Before we have children, I’m sure that we all have an ideal in our heads surrounding how we want to parent. Some of those things get thrown out of the window immediately, and other things do not. The reality of children is far different to the soft-focus imaginings of our first pregnancies.

My children are five and three, with our third child set to arrive in late August and I am finding things hard.

The reality of my daughter is vastly different to the reality I imagined before she was born.

At five, she is full of attitude and opinions and it doesn’t take my patience very long to wear out with her constant arguing. There’s only so many times you can tell a child that no, they may not have that kiwifruit because it isn’t ripe, while they argue black and blue that they WANT it and it IS ripe, before your head explodes.

I want to be the patient mother. I want to not yell. I want to not have everything be an argument.

Sadly, I am failing at all three of these things.

Somewhere, someone said that provided you are a good mother 80% of the time, you’re still winning. I’m not even sure I’m making that, with 80% of my time spent in arguments with my daughter.

I also know that I need to pick your battles. Which is also well and good, in theory, right up until every word coming out of my mouth causes your daughter to scream “I HATE YOU, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!”

It’s the little things, like asking her to change out of her school clothes, or brush her teeth, or eat breakfast before school. Reminding her to pick up her toys (BUT MY LEGS HURT AIEEEEEEE) and to get changed into pajamas and put that stick DOWN before you hurt your brother.

It’s the screaming at me, over every little thing, that saps my will to even want to talk to Amy some days. The constant meltdowns over the simplest of things, with her losing her temper over every. little. thing.

I’m tired Internet and she’s hard to parent and I fear that I’m not doing a very good job at it.

The problem is that she’s on the spectrum. That she only wants to do what SHE wants to do and damn the rest of us. That my asking her to stop screaming, to listen to me, to do as she’s asked, is impeding on how things work inside her head.

She doesn’t understand why she can’t do exactly what she wants, whenever she wants to. Even if that something involves cutting every piece of paper in the house into smaller pieces, or pulling every single book out of the bookshelves to build a train track, or making hot chocolate at 2am.

It’s exhausting.

I’m exhausted.

And frankly, I’m sick of having her scream at me.

Parenting a child with autism is hard, even harder when Autism guidebooks are inevitably geared towards boys, not girls. It’s hard when you can’t get your child to listen to you, or make eye contact, or absorb anything you want them to. We’re trialling some dietary supplements that are helping, but helping is not better.

Amy is going to be amazing as an adult.

I just need to not tear out my own brain before she gets there.

So, the great plumbing disaster of 2012 continues and I have been stuck peeing in a bucket since yesterday afternoon. For a pregnant woman with a baby bouncing on her bladder, this is not my idea of fun.

On the left, you can see the toilet pipe, that attaches to my outside toilet, with the spot for the new pipe (for the NEW TOILET!!!) to attach. On the right, you can see the septic tank. You will notice that they are not joined together, therefore, no peeing in the toilet for us.

[I will point out here that the water you can see is not pee, but muddy water from the small water tank that was left dripping. I know, I thought that was excellent when I discovered that this morning too.]

The grey water pit is finally dug and filled back in, although it too, is not connected. Nathan grumbled something about having to dig something and poke a pipe somewhere, but my brain had switched off.

This morning however, it was finally connected enough so that I got to have a shower, while cackling gleefully to myself. It’s the small pleasures in life, like a hot shower, when you’ve been washing in the sink for the last three days because we were to avoid putting as much water down the drain as possible.

Sure, there is now a large puddle of shower water sitting at the base of the pipe Nathan has to work on, but it smells like shampoo at least.

Like I said, it’s the little things.

Aside from the fact that at the end of this, we’ll have fixed a problem that we’ve been procrastinating about since we moved in, AND we’ll have an inside toilet (in the next few weeks), the only good thing about all this digging and dirt is that I have a blank canvas in which to discuss grown up things like landscaping and the relative merits of different grass seeds. I’m angling for flowers and trees in this spot, which is where the car used to get parked.

Flowers and trees are much nicer than a car.

There is a lot of dirt piled up out there. And you know what children love? DIRT.

Despite me not being able to shower because “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T PUT WATER DOWN THE DRAIN”, we’ve had to bath the kids every night since work started. Piles of dirt and gravel are irresistible, apparently.

I’m told that the regular outside toilet will be hooked up and working again by tonight, but in the meantime Internet, I am peeing in a bucket. I know. My life is so cool.

This post is sponsored by Big W Toys and is helping to pay for my plumbing disaster, that continues, despite me trying not to look at it.
***

Amy will be turning six, around the same time that this baby of mine is born. It’s nice to be able to say that still, because the baby didn’t move for over 12 hours yesterday and I ended up at the hospital, worrying that she was dead. Obviously she is not dead, which is really quite a relief. She kicked while I was on the monitors, kicked the straps and immediately went quiet again once the trace was finished.

Never fear though Internet, she was WIDE awake at 3am when I was trying not to vomit. Morning sickness is back, apparently with a firm desire to make sure I never eat again.

Anyway, I digress.

Amy will be turning six in early September and I haven’t bought her any presents yet. This is mostly because I have nowhere to hide them, but also because I’ve been sort of lazy about deciding which direction we want to go in for presents this year. I can’t see that I’ll be up to helping her with craft sets and paints, not with the whole brand new baby and leaking breasts thing going on.

I also need to find both children a present to give them once the baby is born, knowing that they will both be feeling a little put out by the new arrival.

Enter, Big W toys. I’ve been spending a little bit of time on their online catalogue, working out what exactly I need to buy to keep everyone happy. Being able to check everything out online has made my life so much easier, what with the whole broken pelvis thing I’ve got going on and the inability to walk great distances.

Needless to say, sometime in the next month or so, I will be baby shopping, birthday shopping and hey kids you’ve got a new sister shopping. If I’m really lucky, they’ll have what I want online and I won’t even have to walk anywhere.

Because Big W are interested in letting you guys (my lovely loyal minions) buy some toys too, I have a $100 gift card to give away!

Just let me know in a comment below, what toy would you buy if you had $100 to spend?

You can score extra entries by liking the Big W facebook page, or tweeting about the giveaway. See the widget for details.

Then fill out the Rafflecopter form below, so that moderating and drawing the entries is easy for me.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You MUST fill out the Rafflecopter form to be eligible. One entry per household, Australian residents only.

So, my 25 week photo.

24 weeks for comparison.

I lost 5kg this week, after the stomach bug floored me. I’m still not fully recovered, having no energy and finding food hard to stomach. Funnily enough, with both pregnancies previous, I caught a stomach bug around the 20 ish week mark and lost weight. I’d hoped to miss the hell that is vomiting until your eyes ache this time, but it seems that some things continue to happen regardless of what I want.

Of course, it’s all coincidence, but three pregnancies running? Really?

Ugh.

I’m hoping I can recover from this – I managed to with Isaac, but didn’t manage to with Amy. This pregnancy is more like my first than my second, so I’m a little concerned about the increased nausea and inability to eat anything. I was awake at 4am last night taking more anti-nausea meds after the urge to vomit woke me up.

Yesterday in the car, the baby flipped breech (again) and I’ve done nothing but swear about it since. Not because I am worried about her being breech, but because having baby feet kicking your cervix from the inside is painful. Not to mention she’s pressing on a nerve in my right hip.

Pregnancy is so glamorous, isn’t it?

How are you?

It’s loud in my house this morning, which I think is more of a statement about my mental state, rather than the relative loudness of my children. Despite hoping really hard that I wouldn’t, I caught Isaac’s stomach bug and spent a fair amount of time Thursday night through to Friday morning actively wishing I was dead.

I curled up around my bucket and was glad for the fact that my children were sleeping, as I threw up and pulled all the muscles in my stomach, chest and throat.

It wasn’t fun.

Recovery yesterday was slow and this morning, I have just braved a single piece of toast in the hope that I can get something other than water cordial to stay down. A cup of tea would be much appreciated, but to be honest, I’m too tired to make it.

In other news:

This.

This is one part of my yard that is now covered in trenches and mud. That trench is not meant to have water in it, by the way. Two days later, we’d hoped that the water might have evaporated, but a quick glance this morning showed that there was actually more water seeping in from the old failing grey water system.

It was meant to be a simple job – dig a trench to put pipes down, so that we can put a toilet inside. Unfortunately the toilet pipes intersect with the very old earthenware grey water pipes and we were forced to dig those up and replace them as well.

Only to discover that the grey water system at the moment is not working at all, forcing us to replace it entirely.

A “small” job suddenly had Nathan and I playing juggle the budget and working out how exactly we were meant to afford the extra work. Luckily our contractor is a guy who has been working for my family for years and he’ll be happy to be paid in installments.

Needless to say, this week has been a little chaotic.

“But I’m not tired Mummy” he says, as he snuggles into my lap and tucks his head under my chin. His fingers twine through my hair as he breathes a contented sigh. “I’m weally weally not bery tired”.

I’ve been trying to convince him to have a small sleep. We were up until 3.30am together, with Isaac vomiting every ten minutes to begin with, before easing to every 25 minutes. By the end of it, we were both exhausted. He fell asleep between vomits and I watched him carefully, to make sure he didn’t choke. He only tried to once.

By 3.30, I took us both to my bed, as Nathan prepared to sleep on the couch. With buckets and towels at the ready, I prepared for waking every half an hour, but his body had had enough and he fell asleep deeply enough to stop the retching.

***

It was 10.30pm and I was just falling asleep when I heard Isaac start to cry, before that distinctive cough that heralds a child about to throw up. I was up and moving before I realised it, in his bedroom just as he started to throw up.

Pulling him out of his bed, I rubbed his back while he threw up on our feet.

This is parenting, I thought.

This is the reality. I could have told the story about a sick child and the snuggling this morning, but instead I’m telling you that vomit on your feet when you’d rather be sleeping is what parenting has in store for us all.

***

At 7am Isaac’s eyes flew open and I cursed his body clock that would wake him up (wake us up) so early after such a rotten night. I got him a drink of water and turned on cartoons, before stroking his back and falling back asleep.

20 minutes later Amy was in the bedroom with us as well, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Figuratively of course, I was too busy hiding my head under a pillow to check the actual bushiness of her tail.

I debated sending her to school, before deciding that it was too much work. Not to mention a risky endeavour – if she’s going to catch this bug, I want her safely with us where we can keep an eye on her, rather than vomiting all over the front row of the classroom, like a friend of mine did in year 1.

We stayed in bed for as long as possible, but sleeping in is a whole different ball game when you’ve got two children in bed with you, kicking each other and crying.

***

It was not a pleasant night, but you don’t sign up for parenting without expecting to be thrown up on at some point.

And as Isaac tucked himself under my chin for a snuggle this morning, I decided that it’s the bad bits that make you appreciate the good.

I went to lie down this afternoon with my son and my book, only to wake up two hours later, kindle akimbo and pelvis screaming at me. I’d call it narcolepsy, but I suspect “pregnancy” is a better diagnosis. I woke up to find that Isaac hadn’t wet himself, that Nathan had cleaned the house and that everything was pretty much perfect. I am inordinately grateful for this.

Ten minutes later as I was sipping a cup of tea to wash down the buckets of panadol I required, Isaac ran up to me, threw his arms around my neck and squeezed tightly, before racing off again.

In contrast, I saw a physio yesterday who reminded me about the importance of good posture, gave me millions of pelvic floor exercises to do, looked a bit stunned when I discussed what joints of mine actually dislocate and sold me a pelvic brace.

It was an interesting appointment, rehashing things I already knew about how to correctly sit at my computer, how to not destroy my vagina forever and how to ease strain on my shoulders.

All of which are perfect in theory, but a little messy in reality. I pointed this out and she responded “It’s about finding the reality within the ideal”.

Which I guess is a perfect description of life, isn’t it?

As much as the ideal version of sitting at a computer looks great, if I sit properly, my blood pressure bottoms out and I either puke, or pass out. Neither are conducive to working, in case you’re interested. And so I write blog posts either lying in bed with a laptop, or with my feet resting up near the mantelpiece. Definitely bad for my posture, but it’s about finding the least bad thing and attempting that.

I keep reminding myself that pregnancy is not forever, that eventually I’ll be allowed to take the good drugs again and that I will have a smooshy new baby as compensation. Sometime in September, I’ll stop wanting to puke all of the time, my joints will stabilise a little bit and my skin will clear up.

Everything is falling apart and yet, it’s all going to be okay. Even if I spend the next three months unable to actually do anything other than write things and lie down, it will get better. Things will ease and I will not remain this unwell for ever.

This is shades of Amy’s pregnancy over again and I survived that, in worse health to start with. I can get through this. Pregnancy is meant to be glowing health and skipping through rainforests, while birds serenade me.

However, I’ve got to get used to the reality, within my ideal.

24 weeks.

Not pictured: My children covered in preserved cherry juice.

Thank you to Frogpondsrock (Mum) and Liz and Jarod for spending the afternoon with us! It was lovely.

Yesterday evening, after dinner, I took myself to my bedroom with a book in order to get some peace and quiet and hopefully stop my back aching quite so much. I could hear the children running around the house screeching and playing; with Nathan occasionally breaking in to ask them to PLEASE go and play in their bedroom.

It was relaxing, right up until my son came into my room, tucked himself under my chin and nearly asphyxiated me with the smell of perfume. It seems, during their playtime, Isaac had tipped the remains of a bottle of perfume all over himself.

It wasn’t pretty.

For the record, a little bit of perfume is lovely – a lot of it is nauseating.

This morning, after a good wipe down, a bath, a sleep and another wipe down, he still smells vaguely of perfume whenever he tucks himself under my chin for a cuddle.

It could be worse however – there was a time when taking my eyes off Amy meant that she would fingerpaint the kitchen with butter, or the hallway with nappy cream. At one point she smeared both sudocreme and bepanthan into her hair, leaving her looking punky and smelling like sweet baby bottoms for a week. Waterproof nappy rash cream is not designed to shampoo out easily.

Nowadays Amy hides herself in the bedroom with a pair of scissors, paper and the sticky tape, madly creating before anyone discovers her absence. Despite the little bits of paper she leaves everywhere that refuse to vacuum up, I can’t say I mind this style of creative expression.

It’s certainly less frustrating than discovering an entire box of cocoa tipped out, or the corn flour tipped onto the floor!

What do your children get into when you’re not looking?

Today, after a miserable night, I went searching through my blog archives. Long term readers know this, but I was hospitalised while pregnant with Isaac, with fears of preterm labour (short story: 24 weeks pregnant, lost mucus plug, positive fetal fibronectin test, steroids, antibiotics, 3 days in hospital for observation).

I knew that I was about this pregnant when it happened, but I couldn’t remember all of the details. You see, I’d bled on and off through the entire pregnancy to that point, so one more period of bleeding wasn’t entirely a memorable event. Only what happened afterwards is what sticks in my mind.

I’ve been having braxton hicks contractions for the last few weeks, but they’ve intensified in the last couple of days. No major cramping, they’re merely uncomfortable and not coupled with any bleeding, or true signs of labour.

As I was reading back through my archives, my blog was able to tell me that the braxton hicks contractions started at about the same time with Isaac’s pregnancy. That at 27 weeks they were uncomfortable and irregular. That he was still born full term, after two weeks of serious prelabour.

This is reassuring.

When people tell first time mothers to write everything down because they’ll forget, we scoff in disdain. What is happening to us is SO IMPORTANT that there is no way we’d forget any of it. Six years later I look back on Amy’s pregnancy to find myself hazy on the details. I know I was sick. I know the nausea came back with its friends, exhaustion and joint pain at about 22 weeks. I remember being incredibly miserable.

But I can’t remember the details like when braxton hicks contractions got uncomfortable and how badly my ribs ached when my uterus forced them to stretch.

It’s why I’m grateful that I blogged the pregnancy with Isaac, so that I can refer back to it this time.

So far, this pregnancy seems a perfect mix of both full term pregnancies I’ve had. The nausea, pain and exhaustion have increased in the last few weeks. The braxton hicks contractions are uncomfortable, but not a sign of anything greater. My ribs continue to ache and my skin is breaking out and I’m spending a lot of time laying on my bed with a book.

All in all, things look perfectly on track to finish in the same way I gestated and birthed Amy and Isaac.

While I’m nauseous and exhausted and crampy, knowing that this happened last time too (and the result of that pregnancy is draped over my lap right now, stroking my hair) is reassuring. I’m not going mad and I’m not going into preterm labour. I’m just not very good at pregnancy.

So I’ll follow the advice of my midwives from previous pregnancies. I will make sure I’m only doing light things around the house. I will rest lots and I will eat good food as often as I can. I will medicate as necessary and I will drink as much water as I can hold without audibly sloshing.

And, it should all be okay.