My Lovely Wife and I had a conversation about a turkey sandwich the other day.
Our Daughter had to stay after school for marching band practice and we were debating whether to pack her a turkey sandwich for lunch and a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, or peanut butter for lunch and turkey for dinner. Our daughter wanted the latter, but it caused My Lovely Wife some concern.
She was afraid, you see, of what might happen to that turkey sandwich as it sat all day in Senor Awesome's car in the 85-degree North Carolina sunshine. The fact it would be stored in a cooler with an ice pack didn't make her any happier.
By My Lovely Wife's way of thinking, somewhere between noon and 6:00pm, that innocent turkey and cheese sandwich could transform into a ZipLock bag full of raging salmonella capable of causing explosive diarhea, projectile vomiting, internal bleeding, collapsed lung, shingles, and twelve other symptoms never before documented by the Center for Disease Control.
I foolishly thought it would be okay. After all, when I was her age we didn't worry so much about these things.
I can't begin to count the times my tuna fish sandwich -- wrapped in wax paper and placed lovingly in a brown paper bag by my Mother -- would sit in my non-temperature-controlled high school locker until lunch time rolled around. By then, you could smell the mayonnaise halfway down the hallway and it had soaked through both layers of paper and greased up the cover of my social studies textbook. I could have sworn off tuna fish for the rest of my life, but my textbooks, notebooks, jackets and gym clothes would continue to carry that lingering Chicken of the Sea odor for the rest of the school year.
That's just the way it was. If you brought your lunch to school you ended up eating a room temperature sandwich, regardless of how much dairy product or meat or seafood went into the making of it. Tuna, bologna, peanut butter, cheese -- we didn't worry about food poisoning. We simply unwrapped it and ate it. Had we known to be more worried about contaminated food, it's very likely I would have tried faking a bout of E. Coli or campylobacter to go home early on days when there was a math test scheduled.
So, it isn't that I don't love Our Daughter. It isn't that I don't want to keep her protected from random food borne illnesses. It's just that I have a difficult time believing two slices of Boars Head smoked turkey breast and one slice of picante provolone sitting for a day in an insulated cooler with an ice pack the size of a brick could pose her any danger.
Under those conditions, my tuna fish sandwich could have lasted for days...
© 2012 Mark Feggeler
Showing posts with label Mother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mother. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
Buckle Head
There we were, winding our way along circuitous routes through the maternity ward at the hospital, trying our darndest to walk a baby out of My Lovely Wife.
They say walking is good for a thing like that. I think they're liars.
I think the only reason they tell moaning mothers-to-be to get up and walk around is because they're tired of listening to them. They shoo her out the door and head her down the hallway to be somebody else's problem for the next ten minutes. If they're lucky, maybe she'll toss the baby halfway to Ortho. Knees and hips, feh! Let's see if those joint doctors know what to do with a placenta or two.
Anyway, Our Daughter was stubbornly clinging to the womb interior, refusing to answer the call of life's great eviction notice. Contractions were ratcheting down with ever-increasing rapidity and, by the look on My Lovely Wife's face, were no picnic.
The most amazing thing to me was how sincerely apologetic she would get after every contraction. I'm sitting there on a cushioned chair sipping a diet soda and making small talk while she reenacts the John Hurt scene from Alien, but when the pain passes she apologizes to me. Where is that kind of emotional misdirection when I forget to go the bank?
Oh, there's another contraction, and this one looks like a doozy! Eyes are squeezed tight, her fingers are gripping mine, and everything we learned about the therapeutic value of regulated breathing flies straight out the window. She sits in a chair and pushes her head into me until the severe cramping subsides. When she looks up to tell me how sorry she is for being in pain, all I can see is the imprint of my belt buckle across her forehead.
You know those times you aren't supposed to laugh? That was one of those times.
And it was one of the very few of those times in which I actually had enough sense to stifle it. It got slightly more difficult to hold in the laughter the second and third times she sat back with the deep red grooves in her forehead displaying a detailed relief of my buckle, but I managed. Not longer after, following the administration of some very effective pain medications that left her smiling contentedly through contractions that could squeeze coal into diamonds, My Lovely Wife gave birth to Our seven-pound eleven-ounce Daughter.
Three-and-a-half years later, when it was time for twelve pounds of twins to join our family, we had a pretty good idea what we were in for at the hospital that morning. And I made sure to leave the belt at home.
© 2011 Mark Feggeler
They say walking is good for a thing like that. I think they're liars.
I think the only reason they tell moaning mothers-to-be to get up and walk around is because they're tired of listening to them. They shoo her out the door and head her down the hallway to be somebody else's problem for the next ten minutes. If they're lucky, maybe she'll toss the baby halfway to Ortho. Knees and hips, feh! Let's see if those joint doctors know what to do with a placenta or two.
Anyway, Our Daughter was stubbornly clinging to the womb interior, refusing to answer the call of life's great eviction notice. Contractions were ratcheting down with ever-increasing rapidity and, by the look on My Lovely Wife's face, were no picnic.
The most amazing thing to me was how sincerely apologetic she would get after every contraction. I'm sitting there on a cushioned chair sipping a diet soda and making small talk while she reenacts the John Hurt scene from Alien, but when the pain passes she apologizes to me. Where is that kind of emotional misdirection when I forget to go the bank?
Oh, there's another contraction, and this one looks like a doozy! Eyes are squeezed tight, her fingers are gripping mine, and everything we learned about the therapeutic value of regulated breathing flies straight out the window. She sits in a chair and pushes her head into me until the severe cramping subsides. When she looks up to tell me how sorry she is for being in pain, all I can see is the imprint of my belt buckle across her forehead.
And it was one of the very few of those times in which I actually had enough sense to stifle it. It got slightly more difficult to hold in the laughter the second and third times she sat back with the deep red grooves in her forehead displaying a detailed relief of my buckle, but I managed. Not longer after, following the administration of some very effective pain medications that left her smiling contentedly through contractions that could squeeze coal into diamonds, My Lovely Wife gave birth to Our seven-pound eleven-ounce Daughter.
Three-and-a-half years later, when it was time for twelve pounds of twins to join our family, we had a pretty good idea what we were in for at the hospital that morning. And I made sure to leave the belt at home.
© 2011 Mark Feggeler
Friday, May 6, 2011
Happy Mother's Day!
Almost 14 years ago, when my poor Lovely Wife's belly appeared unable to expand any farther, she gave birth to our first child.
She desperately hoped for a daughter and the ultrasounds told us she would get what she wanted. I got quite good at recognizing the tell-tale embryonic gender indicators during those visits. It helped that our unborn baby girl did not mind gracing us with the ocasional explicit angle -- a habit that doesn't seem to end until they reach 10 or 11 years of age.
Ever the impatient woman, my Lovely Wife employed certain tactics to encourage the birthing process. She had read the act of walking would help move the baby along down the birth canal, so it was not an uncommon sight during those final weeks of her pregnancy to see her circling our small living room with a very confused Dalmation sniffing at her heels as she went round and round the coffee table. She even walked the running track at our local high school during the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life the day before checking in to the hospital. That's what I call determination.
Once we had her settled in the birthing suite, labor pains escalated as the laughably mild contractions of the day before were replaced by the real thing. The pains came and went all through that Saturday night.
And what was the expert advice we received to help move the process along? Walk.
So, I played the part of Dalmatian as we walked circles around the corridors, repeatedly stopping as the next wave of contractions gripped my Lovely Wife. If a chair were handy, she would sit and press her head into my stomach as she concentrated on controling her breathing. I learned then that it's extremely difficult to maintain the appropriate serious composure when your wife looks up at you with a belt buckle impression in the middle of her forehead.
Eventually, the epidural was administered. We are not the all natural, new age, unconventional, statement-making kind of people. Drugs exist for specific purposes, and this was one of them. I kept watching the monitor showing the onsloaught of massive contractions and eying the mother-to-be to make sure the medications were doing their job, but I had nothing to fear.
"Everyone should have an epidural," she sighed, oblivious to the internal struggles.
Our Darling Daughter presented herself after only three rounds of pushing and deep breathing. I cut the cord, she cried, we cried, they cleaned her up, and we took turns holding her. Family members came and went, oohing and aahing over the scrunched up, swaddled bundle that was our new baby girl.
A day later she was home with us, and our lives were forever changed. Now, if someone can help us get through the teenage dating years, we might survive to grandparenthood.
Happy Mother's Day to all you Mothers out there. Thank you for the blessings you've brought to our lives.
© 2011 Mark Feggeler
She desperately hoped for a daughter and the ultrasounds told us she would get what she wanted. I got quite good at recognizing the tell-tale embryonic gender indicators during those visits. It helped that our unborn baby girl did not mind gracing us with the ocasional explicit angle -- a habit that doesn't seem to end until they reach 10 or 11 years of age.
Ever the impatient woman, my Lovely Wife employed certain tactics to encourage the birthing process. She had read the act of walking would help move the baby along down the birth canal, so it was not an uncommon sight during those final weeks of her pregnancy to see her circling our small living room with a very confused Dalmation sniffing at her heels as she went round and round the coffee table. She even walked the running track at our local high school during the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life the day before checking in to the hospital. That's what I call determination.
Once we had her settled in the birthing suite, labor pains escalated as the laughably mild contractions of the day before were replaced by the real thing. The pains came and went all through that Saturday night.
And what was the expert advice we received to help move the process along? Walk.
So, I played the part of Dalmatian as we walked circles around the corridors, repeatedly stopping as the next wave of contractions gripped my Lovely Wife. If a chair were handy, she would sit and press her head into my stomach as she concentrated on controling her breathing. I learned then that it's extremely difficult to maintain the appropriate serious composure when your wife looks up at you with a belt buckle impression in the middle of her forehead.
Eventually, the epidural was administered. We are not the all natural, new age, unconventional, statement-making kind of people. Drugs exist for specific purposes, and this was one of them. I kept watching the monitor showing the onsloaught of massive contractions and eying the mother-to-be to make sure the medications were doing their job, but I had nothing to fear.
"Everyone should have an epidural," she sighed, oblivious to the internal struggles.
Our Darling Daughter presented herself after only three rounds of pushing and deep breathing. I cut the cord, she cried, we cried, they cleaned her up, and we took turns holding her. Family members came and went, oohing and aahing over the scrunched up, swaddled bundle that was our new baby girl.
A day later she was home with us, and our lives were forever changed. Now, if someone can help us get through the teenage dating years, we might survive to grandparenthood.
Happy Mother's Day to all you Mothers out there. Thank you for the blessings you've brought to our lives.
© 2011 Mark Feggeler
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