Setri at 13 months

No time to organise post this month, it's more a collection of notes I made in my BlackBerry throughout the month and then posted here unedited. Will edit for photos later
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Still so cute but a lot more grown-up looking in last 3 month. And some funny/quirky aspects to his appearance- esp his wonky, sticking-out ears and baby-fro :) He still has only 6 teeth. He still only just weighs 12kg, too. From being a ginormous nearly-10-kg 4-5 month-old, he's now probably a pretty average 13-month-old, I'm guessing. He still looks solid and healthy, so nothing to worry about.

He 'helps' put on/take off clothes, and has finally learned to put up with wearing shoes or socks (he used to yell 'Stuck! Stuck' whenever we'd attempt to put some on him. He still does a bit, but can then be distracted into walking around and forgetting he has them on.

Can crawl backwards down stairs, walk sideways downstairs if holding onto rail, and walk down stairs holding our hands.

Gam has been working on the concept of sharing. Long ago, when asked to hand something over, Setri would duly hand it over and take it back in less than a second, wailing if it were removed from his reach. Then he learned that he could say 'no', which he routinely did, clutching the now even more precious object to his chest so the asker could not get at it. Now he can run, he will not only clutch the object to his chest, he will often run if he feels it is particularly precious or in significant danger of being removed from his custody. Gam has been utilising an ingenious strategy of asking for something that Setri is holding, cajoling him if he says no, and either holding it and looking it over for the briefest of moments before handing it back, or doing something funny or interesting with it so that when the object is handed back to Setri he will thrust it at Gam and say 'more!'. Sometimes Setri will even say 'share' to Gam (rather, something that rhymes with 'air', seeing as he can't yet make a 'sh' sound), and hold out an object in the expectation that Gam will do something amusing for him.

As a segue from the 'sh' sound, Setri made a pretty good attempt at the word 'sushi' this month- something along the lines of 'zhuzhi'. He loves nori rolls, something he obviously did not inherit from Gam.

Can understand reasonably complex instruction, eg to pick something up and take it to a specific room and put it in a specific cupboard

Attempts colours and numbers. He only knows 2 colours, blue and yellow, and probably only gets it right about 60-70% of the time when presented with a yellow or blue object and asked 'what colour is that, Setri?'. But, when he sees an unfamiliar object, or one whose name he can't say, that is either blue or yellow in colour, he will point at the object and say 'boooo' or 'lello' to indicate what it is that he wants, and does this with (as far as I'm aware) 100% accuracy.

The numbers thing he has been doing since 12 months, and frankly I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a clue. BUT it is so cute when we ask him (for example), 'how many birds are there, Setri?', and he holds up his little hand, fingers outstretched and slightly contorted, and enthusiastically says 'Ree!'. Three seems to be his 'default number', much as 'dog' used to be his default animal. If corrected that there are in fact only two, four, five or just one bird, he will generally attempt to copy what we have just said, and hold up his hand with fingers outstretched to try and match our number signs. But if asked the same 'how many?' question again, he will reply again 'Ree!'. I generally don't go beyond 5, I figure we are probably confusing him enough already!

Anticipates things. Eg can tell that a certain object is about to appear on a TV show by the presence of certain music that generally precedes its presence. Or that a certain object is about to appear on the next page of a book, based on the pictures or sounds that precede it (e.g. he always says 'bowl!' after I read the page of his 'Old King Cole' book that contains the line about the king's pipe. Also he seems to have a great internal clock/calendar and says 'Bin!' every thursday afternoon (bin night). He usually reminds me, as I'm always forgetting. Sees that one of us (esp Mum) has sunglasses on, and knows that it is likely that he will be taken outside... Alternatively he may demand that one of us puts glasses on, because wearing glasses means one has to leave the house!

Can run, but falls over frequently when going flat out.

Often says 'boob' to me to express that he is hungry and wants food, not boob.

Setri experimenting with expressiveness/tone in the way he says things (e.g Mama, no). He can whisper now, too.

Says 'bin!' when he takes an item of food out of his mouth or finds a piece of rubbish, then holds the item in the air until we take it from him.

Says 'ow' when he's hurt (whether a little or a lot).

Has learned to growl and yell and make loud, unpleasant noises of displeasure when he doesn't get his way. He's grown out of his cute little non-tanty tanties. They weren't working, so for a little while we pretty much didn't get tanties. Then in the last few days he's started this growling [edit: it didn't last long, just a couple of days, thankfully].

Much more social. Still likes to sit and observe people for a couple of mins, but then warms up and starts acting smiley and playful.

His language is not a whole lot more comprehensible, and the rate at which he picks up words has plateaued a bit (still increasing, just not exponentially). He now often says 'bye bye' when waving goodbye, or when he wants to indicate that he wishes to leave us behind and go to the park with Grandma.

If he wants us to repeat sing something that he doesn't know the word or sign for, an unfamiliar song, he will ask for 'more la la la'. If I ask him to sing, he will say 'la la la' in a sing-song voice. He's been doing that since about 11 months. This month, however, he started singing 'baaa baaa' when we ask him to sing 'baa baa black sheep'.

He can string 3 words together. For instance, he often likes to play with empty drink bottles. On one occasion, however, he was thirsty and wanted a drink and not just to be given the bottle to play with. So he said 'Bohboh, awah, ding' ('Bottle, water, drink). Another time, Gam did something amusing with Setri's sunglasses, and Setri immediately demanded that he repeat the action by grabbing the glasses, saying "Lah-le (miming putting them on his head), MORE!", then handing the glasses back to Gam (this sequence was repeated until Gam got tired of being bossed around).

Setri is fond of making 'jokes'. One recurring joke is after every breastfeed I give him in bed, Setri clambers into the cot, points at the glass on my bedside table and says 'Awah' (water). The first few times this happened, I would offer him some water (or refill the glass from the jug, if the glass was empty), and Setri would put his lips to the glass as if to take a sip, then grin broadly and turn his back on me. Then one day, having been tricked too many times, I played along and asked 'Do you want water, Setri?'. 'Yeah', he said. 'Awah'. 'I don't believe you!', I told him. 'You're telling baby lies again!'. Setri grinned mischievously and giggled. Now it's a ritual that he asks for water, I make no move to get it for him, and tell him he is a very funny boy for making baby-jokes, and he generally responds by giggling and giving me a kiss or a cuddle. He does seem to prefer it when I pretend to play along by asking if he wants water, not minding that I make no attempt to get the water, so he can pretend to turn his back on me.

He also messes with us by giving us wrong answers to questions we know he knows the answer to. For instance, he knows the answer to the question 'What does a sheep say, Setri?'. He can also tell us what a cow says, a cat says, and a few others as well, but 'baaa' is his default answer when he doesn't know (I'm pretty sure if we asked him 'What does Mummy say, Setri?', he would answer 'baaa!'). Once in a blue moon, more often than not when we are trying to showcase his language abilities to impress our friends, Setri will deliberately give the wrong answer (eg 'moo!' for the sheep) , cock his head with a mischievous look, and giggle.


I don't know if I've mentioned this one before, but from a very early age, before he learned to talk, Setri has been able to do a fake laugh. It sounds like he's scoffing, and he does it in response to Gam laughing at me. Generally he will also fix me with an appropriately scornful gaze. We joke that he's Gam's evil baby henchman. He will rarely do the laugh if I laugh, but he has been known to scoff when Gam's not there, uncannily at times when Gam would no doubt have been scoffing at me too.

He still loves to 'read' (mainly books with flowers or diggers), and surprised me the other day by recognising the word 'Roland' on a book of piano music... I had taught him that the word on the piano itself said 'Roland', but didn't know he had the ability to recognise it anywhere else. He asks for 'Rolan' as often as he asks for 'nano' these days, as if the piano's name is Roland! He also loves it when I write letters on the window or shower glass after a shower, and tell him what they are for, eg 'that's a D for 'daddy'). He always says 'more!', like he's absolutely fascinated.


Showed his first flash of selfishness, as opposed to self-centredness this month. He was sitting in a tray that originally formed the base of a large flower pot, and my mum had filled it with water. Setri was splashing in the shallow water and having a great time. Feifei approached. Feifei has a great nose for fresh water, and was keen for a drink. 'Setri will love this', I thought. It was pretty novel for him to have Feifei as a captive audience, and he would love the opportunity to give him pats as Feifei drank. But that didn't happen. Feifei stooped down to drink, and Setri grabbed Feifei's head with both hands and firmly pushed him away from the tray. Driven by the prospect of a novel fresh water source, Feifei tried again, only for Setri to repeat the action. He hasn't done anything like it since, but it was a little sad to see Setri acting like a mini human being instead of the loving little creature he normally is.


Practices sitting on his potty with his pants/nappy on. He can tell us when he wants to do a wee, but usually says 'no' when asked if he wants to do it in the potty (occasionally he will agree, but then not want to stay on the potty for more than a minute or so- he doesn't seem to find it particularly comfortable. On these occasions he will often agree to do his wee in the shower instead). Has not succeeded in pooing on potty.

Back to enjoying reasonably spicy food. Still having a go at most foods but doesn't reliably enjoy a single thing. Not even chocolate! Often it's quite a challenge to run through a list of foods til there is something Setri says he wants to eat. I always thought I would be in the 'eat this or you get nothing' camp, but he's not picky, he just doesn't feel like eating the same thing every day. And neither do Gam and I, so it would be kind of hypocritical to make him eat the first thing that was offered. Besides, being breastfed, I'm sure he would just make it up by feeding during the night, so it's me who would lose out in the end. Actually he does make it up by feeding during the night anyway, to some degree. He pretty much doesn't drink all day when I'm at work (he does eat, unless he's sick) and saves up for a big feed (and wee) after I get home.

On toilet training, he likes to practise sitting on his potty, and sometimes asks me to take off his nappy so he can sit on it and do a wee, only to tell me afterwards 'no', when he attempts to get up and I ask if he wants to do a wee like he said. On these occasions it usually appears that he has freshly weed in his nappy, so he possibly has things a little muddled, but it seems like progress. He always says 'no' when I ask him if he wants to do his poo on the potty. He routinely tries to wee in the sink or shower, I suppose because I've always praised him for doing it. The other day mum and I had him in the sink after he'd done a poo and he strained his lower abdominal muscles as he usually does when asked to wee. Nothing happened, and he shook his head and said, resignedly, 'no'!

The birth of Setriakor: Epilogue

That first night home, I had my first proper night's sleep in a week, even though I slept lightly with Setri asleep in the bed next to me. Gam changed nappies and brought me water when I needed it. Looking after Setri at home was exactly as we had imagined. Except for the part where I cried every time I left him alone in our room. And every time I remembered the hospital stay. And every time I thought about putting him down. Gam would often be distressed to find me sitting on the couch with Setri in my arms and tears rolling down my cheeks for what seemed like no good reason at all.

After arriving home it took Setri another 36 hours of crying and discomfort to poo for the first time since his second day of life. The combination of nil-by-mouth and antibiotics had really messed with his digestive system. Another strike against the Special Care Registrars and their overly interventionist approach, as far as we were concerned.

Aside from that, everything appeared fine. From the minute we arrived home, Setri seemed infinitely more relaxed. He never had to scream for a feed because we were right there to see if he was hungry. He could be held whenever he needed it (which seemed to be all the time, but I didn't mind). We brought Setri back to the hospital at 6 days old for my Birth Centre follow-up, although I hated going back to the RBWH. Gam reassured me it was ok, we didn't have to stay there this time.



Karen, the midwife who delivered Setri, must have had an inkling of how we were feeling: she gave us brochures on how to complain. We had already taken some from the hospital, but we gratefully accepted these as a gesture of recognition that not all was right with our treatment there. Karen also gave us a disposable nappy- Setri had pooed when we arrived and we had changed his nappy. Problem was, we made the classic rookie mistake of only bringing one spare nappy. How many times could a baby poo during a half-hour visit, after all? However many spare nappies you have in your possession, plus one! He had put on weight though. I was so relieved, still fearful the hospital would find an excuse to take him back.

Gam told her how the registrar who came to my room on the second night had told me that she had been there at Setri's birth, that there was a lot of meconium in the waters and that he was 'in a bad way' and had vomited after the birth. Karen seemed shocked. Absolutely not, she told us. I had the lowest grade of meconium staining in my waters, and Setri was absolutely fine- as healthy as any baby could hope to be immediately after the birth. He had certainly not vomited. Karen asked me, a little apprehensively, if I had any issues with the care I had received through the Birth Centre. “No. You guys were fantastic”, I said without hesitation. Relieved, she gave me a hug and we said goodbye.

Four weeks after Setri's birth we had a group of friends over to breakfast at our house, the first time we had seen them since the birth. I tried to recount an abbreviated version of our stay in hospital to my friend Nicole. I thought enough time had passed that I would be able to at least manage that, but I started crying and couldn't finish.

We skipped an appointment that the Special Care Nursery had made for Setri with the doctor supposedly in charge of his care. Setri was healthy. If they were looking for reasons to justify his hospitalisation they wouldn't have found a single one. No way were we taking him back there.

Exactly 8 weeks after Setri's birth I noticed an increase in my bleeding, after it having previously nearly stopped. That night, around 9pm, I passed a couple of golf ball-sized clots. Risk of haemorrhage. I phoned the hospital and had my midwife on duty paged as per the instructions in my postnatal care information. Annie called back. I should go to the hospital right away, she said, detailing what I should look out for and the steps I should take if I started haemorrhaging. It sounded fairly straightforward, as long as I didn't haemorrhage. If that happened, it sounded like I would be dead before I reached the hospital. Chances were I just needed to be checked by a doctor, then I could go home. Actually, I'm not sure whether she said I could go home, or if that's what I told myself. I thanked Annie for her help. When I relayed the news to Gam my voice shook and I started to cry. “I have to go back to the hospital. I don't want to go back”.

Gam did his best to reassure me. I convinced myself that it was just a formality. The doctor would tell me I was ok and then we could go home.

The roads to the hospital were almost empty- it was a public holiday. We parked in the 'community vehicles' spot right out the front of the hospital. Inside, I had been instructed to go to the reception desk at the Birth Centre; from there I was directed to a waiting room that had obviously been closed for the night. It was locked, dark inside. There were no chairs outside, so I sat on the floor while Gam went back to the reception desk to ask where to go.

Eventually we were directed down a hallway past the Birth Suites in the regular maternity part of the hospital. I had walked down that hallway in labour, wrapped in a sheet, but my memory was hazy. “It was right about here that you had a contraction”, Gam said. I had hung onto the wooden handrail for support. “There were people looking at you, so I wrapped my arms around you and glared at them.”

We reached the small room we had been directed to. Setri needed a feed so I sat in a chair to feed him. The nurse arrived, then left while Setri finished feeding. Immediately afterward, he pooed, and it leaked out of his nappy and onto his jumpsuit. Ugh. Trust it to happen while we were out of the house. At least we were prepared this time: we had brought 2 spare nappies and a change of clothes. The nurse returned. Gam took Setri away to find changing room facilities. I was asked to lie on the bed by a nurse, who took down details of my problem bleeding. There were basically two possibilities: a postpartum infection or some retained placenta. I suspected the latter- when my midwife Karen put traction on Setri's umbilical cord after the birth, the placenta appeared to be torn. Karen had assured me it was all there, but the second she had pulled on the cord I felt it was wrong- she had stopped when I had asked and the placenta was expelled by my body a minute later- and now I felt that my fear at the time had been confirmed. I didn't say so. Instead I told her I hadn't passed any clots since 9pm and I was sure the bleeding was subsiding. I hadn't any symptoms of infection- no elevated temperature, no foul odour.

The nurse looked at the maternity pad I was wearing. It looked like a moderate amount of blood, she said, but I should go to the toilet and change my pad and also give her a urine sample while I was at it. The instructions were to wipe away all the blood with a sterile tissue she gave me, presumably to keep the sample clear of blood.

The toilet was quite a way down the corridor. In the end I just did the best I could to wipe away the blood. It just kept coming. I had awful trouble providing a urine sample, as I had made sure to visit the bathroom before we left for the hospital, but I managed what seemed like just enough. I changed my pad, flushed the toilet and pulled up my pants. As I started to walk away from the toilet I felt an odd, warm feeling between my legs, and knew I was about to pass another clot.

Shit. If they found out about this they would try to keep me in the hospital. I quickly pulled down my pants and hovered over the toilet seat as another dark red, golf-ball sized clot fell out of me. I knew that up to this point Gam was supportive of me deciding whether or not to stay overnight in the hospital, but this could well be the tipping point where he would be so worried for my safety that he would urge me to stay. I knew I was at risk of a haemorrhage but decided to lie and tell the nurse that the bleeding had subsided.

The nurse knocked on the bathroom door. I had been gone a while, was I ok? Just finishing up, I told her.

“You were gone a long time”, said Gam. “I had trouble peeing enough for the urine sample”, I said. Well, that was true. Setri had pooed again while I was gone, and Gam had changed him again.

The gynaecological registrar came by to examine me. She seemed to be favouring a diagnosis of infection rather than retained placenta. She wanted to keep me in hospital overnight, she said. I told her I was very keen to avoid it, if possible. How many women get a postpartum infection?, I asked. Something like 5 percent, she told me. She would be back soon. She wanted to do an internal examination. Not something I felt like, but it would have been silly to refuse. Registrar and nurse left the room together

“One more reason to never do this again.” said Gam. “What do you mean?”, I asked. “No. More. Kids. Look at all the things that have gone wrong”, he said. “First the Special Care Nursery, where I had to go home without you and Setri for almost a whole week, then the mastitis, and now some horrible infection where you might bleed to death at any minute. I'm getting the snip as soon as I can.”

I started crying. I knew that Gam wasn't likely to be keen on having more kids anyway, but it felt horrible that the misfortunes that had befallen us would influence his decision. Especially our experience with those bastard Special Care doctors meant that I might never have another baby as a result of Gam being traumatised by the experience. And the reference to the mastitis bothered me, because I felt like I was being blamed for something else that wasn't my fault. As for tonight's events, I knew where Gam was coming from. It had crossed his mind that I could die. To him, nothing was worth that, not even Setri, let alone risking something like this again- possibly with worse consequences- for some non-existent future baby. At the same time, I almost felt that I was being punished for it if it factored into Gam refusing something I wanted. No way was that his intention, I knew, but it still hurt. Besides, could there possibly be a worse time to bring this up? I sniffed and wiped away tears.

Gam seemed surprised and ever-so-slightly irritated that I had suddenly gotten so emotional, but also appeared to realise that perhaps this wasn't the best time to talk about ruling out more kids. He apologised and handed me some tissues.

The nurse returned. I quizzed her on the likelihood of infection, puzzled that the doctor seemed to think it the most likely diagnosis. How many infections presented with no temperature? No foul-smelling discharge? Almost none, she told me. Pressed for a figure, she said 99.9% would have one or both symptoms. I had neither. I was relieved.

The registrar returned to conduct an internal examination. She explained that it would be just like a pap smear, she would use a speculum and take some swabs from around my cervix, plus take a look at it with a little light. It might be a bit uncomfortable, she said.

Although the clear plastic speculum was lubricated with some kind of gel, it was quite uncomfortable when inserted. I gritted my teeth for the swabs but they weren't too bad. Then the registrar said “There's another clot working its way out through the cervix. Let me just...”. And with that, she inserted a crochet-hook-like implement into my vagina and, after a moment's work, hauled out another clot, which the nurse promptly wiped away. A concerned look crossed the doctor's face. “I'd keep you in”, she said.

Why did there have to be another clot? How many more would there be? Just how much risk was there if I refused to stay? On the one hand I wanted to avoid the hospital at almost any cost. On the other hand, I had only been Setri's mother for 8 weeks, and I didn't want to die now. I wanted to be his mother for a lot longer. At least until he could remember me, and know how much I loved him. And Gam. I pictured Gam raising Setri on his own, and felt distraught. I would rather stay in the hospital than have that happen. On the other hand, if I stayed in the hospital they might take Setri away again? What if another midwife decided that he was breathing too fast and the whole thing happened again? Panicking internally at the thought, I asked what the risk was of a haemorrhage.

Without answering my question directly, the registrar stated how quickly a woman can bleed out during a postpartum haemorrhage. Often too quickly for an ambulance to arrive. “8 weeks is pretty much exactly the time that we'd expect to see problems”, she told me. “I'd rather have you in the hospital where if something goes wrong we can get you help quickly. You can have your baby right with you in the room”, she said. Experience told me better than to believe that. She didn't know what could go wrong- I did. The memory of escaping from hospital with Setri was still fresh. I looked desperately at Gam, whose gaze told me that he knew exactly what I was thinking, and the same thing had gone through his mind. I'd need an ultrasound to determine whether there were any pieces of retained placenta, she said. If I stayed overnight, as an inpatient I would have priority in the queue and could have that ultrasound in the morning. If I went home, I would have to return to the hospital the next day and have the ultrasound as an outpatient, and likely have to wait several hours for it.

That made no sense. If I was really at risk of bleeding to death, shouldn't the degree of seriousness of my condition dictate my position in the queue, not whether I was a damn inpatient? I was being asked to spend a night in hospital, risking going through again what we had been put through after Setri's birth, to avoid a few hours waiting in line for an ultrasound the next day? That sealed my decision. I wanted to go home.

There was only a very small risk I would die, I told myself. I didn't feel particularly reassured.

The registrar looked unhappy. I would have to sign some forms, she told me. I was going to be discharging myself against medical advice. Was I sure?

I wanted to be safe. I wanted to stay, just in case the worst happened. I wasn't delusional. I knew the worst thing that could happen was that I might die. That was far worse than one more night away from Gam. Worse even than Setri being taken away again. But the risk of haemorrhage, despite being greatly increased, seemed smaller than the risk of suffering another night away from Gam. Another night of harassment, another night where someone might decide that Setri's breathing was a little funny, where I would be relentlessly pestered to give him up to the Special Care Nursery for 'observation'. I had failed Setri once and released him to those people, and look what happened. I didn't trust myself not to let it happen again. I probably wasn't going to bleed out at home, I told myself. It was a horrific thought, but the risk was actually very small. They were just being careful, that's all.

I signed the forms, the same forms we had insisted we had wanted to sign to get Setri out of hospital when there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. Gam and I marvelled at how hard we had had to fight to get Setri discharged, yet here I was with a condition that made both of us fearful for my survival, and the forms were handed over with no fuss at all.

I gave them to the nurse. She then went over some symptoms I should look out for. When we should jump into the car and hurry to the hospital; when we should call an ambulance. She seemed genuinely worried about me, surprisingly so. It did give me pause for thought. I knew my decision was questionable, I just hoped I wasn't one of the unlucky ones.

In the car on the way home, in the dark, I quietly shed a few tears, hoping Gam wouldn't notice. I was afraid of not making it through the night. I could tell Gam was deeply worried too. Setri slept.

Back home, Gam left the car and the garage unlocked, in case he had to get me to hospital in a hurry. We would go to the Mater if something happened, he said, he could get there quicker than if we had to wait for an ambulance.

I did wake up the next day. We waited 5 hours at the hospital for an ultrasound. A few days later I received a phonecall letting me know that the results, as well as those of the blood tests, were clear. No infection, and no retained placenta. It was likely that there had been some pieces of the placenta retained but the clots I passed had been the last of it.

We weren't tested like that again, but it was another month or so before I attempted to recount even an abbreviated version of our hospital stay to another person. By that time I could put Setri down on his own without recalling our forced separation and crying.

The raw trauma faded but I was, and am, still angry. The first 5 days of Setri's life were stolen from him, and from us. Not for a legitimate reason. It was not just that no-one listened. It was not just the unprofessional behaviour, the harassment, disrespect and unwarranted, illegitimate threats from registrars on that second, awful night in hospital. It was not just the fact that medical interventions were conducted on Setri without our knowledge or our consent. Not just the fact that they put him nil-by-mouth without a good medical reason for doing so, depriving him of crucial colostrum in those first early days of life. Not just the way they completely failed to provide me with breastfeeding support just as my milk was coming in. Not just the way we were blackmailed into agreeing to a nasogastric tube when it was implied that Setri was becoming malnourished and it would be our fault if his health were affected. Not just the fact that if they had managed to do that, Setri would undoubtedly have been made a lot sicker and hospitalised a lot longer thanks to their stupid, medically unnecessary intervention. Not just any one of those things, which I think on their own would be plenty to get angry about. All of it. I'm angry about all of it. I think about all I have to be grateful for, and it's a heck of a lot. For 5 days we were living cheek by jowl with people whose lives would be changed for the worse to an unimaginable degree, helped through the experience by the same doctors who had caused us so much trouble. But that doesn't take away from the fact that what happened to us was wrong, and it was someone's fault, and it could have been prevented.

I'm reading over this on the eve of Setri's first birthday. I wrote the last parts of Setri's birth story 6 months ago. I had thought a lot of the stronger emotions I had about this experience had faded, and I suppose to a degree they have. But when I started preparing for my return to work, and had to attend a course at UQ Library's Herston branch, I was reminded of the only other time I had been to the library, which was at the same time I first encountered the Special Care Nursery. I was pregnant at the time and never once imagined that I would be there again in a non-professional context. Just the prospect of having to go to that library, had me feeling anxious and sick all week leading up to the course. I was relieved when I saw didn't have to walk past the front door of the Ned Hanlon building after getting off the bus.

We always intended to send off an official complaint about our experience, and we've had it ready to go for months without actually getting around to sending it. Gam is sending it off tonight. I just want to get this all out there and off my chest before Setri's first birthday tomorrow so I can let it be Setri's day, the anniversary of the arrival of our beautiful little guy, instead of the anniversary of a time that was supposed to be joyous but was instead turned into a horrible experience. We don't get to have that time over again.
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The birth of Setriakor: day 6.

In the morning we packed up our things so we could be ready to leave as soon as we had arranged Setri's discharge. As had become practice, we discussed strategy in case roadblocks were again thrown in our way.

We stayed in the Special Care Nursery from an early hour after asking to see a doctor. We expected to have to fight for an early discharge against medical advice. Instead we were informed by a nurse that she would be arranging discharge and that after being seen by the registrar on duty and being given his hearing check, we would be on our way. “Huh. Well that can only be a good thing,” I said to Gam.

Setri had a feed and we waited. People came and went; the doctors did their morning rounds in a whirl, spending all of about 10 seconds in the nursery, apparently without so much of a glance at Setri. It wouldn't have surprised us to learn that that was the full extent of the attention they paid to him throughout his stay, such was the magnitude of their mistake in keeping him in Special Care for 5 nights.

A blood test nurse came by. One more heel prick test to ensure Setri's jaundice was subsiding, she said. It seemed pretty obvious that it was, especially since he had been tested 2 days prior and we were told bilirubin levels were within normal range, and his minimal jaundice had only diminished since he started feeding again. After the ordeal of the last tests, where one nurse had had to hold Setri down in the isolette to stop him from army-crawling away while another nurse tried repeatedly to get blood from his heel, Setri screaming all the while, we feared the worst. This nurse surprised us by taking her time. She swapped the newborn heelprick needle for a larger one more suited to Setri's enormous size and spent a number of minutes patiently squeezing tiny drop after tiny drop from Setri's reluctant heel. Setri was uncomfortable but not traumatised, and we were grateful.

The hearing test nurse stopped by with a trolley. My stomach twisted itself in knots. She was wearing a cheery purple shirt and not her midwife's uniform, but I recognised her instantly as the midwife who had caused me so much trouble on my second night in hospital, bringing the registrars who had alternately confused me with another patient, treated me scornfully and threatened to remove Setri from my care. She stopped to announce her presence to the nurse on duty and I pointed her out to Gam. “That's the one”. “Are you alright?”, he asked. I didn't feel alright. I felt sick and scared all over again. “I'll be ok, I said.”

She recognised me too. She greeted me cheerfully, but it was obvious that there was some strain. I was there because of her. Setri was there because of her. Setri fed, was quiet and passed the test. She told us about her sons. Don't believe anyone who tells you that boys are trouble, she said. Hers were good boys who had never caused her any trouble. Trying to find common ground. “I hope you don't hold anything against me for the other night”, she said before she left. “I hope you don't hold anything against me”. I did. I couldn't help it. I was swelling with resentment. If it hadn't been for her, I could have gone home. At the same time I knew she had been acting on legitimate concerns and followed them up appropriately, if somewhat overzealously. It was the doctors who were responsible for keeping us there, not her. I shook my head. “You were just doing your job”.

We waited some more.

The registrar- a fit, good-looking Scandinavian import whose appearance made me feel even more conscious of my bloated, pale body, dark under-eye circles and unkempt appearance- came by while Setri was having a feed. Oh she couldn't possibly do the requisite checks now, she said, he would get too agitated. She would come back shortly.

We waited. A couple of hours passed. We didn't dare leave in case the registrar came back. We took turns going to the bathroom. We grew impatient. We chatted with the nice nurses on duty. One- it was her first day in Special Care- was a lactation consultant. I wondered what she would have made of the registrars arbitrarily placing Setri nil-by-mouth and then failing to give me any breastfeeding support. She offered advice if I needed it, but noted that Setri was feeding well.

Gam changed Setri's wet nappy. Setri still hadn't pooed. We felt safe enough with the nurse on duty to ask: When should we be worried? It had been 3 days. If he hadn't pooed within 48 hours, she said, bring him back to hospital. Not to this one, Gam muttered to me. Setri was never coming back to Special Care.

How long until Setri's bellybutton stump fell off?, we asked the nurse. It looked pretty dried out to us. “Oh probably another 5 days at least,” she said. 10 minutes later, the stump and its plastic clip fell off. We showed the surprised nurse. I told Gam that I had read that some people keep it as a memento, along with keepsakes such as a lock of the baby's hair, or first teeth. We agreed that was pretty gross, but neither of us could make the first move to throw out the stump. Gam stowed it in my bag, as we joked that we'd probably find it in a few months' time being batted around by one of the cats, covered in lint.

More time passed. We grew annoyed. It was now after lunch time. Neither of us had even had breakfast, let alone lunch. Even my 'comfortable' chair was now causing me pain, but I didn't yet have the strength for taking walks just to stretch my legs. Gam went looking for the registrar but couldn't find her. I overheard the nurses talking about how full the Special Care Nursery now was. Was that why Setri was being discharged? It was Saturday- as far as we had been informed, he was supposed to be released on Monday. No-one had given us a reason for the sudden change of plans, and we didn't dare ask in case we somehow jinxed things. The symptom for which he had been hospitalised, the fast breathing, was still present. Somehow they had abandoned the idea that he was about to drop dead, without explaining why they had suddenly changed their minds.

Eventually the registrar came back. Setri was still breathing somewhat fast but passed all the health checks except one. The registrar couldn't find a pulse in his femoral artery. She tried and she tried, and still couldn't find one. Was it really necessary? We asked. Clearly he had a pulse- he was alive, wasn't he? She was insistent that it had to be done. She went away, came back. Gam and I gritted our teeth After 20 minutes she finally found the pulse she was looking for and we were free to go, just like that.

“I have been inside this building for nearly a week”, I said to Gam as we approached the front door of the hospital building. “And I had to go out this door every night without you and Setri”, he said. I tried to imagine what that must have felt like. How on earth could things have gone so wrong when a perfect birth had produced such a healthy baby?

Outside, I blinked in the bright sunlight. The weather had turned from unseasonably warm remnants of summer when I went into labour to cold Autumn while I was inside, and I hadn't packed a jacket. I felt I'd had a taste of what it was like to be released from prison.

The birth of Setriakor: Day 5

Gam arrived early. I was feeding Setri again, and he came straight to Special Care. We wanted to speak to the doctors as early as possible and get underway our plan to discharge Setri against medical advice. We knew now that the doctors would make it as difficult as possible and it would likely take until the afternoon before we could take Setri home.

Gam was worried as to how I was holding up, having been woken every 2 hours to feed Setri. He was not to worry, I told him, I was feeling wonderful. He had stood up for me, he had fought for Setri, and Setri had spent the night getting cuddles and the breast milk he needed every 2 hours. I was still on cloud nine.

Gam was not so well-off, having again barely slept. He was looking fairly haggard. I was glad today was to be our last day. We put word in early that we wanted to speak to the registrar on duty about discharging Setri. We had no plan to wait for any damn meeting, rounds by the doctors or any other nonsense.

After feeding Setri we headed out of Special Care and ran into the young aboriginal couple whose tiny, pom-pom haired daughter was also in Special Care. We exchanged greetings. They were here rather early, Gam mentioned. Yes, the young guy affirmed. They were no longer staying with an Auntie 40 minutes away from the hospital, they were staying in a special room at the hospital. It was really good, he said, their daughter stayed in the room with them and the hospital was just making sure that their daughter continued to put on weight for a couple of days in their care and they would be allowed to go home.

How did they get this room?, Gam asked. The young guy wasn't sure. Someone approached them, he said. If you wanted to stay there otherwise you had to apply. It usually took a couple of days, as far as he was aware. Never mind, said Gam, it sounded good but we were planning on getting out of there sooner than that. We said our goodbyes. Why hadn't anyone told us about this option, we wondered, so we could be together? I was alone. Gam was spending nights home alone on the couch, too upset to sleep in our bedroom. Setri was in Special Care, clearly stressed by the separation, and Gam was driving anywhere from 20-40 minutes each way from the hospital depending on the time of day, and spending $24 a day on parking. More any time he went home to cook and bring me a decent dinner. Setri wasn't sick, he could easily have been in a room with us and checked up on by the hospital staff if they were so damn worried, still convinced his life was in danger. To say we felt a bit miffed would be to greatly understate things.

The friendly, red-haired registrar from the day before stopped by my ward to see us. Before we could tell her that we wanted Setri out of there, she made an announcement. She had a proposal, she said. They were still no closer to a diagnosis and Setri's breathing was still a little high- in the 70s rather than the 40-60 per minute considered normal. They wanted to keep Setri in hospital. We knew that, and didn't care what they wanted. But we let her speak her piece.

Rather than have me stay in the ward, there was a special room right next to Special Care, she told us- that must be the unit we had just learned about!

I would be allowed to stay there for one night, and then Gam could join me the next night. That way, rather than having to walk the long walk from the gynaecology ward to Special Care every 2 hours at night, I would have to walk only a short distance down the corridor. They would call me every 2 hours or when Setri woke for a feed. On the second night, with Gam staying there, the same thing would happen. On the third night Setri could stay in the room with us and staff would check up on him. This might occur on the second night if all went well. The maximum number of nights we could stay in the unit was three. On Monday- one full week after Setri's birth- we would be discharged. Was that acceptable to us?

Gam and I looked at each other. We had finally been given a discharge date. We knew Setri didn't need to be in hospital and we didn't want or intend for him and me to be there until Monday. However, this was a way out without conflict, without looking like we were doing the wrong thing, going against doctors' orders. A way out without looking like the bad parents we had been painted by some of the registrars to be. We agreed without hesitation.

The registrar would sort it out then, she told us. We were to see a certain nurse in charge of admissions to that unit in the afternoon; meanwhile she would arrange my discharge from Maternity this very morning.

As soon as she had left, Gam and I both said what we had been thinking. First, there was no way we would stay for 2 more nights. One night in the unit would provide a path to exit that met the Special Care registrars halfway. We could handle that. Secondly, although we were very happy about this turn of events we both had a couple of questions in mind- why on earth would I have to stay there on my own the first night? Why would we have to be separated for yet another night when the room was equipped for couples? That seemed arbitrary and cruel after everything we had been through. As for us staying together with Setri in the unit for one more night, if they weren't going to be monitoring him overnight, what was the aim of it? It seemed as if they were trying to test us, to see if I was capable of looking after Setri on my own. What was going to stop Gam staying there with me anyway? Surely they weren't going to police visitors for that room like they did for the wards? And why 3 nights? After all, Setri had been in hospital for 4 nights without dying, they still hadn't come up with a diagnosis. What made them think something was likely enough to happen in the next 2 nights that they had to keep him in hospital?

“You should just stay with me in the unit tonight regardless”, I told Gam. We messaged Mum and Dad to let them know we wouldn't be coming home today after all and to visit us at the hospital.

I was eating homemade porridge that Gam brought in for me when the discharge nurse arrived to see me. She saw I was eating and said she would come back shortly. Mum and Dad arrived in good spirits. We told them what was happening and that we would only be there for one more night. Both Gam and I hid our feelings of trepidation at saying out loud that we would be there only one more night. We had said it so many times since Setri was born, and each time events had conspired to keep us there.

Something I withheld even from Gam was that I was starting to feel institutionalised. I had not left the building even once since I arrived 5 days ago. It was bad enough to leave Setri and go to another part of the building to eat, sleep or go to the toilet. It hadn't occurred to me to step outside, not without Setri. I was becoming afraid of going home. It was a stupid fear, I knew it, and I worried it would upset Gam. But I still didn't really know how to look after a baby. 4 days had passed in which I was not allowed by the hospital to learn how to care for my baby. Setri was 4 days old and I still didn't really even know how to change a nappy. Here, the cleaning was done every day. The food was shit, but it arrived at the same time every day. If my sheets needed changing they would be changed. It was nonsense, of course. I wasn't happy, and I wasn't comfortable. I was horribly sleep-deprived. Anything I needed at home, Gam would provide. But we weren't a smooth-running machine like the hospital. As clinical, unreasonable, inhuman as the treatment of Setri and I had been, it was predictable, familiar. Somehow I was becoming afraid to leave. It was an odd feeling.

The discharge nurse came back as I finished my porridge. After making sure I didn't mind her conducting the requisite health checks in their presence, I lay on the bed while she palpated my mushy-feeling abdomen to check that my uterus was shrinking properly, and asked about bleeding and pain. Everything checked out, I signed my discharge forms and we carried our bags down to the Special Care Nursery level. It was still too early to check in there, so after leaving them outside the unit we all went again to visit Setri, familiar now with the pathetic rigmarole of having to take turns for one of us stand outside the nursery in the hallway because even a baby's own mother and father counted as visitors. It still grated on me that this was just one more thing we never would have had to do if the hospital had done the right thing and allowed us to take Setri home. I was seething with resentment, yet still anxious that they would find a way to prevent us from taking him home.

One thing that still worried us was that Setri had lost so much weight. Of course this was due to the fact that the registrar had arbitrarily placed him on nil-by-mouth for over 36 hours before we had the guts to feed him against their orders, but they weren't about to take that into account. A Special Care nurse informed us that if he lost more than 10% of his body weight it was policy to keep him in hospital. Even though it was the fault of the doctors that he'd lost so much weight in the first place, Gam and I said to each other. The nurse reassured us that she had weighed him and he had 'only' lost about 8% of his body weight. It would start to pick up now that he was feeding again, she said kindly. He now weighed under 5kg, 440g down from his birth weight.

Setri was still feeding with great vigour; those damn wires attached to him notwithstanding. The cannula in his hand had caused him great irritation from the start, but it was my mum, a former nurse, who first noticed that something had gone wrong.

“His hand looks a bit swollen”, she said. It did. He also seemed uncomfortable when it was touched. “I think the cannula's come out”, Mum said, “See that redness further up his arm?”. We flagged down the nurse, who removed the dressing that held the cannula in place. It was horrible- Setri's arm and hand were swollen and bright red, obviously sore and sensitive, judging by Setri's reaction to having it handled. It wasn't an infection, but the cannula site had blocked up and the glucose drip that they had not taken out in spite of the fact that Setri was now breastfeeding again had been feeding into his arm rather than a vein. “That's pretty red,” said Mum. “Looks like it's been like that for a while.”

The nurse bustled about, removing the cannula and dressing from Setri's arm. From what she told us, it wasn't a surprise that this had occurred. The cannula site was getting old. They had flushed it early that morning, the doctors wanting to keep the site open (god knows why- this made us mad. What else did those people have in store for him?) but not wanting to recannulate him at a new site for the obvious reason that he was now no longer nil-by-mouth and didn't really need it. “We want this out, we do not want him recannulated,” Gam said, noting that it had been done the first time around without our permission. Chances were he didn't need to say it- they probably would not have recannulated Setri, but who could blame him for feeling the need to iterate it so strongly, after everything that had happened?

“One more thing that wouldn't have happened but for the Special Care Nursery”, I said bitterly, upset all over again as I looked at Setri's little arm, swollen and red. “This is an actual injury”, said Gam. It looked painful. We were angry. None of this should have happened. None of it. We shouldn't have been there. We were effectively forced into this situation and now our baby was in pain once again as a result of unnecessary medical intervention. On its own it might have seemed minor, but to us it was just the latest in a long string of insults. At least he had his preferred sucking hand back- the dressing and the cannula had prevented him from self-soothing in his preferred manner, part of the reason it had appeared to annoy him so much in the first place.

“Don't worry, we'll get you out of this place soon”, Gam said to Setri.

It was around this time that one of the nurses enquired about Setri's bowel movements during the short time he had spent outside the Special Care Nursery. “Normal”, I told her. He had pooed meconium on his second night in hospital while in the maternity ward with me, and had pooed at least once prior to that on his first day in Special Care. Why? Setri hadn't passed a bowel movement since being put nil-by-mouth when he was less than 2 days old, she told us. That was normal, given his treatment, but it was something they had to monitor. If he didn't poo soon it could indicate trouble. If he didn't poo, would it mean they would keep him in hospital?, we asked. It could, she said. “Great”, said Gam. “One more thing to worry about.” One more potential health problem that was the fault of the hospital. The registrar had placed Setri nil-by-mouth when he was only 1 day old, and it was 36 hours before we told them to go to hell and fed him anyway. That meant he missed most of the colostrum I produced- colostrum designed to clear out his gastrointestinal tract. One more reason to be angry.

It was not long after lunch time when we moved our stuff into the special parents' unit. It was set up like a cheap motel room and had a double bed. No reassuringly sterile hospital linens here, though- the bedclothes looked worn and had seen better days. The room was clean enough, but still a bit scungy. Quite a lot scungy compared with the hospital environment I'd become used to, really. There was a folding change-table for parents whose babies were allowed to stay with them. It looked dangerously flimsy.

Even worse was the bathroom. It was a shared bathroom, with a door on either side leading from both the parents' units, and a special locking system explained to us by the admitting nurse. Sharing wasn't the problem. I'd been sharing a bathroom with at least one person right from the very beginning. The bathroom was dirty. As in it hadn't had more than a perfunctory cleaning in a long time. The toilet-roll holder had been pulled away from the wall and the roll dangled ready to fall on the floor. There were handrails right next to the toilet, which I had found essential for support up to that point, but their less-than-clean appearance meant I just took extra care getting up and down rather than touch them. I did my best to wash my hands extra thoroughly. The unsavoury state of the unit did have one positive, if unintended, effect: I suddenly lost all apprehension about going back home! No matter how incapable Gam and I were of keeping on top of the housework, it would take a long time for our bathroom to get that dirty!

Meals were still delivered, but only for me. We weren't sure if Gam was officially staying in the unit or not. He had been there when we checked in, and no-one mentioned that it was only supposed to be me staying there. Not that it mattered, as the meals were just as inedible. The only difference was that I was offered a 'menu' and could elect to receive full-fat milk in the mornings rather than the skim milk that had been provided while I was staying in Maternity.

For the first time in 5 nights, Gam and I spent the night together. It was the first time in many months that I had been able to spoon him in bed, now that my massive, uncomfortable pregnant stomach had disappeared. It felt blissful to hold him.

Not so blissful was being woken every 2 hours on the dot by a phonecall from Special Care, hauling on a few more items of clothing and trotting down the hallway to feed Setri. 5 days in and we were both severely sleep-deprived to the point where it felt literally painful to drag ourselves from slumber. Gam almost succumbed to the temptation of staying in bed at one point, but doggedly roused himself and followed me to the nursery before falling asleep in his chair as I fed Setri. It was ridiculous, we grumbled on the way back to our room. At home we'd have Setri in our room, in the co-sleeper cot attached to our bed. We were being sleep-deprived for nothing other than the satisfaction of the hospital. No way were we going to do this for another night, even if Setri was allowed to stay in the parents' unit with us. Having Gam with me, us being a team again through the night as well as the day, a family tucked into the corner of the Special Care Nursery, Setri falling asleep in Gam's arms as he held him after a feed, it felt almost right. But we were still in the hospital, and we ached with tiredness and the desire to go home.

Sleeeeeeep

I truly would like to know how it is that an 8-month-old baby can stay up til all hours, get me up after 7 hours sleep, have a single 40 minute nap during the day, and then repeat the cycle night after night, remaining annoyingly chipper while I get more and more tired. How can an 8 month-old get by on only ~9 hours' sleep a day?

Honestly, every day I think 'He will surely sleep well tonight, he's hardly slept at all today, and he got up early to boot'. And every night I tell myself 'He will surely sleep well tomorrow, he's going to bed at the same time as us, he will NEED a big nap tomorrow!'. And never will it be true more than once in a blue moon- and I mean I could probably count the times it's proved true on one hand

Moreover, where does this enduring optimism of mine come from? Setri has clearly got me beaten, and yet every day I'll believe that tomorrow will be different. Is stupidity and blind optimism a symptom of sleep deprivation? I wish I had half that boy's energy. If he can go through life being powered like the Energizer Bunny, more power to him, I won't begrudge him that even now. Ok, maybe a little bit...

Nougat Limar. They put WHAT in it??

Sure, it looks good...

I am a lover of nougat. My personal preference is for the hard (chewy, not brittle) Italian-style torrone. I detest nougat with peanuts and dislike pretty much any with any kind of dried fruit except sour cherries, as well as nougat flavoured with  chocolate etc. I like plain nougat with pistachios, almonds or macadamias, in that order, maybe with a bit of honey as long as it doesn't up the sweetness too much.

Now, being a fairly simple product with few ingredients, even the nougat I 'dislike' is generally fairly edible. Definitely not objectionable, so I have no qualms about giving an unfamiliar nougat a go.

After a bad experience buying a new nougat at some markets a few years ago, however, I tried to break myself of this happy-go-lucky approach to nougat. The nougat I bought at the markets tasted salty. "WTF?", I thought at the time. "Nougat doesn't have salt!". I checked the ingredients listed for the pistachio, cherry and cranberry 'Nougat Limar' I had just purchased. Salt was in the list of ingredients. I resolved never to buy the disgusting stuff again. It was hard- I kept seeing this appealing-looking nougat everywhere. Nougat even appeared in the bulk food aisle at Mrs Flannery's, and after buying, tasting and discarding it because it was salty I'm pretty sure it was Nougat Limar, as it was the same pistachio and cranberry flavour as I'd once bought at those markets.

I had made a habit of satisfying my nougat cravings with a reliable purchase of pistachio torrone from the wonderful deli Samios Foods whenever we went there. But slowly it disappeared from their shelves and was not restocked. The horror! So today I did a very stupid thing. I saw some very attractive-looking pistachio nougat at the equally wonderful Superior Fruit. They stock lots of high-quality products. Could it be a good one? I gave it a squeeze and it didn't feel too squishy (I only realised later that it said 'soft, French-style'), so I popped it in our basket. It was Nougat Limar, but I couldn't remember the brand of the Nougat I had resolved never to buy. I didn't think to check the ingredients list to ascertain whether it was dodgy until after it had been passed through the register. What can I say, it was 11am and I hadn't even had a coffee, let alone breakfast! Salt. Never mind, I was starving and had no time to eat any real food before breastfeeding Setri and putting him down for a nap. I tried a piece. The taste of salt was there alright, but it wasn't as overpowering as I remembered.

Later I came back for more. There was another odd taste that really shouldn't be present. Real nougat is made, basically, from egg whites and sugar. It has a very clean taste. This tasted cloying, claggy... it tasted of... powdered milk! That was it!

I checked the ingredients list, reading it thoroughly this time.

Sure enough: 'Milk solids'. Powdered milk! Nougat Limar don't just put in salt, they put powdered bloody milk in their 'nougat'. No wonder it's so revolting. Why is this stuff everywhere??? (Don't tell me the answer to that- I know the sad answer is because most people eat it and like it... most people have no taste!).

Got to find me some genuine, chewy hard torrone to drown my sorrows, to alleviate my thwarted craving for good, honest nougat *sob*.


What's more, on their website they have a link to a page titled 'Our Ingredients'. Except it doesn't tell you a single frickin' thing about their ingredients! It has the varieties of 'nougat' that they flog to unsuspecting consumers, and a big, breathy announcement that "Nougat Limar is Gluten Free". Oh yes, they're so special... just like all those other nougats that taste better, don't have shonky ingredients and are also gluten free because- get this- EGG WHITES AND SUGAR AND NUTS ARE ALL GLUTEN FREE!


GRR.


Why yes, yes I am feeling especially ranty tonight. But the shonky bastards deserved it- I already had a pent-up tirade from the first time I tried their stupid salty nougat a couple of years ago :)

The latest in a grand tradition of anti-porn screeds in the mainstream media

Gam sent me a link to this garbage anti-porn article by a (groan) 'Professor of Women's Studies' that I had missed because it was published in the opinion section on the Brisbane Times website. I have so little time to blog these days (let alone do all the stuff that I should be getting done!) that I shouldn't have even read it, knowing I wouldn't be able to help penning a suitably ranty response, but at least I kept it pretty much in point form rather than writing an essay like I did last time.

==================================
Gail Dines on 'porn'. Rather than addressing her sweeping generalisation of the broad diversity of tastes catered for in the real world of porn, I will refer you here to show you exactly what kind of bunk is created when some ignoramus takes a position based on some stupid stereotype of porn. Hereafter just assume that every time Dines writes the word 'porn' she is referring to something hardcore featuring a generic blonde with anus lipstick and silicone boobs being roughly penetrated by 'any number' of well-equipped, ungentlemanly brutes.


"The men they date, have sex with and marry are increasingly being brought up on a steady diet of porn, and the more they watch, the less capable they are of forming connected, intimate relationships."

• Proof? Cite studies?


"The porn these men consume looks nothing like your father's Playboy."

• Really? The same Playboy that 'women's studies' professors spent years railing against as sexist and harmful? I own a Playboy collection ranging through vintage and modern issues spanning nearly 50 years, and the old ones, while being incredibly tame in terms of the visual depictions of women (and extraordinarily literary in their content), are written with a now quaint, old-fashioned sexist bent, despite being reasonably progressive and liberal for their time in terms of women's sexuality.

• It might not 'look like' your father's Playboy, but that's because the content in dear old Dad's Playboy is now pretty much PG rated in the wider context of the amount of flesh it's permissible to display in any visual media in this day and age. Why *should* porn look like your father's Playboy? Playboy never called itself porn anyway, it was nutbag feminists and religious extremists (who have a lot more in common than either group would care to admit) who labelled it such.


"Consumers are catapulted into a world of cruel and brutal sex acts designed to dehumanise women"

- What Dines is saying is that porn is a vast, anti-woman conspiracy. It's not as simple as people wanting to get off, oh no! No, it's a James Bond-style plot hatched by people (i.e. men) who HATE WOMEN and want to victimise them. How can something so preposterous get published in a mainstream newspaper? How? How can someone who spews such tripe, with a blatantly sexist, anti-male bent, be employed at an institution of higher learning?

This is what really gets my goat about anti-porn campaigners. Sheila Jeffries, Dines, they are all highly paid 'academics' who aren't subject to the kind of rigorous review and standards that academics in other fields are subject to. Their extremism is rewarded because they are in a field characterised by nutbaggery and populated by nutbags. It doesn't matter to what extent their work is based on crazed and unfounded claims, because the more it is, the more it is rewarded. Alternate views don't get a look in- women who aren't in complete lockstep (which is most of them, I'll wager), are ostracised and pilloried as brainwashed victims of the invented conspiracy that these overpaid academic feminists spend their careers railing against. They might be respected in their field, but that's because the field is populated not with scientists, who are compelled to adhere to certain standards of objectivity, but with fellow extremists. Universities employ these feminist nutbags because they're big in their field, but in doing so they do themselves a disservice and undermine the very standards in research and education that they purport to uphold. It's a disgrace.


"In the vast majority of porn today, sex is not about making love... connection, empathy, tenderness, caring, affection- are missing, and in their place are those we normally associate with hate- fear, disgust, anger, loathing and contempt".

• Outright bullshit. Porn was never meant to be about portraying sex as being about making love. Sex itself is primarily not about connection, empathy, tenderness etc. etc. It's a biological urge. It can be done in that context, sure, but the other- feeling sexual pleasure just for pleasure's sake- is no less legitimate. There is such a massive, mind-boggling variety of porn out there, and I am 100% certain that Professor (ugh) Dines pulled that grand, sweeping generalisation out of her arse. It's a popular misconception, and it's only popular because people like Dines get published and people like me, who actually watch porn, don't.


"In the vast majority of porn today... as [the female performer] is being roughly penetrated by any number of men, she is being called vile names such as whore, slut, and worse."

• Proof? In the vast majority of porn? How many men? Called names? If you're going to imply that you've studied the stuff and looked at the numbers, cough up some data, woman. Where was that published, exactly?

• Also, the insinuation is that somehow sex that might be characterised as rough, a quickie, fast-and-furious, is somehow non-consensual and degrading to women. Lots of women like rough sex! I like rough sex! If I was a 'professor of women's studies' I might be tempted to pull a sweeping, unfounded pseudo-statistical generalisation out of my arse, such as "a majority of women like rough sex", but I'm not, so I won't. I am confident in saying, however, that it is likely that in the vast majority of porn depicting rough sex, whether with multiple partners or not, the sex is 100% consensual.


"We often hear that porn is all about fun and fantasy, so it has no real effect. My interviews with university-age men tell a very different story."

• See, if this woman's work and any of the journals that published it had even a modicum of scientific credibility, any reviewer would be screaming "SELECTION BIAS, you idiot, SELECTION BIAS!!". What kind of 'university-aged' man would volunteer to speak to some anti-porn-campaigner women's studies professor about their own porn habits? No sane person would believe that their confessional would be treated objectively by an anti-porn 'researcher' (who has already decided what she would like the outcome of her 'research' to be, thankyouverymuch). Her 'research' is likely to consist of interviews with young men who believe that porn is a problem for them, not a broad spectrum of young men in the community. Dines doesn't acknowledge this, of course. What matters to her is not the credibility of her data, just that it backs up her preconceived notions.



"Unlike previous generations, these boys and men have unlimited access to hard-core images 24 hours a day".

• Does that conjure up an image of some dishevelled male, frazzled by hours of self-abuse, in a darkened room lit only by a computer screen displaying pornographic imagery? You betcha! Men, given a computer, will do nothing but access hard-core porn 24 hours a day! They can't help themselves! It's there, so they just keep chugging it down, like an addictive mixture of red cordial and heroin.



"Many of the men I talk to believe that porn sex is what women want, and they become upset and angry when their sex partner, perhaps their wife, girlfriend, or a one night hook-up, refuses to look or behave like their favourite porn star."

• Oh. My. Goodness. So much wrong with this claim it's hard to know where to start. I'll start from the end and work backwards.

• 1. Let's spell this out. Guy gets lucky and convinces a girl to hook up with him. Alright!! Sex is on the menu! Now choose the most likely option:

• a) Guy can't believe his luck, starts tearing off his clothes in a hurry so he can get some action in case he's about to wake up and finds it's all a dream.

•  b) Guy sits random hook-up down and says 
"Ok, go to the bathroom, put on these heels and bung on a bit more eyeliner. By the way I'm going to call you Jenna while we're doing it, I hope you won't mind." Then, when the woman in question laughs in his face, he flies into a rage.

• 2. Let's tease apart the rest of what Dines has said...

• A man can believe that 'porn sex is what women want' (let's ignore the fact that 'porn sex' in fact encompasses every kind of sex known to humankind and keep it within the narrow-minded spirit that the author intended this passage to be read in, shall we?).

•  A man can be affronted and angry when his wife or girlfriend (let's ignore the preposterous idea that a one-night hook-up would be subjected to this one, shall we?) refuses to 'look or behave like [the man's] favourite porn star.'

• I think a reasonable person would agree that a reasonable man who somehow convinced himself that 'porn sex is what women want' (haha) would, when confronted with information to the contrary, adjust his view in light of this new information.

• I think a reasonable person would agree that a man who not only convinced himself that 'porn sex is what women want' but then got angry when confronted with the fact that his wife or girlfriend did not, in fact, want this so-called 'porn sex', could quite reasonably be labelled deranged.

Q.E.D. Dines has admitted that many of the men she has talked to are deranged. Now, is she saying that a substantial proportion of men in the population at large are thus deranged?


"Next to the screaming orgasms and sexual gymnastics of porn sex (again, we must ignore reality and adhere to the Dines Dictionary definition of 'porn sex' to comprehend this statement), real sex with real women starts to feel boring and bland."

• Given that Dines has admitted, albeit unwittingly, that her sample is subject to the worst kind of selection bias and her subjects are, in fact, deranged, this statement actually makes sense. In that context.

• I feel confident in saying, however, that contrary to Dines' implication that all men who view pornography (and thus pretty much all men) are wont to view real sex with indifference and instead prefer porn... ROFLMAO!!!!!! What kind of idiot would seriously suggest something like that???!!




"These men have become so accustomed to porn sex (refer to Dines Dictionary) that some are disappointed by their own sexual performance."

• Wait, only some? Not 'many'? So, while 'many' men in Dines' sample held women to a (stereotypical) porn standard, only 'some' held themselves to the same standard. This again confirms the fucked-up-ness of the sort of guy who would talk to a confirmed anti-porn feminist about their porn habits. Again, I say, NOT representative of the male population as a whole.


"They need to pull up the porn images in their head in order to have an orgasm with their partner."

• Do I need to spell it out? The sort of men who talk to this woman are sufferers of serious sexual disorders! That there is some diagnostic criteria for severely dysfunctional sexual behaviour. If not mental disorders in general, going by some of the other things she has said about these men.

• How, then, is it not extremely offensive and sexist to extrapolate this data obtained by interviewing a subset of the male population who suffer from mental and sexual dysfunction across the male population as a whole? WHY is this tripe being published?



"I had been somewhat sceptical of the addiction model, thinking that it was a way for men to avoid taking responsibility for their porn use. However... sex and relationship therapists Wendy Maltz and Larry Maltz discuss in their book The Porn Trap ..."

• Hang on right there. You're an academic and your reference for this pile of crap you're writing is a couple of sex therapists who wrote a sensationalist, anti-porn book. Honestly! This speaks volumes about the field of women's studies and the universities that pay fat salaries to a select group of women whose profession is spouting unfounded crap.




"While men may share their favourite porn stories, they don't tend to talk to each other about their addictive behaviour..."

• I'm sorry, men what? 'Porn stories'?! I can't say that men don't have special men-only gatherings where they swap their 'favourite porn stories'. Whilst I suspect this is a figment of Dines' imagination, if 'men' did engage in this particular activity I suppose that as a woman I wouldn't be included. From what I've seen of porn, which is probably more than Dines, porn that does have a story is the exception these days. What does that leave to swap? "So then this chick walks into a room where there's a couch, and there's this guy and pretty soon most of their clothes are off and they're doing it". "Awesome! That sounds just like the one I saw last week, except it had two chicks!". "Well the last one I saw didn't even have a guy, there was just this one chick, and a vibrator..."



"If we are really going to tackle porn, however, we... need to build a long-term, multi-pronged movement that involves building coalitions, grassroots education programs, and media strategies that eventually lead to cultural change."

• What, like the current media strategy of printing only anti-porn screeds, typically written by overpaid academic feminists with a tenuous grasp on reality?

• And why do we need to 'tackle porn'? Porn is not the problem! A minority of people have the kind of problem with porn that Dines describes, and the solution is not to obliterate pornography. Mental problems and sexual disorders require appropriate treatment, but we don't need to put the rest of the world in a straitjacket to treat the problems of a small number of people.

• As is typical of anti-porn screeds published in the mainstream media, all porn is lumped in the same basket with no acknowledgement of the diversity of tastes that it caters to. Porn is easily more reflective of human diversity than any other mainstream visual entertainment medium and I'll wager that any real research would back that up. We won't see anything approaching real research from the likes of Dines, however.


"As long as we have porn, women will never be seen as full human beings deserving of all the rights that men have... There is no room for porn in a just society"


• Oh what a crock. As Gam likes to point out, anti-porn campaigners like Dines exhibit a massive blind spot when it comes to gay porn, because it undermines bullshit arguments such as the one above. It's a stupid statement, an unfounded one, and underscores the fact that the academic credentials of anyone in the field of 'women's studies' are immediately suspect. Dines' views are rightly relegated to the opinion pages, but she's masquerading as some sort of social scientist when she really has no more credibility in this field than the average religious nutbag who might pen a similar anti-porn screed. Professor my arse. How can someone get paid to come up with such crap?

Not Gisele: 23 weeks on and still saggy

 At least my old clothes now fit!

Well it's not as if it wasn't obvious that I wouldn't be modelling a bikini 2 minutes after giving birth, a la Gisele Bundchen. And, like I was at 11 weeks postpartum I'm still unsure as to whether I'll ever be able to wear a bikini again... I've already made Gam very sad by buying my first one-piece swimsuit in more than 10 years (i.e. since I had a say in what kind of swimsuit I wore!).

 Still have lots of extra skin...

I bought from Trixan Body, for anyone who's interested- I really hate swimsuit shopping... not because I'm insecure, but because there is just so much crap out there and I hate wasting my time trying it on. Trixan Body have 'free postage and free returns', so you can buy as many things as you like to try on, and send back what doesn't fit, and I took full advantage! I ordered 5 one-piece suits and sent back 3... brilliant system, even if I did buy one more swimsuit than I meant to! I doubt I'll ever shop for swimmers anywhere else.

 Bellybutton skin...

I've lost a bit more weight since 11 weeks, and am now back to my pre-pregnancy weight. The downside of that is that the stretched skin on my stomach hasn't kept up as much as it might have, and I still have quite a lot extra. However, it must be a lot better than it was, because it used to look so gross when I was lying down- all wrinkly- and now it doesn't look anywhere near as bad. More like the stomach of a 50-year-old than a 100-year-old... just a tiny hint of wrinkle now! Oh, but lying on my side my stomach still looks like it's melting off my body. Pretty bad, but it was fairly horrifying before, so it's definitely better than it was! I'm pleased with how the stretchmarks are fading too. Note to anyone who's curious: I did not apply any magic creams or oils, not even moisturiser... I did try and remember to do something like that a few times (no more than about 4-5 times in 23 weeks) with free samples of nice-smelling oils I got sent when I bought some baby clothes for Setri, but most of the time I barely remember to shave my legs, let alone apply nice oils and things... and at least this way I'm not tempted to credit magic oils and creams with stretchmark-fading properties, which I might be if I had used them on a regular basis.

Stomach skin... hard to believe that it used to be even worse!

My bellybutton looks normal when I lie down, but not when I stand up... it kind of slumps forward under the extra skin and looks pretty bloody sad. I finally got to see a physio at the hospital about a month ago, where my stomach muscles were checked for separation and I was also checked internally for signs of prolapse or other damage. There was good news all around in terms of the fascia between my abdominal muscles repairing itself, as well as there being no obvious internal damage, but the physio said that the fascia between my abs had been stretched and might always be a couple of centimetres wider than it used to be, particularly around my bellybutton, so I'll have a bit less waist definition than I used to, by the looks of it... My bellybutton is a bit of a joke, there is so much extra skin on top of it, and it's almost like it's been uprooted from wherever it used to be positioned in my stomach. I'm happy to know that I'm fine to do sit-up-type motions... not that I ever do sit-ups, but getting out of bed while lifting Setri, that kind of thing.

I was actually chuffed when the physio seemed impressed by my stomach muscles- Gam and I hadn't yet got around to doing even a token effort at exercise at the time. Since then we have been for one short jog and 2 days ago I attended a supposedly easy pilates/yoga-mix class at the gym my cousin Rach goes to... The muscles I do have are pretty strong (arms and stomach), but the muscles that have wasted in my year or so without exercise (bum, thighs, inner-thighs, calves) were so non-existent that I was in pain within a few seconds of starting the class! The pain after the class was all good pain, though, and I've resolved to do a bit more exercise.

I say I'm not insecure, but I have noticed that when we are having people over I avoid wearing anything that would require me to lift up my top to breastfeed Setri and thus reveal my stomach... so I guess I am a little insecure. I'm happy enough with how things are going, but I do feel my body is still a little gross for public consumption.

Not going bald, but it was a near thing...

I had a nice moment of surprise and relief the other day when I was brushing my hair (what little of it that is left) and realised that I had an 'undercoat' of new hair beginning to grow. Phew!

In other news, Setri is crawling, but not very far, nor very fast. He is obsessed with the cats and tries to crawl to them... they feel perfectly safe sitting still and watching him until he comes within arm's reach. I figure the day they high-tail it as soon as Setri starts marching their way is the day we can truly say he is crawling.

The Australian wets itself over Green-bashing backlash

The Australian has gotten all defensive over the unsettled reaction among its media colleagues and competitors over the way it engaged in open Green-bashing last week. What a complete joke. Seriously, 'tough reporting'? Portraying open calls for the destruction of the Greens as serious journalistic scrutiny?

They're not kidding anyone any more, and it's got them worried.

Chickens!

We did it! I am finally, as Gam put it, 'living the dream'.

2 weeks ago we got ourselves 2 chickens, a pair of scruffy ISA Browns. We had figured we'd be waiting a few years before we got ourselves a couple of chooks- that we'd first make sure we had proper fences, at least- but a work colleague of Gam's was giving away a couple of tame-ish chickens, so he volunteered to take them, and spent a weekend knocking together a rather nice coop for them in our concreted, unused 'pig-on-a-spit area'.

Given that the two chickens (as yet unnamed and referred to as 'Bad Chicken' and 'The Other One') had supposedly once been pets prior to residing with Gam's colleague's mother, I was surprised they were in such poor condition. They were underweight and their feathers were dull and patchy. I was a little worried that they might be a bit old, but we'd been told they were regular layers, and they were. I think that rather than being fed layer pellets and grain they'd merely been left to forage for their own food in the nice old lady's backyard.

Unfortunately they don't seem to know how to perch and have been roosting in and on one of the nest boxes, meaning I have to clean their poo out of it every day! Thankfully they lay in the other nest box!

Anyway, after a couple of days of ready access to feed they were already noticeably heavier. Two weeks on, they've grown more feathers and are much glossier and healthier looking than in these photos, though they are still missing a few feathers in places.

They are reasonably tame, though not as tame as the chickens I had growing up. They have each laid an egg every second day (on the same day, in the same nest box) since we got them, but I figured that frequency of laying would increase once they put on some condition, and we were duly rewarded with one extra egg on their 'off day' on Friday, so that's a good sign.

It's so nice having home-grown eggs- they are noticeably fresher than bought eggs, and I love knowing they come from happy chickens. The girls are mostly confined in their yard, but I let them out for a scratch in the dirt most days, which they love. They dug up the herb garden (which survived), and my Mum and I went for a walk after forgetting we'd let them out and came back to find them scratching in our neighbour's yard! Oops! Thankfully we have great neighbours and no damage was done, but Gam was a bit cranky with me and started muttering something about 'stew' when he found out...

Gam is already talking about getting a couple more chickens- I'm keen on getting a couple of heritage-breed chicks (I have always wanted to own some cool-looking fancy breeds... I once had silkies and they were great) from one of the local places that sells them- but I want to wait a while, as baby chicks need a lot of care and attention if they are to become as tame as I'd like, and when Setri is a little bit older he will get a lot of enjoyment out of raising some, I reckon.

First eggs! Of course I had to photograph them!