Patrick Swayze rises again

Whatever happened to Patrick Swayze? Once upon a time in the ‘80s you couldn’t move for Patrick Swayzes coming out at you from Athena posters and film trailers. But now he’s all but disappeared. Except for good old Channel 5. They appear to have resurrected him from the dead – just like in Ghost.

But Bill and I can’t work out whether it’s a Patrick Swayze season or an ‘80s season that is currently gripping Channel 5. It's so hard to tell - there were few films that came out in that period that didn't feature Patrick Swayze strutting his stuff, so the two roll into one. Except for Desperately Seeking Susan - now that was quality and he didn't get anywhere near that.

Ho hum – whichever it is, I guess Patrick must be happy, because life seems to have been a bit quiet for him these past few years, and Channel 5 must be bringing in the royalties for him again.

...And I hate to admit it, but I was secretly pleased when I saw the Dirty Dancing soundtrack being advertised again - I missed it first time round, and before now have always been too worried about looking uncool if I bought it. But now I'm old and untrendy I don't care, so I've been dropping heavy hints to Bill that he can disturb the moths and get that one for me. I know there was a lot of rubbish on the film (not least of all Mr Swayze's acting), but there were some good old originals too.

...How would you call your baby home?

Still doesn't explain what happened to Patrick. Any ideas..?

OK, Here's a clue...

Bloat and bureaucracy

I’m finding myself hugging the communal printer this morning in a bid to get warm. It is a big mammoth of a machine, spews out pages at the speed of light in full glorious technicolour. It also generates enough heat to, well possibly not fry eggs exactly, but certainly to bring chocolate to a rapid melt. Problem is it’s a bit chunky. I prefer slightly softer things to cuddle as a rule, something not quite so square.

So that’s summer gone then, I guess, judging by the plummet in temperature. It seems to have passed me by in a blur this year – dominated by my encounter with that great institution the NHS. I never did get round to telling you about that, did I? Well let me start at the very beginning…(no I’m not about to launch into another Julie Andrews moment):

It probably passed you by unnoticed. Perhaps a little extra flatulence after an impromptu barbeque, a hiccup or two after an ice-cold beer enjoyed in a rare ray of sunshine. But for the majority, ‘National Gut Week’ this summer passed uneventfully like a mild spell of indigestion under attack from Andrew’s Salts, with not so much as a ‘pass the Rennie, please’.

My gut, however, had an entirely different plan. Having spent fifteen years researching health and health care cerebrally, the rest of my body obviously decided National Gut Week provided an ideal opportunity to get in a spot of undercover investigation, to immerse the researcher in her subject fully. So this week of gastric celebration saw me doubled up in agonising abdominal pain, able to keep neither food nor fluid down any longer than it took to rush to the nearest loo. I was rushed to the local A&E department by my GP.

As a health researcher, I’ve always harboured a healthy suspicion of the medicalisation of society. From cradle to grave, all aspects of our lives have become subject to the medical gaze. Celebrity Doctors tell us how to live our lives healthily during our morning dose of television, and supermarkets coach us on calories, fat and sodium intake. But on this occasion, presented with a clear dis-ease of the body, I, like most people, was happy to lie back and leave it to the experts in white coats. Only I found those experts are more likely to wear pinstripe than white, and while my number one priority may have been to move through the system as quickly as possible, the biomedical paradigm and bloated bureaucracy conspired against me.

My GP, bless her, is one of those rare breeds of medics who has not lost sight of the person surrounding the symptoms. She knows I don’t like taking unnecessary medication or submitting to invasive procedures just to fill an empty slot in my diary. She knows I’ve given birth to two large babies with nothing more than a puff of gas and air. In short, she knows me as an intelligent, capable adult, who faced with most experiences of illness or pain can reel with the punch and get on with life. Put me in a busy hospital however, I am seen simply as a 35 year old woman (oh not one of those!) presenting with non-specific symptoms (i.e. they can’t see it on an x-ray), and they have me down as a hypochondriac with an extremely low pain threshold.

The first diagnosis was consumption of suspect barbeque fodder, despite my assurances that I was a vegetarian who hadn’t managed to eat anything, least of all raw chicken, for the best part of a week. However, this barbeque casualty lasted unexpectedly long, and for the duration of National Gut Week, and the following week, I was marooned in a hospital ward, not able to move further than the buzzer to call the nurse for a bedpan. But once the morphine took hold, and the pain subsided, I had ample time to reflect and marvel at the intricate workings of the beast that is the NHS in this new age of ‘efficiency’, reduced waiting times, MRSA and celebrity chef’s meal choices on the hospital menu.

I quickly discovered that to be admitted to a surgical ward - even if they have yet to identify anything that actually requires surgical intervention - gives staff carte blanche to dress the patient in surgical gown, squeeze her legs into thigh-high anti-DVT stockings, inject with anti-coagulant and hang a ‘Nil by mouth’ sign over the bed. All of which will be completed with the utmost efficiency, but sadly no explanation. My first few attempts at seeking clarification demonstrated my naivety and confirmed my status as hospital virgin:
‘Oh you’ll have to ask the doctors when they come round’, replied the nurse. I was happy with this, so ventured to ask when that might be. And I think this is the moment I received the most confusing, yet also the most unintentionally honest piece of information in my entire stay:
‘It may be before 2 o’clock’. Pause. ‘Or it may be after 2 o’clock’.
Numbed by the pain of trying to make head or tail of this latest example of the laboriously incomprehensible workings of a hospital, I lay back defeated, and awaited the next round of morphine.

I’m not saying the individual professions that comprise the hospital system are not good at what they do, they just don’t seem able to collaborate. The ward sisters and nursing staff are heavenly angels of mercy, divinely administering medication and commodes, and checking their charges are within acceptable limits for blood pressure, pulse, oxygen, temperature and fluid balance. All this with a constant smile, poor pay, low status and exceptionally long hours. Then along come the consultants, who seem to operate with the belief that they have no duty to explain themselves or their treatments to either patients or nurses. So the nursing and auxiliary staff flock around the ward like a giant holding bay, trying to calm and placate patients, with nobody knowing what the hell is going on.

As the government announces the scrapping of the hospital star rating in favour of yet another concoction of targets based on managerial and bureaucratic rather than clinical need, I ponder the question of whether implementing a more holistic approach to health care might be a better way forward. I ‘breeched’ by spending longer than four hours in casualty before admission. This may have cost my hospital a third star, but quite frankly, I would have been happy to spend four days in casualty, if only the system could operate effectively in terms of health care rather than management protocols. If only I had been treated like a capable human being, who can play a part in my own health management, rather than being forced to lie passively in my unattractive stockings, starved of nutrients and dignity - reduced to little more than a receptacle for needles and pills. Add to this the simmering hospital heat and pent up frustration, apprehension and sometimes sheer terror of patients, and the modern efficiency of the NHS looks more like a backstreet B&B than an establishment worthy of one star, let alone three.

Initial conclusions from my bed-bound research would suggest not all consultants are the same. But the majority are. The arrival of the consultant is heralded by a fanfare of footsteps approaching at breakneck speed. With a spectacular visual display of blurred pinstripe and stethoscopes, the charge halts abruptly at the foot of the bed. As the dust settles it becomes apparent that this wasn’t a herd of elephants being chased by a pack of well-dressed hunters, but merely a flustered Senior House Officer, a slightly distant and seemingly side-lined Registrar, and God himself…oops, sorry, the Consultant. He (usually is!) bustles in with all the importance of a foreign dignitary, addresses the ‘Nil by mouth’ sign above the patient’s head, delegates menial tasks to the SHO and then, with a click of the heels, is gone. There is the odd consultant who manages to blend biomedical expertise and clinical excellence with a more holistic understanding of the patient as a person, rather than a disembodied case of symptom presentation. But it would on average seem the higher up the chain of command, the less willing or able they seem to indulge in the very human pastime of talking to the patient. To such a degree that when I first attempted to ask my consultant a few questions, he immediately became defensive, claimed there had been ‘a breakdown in the doctor-patient relationship’, and promptly passed my case over to a colleague. Perhaps I just upset his natural stampede rhythm.

It wasn’t until day 10 of my ordeal that I was informed negative test results are not routinely reported back to patients. For the medical team, a negative result is merely the cue for putting in place the next test in a process of elimination. Never mind the poor patient, languishing in a hospital bed waiting to be told whether or not the scan showed up any unusual growths knocking about inside.

Thus the hospital experience for someone presenting with unusual symptomology, becomes a laboriously slow and drawn out process, and the discovery of a fully functioning television in my third ward provided a welcome distraction. There on Channel 5’s ‘Doctor, Doctor’, I thought my prayers were finally being answered, not dressed in pinstripe but in the guise of the celebrity expert. Viewers with stomach problems were invited to ring in for a live on-air consultation. Dr Mark Porter beamed down at me, oozing bedside manner, charm and confidence, and I was momentarily star struck, convinced he held the key to unlock my suffering. Even the nurses were egging me on to make that call. There’s a celebrity, surely he could get me out of there? Pass the telephone trolley, nurse…

Domestic goddess moment turns gooey

I had one of my domestic goddess moments today. Thankfully they’re few and far between, but sadly they usually strike at the most inconvenient moments.

This one was triggered by the sight of two rather over-ripe bananas lurking in the fruit bowl. The timing of this observation was unfortunate as it was just as I arrived home with Lily from school, and we had precisely half an hour to do an about turn and get back out for her Tae Kwon Do lesson. As we had to ensure she had managed to have a snack, a drink, do her homework and squeeze a promised moment of Nick Junior into that half hour – time was already looking stretched.

‘Would you like to help me make a cake?’ I asked brightly. Lily’s face lit up – I could see she had visions of chocolate crispies again.
‘I’m going to make a banana cake in the bread-machine. Do you want to help?’
Lily’s face sunk, ‘I don't like banana cake,' she sulked, 'Can I watch Nick Junior instead?’

To be honest I was relieved. Making cakes with the help of little hands always takes much longer than anticipated, and I was confident that with her safely glued to the telly with an apple and a glass of water I could whip this cake up in no time, leaving the very capable bread-making machine to cope with the cooking bit while we were out.

In an attempt to speed things up, I put the flour in the tin, clicked it into place, and set the programme on its way, so the kneader was working as I was ladling in the rest of the ingredients.

I should have realised straight away something was wrong. As well as the kneader springing into action, I noticed the filament around the tin was glowing hotter and hotter with each beat of the motor. But I was in such a rush to measure the rest of the ingredients and get them into the tin before the kneading was over and the cooking cycle began – so I didn’t notice.

It was only as I added the final slurp of milk that it dawned on me that perhaps I had set the wrong programme going. By now the flour, eggs, honey and bananas were fairly congealed and some of the mixture at the edge was well on the way to burning.

With five minutes to go I rushed Lily into her Tae Kwon Do outfit, whilst blowing madly on the filament in the bread-maker - it stubbornly refusing to start on the proper cycle until the heat from the first one had died down. Fair enough I guess – the rapid bake loaf cycle was clearly a little extreme for my banana cake to handle. I also set about trying to remix the already solidified goo that was now a half-baked cake – one baked at far too high a temperature, before half the ingredients had been added.

With a bit of gentle oral persuasion (with Lily well out of earshot) I eventually persuaded the bread-machine to get going on the cake cycle, just in time to whisk Lily away from Dora and get her out the door.

I must admit I was a little worried all the way through Tae Kwon Do – not about the cake, I realised as soon as I shut the door on it that it was going to be a write-off – but worried that there was actually something wrong with the bread-machine and the house would be burnt down by the time we got home. But luckily when we returned nothing more than the banana cake had got a second baking, and the house honestly smelt delicious. Just as good as Nigella Lawson’s does, I’m sure.

Unfortunately the cake didn’t look as good as it smelt. I opened the lid of the bread-maker to find a pale congealed mass that looked more like melted toffee ice-cream than banana cake. For a second a flash of inspiration struck me – I’d scoop out little chunks with a spoon and mix it with vanilla ice-cream and chocolate sauce and the kids would have their very own sticky-toffee-sundaes for pudding. Magic!...

...My enthusiasm didn’t last long. Just long enough for Bill to pop his head over my shoulder and shudder in horror – ‘you’re not thinking of feeding that to the kids, are you?!’

...Besides, we’ve no chocolate sauce, so I’d have to start from scratch…and today is clearly not a cooking day for me…

I bet Nigella doesn’t have days like these…



-

Conquering my fears!

As I was driving to work yesterday I felt a clunk on the roof and then watched as a bright green conker pod bounced off the car and into the road next to me. Unfortunately also into the path of an oncoming car, so that was the last I saw of that particular conker.

But it got me thinking about this time last year. Lily had just started school and was keen to contribute to the autumn display table in her classroom. Not content with the pitiful collection of crumpled brown leaves we managed to salvage from our back garden, I agreed to try and find a conker tree for her.

If you’re new to an area and didn’t grow up there – you’re unlikely to know off hand where the nearest conker tree is. Add to this the fact that I was newly emerging from my complete meltdown from postnatal depression, and you can imagine I was not in the mood for setting off on jolly jaunts around the town looking for trees laden down with conkers. So I half-heartedly hid in the security zone of the car and drove up and down our local streets looking for clusters of small boys picking things up off the ground (much easier to spot them than looking for the conkers themselves).

It didn’t take me long. I located a suitable spot half way between our house and the school gates. Perfect if we were walking to school. Only it was a little over a mile to walk and I was practically living like a hermit at the time, managing to drag myself into the car to get Lily to school each day, but not daring to actually face the world without that metal security blanket of car to protect me. But my CPN was working hard at convincing me to try out new things, and she thought walking to school would be perfect. It would get me out of the house, into the fresh air, give me some exercise and force me to face being in amongst people again.

Those school walks this time last year were a nightmare. I still remember the pain I used to get in my neck and the headache I’d nurse for hours afterwards, because I had been so tense for the whole journey. It is a busy road most of the way, and Lily being a chatterbox and only half my height, would try and shout at me all the way along to be heard above the traffic. The traffic would scare me, I had to lean over to hear Lily, I worried I couldn’t hear her, I worried she'd hurt herself on the prickly conker pods, I worried we were going to be late…I worried about everything!

Then the CPN gave me some little tricks to help avoid my panic attacks. She suggested we count cars or puddles or flowers. So this gave me a distraction and I’d cling onto it like a dog with a bone, and I’d still be counting red cars way after Lily had grown bored of the game, and still be making a mental note of puddles on the way home. But it got me through.

So this morning it was my turn to do the school run, and I decided it was time to lay old ghosts to rest and see if I could actually enjoy the school walk this year. So out came the buggy (to drop Poppy at nursery) and the car stayed on the drive. The sun was in the sky, there was birdsong on the air and I had a spring in my step as Lily skipped along beside me, excited at the prospect of finding this year’s first conkers.

And do you know what? This time they both shouted at me to be heard above the traffic all the way there, I couldn’t hear a word of what either of them were saying, and by the time we finished scrabbling around looking for the early autumnal offerings, we were most definitely going to be late for school. I didn’t count one car, have no idea how many puddles we passed, and I was still smiling after the bell had rung, Lily was settled in her seat and I was on my way back home...

Isn’t life on Prozac great..!!

Daisy x :)

The hills are alive....with the sound of music...

I’ve just had the most delicious Sound of Music moment with Poppy and Lily! The usual war-zone was in active session in the kitchen at teatime, so I dug out from a dusty corner on the shelves a CD that I bought ages and ages ago from M&S.

I had bought it during one of those deluded moments of motherhood when I envisaged that I could curl up on the sofa with my kids, just like the lady on the front cover, wrapped up in a luxurious hug of peace and restfulness...It was also in the sale, which helped nurture the day dream…

As you can imagine, that moment never quite materialised, as I awoke to reality and realised that Lily and Poppy are more into active combat than peace and love. So it had been relegated to the ‘never played’ section of the CD collection for months.

But a flash of inspiration made me recover it this evening, commando-crawl across the horror that was the kitchen floor, and slip it unseen into the CD player - and boy did it work! I wasn’t really expecting results, but within minutes the two little combatants had settled into a rhythmic shovelling motion, their eyes glazing over and the noodles going down smoothly.

And then before I knew it I was singing along and the two of them were inching adoringly closer to me, their little faces gazing up with wonder and love. I swear it was a real Julie Andrews moment. I could’ve sworn Lily was on her knees, just like little Lisel in the film. And there they were, to the closing bars of ‘You are my sunshine’ (ok, I know that one isn't in the film), hugging my legs and drifting off to a land much better than the one of noodles, sausages and sweetcorn strewn on the floor around us…

I half expected Bill to come marching in blowing a whistle just like the Captain…!

Stuck on a Bank Holiday?

Stuck for ideas this Bank Holiday? Not me, I was bursting with ideas of how to entertain Lily and Poppy while Bill went to watch the annual August Bank Holiday football game of our local team. Don’t get me wrong, he goes every week, it’s just that the Bank Holiday game can never be missed, and I know from bitter experience that unprepared, the Bank Holiday football afternoon with the kids alone can be a hellish battle right out of the Peterloo Massacre, far worse than anything two third division football teams can muster between them on the pitch.

So while Poppy was taking her afternoon nap Lily and I nipped out to stock up on supplies of Rice Crispies and cocoa, syrup and butter. When Poppy woke an hour later, ready to embark on one of her post-nap full on tantrums, hurling milk beakers and books around the front room for half an hour, I jumped in quickly before she could even summon up the energy to put on a performance, with the magic phrase: ‘Shall we make some crispie cakes?’

The next hour was spent blissfully bashing bowls full of innocent puffed rice with wooden spoons, screwing up paper cup-cases and eating a gooey melted concoction of sugar and chocolate.

Sated for a short while, they cleared off to watch Dora on Nick Junior, and I set about tackling the bombsite that was the kitchen. Just then a vision of Poppy diving face first onto our cream settee, covered from nose to chin in chocolate goo, had me rushing to the rescue clutching a pack of baby wipes. And I don’t mind telling you I was feeling very smug having managed to escape that disaster, get the kids clean and do the washing up after our crispie cake orgy, all before the closing credits of Dora were rolling.

Once Dora was over we decided to do something else creative, and Lily went to fetch her favourite book with ideas for how to make everything from an octopus to a bonfire out of little more than some PVA glue and a few sheets of coloured paper (must have been written by an ex-Blue Peter presenter from the 1970s before it went all pop music and fashion).

Having settled on the shimmery fish with wavy tails, we set about gathering our supplies of tissue paper and milk bottle tops to embark on our next project. Just then I remembered we had no glue. A frantic search in the kitchen drawers confirmed my worst fears, there was nothing remotely sticky apart from a flea-bitten tube of superglue and I wouldn’t let Poppy loose on that – even I’m not that irresponsible.

On an ordinary day, when I’m feeling dishevelled, browbeaten, inadequate and exhausted from motherhood, I would have told the kids we needed to abandon the fish idea and switched the TV back on again. But no, today was a Bank Holiday – I was coping fine with my kids alone for the first time in ages and the sun was even shining. Hell, I was going to take the bull by the horns, pile them into the car and go shopping for Pritt Stick.

Going for the quickest option, I headed for the local row of shops – I can leave the kids safely locked in the car, nip in and still see them from the shop window. I say safely locked, because this row of shops is on a council estate which was the location for some serious sociological investigation into anti-social behaviour, drug trafficking and vandalism in the 1980s. They even wrote a book about it. Things have improved a little, but not that much, so I had to make this quick.

A quick sprint round the first shop revealed nothing in the way of handy Blue Peter style materials. So double checking the central locking on the car, I raced for the next shop door. Still panting from my first exploration, rather than trying to search the shelves in this place, I ran straight to the back of the shop where I could see the shop girl having a quick fag break out the back while things were slack.
‘Have you got any glue?’ I splutter at the girl, like a woman possessed.
She looks slightly taken aback, flicks the ash off her cigarette, and shakes her head slowly.
My eyes widen in horror – ‘Not even Pritt Stick?’ I gasp in disbelief.

It’s only as I turn to exit the shop that I catch sight of myself in the mirror hung up over the counter to allow the shop keeper to see what’s going on at the back of the shop - and I realise I have not been such a perfect domestic goddess today after all. I self-consciously eased myself back into the car and looked closely in the rear view mirror. In my haste and concern for the furnishings, I may have wiped the kids clean enough to attend Sunday School and saved our tatty settee, but I had completely forgotten to clean my own face.

A flash back to our orgy in the kitchen reminded me that Poppy had been feeding me handfuls of crispie cake from her bowl. Stuck to my chin were several very crusty looking rice puffs, and my lack of attention to person presentation today had extended to not bothering with make-up, and forgetting to brush my hair before leaving the house. So although I had remembered just in time to change from my slippers to my trainers, the overall effect was still that of someone not quite in control of her faculties and just a little deranged.

As I drove away I spotted a group of teenage girls sitting on a wall not far from the shop, and I realised sadly why no shop on this estate was going to make access to glue free and easy. But you’d have thought they could have made an exception with Pritt Stick – I can’t be the only desperate mum around here on a Bank Holiday.

Beaten by our local retailers, I raced to Sainsbury’s five minutes before they were due to close. Grabbing Poppy under one arm and pulling Lily reluctantly along by the other, with no shame I headed straight for customer services and demanded to know where they kept their glue. And finally our search for the Holy Grail was over. There in front of my eyes was a big bucket full of Pritt Sticks – I could have kissed the young man who had led me to this treasure. The icing on the cake – it was ‘buy one get one free’ – perfect, no fighting over one stick of glue. Even I joined in the chorus of ‘We did it’, the Dora song, on the way home in the car.

So it was an afternoon of relative calm from the kids, but clear signs of depravity from their mother. Ok, so I was publicly humiliated and will never be able to show my face in that row of shops again, but the kids were happily entertained with an afternoon of covering themselves, the house, and me with chocolate goo and silvery fish scales. So I still feel like its 1-0 to me this Bank Holiday!

Right, Bill’s back, so I’m off for a well-earned (and much needed) soak.

Daisy x

By the way – in case you were wondering, we won the football 1-0 too!

DAISY RETURNS!!!!!

Hi there tiddly-peeps (A Hoobs reference for all you wonderfully amazing parents who manage to survive early mornings without the aid of Channel 4). I feel like I’m starting all over again, I’ve been away so long. I must thank Pops for holding the fort during my absence.

It’s been a crazy few weeks. And not the usual summer madness that school holidays and unexpected heatwaves bring, but another level of madness altogether. Pops hinted at the situation – I’ve been stuck in various hospital wards, attached to an array of monitors and drips, enduring an assortment of tests and investigations, and basically have lost touch with the world completely. But I’m back! Well sort of…

I’ve never spent time inside before – in any sort of institution. And for the first time I started to understand how prisoners actually make it through sentences that last for years on end. I know there are some differences – prisons have televisions that work, hospitals don’t – but I should imagine there are also a lot of similarities between long stay in a prison and long stay in a hospital. For a start, breakfast arrives ridiculously early to the sound of clattering on iron railings; secondly the staff get to submit inmates to a range of unexplained ritualistic procedures at periodic intervals throughout the day; and finally, there are strict visiting hours with controls on numbers, suitability and type (children usually not welcome). But I dare say smoking rules are more lax in prison, as Pops pointed out (I never thought I’d live to see the day Pops stood up for the rights of a smoker!).

I’ll tell you more about the details over the next few posts, as I start to orientate myself around the keyboard again. Suffice to say for now that what has always been a healthy suspicion of all things in white coats has now grown into an active distaste. I always knew that historically the world of doctors and medicines was designed to control and subjugate the patient, but I had kind of hoped things had moved on a bit in the 21st century. I was wrong.

More of that to come. But the whole experience has changed me deeply, and this morning when I found myself interrupting a game of doctor and patient between Poppy and Lily, a crisis of conscience quickly ensued. Dr Poppy was administering to patient Lily, by searching for a migrant heartbeat in her lower digestive cavity, with the aid of a plastic stethoscope. At this point, patient Lily intervened, shouting, 'Duh, Poppy! It's my foot that's hurting, you don't have to listen to my heart!' – rounded off with her best 5-year-old impersonation of a teenage grunt.

Dr Poppy simply looked up, made an absentminded adjustment to her stethoscope, and got back to what she was doing, completely ignoring the patient's interjection, as if it had been nothing more than the buzz of a passing fly.

Afraid that the whole thing might escalate into a doctor-patient uprising - as Poppy is going through a very determined stage at the moment, and Lily does her best to provoke her - I urged Lily to let Dr Poppy do what she wanted to her patient. ‘After all’, I heard myself say, 'the doctor always knows best!'

And then I almost choked on my words! Here's me – still reeling from the shock of dealing with a consultant who thought the world revolved around him and no patient had the right to speak - and there I was trying to train my child, already showing very positive signs of rebellion and self confidence to question authority, to abandon all sense of control and give in to the power of the dominant regime. Aarrghh!!

Don’t worry – I will explain all very soon. It’s getting late, and I have a heap of medication to get through before I can go to bed…

It's nice to be back.

Daisy x

Mediterranean Diet

Hi again from Daisy's Dad. The good news is that Daisy and family are taking a break at the seaside. All the hospital tests so far have proved negative, which is good news but means there is still a puzzle. She is due to have some further tests as an out-patient, but at the moment is soaking up some sun and relaxing, and tells me it's time I made another blog post for her!

I thought I would write about my hobby, which is enjoying serendipitous synchronicity, or in plain English waiting for interesting links between unrelated ideas to pop up. And funnily enough, one happened as I was sitting here at my keyboard thinking about how to explain it.

First, a little background. I live in the United Kingdom and over the years I have taken many self-catering holidays around the Mediterranean. Self catering because one of the holiday high spots for me is being able to buy fresh ingredients for a Mediterranean Diet daily. When I get to a new place, the first thing I want to know is the location of the produce market. Now that I'm retired, I've been mulling over whether to reverse the holiday process - live near the Mediterranean and take occasional holidays back in the UK! So I've looked at all the variables, cost of property, location of airports with low-cost airlines and so on, and decided that the ideal location would be in Italy, probably in Tuscany. And that's as far as it has gone so far - the next stage will be to take an off-season holiday in Tuscany to do some research locally.

Back to Serendipitous Synchronicity. Sitting at my keyboard looking at Daisy's blog, I clicked idly on the link in the right-hand column that says "Break free - how to turn your passion into an income". Sounded like the subject line on a spam email, but I wasn't going anywhere in a hurry and I'd just made a fresh cup of coffee, so I clicked. And there, right in the middle of the page, was a photograph of a Villa which was obviously in Tuscany! So I clicked on the picture, and it gave me the fascinating story of a young couple, Fiona McCardle and Jim Andrew, who did turn their passion into an income, and set up a web business Rent a Villa in Tuscany - if you read their story, there is a link to their site at the end of it.

And that's what I mean by Serendipitous Syncronicity - now I have no excuse - the pieces are falling into place! Oh, and Daisy and company love the idea of holidays in Tuscany...

A surprised defence of smokers rights!

Hi – this is Daisy’s Dad learning how blogs work. Unfortunately, Daisy has been in and out of hospital over the last couple of weeks, and hasn’t had the time to do much on her computer. I’ll let her tell the story, because I know she has been making loads of notes – in the meanwhile, she asked me to post something to show that her blog is still live, and left the topic up to me to choose. Brave girl!

As it happens, I do have something I want to say, because on my hospital visits I observed a couple of cases of unfair treatment, almost victimisation, which have made me hopping mad.

Our local hospital has a no-smoking policy, and as a lifelong non-smoker who lost both parents to smoking-related disease, I agree with it totally. I am saddened to see hospital staff hanging around in the grounds taking a furtive drag, even though the ban extends in theory to the grounds as well, but I know that they are dedicated and caring people who work long hours for ridiculously low pay, and a cigarette helps them through the day.

But heaven preserve the smokers who end up as patients! They come into hospital because they are ill, and their crutch is kicked away as soon as they are admitted. There is not even a smokers’ day room available to them. One elderly man set himself and his bed on fire trying to have a surreptitious puff during the night shift, but the case that really annoyed me was that of a young mother who was in for investigation of severe abdominal pain.

After a number of tests, they determined that it would be necessary to remove her gall bladder, which would mean going onto a waiting list for the operation. She couldn’t go home immediately because there were some other tests to be carried out, but she was promised an appointment with the Pain Control Team before leaving hospital, as the pain was spasmodic but crippling when it hit. But Oh No! The appointment was cancelled. And why? Because when not in pain she could walk out into the grounds to text her children and, yes, have a cigarette. As she said, she would "crawl over broken glass" to keep in touch with her children, but mobile phones and cigarettes are not allowed in the hospital buildings, and the fact that she could make her journey to the grounds was taken as proof that she was not in sufficient pain.

Sufficient pain! She described the intensity as being like childbirth, and in childbirth it is possible to move around between contractions. I don’t know, I’m only a man, but as a Mum with four children she would know what she was talking about, and I got the impression she was a tough cookie, not someone to make a fuss without reason.

I do not know who took the decision to cancel the Pain Relief consultation, but I do wonder what went through her/his mind while doing it. Where did the compassion go? I would be delighted if all smokers could give up the habit tomorrow, but surely nicotine dependency is a part of the patient’s problem which could be established at admission and taken into account during treatment – for example by offering patches and counselling. Or am I making the mistake of wanting to see a holistic approach to treatment rather than a one-thing-at-a-time conveyor system?

The beautiful mind of motherhood

After yesterday’s bomb atrocities in London, I tried to lose myself in a film, and finally watched A Beautiful Mind, which has been sitting on my shelf for many months waiting to be returned to its owner and as yet unwatched.

It’s based on the true-life story of Nobel Prize winner John Nash, a Mathematician who gets entangled in a mysterious conspiracy. I don’t want to ruin the end of it for you, but I thought it was rather telling that I believed the characters were all real, and Bill was convinced they weren’t.

Watch the film and see what you think that says about my current state of mind! And then, please let me know…

I’m not a huge Russell Crowe fan, he’s just a bit too ‘all man’ for me – but in this one he’s good and I thoroughly recommend it for anyone who feels like they’re close to losing the plot. It is reassuring in an odd kind of way.

But it isn’t just people like me, who have had a complete meltdown and six months off work who feel like they’re somehow on the edge of everybody else’s reality. I was talking to a friend last night who is on the verge of returning to work after six years of fulltime motherhood, and she is feel understandably apprehensive and nervous about how she will be received in a workplace that she used to know so well, yet now seems strangely alien. And she has all her marbles!!

So it got me thinking that perhaps this is all just about motherhood (although obviously not in John Nash’s case!), not post-natal depression. When I first returned to work after maternity leave - when I was still standing securely on two feet and managing to look the world in the eye - even then I felt like an outsider in the workplace. I sort of had a perception that everyone else was looking at me differently now I was a mother. As if I was somehow less capable, certainly less intelligent, and unlikely to be trusted to perform as well as my non-parent colleagues. Perhaps it was the bottles of expressed breast milk I was seen carrying from my office to the fridge every lunchtime, or maybe the pushchair parked in the corner of my room. Apart from that I was doing everything else as I always had done. But something told me that my status had gone down.

And talking to other mothers yesterday just made me think it doesn’t matter what path we choose, whether we stay at home to bring up our kids, carry on working through their infancy or return to work after a slightly extended maternity break – whatever we do, we are going to end up feeling inferior in the workplace. Because modern day work and modern day motherhood just don’t fit neatly together. It’s messy and emotional and splits you in two.

But you know what? I don’t care. For me, my status in the workplace is far less important than my status as a mother…it’s just a shame that it is the former rather than the latter that pays the bills!

(Have you noticed I haven’t mentioned my little ones today? I’m tired of seeing adverts for nothing but flowers on my blog!!)

Breast is best...is it?

‘Has the drive to promote breastfeeding gone too far?’ That’s the question that the ITV news asked viewers this afternoon, in the wake of a report by a sociologist claiming that the ‘moral crusade’ by breastfeeding advocates is undermining experiences of parenthood.

I was actually extremely disappointed with the article. Quite unexpectedly they didn’t have the author of the report or anybody to explain why we shouldn’t be breastfeeding our babies. They just had a very nice GP, Sarah Jarvis, who quite categorically said ‘breast is best’. So in danger of being shouted down for being a looney earth mother, for once I say 'hurrah to ITV!'

Dr Jarvis criticised the schizophrenic attitude British society has to breastfeeding – on the one hand we promote the health benefits for baby, but on the other we deny a woman’s right to breastfeed her baby when and where she chooses. It seems ludicrous, in a society where we see naked breasts exposed in all their glory in newspapers everyday, and women are forever being encouraged to ‘get your tits out for the lads’ – that when we want to get our tits out for our babies, we are ridiculed, shunned, moved on and labelled moral-crusading cranks. Why can we get them out for lecherous men but not to ensure the healthy development of our children?

What a sick society we must live in.

Come to think of it, if Britain continues to have this stuck up, sexist, disapproving, priggish attitude towards breastfeeding, then it will be a very sick country indeed. Babies who are breastfed have less gastroenteritis, fewer coughs and colds, less admissions to hospital for infection, and grow up healthier, less likely to become obese and more likely to avoid other common health complaints like asthma, eczema and heart disease. Look at it that way, and breastfeeding isn’t just an issue of personal choice, is it? It is a public health issue as well.

But hopefully there may be change. When they first discovered smoking was bad for your health, nobody listened, smoking continued unabated, smokers protected their 'right' to smoke, and public areas were choked with the fumes of hundreds of cigarettes for all to inhale. Now the realisation has dawned, non-smokers are starting to demand their right to a smoke free environment, lifelong smokers bravely battle through the pain of giving up, and smoking has become one of the biggest public health issues in the UK.

Whatever smokers try and claim – they can give up – and it makes the world a healthier place for all of us. Only a tiny minority of women genuinely can’t breastfeed, and in the majority of cases, difficulties can be overcome with the help of a trained breastfeeding counsellor. So when a few more people in authority realise that breastfeeding needn’t be a shameful and private hell - that it is in fact a pain free, cheap, convenient and loving way to protect the future health of Britain, perhaps it too will be taken up as a public health issue.

On 22 March this year a campaign was launched to protect mothers' rights to feed their babies in public in England and Wales. If you want to help improve the health of the nation, by backing this campaign, sign their petition.

Hey, and to all you mums and dads who haven’t made up your minds yet, another great benefit of breastfeeding – the nappies of breastfed babies smell much sweeter than those of bottle fed babies. Now if that doesn’t convince you when baby starts producing monster stinky poos at two in the morning, nothing will!

Panic in the aisles of Sainsbury's

The appearance of incompetence. It happens to us all. It certainly happens to me – but I have insanity and prozac as reliable scapegoats. But when it happens to a father, then he for some reason feels like the finger of suspicion is pointing at him, everyone is laughing, and he will shortly be up for nomination as Worst Parent of the Year.

Bill was in charge of Lily and Poppy on Friday night while I was out on my college night. He was feeling particularly pleased with himself, having got the pair upstairs, washed and scrubbed with no major tantrums erupting. Mentally patting himself on the back and dreaming of that bottle of white wine cooling in the fridge, he reached for their pyjamas; and then it struck him – like a tonne of bricks (or a toddler wielding a heavy-handled skipping rope at head height) – there were no nappies in the house. 7 o’clock on a Friday evening, home alone, with not a nappy in sight. And although Poppy is potty-trained during the day (just about!), she still needs a nappy at night.

So it was a site of devastation I returned to later that evening. Every drawer and cupboard had been turned out, in the desperate hunt for a nappy, all to no avail. Bill had ended up piling them both into the car and headed for Sainsbury’s (thank heavens for 24 hour shopping!). He said he was too embarrassed to take them in with him, but mindful of the fact that leaving a two and a five year old unattended in a car in a public place wasn’t exactly up there on the list of perfect parenting tips either. So he bit the bullet and reluctantly dragged the two pyjama-clad children with him on the nappy hunt.

He had hoped to get in and out with nobody noticing him. But Poppy and Lily were determined to let the whole shop know that daddy had forgotten the nappies, and they were out on an exciting late-night shopping trip as a result - so they told everyone they came across (Bill says it is remarkable just how many people do go shopping in Sainsbury's on a Friday night at 7 o’clock). He felt like everyone was judging him as a completely incompetent hopeless dad, who didn’t know one end of a baby from the other.

Grabbing the nappies and rushing through the checkout, with one last embarrassing ‘Daddy got no nappies!’ from Poppy to the checkout lady, and he was herding them back through the shop to the front door. Just as he thought he’d got away with it, he heard the noise of a tap being turned on, and pivoting in horror, he saw Poppy standing behind him, feet hip-with apart, shouting ‘I have done a wee! I have done a wee I have!’

I don’t think he’ll be rushing back to Sainsbury’s in the very near future, my dear Sweet William! (Who, by the way, is the most competent dad I know, so that award can go to one of the other many hundreds of parents enjoying late night dashes to Sainsbury’s. We've all been there one way or another).

Thanks mum

My mum sent me an amazing book today. A simple little thing entitled Thanks mum: inspiring lessons for mothers. It is compiled by people all around the world, sending in their witty and inspiring comments on motherhood.

I live many miles from my mum, and receiving this was like getting a huge, unexpected hug through the post from her.

So for anyone out there with a mum who you don’t see as often as you'ld like – go and buy her this book.

For those of you who live quite close enough, thank you, and sometimes feel like you’ll never break free; but still love her all the same - buy her this book.
For anyone who sees their mother every day and still can’t tell her how much you appreciate her – buy her this book!

Go on! Send your mum a hug today! (And please excuse the scribbling on the front cover I've scanned in for you - my mum never could resist the temptation to deface a good book!!).

Oh, and by the way... Thanks, mum!

Pippi Longstocking and Poppy Long-stropping

Do you ever have one of those mornings when you feel like the world is playing some kind of sick joke on you? Any minute now God or somebody else in charge is going to jump out with a big microphone and a cheeky smile, shouting 'Surprise!!'

It started like any other morning. Weetabix on the walls, potties being emptied all over the bathroom floor and an undercurrent of tantrums simmering away discretely. But we were coping. And then Poppy lost it. Completely lost it because she wanted to take her top off in order to put her big girl's pants on. Now search me, I have no reason why one should have to remove one's top in order to put on a pair of knickers, but in the logic of a two year old, it was making perfect sense. And mummy was just being plain stupid for not following the thread of reasoning. So I left her to it. Top still on, because she couldn't get it off herself, but knickers being thrown around the bedroom in a fit of toddler rage.

Then up came Lily looking for trouble. Again, started off innocently enough. She wanted me to do her hair. We had the usual early morning discourse:
Lily: I just want a slide in
Mummy: You need to tie it back, it's hot, you've got Tae Kwon Do tonight (and besides you look like you've been pulled through a hedge backwards and I can't let you out in public like that on top of the combination of clothes you've picked out for yourself this morning).
(This last bit was of course not said out loud)
Lily: Ok, I'll have bunches.

So I struggle on trying to un-knot the mass of straw that passes for hair on Lily's head. She has beautiful hair and we brush it every day, and wash it regularly, but somehow she still manages to make it look like she's auditioning for the part of Victorian Street Urchin in Oliver.

Bunches duly created, and the sulk sets in:
Lily: I don't want bunches. Bunches look silly!
Mummy (through gritted teeth, I hadn't taken my morning Prozac yet): You asked for bunches, sweetheart, that's what you've got.
...Sulk...
Mummy: I tell you what - we'll plait them and then they won't stick out so much.

She was pleased with this idea and so was I - we were meeting half way and that's always so much better than giving in completely. (Meanwhile Poppy is still next door kicking and screaming with a pair of big girl's pants on her head, having completely forgotten what she was in a strop about in the first place, but keeping the show up just in case I hadn't forgotten).

Plaits in place and Lilly lets rip. I guess I didn't help by saying she looked like Pippi Longstocking. I used to love Pippi Longstocking as a kid and I thought Lily looked gorgeous. But she was having none of it and joined in the chorus with Poppy who had by now joined us and was rolling about my bed, still with her top on, but no sign of her pants.

I know it isn't nice when our parents laugh at our attempts to stamp authority on the world - I remember it well myself. But it was such a funny scene I just had to laugh and left them to it. Pippi Longstocking and Poppy Long-stropping, rolling and moaning about the bed as if I'd just banned Christmas!

Perhaps it is all down to their artistic temperament. You've already seen Lily's handiwork with a pencil, so here is Poppy's latest offering from nursery to brighten up the page. Us artists just have to suffer in a world that doesn't understand...

It is entitled Mary, Mary quite contrary... yea, that would be right!

Dx

Discrimination in pay

I was wrong - it's 18.4%, not 16%.

I'm even more fed up than I thought!

Life is a race

I need a change in career. I’ve always known that, but having postnatal depression has just made it all the more apparent. I lost valuable time with my babies growing up, because the workplace infiltrated every minute of time I had on maternity leave, and hauled me back into the office far sooner than I would have liked. And now I face a summer with Bill and me alternating time off to look after Lily over the school holidays, leaving precious little time for us to take a proper holiday off together as a family.

If I could do anything I liked I think I would become a classroom assistant with children in their first year of primary school. Then at least I'd get some time off with my kids. But it isn’t as simple as that. I currently work in an industry where women get paid an average of 16 per cent less than men for doing the equivalent job, but if I moved into the world of classroom assistants I wouldn’t even earn as much as somebody stacking the shelves in Aldi. Is it just me or is there something criminal about an economic system that values supermarkets over education? I’ve been a check-out-chick and shelf-stacker before. Nothing wrong with that, but I don’t intend to go back to it just because it pays more than doing something I’d really rather do. But then why should I suffer financially because I want to help kids develop their full potential?

Anyway, it’s all academic, because £6.15 an hour as a classroom assistant won’t cover the mortgage, nor will £6.50 an hour for stacking the shelves in Aldi for that matter, so I guess I’m stuck for now surrounded by men being paid ridiculously more than me. Men who, possibly as a result, feel more valued than me and are less close to the edge of quitting!

On a lighter note I did the Race for Life yesterday. 10 000 participants and almost as many spectators in one small park in the blazing sun – boy was that a bad idea for someone who suffers panic attacks in crowds!! My counsellor said one way to deal with panic attacks is to concentrate really hard on one object and try to lose yourself in that, forgetting the wider chaos around you. Not a recommended strategy in the Race for Life. Most objects in front of me were the backs of other women – backs displaying little pink squares emblazoned with the names of loved ones they had lost through cancer. One particularly heartbreaking group was two women and a small girl, of about 3. Each had a photo of the same young man on their pink square. For one he was a brother, for one he was a husband, and for the little girl, he was her daddy. They were clearly enjoying the day and it must give them a sense of empowerment to be able to do something constructive and so communal in the face of such private and individual sorrow. It just brought a tear to my eye every time I saw them. In a sad sort of way this made me go even quicker, because I wanted to get in front of all these sad, sad stories and not have to see those ghost like faces on little pink squares anymore. But for that family, and for so many like them, there is no getting away from the ghosts, however fast you run.

So it was a very humbling experience, and I’m definitely going to do it again. I am walking a little bit slower than usual this morning. I’m not sure if that is aching muscles or the cheap slip-on sandals I’m wearing. Probably the latter. I’m usually someone who walks at the pace of a professional speed-walker, striding ahead leaving poor little Lily and Poppy squealing at me to slow down. But today I’m having to take life at a more leisurely pace because if I go too quickly my sandals fly off. Maybe I should take to wearing them everyday – it would force me to take life a bit more slowly…

Then again, I wonder how much a professional speed-walker gets paid..?

Wandering wombs

I think our cat is going through a broody stage. Is that possible when they’ve been spayed? She is behaving like a mother making a family nest for her brood and bringing home the bacon for them. We had a cat called Tabitha when I was a kid, and Tabitha had a litter of seven kittens. I’d come down one morning early and found her grunting and squeaking under the kitchen table. Or so I thought. Turns out the grunting actually meant she was in the throws of labour, and the squeaking wasn’t coming from Tabs at all, but from the rapidly expanding family of cats she was producing under there in her cardboard box.

Within a few days Tabitha was out ferreting for food to bring home to her babies. And whenever she did find anything suitable she used to bring it to the middle of the kitchen floor, settle back on her haunches, puff out her little furry chest like a proud lion, tip her head back and start howling. A long, deep, sad, rhythmic sound. If you’ve heard a mother cat you’ll know what I mean. There is something so incredibly haunting about that song. And it is so different to a cat’s ordinary miaow. On one occasion Tabitha managed to bring home a completely unopened pack of streaky bacon from the local supermarket. I think it was then that dad decided it was time to find new homes for the kittens.

But Squeak has no babies and no chance of ever having any. Furthermore, she’s called 'Squeak' because all she ever does is let out this tiny high pitched squeaky miaow. And yet here she is, six years old, womb-less and infertile, and calling the song of the mother cat. I find it very sad. But looking on the bright side, at least she isn’t bringing home packs of bacon for her invisible babes – she prefers to catch one of Lily’s feathery tiaras instead! Sometimes pink, sometimes white, once a princess glove with furry trimmings - but always something fluffy and hairy. No vacuum packed plastic for this little kitty!

This is Big Brother...and baby brother, and mother and...the world's gone mad!

Do you know, it is now possible, once you have put your own screaming toddlers to bed, to spend an entire evening watching other people’s screaming toddlers on TV? So yesterday, I got in from an exhausting day helping out with 60 kids on a school trip; battled with tears and tantrums from my own two between 5 and 7; and eventually tucked the little darlings up – washed, scrubbed and sweet smelling - only to rush downstairs to switch the telly on to catch the latest instalment of House of Tiny Tearaways!

At one stage I even had it in stereo – whilst Tiny Tearaway number 1 was shouting and swearing at the long-suffering Dr Tanya on BBC3, my own Tiny Tearaway Poppy was yelling blue murder from the bedroom because she’d managed to get her arms twisted out of her pyjama top and caught through the neck opening. Then it’s on to Little Angels for more tantrums, screaming and struggling parents, and I was starting to wonder what it was about me that made me expose myself to this 24-7…

Partly I want to watch it in case I learn some fantastic parenting trick that I haven’t already picked up from a previous episode. Unlikely, as the problem always seems to come down to one of three things – over-anxious parents, obsessively clean parents or fighting parents. As I am on prozac I can clinically no longer be over-anxious, my body chemicals prohibit it. I am the most non-obsessive person to the point of obsession when it comes to housework and washing the kids hands, so count me out on that one too. And Bill and I were only commenting the other evening that we haven’t had a good row for ages – so we can’t fall foul to that one either. So I have to keep watching in the hope of cause number 4 being identified, so I can learn where we’re going wrong…

Partly I watch it because there is something morbidly satisfying in watching other people’s children behave worse than your own. Let’s face it, these poor people wouldn’t be on the programme unless things had reached breaking point, so these are usually kids with pretty spectacular behaviour patterns. So Bill and I can sit there, whilst our own children are silently tucked up in bed, thinking that we are very lucky with our little angelic girls after all - forgetting what the reality is like when they're awake. So I have to keep watching to give me those feel-good moments…

And I think partly I watch it because I just love kids. Good ones, naughty ones, troubled ones, happy ones. They’re all pretty cute when it comes down to it (especially when they’re at the end of a remote control that can switch them off!). I had the most wonderful experience yesterday on this school trip. There’s a lovely little boy in Lily’s class called Jack (well, there are two actually, it being a popular name at the moment, but the other one isn’t quite so cute!). And yesterday, after an enjoyable half hour of shoving four and five year olds up a mock-Victorian chimney in the Museum of Childhood, I was walking back to the rest of the group with little Jack, when he looked up at me with big round eyes and said ‘I like you, Mrs May’.

And it just struck me that the world would be such an easier place to live in if we all operated with the openness and honesty of children. I’m sure I’m not alone in having met people occasionally in a shop, or at a railway station, or in the mother and baby room in Mothercare, got into a conversation with them, and thought – hey, we’d get on, I’d like you for a friend. But because we are adults it would be too embarrassing to say – 'do you fancy swapping numbers and getting together again?' – it might be misconstrued. So we end the conversation with a cheerful goodbye and never see the person again, thinking what a great friendship-that-never-was has just been lost. Now if we were 5 years old we could just turn round to each other and say ‘I like you’ and a chance meeting will instantly be transformed into easy friendship.

And what about being honest and open with those friends we do have? Lily thinks nothing of sitting in front of her pals on the toilet doing a poo while they discuss their fear of non-existent monsters. Whereas I recently discovered that at the time I was having my meltdown, two of my closest friends were also going through emotionally rough patches, and yet only two of us had admitted this. So a great opportunity for support in numbers was lost. At the same time Lynette was at breaking point on Desperate Housewives, thinking she was a failure as a mum, until her friends admitted to her that they had also been in her situation. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this, guys?’ pleaded a desperate Lynette.

But no, we’re too reserved and proper for that sort of openness with our emotions. Instead we lock ourselves away in our houses and watch an ever expanding array of television programmes exposing other people under the spotlight to highlight their weaknesses and problems in front of the nation - perhaps secretly hoping that within their sad and sorry tales we’ll find the secret key to unlocking our own frustrations without having to admit them to anyone.

The next one to hit our screens sounds particularly frightening. Pregnancy, birth and early parenting in a goldfish bowl. As if it isn’t a stressful enough time already without the added pressure of several million viewers! What can possibly drive people to want to take part in this one? The child isn’t even born yet, so how can it be a problem? But if they start their family life in such an artificial environment, chances are they’ll end up on Tiny Tearaways a few years down the line trying to undo the damage to their relationships that the first programme caused. And I guess by the time they’re grown up, they’ll be so used to having their lives exposed to the public, that Big Brother will be the next obvious career move. And eventually we’ll have the first televised shag on Big Brother that results in a baby, and the whole thing can be self-regenerating…No need to leave ‘the house’…

I wonder why our television screens are so saturated with these programmes at the moment?

Oops. I’m ranting. Time to sign off!

When did you last think about the webbing between your toes?

‘When did you last think about the webbing between your toes?’ In my case, not that long ago actually, as dear Sweet William has athlete’s foot, and it does tend to focus the mind on the toes if a member of the family is walking around sporting that. But it’s a good question, and one that was posed to me just an hour ago as I stood in a patch of grass in the middle of a built-up urban area, shifting my weight back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, rolling through my feet and hugging an imaginary big ball.

Let’s start at the beginning…I was about to give up on the day big time when I suddenly remembered a Tai Chi class was being introduced at work this week. So having locked myself away in my office all day - door shut, studiously trying to avoid contact with anyone in case I was called upon to show an interest in the world – I threw caution to the wind and headed on over to the designated patch of grass and took a leap into the unknown.

The class was run by a very nice man called Colin, who looked kind of odd doing Tai Chi in the summer heat, wearing a formal striped shirt and suit trousers. But I quickly realised, what you look like doesn’t matter, and you can wear more or less anything for this particular activity – you’re concentrating on what’s going on inside the body, not outside it.

I must say, for what is such a stressed-out and large organisation, I was disappointed that only about ten of us turned up for Colin - and all women. Are men not in need of relaxation and gentle exercise? Or are they scared of looking like prats stood on the edge of a busy city-centre street waving their arms in the air? Come on, lads, give it a go! It really empties the mind of everything apart from that gentle movement, the kiss of the warm breeze and your breath. I found it incredibly relaxing and focusing. It brings to your attention every part of your body as you make the slow, deliberate weight shifts and sways. It should be prescribed on the NHS for depression.

I’m used to yoga, swimming, weights and aerobics (hey – I’ve tried everything to shift this depression!), but this was something completely different and uniquely challenging for me. You see, to add insult to injury, not only did I go down with postnatal depression what seems like a lifetime ago, I also developed vertigo and have had it for nearly two years now. The medics have done brain scans and blood tests, poured hot and cold water in my ears, blindfolded me, spun me around, and stood me on one leg. In most of these situations I end up falling over or wanting to throw up, and they have yet to come up with a cause.

Anyway, I just discovered it makes Tai Chi a bit difficult. All the swaying from side to side and following slow movements with your eyes, is enough to send me tumbling. My doctor tells me – by standing me up and asking me to close my eyes, then catching me when I fall – that I am over-relying on my eyes to give me a visual clue as to when I am upright. When she pointed this out I realised that I do always need to focus on a point somewhere just in front of me, a little below eye level, which is staying fairly still. This always helps to keep me on my feet.

So I needed to find my visual clue in the middle of this grassy patch where we were practising Tai Chi. It is a fairly large space, and apart from our merry little gathering, an empty one. So the only thing that was staying fairly still in front of me was Colin. And as I say, I have to focus downwards a bit – so the poor guy had me staring at his crotch for the best part of an hour. No wonder he said an all-women group was intimidating! But it kept me upright. Colin says Tai Chi makes you concentrate on even the smallest parts of your body, right down to the webbing between your toes. Sorry, Colin, if I’d have concentrated that far down I would definitely have fallen over!

A newly chilled Daisy signing out...

Boris backs my cause!!

I don’t believe it! Preparing for Lily’s birthday party or prozac, or a combination of the two, must be turning my brain into a pudding – I actually agree with something written in the Telegraph, not only written in the Telegraph – but written by Boris Johnson!!?@?!**! Ooo, it makes me shiver just to type the admission. But go Boris, hats off to you boy, because today you got something spot on, and I for one won’t be slinging my marmalade at you (his concern when his opinion was voiced).

Boris believes that there may actually be some women out there who, wait for it, don’t want to go back to work when their children are young. Hurrah! Somebody has realised. Shame it isn’t somebody in charge who can actually make some tax changes and adjust the ridiculously inflated house market, so that we can turn our wishes into reality.

As a Conservative, Boris was using this to have a go at Labour’s latest attempts to improve the pathetic state of childcare in our country. But for me this isn’t a political issue (and if it was, I don’t think either of the main parties are anywhere near managing to sort it out!). For me it is a question of the heart, a calling, a need. A need that, when I didn’t get it met, my body and mind went into meltdown.

I’m not a ‘natural’ mother – I wasn’t one of these women who always dreamed of having kids, and would plan to spend her days baking cakes in gingham aprons and making Blue Peter models with them. So when the time came to have children, I naturally assumed that going back to work after a decent period of maternity leave was not going to be a problem. I loved my little angels like nothing else in the world, but hey, I figured sometime apart was also good for us – they would make friends, learn to socialise and have the opportunity to play with sand, water and paint all day – and I would keep sane by keeping my brain ticking over and remembering something of who I was before I became ‘mummy’.

Besides – with the years of studying Bill and I have clocked up between us, the price of houses, and the pitiful state of pay in our chosen professions – there wasn’t much choice. I had to go back to keep our modest roof over our heads.

Even as my body and mind began its shutdown process, I hadn’t realised why. I know all sorts of women succumb to postnatal depression – but I have a wonderful husband, a supportive family and two kids who most of the time aren’t trying to kill each other or blow the house up. So what did I have to be ‘depressed’ about? And then with time, and counselling, it suddenly dawned on me that a huge part of what was important to me wasn’t there. I realised I wanted to be able to clean the house, to cook tea for the kids more often, to put Bill’s dinner on the table a few times, so he wasn’t always cooking for me, and above all to cuddle and play with my children and watch them grow up. I wanted to be a MUM, and I wanted the energy and time to do it. You’re right, Boris, I didn’t want to go to work.

It was a revelation for me. As I said, I’d always been driven by work, social life and external causes – I hadn’t figured on a part of my identity being tied to the home and family quite so strongly. But there it was.

So what can I do? We still need a roof over our heads (we’re bursting at the seams already and downsizing isn’t an option), we need to eat and clothe the kids, and every once in a while we like to treat ourselves to a night down the pub. We don’t have an extravagant lifestyle. But I can’t give up work. I’m trapped. My occupational health doctor says I have a ‘Cinderella complex’ – she says we can always change things and do things really, it is just ourselves stopping us. I nod my head and smile, but I’ve yet to find the fairy godmother who is going to wave her magic wand and turn me into a stay-at-home-mum over night with the financial security to support it.

So in the meantime I make plans and little inroads, and I have my escape route mapped out. But it will take time, and the kids are growing up…Perhaps I’ll be able to afford to do it when the kids have kids of their own, and then I can be a stay-at-home-grandmother and look after my grandchildren while my kids go out to work. Come to think of it, that might be better, you get to hand them back again at the end of the day!

Right – off to make a heart-shaped cake and fairy biscuits for my little princess who turns five tomorrow (no, I haven't invested in the gingham apron yet). Five years – a whole term in office for a government – plenty of time to have turned around the working mother’s situation to provide some real choice – wouldn’t you have thought..?

You're an embarrassment!

Are our children genetically programmed to be able to make us squirm in public? And in return, are we as parents able to do the same for them?

I took Lilly for her check with the school nurse yesterday. A very nice, prim and proper lady, who I would have liked to do my best to impress, but with whom Lilly didn’t seem to want to have anything to do. She just stuck her fingers in her mouth, tilted her head to one side (a gesture which she uses in pretence of shyness), and looked at me whenever the nurse spoke to her, as if I was meant to be giving all the answers.

Not wanting to seem like an over-anxious parent speaking for her, I left her to it, and adopted my own techniques to suggest by body language that this was their game and I was just a spectator. But I think my nonchalant way of looking around the artwork on the classroom walls, coupled with what must by now be a rather spaced-out-prozac look in my eyes, and the nurse probably wondered whether Lily and I had any kind of relationship at all!

So went the questions: ‘What’s your favourite story, Lily?’
Silence.
‘What does mummy read to you at bedtime?’
Mummy sits with clenched teeth waiting for Lily to gush about her ‘information book’ that we paw over every night. My mother bought it for her – a children’s encyclopaedia – and she loves reading it at bedtime. Her favourite extracts are ‘all about floating and sinking’ and ‘the passage of food through our body’. Ok, so I've got a geek for a daughter, but I love her. But instead – silence. She looks at me accusingly as if she’s never heard the idea of a bedtime story, and has clearly been missing out.

The nurse looks nervously at me – obviously I’m a mother who is not only on prozac and not the least bit interested in my child, I also never read to her.
Finally the silence is broken with a little whisper from Lily, through her finger sucking, - ‘I like sleeping beauty’.
Liar - I thought! She has nightmares whenever we read that. But never mind, at least she has broken the silence and proved to the nurse she does know how to speak.

Next we move on to food: ‘Tell me, Lily, do you have school dinners?’
‘Yes, only on a Friday’.
‘And what do they give you?’
‘Sometimes they give me chips and chocolate cake’ – another lie. The school has recently gone all Jamie Oliver on us and they are served a fantastic array of fine home cooked foods – with not a chip or a turkey twizzler in sight.
‘What’s your favourite food, Lily?’
Ah, I know this one – blueberries and strawberries, she can’t get enough of them.
‘Chips, pizza fingers, peas…and tomato ketchup!’ comes the triumphant reply.
Another nervous glance in my direction.
‘You know you should eat fruit and vegetables too, Lily? What’s your favourite vegetable?’
Lily takes an age, her eyes rolling around the ceiling and her mouth working overtime on her fingers, as if sucking harder will somehow remind her of what a vegetable is. This is the child who will eat a plate full of broccoli if you give it to her, and devours about five pieces of fruit for breakfast.

At this point I gave up. The nurse was obviously not going to ask her what she ate on the other four days of the week. If she had, I could’ve been made to feel a bit better if Lily had told her she always has fruit with her packed-lunch, and drinks only water!

What we lost on the food front, we more than made up for on the physical skills. Lily impressed the nurse with her skipping ability and the length of time she could stand on one leg without falling over. I felt vindicated! A child who lives on chips alone can’t skip and hop with such dexterity, surely!? One more sideways glance at me and we were dismissed with a full bill of health. So off we went, Lily miraculously regaining her voice the minute we left the room, and me feeling like I’d just been observed by Dr Tanya Byron for crimes against parenting.

But I feel I got my own back later that day when taking her to ballet, even if Lily didn’t notice. Lily has recently taken up ballet. She’s been desperate to go for ages and we couldn’t get a place for her. Then Bill managed to find her one in a rather posh little village a few miles from where we live. So although none of her friends go, we thought she could start there and see how she settles. Bill took her the first couple of times and I think he rather enjoyed being amongst all the well-healed mums in their four-by-fours with their fake tans, fake hair, but obviously very genuine designer labels. Of course Lily is too young still to get caught up in all the pretences of class consciousness, but Bill and I haven’t failed to recognise we don’t fit in – and I’m sure it won’t be long before Lily starts wondering why we don’t have a seven-seater silver people carrier and matching his & hers Cartier watches. In fact Bill said he felt like he was in a scene out of Billy Elliot the other day, when we drove up in our clapped out, back-firing old car, with Lily in her worn out ballet shoes, and holes in her tights! So she can embarrass me in-front of the school nurse with a pack of lies and disgraceful social skills, but us parents are pretty good at doing embarrassing things too. Be warned!

But the last word must surely go to Poppy. When we were out shopping on Saturday morning she stood in the middle of a busy shop and proceeded to sing an entire rendition of YMCA at the top of her voice for all to see, complete with arm actions and swinging hips. That’s my baby!

...And you wonder why I’m on prozac..!?

AdSense?...Makes sense!

There’s something suitably reassuring about grey weather when you’re not feeling at your best. I’ve recently been going into a bit of dip, and the increasingly bright and sunny weather was just making me feel even more out of step with the rest of the world. Today I start on a double dose of prozac (don’t worry – not self-administered – all above board and legit, as directed by my doctor), and the grey weather is making me feel rather more upbeat about the whole thing. If it’s grey and miserable and cold in June and I’m coping pretty well, imagine how wonderful I’ll be feeling on a hot, sunny day in July, when my double dosage has taken full effect and I’ve just stepped off the plane in Menorca! So there is something very metaphoric about the weather and I’m all for the odd grey day in June if it fits into the great scheme of things – makes sense to me.

Talking about the great scheme of things - I finally got AdSense up and running on the blog today. And that’s given me another reassuring little hug to show that I’m part of a wider world of dislocated people out there. I found it quite funny, yet heartening, that you can now link directly from my blog to registered psychotherapists, depression counselling in London and even training in Jungian psychology in Zurich (that’s in case I really tip you over the edge).

So if you’re out there feeling at one with yourself, but a little off the beat with the rest of the world, sit back, watch the clouds roll by, then select the link for you and you’re only a click away from your salvation. I think I’ll try Jungian psychology first.

AdSense…makes perfect sense to me!

Computer getting you down..?

I'm having one of those days when my legs don't seem to be communicating with my brain, and my eyes can't stay open long enough to focus on anything further than the end of the bed. So it's taken me most of the day to haul myself up to the computer and get it switched on. Problem is, the repetitiveness of mouse clicks and the glare of the screen are conspiring against me to try and send me back to sleep again. So work is a slow concept today...

Or is there something wrong with my computer? Because I heard on the news today that our computers could be therapeutic aids. There's been a new development in the treatment of depression. A computer simulation programme, incorporating case-studies of sufferers to spur you on, uses cognitive behaviour therapy to help you to help yourself to lift out of your illness.

Now on the one hand I can see that it has its benefits. Take me, I couldn't even talk to Bill about how I was feeling for the best part of a year. By the time I finally reached meltdown it came as a complete shock to him because he didn't know what I had been hiding. And as for talking to a doctor about it, well, that was the furthest thing on my mind at the time. But a computer - now that might've been good. I could have logged on each day (if I could have dragged myself to the desk) and talked through my problems with something that was never going to be capable of answering back, judging me or laughing in my face. And I would never have to try and explain why I was feeling the way I was, when even I didn't know - the computer wouldn't care. And if it did get above its station, well the ultimate power lay with me - I could just switch the damn thing off!

But I'm not sure... I understand this new therapy is working really well with some people. But I worry about a technocentric world where we are even turning to machines to help us deal with our psychological problems. To me there just seems to be something a bit in-human about creating an artificial 'talking environment' between a human and a computer (I've just remembered, I read a novel once about an academic experimenting with this sort of thing and it really screwed him up!). Anyway, where was I? As someone who has suffered from depression alone, then plucked up the courage to talk to people about it, and then been lucky enough to benefit from counseling, I just think that there are times when we need that human touch to give the edge to our solutions. A computer may be programmed to come up with the right questions, and show nice video clips of actor-sufferers who talk about their experiences, but will a computer ring on your door and force you to get out of bed once a week? Will a computer help you to remember the social niceties of making a cup of tea for a visitor, and will that computer have a knowledge of your local environment that will help you and it shape particular coping strategies that can be applied for your circumstances? I'm not convinced.

I'll probably eat my words in twenty years time when we all have our own PCT (personal computer therapist), just like we now all have mobile 'phones and laughed at those first huge prototypes in the 'eighties - but the human touch of knowing somebody was coming to talk to me once a week, would be able to respond to visual clues from me and my home, and care enough to make sure we were making progress - that was what mattered for me, and I could never get that from a computer programme.

Anyway, I must stop, I obviously don't know much about it and what I do know came from one news report, half of which I've forgotten. Could be the whole thing is a lot more sophisticated than I'm giving it credit for, and the computer comes complete with cuddly arms and a smiley face to lift your spirits daily. My memory is at an all time low at the moment - could be the tiredness, but then again, according to a box of Allways Ultra sitting on my bathroom shelf, it could be because I'm at the wrong time of my cycle. Apparently women's memories are at their best in the middle of their cycle when their oestrogen levels are at their highest. All very well, but as we only read that at the beginning of our cycle, when our memory is poor, by the time we get to the stage which should be optimum for passing exams and memorising important phone numbers, we've forgotten when it was we should be at our peak...

So long! I'll try to remember to come back soon, but I may have to wait till mid cycle, could be a week or so...

I promised you Tom...

It's a beautiful day here today - sun's shining and I've just had half an hour's walk, followed by twenty minutes on the train, followed by another half hour walk to get into work. The car seems to have given up the will to change gear, so I'm braving it on public transport. I used to love it, but it takes so long to get to work and I'm completely worn out now. It doesn't help that I got little sleep last night. After watching Desperate Midwives with lots of graphic images of birth, I then drifted off dreaming about Poppy being knocked over by a dog in a garden centre and her brain spluttering from the top of her scull, complete with a gush of fluid, just like a baby emerging into the world. And although I know we were in a garden centre, I was actually buying peppers ready to eat rather than grow. Most bizarre!? So little sleep, lots of walking, and hence completely knackered.

But I did promise you Tom. Well, we've got more than Tom since I made that rash statement. I heard through the grapevine that Tom Cruise has been having a go at celebrity women who talk openly about their postnatal depression and take medication for it. I think his main gripe was with Brooke Shields, and he is said to be of the opinion that she is using her PND as a way of covering up a flagging career. To be honest I knew nothing about her career, but I've since found out she's staring in a West End musical at the moment. Not exactly flagging, eh Tom?

I'm sure it will not please Tom, but celebrity mums suffering from postnatal depression seem to be popping up all over the place at the moment. It seems to be the celeb thing to have - used to be a toy dog they couldn't be seen without, then it was a baby, so I guess the logical next step is PND. It seems no celebrity mum is worth her salt if she doesn't have an interview in a national paper or magazine where she talks candidly about her battle with PND, how she faught bravely on and is now back to her beautiful and vibrant self and here's the glossy photos to prove it...

Take Elle McPherson. I read recently that she had PND so booked herself into a celebrity clinic for six weeks, and then hey presto! she was cured. If only we all had that luxury. I found it took something more like a year of hiding it from everyone including myself, followed by a complete meltdown, six months withdrawal from the world, medication, counselling and a slow, faltering return to normality is now just about setting in. Wouldn't it be cheaper on the NHS and employers if they sent all of us suffering from PND to a celebrity clinic for six weeks? The current way of dealing with the condition must be a huge drain on the country compared to what it would be if we all had Elle's miracle cure.

I take my hat off to Fern Britton (is that spelt right? Did I ever tell you I can't spell?). She did a special on Tonight with Trevor McDonald last night. And she was brilliant. She hit the nail on the head. She described perfectly, simply and honestly the reality of postnatal illness. Ok, she included a few celebrities in there, but that's just to pander to the British public's desire to hear it from the celebrity rather than the expert or the normal person - but she also told the stories of normal, everyday women, just like me, and how devastating and debilitating PND is for them.

Just to really up the tempo of depressing TV last night I rounded off with the third in the series of Desperate Midwives. The story of Snowy, Caroline and Eloise was, for me, up there with the electric chair for sheer inhumane treatment of people. The story goes, for those of you who didn't see it, Snowy was an alcoholic who was drying out - and doing so pretty successfully it seemed; Caroline had already had her first child taken off her at birth two years previously and put into care; and little Eloise was due any day now to be born into an uncertain future - because social services hadn't yet decided whether Caroline and Snowy would get to keep their baby.

Now ok, they were perhaps not the most promising looking parents on paper, but then what does that prove? The programme showed Caroline go through labour, remarkably calm and collect, considering they had by then decided they would take the baby away from her. You could see an instant love from her for Eloise, which I have to admit I didn't have when Lily was born. And she was absolutely devoted to her from the start. Elsewhere in that hospital there were no doubt babies being born to perfectly respectable parents who will go on in future years to abuse and mistreat their children, despite being apparently respectable, professional people that social services very rarely suspect of being in any way unsuitable to become parents.

So who are we as a society to judge who should get to keep their baby? Why should Snowy and Caroline have to go through that when the parents of children who get abused daily behind closed doors in leafy suburban neighbourhoods never did? If we look at the statistics and realise how much abuse of children does go on in a variety of settings, and on a lower scale, just downright bad parenting - how many of those parents had to wait to hear judgment on whether they would be allowed to keep their baby? If we are going to judge one couple, why not every other couple? Did anyone check whether Jessie what's-her-name from East Enders, should have the right to keep her baby? The newspapers were always full of stories of her having a drink problem. But we didn't take Tallulah away from her mother (Wallace, that's it, Jessie Wallace).

There must be a more humane way of checking that a baby's start in life will be a good one, and that it will be consistent and familiar and stable. Eloise was whisked off after three days to foster carers, where I am sure she was very well looked after, and Caroline was given access to see her and they will eventually reconsider whether they can be reunited for good. But how about setting up some kind of halfway home for families in this position? A place where mother and baby can stay together, establish breastfeeding, develop a bond and get to know one another in a way that is more likely to build the basis to a secure and lasting relationship. I'm not saying Caroline and Snowy will be the best parents in the world, but then again none of us are. I just felt sick that some people have that judgment made for them by other people, whereas some of us, regardless of our real capabilities, get to dive into parenthood with no prior training, no screening and no guarantee we will get it right either.

But I will end on a positive note. You're going to think I spent all last night watching TV, but I was doing some yoga during this last one - I caught the back end of Emmerdale too. It seems little Debbie had a homebirth, and I'm really sorry to have missed that (although it is a bit of a shame that the only homebirths we ever get to see on soaps are unexpected from teenage pregnancies - reinforcing the myth that homebirth is something 'abnormal'!). Anyway, I was really pleased to see Lisa encouraging Debbie to breastfeed her baby. Ok, so the little mite might have been born into the hell that is the Dingles family, and the mother may be only a slip of a lass herself, but both mother and baby will get longterm health benefits from breastfeeding if she keeps it up, and just to introduce the idea that teenage mums can breastfeed on a national soap is fantastic!!

So I'm happy for once, ITV gets the thumbs up from me. But now I must get some real work done...

Easy as ABC...

...or should that be 'ah-bu-ku'? Interesting debate going on this morning about how our children should be taught to read at school. Apparently something called 'synthetic phonics' is the way to go - I'm sure Lily's school uses something called 'funky phonics', so I guess she's half way there and might develop a bit of rhythm while she's at it.

It's odd, isn't it? On the one hand I know schools all around us are 'failing' - we hear it every day on the news. But on the other hand I'm also convinced that they are ultimately doing their best for our kids. I know when I was at school we still had the odd teacher who was in it purely for the kicks he or she could get out of bullying the weaker amongst us on the sports fields, but PE is being fairly effectively removed from the curriculum, so I guess that breed of teacher should be dying out? The teachers I know are stressed-out, over-worked, fed up, exhausted, buried under piles of paper work and unable to breath in their small class rooms due to unmanageable class sizes - but they love the kids and they honestly go all out to do what they believe is best for them.

Increasingly it seems we're being told as parents that it is our fault if the schools are failing our kids. Take school dinners. Bill showed me something in the paper last night that was blaming parents for the poor state that school dinners have ended up in. Not only was a government spokesperson saying any improvements made in recent months had nothing to do with Jamie Oliver (a likely story), but that the whole thing was our fault in the first place for not walking hand-in-hand into the canteen with our children and demanding a decent dinner. Is it our job? Am I a lax mother because I assume that there should be the system in place for the institution that acts 'in loco parentis' (or whatever the phrase is) for our children, should also be able to get some decent grub into them while they're under their roof?

Anyway, enough for today...and that's even before I get on to Tom Cruise. You'll have to wait for another day, Tom, but don't think you're off the hook with what you've been saying... oh no!

Dx