This week at Chaos HQ

Both Ana and I are dragging our feet to school. Ali and I are skipping off to the zoo while we can.

Heather has just reminded me how lucky I am. My family is looked after by angels.

Two of them delivered my babies. Several saved my youngest from newborn illness and again from Calpol enthusiasm. A nervous trainee-angel looked after my eldest when she decided to go foraging for woody nightshade.

And the snail said: 'I feel so small.'

They were always just there when we needed them. Which is why I love the NHS.

My homeland is abundant in angels, but access is expensive and inequitable. Many other places are not even that lucky.

Everyone should have the NHS. All kids should be looked after by angels. Don't you think?

Back to chasing pixies and fending off nightshade attack.

Visit from the Bronchiolitis Fairy

Ali had a visit from her old friend the Bronchiolitis Fairy recently. The Bronchiolitis Fairy is the mean old cow of the fairy world - much nastier than the Tooth Fairy with her pliers; much more motivated than that lazy recluse Big Foot.

Ali first met the Bronchiolitis Fairy, a year and a half ago when she was six weeks old. She caught a winter bug, coughed her little heart out and stopped feeding. An hour's visit to A&E turned into a week in the pediatric ward.

Bronchiolitis Fairy sited near Euston station.

Ali was such a tiny thing that the nurses had to make a nest of towels for her in the hospital bed. She was so pale that she camouflaged with the white sheets. She looked more like a perfect, porceline doll than a baby. Her little rib cage sucked in and out like a miniature bellows on overdrive.

For days she dreamed, coughed, dreamed, and coughed in her towel nest, like some delicate flightless little sparrow. Her tiny arms remained flung over her head in a halo, fists clenched tightly.

I hovered over her as if in a fever dream, unable to sleep, and in increasingly smelly socks (I hadn't come to the hospital prepared for a week's stay).*

I subsisted on Weetabix in styrofoam cups and a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that I found around the ward. Between bowls of soggy cereal and to the drumbeat of rain against the hospital window, I read about a healthy, precocious little girl exploring the wonder of the world and the beauty of her own mind.

'Ceiling wax? Bah.' 

I prayed that my girl would grow strong, that she'd spend a vigorous girlhood chasing rabbits and talking a load of nonsense with dodos. I promised to always hover by her side, to keep her safe and warm. I suspect most parents of ill children make similar silent promises.

I didn't sleep for a week. I lost track of time. I think I lost a few of my marbles too, which may still be under the cot in that bleach-scented room. But one sunny morning we were finally able to make our way home, and this song was playing in the car.

A week of bronculitis is nothing - many parents contend with far worse. Some unlucky ones with unspeakable suffering. I know that we are lucky. I know that we've had it easy.

The Bronchiolitis Fairy has been less nasty on subsequent visits. On her recent visit, poor Ali had to endure some very insulting poking from the doctor and a few puffs of an inhaler. Calpol reserves have been depleted. But that's the worst of it this time round.

I don't know where she picked this up, but Ali now wails 'poor mama!' when she is feeling particularly miserable. Of course this causes her poor mama's heart to crack in two every time.

Buttheaditis, a chronic inherited condition. 

It was while Ali sat on my knee at the GP's crying out 'poor mama!' that I was struck by the thought that maybe I need to relax and let go of my children a little more. The doctor listened to Ali's breathing through a stethoscope, frowned and leaned back. 'Can you stop patting her on the back and saying 'It's okay baby' into her cheek?'' she said. 'It's all I can hear'.

Poor Ali. When she gets tired and ill, she just gets more stubborn. She works harder when she most needs to take it easy. She gets mad at anyone who tries to help her.

Poor Ali: in this way she is just like her mama.

After the GP's, she yelled 'POOR MAMA' at her blocks all afternoon when they wouldn't stack up just so. But she refused to stop playing. Finally, finally, she flopped over and allowed me to cuddle her.

Someday, she will grow up and fly the nest. Even in adulthood there will be times when her stubbornness cannot overpower what ails her. For those times, I hope she is able to rest, to put down her defenses, to ask for help.

Perhaps in these moments she will feel the ghost of a hand patting her gently on the back, and hear a voice whispering in her ear that everything is going to be okay.

I will get better at letting go with my hands and my eyes as she gets older. But I will always keep her safe and warm in my heart.

*That is until our lovely friend P delivered a bag. Siblings weren't allowed in the ward so Papa and Ana had to stay home and keep a waffle and nutella vigil all week. Brave souls, they seemed in extremely high spirits at the end of it.

23: Waiting for the miracle

Day 23 is born.

With child.

At my first maternity appointment, the GP actually said 'women have been doing this for thousands of years'. Boy do I hate the assertion that bearing children is trivial because it is common. True: every child born is first carried, and true: this usually involves a bulbous belly, a tired back, the better part of a year, and a rather rude exit. Thousands of years of hard labour, agony, loss, and joy.

Palm of wonder. 

Frequency simply cannot remove the peril or the wonder of the experience. So I don't think it's sappy to say that when a child takes her first breath outside the womb it is miraculous. Even if her plastic manger lies in a noisy ward smelling of disinfectant, staffed by toast and tea-wielding midwives instead of angels, beatifically illuminated by fluorescent strip-lights shining through some horrible hour of night.

Wondrous, even if women have always done just this.

4: NHS bear hug

Day 4 in Advent.

Can't bear paracetamol. 

I can unreservedly recommend my local hospital for minor kid emergencies. For instance, if your child slips into stealth-mode and commandeers a full bottle of Calpol, then triumphantly returns it to you emptied, the nice A&E people will let you in out of the cold with a smile. They won't even criticise your shoddy baby surveillance skills and rubbish cap-securing ability. Your snowflake might then flail about wrathfully, shouting Babish obscenities like something out of 'The Exorcist' while the nurse tries to draw blood to ascertain paracetamol levels. Said nurse will remain calm, simultaneously offering a cute teddy to your teeth-gnashing minion, and comforting words to a blubbering you. The blood test might confirm that, while your devil in disguise created a Calpol Jackson Pollock on the carpet, she actually ingested nil. The nurse will convey this news tactfully, and will probably not even point and laugh at you for all the flapping about.

Angel in disguise

People don't always have nice things to say about the NHS. And I know some hospitals are better than others. But all I have to say to my local is: thank you; you are awesome.

Warriors, turkeys, aliens

Three Novembers ago, this house recieved it's first bald alien vole. On that infamous day two carefree twenty-somethings grew suddenly old, but all three survived the experience. Then one year ago, us two seasoned parents of one drove again through the empty, rain-washed streets of midnight to bring home a second vole from the clutches of the NHS. There followed a blissful few weeks of peace, then a desperately exhausting year. Only recently a sense of calm has returned to this house. But I remain suspicious, because this calm reminds me of a silent toddler who has found mischief in the next room.

We spent much of November hovered over flaming birthday cakes. While the kids joyfully tried to set their hair on fire, Papa and I trembled over the year gone and whispered with cautious optimism about the year to come. The business of flaming cakes done, the voles and I went for a day out in London. After accidentally getting caught up in a vicious tourist tangle surrounding the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, we went to kick up fallen leaves in Green Park.

Such a perfect day, drank fruit shoots in the park.

London parks in autumn are pure magic to kids and the childish (me) alike. Lampposts twinkle in the mist, and curiously well-mannered squirrels dart along crooked paths and up ancient knotted trees. There are even enchanted wardrobes and chalk drawings hidden between stacks of kicking-leaves if you look carefully enough.

Post-leafy-running-amok, the girls climbed back into their ponderous double buggy, and I steered our convoy through the streets of Mayfair en route to the Christmas-light-bedecked bedlam of Oxford Street. We were on Berkeley Square, Bentleys to the left of us and art dealers to the right, when we encountered a human obstruction: a huge, volatile Odin look-alike, who was both angrilly and gingerly cradling a steaming hot mug of something. He planted his feet squarely in front of the buggy and extended an accusatory 'ko' finger directly at Ali's head.

Be-suited men on either side of us bristled, then hovered at the ready.  London urban anonymity is a funny thing—strangers would rather jump in front of a bus than look you in the eye, but they will never fail to whip out first aid or judo as required.  'SPACE INVADER!' shouted Steamy Mug Man. Ali took on a guilty, cornered look, like a baby in the headlights, then released an ear-shattering crow. Steamy Mug Man relaxed, nodded, sipped his mug contentedly, and walked on. Ali blinked in confirmation. The suity men and I stood in awkward confusion for a moment, then relaxed back into urban anonymity and moved on. 

When we were nearly to Oxford Street, I realized that Steamy Mug Man must have been referring to Ali's hat (which clearly is a bit Marvin the Martian—see the sinkable Molly Dolly modelling it below*). I wonder if Steamy Mug Man realized the enormous wisdom of his words. Upon reflection, I am convinced he is either a) a prophet, or b) a papa who's own space has been similarly invaded.

All your space are belong to us. 

Speaking of space invasion, I only recently watched the film 'Aliens' for the first time. If you saw 'Aliens' in a more timely manner, back when dinosaurs still roamed freely, I will remind you of the final scene. It features Sigourney Weaver in a massive space-marine-lifter-suit-thingy, defending her adopted little girl in an all-out fight with the big-mama alien. Sigourney says some tough, sweary yo-mama things, then ejects the big nasty alien out into the vacuum of space. That job done, she turns to give her girl a cuddle. In prior scenes, 'Aliens' touches on various unpleasant aspects of early parenthood—childbirth, the feeling of constantly being chased by creatures bent on your destruction specifically and world domination more generally, and an exodus of all fashion sense from the galaxy. But it is this final scene that offers up a wonderful and rare thing in film: a totally awesome maternal super-hero. Watching 'Aliens' reminded me of one of my favourite quotes: 'Becoming a mother' writes Naomi Wolf in Misconceptions 'requires a supreme focus, a profound discipline, and even a kind of warrior spirit.' 

This November marks one year since the arrival of the second space invader. So far, there are still four survivors. I say with cautious optimism that things are looking up, and I am deeply thankful for this. Additionally, I am thankful for the privilege of living in this land of magical parks, be-suited-judo-baby-defenders, and wise sages disguised behind steamy mugs. What I intended to do at the start of this ramble through a yellow wood was to send a holiday toast my fellows and family across the big blue watery space. So if you are still with me, I will do so without further delay.

May your turkeys be gigantic, your cranberries overflowing. May you never lose your cultural inclination towards optimism, your warrior spirit, your belief that tomorrow must be better than today (even when you are feeling as tired and battered as Sigourney after fighting a big nasty alien). May you enjoy your feast, momentarily unencumbered by your worries, and over-eat up to your eyeballs (I always do) till you fall over into a food-induced stupor, flanked all around by the warmth of your beloved space invaders. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

*A&E Mum: no offence intended. As you can see, the hat you gifted us remains a family favourite.