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

My Daisy chain

So here we are, me and my gang. As you can see from Lily's artisitc offering, I have two children, a lovely pink t-shirt, a husband with a bad haircut and an immensely happy, if somehwat stoned-looking family.

Lily is four. She'll be five soon and is well on the way to securing the position of Head of the Family. Poppy, who currently holds that title, is 2, and pushing out molars at the moment - hence my inability to write two days ago due to tiredness. And there's Bill, my sweet William - tall, blue eyes, and that picture was drawn before his visit to the hairdressers, as in reality he has beautiful hair, honest.

As for me - yes, I have got long legs and do sometimes feel like my left arm has a slight kink in it caused by the permanent attachment of Poppy to my hip, but apart from that I'm not sure it's an entirely accurate reflection of me. I love the smile though - that must be the prozac kicking in.

It's half term! Wow! I can't believe I've got a child old enough to have me caught up in the mania of school holidays already. They don't really fit around work so well though, do they, these half terms? God only knows how we'll cope in the summer. When I first returned to work after Lily was born, I sort of felt it was a rest, a time to catch up on sleep (the beauty of having your own office!), and an opportunity to get away from the constant call of 'Mummy!' (did anyone see that episode of Doctor Who..!).

But then when they get to school, just when you thought you'd got some kind of routine set up, they go and close the place down and send them back home for a week. Now when do I catch up on sleep? Trying to have an afternoon nap with Lily is like trying to fall asleep whilst wrestling a small antelope, a mass of wriggling legs and arms, squeals and farts.

I see Mother and Baby magazine published some research this week that says mothers of young babies get an average of 3 and a half hours sleep a night, compared with 5 hours that our own mothers enjoyed. My mother was staying with us this week, and her, Lily and Poppy averaged something between 8 and 12 hours sleep a night each. But their combined nocturnal routines - involving sleep-singing on Poppy's part, banging into the wall by Lily, and frequent toilet trips for my mother, left me with, you've guessed it, something nearer 3 and a half! So even when our 'young' babies grow up, it seems we continue to lose out to both generations. The Mother and Baby report concludes 'life is much harder for today's parents'. Mmm, I had a sneaky suspicion it wasn't all wine and roses!