An update from the last few months

Hello All,

Well, it’s been about 5 months since my last post.

I barely get the chance to pee in private so having the time to sit down to write a blog is low down on the list of my priorities (just below matching underwear and a little above Pilates.) That said, here I am to catch you all up on the latest and greatest these past few months have had to offer.

First off, we’ve just bought a house. Squee! I’ve had a grand old time Kierafying the place (a process involving paint, curtains and a nervous-looking husband checking on bank statements). Specks include 4 beds, 2 1/2 bath, nice big kitchen and a playroom for Arjun. Hurrah! A place to chuck his toys and unending toddler miscellanea! The best bit is that we’ve finally been able to make the nursery of my dreams for Arjun, and yes, I know that really it’s his bedroom and it should be for him. But it isn’t. It’s for me. Ever since I saw that little blue positive sign on the home pregnancy test, my head has been in a cloud of coordinating bedding and wall-sized murals. It's better than I had imagined - pictures to come.

Arjun has morphed from a tiny and helpless infant to a walking, talking, cavorting toddler, leaving a wake of damage and destruction in his path. I absolutely understand the phrase “having eyes in the back of your head" as he needs 100% CONSTANT supervision lest I find him with a mouthful of potted plant soil and Alok's cufflinks in the toilet. Again.

Thankfully I’ve yet to encounter a tantrum in public places as Arjun is the epitome of innocence and adorability whenever we’re out. It’s only when we’re home that he unleashes his wrath and fury over the injustices of his tiny world (how dare I not let him play with electrical cables? How dare 1?!). Either way, we’ve survived the first year relatively successfully. We've both come out relatively unscathed (mind the bite marks from little, tiny teeth) and all three of us still seem to like each other. That’s always a bonus.

Stay tuned,

x

From The Desk of the Intellectually-Starved: Infants Don’t Care About Philosophy

Before I plunged headfirst into motherhood I was pursuing a degree in humanitarian studies. My days were spent reading Praust and Voltaire and I could dissect a pig’s larynx like nobody’s business. One year later the extent of my academic pursuit is singing along to the Baby Einstein DVD. Unfortunately, a six-month-old is a fairly poor conversationalist and life as an at-home mother soon becomes pretty monotonous.

The mother-and-baby groups that I frequent are better, but not by much. Our chitchat involves discussing the frequency, consistency and quantity of our children’s bowel movements. Woo.

My husband comes home weary from another day at work to a half-crazed intellectually starved old biddy that follows behind him, batty from isolation and boredom. Following him to the bathroom like a crazed stalker and nattering nonsense at the locked door where he is undoubtedly (and understandably) hiding. I plead, “Let’s discuss politics and religion! Let us debate the principles of existentialist philosophy! I need adult interaction and intellectual stimulation! Let me live vicariously through you!!”

However, any attempt at a proper conversation would inevitably be stilted due to my embarrassing cluelessness of current events. I simply do not have the time to keep up with the global comings and goings. As it happens, while Obama was inaugurated I was in labour, and while the MP’s expense reports were publicly scrutinized, I was trying (in vain) to express milk. I don’t read newspapers because my son eats them and the vast majority of literature I read has to do with bottle sterilizers and breast-pumps. 

But in the rare minutes when I can find the peace to pen my thoughts, I escape to the solace of my blog, where I can write and think about whatever I damn well please. And what do I choose to write about? Being a mother. The irony does not escape me. Why, you ask? When the Internet is a vast and wonderful forum where I can write about anything I wish?

I don’t know, really.

Maybe because while my knowledge of biomedical ethics is outdated and lacking, I can relish my expertise on the love/hate Gina Ford dispute. Maybe it’s because I have become hopelessly absorbed in my maternal role with nary a chance of recovery.

 Maybe it’s because my brain was lost with my placenta.

Let the Battle Begin: Introducing 'Real Food'

Now, before I begin, I should mention that I am, quite frankly, a lazy person. Not lazy as in drain-on-society, crap-houseguest kind of lazy, but if I am offered the choice of doing something the easy way, I’m not hard to persuade. Hence one of the many reasons why breastfeeding is brilliant. Admittedly during those first tumultuous weeks with the around-the-clock feedings and bleeding nipples bottles were a luring temptress, but I always saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Bottles, while deliciously handy once in a while (and lovely for Daddy to have some bonding time), involve formulas and teat sizes and sterilization and temperatures and all of those things that, being perfectly honest, I am simply too lazy for. Breastfeeding, on the other hand, is always readily available and the perfect temperature. Just whip ‘em on out and get on with it.

    That said, thing were going along swimmingly. Then he hit six months and while other mothers had been pureeing carrots for their wee ones for a couple months now, mine was still happily slurping away at the breast. How had it snuck up on me so fast? I had skipped the weaning chapters in my baby books, this strange and foreign weaning business was still ages away. Wasn’t it?

 I dug my feet into the ground for as long as possible, ignoring comments such as ‘He hasn’t had any solids? At all?’ and ‘Maybe just a little bit of Pablum to top him up’ until even Arjun’s health visitor sent me home from a check-up with a pamphlet on weaning. Whipping out a boob is considerably easier than mucking about with ‘real food’ I really wasn’t ready for him to stop breastfeeding. Easy for him, easy for me, win-win? No?

Nonetheless, I armed myself for battle; with my Annabel Karmel recipes, my tommee tippy heat-sensing spoons. I bought the freshest and most nutritious organic food in the produce aisle, spent the afternoon sterilizing and pureeing and freezing. My deepfreeze was stocked with nutritionally-packed mini-meals that I’d just have to pop into a bowl and microwave for a minute. I emerge from the kitchen, triumphant and splattered with parsnip where I found my husband. Feeding him icecream. 

The Yummy Mummy Epidemic: The Loss of the Right to Frump.

The recent celebrity baby-boom has resulted in an onslaught of tabloid covers featuring celebrity mothers minutes from the delivery room, posing in string bikinis. Umbilical cord still attached. Articles brimming with tips and tricks to lose the baby weight and promises of transforming you back to your lean-mean-pre-partum-machine in 6-weeks or less appeal to pregnant and post-natal alike. In their sleep-deprived, hormonal and all-round fragile state this seems like perfect logic. Oh, the poor, gullible prima gravida. Of course I’ll lose the weight breastfeeding, of course I’ll maintain an exclusive diet of seaweed and acai berry. I’ll schedule the training for my marathon during naptime, before preparing nutritionally balanced, low-fat, low-carb, organic gourmet meals.

Pfft.

 One fact, failed to mention, is the nanny, personal trainer, dieticians, hair and makeup artist, and the oh, so flattering lighting (Funny thing, the light, when I wear my bikini, is not so flattering). I, too, have fallen victim to its unattainable charms; with my bugaboo pram, my designer nappy-bag (the same as Angelina’s!) in the vain hope that I, yes I, will be the posh mom. The M.I.L.F (forgive me), the one who still had it. I will be the one with rock-hard abs 6-weeks post partum. I will make it a priority to blow-dry and flat-iron my hair daily (and it will, it will look like Victoria’s, contrary to what my stylist says). Bygone are the days when it was acceptable – nay, expected – for a haggard mother to trudge to the post office, grumpy child in tow, with sudocrem on her breakout, wearing yesterdays pureed carrots on her reflux covered jumper. I would not be that woman.

Fast-forward 3 months later.

         If I can fit in a shower between a load of laundry, making supper, (admittedly, non-nutritionally balanced, high-fat, high-carb, non-organic and definitely not gourmet) and sterilizing bottles in the thirty seconds that my son will nap, the day has been a success. My hair has grown from Victoria Beckham-esque into Bon Jovi circa 1988.And you know? I’m kind of okay with it. Sure, I sometimes I wish my stomach has a little more concave than convex, and pictures of my bikini-worthy body from honeymoon in Cuba evoke a pang of nostalgia, but really, I have more important things to do.

Now, I’d better go, I have to get to the post-office, maybe I’ll wash off the sudocrem off my chin. But then again, maybe I won’t.

Pregnancy Flashback: How We Got Here In The First Place

            It has never been an issue for my husband and I on whether or not we’d have children. We both love and wanted kids someday (note the ironic foreshadowing on “someday”) throughout our dating days, we’d often discuss the future (more ironic foreshadowing) when we’d be parents. My mother warned me, (God bless her) that we Anderson women come from a long line of easy breeders. God knows my mom merely had to use the same toothbrush as my dad and she’d end up with a youngin’. And so, before the wedding, she told a bright-eyed and bushy tailed me to wait a little and enjoy married life.

Now, forgive me for my naivety here, but I assumed The Miracle of Conception was a little more finicky than it really is. In my simple little mind I had envisioned thermometers and timings and calendars with circles and exclamation marks on them.  A couple of months before my wedding I went off the pill, bought a bottle of multi-vitamins with folic acid and saw to it that my body was in tip-top baby-making shape. That said,  I also saw my GP and informed her of our plans of trying (or, rather, not hindering). Her response was this, and I quote, 'You've been on the pill for quite sometime now, don't be too worried if you haven't conceived in six or seven months.' 

Ha! Hahahaha.

Let me tell you, friends, my uterus is a very friendly place. As it turns out, for the last week of our honeymoon my poor husband had to put up with a tired, bitchy, libido-less and hormonally out-of-whack wife. I was on that delivery table exactly 9 months after my dad walked me down that aisle. Trying for a baby? Trying!? There was no 'trying' involved.