The way things are

So it would seem that the bug I'm getting over, has found new lodgings in the Mother of Last Year (unfortunately the title of Mother of the Year is floating, and until proven otherwise, a temporary title will be used).

 The man was complaining of the all too familiar sore throat, blocked head and aching joints, when I stirred up a great concoction of vitamin C and anti-inflammatories to wash his malaise away. I held out the potion, and the whining started.

"I don't want all that stuff. I don't need it."

"Don't question me," I said, all maternal-like, "I am a nurse, you know."

"Really?" he said, eyebrows raised, taunting.

"Daddy," T-Bird interjected. "Mommy really is a nurse. Or she used to be a nurse."

A moment passed where we all exchanged glances.

"Mommy is a nurse who stays at home," she declared after a little thinking.

I nodded triumphantly at her father and shoved the medication into his hand.

"...and who goes shopping."

So much for victory lasting for any decent length of time.

PS. And it's not true, by the way. I do a lot of other stuff too.

Human Evolution

Today on Talk Radio, it was mentioned that human evolution is pretty much coming to an end. Some clever scientist has figured it all out, and suggests that this is about as good as it's going to get for the species homo sapiens. 

How disappointing!

I have so many great ideas for improving on the standard model human. For instance: the third hand. As a midwife the need for a third hand somewhere around my belly button became apparent early on. Just to hold onto things like stethoscopes, catheters, umbilical cords and kidney bowls. It was when I became a mother that the need for a third hand became more urgent. You know, to hold a nappy bag while steering two kids across the road, to catch the cup that your toddler knocks over while you're busy cutting their chicken into bite-size pieces, or to scratch around for your car-keys while hanging onto your sugar overloaded kids after a party.

See? The third hand evolution is still an important development in perfecting the human.

More recently I have become more concerned with another flaw of the average person, namely the opaqueness of the head. It is becoming more and more frustrating for me to guess at what's going on in a person's mind. I find myself second guessing every move and word and action, trying to work out what people are actually saying. Just when I think I've got someone figured out, they completely pull the carpet out from underneath me, and I'm left back at square one, no closer to understanding this individual than I ever was.

So. The solution, I figure, is a transparent head. One that you can see deep into and get to the core of what's actually making the wheel spin. Oh yes. And coloured thoughts. And a key to decode them. Like pink thoughts might mean: gee, I'm really craving marshmallows. And a brown thought might mean, you're a complete idiot, you make me sick, but because we're in the same lift club I'm just being polite and putting up with you. Blue thoughts may mean I'm not a total moron, I'm just not very good at showing you I care. Orange thoughts might mean I like you, but your body odour is pretty intolerable right know. And yellow thoughts might mean, it's not that you're boring me right now, but I need to pee so badly that my eyes are watering and I can't stop wriggling in discomfort.

You know. Something like that.

Holy Roses

My daughters have several bad habits. The kind of habits that make me a) want to hurl b) want to yell or c) pretend that I don't know them. I hope that at some stage they will grow out of these lousy quirks. And for that reason, as well as in the hope that one day we might actually be friends, and they might actually read what I have written (I doubt it, truly, but you never can tell) I will refrain from naming the specific child over whom I wish to vent.

It would seem that this little person has an obsession with holes. And, more than that, she has a propensity to absentmindedly investigate these holes with her fingers. Without a thought as to what might be lurking in, for instance, a knot hole, she will slip a finger in, give it a wiggle, and be on her way.

The holes she explores come in all shapes and sizes. Naturally, her own orifices have had a good old delve around in. (Much to my utter disgust, mind you!) In fact, I lose count of the number of times a day that I either tell her to take her finger out of her nose, or just pull the offending digit out myself whilst offering her "The Look".

(So much for trying to protect her identity, right? Those of you who know her, will know her. Know what I mean?)

But self-exploration aside, as mentioned, this madam of pokery investigates nature with a scrutinizing finger. Knot holes, gaps between bricks, the hidden rim of the windowsill, the hollow cylindrical handle of the wheel barrow, (meanwhile my spider-radar is bleeping just mentioning these things!), the bunnies' ears, a suspiciously perfectly round hollow in the sand-pit sand. The list goes on and on.

Fortunately the electricity speech seems to have taken root somewhere in that sponge-like head of hers, and we have not had any shocking experiences with regards to fingers in sockets.

There are times were I just cannot sit next to her for prolonged periods of time. If I do, I'll get a bored finger wiggled into my sock, or my ear. It's like she just can't help herself.

Now, I've spent some time thinking about this inclination of hers, and while I hope like blazes that she will outgrow it, I can't help but speculate if this is a window into her future. They say that nursing is hereditary, and with her being subconsciously drawn to dark holes, I have to wonder whether she might end up as a midwife.

Just a thought, really.

What's in a name?

A labour ward is a good place to keep track of name trends. When I was doing delivery duty, I was exposed to a clump of Calebs, a mass of Micaelas, a hefty helping of Heindrichs, some Simons and a very few Felicities.

It was always interesting for me to hear what people were choosing to name their children and why. Some people went for the family name option, giving their brand new offspring a super-concoction of names belonging to various family members from the last 5 generations. I always felt that this was very unfair on the infant. Why such a tiny little person has to carry some ridiculously extensive title is beyond me. 

Can you imagine: "I'm so glad you came to visit. I'd love to introduce you to my son. I hope you don't have anywhere you need to be in the next couple of hours, because it's going to take that long for me to recite his full name. I will have to stop at some point just to check his birth certificate, because I always muddle up the part where Wilhelm Majorus Siegfried follows on to the Peter Gandolfini, or is it the Jean-Claude Renaldi bit? See, I get it wrong every time! Just trying to keep the peace in this politically correct EU family of ours. Ahem. Cuppa tea?"

Then there were the parents who insisted on the New Agey names: "Ja, this is uhm? What do you call that beautiful flower with the thorns? Oh yes, a rose... Rose, what did we decide to call this little bebby? That's right, man, we called him Sunbeam. I thought it was wicked, bru. Yeah it's a bit on the frillsy side, but we actually didn't check if it was a boy or a girl for the first three days, you know... those labour drugs were wild, man! What? What do you mean only she was supposed to have?""

I also have my reservations about New Age names. It might be really cute, Gwenyth Paltrow, to have your little Apple Blossom digging in the sandpit, making snow angels or even starting ballet, but one day, when sweet little Apple Blossom has finished her MBA, please tell me who is actually going to take her seriously when she applies for that fancy position at IBM? (Apple working for IBM? Splendid, I know!)

Or parents who complicate the spelling of their infant's name to make their little dumpling completely unique. "This is Michael,' is what you hear, but what they're saying is, "This is EmYkilL." And the day that poor little EmYkilL has to learn to write his own name, the kid's going to have to go see an educational psychologist just to deal with the fact that his parents couldn't spell!

So when the time came to choose names for my own children, I was quite nervous. Not only about making the right decision, but also about all the criticism that goes along with naming your child (as neatly illustrated in the last four paragraphs).

We consulted name books, in the end, deciding that we favoured giving names with inherently special meanings. We should have only looked at one book, though. The trouble with looking up the meaning of the same name in different books, is that each author donates their own special interpretation to each name, so you'll find that the name you really like could mean "radiant angel" in one book and "lump of clay" in another.

We ended up going with one name meaning "Happy" and one meaning "Bringer of peace". (Side note - we await, perhaps not as patiently as we ought, for happiness and peace to be brought).

Yesterday, on the way home from ballet, "Happiness" was thoughtfully tugging on a stray hair that had escaped the crooked bun pinned off-center at the top of her head.

"Mom," she said, "when I have my daughter one day, I will call her Juliet."

"That's a very beautiful and romantic name," I said.

"What's romantic?" she asked.

"It's, uh, it means lovely and beautiful and special," I grasped at straws.

"Oh." Moments silence. "If I have another girl, I will call her Chloe."

"That's nice too, " I said. "But what if you have a boy?"

No hesitation here: "I'll call him Spiderman."

Hmmm. Seems we may be into a new name trend here...

Leaving work

I am confronted with a bitter-sweet anticipation. I have one week left at my current "official" place of work. I am standing on the edge of a cliff, only, unlike during dramatic changes in one's life where you feel that you are about to jump off into the great unknown, I feel like am facing the other way. Instead of preparing myself to plummet out into the vast abyss, I have my back to the chasm. I feel like I have spent the last four years pulling myself up this impossible rock and have reached a level and grassy, and somewhat unchallenging plateau.

I am relinquishing my responsibilities as small business owner, health advisor, dispenser of baby-know-how and giver of (more often than not) pain-free injections to humans in the 0 to 2 year category. 

4 years! How do you give up your "baby" after 4 years? 4 years of walking a road with clients who have become dear friends.  4 years of crying with parents over the unbearable loss of a stillborn child or the frustration of infertility. 4 years of anxiously waiting for pregnancy test results. 4 years of watching little bumps swell into radiant full term pregnancies and welcoming the tiny little bundles that grow and change so incredibly rapidly over the next few weeks, months and years. 4 years of nurturing the breastfeeding partnership of mother and child. 4 year of adapting/ adjusting/ advising/ alternating/ alleviating/ answering/ arguing/ assessing/ assisting/ bandaging/ breastfeeding/ breathing/ bruising/ calming/ campaigning/ caring/ carrying/ challenging/ changing/ cleaning/ collecting/ co-operating/ cradling/ creaming/ crying/ daring/ diagnosing/ diapering/ disinfecting/ educating/ embracing/ encouraging/ evaluating/ failing/ feeding/ fighting/ finding/ giving/ giving-up/ growing/ guessing/ healing/ holding/ implementing/ joking/ knowing/ laughing/ learning/ losing sleep/ loving/ massaging/ measuring/ meeting/ monitoring/ needing/ not sleeping/ nursing/ phoning/ planning/ pleading/ praying/ pricking/ promoting/ protecting/ recording/ repeating/ researching/ reupholstering/ rocking/ serving/ soothing/ sterilising/ suggesting/ swaddling/ testing/ tickling/ treating/ trying/ vaccinating/ visiting/ watching/ weighing/ winding/ winning/ worrying. 

Leaving this behind me, in part feels like giving up a child for adoption. A sense of guilt over abandoning this little business I have nurtured and grown for 4 years. And yet, as this season in my life rapidly draws to a close, I await what lies in store for me with some relief and excitement. I expect the next season to be relatively quiet and unobtrusive. A time of mothering, after-school taxiing, school outing accompaniament and general home management awaits.

I hate the term "Home Executive" - it sounds so like I'm trying to mask the fact that I scrub toilets and wipe noses and sort 4 people's underwear. Like I'm trying to make scratching mildew out of the tile grouting sound sophisticated. I think "Stay-at -Home-Mom" really covers it far better. Everyone knows that a mom does the dirty work, but everyone loves their mom for doing it. I don't need a fancy label. I will be knee deep in housework and and elbow-deep in homework. I will have mud under my cracked fingernails while I pull weeds out of the lawn. My wardrobe will not have anything that requires heels. I am a mom. And proud of it. 

(She bites her lip as she publishes her post)...