The most socially awkward thing I’ve ever done. So awkward I’m not going to * anything.
Have a baby in 2020.
But first, please enjoy the preceding few weeks’ hilarity in my meme and photo folder.
It was really awkward. Not least because of how it happened. One-time-only bad decision making, if you know what I mean, after a few glasses of Irish-cream-what-what from Aldi. I mean, can we be more classy? I’m thoroughly embarrassed as I type this and remember myself saying something like: “it’s the end of the world, who cares anyway?” (April ’20). In any case, one fine day sitting at the computer, the nausea hit me from my toes up. My first thought was, no. Just no. No way. And then himself got sent straight to the pharmacy.
Back to the awkwardness. For a while, it just looked like the Covid Stone. Then it started looking like a real baby. I was stuck at home, as we all were. Going literally nowhere except to hospital appointments by myself. Time went on and it was just too late to say anything on all the work video calls. I mean, what do you do? Stand up and show off your belly in an ‘accidental’ side shot? Yawn and stretch? Or do you interrupt proceedings with an “excuse me I have some news?” While debating these various different and equally awkward scenarios, so much time passed that it was nearly time to have the actual baby. And then he arrived early. So then the message had to very quickly turn into “hey, I’m off here now for a bit of personal time, but not for too long. No, I don’t have Covid. BRB”-type messages. AFK for a few days.
I had my baby on the 29 November, by section, in CUMH. It was a Sunday night – change of shift time. It was really scary and very unpleasant, with Graeme (my husband) waiting outside in the car park for hours and nobody knowing what was going on. I was admitted to the Emergency and was in for about five hours, in labour, on a narrow bed, not able to reach my phone. By the time I got somebody to pass it to me, I was pretty much being dressed for theatre. We thought I’d go in, be calmed down, and sent away again. Not that simple. Graeme was allowed in basically as they were cutting me open – after they had to repeat the spinal block that didn’t work the first time. Just a really unpleasant evening. He had to leave when they wheeled me out of recovery. He hadn’t been able to attend a single doctor’s appointment with me.
Ruairí came out shouting the odds though and was pretty okay. This was the biggest relief for me at that moment. We had a difficult pregnancy, him and I. Besides it being incredibly awkward, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. From start to end, the ball was dropped by the doctors and midwives involved in that regard. If not for our GP and the village pharmacy, I don’t know if we would have come out okay. That, and all the delicious healthy snacks Graeme made. Endless snacking. Snacking till the food is up your throat with the nausea.
To this day, I’m waiting for the South Infirmary to phone me back to get my sugar readings from about 6 months ago. And yes, assholes, I left multiple messages on your various answering machines. Can you tell I got sick and tired of injecting myself with insulin? I have the biggest respect for anybody who lives with diabetes. I did a needle count one day, rough estimation: I had to prick my finger seven times a day in order to test sugars and inject insulin twice a day. I will be avoiding the follow-up fasting glucose test for a while, possibly until the trauma subsides.
When I went into labour, they gave me medication for high blood pressure, as that was playing up too. They explained at the time, but, honestly, I wasn’t listening to anything or seeing very much. I met so many people there that Graeme remembers; don’t ask me who they are though! That medication did something, and Ruairí’s sugars crashed at 48 hours. He landed up in the neonatal unit with a sugar level of 1.9. This was at 10pm at night.
After I had been told that afternoon that he had a murmur in his heart, I had to tell Graeme in a text message. I couldn’t voice note or call because the other children were listening in. Then I had to message, from the deserted basement passage of CUMH in the middle of the night, while our baby was being revived. He got through that. The murmur disappeared. And then he was jaundiced. So jaundiced he went back into the neonatal unit for a few days and sessions under the lamps. We had been able to take him home for one night only at that point. I had to go back to the emergency for very high blood pressure. Sitting, alone, again, on a tiny bed, my milk came in leaking all over. I pumped. He drank. We got through it. He was allowed home when he was one week old.
I don’t think anything gets more awkward than this experience.
All that trauma with nowhere for it to go, in the middle of all the trauma of our lives every day these days. At times, the awkwardness is really funny. But, at other times, I cry.
When we need the hugs and the chat the most, they’re not there anymore. We need to fix this. Be kind to the people around you. Ask how they’re doing. Make space for people to tell their stories. We’re all going through something, and we need each other. Let’s take turns having a bad day and allowing ourselves and others to have a bad day. We’re nearly there. Let’s not leave anybody behind.
As my niece says, he is our tinnnnyyyyy piece of cheese.
Merry New Year to all of you! I went AWOL for a good reason there – to be revealed in the next column as The Most Socially Awkward Thing I Did in 2020 and Ever.* In any case, here we are. Locked down. Again. The third time over. Well, it’s more like the second time, as the time before this didn’t really count. Or did it? Time is a bit hazy at the moment. I find my mind reverts back to our Southern Hemisphere, South African calendar in a Clockwork Orange-type blip from time to time. Is it the start of the school year? Is it the end? What’s happening? It feels like July, but it’s not. Will summer ever come back? If I start posting pictures of crossed out I I I Is send help!
Other coping slash distraction mechanisms include binge watching series. Schitt’s Creek has opened up a world of meme-age.***** We’re onto Brooklyn 99 now. It’s making me regret not going into the police service and becoming a detective (that is one of my lesser-known regrets – I think I would have made a very good detective. I also have a queue of schmaltzy 90s and 2000s romantic comedies to get through; Sweet Home Alabama ticked off that list. Mental chewing gum is where it is at.
In any case, fuck Brexit. Really. I don’t say much about it publicly, but I am sad it actually happened. I’m sad for all that could have been and now never will be. I’m sad for people who believe they’re so much better than everybody else that they put walls up, slam doors shut, and retreat. Small people with small minds. Nationalism turned disease. There, I said it. Ugh. In protest, I check out my items on Amazon one by one,******* while I watch my romcoms, eating alcoholic milkshakes and dreaming of UBI and communal gardens.
Reading back, I realise I might have missed out a small, but rather vital, piece of information for you. That is, when you’re setting your focus for the year or quarter or month, to pick out two to three things to focus on. So, if we look at our categories for the year – and we’ve scored them in light of what our level 10 life looks like – in order to start achieving balance, we’d likely pick up the two to three lowest scoring categories and assign them highest priority. On my Wheel of Life, my three lowest scoring categories are: Health, Personal Development, and Fun and Recreation. I decided to concentrate on these for 2020. When I set my goals, I make the goals set in these categories a priority. Other goals come second to these.
Take recreation or hobbies in my case. At the beginning of this year, 2020, the year of all that is Corona, I decided to brush up on my piano playing skills. Again. I thought I’d be able to sneak an hour a couple of times a week while the kids were at school to do this. And then we all laughed together. About halfway into lockdown, I realised that instead of carrying this over as a ‘priority’ task that I was never going to get to, I could shift focus and make sure that I spent at least half an hour to an hour, before I went to sleep, reading novels. This helps me to wind down and shift focus onto something that is not work or family related. I love reading candyfloss time-crime dramas or thrillers. Honestly, it’s as much me-time as piano was ever going to be. I’m not about to be sitting at the Heuston Station piano enthralling all who come and go with my talents, believe you me. It was purely for me to do something different. Reading has the same effect. It is okay to change that specific action of play piano for three hours a week to read for half an hour before bed every night.
“At the very end of each month, set up a new Monthly Log. Once that’s done, review the pages of the month gone by. Chances are, you didn’t get around to completing all your Tasks. That’s fine! What’s important is figuring out which incomplete Tasks are worth your limited time and energy moving forward. Strike out those that aren’t, and migrate the ones that are.”
