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