So we’re into the home stretch thank goodness. And with the end in sight it is normal for the heavily pregnant female to resort to ‘nesting’, an instinctual phenomena characterised by sudden spurts of cleaning and organising of her habitat in preparation for the new arrival. This manifestation is an early indication that labour is imminent.
I have my own personally adapted version of this phenomenon. I call it ‘hoarding’ and it is characterised by the frantic buying of clothes that I can wear on the other side. I’ve been trawling the Boden sale all week filling my virtual trolly with gorgeous items that will hopefully goad me into actually fitting into them as soon as possible.
And last week I made a special trip to the Dubai Outlet mall with the pretense of treating the children to an hours play in the creche. In reality I was on a mission to buy something gorgeous in Monsoon. It was disappointing to be honest but I still managed to leave the store with a gorgeous silk top. After hugging it for a bit I reluctantly hung it in the wardrobe, label dangling forlornly, where it will have to stay for another couple of months. But it's a comfort just knowing it’s there.
It’s irrational I know, but I am in horror of being that rounded, milky, new mother wearing shapeless squishy tops in a look that says ‘I don’t matter…I’m comitted 100% to being a new mother for the next 6 months and I have resigned myself to wearing ugly crimes of fashion until society tells me I can start thinking about my appearance again’.
I don’t want the whiff of victimhood around me and so instead go to great lengths to prove ‘I’m fine, I've only had a baby for goodness sake!' Besides, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that women in Vietnam give birth in paddy fields, then strap the baby to themselves and go back to work (I’m not strictly sure about this actually, but it sounds like something they might do).
I take it too far. On the birth of number 4, which coincided inconveniently with Christmas, I bumped into a friend in the Monsoon sale. I was three days post-partum and looking wild-eyed and manic and ever so slightly deathly pale as I trawled through the party dress rack (my favourite) trying my best not to faint.
-‘Are you OK?’ she enquired, peering at my stomach ‘my god, you’ve had the baby….when?’
-‘Three days ago’ I whimpered.
-‘Good god woman, what on earth are you doing here?’
-‘It’s the Monsoon sale’ I protested weakly ’I couldn’t rest knowing it had started…I left the baby with dh’ I explained, beginning to feel I really ought to sit down.
I now see that I was probably a little over-enthusiastic in my pursuit of normalcy and should probably have cut myself a little slack. I shall try to be kinder to myself this time….although a dress from Monsoon is actually my idea of being kind to myself.
Anyhow, for now I shall confine my activities to amassing my post-partum wardrobe, both virtually and by shuffling around the mall like some oversized bag lady. And nesting will continue to elude me since it exists in the realm of the unecessary when you have a maid service three times a week ( I do live in the middle east after all where nobody does anything for themselves).
Free range kids
I was listening to that New York mother who wrote that book ‘Free Range Kids’ on the radio the other day and I have to say, I love what she’s doing.
Her theory is that our children are so over-protected that we are raising a generation who will grow up lacking the tools to actually take risks or think laterally or with imagination. Worse, we’re depriving them of a proper childhood while simultaneously making parenthood a hellish, guilty and anxt-ridden experience for ourselves.
The proponant of the theory, Lenore Skanazy, caused uproar when she wrote in her New York column of how she let her 9 year old son make his way home alone from Bloomingdales in New York city where they live. She gave him 20 dollars along with instructions as to how to get home, and then let him off to figure it out himself.
The response has been outrage by critics and parents alike, labelling her the worst mother in America among other equally hysterical names. She does, thank god, have a large following and a blogsite where brave parents share their free range parenting stories, and has even highlighted a radical new movement 'the kids walk to school programe' which encourages children to (gasp) walk to school themselves!
Of course I support all this wholeheartedly, what she’s doing makes complete sense to my slummy mummy sensibilities and philosophy.
My nine year old daughter is smart, cynical and inciteful but I’m doing her no favours if I never allow her to walk to the mall without me. It’s a ten minute walk through a compound with security guards, across a road where a security guard is posted, and yet she’s never done it (and I shall tactfully side-step the whole issue of 45 degree heat being reason enough not to walk anywhere right now). This isn't because I object to her making that trip, but because she has no friends to go with her.
When I’ve mentioned to other mothers about allowing her to walk to the shops alone, I’ve been met with much head shaking and comments such as ‘Oh I wouldn’t take that risk’ which is precisely the problem. We know in all probability that nothing bad will happen, but as long as there is that doubt, and worse, the chance that if something DOES happen we, and everyone else around us, will point the accusative finger, we’re not going to take that chance. And so we keep them at home under our watchful eye or drive them to the mall ourselves.
But it starts earlier. Having coffee with someone who insists on checking to see what the kids are doing upstairs every 5 minutes is an exercise in frustration and futility. Trying to recapture the dying threads of a conversation every time she returns to the room, coffee long cold ‘what were we saying?' leaves me wanting to pour aforementioned coffee over her head and beg her never to call again. And inevitably these same mothers will have those kids that must interupt the conversation every three minutes to tell mummy something inciteful like ‘mummy, I know about the life-cycle of a frog…let me tell you’ (bugger off kid and tell someone who cares…I want to hear the end of this story).
Now when I was a kid, interupting an adults conversation was tantemount to self- inflicted infanticide (is there a word for that?)…you just didn’t do it.
I used to have a friend who would stop the conversation every time her three year old boy came running into the room crying hysterically (which was every two minutes). Grabbing him in panic she'd urge him to ‘use your words darling…remember your words?…tell mummy what terrible thing happened’ as my three year old son would stand guility by, waiting for the inevitable and collective accusative glare once his latest offence had been revealed. I wanted to yell at her -'LOOK, obviously my kid hit your kid...much like your kid hit my kid two minutes ago. The difference is that my kid can't be bothered to tell me since he'll get zero reaction from me!! Now, can we move on???'
And there is a 1,000% more chance that the children will cover the wall in lipstick or felt tip pen than meet an horrific and untimely death if left to their own devices for 20 minutes unsupervised. When I was a kid we genuinely got involved in some very dangerous and dodgy things during the long summer days when we disapeared from the house at 9am, not returning till dusk when hunger called, but amazingly we lived to tell the tale.
I have a friend who phoned one lazy Sunday afternoon for a chat.
-‘What are you doing?’ She asked.
-‘Oh we’re watching a movie’ I replied.
-‘Oh,which one?’
-‘You know that one about the paedophile…Kevin Bacon..yeah that one’
-‘But where are the children?’ she enquired, voice filling with alarm.
-‘Playing….in and out of the garden…why?’
-‘You can’t mean you’re watching that with them there? Oh my god!!’
She was genuinely freaked out and as I hung up the phone I wondered was it really that terrible. They were too small to understand what the story was about, and it wasn’t as if he was actively paedophillic in the movie, so what was the problem? Besides, they weren’t even watching the movie!
Mind you, she is the type of mother who will sit in the back of the car with the baby when her husband is driving. My god, but what the hell is that about? When we were kids we stood in the back of the car, no doubt playing with sharp objects while mother smoked ten cigarettes in the front of the car with the windows closed!! Judging by todays standards, I’m amazed any of us made it to our teens.
With child-rearing, I strongly (and some would say conveniently) believe that a healthy neglect is vital if you wish to produce useful and resourceful members of society for the future. Children that can't fight their own battles or amuse themselves for ten minutes without mummy getting down on the floor to help them finger paint won't be much use in a crisis. Plus, it makes parenting a whole lot easier and cheaper if you can say 'go upstairs and make a tent kids' without having to buy the special tent-making kit from the Early Learning Centre or do anything more than supply the sheet. Plus you get to finish a conversation and drink your coffee while it's still hot.
Everyone's a winner.
I have my own personally adapted version of this phenomenon. I call it ‘hoarding’ and it is characterised by the frantic buying of clothes that I can wear on the other side. I’ve been trawling the Boden sale all week filling my virtual trolly with gorgeous items that will hopefully goad me into actually fitting into them as soon as possible.
And last week I made a special trip to the Dubai Outlet mall with the pretense of treating the children to an hours play in the creche. In reality I was on a mission to buy something gorgeous in Monsoon. It was disappointing to be honest but I still managed to leave the store with a gorgeous silk top. After hugging it for a bit I reluctantly hung it in the wardrobe, label dangling forlornly, where it will have to stay for another couple of months. But it's a comfort just knowing it’s there.
It’s irrational I know, but I am in horror of being that rounded, milky, new mother wearing shapeless squishy tops in a look that says ‘I don’t matter…I’m comitted 100% to being a new mother for the next 6 months and I have resigned myself to wearing ugly crimes of fashion until society tells me I can start thinking about my appearance again’.
I don’t want the whiff of victimhood around me and so instead go to great lengths to prove ‘I’m fine, I've only had a baby for goodness sake!' Besides, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that women in Vietnam give birth in paddy fields, then strap the baby to themselves and go back to work (I’m not strictly sure about this actually, but it sounds like something they might do).
I take it too far. On the birth of number 4, which coincided inconveniently with Christmas, I bumped into a friend in the Monsoon sale. I was three days post-partum and looking wild-eyed and manic and ever so slightly deathly pale as I trawled through the party dress rack (my favourite) trying my best not to faint.
-‘Are you OK?’ she enquired, peering at my stomach ‘my god, you’ve had the baby….when?’
-‘Three days ago’ I whimpered.
-‘Good god woman, what on earth are you doing here?’
-‘It’s the Monsoon sale’ I protested weakly ’I couldn’t rest knowing it had started…I left the baby with dh’ I explained, beginning to feel I really ought to sit down.
I now see that I was probably a little over-enthusiastic in my pursuit of normalcy and should probably have cut myself a little slack. I shall try to be kinder to myself this time….although a dress from Monsoon is actually my idea of being kind to myself.
Anyhow, for now I shall confine my activities to amassing my post-partum wardrobe, both virtually and by shuffling around the mall like some oversized bag lady. And nesting will continue to elude me since it exists in the realm of the unecessary when you have a maid service three times a week ( I do live in the middle east after all where nobody does anything for themselves).
Free range kids
I was listening to that New York mother who wrote that book ‘Free Range Kids’ on the radio the other day and I have to say, I love what she’s doing.
Her theory is that our children are so over-protected that we are raising a generation who will grow up lacking the tools to actually take risks or think laterally or with imagination. Worse, we’re depriving them of a proper childhood while simultaneously making parenthood a hellish, guilty and anxt-ridden experience for ourselves.
The proponant of the theory, Lenore Skanazy, caused uproar when she wrote in her New York column of how she let her 9 year old son make his way home alone from Bloomingdales in New York city where they live. She gave him 20 dollars along with instructions as to how to get home, and then let him off to figure it out himself.
The response has been outrage by critics and parents alike, labelling her the worst mother in America among other equally hysterical names. She does, thank god, have a large following and a blogsite where brave parents share their free range parenting stories, and has even highlighted a radical new movement 'the kids walk to school programe' which encourages children to (gasp) walk to school themselves!
Of course I support all this wholeheartedly, what she’s doing makes complete sense to my slummy mummy sensibilities and philosophy.
My nine year old daughter is smart, cynical and inciteful but I’m doing her no favours if I never allow her to walk to the mall without me. It’s a ten minute walk through a compound with security guards, across a road where a security guard is posted, and yet she’s never done it (and I shall tactfully side-step the whole issue of 45 degree heat being reason enough not to walk anywhere right now). This isn't because I object to her making that trip, but because she has no friends to go with her.
When I’ve mentioned to other mothers about allowing her to walk to the shops alone, I’ve been met with much head shaking and comments such as ‘Oh I wouldn’t take that risk’ which is precisely the problem. We know in all probability that nothing bad will happen, but as long as there is that doubt, and worse, the chance that if something DOES happen we, and everyone else around us, will point the accusative finger, we’re not going to take that chance. And so we keep them at home under our watchful eye or drive them to the mall ourselves.
But it starts earlier. Having coffee with someone who insists on checking to see what the kids are doing upstairs every 5 minutes is an exercise in frustration and futility. Trying to recapture the dying threads of a conversation every time she returns to the room, coffee long cold ‘what were we saying?' leaves me wanting to pour aforementioned coffee over her head and beg her never to call again. And inevitably these same mothers will have those kids that must interupt the conversation every three minutes to tell mummy something inciteful like ‘mummy, I know about the life-cycle of a frog…let me tell you’ (bugger off kid and tell someone who cares…I want to hear the end of this story).
Now when I was a kid, interupting an adults conversation was tantemount to self- inflicted infanticide (is there a word for that?)…you just didn’t do it.
I used to have a friend who would stop the conversation every time her three year old boy came running into the room crying hysterically (which was every two minutes). Grabbing him in panic she'd urge him to ‘use your words darling…remember your words?…tell mummy what terrible thing happened’ as my three year old son would stand guility by, waiting for the inevitable and collective accusative glare once his latest offence had been revealed. I wanted to yell at her -'LOOK, obviously my kid hit your kid...much like your kid hit my kid two minutes ago. The difference is that my kid can't be bothered to tell me since he'll get zero reaction from me!! Now, can we move on???'
And there is a 1,000% more chance that the children will cover the wall in lipstick or felt tip pen than meet an horrific and untimely death if left to their own devices for 20 minutes unsupervised. When I was a kid we genuinely got involved in some very dangerous and dodgy things during the long summer days when we disapeared from the house at 9am, not returning till dusk when hunger called, but amazingly we lived to tell the tale.
I have a friend who phoned one lazy Sunday afternoon for a chat.
-‘What are you doing?’ She asked.
-‘Oh we’re watching a movie’ I replied.
-‘Oh,which one?’
-‘You know that one about the paedophile…Kevin Bacon..yeah that one’
-‘But where are the children?’ she enquired, voice filling with alarm.
-‘Playing….in and out of the garden…why?’
-‘You can’t mean you’re watching that with them there? Oh my god!!’
She was genuinely freaked out and as I hung up the phone I wondered was it really that terrible. They were too small to understand what the story was about, and it wasn’t as if he was actively paedophillic in the movie, so what was the problem? Besides, they weren’t even watching the movie!
Mind you, she is the type of mother who will sit in the back of the car with the baby when her husband is driving. My god, but what the hell is that about? When we were kids we stood in the back of the car, no doubt playing with sharp objects while mother smoked ten cigarettes in the front of the car with the windows closed!! Judging by todays standards, I’m amazed any of us made it to our teens.
With child-rearing, I strongly (and some would say conveniently) believe that a healthy neglect is vital if you wish to produce useful and resourceful members of society for the future. Children that can't fight their own battles or amuse themselves for ten minutes without mummy getting down on the floor to help them finger paint won't be much use in a crisis. Plus, it makes parenting a whole lot easier and cheaper if you can say 'go upstairs and make a tent kids' without having to buy the special tent-making kit from the Early Learning Centre or do anything more than supply the sheet. Plus you get to finish a conversation and drink your coffee while it's still hot.
Everyone's a winner.
