April 2008

PostingWhy there's no place like home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Childbirth Home birth New baby Older mother

PostingBook Festival Update

Edinburgh International Book Festival UPDATE

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

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

Blogging Books

PostingA belly good idea

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

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

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

PostingTagged

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogging

PostingPay mothers to stay at home

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

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

PostingHappy Birthday Zornhau

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

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

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

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

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

Blogging Friends

PostingEdinburgh Book Festival appearance

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

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

Activities Blogging Books Fashionably Late - the book Out and about

PostingBed-mates and bolsters

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I was being polite."

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

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

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

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

"Oh, come here," he says.

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

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

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

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

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

Childbirth Daughter Home Husband New baby Pregnancy

PostingOf pregheads and jealousy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fashionably Late - the book News Older mother

PostingThis writing life

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

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

Angst Books Fashionably Late - the book