Barren Mare

Ear, ear

True to form, Botany's ear infection led us in a merry, cyclical dance for another couple of weeks. I think the day after I posted last, the nursery called me to come collect her early. I went in and found Botany lying asleep curled up in a miserable heap on the floor. On the drive home, I looked in the rear view mirror and her eyes were sad and her face was a sort of appalling, washed out grey tone. RIGHT! I thought, enough is enough. As soon as we got home, I broke out the antibiotics.

She showed vast and startling improvement almost immediately and so I gave her the full course and chalked it up to experience. All seemed well for about a week. Then her mood deteriorated, along with her willingness to get dressed, go to nursery or do anything other than cling on to my left leg while demanding cuddles and backrubs on tap. She started complaining about her left ear again- and not just in the morning when she was being forced into her coat and shoes. So without further ado, we trotted her back to the doctor, who pronounced Botany's ears as both being red and a second course of antibiotics prescribed.

This will hopefully do the trick because goddamn, I am fed up with it now. Aside from the general misery caused by having a cranky, sick child, the timing could not be worse in terms of my work. I remain hideously, crushingly, unrelentingly busy at my job this month as my £250 million project teeters precariously on the edge of falling through. And while there is no doubt that Botany comes as my absolute first priority at all times, I could not help but feel an overwhelming desire to panic and throw up whenever my internal phone line rang about 2 o'clock, in case it was the nursery calling to say she wasn't well again.

Speaking of precarious teetering, the roof of our tenement building appears to be crumbling to bits in places. Or at least one of the chimney pots directly above the front doors is a bad state. We woke up at quarter to eight on Sunday morning to the sound of a large and noisy vehicle outside our bedroom window. At first we thought it was the bins being emptied but even our loony Council is not that keen. Finally Knox ventured to the window and saw the street had been sealed off and two men in neon green vests watching as one of their colleagues cleared off the loose mortar and debris that had come loose from around the chimney- and fallen on a car in the night. Interestingly, their method of sorting it out was simply to take great handfuls of the stuff and just huck it down on to the street and pavement, which led to a very near miss just inches from my neighbour's BMW. She was also watching from the street as it landed and from the look on her face, practically swallowed her own tongue with the shock.

After about an hour the crane came down, the men moved off and that was the end of it, although I confess I don't like to linger by the front door for too long. Apparently the roof still needs work and the quote is to the tune of about £700 per household plus we're all going to get slapped with an charge for the emergency repairs, for god knows how much. You do kind of tend to expect these things living in old tenement buildings- but even so it's somewhat of a blow since I was trying to stash some money away in hopes of actually getting a holiday somewhere this year. Or maybe an iphone, since my mobile is presently held together with duct tape and I am a sucker for the idea of iphonage, having secretly coveted one since they came out. But no. Instead I will dutifully pay for the roof and sadly eye my once more depleted war chest, telling myself not to be such a whiner since we're lucky to have a roof over our heads and all. Sigh.

Plenty of time

Chicken pox- done. Hopefully, we can strike that one off the list of little life milestones.

Botany’s experience proved relatively mild although she had to be off nursery for a whole week before the last of the blisters scabbed over sufficiently.  E. and I split the childcare/time off work, which lessened the burden somewhat. In some ways (for me, anyway) it was actually nice to have a couple extra days off with Botany where we had no choice but to hunker down and stay in. We seem to spend so much of our time together rushing around either doing chores and errands or else visiting people, going to activities or birthday parties or some other outing. Our forced quarantine meant the pace was taken down a notch and consequently we both chilled out quite a bit. We did lots of painting and sticker projects. We excavated the toy box, finding old treasures. We hauled the red storage boxes off the top of my wardrobe and looked at family photographs. We pulled out lots of big play things with seemingly endless number of component bits- such as the wooden train set and the lego fire station and made a grand mess of the living room. And yes, we watched more than the recommended daily allotment of movies and television.  At the end of the second day, we lay spooned up on the couch, as a disproportionately thin princess twirled and sang onscreen before us and the gray November daylight faded fast outside. Botany fell asleep, her head slumped in the crook of my arm and I felt both sweetly happy and melancholy at the same time.   

In other news- still not pregnant. Most of the time, I’m not particularly bothered about it, and then I see a pregnant colleague or parent from the nursery and then-*pang*. But mostly I am just becoming increasingly irritated by people who casually ask me if I’m going to have a second child- as if it’s something I’ve accidentally overlooked and maybe should order from a Christmas catalogue this year. I’ve been around the reproductive battle zones long enough to shrug off what could otherwise be taken as a grossly insensitive query. But then invariably, I mention that (leaving aside any mention of my history) that regardless of whether I want a second child or not, I am no spring chicken at 40- and they laugh. They say, oh that’s not too old, you have plenty of time!

Hearing the words “plenty of time”- and all the blithe and inconsiderate assumptions that go with that phrase (for example, that we can all just have children as and whenever we happen to choose,) makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a spoon. Or possibly their eyeballs. I’m not saying it’s impossible- but a measly 5% chance per month coupled with a significantly higher possibility of miscarriage does not, in my book, equate to anything like plenty of time.

If I were never to have another child, I am sure that, while experiencing a certain amount of regret and disappointment at the loss of what could be, I would be absolutely fine with the one I already have. Knox, on the other hand- I’m not so sure. He loves Botany to bits, but I’m aware that he feels quite strongly that no matter how much input he has in her life and how much he help me bring her up, it won’t change the inescapable fact that she’s not his biological child. And ultimately, that is what he wants.

It’s been such a long time since I dipped my toe into the waters of assisted reproductive technology- but my immediate thoughts is that if we did go down that route (gawd! So much for my "do not resuscitate" orders!) I have neither the energy nor means to do endless rounds of IVF. Which means do not pass go, proceed straight to egg donation? Right?  Errgg. Couldn’t we just, you know, get a kitten?

 

Pox populis

What with all that yearning for an even keel, and thinking we were almost there, I crucially overlooked one key fact- Botany was almost certain to also come down with chickenpox. Actually, I think "overlooked" is inaccurate- shoved my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes and sang "lalalalala" very loudly is more like it.

I foolishly began to believe that maybe we had dodged that particular bullet yet again and started planning ahead in the way of someone accustomed to having some measure of control over events. I booked a training course at work. I made plans to meet a friend for dinner. I promised certain people that certain deadlines would be met. I even (and I blush at this one) boasted that Botany generally has an immune system resembling a Kevlar vest. Yes, of course I can go to that meeting, because tralalala, she's not going to get the chickenpox, after all!

Finally, my boss- who has two children of his own- rolled his eyes and told me to stop being so silly, of course she was going to get it, and after checking the dates of Knox's illness, said it would be Thursday this week. "It's in the post," he said. "It will arrive right on time."

My boss is one of those annoying people who is- damn him- always right about everything.

Sure enough, after plunking Botany in the bath last night, the first thing I see is a little dew drop on a rose petal blister, on the centre of her back. Closer inspection revealed poxy marks on her arm, her collarbone and right above her little girl bits. Then she complained of a headache and I bundled her off to bed with some baby paracetemol for good measure. This morning she was chirpy as an over-eager technicolour cartoon bird, but with more spots sprouting on her forehead and behind her ears. 

So- more chickenpox in the house of Mare, although I am reasonably certain it won't be as awful as the go- round Knox has just endured. Botany will need to stay off nursery probably for the next week and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to manage all the stuff I said I would do unless I can transport myself through the space time continuum and be two or more places at once.

Poxy

After mulling over the nursery situation, I’ve decided to leave things as they are, for a little while longer. I will almost certainly move over to the lovely little place around the corner (where she already attends two days a week) in due course but it’s a sufficiently stiff jump in cost that there would be a big pinch in what is already a relatively household tight budget. I’m not suggesting that money should come before Botany’s well being- however, I’m also not so absolutely certain that the issues I’ve noticed at the first nursery merit moving her quite yet. I think one of the reasons that the children’s behaviour seems to be occasionally out of hand is that are simply quite a few more children attending, and the staff ratios- while within appropriate care guidelines- are not such that they can watch the children as closely as I might like. Hence it seems to have more a flavour of the playground jungle. Another issue is that the staff- while all generally very nice and competent tend rotate around between this centre and their head office. The result is a trend toward less continuity of care. Miss P. was an example of one such temporary deployment and when I went in this week, she was gone.

As far as speaking to the centre manager- unfortunately I’ve done that. She’s as much use as a chocolate teapot. Nice, well-meaning, says all the right things- but generally ineffective and I know for a fact many of the staff don’t like her.  

Ultimately the deciding factor for me is that there are days when Botany seems genuinely happy and excited to be going there or asks if she will be seeing one of her little friends. So, while I will continue to monitor my misgivings, I’ll wait and see- for now.

More on time outs in another post, I think. Today I need to attend to battening down the hatches in light of our latest familial drama Yesterday we discovered that, having reached nearly forty years of age unscathed, it seems Knox has finally come down with...a nasty case of chicken pox. We suspect he picked it up at work, since oddly enough Botany doesn’t seem to have it yet. She dodged many a poxy bullet at day care so far, but I’ll be a little surprised if she manages to avoid it this time. It’s hideously bad timing as far as Knox goes, since a staff member is on holiday, another is away on a course and the only other available person can’t manage on their own. I’ve thrown my hands up and am hoping a solution magically presents itself (one which does not involve me having to go in and actually work all weekend, missing my first chance in three weeks to have a lie-in.)

 

       

Weeping and gnashing

As I dropped Botany off at nursery yesterday, she looked up at me and smiled angelically.  “I will be a good girl today Mummy,” she said. Then, in a stage whisper she added “No biting!”

Encouraging as this was, it only heightened my dismay later in the day when I collected and was informed by Miss P, a temporary nursery staff member, that there had been two “incidents” that day. Oh, Botany, I groaned, not more biting! No, no, Miss P. hastened to correct me- this time, she had been scratching the other children.

“She was given two time outs,” Miss P. said, in a tone which implied that this was a very special and rare punishment.

 Botany twirled up to me and grabbed my legs. Botany, I reproached her, you know it’s wrong to hurt other children. She applied her “pretending to be listening face”. I knelt down and said it again at close range, whereupon she at least appeared somewhat embarrassed.

“Maybe you should speak to her key worker,” Miss P said, “just so you can ensure you are consistent with what you're doing at home.” I’m perhaps reading between the lines but just based on tone again, I got the impression she was suggesting that what we were doing at home was permitting Botany to sink her fangs into our necks and drink our blood.  

 I tried to explain that Knox and I pretty much run a zero-tolerance household and that Botany is pulled up on any bad behaviour immediately, including failing to comply with an adult instruction  of any type. 

“Oh, so does she stay in time out until her time is up?” Miss P asked.

Ack. How long have you got for a discussion on this, Miss P, I thought. You see, after months of battles, we’ve arrived at a method which has been working really well. Instead of focusing so much on what had ultimately become a power struggle in getting Botany to stand in a particular spot for 3 minutes, what we do now is something called “stop, pause, redirect”. Essentially, if she disobeys or acts up, we immediately stop whatever she’s doing, pause by putting her somewhere neutral to give her a chance to pull herself together and then move on, refocusing her toward something we do want her to do. There’s no time limit on it on the “pause” element. Sometime she wigs out for 10 minutes, sometimes it takes 30 seconds. It takes as long as it takes. But it’s about teaching her to get herself under control as well as stopping the bad behaviour.

What came out of my mouth instead was an inarticulate “Er, no, we don’t really do time outs that way at home,” as I watched Botany wander over to the reading corner to pick up her book.

Miss P. raised her eyebrows. “You know,” she said, “the other children don’t really want to play with her because she behaves like this. Does she have any friends outside of nursery? ”

“Um, yes,” I said. We have a little group of friends we see frequently on the one weekday she is not at nursery. In fact, Botany is actually quite well behaved then.   

“Maybe you could try getting a book which has a message in it,” she said, ominously emphasising the word message.   

“Er, we’ve done that, tried that, um, er…wait,” I muttered as I watched a little boy approach Botany and in an unilateral act of aggression, grab her book and push her over. She started to cry.  

I decided we’d both had enough for one day and I scooped up my weeping daughter and we left. I feel irritated and vaguely grubby about the whole thing. I don’t understand why Botany is acting so obnoxiously toward other children, but I’ve certainly witnessed plenty of such behaviour directed toward her over a number of occasions when picking her up.  I resent the implication (perceived or not) that I’m somehow responsible for her behaviour when she is there. I get the impression that she is less and less happy at this nursery- that something is not right, that she is falling through the cracks somewhere, that her evident frustration is not being directed properly. Or is it just her? Is she simply hard to handle? In contrast, she seems to love the new place around the corner, and if it wasn’t so hideously expensive to place her there four days a week, I think I would jump at the chance to move her.

What to do?

The Dangerous Toddlers Act

Botany's third birthday has come and gone. The celebrations lasted, like some extended royal wedding, for over three days. It felt longer than that in some ways, as we had all her little friends' parties in the days preceding- and so for what felt like six weeks, I spent every spare moment buying presents, unearthing party clothes, eating cake, playing pass the parcel, negotiating treaties during disputes over balloons and the last lollipop.

The insanity culminated in a small gathering held here. That morning, it poured rain, drenching the garden and restricting us to the relatively small confines of the flat. My parents decided they would prefer to be elsewhere, leaving me to get on with it single handed. After an hour or so of four toddlers hopped up on sugar and screaming up and down the hallway like caged wildebeasts, I handed out glasses of wine to their parents, which my  fellow mothers gulped in frantic gratitude.

Afterwards I found Botany lying, her party dress rumpled, entirely under the duvet in her bed. I think I was not alone in finding it all just a bit much. And I am still picking bits of raisins out of my living room rug. 

While Botany has settled in nicely to her new preschool, problems are emerging at the old place where she continues to attend twice a week. She has a special- and one might go so far as to describe it as passionte-friendship with another little girl her age whom I shall call "Milly". The two of them are more or less inseparable during the day and when she is not there, Botany refers to Milly frequently and lovingly as "my best friend" whom she would one day like to "marry".

Which makes it all the more dismaying that Botany has lately taken to venting any displeasure with her  friend by sinking her tiny fangs into Milly's tender flesh. It's happened four times now- twice in one day-and on two occasions, Botany has drawn blood. Worst of all, one of the bites was on Milly's face. To say I am mortified and flummoxed by it is an understatement.

I confess it's not the first time Botany has bitten someone- she had a go at a small child some months back when he pushed in front of her, and once, during  massive tantrum, she bit E. But I would not characterise her as a biter- except evidently, she is, at least where Milly is concerned. I don't know what it is about Milly that inspires such extreme rage and frustration. And at least up until yesterday, Botany has not seemed overly remorseful about it. The first time it happened, I talked to the staff to make sure Botany was appropriately reprimanded. E. bought a card for Milly which we wrote together- a profuse apology explaining that Botany understood biting was wrong and it would not happen again. We re-read "Teeth are Not For Biting" about 800 times.   

Then it happened again, and Botany seemed actually quite pleased with herself. I was horrified when they told me upon pick up that she had done it, and then she giggled. Dear God, I fretted, am I raising a sociopath? The next day, I passed Milly's mother in the corridor at work and I burst into flames with embarrassment. What do you say? Hi, we don't know each other but your kid is wearing my daughter's tooth prints?  My child is actually quite sweet and loves your child to bits- when she is not trying to gnaw off her arm?

Yesterday was the dual chomping incident, and for the first time Botany did seem contrite. "Mummy, I bit twice," she said, head down and with tears in her eyes as soon as I walked in. "Sorry," she whimpered, unprompted. Botany, Botany, how you test my patience while breaking my heart sometimes.

But I reviewed the discipline measures with the staff and it seems they may be taking a somewhat firmer line now with an immediate and a longer time out. They are going to try to monitor Botany and Milly when they are together (keeping them apart is apparently not feasible) and while I don't have high expectations for the amount of attention they can give, I hope some of what is causing the volcanic frustration can be deflected. They have patiently assured me that we'll get through it, which gives me some optimism in the face of this bewildering behaviour.

Either that or I will be packing a muzzle in her lunchbag.

Whirligig

August is the busiest month of the year for me, topping even Christmas in terms of an endless round of chores, appointments, social gatherings and activities. All my insurances expire- car, house, breakdown, travel- and require to be renewed after a least a cursory glance at the comparison websites to make sure I am not getting completely ripped off. We have three birthday parties, with the obligatory present to be purchased (hurrah for bookshop three-for-two offers). Then Knox has his birthday, followed closely by Botany's. The circus comes to town in all its spectacular glory and we have various shows to attend, plus a stream of visitors who suddenly appear, sometimes looking for a place to stay or else wanting to stop in and say hello.

Botany also makes the move to both the preschool room at her old nursery, and her start at the new place around the corner from our flat. For the former, the preschool transition is relatively straightfoward in that she simply moves beyond a gate into a different part of the room, but the staff and the routine are all quite familiar. The new place is a bit more daunting- it's set in a charming cottage in the grounds of a larger house- and despite having spoken of it with considerable enthusiam for months, Botany found herself a bit overwhelmed when we went for her first settling in visit last week. Clutching my hand tightly, she looked around the nice bright space and muttered- first to me and then to the warmly welcoming staff member, "This is...different." The staff tried to coax her out to play in the garden while I went through some of the paperwork but she was having none of it, preferring to sit on my lap like a nervous monkey.

The plan is that the next time she goes before her formal start, she will be there for an hour on her own and all being well, her days will commence that week. The staff worker suggested at one point that Botany may not want to do the whole session at first (or, as I read it, depending on how unsettled she is, they may not want her there the whole day) and maybe we could ease into it for the first couple of weeks? Ack. Nice as that may be, it doesn't really enable me to actually go and do that thing I do when she is at nursery, namely work. I've had to cancel her spot at the old nursery for those two days, so I fear it is going to be a matter of just getting on with it. I'm relatively confident Botany will land on her feet, but I'm eyeing the number of appointments on my calendar for those weeks with a slight sense of trepidation.

In the middle of all this, we decided it would be a good idea to go ahead with having Botany's room painted. I have done virtually no redecorating since I moved into this flat two years ago. The colour scheme on Botany's walls, while an entirely liveable and non-offensive shade of blue- was becoming undesirable to a girl whose heart craves all things pink. Plus, to be honest, the wallpaer feature wall was starting to get on both our nerves a tiny bit. So I booked the painter, who came for a quick chat and was faced with Botany's unswerving gaze and a demand for "pinkity pink, please". Fortunately the whole thing was accomplished in two days but it meant moving everything out of her room and into the hall/living room  for the duration. My god, the kid has a lot of books not to mention stuffed tigers/teddies/blue kanagaroos.

When it came time to reinstall the furniture I reckoned this was a good an opportunity as any to finish converting the cot into a full toddler bed. So after trembling on top of the ladder into the loft to retrieve the box holding the extension (compelete with mattress insert), we took the second side of the bars off to reveal a sweet little bed long enough for Botany to grow into until she is about six. She is delighted with the result and I am quite pleased myself.

All this reorganisation did mean, however, there is no longer enough room for the nursing chair. Of late we had sat in this less and less anyway- Botany is growing a tad large to fit comfortably on my lap to read for any extended period with the arms of the chair poking into us and too wiggly to sit still for long with her legs hanging over mine. Had we had a bigger home, I probably would have kept it since- aside from being ridiculously soothing to sit and rock in-I have a seriously fond and sentimental attachment to it. That chair, more than just about anything else, represents to me a big part of Botany's babyhood. The hours and hours we spent sitting rocking and nursing. The endless mornings waking early then soothing her back to sleep while dozing off myself. The retreat to the chair as soon as we came home from work/nursery every day, a pleasant half hour of unwinding. It was our haven, our refuge, my sure fire way to calm her down, the first cuddle of the morning, the last story of the night.

But space considerations prevailed, along with Botany being keen to create a "story corner" in that part of the room with her sheepskin rug and some big pillows. Knox and I bundled the chair and footstool into the car to lend to a good friend of mine due to give birth in a couple of weeks. I am sure it will be a good home for it, although I confess to feeling a tad melancholy as we placed in a bright corner of the fresh nursery. I don't know if I'll even need the chair back again- at the moment, it's not looking too likely. It felt very much like the end of an era, saying goodbye for the last time to nursing and babies and rocking to sleep.

Perfect timing

This week, I decided, was the week. No more nappies. Bring the on wet clothes, the possibility of unspeakable stains on the living room carpet, the additional laundry. We were going cold turkey and moving on to big girl underpants.

 

Having previously tried all the usual incentives without much success (chocolate buttons, princess underpants, yadda yadda), I decided to offer a reward that I knew my child would not be able to resist. Given that I have produced one of the girliest girls in the history of Girl, I realised there was a certain item that would undoubtedly be close to her fluffy little heart. Shoes. And not just any shoes- special pink, beaded, flowery and ridiculously expensive shoes, with a catchy name. But she’d have to work for it, oh yes. These babies were not getting handed out for one or two minor attempts- this was serious delayed gratification, real motivational prize stuff.  And since I reckoned the delicious reward would arrive and be ready for handing over roughly around the time Botany outgrows the only other pair of shoes she owns, it seemed like perfect timing.

 

Like many things with Botany, she has adapted better than I expected, thus confirming yet again that I continually underestimate my daughter’s capacity to cope with life’s little challenges. The first day we stayed close to home and visited the potty approximately every hour. The day passed without an accident. She had her nap in her cot with a rubber sheet in place, just in case, but without incident. By dinner time, she was telling me when she had to go. Her chart is filling with gold and silver stars. The next day we ventured out to the grocery store and later to the library. Yesterday she went to nursery, a sack of about twenty spare underpants in reserve and miraculously she came home wearing the same clothes. 

 

I’ve ordered the shoes, at least one size too large- since at that price, she better get at least six months' wear out of them. Not that this can be guaranteed, as Botany's feet grow at the rate of mutant triffids. 

 

So, between bars off the cot and what appears to be a successful transition to the world of big girl undergarments- as well the notice from her nursery this morning that she is moving to the preschool room two weeks from now, Botany is doing a long merry dance over top a number of milestones in a short space of time. I am standing at the edge and watching her go, feeling when next I look, we’ll be dropping her off at university and begging her to phone home once in awhile.

 

Speaking of milestone, my fortieth birthday looms large. I have two more months of pretending to be thirty-something before I can settle in to enjoying my midlife crisis. I am trying to tamp down the incessant voice in my head shouting that in terms of fertility I’m passssst it- but as month after fruitless month goes by, I become increasingly convinced that the window of opportunity is on the verge of being closed forever.

Friends around me have already decided, for one reason or another, that they are done. Friend A has one child, and firmly feels that is enough, given their circumstances, finances, lack of support system and the closet sized measurements of their beloved flat. Friend B has two children under two, and chanting “done, done, done” as she counts the days until things start to get a little easier. Friend C has produced lovely baby number three, a boy to round off the pair of lovely girls, and is contented. To my chagrin, it seems that yet again, my choices here are not entirely up to me.    

 

 

 

 

 

Problem child

This may seem completely obvious to anyone who has ever started up a new business, but I’ve realised that in some ways, it’s a bit like having your first baby. You're very excited at the start, slightly nervous and full of uncertainty but yet happily anticipating the day you are up and running. Lots of people wish you well and say they will be supportive. You work yourself half to death labouring to get ready. Then as soon as you begin, you realise you have absolutely no effing idea how to do this, you are totally overwhelmed by the enormity of what you have taken on, you stay up all night working/worrying, and you realise the life you had before seems like its completely over. On the third day you come home and cry a lot while contemplating having a complete nervous breakdown. There are small arguments over relative trivialities and huge rows about the big picture. 

 

And then you get up the next day, and the next and the next and get on with it as best you can, in between mini panic attacks, lack of sleep and a general sense of anxiety and doom. In this case, I may not be so worried about dropping the baby on her head (or suddenly out of a window, which was a horrendous recurring mental image of mine  when Botany was a newborn)- but I am worried that we’re going to fail, and all that we worked for will be lost with nothing to show for it.   

 

People keep saying it will get better and it might but right now it does feel like something of a long dark tunnel for both me and Knox.  What surprised me somewhat is how quickly it morphed from being his business to really being our business. In hindsight, given what he was taking on, that was always going to be the reality but I was in some form of denial as to how much input might be needed from me. I suppose on the upside I am already used to working 16 hour days (what with already having a day job and a parenting job) so in many ways it’s not all that different to my current pace of life.  But it feels like some things I love and enjoy are falling by the wayside somewhat. Reading for fun? No time. Cooking proper meals? Not so much. Writing carefully crafted blog posts and starting my novel? Oh, how I wish.

 

I suppose it’s also probably just as well that, given the current levels of stress in the house, there isn’t another new baby on the way. I’ve been so busy that the complete lack of success in that department has barely even registered on the radar of problems. My real worry is that in six months' time, I will look up from working like a crazed weasel and discover that oops! I’m over forty! And I’m truly past it!        

 

Meanwhile, I’ve been feeling quite wistful in that I don’t get as nearly much time with Botany as I used to. She’s been completely sweet about a relative lack of attention from me up and indeed, been behaving like a angel- until this past weekend when I finally had a chance to spend a couple of days with her in a row. I eagerly looked forward to it all week and when it finally arrived, she immediately morphed back into a nightmarish little beast. Whining endlessly, throwing the toy I bought her for Easter at me, kicking me during nappy changes, impudently running away in the store car park and generally being something of a contrary pain in the ass. I  confess that her crying “I want my Daddy” repeatedly during one particular tantrum was especially irritating. Botany, my delicious darling, your Daddy is on yet another extended business trip out of the country for another two weeks, leaving me once again to carry the load on mostly on my own, so please don’t go there.

 

I’m not entirely sure what prompted Botany’s sudden change of temperament. Change of routine? Frustration at realising how much she's been missing me too lately? Or just the sudden whiff of power shift? I think if I am being honest, my guilt at not having more time with her has probably caused me to revert back to more of a pushover than I have been in recent months. It’s as if she can sense- and exploit- the slightest chink in my maternal armour and before I know it, I am being ordered around like a slave and dictated to by a toddler. It’s hard for me to find a balance between being a loving, attentive mother and also being the Top Dog in the house, She Who Will Not be Disrespected.    

 

I never like ending posts on a bad note if I can help it though, so I will counter some of the sense of doom and gloom by saying that at least my dental visit was fine in the end. I simply needed to have a further filling put into the root canal tooth.  It's slightly strange having a procedure done with no need for numbing up in advance- somehow, the idea that there is no nerve there definitely equals no pain required more of a leap of faith than my otherwise rational mind might have believed- but it was quick and yes, painless. Let us hope that the next visit in six months finds me in a calmer state all around.     

 

The cure for what ails us

Botany rarely gets ill. Aside from the initial bouts of colic when she was a newborn and the odd cough and mild cold (and, er, threadworms), she is a hardy little soul. To date, she has vomited exactly once in her entire life- albeit in a spectacularly dramatic fashion, having just consumed a homemade blueberry smoothie, the contents of which she deposited all over my lap as I sat trying to put her shoes on. For the last year and a half, I have been alternately secretly smug and goat-sacrificingly grateful at the robustness of her immune system. Sure, I had to put up with what seemed like a never ending siege of 4am wake up calls for months on end but at least she was jumping bean healthy throughout. Just as well, because in truth, had Botany been prone to much in the way of sickness, I think it might just have put me over the single parenting edge. 

This week, she seems to have developed an ear infection. I know that, not due to my superior parenting ability to diagnosis illness, but because she suddenly grabbed me and whimpered, "My ear is sore" over and over while simultaneously regressing into small, sad, cuddly baby mode. This sent me flailing to the cupboard for the magic pink medicine stuff, while realising that Botany's previous health record has spoiled me somewhat. I suddenly feel vastly inexperienced in dealing with toddler unwellness. Some things seem pretty obvious- like when she woke up crying at 3am, complaining of a sore ear, she needed another dose of painkiller. Other things are less so- she seemed relatively fine in the morning but was she unwell enough to stay home from nursery? Should I substitute my own doctor's appointment today with one for her? How exactly does that thermometer thing work, anyway? Where's my mommy when I need her?

And, in the back of my mind was the recent tragic news from a former member of my postnatal group. Her child was the same age as Botany and I remember his sweet, round blue eyes. We had long since lost touch but last week I learned from a friend of a friend that the boy was became unwell one day and within 24 hours had died of something along the lines of meningitis. Good Lord. It hit me that I need to become a bit more...alive, if I may use that term, to signs and symptoms of childhood illnesses. It just seems like a hard line to walk- balancing the desire to wrap in cotton wool with the tempering of needless paranoia. 

I also came to the view recently that I am overdue for attending to my own medical needs and it's time to rectify that. That weird, slow growing lump on my head was finally looked at today; I was 90% certain it was of the not-harmful cyst variety but then again, you know, it struck me that body lumps of any type should probably at least be monitored even cursorily by somebody with an actual medical degree. While I was there, I casually mentioned the old thyroid condition in the context of trying to get pregnant again and the doctor had the needle in my arm faster than you can say "endocrine". I guess no harm in having it checked out, since it's been a year since my last test.

Oh, and I'm going to the dentist next week for the first time in about two years. The root canal tooth is not looking too happy and it occurred to me that the temporary filling the dentist put in way back when was in fact, meant to be just that- temporary- and is probably well past its sell by date.

To be honest, I think I put off dealing with anything related to dentistry (and in particular that tooth) for so long, partly because of the expense and partly because of the incredibly bad associations created from that time in my life. I don't believe I will ever quite get over the memory of the night before the root canal treatment. Physical pain- huge, immense, overwhelming in my mouth and jaw. Finding out that my relationship with E. was over. Agony.

I remember sitting in the dentist's waiting room, watching the clock tick with treacle slowness toward the hour of my appointment, tears running down my face as I willed myself to hold it together, hold it together for just a few more minutes. It still feels like a part of me died from the effort it took to get through that morning. It wouldn't surprise me to learn there is a small shadowy ghost of me still haunting that waiting room- hanging over the back of the fancy leather chairs, fingers pressed against the glass topped coffee table, praying for relief.