1. I Must Be Insane

Well hello there. I am one of those humans who stays at home with their baby. I think I must be insane. I sit here trying to type out some thoughts whilst wrestling my 14 month old away from my laptop, all the while thinking, “Is today the day she finally succeeds in climbing into the freezer, the dishwasher or washing machine?” (I hope it’s the washing machine because the freezer is far more dangerous.) My offspring - a beautiful blue eyed cherub - is in that kamikaze lemming phase of life. I think each day she wakes up and thinks, "Hmm, how can I die really quickly and dramatically today? Ok awesome, I’m going to try that right now!”. Before I really get deep into philosophizing about the why’s of toddlerhood, let me start at the beginning of my journey. 

I thought I was ready for a baby. (Inserts hysterical, somewhat maniacal laughter.) I thought I knew what was coming because I had au-paired. (Inserts more hysterical, bordering on crying laughter.) I thought I knew a lot of things, and then I fell pregnant. 

Disclaimer : If you are one of those, “Oh my gosh, I just glowed while being pregnant", super organic, don’t feed your child anything without kale in it, I made my own rainbow colored play dough, your child will die if you don’t breastfeed it until it’s 42 months old, formula is from the ash heap of Satan’s pipe, Wonder Woman type of mothers, this little blog will definitely offend you. I am taking this opportunity to suggest you go read “Organic Weekly” or something along that line of thought. You will find my musings and honesty to be primal, cavewoman-like and probably awfully unsavory. You have been warned! If, however, you’re more like me in that you feel like you’ve had the most phenomenally victorious day if you kept the small human alive AND managed to take a shower, then maybe this will give you a moment to smile in your crazy, dear God please help me not to become an alcoholic sort of day. 

So let’s talk about pregnancy. Maybe you were one of those women who glowed and felt warm and fuzzy at the prospect of bringing another life into the world. Or maybe, like me, you started vomiting violently at 5 weeks pregnant, and ended up hospitalized on and off for your entire pregnancy. I am one of those terribly unfortunate ladies who has a condition called “hyperemsis gravidarum” (what Princess Kate has, for those of you who don’t have time to google it). What that means in laymen’s terms is that you become an absolute champion vomiter. If they had the Olympics for vomiting, you would win gold. It’s like having gastro really badly for 9 months. Ok ok, that’s a little dramatic - it’s actually only 8 months. I can say with brutal honesty that being pregnant was the worst time of my entire life. No glowing happened. What did happen was chronic nausea and insane levels of vomiting - my poor husband spent many months rotating vomit buckets because one just wasn’t enough to contain the deluge that poured forth from my body; really intense constipation, and this is coming from someone who had never been constipated in their life pre pregnancy; peeing like a race horse; having my already intensely developed olfactory system turn into what felt like a troop of bloodhounds living in my nasal passages; a lot of vomiting - not sure if I mentioned the vomiting; hemorrhoids (more on that later); fainting if I dared sit up for longer than 15 minutes in a row - this was due to incredibly low blood pressure, and a host of other super exciting issues. So like I mentioned previously, no glowing whatsoever. Truth be told, the first night I was hospitalized when I was only 5 weeks pregnant, I sobbed really loudly in between vomits and said to my husband, “We should have just bought a puppy.” Due to the extreme stress of seeing me in that condition, my lovely husband actually passed out in the hospital emergency room. Picture it if you can. The nurse - a lovely lady named Jenny - somehow found a vein in my awfully dehydrated hand to put me on a drip, but my insides kept convulsing in sheer determination to expel the foreigner from my body. At this moment in time, Sid (the lovely husband) collapsed and ended up on the floor with another nurse running in to attend to him. Thankfully my father was a medic in the army and managed to keep everything together. He was so intensely excited about the notion of a grandchild that he was grinning like a monkey who found its way to banana heaven - in the midst of all the sobbing, puking and passing out. 

That fateful night at Hillcrest Hospital was the beginning of my extremely long pregnancy journey. Dr Gangaram, my very patient Gynae, met me for the first time in a hospital bed with my head in a bucket, in between floods of tears and howls that "We REALLY should have just bought a puppy." He looked at me with deep concern in his kind eyes and told me that it might get better around week 12. I looked back at him with absolute horror and asked if he was joking. This was week 5 and each second of living was excruciatingly long due to the insanity of nausea and vomiting that ravaged my body. He smiled gently and said he would be giving me medication that they give to children having chemo because it was safe for the baby, and that while it wouldn't be able to remove the nausea, at least it would cause the vomiting to calm down so that I wouldn't miscarry. 

By week 10, I looked like a heroin addict. Bruises covered my translucent arms from the nurse's attempts at vein finding for yet another drip. Fast forward through many many months of trauma to week 38, and finally Dr Gangaram was ready to take this baby out of me. I won't bore you with the details, but I remember lying in the recovery room and the nausea finally lifting. It was a moment in life that I will never forget. All I wanted to do was EAT! And they wouldn't let me - I was very sad and tried with all my persuasive abilities to get the nurses to relent, but to their credit they didn't. It was jelly and soup for me until they were certain I wouldn't throw up and risk tearing open my fresh C-section wound. And so the journey of being a mother was well and truly on its way. Man oh man, nothing could have prepared me for the craziness of it all. In the weeks to follow I will detail, with raw honesty, my personal process of keeping the offspring alive. I think I could have solved part of the drought crisis in Cape Town had I actually just bottled the amount of water that poured from my eyes on a daily basis. I can tell you that I have survived 15 months of a small human! It's a miracle! My name is Christie Joseph, and I'm a full time mom. By the grace of God I am not an alcoholic. I hope that my primal musings will make you feel a little better about yourself and most importantly, help you to see that you are not alone. There won't be pretty filters on my thoughts and experiences. If I offend you by not being one of the perfect moms, I totally understand the plight and can direct you to a much prettier and more organic space where you can bask in the glow of fresh vegetables and clean, white furniture. If I don't offend you, welcome, and I hope to be part of your rare serotonin enhancing moments in life.