Blog to Book - Fashionably Late
I am writing Fashionably Late, an irreverent guide to having children later in life. Did you become a mother over 35? If so, and you'd like to tell me your story please contact me at mail@motheratlarge.com.
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Breastfeeding
Butcher's girl
My husband is a gentle sort of character. A teetotal, poetry-writing chap who would - no, has - crossed a road to rescue a stranded caterpillar. A man who brings me flowers almost weekly, who runs up two flights of stairs to see me and the children in the evenings, who looked after me every step of the way through two difficult pregnancies and a miscarriage, bringing me supper and breakfast in bed, while making endless cups of tea, a man who allows my mother - his mother-in-law - to be a daily part of our family. However, our otherwise idyllic relationship has hit a stumbling block.
It's about diet. He is a committed vegetarian. Since having Button in July I have become a carnivore. I need lots of meat. Not just the odd bacon sarnie. But roast chicken, lamb and steak. Sausages. Burgers. Slices of ham. Daily. For the protein and iron? I don't really know. I just know I MUST HAVE MEAT. Like a junkie needs a fix. The cravings are as bad as in early pregnancy. When I wanted peanut butter, fruit and nut chocolate and strawberry milkshakes. Sometimes together. When I ate mushroom papardelle every night for a fortnight, Washed down with the aforementioned milkshake. Urgh, I feel sick just remembering.
Now I absolutely must have steak. At least every other day. Maybe it's the breastfeeding? Which, by the way, is going well now. After a shaky start. When it hurt so much my tears of pain and frustration were dropping onto poor Button's head.
The problem, well, no, not problem, but, let's say, the dietary challenge is that husband is a veggie of firm principle, unshakeable in avoiding all meat and fish. Shellfish actually makes him violently ill. And he can't bear animal suffering. For years now I've eaten the same veggie diet as him. Mostly for convenience. I can hardly remember the last time I cooked chicken or ate steak, except in a restaurant.
But now I need to produce two meals each evening - one veggie, the other with meat. New for me, and not as easy as it sounds. I am but a novice in the world of carnivores, as events yesterday proved.
It was with some trepidation that I yesterday manoeuvred the three-wheeler buggie containing Button into our local butcher's shop. We passed what I think were probably a brace of dead grouse (well, maybe not, they might have been pheasants, hard to tell; as I said, I'm no expert in the subject, but some manner of colourful, dead feathery birds, anyway). The smell of blood, meat and animal made me want to retch. Again, a happy reminder of early pregnancy.
Bits of guinea fowl, partridge, venison, veal, wild boar, haggis, black and white puddings lay in front of me, wrapped in plastic, the blood seeping to the edges of the packets.
"Can I help you?" asked one of the several men in bloodied uniforms behind the counter.
"Well, the thing is I need some more iron in my diet. But my husband's vegetarian...."
Cue hysterical laughter from all four men behind counter.
"So you've come here to buy him some meat?"
Mentally I cursed my tendency to talk too much when nervous. But found myself unstoppable.
"No, I haven't. It would need to be something you could serve for one. For me."
"How about a nice piece of liver," said one of the younger of the men. He held up something that looked like a human placenta.
"If you can stomach it," he added, concessionary.
"Errrrr...It's not really my thing, to be honest."
Another female customer piped up with a suggestion. My God. The whole shop was taking an interest in this ridiculous inquiry.
"How about beef stock? You could drink it? Or add it to a vegetable risotto"
Yuck! I thought. Plus, it wouldn't really be a vegetable risotto, would it, if it had beef stock in it? I mean, strictly speaking, Trades Description and all that.
But, brought up in Edinburgh, I said nothing and resorted to my polite laugh. The one that really means she's got to be taking the proverbial. No way am I replacing Twinings English Breakfast with some vile concoction of ground-up cow flesh. No way am I deceiving my poor vegetarian husband into consuming the same. I wanted to talk more about what she meant, but felt we had both the wrong venue and subject for a girly bonding session.
The first, older butcher produced a metal hook from behind the counter, the kind pinning the grouse/pheasants/patridges to the wall, which he waved in front of my face. I really wasn't sure where he was going with this gambit. Then all became clear.
"You could have this. Plenty of iron in this," he guffawed, pleased at his own wit. Oh, for goodness' sake.
Clearly, I have spent too much time with other new mothers, sensitive and thoughtful types who have forsaken high-flying careers for motherhood and take nutrition seriously. I had no idea how to respond to the hook's appearance. No repartee came to me. My hands were shaking. My only ally in this horror of blood, guts and border-line misogyny (or misplaced attempts at humour) was Button. Though only three months old, I sensed a mute sympathy from her. She gave me her crafty sideways look that seemed to say: "Together we're strong enough to get through this difficulty". Anyway, I felt better for looking at her.
I also looked at the other female customer, Beef Stock Woman, expecting a brief eye-meet between us, expressing shared horror at the medieval attitudes of these people, but nothing came back. I lowered my gaze. I couldn't help but suspect she was offended at my lack of warmth in response to her beef stock sally. And, although she could not have been in more than her mid-thirties at most, she had a shopping trolley with wheels by her side. Yes, one of those trollies. Like the ones people's grannies used to own. An indicator, just perhaps, that she and I might not see eye to eye on humour.
"Perhaps I'll just have some fillet steak," I said, injecting an artificial jollity into my voice, pride forcing me to try and preserve the pretence that I was in control of the sitation.
"Aye," said the older butcher, nodding as if I was a teenager who had seen sense at last, bowing to parental widsom on the dangers of late nights, bad boys and lentils. "How much would you like?""
We settle on a slab that would fill half a large frying pan.
I pay. But by this point I am so flustered by being plunged into this alien world that I drop some of my change. My eyesight is especially poor at the moment and I feel even more panicked than before. But, somewhat to my surprise, it is the first, older butcher, the one who thrust the hook in front of me, who insists on coming out from behind the counter to help me look for the missing coin. Even though it takes some minutes, and I suspect his eyesight isn't much better than mine, he sticks with the search until we find the money. All 5p of it. I feel relieved by the man's kindness. The world is a better, nicer place than I was beginning to suspect.
As Button and I (finally) reverse out of the shop, I catch another glimpse of the grouse/pheasant/indeterminate birds, still hanging on the wall where they were when we came in, having failed to attract any takers. Not only dead, but unwanted too. Oh dear. But perhaps I had more allies in the shop than I first feared. For was it my imagination, or did one of the birds give me a wink as I wheeled the buggy past her? Help comes in unexpected places, at unexpected times. We exit. I breathe deeply.
Other people's children
The friend of a friend has just given birth to her first child. "How
did it go?" my friend asked Sharon. "Brilliant, just brilliant," said
Sharon. "No drugs. I just had faith in my own body to give birth and
being so positive got me through it." As I remembered my own childbirth
experience (let's just say it involved a lot of drugs), I tried
to remind myself that Beanie arriving safely was the important thing, that jealousy is a sin, that my delivery could have been much, much worse,
but a sense of inadequacy crept over me.
Looking after Ben has proved a breeze, at least if Sharon is
to be believed. "He doesn't cry. No, really, he doesn't cry. And he's
slept through the night ever since he was born." My jaw fell open when
I heard that and I had to fight the smirk that crept across my face.
"Really?" I managed. "That's.... unusual."
"And how's feeding going?" asked my friend, adopting her most determined
smile. "Really well," replied Sharon. "He latched himself on as soon as
he was born and he's been feeding for up to an hour at a time. In the day. He's never hungry at night." Baby Ben woke up at this point, perhaps aware that his
food intake was under discussion. His gusty cry somewhat belied what
mother had said earlier, but we pretended we hadn't heard and said nothing.
After all, she had just been through childbirth, even if it was
a doddle and she really had given birth to a child destined to be the
next Dalai Lama.
At the sound of Ben's cry, Sharon eyed him like one might a wild
animal, picked him up, shuffled her bottom around, reached for one
boob, then seemed to think better of it, yanked up her jumper on the
other side and gingerly unclipped her nursing bra. As she did so, folds
and folds of saggy stomach flesh fell out over her maternity jeans, and I began
to feel sorry for her. After some seconds of further fumbling under her
jumper, she extracted a disc of sodden tissue that she placed on the
floor next to me, at some distance from herself and the howling infant. I tried not to look at it, in case it put her off
what was proving to be quite a delicate procedure.
After all this, baby Ben, now very wide awake indeed, decided he
wasn't really peckish after all and refused to latch on. But eventually,
Sharon persuaded him to feed. An expression of intense pain
flashed across her face. All bragging, indeed any talking at all on her part, ceased. About three minutes later Ben lost interest and
detached himself from his mother's chest. I swear a roguish grin crossed his two-week-old face.
As for his mother, a look of disappointment and guilt replaced the furrowed concentration
on her face. "Feeding's going really well, but still, I'm thinking
of going to a breastfeeding support clinic on Friday," she said. Truly, I am a horrible person. For at last, when I heard that, I started to warm to her.
Spiritual midwifery
My copy of Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin arrived yesterday from the Book Depository
after the pregnant wife of one of Va-vay's colleagues recommended it to
me last week. Many readers of this blog may already know of Ina May Gaskin,
(I have to confess I didn't) but for those who don't, she is a
'self-taught' lay midwife who has helped pioneer ideas we nowadays take
for granted in modern obstetrics, like fathers being present at births,
the usefulness of breathing techniques, and an end to routine
episiotomies. She was one of the first people to present pregnancy,
childbirth and breastfeeding from a spiritual perspective and is known as "the mother of authentic midwifery". I stayed up
till 2.30am last night reading Spritual Midwifery,
literally unable to put it down, fascinated by stories of women giving
birth at home in a hippy commune in 1970s Tennessee known as The Farm. Although the photos of beautiful, long-haired Madonnas and bearded husbands date the book to a vanished era, the book has a universality and timelessness that makes it as relevant today as ever. Inspirational and
uplifting.
Attachment parenting: a sticky business
We are having phone trouble. It's none of the usual suspects. I'm afraid I blame a pair of well-meaning New Age parenting gurus for the problem.
A while ago I bought a book on babies
by a California paediatrician and his wife. They've got eight children
themselves. I reckoned they must know what they're talking about. They looked like nice people on the cover shot. Their philosophy is called 'attachment parenting'. Heard of it?
Hugely popular in the US, less so in the UK.
Amongst other things, 'attachment parenting' involves:
breastfeeding on demand, 'co-sleeping' with your infant, avoiding
mechanical devices such as prams, rockers or bouncy chairs, 'wearing'
your baby in a sling and, of course, natural birth. Being a bit of an
old hippie at heart myself, I loved these ideas. I just couldn't quite
translate them all into reality.
The authors never argue, but
offer 'loving reminders' to each other. They write wistfully about a custom in Rwanda of not letting the
baby
touch the ground for the first six months of their life. Instead the
local women carry their babies with them at all times, wrapped up
in a cunning arrangement of knotted fabric. These women are so close to their babies they don't use nappies. They can just sense when the child needs to go.
The writers suggest that
if a mother can't breastfeed, the baby's grandmother might consider
re-lactating. Breastfeeding's so important, you see. I've mentioned
this a couple of times to Granny, never with much success. She tends to
clutch at her bosom and look affronted.
I did my best to
follow their advice, and managed some of it. Beanie went in a sling, but I couldn't carry her for long without hurting my
back. I breastfed. The one area where I followed their advice to the
letter was their advice to invest in a cordless phone. To prevent
accidents. Apparently a little-known danger to toddlers is mum
wandering off to answer the phone. Or so they say.
When Beanie was born, Va-vay
dutifully went off to buy cordless phones - after a
'loving reminder' from me. Eighteen months later, we
spend half our lives hunting for the wretched things that Beanie has reallocated somewhere - pillow,
toy basket, knitting box, or the rubbish bin. Even if we phone ourselves to find out
where they are, they won't necessarily ring. No juice left.
Mobiles aren't so reliable either these days. Beanie's fond of
sucking on them. Helps her teeth.
Last week I gave Va-vay another 'loving reminder'. To buy us a conventional, corded phone.
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Edinburgh Mum
One of the lovely things about my holiday was coming home and reading the nice comments so many of you left on the site. Thanks to all who commented while I was away. It made for a great welcome home. Another holiday treat was the chance to catch up on some reading, since I went cold turkey on blogging while we were away and left the laptop at home. One of the books I enjoyed best was Alexander McCall Smith's new book The Careful Use of Compliments, the latest in the Sunday Philosophy Club series. Chosen not (just) because it's set in my native Edinburgh, but for the back-cover promise of material on the challenges of late motherhood. 
It was a surprise to find out that Isabel Dalhousie, the book's wealthy philosopher heroine, has just become a new mum. McCall Smith has always been coy on her exact age, but in previous books in the series, I imagined her to be in her 50s. Past child-bearing age, anyway. I mean, for goodness' sake! She drives a Volvo. A green Volvo. She has a housekeeper, (who does most of the child-rearing). She disapproves of her niece Cat's boyfriends and hassles her to dump them. It sounded like she belonged to a different generation to mine, and, well, I fear I'm at the outer limits of childbearing myself. So I jumped to the wrong conclusion.
At the beginning of Careful Use, McCall Smith drops a bombshell. We discover that Isabel remains disapproving of Cat's choice in men. But she has pinched one of the most attractive of the suitors, Jamie, a man 14 years her junior, for herself. And had a baby with him. A baby that arrives "under the bright lights of the Royal Infirmary." The same place where I had Beanie. Crikey!
Now, let me stress here that I am a huge fan of McCall Smith. In fact I pretty much idolise him. My good friend Iota has even suggested I could be a character in one of his books. But even so, I couldn't help feeling irritated about the (fictional) boyfriend-pinching. Part of the point about Isabel is that she's supposed to agonise with herself about right and wrong. Yet this is about the one area in her life where she doesn't bother with questioning or guilt about her behaviour. It doesn't even seem to occur to her that it might be wrong to get together with a relative's ex-partner.
Isabel's brush with motherhood comes off badly in the book, too. She gets huffy that the local mums and babies group doesn't welcome her with open arms and blames this on her decision to bottle-feed baby Charlie, after finding breast-feeding 'uncomfortable'.
McCall Smith explains: "She had been a member - briefly - of a mother and baby group in Bruntsfield and she had been given looks of disapproval by one or two of the mothers when she had revealed she was not feeding Charlie herself. Those women knew, she thought; they knew that there could be some very good reaons for it, but they could not help their zeal. And she had felt guilty, although she knew it was irrational to feel guilt for something that one could not help."
This must be testimony to McCall Smith's skills as a writer that I responded to this passage with such annoyance, as if this were real-life. I can't agree that people in mums-and-babies groups would treat Isabel like that because she wasn't breastfeeding. They might have raised an eyebrow after hearing about her copping off with a younger relative's partner. They might have wondered why the housekeeper looked after the baby, rather than Isabel.
They might also have been a bit strange towards her due to sleep deprivation since, unlike Isabel, they didn't have a housekeeper to look after their babies. And they might also have wondered about Isabel's decision to spend her baby's early months investigating fraud in the Edinburgh art world, instead of caring for the little boy. But objecting to her bottle-feeding?
Still, I agreed with McCall Smith on the subject of maternal modes of transport. "The mothers in the expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles were the worst, [Jamie] had decided. Why did they need these fuel-hungry contraptions in their urban lives? To barge their way past other, smaller cars, or to make a statement about who they were and what they had?" Judged against that, Isabel's Volvo doesn't look so bad after all.
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Monkey business
We all know that breast is best, but really, you can take a good idea too far, as I think you'll agree this picture proves. This Indian lady, a government worker, has treated Buru, her pet monkey, as her third child, since her woodcutter husband found him half-starved as a baby under a nearby tree after a storm. "Yes, I breastfeed him. He is my son," Namita Das told BBC News. "I did not have a son. God has given me one." According to the BBC, Buru generally stays at home, but can sometimes be seen climbing on neighbours' rooves, stealing bananas. Blimey! And I thought I got some funny looks for breastfeeding Beanie until she was a year old.
No escape
I accidentally plunged into the world of obstetrics again yesterday, in what was meant to be a break from hard-core mothering, during a lunchtime talk at the tented International Book Festival from writers Janice Galloway and Alan Warner on their launch of a not-for-profit publisher in Edinburgh called Long Lunch Press. Galloway and Warner set up Long Lunch with Arts Council funding to ensure an audience for unusual writing they believe deserves to reach the public but that wouldn't attract a commercial publisher.
Hearing this, I was sorely tempted to put my hand up and recommend blogs for the purpose of reaching readers but managed to refrain. However Vanessa at Fidra Books has plenty to say on the subject of not-for-profit publishing in this forthright and shrewd account
of why she doesn't think publishing that sneers at profit makes any sense - and why instead of producing
unread pamphlets Long Lunch should be promoting their work here on the net.
In keeping with the theme of unusual subject matter, Galloway read to us from Rosengarten, her prose-poem discussing the obstetric tools of child birth. It was the difficulty of finding a publisher prepared to accept this
decidedly difficult account of childbirth that prompted Galloway to set
up her new publishing venture.
When Galloway told her audience there was to be a reading about
obstetrics, I must admit I thought what the many commercial publishers
who turned it down obviously did too. And after the reading one couple got up and left,
the woman white-faced.
But now I've had to time to get used to the
idea, I rather like Rosengarten, which sheds light on a closed world. Stick with me here while I quote from the book, I was initially shocked too, but it's worth persevering.
"This is the business of life
with death, two balances in
precise relation. This is the
business of drawing air and
of drowning fluids, of
slickness and dry compression. Of making
two from one, of nerves
and channels, down and
muscle and veins. Of dark
to light, a business carried
out under the broil of
woollen covers, a business
of touch and steel and
random happenstance
There is bleeding of course.
And splitting and aweful surrender."
For their research, Galloway and her co-author studied obstetric implements, mainly forceps, through the ages, hunting through cases at the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, the Edinburgh College of Surgeons and the Hunterian Museum . Their conclusion? "Raking about... showed how little over centuries the basic designs of the implements have changed."
Maybe the implements themselves remain unchanged, but one aspect of obstetrics that could usefully change is the continuing secrecy and embarrassment about the process of childbirth. Perhaps women do deserve to hear more about what childbirth is really like, and it would be worth overcoming our natural squeamishness for that to happen. Our ante-natal classes were great for making friends, but I learnt little that was useful about the actual birth, then spent months afterwards in shock.
Then again, if someone had presented me with a copy of Rosengarten in pregnancy, would I have wanted to know? Nowadays, of course, I'm fascinated by anyone prepared to talk frankly about childbirth, even if it happens unexpectedly.
Breastfeeding Health Pregnancy Blogging Childbirth Festival Books Dilemmas
Weighty matters
I had an ambivalent reaction to news in The Times today that guidance for parents on the optimum rate at which a baby grows is to be measured against a breast-fed infant rather than the faster weight gain of those fed on formula milk.
This is more than a technicality, as any breast-feeding mother who's faced the tyranny of a health visitor's scales can tell you. Life in the early months of a baby's life is dominated by weigh-ins that health visitors use to judge if a baby's thriving or not. The problem with the existing charts is that they can lead HVs to decide that breast-fed babies are growing poorly, because formula-fed babies put on more weight.
I was lucky with Beanie, whom I breast-fed but who still put on weight at a rate her HV decreed acceptable. That's some background to pre-empt comments from the kind strangers who like to write in when I post about breastfeeding to tell me why I should have breastfed my daughter - sisters, I did! But all too many breast-feeding mothers find their babies aren't putting on weight as fast as the HV would like, then get into a vicious circle along the following lines.
HV puts pressure on mum to supplement breast milk with a bottle, citing baby's poor weight gain. Mum, confused and anxious, does as HV wants, her own milk supply drops off at introduction of formula and breastfeeding ends abruptly, usually way before the recommended six-month mark for exclusive breastfeeding. Mum, conditioned by several trees' worth of government material on why she should breastfeed, comes away from experience feeling wretched and guilty, despite having done nothing wrong, except perhaps allowed herself to be bullied by her HV.
I'd be interested to know why a government that's forever pushing its 'breast is best' policy in new mums' faces has taken so long to change growth measurements. Ministers have been under pressure for a while to introduce World
Health Organisation standards for baby growth, following fears that the
formula-based growth charts are leading to the overfeeding of young
children but have taken their time. The Child Growth Foundation complains the government could have got new charts in place a year ago.
One woman who had a child at the same time as me was so traumatised by the entire weigh-in misery (she was forced to introduce formula for her son at a few weeks old due to 'poor' weight gain) she more or less decided to have another child almost straightaway so she could have another go at getting breastfeeding right. Is it just me or is there something wrong with a health system that makes women feel so bad about themselves? Second time round, she's more confident and planning to ignore any pressure from her HV to supplement.
There's never any shortage of propaganda telling women to breastfeed their babies, but there's a lack of proper guidance and support (like the right growth measurements) to help new mums achieve all that the NHS tells us we should. It annoys me when people suggest breastfeeding's an innate skill, because I believe it's something you have to learn, like speaking French or driving a car. The result is that many women don't breastfeed, because often they've been let down by a system that doesn't give them the right help and advice, just lots of guilt-inducing leaflets.
Breastfeeding Olympics
Next Wednesday, 8 August, is Synchronised Breastfeeding Worldwide Day.
The organisers want women around the world to stop whatever they're doing and breastfeed at 10am on that day. Like minutes of remembrance, but noisier. Countries taking part include Philippines, New Zealand, Greece, India, USA, Uganda, Dominican Republic and Malaysia.
Mark my words, it'll be an Olympic sport, at this rate. I might even suggest it myself....
Come the 2012 London Olympics, marks could be awarded in breastfeeding for the following:
1. Position 'Ooh, she's going for a triple cross-cradle on the horse! Performed simultaneously with flying from a trapeze and restraining two older children from thwacking each other over the head! '
2. Stamina 'Twenty hours after mum started feeding her Amelia's still refusing to settle! This little one has gnawed the nipples off her mum but look at that mum's perseverence! A tube of Lansinoh cream and she's still in the race.'
3. Style - judged on choice of NCT breastfeeding accessories, skills at assembling and using breastpumps (while in hormonal daze, naturally), dexterity and discretion in hauling up various items of clothing at a range of venues (mother-in-law's sitting room, cafe, bar, bus, beach, airplane)
I propose a special uniform (with all-important flaps) for contestants, the UK one put together with help from the NCT. Unlike other sports, droopy body parts could be an absolute asset in breastfeeding.
This is also one sport where Olympic officials won't need to worry gender confusion. I don't see any problems with big-boned eastern Europeans masquerading as breastfeeders. Not unless medical science has come on a long way by then.
New me
Let's start with the good news. A mere 15 months after the Bean's arrival, I have slimmed down to the point where I no longer need to wear my old maternity clothes. People have, thank God, stopped a) asking when the baby's due (from the more brazen) and b) looking pointedly at my stomach.
And the bad news? The bad news is:
1. Trauma of ridding wardrobe of old and beloved maternity pantaloons
2. I have hardly any normal clothes left, not ones I fit into or could use anyway
3. After 15 months with a mix of statutory maternity pay and part-time freelance work, there's not much money to buy new threads.
4. The worst bit - I'm not doing very well at coming to terms with a symbolic end to The Bean's baby years.
First I piled up all my old maternity trousers, with their funny elasticated rigging that I dimly remember once, long, long ago, striking me as peculiar. They now seem alarmingly normal. The strange tweed maternity skirt from the Formes sale that I had to keep hitching up over my bump even at nine months. Cheap tops from Dorothy Perkins that fell apart in the wash.
Then I set to work on all the breastfeeding gear - breastfeeding nighties, breastfeeding camisoles, breastfeeding winter tops, breastfeeding T-shirts. Looking at the unironed pile of flannel on my bedroom floor, I did wonder if breastfeeding really does work out cheaper than bottles; that lot must have filled the NCT coffers by a few hundred quid. Here, too, it was hard to say goodbye. Flannel is very comfortable against the skin, you know.
Like maternity clothes, breastfeeding tops are another clothing peculiarity. From afar they seem normal, that is until you inspect them more closely and see the strange flaps, slits, panelling and apertures tucked away. The sight of them brought back happy memories: on a trip to the local art shop, the owner had to point out to me I'd neglected to close the flaps up again after feeding The Bean. Oops. Very bohemian.
About a dozen lovely glamorous greying nursing bras, including the badly-fitted one that had me in agony with a blocked duct, followed them into a storage basket. Even after all the early traumas of breastfeeding I was upset to see them all go, but I've steeled myself to draw a line and move on.
Then the following day, in one of those coincidences that are so uncannily in tune with personal circumstances they really shouldn't be a coincidence, a woman in the street stopped me to ask if I knew any good maternity wear shops in Edinburgh. I suppose she must have guessed I'd know, judging from The Bean's age. As I pointed up the hill to one place, tears welled up in my eyes, I cut the conversation short, and pushed The Bean away.
Update later the same day... it seems I spoke too soon. My kind neighbour saw me struggling in with five shopping bags earlier, and insisted on carrying two of them up the stairs to our second floor flat.... because she thought I was expecting. This is just intolerable. I look more pregnant than some of the women who really are. I have had to explain again I am not pregnant, though God knows I wish I were, (I spared her that part) and that I had a miscarriage. She looked mortified at her mistake, and I have just come off the phone to Va-vay in floods of tears.
Childcare Edinburgh Kit Pregnancy Breastfeeding Miscarriage Money
Breastfeeding blues
Next week sees the start of World Breastfeeding Week, now in its sixteenth year. This year's theme is the importance of breastfeeding in the first hour of a baby's life.
Educating women in the benefits of breastfeeding is only one part of the equation.
We need more health workers who can teach first-timers how to breastfeed, because I don't think it's an innate skill, despite what some people say.
"Every newborn, when placed on the mother's abdomen soon after birth,
has the ability to find her mother's breast all on her own and to
decide when to take the first breastfeed," say the organisers.
Sadly, it
wasn't like that for me, nor for many of my friends, though most of us mastered breastfeeding in the end. The Bean was too busy trying out her lung capacity to do the "breast crawl".
I was ready to throw in the towel at various points in the early weeks and give Beanie a bottle. Only support from Va-vay kept me going. And stopping the 'nose-to-nipple' latch-on they taught me in hospital that made me dizzy with pain.
After that, everything slowly got easier. Until we got to the point where breastfeeding was actually enjoyable. But by that time I felt under almost as much pressure to stop as I did to start in the first place.
World Breastfeeding Week runs from August 1-7.
An older woman
As some of you know, I am an older first-time mum. I had The Bean at the grand old age of 38 - which in medical parlance made me a senile primagravida. Oooh, how attractive does that sound..... like an elderly gorilla with dementia. But I never really felt old until I started going to mums and babies groups, where everyone else looked so young. And no, I'm not just talking about the babies.
A lot about being an L Plates mum seems to be the same whatever age you are. I've sat down to write about the differences in being an older first-timer and am racking my brains to think of any. This is what I've thought of so far:
1. Like any minority group, we older first-timers tend to band together for protection. One friend said early on in our friendship she wanted me as her friend to be able to prove to her child when he was older that he wasn't the only one to have an 'older' mum. We've agreed that at the school gates we'll be pointing to each other, telling our respective children: "See! You're not the the only one who's got an uncool mum! Look, Johnny's mum got her bus pass last week too."
2. Acceptance of restrictions. I don't think I minded staying in every night for about a year after my daughter was born as much as some of the younger mums. Now this really is showing my age, but when I was younger I did my share of partying. So nights in with The Bean, Va-vay (as she now calls her dad) and the breastfeeding pillow were fine by me. Tiring, but fine.
3. After being with The Bean all day not only did Va-vay's face look monstrously large in comparison on our pillows, when we collapsed into bed at 9.30pm, but my own looked like the withered mask of an old woman when I looked in the mirror.
4. Pressure to procreate. I met Va-vay only when I was nearly 36. Most inefficient of me, as he keeps telling me. We had a short interlude of doing nice stuff like strolling through the countryside, going to the theatre and having foreign holidays. But it's no exaggeration to say it's been serious reproduction pretty much all the way ever since. No! Not like that...
I've either been pregnant or breastfeeding for most of the time we've been together.
Still, maybe I should just count my blessings... after my miscarriage in May I'm so very glad we started a family straightaway. The Bean arrived a few days before our first wedding anniversary. Having her with us is all that really matters.
5. A sense of mild, but residual embarrassment that I crossed some kind of finishing-line years later than most of my peers.
6. Disbelief any of this is happening. I spent so many years on my own, or in bad relationships, I can't believe I'm a happily-married mother. Well, Va-vay and I argue sometimes.... but even so.
7. I feel like a kid myself next to women of the same age, most of whom have children much older than The Bean.
8. Sometimes I find myself calculating how much longer Granny, Va-vay and I'll be around to pester The Bean with offers of breadsticks, milk, payment of nursery fees, or similar. Hmmm... must break morbid habit.
9. Shock at cynical commercial targeting of babies!!! When did the marketing departments get their hands on baby products? Back in '67 we babies didn't have branding. We didn't even have animal pictures on our towelling nappies. The best we could hope for was Tommee Tippee on our potties come the advent of toilet training (which as my mother never tires of telling me, often in front of Va-vay, happened when I was 13 months old). Sorry. Too much information...
What do you all think? Does it make a difference how old a mum is when she has her first baby?
I don't know enough about the medical or physical side of
things to write about that. Also, it should go without saying, but I'm writing about personal experience here. Obviously these
things vary according to different individuals.
Baby police
Following my mid-week rant about acronyms polluting the world of mothering, one of my correspondents
has gamely suggested I call myself Acromum. I'm flattered!
I could use the small remnants of my time not spent blogging, working or
looking after The Bean, to fight acronyms wherever I see them, armed
with nothing more than a hefty changing bag, toddler reins, broccoli
spears and some smelly old nappies.
That should bring people back to
earth and get them to drop these silly titles like SAHM and WAHM.
The ultimate deterrant, of course, would be disemvowelling.
If I had an arch-enemy, perhaps someone from the acronym-rich military
or medical professions, or even someone over at the Parenting Police HQ
- Ofmum - they could fight by wheeling out a copy of the Book of Acronyms that Ingenious Rose
alerted me to.
At the sight of the dreaded volume, I would instantly
wither into a pile of meaningless letters, spouting received wisdom set
down by well-meaning but mostly childless bureacrats who equate life
for a newborn in rural, war-torn Africa with arriving in a neurotic,
middle-class family in the Edinburgh New Town.
Much of the advice on
breastfeeding in the UK comes from global organisations concerned
primarily with developing countries. Yet it gets applied across the
board in developed, as well as poorer regions, even though the worst
many of us have to contend with is a scrap over parking places in
this city. Not exactly equivalent to civil war and the West Side Boys in Africa.
Though talking of conflict, there's also the issue of
differing parental opinions on the finer technicalities of parenting.
For example, how best to warm a bottle - which can lead to vicious,
internecine guerilla warfare.
"Don't add the powder before you heat the water, I've told you a million times!"
"What difference does that make? You're undermining my parenting!"
"You've got to add the powder afterwards. It's the microbes in the milk."
"Microbes? You're making this up. Oh, don't tell me you read it in one of your books."
Guess we forgot to be grateful there was no trip to a dank well involved. And took sterile water for granted.
Perhaps the Ofmum bureaucrats are right - and there's something to be
said for one-size-fits-all parenting (oh dear, almost felt an acronym
coming on there) - with baby police around the world marching to the
same step.
Then again, important differences remain. At least in Africa the enemy isn't someone who's meant to be on your own side.
Breastfeeding Dads Edinburgh Husband Parenting gurus Perfectionism Work at Home Mum
Daddy's girl
The Bean is getting ever fonder of her dad. I've become boring to her.
I've suspected she might be transferring her affections for a while. It started with the end of breastfeeding when she turned a year.
Something happened today that proved it's official.
Her dad woke up this morning complaining he was poorly. Not quite at death's door. Not yet. But bad enough to work from home.
That meant we were able to go together to pick The Bean up from her nursery in the afternoon.
We did our usual paranoid inspection of the nursery gates, checking they were all locked.
Then located our daughter behind a plastic partition. She was engaged in what the nursery calls in its daily report cards "floor play" and "interacting with other children".
The Bean looked up, saw me and gave a friendly wave. The kind of wave that says: "Fine, I see you, but please don't hang about and embarrass me." The Bean is 15 months old. What her teenage years will be like, I dread to think.
I stooped down to pick her up. She gave me a perfunctory cuddle. I covered her face in kisses. She tolerated one or two, then wriggled away.
Then she spotted her father. Stretched out her arms towards him. Mewled and cawed like the little traitor she was. I had no choice. I handed her over to him.
What a transformation.
As soon as she was in her dad's arms, peace was restored.
The little ingrate.
The best I can say for myself is that I didn't actually say out loud: "After all I've done for you."
No, I just thought it.
Never-good-enough Mum
You just can't get it right as a parent. Hours of my life spent
grafting at the coal face of motherhood, hacking up wholesome organic
vegetables and reducing them to pureed slime, of which my daughter
might, on a good day, consent to eat a grudging spoonful, and now look what happens.
I
finally master an RSS feed from the BBC and one of the first things I see today is the
latest directive from Mothering HQ telling me I've wasted my time, my
sweet potatoes and my freezer space by pureeing all this food.
In all honesty I always knew The Bean preferred fromage frais to
anything I made. Now it seems that pureed food is not just unpalatable,
but bad, bad, bad.
For it seems purees are in fact the work of evil food manufacturers
who want parents in their commercial thrall for years to come.
The Unicef Baby-Friendly Initiative almost equates pureeing food with
formula-milk makers peddling their evil powder to third-world
countries.
Truly, motherhood and martyrdom go hand in hand. I know now how poor
old St Sebastian must have felt. Not so much plugged full of unfriendly
arrows, as, in my case, pierced to the heart by my own Moulinex
whizzing wand, stoned by a flurry of small plastic food receptacles,
shamed in the village stocks by the liberal daubing of pureed parsnip
thrown at me by my own daughter.
Like all parenting gurus,
Unicef wheels out a battery of dire consequences for any parents
foolish enough to consider ignoring the received
wisdom on pureeing.
You see, babies get addicted to pureed food.
And spoon-feeding babies pureed food is unnatural and unnecessary.
Why, it could
delay the onset of their chewing skills. Babies unlucky enough to be fed pureed food by
their reckless parents have little control over how much they eat.
Which in turn makes them vulnerable to getting blocked up. Oh, and they could also become fussy eaters in later life.
If
Unicef had their way babies would survive on a milk-only diet for six
months and then move straight onto solids. Bypassing evil gloop altogether.
I've
yet to meet a mother who made it to the six-month mark before breaking
out the Organix baby rice. If anyone reading this has a child who made
it that far on milk alone, I congratulate you. Please could you let the
rest of us know how you managed it.
So, here's my idea, how about we expand the Unicef remit. It could include not just a Baby-Friendly Initiative, but a Mother-Friendly one too.
Ideally, one that publishes
research proving what we all know - that once babies are onto baby rice at four or five months, their
mums can get a decent night's sleep, without waking twice a night to
open up the mini-bar.
Actually, no, forget about baby rice. If I'd known Unicef's ideas
on purees sooner there'd have been no mulched-up carrots or rice. No,
I'd have served up a nice, tasty steak and chips to my daughter. Start as you mean to go on. Medium
rare, I think.... Softer on the (non-existent) teeth that way.
Daughter Food Mistakes Parenting gurus Perfectionism Breastfeeding
Nursing rights
How considerate of the English government to pass a law enshrining
women's right to breastfeed their babies in public. Good of them to
give women legal redress if some nutter demands they stow away their
offending parts, cut a feed short and hop it. So instead of meekly
replacing damp bra pad, buckling up nursing bra and b****ring off
elsewhere, screaming infant in tow, women now have the right to get
lippy back. Good.
Presumably the motivation behind this latest legislation is the
government's desperation to make us all breastfeed. There'll be grants
for it soon, mark my words. Subsidies in the form of vouchers for
nursing bras and nipple cream. Health visitors discreetly handing out
wodges of cash at the sight of cracked nipples.
I suppose it is good that the government is giving breastfeeding
women some legal support. Let's face it, it takes some nerve to get
your breasts out in public, then use them to feed a
shrieking baby, law or no law. But I have my reservations.
This law took effect in Scotland a while ago, before my daughter was
born. So I have no experience of what it was like to breastfeed prior
to the new law. But my sense is that while breastfeeding legislation is good, a hydraulic-lift nursing bra from the NCT is better. NCT nursing tops
weren't so great, on the other hand, at least not the time I forgot to
pull the flap back down and went shopping with rather more on display
than I realised.
Frankly, though, who needs legislation to breastfeed in public, when
there's the piercing screams of a small child telling you to get on with it? Any embarrassment about
public breastfeeding was nothing compared to my embarrassment at my
daughter's hungry crying. When the wail went up on-lookers dived for
cover, hands over ears, waiting for the Luftwaffe to drop its bombs.
"Aye, that's a fine pair of lungs she's got," ventured one brave soul
above the siren.
I'd have done anything to quieten her. No, hang on, that's not right, I did
do anything. I not just breastfed her in public, I breastfed her in
parks, shops, cafes, beaches, buses, and cinemas, on walls, benches and
trains. And you know what, in a year of all that, no-one so much as
looked at me, let alone hassled me. Maybe that was the long arm of the
law... or then again, maybe not. Whichever it was, I do hope the
government isn't wasting tax-payers' resources again.
Birthing choices
Only a month after Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, outlined
plans to guarantee expectant mothers a "full range of birthing choices"
by 2009 it seems the reality is that some women might be lucky if they
get a qualified midwife or doctor to deliver their baby.
A report for the Department of Health has revealed that NHS
trusts using maternity support workers to do the work of trained
midwives could be putting the safety of mothers and babies at risk.
The study found that several trusts are converting midwife positions
into posts for lesser-qualified maternity support workers. The news has
clearly got medical bigwigs worried - it's prompted Christine Beasley,
the Chief Nursing Officer, to remind all trusts it's a legal
requirement for a registered midwife or doctor to deliver every baby.
The idea of using maternity support workers was that they would free
midwives up to do the jobs that only they are trained to do, (it takes
three years to train as a midwife) but it seems that in the
hard-pressed NHS they've taken a good idea too far, with these workers
assuming responsibility for tasks they're not qualified to do.
Personally, I have huge admiration for maternity support workers - they
were the women who got me through long, sleepless nights in hospital as
I struggled with breastfeeding, propped me up when I fainted in the
shower after giving birth, and admired my daughter like she was the first newborn they'd
seen in a year. Despite their long hours and lousy pay they were
endlessly good-natured and kind.
But still... it's not my idea of a "birthing choice" to do without a midwife or doctor while giving birth, sorry Mrs Hewitt.
Read more at
The Royal College of Midwives
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
National Childbirth Trust
The NCT has lots of good information on birth options.
The parenting paradox
You just can't win as a parent. It was my health visitor who explained the parenting paradox to me. If you take your child to ballet/football then you're labelled pushy, she explained. If you don't, you'll feel guilty for not encouraging them. Know the sort of thing I mean? Whatever you do, you can't win.
Fellow Edinburgh blogger Littlemummy did an amusing posting the other week on Socially Recognised Parenting Standards. Reading it made me realise we parents will never achieve parenting perfection, because no ordinary human could ever attain the standards we set ourselves.
I started thinking about the never-ending series of exacting rules and parenting commandments that all contradict and conflict with each other. So even if you manage by some feat of superhuman stamina to meet one of them, then you'll be breaking another at the same time. I suppose the only way round this is to concentrate on what we each think is right, and ignore other people's ideas, however well-meant.
These are a few thoughts on some of the main parenting paradoxes
Breastfeeding
Any young mum can tell you of the immense pressure to breastfeed a new baby. Not so many people talk about how only a few months later there's similar pressure to stop. In hospital after having my daughter my boobs became public property, staff were so keen for me to learn this womanly art. Hands came from everywhere to latch the baby on. Someone even told me to follow the "nose to nipple" mantra - a policy that was to cost my poor nipples untold anguish. Then, just about as soon as I got breastfeeding going smoothly, it seemed to be time to stop. No sooner had we got past the toe-curling agony stage of nipple guards and Lansinoh cream, than people were saying things like: "You've got to wonder who's benefitting from this - the mother or the baby."
Mother-infant bonding
Pick up any of the legions of parenting books available now and you'll read about the virtues of responsive attachment parenting, that involves "baby wearing", baby massage, skin-on-skin contact, and breastfeeding. The idea is these practices supposedly promote a strong bond between mother and infant. Fast forward only a few months later and it's all about fostering a healthy sense of individuality and self-assertion on the baby's part, with dark looks cast at clingy babies. How much is a good thing? When does a good thing turn into something bad? How do you get the balance right? Well, it seems you can't, because the goal posts are always moving.
Work vs parenting
This works a bit like this: you're not quite recognised as a proper human being or accorded any status if, as a mother, you don't do some form of paid work, but if on the other hand you do work then you must also express conflict, regret and guilt for doing so. Truly, no-win all round.
Any mother who loves going to work because they enjoy the banter, get a rest, earn lovely dosh to spend on nice things and can go to the loo alone never admits as much, but instead expresses stoical regret that her life has worked out this way, as if it happened outwith her control.
There's more on this theme over at The Bad Mothers' Club. Any thoughts on other parenting paradoxes?
Angst Breastfeeding Daughter Dilemmas Guilt Paradoxes Parenting gurus Work Work vs mothering
Home working for parents: the plus side
In my posting yesterday on the drawbacks to being a Work at Home Mum, or WAHM, I promised another missive today on the joys of a life spent fettered to a keyboard in the spare bedroom/playroom/study, while pretending to be a carefree "have-it-all" mum, with perfect work/life balance.
Now today's come around and I regret to have to say I can hardly think of any benefits to being a WAHM. But having scratched what's left of my braincells after a year's breastfeeding, I've managed to think of a few upsides.
No colleagues
At first this was a plus and I enjoyed my own company. Now I'm a seasoned WAHM and idealise any office where I've ever worked, however poisonous the politics were, remembering only the cheerful banter, not the nastier sides.
Flexibility in hours
Easier to knock off work early on a sunny day when I fancy taking my daughter to the park. When she was sent home from nursery with a sticky eye it was easy for me to walk over there and pick her up. Major plus for parents of young children. Some mornings I take her in to nursery closer to lunchtime, and then pick her up before teatime.
Master and commander (sort of)
I feel more in control of my own destiny, working for myself, and enjoy the freedom it brings. I can explore ideas and projects that interest me, without checking in with anyone else first.
Fitting work in around children
If things have gone haywire during the day, with our daughter sick at home or similar, I can make up the lost hours in the evening here at home.
Commuting time
For all my moaning about lack of company in the working day, I never enjoyed being shoe-horned into the London Tube every morning on the way to work, squashed in with dozens of other people. Even I, moaner that I am, have to admit it's not much of a trek from bedroom to spare room.
Ability to work from anywhere with broadband connection
Well, theoretically, although it's strange how so much of work still comes down to talking with real, live human beings, even now. But being self-employed and working from home meant I was able to escape London two years ago to come back to Edinburgh. We're now debating a possible next move to France. If my husband didn't have such good IT skills, I doubt I'd be so sanguine on this point.
Getting more done at home/fewer interruptions?
Arguable point. A friend has a theory that people get more done working from home than they would in offices, because so much time there is taken up with meetings. Hah - but what about tea breaks?
Climbing the laundry mountain
Taking little breaks to work on the laundry leaves me still feeling quite smug and virtuous afterwards, almost as if I'd stayed at my desk and done the work I was meant to be doing, instead of frippering away the minutes on anything I could manage to justify to myself.
Some weeks you can take on more work, others less
When K was unwell a few weeks ago and she couldn't go to nursery, I was able to rearrange my work to look after her.
Breastfeeding Daughter Husband Nursery Pregnancy Work Home working
More on childcare options... today, Granny to the rescue
As I mentioned in an earlier posting, apparently "have-it-all" mums are shunning nurseries
that could damage their children's development and staying home to look
after their kids. Ideally, of course, some newspapers would rather we
women spent our entire reproductive
years pregnant and/or barefoot in the kitchen.
Given we live in a less-than-ideal world, in which many of us do some
sort of balancing act between work and family, while trying our utmost
to do the best for our children, I've decided to write some more about
the childcare options available to working mums, or at least my
personal experience of them.
Today, Granny to the rescue.
Granny often looks
after my daughter one or two days a week while I work, sometimes at
home, other times in an office. The arrangement generally works well
for all concerned, with big benefits all round. My daughter also goes
to nursery twice weekly.
Things to know about childcare from Granny
1. Parenting takes stamina - lots of it - and grandparents tire easily
Granny would never admit this, but she is shattered by the
end of a day chasing after her beloved grandaughter. I only found out
how bad it was when I rang her one evening around 8.30pm after she'd
gone home from a day looking after K, only for my father to tell me
she'd gone to bed "early". I felt terrible.
2. Your child can do NO wrong in Granny's eyes
My daughter has filched Granny's OAP bus pass while rifling through
her handbag, somehow lost her mobile, and scrunched up precious family
photos Granny carries everywhere in her Sudoko book. Does Granny care?
3. Seeing the bond develop between Granny and K - heart-warming
K kicks her legs with delight when she sees Granny coming up the
stairs to see her, while Granny's had a new lease of life since K
arrived 13 months ago. They get on extremely well and it's been one of
the best things about having a child, seeing the bond between them
strengthen and grow.
4. K's biscuit consumption increases while Granny is around. So does mine.
Granny believes a little treat now and then never hurt anyone.
5. Like any veteran of terry towelling, Granny believes in 10 or 12 daily nappy changes
Don't suppose it can do any harm. Granny often brings round packs
of nappies. "Bulky for you to carry!" she says. "Let me bring these
over in the car."
6. Limited interaction for K with other babies - or "tweenies"
But lots of admiration from the other old ladies Granny seems to
meet while out and about buying biscuits. Doesn't matter so much to us,
because K is with other children at nursery twice weekly.
7. Hard to concentrate while working at home if K and Granny larking
about in kitchen, often playing