The Baby and the Bathwater

Our youngest turned three last week and, as they invariably do on the birthdays of our offspring, my thoughts returned to that cold February day in 2006. It went like this;

Monday after half term. I wake up and know this is the day. It feels like it did the day our second child was born so I do a quick calculation, tell my husband the baby will be arriving between three and four in the afternoon, that he is welcome to go to work but I’d like him back by lunchtime.

Our au pair takes the children to school and I sit down to wait. My Lovely Neighbour comes to keep me company but there is nothing very obvious going on and I’m not sure she believes me when I say I’m having a baby so in the end she wanders off.

In time the Domestic God reappears and we go for a stroll down the Lower Richmond Road where we pick up some light bulbs. I feel a twinge and we call the midwife. Walking back is quite uncomfortable.

When the midwife arrives the air is full of anti-climax. I have one contraction that makes my eyes water. The midwife exchanges a knowing look with her assistant and suggests I have a bath. I am feeling cold so I agree. She pours in the bubble bath and makes it really hot.

Comfortably submerged I feel the advent of a second contraction and cry out. My husband, who is making his way up the stairs, mobile to ear on a business call, diverts to bathroom just in time. The midwife is calling for a torch. She uses her hand to push aside the bubbles. It is 3.37pm.

The baby is flopped quickly onto my chest. I suspect the water is far too hot for a newborn.
Congratulations! says the midwife, You have a beautiful daughter. I feel certain she’s missed the vital clue.

My eyes are tight shut. I have no desire to wake from this dream. All along I’ve known it would be another boy. It’s what we do. I never allowed myself to hope otherwise and laughed when the boys spotted three magpies as we walked on Barnes Common the day before, declaring it must be a girl. I open one eye and see my husband perched on the loo seat, tears streaming down his face. I look down at my new slippery, purple bubble baby for the first time, our daughter, our little girl.

Our Lovely Neighbour has collected the two older boys from school and taken them home via the sweet shop. Our youngest son has returned from a walk with the au pair. He has slept right through the unexpected water birth of his little sister parked in his buggy downstairs. When he wakes he is not very pleased. Daddy goes and tells the older boys they have a sister. They don’t quite believe it either but bounce back over the road with their sweets, to come and see us both, still in the bath, cord still intact. They offer me Maltesers.

I am brought a cup of tea and climb in to our big bed with my new nameless daughter. We had a boy’s name all ready to go. Now we shall have to think again. So she is Baby to begin with and it sticks, right up until she is old enough to protest, I not a baby!

In the meantime we hang pink balloons on the railings outside our house to flutter forth the glad tidings. I bought both, blue and pink ones, just in case, a chink of hope remaining despite the odds stacked so firmly against us. I can hardly believe my luck.

Mothers and Daughters

My mother has been staying (hence the self-imposed internet purdah). At 74, widowed by the premature death of my father ten years ago, my mother is deaf and walks slowly with a stick. None of this, however, is enough to put her off her first ever trip to Asia. (Correction: to Hong Kong. She was born in Ceylon, but that's another story...)

Her flight is delayed by five hours on the runway at Heathrow. We watch the HK airport website all day for news. I get to the airport at the rescheduled hour and spot my mother parked to one side in her BA wheelchair thumbing through her diary in search of my number. Which she hasn’t thought to bring. Presumably because she was expecting her reliable daughter to be there to meet her. I am consumed by guilt.

Because I am late and the wheelchair assistant has had to leave for his next assignment, we face a logistical problem. She has with her two suitcases and two pieces of hand luggage, none of it particularly large or heavy but I am going to need two hands for either the wheelchair or the luggage. The car is a distance away and I do not feel able to leave either luggage or mother unaccompanied for any further length of time.

Load me up, she says cheerfully. My mother is frail and slender and, unhappy with the idea of burying her under a pile of bags, I look around for other options. I spot a lone luggage trolley. Do you think you can push? I ask.

Leaning forward in her wheelchair, head down and arms outstretched, she can just reach the bar of the luggage trolley. Steering is erratic but from behind I can at least provide the power. Concentrating hard, our stately progress is impeded when the wheelchair’s footrests catch unavoidably on the trolley’s back wheels bringing our bizarre little caravan repeatedly to a sudden halt. Stopping and starting we weave our way towards the car park. We have covered the whole terminal building before a thoughtful Indian acknowledges our need and helps us into the lift.

After years of sleeping lightly in anticipation of a needy child I am woken in the night. My mother is moving about on the floor below. I hear something hard fall to the parquet floor. Concerned that she has dropped her stick and might need it to reach the bathroom I go and investigate. As I descend the stairs I see her inching her way to the bathroom, eyes glued to the floor in search of obstacles. Cocooned by her deafness she is unaware of me until I am beside her. She looks up.

Hallo Darling. How lovely to see you! She beams as if she has just bumped into me unexpectedly outside Waitrose. Without her hearing aids she has no idea how loudly she speaks.

Shhh! You’ll wake the boys, I mouth. She changes tack and starts back towards her room. I follow her in.

I thought you were off to the loo, I say.

I thought we could have a lovely chat in here, she replies. It is 2.30 in the morning and chatting is the last thing on my mind. Wide awake and remarkably chipper given the ordeal of the previous day, she has drawn the curtains, unpacked her luggage, selected an outfit for the morning and is raring to go. I explain that she may be suffering from jetlag and that I’ll look forward to chatting in the morning before wishing her a good night and returning to bed.

In anticipation of her visit I have hired a wheelchair. By some extraordinary stroke of luck it just fits into the Flying Sofa behind the front seats. Even more extraordinary is the fact that with Granny in the front and the Domestic God at the wheel, all four children and I can still fit into the car. I praise the Flying Sofa and retract all rude comments I may have made in the past about its lack of style, street cred or speed. It is now officially The Best Car in Hong Kong. Apart from our neighbour’s new Masarati, that is, which I surprise myself by coveting every day. Not that you’d get a Granny, two parents, four children and a wheelchair in that. Thus we set out to discover Hong Kong. We are mobile and I am elated.

On her fourth morning my mother falls in the bathroom and hits her head on its unforgiving marble floor. I am horrified by the egg-sized lump that appears on her head. I administer ice, arnica, Rescue Cream – all the remedies I have for the children but it is an adult-size bump. That day we stay in. Over the next days and weeks from my position as chief wheelchair operator I watch the bruising on the crown of her head turn yellow and purple and spread down her neck where it sits stubbornly for the duration of her stay. There are other startling reminders of her fall on her arm, her hand and her back. She admits, only when pressed, that her ribs are quite painful. How could I have allowed this to happen?

Hong Kong proves to be remarkably wheelchair unfriendly. Whole car park floors have no lift. Lifts are approached by stairs and the first two floors of a building are served only by an escalator. We end up in damp corridors and service lifts along with restaurant supplies and shop deliveries. I start to see my surroundings through the eyes of a wheelchair pusher: curb stones become obstacles, the camber of a pavement is an angled balancing act, potholes are man traps and an uneven pavement a bumpy ride. An uphill incline becomes a hard work out and a downhill slope a risky undertaking.

We are assisted by attentive passers by who help lift the wheel chair in and out of taxis, up and down pavements, through doors and up steps. They offer helping hands to my mother and appear fascinated by the spectacle of three generations of a European family: mother, daughter, granddaughter. Granddaughter would like to claim the wheelchair as her own clambering hopefully in each time we get it out of the car before she is lifted out to shrieks of protest. My mother apologises for being a nuisance and says it is a shame that after pushing prams and buggies for ten years I now have to wheel her around. I wonder in what many ways over the years I was a nuisance to her.

My mother bears all with customary good will. Each day she braves the 24 steps to come down for breakfast. When we go out there are 31 more to reach the garage. If she wants to get to the pool there are a further 59 steps. Yet we are not deterred. We take the Star Ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui and enjoy the Harbour View. We ride on the Peak Tram and look down on the skyscrapers from above. We go to Stanley and browse in the market. We spend an afternoon on Shek’O beach where she watches the boys boogie boarding in the surf from the comfort of her deck chair. We drive into the New Territories and watch the 8 year old at his riding lesson. I wheel her through Hong Kong Park where towers of glass and steel crowd in on us while we admire the ornamental carp and watch the terrapins compete for a place in the sun.

She is here for the nursery sports day where our four year old obliges by wining his running race and I stay true to form by losing mine. We visit the school to view the Year 3’s Egyptian project ‘museum’. On a warm afternoon she reclines by the pool and delights in the spectacle of the children at play. We go out to eat and she is startled by the noise and crowds of Hong Kong. She reads to the children, plays board games and in the evenings we watch films together.

On days when we don't go out she sits in the sun and reads or watches the comings and going of a house filled with children. We drink numerous cups of tea and sometimes we chat, reminisce. I ask about her mother, her wartime childhood, fill the gaps in my knowledge of her family’s past. She hears out my dilemmas over schools, my likes and dislikes of my Hong Kong life, my hopes and fears for our time here. She meets my friends and is here for her granddaughter's third birthday. It is a happy time. I am glad to be showing her my life and hope it is a holiday for her. She doesn't need to wash or iron or cook, just be, and climb the stairs.

And yet all the time I feel I am not doing quite enough: what is enough for a mother who pushed me in a pram, washed, ironed and cooked for me for 18 long years, saw me through the ups and downs of school, university and beyond? She talked me off ledges, read me to sleep, counselled me in times of need. The balance sheet remains imbalanced and now that it's payback time I am in demand by my own demanding children .

We spend a day at the shops and she offers an opinion as I try things on. I can’t remember the last time we went shopping together. While I once craved it her damaged legs would not stand it. Shopping was torture to be endured in any shop where no chair was provided for customers. Thus all trendy shops were out of bounds and my girlish wardrobe was distinctly lacking in cool.

And then, the day of departure is upon us. The time has sped by. We spend the morning out and plan a last supper in a restaurant before her night time flight. She is flustered to find she is leaving, has in mind it is not till tomorrow and wonders if she has booked a taxi for the right day. I check the details and with dismay realise I've goofed again. Her flight took off at 1.10am that very morning. I have muddled the dates and feel like a fool.

The Domestic God secures another flight that very evening. It is earlier and the only loss is the dinner out so we eat spag bol at home with the kids and Granny reads the children a last bedtime story. My husband has got me off the hook once more and I love him to bits. I love my mother too but she is looking forward to going home and I’m not sure that either of us was ready for an extended visit.

Do you think you’ll come again? I ask.

If I’m invited, she replies. I have had the most wonderful time.

Six months on

2nd February, was the half year anniversary of our arrival in Hong Kong. On August 1st I left London with our four children and flew to Hong Kong to be reunited with the Pioneering Accountant. In my naïve way, I imagined we’d be settled and sorted by the end of September.

So, six months down the line, how do I feel about my new home? I’m not sure I’m really ready to call it home. In fact I constantly have the feeling I’m sitting on someone else’s furniture and rather wish we’d bought more of our own stuff rather than putting it into storage. But would being surrounded by my UK clutter mean I felt more at home in HK?

Both the Pioneering Accountant and I have already registered that we do not want to spend the rest of our lives here. It’s an adventure, one we sought out and welcomed, and one we are prepared to make the most of for as long as it lasts. And whilst I fully recognise the potential for having a good time while we’re here, for meeting many interesting people and doing some fascinating things, I find I have not yet fallen completely in love with the place.

Hong Kong is not a place for the faint hearted. Despite unusually comfortable levels of home help, short commuting times, good weather and an outdoorsy life, it is also a harsh, urban, unforgiving sort of existence. It’s relentlessly commercial, loud, busy, ugly and alien in many ways to an English girl, even a relatively well-travelled one. And yet, it sort of gets under your skin and I have to admit, somewhat reluctantly, that I actually do quite like it here.

There are things I still miss from my old life in London: I miss walking the children to school and doing my local errands on foot. I miss London’s wonderful array of art galleries, opera, theatre, ballet and exhibitions. I miss going up to town on the 22 bus and shopping on the King’s Road. I miss our weekend bike rides along the Thames and through Richmond Park.

There is a growing list of things I no longer find odd or surprising in Hong Kong. Perhaps this means I’m getting used to life here. Perhaps these will be the things I miss when we eventually go home to London:

crowds and crowds of people
mobiles that work in the underground
public health announcements on TV
not being able to read the signs
Hello Kitty on everything
young women in head-to-toe Louis Vuitton
talking about Nancy Kissel
not being understood
being elbowed aside in a queue
calling relative strangers my new friends
Dim Sum
double layers of packaging on everything from loo rolls to biscuits
cockroaches
smog
fur coats
clean cars
the sound of a jack-hammer
bamboo scaffolding
shanty towns and skyscrapers
and last, but not least, ironed knickers.

Goodbye to all that

Our two year old daughter has just discarded her night time nappy. No big deal you may say. But yes. It is. For this portentous event means that for the very first time since the birth of our eldest son in December 1998 we will not have to change a nappy in our household. Or to be more precise, a nappy will not be changed in our household, as we have, over the years, managed a few child-free sorties thanks to grandparental input.

That’s ten years, one month, three weeks and four days of uninterrupted nappy changing to be exact. Can I be bothered to work out how many nappies that is? I’ll give it a try. My accounting husband would be proud of me. Let’s assume an average 4 nappies a day for 365 days x 10 years = 14,600. Then the periods of changing two lots: boys nos.1 and 2 overlapped for at least a year; +1460. Boys nos. 2 and 3 overlapped for 3 months or so; +360. And boy no.3 and girl no.1 overlapped for about 18 months; +2190. Which gives a total of 18, 610 nappies. Blimey. And every single one of them was disposable. So how much landfill have I clogged with horrid methane exuding packets of crap? And the cost! £6.98 for a packet of 27. That means in ten years I have spent approximately £4,811 on nappies alone.

There are those who say that the washing of re-usable nappies with all its detergent, water and electricity, is just as detrimental to the environment as disposable ones. Our local borough did not offer the nappy collection service I have heard about in Edinburgh and Bristol. Our London GP once said she used to see the most awful cases of nappy rash before disposable nappies became widely used. These are the arguments that those who don’t want to wash Terri nappies like to hear. One thing is certain: disposable nappies do such an efficient job at keeping a toddler dry that oftentimes they won’t even realise they are wet. So where’s the incentive to use the potty? Which in turn sells more nappies. I’m sure those of us who dragged a heavy sodden Terri nappy around our thighs as toddlers had a greater need to be potty trained sooner rather than later.

I have friends who were rather surprised at how long my boys were indulged in their need to wear nappies - let’s not beat about the bush, only one of my boys bothered to come out of them before reaching his third birthday. I wasn’t prepared to use bribery as I’d seen kids visit the potty hundreds of times with barely visible results just to get another jelly baby. Look my son is potty trained and he’s not even two. Please ignore the fact that he’s got rotten teeth!

In my experience, the safest way to avoid accidents, save time and multiple use of the washing machine was more or less to wait until the boys told me when they were ready to come out. Perhaps this is an example of despicable slummy-mummydom but there were educationalists in Germany where we lived at the time who insisted that most boys were not anyway able to control the pipes sufficiently until they were three or thereabouts. I’m sure there are several out there who will want to put me right on that front but it was a line I was happy to swallow in my laisser-faire approach to potty training.

Actually that’s not true. I wasn’t always so laid back. As first time parents we tried hard to train our eldest son, the summer after his second birthday. I have photos of him on holiday in France sitting on a potty in the garden of the house we rented, chatting to his attentive Grandma. We let him run around with no pants that summer. It was easier than washing them all the time. The French didn’t appear to mind.

One lunch time we were sitting outside a café on a village pavement when our little boy grew agitated. He started to busy himself, running back and forth as if looking for something. I had just taken him to the loo so assumed it was something else that was bothering him. As we watched, our little chap squatted down and left a man-sized turd on the pavement only yards away from the nearest table, fortunately unoccupied. We were speechless. What on earth should we do with it? Pretend it was a dog? Too big! Run and hide? We had just ordered. Ignore it? What if someone trod in it? Or traced it back to us? Looking around to check he was unobserved my husband took a serviette, picked up the offending object and sauntered off in search of a suitable place to dispose of it. I thought he might find one of those bins for dog waste but I’m not sure the rural Burgundians were quite there yet. My, how we laughed.

So, we are about to rid ourselves of two potties, a child size loo seat, a nappy bucket, a nappy changing mat and half a packet of Pampers pull-ups, all, with the exception of the last item, ten years old. Do I have a bidder?

It is the end of an era, but one I am not sad to see go. In fact, I think we’ll throw a party to celebrate. The question is what should I put on the invitation? My husband thought of The Wipe Out Party. All suggestions welcome.

To laugh or not to laugh....

On Tuesday someone threw a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao as he delivered a speech at Cambridge University. I read about it yesterday in the South China Morning Post where the newsworthy point was that this incident had actually been given air space on Central Chinese TV, the state broadcaster. Such embarrassing incidents are usually suppressed by China’s tightly controlled media.

Premier Wen described the incident as despicable. The Chinese are acutely sensitive to insults and the British Government, keen as it is to build bilateral ties, will be relieved that his reaction was so restrained. This major sense of humour failure was notably absent when President George W. Bush had shoes thrown at him in Iraq and the Chinese had a good laugh.

Premier Wen was visiting Britain with the aim of improving Anglo-Sino trade during the global downturn. Gordon Brown had been warned not to sacrifice human rights concerns to the prospect of boosting exports. Well that’s good to know. More Waitrose products for the Chinese but still no freedom of speech. They’ll be pleased about that.

The South China Morning Post went on to report that all negative or ironic comments made by bloggers on the subject had been blocked. I must be careful what I say. No irony intended.

Confessions of a reluctant HR Manager

We get back from skiing late on Saturday night. Sunday is the amahs’ day off and rather than wait for Monday I set about the washing. There are nine full loads of it.

The following morning I become increasingly aware that all is not well. A neighbour who’s heard gossip from her amah alerts me to the fact there is a family feud bubbling away in our house. The sisters are seemingly no longer going out together, nor are they eating together, nor are they even speaking to each other. When I walk in to the kitchen you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.

What on earth is going on? We’ve only been away a week and civil war has broken out. I thought the amahs were there to help me and yet I am spending more time and energy sorting out their issues than my own. Lucky as I am to have this level of help, this is so not what I need. I am a mother, not a trade union official. I spend the evening discussing it with my reasonable, diplomatic and wise husband who then sends me in to bat. Can’t you do it? I plead. No, he says, this is your department.

One by one, I hear them out. It is six of one, half a dozen of the other; she did this, she said that, petty squabbles, jealousy and bickering. I fought long and hard to get the Dream Team to Hong Kong from the Philippines and this is what it’s come to. I am so fed up I could bang their heads together.

Now it’s my turn to speak and I read the riot act. Things have begun to slide. I have been too lenient. Metaphorically speaking there have been too many boiled turkeys, too many incidents of polishing the antique furniture with Windolene. It’s time to lay down the law. This is the sort of behaviour I would not tolerate from my children, and I tell them so. If they can’t sort out their issues with each other then I’ll send them both home. For good.

Do I make myself clear? I hear myself saying before I march out of the room, every inch the Ma’am, the employer, the boss. And as I do I know my cheeks are flaming and I want to run and hide. I feel as though I’m ten years old, play-acting a part in a big-girls’ play. It was a part I didn’t really want and rarely have I felt so ill-equipped, so under-qualified and so fake. These women are the same age as me and yet I sound like a mother, a teacher, an old cow.

Ten minutes later I leave for yoga and hope that a bit of deep breathing and sun worship might calm me down. I wonder what the fall out will be and reason that if they are really unhappy they can try their luck elsewhere. They are free agents and can give notice at any time. Despite the inconvenience and my deep reluctance to return to my helpless in Hong Kong state, I know that in time I will find a replacement. A former boss of mine used to say, whenever anyone left his firm, We’ll get someone better. And yet, in truth what we all know is that a month’s salary in Hong Kong is not far off the average annual wage in the Philippines. Whilst I am reeling at the disproportionate amount of power I seem to have acquired, my amahs might be reflecting that a decent job in Hong Kong is not something you want to lose to a sisterly spat. But the truth is that with all the cultural, social and linguistic issues that divide us, coupled with my own inexperience at handling squabbling banshees in my own kitchen, I have simply no idea what they are thinking or what they’ll do next. All I know is that I never applied for the job of HR Manager.

"Where happiness means the world"

We spent the week of the Chinese New Year holiday skiing in Sahoro, Japan. It was our first time at Club Med and I was all prepared for bun-fights in the dining room and worse.

The reality is a pleasant surprise. The hotel is pretty full, Chinese Week being one of the busiest times of its season. Our children are happy and therefore, by extension, so are we. The whole place is geared up to enable parents and their children to have the best possible time. Every need is catered for and there is such an array of activities on offer for the kids, even after a day on the slopes, that it would be quite possible not to see your children for much of the holiday.

We meet a myriad of other families: we recognise some from Hong Kong but there are Dutch from Seoul, Germans from Shanghai, French from Beijing, Brits from Sakhalin, Brunei and Oman, Canadian Indians from Singapore and Malaysians from Kuala Lumpur. The instructors are from Quebec, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and USA. Together we represent a whole melting pot of nationalities, colours, origins and residencies, all united by this strange need to ski fast down the side of a mountain.

At the end of our third day our two year old starts throwing up. The Kids’ Club and its single chap-stick approach to 20 kids might be held responsible. The fall-out, however, is our problem and for four days she remains volatile at both ends, reminding us intermittently in pitiful tones, I’m sick.

The Domestic God and I ski and play nursemaid in half day shifts. Our little patient is wiped out and sleeps for hours on end. In the meantime the boys make huge progress on the slopes. Our ten year old grows fast and fearless. His younger brother is slower but stays staunchly upright. Our four year old recounts his achievements after his first ever day on skis. The story involves a ramp and a backwards flip told with such conviction I think he believes it really did happen.

On an outing with the older boys our last run takes in the so-called Monkey Run, a horrifyingly narrow, tree-lined track of deep ruts and bumps which the kids love and the adults love to hate. Speed is inevitable as there is no room to turn or slow down. The only way to survive is to crouch low and try and scoot over the bumps. The eight year old goes first and snow ploughs his way down. I go last and pass the ten year old at break-neck speed as he rights himself after a fall. In trying to avoid him I momentarily lose concentration and it is enough to land me in the trees in deep snow, my skis above my head. I need a hand, I need a crane. Eventually I free myself from the skis and sink thigh deep into soft snow and struggle out of the drift and back onto the run. The ten year old has gone off in a huff. The eight year old is waiting patiently for me at the bottom, the only one of us not to have taken a tumble. Leave it to the monkeys next time, I mutter.

Japan is an experience in itself and the unusual combination of daytime skiing and après-ski sushi suits me down to the ground. The slopes are beautifully empty, several hundred Club Medders managing to disperse themselves so widely over the mountain that we never once wait more than 3 or 4 minutes for a lift. One feature which will remain in my mind for months to come as I wonder why it has not caught on in Europe is the Japanese heated loo seat – perfect for ski-cooled backsides as you come in from the cold!

Home once more, I am inclined to think we were lucky to get away with no more than a stomach upset. Five skiers have returned with not a twisted ankle nor a broken bone between them and to me that seems like quite an achievement and certainly enough to persuade me, credit crunch aside, we might even want to go back next year.