I attended yet another course this week. I’ve moved on from ‘personal’  to ‘facilitative’ leadership. Who the heck organizes courses for this time of year, anyway? I’m tired and I need a holiday. Did you know that South Africa closes down for a month over Christmas? Schools closed on Friday, and it’s all downhill from here: we’re in holiday mode. I’m as tired of this year as the next person, so on Monday morning, having lobbed Hannah in the direction of her daymom’s house and sent James speeding off to school at the back of a car of questionable safety standards, I unwillingly dragged myself to the course venue, consoling myself with the thought that ‘facilitative leadership’ is sufficiently objective so that there was no danger of over-engaging or becoming emotionally invested in the process. In short, I was going for the food.

 

Granted, it was incredibly good food, but one short day later and I was blubbering in front of the rest of the course candidates. It’s a bit of a blur now. I was sick at the time (I had yet another bout of flu the whole week) and I remember getting way too involved in our role-play. The scene we’d set appeared all too familiar for my liking – it replicated my hellish work situation perfectly – and a solicitous tilt of the head from my course facilitator had me red-faced and doing the ugly cry.

 

I don’t regret it – doing the course, or doing the ugly cry in front of eight perfect strangers. I learned an incredible amount, and either gave the strangers a good laugh, or helped them to see that their actions have consequences. Hey! I’m already a facilitator.

 

Note to internet:

Although I consider myself fairly knowledgeable, I feel obligated to inform you that there are a few things that you simply won't, no matter how long you read this blog, find the answers to here:

How to blow your nose

 

Holding her breath under water (um, huh?)

and certainly not:

 

How to treat pmt
Thank you.

 

I went to see Polar Express with James this afternoon. Ok, Santa was a touch Messianic towards the end there, but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, not least because I got to watch as James got so involved with the plot that his little butt was perched on the edge of his seat and his popcorn sat forgotten in his mouth until I leaned over to remind him to chew.

 

I’ve decided to allow the bell to ring for me. (See the movie to get that last sentence.)

 

Has it really been five days since my last post?

 

I could lie and say it hasn’t felt like that long. The truth is that I’ve thought about writing every night, but I’ve just felt too apathetic to do anything about it. My MIL’s visit left me feeling angry, frustrated, inadequate (for not confronting her), and very miserable. To top a crappy week spent thinking about how crappy her visit was, I came down with flu yesterday, so even as I type this, I feel as if I’m floating on a fever and drug-induced cloud. This would be about the 90^th time I’ve been sick this year.

 

Charming.

 

Apropos of nothing: Because I love charts (see Scott’s innie-outie creation, artfully supplied by moi) here is the outcome of the spontaneous voting that went on after my little anti-MIL blurt:

 

 

I know: that added no value whatsoever. Humour me – I love seeing spreadsheets in action. Thanks to everyone who voted. I might just take your advice.

 

Moving swiftly on:

 

We baby sat – sorry – had a friend of James’s over for a play date today. I’ve come to the conclusion that this whole play date thing is a bit of a farce. It all started a few months ago when the mom of one of James’s classmates told me that her little darling was desperate to come and play with James over the weekend. I have to admit: I don’t get it. They see each other for six hours each day, five days a week. Why the desperation? Call me a monster, but it just doesn’t fill me with unbridled joy knowing that someone else’s child will be my responsibility for a few hours of a weekend afternoon, while the mom gets to flit off to do what she likes and I DON’T EVEN GET PAID FOR IT.

 

Go on, admit it – the thought has crossed your mind too.

 

It wasn’t all that bad in the end. The joy of having a five year old over to play is that he can generally get on and do what he wants on his own and all that’s left for me to do is make sure he’s sufficiently hydrated and he doesn’t pee on my bathroom floor.

 

I know: I’m a horrendous ogre of a play date host. Sue me.

 

Pssst: it’s Scott’s 34^th birthday on Tuesday. He’s expecting a surprise party of note. This won’t be happening – for various reasons – the primary one being that he seems to have more virtual friends than fleshy ones…(If you’re reading this, Scott: LOVE YOU!!) But we’ll be spending a few hours alone on Tuesday night while my mother babysits – which kind of makes me feel as if I’m also getting a gift on Scott’s birthday. Hey, I’ll take my me time where I can get it.

Hannah’s version of Baa-baa black sheep:

“Blah Blah Black Sheep
Have you any woooool?
Yes soh, yes soh,
Three bags fooool.
I wanna plaster
I wanna dame
I wanna little boy
aa-aa down a layyyyne.”

My MIL visited last week. Despite the fact that I vowed never to do this, there is just one thing that I absolutely have to get off my chest before my head explodes.

 

MIL favours James over Hannah. She doesn’t come right out and say it, but she overtly implies it. She spends far more time with James than she does with Hannah. She thinks nothing of spending an entire afternoon reading to James and shouting at Hannah to stop moaning. When the children argue, she believes it’s Hannah’s fault, because “Hannah goads James”. The fact that Hannah is a picky eater is vaguely distasteful to her. The fact that her screams of protestation sometimes go ultrasonic on us is more than vaguely distasteful. She claims not to be able to remember James screaming at quite the same pitch as Hannah does. On Saturday, when Hannah and I came back from Tertia’s baby shower, she told me that James is far happier when he’s alone with his dad, leaving no doubt about her underlying comment, which was, “Hannah is in the way.”

 

If you’re not convinced yet, there’s more. But I won’t go into it now, because it’s all been whirling around in my head for far too long now and I just want to blot it all out.

 

I’ve never been the mother-bear type. I don’t go frantic if I notice a bite mark on an arm, or discover that one of my children were smacked in the playground. I see their daycare as a preparation for life and, unless I decide that they’re being bullied, or they ask for help, I don’t rush to avenge them. Over this past week, though, I’ve wanted nothing more than to gather Hannah into my arms and whisk her far, far away from the source of the danger. To show her that she’s a valued person, a much-loved human being, a unique soul worthy of affection regardless of what she can or can’t accomplish.

 

I wish I were the confrontational type, because I would have marched right over to MIL a thousand times by now, and used none of the communication skills I’ve learned over the past 12 years of working.

 

Instead, I’ll just blurt this out all over the internet, and make a mental note to delete this entry before she reads it…

 

We did the Grade R (Reception Grade, or pre-school) introduction thing this afternoon. It’s the time when parents get to meet the teachers, they tell us what their rules are and we listen attentively and marvel at how we survived the hell that is school.

 

It was a positive meeting. James’s teacher is distinctly un-ogre-like, which was a pleasant surprise. She even managed a few jokes here and there. She gave the impression of actually caring about who each child is and, by some freakish talent, seems to be able to remember all the children’s names on first glance.

 

It’s not all going to be dandy, though. Given the starting time of class (8am) and the earliest time of drop-off (7.45am), they’ve allowed me a window period of, like, a second to drop James off, rush off to drop Hannah at her daycare, and arrive at work on time. And once again, working moms lose out. There were the usual jibes at us: “Pick-up time is at 1 sharp, because it’s scary to be left waiting when all the other children are going home with their mommies”; “Volunteer to help out when they go on outings, because it sends a message to your child that you care.” And a staggered admission time at the beginning of the year, over a period of three days, which means an extended holiday period, which I hadn’t taken into account.

 

In the short hour we were there, I felt as if my family suddenly came of age. There I was with James, at a ‘real’ school, with real uniforms and teachers and classes. When did he get this old? How did I become the mother of a five year old? When did I say I was ready for my baby to enter ‘big school’? (Answer to last being ‘um, never’.)

 

I was so proud of him today. You have to see his behaviour in the context of the hell that we’ve been through at the start of every one of the last four years. James detested change. Even though he knew all the teachers at his very small crèche, at the beginning of every year, he and I would go through the same trauma of leaving the familiar and entering the foreign. I would hold my breath (only barely figuratively) for two weeks, hoping that he would settle into his new class. Every morning during those two weeks, he would attach himself to a part of me, usually a leg or hip, and beg me not to leave.

 

It was so bad that I was convinced that fear of change would pervade the rest of his life.

 

Because of this, I’ve been preparing him for his impending change of school since the beginning of the year. He’s surprised me with his nonchalance and I chose to take it as a sign that he was sticking his head in the sand, pretending that it would never happen. Boy, was I wrong. This morning, on the way to crèche, he announced that he wanted to go to his ‘big school’ immediately. After lunch, he was apparently so excited about today’s meeting that he couldn’t sleep, and spent his time watching out for me. When we arrived at the school, he hopped out of the car and ran into the playground. We found the classroom and, when I asked him whether he wanted to play or sit with me while the teacher spoke to the parents, he chose playing. Astounded, I stood for a while in the adjoining classroom, just staring at him and marveling at how self-contained and comfortable he looked.

 

My big boy.

 

How to torture me:

 

Tell me you can count to 100 and then demonstrate it, like, 50 times while I’m driving you to school.

I feel like a bit of a fraud. I said something this morning that might, at first glance, seem like a complete contradiction to what I’ve always purported to believe. My exact words were: “I couldn’t be a mother to three children if I worked full time.” What I meant was that I couldn’t be a good mother to any children at all if I worked full time. Before all you full time working moms plot to have me assassinated, let me clarify, because I’m not sure yet whether I agree with myself:

 

Last night, we were invited to a braai (barbeque) at some friends. A married couple with two young children, these people have a seriously extravagant lifestyle, due largely to the fact that the mom works full time in a very high profile position and earns packets of money. It occurred to me that they had probably spent about as much on last night’s braai as we would on a week’s groceries. A conversation I had recently with one of these friends has been ringing in my ears lately – I’d just turned down an invitation to a restaurant, citing lack of money as an excuse, and he commented that he’d noticed that we generally have to keep to quite a tight budget. This is true and last night’s braai got me thinking about our decision to have another baby. Is it insane to bring another person into the equation of our already tightly-budgeted life? I asked Scott as much and he said that it is insane, but only if we’re aspiring to a similar lifestyle as our friends.

 

We don’t have a lot of money because of a decision I made when James was six months old. After I gave birth, I cut back on my working hours, with a vague plan to return to full time work within six months. It didn’t make financial sense, but we did it anyway. When he was six months old, I was given the option of going back full time, or changing my job and keeping the part time hours. I chose the latter. It’s now five years later, and I’m still working part time. As a result, we’re probably about 10 years behind our peers in terms of housing bonds and possessions.

 

My reasoning around working and doing it part time is this: the work keeps me sane and the number of hours does the same – I’m a better mom because I work and a better worker because I work part time.

 

For as long as I’ve been working part time, it’s always been a consideration to return to full time work. Periodically, I consider it, and periodically, I reject the notion. This arrangement seems to makes sense for me and messing with it would be inviting trouble. So part of the motivation for this morning’s comment is, plausibly, that I know what I’m capable of handling and I’m not about to do anything that is beyond my capabilities.

 

But there are other thoughts lurking that I need to air, so bear with me.

 

Since becoming a mom, I’ve always felt ambivalent about working at all. It’s undeniably what I want and it makes me a better person, but I can’t decide whether it’s the best for my children. If someone told me to cut off a limb in order to save my children’s lives, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Similarly, if someone could tell me conclusively and without a doubt that the children of working parents are somehow psychologically damaged beyond repair, I’d stop working in a millisecond.

 

So part of this morning’s comment comes out of an indecision about my role. Because of my ambivalence, I’ve constructed rules and boundaries around my working days. There are good rules, like the fact that, without a doubt, my children are my priority, whereas work can take a back seat occasionally. But there are stupid rules too. For example, I harbour a secret horror of leaving my children in crèche until 5pm or beyond. I’ve decided, completely arbitrarily, that they can stay in daycare for a certain number of hours, but no longer. It puts enormous pressure on me to fetch them at a certain time, and even as I’m rushing to get them, I recognise exactly how irrational it is.

 

It’s a good thing that I know what my limits are. I know that I couldn’t manage the house and the children and my relationship with Scott if I were working longer hours, and I’ve made a decision based on that knowledge. But this morning’s comment made me realise that I need to work through the ambivalence and, once and for all, embrace the lifestyle that I’ve chosen.

I’m:

Staggered…
…at how offhandedly a friend dropped the following into a perfectly innocuous conversation we were having yesterday: “Ideally, mothers should stay at home with their children…”

Shallow
Yesterday, after wiping the bathroom basin, I surveyed my work and decided that, when enamel and stainless steel gleam, everything seems right with my world.

Wounded
…because, after spending the better half of three weeks working on a project, providing images to a history student who was making a documentary, thoroughly enjoying myself and learning an incredible amount, a colleague took the opportunity to destructively criticise the finished product.

Ecstatic
...that Tertia has reached the 28 week mark. Healthy-babies-in-January...

Depressed
…and about to embark on a course of ‘natural’ feel-good medication, recommended by my dear old mom. Thanks, mom, for looking after me.

Why is it that, ever since I became a parent, perfect strangers have felt the need to bestow their random pearls of “wisdom” on me? No, that isn’t altogether true: it actually started when I was pregnant. Maybe it’s my face. (see “100 things” #10) Or perhaps I look as if I’m particularly in need of assistance when I’m out with my children. Whatever the reason, it’s teeth-achingly irritating.

 

When I was pregnant, people would assess me and my habits and come to perfectly formed, wholly illogical conclusions: my newly-found knitting habit would kill my baby in utero, because the cord would wrap itself around the baby’s neck; my constant heartburn meant I’d give birth to a baby who resembled wolf-child; and my swollen features (particularly my nose) foretold a boy. (I gave birth to a live, predominantly hairless boy – 1 out of 3.)

 

It wasn’t long after James was out of the womb that the advice started to pour in. I couldn’t step out of the house without some stranger walking over and informing me that James was cold/ hungry/ tired.

 

The most staggering and devastating piece of advice I ever received was when James was eight days old. I had popped out to the shops with him, partly because I was going stir-crazy and partly because, after 6 months of bed rest, I wanted to find out what it was like to be a normal mom, out shopping with her child. A woman stopped me just as I was getting into the elevator on the way back to the car park, peered into James’s pram, looked at me, and, in front of everyone in the elevator said, “You know, you can give a child that young brain damage by putting him into a pram.” I got into the elevator and burst into tears. Scott swore profusely.

 

Unsolicited advice is a unique kind of torture.

 

Thankfully, I haven’t had to endure the torture very much lately, because my children are now old enough to heed my threats of ‘no-lollipop-unless-you-shut-up’, or ‘do-you-want-me-to-take-you-into-the-bathroom-so-that-we-can-really-talk-about-this?’ But last Saturday, I was reminded of just how excruciating it can be when someone, entirely uninvited, decides to enter your private world. I’d just finished a particularly dire shopping expedition at a decidedly down-market supermarket (because I was trying to save time and money) when Hannah decided to do her abused child impersonation. She wanted me to take her out of the trolley, and when I did, she screamed and wailed and turned puce, in front of about 1000 shoppers, because she wanted to get back into the trolley. The scene repeated itself 3 times, until, fuming, I stood my ground, ignoring her, unwilling to budge because of the principle of the matter. A woman behind me was visibly irritated and barked at me, “why don’t you put her in the trolley?” I was so infuriated at her interruption that I couldn’t speak, so I must have looked a bit mad as I stared at her, my mouth working, but no sound emitting from it.

 

We left the shop and Hannah started laughing at something completely random the moment we left the building.

 

Intrusion is what it is. Butting in to other people’s business where you’re not needed or wanted. Thank you for that suggestion, now please shut up.

 

*******************************************

James: Imagine if you had 301 heads!

Me: That would mean you’d have to feed 301 mouths.

James: Yes, and you’d have 301 pairs of eyes and ears and 301 noses.

Me: And 301 brains.

(Pause…)

James: So you could think about 301 different things at the same time.

 

Sounds just like motherhood to me.

 

Tertia's recent post, "Natural Schmatural", got me thinking about my own experiences of pregnancy and birth.

As I commented to Tertia, I've experienced both 'natural', or vaginal birth and 'unnatural', or c-section and to me, there is no distinction - both hurt like merry hell and both had the same outcome - a baby. To argue that one is more favourable than the other seems pointless to me.

It’s occurred to me though, that this isn’t the full story and that I seem to have selectively forgotten a significant portion of the period after Hannah’s birth. Abby’s comment to the same post, in which she warned Tertia that perhaps she should take into account the possibility that she would mourn a 'natural' birth, reminded me:

It was about 18 months after the emergency c-section and I had been ranting to Scott about the very topic that Tertia raised.  I found it intolerable that some women tend to see c-sections as less of a birth experience than vaginal birth. I argued that, had it not been for the c-section, Hannah might not have been alive today. I asserted how grateful I was that I had had a c-section and that I was perfectly happy with that birth experience. As I took a breath, mid-rant, Scott turned to me and said, "I'm so glad you see it that way now."

 

I was shocked. What did he mean, "now"?

Scott reminded me that for a long period after the c-section, I went through a period of mourning for the vaginal birth experience that was denied me. He reminded me that I had said I felt like a fraud, that I felt I had missed out on a 'real' birth experience and that I felt I had been cheated.

Mmmph. So much for my ‘whatever works/ anything goes’ mantra.

 

I completely identified with what Abby said. She told Tertia not to be surprised if she found herself sitting with her twins one day and wondering what the ‘natural’ or vaginal birth experience would have been like. It was what I found myself doing, after fervently declaring that I didn’t care how my babies got here, as long as they were alive and well.

 

There are a few reasons that would probably justify the way I felt at the time: I was told I was having the c-section within 3 hours and I was only 33 weeks and 6 days pregnant. I’d been lying in a hospital bed, attached to a drip, for a week, scared witless that my baby wouldn’t make it. When I was told I was to have the c-section, it was just that – I was told, not asked. I didn’t feel a part of the process at all, and I still have questions about just how necessary it was at that particular time. I felt cheated out of the whole experience – the baby shower, the maternity leave, the waters breaking, the contractions. So it was perhaps a perfectly normal response to spend a few weeks grieving over what had been denied me.

 

Understand that I’m not arguing that everyone who has a c-section will have the same emotions as I had. I just found it interesting, looking at my experience, that emotions can sneak up on you – you think you feel one thing and, out of nowhere, your sentiment, or emotion stages a coup.

 ************

On an entirely different note: For those of you who’ve been waiting with bated breath for an update on days 2, 3, 4, 5, etc sans dummy, here’s the abbreviated version:

 

Day 2: “Dummy? Dummeeeee. Dummmmmmeeeeeeeeeee. WHAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Night 2, around 2am: “MOMMMMEEEEEEE!”

Day 3: “Where’s dummy mommy?” (“Gone, darling.”) “WHAAAAAAAAA!”

Night 3, around 2am: MOMMMMMEEEEEEEE, DADDDDEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Day 4: “Baby has dummy. Hannah not a baby. Baby sucking dummy, mommy. Ha ha ha ha.”

Night 4, around 3am: “MOMMMMMEEEEEEE!”

Days 5 and 6:

Nights 5 and 6, various times, from 1am: “DADDDDDEEEEEE, MOMMMMMMEEEEE!”

Day 7:

Day 8:

Day 9:

Success: The dummy has left the building.

I know, crap title, but I have to whine a bit today, or my head will explode. Indulge me: