Cyclopean Columns

For all those post-apocalypse, Zombie death loving folks out there, I can highly, highly recommend Alpha Dog.

F***ing advertisers with their f***ing spam comments! You can thank them for me having to switch on f***ing word verification before you can leave a comment.

If you suffer from comment spam, have a read of this link. Many thanks to Kelvingreen, fellow blogger and Lovecraftian afficionado, who has been seeing a bunch of this f***ing sh*t recently as well.

Not that I'm angry...

Well, it would seem that online quizzes never lie, and this one is right on the money - I am blonde, after all :)

You're Alexandra Cabot!


Which Law & Order: SVU character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Y'know, if I didn't know better, I'd say that my blog has just been spammed. Have a look at the comments on the post just below this one, thats right - the one about the book 'Blokes and Babies'. You'll see two comments from some people I've never heard of, with links to some wierd sites (something about lawn mowing and one that my ad-blocker won't let me see, which is a good thing I think...).

Anyone experienced this sort of thing before? Are they bots or real people? Are they really trying to sell some sort of penis enlarger or a video of Paris Hilton or (as it would seem) some sort of lawn maintenance service??

Well, Christine and Miskowy Blog - if you're actually real people, why don't you come forward for the nice folks and let us know what you're really about?

Further to my last post, I'd like to mention a book I've been reading the past couple of days. Published too late to cover the whole pregnancy and childbirth experience, Blokes and Babies provides a much needed male perspective on this whole breeding thing. As an "enlightened drone" (see the book's glossary) I was most entertained to find a lot of my XY observations were not unique.

If you're a guy and you're going to have kids, get it.

(Man, I should be asking for royalties here...)

Phew!

It's late at night, I'm bloody tired - what better time than now to write an entry in the ol' blog? (Interesting note, I couldn't even type "blog" correctly, I ended up with blod instead)

I have just become a father. This is a wierd and mystical experience that I would highly recommend to any other man. You see, I didn't have to spend 33 hours in labour just to have it ultimately end in a surgical procedure under a general anasthetic. My wife did. You would think this would be a good thing for the blokes, but it turns out that it ain't so flash.

The labour started simply enough. About 7am on Thursday the Wife starts getting contractions. Nothing fancy, just a mild crampy-sort of thing every 20 minutes or so. She pretty much just sat in bed and read a book until 10am, when she thought she'd better call me at work. No concern, no fuss, even able to talk through the contractions. Sweet! I figure it's going to be hours yet, so I don't rush home from work, eventually walk in the door about 2pm.

By this stage, contractions are 5 minutes apart, but still nothing to write home about intensity-wise. This has changed by 6pm, when they are really starting to take the Wife's breath away. by 10pm the contractions are about 4 minutes apart and we decide to go to hospital.

At this point, hindsight tells me that the in-car delivery would have been a preferred option to what actually happened, but at the time I was just thinking how much I hoped there would be nothing exciting on the journey, and that the trip would be about five contractions worth. I missed a turnoff and we went a somewhat creative way to the hospital.

We have an initial exam - things are looking good, about 4cm dilation (need 10 for birth). About 1am the next morning, we go the first shot of pethidine. I'm still feeling all good and supportive, helping the Wife through the contractions by reminding her to breathe and making inane comments about how well she's doing etc. Things are less rosy by 630am, when the exam shows that we've not made any progress on the dilation. On top of this, the contractions are getting weaker and further apart.

Time gets a little hazy, but for the next six or something hours the Wife continues to endure contractions at five minute intervals, give or take. She's no longer able to hold anything down, not even her own bile, and being in the support team has become a lot less than pleasant. You feel completely inadequate trying to reassure a person who is going through some sort of hell and knows there's going to be many hours more of it. Expensive drugs starting with a "Z" deal with the nausea, and we go onto another drug to help with the contractions and dilation. This is the same drug used to induce childbirth in overdue mums.

The stuff doesn't work the way they want and the contractions start to "double barrel", which is a way of saying even more painful but achieving nothing. It's about this time that the Wife is completely shattered and wants to stop. Seriously stop. What can you say? There's the lame thing where you can agree and say "OK, lets just pack up and go", but under the circumstances it just don't cut it. About this time we get told an epidural might help as this will allow the maximum drug use and least distress to the Wife. We're also told this probably won't get us where we need to go and that a cesaerian section is the likely outcome.

This scares us both to hell. We came into this expecting a normal, natural childbirth, and are now being asked to sign up for pretty major surgery. Sure, if it's the only way to get bub out, that's fine, but we just weren't mentally prepared for it. But hey, flexibility was our watch-word for this labour, so we nod and try not to worry about it. Besides, the epidural will mean no more pain for the Wife.

The Wife is fitted with a catheter for an epidural, which in itself is quite distressing for me as a helper, seeing her still coming down from a contraction and hearing the anethetist saying "I'm in - for God's sake don't move!". I picture myself with a paraplegic partner and a newborn. Everything goes OK though and pretty soon after I have a Wife who is a lot less distressed. The midwives plan to let the drugs really do their work for the next couple of hours and leave us to it for a bit.

It's about this point I have my crisis of faith. The Wife still needs me there to give her support, encouragement and a rock on which to ground herself. I've been the big, strong man and partner all the way to this point, saying the right things, emptying her vomit bowl, keeping in good humour and never for an instant letting her think I'm anything other than supremely confident in what's going on.

Unfortunately, the prospect of a cesaerian without notice has shaken me to the core. I had lost my faith, I found myself surrounded by unpleasant what-ifs, all leading to the "what-if the Wife doesn't survive this?" and "what-if the baby doesn't survive this?" I suddenly find myself unable to look at or talk to my Wife without being in real danger of breaking down completely into a pile of tears and sobs, which would be the opposite of support and being a rock. I make an excuse to go and get a coffee with my fantastic parents, and thankfully twenty minutes with a cappucino, a macadamia-nut and white chocolate cookie and my two role-models is enough for me to get my life into perspective again and be able to go back and give the Wife the support she needs.

There is a bit of a blur now, as we get taken by an orderly and a midwife to the operating theatre. Well, I get as far as the first doors before being whisked off in another direction to get dressed in those lovely surgery clothes. I get to have a red hat so that people don't mistake me for someone who knows what they're doing. As if the camera in my hand wouldn't give it away...

I get escorted to the operating theatre, there's a bunch of people there and the maching that goes "ping!". I'm shown to my seat adjacent to my wife's head and told my job is to hold her hand. Somethin I can do! They pull a sheet up as a barrier between us and the business end, and everyone takes their places. They make the first incision.

"I can feel that!"

This is not so good. Despite the epidural which was promoted to a spinal block, it turns out the Wife is not sufficiently anethatised, and she could feel her abdomen being cut open. Immediately the anethatist says "we're putting her to sleep" and I get whisked back out of the operating room again, straight past the machine that goes "ping!" After getting changed I spend the rest of the birth pacing up and down in a corridor outside of the surgical wing, picturing all of the unpleasant scenarios that could be the outcome of this situation.

I am eventually greeted by the midwife wheeling a funky trolly with the most gorgeous little baby girl on it - my daughter! It is my job now to go with them to maternity and keep company with the bub until the Wife has returned from recovery. This takes more than an hour, and during this time of course I am still thinking stupid stuff like "what-if there were complications?" and "what-if I'm going to be bringing up this little bundle of joy on my own?"

It's all unfounded of course, and in the end everyone is OK, if tired. I now get to go home every night and waste a good night's sleep writing rambling diatribes in this blog. The Wife is a little less lucky, having to try and sleep in a hospital with all of its attendant distractions, including haveing to feed bub every four hours. The whole thing was a trial, it really was. Strange thing is, I felt I desperately had to write all of this down before I forgot it. Must be a survival mechanism, that we tend to block the less pleasant parts of our experiences out - makes us more likely to go ahead and breed a second time.

It has all been worth it though, because unlike other parents who only think they have the world's cutest baby, in our case it's true.

I just saw a news article that talked about protests and delays regarding establishing a .xxx domain for the internet, designed specifically for the "adult entertainment" industry. I just can't understand why people would take issue with this. After all, whether people like it or not the internet is rife with sex sites, pornography and so on. There are huge quantities of people that make use of this - I'm pretty certain that adult-themed stuff still takes up the most bandwidth online.

Given I'm about to be a dad, I completely understand the desire to limit access to this sort of stuff. I don't think it should be banned, however, as there are all sorts of self-determination and free speech issues at stake here. Surely having a .xxx domain means that all that sort of stuff can be controlled a little better, and you can make a neat little divider between it and the rest of the net? I for one would be much happier knowing that, by and large, the .com domain was for general "stuff" and any naughty business was restricted to .xxx. I could simply tell Net Nanny (or whatever I end up using for web protection for my fetus) not to allow access to any .xxx sites. Duh!

Lets have a little sense here, people! Go the .xxx and let people make more informed choices about what and how they surf!

Well, I read today that NASA finally managed to launch its latest space probe to Mars, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. I'm a bit of a space nerd, you see, and I was chuffed to see that we've taken another small step for mankind. I'm living for the day that we see space elevators and moon mining and all that good stuff. But not today. Today I can simply be thankful that we can get a Space Shuttle back from orbit without burning up, and launch a space probe to our nearest planetary neighbour.

Well, here you have it. Granted, it is the middle of winter, and granted, Canberra is in what passes for mountains here in Oz. It still comes as a big surprise when we see the white stuff falling from the sky though. Grizzled old Canberrans would have looked out their windows, stroked their beards and made comparisons with "the last great snowfall of 86". Yes, it's been that long since we had a decent bit of snow.

Of course, I wouldn't be expecting to see a snow plough out on the road any time soon...

That said, a mate at work mentioned he knew a guy that got snowed in the last time. This was down in Theodore, so I guess a bit higher up than the bulk of Canberra. There wasn't a lot of snow, just enough to turn the steep, narrow streets of Theodore into a black ice hell. Called into work saying "I'm snowed in!" - and he was actually right!

So there you go. These pics were taken by my lovely better half, who is all of about five days away from giving birth to our first child. If you're all really lucky I'll be posting stuff about parenthood and such some other time. You might even get baby photos...

Chiz - C.

Well, here I am.

Not much to look at, really. I would have expected the decor to be a little more alluring. Oh well... unaccustomed to Blogging as I am, this may well be the only thing I ever post, we'll just have to see. I mainly ended up here with a blog because a friend of mine was posting stuff as well, and I wanted to be able to leave rude comments on his blog.

I have to do a couple of compulsory nerdy things now:

1. This is a numbered list
2. This is Bold
3. This is Underlined Italics

Yup. I'm officially excited. Better not tarry too long, this is work time after all!