The Mule

The question of whether or not babies can learn to 'self-soothe' continues to divide parenting writers and experts. Does a baby left to cry alone in their cot eventually find ways to comfort themselves, to make themselves feel better? Or do they simply stop crying after a while because they realise that nobody will come and that there is nothing they can do about it - they learn that they are helpless? Let's look at this from a fresh angle. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, let me ask you a question: How do YOU 'self-soothe'? Think for a moment. The shit is hitting the fan. You are distressed. You have lost your job. Your relationship flounders. Someone close to you is sick. The usual suspects. You feel 'emotional'; you are upset, jangled, stirred. What do you do? How do you try to regulate yourself, to bring yourself back into balance? You might sit with your difficult feelings for a while, aware that they are part of life's patte...

Dear Daughters Brace yourselves, I have a confession to make. It may or may not surprise you. Here goes... I don't like being woken up in the night! I REALLY don't like it! I can't stand it! Maybe you thought it just washed over me - all part of the service - like chopping cheese into chunks or sitting through Waybaloo - well you're wrong. Being woken up and dragged from the delicious depths of sleep two, three, four, five times a night is WAY more irritating than that! WAY MORE! And, quite frankly, I'm bloody well sick of it! It's not just the nights - which are bad enough - it's the evenings too. For five years now I have had my enjoyment of every single evening compromised in some way, either because I've been trapped in a bedroom breastfeeding, singing, storytelling or simply begging you to go to sleep, or because I've had to abandon my delicious food / fascinating film / other grown-up activity, and go back upstairs to soothe you back to...

Sleep training, controlled crying, and crying it out: is it ok, or isn’t it? New research has just been published in the American Journal of Pediatrics suggesting that: “Behavioral sleep techniques did not cause long-lasting harms or benefits to child, child-parent, or maternal outcomes. Parents and health professionals can feel comfortable about using these techniques to reduce the population burden of infant sleep problems and maternal depression.” The research is already being hailed as a victory by those who claim that sleep training is an essential parenting rite of passage and completely harmless to the child involved. The Daily Telegraph headlined: ‘ Leave your baby to cry, scientists say ’, whilst the good old Daily Mail claimed, ‘ Letting babies cry rather than rushing to comfort them is secret to longer sleep (for infants AND parents) ’. This is not a new debate. The fight over whether or not sleep training is harmful rages constantly amidst parents, faceboo...

A supplier of Amber Teething Necklaces on Ebay, Wee Rascals , has had to recall some of their products due to safety concerns, I learnt today. The company has recalled all of its necklaces and ankle bracelets for babies and children, because they failed a safety test instigated by the Buckinghamshire County Council Trading Standards Department. The tests found that, “The product failed to satisfy BS EN71-1:2011 (Safety of toys – part 1: mechanical and physical properties) when tested in accordance with paragraph 8.7 (Impact Test), in that several beads shattered and detached. The bead fragments fitted wholly inside the small parts cylinder of dimensions specified in paragraph 8.2. These components pose a potential choking/inhalation hazard to a child under 36 months.” How do I know this? Because I bought one of the damn things, and like many of the various bits of baby tat I've been suckered into purchasing over the years, it turned out to be a complete waste of money. Of co...

'Crying it out'...'controlled crying'...'sleep training'....when I had my first baby nearly four years ago, I was told that I needed to do it by everyone from my hair-dresser to my Baby Massage teacher, who handed out badly baked cakes and half baked parenting advice and told me my baby would never sleep through the night. The practice of leaving a baby to cry alone in a cot in order to encourage them to learn to be less dependent on their parents at night is so common and widespread in our culture that it is considered an absolutely normal if not essential part of a baby's first year. The number one best selling author of childcare books in the UK, Gina Ford, recommends it in several of her books, and even the NHS endorses it: on their website and in the book 'Birth to Five', handed out to all new mothers in England, they state: By the time your child is six months old, it’s reasonable to expect them to sleep through most nights. If there’s no o...

Yes, I know what you're thinking.  Another blog about the ridiculous cot death plot, how insulting it is to those who have actually suffered in this way, how they have missed a chance to cover a serious issue in a helpful way, how they have portrayed post natal women as hormonal nutters, and how in reality such baby swapping behaviour would result in a lifetime sectioned under the mental health act, but in soap land it will probably all be forgiven after a public apology in the Vic and a couple of weeks in Marbella. And so on.  Actually, this post isn't going to be about that.  Sorry.  Do you feel misled, but only in a small way?  Good, because that is precisely what this post IS going to be about. Before I had my first child, I was blissfully unaware of what life with a baby had in store for me.  I had a vague idea of how it would go, though, and I think in retrospect that I was mostly getting my information from Eastenders.  On Eastenders, and I'm ...