April 2007

PostingNursery parting such sweet sorrow



Dropped K off at nursery this morning, an event that's become a regular torment for both of us.

Mentioned this trouble to my mother, who spent her early wartime childhood evacuated onto the family farm in Yorkshire. "Whenever the farmers separated a cow and a calf into different fields both of them mooed for days afterwards," she tells me. "Yes, both of them."

She shook her head. In sympathy? confusion? Remembering her own similar experiences? With me? With her own mother? For years I thought myself alone in missing her as a child when work took her away. Now I realise she must have felt the same.

However, unlike the poor cows, my daughter and I have not gone been forced apart forever, at least I hope not. I have every confidence we will be reunited at 5.30pm today, or even earlier, if I can tear myself away from this blog and get through my professional work sooner.

But believe me, when her face crumples and the tears start falling, it feels like we could be on that windswept Yorkshire farm, cruel fate intervening as bluff farmer.

Staff assure me that she soon settles down happily to "floor play" or whatever else they're doing. "She's a cheeky monkey, guilt-tripping you like this!" says one girl, trying, I think, to reassure me. I don't believe her. I think K really prefers to be with me, even if we don't do all the "singing, dancing, music" at home that I read about in her nursery report cards.

We go through a rigmarole of cuddles, putting her down, her crying, then back to more cuddles and so on. After a few rounds like that they promise to call me if she doesn't settle. Furtively, I creep away while her back's turned to examine a dreamcatcher. As I leave, I peer through the window, thinking people will take me for a nutter, to catch a glimpse of her and check she is indeed okay. She's settled fine. Phew.

Nobody else in my entire life has ever wanted to be with me this much. Probably no-one else, save future children, ever will again. Yet I don't really know how to deal with it. Is there something wrong with me that I don't always embrace this, that sometimes this dependance and love is claustrophobic, even oppressive? I'm flattered, touched - but also daunted and guilty.

Why is it that I persist with my professional writing, when I could be 24/7 with someone who so plainly favours me over all others? I doubt myself, wonder so often if I'm doing the right thing, even though I'm only working a  two-day week. Being a modern mum, there's so much pressure to be all things to all people, nurturing earth mother and career woman, both so at odds with each other, and I waste so much of my time missing one whenever I'm doing the other.

So why do I work? Well, the income is useful; also, the sense of continuity with my old life  is reassuring; then there's the thought that in a few years K will be at school and I must keep my links with the adult world of work that I'll need even more then. And finally, most shamefully, sometimes I like to have a break. It's as simple as that. There, I've said it.

Does that make me a bad mother? Sometimes it's nice to tidy the kitchen, and know it won't be messy again in four minutes. It's nice to focus on me, without half or all my mind on another person all the time. It's nice to eat lunch without feeding my beautiful daughter home-made organic gloop she'll probably reject or flick on my new trousers.

And yet, the emptiness is intense as I walk away from nursery towards the car, where her Maxi Cosi throne sits empty and untenanted, bare save for a discarded pink sock. I pick up the sock and bring it home, where it now sits on the table in my otherwise pristine kitchen, awaiting the return of its pair this evening.

Posted 30 April 2007 12:30 | Number of comments: 3 | Comments

Car Daughter Granny Home Nursery Pregnancy Work

PostingTeatime 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.

Posted 28 April 2007 06:39 | Number of comments: 0 | Comments

Daughter Home Husband Food

PostingThings 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

Posted 26 April 2007 22:23 | Number of comments: 0 | Comments

Daughter Granny Home

PostingSecond 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.

 

Posted 23 April 2007 13:32 | Number of comments: 1 | Comments

Daughter Edinburgh Friends Home Husband

PostingMum 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.

Posted 17 April 2007 15:23 | Number of comments: 1 | Comments

Daughter Edinburgh Husband Kit

PostingTaming of the towering inferno

Sunday evening J brought out his beloved tool boxes and did a spot of flat safety-proofing, leading to a mini-drama of parental paranoia and derring DIY deeds.



From the kitchen, where I was making supper, I could hear the sound of drilling, interspersed with huffing and puffing, as he attached safety straps to a perilously tall, narrow bookcase that we've been worrying K might pull down on herself.



The only problem with this excellent plan was that we live in an old Georgian flat - and have the flakey 200-year-old plaster to prove it.



After twenty minutes J called me through from the kitchen to help road-test his handiwork.



"I want you to pull on the bookcase as hard as K might," he said.



"How hard do you think she would pull?" I replied.



"I don't know. Just pull the way you think she might."



"Okay."



I pulled a bit. Then a bit more. After that I got quite excited, almost toddler-like in fact, and pulled a bit harder still, back and forth. It was getting to be quite good fun. At that point I heard a stretching noise and the bookcase started to come away from its moorings in the sub-standard plaster.



"K wouldn't pull that hard!" said J, grim-faced and disappointed.



"How do you know? She's very strong," I defended.



We both peered at the loosened rawl plug.



"You did ask me to test it."



"Not like that."



I beat a retreat, feeling just like a naughty but defiant toddler might in similar circumstances. In fact, it took me back to when I was about K's age. I almost expected my mother to materialise and, as they say up here in Scotland, "give me a row".





Posted 17 April 2007 11:44 | Number of comments: 1 | Comments

PostingShame 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.

Posted 13 April 2007 09:52 | Number of comments: 0 | Comments

Breastfeeding Daughter Edinburgh Granny

PostingSad but just case of frozen embryos

Poor Nathallie Evans. However much we might know the ruling this week from the European Court of Human Rights ordering the frozen embryos she created with ex-partner Howard Johnston to be destroyed was just, it's hard not to sympathise with her.



Of course he should have the right to decide when and where he becomes a father, of course the embryos are as much his as they are hers, and yes, of course, it would be wrong to let her use the embryos without his consent. And yet... and yet...  I can imagine her anguish only too easily, her pain at losing this last glimmer of hope that she might one day have her own child, and my heart goes out to her in a way it cannot to him. Having lost her fertility to illness, she now faces a childless future.



Nobody could really dispute that Howard Johnston is within his rights to stop this process. If a baby is, at least in ideal circumstances, the fruit of love between a man and woman, then it has to be admitted that making one after the love has gone does seem wrong-headed and unnatural.



I remember only too well that restless obsession of wanting a baby, and had I found myself in Natallie Evans' position, I too would probably have done as she did and followed this doomed quest through every legal twist and turn, defying logic and reason. I wish her well and hope that whatever happens now she finds a way to make peace with her situation.

Posted 12 April 2007 19:33 | Number of comments: 0 | Comments

PostingDon't look back...

To one of Edinburgh's most popular eateries for lunch to celebrate our wedding anniversary, while we left K at nursery. This was a kind of two-in-one celebration to compensate for last year's anniversary being, well, frankly a bit traumatic. Then I was in hospital enduring the agony of establishing breastfeeding and having a blood transfusion, with K only a few days old.



So goodness knows why the ridiculous need to justify my decision to leave K at nursery for a few hours while J and I had fun. I can't seem to help it, stupid and irrational though I know I am. Before I had K I vowed not to be a martyred mother who forgets how to look after herself, but it's easier than I ever suspected to slip into that role.



All seemed well initially. The sun shone and jazzy upbeat music in the restaurant lifted our already exuberant mood. The waitress smiled, congratulated us and led us over to our table. At first I didn't realise what was happening at the table next to us, being busy flirting and giggling with J, feeling almost girlish and giddy. But before we sat down everything came into focus. As soon as I twigged what was going on, I had to ask to be moved. Shame on me.

Posted 09 April 2007 19:35 | Number of comments: 1 | Comments

Breastfeeding Husband

PostingA hymn and a prayer on Easter Sunday

An acquaintance told me how before she had a child herself she used to get annoyed when children made a noise in public. These days, she said, she's mostly just relieved it's not her child making the noise. Even though this particular woman is like a born-again clone of the  posh gels I had to endure in my school days, someone whose air of entitlement and snootiness has grated on me more than a little, I couldn't help but agree with her.

Today I thought again about what she said when I took K on her first visit to church for Easter Sunday at St George's West in Shandwick Place. Most people were extremely welcoming to us, but the man on the door who greeted us said K could stay "as long as she doesn't make a noise", which I thought was not the practical expression of "service, integrity and turning the other cheek" that the minister later talked about in his sermon. To be honest, though, two years ago, childless and ignorant, that would have been my attitude. I would have been giving some hard-pressed parent a withering look as cries rent the air.

Two women separately offered to help with K and look after her upstairs in the junior creche. I partly wanted to take them up on their offer but then worried that they might not look after her well or that they'd let someone steal her. I find it so difficult to distinguish between crazy paranoia and good mothering. Perhaps the reality is there is no valid distinction; once those mothering hormones are in a woman's system the world is forever a dangerous place, in which you can trust no-one, not even the nice ladies from Sunday School, and paranoia becomes hard-wired as your default mode of being. Oh dear.

K sat through a hymn and prayer, very patiently, before starting to coo intermittently, at which point we got up and perambulated quietly at the side, where K found a large plant pot full of stones that required further investigation. I thwarted several attempts by her to insert a stone into her mouth, then for about an hour afterwards had a feeling at the back of my throat as if I'd tried to swallow the stone myself.

It was good to be in a church again, after too many months away, and this place felt active and energetic, full of people of varying ages, with a thoughtful and well-delivered sermon. I liked the atmosphere and people. We stayed almost the full course and I came away feeling I'd managed to connect with something spriritual. I don't think we disturbed anyone else's worship. Who knows, next Sunday I might even pluck up courage to explore the junior creche, though of course I plan on staying with K for at least the first couple of times until she's settled in, even if I am irrational and paranoid.

Posted 08 April 2007 22:25 | Number of comments: 0 | Comments

Daughter Edinburgh

PostingHills are alive with the buzz of springtime

Sun poured in through the shutters first thing this morning and I yearned to be on the hills within minutes of waking up, with a restless eagerness that I knew no amount of Saturday morning shopping could satisfy. Perhaps Spring arriving had something to do with it, because it felt like my body waking up again after the long hibernation of winter.

With the long Easter weekend stretching ahead of us I wanted to take my chance to be outdoors while the weather and my energy held. While I was pregnant with K I was often too sick or exhausted  to do more than walk to the end of the street. Then when she was really little, I was even more exhausted and a strange paranoia made me reluctant to leave the neighbourhood.  All too often the highlight of my weekend was nothing more than a latte in Caffe Nero, which is great and I don't mean to be ungrateful, but I know there's so much more to life.

To my enormous delight we managed a "proper" family outing today. It was the real McCoy. We packed up our shamefully unscuffed walking boots, the Macpac Vamoose carrier, and assorted walking kit and unstabled the noble beast, Snufix, as we have christened our new car.

We took the A702 Biggar road south of Edinburgh, argued about the turn-off for the Glencorse Reservoir (yes, it really was a proper family outing) and parked beside the Flotterstone Inn, where we stopped for a coffee to calm down. The staff were friendly and I felt better pretty much as soon as we arrived.

We followed a path from the Inn up to Glencorse Reservoir, past what was described as the "old filter beds", crossing through farm gates. Fresh, sharp, intoxicating air filled my nostrils and lungs, helping my shoulders untense. I gulped down as much air as I could. Trees were just starting to come into bud, leaves not yet unfurled. The sun rippled its light over the lakes of water. Lambs, still wobbly on their legs, were feeding from their mothers on sharp grassy inclines. Anglers sat in rowing boats on the reservoir, fishing for trout.

We walked up to the top of the reservoir and trekked up past Logan Burn to Loganlea Reservoir. East Kip towered over it, at 534 metres, seeming to invite us to ascend if we could, but I knew by then I had only enough energy to get home and no more, though I'd dearly have loved to carry on all day.

K sat in the Vamoose on her dad's shoulders taking all this in, looking around with her habitual intense interest before falling asleep with her face propped awkwardly against a piece of strapping. I started to worry about sunburn and we improvised a sunshade from an old muslin. "K of Arabia" quipped her dad.

Being in the hills is like finding a world apart, a better, easier world where I can keep things in perspective and find it easier to be happy, and it's a world that endures, changing little from one year to the next, soothing in its steadiness. Yet I forget so quickly that this other world of even exists when I'm back in the city, surrounded by granite. Another reason why family days out, with beautiful hills and greenery, are such a good thing. May we never forget the hills are always there, even when we can't be there amongst them.

Posted 07 April 2007 20:49 | Number of comments: 0 | Comments

Posting"Poo or no poo" and other stories

K's illness drags on. It's nearly a week now. Nursery won't take her until she's done a solid poo, or gone 24 hours with no poo at all. Since poor K doesn't qualify on either count I phone work to tell them I won't be in - the second day in a row. They're understanding, but I work freelance, so this means nada in the bank account and possible loss of credibility and goodwill at a place where I'm still newish.

To make matters worse, K's reached convalescence. When I tried to kiss her this morning she pushed me away. Just one imperious gesture of the hand, not so much as a look in my direction. I was hurt and a nastier part of me thought: "You ungrateful little monster".

I know she's on the mend. While I was making her breakfast, the little monkey reached across the table to where I'd left my breakfast, half-inched a piece of toast and marmalade and wolfed it down, full of beady concentration. It was the gobbling noises that tipped me off. At least she had the grace to look startled when she realised I was onto her.

Nappy changing remains an ordeal for both of us, with her tummy not quite right. I can't handle the stench without retching. But I've worked out a way of doing it. First I open the window wide, to let in Edinburgh's early April weather, and  I assemble all my accoutrements - fragranced nappy sacks, fresh nappy, cotton wool balls, toilet paper, nappy cream, jug of water - on the floor in advance.

Then I take a few practice deep breaths before breathing in for as long as I can and setting to work in earnest. Sometimes, with luck, I can get everything done and cleared away before I need to breathe again. The downside is I'm so dizzy afterwards I sometimes see stars. The upside is that with all the fresh air from the open window I recover in no time at all.

Posted 03 April 2007 12:00 | Number of comments: 0 | Comments

Daughter Edinburgh Home Nursery Pregnancy Work

PostingAll coming out in the wash

While K was poorly J and I took up battle stations, pretty much as John Cleese and Robin Skynner describe it in their excellent book Families and How to Survive Them. Put it this way, romance and fun weren't high on the agenda. I had to ask J to change her nappies, since they were making me retch into the nappy bucket, which has seen a fair bit of action over the past few days. My side of the unspoken deal was I cleaned K up, made meals and sat with her.

"Don't worry, leave the nappies to me," J said.

We were almost professional at first in our self-restraint, both patrolling the flat in the dead of night, exhausted, cold, barefoot; K unable to sleep. But after a couple of days we started to take out our worries and anxieties on each other. What brought everything to the surface was, of course, ridiculously small.

Each day we've consigned roughly four sleepsuits and two or three grobags to the wash. Her brand-new rosebud grobag was hit by enemy fire on its first outing. I couldn't keep pace with the laundry, even when Granny helped out by taking some of it round to her tumbledrier. Heaps of it sat around the flat, heavy and wet, nowhere left to hang it out.

Oh, how I rue the decision last year to buy a simple washing machine, not a washer drier. When I said this to Granny last week she agreed I'd made a mistake and suggested I cut my losses and buy a new machine. Then I felt even worse.



Annoyed at myself, anxious about K, fixating on the washing, I breached the unspoken division of labout between me and J.

"Could you help me hanging out this washing?"

"I've got to finish this piece of work. I have put quite a lot of washing on in the past few days, as it happens."



 Humph. And so the bickering began.

Posted 01 April 2007 22:58 | Number of comments: 0 | Comments

PostingNever 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.

She's been really quite sick, poor thing, and I finally weakened in my resolve late last night after she clawed piteously at my top and tried to latch onto my arm. Her sleeping's all messed up and I was trying to rock her to sleep in my arms, sat in the antique nursing chair with specially shortened legs that Granny gave me.

I'm really very proud of this chair – it's brilliant for posture and meant I could nurse K with my feet securely on the floor. That might not sound like a big deal, but believe me, it is. Also it has sentimental value; Granny used it when I was K's age. I have the odd reverie imagining K nursing her children there in years to come, but maybe I could knock off the parental expectations for a few years, or at least until she's feeling better.

K was obviously confused as we sat there and couldn't understand why there was no milk forthcoming. I couldn't blame her. She looked so distressed and puzzled. It felt wrong to deny her. When she was well it didn't seem to bother her much (as I mentioned in a earlier post). Now she appears to want the comfort, as much as the actual milk.

Today she was much better, so much so we ventured out to Inverleith Duck Pond, where we enjoyed the daffodils and watched the swans. A group of seagulls later divebombed us, which scared me, but didn't seem to bother K, who was sanguine throughout. Now, of course, I'm indulging in a ridiculous fantasy that it's my milk that's made her better. Which in turn is going to make it even harder to call a complete halt....

Posted 01 April 2007 20:54 | Number of comments: 2 | Comments

Breastfeeding Daughter Granny