Sausage Archives - Mum's the Word

In just twelve short days Sausage, my tiny ginger bundle of happiness and wild imagination, will be turning nine. I genuinely cannot get my head around the fact that I’ve been a mother for NINE whole years, and I’m so proud of the amazing little human she’s become. On the down-side, Husband and I have discovered that shopping for an almost-nine year old is so much harder than it was to shop for an 8-year old. She’s less interested in toys and more interested in Dr. Martens and ear piercings (she’s just had her second lobe piercing and now is basically the coolest kid in her whole school!).

We’ve been wracking our brains about what to buy for her and, aside from consulting BannerExperts for her birthday banner, have come up with a few suggestions so far, and I thought I’d share a few of them with you here:

Converse

She’s already got a leather black-on-black pair which she wears as school shoes, as well as a silver pair, but she’s definitely her mother’s daughter in her love of Converse so I reckon another pair in a super colour or print would go down really well. Clothes become a much more viable gift when they’re this age, so this is definitely on the list for this year.

Perfume

Okay, so this is much a present for me as it is for Sausage – she’s suddenly developed a bit of a fascination with my perfume collection, which is fine, but my bottles aren’t cheap and hey seem to be running out FAR too quickly! Vivienne Westwood make scents which smell incredible but are also a little bit edgy – she’s quite into her punky stuff at the moment, so a perfume made by the woman to styled the Sex Pistols will definitely go down well!

Jewellery

Sausage is a major accessoriser; no outfit is complete for her without co-ordinating earrings, a few bracelets and a necklace, not to mention the hair bows! She’s got such a gorgeous, unique style that I’m always in awe of, and Husband and I love encouraging her individuality. As I mentioned above, she’s now got her ears pierced twice on each lobe so the potential for new earrings has doubled! She’s already got her eye on some which are specific for double piercings, which a little chain between the two and they definitely fit her new punky look.

Roller Skates

She’s not massively into toys anymore but one thing that she has mentioned wanting is a pair of roller skates. Full disclosure: I HATE the idea of roller skates!! For me, they’re a one-way ticket to fractured wrists and bruised coccyges, but I can’t wrap her up in cotton wool forever…as much as I’d love to!

A Keyboard

She’s mentioned wanting to learn an instrument for a while now and although we don’t have space in our house for a full piano, we DO have room for a decent electric keyboard. She already owns a little one that she got a few Christmases ago, but that’s more of a toy, so we want to get her one with a full set of keys so that she can learn to play properly. It’ll fit in our dining room nicely with a proper stand and a stool.

Do you have a nine year old? What did they want for their birthday? Leave me a comment below!

I have been sitting here for the last hour, trying to write a post about Sausage and how she came into the world. And I think I have realised, that after two and quarter years, I’m still not ready to do it.

The words are flowing out of me readily, but somehow, it feels as if no words can ever do justice to how awful a situation it was. It’s taken a really long time for Husband and I to feel even vaguely normal, but writing about it has made me realise that I am still so angry. I’m angry with the Doctors who were supposed to be there, and weren’t. I’m angry with the crappy bureaucratic system which dictates the way our medical system works. But mostly I’m still angry with myself for ever walking out of that hospital and leaving Sausage there.

After a couple of days, I was allowed to go home, but Sausage still needed to be cared for in the NICU unit. The doctors told me that home was the best place for me, so I left. Grudgingly.

I can tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that nothing can prepare you for the pain of going home and leaving your newborn baby in the hospital. Antenatal classes prepare you for a lot of things, but they never tell you that there is a possibility that you may go home empty-handed, even if it is just for a while.

Sausage was in the NICU for 8 days and made an incredible recovery. To this day, I am in total awe of her strength, her resilience, her sheer force of will. She inspires me in so many ways. It’s because of her that I am now studying for a degree, hoping that I can educate myself enough that I may pass on the knowledge I have to others, so that they never have to feel the way we did when it all went wrong. I’m studying for a BSc in Psychology, and I aim to use that, and my own experiences, to help other families who’ve been traumatised by a bad birth, and hope beyond everything that I can turn around the trauma we felt and make something positive out of it.

And so I would like, here and now, to call Yoda out on his assertion that anger leads to the Dark Side. Because, if you take that anger and build on it, don’t smother it and expect it to die on its own, it can turn to into something positive, something that brings help and hope to others. For Sausage’s sake, that it what I plan to do with mine.

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Sausage’s Ninth Birthday Gift Guide

Yoda was wrong.