KEY POINTS:
The pudgy baby with thick twists of hair poking out in a dozen directions thinks it's all hilarious. The green fabric book she's waving around is hilarious. Her mother is hilarious. Plunket nurse Jane Vernon is hilarious. Nuding up and being put on the scales is hilarious. It's an uproarious thing, this being alive. Her wavy pink lips look as if they've never known a pout; her gleaming dark eyes as if they've never seen a tear.
Not so the little Japanese boy on the other side of the room in the Plunket centre in Balmoral, Auckland. By his cries of protest, he evidently thinks being laid down, stripped, weighed and measured is harrowing.
Pink babies and brown babies, big babies and little babies, howling babies and giggling babies, babies who sleep and babies who don't, babies who feed and babies who don't, Vernon has seen the lot since she started as a Plunket nurse more than 30 years ago.
She has that aura of confidence and unflappability of nurses with her years of experience yet, despite having handled thousands of babies, she's still as charmed by them as a clucky aunt.
"Hello, beautiful", she says to the cheerful baby in a softened English accent. "How are you? You're all pink today. What a pretty little girl". Needless to say, the child thinks it's hilarious.
It's Wednesday, which means drop-in day at the converted villa that houses Vernon and Karitane nurses Maggie Gardner and Sue Grey. The day is an initiative Vernon and a colleague came up with about six years ago to give parents a chance to pop by for a bit of reassurance.
Many times a mother will wheel her pram or lug her baby car seat up the concrete drive ostensibly to have her child weighed and measured. There is an obvious fixation with seeing the lines on the graphs in the Plunket book climb in a comforting diagonal. It's a matter of pride when the baby is putting on weight steadily or, in a few cases, not putting on quite so much weight.
Vernon isn't as concerned about weight and height but she recognises that, for many women, bringing their babies to be measured gives them an excuse to ask about more important issues.
So, while she's dutifully adding dots on the graphs in the baby book, Vernon will casually ask how things are going. More often than not that's when the real concerns come up.
And so it is with the mother of the happy baby.
"She still eating well?" asks Vernon over the wails from the other side of the room.
"Yes", is the immediate answer, though a few minutes later the mother says the baby refuses to be spoon-fed any longer. It's quite difficult when there's only finger food.
"Ok", says Vernon. "Give her a spoon, OK? And show her how to do it. It'll make a terrible mess but if she tries to do it, then you can put a spoonful in her mouth. It's quite normal around 10 months for them to be much more interested in finger foods than spoon food."
The baby chuckles, as if amused by the ruse. "That's right", says Vernon brightly, turning to her, "we just have to fool you, don't we?"
Released from his torture, the little boy has discovered some large bright beads on a curly wire that are just asking to be pushed around. Now he doesn't want to leave. "You say bye-bye?" says his mother, grabbing his chubby hand. "Ba-ba. Ba-ba."
Vernon says many of the women she sees feel overwhelmed by motherhood. Those in careers in which they are accustomed to having control, such as teachers, can be particularly thrown.
"They come in here and see other mothers in a similar situation and say, Oh, it's not just me. A lot of mothers need such reassurance that everything's all right."
When the two babies leave it's quiet. The weakening autumn sun warms up the little room, lighting up dozens of posters, flyers and articles that interrupt the pale blue walls - Baby Massage Class, Five Steps to Positive Parenting, Eight Toothy Tips for Babies and Toddlers. The walls throughout the building are papered with advice.
A succession of mostly pink-clad, wide-eyed and passive babies come through for the usual weigh and a measure, and are followed by a woman with two boys. The younger, Nathaniel Kirk, curves into his mother Amanda's chest, his fingers stuffed in his mouth. The problem is, it turns out, that's about all that's getting into his mouth, besides milk.
"Solids", the woman says. "He's 6 months tomorrow and won't even touch them."
"You don't like it, bubby?" Vernon says. "OK try it before milk. Give him some toast with Vegemite, or Cruskits, are good because they go all soggy. A bit of Marmite on it, a bit of flavour. He likes putting his hands in his mouth, so let him hold long, skinny things. Let him have a sliver of steak or something like that and just let him suck it, let him get the flavour out of it, the juice. And often when you start them with finger foods and they get the idea, then they're open to it."
As the trio prepares to leave, a 4-year-old with shiny dark eyes and hair lands in the doorway with a thud and an expectant smile. "Hello India, how are you today?" says Vernon. "Good", is the suddenly shy answer.
Her mother, Helen Yarrow, carries a battered Plunket book. As India proudly snaps up against the measuring chart, Yarrow and Vernon have a chat about what school she'll be going to. "It'll be sad when she turns 5", says Yarrow, "because we wont have to come any more."
When Vernon mentions Canvas is here to write about the Plunket rooms, Yarrow's eyes widen. It seems I have found possibly Plunket's biggest fan.
"India wasn't the easiest of babies", says Yarrow, so one day they came to the Plunket centre for an entire day. The staff taught Yarrow how to get her daughter to sleep, and then mother and baby slept "for more than half an hour for the first time."
"Oh these ladies are just wonderful, they really are. They put me to bed, gave me fresh, crisp sheets, an electric blanket, made me homemade soup for lunch, showed me videos for feeding properly. They were kind and relaxed. And India's just flourished."
India, meanwhile, is heading off a 22-month-old girl as she tries to make a break for the door. She lifts her up to touch a mobile that's playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
As the room empties again, the bell-like notes of the mobile wind down into silence.
Vernon sits for the first time in an hour or so. I ask a question, though by now the answer seems obvious: "Do you like your job?"
"I love it", she says, emphatically. "There's a bit of frustration, particularly when you can't fix things that you'd like to, but there's a huge amount of satisfaction in seeing mums falling in the door, weeping, and going home with smiles on their faces. It's good."
And then she's on her feet again. Theres another baby at the door.
- Canvas
