Why I hate Huffington Post Parents

I can't pretend that I have ever been made of tough stuff. I used to cry at matric dances (even when I was just the 'plus one'), more bereft than the actual classmates who were about to leave the school that the their bonds of friendship were soon to be torn asunder. All it takes is the opening bars of 'Spirit of the Great Heart' to set me weeping about the glory and tragedy of living in Africa, the wonder of family, the sad death of Jock of the Bushveld (all unrelated. But still).

Since becoming a parent, things have escalated and now, it really is a case of every teardrop being a waterfall. At least seven times a day, I wonder at the marvel of actually making it alive through a solid 24 hours when their are cells waiting to mutate, germs waiting to attack, reckless drivers lurking, acts of G-d waiting to take place...

Knowing that I have to protect Leya from each of these eventualities is just such a vast task. It's overwhelming. The very fact of her is overwhelming...the fact that every day she continues to grow, to become, to astound me with her vitality and smartness and sheer force of life.

And every day I am struck afresh by how very, very, very fortunate and blessed I am. When I was pregnant, we were told that there was a chance she might have Down's Syndrome, and I guess because of that, I just feel like I can never quite grasp the completeness - I want to say perfection, but hesitate because of the implication that I may have loved her less if she were in any way less than she is - of her. Whenever I see a child with Down's, I can't stop staring at them. I wonder what it's like to be their mother - to experience the anticipation of counting your child's fingers and toes, staring at the seashell ears - the very clichés that are used to describe the wonder of every new baby. And I think that it doesn't actually matter whether your child has a sandal gap in their toes or weak muscle tone or heart defects; the love you feel must be even more fierce, simply because the battles your child has to fight are harder.

And that's why I hate the Huffington Post Parents blog. I signed up for it in that moment of connectedness that you experience as a brand new parent; that feeling of finally understanding why we're here, that feeling of sharing the greatest secret that's actually known to all humanity: how wonderful it is to love so utterly, so all consumingly. And because of that subscription, every morning I read stories about parents whose hearts are rent by the love they have for their 'imperfect' children. Today's was a plea from a mother whose son's facial bones have fused due to a rare disorder - she begged other parents to reassure their children that her son is just a little boy, just like every single one of them.

For some reason the picture of this little boy flashed through my mind when I was lying with Leya before she fell asleep tonight. Above the picture, his mother had written: "See? How can that face, covered in Twinkies, be at all frightening?" And I was reminded once more of how motherhood flays your heart.

I've just taught Leya how to say prayers, so every night we say "thank you G-d for everything we have" - and what I'm really saying thank you is for the massive privilege of being this precious person's guide through life. And I'm saying thank you for sparing me the heartache of having to work extra hard to protect her, because every mother's sadness really is a reminder that 'there but for the grace of G-d go I'.

Oh, the glamour

So, I'm back at the magazine. For obvious reasons, I cannot outright name the magazine, but I will say that it features a lot about sex. In fact, the very first assignment I was given on my first day back at the office was about foreplay.

Now, for the twenty-somethings who read this magazine and whose lives are peppered with casual 'hook-ups' (a word I would never use in my own life, but which comes in handy when I'm writing for the mag), sex stuff probably flows from their lips like - I don't know - flavoured condom gel or whatever the latest sexessory (see what I did there? Sex + accessory) is.

But not I. Given my chronic sleeplessness and general state of doughiness, bedroom shenanigans have fallen from my list of priorities and I am therefore no expert on foreplay, unless you consider this to include asking my husband to pass me my book before I fall asleep.

Hence, some research had to be done. Gingerly I typed the words 'foreplay new techniques' into my search bar, hoping that I will never have to take my laptop in to be serviced (Can there really be new techniques? Surely with this you kind of have to make the most of what you've got. Even Apple couldn't innovate foreplay?).

At this stage, I was blushing so furiously it felt like my face was trying to detach itself from my head. I tried to bolster myself with memories of the last sex story I wrote. This one was on a device called the butterfly, a gigantic piece of plastic that you step into like a pair of panties and then let it do its thing. Again, while researching this I thought about why anyone would want to expend so much energy, and if it wouldn't just be easier to have a read and go to sleep, and I had a bit of a wonder about where you would store such an awkwardly shaped item so that your helper/kids didn't find it. But apparently I am alone in such musings, to judge by the number of bloggers who have dedicated their free time to trying out sex toys in the name of the public good. These blogs have names like Ilovevibrators!.com (note the exclamation mark!), and the authors issue warnings like "I had to try this one at my parents house and it made a lot of noise". Which baffled me slightly - surely you never HAVE to try a vibrator? Is there really a life and death situation where you HAVE to step into a panty-shaped harness to have a butterfly-shaped thing massage your bits? What, exactly, is the 'or else' here?

But back to the present. I must, at this stage, mention that I share the office with only one other person, an intern called Peter who is so shy he never raises his voice above a whisper. He is easily embarrassed, too. So I can't begin to imagine what went through his mind when the website I downloaded in the name of research piped up, in a husky Spanish voice: "Have you been looking for your g-spot?" It was a voice at once tender and seductive, and yet almost perturbed and maternal, as if it was deeply (ahem) concerned about your ongoing quest for the missing item and  eager to lend a hand (ahem ahem) to help you find it.

As it turns out, Peter is not one for looking for G-spots, which made the situation somehow worse. As I coughed and spluttered in my humiliation, I could only think: ah, the glamour of working in magazines.

My life with the Gestapo

I know all about secret police and the wily, psycho means they employ to have their way with you. I know how they flit from charming smiles one minute to spit-flecked, eye-bulging rage the next; trying to cajole you into giving them what they want, and taking it by brute force if that doesn't work - all the while pushing your buttons, pushing, pushing, pushing. I know this from watching movies starring people with Russian accents, but also because I live with someone who appears to have attended their training school. And, through her methods, she's managed to reduce me to a quivering wreck of my former self, submissive and willing to give in to even the most outlandish demands.

That person is, of course, Leya. Secret police trick number one: the sleeplessness. This needs no further explanation, suffice to say that two years on, I have yet to experience a full eight hours. I no longer believe that sleep training causes psychological damage that will only emerge when the child is a needy adolescent and frankly, if it does, I couldn't care. It's probably no more than they deserve after inflicting all those hours of bouncing on a gym ball in the middle of the night.

Secret police trick number two: Having successfully scrambled my brain, she tries to catch me out. "Where's Samantha?" she asks accusingly. "At home," I answer. "Where's Samantha?" she asks again, a mere second later. The words "At home" have not yet left my mouth when again she roars, "Where's Samantha? Where's Samantha? Where's Samantha? Where's Samantha? Where's Samantha?" If I had another answer to give, believe me, I would. But the reality is that my sister is sitting at her house probably being submitted to a similar torture by her own kids, and it just doesn't seem worth it to make up a lie about her going trekking in the Andes with a pack of alpaca.

Secret police trick number three: the mind games. "Mommy, I want tea." Of course, I've learnt by now that any thinly veiled 'request' is actually a command that must be obeyed within three seconds, else there will be severe repercussion (read: she will unleash her wailing siren, a sound that makes Banshees and harpies sound like nightingales). Naturally, I hop to it; my fervid actions accompanied by a soundtrack of "I want tea I want tea I want tea." Eventually, the tea is placed in her hands. She looks at it with scorn and disgust. "I don't want tea," she states coldly, and tosses the bottle away.

One day, I swear to myself, I will rise again. I will shake off the wretched thing I have become and stand, once more, as a human of worth. I will wait until she is a teenager, and then I will embarrass her non-stop. I will post love notes on her Facebook page, or ask publicly if she remembered to use her rash cream. Hell, it won't actually be as hard as that at all. All I will have to do is walk next to her in public and she will cringe. My time is coming.