In Case of Incapacitation

Since having the Small Girl nearly three years ago, I’ve often wondered what I would do if I were suddenly taken ill; a bad dose of the flu, for example, or a particularly debilitating hangover. My able-bodied presence in the house has become even more important now that the Very Small Boy has joined the family and somewhat ironically, I found myself wondering on Thursday afternoon what on earth would happen if I suddenly became unable to carry out the demanding role of caring for the children.

I say ironically, because by early evening I was feeling distinctly unwell and decided to get an early night. Unfortunately, sleep evaded me; mild stomach cramps and nausea soon gave way to crippling pain and violent vomiting. Assuming it must be a particularly virulent bout of food poisoning, I resigned myself to a few hours of distress, but as the long night wore on, things didn’t seem to be improving. Funnily enough, despite my suffering, I could only think of the children: with every flush of the toilet, I felt more anxious in case I woke them. And, some time in the small hours, unable any longer even to stand, I lay with my cheek against the cool tile of the bathroom floor, fretting silently to myself about how I would look after the Very Small Boy when he inevitably woke for his middle of the night feed.

“You’ll have to take the day off”, I whimpered to DH shortly afterwards, as he lifted the Very Small Boy back into his cot and guided me back to bed. And he did, and my question was answered – if something happens to me, he steps in smoothly and life carries on as normal for the children; I’m not as indispensable as I’d probably like to think I am.

He made breakfast for the Small Girl, dressed and changed the Very Small Boy and then shipped me off to the doctor, who sent me straight to A&E. Without even allowing me to say goodbye to my children, they admitted me to hospital and sent me straight to theatre to have my appendix removed.

“But I can’t stay here”, I protested as they wheeled me down the long, stark corridor in my hospital gown “I’m still breastfeeding! My baby needs me…”. The porter ignored me so, lying on the operating table, I tried to reason with the anaesthetist: “Please don’t give me anything that will compromise breastfeeding my baby!”. He ignored me too.

I had no choice but to remain where I was, recovering, for two nights. The kind doctor who operated told me afterwards that they had performed keyhole surgery with the help of a tiny camera, via three one-inch incisions on different sides of my tummy. Feeling vaguely like one of those people who get abducted by aliens and have weird things done to them, I wondered whether it wouldn’t have just been easier to make one three-inch incision over my appendix and take it out the old-fashioned way.

Looking around me, I noticed that I was the youngest person on my ward by a good fifty years. For two whole days, I was confronted with this sad vision of the way most of us will probably end up; reduced by age and incapacity back to childhood, being gently guided to the toilet or cajoled into eating jelly by our grown children. Still I thought, as I watched the ancient old dear in the bed opposite me, I could do worse than to end up being tenderly humoured by my doting grandchildren as I complained about the way they were putting in my false teeth.

I was finally allowed to return home to the land of the young and the immortal this afternoon, and I did apologise to the lovely nurse for being such a difficult patient. “You should try being married to her!”, murmured DH good-humouredly. He drove me home to the children, who were being looked after by Nanny and Grandpa, and I had a joyful reunion with the Small Girl, who had made me chocolate cornflake cakes. When the Very Small Boy woke from his nap, I eagerly ran upstairs to get him.

As soon as he saw me, he burst out crying and reached out desperately for me. I swooped him up for a cuddle. “Hello baby!” I cried into his soft, fluffy hair. “Don’t worry, Mummy’s home” I whispered in his ear. “Mummy’s here, and it was all a dream. It was all just a bad dream”.

Small Friends

Perhaps not surprisingly, the parents of the Small Girl’s friends are all good friends of ours. It’s all terribly convenient: the Daddies are good chums and often get together for drinks at the weekend, the Mummies are friends and meet over coffee with the children, who are also great mates. And now a new wave of babies are arriving, who are destined to grow up together as best buddies (whether they like it or not).

As often as I can, I try and meet up with my friends during the week so that the children can play whilst we grown-ups compare notes on tantrums and console each other with coffee and solidarity. In practice however, it is rarely that easy.

The Small Girl and I recently met up with one of her Small Friends and her Mummy for lunch at the Shopping Centre. After spending ten minutes queuing up for our sandwiches, the Very Small Boy filled his nappy and I then spent 20 minutes waiting for a baby-change to become free. When I got back, the Small Girls had already finished their lunch, so we spent ten more minutes packing up and clearing away before setting off for a walk. The Small Friend then got into a tussle with a scary-looking toddler with coke-bottle glasses and a ferocious underbite and, with an apologetic look, the Small Friend's Mummy whisked her poor fractious, writhing daughter off home. This caused the Small Girl to go into meltdown at their abrupt departure and for once, I felt sympathetic: my friend and I had, apart from saying “hello”, not actually spoken to each other for the entire duration of the lunch.

It’s often easier to meet at each others’ homes, a prospect that fills the Small Girl with glee (I do wonder why the Small Friends are so excited at the thought of a playdate - mostly, they spend so much time bickering and fighting about sharing that it’s hard to see what any of them actually get from the experience). But the Small Girl is starting to reach the stage now where she plays quite nicely with her girlfriends - we had a lovely playdate at another friend’s house recently, where the two Small Friends wandered off happily together, exploring the garden before disappearing into the house. Some time later, following an anguished cry of “Mummy!”, I found the Small Girl in the bathroom, bent at the waist and wedged firmly, bottom first, into the toilet bowl, arms and legs waving helplessly while her Small Friend looked on in amusement.

When it comes to boys however, the Small Friends’ preference is for arguments; simple disagreements along the lines of “I’m going now”/ “No, stay!”/ “No. I’m going!”/ “No, I want you to stay!” etc. (and hearing these disagreements, I often wonder guiltily what kind of example DH and I might have unintentionally set when bickering about whose turn it is to go to the shop for a pint of milk).

But before they had developed the ability to argue, back when everyone was still in nappies, the Small Girl was most fascinated by seeing little boys having a nappy change, pointing out each time that the Small Friend in question had a willy. One particular friend lent her a pair of his wellington boots for the Irish summer and this led to an amusing conversation about the difference between “wellies” and “willies”. After much confusion, I was most relieved to have cleared it all up – for a while there, I think she thought her Small Friend had two willies.

The Best Policy

Just weeks after having the Very Small Boy, I was dropping the Small Girl off at playschool one morning when her lovely teacher remarked to me “You’re looking great by the way, how are you feeling now?”.

“Well, make-up is a wonderful thing” I joked. “You should have seen me before I put it on. Actually, I feel terrible”.
“Oh. Well at least you look good” said the teacher consolingly.

I questioned afterwards whether I oughtn’t to have just accepted her compliment graciously and been thankful that my complete exhaustion wasn’t as obvious to the outside world as I had assumed. Driving home, I wondered why it is we all feel it’s so important to present a competent front to the world even when in reality we feel as if we are barely coping. I mean, I’d been up since five o’clock that morning, I’d had less than five hours’ sleep in two-hour stretches, I’d had a baby three weeks earlier and the Small Girl had just thrown a challenging breakfast-related tantrum: surely people would understand if I looked a little jaded? But I still stopped to put on my make-up and assume a cheery smile before I dropped her off at playschool.

My younger brother, Hugh (the Small Girl calls him “Uncle Queue”), is one of the few people I know who don’t bother with this façade; if he’s feeling rubbish, he tells you. I was talking to him on the phone the other day: “Hi, how are you?” I asked at the beginning of the conversation.

“Well. I’m still alive”, he replied, with his usual candour (he was having a bad day). And although he often replies in a similar way, it throws me every time, because convention dictates that you say you’re fine, thanks, no matter how you are actually feeling.

I decided to try Uncle Queue’s line of truthfulness myself. One morning last week, I bumped into the father of one of the Small Girl’s friends on the playschool run.

“Hello” he said in passing, “How are you?”. I thought for a minute.
“Oh you know” I replied “This baby’s kept me up all night and I feel like throttling his sister”. The Small Friend’s father looked slightly taken aback and remained silent, lost for words at this unconventional breach of etiquette so early in the morning.

Being a parent is a bit like gaining acceptance into a secret club, the other members of which being the only people you are allowed let your guard down with. A friend of mine recently said of her new status as a mother “No one ever tells you beforehand how hard it’s going to be” and I wondered, should I have told her? When she said she was thinking of having a baby, ought I to have said “Look, are you sure you want to go through with this? I mean you’ll be in for a lifetime of worry and guilt. And as for the sleepless nights… it’s a form of torture, you know!”.

Perhaps that would have been going a little too far. But maybe if I had been a little less evasive and a little more truthful about my life in general with children, she would have realised how tough it can be at times.

In the end though, I think I put on my make-up and my cheerful smile and gloss over the challenging bits because despite driving me at times to the brink of sanity, my children are the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me: two small people for whom I am filled with a remarkable sense of pride. So I owe it to them, really, to show the rest of the world how fulfilled they make feel, even on the bad days. And that’s the truth. Honest.

Soundtrack

I was driving back from playschool with the Small Girl recently, and we were listening to songs on the radio (and if it sounds as if I spend my life driving about in the car, it sometimes feels as if I do - ferrying Small People about and running errands). During my numerous daily car journeys, often my only adult company is the radio.

And so it is that song lyrics often take on great significance, reminding me of a particular occasion, or merely providing an appropriate background commentary to my life. There's a certain Take That song, for instance, which seems written for the Very Small Boy: "Sometimes I see your face looking at me/ All your love and grace smiling at me..... I just want you to help me - 'cause you're keeping me up all night". His little gummy smile, with his single small tooth, does radiate love and grace and warm my heart. And he certainly does keep me up all night.

Every car journey I make is either undertaken at great speed (rushing the Very Small Hungry Boy home for a feed) or extremely slowly (hoping he will fall asleep before we reach our destination), thus infuriating other road users. This particular drive home was one of the slow ones; the Very Small Boy was on the verge of sleep and I was therefore in a good mood, and was singing happily along to "Just Dance".

"Mum?" The Small Girl asked from the back of the car.
"Yes, Sausage" I replied, jigging happily about in my seat to the music.
"I think you're too old to sing that song!"

I laughed, taken aback by her unnerving ability to expose my deepest insecurities. Because sadly, I fear she was almost certainly right; my dancing days are probably over. At least for now.

The song that remains the most poigniant however, is by The Killers, and was playing on the radio as DH drove me to the hospital the day the Very Small Boy was born. It was 6.00am on a cold, dark November morning and as we pulled out of the drive, I listened to the lyrics: "And so long to devotion/ You taught me everything I know/ Wave goodbye, wish me well/ You've gotta let me go...."

And I looked up at the Small Girl's bedroom window and thought of that little girl, fast asleep in her bed, unaware of just how much her life was about to change.

Very Small Concerns

If I hadn’t already been up with the Very Small Boy since the crack of dawn, I might have been quite annoyed on Thursday morning to have been woken at 6.20am by a noisy rubbish truck making its way slowly down the road. I looked out of the window and noted that in any case, it wasn’t our rubbish truck; our recycle bin was still parked neatly by the side of the road, its contents freshly washed and ready for collection.

I have to admit that rubbish collection (and in particular, recycling) is one of my current favourite Things To Complain About. The whole system is privatised here and on our road alone, there are at least three different companies catering for the refuse-related needs of its inhabitants. Each house has at least two bins, one for recycling and one for everything else; we also have one for compostable food waste and one for glass. So that’s at least eight different trucks which have to do the rounds. Now I’m no expert on green issues, but surely all those enormous heavy-duty vehicles hauling up and down the roads every week or two can’t be good for the environment.

Later on, we pulled out of our road on the way to take the Small Girl to playschool, narrowly avoiding yet another scrape on the car, thanks to our own lumbering recycling truck, trying clumsily to jam itself between us and a parked car. I glanced sympathetically at the poor, choked trees lining the road - not even 9.00am, and we were already on our third HGV of the morning.

“Mum?” A Small Voice piped up from the back seat.
“Yes Sausage?” I asked
“What are we going to do this afternoon?”
“I’m not sure Darling; I thought maybe we could pop over to Anne and Jimmy’s”
“Oh yaay! Anne and Jimmy – yaay!... are we going today?”
“Yes, today – after playschool”
“Will we drive there in the car?”
“Well, I suppose we could…”
“In our car?”
“Yes, in our car”
“Mum?”
“Yes, Sausage?”
“Will you be driving?”
“Yes, I suppose I will, if we go in the car”
“Will you be sitting in the front seat?”
“Yes…”
“And Baby Pie and I will be sitting in the back seat?”
“Yes…”
“And can I listen to my music on the way there?”
“If you want…”
“And can I bring a thnack?”
“Yes, Darling” I said, beginning to lose my patience. “But perhaps we ought to just walk – after all, they do only live next door”.

Listening to our conversation from his seat next to the Small Girl, the Very Small Boy raised his earnest little eyebrows and gave his big sister a proud grin, revealing a single, gently gleaming, Very Small Tooth.