Tuesday 3 April 2012

Blog 54 g...Bridezilla...

Blog g...Bridezilla...

In an earlier blog I referred to my family being the 'Hubby', two teenage boys and the 'Bridezilla'. Let me tell you about her. She is currently aptly named this only after having announced her enagement...which was a very romantic affair with a proposal on the beach at night under the stars in Majorca! Her 'young man' had already been round one evening a whole week before the holiday to ask our permission to marry her, plus he showed us The Ring which is stunning...but did he really expect me to keep quiet for a whole week? Well I kid ye not I actually managed to do it even though the excitement was literally killing me! I didn't tell anyone, I had to pretend that I knew nothing about anything...apologies to family and friends who had been asking probing questions and to whom I told several 'white lies'; please forgive me it doesn't come naturally to lie and neither does keeping a secret! I tried to persuade her to take a nice dress on holiday along with the denim shorts, bikinis, flips-flops and a hundred T-shirts! She was not suspicious just fed up that I was interfering with her packing and luckily she followed my advice that just maybe they would want to go out somewhere nice for a meal away from the all-inclusive burgers and hot dogs! So she arrived home from the best holiday of her life and was thrown into wedding mode by several of us clucking hens who wanted a date, a place, do we wear hats, what type of dress did she want and most of all where on earth are you both going to live? With hindsight I should have taken control and said that there was no rush, enjoy being engaged, relax, buy lots of magazines and dream...instead I was panicking that all the venues would be booked up and she would have to wait or settle for somehere not quite what she wanted. [Frightening to think that these days wedding venues are booked years in advance!] OMG then there are the flowers, the cars, who to have as bridesmaids, colours, best man, ushers, guests lists, where do they all stay, what shoes to choose, do I wear the same colour as the bridesmaids, do I confer with the future mother-in-law and then it hit me...it wasn't MY wedding and really I needed to take a back seat. This was HER wedding and she knew EXACTLY what she was having and where!!! So the nick-name 'Bridezilla' evolved after a couple of shopping expeditions where I learnt important wedding ethics...keep your mouth shut, nod if you cannot think of anything nice to say about the colours, NEVER pick a dress from the rails and forget about suggesting a nice tiara and a 30 foot train...

When I refer to the 'Bridezilla' I am really being very unkind…she hasn’t always been like that and let’s face it anyone planning a wedding, finding a house, working two jobs, saving up and not buying shoes for weeks is entitled to feel a tad stressed! 'Bridezilla' is a beautiful girl…actually a beautiful young woman, I keep forgetting how time flies. Not only is she a young woman but that makes me a rather mature lady. I can brag about her being beautiful as I am not her birth mother so it’s not as though I am fishing for compliments. She has the biggest, brightest, bluest eyes you have ever seen, her hair is long and straight and perfectly formed to sway and swish and gleam in the light. When she smiles her face lights up and her perfectly straight, brilliant white teeth are on show. She has the figure to die for and delicate fingers at the end of her petite wrists. She is in short mother-nature’s version of perfection and I still want to wrap her up in cotton wool and protect her from the nasty world we live in even though she is all grown up.

I was at her birth to support her mother, my sister; my big sister as I have always loved saying! At the time I was childless and at a time in my life when the biggest worry was what to wear on a Saturday night and should I go blonde. So, being the birth partner was something I was doing for my sister…did I really know what I was letting myself in for? Of course not! Which is why nowadays I love watching the TV programme One Born Every Minute…best form of contraceptive I can think of for the younger generation. I had only agreed because she was my sister, friends were warned not to think I'd be available for future births, I couldn't let her go into this alone. The baby was the first grandchild for my parents but that didn’t persuade my mother to volunteer. Actually strange thing is that as I write this I am exactly the same age as my mother when 'Bridezilla' was born…somehow I can actually understand mum’s reluctance: it’s seeing your child in pain that must be hard so I take my hat off to all those mums who do support their daughters during the horrors of childbirth…it's not easy and I know what I'm talking about...I have first-hand experience!

When my sister’s waters broke I was on my way to work, literally just out the door when mum shouted;“Quick, get back in here!” and I ran up the drive and into the hallway where mum was standing shaking, by the telephone, white with the fear that if I had been any quicker starting my car I’d have been off down the road to freedom and she would have had to take over! So I was re-routed to the local maternity unit where my sister was already mumbling expletives under her breath as I waltzed in with ABSOLUTELY no preparation…well how hard could it be to hold someone’s hand and say ‘push!’

The lady in the next cubicle could be held responsible for single handedly stopping the other 10 ladies on the ward from having any more children…ever! She was giving birth to her fifth child and was in no condition to be moved to the delivery suite…so with a swift apology to the rest of us the midwives pulled the curtains around her bed and let her get on with it. I have never heard such language and I’ve taught in some risky schools where every other word could be an expletive but this woman could teach them a few new ones. As for her husband after what she called him he should have run off down to the clinic getting a vasectomy before she got home!! My sister was in tears and the look of horror on her face made me cry too!! OMG what was going to happen to us? The only good thing about this lady’s delivery was that it was short…and snap! With the last expletive fresh in the air she was transformed into a billing and cooing besotted mother of a teeny, tiny, baby boy! Phew! So child birth was that quick eh? At this rate I’ll get into work by dinner time.
This is the problem with having no friends who had babies and family members who do not discuss it...I’d really had no idea what to expect when my sister started screwing her face up in agony…should I grab her hand, shout push or grab the midwife? I really should have got my act together and read a few books or talked a bit more about it to find out exactly what to expect...the important lesson at my convent school had only taken one day and that was when I was absent and somehow I didn't copy up the notes and as time passed childbirh seemed a million miles away...! After a loud ooohhh I pulled back the bed covers to see a round dark thing and thought it must be the baby’s head…and oh no it was a dark baby, what would mother say about that? However, the midwife was unperturbed, calmly informing us that my sister needed a bed pan…no it wasn’t the baby’s head it was a movement following the laxatives and it was dark due to all the iron she had been taking! Relief! I wasn’t ready!
Eventually they moved us into the delivery suite where I fainted at the sight of a few things and the excitement: as well as not breathing in whilst breathing out in rhythm to my sister’s breathing techniques. So off came the jumper and then I was splashed with cold water, led to my sister’s side and given her hand…I thought I was supposed to squeeze…er no! She soon showed me which way round it was, practically drawing blood…then suddenly, after several refusals to the invitations to watch the crowning… out came 'Bridezilla'…perfect, beautiful and a full 9lbs 2oz! WOW all with only gas and air…I was exhausted…

I hope that everyone who reads this Blog has had the chance to hold a brand new baby…if not yet than perhaps in the future. It has to be the most magical of feelings. When the midwife handed me 'Bridezilla' she was exactly 4 minutes old and I got to hold her whilst they ‘sorted’ her mother out. This beautiful 9lbs 2oz of new baby lay snuggled and exhausted wrapped up in her pink baby blanket…so cute I wanted to keep her forever. I was so proud of my big sister; she had delivered her baby with no 'effing and jeffing' as the saying goes and was politeness itself to the midwife and she only had gas and air so her recovery would be quicker and baby wouldn’t be groggy [learnt that from the midwife!] We sat and had a cup of tea and dry biscuits and talked about what names she was going to use. Then suddenly the door opened and a rather large man in an apron who looked more like a butcher than a male nurse came in to perform a few stitches…have more gas and air was the midwife’s suggestion as my big sister shouted; “Oi! I’m not a bleeding mattress you’re stitching!” sounding more like herself and so the magical spell was broken, back to normal and I was off to announce to the world that we had a brand new addition to the family.
As I write this I am reminded of those early days of having a new baby in the house where we all still lived at home with mum and dad and how crowded we were with 6 adults and a new born. A bit like when 'Bridezilla' announced she was moving in with me and hubby and the boys…each house has routines, places for each person and their belongings and you are all used to each other’s quirkiness or as Hubby says “Me foibles.” I will not dwell on the situation that brought her to live with us as a teenage girl; suffice to say that she has had a sad start to her life:her mum died the day before her 8th birthday and she had to cope with her loss as well as everyone else’s sadness at losing someone so young [just 37 years old] and within such a short time of us all losing mum too. In a nutshell…she stayed as many weekends and school holidays as we could get her here for and she had her own room here where she stored the beginnings of her shoe and clothes collections. I prayed every night that she could live with us and then just as I was beginning to think it wouldn’t happen… it did…we’ve had almost 7 full years of 'Bridezilla' living here full time and what an education that has been!!
The biggest changes were really for the boys: they had spent weekends and holidays with her but that’s not the same as her always being here and so this led to a lot of inquisitive exploration of the things she now had in her bedroom as the Barbie dolls were replaced by CD collections and magazines. [God only knows what they have both been reading about!] Her little girl make up sets were replaced by extremely expensive limited edition face creams and eyeliners [not easy to get out of pyjama tops that had been used to wipe it off their little faces! Believe me eye liner pencils make a mess on magnolia painted walls!] Body sprays were replaced by expensive perfumes…note the word replaced. I cannot remember the number of perfumes I have had to replace after the boys thought it would be great to go to school smelling sweet for the girls [without realising they were smelling sweeter!]  It took a while for them to realise that designer shoes were in their own boxes for a reason and being swopped around did not go down too well neither did swopping her clothes around in her drawers. Although they knew her room was out of bounds the pull of what was in the cupboards and drawers was too much for them. Then one evening the ‘Intelligent one’ came downstairs and asked if dad could spare a few minutes, I was free but it had to be dad. On entering their bedroom he was met by a blushing ‘Cutie-pie’:
Hubby: “What’s up son?”
Cutie-pie: “I can’t get this off” lifting his t-shirt to show a black lacey bra neatly fastened at the back.
Hubby: “Why on earth have you put that on?”
Cutie pie: “Because it matches these…” pulling his shorts waistband to reveal lacey black knickers…

Safe to say that this has all now been put behind the boys; along with forgetting to lock the bathroom door, eating the diet yoghurts, wearing a white designer vest for PE …my fault I put it in the wrong drawer…and all the other problems that raise their head in a household of 3 males and 2 females…we will miss her when she gets married…lucky that she’s only moving down the road then isn’t?



Blog 54 h...coming soon...next Wednesday...
Copyright ©GML2012

6 comments:

  1. Another great piece. Certainly brought back memories.

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  3. Thank you for your personal message, it is a pleasure to write and be appreciated!! x

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  4. The story of cutie pie still makes me laugh!!! Brilliant ! x

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