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Daughters
Leave our kids alone
Edinburgh Council wants to cut the city's education budget by 9% over the next three years. Our children will suffer if these cuts go ahead. Jobs, facilities, even entire schools are on the line.
Stand up and make your voice heard at a carnival next Tuesday (9 Feb), after school. It runs from 4.15
to 4.45pm outside the City Chambers (pictured) on Edinburgh's High Street, opposite St Giles' Cathedral.
All affected by the cuts are welcome to attend. It'll be a child-friendly event. Please bring your kids along.
Be there
Meet up with groups at local schools after pick-up. Or make your way to the City Chambers on your own. The more of us there, the more attention we'll get.
Organisers are asking people to bring along musical instruments, sports kit, art work and drama costumes. Get your kids in face paints or fancy dress.
Bring banners, have fun
Mine will bring tiaras, wings and wands. Please bring along banners too. The message is "No more cuts".
Make them see sense
Last
year's protests were enough to change Edinburgh Council's decision on the
cuts. This year the plan is to show we are more worried, and even more engaged. Let's get out on the streets next Tuesday. We can make the council see sense.
We might not be strong enough as individuals. Together, we can do it.
Here's an audio briefing on the issues.
Bruntsfield has more details on the carnival here
How the mouse ran up the clock
If the government ever introduces Sats tests for the under-twos - surely only a matter of time - this could be the toy to have at your disposal. Hickory Dickory Clock (sent to us for review by makers Bright Minds, who specialise in toys that are educational and fun) works just like they say in the nursery rhyme. Mice run up and down, powered by infant hands. Youngest daughter Button (15 months) and I have spent hours - yes, literally hours, a tomato sauce even burnt dry one time - sat on the hall floor with this toy. Button enjoys posting the half dozen mice - all different colours - down the chimney. The mice are small, the perfect size for toddlers to grip. Some rattle, other crinkle. Then she opens a door with velcro fastening to retrieve the mice from inside the clock - and stuffs them down the chimney all over again. The transparent clock face means Button can see the mice as they scuttle down. The clock hands move, clicking as they go. So obvious potential there for an older child learning to tell the time. One reason I like this toy is because it should have a longer life span than many I've bought. It comes with a handle, on which there are black and white abacus-style counters that Button examines. On the back is a mirror, now smeary from licking. The nursery rhyme associations give the toy an old-fashioned quality, I sing the verses to Button as we play; it's sturdy and well-made (though in China, like most toys these days). At £29.99, Hickory Dickory Clock is not exactly cheap, but we have already had a lot of pleasure from it and I'm expecting more. Unlike a lot of the stuff littering our flat, (yes, I mean you, Sparkle World Magazine) the toy looks sensible even when not in use. The carriage clock design means it can sit on a table, without looking like something I haven't yet got round to tidying away. If you are looking for a gift for a pre-schooler who's at the loading/unloading stage, this might not be at all a bad idea.
Apple a day
Friday was one of those glorious autumn days when much-discussed hopes of an Indian summer finally materialised, so it seemed only right to indulge in a spot of apple picking in Granny's back garden. After all, the sun was shining and ripe apples were - quite literally - dropping about our feet in what felt like a series of Keatsian moments. It would have been a shame to let all that lovely fruit - and ambience - go to waste.
I began by picking fruit with my hands from the lower branches, being careful, of course, not to get mud on my new sheepskin boots while stretching across flower beds. Then I moved on to a clothes pole, which proved just the thing for knocking fruit down from higher branches. Granny sensibly removed Button to a place of safety as apples tumbled down around us. Not so much clothes pole as mediaeval jousting spear.
In no time at all, we filled up two large plastic bags with the cookers, easy to forget how much bigger they are than eating apples. Granny brought out more bags; we filled those too.
That evening, back home, we feasted on baked apples, stuffed with raisins, honey and cinnamon. Topped off with a tin of custard. I love eating in tune with the seasons, I am the most die-hard townie, but that makes me feel more in harmony with nature.
The next day I gouged, cut, cored, peeled, quartered, sugared and boiled about twenty more apples. Husband Va-vay even made a special trip to the shops to buy more plastic tubs for freezing the apple puree.
Oh, the satisfaction of a job well done. The pleasure of packing away rows of small boxes, each with their freezer-proof label stating date and contents. A proud moment, if I might be allowed to say so.
Granny rang on Sunday evening to enquire about the apples.
"How did you get on?" she asked.
"Pretty well," I said. "I've done a big batch of them."
Then she popped round on Monday morning and looked round the kitchen.
"I thought you said you'd done a big batch of apples," she said.
"I did," I told her, trying not to sound hurt. "I made a tonne of puree and we've been baking them too."
"What are all these, then?" she said, pointing to half a dozen repurposed plant pots, scattered around the kitchen, each one of them packed with apples.
"Those are the rest of them."
"Ah," said Granny. "Don't worry. Plenty of time yet. They used to keep cookers until Christmas."
Button Daughters Edinburgh Food Fun Granny Health Home Out and about
Warrior
A parcel of clothes has arrived from Vertbaudet, the French mail order company that specialises in maternity, baby and kids' clothing. Inside are the most delightful clothes for Beanie (three) and Button (one), handpicked by the firm's publicists. Beanie receives a pinafore in purple needlecord, matching tights and rollneck sweater. She is in ecstasy when she sees her outfit. I too am pleased; and enjoy the novelty of having clothes in our lives that are not pink. With difficulty, I persuade Beanie to wait until after supper to try on her new threads. The dress is perfect; not too trendy, but smart, pretty and well-made; Beanie asks immediately to wear it to nursery. The firm also kindly sends Button several pairs of leggings and tops, and a black sweater (pictured) so sophisticated that it would not look out of place on the Paris Left Bank. At the weekend, Va-vay dresses Button in a pair of new leggings with matching top. Both, like the sweater, are black, though also studded with small white stars. The effect is more sophisticated - and startling - than anything we have ever seen before from the cherubic Button. Dressed in so much black, she looks like a Ninja Warrior Princess, albeit one as yet unable to walk. What's more, the new clothes coincide with another sea-change in Button's life: the move to a new, forward-facing car seat. As Va-vay buckles Button into her turbo-charged ejector seat on Saturday morning he looks at her thoughtfully. "Do you know what you remind me of, Button?" he says. Beanie and I look at him, waiting for an answer. "A fighter pilot." Button grins and coos.
Windy city
The combination of hills and gales make Edinburgh tricky to navigate. I am pushing Button uphill in the Tank (imagine an armoured vehicle, but without the weapons of mass destruction) with one hand. With the other I am holding Beanie's hand. The ferocious wind is slowing progress. "Want cuddle, Mummy," says Beanie. I put the Tank brake on, and pick Beanie up with both hands. The wind is lashing our hair about our faces. As if in slow motion, the wind shifts, catches the buggy containing Button and whips it backwards. The Tank overturns, tipping Button back towards the pavement. My heart jumps out my chest. I thank my lucky stars I remembered to buckle Button into her seat before we set off. She is sprawling at pavement level in her harness but looks unharmed. And unpeturbed. Beanie and I rush to her side, expecting her to scream in distress. She just looks slightly taken aback. But pleased to be getting attention. I right the buggy. Look around - both daughters present and correct. The tight, panicky feeling in my chest subsides. And they call Chicago the Windy City?
On safari
Husband Va-vay leaves tea in my favourite mug
by my bedside, kisses me goodbye and heads out to work. He has even
loaded the dishwasher and set it running before leaving. It's Monday
morning and I am missing him after a weekend of dinners and fun. Some
hours later, the girls and I finally manage to leave the flat. We're having a day
out at the local zoo.
We succeed in boarding a 26 bus, no mean feat given Edinburgh's
draconian transport rules that stipulate drivers allow only one
unfolded buggy on board their buses at any time. I have never known a driver agree
to bend this rule, despite the most piteous pleading imaginable, so suspect they must enforce it on pain of
the most terrible consequences. This
unfolded buggy rule is one of those regulations that sounds
meaningless. But it's more than a technicality. Please just believe me when I say that it can
make a parent's life hell. Our side-by-side double buggy is too
unwieldy to fold, so there have been many times when I've waited in the
Edinburgh rain with the girls for a bus, then been turned away by the
driver because there's already an unfolded buggy on board and have had
to wait for the next bus to come along. Any Edinburgh parent could
recount similar experiences. However, this morning I get lucky, we're
the only buggy at the bus-stop and there are no buggies already on the
bus, that's our green light to get on board and we head out through the
city centre into the suburbs and Edinburgh Zoo, where we clamber aboard something called the Hilltop Safari
(pictured). This bus does daily half-hour tours of the zoo. It's good
for several reasons - Beanie loves the novelty and seeing all the
animals, we find out more about what we're seeing from the guide, plus
it spares Beanie from the climb and me from the effort of pushing the Panzer tank that doubles as their buggy.
The guide makes no comment on the size of the tank, or its
snowplough-shaped prow, but then I reflect that zoo workers must be used to transporting scary wild animals - this is small beer - and he stows it away in the back of the bus. I'm
warming to this experience more by the minute. Edinburgh transport
rules do not apply here - the bus is full of buggies, all in their
full, unfolded glory, and their occupants. We pull away and the guide
begins his spiel. "To your left you'll see the white-naped cranes, one
of the several endangered species you'll find here at the zoo. High up
in that tree you can see one of the females. She is what we call here a
high-demand female." The adults on the bus laugh politely, though of
course the children miss the joke. Unbidden, an image of Va-vay enters
my mind. In it, he is looking at me with quizically raised eyebrows and
an affectionate but distinctly wry smile. Quite suddenly, I no longer
miss him as much as I did.
Activities Buses Daughters Edinburgh Fun Home Husband Out and about Paradoxes
Days of your life
We had a blessing at our local church, St George's West in Edinburgh, on Sunday for Beanie and Button. The church pulled out all the stops for us - printing the order of service sheets in pink, in honour of the girls, placing pink carnations around the hall, presenting both girls with candles and small wooden camels as a reminder of their special day. We took the special christening cake along to the church for a little party afterwards. And sparkling wine too. Everyone there has made us feel so welcome over the last months. The lovely, kind people from the church helped me cut the cake and passed it out to the family and friends who had come to help celebrate, some of them making the journey from the south. It was a wonderful day. Tears came to my eyes when the wonderful minister said the bit: "May God bless you and keep you safe all the days of your life" and I haven't been able to get the phrase "days of your life" out of my head ever since. Younger daughter Button wore my old christening gown, which her Granny had kept safe for so many years. It fitted her perfectly, and I still get a thrill of happiness just thinking about us both wearing the same dress while going through that same rite of passage.
And although it was - officially - the girls who were being blessed on Sunday, as I stood at the altar, holding one daughter in my arms, the other by the hand, I felt blessed too.
Count your blessings
I enjoy ordering cakes - so many enjoyable micro-decisions, such as choosing the colour of icing, agreeing the exact wording that will spiral across the cake's snowy surface, weighing up something called an "optional shimmer effect", deciding type and width of border, debating the merits of square cakes versus round, Victoria sponge or Madeira. It makes me feel in control making decisions like those, (as opposed to the biggies like where to live, how to get back to work, where our children will go to school). The last cake I ordered was for my wedding, a fantastical three-tiered arrangement iced with hearts and flowers that came from a cake-maker in Oxfordshire. Oh, I loved that cake. One of the tiers came to live with us afterwards and remained on top of a kitchen unit for several years, until, eventually, we had to give up on our plan of dusting it down and reviving it with brandy for Beanie's Christening and relinquished it, amid a cloud of dust, to the dustbin. Life at the time was so chaotic I'm not even sure the poor cake had the dignity of shuffling off its mortal coil by going to one of Vavay's favourite refuse bins. However, last week I ordered another special cake (lest you are wondering, a square Victoria sponge, filled with butter cream and jam, complete with optional shimmer effect) as we're about to have a blessing ceremony for our girls. Our great friend Vanessa from Fidra Books and my sister Auntie 'Ona are to be godmothers to Beanie. On Saturday The Godmothers (as Vavay calls Vanessa and 'Ona) and I piled round to Auntie 'Ona's for an evening of wine and fun at a girls-only dinner (our excuse being that we are doing the Moon Walk together) that felt like the feminine equivalent of wetting the baby's head. Childhood friend Zornhau and his lovely wife Kirsty are doing the same for Button. The cake is ordered. Let the festivities begin.
"Eglantine, Eglantine...."
After promising to post at least once a week, I've been most remiss in failing to hit my stated target. Apologies. I'm not yet back at (paid) work but, as many of you would know, life spent looking after two small children is busy (I've written this before, haven't I?) - and also, let's be honest here, more fun than messing about in the blogosphere. Am stealing a few moments to write this as both girls watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks - only the eighteenth such viewing in two weeks. This is a quick round-up post. Beanie has started ballet lessons and I am extremely proud. Va-vay is singing again - mostly snatches from Beanie's DVDs, a sample being "Eglantine, Eglantine, my how you shine!" We have joined Edinburgh Zoo - a year's family membership costs a stiff £110, but since we've already been there three times in just one week, and an individual visit costs close to £30, it's not looking like bad value. Button finds her elder sister vastly entertaining and does everything in her ability to copy Beanie's escapades. Just as soon as Button can get that second arm out she'll be crawling. We have embraced soft play. The dreaded Nipper 360 Out and About buggy - I went for the side-by-side model in the end, not the stacking Phil and Ted version, which might, hard to be sure, but might have been a mistake - is finally proving more biddable. I've overcome my faulty spatial dynamics chip (the same one that gives me problems with parking, though on the plus side this means I have met several nice neighbours who park the car for me) to judge door width and manoeuvre the buggy's vast girth. We trundle over with the beast of burden to the Botanics most days. We still help fuel the brisk trade in babycinos and dinosaur boxes in local cafes. The washing basket has magically acquired the ability to reproduce on its own. Hourly. I am doing a few botanical courses that I'm enjoying. All ordinary stuff - but I'm loving it. Well, okay, maybe not the washing, but the rest of it. I'm going to be helping the Pelvic Partnership, a charity that helps women with pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain, with generating press coverage. On a less positive note, training for June's Moon Walk has faltered, since most evenings I'm good for nothing but supper and bed. All normal, I know. But since I've started collecting sponsorship money for the walk, I have no excuse for this kind of loafing about and plan to start pounding the Edinburgh pavements again at the end of this week. Some kind readers have already generously given money for the cause - many thanks again to you all. The event aims to raise money to support women with breast cancer and fund research into treatment. I know money is tight for lots of people right now, but if anyone can spare a few pounds for this worthy cause it'd be much appreciated. You can donate on-line here.
Two readers each won a copy of Instructions Not Included, Charlotte Moerman's book about bringing up her three small boys. They are Kate Stewart Roper and Avril Davidson.
Okay, and on that note I can hear from the TV that Eglantine, Mr Brown and the children have despatched the Nazis back to Germany with the help of family solidarity, Walt Disney and a few magic spells. My signal to close here.
Activities Daughters Edinburgh Fun Out and about Pelvic girdle pain/SPD
Blog re-think
Regular readers of this blog might have noticed I haven't been posting much of late. Sorry about that. I do have a good excuse. New baby and all that. Many of you being mothers yourselves, there's little need to describe the chaos - joyful chaos, mind, but still chaos - involved in caring for a newborn. But Button is now more than six months old, sleeping through the night, eating three bowls of gloop daily (if you don't count the stuff that goes on her bibs) and beaming at us the rest of the time from her bouncy chair in the kitchen. Life has settled into some kind of tentative new equilibrium. I must admit I feel nervous writing things like that. As if tempting fate to throw everything up in the air again. Really hoping that doesn't happen. Could quite enjoy a nice, calm stretch of time. Facing nothing more momentous than a new route for the nursery run. Or going to this place for morning coffee; instead of this one. Life on a grand scale. But anyway, it's time to revisit the blog. After a longish gap from regular posting, I'm taking the opportunity to rethink what I want this site to be about. Until I work that out, my plan is to post around once a week on random subjects connected with pregnancy and parenting, none of them, it must be said, particularly connected with being a late starter mum, just things I personally happen to find interesting and that could be relevant to mums of all ages. Have done a couple of recent postings on help for pelvic pain in pregnancy, a subject close to my heart since, like an estimated one in five of all pregnant women, I suffered from the condition myself in both my pregnancies, and I'll be posting more on this subject from time to time. Partly to promote awareness of the problem, partly to offer support to women left immobile in their pregnancies by it. On a lighter note, now that I'm back on my feet and getting out and about more, I'll also be writing more about local activities in Edinburgh for toddlers and babies, looking at what's available and providing a few reviews. Last month I started classes in this practice, (pictured) which Button and I are both loving, and at some point in the next couple of weeks I'll be writing more about my experiences there. I've already posted about my adventures in the local park with other neighbourhood mums. There'll be other postings, too, looking at the pros and cons of different activities such as Baby Cinema, playgroups and the like.
Blogging Daughters New baby Out and about Pelvic girdle pain/SPD
Home truths
Not off the hook after all for the home water birth. Not just yet,
anyway. Structural engineer got back in touch to veto bedroom for the
birth pool. But said our smallest room - the hall - looks like it will
take the weight. Husband due to pick up pool, pipes, bleach, colander,
heating pad tomorrow evening. Will buy waterproof torch, anglepoise
lamp, waterproof sheeting at weekend. Scared? Me?
Unsure about giving birth in hallway. Doesn't feel quite right
somehow. Will it be sufficiently private? Can't even remember how much
privacy matters in childbirth. Is it a big issue? When was having
Beanie, midwife got concerned about daughter's heart rate. Army of
green-suited doctors, anaethetists and paediatricians entered through flowery curtain.
"Hello. Where have you all come from?" I asked.
"Did you not see your midwife press the emergency button?" one of them replied.
"Errr... no," I mumbled.
"Don't push," said the midwife, looking up from her notes. "Whatever you do, don't push."
"I'm not pushing!" I said, feeling like small child.
Funny the things you do remember; many of them were wearing clogs. But
seemed fine with that. Not embarrassed, the way I would have been. There were phone calls, booking a place in the resuscitation unit, asking if
theatre was free. No, we'd have to stay put. They brought out the
forceps (I didn't look at that bit). Hauled daughter out of me as fast
as they could. Beanie shrieked with displeasure as she emerged. I was a
bit sore afterwards. Relief on face of clog-clad paediatrician posted
down bottom end to greet Beanie. "Baby can go straight to mum," she
said.
After that drama, I liked idea of giving birth in tranquillity of
own bedroom, where, ahem, this whole project started back in October.
But do not want to become stupid and obstinate about home birth.
Read cautionary tale about woman who broke down in jealous hysteria
when she got text message saying sister-in-law had 'achieved' a home
birth. This woman described herself - no, defined herself - as
HWBA3C. Yes, my thoughts exactly. Stands for 'home water birth after
three Caesareans'. She claimed the Caesareans were violations
'inflicted on her in the name of medical science'.
Spoke to my midwife, whom I trust. Asked if true NHS does unnecessary interventions.
"Look at it from a practical point of view," she said. "The NHS is
careful with its resources. It has to be. There's not a lot of money
available and funding is always being squeezed. Nobody likes to make
things more complicated than they need to be. It's expensive to do a section. It's a question of beds and staff time. We only intervene when
necessary."
Friend whose wife had their second child last
year said: "It's the head count at the end that matters."
Childbirth Daughters Health Health workers Home birth Husband Water birth
Summer holiday
Earlier this week two-year-old daughter went on her first proper trip anywhere without me or her dad. I wanted so much to be cool about this; after all, in the scale of things, the trip wasn't that big a deal. I used to hate feeling smothered by my well-meaning - but over-protective - parents. 
As trips go, this looked pretty innocuous. Beanie's nursery was hiring a bus to take all the children to a seaside town about thirty miles away from where we live. The most hazardous part of the expedition would involve a journey along the nearby motorway in a mini-van, but the driver was the same man who drives all the toddlers to swimming every week. The town in question is a bastion of stone villas, cafes and golf courses, interspersed with hotels that host conferences and weddings.
But this was her first parent-free jaunt - and I couldn't help worrying. (The picture above is of Beanie at the seaside earlier this year - under the watchful gaze of her father.)
The nursery staff were excited about the trip for days beforehand. So much so that voicing my terrors to them seemed a bit rude. They're always kind and cheery with me, Beanie, her granny and her dad. Beanie loves it there - and I wasn't keen to say anything that might rock the boat. Like questioning their ability to look after her for a single day.
"I'm a bit nervous," I finally confessed to one of the nursery assistants last week.
"Why's that? What is it you're worried about," she asked kindly.
I gulped. Might as well be honest "I'm worried you're going to lose her," I replied. I should stop reading the news, all those stories about missing children just frighten me.
She laughed. In a nice way.
"We've got strict staff/child ratios," she said. "And we've been doing this trip for years. It's well organised. We're not going to lose her. We've not lost one yet. Don't worry about that."
I believed what she said. But, even so, spent most of the night beforehand unable to sleep. On the one hand,
I didn't want Beanie to miss out on the fun of a seaside trip. And on the other? I couldn't get over my fear of some mishap. I just didn't know what to do for the best.
Eventually I decided I'd tell the staff she couldn't go - no shame in that.
They'd understand. What with the
pregnancy (five weeks to go, by the way) and everything.
The morning of the expedition dawned. I was hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, pelvic pain, pregnancy weariness and (although I didn't know it at the time) a kidney infection. My husband brought me a cup of tea in bed.
"So, have you made your mind up?" he asked me. "Is she going or not? You'll need to ring nursery and let them know."
I rang nursery, where the woman who answered the phone sounded giddy and excited, making me feel churlish not to enter into the spirit of things.
"If Beanie doesn't go on the trip, will there be anyone left in the nursery to look after her?" I asked.
"No, I'm sorry, there won't be. We're closing the nursery until 4.30pm," she said.
"Well, in that case," I started, trying to keep panic out of my voice, thinking of the work deadlines stacking up ahead of me, the midwives' advice to go to hospital for an
emergency check-up, the stomach pains that could be signs of early labour (but thankfully weren't). "Well, in that case," I repeated. "I guess she'd better go."
I'd love to say I let Beanie go because I got over my nerves. But, truth be told, in the end, it was expediency that won out.
When she returned later that day, with sand in her shoes, socks and trousers, tired and happy, she looked puzzled as to why I hugged her so tightly.
Under the wire
Six weeks until baby due date. Yesterday escaped flat for first time in days. Took daughter and her Granny out for lunch (tapas). Even managed to walk there and back, helped by orthopaedic truss under bump and lessons in this technique. In restaurant, Granny and I leapt back in horror at sight of enormous spider crab sat on counter. Waving its claws at us. Horrified eye meets. Two-year-old daughter unpeturbed.
Hoisted daughter into high chair, grappled with chair straps, slumped down, ordered usual tapas favourites. Spanish waiter made fuss of us all. Rush of pleasure at being back in world. Daughter ordered an apple juice. Looked around room. Surveyed the scene. Pronounced: "Like it."
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.
Bed-mates and bolsters
For the last week or so my husband and I have been sharing our bed with
someone called Horace. With Horace's help, I can get
comfortable enough to doze for a few hours at a time. Horace props up
my bump, lessens my back pain and corrects my posture. When I talk to him, he really seems to listen. Never interrupts. And he's so
bendy - must be all that polystyrene foam for innards.
Unfortunately, Va-vay is
not supportive about our extra bed-mate. I have caught him shooting
dark, jealous looks at my side of the bed as Horace and I snuggle up
together.
"I might investigate a new air bed," he said the other night, in an airy but
long-suffering way. "So I can sleep somewhere else and let you have the
bed to yourselves."
"That's a good idea," I snipe back. "We could bring over the Zed-bed from my mum's."
"Have you ever slept on that Zed-bed?" he replied, as if I'd reminded him of childhood bullying, redundancy or first love.
"When you first came to stay with my parents you slept on the Zed-bed and you never said a thing about it!" I accused him.
"I was being polite."
"You were being repressed. If it was so bad you should have said something."
"Have you seen how much of the bed I have left to sleep on?" he says, indicating with his hands a space the width of a shopping bag.
Normally I would take pride in keeping this squabble up ages longer. But pregnancy has softened me.
"I don't want you to sleep elsewhere," I confess. "I like sharing a bed with you. That's why I married you."
"Oh, come here," he says.
"Err.... I would, but I can't," I say, pointing to 28-weeks-pregnant bump and Horace. "You'll have to come here."
In my last pregnancy I was nearly crippled with pelvic pain.
This time round the pain is shaping up to be just as bad - but I've
been better at getting help in managing it. An obstetric physio at our
local hospital has taught me techniques for staying
mobile - mostly involving breathing (let's face it, breathing always
helps) and stomach-tightening.
Next week she is going to fit me with
something called an orthopaedic belt to hold in all the ligaments
loosened by pregnancy hormones. I fear the belt might do nothing to
boost marital relations but I'm - almost - beyond caring. And Horace won't mind.
Childbirth Daughters Home Husband New baby Pregnancy Pelvic girdle pain/SPD
Chasing butterflies
At the weekend I took Beanie to a place called Butterfly World,
on the outskirts of Edinburgh, the city where we live. She has been
talking about it ever since. Oh, that feeling of being able to do
something that made her happy. Wonderful. Butterflies (Beanie calls
them 'flies') fluttered overhead in an old greenhouse converted into a
sort of tropical paradise. Followed us, pirouetted, swooped out of nowhere. Beanie stumbled towards them, hands held out in greeting. Trays of oranges hung from the ceiling. Butterfly nosh?
We threw money in a wishing well, inspected carp, goldfish and a
catfish, eyed up iguanas, looked at terrapins and had a quick look at the reptile and creepy crawly section in a room at the back.
Being there made my skin crawl. But Beanie and I both loved Butterfly World.
Something alarmed me, though, as I bought my ticket. Sellotaped to the
counter was an advert. It read: "For sale. A large python. £40 ono.
Friendly and easy to manage."
Something in the air
One of the worst things about being an 'older' mum is the humiliation
of being disabused of this fantasy that I am competent at the business
of life. Having a daughter at the age of 38 has pushed me in new and
uncomfortable directions. Take driving, for example. Before Beanie
arrived I didn't drive. I never needed a car and I never much fancied
having one. It didn't matter that I was a bad driver.
Now I need wheels to ferry Beanie around town. The problem is that I am
still rubbish at driving. Actually, no, that's unfair, I'm being too hard on myself. I'm a reasonably good
driver, though a bit slow. It's parking that's the problem. On the
way home the other day I attempted to find a parking space in our street.
No luck. So Beanie and I drove round in circles until I spied a small
space in a lane next to a large stone wall. I tried and tried and tried
and tried and tried and tried to park. Into reverse. Cue grinding of
machinery. Back into first. Edge forward a few inches. Grind the gear
back back down into reverse. And so on. The air stank of some vile
mechanical malfunction.
As I craned my neck back to see where I was reversing I met Beanie's
alarmed gaze. "Don't worry, Beanie, Mummy knows what she's doing," I
lied. She wasn't fooled. I wedged the car so close to the wall the wing
mirror was brushing against lichen and stone. I could feel the sweat
trickling down my arms. Then a man appeared at my window. He seemed
like a good guy, so I wound down the window. "Are you okay?" he asked.
"Can I help?" You know that way when you've been holding tears at bay
and a moment of unexpected kindness makes them flood out? Well, I
started to cry. "I can't do this," I said. "Are you trying to park or
to get out?" he asked. "To park," I snuffled, as I noticed for the
first time a group of people standing around watching my parking, looks
of concern on their faces. I was half in and half out but couldn't move either way. "That's my car behind you," he said, and I
thought, "Oh my God, I really hope I haven't scratched it." He must have
seen the look on my face because he said: "No, don't worry, it's fine.
Would you like me to move my car? Would that make it easier?" So he
moved his car, but somehow by then I'd lost all confidence so I still
couldn't park. Then the man said: "Would you like me to park your car
for you?" And I said "Yes, please. Would you mind? Thank you". As he
got in the car it crossed my mind this might be some ploy to steal
Beanie from me and I said: "You won't drive off with my daughter, will
you?" He said: "Oh my goodness, I hadn't realised you had a baby in the
back." But he came across as a nice, trustworthy chap, and the
onlookers appeared to know him, so I decided it was okay to let him
park the car.
I got out and chatted to a couple of other people who'd come out of
their houses. In different circumstances it would have been quite nice
to meet the neighbours, but my legs were still shaky and I felt at a
bit of a disadvantage after the fiasco they'd just witnessed. "Quite a
smell of clutch fluid, isn't there?" said one, conversationally. "Is the clutch slipping?" I
wouldn't even have known that was the smell and didn't know what he meant by 'clutch slipping' but nodded and rolled my
eyes. I haven't felt that helpless and girly since I was a teenager. Beanie looked completely unpeturbed in her throne in the back as
the neighbour reversed out with her. She looked less hassled with him
than when I was trying to park, in fact. And the job was done in a
couple of minutes. The next day, though, when I went back to check on
the car there was still a smell of clutch fluid in the air.
Weekend, or, what if you die?
Shedworking, one of my favourite sites, is running a theatre review I wrote for them about a production of Walden, a one-man show from Magnetic North about a man who flees civilisation to live in isolation in a hut in the woods. It was great fun going to the theatre (they even gave me a complimentary press ticket, something I haven't enjoyed in years) and because I went on my own I chatted to other people in the audience afterwards. Nothing to do with late parenting, but a mini-highlight of the weekend.
Somewhat closer to home, Va-vay, Beanie and I went to our local Home Birth Support Group at the
weekend. Beanie was entranced when a pregnant lady stuck her tongue out
at her (in a friendly way) - and revealed a rather splendid tongue
piercing. I knew I needed the Support Group after I told a friend last
week I was planning a home birth and he said: "What if you die?" Huh. It's one thing for me to criticise the NHS, but I don't like it when other people do. The Support
Group nodded and smiled when I recounted all this, before bursting into tears, and said they hear this kind of thing a lot. They said that
statistically home births are safer than hospitals. That people who are
negative about you having a home birth are often just worried for you.
Beanie beamed as I sat cross-legged on the floor, weeping, then made
friends with a small boy wearing a T-Shirt saying "Born at Home". Although not yet two years old herself, Beanie loves pointing out "babies" she sees out and about, saying the word "baby" in great excitement, as if the child in question belongs to a different generation from herself. When in fact there's an age gap of twelve months between them. She
spent the rest of the event cuddling the "baby". His mum was there too. Alive and
well.
Other News
A friend is organising a fertility afternoon at the Aditi Yoga Centre
in Edinburgh on Sunday 2 March from two till five. This is a chance to
hear expert speakers on how to improve the chances of becoming
pregnant, maintaining a healthy pregnancy and much more. Topics
covered include acupuncture, chinese herbal medicine, homeopathy, mind
and the body, natural ovulatory cycle, nutrition and yoga. Open to
all. Donation £5 per person.
Activities Angst Childbirth Daughters Dilemmas Friends Fun Health Home birth Out and about Pregnancy
Take to the hills
Edinburgh residents reading this will know about the beauty
of the Pentland Hills that surround the city to the south, guarding it in a semi-circle of heather, hill, reservoir and woodland that gives
views stretching over the town to the sea beyond. It is easy to forget
Edinburgh is a coastal town, coming to a halt at the water's edge,
perhaps because the weather does so little to encourage a trip to the
seaside. Yet out on the hills, the city looks like an island or peninsula, lapped by water.
Before we bought a car earlier this year, we had limited means of
getting out to the hills. On one occasion we resorted to taking a taxi to the start
of a walk, dressed in walking boots, fleeces and gaiters (buses didn't go there). It reminded
me of a journalist who boasted he had to take a taxi to the front line
of a war somewhere in Africa. I forget where exactly. Hope he was still able to claim on expenses.
Now we have the noble beast, we drove out
to Harlaw Reservoir under our own steam. I still find driving stressful, almost a year after buying the car, but there doesn't seem much alternative if we're to go anywhere interesting.
We waited inside the car until all
the dogs barking and milling about the carpark had moved on. I'm useless with dogs. Beanie used to love them; now I fear I've passed my phobias onto her. She gets nervous too.
Beanie travelled in a
backpack carried by her father. We managed a full circuit of the
reservoir, overseen by the charred hulk of Black Hill (501m), whose blackened slopes are
the result of 'muirburn'.
We spotted greylag and pink-footed geese, that roost in the Pentlands in winter-time (living in Greenland the rest of the year, greylag geese see Edinburgh as the equivalent of a winter holiday in the Caribbean or Florida), sheep, horses and some cows. Beanie greeted them all, except the geese, with the word: 'bear'.
On our return to the car we realised we'd lost one of Beanie's shoes somewhere on our walk. If anyone reading this spots a girl's shoe (size 4.5) out by Harlaw reservoir, please drop me a line.
See no weevil
Va-vay has replaced the hallogen bulbs in the kitchen. Following his discovery of an oven-cleaning implement (that looks like a Stanley knife), the last remains of blackened plum jam have disappeared from the new induction hob. Nightly, I get down on my hands and knees to wash and scrub the kitchen's wooden floor. I clean surfaces, sponge away dirt, wipe down the bin, sweep away crumbs, hoover up stray hairs and bin half-eaten and soggy rice cakes. As I do so, I wonder how dirt can regenerate so fast, whether any of the food I prepare ever actually goes in Beanie's stomach, and how it can be that so much hair remains attached to my head, when so much is in front of me on the floor.
On Saturday evening, Va-vay was looking for flour to make the white sauce for a mushroom and courgette pasta bake. He prised open the larder door, whose handle fell off some months ago, releasing an aroma of stale curry spices into the kitchen, fished around for a bag of flour, extracted it, opened it, looked inside, looked again and jumped back in horror. Weevils. Weevils have invaded our larder cupboard. They were eating their way through lentils, porridge oats, bread-making flour, plain flour, self-raising flour, rice, split peas, sunflower seeds, cardamon pods, turmeric, mild curry powder, nutmeg, polenta, rosemary, icing sugar, yeast and assorted Italian Herbs.
By the time Va-vay bagged up the weevil-infested comestibles, took them
round to his favourite refuse bins ('I wanted to give them a decent
send-off'), swabbed down the decks and got to the corner shop for more flour, we ate late on
Saturday night.
The larder no longer smells of stale curry spices. Its corner of the kitchen has the antiseptic, fear-inducing smell of a hospital corridor. Its shelves are empty, save for a couple of jars of jam I bought on honeymoon more than two years ago, the instructions to the microwave and a tube of tomato puree. All of which we judged impregnable by weevil.
For any of you interested, I'm on BBC Radio Scotland's Book Cafe this lunchtime at about 1.15 - 1.30pm, taking part in a discussion about blogs-to-books. Other slated participants include Simon Trewin, the literary agent of Petite Anglaise, one of my favourite blogs. Technical know-how permitting, (and provided I don't come away sounding a complete fool) Va-vay is planning to download the discussion onto this site in the next couple of days. So keep an eye or ear out for that if you're interested in turning blogs into books.
Kick in the head
Beanie's teething problems continue unabated, causing her to wake in the night and refuse to settle.
About 5.50am she signalled to her father in no uncertain terms that her morning had started.
"I was woken up this morning with a kick in the head," said Va-vay later, rather plaintively.
If I hadn't suspected he was playing for effect, I might have been more sympathetic.
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 Daughters Domestic chaos Husband Parenting gurus Toys
Oops, let's do it again
Lynne Spears, mother of beleaguered pop princess Britney, is to write a book about 'her role as a showbiz family matriarch' Bit cheeky, when she and Britney weren't speaking to each other until recently. But hey, that's showbiz, or at least my limited experience of it.
Lynne's publisher specialises in Christian books, which could make it tricky when dealing with some aspects of Britney's life. But, more importantly, the news has made me wonder if I haven't missed a trick or two with Beanie's granny.
After all, if Lynne can turn out 'Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World' and there's a new publishing trend for Granny Memoirs, perhaps Beanie's granny could be prised away from her Sudoko and gently encouraged to write a book. Okay, we're not very glamorous or well-known but we could work round that, surely?
And, okay, there might be less rock 'n' roll here than in the Spears household (well, none at all) but I can see it now: "The Biscuit Memoirs: A Real Story of Confectionery and Crime in the Food Aisle at Waitrose."
There might be some shocking revelations: how Granny allows Beanie to play inside the dishwasher, in defiance of parental edicts on the subject. How she's trained Beanie to empty out the contents of every handbag within fifty paces. How the two of them have bonded over their dental problems - while Granny's new false teeth are giving her trouble, Beanie's new (real) incisors are having difficulty coming in. Oh, the possibilities are endless....
Sharing a Shell
7pm: Before putting Beanie to bed, I read to her about the adventures of Blob, Crab and Brush - "three friends, sharing a shell". She listens with her customary eager, almost rapt attention, while fingering the glittery pictures and pointing at the seagulls wheeling overhead. I close the book and lower Beanie gently into her cot.
"Wwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh."
She allows herself the briefest of pauses.
"Wwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh."
To our dismay, she throws Mr Bear overboard in fury. When she does this, we know we're in real trouble. For where Mr Bear goes, Beanie goes too. Or, at least, in this case, would like to go.
Va-vay and I exchange looks of horror.
"She's not normally like this," I say despairingly, telling him what he already knows.
"What do you suggest we do?" he asks, putting down his briefcase for the first time since he got through the door from work and looking, momentarily, defeated.
"Leave her for a bit? See if she settles?"
"Into what?"
A warning that would have them running for the air-raid shelters in seconds is 'what'. A sonic assault on our ear-drums that would have Health and Safety round in a trice if it happened in the workplace. Try as I might, I feel a familiar mixture of sorrow, love, sympathy - and irritation.
"Better go and change out of my work clothes," says Va-vay, in a tone of forced jollity that alerts me to how tired and strained he really is.
At Beanie HQ the bombs could be dropping any minute. National emergency. Briefly, I wonder what the neighbours must think.
Prepare supper while trying not to listen to daughter-turned-police-siren wailing.
Take it in turns to ask each other: "Is it wrong to leave her to cry like this?"
Abandon plan to 'let her settle'. Impulsively climb into Beanie's cot to help her sleep. She is delighted at this unusual turn of events. But refuses to settle. After her eyes close, admittedly against her will, I attempt to clamber out again, waking her in the process. Drat. Admit temporary defeat and regroup in kitchen, carrying through a triumphant and flushed Beanie in her sleep bag.
Administer milk, calpol and teething gel.
9pm: Grinning with delight, Beanie, propped up between her parents, settles down to watch Spooks. Shield her eyes from scenes of torture, shooting, kidnap and bubonic plague. It doesn't leave much left over. Beanie remains scarily indifferent throughout, except for shooting the odd delighted glance towards me and Va-vay.
"Are you a little scamp?" Va-vay asks her fondly.
10pm: Grumbling but no longer shrieking, even Beanie has to concede the time has come to sleep. With little more than a token protest, for even an 18-month-old has her pride to consider, she puts her thumb in her mouth, clutches Mr Bear to her and curls up on her front for some long-overdue kip.
Midnight: Did I mention sleep? Between now and 2am Va-vay and I try, in no particular order: leaving her magic lantern on for reassurance/rocking/cuddling her/reading to her/sitting by her cot/singing in a way that put me in mind of this.
She falls asleep again. When she wakes later, somewhere in the chaos of the night, we skip all the above steps and bring her into bed with us. She quietens immediately, and seems happy to be sharing with us. Or maybe it's the long night that has finally worn her out. Whatever it is, after a brief, but unedifying struggle between me and Va-vay over the duvet, we all - finally - drift off to sleep. As I fall into sleep, comfortably aware of the sound of her breathing next to me, I hear Va-vay's deep voice saying from the other side of the bed:
"Three friends, sharing a shell."
Nobody stirs. Peace, at last.
Dog days
On holiday it seemed that Beanie greeted every slavering cur, half-rabid wolf and barking hound like long-lost friends, crying out 'dug' to them, oblivious to my maternal fears. 'Dug' is a recent addition to her vocabulary, a popular one, but Avignon pavements are narrow; its dogs can be unpredictable.
Imagine, then, her delight when, on a train journey home one day, we happened on a tiny 'dug' nestling in a woman's handbag. Combining as it did two of her greatest loves - 'dugs' and handbags - Beanie could not have been more entranced.
"Dug! Dug! Dug!" she pointed, desperate to ensure that I, too, had noticed this two-for-one miracle, this holy grail of travel accessories, the benchmark by which all other bags will now be judged. "Dug! Dug! Dug!"
"Yes, Beanie. Dog," I told her, a trifle pedantically, it must be confessed, but loving her innocent enthusiasm.
"Can she touch the dog?" I asked its owner in French.
"Ah, no, he has sharp teeth. Likes to bite." The woman made biting gestures.
"Beanie," I whispered to her "The little dog might bite. We'll just look at him for now."
She listened to what I said, clambered back up on my lap and watched the puppy from afar, interjecting every so often: 'dug!' - and then again - 'dug!' until both she and the dog fell asleep.
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.
Angst Books Breastfeeding Daughters Edinburgh Etiquette Older mother Work vs mothering
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.
Unfit for human consumption
This posting was meant to be all about a trip Beanie and I made yesterday to visit a local attraction that opens to the public only a handful of times every year. This local well features some fine mosaics, statues and columns and we had a good visit to its dank interior, despite the notice warning the water was 'unfit for human consumption'. Someone had thought to put tea lights around the pump, which gave the well an atmospheric, almost religious feel. Beanie made friends with a Scots terrier called Toby.
I say 'meant to be' because shortly after we got home Beanie was ferrying some toys from a basket in the window over to me when she tripped on a cushion, fell and cut open her forehead on the coffee table, blood spurting everywhere. She looked so indignant and shocked, as much as anything else, it broke my heart. It happened in an instant, as we heard people warning these things would do.
Luckily, there's not been too much damage. She calmed down quite quickly before I drove her to hospital, where they saw her almost immediately and patched her up. They don't think there'll be much of a scar, and with luck the cut will heal in a few days. Seeing some of the other children there and the state they were in, I began to wonder if I was making too much of a fuss, since I was crying more than Beanie by this point. Beanie's Grandad came over to lend moral support, since Granny was out on the golf course, in a fight-to-the-death with other members of the Veteran Ladies team, and Va-vay was away.
Talk about stable doors/bolting horses, but last night I taped some old towels to the table corners to prevent a repeat. As for Beanie, she has recovered her old jubilance and now looks quite the proper member of a pirate crew, sporting a bandage over her left eye, which she scratches at from time to time.
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 Daughters 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 Daughters Edinburgh Festival Guilt Out and about
The way to a girl's heart
The Bean remains in the smash-and-grab phase of her infancy, an uncompromising stage in which she displays no inhibitions whatsoever about seizing other people's belongings, but hangs onto her own with grim determination. Since I'd like her to grow up with at least a few friends, we're working on those social skills, and so while browsing in the signing tent at the Edinburgh International Book Festival yesterday (oh, okay, I admit it, hanging around to sneak glances at Richard Dawkins who was there signing copies of his latest book The God Delusion), I found this lovely book by Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo, called Sharing a Shell. 
I've bought Sharing a Shell in the hope it will help teach Beanie about sharing and friendship, since the book is a gentle parable (of sorts) about how we relate to other people, but now I'm wondering if we can learn that sort of thing from a book, whether in fact these are life lessons we have to figure out for ourselves. But I'm such a believer in books' abilities to have transformational effects on our lives I couldn't resist purchasing a copy.
Watching our sixteen-month-old children playing last week in a walled garden at an Edinburgh art gallery, and laughing kindly at my attempts to rein in Beanie's exuberant behaviour, a friend commented to me that children really learn mostly by example, while telling them what to do achieves little. When I look back at my own childhood, that's certainly true, and I think (though others may disagree) that children are acutely sensitive to parental hypocrisy (saying one thing, doing another). Oh dear, in that case I'd better behave myself then and set a good example to my daughter of sharing and friendship.
Still, I don't think Sharing a Shell will prove a bad purchase, if only because, as the cover rightly publicises, it has "Glitter on every page". Now only rarely, very rarely, can that be a bad thing, and Beanie absolutely loves it. Indeed she was so enthralled with her new acquisition yesterday afternoon that she spent about ten uninterrupted minutes fingering the glitter with rapt attention, pausing only to scream at me in indignation when the book fell out of her buggy.
Daughters Etiquette Friends Books Edinburgh Festival Out and about
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?
Over the sea
I'm still getting the hang of blogging, so might be wrong about this. If so, please let me know. But I get the impression postings about things that go less well in my life are more interesting than happy rhapsodies about the Scottish countryside, flora, fauna and trees, or similar. Even I can only take so much of the "Hello Trees!" type of posting.
I would drop my cheerier postings altogether but I like to let you know about the happy side of my life. You see, I don't want to give the wrong impression that my life is one long misery-fest, because nothing could be further from the truth. So I try to include some more upbeat postings about the nice things that happen. But the nice postings can be, well, let's be honest, a teeny bit dull.
Perhaps all writing thrives on conflict, including blogging, and there ain't enough of that in 'my family day out' on the hills. But one of the several reasons why I blog - Gather material for a book on parenting! Release the frustrated journalist in me! - is to create a record of these early years with the Bean.
Before I blogged I kept a diary, now dusty and neglected, in which I recorded her milestones and stories of our days together. Mother at Large is the on-line equivalent. So I want her to see we had fun together, in amongst everything else.
Though speaking of family days out, there's one coming up next week that could be filled with conflict aplenty. Granny, Bean and I are planning to try and take the new hovercraft across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh to Fife (the Firth of Forth is pictured above) one day next week. For people who don't know Scotland that well, the Forth is a narrow strip of sea that runs inland from the North Sea across a good chunk of central Scotland.
Granny's especially keen because OAPs get on board free. Provided, that is, the grandchild of the OAP in question hasn't ransacked their handbag and lost their free bus pass.
I say 'try' to take the hovercraft because the Edinburgh papers are full of accounts of long queues for this service, with bust-ups between other OAPs who've had the same idea as Granny and have been waiting hours to get aboard.
The OAPs won't be the only ones to get tetchy at delays. Beanie will tolerate ten-minute waits max, before she goes nuclear, so if the queues are still as bad next week we'll have to turn back.
I'm not even sure what there is to do in Kirkcaldy, assuming we manage to get there.
The town's dubious claim to fame in my family is as the erstwhile home of my father's aunt - a redoubtable old lady who made her disapproval of my mother quite plain. According to Granny (who is from Yorkshire) this aunt said to my father at their engagement party: "Och! Could you not have found yourself a nice Scottish girl?" We didn't see much of this aunt - transport links to Fife and her range of social pleasantries being what they were.
I'll keep you posted on how we get on next week.
Daughters Dilemmas Edinburgh Etiquette Granny Out and about Domestic chaos Fun
First-timer
Thanks to everyone who visited and commented on yesterday's posting on being an older first-time mum. You all cheered me up no end. So much so, I've climbed out of the slough of self-pity and hardly worried about withered ovaries or early menopause at all today. Okay, I jumped ahead a few decades or so. I admit it. It's just my 40th is coming up in a few months and there's nothing like a landmark birthday to make a person jittery...
There are big upsides to being a little bit older:
1. The Bean doesn't know she got landed with a late-starter. She doesn't care what age I am. As long as I'm not late in getting that milk ready.
2. After her first visit to our home, the health visitor never again asked if The Bean was "assisted" in her creation. For the record, she wasn't.
3. I've done the painful business of growing-up, even if it lasted well into my early 30s, so can now concentrate on helping someone else negotiate that.
4. The health visitor said I must be "very selective" to have waited until I was 37 to settle down.
5. Lighter sleep patterns = good for night-time feeds.
6. Healthier bank balance = less stress. More time at home.
7. Playing with The Bean makes me feel younger. It's fun!
8. After spending so many years wanting to be a mum, I don't mind the hard graft side of parenting too much. But the same is true of many mums... I read in people's blogs - certainly all the ones in my blogroll and others besides - of so much selfless hard work for their children, that they do without complaining or expecting anything much in return.
9. I wish I could add greater life experience to the list.
10. A better sense of who I am. Makes it easier to resist the latest fads in parenting.
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.
Naughty corner
Flying daleks hold few terrors for me nowadays. The only television
that really scares me concentrates on small children with behavioural
issues. Not many shows are more alarming for me than those featuring a 'naughty corner'. Luckily, The Bean is only 15 months old and, so far, reassuringly normal in her behaviour. When I see the 'corner' on telly I fear it as the possible shape of Things to Come.
The sight of Supernanny riding round America from one maladjusted mansion to the next in that ridiculous black cab of hers makes me worry that one day I might end up on one of these programmes. Obviously sans the ranch-style mansion. Or any decent parking for the cab. Plus up here people might try and hire it. Instead of marvel at it as a foreign novelty, as they properly ought. But with an uncontrollable child. While upstairs I act contrite as Supernanny tells me where I've gone wrong.
Watching these programmes I fear I'll appear on them one day, a husk, defeated by my own defective parenting. Sent to the parental naughty corner that is humiliation on national television. And made to stay there for a minute of every year of my age. Which in my case would mean nearly 40 minutes of advice from Mary Poppins.
Programmes like Supernanny make me fear that unless I get this parenting business absolutely right, then in
a couple of years The Bean might win some kind of infant ASBO the government will have been forced to introduce, to combat the unruly pre-schoolers ruling the domestic roost. Perhaps called a BASBO. There, I knew I couldn't write anything about parenting without resorting to acronyms.
The ASBO for pre-school kids would be a kind of souped-up, institutional 'naughty corner'. Bans on hoods on the cardigans their grannies knitted. A large pacifier sign stamped on the front door to indicate naughtiness within. Community toddles to keep them from hanging round softplays with too much time on their hands. Curfews on drinking babycinos after certain hours. I can't see it
catching on as a badge of honour in NCT circles.
When Supernanny US came on the other week, my husband did his utmost to make me switch channels, as he knows my fears well. I didn't listen to him and watched a restaurant owner and his wife meekly receive advice on the many errors of their slack parenting ways.
The damage was done. The next day I was a little bit stricter with The Bean than I'd normally be, thinking I'd better set some limits before Jo Frost's taxi arrived at the door. She was playing on the floor in the kitchen, while I tidied up. Sensing my attention was elsewhere, she made a beeline for a kitchen cupboard containing lots of precious china that we haven't got round to child-proofing yet. When we moved into our flat, The Bean hadn't arrived. So I didn't know back then it was a stupid idea to put china in cupboards at ground level when you have a child.
Just so you know I am not a complete spoilsport, I do allow her to put things in the washing machine. These range from tea-towels to toy bricks and nappy cream. She then enjoys unloading them, in a methodical fashion, before reloading them in the barrel of the washing machine. But I try to keep her away from cupboards where she could break the contents, or hurt herself.
"NO!" I thundered at her, louder than I normally would. "We do NOT go in that cupboard." All credit to her, she smiled up at me, quite unmoved, and went back to sucking on the packet of her Baby Bonjela teething gel. Her mother might deserve some time on the naughty corner. But she's doing just fine.
Food, food, glorious food
My friend and fellow Edinburgh blogger Erica from Littlemummy, one of my favourite parenting sites, has tagged me in a food meme. Yum, yum, yum! Lots of lovely food in my tummy! So has dear DJ Kirkby from Exquisite Dreams (and Random Ramblings from an Anxious Mind) and Adventures of a Wild Hippie Child.
Ladies, are you trying to tell me something?!!! Well, okay, I confess, you've got it right. I am fond of my nosh. Though I'm not that large..... actually I'm normal-sized (but tall).
The Hippie Child blog, by the way, is excerpts from DJ's fascinating and colourful novel in progress about her bohemian childhood. Anybody who liked Esther Freud's enchanting child's-eye view novel Hideous Kinky
DJ's already changed the food meme rules, so I'm feel less bad that I'm going to write about one of my favourite eating places, as well as restaurants (as requested in the original meme). I didn't even know what a meme was until a few days ago. Oh, the shame of it. Here goes, then.
1. Hilltops (like those in the picture!)
Even the grottiest cheese sandwich tastes like manna from heaven if you've had to climb a hill before eating it. Same for a thermos of tea. Warming, refreshing, comforting in the great outdoors. Ordinary in most other places.
I take the time to appreciate food more when I've had to carry it on my back up a gradient all morning. And I've worked up an appetite. The last mangled sandwich I'd throw away at home becomes treasured sustenance outdoors.
Husband and I still rhapsodise about some Waitrose plum tart we shared atop a hillock on the South Downs when we were still "just friends".
2. Sprio & Co, 37 St Stephen Street, Edinburgh
Stylish and friendly Italian cafe in one of Edinburgh's loveliest streets. It rubs shoulders with the second-hand shops that reportedly inspired Edinburgh writer Anne Fine, author of Madame Doubtfire
3. A Room in the Town, 18 Howe Street, Edinburgh
Great for larger get-togethers. Convivial and bustling. Its big mural, pictured (left), gives an idea of what to expect. We go mostly at weekend lunchtimes, nowadays with The Bean. Lovely, warm atmosphere. Great food - at surprisingly reasonable prices. Meals work out cheaper than at Pizza Express. Locally-grown produce. Lovely, friendly staff. They still tease me about waddling in there 42 weeks pregnant with The Bean.
4. Petit Paris, 38
Thin line
It's a fine line between diligent parenting and utter lunacy, as Dulwich Mum was saying the other day. The trouble is telling when you've crossed the line. What self-respecting lunatic parent is gifted with self-awareness?
A nasty bout of what could be parental paranoia kicked off yesterday morning. Or then again it might be normal maternal instincts to protect my child. Don't ask me.
It started when I staggered up the hill to take The Bean to nursery. She couldn't be happier at nursery these days, sometimes waving and clapping as we approach.
I wasn't so thrilled, though, at our arrival. My heart started pounding and my knees went
shaky at the sight that greeted us. Was I being negligent in leaving The Bean here?
The security gate into the front garden was swinging open, beckoning in anyone from the street. This isn't just a garden gate; it has an intercon and buzzer for access to the inner nursery sanctum.
Big boys and girls - by which I mean pre-schoolers - play in this garden, admittedly watched over by nursery staff. It's about the fourth time in a fortnight I've found it wide open.
I wheeled her through the garden, past the climbing frame, discarded tractors and trikes, to a second security door in the actual nursery buildings. That, too, was wide open.
The nursery insists its biggest defence is that staff never leave the children alone. I can't relax knowing the doors are often left open.
Nursery has been responsive to my concerns. They've put up notices remininding people to shut the doors behind them. And they've promised to get a locksmith to check the latches.
There's not a locksmith in the world can do anything about people who won't shut the door or gate behind them.
So yesterday I explained again to The Bean's key worker why it's maybe not such a good idea to leave the doors open. She said a locksmith was coming out again this week to ensure the doors locked properly.
At times like this, I rejoice in the sheer good fortune of having a husband. This called for reinforcements.
Once on the case, he called the nursery, then rang back with good news. The nursery was planning to remind every parent individually that same evening to shut the security doors.
When I went to pick The Bean up later that day, a nursery sentry stood guard at the garden gate.
The upshot? Relief, but also fear I made a big fuss about nothing. Since the miscarriage I've had heightened fears of all sorts about loss - awake and in dreams. So this might be personal paranoia. Or maybe it's the reaction of any responsible parent.
I'm not alone in these concerns. Caroline Dunford writes amusingly about how she handled similar dilemmas in leaving her little boy, 'The Emperor', at playgroup in her wry and entertaining book How to Survive the Terrible Twos (published by White Ladder Press at £7.99). I've just finished Caroline's book, but fear I may be referring back to it frequently in coming months.
What do you think? Please leave a comment!
Daughters Dilemmas Husband Miscarriage Missing sanity Nursery
Family outing
It's an effort to have a family day out, but these days the effort's more than worth it, especially now The Bean is a little bit older. It wasn't always like that.
For about a year after she was born I was too scared to leave the square mile around home. Can't say why, but the post-natal world can be a scary place. I began to think dragons lurked outside the city centre.
Also the effort of getting anywhere with a baby seemed to outweigh any actual pleasure from the outing.
Then in February we bought our first car, after I finally got fed up with the hassle of getting a buggy on a bus.
We've spent the last few months practising our driving and today headed out to some of the hills surrounding Edinburgh for a day in the countryside.
Even a few months ago a trip like today's would have involved 70% hard work to 30% enjoyment. Today's ratio was the exact reversal - lots more fun than effort. The Bean's Dad and I held hands a lot and didn't even bicker about the route.
The Bean perched aloft her father's back in her Vamoose rucksack, surveying cows, flowers, hills and trees with intense curiosity. While covered in a rain hood that made her look like a trainee bee-keeper.
We marched along muddy paths, past old filter beds, stopping in the Wildflower Garden to smell the honeysuckle (pictured), until we reached the Glencourse Reservoir, which provides some of the city's water.
We got some great pictures of The Bean playing with buttercups, surrounded by long grass nearly as tall as her.
Even though we're city-dwellers, I'd like it if The Bean learns something about the countryside, as I love the outdoors. "Look, Beanie! Cows!" her father and I chorused. Then mooed in unison. Good fun.
The Vamoose carrier got properly broken in, too - it's mud-spattered! So not just another piece of expensive, hardly-used kit she'll outgrow in months, unlike a lot of the stuff we bought when she first arrived.
We even managed a bite to eat at the child-friendly and welcoming Flotterstone Inn on the way back. I hardly felt traumatised or hassled at all during the entire trip - a novel sensation. Now I can't wait for our next outing.
Car Daughters Edinburgh Fun Husband Kit Likes/Dislikes Out and about
Disemvowelling
I'm not a girl who's easily scared of acronyms - but it would have been nice to have some warning before I became a mum that my life as a parent, especially a blogging parent, would be dominated by them. Take your pick - are you a Stay at Home Mum (SAHM), Work at Home Mum (WAHM), or just plain sahd? We all have to be something, it seems.
No offence to my fellow blogger Stay at Home Dad, who's got a nice sense of humour and doesn't seem to take these things too seriously, but is this really how we're supposed to define ourselves as human beings?
It's almost enough to make me want to claim I'm a 'homemaker'. Another fellow blogger, Dooce, has a nice variation on what SAHM might stand for. I'm too inhibited to spell it out here.
Today I came across a new acronym - FTBCWM - for Full-Time By Choice Working Mother. Or EOE, for Embodiment of Evil, in certain circles. Fairly trips off the tongue, doesn't it?
I'm thinking of inventing my own title - PTBCAHWM. Part-Time by Choice at Home Working Mum. The hyphenation's a nightmare. But it fairly sums up my working day. And the world of the working mum is consonant-rich and vowel-poor, you see. My title could, alternatively, be a new transcription of a 5am seagull cry as the beast swoops on our rubbish bags.
Or it could stand for Poor in Time, Bewildered and Confused, At Home When Money permits. That could cover a lot of mothers, I reckon.
If you don't believe me about these titles then have a look over at Alpha Mummy, where a real old cat fight has broken out between stay at home mums and workers. The fights's got so nasty it's ended with one of the more vitriolic participants being disemvowelled - the first time I've ever come across this gruesome process outside medieval England. We were none of us overly endowed with vowels in this battle to start with.
It's not that I have a problem with acronyms in themselves. I mean, I fell in love with and married a paid-up geek. Don't laugh, but our courtship included word games based on car number plates we spotted as we strolled along. The Bean and I share our home with shelves of books with titles like XML Primer Plus, C# for Beginners, ASP.NET and XSLT. They give me indigestion when I so much as look at them. Don't even get me started on the stash of computing books in the bathroom.
But I could never tell anyone who asked me what I do: "I am a WAHM. A Work at Home Mother." It'd be like being some tragic pop groupie from the 1980s, in denial that George Michael was gay, bouncing about in leg-warmers, ra-ra skirts and feathered earrings.
But when did all this nonsense about parenting types start? And why do we need these silly titles?
Maybe we invented the titles to give ourselves a sense of identity. Just like we coined the phrase 'parenting' for the stuff our own mothers used to do with no other job description besides 'mother'.
When The Bean arrived 15 months ago, people stopped asking me what I did for a living.
Instead, they started saying: "And what does your husband do?" As if The Bean's beaming presence at my side meant I was out of the job market for a while, and if they wanted to know about our financial status they'd need to check on her dad's earning power.
Maybe other women had the same experience, felt the same way, and so dreamt up these titles to give themselves more status.
I don't know what the people who inquired about husband's job were hoping for, but when I told them he was in IT, their faces generally went blank and they'd change the subject. It was sort of a relief. I don't have much IT small talk. Obviously they didn't either. Maybe I should have said: "He's a Mobster dad. Come on, you know, M-O-B. Mainly Office Bound." Or MOB for Man Overboard. Now that would have been a bit more accurate for the crazy early months after The Bean arrived.
Angst Daughters Husband Parenting gurus Work Work vs mothering 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.
Drug-free birth
So the smoking ban means the last, die-hard English smokers will have to huddle on pavements, unable to find shelter while they enjoy their gaspers.
It's all very well, but I'm worried the Westminster government hasn't quite thought through the consequences of this smoking ban. Let me explain why.
Ten days after the smoking ban became law here in Scotland last March I was lying in a labour suite at the local hospital, nine and a half months pregnant with The Bean, waiting for a doctor to hasten her reluctant arrival into this world.
It was a nervous time. Not least because it was only when they wheeled in a plastic cot that I finally had to come to terms with the fact this pregnancy lark was going to result in a BABY.
Up until that cot appeared, all the ante-natal classes and pregnancy books had given me the impression I might be sitting an exam in beginners' obstetrics. No need to worry about actually giving birth myself.
Frankly, as the birth approached, the exam seemed like the easier option.
I lay there, strapped to a monitor, my husband's clammy palm clasping mine. The unmistakeable smell of tobacco drifted in through the open hospital window.
Me: "Mmmmm... is someone smoking out there?"
After giving up smoking about eleven years previously, by last year I'd hardly thought about it. But desperate times, desperate measures - and all that.
Husband: "Might be. Let me have a look."
Husband (frown on face): "Yes, there's a man smoking out there. Smokers have to go outside now, don't they, with this ban. Would you like me to go down and have a word with him? Tell him to move away?"
Me: "No! Don't do that. He'll go soon enough."
Then, disingenuous: "Stay here and keep me company. You don't want to miss any of the action."
A few minutes passed. What would those contractions be like when they finally arrived, hurried along by their cocktail of artificial hormones, I fretted?
When the NCT teacher said 'agony', might she be exaggerating?
How would I cope with being a mum? Oh hellfire.....
Me (inhaling deeply): "Could you open the window a bit wider?"
Sleep no more
The Bean is scrabbling at a kitchen cupboard door that her dad and I have barred against her. She tugs at the shiny cream surface,
tugs again harder, loses her balance, teeters for a moment, then falls backwards onto her
bottom. She emits a shriek of distress and indignation. Mishaps like this happen
approximately twenty times daily, but don't normally bother her. On
this occasion, however, because she is tired, the fall causes her alarm
and distress. It is 9.30am, and we both know she is upset because she's now been up for two and a half hours and is
due her morning nap. I silently wonder again how the researchers of a large US university could have decided in their infinite wisdom that letting young children nap could be harmful for them.
Looking smaller than usual sat down on the floor, she lifts up her arms to signal she wants to be held. I bend down to pick her
up, cuddle her close to me, and carry my small, disconsolate daughter
through to her bedroom, where I draw the window shutters, and lay out
her sleep bag in her cot ready for her. She is too tired even to demand
to play with her dreamcatcher or inspect her flowery chicken mobile
that hangs from the ceiling. Go straight to the cot. Do not pass the
toy basket. Do not pause to play with festive Santa bib.
I lift her into the cot, get her left arm into the hole of the sleep
bag, then manage to remove her right-hand thumb from her mouth long
enough to get the other arm into the bag. In another well-honoured part
of our morning ritual she reaches out for the well-chewed form of Mr
Bear, her faithful bed-time companion, clutches him to her, and
reinserts her thumb in her mouth. "I'll be back when you've had a
sleep," I tell her, but she's not listening. She's already shut her
eyes, curled onto her side, and is slurping on her thumb, zoned out.
Every morning that The Bean is at home (not nursery) she has a nap on similar lines to this one
she had this morning. Not just so that I can use the time to clean, do
emails, chat on the phone or catch up on work, though, my goodness, it's great to have the chance to do that, but because she needs
the rest, otherwise life becomes too much for her. She hasn't got the energy yet to get through a full day without a sleep top-up.
But woe betide me! For now research from Florida University says that
daytime napping prevents children sleeping well at night - and could even
impair mental performance. They say children's puzzle-solving abilities can deteriorate when they take longer daytime naps. I might have known it. Is there no area of parenting free of some controversial new recommendation? Pregnancy, toys, food, sleep.... none of it simple, all filled with advice from the so-called 'experts'. Who could be more 'expert' on whether my daughter needs a nap than me and her?
Now, I haven't read the
full findings of the Florida survey, which I'm sure is well-intentioned and thoroughly researched. I read a summary of its findings over on Mumsnet. But the
idea that day-time naps are harmful completely contradicts my personal
experience. There's no way The Bean - 14 months old - could cope with a
day lasting from 7am to 7pm without at least one nap. She'd be hysterical and grumpy.
This latest research into naps reminds me of last week's story that
pureed food was bad for babies. What have we parents done to deserve so
many scare stories that overturn so much received wisdom? Maybe the
answer is that young (well, okay, I'm no spring chicken, nearly 40, so not that young)
parents are a good target market for this material - you know, largely
clueless, impressionable, desperate to do their best, lacking
instruction manual or, indeed, clear instructions from the child
herself. Ready to listen to anything that promises The Solution. Well, that's what I'm like, though in fairness I've gained a lot in confidence over the past months.
But it seems like the advice to parents changes all the time. This year's
new parents are told to put baby to sleep on his back, scared witless by stories about what might happen if they don't. The previous generation was given exactly the same lines about how babies should sleep on their fronts, for the same reasons. In another ten years the 'experts' will doubtless change the advice again - but stick with the same dire warnings.
What really gets to me is that all these
parenting gurus like to impart their advice with the message that if
you don't follow it to the letter, disastrous consequences will ensue - with the pureed food research the authors said babies could get addicted to gloop, constipated and eventually obese. That surely can't be true, can it? In this instance, it's the threat of impaired mental performance. I don't know. Maybe they're right, and I'm stupid and cynical to suspect otherwise. What do other people think? Are we right to give our children day-time naps? Are we being preyed on by a parenting advisory industry?
Spy Hard
There's more to this parenting lark than I first suspected. I can no longer agree with the father who told me: "A bit of nerve and a lot of stamina - that's all a new parent needs, really." I'd have to add cunning to the list. You see, it turns out I've been spied on in my own home. By a deceptively sweet-faced baby we call The Bean. Yes, she's had me under surveillance night and day for 14 months - and until recently I never suspected a thing.
Turns out The Bean has spent her entire life-time shadowing me here, in the privacy of my own home. A regular infant spook. She has scrutinised my every move. And now, oh how this makes me cringe, I'm seeing them - including some frankly unappealing character traits - relayed back to me by her.
Sat on kitchen floor next to 'her' bins, arms akimbo, determined and cross, she reminds me of someone. At first I can't think who. Then it comes to me. Oh crikey - is that what I look like? Seizes her father's asthma puffer and pops it in her mouth, shuts her eyes and puffs on it. Grins. Like her dad.
Pretends to brush her teeth with our tooth brushes (though she won't suffer the real thing at bed-time). Pulls my bushy hairbrush through her soft curls. Gazes at self in mirror. Attacks chalk drawing in serious, purposeful manner I recognise of old. Wipes down her changing mat as she must have seen me do. Sighs heavily at computer's recalcitrance. Loves a joke and socialising. Laughs and giggles.
It's like one of those management courses in self-awareness. But I never signed up for this. Ok, the sleepless nights I knew about. But action replays of my every move... nobody warned me about that. Some of these traits I never even realised I had - the mania for wiping surfaces, for example. I shall have to be careful. Never mind about my scary and near-total responsibility for how she turns out as an adult just for now. Next, she'll begin blogging. About me. Now that's a really scary thought.
Protest march
I've always been a literal-minded sort of person.
So when the Bean began screaming in protest today as I strapped her into her summer chariot it was something of a double whammy.
Firstly, though I suppose I would say this, her hysterical anger seemed a tad out of proportion to my crime. You know, maybe a little OTT when I was only trying to take her home for her tea.
My only response to her fury was to adopt my automaton air hostess voice. Something along these lines: "Will passenger Bean please remain calm, return to her seat, stow her seat table away and fasten her seat belt."
They'd have had her up for air rage on any flight. She countered by rearing up out of the buggy, a full two feet of small girl held rigid with the force of her rage.
I looked round furtively, afraid lest someone might hasten to the Bean's aid and call social services.
As if that wasn't bad enough, I'm doubly dismayed because the Bean is only 14 months old, a stage I thought was still meant to involve cherubic innocence. Too early for pram strikes, sit-ins (well, stand-ups, in this case) and unpredictable boycotts. And if this is the warm-up, what's the main event going to be like?
So it seems I was too literal when I thought the terrible twos were exactly that, an affliction that began on second birthdays and ended on the third. I never reckoned on this stuff beginning a full ten months before she turned two.
I blame nursery. She must have got together with the other babies.
They've been giving each other ideas as they hang out, drinking Babycinos, doing their chalk drawings.
Yes, they've clearly been talking to the
union, finding out their rights, ganging up on their poor, frightened bourgeois parents.
Mark my words, one day it's pram strike, the next they'll be toddling through Paris to
overthrow the reactionary 'system'.
Where will it all end?
Lauriston Castle
We drove out on Saturday afternoon to Edinburgh's Lauriston Castle, which overlooks a narrow stretch of sea known as the Firth of Forth that coils out towards the North Sea. A misty mile or so across the water were the patchwork fields and hills of Fife, rising up from the sea. Poor, impoverished Fife is the butt of many an Edinburgh joke. "Best viewed from a distance," goes one saying. 'NFF' or 'Normal for Fife' is a cheeky medical term to describe alcohol and tobacco intake most of us would consider wildly excessive. Yet despite the reputed disappointment of its close-up reality, Fife offers a tantalising vista to all who live this side of the Forth.
On this misty Saturday Lauriston was grey, Edwardian and mysterious, untouched by time, as if pre-war beauties and their beaus might at any minute stroll through the clipped box hedges, past the Italianate rose garden, for a spot of tea on the lawns. Fittingly, the place turned out to be home to several croquet lawns (pictured above), not, it must be said, a sport I have ever had previous reason to associate with Scotland.
It wasn't just the croquet that reminded me of England. In places the grounds were almost as lush and verdant as the English countryside, testimony to the wet 'summer' we've been having up here.
Beautiful, mature trees - horse chestnut, cedar, oak and monkey puzzle - were dotted thickly across the grounds. Inspired by frequent visits to the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh, I'm learning more about trees from a small book from Dorling Kindersley. The trouble is matching up towering great trees with the little pictures in the book. The guide does have a little stick figure drawing next to its tree pictures, to show the scale, but I can't as yet always translate that to the jumbled mass of branch, trunk and leaf in real life.
Almost as unexpected as the untypically Scottish croquet lawns was stumbling on a beautiful Friendship Garden created in the castle's grounds to celebrate Edinburgh's links with the Japanese city of Kyoto. Formal, yet peaceful, that garden was more relaxing than aromatherapy, massage or The Bean's Baby Lullabies CD. Helped by two recent viewings of the film Lost in Translation, I managed to identify some Japanese cherry trees there, which made me happy. Soon I'll become a paid-up tree spotter with anorak, measuring tape and notebook.
The Bean was entranced by the pebbles in the 'dry' garden, which required some methodical sorting, examination and tentative licking before she allowed me to replace them.
The Mad Hatter would have felt quite at home inviting guests to a tea party in the grounds of Lauriston Castle. The Queen of Hearts could have held court, while the yew trees came to life and watched her preside over a ghostly game of croquet on the lawns, played perhaps by some of the castle's stone lions that she had ordered back to life for the occasion.
A good man
"Then get down on your knees and thank God for a good man," says Granny.
I am telling Granny how the Bean's dad gets up every morning at
whatever very un-Godly hour his daughter awakes, then looks after her
until it's time for him to go to work, while I enjoy a lie-in. Not
bragging. Just casually explaining household workings.
"He's more of a morning person than me."
I'm lying sick in bed with flu, as she berates me. Too sick to
genuflect as instructed. Too sick even to blog. Much too sick to
disagree with anything she says. Even when she calls the Bean a little
potato.
I give a humble, token nod at the carpet to indicate I take her point
about knees. Just a gentle nod, though. Don't want to hurt my sore head.
Then I reassert myself: "Mum, it's not just him. It's this generation of men. They all help out more with childcare, the house."
"Even so," says Granny, in a certain tone of voice. "Even so. To have a
man who'll get up every morning and look after your child, leaving you
to sleep..... "
She used this exact annoying tone years ago, obliquely reproaching me
for some poor judgement in my love life via discussion of the novel
Vanity Fair. This is what comes of both being English graduates. An end to direct communication. Everything couched via easy-to-misunderstand literary references.
Needless to say, she was enchanted when I met Jack (also, surely no coincidence, an English grad). The afternoon I
first took him to meet her, he bounded down the pathway to her house,
huge bouquet of flowers and chocolates in his hands, desire to please
writ large on his eager, honest brow. She almost visibly melted. I could see the relief in her eyes that I'd picked a good 'un.
Three years later, and in between the chaos of looking after the Bean,
both of us working, me trying to get established again professionally
and keeping up with friends, I do forget to be grateful for how much he
does to help me. It's easier to pick holes in his bottle-warming
technique than remember to be grateful he does it all in the first
place, even if it's not quite to my personal specifications.
Then this morning an article in The Times "Need a child-friendly dad? Then get divorced"
reminded me to count my blessings. The writer of the article made the
sad claim that divorced women get more support from their children's
fathers than married ones do, saying many married dads spend more time at the
office than they need to because it's less exhausting than the bath-and
bed-time rigmarole at home. How grim.
So, for the record, I am grateful that Jack doesn't mind getting
up early with the Bean, often around 6am, to supervise her loading and
unloading items from various receptacles she's commandeered for her
corner of the kitchen: waste-paper bin; laundry basket, computer
packaging. A couple of mornings last week she was so tired by this
ritual that no sooner had Jack gone to work than she was ready for a
nap, meaning I got to lie in until 9am. Even I can't find anything to
complain about in that.
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.
Daughters Food Mistakes Parenting gurus Perfectionism Breastfeeding
Fathers' Day
It's been months now, and I still haven't got over the demise of Ottakars' bookshops.
Every time I walk past the scaffolding in front of their old Edinburgh shop, I suffer a small pang of loss.
Now book-buying is either on-line or at a well-known chain of supermarkets masquerading as book shops. Hobson's Choice.
Maybe it's the funereal decor they use at the Chain. Maybe it's the taciturn assistants who look so wretched. Whatever the reason, I rarely linger.
Yesterday The Bean and I visited the Chain to buy her dad Kevin McCloud's Grand Designs Handbook for Fathers' Day today. Part of my master plan to build and live in our place in the countryside.
Also a sad reflection on how much early-evening telly we watch.
Kev's books live in the windowless basement. He wouldn't like it there. Bet his books don't either. Not inspiring, or heart-felt, uplifting or architecturally coherent. No irony, no fun, no taking the mick. Just lots of black. Someone should write and let him know.
Another downer is the lack of proper customer lift.
An assistant insists on accompanying us in the service lift. Presumably lest The Bean and I disappear, steal their books and vanish.
Try getting her to talk about books, though.... they might as well be selling sausages.
The service lift lowers itself down to us with impossible slowness. I wheel The Bean in; our minder follows. The outer door closes. The assistant reaches across to the inner gate. It draws shut with a resounding clang.
Hug a tree
My 14-month-old daughter is afraid of trees. This is what comes of living in a city-centre flat. No garden, no shed, no trees. Never mind. I have plans for our astragal (Edinburgh-speak for minute iron balcony, home to pot of red geraniums) and last week I took her to the lovely private gardens up the road from us in Edinburgh's Queen Street, annual subscription £70 (visited four times, not my best investment). As we inspected the trees she ducked her head down onto my shoulder and hid in fear. She thinks they are alive - and out to get her. In younger hippy days I used to hug trees. Nowadays I feel too inhibited. But how could my daughter not love them too?
Rain rescued her. We packed up the vol-au-vent, said goodbye to the scary tree people, and took refuge in a local cafe/photography studio/gallery opened last month in Howe Street by photographer Robyn Rowles. Daughter might not care much for trees, but a vanilla-flavoured babycino is another matter altogether... she was in heaven, bedaubed with milky froth. Robyn captured the moment on camera for us, giving us one of the best pictures we have of The Bean.
Extreme childcare
I'm no great fan of posh gel Katie Hopkins from the BBC programme The Apprentice, though bless her, anyone who behaves like that must surely have "issues", but even I cringed at her grilling last week on television on the old chestnut of childcare arrangements for her two young daughters. I suspect we've now probably all heard enough about poor old Katie, who might not have got the apprenticeship but has assuredly been appointed pantomime villain to the nation.
But it got me thinking about "help" with childcare again, what's acceptable, what's not. At least Katie appeared to be living with her children, who were looked after by herself and other family. You can't say as much for every mother of young children. I know of one Edinburgh "mum" who spends four days a week working in the City of London, while a team of nannies looks after her little girl back here in Scotland, ferrying her to and from school, ballet lessons, tea parties etc, organising after-school. Some couples employ "night" and "weekend" nannies. And all this is before the kids become old enough for boarding school - the other big parental cop-out. Of course I love nothing better than getting on my moral high-horse and being all judgemental about other people's parenting. I only do it so I won't feel so bad about daughter's twice-weekly time at nursery, and one day with her reprobate Granny.
Happy campers
The first family holiday is a shock. Ours wasn't a holiday at all, not
in the strictest sense. We worked harder than I've done in some
paying jobs. It was hard graft. Day and night. Each evening I squirted my milk
into a bowl and mixed it up with powdered baby rice for my daughter. I still remember the
sound it made hitting the plastic. It was fun. But in an unfamiliar, cow-like
way. I felt sad at losing the old freedoms. In private, I cried.
Back in the heady days of coupledom we used to book a cheap flight
somewhere, then wing it, smug about being proper "travellers". We only
once came to grief, descending from a
Cevennol mountain to find a room for the night in the valley. A
Festival de Cinema had taken all the accommodation in a 10k radius. No room in the inn. Again, I cried.
The nice monsieur in the local hotel rang round. After many worried
looks, he found us somewhere and sent us off with rabbit stew for our
supper. After all he'd done for us, I had no heart to confess my
husband was vegetarian. The cottage was grim; no windows. The
bed too small to accommodate me or husband. I woke
several times with nightmares, unsure if awake or asleep. A long
night.
We left the next day, both blaming the other, and got a room in the
hotel, which all the actors had by then finally left. We stayed for two
days, because we had no money and the one cashpoint in the village was
in a shop that didn't open until for another two days. The hotel staff asked every
time they saw me "Ca va mieux?", which seemed to translate as
"You're not going to have a nervous breakdown on our premises, are
you?"
Not wishing to risk a repeat of this on a family holiday, we've agreed
to plan ahead. I'm not experienced in any of this, but we're ruling out hotels. Either we'd have to leave daughter alone in the room while we got our
meal. Or sit there in silence and darkness from 7pm.
The obvious solution would be self-catering. But
that would mean booking a place for a week or fortnight, and then we'd
be stuck. I've a yen for adventure, and would love some of the
old spontaneity.
So we're investigating tents. I discovered on Saturday tent brands are named after birds. Buzzard,
Hawk, Shrike. It speaks of freedom. Prairie, Roadrunner, Vista, Oregon, Halo, Aurora.
Challenge and adventure. In my imagination, I'm there. But our daughter is already
ahead of us. Her Pop-Up Activity Tent arrived home yesterday.
Daughters Dilemmas Fun Husband Kit Mistakes Out and about Toys Work
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.
Money talks
A new survey provides further proof, not that we should need it, that
we working mothers are not a bunch of sybaritic "have-it-alls" after
all. It proves what many of us probably knew all along: many, if not
most, mothers who work do so because their families need the money.
Research published by Scottish Widows says the cost of running a home
means that almost half the nation's households need more than one
breadwinner to maintain what it calls an "acceptable" standard of
living. In other words, most women don't have much choice about whether to work. And those are the households without kids.
What's worse, the firm says: "When it comes to those with dependent
children, the need for two incomes increases, with one in two
households relying on both partners working."
It notes: "Those with children
have, as would be expected, higher levels of debt on both loans and
credit cards than those without."
Apparently, the average household with two dependent children is
£106,600 in debt, a whopping £19,100 more than the average household
without children.
So if any mother reading this is feeling alone in having to return to work to help pay
the bills, or guilty about it, now you know you're in good company -
about half the rest of the country, in fact.
Now, I don't know what the survey is defining as an acceptable
lifestyle. My idea of a comfortable lifestyle is probably fairly modest
by the standards of somebody like Dulwich Mum, bless her, who might well have
different ideas on lifestyle, as those 4x4s and Dior handbags don't
come cheap.
But I'm guessing that when the survey says households need more than
one breadwinner to maintain a comfortable lifestyle, they're talking
fairly average, low-key aspirations involving one holiday a year,
maybe, a car, a few evenings out, decent threads for her, some
hi-tech gimmickry for the bloke, the odd weekend away, that sort
of thing. We're not talking ruthless ambition here, just funding a
reasonable lifestyle.
Reading this survey, which I first came across at Enterprise Nation, I couldn't understand how anyone could call a working
mother a "have-it-all" - unless they were referring to her levels of
debt.
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, as much as anything else, it means they can go to the loo alone never admits as much, but instead expresses stoical regret that her life has worked out this way.
There's more on this theme over at The Bad Mothers' Club. Any thoughts on other parenting paradoxes?
Angst Breastfeeding Daughters Dilemmas Guilt Paradoxes Parenting gurus Work Work vs mothering
Cutting her teeth
My daughter is teething and I am in crisis. Could she not have picked a
better time to grow new teeth? Unstoppable, they are erupting from her
swollen gums like jagged icebergs in films where baddies have tampered
with the earth's climate,
destroyed its natural balance and caused
chaos in the Arctic Circle. What little was left of my natural balance
has gone too, Titanic to the trauma of her teeth.
My daugher has a nursery
"key worker", a competent and kindly young
woman who looks about 23 and is childless. It was she who told me that
my daughter
must be teething, an idea that had not occurred to me. "That'll be her
off her food with her molars coming in," she informed me, as if it were
obvious. I nodded in agreement to pretend this was indeed obvious.
Four tiny teeth hovering at gum level have destroyed our domestic
tranquillity. At bed time
last night she rattled the bars of her cot, screaming and roaring like a caged
animal. Only an hour and a half and two spoons of Calpol later did we
settle her to sleep last night. Someone has recommended frozen celery
for teething babies to chew on. "But you have to mind out for the
stringy bits," she told me. Presumably in case they stick in her
sparkling new teeth.
My daughter and I do not much ressemble one another in many respects,
something my husband tries gallantly to pretend is not the case. I am
brunette and she is fair, like him. This is mostly a
blessing for her, especially as I have bad teeth that an orthodentist
once pronounced incurable. With that in mind, I am
not much comforted by my
husband's attempts to
console me about the domestic confusion. "Look," he told me. "Her
teeth are coming in at the same angle as yours."
Job for life
Apparently if the typical stay-at-home mother were paid for her work, she'd earn the annual equivalent of £70,000, at least according to a set of so-called "compensation experts"
based in the US. Unfortunately, the survey doesn't make clear who's
going to fork out the moolah for all our hard work. Government?
Husband? Children? Will our kids add this to their student loans? But
still, it's nice to know we have some earning power left, even if it is
mostly theoretical. I first read about this at Manic Mama.
My main objection to this survey, produced by Salary.com,
is that I think they've missed quite a few important activities from
their list of maternal roles, which falls far short of covering
the full job spec. So I've listed a few additional roles they might
want to consider next time they're doing the survey.
This is their list of jobs making up the £70,000 salary: 1. Housekeeper 2. Cook 3. Psychologist 4. Day care centre teacher 5. Laundry machine operator 6. Van driver 7. Facilities manager 8. Janitor 9. Computer operator 10. Chief executive officer (though try telling that one to Dad).
And
here are the ones I think they missed. Apologies for some of them being
so medieval. Please let me know your thoughts on any others that should
be on the list.
1. Nightwatchperson Okay, gone is the lantern or candle of yesteryear, replaced by more up-to-date equivalents, like the Tomy baby monitor.
And it's more dressing gown than big caped cloak and boots. But there's
still the same lonely, cold pacing around after midnight, to check that
all's well, investigating cries in the night. And what about some
extra money for unsociable hours, I'd like to know?
2. Dancer/Singer Before
having my daughter I considered myself a fairly shy and inhibited
person, except when drunk. Now I never drink but will sing, dance
and cavort almost anywhere if I reckon there's a chance it'll make my
daughter stop crying. "Old McDonald had a farm, ey-ay-ey-ay-oh!!!"
3. PR Officer "You'll
never guess what our beautiful daughter did at nursery today! She
pulled herself up to standing using just a shoebox for balance!" I
almost have to stop myself from issuing a press release.
4. Health and Safety Officer Detaching
Mr Bear's pink nightcap, lest my daughter swallow it, nagging
long-suffering husband to nail bookshelves to the wall, covering
sockets, hiding toilet cleaner, keeping daughter away from
dishwasher and oven, begging kind neighbours not to paint their front
door while we're around...
5. Journalist I've filled notebooks with detailed accounts of my daughter's exploits that I plan to keep for posterity.
6.Nutritionist Poor performance appraisal here. People brandish Annabel Karmel
books at me all the time, and I do my best,
but follow her recipes in vain. Actually, I spend ages
agonising over my daughter's food intake, still currently limited to
apple puree, porridge and bread sticks, because I know it can't be that
healthy. Her dad persuaded her tonight to add banana,
raspberries and raisins to the list, which she did
grudgingly. Anything I cook is a big no-no. Last week I had my
head in my hands at suppertime, crying, I felt such a failure for
cooking up this food she instantly rejects. She throws it at me, or on
the floor.
7. Speech therapist Daughter: "Haahlaahla"
Me: "That's brilliant! Let's say it again." Daughter: "Laaaaaaa" Abrupt
stop. Me: "Look, the little monkey in the book is saying 'Hug'.
Isn't that clever? Let's try and say 'Huuuuuuuug'." I could go on.
8. Stylist It's
not as easy as it looks to achieve that casually thrown together
boho-chic look for the under-twos. Especially when the under-two
in question is determined to shed socks, shoes and cardi wherever she
can, before regurgitating Annabel's rejected gloop onto her top.
9. Entertainments Officer Playgroup,
nursery, "playdates" - urgh, terrible expression, park. It all takes
organisation, you know, even if the babies and toddlers mostly ignore
one another at these various social events, except to "borrow" each
other's toys.
10. Nurse Bathing gunky eyes in salt water, kissing scratches better, clearing up sick, administering Calpol.
Oh, I forgot, nurses are like stay-at-home mothers, another largely
disempowered social group, being (mainly) female carers on a low wage.
Daughters Food Husband Language Nursery Play Playgroup Safety Work
Lineage and legends
It's been a grim six days, just how grim I realised only yesterday,
when I recognised the unfamiliar physical sensation spreading across my
stomach as laughter, an experience that's been notable by its complete
absence from my life since I had some bad news last Friday. As usual,
it was only as things started to get better, well, slightly, at least,
that I got an inkling of how awful they've been.
Yesterday my husband, daughter and I were all waving at ourselves in a
big mirror. Lest you think we're a bunch of self-obsessed narcissists,
(well, we are, but we try not to indulge it) let me briefly explain:
like many babies, my daughter loves to wave at her glassy, unreachable
self in the mirror. She even, once, when very little, in what looks
destined to be a stock family anecdote, crawled over to a mirror and
tried to give herself a big kiss.
So we were in front of the mirror, my husband with his arm round me, my daughter in my arms, helping her practise waving.
"Here, stand in front of me," he told me, before assuming a stern,
wooden demeanour. My head slotted in under his chin (he's much taller
than me). Our daughter, snug in my arms, despite giggling madly,
consented to tuck her head underneath mine. We made a straight vertical
line of
three heads.
"There we are," he told me proudly. "Our very own totem pole."
Home working: 10 drawbacks
Much as I hate to use this dreadful terminology, I joined the ranks of 'WAHMs', or 'Work at Home Mums', when Katie reached ten months. Before that I was a full-time 'SAHM' (Stay at Home Mum), though I didn't even know it at the time - it's only since I got back to work and had a chance to waste time browsing the net I found out all these new terms. The first six months looking after Katie I didn't miss work at all. Then my friends starting going back to work, one by one, and I got lonely.
Often when I'm talking to people about my work (journalism), they say something encouraging about how it must be easy to do that from home, combining it with looking after the baby. Well, it's not.
In my experience, the reality is that homeworking is really only for people with iron self-discipline, who are motivated and well-organised and aware of the drawbacks as well as the benefits. I am not one of those people.
Listed below are some of the things to bear in mind if you're thinking of becoming a work-at-home-parent. Most are based on personal experience, some from talking with other parents who live, work, eat and sleep in the same small flat.
Today I've written about some of the disadvantages to being a 'WAHM'.
It's not all doom and gloom. There are very real upsides to working this way. Please visit the site tomorrow, to read about the benefits to young parents of working this way.
DRAWBACKS TO BEING A 'WAHM'
1. Don't be deceived into thinking you'll spend more time with your children this way.
You won't. You still have to organise proper childcare for them. Anything else, and you're shortchanging yourself, your clients and them.
2. Home-based childcare will make it impossible to focus on your work
If you choose home-based childcare (for example Granny or childminder coming to your home), you'll find it hard to knuckle down while your children are playing next door.
3. Sleepy head. Just had lunch? Feeling like a little nap?
I'll put my head down for ten minutes. Oops. The afternoon just slid away again. All those hours gone, taken up with what was meant to be a short snooze. And no work to show for it at the end.
4. You may think you're only working two days, but will your clients and contacts?
Once, an all-important contact I was chasing like mad at the start of the week called back unexpectedly a few days later at the nadir, nay, the very trough of my day - Katie's supper-time.
6. You get landed with most of the housework
I'm really lucky in that my husband more than pulls his weight around the house. But being at home all day, I still end up loading, unloading dishwashers, vacuuming, cleaning away dishes, wiping worktops, and doing the endless laundry. As soon as I've done it, it all needs doing again. And it's so very, very dull.
7. Lack of company
It's lonely, being at home on my own all day. Chatting to the postman and the old lady two doors down doesn't fill the gap. Even my husband starts winding up phone conversations after ten or 15 minutes. It's why I've turned to blogging. You start to fall behind professionally, as well, if you're not in offices where you can keep up with latest ways of doing things.
8. You've got to have real self-discipline to get through the work
Otherwise the lure of the biscuit tin will get me every time. I falter and stumble, but have to keep things together because I need the work.
9. I can't appreciate my home anymore, it's also my place of work
I spend too much time here. I notice every piece of dirt, every crumb. I need to go on holiday before I can enjoy where I live again. Home's stopped being a retreat.
10. It's hard to draw a line under the end of each day.
Is it obsessive-compulsive to check emails at midnight?
Daughters Food Granny Home Husband Play 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 "Let's empty Granny's handbag".
It always sounds like so much fun in the kitchen, I get distracted.
Not difficult, admittedly, given my scatter-brain head. Usually, they
end up going for a walk. In which they stop off at the shops to buy,
guess what? More biscuits.
8. The voice of experience.
In terms of childcare, Granny's been there, done it, and got two adult children to prove it.
Okay, her generation doesn't have our hang-ups about organic food,
breastfeeding and Gina Ford. They did things differently, for example
parking their babies at the bottom of the garden.
They didn't have post-natal groups for support and company; their men
weren't expected to help out like our partners do, and they seem to
have spent all day washing nappies years before anyone got extra
brownie points for being environmentally friendly with "real" nappies.
But the fact is, Granny knows what she's doing when it comes to looking after a small child.
9. My daughter gets one-to-one attention, all day long, from someone who loves her
Which is both good, and maybe not-so-good, depending on which survey you read at the time.
10. Nursery get exasperated if I keep bothering them to check K's okay.
Whereas Granny and K will happily blow bubbles and coo down the
phone, (yes, both of them) whenever I call home. Just as long as it's
not on Granny's mobile, (please see No. 2).
11. In a crisis, Granny'll drop everything, even the golf
championship match where she's hoping to improve her handicap, and come
round to help
When my husband and I were both ill over Christmas (remember the Winter Vomiting Virus?) she helped out - big time.
12. Granny would never expect remuneration for all the work she does
She does it out of love. Err, maybe that's cheesy, but it's kind of how it is.
Toys give children "no long-term benefit", finds report
New research says toys and books have no significant future
associations with children's development. According to the Institute of Education, reported by BBC Online, the most important factor is parents playing and talking with their children.
"Toys and books have their place and do help children develop but what
is important is having the parents interact with the child," says the
Institute's Dr Leslie Gutman.
"To have parents read to their children is much more important than
having a hundred books," says the report.
Children whose parents took them out grew up with better social skills, said the report.
I wish I'd known this a year ago, before I accumulated sacks of
unwanted toys.
I bought them partly because I didn't want people to think I was a tightwad who wouldn't spend on her child.
The toy marketing made me think K would suffer impaired development if I didn't.
After all, not having the musical mobile that plays Bach,
complete with cows circling in mid-air above, might have hindered her
hand-eye co-ordination and slowed her speech development.
Parents might have more spare space in their cupboards if Dr Gutman's
research gets a good airing. Charity shops would probably come off
worse, though.
More benefits to nurseries
More confident around other children
K used to crumple at playgroups if another child tried to take her
toys. Strange though this might sound of a one-year-old, she's become
more assertive, in a healthy way, and better at standing her ground.
Better at interacting with other children
K's started to enjoy pushing balls around on the floor with some of her friends. She's better aware of other children.
Staff know what they're doing
These women can change a nappy faster than it takes me to think, "Oh,
maybe I'd better fill the water jug before we get started."
I forgot to post these earlier. An excellent comment on my earlier posting today Pros and Cons of Nursery Life reminded me of them.
Pros and cons of nursery life
Having spent the last few days fuming at stories about greedy 'have-it-all'
mothers repenting their wicked career-minded ways by shunning nurseries
and staying home to look after their kids, here are some of my thoughts
on the pros and cons of nurseries, based on personal experience.
PROS
Making switch from bottle to breast
It was nursery staff who first persuaded my daughter, then aged 10
months, to take a bottle, something I'd been trying for weeks, with no
success. Since then she hasn't looked back. I was beginning to fear I'd be
breastfeeding at the school gates. Thanks to that breakthrough, people have now stopped saying
things like: "Did you see that programme on extraordinary
breastfeeding?"
Healthy balanced diet
At home, K survives on a diet of porridge, apple puree and biscuits.
Believe me, it's not for lack of trying on my part. I have my Annabel
Karmel cookbook and I'm not afraid to use it. But I cook up spaghetti
bolognaise, fish pasta and cauliflower cheese in vain. Even my old
stand-by of sweet potato and chicken is out of favour. However, the
nursery staff can get her to eat chicken papaya, no less. I've been asking for tips on how they do it.
Keener to walk
Don't know if peer group pressure is altogether a good thing, but it
seems to me that since K has seen other children about her age, or a bit
older, starting to toddle, she's keener to do the same.
CONS
These probably reflect my shortcomings as much as the nursery's, but here goes:
Separation anxiety (mine, not hers)
I haven't quite come to terms yet with my daughter being pushed around
the streets of Edinburgh, in the nursery's three-seater buggies, by
someone other than me. The thought I might bump into her out on a walk
at lunchtime is wierd.
She's comes home smelling of someone else's perfume.
Disconcerting. I get a bit jealous. But I also take this as a positive, since it means that she must be getting lots of cuddles.
It's painful to be disabused of fantasy everyone loves K as much as me
Almost all the people who look after her at nursery are fond of her.
Everyone is well-disposed to her. Nobody, strangely, seems aware of how
special and wonderful she is.
Picking up bad habits
No long after starting nursery K started sucking thoughtfully on pieces
of toast, before allowing them to slither out her mouth and down onto
her front, where they linger, transformed into repellant brown slugs.
Could never prove it, but suspect it's a lark she first saw at nursery.
Hotbed of germs
Babies pick up every bug going as soon as they start at nursery.
You can't get the days or times you necessarily want
Which seems to contradict the story about all these empty nursery
places left vacant by repentant career women.
Breastfeeding Daughters Nursery Play Pregnancy Work Edinburgh Food
Teatime shift the hardest in mothering
The hardest shift in mothering is late afternoon. The stairs to our
second-floor flat become steeper than only hours earlier, as my
daughter and I struggle up them to face the shared daily ordeal of tea,
bath and bed-time. I clockwatch as the minutes crawl by from 5.30pm to
7pm, awaiting my husband's return from work.
Tea-time last night was fraught. Unlike we adults K does not engage in
social pretensions. When she doesn't like food, she waves it away with
an imperious gesture. I admire her honesty, as well as resenting it.
Enthroned in her ergonomic high chair, which I wish I could say I scrub
down nightly, but don't, she watched me scrabble in the freezer for
food, heat it, decant it, and ferry it to her. Cue the dismissive wave.
Still just 5.30pm? Surely not.
Sweet potato and chicken was rejected, before she relented slightly and
consented to eat a little. Apple puree got a warmer reception. Her
biscuit was an outright success. She placed it in her hand, then put
her bunched up fist, containing the biscuit, in her mouth, and sat like
that for about ten minutes, sucking in a contemplative fashion.
At 5.45pm my husband got home and caused me to rethink my views on this
time of day. For in his hands was a bunch of luminous pink roses, for
me.
Things my daughter prefers to "real" toys
Socks
Shoes (her own and other people's)
The Voice-over IP phoneset
Toilet paper - preferably shredding it into tiny pieces. Given
half a chance, she'd go for the used variety too. These days I keep the
lid shut as much as possible.
Handbags
Bins
Receptacles and containers of all kinds
2006-2007 tax returns
Granny's Sudoko book
Second of the first birthdays
After the buzzer went at last, ending that pre-party hiatus of waiting,
our visitors began
arriving. First, though, they had to ascend the escalier en colimaçon,
or spiral staircase, so typical of New Town "stairs", as they call
blocks of flats up here, that wends its way up two floors to the eyrie
of our flat.
In their arms were bottles (for once containing wine, as well as
milk) and babies togged up in party kit for this joint birthday party. Light poured in from the domed cupola up above
the stair; a trio of balloons sellotaped to the front door welcomed them.
Just over a year ago we were couples who barely knew each other save to sit awkwardly at NCT
ante-natal classes and engage in abstract pursuits such as debating the
most appropriate modern childcare techniques. Since then, things have
become a trifle less academic as we've battled with sleepless nights and crying babies. We've moved from coupledom to
family life and also, somewhere along the way, become friends.
K had already presided with magisterial good humour over an earlier
celebration, attended mostly by family, on her proper birthday. She was equally enchanted at this knees-up with
her friends. Although the two events shared a common purpose, they were
very different to each other. Celebrating with other families, whose
trajectory has been so similar to ours, somehow served to reinforce
what we've all done and become in the past 12 months, as if we
mirrored and bolstered each other.
Mum splits with buggy
After fighting temptation for months, I've given in to the inevitable.
Yesterday I spurned my faithful travelling companion of many months for a lightweight
feller-me-lad I met on the Internet, whose slim good looks and fancy orange top seduced me
with their superficial charm. I'm being like Prince William. It doesn't feel good, it certainly
doesn't feel right, but boy, does it make those Edinburgh hills easier
to tackle.
For more than a year I've pushed K around town, across beaches and up hills in the Jane
Slalom Pro, a stylish "all-terrain" three-wheeler chariot whose trendy
disc brakes have excited more than a little interest from male
acquaintance, from which K smiles graciously at admirers and bestows
regal waves.
The Jane Pro is a bit like the BMW of the pram world - expensive, sturdy, comfortable - with good engineering you feel you can trust. This new pram, the Maclaren Volo Saffron - nicknamed Vol-au-Vent - is more like a toy for pushing dollies around in, not real babies.
It was J who chose the Jane Pro, since I was in such a
hormonally-induced daze while expecting that I tuned out as soon as
shop assistants started clicking "travel systems" together, but I've
always been proud of it. A few weeks after K made her appearance
a young doctor looked at the Jane Pro with something like respect in
her eyes. "You can go running with those, you know," she offered. I
snorted with derision, but a couple of months later I was racing round Inverleith Park (also, incidentally, home to Scotland's Axe-Throwing Championships) with K in the buggy in a mums-and-babies exercise class, and it was one of my highlights from that post-natal period.
The only problem - and with Edinburgh being so hilly, this really is a
problem - is that the Jane weighs about 10.5kg, or around 1.5
stone. The Vol-au-vent, on the other hand, tips the scales at just
3.9kg. The Jane's also bulky and hard to fold. I vowed that after
spending so much on the Jane I wouldn't buy another
pram but the Vol-au-vent came up cheap on the excellent Kiddicare site, full of bargain baby kit.
The turning point came after yet another sweaty struggle on the buses
last week, where I had to enlist help from two strangers, even though I
was with Granny, to get the pram folded and stowed away.
The new pram's not a patch on the old - you can feel every bump
in the pavement jarring your hands and arms, cobbles
(another big Edinburgh feature) are a killer, and it's so flimsy and
lightweight it's feels more like a mobile deckchair than a proper
buggy. But the acid test came this morning when pushing K up the hill
to nursery: it was a breeze compared with shoving the Jane inch
by inch to the top. Even so, I'll be planning my routes carefully, so I
can wheel out the Jane any time I'm going somewhere without buses or
hills involved. You see, it's the one, even if I need to flirt with others
from time to time.
Shame of shunning breastfeeding mother
Unpleasant lesson in karma. I'll think twice now before being uppity
about sitting next to mothers and babies in restaurants. This started a
few days ago when I went for anniversary lunch with my husband but sans
baby. To my horror, the waiters wanted to sit us next to a
breastfeeding mum and baby. Without even thinking about it, I asked for
a different table.
Yesterday Granny, K and I repaired to our favourite restaurant, Pizza
Express in Stockbridge, which overlooks the Waters of Leith. It's full
of children sat in high chairs, tearing round the tables, popping
balloons. For the first time this year, we braved the outdoor terrace
and were enjoying the spring sunshine as I fed K her bottle.
A couple appeared, who were offered the empty neighbouring table to us,
that sheltered under the same blue parasol as ours. But all was not
well. Whispered conversations ensued. Gucci Loafers and his
iron-helmeted female companion gestured to the other side of the
terrace. No words were needed. It was obvious what they were thinking:
they didn't want to be next to a noisy baby.
Avoiding all eye contact with me, GL pushed his too-long hair out of
his face with a self-conscious gesture, pulled his pristine blouson
leather jacket tighter around him and followed the Iron Maiden to the
other end of the terrace. I could almost hear the jangling of shoe
buckles as he went.
I couldn't understand why anybody, even those two, wouldn't want to sit
close to K as she had her milk. Frankly, I was hurt. Then I remembered
how I felt only a few days earlier, when I wanted a break from it all,
without any reminders, though something about GL suggested he might not
be much of a family man, that his motivation was rather different.
Somewhere in the flat, in the back of a drawer,
is a breastfeeding bracelet I bought from the NCT last
summer, at the
zenith of my breastfeeding days, to show solidarity. Sisters, I no
longer deserve to wear that bracelet. Now I have an inkling of how that
breastfeeding mum, no doubt already beleaguered, might have felt when I
asked for a table well away from her. One possible saving grace: so
many breastfeeding women are in such a daze they don't even notice
social nuances, in my case the baby took up all my energy and focus.
All that said, I don't really regret what I did. Having one lunch, yes, just one lunch free of
feeding traumas, not worrying about my own or anyone else's baby, able
to focus on my husband, completely off-duty, was an absolute delight,
so much so that I keep going back to it in my mind, replaying little
moments, remembering how wonderful it felt to rekindle a time when
everything lay ahead of us, so many dreams and hopes. If the price I
pay for that is being guilty of a little hypocrisy, I don't really care.
Never say never, or, why we nurse again another day
A difficult week. It seems I spoke too soon
about the end of breastfeeding. I had to rethink after K got poorly last
Wednesday, three days after I officially unhooked my nursing bra for the last
time.
Last days of breastfeeding
Yesterday K and I had what I know was our last breastfeed together. We
sat in the rocking chair and she suckled for a few minutes, then
noticed something on the carpet that demanded closer inspection. She
detached herself from me, indicated in no uncertain terms she wanted
down, and crawled off to look at whatever it was. She didn't look back,
and somehow that seemed right, and I took it as confirmation of doing
the right thing, though part of my heart was hurting.
On weaning
"When do you think I'll stop actually making milk?" I ask J, as we discuss plans to wean Katy completely.
"I don't know," he replies. "I have no direct experience of the subject."
Adrift in a sea of gloop
Katy gazes at the sea of cold green pasta stretching out before her
and turns to give me a look that seems to say: "You must be joking if
you think I'm eating this". She looks worried, unsure she'll be able to
prevail, that maternal force majeure will compel her to perform the hideous task of swallowing this nastiness down.
Katy
prefers her food orange (sweet potato, carrot, squash all top
favourites), or beige (apple puree, "pairritch") - and she's indicated
in no uncertain terms that both are more palatable warm. She'll
tolerate spaghetti bolognaise in small quantities or a pink Petit
Filou. Avocado - both the wrong colour and temperature - is a no-no.
Inside
the pasta sea small fluorescent monsters are swimming. One has a long
black hair wrapped around a tentacle. My stomach turns. But another
little baby grabs at the baby-sized serving spoon adrift in the pasta
and pushes at it. The fun begins. Katy holds back a while longer,
watches and then finally starts to copy, relief visible on her face
that this is just another bit of grown-up silliness she can laugh along
with at no cost to herself.
The Mucky Munchkins class works on
the basis that they let babies smear themselves in as much pasta, gloop
and non-toxic paint as they want, then someone else clears it all up
afterwards. When they say mucky, they ain't lying. Next to the pasta is
a washing-up bowl filled near the brim with what looks to be vomit - a
substance I've had enough experience with already this week, thank you
very much - again peopled with monsters. Mess is what we're here for, I have to keep reminding myself.
I've
been trying to kid myself we're doing this entirely for Katy, but the
truth is that after starting back to work two days a week or so in
January I've been lonely and out of sorts on the days I do look after
her. However little I have in common with the other mums here, Mucky
Munchkins is at least some kind of landmark we can organise the day
around, an escape from the long, formless slump of home life, with the
promise of some adult conversation.
So here we are, Katy covered
in yellow porridge in a room at the local library, me twittering
nervously about whether she can eat the gloop in safety. We move on to
finger paintings, with me encouraging Katy to daub cut-out shamrock (a
nod to St Patrick's Day next week) and rainbow shapes.
Come the
end of the class, I want to find the shapes she "painted" and pick up a
rainbow that looks like it might have been hers. Another mother clears
her throat. It's clear I'm about commit some solecism. It turns out to
be the work of her offspring, or so she says. "We're taking that home
to show Daddy, aren't we?" I'm no longer sure which painting is ours.
Bless them, but the babies haven't yet discovered a distinctive style
and one besmeared shamrock looks very much like another.
Briefly,
I consider forgetting the paintings and keeping Katy's vest as our
memento of the morning - installation art for infants, if you like -
since it's got more paint on it than any of the paintings. Nah. Too
bizarre. Then I spot a shamrock that looks like it might be ours. Phew.
The woman running the classes wants to take it from me to lay it
out to dry with the others but after my run-in with the other mum I'm
taking no chances and hug it to me protectively. This might not be
top-end office politics, but on the mums-and-babies circuit you do get
a few opportunities to stretch yourself. I wrap the shamrock, lopsided
from undried lumps of orange paint, in a binliner and pop it in my
rucksack.
About me
Mother at Large dreams of crossing the Pyrenees with her young daughters. And might just do so one of these days. To find out more read her full profile.
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Websites I Enjoy
Edinburgh Unesco City of Literature
Mothers 35 Plus: information for older mothers.
Discover this festival city
Pelvic Partnership - invaluable help and advice for women suffering pelvic pain during and after pregnancy. And remember, Edinburgh mums-to-be suffering this debilitating condition can self-refer to hospital physios at ERI. No longer any need to go via your GP.
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