The Mule

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...

"If you nurse them every time they cry", she said, "You just become a human dummy". A dummy - as if I were...lifeless, still, inanimate, unresponsive, and easily and cheaply replaced. Worse still, perhaps, an idiot, a stooge, a fool. I know that Fools have a long history of being wiser than they seem... Nevertheless I prefer to think of myself as... A Human Pacifier. pac·i·fi·er   [pas-uh-fahy-er]  noun 1. a person or thing that pacifies. 2. a rubber or plastic device, often shaped into a nipple, for a baby to suck or bite on. OK. I'll take definition 1. I am 'a person or thing that pacifies.' pac·i·fy    [pas-uh-fahy] verb (used with object), pac·i·fied, pac·i·fy·ing. 1. to bring or restore to a state of peace or tranquillity; quiet; calm: to pacify an angry man. 2. to appease: to pacify one's appetite. 3. to reduce to a state of submission, especially by military force; subdue. Yes... I 'bring or restor...

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...

It's the three year old's first day to be left at Pre-School. She's never been to Nursery, or the child-minder: we've hardly ever been apart. As we cross the big playground together the sounds of school transport me back to my own childhood. Teachers' voices and the occasional scrape of chairs carry through the humidity of the July morning, my daughter grips tightly to my hand, and I can sense her taking in the loaded atmosphere of this strange new world. We play together for a while, and I chat to the teachers. They all seem lovely and the atmosphere is warm, caring, and a bit chaotic. I tell my daughter I'm leaving and she confidently informs me that she is fine. But then there's a muddle as I'm told I have to put her shoes back on, and in the resulting faff she seems to lose a bit of confidence. She tells me she doesn't know what or who to play with.  A teacher moves in and distracts, and I slip away quick. Back home, I make a coffee and s...

In the past few days there've been some definite signs that Spring has truly arrived, and no, I don't mean the warm air or the nodding daffodils, I'm talking about bloody sand all over my bloody house.  It's amazing how far a three year old can track the stuff, and it turns up in the most irritating places, its regular removal becoming your number one mundane and thankless task for the next six months, until the wheel of the year turns, and you can start repetitively and ineffectively hoovering up its Winter counterpart, glitter, instead. Yesterday, in between bouts of sand clearance, I launched a sunshine induced and uncharacteristic attack on my two daughters respective wardrobes, sorting out summer clothes from various chaotic boxes and cupboards and drawers.  Like all such jobs, in order to try and complete it I had to do two things - set the three year old on a lunatic project (how many layers of trousers can you get on?) and allow the...

"Are you putting her down yet?", the Health Visitor asked.  Her manner was stern, and slightly concerned, as if she might be simultaneously wondering who she might mention me to on the community mental health team.  With my baby just a couple of weeks old and sleeping on my shoulder like a dollop of marshmallow, I stammered, "Er...no!...Er...Should I be?!".  "Yes", she replied, unequivocally. "You need to start putting her down more.  If you hold her all the time you will create a bad habit." Oh.  I felt confused.  I didn't have any kind of parenting plan, I wasn't following the advice of any book, it just hadn't occured to me to stop holding this tiny soul.  I liked having her in my arms.  She seemed delicious to me in every way that it is possible to be delicious.  She felt at ease, draped across the body she had only recently vacated.  And besides, I didn't really have anything else to do, but hold he...