A funny thing happened today. It made me feel very good, so naturally I want to share it with the world.<\/p>\n
One of the programmers at the company I work for is an oriental lady named Waverly Chang who hails from China. She was already working for the company when I started, but unlike me she had no children and vocally proclaimed she had no interest in having any. I always told her straight up that children are the most wonderful thing anyone can ever have.\u00a0 Regardless of the heartache and misery they will invoke<\/em><\/strong>, the joy, love and meaning they bring into our lives is simply incomprehensible to people without children.<\/p>\n At first Waverly was adamantly opposed to the idea of children, however she always seemed interested to hear little stories of what my kids had done, or what mischief they had been up to. And like all children, mine got up to an awful lot of mischief.\u00a0 Anyway after a couple of years Waverly changed her mind. Her son Allan was born about a year later. She was so proud of him, but he was so much work!\u00a0 As an exhausted new parent deprived of sleep she very naturally immediately asserted that with only one, they were done!\u00a0 Allan was thereby doomed to the miserably lonely existence of an only child. {My choice of words, not hers :).}<\/p>\n I reassured her by sharing stories of our firstborn, in which my wife and I were the heroes and our oldest child, Tamryn, was the villain.\u00a0 Stories, which if you know anything of me at all, you know are truths.\u00a0 One such tale was of Tamryn’s first six weeks of life.<\/p>\n Tamryn was born wide-eyed, alert, curious, and hungry.\u00a0 The first three we immediately recognized and felt as proud as any young couple could be \u2013 after all, this gift was the fruit of our loins.\u00a0 That all changed the first night we brought Tamryn home.\u00a0 Without fail Tamryn would wake up screaming every two hours.\u00a0 As every human knows, the pitch and tenor of a newborn’s scream sends shock-waves of discordant distress throughout our bodies.\u00a0 We were literally beside ourselves in our efforts to appease our baby.\u00a0 We soon established a ritual, we’d pick her up, comfort her as best we could while our numb minds kicked into frantic overdrive from our exhausted, disturbed sleep.\u00a0 Once in reasonable control of our faculties we\u2019d change Tamryn\u2019s diaper which, to add insult to injury, was pretty much always soiled.\u00a0 Then my wife would nurse Tamryn until she quieted and fell asleep {Tamryn, not my wife:)}.\u00a0 And then the cycle would begin again, with the virtual two hour clock ticking so loud we\u2019d be hard pressed to get back to sleep before the screaming began again.<\/p>\n According to the doctors everything was fine, Tamryn was alert, slowly gaining weight, and my wife\u2019s boobs were so engorged they felt more like two bricks than two breasts.\u00a0 It was beyond miserable, in fact at one point I recall turning to my teary-eyed wife and exclaiming, \u201cI can\u2019t believe anyone is stupid enough to have more than one of these!<\/em><\/strong>\u201d {It seems by my own proclamation we\u2019re pretty stupid, we\u2019ve had four :)}<\/p>\n Turns out the doctors were wrong.\u00a0 I think it was my mother, but it could have been a friend who suggested we try supplementing breast-feeding with some formula.\u00a0 We were opposed as there is no question a mother\u2019s breast milk is far and away the best for babies, both nutritionally and long-term health wise. Those aren\u2019t a hippy\u2019s opinion, they are medically proven and indisputable facts.\u00a0 However a desperate need for sleep soon overcame our reluctance.\u00a0 {It seems that when a promise of sleep knocks on the door, principle flies out the window.}\u00a0 We bought some formula… and Tamryn slept for six straight hours!\u00a0 Yes, bliss is indeed a number a direction and a time, bliss is six straight hours.\u00a0 Turns out Tamryn was suffering from something my mother called Starving Baby Syndrome.\u00a0 The poor little tike was getting just enough nutrition to not fall into the red flag zone weight wise, but in order to do so she had to be fed every two hours.<\/p>\n As for those mega-boobs?\u00a0 Well, spectacular though they appeared, they were not producing enough milk to satisfy our child.\u00a0 We tried pumping, and it turns out we\u2019d actually got an age old expression completely wrong.\u00a0 It shouldn\u2019t be \u201cYou can\u2019t squeeze blood out of a stone\u201d, but, \u201cYou can\u2019t squeeze breast-milk out of stony boobs…\u201d\u00a0 Once we supplemented Tamryn\u2019s feeding with formula life soon returned to normal.\u00a0 I sincerely hope you don\u2019t believe that last sentence, because it is a complete lie!\u00a0 Life never returns to normal after you have a child, so if you think you\u2019ll pop one out then go back to partying like a carefree teenager\u2026 well, you won\u2019t, but more on the pros and cons of that later.\u00a0 Anyway, Tamryn started gaining weight at a better pace, and we have never once looked back.\u00a0 Not once!\u00a0 Nope, we\u2019ve looked back thousands of times.\u00a0 Funny thing how abject misery turns into some of the most wonderful times of your life when related to friends\u2026<\/p>\n You might be wondering why I would be so callous as to tell Waverly such horror stories? After all wasn\u2019t she suffering enough with her own newborn? First off, suffering<\/em> is not an appropriate word to use to describe the situation \u2013 indeed it doesn\u2019t even come close. Second, and more important, there are many valuable lessons to be learnt from personal tales.\u00a0 Lessons we have significant difficulty gleaning from books, yet which we readily pick up by listening to our more experienced friends and family.<\/p>\n Onward!\u00a0 It took me a while, but I eventually convinced Waverly that depriving Allan of a sibling would be cruel and unusual punishment.\u00a0 She eventually capitulated and a few years later they had a little girl who they named Kelly.<\/p>\n So where is all this leading?<\/p>\n Well recently Waverly has been commiserating with me about the miseries of a working life.\u00a0 Today I saw her in the company kitchen and asked how things were going.\u00a0 She quickly glanced around before whispering, “Thank God it is Thursday, only two more days till the weekend and I’m with Allan and Kelly!” I corrected her by saying, “Only one more day, we shouldn\u2019t count today\u2026”<\/p>\n This is where this post led.\u00a0 The thing that made me feel very good was how Waverly and her husband have two wonderful little angels in their life.\u00a0 To Waverly, those two bundles of joy literally make it worth suffering through a five day week at work if doing so means she can be with them for a two day weekend. I feel even better for having some small part in helping her reach the decision to have them.<\/p>\n As for all you folks out there weighing up the pros and cons of whether or not to take the plunge and change your lives forever by having children?\u00a0 Think of the workweek to weekend ratio mentioned above.\u00a0 Five to two, says it\u2019s the best thing you\u2019ll ever do…<\/p>\n Such moments are some of the little things it is so easy to not notice. The little things that make life worth living.<\/p>\n ~ why Kids<\/strong> ~<\/em> A funny thing happened today. It made me feel very good, so naturally I want to share it with the world. One of the programmers at the company I work for is an oriental lady named Waverly Chang who hails from China. She was already working for the company when I started, but unlike me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n ~<\/em>
\n Little babies,<\/em>
\n little smiles,<\/em>
\n little moments,<\/em>
\n with our little child\u2026<\/em>
\n ~<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"