baybeasts

the bay tree

Before we were even pregnant, we decided that we would honour our baybeasts by planting their placentas in a big pot along with a bay tree. This week we finally took the placentas out of the deep freeze where they have been languishing since the births. We inspected them closely before burying them in a big terracotta pot that my friend A gave to me many years ago, and planted a bay tree bought from Ceres on top.

Loey’s placenta was dark and twisty. The cord was full of strange twists and lumps, and its insertion was velamentous, which means that the blood vessels were all caught up in the membranes rather than coming directly out of the placenta. This is a very rare thing and a bit scary, because when the waters break a vessel can rupture which would be likely fatal for the baby.

Huey’s placenta was small and neat. So much for the whopping great placenta that supposedly blocked him from getting into a good position in utero! There wasn’t much cord, but we don’t know if that was because it was actually very short or if it’s because it was chopped in the caesar and they didn’t give us the whole thing. I like to think that his cord was a bit short, plus round his neck (maybe even twice, I think I heard the doctor say), because then I can understand why he wouldn’t put his head down and the hideous labour and emergency caesar make sense.

It felt good to finally do something meaningful with the placentas - they were so precious, keeping our babies alive and well inside us all those months. And I think the bay tree, which was looking a bit wan and cramped in its nursery black plastic pot, is already looking greener and happier.

the christmas tree

This is our fifth christmas together. Of the four christmases so far, we’ve had one very sad one when we lived in Footscray where we didn’t do anything and felt rather miserable, one on the south coast of New South Wales with my family, another fairly sad one here in Preston, and one in Brisbane with bean’s family. We’ve never had a proper christmas tree, and rarely bought each other secret presents - we’ve always just bought something big we both wanted (like a camera) and called it our present.

This year, with two small babies, we couldn’t spend christmas with either of our extended families, so we decided to really do it properly at home, in celebration of our own little family. The two things that make christmas for me are having a real live christmas tree, and a big pile of exciting presents underneath it. So we allocated a budget for christmas shopping (that we both broke!) and made time to go out alone and buy presents for each other and for the boys (because they are too small to appreciate the surprise, we have made surprises for ourselves by each individually buying presents for each of them). And last week, I ventured out in the car to find a christmas tree. I had just been to three separate christmas tree vendors, and decided on a beautiful little spruce in a pot, when an idiot in a shiny Honda ran into the rear of our car. It was very scary - I was turning right, and waiting for a bus to go past when it happened. I am so lucky that the bus didn’t hit me, and so glad that I was alone in the car. I wasn’t hurt at all, but the car, sadly, was so badly damaged that the insurance company has written it off. This means that we have to somehow find a new one. We loved our car, but they are not terribly common because they don’t make them anymore and they are in demand, so we are feeling a bit miserable about our chances. We also feel miserable about the loss of the car itself - the car we bought so that our little family would be safe on the road; the car that carried our brand new babies home from the hospital.

Luckily, our brilliant friends S and K lent us their second car. The very next day I went out and bought that little spruce in a pot, and it has made everything seem better somehow to have it glowing with fairylights in the corner of our loungeroom, with a big pile of presents underneath.