please let me do this'.
and in that moment in time all I was doing was buttoning my gown.
A second nurse came up to me and introduced her self and in English said that she and her team were going to take care of our baby, which was somewhat reassuring.
The very next moment out comes a lady holding a baby limp in her arms.
They placed the baby in the nicu unit and started working on it.
As I sit there watching them work on my baby a second nurse asked me did I see the sex?
I said no - then a little noise comes from the nicu unit and everybody lets out an involuntary sigh of relief. It's a boy she said.
The nurse asked me if I would like to hold his hand, and I went over and stood next to my son and put my finger in his little hand.
And my thoughts turned to Sofi. What was happening with her?
I know I asked but I cant remember the response, I know it was vague and non specific.
Sofi and I had discussed if something were to go wrong in the birth then I was to go with the baby.
so stick with the plan, its all out of your control you just have to do what you're doing and be here with this little human and that's what I did.
it was all so foreign, having children was never something I was going to do, and being honest if Sofi didn't want to have children then it is still something that I wouldn't do, and so it has occurred to me since that because of this I have never had the fantasy or the daydreams of having kids and a family. I've never played being mum, and so here I was in charge of a little human who would not survive if I wasn't here. wow, what the fuck do I do now?
We took squeaky to the ward and after some time the nurse came to me and said sofi was waking up an would I like to go and see her. We went to the first room that we were in and I collected our belongings, including my phone, and now I was able to call all the family for the first time in hours, we went back to the baby, where I took some photos and then down to recovery to show Sofi photos of our new little baby boy.
Not long after we were both taken back to the nicu ward to be with squeaky in his first few tenuous hours of life.

During this time I had some of the most intense experiences of my life, when asked was I scared, all I could reply was 'I have never been so scared in my life'.
In the moment when they wheeled Sofi into the theatre and the door shut the thought hit me, 'I can cope if the baby dies but if Sofi dies too I don't think I can survive that'.
Then you start to rationalise the feelings you will have if this situations ends up being a worse case scenario.
Fortunately for us it wasn't.
And my family is healthy and happy.
I will always be amazed that out of such a terribly traumatic experience - I speak here of birth in general, because I think no one can deny that birthing is one of the most traumatic experiences anyone can go through for both mother and child,- such joy and happiness can come about.
Every day since the 25th of December 2011 has been filled with joy and happiness and all the other things that go along with life, but more joy and happiness than hardship.
and I will be forever grateful for that.
Reading through this post I have tears rolling down my face remembering the trauma of that one moment in my life, and I ask my self why am I sharing this?, you may be asking the same question (I'm going to tell you even if you're not ;)
my purpose for sharing this moment is to create dialogue and share the experience, to  let other people know that they are not the only ones who had a traumatic birth, and to celebrate our son because my hearts swells with pride every time I think of him.
and to say this one thing, from someone who was never going to have kids - children are a gift, cherish them and the moments you have with them, they make the world a better place.