Lumps and bumps, aches and pains, and never enough spoons.

A little over 2 years ago, I wrote my first blog post about having fibromyalgia. It's a pretty miserable condition, not least because it's completely invisible, so there's a lot of explaining to people about why you can't walk far, or why you need to lie down for a while because you stood up too quickly. For the most part, people are patient, understanding, curious and good natured about it. But it is still exhausting to explain it, and to some degree I still feel a bit embarrassed about not being able to keep up with my peers over the simplest of things, like going for a nice walk somewhere.

When I first wrote about my illness, I was a stay-at-home mum to four children, the youngest of whom was just over a year old. Since then I've taken up voluntary work with the Green Party, which I absolutely love and in many ways has given my mental health a huge boost by giving me a sense of purpose. The flip side is that it's also shown me just how much being ill limits my capability to function. 

This weekend, I was invited to a training weekend at the Eden Project in Cornwall. Workshops (one delivered by me, eep!), discussion groups, a picnic on the beach and glamping - so much fun, and always wonderful to meet new people with the same outlook on life as me. I even met someone else with fibromyalgia! We had a great time comparing symptoms and having a whinge about everything. Unfortunately I didn't do a great job of taking care of myself, and when it came time for me to go home on Sunday morning, I already knew I would be paying for the exertion of the weekend for quite a while. Sitting on the tube, waiting to get off the train to change at Oxford Circus station, I realised I was bordering on having a panic attack, purely because I realised that my arms and shoulders were so weak and bruised from carrying my bag the few hundred metres I'd had to walk through train stations already that I wasn't sure I could walk any further.

I try not to be a complainer. I try to be upbeat and positive. But I also really value honesty, and I think conditions like fibromyalgia need people to talk about them more - not just to spread awareness of their existence, but also to challenge societal structures that currently inhibit people with conditions like mine from being able to fulfil life goals as an able-bodied person would do.

The temption is always to downplay the pain. When people ask "are you ok?", most of the time they don't want the honest answer of "well actually, I feel sick and bloated, my hips are screaming at me, my legs are bruised from sitting on a chair, my peripheral vision has gone blurry, my chest hurts so much that breathing is a real challenge, and I need to sleep like you wouldn't believe!". And so I smile, tell them I feel good and carry on with acting out the part of someone who doesn't want to curl up and cry. Facebook is a particularly tempting playground for painting a picture of everything being amazing. I can be lying in bed, whimpering in pain, unable to sit up for more than a few minutes, but if I post a joke or a funny cat picture on Facebook, I can at least persuade people that I'm ok and I don't want or need their sympathy.

I want to go back to paid employment sometime soon. I want a stimulating and fulfilling job! I'd really like that to be linked to the Green Party, because I've been passionately pouring my limited energy into it for a year now and feel I have so much more I want to give! But... the fact I need to accept is that my health is so unpredictable that I will make a terrible employee. Some mornings I wake up and can't move, can't talk. Some days, just the ten minute round trip for the school run is enough to end up with me lying on the sofa, dizzy and struggling to breathe. Some days, my legs will bruise and swell up just because I've sat on a wooden bench instead of a squishy sofa.

The reality of leaving the house early every morning, travelling to work, then sitting in an office and being productive for several hours, then travelling back home - this is something that I can't kid myself that I'm capable of doing in any reliable capacity. A day here and there, ok. Sounds good. I've had some trips into London to the Green Party office for training days and meetings, and it's been good. I've then had to spend at least 2 days in bed to recuperate. 

I like to use the Spoon Theory analogy to explain to people why small, everyday tasks take on a whole new level of challenge when you have a condition like fibromyalgia. You can read more about it here - and please do. 

I've spoken to some people with disabilities who say that we view all this upside down - that in fact it's not the individual who is disabled, but society. People have different capabilities that may manifest in anatomical differences, mental health differences, or in "invisible" conditions, such as mine. These are only DISabilities because society is exclusionary - starting with our language and our societal outlook towards anybody whose capacity for economic productivity is below optimal. We ascribe value to people according to how much work they can put in versus how much they take out, so someone with any form of condition that changes that balance is treated as lesser than someone in optimum health.

I want to go back to paid employment, but would any employer be prepared to take me on, knowing that I may be off sick a lot? Or that I may need to work from home? Or that I may not be as efficient as someone who doesn't need to lie down every hour or so? How can we change things to make employment and wider society more aware of the needs of people with disabilities, and more receptive to meeting those needs without making a big song and dance about it? 

My dream job would be as a member of Parliament - but the demands and rigour of the campaign trail when I stood as a candidate in this year's election wiped me out. The job itself involves long hours, lots of stress and lots of travelling. Do I know that I could be a good representative for people in my constituency, given my health and limitations? Why should I be excluded from pursuing this role because of those issues? Currently job-share MPs are not permitted, as my colleagues discovered when they attempted to be nominated as jobshare parliamentary candidates and were refused. 

It's taken a long time for me to come to terms with the fact that fibromyalgia has this big an effect on my life, and that this means I am a person with a disability. Actually taking the time to permit myself to identify as disabled has been very empowering, which I didn't think it would be. I thought that identifying as disabled would be admitting a weakness, because that's how we treat people who aren't able-bodied. 

So as usual I feel tired, sick and am aching all over, and the energy it's taken me to fight off several panic attacks today means I can barely keep my eyes open now. But I also feel determined to be part of a movement to change the way we interact with people with disabilities, and to make our society more accessible, more aware, and more inclusive. Watch this space...

Home, Sweet Home.

Wow, I started writing this AGES ago, but after our housing policy made the news today, it seemed worth getting back to this!

Following on from my earlier post exploring why immigration is not to blame for the UK's woes, this piece will elaborate on the housing crisis, with which many of us will be personally familiar.

There are currently more than 610,000 empty homes in England alone. Estimates including Wales & Northern Ireland push this up to more like 835,000. Why are they empty? Most are privately owned as second homes and registered with the council (for council tax purposes) as empty. Some were intended to be rented out but have fallen into disrepair. Some are flats located within (above or behind) and owned by shops. There are even some which were intended to be part of new developments built by investors but were then abandoned before completion! In 2013, government data recorded 1.8million people on social housing waiting lists in England. 

Looking at these two pieces of information, should we not be more than a little irked that the government aren't doing MORE to turn these empty houses into functioning homes to alleviate the housing crisis?

Moreover, in the past 30 years 2.5million council houses have been sold through the Right to Buy scheme for up to 47% less than their market value. Now while the idea of enabling council tenants to secure ownership of their homes sounds like a great idea, bear in mind that this enormous amount of social housing has not been replenished by the government, and 2013 data shows that only 1.7million council properties remain.

This idea of owning your home being the norm was very much a Thatcher-era way of thinking, and that legacy has expanded to the extent now that houses are a commodity for investment, not just a home to live in. According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, "buy-to-let" mortgages accounted for almost 12% of mortgage lending in August 2014 alone. The Private Rental Sector (PRS) now accounts for some 13% of housing in the UK, with plenty of problems to go with it:

• No security. Tenancies are frequently 6 - 12 months long, with no guarantee of renewal and a landlord's ability to end the contract with 2 months notice.
• Uncapped letting agents' fees. The average fees for an agent are £350 every time you move house. 
• Deposits with no guarantee you'll see the money again. Six weeks rent is the norm for a security deposit, intended as as a safeguard against any damage to the property. This is paid in advance of moving in and returned (if you're lucky!) after you move out. If you're moving from one rented property to another, you need to come up with the deposit AND first month's rent in advance before receiving your previous deposit refund.
• Extortionate rent. Competition and government subsidies through housing benefit have allowed rents to soar. An "affordable" 4 bedroom flat in London now requires an annual salary of £100k. 

Homelessness from the private sector is on the increase, accounting for 11% of those acccepted as 'homeless' in 2009, as families find themselves with a terminated contract yet unable to either find or afford a new tenancy.

So what do we do? How do we fix this? The government's social housing budget is currently just £1.5bn, nowhere near enough to address the 1.8 million people long waiting list. We need a serious commitment to ending Right to Buy and building sufficient social housing homes.

Earlier this month, the Green Party announced a manifesto commitment to build 500,000 social housing homes over the course of the next parliament if elected to government, as well as ending the Right to Buy scheme and implementing additional policies such as rent caps for the private rental sector and ending "revenge evictions" for tenants. The full details will be released with the manifesto next month, but I wanted to take a closure look at the announcement to build half a million social homes.

First question - how in the devil do you intend to afford this? What will it cost?

Simple answer: 500,000 homes costing £60,000 each to build over five years = £30 billion over the course of the five year parliament. 

How to do this? Gradually, of course. We know the government's current social housing budget is an insufficient £1.5bn, so we increase this gradually each year until the annual social housing budget in 2020 reaches £9billion/pa.

Why do you have to do it slowly? Where does the money come from?

As with our other policies such as zero university tuition fees, reinstating EMA for college students, investing in the NHS, bringing the railways into public ownership - the money comes from overhauling the tax system. It takes time to bring that money into the public purse, so we stagger the spending accordingly.

• The shortfall from tax avoidance and evasion is currently around the £100billion mark. We have already pledged our commitment to a Tax Dodging Bill that would clamp down on this and bring significant sums of money into the economy. Let's estimate, for now, that we could reliably set this figure at £25billion (a very conservative fraction of the actual amount that should be paid but isn't). 
• A wealth tax of 1% on the assets of those with a personal wealth of over £3million pounds would bring in at least £22billion over the course of a five year parliament.
• Scrapping Trident would save £100billion
• Scrapping HS2 would save more than £40billion 

That's not even the full picture of changes we would implement, and already we've saved or generated an additional £187 BILLION for the UK economy. That £30billion cost of building half a million social homes doesn't look so scary now, does it?

Let's also remember the hidden costs of not having enough social housing: housing benefit makes up 14% of welfare spending at the moment, and as most of it is paid to working people on low wages living in private rented accomodation, that money disappears straight into the hands of private landlords. Additionally, homelessness is estimated to cost the government £1billion every year.

By building enough social homes for people on low incomes to live, we not only take a huge step towards redressing the coalition government's legacy of soaring inequality, but we also begin to create a more sustainable society. 

Building these homes is a very sensible move. It works financially and it works morally. 

Review: Haven Holiday Park, Doniford Bay

I'm toying with a new section for the blog, reviewing family 'stuff' we have/use/experience. It might be awful or I might get bored of it, but bear with me while I muck around and experiment. 

Let's start off this one by saying that caravans are COOL, mmkay. I love them, always have. There are many happy memories of family holidays in caravans in Wales, Clacton-on-Sea, Skeg-Vegas and now Somerset. Last year I tried to persuade my husband of their virtues, but he looked horrified at the suggestion we try such a getaway and later confessed that his only experience of caravan holidays was a certain episode of Father Ted:

Nevertheless, in April this year we found ourselves in a pickle with our house (you don't want me to go there, trust me) and needed a break. We found a 4 night stay for the following week at the Haven caravan site in Doniford Bay, near Watchet, Somerset for £124 and booked it (husband feeling very brave at this point). After looking at all the different types of caravan available (they range from Standard to Deluxe through to Prestige!) we settled on "Deluxe Plus" as it seemed to suit our requirements and budget best. Dvd player, check. Three bedrooms, check. Oven, fridge-freezer, microwave, shower, kettle. Done. The park looked small enough that regardless of where the caravan was located, we wouldn't be too far a walk from the entertainment area or the beach. Sorted. 

Excitement tempered with apprehension best describes our mood on the journey down. We were desperate for a seaside break but more than a little nervous about what the park would be like and who we might encounter whilst staying there. Graham Norton "riverdancing" round our kitchen/lounge for 4 days did not sound terribly relaxing. My husband has a limited tolerance for naff cabaret style entertainment and I hadn't really dared to explain what Rory the Tiger is or the potential scope for parents being dragged onto the dance floor to "Agadoo" at the evening disco. 

First impressions of the park were good. It was clean, green, spacious, right by the sea and very easy to find. The reception area was well sign-posted and the staff who booked us in were smiley and friendly. We discovered, to our delight, that we had received a free upgrade to a Prestige caravan complete with 'un vue de la mer'. We travelled over to our van to inspect our home for the next few days - WOW! It was gorgeous! Much posher than our house, in fact. 

Our view. There is the sea right in the background. Honest.

The family settle in with a game of Monopoly

The journey had taken longer than expected (Milton Keynes to Watchet isn't that far as the seagull flies, but the majority of the journey is country lanes) so we decided to chill for the first evening and went for a gentle stroll down to the beach before picking up fish 'n' chips from the onsite cafe. 

The beach was a little disappointing. Haven markets Doniford Bay as a "sandy shingle beach". Sandy. We found no sand. Lots of muddy rocks though! It wasn't what I'd call a pebble beach either. Just sort of... muddy and rocky. You couldn't spend an afternoon sunbathing there or splooshing around in the surf. Certainly no sandcastles! 

Munchkins at the beach

Our supper was very tasty, though. We managed to feed all 6 of us for around £20 (not counting the ketchup I picked up at the onsite Spar shop, which was a further £2.50!), so it really wasn't bad value at all. 

Having decided that the local beach wasn't going to do for sandcastling, we drove along to Minehead, which is about 20 minutes away by car. We picked up a picnic at the local Tesco and spent the day on the beach. I did find out from a lady in the local nik-nak shop that the sand had been shipped in a few years previously specifically to make the beach more appealing to tourists! It worked, and we had a wonderful time. Minehead is a lovely little town with all the predictable seaside amenities - amusement arcades, ice cream cafes, a multitude of shops selling buckets, spades and assorted beach paraphernalia. 

BEACH FOOTBALL!

Sandcastles are cool.

We decided to be brave that evening and check out the entertainment in the Live Lounge back at the holiday park. Braced for an absolutely disastrous cheesefest of unforgivable proportions, I reminded the husband that regardless of how hellish he found it, the children would love running about, dancing to terrible music and mixing with the other overexcited children. I wasn't wrong... well, not about the kids. They loved it. I was very wrong about my husband hating it. I think he maybe enjoyed it even more than I did! That's saying something, given my weakness for cheesey music and penchant for a bit of dodgy dancing (Agadoo, anyone?). There was a moment I wish I had caught on film of him on the dance floor, bopping along to Gangnam Style at the behest of our son. 

I don't know if it's the sea air, the holiday spirit or the infectious merriment of the entertainment staff but you just can't NOT enjoy all the singing, dancing and daft games they put on. The entertainers weren't in the least bit phased by the small audience and performed absolutely 100%.  The audience was divided into teams - yellow or blue, depending on whether your caravan number was even or odd - and games played throughout the evening earned each team points. Around 9:30pm the points were totalled up and the winning team (ours!) awarded 20% off at the bar. Excellent! We pottered home about an hour later, exhausted but in a brilliant mood.

Ethan showing off the flips flops and sticker he won

Unlike Haven holidays of my youth, you can now sign up for lots of activities on site. They vary from water sports, orienteering, club breakfasts and lunch, to archery, wall climbing and - our favourite - the bungee trampoline. The timetable of activities included a guide to age recommendations as well as prices. Some were free, others cost between £4 and £8 per child. We opted for archery (age 6+) for the boys and a ride on the bungee trampoline (age 3+) for each of the children. The archery class was super. Because we had travelled off-peak and the park was pretty quiet, there were no other children there. The instructor was still very much on form, chatted and joked with the boys and gave them lots of turns shooting the bow and arrow. He figured out their strengths and weaknesses and really helped them get to grips with it. 

Legolas/Lucas

The bungee trampoline was the hero of the holiday as far as the children were concerned. If you haven't tried one, you just have to. The squeals and giggles from the children are testament to how much fun it was, and as the contraption overlooked the sea, I can imagine the view they got up there was pretty amazing.

For the rest of the day, we played in the amusement arcade before going for a swim at the indoor pool. The arcade was very fun, very kid-oriented. Lots of 2p machines and games, a few 10p games. If you like loud noises, bright lights and squealing kids, this is the place for you! The pool was a little less enjoyable. It's smaller than we expected and the outdoor section was closed (this was the end of April so still not peak season though). There are no slides in the indoor part, but there is a shallow splash pool for babies. There are a few cubicles at the poolside for changing and a small number of tables if you want to sit and watch. We didn't spend long there... It just wasn't the sort of pool where you could really kick back and enjoy. I'm glad we tried it but I wouldn't make a huge effort to try again unless the outdoor bit was open and turns out to be much better. 

We had a quiet evening in sampling a couple of local ciders (just us, not for the kids!) and watched a spot of telly with the balcony doors open, taking in the sea breeze and sunset:

On Thursday, our final full day, we invited my mum and stepdad (who live locally) to join us for a picnic. We went back to the clifftop area by the sports section and settled down at one of the lovely picnic tables. There was a small playground nearby and lots of grassy area for the kids to run around. The weather was amazing, so we just spent the day taking in the sea air and relaxing. I can certainly say that Doniford Bay is one of the more peaceful caravan parks I have visited, though that may be in no small part due to the time of year and low number of guests!

We were sad to leave on Friday. The checkout process was painless enough. The only requirement was that we returned the keys to reception by 10am, so we packed up the car, washed and dried our dishes, gave the van a quick once over to tidy up and were on our way. All the way home, we talked about how much we wanted to stay longer and started planning our next trip back. 

That my husband - the British seaside caravan holiday virgin - would happily go to Doniford Bay again tells you what a super family holiday it is. It's not glamorous or brimming with culture. It is a brilliantly friendly family holiday, and if you go out of season it can be a great budget option too. Perhaps if the week had cost us more than £124, we wouldn't have been as pleased overall but for what it did cost us, the caravan was beautiful, the park was clean and quiet, the entertainment was first class and the food available on site was tasty and reasonably priced.

Caravans ARE cool. Got it?

The long road to diagnosis

When I came back to my blog a couple of months ago, I briefly mentioned that my middle son had recently begun the assessment process for Autism Spectrum Disorder and dyspraxia. The last few months have been quite the emotional rollercoaster while the family adjusts to this, and the most intense hard work hasn't even started yet.

I wanted to start documenting our journey with this because it's something that you just can't imagine unless you have a child with some degree of special needs. Over the years of meeting parents in real life or getting to know them through online forums, I've encountered quite a range of special needs among children but nothing - nothing - prepares you for someone pointing to your child and saying you're going to be joining that club too.

In a way I feel awkward and embarrassed to talk about 'coming to terms' with a diagnosis for Autism. I know people whose children have serious physical and mental disabilities, people who've lost their children and others who have struggled to have children at all. To speak about 'coming to terms' with a comparatively tame issue like this seems almost disrespectful to the other parents going through heart wrenching turmoil. But then again it isn't a competition, and there isn't really any way of comparing one family's experience to another. Everything is relative, and for us this journey is really bloody tough.

Ethan has just turned 7, and since he was a baby we've known he was a bit different. He never did 'terrible 2s', didn't really have a proper tantrum until he was gone 4 years old. He's always been a bit fluffy and dippy, smiley and just away with the fairies. We said that was just his way and when his nursery teachers suggested to me in 2009 that he may be Autistic, I laughed them off and said they were getting carried away with themselves. It didn't matter that he barely spoke until he was 3, and then had a series of non-words that he repeated over and over and over. I brushed off his refusal to engage with other children and aversion to group activities, saying he was just comfortable with his own company and preferred to play alone. That it took until way past his 4th birthday to get him completely out of nappies didn't even occur to me as an issue! I'm not lazy about it, far from it  - come on, who realistically would prefer to keep buying and changing nappies over teaching a kid to take charge of their own toiletting?!

My experience of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) up to that point was of a close family member who has Asperger's Syndrome (often known as high functioning autism). Somewhere in my mind I had kept an eye out for behavioural traits that mirrored what I had seen in this relative as a youngster, but seeing nothing of him reflected in Ethan, it seemed absurd for his teachers to suggest there was anything neurologically atypical about him.

The word spectrum is the key, however. Autism isn't just one set of traits; there's a vast range of behaviours that fit the bill, and people with Autism present with a complex cocktail of them. Two different people each with a diagnosis of Autism may actually have no overlap whatsoever in their traits, the spectrum is THAT diverse.

Ethan's behaviour fits in with the less well known aspects of ASD. He has no issues with making eye contact and isn't withdrawn at all (these are the stereotypical traits most people associate with Autism). He's actually completely opposite to that. If he wants to have a conversation with you, he will. If he wants to climb all over you, lift up your jumper and blow raspberries on your stomach, he will. He cannot judge people's moods by looking at their facial expressions or the tone of a voice. He flaps, squeaks, spins round in circles, and takes everything absolutely literally. I have an arsenal of stories about things he's done that seem superficially very funny, but having taken a step back to look at the bigger picture, I see now that it's all part of the suspected Autistic behaviour.

There's so much to learn as a parent with an autistic child. For one, I don't actually know if it's ok to say "autistic child" or if I should stick with "child with Autism". I don't want to define my son by his needs or difficulties. He is first and foremost a wonderful little person. The extra stuff is just one bit of him. I didn't know that it takes SO long to get a diagnosis! We started gathering evidence and speaking to professionals last December, and it looks like it will take until December this year before we have a firm diagnosis in hand. A whole entire year! Did you know it takes that long? We've seen the Special Educational Needs Coordinator at school, the school nurse, the GP, a Developmental Paediatrician and next we're on to Speech and Language Therapy, Occupational Therapy and the Child Psychologist. All these people have or will spend time with Ethan, take his history from me, watch him "perform" as it were and decide what diagnosis fits him best.

As we carry on down this path, I would like to continue sharing our experience in the hope that other parents starting out will find something useful or comforting here. It's SO huge, SO complicated and frightening - and that's just for me. I couldn't begin to tell you what Ethan makes of it all. If I ask him, he usually beams at me and asks if I'd like to play Skylanders with him. I think that means he's ok.

When I grow up...

Can you believe I started writing this post over a month ago and couldn't get any further than an opening sentence? This is a difficult piece for me to write because it means accepting some uncomfortable truths about myself and how I feel about my life. Quite how you start writing something that says "I don't know what meaning my life has" is beyond me.

About 3 weeks ago, I went to a photo shoot session that I'd been lucky enough to win (that is something else I want to blog about because it was a phenomenal experience). As we were unwinding post-shoot, I asked Andrea, the photographer, how she got into the industry, fully expecting her to tell me how it had been a lifelong passion and something she'd pursued for most of her life. Her story was remarkable and more along the lines that a pivotal event in her mid-30s made her suddenly reevaluate everything she was doing and ask herself what it had all meant, what would her legacy be. When she couldn't answer that, she decided on a total career overhaul, to send herself back to college and start doing something she enjoyed. That path took her to photography and now she produces some astonishingly beautiful art. I walked away from the conversation asking myself the same questions. If my life suddenly ended now and I had to reflect on what I have achieved and what it has all meant, what could I really say I've done?

Recently, I reflected on my role as a mother and homemaker, and somewhat defiantly asserted that I am perfectly satisfied and fulfilled with this as my occupation and that it is no problem for me to have put any thoughts of a professional career on the back burner until my children are all in school. I stand by that, but chatting with the photographer last month really started me thinking about WHAT I will do when my youngest child starts school and my days are my own again. 

When I was a youngster, I had dozens of ideas about what profession I would undertake when I grew up. When I was 9, I wanted to be a vet (until thoughts of having to put animals to sleep deterred me). When I was 12 I wanted to be a journalist, much to my grandmother's horror! At 15, I wanted to go into law and actually spent a week's work experience in a solicitors office. Realising that I'm not ruthless enough to be a good lawyer put paid to that ambition, and from there I cycled through archaeology, anthropology, teaching, nursing, midwifery - actually, I've lost track of all the career possibilities that have fluttered in and out of my What I Want To Do When I Grow Up spectrum. So here I am, 28 years old, wife and mother, and absolutely naff all idea of what I want to do When I Grow Up. 

I know that I want it to be meaningful. I've always said I wanted a "career", not a "job". I want to make a difference to other people's lives, and set an example to my children that nothing is beyond your reach if you work hard enough. But do I have the courage to see this through? I have friends and family who do Important Jobs, and have Offices and Letters After Their Names. I confess to being more than a little intimidated by listening to my family chat about this, that or the other development with their workplaces. Will I ever be able to contribute to that sort of conversation? 

How do you measure "success"? If my children are happy, well adjusted individuals with a loving, secure family background, can I realistically ask for anything more? Without wanting to get into an existential conundrum (to which I am exceptionally prone), why does it matter in the grand scheme of things if I live my life quietly, without a high-flying career? My childhood best friend and I used to dream of all the wonderful things we would achieve, and while she is indeed off being Important now, my life is much more subdued and domestic. Nobody beyond my immediate family will remember me after I'm gone. My name will never be in history books. That doesn't bother me but it also doesn't help this lingering feeling that I ought to have SOME idea of what I'm going to do When I Grow Up. 

Perhaps this is a common feeling amongst stay at home parents. I'd certainly welcome any feedback from others in this position, and especially any tips on how to deal with it. I have a couple of friends who've recently returned to work after taking time out to care for small children and I'm dying to pick their brains about how they found it. 

The big bad "B" word - bedsharing

I'm going to try and resist the temptation to write a load of "for" and "against" points in this post. There is a wealth of evidence that sleeping in the same bed as your baby is perfectly safe as long as you observe a handful of safety points, all of which are nicely summarised here. This post is simply my personal experience of it, particularly in the last 3 months since my youngest son was born. 

I first discovered bedsharing quite by accident. My first son was about 3 weeks old and I was beyond sleep-deprived. He was not an easy baby by any means, especially when it came to sleeping. He hated his Moses basket, screamed if put in a cot, snoozed briefly in the car seat as long as you stood up swinging it back and forth but woke the moment you put it down. After 3 weeks, I was deranged with tiredness. My friend's mum, a wonderful midwife, came to visit and asked me if I'd tried lying down on my bed to feed him. She helped me get comfortable, pointed out the safety do's and don'ts and left us to it. He went to sleep! And he stayed asleep for hours. AND I SLEPT TOO! When we woke up, I felt like a new woman and resolved to stick with this marvellous practice every night. When my second son and then my daughter came along, there was no question of where and how they would sleep, and the same applied when this baby was born. 

What differed this time was the attitude of the health care professionals I encountered. Previously I felt I had to play down the role of bedsharing in our lives, or print out studies demonstrating that it was safe as responses to the concerns of health visitors. Lying in bed on the postnatal ward after Baby T was born in May, however, my eyes were drawn to a little A4 poster on the door (which I cannot for the life of me find an online edition of!) containing a drawing of a bedsharing mother and baby, and a summary of the safety advice. It seems that finally the medical profession is recognising that most mothers will, at some stage and sometimes only for one night out of desperation, have their babies sleep in bed with them and that rather than put forth blanket advice to not do this, it is far more sensible to at least tell parents how to do it safely. I'm surprised that I actually feel SO much better for being able to come out of the closet and talk openly to my health visitor about bedsharing!

So what have the last 3 months actually been like for us as a family at bedtime? Well, mostly pretty good. T is, for the most part, a great sleeper. On average he wakes 2 - 3 times a night to be fed, at which point he turns half onto his side, snoozily latches on and then falls asleep again when he's done. I am very pleased to not have to leave my bed in order to tackle the night feeds! Recently he's taken to falling asleep around 8pm at which point we put him in the carry cot downstairs and then I move him to his cot in our room when we go to bed, where he'll sleep until around 2am. I have to confess that for the first few nights he did this, I couldn't sleep. I felt very anxious even though he was only a few feet away! When he's lying next to me, I can quickly check that he's still breathing, he's not too hot or cold etc. When he's in his cot, I worry that I wouldn't immediately know if something was wrong. Plus when we fall asleep in bed together, I like to hold his little hand and I miss that when he's all the way over there in his cot! 

It's not all sunshine and daisies though. My hips and back are struggling with lying in the same position all night. Left to my own devices, I like to sleep on my front, limbs sprawled out as much as I can! Definitely can't do that with a baby in the bed. Lying on my side is my least favourite sleeping position. We've also had to contend with a bed that isn't really quite big enough... we only have a 'small double' bed, not a full double. It's a squeeze with me and my husband in (both sprawly, inconsiderate sleepers!), but adding the baby to the mix makes it a combination of uncomfortable and not really safe (baby gets too hot in between the both of us, or is too close to the edge of the bed if I lie in the middle). So in order to make it a safe sleeping environment, my husband has taken to using either the air bed in our room or the spare room, or sleeping on our (admittedly very comfortable and big) sofa. We've had to put a lot of work into replacing that lost intimacy of sleeping next to each other but we're doing alright with that. We both know it won't be forever that the baby is in our bed, plus we know that if it became a real issue for our relationship, we could simply invest in a bigger bed and then all snuggle in together safely!

As much as I'm looking forward to getting my bedspace back and being able to sprawl again, I know I'll really miss waking up next to a little baby face. My older children all abandoned my bed by their first birthday (apart from occasional nights if they were poorly or had a bad dream) and it was a sad moment for me to realise that I wouldn't curl up for a snooze with them again. My husband and I have said repeatedly that we're really throwing ourselves into embracing all the hard work of a baby's first months this time because we know Baby T is our last and if we wish this time away, we will regret it.  So yes, bedsharing has its bad points as much as its good points, but I wouldn't give it up for the world. 

Month one of breastfeeding...

As part of my mini-series of blogs giving a warts 'n' all account of my first few weeks or months (whenever I get bored of writing about it or you get bored of reading it!) of life with a new baby, it seemed appropriate to include something about breastfeeding, particularly with National Breastfeeding Week coming up at the end of this month. One of my pet peeves (I have a few) about how we treat breastfeeding is the lack of transparency and realism used in promoting it to expectant parents. Most of the literature pregnant women receive about breastfeeding contains beautifully shot photographs depicting calm, romanticised scenes of a laid back mother and a content, snuggly baby. Very lovely to look at, very lovely to imagine yourself doing. Not entirely representative of the early days establishing breastfeeding, and thus not actually terribly helpful.

When my first son was tiny and I was trying to get to grips with feeding him, I struggled. He didn't latch well, I felt awkward holding him, my arms ached from lifting him and holding him in position to feed, my nipples were sore, I developed mastitis, I felt self-conscious about exposing bits of wobbly postnatal belly when lifting my jumper, I leaked milk everywhere between feeds and from whichever side I wasn't feeding from at the time - never mind the fact that he CRIED. A lot. I was certain that there was something wrong with what he was being fed, either the quantity or the quality. Why else would he cry?? I remember loudly lamenting to my midwife that boobs really should be see-through and have little marks down the side to help keep track of how much milk babies had taken! Looking back now, I see that comment as sadly indicative of how far we've marginalised breastfeeding and normalised bottle feeding in its place.

 It wasn't a snuggly and calm experience, and I thought I must be doing it wrong because it didn't feel like the pictures suggested it should. The remedy to this was chatting with a bunch of other breastfeeding mums I knew from baby groups and realising that we had all experienced varying degrees of discomfort and awkwardness, worry and frustration. I wasn't weird and certainly wasn't doing it wrong! That's just what it's like trying to learn a new skill when you're already tired and uncomfortable from having given birth days or hours before. Imagine trying to learn to drive when you haven't slept properly in days, then giving yourself a hard time for struggling to coordinate your hands and feet to control the vehicle!

So. This time would be fine for me, right? I've breastfed three other children for around a year each. I'm a trained peer supporter and have read an almost absurd amount of stuff about how breastfeeding works. So I wasn't going to have any problems getting to grips with feeding this baby... HAHA. How wrong was I.

The very first time I fed him was lovely. Ok so I may be remembering that through rose-tinted glasses. I was still very uncomfortable after the birth, covered in blood and sweat (I promised honesty!), still high from the pethidine and gas & air, starving hungry and really, really tired. But he latched like a pro and quite happily munched away for about half an hour while his Dad & I cooed over how beautiful he was. Later on when we had settled into the postnatal ward, I tried to feed him again. He promptly clamped his mouth shut and wanted nothing to do with me. "Alright", I thought, "that's fine. You've been born with plentiful fat stores to keep you going, you're probably a bit zonked from the pethidine. This isn't a problem". I held him and he went to sleep, so I lay down and snoozed for a while myself. Throughout the following morning I tried again to feed him, anxious to tell the midwives that he was feeding well so we could go home at some point that day. No matter what I did - all the tricks in the book about stripping his clothes off, tickling his feet, skin to skin contact, changing feeding positions - he wasn't interested. Even when we got home that evening, he didn't want to know. I was still reminding myself that this is ok, he was very awake and alert but just preferred to be held and look at faces.

Around midnight, something happened. I don't know what, but it's like someone flicked his 'hunger' switch on and peaceful snoozy baby morphed into Screaming Booby Monster. He fed and fed and fed and fed for three hours straight. I knew he wasn't latching properly, I could see that his mouth wasn't opening enough when I was putting him to the breast and I could feel that something wasn't right as I was feeding him but he was busy munching away and I didn't dare disturb him in case he resumed screaming. After 3 days, I was at the stage of toe-curling pain when he started feeding. Every now and then, I'd manage to get him to open his mouth really wide and the pain would be virtually non-existant for that feed, so I assumed that the issue was purely my laziness in getting him to latch properly and all I needed was to really concentrate on getting him to open his mouth wide enough each time and we'd be onto a winner. Oh, and to apply lashings of Lansinoh in between feeds. Not to digress, but I really do love that stuff, perhaps too much. I remember day five, waiting for family to come and visit and being in floods of tears because that particular morning he had fed solidly from 6am to 1pm without more than a few minutes break, and I felt like I was either going to lose my mind, or my boobs were going to fall off. I dreaded having to try and explain that he was just having a fanatical feeding day and I was fine with this, potentially having to field suggestions to maybe give him a bottle or justify why I didn't want to do that. Thankfully he mellowed out just as our visitors arrived and was mostly lovely company for the afternoon.

Through a series of clerical mishaps, we didn't see the midwife again until Baby T was 10 days old, at which point they weighed him and announced that not only was he back to his birth weight, but he'd actually exceeded it by a further 3 ounces. That was very exciting news to me and reassured me that although latching him on still hurt quite a bit (less so since I'd taken to smearing myself in Lansinoh!), he was clearly getting enough milk, so it was all worth it. I casually mentioned the discomfort to the midwife, but said I wasn't worried because he was gaining weight really well, had masses of wet and dirty nappies so everything must actually be going fine. She decided to check him over anyway and within seconds had spotted that he had a tongue tie. This was a relatively new concept to me as tongue tie wasn't as widely known about when I did my training or when my other children were babies. If you feel underneath your tongue, you'll find a tiny thin bit of flesh attaching your tongue to the bottom of your mouth. In babies with tongue-tie, that bit of flesh is too short and/or attached too far forward, preventing them from thrusting their tongues forward and thus latching on to the breast properly.

I can't tell you how thrilled I was when she said that to me. That may sound really ridiculous but I was starting to lose faith in myself. As I said before, I've breastfed three other children, trained in breastfeeding support and spend an inordinate amount of my spare time reading up on issues surrounding breastfeeding. Establishing breastfeeding with my own baby should have been a doddle! Admitting that I had sore nipples from a poor latch was pretty embarrassing to be honest, so being told that it wasn't my fault was music to my ears! Best of all, it was something that could be remedied! She rang the community midwives office to ask for a referral to our resident lactation consultant, who happens to be a bit of an authority on tongue tie, and I was astonished for her to then ask if we were available to pop in and see her the following morning for a consultation and possibly to have Baby T's tongue tie divided. That's pretty fast moving for any NHS procedure, but in the context of what I've read of other parents waiting weeks to see someone, battling to have a tongue tie properly diagnosed or even find a doctor who recognises that such a thing exists, this was absolutely monumental.

As the evening wore on, I started to feel nervous about the morning's appointment. The excitement had worn off, and instead apprehension about the idea of dividing his tongue tie crept in. It's a tiny, tiny procedure. It takes half a second at most and the staff who do it are very well trained. From what I'd read, it's less distressing to a baby than the standard heel prick test almost every baby in the UK has at 6 days old, or the vaccinations at 2, 3 and 4 months old. But still... something about the idea of anyone sticking a pair of surgical scissors into my baby's mouth to snip a bit of flesh... Well quite frankly the very idea of it brought me out in cold sweats.  I prepared myself mentally to argue every which way against having it divided until I was absolutely certain that it was necessary and that doing so would improve Baby T's wellbeing.

The appointment was actually much less alarming that I'd convinced myself it would be. The midwife was lovely, very comforting but also straightforward and no-nonsense. She went through the assessment paperwork with us and explained how they determine the severity of a tongue tie in terms of how it impacts a baby's ability to feed. We also talked through how long and frequently Baby T had been feeding - not easy considering that I hadn't been paying attention and just fed him if he wailed! I pointed out that I was very reluctant to have the procedure done as my pain and discomfort was reducing through me really concentrating on getting his latch right, and he was clearly getting enough milk because his weight gain was really good. It wasn't until we looked again at his feeding pattern that I realised his weight gain was so good because I had probably spent about 70% of my time doing nothing but feeding him over the previous eleven days. Newborn babies are supposed to feed a lot; their tummies are tiny - walnut sized really - so they fill up quickly and also empty very frequently! I had simply put down his frequency and length of feeding to normal newborn behaviour, but actually from the midwife observing him feed, we could both see that he wasn't getting a lot of milk in one go, so needed to feed for ages on end to fill up. Closer examination of his mouth showed us that his tongue tie was actually pretty bad and he could barely move his tongue around - certainly not enough to ever be able to latch on properly to be fed. Although his weight gain had been great so far, that would most likely tail off quite quickly and he'd start to struggle. I didn't want to leave it until he was older to have the tie divided because it would be more distressing to him then, so we decided to go for it. I wimped out of holding him and asked my husband to take over while I got ready to feed him. The moment it was done, he squawked a little but he was handed back to me immediately and settled down to feed. I promptly burst into tears and gripped him fiercely but once I calmed down it dawned on me that I couldn't feel any pain from him feeding!

For the next couple of days, I carried on really concentrating on getting him to open his mouth wide and latch properly - the midwife had warned that he'd effectively need to re-learn what to do with his mouth now that he could move his tongue properly - but the real surprise was how much shorter his feeds suddenly were. Whereas I'd previously sit for half an hour or more to feed him, he would now either fall asleep or un-latch himself after something more like ten minutes. I haven't had him weighed again yet, but he's outgrown a handful of his first outfits and started to develop chubby cheeks and thighs.

Since having the tongue tie sorted, I've tried very hard not to worry about anything breastfeeding related. I'm no longer in pain, Baby T is most definitely putting on weight and becoming more alert and interactive, he's sleeping well (that's another blog in itself ;-) ) and is generally wonderful to be around. Aside from a couple of days feeling under the weather with mild mastitis, all has been much smoother for the last two weeks. The health visitor is coming again this Friday and will weigh him again so I'm looking forward to seeing how well the weight gain is going now - especially as there is a small part of me competing with a friend whose baby is the same age and is gaining weight like a professional!

If there is one thing I would hope an expectant mother to take from this post, it is to accept that the early days are not going to be a picnic - and that that's ok! Read lots, talk to other breastfeeding mums and health care professionals, but also accept that when you're sore, aching, exhausted and bewildered by a tiny, wailing creature for whose wellbeing and survival you are entirely responsible, all that preparation will go out of the window and even the most seasoned breastfeeder will falter without the right support at hand. Without the local midwives and lactation consultant really knowing their stuff and reaching out to offer me the help I needed, this last month would have been infinitely more troublesome than it has been. I think we've just about settled down now and I feel confident and comfortable with breastfeeding. Now all I have to sort out is my wardrobe! Finding summery tops that I can breastfeed in comfortably is harder than it sounds - particularly as 'comfortably' for me absolutely has to mean that I don't worry about flashing bits of wobbly belly at anyone. So far I've favoured the two layered approach with a vest top underneath a baggier top, so I'm exposing the minimum amount of flesh possible. That's fine while the weather is so grim, but if it warms up over July & August, I'm going to have to go shopping!

While I'm on the topic of breastfeeding, I'll take the opportunity to shout out to a few other blogs worth reading if you're a breastfeeding woman, or pregnant and want to read more:

For great tips on fashionable clothes and breastfeeding (because I'm still a girl and still love clothes!): Milk Chic Breastfeeding Fashion blog and website

For amazingly eloquent and stirring pieces on new research or responses to coverage in the media:
The Analytical Armadillo blog (from a certified lactation consultant)

For great info and more bare-bones truth about breastfeeding:
Dispelling Breastfeeding Myths blog

Edited to include the lovely Kim of the Little Leaf (I've just discovered her blog and am a little bit in love with it)


And a list of helplines from the NCT is available HERE

One final edit - I saw this just now and needed to share it!

Next time - Bedsharing!

*THAT* Time Magazine cover...

How could I not blog about it? I mean really... Everyone and their dog seems to have an opinion on Time's May edition front cover photo and it seems to have caused quite the whirlwind. Never one to resist a good bandwagon, I feel it's only polite for me to contribute my two-penneth on the matter. 

You can't possibly have missed it, but just in case you have, here is the image in question:

The lady is 26 year old mother of two, Jamie Lynne Grumet from Los Angeles, and the child is her near-4 year old son, Aram. So there's the introductions done with: Jamie and Aram, meet the world. The world, meet Jamie and Aram. OH! But wait... I forgot the pivotal character in this photograph - Jamie's BREAST. And oh my word, look where it is! Aren't we all just shocked to our very core? No? Oh... No, neither was I. It's a woman, breastfeeding her son. That's it. I have no reaction to it beyond that. I've known plenty of mothers and children who've enjoyed breastfeeding up to and beyond 4 years of age and it's just one of the many things that some parents and children enjoy doing together and others don't. 

There is, however, something I really, really don't like about the magazine cover. That caption... right there... Are You Mom Enough? Ick, yuk and shudder. I'm not even sure where to begin with dissecting this one. Firstly, every woman who has ever been pregnant is a mother. One-hundred per cent. There aren't degrees of motherhood, there isn't a checklist of achievements and activities that you tick off and at the end there's a shiny medal. I don't care how or whether you gave birth, how you fed your baby, where your baby slept, how you transported him or her around - we are all 100% mothers and should support and care for each other in that. There are plenty of parenting choices that I don't like and wouldn't practice myself, some that actually upset me a little because of the reasoning behind them or research demonstrating potential long term negative effects - but I am no "more" a mother because I of the things I do or don't do with my children. It just isn't a competition. 

The juxtaposition of that dreadful, loaded question with the image really sets up attachment parenting as the sort of movement that DOES consider parenting to be a competitive sport though. It's no wonder that the general public see us as weird, yoghurt-knitting hippies with superiority complexes because we practice x, y and z. I made the terrible mistake of reading comments from the general public on a range of websites that had written about this issue over the last couple of days, and some of them really made me incredibly sad. The vitriol directed at attachment parenting and the people who practice it is intense in places. Allegations of child molestation and paedophilia, accusations that this sort of parenting produces dependent, slothful adults who don't know how to function, and the favourite "it's all for the mother's selfish benefit". Selfish? Child abusers?? That hurts. It's also untrue but that should be obvious anyway - right? Well here's the problem... The mass media LOVE a juicy contentious issue to whip the public up into a bit of moral outrage. It sells, it's sexy news. I have never read or even considered Time Magazine before (I don't think it's a big thing here in the UK anyway) but here I am writing about it having spent a lot of today reading what other people have written about it. So clearly it's NOT obvious that we're not all judgmental lunatics. 

Actually if you go out and meet the sorts of women who breastfeed their children to whatever age, share a bed with them, use a sling or carrier more often than a pram or stroller, you'll find that, on the whole, we're really very ordinary. In fact, I defy anyone to single out one parent in their entire social circle who has not, at some stage, either breastfed (even only once after birth), slept in the same bed as their baby (even just one night out of sleep-deprived desperation!) or carried their baby in a sling of whatever design.

Very few of us are bonkers and self-righteous - naturally a few are, but then you find bonkers, self-righteous types in all walks of life! Just because some people who prefer bed-sharing, breastfeeding and baby-carrying are a bit nuts, this doesn't automatically mean that ALL parents who adopt this approach to raising their children are funny in the head. Somehow the sweeping generalisation that we are seems to have become the normal perception of attachment parenting, and sadly coverage like the Time magazine front cover really only serves to fuel that misconception.

Reading an interview with the lady in the photograph, something jumped out at me about her appreciation of Dr. Bill Sears - the man credited with pulling together the philosophies behind attachment parenting and shaping it into a defined 'style' of raising children. When asked if she was a fan of his, Ms. Grumet replied that she finds him to be "a gentle spirit... nonjudgmental and relevant... The way he does it is graceful and educating rather than condemning"

That's a perfect summary of how I feel we should all treat one another in our journey as parents. It's what attracted me to join support groups for attachment parenting and why I enjoy reading the blogs and books written on the subject. I have encountered judgment and condemnation, but as a recipient from those who don't understand what my parenting choices are about, because they have chosen not to educate themselves about it but instead to make assumptions gleamed from snapshots misrepresenting the whole area - rather like this magazine cover. Or like the Channel 4 documentary on "Extreme Breastfeeding". Or like the plethora of Daily Mail articles maligning parents and particularly mothers at any given opportunity... You get the idea. It is very difficult to find a piece of popular media that presents attachment parenting or any of its constituent elements in a positive and open-minded light. In fairness, why would they? It's not interesting if you talk about it sensibly and encourage people to make up their own minds. It sells FAR many more issues if you get people really riled up, set parents up as warring factions hissing and spitting at one another's choices. Throw in some really obtuse reference to sex and you're onto a winner! 

So there is my opinion on the debacle. The fact that the woman in the picture is breastfeeding a four-year old is neither here nor there. I'm far more concerned by the unfortunate message that is being given out about attachment parenting and the people who embrace it. 

So it's my due date!

Aaaand I'm still pregnant. It's not that big a deal, most babies are born after their due date anyway (makes you wonder why we bother with them!). I'm a little dismayed simply because two of my other children were born in the days leading up to the due date and I've had so many false starts in the last couple of weeks, we've been on edge and ready for Baby Alert for ages.

I did promise in my last post that I would keep an honest and open diary about my experience of having a new baby, so this seems like a good place to start. How I feel about going overdue... I would love to say that I'm on board with the barefoot hippy mentality that knows my baby will be born when he's good and ready, and not before. I actually know women who are not only perfectly happy to go beyond the 40 week mark, but actually object on principal to any medical intervention that would bring on labour artificially. Man, I would LOVE to have that sort of outlook and faith in my body. It's not that going overdue frightens me... I have every confidence that my body will look after my baby until he's ready to deal with the outside world. I'm just really bloody uncomfortable and running out of patience now!

I have armed myself with the plastic smile and stock answer of "yes I'm fine, just very excited" ready for when people ask me how I'm feeling. I'm not fine and excited is not the number 1 emotion I'm feeling at the moment, but I have learned that when people ask a heavily pregnant women how she's feeling, they don't actually want to be told that you're sick of swollen ankles, piles, sleep deprivation, heartburn, constant loo visits, not being able to see your own foof to keep up personal grooming and so on. If anything, it seems to invite responses like "ahh but you're lucky really because so many women can't get pregnant at all", or even "you'll get no sympathy from me, this is all self-inflicted!" (this was genuinely said to me a few days ago). So, the next time someone asks me how I'm feeling at 9 months pregnant whilst running round after 3 small children, I will tell them that I'm fine and very excited about meeting our latest family member.

I will confess now to obsessively watching my moods and changes in my body for anything that indicates impending labour. Apparently a strong desire to clean the house coupled with an inexplicable irritability at everyone and everything is a dead giveaway that I'm about to give birth. Well... I clean all the time because I have 3 children and a very messy husband. If I didn't clean all the time, my house would be revolting! I'm grouchy because I'm heavily pregnant and have to spend all my free time cleaning my house! So I don't think I can trust those two 'signs'...  Every little cramp and twinge I get is carefully analysed so I can decide whether that was a strong Braxton Hicks (sort of like a contraction but just a practice one) or a very mild proper contraction, and then timed to monitor regularity and increases in frequency. I'm not going to talk about going to the loo.. I know, I know I promised honesty, but the women who've done pregnancy and childbirth before will know where this is going, and those who haven't really don't want to know. I will leave you with one word that says enough: mucous. There, be glad that I'm not going into more detail!

So you can tell that I'm definitely NOT in line with the super-relaxed barefoot hippy momma philosophy just now. I want this baby out, sooner rather than later. I want my body back! I want to be able to put my jeans on without enlisting my husband's help. I would very much like to be able to reach my ankles when I shave my legs. I'd really, really like to be able to get off the sofa without having to rock back and forth to gain momentum, like a tortoise stuck on its back (a source of great amusement for friends and family last weekend!).

But... I Am Fine And Very Excited. Honestly.

Next: my birth story (whenever it flipping well happens!). Will I get my intervention-free, drug-free water birth? Or will I end up flat on my back at the midwife's insistence and begging for an epidural?

A promise...

If you've been reading my blog for a while, or if you know me in real life, it can't have escaped your attention that I'm very passionate about my parenting choices and the philosophy behind them. I have often heard it said that it is much easier to preach than to practice, and I agree this is almost entirely true of parenting - even for those who have done this, that and the other. Looking back with rose tinted glasses at my journey through intervention-free birth, breastfeeding, bed-sharing, gentle discipline etc. I'm very certain I've edited out the parts where I doubted myself, where I maybe even thought I was a fool for not doing what the books said in the name of maintaining some semblance of a pre-baby identity. 

And so here is my promise: as I am currently 38 weeks pregnant with baby no.4 and have every intention of following all this stuff I blog about and talk about incessantly, I will also endeavour to keep as honest a diary of this experience as I can. I will not hold back on talking about the difficult parts, I will not censor myself and romanticise what I do in order to make it seem more appealing to others. This may mean that sometimes I write uncomfortable truths - uncomfortable for myself to admit in a public domain and for others to read without judgment. I talk a lot about transparency and the need for expectant parents to have realistic ideas about life with a new baby, and so I offer up my no-holds-barred, warts 'n' all stories. 

Can I actually practice what I preach and embrace it as joyfully as my memory likes to tell me I did previously? We shall see....! 

Discourse Theory and Parenting - Deconstructing the Social Construct

For this post, I will don my amateur anthropologist hat (it's a pink sombrero if you're interested) and attempt to examine how the social phenomenon of "Parenting" (the capital P is important) has been shaped by the language we use to discuss it and how this influences the decisions we make about raising our children.

Before we get our teeth into the subject matter, I'd like to define a few of the terms which will crop up here and there. This is purely because today's post is written from an Anthropological perspective, which is great if you're an Anthropologist and understand the social theory behind my ideas. If you've never even glanced over them, however, they just don't make sense! It took me a while to get my head around some of the themes and perspectives I studied during my degree. 

• Discourse theory - specifically "discursive formation" as outlined by Michél Foucault. The essence of this is that the language surrounding an idea is itself an integral element of its construction. Everything abstract exists as a product of the exchange of thought processes which created it.

That still sounds like complete nonsense, doesn't it? Yeah, I thought so too. Let's look at it in practice. Teenagers didn't exist pre-World War Two. Obviously they did exist, in that there were living people aged between 13 and 19 but they weren't "teenagers" as we know them today. The modern teenager - in his scruffy clothes, obnoxious attitude, untidy bedroom and general misanthropic outlook has been entirely constructed by post-war social ideas. Prior to this, adolescents were miniature adults, often out working, rarely in school past the age of 14 (in the case of working class families) but the idea of hormone-ridden, juveniles skulking round the streets in hooded tops and trainers just wasn't there in any form (further reading: Language, Class & Identity - Teenagers Fashioning Themselves Through Language)

It is the exchange of concepts through dialogue that shapes such a social phenomenon as The Teenager. The word 'teen age' (adj) itself first appeared in writing in a Canadian publication dated 1921, but was enclosed in quotation marks, signifying that it wasn't a fully integrated entry into the dictionary or normal language. From the late 1940s and early 1950s, "teen-age" began to appear in newspaper articles and was eventually included in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1950-something (I will find an actual date for that at some stage, promise!). Don't even get me started on "emo"!

George Orwell exploited this idea of the power of language and how it shapes concepts in his novel 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. In the text, he creates "Newspeak" and "Doublethink" (combined in later linguistic theory to form "doublespeak"), which are effectively the two ways in which 'Big Brother' and  'the Party' have reduced the English language right down to a skeleton form; words have simply been removed from the lexicon in order to extinguish the concepts which they represent. In practice, this would mean that by removing the word "revolution" from the language, it ceases to exist as an idea and thus there can be no social uprising against the government. Doublethink is the mental process accompanying the implementation of Newspeak, in which the user is simultaneously aware that the truth has been altered and that the 'new' truth is now the only truth. If you haven't read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', you really should. It's an excellent insight into how we use language. 

Anyway, I digress. The point is that there are lots of ways in which you can explore the role of language and discourse in forming, sustaining and eliminating social phenomena. 

Are you still with me? Well done! Now for another one...

• Cultural/social construct -  this isn't dissimilar to how I've defined discourse theory. It's another expression of how events and phenomena only exist as a product of the exchanges which have defined them and characteristics that have been attributed to them. This extends beyond the language (discourse) though and looks at social norms and values, shared understandings across social groups.

Again, to put it into practice - gender roles are a cultural construct, as opposed to being innately defined by our biology. "Gender" is obviously a biological fact - a person's DNA will either express them as being Male or Female, but how that is expressed throughout their social lives is constructed BY the society in which they live. There is nothing in my biology which says that I, as the woman, must take charge of the housework in our home while my husband goes out to work - but this is the expected norm because my role as a woman has been decided by shared understandings, passed on from one generation to another. A 'stay at home dad' is regarded as quite the exception, because it goes against the cultural construct of the man's gender role.

Got me? That one is a bit easier to get your teeth into. Just beware of trying to apply it to more abstract scenarios... I recall having an argument with one of my lecturers because he said that Science is a social construct. He did persuade me eventually, but the depth of the theory to explain it was so elaborate that I've never been able to recall it since. Safe to say, pretty much everything is a cultural construct. 

So those are the two biggest themes that will come up in today's post. As I said, you can break just about anything down as being a cultural construct - including Parenting.

You don't have to look far to see parenting in practice as a social event. Comedians will base whole routines around their experiences as a mother or father, there are websites set up with the express purpose of attracting mothers (and fathers, but more so the former) to discuss elements of their child-rearing, adverts for various household products and brands will often refer to "Mums prefer this" as a point in their superiority over competitors (my Asda loo roll promises me that 3 out of 4 Mums prefer it to the leading brand). Parents are a Big Deal in modern British society. The industry behind pregnancy, birth, baby care, childhood is enormous - at present I don't have even a ballpark figure for how much the UK baby industry is worth, but it is A Lot. Parenting is also a contentious issue in the media. Barely a day goes by when some news story or other doesn't come up about the impact of children's upbringing on their functionality as adults, whether it's behavioural, nutritional, medical - there is almost always something in the news about all the new stuff researchers are learning about how we develop from infants.

There is a huge number of phrases most parents will be familiar with, and each one is an idea entirely constructed by society:

Hands up if you've heard these before? (you don't really have to raise your hand, I won't see it anyway)

They are all ideas about modern parenting that crop up time and time again in the literature and general conversation between mums & dad, health care providers and self-styled "baby experts". Some of them relate to behaviours we anticipate our offspring to exhibit at certain stages (like sleeping for a particular number of hours overnight), some refer to the DREADFUL consequences of making certain choices about how to raise our children (I have an impressive collection of 'rods for my back' according to some people). And then there's this one: 'a happy mum means a happy baby' - this one induces the sort of head-meets-desk response from me; it's overly simplistic, thoughtless and frankly just not true! (read more HERE)

One thing that all these buzz words have in common is that they are entirely derived from Western social concepts about how babies ought to behave and how parents ought to achieve this arbitrary standard.  

Babies, as we know them in the modern context, are a social construct. I promise that is not complete nonsense! Biologically, we produce offspring. Humans are a mammalian species who give birth to live young (rather than laying eggs, etc) and provide their first nutrition in the form of milk from the mother's breasts. That is how science has differentiated mammals from reptiles, birds, insects etc. However, a chimpanzee baby and a human baby have very different roles within society. I can't recall any zoological studies investigating the sleep patterns of 12 week old baby chimpanzees, or groups of chimpanzee mothers coming together to discuss when they plan to start introducing solid food to their young one's diet. That sort of preoccupation is very much a human practice, and even more so in the last 50 years than earlier in history. 

Why? 

Why, if we're just another mammal, do we get so caught up in how we raise our children and all the possible combinations of consequences that decisions about this, that and the other might have?

I have some ideas about why, and it is all down to how human society has constructed The Baby. In the West, a newborn baby is a helpless, feeble, dependent being, reliant entirely on its parents for sustenance, warmth, protection and love. It is the job of the parents to enable this little creature to survive and to endow it with the ability to function as a biological entity, independent of its parents. The word "independent" is highlight in red there, because that is the fundamental point of Western parenting. Our focus is very much on assisting our babies to stop needing us as soon as is safe for them. Discourse about feeding babies often focuses on the baby's dependence on the mother as a negative of breastfeeding, or the ability of any other person to feed the baby as a positive of bottle feeding; we have the most bizarre obsession with how long our babies sleep at night and WHERE, with the self-proclaimed experts extolling the virtues of an infant learning to sleep alone as early as possible; behavioural observations will comment on making a baby 'clingy' if he or she is picked up and soothed every time a cry is uttered, and there are an increasing number of methods populating the book shelves claiming to teach your baby how to "self-soothe". 

The outcome of all this is that parents begin their life with a new baby thinking almost from the word go about how and when their child will be less reliant on them to meet their every need. It has spawned a counter-revolution of parenting philosophies which rebels against this yearning for independence and calls itself "attachment parenting", with the emphasis on continual physical contact with a baby through breastfeeding, carrying the baby in a sling rather than a pram, bedsharing where safe to do so and so on.  Ironically, these are the sorts of practices which invite the "rod for your own back"  and "clingy baby" remarks and prompted me to write this blog in defence of my own choices.

For a moment, let's compare this to Japan. I read a fascinating article examining maternal and infant interactions in Japan and from it gleamed that The Baby as a social construct is a very different creature there than it is in the West. For them, The Baby is from birth an autonomous being and must be taught how to form relationships with other humans through ongoing contact from the parents. The social norm is much more in favour of maximised contact between the mother and baby, habitual bedsharing rates are infinitely higher as are breastfeeding statistics. Two groups of human beings, viewing and behaving towards their offspring in remarkably different ways, and all can be traced back to socially constructed ideas and how they are represented through the discourse surrounding parents and parenting.

I follow quite a few parenting blogs and their pages on Facebook, and there is a definite reoccurring  theme among the posts from other readers. They are almost all related to how they feel they are negatively viewed and treated by other people for the choices they have made - this may manifest as being criticised for breastfeeding in public, well-meant but ultimately unwelcome 'advice' from relatives, observations about a baby's weight/sleep/general demeanour as a negative consequence of some choice made by the parents. I challenge you to find a single parent who does not feel that at some stage they have been criticised, however subtly, for a decision they have made about caring for their child. 

So this is what we as a society have achieved: we have elevated the status of parenthood and parenting by creating a lucrative industry behind it, supported that status by revering the Mother and Father figure as paradigms of virtue in advertising of the most benign products and yet also constructed such an unnatural and inaccessible ideal of The Baby that your average man and woman waiting to welcome their first child will find themselves overwhelmed with conflicting advice as to what is "the best" thing to do.