Things They Don't Tell You About Pregnancy

The list of things "they" don't tell you about pregnancy, childhood and motherhood is possibly the longest list in history. I'm fairly sure that if a lot of those things were taught in schools, we wouldn't have a teenage pregnancy epidemic because teenage girls would be too grossed out at the thought of such delights as piles, accidental peeing and being covered head to toe in milky vomit.

This started off as a bit of a jokey post, but as I wrote it, and asked friends for their input, it became clear that actually there are a good few things it would be really handy to know about. In fact, the list of “things” got so long, it’s too big for one post so I’ve broken it down into three. Today’s post therefore is a list of things that might be handy to know about pregnancy:

• Relaxin: it’s a hormone that does what it says on the tin: it sets about making your bones and joints more flexible, so as to allow your pelvis to widen for the baby to come out. Sometimes it does this a little too enthusiastically, and your pelvis goes a bit wobbly. For me, this meant wearing a large, white, elasticated belt around my hips whenever I was walking any distance. For others, it means quite a lot more pain and discomfort, possibly even crutches or a wheelchair. Ever seen anyone on a soap dealing with this? No, of course not. It’s not glamorous enough, just bloody annoying.
• As well as causing all the hip problems, relaxin also causes all your other joints to relax. This can cause the bones and muscles in your feet to spread out, and your feet to grow. It can also mean your oesophagus relaxes, and you get acid reflux. A lot.
• Shhh… don’t tell anyone, but the pregnancy glow is a big, fat, ugly myth. I spent the first 6 months of my pregnancy waiting for it to kick in, before realising it probably wasn’t coming.
• Bleeding and leaking fluid: sometimes, this just happens. When it does, it freaks you out and causes massive panic. Then you speak to the people in the know and they invariably say "oh yeah, don't worry about that!" (NB. if you are pregnant and have this, still speak to the people in the know. Don't take my word for anything; I'm far from an expert in these things)
• You can no longer trust your own mind. I don't know about anyone else, but my hormones were largely all over the shop from one day to the next, and I found in the end that I just didn't really trust myself to make any proper decisions.
• That said, any time you are even vaguely emotional, people will pull a “knowing” face and blame it on your hormones – even if you are angry or upset for a valid reason.
• Say goodbye to a decent night's sleep. I've not slept more than about 4 hours at a time since the middle of my pregnancy. The good news is, you just get used to it after a while. And then when you’ve had the baby and you don’t need to pee every five minutes, you get up with the baby instead. And then sometimes, the baby is asleep but you just wake up because you’re used to it.
• Your immune system is lower while you are pregnant, which means you are more prone to coughs and colds. And there is hardly any medication you can take for them. It’s basically just paracetamol. If in doubt, assume you can’t take it. Buy lots of tissues.
• When you are pregnant, people think it’s ok to just come up and touch your belly. Even people you don’t know terribly well. It’s also open season on commenting on your size.
• If you go overdue, the world and his wife will have only one greeting each time they see you: “not had it yet then?” Which is exactly what you don’t need to hear, when it’s the first thing you think every time you wake up, and you’d really rather have had it by now yourself.
• A lot of women really don’t enjoy pregnancy, for whatever reason. It doesn’t make them bad people. Society dictates that we should all be perfectly calm and happy and glowing throughout, and people get confused when that’s not the case. Quite often their confusion manifests itself in assumptions about your suitability as a mother. Ignore them, they are idiots.
• One thing a friend said to me fairly early on: if it can go wrong in your body, now’s the time it will go wrong. Prepare for everything to cease usual functioning.
• A lot of pregnant women have bleeding gums. And not just “oh what’s that on my toothbrush there” but proper massacre in the sink, as one lady put it.
• You will become very forgetful. Baby Brain is real. And it only gets worse. My daughter is now 6 months old and I regularly miss something on a dvd I’m watching because I forgot to pay attention; I rewind it to watch again, only to find I’ve forgotten to pay attention again. Eventually I just give up!
• Babies get hiccups before they are born. It feels weird.
• For me, pregnancy improved my body image to no end. Having spent my entire adult life worrying about wearing clothes that might be too tight and show my gut, I now relished the fact I was supposed to have a big belly, and wore lots of figure-hugging tops.
• Your belly will most probably get pretty hairy. It’s normal.
• Personally, I had some very strange dreams while I was pregnant. The one that really springs to mind was one night when I dreamed the baby was kicking, and managed to split my stomach and kick its way right out of me. Very disturbing.
• Early on in pregnancy, my GP told me that she was sure pregnancy hormones just kick in and make you go all chilled out and happy at a certain point. I thought she was mental, but suddenly, when I got to 23 weeks, I found that I could not find a shit to give about a lot of things. Even facing the horrible stresses I faced, I was still relatively calm. If I hadn’t been under such ridiculous stress, I could quite probably have been comatose.

I've probably missed a fair few points here; feel free to leave comments below with your own experiences.

This post is part of a group of Things They Don't Tell You About... posts. The others are:

Things They Don't Tell You About Childbirth

Things They Don't Tell You About Breastfeeding
Things They Don't Tell You About Motherhood
Things They Don't Tell You About Babies

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What We Did This Week

I have decided that from now on, my Saturday post will be about what we’ve done in the last week…

Sunday

The weather was horrid, and we’d had a busy week, so I decided we should have a day at home. We didn’t do much. I honestly can’t tell you how we passed 24 hours. It was fabulous.

Monday

I had an optician appointment in the morning, but S had a very rubbish night’s sleep, so I called and cancelled the appointment. The weather was still poo, so we stayed in all morning; I did a lot of housework while S caught up on some sleep. In the afternoon a friend came to visit and we had a long chat about all sorts, which was nice. When she left the weather had improved a little, so we thought of an excuse to go to the shops, and had a little pootle around town. While we were out, S fell asleep so I walked around a little longer, to try and prolong the nap. Eventually we came home, and after S had a little play on her mat, I put her to bed. Half an hour later, she woke up screaming as if someone was attacking her, and continued to scream for about another half an hour, before calming down a bit. She was still upset though, and couldn’t settle, so I brought her downstairs to sleep in her bouncy chair while I had my tea. She slept most of the evening, but woke up when I took her upstairs to bed again. We had a fairly unsettled night, which was not much fun, but not as bad as Sunday night.

Tuesday

Having spent two days cooped up in the flat, I was itching to get out for a bit of fresh air and exercise. We walked into town to meet a friend and give away some of S’s old clothes, and then had a little wander around town. The walk extended to the large out of town supermarket to pick up my new glasses, when they called to say they’d arrived and I was too impatient to wait. When we got home, S was still asleep and I didn’t want to wake her by bumping the pushchair up the stairs, so we went back into town and had a little wander, during which she woke up, and I accidentally ran the pushchair into several students who were being a bit ignorant. When we got home, the neighbour brought her daughter round to use the laptop, while I played silly giggle games with S on the play mats. Have discovered she is entertained almost indefinitely by being set free with no nappy, to roll about as she wishes on her play mat. She also makes a lot of noise. It was probably the best fun either of us have had in a while. Turned out to be a little too much fun for S though; she fell asleep an hour before bed time and I had great fun trying to get her upstairs and into bed without waking her. I failed, but she went back to sleep fairly quickly and didn’t wake up again until I decided to have an early night at 9pm.

Wednesday

Up and bathed early because the gas man was coming to change the gas meter. He arrived at 8:30 and was gone by 9 so we went for a quick wander into town to buy some gas credit. When we came back S had a little nap while I did a little housework, and then our Home Start volunteer came round and we spent an hour or so chatting and playing. After lunch my sister came to collect us, and we spent a fun afternoon visiting my brother and sister in law. Their two youngest children are quite taken with S, and it’s funny to watch them hover around her, occasionally daring to touch her hands or feet. When we got home the neighbour brought her daughter round to make use of my laptop and internet again, and S spent a sociable half hour chatting to both of them. When they left, we spent a little more time nappy-free on the play mats until bed time. Upon putting S to bed, I went to draw the curtains and found my feet rather damp; the roof was leaking again. I was unimpressed to find that nobody would come out to look at it until the next morning, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I put some pans underneath the drips and spent the rest of the evening going up and down stairs to keep an eye on it

Thursday

Got up early in case the council actually meant it when they said they’d be out first thing for the roof. Someone called to ask where the leak was and said they’d send someone round, but that I didn’t need to be there. Took S for a walk in the sling, strapped to my hip rather than my chest for the first time. She seemed to enjoy being able to see more, and was particularly taken with the cashpoint. In the afternoon a friend came for a visit with her beautiful daughter. I suppose it’s possible all 1-year-olds look like that and I’ve just never noticed, having not really spent much time with that age group. She was very cute though, and spent a lot of time giving her shoes to S or trying to hug her. They brought us some toys for S too, which was awesome. Later in the afternoon, another friend came round on his way home from work to paint a wall for me. We had a good old chin-wag whilst he painted my living room wall bright pink. When he left S went to bed, and I congratulated myself at getting her fast asleep within 15 minutes. I came downstairs and started clearing up… only for S to wake up screaming 10 minutes later. She showed no sign of tiring, so I brought her downstairs and put her in her bouncy chair, where she stayed, wide awake and wanting to play, until I gave up and went to bed at 9:30. We didn’t sleep particularly well through the night either, and by 5am I was begging her to go to sleep. Poor thing seemed to be begging me to help her go to sleep, but neither of us could manage it.

Friday

Up early while S was still asleep; managed to have a bath before she woke up. Dressed, downstairs, breakfast and out of the house to walk up to the hospital for a physio appointment. After the appointment we walked back into town and went to a small, locally-owned an awesome underwear shop for a new nursing bra for me. My suspicions proved correct, and my weight loss has also affected my boobs. But they had to order my bra in for me, which was not so awesome. After that, a short wander around town before heading home for lunch. I gave in and shared S’s afternoon nap with her, and then we spent the afternoon playing on a blanket on the floor. Put her to bed around 6; came downstairs and had just enough time to take out the rubbish and do the washing up before she woke up crying. This is getting to be a daily thing, and I have to say I’m not a fan. She went back to sleep after a little Calpol though. Perhaps her teeth are playing up.

Diary Entries from Early Motherhood

I'm still working on a proper blog post, so in the meantime here are some more diary entries from earlier this year...

19^th May (5 weeks, 5 days)

Today a visit from another dear friend: C drove all the way from Oxfordshire to see us. He had to be somewhere else though, so could only stay for an hour or so. It’s strange to see people I’ve not seen for such a long time, and jarring to think of who I was the last time I saw them. It seems incongruous to now sit before them with a sleeping baby in a bouncy chair at my feet, my only topics of conversation how she is sleeping or what is going on with her father.

My mother came round in the afternoon; I find her being in the flat at all very irritating. I always feel that she is judging me, comparing my efforts with the way she successfully dragged 6 of us through childhood with no major injuries. I wait for her to tell me I’ve done something wrong but she doesn’t; instead she makes snide remarks about how rarely she is allowed to hold her granddaughter. Since my brother is not speaking to her, my mother tries to have S play the part of the two grandchildren she doesn’t see, as well as herself. S is too small for this responsibility. I don’t have the energy for an argument over it though, so I just pretend not to hear the comments and accept the gifts graciously. I feel ungrateful because the new baby clothes do not make me happy and I am too tired to smile; I just want her to leave so that I can share S’s next nap with her, before it is too late for a nap and I have to begin the bedtime routine.

I have made black and white patterns on old postcards and stuck them on the wall next to the table where I change S’s nappy. Apparently babies like to look at simple patterns and pictures of faces. I thought it was just one of those stupid things you read that turn out to be complete crap, but when I put her down for a nappy change today, she was completely mesmerised by my crappy drawings. I feel like I’ve finally done something right; perhaps I’m not such a rubbish parent after all.

20^th May (5 weeks, 6 days)

I have started going for long walks with the pushchair in the mornings. I don’t often use the pushchair, preferring to have S in the sling close to me, but now I take her for long walks and she has a nap. It kills time when we have gotten up early in the morning and the day is stretching out before me like some endless sentence of boredom and nappy changing. Today we walked a couple of miles, and then came back into town and I bought a cloth book for S. I’m hoping my recent success with the monochrome drawings will translate to a book with crinkly pages and pictures of faces.

Today S is wearing a baby-gro her father bought for her the day after she was born. She has only just grown into it. I love it, despite its reminding me of the life I thought I would be leading now, and the massive difference between that and what I actually do with my days. It was my sister’s birthday so we all went to Harvester for a meal. S slept through most of it, which was lucky as I am not so keen on breastfeeding in public places.

21^st May (6 weeks)

Today I did not leave the house at all. I know this was a bad move, because even before I had a baby I needed to leave the house at least once a day in order to feel normal. I feel lazy. My daughter has had no fresh air all day, that can’t be a good thing for her. I was just so tired though, and there was nothing I needed to do in town, no money to go frivolously shopping for baby clothes, and most of the stuff in the shops doesn’t fit her any way. She’s still wearing clothes for a newborn. Does 6 weeks still count as newborn? It feels like she’s been here forever now, no longer new but just as precious and breakable.

Although we spent so many hours in the flat, I cannot say what we actually did. We played with the rattles my mother bought for S, but she is a bit too young to even notice they are there. We played with the book, but that appears to be the same situation.

A lady from the childrens centre came round, I think the health visitor sent her. She had that sort of look a lot of people seem to have with me lately, the “oh poor you, you’re a new mum and there’s nobody to make you a cup of tea…” sort of expression. She gave me some leaflets and we signed up to do a baby massage class. I don’t think I even offered her a drink while she was here, what a terrible hostess. I should make an effort to go down to the centre though, I know it would be Good For Me to meet other mums; it’s just depressing because other mums invariably have a husband to share things with, and they invariably have that “oh-you’re-so-brave-you-poor-thing-I-could-never-do-this-alone-and-wow-she-was-early-too-however-are-you-managing” look once they know about me. I try to like other mums and to get on with them, but I tend to just feel jealous of them, which is never an endearing quality.

22^nd May (6 weeks, 1 day)

A friend came to visit today. She does not live locally so I’d not seen her since S was born. She had a baby a few months ago herself, and seems to have had a pretty rough time of it, though she doesn’t really mention it in much detail. She brought presents for the baby – clothes and such – but also some home cooked pasta for me, and some brownies. The perfect gift; I wish my family would take note of this. We sat and chatted for a long while, and she made me feel better about things. When she left she gave me a massive hug and told me I’m doing really well. I feel like I should be doing better though. Poor S only has me to rely on, I need to be two parents to her. When other babies are crying and their mothers are tired, their fathers take over the cooing and rocking. I don’t have that luxury; I cannot get tired. I am so lucky S does not cry very much, and seems to be a fairly chilled baby. When she does cry though, or when it takes her a long time to settle to sleep at night, I feel bad for her that she doesn’t have a second parent to come in and be all fresh about trying to get her to sleep. She just has me, begging her to please go to sleep. I’m sure other mothers don’t resort to leaving the hairdryer switched on in the bedroom for hours at a time each evening. I’m sure other mothers have more patience than me and for that I feel endlessly guilty.

Have You Ever Heard of Home Start?

This morning we had our first visit from our Home Start volunteer.

Home Start is a charity set up to support families who need a little help. They provide volunteers who will visit a family and offer support and guidance on a variety of different things. Home Start is a relatively small charity, but they  offer an invaluable service, going out into the community to help families who might otherwise feel isolated or struggle with things like post natal depression, bereavement, mental or physical disability of a child, or perhaps just trouble getting used to parenthood. Their services are available to all families with a child under five. Their website says they aim to create " a lasting, positive impact on the development of children and the health and welfare of the family." I was referred to them by my health visitor but a lot of people refer themselves to the service. Until the health visitor mentioned them, I'd not heard of Home Start before, so I thought I'd write a little post about them, in case anyone else could do with knowing about their services.

My volunteer is called Dawn, and she is lovely. She turned up this morning with flowers, coffee, cake, and a gossipy magazine for me. Who could ask for more from a visitor? 

Dawn will visit us once a week for as long as we need her support. The idea is that she will be someone to chat to (moan at!), distract Samaire while I make important phone calls that might prove difficult without that help, and to come to appointments with me to do the same sort of thing. She can't babysit for me, but she will come to the council/CAB/solicitor/whoever and keep Samaire entertained while I sort things out. She is also there to come to mother and baby groups etc with me if I don't want to rock up on my own, which is handy.

Today we just sat and had a coffee and a chat; Samaire and Dawn got to know each other, and I filled Dawn in on our story and why I feel I need the extra support of having her in my life right now. For me I think a lot of my benefit of having Dawn visit will be that I'll actually have to get things done. It's been easy to put off making phone calls, booking appointments, because there was always something to distract me. If Dawn has come round specifically to play with Samaire while I call the electricity company about my incorrect bill, then I may actually get around to making that call!

Home Start offer support to families in the UK, but also to the families of British Forces personnel in Germany and Cyprus, which is something you don't often think about with these sorts of things. As they are a charity, they rely on donations and sponsorship to keep going - and, of course, volunteers. They currently have around 17,000 volunteers who go out into the community to visit families, and another 2000 who run their local offices. I am sure they will always welcome new volunteers though so if you have free time that you'd like to spend making friends with a family and playing with kids, click on over to their website and take a look!

One great way you can support Home Start without even really trying is by going to this site and signing up; then they will donate a percentage of the cost of anything you buy through their site. You still shop at the normal websites, and it doesn't cost you a penny!

I will leave you with a quote from their website, which I liked:

If families crumble, communities disintegrate, children suffer. By working in the home to make families strong, children thrive. So we help give children the best possible start in life by supporting parents as they grow in confidence, strengthen their relationships with their children and widen their links with the local community. We work with the families who, for whatever reason, aren’t getting the help they need. Very often we’re the last chance they have.

Open University

A couple of people asked questions about my current OU study, so here is a post all about it.

I originally decided to begin an Open University degree around this time last year. I had decided I wanted to be a primary school teacher, after spending a lot of time helping my ex’s children with their school work; I’d enjoyed teaching them and the ex seemed to think I was good at it, and admirably patient with the things they found difficult. I certainly got a lot of satisfaction from finding I’d managed to help them understand or learn something new. I called up and spoke to one of the Open University’s advisers, who I have to say was very helpful. They don’t do a course for being a teacher (some universities do, not many) so they suggested I do an Open Degree, and choose modules in core curriculum subjects.

An Open Degree is a degree without a specific subject (e.g. English). The principle is the same, in that you have a choice of modules and have to make up a certain number of credits to complete each level, but the choice of modules is much, much wider.

Having taken the advice of the nice man on the phone, I signed up to do a level one course, Exploring Science, to start in January of this year. I applied for financial support, and received full funding, which was handy – especially since shortly after I signed up for my degree, the Open University changed their pricing structure and funding options. Because I declared my qualification before they did all this, I can continue my studies under “transitional rules” which means I can apply for, and receive, a set amount of financial support each academic year, so long as I complete my degree within a certain timeframe.

The Science course was what some might call an optimistic venture, being as it was a 60-credit module (courses come in 15, 30 or 60 credit blocks), due to run until my expected baby was 6 months old. I had a plan though: I would study extra-hard in the first couple of months, get myself ahead of the suggested schedule, enough to allow a couple of months off study when the baby came. The baby had other ideas though. As it was, I was half-way through finishing off my third assignment when I went into labour. Added to that, I was then stuck in hospital for 11 days afterwards, with no internet access. I paid an extortionate amount to access the internet via the TV next to my hospital bed, and emailed my tutor to explain the situation. S’s father brought my laptop and text book into the hospital, and I tried my best to do some of the assignment while S slept in her little fish bowl. My tutor was lovely and told me to just send the assignment in when I could, and to let him know how I was getting on. It didn’t go well though; once I was home my time was taken up either panicking about looking after a tiny baby, fighting with her father, or sleeping. Eventually I bodged the assignment and submitted it, so as to avoid getting too far behind with the course. The next assignment was due in a week or so later, so I tried to get my head down and crack on. After a few days I realised the situation was hopeless. I’d barely looked at the text book, and didn’t even understand half the questions on the assignment paper. I found I was trying to put S to bed early just so that I could come downstairs and stress over the assignment and the course materials that may as well have been written in a foreign language. In the end I called up the Open University to see if there was a way I could cancel my entry on the course, without forfeiting my ability to claim funding for future modules. The lady I spoke to was so unbelievably helpful. She cancelled my entry on the science module, and because I was only part way through it, part of the cost was refunded to my OU account, and available for me to use against another module. The lady asked what I was interested in, and suggested some other courses I could sign up for.

The money refunded to my account was enough to cover what they call an Openings course, which is a 15-credit short course to help people get back into learning after a break. I decided to sign up for Understanding Children and Young People. I was so excited when the course materials turned up, I began reading the book well before the course was due to start! The subject matter was something I found much more enjoyable and easy to understand than science. I’ve already submitted my first assignment and had a couple of telephone tutorials with a lovely lady named Pauline.

Because the Openings course is only a small module, it finishes in January. As soon as the course materials had arrived, and I’d seen it was a lot less daunting than the 10 books and paraphernalia that turned up for the science, I began deciding which other modules I would sign up for. Because I’m studying under the transitional rules, I can’t take too long to study for my degree, so I was keen to sign up for enough credits to ensure I would be able to complete the course in time.

The second module I signed up for was called English for Academic Purposes Online. It’s all about ways of reading and studying, how to write essays, make presentations etc. The entire course is online (clue’s in the name there), which I thought would be difficult but actually makes it a lot easier – everything is right in front of me, all the time. This module doesn’t officially begin until 6^th October, but the module website opened at the beginning of September so I’ve already begun studying – I think after what happened with the science module I’m paranoid about getting behind with anything again. My tutor called to introduce himself on Saturday and seems nice.

The English module is 30 credits, and finishes in April, right after my 60-credit, level 2 Child Development module begins. Because I had funding for the science module and then dropped it, and there is only a certain amount of funding available in each academic year, I had to pay part of the cost of the Child Development module myself, and most probably can’t do the 30-credit level one module I wanted to begin in May, until next academic year – unless anyone wants to fork out the £800 for that module for me!

A few people seem surprised that I am studying for a degree as well as looking after a baby on my own, and ask where I find the time to study. The answer is – my house is very messy! At the moment I am studying for 45 credits, which is less than half what would be considered full-time study. S had 2 naps a day, and goes to bed at 6pm. To be honest, if I didn’t have my Open University work I would probably get a bit bored. Now that I am studying subjects I find interesting, I don’t mind spending a few hours a week reading about them. And I understand it too, which is always a bonus.

With regard to what I plan to do once I’ve got my degree, I’m not so sure any more. If I decide I do still want to be a teacher, I will need to get onto a PGCE course at a university and spend a year studying, with placements in a couple of schools – all tricky things with a small child and no car, but not impossible. I think there is another route to teaching, where you just start at the school and do your teacher training on the job as it were, but I think that’s only in secondary schools. I do think I’d quite like to work with children, but I’m not sure whether that would be in a school, or in another way. I’m open to suggestions if anyone has them!

Squeaky Clean Like a Rubber Ducky

This week, I have been medication-free for a year.

I had something of a colossal breakdown in the summer of 2010, which resulted in my being signed off work for a month, and eventually taking voluntary redundancy. I scared a lot of people, lost a lot of weight, and developed a fairly ridiculous drinking habit (Pisang Ambon, anyone?) I tried a few different medications before finding one that seemed to take the edge off it, and after a couple of months things settled down.

When I fell pregnant and it dawned on me I would have to come off the medication, I was seized by panic. I knew there was no choice but to come off it, but I was petrified I’d end up going back to the comatose, suicidal heap I’d been before. I came off the medication, and between the withdrawal, the usual first trimester hormones, and problems with S’s father, my first 12 weeks of pregnancy were something akin to hell. My GP was keen for me to go back onto the medication as soon as I reached 12 weeks – apparently after that first 12 weeks it’s not such a big deal any more. I had an appointment with her, where she told me: “you can go back onto them, and only a small amount will get to the baby. It’ll only have a bit of withdrawal when it’s born, which will probably just mean it cries a bit more and you probably won’t notice that. Or if you’re breastfeeding, the drug will still be passed to it through your milk, so it won’t have any withdrawal.” I was horrified at this concept – I’d read articles previously about antidepressants and the argument over their being given to children and adolescents; the argument against that use was that a child’s brain is not fully developed, and antidepressants affect the way the brain works. The thought of feeding my baby a brain-altering chemical as it developed inside of me made me sick, and I refused point blank to go back onto the medication. Also, once I’d gone through the pain of coming off them once, I didn’t want to then go back onto them, knowing I’d have to go come back off them and go through it all again at some point. And so, instead of medication, I agreed to regular appointments with my GP (so she could check I wasn’t going mad, and do that ridiculous depression questionnaire they do), and to go back to the Community Mental Health Team for counselling. Both were rather useless when it came to day-to-day functionality.

Looking back, I would say the last 12 months have been some of the hardest in my life. This is not only because I was unable to fall back on self-destructive habits that had seen me through in the past (over-exercise, self-harm, weird eating habits, drinking, sleeping pills), but also because I was wracked with guilt over my responsibility for the life growing inside of me. Because of my situation I felt I had let the baby down before it was even born. Every decision I made now had to take into account how it would affect my unborn child. A lot of those decisions were, in hindsight, not the best ones – especially those involving S’s father.

At 30 weeks I lost weight two weeks in a row because of the stresses I was facing. I moved house at 33 weeks, and S was born at 35 weeks, when I had a chest infection. We were kept in hospital for 11 days, and when we came home the roof had leaked and we couldn’t spend our first night at home. Once we were home, I faced pressure in my relationship with S’s father, and looking after his 6 children at his house. I remember the health visitor sitting on my couch one day and saying to me, “you have to look after yourself better because you’re at quite a high risk for post natal depression.” I burst out crying and told her I thought I was already there.

I stuck to my guns though, and refused time and time again, often through floods of tears, to go back onto the medication. S is now nearly 6 months old, and I have to say I’m really quite proud of myself. I know that the medical profession advises it’s perfectly safe to use the antidepressants I was on after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and I know that nobody would have thought any less of me if I’d gone back onto them at any point between then and now – especially those who had faced the task of trying to deal with me when I was at my lowest. But I know what I am like, and I know that if I had begun taking them again, I would have blamed myself if anything was wrong with S, at birth or at 25 years of age or any point in between, I would have thought back to those pills I took while I was pregnant and breastfeeding.

I didn't just do it on my own though; I've had a lot of help and support, both from professionals, and from my friends. My health visitor and GP have been amazing, going above and beyond what I could reasonably have expected from two over-worked NHS employees, and my friends have reduced me to tears of gratitude and joy more times than I care to mention. People I wasn't particularly close to before S was born have gone out of their way time and again to help me both practically and emotionally. For that I am eternally grateful.

When I came off the medication, it made me horribly sleepy and out of it, and I had to tell my boss why I’d come off it because he wasn’t too impressed at the desk-snoozing I kept doing. He told me he thought having a baby might just be the thing to sort me out mentally. At the time I thought he was talking utter bollocks, but now I think about it, he appears to have been right. Don’t get me wrong, I do still have bad days when I feel awful and want to crawl under my duvet and hide… but you can’t do that when there’s a baby there wanting to be fed and changed and played with. I’m lucky; I know for a lot of people having a baby can make no difference to their depression, perhaps even make it worse. But for me, so far, I seem to be doing pretty well. 

Edit: since this post was published, the safety of using antidepressants during pregnancy has been questioned. It is now not considered as safe as the medical profession thought at the time. 

More on How to Spot Domestic Abuse

Following on from this post, I decided to write more about the signs of domestic abuse. First though, a note about semantics. To make things easier to follow, I’ve used the concept of a heterosexual couple where the male is the abuser, but it is important to remember that abusers can often be female, and same-sex couples are not immune to this either. It’s just easier to write and to follow if I stick to the male/female scenario. 

Quite often a woman can be in an abusive relationship and not necessarily realise it. She may think her partner is a bit moody sometimes, but “that’s just men,” or he may have completely convinced her that every problem in their relationship is her fault, and she’s the one with the problems. 

A list like this can prove useful in helping a woman to understand that what she has been experiencing is abuse, even if there has been no physical violence. Obviously, at some point in a relationship you will hear your partner say these things, but it's when they're being said on a daily basis, or with a menacing tone, that there's a problem.

Phrases you might hear in an abusive relationship:

“You’re asking for trouble”

“You’re obviously shagging someone else”

“I work my arse off to put food on the table and all you do is sit on your fat arse all day and eat my food with those slag friends of yours.”

“You’re really winding me up today”

“You know I hate that”

“You know I’m suffering from stress at the moment, you’re doing this deliberately.”

“You know I need sex regularly, I have a big libido.”

“What sort of a wife/girlfriend are you!”

“How dare you make me feel like this! Who do you think you are?”

Unbelievable as it may seem, many women will believe violence against them may have been their own fault – or perhaps the blame was 50/50 and therefore she has no right to claim abuse. An abuser who is experienced can make his victim believe he has done nothing wrong. Similarly, he can be very skilled at convincing friends, family, even the police, that no abuse has occurred.

Excuses an abuser will use for violence:

“I had to restrain her; she was hysterical. I thought she was going to hurt herself/me/the children.”

“She fell and hurt herself.”

“She just bruises easily.”

“I was defending myself; I am the victim here.”

“Where did those bruises come from? Who did that to her? I wasn't even here!”

“I was drunk; I don’t remember a thing. I always have a bad reaction when I drink spirits.”

“I suffer from this medical condition which makes me lash out in my sleep. I don’t know I’m doing it.”

“She made me so angry! She nagged at me until I just lost it.”

“She is mentally ill and it is so difficult to live with her. I just lashed out from sheer frustration.”

“She is such a bad mother; the children are suffering because of her; I just lost my temper because of it.”

“She is the violent one; I am the victim. I need some help. She attacked me and smashed the house up.”

“She’s a slag. She made me do it because she was having an affair.”

“I only did it because I love her. “

“She deserved it; she had it coming.”

“This situation is so difficult for me, I’m suffering with anxiety.”

“I had a terrible childhood/I suffer from Gulf War Syndrome/I am insecure/I have low self esteem/my mother abandoned me/my ex-wife was such a bitch and slag that I find it impossible to trust other women.”

“I am autistic/I suffer from ADHD/I have Tourette’s/I have a personality disorder/I have learning difficulties.”

“I have been working too hard/I’m unemployed”

Abusers will often project their own behaviours/thoughts onto their partners. For example, he may start an argument with you, and later on refer to the massive row that you deliberately started. Or he will tell you you’re unreasonable, unsociable, you’re passive aggressive, you need to get help for your anger issues, and so on – and you’ll be thinking, hang on, I was about to say that about you! 

It is also quite common that an abuser will fire insults, questions and accusations at you non-stop for as long as it takes you to snap and lash out in frustration, and then use this as more evidence that you are unstable and abusive. They are often very skilled at this, and can make you believe you are indeed the one in the wrong; you have been a complete nightmare to live with, and he is so patient and kind to still be with you. What a saint, to put up with you and your difficult ways. 

Every now and then you may think, wait, I’m sure it’s not unreasonable to ask you to do this, or perhaps you’re the one that wanted to go out and he said it would be better for you both to stay in. Or perhaps when you look up the definition of passive aggression it’s like reading a description of the abuser in your life. But by that point he has put that seed of doubt into your head, and you’re not sure if you’re right or not; not sure if you’re going mad. The lines will blur to the point you are not sure what is going on. I have heard stories of abusers tampering with their victim’s medication, so that they are either taking too much or not enough, and as a result do not know what is going on. Then they say, See? Look at the state of her; she’s driving me round the bend…

To finish, here is a link to the National Domestic Violence Helpline. There are instructions on the website as to how to hide the fact you've visited it. Their 24 hour helpline number is 0808 2000 247.

As a post script, I urge you to please read this post on domestic abuse, which explains domestic abuse so much more eloquently than I could ever hope to.

18th May 2012 (5 weeks, 4 days)

This was written in my diary shortly after S's father had left. At the time he was still visiting occasionally. I was fairly miserable and unsure of what I was doing, and S was still very small and looked really quite breakable.

S sleeps in my bed now. At first, she would go to bed in her Moses basket, and each time I fed her I would put her back in the basket. And then, I just gave up on trying to get her to go back into the basket, and after the first feed she sleeps next to me in my bed. She seems to go back to sleep a lot more easily, and wake less, if she is beside me. Sometimes she reaches out and pokes at me in the night with her tiny little fists.

We wake around 7 most mornings, and S sits in her bouncy chair in the bathroom door way while I have a bath. If I am lucky, I have time to dry myself, apply moisturiser and get dressed before she gets fed up and starts crying. Occasionally I even have time to dry my hair. Once I am dressed I bring S downstairs in the bouncy chair with her clean clothes. I tend to remove her clothes before feeding her the daily dose of vitamins they recommend for all premature babies, as the iron can stain. Then we get her dressed, and I will usually feed her before we venture out of the house.

Today once we were both dressed and ready, we went to a friend’s house. She has three children of her own and is much more confident with babies than I am. She is also one of the best friends I have ever had, giving me her daughter’s old baby clothes and toys, tidying the house when she visits, offering advice, and most importantly telling me I’m not mad and I’m doing the right thing, whatever it is (unless I’m doing the wrong thing; then she’ll tell me that instead – the mark of a true friend).

S’s father visited briefly today too. I didn’t want him here; it makes me nervous and uncomfortable to be around him. I feel like he is running an appraising eye over my entire life, judging me and looking for the slightest sign that I may have done something wrong, something that may disadvantage his offspring in some way. He treats her like a possession. He brought us food and nappies, which I didn’t ask for or need, but one should never look a gift horse in the mouth, so I said thank you and crammed my freezer with meat I don’t have time to cook, and microwave meals full of salt and flavourings. He left £15 on the side when he went.

After he had left, C came round with her daughter. I went to school with C, but hadn’t seen her since we were about 12. Now she has a 7 year old daughter and runs her own business, she seems so much more grown up than I. She and the friend I saw earlier both make me feel like this motherhood lark is a doddle, and I’m perfectly capable of doing it on my own, with or without £15 left on the side by the ex.

Five Things We (Probably) Do Differently

Sometimes I am struck by how much of a hippie I've become since having S. I am a lot more aware of all sorts of things, and have changed my ways a lot from before I was pregnant. The things I do today are very different from how I planned to do things while pregnant! Here are five things we do differently, both to how I had planned/imagine motherhood, and probably to a lot of other people.

1 S wears cloth nappies. I’d toyed with the idea when I was pregnant, but it all sort of fell by the wayside what with the whole moving house/early birth thing. When I started to settle into motherhood, I started thinking about it again and an amazingly generous friend gave me her old full set of cloth nappies, complete with liners and buckets, when I expressed an interest on Facebook. 

A lot of people don’t understand why I would give myself the supposed extra work of using cloth nappies, but there are two main reasons why cloth nappies are infinitely preferable to disposables: 1. the amount of chemicals in a disposable nappy is ridiculous considering how long your darling baby’s bum spends in close proximity to them. Besides the idea of baby’s bum being pushed up against so many chemicals, they smell awful once they’re wet. Cloth nappies just smell of wee when the baby does a wee. 2. No more schlepping home from Tesco with a big bag of nappies hanging off my arm. This is a bigger bonus than you would think. Also I just resent paying that much for them. There are “hidden” costs involved with washing the cloth nappies, but my electricity meter tends to show that I use about £3 or £4 extra a week in laundering them, and I’m sure I’d spend more than that on disposables. Also you know the massive, right-up-the-back, full-change-of-clothes poonamis of doom you get sometimes? So far the cloth nappies have managed to contain those completely. No change of clothes required. 
She does wear disposables overnight, because when a cloth nappy gets wet they can feel it on their skin straight away, so it would wake her up. And if we go out for any longer than a quick wander around the shops, she’ll usually wear a disposable then for the same reason. Incidentally, I’m told that having a baby in cloth nappies, where she can feel the wetness against her skin when she’s done a wee, makes for quicker, easier potty training – idea being that with disposables they do their job too well, and the baby never realises they’re wet.

2 S sleeps in my bed, next to me. She still wakes at least twice every night to feed, and when she does I feed her lying down, and we both go back to sleep without much disruption. Depending on who you speak to, this is either a really good way of not going mad from lack of sleep when breastfeeding (breastfed babies apparently don’t tend to sleep through until they are established on solids, because breast milk is used so efficiently by the stomach it empties fairly quickly and the baby wakes up hungry after a few hours), or a ridiculous way of ensuring the baby will surely die from being rolled over on in the night. I’m not a particularly active sleeper any way, but trust me when I tell you that mothers just have a sixth sense where their children are concerned. Unless a woman is drunk, medicated, or otherwise likely to sleep very deeply, she will not crush her child in the night. Men, on the other hand, do not have this sixth sense, and if there was a man sleeping in my bed S probably would not because the paranoia would mean no sleep. 
When babies are very small they don’t breathe very regularly, which can lead to apnoea and even death in some cases. As S was premature, she was at higher risk for SIDS, and I worry a lot (as you may have noticed). Being close to me when sleeping means that her heartbeat and breathing will naturally fall in line with mine and it’s actually safer in that respect than having the baby sleep farther away from you. And when it comes to being woken in the night, I'd rather be woken by S poking me in the ribs than screaming from across the room. When she wakes in the night and doesn't want to feed she will lay in bed and play with my fingers while I doze until she goes back to sleep. And when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see is her massive, cheesy grin. 
We do have a cot; it’s in S’s bedroom, currently being used to store blankets, clothes and general homeless junk. People keep telling me I’m going to have to put her in the cot eventually; perhaps when she starts crawling I will worry so much about her injuring herself trying to sneak out of bed that I will put her in the cot. Or I might just take my bed off its frame, and pad the floor around it with spare bedding. Either way, I don’t anticipate S’s bedroom being used for her to sleep in for a good couple of years. 
In other shocking news, I do not believe that S sleeping in my bed will lead to her being a manipulative, spoiled or somehow damaged toddler.

3 I take what some would consider to be a ridiculous amount of supplements each day. I counted up and over the course of a 24-hour period I swallow 12 pills. You can all line up to tell me they’re useless or don’t do what the manufacturer claims, or whatever else you want to say. The fact is that my daughter is growing and developing well despite her early start, and my depression is (for the most part) being kept at bay. Also my finger nails are nice and lady like and strong, which is wonderful if you’re into that sort of thing. It is very likely that I will soon no longer be in a position to afford the supplements I take, and that scares the bejesus out of me. I would like to keep taking all of them until I stop breastfeeding, but the omega oils especially I would like to keep taking indefinitely. I firmly believe they did more for my recovery from my breakdown than the prescribed medication ever did, and I do notice a marked difference when I’ve not taken them. Unfortunately I don’t think the NHS is in a position just yet where you can get a prescription for something as outlandish as fish oils, despite the mounting scientific and anecdotal evidence of its efficacy in mental health issues. Possibly because if you (or the NHS) bought fish oils instead of Prozac, Eli Lilly might get a bit annoyed.

4 I use a sling more often than a push chair. It started when I came out of hospital and realised the pram I’d bought was too big for me to be able to get up and down the stairs to the flat on my own. A friend gave me a sling so that I could get out and about without assistance (and to this day I am thankful for this; I’m sure she saved my sanity with that gesture). S was still under 6 pounds in weight at this point, and so I found myself carrying her in the sling a lot of the time; it calmed her, helped her sleep more soundly, and meant I could get things done. When she started to get a little heavier, the sling started to hurt my belly if I wore it for too long, so I bought a more robust, heavy duty one. We use that one when we go out, but around the house, or if I’m trying to get her to sleep in the evenings, we use the older sling, which is more cuddly. 
Apparently being in a sling means a baby’s heartbeat and breathing will adjust to be in line with whoever is carrying them, and my opinion is that all that extra cuddle time being close to me is good for S. People tell me it’s not good for her to be in the sling so much, but I think she’s just fine; she had excellent control of her head and neck form a very young age, and also makes good eye contact with me when she’s in it. It used to be a failsafe way to make her go to sleep, so I would time my outings with her nap times. These days though, it takes longer to get her to sleep in it, as she can see more than when she was younger, and likes to stay awake and look around. She also likes to suck and chew on the sides of it. I certainly get a lot more comments and a lot more people chat to her, when she’s in the sling and at eye level, than if she’s hidden away in the pushchair. I chat to her more as well, with a running commentary on what we’re doing, what she’s looking at, who we’re speaking to, what we’re buying in the shop, where we’re going next. She seems to enjoy the chatting and quite often joins in. Plus - if you're feeling a bit rubbish there's nothing like having a baby strapped to your chest and cuddling you to make you feel better. Having S in the sling has a remarkably calming effect on me; I end up wandering about town with this peaceful smile on my face like a Hindu cow!

5 Prepare to gasp and do your shock-horror face people; I feed S to sleep a lot of the time. Especially in the evenings, to me it just makes sense that if she needs a feed right before she goes to sleep, and she’s going to sleep in my bed, I may as well just lay down next to her and feed her until she drops off. Sometimes she stays asleep; other times she wakes up when she’s finished feeding, and I have to find another way to get her to sleep. I am aware this is frowned upon by a lot of people, but to be quite honest I don’t care. I’m on my own doing this job, which means that I really need my quiet evenings alone in order to remain sane. It’s probably quite selfish, but I want S to get to sleep as quickly as possible in the evenings so that I have time to do my various household chores and relax a little before I head to bed. Feeding her is the best way to get her to go to sleep. Longer term, if I ever want to have a babysitter look after her or, you know, stop breastfeeding her, I am going to have to teach her to get to sleep on her own on a regular basis. For now though, that can wait.

So there we have it. There are several more things we do that are completely different to how I thought I would be as a mother, alone or otherwise. I do think that being a single mother has meant that I've been free to make decisions and do as I pleased; for example, if I had a partner S would probably sleep in a cot, and I would probably feel more pressure in other aspects of our lives. If previous posts are anything to go by though, all these things I think I'm doing differently to everyone else are usually not so different - just we all tend to read the parenting books and assume that's how everyone does it, and we're on our own in doing it a little differently.

Domestic Abuse - No Longer Just Physical.

The government has announced it intends to widen the legal definition of domestic abuse so that it covers mental/emotional abuse, and under-18s for the first time.

This is really good news. Previously there was not a lot that could be done if you didn’t have a physical injury; and even then there wasn’t much to be done, hence the fact Britain’s refuges are bursting at the seams. This is only the start though, and without going out and educating women and making facilities more readily available, I sincerely doubt it will do much to curb domestic abuse. 

Until you teach a woman that she doesn’t deserve it, she didn’t cause this behaviour, it’s not normal, everyone else doesn’t have to deal with this, and it’s not just the way men are, she will not stand up and say, Enough.*

According to Home Office figures (in 2007), 112 women in Britain are killed by a male partner or former partner each year. That's more than one every 3 days. A lady called Pat Craven set up the Freedom Programme to help female victims of domestic abuse, both physical and emotional. It is an invaluable course that helps to show women that the behaviours they have been tolerating and thinking of as normal behaviour they just have to deal with, are wrong and unacceptable.  It also helps women to identify potentially abusive behaviour in any future mates – as we tend to repeat the same patterns in relationships, many women can end up in a string of abusive relationships, reliving the same nightmare. Women often arrive to their first session of this sort of counselling thinking, I’m in the wrong place, he never hit me, I was just over-sensitive. They tend to change their opinions fairly quickly. 

One in five young men, and one in ten young women think that abuse or violence is acceptable. That is a truly horrifying figure, and something we need to change. In the interest of “doing my bit,” here is a list of behaviours used by abusers to try and control women:

• Glaring, sulking, grinding or gritting teeth, a menacing smile

• Invades your personal space in order to intimidate

• Fires questions at you without giving you time to respond

• Moves to hit you but stops just before making contact

• Emotionally abusive, calling you names or saying things to make you feel fat or ugly

• Messes with your head, making you think you've lost things when he's moved them, contradicting you on things you know you've said or done differently (this is one of the worst, and so difficult to prove because you genuinely believe you must be going mad)

• Unfaithful (often blaming it on your behaviour that has driven him to it)

• Puts you down in front of others, often in the form of a joke ("it was only a joke, what's your problem!")

• May isolate you and sulk when you have visitors to the house

• Charms your family and friends so they can't see why you have a problem with him

• Makes the abuse seem less by playing it down or outright lying about it

• Either denies abuse or blames you for it ("you drove me to it!")

• A million and one excuses as to why he has behaved this way - drink, drugs, work, unemployment, stress, low self-esteem, insecurity, my dog ate it.

• If there are children an abuser will often use them against you, getting them to join him in arguing against you or telling them lies about you#

• Tells you you're a bad mother, often telling others too. In many cases abusers will take this to the extreme, with children eventually being removed from the house because of what has been alleged

• Denies he is the father of your child

• Controls all the money

• Makes all the major decisions in the household

• Either refuses sex or demands it as and when he wants it (regardless of how you feel)

• Rape ("current partners" are responsible for 45% of all reported rapes. Approximately one-fifth of all rapes is actually reported)

• Attempts to keep you pregnant for long periods of time (one child quickly after another)

• Uses coercion or threats to keep you in your place

• May threaten suicide or cry to get you to come back if you leave

• May threaten to hurt pets or children to get you to do as he wants.

Of course, most people will exhibit some of these behaviours at one time or another; but if you are in a situation where your partner is doing several of these things on a regular basis, you may want to consider whether you are  in fact in an abusive situation. On average a woman will be abused 35 times before she will actually seek help.

Many abusers don't believe their behaviour is abuse if they don't actually hit you; they see it as normal behaviour, and may well tell you that you're just being over-sensitive or picky. (People outside the relationship may well say the same.) Even if they do hit you, they can usually excuse themselves because you provoked them, or it was just a tap, you moved in the wrong direction and they didn't intend to actually hit you.

When a woman falls pregnant and books in with a midwife, she is given a pack with various leaflets about things relating to pregnancy and childbirth. These days they also include a tiny, wallet-sized card depicting "Mr Right" on one side, and "Mr Wrong" on the other. Mr Right lists characteristics such as "Cheerful, consistent, shares financial responsibility, encourages you to be independent." Mr Wrong's characteristics include "shouts, sulks, calls you names, never admits he is wrong, uses the children to control you, expects sex on demand." The cards are deliberately made small so that a woman can quickly hide them away from someone who may be enraged by seeing them. This can often be the first thing that makes a woman think perhaps her situation is less than ideal, and it's a good job - women are three times more likely to be injured while pregnant, and pregnancy is often when physical violence begins in a relationship. When a woman is pregnant she is more vulnerable and more dependent, so an abuser feels he is more likely to get away with it - and often they do.

This is all done through charity, government grants or lottery funding though. People who run the Freedom Programme and similar programmes have to fill in endless paperwork justifying their existence, and practically beg for funding each time they begin a new course. Meanwhile, women are trapped in abusive relationships, truly horrific circumstances, believing there is no way out, and this is just their lot in life. How many women will hear the law has changed and suddenly think, "oh yes, now I can leave?" I'm guessing not many. More needs to be done.  There is also a valid argument that if they took this sort of work into schools, and taught young women what they don't have to put up with before they are in the middle of it, they could prevent a lot of abuse from taking place.

If a child is growing up in a home where Daddy hits Mummy, they can be heard arguing all night, Mummy is called all sorts of names and so on, they will not expect life to be any different when they grow up - either becoming an abuser themselves, or ending up in a relationship where they are abused. Nearly three quarters of children live in households where domestic violence occurs. Next time you see a gang of unruly teenagers in the park, look at them and remember that figure. Three quarters of all children. Three out of every four. What are we doing to our children? We need to do more to stop the vicious cycle because it can only get worse, new legislation or not.

It is also worth noting here that while the government is expanding the definition of domestic abuse, they are also still planning to bring in Ian Duncan Smith's brainchild, Universal Credit. Under this scheme, the majority of benefit payments will be rolled into one monthly payment per household. This will mean that where previously an abused woman may have had benefits coming into her own bank account and a certain amount of freedom, the man of the house will now be back in control, holding the purse strings tightly and putting the women's lib movement back by about 50 years. How much easier is it to control a woman, when you know she doesn't even have the money for bus fare to get away from you?

This post is a little long and rambling; sorry about that. It's highly likely I will make another post about domestic abuse in the near future, as it's something I feel very strongly about these days.

*: yes, I know that abuse is also perpetrated against men. But the fact is that the majority of violence and abuse, whether against men or women, is perpetrated by men. 

Setting an Example?

I was talking to a friend the other day about how our children pick up everything we say and do, from a very young age.

When S was very small, I was basically living off microwave meals and crisps, bringing her into the kitchen in her bouncy chair while I waited for the microwave to ping. Then one day I realised that my daughter may very well grow up believing food came from that little white box in the corner of the kitchen, and that wasn’t very healthy for her. So I started to eat salads and fresh food, with her sitting in the kitchen watching me chop vegetables instead.

My friend told me that the other day she walked into her 2-year-old’s bedroom to find her putting her dollies down for a nap, and using the exact same words and tone as her mother uses: “no dolly, it’s nap time now, stay in your bed, good girl…”

It’s made me think about the way I speak and act, and what S sees and hears on a daily basis: will I suddenly have a cringey moment when I hear my daughter repeat something I’ve said a million times within her hearing? I’m trying to not only refrain from swearing or saying nasty things, but also to just be more positive and pleasant in general. It’s hard work to begin with but I’m hoping longer term it will affect both of us for the better.

I know I made a whole post the other day about women not judging each other, but today while I was out shopping, I had a horrible moment watching a young woman with her children. She had a toddler in the pushchair who was crying and whining constantly, clearly unhappy about something. As I stood behind them in the queue, the woman’s mother told the crying child that he may be the age of a toddler, but he was behaving like a baby. Then his older sister came back from wandering about the shop, and stood next to the child, shouting, “Oh, shut up, you’re so annoying!” every few minutes. The mother joined in, telling the child off for making a noise, telling him to shut up and generally having a go. Now, I can understand that from time to time, if your child has been crying for a while for no discernible reason, you might get a bit frustrated and explode a little… but surely hearing one of your other children emulating you would cause you to catch yourself and feel a little embarrassed? And as for the grandmother, I couldn’t help but think this was where it had all been learned from. As I left the shop behind them, I could hear the mother and grandmother berating the little girl for something, telling her she was so bad and naughty and horrible and all the rest of it, she didn’t deserve to go to Shakeaway. I know that while S is very small and not able to do anything much that’s likely to irritate me, I’m not really in a position to judge how anyone else deals with their older child doing things that irritate them or are naughty; perhaps when S is older and discovers mischief I will lose my temper and call her names. I really hope I can work on my self-control before then though and ensure it doesn’t happen.

For me, I think there’s a massive difference between telling a child “you did a silly thing” and telling a child, “you’re stupid.” I get really angry when I hear people telling children they are stupid or bad, because I really believe in the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy, that they will believe that they are inherently bad, and not able to achieve more. I used to get so angry at S’s father for the way he spoke to his children, the names he called them – but they did wind me up as well sometimes and I would explode and tell them to just shut up and leave the room for a minute. It breaks my heart to see any child who believes they are stupid or bad in some way, I want to grab their parents and shake them, shouting, “can’t you see what you’re doing?!”

I’m really not a big fan of the idea of a naughty step or time outs either; Super Nanny scares me with the way she encourages parents to treat their children. Perhaps that’s just me though.

For now, I intend to try my best to be positive as much as possible, certainly whenever my daughter can see/hear me, and not to call people names or swear. Feel free to pull me up on it if you catch me being mean!