GrannyXpress

The Middle Wife

Filed under: GrannyX Approves, Family Matters @ August 6, 2008 6:09 pm by healthiacynthia


The Delivery by Jenny Rollo
The “Middle Wife”

I’ve been an educator since 1968.

I have two kids myself,
but the best birth story I know is the one I saw in my own
second grade class room a few years back.

When I was A kid, I loved show-and-tell.
So I always have A few sessions
with my students.

It helps them get over shyness and
usually show-and-tell is pretty tame.

Kids bring in pet turtles,model
airplanes, pictures of fish they catch, stuff like that.
And I never ever place any boundaries or limitations on them.

If they want to lug it
in to school and talk about it, they’re welcome.

Well, one day this little girl, Purita, a very bright, very
Smart, clever outgoing kid,
takes her turn and waddles up to the front of the class
with a pillow stuffed under her sweater.

She holds up a snapshot of an infant,
“This is Rey,my baby brother,
and I’m going to tell you about his birthday.”

“First, Mom and Dad made him as a symbol of their
love, and then Dad put
a seed in my Mom’s stomach, and Rey grew in there.
He ate for nine months through an umbrella cord “.

She’s standing there with her hands on the pillow, and
I’m trying not to
laugh and wishing I had my camcorder with me.

The kids were watching her in amazement.

“Then, about two Saturdays ago, my Mom starts saying
and going, ‘Oh, Oh, oh,oh,!
Purita puts a hand behind her back and groans.

“She walked around the house for, like an hour, ‘Oh, oh, oh!

(Now this kid is doing
a hysterical duck walk and groaning).

“My Dad called the middle wife.
She delivers babies,but she doesn’t
have a sign on the car like the Domino’s man.

They got my Mom to lie down on the bed like this.

(Then Purita lies down with her back against the wall).

And then, pop!!

My Mom had this bag of water she kept in there in case
he got thirsty, and it just blew up and spilled all over
the bed, like psshhheeww!.
(This kid has her legs spread with her little hands miming
water flowing away. It was too much!)

“Then the middle wife starts saying ‘push,
push, and ‘breathe, breathe.

They started counting, but never even got past ten.

Then, all of a sudden, out comes my brother.

He was covered in yucky stuff that they
all said it was from Mom’s play-center, so there must
be a lot of toys inside there.”

Then Purita stood up, took a big theatrical
bow and returned to her seat.

I’m sure I applauded the loudest.

Ever since then, when it’s
show-and-tell day, I bring my camcorder, just in case
another “Middle Wife” comes along.

This is written by an anonymous Grade two teacher.

The photo is from sxc.hu © Jenny Rollo (thanks Jenny!)

Rainy Day Dreamin’

Filed under: GrannyX Comforts, Family Matters @ May 13, 2008 10:55 am by healthiacynthia


It’s a rainy day today and I’m missing my little munchkins… while I was having a shower in the bathroom that they use when they visit I decided that I would hang pictures of the two little bathing beauties on a space above the commode that is currently vacant. I think I will either have them framed with a sort of maple finished wood, or maybe get the decoupage-type finish.

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Getting Baby To Sleep

Filed under: GrannyX Recommends, Family Matters, Baby Sleep @ May 2, 2008 12:29 am by healthiacynthia

We’ve all been there as grandparents, I’m sure…. our little grandchild– delightful, cherubic, sweet-smelling– won’t go to sleep. Either we’re trying to assist our tired adult child, the parent, get the squalling baby to release all that tension into lovely restful sleep, or we’re trying to do it ourselves as temporary babysitters or long-term caregivers….

We draw on all the stuff we did in the past as parents… checking for pins and other possible sources of external discomfort– looking for signs of colic and earache– adjusting clothing to meet with either too-hot or too-cool conditions– rocking– singing– ferberizing– etc.

Eventually we may get the wee one to sleep, but it might be with him/her in our arms or lying in the same bed with them… any stirring starts the whole process over again.

Here is an e-offer that costs about as much as a couple of lattes and seems to guarantee successfully getting your baby to sleep after applying what you learn from a 35-minute audio. Sounds worth a try to me– what do you think? Pass the word on to the young adults who are trying to do it all– Click Here!

Revisiting The Empty Nest

Filed under: GrannyXGrouses, Family Matters @ January 30, 2008 12:42 pm by healthiacynthia

empty nestThis morning I walked by the room that ordinarily has its door shut and I caught a glimpse of the little Dora* Bed in there with its baby pink sheet and the big old elephant puppet flung up where the pillow goes. Like long-distance grannies everywhere, I blinked back a tear. All I had to say to my husband for him to immediately get it was: “that little bed”.

When our sons left home to live ‘away’– for real– I grieved their speedy transition from infancy to adulthood. I also worried a lot about their safety out there in the big world where the magic of mommy didn’t work. When I was really worried I had dreams where they were helpless babies and where I would sit them down somewhere and then not be able to find them again. The dream would morph into a nightmare that left me feeling blue and disconnected the next morning. My older son’s marriage to the lovely M. brought me out of the initial loss and his fine fathering reassured me that he was a competent, capable adult.

A couple of years ago we moved to this island to be near our younger adult son. In fact, he moved in with us and we went blissfully about our lives together, sometimes even attending community events as a ‘family’. I guess down deep we must have known that a man in his 30s generally doesn’t stay with the folks forever, so we were not TOO surprised when he upped and moved to live in a sort of communal farming situation in the East. He is happy and doing what he does well. He’s only an email away.

But back to missing the little granddaughters… part of the poignancy of loss involves their tenderness. Will they even remember us when they return here in June? I mean, A1 will know who we are because we phone occasionally and she spent quite a lot of time with us, but little A-too barely got to recognize our faces… she was three months old when they left on January 13th– she’ll be 8 months old when they return. On the other hand, both of them are getting to spend time with their other granny, (nanay).

I am ever so grateful to be a grandmother. I can barely imagine what it must be like for many grandparents who ‘lose’ their grandchildren to permanent re-location and/or through divorce and other interrupters to family unity. I typed ‘re-location’ but maybe the word is actually ‘dis-location’ because it seems to me that grandkids and grandparents who are forced apart experience a painful dysfunctionality, a torn bond, if one even existed in the first place. We live in this ‘global community’ and it does seem to mean that we will continue to be separated by great distances. Email is fine, and voice mail is finer, and webcams are lovely, but cuddling a real, flesh-and-blood grandchild is the absolute best!

*A Dora bed is one of those plastic theme items that was inspired by my granddaughter’s favourite video heroine, the hyper-active little Latina, Dora the Explorer.