Well hello there!

Goodness me, I've just remembered I had this blog, thanks to Facebook and it's 'on this day' feature. Just when I'm finally getting back into my baking!

I've found an app that I am quite in love with, feel free to check out my recipe box on copy me that. I may just revive this blog to post about my successes and failures, my memory isn't what it used to be!

http://www.copymethat.com/recipebox/bec-lapham/473690/

Have fun baking!

Bec

Fixed palate, broken relationship...

Master J is now almost 2 weeks post palate repair. These past 2 weeks have been so unbelievably hard.  Seeing your baby in a morphine induced haze is heart breaking. Mr J fights sleep SO hard even morphine couldnt knock him out.  A week in hospital with 2-4hrs sleep a night - not exactly a 5 star vacation. The care we received was second to none, medically speaking everything was deemed a success, now we have to wait a few weeks to see how it heals, and fingers crossed it will be perfect, and we wont have to go back for more surgery.

The hardest part of this ordeal has been not being able to breastfeed.  For the past 5 months he has been exclusively breastfed. It is his only comfort, and we worked so hard to get it happening.  Now it has been ripped away, for a month. 2 weeks to go. Without our breastfeeding relations hip I feel completely disconnected from him, and completely irrelevant. He feels the same. He doesnt want me, he doesnt need me, and he gets no comfort from me. I have absolutely no idea how to be his mother right now. When he cries, which is often, i feel like all i can do is pass him over to Daddy L and walk away. I cant get him to sleep, it's a struggle to get him to take a bottle, i feel completely useless. He looks at me as if to say 'why, why won't you just feed me, hold me close and let me feed?' I would if I was allowed, in a heartbeat. I can't even just hold him close and snuggle because he gets stressed out and claws at my chest. I am living in fear that in 2 weeks time he won't go back to the breast, and I don't know what I'd do then. I hate not having a relationship with him, but we can't do anything about it. Hopefully our relationship can be mended, even tho it doesn't feel at will ever have a relationship again. I expected things to be tough post op, but this is so much worse than I expected.

On a positive note, physically J is going really well, feeding and finally sleeping. He still wants to be held all the time, which is perfectly fine, but he needs me to be standing whilst I hold him. My entire body aches from standing around 18hrs a day for a week. I'm exhausted all round really.

My frame of mind, and time with my family gave me a wake up call. Social media - Facebook - was too big a part of my life. Walking around the ward at 4am checking Facebook. Why?? What was I getting out of it? As things happened with J I was composing status updates, and updates for my groups in, in my head. I should have been focused on what was happening, not how I would share it. I was failing my son all round. This was something i could do something about. So i deactivated my Facebook. No dramatic 'I'm leaving Facebook' announcements, i just left. People had my number if they wanted me. This was a week ago. And it feels good. I don't feel as judged - by myself or others. I don't feel like I have to live up to anybody else. I'll be back, but hopefully in a more limited capacity.

Until then, thank you to everyone for their well wishes, and for thinking of us, it really does mean a lot.
Xxx

Christmas... the season to be...a sheep?

I cop a lot of flack for not being 'into' Xmas. I get called a grinch, a spoil sport, and get scoffed at.  How can one not be into Xmas you ask?  Easy.

Why do we celebrate Xmas? Well that depends on your belief system.  If you are Christian you probably toe the party line and parrot that Xmas is about the birth of Jesus, despite evidence to the fact that this is not a 'fact' (dont get me started on the greatest selling fictional story of all time). You probably havent looked at why December 25 was chosen. Yes, chosen. It had nothing to do with the bible and everything to do with assimilating with existing Pagan holiday of Saturnalia in 4CE, and telling Pagans they could continue their Saturnalia traditions, and the final day of Saturnalia was declared Jesus Birthday in order to add a 'Christian' aspect to the Pagan tradition. In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been. The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

So, do I believe in the story of Jesus and feel the need to celebrate a fictitious birth? No! Do I identify as Pagan and feel the need to celebrate Saturnalia? No! So we can safely say there is no religious reason for me to treat the day any differently to any other day.

Oh but what about the children, wont someone please think of the children, I hear you cry. If we look at the REAL history of Christmas, it is not a day that we would want to celebrate at all!

·        Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly.  For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.

·       Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.”  It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.

·        Christmas is a lie.  There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25^th.

·        December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.

·        Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.

'Santa Claus' or Saint Nick was was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra.  He died in 345 CE on December 6^th.  He was only named a saint in the 19^th century. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament.  The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil” who sentenced Jesus to death. 

In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy.  There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts.  The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult.  Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

 The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans.  These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw.  Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn.  When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25^th instead of December 6^th.

In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow andRip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History.  The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…”  Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus.  From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly.  Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock.  Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world.  All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa.  Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face.  The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red.  And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

So does any of this make me more inclined to think December 25 is different to any other day?  You guessed it, NOPE!  All this hubub and fuss over one day. Forcing people to feel like they have to socialise with people they wouldnt otherwise be around, awkward family get togethers and then the fighting over Christmas customs, the over indulging of food, spending copious amounts of money on things you probably dont need.  I just dont see the point.  There is absolutely NO reason for me to 'celebrate' December 25!  I honestly see no reason to buy into any of the Christmas propaganda.  But hey, if you want to lie to your kids about a fat man who breaks and enters, encourage your kids to sit on a strangers lap and take presents/lollies from them go for it. Nothing to do with me! But for me, I have no desire to perpetuate the theatrics.