This Season’s Must-Have Accessory

While mothers-in-law can be intensely irritating and are a legitimate target for blogging abuse, grandmothers are absolutely indispensable and must be celebrated.

Like certain exotic breeds of marsupial, they are at their best at night when they are especially good at tapping on the door of the pumpkin at 2.00 a.m. and asking to “borrow” the baby – as if they just happened to be passing by and were seized by a sudden urge to hang out with their screaming grandson.

And despite their often out-dated theories on infant development (don’t let them keep their knees bent or else they’ll turn out bow-legged) they have street cred. One certainly cannot navigate the labyrinthine childcare bureaucracy of this country without an abuela.

In Peru, while most vaccinations are available in private clinics and can be easily obtained at a price, the very first one – which has to be given before the child is 20 days old – is only administered in the public hospitals. It is probably the State’s way of keeping tabs on births. In order to obtain this vaccination, which is only dispensed at 8.15 a.m., three days a week, one has to travel to the centre of Lima at the crack of dawn to “hacer la cola”.

Queuing is a way of life in Lima and there are individuals that make their living at it. They get up early and stand in whatever line they think will be most profitable and then sell their place to desperate latecomers. Others arrive early, convince the person in line in front of them to hold their place and then go and have a leisurely breakfast. Thus, you can arrive at a reasonable hour and join a reasonable length line only to have 5 or 10 people suddenly appear in front of you just as the doors are opening. This is seen as perfectly legitimate and draws not a murmur of protest from either the people in the queue or the police keeping order.

It is advisable to arrive in el centro well before 8.15 a.m. because vaccinations are dispensed until they run out and those remaining in the queue have to start all over again on the next available day. Of course no one but an abuela knows these things. I arrived with mine just after 7.00 a.m. and joined a line of what appeared to be three mamas but which we discovered upon canny inquires by my mother-in-law, was actually a line of seven.

All the mamas were equipped with the essentials: 1) a large bundle of blankets; and 2) an abuela carrying a bottomless Mary Poppins-like handbag out of which they produce at intervals thermos flasks of hot water, tins of formula, baby wipes, diapers, hats and more blankets. Those few mamas not fortunate enough to be in possession of an abeula bring along nervous husbands who busy themselves fiddling with their cell phones or pretending to look for parking spaces for their non-existent cars.

Having established your place on the pavement the baby-comparison ritual begins. As the morning chill gives way to the standard light fog of dust that settles over Lima daily, layers of blankets are cautiously peeled back, a smorgasbord of baby heads emerge and the chorus begins. “¡Ay que preciosa!” “¡Pero que bonito!” “¡Cuanto tiempo tiene?” “¡Que muñequito!” The mamas try to look modest while the abuelas proudly compare statistics.

My mother-in-law is delighted that Smuggitos is the smallest baby in the queue.

“He was born even tinier” she says with perverse pride, “2.750 kilos and only 47 cm!”

His nearest rival – also newborn – is swathed in a dense cloud of pink blankets, the first layer of which when removed reveals a large round face the colour of brick topped by an impossibly thick thatch of black hair which starts at the bridge of the perspiring nose. This kid is several weight divisions above Smuggitos.

Once the doors are opened the tyranny of the enfermeras begins. The vaccination department is run by a team of diminutive nurses who swiftly separate the mamas and the abuelas. The mamas are packed in an orderly manner onto a row of benches while the abuelas are banished back to the pavement. The mamas are given a brief lecture: “wait your turn, it will take about 10 minutes each, be sure to have your vaccination cards with you. Can’t tell you if there are vaccines available, you’ll only find out once you get into the inside room.”

The abuelas stand outside on the pavement and fret.

“But I have to give the leche.”

“The baby needs another blanket, ¡mucho aire!”

“I have to carry the baby. My daughter had a C-section. They cut her from hip to hip and look at the size of the child. She weighs a ton!” says the grandmother of the pink cumulus nimbus, with some justification.

Inside, the mamas, bereft of their shepherds, are being bullied by the enfermeras.

“Señora, how old is that child? Six months? And you are only now bringing him for his shot?”

“Where is his vaccination card? What do you mean you have to ask your mother? You don’t know? It’s your baby!”

“What do you mean the clinic told you to bring him for la vacuna now? Forget what the clinic says, you must take the child to the centro de servicios medical in your district.”

The enfermeras reserve a special degree of contempt for mamas who turn up with prescriptions or ordenes from a private clinic.

“What is your baby suffering from? Nothing? She must have something wrong with her if the clinic gave you this piece of paper just to get a vacuna. Typhoid? Polio? Does she have a fever? I don’t care if your doctor says she’s healthy. There must be something wrong if you have a prescription for a vaccination. No, your mother can’t come inside and explain to me. Wait over there.”

Occasionally, when the security guard at the door is distracted, an abuela will dart in and attempt to assist their bewildered offspring. They are quickly shooed away and return to the pavement where they compare notes. This is where all the essential information is obtained: which public hospital has the surest supply of vaccinations and what time you need to turn up there. Which clinics charge the most and what the new reglas are with regard to a variety of state services. “Did you know that the ID card office has moved to Av Javier Prado opposite el Banco Nacional? Sí, about 6 months ago, and now you have to go between 8.00 a.m. and noon to apply and it takes a week but you can give the official 10 soles and he’ll do it for you de una vez. Go on a Wednesday, the line is shorter.”

There is no number to call or webpage to visit to find out this stuff. It is only available on the abuelanet and if you don’t have one you are, as the Peruvians say, jodido. So the next time my suegra gives me one of her backhanded compliments (“How nice you look today, but hija, don’t ever wear that jumper again.” “Your hair looks great, now that’s how I like to see you!”) I will smile serenely and silently thank whichever deity sent her.

"It Takes a Village..." or The Open Source Approach to Childrearing

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a mother in possession of a newborn baby must be in want of advice.

It matters not at all that my daughter is living proof that I have raised at least one child with no visible signs of trauma or abnormality. Completely irrelevant. I am a new mother and therefore by definition completely incompetent. The minute I even try to lift the baby the cry goes up “the spine! The spine! Be careful with his head!” as if I’m going to wring the child out like a piece of laundry. From clinic to home to the doctor’s waiting room, I am constantly observed and instructed. I took Smuggitos to get his passport and was thoroughly and intimately interrogated by an elderly woman in the immigration office waiting room.

“¡Ah que preciosura!” (they always start off like that). “Are you breastfeeding? And what else? Forget formula, you need to feed him lots of water! That will make him nice and fat. Eight glasses of water a day, that’s what he needs, believe me. And his skin? Odourless vaseline all over, its miraculous. You’re travelling? Remember to stuff lots of cotton wool in his ears when the plane takes off. Have you circumcised him? No?!! But you must! If you don’t, you’ll regret it later, his sex life will be terrible.”

I commented that I had consulted with the male members of my family, all of whom were intact and had no complaints about their sex lives. She peered at me incredulously, “¿y de donde eres señora?” obviously making a mental note to report the entire Caribbean region to the UN Human Rights Council.

And since when is breastfeeding a spectator sport? People peer over my shoulder and make observations: “Try the other one” “Sit up straighter” “Lean forward” “Are you sure you have any milk?” “The spine! The spine! Be careful with his head!” I had nurses – each with her own infallible technique to demonstrate – actually climb onto the bed to try and poke my nipple into the baby’s mouth from different angles.

Even my husband has ventured a “but my mother says...” He’s damned lucky marital relations have not yet been resumed because if they had, he wouldn’t be getting any.

I mentioned before that my mother-in-law is remarkable at burping the baby, but gas comes in many forms, and in return for this invaluable service I am subjected to endless and repetitive philosophical ay hija discourses and minute instructions as to how to hold, feed, bathe and generally care for my son. My interpretation of the Baby Inca’s cries, squeaks and grunts are all discarded in favour of her own – apparently he speaks the Chiclayan dialect of her region.

My stress levels are not assisted by the fact that, having spent 9 months growing a magnificent pair of boobs, the little ingrate now refuses to utilize them because he's been surreptitiously introduced to the joys of bottled formula. Despite insisting that I wanted to breastfeed exclusively the nurses in the clinic, instead of bringing him to me in the night when he cried for food (“you were sleeping so well señora”), kept “topping him up” like a damned phonecard. He is now wedded to fast flowing bottles and refuses to put in the graft required to source his meals from my chest so I’m struggling with breast pumps and “nipple confusion” and trying to limit his intake of formula and other fluids. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law keeps trying to feed him aniseed-flavoured water and manzanilla tea to help his digestion. Why is everyone trying to irrigate my child? What is this obsession with water?

In the face of this constant onslaught of goodwill I have developed Coping Strategies.

Have you ever wondered what the purpose of baby talk is? Why adults tend to start babbling like village idiots the moment a baby approaches? I used to think that it was one of those useless Darwinian leftovers like the appendix. However, I have discovered that it is nothing of the sort. In fact, it is an evolutionary necessity, as important a survival mechanism as opposable thumbs or the fight-or-flight response triggered by adrenalin.

For example, when my suegra announced that she was inviting herself to the first doctor visit, I instinctively picked up Smuggitos and cooed to him: “Of course your abuela is coming to the doctor with us! Yes she is! Yes she is! She wants to make sure that silly mummy is taking good care of her ickle wickle grandson doesn’t she? Yes she does! Yes she does! But don’t worry, your mummy is a grown woman who is perfectly capable of taking care of her Smuggitos. Yes she is! Yes she is!”

This automatic ‘talk to the baby’ response by the mother of the newborn in the face of territorial challenges sends a subtle message while avoiding direct confrontation with the challenger. It also eases tension along the jaw line and keeps me out of prison, where I hear the wifi connections are not great.

Secondly, I am invoking my constitutional right to Make Stuff Up and Have My Passionate Beliefs Respected No Matter How Illogical. I have noticed that quoting doctors’ orders has absolutely no effect in deflecting unwanted home remedies but anything ‘traditional’ or ‘customary’ is greeted with respectful nods and total compliance.

Before checking me out of the clinic the paediatrician gave me a brochure with childcare instructions, including the stricture that I not use any kind of girdle or umbligero (which I can only translate as a “bellybuttoner”) on the child. Turns out that it is customary to strap down babies’ midsections so their bellybuttons will be innies and not outies.

My suegra says that with each of her children she taped a coin to their navels to avoid this social disgrace. “I did it to you, and yours doesn’t stick out” she sniffed at my husband with impeccable logic. I pointed out that neither does mine and I was not subjected to such measures. “You were obviously too young to remember” she replied. (“But with Smuggies I never...” I began, but gave it up. I am saving my energy for the interception of enriched liquids.)

I was instructed to blow on the top of the baby’s head three times to stop the hiccups. My husband was sceptical at first but reported excitedly that he tried it and it worked like a charm. “You have to wait about 15 minutes before they stop of course, but it works!”

My suegro told Smuggies that we have to wrap red string around the baby’s hand to ward of the evil eye from bad adults. This is similar to the Trinidad and Tobago practice of giving babies bracelets of black beads to wear to ward off ‘maljo’ (mal yeux or ‘bad eye’).

As far as I am concerned they can adorn the Baby Inca like a Christmas tree as long as they let me decide what to feed him. I therefore plan to trot out traditions at every available opportunity. As a test, I announced that we have to bury his 'navelstring' (what we Trinis call the remnant of the umbilical cord which falls off after a week or so) under a plant in the backyard. Shovels are being sourced as we speak.

From now on, I shall invent traditions at my convenience. The next time anyone suggests I feed Smuggitos agua I will inform them that in the Caribbean it is considered very bad luck to give a baby water before 6 months of age because then the water jumbies will become restless and floods will inundate the neighbourhood. If the threat of tsunamis doesn't work, nothing will.

As I was saying to my son just the other day “we’re going to fill them up with a pack of lies aren’t we Smuggitos? Yes we are! Yes we are!”


Coming Soon...This Season’s Must-Have Accessory