birthday number 3

Today is another special day for me..[ I am so lucky that I seem to have quite a few of these days, ]but this one is extra special because its the anniversary of the first day I met my daughter Gabriella.. Despite it being November, the sun shone that day too.. I had had a couple of false alarms before, and my poor husband had to rush around trying to find a telephone box to call the hospital for an ambulance to take me in.. I was due on the 9th of November, but on the 7th had had to attend a wedding .. I had thought that it would have started me off as we had to travel quite a distance to get there.... but no. there I was in all my finery and a huge bump in front... On the evening of the 20th November I had re folded all the baby clothes, moved a huge wardrobe and laid a carpet [with the help of my husband of course..]. but in the early hours I knew I was in labour... of course having had a false alarm twice, my beloved lying in bed did not wish to get up and go out in the cold and dark to find a phone to call the ambulance..!!!!!! but he did, and when they arrived around 6 am I was really in the throes of it all... Husband had to stay behind as the two other little ones were asleep.. I found myself in the hospital very quickly and the pains very close to gether.. My pet way to cope,[ this beiing my third child I was getting cleverer, and had found that counting out loud helped manage the pain].. crying out for an epidural but refused as they did not have any, and the next hospital was too far away and I was already nearly pushing, so had to shut up and continue counting.!!!.. At 9.25 that morning, 21st November- my second daughter came into the world, as bright and bonny as she ever was! Realising that at last that push had got baby out.. I waited to hear what I had had... [bearing in mind that I had carried exactly the same way I had with Daniel my first, Rebecca who came second carried completely differently..] . I had assumed it was also going to be a boy and knitted everything blue!!! When the doctor called out 'you have a lovely baby daughter' I cried out, 'but I can't have, I've knitted everything blue... he replied..'well I cannot put her back, so you will have to tie pink ribbons around the knitted garments to try and alter the look!!!! Because I was so sure it was going to be another boy, I had not decided properly on a girl's name... then my mother disagreed with my choice of Lorna Elizabeth...so for 4 days she was nameless.. then being close to christmas, I thought of Angel Gabriel, and decided to call her Gabriella Maria... all italian like... but pretty all the same!!... [ of course as she was growing up into teen years she hated the name and wanted an ordinary one instead.!!] .. I've never regretted having any of my children, and when the health visitor asked me when I was home, whether I had finished having children - I replied.. no, realising how much I enjoyed meeting the new babies, even though the pain was undescribable at the time... they were all worth it!!!

parenting

When you are given a tiny baby that has just arrived out of the womb, the enormity of the journed you have just started, might hit you hard..For myself, I was just so overjoyed at a safe arrival of a baby son that looked perfect in every way.. For some people it is that first meeting where you realise that this little one is totally reliant on yourself. The early days of motherhood are a fast learning curve... when I had my son, the stay in hospital was at least a week, sometimes two** I know that at the fourth day I would have gone home leaving my son to stay for the alloted term.. because I was missing my husband such a lot, and as he was a student at university..there were lots of girls to distract him whilst I was away... So, we began our journey, which ended 23 years later and four other little ones joining my first baby. Having children is an open book situation... no rules, ideas how to, other than that handed to you by your mother, who seems to have ideas that do not match any recent child book publications... Somehow you get through and the kids grow up, and then there is the awful time called Teenage years. At the moment, my daughter is experiencing heart ache and anxiety as her almost 16 year old is in constant conflict with his dad and any other authority like school!! They recently moved in the countryside with a bit of land, and meant that my daughter's journey to work each day is 2 hours there and another 2 hours back.. The boy had to change schools and in the way amongst kids, the quickest way to be accepted is to become part of those that are rebelling... So now his nocturnal times when he should be asleep is spent texting his friends and being glued to his phone.. Tuesday night, his father found him outside in the garage smoking [pot] and drinking... of course there was a conflict situation, and things got said, and finally his dad said..'well those are the house rules and if you don't like them, you know what to do'- this, bear in mind is at 3am in the morning, and my girl has to go to work at 6am to catch train.. You can guess what the outcome was... no show of the boy after school.. missed his appointment with the head of school because of disruptive behaviour at school, and vanished! His father drove all over the place trying to see if he was walking around.. but nothing except one of his friends said she thought he might be staying over with another friend and that information had to do, as she said she didnt know which friend it could be.. I live so many many miles away from them, that I feel so useless being no help to my girl.. The family structure has always been a bit volatile, as Dad is fairly strict and mum tries to reason with the kids..[ when one gets married, the last thing you discuss is parenting issues... and how you deal with them.. so these two have totally different outlooks and that causes confusion that grows and grows.. ] They will have to attend family session counselling, but in the meantime, all this sorrow and heartache continues when you cannot reach your child emotionally or physically.. At almost 16 he's bound to feel he knows better than his parents in real life issues.. None of my kids touched drugs at his age, and boozing was tried out and abandoned, but much later than mid teens... university was the nightmare then, so many other things to disrupt their studies, but we all came through fairly unscathed I think.. ]] The family is very comfortably well off as the household income is high and now they have moved, Dad is there working from home, so they always have one parent around..I am sure that my grandson feels very hard done by, and that his parents do not understand where he is coming from , but smoking pot is never going to get things right, and the next few months are going to be hard for them all.. I do hope he returns soon, but who can tell... being a parent is such a hard job, but the rewards are wonderful ... however the down side is always there too, and in this situation, where he feels outside the family group, is not an easy one to correct..