Posted on August 31, 2021
Hello
I’m Emily.
I write a newsletter now instead of writing here! You can sign up for my Emily Writes Weekly below. Thanks so much for your support!!
And you can buy my books Rants in the Dark, Is it Bedtime Yet?, and Needs Adult Supervision.
And if you want to book me that would be real nice and you can email me at emilywritesnz at gmail dot com.
And if you want to buy me a coffee you can do that here. Thank you for your support.
Here are some of my posts people seem to like the most:
I saw Tarzan and this is my review after some wines
Inside the secret world of co-sleepers
How to give birth – the definitive guide
Why are we rejoicing in the punishment of children?
My baby slept through the night six times so now I’m an expert on getting your kid to do that
Posted on April 30, 2021
The Just Fucking Doing It Tour
Rebecca Keil and I are coming to your city! Tickets are on sale Wednesday 5 May at Midday HERE for all cities except Auckland and Invercargill. Buy Auckland tickets here. Invercargill tickets are here. There are no door sales, once we sell out that’s it!
It’s time to treat yourself! Have a night off with your girls and laugh till you cry with Rebecca Keil and Emily Writes. Both are exhausted mums who planned a tour to get away from their kids and both are a bit wild, and both want you to have the night of your life!
Rebecca and Emily met years ago and have been mates ever since. This is their first tour together and they want to make the regions laugh and cry and feel amazing. If you’ve ever felt like parenting is the best and worst thing that you ever did? This night is for you. If you secretly suck up LEGO pieces by vacuum and tell your kids the park is closed when it’s raining – then this is the night for you! We’ll answer your questions on all sorts of stuff – parenting, sleep, sex, surrogacy, feminism, activism, Hollywood Hunks and body stuff!
The night isn’t just for mums. It’s for anyone who loves the kaupapa – We are just fucking doing it!
Come for the solidarity and the shared joy and we’ll donate a portion of ticket sales to a local charity.
All shows begin at 7.30pm, have a 15 minute intermission, and end at 9.30pm.
Whangārei 17 May at The Butter Factory 8 Butter Factory Lane, Whangārei supporting Kind Hands Respite Care SOLD OUT
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland 18 May at the Tuning Fork 42-80 Mahuhu Crescent, Auckland CBD supporting North West Toy Library SOLD OUT
Kirikiriroa Hamilton 19 May at The Cook 7 Cook Street, Hamilton East, supporting Heart Kids Waikato SOLD OUT
Tauranga 20 May at Our Place 91 Willow Street, Tauranga supporting Kura kai SOLD OUT
New Plymouth 21 May at Novotel New Plymouth supporting Diabetes Youth Taranaki SOLD OUT
Palmerston North 22 May The Royal Hotel Bar 44 Rangitikei Street, Palmerston North supporting Whangai Ora Milk Bank SOLD OUT
Napier 23 May at The Cabana Bar 11 Shakespeare Road, Bluff Hill, Napier supporting Te Tipu Whenua o Pa Harakeke SOLD OUT
Ōtautahi Christchurch 26 May at Welles Street supporting the Brackenridge respite programme SOLD OUT
Blenheim 27 May at the Woodbourne Tavern 80 High Street, Renwick supporting the Malborough Multicultural Centre SOLD OUT
Nelson 28 May at Harvest Kitchen 168 Redwood Road, Appleby supporting Nelson District Parents Centre SOLD OUT
Wairarapa 1 June at The Garrison Cafe and Bar 57 Fox Street, Featherston supporting Wairarapa Winter Jackets SOLD OUT
Pōneke Wellington 2 June at Meow 9 Edward Street, Te Aro supporting Little Shadow SOLD OUT
Timaru 3 June at Sail Bar 51 Sophia Street supporting Timaru Parents Centre SOLD OUT
Ōtepoti Dunedin 4 June at Petridish 8 Stafford Street supporting Mornington Toy Library SOLD OUT
Invercargill 5 June at ITL Stadium 18 Surrey Park Road supporting Makarewa Playcentre SOLD OUT
Wānaka 6 June at Edgewater Wanaka 54 Sargood Drive supporting Wanaka Pre-School SOLD OUT
Kurow 7 June at The Kurow Hotel Pub 55 Bledisloe Street in support of Kurow Women. SOLD OUT
Dunedin 19 June at Petridish 8 Stafford Street
Auckland 20 June at the Tuning Fork 42-80 Mahuhu Crescent, Auckland CBD supporting Talk Peach
Wellington 23 June at Meow 9 Edward Street supporting Diabetes Youth Wellington SOLD OUT
Get your tickets now! No door sales!
Posted on December 13, 2018
All the shitty takes in one go
Tired of the shit emails and DMs and comments I’m getting so here I’ll answer your crap in one go.
Not all men are violent you’re being sexist
If I came to you crying and said – my husband broke my jaw – and you said to me “Well, not all husbands do that – I didn’t break my wife’s jaw” do you think that would be an appropriate thing to say? What makes you immediately disregard that a man hurt someone? Why can’t you express horror for violence without making it about yourself? Why can’t you say – That’s appalling, here let me help? Why is your immediate reaction to disregard what a woman has said? Don’t you think that’s messed up?
If women were killing men at the rate men are killing women all women would be on curfew by now. I would be marching in the street. So why won’t you stand with women?
You’re making men feel attacked
Well, boo fucking hoo. Women are literally being attacked – being raped, murdered, beaten. And you’re upset because a columnist expressed anger and sadness over it? Grow the fuck up. This isn’t about your feelings. I’m so sorry words make you feel uncomfortable – but I can assure you – being bashed in front of your kids or killed because you were out at night is worse than reading something on Facebook that makes you feel a wee bit unsure of yourself and your place in the world. Get over it.
What about violence against men
What about how you only bring up violence against men when you want to disregard violence against women? I’m horrified by violence against men. I have two boys. I desperately want them to be protected. Guess what Dave – That is why I am trying to do something about male violence! What the fuck are you doing? You only seem to care about these men when I talk about violence against women. Why don’t you make ending toxic masculinity a priority to protect these men instead of sitting on your ass angry wanking over women having opinions.
Women hurt men too
They do. And it’s abhorrent. And if every day women were murdering men and raping them – I’d be calling for an end to toxic femininity. If my boys grew up being told it’s not safe for them to speak to women or be out at night you can bet your ass I’d be devoting my life to it. That’s not happening. And women being violent toward men does not cancel out male violence no matter how much you want it to. If my son hit someone at school, and their parent said – “Your child made my daughter’s nose bleed” what would you think if I then said “yeah but sometimes girls hit boys in the playground”. All of this is a distraction – it’s an argument designed to minimise violence against women. Nobody has ever said women being violent toward men is acceptable. You are saying violence toward women is – by trying to say violence against men cancels it out.
They’re just psychopaths.
Oh really? All of them. New Zealand has the worst rate of family and intimate-partner violence in the world. Cops attend family violence incidents every four minutes. ALast year, police attended about 105,000 domestic violence incidents. If all incidents were reported, they would have attended at least 525,000 calls for help.
And you think they’re all just crazy? Well fuck me, I want to see an inquiry into what’s in our drinking water because if it’s not our culture – you know the culture that means every time a woman writes about violence she gets 100 emails calling her a cunt and a whore – then it must be something else. Do you really think it’s something else? Do you really think we have the highest rate of psychopaths in the entire world?
By calling these men monsters or psychopaths we are saying there’s nothing we can do. It’s washing the hands of it all. It’s saying oh well, we have no responsibility here – none of us. That is simply not true – and it’s a dangerous attitude. I’m tired of this violence, aren’t you? Don’t you want us to work together to stop it?
You’re politicising murder
It is political. Stop trying to silence women. Silence is complicity and I refuse to shut up because you don’t like the reality of violence in this country. And you know what else is political – you trying to stop people talking about it! You trying to tell people not to talk about a murder victim because it makes you feel uncomfortable as a man? That’s political. That’s you prioritising your feelings over the need for us to work toward a world where women aren’t dying every day at the hands of men.
It is only when women die that we are accused of being political. People can march in the street (and should) over child abuse statistics and nobody accuses them of taking advantage or using the names of these children for political gain. They rightly see it as saying “Enough! No more!” If you’re unmoved by another woman murdered, and you want people to be quiet about it, that’s messed up. Consider why you don’t want us shining a light on this violence.
You’re pushing an agenda
Yeah I am. My agenda is that I want to see an end to women dying and being bashed and being raped.
You have a victim complex
Actually bro, you do. If a woman is murdered and you think you’re the victim because some other woman is laying down truths you don’t like? You’re the one with the victim complex.
WhY Do yOU haTE MeN EmILy???????????????????????
If I hated you – I would be marching for segretation. I’d want revenge. All I want is for all genders to be safe against male violence and entitlement.
Your views are extreme
If it’s extreme to think that every one of us has a responsibility to do everything we can to protect women and children – then yeah, I’m extreme. The reality is that every woman I know who parents boys is parenting like me. They’re all trying to teach their boys to respect themselves, their bodies, other people, and other people’s bodies. If you think it’s extreme to teach your child “these hands don’t hurt” then you’re part of the problem. If you think Boys Will Be Boys and Boys Are The Bosses is a legitimate way to parent in 2018 then that to me is an extreme and messed up view. There is nothing extreme or wrong about parenting in a way that protects your children and other children.
Telling your son he can’t hug someone if they don’t want a hug won’t change anything.
Maybe it won’t. But what’s the harm? Changing a culture is hard. You need to start in your own backyard. You need to do something. For me, that’s teaching my son he doesn’t get to hug someone if they don’t want to be hugged. It’s teaching him that his body is his own and if he doesn’t want me to tickle him then I won’t. It’s that if he says NO that NO will be respected, so he then learns to respect NO. I don’t excuse his behaviour with boys will be boys. I teach him boys are kind, boys are loving, boys are gentle – because they are. I don’t teach him boys don’t cry or boys are rough – because that’s not true. We don’t call him a sissy or tell him he throws like a girl – we are careful about our language. We nurture his interests regardless of whether they are considered gendered. This might not do anything – but then again, it might. It might make him think twice when he hears messages that are sexist or hateful toward women and minorities. He might think – hold on, I know that isn’t true, I know that isn’t right. He might step in against a bully. He might protect his friends against someone being hurtful. If someone touches him and he says no – and they don’t stop – he will know to tell me. He will know that it’s not his fault. That he shouldn’t feel guilt. He will know that’s wrong. And he will never do that to someone else because he’s been taught over and over and over again that his body is his own and his friend’s body is their own. All of my friends are raising their kids this way. Because we all believe that it has to make a difference. I will never understand why people find this controversial – especially when they spend their entire lives putting rules around their daughters.
Your sons will hate you/Your sons will be brats/You are making your sons hate themselves
I refuse to be my child’s first bully. I will not give them the tools to hate the parts of themselves that are so precious to them and us – their gentleness, their affection for others, their kindness, their love of dancing, their love of glitter and flowers and tutus and their generosity. I will nurture and love them and protect them by ensuring gender stereotypes and norms and narrow views of masculinity don’t break them. My sons are free, I only wish the same for your children, for all children. I know you think going after my sons is what will break me, and it’s true – it’s the thing that hurts the most. But my husband and I are a team, and we are speaking out about these issues FOR our sons. It’s for them, they motivate us, their drive us to try to make the world a better place. You can’t hurt us here. We know our children and our children are loved.
Public grief is wrong
If your reaction to a young woman crying because she feels connected to another young woman – you’re a fucking loose unit. Hardening our hearts to everything is no way to live. Your cynicism is yours alone – don’t tell people how to feel. Unity and solidarity comes from grief. Change comes from grief. Snarking away at how people are upset just makes you an asshole.
What about all the women who aren’t getting media attention
They should be getting media attention. Women of colour and trans women suffer appalling rates of violence and every death should make the front page. Maybe then people would see just how widespread this problem is. I don’t know any women who disagree with this. But if you’re using this argument to stop people talking about violence against women, you need to consider why if it’s not to highlight racism and transphobia, and it’s instead to minimise the feelings women have about this case – you’re a dick.
I’m a cool chill girl and I just want to say I love you guys and you don’t have to do anything!
Internalised misogyny is a hell of a drug. We think if we suck up to men and throw our sisters under the bus we might be saved. They’ll like us. And we’ll be popular and cool. We’ll be one of the boys. If you’re raised in a society that makes you think women are bitches, of course you end up believing that. You don’t want to be a bitch like those other girls. So you slam them. And you kiss ass all day long making sure no man ever feels uncomfortable. We have all been there. I wasted many years of my life not realising women were my saviours in life. Now, I’m an adult – I know better. Nothing could make me want to prioritise men’s feelings now. Nothing could make me want to hurt my sisters or stand against them just so some limp dick knuckle dragging guy wants to fuck me. One day you’ll see.
YoU r A fEMinAzi?!?
I prefer the term boner-killer.
Jokes aside, consider who is watching you right now. Is your daughter? What are you teaching her when you come online and call me a cunt? What are you telling her about what her thoughts and ideas are worth in this world, to you? What are you teaching your son when you talk about feminazi sluts? What messages do you think he’s hearing about a woman’s worth? About her right to safety?
The kids are watching. What future are they going to have if you won’t change?
Posted on November 19, 2018
The hustle
Nobody wants to talk about money. It’s horrible talking about money. But I feel like I should.
I’m 33 and my family and I live week to week. This is quite normal in our circle of friends. I gave up my day job earlier in the year thinking after two years at The Spinoff I finally had stable work. Then our great sponsor left The Spinoff Parents. So I lost my main income. I was lucky to pick up other contracting work but it’s been hard.
And then I see comments from people saying “She doesn’t need money – her books are everywhere and she’s at every festival”. I promise you – life looks very different here, in reality.
Here’s what you don’t see…
Posted on September 20, 2018
Rants in the Dark: The Play is NEXT WEEK!
Posted on February 19, 2016
One day your kids will grow up
I don’t know if anyone has explained to you how growing works but one day your baby is going to be an adult. I found this out from a shared poem on Facebook. I’m really glad I discovered it because this whole time that my kids have been growing I’ve been like WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? I thought babies stayed babies forever.
So ever since reading this life-changing poem, I’ve been busy as fuck CHERISHING EVERY MOMENT. And boy am I tired. But not so tired that I couldn’t ignore my child to write this blog post (I cherished the moment of ignoring him while I ignored him).
Here I present my own sharable FB wisdom about children and parenting:
A poem about how kids will grow up or something more profound than that but I can’t think of a better title
One day your child will stop waking up every 45 minutes and you will actually sleep – real sleep.
One day you will clean a poo out of the shower for the last time.
One day you will be able to read a book that was written for adult people.
One day, for the last time, you will be woken by a toddler saying “my tummy…” and then they will vomit all over you and the entire family will have to shower at 4am – FOR THE LAST TIME.
One day, you will actually only have one load of washing to do.
One day you will go out with your girlfriends and dance till 4am and get drunk on house wine and have the best time ever and not think about your kids once.
One day your child will do an explosive poo in public that covers them from head to toe and leaks on to your arm and your new pants and you will realise you forgot wipes – for the last time.
You won’t realise it at the time but one day when your child refuses to just put on their bloody shoes it will be the last time you will be an hour and forty five minutes late to something that was really important.
One day you will step on lego for the last time.
One day, while laying in bed next to your child who won’t sleep and thinking about the bills you are struggling to pay on one income, you’ll not realise it’s the last time you do this.
One day, you will hear the Fireman Sam theme tune for the last time. It won’t even register.
One day your breasts will bleed and searing pain will rip through your body for the last time.
When your baby is screaming from the pain of teething and you’re sobbing in the dark because you don’t know how to help them and you feel like the worst mother in the world – it will be the last time.
And you didn’t even realise.
One day you will carry a kicking and screaming toddler through a mall while people give you disapproving stares for the last time.
One day you will change the sheets on a bunk bed at 2am for the last time.
One day, and you won’t realise it’s the last time, your baby will smear yoghurt all over himself and his highchair and then throw it on the floor.
One day you will watch Frozen – for the last time.
You won’t know it’s the last time at the time. And one day you’ll look back on those moments and think – I wish I could look at a pair of poo covered undies and try to work out if I should soak them or just throw them out. I wish I could have just one more cold coffee and a panadol as I try to fight off the most severe sleep deprivation I’ve ever experienced in my life. I wish just once more I could just once more hoover down a meal while standing and then spend an evening in a room under a screaming baby. I wish I could hear Justine Clarke sing Watermelon while my children scream at each other. Just. One. More. Time.
Cherish every moment. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Every second. Every millisecond. Because one day they will grow up and you’ll be sharing nostalgic and delusional poems about this time on whatever terrifying new platform Mark Zuckerberg has created.
Really though, before I get those looks and comments…These types of posts make me fairly unpopular in the positive parenting/gentle parenting/attachment crowd – BUT, this is how I can be a positive parent and a gentle parent and follow the attachment practices that work for my family.
Reality makes me a good parent.
Guilt-tripping and anxiety over whether I’m happy enough or grateful enough for what I have – that doesn’t make me a good parent. Endless comments about how this is just a stage and one day you’ll regret not loving every bloody second of it and bla bla bla – these comments aren’t helpful to parents. I doubt any parent has said – “Oh my gosh, you’re right! They DO grow up! I feel so much better about the fact that my child has severe reflux and screams in agony while I try to work out what medication is actually going to work”. I’ve even had people say cherish every moment to me while my child was in hospital unable to breathe on his own – time flies! Before you know it they’ll be adults. Or they won’t – you know, that’s why we are sitting by his bed trying to hold everything together.
Cherish every moment. Time flies. Before you know it you’ll be alone and grey and have nothing to live for – I mean, please just STOP. Let people be in whatever moment of parenting they’re in and let them allow some of those moments to woosh past them and be forgotten forever because those moments SUCKED. This beautiful chaos, this awful mess of wonderous life – let us just be here. Let us choose. Don’t suggest to us that it’s all downhill from baby-hood. Allow some complexity in what it’s really like to grow our babies. Every stage can be tough at times, no stage is bliss.
If we are so immensely lucky in a world where we are so very fragile: they will grow up.
That’s the gift. That’s what you cherish.
***
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Posted on February 18, 2016
Should you get your child immunised?
I am grateful to share a post today by the incredible Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw who is a researcher and writer at the Morgan Foundation. This post was originally published on the Morgan Foundation website. I’m publishing this post because I can’t write it. If I were to write a post under the title of “Should you get your child immunised” I’d just say “yes”. If I were to flesh it out I’d say: “Please, please immunise. I beg you”. I am the parent of a child whose trachea collapsed when he contracted a cold because the respiratory condition he was born with meant he couldn’t breathe most of the time. That day, he went into emergency surgery – it was one of the worst days of my life. He was just a baby. If he’d caught whooping cough – he’d be dead. That’s it. I have written about it – kind of – it’s so hard to write about. I have written about the agony of seeing your child unable to breathe on their own, and I’ve published a guest post by a dear friend who wrote with beautiful honesty about a day in the life of the ordinary heartbreak of parenting a child with severe health issues. I can speak from my own experiences. And I’ve been asked many times to write about vaccination. But I am, shall we say, compromised. I am a vocal supporter of immunisation because I want and need to protect my child, and I want and need to protect all of the children around me. It’s deeply personal for me. So I can’t write this post. But someone who really knows their shit and can approach it from a non-emotional place, based on scientific fact and logic and reason, can. I have closed comments on this post because vaccination isn’t a debate in my mind and I find vaccination debates exhausting and demoralising and deeply, deeply upsetting to me. So I’ll just say this: Thank you for taking the time to read this and if you vaccinate your child – THANK YOU. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. From my whole whānau and all of my loved ones: Thank you! Thank you a million times over. Thank you to the moon and back and thank you to the stars. Thank you. Just thank you.
Should you get your child immunised?
Widespread immunisation helps everyone
A vaccination prevents an individual getting a disease, that much is pretty straightforward . However, widespread immunisation also has benefits. If enough people are vaccinated it eventually eliminates a communicable disease (a disease you can catch from someone else who has the virus) in a community, a society and eventually worldwide. Smallpox for example is eradicated worldwide.
This is known as “herd immunity”: when enough people are fully immunised (for most vaccines this is near 95% of the population), the risk of someone catching the disease and passing it to someone else not immunised is very low. Eventually the disease cannot continue to live as it cannot find enough hosts for it to breed in, and it becomes extinct. If only we could do that with rats and possums so effectively!
But a vaccination comes with risks
No medical treatment is without risks. Having an ingrown toenail removed has a risk of toe amputation, having a general anaesthetic has a risk of brain damage.
But with most interventions the likelihood of the most severe side effect is much smaller than the risks associated with not doing the thing. So there are some risks when a child is immunised, for example inflammation at the site of the injection or fever. There are even smaller risks of some more serious side effects like an allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. However, such severe side effects occur much less often with the vaccine than they would if a person caught the disease itself.
The figure below compares the risks of having the MMR (Measles Mumps Rubella) vaccine vs taking your risks with measles. If a million children had the vaccine, and another million caught the disease, then we would expect to see the numbers of complications in the table below.
| MMR Vaccine | Measles |
| Uncommon Complications | |
| 300 children have seizures | 10,000 children have seizures induced by fever |
| Rare Complications | |
| 26 Children bruise or bleed more easily (thrombocytopenia) | 330 Children develop thrombocytopenia |
| VERY Rare Complications | |
| Up to 4 children get severe anaphylaxis (allergic reaction)- treatable | 0 Children get anaphylaxis |
| 0 Children get SSPE (causes progressive brain damage & death) | 10 Children get SSPE |
| Up to 1 child may develop encephalitis (brain inflammation that can cause brain damage and death) | 2000 Children develop encephalitis |
Figure 1. Severe complications due to MMR vaccine and measles among 1 million children aged under 5 years. Source: The Australian Academy of Science.
What we can say is that there is NO risk whatsoever that you will get autism from a vaccine.
This creates a prisoner’s dilemma
This combination of factors gives rise to a prisoner’s dilemma. A what? You can find out more about the classic prisoner’s dilemma (and why it involves prisoners) here. For now we will stick with the immunisation theme.
As as immunisation rates grow in a society (as they are currently in New Zealand), the risks of contracting a disease lessen, as do the overall risks in a population of being hospitalised or dying from that disease. So if enough other people are immunised, then it might be rational for some people to take the risk and and choose not to vaccinate their child. In other words, if the chances of their child contracting the disease are low, the parents might choose to avoid the (also low) risks associated with getting the vaccination.
Example of a Prisoners Dilemma
For simplicity, let us pretend a community has two undecided and unrelated parents, Andrew and Brian. They have herd immunity explained to them, alongside the risks of the vaccination for measles, the risks of contracting the disease and the risks of hospitalisation or death if their child gets the disease. Each are then asked to decide whether to vaccinate their child against measles. The risks and rewards for them are as follows:
- If Andrew and Brian both don’t vaccinate, each child has a higher risk of contracting the disease and of experiencing serious health effects of the illness, but they avoid the risk of vaccination side effects.
- If Andrew does not vaccinate but Brian does, Andrew’s child will have a lower risk of catching the disease, low risk of experiencing serious health effects of the illness and no risk of vaccination side effects. Brian’s child will have a low risk of the disease, low risk of experiencing serious health effects of the illness and some risk of vaccination side effects (and vice versa). In short, Andrew is taking a ‘free ride’, benefitting from Brian’s choice to immunise his child.
- If Andrew and Brian both vaccinated, both children will have the lowest risk (becoming no risk) of the disease and experiencing serious health effects of the illness, while both children have a risk of vaccination side effects.
Assuming Brian vaccinates his child, it might make sense for Andrew to choose not to. And this applies in the real world – in a mathematical sense the truly rational parent (when understanding the real scientific risks, we are not talking myths here) may choose not to vaccinate, provided that enough of society has been vaccinated to provide herd immunity. In this situation, a rational parent could view the risks of vaccinating their child as much greater than the risk of their child contracting the disease.
Why the ‘Free-Riders’ are hurting their kids (and others) in the long term.
You can probably see the problems in this ‘rational’ but ultimately selfish decision process, and not just for the wider community as a whole. In taking this ‘free ride’, parents who chose not to vaccinate could be harming their child in the longer term. As the vaccination rates decline (as more people choose not to vaccinate believing the risk to be low) the actual risks of contracting the disease then rise. So every child is now exposed to a greater level of risk, BUT especially those that are unvaccinated.
How do we know this? Because in countries with low vaccination rates, their rate of disease is at epidemic proportions. This interactive map shows where measles is at an epidemic rate worldwide – the majority of deaths from measles are in children under 5. Afghanistan which has an immunisation rate of less than 40% had 6000 cases in 2012 (likely to be more due to poor reporting mechanisms).
And just in case you think this is a developing world problem, in New Zealand in 1991 our immunisation coverage rate at 2 years was less than 60% overall, and only 42% In Maori and 45% Pacific children . In 1997 we had a large scale measles outbreak, there were 2169 cases notified, near 100 people hospitalised and 7 people died, four of those who died were children who were not immunised(Ministry of Health Immunisation Handbook, 2014). As we will see tomorrow, even now we don’t have the levels of immunisation we need for herd immunity – so any parent not immunising their child is rolling the dice with disease.
If an unimmunised child does come in contact with measles for example, there is a 90% chance they will get it, and if they do get it there is a 1 in 5 chance they will be hospitalised for serious complications and a 1 in 1000 chance they will die. So if increasing numbers of parents choose not to immunise due to a low risk of disease and a comparatively higher risk of vaccination side-effects they are actually, ironically, increasing the risk of their child becoming seriously ill during outbreaks. What is almost worse is that they are putting some already really vulnerable kids at greater risk.
Free-Riders risk making sick & vulnerable kids sicker
For children with compromised immunity, and in New Zealand this is mainly kids receiving chemotherapy treatment for cancer, if they contract measles they have a 1 in 2 chance of dying from it. Young babies, who have undeveloped immune systems and are too young to get a vaccination, are at high risk of contraction and hospitalisation during an outbreak of a disease. Kids in poverty who already suffer an additional disease burden compared to their better off counter parts, are more vulnerable also due to their lower vaccination rates (an issue we will go into in the next blog). So as the rate of a disease increases due to a decline in vaccination rates, the kids that suffer from this decline are those that are least able to cope.
Only a few of us can have a free-ride and it needs to be based on need.
If herd immunity is achieved when 90-95% of the population are fully immunised (depending on the disease) and this rate is maintained for a period of time, then the 5-10% we can carry unimmunized in our society needs to be reserved for those with the greatest need, not those who want to opt out due to illogical perceptions of risk. It helps if information about the risks and benefits, both individual and population based, are communicated effectively and people are given the opportunity to understand that their personal decision affects everyone.
Summary
In summary, having your child vaccinated helps not only your child but everyone in society. It is theoretically plausible that if enough people have their child vaccinated, it might be rational to not have your child vaccinated, given the low risk of side effects. But the more people that make that decision, the greater the risk of an outbreak becomes. And that can potentially hurt anyone that isn’t immunised. The next blog will look at the situation in New Zealand, and will expand on why the poor and sick are the ones that lose out when people choose not to be immunised.
Posted on February 11, 2016
Dear Mamas: The podcast – episode one
Kia ora! Holly Walker and I are super excited to bring to you the very first episode of our monthly podcast – Dear Mamas. This first episode is just kind of an intro into what we are all about – we introduce ourselves, and then talk about a lot of stuff over a wine (or two). Weaning, work, and everything in between is covered – but we will probably have a theme for future episodes. We want to create a podcast that is fun and umm funny but we want to also cover the serious stuff – the things that matter to mums. We want to celebrate parenting but also commiserate together over the hard stuff. And support and uplift each other. It’s similar to my blog – but in podcast form. It’s a no-bullshit, no-judgement zone. Check it out, tell us what you think, and please let us know what you’d like us to cover in our next episode. We are hoping to put out an episode every month – the next one should be out mid-March. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or Stitcher, or I’ll be posting them as we do them here.
Here is a transcript of our discussion. A huge thanks to @styla73 for writing this transcript and to Ed for his support.
Posted on February 8, 2016
Who will you be?
One of my favourite things to do is imagine who my boys will grow up to be. Will they be bogans? Or hippies? Will they stay up late reading by torchlight like I did? Or will they ignore all books like their father? Will they be outdoorsy like him? Or will they curl their lip at the thought of a hike? (I just don’t understand hiking ok I mean it’s just difficult walking right? I don’t even want to walk let alone difficult walk.)
Will they perform? That seems inevitable for Eddie. Every morning you’d think he was preparing for the Oscars not kindy. Will either of them be introverted like their dad? Or will they both be that person who never shuts up like their mum (I think it’s heading this way since it’s 7am and I’ve heard 15,000 why questions already including why does my blug stay in my body and how do I get it out? Maybe he will be a goth?)
When Eddie was very small, and asleep in the buggy (those were the days), I caught sight of a group of skaters at a skate park. The young boys were so tall and gangly and uncoordinated yet so sure of themselves when they were on their boards. They were cocky and confident, totally at ease with each other but there was clearly some rigid social structure underpinning their hang. I thought about whether Eddie would be like them. Would he be popular? Shy? I saw a boy fall over and one of his friends cackled loudly and yelled to get the attention of others, another helped him up and gave him a rough pat on the back. Would he laugh or help? Or do both? I saw another absolutely fixated on tightening the wheels on his board. Another huffed angrily on a durry. I hope he doesn’t smoke – I hope he doesn’t see that almost every single photo of his father and I taken at night from the age of 17 to ummm 26 includes a cigarette). One boy had the loudest laugh I’ve ever heard, it sounded like a tin drum and I found myself smiling while I watched him. Eddie’s laugh is so forceful, even at only a few months old – would he be the child that made everyone laugh? Or would he laugh at others? I hoped not. I thought about the type of parent I needed to be for him to help him freely become whatever he’s meant to be. What qualities should he have? I wanted him to be kind. And maybe patient, since I’m not very and his father is very. But also not as shut down as his dad and so many other men can be. I want him to talk about his feelings. Feel he can be open, and maybe he can teach others to be open too. Maybe he’ll be a teacher. I hope he becomes something noble, but then whatever he does I’ll be proud of him and—-Just then I realised the skateboard kids were staring at me. They’d formed a pack. They looked so wild and free! Oh I’d like to be like that – I gazed longingly at them. Maybe I could ask them about their mothers? One of the boys yelled at me, breaking my daydream:
“Take a picture you creepy old lady!”
***
The moral of the story is probably don’t spend 40 minutes watching teenage boys play in a park.
Posted on February 1, 2016
Closed to be open
It’s a strange little struggle when the way you want to parent, or the way you thought you would parent, interferes with what you just have to do to get by. I say little because – look, sometimes you just have to get on with it don’t you? But it’s still a struggle…
I am currently writing this sitting hunched over my laptop at my mother-in-law’s house (I don’t publish my posts straight away – I spend a bit of time making sure they’re not going to upset anyone so this isn’t right now….but that’s not the point). After a year of not sleeping longer than three hours, drastic measures have been taken. My husband has the baby at home, and I’m with my big boy at Nanna’s. We are weaning.
It’s earlier than I wanted. Breastfeeding was hard fought for and I imagined I’d do it until baby decided he didn’t want anymore. But reality has set in, and as I’m on the verge of a breakdown from literally never sleeping, we have realised we have to do something.
So here we are. My baby’s desire to feed all through the night every night has been something we have accepted for a long time, but now it’s starting to impact my health so for the last few months we’ve been trying to change things. And nothing has worked. Feeding only during the day hasn’t worked. Feeding only at night hasn’t worked. Having daddy bring baby into our room hasn’t worked. Having baby sleep in bed all night with me feeding whenever he wants to be fed works for him – but it doesn’t work for anybody else in the house.
And forced weaning isn’t what I wanted to do. My parenting style – if I have one – is exceedingly gentle, child-led, and often the path of least resistance…What we are doing feels like it goes against the way we want to do things, even if we are doing it in the most gentle way we can.
But this is the reality of parenting isn’t it? Sometimes what one wants doesn’t work for the other three (or four or six or however many are in your whānau). And balancing our family of four is something we strive for – everyone’s vote counts equally. It’s a struggle sometimes to make sure everyone is being heard and quite frankly, I often find myself at the bottom of the pile.
It was my husband who finally put his foot down and said we need to focus on me for a bit. I need sleep. Even if it means that short term he won’t get sleep and baby won’t get sleep (to be fair baby rarely sleeps so whatever kid).
Prioritising is hard for a lot of families. I’ve spoken to so many mums who are so close to burnout because the order of the house is everyone else’s needs then maybe, if there’s anything left over, them.
I always advocate for mums, so it’s a strange thing to not really be able to advocate for myself. I slept amazingly last night from 10pm till 4am. The most sleep I’ve had in well over a year. I feel like a million dollars (a million dollars with very engorged and painful boobs just FYI TMI).
So I’m saying now, from the other side of sleep: I know how hard it is to go against how you want to do things as a parent, and I know how hard it is to let anyone else put you first, and I know how hard it is to say you’re struggling and things have to change.
But if you can – do it. And if you can’t – get someone to do it for you.
I had to wait until my husband and mother-in-law said “enough” and I was too tired to argue. But I’m glad they did step in. I’m glad they noticed and recognised I wouldn’t be able to say it myself. I’m grateful they could see the internal struggle I was having – and I’m so thankful they decided to do something about it.
And even though my heart feels heavy, just one night of sleep has helped me clear the fog in my head.
I needed and deserved sleep. And my little milk-obsessed baby is actually a resilient, one-year-old fatty who will also get through this just fine even if he doesn’t like it. I just need to keep remembering that. And, like a mantra, keep telling myself that I matter too. That I need to be healthy to take care of my beautiful babies. That I can’t be the mum I want to be if I hit a wall. That all the parenting philosophies and good intentions and plans on how I want to handle things aren’t worth a dollar if I can’t function properly.
I am imagining my cheeky monkey right now snuggled up with his daddy – sleeping peacefully despite the milk bar being closed.
It is going to be OK even if it’s not what I planned or what I wanted. It’s going to be OK.
