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Ouch
New Years Day I decided I couldn't put of the leaf-clearing any longer. Half my lawn now looks green, if eldest daughter had not appeared all my lawn would look wonderful, and I would possibly be be completely immobile - still. Since my gardening exploits I have been adopting various glamorous poses, most of which involve lying flat on the floor with my legs supported on any adjacent furniture, I am calling it 'the standed beetle look'. As my foray into the world of back-pain happened over the holiday period I took it upon my self to self-medicate with any prescription drugs I could lay my hands on, a pharmacist would doubtless be horrified, but they did sedate me sufficiently to reduce the amount a self-pity I was indulging in, and stopped Hubby from transporting me, in his van, to the nearest hospital which catered for both spinal injuries and hysteria. I have to say that the 'caring' profession I work for were magnificent in their sympathy, particularly in their wishes for a speedy recovery, 'will you be OK for your on-call tonight?' Having spent two days in bed I called the Doc's for an appointment, and luck was on my side, I got one. A G.P I had never heard of, but in my Valium induced world I deciced that I could possibly divorce Hubby and marry this God of the medical profession. I have little recollection of the consultation, I know I smiled a lot, and groaned when he asked me to demonstrate my range of movements, but I did float out of the surgery with a prescription for more valium, pain-relief and a note telling work that they would not be seeing me until he wanted them to.
Eldest daughter came round last night and told me I looked as if I was in labour, something to do with the kneeling on all fours I suspect. She has now reached the worrying stage in her pregnancy so we listened to Baby Bean, apparently it's a girl 'cos her heartbeat was over 140bpm, what absolute rubbish that old wives tale is, BB was moving around like a manic kitten at the time so of course it's heartbeat is going to be high. Oh well, she has a 50% chance of being right.
Jack et famille return from Andorra c'est soir. I only hope that he is not too disappointed that Naughty Nanny will be Dopey Nanny. It will be lovely to see him again, especially as he has grown his first tooth whilst away.
It's now 12 hours since I took my last Valium. This is a major improvement, particularly in the reasoning department! Still popping my trustworthy friend Voltarol but I don't feel they affect my mental faculties to quite the same degree. For the last couple of days I have been taking short ambles round the local shops, accompanied, and my decision to attempt life without 'mothers little helpers' came when youngest daughter apologised, on two seperate occassions, to assistants for my behaviour. She was concerned that they may have thought I was 'high'. Yesterday Hubby was my escort and he was mortified when I asked a lovely check-out girl in Iceland where she had had her tattoo done. It was a really pretty, pastel flower and I thought that it would look lovely on some part of my anatomy.
When we got home we were having a discussion about my birthday pressie, I decided I wanted a new patio. Our present one needs re-doing and I am reluctant now to attempt doing it, I laid the last one, but that was five years ago when my body accepted readily any demands I placed upon it. So I said that I would like someone to be employed to do it (Hubby also has a delicate back). The next thing I knew was that he was saying my pressie could be putting money towards a new car. I flipped. I shouted, and then disolved into such a pit of self-pity that Australia was only a few miles away. I think he got the message though. I have to have a car for work, it is a stipulation of my job, and as such it shouldn't be part of my birthday pressie.
Now I need your help. Has anyone got a Mothercare Steam Steriliser? Yes, I am already collecting for the advent of Grandchild number 2. I was given one, but without the instruction book (not the Grandchild, the steriliser) so I don't know how much water to put in it. If anyone knows the answer please let me know.
Jack is back. The stair gate is up, the cats bowls have been relegated to a place of safety, and the fireguard is in position. I had a really good buy the other day, a virtually new Mama'a and Papa's highchair for £15. We had been using a really handy booster seat but meal times had become a truly messy affair and so I decided that self-containment of foodstuff was now a priority. A tandem pushchair is next on my list, and a potty. He always fills his nappy at the same time so I'm going to try and avoid that chore by plonking him on a receptacle, it worked with his Auntie so hopefully is will do the trick with him.
Bedtime Games
As I lie there in my little nest, awaiting the joy of sleep, I play games to while away the time. Usually they are themed upon the alphabet, boy's names, girl's names, countries, names which can be masculine or feminine, trees, even football teams. Last night I was musing though, and to be honest it was a rather negative muse. Inwardly I berated myself for being too introspective, and that was when the new game started. How many words could I get from the word INTROSPECTIVE? The rules forbade 2 letter words, or plurals - tin, torn, rot, riot, sort, port, pint, print, trip, top, pot, stop, inspect, protect, insect, sect, section, sector, respect, vector, invective, spot, sport, vote, percent, recent, coin, sieve, serve, then I went to sleep. I'm not going to recommend or repeat this game though because I had the most awful dreams, to the extent that I even summoned Hubby to me, he was in another room, because I was shouting and screaming so much in my sleep.
Back musing
For the past 3 days I have been hearing that childbirth is painful. Well, I wonder why that could be?
Could it be that -
1) Most women do require that the exit point for their baby just might require some degree of distention to allow something with a head diameter of approx. 35cms to exit? Okay, so nature could have provided us women with that, but he would then have had to provide our partners with a reproductive part capable of filling that apperture, unless they didn't mind that thet may just as well be exploring the empty inside of the average plant pot.
2) Supposing there was no pain associated with labour ( exertion of body, work hard, move with difficulty ). How would we know when little one was coming? Would we take it seriously? Women would be stopping mid-shop to produce junior, swimming-pools would be teeming with newly born infants. Pain is associated with childbirth, in any animal, to give them warning, and time to get to a place of safety.
I know that by now anyone reading will be thinking I'm trivialising a serious subject. To a degree I am. but having done it 3 times myself, and helped with hundreds of births I do feel that childbirth needs to be put into context. It is a normal, physiological function. Generally speaking it is one day out of your life. Until a few years ago babies were blessings, not commodities, if the baby was alive and well parents counted themselves lucky. They knew labour would be painful. Now the expectation is that it will be an amazing experience, and for many it is, but who is it that carries 'the blame' if it is worse than they expected. The midwife. I found an article today which very much sums up what the problem is, and that is the shortage of midwives. Most labour wards function on the very basic level of staffing, if it's a quiet night then most women having their babies will have felt well-supported, if it's busy or there are high-risk cases in then those women in 'normal labour' will be left alone far more, and may, at times, feel frightened. As a result the couple will feel they were abandoned, they may well take issue with the midwife, or her superior (and I don't condemn them for that) and that midwife will have not only had a stressful shift, but will then face a 'dressing-down' by her manager. If it happens often enough she will leave. We enter the profession wanting to fulfill the definition of 'Midwife' - to be with woman, not women. Can this developing crisis in maternity services be stopped - Yes, employ more Midwives. They are out there but they just don't want to practice within a deliberately understaffed profession, which incidentally now has the highest litigation rate in the NHS. Deliberately understaffed? Yes, all units employ the minimum number of midwives the Trust Board feels is necessary, not the Head of Midwifery, or the Local Supervising Authority but the executives dictate the number of midwives! If midwives go on maternity leave or long-term sick leave, they are not replaced as they are still part of 'establishment', so you end up in a situation where theoretically the unit is fully-staffed, but actually it is always understaffed. End of diatribe.
Today I went pushchair hunting with eldest daughter. Think she has decided on an all-terrain thingy, she does a lot of walking. Looked at all the baby clothes, wasn't allowed to buy any! Saw Rick Wakeman, he was grumbling, daughter had never heard of him.
Jack has 2 teeth now. He scuttles around the furniture, lets go, takes one step - and falls over. He sits on his potty, but doesn't produce anything, perhaps he's like his Grandad and needs to read for half an hour first.
The dream machine
This is it, eldest daughters choice in pushchair. The Urban Detour Extreme. We bought Jack's pushchair for him, a nifty little cosatto travel system, telescopically folding, handy for going on airplanes, easy to store, and a hundred pounds less than this. The daughters have different needs. Jack's Mummy drives everywhere so small and light were her requirements, eldest daughter walks, into town, over fields, through woods so she wants something hardy and extra comfy for baby. I want to be the perfect Nanny - but at just under £300 I feel I may have to limit my 'Mary Poppins' approach. It's only a year since the last pushchair etc purchases, and I'm worried that next year another one, perhaps two Grandchildren will arrive, a sibling for Jack, tandem pushchair required, and/or Son will begin his foray into parenthood.
Talking parenthood did anyone see that reality programme with Caprice plus baby simulator? Really funny, and true. The aspects they didn't cover was the fact that new Mums are also recovering from the birth itself so do not have the reserves of cosseted celebs, plus, who was doing the washing etc?
Just sitting there
Between Christmas and New Year as we were out for a walk I saw a car, on someones driveway, For Sale. I interupted some interesting monologue of Hubby's about some golfing exploit to tell him 'That's my car'. I elaborated 'That's my next car, I really like it'. My very own auxiliary mouth (Hubby) told me that it wasn't, it was too big, I didn't like silver, it wasn't really what I wanted. Strange that, I was certain that I did want it, but obviously I was mistaken. On the way back primary mouth once again voiced a desire, which auxiliary overuled again. After a few days of primary mouth repeating and repeating it's mantra 'That's my car', auxiliary mouth took over, and talked to the owner of said vehicle. By then I had checked everything out, list price, insurance cost, average running cost, road tax bracket, the lot. An agreement seemed to be forthcoming, then silence. I don't like to keep harping on, and by then I had knackered my back so had more pressing concerns, so didn't mention it for a while. Next time I was able to go pass where it resided, still there. When Hubby returned from golf, I told him. 'No. You don't want one of those. Everyone at golf said you wouldn't want one of those.' My personality is weird, it must be because then I thought, better not insist, supposing I did get it, and then it broke down, or I had a crash. It would be my fault. Secretly though I yearned for my little, well medium sized-car, and whilst it sat there I would give it loving looks as I went past. Then it moved, last Friday it wasn't sitting at the top of the drive anymore, it was round, infront of the house. Good, it's sold. Temptation has gone. It hasn't though, it's still sitting there. Why? I'm being mentally tortured by a car.
Now, any car buffs out there. It's a Rover 45 Advantage. 4 years old. Should I love it or despise it?
P Day
Today is pee-today. Yes, Jack christened his potty. The success was greeted with rapturous applause, so of course he had to join in, which was accompanied by him getting off his potty, and trailing the legs of his baby-gro through the contents. Oh well, you can't have everything.
Pregnant daughter phoned today and asked if she could take Andrews. I was cautious in my reply, examined the supply Hubby keeps for when he has over-indulged , couldn't see any cautions so gave the go-ahead. Of course then I worried. Would I have said that to any of my patients? No. I would have urged caution. Questioned why they needed it, and then suggested alternatives. Off I trundled to the local pharmacy and collared the pharmacist. 'Can pregnant women take Andrews?', 'How many months are you?' he asked. Now, there are two ways of looking at this, one good, one bad. Good - I look young enough to be pregnant. Bad - I look large enough to be pregnant. Perhaps it's both though, I look fat, and young enough to be pregnant. Anyway, I told him I was 6 months! He advised against it because it was 'too gripey'! I thanked him, and waddled out of the chemists. I shall update my advise to daughter, take it in moderation.