You’ll forgive the lack of recent post perhaps if I explain that I’ve been giving birth and things recently.At precisely midday on New Year’s Day, my little one whooshed into the world, arm outstretched over his head like Superman. Midday, 01.01.10: a very tidy birthday and no doubt one that portends something or other. According to my discharge notes, the birth took 2 hours 24 minutes, though at best this must be a good guess, for he was born on the antenatal ward with a midwife turning up only just in time to catch him.
After all the hooha about my so-called 'high risk' pregnancy and no less than 18 mornings spent attached to a grotty old machine being monitored, the hospital lost my medical notes and left me totally unsupervised and unmonitored for the whole labour. The most surprising part is that having insisted on having him out, and inducing the whole process by breaking my waters, the possibility that I might, in fact, have a baby pretty soon apparently didn’t occur. So ladies, the moral of the story is do not give birth on a bank holiday if you want some moral (or rather medical) support.
After the birth I hemorrhaged, and to be fair, they very competently stopped me bleeding to death. Which is why I can type with such speed and vigour now.
Since I have become a mother of two, something peculiar has happened. For the first time, I feel as if I’m a proper mother. If your first child is a kind of practice run, in which you discover with distressing suddenness that you know absolutely nothing about babies, cannot control anything and have alarmingly neurotic tendencies, then in comparison, your second child makes you feel almost competent and possibly even fit to call yourself a parent. This is the wonderful thing about second children. They seem easy peasy and really quite a treat.
What is not so easy is the business of simultaneously looking after the toddler as well. The Impster, who permanently inhabits some sort of ‘second life’ these days, refers to her younger sibling as ‘Sizzles’, the dog from Charlie and Lola. Naturally, she has assumed the role of Lola (in case you’re not a seasoned CBeebies viewer, Lola is an infuriatingly chippy little brat). Unfortunately, this means that Sizzles is regularly patted, sometimes with startling enthusiasm, and must on no account share a bath with her ‘because I’m scared he’ll poo on me’ (which is fair enough and pretty well reasoned). She frequently insists that I ‘take him off the breast’, particularly when I am instructed to ‘watch the telly’ (quite literally – it is not turned on, because the Impster likes to make believe her own programmes and talk you through the action). On the whole she is indifferent to his wellbeing, but has been the happy recipient of numerous ‘big sister’ gifts.
Well, even Superman can’t be entirely super. To be frank, he is somewhat needy and his current wails suggest not wholly appreciative of this blog, so I must away.
