A festive freak-out

It’s Christmas – the one day of the year everyone eats so much that we all look 31 weeks’ pregnant. Hooray!

A good week, winding down to a fortnight off from work – fantastic! It suddenly dawned on me that I will be coming back to work for a little less than a month, and that will be quite tricky I imagine.

Only because I am now starting to feel the weight of, not the world on my shoulders, but this baby girl on my girth.

Good Lord, it’s difficult getting around and the sudden effort required to do so catches you quite by surprise.

Want to vacuum the house? Awesome, not a problem. Until you get half-way through and need to sit down and get your breath back, while saying to yourself that you’ll finish the other half after you’ve had a nap.

Want to drive to work? Easy. Do it most days a week. Until you try and get the seatbelt in a comfortable position below your enormous belly, all the while wondering what the hell might go wrong if you were in an accident and that belt snapped across your abdomen.

And getting out of the car? Just give me 10 minutes to pry myself loose from the driver’s seat. Brace against steering wheel, swivel, swing legs onto ground, grunt, push upwards, grunt louder, stand upright, grimace. I feel 108.

Then my lower back twinges, or my hips go numb, and I feel 208.

I am also starting to get some practical things done, like getting the car seat fitted, packing a bag for hospital (waa!) and finally organising maternity leave through Centrelink.

Doing these things, apart from making it all so bloody real, also reinforces how momentous the change will be for our family in 2012.

Soon and within the space of about six weeks, J leaves day care after four years, starts kindy and we welcome his new baby sister into the world.

I stop work for an extended period for the first time in my life and I become the main carer of a tiny baby girl.

I discard a comfortable routine that involved supreme organisation, accomplishing a stimulating variety of duties at work, multi-tasking and basically having control over every aspect of my life for what is likely to be a chaotic mess of sleeplessness, a crying baby I fear I won’t be able to understand and patronising piles of washing.

Oh. My. God.

Just plain weird

T's parents visited from country South Australia this week.

But I didn't see them. Her father refuses to see me or acknowledge me.

They stayed a week.

An entire week, from Sunday to Sunday and I did not see them once. Not even for a split second.

They stayed a suburb away.

T took our little boy to them each day, or she took him to his regular weekly activities like swimming and gym. And they tagged along.

There were no combined dinners, no "let's go out together and try this new Italian place I heard about" or "let's just grab a shnitty at the RSL tonight".

We dropped him off yesterday, Saturday, to spend the day with them while we had a hit of tennis and did some shopping.

I sat by myself in the car while T took him upstairs, and I contemplated the ridiculous situation as the traffic whizzed by my open window.

T's father would rather not have me around as a reminder of the sort of relationship his daughter is living in. A relationship he does not condone.

We think he believes I have corrupted their daughter...that I have got my hooks into her and turned her gay.

They must be pretty powerful hooks that attach with some sort of crazy-concrete super glue, because they've stuck and stayed in for coming up to eight years now...

There are so many things wrong with this situation.

Firstly, let me just vent in my not-always-fair black-and-white way. T and her mum should grow some balls, tell this idiot to get his head out of his own bigoted ass and wake the fuck up to the fact that life is short, his daughter is happy, and this is her CHOICE.

They should both STOP, right now, bowing down to this fuckwit and stop letting him call the shots, stop him standing in the way of the happiness that should come from seeing their daughter living the fulfilled, nurturing life she does: as one integral part of a three-person family.

If he wants to sit in a chair and grumble and moan about a kid having two dykes for parents, then he can do it. BY HIMSELF.

How dare he draw everyone around him into that swirling black hole of hatred and ignorance?

Right, now might be a good time for the rational me to step in. T has always had a brilliant relationship with her father...daddy's little girl and all that.

Of course, that went haywire and pretty much exploded into nothingness when she revealed the truth about us.

If any of my parents or loved ones had have reacted the way he did at the time that news was shared, not only would I never speak to them again, I would in fact take great glee in cutting them completely from my life. Much like a cancerous boil is sliced off with a white-hot scalpel. And with much relief afterwards.

I would be flippant and carefree about denying them, and gain salacious pleasure from rising an axe above my head - the rustier the better - and slamming it down on our relationship with a hefty cleave of intent.

Yes, you would be wise not to cross me.

But of course, that is easy for me to say when I am over here in the fortunate comfort of a supportive and loving reaction from every single member of my family.

And you know what is even weirder about all of this? He doted on J and both of them were delightfully astounded at his personality, his speech, his development, his mannerisms and his good behaviour (he really is an angel and this might sound corny, but almost every day, I thank whoever was responsible for blessing us with such a beautiful boy).

So, put that in your freaking pipe and smoke it, old man. Two women - and two women you knew and really liked before you found out we were in a relationship - can raise a smart, sensitive and caring boy.

If it was me, you would never get to see him. Because this type of behaviour makes me come over all vindictive. If it was me, I would take great joy in depriving you of him. Just as you are depriving your daughter from being completely honest about her life and the person she is, in her beautiful soul.

But I am slowly learning to chill about it. Firstly, it only makes me angrier if he dares to steal emotional energy from me, so I must put it out of my mind.

And secondly, I don't want to be another source of anxiety for poor T in all this. I won't be a slice of bread in this disgusting, mixed-up sandwich - and she should not be forced into the middle.

I understand it is not so easy for her to cut him out and stand up to him. We are different people and this is her father.

But she has always said that once the next baby comes along, if they wish to treat the kids differently (because I will be having the next one), that will be the end of their involvement in our lives.

Another reason why I so wished to be cradling a two-week old in my arms right now.

The final, relieved cleave could have already been cleft and we might be able to move on from this torment limbo...