Shout out to the FIFO (Fly-In Fly-Out) Daddies.

I saw a post from a mummy the other day and though I would write up an elaborated version.  I am a FIFO Mummy, my husband is away 2 weeks and home for 1 week (6 days realistically as Wednesday are fly in & out days).

My life is pretty damn good and it is all thanks to my husband.  He works his ass off doing 12 hour days for 14 days straight.  Ok, yea I’m a mum and I am full-time but in all reality......it just dosn’t compare.  Ok I have my bad days, my son is literally making my hair fall out and my brain explode from frustration.  He is nearly 2 and pushing me, learning/disobeying boundaries, drawing on walls, hitting the dog, not eating anything nice I cook him (have slaved over for hours) unless it comes from a packet, won’t go to sleep quickly now that his cot side has been removed (this takes approximately an hour each night) blah blah blah blah.  BUT, I also have great times and love our boy to pieces.

The things I get to see that my husband misses out on (so that he can provide for us) are:-

• ·         Cuddles & Kisses every day (from both of us ;) )
• ·         Seeing our boys face standing beside the bed in the morning waiting to be lifted in for cuddles. It’s around this time that my husband has already been at work for over an hour, his alarm went off at 5am you see, just so he can work his guts out for another 12 hours.
• ·         Each new word that he says (and there are a few at the moment) the first time he says it. During the day when my boy is telling me random things that don’t make sense, my husband is out drilling water out of the ground, sweating, dirty, working like crazy and tired.
• ·         Visits to the park, swimming lessons, coffee dates with my boys little friends CUTE!!  While I enjoy these moments my husband is working, thinking and looking forward to that moment at the end of the day when he gets to skype his wife and baby boy who are over 1500kms away.
• ·         While my baby boy sleeps for an hour (sometimes 2) during the day, I get some alone time, I get to do a workout, muck around on the internet, tidy up the house.  During this time every day husband is having lunch that he packed from the food hall that morning (same crap different day) out in the middle of nowhere, covered in red dirt, wishing he was home with his wife and boy.
• ·         Picking our boy up from day care (we just started 2 days a week) and seeing him RUN/SKIP to me, so happy to see me!!!!  About this time of the day my husband has done 11 hours and is struggling to go on but he pushes through, he has 2 hours left and he gets to skype his boy, but he dosn’t get to see him in person.
• ·         The moment when Daddy hangs up on Skype and our boy (who has been pretending to ignore him, playing around the room and looking quickly at the phone to make sure Daddy is still there watching him show off) comes up to the phone saying “Daddy Gone” letting out a little moan.  At this moment my husband has hung up and is heading to the food hall to eat stodgy old camp food that is the same stuff just a different day.  Bulk cooked and not home cooked, he dosn’t get to sit with his boy to eat dinner each night.  He knows that he won’t see his boy for another 24 hours and it will be through a phone on skype.
• ·         Night time kisses, Night time cuddles, reading our boy a book.  When my husband goes to bed he is in a donger, a single bed, all alone and counting down the days when he gets to come home again and do all of the things I have mentioned above, only for 6 days but he will make the most of it.  He dosn’t get to see his boy every night and say goodnight and give him kisses.

When we Skype every night, my husband is so happy to see us.  Yet I know that deep down he is hiding the fact that he is totally knackered from his 12 hour day, slaving his ass off, breathing in red dust, having minimal breaks and the emotional drain being far away from his family.  I miss him every minute of every day, but I can’t begin to imagine how hard it must be for him to be so far away from his baby boy.  To have to get out of the car and head to the plane every 3 weeks, and say goodbye to his son while his lil boy is crying and reaching out to him.  To know that he is working while we are out having coffee, play dates and being a single mum family for 2 weeks out of 3.  He is so proud that he is providing for us and I can’t thank him enough for doing what he does.

What I have said realistically just scratches the tip of the massive big iceberg that we live in.  Yes we choose to live this way but it dosn’t mean it is easy. We plan on doing this for a few more years only and I am looking forward to that end day so much!!

Thank you my Bay Bay, short term pain for long term gain......Love you to the end of the universe and back J

So to all of you daddies out there that have to leave your children each time you “go to work”, from the bottom of my heart......THANK YOU!!!!!!

Things he does that amazes me.

1.     How he can manage to still chew (move his bottom jaw up and down) after he has shoved SO MUCH food in his mouth.
I mean, can babies dislocate their jaw or something?  Is there a secret here that we slowly loose as adults simply because we learn to put less in each time we eat?

2.     How he can continue to head butt me and still laugh when it’s actually starting to hurt me.
I thought baby’s skulls were still fusing to become one piece of skull, wouldn't they be more sensitive?  He has RED SPOTS on his forehead from where he has hit my head but still Giggles like a loony person.  Then when I stop letting him head butt me he cries!!  Like he wants to hurt himself and me just a few more times.

3.     How he can sleep with his head looking like its falling off behind him, his arm underneath himself (if I did this my arm would be dead on awakening), his leg in the air and with said bent head in the corner of the cot tight up against both sides.  Yet he still wakes up happy, AND he can move his arm that he has just cut all of the circulation off to for the last few hours.

4.     How he can hold a full-on, rather long, in depth conversation with facial expressions and arm gestures......yet I have no idea what he is saying.
Does he honestly think that “mung nun blun nom wee ning ton dlung ga lug ga lug galugaluglagug” over and over with a few other additions are words? Am I speaking like that?  Should I pronounce my words clearer? Another Vodka shot for mumma, then maybe she will understand?  Probably not but it will help......surely J

5.     How his emotions can change in an instant!!
Baby Boy =Run run run run hahahahaha I’m chasing you..fall over...OMG It’s the end of the world and I need a cuddle and I am going to cry REALLY LOUD....hahaha look the dog just walked in the room, PUT ME DOWN I am going to pat the dog...Fake cry time, I am hungry, I will fake moan on the way to the kitchen cupboard while slouching my shoulders (yes my 19 month old has the shoulder slouch down when it comes to getting what he wants), cue fake tears (not sure how he does this), rub eyes, pointing at bikkys...YAY YOU GOT ME A BIKKY!!!  I LOVE YOU AND I AM THE HAPPIEST BABY IN THE WORLD!!
Sound normal?  It’s crazy!  Sometimes it does my head in but mostly it makes me laugh.  The child health nurse said I shouldn’t laugh when he’s being naughty and screaming.  So I have now learnt to walk away while laughing so he dosn’t see me.  And then I turn back to him when I have composed myself.

6.     How no matter how many times I ask/tell him not to do something, the more he does it.  And he would rather do something I say not to rather than something he loves.  I’ve basically given up on growing tomatoes.  He LOVES to wait until they are green and about to turn red (giving me a false sense of security that it will make it) and then pulls them off while I’m not looking.  He also likes to grab handfuls of dirt from all of my potplants and put it everywhere...EVERYWHERE!!  The list would go on but I have to stop......

7.     As Above ^^ The Word NO.  If I ever use this word I always explain myself so I am not a NO mum.  And so that my boy understands why I keep saying NO to him.  I just don’t get it......he knows what NO means......he knows what he's doing gets me upset......BUT he insists on actually doing what I said NO about only a few minutes ago, over and over and over again.  Wipes......They don’t live in the container EVER, they should live schrewn all over the floor, it’s like he knows tissues are cheaper now and the wipes get me going more so he beelines straight for them.

FLYING BABY!!!

So the last time we went on an overseas holiday my baby was simply that......a baby.

At only 4 months old it was pretty simple.  I heard all of these horror stories of flying with babies and how you need all of these THINGS to keep them occupied etc......I’m guessing those horror stories weren’t applicable to babies that can’t yet walk, talk or basically do anything without adult assistance.

So the trip went simple, get a wall cot seat......yes, they attach a cot to the wall in front of you.  This is given to you when you ask for it and until then you just hold them and share a seatbelt.  So we ask for the cot once we have taken off, lil Mr. Has a feed, I put him in his sleeping bag and he went to sleep on us and we transferred him.  SO EASY!!!!!!

Ummmmmm, well now we are about to attempt the big trip.  He is going to be 18 months old.  Won’t sit still, walks and runs everywhere, throws things, screams at most things.......no wait......screams at everything and is pretty much a little toddler who is NOT going to enjoy being confined to a small area for 3 ½ hours (first flight) and then 3 ½ hours (2^nd flight).  Yes, stupid I know, we got a stopover flight.  I have since been told that your ears (if like mine don’t pop properly and I end up in pain on the way down) on a second consecutive flight end up worse than if you were just to do one flight.  I am hoping that lil Mr. Got his dads ears and it dosn’t bother him, otherwise Daddy is going to have HEAPS of fun dealing with both of us in excruciating pain.

So I have slowly been stocking up on a few new toys to bring out on the aeroplane.  They probably won’t last long in keeping him quiet buy hey, no harm in trying right?  I am also going to get SHITLOADS of snack foods J Fill em up and hope that it will add to the quiet time.  Either that or he is going to throw them at the people around us and wait for their reaction, I honestly hope they ignore him......THEY should hope they ignore him or he is going to repeat and repeat because IT’S FUNNY!!!!!!

I am hoping they will give us a cot seat on all 4 flights, I got to pick the seats but the cot ones were taken ARGH!!!  So have to pick down the back smack bang in the middle of the plane, no window for extra distraction......just an isle on either side of us.  That will be fun :) 

I know we are going to be those people that I used to hate, honestly I used to think WHYYYYY is that baby CRYING!!!  Get it away!!!  I hate to admit that but it’s true.  I’m sure plenty of us have been on flights (before we had children) and while taking your seat you see that there is a child behind you, next to you or even on the same half of the bloody plane as you and you think......”Honestly??  I hope that kid behaves.”  The worst are when you have had such a great holiday and there has been lots of drinking with friends.  You are on the 2^nd week of your constant hangover and heading home, thinking that you will “just sleep on the plane” hahahaha but NO there’s a baby in your half of the plane, it screamed on take-off, landing, when someone walked past and just simply because IT CAN!!  Please don’t let us be that family L

So I will log off for now because I want to finish this blog AFTER the flight J

Lets see what happened......

Honestly......it actually went pretty well.  2 of the 4 flights we had to have baby boy on our knee as the plane was literally chokka block.  Thankfully both times the “other person” let us have the isle.

Speaking of the isle, I am pretty sure the air hostesses do not like children in the isle......at all......EVER!!  I mean they were lovely, so don’t get me wrong there, but after an hour or so of them going up and down the isle serving people drinks and food and just checking on the people who pushed their button to ask what the white fluffy things outside are......they actually stopped asking us to move baby boy.  I am thankfull!!  They carefully pushed him to the side each time and moved on.  This was so much easier than them having to interrupt me and also having to loose momentum.

I now wish that all air hostesses would just move him to the side and carry on haha.  Although, the only negative thing about that is that he nearly got run over by the huge food/drink filled trolleys a couple of times.  Now there’s where I would like an exception to be made and for them to ask me to move him.  Luckily (mother’s intuition right??) I just kind of knew each time a trolley was coming and managed to quickly lift him out of the isle.  But having to lift him every time someone just wants to walk past, not so cool.  So to everyone out there!!!!!!  If you are on a plane and there is a child in the isle, just move them gently to the side and keep moving.  I thank all of the people who did this!!  I still had to lift baby boy most of the time but some people understood, especially after an hour or so when I just started pulling his head towards me and kindly saying “just push him out of the way”.  Too harsh? I don’t think so, the 100+ times I had to pick him up anyway, my lower back hailed me for that comment J

So as you can see the isle was a saviour for us.  ALSO the other 2 flights when he got a seat of his own!!  Yes....his....own....seat!!!  We had 3 seats between us (this will happen soon anyway as we will have to pay for his ticket in full) and it was amazing. J  Another saviour was food.

I packed so much food, crap food I must admit, but it was food that kept him happy, content and stopped his hears from hurting on the way down 4 times.  We had baby muesli bars, snack packs of fruit stuff that was rolled in sugar (why did they roll them in sugar?), arrowroot biscuits (his fave....for now until he meets other branded biscuits) and other random things that I can’t remember right now.

My third and final saviour was 2 small bags of play things.  This was so that I could bring just one bag out at a time.  So after he got bored with the initial bag I could bring the next one out and put the other one away.  They were on continual rotate which kept him very happy.  Bag one had little books, micro machine cars, snuffalupagus (one of his fave toys) and another big car toy.  The other bag was actually a giant pencil case with crayons, pencils, paper and a drawing book.  This kept him happy.  We tried the TV with earphones but he didn’t really care, still a bit young at this stage as he’s not really much of a TV kid during the day (just at night when Mummy is tired).  Toys, food, drawing and the isle. 

These 4 things kept us sane, I won’t lie though as he did have a couple of meltdowns.  I don’t blame him!!  All up he was made, through no choice of his own, to stay in a confined area with minimal toys, space, movement AND with heaps of people that he didn’t know walking past, staring, smiling, trying to make him smile.  14 HOURS!!!  He did bloody well. 

As you can see I havn’t actually blogged much but that will be changing soon.  Thanks for sticking around to all of you, and thanks for reading my stuff.

When are you having another one??

The one question that currently breaks my heart, stops me in my tracks and makes me blatantly lie to whoever asks me.  I don’t lie, it defeats the purpose of being who I am.  I am straight up, honest and give it as I see it, but this lie is to protect me and what OTHER questions, sympathies and comments may arise.  It’s just EASIER to lie......

Honestly, I thought long and hard about posting this to the world.  And then I came to the conclusion, if it helps just one person (even if that is me) then why not.  There is definitely no reason for this to hurt anyone and if it does then they havn’t gotten the point of what I am trying to say.

So......

I am a Mother who is so blessed to have a healthy baby boy and I KNOW how lucky I am.   I appreciate him more and more each day......you see I have a secret I’d like to share with you all, it’s a secret so many mother’s out there have and live with every single day of their lives.

Dedication......

I am dedicating this Blog to all of the Mother’s who already have one......but can’t seem to FALL pregnant with another "naturally".  That’s my secret.

I know there are people out there who can’t even have one and I want to acknowledge them.  I share a piece of my heart with you, this blog is about already mother’s, but I have to acknowledge those who can’t even have one xxoo

Those damn questions and “advice”......

“Oh you have had one so at least you know you can have another”

“There’s a reason that this is happening”

“Oh I fall pregnant when my husband just touches me”

“Just give it time”

“Oh don’t you want your babies close together anymore?”

These are all things I have heard, from people I have told, Professionals and strangers.  They all make sense, but they aren't what someone in my situation wants to hear.  There’s a reason?  Why don’t I get let in on this reason?  It’s my body, my choice, my plans that have been turned upside down and changed without MY CONSENT.

Positivity and my Son......

I am a very positive person, sometimes too positive.  I am taking this all in my stride but deep down inside I am hurting, yearning, wanting and needing that baby that my husband and I have been trying for, for a long time.   Don’t get me wrong, my baby boy is my life and nothing will ever change that.  But I also want to do this for him.  I want to give him a sibling that he can grow up with, fight with, play with and make memories with.  I want to give him someone he can go to when he is older and talk to because he can’t talk to Mum or Dad about it.

I am broken, there’s something wrong with me......

I do blame myself, not in the way that I am purposely sabotaging this or that it’s my fault.  I just know it’s my problem and not my husbands, I wish I could give him another child.  I still hope to one day but I just need to get some help.  I even ask myself, “I've done it once, surely it should be just as easy the second time, why is this happening?” and can’t answer my own question.

Well, there you go.  That is my not so secret, secret.

I am not looking for sympathy, I am not looking for those sad looks from people when they hear......I am sharing this so that people understand what not only me, but so many other couples are going through......in silence.  Sometimes the simplest question can break the strongest person without you even knowing it.  Sometimes people don’t want to hear how YOU did it, or how it’s MEANT TO BE.  They just want a simple nod and acknowledgement.  No questions asked, no explanations.

If I told every person that asked me “When are you having another one” that “I can’t” I would have gone insane.  Who wants to recount their situation with every single person, simply because they were asked the question that they dread being asked every day.  Not Me.  I don’t hate people for asking at all, it’s not their fault, they don’t know and that’s why it’s just easier to lie.

This has honestly got to be one of the most emotional rollercoaster’s I have been on and I have been on a few rollercoaster’s in my time.  The negative psychological effect it has is so strong and support is necessary.  I am lucky to have an amazing husband and some great close friends who are there for me.  I urge anyone going through this to not go through it alone.  Talk about it.  This Blog has helped me immensely, just getting it out in the open.  Sharing my story J

My Dreams....

Oh how my dreams have changed in the last 12 months.  My biggest dreams are to be fat, not be able to bend down and pick up my car keys because of the human being I am growing inside me, have the need to get up and urinate every few hours in the middle of the night, waddle like a damn duck & simply be pregnant!!

I can’t have that dream again yet (hopefully one day) but hope that everyone out there that does become pregnant (and me in the future hopefully) enjoys every single moment. 

Every single pain that someone else out there dreams for.

Every single twinge in your back/leg/foot/bladder that another woman would give an arm or a leg for.

Of course everyone has the right to moan, that is only human.  It’s a long hard road being pregnant and having a newborn then toddler, I know, I’ve been there.  Just don’t let it hurt you, upset you or break you because it is a pretty special gift that you have given yourself  J

I have friends getting pregnant and having babies and I am so happy for them.  My elation may not show but deep down I am crying tears of happiness for them.  I don’t think “why not me” I think “yay for them” and that is how it should be. 

It will Pass......

The swelling......it will pass
The incontinence......it will pass (mostly haha)
The heartburn......it will pass (the moment you have your baby in your arms)
The constant need to pee......it will pass
The need and want for it to be over with!!......It will pass

Enjoy it, and then enjoy the amazing human being that you just grew inside of your own body.  They are a blessing and not to be taken lightly.  Enjoy each moment from the second you pee on that stick to the moment it’s time for you to leave this place.  You are their world just like they are yours.  There are people out there who would take your place in an instant, without question.

The STATISTICS......

Approximately 1 in 7 couples go through Secondary Infertility (or find it hard to have a second child), it is very common.

Approximately 10-15% of couples are infertile.

If you are having trouble with Number 2 go seek help after 6 months, not 12 like primary infertility.

Most cases of Infertility stem from the females side.

Causes in order are =   1: Age

       2: Weight

       3: Endometriosis

I want to thank whoever took the time to read this xxoo

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