Photo by Aron Mifsud Bonnici

Trapped somewhere between life and death, a young woman seeks freedom and peace while she tries to remember what drove her to kill herself.

Eva Hamilton remembers wanting to die, and the relief she felt as she fell to her death, but not what drove her to it. Alone and filled with regret, she exists now in her own private purgatory, destined to dwell amongst the living, never able to communicate with them.

When Eva meets Timothy, she hopes she has found someone who can help her uncover the secret of why they are forced to remain amongst the living, and if there is any escape. But Timothy is far more accepting of his fate, and seems content to ponder, rather than solve, the riddle of their existence. Torn between the warmth of Timothy’s friendship, and the aching desire to find a way out, Eva must choose between comfort and darkness.

But maybe there is a third option; a chance meeting with two grieving orphans has Eva thinking there may be a purpose for her after all.

Back in 2009 I awoke one morning from a dream that I had started writing a novel about a girl called Eva. The name of the book in the dream is way too embarrassing to share with you, but it did plant the seed of an idea in my mind.

I have been writing in one form or another since I was five or so years old. I used to write little books, complete with (terrible) illustrations, staple them together and give them away as gifts. Even back then I would brag about how I was going to be an author when I grew up.

The problem was that I never had any truly good ideas. Even when I decided to study “Professional Writing” in my 20s, I had a horrible time coming up with ideas to complete the assignments. I’m fairly sure most of what I wrote was complete rubbish. Don’t get me wrong, I think the writing itself was probably quite sound, it was the fact that it was based on almost nothing that brought it down.

So anyway, after I had the Eva dream I started to think about writing again, for the first time in years. Walking home from work one day I looked around at the other people going about their business and thought to myself, “I really don’t pay attention to any of these people. They could be ghosts, and I would never know.” And the idea for Amaranth was born.

So I decided to finally start writing a novel. The ideas, for once, came thick and fast. I just sat down one evening and started to write. The more I wrote, the more the story formed in my mind. I badgered Chris constantly about whether he thought this or that idea was good and, though he would claim otherwise, he helped me shape the idea into something I could apply a story to.

Around the same time, I discovered Authonomy; an online writing community run by Harper Collins in the UK. It’s a place where anyone who has 10 000 words of a book written can upload it and share it with other writers. You can also sign up as a reader, so I signed up, made a profile and started to plot out those first 10 000 words.

Not long afterwards, I fell pregnant with my daughter and the whole project was more or less shelved. I did write bits and pieces while I was traveling for work in Japan and the US, but there was something about the plot-line I had in mind that just didn’t sit right. I decided to leave it alone for a while and concentrate 100% on motherhood.

Throughout my daughter’s first year, Amaranth would pop up and swim about in my head now and then, the idea would morph and change, and then slink back into my subconscious. It wasn’t until Ella started in kindergarten and I had a few moments to myself that I felt ready to think about it seriously again. I cringed as I took out what I had written nearly two years before, ready to throw out the lot and start again.

To my shock and delight, for once in my life I was able to look back at something I’d written and feel that it wasn’t complete tripe. Even with the way the idea had morphed and evolved in my mind, almost all of it could be salvaged with a bit of massaging and tweaking. So I cracked my knuckles and go to work.

Before long, the 6 000 or so words I’d written before were tightened up and adjusted for the new ideas I had, and they grew into 10 000 in no time at all. I uploaded what I had to Authonomy and got active on the site, reading, commenting and meeting people on the forums.

When I went back to work, I decided to keep one day a week for my daughter and I, so that she wouldn’t be in daycare more than two days at a stretch. But before long it became obvious that she had a great time at kindergarten and got horribly bored at home with me. It was time to put her in full time.

But since I was already used to the reduced salary, I discussed the idea with Chris and my boss that I keep that day free to write. I gave myself to the end of 2011 to make a go of it, and if I found that I wasn’t getting far enough, or wasn’t using the time effectively, I’d come back to work full time.

By the end of 2011 I had written almost 40 000 words. I was getting a lot of very positive feedback from Authonomy members, as well as the family and friends who read what I had so far as well. So this year I have given myself until March to get the first draft finished. I will then spend some time editing, taking into consideration the feedback I’ve been given, and getting it polished up and ready for submission to agents.

To date, I have written almost 55 000 words, and am on track to be finished in a few weeks. So, if you’re interested, please feel welcome to visit Authonomy and read what I have so far: http://www.authonomy.com/books/38477/amaranth/

If you’d like to offer feedback, you can either sign up for an account on Authonomy and do it there, or simply leave your comment on this post.

You know what I’m talking about. It’s one of the most common dilemmas for women today; career or children.

Feminism and the women’s liberation movement have given us so many options that I sometimes feel like it would be easier to go back to being oppressed. At least when women had so few rights, they didn’t put unrealistic expectations on themselves. In many cases they simply accepted that their lot in life was to raise children and look after their husband and household. Sounds gleefully uncomplicated, doesn’t it? (Notice I didn’t say easy.)

I am playing Devil’s advocate here; I don’t actually want to be a 50s housewife. But I never expected to feel so conflicted about motherhood.

My pregnancy was unplanned and came as quite a shock, even though in the back of my mind I had always believed I would eventually find the right time to have children. And in retrospect, it was probably for the best that it happened of its own accord, because as many parents will tell you, there really is no “right time” to have children.

So despite not being sure I was totally ready, I took a deep breath and stared square in the face of impending motherhood. For the most part I was excited and looked forward to life with our new little family member, but there was a little niggle in the back of my mind that I really wished wasn’t there; the one that told me I was “giving up” and turning my back on my career, which I have worked hard to develop.

It didn’t help that once I made the announcement, people immediately started to treat me differently. They weren’t rude, or unkind, but they inadvertently became a little condescending, and enjoyed making jokes about how my life was over now. Even other parents chimed in and seemed to relish in telling me how I would never sleep again, how my “glamorous international career” as one friend called it, would have to take a backseat to the new little driving force in my life, when she arrived.

At work, instead of talking to me about the projects I was working on, people would drop in and head-tilt at me; Aww, there’s the little mother. Look at that bump! So cute! Etc, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked discussing my baby and my pregnancy. After all, it was a huge deal. I was excited, and scared, and I have always been the sort of person who likes to analyze things by talking them out with friends. But again, that little voice was there, telling me this was all I was now; something that anyone can be. Parents are a dime a dozen, and as much as they like to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves they are doing the most important job in the world (which actually, they are), they are boring to people who haven’t done it yet. It feels like being put out to pasture. I was no longer a racehorse, I was a breeder.

No longer was I someone to be admired for having the aforementioned glamorous international career; I was just another woman heading off on maternity leave. Around me, my colleagues were being promoted, or given jobs and projects that might otherwise have been offered to me. It stung.

Then the baby was born. Everything changed. I no longer cared, not only about my career, but about anything that wasn’t directly related to my baby. I would find myself getting immediately bored whenever the subject changed away from parenting, and I’d have to mentally slap myself so that I could stay focused on what other people were saying. I had become what I previously said I never would; one of those annoying people who have nothing in their life besides their child. And I didn’t care who knew it.

The career woman in me was still there, albeit gagged, stuffed in a box and buried alive. I heard her muffled cries a few times, but was unsympathetic to her plight; she’d had her day, and really felt like no great loss. I surrounded myself with other mothers, and lived and breathed babies for 15 or so months.

But one has to come out of that baby fog eventually, if only because most women eventually have to return to work. I had taken as much time off as possible, adding a few unpaid months to the 12 or so paid months we get here in Norway. But we couldn’t afford for me to stay home forever, and when I’m completely honest with myself, I have to admit I was getting bored. And so was my daughter. There just wasn’t enough to keep either of us entertained, stuck at home alone together. Even though I arranged outings almost every day, and regularly spent time with the other mothers I’d met during my maternity leave, it wasn’t enough to keep my brain nourished. I started to want to talk about something else again.

A few months before I was due to return to work, I was told that there had been a restructure, and they weren’t going to be running customer projects out of the Oslo office anymore. So essentially my job didn’t exist anymore, but they were willing to find something else for me to do. I was given a couple of opportunities to think about, and I took the one that offered me the most flexibility and the least pressure. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now that I’m back, I don’t exactly regret my decision. Any of my decisions, actually, because if I did anything differently, my daughter would have less of me than I want her to have. My job is secure, flexible, and nowhere near as demanding as project work was. No more travel, no more late night teleconferences, no more working until late on Christmas Eve to satisfy demanding customers. I can work from home when or if I need to, and my new boss (a mother herself) is very understanding if I ever have to drop everything and leave in an emergency. The perfect compromise? Maybe. But it also means that as long as I’m no longer a project manager, my skills are getting lost, forgotten and outdated. When I am ready to get back into more demanding work, I have lost the most valuable thing one can have in the IT Industry; recent, relevant experience.

I don’t know too many men who have had to do this to their careers when they have children. Most of them take the minimum amount of parenting leave, and still pursue their careers, hobbies and friendships much as they did before. True, maybe they spend more evenings and weekends at home than they used to, but when they go out, or have to work late, or spend a weekend away, they feel justified. Speaking for myself, as much as I sometimes long for a weekend away, or even an evening, I am plagued with guilt and worry the entire time.

Sure, it is possible for a woman to bottle feed her baby, share the parental leave in a different ratio with her partner (at least here in Norway it is), and return to work without missing a beat. But what does that do to her relationship with her baby? Some would argue that it doesn’t have any negative impact, if the baby is well cared-for in her absence. You could even say that it’s better for both of them to learn to be apart. But it’s still not “having it all”, is it? You are handing over the care of your baby to others, so that you can pursue a career.

I can’t speak for other women who have chosen to do it this way, but I know I wouldn’t have been happy about it. I feel bad enough already that my daughter is seeing more of her kindergarten carers than she is of her parents, and she was over a year old by the time that happened. Plenty of babies today are in daycare from only a few months of age. That may work for those parents, and good luck to them, but I still argue that it’s not “having it all” to do it that way. It’s having a little bit of a whole bunch of different stuff. But for me, well let’s put it this way; I never feel like tapas is a real meal, even if I am full afterwards.

I think the main difference between men and women in this situation is expectation. Men don’t generally expect to be able to spend all day, every day with their children. They expect that someone (be it the mother, or some other person) is going to take care of their child while they work. They have done this pretty much since the beginning of human history. Women, on the other hand, still have all that history to overcome. For many of us, we spent our early years at home with our own mothers. It’s difficult to be the generation that does things so differently for the first time. The old expectations, desires and feelings of responsibility are fighting with the new ones.

The more time you spend being a mother, the less time you can spend focused on your career. At best it is a balancing act. I’m not the kind who can forget she ever had a career, and find total fulfillment in being a full-time mother even if it were financially viable. But I can’t go back to my old working life either.

The key to happiness is, I guess, finding the balance you can live with.

Misja

One of the best and closest friends I have in Norway, you are not only smart and beautiful, but you are also so kind and one of the best listeners I’ve ever known. I don’t know how you’ve managed to fit so many achievements into your life, given that you’re not even 30 yet! Your academic and professional careers are impressive, to say the least, but you are also a wonderful and dedicated mother. I feel lucky to know you and have you as my friend. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been able to pour my heart out to you all those times in the past few years.

Michelle

I admire you more than I can say. You’re so strong, and so dedicated and as much as you try to deny it or downplay it, you are one of the best mothers I know. Your babies are so lucky to have you as their mum. Even though in some ways we differ in parenting style, I still hold you as one of the people I most look up to and rely on for advice when it comes to how to raise my little girl. You have overcome a lot to get where you are today, and that, to me, speaks volumes about who you are as a person. You are a tower of strength and even if you don’t feel like one, everyone who knows you knows this is true.

Theresia

My first friend in Norway. I wish you hadn’t had to go back to your “normal” life after your short stay here, and I miss you all the time. We got along like old friends from the minute we met, and no matter how much time passes between visits, I never feel like things have changed between us. Professionally and academically I admire all you’ve achieved, and know that I could never do what you’ve done. I love the way you constantly challenge yourself, and push yourself to experience new things. You are someone who has listened to my problems and never been judgmental or dismissive, but you have offered me common sense advice, posed just the right questions to ask myself, and never fobbed me off with sentimental placation. I hope we stay friends forever.

Natalie

I felt like a kindred spirit with you during our time working together, and I’m so happy we have stayed in touch and stayed friends. We barely knew each other when you inadvertently had to sit up all night with me during a crisis. And yet, you were there for me like we had been friends for years. I have never forgotten that. And then there were all those great wine and cheese moments, both at the office and everywhere else. Who else could I have sneaked out for a couple of cheeky glasses with, and then crept back into the office on our hands and knees to play tricks on the receptionists? Giggling all the while, mind you. You have fantastic style, and somehow manage to be gorgeous and sophisticated while at the same time being a great laugh.

And yet another Natalie

(I’m sure you two can work out which one is which!)

Another Natalie, another amazing friend. How long have we known each other? It must be over 10 years now… We’ve been there for each other during some very dark times, and always managed to pull each other back into the light. I loved having a little piece of home here in Norway for my 30th, and you were it! You brought life and light to what might otherwise have been an understated little affair, and danced to stupid songs with me until our feet were red. When I think of you, I think of a larger-than-life personality; a woman who spreads laughter and happiness wherever she goes. Your stories are unfailingly hilarious and I think if we saw each other more often I would probably need to invest in a box of incontinence pants; you make me laugh that much. But underneath that huge personality is a beautiful soul, whose warmth and compassion have pulled me through some of the worst times in my life. Never stop being you.

Jo

You were really so young when you suddenly had two kids in your life, when probably all you wanted was to spend time with their dad. And yet, you’ve been not only a parent to me, but a true friend. You never judge, you never lecture, you just listen and ask me questions so that I can figure out the answers for myself. From homework problems through to boy (and later man) problems, you always helped me find my own way, even if I had to do some damn stupid things along the way to learn what I needed to know. I hope you know how important you are to me, and how much you have done for me over the years. I know that I wouldn’t be who I am today without your guidance and influence.

Mum

It’s really only now that I am a mother myself that I begin to know what you are to me and have done for me. Every day I hear you echoing in my own voice as I talk to and guide my own little girl. From the wonderful legacy that was your mum, and my Grandma, came a woman who for years I just thought of as “Mum” but whom I now feel I have begun to know as a person. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived so far away for so long now, or maybe it’s something we all go through when we become parents ourselves, but either way I feel very lucky to know you both as a mother and as a woman. It seems to be the curse of motherhood that we never know how dearly we are loved until we feel that love for our own children; but now that I know what you must have felt for me all these years, I thank you for it. Maybe I can’t know how hard it is for you that I, and as a consequence, Ella too, live so far away from you. But you should know that you are always present in the person you have brought me up to be, and I am proud of and grateful for that gift.

Finally, and most importantly;

Ella

You are the most wonderful and amazing gift I could ever ask for. I look forward so much to seeing the woman you will become, and hope you will always know how much I love you. You have changed my life forever, and though right now I miss some small things (like being able to sleep past 5am), I feel like a light shone down on my life when you entered it. You make me laugh and smile every day, and it is with great joy and also great sadness that I watch you grow so quickly. You are truly a wonder to me, and even though there will undoubtedly be times you will be mad at me, and will probably slam the door in my face, I will always be there when you open it again. Always.

There are so many great women in my life, and though I can’t mention you all here, you should all know that you are wonderful in your own unique way. Take a moment today, not only to think about the women in your life that you couldn’t do without, but who YOU are and why you mean something special to your friends and loved ones. We don’t take enough time to think about ourselves, who we are and what we mean to others, because it’s in our nature to put others first. But you are special, you are valued and you are needed. Every one of you. Happy Women’s Day.

The context to all of this is that we have been working closely with Ella’s pediatric nurse and doctors at two different hospitals to try and work out why she is not gaining weight very well. She’s slipped from the 55th percentile down to between the 3rd and 10th, depending on which chart you’re referring to. Even though most people would tell  you not to worry, of course as a parent you’re going to worry.

So after much agonizing (and I mean tears, guilt, self-blame etc etc) I gave in and started to supplement Ella’s feedings with formula. Just once a day, but just to make sure she was getting enough food, and enough calories. Even though I have no judgment towards others who formula feed their babies, I had always expected to be able to exclusively breastfeed my baby, and felt awful that I had to compromise that. In many ways I would have felt better if the reason had been that I didn’t have enough milk to give her, but it felt truly terrible to know that I had milk for her, but she wouldn’t take it, only feeding for two or three minutes at a time.

After a couple of weeks, while she didn’t start really putting on weight, she did start to stabilize a bit. Her appetite, at least for bottled milk (formula or breastmilk) seemed to increase a bit. She still didn’t really want to breastfeed, but I perservered with that, as well as pumping milk for her and giving her the one bottle of formula per day.

When we finally got in to see the pediatrician at the hospital, his first advice was to stop the milk-based formula and go on to a prescription formula that contained no milk or soy proteins, plus I had to stop eating all dairy products, even in trace amounts, for two weeks so we could rule out (or in) that Ella has a milk protein allergy or intolerance. Although I didn’t really believe that to be the case, given that she didn’t have any adverse reactions when we started her on formula, it was a nice gentle start to finding the problem that didn’t involve sticking a tube down my baby’s throat.

That night, I posted a status on Facebook bemoaning my dairy-free diet. I received lots of comments from friends offering their support and wishes of luck, which really meant a lot to me. It was a tough time for us, emotionally and physically (Ella was sleeping maybe 3 hours a night in fits and starts) and I was feeling pretty demoralized. During the comment thread, it also came up that we would be starting Ella on prescription formula.

So then some jackass that I haven’t seen since highschool, and frankly wasn’t friends with even then, posts a comment that went something like:

Cow’s milk is only for baby cows. Funny that hey? The best thing for your baby is for you to be vegetarian and to breastfeed your baby. But you have chosen not to do that and to feed it synthetic crap.

The reason I say it went something like that, is because I was so steamed that I immediately deleted it, so can’t remember exactly how it was worded, or exactly how many spelling and grammatical errors it contained (there were many). I then sent an email to the poster telling them that I had deleted the comment and that he didn’t know the situation and should keep his thoughts to himself. I then changed my status to “I wish people would keep their narrow-minded crap to themselves and not go making comments about things they know zero about”. The idiot then commented on that post “Yeah Zoe, I know zero. Goodbye Facebook friend.”

I don’t know what made me angrier. The fact that this moron insisted that he knew what he was talking about, or that he got to delete me as a friend before I could do it to him first! Yes, I know, petty. But I was mad.

But as the evening wore on, I found myself getting angrier and angrier and not being able to stop thinking about it. I felt like emailing him again, but restrained myself. I knew it would just result in another barrage of self-righteous garbage from this guy, and I would end up more upset than ever.

Some of you may not understand why this made me so mad, since people make idiotic comments on Facebook all the time. But the point is that unless you really know the whole story in a situation, who are you to judge? Let’s face it, even if you do know the whole story, it’s not your place to tell people how to raise their children. He didn’t know if I had a medical issue that prevented me from breastfeeding, or if I had milk at all. What if I’d had a mastectomy? He had no idea, but decided to throw his self-righteous, ignorant comment out there instead of being supportive, or, if he couldn’t manage that, simply silent.

I know a few people who have had to feed their babies formula when they didn’t really want to, and they don’t take the decision lightly. There are also people who don’t agonize over the decision; they simply do it because it is the right choice for them. The fact is that modern formula is just as nutritious as breastmilk, just without the antibodies that breastmilk has. Plenty of babies thrive on it. So while I still feel and acknowledge that human breastmilk is the best food for human babies, there are legitimate reasons why people choose to give their babies other food.

There are some pretty militant people out there when it comes to breastfeeding (I’m not even going to go into the whole vegetarianism part of the comment), but no one, not even a baby’s father, has the right to tell a mother what to do with her own breasts. It is a mother’s choice what is best for her and her baby, and sometimes she has to make a tough decision when her baby’s health is at stake.

So I want to say thank you to all the people who made supportive and helpful comments, and send a big UP YOURS to anyone who doesn’t stop to think before they post about what their comment might actually mean to the person receiving it. Although “Friend” is a loose definition in the Facebook world, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t act like a true friend when posting comments.

To end on a positive note, although Ella is still only slowly gaining weight, since her two first teeth popped this week, she’s been much happier and her appetite seems to be slowly on the increase. We’re back on dairy now (to see if there is any adverse reaction after taking a break) and with a bit of luck things will get back on track soon.

As I get time (ha ha) I will add blog entries about all the weird and wonderful things I have bought (and where I bought them, since it was usually online) or tired and let you know what worked or didn’t work, and why. Bear in mind that I am totally aware that every baby is different, and what works (or doesn’t) for us may be completely irrelevant for you and your baby. But it might amuse you to read about my adventures into motherhood anyway. In any case, there are a lot of products that I found after lots of research that I wished I had known about from the start, and I’d like to share these with you.

Watch this space!

For an organiser (read control freak) like me, this is DVD library heaven. It also allows us to take notes of who has borrowed our DVDs, and on what date. Considering we own over 300 titles (and that’s just counting by title, not by disks, episodes, individual titles within box sets etc), this can be VERY handy. I like to be able to share my movies with friends, especially since we do have quite a few fairly obscure titles, but it can be extremely difficult to remember who has what, and how long they’ve had it. No one likes to admit it, but it does get frustrating to lend out movies and have people not take the initiative to return them, resulting in regular conversations beginning with, “Did you guys borrow [insert DVD title here] a while back….?”

Apart from the serious sore back I had after spending several hours crouched amongst teetering towers of DVD cases while I put them all in order and added our personal details to each database entry, it was a great activity to divert my buzzing brain. Next stop, Book Collector and my bookcase!

In the meantime, you can check out another of Movie Collector’s features, which is the ability to export the entire database to html, ready for upload to the web: www.zoeselina.com/movies

Note: Collectorz.com also has databases for video games, CDs/MP3s, books and comic books – all of which have the same features as Movie Collector, and all compatible with a range of barcode scanners.

If one more person says any of the following unhelpful comments, I’m going to smack them:

• “First babies are always late”
• “Not long to go now, eh?”
• “Enjoy the quiet while you still can!”
• “You should get lots of sleep. You won’t get any for the next five years!”
• “Wow, you’re getting big!”

You get the idea. A little advice for anyone thinking of making any of these comments or similar variants to a 9-months-pregnant woman: Keep it to yourself. We don’t want to hear it! Seriously.This is a topic much discussed in the chatroom I visit, which is for women who are due this month, so I know I’m not alone in this. We all hate those smug comments from people who already have kids about what we’re supposedly in for. Let us enjoy the fantasy for the short time we have left!

And for those who don’t have kids, or have never been 9 months pregnant, imagine having a medicine ball strapped to your stomach which constantly pokes you in the ribs, pancreas, lungs, bladder or any other thing you don’t want to be poked in, plus all your joints hurting, none of your clothes fitting properly, taking several minutes to get up from sitting and facing one of the biggest life changes anyone ever goes through (not to mention the impending joy of labour). Now when you imagine all of that, think how unpleasant it is when some well-meaning person makes a thoughtless, throwaway comment about how much longer it’s going to last. Mmm, not fun.

Now that I have vented all that crankiness, I can talk about the fun parts of waiting for the big day. After the long search for a new apartment, and the moving in, unpacking, cleaning and tidying up, we finally have our little nest pretty much ready for its newest resident. The nursery is 99% finished, we (and by “we” I mean Chris) just need to put up some shelves and somehow fit the gigantic rocking chair that arrived today through the door. It is currently sitting in our back garden in a massive box because the delivery men couldn’t even fit it through the door to the building, and supposedly aren’t allowed to take it out of the box. So we have some extra muscle coming over this afternoon to see if it can be gotten in once out of the box. I sure hope so!

I was lucky enough to find some wall stickers of the original E. H. Shepard Winne the Pooh characters on Amazon, right around the time one of my friends from work was in the States and could bring them back over for me. I am SO happy with the way they look on the walls. Unless you lean right in, in the exact right kind of light, they look like they’ve been painted on. We decided to decorate mainly in white, just in case the ultrasound doctor made a mistake and the baby turns out to be a boy. But that went right out the window when Chris decided we should get a pink chest of drawers. So here’s hoping!

I’ve been doing as much reading as possible on both the birth/delivery and on what we need to do the first couple of weeks. The books that have been the most helpful are:

• Juju Sundin’s Birth Skills by Juju Sundin and Sarah Murdoch
• The New Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford
• Your Baby Week by Week by Simone Cave and Dr Caroline Fertleman

I’ll let you know if any of them worked in a practical sense later, but so far the theory all seems pretty sound.  Apparently the Gina Ford baby routines are quite controversial and are considered by some to be too rigid and some even say “cruel”. I did some research about whether the routines actually worked for real people and found some very vocal opinions on both sides. However, it seemed that most of the loudest detractors didn’t actually read the book, or started reading and didn’t finish. I admit that Gina could do herself a lot of favours if she adjusted the tone of the book, which comes across a bit like the stereotypical harsh British nanny. But if you can get past that and really read the content, this book is not about letting babies cry until they pass out, it’s about anticipating their needs so that they don’t get into a crying fit in the first place.

Someone in one forum I visited even claimed that because Gina Ford never had a child of her own, she worked out her routines on dogs. I had to laugh at that one. Personally, it doesn’t bother me if a child-rearing expert doesn’t have children. Not all oncologists have had cancer, not all midwives or ob/gyns have children of their own. As long as they have professional experience and evidence of success, that’s enough for me. And if we try these methods and they don’t work for us, we will either adjust them to suit us, or drop them altogether and try something else. No harm done.

Thankfully tomorrow is a public holiday, as is Monday, so I won’t be going insane on my own for much longer. With a little luck I won’t be too far into my 41st week before something happens.

Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a while after this post… I’m not the most consistent blogger at the best of times, and unless the wait stretches on for another week or more, I guess I’ll have my mind on other things for a while.

But I hope to at least get a spare moment to make an announcement and post some photos of the nursery and its new little resident. There has been considerable curiosity around the name we have chosen, since we have decided not to tell anyone until it has been given. So I’ll be posting that here too. Stay tuned!

After almost a year of searching, one loss to forkjøpsrett, one loss to indecisive, greedy sellers, price peak after price peak, we finally have a new apartment. And despite the frustration and tension we have been through, I can honestly say I think we have found our dream apartment. It was renovated just last year, and it needs nothing done at all. It’s just perfect and I absolutely love it.

The apartment is on the first floor of the building, which from the perspective of most Norwegians is a bad thing. However, it is a high first floor, with about ten steps up to the front door once you enter the main building. This means that we could move into the area we loved, without having to worry about climbing flight after flight of stairs with a baby and all the paraphernalia that goes with one (Torshov is lovely, but the buildings are quite old and elevators are rare).

The top floor consists of an amazing kitchen:

A large living and dining area:

and a toilet (or half-bathroom, as the Americans would call it):

Downstairs in the remodeled basement are two bedrooms:

a washroom (laundry; also a rarity in Oslo), and the most amazing bathroom I’ve ever seen:

And yes, that is in fact a TV on the wall on the left. It’s a “Tilevision” bathroom TV which is built into the wall behind mist-proof glass and it even has a waterproof remote control! On the other side of the room is a shower with no less than four different water settings; shower, hand-held shower, power jet and waterfall. I can’t wait to try it out… once I’m done with the whirlpool bath tub with built-in scented oil disperser.

When we went to the contract signing, the agent told us that after he put the ad for this apartment on the Internet, he was contacted by an interior design magazine asking if they could do a piece on it. So I guess I’m not the only one who thinks it’s beautiful. And unlike so many apartments that we’ve looked at in the last 9 or so months, it actually looks better in real life than it does in the pictures.

We pick up the keys on 6th April, and will be moving in the following weekend.

Now we have the grueling task of preparing Chris’s apartment for sale. We have a photographer coming Tuesday to take pictures, so while I sit here blogging away, I know I should be creating lovely clean surfaces for that minimalist look Norwegians so crave. Unfortunately as I am now in my third trimester, I’m finding it harder and harder to be useful around the house. However, I will do what I can…