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.
Advertising
Life Insurance
Get a great deal on life insurance
with a policy from Directline
Compare hundreds of life insurance policies with Protected.co.uk
Recent comments
Helen on Our beautiful girl has arrived!!!!!.
Expat Mum on Our beautiful girl has arrived!!!!!.
Hadriana on Our beautiful girl has arrived!!!!!.
Lindsay on Our beautiful girl has arrived!!!!!.
Guineapigmum on Our beautiful girl has arrived!!!!!.
Tasha on Our beautiful girl has arrived!!!!!.
DownToEarthMother on Our beautiful girl has arrived!!!!!.
Categories
- Activities (14)
- Angst (21)
- Awards (2)
- Being a mother (1)
- Blogging (18)
- Books (30)
- Breastfeeding (25)
- Buses (3)
- Car (7)
- Childbirth (21)
- Childcare (27)
- Dads (10)
- Daughter (70)
- Dilemmas (26)
- Domestic chaos (24)
- Edinburgh (45)
- Etiquette (9)
- Fashionably Late - the book (14)
- Festival (11)
- Food (14)
- Friends (14)
- Fun (18)
- Granny (17)
- Guilt (12)
- Health (17)
- Health workers (2)
- Holidays (6)
- Home (26)
- Home birth (10)
- Home working (5)
- Husband (47)
- Kit (14)
- Language (1)
- Laundry (1)
- Likes/Dislikes (4)
- Miscarriage (13)
- Missing sanity (5)
- Mistakes (4)
- Money (5)
- New baby (11)
- New Town Mum (1)
- News (9)
- Nursery (16)
- Older mother (41)
- Out and about (47)
- Paradoxes (5)
- Parenting gurus (15)
- Perfectionism (7)
- Play (8)
- Playgroup (4)
- Safety (5)
- Sleep (2)
- Toys (3)
- Water birth (8)
- Work (24)
- Work at Home Mum (6)
- Work vs mothering (17)
Childcare
Then and Now
Seven weeks to go until my due date for younger daughter! Husband and I
attended a birth preparation workshop this weekend, practising labour
postures, pain relief techniques and relaxation. Pain
management involved gripping an ice cube. My right hand
remains a little numb many hours later. Oh well. It was a good event,
not least because I got lots of massage and attention from Va-vay, my
husband. Some of the other couples there were expecting their first
children, which got me thinking about things I wish I'd known when I
was having a baby first-time round. Here are a few of my thoughts.
Please feel free to chip in with any of your own.
1. You cannot just put a new baby down in her cot and expect her to go
to sleep. Nah. No matter how tired you both are. For a long time,
getting Beanie (elder daughter) to sleep was a delicate process that
involved rocking, feeding, singing and hushing.
2. For this reason, a Moses basket is not necessarily a great
investment. By the time I had persuaded Beanie to sleep in
hers, she had just about outgrown it. Not only are Moses baskets
expensive, and used for a short time, but they come with annoying
padding and quilts 'for decoration' that could be dangerous for small
babies. But they do look cute.
3. It might be best to assemble all the baby kit BEFORE baby arrives.
Not afterwards, like I did. A simple car seat was beyond me to fit into
the car in the early weeks after having Beanie. Same went for breast
pumps. I wish I'd practised with the wretched milking machine before
Beanie arrived. In that post-natal daze, it seemed like I needed a
Diploma in Childrearing Equipment (Intermediate Level) to master the
thing. Nowadays I see the pump gathering dust in a kitchen cupboard. It
looks simple enough. What was the problem?
4. Despite what the books say, there's no great harm (that I can see,
anyway) in letting baby fall asleep for a short nap in his or her
parents' arms. Snuggling up with Beanie was one of the most blissful
experiences of my life. Letting your baby sleep in your arms doesn't
mean your child will be incapable of sleeping in a cot on their own (as
some of the books will tell you). Just enjoy the experience. Because,
before you know it, you'll be onto a different stage. Which reminds me
of something else....
5. The sleepless nights don't last forever. Though they seem endless at
the time. Almost before I knew it, I'd gone from praying for more sleep
to missing Beanie being around for night-time feeds. All the stages are
over so quick. The era of pureed root vegetables already seems years
away. Was there really a time when she couldn't walk? When I wondered
if she'd ever be big enough to fit into six-to-nine month vests?
6. Some parenting books sell themselves by threatening all kinds of
dire consequences if you don't follow their advice to their letter.
Sleepless nights spent looking after kids who are candidates for
Supernanny. That sort of stuff. Unless you follow their 'routines' to
the letter, that is. Mostly, that is rubbish. Most parents can muddle
through very well by following their own instincts. I wish I'd been
more chilled and less desperate for advice from childless parenting
gurus who play on new parents' vulnerability.
7. Other parents in baby groups tell fibs about their children's
achievements. Do not believe them. The more insecure the parent, the
more prodigious (or apparently so) their child's ability to 'sleep
through', grow teeth, walk, talk etc. I wish I hadn't been taken in by
the boastfulness.
8. The timing of milestones like first steps doesn't really matter.
Even though it seems to matter at the time. Healthy, normal children
will do things at the pace that's right for them. It's not worth
getting sucked into competitiveness over whose child started walking
first.
9. People have more strongly held views on how to parent than they do
on religion and politics. But whereas most people will hold back from
ramming political and religious views down the throat of acquaintance
and near or actual strangers, any new or expectant mother is considered
fair game for other people to offer unwanted advice. Don't take it personally. The converse is that having a child put me in touch with a great deal of unexpected kindness from all sorts of people.
10. Looking after a newborn isn't complicated. Feeding, sleeping, nappies. But it takes a huge amount of stamina.
And a bit of nerve. This job is relentless. And you never get a lie-in
to recover.
11. It doesn't matter how much you've achieved in your work (unless,
perhaps, you worked with children). Having a baby will test you in ways
you never imagined possible. Feeling totally responsible for a small
baby who is dependent on you for everything, and I mean everything,
is a tall order. For everybody. No matter how competent they were at
their jobs or in other spheres. I didn't understand this until I had my
daughter.
11. I wish I'd known in the early days, when I was so tired I could
hardly remember my own name, how fantastic it is to have a two-year-old
daughter. We can communicate with words! She has an excellent sense of
humour. We have fun together! She has turned from a tiny baby into an
affectionate and gentle little girl with an endearing curiosity about
the world. I'm proud of her.
Women 'unprepared for childbirth'
Many women are going into labour underestimating how painful it can be and overly optimistic they will be able to manage without drugs, a study suggests. Researchers at the University of Newcastle found 'discrepancies' between women's expectations of labour - and their actual experiences. In England, around a quarter of women who give birth end up having an epidural, the spinal analgesia which eliminates the pain of contractions, although many did not plan on having one. "Of course it is important to have hopes for how you would like your labour to be. But those involved in providing ante-natal sessions, while listening to these, need to make sure that women are aware of how things may go and help them construct realistic expectations," says Joanne Lally, who led the research. "The problem with some of the courses out there is that they concentrate so much on doing it naturally that inevitably women feel as though they've done something wrong when those techniques aren't enough for them." The BBC quotes Anna Davidson of the Birth Trauma Association suggesting women should be less competitive with each other about how they give birth. "Ante-natal sessions do need to be more realistic - perhaps including women who have given birth and had very different experiences. But mothers themselves need to stop being so gladiatorial about what they managed to endure. We sometimes seem to forget that while childbirth is natural, women in the past regularly died as a result of it."
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.
Labour of love
I am reading accounts of women giving birth the way I used to eat cashew nuts - unable to stop myself and always wanting more. Ina May Gaskin, Sheila Kitzinger, Kate Mosse, Lesley Regan, Zita West, Janet Balaskas
- their books form tower blocks next to my bed. I look forwards to bed
time the way I used to enjoy Friday nights after a long week at work.
It's my chance to read about how other women coped with pregnancy and
childbirth. This would be fine, were it not for the fact that I cannot
persuade my husband Va-vay to share my enthusiasm for these books.
Don't get me wrong, Va-vay could not be more supportive of my pregnancy
- in a practical, solution-oriented sense. He does lots of shopping,
cooking, cleaning, laundry and childcare. When Beanie woke last night
at 2.30am it was Va-vay who got up and searched for Calpol, then sat
with her until she fell back to sleep. At about 5am. It was Va-vay who
got her up two hours later, got her to nursery, took out the rubbish
and went to work.
In fairness to him, all that activity doesn't leave much time for
reading. But last week I did mention to him that since he's my birth
partner it would be nice if he could read up on labour. At the time he
became rather huffy. Accused me of accusing him of being
'unsupportive."
"No, Va-vay, that's not what I meant," I protested. "I'd just like us
both to be involved in the labour. For us both to know what's going on.
So you understand the emotional side too."
"I know all about emotions, living with you," he said.
I dropped the subject.
Then on Sunday I bought a book on potty training for Beanie and left it
in the bathroom - home to the potty training action. Later that evening
Va-vay came out of the bathroom, quite jubilant, and started quoting
facts from the book at me.
"Do you know what 'lifting' is?" he asked me.
"Errr, no. Why?"
"It's the practice of putting children on the potty last thing at night. Very controversial."
"Right. Well, thank you for letting me know that."
"If you want me to read any of those books on childbirth just leave
them in the bathroom too and I'll take a look at them," he said with a
jaunty air. No doubt he plans to quote salient facts back at me. He is
just not taking this seriously. My private bits are risking mutilation.
There will be pain, blood and gore - however well it goes. I don't want
Ina May and Sheila left in the bathroom - it feels disrespectful.
Bring on our birth preparation workshops. Then I will have him
discussing feelings. In a group. With people he doesn't know. Ah,
vengeance.
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.
Breastfeeding Childcare Daughter Domestic chaos Husband Parenting gurus Toys
Get your hankies out
Tragic story over at Alpha Mummy about a man advertising on-line to give his baby daughter away. A post on Postaroo.com by a man claiming to live in Nashville seeks to give away his baby girl Brenda for free “to your loving home”. The man claims he's been a single parent since losing his wife in an accident and that since a nanny is effectively bringing the little girl up at the moment, she'd be better with a 'proper' family than in his care. Sad, sad, sad - if true. Makes me come over all Mary Poppins and wish I could march over to their place with a magic umbrella, sing and dance on the chimney tops and put things to rights for them. I imagine whoever the US equivalent of health visitors are will have something to say on the subject too. Then again, he might be joking. Not very funny though.
First year of motherhood tests us all
For most new mothers the year after having their first baby turns out to be the loneliest in their lives, according to a survey from Tesco and Mother and Baby magazine. Cut off from families, friends and work colleagues, almost half of new mums feel 'lonely and isolated'. Nine out of ten miss the social life they enjoyed before the baby arrived and around two-thirds 'feel cut off from normal life'. Only around a quarter lived in the same town as their parents.
The Mail quotes Elena Dalrymple, editor of Mother and Baby, saying: "Leaving work and having a baby is a huge physical and emotional adjustment for women. Friends without babies drift off, grandparents live miles away, neighbours are barely on nodding terms, other mums you bump into at the shops aren't your type and the social life you once knew has ground to a halt."
My experience was quite the opposite: I found myself meeting all sorts of new people when Beanie arrived and have been extremely fortunate in making friends with other mums from our ante-natal class and other groups. It's not over-stating things to say they've been a life-line in some difficult times.
Having a child also meant I got to know some of our neighbours. We used to have a little cafe at the end of our street and before it closed would gather there for coffee and a chat, without having to make any arrangement beforehand. We'd just wander in and chat to whoever was there. Having a child has helped me feel part of a community. It's been great.
On the downside, I've inevitably met people with whom I had little in common except having a child at the same time - but that's hardly surprising. Some of the mums-and-babies events have had their excruciating side.
Sample conversation:
- "Which school are you thinking of for Beanie?" Beanie being two or three months old at the time of questioning. Mind you, I am also guilty of this line of questioning. Schooling is an Edinburgh obsession. Perhaps also elsewhere?
- "My little Fionulla's been sleeping through the night since she was ten weeks. We have to wake her in the morning." GRRRRRrrrrrrr.....
- "Surely you feed her 100% organic! Don't you know what goes into pesticides?"
- "Ranulph's such an active little boy. Girls are so much more passive, aren't they?" On hearing this, a little girl called Arabella (nine months) clouted poor Ranulph (her junior, at six months, and not so very active after all) round the ear. Sins of the parents and all that...
- "Was that a shop-bought cake I spotted?"
These days I don't see as much of Ranulph and his doting mum. But many of us mums who had babies around the same time still enjoy meeting up. Perhaps if I hadn't seen this survey published next to a story about how successful, beautiful women can't find boyfriends, (not something I've ever noticed) it wouldn't have made me think of a comment by Julie Burchill that some newspapers can't bear the idea that there might be a woman somewhere in the world who is - terrible thought! - enjoying herself.
Unruly regulations
Here's a book that sounds like required reading for every parent of a young child. Playing it Safe by Alan Pearce, published by those clever people at The Friday Project, is a collection of all the silly health and safety stories from the press. There are gems about taps that limit the temperature in your bath, a ban on palm trees in Torbay (sharp leaves - ouch!) and the school that stopped children playing football in case they got hurt. There are even warnings on the back cover about the book itself - "Beware of paper cuts".
I say 'required reading' for parents of young children because since Beanie arrived 18 months ago I know I could benefit from a reality check on the difference between responsible parenting and crazed health-and-safety lunacy. I'm not proud. I can admit when I need help.
I write this as a mother whose cream sitting room is now accessorised with grey lagging pipes and gaffer tape, strapped to every conceivable surface where Beanie might hurt herself.
Before Beanie arrived I too used to find health and safety silliness amusing, just like this book does. Yes, I was hip once. Really. Oh, how I laughed to myself at childproof locks, 'corner protection devices' and over-protective parents. You know the type, the ones who won't let their kids eat uncooked cake mixture - raw eggs/salmonella, 'Ooh, dangerous!' - and freak out in pregnancy about unpasteurised cheeses and eating a mouthful of peanuts (so risky with potential nut allergies).
Then when Beanie arrived all that changed. The world turned overnight into a dangerous and frightening place. Husband and I began to take seriously some of the things Playing it Safe is mocking. We don't see the funny side in turning down the central water thermostat (if only we could find it) to lower bath water temperature. Our sense of humour (and proportion) has run dry.
On Beanie's first night at home husband and I were in such a state of panic we became alarmed our new wardrobe might emit toxic glue fumes that would harm her.
"She's wheezing!" husband announced in panic about his daughter at about 3.30am. We lost the plot so badly we ended up all sleeping in another room, far from the offending wardrobe and any risk of pollution. It was one of the worst nights of my life, yet was meant to have been one of the best.
In our defence, sleep deprivation did play a part in the madness.
Even so, a copy of Playing It Safe might remind us that it's possible to get through life safely without following every nutty regulation dreamt up by jobs' worth bureacrats. Or inventing ones of our own, for that matter.
I plan to place a copy in the bathroom. Where I often plant reading material I want my husband to see.
Somewhere close to where I imagine the water thermostat might be.
Childcare Domestic chaos Home Kit Missing sanity Perfectionism Safety Books
Baboushka
Definitions of an 'older mum' can vary wildly, not just from one country to another, but from region to region, family to family. What's old in one person's eyes can be positively youthful in someone else's. Thanks again to all who commented on Tuesday's posting and reminded me of this.
Here's another good example. Apparently even today, in Russia, women tend to have babies before the age of 25, and women older than this are categorised by maternity units as 'elderly', or whatever the Russian is for 'over the hill'. Dread to think what they'd make of new mums in their 40s. Stalin probably rounded them up and sent them to the Siberian salt mines in disgrace for pressing their withered ovaries into service one last time. Personally I blame all those matrioshka dolls they have. Such temptation to see if there's another little one waiting to emerge.
I discovered about Russian ideas on maternal age in Oliver James' book Affluenza, in which he explores why so many more people fixate on what they haven't got and seek to be someone they're not.
Not obviously a book where I expected to come across definitions of an 'older' mum. But maternal age is relevant here, insists James. He says he mentions childbearing age in Russia, because Russian women 'do not yet define their worth through paid work'. Many of them do work, but their primary focus remains on being mothers. Hence fewer of the tensions between work and family experienced by so many of their counterparts in Western Europe.
James lays the blame for some of our social ills at the door of poor childcare. His biggest bugbear is putting young children into nurseries before they're ready and even argues that our culture's restless dissatisfaction and obsession with 'having' rather than 'being' is a byproduct of inadequate early child care that makes us insecure and needy.
He objects to mums leaving young children in nurseries or with
childminders, arguing this causes long-term behavioural problems for
the children in question, who find it difficult to form relationships and tend to
base their sense of worth on external factors (exam grades, size and location of
house, trendy gadgets). The problem with 'affluenza' is its many sufferers are never satisfied, no matter how much they achieve or own, leaving them with an unquenchable sense
of emptiness. Since Beanie, aged 17 months, goes to nursery twice a week, you can imagine how I felt when I read that.
Here is James on the evils of day care for young children: "The message from research is clear: under three a child is best off with one person, the same one every day and one who is responsive."
However, he's not unsympathetic to mothers: "The great problem [with being a mother] is the lack of status it attracts and our having been brainwashed into believing that only paid work is admirable. Unfortunately it will be rare that anyone other than your partners will give you the credit you deserve. But in its absence, remember this: however much you were raised to be a prize-hunter, intrinsic pleasure is far better for your emotional well-being. It may not seem so very often, but the authenticity, vivacity and playfulness of small children is hugely rewarding, a much greater boon than any number of promotions or pay rises."
So there we go.
Let's fix it
Social conditioning starts young. I learnt this from a cursory ten minutes last night in front of my new favourite TV channel CBeebies. Women can hardly be surprised their menfolk focus on solutions and practicalities, when young boys are encouraged to model themselves on Bob "Let's fix it" the Builder. Bob is a likeable chap and good sort, but includes machines among his friends. I suspect if the government ever got serious about getting more women into IT, it would probably have to tackle gender issues with Bob's TV show first.
Likeable though he is, I wonder if Bob's storing up long-term trouble in relationships with his focus on machines. Will Bob grow up to be a man who'll listen to and empathise with his partner? Poor Bob. He'll probably get into trouble with her by putting on his hard hat and rushing to fix things, all well-meaning and wanting to please. Then she might complain: "You never listen to me! I feel so unheard." And he'll be left feeling all confused. All down to misguided early conditioning. Tragic, really.
As for us girls, could CBeebies not have found us a better inspiration than Uppsy Daisy, the sweet-natured but feisty heroine of In the Night Garden? Iggle Piggle, her great pal, doesn't look old enough to be allowed out with this young lady. If I was his mum, I'd be practising disapproving looks. Doing clever things with her hair and repeating her own name isn't much of a way for Uppsy Daisy to pass the time. I'd get bored. She just skips around the garden and flicks her hair. Electronically. She doesn't get to go in the lovely boat with Iggle Piggle and his red blanket. Also, I was a teeny bit scared of her in the episode where she found out some naughty person had been bold enough to sleep in the motorised bed that follows her everywhere. As Derek Jacobi intoned in the beautiful voice-over: "Only Uppsy Daisy sleeps in Uppsy Daisy's bed." Well, that's us told.
Then there's the question of the Pontypine family, who live in a semi with net curtains, which they sometimes twitch, by the foot of a large tree. All ten of them. Is it any wonder we suffer this tyranny for large families, given nightly bombardment by the Pontys and their eight children? Last night Beanie and I counted the Ponty progeny in and out of more flowerpots than I care to remember by cold light of day. What's more, all the Ponty babies are of identical height..... meaning Mrs Pontypine must have given birth to octuplets. Now that's pressure.
Obsessed
The night after Kate and Gerry McCann were named as suspects in the disappearance of their own child, I dreamt my duvet had turned into a rippling black cloud that was
engulfing me in a sea of darkness. I woke up dripping with sweat to
hear Beanie next door screaming, and clambered out of bed, pushing away the darkness.
No news story has ever affected me like this before, except maybe the Soham murders. I've become obsessed with this latest twist in the case of a little girl who went missing in mysterious circumstances in Portugal five months ago. Obsessed to the point where I can hardly talk of anything else. To the point where when I wake up it's the first thing I think about.
Since the story broke in May, it's felt like a part of me, of who I am as a parent. I've based so much of my behaviour since the little girl went missing on the assumption she was abducted from their ground-floor Portuguese holiday apartment.
I've hassled Beanie's nursery to tighten security, refused to leave her with anyone except close family and a handful of trusted friends and planned our holiday around being with her all the time. Beanie, like Madeleine, is pretty and blonde; just a couple of years younger than the missing girl. But so many of us parents, if not all of us, identified with the McCanns, with the unspeakable calamity that seemed to have befallen them.
The Madeleine story appeared to embody every parent's worst fears. The stuff of myth and monsters. Now it seems the real truth might be darker still. I hope not. But I get a bad feeling it might be.
Granny footsteps
Here's a little-known advantage to having children later in life. One that's been under my nose for months, but that I've only now noticed. By accident, really. Revelation strikes on the way back from Waitrose. Around tea-time. After we miss our bus. The way these things so often do.
"So what's it like, mum, waiting till 67 to have your first grandchild?" I ask Granny.
The state Granny is in, I half-expect her to say: "Awful. I'm too old and knackered to run after a toddler. Couldn't you have got yourself a decent feller ten years ago?" Not that I in any way feel like this myself, you must understand.
I'm expecting this response because, after all, we've just left the supermarket. The same supermarket where last week she volunteered to go back and pay for a tub of half-fat fromage frais her seventeen-month grandaughter had somehow, a day earlier, managed to half-inch from the shelves, without Granny noticing, and hide in her buggy. When the offending item was discovered, to great consternation, Granny insisted on returning to the scene of the crime to confess and pay up. So important to instill honesty early.....
Granny's finger is bleeding from a fumbled attempt to strap Beanie into her chariot. Flustered fingers, the arched back of protest, a nippy buckle....
She is also carrying two bags of my shopping (let me just say here I am carrying the other two and pushing the buggy, lest you conclude I'm a complete slacker). Her face is lopsided after a trip to the dentist to remove one of her last four remaining teeth. The rest go next week: it's a poignant time. And she is perspiring in the sunshine with her efforts.
But she doesn't say what I expected. She doesn't even hesitate.
"Brrrrrrilliant!"
She becomes more Yorkshire in emphasis. Her ruddy face and terrible teeth crack into a huge smile.
"It would have been just the same if it had happened ten years ago, mind."
Then she stops, corrects herself.
"No, it wouldn't have been as good ten years ago. I wouldn't have been retired and able to spend all this time with you and Beanie."
It's unimaginable. If Granny were still working, Beanie would never have met all the biscuit-buying old ladies in the supermarket who greet her like an old friend. She wouldn't have all the love and attention of her granny, a lady for whom the word 'besotted' barely describes the intensity of her love for Beanie. No getting to rampage around Granny's garden, enjoying the honeysuckle, no entertaining hours spent unloading and loading the contents of Granny's handbag onto the kitchen floor... the thought of Granny unavailable for larks and jollity is grim; grim in the extreme.
As for me, how would I have got through the long days of caring for Beanie on my own? I know lots of women do. But communication can be tough with someone whose only phrases are 'neh, neh, neh", "ping" and "bah-bah". Don't get me wrong; I adore Beanie, I'm so proud of her. She has an excellent sense of fun, she's loving and outgoing. My love for her is huge and overwhelming. I feel I'd give my life for her if need be. She's the most amazing, precious thing ever to happen to me. Sometimes, though, it just lightens the load to have another person there, to keep an eye out for her while I do boring domestic stuff, make her feel special and loved.
Granny has taken to being a grandmother with such glee and good grace, she even consented to read a book I bought her, The Good Granny Guide by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall, accepting it with scarcely more than a grumpy 'hrummph' sound in mild protest that suggested one as experienced as she could have no need of such advice. And she acts on some of the suggestions too. Greater love hath no granny than this; to read something suspiciously close to the self-help books her generation disdains, to accept advice from a stranger on the business of how to be her.
Time and tide
Erica at Littlemummy and British Parent Bloggers has pointed me towards a story revealing the pressure on mums is so great that we have just ten minutes of 'me-time' every day to ourselves, leading researchers to label our generation as 'motor mums'.
Writing as one who can barely bring herself to drive a car, I'm not sure this is the right label for me. I'm also unsure what counts as 'me-time', which in itself could be sad and telling. Loading and unloading the dishwasher? Cleaning the floors? Vacuuming? The Sisyphean task of laundry management, for which I'm beginning to wonder if I need one of those project management qualifications? Blogging?
I did go to lots of Edinburgh Book Festival events, some of them even on my own. That's got to count. But that was okay because I suffered torments of guilt for my frivolous abandon.
According to the people who came up with this research (a washing powder company) mums have so little time to themselves because they spend most of the day keeping their children happy.
I don't mind not having much 'me-time', (though as I write Beanie is screaming for my attention, annoyed to have lost me in the blogosphere, so I'll have to be quick). Perhaps I'm not being strictly honest with myself - there is tension between her needs, or at least her wants, and mine.
But I had to wait until I was 38 to have Beanie. So I had a super-abundance of 'me-time' before she arrived, some of it great, some okay, and some, well, frankly, lonely; spent wondering if or when Mr Right would materialise, if I'd be able to have a baby. Yes, I know: Bridget Jones, eat your heart out.
Maybe being older has meant a bigger adjustment to devoting most of my waking hours (and quite a few of the sleeping ones, too, on occasion) to another person.
But after waiting so long for her, now Beanie's here, I intend to make the most of it.
Learning the lingo
Reading a piece in The Times about neologisms that are creeping into the language, I started to think about some of the mother-and-baby ones they missed from their list, which included gems like blogosphere (hurrah!), biopiracy, embed and podcast.
Here are some newly coined words and phrases for parents that I've encountered recently. Please let me know if you agree or disagree with them, and about others you've stumbled across.
1. Travel system
Or, to give it the full title, a 3-in-1 travel system. A complex arrangement of plastic, wheels, buckles and straps, costing the annual GDP of Moldova, that mysteriously transforms into car seat, forward-facing pram, rear-facing buggy, rocket ship and Formula One racing car. With optional footmuff and air conditioning. Special prizes available for anyone who can fathom the crypic instruction manual while pregnant or recovering from childbirth. (Pictured above is another kind of 'travel system' altogether)
2. 'Bye bye' - as transitive verb. 'To bye bye' meaning 'to dismiss'
Not strictly a neologism, but usage has changed. 'To bye-bye' is to wave away undesired objects. Example: "She bye byed away the broccoli as she was no longer hungry and waved for Petit Filou." When Beanie gets bored with something she says 'bye bye' to indicate I should remove it.
3. Develo-play
Wheeze to persuade parents of young babies that buying certain toys will boost early motor skills. Often billed as 'interactive'. How the human race survived so long without this stuff at its disposal I can hardly begin to imagine. It wasn't like this back in the late 60's when I was a kid. Cue Last of Summer Wine music.
4. Infant stimulation
The big buzz word of childcare. Surely a ruse dreamt up by toy makers' marketing teams, who have realised they can persuade parents to shell out on tonnes of unwanted and largely useless plastic by laying a guilt trip on them and suggesting that without these toys, children's development will be delayed? Baby Einstein provides CDs of classical music suitable for under-ones.
5. Baby gym
A nest of fabric and colour, with toys dangling from above, for newborn babies to explore.
6. Soft play
Perhaps designed to soothe our fears that children might get hurt while engaging in the rough-and-tumble normal to early childhood. Little about this experience is soft.
7. Discovery cards
Remember flash cards? They've had a make-over. This is: "the perfect on-the-go learning activity for babies and toddlers"
8. Teether book
Book with plastic edges for babies to bite and chew on while teething.
9. Pacifier
Dummies are increasingly popular with modern parents. And they have a new name, borrowed from North America. Let's face it, pacifier doesn't have the same negative connotations as dummy.
Anyone know of any others?
L Plates Mum
Reading last week the story of a rise in unjust adoptions, I was taken back to my fears as an L Plates mum when Beanie first arrived and I hadn't a clue how to get from one minute to the next so sat in my flat shaking, wondering what to do next. Terrified the Baby Police (my friendly health visitor) would rumble me, I asked a friend who's a paediatrician if I'd get into trouble for general ineptitude in the matter of caring for a newborn. "No," she told me. "Not unless you're doing drugs or hitting her." Big sigh of relief, since I was guilty of neither crime, though I continued to fear the weekly health clinic weigh-ins when I had to de-robe Beanie and pop her in a set of kitchen scales. It felt like the neo-natal equivalent of annual performance appraisals.
Other News
In the Night Garden
Thanks to Littlemummy, who has a posting on how much her daughter Erin loves this programme, Beanie has discovered In the Night Garden on CBeebies. She's so excited by it, she insists on standing up and swaying furiously while it's on, waving at Iggle Piggle, Uppsy Daisy and their friends in what I take to be ecstasy, though her waves cause me a small pang of heartache, when I think how the characters will never wave back at her and see how unsuspecting she is of this. Her dad and I are pretty taken with In the Night Garden too. Va-vay in particular enjoys repeating the names of the different characters to himself. Sitting eating his veggie dinner a couple of nights ago he said, apropos of nothing in particular: "Tombliboos." Short pause. "Tombliboos." Va-vay, who has a degree in linguistics, is trying to pass his love of In the Night Garden off to me as an interest in the development of infant speech patterns. An interest that has led to him starting to get home earlier from work, in time for the 6.20pm start time. My cup, it runneth over.
Activities Childcare Daughter Dilemmas Domestic chaos Home Husband News
Bad mother
It's a tricky business, being a mum and an individual. This morning I did something bold and daring, something few mums dare to do - I did something for myself. It wasn't easy, but I persevered, despite all my torment and guilt.
My first crime: taking the phone from my daughter so I could make the necessary calls.
An attempt to placate Beanie by offering her the TV remote control fails.
She simply gives me a look that said: "I'm no fool, you know. I see straight through you. I know you're trying to fob me off with some silly pretend phone."
I feel crushed, though no words have been said.
I remember how only an hour or so earlier she kicked her legs in delight when I fetched her out of her cot and beamed her best smile at me, how she laughed and smiled so readily at me when I played peek-a-boo from behind the shower curtain, how she tried to feed me some of her breakfast, even though I had my own toast and marmalade.
But I really, really need the phone to book some tickets for a couple of Festival events this evening.
I make the call and all hell starts to break loose. Not only have I stolen Beanie's favourite toy, but (my second crime) I am ignoring her and I think she might have also sensed my longer-term objective (third crime) of planning an evening out on my own while her dad babysits.
At first I hope she might settle down after a few minutes. Fat chance.
An attempt to buy on-line doesn't work any better and the computer freezes as I go to click 'submit'. By now tears are rolling down Beanie's face, and I feel like the worst mother in the world as I fight my own rising hysteria.
The guilt's almost unbearable and I force myself to remember how when I was pregnant I was so sick with nausea and joint pain I managed to go out roughly four times in the entire nine months. One of those occasions was an ill-fated trip to the Edinburgh Tattoo, which ended in me throwing up outside the Castle under the wary gaze of a soldier armed with a machine gun.
Someone once told me: 'The healthy mother takes time for herself'. Why can't I believe that's true?
Intermittent shrieking has intensified into one long wail, punctuated only with heart-wrending pauses to draw breath. Only ten minutes have passed, but it feels like eternity.
The computer creaks back to life. 'Your order is confirmed' flashes up on screen. Just as this happens a human being speaks to me on the phone. At least, I think it's a human being, though Beanie's screaming so hard it's difficult to be sure.
Then my brain clears and at last I know what to do. I pick up my daughter, cuddle her close to me and listen to her heaving sobs subside.
Will my guilt lend an extra piquancy to the festival events? Or will I sit there kicking myself for being so selfish? Who knows. She's sleeping now, as I write this. When she wakes up I'll give her my undivided attention - all afternoon.
Angst Books Childcare Daughter Edinburgh Festival Guilt Out and about
Why not to have children
Interesting piece in The Times yesterday about a new bestseller by French author Corinne Maier called No Kid: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children. I say 'interesting' advisedly, if only because the story made me wonder how Maier's managing chez elle, where I imagine her two teenage children have presumably had something to say to their mum about breaking this social taboo. I don't know anyone who's dared to admit they don't want kids, so I quite admire Maier for tackling this thorny subject.
Despite its provocative title and tongue-in-cheek content, No Kid actually makes some sensible arguments, with Maier suggesting, for example, that it's a mistake to pity people who do not have children, when many of them have chosen a positive and sensible alternative to becoming parents. Better to label them child-free, rather than childless, she argues. Perhaps it's an issue of semantics, but I couldn't argue with the underlying sentiment.
The book apparently emerged from Maier's concern that no one is doing anything to temper an idealised view of motherhood fostered by two potent forces in her native France: the state, which wants more babies to help pay pensions, and the baby industry. Belonging to a generation of women who despair at their own inadequacy if their babies don't possess the most desirable audio-visual stimulatory toys of the moment, ('stimulation' being one of the current baby industry buzz words) I know what she means.
The book certainly does its best to counter any idealistic views, listing all the things parents have to give up when they have kids:
1. A full night's sleep,
2. A lie-in
3. Deciding to go to the cinema on the spur of the moment
4. Staying out later than midnight (babysitters have to be relieved)
5. Visiting a museum or exhibition (children start playing up).
Then there's the colossal strain on parental relationships to take into account, when having sex has to be dutifully squeezed into those tiny windows when neither partner is too exhausted even to contemplate it, when differences of opinion on the best way to warm a bottle of milk (before adding powder or after?) assume monumental proportions it would take a peace camp to resolve.
This sounds like a clever, sophisticated book; it's already climbed to the top of France's best-seller lists, and its publishers, Michalon, must be hoping it will do the same here in the UK, but even so, I still can't agree with its basic premise. Having a baby is fab.
Parenting gurus Books Childcare Dilemmas Domestic chaos Etiquette Guilt Paradoxes
Strangers
Just back from an unpleasant encounter in a local cafe. An elderly man came across uninvited to our table to talk to Beanie.
"You're a smiling wee baby, aren't you?" he started.
Fine, but then:
"My wife doesn't smile at me like that."
Cue sinking feeling in my stomach, while I simultaneously steeled myself for battle.
"You're very pretty," he told her. Was this really happening? In a coffee shop in broad daylight?
Sure enough, his hand went out to ruffle her hair.
"She's not public property," I told him. "Take your hands off her."
Filthy look in my direction, he slunk off.
Despite my outburst, he still insisted on sitting at the table next to ours, while Granny and I drank our skinny lattes double-quick so we could make our escape.
"Taboo, taboo, taboo," he muttered to his wife as she joined him. Yes, the same one he described so flatteringly earlier.
After a short muffled conversation, his wife turned to me and informed me that they were respectable people who meant no harm. I nodded at her without saying anything. I began to feel guilty for saying anything, wondered if I'd misinterpreted his comments.
But if he'd been as well-meaning as she insisted he was, then wouldn't he have backed off? Possibly even apologised? Or left us alone as I asked.
I find this area so difficult. I believe my daughter has the right to go about in public without strangers touching her. But I hate embarrassing confrontation as much as the next person and I lose confidence in my own judgement.
My difficulty is that I don't want her to grow up seeing the world as a bad, dangerous place, since most people are absolutely great. Beanie is a friendly, outgoing child and I would hate for her to become paranoid and suspicious of everybody she meets.
The truth is I don't really mind when some people pat her on the head, or give her a cuddle.
But there is a tiny minority of people like today's plat du jour at lunchtime.
The guy today just gave me a bad feeling, a creepy-crawly feeling up my spine and sick churning in my stomach, even before the comparison between my 16-month-old daughter and his wife.
How do other parents handle this sort of thing?
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.
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.