Bad behaviour and lolly bags

3D lolly bag before the unfortunate indicent

This weekend I left the lolly bag on the car roof as I strapped my daughter into her seat after a four year old party.

Every time I place something on the roof I simultaneously warn myself I'm going to forget it. Then I do. The petrol cap, a porcelain plate and cake, lunchboxes and children's clothing have all come the raw prawn these past few months.

Last week I left the remote control of a fantastic toy car on the roof, losing both the device and the car's purpose. It didn't even belong to me, I had borrowed it from my mum.

Show us your Tits

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like a bit of a creep when a mother is breastfeeding nearby. I look anywhere but her, avoiding all eye contact and generally give her a wide berth. If a women starts breastfeeding next to me at playgroup I'll find a reason to get up and move.

I wonder why it makes me so uncomfortable, and I know I'm not the only one who feels like this, given that men and non mothers probably feel even more ill at ease when  a woman does something we've been trained for decades not to do: pulls out her tits in public.

Regrets of Parents

Who needs Huggies to swim?

What!? No one regrets a baby!? Want to bet - this kid sure grew up feeling like a mistake.

Then along comes the Huggies survey of parents, saying two thirds of parents regret stuff about raising their children. I have to say I'm kind of shocked at the large amount of parents regretting things, and the long list of regrets, none of which I identify with. 

End of Summer and the Stalker comes out

The salt has dried. Broken glass litters dirt tracks leading to the beach. Sand is all over the floor. The lipstick in my car has melted and reformed over 100 times. Sydney's long hot summer has come to an abrupt end. Goodbye endless 45C degree days, fish and chips at sunset and three swims a day. Now that I'm getting used to the feel of clothes on my body again, I've reentered the world of blogging and intend to post a few things every month.

Endings and Beginnings

It's been about a year since I touched this blog site. It is now top of page two when you Google "best brothel Sydney" which is interesting since my blog was supposed to be about parenting and kids, not brothels. I clearly digressed, then abandoned my blog, like so many before me.

Such a cliche. To get you up to speed on what I've been doing for the past 1-2 years, I had another baby, a boy, again by Csection in a public hospital. This was liberating and fun as I had so many pain killers, my family visited me every day taking me for wheelchair rides and my room had ocean views. Best of all, I kissed my two year old good bye and she was taken home by her dad to read about The Wild Things and enact the book.

Day in the Life of a Sydney Stay at Home Mum

Even in winter we're at the beach

OK, so while I wait for the Institute of Teachers to approve my teacher status, I am wiling away the hours at home with my little one. It's a sweet reminder of what the first year of her life was like, and now that she's just turned two, a hell of a lot more fun. It's also a welcome reprieve from what was a hellish year of huge challenges and changes as I trained as a teacher. I am now done! And I have a long hot happy summer stretched out before me.

Peppermint Vagina

Cup of tea anyone? How would you like it served? In your vagina?

I don’t think I’ve ever Googled something so much or worried about my vagina so much as when I suffered a Bartholin cyst, a mysterious little, or big, swelling on the Bartholin glands. 

Overnight I became an expert on these little glands on both sides of my vagina.

Several weeks later I woke up in a pool of my own blood with a sore vagina after an operation on my infected cyst called marsupialisation.

I experienced a lot of pain and annoyance from this episode, as you'd expect from gynecological surgery, alleviated only mildly by a box of oxycontin from my doctor mum (thanks to my gyne for the box of Panadeine Forte but I think I'll take Endone instead.) The bottom line though, is a cure I want to share that I inadvertently discovered. 

Teabags.

Four months after the operation, I was still experiencing pain and regular eruptions of inflamed glands, probably due to the stress of work and study while parenting. They completely stopped and healed almost magically after I applied a hot, wet, plain old teabag.

Another several hours on Google bought up scores of cures, and this was first on my list, just before turmeric paste and milk soaked bread. It actually worked. I placed three teabags over a day inside the vagina, and by the next day the infected cysts had ejected the gunk inside and were soothed and normal looking. I couldn't believe it. This apparently also works for boils. If I had a boil I would apply disinfectant and boiling water, but I tired of doing this on my poor vagina. I'm so glad to have found a very easy and accessible cure.

So any of my readers who may suffer from blocked Bartholin's cysts - about 2-5 per cent of women - please do try teabags. Lady Grey is my natural choice, with high notes of bergamot and citrus, but ginger and lemon worked well as well. Just don’t add milk and honey.