Honestly, I still haven’t decided if I will continue to blog or if I’ll give it away after so many years. So, in an effort to put off making a decision just yet I’ve decided to republish some of my older posts starting at the beginning–well almost. Unfortunately when I began blogging I only offered a partial feed some posts are lost to history. This post Blogging Peeves was original on November 11 2007

I’m not the world’s greatest speller and I sure as hell suck when it comes to grammar, but there are a few things that will have me turning away from your blog–actually clicking away, but you know what I mean.

Light text on a dark background. This one is nothing personal; I just can’t read white on black. It does really funky things to my eyes and ends up giving me a headache. That said, if you have a blog that I really want to read I may end up cutting and pasting into Word or Notepad.

No paragraph spaces. As Naughty Daddy says, there’s no law that says “thou must use space between paragraphs” but this one still drives me insane! It’s a simple matter of two carriage returns.
You can’t rely on Word’s default formatting to transfer over to a blog post when you cut and paste. You still need to hit the enter key twice.
Chunks of text written without paragraph space are very difficult to read.

Auto-playing music. I come from the school of thought that says “websites should be seen and not heard”. Seriously, how many times have you used a computer in a place were sound would be inappropriate? Or else been surfing the web, either, using dial up or your speakers to listen to your own music? Waiting for music you don’t want to listen to is a pain in the butt, having it break into your music equally so.

If you want to have music on your site that’s fine, I have no problem with that. But I shouldn’t have to opt out. The bottom line is auto-playing music on your blog or anywhere else is annoying and kind of rude. Please stop.

Honestly, I still haven’t decided if I will continue to blog or if I’ll give it away after so many years. So, in an effort to put off making a decision just yet I’ve decided to republish some of my older posts starting at the beginning–well almost. Unfortunately when I began blogging I only offered a partial feed some posts are lost to history. This post Prematurity on the Today program was original on November 16 2007

Next week on the Today program they’re doing a piece on premature babies. The following is a letter I’ve sent in:

Dear Today,
My daughter Miss E was born prematurely on the 29th of March this year, at 26 week 3 days gestation–for a premmie those three days make a huge difference–she weighed 426 grams. I had preeclampsia which had caused her placenta to fail and resulted in “Intra Uterine Growth Retardation” and her tiny size. No one expected her to survive birth much less cry, but she did. She was born kicking and screaming, scoring an Apgar of 9 at both 1 and 5 minutes.

The trip down NICU lane has been a long, rough one for my little girl lasting five months–seven weeks were spent ventilated and a further seven on CPAP, in her first week her skin was so fragile that it wasn’t uncommon for us to find little tears and sores on her tiny body. During her first weeks she was so unstable that simply changing her nappy caused her heart rate and oxygen saturation levels to drop to a point where she would turn white or blue and it would take almost half an hour for her to recover. For this reason I didn’t get to hold her for the first time until she was six weeks old.

1/3 of all premmies are readmitted to hospital in their first year due to colds and flu.

Like all premmies she has “Chronic Lung Disease” a condition in which damaged lung tissue causes breathing and health problems. This is partially due to her prematurity and partially due to her unavoidable ventilation. Her CLD means that we have to be careful to keep her away from potentially sick people and children under five. Up until recently this has meant no trips out of the house, we didn’t take her anywhere there’s likely to be crowds and if we did venture out we’d take her in her “Bubble”–her pram covered by the rain shield. This may seem strange, but 1/3 of all premmies are readmitted to hospital in their first year due to colds and flu. Many of them end up back on CPAP or worse, being ventilated. We still avoid most places.

For a little girl no one thought would survive she has done remarkably well. Though she’s small (she currently weighs 4.85kg/10lbs 11oz at 7.5 months or 3.5 months corrected) and we have problems with feeding and potential developmental delays down the track we have been incredibly lucky. We still face years of doctors’ visits and the increased possibility of things like autism, developmental delays and behavioral problems things could have been much, much worse. As one of her nurses said recently “she’s about as small as they come and survive”.

I was very excited when I heard Richard say you were doing a piece on premature babies because there’s a huge misconception out there that premmies are just babies who were born a bit early and a bit small but are other wise “normal”. While this is sometimes the case, it is more often not true. Even the ones born “just a little early” (30+ weeks gestation) still face the prospect of brain bleeds and lasting illnesses and disabilities related to their prematurity while others.

Thanks for your time,

Honestly, I still haven’t decided if I will continue to blog or if I’ll give it away after so many years. So, in an effort to put off making a decision just yet I’ve decided to republish some of my older posts starting at the beginning–well almost. Unfortunately when I began blogging I only offered a partial feed some posts are lost to history. This post Baby Angst was original on November 11 2007

The most commonly used phrase in our house “just give me a minute”. It’s usually said in reference to anything Miss E needs because, lets face it, she has a lot of needs and they all need tending to RIGHT THIS MINUTE! No! In a second just wont do! What part of NOW don’t you understands?

We suffer many a screaming fit down here in the Mad House. These are mostly a result of the baby stealing her own pacifier. The baby wanting her bottle but not wanting to be put down while you do it—despite what you may think sweet child o’ mine, I am not Shiva—or the baby loosing her toy, usually because she’s thrown it away. But she’ll also cry when she’s sick of looking at whatever’s in front of her, wants off her belly during tummy time but is far too lazy to roll over despite the fact that she can. Probably the most frustrating is something I’m sure all you parents out there understand. When she screams for no reason in particular and there’s nothing you can do to make it better. Talk about baby angst, I can wait until she’s a teenager…

Last week I was enjoying a nice little break from the internet–mainly because something about our internet broke. When I finally resumed my internet addiction I attempted to add code for the Great Australian Internet Blackout to the footer of my Bad Mummy template and found some new and interesting script.

Turns out while I was gone some pathetic arse hacked my site!

I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to salvage some of my previous posts and comments, but I’m not sure how much and when that will be. Right now I’m really pissed off at myself for not keeping better backups because that would save my bacon. What I’d like to say right now is learn from my stupidity.

To be entirely honest, I’m feeling really discouraged and can’t help but wonder if this isn’t as gooder time as any to call blogging quits.