Somehow writing updates with a baby while keeping a full time job, looking for a job, and recently, trying to piece together an African family celebration is not easy, not even for a multi-tasker speed worker like me. I have written so many paragraphs in my head while I was rocking him to sleep, so many!! Of course I forgot them all by the time I actually got the time to sit down and write. Which is a pity, because they were soooooo funny! You need humour, especially in those weeeee hours, when you are a parent. And often time your humour is deflected back to you, through naughty eyes and wide smiles and laughing at nothings. Which makes having a baby all so worth it. But I’m writing ahead. So what follows is a puzzle with pieces created the past, erm, six months or so (my memory is gone with my sleep).
I can stare at him for hours. When he falls asleep in my arms, I find my fingers involuntarily drawing his face, and I can’t believe that this piece of perfection was once curled up in my body. When he fell asleep on my tummy, his hair is my cocaine. Or that was at least till month six. From month six, he hardly ever sits still enough for me to do that, and sleeping on top of me became a nipple twisting, throat blocking, nose picking, wrestling exercise. One, which I’m sad to say, I usually lose.
If somebody told me three years ago that I will tell somebody on a Sunday picnic to put breast milk on her baby’s head to get rid of cradle cap, I would not believe you. As it turns out, breast milk is the cure for everything. Sticky eye? Breast milk. Stuffed nose? Breast milk. Husband ignoring you? Squirt him with breast milk.
The thing with babies is you don’t know what they are going to do at night. Especially not when you think you know what they are going to do. Not that I’m complaining much, I think I am better off than many moms out there, but still, when I wake up in the mornings and I’m grateful for 3 hours non-stop sleep, I know that my life has been forever changed. So, somewhat sleep deprived but incredibly changed and happy, I attempt to write a mildly entertaining update. The topic of sleep can fill quite a few pages. Sleep is a BIG topic among new moms. And incidentally also the first question that people ask you. “ahhh, cute baby, does he sleep through yet?” I always feel like saying “would he be less cute if I say he doesn’t?” or, “is fuck you also an answer?”. I have learned that the percentage of babies sleeping through does not correlate to the percentage of mom’s that brag about their baby sleeping through. Nope, that graph is a huge concave (or is that convex) graph. I ignore and down right hate moms that come with the “oh, curlybum slept through since six weeks, I guess I’m just lucky” and I have placed a ban on any dad telling me or any other mom that they are tired. Ok, not put a ban, but the sight of me biting of my husband’s head on the two occasions where he said that, is enough to make dads put a voluntary ban on saying that.
I think if companies want to get more women in the workplace, they should offer baby subsidies. This off course, in addition to the ONLY 8 hour working day (since life with baby means that you have another full time job), and that DURING those 8 hours, your performance is measured in the same way that you will measure the performance of a first year, because I seriously think I get about as much sleep in as I did back then. Only now the alcohol in beer is replaced with alcohol in rescue remedy some nights.
Oh, and another perk of being a parent is The Advice. I thought The Advice would stop once the baby was OUT of my body, and people could see just by him being alive I’m doing a good job, but nope. Now I get stopped by total strangers in Checkers and first get told about the grandchildren somewhere in the Karoo, and then…. THE ADVICE. So far, the best advice I ever got was to nod and smile at any advice you get. You should sleep training your baby! Nod and smile. You can really stop breast feeding now. Nod and smile. You should carry on breastfeeding until he’s three. Nod and smile. When he’s cranky like that, you should inject him with morphine, it really works. Nod and smile. You should really make time for yourself and go exercise. Nod and…TIME??? For MYSELF?? Nod off….
Oh, I’ve come to dread full moons. My child has transformed me into a werewolf like creature that howls at full moon because she gets little sleep. He refuses to sleep during full moon. And usually I only figure out it is full moon when I walk to the edge of the balcony, ready to throw him off because he screams so much. Oh, I’m seriously joking. In case you are an American midwife and now have to report me to the authorities because I admitted a bit dramatically that SOMETIMES IT’S JUST SO DAMN TIRING. But it also bring out the creative punk in me. I’ve composed many a punk song at 3 o’clock in the morning, many of which will make any hard core colored blush. I usually has Heiko giggling and Georg laughing. But at least I get the frustration out.
Ok. That’s the sleep deprived moaning, but what about the good stuff? Do you have time? And do you have time for a stereotype, ie new parent that can hardly ever stop talking about her little super-wonder? All the sleep deprivation, the sleepwalking and the sleep screaming are soon forgotten the moment he wakes up early in the morning (sometimes very early) and greeting you with a big fat smile. A BIG smile. Then how he progressed from being something you fear to put in bed with you because he might get lost between the covers, to an immobile four month old laying between us just breathing loud, to a five month old hitting us with his arms, to a six month old kicking, to a seven month old rolling around, and finally, to an eight month old crawling to the edges and climbing over us, and seeking mom’s eyes and ears for entertainment, and if that does not work, sticking fingers in my nose just to make sure that I’m REALLY only pretending to sleep. Oh, and until recently when he gets up, stand up against the wall, wobbly do a jump like movement, let go, bump his head against the wall, and then crying, which usually signals the end of our little “lay in”. This whole transformation looks something like those evolution apes. From crawling to walking. Each step with its own challenges, and each step only challenging you gradually, so as not to exhaust you completely from the start. No, this is a slowwww torture process. My midwife called the other day and she said, she always finds that this stage is a bit like in Jurassic park, where the guy tells his family “as long as they haven’t figured out how to use the door handles, we are all right”. Or how to put the dog bowl in their mouths. Or how to eat a handful of sand the moment you sip your coffee. Or how to crawl on a big big space and find the one and only cigarette butt. Or. Jip, you catch my drift. And I’m sure every mom that reads this can add her own list. Or dad.
Swimming lessons were also fun. From the first lesson where he skeptically rested his head on my shoulder to relax to “twinkle twinkle little star”, to the last lesson where he swam underwater after doing “humpty dumpty” from the wall and then, finally, “waving bye bye” at the last class. And those SONGS! Every time I greet somebody I sing “our lesson time was fun, our lesson time was fun” five time in cannon, before I can “wave good bye”. There are, in fact, many situations during the day where the soundtrack for the moment is not a nice Neil Young anymore, but a children’s song. Which means that sleep deprived mom often walks around whistling impossibly positive tunes… zippadedoda…
And the exhausted highlight of the day must be just before going to bed, the making sure that he’s warm enough. Watching that angel face. The silence. The absolute serenity and the way his face says “I feel save”. The way I can hear him when he wakes up at night by a (loud) and very exciting fast breathing sound coming from next door. Then an “ah-ah”, a pause to see if we are responding, and a repeat until we do. And then, as we approach the cot, the most feverous exciting kicks or jumps coming from the cot, the head slightly tilted to the door, and…jip, that SMILE. But there are also the nights when I wake up before he wakes me up, and then I miss him. I really miss him when he sleeps. Even those times when I’m totally exhausted, I’m almost always relieved when he wakes up again. As if every awakening is yet another time when we are lucky. Parenting might be an acquired skill, one you acquire sometimes naturally, sometimes with practice and sometimes with hard work. But it is mostly luck. From conception, really. Luck. There are about 5 000 chances for him to make a fatal accident, and sometimes he narrowly crawls past one or two, but so far we’ve been extremely lucky. But then again, that can also be true for our own lives… I suppose it’s because as a parent you feel so damn responsible for life in general and your child in particular, that them surviving makes you feel luckier than you surviving.
Jip, I can go on, but I presume you are probably skim reading this by now. Yawn. Baby stuff. Yawn. So, how is it going with ME. Elmien? It’s going very “liberating” with me at the moment. I have accepted a senior lecturer job at the University of Johannesburg, and I’m very excited to leave for the big city. Of course it goes with some sadness, some good byes and many tears, especially leaving my parents in the Cape, but I know it is the right move for now. I like Johannesburg, and I think I can learn to love the city. Of course we have the GPS system, complete with smash and grab warnings installed, but that was mostly for marital bliss. We have enough other stress as it is. (Seriously, today I looked at that little GPS computer and I thought to myself “Garmin, you sure must’ve saved a few marriages”. Actually Heiko and I are very good at directions. Heiko knows he’s crap, and I’m usually not too crap, and since I’m a woman, if I’m lost, I stop and ask for directions. But not anymore, because superhero Garmin came to save our lives forever!) Other than that I don’t have much time for myself, as I’m usually KO by the day by 9, and asleep by 10. But I’m really happy so far with my short married life, so in the end it is all worth it. It’s been an incredible year. Looking back, I’m not sure how I fit it all in, and when I look back in 10 years, I would probably be more proud of myself then than I am at the moment, and fuck I’m proud of myself at the moment. All I can say is, having little Georg in my (our) life has made all the difference. Not becoming dr, not going for job interviews and getting the job and the prospect of moving, nothing will ever come close to that spectacular moment in April 2009, not the 10th at 16:09 when I first laid eyes on him, but that next morning, when I just could not stop staring, and we laid in bed and stared. Just stared. In the morning sun. In silence. The two of us. For hours. That Saturday morning just before lunch, that will be my 2009 best memory. And I tell you, it was a difficult choice!!
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