Archive for August, 2007

 

Too Posh to Push? (Part 2)

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

But, having said that, there are things you aren’t told when schedules are being done and options are being narrowed down and made, and I will have to list them to distance myself as much as possible from these admissions:

  • It’s a totally freaky experience being fully awake and knowing that your insides are spilling all over the operating table and there is blood and fluid flowing like a fountain from your belly – the gynae and theatre nurses have to wear wellies (enough said). Don’t ever look at the overhead light, as you will be terrified by the reflection.
  • You are given your baby at about the same time as a shot of morphine in your thigh – the effect of the drug is not conducive with (a) safety and (b) bonding.
  • It’s fucking sore when the drugs wear off.
  • It’s fucking sore when you have to get up to go to the toilet for the first time after they take the catheter out.
  • You get a suppository – this is supposedly for the alleviation of the pain but, when you are crapping your guts out, it is revealed that it is all a cover and it is really to prevent you clogging up, getting constipated and having to push so hard that your stitches pop out.
  • You are incapable of coping with a tiny baby at home when your husband only has three days of paternity leave (RSA Labour Law sucks … believe me, I know).
  • You are incapable of coping without your parents or in-laws around.
  • You are incapable of coping WITH your parents or in-laws around.
  • It is perfectly normal to have permanent nerve damage in your coccyx – my feeling in that area disappeared totally for over a year and now the pain is making up for the long-term loss.
  • The entry point of the spinal block needle comes back to haunt you by causing the most excruciating pain – this when you are constantly having to pick up a 13kg bundle.

Perhaps the NHS should change their propaganda slogan. Or perhaps they tried … but, admittedly, the above list doesn’t make for a particularly catchy slogan.

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Too Posh to Push? (Part 1)

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

One of the reasons I left the UK was because I could no longer deal with the NHS propaganda that made women feel like they were either failures as women or just weren’t particularly interested in breaking
a sweat during the birthing process. The former touches a nerve in even the most non-maternal woman and the latter conjures up images of a woman who hands her baby to a wet nurse as soon as it emerges from the bloody wound.

Not particularly into the whole maternal, mother nature thing (which, one has to admit, is not so much mother nature as total fad these days), I knew I would have a c-section – it’s unnatural to try and get
something that big out of such a small exit. Whether the gynae was looking after his schedule or my continence is irrelevant. When he told me the head of my foetus was too large to exit ‘naturally’, I was relieved to have the medical back-up for my instinctual beliefs – after all who said a small slice across the lower abdomen to extract a living being isn’t natural.

There are revelations that follow. I do, however, have to pre-empt them with a disclaimer: I still believe in the advances of medical science enough to believe that a c-section is the only way and I would never go back and change a thing.

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The Anti-Mum

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

An avid campaigner against the need to have a child has reached a stage of her biology that she is battling to hold at bay. As the last of her peers to be childless, she feels her life is lacking something and that this indicates that she needs a baby.

Nobody needs a baby; most people just want one. It’s immaterial what your motives are for either wanting one or not but you have to be very clear on what you actually need.

Wanting a baby requires you to want it badly enough to compensate for the loss of freedom, mobility, travel, late-night parties and the halving of your relationships.

But when you choose the alternative, you have to be strong enough in the face of the social pressures, the emotional guilt and the need to know if it will ever be enough to not have one.

Having a baby is like upgrading or downgrading your neighbourhood … whichever way you choose to look at it. It’s a lifestyle choice. Take it or leave it but never feel it is so integral to life that you will feel incomplete without it.

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‘So, are you having a second?’

Monday, August 20th, 2007

Since the moment I went public with my pregnancy, people have been asking about the ‘next one’. I endured the baby question through nine years of marriage and genuinely hoped that, through falling pregnant, people would consider my duty done and let me be. It’s just not that simple. People feel a sense of duty around the need to procreate to the point that one person’s advice was, ‘Just don’t think about it, just do it.’ Helpful? I think not. Perfect strangers will ask how old my son is and immediately offer advice on how far apart I should have my children to birth methods for the next.

I feel a great sense of relief when I chance upon someone who is stopping at one.  A kindred spirit for no other reason than that their desire to have only one translates into a willingness to expand their social boundaries. People who have a second, third (and sometimes fourth), because they feel their first needs a friend or because their first is becoming too spoilt, are not only delusional (because there are no guarantees of either being resolved), but are also saying, ‘I’m not bothered with looking outside of my family unit for companionship for my offspring as they are better off getting it all from within the ‘unit’.’

I am slowly beginning to realise that this question is not meant as an affront about my abilities as a non-mother but is perhaps the only question mumsy mums can muster – the only thing they feel they have in common with me now that I have joined the ranks.

As a reader of my outwardly expressed inner thoughts, don’t take it personally if you have/want more than one … and I’ll try not to take it personally that I am expected to have/want more than one.

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‘He’s not my first, he’s my only’.

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

I’ve got two words for you. Norman Bates. A product of Hollywood, he has become the quintessential only child, a benchmark upon which to base the desperate need of couples to have more children.

Is it really so terribly sad and lonely being an only child? With the world as big as it is and the pool of children out there to play with, can anyone really believe that all only children will grow up bored, depressed and likely to murder their parents. The way I see it; the more children you have, the greater your chances are of producing a psychopath.

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Baby Reds

Sunday, August 12th, 2007

I missed three birthdays in one week. It’s not that I forgot about the birthdays, it’s that I forgot what week I was in. This was the point when I realised I might have post-natal depression.

This was not the baby blues – I wasn’t blue, I was red. I didn’t feel like crying, I felt like screaming; I didn’t feel like curling up in a ball under the covers, I felt like bolting and never looking back; I didn’t feel like driving fast, I felt like driving fast over a cliff. You get the picture – blue is too passive to be my colour. This is the reason so much red has found its way into my child’s wardrobe – it’s a matter of projecting.

My gynae became a colour victim too – I see red when I’m not getting my greens – for making all of this possible. I had tried blaming the baby, my husband, my hormones, my motherhood. It wasn’t working. The gynae, conditioned to field hormonal abuse, suggested I phone the PND (post-natal depression) Hotline. This hotline evidently mirrors its SLAs on the 911 switchboard – I left a desperate message but no one ever returned my call.

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More shocking honesty

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007

It’s a sex thing

The few post-child-sex stories you hear revolve around a man’s rejection; his needs not being satisfied by the new woman in his life … the woman with engorged breasts that cannot be fondled, the woman who doesn’t put his needs first, the woman who is ratty, hormonal and with whom he is now expected to share his bed. I sympathise with this man, I really do.

But what about the man who uses this sympathy to convince himself that it’s OK to not want his wife. He wanted the child so desperately that there was bound to be an anti-climax … he sure didn’t buy into any of this. I actually sympathise with this man too.

There is so much at play here. But the bottom line is that the sex thing gets in the way of unraveling all the expectations and disappointments. I felt that all I wanted was sex and all my husband wanted was sex with someone else. The thing is, we both just wanted sex. The only difference was that my problem with sex was physical: my husband’s purely emotional.

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Back in the saddle

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007

99.9% immune to another bout of pregnancy, I was back in the saddle.

Or so I thought …

You’re advised to hold off on sex until the six-week check-up. This is no short period when your sleep is constantly disturbed and weeks feel like months. And when you think you will never again be the owner of your breasts, let alone your body, you need your partner to flip you over and take you before you and your baby merge to become part of the same collective.

But things need to heal before you can ride again.

And so I waited. I waited until my gynae told me I was good to go. And once I was good to go, every spare moment was used to the max to wax and clip and preen and sheen. Leaving nothing to chance, I even pre-selected the perfect condom for my much-anticipated night of sordid sexcapades.

Nothing could have prepared me for what ensued. It was a complete non-event; only the tip of the condom got any action that night. I wanted to believe it was nerves or even the onset of frigidity … but the thing is, if you’re breast-feeding (and this is not meant to be an advert for formula-feeding), your hormones are the only things getting screwed and your ‘koek’ is as tight and dry as an 80-year-old’s.

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Schoolyard bully

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

Not one for schoolyard scraps in my day, I have found myself making up for this childhood void at my local ‘Moms and Tots’ group. Allergic as I was to the concept of embarking on the ‘moms and tots’ journey, the mother in me wanted to do ‘what’s best for my child’. I took this to new levels when wrestling from minors, toys they themselves had ‘stolen’ from my child.

It feels good to have a cause.

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Reaching out on the Radio

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

What I should have said on Cape Talk was, ‘Yes, I do agree with you that a baby should be put into a routine. But perhaps you shouldn’t make it sound so easy. You are telling all your listeners that your method is the only solution and that they should never allow their kids to be in the driving seat. But perhaps you need to express to them that although they will need to give up the relative ease of demand, demand, demand, it will be easier only after a very long period of extraordinarily hard work. Any new mother will tell you that when trying to get on with life while coping with this new little person in their life it’s as easy being in the driving seat as it is being in the pilot’s seat of a Boeing without a licence to fly. Putting a baby in a routine requires commitment, dedication and vigilance … not to mention a strong will and a tolerance for methods such as controlled crying.’

I should have. But I didn’t.

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