Speaker’s corner
ONE day I went for a walk around my suburban stockade to check up on the garrison and partly to exercise my daughter’s Maltese dog that has long been foisted upon us these many years. The dog, still clean and fluffy from the dry cleaners, had a silly blue ribbon attached to its ear but, fortunately, I have trained it to trot well behind me so that people do not realise it has anything to do with me. Real men have rottweilers.
A couple who live up the road against the western ramparts came past wheeling a pram containing a baby far too small to have been theirs for they were beyond two score years and ten. It was, they explained, their daughter’s child – or, to be precise, their daughter’s second child. The significance of it being the “second” child was that there was no way their daughter would have entrusted them, or anybody else, with their firstborn.
New parents are like that. One is trusted as a grandparent only after the birth of the second child. Then, boy are you popular!
As one of my readers wrote a few days ago, “Being a parent changes everything. But being a parent also changes with each baby.” Your Clothes: 1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as the pregnancy is confirmed.
2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.
3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes. Preparing for the birth 1st: You practise your breathing religiously. 2nd: You don’t bother practising because, last time, breathing didn’t do a thing.
3rd: You ask for an epidural in your eighth month. The nursery 1st: You pre-wash your new-born’s clothes, colour-co-ordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby’s chest of drawers.
2nd: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and chuck out only the ones with the darkest stains. 3rd: Boys can wear pink, can’t they? Worries 1st: At the first sign of distress – a whimper, a frown – you pick up the baby.
2nd: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.
3rd: You teach your 3-year-old how to shove the dummy in. The dummy 1st: If the dummy falls on the floor, you put it away until you can boil it.
2nd: If it falls on the floor you clean it off with juice from the baby’s bottle. 3rd: You wipe it on your sleeve. Nappies 1st: You change them every hour. 2nd: You change them every two to three hours, if needed.
3rd: You change them only when people complain of the smell or they sag from weight. At Home 1st: You spend a good part of every day just gazing at the baby.
2nd: You spend a part of each day watching that your older child isn’t sitting on it.
3rd: You spend a lot of time hiding from the children. Swallowing coins 1st: When your first child swallows a coin, you rush it to hospital for X-rays.
2nd: When your second child swallows a coin, you watch for it to pass.
3rd: When third child swallows a coin you deduct it from its allowance.
After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin.
Finally, she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say in a trembling voice, “Who was THAT?”