Grin and Tonic

Why did I wait so long?

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

I’ve lost my mum when I need her most. She’s still alive, but her life is over. She lies in a bed, trapped in her body, confused by her thoughts. I still have her, but I’ve lost her guidance, her support, her love, her ability to walk into my house and see the pile of ironing, the person who would have helped me bring up my three young children. My beautiful new daughter is seven weeks old and I found out this week that she has inherited my chromosome disorder that was responsible for all my miscarriages. And what devastates me more than anything now that I’ve lost my best supporter, is that I might not be around when she needs me most. Even if she waits till she’s 30 (which is early by modern standards) I will be 70. If she waits until she is 40 like me, I will be 80. Will I be around when she needs me most? When she needs me to help her through possible grief and upsets as her fertility issues arise? When she needs me to hold her hand through her first pregnancy and help her with the housework? When she needs me to tell her her baby is the most beautiful child in the world and she is the best mum? To babysit, to councel, to listen, to share her joy, and share the burden. Why did I wait so long?

I thought I had to live my life before I had children…. that they somehow represented the end of something. I never realised of course, that they are the beginning. Why did I waste so much time? Why didn’t I give my mum many more years to enjoy her grandchildren?

My generation thought we were having it all by pushing motherhood later and later…… but I’m beginning to fear that we made a huge mistake. Now I think our generation will be left with nothing – no support systems, no guidance and no energy to help our children when they need us most.

Why did I wait so long? And another huge thank you to my blog-brethren – your support is so lovely at this time……. xx

Posted in age, fertility, older parents | 5 Comments

a new phase

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

The doctor warned us this would be a rollercoaster. I’ve always rather liked exciting rides. Not this one. This is a ride I can’t get off. But, after the desperate dips of the last few weeks, we now seem to be on the long straight stretch – and I have no idea if at the end we plummet down a horrible frightening fall, or slowly tantalisingly rise up to new heights. It’s a rollercoater ride with blindfolds.

Mum is off the critical list, and has been transferred to Belfast, alert enough to know who we are and what is going on. Great for us to have a little of her back (albeit a silent, parlaysed her) but awful for her as she is trapped inside a redundent body unable to express herself other than through half a smile and two bright blue terrified eyes. On good days, when she recognises me and touches my face, I am strengthened – like my lipstick reward of old when the taste of her lipstick when she kissed me as a child made me feel invinsible. On bad days when she is lost to me, I can hardly muster the strength to keep going. I spoon feed my mother, and come home to feed my children. I rub moisturiser on her drying out skin, and come home and rub oil on my newborn’s growing skin. Two ends of the lifecycle spectrum and I am in the middle.

But. I must learn from my parent to be a parent. She taught me to carry on and find the good in the bad. Yesterday my baby smiled at me for the first time, and so did my mum. A new phase begins. A long phase of development and rehabilitation. They both need me….. and those smiles will have to give me the strength. Thank you also for all your good wishes and thoughts – my friends keep me going too…..

Posted in baby, stroke | 6 Comments

Life on the edge

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

As I cling to my new baby’s life, I watch my mum’s old one slipping away. Old, but not done. Not by a long shot. She may have been in her 70’s but she was as lively and vivacious as always. She did water aerobics twice a week, walked very day, did the crossword and had a more active social life than me. Always glamourous, she never left the house without lipstick.

I am a young mum, and am too young to loose my mum.
Who will call me every morning to see how my night has been?
Who will I call every afternoon to hear how her day has been, and be told how cold it is, even when it’s 20 degrees?
Who will call me every evening during the kid’s tea, saying “I know it’s a bad time, but….”?
Who will fix my knitting?
Who will turn their face to the sun with me as we sit outside and watch the girls play?
Who will hold my hand, despite me being 40 years old?
Who will stroke my face?
Who will tell me I’m talented and amazing?
Who will tell me I’m spoilt and need to grow up?
Who will help me make all the forthcoming birthday cakes?
Who will I call when I can’t make gravy?
Who will I want when I’m ill and no-one will do but her?
Who will I share all my joy and pain with?
Who will I share my everyday moments with over a cup of tea and a chocolate (“You can never have a cuppa without a bite of chocolate”)?

The void she is leaving is too dark, too deep, too dangerous, too frightening to behold right now. All I can do is hold her hand. I suspect my three girls will hold me back from the edge.

I hold her hand every day, a hand that has touched and guided me my entire life.
I stroke her face, a face that has filled my vision more than any other face in my life.
My heart is breaking, and the person I need to fix it can’t help me any more.

Posted in mum | 6 Comments

The eyes say it all

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

How can one week change my life so completely? The second photo is the picture I wanted to show the world, to go with the blog I wrote in my hospital room 5 days ago when life was as perfect as it could be. Below is that blog. Then below that, is what happened when my world ended at 3am on Saturday morning, and so the first picture is the one I NEED the world to see.

For so long you have lain on my lungs and my spine, my stomach shoved under my left armpit, my bladder squashed somewhere behind my right buttock. But three days ago, they lifted you out and laid you in my arms, your head laid on my heart. For something so small, babies have an incredible capacity to fill every atom of the world around them – you are not yet three days old, yet I hardly remember life before you. You have filled every breath. My lungs are back in place, but the air in them is bursting with the smell of you. We are cocooned in our little world, the occassional visitor entering our womb of wonder but leaving us again. Your gorgeous ginger dad is delighted – his first excited words: “she’s a red-head!” I’m not at all convinced but I’m not going to burst his ginger bubble yet. Daisy and Poppy, your sisters are smitten, and you are already accepting of being pulled and prodded.

I am hostage to your lips, smacking and slapping as they clasp my burgeoning breasts, sucking and searching constantly, one deep blue eye occassionally peeking at me, winking, watchful, wonderful. I’m a bit dazed, my c-section wound curtailing my energy bubble, which is supressed by your feeding needs. So dazed and bewitched am I, the Dr thinks I’ve been at the drugs cabinet. As he came in to see me we gazed at your perfection. My delireous smile faltered, I gasped, aghast. There was a cut on your head! How had it happened? How could I have been so careless? I was mortified, embarrassed, guilt-ridden. We quickly examined you, concern turning to confusion on his face, confusion turning to comprehension on my face.

“Ah,” I said, taking a lick. “That’ll be a dollop of my mum’s homemade blackberry jelly.” My guilty mid-night feast had been discovered.

I am getting to know you, so strange, yet so right. You are mine, and always have been. We were always meant to be and it feels like the final piece of the jigsaw has fitted into place, and now the picture is complete. I made you, but you completed me. Welcome my love, our Ruby Rose – a little gem in our garden of flowergirls.

4 days later- I am in the darkest days of my life. My worst nightmare woke me from my sleep at 3am on Saturday night, 4 days after my daughter was born, when my husband came into my hospital room and told me my lovely mum had had a massive stroke. My beautiful, vibrant mum, the woman who has shared time with me every day of my life, in person or on the phone, held me, comforted me, is lying in a bed looking 150, unable to speak, locked in a silent hell. Her eyes occassionally open and they see me. Sometimes they scream for me to help her. Sometimes they love me so intensly I feel the earth shudder with the force. In one week, I have had a new daughter whose eyes are dark pools of wonder that I have yet to discover, and my mum lies stricken, her eyes deep pools of fear and love – and a lifetime together of knowledge. My devastation is beyond my ability to comprehend, I don’t know if the ground will ever be steady again.

In a week my world has transformed forever and two of the people I love most in the world are only open to me with their eyes. Somehow, I have to find the strength to be there for them both – and my girls and family. I have to look into their eyes and bring my baby forward, and bring my mum back.

Posted in new baby, stroke | 8 Comments

The extraordinary ordinary

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Tomorrow, I’m having a baby. How strange to write that, to know that, but there it is. About lunchtime actually. Such an ordinary, everyday event. Yet such an extraordinary, primeval, earth-shattering, life-changing event too. Tomorrow I meet my daughter, a person I will love with ferocious intensity for the rest of my life.

As a child I always wanted to be different. I didn’t want to fit in, instead I strived to stand out. I don’t know why. I lived in my imagination, creating stories and imagined experiences, desperate for my perfectly fine, but ordinary, life to become extraordinary. That ambtion took me to Pakistan as a teenager to teach English, threw me into the scrum of women’s rugby, led me to lead an orangutan through the jungles of Borneo and release it into the wild. With every book I devoured, with every word I ingested, my appetite for adventure increased.

I never wanted “the norm” and so I surprised myself along with everyone else when I married the man of my dreams, a wild-hearted adventurer and lover of life. And then it all became a bit serious – we had babies, we had losses, we had job-enforced separation, we had money issues, we had stresses. We had some laughs, we had lots of joy and even the odd little adventure. But I started to feel that old feeling of ordinaryness – a statistic even. Even my heartaches were numbers – one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. Older mums have a harder time keeping pregnancies. It frightened me.

But as I feel the last kicks of my baby before I hold her in my arms tomorrow, I know that my life is utterly extraordinary. The sheer amazingness of the girls, the joy of being loved by a great man, the thrill of being a mum. In doing the ordinary, I found the extraordinary.

Life is not made extraordinary by the things we do. Life is made extraordinary by the people we love. And tomorrow, I meet a new love of my life. Extraordinary, don’t you think?

Posted in new baby | 7 Comments

Great Expectations

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Now I know it’s not looking good, beginning a blog about great expectations with an apology, an excuse for laziness, a blagging of blogging failure. But I am. So there.

My name is Alana Kirk and I am a blogging basket-case, a creative couch-potato, a literary lout. My beautiful baby (the blog) has been neglected and abandoned in favour of my beautiful baby (in belly). There have been no words of wisdom, no funny fables and certainly no insightful…well, insights. As my stomach has swelled, so my brain has diminished until all I am capable of (until about 4pm anyway) is basic speech and a vague responsibility for my two children. All other tasks have turned into Mt Everest – impossible, dangerous and too bloody daunting.

Which leads nicely onto my theme for this rather tardy post…. great expectations. Do they help us strive forward and attain new heights, or do they crush us until we are quibbling wrecks of self-preceived failure and un-ticked lists? I’ve always thought the former, always lived on lists and always moved my little world continually forward. But now, to be honest, I am feeling a little deflated (despite my inflated body). I am finding the expectations on me from my family, my hubby and my children (expectations no doubt I have created through years of frenetic functioning and copious coping through everything) too much. Way, way, way too much. I am utterly exhausted. Six pregnancies in 5 years, three babies – well, two and one imminent), writing, living, and yes, I admit, far too much baking and decorating. I’m always the one who copes, so when I realise that at this precise moment in time – as my body defies gravity, my sleep-deprived exhaustion defies death and lengthy lists of to-do are lengthier lists of not-done – I am not coping, those that see me (I’m hard to miss) are not really seeing me. They are not seeing that I need not to have any expectations on me. That I am scared and incompetent and emotional and needy – all the things I am ususally not. But it works both ways too. I have great expectations of them, and how anyone live up to those? And so I conclude before my head explodes from thinking too much instead of mulching more brain cells.

Maybe we should all take the great away from expectations. Maybe we need to have real expectations. To completely ruin a beautiful saying … give me the serenity to accept the things I can do, the courage to let go of the things I just can’t right now, and the wisdom to know the difference. So with that I sign off with a flourish, and will NOT go and cook another 42 cottage pies for the freezer and instead sit down with a cup of tea. And a lovely (bought!) chocolate muffin. And it may be some time before I work up the energy to write again. Sorry.

Posted in blogging, exhaustion, pregnant at 40 | 7 Comments

Snooze Button Defect

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Kids just don’t get the concept of snoozing. It’s ‘awake’ or ‘asleep’ – no warm, fuzzy, lazy lazing in bed, eyes closed, thoughts open, aware the day has begun but not quite ready to face it.

That bastion of parental fantasy, that adult pleasure that is free and legal, that loss so keenly felt when it is violently ripped asunder by curious little people.

Daisy is a fabulous sleeper. I am praying to all my non-religious icons that this baby who will shatter my dreams and well as my snoozes in 5 weeks will take after her biggest sister. Daisy falls asleep mid-sentence, sleeps like the dead for 12 hours, then wakes up as brilliantly as a light being switched on and jumps out of bed, happy never-ending sunshine and bouncing for the next 12 hours. There is nothing inbetween.

Poppy on the other hand has many wonderful qualities. Sleeping is not one of them. Sleeping late does not register at all on her scale of important things in life. So it is at 6.30 (A – OMG – M), I am woken by the gentle stroking of my arm and the soft words ,”mummy, I need to do a wee wee.” After I blindly put her on the loo, I urge her back to bed to no avail. In she creeps with me, and I snuggle down, her encased in my arms, and hope, just this once, she’ll fall back to sleep.

But two minutes elapse (during which time she has kicked me several times, and my baby kicks her back so I feel like a football pitch) and turns to me and whispers,

“But mummy, is it morning?” On these summer dawns, it is hard to lie.

“Yes, lovely, but we’re going to snooze for a bit. It’s a bit early.”

More football.

“But mummy, it IS morning?”

“yes….”

“So can I have a story?”

Twenty minutes later we are joined by her sister, all sunshine and bouncing, and we face the day whether I like it or not.

I know teenagers have a reputation for never getting out of bed. Can someone please tell me I don’t have to wait another 9 years??? When does the Snooze Button start functioning? In the meantime, I suppose cuddles and stories aren’t a bad way to start the day.

Posted in parenting, sleep, snoozing | 3 Comments

Fitting it all in…..

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Despite only seven (yes!!!!!! only seven!!!!) weeks to go until I can lift this enormous boulder that is my stomach off my spine, and cradle a light little lump of loveliness in my arms instead.. this title does not actually refer to the fact that my lungs and stomach are now so squashed I can only breath standing up, and only eat one marshmallow size of food before my aesophagous fires up in anger and burns a hole in my chest while belching loudly in riotous outrage.

No – ‘fitting it all in’ now refers to my near frantic frenzy of to-do-lists I have to tick off before I get too fat to waddle and then too tired to bother.

I have emerged from my sloth-like caterpillar stage, through some imaginary hormone happy chrysalis, into some energetic, creatively juicy, albeit rather heavy and un-graceful butterfly, fluttering and muttering to myself as I prepare our household for the onslaught of a new baby. How could something so small, require so much preparation? Thinking, list-making, knitting, shopping, cooking, decorating, did I mention shoppng?, preparing bedrooms, making childcare plans…. never mind preparing our two girls for their little steps into the big worlds of school and montessori.

Between the sickness and tiredness of early and mid pregnancy I had to abandon many of my regular activities and focus on the essential…. like feeding my children. But now – resplendent in bulbous blooming bountiful energy – I have finished my novel. It is done. It is printed and I even posted it to an editor for some feedback. It may of course spend the next thirty years in my desk drawer, but it is done. But that’s not all! I’ve made the curtains for the baby room, bought the beds for the girls, moved the cot into place, bought the buggy, and I’ve even made the To do list for Daisy’s birthday party in October and bought her presents (yes I know, but it’s only 3 weeks after the birth so I need to have it done!). I still have a list that hangs down to my feet (though thankfully I can see neither the end of the list or my feet). I have finished articles for Christmas deadlines, and bought 20 pie dishes for my culinary challenge of filling the freezer with nutritious food so nobody starves in the first few weeks. Daisy’s school uniform is bought (though not labelled – add to list!), I’ve been reading Poppy books on starting Montessori, I have even – yes, may I stand proud and non-apologetic – bought some Christmas presents. And I’ve even returned to my blogging world and caught up with some old friends….. if you are still with me – I’ve missed reading your stories and am loving catching up with your hurly burly lives once more.
It feels good to be alive again, and now as I tick, tick, tick my lists, I count the days until the sleep sloth of sweet surrender mists over me again as the sweet smell of my new baby’s head renders all my lists meaningless.
But for now, I am leading the charge on those lists like a demented dragon. No wonder then Daisy looked confused the other day when hubby told her she couldn’t have something because he was the boss and said so. She looked at him, genuinely baffled, before replying, ” But daddy, that’s not true. Mummy is the boss.”
I’m back!

Posted in lists, motherhood, new baby | 3 Comments

Who’s the Dummy?

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

Dummy. Soother. Whatever they are called, babies love them and parents hate them. In our house, Poppy called hers her Mee Mee (an indication perhaps of just how personally and emotionally she was attached to it). We have been through the gambit – pink ones, purple ones, little ones, big ones, animal ones, flower ones – and when she got desperate, even the doll’s ones! Each morning I would drop it with distain into a cup of boiling water, and each evening little hands would clamber up to the counter (and even little legs would clamber onto a tall stool if I didn’t respond quickly enough) to retrieve it.

I’ve tried everything – bribery, withdrawal, and the cruelest of all – the ‘only Babies have mee mee’s, you’re a big girl’ card – only to be told my little independent explorer who insists on being grown up and doing everything herself, is in fact a baby. “But I luuuurve my mee mee mummy.” Such plaintive little words would turn my stone heart to mush and I’d give in. Again.

Until now. On the drive back from Donegal I realised I’d forgotten the Mee Mee, left squandering alone in a cup of now cooled water. I took my chance. I kept my nerve. I drove past the chemist where gleaming rows of multi-coloured dummies sat on display. I was going to fight the Mee, and I was going to win.

I kept my jolly face on at all times, as I persuaded poor Poppy that now was the time. And since older sister has become obsessed with the Tooth Fairy of late, we decided that the Mee Mee Fairy was just as generous. We made a card for her – my enthusiastic drawing countered by Poppy’s reluctant glueing, but in the end it was done. A sparkling silver card to the Mee Mee Fairy, asking her to take away the Mee Mee from Donegal and leave Poppy a token of her thanks under her pillow instead. As soon as hubby returned from work, I pelted to the shops to buy something beautiful and awe-inspiring and glittering and representative of everything sparkling and gorgeous that the Mee Mee Fairy would obviously be. But 6.30 on a Wedensday night at my local newsagent was not somewhere I think Mee Mee Fairies buy their gifts, so I ended up with a Lego set.

Still, I perservered. Now convincing Poppy to leave her card on the dressing table rather than under her pillow since I knew no lego set was going to realistically fit under there, we had a tearful hug at bedtime, but I pulled myself together and kept strong. Off to sleep my little girl went, Mee Mee-less and sad. I snuck in a few hours later, and left the present on the table, taking the card and putting it in her Treasure Box for reminiscing in years to come.

I felt so guilty. I had taken away my child’s comfort. Because I don’t like it. Oh, I’ve justified it to myself – they are dirty, she is three and old enough, it’ll wreck her teeth. But still. I felt like Cruella de Ville.

But at 5am, a little hand stroked mine awake. I sat up in bed, groggy and sleepy. “Mummy, Mummy!” came a little whisper. “The Mee Mee Fairy came! She came! She left me a present!” And so I struggled out of bed to investigate, and lo and behold she had. I pulled Poppy off her sleeping sister, quite sure Daisy would not appreciate a 5am call to play and convinced her to return to bed. But at 7am, the lego was dragged in and has been the only thing played with in three days. The Mee Mee isn’t quite forgotten, but we’re beyond the stage of me running to the 24 hour chemist to get a good night’s sleep. Another step on the road to being a ‘big girl’ has been achieved. So why do I still feel like the Wicked Witch of the West?

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

creepy crawlies and all things nice..

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Grin & Tonic by Alana Kirk

I know I’ve written about the wondrous wilds of Donegal before. How the light shines in such an extraordinary way, as if the sun and clouds are dancing with each other; how the beaches are more spectacular than any tropical paradise I have been too – and empty; how the air energises you to your very bones and then just at the right time tires you to those same bones so you sleep like the dead, the grateful dead.

I know all this, yet everytime I come back it takes my breath away, the knowledge returning to understanding and my amazement renews itself and I remember why this is the most beautiful place on earth. Even my girls somehow know with their young years that this is what life is really about. Endless, too short hours running on sand, wind ripping our hair, sun competing for affection on our skin, rockpools bursting with wonder and life and adventure and untold discoveries.

Motherhood is momentous – so many roles and feelings and skills and jobs rolled into one delicious word, “Mummy!” It gets said a lot in Donegal.

“Mummy come and see this!”

“Mummy, what’s that?”

“Mummy, can I touch it?”

“Mummy, I want to stay here for ever!”

Today I took on the role of David Attenborough, the great knowledgeable master of the animal world. Today we saw 3 stages of tadpoles and caught a frog, we picked caterpillars off the leaves and saw chrysalis and butterflies – we even got to see one of nature’s best shows – a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, we found starfish, and caught crabs, we poked jellyfish and we ran from the fast incomng tide. Today I was an encyclopedia, and my girls learnt about the wonders of life.

This is what Donegal is also about. Beautiful skies. Gorgeous beaches. Luscious air. And most of all – life and living.