the morning after...

B for Body

Only yesterday you were admiring your fertile godess' allure.
Its hump was the envy of all and the awe of your beloved.
Then, terrible cramps told you that a new chapter of your life was about to start, as the process of expulsion followed its course, you suddenly realized that this beautiful pregnant body of yours, the one that imposed kindness and admiration from others, was really just a loan.
The conclusion of your labour ordeal making it very clear to you that, you had some late fees on your account and that the price to pay was utter grosseness.

Be prepared: the past few months mislead you to think that you had gained some sort of mojo, making everyone around you think you were the most awesome and interesting person in the room, as colleagues and family regularly inquired on every aspect of your existence, from your sleep quality to  your intimate fears and hopes.
All this is OVER girlfriend.
The new center of attention is named BABY and he left his mark on your body.9 months of gradual stretching, sleepless nights and breastfeeding will take care of keeping your body unrecognizable to your eyes and those of your entourage.

know your enemies:
Enemy number 1: Janice Min editor of US magazine and her ilk, who are responsible for popularizing the "Celebrities get their bods back three weeks after giving birth! How they did it and you can too!..."Truth is honey, ain't gonna happen. (you are kind of short of a nanny, a private chef, a private yoga teacher, a private ex israeli soldier trainer, and a feng shui consultant).
Enemy number 2 :BABY. That leech will not let you rest, and the little "me" time you will get, will be spent catching up on cooking, cleaning dishes, doing laundry, folding laundry, and eating food out of a can.If you're lucky, you might get 5 minutes in the bathroom, where you are sure to lament the state of your post-pregnancy bod which, unlike Beyonce's, isn't bouncing back to its pre-prego physique. I hate to break it to you but, you can now be certain that this mortal shell of yours will forever resist morphing into Gisele Bundchen's body.

Your weapons: A big shot of realism, tolerance and a Gillian Anderson video.
If you are breasfeeding, your attack will have to be postponed for a little while.

the power of speech

There will come a time when, the lump of flesh that once was your baby will open its mouth and utter sounds that make up words. These words will then be stringed together and form somewhat coherent sentences and these sentences will give you an insight into this "prolongation of your being's" inner thoughts.
These thoughts will make you realize that, there is a reason why most western countries grant the right to vote to 18 year olds, and withhold it from their younger teenage peers. The brain takes its time to mature.
What goes on in a two year old's head could be resumed by the term Lewis Caroll's neurosis- cum- Munchausen syndrome.
My dear son, (whom I love more than anything in this world and has become the apple of my eyes over the past 27 months even though sometimes he drives me so nuts that I feel like peeling the wallpaper off my wall,... with my teeth), has discovered the power of speech. I am of course thrilled by this new milestone in his development, and marvel at all the wonderful things he is now able to express.
Just the other day he exclaimed:" ah...piano I think I do a magic trick and ah.. giant egg but I feel a little bit sick  ah.. tummy ache but ah.. feel better now."
Of course I promptly replied the only possible answer to his story: "REALLY?!"
Each child is different, and you will be told so countless times over the next few years, mostly in instances where you are at a playgroup and this kid, who is the same age as yours, can do stuff your kid can't, and you'll involuntarily let a "vow you're kid can do that!mine can't even do that" out, to which your kind and slightly embarrassed interlocutor will reply "each child is different".
You will learn this line by heart and will become an expert at using it yourself.
So my child, has developed this exceptional capacity to talk, much in the way of sports commentators, about nothing but with a very high volume of words.
If we go out for a walk he will comment on every step of our journey. "look mama going down the stairs, oh open the door mama, it's daytime, look kitty walking on the sidewalk hi kitty, big neighbour woman says hi mama"etc.
However thrilled you are that your child is acquiring vocabulary at the speed of Neo learning Kung Fu, at some point in the day, you will want to hear SILENCE.
Nap time will come to your rescue, or will it? you will become acutely aware of what goes on on the roads near your home, as ambulances and pimped up toyotas drive past your window disturbing your child's rest and possibly waking him up from what was, essentially, Your Quiet Time, and the chatter will start again.
You might become sick of your own voice retelling that same Dr Seus' story for the umpteenth time.
And when your husband gets home and starts telling you about his day you will wish you'd married someone who truly understands the meaning of this great Shakespeare quote "brevity is the soul of wit".
This is where Ghandi can come to your rescue. "Be the change you want to see in the world". This small sentence is a truly powerful mantra.
The aim here, my dear friends, is to work at perfecting the zen master wordsmith that lies in each of us. The technique is simple but demands devoted practice.
Everyday past 4 pm you will work at Feng Shuing your vocabulary and jettison all these superflous conjunctions, particles and articles in order to attain speech Nirvana.
You will have to work hard on mastering this ancient art that is Telegraphic Speech.
After enough Kill Bill style training, you will produce syntactic gems of deep wisdom such as "give- me- wine"; "child-go-sleep- now";"husband-dishes-trash"and I promise you that you will see peace and quiet reign in your home once again.

Midnight Lover

Mothers don't "fall" asleep. They CRASH. Glasses, bras, shoes still on, she didn't even know what hit her. ( she swore to herself she would finish watching season 3 of Mildred Pearse...)

But do not be mistaken, this is no heavy slumber, no idyllic coma. Only a peep will wake her. A moan,a a whimper of her baby will snap her out of her rest. She stays put, still as a statue, praying for a false alarm. Maybe she dreamed it? No. There it is again. Peep. Moan. Whimper.

What was a whimper becomes a cry, and eventually a full fledged wail.

He's UP.

She picks him up, herself still blurry eyed and cloudy, and then it happens. He doesn't need words, his tiny eyes speak louder than words, more explicit than a novel.  No one has ever looked at her this way. No one has ever been so happy to see her, the smile which he greets her with is the most loving, tender she was ever given.
The city sleeps, it seems not one soul but them are awake. They are alone, in the quiet darkness, and all there is is love.

the kindness of strangers

Before becoming a parent, for me, the key in life to break the ice with people was cigarette. That little white stick had allowed me to struck up countless conversations with perfect strangers in need of a light or a spare one. The crowd was varied, but it had this in common, the sweet smell of success, and an addiction that we all knew we had to kick, but that was just too good to do so right now. We were all addicts, and felt secretly hip being so. Somehow, the smoking crowd always counted the coolest, most popular or most sought after individuals of any given click, it is a statistical fact that there is a higher rate of very interesting people amongst smokers compared to non smokers or so I thought.

Parenthood having made me a non-smoker, I have discovered a whole new way to start a conversation with a stranger.

These days I feel like one of those silent product demonstrators from the shopping channel. People address me while looking at him. Ever since my bundle of joy came into my life I have spoken with more strangers than I can count without ever meeting their eyes, which are riveted on my child’s face.

I take it as a compliment.

People from all walks of life feel like they can address me to comment on everything and anything related to my son. His big eyes, the shape of his eyebrows, his cuteness, and the fact that he probably looks more like my husband than me.

I've also had to play the host of "the age is right" game on a daily basis.

To all of the above, my response is generally a silent smile, "9 months and a few days", or a grateful "thank you".

While I have come to realize that children are like a hot lamp on a pile of snow for most people, I have also began to experience a level of familiarity with perfect strangers that can make me, on good days slightly uncomfortable and on other days downright angry.

While I find it a wonderful thing that people feel some concern for someone else’s child, I have also come to think that a massive educational campaign needs to be put in place by governments around the globe to educate their citizens about this most dreadful of dangers, being dressed inappropriately for the weather.

It would seem that perfect strangers know better than me that my baby is too cold or too hot.

In effect just today a kind gentleman who must have been in his late 60’s addressed me in the most delightful manner when he tapped his head with one hand while pointing at my son with the other as he growled « his head is going to be cold! » To which I promptly replied a « no, no, he is fine! » which was right away countered by « no it’s too cold! Put a hat on him!»

It is not the first nor the last time, I am afraid, that such remarks are made to me and that my competence as a mother is put into question by well-meaning passersby. But where, I ask myself, do these people come from or rather when do they come from? Is it possible that evolution has made babies more resistant to temperature fluctuation in the space of one generation? Were our grandparents traumatized by visits to hospital wards full of babies whose indignant mothers had omitted to place a bonnet over their heads? Or is global warming really affecting us more than we realize?

As far as I remember from my prenatal classes, if you are cold probabilities are, so is your baby, if you are too hot probabilities are, so is your baby. Now I don't believe that my mama trained me to be a navy seal, so I will carry on not dressing my baby appropriately and will ignore cold war era standards of dressing.

I also feel that another area of public education needs to be addressed by the authorities.

I now see posters in most public restrooms explaining to us in details how to wash our hands, from turning the tap on to throwing away the paper towel; I feel that a bit more education on this sensitive area of our body would also be beneficial to the population. It would only require one little extra sticker on the mirrors of our public latrines:Hands off strangers' babies!

Everyone seems to have an urge to slip their fingers in the palm of my baby's hand and get squeezed by those tiny muscles. Why Oh Why? I ask. Has theH1N1 scare taught us nothing? I feel like spraying any stranger approaching us with a good dose of purell, but alas I do not draw fast enough yet, and so, my son has already been exposed to many germs of untraceable origins. To defend him against his assailants I have tried a few techniques, I whished that all of them stayed within the framework of diplomatic codes so as not to antagonize anyone in my neighborhood. Unfortunately Noam's teething and the TV series the Tudors have kept me awake lately and my diplomatic skills have been somewhat diminished. If I had to list my "Stranger keep your fingers off my son" techniques in diplomatic order from top to bottom it would resemble this: Technique 1 : grab hold of my son's hands before the assailant, best approach by far but unfortunately not always practical while running errands. Technique 2: the sly move, as the assailant approaches I try to feign seeing someone in the distance and move to salute them from afar. This one has left me looking slightly crazy in the eyes of passers-by seeing me wave at the invisible man. Technique 3: Put gloves on him. Limited, off course, by weather conditions and can backfire since, the assailant, unable to reach its target might go for the face instead. Technique 4: Just plainly say to the assailant; I don't want anyone, whom I have not seen wash their hands with my own eyes first, touch my son's hands ...mmkay. I had to use that one in a supermarket once while the cigarette smelling lady demonstrating cheese looked at me and asked with utter incomprehension in her eyes: "but why?" to which I blurted out "because I don't like it" this was followed by a very awkward silence while the people tasting a 5 year old cheddar stared at me gawping. This egged me on to explain that babies put their hands in their mouths all day long, that hands are the number one germs carrier, and that strangers should understand that they are basically slapping all of their microbes onto those little hands. I guess the fact that the only make up I had on were the dark circles left by another sleepless night, and the slight aggressive tone of my voice blurred the very simple message I was trying to deliver. That is why I call on health Canada to help me educate the public on this very touchy issue.

Minute One.

They lied. They said it would be the best day of your life.
They said it would be magical, the moment when they would lay him on you, that you would know it was all worth it.
The wait, the excruciating agony, all worth it.
You asked for a baby.
Instead, you got a monkey. Or a martian. Or a chicken. Maybe even a worm.
But this sure looks nothing like a baby.
It`s covered in hair. Or worse, it's completely bald.
Its blue. it's grey. It's translucent.
The skin ripples, pimples, crimples.
Is this goo? Is this poo? What the hell is this?