» Ouch!

I take no credit at all for this story
I just think it's absolute genius. And since my first reaction to this week's QOTW was overwhelmingly "Childbirth" I felt it deserved a pearost.

Original credit goes to BewilderedMum over at Bad Mother's Club.

After ds1 was born, I needed stitches. They removed the top half of the bed, and put me at the bottom half, with my feet in stirrups. It was a very small delivery room - in part cos I don't think they thought I was EVER going to give birth

Soo - am there, feet in stirrups, occupying the bottom half of the bed. The doctor was perched on a wheely stool thing, in this tiny delivery room, awaiting the passive arrival of my torn min-min, for his ministrations...

Aaanyway, cos of syntocinon drip, I was still honking like a good 'un, so some bright spark, propped me up on pillows , and raised the bottom part of the bed, so I didn't choke....

Unfortunately, because I am incredibly supple (tae kwon do) and had an epidural, which meant I had no feeling or control (or so I sez )

I SLID down the delivery table, past the end, past the stirrups - my feet stayed where they were in the stiruups, but the rest of me carried on..) and into the face of the waiting doctor.

Cos it was a small delivery room, he was PINNED to the wall, by my savaged min-min - honest to god, it was in his face. he shouted "HELP" in quite a distressed tone of voice, but the midwives and dh were busy with the baby..

After 38 hours of labour, and a severe sense of humour failure throughout - it suddenly returned..

The Doctor looked SO panicked - like I was wielding a sub machine gun, not a savaged min-min.

I remarked to him "I bet you didn't think you'd spend your saturday night like THIS did you!!" Then I LITERALLY pissed myself laughing - in his face...

Dh turned to me, with some irritation, and said "FGS sober up - you're a mother now!" - which made me laugh even more!! and the midwives ran to oik me up the bed - but the doctor looked distinctly nervous - he did a FABULOUS job of my stitches - afterwards, I hardly knew they were there -

mind you - by this point, he was prolly so freaked out by my min-min, that he thought if he didn't do a good job, my min would find out where he lived, and would come and burn his house down....
(Fri 30th Jul 2010, 0:46, More)

» Stalked

My fiancé
went to Caterpillar Nursery in 1986, I followed in 1991.

He went to shithole of schools Aylesford in 1994. He left in 1999, the year I started.

Getting closer...

Fast-forward to me being 15 and hormonally incompetent. My mum takes our ancient computer into the local shop.

By the time we leave the shop I know two things: That we needed a new computer, and that I wanted to break the new one as fast as possible so that I could see the very lovely young man who worked there again.

Unfortunately, I was 15, spotty, weird and absolutely useless with guys, while he was 20, an alcoholic and way cooler than I ever could have hoped to have been.

So I get to the age when I can reasonably expect to get a drink in a pub without being thrown out, and I happen to choose the same one that he plays pool in fairly regularly.

Still, I wait.

It takes 2 more years, a nasty breakup/rebound and a couple of vodka & lemonades before I actually go up and say hello outside of the shop. We've been together ever since and are now expecting our first baby.

And that's the story of how I accidentally stalked the man I will end up marrying...
(Thu 31st Jan 2008, 19:08, More)

» Professions I Hate

Be the change you wish to see
I have a very opinionated friend called Phil. Phil hates a lot of people, especially when drunk. But one group at which he particularly enjoys directing his ire are the police. One evening, nearly falling asleep in the pub after several all-nighters trying to catch up with my college work, and fed up of hearing him rant on about the same thing for the umpteenth time, I had a sudden flash of inspiration.

"Phil," I said, concentrating hard on building a house-of-cards using soggy beermats, "if you feel so strongly about this, why don't you do something about it?" He looked up just as my house collapsed on itself yet again.
"Do something?" He laughed. "Like what?"
"Like - like join the police yourself. Go to the top. Work your way up. Change it from within."
Phil laughed cynically. "Like I could make any difference anyway."
"You could though," I said enthusiastically. "If you feel so strongly about it. And in any case, even if you didn't change anything you could still make a difference at the bottom. Give one person a good experience of the police, when they might have had a bad one. Come on, you were saying the other day you didn't know what you wanted to do after college."
"Maybe." he said, draining his pint glass. "I'll think about it. My round?"

Needless to say he didn't join the police. He's now working in Superdrug, but has gone back to college to retrain as a plumber, so fair play to him for finding something he wanted to do.

Anyway, fast forward a few years. I had forgotten all about this conversation, but was having a similar rant myself about the combined breastfeeding knowledge of most midwives and health visitors. Now, granted, midwives and health visitors have a lot of things to know about, and breastfeeding isn't often considered a priority, but it's something that is relatively unusual in our society, especially over the last 30 years, so that most first time mothers have never even seen anyone breastfeed when they have their children. Consequently, it often doesn't come naturally or instinctively to women and they require assistance from healthcare professionals. Occasionally you get lucky and meet a genuinely helpful and knowledgeable person, but more often than not, you get outdated advice, information which is plain wrong, and if you're really unlucky, the infamous "grab the baby's head, grab the boob, and shove them together" approach, which seems to be an NHS specialty, and is not only pretty upsetting for the mother and traumatic for the baby, but also totally unnecessary and not always that helpful.

I was lucky when I had my son in that I had read up a lot on breastfeeding theory beforehand, all the women in my family had breastfed so I had plenty of support on hand, I was even lucky enough to find a midwife in hospital who had a decent level of knowledge, and it all went pretty straightforwardly with no major problems. So when I started hearing all these horror stories I felt moved to do something - and decided to sign up to a breastfeeding peer support course. I felt that if I could help one woman breastfeed for just one more day than she would have been able to otherwise then it would have been worth it.

So have been doing this volunteering for a few months now and it's amazing - I get to see people gain confidence and achieve something they are proud of, and I'm doing something I'm passionate about. Only thing is that there just aren't many opportunities for paid work in this field and I can't carry on volunteering forever. So I have decided to go to university and train to be a social worker.

So I suppose what I am saying is, if you feel strongly about something, don't just sit around complaining about it, get off your arse and go and change it. Although if of course you're just having a moan and you have a perfectly good job anyway then feel free to carry on.
(Tue 1st Jun 2010, 21:57, More)

» * PFFT *

My stepfamily
This week's QOTW seems to handily match in with last week's for my story.

My stepfamily are probably the fartiest people I have ever met. Fortunately I'm not all that related.

My Dad likes to light his farts when he gets drunk at family Christmas gatherings and once decided to fart inside the (quite elderly) dog's tent-shaped, enclosed-style bed. The poor dog got into it, turned around once and stuck her head out again as if to say, "What have you done?"

Then again, this is the same dog who in her last few days sneezed and shot out a (now legendary) 100mph poo.

My stepmum has been described as "The only woman I've ever met who lights her own farts" and enjoys making everyone else join in the trumpeting with her favourite Winter dish - 'farty bean stew'. This is basically a mixture of about 5 or 6 different kinds of beans and vegetables like sprouts and I'm sure it's her way of getting free heating throughout the winter.

But my little sister, at the tender age of 2, possibly tops the lot. Recently I took my boyfriend to meet the mad stepfamily for the first time, and the five of us were sat at the table having some kind of conversation. Suddenly the conversation is interrupted with the loudest PPPPAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPP! you ever heard. Boyfriend's hair ripples with the soundwaves and a surprised expression fills his face.

"Who was that?" he enquires, looking around the room and trying to avoid looking my father in the eye.
"Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Shouts the 2 year old, looking utterly delighted. Cue boyfriend's eyebrows nearly lifting off the top of his head and everybody else erupting into gales of laughter.

I would apologise, but he knows I like it
(Sat 14th Jul 2007, 15:41, More)

» Intense Friendships

My "Legendary" Bra
Is currently in the ownership of a certain friend of mine. We first met about six months ago, lost touch and met again a couple of weeks ago.

Having him introduce me to all his friends as "the girl whose bra that is" and seeing the looks on their faces, well that's intense.

I am reliably informed that it has been wanked over by at least two different people. I'm not sure whether to be disgusted or strangely proud.
(Sun 30th Jul 2006, 0:11, More)