Three Ring Circus

Yesterday we made our way back to the ENT doctor for Ivy’s follow up check up for her ears following what is now known in this house as the ‘great ear caper’. The doctor explained that Ivy has some immuno deficiency and neutropaenia and payed her a great deal of attention…finally. Now we have a plan for her ears and we know that the next few years will be bumpy. We know this because Imogen has the exact same thing. It’s not great news but it is good to know that the doctors might stand up and pay attention now. I feel validated and not so much like a crap mother, who can’t keep her baby well.

On another level, perhaps coming from my nursey side, it is all very interesting how genetics work. How something can skip a couple of kids and find its way to another. As if to trumpet her condition, Ivy has woken up with a temperature this morning after sleeping fitfully. Noah unexpectedly woke early too, so maybe they are both coming down with something. We’ll have to wait and see.

My house is a mess. I am the first to admit it and I am NO house cleaner. I hate it. It’s a very thankless task. In my house if you wash the floors in the morning, by lunchtime they need cleaning again. In my house, people are lined up at the toilet door to defoul your pristine sparkling toilet bowl the minute you finish the final scrub down. In my house there are clothes everywhere and my washing machine is constantly whirring in the background. My bedroom looks like a chinese laundry.

I’m getting a bit sick of it looking this way. I watched something on the Oprah show the other week where you clean out anything you haven’t touched for a year. I could do that. I could go room by room and do a massive clean. I AM going to do that but not this weekend. This weekend is mother’s day. It’s not a day to clean.

After three weeks of being off work in a sick leave related way, I am going back to night duty tonight. At 4am this morning after I had finally settled Ivy (from a midnight wake up) and then having Noah find his way into bed with us, the tears and frustrations came rolling out of me. I need to work. I need to do this because… (a) we need the money, (b) I like working as a midwife and when the kids are older I want to be able to work as an effective midwife, so I need to keep my foot in the door, (c) I get to be Tiffany the midwife, instead of Mum, wife, cook, slave, taxi driver, washer woman, counsellor, mediator, thing to cling to when we are frightened of the vacuum cleaner, thing to cling to when we are overtired and overwhelmed, pillow, leaning post, teddy bear. I just get to be me and I am recognised and appreciated for my skills. I don’t ever feel as though I am being taken for granted, even though it’s only night duty and I am not doing much for the women and their babies, they still like me for me… did I mention we need the money? LOL

So, I have enjoyed having the time off and not having to stay awake for 48hours before I can rest. I’ve loved being there for the kids, have enjoyed their company and having some degree of organisation about my day but it all has to start up again for the above reasons. My dream is to resign and to study and to start an antenatal outreach programme in the boonies. A house, where women can come for a chat and coffee, to talk about their pregnancies, have a check up, come if they are worried or scared or if they just need reassurance. I would love to be a midwife in that context.

I’m sure it will be fine once I’m there but the night duty dread is slowly taking over my thoughts today. The only other thing I can think about is that I have to teach ten kids how to do scrapbooking tomorrow on no sleep… it could be interesting.