Off Our Rockers

Today is such an off day for us. Well, perhaps not for Atch, who usually runs perfectly well on autopilot. We slept late, we woke up late, and we had to leave a dawdling Woog who was clearly not in sync with the day's schedule.

Poor Woog was designated to take a jeep to school. When I left him to say goodbye, he was querulously allowing his yaya to give him a quick bath and complaining he had soap in his eyes.

What slaves we are to the schedules we've set for ourselves. What makes it even worse is that we're practically forcing our children to conform to the program.

So what if our son wakes up needing a hug and some cuddle time for a nightmare he must have had. We're off schedule. So what if he whines for some attention while half awake, he struggles with his clothes. We're running late. So what, if near tears, he rushes down to the breakfast table trying to keep up with us. So sorry son, we're off, you go and take public transport to school. Serves you right for being such a slowpoke.

I was quiet on the drive to the office. It was head-bashing-against-the-dashboard time. Couldn't we have at least given him some time to wake up, hugged him and said his morning prayers with him? Nooooo, we had to rush, work was waiting. Onwards to those great hallowed edifices of steel and stone - the great dictating force in our lives.

Couldn't one of us have listened about his nightmare and commiserated with the pounding in his heart and the ringing in his ears? What a time-waster. Instead, we had left him raw and vulnerable to face the day without the armor of our loving support to draw around himself.

At some point, a clueless Atch commented on Woog being such a whiner. Already heavy-hearted from guilt, I lit on him, all hellfire and brimstone.

We're there, but we're not there, I bitched. We spend less than three hours a day with him, and instead of really sitting down and listening to him, we rush him through homework and bath time and bed time. We make a pretense of communicating with him, but what we actually do is lecture him on what he must do and what he must not do. No wonder he craves our attention.

But then, I argued, contradicting myself, if we take all this time to be there for him, we'd go off schedule. That's the thing, see, Atch? We have to strike a balance somehow.

We need to take the time to celebrate him, his being a kid, his being unique: warts and scabs and all. What we don't need is to leave him feeling rushed and somehow incomplete, without building his self-esteem, or letting him know that he is a priority for us and that we truly love to be with him.

I was near tears and near the office when I finally finished my diatribe. Atch was quiet, thoughtful. Commendable of him, quipped my peevish inner dialogue. Even if his silence merely meant he was trying to avoid a fight with me so early in the working day. What valor is there in arguing with a very pregnant and very emotionally distraught woman, after all.

Later, I am going to sit down with Atch and lay down a concrete plan. We need to save us from ourselves and this harried lifestyle we have imposed on our son. We need to allow him to be himself and to let him know that he's wonderful, brilliant, creative, compassionate and marvelous.

We have to. It's imperative. After all, we hold his heart in our hands.

06/30/06

Shedding

Almost every night, Woog and I take our bath together. It's part of our bonding process. And well, truth be told, it saves both time, water, and ergo - money. (What cheapskates the members of this family are).

One might ask, where is Atch in all of this? One may find the man of the house taking his own sweet time in the downstairs bathroom – his one concession to luxury – where he may fill the sweet air with the acrid smoke of his Winstons as he sits on his “throne” and contemplates his day. Later, all fresh and moist, we come upon each other at the junction of the stairs, whence we proceed to retire to our room for some quality family time.

Last night, as we were toweling off in the bathroom, I found the urge to have one last pee. Wiping myself off as Woog was doing his running commentary on all and sundry (he sure does talk, that kid), I pulled away a long sticky brownish clump of mucus plug with the toilet paper. Woog stopped in mid-sentence and gaped. I have been shedding these things for about a week now, and although Woog has seen this phenomenon before (and been duly informed of the facts), it was the first time he witnessed such specimen in such globulous quantity so up close and personal.

I took one look at Woog's face and tried not to laugh. His eyes were gleaming with a kind of horrified fascination normally reserved for say, freshly squashed roadkill frog, or his Wawa (grandmother) taking off her dentures. His upper lip was curving upwards, and whether it was the start of a gag reflex or the beginnings of an “oh ewwwie, Mom!”, I couldn't quite say.

Again I explained to him that I was shedding my mucus plug, that thick gel-like substance that blocks the cervix and protects the fetus inside. Once a mommy is nearing labor, her cervix thins out and releases the mucus plug. This is a sure sign the baby would be coming soon.

After a very long thoughtful pause, Firstborn declared, “I'm not going with you to the hospital, Mom.”

“Why not?”

“I'm afraid of the mucus plug.” (and at this, I mentally waved a sad little adieu to the subtle brainwashing tactics of his two doctor aunts who have been enthusiastically, albeit prematurely, grooming him for the medical profession).

“You can stay in the hospital room with Tatay,” I ventured hopefully.

“Can I stay home with Yaya instead?”

*Sigh*

“Mom,” Woog said, exiting the bathroom with a pat on my belly, “don't give birth to Eli until my birthday, ha...?”

And since Woog just turned four earlier this month, the thought of carrying this prodigious, malingering fetus for another year almost sent me to my knees in laughter – and tears.

29 June 2006

Tired and Terrified

Atch winced mightily as his wedding ring cut across his clenched fingers. The pressure was growing intense, but he silently endured the pain just as his wife bore down unceasingly on his hand. This was his role, after all, and he dutifully soaked everything up like a sponge.

This is not a scene from the delivery room. Or even the labor room. This incident is set around a routine check-up of a full-term pregnancy. The OB-Gyn withdraws her latex-gloved fingertips from the violated orifice of this red-faced algophobe. Freed at last, said algophobe's husband shakes his poor mangled hand gingerly, perhaps hoping to get some of the circulation back.

The OB-Gyn is shaking her head. The mucus plug is still too thick, the uterus still too high up. For a second pregnancy 38 weeks old, this is a bit unusual. And I've been 3 centimeters dilated for the past week.

Atch starts getting a determined look on his face, and I could almost imagine him hectoring me through a regular exercise regiment of power walking, squats and lunges. Anything to get my uterus contracting and the baby descending. Anything to avoid a costly cesarean section. As one, we blink away the image of hundreds of peso bills flying out the window. This is probably one of the reasons we fell in love – the irresistible primal call of one skinflint to another. *Sigh*

On the way down, we take the stairs. I am so tired. I can feel the clenched muscles in my aching lower back and Eli's weight pressing sharply down on my bladder, incessantly grinding against my pelvic bones. My thighs are trembling from exertion. I am snorting like a fire dragon out of steam.

Stoically, I have borne this for the last few bloated months.

I am so tired. And so terrified.

Four years ago, I nearly became a permanent occupant of the labor room. I lay for three agonizing days in induced labor before some sympathetic senior resident burst my amniotic sac with a wicked-looking plastic probe. After that, I lost all remaining shreds of dignity as I clawed my way through my husband's shirt and the drenched sheets. I fancy if I had any more strength left, I would have bent my IV stand in half. As it is, Atch tells me he has heard carabaos with a more mellifluous bellow.

Four years after pushing out a 7.11-pound Woog, I am back at square one.

I am so tired. And so terrified.

And so, undoubtedly, Atch and I will be pounding the pavement, son and dogs in tow. Muttering our prayers, shoring up a courageous front, and hoping to raise a low pain threshold.

We'll see...

27 June 2006

War and Peace

I came upon Woog stomping up and down the stairs in his school uniform, hyperventilating. It looked like he was going through the full range of Lamaze breathing exercises.

“What's up with you, hey.”

“I'm blowing my mad out.” He retorted (huff-huff-huff), still noisily wearing out the soles of his shoes.

“Who're you mad at?”

Tatay! (huff-huff-huff)”

Oh dear. I was afraid of that. I hauled my heavily pregnant self into the bedroom to find Atch doing his adult version of letting off steam. He was violently flinging himself into his work clothes, and I winced, anticipating the sound of rending cloth.

Turns out father and son had another of their many arguments involving the former's predilection for speed, and the latter's tendency to dawdle. Atch is the type who wants everything done yesterday. Woog takes time to pause and ponder out loud on the number of horns a Styracosaur has, among other things. This morning, the object of dispute was Woog's poor abused shoes. Or rather, how slow those shoes took getting into their owner's feet.

I imagine Woog daydreaming about the line of ants traversing the bathroom tiles whilst slipping his right foot into his left shoe. Meanwhile his impatient father fumes. Father then growls out something with gritted teeth, and son, rudely startled from his random thoughts, immediately launches into a thundercloud of temper. All hell breaks loose, and both parties harrumph away from each other in testosterone-filled indignation.

“After all, he is only four years old.” I try to soothe Atch. And I get a glance which spoke volumes about the household chores he was obliged to do at such and such a speed, all at the tender age of four. I have long since discovered that going head-on against my husband's dagger looks will only leave me with a slashed and tattered psyche. I instead attempted some good-natured parrying and doing the wifely duty of smoothening out his collar and ego. As soon as I assured myself no clothes were getting ripped that morning, I went down to soothe the other man in my life.

Turns out Woog didnt need my ministrations. I found him fiddling with the dog's collar and regaling his grandfather about how said dog sent him sprawling off his bike earlier that morning. His enthusiasm was catching, grandfather was chuckling.

How wonderful that children recover so quickly, unlike us adults who jealously hoard hurts and misgivings in all our Scrooge-like splendour. The distress of a moment before already forgotten, my son was regenerating as only the young can. His heart was intact, and I sent up a brief prayer of thanks. I am hoping against hope it will always be so.

As Atch came down in a rush, all pressed and dressed for another working day, Woog spun around with a start, eyes wide. He haltingly reached out, and blurted out a tentative “I'm sorry, Tatay...”

My husband paused, scooped our son up into his arms, buried his nose into a fragrant neck and made snorting noises (his version of an apology, I'd wager). Woog burst into his signature high-pitched giggle. All was well. In that moment, the apartment was filled with sounds fit to make a mother's heart swell. And for a time, I blinked up at the ceiling for some imaginary cobwebs that might need dusting.

19 June 2006

Firstborn Furor

“Mom, I want you...!” A plaintive voice calls from the top of the stairs.

It is 7:00 in the morning and my son has just woken up. My uncharacteristically needy four-year-old son.

I swallow as much breakfast as I can & hurry upstairs. Woog's tousled head is sticking out of the bedroom, his pj's hitched up to his knees, making him look like a dwarfish buccaneer. As soon as he spots me, he ducks back inside the door and jumps into his bed. “Mom, I want some chocolate milk”. And belatedly, “please...”

I sighed. The clock is racing against me. I have to be riding to work soon. But I get him his favorite dinosaur cup anyway. What do they say about time flying...before I know it, he'll be chugging down his own beer without my help.

Ever since my bump started showing, Woog has compensated for his burgeoning insecurity with increasing bouts of neediness, petulance, whining and (heaven help me) baby talk. Translated: regression. This from the self-proclaimed “big boy” who would insist on changing himself, even if his shirt were on backwards; who would bring his plate to the kitchen after every meal; who would make his own bed with special attention to the sheet corners; who would give himself his own bath, warding off any adult with a fierce flash of unibrow, his only concession to helplessness being “please wash my back”.

Where did my big boy go?

I had expected this. Sort of. When we first learned we were pregnant, the husband and I took him aside and explained this coming-of-age phenomenon known as Big Brotherhood. Ever conscious of being as objective as possible, we told him of the pros (the baby will spend most of its time sleeping; you get new stuff, it gets all your hand-me-downs) and the cons (it'll cry and poop a lot, and maybe, just maybe, you'll have to wash some baby bottles).

We did this, every single chance we could get. The child rearing books say at this age, the key was repetition, repetition, repetition.

And it did seem to work. For a while. Many times I'd wake from dozing to find Woog kissing my tummy goodnight. Upon arriving home from work, a tiny human projectile would fling itself at my midsection (“look baby, I made you a robot dino from my lego blocks!”).

Things were going so smoothly until, spawned from a well meaning sentiment of family-togetherness, we took Woog along with us for the baby's ultrasound. There in the clinic, with both parents and doctor cooing over the monitor, Firstborn's forehead creased ever more inward, and his generous brows gave a forecast of thunder on the horizon.

And thunder it did. In the next few months, Atch & I tried to keep our tempers, our sanity, and our hands from Woog's obstinate little neck. We were treated to behavior that ran a gamut from overly saccharine (“Mom, am I your sweetest?” - multiplied 20 times), to deeply sore (“I'm mad at you! You're not minding me!”), to downright stinky (bedwetting! When he hasn't had an accident in almost a year!). In between, he tried his damnedest to keep us by his side at all times (“Don't go, please don't leave me!” - clinging to our clothing exactly two seconds before we set out for work in the mornings, and in the exceptionally dire instances when a bathroom break was necessary).

In the rarest of times when the husband & I get to really sit down and talk, Woog's increasingly downward spiral becomes prime fodder. Are we paying him too little attention? Should we smother him in more hugs, kisses and cuddles? Have we been growling at him too much?

We took a long look at Woog. A really long look that had the boy squirming in his short shorts and biting nervously at his hangnails. We hugged him, inhaled his aromatic head and nearly gave him hickeys. By the time we were done, he was squirming to be released. “Woog,” we said, “you're a big brother now. Its time for you to show a good example for the baby to follow. Would you like the baby to whine like you?”

“No.”

“Would you like the baby to be misbehaved, rude and disrespectful?”

“No!”

“So will you be in charge of showing the baby the proper way to behave?”

“Yes..... Mom, am I your sweetest?”

So we started giving him more responsibility. He gets to turn on the electric insect repellent in the evenings and lay out his school clothes for the following day. We put him in charge of switching off the night-light, and lugging his potty to the bedroom before bed. He still has to master the art of folding his underwear, but he's getting there. Altogether, he's too busy being responsible to worry about being the flavor of the month.

The other week, I took out his old baby stuff for cleaning. “Lets give these to the baby, Mom.” He decided. Inside, I smiled and I smiled.

As an experiment, I sent him off to sort out all his toys: those he would keep, and those we'd donate to an orphanage. It took him a whole sweaty indecisive day, but afterwards, he proudly showed off half a garbage bag of discards.

He's trying mightily hard to please, my little one.

The other day, we took him with us for a pre-natal check-up. While I was weighing in, a woman in bed behind a hastily drawn curtain started groaning loudly in active labor. Woog, holding my handbag, started looking anxious. In a startling preview of the kind of man he'd likely become, I saw him glance up, glance down, glance at me. But never again did he let his eyes drift back towards that woman in the throes of childbirth.

In the car, we explained to him that giving birth was a messy but necessary affair. It hurt like hell, yes, but the end result was wonderful. Point in case: himself. I brought up the possibility of a midnight labor, that he might wake up in the morning and find me gone (to the hospital), but Atch smoothed over an impending rough patch by deciding that he would haul everyone, Woog included, to the hospital when the time came. “It'd be better to make him feel included.” That settled, Firstborn relaxed with a smile.

This morning, Woog woke at 6:00, excited. Today was P.E. day. Half asleep, I observed him from the corners of my mote-encrusted eyes as he made his bed. Noisily, he dragged a chair to take down his change of clothes (prepared from the night before) and grunted his way into them. He gathered up his used dinosaur cup, his tiny towelette, and turned off my alarm clock just as it rang.

“Wake up Mom! Its morning. We'll be late!”

Despite my rough heartburn filled night, I sat up and gathered him in a hug. My big boy was back.

16 June 2006

“Alien Lifeform” Within

Eli kicked up a fuss over lunch today. Being quite used to it, I lingered over my grilled milk-fish, fresh tomatoes and the usual office gossip, until one of my co-workers exclaimed that my tummy was heaving in irregular little bumps and bulges.

My Eli. He's turning 36 weeks soon, and the apprehension of future labor pains washes over me. This is NOT the kind of pregnancy where I have to monitor fetal movements intermittently. With Eli, I have become the privileged recipient of enormous belly-quakes that wake me up in the middle of the night. With Eli I have mastered the art of sleeping upright, proudly surviving heartburn, acid reflux and the accompanying breathing problems.

Eli at 12 Weeks

In the middle of the working day, I load the cd-rom drive with the classics and bring the speakers right up to my belly: voila! The tiny tornado that is my second child quiets down to the occasional stretch and hiccup, allowing me to get on with trying to earn a living.

The other night, sandwiched between my husband and four-year-old son, Woog, while watching Disney Channel (you can guess who wears the viewing preference pants at home), a tiny limb from within began to violently poke Atch's arm. On the opposite side, another body part started an epileptic little dance against my volatile pre-schooler's ribs.

Two sets of eyes turned to me. One crinkled with amusement, the other with two thick eyebrows bunched into a unibrow. My husband laughed and gently rubbed my belly, while Woog moved away from his offending sibling muttering a “tsk” sound, his eyes turning back to Lilo & Stitch.

Boy, do I have my future referee work cut out for me.

While browsing through some baby websites, I learned that at 35 weeks the baby should have grown to around 18 inches and would weigh in the neighborhood of 5 pounds. The snug-as-a-bug scenario should about limit the room to somersault in. But this medical fact hasn't seemed to stop my little blackbelt from issuing regular roundhouse kicks and elbow jabs to my poor abused insides. Sometimes I imagine my uterus to be one whole black-and-blue mass of tenderized meat, courtesy of the unstoppable juggernaut that is Eli.

A deluge of folic acid and iron supplements notwithstanding, my OB-Gyn assures me everything's normal: from the initial butterflies-in-my-stomach fluttering in the fourth month to the UFC-inspired moves in the ninth. But Eli's hyperactivity came as a great surprise. Woog, while not the most complacent of fetuses, was gentle in comparison.

As I type this, Eli is drumming an energetic sousa march against the top of my stomach – his heels, most likely. I think its about time to turn on the classics again.

08 June 2006