Sunday 3 July 2016

Dog piss and picnics!

So anyone with small children will know that going out for a 'nice' picnic can be a difficult enough task at the best of times.

Twice this week I have attempted it and twice it has been ruined. Today quite literally pissed upon!

Monday my Mayte and I went for a walk to burn off the bum and had a picnic in the local park estate.

There we sat with 2 toddlers and two babes. The toddlers were eating their picnics nicely and I was feeding my baby her first taste of mangoes (thanks to a lovely Ella's pouch). My little girl was loving it! She thought this was quite amazing.

Until a a cocker spaniel came running through our picnic up ending the toddlers snacks and rummaging through baby bags.

I grabbed the dog by the collar and waited for the owner to eventually appear!

"Oh he's not dangerous!" Well not the point but fine. We asked that they put the dog on the lead if he couldn't be recalled.

The owner walked 100 yards away with the dog in arm and then put it back down.

At this point the little bugger ran full speed back to us with purpose, snatched the toddlers snacks away and then proceeded to run about all over our things. Whist removing the babies from its path I had had to put the pouch down which the dog then grabbed and ate!

Well fuck me! The guy just ran back over laughing! I wasn't. My baby's first pouch gone, the Tupperware with teeth marks in it and the rest of the food for the kids now inside a dog!

Another half arsed apology and the man was gone. Pissed off we went to the pub for wine and chips.

My baby settled for boob and to be honest no lasting harm was done. Although I proceeded to bitch about it for the next several hours!

Then today again, my husband and I are sat having a picnic (in a different park). The toddler is eating his sandwiches and the baby is kicking about on the floor. A dog wanders over. I put my arm between the baby and the dog, and the owner shouts at me from 100 yards. "For god sake he won't do anything!"

Except it did! The fucking thing pissed all over my baby bag. Soaking the nappies, the snacks, the spare clothes and everything else in stinking urine!!

"Well I didn't know it was going to that!" Was all the owner said! And with that she walked off!

Needless to say I did not handle it with much class or decorum. I was fucking livid. The little girl that she was with (don't know if it was her daughter) apologised to me and ran after the woman shouting at her for not saying sorry.

I heard her say that she had apologised. She hadn't and I lost it. I walked over to her and pointed out that she hadn't had the curtesy to apologise to me. She laughed and said there wasn't anything she could do anyway. I considered walloping the woman but thought better of it. Childishly I called her a chav and stormed off. Not my finest hour.

I was so fricking mad but what can you do in these situations? Sodding nothing!

What makes it worse is we have to leave our dog at home when we do these things because she is such a little shit, she just barks at any other dog that comes near us. But because she is such a little shit she is kept on the lead when we do go out.

Why just because someone doesn't consider their dog to be dangerous do they think they can let it do what ever it damn well feels like? A dog doesn't need to be aggressive to be dangerous it just needs to be poorly controlled.

I quite frankly think that from now on I am going to take my little Hellion dog out with me for picnics and the next time someone's dog comes trampling through, they can take their chances with her!

Erghhhh pass the wine!

The Pramshed

Saturday 2 July 2016

3 years ago today I gave up on ever having a baby

3 years ago today we ended our attempts to have our own children. It is crazy how it all happened. I felt today that since I have started a blog and have a policy of painful honesty I would share my story.

It started 7 years ago. I was 23.

I had been to the doctor as I hadn't had a period in months. I had had a series of cysts that had been a pretty vile experience and so thought I had better be checked out. My GP ran some tests and I had never really thought any more of it.

Then a follow up appointment dropped a life shattering bomb shell. I was infertile. I didn't ovulate.

My GP grabbed the bull by the horns and had my husband (then boyfriend) 's sperm tested.

Well! There it was. A sperm count that would make children all but impossible.

As I was so young we were told if we wanted even a snowball's chance in hell we should be referred for fertility treatment immediately.

We had not even considered babies at this point, I was 23 going on 17, a student nurse and completely piss poor. It all just sort of ran away from us.

Before we knew it we were in front of a consultant. Thoughts of sperm or egg donors in our mind. After further testing my husband's swimmers were fine, if not a little lazy.

The Clomifine commenced and so did the scheduled bonking. We had sex whether we liked it or not. Whether we liked each other of not.

I peed on sticks to see if I was ovulating and at times I would see the smiley face! I would get so excited. I would have my bloods done and be so sure when we next saw the consultant it would be good news. It never was. The smiley face had lied. They test for the wrong hormone and they don't mean it when they smile.

18 months of false hope and mocking smiles.  I had not ovulated, I couldn't be pregnant.

On we went to the IUI and the daily injections. As a (now qualified) nurse the injections didn't phase me, if anything I felt like in a weird way it could make them work better as I was an expert in stabbing people with needles. I could stab myself better than anyone.

Well if the stress of the treatment isn't enough, the overwhelming desire for it to work, the fucking roller coaster of hormones, hope and then hopelessness was all but unbearable. Then once someone decides you may have a follicle that is almost passable you have the treatment. My husband at the first of these actually told me he felt violated for me. It is pretty fucked up. 2 women have a chat around your what-not checking a bottle of your partners junk before shoving it  up you with a straw. Pretty gruesome.

By the third time all dignity had gone out the window. All sense of privacy or ownership over my own body parts had gone and I was joining in the chats with the nurses as they checked my details with my legs in the air and my hoo-ha on display.

After 3 rounds of this, 3 rounds of stabbing myself with drugs, shoving progesterone in places that should only ever be 'out holes'...nothing.

The only thing that had changed was that my mental health was in pieces and my desire for a baby was immeasurable.

Onwards we went. ICSI next. Well shit the bed! How I didn't top myself is actually quite beyond me. Some days I would lie on the landing crying, unable to move. My husband once rang me and I was so hysterical he left work to check on me. Honestly I think he had prepared himself for the worst. Hormones being hormones however had seen me have a complete and spontaneous recovery and I was sat drinking tea in the kitchen.

I never really considered my husband in all of it at the time. My emotions, and hormones and generally pretty broken state of mind were all consuming. I was completely selfish, but even with hindsight I don't see how I could have been anything different. I don't really know how I made it through.

I missed my sisters 30th, our niece's christening had to be rescheduled and I had to take unpaid time off work. And all for nothing.

So many people offered us the money that we couldn't find to try again but I was done. I couldn't survive any more. I knew it and so did my husband.

July 2011 I came to terms with the fact that I would never have my own children. I would never know what it was to be pregnant.

We decided to adopt. It was a decision that lifted all the burden. I wanted to be a mummy so much, it was all I could think about. They didn't need to have my genes to be my children. My husband I think was just relieved to have me back from the brink and being the wonderful man that he is hot behind the idea 100%.

We were all ready to go with the adoption, we had references from friends and family and our social worker knew more about us than our own family did.

Then one day in Tesco I was doing my weekly shop and I turned into a crazy woman. I started buying spinach and piles of fruit. I bought multi vitamins and put the wine back on the shelf. I then stood in the women's aisle like a complete mental case picking up and putting back the Tampax until I eventually went and purchased a pregnancy test. I had no reason to think for a moment I could be pregnant but some how I just knew I was.

12 tests later and a lot of tears and there it was I was pregnant. How? Who the chuff knows? But I was.

3 months after having known I would never have my own baby there I was pregnant.

3 years later and I have just put not only my first but also my second baby in their bed.

Our bodies are wonderful things. I apologise for the whopping length of my post. But that's my story. That's how I had my babies after knowing I would never have one.

I hope anyone else that is going through similar can take comfort in my story. It was long but it had a happy ending!


The Pramshed
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Friday 1 July 2016

I want to be you when I grow up!

I am very quickly becoming a bit of a lot of a blogging addict. Not just writing, I'm somewhat shit at that bit, but reading and stalking other parenting blogs.

What I have realised by reading all these wonderful people's posts is that they are all who I want to be when I grow up!

That might seem ridiculous as I will soon be turning 30 and I have wrinkles on my boobs belly face, but I don't feel like a grown up.

I have 2 gorgeous babies who are not turning out to be total delinquents (yet, give it time) and a wonderful husband.. and a dog, and a cat and a mortgage.

I should feel like a grown up. According to the tax man I am a grown up. But I still look at others, sometimes younger, and think "Shit! They have really got it figured out!"

I have seen wonderful instructional posts about how to be a good blogger, about how I should find my niche and offer words of wisdom. Honestly, I don't have any. The only thing I can offer is my honesty. Is my parenting truth. About how I fuck up, don't have it figured out and don't really act like a grown up.

I have Funday Wednesdays, I do sit on my child and use comply or cry, I go to the toilet for the sole purpose of catching up on social media, and more often than not I put the kids to bed early so I can drink my wine!

 I am already a mummy and I am quickly learning how to be a good one not too shit one but I still don't yet feel like I could call myself a grown up!I admire those of who do, you are who I want to be when I grow up!

Domesticated Momster
Pick N Mix Fridays