The Juggle Of Modern Motherhood

Life is definitely a juggling process, even more so when you have special needs children. The slightest upset can send all those metaphorical juggling balls crashing down and we’re left looking for them, that one that’s bounced away and the cat is chasing it, the other one that’s gone behind the sofa (shall I get it out now and use that opportunity to retrieve the Lego and the little scraps of paper too?) and the one that just carries on bouncing (usually the most important one).

I didn’t have the traditional mother experience when I was growing up, my mum was emotionally ill and my dad received custody of myself and my two sisters. It was a strange experience, being the daughter of a single father, new neighbours (as we’d moved when they divorced) didn’t ask what, where or why, I’ll bet there were conversations behind those net curtains though!

My maternal grandmother was a great influential figure in my life, she always wore a hat for "best" and my fondest memory of her is when she had an apron on, baking. She made the most wonderful rock cakes and, try as I might, I can’t replicate them. She also had a bit of a thing for strawberry bonbons from Sainsburys, how she managed to eat them with her dentures in though, I don’t know. She was a midwife before having her children and during WW2 as well. That can’t have been easy, going out to attend births during air raids, especially with her husband (my Grandad) away serving in the RAF and not knowing when she’d see him again. A brave lady, she didn’t talk about those times but, looking into her pale blue eyes at times, you just knew that it had been difficult.

By contrast, we have it so much easier in this modern world…or do we?

Knowledge is literally within a few clicks away, knowledge that can change your life for the better or worse, immediately. Never, ever google if you are particularly worried about a condition before you see the doctor, it will not ease your mind!

Sometimes technology can be too much, people forget how to communicate face-to-face.

An example of this is when my daughter needs her medication every three months. Our doctor cannot prescribe it as its classed as "unlicensed" so we have to refer back to the paediatric unit where she received her autism diagnosis at age 4, she’s now 9. The doctor who originally diagnosed her has left the area and no-one has space to take my daughter on their books, so she’s classed as a "floating patient" (at 9 years old!). Every three months, we have the rigmarole of asking – via email – someone who has never met my daughter for a prescription, they don’t acknowledge the request or reply and when I telephone it’s an answering machine…always an answering machine and one that doesn’t appear to pass messages along. Eventually I’ll get confirmation that someone somewhere has approved it and because they won’t then post it out to me (cutbacks) they then send it in the internal post to the hospital pharmacy (literally over the road) but it takes up to FIVE days to arrive and will sometimes get lost in the internal post. So, you start again. This can all take up to a month to do something that if we’d had a five minute appointment with a PERSON could have been sorted out so much quicker and with a great less stress. Not stress for the nameless, faceless people who pass my request around but for me, D’s Mumma, the one who watches that medication going down and down, hoping we don’t run out.

I’ve just completed our son’s secondary school application online. Click, click, click. Yes, it’s definitely easier that way but so impersonal. Someone who we don’t know will make a judgement based on a few paragraphs and decide where our high functioning autistic T – with all his wonderful but (at times) frustrating traits – will spend six years of his life. They won’t ever meet T, they won’t see if their decision will be the right one, we’ll live with the consequences.

Life can seem very impersonal, controlled by devices and people we don’t know, energy prices increases anyone?

The simplicity of the "Call The Midwife" life can be very appealing, with it’s limitations and the wonderful Silver Cross prams. I’m not sure where my children would have fitted in though.

Back to juggling my metaphorical balls, routines need to be met, I must make that phone call, answer those emails, schedule in a wee and give my children a cuddle (the last one is never a chore!).

This is my entry into the Mum Network Trusted Blogger Club Autumn Carnival to win a ticket to BritMums Live, something that I’ve never been to before and always wanted to (despite the fact I’m not the most outgoing person in the world).