Baby Jaguar's First Birthday

 

It hardly seems believable that it's been a whole year since Master Jaguar was born. I remember the day so clearly; it could have been last month. But here we are, an entire world away from where we were then, on Jaguar's birthday.

There hasn't been much time for blogging since we moved here. Scott needs the computer most of the time for job hunting, and when he's not using it, we are usually busy doing other settling-in things. As much as I'd like to write a long, heart-felt post (and I do intend to later if at all possible), right now I'm busy making lunch, getting the girls dried off and dressed after playing in the pool, baking a birthday cake, and tidying the house before an old high school friend of mine and her little boy get here. Scott is busy cleaning out the pool. The Birthday Boy is busy playing with his new toy (and the poor kid has been relegated to the play pen while I do all the hot oven stuff). It's all go around here, all the time, despite my not having a job!

But I'll give you a quick birthday up-date. The wee man slept in (which meant I slept in!) until nearly 9. He opened his present from us, an elephant that blows baubles out his trunk. We all went to breakfast at Waffle House to celebrate. My aforementioned friend is coming over soon to play. The girls are going to Vacation Bible School tonight. Jaguar's actual birthday party will be on Saturday, which I will make a tremendous effort to blog about. He's been all smiles all day, and even took a wonderful nap earlier, allowing me to do paperwork while he slept. He's my perfect little ray of sunshine, that boy.

Happy birthday, Jaguar. You made this little family complete.

February Book Review

At the beginning of February I started reading a book I'd pulled from the shelf at the checkout in Morrisons that ran me only £2. I love midwifery books like Call the Midwife, so I thought this book, Midwife On Call might be interesting.

Though it did not cease to annoy me the way Agnes Light stole and simply reversed the title from the popular Jennifer Worth book.

The book was okay. It wasn't fabulously written; it was very colloquial, which for those who enjoy a book that sounds like it is literally being dictated to you by mouth might appreciate, but I found it grating. The blurb on the cover, claiming to be a book about interesting birthing stories is only marginally true. The book is actually just one midwife's memoir of starting midwifery as a mother of 2 in her late 20s in the 1970s and how her midwifery career progressed through the years. It was interesting in places, and did have a few birthing stories scattered here and there, but mostly, it was a memoir.

For the first half of the book I was unimpressed. However, I will admit that as I pushed through it, I did begin to find the author somewhat endearing as a character, once I accepted the book as a story of her life and not necessarily a story about midwifery. By the end, I did feel the author is probably a nice person, but I never got over the feeling she was merely jumping on the bandwagon of midwifery-based bestsellers.

If you want an easy-to-read book about a woman's life (who happened to be an midwife by occupation), it's an all right choice. But if you want good, exciting birthing stories, or well-illustrated ideas of what childbirth was like in the UK in days gone by, stick with Worth's Call the Midwife or June Goulding's Light in the Window or even Angela Patrick's The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers.

*I am aiming to read a book a month. If you'd be interested in joining an online book club, leave a comment below. For the month of March I am reading Silence by Endo Shusako, and if anyone is interested, we can have a Facebook-based group for discussing it - and for choosing a book for April!

Blessed With Peace

All the walls painted a blueish shade of white, desperate to appear homey instead of clinical, swelled inward around her, as if trying to subtly choke her without the midwives noticing. Visions and beliefs, once so clear, blurred and spilled over her eyelids in suffocating silence, something akin to grief.

She had plans for this baby; she was going to shape this baby's soul and nature with these plans. All she had imagined for eight endless months was birthing her precious child in love and tranquillity in the peace of her own darkened home, in a pool of warm calming water. She was going to have a baby associated with that element, a gentle, flowing water-child, soft and peaceful and able to love.

She was new to babies and birth but had done all she could to be ready for this moment. Well, not this moment, but the moment of her dreams and plans. This moment engulfed her, frightened her, grieved her. She was being told that there was no chance for a natural birth, let alone a homebirth or a waterbirth, and the section would be booked for 39 weeks gestation.

Hours later, she gathered the blankets around her body up to her neck in the late afternoon, pulled-curtains semi-darkness, and allowed the sadness to slowly and warmly trickle over her. She spoke quietly but audibly to her unborn baby, telling her all plans she had for her, apologising to her for what would have to take place, and blessing the child who could live thanks to the very technology and science that so frightened her. She prayed her baby could still be born into the serenity she imagined would mark the child's life, though her entry into the world would be far from serene.

The day was booked - 2nd of February, Groundhog Day. But instead, four days earlier, her body once again resisted her intentions and bled its warning. She was brave but only briefly. Bravery turned to concern which turned to anxiety as doctors waited, stoic experts. Tears once again, this baby more acquainted with fear now instead of peace. Finally, she was wheeled into the room, more blueish-white walls, more homelike-attempts, and she greeted the moment she would meet this child who had consumed her every thought. Please, God, let there be calm. Though this baby will not flow into the world as she should have, bless this baby with the gift of sweet peacefulness.

******
The girl born into blood-soaked hands in a room of bright lights and irrelevant chatter was indeed blessed with sweet peacefulness. Her mother's wishes were granted, not in the way she had wished them, but granted nonetheless. Her daughter flows through life with cheerfulness, joy, kindness and gentleness, along with comical clumsiness, like green water tripping over a stony, crooked brook, squirrels and bluebirds giggling nearby. She is indeed her mother's water-baby, pure and bright and deserving of her name: "white, fair" Fifi.

Happy sixth birthday.