Too posh to push and proud…

‘So, when can I mark the delivery date in my diary?’ I smiled purposefully, pen hovering, ready to commit the date. ‘You see my mother is flying out for 10 days to give me a hand, and she wants to book her flight.’

My new doctor (who is from sturdy, Syrian stock) raised her thick eyebrows, and fixed me with a steely glare. ‘Well, you are due in early August my dear– and there might be a two-week margin either way,’ she said firmly. ‘Your mother can adjust her flight nearer the time…’

‘Erm, how does that work?’ I replied, trying to prevent the alarm from creeping in. Stay in control. Keep calm… ‘After all, I’m having a planned c-section. Remember?’

She flapped her papers about disapprovingly, harrumphed as she read my notes on the computer screen, and raised her steely glare to mine once more. ‘We don’t finalize a date until mid-way through your eighth month,’ she replied eventually, with a non-negotiable twitch of her impressive tash.

‘Fine. No problem. Just as long as you know that as I’m paying for it, I’m having a c-section,’ I finished, rather firmly for me, I thought.

Now it’s not that I have anything against the ‘natural-birth brigade’. In fact, I am thoroughly respectful and downright awestruck by anyone who can happily push a 3.5kg baby through a hole the size of a tiddlywink, and then gush that it was an ‘amazing’ experience that they’d ‘happily repeat.’

I even gamely tried it once, but found it such absolute hell on earth, that I vowed never – unless I found myself in a post apocalypse – to do such a dreadful thing again.

Yes, the mammoth 50+hour labour, resulting in a broken coccyx, more stitches than in fleet of Olympic sprinters and a poor, battered baby rendered so grumpy by the process that he cried almost non-stop for a year, made me realise eau naturelle is not for me.

Furthermore, most fellow mothers I know when they delivered their precious firstborns, are presented with wonderful, ‘push presents’ – exclusive jewellery pieces given by doting husbands to mark the occasion. Fashionista mum received a dazzling diamond Tiffany solitaire for her one and only stab at motherhood, while Alpha mum has a huge, Harry Winston, four row ‘traffic’ ring, that her rich husband embellishes with yet another astoundingly expensive stone, every time she squeezes an annoyingly perfect child out.

Meanwhile, old muggins here was in such a sorry state after being practically torn in two, that the only ring DH thought to buy me was a blow-up one I could sit on. Admittedly at the time, being able to sit felt even more precious and luxurious than the Cartier emerald eternity ring I’d admired so hopefully in Emirates Towers Boulevard prior to delivery. But still….

So youngest son was born via the sunroof. And yes dear reader, the whole process was an absolute revelation. From the business of ‘checking in’ to my 7am ‘surgical slot’, to the vast amounts of pethadine and wonderful aftercare I received in the luxurious private hospital room, I barely felt as though I’d given birth at all. It really was more like I’d been on one of those intensive spa breaks at an exclusive retreat in the Swiss Alps, where you go through a few, grueling, beatifying processes that aren’t very comfortable, and then end up with the most spectacular results – in my case, an angelic and contented bouncing baby boy…

And having a baby the way you want to, (especially if it’s surgical) is positively encouraged in the UAE. Why? Because expats have to maintain private medical insurance, so our doctors are (usually) sympathetic to requirements. You need to time baby’s arrival to coincide with your husband’s business trip itinerary? Sure thing Honey! No problem! Need the delivery to fit in with the school holidays? of course madam! But even if you want a water birth with accompanying whale-music, Maurice dancers and a troupe from New Zealand performing the Hakka, there’s a hospital in Al Ain offering that too.

Only, things are a little different for us this time around because for some ridiculously stupid reason, we changed our health insurance policy to another company, thinking our coverage level was the same as the first two times. It wasn’t. And so, baby number three will be born in the reputable government hospital, via their slightly cost-reduced private scheme – instead of the luxurious American Hospital, which serves up new parents a Champagne dinner as part of the package – sob! And the doctors at our current hospital are rather like those you’d find on the NHS (very skilled and able – but rather determined you’ll do things their way….

Of course, both my mother and mother-in-law who are made of sterner stuff (well, they were in the olden days – it was all that carbolic soap) think I’m rather pathetic.

‘Your oldest brother was breech so he came out sideways. I delivered him with zero pain relief after a 600 hour labour and almost lost a leg in the process. But I still cycled the 50-mile London to Brighton annual jaunt a week later with him strapped to my back in a papoos,’ declared my mother (a matriarch of seven naturally born children) as she pulled the cord of her chainsaw and proceeded to clear the miniature forest she lovingly calls her ‘shrubbery’. ‘You girls these days are such a bunch of softies.’

Mother-in-law is just as bad. Five natural births, the last one with twin boys, has her convinced that the bigger the baby, the less childbirth actually hurts…

I know! Of course, it completely defies the laws of physics! But women like this are so damn tough, it’s best not to argue the toss with them…

And the point is, I’m not actually too posh to push, I’m just too scared, not afraid to admit it – and neither am I alone…. Let’s face it girls, stitches where the sun don’t shine are a real bummer…

Why just this morning, a friend who is due to deliver imminently, and had been spewing forth about the virtues of natural birth, did a volte face  and confided that she was actually extremely relieved to be requiring a  caesarian… ‘I really didn’t want to go through all that again,’ she muttered, in relieved tones, ‘especially as I’ve only just had my roids fixed from the last time!’

So I say, ‘each to their own and no judging! Also, let’s have a bit more honesty too when it comes to the exiting of babies.

We all have to live with the consequences of our decisions – both financially and physically. And personally, I don’t want another broken under-carriage, new piles or sneeze-wee. Plus, as the best ‘push present’ I’d get out of DH would probably be another hemorrhoid ring, I might as well get him to fork out for the more expensive surgical delivery package. At least I’ll get to lie in bed and watch cable TV for four days… Now that really can’t be bad!

 

 

 

Cutting the cord….

‘I can’t believe you’ve still got that,’ muttered DH in genuine disgust.

We were clearing out the spare room (soon-to-be-nursery) and I’d just come across a little keepsake box from oldest sons’ first weeks of babyhood. Inside, lovingly preserved, was the onsie he wore when he came home from hospital, his tiny wrist and ankle ID bands, some grainy scan pictures, a pair of minute, grandma-crotched booties, a baby-curl – and the object of my husband’s revulsion; my firstborns’ mummified cord stump.

‘What?’ I exclaimed innocently, twiddling it in front of him between two fingers in wonder. It was black-brown in colour, scab-like and rock-hard, with the white plastic clamp still attached. ‘There’s nothing horrid about it at all,’ I continued, knowing full well I was making him queasy, but launching into outraged, sentimental protestations anyway.

‘It’s the very last tiny thing that connected us physically – and nurtured him for months inside me!’ I gushed alarmingly.

‘I know exactly what it is,’ sniffed DH, looking away. ‘And it resembles a piece of out-of-date biltong.’

Hmmmm… Irked that my maternal sentiments were not echoed by my usually soft-hearted husband, I hastily returned said stump to the box with the rest of my precious memorabilia, and put it back in the secure bottom drawer, like a drug-addict hiding my secret stash.

Surely keeping it wasn’t that weird – was it? It was hardly like I was storing a dismembered digit – right?

Sometime later, I was heartily reassured when my favourite newspaper (the good old Daily Mail) ran a story about the unusual things mothers keep to remind themselves of their child’s babyhood and birth. Apparently, treasuring the cord stump is something a whopping 32 percent of  mothers in the UK do too. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2134998/Babys-dirty-nappy-positive-pregnancy-tests–The-bizarre-keepsakes-new-mothers-cherish-forever.html

The article went on to say that ‘stump collection’ was far from unusual – and that some mothers even preserve their child’s first dirty nappy….

While I’d personally struggle to find nostalgia nestled in the depths of a Pampers full of muconiam, I can understand where they are coming from. Because the sad (or beautiful, depending on where you’re coming from) fact is, there is not one single, disgusting thing to a mother when it comes to her own baby…

That’s right. While anybody else’s secretions – even in tiny amounts, can make us gag uncontrollably, the most squeamish amongst us mums can happily mop up, examine and discuss in great detail, the generous excretions of our own young.  And while we don’t go as far as licking them clean, like other mammals do, we are pretty much immune to revulsion when it comes to their bodily functions.

In fact, a quick ‘ask around’ the Dubai school mums, made me realise my little cord compulsion was nothing – absolutely nothing, in the grand scheme of things, to worry about.

Alpha mum, jiggling fashionable baby number four on her slender, lycra-clad hip, happily revealed that not only had she kept her babies’ cord stumps, first nail clippings and nappies, but that she’d also sent her placentas off to, ‘my marvellous midwife in the UK,’ to have them freeze-dried and made into supplement capsules.

‘I got 300 out of Tabitha’s placenta this time – that’s more than I ever got with Jocasta’s, Astalas’ or Winnifreds’, and I’m still taking them eight months on,’ she wittered proudly, adding that she was convinced it was why her breast milk was always so abundant – and how she’d managed to almost instantly shed the seven kilos she’d gained in total, ‘while preggers with nombro quatre.’

Fashionista mum had a slightly more surreal take on things, admitting that she had obsessively collected, polished and stored every single one of her daughter’s first teeth. ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them – perhaps make a bracelet or a necklace?’ she mused with alarming seriousness.

‘Perhaps you could use them to decorate your pregnant belly-cast wall hanging,’ I suggested, tongue firmly in cheek as I referred to the ‘breasts and all’ plaster of Paris body mold that took pride of place in her sitting room.

‘Derek [the pilot husband] already suggested that – and I did consider it,’ she replied in all honesty, ‘but some of my friends think it might look a bit macabre…’

Moving swiftly on….

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law, never one to mince her words, declared my ‘cord stump keeping’ as ‘Eeuuw!’ However, she did admit to storing all ‘six’ of her pregnancy test sticks when she discovered she was expecting for the first time. ‘I’m going to keep them forever and make a picture out of them for my princess,’ she declared, with no inkling of how absolutely bonkers this made her sound….

Mother-in-law however, had no room for such fripperies and thought us all rather silly. ‘I think it’s a very ‘modern’ way of doing things,’ she declared, a tad witheringly. ‘I only kept the hospital bands and birth records of my babies – what more do you need?’

But I know very well that when our daughter is born this summer, I will be just as sentimentally ‘daft’ as I was with our first two babies. What’s more, I will be sure to take extra special care of those tiny items this time around. And it isn’t just because I very much suspect she will be our last child, but because I know how easily the items can go astray.

For example, I also stored youngest son’s ‘birth bits’ very carefully, but one day, while cooing over them in a sentimental fashion when he was oh, about two, I accidentally dropped his tiny piece of cord on the floor. Quick as a flash, with absolutely no remorse – or respect for my distress, our food-addict Labrador had snaffled it up and my ‘little, physical connection to my baby boy,’ was gone forever…

DH thought it was hilarious – and still laughs about it today…

As for me, well, I’m far too hormonal to be rational at the moment, so I’ll leave it up to you lot to decide….

Maid to measure…

‘I do think we should have told them the truth.’ I said to DH, with more than a twinge of guilt.

‘We did tell them the truth.’ He answered, completely unperturbed.

‘Well, we told them part of the truth – but not the whole truth – if the truth be told…’ I reminded him.

‘Mmmm,’ he agreed, distinctly non-committal.

You see, it’s not that we lied to Agatha’s new employers when they called us for a reference. It’s just that we omitted a few fairly serious facts which in hindsight (and according to the heated discussions about maids on expatwoman.com ) we should have been more honest about.

After all, Agatha has her good points. She is very honest and as strong as an ox. Despite constant complaints that she’s ‘too old and tired’ she has only taken three sick days in the past six years. She’s never late either – not even by a nanosecond. She’s supremely organized; from out-of-date items in the fridge to the near-autistic, regimented order of my knicker drawer. Unlike many maid/nannies in this country, Agatha is a disciplinarian with the children too. Rather like us, they don’t dare disobey her. And herein lays the problem.

But it wasn’t always like that. You see, when Agatha first came to us many moons ago, she wasn’t nearly so anal or domineering. Indeed, she had been working for an Indian family who’d given her just one half/day off every fortnight, and who’d  made her sleep on the floor on a roll-up mattress in the same room as their two children. She was on call 24/7, had no privacy at all and was paid just Dhs800 a month. Furthermore, she was as thin as a rake, with the kind of half-starved cheekbones of a famine victim, and a mousey temperament to match.

She was the first person I’d interviewed for the position. She was also in the country on a visit visa, because, after five years of servitude with the Indian family, she’d felt the need to escape back home for a while. She had no references, barely spoke a word to me, and when I asked her to change oldest son’s nappy, she put it on back-to-front. She also never smiled – which should have been a warning. But I felt most dreadfully sorry for her, because I could see she was desperately shy and that she desperately wanted the job.  So, as I was working from home and could watch her for a while, we took her on.

Initially, she was delighted to be with us. Our maids’ accommodation is a little self-contained chalet with its own bedroom, bathroom, kitchen (with cooker/fridge/washing machine) and front door, and we were fairly relaxed about her duties. ‘Just keep the house in order and watch the baby when we’re working,’ type thing.

As we were unused to having a full-time maid, and still getting to grips with the kind of sleep deprivation trauma you only experience with your first child, we rarely went out in the evenings either. Even when we did, and it was on a weekend, we made a point of paying Agatha extra for her trouble.

But little by little, things began to change. The perks we’d happily volunteered, became expectations – and Agatha started to ask for things.… A Lot. First it was a bigger fridge – she wanted a double-door jobbie with a big freezer compartment. Then it was the bigger telly and the new DVD player (the one we gave her only played original – not pirated disks). There were advances too  – which in hindsight, foolishly, we wrote off, along with numerous other financial requests. Eventually, DH and I began to raise eyebrows at each other as the ‘asking’ continued, because our generosity, (which could not be boundless due to financial constraints), was nevertheless pretty good – though clearly not appreciated.

Indeed, this December just passed, Agatha even told an astounded DH that she was ‘very disappointed’ by the amount of money we’d given her for Christmas (we are a bit strapped for cash at the moment) along with a stocking-full of carefully chosen presents.

But back to the story. As Agatha became emboldened by our gentleness, the balance of power slowly shifted. By now, oldest son was a strapping three-year-old, sleeping 12 hours a night, while youngest son (aged six months) was a well-behaved second child – also sleeping 12 hours a night. With our lives back on track, we began to crawl out of our self-imposed ‘early parenthood years’ prison – and socialize.

We couldn’t afford to go out much, so we entertained at home. But we never asked Agatha to help us cook, or wash up after one of our messy dinner parties, as many expat households do. Instead, we’d drag ourselves out of bed, and somehow, heads pounding, clear up the debris while juggling the childcare. After all, we reasoned, it was Agatha’s weekend too.

More fool us! The less we asked of her, the less she did. And the less she did, the more we took on.  And despite all this, like utter fools, we still doled out the pay rises. The result was that whenever we asked Agatha to do anything out of her self-imposed routine, like ‘babysitting’, ‘ironing my work clothes’ or ‘taking the children to the park’; we were often met with a negative response.

Tragically, what had started as domestic bliss became a domestic battle of wills. And by the time I went part-time at my company four years into her service, Agatha decided that she also, was going to become part time…..  And there was diddly-squat that I could do about it….

That’s when things got really bad. DH and I began to draw straws over who would ask our terrifyingly surly maid if she could babysit. The past two times I’ve made the request, I’ve been turned down flat – not because Agatha had other plans, but because she just ‘doesn’t want to’. I do need to say at this point, that far from being the worn-out skinny waif she once was, Agatha is now as plump and hearty as a pigmy hippo….

In short, our well-intentioned kindness had, over time, created a monster…. And despite my initial protestations, when other ‘maid-employing expats’ had declared that ‘you spoil them [maids] if you’re too nice,’ I have to say, that I finally think they are right….

Yes, these days, Agatha runs our household with all the efficiency [and terror] of a Nazi commandant. Shoes are removed promptly at the doorstep. Greens are eaten (whether they make you feel ill or not!) and only a fool would ask her to forgo her 1.5 hour daily lunch break – even if you’re on a project deadline.

I admit I’m not proud of having called her ‘bloody steel britches’ under my breath on occasions…

If you’re wondering why we didn’t sack her years ago, well, there are several reasons really. First off, we are both really frightened of her.  And secondly, every time we’ve been seriously tempted to end the partnership, some huge expense, like an AC meltdown, or an exploding car has meant we could only afford to renew her visa – not terminate it and re-sponsor another maid (which costs around Dhs8,000 – or £1,500).

So, as we enter Agatha’s final 24 hours of employment, and Dipti (our new, very sunny natured maid) takes over, I will enter this new phase of domesticity with a steely heart and wallet tighter than Michael Flatley’s buttocks.  Sorry Dipti – that’s just how it’s got to be…

I’ve also decided I won’t be apologizing to Agatha’s new employers. And I’m not going to feel guilty anymore either. After all, they interviewed her, and liked her enough to ask for a reference. We were honest – insomuch as we truthfully answered the details they requested. And, yet, despite having had a taste of what’s to come, they are still willing to take her on….  And frankly, more fool them…

Because Agatha has already demonstrated to them that she likes to call all the shots. As she told me proudly very recently, ‘New Madam wanted me to sleep in the small bedroom and use the bathroom down the hallway. But I said I wanted the bigger room with the ensuite bathroom or I wouldn’t take the job.’

‘Oh. Really Agatha? And was the room free for you to take?’

‘Oh no, ‘she said with smug relish. ‘New Madam was using it as her office. But she’s going to move into the small room, re-paint the big one and give it to me…’

Eeek!

So good luck to Agatha and all who employ her!

After so many years of servitude dear readers, I think I deserve my freedom!