Not the Nanny

The perils of working from home with children was highlighted in a most delightful way last week when Robert Kelly's live BBC interview went viral. If you have no clue what I mean, check this out:

The clip did the rounds quickly.  Friends were eager to share the charm and humour in this 40 second clip. When I watched it, the Husband said he could hear me laughing from downstairs. Even writing about it now brings on a chuckle. 

I clocked early on that the children were mixed race so I assumed that the woman who slid so spectacularly into frame was their mum. The little girl in her yellow cardigan became my hero.

The next day there was online debate whether the woman was the nanny or the mum. The clip had gone viral and the woman was being referred to as the nanny. At this point, I was unsure what she was so after some checking, I read that the woman was most definitely the mum. 

I was at a party later and the video came up in conversation. We watched it, laughed and afterwards my friends spoke about the nanny in the clip.

She's not the nanny. She's the mum.

No no. She's the nanny.

No she's not.  She's the mum. 

No, she's the nanny. 

I let it go.  I'm not sure what the reasons were for the insistence that the woman was the nanny. We didn't discuss it but it left me feeling uneasy because in 40 seconds, you probably make that assumption based on body language or race. I hoped it wasn't the latter.

Swiftly, the widespread assumption that Jung-a-Kim, the woman in the video, was the nanny or maid sparked media interest and debate over cultural stereotyping and casual racism. I  jumped on the bandwagon and posted this article on my Facebook. The resulting discussion was wide ranging from affirmations that 'Nannygate' was indeed racist to comments that it was her body language and behaviour that made her seem nanny-like. Which in itself is a whole other topic of subjugation. 

The most relevant question raised within my own circle was:

Why does it even matter?

Why could we all not just enjoy the clip and not query why people assumed that Jung-a-Kim was the nanny? What's wrong with being a nanny anyway? Nothing.

When I asked myself the question, why does it matter, this is what I came up with.

Even if only one person out of all the thousands that viewed the clip made the assumption that Jung-a Kim was the nanny based on racial stereotyping, that is one person too many. Because assumptions like that spread and take root unless you call them out early. Assumptions like that will eventually affect my life. They already have. 

Asian woman. 

Servant. Maid. Nanny. Mail order bride. Subservient. Victim. Vixen. Prostitute. Dragon Lady. Tiger Mum.

All such cliches but these stereotypes live on as demonstrated by the reaction to this clip. For I'm pretty sure that more than one person based their nanny assumption on race.*  

In my experience, it is not overt racism that is the most damaging or hurtful. When someone tells you to your face that you should go back to where you came from you fucking Chinese cunt,** a least you know what you are dealing with. 

It is the subtle, covert judgement that is the most dangerous. Or what Jen McGuire calls casual, almost benign stereotyping. She writes:

It's this sort of casual, almost benign stereotyping that can ultimately be so dangerous. Just because it's not aggressive or overt doesn't mean it's not changing our world view. In fact, because it can be so much more difficult to pinpoint, it's also harder to call out.

It's the kind of stereotyping, such as the case here with Jung-a-Kim, where because it is subtle or unintentional that you are told to stop making a mountain out of a molehill. That it is harmless. That you are looking for something that isn't there.  Or that you are imagining it.

If you have never experienced any form of racism nor stereotyping in your life that has affected you adversely, then you are lucky. So have some empathy, if you can, when I say:

We are not imagining it.



* I am not exempt. I have been racist. I make assumptions all the time. I can be judgmental. I try and have respect and empathy. But I don't always. In this instance, because I have grown up with this type of institutionalised racism, I am calling it out. But I have been wrong as well in other cases. 

**The Husband disagrees. He says he would prefer low level racism, even if it is more insidious, than someone coming at him with a knife shouting, 'Come here you fucking Paki' (true story)

Parolitics

It's Dragon's last day of school today.  Her first year at school is soon to be over and I find myself unexpectedly emotional. Maybe it was wrapping the large quantities of alcohol I had purchased for her teachers that did me in. Thinking about all they have done for her in the past year. Or maybe it was the epic meltdown she had yesterday due to her sadness at school finishing. Or maybe it is the fact that time is flying and she is growing up.

Dragon's first school year has been a big eye opener for me and the Husband. We have discovered the meaning of a 'school community.' We have met and gotten to know our neighbours because our kids all go to the same school. I have embraced the mum's Whatsapp or Facebook messaging chat group phenomenom. I drink more coffee than I thought possible during mum coffee catchups. I have a new collective of small people who I can chat with just as easily as their parents. I have met some great people who I like as people, not just because we are all parents. In a place like London, it is rare to find this type of solid community and so we embrace it.

Reflecting on all that has happened within the last year has made me think about the politics of parenting or, parolitics. When Dragon was a baby and I was venturing out into new playgroups, baby meetups, activity days, it dawned on me that negotiating your way through the world of parenting is a political act. In fact, I wrote a short piece about it during Dragon's first year:

There are many secrets to parenthood. Things that remain unspoken and once experienced are tucked away, not for discussion. Once the baby is here, it is too late. You have opened the door to the other room, and the room within that. On a good day, this exposure feels infinite, sublime even. On a bad day, endless.

You discover these secrets, one by one but you don’t speak of them, or rarely, for there is some social contract it seems, which forbids us to speak truthfully about becoming a parent.

Once you become a parent, you become a politician.  Parenting is political. Friendships may crumble. Allegiances change over cloth or plastic nappies. Your new parent friends believe in the death penalty and vote for UKIP but it doesn’t matter because your kids are friends and playdates take priority over execution.

Who am I?

Where do you draw the line in this new world of relationships lived through your offspring?Unwittingly you are bound to this group of men and women whose children will be invited to your home for playdates and birthday parties. Whose faces you will recognise over time from pick-up and drop offs at the school gate. These people are your people now.

This is your parenting community.

Is this what you choose? Not necessarily. If you had a choice, you would choose your old-life friends. But they have disappeared from your daily life for they are far away, geographically or philosophically. Some old-life friends become unrecognisable once they have children. Some return, as do you, to a semblance of your former self but some are lost forever; their identities forsaken in the fog of parenting.

Friends without offspring miss you too. Some cut you loose. This is devastating.

‘I am not a leper,‘ you think, ‘but I am a shape-shifter.’

I have grieved the loss of friendship due to children. No-one speaks of this but it happens. 

Five years in, I am still earning my stripes as a parent. But I have ventured far from those early days where I struggled to make sense of the incongruencies inherent within parenting life. Nowadays I love the contradictions. I don't need to understand the whys and wherefores as much anymore. It just is the way it is. I like this new world order, far more than I ever thought I would. 

It's reassuring to be surprised by your own life on occasion. 

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.

But What Do You Do All Day?

When I was childless, it mystified me as to why people with kids always said they never had any time or energy.

What's keeping them so busy?  I wondered.

Sure I'd heard about the sleep deprivation that newborns could cause but that was a just a phase right? What did these parents do that used up all their time and energy? After all there is 24 hours in a day.  I decided they must be exaggerating.

Well feel free to slap me.

Because they were NOT exaggerating.  At all.

After Dragon had been in my life for a few months,  non-parent friends asked me things like:

Have you been following that story in the papers?
Have you read any good books lately?
Have you been to any good shows recently?

Oh how I laughed. But I shouldn't have because I was exactly none the wiser myself before Dragon.

So where does all my time and energy go as I sure as hell don't have much of either? I decided to take an inventory. Just a random day in the life of a mum of a nine month old.**

 Here goes:

5.00: Dragon wakes and cries. I ignore her.
5.15: Still crying. I kick Husband out of bed to go soothe her
5.30: Dragon falls back asleep. So does Husband. I lie awake wishing I could.
6.05: Dragon wakes again. Cries
6.15: Breastfeed Dragon
6.45: Sit with Dragon in steamy bathroom and do her physio (for a mucus issue - long story).
7.05: Dress Dragon and change nappy.
7.30: Plonk Dragon in front of TV. I get changed, make beds, tidy Dragon's room and get her and my breakfast ready
8.00: Feed Dragon. Feed myself.
9.00: Play or Skype Family/Friends
9.20: Dragon nappy change and nap
9.40: Clean breakfast mess, fold and put away laundry. Put in new load of washing. Tidy house. Cook food for Dragon for following day. Answer emails. Make phone calls. Do online errands.
11.00: Dragon wakes. Check nappy. Give snack. Play if staying in or head out to meet friends or for some baby activities (paying exorbitant amounts of money for 30 minutes of singing and clapping, baby swimming, ie holding them in water for 30 mins etc)
11:45 Hang out new load of laundry if home. Get Dragon and my lunch ready
12.00: Feed Dragon lunch. Feed myself.
13.00: Clean lunch mess if at home
14.00: Prepare bottle and feed Dragon
14.30: Dragon nappy change and nap
14.45: Time to MYSELF!
16:00: Dragon wakes. Give snack. Play or go out. Meet up with mum and baby group. Cook or shop
16:30: Do second bathroom physio session with Dragon.
17:15: Get Dragon dinner ready
17:30: Feed Dragon dinner
18:30: Bathe Dragon and get her ready for bed
19:00: Breastfeed Dragon
19:20: Clean up Dragon dinner mess and kitchen
20.00: Eat dinner with Husband
20:30: Get Dragon food sorted for next day. Pack any bags needed for next day. Shower
21:00: Collapse. Talk to Husband. About Dragon
23:00: Breastfeed Dragon
00:00: Sleep
03.00: Dragon cries. Husband and I pray to the Baby Goddess. Please, Please, go back to sleep.

And sometimes, she does.

It'll be just as busy when she is bigger*

Not every day is as above. There are days where we are out and about from morn to night. Days where we have visitors. Days where surprises happen. Days where I get to go out and do whatever I want. Days where I go to uni and kickstart my brain.  But the one constant throughout is that Dragon needs a LOT of care; day in , day out

And for now, I wouldn't have it any other way.

*Image courtesy of Fotolia UK

**To give him his full credit, the Husband is also the primary carer for Dragon. He looks after her most weekends and does her morning routine twice a week on weekdays too. And cooks and cleans and all of it.  And did 80% of the night feeds when she was a newborn. And gets up and soothes her when she wakes in the middle of the night. He is a Good Egg.

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.

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.