I just don't know what to do with myself.

A few years ago, after lots of trips to doctors and hospitals, lots of poking, prodding, scanning, jabbing and pain, I was told I would never have children naturally. PCOS, endometriosis and general unexplained nonsense combined to make me fully infertile.

I think it was four days after being told that I would need medical assistance to have babies that I fell pregnant with Jellybean, aged 24, 5 months after meeting my now husband. Which was a bit of a surprise. 

After Jellybean I had the magical, glorious, wonderful months and months of feeding him and not having a period - then when it came back I had to decide what contraceptive method to opt for. I went for the mirena. It was fitted terribly, it was agony, constantly, and I bled for months. 

The week of our honeymoon it finally felt a little better, the pain was less, the bleeding stopped. It turns out that it had dislodged - which we realised when I got pregnant on honeymoon. Which was, to say the least, a little unexpected. 

So when Jellybean was just 22 months old we also had a tiny Midget Gem.

The first pregnancy was pretty rough towards the end - I had terrible pain in my pelvis and my hips became very loose, I swayed painfully when I walked, and giving birth to a 9lb 9oz baby who is facing the wrong way is pretty difficult - so the rather forcible assistance I got from the midwives caused some fairly nasty damage to that whole pelvis area. 

I was still seeing the physiotherapist when I got pregnant the second time. By 8 weeks I was struggling with the pain. At 11 I got crutches. By 17 I was housebound and I spend the last few weeks in a wheelchair after the midwife watched me through the window take ten minutes to cross the room when she popped over for a surprise visit. A consultant visit led to a c-section just before 37 weeks pregnant (and a healthy 8lb 12oz monster baby!)

I had some quite intensive physio after the c-section and had a support belt for months. I asked there whether it would be wise to have another baby. "Don't even think about it, unless you think it's ok to not walk again" was basically the response. 

I struggle with this. 

This time when the time came to think about contraception I went with the pill. I bled for five months and turned into Satan. So I stopped taking it. 

I am now opting for "GET OFF ME" as a method of avoiding pregnancy. 

I don't want more hormones messing with my own. I don't want a coil, because I don't trust it. I don't want the patches or implants, they are the same hormones as the pill. I don't know what to do.

I think the only real option for us is steralisation - for one or both of us (you know, just to be sure, look at our track record!) but we both balk a little because I'm only 28, he is only 30. That's pretty young to say 'never ever again'. 

Only I also know I don't want to be pregnant again. I mean, I do, it is amazing, but I don't want to be in a wheelchair, wondering whether I could ever get out of it again. I just starting running again - there was a time we wondered if I'd ever be able to. I can wear heels again. That was a big no no for many months after having my boys. 

I don't want to go through the pain, the fear, of all that.

But I do want more children.

We've spoken a lot about fostering and adoption, and are both keen to look into those areas in a couple of years. I would love to adopt a child or two to join our family, but wonder how it would work, and whether we'd be allowed, whether we would ever succeed. 

I don't know what to do. Do I bite the bullet and get my innards knotted up? Do I make him? Do I stick with "GET OFF ME" and hope for the best? 

There are only so many answers

Jellybean has been talking about his willy a lot this week. 


Like when he was in the bath and washing his 'bits and pieces' and laughing, because we call the brio train track 'pieces'. Then he said that there was a ball in his bottom. Then, gleefully, that he has TWO BALLS in his bottom. We explained that all men have a willy and two balls and that's what their bits and pieces are.


Jellybean said he likes balls, because they are fun to play with, and that he likes kicking balls, and asked very politely if Daddy wanted to kick his balls?


Then we had a chat about boys bits and girls bits, and how we should never kick anyone in their bits and pieces. 


The next morning Jellybean popped in to use the loo whilst I was showering; this led to yet another chat about where my willy has gone.


I keep trying to explain that ladies don't have willies, they have front bottoms. Then explain that the front bottom isn't for poo. And then I had to explain that no, I hadn't washed my willy off in the bath, and it was nothing to do with being kicked. 


Jellybean still thinks the whole idea is HILARIOUS. Almost as hilarious as the look on Daddy's face when Jellybean marched into the room, dropped his pants and shouted 'LOOK Daddy, my willy is BIG and STRONG!'


Oh my!

Smoking

Smoking is bad. It's really, really revolting, there is NO good about it, not one single, microscopic good thing. None. I dislike it intensely. It is horrible.

I discovered this morning that someone who spends a lot of time with my children has started smoking - this person didn't smoke when I met them, and says they don't smoke often now, but does smoke. 


This person smokes and then spends time with my children.


I have very strong feelings against smoking and particularly smoking around my children. 


I do not want them seeing smoking and it becoming normal for them - the way it was when I was a child, and all the adults around me did it. 


I do not want them inhaling smoke, and having it invade their tiny, perfect bodies.


I do not want them smelling smoke, smelling OF smoke, ever feeling like or thinking smoking is something that it's ok to do. Because it isn't.


I told this person - who I otherwise like very, very much and who my children adore - that if she smoked around them, or smelt of smoke when she was around them, I would stop her seeing them or spending time with them.


She was upset - but agreed to stick to that and promised they would never know she smoked or see her, or anyone else she knows, smoke. That made me happier, but I still felt betrayed somehow that she had done it at all when she knew how I felt about it and then arrived to see my children.


I hate smoking. My incredible grandmothers, both of whom smoked, died of cancer. One very quickly, both very ill and suffering, and it breaks my heart that something so foolish took them from us all, that I could still have them in my life - in my children's life - but for that. 

I grew up around smokers, my parents smoked around us every day when I was young, and I never questioned it. When I was at school I tried it, hated it. When I was in sixth form I tried it again, liked it, carried on. I smoked on and off from then until I was 24 and got pregnant. I stopped because the tiny life inside me mattered a damn sight more than smoking did to me.


Don't get me wrong - I liked it. I liked it a lot. There are days now when I think I would quite like to smoke, because I liked it. 


But my children matter more. A LOT more. A quite frankly in a different WORLD amount more. 


Before the children, when I smoked, I knew all the risks and dangers, the harm and poison, the health effects and ruin that smoking could - would - do to my body, and I ignored it. I did what everyone does each time they pop a cigarette in their mouth - I justified it with 'we all die of something' and the idea that those things happen to OTHER PEOPLE. But they don't. 


Each and every cigarette you have kills cells, kills them dead, totally totally dead. Every one kills an area of your lungs, meaning you can't breathe as well as you could before it. One might not seem to do much damage, but it bloody well adds up.


My Grampa, who is in his 70s and should, by all rights, be pretty sprightly, smoked - and he now has COPD. The result of this is that getting off his sofa is enough to make him pant and gasp desperately for breath. He has an oxygen tank in a rucksack and a pipe that pumps it directly into his nostrils, because just breathing in doesn't work, his body can't absorb enough oxygen from simple air to keep him alive. So he has to add more, in pure form, just to be able to get off his own sofa. 


That's what smoking did.


Smoking took my Grandmothers - incredible, strong, beautiful, inspirational women who changed people's lives and genuinely made the world a better place. Gone. Gone horribly. Gone. 


Smoking did that. 

When I was pregnant my Dad still smoked - but he quit after I refused to get in his car whilst he smoked. I refused to put my unborn child in a smoky atmosphere, and I refuse to let my boys be around smoking now. And he quit. My Mum had already quit by then. I am so proud of them both, because they smoked for so many years, but they quit and have both been smoke free for years. 


I won't avoid saying anything to avoid hurting the feelings of someone who smokes and wants to do so near the boys, because it is poison, and I WILL NOT deliberately put my children in a room where they are BEING HARMED by someone DELIBERATELY to avoid someone getting a bit upset.


Smoking is a choice people make - often intelligent, lovely people - knowing all the facts. Knowing it is dangerous, that every single one harms their health. Smokers know, and choose to do it anyway. 


If you choose to do it, then carry on - but don't think for one second that I will let you do it to my babies.

People who smoke, who may be offended by this - look at it this way.


Would you let someone take your child out in their car without a seatbelt?


Would you let your toddler cross a busy road alone?


Would you let your child drink water from a bucket filled with cleaning products?


Would you let your child go outside in the snow wearing nothing but underpants?


Would you let someone terribly, terribly drunk babysit?


Would you leave your children alone by a lit fire?


If you said no to any of those, then why on earth would you be ok with someone smoking around your children, or doing so yourself? With those things there is a chance that your child could be harmed - it isn't certain, but there's a chance of it. 


With smoking your child WILL be harmed - and you will too. Every single time. 


That is why nobody is allowed to smoke around my children. Because I can't protect them from everything, but I CAN protect them from something we all KNOW is harmful. It IS harmful. There is no defence that can disprove that. People can make choices despite knowing it - but they absolutely cannot disprove it. It is fact. Smoking is harmful.

So don't do it around my babies. 



Thank you.


Oh, and if any of the very, very few people I know that smoke who do want to see my babies - e-cigarettes are a way of poisoning yourself without passing it on - and may be so rubbish that you just give up altogether anyway! Worth a try!






Image sources:
http://www.freeimagesarchive.com/data/media/48/3_no+smoking.jpg
http://goodhealth.freeservers.com/no-smoking-ad-lung-cancer-BC.gif
http://collegecandy.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/actualsmokefreezoneandsymbolsticker.jpg?w=278&h=434
http://www.dreamstime.com/skull-danger-sign-thumb16961015.jpg
http://bobbiejanegardner.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Danger-Do-Not-Touch.jpg

Silent Sunday

Visitors visited

This week some visitors visited - the best friend kind, plus additional family.


My super brilliant best friend Mollinda and her sister came, along with small human Baby A, who is AMAZING. 


I have spent my evenings all week laughing ridiculously hard at very, very silly things - things like grumpy boobs, mipple meep, banoffee pie and bad murders.


I love my friends - and Mollinda gives the greatest presents!

She is also a super brilliant awesome artist - these photos are not great quality, but her drawings of us are! These are going in frames and being added to the Molly Wall where other things she's drawn or painted for me are.