The Last Post

from here

I started my blog in May 2011, when Moses, my eldest child, was almost 9 months old. I called it Belle’s Elbows, because I found that all of the song lyrics and quotes I thought would make me seem deep and interesting were taken on Blogger already, and my childhood nickname plus a random body part seemed like as good a name as anything else I’d ever come up with (I originally settled on, and started a page called, Belle’s Ankles before realising, approximately 4 seconds later, that ‘elbows’ sounded seven hundred times better). (My second challenge was the blog address, for which I decided on theelbowsofbelle.blogspot.com because the idea of mysterious future readers of my blog ever seeing belleselbows and thinking I was a-okay with the lack of apostrophe made me hyperventilate).

I was spending an awful lot of my time breastfeeding back in those days, and I wanted to make the most of the hours I was required to sit on the couch while Moses worked at sucking the perkiness out of my youthful boobs (and nourishing himself, I guess). I decided I’d use this regular couch time for reading the Christian theology books I’d made no time for before Mo arrived, to grapple further with the strict gender roles I’d been taught in church up to that point. I figured a blog could be an easily-accessible home to the reviews of these books which would allow my similarly-passionate but more time-poor friends to follow along with my research without having to read everything for themselves. (It’s strange now to think that none of this reading and blogging would have happened if I had access back then to either Netflix or Twitter.) I hadn’t considered that in writing I’d find a much-needed creative outlet I hadn’t realised I’d been muchly-needing, and a safe space in which I could process my thoughts and fears and doubts and joys as I adjusted to marriage and motherhood and tried to better understand who I was in light of these as well as my Christian faith.

It's weird having publicly documented almost 8 years of my life, particularly as I’ve changed so dramatically in that time. In 2011, I was a new mum, trying very hard to be perfect in all the possible ways a mum could be perfect, so that my son would always think I was the bestest person ever and would definitely never end up in therapy. I was also extremely Christian, the eager type, who’d always try to invite you – her openly-not-Christian-but-extraordinarily-polite workmate – to her church, and who enthusiastically gifted you a small, leather-bound Bible because you’d once listened to me talking about reading it and made a passing comment, probably in the hopes that it would bring a nice end to our conversation, about how you thought you’d maybe read some of it yourself one day. (Guess what, friend? That day could be TODAY, because HERE’S A BIBLE FOR YOU!! You’re WELCOME!!!!) The type who had earnest conversations with her oldest and most loyal friend about how sad I was that she wouldn’t be joining me in heaven, given her blatantly unchristian behaviour and beliefs (she was – and remains – a superlative human being, it was just she was having sex without being married, and thought that was fine, so… pretty evil). THAT TYPE. That was 2011 me.

Nowadays, my son spends quite a bit of his life convinced I’m the worstest person ever (“Literally everyone in the world has an Xbox except me, and Huon has a TV bigger than ours IN HIS BEDROOM”) and will certainly need therapy when he’s older (everyone does). I feel zero pressure to act like the sweet, playful, always-happy mother who regularly shows up in movies (often running through meadows in slow-motion, dress billowing behind her); I’m done with acting any roles, whether it’s Good Mother or Good Christian Woman. 2020-me has now apologised to both my ex-workmate and my still-loyal-friend about the things past-me said when she was drunk on evangelical Christianity. Since 2011, I’ve been pregnant three more times, two of which ended in miscarriage, and one of which produced Hazel. I’ve finished one degree (Divinity) and am on the final leg of another (Psychology). I’m trying to find new purpose now that what lies ahead is my own to figure out the directions to, where before I could merely follow those handed to me by church leaders.

I cringe when I read my early posts on this blog; the Christian-ness, for one thing, but it’s also clear to now-me that I was trying too hard to sound like someone I wasn’t. (It struck me as I wrote that last line that it was Rachel Held Evans. I was trying to sound like Rachel Held Evans. She was my favourite blogger/person in 2011, and her writing was one of the reasons I started wanting to try my own hand at it. My heart is still broken over her sudden death last year.) As the years went by, I found my voice. I started writing more for me than for an imaginary audience. I used to write and edit in my head while my children played at the park, repeating lines to myself so that I wouldn’t forget them before I got home, put them to bed for a nap, then raced to my laptop to madly bash out fully-formed paragraphs. Blogging got me through the difficult days of caring for small humans.

I discovered how much I loved the process of constructing sentences and editing them and making myself laugh or think or rethink. I also practised vulnerability through writing; I wrote about my miscarriages, the unsettling feeling of not knowing what to do with my life, pregnancy (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), sleep, evangelical Christianity, things that made me cranky, study, marriage, post-natal depression, mothering, anxiety, moving, mothering, mothering, and random things that happened/occurred to me while going about my days with two young children and a bazillion assignments due. I made a few friends through my writing, only one of whom I’ve met in person. I raged at Blogger a lot (its random formatting changes that I could find no way of overriding frequently made me feel stabby; for a stunning example, please see the unnecessary space added between points 5 and 6 in the list below). I figured out how to embed gifs and find and edit photos and play around with HTML and solve technological issues I’d have given up on pre-blog. Blogging also showed me that I was able to integrate information and explain it in a readable way, which, I realised, was a key part of research. I grew more confident in my ability to study as a result of blogging; I’m not sure I’d have had the courage to start my psychology degree when I did if I hadn’t learned this about myself through writing for Belle’s Elbows.

I know that blogging – particularly “mummy-blogging” – was/is seen as an embarrassingly low art form, but I still love it, mostly because I’m deeply grateful for everything it gave me: a chance to express and challenge myself, meaningful conversations with others I’d have otherwise missed, a way to meet new people and find community, a way to meet myself and figure out my values and desires, and a space to store 8 years’ worth of memories.

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For a long time, I was trying to make sure I was in bed by 9:30pm, but I’d always be in bed at 10pm, and then, after feeling guilty about it for a while, I thought, “Why bother trying so hard to be in bed earlier when 10pm is obviously the time I naturally make it to bed?“ So I changed my bedtime to 10pm and now I go to bed at 11pm.

From Sick and Tired 

from here

I’ve decided to take Belle’s Elbows down partly because of the cringey posts and partly because all of the pictures disappeared from the posts once I changed my surname and moved the blog over to my new email address (I started adding some back in, but I gave up). Partly, as well, I plan to make writing more of a priority in my life again this year, but the thought of adding to Belle’s Elbows feels wrong somehow; if I’m still going to blog (is that a thing anymore? I don’t even know), I’d prefer a fresh, new space where I can start over.

Over the 8 years since beginning Belle’s Elbows, I’ve written 430 posts (including this one). I spent one of my holidays last year copying each one into a Word document, which now contains 717 pages and 241,339 words. 8 years, 430 posts and 241,339 words of comment, confession, confusion, family updates, book and movie reviews, book/movie reviews mixed with family updates, and cracking myself up.

I’ll be keeping the blog up until my birthday in early March, to give anyone who wants it time to read through the ‘Best Of’ list that I compiled while copying and pasting each post from blog to computer. Many of the links are in the text above, but I’ve listed others below (I updated the photos on some but not all of these posts. You’re welcome/sorry).

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I borrowed You Should Have Known from the library thanks to Swistle’s review. When I picked it up I noticed that on the cover the book’s described as a 'psychological thriller' which made my heart pound and panic, until my head said, “Calm down, Heart. What’s your favourite book of all time?” and my heart said, “We Need to Talk about Kevin,” and my head said, “…?” and my heart said, “?!” and my head said, “And how do you think that book would be described?” and my heart was like, “Hey! Maybe I actually like reading psychological thrillers! Thanks, Head!” and my head said “No worries” and then there was an awkward silence until I stepped in and asked, “So, do I read You Should Have Known?” and my head and heart both said “Yes.” So I read it over the weekend.

from You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz  

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Highlights from Belle's Elbows

1. This is one of my favourite posts from the early days of the blog, most probably because it was the first time I wrote something that felt scarily honest and worked up the courage to throw it out into the world: What Uralla taught me about myself.
2. This story still makes me smile; I was not expecting it to end the way it did: Phone. (This post is linked to in the previous one, but I’m putting it here separately, purely for the adorably smooshy photo of Hazel: Slobber.)
3. There are many posts, mostly kid-related, detailing situations I’d have completely forgotten about if it weren’t for the fact that I documented them at the time for my blog. This is an example of such a post: Holiday 2013.
   
4. These posts – covering my 2017 surname change – had the highest number of readers of all of my blog posts, almost certainly because they were among the few I posted to social media: Surnames #2 and Surnames#3.
5. My 2019 series on why I’m no longer a Christian (the only thing I’ve posted since September 2017), which begins here: The Deconstruction: Introduction.
   
   
6. These two perfectly demonstrate the levels of my dedication to procrastinating, and also make me very happy I no longer live in Sydney: The Massacre and There's a Cockroach In My Kitchen.
7. Finally, these posts from 2014 were extremely fun to write and still make me laugh every time I reread them:

• Knots.
• The gym and the gifs.

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Thank you, thank you, thank you and goodbye, Belle's Elbows.

And thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone came along for the ride, for all or part of the time I hung out here.

Love, Belle/Annelise.

x

from here

Study #2

from here

I was told last week that along with each baby you give birth to half of your brain, but when I noted out loud that that left me with none, my friend clarified that it’s not half of your original brain you lose each time, it’s half of what’s left. So I still have a quarter. (She’s not a scientist but it feels like it’s true, so I’m just going with it.) Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure the quarter I have is the one that remembers unnecessary things like the lyrics to songs I haven’t heard since the 90s rather than important things like CLOSE YOUR EYES, ALAN remembering to take the car keys out of the ignition while you go shopping at Westfield OKAY YOU CAN OPEN THEM AGAIN NOW. 

I really don’t know if the quarter that’s left is able to write essays. I’m enrolled in a hermeneutics subject this semester – my final class before my Grad Dip is over and done with!! HOPEFULLY. I’m freaking out about studying again with less brain than last time, but I’m also quite excited about finally (HOPEFULLY) finishing up and being free to move on to my next (more employable) qualification. My poor quarter-brain is very confused with these mixed emotions. This could go very badly.

Hazel's birth

I was quick to write about Mo’s birth after he arrived; it was a dramatic story. I was proud of the fact that I’d had the courage to fight for the birth I wanted, and that, when it came time to deliver my baby, my body hadn’t let me down. I didn’t want to forget that feeling of strength and empowerment, and I will forever keep those pages of passionate scrawl to make sure I don’t. Mo’s was the birth I wanted, but it wasn’t the story I wanted; fights and drama may make the story interesting later, but they’re stressful and unpleasant at the time. For my second birth, I dreamed of having an ordinary story to tell, free from crisis or suspense or any of those other elements that make a story one that others itch to hear the details of. There was nothing gripping about Hazel’s birth. It was exactly the birth story I wanted.

Moses listening for Hazel's "heartbeep"

On a Tuesday night last August, two days past my due date, my midwife (Jo) messaged to ask how I was feeling. “I reckon it’s going to be a while yet,” I wrote back, feeling zen after weeks of impatience. I had a clear picture in my mind of what the birth would look like. Timing-wise, it was just like Mo’s: my waters would break in the morning and labour would start that night. Around midnight the baby would arrive, and we’d wake Mo up so that he could come meet his little sister, and he’d be bleary but super excited as we cut the cord and wrapped Hazel up. Then I’d have a shower, we’d all jump into bed, and we’d sleep like logs until (late) morning when I’d wake up feeling refreshed and probably bake some bread for us to eat for breakfast. My children would arise and call me blessed. I’d go for a jog or something. (I'm getting carried away; the point is that in my mind, Hazel would be born at night. It was all going to happen at night.)

The next morning I woke at around 5am and then spent the next hour or so in a dozey state in which it wasn’t clear if I was actually in labour or just dreaming I was in labour. I woke up properly at 6:30am and discovered that the contractions were not a dream. When I first timed them at around 7am, the contractions were coming every eight minutes, but they only lasted for 30 seconds at most. Jo had warned me that there might be some pre-labour before the real thing kicked in (Hazel had been hanging out in posterior positions), but it was a little while until Alan had to figure out whether or not to go to work, so I turned my mind to the next most important decision:

I was having a homebirth, and I knew we needed to start filling the pool as soon as it was clear that labour had started. I’d avoided showering before bed for the previous week so that we wouldn’t use up the hot water in case it was needed to fill up the bath if labour started early in the night (IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN AT NIGHT, OKAY?!). BUT I’d run out of shampoo a few days earlier and had finally bought a new bottle the previous day, and my hair was so dirty I could have styled it into a mohawk using its own grease to hold it in place. I couldn’t have a baby with hair like that; I hate all photos of me post-Mo’s birth, and I desperately wanted to have a crack at getting at least one of those beautiful look-at-me-I-just-had-a-baby snaps I’d seen in homebirth magazines (I’d also invested in some waterproof mascara for this reason (Yes, it’s vain, but you should see my post-Mo photos (Except I won’t let you see my post-Mo photos because I hate them so much))).

I decided that we could use the kettle and saucepans on the stove to supplement the hot water for the pool, but nothing besides washing it could make my feral hair clean, so I showered. I wasn’t sure whether this was proper labour yet, so I figured there was still time. After my shower, Alan told me he was going to start filling up the pool. I told him it was too early, I didn’t even know if this was labour. He ignored me and started filling up the pool. It was his one job, and he was going to get it done, dammit.

At 9am I was on the phone to Jo, trying to figure out whether or not she should call in at her place on her way from another birth to grab some tea and toast before heading to ours (I told her, yes, she should stop for breakfast; I was terrified of having her arrive just as my contractions completely stopped and having to tell her, “OOPS! My bad!”). I’d been lying down to see if the contractions would peter out, but they kept coming (they were now three minutes apart, we noticed as we chatted), and intensifying so that it was no longer comfortable to be horizontal; I needed to start walking. By 9:30am they were two minutes apart, but still only 30 seconds in duration. Jo decided to come.

Throughout all of this, Mo was running around as if it were any other day, demanding food and digging in the backyard (Jo’s first job on arrival was to go out and inspect his muddy creation). I still didn’t know whether I was in labour or not – what’s the difference between pre-labour and labour?! I had no idea. My contractions didn’t seem to be lasting long enough to be labour, even though they certainly felt intense enough. Plus my waters hadn’t broken, and it was DAYTIME. This was not how I’d seen it going. Jo assured me it was labour, and Alan looked a bit proud of himself for having ignored me and started on the pool.

I was pacing, trying to find somewhere dark (who goes into labour during the day?! WHOOOOOOOO?) and away from the bustle in the kitchen/lounge room, where Alan (and then Alan and Jo) were hurrying saucepans of hot water to the pool. It was about 10:30am when Moses playfully whacked me on the bottom during a particularly bitey contraction and called out, “TIP!” I calmly informed Alan that if it happened again he might not live to meet his little sister, and we decided that Alan and Jo would drive Moses over to the home of a friend who lived only a few minutes down the road, and she’d drop him back when birth was imminent. We threw some snacks into a bag for him, and off they went.

Jo had told me she thought things would speed up without Moses around; left to myself in the quiet, I put on my CD of Pachelbel’s Canon and cried at my baby (Hurry uuuuuuup! I just want to meeeeeeeeeeet youuuuuuuuuuuu [my zen phase was over, I wanted this baby out pronto]), and then, in response, had the kind of contraction that let me know the wait would soon be over. By the time Alan and Jo arrived home, I was starting to feel like pushing. This announcement brought on more of Alan’s frenzied running from the stove to the pool, while Jo magically managed to be in all places at once, helping him while also pressing a hot pack onto my lower back while also setting up her things ready for the baby’s arrival. My waters broke at 11:05am, I jumped in the pool at 11:06am, Moses came home sometime soon after that, and Hazel was born at 11:21am (Jo’s notes say, “Annelise breathed out a beautiful baby girl.” I don’t remember it feeling that easy, but I love that line anyway).

I was in water for the birth this time (I’d been “on land” with Moses), and, though I wasn’t in the pool for long before Hazel arrived, I loved the warmth of the water (“It’s too hot!” cried Jo, and Alan switched the hose to cold water instead), the space that was all mine, and being able to press my forehead against the rubbery pool side. Jo passed over a cold flannel for my face just as I looked up to ask her if she could please fetch a cold flannel for my face (she can read minds), and Alan stood by with my drink bottle handy; I was crazily thirsty throughout the whole labour. Each contraction seemed to bring Hazel’s head right down, but then as it passed I’d feel her moving back up again. I was restless, thinking, “COME ON! This is taking forever!” I was a little embarrassed at my whining when I found out afterwards that this second stage of labour had lasted only 11 minutes.

And when Hazel did arrive, I pulled her out of the water and finally held my precious girl for the first time. She was less excited to meet us, refusing to breathe for a while; Jo asked me to blow on her face while she rubbed her with a towel and brought an oxygen mask close. Hazel soon decided breathing wasn’t that bad, and Alan and Moses came closer to say their hellos. We hopped out of the bath (I say “hopped” but it was far less graceful, considering Hazel and I were still attached via her umbilical cord, and the pool’s sides here high; Jo held Hazel, Alan held me, there were manoeuvres, and then I was out) and Hazel and I cuddled on the couch, while I waited to birth the placenta (it turned up just over an hour after Hazel did, at 12:28pm).

Over the next little while Hazel started adding to her list of Firsts (first breastfeed, first poo). Alan cut the umbilical cord (Moses was too wary), and I ate roasted sweet potato and sent out our news in text messages. Moses went to have his nap, Alan started emptying the pool into our garden, Jo brought over the placenta to show me the hole where the sac had burst, I nearly threw up, Jo took the placenta away again. I was shocked that it was only lunchtime and I was holding a baby who had been on the inside when I woke up that morning; it took a while to sink in: She’s here! It’s over! I’d prepared myself for everything that could go wrong during the birth (you have to if you decide to birth at home, other people make sure you’re aware how terribly it could all turn out); it came as a bit of a surprise to get through with no frantic race to the hospital. 

And that’s the story. It could have been far more exciting if there was a mad rush to the hospital, and no doubt I’d have written that story down months ago after telling it a bazillion times. But that wouldn’t have been the story I’d dreamed about; this one is. This one’s exactly the story I wanted: a boring, beautiful birth.

No more

Even though

I’d love to see what other permutations of unbelievably-gorgeous Alan’s and my genes combined can come up with, and

I have more baby names to use up, and

I still like the idea of having 3 kids, and

babies at 7 months old (anywhere from 4 months old, really) are the most delightful things ever, and

I feel like I’ve got the whole birthing thing down now, and

I love Moses and Hazel more than the sweetest clichés...

we’re not having more kids.*

Because

we can’t afford a cleaner, nanny and cook, and

my maternity bras are falling apart, and

I desperately need time away from people (including [especially?!] my children) in order to function well, and

I don’t enjoy being pregnant, and

my womb has proven fairly fussy about the embryos it keeps, and I really don’t want to have (or even risk) another miscarriage, and

I don’t feel like I have the capacity to be the mother I really want to be (Jesus-y, available, patient, energetic, calm, interesting, organised) to more than two little people (at the moment even two is pushing it), and

I don’t feel like I have the capacity to be the grandmother I really want to be (should my children one day have their own) to the kids of more than two people, and

I currently spend quite a bit of time with a three-year-old, which keeps things in perspective when looking at photos of babies (yes, they’re adorable, but in a few years’ time they will argue with you even when they know they’re wrong).

So, no more*.

* Unless we accidentally do… (Hello, Child #3! We love you!! Best surprise ever!!!!)