This mum's post election debrief.

EDIT: 25/1/2020
Having had a few months to reflect on this, I'm still very disappointed with the election result, but I'm more sad than angry. I understand that it is a place of privilege to be able to put more importance on the environment, that my personal benefit. I don't have to worry if I'll still be able to feed my kids, as so many others do. I'm trying to be more understanding, to consider others position. It doesn't mean I think the environment is any less in trouble, but I'm trying to focus my anger in a more useful direction. Having learnt a bit more about our Pentecostal PM and how his beliefs affect his politics, I'm feeling even more wary of religion mixing with politics (Tasmania almost got a Pentecostal premier last week, which had me worried). Particularly since I find the more religious a person is, the further away from the actual core values of the religion they seem to be. I hope we will get through this, that we won't actually set the world on fire, but we still have a lot to do, don't we?

I realise that ‘para’parenting’ doesn’t exactly scream politics, but politics is about the rules and systems that govern our societies, and as a parent, our current political climate in Australia really worries me.

I am feeling angry, that people not only voted to keep the Morrison government, but that they actually gave them more seats. That Labour fucked up so badly. They had ‘an unlosable election’, and yet, here we are. And what happened to ‘this is the climate change election?’  

I’m glad that Shorten has stepped down. For the love of God, can we please give Penny Wong a go?? Ok, I realise she’s a senator, not an MP, but that just a technicality. How amazing would it be to have a gay woman in the top spot? Or just anyone who had some direction and leadership ability, really.

Off the top of my head, there are a few things I think Labour did that were really, really dumb. Like a 40% tax on inherences. I have to think they meant it to stop the rich just passing stuff onto their richer kids, because otherwise they’re not just stupid but incompetent if they didn’t realise the effect it would have on the lower end of the food chain. They’d lost that battle when it was broken down by the coalition as ‘Grandma will give you a $40,000 car and the ATO will give you a $16,000 bill’. I wonder why younger people receiving inherences weren’t keen on that idea? Or older people keen to know that their kids would be billed for the gifts they gave them?

Their plan for 50% electric cars, in a country the size of Australia was never going to fly. There are smarter ways to get our emissions down. Yes, most of our population is in urban areas, but how about the invested in cheap, reliable public transport in those areas, then people wouldn’t need to use cars.

Their tax on family trusts, again, stupid. So many small businesses, including our own, are set up using a family trust. This is because it protects the family assets (like the house you live in), in case of someone suing the business for something the business is responsible for (like because someone gets hurt working for you, or on your property). For many small family businesses, this is the money they live off, their only income. Especially, say, a mum working full time raising the children that will later inherit the property and go on to work on it (oh, look, they got hit twice). Labour are just so out of touch! Aren’t these the people they say they are trying to protect? Ordinary working people? What happened to taxing the rich end of town? Or you know, just making those big companies/mines pay any tax would be a good start!

And yet, even with these three policies that I did not agree with, I still wanted them to win. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t do something to stop the earth burning to a crisp, it won’t matter what tax anyone does or doesn’t pay!!  

I saw a video by Charlie Pickering this week, talking about Australia’s ‘share’ of global emissions. He talks about how we do only produce 1.3% of global emissions. However, our 1.3%, combined with England at around 2% and many other countries with small emissions, total 41% of fossil fuel emissions. The UK have declared a climate emergency. Our Politian’s, instead of trying to clean up our share, just say we are too small to matter. We only around 2% of allied forces in WW2, but we didn’t let that stop us doing our bit. Why should this be any different? As Pickering said, we have always punched above our weight.

There is very little, if anything, we can do about the 27% of emissions produced by China. We might be able to put political pressure on them, or stop selling them cheap coal, but really, that would need to be a global approach. We can however take care of our corner of the world. How about not letting a coal mine be built basically on top of the Great Barrier Reef? Our greatest living wonder is already being cooked, now they’re going to throw a mines worth of pollution at it too?

We are experiencing massive, catastrophic weather events, with increased regularity. Once in a century is rapidly approaching once a decade. What will it be like by the time our babies are having babies of their own? I come from a farming background and I see the pain our farmers are in; if they’re not fighting drought, it’s flood or fire. This past summer Tasmania had horrific fires that burnt areas that won’t ever recover, destroyed trees hundreds of years older than the Australian government that doesn’t seem to think their loss matters, that because there was no loss of human life that it wasn’t really that bad.  

I was not at all enthusiastic about a Labour win, but I am feeling gutted that they lost. I went into the polling booth with a heavy heart, knowing there was no one running I felt I could enthusiastically get behind. I felt Labour had stupid policies and were not really very different from the Liberal party in anything I considered important. The Greens have strong environmental policies, but I find some of their policies really detrimental to the farming community. I also haven’t forgotten they were behind campaigns to get rodeos and horse racing banned, both sports I have long been involved in (some bad people, mostly good people who love their animals). Liberals I find utterly inhumane and their policies cruel. Their views on immigration and refugees are awful. I also believe that a woman should have the right to choose if and when she has a baby, so find the lack of reproductive health services woefully inadequate. Men should not be legislating women's bodies. My local Liberal candidate was dis-endorsed over a Facebook post she apparently wrote saying feminists should have their clitorises removed and be sold to the Arabs for fucks sake. As an out and proud feminist, I find that terrifying, horrific, abhorrent, disgusting and all those other adjectives!! (Don’t even get me started on the fact that feminism is the reason she’s even allowed to stand for parliament). And all the other minor parties seem to be one or more of the ‘ists’ or ‘phobes,’ racists, bigots, homophobes, islamophobe’s, sexists, ableist… the list goes on! Clive Palmer just bought himself a government that will let his mining businesses continue to operate, without forcing him to actually pay his staff. I guess he feels his $70m was well spent! Urgh!  

I don’t feel confused or surprised, just utterly disappointed and frustrated. I feel sad. I know that I did the right thing, but I can’t help but feel I’ve not done enough, I’m not doing enough. I know I need to do more, but I don’t know how or what. I only have a finite amount of time and energy to spare, so I want to use it well. But I know not doing anything, is no longer an option. I’ve been thinking about running for office for a while now. I don’t think I’m ready yet. I don’t feel I have enough knowledge or life experience. Then again Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is my age and look what she’s doing with her life! I don’t want to run for a federal seat, because I don’t want to be away from my home and family that much, but I feel like that’s where the real changes are made. I guess I have a few years to decide about that now anyway.

So, people, what are you doing? How are you feeling after this election? Maybe you don’t see this as a bad thing? Have you found this uplifting, or do you want to move to New Zealand? What are you doing to help make Australia a better place for everyone? What can I do?

A baby is born

We had booked in a c-section for baby 2. There were a few reasons for this, including the fact that I was really struggling with all the extra weight I was carrying, baby was measuring big and Will had had a massive head. Because I'd had a c section already, my induction methods were very limited. While I wasn't scared of a big baby, or even a big head, I did know it wold make a vaginal delivery more difficult, and the likelihood of another emergency c section was much higher.
That said, Dr D, Tim and I were in agreement that if I went into labour spontaneously, then I could have a try at a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). I really wasn't holding out any hope for this, since Will had had no interest in going anywhere at full term and we were booked in early this time. However....

Three days before surgery was scheduled, Will and I were at home, baking a cake. The cake was in the oven, Will had gone down for a nap and... yeah that's not just Braxton Hicks anymore. Shit. Ok. Tim had been trying to get a final couple of days of work in before baby arrived, so I called him home to take me to the hospital. My mother-in-law was already coming out to watch Will while I had a nap, so she had to put her foot down too.

As we left home, I was having contractions about 4 minutes apart. I can feel them come on- it's just like someone hugging me tightly around my belly, though it's hard for me to tell the duration of them as they fade off again. Basically I was feeling nervous, like maybe I needed to go to the toilet (tried that, I didn't). We live about 30 minutes from the hospital and by the time we were half way there, I was not good. Within a few minutes, I'd gone from basically fine, to feeling really sick, heart racing, feverish, nasty headache. The effort of getting out of the car actually did make me sick.

When we arrived on the ward, I was admitted, but there was no expectation from anyone (except me) that this was show time. It took a while for a canula to be successfully inserted. My veins aren't great at the best of times. (Even getting iron infusions while I was pregnant often took multiple attempts). That allowed them to start anti nausea medication (so I could take panadole) and fluids. Once that all happened, I started feeling much better.

For those of you who haven't had much exposure to spinal cord injuries, the thing to watch out for here is AD, autonomic dysreflexia. Because I can't feel pain or discomfort below my injury level, my body has a different warning system to tell me something is wrong. The first symptom is a headache as my blood pressure rises. Other symptoms include all the ones I'd been experiencing, though it changes from person to person. Now you might expect that labour would fit the 'pain or discomfort' bill, but my response had come on very hard and fast.

By the time I'd been in a few hours I'd progressed from 2cm dilated to 4cm.  Baby's heart rate was a little higher than we wanted, though it had come down as I'd begun to feel better. Then my waters broke, full of merconium. So we decided it was time to go to theater. Now, not only were we dealing with a baby a few days earlier than we'd expected (I'd literally only packed my hospital bag 3 hours before we left home), but Dr D wasn't working that day, so I was dealing with obstetricians I'd never met before. Don't get me wrong, they were lovely, did a good job and listened to me but it was still very off putting to be going through all this without her.

Unfortunately, I cannot be so complementary of the anesthetist I had. Now I want to preface this saying that I understand her primary job is to get both Mum and Baby through the surgery safely, but that is not her only job. She did not listen to me when I told her that my fever was a result of my AD, rather she said it must be the result of an infection, despite my blood tests having come back clear and the fact my symptoms came on so quickly, and were fixed by panadole.
Because I'd had a fever, she would only do a GA (general anesthetic). Her reasoning for this was that if I had an infection and it got into my spinal column from the spinal tap, it would be a horrific infection to try and get rid of. Treatment included multiple surgeries over years. So if I'd had an infection, that would be very sensible, except that my fever was from AD. This decision was devastating to me. It meant that I would be asleep for the delivery, but it also meant no one else, including Tim, is allowed in the delivery room.

When we got to the theater door, she berated me like a child, speaking about me as if I wasn't there. She said if I didn't want a GA, that I needed to get another anesthetist, as if that was a viable option when we were at the theater door and everyone was telling me my baby was in distress and needed to be born now. Then when I said I was 'fucking furious' (in reply to 'how are you feeling?'), she told me she wouldn't give me a GA if I wasn't happy. Well. I saw red. I am not someone who is confrontational, especially people in positions of authority, like doctors! But she poked the wrong Mama Bear! I told her she had no right to ask that of me. That I consented, we needed to get this baby out and now, but she did not get to tell me I had to be happy about it!!

Ok, deep breathes. Can you tell I am still a little frustrated about this, almost three months later? (For those of you wondering, I did put in a complaint, about 6 weeks after. I wanted to take time to process what had happened, to make sure I wasn't being irrational).

Tim was kicked out (unfortunately no one had actually told him anything about where he was meant to go, so he was a bit lost for a while), and they took me into the theater. As I counted down, I had tears running down my face. My only memory between then and recovery, was a dark haired boy being offered for a kiss and being asked if he had a name. Harrison Trevor. You've never seen a newborn with so much hair!

Harry was taken off to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, NICU, and I was taken to recovery, where I slowly woke up and got snippets of news about him. His Apgar score was 2, so very low at birth. He had needed some help to breath, most likely because he'd also got some GA, and weighted 8lb, 3.5oz, so a pound lighter than Will, but the same sized head, almost 2 weeks earlier!

When he needed his first feed, I was still in recovery. Tim insisted they come see me to try express some milk before they gave him formula. I was so proud of him for this. He knew exactly what I wanted and made sure it happened. Sure enough, the midwife for 15ml in 5 minutes, off one boob. For those of you who haven't had babies, 15ml of colostrum is really good!!

Once I was discharged from recovery, I was taken up to the nursery to meet Harry properly. Poor baby was hooked up to a drip, but he was well and truly alive, which is the main thing.

I'm going to leave it there for today.