Just over two weeks ago my youngest son Dominic and his wife Lisa presented us with a beautiful grandson. I want to write a wonderful article about babies but I cannot think of anything to say about them that has not been said many, many times before.
Our new grandson was in a great hurry to get into this world, he was expected to arrive on 19th Feb but decided that 2nd of Feb would be a much better day for an arrival so he caught us all a bit on the hop. Both Lisa and Dominic had gone off to work that morning and although they both say that they did think, “What if bubs comes today?” it was not a very serious thought, just a passing one.
Lisa has worked as a nanny for a family for about 12 years and although she is not really needed as a nanny any more she still works there doing the shopping and other housekeeping tasks, one or two days a week. She was bringing the shopping into the house when she realised that baby was going to make an appearance. She phoned Dominic at work and he went to collect her to take her to the hospital. She told me later “I didn’t put all the shopping away, but at least I did put all the cold stuff into the fridge” (What a conscientious girl). They went to the hospital but were sent home, as it was too early for her to be admitted. By about 5 o’clock that evening she knew that she was ready to go back to the hospital. We have heard a number of news stories recently against hospitals who have refused to admit an expectant mother and then baby was born in a taxi, a toilet or by the road side and Dominic was determined that they would not be sent home. He was ready to lay down on the hospital floor and kick and scream and have a temper tantrum to make sure that she was admitted this time but it was not necessary, she was admitted and our beautiful grandson arrived just before 8.45 pm. He weighed in at 2.75kgs (6.06 lbs) and was 51cm (20 inches) tall. He is called Nathan Dominic.
One can’t help thinking of how different having a baby is today than it was when I gave birth to Nathan Dominic’s father. Then fathers were not encouraged to be with their wives during the birth. It was assumed that father would faint and just get in the way. He was supposed to keep out of the way in the hospital waiting room. Now new mothers are sent home as soon as possible but in those days they were expected to stay in hospital for almost a week, at least until baby had recovered its birth weight. Nowadays Mums are given so much more information and helped with their new infant than we were and for the sake of the poor babes that is a great thing but I think the biggest difference is the equipment.
The first and biggest change is disposable nappies. I accept that they must be causing a huge problem in the landfills of the world but I am sure that if they had been available in my days I would have used them too. Those terry-towelling nappies were such a problem. Not only to wash but also to change and keep in position. They needed to be held together with large safety pins and there was always a chance that the pin could prick the baby. I remember many times when I could not find the pins and a huge search would ensue before a clean nappy could be put into position. Once babe started to toddle the nappy would spend most of it time slipping down to the knees and must have been very uncomfortable for the poor infant. Now the disposable variety keep baby dry, comfortable and tidy.
Young Nathan’s parents have bought him a great gadget in which he lays and is electrically rocked gently to and fro. To get the same effect we had to have a cot on rockers and we needed to put our foot on the rocker to move it back and for or to put the baby in it’s pram and wheel it back and fro. I got into the habit of rocking the pram most of the time even if baby did not need rocking to sleep. If I stopped to talk to someone when pushing the pram it was natural for me to rock it back and forth. I did not realise that I was doing it until one day as I stood chatting to a friend in the supermarket I was amazed to find that I was rocking my shopping trolley back and fro. (Trying to get the groceries to sleep????)
Another hi-tech gadget that Dominic and Lisa have is a camera over Nathan’s cot. I have seen intercoms before but this one is really state of the art. Dominic tells me that it is linked to their TV and to the remote control. While they are watching TV they can remotely turn on the camera and check on the TV screen how their baby is. I expect that they will just use it to watch him instead of watching the commercials on TV. When Jonathan was a baby Jonny had an electronics kit that he could build various things with. One of the things he could build was an intercom. Obviously way back then it just transmitted sound but Jonny had fun building it and he placed it next to the cot and went into the next room waiting to hear any noise that Jonathan might make. A little while later we heard voices coming through the speaker, voices that were obviously not Jonathan. After listening for a little while we realised that somehow we had connected to the police car wavelength and what we could hear was the conversation between the police station and the police cars. We could not get the intercom to work the way we intended it to, we always got the control room sending the police car to investigate a crime and the reply of the men in the car. We knew that it is illegal to listen into the police wavelength so we had to dismantle the gadget. Yes things have changed since then.
One thing that will never change though ‘Babies are Beautiful’. I believe that God made them beautiful so that human beings would want more and more and that once we had them we would be besotted with them and would nurture and care for them until they were able to care for themselves. He wanted us to fill the world that He had created and you can see by the number of people in the world today it was a great idea, in fact maybe too good an idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment