Letting it all out

Something distressing happened last Thursday.  Our four and a half year old had a major melt down. It was the first one in quite a while.  We had been free of them, or that should be, he had been free of them for a long time but something set him off that day.    It may not sound like a lot but for those of you who have witnessed your child throwing the mother of all tantrums, you get what I mean.  Everyone is left exhausted and upset in the aftermath, least of all the tantrum thrower themselves.  The outburst was over something so simple and small I can't remember what it was but there was hot chocolate, a biscuit and a seating arrangement.      Although naturally it wasn’t small and simple to him, otherwise he wouldn’t have felt the need to vent so strongly.  I managed to diffuse the situation by distraction.  I showed him the pictures of the rented house on the beach we are going to in a few weeks. Unfortunately, his big brother was very enthusiastic and put his head in front of the computer screen to have a better look and things escalated again.   It was awful.  He screamed and roared, sobbed, bawled and snotted everywhere that he couldn't see the pictures. His brothers looked on in alarm and one of them even clamped his hands over his ears in an effort to drown out the noise.  I was shaking with the uselessness of it all.  There was no talking to him, no calming him down. He slammed doors, screamed and howled some more and threw things about in his fit of rage and frustration. He hated me and everything and everyone.   After it all he sat there sucking his thumb with a big red, shiny swollen face on him, his face still looking like thunder.  I wanted to hug him and I wanted to shake him.  I knew if I approached him too soon, it would only enrage him further so I sat there and waited.  He is extremely head strong, stubborn and at the same time, quite sensitive.  During that rampage, I saw him as a fifteen year old and it frightened the jeebus out of me.   He is starting school in September and as a baby, it took him months to settle into crèche. He was only there for a couple of hours each morning (it's his aunty’s crèche so he was with family!) and he would exhaust himself by crying so hard that he would crawl around looking for a beanbag in which to collapse and fall asleep. He had his hour in Big School two weeks back and was so quiet and shy I saw a different boy altogether.   At this stage his brothers had left the room and he was sitting on the chair at the end of the table. I went over, knelt down and gave him a hug. I asked him were we friends and he resisted a little bit but didn't pull away. I took this as a good sign and hugged him a little bit more.  I chanced getting rejected altogether and I told him I loved him and I know it's very hard sometimes.  No reaction which encouraged me and I kept hugging him and rubbing his back.  After a while he put his head on my shoulder and I decided to go for broke.  When all else fails in our house, toilet humour is your best bet so I unleashed my inner Dumb and Dumber comedian.   I was halfway through my bad taste joke and as soon as he heard the word “poo” I could feel him smile against my shoulder. I shed a little tear then I'll admit, from relief and realising I, too, was jaded after the showdown. I picked him up. The skinny little body of him!  The baby had just woken up so I carried my boy down to the bedroom.   I put him in my bed and covered him up. He began to talk to me about his various cuts and bruises and I listened for the umpteenth time as he showed me a scar on his hand from an old accident.  Something was ringing in my head.  His chat was so banal yet so telling.  He had my full and undivided attention and he was making the most of it, by any means.  The baby was bouncing around in his cot behind us, eager to be free of its confines but I remained concentrated on the small boy tucked up in my bed.  His chatter wasn’t important; I think he knew that too, it was more that he had me, all to himself, for that minute.  I felt like shit.   I always feel like shit simply because I haven't got the time to spend one on one quality time with them all. I love that they are all so close in age.   I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, do it any other way.  But a direct hard hitting down side is that the stages and phases are very close together. One of them stops roaring and another will start.  It's exhausting.     He’s a spirited boy, but it doesn’t mean he needs to be “handled” a certain way.  I took a long hard look at the situation that day.  That evening, Mister Husband had a late appointment and he took Iarla with him.  On their return, it was clarified that yes, all he wants is a little attention.  Again, the chatter from the boy to and from the meeting was repetitive but he was making full and proper use of there not being any competition from his brothers.  I spent a little time sitting on the side of his bed at bedtime, just listening to him babble on.  The same stuff he had already told me a couple of times that day.  My heart was breaking for him.  It was so obvious, so patently clear how ignored he had been feeling.  The bad form he had been in the grip of for the last few weeks was his way of vocalising his needs and I neither listened to him nor heard him.  I berated myself and for good reason.  It’s not ok to say and believe there are not enough hours in the day to tend to your child’s needs.  It is much easier to catch a problem, any problem, and nip it in the bud than wait till the matter develops to such an extent it spirals out of control.  I don’t think I am being too hard on myself over this, I think I needed that little wake up call.  One of my boys was floundering; thoughts of Big School were playing heavily on his mind, he was feeling a bit swamped by the natural capabilities of his older brother and ignored due to the primary needs of his two younger ones.  It was easier for me to tend to them and instruct Iarla to watch telly or read a book whilst I did so.  I took advantage of knowing that he would give up after a while and go off by himself.  Not good enough.  Not one bit good enough.  I see an improvement already.  A reaping of the rewards of that tiny little extra bit of time I spend with him at bed time.  That first night, I let him chatter on until he literally had no words left.  I tucked him in and gave him his Monster Kiss (our boys believe a monster kiss on the forehead keeps bad dreams at bay) had a little joke with him and finished up by telling him that I loved him very much.  The next morning, he sneaked into the bed beside me bright and early.  It had been his habit of late to crawl in beside his daddy.  Skinny little arms went around my neck and he tightened them as hard as he could, saying he remembered me telling him that I loved him the night before.  I don’t know how I didn’t bawl into the pillow.  I have made it a priority to spend that bit of time with him before he falls asleep now.  During the day when he approaches me with any one of his many thoughts, requests and Show and Tells, I take the time to stop whatever it is I am doing, turn to look at him and listen.  Even if I just repeat what he has said to me, and nothing else, he is happy and satisfied that he has been heard and more importantly, his needs have been acknowledged and met. The spontaneous hugs he used to give me, the ones that had had dried up without my even noticing, are back and being doled out regularly once more.  My head and heart are light again.

I Swear, Therefore I Am

Foul language is the mark of the uneducated,

The ones who didn’t persevere. 

Whilst the educated stuck it

To avoid obscenities like fuck it,

From the learned, oh fiddlesticks is all you will hear.

At the time of writing this, Screecher Creature No. 3 was shouting “bollix, bollix, bollix” over and over again.  I have often caught him swearing at a toy, calling it an “effin’ yoke.”  Insert full and proper obscenity here.  I do it myself.  When I hear something I like, I tend to retain it but once I repeat it back, it’s gone.  Whoosh!  Out of my head, never to be thought of again.  I wish Screecher Creature No. 3 would forget his expletives as soon as he uses them. Kids are like sponges, or so I’ve read often enough.  They will soak up everything, oblivious to the appropriateness of whatever it is they have just heard, and spit it back out again.   Apparently when I was three or four, my father had me spell the poo word for a friend of his.  Outside the church of all places.  It was received with great merriment.  When I was a lot older, to know better at least, I told my mother where to go by writing it on a blackboard.  I cannot recall the crime that was committed against me that drove me to do it, and allow her to see it in retaliation, but I do remember getting a wallop for my efforts (my mother has mellowed a lot since) and sent to bed.  If I hark back, it was a bright Summers evening and after about a half hour or so, by my reckoning, I crept out of the bed thinking all would have been forgiven. I got another crack for myself and was sent straight back to the scratcher.  Right now I am ignoring Screecher Creature No. 3 in the hope that he stops swearing or at least takes it down a notch and doesn’t waken his sleeping baby brother.  (I need to get this done.  I haven’t time to discipline.)  I swear myself sometimes.  I admit it.  I probably do it a lot more than is strictly necessary.  Oh alright then, I definitely do it a lot more than is strictly necessary.  I get great liberation from it.  I tend to get colourful when I’m cross, when I feel passionate about something and when I drop things.   I didn’t always do this.  At least I don’t think I did.  I remember working for a female boss who swore like a trooper.  It shocked me.  Probably because it was my first proper job outside my home town and up until then, employers always behaved and spoke professionally.  I didn’t know how to take this profanity liking woman.  She admitted that her husband hated her swearing.  Hated it but she got great release from it.  I get that now.  Mister Husband doesn’t like me swearing either but *whispers* he should talk.  Bland outbursts like “sausages” “sugar” and “fiddlesticks” just don’t cut it for me. Only a full on hard core expletive will do the job.  I’m not Quentin Tarantino now or anything, I do have a cut- off point; I just have to find it is all.  In fairness to the Screechers, for boys who are exposed to their fair share of bad words, they don’t indulge themselves.  It is just Screecher Creature No. 3 who gets colourful on occasion which is a good thing because usually I can’t help grinning when he gets vocally artistic. Yes, they call each other “stoopid,” and “dumbass” has been used on occasion.  Those fekin American cartoons!  “Poopy head” is one that is guaranteed to be followed by howls of hysterical laughter.   I always pull them up when they insult each other.  Telling someone they are stupid, in my opinion, is worse than swearing.  A cuss word is, after all, just a word, but an insult has real power to hurt and scar.  I feel there is a big difference between selectively ignoring the odd four letter word and not getting shirty with them when they disrespect each other.  Screecher Creature No. 3 really is just repeating what he has heard so it is up to me, his teacher, to make a conscious effort to cut back on the profanities.  I’ll try to keep them in my head now but like a lot of things these days, sometimes they just escape!   

A Gentle Reminder

I am due to have a womanly examination next month. I am neither looking forward to it nor am I dreading it.  It simply has to be done.  It takes literally a couple of minutes and it could save my life.  It is a smear or Pap test.  This is the light scraping of cells from my cervix, a painless procedure even if it does involve “sticking my bum in someone’s face” which will then be sent to a laboratory to determine whether the cells are normal or not.  It is recommended that women aged 25 to 44 have this test every three years and women aged 45 to 60 every five years.  Regardless of age however, once a woman has her first test, she needs to have two normal results before she can move onto the five year test.  This time frame will obviously change if abnormal cells are detected in the meantime.   So that’s one slightly uncomfortable and undignified two minute test every few years to keep you healthy.  What could be less time consuming?  It takes longer to brush your teeth.  If you’re brushing them properly.  The reassuring thing about cervical cancer is; it is one of the good cancers to have.  If there is such a thing as a good cancer to get.  I hear that a lot lately and I wonder who are they trying to kid.  Personally I don’t care how good or bad a cancer is; cancer is still cancer and if there is a way to significantly increase my chances of remaining cancer free, I will do it.  Quitting the smokes is one way of reducing that risk.  But giving up the habit also significantly reduces every other cancer risk as well so you are onto a winner immediately.  See your GP straight away if there are any changes in your cervix.  You will know because you may have bleeding or spotting at irregular intervals. And the best way of all to reduce the risk is go for those regular smear tests.  I keep repeating this. I don’t think you can say it often enough.  It’s important that people are getting the message because I know there are plenty of women who avoid going for this test.  They go out of their way to avoid it.  I know of someone who changes their doctor every three years or when the doctor starts pressuring them to have the test, whichever happens first.  They reckon they are too squeamish.  Cancer doesn’t know or care what squeamish is.  I know a mother of two who has never had this test done.  Ever.  They may even have said they just never got around to it.  Cancer doesn’t give a toss about your timetable either. There are younger people out there, in their twenties, who are of the opinion that being in your twenties is enough to protect you.  They are not in the “risk” category, apparently.  Cervical cancer isn’t fussy whether you lost your virginity at 15 or 35.  Once you are sexually active, you are “at risk.”     Cervical cells change so slowly and take so long develop which makes it a preventable disease.  Once you go for the test that is.   This is why a test is required only every couple of years.  That’s how leisurely it is.  All the same, it is the second most common form of female cancer in Europe.  It is also worth noting that if a family member has abnormal test results, i.e. has been found to have cancerous cells; this does not mean that your chances are increased.  In other words, cervical cancer does not run in families.  This test is free.  If you received an offer from your car dealership, optician or even your dentist, offering you, free of charge, a full road test, a complete eye exam or a dental clean, would you turn them down?  Would you drive your car if the tyres were bald?  What about with broken wipers on a wet day?  Would you let your child out on his bike if the brakes were dodgy?  Yes, you have to go in, drop your drawers whilst grinning (or maybe not!) and bearing it for a couple of minutes for an intimate examination.  I can think of better and nicer things I would rather do as well, but I’ve had enough of these tests done now to know how quick the procedure is.  We owe it to ourselves to have this test.  We owe it to our kids.  Cervical cancer may be an easy one to “catch” and treat but if it’s the one that we let get away, it can and will kill us.  Our kids will be without their mother.  And all because we didn’t find the time, we were too squeamish or were of the opinion that it won’t happen to us.  It can and it could!  Please, do you and yours a favour today; research www.cervicalcheck.ie for more details on cervical screening.  Once you are registered they will even send you out a reminder for future checks.   It will also show you where you can go for this test if you don’t want to visit your family GP, the one that has known you since you were in nappies.  I know they’ve “seen it all before” but if they haven’t seen yours nor do you want them to, that’s fair enough. Go somewhere else.  Anywhere else.  Just go!

Group Therapy

My name is Gwen and I am the mother of four gorgeous Screecher Creature boys who have inspired me to write a blog called www.wonderfulwagon.com documenting our adventures together, breastfeeding and otherwise. They stretch my patience to the limit every day and also my love.  Thankfully though, my love for them has no limits.  Having said that, we all need a little respite now and again and what better way to get that then by meeting up with a group of like-minded contemporaries.  So I was delighted to see such a group -  Cuidiu - ICT Breastfeeding Support Group being set up in my hometown, Athy, Co. Kildare.   I am fortunate to have enjoyed a very successful and wonderful breastfeeding relationship with my three older boys and the same was proving to be the case with my then three month old.  Being totally honest, I went along to the group that first week mostly out of curiosity.  You see, I “knew” Angela from an Irish parenting website and welcomed the opportunity to meet her in person.  That was a year ago and I can again, honestly say, her group is one of the highlights of my week.  It has grown from strength to strength and many of those ladies and their babies, who then ranged from 6 weeks old to one year, are not strangers with odd usernames on rollercoaster.ie anymore, but friends.   Our newborn babies, and indeed toddlers, have grown together.  We have shared the first smiles, first teeth, baby led weaning tips and stories, that all important and very exciting first step, plus the trials and tribulations of breastfeeding our older children.  For we are all “still” breastfeeding our babies and one or two are “still” very much enjoying sharing that closeness with their older children.  None of us have plans to stop any time soon.    From the very beginning Angela’s group has been a great success.  I have seen new first time mothers walk through Angela’s door with various problems borne from conflicting information received in the hospital, mothers with babies who were slow to gain weight, those with a poor latch and a baby who was born early.  There have been mothers who experienced traumatic births but nevertheless sailed through breastfeeding their older child, and then suddenly found themselves experiencing an unexpected problem feeding their new baby.  I saw Angela help and assist them all.  Tirelessly.  I salute each and every woman who has taken it upon themselves to create breastfeeding groups in local communities, whether they have 15 members or 100 members.  I believe such groups serve a dual purpose; they are there to offer a helping hand and to assist mothers with their breastfeeding journey but they are also a wonderful chance for me, and I am sure lots of other mothers across the country, to be in the company of like-minded parents.    It is an opportunity for me to be social and helps me escape the confines of the house with three small children until school is out and the oldest boy returns home. If I am of a mind I will wear a bit of make-up, maybe even brush my hair before going and make sure my shoes match.  The boys, for I don’t travel alone, also enjoy this break from the norm and I am sure, even though they are not fully aware of it, appreciate their new and energised mother afterwards, thanks to the company and the chat.     I am of the strong opinion that such gatherings, be they mother and toddler groups or breast feeding groups, are very important for those of us who are not in the vicinity of water coolers in an office environment anymore thus cannot avail of the social outlet they provide.  A vomiting bug visited our house in May and I was unable to attend my beloved Group.  If there was any doubt in my mind about my attachment to it, (there wasn’t) missing it that week only proved to me how invaluable that weekly contact with Angela and the other ladies is.  And, it has to be said, it’s the best cup of coffee all week!