I have decided to have a break from blogging for a while to try and get my head together over writing again. I hope I can report back in future full of writing beans and back on track with my goals! Watch this space!

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I have spent approximately two years believing that if only I worked harder, got more organised etc I would have ample writing time and would be highly productive. My goals for this year were to finish Surviving Kelly Tracey by July, redraft The Sky Pharaohs by November and write the first draft of Surviving Kelly Tracey’s sequel, Mireille, for NaNoWriMo in November. I cheerfully expected with Kiko turning three that he would become much easier to handle. In fact, the opposite has been true. Kiko’s schedule on a good day is as follows:

1. Wake up at 5.30am, wired, talking and singing, unable to stay quiet even when made to stay in his room until “day time” (7am).
2. Talk, question, eat, demand and “do” relentlessly for every second his eyelids are open.
3. If Mammy deigns not to engage him 100% during this time, scream: “MAMMY! TALK!” repeatedly until full attention is his.
4. Fall asleep reluctantly and after much stalling around 8pm.

This is a good day. On a normal day, he wakes up at 2am then 4am and is absolutely wired until 10pm or even midnight. He needs his sleep and so most days he is exhausted but there is usually not even the vaguest chance of him having a nap. I was hoping the Elimination Diet would help with his sleep problems but I’m beginning to see that hyper-alertness is his personality and that cutting out additives and sticking to the sleep routine (which has been in place with many, many refinements since he was born) is not going to help much. Nobody I speak to has any understanding of how intense he is or how relentless his demands for attention are (and this has got nothing to do with Attention Deficit, in his case he seems to have too strong a power of concentration and focus). Obviously, considering his birth issues, it is good that his brain appears to be so, erm, active, although how “normal” he is I do not know. He is an absolute super-diddums but he is not easy to live with.

So into the mix of his sleeplessness and extremely full-on personality, we throw his near constant illness and monthly asthma flare-ups. On top of that, we’ve been moving house for three months amidst huge uncertainty over a complicated life thing that has yet to be resolved.

Is it any wonder I’ve not been productive?

I don’t want to make up excuses but when I do sit down to write, which is at 8pm on a good day, I am so exhausted I can barely string two thoughts together. I’ve been having big problems concentrating and more often than not find myself online researching what I can do about Kiko’s asthma. In a normal year, I would read 50-80 books but this year I have barely been able to finish reading four. I will pick up a book, get halfway and have to give up because I can’t concentrate.

Somehow, despite this, I’ve managed to keep going with redrafting Surviving Kelly Tracey to the extent where I can see the full story in my mind’s eye, the themes, the intricacies of the plot. I know this book has the potential to be very good. I have something like three-quarters of a skyscraper built, the rain’s coming through the roof, but if I keep on building, the end result will be mighty! The trouble is, I won’t be able to do that by July, for all I’ve berated myself for not trying hard enough. I’m only human and even beside the point of not wanting to muck up what I’ve been working on, I just don’t have enough hours in the day where I can sit down and write. I don’t know what the solution to this is going to be except to keep on writing in whatever way I can, to try not to let in the negativity and fears that I have already failed.

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Scene: The train station platform. We’re on our way back home after a busy day. Kiko is sitting in his pram and talking non-stop as usual.

Tannoy Voiceover: The next train to arrive on platform three stops at…. Town Hall, Wynyard, Milson’s Point…

Kiko: (stops talking, ears pricking up, eyes gleaming with delight) Weird? WEIRD?? Train’s stopping at Weird?!

Mammy: Wynyard. The station’s name is Wynyard.

Kiko: (gleefully and deliberately misunderstanding) Weird? Station’s name is Weird?

Mammy: Wynyard.

Kiko: Weird! BWAAAHHHHAAA HHAAAA HAHHHHH!

Mammy: Maybe Wynyard is quite weird.

Kiko: That’s where Knock-Knock Dee-Dee’s going! Weird! That’s Knock-Knock Dee-Dee’s station!

Mammy: That doesn’t surprise me in the least…

As you can see, Young Master Villain has bounced back from last week’s asthma attack which landed him in hospital for two days. I believe this asthma attack wouldn’t have been so serious if I had trusted my instincts rather than following the advice of his paediatrician. We will not be going back to that paediatrician in future, and instead have an appointment with a paediatrician who specialises in asthma as related to allergies. This doctor was recommended to me by the dietitian, she was heavily booked up but was able to fit us in for next week, which I am very, very grateful about. We’re back on the Elimination Diet after having to bend the rules slightly - it turns out hospital food is full of perservatives and colouring, not that I am complaining. Every member of staff we encountered at the hospital was brilliant.

To make life even more exciting, we are moving house on Saturday, the future is looking “interesting”, and I have come to realise I will not make my July deadline for finishing Surviving Kelly Tracey, but that this book may turn out to be… you know, quite good! So all is not lost. More writing angst in my next post.

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We went to mass on Sunday. It was Kiko’s friend’s baptism. This was on the wall of the church:

The elimination diet doesn’t seem to be working. I’m not going to give up on it though.

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I’d just been on the phone to someone on the other side of Australia and we kept getting cut off because of the distance. Kiko was listening eagerly. When I put the phone down he had a question for me.

Kiko: Mammy, why you get cut off?

Mammy: Because the distance was so far. [The caller] was all the way on the other side of Australia.

Kiko: (intense little frown) He was standing on his head?

Mammy: Huh?

Kiko: Coz he’s on the other side of Australia?

Mammy: (remembers some piece of nonsense she told Kiko months ago about the UK rellies being upside-down) Oh, no! That’s in UK. Lolo and Lola are the ones who are standing on their heads. Because they’re on the other side of the world.

Kiko: Are they gonking themselves?

Mammy: Uh, no diddums. The world seems normal wherever you’re living.

Kiko: Why?

Mammy: Uh……..

Man, whatever I say, it comes back to bite me!

Upside-down world map from Wikimedia Commons.

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We went to the paediatrician’s office this morning, to the usual grim scene - the receptionist falling over herself to be rude to me, accusing me of turning up at the wrong time (untrue) then smugly ignoring me. This receptionist used to be really friendly but I guess some kind of “Night Of The Long Knives” has occurred because she has been stripped of the duty of making appointments for the doctor we see. Since the change - which I assume came down to finances - she appears to have decided upon a life mission for herself - to be as nasty and unhelpful to his patients as she can - a questionable policy considering his patients are sick children.

Anyway. I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular from the paediatrician today, but I can see he was trying to be helpful, in a has-no-concept-of-what-I-go-through-on-a-daily-basis sort of way. He rolled his eyes when I mentioned that I was taking Kiko to a dietitian but then went on to admit that some people do have food chemical sensitivities. He also noticed evidence of repeated ear infections in Kiko’s ears, and that his nasal passages are badly swollen, that he’s pale and has dark circles under his eyes, although he didn’t seem to take this particularly seriously. His response to my concerns over Kiko’s monthly asthma attacks, and the fact he’s been taking liquid steroids monthly - was to not give him liquid steroids in future and just give him more ventolin when he’s gasping for breath! When I told him that all the ventolin did was make Kiko extremely hyperactive, he said a different reliever inhaler used to exist that didn’t make kids go high, but that it was out of production because it contained CFC gases. His solution: keep on giving Kiko ventolin and put up with the hyperactivity. He did prescribe Kiko a nasal spray, though. Which I really should get and start using but I’m too depressed to right now.

That grim interlude was followed by Kiko tripping up a grumpy woman in Medicare then chucking the biggest tantrum of all time, which was interspersed by some space cadet from a “private number” (later this transpired to be Bank X) calling me on my mobile for no apparent reason, hanging up after three rings, then leaving a barely intelligible message on my voice mail, which I had to listen to ten times just to get even a rough idea of the return phone number. I phoned Space Cadet only to go through to Bank X’s switchboard, to a supercilious individual, who informed me that the person who called me was “busy” and that if I really must speak to them then I had to call back later and take my chances then. Er…? Who called me? I don’t want anything to do with Bank X. At this juncture in the conversation, I had grappled the Tantrumming One into a cafe, and, after insisting the staff check the ingredients of their bread and being told it didn’t contain sesame, ordered him a sandwich… which arrived with a blinking great sesame seed on it! I am pleased with how I negotiated the cafe situation - Kiko did eventually end up with a sesame-seed-free sandwich. Let’s just say I was not quite so polite to Bank X - and I don’t care.

It was only twelve thirty in the afternoon and I felt like bursting into a rousing rendition of Kiko’s favourite song:

WHAT A BAD DAY! WHAT A BAD SONG!
WHAT A BAD DAY! WHAT A BAD SONG!

(repeat for as many times as it takes to drive everyone around you totally insane)

(Can you tell he composed this number himself?)

Then we went to see the dietitian.

Wow.

The dietitian’s office was in a lovely 1930s-style house. You walked in through the original front door, over a doormat that said WELCOME, into a hall that had been knocked through to the glass conservatory on the back of the building. The back garden was mainly car park but was surrounded by tall tropical trees that cast green light and shadows through the waiting room, which was lovely and warm. New Age music was playing softly, each chair had a cushion, and the walls were covered in illustrations from children’s books. There was a toy box full of old-fashioned Duplo, the kind I had as a kid - a simple thing but the sight of it jolted me out of my foul mood. The receptionists were unfailingly polite, even when Kiko got loud over Green Eggs and Ham, which I’d brought in case of emergency. (”No, keep reading! That’s my favourite book!”) We’d arrived quite early and the dietitian was running somewhat late but the ambiance was so relaxing, I could have happily waited there all day.

And I am so pleased to say that the dietitian took us seriously. Finally, after all these months, I was talking to someone who listened, believed me, and had constructive answers. She really “got” that I’m at breaking point with this, and no, I’m not a neurotic mother who’s inventing illnesses out of boredom or that I lack parenting skills and can’t cope with what I imagine to be hyperactivity, Kiko is constantly ill on top of being an intense, demanding child (not his fault, the poppet, but so, so draining), and I genuinely need solutions so that we can all stop suffering. So both Kiko and I will be going on the elimination diet, starting on Thursday or Friday (depending on how long it takes for me to get organised with food). We’re going on the one developed by the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, which eliminates salicylates, amines and glutamates. I’m going to try and rope the Daddy into it too, although he’ll find it hard to give up his Milo and Maccas! One decision I came to today was that I’m going to start eating meat again, even if it’s only chicken (feeling a bit bleurgh over the fact organic chicken isn’t available here but at least I can buy free-range). The dietitian also recommended Kiko go back on milk for the early stages of the elimination diet, but I will start buying the special A2 stuff.

So despite the predictably depressing start, the day had a hopeful end. I am absolutely exhausted - no excuse not to do a bit of work on chapter six, though!

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I’m on asthma-watch. Fortunately Kiko’s breathing has not deteriorated yet but based on plentiful past experience I know it’s only a matter of time. Still, though, he made me laugh at the dinner table tonight.

Kiko frowns severely at his plate of fried egg and potato wedges, then at Mammy. Yes, following my recent revelations over diet issues, I am officially without a clue on what to feed him.

Kiko: (imperious, negotiating little voice) If I eat all my dinner, can I have a ride on a space rocket?

OK. That’s thinking one bigger than dessert.

And he didn’t eat all his dinner, which is just as well, because he did seriously seem to believe that offering rides on space rockets was within my power. Would NASA would want Monsieur Bossy on board? Don’t answer that…!

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He’s on multivitamins. He’s on probiotics. I’ve cut sulphites, amines, dairy, and anything artificial from his diet. But despite my best efforts, Kiko’s asthma is flaring up again, only 2.5 weeks after the last attack. He’s doing the constant, choking cough, which means the asthma will soon follow. I took him to the doctor this afternoon only to be fed the usual line about children always being ill and how I need to accept the fact, the underlying implication being, oh yeah, he might have asthma, but I’m paranoid for being concerned and deigning to seek medical help for him. I am so sick of this. The constant illness and frequent asthma flare-ups are bad enough without being branded neurotic for trying to understand why. He’s been going through this for fifteen months now, the trend is for the worse, and I’m beginning to doubt if he’ll be well enough to go to school. He’s barely making one day a week at nursery right now. Every time he goes there, I’m hanging by the phone knowing in my heart that he was too ill to go - but if we keep him in the house whenever he’s not well, we would never, ever set foot outside this front door.

Anyway, none of this solves the current immediate concern that his asthma is about to flare up and I can’t get him reliable medical advice. His usual doctor is on holiday at the moment, which leaves me few options. I can:

1. take him back to the walk-in clinic tomorrow and try to see an asthma-aware doctor, the emphasis being on try,
2. travel forty-five minutes on the train to our old doctor, who may or may not have an appointment free - I dread being stuck on a train with Kiko when his asthma is bad but our old doctor’s surgery is next to a big children’s hospital, if he did take a turn for the worse,
3. go to his paediatrician’s office, five minutes’ walk away from here, and see if there is a cancellation, I don’t like to jump the queue and the receptionist will treat me with contempt but this is asthma and I don’t really care what I have to go through in order to get him help,
4. don’t bother with doctors and just give him liquid steroids as soon as his breathing deteriorates - they usually work within hours and help him turn the corner, but then I have the guilt of giving him steroids without medical advice.

I sense I’m going to do a combination of (4) and (3) and when the paediatrician’s receptionist knocks us back, go to the walk-in clinic and wait for the whole day, if need be, to see a decent doctor. What fun.

I have pinned so much on seeing this dietitian, if she turns out to be a dismissive nut I’ll turn into King Kong in her office. Just watch me!

Consider yourself warned, World.

He’s coughing and crying. All in my imagination? I wish.

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In a bid to get to the bottom of Kiko’s constant ear infections and monthly asthma flare-ups, I have been gradually cutting down his dairy intake, with the aim of going milk-free within the next week or so. Despite still having lots of allergic symptoms, such as itchy eyes, coughing and sneezing, he already seems much calmer and more centred in his behaviour - apart from last night when he had a three-hour hyperactive flip-out and couldn’t get to sleep. Looking over his food diary for yesterday, I noticed he had been snacking on food high in amines throughout the day - banana bread, tuna pasta salad, grapes, some chocolate mini Easter Eggs. I stopped giving him bananas last year after noticing a link between him eating them and his asthma getting worse. I didn’t realise until last week, when I read a book on food intolerances, Fed Up by Sue Dengate, that “bananas” themselves aren’t the problem - the amines in them are - and amines are in tons and tons of different kinds of food - almost all kinds being Kiko’s favourite.

I know I always have a mild reaction after eating mushrooms, and more extreme reactions to chocolate (doesn’t stop me eating either, mind you…) and I’m guessing I might be sensitive to amines myself - Kiko does seem to take after me in being hypersensitive to certain chemicals. If I give him decongestants he goes berserk. Once we see the dietitian and go on an elimination diet we should hopefully know more clearly what is going on. In the meantime, wanting to avoid another hyperactive episode on the scale of last night’s one, I have been avoiding giving Kiko food high in amines. This is incredibly difficult considering a) he never stops eating, and b) the foods he loves contain either amines or dairy or both.

So in desperation, at the shops today, I bought a packet of plain rice cakes (bleurgh) and gave His Lordship one. With prim distain, he ate the first then requested another. Halfway through, he had a question for me.

Kiko: (high suspicion, holding up the rice cake) What is this made of, Mammy?

Mammy: Rice. It’s a rice cake.

Kiko: (the indignant, faintly wheedling tones of a cantankerous old man) But I don’t WANT it to be made of rice!

Mammy: (laughing, she really shouldn’t humour him) OK. So what do you want it to be made from?

Kiko: (deadpan) Chocolate.

Well, I did ask! And I can’t help but agree with him…

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I’ve been feeling overwhelmed lately with one thing or another - or rather three things: 1) Kiko, while a diddums, is super, super demanding, mostly in a totally good way yet demanding nonetheless, 2) I have to finish redrafting Surviving Kelly Tracey by July, and 3) we’re in the process of moving house, which is becoming complicated but I won’t go into that. So I was relieved to have a couple of hours on my own this morning while Kiko and his Daddy had Boy Time together.

Poor Kiko is going to go on an elimination diet soon as I suspect his long run of poorliness may be down to an underlying food intolerance. We have an appointment to see a dietitian and will go through the process properly. In the meantime, I’m cutting out milk and sulphites from his diet but making no other changes. Kiko heard me and his Daddy discussing the diet and went unusually quiet for half a day, then came to me in the afternoon and pleaded: “Mammy, don’t cut out my food!” Wah! I promised him that no, we wouldn’t be starving him and also that since it’s Easter, he could go to K-Mart and choose whatever Easter egg he liked. That’s where he and his Daddy went today.

I heard the car draw up when they came back and a tiny voice whooping: “Mammy! Mammy!” as soon as the car door opened. A small tornado whirled through the gate, rattled on the front door and shot up the stairs yelling: “Mammy!” the whole time. I could also hear a jingling noise and when I went out to meet Kiko, he was holding a golden Lindt bunny with a bell around its neck.

Kiko: (beside himself with excitement, holding out the chocolate bunny) Mammy, I got duh EASTER BUNNY!

Mammy: I can see that! He’s so cute, I love his bell. Is this the Easter egg you chose?

Kiko: Yes. Can I eat it now?

Mammy: No, diddums, you have to save it until tomorrow, Easter Sunday.

Kiko: I can’t eat it now?

Mammy: No, it’s for Easter. Do you remember what Easter’s about?

I smile, expecting to hear the word chocolate.

Kiko: It’s when Jesus roll away the stone from the cave and he’s not there anymore.

Mammy: SPEECHLESS

Whoa, so he actually does listen to the answers to the ninety-trillion questions per day he asks. And the obsession with Jesus continues. I feel sorry for the poppet because I’m seriously suspecting that milk intolerance underlies his asthma, which will mean no more chocolate for long, long time. I’m glad he’s got good taste in the stuff, though. I was expecting him to come home with a two-metre tall Bob the Builder egg with a free tool kit and hard hat. I can live with the cute diddle Lindt bunny.

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