All By Myself
I know what you’re thinking, that I’m going to write about how children want to be independent and tend to get frustrated when we want to help them do something.
No. I’m not talking about children here, but us mothers.
A couple of days ago, as I left the café I had been enjoying dessert at with my stepson and his friends, I blurted out that I am busy because I have a fire engine birthday cake to make that evening. Filip’s young friend was surprised, “Why don’t you just order one?” she asked. I thought about it for a moment (horrified by her suggestion), and quickly said: “It’s a mother’s ambition thing, one day you’ll understand.”
That evening, despite feeling sick obviously coming down with some sort of bug, I managed to get the kids involved in helping mix and bake the cake (after Googling “easy chocolate cake recipes”). While the cake cooled, I put the kids to bed and edited 10 or so pages of text before my hard drive crashed. Luckily I managed to email what I had done first – phew! Unable to Google “red icing recipes” (easy ones, of course), I consulted an aunt who happened to call, mixed all the icing sugar I had with some cocoa, a little bit of left over butter and half a glass of beetroot juice our housekeeper had squeezed earlier (cannot find food dye in this city).
What would we do without the internet? I’d even watched a short clip on YouTube about decorating a fire engine cake a few nights earlier. Needless to say my cake was nowhere near as professional looking. But not much can beat the feeling of satisfaction and pride at the wide eyes my son made in the morning as he excitedly poked the icing, pointed out missing stairs near the doors for the firemen to climb, and asked repeatedly if his “birthday has to be kept in the fridge?”
Although incomparable in many ways, this story reminded me of how my husband failed to understand WHY any woman, in this day and age of the epidural, would want a drug-free birth? I have heard that women sometimes feel let down after a c-section. I had an easy pain-free labour with our daughter and felt like I’d cheated nature. Sounds crazy to my husband, who compared my wish for a natural birth to having a tooth pulled with no anesthesia. As most of you readers know, I got more of a natural birth than I bargained for and, as a result, I get to wake up every morning in the bed my son was born in.
There are some things only mothers will ever understand.
A couple of days ago, as I left the café I had been enjoying dessert at with my stepson and his friends, I blurted out that I am busy because I have a fire engine birthday cake to make that evening. Filip’s young friend was surprised, “Why don’t you just order one?” she asked. I thought about it for a moment (horrified by her suggestion), and quickly said: “It’s a mother’s ambition thing, one day you’ll understand.”
That evening, despite feeling sick obviously coming down with some sort of bug, I managed to get the kids involved in helping mix and bake the cake (after Googling “easy chocolate cake recipes”). While the cake cooled, I put the kids to bed and edited 10 or so pages of text before my hard drive crashed. Luckily I managed to email what I had done first – phew! Unable to Google “red icing recipes” (easy ones, of course), I consulted an aunt who happened to call, mixed all the icing sugar I had with some cocoa, a little bit of left over butter and half a glass of beetroot juice our housekeeper had squeezed earlier (cannot find food dye in this city).
What would we do without the internet? I’d even watched a short clip on YouTube about decorating a fire engine cake a few nights earlier. Needless to say my cake was nowhere near as professional looking. But not much can beat the feeling of satisfaction and pride at the wide eyes my son made in the morning as he excitedly poked the icing, pointed out missing stairs near the doors for the firemen to climb, and asked repeatedly if his “birthday has to be kept in the fridge?”
Although incomparable in many ways, this story reminded me of how my husband failed to understand WHY any woman, in this day and age of the epidural, would want a drug-free birth? I have heard that women sometimes feel let down after a c-section. I had an easy pain-free labour with our daughter and felt like I’d cheated nature. Sounds crazy to my husband, who compared my wish for a natural birth to having a tooth pulled with no anesthesia. As most of you readers know, I got more of a natural birth than I bargained for and, as a result, I get to wake up every morning in the bed my son was born in.
There are some things only mothers will ever understand.
I feel sad when women say that to have an epidural birth makes you less of a woman. It is upseting. There are women petrified of having natural births and if this gives them an option to have healthy children then why not do it. Each woman has a different experience. I had a C to have my child (it doesnt matter if it was a choice or not). It was a wonderful time and quite frankly I wouldnt have it any other way. I vote for choice!
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