KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

Chopsticks. I don't hold mine correctly. Neither does Little Sissy Pham. Do you know who holds chopsticks perfectly? Big Brother Pham. You know why? Because he had our parents all to himself for the first four years until I came along and ruined everything. When I rocked up, my parents were chasing after a super active, wild toddler and Mum Pham was pregnant again a couple of months after I was born so I was left to figure chopsticks out myself when I had enough hand coordination to try.

All this is to say that Baby Pham will be an only child. Boyfriend Pham was an only child growing up and loved it, so he's always wanted a kid. Singular. My sister is my best friend and my brother is highly tolerable so I would have like to try for another baby if we had managed to get pregnant when we first started trying five years ago. But now I am an unfit 40 who didn't carry pregnancy well. I couldn't lift or actively play with 2-year-old Nephew Pham for nearly two trimesters and I don't want to miss out on playing with Baby Pham during his peak cute toddler year. I dread what recovery would be like after another pregnancy and delivery for my 40-something body if we could get pregnant again.

So instead of a sibling, I tell myself that Baby Pham will learn to hold chopsticks correctly because we'll have time and attention to teach him. He will be loved, adored and have his doting parents all to himself for many years... until he becomes a grumpy teen and moves to the bedroom at the other end of the house and wants nothing to do with us for a while.

Before we had a baby, we would be asked if we wanted / planned / tried to make babies. Now that we have Baby Pham, a common question is 'Will you have another?' I don't mind this question, it's natural for people who meet my chunky monkey of a baby to want more versions of him with equal or greater chunkiness. He's a very cute baby if I do say so myself.

Little Sissy Pham did not have such a good time with this type of questioning because people she crossed paths with felt entitled to tell her she should have another baby. She has her reasons for only having one baby that's not my business to share. I do wonder if people don't tell me I should have another kid the way they used to, because the cost of living crisis is now a thing, and the financial pressure of raising children is immense. 

Our IVF doctor said we'd ultimately want more children after our first baby so the kids could play with each other. Bless him for helping us make Baby Pham, but he's wrong. We rather delight in playing with Baby Pham - I enjoy learning the world through his eyes, and Boyfriend Pham is always inventing new ways to play with bub. I don't think we'd make a sibling just so we can spend less time with our son. That said, we've kept our frozen embryos so we have the option because it's early days and people say it's too soon to decide either way if we're unsure.

I took Baby Pham to visit the work crew and one of my colleagues asked when I'd gotten engaged. I forgot I'd started wearing a ring on my ring finger because it no longer fit on my middle finger. I told him my fingers got fat after pregnancy and they haven't deflated to the size they used to be. I have no plans to marry.

Boyfriend Pham isn't a huge romantic by any stretch of the imagination. He compliments me by comparing me to food. He's really into carbs: pizza, pita, roti, milk buns, tortillas - if it has any type of flour, he's down. So when he tells me I'm a "fancy loaf" that's about as close to sweet-talk as we get.

Keep this in mind when I tell you that one day when we were in the car, I think he was driving and I was the passenger. He looked over and told me, "You can marry me if you want." Then looked back at the road. What? The audacity! He said it as a joke, but he also would marry me if that's what I wanted. Luckily for both of us, I'm too frugal to get married so that flop of a proposal isn't our proposal story. 

If I want more legal rights then I'd opt for power of attorney over marriage since commitment isn't an issue for us. We've bought a home together, share all our finances, adopted a cowardly little lion (Rei Pham) and we now share our genes with Baby Pham so we're linked for life even if we break up. That's commitment enough for me. It's now an ongoing joke whenever he does something to annoy me, I say I want a divorce and he says I have to marry him first.

If Mum Pham were around I'd marry Boyfriend Pham so Mum could have a big-ass wedding, invite every person who has ever crossed her path, and months of bragging rights. Mum Pham only had a small wedding being a refugee in Germany. I'd have spent tens of thousands of dollars to make her happy. But Mum isn't around now I've found someone worth marrying, and Dad Pham does not give a crap about matrimony so I'll use my money to pay down our mortgage.

So Baby Pham is a bastard. My bastard. If he wants his parents to marry when he's older, then I would consider it. But for now, it's not a priority. 

One thing I wasn't prepared for being a primary carer for Baby Pham was sun-damaged hands. I suppose there are many more important things to talk about when it comes to raising a baby, which is why I was never warned that new mums (and dads) have an equivalent to a Trucker's Arm. This, my friend, is what I call Pram Hands.

Pushing the pram around every day in the sun led my previously healthy, office worker hands to become a dry and crusty dark brown. I learned to pile on the sunscreen pre-walk and then moisturise post-walk to keep my hands from shrivelling up due to prolonged sun exposure. Not a problem I had when I walked with my hands swinging by my sides without a care in the world, before my hands started keeping another being safe and well.

This was a short-lived first world problem for new parent life, because around 8 months old, Baby Pham got over being in the pram so we stopped going for daily walks. These days I only walk to local activities and shops a couple of times a week. Most of the time when I try to take him out in a pram, I end up wearing him in a carrier and the pram is used to push around his nappy bag. I kinda miss my Pram Hands days - the passive exercise of walking was good for my mental and physical health.

I was a wreck the first six weeks with Baby Pham. The anxiety and fear and worry over keeping Baby alive and thriving was crippling. I've never experienced anxiety before. Sure, I've been nervous before big life milestones or changes, but I've never had my nerves shake me to the point where they impacted my decision-making and actions (or inaction). 

Simple things I did before suddenly became overwhelming with the added baby logistics - pram, car seat, carrier, nappies, outfit changes, bibs, bottles. The rational side of me knew millions of parents did this every day. The irrational side of me couldn't see how I could possibly manage it. 

The lack of sleep didn't help, but I don't think that was the main factor. I was full of raging hormones and while I had wild hormones during pregnancy, I only had to care about feeding and sleeping myself then. Postpartum I had a tiny, fragile human whose life literally depended on me being switched on because he hadn't yet learned how to feed and poop and sleep outside the safety of a womb. The pressure of this responsibility crushed me. 

My main outings with Baby were to his medical appointments. Baby was thriving despite his reflux while Mum was struggling with her mental health. 

Our GP told me to get out of the house, the more I do it, the easier it will get. Sounds simple enough, yet felt unachievable to me at the time. The child health nurses gave me a plethora of support services for new parents after I made it to a drop-in clinic without Boyfriend Pham for the first time and burst into tears. Boyfriend Pham had accompanied us all the other times but he was back in the office by then. 

The main message I understood was to "Find your village" and connect with the community. I always thought this meant family and friends but being isolated on the Northside of Brisbane I didn't have my Southside siblings around. Instead, I ended up signing up for a bunch of different services and connected with other new parents in my local area. 

My all-time favourite has been the Pregnancy Counselling Link's Koala Joeys Program which was recommended to me by a Girl's Night friend. Baby Pham and I went religiously every week. The only times we skipped was when one of us (usually both of us) was sick. 

Peach Tree in Nundah was another sanity saver. I went to their parents and bubs yoga until Baby Pham got too active and disruptive to the classes. But while he was barely crawling, it was bliss being able to stretch and relax my tense muscles with yoga while he played on a playmat or lay beside my yoga mat. 

Queensland Health provided a number of services that are opt-in.  I joined a mother's group where they connected a bunch of us who had babies within a month of each other and lived in the general area. I also opted in for their Circle of Security program because Little Sissy Pham recommended it having gone through the learning with her bub. 

All of is lengthy post is to say, find local support programs near you. It helped me get out of the postpartum depression hole I was in, and I've made a few mum friends who I plan to stay in touch with once I'm no longer on parental leave. 

Boyfriend Pham and I aren't married - hence, calling him Boyfriend instead of Husband - and his surname isn't Pham. Even though I love my name - Jade Pham, short, sharp and to the point - there are a bazillion Phams out there and thousands of Jade Phams because 'Ngoc' meaning jade is a very common Vietnamese first name.

When it came to picking a surname for Baby Pham, it was a no-brainer. Boyfriend Pham's surname is so unique he's related to everyone in Australia who has his surname. So: decision made. No patriarchal reasons. If I had a less generic surname, I'd have used mine. If you know a Pham in Australia, chances are I am NOT related to them. The surname was easy.

The first name was a little trickier to pick when we had every name in the whole wide world to choose from. But once I put together a short list of names, we quickly realised we don't like most names. We whittled the list down to two options. One option we'd 'matched' on Baby Name App (a Tinder-style app) where we swiped yes or no to names we liked. It was our only match. The other option was the only name Boyfriend Pham didn't cross off my shortlist.

When people asked about Baby Pham's name before he arrived, we'd tell them we were tossing up between two options (without revealing what the options were). By the time I was in the birthing suite, I was pretty confident I'd ruled out the Tinder-style baby name - I'd only swiped yes because it sounded cute but have you met me? I may make a cute baby with my off-the-chart wide chubby cheeks, but he's very unlikely to grow up to be cutesy. If Boyfriend Pham and I live up to our expectations of ourselves as his parents, Baby Pham will be confident, kind and smart. So we chose a name that's direct and to the point like we are.

So far he's living up to his name. I wish I could share his face with you because he has very stern eyebrows when he's considering things. You'll just have to trust me that our little dumpling gives the People's Eyebrow vibes: