#10 On Having Children Who Are Sick (and not meaning good)

Bedridden and subdued. For now.

Both of my children have just been sick.

Let me clarify: my newborn daughter has just been sick, as in ‘vomited’, as in right now.

And again just now.

My son has just been ill, as in vaguely recently in the last few weeks. More on that shortly.

Daughter’s version of sickness is astounding. It's not just the excessive frequency and volume with which she empties her oesophagus. The actual substance consistency is something that would impress the Roux Brothers: it is a white mixture - impossibly both slime and soufflé - that slides and flops its way down my shoulder, my back or - my favourite - my cleavage.

What to do about this? Not much, apparently, except be grateful for my washing machine. She's a 'happy puker' which means that her 'oesophagal sphincter' (excellent word) just needs to mature until it can keep food down. In short, this is not a health but a laundry issue.

And how. Glad as I am that she's doing fine, she and I are like actors in an unglamorous Bollywood film: we undergo multiple costume changes per diem. However, actual Bollywood actors do not, of course, have to launder said costumes themselves. Me? Add all this to Son's potty-training knicker-slip-ups and I'm riding a tidal wave of washing every day.

In fairness, I have got used to the laundry. Hell, I'm now even quite proud of the military efficiency with which I can do it. Sad, I know.

What it is that bothers me, then? It's not the actual breastfeeding of Daughter either, which must have increased since I’m sure what she chucks up is double what went down. No, feeding her is time we share and something I enjoy, particularly as I look down at her doing her best Popeye face mid-feed, with one eye wild-open and the other scrunched shut. Ug ug ug ug.

Besides, I'm hoping that the more milk I make, the more calories I burn, so hooray to that. Spew me thin, Daughter.

No, it's more the general aroma that is troubling. The faint, cheesy whiff has embedded itself into the fibres of our clothes and our lives, even when the telltale white goo or silvery smears are nowhere to be seen. Since we rent our current property and live abroad, we've filled it with cheap and / or second-hand rugs and furniture that I do not think would survive being washed. So the smelly spectre lingers on, forever haunting and mocking us from each room: when I put on clothes I think are clean; when I lie down to play with her on the rug; when we invite guests to relax on the sofa.

Yet even all this is something that we have had to grow used to; Son's recent illness was something we could not.

The day before Good Friday, my vaguely productive afternoon was cut short by a phonecall from his Daycare: he is coughing wildly; please come and take him home. Sure enough, Son's coughing fits sounded like a hurried conversation between a walrus and an old donkey. It was officially labelled croup, a type of laryngitis, by the visiting doctor.

Now we were not too worried about the croup. It is highly contagious but the illness itself sounds a lot worse - literally-  than it is. Also, he had had this before, about eighteen months previously. But back in those days, filled only with his jolly chuckling and baby talk, it was quite easy to bear. This time, having had eighteen months to cultivate his language and tantrum skills, he truly tested us.

So over the Easter bank holiday, family plans were shoved aside in favour of strict instructions:

1. Any further swelling of larynx = trip to hospital, thus:
2. Keep subject indoors + pacified to the extreme, as any upset / raising of voice = further swelling of larynx (see point 1)

Pacified to the extreme, eh.

'Good luck with that', the doctor forgot to utter as he left.  No sooner had he gone than right on cue Son leapt into full Kim Jong Un mode. What a picture it must have been, him stomping his way around the cramped flat,  demanding here and refusing there as we slithered behind him, obsequiously shushing and fluttering our fingers at him in attempt not to trigger his temper. Croup or no croup, he must have enjoyed it.

People say that under-fours have no capacity to wield willful control yet. Those people cannot have met infants who are sick, in any sense of the word.

#9 On My Son's Obsession With His Nether Lands

                                                                                        Let's be honest: rude bits are funny

Sorry for any confusion, Dutch friends. It is definitely biology and not geography that grips my son. Now we know he is no stranger to the rear content of his underpants, as you'll see if you click here. He also still loves to take a turn about the apartment wearing only said pants and with an entire buttock popping out at the back. Yet the latest obsession has brought us back round to the front, as it were.

And how fixated he is. Recently, potty training has introduced him more fully to his man-tool as he needs to focus on what it actually does and then what he must do with it at crucial moments. A once unknown object has now become a cool new toy. Indeed, he will often sit playing with it on the sofa, twanging it in full view. If we're lucky, he might even get just the end of it to sit peeking out the top of his pants for us: 'yook, Mummy.'  All of this meets hesitant and mixed reactions from us- a light tut, a theatrical grimace and  'stop iiiiit' or 'put it away.' We try to be all cool about it, but we are British and it is hard.

'It's the start of a man's lifelong obsession' Husband says, but more on that later.

In case you thought females had slipped under the radar, fear not. For Son, all human lowlands deserve equal scrutiny and he has made some crucial comparisons. With me it's one of wistful disappointment: '...sigh...you've not got one, Mummy.' As he shakes his head, I wonder if Freud can be ingested by illiterate toddlers. In 2016, who knows what his sneaky little fingers have come across in The App Store. 

With his baby sister, the attitude is more like the scientist's detached fascination, complete with an urge to name said item.   

Son: What it called, Mummy?

Me:  OK. No prodding, thank you. It's her...lady bits. 

Son: Oh.

 (slight pause).

       

        Daddy! She's got a lady bag! (pronounced 'yady bag') Yook!' 

Me: No...oh never mind.

But back to males: Husband has not got off any more lightly. I mentioned his making the comment on 'the start of a lifelong obsession' with, was it a degree of pride? Well if it was, Son stamped all over it in his shower time observation about the willy,

'wee-yee, Daddy! Yook! You godda small one and I godda BIG ONE, hur hur hur.'

Now I've mentioned before that Son is a smart arse: if he's capable of grasping Freud, perhaps he is aware that he and his male toddler peers do have proportions that would shame most adult males. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the link between arrogance and being 'bigheaded' started with this exact boast being made by infant males with their massive crania.

Yet I digress. Slightly. Nothing I've written about here will surprise anyone who has sons and so nor will it shock them. What unites us as adults is that the innocence of preschoolers renders them incapable of tact or subtlety and so their failure to appreciate taboos - verbal or visual - means that they confront us with them all the time. So, Son's casual reference to the Lady Bag? No worse than our own failed attempts to find an inoffensive female equivalent of the word 'willy' (though the streets-ahead Swedes have managed it and you can read about it here). His self-prodding? We all know that isn't going away any time soon; we just hope he figures out that the issue of time and place comes into play here.

This is all quite complex stuff that's as current as it is timeless: I can't help wondering if it's really all down to Son's innocence or if it's his precocious comment on the contradictions of the human condition. Any proud mother would hope it's the latter but who knows.

Complexity aside, I guess we do owe it to him to be taught what is and is not OK in all this re: the Big Wide World. Basically, I don't wish him to meet the same fate as my primary classmate, 'Phil', whose sad story involves an incident during class story time. For there we all sat, cross-legged upon the big mat at five or six years old, eager little cherubs bathed in the sunlight of the huge classroom window and, As Mrs S slowly rolled out the opening lines of the book, I was as transfixed as anyone. Or I was until a tap on my knee startled me and I looked around to see Phil beaming at me, wide-eyed and pointing silently downwards to the special puppetry he was performing, exposed through the gaping leg of his school shorts. The cautionary element to this tale ends with the ultimate pupil fate: banishment to the Wooden Shoe Box in the dark corridor, forever an outcast.

I mentioned the Swedes earlier and my reference to the Dutch was no passing one, since I wonder how such issues play out in cool Northern Europe. Since their attitude to bums and willies and more besides  - in short, their attitude to bodily taboos - is so much less awkward than that of us Brits, it's a wonder whether an equivalent Phil would even think it were worth exposing what is not that remarkable. There is a link between what is forbidden and what is funny: children know it and comedians make a career out of it.

So it should come as little surprise that with so much material Britain has some of the best comedy in the world. Nobody sees the hilarity of British pomp and discomfort more than a Brit.

And nobody exposes this better than Blackadder. In light of all this, the scene that springs to mind best is the one where Edmund mocks the self-importance of Samuel Johnson and his writing of the English Dictionary:

Johnson: (upon seeing the words that have been underlined in his precious dictionary) Fart; fiddle; fornicate...Sir! I hope you're not using the first English dictionary to look up rude words!

Edmund: I wouldn't be too hopeful; that's what all the other ones will be used for.

So, we may try our best to educate our son to be forward-thinking, confident and unashamed. But if we go too far he may never enjoy the British diet of Blackadder. And to me that would be a fate worse than any Shoe Box banishment.

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#8 On Cherry-Picking Your Child's Genes

                              

                      Looks, personality, the lot...which genes would we choose and what does it say about us...?




Ever tried to imagine what someone's house looks like before you're due to make your first visit? It never really works, does it? The eventual reality always makes the fantasy just that: weird and dreamlike. It's a bit like that when we birth children. Due to genetics, of course, even if we find out the gender beforehand ninety-nine percent of the actual outcome, subject to infinite possible combinations, will always be a surprise. 

That said, I've still enjoyed a bit of timewast-y pondering as much as the next woman, especially with my son (my first). Have I ever got anything right in my musings? Well...

With Son we started this on a physical level. We'd expected a child with my husband's dark Asian genes and sure enough, out popped a little coffee-coloured babe with black hair. So far so good, we thought, until a week later the 'tan' had shown itself to be jaundice, the hair had thinned and receded and he'd developed some pronounced baby acne. In short, a pimply Phil Collins was what stared back at us. Well, for that time at least.

But I'm being so shallow, I thought. Let me turn my musings to his character. How might that turn out? Let's see: if we could cherry pick some genes, we'd see that daddy's skills are largely quite lucrative where mummy's are not; Daddy gets Maths and Science, Mummy...not so much. Mummy can do languages...there, have languages.

In truth, the jury's still out on the academic stuff. He's only two and a half. For now, what I can say is that other traits from both us parents have over time reared their ugly heads emerged.  Our predictions have been mocked once again.

Here's what we found: 

What you hope for	What you get
1. His father's special bond with numbers	An obsession with the number 8. He either delights in pointing it out wherever he sees it, or has it feature in bad dreams where he's unhappily squealing its name (no, really). Odd.
2. A sense of attentiveness and willingness to listen.	Not sure what I was thinking here, since I'm not particularly gifted at this either. At best Son's listening is selective, swung heavily in favour of words concerning nice times and sweet things, obviously. Less nice words from us go totally unheard. Allegedly.  Then, he will happily start repeating back to us stuff we've said months earlier, often not intended for his ears (you know, swear words, insults we've muttered at other drivers when driving, etc). But this gets worse as you will see below.
3. Intelligence, keenness, a love of learning.  Brains, basically.	Smart-arsedness. Yes, he 'gets' consequences after all, though likes to turn it all back on us. Often recently have our angry words and expressions been met with his sing-song 'OK, I time out' whereupon he cheerily pops himself atop The Chair of Absolute Punishment. What a fear factor it clearly has.
4. Compliance	Not on your life, unless bribed. Heavily and on his terms. You’ve seen point #3.
OK then, if he won’t lie down and take orders, maybe it’s due to...  5. Calm Self-Confidence, a sense of Dignity...	Indignance, smart-arsedness (see above) and, er, despotism. In a recent fun game, Son opts for some role-play: ' time out, mummy!' so I awkwardly play along, sitting where told and pretending to cry. Feeling a creeping sense of inappropriateness, I break role and get up to make myself a cup of tea, only to be told 'No! Sit there! I told you sit there!'  A-ha, I think, here again do you show those excellent listening skills, coupled with a talent for observational comedy. See point #2.
OK, none of the above have really gone to plan. Let's at least go for comedy, then: 6. A child who is Amusing and Good Company.	A huge showoff who plays to laughs, especially when it's inappropriate. Not only does he repeat dodgy stuff we've said, he often does it with the gusto of the performer: one friend of ours still has the video footage of Son repeating the word 'MENTAL' over and over, with a delighted eyeballing of each audience member and a volume that matches the increasing laughs.
7. Sensitivity (to others) and empathy	A drama queen - sensitive to himself, at least - with a talent for pathos. This is the boy who likes to cry into the mirror and perfect the delivery of his tears.

So can we ever know what kind of a child we will have, and can we ever prepare for it? Forewarned is forearmed, surely. 

Well maybe, but it's complicated. We need to reconcile ourselves with the levels of denial first. On a simple level, this involves just the relationship with our child. When I discipline Son I often need to suppress how bloody funny and endearing his behaviour often is. What may not be predictable/eradicable can at least be forgivable. And that's OK. In fact, it's good: Mother Nature has ensured Son's survival because I don't throttle him. 

But wait, there's more. Someone I know was recently pulled up at work for not towing the line. He was told he was argumentative, dismissive and unmanageable. Now these are harsh words to hear, but even harsher when drawing an uncomfortable conclusion: 

'Shit, you know what? That's my son.'

For all we now know about genetics, there is no softening to the blow of seeing ourselves in our children and vice-versa. And dammit, the more Husband and I ponder the list above, the more of a mirror it becomes to our attempts to deny or euphemise our own flaws. Our tots' lives play out at times like a satire of our own. In my case, this is no more true than with points #6 and #7 above. Sigh. 

Prediction is possible, then, but it involves some awkward admissions first.

However, maybe more important than this is acceptance, since acceptance of our children really needs an acceptance of ourselves. OK, Nature, I get it, but is this all simply a lesson about the cold light of day? Well, no. As with everything child-related, everything we discover deepens our appreciation of our own parents, and our connection with them (er, Mum, you know that thing I used to do, how did you manage it...?) and, what's more, of course, with various relatives and ancestors. The mirror becomes one between us and generations below, above and beyond, however charming or charmless the common traits may be. 


So, if we can't cherry-pick from this family tree then at least we can connect with many far-flung parts of it through our genes. And perhaps, most importantly, the familiar can be as comforting as it can be uncomfortable. 

That's what I tell myself, anyway.


Erica 

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#7 On Double Mother's Day- An Open Letter To My Children

Don't get my wrong, my two children are not yet literate. Their combined age is not even two-and-a-half. Since it is Mother's Day (or Mothering Sunday- sorry, Olde English sticklers) I write this for a time when they will truly appreciate what a mother is and does; in short, a time when they have become parents themselves. 

What's more, our understanding of what it's like to have extra and subsequent babies will increase our grasp of our parents' own similar experience, as I have my parents'. And what an experience: in such a family efficiency and corner-cutting mean that what was done for the first-born may well be done more shabbily, or not at all, for the next newborn. Even for the firstborn there will now be many compromises that were not there before.

But you know what? I hope that in my case they'll see me not as half a mother to each of them, but a Double Mother who they love not despite but because of these cut corners, as I see my own mum. 

All this stuff will have been character building, kids, do you hear? 

.....Here goes.

Dear Daughter (currently four weeks old), 

I hope you understand that second time around (and, if relevant, subsequent times thereafter), we are basically more relaxed than we were with your brother, as follows:

1) Physically, you see, we treated him like a delicate chick, always held carefully in two hands. However you are more of a chinchilla, often carried floppily in or on one hand. This happens a lot when I need to wipe your baby vom off your and neck and the back of your head (how the hell...)

2) Your brother was attended to at all times; you I often leave lying lost in the middle of my bed, on the sofa, wherever. Only when I eventually remember I left you there do I return, to find you scrabbling about like a little woodlouse on its back. 

3) Breastfeeding is no longer a sedentary, even stationary, activity for me. Oh no. I often feed you in motion when making a cup of tea, trying to dress your wriggling brother, brushing my teeth, even (sigh) nipping for a wee. I like to think of this a homage to more traditional cultures. I also like to think that I have drawn the line at answering the door in this state, though I can't completely remember.

4) Baby massage? You'll be lucky. 

5) Upon re-entering the house, I sometimes leave you asleep in the car seat for a few minutes. And maybe a couple more minutes. You don't seem to mind this as you stay asleep, despite the position of your head being at a curious right angle to your neck and body. This happened with your brother, too, except the guilt and Safety First concerns ate us up much sooner. 

6) Finally, your nappy is not changed with anywhere near the previous frequency. With Huggies and the like, The Thin Blue Line of wetness once signalled mayday. Now: no way! Sometimes you don't get changed until your loincloth has swelled up like a bouyancy aid, usually because I haven't wanted to wake you up.

Please forgive me love me all the more for all this,

Your Mum xxx

Dear Son (now two years, three months)

You can probably glean from the above the  more focused, one-one-one treatment you received as our firstborn. But since your sister has now come along things have changed a little for you too, haven't they? For example:

1) Your nappies may once merely have flirted with soiled-ness before being whipped away. Now, at night time, desperate not to wake you, we leave you be. In fact, we are reminded only of our laxness when we come back to your room to check on you and are strangled, upon re-entering, by the sweet fog of a petting zoo. You sleep happily, though, so we still think it's for the best.

2) Not remembering your own infancy, you have a new fascination with breastfeeding. You are now of the opinion that should you squeeze your own tiny nipples, they may at some point help to nurse your sister. If, upon reading this in adulthood, you still require me to explain this concept more fully, I will be happy to do so. 

3) We now allow more screen time than the government recommended dose. Have you seen the amount of TV I watched as a kid? You'll be...fine.

So remember, my children, next time you show brilliance or resilience, think of your mother and how she crafted you in this way. On Father's Day, you can pretty much apply any of this to your dear father (except maybe point #3 of the first section). 

And if you can't do that, then at least know that upon having two tots, the fun times for us have definitely not halved. 

Love, Your Mum xxx

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You Have The Right to Remain Silent: # 6 Upon Your Choice of Child Name

Please excuse the delay in getting this blog out; this little character announced her arrival two weeks ago...

I really like my name. I'm pretty sure I always have. Lots of people haven't, however, or didn't around the time of my birth. Interestingly, they felt the need to say this to my mum.

In the early 80s Emily, Charlotte and the usual chart toppers were reigning supreme as much as they still seem to now (less so Anne but then she always was the slightly less awesome Bronte sister). So Mum tried to do what I since have sought to: call her baby a more unusual name. And as so often with all things baby, the various responses to both of our choices came thick and fast; some positive but of course some negative. 

Why negative, though? I remember being struck, even as a kid, by how rude I thought it was that anyone would openly feel the need to disapprove of your choice, whether that same name belonged to some imbecile they once knew or whether it just wasn't their cup of tea. The issue here is not how those people feel; I don't think anyone - me included- can claim that they haven't disliked someone else's baby name idea for either reason (and I'm always utterly convinced of how very right my opinions are). But there is public and private dislike, surely, and to tell someone you didn't like their choice would be like telling them you thought their outfit was ugly.  And for us English, this would be unspeakably rude. 

Or would it? It was during my first pregnancy that I mused over this parallel and considered that the cheek of the comment lay not so much in its openness as in its timing. That is, was it a comment made during the time of choosing (while pregnant / in the changing room) or once the choice was irreversible (some time after the naming / after the purchase)? 

It was here that I remembered fashion guru Gok Wan, no less. His shiny nugget of wisdom is this: when clothes shopping, always do it alone. Seek no-one's opinion because you know what you like and what suits you and, pre-purchase, you don't need friends clogging up the changing room trying to convince you otherwise. Not only that, post-purchase with you wearing said outfit/item, nobody would be a big enough arsehole to tell you that it looked foul upon you, for what good could possibly come of that? Needless to say if they did say this, well, then an arsehole they surely were and where you went from there would be your call.*

Ah Gok, the reach of your advice knows no bounds. 

I was much heartened by this nugget, since once or twice I myself had made the mistake of spilling the name beans when people had asked about my bump. Well, no more. By the end of that first pregnancy, Husband and I had decided to adopt Gok's philosophy and it has been empowering ever since. 

So: 

Don't tell people before the birth: if you like the name then why should you care what they think or, worse, be made to have second thoughts? 

Only tell them after: they have the right to an opinion but they also have the right to remain silent, which they should exercise unless

a) their comments are positive
b) they are an arsehole
c) they are a close friend/confidante/mentor with whom this kind of candidness is acceptable, even desirable (though you both should still double check the criteria for b) before proceeding)
d) they are someone who mistakes themselves for c) when they are in fact b).

Someone told me recently that upon using Gok's advice with her own baby's naming, her mother still retorted: 'you've called her that? Well I don't like that name.' 

A note about d) people: they are often relatives. Let's face it, if this sounds familiar then this aspect of your relationship is probably the least of your worries. 

And not even Gok can help you with that one.

Erica

*I added that last sentence myself, though I'm sure it's what Gok himself would conclude in a nice way.

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#5 Seven Gifts and Trinkets for Children...Which Suck

Playdoh: a genius classic, or designed to torture parents? 

I've just realised that writing the title 'gifts and trinkets for children THAT suck' could have been a little more ambiguous. 


Good thing I checked myself before I wrecked myself. 

So enough time has now passed since Christmas for me to draw some strong, lucid conclusions as to which children's gifts are actually more of a curse. 

Now before I go any further, do not mistake this for being a blog about toys that are unsafe for children, or that children do not like. Oh no, these feelings of anguish concern themselves only with The Chief Put-Away-er, or floor scrubber, or whomever. In this case that would mostly be me. Indeed you will see many toys below which Son positively raves about; I just like to think that he only gets to haul them out with my approval.

Except when I'm really tired.

Or it's a really rainy day.

Anyway...

1) Play Doh

Read: Play D'oh. 

Yes, like I said, this list may contain children's 'classics' and this item is no exception. Son loves  to get his box off the shelf and take out all the little tubs of this stuff, squawking in frustration as he needs me to actually squeeze it out of said tubs. Now I have to say, playing with it does occupy him for quite some time which, as we know, is No Small Thing. He has a machine where you put it in one end and it splurges out the other; he has little plastic mould- cases where you shove the playdoh in and, upon reopening, take out a cool dinosaur or superhero shape. I can see the attraction.

This is all well and good but it's just the goddam mess. I know, I know, toddlers make mess, but this is some next-level shit.  Forget the fact that its colour integrity has vanished upon very first use since it soon becomes a murky, hodge-podge ball of primary hues. It's that upon trying to tidy this stuff away, you are faced with one or any combination of the following:


All over the table, or more likely, your floor: the little poos of mice on acid, i.e. tiny roll-y bits of rainbow pastry that defy being picked up by adult fingers. In fact, nimble toddler fingers are ideal for this task yet strangely Son seems to disagree.
Indeed if they are not picked up immediately:  hard old mouse droppings which are of no use ever again, OR
Little flattened discs that have been trodden upon and that you have to scrape off the floor with a knife. Even if you succeed in this part, some dull shape forever remains to mock you where the play doh has been, with the ridges of said knife still in it if you're lucky. OR...
Worse still, wodges that have been trodden into your carpet, flattened forever like chewing gum into your shag.

 This concludes my discussion of playdoh.

2) Most children's fridge magnets. Again, Son delights in faffing about with these animals, numbers, letters. However my issue with them is twofold:

• They often fall off the fridge and end up kicked underneath, gathering fur and grease until the next decade when the fridge gets moved. Now you could say that this happens to ANY fridge magnets, however:
• Kids' magnets are pathetic as magnets. This is my chief complaint. If they're going to sit on the fridge door, they can at least prop up my electrician's phone number, a postcard or, more sweetly, Son's finger paintings. But they cannot hold up jack and fall down if you even try to put a piece of loo paper between them and the metal surface. Thus begins the fate that I mentioned above. Useless.

3) Most noisy children's toys. Particularly ones with tunes. If you have ever bought one of these for a child, it is very likely that you do not have children. Be aware that upon reception of such an item, most parents immediately reach for the miniature phillips screwdriver they got from a cracker and set about removing the batteries. 

** Now I may have misled you slightly into believing that I have never bought any such gifts for children. Logical though this may be, it is untrue. I believe I have bought all of the above on various occasions, I just seem to think how awesome a gift they'd be for the child and forget about the parent. This may be the point of buying children's gifts, I hear you cry, but do not forget that on tricky days when Son is being less than compliant, it is the parents' friendship / tea / wine / tequila I will need. 

However, in my stupid quest to be a Great Host-Mum at my son's birthday party, I am as likely as anyone to shove the following into party bags that took me about eight hours to prepare:



4) Whistles. Read the above on noisy toys.



5) Tiny tubs of playdoh. Nuff said. OR chalk or crayons for decorating Farrow and Ball walls.



6) Cheap chocolates that make dog chocs taste like Lindt. Well, the e-number high and crash is not something the host will have to deal with, so that's all good. 



7) Large bubble-dips, you know, the long, thin ones with fairy liquid in where the kids blow the bubbles out through the weird oval ring. Except a) Not only does your toddler yelp with anger at not being able to do this and thus force you to do it, b) they insist upon doing this inside and c) upon any hard floor, they manage to spill the solution so that it forms slippery blobs for you to slide about on, like invisible banana skins. 



Ideally, next Christmas / birthday party we would never see any of these things again. But let's face it, perhaps among us parents there is an element of schadenfreude to all gift/trinket-buying and I'll treat the above more like a handy shopping list. 



Erica 


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#4 On Being Overdue: Ughhhh

                                               Overdue and over it: maybe you handle this better than me. Well, I'm going to moan anyway.

I am not overdue. Hell, it's a few weeks until I am even due.

HOW. EVER.

I am still preparing myself for this stage, since last time I seem to remember it getting on my tits somewhat. So that and one or two other reasons have prompted me to write this pre-emptive note, as follows:

1) An overseas friend recently texting me to say 'Overdue. Ugh.' She's actually had the baby by now. That said, being overdue and over it is something I and may other women can relate to, and it's pretty hard to imagine for anyone else.

2) The mental ballache: having a few weeks to go, you already start to focus on the Due Date as a real D-Day. So like any other major date in your diary, your mind almost separates other upcoming plans, thoughts and events into two  distinct zones on a timeline: things happening before and things happening after. OK, this time round I am already trying to be more realistic/  less timeline-y. But the last time, upon hearing that all my mum's babies had been early, I even considered that it might happen two weeks sooner.

Now statistically this is not crazy, but you can guarantee how likely this expectation would be blown out of the water. The actual result? A tedious, painful, three-point-five week wait since Son was actually nine days over. What's more, the podgy little sod was just getting bigger and heavier in there and would be tricky to get out.

And he, er, was.

3) The physical ballache: already I feel all this. Yes, there's the rolling around from one piece of furniture to another like Dame Barbara Cartland / a giant pupa. There is, of course, the turgid ache of a lump stuck on the front of you; the leg cramps that seize and freeze up your calves in the dead of night so that you have to get up and walk around and / or furiously thump the muscle like a butcher tenderising a fillet. Yes, yes, there's all of that.

But what I've also found hard again is the frequent tendency, upon sitting down even for a second, for cement to start chugging through your veins, taking its sweet time circumnavigating the ass area before moving onto anywhere else. And never more so than when you are overdue.  And nobody else will ever truly understand this. Which brings me on to my next point...

2) I need to mentally prepare myself for Other People, i.e. those who have not been through it, who really have no idea how this all feels. So cue my tired seething when well-meaning* folk start prodding me on Facebook going 'Oi, where's this baby then? Ha ha.'

Ha ha.

Ha ha. Last time Old Git here couldn't even bring myself to respond, because what do you actually say? 'No, not yet- soon I hope! "+ smiley / awkward face emoji (Oh I'm so sorry, are you getting impatient too? You poor sausage).

Or better still, 'Oh crap, yes. Shit, so sorry I completely forgot to let anyone know. Our two-week-old is just bouncing and well. Thanks for reminding me!' Come on, Other People, have a think for a mo.

3) The self-image. Yes, yes, Aesop told us that vanity is foolishness. But Aesop didn't grow a bloody baby, did he. Why just the other day, Son was typically bullying me out of bed by tugging at my wrists- 'get up, Mummy.' So I swung my legs around to sit on the edge of the bed and, sadly, face head-on the mirrored wardrobe. 

With my weary, simpering look at my son, my flaccid frame as my shoulders slouched towards the mirror; it struck me how like a mummy orang-utan I looked. Gaumless and formless: ah, nature is beautiful. Now hurry up, nature, and do your sodding work speeding this birth along. No woman should have to go on like this.

So there's being positive and all that, but that can sod off. For now. Sometimes a good old moan works wonders.

However, on a more positive / productive note, I thought I might do something for women who might need a bit more entertaining, those for whom a mere moan is not enough. So I've included a wee crossword to get your brain cells sizzling (see this pdf and hell, print it off if you're really keen)

Adios,

Erica


*I say this with some irritation, given that I don't think I've ever met a truly evil person who didn't mean well. Therefore for 'well-meaning' please read 'irksome / meddlesome.'

Seen the book? Take a look! http://lookingatyoubaby.com/

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