Uncomfortable truths

I love learning new stuff. There are few things more exciting than adding a new topic to my (probably relatively limited!) repertoire of Things I Know About The Universe. Sometimes though, I learn a thing I don't like; something that makes me reevaluate my place in the world and how I contribute to it. This month has shown me one such occasion. 

At the beginning of August, I attended a training day with the Green Party's "Young Greens", including a workshop on "Intersectionality". It was a new word to me and I regret to admit that I spent the first few minutes fidgeting in my seat, feeling like I was back in an A level sociology lecture. In brief, intersectionality relates to different systems of oppression and the way they overlap to form complex compounds of prejudice. We have a tendency to treat sexism, racism, homophobia, disablism etc. as distinct and isolated streams of intolerance and neglect to consider the individuals whose lives are impacted by one or more of these. You can find support systems for gay people, disabled people, ethnic minorities - but where is the inclusive, all-encompassing support for the gay, black, disabled person?

A seriously over-simplified diagram
of interlocking systems of oppression.

It sounds so straightforward, that it's almost ridiculous to have to point out that someone can be a victim of multiple systems of oppression and that we should all endeavour to see the overlaps and not separate them out into neat compartments that we know how to handle.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. Last year I wrote a blog post about Miley Cyrus and that VMA performance. It was the first time I'd really had to consider that traditional feminism sidelines non-white women, and so I wrote about the insidiously racist undertones contained within the aforementioned dance routine. Reading it back now, I could kick myself for falling into the trap of separating out sexism and racism. The two, in this case, are tightly interconnected. And I missed that.

Why did I miss that? Why did I fail to see the gap in traditional feminism that applies to women of colour? Because "white privilege".

Those two words made me squirm in my seat during the workshop and frequently since. In very basic terms, being white gives you an immediate advantage in every single area of life whilst simultaneously conditioning you to not see the privilege. Does that make sense? I'm a white British female. I've been in situations where I've felt self-conscious about my gender, some where I've been hyper-aware of my nationality. Never once have I felt that the colour of my skin might be an issue to someone or might affect my chance of getting a job, renting a house, being looked at strangely on public transport, called names in the street. I can look at newspapers, television programmes and movies and see my culture represented without giving it a second thought. THAT is the essence of white privilege. The fact that someone else had to explain that it even exists is itself indicative of the widespread normalisation of white privilege.

We don't tend to think of racism in these terms. It's easier to frame it as negative actions towards someone else based on their ethnicity, when in actual fact white privilege is the foundation upon which racism is built. 

So I've been trying to get my head around this for a few weeks, and I'm still not sure I understand it. Too many times, I've felt very defensive and upset, wanted to shut down the computer, dismiss white privilege and carry on feeling that I work far too hard to promote tolerance and social harmony to ever justify being called a tool of oppression. Do you know why it would be easy for me to do that? WHITE PRIVILEGE. Because I am white, I can - if I choose - look away from the problem and pretend it doesn't exist. I have that power because my life is not negatively impacted by the colour of my skin; I don't even have to give it a second thought. 

Something happened this week that reinforced my determination to educate myself properly on issues of race and racism. I saw a post on Facebook which had prompted a debate that eventually turned nasty and saw one person call the other "mayo face" and later "mayo brigade". I've never heard that insult before, so I googled it and learned that it is a slur used against white people. I felt an instant hollow in my chest and could have cried. Here was someone dismissing one person's entire opinion with a nasty jibe about skin colour. I felt angry, sad, humiliated - and it hadn't even been directed at me. Just a couple of words on a screen, but they ate away at me for days. It dawned on me quickly that this can't be far from what people from ethnic minorities feel All The Time. 

At what stage in their childhood did they learn that people will give them grief for no reason other than their skin is darker? What must it be like to go into a shop, browse the newspapers and see nobody who looks like you? How do you manage the frustration at being sidelined for jobs because of the colour of your skin? Even more - how do you refrain from shouting and screaming at everyone who tries to say that racism isn't an issue these days?? Because oh, god. IT IS. It so is. And this is an every day reality for people who aren't white. 

How I felt after that one isolated incident doesn't even begin to compare to prejudice experienced by non-white people, but it gave me a fleeting insight. So the next time I want to write something about feminism, I am determined to not imagine that whatever I experience as a white female could be the same as that of a black woman. I don't know nearly enough about intersectionality and how to apply it to my life, so educating myself is my goal. 

If you've read this and feel as I initially did -  defensive, annoyed and like I'm talking out of my backside - I invite you to consider that it is your position of privilege which allows you to feel this way. We cannot begin to unravel the labyrinth of prejudice until we all accept that being white and/or male and/or straight and/or able-bodied, etc. affords us certain perks that we teach ourselves to see as an automatic right.

Further reading:

Explaining privilege to a broke white person:

http://occupywallstreet.net/story/explaining-white-privilege-broke-white-person

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack:

http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

Kimberle Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins:

http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/files/socialdiff/projects/Article__Mapping_the_Margins_by_Kimblere_Crenshaw.pdf

Miley Cyrus and Accidental Racism

Right then. I couldn't resist any longer. A post about Miley Cyrus' performance at the VMAs this week...

I feel I should preface this post with a couple of points:

• Before yesterday I didn't know what "twerking" is
• Before yesterday I only had a vague grasp of what a Miley Cyrus is

Ninety per-cent of the discussion I've read about this performance has focused on its overtly sexual nature, speculation on Cyrus' drug usage, eyebrow-raising at that really weird tongue thing she does and the inappropriateness of broadcasting this routine to an audience of impressionable children and young teenagers. Until that is, Caitlin Moran retweeted a link to a blog exploring its racial implications.

I read the blog a couple of times, trying to take in the message. In all honesty, at first I felt it was overanalysing somewhat, looking for issues that weren't there. But then I'm not a black woman; I have never had to consider that traditional feminism doesn't account for specific issues faced by women of different ethnicities. That's when I started to deconstruct my own feelings about this blog post, the VMA performance and other forms of normalised "accidental" everyday racism. 

I still don't think Miley Cyrus' dance routine (I'm being generous in calling in that!) was overtly racist in the same way it was overtly sexual. But it DOES perpetuate accepted stereotypes about black women and representations of their sexuality.

To me, being racist means a deliberate and conscious act which harms or denigrates one or more people based on the colour of their skin and/or aspects of their culture. 

I don't think that applies to Miley Cyrus in this instance. What I do see in her performance is what I've called "accidental racism"; that is, an unconscious attitude towards (in this case) black culture which stereotypes and misrepresents a key intimate aspect of black women's lives. 

The fact that the racial implications of the performance need to be highlighted is entirely the point. We don't see this as 'racist' because such representations of black women and black culture have become normalised to us. A few decades ago, it wasn't seen as sexist to market a kitchen product to women in this manner because demeaning women was normal and accepted. It has taken many years to challenge that and begin to eradicate sexism, and yet we still see adverts for cleaning products, supermarket chains, etc. that focus their preference by mothers as their unique selling point. And yes, when people complain that such adverts are sexist, we're told that we're overanalysing and looking for issues that aren't there - because attitudes that cleaning and grocery shopping is the preserve of the little wifey at home are still normalised.

It is possible to perpetuate damaging racial stereotypes without realising you're doing it. This insidious form of oppression is much more difficult to challenge because it first requires an awful lot of work to demonstrate that it even exists and that you're not grasping at straws to find it. 

A few days ago, a friend published a link to a series of "automatic preference" tests, one of which looks at whether you lean towards or away from black or white people's faces. I have NO idea how it works, but when my results were given, it also gave a breakdown of the total number of respondents and the average result. Staggeringly, the majority - over a quarter - of respondents were found to have an automatic preference for white people over black people. This means that without any conscious decision making, they found a white face more tolerable than a black face. THIS is entirely what is meant by accidental racism. 

Here are the tests if you'd like to explore for yourself: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/uk/selectatest.jsp

One final thing I would like to say on this matter is that I don't hold Miley Cyrus 100% culpable for the content of her performance. There is a team of stylists, choreographers, managers and broadcasters who need to ask themselves what the hell they were thinking when they decided this was a really great routine for a young, female artist.

On being a woman.

I've been trying to write a piece on body image for over a year now but it just never seems to come out the way I want it to. I don't know any women who have lived their lives without worrying about the way they look at some stage or other. For some, it's an all-consuming anxiety. For others it's a more casual awareness, perhaps just the occasional urge to lose a few pounds for summer or to get into a particular outfit for a special occasion. Society is saturated with opinions on women's figures, faces, fashion and hair styles (I couldn't think of an 'f' for that last one!). Even the Duchess of Cambridge was exposed to this, courtesy of OK! magazine's spectacularly vile front cover this week, one day after she had given birth:

 

I've since read that OK! magazine have apologised for this feature in the wake of thousands of complaints via Twitter and Facebook. The damage has been done, however. Quite how they explain their comments on Twitter remains to be seen:

Of course, Kate Middleton isn't the only woman to find herself under this manner of postnatal weight loss scrutiny. Magazines and tabloid newspapers of this ilk have long stalked celebrity mothers, commenting on their figures before and after having had children. It's not just post-baby belly and weight gain/loss that comes under fire. Cellulite, stretch marks, lack of attention to make-up and hair - there have been entire "articles" dedicated to coverage of each and every one of these, and not complimentary ones. The overarching theme seems to be that it is not OK to 'let yourself go' just because you've become a mother. You might well have made a tiny person and taken on 24/7 care of said tiny person, but that's no excuse to not look your best. 

The effect on the average female can't be underestimated. There is a ridiculous social construct of what constitutes an acceptable appearance for females, and along with that goes the view that women who don't conform to this ideal are somehow deviant and worthy of disdain. In order to be interesting, we must first be attractive. 

Last month, Marion Bartoli won the Wimbledon Women's Championship with an absolutely smashing performance. The news coverage of her victory, however, didn't talk about her talent or her journey to the top. It didn't speak of how she could inspire a generation of youngsters to pick up a tennis racket. There was no mention of her home town's pride or how her family would celebrate. What dominated the coverage instead was a mindblowingly misogynistic remark from commentator John Inverdale. 

"Do you think Bartoli's dad told her when she was little, 'you're never going to be a looker, you'll never be a Sharapova, so you have to be scrappy and fight?'"

What relevance her appearance has to her ability to play damn good tennis, I cannot figure out. Why Maria Sharapova's looks should have given her an edge is another mystery. How sad that a fantastic achievement by a brilliantly talented woman should be sidelined in favour of discussion on her looks. 

Yesterday I watched a short but powerful interview with Dustin Hoffman in which he speaks of the moment he realised the extent to which he had bought into all the crap about women needing to be beautiful in order to be worthy of consideration. It's only 3 minutes long, so do watch it. You won't regret it:

It speaks volumes to me that this treatment of women is entirely subconscious to most people, and that women ourselves perpetuate it unknowingly. It tells me that our social consciousness is so entrenched in having a fixed definition of "beauty" that we have lost the ability to see value and worth in talent & brilliance on its own.

Look to the music industry: find me a female vocalist or musician who is not beautiful by commonly accepted standards. There are very few, if any. It seems that you can't be a successful artist if you're not marketable, and you can't market ugly chicks.

Sidelining women isn't new. Science is full of amazing, brilliant women and their achievements, but they're not household names like Einstein, Newton or Freud. Ever heard of Rosalind Franklin? Without her input, Crick and Watson couldn't have made their discovery of the structure of DNA. How about Nettie Stevens, who made critical discoveries about chromosomes determining the sex of an organism? Mathematics, literature, science, engineering, medicine, entertainment - countless industries and disciplines where the work of women has been marginalised or credited to their male counterparts. Even today the representation of women is unbalanced against that of men. The Bank of England recently announced the inclusion of Jane Austen on the £10 note, but only after a powerful campaign and backlash against the removal of Elizabeth Fry from the £5 note and her replacement with Winston Churchill. Left alone, this would have meant that there was NO female representation on our currency (aside from the Queen, obviously!). 

It all comes back to the same thing. Women face an uphill battle to achieve the same recognition and status as men, at the same time being judged for the way we look and the effort we put in to making the best of ourselves. Young girls and women are trained from an early age to worry about their appearances through exposure to the mass media and the ever increasing abundance of vanity products aimed at children. You can now buy high heels, make-up, clothing with the Playboy logo emblazoned across it - PLAYBOY, for heaven's sake! - all aimed at girls under the age of 10. 

This has turned into a longer post than I intended, and I still don't feel I've got my teeth into the subject. There is just so much surrounding this issue. The No More Page 3 campaign, Mumsnet Let Girls Be Girls campaign, every bit of feminist writing out there - all of it very much needed. The couple of examples of sexism I've picked out for this piece all relate to incidents from the last month or so. If I was to delve further back, we could be here all day discussing instances of everyday sexism and misogyny.

I think I'll have to come back to this topic when I've organised my feelings on it a little more!

Fat girl wants to wear a dress!

It's reeeaaaally hot here at the moment. Well, by British summer standards anyway. I think it must be about 28 - 29 degrees Celsius just now, which is freakin' WARM in my book. I am wearing cropped jeans and a flowery top. What I would really like to do is dig out the short-shorts and don a little vest to go with them. Nice and cool, easy to move around in - good times! Only... I can't. Because I'm overweight and according to internet memes there are RULES about how much flesh you're allowed to expose.

This has done the rounds recently on Facebook:

I hate it. Hate hate hate it. How anyone wants to dress should be their own choice, not subject to nasty jokes that basically suggest fatties should cover up. 

I much prefer this:

Fuck it. I'm getting out the shorts. Sorry, world, you'll just have to tolerate my wobbly thighs and pudgy belly. This fat bird isn't melting for anyone!

The feminist housewife...

I didn't think that "Bog Off, Cherie Blair" would work too well as a title, but please do feel free to take that as the subtext of this post. As a brief background, the former PM's wife has well and truly stuck her foot in it again by criticising stay at home mothers, calling their choice "dangerous" and claiming that they lack ambition. I've read a few different newspapers' coverage of this, trying to find some representation of it that wouldn't have me spitting feathers, but the Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail articles each brought me out in a rash of rage and frustration.

In essence, the claims made against housewives/homemakers/stay at home mothers - whatever you want to call us - are that we set a bad example to our children by not having a professional career, we set ourselves up for trial and tribulation in the future by being dependent on our husbands, and we are throwing all the achievements of our feminist mothers' generation in their faces. 

Pardon me one moment while I let out a howl of frustration and bang my head against the wall...

Ok, I have composed myself, and so to continue.

Don't get me wrong; I completely agree that it is beyond unfortunate when relationships break down and women are left in difficult positions trying to reassess their living arrangements and work out how to raise their children without the father living in the same home. I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It sucks. Nothing about being a single mother is easy - financially, emotionally, socially. I only survived because we have a fairly comprehensive welfare system designed to help people from all walks of life who need a foot-up when something goes wrong in their lives. Without that, well... I don't like to think about how I would have coped 50 years ago if I'd been in the same situation. 

The amazing, wonderful thing is that things HAVE changed in the last 50 years - for the better! Women do have more rights, better security, fewer oppressions. Some of that has come from changes to the law, giving us the vote, the right to divorce our husbands, the right to own property, the right to earn the same salary as a male counterpart and so on. Some of it has been social change, altering the way we talk about and think of women's roles, although that element appears to be lagging behind. 

Whichever way you look at it, it is much less dangerous now to be a single mother than it used to be. There are things in place designed to keep you afloat and help you get back on your feet. Still, it's sad to think that this is the preoccupying element when it comes to discussing women who choose to stay home to look after their children rather than return to paid employment outside the home. Why oh why do we need to focus so heavily on the "what if" and worst case scenario when planning our families? I know it pays to have contingency plans in the event of falling on hard times, but if fears of relationships breaking down or partners dying governed all our lifestyle choices, very few of us would take the step of having children at all. 

And so to the point about stay at home mothers lacking ambition and throwing feminism back in our forebear's faces. I called this piece "The feminist housewife" because that is how I see myself. I do not work outside the home, and yet I consider many of my principles and philosophies to have strong feminist foundations. The two are not mutually exclusive, despite what Cherie Blair may think. 

Feminism and the whole concept of the women's rights movements is all about giving women CHOICES, giving us the power to decide for ourselves how to live our lives. Where life for a woman previously revolved around her reproductive functions, the revolution of the 1960s and onwards opened the doors for women to do what they wanted, and not to have life set out for them based purely on their gender. 

It is my right to decide for myself to stay at home with my children while they are young. Society does not have the right to dictate to me that this is what I must do because I am a woman, neither does society have the right to dictate that I must have a professional career AND take care of my family because I am a woman. Yet that is what Cherie Blair and similar critics of stay at home mums suggest. Because we are women, we must achieve a balance between being the perfect partner, mother AND employee. Heaven forbid we neglect any one of those! Look to Gina Ford's latest drivel book for a stark warning on neglecting your husband's sexual needs; look to Cherie Blair for a warning about not maintaining paid employment outside your home, away from your children; and pick up any newspaper from the last ten years for plenty of right-wing lamentations about parenting failures leading to the downfall of modern society.

The message from all that is clear - WOMEN! You wanted it all - well fine! Have it all, but you'd better do it all perfectly or we'll come down on you like a tonne of bricks.

What utter claptrap. Why oh why must I tick all these boxes in order to be a successful woman? How is this any less oppressive than being told that I cannot choose a career because I happen to have been born with two X chromosomes? 

I'll say it again - feminism is about CHOICES. Cherie Blair urging women to set better examples to their children by working outside the home, ensuring that they won't be left high and dry should their husbands leave them or meet an untimely death, is the least empowering, most denigrating comment on modern womanhood that I have heard in a while. Why instead does she not urge men to take a more active role in the home and share the work of parenting? Why is she not attacking the government's latest round of welfare cuts that will actually force parents out of work because of the soaring cost of childcare and diminishing availability of subsidies? Why not support a woman's right to decide IF she wants to stay at home with her children or go out to work rather than lay the ills of the world at her doorstep?

As a feminist, I am proud to say that I have chosen to set aside my career until my children are older; I have chosen to stay at home each day to care for them, keep the house in a liveable condition and take care of the menial day-to-day tasks. When my children are older and at school, when my constant company and attention is no longer required, then I will choose to seek paid employment outside the home. I made my decisions because it was what worked best for our family dynamic. I know plenty of women for whom this life would be an utter nightmare, and for them going out to work is their best decision too. I also know plenty of women who find the whole concept of parenthood absolutely awful and do not want to have children at all. We all deserve to be supported in these choices and not told that we're wrong and that we must marry, bear children and have a career because we're women and that's what women do.

My birth story, as promised!

I am delighted to announce that baby Theodore William was born at 11:46pm on Monday May 14th after a relatively short but intense labour! Many apologies for taking an age to blog again, but it turns out that tiny babies are really quite time consuming!

In keeping with the theme of my blog, I would like to share my birth story and relate it back to the pregnancy, birth and parenting philosophies I am so passionate about. One of my favourite other parenting blogs to follow is Birth Without Fear, primarily a collection of birth stories focusing on giving birth back to women as opposed to it being the highly medicalised, intervention-driven phenomenon we often see it as today. Although the majority of the experiences shared within are drug-free home births, there are also stories of caesarean section, hospital deliveries and birth following induction of labour. The focus isn't so much on "all natural" birth, but more about empowering women to feel in control of their birth, no matter what shape it takes. I have found over the last 7 years as a mother that it is very easy to have decisions taken out of your hands and governed by hospital policies and common medical practices, even if that doesn't fit with your own ethos and comfort zone. Rebelling against these practices can be very frightening, especially when you are essentially arguing with a highly qualified medical professional about what they do for a living. One of the most helpful tools I was given at antenatal classes in my second pregnancy was the B.R.A.I.N acronym to use when questioning proposed procedures during pregnancy and birth. 

B = benefits What are the positive outcomes from this course of action?

R = risks What potential negative consequences are there?

A = alternatives What else could we do instead?

I =  intuition What does my gut tell me about this?

N = nothing What happens if we do nothing now and let things continue as they are?

I used that when it came to my second son's birth and the result was a very calm labour during which I felt entirely in charge and had nothing but good feelings when looking back on it. Unfortunately I lost that grip when it came to the birth of my daughter two and a half years later, and wound up with a very frightening experience, with hospital staff intimidating me into accepting procedures that I didn't want (or, on reflection, actually need) and at one point going as far as making me cry. Coming to terms with that birth took me a long time, and I was determined this time to recreate the birth of my second son as much as I could. The details needn't necessarily be the same - I had a lovely drug-free water birth then, which was easy to arrange because I had no complications during the pregnancy at all. My logical head knew that things may not go the same way this time if I was at all unwell through the pregnancy, but the important thing when preparing emotionally to give birth again was to feel that the birth was MINE, not the midwife or doctor's; the decisions made about my care would come from what I wanted, not what I felt pushed into; and I wouldn't be afraid to challenge any proposals that I didn't feel comfortable about. Beyond that, I didn't have much of a birth plan. When the midwife asked me about it, my answer was simply that I wished to be left alone as much as possible and have as few interventions as I could.

And now for the confession part... My promise from 3 weeks ago was, after all, to be honest about how far my preaching lives up to my practices! 

My birth this time didn't really go the way I wanted. It wasn't intervention-free, I wasn't relaxed and calm throughout and at times I was very frightened - too frightened to refuse having my labour induced or to articulate why I didn't want to be put on an IV drip to intensify my contractions later on. Everything I had practiced about B.R.A.I.N. and feeling in control of my labour went out of the window and I quite literally hid behind my husband at one stage! 

Everything started on Sunday afternoon when my waters broke spontaneously and in epic fashion whilst I was folding laundry. That's never happened to me before so I was quite taken aback and not too sure what to do! I'd been experiencing bouts of contractions for weeks, although they always stopped after a few hours and I'd settled into a mindset of just not thinking about when labour might start. This was different though, because waters breaking means that labour is very imminent! According to the midwife, 60% of women go into labour within 18 hours of their waters breaking so I got very, very excited and called the labour ward. They asked me to come in and be checked over, which I did and then chatted about how things would go from here. They said that if I hadn't gone into natural labour by 8am the following morning, I should phone again to discuss induction. That's the first point at which I panicked. I've never been induced before... my labours have always started by themselves - two of them were before 40 weeks, so I have limited experience of going overdue at all. I have heard stories of induction though, none of which sounded very appealing, and from reading lots about the mechanics of labour, I understood that the artifice of inducing contractions meant that it would all hurt a lot more. Without the natural accompaniment of endorphins with the oxytocin release that governs natural labour, I would feel everything much more intensely. Bizarrely, that didn't fill me with much joy! I went home, determined to bounce around on my birth ball all evening, drink raspberry leaf tea 'til it came out of my ears, walk around as much as my achey hips would permit and eat the spiciest curry I could tolerate, all in the name of getting labour to start by itself! Did ANY of it work? Did it heck. Just as most nights of the preceding few weeks, I had contractions, they hurt quite a lot, they stayed regular and increased in frequency to every 8 minutes.... and then by 3am it all stopped and I cried. This time I cried because I knew the next day would bring a lot of examinations and procedures I didn't want, and would most likely culminate in me having the sort of labour I'd been afraid of all along.

At 8am I rang the labour ward as discussed and was advised to call back again at 11am to arrange a time to go back in. I tried to stay calm all morning and discussed my feelings with my husband, reminding him in particular that I remembered how much the Fear had affected my last labour and how much I regretted the epidural I had begged for when the midwife snapped at me and told me I'd be labouring for hours and was putting my baby at risk by refusing more interventions. I told him that I needed him to be my advocate this time, that if things went the same way and I couldn't cope, that I would need him to make me question myself if I started to waver on my faith in myself: "Remind me how much I hated the epidural, don't let me beg for one again". I googled frantically, rang midwife friends, posted on the Analytical Armadillo's facebook wall - all to find out as much as I could about what induction of labour would involve and what I needed to know about my alternative options. What I learned was reassuring - namely, I could go as far as refusing the induction and waiting up to a further 72 hours for labour to start spontaneously. The NICE guidelines accommodate that and have advisements in place for how to monitor pregnant women for any sign of infection which would indicate an urgent need to get the baby out. That appealed to me a lot more than having pessaries inserted or being hooked up to IV drips! The thought of being able to retrieve my natural labour after all calmed me down and we toddled off to the hospital to talk to the midwives.

Something very strange happens to me when I enter a hospital building. I'm not in my house anymore... I'm in the doctors' house. This is their territory, not mine. I have no right to question their opinions with my own amateur knowledge informed by Google and entry-level Biology textbooks. It might be hard to believe, but my bolshy-ness does a complete runner and in place is a meek and frightened girl, not a strong and determined woman. So I sat in the delivery room, pondering what would happen and trying to scramble together my recollections of the information I'd gathered that day. 

A lovely, lovely midwife came into the room and we started talking through the various paths ahead. She was smiley and reassuring, matter of fact in answering my questions and respectful of my worries. I don't recall exactly how, but the decision I made was to accept the induction there and then, not wait for the next 72 hours to pass then reassess. I'm aware that I felt apprehensive about deviating from the hospital's usual practice and defying the wishes of my - albeit lovely - healthcare professional. Without a team of like-minded people physically around me, urging me to push forward with me desire not to be interfered with, I'm afraid I didn't have the inner strength to go against the grain. It was a mixed feeling... on the one hand, happy to be a step closer to meeting my baby, at the same time deflated at my birth no longer being "mine" but instead morphing into the property of the doctors, to be assessed and evaluated according to their rigid checklist of events that would determine whether or not the progress I made over the coming hours was to their satisfaction. 

The midwife explained that step one would involve inserting a pessary containing synthetic prostaglandins to help my cervix soften and begin to dilate. Hopefully this would be all that was needed to get labour going into full swing, but if not I would then be given an intravenous drip of more synthetic hormones intended to either start contractions or to make existing ones stronger. If that happened, I would need to be hooked up to a machine to have my baby's heart rate constantly monitored, and this would ideally take place with me lying down... for the entire duration of my labour. THAT completely freaked me out. I don't *do* lying down in labour. The geography of it just doesn't work! Forget everything you've seen on tv - labouring lying down is the least convenient position for a baby to try and exit the womb. The birth canal slants in such a way that you would end up trying to push the baby out uphill, all the while with the weight of said baby pressing back against you, limiting your blood flow through the arteries running along your spine. ICK. No way, Jose. I've done that once in my first labour when I didn't know any better and it was evil. Furthermore my son then needed to be resuscitated after the birth, something I'm confident wouldn't have happened if I'd been in a better position when labouring and pushing. 

With fingers crossed and prayers said, we toddled off to the antenatal ward to wait for the pessary gel to take effect and hopefully get labour moving. I sent my husband home at this point to see our other children because I didn't think there was much point him mooching around the ward waiting for something or nothing to happen. I had my tens machine (borrowed at the eleventh hour from a friend!), Jaffa cakes, birth ball and - most importantly - the whole bay to myself! Six beds on the ward and none occupied. I was very relieved to have a big open space to myself, so I set about bopping on the ball, snacking to get some energy back and chatting to the two student midwives who were pottering around. After a very short while, the contractions ramped up and I was confident things were moving as I'd prayed for. Two hours after the gel had been done, the senior midwife on the ward started to flap a bit and asked if I'd like to be examined to see if I'd progressed and should be moved back to the delivery room. I was ok with that (more anxious to know if all the pain was finally getting me somewhere!) so they checked me over and cheerfully announced I'd reached the magical 4cm dilated which indicated I was now in Active Labour. This was it, all hands on deck, no going back now - and more importantly, I had escaped the dreaded IV drip. The thought occurred that I should probably call my husband to come back to the hospital as we had originally agreed that he wouldn't return until after our kids were in bed, but the midwife and I suspected things may be moving faster than that! 

When we got back to the labour ward, husband dutifully in tow, I met with the midwife who was to care for me throughout the rest of my labour and the birth (assuming her shift didn't end first anyway!). I wasn't sure if I liked her to start with... She was very pretty, beautifully made up and quite glamorous looking. When you're in the throes of labour and feeling at your least dignified, it smarts to see someone looking lovely at you! Fortunately she was absolutely delightful, made me giggle and put me at ease. We were furnished with a radio to listen to Classic FM, jugs of ice water to keep me refreshed (although my husband qualified for several cups of coffee throughout the evening, hmmph) another birth ball and extra pillows so I could experiment with moving around and getting comfortable. At this point, I felt fantastic... I had defied the doctors' expectations by responding so quickly to the induction, I was in control of my labour, I was mobile, lucid and very excited about meeting my baby soon. My husband took a photo on his phone of me beaming with the gas & air pipe in one hand and a cup of water (held aloft like a chalice of fine wine!) in the other, and sent it to my Mum, who had been fretting about how I was coping. The pain increased and my contractions were 2 minutes apart from here on in. I leaned on my husband for support, taking great comfort in burying my head in his shoulder whilst standing on my tip toes (goodness knows why that was more comfortable than just standing!), pressing the BOOST button on the tens machine and going for gold with the gas and air. I had tried the ball, kneeling on the bed, leaning on pillows etc, but everything other than standing upright was unbearable agony.

I had last been examined just after 6pm, so the midwife said they would check again around 10pm if I consented. By 9pm, I was certain I felt the sort of pressure that indicated being ready to push, so we decided to check again and see how things had gone. My heart sank when she paused before telling me I was still only 4cm. After 3 hours of utter agony, nothing had happened. My body wasn't cooperating with me after all. Weeks and weeks of slow latent labour, of promising myself that it would mean that, when the time came, the groundwork would have already been done and the birth would be smooth sailing, then gradual realisation that my body and I were no longer in tune. All that pain and frustration just to get my hopes up for those few hours in the delivery room, only then to feel utterly crushed and like we were back at square one. To add insult to injury, the midwife then had to break the news that she was duty bound to inform the doctors of the outcome of the examination, and that they would certainly press for me to have the drip to intensify the labour. At that point, I had a complete meltdown. The idea of making an already unbearable labour more intense after taking away the faith I had only just restored in my body... I'd felt that Fear before, in my last labour. I had had maybe 10 hours sleep in total that entire week and didn't have the energy to deal with the pain any longer. I felt the words "please, please make it stop" leave my lips before I burst into tears and begged for them to call the anaesthetist. If I was going to be labouring for hours, I may as well lessen the pain. The labour wasn't mine anymore anyway. The doctors would shortly be arriving to take over and mould it into THEIR delivery, according to their specifications of how a labour should progress. Why should I fight and embrace the pain of a labour that didn't belong to me. 

As he'd promised that morning, my husband started to remind me how I felt last time after the epidural - that I had regretted it instantly, that I mourned the pain from the birth because I no longer felt it, that my daughter had been born half an hour after it had been administered so I always felt that it had been a pointless intervention. The midwife stepped in and held my hand. After that contraction passed and I was back in the room, she talked to me about what my husband had said. I expected her to come down on the side of knocking me out, but to my amazement she really took on board how I had felt last time and started talking me through other ideas. She suggested pethidine as an interim measure, saying that at the least it would relax me a bit and stop me panicking. If we were lucky, I may even be able to sleep a little while and regain some energy to face the rest of the labour. I fell in love with her a little when she then also promised that she would do her best to fight my corner and delay the doctors putting up the IV drip to give me time to get back in control. I was reluctant to accept the pethidine because I had had it in my first labour and felt very sick, but by this stage I knew I needed to make A decision and regain my control, so I told her to get it over and done with before I changed my mind.

After that, everything is a blur.  I vaguely remember stripping off the gown I'd put on over my vest earlier in the evening and climbing up onto the bed. The next thing I recall is the final two pushes before my son was born, and then leaning face down into the pillow for a couple of minutes asking myself if that really was it, was it really all over! The midwife then pointed out that it had only been 25 minutes between the pethidine injection and me getting into position to push! I had gone from just 5cm dilated with half my labour still to go and in absolute emotional breakdown, to pushing my baby out in less than half an hour! I remember murmuring "is it really over?" half a dozen times and feeling incredibly relieved that the pain had finally stopped. Even so, I really didn't want to let go of the tens machine controls! It had become such a comfort to me that I needed to hang onto it for a few moments until it really sank in that the hurty bit was done with. In truth, I felt a little shell-shocked. I hadn't expected such a managed birth, or to feel so frightened and small especially as this was my fourth birth and I've researched so much about relaxed birthing techniques!

So that was it. It didn't go the way I had wanted, but I can say that I felt in tune with my midwife and that she respected what I was trying to achieve with my birth and did everything she could given the circumstances. It's difficult to say out loud that your birth didn't go to plan, because very often people's response is to say that it shouldn't matter because you still have a healthy baby from it. Actually, it DOES matter. Can you imagine responding to a crestfallen bride on her wedding day that it didn't matter that everything had gone wrong on the day because she still had her husband out of it? We afford women the right to demand their perfect wedding day and we should do the same for their perfect birth, and moreover we should accommodate women needing to work through the barrage of emotions that comes around if they wind up with a birth that feels completely alien to them. I have been offered the Birth Afterthoughts service from my midwife since being discharged from hospital, which I declined because writing everything out here has been therapeutic enough and I feel at peace with how things went now. I know women who've had really traumatic births though and who still need a lot of support to deal with that.

I won't be having any more children but all my experiences of childbirth have reinforced my passion for giving birth back to women, empowering women to feel in charge of and in tune with their own bodies and not to feel afraid of the frankly awesome things we do whilst bringing new life into the world.

Quite frankly, we women rock!

A rambly one from a sleepy parent

This is a really personal post... Not much in the way of impartial arguments here, but my brain feels very busy and I wanted to get it all out!

Having spent parts of today debating on a certain sleep specialist's Facebook page, I feel a little bit despondent. Is parenting supposed to be easy? I don't mean that it's supposed to be free from hard work (there's a reason they call it 'labour', right??) but is it supposed to be such a battle?

I keep reading statements about making parents "happier" and helping them find it all "easier", which seems to be a smokescreen for making a child less dependent on parents from as young an age as possible. I can see the appeal to be honest!
Society seems to have decided that life should be hedonistic where possible, that indulging your own desires on a daily or more long term basis is an achievable and aspirational goal, and surrendering yourself to parenting doesn't really go hand in hand with that. It's no wonder there's such demand for books that seem to enable this and that practices like attachment parenting are more marginalised. It makes me sad that I feel like the way I've parented has been so much more labour-intensive for me than it could have been if I'd followed various experts' regimes instead although I feel happier and more relaxed than I suspect I would have done had I gone against what felt instinctual to me.

Occasionally, I get into discussions with people about things I've done on my parenting journey like breastfeeding, baby led weaning, bed-sharing etc and there's a handful of key phrases that seem to crop up again and again.. "rod for your own back", "clingy baby", "just doing it for your own benefit" and so on, so forth. It's quite hurtful actually...

Why did I breastfeed? Initially because my best friend's mum (midwife and strong breastfeeding advocate) promised to be a flea in my ear until I understood why it was important, and then later because I'd gone on to do breastfeeding support training myself and learned an incredible amount of stuff about the physiology of breastmilk and breastfeeding and thought the whole thing was just too amazing to miss out on. If you've never had children or breastfeeding wasn't on your radar, you would be astonished to know how complex the science behind it is. There's SO much to know - you can do an entire diploma in Breastfeeding Counselling and still have stuff to learn!

Why did I go with baby led weaning? I didn't with my first child. I went with what the jars in the supermarket said (suitable from 4 months), what I read on parenting forums and what I thought I knew from anecdotes handed down from peers. I spoonfed him mush from jars at first, then progressed to chunkier mush and eventually to smaller portions of my food. I HATED every moment of it. Messy, expensive, and eventually I started to read journal articles suggesting that it actually hadn't been the best decision for his health. Even worse, I'd made that decision without properly researching it. Cue the mummy guilt! With my second child, I felt a little better informed, was resolved to wait until he was six months old and then found that the little bugger wasn't interested in food anyway. One day, when he was almost 7 months old, he lunged at my plate of Sunday roast, grabbed a potato and scoffed the whole thing. From that point I just gave him bits and pieces that he could grab at himself and let him get on with it. A couple of years later, I found out that this is apparently called Baby Led Weaning. Ok, cool.

And then the doozy... Why did I share a bed with my babies?
This is the topic behind the controversy on Facebook today. I, along with a large number of parents, let my baby sleep in bed with me habitually, deliberately and for a long time (about a year on average). Why??  Because I like to sleep. I really, really like to sleep. And babies don't sleep a lot. Tiny babies have no concept of day or night. Me pleading with my 2 week old son that "it's night time, LOOK (turns towards window to show him the black of night!), why won't you SLEEEEEEP??" was completely pointless, very demoralising. Breastfeeding releases all sorts of hormones, and at night it releases hormones that make me and the baby sleepy. BRILLIANT. Unless you're sitting up in bed to feed, or on a sofa. I will confess now that I dozed off during one of these feeds and baby L slipped out of my arms and into my lap. I awoke in a split second but it absolutely terrified me. So what did I do? Well I got OUT of the bed of course, and I woke myself up, got myself a hot drink, put the tv on and made sure I couldn't fall asleep again. But I LIKE SLEEP. At 2am, my body wants me to be sleeping. A couple of days later, my friend's mum came to visit and I broke down about how tired I was. She then proceeded to show me something that changed my life and saved my sanity - how to breastfeed whilst lying down. She gave me a leaflet about how to make my bed a safe place for the baby, things I must avoid doing in order to keep it safe and how to get comfy and get him fed. He and I both nodded off and that night I had the most incredible night's sleep of my whole life. It was magical. I slept, he slept, I fed him dreamily throughout the night and 5 months later we were still doing the same thing. So when my second son was born, there was no question about how I'd handle the nights, and away we went. When my daughter was born, the same thing applied. Seven years and 3 children later, I can thankfully look back and say I have very limited first hand experience of the 'being up all night with the baby' or the 'dreaded night feeds'.

Has it been easy, any of this stuff? I suppose it depends on how you define 'easy'... It's been a challenge to get comfy at night sometimes with 3 people snoozing in one double bed. If I want to buy new tops I have to make sure I can breastfeed in them comfortably. I get a little too anxious about the idea of anyone criticising me for breastfeeding in public. I gave up asking my doctor for advice about breastfeeding related problems when it became evident that I knew far more about the physiology of breasts than any of them did. I've been on the receiving end of some pretty sharp insults and derogatory comments because I am outspoken about my love of breastfeeding - which apparently makes me "militant". I've had to justify why I didn't want to give my babies a bottle of formula at night "to make them sleep longer" and then field remarks about making a rod for my own back, or how I'm just breastfeeding because it makes ME feel good.

BUT... everything I've done has gone along with my instinct on what approach to parenting would make me happier, what felt closest to my biological imperative as a mammalian mother rearing her offspring. I tell myself to imagine what I would do if I was stranded on an island with just my baby. No television, media, peer pressure, employment concerns, or self-proclaimed baby experts to invade my parenting. If my baby cried, would I leave him to learn to settle himself without my reassurance? Doubtful. If he was hungry, would I deny him food until he had completed an acceptable length of time since his last feed? I can't imagine why... When it came to bedtime, would I put him in a separate bit of the cave (my island is quite accommodating!) or snuggle him up to me to keep warm? Using that analogy, I feel confident that the choices I've made have been the right ones for me and my children, and using the journal articles I've read, I also feel confident that I haven't done anything detrimental to their health in the short or long term. That's satisfactory to me, and yet society persists in telling me I could have made it easier for myself. Funny eh.

At some point soon, I want to write a post about parenting and babies from an anthropological perspective and look at how we've culturally constructed the whole concept. I promise that one will be less of a personal ramble and more of a balanced, evidence-based piece!

Newspapers make me grumpy.

Not just newspapers, all forms of news reporting make me really, very cross. I used to be terribly impressionable as a youngster and believed everything on the news programmes and in the papers entirely, because they couldn't print/say something if it wasn't true - right?

I can't remember when exactly I started to understand how biased the media is; how easy it is to skew a particular event through language and cleverly chosen snippets of quotes taken out of context. Then there's the practice of just not reporting some things at all! I have a friend who lives in Palestine and is extremely passionate about trying to get information out about the goings on over there - stuff that just doesn't make it to the papers and news programmes we see in the UK, because it doesn't fit the convenient political agenda. Some of the things she's seen are horrific but if you want to read about it for yourself, you have to go to extraordinary - and in her case, often dangerous - lengths to unearth it. 

So, imagine my dismay at flicking on BBC Breakfast news today, as I do every morning (I have a real soft spot for Bill & Sian) to see the reports on the Vitamin D supplement furore. Suitable references to medical studies on the effects and prevalence of Vit. D deficiency, quotes from doctors about how much money the NHS would save in the long run if everybody protected themselves against Vit. D deficiency, and so on, so forth. And all I kept thinking is "why aren't any of you this eager to report stories in support of breastfeeding, or stories that highlight just how poor the standard of aftercare for breastfeeding women is?". Considering that much of the Vit. D coverage highlighted how poorly understood the guidelines on it are by the general public and medical institutions alike, it baffles me to think the same principle doesn't apply to the doctors, health visitors and general public who are really terrifically misinformed about the true nature of breastfeeding.

Where is the story covering the experiences of the mothers who go through pregnancy and birth determined to breastfeed, only to find that the midwives on the postnatal wards are too overstretched to dedicate any serious time to helping them establish breastfeeding? Or worse! The hospital staff whose response is to suggest giving the baby a bottle! This isn't in reference to the mums who have no interest in breastfeeding, but there are so many - TOO many - who want to breastfeed, are encouraged towards it by leaflets and booklets given in pregnancy - and then find that there's nobody around to help them, or people around actively discouraging them. Isn't that weird? In fact, isn't that downright disgraceful?

What's more, the people who volunteer to help such women out - often mums themselves who've undergone training and devote their time, unpaid, to visiting women in hospital and at home to help, or midwives and health visitors who've taken the time to really educate themselves about breastfeeding support - are given pejorative names like "the breastapo" or "breastfeeding Nazi" (see HERE for a really excellent discussion on this). 

Why don't the media report things like this? Where is the OUTRAGE that GPs often have no idea what the accurate advice to give to a mum with mastitis is? My own GP told me that I must stop breastfeeding when I got mastitis, because the milk would be infected and make my baby ill. Had I followed his advice and not researched it myself, instead following the recommendations of an IBCLC Lactation Consultant, I could have ended up with a very nasty breast abscess. Sadly I am nowhere near a minority in experiencing truly dreadful and inaccurate advice about breastfeeding from healthcare professionals. But WHERE is the media coverage of this? WHERE is the story about how many women feel they had to give up breastfeeding purely because they were denied the correct information and support to overcome hurdles in their feeding journey?

Is there ANY other area of healthcare where a medical professional could get away with being so poorly informed? There really, really isn't. Yet in spite of ever increasing research showing the long term health impact of not breastfeeding, the general perception of the importance of breastfeeding isn't changing and mothers from all around the UK who want to breastfeed their child are still frequently facing poor support. 

In case there are any breastfeeding mums who are reading this, I would like to take the opportunity to direct you to the really fantastic support organisations:

• NCT : 0300 330 0771 (7 days a week, 8am-10pm)
• The Breastfeeding Network: 0300 100 0210 (9.30am-9.30pm every day)
• Association of Breastfeeding Mothers: 08444 122949 (9.30am-10.30pm)
• La Leche League Great Britain: 0845 120 2918
• Government helpline manned by The Breastfeeding Network and Association of Breastfeeding Mothers: 0300 100 0212
• www.breastfeedingnetwork.co.uk.
• www.kellymom.com.
• www.laleche.org.uk.
•  www.lcgb.org.
• www.fatherhoodinstitute.org. 
• www.dad.info.

It's a shame that the kind of encouragement and accurate information managed by the organisations I've pointed out above isn't widely available as standard from all health care providers responsible for caring for new mothers and babies. It's even more of a shame that the media would rather publish negative and detrimental stories about breastfeeding than devote any time and effort to trying to improve the support services offered to every single mother.