And she's here......

I know....cute right?? I know how parents always think their kids are the most beautiful, amazing beings, but really?? This is the most amazing, beautiful creature out there....

Ok, so a lot has happened and I've been very lacks with the blog (humble apologies to be inserted here). However, if any of you are parents, you will know that time becomes completely irrelevant when there's a little terror around. Let me fill you in...

Birth: We went if for a checkup when Kris was about a week overdue, only to find that she was already 5cm dilated (ouch) without feeling a thing. Super Sue (the midwife) decided then and there to induce and waters were promptly broken. The aforementioned waters managed to get themselves everywhere....Sue sat in them, I stepped in them, nastiness!! Anyhooo....about half an hour after popping the balloon, Kris was begging Sue to put said waters right back where they came from!! An hour after that she was begging all and sundry for drugs of any and all descriptions (none of which were forthcoming). Little Kori popped out about four hours after labour was induced and all of a sudden all pain and discomfort was forgotten and all insults, swearwords and general nastiness thrown my way went into the "I don't remember a thing" vault. I must admit though, I developed a new-found respect for my wonderful wife after her ordeal. Anyone who can go through that and deal with such a huge amount of pain is amazing! (But I've told you this loads of times, Mommy!)

Cutting the cord: Believe it or not, I actually did this....freaky! The umbilical cord is like a life-form all on it's own. It pulsates, it's wriggly, it's just plain strange...and I cut it! Then, while I'm still dealing with this trauma, out pops the placenta. I'm like, Woah there cowboy, not quite ready for alien invasion just yet! And there are people out there who eat that??? The only thing I could think of was to use it as a prop in my next sci-fi film....

Latching: Ok, this is where the fun begins.... Apparently it's really important to get the little worm to latch on to a boob asap. However, Kris, being her usual practical self, decided the best place for her and her (graphic description coming up for those squeamish ones....) bleeding netheryeya was the loo. So my child's first taste of freedom happened while mom was proudly perching on the great white throne!!

The first night was spent gooing and gaaing over our new bundle while Kris facebooked, texted and BBM'd the world! Most of the pics have me holding the worm and Kris holding her phone!

First Poop: Ok, this is just plain scary. No-one tells you that the first discharge is literally 9 months worth of back-up that has somehow transformed into this black sludge that kinda reminded me of the stuff Spiderman's evil twin used to shoot out in Spiderman 3 (crappy sequel!). Everytime you attempt to wipe it away, it just springs back, attaching another wet wipe to your baby's ass! I wanted to take her into the garden and hose her down, but apparently that's frowned upon. And of course, through it all she's lying there with this "I told you I'd get you back" look on her face, little terrorist. Another thing they don't tell you, is that this little bundle of "joy" farts worse than a fifty-year-old on a diet of cabbage and baked beans! This child of mine can single-assedly put a herd of cows to shame with the amount of methane she puts out...Mind you, at least I have someone I can blame mine on now.

Kori is now 8 weeks old and has a firm grasp on controlling the entire household. The cat is terrified of her, the dogs are not quite sure what to make of her and her parents cater to her every whim. She is definately the queen-bee.
More later.....

Exploding Mamma

I'm not even joking...if this carries on any longer, I'm expecting this to happen to very pregnant fairy any minute! We are now a week overdue and it seems like the fruit of psychology major's loins is trying to set a record for hanging around a womb (maybe I should contact Guinness or Ripley's). When I was at school I read this book called Spring Sonata, by Bernice Rubens, and I reckon my zygote assimilated this knowledge somehow, because the book is about a baby who decides not to come out and ends up writing his memoirs while in-uterus!!! Odd I know, but I can imagine my progeny sticking her little arm out in the middle of the night and snagging a notepad and a Bic and scribbling away while we lament her late arrival!

I know it's nothing to worry about, it's not like she's stopped kicking Kris in the crotch or anything, but I'd really like to meet the little sproglet already...

So the update is as follows...Pregnant fairy is the size of a house and like an oil-tanker needs about three kilometres to turn! The whole bed has become her domain and she regularly uses me as a fulcrum at night to lever herself into a more comfortable position. This maneuvering happens regularly every half hour or so which inevitably leads to a trip to the commode accompanied by different levels of moaning and groaning which results in both the dogs howling in sympathy!

Our Doulla (for those not in the know, a Doulla is kind of like a mid-wife's assistant) came by the other day to give us some pressure point pointers, if you will. I now draw a rising sun on preggie fairy's lower back with a lit charcoal-like pencil which puts her in sort of a coma and makes her sigh a lot. Not quite sure what this does, but apparently she now has little flutters in her belly and I have writer's cramp. She also showed me where the reflexology points are...
Maria (doulla) : "Find the ankle bone, measure four finger widths above it and apply pressure, that's the womb"
Me: "The ankle what?"
SLAP
Me: "ouch!!"
I mean really, how do you locate a 9-month pregnant woman's ankles?? They disappeared sometime during the second trimester! There's just a tree-trunk down there with absolutely no distinction between foot, calf or thigh.

Anyway, despite several sleepless nights filled with contractions, flutters, something-like-period-pains and my unborn digging into her cervix, fairy is still hanging on to her water for dear life.
The next step is going in for an internal examination and I'm still trying to convince her to do a "When Harry met Sally" type orgasm scene just to see the midwife's response!!!

Baby Cooker

Let's just make one thing clear...this is not the pregnant fairy's belly and it ain't Kori's foot, however, the force with which the little bugger manages to kick me in the back makes me think she's going to be a shoe-in for the women's national soccer or rugby teams! As a matter of fact, I'm considering an early sex change op so that she/he/it can make some moolah playing for the Stormers. Watch out Peter Grant!!!

The fairy is not acting very fairy-like lately. She's waddling around like she's been got at by a randy rhinoceros and pretty much every movement illicits a wide variety of grunts and groans. Turning over in bed involves an industrial crane, me moving into the spare-room for 15 minutes and the neighbours peering over the wall to see if everything is ok. The dogs have figured out that they can get away with anything cause mom can't catch them to mete out punishment, I think they're loving it!

Our midwife told us a couple of weeks ago that the little bugger could pop any day now, and the longer it goes on, the more the pressure is building. She dropped down into position, started clawing at the Cervix (according to Pregnant Fairy) and contractions started. However, these symptoms just decided to linger, so the waddler now doubles over in pain every now and then while scrubbing the floors and I have to remind her to get on with it else my supper's not gonna get made!
(Hehe, can you imagine?? I would get my ass kicked royally if I tried that!)
 Every time we think it's gonna happen soon, the little tyke climbs back up and hides behind Kris' lungs and the whole circle of Fafa starts all over again!
 I got woken up last night only to be informed that she is NOT in labour! Why exactly I needed to be woken from my slumber for this little nugget, I have yet to figure out, but I guess that's part of the whole supportive partner thing I've been reading about.

My social life is in the toilet! In the last two weeks, we've missed out on Bingo night, Poker games, soccer and rugby matches and a debauched night at Teazers, to name but a few and if this kid doesn't pop soon, I'm going to be blaming it for the loss of loads of amazing memories! I spent this last weekend figuring out how to install the car seat, much to the dogs' dismay, because this means no car trips for them for a while.

On the positive side, I've now mastered the whole "shaving someone else's legs" technique and I'm pretty good at trimming the "hedge". I've also realized that pregnancy is nature's way of teaching dads/partners how to dry their kids, cause Pregnant Fairy has finally reached the stage where she can no longer reach to dry her legs after bathing. It's either me or a hair-dryer!!!

Sssshhhhhhh......

Yes, you see correctly. Pregnant fairy was telling me to Shush by putting her finger in her ear! What's up with this??? Is her brain going to return to normal once the little alien is ejected? Please, God, can it return to normal.

Ok, I know it's been a while, but it seems like everything is escalating at once. I've been juggling work, mid-wife appointments, Chyro appointments, a car with a broken cambelt, a domestic worker that breaks everything she touches and freak winter rainstorms that flood my whole house. It's been a fun couple of weeks.

Pregnant fairy is doing a great job growing my first-born. Apparently everything is on track and the large amounts of ice-cream being ingested are not detrimental to the little zygote at all, the only side-effect is of course the heightened state of her (she is currently beating Hussain Bolt's 100m time in the womb, running from one side to the other and bouncing off the walls!) It's gotten to the point where I get woken up by tiny little kicks in the small of my back which, I must admit, feel a little creepy at times. It kind of reminds me of the first Alien movie when the creature comes bursting out of Lance Henriksen's chest!!

We have now got the nursery sort of sorted. We have that compactum, changing-station station thing, Kris put up some cool bear-themed hooks above it and I even hauled out the power tools (Lesbines love power tools!) and put up a shelf for her. We bit the bullet and shelled out the dosh for a perambulator (big word, hey?) with the car seat attachment, which was promptly adopted by Eko the cat who now sleeps in the basket at the bottom. We do have a cot, although this is currently residing in Cape Town somewhere but will hopefully find it's way up to Joeys in the not too distant future. So her little room is coming on nicely. We decided against the rocking chair and fitted out the single bed with loads of pillows and stuff for Kris to do feedings etc. However, this single bed miraculously found it's way into our bedroom a couple of weeks ago. When asked about this, pregnant fairy explained that it's for me to sleep on when she starts keeping me awake at night. Sweet sentiment, you say....right! I'm not allowed to sleep anywhere else! So the result of this great plan is that my bedside lamp is now balancing in the middle of the single bed which has been pushed right up against my side of our queen-size bed forcing the bed-side table to be moved to where the laundry basket hangs out! This makes making the bed extremely challenging, getting out of bed almost impossible and just creates a huge space to be filled with anything and everything that previously had nowhere to go. I did a bit of an inventory yesterday and found three towels, two pairs of jean-pant, four shirts, a belt, two caps, five novels in different stages of reading, tummy and stretchmark cream, Eko's lazer toy thingy, two computer cables, an external hard drive and seventeen jelly-beans on said single bed! Clearly this is not the best use of a single bed.

Oh, I must tell you, Kris discovered a new game the other day while lamenting the size of her formerly perky mammary glands. It's called Peek-a-boob, and yes folks, she can literally hide her entire face behind one of those mothers!! Scary.......

Ok, so the pregnant fairy is starting to resemble a pregnant hippo fairy (I'm ducking in advance cause I know something heavy is about to be launched at my noggin!). Life in the Henriksen household is plodding along (waddling along) nicely as we pass the five month stage (I'm still not good at the whole counting in weeks thing! I just don't get it).

Preggie fairy is now visiting the Chiro once a week because apparently her pelvis has tilted forward which could lead to our child coming out of her bum instead of her vag! Ok, maybe not, but the mental image is rather funny... This whole pelvic tilt thing is quite painful and part of the cure is the application of ice packs to the netheryeya. Now this is not much fun for wifey, but loads of fun for me to watch. There's not much worse than having to apply an ice pack between your legs when its so cold outside the heaters have been hauled out of storage! She ends up with rosy heat-filled cheeks from the heater and goosebumps from the waist down...

Kori is growing steadily and making her presence known more and more each day. She's settled in to a perfect upside down position which is apparently great for birth, not so great for mom who has to pee every two minutes cause the kid is elbowing/kicking/head-butting her in the bladder! The pressure on the bladder is also the reason why Kris has to change underwear five times a day. Every time she sneezes or coughs, she has a little accident. I've decided it would be better for all involved if I just bought her incontinence broeks, but she's still vetoing that plan! I don't see the issue myself, I find those broeks very handy when I go to concerts...I mean really, have you ever tried to go to the bathroom at a concert? You miss the whole thing while waiting in line. I say strap on the granny-panties and pee to your heart's content while banging away in the Mosh-pit!

The next big event for us is the annual baby Expo. I must tell you that I am not looking forward to fighting thousands of hormonal pregnant women all trying to get the last jumbo pack of huggies nappies! I've been informed that it doesn't matter that the house, insurance, MY medical aid, the car, pretty much everything can bounce this month as long as we have money for the expo. I'll be re-living my student years by eating two-minute noodles all month (note that it's just me...Kris still gets lamb korma and magnum ice-creams!) and rationing my petrol by freewheeling down every hill to make it last! The fact that said Expo happens before the baby shower doesn't help either...I can just see us at the baby shower going "thanks so much for leaving the tags on, we've already got one of those!" Apparently we didn't plan this very well!

Bed Time (NOT bedtime!!)

So the bed is my happy place. It's my little spot of the world where I can snuggle up in my down duvet (comforter for those who don't use the King's (Queen's?) English!) and forget about all my worries and strife and drift into my subconscious. Not any more!

Before the sproglet came along I used to have running battles with my wife about who actually owned the duvet! Most nights the floor on her side of the bed had more covers than I did and the cat managed to steal the rest from me. I did however manage to steal them back most of the time. Now that she has mount Everest growing on her abdomen, I have absolutely no chance of staying warm...She hangs on to the duvet with a death grip and even the cat has no chance of curling up in a downy nest anymore. I'm at the stage where I hope for the cat to come and snuggle me to keep me warm, but that is usually met with a feline glare that somehow manages to convey "Just try it buddy and you'll see how quick the nails come out"!

Add to this the fact that she (the wife, not the cat) cannot sleep without a gale force wind blowing on her (we have a fan that I could lease out to the Springbok sky-diving team for their formation practices!) and the end result is me shivering and shaking like a cleanly shaved Polar Bear while she rolls herself up in the duvet till only the tip of her nose sticks out! And God help me if I decide to move to the couch or the spare bedroom!!
She will wake up the minute I try and sneak out and best I get my shivering ass back into my ice-block and pretend to like it.

We have developed a little routine at night when we decide to retire. The when-to-go-to-bed decision has also been taken away from me, by the way. There's no more staying up later than the wife. I have to go to bed at the same time as her, because she can't sleep unless she's somehow holding on to me while previously mentioned Mt Everest digs into my back and I have to contort into all sorts of weird and wonderful positions so that she can still spoon! So, if wifey decides she's tired at 7.30pm, that's when I have to go to bed! There are seven year olds who get to stay up later than me!! I have to ask friend's kids what happened on Grey's Anatomy because I'm not allowed to stay up late enough to watch it...
Anyway, back to the routine...So, we get into bed and wifey lies across it so that I can oil all the places she can't reach in order to somehow stem the inevitable flow of stretch marks across the ever-widening expanse that is her belly. Once this is accomplished I end up doing the hugging-the-belly thing that seems to be the only way Lesbian partners and fathers have of sharing in this miracle. This is normally followed by the self-conscious talking-to-said-belly-thing. And this conversation makes no sense to anyone. I'm sure the first thing my child is going to say is "Did you lose every single brain cell when my mother became pregnant??!!" My wife says I should sing to her, but for some or other reason the only song that pops into my head when she says this is "I like big butts and I cannot lie....."

I think I need to invest in a nursery rhyme CD!!

It's a Girl

So I did my online application for a gun licence in preparation of all the horny teenage boys that will be flocking to my door in about 16 years!

Honestly, I really thought it would be a boy. I fully believe that the universe will never give you anything you can't handle, but once again, I was foiled. I have no idea what to do with a girl!! From as far back as I can remember it was always me stealing my brother's toys because I wanted GI Joe, not Barbie... I could kick a ball further, bowl like Alan Donald, shoot a katty, build go-carts, climb trees....basically I was a boy with a vajay-jay! So dealing with a baby boy was gonna be peanuts. I could already see me running up and down the sideline, yelling at his under-10 rugby coach while proudly proclaiming to the world that the left winger was mine! I don't know if that goes down well at ballet class...

I think my main hiccup in all this is the fact that I really don't get women. I do not understand the moods, the double meanings in things, the hidden agenda's, none if it makes sense. I think I was absent the day those were handed out. So am I going to understand this little bundle of pink joy???

Don't get me wrong...I'm not disappointed and won't be one of those parents who raise their girls like boys cause that's what they wanted, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to make some pearler mistakes. As it is, I'm currently stumped as to what to get a friend's one-year-old for her birthday. I don't know what 1 yr-old girls like! I don't even know what 26yr old girls like....ask my wife! It seems like everything I look at in the shops has little flowers and fairies on, so I guess little girls like those, but to me the little dogs and choo-choo trains are so much cuter....

In the meantime, the wife is now on mission Pink. Not that everything is the colour pink, but I believe she is loving the idea of doing the little girly thing. Now she can completely indulge in everything that is lacking in our house (we're not really the girly type of Lesbines.....). I'm pretty sure that I will soon have to haul out the paint rollers and redo the spare room into a little girls' dream environment. The fact that all the tyke is going to be doing in there for the next couple of years is sleep, dribble, throw up and poop, is entirely beside the fact. All my bookshelves are being thrown out, the spare double bed was exchanged for a single so sorry for all the couples who were planning on sleeping over and the whole room has been shifted and moved about so often I keep stubbing my toes on things that weren't there the day before!

Now the discussion moves to what furniture the baby needs. It's a baby...what could it possible need except a place to sleep???
"Should we get a compactum with built-in baby bath?"
"WTF is a compactum??? (envisioning some sort of fold-a-baby-in-half machine)
"It's a chest of drawers with a changing station on top, silly" (she's all calm and sweet right now...it's kind of scary!)

I'm pretty sure my mom never had a changing station. Is it branded and owned by BP or Shell?? Are there attendants or is it self-service?
What happened to changing the nappy on a bed? And why can't the kid be bathed in the bathroom like a normal person?

I have a funny feeling that I'm going to be spending a lot of time outside with the dogs, cause I'm pretty sure they're not going to understand what's going on either!

Anyway those are all the things going through my mind....in the meantime, here's Kori.......

From Itchy to Psycho!

I must firstly admit that I got this pic in an email today, but I couldn't help changing the heading because it pretty much sums up wifey at the moment.
I recently asked her to describe her symptoms to me and a week later I got an email at work that cracked me up!


Nothing fits you (This is true....she has two pairs of pants that fit and they're both pajama bottoms! "You never take me out anymore" is usually answered with "Most restaurants have a no pajama rule, sweetie, eat your pizza!")
Hair sprouts in places even dogs don't have hair (thick black hair) (I checked my dogs, and she's right!)
You're constipated....BADLY (Do I even need to comment on this??)
Your stomach cramps  (In one of my earliest posts I made reference to her mantra, "Feel my tummy!". This is still in effect, only now I have to analyze whether one side is harder than the other, whether the little bump I'm feeling is a head or a butt, feel around and figure out where the little bugger is hiding, etc, etc.)
You fart and burp uncontrollably (Ok, we touched on this in the last post, so no more comments needed. I invested in some serious air freshener and when she's sleeping I stick those pine car air-fresheners in her pajama pants!)
Your breath smells like dead warthog bum (kats words) (This has become quite a serious issue. It basically means whenever she rolls over in bed, I am forced to do the same unless I want to be woken up by the noxious fumes! I'm tempted to put a camera in the bedroom to watch our synchronized turning-over, I'm sure we're so in tune, we could enter the Olympics! Alternatively I could always invest in a gas mask...)
Your ankles swell (Ankle, not ankles....she only has one left. The one on her right foot has completely disappeared and the song has been changed to "the foot-bone's connected to the knee-bone....the knee bone's connected to the thigh-bone....")
Your feet swell (haven't really noticed this one cause the only shoes she wears are "Crocs" and they are pretty much designed for swollen feet!)
Your toes and fingers looks like pork sausages (The upside to this is that she can go out on the prowl again as a single woman because her wedding ring doesn't even fit on her pinkie finger anymore!)
You are constantly snotty (Well at least I'm practicing for when the Zygote arrives!)
You can't reach to shave your sasquatch legs (I'm very lucky that I'm generally a pretty hairless person. I only have to shave once a month and even then it's normally only two or three hairs, so this has been a bit of a culture shock for me. I've been tasked with doing the shaving thing. Let me tell you, there are men out there who would kill to have my wife's leg hairs on their faces! There are teenage boys locking themselves in bathrooms, shaving their downy cheeks three times a day to try and get what my wife has on her legs! I am personally keeping Gillette in business by buying up all the stock of Mach3 razor blades so that I can lean over a bath-tub and rasp away three times a week!)
It looks like you have a second Rastafarian head "down there" because you can't fucking see anything and I'd rather not snip off my clitoris for although I don't use it much right now at some point in my life I would appreciate it if someone could once again show me what an orgasm is. (Ummm, ok....this one might be a little TMI.)
Your boobs grow to gigantic proportions (Once again this symptom is mainly meant to aggravate all the "other halves". There's nothing fun about having your toys upgraded and then being told you can't actually play with them for the next year!)
Your nipples ache and sting and burn constantly (See above.) (No, wait, I actually have more to say on this little matter. Like the "feel my tummy", the "look at my nipples" mantra has joined the fold. I have had to study this part of her anatomy from all sides, top and below! I am pretty sure that if she could turn them inside out, I would have to scrutinize that side of them as well. Despite all the studying and scrutinizing, I have yet to figure out why they ache, sting or burn!)
Your skin goes dry and itches (I have become the master (mistress?) of applying Aqeous Cream. This has now become a daily ritual.)
Your hair goes oily quickly (Must admit, this little puppy has not given me any headaches yet.)
You get new stretchmarks under your armpits??!! (The whole stretchmark issue is a bit of a contentious one. Notice them and you're bound to get punched, don't notice them and you're not paying enough attention! The whole idea that your body is stretching so much that the skin actually splits, is completely alien to me. Surely the all-powerful universe created the body to handle the whole childbirth thing without actually splitting at the seams??)
The existing stretchmarks on your thighs now extend half way up your back (See above, though I'm actually sure there weren't any there to begin with!(Did you see how I slipped that in? I'm pretty sure I just earned some Brownie points with that!)


So there you have it, her symptoms in her own words. See, I'm not making this shit up!!

Pregnant Fairy

I'm sure you're wondering what the hiatus was all about, well, let me tell you, living with a pregnant fairy is not as Walt Disney as it sounds. We've got a little morning routine which involves me being woken up by a few not so surreptitious kicks in the ankle. These nudges basically mean "get your butt out of bed and make me something to eat before I throw up on you!" So I crawl out of bed, let the dogs out after checking to see if they've peed on my couches (a new trick of theirs), feed the screaming cat while making the love of my life a bowl of Cheerios or Rice Crispies (depending on the flavour of the week). What makes this little routine really crappy is that I have to do all this while trying to wake up without the added assistance that my morning cup of Jacobs normally gives me because said pregnant fairy can't handle the smell of coffee!
She's trying to get me to take over gestation duties! I don't know where this idea that pregnancy is like shift-work came from, but she's sure she can just hand over to me and go clubbing or something.
"You take it...it's your turn!"
"But baby, you wanted to carry, I said we should adopt!"
"Well, I've changed my mind."

She wants to be normal again. Normal?? Please all you deity's out there.....let her be normal again!!
Let me justify this little plea...
Most people understand that there are several hormonal and behavioral changes that occur during pregnancy. It's "normal" for the pregnant fairy to become moody, have cravings and aversions and to burst into tears for no apparant reason because you've just agreed to do something for her and she now feels guilty for asking in the first place!
What they don't tell you is that she turns into a bit of a...I'm trying to think of a word that won't get me slapped....damn, I don't think there is one...ok, she turns into a bit of a BOY! My wife has never been one to let go of any bodily gases. If one happens to slip out whether it be from above or below, she turns beet-red and apologises for days. Not any more. Ever since the alien implantation, she's become like the quintessential man who does the "pull my finger" routine!! And there's no more embarrasment, now it cackles like the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel and fans everything in my direction because I have to be a part of everything during this pregnancy. My dwindling bank account is going dip even more because gas masks are apparently quite expensive!
Another big change is a personality one. My wife is normally the sweetest person around. She has adopted an elderly lady up the road and regularly visits to read to her and do her feet etc. This elderly lady recently told her that all these pregnancy pains and nausea she's having would not have been tolerated in her day, she would have been told to shush and go about her business. Pregnant Fairy's response?
"Well if you'd broken your hip 30 years ago, they would have put you down!"

She's not so nice anymore and I'm afraid.

Sproglet shows his face

I think its unfair to be left alone in your Gynae's office when she has one of those operating game-type models of the uterus lying on the desk. All I wanna do is play with it, but the wife won't let me because she reckons I'll put the Cervix where the Fallopian should be and vice versa. Mind you, she's probably right...
We're waiting to do our first scan and wifey and I were ready to go and bouncing off the walls about six hours before the scheduled appointment. Not that we're excited or anything!!
Our appointment was for 10.15, so we arrived a rather respectable 45 min early only to be told that the appointment was for 11.45!!!
Now please note that I'm not blaming Kris for this mix-up (at this point blaming Kris for anything is tantamount to signing my own death warrant, loading the gun and pulling the trigger myself, and I'm not that stupid!), so after some stern words to the receptionist we get bumped up the very long waiting list and finally get shown into the office with the aforementioned Uterus game.

By the time the Gynae decides to join us, I have named every angel in the office (there were 18! Who has 18 angel figurines in their doctors chambers??!), re-organised her pens according to colour, length and amount of ink left and shoved two prescription pads down the back of my pants. Ok, so I'm lying about the last one, but let me tell you, it would have been really easy to do if I was a druggie type person!

Finally we get taken to the room with the ultrasound machine and still no stirrups (I don't think I'm ever getting to see these legendary marvels of modern medicine!). Gynae decides that an internal scan is the way to go and bypasses the big recording mic-looking device and reaches for the one that looks a bit like an electric toothbrush minus the bristles. Being the self-respecting Lesbine that I am, it's been a while since I've done the whole condom thing, but let me tell you, this chick is a pro. She has that little jiffy bag open and stretched over the Oral B gadget so fast, I reckon prostitutes would pay for classes!
Next on the agenda is enough lube to run a John Deere tractor engine for a couple of years and before we know it, she's digging around inside the wife with all the care of a jack-hammer operator.
The images start appearing on the little monitor and I keep expecting to hear "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" because all I see are images of the lunar landscape, but then she stops and I have a perfect shot of a little Mexican jumping bean with a perfect head and little stumps which will hopefully grow into arms and legs!
It was rather strange that at this exact moment some tiny little insect or other decided to fly into my eye, because it started watering the minute I saw the little bean (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

But I'm Pregnant!

I am now regretting the decision to not carry our zygote. Despite the pain, the nausea, the constant need to pee and the eating disorder, it seems that you can get away with pretty much anything as long as each sentence ends with "but I'm pregnant".
"Fix the TV!"
"I thought we didn't want a TV in the bedroom, baby."
"But I'm pregnant!"
"Yes dear"

"I would have done the dishes today, but I'm pregnant"
"What's that got to do with the dishes?"
"They smell"
"Yes dear"

The heightened sense of smell is killing me. The pregnant one can smell better than a starving hyena! I have resorted to cooking in the uninhabited cottage at the bottom of the garden, because she can't stand the smell of anything cooking. God help me when we get a tenant...I'll have to rent another house so that I can cook dinner!
She spends most of the day with her T-shirt pulled halfway up her face because the neighbours three blocks up and two over have the audacity to braai when they should know better.
I have to find new and interesting routes to the shops because cars in general are "smelly", so TomTom and I have to discover routes that no other vehicles have ever used and it doesn't matter if it takes two days to get there, just make sure that there are no cars anywhere! And while you're at it, don't hit any bumps! Right....this is of course possible on SA roads....after three months of rain...in speed bump central!!

This sense of smell also dictates what is eaten in our house. Now don't get me wrong, she's not asking for pickles deep fried in peanut butter batter and dipped in Chocolate ice cream or anything, but the food she can eat is generally just white. For two weeks I spent a fortune at Wimpy cos the only thing she would eat was Wimpy Chicken Mayo toasties. We then decided that we could probably stomach something different, so plain bread dipped into Veggie Cup-a-Soup became the flavour of the week, but only if I first removed all the floatie bits! This became lunch and dinner, while breakfast consisted of instant oats (the disgusting Peaches and Cream option!). We have now graduated to Mash, but only if I cook it in the cottage!

To be honest, pregnant women have sometimes got the short end of the stick. Pretty much every website you look at has a list seven pages long of forbidden foods for whatever reason. No Sushi (cause raw fish is bad for you. Tell that to 200 million Japanese women!), no Soft serve (cause you could get Listeria - whatever that is!), no Deli meats (unless you heat them up!) etc, etc. Of course the only things that the wife really wants to eat is Sushi wrapped in Hickory ham washed down with a Steers soft serve! Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that pregnant women poison themselves with raw puffer fish, but I do think that some of the things on the lists are a bit ridiculous. I doubt that pregnant women in the fifties gave up eating ham sarmies and I'm pretty sure there were loads of healthy babies born subsequent to the chowing of said sarmies.
Luckily for us, our midwife is "listen-to-your-body" pro.

The result of course is that I now have to take new and interesting routes to find her biltong and anything Granadilla flavoured!

Pregnant Brain

I understand the physiological changes that happen to women during pregnancy. I know, for example, that the uterus expands from an organ that weighs 70g with a cavity space of about 1ml to an organ that weighs more than 1000g that can accumulate a fluid area of almost 20L. What I didn't realise is that the brain also has to make room for this little tyke!
At the best of times, the wife has always had the most entertaining brain. Believe me, she has come up with some pearlers in her time. However, with the addition of the zygote, her brain cells have all packed their bags and relocated to more suitable climates.

From one minute to the next, she completely forgets what it is she's talking about and subjects chop and change at will and God help you if you don't keep up. You could be discussing what to have for dinner and the next sentence has something to do with how viscous the mucus is.
"In the soup???"
"No, silly," eyes rolling like you're the most dense person to walk the face of the planet, "in my uterus! Keep up for heavens sake!"

Another new turn of events is the way she just makes up words for things because in the heat of the moment, she can't for the life of her remember the proper names. Let me give you an example...

Picture the scene: It's about 10pm and we're getting ready for bed. The wife has just been for her seventeenth visit to the WC and is now complaining about this.
"It's like this neverending circle of Fafa!"
"I'm sorry....circle of what??"
"Fafa!"
Cue dumbfounded look on my face.....
"Fafa!! You know, I lie in bed and get sleepy, then I need to pee, so I get up and pee, then I have to wait to get sleepy again, then just as I'm about to fall asleep, I need to pee again... a circle of Fafa."
"And what exactly does Fafa mean??"
"You know....Fafa!!. Just Fafa!"
And the eyes roll again like I'm the densest person around.

The descriptions also get "Krissified".
"How you feeling today, my love?" gets a response similar to "I'm twitchy....and pully". Not quite sure how to take that, but generally nodding and saying something like "I'm so sorry, baby...can I rub your tum?" is normally the right way to go.

Either way, if I don't keep up with the conversation or if I'm not sympathetic enough to the twitchy pullies, I'm generally in a world of Fafa!!

Peeing on a stick

Me and the waiting game are not the best of friends. However, the wife has a knack of making me look like the most patient person in the entire world if not each and every known and unknown universe. Generally one needs to wait a couple of weeks after insemination to check for the little blue/pink/purple/red line. My wife decides we need to test on the drive home! Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit.

"I'm pregnant, I need to pee on a stick!"
"No, baby, you don't, it's only been two hours.."
"No, really, I need to pee on a stick"
"Yes dear"

Yes dear has become my general response to just about everything (except the inevitable "do I look fat in this?", in which case "No dear" becomes the correct retort).

On the day after insemination, she has started walking around cradling the tummy. I am being bombarded with emails of really explicit pictures of what I can only assume are alien life-forms, but which she insists are the zygote forming. Her Google search bar is filled with every conceivable question about pregnancy, the daily progression of said zygote and possible symptoms. "My boobs are sore" has become her mantra and my life now consists of feeling her tummy every thirty minutes to check for any tightness, stretch marks, kicking, heads crowning, etc.

The inevitable arguments about possible names start in earnest with me digging my heels in about calling any progeny Salt, Pepper, Storm, Mountain, Moon-pie....actually anything vaguely relating to something thought of during an extremely intense LSD trip!! I have flash-forwards of the fruit of 6ft, dark haired, green-eyed psychology major's loins coming home from school in tears because the kids are teasing him/her because his/her slightly deranged mother decided to name him/her after a condiment. Anyway, Tomato Sauce Henriksen just won't work on the world's no 1 golfer....

On day three I get an email at work containing a pregnancy calender with a huge red cross on day 15 which is supposedly the best time to do the pee on a stick test. Knowing her like I do, I'm pretty confidant that this will change about twenty-fifteen times over the next week or so.
I don't want to gloat or do the I-told-you-so speech, but by day 8 she'd already purchased the box of pee-sticks and was hinting at doing a slightly earlier test. I of course decide this is a good time to assert some authority, which, as per usual, has absolutely no effect whatsoever. We finally agree that she can try one on day 13.

Right in the middle of a very satisfying dream involving Angelina Jolie twins, I get dragged back to reality by a very uncomfortable looking woman still cradling her belly.
"I need to pee"
To which I very groggily reply "Huh?"
"I need to pee"
"And what exactly is stopping you?"
"The test has to be done with my first morning pee, and it's morning"
"Two o'clock in the morning!"
"I WANT TO PEE ON A STICK!"
"Yes dear"

Five minutes later we're both giggling like schoolgirls, hanging on to a little plastic stick that has just changed our lives forever by displaying two purple lines!

"My boobs are sore. Does my tummy look bigger to you?"

Giddy-up

So we finally get to the point where we are now ready to insert the Olympic swimmers, or at least the psychologically advanced swimmers.

Now for some or other reason, women in general insist on doing a serious spring clean down there whenever they have a gynae appointment or something similar. So out comes the Dove, three sponges, the pine gel, the windowlene, Mr Muscle....pretty much whatever can degrease the garage floor and the bikini trimmer for a final landscaping. I'm surprised she didn't glitter it!
Two hours later I load wifey into the car where she promptly grabs the stressball and starts manipulating the hell out of it.
At the bank Santa herds us into a little room and Kris is told to disrobe and get up onto the examination table. At this point I'm trying to find the stirrups which are pointedly absent. Having never been to a gynae (yeah, yeah, save your boos for someone who gives a.....), I'm pretty intrigued by the whole stirrups process, but apparently they're not needed for this little endeavour. So there we are, Kris on the table with her netheryeya covered by a quarter sheet - I think they had budget cuts - me paging through a two-year old copy of Hustler - I think they use the same room for deposits and withdrawals - and both of us nervous enough to generate enough kinetic energy to solve Eskom's current crisis.
Eventually Santa reappears with a bag full of goodies, including two straws of recently defrosted (do you think they use a microwave?) #3057 and one very shiny pair of duck lips. So while Santa gloves up, Kris grabs my hand and starts squeezing. It was at this moment that I decided not to be anywhere within grasping distance during the birthing procedure. The woman has steel clamps instead of hands! If I have three broken bones and severe bruising from the implanting procedure, I don't even want to know what she's going to do to me when she's in real pain!

The first step is the insertion of said duck lips (a medieval torture device if there ever was one) so that the sperm can be injected via a catheter (not to be confused with the one from the bladder!) directly into the cervix. This means the not-so-olympic, slightly cold dudes and dudettes have a lot less swimming to do, thus increasing the chances of one actually making it to the finish line. The next minute, Santa peers around the wife's raised knees and throws a "Do you wanna see?" my way. Being the inquisitive journalist type that I am, I can't give up the chance of having a birds eye view of the area I normally just feel my way around in (sorry Mom!). I finally manage to extricate myself from Kris' death grip to go and have a squizz.  I don't know if you've ever seen a cervix, but it basically looks like a short stumpy penis that's removed it's false teeth, sorta like the sandworms in the movie Dune. Apparently my exact words where something to the effect of "So that's what it looks like with the lights on!". Cue scornful glare.....

A few minutes later the procedure is done and Kris and I are alone in the deposit/withdrawal room, both slightly less nervous and slightly more hopeful that we are now finally on our way to becoming that statistic that most couples take for granted. You know, the one-car-2.4-kids kind of statistic......

PS. On the way home, the poor stressball finally gave in to all her manipulation, spewing white chalk all over my car.

Wonder what the Metro Cops would've said about this lot!!!

Tablets and Tantrums

Ask any man and 99% of Lesbians....women are hard to understand at best of times. Just because I'm a woman does not make this statement any less true. I do NOT get my wife. I don't understand the moods, why I'm wrong ALL the time and God knows I have no idea how to answer the "Am I fat?" question. Add into that mix a cocktail of fertility drugs and I am now in the depths of hell with absolutely no escape route!

The little tablet is supposed to ensure that The Egg forms when it's supposed to, thus upping the chance of fertilization when we proceed with insemination. What they don't tell you is that this tiny little pill also turns your obviously better half into Beelzebub's first cousin!

On day one it's all smiles and excitement because we're finally starting the process. By day three, the usually smiley happy face has scrunched into a perpetual frown and I am now sleeping with one eye open in case I get attacked in my sleep for dipping her teabag too many times. Being in the TV and film industry, I'm always wondering about motivation for certain effects in movies. I now firmly believe that Peter Jackson's wife was on Clomid when he came up with Smeagol's descent into madness and ultimate transformation into Gollum! I'm pretty sure I woke up in the middle of the night to her stroking the packaging whispering "my pressshhhhiiiouus".

By now I am counting to ten each and every time I attempt to open my mouth just  in case whatever I'm about to say could be construed in any way other than the way I mean it. "Hi sweetie, how was your day?" is treated to a scornful stare followed by a diatribe of how absolutely hellish her day of googling baby names was and how I now had to go out and find her some supper because there is just no way she's cooking!

I must admit that she was aware of all these changes though. On day four she proceeded to tell me that even though I am doing and saying absolutely nothing wrong, everything out of my mouth is irritating the "living hell" out of her and it would be best to just shut up. "Yes Dear" garnered me yet another scornful stare.

I thank each and every deity for limiting this small, white version of dynamite to only five doses, because at Day 5 I had already packed my toothbrush,  rolled up my sleeping bag from the couch and was heading for the door when she ever so sweetly popped her head round the corner and said, "oh honey, we have two lines"....

Now before you jump to all sorts of conclusions and start yelling at me for skipping steps, this was not the pregnancy test. This was the ovulation test.

Procedure to be followed upon positive ovulation test:
1. Phone up Santa at the Sperm bank and make sure that 1,9m tall, dark haired psychology dude with green eyes and medium complexion is in stock and book a couple of straws for the following day.
2. Load wife into car (making sure to tell her how amazing she is despite the scornful glares)
3. Get your ass to the sperm bank as soon as possible, taking all your weekly frustrations out on unsuspecting taxi drivers and early morning commuters.
4. Get wife to drop trou so she can get jabbed in the gluteus maximus by a rather large needle filled with yet another drug...this one ensures that The Egg drops into place when it's supposed to, so that the swimmers have a finish line to strive for!
5. Load wife back in car (sympathizing the whole way).
6. Proceed with the return journey home, yelling expletives at every other driver who dares to use the same public roads as you.
7. Deposit wife in chair at home, boil the kettle for tea (making sure not to dip the teabag too many times), grab laptop and hightail it the hell out of there.

To be Continued.....

Choosing Daddy Part 2

Ok, so the procedure is apparently as follows. First, go into hospital so they can cut into your belly button, inject some purple dye into your fallopian tubes and ensure that the tubes are open! I'm pretty sure my mom never had that procedure...I mean, surely that's an option if insemination doesn't work??? After that, you're put on fertility drugs, then, when you ovulate, you have to go and pick up your sperm from whichever bank you decide to withdraw from and bring said withdrawal to the doctor's office for insemination. Now I don't know about you, but I have a bit of a problem driving around in peak hour traffic with a vial of sperm on the dashboard. That's a bit difficult to explain to the Metro officer pulling you over for a routine check. And God forbid you get into an accident, does Outsurance's Out-and-about cover that?
Outsurance - "Can you please list the items damaged in the accident?"
Me - "Sure...one cellphone, a laptop and external hard-drive and R1000 worth of sperm."
Outsurance- "I'm sorry....repeat that last one?"

With all these questions mulling about in our brains we left the fertility clinic less than reassured about the whole process. However, seeing as how the Cryobank was just up the road, we thought we'd pop in and see what options were available to  two self-respecting Lesbians. Apparently not a hell of a lot!
Ok, so the four options include a Lawyer, a Psychologist, a Scientist and a small business owner which could mean he runs a boerewors stand on Malibongwe drive for all we know. They range from basketball player size to midget and have a range of features from green eyes to wavy blonde hair. Most parents take it for granted that their kids will inherit some of their features, so suffice it to say we tend to look at donors who have similar looks to ours, I mean it's gonna be difficult enough explaining it's parental origins to the future sprog without having to explain why he/she has bright red hair, is seven feet tall and is Outer Mongolian! So we finally decide on the 1,9m tall, dark haired psychology dude with green eyes and medium complexion, hoping that the result would be a vaguely intelligent, medium sized kid who looks a little like both of us!

Now, for those who don't know, sperm is sold by the straw. Odd I know considering that the only other thing sold in a straw is Sherbert and at least that one only costs R5 and you can use it afterwards for your coke....a-cola. Anyway....according to the elderly gentleman in charge (I'm pretty sure he moonlights as Santa at Cresta!) you need two straws per insem and you need to load up over two days....so that's four straws of man juice! But, wait, there's more...before they inseminate, you have to have this mother of an injection into your stomach to ensure that the egg drops into the allocated slot. Once again...I'm pretty sure my mother never did this! 

The upside of this rather scary visit was finding out that we could actually do the whole procedure there instead of going through the middleman (kind of like finding out you don't need an insurance agent, you can go direct and save thousands!). Kinda makes me wish there was an insemination Hippo.......

To be continued.......

Choosing Daddy

Ok, so after three years of mostly blissfull marriage, the wife and I decide to take the next step. Actually we decided this a while ago, but it's not that easy to find sperm. It's not as if you can pop into the BP shop at three in the morning, pick up a Coke, a loaf of bread, ciggies and a straw of 6ft tall, dark hair, dark eyes with a Law Degree. I came up with the idea of sending her off to some dodgy bar right after ovulation with a fistfull of Rufies and we see what happens, but that was shot down for some or other reason.
We did think of approaching our friends, but being the darlings that they are, they would all like to be "involved" in the baby's life. "Involved" how? I think it's going to be difficult enough for the kid to explain its two mothers, now we're gonna throw in a part-time dad as well? Then comes the question of maintenance, should he pay if he wants to be "involved" or not? And if he's involved as Dad, and my wife is Mom, what the hell does that make me, chopped liver?
Eventually we found a mate that wanted absolutely nothing to do with any and all offspring, so we attempted the home insemination! For all those Lesbines who read the story in the You Magazine about the couple with the champagne glass and the Turkey baster and went "Aaaawwwww"....., Up Yours, I say! There is absolutely nothing romantic, sweet, nurturing or bonding about approaching your better half with a syringe half full of a (rather satisfied at that particular moment) friend's man-juice and expelling said syringe into that very special place where it's supposed to go (contrary to most porn movies that insist it goes everywhere else)! We gave that up as a bad idea.

Sooo, we decided to take the medical approach. After chatting to some friends who took this route very successfully and ended up with the most beautiful cherub ever, we ended up with quite a few options. Several of these options would have been perfect for us if we had just won the Lotto, or maybe the donors were all Nobel Laureates or Male Supermodels. Either way, they were waaayyy out of our price range. We ended up making an appointment at a fertility clinic in Parktown. We arrived 15 min early for our appointment and as per usual when visiting a new medical practice, we were handed the obligatory file of papers to fill out and pointed in the direction of a row of seats. After 20 min (by now I had almost mastered Portuguese as that seemed to be the only language spoken in the waiting room) we were summoned by the resident psychiatrists who proceeded to check our mental stability. Question 1: "Have you really thought about this?" Uuuummmm.....no, I was in the neighbourhood and thought, gee, why not pop into the fertility clinic and have ourselves a baby! Question 12: "What if you change your mind?" Well, hell, that's easy, bring it back for a refund?? Are they serious with these questions?
Anyhoo. About 20 min later we're back in the aforementioned waiting room waiting patiently to see the gynae. By now the waiting room is chock-a-block, the receptionist is running around like a chicken without a head looking for some misplaced files and yelling at everyone, the psychiatrist is trying to keep the peace, we keep hearing hushed rumours that the doctor isn't even in and all in all the natives are getting restless. Just as I'm about to lead a revolt, we get summoned into what can only be described as a closet by a woman dressed as a suicide bomber. She proceeds to ask even more questions, and I'm like, cool, a female gynae, only to discover that she's actually the office manager and only really worried about who's settling the increasing-by-the-minute bill cause they are not affiliated to medical aid. By now I'm feeling decidedly like a lot of people who wore pink triangles and were herded onto cattle cars during the Hitler regime! Back to the now even more full waiting room where we squeeze ourselves between an elderly Portuguese man and what I hope to God is his grand-daughter! Finally we get called in to see The Doctor...Yes, it was spoken in hushed, Capital Letters and I fully expected there to be a glowing backlight on him when I entered the hallowed inner office, but alas, he was just a man. Said man's initial question to us was "So, why can't you get pregnant?" After a rather long pause which was filled with me looking at him, trying to ascertain whether he was joking or not, I replied with a simple "Cause I don't have a penis???"

to be continued.....