Posted on March 10, 2016
Dear Mamas: The podcast – episode two
Kia ora. How are you? Are the kids asleep yet? Holly Walker and I made another episode of our podcast – Dear Mamas. Our second one! Hopefully the kids are asleep or someone else is sorting them out so that you can listen to it. The first episode we did was an intro into what we are all about. This time we decided to have a theme and a guest. So, we are talking about self-care for mothers. It’s a big, meaty topic, we’ve tried to cover our thoughts about it – how hard it is to do, what it even means…
We were joined by Dr Katie Bruce. She is the director of Just Speak which is an AWESOME organisation. Just Speak is a network of young people speaking to, and speaking up for, a new generation of thinkers who want change in our criminal justice system. Pretty cool aye? I met Katie through Mother’s Network. We are both volunteers – she is a facilitator for their amazing groups for mums, and once upon a time I was in her group. Katie has a three-year-old son and she lives in Wellington with her husband. We are good friends and I’m really grateful she joined us for this podcast.
So that’s it – the second episode. It’s quite nerve-wracking putting it all out there. Please check it out and tell us what you think. We really, really appreciate the feedback. If you want to subscribe or rate our podcast that would be awesome too. 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-April. 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 Ashlyn for writing this transcript and to Ed for his support.
Posted on March 7, 2016
My love for a creep – The Lulla Doll review
I can basically start this review with “What would I do for a night’s sleep” and the answer is anything. And then anything again. Because basically anything.
So would I share a bed with a creepy doll with a weird face that clicks and gasps for air like a dying zombie? Yes, yes I would.
Let’s be real – I would share my bed with a possessed demon or actually an actual dead person if it meant my child who hates sleep with the fire of a thousand suns would actually FLUFFING* sleep. So yes, if a doll with a death rattle soothes my child, then I’m pleased I can just get a Lulla Doll and I don’t have to actually kill someone.
And really, it’s my husband I’m going to kill isn’t it? And that’s not great for the family if he’s goneburger.
So I’m going to begin this review by saying Thank You Makers of the Lulla Doll and Sleepytot NZ because they’re the ones who sent me the doll, and they’re the ones you need to order one from if you want one. Thank you for saving my marriage by keeping my husband alive. Because the Lulla Doll’s heartbeat (terror clicks) and recorded breathing (death rattle) actually keep my child asleep at night. Which means for now, my husband gets to live. How nice for everyone but especially him.
So quickly – what’s a Lulla Doll? It’s a soft doll that has a heartbeat and breathes and it is meant to mimic a “caregiver”. Unfortunately you can’t leave your kid with it to go boozing and pretend you live a child-free existence. Not that I tried…
The heartbeat and breathing is a recording of “a mother at rest” and at first I thought this was impossible because “mother at rest” is a thing that has never actually happened in the world. But then I thought, oh yes, you do rest when you’re dying. Oh sweet death.
But then I found out that the breathing is the breathing of a yoga teacher.
And her name is Gudrun.
And Gudrun has four children.
Oh Gudrun.
And now I can’t stop wondering what Gudrun’s life is like. Is she recognised for her breathing everywhere she goes now? Is she stopped by groups of mums who excitedly say ‘DO THE BREATHING! DO THE BREATHING!’ Is she typecast now? There must be so few roles in Hollywood for “just breathing”. But surely she’d be popular for horror movies? Does Gudrun have any friends? Do people just fall asleep around her all the time? Can you imagine that life? You start talking to someone and they fall asleep, you go your whole life feeling abandoned and unloved and then you go to therapy and you are telling your therapist everything, from the moment your mother fell asleep giving birth to you, to your future husband or wife falling asleep along with the celebrant and all of your friends and family at your wedding, you talk about how you’re completely uneducated because all of your teachers have always fallen asleep, how work is pretty easy really because your manager sleeps through all of your performance reviews, but you literally cannot talk to anybody by phone….and then you look up and your therapist is asleep.
Is her partner the most well rested person on the planet?
Are her children always asleep?
Has anyone considered the kidnapping risk involved here? What if I stole her, I mean what if someone stole her, and just made her lay next to their kid all day and night, or wedged her into the buggy so they never had to change the batteries on the damn doll?
Because that is a messed up idea I know, but it is kind of a good idea right? Kind of?
Because this is the problem with the Lulla Doll – it works, until the batteries run out and this is what happens when that happens:
*baby cries*
*whisper screaming*
PRESS THE DOLL’S CHEST
*more whispered screaming*
I DID
PRESS IT AGAIN! YOU’RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT!
I AM. I PRESSED IT OK. I KNOW HOW TO PRESS A DOLL’S CHEST I AM NOT USELESS!
JESUS JUST GIVE IT TO ME YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT!
YOU TRY THEN IT’S THE BATTERIES!
YOU DIDN’T CHANGE THE BATTERIES I ONLY ASKED FOR ONE THING OK FOR YOU TO CHANGE THE BLOODY EFFING BATTERIES I MEAN JESUS CAN YOU NOT DO ONE THING!
YOU CHANGE IT. WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO CHANGE IT?
WHERE IS THE FLUFFING MOTHER FLUFFER FLUFFING FLUFF SCREWDRIVER (this is a review so I’m trying not to say fuck)
YOU MOVED THE SCREWDRIVER IT WAS RIGHT THERE
*louder whisper fighting*
WHY WOULD I MOVE THE SCREWDRIVER???? WHY DIDN’T YOU CHANGE THE BATTERY
I DID CHANGE IT
NO YOU DIDN’T
This usually goes on until you get the new batteries in and Gudrun starts breathing again.
Then you’re like:
Goodnight sweetheart.
Goodnight babe.
The good batteries can last up to a week – maybe 10 days if you’re only using it at night (we use it for naps too), but there is no way to know when the battery will run out, so it will always be 4am when you really need to sleep.
When we first got the Lulla Doll (who we have affectionately called Creep Gundy) we were just like, wow, this is creepy as Hell. Then we put it on and were instantly relaxed. The death rattle is really relaxing. Which is weird because hospices are not relaxing. Damn, I took this to a dark place and now I’m not sure where to go with it.
Can I start again? Like, I am super tired all the time so could fall asleep literally at any moment so I don’t need much – but the doll made both me and my husband feel like we were being hypnotised.
The doll was for Ham who was 11 months old when we got it. When Ham first met Creep Gundy it went like this.
*Ham screaming*
Me waving Creep Gundy at Ham: Look at this thing! It’s doing a thing! Go to sleep with it!
Ham: *stops screaming*
Imagined internal monologue of Ham:
What the Hell is that thing?
I don’t want to sleep with that?
Why is it making that noise?
Is it dying?
What is that clicking noise-I Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
So we created a shrine for Creep Gundy and we pray to her and give her offerings of Tupperware containers filled with the fresh blood of virgins and it’s really hard to find virgins when all of your friends have a million kids and were very experimental in high school anyway.
The truth is the Lulla Doll works sometimes, for some kids. But that would not make a great review would it? At various times I’ve gone to write this and my notes have been:
So good. Everyone should get.
Does not work. Fuck everything.
Definitely cannot live without doll.
Needs longer battery life.
Needs to not have a battery.
Need another one so I can wash first doll.
Just buy it.
How did I ever live without this doll?
This is why I have taken two months to write this. Because I have wanted it to be a fair review. And so here’s my fair review – the doll works for us. Before we got the doll, Ham woke every 45 minutes or so. He slept in bed with us, and we had to lay with him to get him through each REM cycle. But the doll does a really good job of either tricking him into thinking we are with him, or just keeping the environment the same so he can stay asleep. I don’t know what it is. But whatever it is, it’s working for Ham. It’s not a miracle – I can’t say he’s gone from that to sleeping through every night. But he has had waaaay less wake ups, most nights. So to me, that is totally worth it. Because there isn’t a product on the market (unless the boxes you leave babies in at Fire stations could be considered a product) that will get every baby sleeping through every single night.
I will share my bed with a creep for way less wake-ups and this good progress we have been having.
And thankfully, I don’t have to share my bed with Creep Gundy anymore, because Ham has started to sleep in his own bed. For the first time since EVER.
And I think that is due the Lulla Doll. I mean, there are obvious reasons why it would work – including that it’s seems to make Ham feel safe in the same way that Eddie’s teddy makes him feel safe. But there are also apparently SCIENTS REASUNS:
Lulla was designed in Iceland after many years of scientific research which shows how closeness improves sleep, well being and safety. Playing a real heartbeat and breathing continuously for 8 hours!
Lulla’s unique patent pending design was inspired by research on kangaroo care, the effects of heartbeat and breathing sounds, and the effects that smell, sight and touch have on babies and small children.
I mean that makes sense right? This is why people put babies on their chest as soon as they’re born, it’s why babies sleep so well in carriers and why so many parents have sex on the floor because their bed is full of kids.
So what would I change about the doll? I would somehow make it run without a battery. I have seen some people complain about the fact that the recording is only for eight hours but since my child never sleeps a full eight hours, that’s not a problem for me. You press the doll’s chest to get it to re-start the eight hours anyway, so I’m not sure what the issue with that would be. There has been a number of times when Ham has cried and we have realised the doll stopped and we’ve just pressed the chest again to get it started again. It’s not that much of a big deal, but I could see how it could be.
I asked Fiona at Sleepytot (she’s awesome!) about this and she said: “the new Lulla Doll (out in June) has a reset button which allows you to have another eight hours of continuous heartbeat and breathing. The current version will do eight hours all up (if its paused after a two hour nap, it will only go for the remaining six hours the next time you push the button)”.
To be honest, I never ever noticed this. I think I’m always just half asleep and turning it on. But for this reason, I’d buy the new one in June rather than buying a second hand one. And if I had the money I’d upgrade to the new one and then sell the old one. People are selling these things for hundreds on Trademe (way more than the recommended retail price) – basically because they’re hard to get.
There’s going to be a black market Lulla Doll I’m sure. Some industrious person is going to record their 100 smokes a day grandfather and make a killing. Or I suppose you could start a business where you hire out people with really bad asthma or bionic hearts to sit by your kid’s bed, but I feel the screening process would really derail the whole thing.
Instead you can pre-order the new one from Sleepytot New Zealand and get it as soon as it arrives. You can also lay-by it. And yes, I recommend it. I’m not saying it will work for every child, every night, or that it will be a miracle cure for your child’s awful sleep.
But, I will say though that my perpetually grumpy husband who hates everything loves the Lulla Doll. He accidentally left it in our cabin while we were on holiday and when he realised he literally ran faster than I’ve ever seen him run in his entire life to get it. So that’s something.
Big thanks to Fiona at Sleepytot NZ for hooking me up with a Lulla Doll. I like that she actually reads the blog and just emailed me like “do you want to try this?” and just sent it and that was it. Instead of other brands that are all like “We will send you this thing if you write 8000 words organically using the terms “Sleeperiser8000” and “StupidBrandLtd” and the hashtag #sleepingisreallygreatwiththesleeperiser8000fromstupidbrandltd and please organically say our slogan “the most fun you can have on your back!” Please also write it in the next three hours and we want to check the copy first and just make a few small edits, actually we could write it for you, but in your authentic voice and please don’t say we gifted it to you, can you pretend you bought it and also please post to all of your social media platforms”.
So thank you Sleepytot NZ, I like a company that is confident enough in what they’re selling to just send it and hope for the best. I am very pleased to say I am now be a card-carrying member of the Gudrun Fan Club/Lulla Doll Cult.
All Hail Creep Gundy.
***
OMG GUESS WHAT I was looking for a video for you to show you what the doll looks like and what it sounds like and I found this one and IT HAS GUDRUN IN IT! GUDRUN! In some kind of creepy basement. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. She looks like she has powers?!?!
*I tried hard not to say fuck while writing this review.
If you liked this, follow me on Facebook for more of the same. I’m on Instagram too! If you really liked this or any of my other posts and you want to support me you could put my name forward for events or get people to commission me for writing or you could make a one off donation or support me through my Patreon account. If you’ve supported me by sharing one of my posts, making a comment, or making a donation – I can’t ever thank you enough. Ngā mihi nui. E x
Posted on March 6, 2016
GUEST POST: Two babies, two years
I met Craig at Webstock. We sat in the corner and showed each other photos of our babies – the great past time of saddo parents everywhere (no offence Craig). Seriously, I LOVE proud parents. I love no-chill look at photos of my family mums and dads. I am definitely that parent. Imagine having to deal with me every day? I literally write about my kids all day, tweet about my kids all day, and talk about them ALL DAY. I am insufferable. I’m not suggesting Craig is insufferable, he might be, we don’t know each other that well….But he struck me as a parent who is like me. Therefore, since I’m a narcissist, I liked Craig straight away. I meet so many people through this blog, and a lot of them are dads. I am really pleased to be able to finally share a guest post from a dad on this blog. I’ve hoped I’d get a dad post eventually – it might finally shut up those “what about the dads!” comments I get. But probably not. I love dads, and I have a lot of good friends who are dads, some of them I met through this blog. But I’m a mum, so I don’t bother to do “dad perspective” stuff. That’s why I’m so happy Craig wrote this post. I think it’s lovely. Delightful. It’s all about his first two years with his two gorgeous babies! Thanks for sharing with us Craig!
Just over two years ago I donned a pair of white overalls and was led into an operating theatre at 5am. My wife had a green sheet stretched out like a volleyball net across the bump where two children had been percolating for the past thirty-five weeks. I couldn’t see past the sheet from my position near her head, but if I had I would have had a front-row seat for the insicion-and-viscera show that was an emergency ceaserean.
The doctor – our doctor – a brisk man who joked in a way that you were never quite sure about was now an image of intense concentration. His work was swift and methodical as he sliced into my wife’s abdomen, and removed both twins in rapid succession (Gwen Stefani’s It’s my life was playing softly on the theatre stereo and both babies were on this side of the womb by the time it had finished… even at this life-changing moment I thought ‘well, this is a lame choice for the kid’s first ever exposure to music’).
And with that our identical twin girls – Lillian and Ruth – were no longer black-and-white blobs on an ultrasound screen, they were flesh-and-blood, skin-and-hair, poop-and-vomit humans. I won’t subject you to the traumatic experience of our post-birth care (that’s a story for another, particularly bleak day) but over the past few weeks as we slowly got more and more used to our tiny, fragile babies we started defining time in relation to how long it was until the next feed or when the next relative was coming to stay. Another twin dad gave me the single best piece of advice I’d ever received when he told me that devising a routine, and sticking steadfastly to it was absolutely paramount. While I often waver with healthy eating and exercise goals, I had the regimented discipline of the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket when it came to the girl’s feeding-and-sleeping routine.
The first month was hard. As was the next couple, and the rest of that year. It never stopped being hard in one way or another, and the challenges just kind of changed without really decreasing (“yes! they’re finally sleeping through the night.. oh cool, now they’re ornery as hell all the time because teething…”).
And it wasn’t just hard either. Having twins came with a wide range of things that were unexpected – stuff that didn’t fit with anything I’d read about or thought I’d have to deal with.
The first is the questioning – at least half the time I take the girls anywhere public I’ll have to field questions like I’m that guy from Back to the Future.
“Are they twins?” a doe-eyed stranger will ask after catching my gaze, and my answer will oscillate between either a polite affirmation and a chat or a curt “yup” depending on how tired I am at the time. 90% of the time this question is followed up by the same supplementary question; “Do you have twins in the family?” Well, yeah lady, I have cousins that are twins but identical twins like these aren’t really a genetic thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to finish the grocery shopping and WHY ARE THERE SO MANY DAMN TOILET PAPER OPTIONS??
The other unexpected thing I came to realise was how much flip-flopping a pair of babies would do. I was under no illusions that I’d often be dealing with one cranky baby and one that was calm and chill, but what I wasnt counting on was the rate or consistency of how they switch from one role to the other. It was disconcerting to see one twin screaming her vocal cords out while the other would sit still wearing a goofy contented grin, only to have them swap dispositions completely and instantaneously two days later. This trend has leveled out as the girls have grown, but still reemerges like the bloated corpse of Rod Stewart’s career every so often and is still annoying to deal with (like Rod Stewart – probably).
And if you want to see a tableau of pure, chrystalised panic; peek through the curtains of a room where one relaxed baby is sleeping near where the parents are desperately trying to stop the non-sleeping one from howling like a banshee. Its a tense scene.
Over the past two years of tantrums, turmoil and Teletubbies Lillian and Ruth have gone from tiny, needy balls of screaming and excretions to larger, less needy, sweet bundles of babbling energy. We decided long ago that we wouldn’t have any more children, but reflecting back on the first two years, I don’t think there is much we would have done differently. For all the grumbling I’ve done over the course of this post, I love being a dad.
When the girls were about six months old a buddy of mine with a pregnant wife asked what the hardest part of being a dad was – I answered “well, you’d think it would be the stress associated with the financial burden, or the guilt that you constantly feel about how you’re going to inevitablely mess this kid up, or the anxiety of local and world events that suddenly impact you much more severely than they did before, but it’s not.
“It’s not even the physical exhaustion that the sleep deprivation batters you with, or the emotional turmoil, or the toll on the mental health of your family, or the dumb arguments, or any of that. The hardest thing about being a dad… is trying to use those stupid fucking domes sewn into every piece of baby clothing on the planet.”
I often feel like I’ve aged about four decades in the past twenty-five months and although I’ve grown a LOT, I still struggle (especially with those damn domes).
Posted on March 2, 2016
A whole night
He slept through the night.
For the first time, since he was born, he slept longer than four hours. Four hours was his previous achievement. That four hours? Incredible. Indescribable.
But a night? A whole night?
When he woke, he popped his fuzzy little head up. He rubbed his eyes with his tiny little fists. A look of wonder rushed across his little fat face. Even he was surprised he’d managed to sleep. All night.
My husband and I woke disorientated and comically bewildered. How could it be morning? We were due at least three to six wake-ups over the seven hours we class as “night-time” slash “lose all hope and will to live time”.
The Ham giggled. He flung himself backward onto the bed and dissolved into fat, ridiculous chuckles that turned into absurdly loud shrieks of laughter. While we stared in amazement until we all gave in and fell into the moment too. All of us howling, tears pulling at my eyes as I pulled the battery from my phone – surely the time was wrong. My husband peered out the window “It’s morning?”
A beautiful smile.
The Ham had finally achieved what we thought was the unachievable. It had taken him 13 months. And oh, those 13 months, waking every 45 minutes, screaming for hours while we rocked and sang and hissed and cried and cried. There were torn nipples. Whispered fights “IT’S YOUR TURN!” Sleep apps that we had to stop using because I couldn’t handle my day knowing for sure that I’d had only two hours and 45 minutes – broken so very broken – sleep. There were moments when I really wondered what the Hell I had done to deserve a child that hated sleep. In my worst moments, those 4am desperate moments when you know your other child will be up soon, and you STILL haven’t slept – I thought about running away. Far.
How can we, how did we, how do we, keep doing this? Day in? Day out? Each night I felt as if I was staring out at the sea from a steep and ragged cliff-top. I felt so lost. So guilty. So confused. There were some nights where I cried buckets even before I climbed exhausted into bed.
I have never, in my entire life, even in my first born’s first year, wanted sleep as much as I wanted it near the end of this 13 months. Needed it. Desperately. I would have traded anything. Anything.
I had begun to feel like I was fraying at the edges. Little bits of me kept catching on things and I was becoming less of myself every day. Sleep deprivation does that. It steals from you and you don’t notice at first. You’re surprised by how well you’re coping. You make comments about how it’s amazing that you are getting by and doing so much. But you catch yourself running into the kitchen and you can’t remember what you went there for. Or you get home from the supermarket and you’ve forgotten the one thing you went there for. They’re the little things. You laugh them off.
But then it’s the bigger things. You start to feel as if you’re living in a fog. You retreat. You keep getting sick. You hurt a lot. Your bones and your heart. In the evening, you find yourself sitting down for a minute to collect yourself but then you look at the time and you’ve been in that one spot, staring at the wall, for almost an hour.
You don’t know where time goes. But every moment is waking.
I have been accused of being melodramatic about sleep. Told parenting is tiring.
Why did I have children if I couldn’t cope with a change in sleeping patterns?
There’s no point trying to get someone to understand the sleep deprivation many parents have with their child in that first year, or more. There’s no point.
You know or you don’t know. Some people are blessed with babies who sleep 10 (sometimes even more) hours a night. For most of my son’s life I have lived on around 20 hours sleep a week. Sometimes more, usually less.
This is not unusual.
People like to pretend it is. It makes them uncomfortable so they suggest it’s not really happening. If it is – it’s the fault of the mother. She’s not trying hard enough to get her baby to sleep. She’s not having naps. She needs to put herself first. She’s not practising self-care. She’s a martyr.
All of the judgements and assumptions and ignorant comments sit at the bottom of a clifftop. Above are countless mothers who stand and face the roaring waves each night and say:
This will pass
We are doing the best we can
Tonight might be different
Tomorrow is another day
We are doing the best we can
It won’t always be like this.
And it won’t. And when I’m on that clifftop, I’m not alone. And neither of you. This chorus in the night is one we share. We are together alone in this. It won’t always be like this and we will get there together.
One night you will kiss your baby’s sweet little face – expectant and full. A little moon peering out in the darkness. You will kiss them and silently wish or maybe you’ll be too tired even for that. You’ll fall into sleep – maybe easily, maybe it’ll take a while.
And you’ll wake up in the morning after they’ve slept all night.
Hours of blissful sleep that will sustain you until it happens again.
You’ve got this mama. You’re not alone on the cliff top. You’ll make it. I know you will.
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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.
Posted on January 19, 2016
The night I was an unlocked car
TRIGGER WARNING: This post discusses sexual assault.
***
I barely drink these days. With no sleep and breastfeeding around the clock it’s just not an option for me. I know few parents who drink heavily because really, who wants to look after kids when they’re hung-over?
But a while back, I got drunk. For the first time in well over a year. I was going to the Elton John concert with a friend and my toddler was at his nanna’s and dad was on FULL BABY DUTY as in – I was going to sleep all night and he was going to do wake-ups.
I was so excited, that I probably got a bit too excited, and that’s how I ended up drunk, singing Tiny Dancer at the top of my lungs.
I had been given taxi money by a dear family friend, and I’m ashamed to say it since she’s probably reading this, I spent most of it on those darling little bottles of terrible wine at the stadium. I drank quite a few of those things. And my tolerance had disintegrated from not drinking for a very long time.
I was excited by freedom! A night out! I had no idea when my next night off would be – it might not be for a year! I was irresponsible. I got smashed. I had the best time ever.
And according to a recent column published in the Herald, a column I’m not going to link to because it’s already caused so many tears and hurt…Well, according to that column I should have been raped that night. I was attracting trash by acting trash. I was drunk. I was dressed (possibly? The columnist didn’t hand out her booklet on what clothing is rape-inviting and what isn’t) provocatively by wearing tight jeans.
I was an unlocked car according to the many people who commented on that story.
Had I been raped that night after screeching Goodbye Yellow Brick Road down the phone to my sister it would have been because of my poor decisions. Because I didn’t act responsibly.
If my husband had to call his mum and get her to watch the children while he picked me up from the hospital after my rape, it would have been my fault.
If the next day, my toddler asked me why I was crying, saw bruises on me, if he tried to understand why mama is broken, it would have been my fault.
If one day as an adult my sons asked me about my rape, according to this columnist I would need to tell them that women must take responsibility.
I would need to tell my sons that “women and men are two entirely different creatures, with different responses and triggers”.
And if they asked why I went out and got drunk and got myself raped, I wouldn’t tell them about how the giddy excitement of a night off got to me and I drank too much but that doesn’t matter, because nobody deserves rape, no I’d have to tell them that the ultimate responsibility for my rape lies with me.
It’s important that they know that “yes, it’s a woman’s right to dress how she wants – but it is also a responsibility to dress in a manner that shows how she wants to be treated”.
I will tell the boys that they can decide how they treat a woman based on how she is dressed. If she is dressed a certain way, she is sending them a message.
Just like mummy did that night that she went to the concert and drank too much wine with money she should have used for a taxi.
According to this columnist I need to tell them that I should have kept myself safe but I didn’t. I didn’t behave “in a manner that signals that [I am] precious, special and deserve a man that is appreciative of [me] and [my] unique character”.
I’m not their mummy. I am an unlocked car.
***
To be entirely clear – it’s never your fault. Ever.
Our mothers, our sisters, our grandmothers, our aunts – they are not unlocked cars. Our daughters are not unlocked cars.
Our fathers, husbands, and sons are not creatures who need to see what someone is wearing to work out if they’re going to rape them or not.
This is what we teach our children. That it is never their fault. That what they wear is not an invitation to hurt them. That they are never allowed to hurt someone based on what they wear.
That article said the ultimate responsibility lies with women to “keep safe” from rapists. This is abhorrent and anyone who isn’t a rape apologist would know it’s the rapist who holds responsibility NOT TO RAPE.
But – as parents (and the person who wrote that piece is one) we have responsibilities – and that’s to ensure we don’t raise our boys to think they’re animals and that they need to take their cues not to assault and rape women based on a woman’s clothing and behaviour. And that we don’t raise our girls to think that if they are raped they deserve it for not following an ever-changing set of rules that don’t at all protect against rapists anyway.
Most of all, we need to not perpetuate the dangerous objectification of women that we are nothing but unlocked cars. Nothing but trash.
That night my dear family friends – husband and wife – took me home. Not once did the man who spoke at my wedding think about raping me. Because he saw me as a human being, not an unlocked car. Not once did his wonderful wife think “well, she’s walking around asking to be raped tonight”. Because she saw me as a human being, not trash.
We are not trash. You are not trash.
I am a mum, a wife, a sister, a friend, a daughter, a writer, a volunteer, an activist, a human being.
I am many things.
But I am not an unlocked car.
***
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