Rings on Her Fingers,

In complete honesty, I never thought I would be a fan of breastmilk jewellery and, I can't remember if I have mentioned this before, but when I was coming to the end of my pumping journey, I decided I really wanted to get a breastmilk necklace, because it was a long, hard journey and I was really proud of myself for how long I managed to carry on. It was difficult, but it was rewarding, and whilst it wasn't what I had imagined it to be before Little Man was born, I wanted the necklace to honour that journey. It even has his initial on it in a little charm made of my milk, which is gorgeous.

I've always understood the concept of inclusions of ashes, or hair, particularly when it's a person who has passed away, because at least it is keeping a part of that person with you, and it's the same with pet fur. I don't think anyone gets the kick particularly when it comes to inclusions of dried flowers, but maybe I'm wrong? 

I watched a reel this morning which was about a ring made with an inclusion of a different kind, and my initial reaction was ew. It was a ring which included a sample of sperm. Surprisingly the comments were not mostly ew, and I wonder why that is my initial reaction, but then the story behind why it was made does make it make more sense. I think the fact that my partner and I didn't have to have any medical intervention to have our son makes me feel differently about it, because that particular ring was made with a sample of sperm from the couple's IVF journey, and so... right, I can't think of any better way to put it than to be a bit vulgar, so we're just going to have to go with it.

When I was getting my breast milk necklace, it was made from milk I had expressed, or pumped if you prefer, to maintain my supply but after I had a drink (an alcoholic drink...) so I couldn't have fed it to my child. It was in a bag marked as bath milk only that I was keeping in case he had any issues like eczema, but,  touch wood, we're okay on that front. Had it not been that, I'm not sure how I would have felt, because I struggled to pump the amount I did for my son, and it might have felt selfish to have taken any of that for making jewellery. Had I not breastfed at all, and only expressed milk in order to make a necklace, again, it likely would have felt weird. 

IVF as a medical journey often means that men have to... express themselves? (My head is screaming at me to just say rub one out instead of trying to be delicate about it) to have testing done or to provide genetic material which will be used in the creation of embryos. Inevitably, it's an act of love backed up by science and a whole lot of hope to make it possible for a couple who have struggled to have a child be able to realise that dream, and there is a lot of power in immortalising that and I think acknowledging that meaning and that journey changes things.

Over history, jacking off onto someone or onto the image of someone has been about power, control, humiliation and things like that, and I think there are effectively scars on, let's call it societal memory for lack of a better term, that mean we have a gut reaction of urgh, jizz, bad, or maybe it's just like, urgh, bodily fluids, gross. I can understand the perspective of 'making jewellery from any bodily fluid is weird' and the cool thing about it is that this most of this stuff doesn't scream that that is what it is. It's a quiet and personal tribute. Obviously that's different when that gets shared on social media, because at that stage a poster is either inviting opinions or often trying to inflame opinions. The problem I have, and the problem I saw in my own reaction, was the differentiation between a tribute to breast milk that was produced to nourish the baby, and sperm which was surplus to requirement to make the baby in the first place, that was already expressed and used in a lab, so would have otherwise been discarded. 

If it was something where a person was made to wear it, then I think that would be obviously very different, because of the aforementioned issues in history where the intention behind it has been very different, and I think if it was supremely obvious that it was what it was - I don't know, like a sperm shape on a ring or something - it might be different, but since it's a quiet tribute which looks much like any other inclusion ring, it's probably not something that needs a whole lot of noise, but when the maker posted it on social media, it obviously creates a conversation, and there will always be accusations that they are doing it to be divisive, because that's what gets views and comments and reactions which keep the cycle going. Ultimately, it's not something like Megan Fox's engagement ring, where taking it off will cause pain and damage, and instead it feels like a nice thing to do with IVF byproducts, which can be another really difficult debate.

I started writing this a couple of weeks ago when I saw the video originally, but juggling being a mum, keeping "on top of" house chores, getting our garden de-nettled etc and every other thing we have going on at the moment, trying to get it finished and posted has been more than a challenge! Which is also the reason it's not being posted on one of the days I would normally try and post a blog. It's not that I have anything against Thursdays, but aiming for Monday, Wednesday and Friday sometimes seems more realistic to me, even if it's not so much at the moment.

The Path to Saying 'I Do' Part 5,

I fully appreciate that some people are distrustful of AI and some people just plain hate it and there are a lot of good reasons for that. I do, honestly, especially because I don't think there should be a debate about the fact that it's use should be able to get us to the point where we have more time for our passions, rather than less, or rather than the AI effectively doing our passion projects for us, like when it creates artwork, but...

When it comes to weddings there are a lot of people who have started wanting to do a lot of it themselves, whether because it works out cheaper or because it gives them a lot more creative control or just control generally. And I get it.

When we started planning our wedding, I was kind of aware of the fact that there were going to be all of these little bits of things which would crop up that we hadn't thought of or hadn't known about, but I also had a bit of a general idea of how much things might cost. My future husband, God love him, thought that the price we had from the venue was a package price and we'd have to get a suit and a dress (his dress is gorgeous... KIDDING) and rings, but that other than that it was sort of a plug and play thing where it was all done for us, and it has shook him how much there has been to do. (And I haven't even made him do most of it.) 

I think he was aware that wedding invites weren't in the scope of what the venue did but I think he was of the opinion that they couldn't really be that expensive, could they? And I was like, yeah, it says wedding on it. Whatever price you're thinking of, add a zero to the end and you're probably closer to the figure than you were with your first guess. It was like the conversation over the pram all over again. I looked into a few different options, but as some of them were going in the post and I didn't want two 'tiers' of invites, we wanted them to be flat and as few sheets of paper or card as possible. We were also still trying to sort out with the venue about the menu so just asked about allergies and not food choices at that stage, but a lot of places that I was looking at wanted to do an invite "bundle" with an RSVP card to physically send back, an "info sheet" and a menu options card... It was all getting a bit out of hand, so thankfully I used Canva to do our own and do them our own way.

Now, I've always been more autistic than artistic (it's fine, I am ND, I can make that joke, and I do, regularly) I was pretty impressed that I chose a design I liked that was completely the wrong colour scheme (although one I'm wishing had gone with our venue, because I looked at a burgundy suit over the weekend and liked it - not for me!) and changed it, then managed to change the design for the back of the invite to make it a bit more simplistic, but still on theme and cute, so we could pile a bit of info on there without it looking cramped or cluttered, but when it's come to other bits that I want to mirror the invites, I'm sad to say I just don't want to mess around with them the same way, and I just want to press the AI button and say do this next bit, whatever it is, like that, so it matches, and then it poofs and does it, but it's not working out that simple.

I'm not asking for rocket science, I just want a template for *one thing, or another thing, which I'm not going to put because I never quite know who reads this and they might be coming to the wedding...* but it keeps saying, nah, I don't want to do that, do it yourself. And then I want to scream. I mean, yes, I can do it myself, but I don't want to and I thought the whole point of AI being there and "making our lives easier" was that I didn't have to, but it seems that there is no such luck on this for the moment, so I'm just going to have to keep plodding on with it and hope it's done sooner rather than later... 

8.5.26,

There is a significant thing about today that I only came to realise a couple of weeks ago, and it made me happy, and it made me sad.

 

Today is Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday; that's a lot of candles to fit on a cake. Like many British people, particularly the animal lovers, I do have a lot of love for Sir David. His book in the Little People, Big Dreams series is one which I sought out to buy for my son as opposed to one of the ones we've just kind of ended up with... It's also one of those which I have made a point of reading to my son, as opposed to some that I've left on the pile and we'll get to at some point. All this is to say that today is a day of great celebration because it is the centenary of an icon, effectively, but today is something else to me, too.

Today would have been the 100th birthday of my Grandpa, Jim. My grandpa Jim was my favourite person when I was a child. I've got a photo of a chubby little baby me sat on his knee on the Santa train, grinning my head off, probably because he was making me chuckle. We watched football together, even though I later decided I didn't like football - maybe it was because he wasn't there for me to watch it with anymore. He had a love of flat caps, old cars (or as he called them, cars), Man United, Frank Sinatra and Lancashire. He learnt German and told stories about World War 2. He served in the Navy, worked for P&G and pottered about in the garden. He had blue eyes, a cheeky smile and a soft voice, and I miss him so much.

When I was six weeks old, he went into the hospital for a second bypass surgery. He had had the first one ten years before, and the type of surgery that it was, at the time, was expected to last for about ten years, so what I was six weeks old, he needed it to be done again. My mum took me to the hospital with her and when my nana went to go and see if he was okay for visitors, Mum waited in the waiting room with me, and the next minute he was at the door, having walked down the corridor to come and see his granddaughter. I wasn't his first, I wasn't his last, but in the eleven and a bit years I shared with him on this planet I got to spend quite a bit of time with him and one thing I know is that it wasn't enough, but no amount of time ever would have been.

After he died, I wrote my first poem. It wasn't something I was asked to or told to write, but I sat and I wrote it, and we read it for him at the funeral, because it was just a kid trying to tell her grandpa how much she missed him already, and I have spent the next two decades and more missing him. I wish he had been there to see me go to college, and then to university, moving to London, graduating... coming back from London... learning to drive, meeting a man that reminds me of him in subtle little ways it took me a while to see, having my son, and later this year getting married... But especially meeting my son.

My son is named after my grandpa. It was a decision I had made myself a lot time ago, and it's a decision I'm glad my partner was okay with. I didn't want it to be his middle name or anything, but I wanted my first son to be named James so he could be Little Jim, Baby Jim, whatever nicknames, but he would share a first name with his Great Grandpa. I didn't know I was going to be raising a little blue eyed smiler who liked football and cars, but I love that he shares those things with his dad (not the blue eyes - that sort of skipped a generation) and that they're things he has in common with my grandpa. It's a different football team, but they both supported local football clubs, and by the time my son is old enough to drive he might not get a choice in the fact that cars are electric (though his dad will hopefully still have a couple of classics on the road including an old mini) but the main things, the main themes, are there. My son's already being raised on stories about how wonderful his Great Grandpa was, and that'll continue from both me and my mum, but it does mean that whilst I'm happy for Sir David, and his family, upon his 100th birthday, I'm going to spend the day feeling just a bit sad, too, because I wish Grandpa Jim was here to share it, and that he could spend today with my son. 

Grey's Anatomy Doesn't Feel The Same Anymore,

I have loved Grey's Anatomy for so many years, since I had to try and convince my mum to let me watch it (I was kind of sheltered at 12, okay?) and whilst I could have a moan about how only having the M left from MAGIC and even then, not all the time, makes it not as good, but honestly, I love it. I've loved the offshoots of Private Practice and Station 19, I love the political side of it... I just love it. I cried when Eric Dane passed away because he was so incredible in Grey's and I don't think I could have watched him in anything else and not expected him to be one of the Dirty Mistresses, but I put myself on a bit of a ban of watching medical dramas whilst I was pregnant, so no Grey's even for comfort watching, no Casualty or ER or This Is Going To Hurt or Bodies, because I was stressed and scared enough without adding fuel to that particular fire. 

In the first few weeks after the delivery of my son, I wasn't really watching a whole lot of television anyway, because I would have just fallen asleep on the sofa or fallen back to sleep in my bed, because I was, like all or at least most new parents, exhausted and trying to learn how to function, but you would think over 4 months down the line I would be able to lift that ban now? Well, not really.

Whilst I'm sure there would be a lot of people who would look at my situation and call me lucky, I did experience a level of birth trauma that I'm finding it hard to navigate. Whilst it wasn't the whole thing of being rushed in for an emergency C-section where the surgeons are racing against the clock to make sure the baby, me or both of us are not in danger, it doesn't mean it was easy, or an experience I want to repeat, and there are a lot of times where I feel like the situation I was in, the stresses and worries and circumstances, basically robbed me of the birth that I wanted and the impact that that had, especially early on, was huge, but it means that watching women in labour on TV programs is hard, and watching storylines about people experiencing complications is even harder. I know it's worse at the moment because even though our little guy is sleeping pretty well for a still pretty small baby, I'm not sleeping properly and I'm not a hundred percent sure as to why, but lack of sleep always means I have more of a hair trigger for things like this, so I've been having to ask my partner to mute things or skip through scenes, because I just can't cope with them right now.

It's the sort of thing that people tell you gets better with time, and I honestly hope that it does, but I think it's not just time, but distance, and distance requires not poking a wound, even a mental one, whilst it's still fresh and open and healing, so for now, I'm trying not to poke it by staying away from things which remind me why it hurts. 

Wouldn't It Be Great If IKEA,

I'm going to start this by saying I don't agree with the Lancashire Hot Pots on this one and I neither fear IKEA nor dislike it, in fact, I love it. I know that not everyone likes them, I know some people see them as just a cheap furniture pusher and I'm sure that some people are devastated that the entire MALM range is going to be going soon, even though they already axed the best colour (one of the previous oaks that was a textured veneer and just generally beautiful) partly because it's been around for 24 years (I'm not sad enough to know that without looking it up - it was on the wall of IKEA when we were there last) and it's hard enough when an entire brand goes pop and you can't get it anymore, let alone when a business makes a decision to move on from something that has been a staple for that long. 

I've been irritated with them before, because they do something like make the best plant goujons you've ever tasted and then discontinue them, or make the plant balls a bit too meaty so I have a half panic until Paul reassures me that they are the plant ones, he checked and he watched them make my food (he's a good egg), and when the Warrington one decided to slim down their menu for some reason and they weren't sharing that reason because it was after they finished the kitchen refurb and they dropped the rice bowl, it boiled my piss, but the recent salve to that has been a return of the rice bowl and another deal for super cheap food.

I've also seen some amazing things in IKEA like nursing groups in the cafe, they've done a pub* quiz and all those sorts of things that make it more like a community hub than a shop and I love that, and I love the feeding area for babies that I've used as a pumping area more than once. There's a lot that I like about IKEA, even if the Tetris game of getting things into a small car is both laughable and infuriating, the names are a dyslexic person (me)'s worst nightmare and there needs to be a lane for dawdlers because I just want to push them onto the nearest sofa so that they are out of my way. (I wouldn't but the thought crosses my mind on a more than semi regular basis...) I feel similar in the Trafford Centre, but there's less soft landings for people there.

So what is my latest IKEA related gripe? I like the new blue Billy bookcase. In fact, I love it. I love the green Kallax, too. I love the wonky nature of the shelves being different widths and things, but you can only have it in green and the green one is only in wonky. The blue Billy? No height extension, no drawer for the bottom, no doors at all... and let's face it, colour matching is hard to impossible, and because of the nature of what IKEA is, it's not going to look the same if you vinyl wrap or paint your own at home, so it's cool and it's "highly customisable" but not highly enough really. If you want a desk on a Billy, it has to be a white one, if you want the drawer, it has to be a white one, if you have non-standard ceilings... options are vastly reduced. I know, I know, it's mass produced and it's cheap and it's not meant to be custom furniture and you'd pay a lot more for something that is, but just imagine being able to use it like a pick 'n' mix, even if only on the website, and going here's the materials, here's the styles or patterns or whatever you want to call it, and then being able to get multiple height extensions for the Billy bookcases if you have high ceilings, because as long as it's mounted to the wall, the engineering of one versus two shouldn't be complicated at all. I'd love to be able to get blue ones with a drawer at the bottom for little man's toys, a couple of opaque doors at the top and glass doors down the middle to mean that my books get less dusty when they're sat on their shelves, but there are no blue doors and there's no drawer in the brown walnut that I also think would look quite nice.

We had talked about getting a carpenter in and getting something done in the front room and I think what we would be looking for would be very similar to what I've described above, but as I say, it would be more expensive, and we can't do expensive until after the wedding, because until then, well, we have a wedding to pay for, and weddings don't come cheap either!

What We Don't Know,

This might be a little all over the place because I'm working on very little sleep and trying to get it typed up whilst watching over my little boy in his bouncer, and also eating my lunch, because nothing teaches you to multitask like becoming a mum. Or a parent in general really, but when I think of it in terms of myself I always think of it in terms of becoming a mum instead of becoming a parent. Maybe that's just me?

I realise there is a privilege to being a parent these days. I'm not talking about the privilege of a relatively easy journey into being a parent and whether infertility rates are going up or we're just hearing more of it because people are more open about it, society is more accepting of discussions about it and because social media means when you've seen one video about something you see ALL OF THEM, but the privilege of the fact that when something seems... off?... you can do a quick search on Google (*other search engines are available even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes) or go to specific places such as communities on Reddit, forums on Peanut or similar apps for parents or even the NHSs own website(s) to reassure yourself that everything is fine or find information about what to do next. I've said a few times that these things aren't perfect, but then all babies are loveable little individuals, they're all different and none of them come with an instruction manual, so I get that most of these places are just full of people doing their best.

That being said, research is done with an idea in mind of what we don't know; it's a specific question being asked and hopefully answered whether it's a quick Google search, hitting the text books, medical journals with case files of things which have happened before or work in labs where there is a particular scope or question and the research is the journey to finding out the answer. So what happens if you don't know what the question is? Or what is you have what you think is an answer, but it's wrong? Well, nothing happens, which I think is why I love Tim Minchin's Commencement Speech when he says (I'm paraphrasing slightly) that opinions differ from arseholes in that, whilst everyone has one, yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined, because it's true, and also because it's Tim Minchin so it's funny. Unfortunately though people are very often only dispossessed of their erroneous facts and opinions when they're mocked for holding them in the first place, or upon being forced to be because they have been proven wrong, and honestly, it seems a little harsh. Is this a tangent? I promise it is not.

Recently I met up with a group of other women, all of whom have children, but ranging from my own at under a year, to some whose children are in their twenties, so they're probably closer in age to when they will or might become grandparents than their own experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and early parenthood, but the great thing is there is a universality to the experience of parenthood, even when there are so many divisions between us and there are some things you can only understand as a mum or a birthing parent (I know the two are not synonymous) or a non birthing parent, or a working parent, a single parent, a twin mum, a c-section mum etc. Even within those groups you'll have divisions, whether it be elective or emergency C-sections (reluctant C-section mums like myself) and there are obviously a lot that can intersect as well, which can further unite and divide us depending on where we fall.

I think I've previously mentioned - or perhaps I just wrote as part of my I'm distracting myself from the monotony and boredom of waiting for something to happen in the hospital - that when I came across a video on social media that stated that when you have a "month long period" after childbirth, it's not that, but it is partly because your body has a dinner plate sized wound where the placenta has detached from and your body needs to heal it and that comes with some bleeding or something that looks like bleeding and partly because your body is doing a bunch of things to go back to it's pre-pregnancy self (or at least your uterus is, or is aiming to). 

One of the ladies I was with mentioned she didn't think you bled with a C-section, but you do, because even with the best surgeon, they can't repair the wound from the placenta instantly and they can't do everything else to heal the body that the body does for itself. She then asked if it was when you were breastfeeding that you didn't bleed, and no, you do, and you can actually bleed more, because all the clotting that your body has to do as part of that healing process can be interrupted by the hormones which are needed for breastfeeding. Thankfully, I have seen enough information out there that says you don't need to go into the hospital about the bleeding unless the clot are bigger than the size of a lemon, and let's face it, you're going to remember that because it feels pretty shocking - lemons aren't small!! - but the whole experience is pretty shocking. I remember I knocked my belly somehow, it might have been whilst putting on one of those support belt things because my scar was tender and my back was still painful, and there was this gush... And I thought I had really done myself some damage, but no, it was completely normal. 

It sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but I often wondered when I was going through pregnancy if the reason you weren't told about certain things which happen or the frequency with which they happen was less to do with inadequate messaging or not knowing how to reach the right people etc and more to do with not putting anyone off of having a baby that wants to, because generally birth rates (I'm just talking in the UK here) are lower than previous, although some recent records show a slight, very slight, uptick. Given that fertility rates have been dropping (at least in what I read from 2021-2024) and people are having smaller families at a later stage, anything else which is liable to make more people reconsider having children is probably seen as a bad thing.

That being said, and it might be because I'm a thirsty sponge for information, I generally think that more information is better, and even if a person is never planning to have children, can't biologically have children or whatever their situation, more people understanding pregnancy symptoms and conditions like Hyperemesis Gravidarum, severe morning sickness (because it can be severe without reaching the level of HG) and pelvic girdle pain to name only a few, there might be a little more compassion and understanding for pregnant people. Granted there also might not be, because there are people who simply believe that pregnancy is a choice and if you make the choice it's your problem to deal with what you get with it, but I'm choosing to be optimistic about people's ability and inclination towards compassion, partly because I don't want to think about the issues which are still ongoing in America where choice and pregnancy are a very problematic conversation for other reasons. 

The Path to Saying 'I Do' Part 4,

Something I have never quite got my head around is people like me, who barely do their hair in any other way than scraped back into a messy bun or a ponytail, rarely wear make up and aren't much for getting false nails done going ahead and going against all of that for their wedding day. 

Look, I get that whole wanting to look 'your best' for the day and wanting to look nice for the photos and all that, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to be walking down the aisle towards someone who barely recognised me or someone who I barely recognised. It's almost like if my fiancé decided to get laser eye surgery the night before the wedding (I know it's not that quick but work with me on this one) or wear contact lenses. It's not that I've not seen him without his glasses on, because I have. More often than not he goes to sleep before me and obviously doesn't wear his glasses, and has normally taken them off for a while before going to bed whilst getting ready to go to bed, but the picture of him in my head is wearing glasses, so I would be pretty confused if he wasn't wearing them. Or if he decided to shave his beard off the night before or the morning of the wedding, I would be pretty confused.

I've been debating over whether or not to dye my hair back to ginger, because I've been so lazy over the last two years that I don't think he's ever actually seen me with my properly ginger hair, and if having a little one to run around after is going to mean I'm continuing on that lazy streak (or rather won't have the time for doing it) it may be the last time for a long time I actually have ginger hair, and is that going to be strange when there's photos across my house of my husband and some ginger bride? Is that going to confuse my kid? I don't know, but I'm sure that if I was wearing properly done make up - you know, when people go the whole hog and book someone to do their make up and style their hair properly and all of that - I think it would confuse my kid, both on the day and in the photos later.

It's probably going to be another thing that is assumed to be a money saving effort - hair dressers and make up artists are expensive! - but I am fully intending to do my own hair and make up, but it's not about the cost, it's about wanting to look like myself. For one thing, my partner isn't a big fan of make up. For someone who has always been a lover of red lipstick, that's been a bit of an adjustment for me, but I realised pretty early on I like kissing him more than I like red lipstick - if that doesn't tell him how much I like kissing him... nothing. ever. will. For another, make up 'trends' have never been my thing, and I've never in my life worn fake eyelashes and don't feel the need to start on my wedding day. There are very few times in my life I've ever worn foundation, so it seems crazy to me to pay someone to come in and put my mascara on, draw on a bit of eyeliner and put on some lipstick for me. The only thing that makes me consider it is that I struggle to get eyeliner even most of the time. 

And yet with all that being said, I am tempted to go and get my nails done, if only for the fact that I'm sure there will be a few photos of hands, and I'm not the biggest fan of my son's newborn photos where my hands are in them because I still  bite my nails and it's not just a little bit or a polite nibble on the corner of the thumb, but a full on, aggressive, I bite them, I tear them, I go too far and then they hurt kind of thing. I'm trying to leave them alone from now until the wedding but I've been saying that since January and we're not getting very far... 

To some extent, it feels like another area where people can just get carried away...

One thing I am struggling with at the moment is how 'me' I feel in my dress, and I'm not sure if it's just because I didn't do the whole bridal store try on a bunch of dresses, find the right one and cry, because I found one I was in love with that wasn't my size and couldn't get it in a larger size, the fact that my body is a larger size than I'm comfortable wearing, or if I just bought my dress too early and this is a natural consequence of having too long to stew on it, but whatever it is, that's a decision I've made and I'm not revisiting!