Christmas, wrapping paper, and why Santa gets too much praise...

Christmas is coming and I am still fat.  In spite of my best efforts, there is still too much of me and those slinky numbers which hang, corpse-like, in my wardrobe remain as strangers. Of course there’s not much hope of anything changing until January at this stage as the season of overindulgence beckons.

I do love Christmas, or the feelings and memories the season evokes. A time when, even in the desert, we can pretend we live in Dickensian London -of course sidestepping the fact that life at that time was actually nasty, brutish and short- instead believing that tartan is a good choice for the living room and fake garlands are a tasteful addition to the staircase banister.

It’s also a time of shameless over-spending in a manner which would make even Paris Hilton blush; of throwing things into our trolley’s, virtual or otherwise, without stopping to analyse the long term benefits of such items as a set of bath towels with snowmen on them or a family set of matching reindeer pyjamas (yes, such a thing exists and yes, I must admit I was very tempted).

Ah yes, I love it! Every year I insist to DH that I need at least one Christmas party dress even though we never get invited to any actual parties.  This year we're holding a party in the house which I have grandly entitled a 'Mulled wine and mince pie' party, which basically means that on arrival my guests will be offered a glass of gluwine and a mince pie: my duties as a hostess complete, I can get on and enjoy the rest of the night.

In fact, the only Christmas party I’ve been invited to since I got to the Middle East was DH’s work party at the Hilton in Abu Dhabi, the first year we were here. We were very excited about this party as his employer had organised a suite in the hotel for us, we had a babysitter booked to the room, a new dress from Reiss was purchased for me, and we were good to go.

When we got down to the party room we were dismayed to realise that since his company were a Saudi company, there was no alcohol being served -( isn't a non-alcoholic Christmas party an oxymoron?)

To make matters worse, the lights were on full so it felt a bit like a daytime convention.  It’s one thing to sit there wearing a party dress and a silly hat if everyone is half-cut on mulled-wine, but quite another to sit there under the glare of the overhead lights sober as a judge.

Sitting at a table surrounded by some very nice Muslim men and women, I attempted to start a debate about the relevance of the hijab in modern society but since this failed to stir up much dialogue I dropped the subject, grabbing a passing waiter instead, in the hope of a clandestine drink for DH and me.

Luckily he was amenable to this as long as we were discreet – turns out there were discreet people dotted all over the room. However, discretion gets trickier as the drinks go down and by the time a Malaysian guy on the next table started sculling brandy from the neck of a bottle, trying to hide our glasses of wine seemed a tad unnecessary.

I ended up on the dance floor believing I was Olivia Newton-John to DH’s John Travolta while the sobre on-lookers made their excuses and left.  Oddly enough, that was the last time his employer held a Christmas party.

This year we’re staying put in the UAE. Last year we went home to Ireland but it was too expensive and too cold and frankly it took about five minutes to say hello to all the people I wanted to say hello to, after which we were just filling in the time eating, drinking and buying clothes which would be totally unsuitable once our two week trip was at an end.

On Christmas eve I made the mistake of visiting my sister for ‘a drink’ before going home to do some serious gift wrapping.  I was shaken awake at two in the morning by a pleading DH

-‘please wake up, I’ve got two dozen toys here which all need wrapping and I can’t do it alone’.

-‘What?  What time is it?  How did we get home?’ I was completely disoriented.

-‘You and your sister got drunk – difference is, she’s already done all her wrapping!’ (my sister is the sort of drinking companion who insists on topping up your glass the second it becomes half-empty!)

I stumbled out, helped wrap a couple of toys then decided that this year Santa Claus was trying to be environmentally friendly and was not using wrapping paper.  Throwing the pile of toys under the tree, I staggered back to bed.  The following morning it was a bit of a free-for-all as the children scrambled under the tree for their toys.

Fortunately with three boys, the gifts were pretty much interchangeable so they didn't mind too much; and my daughter easily deduced that if it was pink, it was for her. All the while I sat there, hungover and shame-faced,  while DH glared at me accusingly.  He will never let me live it down.

It was a lesson learned – this year I’m wrapping as I go; although hiding the presents as they come in to the house is proving to be a tad difficult.  We had a baby-swing hiding in the back of the car the other day:  DH was hoping to smuggle it in while the children were asleep; but alas, it was spotted by my helpful and curious six year old while he played outside.

I was out at the time but received a call from DH who was obviously surrounded by a gaggle of children-

-‘You’ll never guess who’s visited early’ he began.

-‘Huh?’

-‘Santa has left a baby swing...hasn’t he kids...in the car...would you believe it?’

-‘Wow, that was early’ I countered.

-‘Yes, he must have meant for it to be an early Christmas present....now he’ll have to get the baby something else for Christmas day (code for- 'get something while you're out')’

Santa Claus is an expensive and praise-sapping scene-stealer, greedily pinching the credit for all the hard work that us parents put in, during the run up to Christmas, for himself. Where else in life would you put a ton of work, time and money into something and then turn around and happily attribute all praise to some mythical creature? Madness!

As is the birthday fairy, another fictitious character invented by my sister, who takes full credit for anything she buys her children for their birthdays, and one that I foolishly adopted for my own children.  On more than one occasion the birthday boy or girl has ripped open their birthday present- kindly left over-night from the birthday fairy-  turned to me and quietly asked ‘and what did you get me for my birthday mum?’

Mind you, they are becoming suspicious of Santa Claus as they get older, so when eight year old boy quizzed me the other day, I must admit I struggled to come up with an answer –

-‘Mum, do the Muslim kids get presents from Santa?’

-‘Err, no, they don’t, they get their presents at Eid’

-‘And Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, do they?’

-‘Err, no, they don’t, they have Hannukah’

-‘So who has Christmas then?’

-‘Well, Christians do....’ (I could see where this was going)

-‘Are we Christians mum?’

-‘Well, no, we’re not anything’

-‘So why does Santa come to us?’

-‘Umm, well, it’s a good thing you asked (thinking rapidly) .... he comes to us because my parents were Christians so we’re still on his list’ (phew!)

Thankfully he accepted my explanation and wandered off.

And now I must finish....there are gifts to wrap, wine to mull, pies to mince and party dresses to try on.... don't you just love it!

An atheists guide to free speech : Don't do it!

Warning: I get a little bit serious in this post but stay with me dear reader, I promise a return to trivial drivel next time...

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but a keyboard is nothing against someone with a grudge (and just on that, if someone is coming at you wielding a samurai sword, I really don't think writing 'don't kill me' on a piece of paper is going to stop him in his murderous tracks).

To explain: someone recently posted a clip on an expat women’s chat forum, of a TV interview with an Imam in Yemen (or Qatar…somewhere in the middle east). In it he explains the rules surrounding the beating of ones wife. Believe it or not there are guidelines; no bones must be broken, blood must not be drawn and the stick must be of a certain width and length. He also went on to explain how this method of discipline can only be used in one specific circumstance: if said wife refuses to sleep with her husband. However, this must only be used as a last resort after all other avenues, such as threats, have been explored.

The clip sparked much debate on the forum: on the one side were the Western-educated feminists who voiced their disgust at the idea of women being beaten at all in this day and age, that such an activity was tantamount to marital rape and that it was time that countries such as Yemen moved into the modern age.

On the other side, Muslim women came in and argued that the translation of the TV show (which was in Arabic with English subtitles) was questionable, that it was extremist and circulated on the likes of You Tube purely to stir up anti-Islamic sentiment and that wife-beating was not part of the normal marriage contract in the average Muslim marriage.

Most agreed that both arguments had merit, and in fact weren’t mutually exclusive - and personally I didn’t doubt that the interview was designed purely to portray the Imam as an anachronistic, misogynistic dinosaur. And to this end it achieved its goal.

After reading several pages of debate on the chat forum I tired of the same argument spinning around and around and decided to post a comment myself- something along the lines of ‘it is ridiculous to base your life today, including how to go about beating your wife, on ancient scripture of dubious origins’ – a basic atheistic argument I think it is safe to say. My comment was belligerent and inflammatory but I was irked that the issue was being debated as if it were rational to begin with.

Following these comments I received a threatening message from one of the forum members – someone who had created a new identity purely to make these threats – along the lines of ‘I know who you are, I know your full name, I will report you to the UAE authorities for making such a statement unless you apologise and withdraw the comments’ along with some other accusatory words.  The poster was called 'Hitch'* and I did wonder initially if it was some joker, cleverly using a nickname referring to the notorious atheist Christopher Hitchens, who was trying to spook me.  It quickly became apparent that this was no joker.

I didn’t apologise for the comment, just for the offense caused to the individual; going on to paraphrase the famous quote that I respected this persons religion in the same way I respected his right to believe his wife was beautiful and his children brilliant; but I did remove the offending words, leaving just the gist of the argument on the thread. However, this wasn’t enough for this individual who later informed me that they had reported me to Etisalat, the main UAE communications provider, that I had brought this down on my own head and I deserved everything I got.

Belligerently I pointed out that Etisalat can’t even get e-Life to work in my house so I wasn’t going to get too upset! However, within a day my internet had stopped working and I’m sitting in Caffe Nero as I type.

Now, I have a big mouth and it has gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion, but this time I was genuinely thrown by the menacing tone of the messages sent by my accuser and the implicit threat contained within.

This individual obviously considered themselves devout and felt the need to defend their faith in the face of atheistic and (as they saw it) disrespectful comments. However, their threatening manner and nasty tone spoke, not of religious fervour and piety, but of intolerance and vindictiveness and a need to inflict a punishment on me for voicing my opinions. Since I make no secret of my identity on this forum, I was genuinely afraid of what this person was capable of.

As an atheist I have a problem with anyone using ancient scripts as a basis for modern life - growing up as a catholic taught me how hypocritical and arbitrary religion can be - it might not be a palatable opinion to many, but it is just my opinion and if it means I’ll burn in hell for all eternity, well, I’ll take my chances.

I’m not stupid; I understand the need to be careful with ones comments in a Muslim country. I understand the need to show respect where appropriate, but I do believe that a chat forum, this one in particular, where strong opinions are the norm and where people- mainly articulate and educated expats (along with a minority of interesting and educated locals and Muslims from neighbouring countries)- come to discuss everything from where to buy curtains to the great cultural and religious questions which inevitably present themselves as part of the thinking-expat life, is not the place to be policed.

Clearly if I were writing to a national newspaper these comments would not find themselves on to the pages, but a chat forum is for the entire world to see and can't be confined to just one geographical place, and to this end I feel that it should be free to voice opinions of all kinds as long as nobody is being hurt or exploited.

It could be argued that my words did hurt some of the members of the forum and to this I say -that is the beauty of a forum, members are free to express their hurt or annoyance by adding their own comment, by shooting down mine (and many of the members on the forum are more than capable of doing so and do regularly).

You can learn a lot from some of these discussions, as indeed I have during my two and half years in this country, but there is nothing to learn if we are all silenced for fear of offending or worse, being threatened by the authorities. And like me, there are many expat women here who aren't interested in a life consisting solely of manicures and champagne brunches, but who want to learn about the different cultures around them, and to ask questions, and yes, sometimes, disagree and give unpalatable opinions.

The experience has shaken me a little, made me think twice about what I say in the future (a wish granted to my accuser) and perhaps made me a little wiser. I’ve chosen to write about this on my blog because I didn’t want to pretend it didn't happen, because I know I made a mistake, because it’s a lesson learned and is one more reason to appreciate the country I come from -- however troubled at present -- where free speech and strong opinions are at the very core of who we are and won't be silenced by threats.

*Turns out this individual was a director of a prominent university in Abu Dhabi, one would wonder what he was doing trawling an expat women's forum in the first place.

Boy-racers, B&Q and Barracuda....

You'd have to be living under a rock in the desert to be unaware of how dangerous it is to drive here in the UAE.  On the drive from RAK to Dubai, the side of the road is literally strewn with burned- out tyres and car parts and you're guaranteed to spot at least one major accident on any journey lasting longer than half an hour. 

It's a topic which occupies much headline space and even has its own facebook group 'if you can drive in the UAE you can drive anywhere'.  I joined this group, not because it was going to achieve anything (much like 'liking' a group called 'murder is wrong' isn't going to throw potential murderers into a moral dilemma and stop them in their murderous tracks) but because it creates a sense of belonging among a small, marginalised minority- i.e. those people in this country who can actually drive.

As I see it, the problem lies with two distinct groups- i) those who seem to have no idea how to take a left hand turn, join a roundabout or enter a junction, driving around in 20 year old jalopies crammed to capacity and ii) those young indigenous males - boy racers if you will -who are under the impression that aggressive speeding equates to large genitalia.

Without doubt the latter group are the most annoying and dangerous.  Nothing is more likely to send me careering into a motorway barrier than a glance in the rear-view mirror at the sudden sight of a large white Landcruiser hurtling towards me at 180km per hour, lights flashing, horn beeping, screaming at me to get the hell out the way like some mechanical monster. 

With a jolt you realise that it's either move or die as these idiots are quite mad enough to plough into the back of you just to prove a point.  Of course, congenitally truculent, I have on occasion refused to move; righteous in the knowledge that I am in fact observing the speed limit and that if the demented idiot behind me is in such a rush to get to Starbucks then he'd better go around me.  That just makes them madder, resulting in said car attempting to overtake on the left hand side.

Personally I think the problem could be solved by B&Q- the DIY Superstore- setting up shop here in the UAE.  Men are essentially cavemen and as such are competitive, goal-driven providers.  These traits are usually expressed via work, sport or DIY but I'm willing to bet that the majority of these road-pests are lacking these elements to their lives; ergo the only arena they have to express their inner alpha-male is on the roads.  Were they forced to spend their weekends tiling the bathroom floor or laying a deck, it's feasible that they'd be transformed into pussycats once they got behind the wheel. 

Of course, I'm being simplistic; culture is a difficult thing to change which is why my above solution wouldn't actually work.  The culture of servants (slaves?) here is something that isn't going to change any time soon so it is unlikely that the average young man is about to spend an afternoon putting up shelves in the living room when he has a servant to do the task for him.

Similarly, the average young mother will have at least one nanny to take care of her children (it's not unusual to see two nannies for two children) which is why a university in Ajman has recently offered a new four-year degree- programme in 'the mothering profession' which claims to cover everything from women's rights (importantish) to pedicures (priority).

Many of these women have been raised by nannies themselves which means that they have no experience of what a mother actually does.  The course aims to equip them to take care of their own children, something which is practically unheard of in this neck of the woods for certain nationalities.

Of course, it's an interesting question - 'can mothering (or slightly more PC - parenting) be taught?'  Parenting books are big business these days and there is a culture of fear surrounding parenting where common sense and instinct seems to have been replaced with theoretical models and psychobabble. 

I remember getting home from the hospital after my daughter was born and feeling overwhelmed by the task in hand.  'What should I do?' I wondered as I stood in my living room and looked around me.  I was pretty sure I was supposed to be super-stressed, exhausted and constantly busy but as I looked at the little girl asleep in her crib I realised that there was nothing to do but wait for her wake up. 

Had I read all the parenting literature I'm sure I would have been panicking about her next feed, her weight, her temperature.  As it was, we spent the mornings walking to the village to buy milk and glossy magazines and the afternoons snoozing in front of Judge Judy.  Ah happy times....

And finally...

I finally paid a visit to the famous 'Barracuda'- the massive off-license situated in Umm Al Qawainn. I'm still reeling from the fact that I've lived ten minutes away from it for over a year and yet never bothered to check it out. It's magic! As I wandered around filling my trolley I was overcome with a feeling of contentment and belonging and found myself smiling conspiratorially with the other customers 'isn't this a wonderful find?' I wanted to confide but nobody else seemed as impressed as I was.

Like a child in a sweet shop I dashed from aisle to aisle holding items aloft and yelling to DH 'hey, four litres of wine for 70 dirham's!! Can it be true?....oh wait, look at this - five litres for 75 dirham's! I'm in wino nirvana!'. Hugging my trolley protectively I paid at the checkout and walked, half-ran out of the sliding doors dogged by an irrational fear that the manager would come running out behind me yelling 'sorry ma'am, it's been a mistake....it shouldn't be so cheap'.

Although, on a more sobering note (so to speak) I did make the baffling discovery last week that my Dubai Islamic Bank card, which has been refused several times in our local Cellar off-license, is not allowed to be used to buy alcohol: the clue was the Islamic part of the name although it had never been explained to me before - the guy on the checkout clearly preferring to see me squirm with embarrassment at having my card refused each time.

Bizarre as it sounds, I was forced to leave my stash behind me on the counter, jump in my car and seek out an ATM, climb back in to my car and return to the off-license whereupon I was obliged to hand over the cash manually.

As I walked through the car park, black bags straining from the 4 for 100 dirhams special-offer, I was amused to see the boy-racers sitting behind their blacked out windows in their Landcruisers, beeping impatiently at the staff to hurry up and hand over their vodka.  No, on reflection, I really don't think a weekend grouting the bathroom tiles is on the books for these guys any time soon...

Why I love 'House' but think SATC2 sucked...

Four weeks post-partum and I’ve been dismayed to discover that my seemingly miraculous recovery from wine-addiction was entirely fictitious, brought about solely from the pregnancy hormones swamping my body.  As the hormones slowly ebb, the love affair with the grape flows and I find myself once more enslaved to that glass or two each night as I settle down in front of House; series 1 and 2 of which I recently downloaded and have been watching obsessively ever since (who would have thought Blackadder's Prince Thickie would make such a brilliant, curmudgeonly American MD?) As a result of my 3 episodes a night habit, I’ve become somewhat of an expert on diagnostic medicine and am prone to pronounce ‘it’s got to be lupus’ every time someone in my house has a sniffle.
On the positive side, my penchant for the hot chocolate and apple crumble served up in my local ‘Shakespeare’ cafe has subsided giving my girth a fighting chance of fitting into my newly acquired wardrobe this side of Christmas.     
Pretentious, Moi? 

Is it just me or is ‘Little Einsteins’ the most annoying, pretentious and smugly middle-class kids show on TV?  It is the TV equivalent of a three year old learning to speak Mandarin and is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with modern parenting where a child can no longer just be 'normal' but must be either gifted or on a spectrum of one sort or another.

The plot, such as it is, is four precocious kids whizzing around in a rocket, landing in places like Tuscany or Paris where they chant the names of famous composers over and over again (‘Dvorak, oh! Dvorak!’) to the tunes of said composer, while words like ‘allegro’ and ‘adagio’ flash up on the screen along with a picture of that composer (eminently useful that the average three-year-old is able to pick out Grieg in a line-up).

Last week I struggled to understand the point of five cello’s prancing about to Peer Gynt on the banks of the river Po.  And today I really thought it had gone too far as the characters searched for the ingredients for rocket soup -- how pretentious! but it turned out the soup was actually for the rocket-ship, rather than a soup made out of a rocket leaves...mind you, it wouldn’t have come as a great surprise- next they’ll be singing about the virtues of cashmir sweaters or the difference between Chardonnay and Sauvingnon blanc (which to be honest might actually be quite useful as a life-skill).

Of course there is nothing wrong with introducing your children to classical music; my children hear it regularly if I happen to have Lyric FM playing on the internet; but being able to name a composer, while charming, is of little use to a three year old.  There does seem to be this drive among middle-class parents to have ‘gifted’ or ‘exceptional’ children who can read and play instruments before they’re three.  Learning to do something early doesn’t necessarily make a child any brighter than a kid who learns those skills later on: Steven Hawkings commented in an interview recently that he couldn’t read until he was 8- and it could be argued that playing in mud or emptying the pots and pans cupboard is more educational anyway.

Personally I’d rather they learned to tie their shoe laces or wipe their own bottoms than speak fluent French.
Abu Dhabi aka Morocco

And finally.... I recently got to see Sex and the City 2 which, much to my excitement, is supposedly part set in AbuDhabi.  It was, in a word, abysmal. 

I don’t know what was more unrealistic, the four subservient Emiratis holding open the car doors for the four female protagonists at the airport (I doubt Emiratis hold their own toothbrushes), or when Aiden tells Carrie that ‘they consider it rude to keep people waiting here’. This comment was so at odds with the way of life here is, where nothing happens on time and in fact it's practically mandatory to be late, with inshallah (roughtly translated: in Allah we hope/God willing/not a feckin' hope pal) being the stock response to any pressing questions.

Clearly they didn’t bother to employ a cultural anthropologist on the movie to lend a certain realism to it, if they had the girls would have arrived to Abu Dhabi airport to find that the cars weren't in fact there at all as there had been a mix up with the bookings, and were in fact on their way to Dubai airport.

The authenticity was further thrown in to question when the girls decide to visit ‘Old Abu Dhabi souk’.

Now, when I first arrived in Abu Dhabi I too had images of wandering around a traditional souk, Kristen Scott-Thomas-like, buying exotic silks, spices and rugs, haggling charmingly with the wizened old market sellers, while wearing crisp white linen (and still in the realm of fantasy with Ralph Fiennes clandestinely trailing me and without my four squabbling children).

Alas, it was not to be!  I was greatly dismayed as I emerged from my taxi in Al Meena Port to discover that the souk, located on a large piece of wasteland, contained mainly plastic buckets and industrial sized cooking pots, plants and household implements. There was nothing charming or exotic about it and I eventually gave up trying to be intrepid and cultural and escaped into the nearby mall for a coffee.

Yes, prior to my arrival, my idea of the Middle East had been mostly informed by the movies and I had erroneously believed that it was all belly-dancing, silken tents and sultry exotic evenings dancing the seven veils under the stars.

Thankfully SATC2 delivered on this fantasy; after all, who wants to see badly constructed hotels complete with leaking external air-conditioning systems or piles of rubbish on the side of the road. Or, for that matter, maniacal drivers mounting pavements to get around the too-slow car in front. Those images are best kept for movies like 'the hurt locker'.

It also helped that the movie was filmed in Morocco. Anyway, by the time Samantha spots the hunky Danish architect and utters the beautifully scripted line ‘Lawrence of my Labia’ I was done with the movie and went to bed.

Hell, suicide, and cabbage leaves...

So it’s over.  Thank the imaginary gods above.  And yes, dear reader, as predicted, it was total and utter hell.  

Clearly the female brain is hot-wired with denial when it comes to all things childbirth-related since it’s not until one reaches the second stage of labour that the slow recollection descends  ‘ah yes, I remember this; I’m experiencing the equivalent of being sawn in half without the alleviating ability to pass-out half-way through’ but of course by then it’s all too late.

The hospital in question was faultless and consummately professional aside from the comedienne of a nurse who, two days post-partum, eyed my still-swollen stomach and commented ‘tee hee are you sure you’re not still pregnant?’ which frankly went down like a lead balloon as indeed, I still had all the appearance of a woman 5 months into her pregnancy (I’d like to say it was an isolated incident, but sadly more than one Filipina shop assistant has since made the same hilarious comment, much to my amusement.)

The anaesthetist performed her role beautifully, filling me with enough drugs to cheer-up an NA meeting, thus sailing me through labour stage-one quite blissfully.  Sadly, when this wore off the replacement wasn’t so effective and it was at this stage, as the contractions tore through my body, that I began to consider in earnest the possibility of unhooking myself from the various drips and machines around me, staggering across the room and flinging myself from the 5^th floor window.  

In my naivety I had reasoned that this birth would be quick and relatively easy considering the fact that it was to be my fifth.

A wise man once said ‘madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result’; in other words, having had four agonising births to date, I'm now at a loss to explain how I  could have ever entertained such foolish fantasies that this would be any different. The ordeal lasted 13 glorious hours and by the time the little mite was finally born all I could think to say to the assisting midwife was ‘why on earth would anyone opt to do that without pain relief?’ to which she slowly shook her head as she considered it and replied ‘I really don’t know’.  

To put this in perspective, I had four root canals last year, two at a time.  Although excrutiatingly unpleasant, I kept my cool and managed to get through the ordeal without crying, and had I expressed my wish to experience the procedure fully au naturelle, I'm sure my dentist would have discreetly made a phone call to the local loony bin and had me admitted forthwith.

What they don’t tell you about the epidural is that it doesn’t actually do anything once you’re into the last leg of the event.  Nothing.  Zero.  You’re on your own.

And I couldn’t help but think that all those weeks of effort to look presentable and unflappable at my appointments with my obstetrician; being every inch ‘the experienced mother of four’, was all for nought when I was lying there, legs in stirrups with no idea what vision of hell was being displayed below, crying like a baby and begging him to hurry up and just ‘END IT, PLEEEEEEEEAAAAZZZ!’, all dignity on the floor along with half my internal organs.

But I was rewarded with another little clone and that makes me happy.  I seem to deliver the same baby repeatedly since I am unable to discern any difference between him and all the others I’ve delivered, with the only variable being the quantity and shade of hair they arrive with.

By Friday morning I was 4 days post-partum and woke to find I had had the mother of all boob-jobs during the night.  This is another thing they don’t explain to you on your first pregnancy.  Obviously, this being my fifth baby I was expecting the arrival of mega boobs, but following the birth of my first child it was quite a shock to wake to find my C-cups replaced by double H’s, thus heralding the arrival of milk.   

DH always bemoans the cruel irony of this stage; fantasy boobs but completely and agonisingly untouchable.  Since this is definitely the last time I will experience this, I took a photo for posterity, like an after-picture for a cosmetic surgery advertisement in the back of a magazine.  That's one for facebook!  Well, perhaps not.

They say you can relieve the pain of ‘breast engorgement’ (which is the correct term for mega-boobs) by putting cabbage leaves in your bra.  I tried it once, but walking around with a brassicas vegetable in my underwear did little to counteract the pain and much to repel other humans from me.  And I couldn't help but feel that I was the victim of a male practical joke: 'just how gullible are women?' If they said stashing broccoli in our knickers would alleviate period-pains would we do it?  Actually, we probably would.

One thing that always perplexes me after having a baby is how mere aquaintances feel entitled to ask for intimate details which, in normal circumstances, would never be asked.  

-'Are you breast-feeding' asked the woman behind the counter in my local supermarket.

-'Er, well, I'm combining...well, trying to...I really can't decide...er (why am I answering you?)...it's complicated'.

OR

-'A boy!  Congratulations' said the Indian security guard at my local mall. 'Did you have a normal delivery?'

-'Err...(what??) yes thank you' I replied, wondering how he'd react if I continued 'yes, a normal VAGINAL delivery....13 hours of contractions, no stitches thank god, text-book stuff!' while I watched him shuffle away wishing he'd never asked (and as aside, I resent the term 'normal' delivery; to my mind there is nothing 'normal' about what I've described above.)

Actually, I might try that response next time.  

But it's all over now; Junior is with us and the house just got busier.  DH has grudgingly agreed to be dispatched to the local vet to be neutered within the coming weeks to ensure that this sort of 'surprise' doesn't happen again while in my dreams I contemplate the view from that fifth floor window, and the long drop below.

Sleeping, breathing and the pursuit of Starbucks....

DH assures me I’m ‘ready to calf’ which is culchy-speak for ‘childbirth is imminent’ and, bloodcurdling as that thought is, I’m just looking forward to a proper night's sleep.  My nights are currently a revolving door of bathroom-bed-bathroom-bed and my sleeping positions have been reduced to a choice of precisely one: the left side, since sleeping on my back feels like there is a baby seal crushing all my internal organs and sleeping on my right seems to bring about all the symptoms of a minor stroke.  And it's been several weeks since I've taken breathing for granted.

Yes, nature has cleverly conspired to ensure that the closing weeks of pregnancy are so utterly uncomfortable that the agonising and horrific ordeal ahead is seen as a blessed relief.

I am slightly concerned about giving birth here in the UAE though - just ordering a coffee can be trying at times - so the idea of trying to explain my wish for an epidural could prove to be challenging.  I have this reoccurring nightmare where I'm yelling for an epidural while a smiling Filipina nurse sing-songs ‘sorreee ma’am, it’s Ramadan, you can’t have any pain relief until the sun goes down’ like some demented character in a Stephen King novel.

I can’t help but feel that might actually happen.

At the very least I fully expect to be told the anaesthetist has left for the day and I'll have to wait until the next day, and do I want a Panadol...

I’m not making out that childbirth is always smooth going in Ireland either; I’ve had good and bad.  On the birth of boy-child number two I arrived at the hospital in the throes of labour to be told by the nurse that they had lost my records and did I mind answering a few questions.  So there I sat opposite a woman holding clipboard and pen as she went through my name, date of birth, address.....

-'When was your last period' she inquired.

-‘Seriously?' (clearly I have issues remembering this sort of detail at the best of times) '...ah nine months ago I reckon’ I sniggered....'OWWW!'

-‘But we need a date’ she insisted.  I hazarded a guess.

-‘Well, in that case you’re not due for another three weeks’ she said, ‘you’d best go home’.

Ten minutes later my waters broke and boy-child number two was with us within an hour; had I taken her advice I would have been in my living room in front of 'Who wants to be a millionaire' by the time I was at the point of pushing.

I’m due to attend a hospital in an area of Dubai optimistically called ‘Healthcare City’, which is basically a number of hospitals and clinics surrounding a parking lot.  

In the UAE, if they can give it a theme and grandly call it a ‘City’, they will.  We have ‘Academic city’ which is a college surrounded by sand as far as I can make out, ‘Motor City’ which is basically a car racing track (not sure why they need this...they have the roads don't they?) and here in RAK the 'RAK Media City' which is an office on a piece of wasteland outside the town which houses several people who have no idea what to do all day.

Mind you, the emirate of Umm al Quawain is called a city and I’ve seen towns in Mayo consisting of a sub-post office, pub and undertakers all-in-one which have more life in them.  But they like to think big here so it’s not so much what you see but what you will see in the future that inspires them when naming things.

But it’s Ramadan once again and that throws up the same challenges as it did for the last two years.  It’s not politically correct to be negative about Ramadan here since there is a certain quarter of expat who insist we stifle any grumbles or grouses about what are, in my view, the undeniable inconveniences associated with it. If you complain you are being, at best, ethnocentric and culturally ignorant, at worse committing a hate crime and are therefore a small-minded, bigoted-racist who should be escorted to the nearest border and never be allowed to return.  

It has been argued that 1.5 billion believers can’t be wrong, but then I have little faith in the wisdom of crowds: just look at some of the winners of Pop Idol.  Besides, I find Ramadan and it’s application a little too arbitrary for my liking.  A group of guys with beards study some lunar cycles and decide its Ramadan and suddenly, although you can still buy a Burger King meal at the mall,  you have to eat it in your car as sitting inside Burger King has over-night become as unthinkable as walking around with your knickers on your head.  And why is it you can’t  have a coffee in Starbucks but you can at the Hilton?  The only difference I see is the price, but then maybe that’s the point.

Also, if you must only fast during daylight hours, what’s to stop you going to the South Pole where you might only have one hour's daylight a day and doing your fast there?  Not much of a challenge is it, an episode of House and your done!

But we shall struggle on and make the most of it and next time I post there should be one more flight to pay for next time we decide to go on holiday.  Bring on the agony, I need a proper night's sleep!

Nesting, hoarding and why you should neglect your children...

So we’re into the home stretch thank goodness. And with the end in sight it is normal for the heavily pregnant female to resort to ‘nesting’, an instinctual phenomena characterised by sudden spurts of cleaning and organising of her habitat in preparation for the new arrival. This manifestation is an early indication that labour is imminent.

I have my own personally adapted version of this phenomenon. I call it ‘hoarding’ and it is characterised by the frantic buying of clothes that I can wear on the other side. I’ve been trawling the Boden sale all week filling my virtual trolly with gorgeous items that will hopefully goad me into actually fitting into them as soon as possible. 

And last week I made a special trip to the Dubai Outlet mall with the pretense of treating the children to an hours play in the creche.  In reality I was on a mission to buy something gorgeous in Monsoon. It was disappointing to be honest but I still managed to leave the store with a gorgeous silk top. After hugging it for a bit I reluctantly hung it in the wardrobe, label dangling forlornly, where it will have to stay for another couple of months.  But it's a comfort just knowing it’s there.

It’s irrational I know, but I am in horror of being that rounded, milky, new mother wearing shapeless squishy tops in a look that says ‘I don’t matter…I’m comitted 100% to being a new mother for the next 6 months and I have resigned myself to wearing ugly crimes of fashion until society tells me I can start thinking about my appearance again’.

I don’t want the whiff of victimhood around me and so instead go to great lengths to prove ‘I’m fine, I've only had a baby for goodness sake!'  Besides, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that women in Vietnam give birth in paddy fields, then strap the baby to themselves and go back to work (I’m not strictly sure about this actually, but it sounds like something they might do).

I take it too far. On the birth of number 4, which coincided inconveniently with Christmas, I bumped into a friend in the Monsoon sale.  I was three days post-partum and looking wild-eyed and manic and ever so slightly deathly pale as I trawled through the party dress rack (my favourite) trying my best not to faint.

-‘Are you OK?’ she enquired, peering at my stomach ‘my god, you’ve had the baby….when?’

-‘Three days ago’ I whimpered.

-‘Good god woman, what on earth are you doing here?’

-‘It’s the Monsoon sale’ I protested weakly ’I couldn’t rest knowing it had started…I left the baby with dh’ I explained, beginning to feel I really ought to sit down.

I now see that I was probably a little over-enthusiastic in my pursuit of normalcy and should probably have cut myself a little slack. I shall try to be kinder to myself this time….although a dress from Monsoon is actually my idea of being kind to myself.

Anyhow, for now I shall confine my activities to amassing my post-partum wardrobe, both virtually and by shuffling around the mall like some oversized bag lady.  And nesting will continue to elude me since it exists in the realm of the unecessary when you have a maid service three times a week  ( I do live in the middle east after all where nobody does anything for themselves).

Free range kids

I was listening to that New York mother who wrote that book ‘Free Range Kids’ on the radio the other day and I have to say, I love what she’s doing.

Her theory is that our children are so over-protected that we are raising a generation who will grow up lacking the tools to actually take risks or think laterally or with imagination. Worse, we’re depriving them of a proper childhood while simultaneously making parenthood a hellish, guilty and anxt-ridden experience for ourselves.

The proponant of the theory, Lenore Skanazy, caused uproar when she wrote in her New York column of how she let her 9 year old son make his way home alone from Bloomingdales in New York city where they live. She gave him 20 dollars along with instructions as to how to get home, and then let him off to figure it out himself.

The response has been outrage by critics and parents alike, labelling her the worst mother in America among other equally hysterical names.  She does, thank god, have a large following and a blogsite where brave parents share their free range parenting stories, and has even highlighted a radical new movement 'the kids walk to school programe' which encourages children to (gasp) walk to school themselves!

Of course I support all this wholeheartedly, what she’s doing makes complete sense to my slummy mummy sensibilities and philosophy.

My nine year old daughter is smart, cynical and inciteful but I’m doing her no favours if I never allow her to walk to the mall without me. It’s a ten minute walk through a compound with security guards, across a road where a security guard is posted, and yet she’s never done it (and I shall tactfully side-step the whole issue of 45 degree heat being reason enough not to walk anywhere right now). This isn't because I object to her making that trip, but because she has no friends to go with her.

When I’ve mentioned to other mothers about allowing her to walk to the shops alone, I’ve been met with much head shaking and comments such as ‘Oh I wouldn’t take that risk’ which is precisely the problem. We know in all probability that nothing bad will happen, but as long as there is that doubt, and worse, the chance that if something DOES happen we, and everyone else around us, will point the accusative finger, we’re not going to take that chance. And so we keep them at home under our watchful eye or drive them to the mall ourselves.

But it starts earlier. Having coffee with someone who insists on checking to see what the kids are doing upstairs every 5 minutes is an exercise in frustration and futility. Trying to recapture the dying threads of a conversation every time she returns to the room, coffee long cold ‘what were we saying?' leaves me wanting to pour aforementioned coffee over her head and beg her never to call again. And inevitably these same mothers will have those kids that must interupt the conversation every three minutes to tell mummy something inciteful like ‘mummy, I know about the life-cycle of a frog…let me tell you’ (bugger off kid and tell someone who cares…I want to hear the end of this story).

Now when I was a kid, interupting an adults conversation was tantemount to self- inflicted infanticide (is there a word for that?)…you just didn’t do it.

I used to have a friend who would stop the conversation every time her three year old boy came running into the room crying hysterically (which was every two minutes).  Grabbing him in panic she'd urge him to ‘use your words darling…remember your words?…tell mummy what terrible thing happened’ as my three year old son would stand guility by, waiting for the inevitable and collective accusative glare once his latest offence had been revealed.  I wanted to yell at her -'LOOK, obviously my kid hit your kid...much like your kid hit my kid two minutes ago.  The difference is that my kid can't be bothered to tell me since he'll get zero reaction from me!! Now, can we move on???'

And there is a 1,000% more chance that the children will cover the wall in lipstick or felt tip pen than meet an horrific and untimely death if left to their own devices for 20 minutes unsupervised. When I was a kid we genuinely got involved in some very dangerous and dodgy things during the long summer days when we disapeared from the house at 9am, not returning till dusk when hunger called, but amazingly we lived to tell the tale.

I have a friend who phoned one lazy Sunday afternoon for a chat.

-‘What are you doing?’ She asked.

-‘Oh we’re watching a movie’ I replied.

-‘Oh,which one?’

-‘You know that one about the paedophile…Kevin Bacon..yeah that one’

-‘But where are the children?’ she enquired, voice filling with alarm.

-‘Playing….in and out of the garden…why?’

-‘You can’t mean you’re watching that with them there? Oh my god!!’

She was genuinely freaked out and as I hung up the phone I wondered was it really that terrible. They were too small to understand what the story was about, and it wasn’t as if he was actively paedophillic in the movie, so what was the problem? Besides, they weren’t even watching the movie!

Mind you, she is the type of mother who will sit in the back of the car with the baby when her husband is driving. My god, but what the hell is that about? When we were kids we stood in the back of the car, no doubt playing with sharp objects while mother smoked ten cigarettes in the front of the car with the windows closed!! Judging by todays standards, I’m amazed any of us made it to our teens.

With child-rearing, I strongly (and some would say conveniently) believe that a healthy neglect is vital if you wish to produce useful and resourceful members of society for the future.  Children that can't fight their own battles or amuse themselves for ten minutes without mummy getting down on the floor to help them finger paint won't be much use in a crisis.  Plus, it makes parenting a whole lot easier and cheaper if you can say 'go upstairs and make a tent kids' without having to buy the special tent-making kit from the Early Learning Centre or do anything more than supply the sheet.  Plus you get to finish a conversation and drink your coffee while it's still hot. 

Everyone's a winner.

Frogs and snails and puppy dogs tails........

'Are you sure you want to know?’ asked the German doctor as I stared up at the squirming, leaping form on the screen in front of me.

‘Yes, god yes please yes’ I begged, thinking pleasantly of the gorgeous pink, frilled things I’d spotted in Carter's baby shop the day before.

The four children sat silently wrestling each other in the corner, squashed into two armchairs, watching the show. Occasionally there would be a muffled giggle as someone would whisper ‘I see its butt!’

I started to daydream- ‘I’ll call her Delilah….or Jezebel’ I mused, ‘and she can share a bedroom with nine year old girl…it will be perfect….all pink and sage toile de jouey I think…’

‘I see a little penis’ said the German laconically, jolting me in to reality.

I fell silent for a moment, confused and disoriented. I had been absolutely certain this child was female, the pregnancy to date having been a carbon copy of my first.

‘Oh!’ I quickly adjusted myself, brightening, ‘lovely, another boy… hey! another brother kids!’

My daughter started to silently sob in the corner and the boys, unmoved by this news, continued to wrestle each other.

I love my sons. They are a joy; loving, gentle and devoted to me without agenda or complexity. But four!! It just feels a tad, well, excessive!

When I imagined motherhood as a young woman, I pictured myself with a gaggle of little girls, dressed up in pink tutus (me included) in a fairy tent with wands, wings and ballet slippers. We would wear matching fabrics from Joules and go for high tea with cream cakes and hot chocolate. They would fall in love with all the same books I adored as a little girl such as ‘Ballet shoes’ and ‘The twins at St. Clares' and would be fanatical about ballet and musical theatre.

Their bedroom would be a shrine to all things girly, decorated in a palette of pinks with white painted furniture and lace canopies.

To date we've had a bug theme, cowboy theme, superhero theme (several) and currently on general transport theme (cars, trains..that sort of thing). And my daughter isn't much better. Apparently at school the worst thing you can be is a girlie-girl so pink is OUT as is anything remotely feminine.

Oh I've been short changed, and that's for sure! DH, of course is in his element and revels in taking them to the cinema to see the latest Marvel blockbuster and regularly arrives home from work bearing the latest PS3 games 'for the kids' (this is a man so bad at gifts and surprises that on the day of my birthday every year, following months of heavy hints and blatant comments such as 'I want a pink laptop for my birthday', he'll phone me from the mall, on his lunch break, to ask 'so, what is it you wanted?')

So motherhood has given me the insider track on super heroes and action figures and well, boys in general. They're simple creatures, like their fully grown counterparts. And they play in a totally different way to girls - it can only be described as, well, autistic, and mainly involves playing with the same toy/stone/piece of plastic for hours on end, running it up walls and along floors with accompanying noises. It's bizarre but easily accommodated.

When I discovered my second child was to be a boy, I wondered how I could possibly love him. My daughter was so pink, perfect and delicious that I struggled with the idea of how I could love any other child, regardless of gender.

When he was born he was red, scrawny and yelling and I couldn’t help but recall the pink, plump calmness of my newly born daughter 20 months earlier as she lay staring up at me, wide-eyed and beautiful.

I think it's fair to say I went through a sort of crisis for his first few months, dressing him in her caste offs and generally not accepting that he was male. On many occasions I was asked ‘what is her name’ by passers-by as they stared down at the plump little boy dressed head to toe in pink.

But I adjusted and by the time boy-child number two arrived, I had realised how much easier these beings were to care for.

As boy-child number three was born I was honestly overjoyed at the appearance of yet another little man. He is loveable and delightful and to be honest, his gender is secondary to his gregarious personality.

But this time it just felt like it was time for another female, if for nothing else but to balance out all that testosterone at home.

But it must be said I am tired of this pregnancy at this stage, it's much too long particularly when you expand at such an alarming rate. The other day I was in a changing room trying on a dress which I wouldn't even glance at in peace time. As I wrestled the thing over my head, three-year-old, who was crammed into the booth with me, eyed my tummy and enquired 'are you going to upsplode mummy?' to which I replied gravely, 'Yes, darling, I rather think I am'.

Our showtime channels have been cancelled and we don’t know who to phone to get them back so we’ve been watching a lot of Oprah lately. Last night we watched open-mouthed at the story of the women in America who starved her four boys over the course of several years. It was heart-rending to watch how they suffered and I couldn’t help but wonder how you could possibly do that to your children. Obviously, nurturing instincts and basic decency aside, how on earth would you keep them quiet? I think its fair to say the only reason my children are fed regularly is because they start fighting when they’re hungry; particularly in the car.

My car is testament to this and can only be described as a rubbish tip. To open the door is to risk being buried under an avalanche of crisp wrappers and empty drinks cartons; DH, who pampers his car like a spinster pampers her cats, refuses to go anywhere near it. I'd like to take the advice of one of those nice parenting magazine which recommend colouring books and puzzles to keep the little'uns amused on a journey, but the reality is that drinks and snacks are the only way to stop them either jumping out of the moving vehicle or strangling each other on any given journey.

And its not just in the car. I use drinks and snacks as a pacifier for any number of eventualities whether I'm on the phone, typing an email, chatting with a friend or whatever it is, 'here, have this' is sure to make them go away and stop bothering me.


Customer service...again...

I know I’ve ranted about this on more than one occasion, but really I can’t not mention it. Again we went to buy school shoes for the children and again I requested that their feet be measured before trying on any shoes. Reasonable enough request considering the fact that children have an irritating tendency to get bigger.

However, the shop assistant, looking slightly put out at such an outrageous request, took my five year old over to the foot measuring thingie and placed his foot on the measuring board WITH HIS SHOE STILL ON!! I'll take a wild guess and say that the staff training at Centrepoint is confined to half a day's training on how to follow a customer around the shop in a most invasive and irritating manner without any training on how to actually assist.

That's shopping UAE style!

Lifestyle guru's have all the answers...

'Ooh ma'am you mustn't eat so much, you're too fat!' said the thoughtful  and sensitive Filipina behind the counter in 'Splash' after I had revealed that I was three months pregnant.  'You are so big!'

Quite. I knew this anyway, a glance in the mirror would've confirmed this assertion, but this comment left me in no doubt. This was further confirmed by the disasterous purchase of a 'pregnancy belt'.  For those who aren't in the know, these belts fit over your normal trousers, which can then be left unzipped, post-prandial style, and perfectly concealed beneath the belt.  The result should be a tailor-made type appearance as the trouser fit perfectly, all lumps and bumps hidden.

Unfortunately for me I never got to wear the belt as trying to get my favourite trousers up past my knees turned out to be more challenging than anticipated.

I’m only three months pregnant but within the space of 2 days I went from looking as if I'd eaten a rather substantial lunch to looking 5 months pregnant. Collecting the kids from school has become an exhausting affair of explanations and affirmations.

-‘yes, yes I am pregnant' I will smile.

-‘yep, yep, I know, where did that come from, ha ha?’ I chuckle.

Everywhere I go people are double-taking as I pass by. It’s not just the apparent sudden pregnancy, it’s the trail of four brawling children which adds to the head-shaking disbelief.

I often wonder at these women that we read about in classy publications such as ‘Chat’ and ‘Take a break’ who don’t know they’re pregnant until the baby appears on the bathroom floor. ‘I had no idea I was pregnant’ whines the headline above a photo of Destiny standing pasty-faced and disappointed  as she points to the floor of her bathroom.

Anyway, I promise myself and my readers that I won’t turn this blog into ‘secret diary of a dull pregnant woman who has nothing else to talk about but her dull pregnancy’. I don’t need to, Jules Oliver has already turned it into an art-form.

I’ve got nothing against Jules….after all she is expecting baby number four, so maximum respect to her; although having more than two children seems a tad less reckless when your husband is a multi-millionaire. Good luck to her, but please, no more pregnancy diaries… really, what is there to say other than ‘I feel sick, I miss lying on my stomach and I'm wearing something even my mother would think twice about’.


I must admit that some of these lifestyle books do appeal, despite the fact that everything in them is obvious and preachy. One of my current obsessions is the ‘Why French women don’t get fat’ series. For someone with as dysfunctional a relationship with food as I have, this approach makes a lot of sense to me. The idea that over-eating is encouraged by bulk-buying from hypermarkets is entirely logical. The French have known for decades that buying local, fresh and in-season produce is far better for you and leaves you less likely to binge.

I want to live in France...

I try to live by this principle but unfortunately the most enduring effect this has on my house is that there is never anything to eat in it. Fed up with dry crackers and 2 month old tangerines as a snack, my exasperated daughter the other day snapped ‘we’re NOT French mum, buy some food!’

It’s not meanness that keeps my cupboards bare, but like Oscar Wilde I can resist anything but temptation and so it's easier to leave all the fattening carb-ridden snacks on the supermarket shelves.

I used to take a much keener interest in cooking, but like many things (weekend lie-ins, pelvic floor muscles etc..) kids spoiled it for me. There's no bigger waste of time than spending a couple of hours cooking for your family only for them to rush in, eat in the space of 90 seconds and then disappear again leaving nothing but a food covered floor. And going to all that trouble for myself and DH just seems indulgent.

However, the other night, faced with the paltry offerings of the Showtime satellite network, myself and DH found ourselves watching 'The naked chef' on the telly. Of course, the first 20 minutes were spent guffawing and imitating Jamie's 'mockney' attempts at being a 'geezer'. However, we eventually fell silent as he started to work his genius on some pork chops and a roasted chicken. It was magic!

-'I'm hungry' complained DH, the beans on toast having obviously not been sufficient.

-'yeah, me too' I concurred.

I disappeared out the kitchen in search of snacks but all I could find were babybels 'lite' and some withered baby carrot batons.

I went to bed hungry but inspired and the next day found myself in Spinney's buying all the necessary ingredients for a pork chop taste sensation!

The chops (purchases from the special pork/satans-flesh counter in the supermarket) turned out OK.  DH, overjoyed at such a treat,  lavished praise every three bites, clearly hoping this might become a new feature in his life (For the record, it lasted precisely two nights).

One 'lifestyle' author I've always steered well clear of is Gina Ford, the child-rearing guru and author of 'the contented baby'. Her methods have always left me feeling cold as she's famous for coining the phrase 'controlled crying', which basically means ignoring your baby when it cries but feeling you're being a good parent by doing so! 

Leaving your baby to cry is the devils work...

Besides, the idea of leaving your baby to cry in a controlled manner on the advice of a woman with no children has always sounded slightly oxymoronic to me!  It's like taking dieting advice from an obese woman, or having your hair coloured by a blind person!   Besides, how can a four month old baby possibly understand that you're leaving it to cry for it's own good and to avoid issues in later life?  If anything I would have thought it would have completely the opposite effect.  Abandonment issues.....anyone?

I realise my child-rearing methods, while highly effective as babies, will probably leave all four children seeing shrinks by the time they're 25, but at least I have children so I've earned my opinion, and I've NEVER left a small defenseless baby to cry in some misguided attempt at asserting authority early on.

I wonder what Ms Ford would have made of them the other day at my daughters school play... For once I had roped DH into coming along, which I knew would make my life much easier in the sense that two threats are better than one. As the play started we waited for my daughters grand entrance. Twenty minutes in no sign of her, 30 minutes, still in the wings. Forty minutes and nothing... in fact my daughter didn't appear until the very last scene (she had cleverly opted not to tell me this or I wouldn't have shown up until the last ten minutes).

It's not that I dislike school plays, I accept they are part of the parenting contract and are to be endured, but bringing small children along to these events inevitably create problems..

-'I see your bum bum' pipes up three year old.

-Shhhhhhhhh! 

-'I see your big bum bum' replies five year old.

-'I wanna sit on the step!' demands three year old.

-'No, sit down and be quiet' I hiss.

-'I wanna', he whines.

-'So do I' lisps five year old.

-'No, now both sit down and I'll give you a treat after wards if you're good' I bargain.

-'Can we go to the toy shop and get a Sonic toy?' asks five year old.

-'Yes, yes, later on... just please be quiet, people are looking at us' I beg,  feeling eyes boring into the back of my head.


-'But I wanna sit on the step with the kids' lisps five year old again.

-'Yeah...pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease??' they both beg.

-'Oh go on then'  I give in.

Off they toddled to the steps in the middle of the auditorium where several other smaller siblings were watching.  Of course this just made it worse because now they were out of my reach and I could no longer whisper death threats into their ears.

-'I see your willy' I hear from the steps.

-'You big bum bum' (this has pretty much been their entire repertoire for the past couple of years).

-'That mans an idiot!!'

-'Stupid idiot!'


The man closest to three year old was clearly growing more and more vexed with them...throwing furious glances at them every couple of minutes.

Since they were no longer near me I tried to pretend I didn't know who they were.

Finally nine year old daughter appeared on the stage (without her costume...she was supposed to be a fisherman but had left her costume in the art room and so was wearing a pink summer dress).

Three year old, overjoyed at her sudden appearance yelled her name at the top of his voice. The entire audience turned to look at him. So he did it again.

Luckily the play was almost over so we could escape. On the way out several parents thanked me for the side show entertainment, several threw withering looks. Well, you can't please all the people all of the time, and who knows, had I left them alone and crying as babies they might have sat quietly at my side throughout the performance.  Somehow I doubt it.

The link between fertility and abbattoirs....

I knew something was up when I got my clothes back from the laundry and there was a newborn baby outfit among them.  

A few weeks later I bought something in the chemist and the assistant threw a dozen baby’s bibs into the bag for free.  

From that moment on I knew my days were numbered and that Demeter, the Greek goddess of fertility would claim me sooner or later.

Yes dear reader, this mother of four is soon to become a mother of five.

Coming from a long line of very fertile women (my sister has 8 children), fertility for me is not so much a blessing as an affliction.  I realise this isn't a popular statement to make, coming from a generation of women who were told that they had choices, one of which was to postpone childbirth until their thirties only to find that nature had played a cruel trick, that the thirty-something doesn't conceive as easily as the twenty-something.  My heart goes out to women who struggle to conceive; it is frustrating, disheartening and utterly unfair.

However, there is a flip side to this which can be equally frustrating when a careless night out with too much champagne results in something a tad more permanent than a hangover!

So, here I am with baby number five in waiting.  After the initial few days of pure, knee-buckling shock, I’m starting to adjust to my fate.  Of course that’s providing it’s a girl.  Our catalogue can just about accommodate another female in the house.  A boy, on the other hand,  is totally out of the question and should I discover another male is on the way I'll be on the phone to Madonna quicker than you can say 'forget Malawi'.

I love that scene at the end of the movie,  ‘The story of us’, when Michelle Pfeifer and Bruce Willis decide, after a separation, to give their marriage another go; cue a series of touching flashbacks tracing their lives together.  It goes something like this-

Bruce (obviously wearing wig) meets Michelle in college; Bruce proposes to Michelle; fun scene painting their first house, together;  Michelle tells Bruce she’s pregnant;  birth of baby;  Michelle tells Bruce she’s pregnant again; another birth of baby; child comes into their bedroom and lisps ‘I’ve got chicken pots’ etc etc…

You get the idea.  The scene is accompanied by a swelling classical guitar piece and I sob everytime I see it, over-sentimentalising my history with DH.  

Unfortunately, my truth is rather less touching.  If I were to run a series of clips of DH’s reaction every time I announced there was another baby on the way, it would go something like this;-

2000       Me: ‘I’m pregnant’

   DH: 'Oh shit’

2002      Me: ‘Guess what.... I’m pregnant’

  DH: ‘Serious? Oh jaysus....'

2004      Me: ‘I’m pregnant again’

  DH: ‘Again?  Hahahaha....Ah for f*cks sake…serious? Ah shit!’

2006      Me: ‘I can’t believe it, I’m pregnant again’

  DH: ‘Ah jeez…no way….no way….ah shit’

2010      Me: (this time) ‘(sob) Oh my god, I’m pregnant’

  DH: Oh god, ah well, another one won't make any difference at this stage.......

This last response was uncharacteristically semi-positive since I was so distraught he was obliged to take the opposing viewpoint.

I don't mean to be hard on DH, he loves each and every one of them passionately, but I can't help but think that given the choice he'd much rather it was just the two of us again.  I think every man would admit to this if pushed on the subject.

The children’s responses have been varied.  Eight year old girl is very much looking forward to finally having a sister (I know, I know....I'll deal with that one later on). 

Seven year old boy wants to know if we can call it ‘Sonic’.  I said I’d think about it.

Five year old boy wants to know if it will be born with a sword.  I said I rather hope it won’t.

Three year old boy lifted up my top and said ‘is there a baby in your boobies mummy?’ (which given the impressive increase in size is a fair comment actually)

There are the positives of course.  Overnight I've become a one-woman detox-unit as the mere thought of alcohol makes me want to lie face down on a cool tiled floor and wait for the nausea to pass.  And as  DH indulges in his nightly tipple, I look on with contempt, pitying his pathetic enslavement to the bottle (I know from past experience that this aversion will last until exactly one minute after delivery whereupon I shall be yelling for the Champagne).

However, the negatives are several.  The sure knowledge that my girth will increase, regardless of what I eat or how many times I do sit-ups, is a soul-destroying surety.  And my criteria for a passable outfit will dwindle to what I can wrestle myself into, as opposed to whether it is attractive, suitable or appropriate.  During my first pregnancy, in my wisdom I decided to eschew maternity wear, reasoning that I would only be pregnant once and so it would be a waste of money anyhow.  A glowing example of false economy if ever there was one.

But the biggest issue for me is the impending childbirth itself.  An event as inevitable as death and as unavoidable as a photo of Posh in a copy of 'OK magazine'.  No matter which way you look at it, there is only one obstacle between my unborn child and this earth, and that is a hard truth to live with.

I'm not particularly squeamish, I rarely visit the doctor and consider myself fairly robust.  However, childbirth for me is akin to a slow, sadistic execution.  The best comparison I can come up with is that scene at the end of Braveheart when Mel Gibson is drawn and quartered in front of a baying crowd.  It's like that, but worse.  

And I know its a cliche, but I truly believe that were men to give birth the population would dwindle to a few hundred, half of whom would be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

And a tour of the delivery suite is as tempting as a guided tour of an abattoir.  I am not fooled by the plastic pot plants and peach walls, those places are barbaric.

As I approach the three month mark, I'm busy letting people know of my condition lest they think I've merely let myself go and can't be bothered to hold in my stomach.  Of course it's all downhill from now on but I shall sit tight, exploit the rare love being shown to my liver, and enjoy the ride.