On Blogging, Breasfeeding, Mess & Me-Time

Bless me, oh God of Blogs, for I have sinned. It has been one and a half months since my last blog post…

20 minutes ago, I fired off this tweet:

1) no husband 2) no help 3) a broken stove 4) 2 kids under 3
= 4 good reasons to eat out & drink wine all weekend long #overwhelmed

And now, miracle of miracles, I am seated in front of my laptop as both kids are sound asleep – The Princess upstairs in her bed and my two month old Prince next to me in his pram. The silence is almost freaky. I keep my head down and focused on my keyboard and screen in an attempt to ignore the unbelievable mess that is my home. The amount of havoc that one toddler has wreaked during the 8 hours she has been awake since 4pm on Friday, is truly staggering. Okay, she did have a little help from her friend. Note: “friend” – singular – only one other toddler monster. But this particular child takes messy eating to brand new heights: she managed to smooth cream cheese into the actual weave of the playroom rug. I stare at the white moosh on my brown mat and wonder how in God’s name one would go about removing it entirely.

Fortunately, when I am in survival mode – and I have probably been in that mode for the past two and a half years since The Princess’ birth – I can live in, around and on top of, mess. I don’t like mess, but I like cleaning up even less. In rare moments when kids are not being fed, bathed, changed, entertained, placated or put to sleep, there are just too many more interesting things to do in this life, to waste time tidying up. Like writing blogs, watching The Sopranos from start to finish – my current entertainment during breastfeeds, going for walks with the jogger, reading, the list goes on…

Of course those moments are ridiculously rare but I crave them anyway. A fellow full-time mommy recounted a story that she heard from a mom of three. This mom reported that after her second child, she stopped expecting any more microscopic moments of time to herself and that was how she coped. I still expect those moments. To give up that expectation would be to lose myself completely and I just don’t think I could cope with that. I need “me time” or, what I should rather call “Mac time” – time alone with my laptop: reading, writing, researching, shopping, corresponding, catching up on admin. My sanity depends on it.

I let my ears take in the sweet sound of two kids sleeping simultaneously…

The Prince was due for his three hourly feed five minutes ago but I just can’t bring myself to wake him up – even at the risk of messing with my milk supply. On that topic, my milk has mysteriously evaporated at every 6:30pm feed of the day. I managed to breastfeed exclusively for 7 weeks before The Prince had his first taste of formula and now, literally overnight for the past 10 days, I have virtually no milk at that time of day. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a breastfeeding crusader – certainly not amongst groups who have the means to procure alternatives and the infrastructure to ensure proper sterilisation. I know of too many examples of extremely intelligent adults whose mothers were unable to breastfeed to believe that formula cannot ensure the same level of brain development as breastmilk. Some women just don’t manage to breastfeed or to breastfeed exclusively (I struggled tremendously with The Princess and found it hugely stressful). However, personally, I just would have liked to have given The Prince formula less often than once a day for the first four months. But yesterday my neighbour told me something interesting. Her nurse told her that 200ml of breastmilk per day is just as good as an exclusive breastmilk diet. She equated this to eating All Bran: you can eat one bowl of All Bran or three bowls of All Bran but you’ll get everything you need in terms of fibre etc, from just one bowl. I have no idea if this assertion has been scientifically proven, but I like the theory so I’m choosing to believe its veracity.

Other than feeding every three hours, my life at present – as per my tweets – is mostly taken up with training for the 94.7 cycle challenge on 17 November. On 10 August when The Prince was just two weeks old, our family of four was driving out to my cousin’s daughter’s wedding in The Cradle. There were hundreds of cyclists out and amongst them were a notable number of women. I thought I saw The Husband look longingly at what appeared to be couples cycling together and I must have had a rush of blood to the head as I heard myself announcing confidently that I would ride the 94.7. For non-Jozi dwellers, the 94.7 cycle challenge gets its name from the frequency of a local radio station and is, just to be cute, literally 94.7 kilometres long. It sound like a “cute” idea at the time, but as I started training, I realised how hard cycling actually is, compared to being just generally quite fit from gym, a 5km run once a week, some personal training, regular speed walking etc. That incredible burn in your legs – there is just nothing like it. And don’t even get me started on cleats…

But more about that in a future blog. The Prince has just woken up and is screaming for his lunch!

 

 

On Khloe Kardashian, Self Esteem, Liz Hurley & White Jeans

Having a new baby means being awake at all sorts of ungodly hours. Thanks to The Husband’s generosity and pragmatism, we have a night nurse. I say “pragmatism” because he knows how grumpy I get when I am sleep deprived and he knows there is a practical – albeit costly – solution. Her name is Precious. She taps me gently while I am sound asleep and says with urgency:

“He’s awake!”

I fly out of bed in response to the urgency in Precious’ voice, dash to the nursery and then flop into the feeding chair and sometimes even fall asleep while Precious changes The Prince’s nappy and readies him for his feed. And then I generally sleep through the feed until she prods me and tells me it’s time to change sides. I can safely say that I would trade in my car if I had to, for the luxury of a night nurse. I feel human the day after Precious’ shift and like a dead woman walking the day after her night off.

Most nights I crawl back into bed and pass out after the feed, but some nights (and, fortunately, so far, not many) I simply can’t get back to sleep. This was the case a few nights ago. I was so wide awake that I eventually crawled out of bed at 4am and crept to the TV room.

I happened to turn on M-Net just as a show called The Talk started. It featured a bunch of women sitting around a table. Amongst the women, I recognised Sharon Osborne. As the introductory music ended and the audience applauded, one of the women introduced the first topic of the talk show with the solemnity one would expect were she reporting on a grave political crisis: Khloe Kardashian’s poor self esteem.

khloe-kardashian-279718138

The camera then cut to this round-table of female presenters looking traumatised by the news and brimming with empathy for the reality TV star. In order to give viewers a real taste of the emotional hardship endured daily by Khloe, the presenter quoted Khloe who had said that “being compared to somebody else every day does sort of beat up your spirit and soul.” Apparently Khloe reported that she had been called the “heavier” and “less attractive” of the sisters. Luckily for Khloe, Sharon Osborne was the first to comment with a statement that is bound to reverse all her psychological trauma:

“I just think she has the BEST personality out of everyone!” Sharon gushed, to rapturous applause from the in-studio audience.

Thanks, Sharon. You do know that you basically just called her ugly? When my dad was at university in the sixties, the prevailing catch phrase for an unattractive woman was: “She sure can cook!” With the emancipation of women and Woolworths microwave meals, the modern version of this maxim has morphed into: “She sure has a great personality”.

I konfess that I just kan’t watch Kris, Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Kendall and Kylie Kardashian/ Jenner and their show at the best of times, although I can’t think of a better cure for insomnia than Khloe Kardashian’s complexes. If only I’d been able to keep the TV on for an extra minute or two, I would have been able to pass out from absolute apathy.

Aside from bad TV at 5am, the weeks following the birth of a child can be tough. Especially when they happen to be the very weeks when Hyde Park and Sandton City go on sale. About a week after The Prince was born, The Husband’s favourite Hyde Park store was offering 50% off all their merchandise and he was looking to spoil me. What could I do under the circumstances other than engage in aspirational acquisitions? I was immediately drawn to a gorgeous pair of white, skinny jeans with gold zips. Tres, tres St Tropez or tres, tres Sandton. But as I picked them up, I was reminded of something a friend told me last year. She told me that it had been said (by some famous and fabulous male stylist, I think) that if you’re a woman and your name is not Liz Hurley, you simply should not wear white jeans. Sorry, honey. Although I agree that I am not Liz Hurley and that I should not wear white jeans, I have always loved white pants and am delighted that white jeans have made a comeback. So I now have this pair – that cost 50% less than usual – hanging in my cupboard, staring at me and taunting me. I should somehow sticky-tape them to the fridge…

Liz Hurley Leaving Her Home London June 17, 2008

But since that’s not terribly practical, I decided to re-join Weight Watchers instead. I polished off a cupcake in the car on the way there and arrived ready to take a deep breath and step on the scale. The last time I attended Weight Watchers was before I found out that I was pregnant with The Prince – a time when I weighed a lot less than I do now. For this reason, I made a point of mentioning to the Group Leader that I had stopped Weight Watchers because I’d fallen pregnant (they don’t allow pregnant people to follow the programme) and that I was returning because I’d just had a baby. Clearly, however, I did not place enough emphasis on the word “just” because a few minutes later I climbed on the scale to hear the Group Leader say (raised eyebrow and all):

“I see… yes… well…your weight has gone up quite a bit.”

“I literally just had a baby eleven days ago!” I snapped.

To this, my fellow members responded as one would hope the Sisterhood would respond with remarks like:

“Oh my gosh, I’d still be in bed!” and

“You look amazing for someone who just had a baby!” (From my observations and my own behaviour, women say this to one another post babies, no matter what, but somehow it’s still nice to hear even if you know it’s a big, fat lie.)

I automatically felt better.

But sisterhood or no sisterhood, I still have to find a way into those designer white jeans before they go out of style again.

Preggie Exercise & The Chat Burning Zone

A while ago, The Sister asked me what blog name I was planning on giving my son. Since I called my daughter The Princess, it follows that I would call my son The Prince. But two days ago, an actual prince decided to make his appearance on exactly the date that I was due to give birth – Monday, 22 July 2013. And my son decided not to make an appearance on the day he was predicted to arrive.

“Stuff being born on the same day as the future king of England!”, he thought.

Like The Princess, who frolicked inside my belly for an extra week before I demanded to be induced, my son appears to be very comfortable in utero. Anyway, since he will not share a birthday with the most famous prince in the world, I think it’s okay to call him The Prince, alongside his sister, The Princess.

One of the reasons why an overdue baby can be bad for the self-esteem, is that the dreaded number depicting what one weighs on the scale has more time to climb. With The Princess, despite her above average birth weight of 3.66kg, I managed to contain my weight gain to a fairly respectable 12kg, which I understand is considered normal for someone who is not underweight – something I have never been accused of. On Tuesday I hopped on that hateful machine, just for a laugh, and my weight gain had gone from 12.8kg one week earlier, to a whopping 14.2kg. The Prince better justify this being one BIG baby!

One of the ways I have tried to (unsuccessfully) to contain my pregnancy weight gain, has been through exercise. Unfortunately, however, when I was five months pregnant, I started to feel a stabbing pain in my right side every time I did any cardio exercise. I couldn’t even walk around Sandton City at “speed”, so going for runs (which were becoming uncomfortable anyway with my growing belly) and even walks around the neighbourhood, became impossible.

I have never been very motivated to do my own workouts in a gym. I either need to be in a group training session or a I need a personal trainer to keep me in line. But being pregnant, super hormonal and having to entertain a busy toddler all day during school holidays, weekends and the many public holidays that surface in South Africa around April and May, changed my view of solo gym sessions. Suddenly, Virgin Active and its Club V for kids could offer me multiple solutions:

1) a way to burn off just a few bites of the truckloads of chocolate my hormonal self was insisting on consuming

2) a brief break from childcare and a change of scenery

3) a chance for The Husband and I to work out simultaneously over the weekend or on a public holiday if he wasn’t cycling

4) fun for The Princess in the form of a million toys and games that were new and novel

There was only one problem: despite having successfully started playschool in late January at 21 months, The Princess wasn’t interested in being left with childminders, despite the fact that she was in Toy Heaven. I knew this because she screamed the house down on more than one occasion when I tried to leave her at Club V.

I almost gave up, but on Easter Monday, I was determined to make Club V work for us. And somehow, it was suddenly like sleep training – a relatively small amount of pain for many years of gain. She screamed for a few minutes when I left the room and then fell silent as the childminder managed to distract her. I crept to the elliptical trainer, put one earphone in and waited for my name to be called over the intercom to come and placate my hysterical child – as had happened many times before.

But the announcement never came.

From then onwards, I struggled to get The Princess to leave Club V. I had to pretend that I was leaving her behind. Sometimes even that didn’t work.

So, since Easter, I’ve had no excuse not to frequent the gym. There was no way I could bounce around with my big belly in a group exercise class and so the elliptical trainer became my friend. Some days, the pain would surface during a workout and I would have to severely decrease my intensity. After my 20 minute time limit was up, I’d climb onto the treadmill. If I kept my speed down to embarrassingly low levels, I could walk without pain in my side.

Although I have never been the sportiest or fittest chick in town, my Type A personality means that if I motivate myself sufficiently to go to the gym, every second must count. I must achieve maximum efficiency – within my own (fairly great) physical limits. I must be – as a very wise late friend of The Husband’s used to say – “a legend in my own lunch box”.

Before I was heavily pregnant and before this stabbing pain from exercise began, I would look at women talking on the phone on the treadmill with internal disdain. If you were able to have a fat chat, you weren’t pushing yourself sufficiently, right? Or, if you were holding on to the bar you were wasting your time. If you were walking at a speed of 5 or less and no gradient – and God forbid you were talking on the phone, messaging, looking at Facebook or holding on – you may as well be lying on the couch since you certainly weren’t going to break a sweat.

When my neighbour was 38 weeks pregnant a few months ago, I asked her how she was feeling. She sighed, looked at me and said: “You know what, Natalie? I just don’t think our bodies were meant to be shared.”

There have been days during this pregnancy when my neighbour’s words have rung so true. Not least when I’ve been on the treadmill. On those days, I have smiled to myself, smiled at the women scrolling through Facebook on their phones next to me and I’ve been reminded of that classic scene from the movie “The Switch” with Jennifer Anniston and Jason Bateman. (The movie in which Jennifer Anniston’s character is the platonic BFF of Jason Bateman’s character and she decides to get pregnant via a sperm donor.) Jason Bateman’s character’s personality is definitely Type A and contrasts sharply with that of his colleague. The two men are at the gym, each side by side on a treadmill when Jason Bateman’s character looks over at his colleague and says with raised eyebrows:

“You’re eating a chocolate bar? On 4?”

To which his colleague replies indignantly: “I’m in the fat burning zone!”

I draw the line at consuming chocolate whilst actually on the treadmill, but for the last few months I have been exercising in what I term “the chat burning zone”. I catch up with my phone calls, I post status up-dates on Facebook, I tweet, I respond to sms’s.

But I don’t hold on to the bar. That would really be letting myself go 🙂

The Dangers of Housewives Alone in Coffee Shops

I confess that I am not used to strange men approaching me in coffee shops. This happened a few weeks ago when I was replying to some e-mails in a coffee shop in Benmore while The Princess was at school. I’d walked in and seen only one table with three casually dressed guys who appeared to be in the midst of a business meeting. I’d deliberately chosen the table furthest from these guys so as not to fall prey to accidental eavesdropping.

Whilst fully immersed in all-important, housewife admin on my I-pad, I sensed that a figure had approached my table and I heard a deep voice say:

“Howzit, doll,”

I could not believe the audacity of this man and began lifting my head with the full intention of blurting out:

DON’T YOU DARE CALL ME DOLL !

But as I looked up, something stopped me and I realised that I would have deeply offended (or amused) our good friend Erik, who relocated to Windhoek six months ago.

I had to remind myself that not too many men want to pick up a chick who’s eight months pregnant – at all – and certainly not at ten in the morning in a coffee shop.

This past week, however, “it” happened again. I was sitting at a table outside at Europa, Melrose Arch, guiltily devouring actual sushi with raw salmon and everything. (I was busy convincing myself that French women eat unpasteurised cheese – and probably don’t give up coffee, cigarettes or wine either – throughout pregnancy, so what was a bit of sushi between me and the 3.2kg buffeltjie still apparently growing in my tummy? He’d survived 30 Stopayne tablets the week before so I was sure he’d survive a bit of raw fish…)

I was looking down at my food when I caught a glimpse of a strange man approaching my table. From my experience with Erik, I’d learnt that it was unlikely he was trying to pick me up, so I was a little more pragmatic this time. Was he a husband coming to chastise me for eating sushi at 38 weeks pregnant? I felt slightly unnerved…

“You look like someone who’d know this,” he began. “Is there a spa in Melrose Arch?”

I guess you can take the girl out Keurbooms and put her in Sandton, but you can’t take Keurbooms out of the girl: when someone in a shopping centre asks me if there’s a spa around, I think of the Spar.

I was about to respond,

“No, sorry, there’s only a Woolies.”

But then I caught sight of my newly pedicured feet, clad in open-toed, bedroom slippers on loan from the Melrose Arch Spa. I also noticed that my “suitor” looked like the quintessential metro-sexual. He’d noticed my red nails and toes as opposed to my face – a face which still lives in fear of Botox, can’t be bothered with facials and which boasts bushy, dark eyebrows which I’m too afraid of waxing for fear the therapist will virtually denude me of any eyebrows to speak of.

I may feel more at home in a Spar than in a spa but at least I had fabulous red nails and toes which The Princess took note of immediately when I fetched her from school:

“Mommy’s nails are RED!” she announced.

That’s my little Sandtonite girl! 🙂

The Root of the Problem

I had great plans for the past week – my third last week before becoming a mother of two. I was going to tick off a whole lot of things on the “to do” list, such as:

– huge Baby City shop
– take friend for belated birthday lunch
– do fun-filled, half-term, holiday activities with The Princess
– arrange preggy belly photo shoot
– birthday and kitchen tea gift shopping
– clean-out my half of the study
– learn how to use sewing machine inherited from Gran
– buy final pieces for nursery
– go to theatre on date night
– host a weekend lunch

And the list could well go on… So yes, I had great plans for this past week and a bit. But my 37 week pregnant body, together with the universe, had other plans for me.

On Wednesday last week, I felt the onset of sinus pain. By Thursday it was making me miserable and I took myself off to my GP. He thought my pregnancy heartburn might be aggravating my sinuses. (Time to stop with the over-indulgences.) Still, the pain persisted. I tried to ignore it and get on with important things like attending Disney on Ice with The Princess last Friday. By Friday afternoon, I thought I just might be experiencing tooth pain, not sinusitis, so I called my dentist. He was in theatre that afternoon so he couldn’t see me until Monday. By Saturday mid-morning, I was literally lying on the couch, curling my toes and groaning in agony. A hot water bottle to the cheek brought some relief. Challenge: you try to get hold of a dentist in Joburg on a Saturday. Mine was on voicemail. Another I knew of in the area was out of town. Another, offering “emergency services” (which turned out to be a one-man show IF he answered his cell phone) was delivering a training course in Kenya.

The result was that I was referred to a medical centre somewhere in the vicinity of Strijdom Park. Not to be a snob, but it is an area I associate more with warehouse-based businesses or panel beaters rather than top medical practitioners. And of course I got lost on the way trying to find the centre. Evidently, asking the receptionist: “Should I travel north along Malibongwe Drive from the intersection with Republic?”, was a bad idea for the clarification of directions. I know we don’t have Table Mountain as a landmark in Jozi, but seriously, the general direction of Pretoria is north and the general direction of the CBD is south. Right? As a result, I wound up in Kya Sands at 10:27 am when I was supposed to be in Strijdom Park before the dentist closed at 10:30.

When I tore into the rooms at 10:31, dragging The Princess (who insisted on walking around in her socks) behind me, I was asked to fill in a form. At this juncture, I was in so much pain that the prospect of two pages’ worth of admin was more than I could face. I was more than happy to turn on the waterworks. I had applied Make Up Forever’s “Smoky Lash Mascara” that morning which is no longer available in SA in waterproof. (Evidently, people in emerging markets don’t cry.) Needless to say, in a few seconds, I had mascara running down my cheeks. I think myself and my toddler in her socks in the middle of winter were a real sight for sore eyes – even in Strijdom Park. Fortunately, one of the receptionists took pity on me (admittedly not the receptionist I’d called an idiot for not knowing north from south – understandably, she did not look very sympathetic). The nice receptionist filled out my form while I dictated my personal information to her in between sobs of pain.

I then got to see the dentist, while The Princess sat on my lap. She x-rayed my teeth, where I was complaining of pain, and could find nothing. Absolutely nothing. Fortunately, she was ethical and said she didn’t recommend performing root treatment if there was no evidence of any problem. At that stage, I was in so much pain I was tempted to tell her to rip out all three suspect teeth, but my better judgement prevailed and I tried to think about what to do next. The Husband was out cycling and not answering his phone and I wanted my mommy who was 1,200km away. The Mother-in-Law was about to board a cruise ship in Copenhagen and I realised that I was going to have to put my big girl panties on and make a plan myself. The Princess, however, had other plans. She chose this moment to flatly refuse to be strapped in to her car seat. No amount of begging, blubbing or beseeching would change her mind. At two years and three months old, she instinctively knew that in that moment, she had the power and she was going to use it.

Force was my only option.

Eventually, I managed to strap my kicking and screaming child into her seat, but as I climbed into the drivers seat, a defiant and triumphant little voice declared:

“Look, Mommy!” and she wormed her arms out of the car seat straps.

I turned away from her, took a deep breath, waited a few seconds and then told her very calmly and very clearly though teeth clenched in frustration and pain, that she’d better put her arms back in VERY QUICKLY! Miraculously, it worked! I tried to hide my relief that I’d managed to win this battle as she elicited a guilt-ridden cry of:

“Help me, Mommy!”

And so we were off. But where to? 1) The only dentist apparently available on a Saturday in this 12 million person city could find nothing wrong. 2) I had been on meds for sinus relief for three days and they were not helping at all.

I really wanted my mom.

Thank God, just then, The Husband called. He took me to our GP who was still finishing up with his Saturday patients. The GP surmised that I might be experiencing referred tooth pain from something to do with my sinuses, although he too, could not find much evidence of this. I spent the rest of the weekend popping Stilpayne, Panado and antibiotics which brought periods of relief followed by periods of intense pain.

On Monday morning I raced to my dentist. He too, could see nothing but suspected immediately from my symptoms that there was something going on inside one of my teeth and sent me to an endodontist. Yes, an endodontist. Before Monday, I had no idea that a branch of dentistry called endodontics existed. By the time I got to Dr J, I was so overwhelmed by the pain that I was in tears once again (but at least I’d remembered to apply my waterproof MAC mascara instead) and begging for his help. His x-rays could not reveal anything either but he strongly suspected that one of my back teeth on the left hand side was infected internally. As to whether it was a top tooth or a bottom tooth, he couldn’t even be certain because apparently intense pain often presents itself as referred pain. He then set about bashing and prodding each tooth to try to ascertain which tooth was experiencing the most pain so that he could figure out which tooth to open up. I felt like an actor who had to perform on cue to the pain signals (despite the fact that everything he did hurt) or else he would hack into the wrong tooth. I eventually blurted out:

“I can’t do this! I am so stressed at the prospect of misdiagnosing myself. It’s all really, really sore!”

I think if I wasn’t 37 weeks pregnant he probably would have given me a tranquiliser at this stage.

Fortunately, some more prodding and hot and cold tests and my apparently appropriate and somewhat differentiated squeals of pain led him to choose the correct tooth to open up and begin the first of a few procedures in what is commonly termed “root canal treatment”. Phew! This first stage he called a “pulpectomy” where he removed the “pulp” of the tooth containing all the inflamed nerves, etc. This was supposed to bring relief.

But it didn’t. Despite the local anaesthetic I was still in agony when I left his rooms. I took two more Stilpayne which brought some relief, but once they wore off a few hours later, I was in hell again.

The next day, Tuesday, I called Dr J as soon as his rooms opened, crying and begging him to fit me in to finish the root canal procedure that day instead of three days later, on Friday. He is one of those special kind of medical practictioners gifted with a brilliant bedside manner and who know just what kind of a note to hit with an hysterical patient:

“No, that won’t be possible,” he replied, “I squeezed you in for a pulpectomy yesterday and my day was all out of kilter as a result.”

Really, dude? Your day was out of kilter? Are you frigging kidding me here? I was blown away. But I was so desperate that I accepted his offer of squeezing me in to check things out at 1pm that day.

I climbed into his chair and he started prodding around to ascertain what the problem was. When he put pressure on the tooth in question I nearly went through the roof.

I think he got the message that there was still a problem.

Apparently I had a rare complication of some sort and the solution was to “adjust my bite”. Of course, as a layperson, I knew exactly what that meant. The previous day I had actually wanted to ask him to please stop speaking behind his little dental mask and to

e – n – u – n – c – i – a – t – e

his words, rather than swallowing them at the end of every sentence. (Slightly patronising, though, so I refrained.) But, as a result, I later learned that I had completely misunderstood him. I learned that one needs to wait several days after a pulpectomy before the time-consuming process of having the root area filled in, is done. Thank you Dr Communication Skills for mumbling under your mask and telling me that I threw your schedule “out of kilter”!

Fortunately, that afternoon, I managed to find an endodontist who could look me in the eye, explain to me in simple English what had been done and what still had to be done, could warn me about unlikely, but possible, further complications and could set my mind at ease by opening up the tooth again and checking that everything that needed to be taken out, had indeed been taken out. Thank God for medical practitioners who can communicate with their patients!

The long and short is that after 8 days of being in varying degrees of pain, the pain finally stopped. After this root canal, experience, I feel almost ready for natural childbirth in 15 days time – with epidural, bien sur 🙂

Mommy’s Big Night Out/ In

Ever since The Husband went on a five night cycling trip in mid-December, followed by a four night cycling trip in late January, I have been fantasising about going away… all by myself… just me and my beloved Macbook… relishing the quiet… not worrying about anyone but yours truly… sleeping… reading… maybe even going to gym… shopping… napping… writing… reading… sleeping… Sigh.

There were just a few snags with the fantasy. I am over aeroplanes (I’ve taken over 40 one-way flights since The Princess’ birth two years and three months ago) and I don’t like driving long distance. Oh, and I regard Sandton to Monte Casino as long distance. Naturally, this limited my options. Also, I genuinely like Joburg. I like the shops, I like the choice of gyms on my doorstep, I like the vibe, I love the winter sunshine… I actually really like my home too. But despite my love for The Husband and our beautiful, super intelligent and amusing daughter who adores me, sometimes I just feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor and I simply “vant to be alone.” It doesn’t help that our house is very, very open plan, so sitting down to do something simple like write a blog while The Princess is awake is completely impossible. And so I fantasised about checking into a local Sandton hotel for a few nights and squeezing in all the abovementioned things…Sigh.

Well, after six months of vivid fantasies, yesterday, I finally took the plunge and booked myself into a hotel for Thursday night, 20 June. Okay, the hotel is 300m from my house and although check-in time was from 3pm, I felt too guilty to leave The Princess for the afternoon when she only woke up at 2pm after school… I vowed I would leave my house for the 30 second commute (quite literally) at 5pm when the supper/ bath/ witching hour began. But, having no deadline, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to leave this little angel who adores me and wants to be with me whenever she stops to think about it. And so I stayed to read her a story and put her to bed at 7pm. Then I left home with my suitcase full of one night supplies: my laptop, my book, my i-pad – all my little “me-time” indulgences – and promptly sms’ed my nanny with the hotel’s phone number and my room number – in case of emergencies. (The Husband was at a work function).

A word or two on present-day decor trends in hotels: since when did it go out of style to have actual lights fitted to the ceiling in hotel rooms? Somehow, it’s become de rigeur to simply bathe a hotel room in the gentle, romantic light of bedside lamps and perhaps a desk lamp or passage light. WTF? I happen to like light. So, in an effort to create some additional light in the room, I decided to turn on the desk lamp. I have to say that it was no small feat trying to locate the hidden switch on this baby:

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I eventually gave up and asked the Room Service waiter to turn it on for me. He fiddled around for the elusive on button and eventually confirmed that lamp wasn’t working. He’d call maintenance.

So much for “vanting” to be alone! I was now waiting for maintenance, as well as housekeeping because when I checked in, the very thoughtful lady at the front desk took one look at my enormous belly and said, “When I was in your condition, I found the type of hard pillows the hotel provides highly uncomfortable. May I offer you some feather pillows?” I had to smile at her pregnancy euphemism: being in a “condition”. In some ways it sounded so Victorian and, in some ways, with all the glorious ailments that have been plaguing me (heartburn, indigestion, bloating, weight gain, shortness of breath) I honestly did feel as though I were in a “condition”. And yes, I would need those feather pillows in my “condition”, please.

While I was waiting for maintenance and housekeeping, I decided to fire up my Mac and start this blog. I had been assured that getting connected was fast and free and did not require an impossible combination of illogical letters and numbers as a password – all I needed was my surname and my room number. Something I thought even my technologically-challenged self would be able to cope with. But apparently not. After several attempts to go on-line, I kept getting a “back-end error” message. I suspected that this was not good. I called the lovely lady, Jacky, at the front desk.

“Oh yes,” she confirmed, “we’re off-line at the moment because the IT department in London is in the process of up-grading our line from 4 megabits per second to 10 megabits per second.”

Was I meant to be excited for them? Here I was, paying a small fortune for solitude, 300m from my home with its very own 10 Mb per second, uncapped ADSL line… It felt as though, after six months of fantasies, the universe was truly conspiring against me…

Jacky called back shortly afterwards asking me to try to connect to the internet again. I tried and failed. She then wanted to know what computer I was using. The “Aaaah…. I SEE…” response I got did not sound good either. Basically, it was my fault I was having trouble connecting with a Mac? Jacky then explained that whilst she would ordinarily love to send the technical guy up to my room to assist, it was a really busy time of night and could I perhaps come down? I pictured the scene in the lobby that I’d witnessed when I entered the hotel to check in. Having only ever been to this particular hotel during the day, it had escaped me that the bar was more or less positioned smack in the middle of the entrance. It was pumping with British-accented flight attendants and crew whom I knew were a primary target market for the hotel. (I had seen and overheard this crowd around the corner at Tashas enough times while The Princess was a babe in the pram and we practically spent our lives escaping to Tashas). I looked down at my newly purchased, breastfeeding-friendly, spotty pink and black pyjamas from Woolies and declined coming down to the front desk for technical assistance.

Then Maintenance arrived. The representative was charmingly honest. After a quick once-over, he confirmed that he couldn’t change the bulb in my desk lamp because the particular globes that these funky desk lamps required, were not available in South Africa. A minor oversight during the furniture and decor installation! Oops!

In the hotel’s defence, the Maintenance man very quickly replaced my lamp with a similar looking device. Perhaps this globe was one of the original imports from when the hotel opened for the World Cup in 2010? Nonetheless, the funky lamp now worked. And then through some fiddling around on my Mac, in my spotty pink and black PJ’s, this technologically challenged Mommy managed to connect to the Internet. Yeeha!

All sorted! Except for the feather pillows which hadn’t yet arrived. The problem was that by this stage it was 9:30pm and I couldn’t have cared if the pillows were made out of sand and the Internet had never been invented. I was ready to pass out.

My bladder woke me up at 02:30am with the imported desk lamp still burning, clutching a rock hard pillow to try and support my oversized belly.

And that is the story of my big night of “me-time”. Of course my internal mommy alarm and my squished bladder woke me up at 5:55 am this morning but the good news is that check-out time is 12pm and I don’t plan on getting out of my spotty pyjamas until then. Mmmm.