New life
Motherhood goes metric
Zenga Longrnore
Someone, somewhere, has gone through a list of the top London hospitals, picked out the best one and said, 'Yell, that's the one we'll close.' Who he is and why he's done it remains a mystery, but the sad fact is he is talking of closing down London's finest maternity hospital — Queen Charlotte's. Within the walls of this noble edifice, Omalara first saw the light of electric lamps. Ah! how well I remember the kindly midwife who made me feel as if having a baby were so clever a feat that I couldn't believe anyone had ever done
such a thing before. And now the hospital might close for no other reason save that this previously mentioned Someone has that unpalatable blend of spite and stupid- ity. If he can't resist pulling things down, can't he do humanity a service and make it the South Peckham Estate, or better still, my flimsy tower block?
However, touch wood, let's hope no- thing so dramatic occurs until I've been safely rehoused. In the meantime I'm still popping into the baby clinic every once in a while to have Omalara weighed. Weighing babies involves a ridiculously unnecessary palaver. After struggling with scales too slender for all but the tiniest babe, the health visitor announces, 'Seven point 81.' 'Really. How much is that?' Wait a minute and I'll check.' And for the time it takes to . re-nappy and dress Omalara, the hapless health visitor draws her finger up and down a chart. `Ah, here we are — no — wait a minute — y-y-yes — no — oho! Seventeen pounds and three ounces.' I never like to ask her why she couldn't have said so in the first place, because my health visitor is all too liable to ask me why I don't know my metric. 'You young mothers think you can stop progress,' she once told me, .sniffily washing her hands, 'this is the real world Baby has been born into, you know.'
Too real for my liking. What if fruit and veg were to be weighed in this fashion? 'Tomatoes are 50p a point 45 kilos today, ladies, a thieves' bargain.' Aaagh! Money going decimal is an act of the Seventies, but babies going decimal is too much to be (dare I say) borne.
Olumba almost wept when the midwife informed him over the phone that Omalara only weighed three point three at birth. The next day, when he ran into the hospital ward, I explained that her correct weight was seven pounds five ounces.
'How did she put on so much so quick? Na power-packed pickine, dis!' I must admit, at the time I felt almost grateful to metrication for having helped put so broad a smile on Olumba's face.
Sadly Olumba has little to smile about these days. His Aunty Toro has written from Nigeria to say that she and her three Children plan to stay this summer. Every six months, for as long as I have known Olumba, Aunty Toro has been writing him long letters asking for almost everything You can't get in Nigeria. The list includes tinned spaghetti, HP sauce, marmalade and anything with a Marks and Spencer label. Marks and Spencer symbolises all that is glamorous in West Africa. Weeks later a letter of complaint will arrive, saying not only has Olumba omitted some tinned item of great importance but the customs men have `thiefed the tomato ketchup so send more quick-quick'. I've never met Aunty Toro, but judging by the hunted look Olumba wore when opening her letter of self-invitation, it looks as if I Shall be spending the summer at my mother's.
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