Mother to Child

I'm baacck....

And to kick off my re-entry into the blogging world, I'll post this which I wrote many moons ago when I was nowhere close to being a mother:

Dear Child,

Life? What can I possibly tell you about life? I am no expert. I can only tell you what I have felt and seen and learned so far. So what I am telling you is only my story, for you to take or leave as you so wish.

As you grow older, you will become more aware of time. Not time as in the real sense, meaning those handful of  moments in our lives which really matter. No, in this case I mean time as in the clock ticking time. You will notice yourself becoming more preoccupied with this notion of time and how Time is Short.  How you may not be able to fit in everything you want to do as You Have No Time.

If you can, I would say ditch this approach immediately. Do not make yourself a willing slave to this idea of time. Because in the end, it is only an idea. A powerful one, but an idea nonetheless and as with all ideas, they exist only in our minds eye unless we give them the power to live in the world.

You see, it is not true that time is short and that you have no time. In reality, time is what you make of it and if you choose to make time for something or someone, the time will be there.  Do not trust people who tell you constantly that they are so very, very busy and do not have time for you. The truly busiest people that I know always find a moment for what is important.

Be generous. Be a generous person not only with your time but with your thoughts, your actions, your money, your mind and your heart. Be someone that is interested in other people. It is always possible to find something in common or something interesting about another person no matter how different they may seem to you. Fight against the urge to think too much about yourself and instead, focus on others. Extend your perspective outwards.  There is a big wide world for you to explore with all its magic and wonders and it will open itself up to you if you choose to look at it rather than looking at yourself.

It is important in life to have discipline. I hope that I have instilled some sense of that within you. When I was a little girl, your grandmother put me in ballet classes. I hated them. For nine bitter years, I endured these classes. They were hard and tough and I hated my teacher. My mother (your grandmother) would not give into my pleas to stop.

She used to say to me, 'You don't understand now what this is giving you but you will when you are older. It is not just about learning ballet, it is learning about discipline and how to hold yourself in the world. ' 

When I was fifteen, everything changed. I became mature enough to realise how useful the discipline I had learned from ballet was. I was able to apply it in so many different sectors of my life. This discipline helped me become the woman I am today and the mother I am to you. So discipline is important. Keep some in your life at all times. It will help you through a lot in life.

Surround yourself with positive, loving people. Do not be too proud or too scared to listen to what others have to say and share in their experience of the world. We all have a lot to teach each other. Try to avoid pettiness and also do not hold yourself to impossible standards. Perfection is an illusion and a hard taskmaster. As long as you do your best in what you turn your attention to, be happy with that. Be happy with flaws.

Cultivate humility. Do not confuse humility with false modesty. Be confident and proud of yourself and your achievements but do not boast or brag. You do not need to parade yourself constantly to others.

For some reason that I cannot understand, we are encouraged in society to strive to be happy. As if Happiness is a state of being that we should all reach. Well, that is not my view. If you were happy all the time, it would drive you and everyone else around you mad. Learn to realise that happiness in life comes in moments. It comes and then it goes. Appreciate when it is with you but do not long for it constantly. Life is about so many emotions and states of being. Embrace them all rather than being fixated on only one.

There are so many more things that I wish to write and share with you but I think you will find your own way. The last thing I will leave you with is love. There is a lot said about love and so there should be as it is important. If you wish to have love in your life; be a loving person. It is a mistake to 'look'  for love, for if it is not within your own self, you won’t find it anywhere else.  For love is a reflection of your own humanity upon the world. Love is a muscle that you must constantly flex. It is not passive and it does not 'happen' to you. You create the love that you want.

I helped create you and you are my love.

Your Mother.

Anyone for Seconds?

The past few months have flown by in a flurry of (more than usual) activity. In pursuit of sun and loved ones, we flew halfway across the world with our boisterous toddler barely on our laps. Visiting Perth for Christmas was a dream. A very hot one, but a beautiful dream nonetheless. Fast fading now amidst the cold, grey winter that we returned to in Blighty.

We landed back at Heathrow, heart, mind and body holding together and just as well for we have barely stopped since. Work, study, life have all crowded in as we readjusted to being a unit of three without the additional help or company of loving grandparents and old friends.

In this period many people I knew gave birth. All to their second child. As I heard of each new arrival into this world, I smiled and then asked myself:

Would I?

And the answer each time has been:

No.

It is a question I get asked a lot. It seems to be human nature to jump ahead of ourselves rather than relish what is there. Our few rites of passage (marriage, birth, death) are hurried. Years ago when I announced my engagement, the question on everyone's lips was:

When is the wedding?

After the wedding had barely been done and dusted, it was:

House?
Kids?

And when the kid did come along, my own mother asked me:

Do you think you'll have another?

Given that the stitches were barely out and I was still waking like a Rhinestone Cowboy, I thought the answer would have been obvious.

However it has been nearly two years now since Dragon entered the world. In that time I have considered the sibling question extensively.  I have said to the Husband:

We are putting all our eggs into one basket. It's very risky.

And it is. When you experience the love you have for your child, the thought of anything happening to that child is inconceivable. Better to have a spare. The same being if anything were to happen to you or your partner. Then as siblings they could support one another. That is, if they don't hate each other as some siblings do.

I wonder when people will stop asking that question? When it is evident that I am post menopausal? When I look post menopausal even if I'm not?

And I wonder when I am asked that question, when will I stop asking myself:

Will I?

The Baby Antidote

I have been told by non parent friends that I am a Baby Antidote.

People who don't want to have kids and want their decision validated are sent my way. People who do are ushered in the other direction. I haven't done any special training to warrant this title except speak about my first year of parenthood as it really was. A beautiful and unique Hell which I loved and railed against in equal measure.

My version is not dissimilar to this one here. We modern women who venture forth into parenthood for the first in our mid to late thirties. We who have lived lives of choice and autonomy. We are so unprepared.

I caught up with a friend on the weekend. She is due to give birth any day now and had lots of questions about baby stuff. Birth stuff. Pain stuff. And I, well I muted myself to an undecipherable level.

I'm scared mostly about tearing and bleeding afterwards, she confessed.

Hahahahahaha, I wanted to laugh hysterically, Are you serious? Is that ALL you're most worried about? but what came out of my mouth was: Oh don't worry about that. You'll be absorbed by the baby that's just come out of you. You won't even notice.

After our catchup I mentally kicked myself. I had just done to her others had done to me when I was pregnant. Smoothed the edges of shocking new experience that is parenthood for the first time. But what else can you do?

My powers are on the wane.

A New Year Dawns...

Wow. What a crazy year 2011 was.

I pushed a human being out of my nether regions. That human being now can sit, eat and give me cheek.

What will 2012 bring. This time next year, what will my little world look like?

The very first blog entry I wrote here in 2008 was about whether or not children keep you young. I had heard this saying before but never understood it. To me, all parents looked permanently exhausted, not youthful at all.

Now that I have joined the ranks of exhausted caregivers, I finally understand what it means.

Having a young kid takes a lot. It takes all your time, energy, patience, sanity. But what you get in return is immeasurable.

Hope springs eternal in human breast wrote Alexander Pope.

It's true. In the dark hours of another sleepless night, your baby looks at you or holds onto you in a certain way and all exhaustion is forgotten and you are renewed.

It Gets Easier? Said Who?

One of the things that I am told constantly during my first year of parenthood is that it will get easier.

What does this mean exactly? Will I get to go on that tropical holiday soon and drink margaritas in the sun?  Will Dragon start making me breakfast in bed? Will the gamut of kids stuff clogging our small flat evaporate to be replaced by tasteful decor?

Nada.

I think people aka other parents, tell you it gets easier because that is the thing to say. They are not going to say:

Actually it doesn't get easier. It just changes but there will always be something you are worried about.

You lug this around all day and tell me its easy

A friend once said to me that the early years of child rearing is physically exhausting. Later on when they are older, it becomes emotionally exhausting. She said that she found the latter much harder.

Hooray for her honesty.

Because I haven't found that it gets easier. It changes. Your expectations change. You get used to the physical drudgery and the toll it takes. You shift ever so gradually into parenthood. You begin to get a glimmer of the long haul.

One of the reasons I held off having a baby until my late 30's was that I didn't want to be constantly worried. Nor lose my solitude, both inside my head and within my life.

I'm so glad I waited for life is not easy with Dragon. It is constantly challenging.

But I'm up to the challenge.

Eight Months On...

Technically that's not true. Dragon is now closer to nine months than eight.

Nine months. That's how long she gestated for inside of me. And now she's been out in the world for about the same time.

Slow down kid. What's your hurry? I want to say to her. I know she'll be off like a bullet once she tastes a smidgen of independence.

Amongst my new mum friends, there is heightened anxiety regarding milestones and development. Are they  eating? Crawling? Sleeping? Walking? Later on I imagine it will be other things like whether they know their ABCs or if they can swim yet?

Part of my job as a parent is to facilitate her development in the best way I can. But personally, I think there is too much emphasis on development and getting further along.

She's a kid. Let her have a childhood.

A friend of mine asked me recently what dreams and hopes I have for Dragon. I said I had none. Apart from her happiness and health that is.

After all, she's not here to live out my dreams and hopes.

I'm here to help her live out hers.

I hope she has many.

Turn the Other Cheek

One of the common myths about becoming a parent is that you ditch all your non -parent friends. That you become so obsessed with all things baby that you:

a) become a total baby bore
b) become a bit "us" and "them" in regards to people who don't have kids
c) secretly feel that people who don't have kids haven't glimpsed the meaning of life, blah, blah, blah

There is truth to all of the above. You do become obsessed. You have to in order to embrace the tsunami of a life change that is happening to you. As part and parcel of this obsession, you do become a baby bore for awhile. Therefore you do separate parent friends and non parent friends as you know who you can talk to about baby for more than five minutes and who not to. And as for the meaning of life, well its true that kids completely change your life forever. But it's your life. Not your friends.

Since birth, I have made a conscious effort not to become a baby bore in the presence of my non parent friends. After all, they have rich and varied lives which interest me more than discussing how many nappies I changed that day. I remember how much I used to hate it when I was not a parent and had to endure conversations about kids and nothing else.

What I did not expect though was for some non parent friends to ditch me. Yes! They turned the other cheek.

Did you hear? She had a baby. Another one bites the dust

After I gave birth to Dragon, some friends just disappeared from my life. They made all the right noises about coming to see me and the baby. But they never came. She's seven months old now. They ain't coming.

I wonder what I could have done to warrant this. Is having a baby so bad? It's not infectious.

It makes me wonder what our friendship was really about.

Turns out it was about them.

Paradoxes of Parenting

I have ten minutes to write this. This is what my life has become. Short bursts of moments where I can fit in anything other than Looking After Baby. Therefore I write in short sentences.

I was thinking yesterday what a contrary experience parenting has been so far. Riddled with cliches yet everything a new discovery.  I share these in short sentences;

You sleep less than ever before in your life yet have to do the most exhausting, non-stop work ever

Some days you wish your child to disappear but are filled with the most bone-chilling dread at the thought of it

Your brain is not engaged in the way it was prior to birth yet you are at your most intuitive

They take up your whole life and in doing so, your life changes

You long for your baby to stop crying and sleep but creep in to watch them breathe when they do

You collapse exhausted at the end of the day, relieved that the baby is asleep and you can have some time to yourself. An hour later, you start looking at photos of him/her on your phone

You miss them even though they are with you

Your relationship with your partner becomes tested to its very core and in being so, becomes stronger

You long to leave, to escape the four walls of parenting but on the days you have a baby free pass, you think about baby and hurry home.

My ten minutes are up. I'm back on duty.

Generation Google

Recently Dragon entered yet another phase of development with new and unexplained behaviours which left me drained and puzzled. So I did what my generation does. I hit the internet.

The more I read, the more confused I got. It seems that Dragon could be overstimulated; eating too frequently;  not eating enough; teething; going through a growth spurt; suffering from reflux or wind; have trust issues as I let her cry herself to sleep; on the wrong schedule for her age; ready to wean; have allergies; needing more activity time; needing less activity time; missing her sleep window; a psychopath or all of the above.

Dear Google - Where Did These Children Come From?*

My friend Suki who is also a new mum told me that a midwife once said to her:


Your generation of  women want to schedule your babies like you schedule your lives.

And its true. We want to have it all figured out. But you can't do that with babies. So there is a big industry out there making money from this insecurity. The Schedulers and the Whisperers.

Don't get me wrong. I think its a good thing that there is information out there. For I don't live in a society where I am surrounded by a village of experienced women who will guide and show me how to mother on a day-to-day basis. I have to get an inkling somehow.

But the best way I've found is through word of mouth with other mothers. And your own instinct.

Something that comes free and doesn't take hours of Googling to find online.

*Photo courtesy of http://melissacooley.com/2011/06/what-work-life-balance/

What Price A Mothers Love?

I'll be frank. Prior to having a child, I could never understand the proliferation of toys that would litter the home of every parent I knew. Their homes seem overrun by an army of stuffed animals and brightly coloured plastic things that hurt your bare feet when you stepped on them.

At some point in my pregnancy, I said to the Husband:

I am not going to buy our baby lots of toys. She doesn't need them. It's a total con.

Although this was my stance, it was not that of my friends and family. Before she was even born, Dragon had toys and other gifts generously lavished upon her; so much so that it scared me. I felt like I was drowning in baby stuff.

As it turned out, I was right. When Dragon was born she did not need the mountain of toys that waited for her or the four drawers of clothes accumulated. All she needed was milk, sleep, a wash every now and again and lots of love and attention.

Easy right?

Not so. For when Dragon was born, so was a mother. I surveyed all the toys we had been given by our generous friends and decided that I wanted MORE.

My name is Lavendar and I am a Fisher Price addict.

What happened?

On the advice of my friend Yvette and my physio (long story), I purchased Dragon the Fisher Price Rainforest musical mobile. So she could have something to look at when her nappy was being changed instead of a white ceiling.

This was the beginning of the end

She absolutely loved it, laughing and kicking her legs whenever she saw it. It's saved my sanity many times over and should be displayed in a museum somewhere.

But it was a slippery slope.

A few weeks after the introduction of this marvellous mobile in our lives, we visited a friend who had the Fisher Price Rainforest musical playmat. The minute Dragon lay down on it, she started laughing, kicking her legs, squealing.

A pattern was emerging.

We must get it for her,  my (own) mother said. See how happy it makes her.

I looked at my baby who was so happy on the playmat. I looked at her cheerful gurgling face and chubby legs kicking away as the happy smiling stuffed animals and flashing lights did their dance of addiction.

I knew then that I would fill my house with toys just to see her happy. I would bankrupt myself and the Husband in order to scratch this itch.

The mat was delivered two days later. And many other things since then.

What price a mothers love?

Ask Fisher Price.

Motherhood: It's Not all Apples.

When I was six months pregnant, I registered myself for an NCT Early Days postnatal course. Mistakenly thinking it was a course about childcare, I who had only changed a nappy once in my life pre Dragon, thought I would need all the help I could get.

Turns out I should've read the fine print. Early Days is actually a course for the mother. I quote my course leader:

Post birth, all the attention is on the baby. How is the baby? What should I do with the baby? Well what about the mother? She's going through a lot too. But no-one really asks about her. This course is for the mother. A place where she can discuss and examine how motherhood is impacting upon her.  After all, when a baby is born, so is a mother.

Great!  I thought. I'm in the right place.

I looked at all the faces around me and wondered what their stories were.

It turns out that most of their stories were the same. Shiny, happy love stories. Blissed up with baby stories. My life is complete stories.

It really pissed me off.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: The Veneer of Motherhood.

Is this what a good mother does? Dress identically to her children? Freaky.

Of course we all love our babies. Otherwise we would have killed them all by now for the torture of those early days/weeks/months. Let me tell you, the ONLY thing that keeps a baby alive when it allows you no sleep,  tears the skin off your nipple with her mouth, screams for hours at a time, ad infinitium (insert your trauma here), the only thing that keeps that baby alive is LOVE.

So it's a given that we love our babies.Would dive into a burning lake filled with vomit for them. Would throw ourselves in front of a stampede of mating brumbies for them (insert corny cliche here) 

But ladies, until that time comes when we must face the brumbies, let's do ourselves a favour and tell it like it is. I don't care how you put it. Changing twenty nappies a day is not blissful. Say it aloud. No-one is going to cart you off to the looney bin. Social services isn't going to come knocking. You are not a bad mother.

You are normal.

Going through a very normal, albeit, brutal rite-of-passage towards becoming a parent. The very core of your identity is shape shifting and that's gotta hurt at times.


But don't tell me its all fairy floss and rainbows. Just tell the truth.

New Parents Don't...

Just some observations of mine from the first few weeks of parenthood.

New parents dont't have mealtimes. They just shove in whatever they can scavenge as quickly as possible.

New parents don't have conversations with one another. They use walkie talkie lingo. Is she fed? Yes. Changed? Yes. Sleeping? Yes. Good.

New parents don't operate on clock time but feed and sleep time.

New parents are constantly lurching between terror and love.

New parents don't read more than three sentences at a time. Apart from articles found through Google about what to do if your baby is ____ (fill in the blank)

New parents don't get to finish cups of coffee or tea.

New parents don't fit their lives around anyone else apart from their baby. For now.

New parents don't care if you are put out by the new status quo. If you are a real friend, suck it up.

New parents don't care that much about themselves for now. As long as the baby is alright.

New parents don't do much for the first few hours but stare. At their baby.

New parents don't realise the scope of their own parents until it's their turn.

New parents don't want to hear negative things

New parents don't wear the emotional armour they usually have.

New parents don't know what the hell they are doing.

New parents don't want to ever go back to a life without their baby.

Childcare :The Buck Starts Here

About two months ago over dinner some friends suggested that we start thinking about childcare options for our unborn, unnamed baby. 

Freaked out on the way home, I said to the Husband:

But s/he's not even born yet!

He just shook his head and replied:

Homeschooling.

Dragon still isn't born but over the past few weeks I've started checking out some of the local nurseries in my area.  Up against the coalface of future parenting reality, I either have to ditch my university course which I'm loathe to do or locate some childcare options quicksmart for when I return to study. Quick being the operative word as places go fast. Even for an unborn child.

Are they sitting quietly because they've been drugged?

 The thing is that everytime I've been to see one of these nurseries, something in me breaks a little. It doesn't matter how nice the staff seem nor how happy the kids look. Whether the meals are organic or if the fees are expensive rather than exorbitant. I feel a little sad each time.

Will I be able to leave my child at one of these places? Maybe when the time comes I'll welcome the break?

I don't know.

It's a small taste of the heartbreak a parent goes through. And I don't even have my stripes yet.