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!