PostingGoing it alone

Just read this and am at a loss what to think. Finding herself single at 40, the author used donor insemination to become pregnant. Superficially, at least, the procedure worked: she found herself the single mother of a healthy young son.

But, unsurprisingly, the author remains unhappy. Her single status still rankles, and she advises thirty-something women to 'settle' for any old man they can get their hands on and have children with him. It seems the poor woman herself can't find any man at all now, not even the ones she claimed she turned down a few years back. Turned down for minor deficiencies like 'abysmal sense of aesthetics'. Someone, please, explain to her that 'abysmal sense of aesthetics' in a man should be welcomed. It's proof of heterosexuality! Who wants to marry Oscar Wilde?

Believe me, I want to be supportive of women who deliberately go it alone in having children. I do! I really do. Many of these women are slightly older, like myself, and desperate for someone to love. I suspect they have donor children because they think a baby will bring them that love. But in my heart of hearts, I have to confess I'm uneasy. Sorry. Can't help it.

Jetting off to Spain (that way women can bypass UK fertility laws that would deny them 'treatment' in this country), where a doctor inserts a stranger's sperm into your vagina, seems to put having a child onto the same footing as buying a pet.

I know, I know, I'm old-fashioned. Please feel free to disagree with me (though, please, don't make it personal). But having a child myself has made me more conservative. And there are good reasons why this course of action is banned in the UK. I've tried to argue myself into feeling more sympathetic, but the truth is... I don't.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking here about single mums who find themselves bringing up a child on their own when the father walks out on them. That's very different indeed. It's the mums who 'buy babies' abroad who make me feel nervous.

My problem with women like the author of this article is that they think the act of having a child will give them the entire package of love/family/social approval/connectedness they want. They just don't understand that, ideally at least, a baby is the result of love between a man and woman. I know things don't always work out like that, but what's wrong with aiming high?

So they come back from Spain, considerably poorer after shelling out for the sperm, struggling with pregnancy sickness, then the shock of caring for a newborn. All on their own. Then wonder why they're more miserable than when childless.

The author of this article is advising single women in their thirties to settle for "Mr Good Enough" and abandon hope of finding true or lasting love. Most of the other mums in her baby groups (who must be so thrilled to have her around, eyeing up their husbands) have rubbish relationships, she argues. Why set yourself up for disappointment by having high expectations? Just marry anyone who'll have you.

I'm afraid I don't agree with the author about the wisdom of 'settling'. I believe lasting love does exist. Yes, it really does. That's what's kept me going through sleepless nights, sickness and pain. Even when we're irritated with each other. The connection is still there, the reason for making a family. It makes the bad times bearable, and the good times even better. There's no point in compromising on that. Otherwise why are you having a family? For show? To impress your parents and siblings? Prove you're not a loser? I'd rather have the real thing. Or nothing at all.

Posted 15 May 2008 17:07 | Number of comments: 1 | Comments

Older mother

PostingOther people and their children

Here is a list of the things that REALLY annoy me in the world of parenting. If my list seems a little, well, angry, please bear in mind I'm seven months pregnant. Hormones are programming me to fight off anyone who might be a threat to my lion cubs. Grrrrrrrr.

1.    Parking spaces. Drivers who park in the extra-spacious “Parents” section of the supermarket carpark, just outside the store entrance – but do not have any children with them. Drivers of four-by-fours with blacked out rear windows who park in the "Parents" section also get my goat. Not because they don't have any kids - just because they and their cars are usually so ugly.

2.    Oldies. Older men who tut and give me looks when my two-year-old daughter cries in public. If I have to put up with their nasal hair, liver spots, attempts to bully, bad driving, leering at my breasts and staring at my bump, they can endure a short burst of lung exercise from my daughter.

3.   Jealousy. The spiteful comments I’ve had to endure since becoming pregnant from a woman with “infertility” problems. Her husband spends lots of time away from home with “the boys” or on “business trips”. He sports yellow suede ankle boots. She thinks homeopathy will cure their problems. I'm not sure I do.

4.    Love is blind. Mothers who don’t understand that all of us, every last one of us, loves our own child best. These are the women who expect you to marvel at their podgy-faced toddler’s rather dull exploits as if the child were your own. “You will never guess how many words Sebastian has in his vocabulary now!” No, she’s right. I probably won’t – because I couldn’t give a toss. I’m interested in my own child’s vocabulary, and I’ll give her limited airtime on Sebastian to be polite, but that’s the extent of it.

5.   Boasting. The mothers who claim their child is an infant prodigy. Tends to be worse among mothers of boys. “My darling Siggie slept through the night from seven weeks old.” Seems to be direct correlation between crumbling state of parental marriage and devotion lavished on child. Husband has often left the marital bed – to be replaced by son.  Which leads me onto....

6.    ....Extended breastfeeding. Yuk. The hallmark of the extended breastfeeder is blinkered self-delusion over how creepy the entire business has become. Invariably defensive and prickly, with marriages that were crumbling long before the arrival of their beloved infant cemented marital collapse, extended breastfeeders normally have some sort of excuse for their behaviour along the following lines

a) "My darling would never settle to sleep at night without me shoving my lactating boobies in his (and it usually is his) face first." And they genuinely think that's something to encourage?

b) "Frederick has developed a lactose intolerance. The poor darling will starve or turn purple unless I feed him myself. I do it all for him, you know. I'd really rather not be breastfeeding but I have no choice."

c) “They do it in Rwanda until the children have speared their first lion; these peasant societies know so much more than us about how to rear contented babies.” Errr, reality check here - there were no lions roaming wild in the UK, at least not when I last checked. “I plan to carry on until Frederick is at school. Did you have problems breastfeeding?”

My response to c) is that, unlike the poor bastards in Rwanda, most of us have access to sterile water, clean milk and other foods for our children. And in case some nutter dares to post a nasty comment about my own breastfeeding – yes, I’ve had a few of those – I breastfed my daughter until she was a year old. Plenty long enough.

7.    Anti-social behaviour. Parents who ignore or excuse thuggish behaviour on the part of their children. A small boy recently kicked my daughter in the face so hard she had bruising on her eye for a week afterwards. Was his mother bothered? Not very much. "Ah. he'll be on the rugby terraces in no time," she said proudly.

8.    Parental smugness. These are the parents who pretend that having a baby is a piece of cake, even when every instinct tells you they’re falling apart under the pressure. When our babies were weeks old, I turned to one woman I’d met at a so-called “support group” for new mums and confessed how difficult I was finding it looking after a newborn. “Well, you’ve just got to get on with it,” was the best she could manage in response. “Have you thought about which school you’re going to put your daughter down for? I hear the entrance assessments for four-year-olds involve a whole day’s testing.”

9.    Parental put-downs. Typically involves the decision to work – or not. Whichever you do – you’re screwed.

When I told a woman recently at a grisly children’s picnic that I planned to go back to work a few days a week some time after having our second child in July, she said: “What! Do you not want to be at home looking after your children?” I replied, “No, I think I’m a better mother when I’m happy and fulfilled as a person. I like my work. Plus we could do with the money.” She choked on her onion quiche. Choice of nursery/childcare arrangements more generally are another popular area for criticism and one-upmanship.

10.    Pressure to procreate. No sooner have you staggered out of the post-natal ward toting number one child homewards in a brand-new car seat, barely able to remember your own name, shaking from the trauma of giving birth, than the comments start coming about when you plan to press your battered private bits into service for the second. To say these comments can veer on the insensitive is an understatement. One woman I hardly knew asked me, a couple of weeks after I’d lost a baby to miscarriage (unbeknown to her), whether I was planning on having another child. “Errr, no,” I said. “Well, not right now anyway.” “Oh! Do you not enjoy being a parent?” she said, mock-sympathetically. I have a friend with one child who suffers from a medical condition that requires her to take heavy-duty drugs daily. To her great sadness, having another child would be a near-impossibility for her. She still gets comments along lines that suggest she is selfish or too career-oriented for not producing more children.

11. Another thought. People without children. Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say. Agreed. But I'm talking here about the ones who hold forth on how to bring up kids. Without having the faintest clue what they're talking about. The types who criticise parents for putting children into nurseries. Would do it all so much better themselves. Have theories. Opinions. Offer unwanted advice. Have never gone a night without sleep in their lives. But don't have a boyfriend/husband to give them a child of their own.

Footnote: I should probably add here that I've also been lucky enough to meet many lovely parents, who wouldn't stoop to the kind of behaviour described above, people who are grounded and sane, able to laugh at themselves and talk honestly about life as a new parent. Unfortunately, as they say at my daughter's nursery, there's always a few who spoil it for everyone else.

Please feel free to add any parenting bugbears of your own in the Comments section.

Posted 11 May 2008 14:26 | Number of comments: 23 | Comments

Breastfeeding Childbirth Childcare Etiquette Likes/Dislikes Miscarriage Work vs mothering

PostingMystery of the Meme

I've been tagged by Vanessa of Fidra - (now that sounds like a book title if ever I heard one) - in something called a book meme.

The rules are:

1. Pick up the nearest book.

2. Open to page 123

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Birthing from Within by Pam England and Rob Horowitz.

"The burst of energy that accompanies the onset of labour allows for last minute 'nesting'. Use this opportunity to take care of any unfinished business before settling into your birth place and the state-of-mindlessness sometimes referred to as 'Labourland'. In America, the image of women in labour lying down in a narrow bed, waiting and watching the monitor has become part of our idea of birth."

My brain isn't working well this morning - that 'state-of-mindlessness' thing kicking in already. I need to have a think about who I'll tag. Update follows later.

Posted 02 May 2008 10:38 | Number of comments: 5 | Comments

Blogging Books

PostingWhy there's no place like home

hrowan300_Small.jpg Telegraph writer Rowan Pelling has written this excellent article about having her second son at home last month. The decision to go for a home birth followed a traumatic delivery first time round in which Pelling got to 9cm dilated - and still ended up under the surgeons' knives with an emergency C-Section. Personally, I just managed to escape a section when giving birth to my daughter. But I did have a tough time delivering a baby who weighed well over 10lbs - so I can  sympathise with Pelling (pictured).

As Pelling jokingly points out, home birth in the UK has an unfair reputation  as the preserve of 'masochistic, tree-hugging yoga freaks'. Just 1.8% of new mothers in the UK give birth at home. But research suggests home births are as safe as hospital deliveries - indeed, possibly even safer, since there's less risk of contracting MRSA. And birth is less stressful in a familiar environment, studies suggest. There's also less risk of intervention; birth is allowed to take its natural course. There are no doctors rushing in to speed up labour artificially, which can lead to all sorts of problems. There's no pressure to agree to using forceps or ventouse if mothers overshoot hospital guidelines for permitted length of the second stage of labour.

Since I decided on a home birth for my second child, due in July, I've had to put up with acquaintance who have a) sneered at my decision  b) suggested I might die in the experience. Friends, especially those who had easier deliveries with their second children, have been more positive. But my mother still looks terrified at the mention of home birth and refuses to acknowledge I'm serious in my plans for one. My husband's hands shake slightly when I discuss it with him and he starts discussing the engineering behind our hot water system - always, I suspect, the first defence of a man troubled by what he's hearing. So it was good to read a positive account of home birth from another woman (also, at 40, a slightly older mum like myself) who felt empowered by the experience.

Pelling attributes some of the success of her home birth to hiring an independent midwife (for around £3,000). I have a fantastic community midwife - but unfortunately there's no guarantee of it being her who comes out to me when I'm in labour - and I'm trying to decide whether it would be worth the expense of hiring an independent midwife. That way, at least, I wouldn't have the stress of wondering about what the midwife will be like.

By the way - here is a useful tip for any woman about to have a baby or looking after a newborn. I've learnt recently that every woman has the right to insist on a change in the medical staff looking after her, including midwives, obstetricians, anaesthetists and health visitors. This would have been nice to know when I was giving birth to my daughter, and I suffered at the hands of a midwife who was like one of my old PE teachers at school. I will never be able to cleanse my brain of her instructions. "Push down through your bottom," she kept telling me, like I was a lazy army recruit who needed whipping into line.

If I'd known back then I had a legal right to tell her to push off and get a replacement, I'd have done so. So, if anyone reading this finds themselves suffering from authoritarian medics who act as if they have the god-given  power to tell them what to do, remember: you have the power to ditch them. There's a small but potent minority of medics who take advantage of their perceived power to bully women. And let's face it, who's more vulnerable than a pregnant or newly-delivered mother? 

Posted 28 April 2008 12:47 | Number of comments: 11 | Comments

Childbirth Home birth New baby Older mother

PostingBook Festival Update

Edinburgh International Book Festival UPDATE

I'll be speaking on the subject of Books and the Internet at the EIBF on Friday August 15 at 2pm. The organisers have kindly agreed to give me a date that won't clash with my husband's 40th birthday - also mid-August. I don't want to over-promise: anything I know about Books and the Internet is what I've learnt from swapping notes with readers of this blog and other friends I've made on-line. But I'm working hard to pack as much information into the workshop as possible.

Posted 24 April 2008 16:35 | Number of comments: 2 | Comments

Blogging Books

PostingA belly good idea

scan0001Small_Small.jpg Since my first 'belly bra' arrived by post two days ago, life has taken a turn for the better. Lest you were wondering, the 'bra' is a support garment for pregnant women. An 'intelligent, full torso' support garment, no less. At least, that is according to the (American) manufacturers. I mention this in case you thought it was underwear of choice for beer-swilling men from the North with names like Jimmy Five Bellies. Though they could probably put the belly bra to good use too. We all have our burdens to bear. Let's not be territorial here. At 29 weeks pregnant, struggling with pelvic aches and pain, I am finding it invaluable.

It's not quite the landmark in my life of getting fitted (aged 13) for my first bra, but I wouldn't like to underplay the garment's impact. Thanks to the 'bra', I can once more walk around without clinging onto table tops for support and wincing in pain. I can hoover the floor, get up and down from chairs, crouch on the floor to change nappies, race after Beanie in shops, stand at the cooker to make supper and - get this - walk further than the end of the street and back. It has, in short, transformed my life. After all, it's one thing to be a 'fashionably late' mum (I am 40). Something else to acquire the mobility of an arthritic 80-year-old. Many thanks to Catherine from Juxtapose who recommended one in a comment. I'd never even heard of such a thing a week ago. 

Posted 24 April 2008 16:17 | Number of comments: 7 | Comments

PostingTagged

I've been tagged by Alex at Shedworking to reveal six things about myself. Here goes:

1. My favourite food is peanut butter on toast. I'm eating this gourmet concoction as I type.

2. I get pleasure from cleaning kitchens. Untidiness depresses me.

3. I have a literary agent. Oooh, get me! But I still feel odd saying sentences like "My agent thinks....."

4. I am NOT a character from a McCall Smith book. I am a real person. Despite what anyone says.

5. I am looking forwards to lunch with my husband on Sunday. Just the two of us.

6. I am already nervous about giving birth to our second child in July.

Okay, my turn. I'd like to tag Omega Mum, Vanessa from The Fidra Blog and Erica from Littlemummy.

Posted 24 April 2008 15:28 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

Blogging

PostingPay mothers to stay at home

Mothers should be paid to stay at home and raise their babies, according to a report released today. The Telegraph has this story on the report, which found that most women wanted to work either part-time or not at all while their children were under five but were unable to do so because most government support for families goes into tax credits. The Policy Exchange think tank wants the government to scrap the current system of tax credits and grants in favour of a universal child care allowance, worth £60 a week. British parents pay 70% of their childcare costs, compared to to a European average of 30%.

Posted 21 April 2008 09:04 | Number of comments: 13 | Comments

PostingHappy Birthday Zornhau

One of the nicest things about blogging has been the Friends Reunited aspect: getting back in touch with old friends I haven't seen in years. My friend Zornhau and I more or less grew up together. Then we lost touch: I moved away to London, he stayed in Edinburgh. I kept in occasional contact with his sister. I went to her wedding, she drove two hundred miles to come to mine, even though she was in early pregnancy and looked wretched. We sent presents for each other's babies. I heard snippets from her about Zornhau's life.

Twenty years after I last saw Zornhau I was pushing a buggy along an Edinburgh street when I bumped into him by chance. We chatted for a few minutes. Both married. One child each. Me a daughter. Him a son. Working in similar areas. We talked of house renovations, flats and primary schools. Good, grown-up stuff. "Do you have a blog?" he said, as we parted. "Yes, Mother at Large," I yelled into the wind. Thank you, Va-vay, for what must have been a memorable blog address. We renewed our friendship via our blogs.

Last Friday was Zornhau's 40th birthday. It was lovely to help him, his wife and their many, many friends celebrate. There were lots of people - yes, real people - there I've only ever known as people commenting on his site. So I got to meet the blokes behind blog names like Calcinations, The Hat and Single Point. There was also a group of people I remember from the teenage party years. Zornhau's wife pointed out a man standing at the bar. "That's Michael," she said. "You'll remember him from when you were growing up." I peered at the bar, looking for a shy and gangly teenager. No-one there fitted the bill. I looked at her in puzzlement.

"There," she said gently. "In front of you." I looked again. The Michael I remembered had gone, bulked out into a full-grown man. This bloke was confident. Could hold a conversation. Look a woman in the eye. He even had a girlfriend, for goodness sake. Others from our gang of friends were there. It was fantastic to see them. Though we all of us - amazingly - seemed to have aged twenty years overnight. And some of them turned out to be behind blog names I've seen on Zornhau's site and elsewhere. That's the thing about blogging - you never quite know where you are.

Posted 20 April 2008 14:18 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

Blogging Friends

PostingEdinburgh Book Festival appearance

headereibf_Small.jpgNicola Morgan, head of the Society of Authors in Scotland, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival have asked me to do a writer's workshop at the festival in August on blogging, social networking and books. Wonderful news, but I did feel honour-bound to point out that following the collapse of The Friday Project I don't currently have a book contract. I didn't want them to take me under false pretences. Were they sure they still wanted me? Not a problem, said the organisers. They already knew all about my publisher going bust (very sorry, sure something good would come of it) and could I please talk a bit to the audience about my experiences with The Friday Project? Well, fine. I can do that. Only other snag is that I'm due to give birth just six weeks earlier. But my friend Vanessa has offered to look after the baby in the refreshment tent while I do the workshop. So looks like we're in business. Anyone in Edinburgh in August, do please come along if you get the chance. I'll do my best to make it informative and fun.

Posted 20 April 2008 13:04 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

Activities Blogging Books Fashionably Late - the book Out and about

PostingBed-mates and bolsters

For the last week or so my husband and I have been sharing our bed with someone called Horace. With Horace's help, I can get comfortable enough to doze for a few hours at a time. Horace props up my bump, lessens my back pain and corrects my posture. When I talk to him, he really seems to listen. Never interrupts. And he's so bendy - must be all that polystyrene foam for innards.

Unfortunately, Va-vay is not supportive about our extra bed-mate. I have caught him shooting dark, jealous looks at my side of the bed as Horace and I snuggle up together.

"I might investigate a new air bed," he said the other night, in an airy but long-suffering way. "So I can sleep somewhere else and let you have the bed to yourselves."

"That's a good idea," I snipe back. "We could bring over the Zed-bed from my mum's."

"Have you ever slept on that Zed-bed?" he replied, as if I'd reminded him of childhood bullying, redundancy or first love.

"When you first came to stay with my parents you slept on the Zed-bed and you never said a thing about it!" I accused him.

"I was being polite."

"You were being repressed. If it was so bad you should have said something."

"Have you seen how much of the bed I have left to sleep on?" he says, indicating with his hands a space the width of a shopping bag.

Normally I would take pride in keeping this squabble up ages longer. But pregnancy has softened me.

"I don't want you to sleep elsewhere," I confess. "I like sharing a bed with you. That's why I married you."

"Oh, come here," he says.

"Err....  I would, but I can't," I say, pointing to 28-weeks-pregnant bump and Horace. "You'll have to come here."

In my last pregnancy I was nearly crippled with pelvic pain, so I asked my midwife for help. "Keep your legs together," she told me. And they wonder why pregnant women feel misunderstood....

This time round the pain is shaping up to be just as bad - but I've been better at getting help in managing it. An obstetric physio at our local hospital has taught me techniques for staying mobile - mostly involving breathing (let's face it, breathing always helps) and stomach-tightening.

Next week she is going to fit me with something called an orthopaedic belt to hold in all the ligaments loosened by pregnancy hormones. I fear the belt might do nothing to boost marital relations but I'm - almost - beyond caring. And Horace won't mind.

Posted 19 April 2008 15:06 | Number of comments: 11 | Comments

Childbirth Daughter Home Husband New baby Pregnancy

PostingOf pregheads and jealousy

Reading a nasty piece by Minette Marrin in The Times about pregnant newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky, I was tempted to write that women are so often their own worst enemies. But then it occurred to me that no bloke nowadays would dare say what Marrin does, which is that Kaplinsky is selfish and contemptible for getting pregnant before she started a £1m a year job as the 'Face of Five News'. A man might have thought it, but only a woman could (almost) get away with saying that.

"If I were running Five I would be beside myself with rage," fulminates Marrin, a woman who looks like a) her childbearing years are memories b) even in her full reproductive glory did not see much uterine action, though I could be wrong about that; despite laying into Kaplinsky, Marrin does not volunteer details of her own parity.

Of course, as you might expect, Marrin expands her grouse to include all women who expect to combine work and having children. "The proper word for all this is exploitation," she rages, admitting that back in her more fertile years she was grilled by her own employers about her plans for children. Maybe that's why she's so nasty to Kaplinsky, envy of the (slightly) greater career opportunities women have nowadays compared to her time. She glosses over the fact that Kaplinsky won't receive a penny in maternity pay from Five - being a freelancer.

She also, predictibly enough, has spiteful things to say about the very state of pregnancy:

"Meanwhile, instead of the ferociously sexy on-the-ball babe that Five hired, Kaplinsky will be becoming larger and mumsier, she may have a nauseous or difficult pregnancy requiring lots of time off, and at some point her brain will be affected by the amnesia of pregnancy. This is a phenomenon that is now widely admitted, even by feminists (although it is equally often denied when inconvenient); there is even a nasty new fashionable word for a woman  in this state - preghead."

Small point here - aren't all pregnancies nauseous and difficult? Just by their nature?

Underlying Marrin's attack, no doubt motivated by jealousy that Kaplinsky combines a career with good looks, happy relationship and, now, to Marrin's horror, a baby on the way, lurks this assumption that childbearing can and should be scheduled for a lull in our diaries. Life, nature, our bodies, relationships; none of them work like that. If we waited for the 'perfect' time to get pregnant, we'd be waiting forever. Until 'fashionably late' was too late.

There's always going to be something that might warrant delay in trying for a baby - new job, a book to write, promotion, holiday, family crisis, lack of money, fear we won't be 'good enough'. My feeling - and this is just my personal opinion - is that you have to block everything else out and go for it. If I hadn't I'd never have dared have a child. And who knows what Kaplinksy's real circumstances are? She might have suffered a series of miscarriages over the past few years. Or she might have feared (wrongly, as it turns out) that she was infertile. Lay off her, I say.

Posted 07 April 2008 14:05 | Number of comments: 20 | Comments

Fashionably Late - the book News Older mother

PostingThis writing life

In the end, it was my two-year-old daughter who best summed up this week's crisis at my publisher. "Book!" cried Beanie, clasping a copy of Catherine Rayner's Augustus and His Smile in her hand and advancing towards me, waving the desired item in the air.  "Book!" she cried again, hoping I would read the story of Augustus' search for his missing smile to her. "Book! Book! Book!" Poor Beanie. Her father Va-vay and I were both too preoccupied to read to her. "Book!" she insisted. "No, Beanie, darling, not right now," I said. "Mummy and daddy are worried about something. We'll do the book later." I sighed. I put my head in my hands. Even Va-vay sighed. Va-vay never normally sighs. Self-pity, not his thing. He turned to me. "She's right, isn't she. Beanie's right. That's what all this is about. A book." augustus_Small.jpgHe means my book. Not the one about Augustus, lovely though he is. A few days ago I discovered that my publisher has officially gone bust, owing hundreds of thousands to all sorts of people. This is potentially a disaster for me, as it leaves me with a half-finished book (on later motherhood) and no-one to publish it. Three months before I'm due to have a baby. I keep waking at 4am in panic, unable to get back to sleep for worrying about how to recoup the time I've invested in writing. Thinking about the money I could have earnt if I hadn't been working on Fashionably Late. Embarrassed about all the women I've interviewed, women who have been so generous in sharing their stories and time with me, recounting deeply personal experiences of relationships, pregnancy and childbirth. They're expecting to see a book result from it all and I'm afraid I'm going to let them down. And when the 4am demons strike, I'm also mortified that the entire episode reflects badly on me and my judgement. The only glimmer of hope is that I've been assured that another publisher wants to buy my book. And is in the process of issuing a contract. Mean time, let's just say, Augustus isn't the only one round here who's lost his smile.

Posted 03 April 2008 21:40 | Number of comments: 25 | Comments

Angst Books Fashionably Late - the book

PostingSchool for thought

"What about trying this place," suggests Va-vay, as we debate a school for our two-year-old daughter Beanie.

Though he would never admit as much, Va-vay is basing this idea on Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street novels, whose young hero Bertie is forced to attend the same institution. I cannot help thinking that Va-vay has slightly missed the point here: Bertie is miserable at being made to go to school there. But at twenty five weeks pregnant, I choose my battles carefully.

The next day I call the school.

"Allo, yes?" says a Germanic accent on the other end of the phone that sounds like a parody of itself.

"Err, hello, could you put me through to your admissions secretary?"

Silence. No farewell niceties, just a click on the line. Another voice answers.

"Hello. What can I do for you?" I feel like I've broken a rule by knocking on the staffroom door at lunch break and she's torn herself away from a sandwich to see me.

I explain I am looking for a school for my young daughter. My voice is cracking up slightly and I swallow nervously.

"Very good. I'll put a copy of our prospectus in the post. And we have a tour of the school on 1 May for prospective parents. Can you attend that?"

"Yes, I think so. Let me just check my diary," I reply, feeling slightly crushed, as if I haven't done my homework on time or forgot to wash my PE kit for games. "Yes, that should be fine."

"I will put your name down then. Will your husband be with you?"

I haven't mentioned a husband. How does she know I'm married? Is this how they go about 'nurturing the imagination' and fostering 'keen thinking and questioning skills' as promised on their website - jumping to conclusions about people's private lives?

"No, he won't be," I explain, feeling inexplicably nervous. "But I'd like to bring my daughter along, to show her the place. See her response."

"That won't be possible," says Madam, sounding ticked off. "We don't permit young children to come on tours. They're too disruptive."

I force myself to state the obvious. "But it's my daughter who would be at the school. I need to see how she takes to it." Or not, I think, silently.

"No, children are not allowed. We take tours into classrooms and young children of her age would disturb pupils who are working."

I remember that these people are proposing to charge us many thousands of pounds for educating Beanie. A flame of anger jumps up in me.

"Oh, okay. I see. Well, look, I think in that case we might just leave it then, thanks all the same. This isn't really what we're looking for."

I hear a click on the other end of the phone and the line goes dead. Even these people haven't had the cheek to suggest they'll be teaching pupils much in the way of social skills.

Later that day I recount the experience to Beanie's granny, a former teacher.

"Why is it that so many people in teaching don't actually seem to like children very much?" I ask her. "Don't they know they'll be with children all day long if they go into teaching?"

Granny just shrugs. "Don't know. Some people go into it because they want to reform children. It gives them a moral uplift. There's a power dynamic there, you know."

Even if it turned out Beanie adored the place, I wouldn't want to set foot in it.

Posted 27 March 2008 15:56 | Number of comments: 12 | Comments

Edinburgh Granny

PostingCheers

Pregnant women are being advised not to drink any alcohol during the first three months of pregnancy by a health watchdog that last year said would-be mothers could drink a glass of wine every day.  What is it that makes every man, dog and government quango think they have the right to pontificate on how about pregnant women and new mothers should manage our lives? And why can't they at least make their minds up about what they're telling us to do?

The Department of Health said in May last year pregnant women should stop drinking altogether. But the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said a few months later there was no evidence a small glass of wine every day caused any harm after the first trimester. The obstetrician who chaired the group developing the latest abstinence guidelines has admitted the latest guideline changes are not based on any fresh scientific evidence, saying: "There's no evidence of definite harm of drinking that level of alcohol per week [a daily glass of wine] but we are unable to guarantee women that there will be no harm." As if pregnancy isn't hard enough already, you get bombarded with conflicting advice from medics more interested in covering their backs against lawsuits than in looking after vulnerable pregnant women.

Posted 26 March 2008 21:46 | Number of comments: 8 | Comments

Guilt Health New baby