First Christmas

Five years ago I wrote of the traditions of Christmas that were ending for me, due to the changes in my life, and I spoke of starting new traditions. There are a few customs which I have started since then, a message such as this being one of them, but I am looking forward this year to rekindling one tradition that my Mum and I used to share. Every year on Christmas Eve, from when I was a baby until I was maybe eight years old, my mum would read me a poem which is entitled He Comes in the Night, and this year, before Michelle and I relax on the couch with some hot chocolate and watch It's a Wonderful Life I will read the poem to my son.

This is Nathan's first Christmas and our first Christmas as a family. At nineteen weeks old Nathan is, of course, too little to understand Christmas, though he does like the tree and seems to enjoy the Christmas songs we sing to him. Last year I had written, quite stupidly, that I did not see the sense in getting baby gifts at Christmas. While I still remember the logic of that line of thought, I know that if I had not said it and heard it elsewhere now I would find the very idea abhorrent. Nathan's daddy is very much looking forward to helping his sons tiny and uncoordinated hands rip open the gifts that he has gotten his baby boy.

Change has been the defining characteristic of this year. There have been beginnings, endings and new beginnings over the year, and not just for me. Some were happy changes like mine, some were sad and some were bittersweet. Lives and relationships have altered dramatically as priorities and perceptions shifted. It has not been an easy year and the same can be said for too many of the years recently past, but now more than ever I look forward to what the new year will bring. For quite a few people I know there is much to look forward to indeed.

Christmas has always been a time for me when I try (I said try) to be positive. Santa's rules of no shouting, pouting or crying are a good rule of thumb for this season, and good will to all men (and women) seems to me to be a reasonably good idea too. For a few days I urge you all to enjoy what you have rather than bemoan what you do not. There will be plenty of time to worry another time.

Have a great Christmas everyone, I wish nothing but the best for you all.

I'll leave you with the poem I will be reading to Nathan:

HE comes in the night! He comes in the night!
He softly, silently comes;
While the little brown heads on the pillows so white
Are dreaming of bugles and drums.

He cuts through the snow like a ship through the foam,
While the white flakes around him whirl;
Who tells him I know not, but he findeth the home
Of each good little boy and girl.

His sleigh it is long, and deep, and wide;
It will carry a host of things,
While dozens of drums hang over the side,
With the sticks sticking under the strings.

And yet not the sound of a drum is heard,
Not a bugle blast is blown,
As he mounts to the chimney-top like a bird,
And drops to the hearth like a stone.

The little red stockings he silently fills
Till the stockings will hold no more;
The bright little sleds for the great snow hills
Are quickly set down on the floor.

Then Santa Claus mounts to the roof like a bird,
And glides to his seat in the sleigh;
Not the sound of a bugle or drum is heard
As he noiselessly gallops away.

He rides to the East, and he rides to the West,
Of his goodies he touches not one;
He eateth the crumbs of the Christmas feast
When the dear little folks are done.

Old Santa Claus doeth all he can,
This beautiful mission is his;
Then, children, be good to the little old man
When you find who the little man is.

Standstill

At least 8 inches of snow has fallen today in East Kilbride and the wold has come to a stop. The heating in my work broke and so the building was closed. Then the schools closed. Then the Town Centre closed.

I went to the shops to get cold medicine for Nathan. The paths were so deep that I had to walk down the main road and I had to push three cars to get them moving-
Hold on a minute-
Sorry, I had to run out and push another car there.

Where was I, oh yeah... Snow.

My brother is stranded in Eastwood Toll. My aunt (sorry Eileen) has been stranded in Bellshill since before 9am and hasn't been heard of for over five hours now. My Father-in-Law, a bus driver, had to stop in the middle of his route and ask the passengers to get off, he too is (you guessed it) stranded. Twitter and The Facebook tell different variations of the same stories.

On the other hand, the views are spectacular.

Inconsolable

So, it was Michelle's works Christmas night out tonight meaning that Nathan and I had the night to ourselves. I've looked after Nathan myself now a few times without any problems what so ever.

Just before 6pm Nathan inexplicably, uncontrollably and inconsolably started to sob. And then cry. And then scream. He didn't stop for over an hour.

Nothing calmed him. I cuddled him and he screamed. I gave him his dummy and he screamed. I tried to feed him and he screamed. I rocked him. I danced. I sang. I begged. I cried. I sacrificed a goat! He screamed. He screamed He screamed. He took a big deep breath... And then he screamed.

So what could I do? I knew what would calm him. If you're a mother reading this, you probably know what would calm him too. And so, frantic myself at this point, I reluctantly and regrettably had to make the call and bring Nathan's mummy home from her first night out in eight months.

And so Michelle fed him and consoled and, being a nice person and a good wife and mother, claims not to mind at all being called home. She told me that he was upset just because he's not been himself today (he had a bit of a sore stomach and is teething) and that I did the right thing to call her home. Maybe. All I know is that my little boy was upset and his daddy couldn't do anything to help him.

Brown Windows

Every time my mum drives round to my home she makes the same two remarks. Firstly that she should call the council about the parking in the culdesac where we live (getting round the road in the car is very tight) and secondly she comments on my upstairs neighbours windows. Friday past was no exception, though this time she added to her usual lament saying "I didn't know he had a cat."

As soon as Michelle and I had looked up to see her I was running up the stairs and pounding on my neighbours door. No answer, but in the course of the weeks of looking for Fudge I had met to a woman who lived round the corner from us and she had told me her father lived above me.

I quickly ran round to her door. I was furious. When her husband answered I told him that his father-in-law had my cat and that I wanted a key to go in and get her. The daughter was very cagey I felt but then I was far from calm after she had told me that her dad had "brought in a cat" about a month ago "a fluffy one". I had spoke to this woman at length about the cat being missing, I had shown her a picture of her, and I had put a leaflet through her door. She knew. I don't know at which point she knew, but she knew her father had taken our cat.

I kept calm in the daughters home. If I wanted in that flat I had no choice. She did not have a key but she told me she was on her way out to meet her dad for lunch. Her husband told me that he would be back with the key within the hour.

A little past her husbands self imposed deadline the daughter phoned and told me her dad had not yet arrived where they had to meet but that I would get my cat back that night. I didn't like her tone. Too nervous. I decided I would wait no longer than an hour and if my neighbour had not returned by then I was going into his flat by any means I could.

Thirty minutes later the old man was walking up the path and I came out to meet him. His daughter had got it touch with him but they were not meeting for lunch as she had claimed. Why she would lie about that I have no idea, but at the same time I was not surprised that she had done so. The old man claimed that whatever he was told had been obscured by the sound of the bus so when I told him the situation he acted surprised. "I saw a cat behind the telly a couple of weeks ago" he told me "but I never found it again". He never found it again? So, what did he think? That he imagined it? That it somehow escaped? His story changed a little every time but at that point I was ignoring him and telling him that I was going into his home to find my cat.

His flat was thick with dirt and stagnant stinking air. I quickly found where the cat had been doing the toilet - the corner of his livingroom. "In here? It's done the toilet in here?!" said the old man. He went on to claim he didn't live there. A lie; We hear his TV blaring and his toilet flush every night.

At this point you may start to feel sorry for this man. I've referred to him as an old man, yes, but in truth he is only in his mid to late sixties. He is quite deaf but by all indications he seems to have his full mental capacity. He is not to be pitied. I have thought about this for a long time and for the cat to enter his home he would have to have let her do so. She may have entered his home of his own free will but she would have done so slowly and cautiously. This is not a man who would leave his door ajar, not with the filth that could be seen by peering inside. No, he has let her enter and then shut her in. Not to care for her it seems given the frail and dehydrated state we found her in but just... I have no idea why. To reemphasis: he is not a creature to be pitied.

Fudge ran from her hiding place in his wardrobe when she saw me. She was scared. I picked her up and left him in his filth without saying a word. Back downstairs I put Fudge straight into a cat carrier to take her to a vet. The vet couldn't see us immediately and so I let her out. Only then did she realise where she was. She rubbed her face on my hands and let me pet her for the first time in a month. She was gone. She was dead. Yet suddenly she was home.

As for the old man, his claim to not have known Fudge was in his home is, to put it mildly, extremely unlikely. When I brought her home she still had her collar on which has a loud bell attached and the vet told me that her throat was red from shouting. Above all else though, the biggest reason that what he says is untrue is that despite being timid, Fudge would have approached him at some point of the course of a month if only to be fed or get water. Add these facts to his and his daughters ever changing stories (she called me that night and said that she didn't think her dad had had my cat all that time, despite telling my earlier that her father had brought a cat in a month ago) and I come up with... what? Are they crazy? Certainly that or just plain evil.

All is well that ends well though. One week later Fudge is more like her old self and, though still a little jumpy, she seems very happy. And the old man? An environmental health officer will be visiting him any day now.

Here Comes the Son

"That one was was just over four minutes... That was just under three... Jesus! That was barely two minutes apart for the last two! We need to phone them."

And so I phoned Wishaw General's Maternaty Triage Unit and, in a short time later, Michelle and I were in the back of an ambulance on the way to have our baby. Finally!

Having been due on 1 August our boy was, at that point, 10 days late. A length of time which put a strain on Michelle's resolve and my ability to come up with daily Facebook puns. Nevertheless he was on his way; with contractions averaging three minutes apart we knew it wouldn't be long before we could see the face we'd tried so hard to imagine for the past nine months.

Once in the hospital Michelle was taken in a wheelchair directly to a delivery room where we met Tina, the first midwife, who dealt with us right through the night into the morning. Tina was great; very nice and she didn't sugarcoat anything, which is a quality I always appreciate. After some checks and tests were done Tina told us that things were not all as they should be and, in particular, that the baby's heart rate indicted that he may struggle in what was likely to be a long labour. As this was the case it was Tina's assessment that Michelle should have a caesarian section.

The final word on whether or not Michelle was to have a section was to be the decision of the pediatrician, Dr DeRoy. As soon as the doctor came through the door she was greeted by Michelle, drunk on gas and air, calling her by her first name. It turns out that Sabine was a client at Michelle's salon and though Michelle does not personally cut her hair she obviously remembered her. Looking back on it Michelle remembers the small small voice inside her screaming "shut up you blithering idiot!" as she called out the doctors name.

Dr DeRoy did not want to be too hasty about the surgery but decided that Michelle should be given an epidural as the eventually of the surgery might have been inevitable.

After the epidural things seemed to calm down. Tina's shift ended and she was replaced by Linda (who I keep wanting to call Janet for some reason) and Karen, a trainee midwife. as the baby's heart rate was erratic there was always someone in the room and various checks were done regularly. It was hours of waiting and though the hours seemed to pass quickly it would be dishonest to say that the wait did not seem long.

And then Michelle was told to push. And she pushed! She put everything into each of those pushes and then pushed some more. She never even made a sound because she was so focused on pushing. She was tough.

Durning the course of Michelle's labour our soundtrack had been the erratic heartbeat we could hear on the monitor as well as see. Over the twelve hours I had got to know what the digital readout was when the heart rate dipped. As Michelle pushed and I encouraged her I tried to hide the fear on my face as I watched the the numbers on that display fall lower with every push. And on the the last push the heartrate stopped and for a terrible moment my heart stopped too until... Nathan was here. All of a sudden he was lying on his mothers chest as I cut his cord.

I had been told by many that the birth was disgusting. "Don't watch" they told me "it's horrific!". What a bunch of jessies! It's a life! It's beautiful! Truly the most amazing thing I have ever seen (and I've seen Cirque du Soleil!).

Twenty four hours after his birth we were all three of us on the way home, ready for a new life, new challenges and all the stories yet to be told.