Fearing fear

When I started writing this post I had two unrelated stories I wanted to tell in the back of my mind. I didn’t know why I needed to tell them both and what I wanted to say with them. So I started writing and maybe I have come to some conclusion. You tell me.

In November 2004 we went on a family holiday. We stayed in a holiday flat in Uvongo on the KZN Hibiscus Coast south from Durban.

Marco was nine months old and had just started commando crawling.

When I look at photographs taken during that time, I seem relaxed and happy. We were in a good position financially, career-wise and we were in love with each other and our beautiful child. It should have been one of the happiest times of our lives.

Yet I remember feeling disgruntled and tired. Marco still woke up numerous times a night, he wanted to breast-feed non-stop. And Dirk was not pulling his weight in my opinion. He slept soundlessly at night and took long naps during the day. He read the paper and ate snacks. Not once did he even offer to take Marco for an hour or two so that I could rest or read or just relax. I spent my days chasing Marco around the luxury flat, trying to keep him from overturning the elaborate decorations and impractical furniture, chewing on the rugs and getting himself entangled into the blind cords. I was on holiday, yet not on holiday. With hindsight, I should have just damn well relaxed.

I should have been happy to have the daily cleaning service included in the rental of the flat given the fact that Marco spent most of his day sailing on his tummy. Yet I wasn’t. There was something distinctly odd about our cleaning lady…

Normally the cleaning staff time their daily cleaning sessions to co-incide with the family going to the beach. I can imagine that it is just more practical – not having a whole family under your feet while you are trying to do your job.

However, our cleaning lady pitched up at either breakfast or lunch and made pointed remarks about how hungry she was. She manipulated us and we ended up sharing most of our meals with her even though her services came as part of our rental and we weren’t obliged to give her anything – except a tip at the end. It was her personality that irritated me most. She acted servile (eek), but her smile never reached her eyes and her eyes darted here and there – keenly observing and sly. She gave me the creeps and I tried to stay out of her way as much as possible. She was no fool. She saw that I didn’t like her.

One day I bumped into her coming into the flat. I had Marco in my arms. We greeted and suddenly her eyes fixed on Marco. Her ingratiating expression vanished, her eyes grew big and she said, soft but clear:
“This child is going to be unhappy. Very unhappy.”
She caught my puzzled expression, smiled almost apologetically and disappeared into the kitchen.

I truly did not know what to make of it. Did I misunderstand her? Was she trying to manipulate me into superstition and trying to “buy” her goodwill? Or was she just slightly mad.?

I decided to stick with the manipulation theory – after all that would tie in with my prior observations of her. But it stayed at the back of my mind – and I hated that she managed that.

***
We moved from the Free State to a farm in northern KwaZulu Natal when I was just 3 years old. The house on this farm was built somewhere in the 1940s – a little block of a pre-war house straight out of a child’s drawing. It had an odd floor-plan. Two bedrooms led from the lounge – one of them mine – often causing me to exit the house through the bedroom window if my parents entertained guests I did not particularly want to see. (I was painfully shy as a child.)

When I try to think back, I cannot remember whether I didn’t like the house from the start. But I was afraid of my bedroom from the start. My mother had to bribe me to go and fetch something from it even during daytime while I grew up. As a high school aged child, I took music as a subject at school and spent long hours in front of my piano – practicing. So as not to disturb anybody else, the piano was moved to my bedroom. Sometimes I would be sitting playing and I’d get the feeling that somebody was watching me from behind. Slowly and without looking I would get up and then bolt from the bedroom, only relaxing as I rounded the corner into the passage. One day, I ran so fast that my foot slipped and I fell, hitting my head on the floor. I came to in my father’s arms. He started scolding me about running in the house as soon as he was sure I was okay. But I was too shy to tell him why…After all, here I was – almost an adult – running away from something nameless.

My parents were both very active in farming and it often happened that they had to go and help an animal in distress after dark. My sister and I stayed in the house – locking ourselves safely in. The crime situation then was not what it is today, but we were still taking part in the bush war in Zimbabwe and terrorists used a route quite close by to infiltrate the country. Yet I felt safer outside. I would leave my sister behind in the house and walk around it in the pitch-dark until I could see my parent’s truck coming up the road. It felt as if I could not breathe in the house. My uneasy relationship with the house continued until we moved out of it. We lived there for 17 years and then when I was 20 years old and in my second year at university, my parents moved to a house in town – leaving the small house on the farm to be occupied by first a farm manager and then left to stand empty to this day. It must be more than 10 years since I’ve last seen it. I miss the farm, but I do not miss that house.

Subsequently I have lived in and visited a great many other places. Yet I have never had an irrational fear of any other house – even the ones that were ostensibly “haunted”. I’ve never asked my sister about it outright, but she has never given me the impression that she was ever uneasy in the house.

It is true that we spent long periods of extreme unhappiness in that house. More tears dripped on its old creaky floorboards than any of us would care to remember. We were often on the brink of financial ruin – a smell I’ll never forget is of bruised plants after a hail storm destroyed a crop into which my father had ploughed everything we had. And I’ll never forget the image of my father shaking his fist at the sky and at God after the rain stayed away resolutely for months on end. Maybe the house merely absorbed our collective unhappiness and reflected that back to me. I truly don’t know.

But I think that we all realized during the past 16 months that our unhappiness at that time often centered in “things”, and our reaction to the loss of those “things”. We have come to know that human life can be extremely frail and precious and that THAT is what we need to treasure.

I don’t blame my parents for my childhood eccentricities and fears. But maybe I can learn from them.

I have resolved long ago that where ever I live, I will never make my home or this family a place my kids fear. It will be without monsters. Yet I’ve already spent far too much time crying in this house of ours. It is true that we have had an awful lot to come to terms with and that it does not happen without tears. But it should never be at the cost of the precious human lives we were entrusted with.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. – Marcus Aurelius

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others. – Marianne Williamson

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. – Marie Curie

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom. -Marilyn Ferguson

The red cat

Before I had kids (oh, famous last words) I visualized the relationship between my children and my parents as somehow an extension of my own with them. In reality, they seem to have a completely autonomous relationship.

I must say that the interaction between my father and Marco supplies me with endless amusement. The two of them are so similar. My father has a very volatile personality and consequently we were rather afraid of him as kids. Well. It has never occurred to Marco that he should fear his grandfather. He tolerates my father’s moods with loving exasperation and does not back down one millimeter from trying to get his own way. And my father allows him far more than we would ever be allowed as children.

About my mother I could write books. She is patient, wise, resourceful, loving and I don’t know what I would have done without her during this past year. But today I want to write about my father.

From him I have inherited a certain stubbornness that is based on the assumption that if you can conceptualize something, it must be possible. My father will find a way to do something, come hell or high water. His solutions are not always simple, but in the end, they work.

About three years ago, he decided to buy a farm in the Karoo – a semi-desert area 1400km from home. There he stayed by himself for two and a half years. My mother was prepared to go and live with him on the farm, but he wouldn’t let her move from their comfortable big house in Vryheid. The farmhouse was flattened to the ground by an angry and bitter farmowner after his wife left him and the only dwelling was an old shepherd’s house. There was no running water, no electricity and the closest town, Beaufort-West, is 40km from there.

He lived in the shepherd’s house, he managed to devise a way of getting running water into the house, he cooked on an open fire and he listened to the radio for company. He wrote poetry by lamplight and he farmed with sheep – trying to keep them safe from jackal and wild cats. He experienced extremes in cold and heat and he worked until his muscles ached. This period was hard on both of them – they aged visibly. But he needed the solitude. He needed to sort his head out. In September 2005, my mother heard somebody at the gate one morning early. She went to see and there he was: His truck was loaded and he had a trailer with all his belongings on it. “I’m back” he said simply. He sold the sheep, paid off the farm and leased it out to another man – all within one day. He packed his things and drove for 24 hours uninterrupted to get home. Now the farm is paid off and gives them a handy income in rental.

This is the kind of man my father is.

He would do anything for us and his grandchildren. Loren’s birth was hard on him – as it had been on all the other grandparents. But he has never given up praying and hoping and devising ways to make things better.

One night –long after my parents had gone to bed – my father sat bolt upright in bed.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asked, worried.
“You know, I’ve often doubted that the children would pull things off. But now I’ve remembered that red cat….”
And he dived back into his pillow, pummeled it a few times and almost immediately started snoring softly again.

Burglar in the storeroom II – warning, sensitive issues mentioned

No, we didn’t lock the cat in again and neither was there a real burglar in our storeroom this time. But something happened this weekend which kind of threw me off balance a bit.

On Sunday afternoon our front gate bell rang. Dirk went to see who it was. Three young, probably high school age, black (you’ll se the relevance of this later) men stood in front of the gate. They said that they came to pick up stationery from a Mr Pillay at no 3. Mr Pillay was not home and would only return later that night. They were thirsty and wanted a drink of water and were in need of some bus fare to return home.

Dirk said outright to them that they were lying. We have neither a Mr Pillay nor a house number 3 in our cul-de-sac…He fetched them some water and sent them on their way. He looked deeply troubled and phoned both the police and the policing forum guards. The company who is running the patrols, immediately dispatched a vehicle. They asked if Dirk minded going with them to see if the youths were still in the area and to identify them.

They found them in another cul-de-sac where they were telling the same story to an elderly lady. The people next door to this address have been away on holiday for some time. The police arrived as well. Sometimes young people are used as fore-runners for hardened criminals engaging in organized crime. They are used as spies and paid handsomely. The police said to Dirk that there is a definite increase in crime from Thursdays, because young kids need money for the week-end – for drugs and alcohol and clubs etc.

But obviously, the boys might merely have thought that they could make a few bucks out of plain old begging. So, the police were understandably reluctant to do much more than offer them a lift back into town. An argument ensued between the armed patrolmen and the police and finally the police were convinced to take the young men in for fingerprinting. Their reasoning was that if the boys meant to only beg, they actually went to a lot of trouble and expense to get to our area in order to do so. They would likely have had to take two to three taxis to reach us. Furthermore we know that our area is targeted by criminals and we simply cannot afford to take any chances. As neighbours started phoning each other, and piecing stories together, we realized that the boys have been in the area all afternoon. One man found them right outside his back door, trying to peer in.

In South Africa we have a melting pot of races and cultures. In some cultures, stealing is forbidden, in others it is only considered wrong if you are caught out. As I’ve discussed in another post, many people are dirt poor – the greater majority of them black. 13 Years after independence and equal voting rights for all and things are looking even worse than they were before. The Government seems unable to take things into hand. Discrimination on the grounds of race is taking place daily – black people are still discriminated against and white people are discriminated against with stringent affirmative action policies. People who neither have the qualifications nor the experience are appointed into highly-paid jobs, with disasterous results. Coloured people and Asians are discriminated against because they were “too black “in the previous regime, but now they are “too white”.

The bottom line is that there are a lot of people who feel that they were let down by the system and who have decided to take what they can – with force if necessary. Organized crime spans all races and cultures and hardened criminals will not hesitate to murder for the sake of a small household appliance. Amongst law-abiding folk, there is fear and anger. I have heard a few of my neighbours (especially ones who have been targeted by crime in the past few weeks)say outright that they will not hesitate to shoot in order to kill if anyone enters their home again.

Dirk and I had a serious discussion when he came back. He said that his big fear is not being able to protect the kids and I. He said that if anyone hurt one of his kids, he’d go mad. We have to accept that Loren – who needs suctioning in order to breathe – will not survive even one night if Dirk and I were to be hurt or killed.

Even though the three young men were in all likelihood not up to any good, lying is not a crime and neither is loitering. Were we justified in taking up the matter with the police and were they justified in taking them in for fingerprinting?

What are your views?

The Shepherd

We are in the midst of probably one of the more tense periods in our lives: There’s builders busy working around us, every weekend we have to vacate a room for painting, our finances look shocking, I’ve had an accident, I have pregnancy hormones crashing through my system and making me just a little crazy and we have two demanding little boys and lots of pressure at work.

Yet, we are so privileged when I really think about it.

We are healthy, Loren is really making good progress, Marco is astounding us every day with something new and delightful, my pregnancy is progressing wonderfully and we already find such joy in “playing” with our new little one and feeling its kicks, we have a lovely home, good jobs, enough to eat and support from wonderful people.

We have everything to be thankful for.

Speaking of Loren, I haven’t been able to go to any of his OT appointments for a number of weeks. I always have a meeting or some crisis at that time. But from Anna, I’ve been gathering that Shelley (the OT) is very pleased with him. This past Wednesday I went home for the OT session. Shelley brought Loren some very lovely toys – two cars – to play with.

Shelley converted these cars to be operated with a large switch and she had Loren sitting between her legs and operating the switch himself.

His concentration is astounding. Even though his ability does not match his will, it was clear to all of us that he WANTED TO PLAY. He knew that the switch made the toy work and he made the appropriate movement to get it to work. His head control has improved with leaps and bounds and I ascribe it directly to the new ABR exercise to increase strength and lengthen the muscles between his shoulder and neck. At some point he was sitting upright with his head in the midline position – not even wavering. Wednesday night he went to bed early – dead tired – but as restless as an ant throughout the night. At one point I tucked him into bed with me and that seemed to calm him enough to sleep. He reminded me so much of Marco when he was roundabout the same age after having an exciting day…

Shelley is hoping to get Loren to communicate with movements. Even a yes-no response would be great at this stage. The only problem is that we had very little to work with in the line of consistent movement. I have never been despondent about it, because I knew that his function would eventually improve with ABR. Of course speech would be the ideal, but in the mean time I’ll settle for anything.

A couple of weeks ago we discovered that Loren is able to consistently reach out with his right hand on our request. Not only did he do this during the OT session, but he also did it later that afternoon when I asked him if he wanted to hold a pen. (I held his hand and made him draw pictures.) Now we only need to equate that to communication of some kind. I already know and have known from a very young age that his receptive language skills are good. Shelley always seemed to doubt this – not saying it outright – but changing the subject when I made references to it. Now it seems that she has also realized Loren is able to understand most of what we tell him. And I’m so glad, so glad. He needs more people to believe in him.

ABR is going well. Anna averages around five hours a day and I try and add at least an hour at night. Because we have so many (five) new exercises, the time spent on each has diminished. We’ll have to see what the effect of that is going to be – it may not be the issue I fear it would be, because these exercises are much more specific than the previous ones and they seem to work together. I can already see a visible difference in the width of his shoulders and the position of his clavicles – accounting for his increased range of movement and his improved neck control.

Last night he woke up at 3:00 – soaking wet and ravenous. I dressed him in dry clothes, fed him some milk and cuddled with him for a while. When his eyes became heavy with sleep, I tucked him back into bed and smiled in the dark as I heard him settle himself into a deep sleep.

And then I dreamt about the two paintings above the bed: Rows of sheep on a hill – round and soft with wool – swallows sweeping through the air. Did you know swallows only stay where there is peace and where the air is clean? In the paintings there are buildings of prayer on a hill and a Shepherd guarding the sheep – light from the sunrise stretching the shadow of his shepherd’s staff to fall over my two sleeping boys.

Builders and how to survive them

…Or at least what you should not do when you have to deal with them!

Strange how people change over the course of a lifetime.

I’ve always been a “softie” – inclined to let myself be bullied into things and saying yes when I meant no and letting people get away with murder – all in the name of peace.

Dirk is far more inclined to speak his mind and address bad service decisively. Having a background as an attorney, he is very aware of the legal ramifications of anything anybody does.

Our roles haves switched.

Example in point: We have had poor performance from the builders since mid-Feb. There was no progression of work, subcontractors did not arrive or went home early and what freaked us out was the fact that material we had paid for already was not being delivered. We called them in (amidst ducking and diving from the main contractor) at the end of February. We are aware that he has some very serious personal problems and we have sympathy, but they should not really interfere with the work as he is not doing the actual work himself, but subcontracts to someone else. So we were very blunt with him and insisted on a written “plan of action” and improved performance.

Despite his assurances that he would get things back on track and his verbal agreement to have the work finished tomorrow, we haven’t really seen any drastic improvement or progress. On Monday and Tuesday nobody pitched up for work. We also haven’t received anything in writing from him.

Yesterday I arrived home to find two of the three workers lounging under a tree in the garden, reading the paper. The third guy was walking around aimlessly with a piece of wood. The subcontractor was missing. I phoned the main contractor. He said that he was happy that work was back on track and that I should not worry my “pretty face” over this. The subcontractor had gone to fetch a window that needs to be installed.

Well, the subcontractor arrived back sans window and collected his workers and went home. This morning Dirk phoned the suppliers and was told that they phoned the main contractor twice to pick up some doors, but that he never collected them and only vaguely mentioned needing a window. No order was done for a window. It is not the first time we caught this guy out lying to us.

I work for an organization that deal in building – state buildings. I asked an architect friend and she was alarmed. We should have included penalties for time delays in the contract and we definitely should not have paid upfront. (There’s only one payment outstanding – on completion of the work.) She suggested we write a letter recording everything and that he gets a deadline to respond to.

But Dirk seemed strangely lethargic and so I wrote the letter. I asked for a written plan of action so that we can draft a new contract that includes penalties for time delays and that stipulates problems arising from the first contract to be sorted out. Dirk wanted additional work done, but I feel they should complete the work they contracted for and get the hell out of our lives. I also said that if the contractor does not repond to our letter, we would consider that a cancellation of the contract and that we will hold him responsible for costs to get the work completed by someone else. We are sending a copy of this letter to the Master Builder’s Association – of which he is a member.

I am tired of being lied to and my concerns being smoothed over – pretty face, indeed! Dirk still seems concerned about not spoiling the “good relationship” we have with this guy. Good relationship, my foot! I seethe every time I see him.

Let’s hope we can sort something out.

A fender-bender and GTT- ugh!

This morning I had a bit of a fender-bender.

Traffic was backed up into a fairly busy road and I came over the hill to find a long line of stationary cars right in front of me. I had to break relatively hard to avoid hitting the woman in front of me. The guy in the truck behind me wasn’t so lucky. He hit my car from the back and pushed it into the woman in front’s car.

There was a good Samaritan – living across the road from where the accident took place – who took charge. He marked vehicle positions on the road, calmed the poor woman in front of me (who was sobbing) down and we all phoned our respective spouses/ family.

The young guy who hit my car, felt terrible. I understood completely, having seen his panicked face in the rearview mirror a split second before the impact. Accidents happen – and my car is probably damaged least even though it sustained two instances of impact – the wonder of modern “plastic moldable” panels.. It is badly enough damaged that the boot won’t close, though and insurance insisted that we take it to a panel beater immediately. They don’t have a courtesy car for me yet and at the moment I’m dependant on Dirk for transport.

Dirk was panicked and insisted that I go to see a doctor immediately. I felt less worried, having felt the baby move and not having had any bleeding or pain. The baby is still so nicely cushioned in amniotic fluid, that it probably barely took notice. But I gave in and we went to see (yet another) OB – a woman around my own age. I must say that she reacted probably the best of all the OBs that I’ve seen so far.

Dirk exercised his veto right about scans and I had one. The baby is fine, moving energetically and looks for all intents and purposes healthy. While I lay there it struck me why I’m not terribly keen on scans – apart from my moral-ethical-sceptisism-about-safety issues with them: I felt nothing looking at the image on-screen. At stages I did not even look. I know that that is not my baby. My baby is in me and I “know” it is safe. I felt no connection with the image – nada, zip, zilch.

The doctor laughingly said that I’m probably one of the most difficult patients she has encountered so far – she says I’m the kind of person they get warned about in medical school. But I heard her talking to me and in talking resolving issues in her own head at the same time. I got the strange impression she could understand my reasoning. She even asked if I would prefer the midwife attending Marco’s birth to assist me with her as backup. Which completely blew my mind.

She is going to insist on me taking a glucose tolerance test, though, since there was sugar spillage in my urine. I have had that before and it is not uncommon in pregnancy. My mother had that with both her pregnancies also. I had blood test for gestational diabetes before and they were negative. So I think she is wasting my time and hers….

So far so good…

An extraordinary life

Something that has always gnawed at me, but most particularly since Loren was born, is the question of parallel realities and choices.

A couple of years ago, I asked a previous boss turned friend cum sceptic turned Christian whether she would change anything about her life. She answered, without thinking much about it, that she would choose a different father. True, this was a man who made their mother’s life hell to the extent that she left her three kids with their father in Australia and went to find a better life, hoping (I assume) to come back for them later. Their father took them away – if my memory serves me correct, overseas – and a life of running around, ducking from shelter to shelter, hunger and extreme adversity started. Judy, who was the eldest, decided that enough was enough after a while. One day, while he was out drinking, she took her two siblings by the hand and led them to the closest child welfare office. Clearly and fearlessly the pixiefaced dark-haired girl explained their circumstances and asked for help. They were placed in foster care (with lovely people) for a number of years and Judy was self-sufficient before they were reunited with their mother. Their mother got married again and their stepfather became like a real father to them.

Now Judy is a successful, beautiful, resourceful woman. But her biggest accomplishment, I feel, was raising three beautiful kids of her own, taking in her husband’s niece and playing mother to a number of children with less than fortunate circumstances. Her own experience gave her empathy and boundless love and she shared that with everyone. Would she have been the same person if her life stayed happy but bland? Very likely not.

Ironically, at the time I asked her that question, I could honestly say that I had no regrets, that I would not change a single thing about my own life. Sure, I had had my share of adversity. My growing-up years were sometimes fraught with tension and hard times financially. And my own father is not one of the easiest people to live with. But he gave me so much. From him I learnt that everything is possible. There’s no can’t. There is no accepting something that is not right. My father also loves us endlessly. He never really says it, but we always knew it.

Now my answer to my own question will differ. I made choices that impact daily on not only my own life, but mostly on that of an innocent child. My choices affected my older child, my husband, my own father and mother and my husband’s, all our friends and extended family. I cannot go back and change my choice. And that is the hard part. Or is it?

I know that having Loren has changed me irrevocably. Sometimes I mourn the loss of that girl, but mostly it has also taught me some life lessons that I would not have come by any other way.

In the moments after Loren’s birth, my only prayer was that God would keep him safe. I’m not sure exactly what I meant by that. Brain damage did not really occur to me. I wanted him to live. About a block from the hospital, I thought I heard a death rattle from him. Yet he survived. I’ve since realized that even though his brain was damaged, Loren – the spirit, the personality, the deeper being – is unscathed. That being looks out at me every day through bright and interested eyes. Yes, God did keep him safe.

Loren has affected a great many people’s lives. If you listen carefully to what he does not say, you’ll hear everything about grace and determination. Like many children who start out in life at a disadvantage, he has learned to fight. He is an extraordinary being just the way he is.

I must say that this comment on Christy Everett’s post Enough? Not Enough? Too much? really jolted me.

I always get a little nervous when families start wondering “Are we doing enough?” because kids are sooooo perceptive, and I worry that they’ll start wondering “Am I not enough? Where did I fail my parents?”, etc., etc. I know these are the last things you would ever want him to think, and the last place your heart is as a parent. But I’ve seen that misperception in some of the cuties that I work with. They think, if I could just walk a little straighter, if I could just ditch this walker, if I could just stand a little longer on my own, so be cautious about putting more on your plate.

Suppose I can go back to that moment of choice and I can disregard my own feelings and those of all the other people involved in our lives. Suppose I could know that Loren would have been an average, even mediocre, nice enough, clever enough but nothing spectacular personality. That he would live an ordinary life, not affecting many people beyond the ones he deals with on a daily basis. What would I choose then?

You know what? I am intensely grateful I don’t have to make that choice. And there is a strange comfort in knowing I don’t have to and that I’ll never need to. That I merely have to give over my fate to a God I trust and that he’ll give me the strength to deal with whatever comes my way.

VERY GOOD, MAMA!

Loren slept through the night for all intents and purposes. And this means, shhh, we slept too. I actually woke up a few times and went to check on him…. Old habits die hard.

This morning as I left for work, he was still fast asleep. And I found Anna, dear wonderful Anna, already busy with ABR. Despite him being niggly yesterday, she still managed to fit in almost 5 hours.

I know that I do not give her and Jenny – who does house work and looks after Marco – enough credit for what they do. But I really appreciate them. I have peace of mind about my children when they are in their care.

The decision to not stay home and look after my own children has been one that caused me bitter tears. I have had many fights with Dirk over this. I believe that no-one can replace a mother. But he has always maintained that we need my salary to survive. I disagree. I feel we can make do with less. We will need to supplement his income with something, but we have an extra property which we could develop and rent out and I’m not fussy about what I do, nor am I lazy. I know that I need to take the bull by the horns and come up with a concrete plan. It’s not saying Dirk will agree to it, but nothing will happen while I sit here in a kind of tired, overwhelmed stupor.

I grew up with little money, but a mother who was always there. Dirk’s mom worked, but she was a teacher who could be with her children most afternoons. So, I suppose we can both attest to the fact that it has major advantages for a child.

I increasingly get the impression that Marco is ready for a more social daycare environment. It tugs at my heartstrings. But this morning he said that he does not want to stay with Jenny – something he has never really said outright. It could just be that the two of them had a fight yesterday. But in recent weeks, I’ve seen him getting more and more social with other kids.

For us a part in the decision to keep Marco home was because of health issues. I know that children tend to get sick quickly and often at daycare centers. It is normal. But Loren could not afford to get sick…. I feel slightly more at peace about Loren’s immune system now. And I will not hold one child back purely because of my fears for another. Other, more compelling reasons why I kept Marco home were not really being socially ready for bigger groups and language – most daycare centers are mainly English and he had the opportunity to have an au-pair who speaks Afrikaans until he was 2 and a bit. But those reasons are no longer much of an issue. He has picked up a fair amount of English from Jenny and Anna by now and he should be able to make himself understood at even an all-English daycare.

The only thing that still worries me slightly is him not being potty-trained yet. We tried when I had the three weeks alone with the kids, but he resolutely refused to use the potty. I even went as far as demonstrating peeing in the potty. We had an extra one and I wanted him to sit on that one. He was most interested but he brought the extra one over and said:
“Please do that again!” with an expression of great expectation on his little face. If ever I’m in need of a party trick, I’ll be sure to remember that one.

A friend of mine – with a son just one month older – is also in the throes of potty training with her son. She demonstrated pooing (in the toilet) and got a hearty:
VERY GOOD, MAMA! And nothing else from him.

Maybe not quite ready, yet? I’ll just keep on trying.

It is ironic that my husband and I can agree on so many things – of sometimes lesser importance. I’m so grateful for the things we do agree on. But we seem to be on different pages about this one most important issue.

Three down none to go.

Dirk and I went to look at a potential hospital – nope, we don’t have a doctor yet, thanks for asking – one of three private hospitals in town. One is out of the question since I’m never going back there. Not even to visit. And the other one I’ve never liked, for various reasons, which is why I didn’t go there in the first place.

As hospitals go, this one was fine, but the whole experience made my throat constrict and my hands sweat. Especially when the unit manager thought it a good idea to show us the NICU. I asked a few pertinent questions such as the obvious ones about rooming in, visitors, availability of single rooms, but also a few that made the unit manager shift uncomfortably in her seat: HERE COMES TROUBLE, I could almost hear her think.

I wanted to know for example if they had a policy of removing the baby from the mother after a C-Section. This is important to me, because I don’t want to be separated from my newborn should I end up with one.(C-section, I mean.) She answered that it depends on whether the mother is under the influence of pain medication /capable of handling her baby. Fair enough. Except that my whole damn problem with C-sections is that it puts the mother in a position which makes caring for her baby somewhat difficult. A few other hospitals I know, take the baby away for hours afterwards – which is what happened to Marco and I despite the fact that I was wide-awake and alert. She also said that the baby is kept apart from the mom for heating him up and for bathing. I said it’s not acceptable. I’ll bath my own baby the next day and the baby can be on my chest for warming. She conceded that that’s possible.

I wanted to know if a birth plan is honoured or if it disappears out the door the moment the mother walks in. She said they make it a point to discuss birth plans with the midwife well in advance and that communication is of paramount importance. I sensed she was lying through her teeth – especially when she could recall ..um… one lady with a birth plan “which we followed to the letter.” But that is fine. I’ll hold them to my birth plan even if I have to thread it into their heads through their ears – emergencies excluded, of course.

Dirk asked her about OBs. She answered that she could not of course recommend anyone but that they have five OBs with their rooms on the hospital premises. She gave me their numbers and of the five I’ve heard about two where good feedback was given. So this afternoon I phoned their rooms up and explained that I was looking for an OB. The receptionists were both lovely little sunrays. NOT. (You know the type where the phone is answered in a barely audible mumble and you have no idea whether you even have the correct number or not.) Of course neither of the doctors was available and I was vaguely instructed to try again tomorrow at certain times. No offer was made to get the doctor to phone me and my suggestion that he does so was ignored. I guess they don’t need new patients then. And if I don’t get the doctors tomorrow at the recommended times and no-one phones me back, then I’m not going to be one of their new patients. That’s for sure.

Dirk is opposed to using Durban (our neighbouring city) for practical reasons. But if we cannot find an OB here that we both like, then that’s our only choice. We have exhausted almost all of the avenues here.

I’ve heard, through my good friend the Internet, about a female OB in Durban who sounds pretty much what I’m looking for. Only problem is that she seems to be the head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at one of the smaller hospitals in Durban and I’m not sure that she practices any more. Dirk promised to phone and find out.

Dear Internet friends, if you had only one or two questions to ask a prospective OB over the phone and you were me, what would you ask?