Archive for category parenting
Basil’s grown up cooking for kids
Posted by rose22joh in Gastronomy, parenting on 23/08/2010
(image from Omnivorous bear who read the same Observer article)
Another installment in my efforts to teach my toddler to cook. We do this when it is raining. Today, we made packet Postman Pat cakes. No information needed.
But we also made basil biscuits.
This is amazingly easy.
50g butter
50g sugar
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 handfuls chopped basil leaves
(I used thai basil as it happened to be at hand, but greek or standard is perfectly good too).
Cream together the butter and sugar. Toddler can do this, slowly.
Blend in the flour and baking powder.
Knead in the bowl, or on a board, roll into a sausage. Put back in bowl, roll in the chopped basil leaves, keep rolling around to mix the basil leaves in evenly.
Make the dough into a 2cm wide sausage. Cut into 1cm slices.
Put on a greased baking tray, and bake in the oven at 180c for 12 minutes.
Now, these could happily be changed around – parmesan in place of the sugar, lemon juice and peel in the sweet biscuit mix,or tomato puree or sundried tomatoes in place of the sugar.
Toddler’s not completely sure about them, but has said he’ll try again after his nap…
The classic British holiday…
… or 5 really good things I did on my holidays and 5 potential deal-breakers…
1) The English country wedding
What could be more perfect than starting a holiday with a wedding?
My cousin got married in a little stone church where everyone knew her, and had a hog roast reception at a specially converted wedding barn in the middle of nowhere (the fantastically named village of Throcking). My son was a page boy and insisted on carrying a “Just Married” balloon down the aisle behind her, and stripped all his outfit off during the ceremony because he was too hot. Don’t you just love toddlers? 
Fantastic day, lovely to see my family, great to see my cousin (who has always been the closest thing I have to a sister) so happy.
Of course, the location of the wedding limited our options for making use of our week off, so we headed east, to Suffolk…
2) Visiting Castles
Having recently joined English Heritage, my husband is determined to get his money’s worth. We’ve visited three castles and a ruined abbey within a week. Fortunately, my son is obsessed with castles at the moment. At Framlingham (where Mary Tudor was declared queen), we joined the EH Time Travellers. While a toddler is too little to take part in the mock battles and wild bear hunt, my son was plenty big enough to paint a shield and was thrilled to get the design he asked for (“a big lion with a tail on!”) He also ran the ramparts, thrilling for him, a little nerve fraying for me although it is all in good repair.
At Orford castle (pictured) he fell asleep in the car and spent a good 40 minutes asleep on my lap in the main hall. Waking up there was the Best. Thing. Ever! He then climbed to the top of the castle, and back down again, on his own little legs. and slept soundly that night.
3) Southwold
We’ve wanted to visit Southwold for ages, but when we holidayed in Norfolk, it was just a little too much in the wrong direction. It was worth the wait. We stayed at the hotel Gordon Brown used on his holiday there (no, we didn’t book for that reason, we didn’t know that until we were leaving!) My favourite moment was my toddler walking into our room and saying “Ooh! This is lubly!”
It is famous for its rows of brightly painted beach huts, its white lighthouse, the Adnams brewery and its pier, which was only recently completed and is in fact the UK’s only 21st century pier. Southwold is truly lovely, and although it has the usual middle class beach uniform shops (Fat Face, Joules and a mini-department store stocking Crew and White Stuff) there are also an impressive number of independent stores. There’s a tiny amber museum and a few more museums that we didn’t go to (no time!) and many happy hours can be spent mucking about on the beach (sandy) and on the pier (the modern ironic amusement arcade is fantastic although too scary for a toddler).
4) Sutton Hoo
When we told people that we were going to Ipswich over night, most went “why???” Some people know about the regeneration of the docks area which is really very stylish indeed, but most know it as a bit of a chav town, not really living up to its claim (with Chelmsford) of being the first Anglo-Saxon towns in Britain.
And the proximity to Sutton Hoo, the site of the most important Anglo-Saxon archaeological site in Britain, shows that this last point was an important one. Sutton Hoo in the rain is basically a big mound of grassy earth at the end of a wheelchair-friendly but muddy path. However it has an excellent visitor centre. We were a bit disappointed to find it was National Trust rather than English Heritage (by contrast Stonehenge is EH… go figure) so we had to pay the entrance fee but it was worth it. There’s an excellent film, a really interesting exhibition, drawing tables for kids, a rather alarming “open grave” in the floor with a sandcast of a murdered body within in, and a replica of the longboat in which the Anglo-Saxon hoard and the helmet (here a plastic version is modelled by my husband, the original is in the British Museum in London) was found.
For anyone interested in the dark ages, or in the history of Britain – political or religious because this site is pagan burials with early Christian influences- Sutton Hoo is a must.
The best thing for me was my son’s artwork going up on the wall in the visitor’s centre. And a slight moment of embarrassment when he told the nice curator that his name is “Baby Bear”…
#
5) TV tie-in
And finally… for anyone without a child under 7, this picture will mean little.
But for Cbeebies fans everywhere, this is a really famous building. This is Jason Mason’s house in Sunny Sands from “Grandpa in my Pocket”!!! My son knew it immediately and was thrilled.
If you want to find it, it is in Aldburgh, near the seafront.
However, as always there are things that disappoint you.
Here’s 5…
1) customer service at reception in the Salthouse Hotel, Ipswich
An error meant that two rooms had been reserved for us. Rather than check us in, give us the key to one and sorting out the backroom issues later, we were kept waiting a good 15 minutes with our toddler (and the after effects of my food poisoning) in the admittedly stylish reception and almost accused of having reserved two ourselves! Given this hotel is Alastair Sawday Special Places to Stay-listed, a sign of quality we’ve never been disappointed by, we were appalled.
Breakfast food and service, the room itself and the extremely helpful porter were excellent. But the reception experienced tainted it.
2) customer service at the Crown hotel’s restaurant, Southwold
We had dinner at the Crown Southwold on the first night we were there, and were impressed with the food and service. We decided to return for our special dinner. We couldn’t reserve, but thought arriving before 7pm would be fine.
We got a table without difficulty, but after ordering we waited an hour for our starters (crab on toast with gazpacho, and mushroom and tarragon soup). Neither dish takes an hour to prepare, there was no explanation, no offer of bread. We were only grateful that our toddler had eaten beforehand and sat happily in his chair colouring Peppa Pig pictures. When it finally did arrive, and we were asked if we were enjoying our meal we said well the food is fine but how did two bowls of soup take an hour?
The maitre d’ arrived, all explanation that the restaurant was busy, but no real apology, and certainly no offer to waive e.g. the cost of the starters. The mains arrived very speedily and he personally delivered our desserts (the strawberry pannacotta, strawberries with basil syrup, strawberry and basil sorbet and red basil was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten!), but it shouldn’t be that you have to complain to get reasonable service. Frustrating, given the excellent service only a few days earlier.
3) food poisoning from my only non-fish meal in days!
Chicken, perfectly roasted, must’ve had been exposed to bacteria after cooking. Haven’t been that ill in ages. Not the Crown, in case you were wondering.
4) the behaviour of drivers on the motorway (and frankly most other roads)
You lot! You’re mad! As I now have access to sat nav, my attention in the passenger seat is back on the road. When did it become acceptable not to indicate before moving? When was it made ok not to look to the right when joining a roundabout? Aren’t white lines in the centre of the road meant to be to the right of the car, not in the centre? Don’t you know/ care about the £80 fine for talking on your mobile when driving – its not about money-making – you’re endangering others! Speed limits aren’t a goal or a minimum – on country lanes you need to drive appropriately for the speed of the road even if there’s a “national speed limits apply” sign. What the HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU ALL???!!!
5) the M25 (and the Dartford crossing)
In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s “Good Omens” there’s a fantastic sequence where Crowley the demon shapes the M25 into the dark sigil Odegra. Have you been on the M25 recently? Journeys that used to take 1.5 hours (like getting to the wedding) now require you to leave up to 3 hours in order to be sure of getting there. The Dartford tunnel in particular is diabolical at present. But to add insult to injury, as you crawl across the Dartford bridge, you can see where they are installing speed cameras. Speed cameras! Our average speed over the bridge was 10 mph! We didn’t get faster than 20mph! And this was 3pm, not even rush hour. Truly dreadful.
Sorting out the mess of the M25 needs to be a national level strategic transport priority.
But a holiday’s not a holiday if you don’t have something to complain about, after all. I hope you all enjoy yours as much.
Cooking with Mummy…
Posted by rose22joh in Gastronomy, parenting on 26/07/2010
… today, we made cheese and ham breakfast muffins.
Heavily modelled on an M&S magazine recipe, we adapted to what we had in the house.
If you want to make the same, you will need:
300g plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
a few grinds of pepper
3 beaten eggs
225ml milk
1 heaped tablespoon hummous
25g parmesan cheese
5 slices of ham, chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
3 shallots, chopped
Handful of basil, chopped
125g cheddar, chopped
Extra parmesan to top
Heat the over to 190c, 170c for fan ovens. Put some silicone bun cases into a muffin tin. It’s amazing how precise toddler wanted to be about this.
Sift the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Grind pepper in. Add the eggs, hummous, parmesan and half the milk, and stir to make a kind of batter. This is fun and messy. Add the rest of the milk slowly so that it doesn’t get too sloppy.
Fry the ham and shallots in the olive oil (despite toddler’s protests, this was my job…). When shallots are golden, tip into the batter.
Add the cheese – we used some cheese slices so toddler could tear them up and chunks are best but you might want to grate or chop some up so that it melts through the muffins as they cook.
Rip the basil and add to the mixture.
Now, spoon into the bun cases, filling to just below the top of each case, and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown on the top.
Make sure you look in through the oven door as they cook to see them rising!
Once cooked, take them out and cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then put on a rack to cool further.
Eat while still warm.
If you want them to be a bit more sophisticated, you could serve with scrambled eggs. Or bechemel sauce. Mmmm.
PS the photo is not our muffins – need to download my phone photos for that…
A sporting chance
(picture from www.parentdish.com)
Just heard an interesting piece on Women’s Hour about why so few women are involved in sport in the UK.
To be honest, I’ve never really enjoyed sport.
I always came 4th (out of 4) in the running races at primary school.
I was always last or second to last in being picked for teams.
I was always allocated the Wing Defence role in netball and the equivalent in hockey.
The only time I really enjoyed participating in anything sporty was when we breifly introduced tag rugby at school (turns out I’m stronger than I look, but don’t like getting covered in mud).
I used to sort-of enjoy tennis, but I’m left-handed. This means lots of people tell you that you will have a big advantage if you can build a strong backhand, but you get stuck on the far side of the net and given occasional attention while the “normal” righthanders are coached through the next bit of the normally righthanded coach’s plan.
I also liked it when my House discovered that, given the way points were given for sports day (5 points for taking part, 10 for third, 15 second, 20 first, plus extra points for decent times and distances) meant that if we all did as many events as possible, no matter how badly we performed we stood a chance of winning the House Sports Cup. And we all applauded each other.
After school, I didn’t really do sport. I did musicals at university, learning dance (as it turned out, the beginning of 10 years of ankle trauma).
I did yoga – brilliant, and genuinely leaves you aching.
I tried pilates (awful, repetitive) and as a bit of a departure, and inspired by a PhD student working at the same office as me who was a third Dan, I tried Tae Kwando. And damaged my ankle so badly (originally damaged by the tap dancing) that I ended up on crutches.
So I learned that, as I’m not motivated by competitive sport, the often mocked “it’s the taking part that counts” really means something.
What wrong with that?
As far as I can see it’s the sporty, competitve people telling me that you have to be the best and that excellence is all that put me off sport all together.
Rather than dimiss my view on this, perhaps if there was a chance to take part in something, building skills.
Women’s hour spent a few minutes on a mums-organised non-competitive netball team – no scores kept, everyone changing positions and teams.
I wonder if I’d get bored though, as it does rather emphasise the pointlessness of it all.
Now of course, time is an issue.
I have a Wii Fit but get little chance to use it.
I work three days a week, walking to the station in the morning and dashing back to collect my son and babysitting until my husband gets home, which can be really late.
Weekends are filled with trying to go out as a family, seeing friends and family, mowing lawns, cooking, and trying to combat the tiredness the rest of the week engenders.
On the days I don’t work there’s playgroup, play dates and chores – housework and paper work, all of which take time.
And I don’t work full-time as I actually want to spend time with my son, and there’s precious little exercise that we can do together and would actually get me fit – swimming with a toddler is babysitting in water. And if I stick him in a gym creche, I’m hardly spending time with him, am I?
But I’m way too fat now, and need to do something about it.
Given the time factor, it’s probably going to have to be something both a two year old and I can do together.
I’m wondering about both of us trying horseriding, which should be relatively easy to find lessons for in our new semi-rural life?
Or may be the local rugby club does a mum’s team (or could do one)?
If you know of a fun, amateur sports group in Ashford that doesn’t require you to be any good to take part and caters for toddlers and their mothers, give me a shout!
Liking, learning, languages
Posted by rose22joh in EU, Uncategorized, life, parenting on 12/07/2010
Looking at the Petit Filous ads, I wonder – can you get a lifestyle from a language?
One of the great things about Facebook is that you ccan get back in touch with people. Today, I’ve been looking at the photos of my Frnech friend’s new born son.
French friend? Yes, I apologise for the turn of phrase.
When I was younger, we made friends with the people staying in the next door gite, while on holiday near Colmar. As it turned out, they actually lived about 40 miles from us and I spent my teenage years learning French with a purpose. It all seems so much more worthwhile when you have someone you want to be able to talk to.
Through this I enjoyed what we shared as culture, and the differences too. I gained access to a whole different way of thinking and a way of looking at the world.
I also speak some Spanish. I chose to do so because my 13-year old self thought that it was better to learn a language spoken so widely in the world rather than German, spoken in only one country. Now I’ve several Germna speakers in my circle of friends, and no one Spanish speaking. I keep feeling embarrassingly monoglot.
So when it comes to teaching my son languages, I want to start early.
After all the theory behind language lessons in primary schools was about cutting money and improving GCSE results by not requiring a lang- I’m sorry, was about children soaking up languages more easily early on so that they learn a love of them (I guess this is the same theory of learning that leads to atheists saying that children should not learn about God’s love until they are old enough to decide to do so…)
But while it is natural to me as a francophone that my son should learn to speak the language of our neighbours, is it rational? Is it the most useful thing he could do?
What about Spanish? My theory still holds, plus I found travelling in California that it was very useful to speak Spanish. Even Gerorge W Bush spoke Spanish.
What about the language of the BRICs? As Europe and the US decline as world powers, surely there’s a point to learning Hindi, Chinese, Portuguese, even Russian?
We’ve decided to start with what we know.
After a few goes yesterday, learning in English and French, my son now sings:
Fairer Jacker, Door May Voo, Sonic May A Tina, Ding Dang Dong!
Which isn’t bad for a first go.
We have the Muzzy VHS tapes in French and Spanish too.
These were given to us by a lovely B&B owner in Salisbury (we’d highly recommend a stay there, and please also make a donation to the Meningitis Trust if you have some spare pennies).
We need to dig out the video from the roof to be able to play them, but we think it might be time to get them going…
There are apparently lovely Fench clubs here in Ashford too, including holiday clubs for toddlers, so may be starting with what we as parents know, and starting with French.
Then the rest! Ciao…
Some things I learned about “real” life, work and childcare…
image from http://www.boloji.com/women/0103.htm, please do read the excellent article there
I’ve met so many lovely, intelligent women this week. We’ve been talking about working and childcare. (This is probably because the common theme to the various groups I’ve been meeting is children rather than because it’s a particular preoccupation…)
It’s been a real eye opener.
In my working life, I am surounded by highly educated, ambitious people.
Most of them live in London. Many don’t have kids.
They pretty much reflected my real life when I was newly married and lived 20 minutes from the office and everyone I knew was terribly high powered and some were (self?) important and the office would not be able to do without them.
The other people I met then were living in a tower block with 5 children with at least one called Kayden or Precious. But I never really knew them, I just got chatting to them at the Health Visitors’ clinics as we waited to have our babies weighed.
That’s no longer real life. I mean that in the sense of, if I woke up one morning and the office wasn’t there any more, I wouldn’t be walking past the site of it each day.
Real life for me is in my hometown.
And that means that real life people are the ones I now meet.
The musings below are widescale generalisations. There’s no stats included because I’ve been chatting with new friends, not interviewing research interviewees. Becuase of the way things have worked out socially, I’ve not really met single parents so that side of things doesn’t feature. And I guess it is right to focus on those in most need.
But I wonder if it’s given me access to a group of women who don’t often get heard about and so their norms get overlooked?
The women I meet here that don’t work seem to have three or more children.
And there’s a lot with three children. I’m beginning to wonder if the logistics of three are actually slightly simpler than two, because the stats show that once you pass three, one parent is then pretty much forced to take on the role of the stay at home car driving, child-oriented parent while the other brings in the money…
So most women here work.
But I’m not meeting high powered business women – presumably I need to do that by talking to them either at their workplace or on the train to London when I commute rather than behind a pushchair in the town centre?
No, most of us here seem to work part time for someone else.
Some are, say, working a few hours in the evening when their partners can do the childcare. Or working the lunch shifts in town to fit in with the school run. Or volunteering. Or supply teaching. Another has a husband in the sort of job where she’s expected to take on the pastoral side.
I’ve met so many teachers too, often married to other teachers, fed up with the 9-3 jokes and wondering how to fit their own kids in.
So many have stepped down, either in terms of their actual jobs or their ambitions. Local jobs count.
Most think I’m insane to have a roundtrip commute of over 100 miles.
Most of the women I meet work part-time. We know there are disadvantages to this in terms of lifelong earnings, pension, and career prospects.
So why not do more hours?
The response is who’d look after the kids?
The primary concern is not the long term but the day to day logisitics.
But surely the answer here is childcare?
Well, when we talk childcare, the response is that, even with the staff pretty much on minimum wage, the cost is too high. We’re talking nurseries really. Talk about nannies and you’ll hear what a guffaw sounds like.
I tested the idea that seems popular in feminist circles that actually even if the cost is the same as or slightly more than what one working parent can bring in, the parents should take the hit now, so to speak, for the sake of the future earnings potential and pension provisions.
This was greeted universally with horror.
The issue might make sense to economists, who apparently were touting the same approach to saving for pensions on the radio this morning, but the main question from the real people I know is what on earth do the people who suggest this think we live on that we can “take a hit” in the short term?
I’ve heard stories of taking in lodgers, the ruination that going a few pence overdrawn the day before being paid and losing your whole next day’s pay to the bankcharge. I’ve even heard about not being able to afford to pay into the state pension, let alone a private one. And yes, that’s even with tax credits in play. But what can you do if the available jobs don’t meet the cost of living – a living wage if you like?
There is also an issue of childcare availability.
It’s not really a question of provision for 3 and 4 year olds, although the thing that upsets parents is not getting the place they want for their child when parental choice is the most touted concept in education.
I know some mums taking their children to two different schools each day because they’ve not got places for both at the same one. Not only is that disruptive for a family, but it has an impact on whether parents can work. Logisitics matter. Not to mention the carbon footprint issues of this sort of thing!
Actually, work-wise, the availability of wrap-around care is the most difficult – a limited number of nurseries are available for children 6 months plus and fewer still offer the full wrap-around hours, and even fewer of them are conveniently located for commuters.
I’ve only had one actively recommended to me by the parents who send their kids there – and that’s the most expensive, naturally.
And the school-level wrap-around care provision appears not to be at every school but for some it is at a centrally-designated school a good drive away!
But finding a childminder to wrap around other nurseries or schools is also a nightmare – finding someone you are happy to leave your kids with, who has space for children of the right age, and who takes and collects from the right schools is not simple, even with the information available from Kent children and families information service…
Family matters
Because leaving your child with someone is not just a matter of that person having a paper qualification.
You have to be happy that your child is looked after as you would wish, and often even the best is a compromise at heart because it’s just not you doing it. Is it any wonder so many of the parents I’m meeting seem to seek to avoid doing this?
And while mostly we all seem to be begging time from the grandparents, we shouldn’t be counting on it as who knows when it might suddenly not be available?
And there’s the big unspoken secret too – parents actually want to spend time with their children, see them grow up, see the firsts, help them learn and develop. However much childcare is available, ultimately many parents are going to want to raise their own children directly if they can.
So what are people doing about all this?
The majority of people I’ve met are married or in marriage-like long term relationships. That affects the approach that’s taken.
Basically, those that can, seem to think as a couple – whose job or career takes precedence, how to handle the logistics, even to the extent of working out how to live with each other’s pension provisions.
For the majority of people I’ve talked to about this, they recognise that this isn’t ideal for them as individuals but they see it as part of the reality of being a family and having children.
While with one eye on the divorce stats this may not seem wise for individuals. Just as pre-nups are not popular or common in the UK, I think there is still an innate social (small “c”) conservatism and a dash of romance in the country overall. We don’t want to think about marriages failing. And we don’t want to plan on the basis that ours would be one of them.
So families balance the childcare between them, prioritising local over high paid, working out sometimes complicated logistics, choosing between them who gets the career rather than both trying to in order that they get to see their children rather than have someone else raise them.
But that raises a small question for me. If families are doing all this, then how will the need for better childcare provision that would allow them to do otherwise be identified? And which companies are going to do that research with parents in order to see if there’s a viable business?
Unwrapping this one is going to be a bit more complicated than even I’d thought…
So are you going to have another one?
I’m losing count of the number of times I’ve been asked this question.
At best, it’s when my adorable toddler is running around being cute.
At worst, it was during a job interview – something which I think it is actually illegal to ask me.
But every time I wonder what exactly I’m supposed to answer.
Generally it’s a well-meaning question.
But actually it risks being quite personal and intrusive.
Think about it in the context of work.
Now I’ve had some months to think it over, I think the correct answer would have been: “would you be asking that if it was my husband sitting here in this interview and not me?”
If it’s a question that an employer might want an answer to from a thirty-something woman, then there’s a whole load of assumptions that go behind that.
It correctly assumes that I would have to take time out of the office to have a baby and deal with the immediate issues with breastfeeding a newborn and postnatal maternal health – that’s one thing a father can’t do instead.
But I suspect it goes rather further than that, assuming that I would be taking the parental leave for any future child all by myself. While for a couple, you may think of yourselves as a unit, at the moment your employer almost certainly doesn’t.
It’ll be interesting to see, if our law changes in 2011 to a system of shared parental leave, whether the assumption shifts from being that one parent will take all the leave to an assumption that each will take half.
And what did I actually say when I was asked? Well, it was suffixed by, “I hope you don’t mind me asking…” and I think I said, “no it’s fine, and not at the moment“.
But it was sufficient for me to feel negative about the idea of working in that team. What would’ve happened if I had joined and then got pregnant? A sense that I’d gone against what I’d said before joining the team and therefore betrayal and untrustworthiness?
But it’s not just parental leave that figures in that sort of thinking.
What if my toddler or newborn was ill and I needed to take time off to be with them? The rough truth is that childcare doesn’t do child illness.
You hear about “pink medicine babies” – the guilty reality that if the child is just a little under the weather most parents will shove a spoonful of calpol down their throats and deliver them to the childcare provider anyway. They then spend the day dreading the call to say that their little bundle has a temperature and needs picking up NOW. It’s not ideal from an employer’s perspective. It’s not ideal from a parent’s perspective. It’s certainly not ideal from the child’s perspective.
But – particularly in a recession, where it’s a financial imperative that people are in work- it happens. All because people are afraid to take time off work to be there when their child is ill in case their work decides it can do without them, permanently.
Is it any wonder that the lesser-earning parent is often the one that takes the time out? But again it is not always a matter of choice. I keep hearing about employers who don’t exactly say to fathers that they can’t take time with their children but imply that they are letting themselves and the team down. But wouldn’t it be better if that didn’t automatically mean Mummy had to let hers down?
So are you going to have another one?
Is the question any better in your personal life?
It happened to me yesterday.
I was just getting my hair cut, and my toddler was pushing one of the chairs around the salon. I’m sure she only meant it in a he’s-cute-wouldn’t-it-be-lovely-to-have-more way.
But it’s a risky question.
What happens if the answer is “Good God, no! Awful little blighters, don’t know why we had the first one!” Not the case for us, thank God, but how would the questioner feel if that was the answer they got?
Who knows what circumstances the family are experiencing? May be they are sandwich generation, with adult caring responsibilities as well as a small child? Not having a second one might be a matter of necessity rather than choice.
Who knows if the person they’re asking has tried and failed for months? Miscarriages are not exactly a bundle of laughs and not usually the thing to share in smalltalk situations.
The thing is, unless you are already pregnant with the next one, which I am not, it is impossible to answer that question without sounding defensive.
And you get all kinds of advice offered to you as if to compensate for the embarrassment caused. Sometimes it just digs the hole deeper.
But ultimately the old platitude is the best: “it’ll happen when it happens“.
I don’t think you can really go wrong with that, as when it happens may be never…
So we just cross our legs?
Two days on and I’m still feeling cross about it!
Yes, it’s the Daily Mail again with the outrageous headline that babies born just one week early risk serious health problems.
On how many levels can a story be hurtful?
It’s carefully presented as being a warning about the dangers of elective caesareans which tend to take place at 39 weeks (and in so doing again perpetuates the attitude that having a caesarean is about being too posh to push).
But look at the statistic it presents… when it comes to caesareans, up to 7% are elective, apparently – so that means that about 93% of caesareans are emergency or planned?
That’s hardly an overwhelming level of too-poshness.
There is a question though over why we have such a high level of caesareans over all – double the World Health Organisation’s recommended level (but why is there a recommended level? Surely this was about demedicalising birth in e.g. the former Soviet Union? Could this be a formula babymilk style issue where something recommended for a good reason and has unintended consequences for some mothers?).
But hold on, it gets worse… “the full 40 weeks”?
My son arrived at 38 weeks and I was assured that he was full term.
A day or two earlier of course he would have been premature, but I needn’t worry as 38-42 weeks is full term and perfectly normal.
That of course assumes that my due date was correctly calculated in the first place (I didn’t know, when first pregnant, that the length of your menstrual cycle plays a part in those first calculations – why would I know that?)
I didn’t expect my waters to break at 38 weeks and my son to arrive less than 12 hours later.
I’d have preferred him to hang on in there. I wasn’t completely ready, the house was not tidied and I hadn’t even got my overnight bag packed!
But I turned out to have pre-eclampsia, and he had IUGR, plus some placenta problem so his hormones triggered labour so he could survive.
How was I supposed to keep him in there longer, exactly?
And, given the risks we were both facing, surely it would be ludicrous for me to worry about anything more than ensuring we could both live and thrive?
The thing is, there’s no real consideration in the article about why a baby might be arriving early.
It is entirely possible that babies arriving earlier than 40 weeks are doing so – like my son who was a natural birth and my niece who was an emergency caesarean – because they are experiencing difficulty in the womb.
But how much does that extra week really matter?
If children born 24-27 weeks tend to have a greater propensity to special educational needs (and if the article is right that the level is nearly 7 times more than those born at 40 weeks, then roughly 300 in every 1000 born that early), then it seems reasonable to say that prematurity brings risks.
But there’s a huge difference between saying that, and stressing about the following statistic: for every thousand children born at 39 weeks, 47 will have SEN. For those born at 40 weeks it’s 44 children. By the way, overall in the school population, in 2008, 2.9% of children had SEN.
I just wonder – given all the other factors that can affect SEN, whether this is actually sufficiently clinically significant to change from planned caesareans taking place at 39 weeks to planned caesareans at 40 weeks?
In any case, the article itself makes clear at the end that respected medical opinion is divided on whether caesareans at 40 weeks would actually be any safer anyway!
But the thing we tend to forget in the developed world is that birth is not a safe thing.
The truth is that birth is a process over which we have less control than we like to think. It’s raw and bloody and painful and a reminder that what we are doing has significance.
And we still have very little idea about how children develop their mental faculties at such an early stage.
But I’m pretty clear that stress is a Bad Thing – overall, and in pregnancy in particular.
So please Daily Mail, don’t run this sort of scare story.
It upsets parents on something over which a phenomenally high number of them have absolutely no choice or control at all.
It’s not as if we can all just cross our legs and keep the babies in a little bit longer.
Babies come when they want to. And if they don’t – that’s why the caesarean help is available.
What A-list really means…
… or what I did on my holidays.
We’re just back from 5 nights away in Dorset. Sunshine, warm enough to spend a day on the beach… this holiday had all the sort of things you want for good memories to look back on and say “do you remember when we…?”
A couple of years back, we decided that we didn’t want to fly with our tiny bundle of a son, plus we wanted to keep costs down and not have an enormous carbon footprint and investigated child-friendly hotels in the UK. There’s a whole load of them,mostly quite expensive, so we guessed that we were not the only people thinking this way.
Our first outing was to the Bedruthan Steps hotel, halfway between Padstow and Newquay in Cornwall, and we thought about going back there this year. But the Bedruthan Steps was one of two hotels mentioned frequently by the Wandsworth yummy mummies that I used to meet – the other, Moonfleet Manor was more expensive and more exclusive. Now, I’m not sure whether the Bedruthan Steps prices have increased or whether Moonfleet has become more competitive, but this year the prices were much of a muchness. And Dorset is much less of a drive than Cornwall, so Moonfleet it was.
We followed the (loathed by my husband) sat nav’s directions, stopped to read the sign at the campsite that informed us that the road the sat nav tries to send you up no longer exists and followed the alternative directions to Fleet, the road twisting and turning down towards the coast until finally, just when you don’t think it can possibly be the right way, the roofline of the manor house appears.
The plastic slide and play equipment in the field next to the main gateway (part of the excellent creche) gives away that this is not going to be just any luxury hotel break…
There’s a difference style between the Bedruthan Steps and Moonfleet – Bedruthan is 1970s purpose-built and so lends itself to very modern decor, while the original bits of Moonfleet are from the 16th century and the decor old wood and colonial-influenced. Some people have posted on websites that it is a bit tatty, but faded grandeur is a look in itself and fits the feel of the place perfectly. The things you want to be perfect, are – bedlinen is crisp cotton, towels soft and fluffy.
The communal spaces have a lot of things on the walls (including a tiger skin and a polar bear’s head which my son thought was the best thing ever…), there are lots of sagging but comfy sofas, and good but old Persian rugs.
You are greeted at the door by Snoopy the spaniel – I’m not really a dog person but this one is adorable and led us through the entrance hall to the chi Lions guarding reception. We had a nice surprise on arrival – it was a quiet week and we’d been upgraded from the cheapest room to a junior suite. That meant my toddler could have his own room, which was good for all of us 
The restaurant is largely locally sourced and caters for big breakfasts with some of the nicest sausages we’ve ever had, cream teas in the afternoon, and Anglo-French evening dining. For the kids, there is a charge for breakfast, an afternoon tea with real food (served in the Veranda room, which takes some finding), or family dining before 7.30pm (with a minimum cover charge that was way above what my toddler could manage).
There was another surprise as we went for the first of our delicious dinners that night.
A real A-list couple amongst the fellow guests dining there. In keeping with the discreet nature of Moonfleet, my own Sensibility and the clear Sense that autograph hunting would just not be the cool thing to do, I’m not Actually going to tell you directly who they were, but let’s just say it all seemed perfectly normal and not at all Stranger Than Fiction. Oh, ok, an actress that we all Love and her actor husband. My husband noted that they spoke to the (predominantly but not exclusively) French staff in French – we weren’t entirely clear why…
There was another actress there too, but as she was (according to my mother in law) from Corination Street which I don’t watch I didn’t have the faintest idea who she was and she was just another mum…
And on our fourth day we were asked if we could avoid going through the lounge for a couple of hours “for the filming”. Filming what, I asked. “His new album’s all about Moonfleet!” I was told, but although I’d seen yet another vaguely familiar person the night before, I didn’t twig who “He” was.
But back to normality for a moment (persumably what those celebrities were there for too).
Moonfleet has a sports centre (which we didn’t know and were therefore unprepared for in terms of tennis footwear), a lovely series of child and adult swimming pools plus a sauna, a big trampoline on the lawn and any number of things like petanque and croquet sets that can be borrowed. We had a really great time in the pool with my son – given his recurring illness early on and my husband’s busyness we’ve somewhat neglected the weekly swimming that we’d intended to do – so we were very pleased to have a few inches of water to teach him to splash and float and get a bit water confident.
My son adored the OFSTED-registered creche – staffed some of the time, with each child allowed two hours supervised play time and craft activities, but also open longer so parents can be there while the kids explore the huge variety of toys, costumes etc. Stew the rabbit was also popular for cuddles.
For smaller visitors, there’s a bottle-washing service, you can borrow a fridge, nappy bucket and a steriliser, and there’s a choice of cots or beds. You can also borrow a mesh bed side thing if you use one to stop your child rolling onto the floor, so we needn’t have taken ours. There’s babylistening too, so you can have dinner in peace in the restaurant, or drinks on the terrace or coffee in the lounge.
Aided by the better-than-expected weather, we spent a lovely day on a secluded beach in Portland, had fun on the farm at Lulworth castle, stroked starfish at the Sealife centre (they feel a bit like a fruit pastille but you can’t beat the little girl who said “they feel like Mummy’s legs when Daddy’s off on business”!), wandered the streets and the quayside at Weymouth and played peekaboo with the gibbon family at Monkey World in Wool.
Oh, and Moonfleet’s on the Fleet and Chesil beach.
Lovely. Relaxing. Fantastic fun.
Forget clubbing in Aiya Napa and spending a fortune shopping in Dubai and whatever else you see Jordan do. It seems to lack class.
Forget hiring Necker Island from Richard Branson or a fortnight at the One and Only Le Touessrok unless you’ve made your millions and need a personal butler. I’ll bet even the Beckhams get bored with that.
Ok so they got the dessert order a bit wrong one evening, and we felt just a little patronised one breakfast when someone who had not seen us the previous two mornings and who did not want the guests to just pick a suitable table explained to us in suitable for idiot terms that we should wait to be seated (he was better the next time we saw him).
But the welcoming, discreet, unostentatious, calm atmosphere where the needs of small children and tired adults are dealt with warmly and efficiently, where everyone is treated as special and given their space. Now that’s what an A-list holiday really means.
Getting creative…
Posted by rose22joh in life, parenting, writing and literature on 16/05/2010
It’s been a few years, but I want to start writing again.
I’ve finished the qualification I’ve been doing (Assoc CIPD with merit, thanks) and that gives me time on my hands. Well, ok, time that doesn’t involve potty training, new Ministers or a hoover (those three are almost never at the same time, I should point out).
I’ve had a story or two on the go for a while – the Day of the Lemming, a comedy spy novel I was writing jointly with a friend, and Oren and the Art of Onanism, which I’ve posted over at Authonomy. The latter had some interesting reviews, and just for a little while it was number 2 in the religious books category.
Writing is part of who I am. I wouldn’t blog otherwise.
A few years back I did a creative writing course – it was a few hours on a few Friday afternoons at the ICA in London. The tutor was Greg Mosse and we talked about the book his wife Kate was writing set in Carcassonne. That book was Labyrinth, the post-Da Vinci Code boom novel which was adopted by Richard and Judy’s book club and sold millions. I guess it’s unlikely they’re still running those courses now…
Plus I work part-time and have a toddler, so getting the free time to attend is just not easy to come by. So when I discovered Tim, the excellent @dotterel on Twitter and author of the Bringing Up Charlie blog was running an online creative writing course, I figured this might be a good way of getting back into the habit of fiction writing.
I’m looking forward to critiquing and getting critiques from my writing partners, and hope that I can be fair and honest and that they will be too.
So let’s get writing!
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my original weblog- Was I lied to and bullied over breastfeeding?
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