The Five Little Ducks Blog

At 37 weeks pregnant the exhaustion is quite overwhelming; I am getting very breathless and finding it difficult to stand. Yesterday I told the children that I would not be able to play “you can’t catch me” anymore. What a disappointment I am. I have never felt this tired in a pregnancy before. From my head to my fingers to my toes, I am aching. Miss L is getting quite concerned. “Are you happy mummy?” she keeps asking me (the girls do not like it when I am anything but cheerful) to which I respond “I am happy darling, but I am so tired and very sore.” Miss L frowns and says “oh”, cuddling me, before asking about my happiness again.

A few days ago I supervised a phone contact between Miss A and Miss L and their birth mother for the first time. This was an interesting experience. Miss A had been so excited when I told her we were going to talk to her mum; she wanted me to call straight away (and she cannot understand why I cannot call her anytime we want). It was difficult to get the girls to stay still for a half hour phone call. I kept the phone on loud speaker, following them around and trying to prompt conversation. Miss L had little more to say to her mother than “hello”, “preschool” and “playdough”, while Miss A did not have much to say either besides continually repeating “I love you” and “I miss you” to which her mother responded “I love you more” and “I miss you more”. I felt I detected a note of irritation from their mother when I had to explain to her that I am referred to as “mummy” as well as “Aunty H” because she had been confused when Miss A kept calling her “Mummy K”. Miss A became grumpy and a little upset after her mother told her that she was having another baby, and Mummy K’s question of whether Miss A liked the baby’s name was met with a firm ‘no!’ Nonetheless, Miss A said a beautiful prayer at dinnertime, thanking God for Mummy, Daddy and “Mummy far away with a baby in her tummy”.

The next day, Miss A sobbed and sobbed during rest time at child care, telling her teacher about how she loved Mummy H but she loved and missed “Mummy far away”.

Our whole situation at the moment is like a magnificent, higgledy-piggledy patchwork quilt. All the pieces of scrap are being messily sewed together with love, faith, and good intentions. Taking a step back, it looks beautiful and I know that this is working. What a rollercoaster of mixed emotions; highs and lows. There are lows as Daddy Duck and I struggle to hold it together and once again speak more harshly than we ought to. Lows as I catch Miss A lying to me again, and I have to confront her. Lows as the children fight, squabble, snatch and hurt, and I feel guilty for forcing them all to live together. Lows when I realise what a long road ahead I have with some of the behaviours and attitudes. A definite low when Mr E says Miss A is being a bully. There are highs when I feel something, really feel something, for Miss L and I kiss her cheek not to act loving but because I am falling in love. Highs when I can give Miss A a genuine compliment and I know how very happy it makes her. Highs when all the children dance together in the lounge room, or when I witness them playing nicely together. What a high it was when we returned home in the night time and the four little ducks saw our solar Christmas lights all sparkling in the front yard for the first time. The children ran, jumped and skipped, all shrieking gleefully. Mr E yelled repeatedly “this is amazing!” Daddy Duck and I laughed and smiled, genuinely enjoying the children’s pure joy.

Having never been on a rollercoaster myself, I am going to assume that there are flat, ordinary bits; neither exhilarating nor terrifying. These are the times when we get through a meal in relative peace, when the bedtime routine has gone smoothly, when Miss A snuggles against me, and it feels nice and comfortable. Sometimes we realise that progress has been made; like Miss A confessing a lie to me or Miss L going to sleep the last three nights without crying.

I was on the worship team on Sunday as a back up singer. All through the rehearsal I was struggling to stand or breathe; I required a stool to sit on and I thought I would need it during the service. Daddy Duck arrived with the children once we had started playing. The girls looked lovely in their dresses, Mr E was his handsome self and they all waved at me. Miss A immediately started dancing and waving her hands. They ran and skipped up and down the aisle. At one point they had all removed their shoes and were dancing ring-around-the-roses style. The sight of these children was so wonderful to me, that it gave me energy. I was able to sing through the rest of that set without sitting down. I was so happy.

The definite low this week was yesterday attending an ultrasound at the hospital, thinking everything was fine, then receiving a phone call around 5pm telling me I had to return at midday today because the sonographer had taken some extra photos and the doctor wanted to speak to me. After telling my husband, I called my Aunty and asked her to mind all the children, then rang my mother to inform her. She suggested that I take a friend with me, so I arranged for my mentor to drive me to the hospital, thinking that if there was bad news, I would be too upset to safely get myself home. Daddy Duck was equally worried, so he messaged a few church friends and asked them to pray for us. My overactive imagination began running through the possibilities of what could be wrong with the baby that had not been picked up at the 19 week scan. I comforted myself with the knowledge that if labour needed to be induced soon, at 37 weeks, my baby should be fairly ‘safe’. All through the night I dreamed about what the problem might be, sleeping restlessly. When I awoke it dawned upon me that there might be nothing amiss with the baby but perhaps there was something wrong with me? I was grumpy all morning; I just wanted my nieces to leave me alone while I craved cuddles with Mr E and Miss R. I felt so sick; I could barely eat.

As soon as we arrived in the Ultrasound waiting room, the sonographer greeted me cheerfully and said “don’t worry! Nothing’s wrong!” I do not know how the receptionist had managed to skew the message to me so badly or make the situation sound so serious, however the only problem was a missing photograph in my file that needed to be redone. I should have felt utterly relieved, instead I felt foolish and upset for the worry I had gone through, for all the people we alarmed.

“Deep breaths,” my Aunty reminded me when she left our house this afternoon. Indeed.