The Mule

I hold my baby every time she cries...just for comfort. I know she isn't really hungry, but I let her come close and nurse anyway...just for comfort. As she falls asleep, I'm always there; singing, rocking, nursing...just for comfort. And most nights, she sleeps in my bed...just for comfort. By day, I notice her, noticing the world, and if she looks lost or confused, I pick her up...just for comfort. I let her move away, branch out, explore, until she falls, or hesitates, or looks to me, and then I offer her my arms...just for comfort. When she's scared, or sad, or cross, or lost, I try to understand, to be there...just for comfort. And any time she wants to snuggle, day or night, I stop everything else and hold her...just for comfort. --- I write...just for comfort. I paint, I dance, I sing...just for comfort. I take a book, light a lamp, and get cosy...just for comfort. I laugh with friends...just for comfort. I walk, I run, I dream, I plan, I travel...just ...

Life is tough: for everyone there are trials and sorrows, disappointments and heartbreaks. From a mental health perspective, the world loosely divides itself into two camps - those who cope, and those who don't. And as scary as it might be to contemplate, this coping ability or inability is pretty much entirely shaped by nurture - by our actions as parents. It's simple: the way that we respond to our child when they are in a state of distress will become the way that they respond to their own distress as they grow into young people and adults. If we distance ourselves from their difficult emotions, they will learn to distance themselves too. If we respond with anger or tension, they will feel anger and tension too in life's harder moments. If we placate or 'medicate' our upset children with sugar or TV, they will learn to do the same for themselves as adults. And if we cannot tolerate their distress, we will teach them that distress itself is intolerable and must ...

'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...

This week I've been running a special series of posts on one of my favourite subjects, Birth. On Monday, Michelle told the story of her empowering VBAC , and on Tuesday we heard Anna's story of her adoption experience, with a very surprising twist. On Wednesday Maddie from Developing Doulas shared some passionate thoughts about motherhood and pointed us in the direction of the fantastic website, One World Birth . On Thursday, Awen Clement wrote about the Red Tent Project , which hopes to create a travelling space in the UK for women and their many rites of passage.  During the week an artist friend of mine has also been busy making a beautiful painting inspired by women's words about their 'post baby' bodies, especially for this blog. Late last night I shared images of her art work, and took the rather bold (or foolish?!) step of including a photo I took of my own tummy button, in the post Acceptance Nude . I'm so thrilled to introduce the f...

Before I had my two children, I really liked my body. I know girls are notorious for having bits of themselves they despise, but I liked all of me. I never really worked out, I never really watched what I ate, but I just had a great body, that looked good in clothes, and even better naked. Before you really start to hate me, here is a picture I just took of my tummy button: This is what it looks like when I bend over. So if I'm naked, and reaching down to pull the plug out of the bath or pick up a discarded toy, this is what I see. As the three year old so beautifully put it, 'Mummy, when you bend over, your tummy goes all sort of melty-down.' And I dislike it. I dislike it intensely. I realise this may make me seem shallow and superficial. But I'm afraid that I cannot quite accept the rather dramatic fall from grace my body has experienced; transformed, almost over-night, from something I willingly and happily flaunted, to something I'm keen to keep hi...

Today's post for the week long Birth Special comes from Awen Clement, a mother and trainee midwife, whose love of the book The Red Tent was one of the many reasons she felt called to become involved in this wonderful project. If you feel equally inspired, they would be thrilled to hear from you! The Red Tent Project "We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust. This is not your fault, or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing... ..And now you come to me...you come hungry for the story that was lost. You crave words to fill the great silence that swallowed me, and my mothers, and my grandmothers before them." ( Prologue, 'The Red Tent', Anita Diamant) Have you read Anita’s book? Did it speak to you? Did you feel a tugging of your soul, a tingle of ancestral memory that you couldn’t quite place? Even if you ha...

This week I'm running a Birth Special. On Monday Michelle told her moving tale of achieving the VBAC of her dreams, and yesterday, Anna shared a wonderful story with a truly unexpected twist about her experience of adoption. Today’s guest post comes from Doula Maddie McMahon. She writes with passion of the wonderful power of mothers and motherhood, and calls for a better world for those who bear and raise children. Maddie writes posts about birth and motherhood at www.maddiemcmahon.com , and offers Doula services and training in Cambridge UK . You can also follow her on facebook . Mothers Matter… Mothers nurture a growing child in their wombs, fiercely protecting that future human despite having perhaps been rejected by the child’s father, despite rape, poverty, despite extreme emotional and physical suffering. Mothers give birth. Some hunker down and roar their babies out; lioness mamas ecstatic with earth-shattering power. Some dream their babies into the worl...