KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

Dad Pham wanted to keep his send off small and simple. His only requests were his three Phamlings attend his burial in the grave beside Mum Pham. He wanted a low stress affair after the tumultuous and traumatic experience of losing Mum Pham and arranging her interstate funeral.

The thing is, Dad is dead and gone, but we have to live with our relatives and friends. No way could we do as he asked and not allow his siblings and nieces and nephews, and his Vietnamese community to grieve and pay their respects.

Big Brother Pham jail-breaked Dad out of hospital for a day last year so he could attend a big family event when a cousin from Germany came to visit Brisbane. In a way, it was good for our relatives to see Dad's ailing health. It meant when it was time to share the news of his passing, nobody was shocked like they had been when Mum died.

Of course, because Dad wanted to keep it simple, we instead had a funeral service in Brisbane for his siblings and then a burial service in Melbourne for his friends and Mum's side of the family. All during Tropical Cyclone Alfred. His funeral service was nearly postponed and then our flights to Melbourne would have been cancelled had we flown a day earlier. The name plate on his casket needed fixing, the flights we booked didn't go through but luckily we ended up on alternative flights even if they were at godawful hours, our mourning cloths were left behind by the funeral home's transport team and Little Sissy Pham had to brave flooding roads to meet the funeral director to collect them for the burial ceremony. The Brisbane temple road flooded and had a tree fall across it to boot, so we couldn't attend to make an offering after the funeral. Oh, and of course, the taxi we booked to the airport kept getting cancelled by drivers so Big Brother Pham and Sister-Not-In-Law drove ourselves there. I wrote most of this on the plane to Melbourne so, good news, we made it. ...and, yep, Melbourne is having a heatwave.

Part of me likes to think that Dad watched on as we overcame unexpected challenges, shaking his head in disbelief at how we persevered despite the odds to put on a big funeral and burial, when he'd timed his passing with a force of nature that we could have easily used as an excuse to keep things small and simple. It's not our fault, Dad, that you and Mum raised resilient, hard working, emotionally stable, physically able adults. Your Phamlings keep trying until we get it done!

Randomly my uncle's (dad's youngest brother) shoe broke in Melbourne the night before the burial. Luckily shops are open late in Melbourne so we got him some superglue. It's been a bizarre week. I'll write about the Melbourne burial another time.

Friday night. My brother's name lit up my phone and I hoped it was another trip to hospital but I knew it wasn't because hospital trips are a PhamLe group message. And phone calls are for the words, "Dad's passed."

I held it together long enough to learn the details. Then my voice broke (of course, life being life, I'd just put in my teeth whitening kit so had a lisp during this serious conversation) when I thanked Big Brother Pham for taking good care of Dad these past several years, and in particular the last few years where he was in and out of hospital often.

Dad Pham sold the Phamly home to my brother who built a granny flat at the back of the block. This meant Dad got to spend his final years living with family, seeing his granddaughters grow up, and had dinner with his eldest son most nights.

Thanks to Big Brother Pham, Dad got to live and pass on his own terms. He was at home and chain-smoking to the very end, which is what he'd wanted.

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.

We had grand plans to paint baby's nursery a cute colour or paint a feature wall like in our bedroom but we never got around to it. Instead, we went with quick and easy wall decals. Boyfriend Pham wanted an Australiana-themed nursery for Baby Pham because he'll grow up surrounded by Americanisms in pop culture. It took us about 8 months after Baby was born to decorate his room because we had other things to worry about. Namely, how the hell to parent so baby boy thrives.

Somewhat ironically, we got our Australian-themed wall decals from Spain. DecoDeCoco is a small, independent business that sells their designs on Etsy. Once I stumbled upon the design, I couldn't imagine another decal set in Baby's room. This is perfectly cute. Baby animals that aren't too cartoonish or creepily realistic. And it hasn't given Baby nightmares like the giraffe soft toy a friend gifted. Baby Pham has definitely been a cuddly koala this year so his room decorations are very fitting. 

Since this photo was taken we've installed blockout blinds and replaced his ceiling fan with something newer, smaller and quieter. Seems like 9 months old is when life got easier and we were able to do nice things instead of focussing on the bare minimum. 

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:

Little Sissy Pham told me life with Nephew Pham got easier around the 3-month mark when he started to sleep better and generally be more robust. For us, it was around the 4-month mark.

The first 9 weeks were terrible because Baby Pham had reflux, which meant he couldn't be put down flat on his back to nap or sleep for about an hour after feeding (unless we wanted him to wake himself up vomiting and needing a change and being very upset). There was maybe a 5-minute window where he could comfortably do tummy time each day and I felt so guilty that I didn't put him down as much as guidelines tell us to (I fretted for nothing, Baby Pham was on his tummy almost nonstop at 4 months, and commando crawling like a champ by 5 months - a couple of months before babies usually start covering big distances with intention. He went from being most immobile to the most mobile baby in the few regular playgroups we go to).

Once he outgrew his reflux (he still spat up a lot until around 7 months), Baby Pham started having trouble pooping and would have inconsolable screaming fits before each bowel movement. That lasted a few awful weeks until I learned from our GP that he was getting too much foremilk from my boobs and it was giving him lactose overload and upsetting his belly. Then he went from belly aches before poops to explosive diarrhea that slipped out in sharts and poops - our nappy bill doubled for two months until we introduced solids at 4 months.

Around the 4 month mark when his eating and bowel movements settled, I finally felt like I got the hang of this infant parenting thing. Which is to say, anything bad? You just gotta wait it out. Babies grow so fast by the time you adjust what you're doing you don't know whether the change you made helped or if Baby outgrew the issue.

Boy, did Baby Pham have a poor streak of luck between 5-8 months. It all kicked off with his first round of teething around the 5-month mark. Every week there was something new for the next three months and counting...

Teething two bottom teeth, baby's first virus, windburn dribble rash that turned into eczema, teething top two middle teeth (one took 5 agonising days to cut through), second virus, teething round three, ear infection from swimming lessons (antibiotic ear drops were needed to fix this), third virus, food allergy hives outbreak... I'm bracing myself for what's next.

All of the above triggered overnight sleep issues. Poor bub was so uncomfortable he'd wake up every hour not able to resettle or connect his sleep cycles. Hence, this mum not writing blog entries for half a year. I have never been so exhausted and brain-dead in my life. I'm also the happiest and most fulfilled I've ever been in my life so: worth it. Though, in the sleepless nights and zombie days, what keeps me going is knowing that whatever the current hurdle is, it will pass. I'll do my best to move it along, but most of the time there are no quick fixes so I just have to try my best and wait it out.