Friday Playlist: “We Take Turns at Our House” Edition

Posted on 10/17/2008 by cheesefairy

Me: Do you like this song?
Trombone: Yup, mm hmm.
Me: Because you’re not dancing.
Trombone: I’m dancing with my HEAD Mummy.


SeeqPod – Playable Search

Posted in music, trombone | 1 Comment

Derail Your Own Train

Posted on 10/16/2008 by cheesefairy

Fall, it’s not you, it’s me. I love your morning fog and your evening dark. I love the swish of tires on wet streets, wearing my gum boots, wrapping scarves around my neck, raindrops falling on my head etc. I love sleeping in my bedroom with the window open so there is a cool breeze, huddled under a warm quilt.

But I love those things, let’s be honest, when I don’t have anything else to do. Getting out from under the warm quilt at 4:55 in the goddamn morning to feed a baby who, let’s face it, is not going to waste away any time soon? Not my favourite part of Fall.

Last week I was ON. I made a fresh, hot meal every night. One night it was risotto. I don’t remember the others. I was up, out of the house, everything was clean, the cupboards were stocked, the children were, um, well, they’re still breathing right now so I guess they were fine?

This week I am OFF. I have spent three separate afternoons wandering around the grocery store, waving off the helpful grocery store people, “No, I don’t need help finding anything; I’m just thinking.” (Ha. That’s a good one.) Laundry idles in the washer until it needs re-washing because of that mildewy smell. There are four separate sippy cups of milk in the fridge; I do not know which is the most recent. Our front porch looks like it got hit by a Toddler Desert Storm; summer toys and remnants of sand (No. More. Sand. Ever.) everywhere and every time I come home I say to myself, self, you should clean up the porch or the property values will decrease even more and myself says back, bitch, the economy is tanking and you can’t afford to move anywhere except Abbotsford so get inside and find the chocolate.

Thankfully we have freezer food until my cooking mojo returns. (Except I think I will toss the container marked “Potato soup – BAD.” Why would I keep that? Since July?)

I should stretch more. And drink more water.

And I’m pretty sure the internal dialogue while nursing my infant isn’t supposed to go:

Self: “Aw, someday he won’t fit in my arms like this.”
Devil Self: “No, because he will live FAR FAR AWAY and I’ll get to sleep in.”

That’s how I know it’s time to re-implement the sanity journal. Even if I have to get up at 4 am and prop my eyelids with toothpicks to do it.

I know it will pass. I know. The days are getting shorter but they feel longer. That parenting coin just keeps flipping; Trombone is brilliant and ornery, Fresco is adorable and engaging but, I think, should have come with hearing protection.

I got used to a routine with Trombone; hell, I created the routine and None Shall Fuck With It. It allowed for the barest minimum of everything I needed: coffee, alone time, time with SA, time with Trombone, time for laundry, time for mindless internet surfing, er, research. Enter Fresco. Who is not at all a crazy-maker, just an almost-6-month-old baby who has needs and wants and refuses to stick to anything remotely resembling a routine, outright REFUSES and it is
driving
me
mad.

Well except that he poops every day at the first hint of sunrise, even if sunrise is behind heavy cloud. Whatever. We all have our obscure little talents.

I know how silly it is to expect anything at all from our day-to-day except survival. I still do. I have high expectations. Despite my best intentions, I have high expectations.

But I am still treading staunchly through my days, left foot right foot, one day at a time and I know things will swing up and down again hundreds of times before they ever level. It is all right, really.

For example: the cat has stopped trying to sleep on the change table.

Oh, AND Saint Aardvark is making beer on Saturday, in our kitchen.

I will take what I can get. The end.

Posted in drink, two! children!, whiny | 9 Comments

True, Patriot Love

Posted on 10/14/2008 by cheesefairy

Remember The Canadian Mother’s Book by Helen MacMurchy, MD, from two years ago? I had a yearning for it the other day and dug it out of the bookshelf. Today is election day in Canada. I bring to you more choice selections that you might feel your patriotic spirits rise. (of course non-Canadians may read as well.)

In case you were wondering what one looks like, here is a primer on The Good Baby:

The Good Baby has bright eyes and a contented expression. His skin is red for the first few days and then gradually becomes a clear soft pink colour. He feels “light” and “springy” in your arms. He sleeps peacefully with eyes and mouth closed.

On Saving your Country by Nursing Your Baby:

The Mother is the leader, but the Father, the Doctor, the Nurse, the rest of the family and all of us Canadians must help the Mother to make Maternal Nursing the Canadian Way.

The Doctor, of course, depends on the Nurse to manage the nursing. But the Doctor is responsible for seeing that the Nurse manages it properly and advises the Mother wisely. Nursing by the Mother is the One Best Way to save the life of the Canadian Baby.

When we are done nursing (at 9 months) we wean:

Milk is the indispensable food for children. They cannot do without it. The cow has been well called “the foster mother of the human race,” and she must have green food, fresh air and sun.

And eventually, we may feed a variety of jellies, including barley jelly:

Soak four tablespoonfuls of well-washed pearl barley in a quart of warm water for an hour. Bring to the boiling-point, and keep almost boiling for three hours. While hot, strain into a freshly-scalded jug. Cover and set in a cool place. Make fresh for use every day.

I guess they didn’t have TV back in the ’20s so what else would you have to do but spend 4 hours of every day making your own barley jelly that your baby would probably spit out all over the floor. Or maybe that’s just my bias talking.

But I think my favourite page is the one containing this vignette entitled: The Golden Opportunity.

At 5:45 am steal to the mother’s door. Is she sleeping? She stirs, she speaks.

“Is that you, nurse? Where is my baby?”

Carry in the little Canadian – looking so sweet – and give him to his mother. This baby is a Canadian boy, but the next will be a Canadian girl and just as welcome. He sleeps on as you lay him in his mother’s arms.

It is well for him. Pre-natal life is behind him and post-natal life, with all its greatness, is before him, and we must do our best for the “infant soldier.” He has helped his mother to fight for her life and his, and now he sleeps.

(The Canadian Mother, of course, does not sleep. She will never sleep again with the responsibility of the Canadian Child’s Upbringing weighing so heavily upon her shoulders.)

(Plus there’s all that barley jelly to make.)
(and Gossip Girl to watch. Oh. Just me?)

Posted in books, funny, the parenthood | 3 Comments

My Idle Hands Encountered the Devil Television Today

Posted on 10/13/2008 by cheesefairy

Dear The Learning Channel,

I watched part of two episodes of your show, A Baby Story today.

I have seen your show before. It’s a cleaned up, pretty version of labour and delivery and it always features a happy ending. I have actually heard it referred to as birth porn for just that reason. I used to be unemployed and without children and it was pretty gripping television, what with the happy ending and all and the triumph of woman over pain and the sneak peeks into American hospital rooms.

However I now have two children of my own (so I am an Expert) and though my labours were different from each other in many ways, they both shared two very important characteristics: I was respected and trusted to my process throughout. These are characteristics I think are missing from your show and I think this absence is detrimental to your viewers, many of whom are probably developing from you their own ideas about what childbirth will be like and who would benefit from a balanced portrayal of same.

The two episodes I saw today depressed and disgusted me. Both featured women whose labours were declared “non-progressive” and so their doctors recommended cesarean sections. In the case of the first woman, her perfectly normal baby was removed from her uterus and then removed from the room and only when her own mother asked that the baby be brought in, did the nurse bring the baby to her mother.

The second woman had an epidural placed to help with her pain and then was put in bed to dilate, you know, as though she were a machine. After several hours of her just lying there, waiting for something to happen, her doctor examined her cervix and said, “You’re 7 centimetres and the baby is still quite high up. Right now it’s looking like we’ll probably have to do a c-section but you know, I’ve been surprised before. I’ll come back and check you in a while.”

When he returned, a scant hour later, he declared that she was still 7 centimetres and the baby was still high up. He pronounced that it was time to get that baby out because – and this is what really got my hackles up – “…you’re not dilating and the baby is still quite high. This is nature’s way of saying it’s not going to happen.”

At this point, The Learning Network, I truly did want to leap into my television set and kick that pig fucker doctor right in the junk.

She was given paralytic drugs, made to stay in bed, as much as told that she probably wouldn’t be able to deliver her baby vaginally but hey – maybe! – but her doctor doubted it, told that she would probably have to have major surgery and then left alone: SURPRISE! she didn’t dilate, SURPRISE! the baby didn’t move, SURPRISE! her body shut itself down.

This doctor wants to invoke Nature? Ignorant pig fucker! Nature intended this woman to be on her feet, using gravity to move the baby down, using her body the way her body was built to be used. Nature intended for her to be supported by people who know what they are talking about. Nature intended she be given the time and space and information she needed in order to have her baby safely, successfully, in her own time.

And I have no problem with c-sections. They save lives. They are sometimes necessary. And yes I know the show is edited and I did not see the whole story. Maybe at the end, she sued him. I don’t know.

However I would like to propose a companion show for A Baby Story, working title: Doula Saves the Day! Imagine the style of Nanny 911 (the show where the bossy nanny comes and whips a badly behaved family into shape) taking place in a hospital setting within the framework of a woman’s labour and delivery day. A doula, a non-medical support person for a labouring woman and her partner, would be available to intervene in a Nanny 911 fashion, should a woman being filmed for A Baby Story think it warranted.

Here is the episode I just described being transformed into Doula Saves the Day! When the doctor comes in the room and offers his opinion, the husband says, “We want a doula!” After a commercial break, the doula magically arrives and helps the woman to her feet (or better yet is called before she gets the epidural so that she can request a walking epidural) and takes her for a walk around the hospital. She helps her into the shower or bath and lets her labour in water. She gets the woman a yoga ball to sit on and crouch over.

When the doctor comes back in an hour, the woman has progressed to 8 cms and the baby is lowering in her pelvis. The doula convinces the doctor they should wait another hour before thinking about a c-section. Within the hour, the woman is fully dilated, a variety of positions for pushing are proposed (only one of which is lying prone on the bed) and when it is time, the woman delivers her baby vaginally with the support of her husband and doula by her side. She holds her baby right away.

(And if people take to this you could do an Xtreme Doula Saves the Day!, where the doula takes the doctor out behind the hospital and kneecaps him.)

I think the experience of birth can be so many things and can be influenced by so many factors. I really think the model I’ve described above would result in fewer unnecessary surgeries and would also serve to show the viewing public that there is an alternative to “shut up and do what the doctor says, you ignorant slut.”

Most sincerely, awaiting your positive response,

Cheesefairy

Posted in idiots, television | 8 Comments

Two

Posted on 10/11/2008 by cheesefairy

She was sitting in a small umbrella stroller, sucking her thumb. The woman she was with pulled a compact from her purse and started patting at her eyes with makeup. Then they saw me and Fresco sitting across from them.

“I remember when you were that small,” said the woman to the girl, “before you were a holy terror like you are now.”

The little girl took her thumb out of her mouth and pointed at Fresco.

“It’s a baby,” said the woman, “a very pretty baby. How old is the baby,” she asked me.

“6 months,” I said.

“That’s a nice age,” she said.

“How old are you,” I asked the little girl. She stared at me.

“She’s two,” said the woman.

“Wow,” I said, “I have a little boy at home who’s two.”

“She’s awful,” said the woman, “she just tantrums all the time. I love her to pieces but…”

“Two is hard,” I said, and to the girl, “it’s hard being two, right?” The little girl nodded. She pouted, stuck that bottom lip out till it was almost touching her chin.

“Anyway, she’s my niece,” said the woman, “I just look after her during the day.”

The bus drove for a while. The little girl stared at me. Said something to her aunt.

“Well I’m going to Grandpa’s. I don’t know where YOU’RE going,” the woman said, “do you think Grandpa wants to see bad little girls?”

Yes, I thought. Yes Grandpa does. Whether you’re bad or not. Grandpa wants to see you. I waited for something, anything, to break the silence, a laugh, an “Auntie’s just kidding,” but there was nothing.

“She sucks her thumb, right?” the woman said to me, “I’ve told her mother, you should get her to stop, but she doesn’t care.” She reached out to move some hair from the girl’s forehead and the little girl flinched. And so did I.

“It’s a hard habit to break,” I said. “I guess it feels good.”

“My kid did it once,” the woman said, “and that was the last time.”

More silence.

Their stop came and she wheeled the stroller off backwards, the little girl staring at me. I waved. She half-smiled.

No matter what anyone tells you, you are not a bad person. You deserve to be loved for who you are. You are just a little girl, just a baby. Maybe you are a handful but she shouldn’t say that to people, not in front of you. You’re still learning. It’s not your fault.

I willed her to hear my thoughts over the hissing and squealing of the bus, over the voices of her family, over her own voice. I don’t know if she did, so when we got off the bus I told Fresco too. The more children hear it, the better, I figure.

Posted in people, public transit | 12 Comments