BA 0085 - a survivor's tale.

When I look back, it is with wonder that we survived at all.  Yet I also know that there were only a few moments when failure seemed inevitable and, that, wonder of wonders, we did in fact survive; marriage, family and (sort of) dignity intact. 

The bad:
A vomiting, copiously, orangely, and without warning, about six hours into the flight out.  Not good, although I can't fault the staff, who, despite the fact that they should have been enjoying an extra holiday courtesy of Unite instead of mopping up our puke, were gracious and helpful, and amazingly tolerant of the fact that we'd totally trashed their bassinet.
S screaming.  And then screaming.  And then screaming a little bit more. For a solid two hours on the way back.  For about ten minutes I was nails and stuck to my guns ("ride it out, she will go back to sleep eventually, if you get her out it'll just make things worse") and then the stewardess came and asked if everything was ok, the man next to us offered to see if he could calm her down and my sister glared very obviously at me and I gave in.  Mistake.
L refusing, in classic L fashion: body rigid, head back, lungs inflated, to put her seat belt on.  Every time.
And to top it off:
Two hours sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow on the way out because it was too cold to take off, only to discover, when we got there, that our bags were still, you guessed it, sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow...
 
But, as I say, generally, the good bits outnumbered the bad.  L was (seat belt aside) amazing. On the way out she sat and watched the tv for about an hour and a half before saying "I want to go to sleep now" and doing just that until I woke her up when we were due to land.  And on the way back just the same, apart from the fact that the sleeping was done on the floor rather than in her seat. Quite frankly, if I'd thought I would fit, I'd have joined her.  As for A and S, they were pretty good too. It was hardly A's fault she was sick, and otherwise she slept throughout, and as for S screaming, I guess that if someone had offered me two hours of screaming out of two eight-hour flights, I'd probably have taken it.  Whether the people around us would have done is, of course, a different question...

So after asking for hints and tips, in the end, none of them were necessary.  But for next time, I will know:

• Take every single thing you can possibly think of to entertain them. Even if (like us) you never use any of it, you'll be glad you had it just in case.
• Ignore the air hostesses except when absolutely necessary.  Apparently it's unsafe to let a child sleep on the floor of a plane because the oxygen masks won't reach that low down (the fact that you'd probably choose to pick your child up to put the oxygen mask on her rather than letting her suffocate seems to have escaped them).  I said "Oh right, thanks" and did nothing about it.
• A whimper is better than a scream. If your child is whimpering, ignore her. If she's grumbling, ignore her. If she's yelping, ignore her. If she's really properly going for it, you might have to pick her up.  But until then, just hope. And don't make eye contact.  With child or fellow passengers.
  
• Normal rules do not apply, especially over food.  L ate what she wanted and ignored the rest.  In her case this was yoghurt and chocolate biscuits.  I can't imagine that it did her any harm.
• But the converse of that is that if babies are in a routine, stick to it as far as possible. We were lucky in that both our flights were evening (ish) so we just dragged out the routine so that A and S were having their bedtime milk as we took off. Cue no painful ears and they both fell asleep during take off, and in the case of one baby each flight, stayed that way until landing.
• If all else fails. Drugs. In this case Calpol, but anything else that works would do...
• And finally, sadly, don't think it's all over when the plane lands. You've still got the jetlag to come.
  

Do I still belong here?

It was our office Christmas party last night.  It's a good evening normally.  They're pretty generous, so there are drinks with sparkly wine, and then a proper dinner and dancing.  Oh and the revue.  A highlight of the office calendar, when the junior members of staff put on a sketch show about the last year. Sounds horrendous, and kind of is (and I'm extremely glad I never have to do it again), but also normally very funny.

Last night was no exception. Everyone looking their best (apart from some of the longer-standing members of staff who hold it a point of principle not to have fun at something that is, essentially work.  As though dressing up were an indication of unwarranted frivolity.  Christmas? Bah humbug!)  The food was good, the wine plentiful and the revue well rehearsed and, in parts, hilarious.

But I felt totally out of place.  And I suddenly feel that this job, this building, these people who have been an enormous part of my life for the last nearly ten years, are no longer where I belong.

I walked into the room, was handed a glass, looked around and realised I knew barely half the people there.  I don't know who these other people are, or where they've come from, but I do know that this time five years ago there wouldn't have been a person in the room I didn't know and who didn't know me, and it's an office of 300 or so.  I had a lovely time chatting to the people I do know, and of whom I am very fond, but I'm not at the centre of things any more. I'm on the outside, looking in, and I'm not sure I even want to be there.

The revue was, as I said, great.  But I didn't get most of the jokes.  Topical comedy only really works if you know what they're talking about, and having only been in the office for ten months of the last three years,  I'm like someone who returns from a weekend break in Bhutan and is then surprised when they don't find Mock the Week terribly amusing.

And it got me to wondering:  is this because I'm getting older and more set in my ways? Is it because of all the maternity leave I seem to have wangled? Or is it just that, in my head at least, I've moved on? That I have more important things and people in my life now, and work, which was once so central, is now less so.

I talked a lot to the people I was sitting with about our plans, and our scheme to move to Middle of Nowhere and for me to work as a consultant from there.  All of which still feels miraculously lucky and like I don't deserve it, and they all said how much they'd miss me and how it wouldn't feel like the same place without me, but I know that's not true.  They will miss me, I'm sure, but I also know that in three years time many of them will be hard pushed to remember who I am. It's like leaving school. The institution is bigger than the individuals that make it up, and when one person moves on, the water closes over her head.  Some people make bigger ripples than others, but eventually everyone is forgotten.  The firm I work for has been going for over three hundred years.  My ten don't amount to a great deal in comparison.

I've been struggling with my job since I went back to work: finding it terribly hard to be a good mother and a good worker.  But I've found the idea of giving up my job (and, it feels, my identity) equally hard to contemplate. The things is, maybe my job is ready to give me up too. Maybe we all have places, people or things that are right for us at particular points in our lives.  And I'm beginning to think that at this point in my life my job and I don't belong together any more

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And in other news:  off to Canada this afternoon. Wish us luck...  And if I can't post from there: Merry Christmas one and all!

Scandal in the toy box

The Fisher Price Mummy went missing a number of months ago. Since then the Daddy and the baby have been getting along very nicely thank you. But now Mr Noah too is nowhere to be found. Mrs Noah is putting on a brave face, but I can see she has her suspicions...

Where on earth do they go? I have checked everywhere, including turning out the bins. It's clearly the parental version of the missing sock in the washing machine.  And just as irritating.

I hate you

I had one of those out-of-body perfect-mother moments the other day. You know the ones: when just for five minutes (seconds?) no-one is screaming, no-one smells of poo, there is baby mush brewing deliciously on the stove, your children are all playing beautifully together, and in your head you're wearing white linen, miraculously uncrushed...

Anyway, L, who has recently discovered her imagination, was playing with two of her teddies.  The teddies were having a lovely time, having a party if I remember rightly, and talking about their forthcoming trip to Canada.  I watched, indulgently, thinking "isn't she cute" sort of thoughts, when one teddy turned to the other and said:

"I hate you".

I crashed out of my white-linen-festooned reverie with a bang.

L knows about hate.  And hating.  And she's heard, in her cushioned, cocooned, cushy life, someone say to someone else, "I hate you".  And she's internalised it sufficiently that her teddies are now saying it to each other.

And it made me realise that I don't want my daughter to know about hate.  I want to protect her from hate and hating and people who hate.  I want to teach her that there are more powerful, and much, much more important things than hate.

Hearing those words from L gave them astonishing force.  I felt just as shocked as if she'd sworn.  So I sat her down and we had a serious chat about not hating, and how that was not a nice thing to say, and how I didn't want to hear her saying it again.

And then this evening I found myself announcing to the world that I hate sorting out the laundry...  Whoops.

A proper mother always gives her children a healthy, home-cooked meal.

L's friend D came round for some lunch today.  I made a big pasta bake; with a proper soffrito (ooh, get me) and everything.

Then I overheard this conversation:

D:  L, do you like pasta?
L:  I like it at nursery but I don't like it at home.

Beans on toast for supper.

365 days in.

Well. Breathe in. Breathe out. Take another sip of (pink) champagne.  We've done it. We've survived the first year (and the birthday party).

A and S are one.

Things I remember from this time last year:

The utter strangeness of leaving the house while it was still dark knowing that when we came back we'd have two babies with us; kissing L goodbye as we left, and looking at her, fast asleep and oblivious of how much her world was going to change;  the extraordinary speed and calmness of an elective c-s (complete contrast to the first (natural) time); the relief of hearing the cries (that was the same as the first time, only this time there were two); the amazement of holding my baby, and then looking at B and realising that he was holding one too;  just how tiny babies (even perfectly formed, and perfectly healthy babies) born at 36 weeks really are...

And as I look back on the last 365 days I think that despite the tough bits (the morning, 10 days in, when we'd had them, we'd breastfed them, we'd got them to Edinburgh, we'd survived (nay, enjoyed) my brother-in-law's wedding, and then the adrenaline wore off...; the few weeks at about four months when I really, really thought I wasn't going to cope;  the first month or so of being back at work; the last few days), we've had a wonderful time, and we have, in the spirit of counting my blessings, been blessed.

We've been blessed by the moments, not so few and far between, when all three of our beautiful girls are happy and giggling together; by the times we leave their room to put them down for a sleep and hear more giggles from behind the door (I'm sure they get up to all sorts in there once the lights go off);  by the amazement of watching them learn about themselves and each other;by the S-faces (will post a picture one day); by the fact that A can shake her head but not nod and S can nod but not shake hers; by the cuddles (L wasn't a cuddly baby, S and A more than make up for it); by the coos, and oohs, and "oh, haven't you got your hands full?"s that I claim to hate, but actually give me an enormous glow of pride - such that when I'm out on my own and people don't stop me in the street to tell me how lucky/brave/stupid I am I feel as though something's missing (because it is); by watching A learn to walk (while pushing a trolley, but still); by the (more) pride of having exclusively breast fed them for six months;  by getting to know these two amazingly identical and astonishingly different people, and by knowing that there is so much more to learn.

Darling A, and Gorgeous S, we are so lucky to have you.  Happy birthday, my beautiful girls.

A whinge and a worry

Apologies in advance. If you want to read something cheery and non-self-pitying look away now...

A whinge:

Here is my to do list:
Finish three weeks's worth of work on a ridiculously complicated spreadsheet that I just know isn't going to balance (and no, I'm not an accountant) by tomorrow pm when my boss goes on holiday.  She's lovely but she doesn't understand spreadsheets, so when she asked me to do it, she had (and I think still has) no idea quite how much work it is.
Do all the rest of the work that's been piling up on my desk since I started on the spreadsheet (probably by last week, I don't know, I haven't looked at it)
Organise a party for eight babies (by Friday)
Organise a birthday for two babies (by Friday)
Organise a Christening (Sunday)
Organise a party for 18 adults and I'm still not sure how many babies (Sunday, after the Christening)

Decide what I still need to get for Canada and buy it
Pack for five people to go to Canada including all the Christmas presents but within (of course) the luggage allowance (by about ten minutes before we need to leave for the airport probably)
Sort out a Christmas present for B. Somehow I've done all of Rabbit's friends and relations, but B, love of my life, hasn't made the cut.  This is worrying me more than much of the rest put together, even though I know (because I've told him) that he won't mind.
Make a t-shirt for a paying customer by Friday week (I'm not complaining, really I'm not, I'm delighted to have a proper customer, but I do rather wish she didn't need it by Christmas...)
Arrange A&S's one year jabs (next week, otherwise I'll forget)
Buy a house (before we get kicked out of this one)
Oh, and, do all the usual laundry, tidying, sorting out, cooking, ferrying to nursery, shopping etc that usually fills my few non-working days, with the added bonus that B is going to be in Warsaw next week so can't help.

I burst into tears in the doctor's today.

I didn't mean to. I didn't think I was that stressed. But she asked me how I was and somehow I went to say ok, only something else came out.

Once I'd calmed down she confirmed that I've got high blood pressure (this is the worry).  And I can't make myself believe it's a coincidence that I didn't have high blood pressure when it was checked the week before I went back to work, and I do now.  Not going to kill me tomorrow high, but high enough that she doesn't want me "wandering around with it until [your] life sorts itself out".  So drugs it is.  Which doesn't exactly reduce the stress either. 

I left the doctor and tried to do a lightning strike on Oxford Street (need to buy a t-shirt to decorate for that paying customer).  Oxford Street's a mistake when you're feeling a bit wobbly.  If you were shopping this afternoon and noticed a bedraggled girl in a glamorous cream coat (Primark) huddled in one of those side-alleys in floods of tears, I'm sorry. I'm not usually like that. Honest.

And sitting here, girls asleep, B writing the Christmas cards (you'll note they aren't on my list), I do know that this too will pass.  I am, really, very very lucky and am well aware of all my blessings - and if anyone's still reading, that's just one more!