Living for Disco

There is something that you will not be aware of if you are not a parent: how people choose to feed their children is a frighteningly controversial topic. I never knew this until I got pregnant, and it became clear from a brief overview of parenting forums that there is a war raging between breastfeeders and formula feeders, and it is impossible to be too judgmental of the Other Side.

I find this whole thing astonishing. Surely if your child is healthy, how you get it to grow and thrive is immaterial? Why should I give a flying fuck whether the woman next to me in the under 1s group gives her child a bottle of formula? Still, there is much hoo hah on the interweb about women who do not breastfeed, and whether their reasons for not doing so are good enough.

The thing is, and no-one tells you this until you try it, is that breastfeeding is hard. Really, really hard.

At my NCT ante-natal classes we had a whole session dedicated to breastfeeding. A lovely woman came to talk to us about how breast is best, and really 99.9% of women are capable of breastfeeding. Apparently those who say they can’t are either wimps or deluding themselves. Sure, some women get mastitis, or thrush, or chapped nipples, but it’s easy to get over those minor inconveniences – they are rare, you are told. We received endless information about ‘latching on’ and different holds. Breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt if the latch is right. Chapped nipples? Just put lanolin on them and they’ll be better in no time.

After one week of breastfeeding, I wanted to hunt down that sanctimonious cow and take a cheese grater to her nipples. What would have been useful would have been more information about the support available, because without the many, many people who helped me over the course of five excruciating and emotionally draining weeks, I would have given the whole thing up, invested in a 10 gallon tin of formula, and never looked back.

There’s nothing wrong with investing in a 10 gallon tin of formula of course – it’s just that with all the propaganda flying about, the insidious judgmentalism and negative connotations in the press and in government policy about formula feeding, you feel that to resort to formula is to materially harm your baby’s chances of a decent future. The guilt is horrific. You feel like a failure – you’ve failed as a woman, and you’ve failed as a mother.

I struggled through breastfeeding, which at times was more like a horror movie (blood, pain, ripping flesh, screams) than the beautiful bonding experience I had expected. I didn’t even get mastitis or thrush, thank heaven. My boobs were simply shredded, rather than infected. I’m glad now that I didn’t give up, but at times I feared for my sanity. It would have made things so much easier if I hadn’t been racked with guilt and regret at the thought of giving up and resorting to a bottle. In the end a breastpump and a standby stock of formula saved me from chucking my baby across the room every time she wanted to eat.

My experience isn’t even uncommon. Everyone I spoke to at the breastfeeding support group had had some nature of problem. It infuriates me, however, that I wasn’t aware of this before I gave birth. I understand that people might not want to put others off, but had I known what might be in store, I would have been able to prepare myself emotionally. As it was, I spent the better part of 6 weeks in tears of pain, guilt and frustration.

Now, at 10 weeks, things are pretty much a walk in the park. Breastfeeding is cheap and easy. Hungry baby? No probs. Just whop out a boob and bingo. No mixing of formula, no sterilising bottles. It’s also turned into the lovely bonding experience that I expected.

Choosing to continue breastfeeding my daughter was entirely up to me. I wouldn’t judge anyone who chose to give up, or not to try in the first place – it’s none of my business. Far too much importance is placed on breastfeeding to the detriment of many people’s mental health.

What I’m trying to say is this: if you are reading this because you are considering giving up breastfeeding, don’t feel guilty about it. I guarantee it will be worth it if you carry on, but if you don’t, so what? Your child will not suffer, and neither should you.

That is all.

Well, it’s been a good few months since I’ve posted, mainly because I found pregnancy to be one long, boring pain in the pinny, and people get enough of my whinging on twitter (follow me! follow me!). In short, I got bigger, heavier, chunkier round the face and more knackered. Then I had a baby, and that’s where things got interesting.

Right throughout my pregnancy, I wondered about my birth plan. All the books and midwives kept saying ‘Have you written a birth plan?’, which I hadn’t. Originally, my birth plan was going to be ‘give me any and all drugs please, and if necessary, knock me on the head so I don’t know what’s happening’. However, gradually, I became rather fixated on the idea of a natural, drug free water birth. I liked the idea of focusing through the pain, and allowing my body to do what it was designed to do, after which I would lie, beaming beatifically, on a bed, feeding my angel baby and wafting my hand at awed visitors, like the queen does on a royal tour.

Everyone we knew who had children kept saying ‘Have you written a birth plan? Don’t bother. May as well flush it down the toilet’, which as time went on I found increasingly unhelpful. Just because their births hadn’t gone to plan, didn’t mean that mine wouldn’t. I’m young(ish), healthy and there was no reason why things shouldn’t go smoothly.

So, just for your delectation, here is a look at my birth plan, as written, and what actually happened. Also, incidentally, my child was due to be born on 15 December. For several weeks, I had to resist punching people who said ‘ooh, you might have a Christmas Day baby’, as if this was a good thing. I was sure that she would arrive well in time for Christmas, and I REALLY didn’t want to spend Christmas in hospital, so when my waters broke at 2am on Christmas Day, I was, of course, delighted.

1. Positions for labour
Plan: I would like to be able to vary the positions in which I labour depending on how I feel. I would like to be as active as possible during labour, and to have physical support from Gordon. I will be bringing a birthing ball to the hospital. I would particularly like to labour in a birthing pool.

Reality: As soon as meconium (baby poop) began appearing in my waters at about 11am on Christmas day, I knew my birthing pool dream was out. The midwife sent me to the hospital, where they whacked a drip in the back of my hand to get the contractions started, and strapped me to a monitor. I wasn’t mobile, and couldn’t use my birthing ball because the monitor kept falling off and I thought the baby had died.

2. Pain relief
Plan: I would like to use water, and gas and air for pain relief. If I become very tired or distressed I’m prepared to try pethidine, although I would like to avoid this if possible, so as not to make the baby dozy when she is born. I would like to avoid an epidural, but have left the decision to Gordon should I seem particularly distressed.

Water – a non starter. For those of you reading this who are pregnant – GAS AND AIR IS THE SHIT GIRLS. Get sucking on that tube as if your life depends on it, and drop kick anyone who tries to prise it from your death grip. I loved it. I had the pethidine too, but it was a nightmare. By the time it had worn off I was yelling for an epidural, and cursing the anaesthetist, who I assumed was keeping me waiting while he had a fag break or indulged in some other such trifling displacement activity.

So, for someone who really wanted a drug free birth, I had the whole basket on offer. And I didn’t need any persuading either.

3. Assisted delivery
Plan: I would like to avoid ventouse or forceps delivery if possible.

Reality: I did manage to avoid a ventouse or forceps delivery -by having an emergency C-section, something I had been vehemently against, but which seemed like a fantastic idea when it was finally suggested at 2.00 in the morning on Boxing Day, when the midwife told me that after 9 hours of belting contractions I was still as ready to give birth as I had been in October. (Midwife: ‘You’re still only 1 cm dilated I’m afraid’. Me, wailing: ‘You have to be FUCKING joking’.)

4. Breastfeeding the baby
Plan: I would like the baby to be placed straight onto my abdomen once she has been born. I would like any examinations or assessments to be done while she is on me if possible. I would like to breastfeed the baby straight away.

Reality: While my child was fished out of the gaping wound in my abdomen, I was having a pleasant conversation with the anaesthetist about his home town of Bangalore, and how fantastic Indian food is, and how much I’d like to go back to India. I did get to breastfeed her once they’re sewn me up and wheeled me back down to the ward, but I was so out of it, I can’t really remember what it was like. There’s a video of me looking all swollen-faced and hamster like, tubes trailing from all sides, and a squirming baby on my chest, which I won’t be posting here. I didn’t have any lippy on, after all.

So, all in all, we may as well have flushed the birth plan down the loo as instructed. But none of it mattered – Martha Rose is here, and she’s healthy and gorgeous, and my god, has she got lungs.

I’m thinking of entering her in the town crier championships for 2010. I’m sure she’ll wipe the floor with the competition.

So, yes, I’m pregnant. Wahey! The third month was the charm, it seems. Today I am 8 weeks 6 days pregnant, although to be honest, it looks as if I’m about 4 months at this stage. Check it out – although not if you’re eating.

I am calling it my little bloat. I don’t know how much of that is actually biscuits (I have been eating rather alot of biscuits) but it’s seriously alarming. Although I have a massive bloated belly, I haven’t actually put any weight on.

My clothes are starting to become uncomfortably tight, and so I’ve bought some groovy two way stretch material with which to doctor my skirts. Now all I have to do is find the energy to… well, do anything really.

I’m stuck in a kind of personal hell. I am so tired and so lethargic that I can’t motivate myself to go out and swim. If I don’t go out and swim, and do what I actually want to do, which is lie on the sofa and eat biscuits, then I hate myself, and am covered by a settling gloom which makes me feel useless, fat and slobby. During these moods, I find it hard to believe that Gordon won’t just divorce me because I’m a disgusting slob who does NOTHING.

My hair is greasy, I have spots, and I feel sick 70 percent of the time. So far, I have to tell you, pregnancy pretty much sucks. Oh yes, I forgot about the constipation! Woo, that one’s a killer. A couple of weeks ago I nearly lost the plot because I hadn’t been for six days. And you wouldn’t believe how much trapped wind six days worth of unprocessed crap can produce. (I realise that this could normally be classed as Too Much Information, but fuck it. It’s my blog.)

I’m a joy to live with, and no mistake.

Roll on 12 weeks, when I can see the little critter on the scanning screen, and it all starts to feel real. It will start to feel real then, won’t it?

Well?

Well, it’s been a while. Mainly because I’m having a hard time coming up with interesting and informative book reviews that are not going to send everyone into a deep and everlasting sleep. It seems I was not born to be a literary critic.

So instead, I decided to go the quickie route, and as I’m obsessed with Twitter at the moment, I thought I’d do 140 character book reviews. Unfortunately, they aren’t really book reviews. They’re just very short plot outlines. Still, what the heck. So far, I has mostly been reading:

Madame Bovary: Don’t marry a boring man, or you’ll end up as far as your ears in debt, and gargling arsenic before you’re 30.
Day of the Triffids: Humanitarian disaster, society collapses: What happens when out-of-control genetic engineering and military space debris collide. Oh…..
Carry Me Down: Oedipal Irish 11 year old unwittingly causes marital rift. Can he really tell when people are lying? Or is he just asking for a slap?
Crime and Punishment (so far, only halfway through) Moody russian student slaughters repellent pawn shop owner, then can’t decide whether he wants to get caught or not.
David Copperfield (so far – halfway through this one too). Rollicking read. Tragedy looms. Suspect it’s all Steerforth’s fault.
Moby Dick (given up on this one) – Whales. Whaling. Whale bones. Shiver me timbers, where’s me ivory leg? Find me a white whale lads, or I’ll have your eyes. Grog! Bring grog!
Mrs Dalloway: The clock chimes. Clarissa Dalloway muses attractively while her husband Richard dallies. A man in a park is suicidal. Ah, the flowers!
Candide: Everyone I love is maimed or dead, but it’s all happened for the best. P.S. God does not exist and the pope and his minions are charlatans.

Think that’s about it so far. Expect updates on David Copperfield and Crime and Punishment, and if I can manage to finish listening to Moby Dick in the car without causing a motorway fatality by spontaneously dozing off, I’ll finish that one too.

toodle pip!

I may have indicated here that I’m trying to get pregnant at the moment. There’s something slightly different about sex when you’re doing it in the hope of conceiving, and I’m not just talking about the fact that now, after the fact, Gordon usually picks me up by my ankles and bounces my head off the mattress in a misguided attempt to help the little swimmers along.

A few times lately we have been to see Gordon’s grandmother, who is in her 90s, and whiling away her twilight years in a retirement home, which she hates with a passion. She’s a brilliantly cantankerous old lady – she doesn’t give a toss what anyone thinks, she just says what’s on her mind. Everytime we go there she tells us how awful everyone is, usually within earshot of several of them. So, we went to the pub, where, after insulting the landlord by saying that she ‘didn’t like his nasty face from the moment she walked in’ and that ‘you can smell people who are only after money’, she began waxing lyrical about how she can’t understand why anyone would want to have children, as they are a pain in the backside in general. We thought this would be a good time to mention that we were thinking of starting a family. Instantly she was excited for us – a turnaround so speedy I got whiplash just watching her face. She seems to have jumped straight from ‘we are trying to conceive’ to ‘the baby is due ANY MINUTE NOW’.

The other day she rang up and asked Gordon if I was ’swelling’. He, of course, was confused, taking it to be an old-fashioned reference to conception. It made me feel a bit unsettled, and I had to check my face and ankles for puffiness, just in case I was actually swelling and hadn’t realised it.

Then yesterday, as we sat in the car on the way to lunch, she asked Gordon if it was a boy or a girl. “Is what a boy or a girl?”, he asked in some confusion. “The baby!”, said grandma. “They can tell you these things pretty much straight away now.” I don’t know how soon you can actually find out the sex of an unborn child, but seeing as we only told her we were going to try for impregnation just before Christmas, I think she’s run away with the timeline a little. I suppose when put up against 94 years, 9 months must seem like a tiny drop of time. We told her of course. I think she was quite disappointed, but I’m not sure she’ll remember.

As for me, I’m trying not to get to hopeful. It’s only month one. And pregnancy tests are expensive, especially when you use them far, far too early in an attempt to make yourself stop obsessing about how an egg might feel when it implants in your womb.

Honestly, it’s like waiting for Christmas to come around, when you’re about 4 and not sure whether it will ever, ever happen.