Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Here is another great Right I just discovered - "Right to be called a bad parent".

My older daugther is very active and she is almost 3. She was born in a year of a pig, but she is a true monkey. She climed out of the crib when she was 18 months, so I had to invest a small fortune into crib tents at 80 dollars a piece.

My son, who just turned 1, is not a monkey type, but he is very strong and smart.

We have a very wide opening between the playroom and the kitchen. When my daugther was little, I started putting plastic filling cabinets to block the whole space. They are 2 ft high and present a miniture Chinese wall for the crawling child. By the time she was able to climb over she was in the good age and could very well walk and jump.

Apperantly my little one was paying very close attention of what his sister was doing, because few days ago, on Sunday, just few hours before his birthday party he decided to follow his sister.

I heard the crash while I was blowing a beach ball and ran to thkitch to find my crying baby on the floor. Nothing seemed broken and I just was about to say "Thanks God, you are ok" when I realized that he was bleeding from his ear. I grabbed him and got on the way to ER.

The difference between good ER and ER
Just because it says Pediatric Emergency Room, it doesn't make it a good ER for 1 year old. How do I know that? Because after spending hours there, talking nurses, doctors, getting CT scans and etc. They told us that we need to get transferred into the hospital that is equipped to handle our problem.

My son got a small skull fracture, but they were not sure about how far it went. Their choice of hospitals was 40 miles away (abviously,because they work together). Mine was about 15, that I know well. After we got into the second hospital, we had to go through the emergency room again. A dozen of people around my son, who was screaming and 5 people asking me the same questions

Rightless

Don't take me wrong - I am very greateful to this country for giving me home. This is the country with so many rights, my head is spinning. I am very happy here, because this is the land of the brave and etc. I am well aware that I probably wouldn't have my fancy toys in the old country. I get that, but lately I feel like have no rights. I started getting this feeling as soon as I started getting ready to enter the happy kingdom of motherhood.

The company I worked for the last 9 years brought a lawyer who said, Pregnancy is not disability and You can expect any special treatment. My work actually got much harder after I got pregnant.

The idea of leaving 8 week old child and going back to work is not even practising in third world countries, but here we in the Freeland, dropping our bandles of joy and marching with with the rest of the workforce

By the time I got very close to the end of my pregnancy, my company fired enough people to fit themselves under 50 people within 75 miles radius law, which means, they are not obligated to provide you with Family Leave. I was also told that I can try to apply my vacation time, but because they are so shorthanded, they probably will not let me take it. Oh, well - all the years of putting extra hours without pay and bending backwards didn't get paid off. What can I say

Because the company became "50 and under", they also got another very cool right - letting me go while I was still on my materniy leave.
I looked in my bag of tricks and got nothing. I guess, they live in the home of the free and I am in the land of the brave