I had coffee with an old school friend, Louise, the other day. I was meeting her son for the first time (and he was fat and delicious and everything a gorgeous baby should be). Louise’s first born, Isabel, was safely ensconced in playgroup so we had a brief respite and could focus on the new baby entirely without igniting the wrath of a scorned sibling.
I should say “further igniting” however, as that morning, Louise’s daughter had done something she had never done before: she had drawn on the floor with a crayon. It is so hard when a new baby comes to stay… Isabel is a perfectly normal and very well behaved little angel… most of the time, but that morning it had all been too much and she had done something she knew would get a response… “I was so cross!” said Louise, in an exasperated tone. Louise did everything right from then on, taking Isabel out of the room to think about what she had done (and perhaps more importantly, to give Louise a chance to clean the offending mark off and calm down). “She apologised…” Louise said, but Isabel was evidently a little more offhand about the apology than Louise would have liked after such a huge and massively out of character calculated little attention getting stunt. I did try to explain that frankly any attention is better than nothing and to have mummy go fifteen shades of purple because there is now a large blue stripe across the floorboards, certainly beats being ignored whilst the delicious baby is being fed.
Apart from that minor hiccup, Isabel has adjusted well to her new brother’s arrival. “She does keep asking “Why?”, though,” said Louise. “When does that stop?” she asked me looking slightly deranged at the prospect of it going on much longer, like beyond the end of the week perhaps…
I tried to reassure her, but sitting there with her enjoying a coffee, I realised that my girls (9 and 7) still do the “why?” thing, and even better, they frequently ask The Ridiculous Question. I know that for most small people asking “Why?” is a way of interacting. Like the blue crayon used against the defenceless beautifully polished floorboard, it is a wonderful way to get attention. I can remember breast feeding number two whilst trying to explain to number one why the sky was blue. As I embarked on an illustrated visual guide to light refraction, drawing on the back of an envelope, clutching the baby under my armpit, I understood that she wasn’t actually listening. Nor did she really want to know the answer to the question. “Why?” was a way of getting my attention. I became THAT mother, at this point, and came up with pat answers to most of The Ridiculous Questions. For example, the ever faithful, pernennial favourite question: “Mummy, what’s for supper?” as I stand in the kitchen oven glove clad hands clasping a tray of fish fingers, illicits my favourite pat response: “Rat’s bottoms and chair-legs” My Northern friend, Sarah, tells her children that for supper they are having “Air pie and a walk around” when they ask, as her mother said to her. It is universal that mothers get sick of The Ridiculous Question and have to come up with some way of maintaining their sanity. “Mummy, why is that man fat?” (said loudly enough for the poor chubby chap to hear) “Mummy, why has that lady got a red dress on?” “Mummy, why are those children shouting?” “I don’t know, darling,” I say, “You’ll have to ask them.” It tends to stop them in their tracks and make them think for themselves. I am also probably damaging them irreparably by feigning interest when I am actually fobbing them off. It keeps me sane… 
But fear not, they do get their own back: “Mummy, are those your pants?” (asked when I am hanging out a double sheet on the washing line to dry in the garden) got a slightly different response. As did: “Mummy, do you shave the fur off your face?” “No darling, mummies don’t have fur on their faces,” I said indulgently, “Just daddy’s have beards.” “No, Mummy,” said my perfect seven year old, “You have a beard too… I can see it” and then my all time favourite which involved a pincer movement from both girls (and so must be admired as at least they have the sense to work together): “Mummy, you know how the dog’s ears are all floppy and dangly?” asked one, “Yes, darling…” I said walking unthinkingly in to their trap. The other daughter said to the first as quick as a wink: “They’re just like mummy’s boobies, aren’t they?” They both agreed heartily and laughing left me standing naked in the bathroom. I trust that both my daughters will grow up with resilient, pneumatic breasts far superior to mine and that their pants are never mistaken for double bed sheets. In the mean time, I am off to cook them rat’s bottoms and chair legs again.
On your bike!
Did you know that from a year old a baby can go on the back of your bike in a safety seat and a helmet? Did you also know (and perhaps this is more important) that you can lose a lot of weight if you exercise like that regularly?
I cycle as many places as I can. This is not because I am some militant greenie, although given a choice I would probably make the green one… I used non-disposable nappies (poverty drove me there – husband was made redundant some years ago and that made us seriously think about our fiscal well-being) and I do own a wormery so I guess maybe I am more green than most. I cycle because I find it less stressful. I cannot stand fighting for parking spaces and sitting in traffic makes me consider road rage as a sensible pass-time. I also don’t have time to go the gym (and poverty made that impossible, see above) and so incorporating exercise into my daily regime seemed sensible. Cycling also sets a good example for my kids, I think, to show there is an alternative to getting in the car. We now cycle pretty much everywhere.
First of all, I used a standard seat on the back of my bike. I learnt the hard way that it is very easy to snap the lose flesh under a small fat child’s chin in the clasp of a helmet (you only do it once…) and also that a bike with a child on the back doesn’t balance against a wall, but falls over. Again, you only do it once and it is amazing how resilient small children are…
As my kids got bigger (between 2 and 6), we resorted to a bike trailer, a sort of two man tent on wheels you can strap them in to. I did a lot of internet research before making the decision and figured that if I stayed on the quieter back roads, we would be fine. I did once catch the big one (Madeleine) boosting the little one (Tabitha) out as I was cycling along at speed… she got caught under the trailer and was dragged for a few feet before I screeched to a halt, her helmet stopping her from going under the back wheels. I also once brought a friend’s child, Clair, home for tea and when we got home Clair squealed: “Tabitha has wet my pants!” Tabitha had weed in the trailer and it had trickled across the seat and soaked in to Clair’s pants. Nothing a hose couldn’t sort out… I also flipped the trailer once, taking a corner at speed… with Tabitha aged about 18 months sleeping in it. I jumped off my bike and peeled back the lid to find her still asleep, suspended from what was now the ceiling, her little arms and legs dangling down and still swinging from the force. Again, I have only ever done it once. (I'm not selling this well, am I?)
Most importantly, though, I lost the extra two stone I was carrying after having number two. It just dropped off me once I started cycling, and now I find I can eat what I want (within reason) and drink enough to keep me sane without getting lardy. (That's got your attention back again, hasn't it?) I also find it incredibly relaxing to ponder the troubles of the world whilst I peddle… it is that repetitive left/right action, I think which helps me process. I highly recommend it, as long as you have good all weather gear (and you can find fabby-do, even stylish items available for sale at Minx). I also recommend an odometer if you are slightly sad like me and feel great satisfaction knowing that you have cycled 80 miles every week.
We used the trailer for a few years (a brilliant Cycletote) until Madeleine got so big I had to either rethink or start amputating limbs. I decided against kitchen table surgery and instead graduated to a tag-along and Madeleine cycles along beside me. Actually she cycles behind me because I would rather not see her trying to make it to the end of the road with no hands on the handle bars. This works well, except Tabitha can frequently be found sitting on the back of the tag-along, feet on her handle bars and NOT pedalling as she should be, but rather reading her school book as I do all the work. We also sometimes have the dog in the basket, so she can come with us.
And all this cycling does some good as well. I have for the past two years, cycled from London to Brighton and raised money for the brilliant Capital to Coast, and plan to do it again this July. So if you feel inspired to either get on your own bike go to it! You don’t need to spend a lot of money and most areas have a freecycle system where you can get a second hand bike, bike seat or tag-along for free. If you are unlikely to get on your bike yourself, but would like to sponsor me, dash to my just giving webpage where you can pledge some cash to speed me on my way. To be honest it is just a really crafty way to spend five hours on my own without the kids. I shall be plugged in to The Archers cycling with a huge, selfish smile on my face…
But what happened to me?
I had lunch with a friend this week. She has a delicious little boy who is now about 7 months old and has just started weaning. She sat at the table trying to post grub in to his little mouth whilst contending with flailing arms and spoon grabbing and raspberry blowing and all the other joys that come with weaning. “It takes so long…” she said to me. I think she was expecting me to show her how to make it all go more smoothly – surely this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be? By the end of a half hour most of the food was either on my friend, the floor, the walls, or the dog had eaten it as it had fallen on the floor and was fair game… Her son looked pretty pleased with himself until she tried to wipe his face which was the final insult.
It takes a lot of time feeding babies… You can trick them in to letting you hold the spoon by giving them a second one, you can use a second person to distract them or to restrain the flailing limbs, but generally speaking it is a messy and time heavy occupation. It is also very emotional feeding a child who is not as enthusiastic as you are about the carefully crafted courgette puree with poached free-range chicken. “It does get better…” I found myself saying to my exasperated, vegetable smeared friend. “It is definitely better than it was..” she said, her voice slightly tired. She has been doing this three times a day for about a month now and it is improving but she still has a long way to go.
What is really amazing is that you really do forget how long it all takes that by the time number two comes along you are strangely unprepared. Again. You have to relearn it all and now have the added distraction of a toddler running around your ankles. Already thinking about number two, my friend and I had the brief discussion about the perfect gap between babies. I did advise that she try sooner rather than later given that it is perfectly normal to expect one in three pregnancies to end in a miscarriage and sometimes conceiving for a second time can be strangely elusive. I do advise everyone who is considering it to seriously think about being pregnant with number two before your first-born turns two. The terrible twos can really take you by surprise in some children and had I not already been pregnant when it hit my eldest daughter, I possibly would have thought about the benefits of just having an only child, so extraordinary was her behaviour. As it was I was already pregnant and it was too late to do anything but watch in amazement and wonder what I had created.
Which leads me to my point, after you have had a baby, what happens to you? Where do you vanish to? Your whole life is taken up by the wonderful life you have created and consequently the fundamentals of who you are: your job, your friends who haven’t got kids, your hobbies, your figure and things you used to enjoy (do you remember going to the cinema… oh the luxury – and what about Sunday morning lie-ins reading the Sunday papers with a cup of coffee… what happened to that!?) seem to be fall by the wayside. Where is the “me” time…
I do think it is important to try to get as much of your own life back as soon as you can, but also acknowledge that for a lot of us, something has to give and that tiny person becomes more important than ourselves – as it should be. Your family relies on you and you are the lynch pin, about which everything revolves. Your priorities as a couple shift and it is usually the mother who carries the largest burden. I am here to tell you, though, that with a little patience and some lateral thought, you will find yourself again at the other end of that dark tunnel. I remember running after my children in a playground whilst a lady sat reading a magazine, and her smiling and saying “soon…” and she was right. There comes a time when you can read a whole book, go to the hairdressers, get some regular exercise, sit on the loo without someone sitting on your knee and spend time with your partner, get a babysitter and go to the cinema and with a little training your children can get themselves breakfast and let you lie in on a Sunday sometimes, too. You may even find a new and different challenging career to focus on which fits in around your children. But you do have to get through the hard, mucky bit first.
My friend sat there yesterday, showered and dressed, having driven across London to arrive on time for lunch, her son fat and happy, well cared for and healthy - a little miracle! We chatted about how hard motherhood was but how worth it, too. “When they are at school,” I said with a smile, “you suddenly find yourself again…” My friend’s face fell a little bit “But that is so long!” she wailed. Yes, I know that six years seems a very long time, but it is all relative, and in the life of your baby and you, really it is such a short time, and the sacrifice really is worth it. I promise.
Mother knows best
I was working for a lovely lady recently. She has just had number three. As I am sure you can imagine she had her hands full. Her mother in law was staying with her when I first started working as a post-natal doula for her. The mother in law was a lovely lady, and one day, took me to one side and asked what I thought about the way that the baby was being left on her back to sleep. Scandalised, the mother in law told me that in her day, they had always been advised to sleep the baby on its side, swapping sides every day to ensure that the skull developed evenly. What was this baby doing sleeping exclusively on its back! It would grow up to have a deformed head! I tried to reassure her that it was now common practice and advised that sleeping on the back was the safest thing for a baby, thankful that she was asking me and not her rather sensitive, post-natal daughter in law. It did remind me though of a lovely private midwife who told me behind her hand that most babies she had met preferred to sleep on their fronts "but don't quote me!". She said she always advised mothers to follow their instincts and to “risk it” if their babes preferred sleeping that way. I am no longer surprised if I find a mother sheepishly showing me a happily sleeping baby lying on its tummy.
As a new mother, you are so vulnerable. Fresh out of sleep and awash with hormones, you have little idea what you are doing for at least the first six weeks and just being able to have a shower before six pm is a true miracle some days. To be expected to then make executive decisions for a small person is almost more than some women can bear; and it doesn't always get easier with the more you have. But to whom should you listen? Your midwife… who may or may not be the same person day after day; your health visitor… who may only be available occasionally; your mother or mother in law… who did this all a very long time ago… your friend up the street who knits her own yoghurt? This same lady had been told by midwives and health visitors and doulas that her baby was tongue tied… but I sat listening as a breast feeding counsellor poo-pooed the whole thing and told her there was nothing wrong with her baby at all. Now who do you believe?
Breast feeding is such a mine field as well. How do you know how much milk you are producing? Where is the gauge to show you if your breast is empty after a feed and full again before one? How do you know if you are providing your baby with enough? I would always say trust your instincts. Believe that you will produce what your baby needs at the time they need it. Trust that your body can do it and watch. If you see a very unhappy baby who is failing to thrive, then obviously you may need to rethink. Generally speaking though, most mothers can breast feed successfully… unless they are stressed out. What could be more stressful than doubting your own ability?
Motherhood is a fraught business. But you can navigate your way through if you trust your own instincts and believe deeply that you will make the best decisions for your baby given the information you have at the time. Read and speak to people if that helps and in the end, listen to your own heart and do what you think is the best thing. Every now and again that may involve listening to and even doing what your mother in law suggests.
Why not start a Babysitting Circle?
Once you have had your baby and the immediate flush of new parenthood has worn off and you are feeling less tired than you were, your attention may suddenly turn to your partner. That person you used to focus all your love and adoration on who has been standing quietly in the background since you fell in love with your new baby may come back in to your sights… perhaps a night out together may be a good idea? But who do you trust to leave your baby with? Nubile 16 year olds are all very well, but would they really know what to do if the house caught fire or your baby was unwell? In addition you need to consider the costs, a trip to the cinema which is already pricey, can be almost doubled if you add in £5 an hour for the babysitter. Suddenly popping down to the pub can seem like an extravagant option. But you must. You must try to spend time with your partner away from your children because your family is only as strong as the weakest link and nurturing your partner and yourself should be as important as nurturing your baby.
In my group of peers, we have found a fabulous (and hardly original) solution to this: we set up a babysitting circle. If it sounds like something that would suit you, please learn from our tried and tested method and pinch it for yourselves. We found a group of likeminded, relatively close (geographically) families who were enthusiastic and began a self-policing community who babysit for each other. Nothing changes hands, just points which are kept in a book held in turn by each member.
We found that the circle works best with about 15 families, all of whom have kids of various ages and preferably are at different schools (so a parents’ evening or a school function can be attended by members whilst other members can sit for them). A “book” is set up (we use an old loose leaf file folder) which contains contact details for everyone in the group and information about their children. It also holds a holds a record of points (exchanged for babysitting) and forms to help you organise sits.
The principle behind it goes like this: Everyone is given 20 points to start with. A rota is set up where one person holds the book for a month at a time. This is the person you call if you need a babysitter. The person holding the book makes a note of your request (dated in case someone else needs a sitter on the same night so it can be a first come first serve basis) and then makes phone calls to the various other members of the circle to find a suitable person who is available to sit for you that night. They phone in reverse order to the number of points the various members have, so the person who has the fewest points (who has used a babysitter more than they have babysat) is phoned first to see if they can sit. The next person who is phoned has the next least number of points and so on, until a babysitter is found. The person with the book then confirms with the requester who is sitting for them and the babysitter and the requester get in touch on the day to double check that everything is still on. Exact hours sat are reported back to the person who is holding the book as soon as a sit has been completed. At the end of every month a tally of the points earned and lost is updated and the next month begins with the order of phone calls to find a babysitter adjusted to reflect that new balance. In this way, anyone who has done a lot of babysitting will not be asked to do any more until their points balance is back down to the same level as everyone else, meaning that the whole system is self-policing.
Over the nine years that ours has been running we have come up with some ground rules which are as follows:
Rules:
1. 1 hour equals one point, using increments of a quarter of an hour/point.
2. One extra point for sitting on a Saturday night.
3. Points double after midnight.
4. Report the number of hours the sit was as soon as possible to the person holding the book, but at least before the end of the month.
5. Children should be in bed when sitter arrives unless previously arranged.
6. Try to leave a glass of wine and perhaps a nibble for your babysitter and explain the workings of the telly/phone etc before leaving.
7. Daytime sits which involve food/bath can be negotiated between the sitter and requester.
8. If you have to cancel a babysit you have agreed to do, please arrange for a replacement yourself rather than asking the person holding the book to do it.
9. Please phone the person holding the book as soon as you need a babysitter. If you need someone at very short notice, you may phone the group yourself.
10. If cancelling (either way) with less than 24 hours notice, one point will be given (in recognition of any inconvenience).
11. If you are holding the book, please phone the person with the lowest number of points first.
12. Please reply to a request for babysitting as soon as possible, saying yes or no. If you can sit you should sit.
13. Please contact the person you are expecting to sit for you before the sit to confirm times. Try to give a rough ballpark of when you will return.
14. If you are going on holiday, please notify the person with the book.
This system has worked very well for us and we have also had the benefit of meeting some really lovely families we may not otherwise had contact with, not to mention the bonus of spending time with our lovely partners reminding ourselves why we fell in love with them in the first place. It is also important to spend some social time together as a group of mothers… OK, that is slightly less important but we try to have a wine and cheese evening every quarter to just keep in touch with each other and also try to do things as a family two or three times a year: meet in a park for a picnic in the summer, have an Easter Egg hunt at Easter, etc. To download the forms we use, please go to the link here. But most importantly, go out and enjoy!
Competitive birthday parties…
There has been a lot in the news recently about parents going to great lengths to make their child’s birthday party better than everyone else’s. I have noticed a trend in this direction since I had kids, and made a very active decision in the first few years to opt out quite deliberately. You can only lose if you are competing and so I decided to take myself out of the competition. Not that I don’t “do” birthday parties, I do… but I make a point of having Old Fashioned birthday parties, like the ones we had when we were kids, and so neatly side step the whole “But Fenella had better pony rides!” complaint.
A long time ago, a friend very wisely advised me never to take a child’s birthday party too seriously. I think she meant in terms of who is invited; imagine that moment when you realise that your child is left in the playground empty handed while everyone else clutches invites. Hideous. I think as a general rule, stay as neutral as you can. If you ask your four year old who they want at their party, they will tell you the kids they are thinking of RIGHT NOW, and not necessarily their actual friends. This can be a trick if you are not intimately acquainted with their pals at school (I always recommend volunteering at school to have a quick look at who your child is really playing with) but can be finessed if you sit down with them and a school list of their class-mates. There is a degree of social engineering that can go on with the invites, a few obligatory offspring of your friends, but generally this is your child’s party and as such should be up to your child to create the guest list. (that said, I have been known to take the class trouble maker off the list and tell a porkie pie about him having a better offer.) Some schools take this decision out of your hands and insist that everyone in the class be invited to every party, but however you arrive at the guest list, please do be sensitive about handing out the invitations. See if you can’t get them slipped in to going home bags by the teacher to avoid the horrid playground scene (and it is usually the mother not the child who is mortally offended when their little darling hasn’t been invited.)
The actual party should be pretty low key. There is no point in hiring anyone dressed as a character to come and entertain your child if they are under three, they are scared of anyone in a furry suit (as they should be). I have seen whole halls cleared in incredible speed because of the arrival of Winnie the Pooh. Keep it simple. Hire a local hall if you are worried about the number of children or the potential for jelly to land on your carpets, be clear about the start and end time (10-12am on a Saturday is usually quite good, you get it over with and don’t tend to clash with anyone else’s party, you can feed them a soupcon of lunch without them being unbearable and no one usually naps at that that time beyond age two) and plan to have some fun.
If you must, give your party a theme, but try not to make it too hard on yourself or too cumbersome for the other parents. It’s all very well being invited to a fancy dress party, but “Pirates of the Caribbean” is too specific and possibly age inappropriate. Plan things to do, but don’t drive yourself mad about anything more than a few activities and traditional games. You don’t need to rent go-karts or have a disco or even hire a clown. You can plan and run a party all by yourself with some help from a partner, grandparent or friend.
The games that we played as kids are still great, and sadly, quite unusual as now most parties involve sophisticated and expensive venues and activities. The old games are the best ones. Don’t expect everyone to be involved, there will always be one child who would rather eat the crisps or stand in a corner, but generally speaking these games are the bees knees:
Pass the parcel
Pin the Tail on the Donkey
Duck duck goose
Stuck in the mud
Kim’s game (Memory game)
Drop the hankie
Musical statues
Musical bumps
Grandmother’s footsteps
Sleeping lions
Hokey cokey
Party rings on a string (you have to eat them as they swing suspended without using your hands)
Relay races (egg/potato and spoon, sack race, stepping stones (you have two paper plates and must stand on one or the other as you make your way down the course), orange relay (tucked under your chin) skipping, hopping and just running)
Post man game (Sheer genius – Four numbered or coloured post boxes placed in the corners of the room. 100 envelopes from the pound shop each with a number of colour on relating to a post box, 100 pieces of paper, enough pencils for everyone to have one. You have to queue at the “post office” to get an envelope, then you have to queue at the “stationery shop” to get a piece of paper. Then you have to write your name on the piece of paper, enclose it in the envelope and post it in the right box. Repeat until the envelopes are all gone. The child who gets the most names in the right box wins. My children play this at home between the two of them for hours. Kids love to queue… is this just a British thing I wonder?)
The Fabric game (each child is given a distinct piece of fabric which has been cut into eight and must find the matching pieces in the small piles scattered around the hall – a firm fave since I was a girl and still fun as an adult… not that I actually PLAY you understand…)
Pinata (you can make this out of paper mache over a balloon)
Children from about four can understand most of these these games and play enthusiastically. You don’t have to follow any game to the end if it’s not fun for your group. Play it all by ear and be flexible…
Food: very important to get this right. Kids like junk at parties. You may only ever feed your children gently stewed organic meat or vegetables at home, but this is the one time when my home-made bread does not get a look in. White bread marmite sandwiches (see Nigella’s How to Cook), jam sandwiches, crisps, cocktail sausages, grapes and crisps. I usually also make number biscuits, but don’t expect anyone to eat them, just suck the icing off them and abandon them. The cake is a must and even if you buy it, the birthday boy/girl must blow out all the candles. If you spend hours making mini quiche and tiny Yorkshire puddings stuffed with slightly rare roast beef, you will only be disappointed and quite cross when all the food is left. By the way, jam, ham and marmite sandwiches all freeze. Make many more than you think you will need (I do a round, four triangles, for each child) and freeze the left overs. Emergency packed lunches sorted for the next few months. Chucked in frozen, they defrost by lunchtime. I always give them squash in paper cups. Juice boxes are expensive and never get finished and can also be made to squirt in a way that squash in a cup just doesn’t.
I always have balloons, but regular blowing up style to go home with each child (if you remember) (I never do). Helium is fun to make you sound like Pinky or Perky, but expensive and quick to lose its floatiness if squirted into regular balloons. Party bags are always a trick. Kids will actually approach you as they arrive asking for theirs. It has become a human right to have a party bag. I am afraid I have been cornered by this one and never taken the (stronger, but possibly mad) stand to NOT have them. I always buy some re-useable bags (Ikea has great ones with Ziploc style closures) and put a piece of cake in them, wrapped in a napkin. I also encourage any sweets found from the Pinata to be piled in (so you hand the bags out in advance of the piñata being broken and they have somewhere to stash their haul rather than stuffing them all straight in their gobs). I also tend to give something like a pen, pencil, roll of shiny selotape or a pad of postit notes. I try to find something useful and which doesn’t need to be kept. You will learn to dread the arrival of plastic tat in to your house if you haven’t already. I also give practical presents for birthdays. I tend to buy t-shirts or lunch boxes or pjs or packets of jolly pants or books. Again, as a mother, I would much rather you gave my child something useful than have to find storage for the milk-shake maker which moos as charming as it is. I also try to give each child a photo of them at the party as a thank you card.
It needn’t cost you a fortune and (ironically) some of my kid’s parties have been the talk of the class, to the point where one very competitive parent once asked me who had “done” the party. I said “Me” and she thought it was some fabulous trendy new entertainer she hadn’t heard of and asked me for the phone number…
Blue Cup Days
I have the great good fortune to have a wonderful friend called Sally who has a thoughtful span of kids, currently aged 8 to 20. She has been there and done it all in the arena of motherhood and parenting and so have her kids. Any time mine try to do something shocking or terrifying, I can rest assured that Sally’s have done it all before. Suspected Meningitis? Yup. Learning difficulties? Oh yes. Trouble with teachers? Neatly resolved. Husband made redundant? Now employed and happily so. Boyfriend/girlfriend issues? Calmly dispatched. She is my shining beacon in the dark stormy seas and I rely on her words of wisdom even when she is not available for me to speak to in person.
Sally coined the phrase: “blue cup day” when her second son, now a delightful teenage lad who has battled and to all intents and purposes beaten Asperger’s syndrome (through many countless hours of patient training from Sally), was going through a particularly awkward patch. She knew that he wanted to drink from a blue Ikea cup at every meal. She also knew that she needed for him to be accepted by his peers and also that he needed to learn how to be perceived as “normal”. There were those days, she told me, where she would arrive at the healthy, nutritious and delicious evening meal (made within the family budget from fresh wholesome ingredients of course) children sitting expectantly at the table and open the cupboard to discover that there were enough blue cups for everyone to have one which meant that no one would be obvious by their inability to drink their milk.
We adopted this as a term for those days when inexplicably everything goes just the way you would like it to go. Not one of those days (as termed by the Mum’s the Word ladies) when you wake up as Mary Poppins but in spite of your best intentions end up as Cruella DeVille. Instead, a blue cup day is one of those days when you float effortlessly, the perfect mother, a true domestic goddess, from dawn to dusk. Your children behave, your husband is grateful and brings home flowers and you manage to find two shoes that match and get a hairbrush through your (possibly clean) hair before going to bed with a smile on your lips. Motherhood’s not so bad, now, is it?
I am happy to pass on this phrase in the knowledge that Sally will be pleased if it enters the lexicon and allows other women to communicate with each other with the ease that we have. If you have a blue cup day, for goodness sake, spread it about. It’s important that we tell people when things go well in addition to complaining about all the days when the baby poos on the wall and the dog and your husband are both humping your legs for attention while your toddler paints the bathroom and herself with sudocreme. (it doesn’t really come off, in case you’re interested)
I spoke to a client today who said that she seems to have a blue cup day every other day. I questioned her and we soon discovered that her good days coincide with the days her daughter sleeps in the afternoon. I did try to reassure her that it does get better. There are things you can do to manage the situation (see my top tips) and as your kids get older you do start to resemble yourself again and that is a beautiful thing. You may not be who you were before all this started, but you can be someone new in your own right and it is a great relief after all those hours you spent on the loo with someone sitting on your knee. And that was just your husband.
Blue cup days for Sally now consist of having matching underwear. And I don’t just mean her pants match her bra, I mean that her underwear is colour co-ordinated with what she is wearing. I have that held in front of me as a new, brighter beacon of hope. One day I will care enough, I say to myself. Until then I am just relieved when the blue cup day comes, confident that the non-blue cup days are necessary to make sure I recognise the good one.
(By the way, Sally has said that I forgot the end of the Blue Cup Day story... it sounds familiar so I am sure she did tell me the whole story, but in my mind, the myth was complete at the children gathered all together, quietly eating their delicious supper... Sally reminded me that: "having sat down at table with the afore mentioned blue cups I found the rabbits had escaped and were playing in the traffic, at which point I abandoned my baby with the child with aspergers and took the other two into the traffic to retrieve them. Blue cup days often have a sting in the tail!!" So even the saintly Sally can have bad days and possible lapses in judgement...)
to clean or not to clean...
That is the question. I was working with a lovely lady today whose husband has just suggested they get a cleaning lady to help her. My lady was worried that as a stay at home mother, her role should be looking after the baby and their home and all that entails, which is surely cleaning... I told her what a friend of mine told me when I had my first baby: If you spend hours scrubbing the kitchen floor on your hands and knees and one of your little darlings walks across that floor with muddy wellingtons, you will want to murder them in cold blood. If your cleaning lady has just cleaned your floors and one of your little darlings walks across it with muddy wellingtons you will shrug and say: "Oh well..." and spot clean the tiny little, perfect footprints off with a cloth. Also reality dictates that to clean a whole house, you have to either find a child minder who you must pay, book your child into a creche (for which you must pay) or pass the child to your partner. You then spend time you could otherwise spend with your family cleaning, most likely on a weekend. Suddenly your time with your partner and children becomes so precious that the amount of money a cleaning lady costs pales into insignificance. Trust me on this one, it is money well spent.
Contented little babies
Gina Ford… hmmm. I am all for instruction manuals and am the first to reach for the rules when my family play Monopoly, but where motherhood is concerned, I am a strong believer that you already have all the answers if you just listen to and trust your own instincts. Why is this so hard for women to do today? Is it because we are all (generally) older when we have families to start with and so have spent more of our lives being in charge and like the illusion of control that a book like: “The Contended Little Baby” gives us? Or is it because we are all far removed from babies when we have our own (and I am the first to admit that the first time I ever changed a nappy was when I had a baby of my own) that we don’t even know where to start? Or, in a world where we are so removed from nature, are we dependant on official instructions and rules because we have never learnt to discover our own instincts to trust them?
I worked for a girl just recently who had twins and was absolutely floored by the experience. She had had a scheduled Caesar, and was recovering from a major abdominal operation as well as experiencing motherhood for the first time and had read Gina Ford’s book. She was as prepared as she could be (in her mind), but was still side swiped by the experience. Evidently, her twins had omitted to read Gina Ford and didn’t understand the rules, and as the twins were fraternal, one was a boy and tended to be more hungry and more needy; where the other was a girl who just happened to be much more easily settled and less demanding. She was beside herself and overwhelmed with guilt about her daughter who she felt she was short-changing. Having twins had meant that she could not spend her early days enjoying her babies, she believed, as she was so distracted by each of them that she was unable to enjoy either of them “properly”. I did try to explain that everyone is overwhelmed in the first few weeks of having a new baby whether it is a singleton or twins, but sadly this fell on deaf ears. (for the record I have not had twins and my heart goes out to her as I cannot even imagine the challenge she faces. I honestly thought it was a miracle if I managed to be showered and dressed by four pm in the first few weeks of my eldest being born.)
I am seriously in favour of reading books, and Gina Ford has a good deal of excellent advice if you can take it as you need it and discard anything that doesn’t work for you. By all means, seek out information if you are embarking on an experience you are unfamiliar with, and motherhood is no different. That said, in a perfect world, I would so much rather that reading books is done in conjunction with advice from a kindly friend with children of her own who could offer you hugs and cups of tea and a shoulder to cry on than for women to rely on a cold and rather clinical approach in book form from someone who as a nanny has never experienced the ravages of mounting sleep deprivation or surges of hormones, or the unbearable love you feel for your new baby. As a new mother, you need to find like-minded souls who can honestly understand and reflect back to you what you are experiencing, who can laugh with you and empathise in a non-judgemental, uncompetitive way. Who can share, truthfully, their experiences of being a mother in a way that makes you feel more normal and more able to cope.
I spoke to a fellow doula yesterday who said she thought being honest about birth and motherhood and breast-feeding was almost impossible; that if you sat a pregnant woman down and tried to tell her the truth, she would by definition be unable to believe you. This friend said she knew she had been told in advance so many of the things that shocked her on becoming a mother, and could only explain that she had dismissed them as “not going to happen to me” rather than take them on board. (Less generously, I believe I was “never told” the TRUTH!) I know for myself that reading Rachel Cusk’s brilliant, yet bleak, book “A Life’s Work”, was almost impossible for me until my children were sufficiently old that their babyhood was a fading memory which I could afford to be nostalgic about. I actually decided not to recommend it to my sister who was pregnant when I read it for fear she may actually come unglued. Perhaps though she would have thrown it away believing it to be a horror story, not pertaining to her at all…
Finally, a website!
Finally I have got my act together and have set up a website. It has been something I have been resisting I guess because of my fear of the technology, like my intransigence in recording my hypnosis sessions on to a cassette tape… I can see a tape, hand it over to my client at the end of a session and feel more confident that it has actually worked… but at Annabel’s insistence (due to client comment) I have been forced into investigating alternative options and now I am the proud owner of a Micromemo and so can record a wav file to my ipod and my clients can download that on to their own mp3 player, or I can burn a disc to listen to from a cd player. (I sound like I know what I am talking about, don’t I? Ha!)
I have also got a high quality mini studio set up for home so I can create bespoke recordings for clients who are too far away to have a face-to-face appointment. I am being dragged into the 21st Century and it is not so scary after all.
Sadly, I don’t feel that the medical community is embracing change quite as enthusiastically, and ironically it is not modernisation they need to address just a return to the good old days where women were allowed to have their babies naturally in the way that nature intended. In the eight years that I have been involved in this business, I have heard so many horror stories spoken by women not feeling supported by their local health workers in having the birth they choose and nine times out of ten decisions have been made for the woman that are not actually in her or her baby’s best interest. This is why I am so passionate about what I do, I think. I was so lucky in the births of my two daughters that I had midwives both times who bucked the hospital policy and did what I needed them to do not what the hospital policy dictated. Both times, the midwives stayed beyond the end of their shift to provide me with continuity of care and both times the midwife actively obstructed the doctors from being involved, in one case forcibly holding the door shut against them.
My births were straightforward although both babies presentation was posterior and consequently my labours were longer than “normal” (although who decides what “normal” is?) and although in neither case the baby was ever in distress, in both instances the hospital policy insisted on interventions. My midwives had my best interest at heart and, in both cases, I was “allowed” a perfectly natural vaginal delivery and recovered sufficiently to carry on my life in a matter of hours. I had no idea how lucky I was until I met other women who had such sad stories of Caesars and inductions, continual monitoring, breaking of waters and other interventions that were mostly unnecessary. These women had felt cheated by the system and consequently they struggled to bond with their babies. Breast-feeding was harder for them and their babies and so was their recovery.
As a member of the MSLC at Kingston Hospital I feel I can represent these women where it matters, witht he Maternity Services at my local hospital. I have taken distraught women back to speak to the Head of Midwifery to have their say and find a degree of closure on what can frequently be a very sad chapter of their life, reassured by the fact that their voices have been heard and so the chances of another woman experiencing what they did are smaller. I have met and worked with many midwives who are so saddened by the current policies and their work overload which forces them to give a patchier service than they would choose. I have also worked with midwives who are unhappy to support women in the labour of their choice, more driven by a need to meet hospital targets and dictates, these midwives continue to work and give women the message that they cannot do what nature intended and they should surrender to a speedy, medicalised birth rather than attempt a water birth at home, or a natural birth in a hospital labour room. Research is being done at Kingston currently to try to find the reason for the resistance of these midwives to embrace the current trend for women to labour in water; to try to find what their objection is and to attempt to educate them to better support women.
Most of the midwives coming in to the profession are more open minded, I find, and I have hope that the government is listening to women who want more choice in their birth, (perhaps this will end in more home births using water) and to be supported in the births of their choice, but recently was sent an article written by a doctor in the States which bodes very badly for us all.
I lived and worked in the States for 16 years and saw first hand how a system of exclusively private health care diminishes a woman’s choice and can bankrupt a family. I have seen how a fear of litigation has changed National policy there to better protect institutions and insurance companies regardless of the cost to mothers and babies. I came home to England, happy to be in a country where, although shabby and can be criticised, the NHS is largely well meaning and is full of lovely midwives like the ones I had first hand experience of. Our National health care is free at the point of contact, something we shouldn't underestimate in labour and birth. Imagine being in labour and being asked to fill in forms and prove your health insurance cover; where, if you would like an epidural you may find your partner whispering anxiously that it would cost nearly £2000; or discovering that your baby had a genetic problem which would be costly to your health insurance company if you carried the baby to term and so they refused to continue to insure you if you continued with your pregnancy? These things happen in America.
A friend in the States sent me the New Yorker article this week, which I read with open-mouthed disbelief, The Score. Do read it if you feel strong enough. Basically it suggests that as doctors and midwives become more and more frightened of litigation (and frankly more selfish about scheduling their time) they prefer to perform Caesars, which can be planned in advance around golf games and eliminate the risk of a baby being possibly born in an emergency scenario. Consequently, skills that have taken centuries for doctors and midwives to learn and perfect are being lost, as they are no longer taught and no longer performed. Forceps deliveries, a procedure that has saved babies and women’s lives for centuries, are no longer performed, the doctors preferring to perform a nice simple cs. The longer this continues, the more simple procedures necessary for a women to have a natural delivery when a baby is in a less than ideal position, will result in cs because there will be nobody available who is sufficiently skilled to perform the procedure. Already, breech births just don’t happen any more by vaginal delivery in this country and in the States it is almost unheard of for a woman to have a physiological third stage. Rather than wait and see how a baby chooses to present, doctors are scheduling a cs at 38 weeks to avoid “not knowing”. I have seen many women who were told they had to have a cs at 38 weeks due to a breech presentation refuse and whose baby turned perfectly naturally in time for their delivery, in effect the baby has up to four weeks to make that turn at 38 weeks, why not see if it happens? If it does, the mother avoided a major abdominal operation with all the attendant risks and the recovery that entails. Why should it not be up to the woman to make this decision rather than be told by the medical community that she has lost that opportunity? I cannot stress enough the emotional fall-out a woman can experience if she feels that her birth has been “taken away” from her which has long term ramifications that I doubt the medical establishment has taken as seriously as the benefits of being able to schedule births in an orderly fashion.