I Sat By The Canal

It's the nicest day of the year so far. I took my baby to a park and when she wanted feeding I sat on the grass beside the canal and nursed her in my lap. Ducks squabbled in front of us.

It was heaven and I love spring.

Brain Fry

I was going to write something deep and meaningful about the over-idealisation of natural birth or perhaps my increasing understanding of my body's slow return to postpartum fertility.

But my brain is fried, so maybe you can help me answer life's really important questions, like:

Why am I wearing two pair of knickers? (OK, the answer is that Cave Baby offered me a pair when I had already put my pants on, and she said "Bum bum" so authoritatively that I had no choice but to put them on. Then I forgot and put my tights on top).

How do you keep a coat on a toddler who has learnt to take it off?

Is it a bad idea to let my toddler play with open boxes of breakfast cereal just so I can do the washing up?

And does the fact that I cleaned the living room yesterday have any bearing on the answer to the previous question?

Is singing the "Baa baa baa, baa Babybel" jingle all around the supermarket a sign of madness, or is it acceptable for those with small children?

Eating crisps with a fork: can anyone explain why?

Maybe you'll get something more coherent later in the week. Maybe not. Ta ta!

Parental Pat on the Back

Every parent needs a pat on the back every so often. And if nobody else is going to give you one, you may as well give it to yourself. We are all our own harshest critics, but if you can find it within yourself to feel good about one little thing each day, then you are probably doing a much better job than you realise.

This sounds like a good idea for a meme doesn't it? I may or may not repeat this at regular or irregular intervals; let's just see what happens.

Here is my pat on the back for today. This morning I took Cave Baby to buy new shoes. Sounds easy? It would have been, had I not made the mistake a month ago of taking her to buy shoes when she was feeling poorly. The mere sight of the shoe measuring lady turned her into a screaming animal. We left without shoes but with a new found fear of foot measurers.

So, on to today. I had waited long enough since shoe-gate that I thought she might have forgotten all about it. Not so. Once again the crying started the minute the innocent-looking measuring device was produced. I thought we could maybe Face The Fear And Do It Anyway so I encouraged the lady to measure her feet despite the crying. We got a rough idea of her size, but she was left thoroughly traumatised by the event. Not wanting to give up, I let the lady fetch some shoes while I did my best to calm her down. We tried a bit of nursing first (I'll get my boobs out anywhere nowadays). That got her quiet until the new shoes appeared. Shoe trying was definitely not going to happen with her in that state, so I pulled out all the tactics at my disposal: carrying her around the shop, talking to old ladies, looking in the mirrors, bouncing on the chairs, taking her outside - you know the drill. Eventually, after a good 20 minutes, I managed to get her to sit on my knee, near the new shoes, without bursting into tears.

We continued to persevere, and after another 10 minutes I managed to get shoes on her and get her to walk in them! It was slow going, but my baby managed to try on about four pairs without complaining. And much to my horror, she took a shine to the garish purple patent ones with lights that flash when you walk.

So why am I proud of this? Well I could have given up again, but we managed to navigate this little shoe buying storm and by the end of the visit she didn't want to leave the shop. It may have taken an hour, but I guided her through an event which, to her, was frightening. She's delighted with her new shoes and I hope that next time she will remember that there is a reward at the end of the process. And did I buy her the tasteful brown pair with funky pink stitching? Did I heck. I went for the yucky purple patent flashy ones. They're for her, not me, and I respect her wishes.

Just think for a minute, and I bet you can come up with something parenting-related that you did this week that you're proud of. I'd love it if you told me in the comments, and it might just make you feel good too!

Thoughts on Childbirth

I am sitting on front of "One Born Every Minute", a documentary series on childbirth. It's the first time I have seen it and I quite literally cannot watch the babies being born without crying. It was the same when I was pregnant; give me good births, bad births, high definition or grainy Youtube footage and I'll cry. I thought the crying might have stopped since I gave birth myself but it evidently hasn't.

I don't know how some ladies manage to watch birth video after birth video when they are pregnant. For me, they are just too loaded with emotion. Even having been there and done that once, it still scares the hell out of me. And I had a good experience! The day after I gave birth I thought "I want to do that again!", but 18 months later the fear has returned. How much did it hurt me? Did I make as much noise as the ladies on television? Did my labour hurt more or less than theirs? Would things go as well if I did it again? Would I breathe through my contractions more calmly or would I shout the house down all over again?

Television has also provided lots of birth footage via "Lambing Live", a bizarre show in which springy haired wildlife presenter Kate Humble delivers spring lambs live on air (if any sheep are cooperative enough to coincide their labours with the one hour broadcasting slot). What strikes me about this programme is how much the farmers know about natural birth. If things are progressing as normal, they leave the sheep alone to get on with her labour. When the lambs are born they place them in front of the sheep so she can lick them clean. They know how important it is for bonding that the lamb is given to its mum immediately after birth. They quietly watch on to check that suckling takes place soon after birth and they see it as essential that each lamb gets a bellyfull of colostrum before they go to sleep. If a lamb does not suckle spontaneously, they help it to latch on, and if that does not work then they milk the sheep and give the colostrum to her lamb through a feeding tube. Nursing is valued highly because it produces stronger, healthier lambs and is cheaper and less labour intensive than bottle feeding.

All of these practices are equally important in human births. But during the twentieth century we managed to convince ourselves that unnatural practices like keeping babies in hospital nurseries and formula feeding were beneficial. We went so far away from what is natural and instinctive that expensive academic research was required in order to persuade us that skin-to-skin contact is good, and mother's milk is far better than any artificial alternative. What a waste of time and money, when farmers could have set us straight all along!

Now be honest - do you cry at birth videos too? And are you as scared as me?

Photo from Independent.co.uk.

Dolphins Are Midwives Too

Dolphin researchers have recently claimed that dolphins should be considered the second most intelligent animals on earth, second to humans but ahead of chimpanzees. That means that dolphins have a rich and complex social life complete with culture, learning and tradition.

The underwater world is so foreign to us humans that I find it hard to imagine what a dolphin's life must be like. But we share so may of our childrearing practices with land-bound apes that I wondered if we would also have methods in common with dolphins. I'm interested in birth, breastfeeding, weaning, infant transport and any other facts about infant care that I can lay my hands on. So, to start at the beginning, I found some information about how dolphins birth their babies.

After a twelve month gestation, dolphins give birth in the water. The fluids released during labour are attractive to predators and put the mother at risk, so the birth is usually attended by several other dolphins who may well be members of the same family. These doula dolphins are putting themselves at risk by attending the birth, but the calf will also carry their genes, so the practice carries an overall evolutionary advantage.

The baby dolphin's tail is born first so that there is less danger of the calf drowning during the birth process. The removal of the newborn calf from the mother's body may actually be assisted by one female midwife dolphin; the practice has been observed in captivity, and stillborn dolphins with teeth marks in their bodies have been found washed up on beaches.



Following the birth, the umbilical cord snaps easily so the new dolphin's movement is not restricted. Calves are able to swim on their own within minutes of birth and will normally make their own way to the surface to breathe. If this does not happen, some dolphin mothers have been observed moving their calves to the surface.

Dolphins do not just make great midwives for members of their own species; they can actually assist at human births too. A Russian male midwife called Igor Charkovsky has helped pregnant women to give birth underwater in the Black Sea aided by dolphins. The animals are reputedly very gentle with human infants and they grant a sense of calm to both the human mother and her baby. Dolphin-attended waterbirths are also said to occur privately in Hawaii.

The sophistication of dolphin birthing practices has taken my breath away. Come back in a week or so if you would like to know more about how dolphins feed, carry and look after their young.

Photos: The Best Photos

What Would An Inuit Mother Do?

It sure is snowy around here. We've got ten inches sitting in the back garden and more forecast over the weekend. Pushing a buggy is impossible unless a snowplough precedes you. But what do the Inuit do in such conditions?



Oh I see, they babywear! It works for people the world over, and it's working great for me too. Carrying my daughter in a backpack is allowing us both to get out in the gorgeous snowy outdoors and we even help to keep each other warm. I admit that I fell on my bum a few days ago, but with her legs tucked either side of my body she was completely safe.

And just because I love snow, here's a snow picture taken in our local park:



Happy New Year to everyone.

Baby, How You Make My Heart Melt

Five things that make me smile, laugh or feel so proud:

1. You know when you hum and run a finger up and down over your lips to make a sort of "Wibble" sound? Cave Baby loves doing that. And she has a rapidly developing repertoire of "Iggle" and "Diddle" sounds. If you didn't know better, you really would think she was having a real conversation from the range of noises she makes.

2. Have wet hands? Then wash your face! It doesn't matter whether they are wet from splashing in the cat's water bowl or being rubbed in spilt orange squash - that face has to be cleaned.

3. "Boof boof", her version of "woof", when she sees a dog. How cute. She even has a version of "Moo" that she trots out for cows, horses and any other large four legged animal. Have you ever thought about how difficult it must be to differentiate between a brown cow and a brown horse?

4. The cutest grimace/smile ever. It's a sort of screwed-up-face/teeth-bared kind of expression and it is doled out without restriction to anyone who flashes her a smile. Random strangers are always telling me what a lovely happy smiley baby she is - they probably say it to everyone, but it still makes me feel special.

5. Cleaning. Give her a wet wipe, tissue or cloth, and prepare to watch while she wipes everything in sight for the next half an hour. Nothing makes her happier. She may in fact be a girl after my own heart.

I could go on for ages, but five is enough for now. What makes your heart melt?

Paddling Furiously Beneath the Surface

People don't frown in photos. In photos, everything is hunky dory. Mothers are the same with our out-of-the-house faces. We are experts at putting on a brave public face even when chaos and frustration reign at home.

Do you ever look at another mother gliding along, calmly pushing a pram, and wonder how she manages to be so competent, so together? I read an explanation for this (was it in What Mothers Do? I'm not sure) and it went roughly as follows. We all feel such a sense of relief when we manage to get organised enough to leave the house that we are bound to look a bit calm and happy as we walk along. Let's face it, the afternoon stroll is the highight of the day when you're caring for a newborn and you're pretty pleased with yourself for getting your shit together long enough to step outside the door (plus the fact that this may be the first time in the day that the baby has stopped crying). At the same time as you're looking at some other mother and wondering how she manages to be so organised, she is probably looking at you thinking how confident you are.

Our own mothers can be just as unhelpful when it comes to understanding how bloody hard motherhood can be. I have already forgotten just how bewildering the first few months were (I don't think I got enough sleep to actually form memories). If I've forgotten after a year, imagine what it's like after 30 years. They remember the good bits (the human brain does have a tendency to forget bad things anyway) and it is the good bits that they tend to talk about. Hence, insecure new mums like me wonder why we are so much less competent than our mothers were.

I think blogs also tend to give a false impression of how great other people's lives are. You read about what a wonderful day some blogger and her family had, you see pictures of attractive children kicking up autumn leaves in dappled sunlight, and you think, "How come my life isn't as perfect as that?". But what the blogger doesn't write about is the tantrum the child had at breakfast time; the fact she had to be bribed to put on her wellies; the way she cried when she was put in her car seat. I'm not criticising anyone for writing nice things about their families; I am just saying that we naturally tend to edit out the worst bits and write about the things that went well, that we enjoyed.

The point of this post is to say that intelligent, self-aware people tend to be self-critical and, when comparing themselves with others, to find themselves wanting (at least, I do). Mothers are no exception. We always think everyone else is coping so much better then we are (I do anyway). But I have met enough mums in real life to know that when you scratch the surface and get past that public face, we all have the same worries and problems. Even a confident, capable, charity-working, volunteering, supermum-of-three, long the subject of my admiration, admitted to me yesterday that she feels she can't cope when her toddler plays up. I know that shouldn't make me feel better, but it does.

So what I am trying to say is that it is easy to look at other people and imagine that their lives are more enjoyable than your own, or that they are much better parents than you, or they are happier than you, or whatever other metric you use to measure your own self-worth. But I don't think it's true. I think other people look at you and think exactly the same thing. I think mothers in particular are brilliant at putting on a brave face. In reality, we all appear to be gliding serenely while beneath the surface we are paddling furiously. This is the nature of things and it will never change. So (and I am saying this more to myself than to anyone else) chill out, make the best of things and stop thinking that everyone is so much better at motherhood than you.

A Gift I Want To Give

If there is one thing that I hope for my daughter's future, aside from her being healthy, it is that she will grow up loving the natural world. I hope she will know how calming and restorative a walk in a green space can be, even if it just a park. I hope she will have the confidence to pick up a map and a compass and set out to wander the outdoors. I hope she will find it rejuvenating to fill her lungs with air scented with grass and manure. And I hope that she will delight in watching wild animals and birds whenever she can.

My parents worked long and hard to give me this gift. They put up with incessant moaning from my brother and I when they dragged us all out for long walks at the weekend. They took us on holiday to remote caravan sites beside windswept coastlines or craggy mountains, and hauled us up hills and down cliffs to catch elusive sightings of shy birds and animals. It must sometimes have been hard to maintain enthusiasm in the face of our cynical complaints. But do you know what? After all those years, something in us clicked. We started asking to go out for walks. When we left home for city universities we found that we missed those doses of country air. We bought tents and sought out quiet green campsites. We started looking for opportunities to watch wildlife. My parents really did succeed in giving us that appreciation of nature.

Will I be able to give my baby the same gift? I feel that I have so much to live up to. I remember so many wonderful moments, and I wonder if I will be able to give my daughter the same memories. I remember my first, thrilling view of a fox hunting at twilight; going out at dusk to watch a family of badgers emerge from its sett; visiting frenetic colonies of nesting seabirds; peering through binoculars at bobbing seals; seeing salmon leap up a weir; eating sandwiches in a hide while waiting to catch sight of a woodpecker; spying a weasel scurrying along a grassy bank. My best memory of all is watching a family of bluetits fledge from a nestbox on the front of our house.

Though I know it is going to be hard to give my daughter the same fond memories, I know that if I can, I will be giving her an escape route from the grey rush of urbanity. So I will do my best at every opportunity to escape the suburbs where we live and to immerse us in fresh air and greenness, in animals, plants, birds and insects.

Of course it's not even a given that there will be so many plants and animals for my daughter to look at when she grows up. If you have a moment, consider signing the RSPB's Letter to the Future that aims to show the UK government that millions of us humble citizens wish they would plough as much money and effort into safeguarding the natural world as they do into saving the economy. You don't have to be an RSPB member and you don't have to give them any money, though I think you have to be a UK citizen. It's a really good idea, and the more people that sign, the stronger the message becomes. Happy pledging.

Time, Or Lack Of It

Gosh, I don't know how all these so-called mummy bloggers find the time to post several times a week, especially those with more than one child. As Cave Baby gets older (13 months and counting) things don't feel like they are getting any easier, and my free time seems to be in shorter and shorter supply. Her naps get ever shorter and her night-time sleep shows no sign of improving. When she is awake she wants to practice walking ALL THE TIME. I can forget about doing anything on the computer when she is around unless I want more of the keys to break following one of her keyboard mashing sessions (only the equals has succumbed so far). And what with my "other projects", not least the preparation for imminent bathroom refurbishment, this blog has been way down my order of priorities.

But in lieu of a proper post, may I encourage you to click on The Feminist Breeders article on breast vs formula. It is just the kind of rant I would be too scared to write. She is a brave blogger with real integrity.

Swipes, Scratches and Bites

I often wonder how other parents manage the baby/animal interface. A typical baby/cat encounter in our house goes roughly as follows. Cat finds a quiet place to lie down. Baby spots cat (cue pointing and cries of "Dada dada"). Baby crawls towards cat. Baby prods cat in face. Cat looks annoyed. Baby pokes face again then strokes hair. Cat looks more annoyed. Baby grabs handful of fur. Cat raises paw threateningly. Baby pulls fur. Cat places paws (claws out) on either side of baby's head and menacingly approaches baby's face with teeth bared, remembers that this scenario has previously concluded with the delivery of quite a hard kick from the mother of said baby, and runs away.

I do my best to prevent Cave Baby from tormenting our cat, but short of banning the cat from the house, there is not a whole lot I can do to keep them apart. Besides, the cat seems to actually gravitate towards the baby. It must be her sadist streak. Or, rather more sadly, it may be her attempt to get attention from the humans who have neglected her for the year in favour of their precious baby.

Well, actually, maybe I could try harder to keep them apart. But I am not an over-protective sort of person and I kind of think that learning to deal with our vicious cat won't do Cave Baby any harm. Granted, she has had quite a few scratches so far. But on the positive side, she is learning to respect animals and she's maybe learning a little lesson about the world not being completely fluffy and cute and nice.

So I probably could do a little bit more to keep them apart, but I'm trying to let them sort it out themselves and I'm hoping that eventually they will reach a state of mutual respect and understanding.

What I want to know is, do other people have this problem with their cats and dogs (or whatever other creatures you have running around your house)? How do you deal with it?

Cleanliness Anxiety

At what point in the last ten years did I turn into one of those women who can't function unless the house is clean? It's been a slow transformation, from a relaxed studenty attitude to dirt, through the easy solo living days to my current anxiety-filled quest to maintain cleanliness in the face of a rampaging crumb-scattering baby. I'm not stupid about cleaning: a quick vac once a week, cleaning the bathroom when it smells or gets spattered with toothpaste, a bit of dusting once a month and a daily wipe of the kitchen surfaces is quite enough for me. But I just can't stand it if things get out of hand and the place becomes dirty.

Last week I was stressed out, all week. And I am ashamed to say it was all because I felt like I was drowning under a weight of housework. We had been away for a long weekend, meaning that the previous week had been mostly about preparing for the trip, so very little washing or cleaning had been done. That meant this week I had to do several loads of laundry, clean the kitchen and vac the house as well as the usual daily washing up. I know this doesn't sound much to a normal person but to a sleep deprived mother with a trying-to-walk baby clinging to her legs, it feels like climbing a mountain.

Every day I put the washing out on the line, only for it to rain again and soak it through. My dad came and did some DIY which coated our entire bathroom and landing in dust. Then he threw a cup of coffee down the stairs. And of course Cave Baby was going through one of her "difficult" weeks which meant she refused to eat her normal meals and preferred to throw food all over the place instead. Three times a day. Ahhhh.

The fact that this all gets me so stressed out is probably related to my SAHM inferiority complex. I think that if I'm at home, the least I should be able to do is welcome Cave Father into a clean house at the end of the day (Feminism? Never heard of it). When I worked full time I didn't really care about dirt because (a) I was only at home when it was dark, so I didn't see it; and (b) I had much more important things to worry about. But now I spend many daylight hours here in my house I have far too much time to look at the state of my carpets and stress about how on earth I am going to find time to clean them when I have to go shopping and take Cave Baby to this or that baby group and meet my mum and make a cake and check my emails and blah blah blah blah. I wish I could have Lisa from Edenwild's healthier attitude towards cleanliness.

Thank god for my mother who came on Thursday and did all those niggly little jobs that Cave Baby just won't tolerate me doing. That helped a lot. But what shocked me the most was that on Friday, when I did manage to vac the house, I instantly felt a hundred times more relaxed. Now isn't that so sad? My anxiety genuinely was caused by my need to clean. I really am turning into one of those women who have to have a clean house. And that's not who I want to be!

Let's just set a few pledges out right now. I am not going to be one of those people who wipes my baby's face or washes her hands in the middle of a meal. I am not going to worry about her picking up soil. I am not going to ask anyone to take their shoes off at the door. And I am going to try not to ever let staying clean get in the way of having fun. I shall have be mindful about reigning my cleaning urges in. Wish me luck!

SAHM Inferiority Complex

This is how I feel about being a stay at home mum. I feel inferior to mothers who go out to work. I feel that I am not pulling my weight in the household. I don't believe that the work I do each day, caring for Cave Baby, cooking and keeping the house clean, bears any comparison to a real work day. I feel that I'm exploiting my kind partner who goes out to earn the money. I feel embarrassed that we can afford to have just one of us working, when other people have it much harder. I feel like my education is going to waste. I feel that my family must wonder why I'm squandering my talents. I wonder when my partner is going to come to his senses and realise how unfair the arrangement is.

Why do I feel like this? I'm not short of stay-at-home role models - my mother took seven years out to look after me and my brother, and my mother-in-law never worked. My partner thinks it is perfectly right and reasonable that I should look after our daughter while he earns the money to support the family. He says I am doing a valuable job. He knows how hard it can be sometimes.

I think that I have been brought up in a culture that places a very high value on mothers going back to work. My family was full of very strong women. My mother has had a successful career, both my grandmothers had good jobs and worked until retirement, my aunts are both wealthy high flyers. Our government constantly encourages women to go back to work by offering money off childcare and withdrawing benefits from those who do not find work once their children reach a certain age (yet at the same time, politicians bemoan the collapse of the family unit and the resulting social problems).

But I am here at home because my partner and I have agreed that it is the best thing for our daughter at the moment. We think it is good for her to have her mum all the time, and we know that we are very fortunate to be able to make this decision. She has quite high needs and the parenting philosophy that we have developed over the past year means that we would feel uncomfortable about handing her over to someone else to care for until she is a little older (though again, I know we are privileged to be able to make this choice).

Being a stay at home mum can be frustrating but I am under no illusion that it is about a million times more fun than going to work. I have never had a job I liked and I have never looked forward to going to work. I cannot identify with women who say they need to get out of the house and work, though I do not doubt that their feelings are perfectly valid. Many studies have shown that stress at work is often caused by a lack of control over your own time, and one of the great aspects of being a full-time mother is that you have almost total control over what you do each day, baby mealtimes and naps permitting. There is a lot of angst amongst full-time mothers (not least amongst bloggers - see recent posts by Mon at Holistic Mama and Jessica at This Is Worthwhile) and I can empathise with their themes of martyrdom, isolation and compromise. I know staying at home is hard - I really suffer from a lack of any time to do anything on my own, for example - but I am satisfied with my lot. I am confident I am doing the right thing for our family and I can't really believe how lucky I've been to have the opportunity to be a stay at home mum. In fact I wonder how long I'm going to be able to get away with the improbably good deal I've got.

Mother, Introverted

In a book I read recently (The Other Hand, Chris Cleave), the fictional female narrator was said to have taken two years after the birth of her son to emerge from the introverted phase of motherhood. This got me thinking - am I still in the introverted phase? Am I just introverted anyway? Or am I outwardly "normal" and just inwardly preoccupied with my own thoughts?

When her baby was 12 weeks old (and mine a similar age), a friend of mine said that she felt she was just coming out of the fog that she had been in since giving birth. At the time I thought that I was already out of that new-mother bubble; the bubble that makes you feel like nothing exists in the world apart from your baby, your house and a gigantic pile of dirty nappies. But I wondered if I was kidding myself; if I was really still lost in the fog but didn't know it.

Months later, with hindsight, I think I was correct back then and I had already broken out of my bubble. And now, at a year postpartum, I think I am still suffering maternal tiredness from broken nights but I am basically back to my old self. I have weeks when I have no desire to associate with anyone except my family, and weeks when I want to go to tots' groups every day. And, symetrically, I have weeks when I have no desire to go anywhere near the internet (like this week) and weeks when I am obsessed with it. I don't think I am caught in a spiral of introversion - in fact I deliberately build bridges so that I do have reasons to get out of bed each morning (aside from the baby-crawling-all-over-me reason).

But am I mistaken? Is there really an introverted phase that lasts as long as two years? Am I still in a fog so enveloping that I can't tell whether it is there or not? In another year, will I emerge from the mist, look back and realise how wrapped up I was in my baby for all that time? And does it even matter? Maybe the fog has a purpose. Maybe that fog is what helps mothers to give so much to their children without worrying about what they themselves have given up.

Who knows. I'll just keep trudging on, doing my best and hoping that I'm doing something right at least some of the time.

Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

I'm feeling rather uninspired at the moment. It could be something to with the lurgy that has struck down myself and my baby, forcing me to spend most of the last week on a settee with a sleeping baby on my lap, staring at the TV.

So, the title of this post is about neighbours. We actually have great neighbours. Not the type to pop round and have a coffee with, but the type you could borrow a ladder from if you were short of one.

Anyway, I was not intending to write about real neighbours. I sat down to write about Neighbours, the only soap worth watching (on weekdays on Channel 5 at 5.30, at least). Any Aussies reading this will probably think it's hilarious that some of us sad Brits still watch this guff. And yes, I have visited the real Ramsay Street.

Anyway, Bridget is breastfeeding her new baby (they seem to be giving bottles too, but hey, I don't really expect continuity from a Neighbours scriptwriter). And they even mentioned her leaking. It's so nice to see breastfeeding mentioned as a normal, run-of-the-mill thing in a soap. It gave me a little smile when I watched it yesterday.

Happy Birthday!

It's my baby's first birthday!

I couldn't let the occasion pass without a little post. The last couple of days have been fun as we have reminisced about what stage of labour I was in this time last year. My labour started slowly and I was contracting for a good 36 hours before I was officially in "established" labour. But I certainly felt every one of those unofficial contractions, let me tell you! And during them I picked some blackberries, baked some gingerbread men, ate some cheese on toast and knelt down with my head on the settee a lot.

Happy Birthday little one. Your father and I are confident that this grand old age will bring a new level of maturity to your sleeping habits, ie you will sleep for more than one hour in your cot or three hours in our bed.

Cow Colostrum - A Bit Wrong?

Is it just me, or is drinking cow colostrum a bit, well, icky?

The antibody and growth-factor packed first milk is the latest performance enhancing supplement for daft cyclists (including Olympic silver medallist Gustav Larsson).

I know it's really no different to drinking cow's milk, but I just can't get away from the feeling that it's a bit wrong. I mean, aren't the super antibodies and growth factors designed for cows not humans? And what about the poor calves?

If it's not speed then it's EPO. If it's not EPO then it's caffeine. Those cyclists just can't get enough of their freaky supplements. And if you're not a cycling fan, you will probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

Cow colostrum. Not for me thanks.

40+1 Weeks: Judgement Approaches

This time last year I was 40 weeks and 1 day pregnant. Cave Baby waited around another eight days before deciding to make her entrance so we are looking forward to her birthday.

But in another way, the first birthday is a bit of a scary point. Everyone has an idea of what a one year old should be like. It should be cutting down on the breastfeeds, sleeping through the night and starting to walk. And whilst the other ages and stages all melt into a blurry mess when viewed through the kaleidoscope of memory, everyone can remember what their own children were doing at age one. That means one thing: judgement.

I have already been told "She can't be having those breastfeeds for ever", and asked "Is she still going to be sleeping with you when she's five?". Aargh. I can ignore anything from strangers but I find it much harder to confront or brush off comments from family. We have relationships to maintain, and any questioning of their beliefs can too easily be taken as criticism of how they brought up their own children.

So, at this time I think it is even more important that I remember why it is good to keep breastfeeding until age two and beyond, why it is good to still sleep with my baby beside me and why I still tote her round in a backpack. It will all be worth it!

Don't you wish that people would occasionally look at your happy, healthy baby and just say "Well done" instead of passing judgement?

My Baby is not Yet One But She Already Knows...

...how to brush her hair, with a hairbrush.
...that lavender is the most fascinating of all the plants in the garden.
...how to drive her little car (backwards).
...that when mummy draws the shower curtain across, that means mummy is going to be out of commission for five minutes. And that is bad news and requires much crying and flapping of arms.
...how to climb up the stairs.
...that books are for flicking through and pointing at.
...that going out is infinitely more fun than staying in.
...that broccoli is yummy but green beans are horrid!
...how to howl like a wolf.
...that crinkly packets = good news.
...that keyboards are for bashing, screens are for smearing, and laptops are for closing.

Thank you Sunnytodaymama for generously giving me this award:

I am supposed to pass this on to 15 newly discovered blogs. I don't know how people have the time to follow 15 blogs, let alone discover 15 new ones, so here are as many as I can manage:

West of the Pennines
HoboMama
Chilliwack Doula
Chatter Box Joe

I know that's pathetic, but that's all I've got folks.

Tagtime

I love allgrownup's blog, so I kindly accept her tag to complete this questionnaire. Here goes.

1. Who is the hottest movie star?

Being obvious, Brad Pitt. Less obvious, Steve Buscemi (those teeth).

2. Apart from your house and your car what's the most expensive thing you have ever bought?

A safari in Tanzania.

3. What's your most treasured memory?

This is too predictable, but I would have to say giving birth to my daughter in my bedroom.

4.What was the best gift you ever received as a child?

Really tough. I had a musical Eeyore that I loved. And I still have my cuddly Tom Kitten (as in The Tale of Tom Kitten).

5. What is the biggest mistake you've made?

Working for the government. Boring, boring, boring. I felt myself shrivelling up.

6. 4 words to describe myself

Friendly, stubborn, determined, indecisive.

7. What was my highlight or lowlight of 2008?

Highlight: the birth of my baby, of course.

8. Favourite film?

I've answered this before. So let's change it to favourite album. Fragments of a Rainy Season by John Cale. One day I will write a whole post about this record. It is just beautiful, amazing songwriting, wonderfully performed and always a joy to listen to.

9. Tell me one thing I don't know about you

I ran a rugby supporters' website for several years. And I don't even know that much about rugby. The site is still going strong, though I handed over the reins a long time ago.

10. If you were a comic book/strip or cartoon character, who would you be?

Snorkmaiden.


Now I know I am supposed to tag some newly discovered blogs, but the sad truth is that I have barely had time to think for the last month. Hence there are no newly discovered blogs. But if you want to join in, post a comment and I will add a link below.