Category Archives: Birthdays

Astonishment

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When I think that Mark is turning six tomorrow, I am astonished. He has evolved from a squalling, spiky haired newborn to a gangly, spiky haired six year old. Six years ago, his single greatest accomplishment was latching on correctly; last week he got his first report card. I could repeat every single cliché about the rapid passage of time, and it would not be enough.

But yet time did not speed by, not always; there were many interminable days and weeks and months, when the clock moved so very slowly, as anyone at home with small children can relate. Often when the boys are in school I will run errands amid mothers who are still in that stage; they are exhausted, and frantic, and desperate just to get out of their houses; they are corralling preschoolers and soothing crying infants and looking mortified at their tantruming toddlers and I know, I know they feel that this stage will never pass but I look at them with sympathy and think it will. It will and it does and in hindsight it is a mere blink of an eye.

I have written about my pregnancy and labour here and here, and so I will try not to repeat myself.

The day my doctor poked my puffy, pre-eclampsic face and announced I would be induced within twenty-four hours, I was astonished, astonished that it was actually happening, on my wedding anniversary no less, that I was going to be a mother. When Mark was born I felt overwhelmed, adoring, and astonished at my sheer luckiness. I still feel that way, six years later.

It’s Party Time, It’s Excellent

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Sorry about the lame title. Mike Myers, you have made a fool of us all.

Tuesday will be Mark’s sixth birthday – sixth! – and so yesterday we took the boys and a few friends bowling. The kids seemed to really enjoy it, which is something I tend to feel quite anxious about while hosting a children’s birthday party. I’m not exactly sure what I think is going to happen; like instead of a birthday party I’m going to be holding several children in a disastrous chamber of horrors which will cause them to go home scarred and crying and their mothers will all hate me and I will be infamous as the mother who cannot host a proper birthday party. Anyway. The kids had fun although in reality – rather than in my crazy head-space – kids are very likely to have fun in any situation involving cupcakes and loot bags, so my birthday party anxiety is largely unfounded.

Speaking of cupcakes, we always have a plethora of them and I end up giving them away so as to not devour them all but all of my containers are currently in use so I decided – erroneously, as it turns out – that it would be optimal to make one dozen cupcakes plus one small cake, the latter to freeze for Mark’s actual birthday. Here is the result:


Behold, the world’s flattest cake. A crepe cake, if you will.


Maybe I should have used a smaller pan.

Perhaps it will improve with frosting. Or…perhaps not. Remember my gingerbread house? I am simply not gifted in this department, people, I need to accept that.

Happy Birthday Dear Husband

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Tomorrow is my husband’s birthday! The boys are giving him a box of golf balls and I am giving him two golf shirts. I’m also baking a chocolate layer cake. This is exactly the same gift and cake combination as last year, and quite possibly the year before that. I can see myself many years in the future, wearing my old-lady slacks and fancy beaded sweater, my support hose and my bright pink feathery lipstick, presenting my husband with two golf shirts, a box of golf balls, and a chocolate layer cake.

Sometimes I think of us when we are old and in a lot of ways, things will not be much different. I will still want to eat dinner at 4:45 and go to bed at 9. My husband, in the tradition of old men everywhere, already swears at the local meteorologist. “That Schulz is a (something something) idiot. Just give me the (something something) forecast already, and stop with the (something something) jokes.”

Speaking of forecasts, I saw an older couple in a garden center who showed me a glimpse of my future. The lady had an armful of boxed bulbs, which the man was eying suspiciously. “I don’t know where you think you’re going to plant them”, he said. “But they’re so pretty!” she replied. “Do you think I’m going to dig up more lawn?” he asked somewhat grumpily. The lady – and although she was a complete stranger, I admire her greatly – smiled sweetly and did the old-lady equivalent of eyelash batting. He sighed. “All right. All right. Just get them. I guess we’ll make room.”

If you substituted perennials for bulbs, and “I’m going to dig” with “you’re going to dig”, you would have the exact conversation my husband and I have every spring! And possibly the exact conversation we will have for the next forty springs! One of these days he’s going to come home and wonder where the lawn went.

All of which is to say I’m looking forward to celebrating many more birthdays with my wonderful husband. Happy birthday, sweetheart!

Post-Birthday Depression

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I knew today would be a bad day. I wonder if that is a self-fulfilling prophecy? I mean, if you think a day is going to be bad, does that mean that karmically you are making your day bad? I’ve been reading this interesting book called “How Yoga Works” and it talks about sowing seeds, positive and negative, and I can’t help but think that if I believe a day is going to be bad, then it will be bad.

It’s all my fault anyway. I was talking to a friend on Monday and I said that I couldn’t believe how well Jake was doing with all this birthday attention. He had been looking forward to his own birthday for about seven months, and I thought with all the buildup there would be a major letdown. That hasn’t happened, I said happily to my friend, I keep waiting for the ball to drop. And let me tell you, people, the freaking ball has dropped. It dropped hard. It dropped so hard it left a big, smoking hole in the ground and all that is left is me, wondering when I will learn not to bring curses upon myself.

Last night there was the post-birthday meltdown and ensuing sadness “I don’t want it to not be my birthday!” that kept Jake up an hour past his normal bedtime, which is highly unusual for him, being the type of kid who falls asleep seconds after going to bed. Needless to say, he was pretty tired today, and started to cry when I left him at school. It’s so heartbreaking to watch a four-year-old stoically wiping away silent tears, walking in his lineup with his giant backpack on. I felt totally deflated, despite knowing that after I left, he would be just fine. And he was, but the rest of the day was one big roller coaster of emotions. It’s hard to blame the kid: he’s exhausted after all, plus he has post-birthday depression. After four days of various celebrations, one is bound to succumb to the doldrums.

But the celebrations were great, especially the one that included eight small kids and a clown. If you live in the Calgary area, I would really recommend Button the Clown – she was very entertaining for that age group, and not at all creepy. Just make sure you call her Button, not Buttons. When I called to confirm, I got her husband (and I’m not making this up) Buddy the Clown on the phone. He tersely said, “Her name is Button. She is not plural.” Oh, snap! When I related this conversation to a friend, she said, “Button the Clown is married to Buddy the Clown? I wonder if they have clown babies.” And I will confess that the image that immediately popped into my head was so incredibly disturbing that I had to question my own mental stability. Again.

Anyway, I’m going for an early bedtime tonight and I’m going to sow the seeds of positive thoughts for a better day tomorrow. Repeat after me, it’s going to be a good day….

Labour Stories – Part Three, Jake’s Birthday

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As I vaguely remember from my days as one gainfully employed, getting called into work is no fun, in fact, it is enough to ruin your day. At the very least, it doesn’t bring out the best in you. That sums up the scenario with my delivery nurse, Cheryl. You see, when I was in labour with Jake, the hospital was packed with labouring women and women waiting for scheduled c-sections. This is what you get for getting pregnant at Christmas. All these women getting a little present from Santa, and nine months later hospitals are experiencing a mini baby boom. So what I’m saying is that the morning I arrived at the hospital, there was a shortage of rooms and nurses. So Cheryl was called in early, and not all that happy about it. To be fair, my delivery nurse with my first baby was Shannon, a youthful and eager nurse who held my hands during each contraction, and who set the expectation bar pretty high. All I clearly remember about Cheryl, really, is that she had a fabulous manicure. Her nails were gorgeous, and after each contraction she would look up from them and say “Was that a bad one?”

My labour was going quickly, so that it was not long after arriving in my delivery room that Cheryl looked up from her nails to say that the contractions were too close together for me to even get checked out, and she called the doctor. Now, I don’t blame Cheryl for her lethargy. Probably she was overworked and tired. Also I was just there, less than 18 months before, having a baby, so the whole process was still quite fresh in my mind: it wasn’t like I was a first-timer. The person I blame is my husband. He actually had the audacity to complain of being tired. Tired! I leave my response to the reader’s imagination.

On September 15, at 10:45 a.m., Jake was born. Our Jake. He is four years old today and a joy in my life: funny, smart, and loving. When he was born I said, with my usual grace and composure, “Thank God I’m not doing that again!” But what I meant was, Jake completed our family, and brings happiness to our lives every day. Thanks Cheryl, for helping him into this world, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Labour Stories – Part Two, The Hospital

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I fully support women who choose to give birth in places other than a hospital – their own homes, a birthing centre, or, in the case of an amazing You Tube video I saw, the Mediterranean Sea. A Russian woman traveled to Israel to give birth in the Mediterranean and it was astonishingly beautiful, the woman the picture of grace and strength. I fully agree that pregnancy is not an illness, and childbirth not – in most cases – an emergency, however, a woman like myself, who makes fifty to-do lists a week and panics over the unlikely scenario of twenty people being simultaneously unavailable to babysit, well, a hospital is my birthing place of choice. I find immediately available medical attention and equipment to be as soothing as the sound of ocean waves. But that’s just me.

Also, I secretly love hospital food. I love getting food on little trays, everything in its own little compartment. I love that the hospital staff brings you a bedtime snack, even if it is a bizarre combination of bran muffin, cheddar cheese, and orange juice with Metamucil. After I had Mark, they brought me a tuna salad sandwich and let me tell you, dear readers, this was the tuna salad sandwich to end all tuna salad sandwiches. This was the greatest tuna salad sandwich of all time. When I was pregnant with Jake, I dreamed about one day getting another such tuna salad sandwich. Nine months, I thought about that sandwich. Then when I had Jake, it was egg salad day. Wretched egg salad. However, they did bring me a Salisbury steak (I still ate meat at that time). It was a tremendous Salisbury steak experience. Angels sang around that Salisbury steak.

Later, as I was recounting this incredible meal, my husband said “You know it’s just a hamburger patty with gravy, right?” Oh, but what a hamburger patty with gravy.

The downside of giving birth in a hospital is, of course, the possibility that you can spend hours in triage, which is precisely what happened to me. Triage was packed, packed with women with scheduled c-sections, women in the early stages of labour, and women in the “MOTHEROFGOD, MAKE IT STOP!” stage of labour. Those in the latter group were quickly wheeled into delivery rooms, prompting my husband to suggest that perhaps I should add a little, shall we say volume to my contractions and although I am capable of dramatic screaming, I felt unable to rise to the occasion at the time.

My doctor came by to check in with regards to what is euphemistically termed “pain management”. Since I had no drugs with Mark, I felt that I should do the same with this baby, not just to quell arguments and sibling rivalry down the road (“Ha ha, you made Mom get an epidural!”) but also because I had the well-authenticated concern that having an epidural would slow down my labour and I wanted to finish and have the baby quickly so that Mark could come and visit in the hospital after his afternoon nap. Yes, you read that correctly. That was my actual concern. Yet another reason to make up a birth plan: when you are in labour, you are simply incapable of rational thought.

Speaking of rational thought, here’s another tidbit: if they offer you a wheelchair, take the wheelchair. I speak from wretched experience. When I was assigned a delivery room at about 7 centimeters, I refused the wheelchair. It’s just down the hall, right? Twenty minutes, several very loud contractions, and 8.5 centimeters dilated later, I finally made it to my delivery room. Why, you may ask, didn’t someone bring me a wheelchair? After all, I was crawling down the hallway, shrieking with a contraction every couple of minutes. I do not know the answer to that. Maybe they thought I would rip the wainscoting off the wall and begin beating people with it? Or maybe the staff is just used to hormonally crazy pregnant women and didn’t notice. All I know is that I was about to meet Cheryl, my delivery nurse, and that is a story for another day.

Labour Day and Labour Stories – Part One

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Jake’s fourth birthday is less than two weeks away, which has had me reminiscing about, appropriately enough, his birth. I LOVE birth stories, labour stories, pregnancy stories. I love hearing about them. If you want to share, I promise to be a rapt audience. I love the ordinary run-of-the-mill birth stories, the grisly birth stories, the weird labour experiences, the pregnancy-related aches and pains. The only thing I do not like about labour stories is the term that is frequently employed, “birth experience”. I don’t know, that term conjures up the same feelings that “synergy” and “optionality” did in my long-ago working days.

You know when you see an enormously pregnant woman, and her behaviour is incredibly irrational and insane, and you know with the benefit of experience that any minute now, that woman will be going into labour, but when you are that enormously pregnant woman, you believe your behaviour is perfectly normal and reasonable, and everyone else around you is crazy? That was exactly my situation prior to going into labour with Jake.

The day before I went into labour I was at the hair salon, which was incredibly fortunate as I did not want to be an exhausted mother to a newborn and a toddler who was not yet one and a half with three inches of grey roots. I really needed those roots covered to rise to the situation. Thank you Dad for those genes. Anyway. In retrospect I should have guessed I was about to go into labour. I hated everyone in that salon. Every single thing bothered me but I had to hold everything inside because really, who wants to annoy the woman with the scissors? So I seethed on the inside. What is with the insipid chatter, I thought. Why is the smell so bad in here? This is an OLD issue of People! If they hadn’t been so behind, I wouldn’t be driving at this time of the day, I fumed in the traffic on the way home. I was so irritable and uncomfortable I decided to try to sleep on the couch. My husband checked on me when he heard my uncontrollable sobbing. He probably thought something was horribly wrong.

“WHAT IF NO ONE IS AROUND TO TAKE CARE OF MARK WHEN I’M IN LABOUR?” I sobbed. This was my fear: that I would go into labour and no one would be around to take care of the toddler. Side note: my parents live twelve minutes away, less if my lead-footed father is driving. My husband pointed out this fact, and also the fact that my elderly neighbour had specifically said she didn’t want to see me on the news as someone who had given birth in a taxi, so if my mom couldn’t come right away to call her. Also, I had been so paranoid that I had made up a list of people who could possibly look after Mark, starting with my best friend and my brothers and ending with almost every neighbour on my block and a couple of his co-workers. Still, I would not be dissuaded. I was convinced that everyone on that list would be unavailable all at the same time. Either I was going to go to the hospital by myself while Rob looked after Mark due to NO ONE else being available, or we would have to take Mark with us and he would be scarred for life watching his brother exit his mother’s vagina. There could be no other options. I cried until I fell asleep.

Then I woke up, at 4:30, to let Rob know we should call my mom to come over and take care of Mark.