Champagne and Socks

We’re about to head off and see a movie for maybe the last time at a cinema in a while. Maybe not, who can say? But also it’s going to be a great way to spend some Sunday time.

It turns out that hanging around at 38 weeks is a lot like showing up to an exam an hour early (in case your car got a flat tyre). Those who went to UWA, it feels like showing up for one of those big exams at the Undercroft – there’s all that lush grass and flowering trees and a cool breeze but all you can do is worry about sighting your friends so you know you’re at the right place at the right time, but not wanting to talk to them cause they’re just going to be running through some equation or other that you don’t want knocked out of your brain and you’re wondering if you should use the bathroom now or in 45 minutes and whether you should eat something even though you feel a bit sick. And the knowledge that in 4 hours, it will all be over and you’ll feel relieved, but worried how you went, and then moving on to the next thing.

The waiting game. I’m frustrated and bored and sore and uncomfortable and irritated and over it but also really aware that when this is done, I’m only at the starting line. People say you should rest up and sleep now – if fucking only I could! I’m not tired most of the time until I’m keel over and sleep where I’m standing tired. And there are NO SLEEP POSITIONS LEFT! I actually dread going to bed now cause I know I’m in for 4 to 6 hours of tossing and turning and pulling a muscle or feeling sick cause I’m on my back and checking the clock to see how much I just slept. I had two positions left – sleeping on my left side and sleeping on my right side but my right side has almost filed a complaint. My shoulder and arm hurt. And now my right hip has started crying out in pain after just one hour of “sleep”. I’ve moved to using a pillow under it but even so, my thigh cramps pretty badly. For all the bullshit people tell you about “you wait til the baby comes and you get no sleep” I say Whatever Man, I’m running on, as Jonathan said the other day, Jetlag state anyway. I’ve not slept a good night since March. And I rarely get more than 2 hours in a stint anyway. At least my body won’t hurt so much in the act of trying to sleep.

My hands are so bad now that I am really limited by what I can do. Today they are so swollen I can’t really bend some of my fingers and  I look like I have man hands. I never realised how much like my dad’s dad’s hands I have. Maybe it’s just the knuckles. I used to think I had my mother’s hands. This week has been a bad one for them anyway. They were so bad Wednesday that I was in a very very bad place – not just with the swelling and numbness and pins and needles (it feels a bit like constantly knocking your funny bone) but with shooting pain through my middle fingers and through my wrists. C stayed home cause he didn’t think I was coping. It was a tad pathetic, I guess. But not being able to take care of your basic needs is never a nice place to be (luckily I wasn’t quite there but it was close). I have no real grip, I can’t open a jar or a bottle, I can’t shut the front door, I can’t really drive. A couple of days I couldn’t even type – on a good day I can use my fingernails to poke at the keyboard, all my fingertips have been numb for weeks. If I think about that too much, I get a panic attack at the claustrophobia.

Actually, something that has surprised me about this journey has been how much I’ve had to deal with claustrophobia. It’s not really something I thought I had an issue with but it’s been something I’ve really had to manage the last few months. And especially in the dark, small hours of the night.

But now, there is really very little left to do. I’m mostly packed for the hospital. The baby’s room and crib are set up. I can’t craft, I can’t write. I can do very little at all that requires hands, which is pretty much everything. And I hate everything that I have recorded on my Foxtel IQ. There are no movies I want to watch and holding a book is nigh impossible. I am ready to be done with this now. Which is of course how nature talks you into the next thing, which sounds completely unpleasant.

Quick! I must get in all the writing before my hands seize up again! (On the upside, I am catching up on things like proofing, slushing and reading, all of which only require the downwards arrow or the odd tweaked word here and there.)

I knew running a crowdfunding campaign would be interesting and to tell the truth, I’ve been wanting to do one for quite some time. I wanted to pick just the right project and the right timing (babies don’t actually care about such things, turns out) and I spent a lot of time observing other similar projects. After our campaign is finished, I’m planning on writing a series of blog posts talking about what we learned – it’s so much already. And also about the publishing business model and being a small press in Australia. One of the most important things that this campaign will enable me to do, is pay at the 5c per word pay rate, something that has been really out of my reach but that I have been aiming to be able to do.

In the meantime, over the weekend we reached the $4000 mark. We were so excited to reach it that we’ve offered all our early backers an extra reward. If you’re interested in claiming yours and were an early backer, give us a shout via the Pozible messages we sent out and we’ll be able to fulfill that straight away.

With just 16 days left to go, we’re hoping to reach our next milestone of $7000 soon and open to general submissions for the anthology. I just wanted to thank everyone who has pledged so far and has helped us boost the signal. We’re so excited about the stories we’ve already acquired for this book, those that we are still considering, and are looking forward to those we are yet to see or are yet to be written! Encouraging more diversity in YA fantasy offers even more scope for exciting stories to be told and read in the genre. We hope to be able to share one more book that does that with YA readers.

We’re blogging over at our Kaleidoscope blog all this month about why this project is important to us, why diversity in fiction is important to us and sharing a little bit of a sneak peek at some of the stories that will be in the book.

I always thought women referred to this stage of pregnancy as being like a beached whale because of their size. Turns out there’s a lot more aimless, listless lolling about than I expected. Which is to say, I’ve started taking *more than one* nap a day! And I HATE napping! Course, I’m also only sleeping between 3 and 5 hours during the night night so the napping is less optional and more just falling over asleep for periods of time. Earlier in my pregnancy, if I fought the nap, I got morning sickness. Now, if I fight the urge to nap, I just find that time passed and I was not conscious during it. The other day, I was sitting, working at my laptop and then I woke up 2 hours later.

And this whole moving slower thing? I really hate it. I’m used to a brisk walk when I know where I’m going, sure my husband thinks I walk slowly but his legs are twice as long as mine. But now, I miss pretty much any conversation he’s trying to have with me when we’re out and about because he’s up ahead talking into the wind 5 paces in front of me. I’m really annoyed by people who get annoyed behind me on the street cause I’m walking too slowly. It’s not like I can waddle any faster, what do they want? A gold star? And old people! Who think they own walking in whatever direction they want cause their old? I don’t really have a tight turning circle these days. Last night, I totally walked straight into the doorjamb as I turned to leave a room – you’d think you’d get used to being this size eventually. But you don’t.

But I think the hardest thing I’m trying to accept, is my waning energy levels. Everything takes me about three times as long now. Which means if I try and put a hard day in, I pay for it by not being able to do anything for the next two days. I never really realised how much I took for granted my ability to just dig deep, pull an allnighter, whatever and deliver to a deadline. My business model, as Tansy calls it. I work well under the pressure of a timeline and I might have got lazy relying on my ability to just pull it out of the hat when I needed to. So it’s not really surprising that I kinda thought I’d have all the time right down to the wire to get things done before the baby comes. I didn’t really plan on actually being less effectual. Normally, I really would have had enough time to complete my to do list in this last month. And I gotta say, I do not like that I’m struggling to do so – and not because I don’t want to do the work but because I physically can’t. I’m used to being able to force or command attention and concentration when I had to. Falling asleep or just not being able to have a clear mind are not things I can accept! I’m definitely struggling with the having to relinquish that control. And of course everyone is so quick to tell me that I should get used to it cause that’s how it’s going to be come next month. But that’s fine – for next month. I’d scheduled that into my planning. *After* I’d finished this to do list.

And on top of that, my carpal tunnel has worsened. I have been unable to sew for a week and there have been days where I have been unable to type as well. I’d planned at least some of the last days of my maternity leave (ha!) for hanging out on the couch and crafting. Sadly for me, I’ve been banned from any crafting until after the baby arrives now. Which also leaves me wondering what the heck am I supposed to be doing, other than napping?

I still have a bunch of things to finish off:

• Trucksong
• Rosaleen Love’s Twelve Planet Volume
• Kaleidoscope Pozible campaign
• Phd Proposal to submit (even though I am now on leave)
• setting up the baby’s room (it’s sort of started and it’s fine for when the baby comes but it’s not like in the movies)
• spring cleaning my house (yeah, even I can admit this one is now in the land of the never never)
• slush reading/general admin/tax stuff/finances etc

And since today and yesterday were highly productive, by late pregnancy me standards, I’m hoping I’m not in beached whale mode again tomorrow

I do have some good news. It mostly looks like I did not have anaphylaxis. I ended up in the ED last Monday morning – as per the instructions of my doctor, and Twitter. I don’t recommend showing up at 6.15am – it’s right before they switch shifts and it meant that I ended up hanging around for 3 hours (sure they could also have been checking I wasn’t dropping dead) and for peeps with anxiety, it was not a fun time. I think I also managed to get checked for preeclampsia about 3 times last week. Anyway, I eventually got cleared and sent home. I did have a few more instances of the claustrophobia + panic + not being able to breathe thing. And I started to get a rash (not having one when I went to ED was one of the reasons they eliminated the allergic reaction) and I’m still not overly convinced I’ve not had heightened sensitivity to salicylates lately.  I started to try and pull them out of my diet, which has been hard cause I’m almost left with nothing to eat. But thought this might also help with the pain in my hands which has been unbearable some days. Anyway, today my doctor’s visit has it leaning towards being rhinitis and I’m trying some over the counter stuff for that.

I’m on the countdown now – both for meeting my deadlines and to meet The Deadline and very aware that the end of this brings me merely to the beginning.

I feel a strong need to record things here about my pregnancy so I have a place to go back to when biology conveniently does its mind wipe erase. I’m really indignant about that.

Yesterday was a bit of a rough day. No husband to provide access to rational thought and to give me a hug. Just me and my body that was somehow trying to play the enemy. I’m still struggling with getting enough sleep. I’m now at the point where I celebrate getting 6 hours in two blocks of sleep as a huge win. Often I have to settle for 3 to 4 hours. But I’d started to get a bit of momentum and the night before last I was having a really great sleep when I woke up at 3.15 with my throat completely swollen shut. I’d had a bit of what I can only describe as pregnancy induced sleep apnea. I’ve had sinus issues since I hit 5 weeks along. So I figured it was that. And every now and then I get jolted awake as I struggle to take a breath, I guess. But this was different. I woke up and my throat was closed and it didn’t dissipate instantly – I could still breathe through my nose though. Being alone in the house, I got quite scared and wasn’t really sure what to do.

It’s quite funny in that in the cold harsh light of day, you’d call an ambulance or you’d go to ED. But at 3am, and when you’re pregnant, you get quite irrational. And you second guess yourself – I didn’t want to disturb anyone at that hour. And I didn’t want to drive to the hospital by myself. And I was worried that maybe I was overreacting and would look silly for making an issue out of it (hysterical, emotional pregnant lady etc). And by the time I’d got as far as looking to see what the wait time would be like at the hospital, I figured I’d be dead if I was going to die, right? And so I’d wait it out. Where wait it out meant wait for husband to wake up in Sydney and call him and cry on the phone. (Aside: I do have a nasty habit of doing that to people, I remember doing that to my mother when I went to live in Israel for a year and got lost on my first day in Haifa and almost ended up in Tel Aviv, so I sobbed on the phone to her about how much I hated it – culture shock, it passed – and she was like “I’m 27 hours away, I wish I could do something!!!”) Poor husband does very well at going from asleep to being cried at in 5 secs. I think that’s his training kicking in. And we agreed I’d not go back to sleep and would go see a doctor first thing. I ended up taking a Polaramine (sanctioned by doctor previously) and did get a bit of sleep at about 6am.

And? Well. When I saw the doctor yesterday, he thought the most likely thing was that it was anaphylactic shock. Which was a bit left field. I’m still not overly convinced since it feels like I’ve had milder symptoms for a couple of months. But, I’m happy to go with the “let’s just avoid nuts for now” recommendation – I’d had pistachio nuts before bed. Not a nut I have ever had a problem with before. And up til now, my allergy to nuts did not give rise to anaphylaxis. He pointed out that your reactions to an allergy scale up with exposure. And you know, pregnancy does weird shit to you. And in retrospect, I forgot about it at the time, but I had my second AntiD injection this week and it’s possible that has interfered (they monitor you straight after in case you react to that). So. That was fun. If it happens again I’m supposed to call an ambulance. And I might need to carry an epipen.

So there was that. But you know, that’s only partially how I roll. And why I was amused when people were warning me with “you wait til”s when pregnant – cause I ain’t the run of the mill. My Crohn’s is of course gearing up. Course it is. And that’s no surprise. I had that flare up caused by anxiety for my *hen’s night* for heaven’s sake. And that is NOTHING compared to November for me, right? So I was expecting this wouldn’t be a happy horse and cart ride in the park. The next part of this story is cut for TMI but to say that pregnancy and Crohn’s flare ups do not mesh well together. And I was quite miserable yesterday.

On the upsides, I’m still low in iron so my midwife has prescribed B12 to take as well (that’s a no brainer, cause, Crohn’s) so I’m hoping to feel awesome by like tomorrow. That’s how it works, right? And at this point, I am popping so many pills that it’s almost equivalent to the futuristic not having to eat anything, just take a pill, where the pill is actually about 12 different things. And much as I was terrified to go to sleep last night (even though the doctor reassured me your body wakes you up if you can’t breathe, as it had done the night before), it didn’t reoccur. So yay. And also, I think I’m quite happy with that medical practice – I’ve yet to actually move to a GP down here and I kinda need to decide that before the baby comes.

So, you know. This is me. I don’t do things by the book. It’s just how I am. The baby on the other hand has been fantastic – doing all the right things, growing well, very active. All good.

The exciting news for today is that Julia Rios and I launched our Pozible campaign to fundraise for our anthology project Kaleidscope – an anthology of diverse contemporary YA fantasy. We’ve been working behind the scenes on the Pozible campaign for ages but on the project for even longer – we had a meeting in person about it in Toronto at last World Fantasy Con but we’d been working on it even before then. It’s exciting to finally see it start to go live. I’m looking forward to working on this project – we’ve already bought 4 stories for it and we’re looking forward to reading for it. We’ll be open to submissions for the project as well, and there will be more on that later in the campaign. We’ve also got a whole bunch of content lined up for October to discuss the project and what diversity means to us.