We’re All Real

Therese Goshorn is a former teacher. I bonded with Therese on the sidelines of freezing cold Friday night soccer games. As our daughters lurched around the soccer field we laughed and joked and sometimes missed vital point scores ’cause we were talking. Therese and her husband have a beautiful relationship with their girls. There is a lot of love, humour and openness on display. When I asked Therese to write for this series she was reluctant because she is not “a writer”, and then she went on to produce a beautiful piece giving a lovely tribute to the women who gave birth to her daughters.

Therese Claudia Kimberly

Our girls are 12 and 15 years old. They have long, thick, dark hair, almost black eyes and beautiful brown skin. They dance with an internal rhythm, laugh joyfully and loudly, and push us, in their teenage-hood, to our wits end!

My journey to motherhood began over 20 years ago and was to take a course way different from the one that my husband and I set out on. We were keen to start our family and after nearly three years we were overjoyed to discover that we were expecting. We very quickly formed an attachment to the dream of our future child.

Our family and friends were of comfort to us when we lost our first, and then a year later, our second child, through miscarriage.

My mum saw an article in the local paper advising an information afternoon for people considering overseas adoption. We went along and met families whose stories got us thinking….

We learned that in order to adopt from overseas we must first be “approved” by the Department of Community Services. This was a roller coaster journey of emotions, attending seminars, filling out loads of paperwork, undergoing police criminal checks and fingerprinting as well as ongoing interviews with social workers who would assess us as suitable parents. Lucky for us there were no major concerns and after about 18 months we got the go ahead to send our papers to Colombia.

We share parenthood with our girls’ other families, the people who hold their genetic code and biological blood. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked, “What happened to their real parents?” As I see it, we’re all their real parents.

Our girls have pictures of their birth mums. We see them on a daily basis. We talk about them by name. We’ve read the letters that they prepared for their daughters. They are not strangers, even though we have never met. The names we call our girls are the names their birth mums gave them. The hopes and dreams that they had for their girls are the same ones that we have – that they be happy, confident and never know want.

I share Mother’s Day with two other women who live a continent and several time zones away. I will think about them on Sunday. I wish them peace, and offer them thanks for allowing me the privilege of sharing the title Mum with them.

Have you been involved in an overseas adoption? Please feel free to share your experience.

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Mothering Other People’s Children

Fiona Wyllie is a radio broadcaster. I can’t imagine anything more difficult than being a step-mum. Being thrown into a parenting role with children already formed and functioning takes an enormous level of love and commitment.  I have long admired Fiona’s relationship with her step-children, especially her willingness to put them first in her life. Fiona happily embraced a whole new world of confusing school uniforms and noisy car trips and time has proven the special role she has played in helping these children grow into happy, successful young adults.

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When my husband asked me to marry him I said “give me a week to think about it”. The reason I needed to consider my decision, was the equation was bigger than just the two of us, he had three redheaded children aged between 7 and 11 who lived with him alternate weeks.

I love children and always thought I’d have my own but didn’t want to bring them into a family which wasn’t happy. My parents were divorced and my previous partner of 10 years and I were a long way from being a perfect couple. So in turn, I was very nervous about becoming a stepmother in my new relationship.

After I accepted the proposal and before I moved in with the family, everyone seemed to have opinions on successful step-parenting and was eager to share them with me. The advice ranged from just let their father discipline them, to avoid having anything to do with their mother. For me this was wrong advice on both counts, as circumstances meant sometimes I was the only adult around when someone overstepped the boundaries, but instead of believing I was a wicked stepmother as I tried to deal with the problem, I thought of myself as just one of the many people with a little more life experience helping the children sort themselves out. I am a big believer that it takes a whole village to raise a child, so I was just someone who cooked meals and tried to figure out whose school uniform was whose when folding the washing. This was a huge mystery for a new step-mum because when I first joined the family they were all at the same school, with identical shirts and shorts that came in various sizes.

Unfortunately every step-family can’t have the successful formula we have, two parents who love their children and respect each other, even though they are no longer together. Deb, the children’s mother, is the reason I have had such an amazing experience as a stepmother. She loves her children so much she allows someone else to also love her kids and even more generously, lets them love me back, without any guilt.

My own mother spent 30 years as a pre-school teacher and parenting educator and when I asked her what book I should be reading to learn how to be a step-parent, she advised me to wait for any problems before I started reading how to solve them, and perhaps finding ones that weren’t there.

It would be wrong of me to say there have been no issues, challenges or dramas, and like all families there have been plenty of tears, sometimes even happy ones. Who could have imagined those early long family car trips could be so difficult, so loud, so tiring and so upsetting? I still give a silent prayer of thanks to the developers of the car DVD players – eye-spy or number plates for 10 hours just can’t compete.

Over the past seven years I have watched and felt the joys and struggles of three children become adults, and I burst with pride over all of them. The oldest Sarah started a new job today, Zac is living in France on a 12 month Rotary exchange student program, and Molly is coming to spend the next school holidays with us and none of us can wait to be together again.

We threw a spanner in the shared parenting mix by following my husband and my dream and moving overseas for two years. Molly spent a term with us last year, going to school here in Vanuatu. She had to ask me to stop being such a bore, as previously working fulltime, I had never had the chance to go to so many parents and friends meetings, fete committee meetings, or run a face painting stall at the school fete. I was going completely overboard in the pursuit and joy of trying to be a super step-mum.

Certain days of the year highlight where you come in the hierarchy of the extended family, my tip to other step-parents is to not strive for the impossible. It is alright to come second, and don’t try and struggle for the same love or respect as the birth parent, spend those big days in other ways than the media tends to paint them, all perfect like a margarine commercial. Make your own special days, spend Christmas eve or Boxing Day instead of Christmas day with the kids or this year give yourself a Mother’s Day treat just for you at the day spa, you know you deserve it!

Are you a step-mum? What’s been your experience?

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Rollercoaster Ride to Motherhood

Emma Siossian is a radio journalist. I was working with Emma when she began this rollercoaster ride to motherhood and I remember watching in awe as she dealt with setback after setback with grace and dignity.

We were travelling in the ruggedly beautiful Kimberley region in Western Australia when we made the decision. After years of sitting on the fence and peering nervously over the other side, we were finally ready. It was time to start a family.

My husband Adam and I were already in our early thirties, but until now we had always wanted more time together as a couple, more time to travel, more time footloose and fancy free. We also carried the naïve belief that once we decided it was time to have children, I would simply fall pregnant.

As it turns out I did fall pregnant relatively quickly.  Things did not go well however and at about 9 weeks, suffering severe pain, I ended up in hospital for emergency surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy in my right fallopian tube. I was also told my left tube was in very bad shape with a lot of scar tissue.

It meant our best chance of having a baby would be IVF. I felt my previously ordered world shatter to pieces. I grieved the loss of my baby and the loss of my ability to conceive a child naturally.

A few months later we started IVF. Each stage of the process was nerve-wracking and physically and emotionally draining. There was much anxious waiting, testing and injecting and sniffing drugs, while always hoping we would get at least one embryo to transfer.

We ended up with two healthy 5-day embryos at the end of the process but sadly the cycle was not successful.

A couple of months later we had our frozen embryo, ‘Frostie’, transferred and this time after the ‘two week wait’ we received the exciting news that I was pregnant! Adam and I were thrilled.

We saw a beautiful heartbeat at our 8 week ultrasound, but our next scan at 10 weeks revealed our embryo had stopped growing a week earlier. It was a devastating blow.

A few months later we were preparing to start our next IVF cycle, when I discovered I was pregnant! We felt scared and in shock, yet thrilled we had conceived on our own, something we had been told was virtually impossible! Obviously it was meant to be and we nicknamed our baby ‘Hope’.

With each passing week our confidence grew and when the time came for our 10 week scan we couldn’t wait to see how much our baby Hope had grown. By now we knew what to look for at each scan and our main focus was seeing that flickering of a heart beat. We held hands as the sonographer began the scan and stared expectantly at the screen, our hearts standing still. The sonographer moved around my belly and stared at the screen for some time without saying anything. It was then we knew. There was no flicker on the screen, no sign of a heartbeat.  Our miracle baby was lost.

My grief and anger consumed me. As the months rolled on I lost my sense of identity. I felt defined by trying to have a baby and my pregnancy losses and floated in a painful limbo. Dinner party conversations became an effort. My main focus was of little interest to others, who simply couldn’t understand our situation. Shopping centres were full of pregnant women and tiny babies. I stared enviously at both.

Further tests revealed I had an auto-immune problem which could be causing my pregnancy losses. My Infertility Specialist recommended that at the time of my next embryo transfer I start daily Clexane injections to try and treat the auto-immune issue.

It felt like a breakthrough, but not long after that I became ill and was diagnosed with Graves Disease, a thyroid disorder which can also cause fertility problems. Our attempts at having a baby had to go on hold. It was yet another hurdle.

After nearly 12 months we were given the medical green light to start trying for a baby again and decided to resume IVF.  In December 2010 we received a positive pregnancy test. It was the most perfect Christmas present in the world.

Throughout the first trimester we took things week by week and held our breath. It wasn’t until we passed the week at which I had lost the other babies that we exhaled, just a little, and I started to really enjoy the pregnancy.

Due to some complications our baby boy came into the world via an emergency caesarean at around 35 weeks. Aidan James arrived late on August 1st 2011. We cradled our beautiful, tiny 2.1 kilogram bundle, our hearts full of overwhelming love.

Aidan is now a delightful and spirited toddler who has brought immeasurable joy into our lives and a love beyond words. I will never forget our painful journey, yet can now view it as a stage in our lives, one which taught us to never take our child for granted and enabled us to have greater compassion for others who have fertility struggles.

Have you overcome fertility struggles? How did you cope?

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The Journey To Motherhood

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This Sunday here in Australia mothers around the country will sip tepid tea and chow down on dry toast lovingly prepared by the children in their lives. Breakfast in bed is a bit of a tradition on mother’s day. Often followed by lunch out with the Grandmas, thankfully cooked by a professional chef as opposed to a three-year-old who still doesn’t have the hand-eye coordination to butter correctly.

My path to parenting was very straight forward. It was really a case of oops, that’s done it. I’ve written in the past about my experience of pregnancy and birth it wasn’t pretty, but we muddled on through. I never experienced maternal urges because I fell pregnant before I had a chance to consider whether I wanted to be a mother or not. I was 29 and married so it wasn’t really a dilemma, just an Oh God what am I supposed to do with this thing called a baby? In hindsight,  I could easily have spent the next ten years making excuses about why it wasn’t a good time to have a child, with a good chance of procreation procrastination leading to a child-free life. It would have been a different course, not better or worse, just different.

As it turned out motherhood would change everything. All decisions now filtered through “how will this affect the children?”. Compromises had to be made. Reorganisation and readjustment became the norm.

It’s a weird state of affairs to find yourself totally responsible for another individual. Yet every day multiple women around the world are handed that responsibility and awarded the title “mother”, usually with little to no preparation.

In  cases like mine the title is bestowed easily, yet for other women the motherhood journey is not so simple. This week on Shambolic Living we are going to hear from some of my lovely friends, who have each come to be mothers by an assortment of methods, step-mothering, fertility treatment, adoption, and the generosity of a donor. It has been awe-inspiring to watch these women overcome challenges and difficulties and go on to create their families. First post will be up tomorrow morning.

What was your journey to motherhood? Was it an easy ride or fraught with detours and distractions?

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Over the Edge

As a parentsocksedit I’ve calmly dealt with trips to the emergency with gaping head wounds, years of sleep deprivation, toddler meltdowns in the supermarket, building resilience in a bullied child, I’ve negotiated, reprimanded, encouraged, guided. Basically, I’ve been a paragon of virtuous calm and sense in the maelstrom of family life. (Well that’s my version of the story anyway).

But in the end it was the socks that did me in.

It’s St Joseph’s Feast Day at school today. So help me we were organised. YESTERDAY I bought the orange juice* (eldest child’s contribution) and the paper plates* (youngest child’s contribution). The was to be no last-minute stop off at the supermarket on the way to school this time, oh no this little black duck had Feast Day sorted.

Then this morning the children informed me they had to wear their sports uniform – again I’m sorted, by some miracle I had managed to wash both sports uniforms between Tuesday sport and Thursday night – go me. Only problem was the bloody sports socks.

You see our school uniform decrees plain white socks with the standard uniform, but with the sports uniform a special version of a plain white sock is required. This one has a band of blue and the name of the school around the top edge neatly wrapping around the ankles of the ankle biters.

We could only find three socks. Which is unfortunate given between two children we have four feet.

Everyone has a tipping point. Turns out mine is socks.

I rant, I rave, I bring in issues completely unrelated to the missing socks, in my head it made sense at the time.

The children refuse to consider my solutions to the problem – OK amputation may have been going to the extreme – but the idea of grabbing a texta and colouring in the sock with a bit of decorative script was a bloody good one – didn’t I just pay $250 for an art excursion? Surely if you are thinking about doing art for the HSC you could manage to jazz up your socks with the name of your school! They refuse to work with me.

Proving just how completely overcome with madness I am there is a brief moment where I consider joining the P&C to lobby for the removal of the sports socks from the uniform. Not that the lobbying is a bad idea, just the joining the P&C bit is INSANE. I once wandered in to a P&C meeting for a look – back in the early days of school life when I was all fresh, new and eager – and accidentally got appointed President – we are never going there again.

So I’m left with my own modern-day Sophie’s Choice. Which child do I pick to wear the proper socks? I make my decision, I scrawl a note to the teacher for the child who misses out. Yet again highlighting to the school our complete ineptitude when it comes to matters domestic.

I can see it now, my child at thirty, sitting in the therapist’s office “my mother never loved me, she chose my sister to wear the SOCKS”. It’s going to be difficult to get the therapist to understand the magnitude of the moment.

I remind myself Joseph was a tradie, a man so easygoing he was happy to raise his wife’s child by another man, spirit, deity, I’m pretty sure he never gave a toss what socks people where wearing when they paid tribute to him. Now if I can only get the school to see it that way!

*You will note both children have a keen awareness of their mother’s limitations  – neither had offered to supply anything that required baking, cooking, or the involvement of their mother beyond her producing the money to buy staple items.

Do you have a tipping point? What idiotic thing has sent you over the edge?

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Alphabet Soup

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So I tried to work my way through the alphabet in the A to Z Challenge. I got to S before the internet dropped out and the family went into meltdown, wandering aimlessly around the house with zombie-like expressions on their face declaring “there’s nothing TO DOOOO, we have no internet!!!”.

It’s probably for the best – I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do for x – unless I posted pictures of old x-rays and regaled you with stories of assorted health scares (all imaginary).

So instead of a post for each remaining letter I’m going all out and give you a single line.

T – Teenagers – When I’m done raising  teenage daughters I’m applying to the UN to be a Peacekeeper. I reckon after negotiating computer time, driving lessons, boyfriends, curfews and bedtime it should be a cinch to solve the crisis in the Middle East.

U – Ultrasound – I had to have an ultrasound recently – I found a lump in my breast – when my colleague discovered I was deciding what music I wanted played at my funeral she decided I needed some medicinal support. Turns out that nice, innocent looking woman in the corner is a first-class drug dealer of the herbal kind. She feeds me some little pills and when she says they will help me relax she’s right – oh it’s a giant cyst that you have to stick a giant needle in to drain a stack of yellow liquid? Bring it on. How bad can it be? I feel great. I can’t remember what the date is to fill out the consent form but that’s OK I’m RELAXED. (Couldn’t help myself got a health issue in there anyway).

V – Video – we are making another video for your viewing pleasure. I’m trying to learn the moves of the cup song from Pitch Perfect. It took me ages to convince the kids to do it, they mastered it in about five minutes, I’m still struggling. We’ll bring it to you as soon I manage to coordinate my flailing hands.

W – Why? – why do I insist on starting challenges only to fail to finish? Is it a character flaw? An attention span issue? A desire for conformity confounded by a rebellious rejection of structure? Who knows.

X – X-rated – who am I kidding – I’ve got nothing x-rated to offer. The only home videos we have involve me tonelessly singing Wiggles songs to bemused looking babies.

Y – Yesterday – life resumed. The children are back at school. I’m back at work. Drive, work, drive, pick-up, drop-off, grocery shop, dinner, dishwasher. Mundane repetition.

Z – ZZZZZ – I thought I was done with sleep deprivation after the baby years – turns out teens invade your sleeping time as well.

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Confessions of a Failed Retro Housewife

photo-1This article has got people talking on social media The Retro Housewife. It paints a picture of educated, intelligent women ditching the board room to stay-at-home and raise children in between craft activities and baking.

I stayed at home for ten years. It looked nothing like the pretty images of instagram and homemaking blogs.

In my retro housewife years this is what we discovered:

1. An untidy person left at home all day does not suddenly develop the ability to create a pristine home with everything in its place. Instead they just make a bigger mess because the ARE HOME ALL DAY. I’m allergic to housework, no really I had tests done, I risk my LIFE every time I try to tackle dust, mould and cleaning products. One particular bathroom cleaning frenzy induced such a violent fit of asthma coughing I could have DIED! My health DEMANDS I leave the dust and dirt undisturbed.

2. The only time cupcakes were made in this house was when the six year-old and three year-old took it upon themselves to make them unassisted. I was busy on the computer. They did such a good job husband thought we have bought them.

3. Home decoration was the responsibility of the three year-old who painted the kitchen pink. I was busy on the computer. It was an ugly kitchen the pink was an improvement.

4. I did learn to cook during these years in the wilderness. Unfortunately I excel at the “big” events, a lunch for 20, I’m your girl. It is the tedium of DAILY cooking for PICKY eaters where I fall down. I don’t know who decreed baked beans on wholemeal toast as a healthy meal, but I’m sure I read that somewhere and my god did I embrace it. It became a staple on the menu plan.

5. I never learnt to sew or knit. The husband knows how to do a hem and sew on a button from his Navy days. That’s all we need.

6. Aside from scrapbooking, which has a purpose of telling the family stories, I was unable to develop a love of craft. Anything involving a glue gun or a shopping trip to Spotlight confuses me. Why?? What is the purpose of all this effort??? It seems such a low return on investment.

So in terms of the Retro Housewife thing I was a complete failure. Yet my stay-at-home years were my time for reinvention, rediscovering and resilience building.

As it turned out it was just a single chapter in an ongoing life. At the time I thought it was the end of my life. Yet I would go on to find that I would get employed again. I would return to the workforce with a whole host of new skills, a clear sense of who I am, my strengths and weaknesses and most importantly what I valued the most in the world.

It was a time of learning that paid work does not an identity make. Contributing to the world can come in many forms. Raising children, working on the P&C, spending time working with a slow reader in the classroom, helping your elderly neighbour with their weekly shop are just as valuable an input into society as turning up at the office each day.

When you break out of the daily grind of commute, work, commute, when you experience life from the isolation of the suburbs you are forced to rethink your beliefs. Looking at the world from a different perspective is healthy. I think that applies whether you have children or not. I believe EVERYONE can benefit for taking some time out.

While the bickering has begun on the idea of the “retro housewife” I wish we could get to a point where we see the value in both staying-at-home and taking part in the workforce. Each delivers benefits to a person and it is important to remember that (if you are lucky) your life will be long enough to enjoy a variety of experiences. There will be times where “leaning in” is important there will also be times when “opting out” will be rewarding and renewing for your personal growth.

Rather than trying to recapture a bygone era, I think the millenium housewife should market herself as a whole new breed. These women are juggling the school run with creating new business models in their work-at-home self employment, they are volunteering their former corporate skills within their local community and experimenting with new ways of melding motherhood and life.

Who knows perhaps one day their contribution will be seen as an important development in the feminism debate?

Staying-at-home is financially challenging (trust me we made huge sacrifices, my husband is a tradie, we weren’t doing this on a white-collar income), therefore it’s not an option for many. The majority of women aren’t working for personal gratification but to put food on the table and roof over their children’s heads. So for those who do get the chance to be at home I hope they don’t waste time arguing about who is the better parent but instead take the time to create new ways of building financial security from the kitchen table or leaving their community better for having had them engaged for a little while. If they do return to the workforce I hope they remember their stay-at-home experiences and go on to challenge the inflexible working practices and structural barriers to women (and men) combining parenthood and career.

To those who believe the retro housewife is a bad, bad thing. Please take a breath and consider why is it happening? Perhaps we need to look at why “having it all” has gone a bit pear-shaped. The conflicting demands of children and career is not yet sorted out. Deciding it’s too bloody hard and taking a break is not necessarily the end of the world.  After all wasn’t “choice” part of the feminist battle? Let’s not knock anyone for electing to take up a “choice” even if it is different to the one you would make.

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Retro Recipes – Anzac Biscuits

I’ve fallen behind in the A to Z Challenge, now doing a desperate attempt to catch up so I’ll do a few posts tonight.

In honour of Anzac Day here’s a recipe from my Nana’s old recipe book.

Anzac Biscuits

Mix together  1 cup each of rolled oats, sugar and flour, 3/4 cup of coconut and 2 tablespoons of Sunshine milk (I think that’s powdered milk).

Melt 4 ounces butter (about 115 grams) and  1 tablespoon golden syrup. Together combine  1 1/2 teaspoons bicarb soda and 2 tablespoons boiling water. Add to butter mixture.

Stir into dry ingredients, mixing well.

Place heaped teaspoonfuls of mixture onto greased tray, allow room for spreading.

Bake in moderate oven for 20 minutes.

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