the washing line

2007-06-13T10:46:00.000+10:00

Whew.

I'm just dropping by to say hello, and let you know we're still here.

Both Alison and I remain really committed to this little blog here and the readers and comments we're still getting even after so much radio silence tells us you'd probably be interested in hearing more from us.

And we have so much more to say.

More about all the stuff we've said so far, more about what happened to us when we became mothers, more about what we think about this motherhood gig.

And we both now have lots more to say about having two babes, about revisiting motherhood, about dealing with siblings.

More joy. More pain. So much has changed, and so much is the same.

We've changed and so have our lives.

The only problem is time. It's proving rather more difficult to find it. We thought we might have more of it, but we're up to our necks in nappies and gurgly giggles and creative ventures and 4 year old needs and house works and mess.

So for now we're putting our own blogs first.

We thank you for tuning in and hope you'll stay in touch, come see each of us where we are sighted with a tad more regularity and come back when we've pushed back the frontiers a little and made some space for the washing line.

the fourth trimester

2007-03-01T19:47:00.001+11:00

Yesterday someone described the first six weeks after the birth of a child as the fourth trimester. The comment has been turning over in my mind as I find more and more resonance with it.

I gave birth to my baby son, Wil nearly three weeks ago. It was two days ahead of plan, but his exit was surgical nonetheless. And since then I have been in that strange freefall where I find it hard to connect thoughts or maintain a conversation or write coherently. I feel mildly divorced from the reality that other people inhabit and locked in a little bubble for two.

This was what I was talking about when my friend made the fourth trimester comment. Because while Wil is now on the outside, he's still connected to me in a way that is so close, so physical and exclusive, it's almost like he's still on the inside. Of course I had forgotten the intensity of this bit.

A good deal of my mind is occupied by him whenever I am awake, and not in a way I can control. He quite literally inhabits my mind, invades my thoughts, grabs my attention. His needs are my needs, his pain is my pain, his hunger is my hunger (I had forgotten how hungry and thirsty breastfeeding makes you!).

It made perfect sense to me when I read that brain scans of new mothers taken while their babies cry show the same neural patterns as when they experience their own physical pain. Like my body hasn't quite worked out that we're separate beings yet.

Breastfeeding makes it all so much more so. The hours I spend on the couch, gritting my teeth while Wil's too small mouth gives me yet another nipple blister, the instinct that propels me out of bed at each and every cry before I'm even awake, the look D and I exchange as he hands an unsettled Wil over to me. The boob is it, the cure all, the panacea, the replacement for the umbilical cord that kept us together for 9 months. There isn't anything D can offer that comes close.

So I just wanted to say hello to all you out there in the regular world. I know you're out there but right now you feel a long way away.

On Turning 4

2007-02-28T11:36:00.000+11:00

Last week my little boy turned 4.
He is no longer a baby. He is a confident, funny, smart, tall, growing up boy. And next year he will be going to school.

The concept of my baby boy going to school is a little disconcerting for me. Have 4 years really passed since his birth? Could he possibly be growing up this quickly? Is he ready for school? Am I ready for school.

Sending my child off to school feels a little like I’m cheating him of his childhood – stripping him of his innocence and demanding that he grow up and become world savvy quickly. I see before him the years of learning, tests, exams, pressure, stress and expectation to do well. I see his path of life of cramming, competition and constant scrutiny to perform.

I wonder, amongst this, are we doing enough for him to achieve his goals within this system, have we given him the skills and the encouragement, have we given him the strength and the confidence to become whatever his heart desires. I truly hope the answer is yes, but does any parent really know till the last University exam is done.

I am being hard on myself with what I have written so far. I can hear you screaming that it doesn’t need to be that way, and I thoroughly agree. I think education can be a wonderful source of adventure and the learning process one of exhilaration and passion. I loved learning, was passionate about so many areas and I hope beyond everything that Max has that same passion. I will do whatever I can to foster his experiences positively. I have no real doubt that Max will do well in whatever he sets his sights on – he has an intensity for detail, perseverance, a yearning to learn how things work and how to put information together. He loves numbers and letters, appreciates colour theory, understands the concept of components and building upon things to create wholes and enjoys his quests to understand. I believe in the school system he will go into, the power of community nurturing, and the emerging curriculum he is already a part of at his daycare. He follows the Reggio Emilia model of learning which I think provides an important building block of establishing ability to think, question, answer and understand within a democratic environment.

What I feel is the quiet slipping away of his childhood – to better things one hopes - but that sense that time is rapidly gaining momentum and suddenly I will wake up and have a teenager in my house complaining of acne. Soon the small bikes he is learning to ride on will be gathering dust, the paddling pools will be put away. His screaming in delight and his delightful monologues in the sandpit will be gone. His tears over stubbed toes will disappear, and mummies kiss will no longer heal all wounds. Soon his cherished naivety about life will be replaced with some harsh realities, which I want desperately to shield him from, but which I know he needs to feel, see and experience to become the person he needs to be and to live the life he was destined to live.

I worry about his future as any mother does, wanting to know an outcome in 50 years and that he will be ok so I can relax in the here and now. Perhaps that would in some way take away from the glory of watching him grow and develop, find interests and learn sometimes by default or the hard way. I will be with him every step of the way, encouraging, supporting, smiling, and guiding. And I still have 11 months to prepare myself for his momentous step into the world when I say goodbye at the school gate. My little boy is growing up.

the parent trap

2007-02-04T10:30:00.000+11:00

If you are in Oz, you might have read this article in Saturday's paper. Jane Cadzow reporting on parental guilt and the burden of raising children in today's world. Like all articles on parenting and children, I devoured it immediately. And like all of these articles I read, I was left feeling really ambivalent about what it meant to me.

Cadzow points to a number of things about how the role of children and parenting have changed throughout history to argue that children have gone from being smaller version of adults (with adult responsibilities and one assumes almost no parenting needs), through the removed from the adult world phase (via wet nurses, nannies and boarding schools, outsourced parenting) to come to occupy centre stage in today's world and in the lives of parents.

Now there's hyper pressure to get it right, to raise geniuses, to attend to a child's every need. For adults to sacrifice themselves and their time to maximise their children's happiness, growth and development and to become experts who will be held fully accountable for a child's every flaw. To surrender personal leisure time, sleep and goals to facilitate maximum exposure, to take children into worlds previously reserved for adults alone.

She argues that this is bad for parents and for kids. Parents are run ragged, guilt ridden and doomed to failure - since kids are indeed humans and not capable of perfection. They are tired and missing out on their own lives. Their children are growing into unhappy hot house flowers, whose every passing emotion is analysed and adjusted and who are increasingly incapable of living their own lives unassisted. "Whiny, passive, self-centred and cheerless", says one journalist quoted by Cadzow.

Part of me agrees with all this. I see the extent of angst so many parents (particularly mothers) go through about the millions of day to day issues they have to make a call on and it seems like so much wasted energy. I see the guilt that wracks otherwise rational intelligent adults over the smallest of problems or judgements from others and it seems so disproportionately self-punishing. I see the way parents feel shamed when their child behaves badly or displays poor judgement - even when such things are rare occurences - the way they become defensive or punishing or embarassed over the learning experiences each child must surely go through.

And I recall, as well as reflect on, the tremendous power of independence as a child. The way in which I learned from the mistakes I made, the way in which I was left to take responsibility for the world I created for myself. I also suspect, from expereince and observation, that in many ways children develop despite parenting rather than because of it. I sometimes wonder what lurks beneith the desire of parents for perfect children, for approval as perfect parents. I wonder why parents let this happen to them, why they take the pressure and guilt on instead of being OK with life's imperfection.

But then there's the other part of me. The part that feels the regular confusion and frustration of reading articles/having conversations/being told about society's fascination with how we parent. About the explosion of (often conflicting) knowledge about what is and is not good for children and what parents should and should not do. If parents have come to over think parenting, then so have social commentators and non-parents alike. Hardly a day goes by when we aren't being told about the crimes of the (all too recent) past, breast vs formula, solids too early or late, toilet training at what age and in what way, co-sleeping or controlled crying. Every choice studied, scrutinised and no doubt to be demonised at some later point.

Women's magazines carry headlines about how Brittany Spears' nights on the town make her subject to visits from child welfare - as though the choice to leave children with a nanny or five whilst enjoying oneself out of the home (underpants or not) make her a mother so unfit to parent that her children should forcibly be removed from her care. Other celebrity mothers have been similarly slammed for losing or gaining weight, for having nannies or not, for carting children with them whilst going out to work, or leaving them behind, or not working at all, for posing nude whilst pregnant or being ashamed of their pregnant bodies, for staying in a bad relationship or leaving one.

In the context of broader social change the the pressure on parenting is not entirely surprising, and there are a few points in Cadzow's article I would take issue on.

For a start the changing nature of work and workplace commitment places pressures on families that didn't used to be there. Cadzow claims working hours haven't fundamentally changed in 40 years, but even if this is true (which I think is not the real picture), those hours are now spread across a greater span of time, are less predictable and more likely to involve travel and home absence than ever before (we may not be clocked on whilst sleepign ina hotel room in another city but we sure aren't being active parents either). More jobs are casual, contract, short term and part-time, many more people cobble a working life together through managing a number of employment situations than sticking on one job for many years - a job more likely than not where your boss knew your kids by name and maybe even let them hang around if they were off school or a bit off colour.

40 years ago very few people worked on weekends, and Sundays in particular were absolutely family time. In the retail sector alone we now have 7 day a week 24 hour a day trading. Sunday quite possibly involves working - if not in the paid workforce then in the domestic sphere via a trip to Bunnings to get the new guttering or the supermarket to do the weekly shop. There can be no doubt that for families, time (even if not reduced in quantum) is most certainly more fractured. And this means parents feel the pressure to be more 'present' for children when they are together.

But I also think that while parenting has becoming an obsession in some respects, children have become far more marginalised beings than they used to be, rather than the centre of the universe as Cadzow asserts. Certainly we now see children in places they used not to be (like expensive restaurants and fancy resorts) and we do see parenting talked about and debated in forums that would once have seen such discussion as entirely beneith them (like daily newspapers). But many of the places in which children were once welcome, indeed quite central, have diminished over time. The vacant land and wild places of the suburban fringe, the parklands that offered more than fenced in uber safe playgrounds, the streets that hosted billy cart races and ball games, the community recreation parks and pools that were cheap and friendly, the local footy oval where the locals practiced their games.

Society is no longer prepared to bear the costs of these resources and it is perhaps inevitable that as the world outside has diminished for kids the world inside has had to grow in compensation. Where once children may have expected to live in the same suburb all their lives, cheek by jowl with extended family and other kids they went to kinder and school with, owning their streets if you like, they are now just as likely to live in a different city or even country to anyone they have known from their childhood. They are more often strangers out of the home and with this comes a greater reliance on parents to mediate the world outside and better furnish the one inside.

Few would argue against the proposition that the world has fundamentally changed too, that even as adults we experience a hyper reality we couldn't have imagined as children. Our parents raised us in an age before computers, mobile phones, accessible international travel, even universal exposure to TV. Before anyone had to remember a PIN, let alone dozens of them. Before we ever heard the term productivity in relation to our performance in the workplace. It is not surprising then that raising children in an age where many of us struggle to stay abreast of the contemporary world creates fears about what will happen to our children if we do not adequately prepare and skill them. A more intensive world may well require more intensive parenting.

Family size is also a building block of parenting, and as those (increasingly rare beasts) who elect to have more than two children will attest, much changes as the number of heads multiply. A significant part of this is necessity - there being only so many hours in a day to attend to children's needs - but a different kind of dynamic opens up when parents no longer constitute the majority. Authority works differently when you are outnumbered, the politics of acceptance dictate that siblings play ever greater roles and economies of scale come into full flight. Statistics on domestic labour support this - parents actually do less work when they have three children then two, and yet less when they have four. That more families have two than four children would seem to suggest that more families would be parenting more intensively.

But all of these tunnels in the rabbit warren connect up for me at some point around judging the present by the past. The world moves on, we as individuals move on. We all like progress. No one would choose to go back to the time before we discovered antibiotics, or before we could turn on a tap and drink safely. Most of us would refelct on our childhoods and find space for improvement. The drive to get parenting right, get it more right, is connected in with all the other things we try and improve. Progress is about change and change brings with it anxiety. Trying to do it better involves criticising the past, moving out of our comfort zone and standing in conflict with others. There's tension and hurt feelings and disagreement about what the future holds and how best to get there.

But it is inevitable too, and in the end surpasses each of us as individuals and our own individual anxieties and blindspots. So yeah, I think we could lighten up a little. I think parents could take themselves and each other less seriously and do more to maintain their perspective. But I don't think we should or can give up on the project of moving forward and becoming better parents.

this time in 11 days

2007-02-01T15:11:00.000+11:00

I'll be having my first post birth nap. Assuming all goes according to the most likely case scenario, which of course it may not.

I've been thinking rather a lot about birthing recently - as you do when it's headed towards you like a freight train. A few people have asked me about the kind of birth I'm expecting and why I have this timeframe so clear in my mind.

I approached Amy's birth with only the haziest of expectations. Perhaps it had to do with my family and their various involvements with the medical world, but I never made assumptions about how things would go. I understood birthing (like reproduction) to be full of unknowns and random occurrences. Probabilities and possibilities. Sure something straightforward would be nice. I hoped for as little pain and intervention as possible because I'm not, you know, like an idiot.

But I was totally realistic that it might not go like that, that there might be times where I'd need to make choices and I probably would not have enough information or functioning brain cells to do that well. I spent a lot of time choosing my obstetrician because I wanted someone I trusted to help me make those choices. Someone with values like mine, who knew what she was doing and had a basis for making good judgements. And - I'll go out on a limb here - someone who had done this trip herslef.

So while the birth didn't go quite like I might have liked, I never felt agrieved about it. I did what seemed like the best thing at the time and I don't know that I would change anything with the benefit of hindsight. I certainly felt like my obstetrician helped me at every step to feel like I owned my choices.

But having been down the endless unproductive labour road I knew that having another baby would present me with different choices than I had the first time around. For a start I knew my chances of ending up with another c-section were very high. I also knew what it was like to give birth in the worst possible way - after days of pain and confusion and uncertainty. To start life with a new infant at your lowest physical ebb.

I also really understood about the 'cascade of interventions' which meant that once you started down the road of trying to make labour happen, or happen faster, your chances increased all the time of needing another intervention and another.

So faced with the conventional wisdom about post c-section births I could choose to plan a c-section on or before my due date, or I could hope to avoid this by going into labour 'naturally' (ie with no medical interventions to induce or hasten) anytime before my due date or perhaps slightly after if I was closely monitored. Of course the two options are not mutually exclusive - a booked date for theatre will not stop labour occurring if that's the way things go, and not going into labour would (at some point) lead to the slice and dice.

So Monday 12th is when it will be happening, if it doesn't happen before. It's a fraction before my due date, less than a week. It's not likely I'll be going past this date (unless the theatre gets overun, or I go into labour but it takes a long time or something else kinks things up). Now don't get me wrong here - I am talking statistics, averages, probabilities. I am not talking absolutes. I can't know what will happen for sure until it happens. And if I felt strongly that I wanted to avoid a c-section, I'd know there are chances to beat the odds.

But the truth is, I don't feel that strongly about it.

Forgive me if this shocks some of you, and don't think it means I don't think others should feel strongly about it. I cried tears of joy for Alison when Pia was born in just the way she wanted it, just like I felt tremendous grief for her and many others who have experienced the birth of their nightmares. If things had been different for me at various junctures I am sure I'd feel differently, but I don't. When it comes to babies and mothering and the whole box and dice there are a lot of things I feel very strongly about, but this isn't one of them.

So the bottom line is, I'll be going with the flow. Amy and I are counting the days off on the calendar and planning her sleep overs and hospital visits, and I think she's liking having a sense of what she's in for. In 11 days time she'll be at kinder having met her new sibling, and anticipating coming back in for another visit before dinner. I might be contemplating my first walk around and perhaps a snack. I might be breastfeeding. I'm not really sure.

But I'm pretty sure I'm going to be feeling a surreal elation. There will be tears. For sure. And some humbling and a lot of joy. And already the getting out bit will be receding into the back of my mind because I'll be looking forward to all that's yet to come.

reading list

2007-01-19T11:12:00.000+11:00

Thanks so much commenters! Between yours and the commnets made on a similar post on my other blog, I now have a fantastic list to hunt out. I would thank you all personally but I am running on empty right now. 3 weeks to go!

trying to find the light

2007-01-16T21:51:00.000+11:00

After last night's terrors about dying mummies, which saw Amy stay fully awake until well after 3am, I did a quick tally of her favourite stories. A good 80%+ of traditional fairy tales and compendium stories feature dead or dying mothers and failing fathers - beauty and the beast, rumplestiltskin, hansel and gretel, cinderella... the list goes on and on.

But Amy has reached an age where picture books and five minute stories just don't cut it, so each and every night she reaches for the big kids books, the ones with words and stories with some length and substance. So we end up reading about dead mothers and rescuing princes and stuff I find pretty repugnant.

So I went to the bookstore today and spent damn near an hour trawling for some new books. I used nearly an hour of a sales assistant's time (something happy!).

Books which are age appropriate, where stuff actually happens. Books that give a four and half year old something to think about and somethign to listen to, but which don't induce nightmares about loss and death, which don't make them think a husband is a girl's only saviour, which don't promote shopping as a life purpose. Something that isn't completely inane and scary to my adult sensibilities, but still appeals to her.

And I came away with two new titles - The Princess and the Unicorn (in the Aussie nibbles series) and Tashi and the Dancing Shoes (in the Tashi series).

And we read the Princess and the Unicorn. And both the mummy and the daddy die.

Please, someone out there tell me there's a secret list somewhere.

in the dark

2007-01-16T01:04:00.000+11:00

It's just after 1 am and I am restless and insomniac. My legs twitch, thumper has been hiccoughing for nearly two hours and I'm hot. I've already peed about 5 times. My boobs are leaking. Amy has woken twice.

Today was D's first day back at work after the summer break, my first day back as a stay at home parent and Amy has been positively feral. She so needs the structure and stimulation of a learning environment. There was disobedience big time and time out and rather more shouting than there should have been.

When she woke at 12.30 she asked me to take her to the toilet and as she was peeing:

Mummy you will always be my favourite friend, even when I am a grown up. And when you die (her voice starts catching and she silently wipes her eyes on her nighty) I will put a big sign up on my house that says My Mummy Has Died. (Bigger sobs here, more eye wiping) And I will invite all my friends and everyone and we'll have a really big party and I will always remember you.

It is way too hard to be four, don't you think? Way harder than being 36 weeks pregnant on a summer's night when you are restless and insomniac.

OH THE LOVE, THE LOVE

2007-01-02T20:16:00.000+11:00

We braced ourselves. We watched other people with their children. We took note of the things to watch out for. But nothing has quite prepared us for the story which unfolds whenever Max is around Pia.

I picked Max up from daycare this afternoon, and had a wonderful chat with one of his carers. She mentioned how maternal Max is, how sweet he is with all the babies when he goes into the babies room. He strokes their cheeks. My heart melts.

Now multiply all that tenfold when Max is at home with Pia. He loves that baby in the most pure, astonishing way. He can’t get enough of her – he covers her hands and feet with little kisses. He watches everything I do with her and copies me in my words, tone and actions. He gives her toys to play with. He draws a chair up to her bassinet and settles her if she starts crying. He pats her stomach, and then makes her smile big broad smiles. He loves to lie next to her playing with her.

I’ve seen other children turn their back on their siblings. I’ve watched as they fight and assert their dominance as the elder child. But Max, well, he just includes Pia in everything we do and say. This baby has become such an integral part of his being and life. He defends her and me in public, and there have been times when I’ve been moved to maternal tears at the things he has said to other people. The compassion one small child has for the family unit he belongs to is just beautiful. It is everything we hoped we had instilled in him, and everything we hoped he would become with a sister in his life.

Does it sound idyllic? Yes. But if I ask him to Get. Off. Her. Now. one more time…This baby will surely be squashed with an overbearing over excited 3 year old brother at some point. Then again, if he treats the women in his life half as well as he treats Pia, he’ll break hearts the world over.

because it's my job

2006-12-22T13:18:00.000+11:00

Today is my last day of work in a job I love and I’m feeling sad about that. From here I get to go and have a lovely summer holiday by the beach, for which I am extremely grateful, but after that…well after that is a whole other deal.

There will be a few weeks in there where I fight the lethargy, the uncomfortable awkwardness of very late pregnancy, the providing amusement to a 4 year old on extended holidays and the preparing for birth. Then, ta da, a new baby. There will be much joy and celebration, a revival of the discovery of the miracle of life, many happy hormones and the fulfilment of a dream.

But there will be other stuff too. Stuff I’m not going to like. Stuff I spent a long time, years in fact, contemplating whether I could face again before agreeing to have another child. And until now I guess I have been thinking mostly about the obvious stuff that belongs in this discussion, the sleep deprivation, the constant illness, the drudgery of washing and feeding and listening to a baby’s cry. The crowding out of time and freedom and independence, the worry and frustration and boredom.

I didn’t like this the first time around and I have no illusions that I’ll like it any better this time around. It is a time to be endured and I think I have the strength to get through largely because I know it won’t go on forever, and because secretly I am hoping I will have an easier baby this time (please, no reflux and sleep disorders and ear problems).

But I haven’t spent as much time thinking about the elephant that’s growing in my head as perhaps I should have. I thought I’d dealt with him, but now that I am packing up my desk and saying goodbye to colleagues and banking my last pay I realise that he hasn’t gone, I’d just turned my back on him.

You see try as I might, I just can’t shake my grief and anger about the way being a mother interferes with me being a person, and how I am heading back into being a non-person in some of the key parts of my life. Bye bye CBD, bye bye working girl with brains and ambition, bye bye equal of men, bye bye independent financially viable woman.

I’ve consciously chosen to have another child despite the trade offs, so I know that in the final analysis I have my priorities and values set on mothering over career. I know I will love this child as fiercely and devotedly as I do Amy and that no good day at work can ever meet the bar in terms of joy and fulfilment that a 30 second snippet of mothering at its finest can ever give. I know all this.

But the flip side is loud in my head. Trumpeting in fact. I was never raised to see myself as a dependent, I never developed the skills to negotiate what I might be allowed to do, never imagined that I would agree to limit myself, my options, my freedoms to such an extent. I never imagined that being a mother would be so utterly different from being a parent.

I grew up believing not just that I wouldn’t be living a kind of gendered domestic life, but that to do so was the worst possible kind of mistake women make. To my very core I believe women can and should be equal to men, and that this equality is measured to a large degree by the way they balance participation in the big world outside the home (paid work, volunteering, socialising and so on) with their responsibilities and creativity within the domestic sphere (housework, craft, cooking relationship nurturing and so on). I always believed that this stuff got out of balance only where individual men and women let it.

But mothering tips that balance in a way I don’t feel I can control. Pregnancy alone is a dividing line, a responsibility, a job, a joy, a journey that is entirely gendered. And then there’s the 8 hours a day of breastfeeding I had with Amy that was both a privilege and a curse, and the accumulation of knowledge and skill that comes from such close contact that ever widens the trench. How easy it is to become enslaved to those things which defined me as mother and mother only.

And I make no claims to motherhood as being a punishment for women while men drink cocktails and live it up. The other side of the great divide is hard too, and lonely, and in many ways men are often less well placed to deal with it than women are. The sense of exclusion, of redundancy, of responsibility to be in the world on behalf not just of oneself, but for a whole family, weighs many men down to the depths of despair.

So my problem is less about the hierarchy of gender (though I admit I often feel oppressed and diminished as a mother compared to life as worker for example) than about its rigidity. I positively resent that motherhood narrows my world to such an extent. And I absolutely resent that the work I do mothering carries no financial reward in the way having a job does. I love working, passionately, and it depresses me no end that I don’t get to do it for long periods or in the way I used to.

I hate that to live happily within the constraints of motherhood, in the now, I need to ignore what I know to be very real risks I run in the future. And here’s the rub. Intellectually and experientially I know that the decision to suspend my independent equality seeking self, even for only a few years, will resonate throughout my future. For us as a family my lack of earnings and retirement savings will have an exponential financial disadvantage, and place yet more pressure on my partner to earn and save more and thus spend yet more time out in the world while I tend home fires. Or stay home and go mad.

But the really scary scenario is what happens when the happy family unit becomes happy no more. It’s taboo to think like this, to show disrespect to one’s life long love by even contemplating a time when said love might whither and die. I hate to do it, I feel like a traitor and perhaps as the superstitious amongst us would warn, the very contemplation may in fact produce imagined results.

But I can’t ignore what I know to be true. Somewhere around half of all families break up, and all of them existed for a considerable time believing it could never be so. And when that break up comes, the reality of the gendered life hits home with a whollop. Men lose their domestic life and are frequently financially ruined to boot. Women are forced into financial independence without a safety net and bear the brunt of the emotional work of caring for children through the trauma of separation.

The specialisation of labour, the gendered division of home and work, made sense in a time when family bonds where concrete and the social context made clear the importance and necessity of a full time domestic manager. While it still had loopholes and cracks through which many (especially women) were known the slip, the basic unit of the world, of the economy, of government was the family.

We no longer live in this world. We now inhabit a legal and political landscape in which we are expected to take responsibility for ourselves as individuals, where single mothers must earn and support their families, where men must participate in their children’s lives, where paternity tests can define who should pay for a child’s upkeep and where the minimum wage is designed not to support a family of five, but a single grown adult.

And this is the knowledge that gnaws at me as I sit at home, nursing a baby on the couch as I kiss my partner goodbye and he goes off to work. As I contemplate sessional kinder and primary school schedules that require children to be picked up and dropped off and cared for at hours of the day that make meaningful paid work near impossible. When I say goodbye to my colleagues today and they ask if I will be coming back to work next year, or when I tell Amy I am finishing work and she is delighted because now she’ll have mummy back.

Like I say, I know the deal and I’ve chosen the best balance I can live with to be the kind of mother I need to be. In the short term I think I can keep the scary things at bay. I can chant mantras in my head about the march of time and try not to let it drag me down. But over the next little while I’ll also be struggling to accommodate the elephant in my head, the warning that what makes me feel good about being a mother now is making me feel uneasy about the future and how those choices might play out if just a few things in this picture change.

have yourself a merry little

2006-12-14T11:59:00.000+11:00

We decorated the Christmas tree last week and Amy was more excited than I’ve ever seen her. At four she’s finally old enough to sustain both an understanding of and interest in the seasonal holiday. She managed to stretch the activity over two days, involve both D and I, and even rope me into making Christmas fairies and mantelpiece decorations. It was nice to spend time with her, see her so happy and involved, and even to get a bit of craft into the picture.

I look forward to this time of year, and I’m glad that here in Oz we get to celebrate Christmas in the lazy summer. For me the two are completely intermingled. Christmas makes me think of beach holidays and relaxed times with friends and family, great gatherings and special meals, hanging out at the local pool, eating icy poles and having picnics, playing games and watching crappy non-ratings period TV movies. It’s also a great time for reading books and doing projects and the things the hurly burly of everyday life crowds out. Christmas is the pinnacle of those times for me, an excuse for everyone to make an effort to be together, to get along, to do stuff together.

But there’s a little piece of me that is feeling a growing disquiet and I’ve been working hard to understand exactly what it is.

At first it started out as a kind of dread about the massive influx of presents. Every year we shop and spend and give and receive a lot of stuff we don’t need and often don’t even want. Amy’s room gets another layer of stuff I break my back to tidy and care for, and a whole lot of stuff goes into the garbage and off to the op shop. There’s guilt and confusion and awkwardness. And I hate that I see my four year old’s brain morphing into the I want monster. An insatiable consuming stuff devouring machine with expectations about plenty that I find obscene.

This year I feel so deeply attuned to the terrible shape of our planet and environment, and this kind of gluttonous consumption is symptomatic of the thinking that landed us here in the first place. I really don’t want to be a part of it at all. We’ve run it down a little by instituting a kris kringle system amongst the adults of the family, but somehow this doesn’t seem like enough to me. I want to go backwards in the stuff stakes, not just forward at a slower pace.

But there’s more to what’s bugging me, and it has to do with Santa. The thing is, Santa to me is just one big values vaccuum. He only exists to motivate more buying, more getting. Almost no one talks about Saint Nicholas, the guy Santa is based on, whose sole existence was about making presents to give to poor and needy children. You know, kids who had nothing else, rather than delivering items on a list to add to the pile you already have. He seems like a pretty good role model to me, and a whole different kettle of fish to Santa.

Plus, it seems counter intuitive to me to create this fictional Santa guy, spin a whole stack of tall tales to explain how he can do the impossible (deliver presents to every kid on the planet in a night – yeah, right), only to come clean about him in a few year’s time and have your kids look at you as if to say, you mean you just made all that stuff up?! Why would you think that was OK?

It’s not like the lie is even justified by his roots in the moral and spiritual teachings we want our kids to learn. He’s not a comfort to children in distress in the way angels are after a death in the family, he’s not a symbol of love and peace like Jesus, he’s not a psychological device to turn something possibly scary and traumatic into a positive milestone of development like the tooth fairy. As I see it he doesn’t really serve any higher purpose and he doesn’t represent something bigger and better than ordinary people.

I’m aware that when I say all this there are a whole lot of people thinking what a sour old cow I must be. Santa doesn’t need a purpose, Santa is fun. He’s a once a year folly to bring joy and excitement to children and who wants to deny their kids that? I am sure it won’t convince any of you if I say I’m not like that. Really. I can be fun and Amy’s life has plenty of joy and excess and stuff already in it. She’s happy and safe and well stimulated – and not just with sensible educational toys. There’s a frightening amount of plastic and glitter and soft toys and loud musical instruments in her possession.

I’m not a grinch or a scrooge or a particularly austere person, but when I take a step back from the whirl of the season I feel ill at ease with the frenzy that Sata drives. To what extent does weaving a little childhood magic make it OK to tell lies to kids about how the world works, to use the threat of not getting presents from Santa as a motivation for good behaviour, to sit them on the lap of some guy in a padded polyester suit when it’s sweltering hot and get them to really focus on working out all the stuff they want want want?

I was cross examined by a bunch of Amy’s peers at kinder this morning about whether Amy was coming to the Christmas party (the answer is yes), but more importantly was she getting a present from Santa (the answer again yes – for $10 a head the kinder organises books for kids from the visiting Santa)? Was she having her photo taken with Santa (yep, last weekend my mother-in-law did the yearly ritual at a shopping centre), and would he give her a present too (yes, a plastic watch that keeps bad time and is covered all over with ads for Ice Age 2)? Was Santa going to come to our house (over my dead body I wanted to scream)?

Was there anything good in any of that?

And there’s some other stuff about Santa and Christmas I’m struggling with. And it’s a thing about living in Australia and celebrating things in a way that mean something to the reality of our lives. The great big boots and furry suit that guy wears are a health and safety nightmare in our climate, and all that snowy imagery and winter food seems entirely misplaced. Most of the time Christmas day here begs for luscious ripe stone fruit and summer pudding and barbequed prawns, cold meats and fresh cool salads. Why would we heat the house running an oven for hours to cook a roast, or boil a pudding or sip eggnog or hot chocolate whilst wearing our lightest of summer dresses and trying not to leave sweat stains on the furniture? Why do we cover our Christmas trees with snowflakes and sleighs and animals that have never set foot or hoof on our continent?

Don’t get me wrong, the Northern Hemisphere Christmases I have had have been magical – I was thrilled to my socks to wake and see snow on the ground, I loved tucking into a great big warming meal in the middle of the day and I have nothing at all against reindeer. In part it was magical precisely because it all made sense.

But from my perspective down here in Oz the traditions of Christmas seem to come from nowhere. What these rituals say to me is that we follow blindly beyond the point of relevance, and still believe that real life, important life, is something we imitate from somewhere else, not something we make from our experience and history. My daughter cares more about reindeer than kangaroos, and this year she’ll be singing about Rudolph, even while she’s eating Skippy.

I don’t want to be a sour old cow, and I don’t want Amy to grow up feeling like she’s missing out, but I just can’t feel good about the values and life lessons this Christmas deal brings. I recognise that we learn what’s right and good through cultural traditions, and that they are a really important part of finding meaning in life as well as having fun. So I’m trying to find other ways to weave magic, other ways to help Amy learn about who we are, what’s important and find joy. I’m looking for some new rituals and traditions that will help us celebrate all that’s right with life, all the good fortune we have, all the promise that tomorrow brings.

I’m not looking to veer into fake nationalistic pride at being an Aussie either. It might be as simple as starting with a Christmas tree that belongs in my country, a banksia or grevillia perhaps. We might make some decorations that include the animals we know and love. Perhaps we’ll write a story or two.

But seriously, I’m looking for suggestions - some anti-stuff suggestions, some making traditions suggestions, some great ways to celebrate suggestions. Any ideas floating around out there?

THE WAY OF THE MOTHER PART 2

2006-12-13T22:48:00.000+11:00

To answer my own question posed in the previous post – e. Not always all at once. But whatever allows us time to move away and find an island somewhere that we can get back to calm. And if a packet of Smarties are involved, all the better. We love a bit of sugar laden high after a meltdown.

There’s a few things which have disturbed me in blogland recently about the way we mother. Perhaps I’m being oversensitive to things, or just reading in the wrong places, but there’s a growing number of comments (in comments sections, just to be clear) on very wonderful blogs written by wonderful mothers suggesting either a conformity to a set of stereotypical principles of “right” mothering, or non-conformity to those principles based on simple everyday decisions and actions which are in theory highly personal.

I take great exception to people assuming your right to being a mother – or more simply your degree of ‘good mothering’ because of something you show on your blog, or a decision you’ve made, or more importantly, because you tell of the reality of mothering that is your experience. There is one blog I have been reading recently written by a lovely, articulate and funny lady who has just had a baby. She’s had a rough go so far – but nothing unusual in anything that’s happened – it’s the real experience of, I suspect, a great majority of mothers. She’s put herself out there to express the way she feels about some things and involved her readers in some painful decisions she’s been making. And she’s dared to suggest that, you know what, some of this really isn’t fun, and actually I really don’t like some aspects of this. I give her 100% credit and respect for standing up and saying this, particularly at the point she is with her baby, and a lot of her readers are following her every word because they too are going through the same thing, or about to.

Does this make her a lesser mother for writing all that she does? Does it make her a worse mother than the one who finds sheer delight in every moment of their child’s life and doesn't outwardly acknowledge the time when it’s rough? Does it make her child less loved? Absolutely not. She loves her child. She enjoys her child. All of that is clear, and transcends the rougher moments of her days. Yet, someone thinks she ‘lacks a maternal gene’, and suggests she should never have become a mother (yes, they suggested she should never have become a mother). Now this really irks me. Where in any baby book does it say we must all be in raptures at our children every single moment of every single day? Where does it say ‘thou shalt not mention the rough bits’?? Where does it say there is no choice but the righteous choice no matter how much physical and emotional pain you’re in? Because somewhere along the line, once we have given birth, we aren’t supposed to talk about the rough bits for a period of time up to, but not limited to, the age of 18 months, and to do so means we really haven’t got the hang of being a mother, or are somehow not entitled to the name. Must we all be martyrs?

I read comments on blogs, and for those posts on blogs which I feel an affinity to, I take great personal strength from the comments as well as the writer. That’s why we all read blogs we like and feel close to. To see and understand another person’s experiences which are similar to your own, and to draw strength from unity and justification of choices is confidence building, even for me who has already had one child. I find great joy in the positives of parenting and the love and hope a child brings to people's lives, but I also know it's not like that all the time, for anyone, and it's good to see that. It somehow makes the joy even more exceptional:: there is nothing so beautiful as a smile after an afternoon of crying in pain. However at the moment I feel like I, as a normal, relaxed mother with strong ideals, am doing a really atrocious job, or that somehow you’ve all got the wrong idea in the other extreme because of the fragments I choose to show. I’m really grappling with strength of conviction – should I be stronger, should I be more rigid in my thinking, will it make a better outcome and if so for who – me or the child? If I do this what will people think, if I do that what will people think? Does it matter if 100 people agree with me and 1 person doesn’t?

I’m a real mother. I may do nice craft work and sew well and knit well and I do a lot of it out of sheer love for my children and the joy of giving something back to them made with love and my time. But the house often goes uncleaned for the week. We often don’t have fresh fruit in the fridge. I loose my patience with Max some days. And some mealtimes he goes without food because he’s not hungry and I’m tired. Given the choice of a 3 year old and a pooey bottom, and a crying baby, the pooey bottom wins. Yes. Sometimes I must let Pia cry because I have to make value judgements as to whose needs are more important for that 60 second period of time. Does this make me a bad mother? According to some people, Yes. It does make me a very bad mother. In some people’s eyes, I should never have gone down this path and I should never have taken the right to be a mother that some people will never have a chance of knowing. And that just breaks my heart to even think that someone could form that judgement about me, or anyone else. If I rewrote those sentences and said we make an effort to go somewhere interesting every day he’s not in daycare, he eats as much fresh fruit as we can give him and that he wants (which is a lot and that’s why we sometimes don’t have it in the fridge), he has access to craft materials and paper constantly and he involves us in his imaginative play, and we spend a great deal of time encouraging and promoting his use of the toilet and he now has the confidence to wipe his own bottom, does that make me a better mother in your eyes? All of that is true – just depends how I present it as to what value judgement is give on my mothering qualities.

I’m speaking in overzealous generalizations here and I know that has the potential to be taken the wrong way and cause offence, but I think the concept remains – assuming the right to being a good mother has to be earnt by some stringent adherence to some set of ‘rules’ about what you should or should not do or say is really hard for those people who do struggle, who do find it hard and who look for compassion and encouragement and familiarity of situation amongst fellow bloggers, friends, and family. I always remember the moment a very good mother friend turned to me just before our children turned two, and said she was so grateful for me saying we had rough days, because she thought she was the only one and that she felt much better knowing she really wasn’t alone and that it took a huge amount of pressure off her. I am forever grateful for her turning to me and telling me she had rough days as well.

I will end by saying that thankfully the majority – the overwhelming majority – of people are compassionate, and without the support of many of you I would have found many of the things I have gone through much harder and I love every one of you because of that. I’ve never personally been on the receiving end of any of this, I make my rant based on what I’ve seen on other blogs, and I just feel saddened that a new mother has to go through such a blind learning curve.

THE WAY OF THE MOTHER - PART 1

2006-12-12T16:21:00.000+11:00

Question::

You're in a crowded shopping centre and your three year old child reaches meltdown point. They are thrashing around on the ground, people are staring. You're tired. They're tired. What do you do?

a) get down on their level and attempt to gain their eye contact and discuss the situation rationally with them all the time being positive and empowering.
b) cajole them with soothing talk and reassurance maintaining a smile and humour.
c) ignore them to downplay the effect.
d) offer bribery.
e) all of the above.

Answers please.

A Kind Of Grieving

2006-11-30T09:31:00.000+11:00

With every love there is grief.
With every joy there is pain.
For every happiness there is sadness.

I am always extremely conscious of the oscillations within me between happiness and sadness – that opposites really aren’t that far removed from each other. Motherhood brings those swings into crystal focus – that they really are one and the same feelings no matter how far apart we think they are.

Towards the middle and end of my pregnancy I started to grieve – for the time I was fast loosing with my first child. Soon he would be a big brother, and would be part of a foursome not a threesome. I grieved for the loss of the life as he knew it, and the undivided attention he had between my husband and I. In grieving I found the joy of him though – the growing he has done, the things he has learnt, the special way he has of seeing the world. I cherished the moments he would lie against my belly and tell me he loved me and the baby. It seemed somehow wrong of us to make him share us with another life at times, and there were moments when I have questioned the validity of bringing another child into the mix.

Our lives were quite fine as a threesome. We could pretend we were a cool couple who just happened to have a child with us. With another child we would be a family. And somehow that seemed immense. There is always upheaval with the arrival of a child, I just wasn’t sure how we would cope, or how that upheaval would manifest itself.

When the baby arrived, I grieved again. For many things. For the fact this was our last child, the preciousness of those first weeks slipping by so quickly, the intensity of remembering and savouring her just being perfect and beautiful at the start of her life, at the growing she has already done, and the fact she is no longer a newborn. I grieve for the breastfeeding more than I should, even though I know she will be ok. Still I grieve for what she should have had and I was not capable of giving. I grieve for the passing of time too quickly. I grieve for the known becoming unknown.

I grieve for the changes for Max, and our family, for the time he doesn’t always get with me, the energy I don’t have to be with him the way he wants me to be. I grieve for the shortness of tempers which flare between mother father child.

This grieve though is borne of intense love – it is a love grief. It is about loving beyond the capacity to love a child, to cherish each closeness and the joy of watching them become themselves, and of allowing them the chances to just be who they need to be. These children break your heart.

glimpsing the void

2006-11-22T15:08:00.000+11:00

There are moments in life that are like doors opening before you. Moments when you suddenly glimpse a whole different way of understanding something, a whole different world, a whole new perspective.

Sometimes those moments are moments of intense darkness. Like when you realise some of the bitter truths of human life and experience that on a day to day basis we manage to leave behind firmly closed doors. When those doors fly open we often rush to close them again, if we are able, in order to go back to living a more bearable life, to free our joy from the chains of sorrows. We shy away from others who hover close to those doorways, we look away when we can.

But sometimes closing the door isn’t possible. When someone we love very dearly dies, or is diagnosed with a life threatening illness, when things we once believed to be essential to our survival are taken from us, when we have been hurt deeply. These are times when what we understand to be living is shifted and a lot just falls away and something bare and essential emerges.

I remember the first such moment I had. I was young, perhaps six or seven. I had been swimming on a warm summer day and I was having fun and laughing. I was utterly carefree. I don't know what triggered it, but it suddenly came over me that one day I would die. And that when I died not only would I stop having experiences, stop interacting with people, stop being, but my consciousness, the knowledge that I had ever lived would be erased too.

I recall being filled with the most terrible dread. Like a yawning chasm opening up inside me into which fell all the meaning and joy I attached to life. I was incredulous, speechless, paralysed by fear and grief. Within a half hour I was back playing after being soothed by promises that it would not be for a long, long time, that I would be ready for it when it happened. But I still remember that day so clearly all this time later.

I have revisited that existential void a number more times in my life with varying degrees of fear and for varying lengths of stay. Sometimes a split second when I see Amy run onto the road and imagine the worst, sometimes for days on end when things happen you can't digest. What strikes me each time is how effectively we manage to suppress the knowledge of it in order to function the rest of the time. How thin the veneer of life can get and yet still hold fast. Everyday the papers are filled with stories that should make us weep, but rarely do. War, global ecological and environmental disaster, child abuse, poverty, death notices, people who leave their homes to go to work and school and never come back.

What happens to us when we not only stand before that open door, but actually pass through it? How do those who are not able to ignore that they are living on borrowed time cope?

I think motherhood has given these questions a very different slant for me, and I think that's a common experience. When I interviewed women about motherhood for a documentary I was making I was surprised how many of them talked about their own mortality, about fears for their health and longevity now that they had a child to anchor them to this world.

But also I think the act of creating life is inextricably linked to the loss of life too. Certainly for me I never felt closer to that line between life and no life than when I was giving birth and in the days leading up to it and receding from it. I wonder too if that isn't why so many of us find it hard to remember that terrain with absolute clarity.

Still there are moments when I look at my girl, when I lie with her at bedtime, when I kiss her goodbye or wait for her to return from somewhere out in the world where the preciousness of her life to me is almost unbearable. And it seems such a perversely human trait that we can be simultaneously aware of that preciousness and need to bury it to be able to do the daily things we need to do. To love her and honour her I must let her be free in the world, help her develop the strength to be independent and brave, to experience as much as she can, but sometimes I want to hold her close to me and away from life.

And if that could somehow keep us safe then perhaps I would contemplate it. But the awful truth is that there are as many dangers within as without. To be human is to be vulnerable, to be transient, to face suffering. It is natural to run from it, from both the suffering and the realisation that suffering is inevitable, but those times we rub up against it also offer us something valuable. They are reminders to not take things for granted, a visceral reminder, beyond platitudes and sentiments.

mr sandman, bring me a dream

2006-11-08T20:44:00.000+11:00

At the moment I am dreaming in that special way I do when I am pregnant. My night life seems to be as involved and comprehensive as my waking life, filled with vivid images and complex stories that haunt my days. I love this part of being pregnant.

But I'm not so crazy on the pull to sleep that is gradually taking over my days. No amount of sleep it seems can leave me refreshed and energised, and no matter how long the nights are I still find myself locked in a futile battle each afternoon to keep my eyes open and my head upright. In an open plan corporate office this is a daily humiliation for me and my chiropractor is growing rich as he battles my daily whiplash from nodding off.

Slowly, stealthily I feel the obsession with sleep creeping in. Like a junkie with a craving I can never satisfy. How much can I get? When and where can I get my next hit? What will I have to sacrifice to get what I need? How can I be so powerless in the face of this all-consuming need?

And I keep thinking about the fact that this is only the beginning, it only gets harder from here and frankly I am scared. I am scared of revisiting those days, well years, when Amy was young and never slept. When it seemed all I could do was complain about tiredness and its many companion ailments.

There was a flurry in the news recently about the release of a study conducted at the Children's Hospital here in Melbourne on PND and sleep. The main finding of the report was that while the rate of PND for the general population of new mothers is 15%, for mothers of children with sleep issues it sky rockets to 45%. More amazingly, that treating their children's sleep problems and providing night time respite resolved PND for the majority of these mothers.

I find the results of this study comforting and alarming at the same time. I am greatly comforted that it seems at last we have clearly and scientifically established what is so obvious to mothers whose babies don’t sleep. Chronic and repeated sleep deprivation sends you mad, and when sleep returns sanity usually follows. The military understand sleep deprivation as a form of torture, and hopefully now the general population is beginning to believe it too.

Why is lack of sleep so wearing? Why don’t new mums sleep when their babies do, as is so often touted as the solution to night waking? If you haven’t been intimate with this scenario let me describe for you the descent into hell.

Not getting enough sleep, and getting broken sleep makes you tired. This is the part we all know. But over time that starts to change the nature of the sleep you do get, with far reaching consequences. You lose out on deep sleep, the really relaxing and refreshing bit, so often you wake up feeling much the same as you did before you went to sleep. You also aren’t getting all the physical things that deep sleep gives you, the healing and repair work that keeps you healthy. Soon you find it harder to get to sleep, and harder to stay asleep. Noise wakes you more easily because you aren’t deeply asleep and other external factors (like temperature and bed comfort) also intrude.

For me this manifested in a constant stiffness and pain in my neck and shoulders. The neck bit gave me headaches, the feeling that I was in a perpetual fog and then escalated into migraines. I became increasingly vulnerable to every germ and virus, and each bout of illness lasted longer and hit harder than it should have. I started suffering from a chronic low level asthma I just couldn’t shake. It seemed like every other week Amy and or I was on a course of antibiotics. I was full of aches and pains and overwhelming exhaustion but bizarrely was increasingly insomniac. I would lie in bed just waiting to hear Amy cry, lie in bed cursing that I wasn’t asleep, lie in bed watching the minutes of precious time tick by on the clock. And when I did eventually fall asleep I would be wrenched awake by those cries I had known were coming. I did try to nap when Amy did but the frustration of spending so much time trying to fall asleep only to be woken in a matter of minutes only depressed me more.

And what was going on in my mind all this time? As you can imagine I was irritable as all hell. I was tired and in pain and seemingly helpless to get myself or my baby to sleep more, or better. Even when others would step in for an afternoon or evening, I couldn’t get the sleep I needed, the situation was so deeply embedded in my body that a few nights off didn’t make a dent in the problem. I was frustrated and angry and totally defeated. I couldn’t foresee a time when things would be different or anything that could happen or be done to change the underlying problem.

And I resented that the pursuit of sleep, alongside the care of a child and the seeking of cures to my various ailments, was all my life had become. Everyday I had to decide whether to spend the precious time when Amy was asleep chasing a nap, or doing something that made me feel I had some shreds of life as person who did more than mothering. Even the domestic chores like washing and cooking gave me some satisfaction, even though they contributed to my tiredness. There certainly wasn’t space for much more. I knew I was going mad from it, but I had no idea what to do.

As it turned out much of Amy’s sleep problems had underlying medical causes. The difficulty in getting these diagnosed, being believed by doctors who were convinced she had ‘behavioural issues’, and being provided with practical assistance in managing them still leave me pained beyond belief. When we finally found a sleep specialist who asked me questions about Amy and then leaned across the table and said your child does not have a behavioural problem and something needs to be done, I almost cried with relief. But knowing about causes didn’t much change the reality of living with the problem that laying down caused her pain and when she was in pain she couldn’t sleep.

She was two and a half before she started to sleep through the night and it was only then that I realised how deeply depressed and unwell I had been.

So the thing I find alarming about the study results is that we know all this stuff, we know what should be obvious, and yet it still happens to a very large number of women. They still front up to GPs and Maternal Health nurses and hospital clinics and get told to pat their child to sleep or take away their dummies or let them cry it out. They get told there is a solution and once correctly implemented everything will be all right. For many babies this may well be true. For many babies it is not. Some babies sleep less than others, some babies have problems with their guts and their ears and their respiratory systems that make it harder for them to go to or stay sleep.

And in all this mothers (and father sometimes too) lose a lot of sleep. They lose confidence in themselves and they lose the capacity to deal with problems effectively because they are tired and stressed and unwell. And our solution is to say take a nap here and there, try a new technique, and basically just handle it better.

I look back on my experience and what scares me the most is not knowing how I might have changed things for the better. What I needed seemed so very far away from what was possible. A night off seemed life an offer of a band aid for my spurting jugular. Despite a supportive partner and a helpful network of family and friends I just couldn’t get on top of it. There is only so much of the burden that others can take from you, only so much that can realistically be expected from doctors and health professionals.

So what will I do if I have another baby who won’t sleep? I’d like to believe that I will ask for more help, that I will be clearer about the importance of not letting myself slide down that slope. But I say that more with hope than conviction because I also know that the asking and the giving of help carries other kinds of burdens and sometimes it seems like it isn’t worth it.

I will most certainly be checking in to a weeklong residential program that treats both mother and child for sleep problems. I will take nights off as soon as I am able to and go and stay somewhere else so I can sleep soundly (I did this only twice when Amy was young and D and I now wonder why we waited so long and why we didn’t do it more). I’ll take drugs if I need to in order to re-establish sleep patterns or lift depression. I hope I will remain clear that from lack of sleep all else flows and stemming the tide is the first line of defence.

picture this

2006-10-30T13:43:00.000+11:00

You're 31 years old, in a pleasant but casual relationship with a much younger man. You share a house with your brother, have a stable job that pays OK and you have a fun and busy social life. Some people might see you as a bit of a party girl, burning the candle at both ends.

Then one morning when you get up to go to work you realise you're feeling really unwell. You can't put your finger on it but the vague feeling of queasiness you had last night has intensified and somehow your whole body feels wrong. You call in sick, make an appointment with your GP and call your boyfriend to come and take you to see the doctor. As the moments tick by you are feeling worse and worse. Waves of nausea and terrible belly ache have you lying on the couch, and even when your boyfriend arrives you find it hard to get up.

Suddenly you think that perhaps if you did a big poo you might feel a little relief before you get in the car. You feel totally constipated, you strain and wait and strain and wait, but nothing's happening. By this time your boyfriend is banging on the door, worried you've been in there too long and you are going to miss your appointment. So he comes in.

You see immediately from the look on his face as he dives across the room, swearing, that something is wrong. He reaches in under you and you realise something really strange is happening, that there's something coming out of you. You're too shocked to make sense of it, only barely register that your brother's calling for an ambulance, that you can feel something enormous, something you've never felt before.

It's not until you are sitting in the ambulance on the way to hospital a few minutes later that it sinks in.

"That was a baby, wasn't it?" You ask the paramedic.
"Yeah, it is," she says.
"Is it alive?" You don't even think to look for yourself.
"Yes, she is, she's fine."

And that's when you first realise. You've just become a mother.

Urban myth? Can you believe it? Can you picture ever being in this situation?

I've met the woman who told me this story, I interviewed her for a documentary project I was doing a while ago. Her story has been on my mind because she's just had her second child - although for her it was like a first pregnancy. I'm sure she's been doing a lot of remembering and a lot of pennys have been dropping about what happened last time.

When I talk about her story, I'll call her Sarah, I find almost universal skepticism. No one, particularly women, are prepared to believe that you could progress through an entire pregnancy and not know. How could you not know?

When you think about the massive changes you experience you think there could be no other explanation than knowing there's a baby inside you. But for Sarah, the collection of changes she experienced did not create the assumption of maternity.

For a start she continued to have periods whilst pregnant. Like most women, she believed that the presence of periodic bleeding definitively ruled out pregnancy. She'd never had a regular or predictable cycle, so if the bleeding was a little erratic, that wasn't unusual.

Similarly, she's had a history of weight gain and loss, so when she put on some weight (not much mind you), she didn't think too much about it. The wriggling in her tummy? A rich and erratic diet, too much drinking and not enough sleep. Because pregnancy wasn't in her frame of reference she sought and found alternative explanations for the things she felt.

She's not stupid, or crazy or in deep denial. She didn't not want to face up to her pregnancy, in fact she loves being a mother and her relationship has gone from strength to strength since her baby came into it. And if you had the slightest inkling you were having a baby do you think for a moment you would let it drop into a toilet bowl?

Sarah's story remains a great lesson to me in how much what we believe about a situation shapes our understanding of it, and how constrained we can be from seeing things clearly when we think our perspective is the only one possible, the right one. Sarah firmly believed she couldn't be pregnant, so firmly that in the throes of labour she couldn't think beyond a bad case of food poisoning. I firmly believed that because pregnancy was an all consuming state for me that I couldn't possibly have not known exactly what was happening to me.

When I think about it, I realise there are many many situations I am in everyday where what I see and hear and understand are based to a large degree on what I believed before I got there. Like Alison's experience of breastfeeding zealots, I also encounter a lot of people whose views of the world place limits around what they are able to see and understand and how they judge.

I try hard to get past those constraints - my own constraints and those of others. I try to challenge myself to look at things from other people's point of view, to see how a few different decisions along the way might have led me in very different directions, and to very different beliefs. Sometimes that's a real ask, and connecting to some people and their take on things is beyond me. Sometimes (most times) I am so unaware of how I'm filtering things that I don't even know that I'm being constrained.

But other times my preparedness to rethink something I once held firmly is deeply illuminating. Sometimes someone pushes me to the point where I am forced to shift my perspective. Sometimes a Sarah comes into your world and says just because something is true for some people, even the vast majority of people, it isn't necessarily true for everyone.

The Other Option

2006-10-29T21:34:00.000+11:00

This post is probably the most painful, and the hardest one, I will have to write. I know at points through this I will cry. I’ve debated for many, many months about whether to write this up – I fear more than anything that I will be judged for what I write and had hoped things would be different after Pia's birth so I could wash some of this away. I will be judged for the decision I made, not once, but twice. And the fact those decisions were extremely hard and emotional for me, makes the judgements even more cruel. I think though, that this is such an integral part of who I am, and the person I have become, that it needs to be said. And if, like Pia’s Story, I can give one other woman some comfort in them having to make the same decision, it will have been worth it.

I had to give up breastfeeding with both Max and with Pia.

In a country which has become fanatical about breastfeeding to the point of extremism, there are only two possible choices a mother could make. You either choose to breastfeed, or you choose to bottle feed. There is no middle ground, no safe haven for those who actually really, really wanted to breastfeed and couldn’t for whatever reason. In the socio-economic circles I live in, I do not know one person who bottle feeds. I am an isolated person within my peer group, and that isolation hurts.

I stopped breastfeeding with Max after 8 days. We had great latch on, position, etc for the first few days. Then a feeding frenzy where we must have had a not so good latch on. And then a terrible few days on the ward with psychotic patients, nurses and midwives through the night who cut their toe nails at the nurses station and bitched about patients for all to hear. Throw in engorgement, and over zealous day time midwives who thought it might be psychologically better for me to be at home rather than on the wards with all the drama, and my confidence was crushed, my nipples cracked, and high levels of anxiety set in. Once home I couldn’t get a good latch on. The nipples deteriorated. My anxiety increased. Max’s anxiety increased. Hysteria set in along with the trauma of the past week. Pain, bloodied feeds, lack of any sleep for 9 days straight and a distressed mother and baby. I withdrew from Max. I actually couldn’t bare to touch him or have him near me. I now know it is possible for someone to cry hysterically for an entire day. Days even. My husband made the call to stop. For our family. For me. For him. For Max.

There has not been one single day since that I haven’t regretted that decision, haven’t felt intense guilt and grief at what I did and what Max has missed out on. I have walked through the years of Max’s life with this burden of my own creation, and have gone out of my way to be a more than perfect mother to make up for it. The pressure and guilt I placed on myself was one of the major contributing factors in PND. I never, ever thought I would not breastfeed. It was never an option in my thinking. So to have to make that call, devastated me. I learnt very quickly, that motherhood is about compromises. Some of them are small concessions, some of them are huge. I got to make all the huge ones within the first two weeks. I had to come to terms with a birth which went totally against my beliefs, and feeding which was against my beliefs. Max though, was happier, less stressed, settled quickly, and is one of the healthiest, most alert, imaginative, intelligent children I know.

I honestly thought the feeding issue with Max was due to circumstance, and the situation I was in. I really did believe that Pia’s feeding would be different. I had a better frame of mind, I knew what was in store. I could do it this time.

The first feed my nipples shredded. Both sides. I had lactation consultants coming out of my ears in hospital. Not one of them/us could get a good latch on. We were constantly making do with nearly good latching. We stopped breastfeeding, and expressed to give the nipples a break. Every feed a midwife would come in and maul my breasts to get colostrum out while we chatted jovially about things. Every visitor I had copped an eyeful of fairly brutal breast manipulation, and a harsh lesson in motherhood difficulties. I shut them out. I decided to feed again with the help of a further lactation consultant. Again, we suffered with nearly good latchings. The nipples got even more shredded through the night. In the quiet isolation of the early hours of the morning, the anxiety settles in, building in intensity with each minute ticking closer to the next feed. The next stage was to express once the milk came in. Add engorgement again – I have no problem producing good milk – and we were on a path to destruction. With the electric pump on the lowest, mildest settings, my nipples still got further damaged. I could have persevered and used a nipple shield – but if the electric pump was causing damage, I really couldn’t see the shields doing much good. I cried long and silently with each feed, trying hard not to focus on the blood mixing with the milk. That is such a horrible, distressing thing to see. I talked to a number of people at the hospital, and decided to stop. Too many tears, too much anxiety. It just isn’t worth it.

I started panicking – a panic attack within 3 days of being a new mother is not a good sign really for someone on PND/depression watch. I really didn’t want to do this again. To open up old raw wounds and repeat past mistakes is just too much – I wanted to enjoy my first weeks with my new baby, not feel anxious and pressured, and panicked about each feed. I didn’t want Pia to know her mother in those weeks as someone who cries whenever they see her. I am so conscious of maternal depression and it’s affects on children – none of which can be accounted for till much later, but how much sorrow has Max seen that could have been avoided? I made my decisions for my family – my bond with Max and Pia is worth far more. My mental sanity is worth more.

Yet still I dread every feed in public where I am judged by other mothers who have no understanding of my situation. I dread answering the questions about feeding. I dread the smugness of mothers who find it easy, who assume everyone can do it. I dread the judgements. I now have twice the guilt – even though I made this decision much better informed, and with the total support of everyone at the hospital and I am ok about that decision. I understand now why it isn’t working: I have very small nipples, and they’re very sensitive. Pia and Max were never able to get them up far enough into the mouth to suck properly, hence their ability to shred instantly. Past damage hasn’t helped their cause. I know I tried everything I could to make it work this time.

But still, the pain will be mine forever.

This same post appears at 6.5st as well. For Pia's birth story, read here.

the problem of reciprocity

2006-10-15T14:15:00.000+10:00

Sorry for the radio silence. Like many bloggers I am eagerly awaiting news from Alison - I expect it will be a while before we see her face round these parts. And what with my new job and all, it's been hard to wade into anything of substance to post about here.

But a couple of things have been happening in my world that have got me thinking. I've been thinking about mum's groups in particular and the reciprocal nature of community in general. For non-aussie readers who aren't familiar with mum's groups as they are here let me explain.

Based solely on geography and date of the birth of your first child, the local government health service for Maternal and Child Health organises a set of initial get togethers for new mothers. They start when your baby is between one and three months and usually run as organised 'sessions' for a couple of months. After this time it is up to group members to determine what happens to the future of the group.

As support groups in an age where extended family is nothing more than an ancestral memory for many women, they can be literal life savers. For those struggling with infant care, who are isolated, lacking information or just looking for someone who understands what's going on for them they are perhaps the government's single most effective initiative for battling the down sides of new motherhood.

There are divergent views on mum's groups - some become strong and binding extended families (I know one mum who still attends bi-annual get togethers for her mother's mums group!), others wither and die when groups find they have nothing in common and no interest in seeing each other. For me I simply can't imagine how I would have remained sane during that first year if it weren't for the women who came to be friends, allies, advisors, confidants and mutual time filler inners - and all in easy walking distance.

Next weekend my mum's group mums are getting together for a childfree evening meal. Although our day time kids oriented get togethers have dwindled to almost nothing and our members have moved suburbs, states and in one case countries, it seems almost everyone from our original group will be coming along next week. I'm really impressed about this and feel so happy to think that despite the pressures of our divergent lives we are all keen to keep that community alive. We still care for and support each other. But at the same time I feel kind of sad that one of the really important aspects of mum's group - the community we create for our children - seems to have withered on the vine.

And this had me asking myself - how much of mum's group is about kids and how much of it is about mums? Of course part of what scares me about this is looking down the barrel of a year at home with an infant and pre schooler and no other mum's around. Most of the mums had their second kids years ago already and have moved beyond those vomit and poo covered slightly hysterical sleep deprived days I am steeling myself for.

Who will I call on those afternoons when there are still hours to go before D gets home and I am up to my neck in feeling overwhelmed and really need someone to make me laugh? What will I say to Amy when she asks why no one wants to come and play, whatever happened to those kids she used to see? Who will I walk around the shops with when I don't need to buy anything but just have to get out of the house?

There's an expression in Thailand, mirrored I'm sure by sayings all over the world - it takes a village to raise a child. Mum's groups are a possibility for a modern village. The community we trust to nurture and keep our child safe while we as mothers are helped with our burdens and kept safe in other ways. One of the things that I've learned through experience, one of the things I used to 'know', but now really 'understand' is that healthy happy kids need healthy happy parents. My girl needs someone to play with, but so do I. The real promise of the mum's group is it's capacity to provide support to both mother and child.

So why don't mum's groups work more effectively than they do? Of course there's a million reasons, a lot of them are obvious and apply to all groups, all communities, all artificial social constructs - lives naturally divert people away from point in time shared experiences. Logistics and time constraints and personalities and other commitments. But there's a couple of things I think are particularly interesting about how people talk about these groups.

Much is made of the way mothers are judged for how they mother and the choices they make. From the brand of shampoo they use on their children's heads to their decisions to work or not, drink when pregnant, use dummies or cloth nappies there is no end of trivial decisions that are fodder for challenges. And the truth is that some of the harshest critics can seem to be other mothers. Perhaps because we are more defensive with people who know too much about what we do, perhaps because it is hardest to pass off criticism that comes from the people who face the same decisions we do.

Mum's groups can be microcosms of everything that makes mothering hardest. Support requires tolerance and when we are most needy, most confused, most overwhelmed and fed up is the time when we are least able to provide a non-judgemental helping hand to someone who has made different choices to us. Hosting other mothers in our homes raise all the questions we perhaps feel most ambivalent about. Do I miss out on that nap I want to clean the place up or do I say my sanity dictates cleaning remain at the bottom of my priorities, do I prepare healthy snacks or give in to my desire for some comfort food, do I discipline other people's children when they behave in ways I don't allow in my own child or do I let other mothers determine what is appropriate for their child? How do we deal with radically different mother behaviours?

The list of issues grows the longer you think about it and there are pretty much no easy answers. Communities which are diverse and tolerant require sacrifice - there's no getting around it. There are times when you do need to hold your tongue, watch possessions you didn't think to pack away get broken, disregard comments you feel are critical of choices you feel you are entitled to make and you have to prepare to feel let down by others who just aren't able to offer you the helping hand you really need. They are imperfect beasts.

But I do not want to teach my daughter that the answer to these difficulties is to walk away. The best response to difference is to disapprove and disengage. I want her to learn that with each complex social interaction she successfully negotiates, the better equipped she is to handle the next one life will throw at her. I want her to value her community and think that putting up with the hard stuff is a reasonable price to pay in exchange for being part of a bigger and brighter world. While I have no desire to expose her to certain perils, neither do I believe I am doing her any favours in teaching her that some people and some ways of living are not worth knowing and understanding, even if they are not what she chooses for herself.

So once every fortnight, despite diminishing interest, I tell everyone that they are free to come to my place. There's always something to eat, a cup of tea to be drunk and a kids room full of toys to be trashed. And if at times I feel ambivalent about how people behave in my house, if sometimes I have an inner dialogue that is less than charitable, then that's OK too.

working on the chain gang

2006-10-07T16:27:00.000+10:00

I started a new job this week and it's really got me thinking about work and my deep attachment to it. I think I really understood this when I realised that I felt guilty being at home and I didn't at work.

I'll say that I don't work long hours or full-time, and I have a child who is extremely social and needs a lot of time with peers. She has a dad with a very flexible work schedule who is engaged with parenting and she also has an involved extended family and a fantastic kinder and childcare centre she loves. If you changed a few of those variables, life might be very different for me and I might feel differently about the things I am about to say.

Work is deeply important to me. I'm a stereotypical twenty first century career woman who has had children later in life. I have worked in some capacity since I was a teenager and when there was no paid work on offer I did volunteering. In my last job before Amy I worked 50-60 hours a week and I loved it.

Of course in the moment there are lots of things to not like about working - especially if you have a job you don't like, a workplace where you don't feel valued, a boss or colleagues that you can't get along with. A lot of the time you can wish you were at the beach and dream of living outside the responsibilities of paid work.

But work has always helped me to define who I am. It has given me purpose. It's no coincidence that I have spent most of my working life in government and the community sector, where I feel that the work I do makes a contribution to something bigger and more important than myself. Where I provide service.

I'll admit too that beyond the inherent satisfaction of doing a good and worthy job, I like the personal rewards. I like the involvement, I like the sense of belonging and I like it that people notice what I do. I'm as pleased when someone takes the time and care to teach me something and make me better at what I do as I am when someone congratulates me for something done well.

But aside from liking being in a job, I feel committed to the importance of having a job. Perhaps because I was raised by a single mother who understood that our long term survival depended on her getting a job with prospects, perhaps because I grew up seeing how much satisfaction and recognition she got from doing that job, perhaps because I saw other mothers unhappily trapped by dependency. I wanted the power to choose what I would do with my life and it always seemed to me that freedom of choice was intimately bound to economic independence and some kind of status in the workforce. This is something beyond the amount I get paid - it's about choices.

When adults used to tell me what a great boss and colleague my mum was I used to burst with pride. I loved that her wondrous light was visible to others too, and I got to say you might get her at work, but her heart is mine because I belong to her! She made me want to achieve great things in my life, to be good and smart and industrious. Seeing her in the broader world really connected my experience of her with a much bigger picture and I suppose I want this same thing for my daughter. I want her to know that the love and care you give to others can be balanced with the things that are important to you and the world beyond your doorstep. I want her to know there are places out there in the world for her too.

As I've grown into being a parent I have also appreciated all the other mother things my mum did - the patience, the discipline, the domestic arts she never neglected. She grew veggies and baked bread and sewed dresses and maintained a home and raised 3 kids. Her choice to leave a bad marriage was very brave and had some really hard consequences, but work was a great salve for her and more importantly it allowed her to do what she knew was the right thing for all of us. It made her strong and confident and smart. I am eternally grateful to her for doing what she did and for instilling in me an understanding that you need to work for the things you want in life.

Alison's previous post about the disappointments of birth resonated with me, but not about birth. I was profoundly disappointed when I realised that birth had led me to a place where I no longer knew how to be someone in the world. When I realised that my pre-birth plan for a few years of part time work followed by a resumption of my 'normal' life was so horribly out of whack with reality. I think I began to understand this the moment she was born, when I knew I would never again be visiting that place I used to call normal. And then when I returned to my old job on a part time basis it was even more apparent.

I am sad and angry that it seems so difficult to find a way to parent and undertake meaningful work. That to be a mother so often entails a loss of independence, not just because someone now depends on me but also because having a child excludes me from so much of the world. In the world of work my child diminishes me. And I don't believe this is desirable or inevitable.

I treat my new job as a privilege. I like that when I talk to Amy I speak with pride, that my engagement out there makes me more alive in here. I wish I felt more confident that my future held more jobs like it, that I could help her be confident that the world will help her achieve all the things she wants to achieve. For now I'll milk it for all it's worth.

IF ONLY

2006-10-02T11:28:00.000+10:00

I should have been having regular pedicures. I should have been having regular manicures. I should have had a monthly – or even better weekly – facial. And full body pregnancy massage. I should have cooked exquisite organic low fat meals every day. I should have eaten more of this, and less of that. I should have had my eyebrows tinted. Except that dying hair is out of bounds. I should have worked for an employer who allowed time off – with pay – for things such as prenatal yoga, facials, massage, pregnancy aqua aerobics. I should have had a job which allowed me to pay for the facials, massages, and pedicures. I should have napped when I needed rest. I should have spent more time lounging on my bed, with dappled sunlight falling through the window, staring lovingly at my unborn child, reading it stories and playing gentle soothing music while stroking the belly. I should have written a birth plan.

And then after the baby was born, I should have used this sterilizer. I should have used this sterilizer as well. And I should have breastfed exclusively for 6 months. And I should have worn a silk negligee in hospital to help me feel sexy again (hello????????) And I should have eaten this, and that, and a little more of this, and a little less of that. I should have played this music. And I should buy these videos. But I shouldn’t let my child watch videos. I should have used this toy in the cot. And this one in the stroller. And this one in the living room. I should have used this spoon and plate set. I should have used this dummy. I should have used these nappies. And these wipes. I should have used cloth nappies. I should have made my own wipes. Except dummy’s are out of bounds, so I should have used this as a soother. But then again this dummy should have been used as well. I should co sleep. I should get the baby into a good routine. I should feed on demand. I should feed at strict times of the day. I should have photographed my baby every day and kept every memento of their life in a nice neat album instead of an old box under the bed. I should have read to them every single opportunity I had. I should use cue cards. I should let them learn of their own accord. I should have enrolled the baby in gym classes. And swim classes. And music classes. And language classes. And drama classes. Aunty Cookie has some great views on all of this.

Because if I don’t do any of this, my child will be so far behind developmentally, physically and emotionally, that I will be forever held to believe that it was all my fault if they do not turn out to be happy bright sparks who make friends with ease and never throw a tantrum.

Bollocks. Oh. I wasn’t supposed to say that was I. Yet, if you pick up any general pregnancy/parenting magazine on the newsagent stands, the entire magazine will sprout this philosophy to you. Read carefully, and every single item is phrased in such a way that to not do what they’re asking is tantamount to endangering your child and stifling their development. And the contradictions from page to page are no-ones business. Not only are you led to believe certain products are better than others – and yes I do acknowledge some products for some things are better – but to suggest that some products will make your child happier, healthier and brighter is really misleading.

But none of this comes even close to the anger and disappointment I have with many of these magazines in the way birth, and to a lesser extent, pregnancy, is portrayed. There is one popular pregnancy magazine commonly available in Australia and the UK (and possibly the states) which follows a soon to be mother - not necessarily a first time mother either – through her pregnancy and her birth. It’s a diary format. The idea is great – to show different birth and pregnancy outcomes. But it fails miserably. The pieces are so edited, that the reality of the birth experience becomes so sanitised, and eventually so glorified, that to go through the same birth for yourself, you could be forgiven for thinking you were going mad if you came out thinking it was anything other than glorious. There is no follow up report at 6 months, and a year, as the mother’s perspective on her birth alters over time.

For many women these magazines are a life line through their pregnancy, a wealth of information about what to expect, what choices they have, and the medicalisation of birth demystified. And there is a lot of great information in there, if you sift through and back up anything you read with further research and information. But turn the corner and look at some of the discussion boards on popular sites like Babycentre, and you’ll realise that dissatisfaction with birth outcomes due to lack of preparation and information prior to, and during, birth play a huge part in birth outcomes. Despite the wealth of information out there, women are still giving birth disillusioned and unsure of what happened and why.

And then we wonder why the statistics for PND are so high or greatly underestimated, and why women struggle to accept birth outcomes, and why women feel like they “failed”. This is a really personal thing for me. I have long held that antenatal classes teach the wrong things, and that there is a general fear of letting women know the reality of some births because we as a society have placed so much emphasis on natural birth. In addition, we as women have come to expect that because we choose natural birth, it will automatically happen, and we often turn a blind eye to potential problems. No longer is natural birth a natural occurrence – it is a thing which is planned and controlled: You did the yoga, you did the massage, you bought everything the magazines told you to buy, you bought the birthing ball and you have the essential oils all packed. Hell, you even got the cot ready at 34 weeks – look how prepared you are!! I know one woman who said to me that she had good thigh muscles because she’s been doing yoga, therefore she will, of course, have a natural birth. Good thigh muscles have little to do with a baby and body clock divorced from the preparations you have made.

When I did my first lot of antenatal classes with the hospital in London when I was pregnant with Max, I asked in the first class whether we would cover the potential problems of various forms of intervention and pain relief – it’s all very good telling us what options are available, but what of the consequences of those actions. The teacher looked at me aghast. Why No! We would not be doing that because you will all have natural births. Okaaaaaaay. Yes – we all were planning natural births, but the likelihood of us all actually having natural births was different. To suggest we needn’t cover other birth forms and their impact on us because we chose otherwise is really debased. Her version of what constituted important information for birth was spending two hours teaching our partners how to massage out leg cramps (true!), that was one class out of 4 gone, and another class spent going over and over how to ring the hospital to tell them you were in labour. After the entire class insisted on having some information about basic baby care post baby (apparently post baby stuff is irrelevant. Never mind none of us had held a baby before and had no idea), that left one 2 hour class to discuss birth. I don’t need to say it was fairly pitiful. Luckily I had booked in for NCT classes at my own expense, and they covered so much more, in so much detail, that I don’t think anyone there would have felt unprepared for various outcomes. NCT is very pro natural and that’s why you choose their classes – but they also know things go wrong, and that to be prepared for that is a part of their role as educators. Natural does not necessarily mean without drugs, without intervention - it can also incorporate understanding, and knowledge of cause and effect and being empowered to deal with whatever situation is presented at the time - planned or unplanned. We covered emergency c-sections in one class. While every one of us probably put a lot of that information away in a file in our head labeled ‘Not Needed”, I can tell you that when I did have to have an emergency c-section, knowing how many people were in the room and why, and what they did, and how long it would take and what generally was going on was a huge relief. I could focus on other things rather than why 11 people (yes 11) were introducing themselves to me. And I understood how I ended up there too.

I know I come at this from a slightly more technical background, and therefore my perspective is slightly different to other people, but because of that I also feel for the lack of real information which is given to women, irrespective of how they plan to birth. I did my Architectural design thesis on a birthing centre attached to a large teaching hospital in Melbourne. I looked at many spatial relationships of the pregnant women in society, and the labouring women through birth within an institutional environment, and how we could change those spatial relationships to gain a better birth outcome – ie a natural birth – for the mother, partner and baby. Part of my research led me to many medical books about intervention, and the prevention of intervention in birth. I have a much stronger appreciation of the cyclic cascade of intervention than most – I have read the pros and cons of basic care procedures, pain relief, induction techniques and management systems through labour. And because of that, I see how unprepared we, as intelligent women, really are when we go into the labour ward.

I don’t intend this post to be a negative slur on being prepared and making whatever preparations you feel necessary. I personally had a monthly facial from 5 months during my first pregnancy because I had such a horrid time that I needed something nice for myself. I don’t intend this to be anti natural birth or to take away from those who have had a great birth experience natural or otherwise – on the contrary my views are very pro natural and they continue to be despite the traumatic birth I had with my first child. I would just like to see a little more realism and understanding, and for women to acknowledge realism in birth outcomes and expectations of them as mothers. And to allow women more trust in themselves as good parents without magazines telling them what is best for their child, or pushing certain parenting ideals. It’s about taking pressure off ourselves.

risk part 2 - or why sometimes it's hard to be a woman

2006-09-26T10:01:00.000+10:00

I'd like to pick up a few of the threads from my last post. There were so many alley ways I wanted to go down and didn't that I've decided to do a series of posts on the risk theme. Please let me know if there are threads you'd like me to follow in future posts, or when you've had enough and want me to, like, get over it and shut up. When you do a lot of research on something it's hard to know when you're being illuminating and when you are going on about stuff no one cares about.

For now I wanted to pick up some of the things Rebecca's comment raised.

Before I start I also want to reiterate a couple of things about these risk posts. This post is going to be about a set of risks faced by women. In so doing I am not implying men do not also face risks, or that they are less in either number or seriousness. I find it really unhelpful to get into a discussion based on who faces the worst problems - our experience of problems is highly subjective and comparing and rating just leads to conflict, not progress.

It's also important to keep uppermost in mind that this is about risk, not outcome. If I paint a picture of the risks faced by women I do not mean that all women face these risks equally, or that any woman will necessarily experience all or even any of them in actuality. Inevitably some women are far more vulnerable than others - often in a frightening cascade - though it is getting harder to tell who is well protected than it used to be. If it seems like a very dark tale then remember I am by nature talking about worst case scenarios, and for every bad outcome there are many who escape the pitfalls. Neither do I imply that no men at all face them or experience them as outcomes. It is a symptom of our world that the way risk is faced is becoming less predictable and a growing number of men, though still small in absolute numbers, face many of the risks traditionally ascribed to women.

And I also want to make really clear that I am not promoting a set of lifestyle choices here. Pointing out the risks associated with certain decisions is neither a warning against them nor a recommendation to take them. Life is inherently about taking risks and only an individual can judge what risks are reasonable for them. Our personal circumstances and preferences have a lot to do with which risks are more significant for us, where we are vulnerable, where we feel lucky.

Whew. I think the caveat might be longer than the post.

OK so what does it mean to be a woman in the twenty first century when it comes to facing risk? For our grandmothers this was much simpler question, both because the risks were less diverse and because they were better understood. Social structures were more rigid, choices were narrower, far fewer women stood outside the confines of the norm. The vast majority of women grew up, got married and had kids. They were almost entirely economically dependent, they mostly carried out unpaid labour and had severely restricted rights when compared with men (think how recently women were allowed to vote, work when married, have their own passports, inherit wealth, attend a university etc). They did not control their fertility, they were socially shunned (or worse) if they left an unhappy or unhealthy marriage and if their husbands left them, became disabled or died they were reliant on the goodwill of others for their survival.

So they faced a set of risks related to being dependent, marginalised participants in society. If they chose to pursue a career or education they most likely faced a degree of social censure which reverberated on their family. They probably also faced daily harassment and discrimination by being treated differently and as a deviant - constantly challenged and ridiculed, perhaps legally, perhaps through humiliation, possibly violence. The pay off would be a degree of economic freedom and perhaps ultimately power and recognition as a trail blazer.

On the other hand, if they followed a more conventional path they ran other risks. They risked not being chosen for marriage, leading again to the risk of social shame, perhaps life as a servant in their parents home, or that of a stranger. If they were chosen for marriage, they risked being stuck with a husband who might fail to provide, be unkind, unfit, unreliable, abusive. They risked losing that husband, especially in times of war or in workplaces fraught with danger. If these risks were realised, they faced an uphill battle to deal with them. Without any institutionalised equality, they most likely sought some other entity on which to become dependent - another man, a father, a church, a charity. Alternatively they attempted to eek out a subsistence on the margins, raising poultry in their yard, taking in other people's laundry etc. [My great grandmother, whose husband died from an accident at work, died not long after and her death certificate listed the cause of death as exhaustion. Not surprising when she had 13 children to care for and no income.]

Over time pressure built for things to change. Exactly because so many women experienced the realisation of these risks there was both an ideological belief in change (equality is inherently right) and a pragmatic belief in change (we can no longer look after all these dispossessed women, let them look after themselves). Change was incremental, with legal frameworks, institutions and social attitudes lagging and leapfrogging each other to produce a world in which there was not just equal opportunity, but affirmative action, the right to divorce and an acceptance of the choice not to marry. The pill also brought about reproductive choice - whether to have kids, how many and when, and the choice could be controlled by women without the consent or knowledge of anyone else. Termination of pregnancy became legal. The work place also reformed with a decline in primary production and manufacturing and a growth in industries which actively relied on women workers. Women's education levels soared (in most parts of the Western world women now outstrip men in educational achievements).

So the risk profile for women began to look a little more like a man's. Not that the world is exactly equal still - there's still a massive gap between what men and women get paid, what jobs and at what level most women work, how women experience social stigmas relating to their lifestyle choices etc - but it's a long way from where it used to be. Women now essentially carry all the rights and responsibilities of autonomous citizens, they are not just a dependent on someone else's tax form, they can access their own pension and so on. And with this the whole economic basis of calculation on society shifts from man plus dependents to adult individuals regardless of gender. Equally they are subject to expectations - to work instead of collecting welfare for example for single mothers, what we in Australia call 'mutual obligation'.

But everything starts to go south when kids enter the picture. The majority of women who have children no longer stay at home full time. The norm is now for women to work, although usually in a part-time capacity and sometimes for just a few hours per week. As such women become subject to two quite different risk profiles - the one that belongs to them as autonomous individuals and the one that belongs to those of the dependent. For many women they transition between these states - independent, dependent and independent again - only very briefly, reduced by things like paid maternity leave. For others the cycle is longer, for some the transition happens once and is never reversed, for others it never happens or they occupy some murky in between state. It gets messy and complicated and the variations keep everyone on the hop and confused. This confusion can be seen socially (so, what do you do? is a question many mothers find vexed), institutionally (the complexity of dealing with government departments around marriage status, kids with different names to their mothers, messy rules around welfare entitlements etc) and legally (just think about what happens on divorce with asset division, alimony and so on). Women often feel stigmatised if they work, and stigmatised if they don't because they are dealing with two sets of expectations as well as risks.

A key characteristic of the shifting states for women is how the risks change over the course of their lives. They tend to accumulate like betting on a double or nothing basis. For example, time spent out of the workforce to care for kids has a lasting effect on what happens to women when they re-enter. A study done over ten years ago estimated that taking time out of the workforce to have a child (regardless of how long) would reduce a woman's lifetime earnings by over $300,000. This can be explained by the subsequent drop in status and opportunity, accumulated retirement savings (working women retire with an average of half the retirement savings of a man in similar work) as well as the loss of income for the time not worked. In reality, most women lose considerably more because they return to work that is part time, poorly paid and usually significantly below their level of capability.

But there are significant risks associated with working post children too. Aside from the social and psychological guilt and worry there are other less obvious problems. Women who work continue to do most, if not all the unpaid domestic work (this is also largely true for partnered women without children if you can believe that). There is a wealth of stats and studies on this in all kinds of interesting detail and I could go on FOREVER about it, but I'll control myself. Bottom line is that women who work part time in the work force do almost as much unpaid domestic work as women who do not do paid work, and women who work full time still do a lot and tend to outsource the rest. Men do pretty much the same level of domestic work regardless of what their partners do, and although the amount they do has increased marginally over the last decade or two, the increase is almost exclusively in childcare (hey I'll take the kids to the park so you can do the vacuuming and shopping!) and directed help (here's a list of things I need you to pick up from the supermarket for me so I can cook dinner). Women who do paid work make up the extra time for all this unpaid work by giving up time for leisure, personal grooming and sleep. The amount of time men devote to these things is not impacted at all by whether they have children or do paid work (quite possibly the more hours they do paid work the more 'leisure' time they take). In other words, paid work tends to be an additional rather than alternate activity for women with children but not for men. There are also a number of studies which point out that working places added strain on partnerships and tends to increase the likelihood of family break up.

Children also have a considerable impact on the work life of most women. In general a woman's status drops when children are present, they are less likely to be developed, promoted, extended and retained. They are also less likely to be able to meet the demand for unpaid overtime - a considerable problem in cultures (such as Australia and the US) where the average weekly hours of work is growing in both quantum and spread of core hours. Flexible rostering over 20 hours a day seven days a week, and an expectation for all workers to do overtime both paid and unpaid, is highly incompatible with family life. Often called 'the mummy track' women tend to drift into casual and temporary work, off the promotional path and into precarious and unstable work. The effects of this ghettoisation are permanent for most women, who remain in this marginalised position even after their child rearing responsibilities have declined.

But the real crunch to the different sets of expectations and risks women become subject to after children is their vulnerability to adversity. If something happens to the partnership on which they rely either fully or in part, they experience both sets of problems. If they divorce, are left, widowed or become a carer for a disabled partner (and remember these outcomes are experienced by well over half of all women), they experience most of the risks of the dependent (poverty, marginalised workforce status, limited opportunities, welfare dependence) AND most of the risks of the autonomous citizen (insufficient retirement savings, family hostile workplace demands, exclusion from charity and support structures). And as previously said they often also cop the criticism given to women who make all the above choices - neglect of their children's emotional needs, failure to provide materially, failure to be a good worker, a welfare/charity freeloader....

Women who want to reduce their risk profiles are increasingly electing to neither marry or have children (and certainly those who have children are having far fewer), seeing the risk of emotional loss as significantly less than the other risks they face as mothers and wives. This trend is growing across the world to an extent which alarms many governments and social researchers. It is impacting birthrates and population pyramids (quite literally putting them on their heads) and is most likely a forecast for a contracting economy, aging population and drain on the public purse unlike anything every seen before. Many see this situation as comparable to the growth in social problems that led to the women's revolution of the 60s. Sadly we don't see the signs of the same kind of social change response yet, but there are a number of unavoidable changes coming our way which will definitely force movement. As the economy and labour force contracts (from declining birthrates and an aging population), women's participation in paid work will be much more highly valued, which gives a little hope that they will be more able to balance a family with a job, and a better paid job at that. There may be a better acknowledgement of the contribution women make to society when they withdraw from the workforce to care, meaning better social insurance schemes to make up the gap in retirement savings and household finances, paid for by their increased workforce participation prior to childrearing. There may be an overall reduction in weekly hours of work, allowing men to better participate in the domestic world and women to better participate in the work world, as we've seen in many European countries in recent years. We might get better at judging choices less and facilitating diversity of preferences more.

Is anyone still there? Congratulations if you made it this far. In my next installment I'll talk a bit more about blokes and how risk is shared or redistributed in families. But for now I need a cup of tea and a good lie down.

risk

2006-09-23T10:54:00.000+10:00

I'll echo Alison's thoughts here - although in general I'll do this in the comments section. It is really gratifying to see this blog prompting the kind of discussion we'd really hoped for. I see it much more as a discussion forum than a regular my journal type blog and to see you all joining in with gusto is just fantastic. Thanks so much!! And I hope you will undserstand this is why you often won't get an email response to your comment, but rather a reponse in the comments section. Please come back and leave further comments on the same topic if people say things that give you thought.

Now I've been thinking about doing a post on risk for a while and a few things recently have added fuel to my thinking. I'll start by saying 'risk' was a key part of the theory I used when writing my thesis on work and family. I found it really interesting and it gave me another way of thinking about some of the dilemmas I faced as a mother around my identity, work, financial dependence and so on. I'm not going to get into a deep academic type discussion here, but I thought I'd let you know the background to my thinking. Of course if anyone is interested in the academic stuff let me know and I can point you to some reading. I'm simplifying a lot, so I hope you'll give me some latitude.

Basically the idea is that as the world has become more complicated and diverse, as people have more choices, more mobility, less certainty, what happens to us is less predictable. A century ago it was a serious and significant decision to elect not to marry, for example, and the choice almost certainly carried some consequences, which were fairly predictable. Similarly even 50 years ago if you were a young working woman and you decided to marry and have children the decision almost certainly entailed giving up paid work, or if it didn't there would have been social and familial consequences. In fact in most industries it was illegal to work when married, a law known as the marriage bar. [And just as an aside the marriage bar was repealled in Japan as recently as 1985 - how gob smacking is that?] The minimum wage was also set in Australia based on the notion that a wage had to support two adults and three children because this was the norm for the vast majority of wage earners.

But now, in theory at least, we are the captains of our own ships. The decisions to marry, bear children, work and so on are our own. We will almost certainly suffer some negative consequences for any decision we make, but for most of us there are ups and downs to all possible choices, rather than overwhelmingly determined 'normal/good' or 'deviant/bad' choices. Rather than listening to our families or a general social consensus, we must weigh up what we see as ups and downs of all possible choices, and it is this process that we might call understanding risk.

So my thinking might go something like this: if I stay home with my kids instead of working I might help them to feel more secure, more loved, and I might improve their development and capabilities. I might also really value the mothering role and feel real satisfaction from knowing how I have shaped them and how they have bonded with me. I might also believe that staying home is the right thing to do. I might think the option of formal childcare is cold and dangerous, with kids more likely to be aggressive and miss out on all the love they would get if they were home with family. On the other hand, not working means as a family we will have less, we are more economically vulneable (what if my partner loses his job?) and my partner and I go from being equal contributers to the domestic/paid work split to have typical gender specialisations. If ever we split up (although it seems unlikely because we love each other, I know at least 50% of couples do end up splitting) it might be really hard for me to get back into the workforce and I'll have no retirement savings, and we might end up being really poor (like lots of single mothers are).

On the other hand, what is at stake if I go to work? I love working and using the skills I worked so hard to accumulate, so I may well be happier. I'll have more money and more importantly to me I'll have financial independence. Because as a family we will have two incomes we are less likely to have a major setback and I'll be able to give my kids the things I think are really important like a good education, the opportunity to travel and the chance to participate in all the things they might love (music lessons, sports teams, their own bikes etc). I might also feel it's important for me as a woman to be equal to my partner. I might have read a recent study that said children who spend some time in formal childcare develop better social and learning skills. But I might also feel like I'm missing out, like they are missing out and like people will judge me for being a bad mother. I might feel like money isn't what's really important to me and feel confident that even if my partner and I broke up, he'd be fair in providing for me and our kids.

Of course all these things are largely unknown. There's a lot of maybes and mights in there so what I am really doing is working out which risks I'm prepared to take, not which consequences I'm prepared to live with. And what's the trouble with that? Well for a start we tend to over emphasis and avoid risks which are immediate and short term, and down play or disregard risks which are further away, regardless of the liklihood of them happening. In other words we worry about what's happening right now and think the future can look after itself. Secondly, we often don't really know much about the odds on the risks we're taking, we base our thinking on the things we feel, the things we've seen in the past, or the things people have told us based on their experience. The result of this is that for many people there comes a time when those longer term risks come back to haunt them and they find themselves in places in their lives they wish they weren't.

So what got me thinking about all this? I'll start close to home and say next week is my twenty week scan. I'm trying to work out whether to take my daughter, who would so love the experience, but what if there's something wrong? Once before I have had the experience of sitting in front of the ultrasound monitor and seeing my worst fears realised and I couldn't put her through that too. When I was pregnant 5 years ago I didn't worry so much - and for good reason. Back then for example, based on my age alone, my risk for having a Downs baby was one in many thousands. This time it's one in 117. We've ruled out Downs this time around, but not one of the many major problems influenced by my age that can be picked up at 20 weeks. And I really wish I wasn't so old and the risk wasn't so great. But back when I might have been popping out babies with really low risk, the risk of job insecurity, financial instability and general immaturity drove us to wait before having children. We didn't worry so much about what it might be like to lose a baby rather than a job, to face a major diability instead of a few lean years. I can't say whether we made the wrong deicison, we don't know what might have happened the other way around, but I do know we didn't think enough about what might happen.

The other thing that got me thinking about this was seeing a number of my friends experiencing trouble over the choices they made long ago. Friends who have been unable to have babies at all, who have remained single against their wishes, who have spent those life savings they so desperately wanted to have in place before having a baby to pay for fertility treatments. Friends whose dream of home ownership becomes ever more distant because they left it too late, whose careers have led them to deadends or 60 hour a week burnt out exhaustion. Friends whose partnerships ended in acrimony with drawn out financial and custody disputes. And it is so much harder to bear the misfortunes you suspect are in part of your own doing than those thrust randomly upon you with no warning and no reason. Should I have done things differently is a haunting refrain.

And all this sounds very dark, and of course in truth risks can also pay off, as any gambler will tell you, and they often do. In so many ways I feel incredibly fortunate that I have so many things right in my life. That I have a loving and engaged partner, a healthy and vibrant girl, an extended family close around me, a nice place to live, good food to eat and time to be creative. I am thankful and relieved and more happy and content than at any other time in my life. But I am also aware that as we get older we see more and more of those chickens coming home to roost and it strikes me how sad it is that we make so many significant decisions early on without an appreciation of what they may bring.

And when I read this incredibly powerful and brave post one of the things that really stayed with me was the author's dilemma about what to do with the wisdom she had gained from her experience. Do you tell people about what it's like when the risks don't pay off? Do you warn them off taking such a risk with the idea that maybe they don't know, don't understand what they are making themselves vulnerable to and if they knew they might make different choices? Or do you accept that the risks play out differently for everyone and try to show how things can turn out OK, regardless of the costs you might have to pay? Do we need to all learn for ourselves what it means to live with our choices? Do we risk being seen as just another nagging doomsdayer trying to tell other people what the 'right' choice is, even though this isn't what we meant?

I don't know if there are answers to any of those questions. I do know that when I did my research I was completely bowled over by a number of the things I read. Some of the stats about how people's lives play out surprised me. Some stats scared me. Like what happens to women who withdraw from the workforce, like what happens to families headed by single mothers, like what happens to fathers and mothers and children in families where there is a polarisation of gender roles, like what happens when partnerships end, like what happens to kids who grow up in houses where they don't see their parents much and income is used to buy the work of parenting, like how little young women understand about agining and fertility. I know stats don't tell every story -there are so very many exceptions to every rule - but the stats still tell an important story when it comes to understanding the risks we're taking.

OUR PLACE

2006-09-21T17:26:00.000+10:00

Firstly I’d like to say – and I think I speak for Sooz as well - thankyou so much for the support you’ve shown on this little venture. I’ve been taking great interest and note of the comments coming through, and a few things have really struck a chord with me.

This blog, and what Sooz and I believe very strongly in, is really needed. There is so much which is left unsaid in the maze of motherhood, and so much is skirted around, avoidance is one of our greatest tactics as mothers, and women. So for us to perhaps confront some of those beliefs and stigmas is hard, but also very welcomed by other people. It strikes me constantly when I talk to other women about motherhood – they truly appreciate someone speaking out and telling it how it is. Sometimes you can see the visible relief that someone has said what they're thinking.

There are so few outlets for us to just let it all out – and the comments reflect that need to talk and be part of something bigger. The length that many of you have gone to in writing your reflections and your views is extraordinary for a blog – and I personally thank you for taking the time to let us know, and to let other people reading know, your experiences and your feedback. Part of us setting up this blog was to establish some dialogue between people – some discussion, and you’ve all jumped straight on that and contributed to everything we’ve written. It’s hard for us to respond to individual comments, but we really want to continue many of these discussions, and will do so through the comments, so please check back if you do make a comment, and see how the thread develops.

The last thing which has struck me is the pressure that comes across in many of your words. The pressure to be something you’re not, to justify your words or your actions, to be politically correct in what you say and how you say it. I really want this to be a pressure free zone – so much of what I try and aim for, and get across to other women is to back away from the pressure we put on ourselves to be Perfect Mothers and Women. What is a perfect mother? What is Right or Wrong in motherhood? The fact is there is no right or wrong, no perfect method of bringing up a child. There is no perfect labour. No perfect hospital bag. No perfect diet for your child, and no perfect education. To try and achieve that will only kill some part of you inside. I really hope, through this blog, you can find a space which is without some of that pressure, and where you can let of some steam, and somewhere you can realise that everyone else is struggling, and in the same boat, and take some consolation from that. And that the decisions we make are our decisions, and really, that’s all that matters.

community parenting and the un-parented

2006-09-16T14:51:00.000+10:00

Amy has always spent lots of time with groups of kids. My mum's group (bless each and every member) has been a fixture from the earliest days and 'community parenting' has come relatively easily to us all. We've tag teamed on swing pushing, on breaking up brawls, on providing snacks and cuddles and drawing boundaries. While I think we would all agree that we don't all parent the same, we've all been more or less happy to accept a level of caring for each others kids and withdrawing for a breather while someone else does the job.

Being a community parenter has taught me that no kids are perfect and no kids are pure evil, they are just all very different. They have different skills and understandings, different ways of approaching things, different tools for getting what they want and different blindsides. It's also taught me that as a parent you have to pull back at a certain point from intervening if you want them to establish their own identity and develop their capacity to be social. There is very rarely someone in the absolute right and someone in the absolute wrong. Sometimes it's hard to watch kids in conflict, but stepping in isn't always a good idea in the long term.

But I remember our first encounter with a mass of kids we didn't know. A winter's morning in an indoor play centre raised in me some unfamiliar emotions. Firstly there were kids lacking not just in discipline, but in a parent to discipline them. They were happy to crash down slides on top of much younger kids, push someone out of their way and generally bully their way all over the place. Their mothers were somewhere over in a gaggle sipping lattes. Similarly there was another breed of seemingly parentless children, the ones who clung to any attendant adult like glue, who chatted tirelessly, who asked constant questions, who were desperate for attention.

What felt strange to me about those encounters was my immediate and instinctive emotional response. I wanted to tell the bullies off and I wanted to escape being a surrogate parent to the attention seekers. I was angry with the mothers for ignoring their kids, even while I understood the myriad of perfectly valid reasons why it might be so. How easily I understood the need for escape from parenting, the need to leave children to independent play, the need to let kids learn to negotiate the world on their own terms. But when my kid was one of the littlest I was forced to do the job their parents should have been doing for them. Telling them to go find friends to play with, telling them to watch out for others.

So this morning we went off to 'traffic school', a play ground set up like a functioning road system. It has traffic lights and stop signs, round abouts and pedestrian crossings, and the kids ride around on their bikes learning about road rules. Only the vast majority of kids do no learning it all. Their parents let them free and then sit down to read the paper or chat to friends while their kids ride willy nilly around crashing into each other. Clearly many of these kids had no grasp or the rules whatsoever and had no way of learning. Some of the kids were significantly older than others and sped around on racers, ignoring traffic lights and signs, terrorising the younger kids.

I am not by nature a cop, and I am not by nature a parent who wants a tight leash. Kids learning to ride bikes on roads make mistakes and have crashes, and for all the biffo I saw there was no blood, no real hurt. And there was a lot of fun being had and no need to get too serious about it all, and I did some paper reading too. But it struck me as really unfortunate that the 'school' part of traffic school was left eating dust for most kids. As I naively tried to explain all the signs and rules to Amy as we went through the course, kids rushed past, all over the road, running lights, ignoring right of way and no one was letting them know it wasn't all right.

Amy's first bingle led to a flood of tears, not from hurt, but from the realisation that following the rules wasn't going to keep her safe. It shattered her confidence in her ability to follow the rules herself and made her fearful of the rogue element. And though she didn't articulate it I am sure she was also aware that there was patently no consequence for bad behaviour, not even a follow up lesson. I felt like snapping a few of the worst offenders, mostly older kids who should have known better by their age, but I also wanted to know what their parents thought about what their kids were doing.

And as we drove home, Amy extrapolated the days lessons to the road in general. She saw herself as very vulnerable to the cars that might squash her, even if it is by accident. To a large extent her realisations were all too familiar to me, and reflect the beginning of a cognitive chain that leads to more adult perceptions. How my place (and safety) in the world is not determined by my actions alone, why there are rules and why they don't always succeed in holding back chaos, why some people never learn the rules and how they sometimes seem to get all the breaks. But I hope she'll also learn that mostly the rules are worth it, and mostly they work, and mostly when people do the wrong things it's because there are things they never learned, or because they are still learning and we all make mistakes. I hope she'll get back on her bike and keep on peddling.

And me? I'll go on trying to negotiate these weird share parent spaces. Trying not to protect Amy too much, trying to help her understand why thing happen the way they do. Trying not to get myself into a conflict with some other parent who takes offence at the way I'm talking to their child, trying not to scowl at parents I think should be doing their job differently. Trying not to be world cop and most definitely trying not to judge people whose attitudes and parenting styles are different to mine.

prepared

2006-09-15T20:53:00.000+10:00

Reading about the bag got me thinking about lists and getting prepared and organised. Actually I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Thinking there was a time in my life when I was very organised, and being organised gave me great pleasure. I loved lists and organisational systems and planning, and revising all of the above. Can I admit to alphabetising my books? To colour coding my filing system? To collecting uniform screw top jars for my pantry over decades? You get the idea. Scary stuff.

It's easy to blame the demise of the organised life on the birth of a child, it's certainly been a serious kick in the pants for me in that regard, but there have been other things which have contributed to the erosion of my managed self. In hindsight I think that packed bag, returning home so largely unpacked, was a watershed. It made me realise how much of life (especially my new babied life) was nothing like I expected. How much of the energy and time I spent planning that bag and it's contents was lost, and for no good reason. How planning was no longer going to insulate me from the unknown.

I've always held that planning was worthwhile because the time spent getting it right upfront paid off over the long term. How much easier is life when you can locate your keys/favourite socks/coordinating fabrics without switching the lights on, when your christmas presents are wrapped before you even start thinking about the menu planning, how much anxiety is dissipated by knowing you aren't going to be caught out? But when the planning no longer pays off, what is the rationale for doing it, especially when there are always so many other pressing drains on your time? What happens when the planning (or lack thereof) becomes more anxiety provoking that simply dealing with the shit as it happens?

Don't get me wrong here, I didn't change personality overnight. I didn't lose my love of the list, or stop using them. I haven't given up my various organising systems. But increasingly I recognise that I do little mental calculations about where I can save time and putting things in their proper place, even devising where that proper place might be just doesn't make the cut. On those days I find myself up to my elbows in piles of junk, or realise that I can't find the stash of children's hairclips I bought Amy 6 months ago I feel a real and abiding sadness. I miss a clean bedroom floor from the days when I didn't just drop into bed barely able to get the clothes off me, forget the use of a hanger, for days on end. I miss the order and neatness, the calm and the sense of command.

But I also think I am quite possibly a happier person by balance. Despite those moments of sadness I care less about the things I can't control, about the expectations not met, about the plans dashed to the ground. And I celebrate the inventiveness and excitement of life managed on the fly. Of worrying less about being ready for the future than missing out on the now. I know a new baby will put this all to the test. Balancing the needs of a pre-schooler with the immediacy of an infant will require more forethought. How do you go with the flow if it's flowing in more than one direction? And how will I deal with the further erosion of what I feel to be an integral part of who I am, of how I like things to be, of what soothes and comforts me?

And straight after the hospital bag comes that other mother of all bags - the nappy bag. This post has already gone on too long, but there's another whole post in the nappy bag, about how you build and maintain it, about whether its a parent thing or a mummy thing, about when you travel light and when you wing it...

WHAT'S IN THE BAG

2006-09-14T22:44:00.000+10:00

I'm starting to switch off and enter Denial. Seems like a logical psychological tool for dealing with the next 23 days. Not that I'm counting. At all. All those intricate lists you make with the first child, religiously crossing of bits and pieces as they are collected, have been abandoned second time round. Shit. What was I thinking! I live for lists. They rule my life, they are my order. Did I think I knew it all because I've done it once?

I have to pack my hospital bag. My midwife and I have a plan. This is good. The plan involves packing my hospital bags this week. Next week she will tell me to unpack my bags, and then, apparently, because I am in chaos without a packed bag, the baby will spontaneously come. I like her plan a lot. I have utter faith in it. Still means I have to pack my bags, which means I should know what is going into my bags. Should be easy. Wrong.

I had 2 bags last time. Because I was efficiently organised because I had read all the books, consulted many lists, crossed off my lists, and visualised my birth. There was one bag for me, and one for the baby. That's how organised I was. 90% of what went into my bag remained untouched. 95% of what went into Max's bag went untouched. The 10% and 5% that were used were incredibly utilitarian things: nappies, maternity pads (how many packets of maternity pads does one buy - a LOT. Buy LOTS now. Your husband does not want to go and buy them for you while you are in hospital), underwear, deodorant, Arnica pills. So what, exactly do I pack this time?

My last labour went haywire in every possible way. There was no romance to any of it, and no way of planning for each new eventuality that presented itself, and therefore no real way of utilising many of the things I thought I would rely on. The one thing I really wanted in my bag - my husband - had been told to go home. Induction is supposed to be slow - Bring a book! Bring knitting! Yes, well, not all inductions are slow, and it's bloody hard when you have no support there with you, and another lady in the room not in labour trying to sleep. I'm pretty sure this time reading and knitting wont be on the agenda either. Cute idea, but I'd like to focus on a) my body, and b) the baby at the other side.

I took no music, or essential oils, candles or anything like that. My labour was brutal, and I kind of liked that. I didn't miss any of them. My one concession was a homeopathic birthing kit. It remained unopened except for the Arnica Pills which I swear made a huge difference to my recovery. They were used religiously from the moment of induction, to the day I went home, and beyond.

The bag for Max went unopened for 12 hours, except to get nappies out. I had been told Max was going to be big. So we only bought non-newborn clothes, and only packed plain sleepsuits in a larger size. We were woefully unprepared for a small baby who swam in 0-3 month clothes, and sweltered in the heat of a sunny window bed and warm hospital. Husband was dispatched to buy emergency lightweight newborn size clothes.

Everything I packed was wrong, or inadequate, or not used. And I followed all the guideline lists. Each baby is different, each labour different, each experience different, and now I'm torn between the stupidly romantic notions of a little newborn girl and this being the last pregnancy/birth, and the reality of just getting through the experience and anything extra can be brought in from home which is 10 minutes walk down the road.

Yes. I am being slightly over thoughtful on this. When I have a packed bag, I will share the contents. I believe a nice big box of chocolates will be high on the list of priorites.

2:37

2006-09-14T11:40:00.000+10:00

It's been a long time since I snuck off during the day and went to the movies on my own but yesterday I went to see the small budget independent Australian film 2:37. Wow. Go see it.

It's about teenagers and the hovering spectre of suicide. And while I am sure lots of old folks will be happy to say they think it is unrealistic and melodramatic, it captures very much what I remember of high school. A great big building full of half formed adults struggling to deal with the world and each other, unable to articulate and share their confusion, their worry, their fear, their desire. Under a surface of lighthearted joy and togetherness or cliched emotional displays of anger and teasing, sit real and complex dilemmas, problems and accomplishments.

But what I found disturbing, nay, terrifying, was to watch it knowing that one day all too soon I will be a parent to a teenager who will be experiencing this. I will have a child who will come through the door at the end of the day and when I ask her how she is she'll say fine, and I won't know whether that's true or not. She might not know whether it's true or not. Or it might be true now, but not in an hour's time.

And I suspect that when it's happening there will be very little I will be able to do that can change the course of events. Few teenagers are interested in the pleas of a parent to talk to me, to let me share your world, I'm here for you, I understand. I mean I know well enough that there are plenty of things I will be able to do to make matters worse - like being a constant nag, like judging and chastising, like being absent and self-absorbed, like being interfering and needy.

But I think if I am going to make it through that time with my daughter it will be because of all the things that happen between now and then. It will be because at every turn I have demonstrated to her that when I say you can tell me anything I really mean it. I gave her unconditional support and a non-judgmental ear, I was focused on helping her achieve what she wanted, not what I wanted for her. Because I was there for her when she needed me, even when it caused me to miss out on some of the things I wanted for myself. Because I was honest with her and didn't trivialise what she felt about things I might know are not so important over time.

And I have to say I feel more than a little daunted by the prospect. I feel daunted because to a large degree the trauma of adolescence is inevitable, and because just as inevitably the role of parents is to get in the back seat and let the crash happen, even knowing you'll get hurt too. Will my desire to save my own hurt lead me to try and stop Amy from making the mistakes which will mature and develop her? How thin is that line between keeping them safe and simply teaching them to lock you out of their real lives?

And if I thought dealing with the judgments and expectations of others when pregnant and raising infants was something mighty to contend with, I can't even begin to imagine what dealing with alcohol, tobacco, sex and parties will do to adult relationships.

So see the film if you can. The guy who made it is himself a suicide survivor and he dedicates the film to a friend who was not a survivor. It is powerful and engaging and the cast of unknowns turn in great performances. And it really got me thinking, and maybe that thinking will help me make our futures better.

catching up

2006-09-12T09:26:00.000+10:00

It's really interesting to read about how you are feeling Alison - so much of what you write about is happening for me too. The crazy jumble of mixed and conflicting emotions is ever present. I slide from excitement to terror in the blink of an eye, and all the way back again just as fast. I know what I'm in for this time and that's got some really good points but also some pretty significant downsides. There is a real battle between my rational fears and my emotional optimism.

And I remind myself, and others do too, that each baby is different. There's no reason to believe that I'll experience the difficulties I had the first time around. Maybe this baby will sleep. Maybe this baby will be fighting fit and never see the inside of the Children's Hospital. Maybe this baby won't be a projectile vomiter and I won't need to change its clothes and mine several times a day.

But maybe this baby won't be born, as Amy was, with a fist out ready to grab a nipple, effortlessly latching on and staying that way for a year. Maybe this baby won't be outgoing like Amy was and will cling to me and scream when we are separated in a way that will break my heart. Maybe this baby won't be eternally happy and strive for independence and embrace the adventure of the world in all its manifestations.

But there are things where I am at a really different stage to you. I'm not at all focused on the birth yet, I'm still worried about where I'll get my maternity clothes. Because maternity clothing companies seem to think that fat people don't have babies, or if they do maternity clothing shops seem to believe that no one wants to buy larger sizes. In the same breath that a sales assistant can tell me we don't get much call for larger sizes she can also tell me that the one larger size they get in for each range always sells out straight away. Yup, clearly there's no call for them.

So I guess my point is that I am not yet occupied with thinking about the Big Questions, I'm still in the banality of the pregnancy onslaught. How long will my clothes still fit? What foods am I craving? Is that new pain something that's just passing through or is it is settling in for the duration? What other modifications to my lifestyle am I going to have to make in the coming months? Your post reminds me that as this phase settles down, the next one will begin.

And I think too that quite a few of the things you are thinking about, about families and relationships and the ripple effects for everyone from this new life, are the things that have occupied me for a good few years while I contemplated whether to have another child at all. The wear and tear for everyone is not inconsiderable and I do worry about how we'll get throught he really difficult bits. For a long time I felt I couldn't do it again because of these worries. Of the fear of losing my Self, like I did last time.

And then one day, as I was getting dinner ready in the kitchen and Amy and D came home from work and kinder and the house was suddenly filled with noise and movement I looked up to the doorway they had just rushed through, I realised a part of me was waiting for someone more. For just a split second, before my rational mind kicked in I felt with all my being that my family was bigger than just the three of us, where's the other one? I thought. And the very next thought was that it was OK because they just weren't here yet.

And as I realised what I was thinking, I began to see the question of a second child in a really different light. As you say, the difference between being a couple with a child and being a family. The difference between what I wanted to go through and where I wanted to be. Between what I understood about the risks and my desire to experience again the bliss of welcoming my child. I haven't resolved that divide, but here I am on the runway with no turning back.

SECOND TIME ROUND

2006-09-11T22:11:00.000+10:00

I am worried. And anxious. And excited. And energised. And tired. And I haven’t even begun yet.

It is no less daunting embarking on motherhood for the second time as it is for the first time. There isn’t the naivety of right and wrong or careful planning you have first time round. There is the absolute knowledge of everything which lies before you, and all the knowledge you still have yet to gain. Everything will change, and nothing will change. I feel the burden of becoming a family – as opposed to becoming a mother. With one child you can still think of yourself as a chic couple who happen to have a child. With two children, you are a family.

Who will I become as a family? Will I become a Mother? Will I still maintain my Self. Will my first child retain their place within our family structure, retain his uniqueness and his joy at being with us. Will the second child be as important, have an equal place, and their own sense of individuality. Will my husband and I still be us, and still need each other as much as we do, and still be the powerful union which we are.

I struggle through each day, riding the waves of emotion which carry me through my waking hours. The euphoria of impending labour sometime in the next month. The anxiety of wanting desperately to not repeat situations, circumstances, outcomes, or decisions from 3 years ago, and the struggle of knowing so much is out of my control. The depression of tiredness setting in, physical incapabilities, and how I will really cope this time. The shock of realising I need to learn to be a full time mother again having rediscovered the joy of my career. And the sheer happiness and excitement of finally, soon, being able to meet the wriggling mass which hangs around my belly.

It is all true. And real. And important.