The Pants Gazette

A week filled with music, family, the beach, laughs and cake.

Oh, and a three-dimensional movie of our baby currently growing inside my belly.

We got a few discs from the doctor when we had our 18-week scan but we hadn’t watched them until my mum visited for her birthday over the weekend.

Doesn’t that sound terrible? We hadn’t watched them.

The reason? 99% because life just takes over and we had seen our baby girl wiggling around on screen before our eyes anyway while the scan was happening, and 1% because I think I am still a teeny bit afraid of bonding.

I know this is a boring, tired old theme – and I am sick of it myself – but I cannot deny what I am feeling. And that is still an element of anxiety.

Anyway, 1% or .000001%, let’s accept it is just there.

The baby is moving quite a bit, although I rue the day I read on the hospital admission forms that I could call the midwives at any time if I had certain concerns, among them reduced movement from my baby (less than 10 – 12 movements per day).

It actually said that, in brackets, in black and white. 10 – 12 movements. Per day.

Why did they write a number? Don’t give me a number! Don’t set me medical parameters that cause me to either relax if I comply or freak out if I don’t!

Now I am bloody counting all day! If I wasn’t so busy at work, and mostly sane for the majority of my waking hours, I would keep a running tally sheet every time I felt a flutter and then either collapse in a heap or rejoice in happiness at the end of the day once I had revised that day’s count.

But mostly it’s all good. The sun has started shining with a bit more intensity, the damn bugs and spiders are coming out and we are forced yet again to utter our Spring refrain “when is the bloody pest control man due again?”: a sure sign summer is on its way.

I am suddenly asking myself seriously what type of attire I shall be able to wear when swimming at the beach and pondering whether I can be brave enough to just let my bare belly see the sun’s rays, unburdened by the ubiquitous rashie I have felt compelled to wear since my late 20s when beer and fine food of the brown, chocolatey variety conspired to gift me a generous spare tyre.

T and I went to the local music festival on the weekend and spent a glorious eight full hours together without our three-year-old.

How strange it was to sit and read the paper in the shade while we waited for bands to set up. How unusually peaceful it was to place a lazy body on the grass and stare at the cloudless sky until even lazier eyes dozed shut for a few precious minutes.

How bizarre to not have to endlessly ask each other if one of us needed to go to the toilet, if we had brushed our teeth or, over dinner, if we could please eat two more spoons of rice before we could have any sweets.

The festival was awesome. We saw The Baby Animals, Missy Higgins, Paris Wells, Watussi, Diesel and Little Red. Bloody brilliant. Although tough to do sober!

Speaking of pregnancy wardrobe, and I know this has emerged as a common theme, but let me leave you with some more news on pants.

The festival marked the second time in a fortnight I had ventured to a public event with my pants undone.

Not just a fly open, or a button missing its loopy mate by mistake. Pants completely and utterly open.

See, I have jeans that fit well, leg-wise and length-wise. But from the bottom of the zipper to the top, there is no way on this earth those two flaps of material will ever meet across my belly.

Ever.

Where they should be the letter I, they are doggedly the letter V, with __ leanings.

But luckily, or not, the good lord of genetics has afforded me with quite a sizeable inner thigh circumference, such expanse of skin that acts as quite a handy magnet to most pants at that point of fabric join. Pants are at their most taut at that stage of my leg, let’s put it that way. Like most humans I guess. Um.

And thankfully, the good lord of fashion has brought back enormously long shirt lengths, hopefully thereby banishing for good those atrocious midriff tops we all wore in the 80s when we had waists and zero belly flab.

Put on one of those 80s length shirts now, after the inevitable middle-age torso spread has woven its wretched magic, and people think you are wearing a scarf with sleeves.

So, I am fortunate for the moment to be able to couple my undone jeans with an almost knee-length top, add a few more layers and whether monster trucks or music festivals, no one knows the difference!

Genius.

Until the wind blows...

The Best Week Yet

Easily one of the best weeks of my life, even if it featured the ubiquitous emotional rollercoaster.

We had our 18-week scan last week and one word sums it up: normal.

I tell you, after the hell we endured last year, that is the best and only six-letter combination we wanted to hear.

The fact that we also found out it’s a girl was icing on the cake, really, and we are just so happy.

I was incredibly nervous in the days leading up to the scan. The day before, I had even readied myself for bad news. Looking back I cannot believe I wasted so much energy imagining the detail of being ushered into a side room to be told there was a growth or an abnormality or that something anatomical wasn’t where it should be.

I didn’t think it would be as bad as before (Downs Syndrome, serious heart defect), but I did honestly think it would be something big enough to cause us to worry for the next six months.

Something even that might require surgery in utero – yep, these are the extreme places my mind goes at night.

I think I have to accept that worry is unfortunately part of my make-up now. It is how I am drawn.

Day to day, I just need to learn how to handle it, control it, not let it get the best of me. But this time, I just expected something else to give me reason to worry.

The three of us finally entered the scan room, late, and our baby suddenly appeared on the screen on the wall.

This was exactly the same room I was in a year ago to have my amnio. This was almost exactly the same image I was looking at back then when I suddenly caught myself and told myself to look away, not get too attached or connect with this tiny being’s movement too much, because I just knew it would all be taken away.

A year ago, on the very day we went in for our scan, we were in the same hospital a few hundred metres away preparing to terminate the pregnancy. (More freaky coincidences here.)

And yet that day, last week, I was trying to push those thoughts far away with as much force as I was remembering them.

The tug-of-war had me exhausted at the end of the day, utterly depleted.

But there was much to celebrate as the three of us sat in silence watching the doctor measure and scan and press popping buttons on a computer.

J was intrigued, T was in awe and I, after asking if everything was alright (give me something!), burst into tears. Of course.

The scan was temporarily interrupted as my stomach heaved as I let out a particularly intense sob, causing the wand thing to lose contact with my contracting belly. But all was well.

Later at home, J and I played while T went to work. I noticed J started getting a few of his toys and calling them his own babies, holding them and feeding them bottles. It was so damn adorable, the little man.

I took him to our local lake by the beach and we had the best time splashing in the shallows and building sand pools and castles. I think I was still walking on happy air at that point and he no doubt picked up on the vibe.

Just then, as the sun set and the light in the sky changed, the unmistakable squawk of the black cockatoo emerged from overhead.

I looked up and five of the massive, majestic birds silhouetted the clouds, right over our heads, their yellow cheeks flashing like war-plane markings as they flooshed through the air.

These are the same birds that appeared a year before when our baby died. I have felt a strong, ethereal connection to them ever since.

And here they were again.

Letting me know everything was right in the world.