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Eloise's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 11/26/00 -------------------- 11/22/00 11/12/00 11/8/00 10/25/00 10/18/00 10/11/00 10/4/00 9/21/00 9/13/00 9/3/00 8/30/00 8/23/00 8/15/00 8/9/00 8/2/00 7/25/00 7/12/00 7/4/00 6/27/00 6/21/00 6/13/00 6/6/00 5/31/00 5/24/00 5/23/00 5/8/00 5/3/00 4/22/00 4/21/00 4/19/00 4/12/00 4/5/00 3/29/00 3/25/00 3/22/00 3/15/00 3/7/00 3/1/00 2/23/00 2/14/00 2/8/00 2/2/00 2/1/00 1/25/00 1/16/00 1/9/00 12/18/99 12/15/99 12/6/99 2/14/99 -------------------- Eloise's Introduction

July 4, 2000

Pixie is 7 months, 2 weeks old!

A Hard Day’s Night
No one can possibly understand the true meaning of this song title fully, completely and exactly, until becoming a mother! Yes, it describes a mother’s nocturnal hours perfectly, and if I didn’t know it was written by Mr. Lennon himself I could easily find myself caught in a bar room brawl defending my conviction that it had been written by a new mum! Alas, my bar room brawling days are over, along with my nights of undisturbed, unperturbed, luxuriously uninterrupted sleeping!

Bugger, bugger, bugger! Pixie has become a very naughty sleeper this past week. The minute we creep into our bedroom to retire for the night, sleeping beauty wakes with a start, and proceeds to whinge and whine and cry until we rescue her from her evil cot and bring her into the warm folds of our bed. But alas, once cozily sandwiched between us she will fix me with a demanding stare whilst sucking determinedly on her dummy as if to say, “I’ve got my eye on you, don’t you dare think you’re allowed to run away in the middle of the night with my boobies!” Yes, it seems she’s become fixated on the boobs. She wants to keep them within reach all night long, but I am a mean witchy-pooh mother and I refuse to give them to her between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.! And so to punish me, Pixie has decided to wake up whingeing and whining every time either Jai or I dare to move even so much as a little toe in bed … in other words, she’s waking up all night long! Sheesh!

In desperation I visited my maternal health nurse for advice…

“What’s a girl to do?” I pleaded.

“This can go on,” I sighed.

“I’m tired, if I don’t get an uninterrupted night’s sleep soon I’m going to fall apart,” I confided.

“It’s like a form of Japanese water torture; it’s slowly driving me crazy!” I finally cracked.

Her answer wasn’t exactly what I expected to hear…

I Should Have Known Better
Guess what? I’m not allowed to be a mean witchy-pooh mother and eek out my baby’s access to the boobie! Nope, the nurse thinks my milk supply has dropped (Me? The mother of all dairy farms?) and that Pixie is having unsettled nights because she basically needs more milk! Yes, it seems I’m not dissimilar to the Nile; it’s either flood or famine! Bugger! And so the antidote is to basically feed her all the bloody time for a week or so until my milk supply increases! Yikes! Not my idea of a fun week, rest assured. Oh, but what I would give to return to the nights when Pixie slept through from 8 p.m. until 7 a.m. without so much as a whimper! Yes, so witchy-pooh is out, moo-cow mama is in, and all in the name of a good night’s SLEEP! Without which, I hasten to add, I am on the brink of mental and physical collapse and could, at a moment's notice, throw the baby out with the bath water without a second’s hesitation!

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
It was the weekend of our traditional Winter Solstice celebrations here in Melbourne -- well, at least amongst our social circles -- and Jai, Pixie and I joined some friends for our annual feast and merry-making on the Saturday just past! Pixie was tired but she coped (she’s a bit of a party animal, truth be told! Just like her mother!). We decided long ago it wasn’t even worth trying to get the fussy Pixster to have a nap when we’re in strange surroundings! So we just let her stay awake, and she does! We don’t stress about it anymore; one afternoon without sleep does not a ruined Pixie make! Thank goodness! So we’re finally beginning to resuscitate our deflated social life! Jai said he felt like we’d been down in the trenches for seven months, but he finally feels like shouting out loud, “We’re back!” I don’t know exactly what’s changed; I guess it’s simply Pixie’s ability to cope with social events and the consequent disruption to her napping schedule!

Eight Days A Week
Despite feeling like we’re ready to enter back into the swing of a social life, I still feel like everything has changed! Jai doesn’t agree; he feels like he’s been out of action for a while but now he’s back. I feel like I’ve been out of action for a while and have totally changed as a person in the intervening months! Is becoming a mother a more profound and altering experience than becoming a father? Physically, YES! Hormonally, YES! Mentally? Emotionally? Or maybe (as in, definitely!) I’m just a more hyper-sensitive person, more prone to profound experiences and inner-transformations! Whatever the case, I feel like a gulf now separates me from my former life, and my child-free friends! And that gulf is due to my new 24-hour-a-day, 8-day-a-week obsession called PIXIE!

Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
There is just NO denying the fact that parenthood is a “club” and as much as I used to pooh-hoo it and think it was a load of rubbish, I do find that other new parents have this familiar knowing look in their eyes (hidden amongst bloodshot eyeballs and black rings). They understand, without a word being spoken, how intense, obsessive, involving, life changing, demanding, remarkable, consuming, overwhelming, passionate, exhausting, exhilarating, challenging, taxing, relentless and crazed parenting is! Everything in my life is now fixed to a new axis: PIXIE! I orbit around her perpetually, like a trapped moon! She is my compass, my latitude and longitude, my sun during the day, my moon at night, she is my map, my plan, my future, and my every waking minute! She is everything to me, and unless everything relates back to her I am lost! Only new parents comprehend this without a word being spoken. They know because they’ve traveled the same weird and wonderful road! And they accept it! It goes without questioning! It just is! They don’t expect anything else of you, don’t get tired of listening to you raving constantly about your baby and your life as a mother, because they know it isn’t possible to have any left-over passion for anything except parenting, and they don’t think you’re a failure as an individual because this is the case!

Magical Mystery Tour
I guess I feel the gulf exists because I know how much I have changed on the inside, but I feel at a loss to explain it! I worry that people still see the old Eloise, trapped in the ravaged body of a new mother, whereas in fact I am now a completely new model, not that it shows on the outside! And it is nigh on impossible to express this transformation to anyone who hasn’t already experienced it! It is impossible to imagine what it’s like to be a parent, impossible to explain it to the uninitiated, because until you have held your own screaming baby in the wee hours of the night, and seen that little nose, that you created crinkle in pain, or laughter, or just for the heck of it, until you have marvelled at their every feature, the softness of their cheeks, the dimple at the back of their necks, their tiny perfect fingers, every strand of hair on their head, until you have experienced your own baby, whom you are completely responsible for, who relies on you 24 hours a day for their survival -- yes, until you have had that kind of pressure, responsibility, and magic wound around your heart and soul, you cannot even begin to understand the enormity of it, and the power it has to tilt your life, your direction and your priorities totally on their heads!

I’m Looking Through You
An interesting conversation occurred at the party. A friend of mine is a nanny and I overheard her telling someone that nannying has turned her off to having her own children. She reckons that most nannies don’t have kids of their own, because they know how hard parenting is and decide not to do it! She cannot fathom doing the early morning shift everyday; when she does a sleep-over with the kids she finds it totally exhausting to wake up at 6 a.m. with the kids ready and raring to go.

Anyway, I had to chip into the conversation because I found the whole idea that nannies don’t have their own kids, really sad! It seemed to me that nannying is like doing all the hard work, without most of the rewards! So I piped up and said, “Yes, parenting is hard work, but I’m afraid all the cliches are fucking true: It’s really hard work but it really is worth it!”

Now I don’t know whether I needed to elaborate, or if this answer stunned them, or if they didn’t believe me, or if it was simply rude of me to butt into the conversation, but both women gave me completely blank looks when I said what I said. It looked like they were staring at me from another planet, through a misty glass window, through a heavy fog … like I was an alien with three heads speaking an unintelligible language. Ha! It honestly felt like they didn’t understand me, or didn’t believe me. It was totally WEIRD! Or maybe they just didn’t want to hear me; maybe they thought I had “turned” and was part of the parenting conspiracy that tries to turn all child-free people into new parents … kind of like “if I’m gonna live through hell I’m gonna drag you all down with me!” Fun-ny!

Can’t Buy Me Love
But what I wanted to get across -- but found I just didn’t have the words to explain -- was that parenting a child is the most profound and influential experience I’ve ever had. And that yes, sure, I complain about how hard it is, and how I want more sleep, and that some days are sheer hell, but the actual hard work of parenting is so, so, so … marginal to the whole business! The hard work and sleepless nights are secondary, trivial, dare I say petty in the grand scheme of the life of this unique person that is blooming under your tender ministrations and 24-hour-a-day care and attention! I mean this is A PERSON, A LIFE, A UNIQUE INDIVIDUAL who depends on you for everything, for their sheer survival! And it is such an honour to be able to watch this little person BLOSSOM under your care, BLOOM into a happy, content, laughing, curious little person! I mean it’s pure, simple, unconditional LOVE! And it’s a brand spanking new, undamaged, untainted LIFE! How can anyone put a price on LIFE and LOVE? How can any price be too high to pay? This is something, I’ve decided, you cannot fully comprehend until you’re a parent!

Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey
Oh yes, I’ve changed! How anyone could ever utter those famous last words, “Having a baby isn’t going to change me!” and not be laughed into oblivion is beyond me. But I uttered them! Ha! Parenting humbles you. It also changes your priorities, and it changes the way you view everything! It is the real thing, the nuts and bolts of life, and it makes you strip yourself down to essentials, cut the crap and bullshit out of your life! Yeah, who’s got time for that?

The Princess Monkey, or just monkey, as we now call her, is laughing more and more. It is THE SWEETEST sound on the planet, I swear! She laughs when I kiss her belly, she laughs when I tickle her under the chin and say “tickle, tickle!” It’s a spluttering kind of chuckle, and her dark shining eyes light up and dance, and I swear it gives me goosebumps to see her happy little face shining with laughter. I am relieved she’s laughing more; I was worried not so long ago that she might not have a sense of humour, which would be a distinct disadvantage in this household. But no, my little monkey is blossoming more and more, growing as a person, experiencing more emotions, more sensations, like a little bud starting to unfurl its petals and open to the sunshine. Sorry ladies, but the monkey brings out the poetry in my soul. Ha!

Day Tripper
OK, I have attached some photos that I just adore! My mother came to visit it us on the weekend baring gifts for the monkey. And hidden amongst them was THE TREASURE OF ALL TREASURES, yes the leopard-print suit Pix’s wearing in the pics. I swear, it is the cutest thing I’ve ever beheld in my life and I WISH I had a matching one to wear when we skive off to the supermarket on our daily outing! Yes, it gives all the grannies a major thrill to see the little leopard girl sitting in her pram, her little ears pointing up. She’s the cutest thing. Mothers point her out to their children, “see the little cat girl!” Ha! It’s too cute! Anyway, I couldn't choose between the photos so I just attached them all! The little girl holding Pixie is her only cousin on my side, Sasha, who adores Pixie and wants to carry her around all the time!

Carry That Weight
Yes, I’m being very brave by including a photo of yours truly and her three chins! EEK! Still haven’t lost that pregnancy weight -- it’s a clinger! It’s gonna take MAJOR effort, and well, it hasn’t happened yet! Ha! I’ve only just started doing my postnatal pelvic floor lifts, seven months later! The good old floor has gone from feeling floppy and numb to feeling slightly elastic again … thankfully it still works. I tested it this week by stopping the golden flow in mid-stream, so that was a relief! I haven’t wanted to know anything about anything down in the banished nether-regions since Pixie was sucked out, but maybe now I’m about to reclaim them! We shall see…

The End
OK, now that you all know all about my plumbing I guess it’s time to sign off! And HEY, no prizes for guessing the inspiration for this diary entry. Anyone even vaguely plugged in to the 20th century knows exactly where my titles came from! Just thought I’d play Amy H.’s little game for a week!

OK, that’s all folks! Enjoy the photos, enjoy your week, and LIFT THOSE PELVIC FLOORS, ladies! I would like to know I am the inspiration behind many tightened perineums as we speak! Ha! OK, I must adjourn. My life is waiting for me to pick it up and kick it!

Have a fantabulous week, everyone,

Eloise~