My Mother Thinks She Is Funnier Than She Really Is
My mother very nicely cooked a turkey dinner for my birthday celebration. She also got me a few tops as a present. Unfortunately, she bought them at a plus-sized boutique. Not a maternity boutique. While I actually am fat, I wanted to say to her, "look, lady, I'm not fat, I'm pregnant!" But, of course, I'm both. So, I told her I was going to look into getting a refund and buying actual maternity clothes in plus size at a different store. Lord knows I need a pair of pants and some undies!
But, this sort of demonstrates something about my mum. She is incredibly loving and generous, but sometimes she doesn't really think before she does something. Sometimes it is offering advice that was unsolicited and unwanted. She was trying to a helpful and loving mum but her effect is to make you mad at her. Sometimes she says something that she thinks is funny, but at the expense of someone else.
And that reminds me of the day I went into labour with Kieran.
My water broke at 9am. Around noon I made it in the midwife's office with my sister and husband and they verify, yup, that's amniotic fluid. Since I wasn't really dilated or effaced or anything, they recommended I go home and rest. At 5 pm they would have me to a non-stress test at the hospital, which basically meant I had to wear a monitor for 20 mins so they could see where the contractions were at.
This was at 36.6 wks, so they didn't want to let me go too long without delivering. Well, the contractions are tiny, weak little things and my midwife keeps saying that they aren't contractions and the OB on call says "let's just book an induction for 9am in case". I told the OB, "you don't need to bother, I know this baby is coming before that," and he looks at me like I'm a crazy lady. The midwife keeps looking at me with a sort of sweetly condescending look but I know what's going on in my body.
We go home where my sister tidies up my fantastically messy apartment (we were in the middle of putting three IKEA dressers together, so there is wood and tools and dust all over the living room!) and makes me a couple of microwave cannelloni. My mum arrives a little while later. Instead of resting, I'm so fantastically excited, I can't do anything but hang out in the kitchen gabbing with my mum and sister.
My mum starts to tell me about the day I was born. Feb 23, 1971. The night before there had been an ice storm and everything was covered by an inch thick layer of ice. She said that the trees and everything glittered so that the world looked like a fairy city. When she went into labor my dad was at work. She called her mother. After she arrived they decided, after talking to the OB, to head straight to the hospital.
My Granny called a cab and ran down the stairs to get into it. My parents lived in a second floor flat of a house and my mother was having a little trouble waddling down the long flight of stairs while contracting (she had a precipitously fast labour and was already at least 5 or 6 cm).
My Granny was at the door of the cab, impatient, not wanting the driver to wait long and shouted, "Run Donna! The cab is here!" My mother described feeling so angry at her mother that she could've throttled her! Imagine telling a woman in full labour to run for a taxi! Down a flight of stairs!
Fast forward to 2003. We all laugh heartily at this story and within a few hours I'm in a good strong labour pattern. I have to move, I can't sit and I can't talk through the contractions any more, except, of course, to yell at my husband, who decides to try to rub my hip as I try laying on my side on a bed, "Don't touch my ass! Don't touch my ass!" It wasn't a great position for me to be in.
After a few hours of standing and pacing and swaying and moaning like a deranged cow, we call a cab to the hospital. It's only a 10 minute walk from the house, but it's after midnight, and my mum and sister will continue past the hospital in the cab home.
Oh, and, did I mention, despite it's being the first week of April, there was a freak blizzard! We got a few feet of snow that day!
So, the cab arrives and, guess what, my spry mother is out by the cab well ahead of me. I was frantically trying to make sure I'd remembered everything (I didn't, I left the paperwork for admitting behind and my husband had to walk back home to get it while I stood in maternity trying not to panic and make it through active labour!). So, my sister is already in the cab, my mum has the door open and I'm waddling slowly out the front door and my mother yells, "Run Leanne! The cab is here!" and as if that wasn't bad enough, she starts cackling at her own joke, loving every ironic moment of it!
I finally got in the taxi, but couldn't even sit, I had to elevate my butt off the seat with my hands because it just hurt to put pressure on my butt/pelvis/cervix. I turned to mum as the taxi pulls away and say, in the deepest, growliest, we-are-definitely-not-amused voice I could muster, "It wasn't funny then and it isn't fucking funny now!"
My mum laughed and then cried, because, well, as long as your're not pregnant, it IS funny, but at the same time, just as her mum rode with her to the hospital in a taxi to the birth of the first child/grandchild of the family, so too was my mum taking her first born to the hospital to have her own first born child.
What a crazy, beautiful night!
Lucky for us, we shouldn't be needing any cabs for our July homebirth. And, I'm making sure I warn my mother well in advance to lay off the jokes if she wants to see her next grandchild born!
Check out Maya's Mom, the online community for parents and keep an eye out for their Blog Carnival. If you decide to join, let me know!
But, this sort of demonstrates something about my mum. She is incredibly loving and generous, but sometimes she doesn't really think before she does something. Sometimes it is offering advice that was unsolicited and unwanted. She was trying to a helpful and loving mum but her effect is to make you mad at her. Sometimes she says something that she thinks is funny, but at the expense of someone else.
And that reminds me of the day I went into labour with Kieran.
My water broke at 9am. Around noon I made it in the midwife's office with my sister and husband and they verify, yup, that's amniotic fluid. Since I wasn't really dilated or effaced or anything, they recommended I go home and rest. At 5 pm they would have me to a non-stress test at the hospital, which basically meant I had to wear a monitor for 20 mins so they could see where the contractions were at.
This was at 36.6 wks, so they didn't want to let me go too long without delivering. Well, the contractions are tiny, weak little things and my midwife keeps saying that they aren't contractions and the OB on call says "let's just book an induction for 9am in case". I told the OB, "you don't need to bother, I know this baby is coming before that," and he looks at me like I'm a crazy lady. The midwife keeps looking at me with a sort of sweetly condescending look but I know what's going on in my body.
We go home where my sister tidies up my fantastically messy apartment (we were in the middle of putting three IKEA dressers together, so there is wood and tools and dust all over the living room!) and makes me a couple of microwave cannelloni. My mum arrives a little while later. Instead of resting, I'm so fantastically excited, I can't do anything but hang out in the kitchen gabbing with my mum and sister.
My mum starts to tell me about the day I was born. Feb 23, 1971. The night before there had been an ice storm and everything was covered by an inch thick layer of ice. She said that the trees and everything glittered so that the world looked like a fairy city. When she went into labor my dad was at work. She called her mother. After she arrived they decided, after talking to the OB, to head straight to the hospital.
My Granny called a cab and ran down the stairs to get into it. My parents lived in a second floor flat of a house and my mother was having a little trouble waddling down the long flight of stairs while contracting (she had a precipitously fast labour and was already at least 5 or 6 cm).
My Granny was at the door of the cab, impatient, not wanting the driver to wait long and shouted, "Run Donna! The cab is here!" My mother described feeling so angry at her mother that she could've throttled her! Imagine telling a woman in full labour to run for a taxi! Down a flight of stairs!
Fast forward to 2003. We all laugh heartily at this story and within a few hours I'm in a good strong labour pattern. I have to move, I can't sit and I can't talk through the contractions any more, except, of course, to yell at my husband, who decides to try to rub my hip as I try laying on my side on a bed, "Don't touch my ass! Don't touch my ass!" It wasn't a great position for me to be in.
After a few hours of standing and pacing and swaying and moaning like a deranged cow, we call a cab to the hospital. It's only a 10 minute walk from the house, but it's after midnight, and my mum and sister will continue past the hospital in the cab home.
Oh, and, did I mention, despite it's being the first week of April, there was a freak blizzard! We got a few feet of snow that day!
So, the cab arrives and, guess what, my spry mother is out by the cab well ahead of me. I was frantically trying to make sure I'd remembered everything (I didn't, I left the paperwork for admitting behind and my husband had to walk back home to get it while I stood in maternity trying not to panic and make it through active labour!). So, my sister is already in the cab, my mum has the door open and I'm waddling slowly out the front door and my mother yells, "Run Leanne! The cab is here!" and as if that wasn't bad enough, she starts cackling at her own joke, loving every ironic moment of it!
I finally got in the taxi, but couldn't even sit, I had to elevate my butt off the seat with my hands because it just hurt to put pressure on my butt/pelvis/cervix. I turned to mum as the taxi pulls away and say, in the deepest, growliest, we-are-definitely-not-amused voice I could muster, "It wasn't funny then and it isn't fucking funny now!"
My mum laughed and then cried, because, well, as long as your're not pregnant, it IS funny, but at the same time, just as her mum rode with her to the hospital in a taxi to the birth of the first child/grandchild of the family, so too was my mum taking her first born to the hospital to have her own first born child.
What a crazy, beautiful night!
Lucky for us, we shouldn't be needing any cabs for our July homebirth. And, I'm making sure I warn my mother well in advance to lay off the jokes if she wants to see her next grandchild born!
Check out Maya's Mom, the online community for parents and keep an eye out for their Blog Carnival. If you decide to join, let me know!
posted by mamaloo at 1:48 PM
1 Comments:
Im sorry I just had to laugh at that run through of the story of your first delivery. How much of a Mom thing is that!
I wish my mom could have been with me when I had my kids, but ( I think fortunately) she is a good few thousand miles away, LOL. My sister gets to have her there for deliveries.
Hope you get hot water soon!
K
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