Separation anxiety

As a slap-bang-in-the-middle-of-middle-class mother I spend most of my time worrying about how wrong I am doing everything and the other half of my time pretending that I am not worrying. So the most recent worry was that I am depriving Cass by not sending her to nursery. As you will know from previous rants, I decided to stay at home with her, so nursery was not on the cards, but clearly this was another something to worry about.

Perhaps we were creating a princess of gargantuan proportions by not socialising her in a nursery environment - would she be a teenager who could not tie her own laces, a university student who had no mates, or worse, a grown up who wouldn’t share her sweeties?! It just so happened that a friend was in a bind around the time that we were having this discussion (when I say we, I clearly mean I was having an internal monologue as B has learnt not to listen ages ago) and he needed a new member of staff for his business. So I got myself a job - how exciting, I get to wear my work wear again... No seriously, that was my main motive. So that meant that Cass needed somewhere to be for my two days a week.

Luckily the nursery down the road had spaces so off we went for a look. I’m not sure what happened between my house (empowered working mum) and the nursery (blob of weeping jelly), but somehow I lost my cool. And we were only there to have a butchers. I couldn’t control myself, pretty much everything set me off; the row of little tiny shoes by the door, the cute handprint pictures adorning the walls, Cass toddling off with nary a backward glance. I was a mess.

Still, we went ahead and I have marshalled myself. It has been a hard road getting her settled (for all of us!) and I still partially wonder what I am doing it for. My logical thinking brain says it is doing her good, but my mummies heart misses her and can’t imagine that anyone else will look after her as well as I will.

Yesterday she came home having painted, played in the woods, eaten loads of fruit, napped, played with her little friend Esther and generally had an all round good time. It just sounds like so much fun - I wanna play too!!

The Mummatron

I hate to say it, but you ain's seen nothing yet! Wait until she goes off to uni. on another continent!

At the age of 17 my baby opted to go to a university in Scotland at the same time as her parents had to move to the USA for Gramps' job. I don't think I can find the words to describe the feelings I had at that time. Of course my baby would ring up with tales of woe and I would spend the next few hours/days fraught with worry about how she was feeling and finally I would be unable to contain my worry any more and I would ring her to hear her cheery voice inform me that she couldn't stop to chat right now as she was too busy having fun! Argh!

I really didn't think it could get worse than that then last Sunday when it came time for Gramps and I to leave little Cassie after a day of fun and games, she put out her arms to us, pulled both our faces up to hers, pressed her face into ours and delivered kiss after kiss and face-hug after face-hug for about five minutes ......... and then we had to walk out the door and leave her!!!!! It may not be separation anxiety but it sure didn't feel like fun driving off down the road!

Granny bloggins

Day 368

You are 1, little girl, you are 1. My little mini-me, my matrioshka, my lovely chubby legger, you are 1. This time 1 year ago I was panicking, overwhelmed by love, and anxiety and the littleness of you, I was terrified. I didn't understand what you needed and I didn't know what I was supposed to do. But as the last year unfolded, we have found our way.

I have slept with your weight on my chest, feeling your snuffly breaths echoing through me. I have nurtured you with my own body and you have grown from that tiny, curled up catlike creature snoozing the day through to this boisterous inquisitive person. I have held your hands as you learned to sit up, to roll over and now to take those little cautious steps.

And you have held my hand as I have become your mother.

Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?

Bed Hopping

I have a guilty little secret that I need to share with you. I sleep with my child. Shock horror. Before CK was born I read all the books and all the statistics that said that SIDS was more prevalent when a child sleeps in bed with its parents. I had nightmares about smothering my baby as I slept, exhausted and oblivious. And then I had her, and my nights became a string of feeds and wake up calls and I became exhausted and oblivious and one day, I fell asleep with the baby in the bed with me.

And it was great.

She slept, I slept, she fed, I slept, she wriggled, I slept. Brilliant.

I mentioned it one day to my health visitor (lovely, but perhaps not the only source of useful advice one should rely totally upon) and saw the flicker of horror cross her face. I reassured her that I don’t take drugs or smoke or drink and she warned me of the dangers of exhaustion and obliviousness. I nodded sagely and assured her I wouldn't anymore.

But I did. And I do. And it is lovely. Except for waking up contorted into strange positions and aching all over from trying not to roll onto her in my oblivious exhaustion. Clearly, some part of my brain is not that oblivious.

I am not alone in my guilty pleasure. My lovely husband has now discovered the joys of sleeping with the baby too as, up until now, he has always been banished from the bed if she is in it - my theory being that some kind of maternal instinct will stop me from rolling onto her while he, sleeping the sleep of the dead (kind of loud snorey dead) might be truly oblivious. In the last couple of weeks though , now she is very nearly 1 (and obviously nearly a grown up), I have allowed it. I think he secretly quite likes an excuse to do it too.

I was talking to someone the other day who warned against co-sleeping as once you start, you just can’t stop (like Pringles). I am not convinced that CK will still be in my bed when she starts uni, or indeed when she goes to school, but even if she is, I’m not sure me or her dad will mind.

Mummatron

Sleeping with your baby or to use the modern vernacular – co-sleeping.

OK, settle down, get a cuppa, this is going to be a long one:

You are a few fragile cells growing in a warm, dark, quiet, secure environment. As soon as you have ears you spend all day listening to your mother talk and all night listening to the beat of her heart and the blood pulsing through her body. When life gets a little cramped in there it seems like a good idea to move outside.

This experience will depend on where in the world you are born, but let us assume for now that it is in the “Western Civilised First World” with its’ medical culture. Chances are that you will arrive in a blindingly bright, cold, dry and screamingly LOUD place where you will be handled by strangers roughly enough to set you wailing. From this moment on your life will be governed by a new set of rules, many of them handed down through generations of nursing staff who learned their art at the hands of spinsters, as married women were not allowed to work, and by someone who is called Dr. Spock or Gina Ford.

So, you are swaddled and taken away from your mother to lie in a far off lonely place where you can hear all sorts of strange noises and sometimes even your mothers’ voice. Then comes the night. We are not nocturnal, so all humans are out of their comfort zone in the dark. Where is the comfort of that heart beat, the warmth of the body, the smell of the breast? Somewhere across the room but it’s too dark to see and anyway your eyes aren’t clever enough for that yet.

Now I shall digress: when visiting Australia many years ago my daughter and I visited a little village in Brisbane called Early Street, a collection of settlers shacks and houses. In one of the meaner dwellings was a bed covered in a beautiful patchwork quilt and attached to the side of the bed was a tiny cot with two legs supporting it on the side away from the bed. All the mother had to do to comfort her baby was reach out a few inches. I don’t know the statistics for how many babies are smothered in their parents beds but don’t you think that if we stopped frowning and muttering and started thinking we might be able to come up with a cunning and safe plan, after all, we can put a man on the moon…

If you are female it will be twelve long years before you are even nearing independence and if you are male it may be twice that long (sorry guys, blame your mothers!) Yet in a matter of a few short months you pass some mysterious milestone and the powers-that-be state that now you can go and sleep, in the dark and all alone, in your own room in a socking great cot. Is it any surprise that as soon as you are able to climb out of your first bed and toddle – fast, really fast, through the dark- you head straight for your parents’ bed?

Once there, with mothers’ nose firmly grasped in one chubby little hand and a fist full of daddys’ back hair clutched in the other you can finally relax and go into the deep sleep you have been yearning for. The warm urine pong of a fetid nappy can rise freely between the bed sheets and if there is not enough room you can use your elbows, knees, feet, and fists to fight for your own space – bliss. At some point in the night you mother or father may leave the bed and go into your room, but do you care? Not a jot. You have been made to sleep there for two years, now it is their turn to be alone – hah!

Maybe if we were all a bit more relaxed about allowing our babies to sleep with us when they really needed to they would feel more confident of their ‘grown-up’ status when offered a room of their own? Of course it has to suit the whole family and it has to be safe.

Now that our daughter is 31, and hasn’t slept in between us for some time (well, OK, at least 27 years) Gramps and I have so many happy memories of those broken nights! Yes, it seemed never-ending at the time and yes it was like musical beds some nights but hey, it was worth it for all the giggles.

PS when said daughter was nearly five we made her a bunk bed with a real ladder and everything and bought her a digital clock, taught her what 7.00 looked like and told her to stay in her room until that time – worked like a dream…

Granny Bloggings

In defence of the only...

Only the Lonely

Only children are spoilt, socially inept, lonely and odd, right? Some children are spoilt, some are socially inept, some are lonely and some (take it from me, I’m a teacher) are certainly odd, but I don’t think this has anything to do with being an ‘only’. I’m sure some onlies fit into these categories, but some of the sibling-rich do too.

I grew up as an only child (technically, I wasn’t an only child til I was two when my brother died - so maybe I don’t count?!) and I had an amazing experience of childhood. I suppose I was ‘spoilt’ - I travelled with my parents, ate in proper restaurants (not just Little Chef roadside pitstops, or Wimpys while out shopping - although I secretly pined for these culinary delights!), and had the saxophone I wanted. But I wasn’t spoilt, I knew my manners, knew I was lucky, and I never expected anything. I wasn’t once lonely as I always had friends around me (who by the way I could choose, unlike siblings). I don’t think I am socially inept, and could always make believe with other kids as well as being able to chat with adults. I admit, I am probably odd, but that has nothing to do with being an only.

So I am writing this in defence of my decision to make CK a little odd, inept, spoilt, lonely only. This post is addressed to everyone who has been saying (just a tad smugly) to me for the last year “I said that, and then I went on to have another 3 children!”. No, when I say I don’t want anymore, I really mean it. I don’t want the 9 months of morning sickness, the 9 months of indigestion, the 9 months of feeling blue. I don’t want anymore stretch marks to compliment the ones I already have. I don’t want my body to be any more deformed that it already is. And I don’t want to share my time or my heart.

I have the confidence that I can make CK a rounded, happy, normal individual without providing another child, without her having someone to squabble with, without her having to share the toy/book/remote control.

And if she turns out a little odd, that is fine too - she will fit in with the rest of the human race!

Mummatron

Get Over It!!

Only Children are just children without siblings, it’s no big deal, get over it!

Families these days come in all shapes and sizes and their dynamics are always changing. Children can be surrounded by ‘siblings’ one day and find themselves ‘only children’ the next, sometimes swiftly joined by a bunch of new ‘siblings’, … with some of these being part time ‘siblings’. Life these days is complicated and children have to learn to live with all sorts of relationships.

I did not set out to have just one child but after our son died, we started to discover the advantages to having just one little girl to introduce to the world. We had the time, the space, and our limited budget could stretch to all sorts of things like museum visits and books, but mostly we had the time. Time to think about how to handle our daughters’ up-bringing; time to answer her questions, time to explain things to her, time to listen to her questions, time to fetch and carry her playmates to our house and her to theirs, time to educate her, time to pay attention to her development as a socially adept little person, and time to talk to her about the birds and the bees when the perfect moment came.

If this is what you call spoiling a child then I say bring it on! In my book the only way you can ‘spoil’ a child is to bring it up to be bad mannered, uncaring, rude, anti-social and selfish, and the best way to do that, is to bring it up with no guide lines or rules which will lead to a complete lack of self discipline and a false perception of their importance in the world.

Let’s face it ‘there’s nowt so queer as folk’, we’re all different thank goodness, because we are all a product of our individual up-bringing, and that’s what makes the world such a wonderfully diverse place full of such wonderfully diverse people.

Granny Bloggings

Silent Sunday

Birdwatching...

Meow - Make way for this Tiger Mummy!

Tiger Mummy - Loud and Proud

Good for Amy Chua. She published an article recently in the WSJ about Chinese Mummies and their attitude to child rearing. For those of you who don’t want to bother to wade through the article here is a potted version; a Chinese mother is the best mother because they zealously guard their children’s future by enforcing strict rules designed to create the most wonderful human being possible. Nothing major, just rules such as practising your chosen musical instrument (either violin or piano and no other) for at least three hours a day; never coming home with anything less than an ‘A’; never watching TV or taking part in a school play; and never (and I mean never) complaining about any of the rules.

As you can imagine, it has provoked quite a stir. But I say good for her. It’s great that she is so confident that she is doing the right thing for her children and that she feels she wants to spread a little of her success to the rest of us. She calls it being a Tiger Mother (not to be confused with a Tiger Moth - a whole different, but I am sure equally intimidating thing).

I have been inspired by her methods and have decided to become a Tiger Mother myself. Well, CK is 10 months now, and that isn’t too young to start...right? So here are my rules for successful parenthood which will be rigidly adhered to:
1. CK will be forced to enjoy herself for at least 70-95% of her waking hours. Everything will be made to be fun and games, and there will be no complaining about it.
2. Mess is a big part of the regime. I expect grubbiness and stains on all clothes and a clean face will be a disappointment - if there isn’t food all around her gob then she clearly isn’t fully engaging with her meals.
3. Music is key to producing a well rounded individual so we shall sing and dance our way through each day (I have already made a start - please see Brain. Mush. Bleugh.)
4. Just as Ms Chua recognises the major effect of the peer group on the development of her girls and so forbids sleepovers and playdates, I too believe that colleagues can have a formative influence over my little one. That is why we will strive every day to see at least one friend, we will always take someone on holiday for Little to play with and I will commit to driving her from one social event to the next.
So there it is folks, the game plan. I like to think of myself as a Lioness, ensuring that my child gets the best of everything in life. Fun, Happiness and the freedom to be who she wants to be.

Mummatron

Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

Tiger mothers? Well, I honestly think there is only one comment I can make on this:

I am SO proud of my daughter for her comments! She has said it all!!

(Do you think I could take a little credit though for bringing up my daughter to be able to see what is truly important in child rearing?) Also, because although I said that she has said it all, when have I ever managed to just be quiet? If asked my philosophy of child rearing I always say, ‘save it for the drugs, sex and rock and roll, and don’t worry about the sex and rock and roll.’

Granny Bloggins