Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

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A Labour of Love

October 4, 2018 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

Image credit: Pixabay. Also, dear scientists, please hurry up and invent this delivery method.

 

As a writer, I see it as my job to ponder some of society’s greatest problems, and, if possible, offer up solutions.

One of the most confounding issues of the 20th and 21st centuries has been teenage pregnancy. The authorities have tried everything from social disapproval of all things sexual to openly teaching sex education in public classrooms. Proper sex education has been hugely beneficial, but not 100% effective.

Of course, I have the answer: All we have to do is invent a device that gives someone a short, but memorable taste of what labour pain is like. Strap it to teens the minute they hit puberty and trigger it to go off every time they contemplate so much as a smooch. This will discourage all sexual activity until they are say… 85 or so. Indeed, not only will this solve the issue of teenage pregnancy, but possibly overpopulation as well.

Yes, as you may have guessed, I have experienced childbirth — four times, and all my kids were north of eight pounds at birth. Yes, I am a special kind of stupid, apparently.

The experience has taught me many things. For example, I now know why the mother-child bond is so strong and so powerful. This is because after giving birth:

1) Both of you are tired, sore, and confused, and you blame each other for this.
2) Both of you are wearing pads and diapers.
3) Neither of you has a belly button, yours having disappeared in pregnancy and his not visible yet.

I also now realize that childbirth is not the private, personal experience of a select few medical professionals and your immediate family, like they show on TV.

In fact, at any given moment, either during labour or in the hours afterward when you’re desperately trying to recover, you will be visited by: the obstetrician, the labour and delivery nurses, the janitor, the food tray lady, the postpartum nurses (never the same one twice), the paediatrician, the blood sample person for you, the empty food tray lady, the janitor, the Ministry of Health official asking you for the spelling of your child’s name when you can’t even remember your own, the blood sample person for your child (whom you would maim for making your baby cry if only you could get up off the bed) and, yes, once again, the janitor.

However, even if you had all of these people in your room at once, they would fail to equal the horror of a visit from: the “lactation consultant.”

A new weapon in the modern medical establishment’s arsenal, the official job of the lactation consultant is to help new mothers and children learn how to nurse. Apparently, several thousand years of human history and instinct simply will not do the job anymore.

The consultant’s technique during the first twenty-four hours after childbirth is to lie in wait outside your hospital room, and burst in during those precious quiet five minutes between visits. The amount of noise this person makes will be directly proportional to how long it’s been since both you and baby have managed to drift off to sleep.

The consultant will then insist your baby is starving and must nurse, now. This is in spite of the fact that babies are too busy wondering what the heck happened to their nice warm, dark, environment to be very hungry in those first few hours, and mothers are too busy saying “ow, ow, ow, ow” to produce any serious meals.

During the next 24 hours, this evil person will bring and inflict a variety of torture devices, like shields, pumps, vents, flanges, valves, pipes, shells and pads – all of which will just make you and the baby increasingly cranky. The only way to make her stop will be to have your husband whack her over the head with your IV stand, and escape the hospital by signing your own discharge papers. Remarkably, you’ll probably find out you can nurse at home just fine.

So childbirth is painful and postpartum recovery can best be described as a circus. The only thing missing is the lions. On the other hand, that’s a good way to describe your hungry tot at 2 a.m., so never mind.

 

Incoming search terms: pregnancy stories

 

 

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A Pregnant Pause

January 23, 2017 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

legs-1554040_1280

If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, I’m sure some well-meaning friend has sent you or tagged you with a “forward.” That is, some message passed from person to person because it is either a dire warning (Ladies! Do not get into your car without checking your back seat first!) or something amusing (You are a child of the 50s/60s/70s/80s/90s if you recognize any of the following…).

Although I’ve seen plenty of forwards relating to motherhood generally, I’ve never seen any about pregnancy. So, in the interest of creating new and fresh forward material that you can use to annoy your entire contact list, I present:

HOW TO TELL THAT THIS IS YOUR SECOND PREGNANCY

You buy loose, strappy sandals as soon as you know you’re pregnant, because you just know that shoes will not be an option by the time you’re nine months gone.

You start every conversation with your partner with, “THIS time, we should…”

You toss out all three hundred of the pregnancy and child rearing guidebooks you bought for the first pregnancy. This is because your kid never read any of those books, and therefore does none of the things the experts said he would.

Every night you make sure there is a clear path to the bathroom because you know that morning sickness will hit you the minute you crack an eyelid to peer at your alarm clock.

You start laying in frozen and convenience meals as soon as you know you’re pregnant, because you know that cooking in the sleep-deprived first eight weeks postpartum is only likely to bring the fire department around again.

You wake up in the middle of the night, worrying about the impending labour and delivery. This time the question is not, “What will it be like?” but “Will it be as bad as last time?”

You wonder if you were really that big by eight weeks along in your first pregnancy.

Your stretch marks get stretch marks.

You announce the commencement of visits to the obstetrician for weekly internal checkups by saying “Let the indignities begin!”

This time around you recognize the “is she or isn’t she?” stares you get while out in public, and you buy a t-shirt that says, “Yes, this is a pregnancy, and not a random weight gain. You can safely ask me about it.”

Remembering how she hovered while were still being stitched up, you obtain a court order barring the lactation consultant from visiting you while you recover in hospital.

Other mothers realize that you already know what labour and delivery is like, so they don’t bother trying to scare you with their gynaecological horror stories. Instead they try to scare you by pointing at your first child and saying, “Whoa, are you ever going to have your hands full with two of them!”

The stretch marks on your stretch marks get stretch marks.

You worry that saying something like, “Mommy’s tummy is getting bigger because there’s a baby in there” to your first child will give him nightmares about being eaten up or something.

While suffering from backache, weight gain, morning sickness and exhaustion, you deal with the twenty-third toddler meltdown of the day and try to resist the urge to run screaming from the house.

You send your partner to a nightclub bouncer training school so he can forcefully prevent the janitor, the hospital consultant, the medical students, the cafeteria lady, the government inspector and the local shoes salesman from trooping through your birth recovery room. This is especially important if you want five whole minutes to just lie there and say “OW!” this time.

You hear your first child laugh and think to yourself, “Yes, it’s all worth it.”

Photo Credit: Marisa_Sias / Pixabay

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