5 Reasons why parents should ‘babywear’ & the 5 actual reasons why most parents do.

Parents interested in the theory about carrying their baby whether they’re new or not to the parenting club, will come across the same sort of information.

Without getting into a detailed bibliography, in a kind of readers digest style, it seems to come down to 5 main points why parents should carry their baby;

1) Creating a stronger bond with their child.

2) Carried babies will mature into empathic, selfless people who are completely intune and comfortable with their world.

3) Carried babies can develop a higher degree of emotional intelligence and develop social skills quicker than their ‘left alone’ counterparts.

4) Turns parents into their own ‘baby whisperers’ because parents don’t miss their baby’s cues.

5) Baby is far more settled, which in turn makes parents more confident, which in turn establishes a peaceful harmony of love, trust which in turn will lead to world peace, the end of all wars and life forever more will be a fantasmagorically wonderful Utopia.

OK, the last part of number 5 is a work in progress, but you get my drift? There are some truly wonderful benefits of ‘babywearing’,

Realistically though, I can guarantee you that  in any  home across the world where you find a new family, theory  is the last thing on that new parent’s mind. ‘Babywearing’ might have already been on the family plan in the beautiful bloom state of a first pregnancy, but once baby is born reality sets in.

It happens to be almost comical why most parents will get into ‘babywearing’ anyway.

The 5 real top reasons why parents ‘babywear’ anyway.

FIRST Reason

Babynoia – like paranoia, but at an entirely new level.

There’s no term in the medical encyclopaedia called Babynoia, but to all parents past & present, it is a very real phenomenon. The experience of thinking you hear your baby cry, even though you know baby is asleep, just as you want to do something important.

Take showering? Who hasn’t heard their baby cry the moment you step under the water? Or taking out the rubbish, checking the mailbox or while hanging up the washing.

If showering hasn’t messed with a new parent’s sanity, hanging out the washing will.

Particularly detrimental on the first timer, who may have checked on still sleeping baby a few times already, the ‘abandonment guilt’ side of Babynoia sets in.

Thoughts like ‘I know my baby is sleeping, but what happens if our pet cat/dog/hamster/mongoose lays across baby’s neck’ or ‘Did I leave the iron/heater/left the chips cooking and a fire is starting?’.

Who would have thought in their pre-baby days that hanging out the washing could be so stressful.

Most parents will eventually rationalise that anxiety by either,

* Ignoring it, but still hanging out the washing at Olympic gold medal speed,

* Deny it, what washing?

* Or chill it, by placing baby in the sling, hanging up the washing while swirling around, rocking & possibly singing made-up nursery rhymes about little singlets & cutesy clothes. Singing does amazing things for neighbour relations, if you have a good voice.

A curious thing happens after parents get a handle on the Babynoia, some go ahead and have another baby or few.

 The SECOND reason

Family Management - Why most parents go running to the cupboard to get their baby sling out of storage – more kids!

Life changes when there’s more than one. Parents might find themselves in similar situations like -

* Turn back on newborn & toddler for a split nanosecond only to hear a strange gurgling sound. Find baby in the pram choking on a mouthful of Smarties. Do all manner of panic induced Smartie extractions while toddler says “I was only sharing mummy”. Couple more incidences like that and you don’t need to be Einstein to figure out that new baby is much safer carried under your nose than left anywhere else for the time being.

* Toddlers have the uncanny knack of timing urgent toilet needs just as baby is about to be fed. Always happens.

Mums have to precariously hold baby on the breast with one hand, handle toddler clothing & potty placement with the other.  Or if bottle fed, have bottle wedged under chin. And not forgetting the wash hands war afterwards.

To outsmart toddler toilet timing, savvy parents have their baby already nestled in the sling just before feeding time.

This is what legends in feeding time are made of.  Breastfeeding mums have baby securely attached to the breast supported by the sling, can breeze through potty urgency with both hands free (bottle feeding parents can still have one hand free) like a cool, calm, ‘I have this nailed’ pro.

*Preschool drop off. Some older siblings are absolutely grateful to get a day away from a noisy baby at preschool. They almost can’t get into the school fast enough. I remember seeing one preschooler jump out of the car, race towards the entrance arms flapping in the air, screaming out “FREEDOM!”

OK, He might have been a happy freedom seeking chappy, yet some others, well… have adjustment or jealousy issues.

When this happens, it’s not the most pleasant part of the day for any parent. It can be very, very hard to walk, prise off leg & combat all the pulling & tugging & crying & screaming from an unwilling preschooler with a baby in one arm.  After a few ‘ground hog’ mornings like that, parents can have battle half won with baby in the sling, a few deep breathes & the resolve that this too shall pass.

The THIRD reason.

Vanity!

Chuckle all you like, but when it comes to hiding the post baby jelly belly, nothing hides it like a sling. One of the oldest vanity tricks in the book. To hide a plump belly, use a large tote bag, with new mums, it’s a sling.

By carrying baby in the sling out in public, attention goes straight to the baby and not on the new mum’s lack of Miranda Kerr post baby body.

In all my years of giving birth to my greatest creations, I have only ever seen one woman carrying baby out of hospital while wearing size 8 jeans. I would like to think that she was in fact a proud new aunty carrying baby out to the car for the new parents. There was far too much spring in her step to convince me she gave birth 48 hours ago.

Also, carrying baby, breastfeeding & eating right actually help to fast track baby weight loss anyway. Just not within 48 hours.

The FOURTH reason

Personal space.

And it is very personal. In regards to how much you care if every Tom, Dick, Harry, Nigel, toddler Timmy & dear old Edna touch your baby.

Well meaning people quite readily approach a pram or shopping trolley for  a peek at the most beautiful baby in that parents world, but they also inclined to start pinching baby’s cheeks, toes, while coughing &  spluttering without any thought sometimes.

When parents get to the point where they are sick of producing instant razor sharp talons while snarling out a matching Sabre tooth “STEP AWAY FROM THE BABY” roar, the sling becomes baby & public defender all in one. Almost newsworthy if you think of how a journalist would put the headline…. 

“Sling used as a diplomatic solution in a near hostile stand-off between a parent & a stranger’.

Having baby in a sling, people usually don’t cross the invisible boundary of

adult personal space; no more  unwanted touchy feelies or having to pin a sign on your baby’s chest that reads ‘Please do not touch the baby. Trespassers will be slapped’

The FIFTH reason

Mobility.

‘Have sling & go where no pram can go before you’

Sounds a bit Star Trekky, but all sling parents love this one. Impatient parents are empowered by the speed, often secretly snickering at parents encumbered by burdensome prams as they zoom past. Also on the travelling parents top priority list of must haves, not only is the sling a lightweight baby transporter, can be used as a change pad & a cover on dubious surfaces.

Use a sling, and you won’t be held at the back of the line for an elevator any more, even if you did get there first. How many able bodied people rudely slipping in just as the elevator door opens, does a pram burdened parent have to sneer at before realising a sling is far more practical to manoeuvre in a crowd. Pram rage can only get you so far. Not denying there is a certain amount of satisfaction in ramming ankles, but using a sling, a parent can slalom around the 2 legged ant populations with stealth.

How a baby sling can help you lose baby weight

During all the years I spent carrying my 5 children during their younger years in the sling, I managed to return to my pre pregnancy weight.

I was always on the go. Maybe that was it.
I put it down to our lifestyle, all that healthy eating, out & aboutness, pounding the pavement seeking new clients, running from not so willing prospective clients, chasing the parking- pick up the kids-get to uni deadline and the markets.

All with a baby in the sling, a suitcase and filled to the brim mother's bag.
All that accessory weight I was carrying around.
Other mums were going to the gym.
But I was never far from my size 8 jeans.


Shape? well maybe not so much... the boobs got bigger!

Almost 20 consecutive years of breastfeeding probably added to their size, but really, I have my mother's & grandmother's genetics to thank for that....Good on ya Mum!

When I inherited the nickname of Dolly Parton, I cut off my long blonde hair and dyed the last little bit red.
The strangest thing happened - my husband didn't notice that 12 inches of hair was missing, or that it was a completely different colour, but he did ask, "Are you wearing a new bra honey?"
He never did live that one down.

As much as no one, least of all my appreciative hubby, complains about the size of my voluptuous set of kahoonas, except for me, I'm proud of them & my tiger stripes (stretch marks) of courage too.
They've done some awesome work, truly awesome work.

Just as the kids are growing older, my body parts are sagging south too.

Whilst I've discovered the strangulating joys of shapewear, my size 8 jeans have been packed away.
For some time.

Its been a few years since I carried any of the kids around in the sling for hours on end daily.
Kids have this rather annoyingly bad habit of growing up.

Though I walk every morning, getting back before the family wakes up, which gives me my daily  pep boost, so that I can jiggy jig the Harlem Shake to an audience of none when making the families lunches in the kitchen.
But it hasn't stopped the weight from sneaking on like an uninvited party quest; no one likes those.

I know that going to the gym is like Brussels Sprouts; both are good for me
I don't like either, but I was doing both.
Until I had an accident that damaged my shoulder.

The type of accident you have when you stand on your husband's desk to install a new curtain rail.

An Ikea desk that hubby put together with a 'Mweh I don't need to connect the stabliser bar, it'll be right' after thought.
.
My life flashed before my eyes as the 2 computer monitors, printers, hard drives & all his other shiz coming crashing down on top of me at a furiously fast speed.
One chipped tooth, more bruises than Muhammed Ali after a few rounds and a left arm dangling uselessly later, I still managed to right hand text him 'You didn't put on the f%$King stabliser bar!"

My hubby had an idea once to make T-shirts that read "I can do anything, I survived Ikea instructions"
I'll add to that "I didn't survive my husband's Ikea project"

There went the daily gym visits, and much to my family's relief so did the awful  Brussels Sprout pie.

I had plenty of time to fill with extra bread, a Choc Top or few, a lot of sitting around and not much moving.

Summer hit and my size 12 shorts wouldn't do up.
I used up 2 boxes of tissues that morning.
My husband paled at every sob.

After 4 weeks of dieting, some weight started to shift, but not a lot.
I needed to do a type of exercise that my still recovering shoulder could handle.

Enter a personal trainer trainee from down the road who was dying to get in some experience & the hospital physiotherapist, they have me sorted.
But the weight wasn't showing much interest in budging, until I told the PT about my skinny years with the babes in the sling.

Her eyes struck open so wide I thought they'd pop.
"Of course, of course! the oldest weight loss trick in the book! carry the extra weight. The body works harder, burns more calories without the extra stress"

Since the beginning of February, PT has had me carrying a 10 kilo bag of potatoes in one of our discarded demo slings on my daily morning walks.

There's not a morning that goes past that I fear that one of the other regular walkers will want to stop to look at my 'baby'.
Its an odd thought I know, but there you have it.

But I did lose 7 kilos during February by using this technique, more than triple what I was losing before. My size 10 skinny jeans are little lose this morning, so I'm dancing the happy dance.
Actually I'm pirouetting between paragraphs.

Having spoken to PT further about this & our local Weight Watcher's team leader. By carrying around extra weight such as a baby/toddler in a sling or strapping on exercise weights and walking for at least 40- 45 minutes daily, will help you lose weight.
As long as your diet is a healthy eating one of course.

So get out & about, like our couple in the photo, or use the sling at home for the daily things that you do!

I'm off to find the trunk that holds my old favourite size 8 jeans.
I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be in the attic, and I haven't been in the attic since I watched The Grudge.......
Then again, there's always retail therapy to help with that!

Let not Insomnia spoil a carefully planned Easter Egg Hunt

People who know me on a personal level, also know that I'm a raving insomniac.

Normally it doesn't interfere with my normal day to day stuff, except for the usual battiness, but I never knew it would make me miss out on one the most yearly treasured events a mother can partake in..... The Annual Chocfest! AKA the Easter Egg hunt.

*Wake @ 2.20am, roll around, toss & turn.

*Try to wake hubby - nothing happening there.

*Make Tea - successfully turn on Mac.

*Facebook says good morning.

*Finish 5 games on Words with Friends

Adzing isn't a real word, but it's a cool scrabble word - score 65 points.

*Stroll around the front yard. Finish lukewarm tea.

*Confuse the bejeesus out of the cat - move food bowl 2 feet to the left.

*Still dark - think about the places to put the little Easter eggs.

*Must remember to count hidden eggs - found some under a fern last month. Could have been there from last year or even the year before. 

*Still in good condition. Won't tell you if I ate them or not.

*FB friend suggest I read her new blog. She’s excited.

Read her blog. It had 2 lines – exhilarating stuff potentially, maybe.

Any story that starts with “This is my story so far. Share the journey with me as I take you………” has the mega movie deal potential attached to it.

*Sit on front porch again with 2^nd cup of tea- cat still looking for its food bowl.

*Discover possible money making venture - lady made millions on a book on how to lose weight by walking around her clothesline. Hmm, looks at own body, this could work.

Walk down path, across the front, up the driveway, across the porch - walk circuit 10 times - gets bored. Maybe not.

*Navigates house in complete darkness to retrieve hidden chocfest stash from bedroom -extra bodies on the couch - asleep. Envious.

*Is it light outside yet - no.

*Has argument with front door - finally closes.

*Sits down at desk, peruse all the funny parenting FB pages - laughs silently at copious posts.

*Front door opens again.....

***Sigh***

*Ignores door.

*Don super fantasmagorical earphones and let the poignant dulcet tones of Pete Murray caress my ears while losing as many Solitaire games I care to.

*Draft comes through front door to tap me on the shoulder as if to say “Hi remember me”

*Brrrrrr.

*Scoop up bag of little Easter eggs and torch.

*Place all 127 chocolate delights around the entire yard – comes inside wearing more cobwebs than intended.

*Sneak into couple of children’s rooms, place their personal Easter eggs on their pillow – older daughter rolls over, egg rolls down and conks her in the head. Exit quickly with the silent stealth of my orange octopus shoes (a must have for all insomniacs)

*Insomnia is a lonely time and I intend to keep it that way.

*6.30am – almost light

*3^rd cup of tea and a spot of predawn gardening.

*Succumb to a breakfast entrée of a lone solitary egg that was whispering “eat me, eat me”

*Is the total 126 eggs or 125 now?

*Cat has finally found his food bowl. Not the smartest feline in the street.

*Come inside – check FB again, just like my mind, it’s only half loading.

**Sigh**

*Feel something crawl on my back – eek!

*Do the hot potato clothes evacuation – almost naked.

Finds curled up dried leaf on floor - movement in corner of eye.

*Spots Little Miss Mischief standing at the entrance of the office – holding an Easter Bunny in one hand and a Judy Moody & the Not So Bummer Summer DVD in the other. Her mouth is wide open and her jaw is on the ground.

UM, um…..

“Watch this with me, I’ll make the tea” Her eyes have Oscar worthy drama.

*I let her - she makes awesome tea. 

*Snuggle up on couch together, watch the opening credits………..

*Eyes open to see 3 faces peering down at me over the back of the couch.

“She’s alive” Must be a shock to them.

*Look out the glass door to see beautiful warm sunshine - the clock is lying saying it is 12.30pm.

                                     Shite, shite, shite!

The Easter Egg hunt! - 

*Image appears - all the eggs melted into a mush that only the ants would adore.

“Don’t worry” says hubby triumphantly, “All ready been done”

*Little Miss Mischief holds up overused hot pink Barbie Easter Egg pail.

*Both have unbelievable cheesy grins.

“Wha……..t, it’s…… already……. done” whimpering meekly.

*A moment of epic mother disappointment; I have never missed an Easter Egg hunt in all of my 27 years of parenting.

*It’s my right of passage. I laid the eggs. I fought dangerous cobwebs. I tripped over backyard junk. I travelled bravely through the long dark fern alley yielding only a torch for guidance and security.

Fern alley - beautiful by day, terrifyingly spooky at both midnight and at 4am.

*Sudden onset of childcare mother syndrome – Crestfallen that someone else witnessed my child’s first steps.

*Little Miss Mischief disappears into the backyard – glimpse secret wink to dad.

*In the kitchen, Teenage Troll sets a new world record – How many eggs can fit in his mouth. Ghastly evidence on chin as his friend falls over from hysterical laughter.

*The coffee machine is blurring away competing with the sound of Missy Zip’s mobile phone.

*A playstation war game is trumpeting a cacophony of battles cries from The Chefs bedroom.

*The TV is blaring.

*The phone is ringing.

And I slept through all of that for the last 5.5 hours!

*Little Miss Mischief returns- drags me outside.

“Don’t cry mum” - I wasn’t crying.

*5 little golden eggs in my hand later – my mouth smiles but my stomach says, oh no!

I hope everyone has a had a wonderful & entertaining Easter as we did.

P.S.

Insomnia is not taking credit as it kept me awake, pointing the blame to Sleep instead. Sleep says "Hey, don't blame me, its not my fault you kept me waiting"

all photos gratefully sourced from Google images, because I'm a lousy photographer and cartoonist. 

How to start Smoking and Survive living in a Haunted house.

 

This is a true ghost story, but it is also a story of how we readily change our ethics to suit a situation and the excuses we make for it, because all addictions are crutches.

Like a lot of people from my generation, I started smoking in high school. It was cool to hang with the gang just outside the school gates, smoking cigarettes, especially those pilfered from an unattended parent pack.

Jump a generation into the future and it’s just not cool to smoke any more, period. The last handful of a soon to be extinct social group, smokers have descended to Leper status.

I gave up when I fell pregnant with my first child, completely out of duty. It never entered my head that one day in the future I would smoke once again. Completely impossible-Nada, never, no way!

18 years later, a day after New Year’s Eve, not long after my beloved father died, sitting somewhat lonely on the back step outside the most haunted house I would ever live in, I struck up a cigarette.

I had chosen a Winfield Blue from the array of packets before me. 6 of my friends had the night before held true to their resolutions and handed me their packets of unused cigarettes to dispose of. I was the most convicted non-smoker they knew. I never realised how much of a turncoat I truly was.

Really, all I wanted was an excuse not to go inside. I never believed in smoking indoors, in cars etc.

If I was smoking, I couldn’t go inside could I?

The light was fading, my head was spinning; deep breaths in and long breaths out, in between the coughing & spluttering, the bile of acid rose in my stomach to greet my windpipe with a punch. Ah! Still it was heaven, albeit, a long forgotten one.

The kids were at their dad’s for the weekend, and I alone except for the ‘others’, no one would know of my naughtiness. I had enough stash to keep me outside all night. 

I must have fallen asleep at some time.

As the first rays of light hit my face and my neck was stiff from leaning against the back door, I heard a crunching munching noise in front of me. One sticky eye opens to a rather large bull chomping on my marigolds a couple of metres away. He was staring right at me.

At that moment I was more scared of this massive beast than I was of the ghostly squatters that occupied the house with us.

I wasn’t to know that Henry, the neighbour’s bull, was rather tame - I was a city girl recently turned country.

I slid up the door ever so slowly, holding panic at bay, till I reached the handle and fell backwards into the house, kicking the door shut with my foot as I lay on the ground. My stash of cigarettes left behind on the doorstep. Damn!

A phone call revealed that my neighbour wasn’t home. Henry thought my backyard was a feast and wasn’t willing to leave anytime soon. If I hadn’t been smoking I would have cried at the devastation of the lost flowers, ripped out grass and the huge pats of steaming dung, but I was more concerned on how to get my precious smokes. 

No amount of shooing, booing and banging saucepan lids together from the sanctuary of the kitchen window would get Henry to move back to the paddocks.

Great, I have only been smoking for a few hours & I am already going through the anxiety of withdrawal.

An hour later as Henry finally turned his head from the direction of the back door step, I opened the door with slow motion stealth, crept down the step, bundled up the packets in my arms and started to crawl backwards keeping an eye on Henry at all times. I raced out to the front veranda and lit up, enjoying it like a treasure hunter finally finding his gold. There was even a euphoric high five jump in the air.

Dry mouthed, I hungered for a cup of tea, but it was such an enterprise to make one. The ‘others’ & I would play on/off tag over & over with the kettle, every time I switched it on, they switched it off.

The first time it happened I thought it was the kettle, so I purchased a new one. It took 4 days after moving in to realise it wasn’t a case of a faulty kettle. No wonder the house had been on the market for over 2 years, empty & hastily abandoned by its previous short- term owners.

Most days I remembered to put a saucepan of water on the stove to boil, which it seemed they didn’t have any control over. This particular morning I turned the kettle on. 2 seconds later it switched itself off. Sigh.

Smokers have a higher level of Serotonin, which induces more Dutch courage than a non-smoker, which is why, when this time the kettle clicked itself off, I let out a string of aggressive threats to my ethereal residents, frightening them into absolute silence & inactivity for 2 days, beginning with the kettle switching back on immediately!

Well! That’s more like it.

Mind you though, the threats only worked the one time. If I was thinking that screaming threats of laying rock salt on the floors and drenching the house in holy water would permanently evict the house of its ghostly tenants, I was sadly mistaken.

Ghosts are not like children; you can’t bluff them as easily.

From that day onwards, now that I had renewed my secret love affair with cigarettes again, I really wanted all the kids in bed by 8.30 so that I could have as much time as possible to spend with my little white cancer sticks. My days tragically changed to counting the hours down till we could meet again.

Smoking seemed to inject a shot of tenacious, enduring courage.

I no longer felt the fear of leaving the kids in my bedroom where we now all slept, shivering with angst as the footsteps of the unseen could be heard along the hallway, or the echoes of long ago conversations filtering through the house, or even when the hairy-backed man with woeful vocals took the liberty of sharing a shower with my 5 year old son.

So many nights I would hear his ear piercing scream “MUM HE’S IN THE SHOWER AGAIN” meant that I would have to stub out my half used cigarette, with a long drawn in breath in frustration. Once I called back having only just lit my smoke “Just close your eyes, I’ll be there in a minute!”

7.5 minutes later I walked into the bathroom finding my little son cowering in the corner sobbing under his wet towel. I could feel with horrible guilt the words ‘worlds worst mum’ being tattooed on my forehead with red-hot flames.

I certainly had my priorities wrong. From then on, I dutifully waited with him in the shower & until he had actually fallen asleep each night before sneaking off to my smoky tryst.

For the 6 months that we lived on the isolated property before I started to smoke again, I would have never, ever set foot outside once it became dark, and never near the granny flat where I had set up my fledgling business. Each afternoon I would lock the door as I walked towards the house and padlock the wrought iron gate heralding it’s entrance. Each night without fail we would hear footsteps stomping down the path, the gate squeak open and the banging of the granny flat door. Some nights, an eerie unexplainable blue light could be seen emanating from inside the workshop.

That area was also the only place that I could smoke undetected. Hiding my contraband under an upturned pot next to the house, I was well within the shadows to have a smoke or few each evening. The first few times, I had my back to the wall, my eyes darting sideways with a certain amount of apprehension, it seemed our ‘granny flat’ residents didn’t like the smell of smoke, as it was a very long time before we heard the nightly ritual again.

I wondered if I should do the same for the house. The risk of being caught smoking by the kids? Hmm, no way!  

Each weekend as the kids left to stay with their father, I moved my smoking spot to the back door step and late into the night, inside the house. The feral animals that moved around the peripheral edge of the bush scrub in the daytime would creep closer to the house late at night. A timid, petite woman alone was fair game.

Many a night I lay awake listening to the animals rummaging outside the house or the ghosts doing their own thing or dealing with the nocturnal animal problem themselves.

I swear one night, alone in the house shivering with terror under my blankets listening to what seemed to be a feral dog clawing at the back door, one of the male ghosts shouted out “Get out of here you f***ing mangy dog!” and possibly the sound of a gun shot thereafter. I sat bolt upright, not at all sure what I heard was real or not. I must have smoked the entire packet before dawn, but at least the house was ‘quiet’ for the remainder.

My weekends became a smoky sleepless affair.

There would come a time when the kids would find out. The stale ashtray smell hovering around my persona should have betrayed me much earlier or maybe the kids were in denial, that their mum was less than perfect.

One night, squished between 2 sleeping beauties, a snoring buffoon and a fecund farting arse, I just couldn’t sleep out of sheer discomfort. Leaving the jungle of 4 bodies behind, I headed for the kitchen.

On my way I passed a watery apparition in the hall. I took one look at it and snarled “Not now!”

The kitchen light was on, even though I had turned it off before bed, but that was nothing unusual. 

Down in one of the abandoned bedrooms I could hear a stereo softly playing, even though it wasn’t plugged in, but that was nothing unusual either. 

I chuckled when I recognised the tune “Keep on Moving” by a boy band called Five. I even found myself singing along.

I perched myself up on the bench, lit a smoke while waiting for the saucepan of water to boil when the shower in my bedroom ensuite started and the hairy backed man with the woeful vocals commenced his dreadful repertoire. 

All 4 kids came running out faster than superman, one after the other. Huey, Dewey, Louie & Moe stood before me with mouths agape, and I, mid puff. Oh crap, sprung.

Arguments arose from all 4 mouths that turned into a cacophony of sound, what no one realised was that the wannabe opera singer and the boy band down the other end of the house had completely stopped.

It took a great deal of convincing my offspring that by me smoking bought a few precious hours of peace each night. I was almost going to mention that by my sacrifice to a life of smoking, I would be protecting my darling loved ones from the perils of a supernatural force. I thought that might be going a little too far.

It wasn’t until I mentioned the very obvious fact that in ghost movies, it’s only the people that don’t have a smoke in their hands that get attacked. You never see anyone puffing away get done over by a ghost. The fact that considering our current living arrangement, our poverty meant we didn’t have a TV and even if we did, I wouldn’t allow them to watch horror ghost movies anyway, they logically believed me.

It took sensible daughter to question what was funding my vice? The then $8.95 packet of cigarettes would buy milk & bread for us for the week. We had a strict budget, I cringed, um, I had scrimped on other things?

The funny thing about addictions is that no matter how impoverished one is, there is always money to buy the addictive substance. I still can’t figure out how I managed it, being a single mum of 4 kids, a uni student and making only meagre portions of money to sustain us all, yet we survived.

We had everything money couldn’t buy – Poverty, Love, and a uniquely large collection of ghosts.

The locals, as they had done with all the previous tenants, laid down their bets as to how long we would stay. After a year they were left scratching their heads “Strewth! No one has lasted this long!”

As long as there wasn’t any strange red slime dripping down the walls, we were staying put.

We never indulged the locals how many times we packed the car ready to leave. The times we all sat quietly listening to ghostly conversations, ghostly sweet laughter of a once happy child, sharing showers with apparitions, how the lights would brutally flicker for long agonising moments. The list of so many other disturbing occurrences was so long it would take a month of blue Monday’s to read through.

The strange thing was when I met my future husband; whenever he visited the house it was completely quiet. He never once experienced anything, zip, zilch, nix!

“Are you sure this house is haunted?” questioning our experiences.

I asked him to move in.

The moment his belongings arrived the haunting completely ceased to exist.

The next 3 years, life became normal until our baby came along. Within the month after her birth the ghostly occupants became active again or returned home, even hubby’s dog Pollie experienced the bathroom ghost. Never saw the dog move so fast out of the house with her tail between her legs.

I’m not sure whether it was because we had both stopped smoking due to the baby, but hubby seriously suggested we move.

“I don’t know if the dog can take it much longer” cradling the whimpering large dog in his arms. I’m glad he didn’t call her Lionheart or something similar, which would have been rather embarrassing.

With that we packed up the family and moved to normality.

Out of revenge I chose the same realtor to act as leasing agent. She suggested a few times if I had considered using a new agent down the road. Letting her know with a large Cheshire smile, I had been so impressed with her previous service I couldn't think to use anyone else, she paled.

Filling out the forms, she automatically ticked non-smoking tenants. “Darling” I intervened, “I actually prefer smokers. The survival rate is higher” 

She gulped.

Postscript.

All families go through tough times at one stage or another. I'm quite sure just like my own family, there are many stories to tell, as diverse & as varied as there are people that walk this wonderful planet.

The most important relationships we have stem from the families we create. Families are the people that we gather around us, people that we share our lives with, related or not. Families are our real crutches in life, once that is acknowledged any addiction can be overcome.

Enjoy!

Another blog written smoke free by a Haunted House Survivor. All photo's have been gratefully sourced from Google Images