Wondrously Other: May 2014

Running Is Not The Joy I Remembered

New Zealand has a reputation for being an outdoor kinda country and after you spend a bit of time here you realise that reputation is actually a huge understatement.

There are people running in Wellington most hours of the day and they all look like they were born wearing itty bitty lycra outfits and running shoes. Round here, the locals bound like gazelles along Marine Parade completely unaffected by gale force winds or blistering heat.

Knowing that, it shouldn't be a surprise that work has twice sent out an invitation offering to pay for employees to enter a marathon four weeks in the future. Because we’re all just waiting for the next opportunity to run 26 miles over here! Four weeks’ notice? Sweet as!

Obviously, I ignored the email, but my messenger started pinging with people asked me if I was going to join in and because I am that woman who just can’t say no to anything that smells like a challenge, I said yes.

That means I have less than four weeks to get match fit for a 10k run.

Just to put that in perspective, the last time I ran Esme was having trouble sitting unaided.

In training terms that’s a really long time.

Then you factor in that I am the sort of person who you can actually see losing condition between training sessions.

The sort of person that sports companies pray never wears their clothing because it gives their designers a bad name.

The sort of person the Angry Jogger calls a “pure bright red runner”.

Let’s be honest, I'm the person you see running and stop to offer a lift.

It doesn't bother me, I’ll own that I will never be a poster girl for any kind of sport because my motivation isn't looks, it’s to get fit enough to keep up with the three energiser bunnies I somehow managed to breed.

At my age, and with my genes, that doesn't just happen.

Two runs in and I'm hating every last second: The aching limbs, the burning throat, the fact that the wind is somehow always in my face.

My mind spends the whole session shouting at me to sink gracefully into middle age and invest heavily in elasticated waistbands.

Most of the time I find it hard to argue.

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The Maybe Diaries was shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Inspire Award. Thank you SO MUCH for your support.

Thursday, 29 May 2014 Comments: 6

Nursing Photoshoot - Celebrating Life With An SNS

I am constantly bewildered at the range of products designed to help me commemorate my children. I've managed to resist most of them, my small concession being a mug for each of the children with a slightly smeary newborn footprint on it and even that felt like an overblown, if reassuringly functional, gesture.

All of which goes to demonstrate how entirely sensible it is that last week I had a breastfeeding photo shoot. Because nothing says understated celebration like having a full lighting set-up to capture your boobs out in public.

I hadn't done it before because I don’t radiate effortless earth mother charm and I nurse with an SNS, both of which disqualify me from being Pinterest worthy.

Also, I'm British, and we don’t go bundles on professionally photography unless it involves uncomfortably stiff family poses and plain curtain backgrounds.

It took something on the scale of Miss Olive’s nursing strike to scare me into action. It made me realise that what we have is fragile and hard won and deserved to be celebrated before we moved on to the next stage of our lives.

She is my last child after all*

A big thank you goes to Sharyn for being talented enough to turn my waffle into a reality and Southern Cross who were awesome enough to lend me their kick-ass function room.

* I'm allowed to play that card at least once a month.

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The Maybe Diaries was shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Inspire Award. Thank you SO MUCH for your support.

Tuesday, 27 May 2014 Comments: 8

Breastfeeding Olive

How To Clear A Blocked Milk Duct

I was sitting at my desk yesterday, minding my own business when I reached for a cup of tea, brushed against my chest and suddenly my head was screaming “SWEET MOTHER OF MERCY, WHAT THE HELL?!?”

For the second time in as many weeks, I was the proud owner of a blocked milk duct. Actually it may be mastitis, I'm never exactly sure of the difference because every site you read seems to have a slightly different definition.

I just know one involves your boob falling off and I don’t have that one.

I have the one where you feel like you have the single biggest pimple of your life throbbing away and no matter what you do, the fucker won’t pop.

I have the one where the cause and effect of a teething baby means you end up with far too much milk at exactly the wrong time of day and half an hour later your entire ductal system is in meltdown and I'm craving cabbage leaves.

Not to eat, to stick down my bra. Because that sounds much less crazy.

I have learned through trial and error that there are a few things that work for me, and many, many that make no difference at all.

Top of that list would be stick on toe warmers. What? There was logic. I was sitting in an office needing something warm and discrete to help with the throbbing. On the face of it they were the perfect solution; until I found out that they burn with the heat of a thousand suns. You don’t have to believe me when I say it was not a pleasant experience, but for the love of all that is holy don’t make the same mistake I did unless you think third degree burns are a good look.

Hot showers don’t solve the problem, although they give me a few blissful moments when I'm not in pain. I distract myself by catching up with the shaving I usually run out of time to finish in the five minutes between turning on the water and someone raising merry hell. There is a reason I wear trousers during the week, and that is because I can’t stand the pitying looks when people notice I only have one shaved leg.

Cabbages leaves help with the pressure, but have the disadvantage that I smell faintly of old lady fart. If I don’t keep a close watch for wandering leaves I'm also left with the toe curling moment when I realise I've been talking to my boss with a little bit of foliage peeking out above my top. If this happens to you, my advice is style it out. Chances are your boss won’t know whether or not the cool kids are all wearing vegetables in their underwear and frankly they’re not going to want to Google “vegetables in underwear” during work time to find out.

By Robek (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

In actual fact the only thing that has worked well for me has been nursing the blockage out. This works less well for Miss Olive who is a creature of habit when it comes to feeding: Unless she is teething in which case all bets are off and we’ll be up all night feeding until I paw feebly at Keith to bring me water and an ice pack.

Either way, I figure that since she is the cause of the horrendous pain I'm experiencing it’s only right she take one for the team and help fix the situation. So we nurse. Lots.

We nurse until she rolls off in a milk drunk stupor.

We nurse until she refuses to latch on and blows raspberries instead.

We nurse until she gets FED UP and starts smacking me in the face at the sight of me unclipping my top.

And when she’s asleep and I think I can get away with some more nursing I sneak out her dummy, wait until she is making goldfish faces and latch her on instead.

Usually this makes her sigh; as if nursing were her biggest chore and she were doing me a huge favour. Sometimes there is a brief eye open and a look that says “Fine. But whoever is in charge of poop control tomorrow is going to regret this”.

Frankly I don’t care, both because that person is never me and also because there is no poop worse than the feeling of a blocked duct.

By this morning Miss Olive had once again worked her magic and although I did have to deal with an unholy amount of poop at 4am, I am now blockage free.

Because life as a working nursing mama is fun like that.

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What awesome tricks am I missing both to keep the blocked ducts away and to treat them? Are there any granny remedies that I need in my life to stop the tidal wave of poop?

The Maybe Diaries was shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Inspire Award.

Thank you SO MUCH for your support.

Thursday, 22 May 2014 Comments: 3

Alfie Attachment Parenting Learning Stay At Home Dad

Raising Musical Children - Please Send Earplugs

Last week, I looked down at my beeping phone to see a photo of my son holding a guitar. Not Keith's guitar as I had first assumed, but a different guitar, a new guitar .... his own guitar.

I can't even describe the noise that escaped from my mouth at that moment; because I'd had two very painful thoughts.

Children need to play musical instruments

Firstly have you heard what a five stringed, un-tuned acoustic guitar sounds like in the hands of an untrained four year old?

Secondly I suspected (correctly as it turned out) that I might end up having to throw myself between a swinging guitar and a little sister in moments of extreme tiredness and frustration.

In some ways I can’t really blame him: There’s nothing more annoying when you are busy creating interpretive music than having to bat away your little sister’s persistent hands.

But then as I pointed out to Alfie, using his guitar as a weapon was only going to hurt him because I don’t care how good Japanese build quality is, I’ll bet the farm that it’s no match for my daughter.

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How do other parents get through that difficult musical learning curve? Is there a technique to smiling through the pain as your fillings hit resonant frequency?

The Maybe Diaries was shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Inspire Award.

Thank you SO MUCH for your support.

Tuesday, 20 May 2014 Comments: 2

Activism Attachment Parenting Birth Esme Midwifery

Will My Daughter Have The Birth She Wants

This is my daughter, an embryonic attachment parent, wearing her baby in a special edition sling created to raise funds in support of German Independent Midwives.

The special edition Pollora POWer Parents sling in support of Independent Midwives in Germany

This sling represents my hope that my daughter will have access to the same level of birth choice that I have today while knowing that it is unlikely that she will.

At least not in Europe.

In 2011 the European Union passed a directive that undermined the ability of Independent Midwives in member states to support a labouring woman. They made it a requirement that Independent Midwives have Professional Indemnity Insurance in the full and certain knowledge that it would be virtually impossible for them to find this cover for an achievable premium.

It confuses me that they would take this step having only just defended the rights of women to choose where they birth because what they have effectively done is make Agnes Gerebs of every Independent Midwife in Europe. They have confirmed the human rights of a birthing woman while depriving her of the effective mechanism to exercise that right, and the result is that women will not easily be able to achieve a safe home birth.

But why does it matter? Why should we care that an Independent Midwife attended homebirth has effectively been rendered unachievable?

It matters because Independent Midwives offer a unique service.

Maternity services within the UK are struggling: That’s not news. There are not enough midwives available to give women proper continuity of care and instead of addressing that problem, this legislation worsens it by removing a small but significant example of best practice.

What does it leave in its place?

It leaves a service that is already failing 50% of the women under its care while the National Institute of Clinical Excellence talks about providing “a model of care that supports one-to-one care in labour” as if the NHS were just being lazy in not having achieved that already.

We have to accept that there is a longer lasting legacy of this shortfall.

There is something called Birth Trauma which is slowly eating away at a large number of women like an emotional cancer.

When I say large number, I mean something in the region of 12,000 women PER YEAR* coming away from the birth of a child with the same symptoms as soldiers who have come back from serving on the front line of a war zone.

Women, like me, who suffer because decision makers at various levels refuse to understand that they cannot dis-empower birthing women without consequence.

These are not women pouting because they didn't get a massage when their back felt a bit ouchie, these are women torn apart by grief because they were failed by the people attending them.

Effective birth care is about knowing that for all our differences, humans have the need to give birth just like any other mammal; in quiet, respectful environments.

Reversing this landslide of trauma is about making the decision that we as a society value the mental health of our mamas enough not to saddle them with a lifetime of pain and regret.

In order to do that, someone has to get their brave boots on and admit that none of that is achievable with the current state funded models of maternity care.

It’s late in the day to join the fight for Independent Midwifery but there is still a road to travel before all of this is consigned to the history books.

If you are interested in getting involved, my suggestion would be to look up the Independent Midwives UK group. You can add your voice to many who are working to secure a future where women are able to make a choice that empowers them and gives them access to the respectful care they deserve.

*I know, I couldn't believe the numbers either. Alder et al (2006) put the instance of post childbirth PTSD at around 1.5%. The UK had 812,970 live births in 2012.

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Did you have the birth you wanted? Do you feel like it impacted your journey as a parent? I'd love to hear your story.

The Maybe Diaries has been shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Award.

If you can spare a minute, please head over to the voting form HERE

All you need do is enter a name and address and tick The Maybe Diaries under Section 5.

And thank you SO MUCH for helping me to get this far!

Thursday, 15 May 2014 Comments: 6

Attachment Parenting Co sleeping Esme Stay At Home Dad Toddler DoOm

The Ultimate Parenting Dilemma

I made the mistake of opening this email when I was supposed to be doing something very weighty and serious.

In my defence if you saw a title like that from your husband I'm sure you would open the email in case this was the 21st century version of Lassie telling me the children were down the well.

As it was, there was less need to call an ambulance for him than there was for me thanks to me ingesting tea into places tea has no business going.

Rookie mistake Batsford, rookie mistake. You don't ever commit to a position you can't maintain for at least two hours, I don't care how much yoga you've been doing recently.

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What's your parenting rookie mistake?

The Maybe Diaries has been shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Award.

Thank you SO MUCH for helping me to get this far!

Comments: 0

Esme Olive Toddler DoOm

The Baby Has Started Walking

After threatening for the last few weeks, Miss Olive has finally coordinated herself enough to take a few faltering steps.

If you sensed that I was typing that with equal parts joy and terror, ten points for you.

Of the three children, Miss Olive is the fastest crawler: She has a rare old turn of speed but it isn't enough to keep up with the elder two as they go marauding through the house and she has been watching intently and calculating what she needs to do to join in their fun.

She is a clever one, my baby daughter; and determined, oh so determined.

Having taken some measurements and done some quick maths, she had concluded that in order to get to the Lego Table of Joy, stuff an off-road tyre into her mouth and escape before anyone confiscates it from her clamped jaw, she needed to get down with this walking business.

And so, decision made, she set to learning.

Look, no hands

I love this photo, both because I managed to capture her determined face but also check out the mutt in the background, looking over her in his usual benevolent way.

He is such a loving fur papa to those children and they, in turn, adore him.

When I left the house this morning Esme had liberated some tongs from a kitchen drawer and was pretending to be a crab.

Harry was lying in a patch of sun debating whether having his body tweaked by a cackling two year old was bad enough to give up his spot.

In the end he decided a melodramatic sigh was enough.

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Do your children have fur parents? Or walk? Or eat Lego? Care to share how you manage any combination of the above without the need to visit A&E on a regular basis?

The Maybe Diaries has been shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Award.

If you can spare a minute, please head over to the voting form HERE

All you need do is enter a name and address and tick The Maybe Diaries under Section 5.

And thank you SO MUCH for helping me to get this far!

Tuesday, 13 May 2014 Comments: 0

Alfie Esme Toddler DoOm

Why You Should Never Use Nicknames For Genitals

Back when Keith and I were friends, he introduced me to a comedy show called League of Gentleman. It was a show full of dark humour that included a character called Tubbs who used to call women “No-Tails” and while it was just one of a smörgåsbord of catchphrases, this one stuck with us long after the show ended.

When we had Alfie, it wasn't so much a conscious life decision as an amusing in-joke to refer to him as a “Tail”. It seemed fairly harmless; at first he couldn't speak, and then it sounded cute to hear our toddler talk about his "tay-ahl".

Then one day Keith called me wheezing from laughter and told me about a conversation he’d had with Alfie’s teacher.

Alfie’s last nursery had a morning assembly in the loose sense of the word: Children gathering in the middle of the room and talking about a subject until they got bored and wandered off to paint their eyeballs.

On that day the subject was animals.

“What are some of the differences between us and animals?” the teacher had asked.

“They have four legs!”

“They can’t talk!”

“They have fur!”

"They eat grass!”

“All good suggestions” said the teacher, “anything else?”

“They have tails”

“No” replied Alfie “I have a tail too”

“I don’t think you do Alfie” said his teacher “humans don’t have tails”

“Well I do” said Alfie as he stood up, and like a true Batsford dropped trou and proudly pointed to his penis to MAKE HIS POINT.

“See, a tail!”

Apparently his teacher had herself an accident from laughing, which I don’t think was quite the reaction Alfie was looking to inspire.

As his loving mama my head sunk into my hands because really Alfie, really? Are you so much your father's son that it wasn't enough to just tell the teacher that you had a tail?

It might be a hard lesson to accept son but sometimes you're right, and sometimes you're wrong; don't make it worse by also being the bloke with his pants round his ankles.

In reality Alfie gave exactly zero fucks about his genitalia being laughed at, but not wanting to flirt too closely with body image issues we have tried to move to more factual descriptions ... with varied success.

Currently Esme swears up and down she is the proud owner of a “pyjama” which makes me slightly fearful of allowing her to go to any sleepovers. Or shops.

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Have you had an innocent nickname come back to bite you? Please tell me I'm not alone!

The Maybe Diaries has been shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Award.

If you can spare a minute, please head over to the voting form HERE

All you need do is enter a name and address and tick The Maybe Diaries under Section 5.

And thank you SO MUCH for helping me to get this far!

Thursday, 8 May 2014 Comments: 0

Activism Alfie Birth Esme Olive Peripartum Cardiomyopathy

Every Mother Counts - The #Every2 Campaign

This weekend we celebrate Mother’s Day; my first as a mother of three.*

In honour of this insane occasion I want to join in with the Every Mother Counts #every2 campaign and do some reminiscing.

In 2009 I was born a mother after what felt like an endless wait. It was a bittersweet moment for me birthing under the influence of some heavy duty opiates and in a situation I very much wanted to avoid. It was also the craziest trip of my life and, as my best friend had promised, I spent a long time looking around me waiting for Alfie’s real mama to arrive.

In 2011 I was born a mother of a daughter and shortly after nearly died. I went into heart failure (known as PPCM) and spent a few weeks in hospital scaring the medical staff by refusing to be a good patient. I made a full recovery, but there were some dark and scary moments where I stared down at my newborn baby girl and sobbed at the thought that I might not be around to see her grow up.

In 2013 I was born the mother of three in a beautiful and healing birth attended by a friend, fellow mother and loving doula. I knew there was a threat of relapse hanging over me but I was well supported and came through the hard work of growing a baby without incident.

Many women aren't so lucky.

As I sit with my babies around me typing this (I’ll edit it later to remove the keyboard smashes) I feel blessed a thousand times over to be here. I enjoy every crazy making moment of being a mama and my heart breaks for every family deprived of the chance to do likewise.

Every Mother Counts is working to reduce the instance of maternal death across the world. If you can spare 2 minutes, you can get involved.

- UPLOAD 2 photos of the day you were “born” a mother on the EMC Facebook portal.

- RUN 2 miles using the Charity Miles app (which will donate $0.25 per mile to EMC)

- SHARE 2 facts about maternal health on 2 of your social media networks.

- DONATE 2 dollars to Every Mother Counts.

- GIVE 2 gifts with one purchase by giving a gift that also supports maternal health programs around the world.

- INVITE 2 friends to Take 2 actions of their own.

Becoming a mama is the work of ages.

When I gave birth to Miss Olive I finally felt that fabled connection with the generations of birthing women who had gone before me. It was wondrous and humbling and I was grateful to finally count myself as a part of this female narrative.

The tradition of birthing warriors can feel distant to mothers in the First World but those women are there, standing in the shadows, roaring us on.

For most of the planet, the shadows are longer and filled with the daughters and sisters and wives who are taken too soon, leaving a hole where the heart of the family should beat.

I like to think that it doesn't have to be that way.

*You lot in the UK have already had your Mother's Day obviously, but join in anyway!

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The Maybe Diaries has been shortlisted for a Brilliance in Blogging 2014 Award.
If you can spare a minute, please head over to the voting form HERE
All you need do is enter a name and address and tick The Maybe Diaries under Section 5.

And thank you SO MUCH for helping me to get this far!

Tuesday, 6 May 2014 Comments: 2

Breastfeeding SNS

Using a Supplemental Nursing System (SNS)

Anyone who has seen my Instagram feed will be well used to the sight of Miss Olive nursing with the aid of a Supplemental Nursing System. That’s no accident; it’s a conscious decision I made a little while ago to be more open about what it takes for me to nurse my baby.

Feeding Miss Olive takes nursing in public to a whole new level of scrutiny.

Nothing says "subtle" like a cowbell of milk round your neck! I might as well hire a town crier to walk around me with a bell shouting “HEAR YE! HEAR YE! THERE’S A BABY! ON HER BOOB! DRINKING MILK! OVER HERE! ON HER BOOB! RIGHT NOW! DRINKING MILK!”

For all that, my reality has been very positive and I've had strangers come up to me and show a genuine interest in the SNS. That may not sound like a positive thing but I’m all about the sharing so it makes me smile and gush and disturb the baby mid feed in my enthusiasm to demonstrate what we are doing.

The interest has also inspired me to post a short video sharing my tips because when you make the choice to use an Supplemental Nursing System, you realise that you are entering a weird breastfeeding void where all you can find are instructional articles written by women with more limbs (or more compliant babies) than you.

There aren't many places that tell you cheats for using an SNS while lying down in bed, or how to avoid getting tangled in those thin tubes, so I've shared what worked for me.

I have also made and shared a video demonstrating a feed with an SNS. It contains traces of exposed breast because, well, how else do you breastfeed?

Despite the benefits of maintaining a nursing relationship with my babies and the positive response I have had I sometimes mourn that nursing hasn't come easy.

In darker moments I wonder whether I’m some kind of fraud for advocating for breastfeeding so strongly. I wonder if using an SNS means I shouldn't count what I do as “proper” nursing.

That makes as much sense as telling someone with glasses that they can’t "really" see but there is no logic to the doubt and it lingers.

It’s a doubt shared by many mamas for whom breastfeeding doesn't “just happen”.

Even with help and support, sometimes you are still left with a situation where you need to do something more to feed your baby. Most women opt to do that by bottle feeding, but often a Supplemental Nursing System can be an alternative.

If you find yourself needing to make that choice, don’t be scared of it. You will need a little time and a little stubborn to use an SNS, but I can promise you it will be worth the effort.

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Have you used an SNS? If you have tips of your own I would love to hear them.

Thursday, 1 May 2014 Comments: 12

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