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

Sleep (again)

from here

I know that sleep deprivation comes with babies so I feel like I can’t whinge about it; it’s like being cranky that your banana comes with a peel, because you don’t want the peel, you just want the banana, you know? YOU CAN'T HAVE THE BANANA WITHOUT THE PEEL, AND YOU WANT THE BANANA SO BE QUIET. Did this point need illustrating? I’m too sleepy to know. Anyway, I’m not surprised by the sleep deprivation this time around, but I am shocked by how worn out it’s possible to become while still managing to make it from morning through to evening AND keep little people alive and fairly content during that time. I’ve slowed down considerably, and am often very aware of my heartbeat –  

baBoom… baBoom… baBoom… baBoom… 

I hear it talking to me:

I’mGoing… toStop… ifYou… don’t…. (it skips a beat to reinforce the message). 

Apparently being overtired makes it harder to do things like falling asleep, which seems like a cruel glitch in our makeup that should have been ironed out a little while ago. Falling asleep is hard not only when when you’re too tired to remember how to actually drop off, but also when you develop such a hatred of being woken too early that you decide that not falling asleep will be less painful, or when you’re so exhausted that getting through tomorrow seems impossible, and the only way to postpone tomorrow is to stay awake tonight. I know it doesn’t make sense, but not much does right now. 

I’d really love someone to look out for my tired signs like I watch for Hazel’s and to scoop me up and say to me, “Oh, my darling, look at you! You’re so sleepy! I’m putting you to bed now and I want you to have a loooooong nap.” I want to be able to wake whenever I’m ready to rather than whenever I’m called for. I want to sleep for 8 hours, uninterrupted. I’d settle for 7. I JUST WANT SLEEP. And Lorde’s album. But mostly sleep.

Sleep

from here

You know those times in life when something’s so big for you that you obsess over it and you google it and you read about it and you talk about it and it’s all you want to obsess over/google/read and talk about but you’re aware that others aren’t quite so keen on the topic as you are and so you just avoid people so that a) you don’t accidentally spew information at them and make them wish they hadn’t hung out with you, and b) they don’t bore you with their non-[your obsession] talk? Right now, that thing for me is sleep. SLEEP. I want to update Facebook every day with posts about how many hours of sleep I’m (not) getting so that people can comment sympathetically, but I won’t. I WON’T, DAMMIT.

I will update here, though. Just briefly.

I am EXHAUSTED, man. I haven’t slept for longer than 3 hours in a while. It’s not completely Hazel’s fault; sometimes she’s sleeping and I could be going to sleep but she’s snoring and I find it impossible to drift off when there’s a noise that I know to expect after a predictable interval, like snores – I start counting the beats between snores and then singing songs that tie in with the rhythm, and it’s VERY. DISTRACTING.

So Hazel snores and I think, “Ugh, this is annoying. I should be falling asleep right now, not singing silly snoring songs.” And I toss up whether or not to poke her and eventually I decide I won’t and then all of the sudden she stops! Then I think, “Okay, sleep time!”, but I wait and, after some minutes pass, I start to think, “Argh, she’s not making any noise; what if she just died?” and I lie there wondering if I should get closer to see if she’s still breathing and then deciding that I’m being ridiculous and then imagining what I’d do if she did die and then I have to tell myself sternly to STOP and just GO TO SLEEP. And then Hazel makes a noise and I relax and then I sleep. That’s a full 30 minutes (more, sometimes) I’m missing out on just because of my stupid, stupid brain.

Speaking of my brain, yesterday I said “brown paper” instead of “brain power” and accidentally smooshed the names of my children together (“Hazes”) instead of referring to just one. *YAWN*

Sleep

The photo above was taken early in our married life to add weight to my accusation that my husband was too often taking up more than his half of the bed.

I usually don’t read the ‘Odd Spot’s on Libra packaging, but this one caught my eye: “The average person falls asleep in seven minutes”. SEVEN MINUTES! I haven’t even finished getting comfortable by that stage, let alone revised the day’s activities and conversations, prayed about the way I spent my time, tried to figure out which day of the week it is and then vaguely planned the following day’s activities, put a reminder in my phone to tell my husband about that funny thing my son did at the park, wondered if my son will be warm enough tonight, crept into his room to check the temperature, turned the fan off, flopped back into bed, re-started the getting-comfortable process while wondering how my friend’s first book club went, prayed for her and the group, thought about starting one myself after we’ve moved, imagined the flier I could make to invite people, thought about which book we’d start with, pictured a meal together with my new book club friends, repositioned my pillow, prayed about opportunities to meet people when we’re in Glenmore Park, imagined how I’ll arrange the furniture in our new house, tossed up the pros and cons of a tiled lounge area, designed a giant rug, panicked about packing, written a blog post in my head about how hard it is to fall asleep, considered getting up to type it, decided not to, worked out whether some cereal would help me drift off, decided no, stretched my calf muscles, added another reminder to my phone about reporting my income to Centrelink, and rolled over.

Most nights I wait for at least an hour before sleep shows up. My husband, on the other hand, is one of those people who bring the average waaaaaaaaaaaay down, balancing out my lengthy pre-sleep sessions by dropping off within a few minutes of adjusting the covers and flipping onto his tummy. Sometimes I’m shocked to hear him snoring what feels like seconds after he’s kissed me goodnight. The other night I was reading my book and he snorted loudly and woke himself up; he was too confused to see the funny side of it but it had me sniggering for ages. Occasionally he also talks in his sleep for my entertainment, and I talk back. Once I’ve finishing laughing quietly I have to write our conversation down so that I can tell him about it in the morning.

I sometimes catch myself lying awake and wondering about things I really don’t need to lie awake wondering about. At the end of last year, the night after my husband mentioned that the college library wouldn’t be loaning books until January because they were doing a stocktake, we hadn’t been in bed for long when I whispered, “Are you still awake?” He left my question hanging for approximately 20 seconds before responding with a half-hearted, “Mm.” “How do you think they stocktake a library?!” I asked. “Do they print out a list of all of their books and walk along the shelves ticking them off one by one? And then go back to their computer and mark the missing ones?” It didn't take me long to realise how ridiculous these questions would seem to my husband. I then had to try to suppress my giggles for the next couple of minutes because we’ve been married for long enough for me to sense when he’s unimpressed, even in the dark.

So, yeah. Seven minutes would be AWESOME.

You and me plus baby makes three

photo by Douglas Sylvester

For all of the pre-kid thinking I did, not one moment was given to considering the impact a baby would have on our marriage. No one had let on (much less told us) that it was tough and my husband’s brother had once mentioned that having kids made him and his wife closer, so we dived into parenthood with optimism and confidence. We lost each other underwater, though, and it was quite a shock to find, after surfacing and gasping for breath months after our son’s arrival, that the distance between the two of us was scarily large, and each of us was too weary to try to swim to the other. 

Marriage this year has been exhausting, and more than once I’ve felt like I haven’t had the energy required to be able to go on. There have been times when my husband has felt more like a flatmate I didn't care for rather than a spouse, and I always feel deceitful appearing married to everyone else when there’s no unity whatsoever between us behind closed doors. In those moments, divorce felt like it’d be little more than obtaining the piece of paper that acknowledged what was already the day-to-day reality of our relationship.

Before our son, we had no inkling of just how effectively sleep - specifically, unbroken sleep - keeps us sane and sweet. We’ve endured long, long months of sleep deprivation this year, which made everything, especially relating to one another, extremely difficult. We were rarely kind to each other at 3am, often snarling instead of whispering, each treating the other like it was their fault the baby had woken hourly since we’d collapsed in bed at 9pm. Our exhaustion amplified the external, non-baby-related stresses we faced (moving church, miscarrying, beach mission), making them seem like massive waves crashing over and, at times, threatening to drown us. After each of them we’d struggle to the surface only to find ourselves even further apart.

We weren’t prepared – though I’m not sure you can be – for all of the changes a baby inevitably brings. For me, it wasn’t just the practical I-was-studying/working-but-now-I’m-not changes, but the massive identity shift that comes (free!) with motherhood: The overwhelming love, the weight of the responsibility, the new anxieties, the relentlessness, the neededness, the constant feelings of guessing what your baby needs and the worry that you’re often getting it wrong. I can barely understand how all of these (and more) have affected who I am and what I need, let alone explain it to my husband.

It also didn’t help that we’d made a fairly individualistic marriage work pretty well before our son arrived. Our son has strengthened our bond with a needle and thick thread, stitching us much closer together. His sewing has been thorough and incredibly painful, and it’s only now, after months of talking and praying and reading, that we’re beginning to appreciate his handiwork.

Over the next few posts, I plan to reflect on a few of the things – two books and one person – I’ve found most helpful for our marriage so far in this struggle to stay afloat together between here and here. 

Love Letter

Dear Unbroken Sleep,

I love you. I'm sorry I never realised how much until now, and that I've not appreciated you for all these years.

If you come back I promise never to take you for granted again. Please come back.

I really miss you.

B.

The photo's from here.

How Long, O Lord?

Despite my best intentions and early enthusiasm, I have started none of the books I planned to read for this blog. I have, however, spent faaaaar too much time perusing baby books this week thanks to a certain little boy who for the past few months has been waking multiple times each night, purely (it seems) for the joy of having a crumpled parent arrive by his cot-side to say “shhhhhhh” and perhaps even stroke his head once or twice.

In the lead up to my wedding day I voraciously read any marriage book I could get my hands on in the hope that the more information I inhaled, the better a wife I’d make and the more likely our marriage would be to succeed. I’m not sure how much I actually took in – it’s hard to relate to instruction about a situation you’ve never been in (“Why would I ever find that irritating in my spouse??”) – but the authors all seemed to agree that marriage was hard work, and I felt somewhat better prepared for married life than I would have felt jumping in study-free.

I didn’t feel the need to study quite as hard before going into labour; having witnessed a few happy and healthy births, I approached the due date feeling mostly positive about the experience I’d soon be... experiencing. (Getting married was much scarier; I didn’t know what a happy and healthy marriage looked like). I still read a few books and tried to remember as many tips as I could about pressure points and positions, all the while knowing they’d probably leave my mind at the first pangs of labour.

So far so good: Marriage chugging along nicely, baby safely delivered – yay for books! Now to researching what to actually do with my small sprout in order to be the best mother possible!

OK, so I should put him on a routine...no, wait – routines aren’t good for babies under 3 months... no worries, will hold off on that. And I feed him on demand to build up my milk supply? Done. I think I like you, Expert #1! So should I feed from both sides, or just the- sorry, Expert #2? Oh, just feed him every three hours? And express too. Right... And if he's not on your schedule he won’t be sleeping through the night in 17 months’ time? Leave him to cry for how long?? Have you actually had a child, Expert #2? Next book... 

And on it goes. NO ONE seems to agree on exactly how one goes about bringing up baby in his first year of life. And I haven’t even started trying to figure out what to do with a toddler - GAH! If there’s anything more frustrating than having 7 different “experts” tell you 7 conflicting ways to have the perfect baby and feel “calm and confident”, then I’m not sure what it is. (Actually, it’s when people say, “Guess who I saw at the shops the other day!” and then actually expect you to guess.)

So I’ve decided to trust the mothering instincts God has given me, and to stop reading baby books looking for a magic nugget of advice that will forever solve all of our sleep problems. And just to get sleep when I can and keep praying that this crazy phase will end sometime really soon.

I, obsessive researcher and paranoid mum, do solemnly swear that I will not read another book about how to get my baby to sleep better (except for maybe ‘The No Cry Sleep Solution’ by Elizabeth Pantley, I’ve heard that one’s really good).

I’ll start reading the blog books instead. Sometime really soon. After a nap.