Oh, Bibi

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I read this article the other day, in which Bibi Lynch instructs mums to stop moaning about their lot because it hurts the feelings of women who are childless not by choice and, well, I didn’t know quite what to say. On the one hand I felt quite sorry for her, and can sympathise somewhat, but on the other I pretty much just wanted to give her a slap. I mean, really? By the same token I should never, ever whinge to friends who are mothers about any of the hundreds of little inconveniences that my childless life brings me, and I probably wouldn’t have anything left to say if I tried that.

There are some very thoughtful and eloquent responses out there, from the points of view of both mothers, and other childless women alike. (“Is the meaning of life just to make more life? That’s not life. That’s fungus.” – I think this wins, frankly. Although the first blog mentioned also provides a remarkable insight into the life of a parent with an ill child, following on from my previous post.) So I’ll leave you to read those while I sit and shake my head in the corner, quietly. Before starting to whine about my unfortunate lot again in about 15 minutes’ time. Mums everywhere, I bid you feel free to join me.

The Hardest Thing

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Last weekend we met one of my husband’s distant cousins at a family party. Incidentally, he lives near us with his wife and their one-or-so year old baby, but since he and my husband never knew each other very well, we’d never managed to catch up with them since moving back. We had been told by other family members about their daughter’s difficult birth, and warned about the many problems experienced since, but it was still shockingly sad to see it in person. There they were, a young couple just like us, with this beautiful little girl… who was very obviously profoundly disabled.

Today I attended a funeral, this time for one of my distant cousins. A baby cousin – he died just shy of his fifth birthday, after having spent about half his life battling to live. Incidentally, my cousin’s family also live near us, and due to me not knowing them terribly well, we’d also struggled to catch up with them since moving back. (We are officially the worst kind of family assholes.) I thought I’d been given some idea about the struggle his parents underwent with his cancer in the last few years, but obviously not. I didn’t know about when his mum got pregnant for a third time and couldn’t be with him while he was radioactive after chemotherapy. I didn’t know about when she was also diagnosed with a milder form of a similar cancer. I didn’t realise that she’d been successfully treated so that her cancer is now in remission… while his went on to become terminal.

It felt an incredible privilege to be allowed to bear witness to both of these couples. Their strength, their ability to cope, their resilience, in the face of chronic, disabling illness, in the face of their children’s eventual death. They are such a difficult things to think about – death and illness in children – but they’ve been very present all along, in the back of my mind. With two miscarriages, and indeed only two pregnancies in so many months, I think we’ve both wondered: what if our eggs/sperm are genetically messed up? What if we could never have children genetically similar to us as a result? What if we could, and were to stay pregnant, only to then discover at a scan that something was very wrong with our baby? What if we didn’t discover until birth, or shortly after, that this little one we so long for is… imperfect? Broken, or disabled, or severely ill in some terrible way? How would we cope? Would we cope? What would it mean if we couldn’t? A million uncomfortable questions, all with no right answers.

Maybe questions with no answers at all, bar the palpable pain etched in a mother’s face earlier today.

Image source.

You can ‘ave zee chicken

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Apart from the title, which my husband shudderingly assured me is a misnomer (I presume he was once traumatised by some little Frenchpeople thoroughly besting him in a food fight), French Children Don’t Throw Food (titled Bringing up Bébé in the US) is an excellent parenting read. I don’t really understand all the resistance it’s received across the Atlantic. Oh, wait no, I do understand. If you’re an urban, middle class American parent, helicopter-parenting for all you’re worth while consumed by guilt, and you read a book in which you painfully recognise your tired self, your strained marriage, and your child-king kidlets, and discover that lo! there is another easier, and much more sanity-inducing way in which you could have been raising charming children while continuing to look chic and fancy your husband all along, it’s not remotely surprising that all that guilt transforms itself into vitriolic anger in less time than it takes you to say Baby Einstein. (Plus, British readers have the benefit of feeling smugly superior to the US throughout, since the utterly demented sounding Park Slope type parenting hasn’t caught hold quite as well among our yummy mummies. I’m sure that goes a long way to easing some of our pain.) All of which makes me suspect that the more angry this book makes you, the more likely you are to need to spend some serious quality time holed up with it and a set of highlighter pens.

Basically, I loved the book because it described largely how I was raised, and how I definitely want to raise any offspring that one day come our way. (It turns out that my mother is a Parisienne! Who knew? Actually, it was evident the first time we all visited that city, but I digress.) I also loved it because it was better than valium for soothing my residual anxieties about breeding. It’s tone is immensely reassuring: It’s OK to let go of your anxieties about which parenting theory is the ‘right’ theory, and just stick to one overall common sense approach! It’s fine to relish your adult life, space and time, and not automatically believe that this will have to be completely turned over to your children without feeling like a selfish, unloving prick! It’s downright recommended that women still remain sensual women and not automatically morph into some strange mumsy other being just due to having reproduced! Feel free to take a relaxed approach, and for God’s sake stop beating yourself up with guilt about everything! Just have some conviction in what you’re doing, and it’ll be fine, and JUST STOP WITH THE GUILT, ALREADY! It’s also hilarious in parts, and because the author basically starts off as a hot neurotic parenting mess, it doesn’t feel preachy, or smug. More, if she can do this, by gum, so can you.

It’s also more than common sense (although, ‘common’ sense ain’t so common anymore, at least not in my professional experience) in that many of the approaches that she puts forward are based in solid child development theory and research. And when in chapter four she started throwing around basic psychoanalytical principles that are thought to underly the development of a secure, resilient, integrated personality, as if they should make up part of every parents’ understanding of how they’re raising their children (they should), I was pretty much sold. The lady clearly knows what she’s talking about. What are we arguing about, then?

And yes, yes, it’s not only French people who parent this way. Pedants. (Case in point: my parents aren’t French. But I’m not buying the argument that small town America does all the same things. Small town America is fat, yo – so there’s at least one very evident, significant difference.) But the observational perspective felt so very true to me. When I wandered round Paris with one of my best friends last spring, both of our ovaries exploding with sap-rising baby fever, we spent an awful lot of time gawking at the women and families around us. They all seemed so… relaxed. The parents looked exactly like the childless adults of similar age. The children were so well behaved, and how on earth did they keep those ridiculously chic outfits clean?

So, even though there was little in the book that felt like genuinely brand new insights to me, that isn’t its point. What it is, is a lot of solid, scientifically backed, sane and soothing parenting sense packed into one well-written, highly readable little book. It makes the whole enterprise of having and raising children seem, well, doable. It shows a way that is straightforward. It highlights that it can be done without guilt and anxiety, and with many an uninterrupted nights’ sleep. Frankly, I don’t understand why we aren’t all moving to France tomorrow.

About turn

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The one thing that is readily established from re-reading these posts of mine is how much of a hypocrite I am.

Well… Maybe that’s a bit harsh. Not a hypocrite exactly, but there have been some apparent swings and roundabouts in the position I’ve held as we’ve made our slow way through this. (Just shag and it’ll happen! Keep just shagging, but also do yoga, meditate, change your diet, and have acupuncture and it’ll happen! Right back to my lazy default position of just shag! Ad infinitum…) Ultimately, I’m not too bothered by this. I think it’s all par for the course when you’re dealing with so much uncertainty, while feeling so utterly powerless to make something happen. And after all, despite how unhinged it may have made me seem, the essentially reasonable core position (just shag! Whenever and however you like!) has not changed, it’s just had different trimmings added depending on the season and the state of my psyche.

However, there has been a change lately which marks more of an abrupt and absolute about turn on an issue I thought I was once pretty clear about. A revisiting of a previous value judgement. My first lesson in how much I’d better STFU about my theoretical opinions on any and everything to do with procreation, because whoo boy, things look mighty different on the other side of an experience; certainly the feelings of this 31 year old with 2 confirmed miscarriages bear little relation to those of her naively optimistic self of 18 months ago. All of which to say that we have undergone initial (in)fertility testing, requested referral to a specialist having exhausted the little expertise our GP has to offer, and have thereby started the equally slow and uncertain process of medically intervening in our attempt to reproduce. (While still shagging. Obviously.)

Oh! My words. At least they’re tasty.

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In a (probably very related) move, I’ve been reading topical books again. I promised you chat about Half a Wife later this month, and that will definitely be happening, but I’ve also been very enjoyably distracted by French Children Don’t Throw Food (called Bringing up Bébé in the US), and will probably be forgetting my lessons of today and happily spouting my opinions on that as well. (Thus far very positive, so if you haven’t read it yet, and fancy giving it a once-over and wading in for discussion, I strongly encourage it!)

Read, reflect, rant

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I also think the very concept of ‘having it all’ is a terribly unhelpful one. What does that even mean? It’s an impossible ideal that keeps us all in a state of unhappiness as we’re constantly yearning for something ‘better’. Also, I think that starting from a position where one thinks of career and children as mutually exclusive concepts is a limiting one. From what I’ve seen of friends who are parents, parenthood is a game-changer. Your whole approach to life changes – I’ve certainly known both male and female friends with kids become remarkably more focussed and efficient after procreating, something that would only help my work!

…………………….

I was thinking of the overall consumerist focus of society, and how we’re all constantly being pressured or persuaded to spend on things that we don’t necessarily need. (You know, like BUY ALL THE THINGS in wedding-land, but it’s everywhere else too, really.) And how once you commit to a certain way of living, that then pressures you to earn a certain amount to maintain it. And then when you’re spending all this time and effort earning this living, you then need to spend on time-savers or leisure. And oh look! You need to earn more to pay for that, and so on and so forth. I don’t think we personally are very caught in this cycle (or at least I hope not!), because we’re aware of it and thoughtful about how we lead our lives. But I’m pretty sure ‘society at large’ is caught up in a lot of that, which to an extent drives a lot of people’s current need to earn.

…………………….

I have been getting all kinds of chatty and opinionated up in other people’s internet space about issues around working parenthood and balancing career and children. Not because I have any big news of my own to share yet (don’t get excited, chickens, we’re still working on it), but clearly it’s something that resonates for me, and by the looks of comment threads everywhere, also for a lot of us, whether we are currently knocked up or not.

Now, I enjoy an uninformed exchange of opinions as much as the next bloke down the pub, but I really like getting my thinking processes on an issue properly greased by reading a well-researched, thought-provoking tome on the matters at hand first. Hence, my invitation to all of you to join me in reading, thinking about, and then hopefully vigourously discussing the whole Pandora’s box of topics that I suspect Half a Wife may throw open for us about working parenthood. I have the book in my possession, though I have not yet started reading it, but this article (which I really hope you read before the Guardian took it down), coupled with all the interesting good sense that Gaby Hinsliff usually speaks on these and other related matters over at her blog, make me almost certain that it will not prove a waste of your time, whatever your views, and wherever you happen to currently be on the reproductive spectrum.

So, a show of hands from all who are up for some engaging discussion on this most thorny of issues in a couple months’ time, please! I am pretty sure that this is guaranteed be a good one.

P.S. If Amazon US is being a dick, Amazon UK might ship it to you. Otherwise, I’m reliably told that the Guardian Bookshop is shipping it overseas, and speedily. No excuses, ladies. None.

Half a wife

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For all the shifts in working life over the past couple of decades, the ideal career track for ambitious professionals remains broadly unchanged from that of their parents’ day: a relentless upward trajectory through ever-rising levels of responsibility, rung by logical rung. It’s often referred to as a male career path, reflecting a common and erroneous assumption that only women’s lives are changed by having children. But the trouble is, fathers are now beginning to rebel against it, too. And I think that’s because it is really a sole breadwinner path, rather than somehow a biologically “male” path.

Unsurprisingly, this bit of Gaby Hinsliff‘s brilliant extract from her seemingly excellent, soon to be released book particularly resonated with me right now, but there is just so much goodness in there. Trust me, and go give the article a read. Based on the extract, this book looks to be a very good one for stimulating thought and discussion on navigating the perils of modern working parenthood.

Cringe-worthy

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I suppose it’s pretty obvious by now that through sheer neglect this blog has entered a respectable state of semi-retirement (and no, not just because of what Kirsty said about those who are “trying”, although, ouch), but I thought I’d more formally put it to rest anyway.

It’s been over a year now, and in the funny way life tends to circle back on itself sometimes, despite the madness and the drama, we’ve landed up not much further on than where we started - living a pretty hectic, but mostly enjoyable life, into which welcoming a baby often seems a hair’s breadth short of utter madness, but what the heck! Life is short, and it’s what we want, so we’ll go for it anyway.

Thankfully, we’re not exactly where we started. Somehow, in the midst of everything else there’s been progress, though that self-same progress has meant, and will probably continue to mean for some time, silence on this front. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret writing what I already have for one moment. It’s clearly helped me to work through some of my neuroses, leaving me, I hope, much better placed to be the relatively chilled-out mother I would very much like to be one day. And I continue to believe that it’s a conversation we should be having, cringe-worthy or not.

But while I still do very much want to find myself knocked up one happy day in the hopefully not too distant future, it finally seems that, well, I’m just not that bothered about it. It doesn’t preoccupy my thoughts as it once did, and actually, I seem to have rediscovered that I have quite a lot else to be getting on with in the meantime. Quite a lot else that I’d very much enjoy getting on with while not pregnant, to be perfectly honest. And that all that money spent on acupuncture to rebalance my chi could instead be buying a lot of very tasty shoes.

So, please excuse me while I neglect this place further, and carry on enjoying the really rather wonderful life I do have. And hopefully, there’ll one day be joyful reason enough for me to return.

Baby It’s You

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I’m guessing this is an oldie by the rather dated clothing and hairstyles (although, those of you who are not big fans of the modern day pink & blue scheme, check out all the stylish gender neutral babywear going on!), but oh my goodness, is it a goodie. A properly informative, and beautifully made series about child development in the first few weeks, months and years, covering topics from vision to speech. All while absolutely brimming over with ridiculously cute, ovary exploding baby flesh. Watch it for free, or get it for keeps, and thank goodness for the splendour of the internet.

Speaking of which, you listened to this when it was linked to on Cate’s blog, right? If not, then you absolutely should, right now. Raw, poetic motherhood. Beautiful stuff.

Unbeliever

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I’m not pregnant anymore. This poppyseed was not our baby.

And… I’m OK. Admittedly, I wasn’t initially, but I’ve had some time, and done a lot of thinking, and spoken to the Boy (and cried at him), and spoken to my therapist (and cried at her), and started having acupuncture, and done some more holistic reading, and gotten back into yoga, and had some much-needed rest (what can I say, it’s been quite a week!) and… I’m as OK as I can be. I really am.

Obviously, I don’t know why I miscarried early, again, and in addition to all the tree-hugging, hippie stuff already mentioned I have seen another, more sympathetic GP, and have a scan booked for next week to check out my ladyparts, so I’m not neglecting the hard science. But, I do think the overwhelming anxiety and disbelief that I experienced as my primary response to the pregnancy (instead of, you know, unremitting JOY) probably had rather a lot to do with it. (It may be stagnant Qi, or it may be chronically high levels of cortisol, but either way it has the same result. Environments poorly conducive to flourishing poppyseeds.)

So, I’ve decided that really, I’m not ready. Not quite. Clearly, I am full of Fear that I wasn’t completely conscious of, or whose strength I hugely underestimated before. So I’m calling a bit of a time out. Taking some time to work on me. To figure out what’s going on with me physically, and try to improve that, and simultaneously figure out what on earth is going on in my headspace, and see what I can do about that as well. This is not necessarily due to an assumption on my part that there’s something ‘wrong’ with me (although, a feeling of brokenness may well be part of what I’ve got to work on), rather it’s mostly an expression of my understanding that my body and my mind are inextricably intertwined, and I can’t look at the one without considering the other.

If I’m not too embarrassed by where this all takes me (see hippy, tree-hugging way of life already mentioned, and consider that I am now, I suppose, mindfully preparing for conception in a way I might have previously mocked - my words, they are mighty tasty), I might write a bit about it, because it’s already proving rather fascinating. Then again, remaining detached enough to ‘observe’ the process might be counterproductive to being completely immersed in it. And the first thing I’m working on is my optimism, and the belief that I’ll feel whole again in two twos. So, I don’t know about sharing this part. We’ll see.

There is one thing that is actually quite comforting about everything that’s happened. (And no, it really isn’t, ‘At least you know you can get pregnant!’ That might get you punched in the face, no matter how zen I become.) Because now I am fully consciously aware of this Fear of mine, so it’s out in the open, where it can be held up to the light, examined and understood. In the bright spring sunlight, so promising of regeneration and renewal, where hopefully one day quite soon, I can look it full it in the face and tell it to fuck right off.