Shortly after my daughter was born my mother presented me with a plant from my Nan. Or, rather, a basket with a variety of plants in it adorned with a pink bow. I have always been fairly straight talking with my mother and so expected it to come as no surprise when surveying this item I said “oh dear”. Of all the gifts that can be given plants are to my mind the cruellest. Cut flowers do not require substantial care; a potted plant, however, is a life time commitment of watering and reporting. If it is a plant that doesn’t particularly appeal to you this is an unbearable burden – in honesty even with plants I do find appealing the idea of committing to regular watering is beyond me.
Please note that this collection of plants was given just after the birth of my daughter, with the associated demands that this brings. If it was me rather the long suffering wife breast feeding I feel certain that I would forget to feed her, and I am rather fond of her.
My mother, instead of encouraging me to enter into a tirade explaining the finer points of my disapproval of the well meant gift, looked a bit crest fallen and told me she had chosen it. I felt this was an appropriate moment for back tracking and suggested that the plants were indeed very nice and that maybe it was the nasty pink bow that was putting me off. My mother explained that she had placed the bow on them.
Seven weeks on we have not completely emptied the flat yet – tonight is the final trip – and among the things that had not made it over yet was the aforementioned plant. This was not a deliberate attempt to kill it, but rather a result of the difficulties of transporting plants – and not liking it.
It was then with some surprise that I arrived home yesterday to discover the plant sitting on the windowsill in a bowl of water. I was shocked. Had I offended my wife in some way so serious that she would seek out this plant to punish me? No. My mother had helpfully gone to the flat and retrieved it.
I wonder what effect watering it with bleach will have?
On the subject of gifts, people did give us, or rather, Grace gifts at the dedication which was now over two weeks ago. As yet I have not sent thank you cards. I get home from work at 7pm at night and I then try to eat, sort out the flat, study.. thank you cards have become a little buried in this list. Yet I know people took time to choose them, and we are very grateful for them..but finding the time to say thank you.. I am attempting to block out an evening next week for it, but right now its not looking good.
Yours as ever
the broken man
Showing posts with label birth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birth. Show all posts
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Thursday, 15 January 2009
How it is....
The alarm goes of at 6.45am and I don’t want to get up. I sleep for another 15mins before dragging myself out of bed. Breakfast and off to work. Work pressure is high but I try to study in my lunch break. I make it home for 6.30pm and take Grace while the long suffering wife cooks. All being well by 7.30pm we have eaten. I then need to work on boxing up the flat and taking things over to my mother's. We are moving in under 14 days.
I have cancelled all the direct debits, cancelled the mortgague payment, cancelled all the bills – the letters will soon rain down on me, the final demands – but I haven’t got the money to pay the bills. Paperwork needs looking at but I haven’t the will or the time to do it. At 1am I crawl into bed, at 3am grace wakes to feed. At 6.45am the alarm goes of and I don’t want to get up. I sleep for another 15mins before dragging myself…and so it goes on.
It is the long suffering wife's birthday on the 27th. Grace’s dedication on the 1st. So much to do and right now all I want to do is sleep.
Last night the wife asked me how much I think her stomach will recover. If how it is now is how it is. She is doing the exercises from the physio – we are a long way off from where things will be but I see her struggling and there is no easy comfort I can offer. The long suffering wife was always going to struggle with a post birth body – she is a recovering annorexic on the wagon for some 10 years now. The tear of her stomach muscles though has made things so much harder, so much worse than they would have been otherwise. She has never had a positive body image and now I see her walking on a thin wire high above the world trying so hard not to fall, trying to cling on.
In a brief moment between feeds, between changed nappys, between packing boxes, between Grace with wind, I catch glimpse of my wife and daughter's eyes, brief moments, the merest hint of a smile and for a moment I lose myself in it and everything seems okay – and then I remember that there are things I need to be doing and so I drag myself out of my chair and continue the battle for survival.
Today I am struggling.
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man.
I have cancelled all the direct debits, cancelled the mortgague payment, cancelled all the bills – the letters will soon rain down on me, the final demands – but I haven’t got the money to pay the bills. Paperwork needs looking at but I haven’t the will or the time to do it. At 1am I crawl into bed, at 3am grace wakes to feed. At 6.45am the alarm goes of and I don’t want to get up. I sleep for another 15mins before dragging myself…and so it goes on.
It is the long suffering wife's birthday on the 27th. Grace’s dedication on the 1st. So much to do and right now all I want to do is sleep.
Last night the wife asked me how much I think her stomach will recover. If how it is now is how it is. She is doing the exercises from the physio – we are a long way off from where things will be but I see her struggling and there is no easy comfort I can offer. The long suffering wife was always going to struggle with a post birth body – she is a recovering annorexic on the wagon for some 10 years now. The tear of her stomach muscles though has made things so much harder, so much worse than they would have been otherwise. She has never had a positive body image and now I see her walking on a thin wire high above the world trying so hard not to fall, trying to cling on.
In a brief moment between feeds, between changed nappys, between packing boxes, between Grace with wind, I catch glimpse of my wife and daughter's eyes, brief moments, the merest hint of a smile and for a moment I lose myself in it and everything seems okay – and then I remember that there are things I need to be doing and so I drag myself out of my chair and continue the battle for survival.
Today I am struggling.
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man.
Monday, 5 January 2009
Back to Work
Back to work today and back to some kind of routine, at least for me.
So two weeks on, and what lessons have we learnt?
We have learnt that babies should not drink bath water. That thrashing around in the bath is not a baby's way of saying it is having fun but rather an indication that it is choking and would like to have a bit of a back rub and to spit up the bath water it has drunk.
I have also learnt that Grace is the third most popular baby name in 2008 (In England). This has, of course, left me feeling a little depressed that it’s the name we settled on - I have only ever known one person called Grace and so thought it was a safe bet.
Before the birth of my daughter, people informed me in a knowing way that you can't understand how it will change your life until you have a baby. That it will change the way you see everything and think about everything. That may happen. It may just be a delayed reaction on my part, but parenthood is as I anticipated. We do all the same things, go to the same places, we just have a baby with us when we do so. Admittedly, Grace seems to make herself the centre of attention, and serves as an invitation to strangers to say "hello" – for some reason particually in supermarkets.
While I am not a great fan of people, I have found myself prepared to listen to people telling me how beautiful she is, and I do feel rather splendid wandering around with her in a sling. I am always a little confused when people say “well done” on seeing her. Having a baby doesn’t seem like an achievement I can claim any great credit for. If she turns out to be a wonderful young lady, then I will be able to claim some credit in having brought her up well, but having merely succeded in fathering her, I feel no particualar claim to credit. People seem obsessed with telling me that she either looks like me or her mother, although I suspect that mostly, she looks like a baby.
There also seems to be a bit of a gender obsession. We do not dress her in great swathes of pink and bows. Instead she wears baby grows – mostly those from her aunt and an American friend as they are of a far higher quality than those we have got as hand-me-downs. As such, looking at her with a baby grow on, it is impossible to distinguish her gender. Yet people who refer to her as a "he" seem terribly embarssed when they ask her name and we reveal that she is indeed a she not a he. It does not create any offence on our part at all. If it bothered us we would dress her in pink as that seems to be the cue that makes the gender link for people.
As time goes on we may discover that Grace is a girly girl who likes nothing better than party frocks. Or she might prefer jeans. The choice is hers, and I have no particular desire to impose it on her from such an early age. Such outfits have far to many buttons for my liking anyway. Baby grows are a far easier option.
Ahhh.. I have just thought of one thing that came as a surprise..the number of nappies she gets through. Her record is currently at 16 in one day. We are using reusable washable nappies – which, also to our surprise, take 2-3 days to dry. This is creating a bit of a battle in trying to have enough nappies to get through each day..I did momentarily flirt with a disposable nappy when she ran out – it was a free sample – I put it on her...and, well, it was plastic and nasty in every way, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her in it, and so it was out with the safety pins and a bit of cloth for an old style nappy as opposed to the Velcro pre shapped reusables.
Well that’s it for now.
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man
So two weeks on, and what lessons have we learnt?
We have learnt that babies should not drink bath water. That thrashing around in the bath is not a baby's way of saying it is having fun but rather an indication that it is choking and would like to have a bit of a back rub and to spit up the bath water it has drunk.
I have also learnt that Grace is the third most popular baby name in 2008 (In England). This has, of course, left me feeling a little depressed that it’s the name we settled on - I have only ever known one person called Grace and so thought it was a safe bet.
Before the birth of my daughter, people informed me in a knowing way that you can't understand how it will change your life until you have a baby. That it will change the way you see everything and think about everything. That may happen. It may just be a delayed reaction on my part, but parenthood is as I anticipated. We do all the same things, go to the same places, we just have a baby with us when we do so. Admittedly, Grace seems to make herself the centre of attention, and serves as an invitation to strangers to say "hello" – for some reason particually in supermarkets.
While I am not a great fan of people, I have found myself prepared to listen to people telling me how beautiful she is, and I do feel rather splendid wandering around with her in a sling. I am always a little confused when people say “well done” on seeing her. Having a baby doesn’t seem like an achievement I can claim any great credit for. If she turns out to be a wonderful young lady, then I will be able to claim some credit in having brought her up well, but having merely succeded in fathering her, I feel no particualar claim to credit. People seem obsessed with telling me that she either looks like me or her mother, although I suspect that mostly, she looks like a baby.
There also seems to be a bit of a gender obsession. We do not dress her in great swathes of pink and bows. Instead she wears baby grows – mostly those from her aunt and an American friend as they are of a far higher quality than those we have got as hand-me-downs. As such, looking at her with a baby grow on, it is impossible to distinguish her gender. Yet people who refer to her as a "he" seem terribly embarssed when they ask her name and we reveal that she is indeed a she not a he. It does not create any offence on our part at all. If it bothered us we would dress her in pink as that seems to be the cue that makes the gender link for people.
As time goes on we may discover that Grace is a girly girl who likes nothing better than party frocks. Or she might prefer jeans. The choice is hers, and I have no particular desire to impose it on her from such an early age. Such outfits have far to many buttons for my liking anyway. Baby grows are a far easier option.
Ahhh.. I have just thought of one thing that came as a surprise..the number of nappies she gets through. Her record is currently at 16 in one day. We are using reusable washable nappies – which, also to our surprise, take 2-3 days to dry. This is creating a bit of a battle in trying to have enough nappies to get through each day..I did momentarily flirt with a disposable nappy when she ran out – it was a free sample – I put it on her...and, well, it was plastic and nasty in every way, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her in it, and so it was out with the safety pins and a bit of cloth for an old style nappy as opposed to the Velcro pre shapped reusables.
Well that’s it for now.
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man
Friday, 19 September 2008
And For Tonight's Entertainment
The long-suffering wife asked me a few days ago whether I was “up for” going to a homebirth meeting, so I said "sure"; it's always good to get some extra info as we are heading down that avenue, so to speak. So, tonight we are heading off to a stranger's house, with a group of other people who have had or are planning to have homebirths. The couple will show us their homebirth pool, the video of the delivery, and we will all have tea and maybe even biscuits.
If you just managed to read that sentence without stopping half way through and screaming "NO!! WHY??? WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT???" then you have done better than me! Let me draw your attention again to that line...at stranger's house watching a video of them giving birth while they ask if I would like another biscuit.. I am very afraid..in fact the only thing which bothered me more was when, many years ago, a female friend put on a hard core video with her in the starring...position and asked me what I thought of it (I nearly choked on my tea!). I mean, maybe..maybe it will all be tastefully filmed from the head end (the mother's – not baby's) but – okay – I am being pathetic? Squeemish?
And when I get nervous I make jokes…I try not to … but, even now, I am thinking of lines like “OUCH, that must sting", "hey, I bet that put your man off sex for ever", "I mean, wow, that’s not pretty” “are all babies that ugly when born?” “may I say, I love what you have done with your hair..”
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man
If you just managed to read that sentence without stopping half way through and screaming "NO!! WHY??? WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT???" then you have done better than me! Let me draw your attention again to that line...at stranger's house watching a video of them giving birth while they ask if I would like another biscuit.. I am very afraid..in fact the only thing which bothered me more was when, many years ago, a female friend put on a hard core video with her in the starring...position and asked me what I thought of it (I nearly choked on my tea!). I mean, maybe..maybe it will all be tastefully filmed from the head end (the mother's – not baby's) but – okay – I am being pathetic? Squeemish?
And when I get nervous I make jokes…I try not to … but, even now, I am thinking of lines like “OUCH, that must sting", "hey, I bet that put your man off sex for ever", "I mean, wow, that’s not pretty” “are all babies that ugly when born?” “may I say, I love what you have done with your hair..”
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man
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