This morning was my lie-in. I require no gifts of jewellery, posh nights out and gourmet chocolates to give me  joy in my life in my current phase. I will want these things again (take not husband dear!Also note that flowers was not on this don’t need list!) but currently the best gifts that I can receive are time to sleep uninterrupted and time all to myself. I don’t want the latter all the time. I love my children and even the chaotic, frenetic pace of life that they bring into the world with them. There does come a point every so often when I crash and burn though. Last night was it. Last night was a night when I was too tired to even go to bed. So this morning was my lie-in and now I am feeling human again. This morning I have been able to string a coherent string of thoughts together. What a delight.

I woke to the sounds of ukelele strumming and keyboard plinking. My oldest daughters were playing on the computer when my husband woke up and he decided this was a poor way to spend a Saturday morning. “Who wants to learn to play a tune on the keyboard?” he asked the girls. “Meeeeee!” they said in unison. By the time I woke up they could both play the first four bars of Twinkle Twinkle. The baby had already gone back to sleep for a nap and the big girls gave me a show and tell session of their new skill.

Dads are good at the impromptu moments. Another friend who is under the weather at the moment, received the gift of uninterrupted sleep from her husband this morning too. She woke to the delight of a silent and empty house as her husband’s impromptu moment was to take their daughter out for breakfast. I have a constant to-do list in my head and grab quiet moments in the household to get a sneaky task done. I can be guilty of ‘wasting’ the time when impromptu moments are possible and turning them into practical moments. I have to really. So thank you to the daddy of our household for this child-centred, skill-building, fun-time-having moment to start the weekend for our girls. And for me, I have the joy of feeling awake, alert and alive after an actual, real and restful sleep. Theses are a few of my favourite things.

When My Husband Navigated Away From the To-Do List is a post from: The Parenting Geek

As I walk through the doors of the local shops to top-up the bread bin, lunch boxes and fridge I am visually accosted. There on the lowest shelves of the newspaper racks are pictures of knicker-clad women with their bum up in the air smiling coyly back at me. And here’s another with a woman lying on her back with her legs up in the air in and wide open whilst ‘modestly’ covering  breasts. I guess I’d have to buy the paper for her to be less coy and give me a face-full on the inside pages.

I don’t have a problem with porn. I have a problem when the porn is at the eye-level of children. I also have a problem with newspapers displaying front page headlines with the words rape, sex or prostitute. My children can read now and they wonder what the words mean. I haven’t explained sex to my six year old yet, so if she asks me what rape means, it would require more explanations and teaching than I would like to be forced into before she asks for her self-induced curiosity and quest for knowledge. It would also require and some pretty dodgy initial associations to draw together sex, violence and power issues in her early sex education.

People like page three, and perhaps lazily, I haven’t given it much thought. However ignorantly, I don’t have a problem with it. People who want to have a picture of a girl with big boobs and tiny knickers know the paper to buy. They buy it, leave the shop, read the paper and enjoy the pictures in whatever way they see fit. The children going into the shop see the front page, hopefully sans the easy-to-read but hard-to-explain words of sex and violence, but certainly without the in-the-face, sexualised images of woman as object before them.

The porn lives on the top shelves. Of course the children can look up, but they don’t. There are sweets, crisps and comics with ‘free’ and tantalising gifts of plastic crap to draw their attention. There is me to beg for the aforementioned treasures and there is the hope that they might leave the shop with a treat. So put the porn on the top-shelves. Take the pornographic materials that are thinly disguised as newspapers and stop shoving this view of women into the pliable minds of our children.

It’s hard enough to know what a girl or woman is supposed to be. My eight year old daughter was playing on an online game called Movie Star Planet. She was designing her avatar by choosing the hair, style and clothes of a female cartoon character. “Mummy, what do you think of this outfit? Do you think it would get me a boyfriend?” I bit my tongue and kept my initial response to myself and just said, “Tell me more.” She told me that she knew a boy would only choose her to be his girlfriend if he liked the way she looked, and did I think a boy would like this look? At that moment I remembered why we have all of the computers in our house in the front room. This is our family room and if a child is on the computer we are close by. I was also glad to be able to share my two-penneth worth with her.  But what message was this children’s game giving to my girl? Look and dress a certain way so that boys will like you. And what messages are we giving to our boys? What are we sharing with them about what they ‘should’ think about girls and women? When I was little, Disney characters were Minnie Mouse and soppy Snow White. Now they are glossy, curvy, long-haired creatures smiling out from epic-length lashes. As this fab piece of spoken word asks, why do the cartoon fairies, princesses and girls all have to be sexy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw6X9uLoR0g

Why Do Cartoon Girls, Princesses and Fairies Have to be Sexy? is a post from: The Parenting Geek

When I’ve listened to athletes in their post-event interviews, many of them have talked about having to go out there and ‘execute’ which by the context seems to mean going out there onto the sporting stage and doing what they’ve been training and preparing to do. Sometimes it all falls into place for them and they give the performance of their life and sometimes some crucial factor goes awry and they are left feeling that they haven’t reached the pinnacle of their promise for their event. And these athletes are stepping into a very public arena to show their triumphs and disasters. Though they will have had peaks and troughs before, the hopes pinned to competitive performances must be so intense and so enormous.

I was told a story about a parenting expert who I won’t name here because I don’t know how publicly she has told this story herself. She was in a shopping centre and her toddler went into complete and total melt-down. The child was having a world-class, gold-medal winning tantrum of all tantrums, and like our athletes, there was our parenting expert having to deal with this in a very public arena! This lady had her sister with her on this day. Her sister leaned over to her to be heard over the noise of the child and hissed “Go! You can’t be seen here like this!” And the mum left the scene and her sister did what we all do in one way or another when our children are raging; she waited for the storm to pass.

Is there an assumption that being a parenting ‘expert’ means that they won’t experience what mere mortal parents do because they know how to stop their children behaving badly before it even begins? Though not a parenting-expert, in my work and in my community, that is both personally and professionally, I often fulfil the role of being a go-to person when people want to discuss or get some help with an issue that they have with their children. Having worked with children for over half of my life through teaching and counselling, and after being a parent for nearly eight years myself, I want the experts I learn from and turn to, to be human and real. I want to know that I am perfectly normal in having peaks and troughs and triumphs and disasters in my parenting. When our athletes fall, trip and stumble they sit and look disappointed, angry or hurt for awhile. When enough time has passed, they learn from what went wrong, add the learning to the sum of their experience to date, and move on to the next competition with their new-learning as a new resource.

As a parent, it’s even more complicated than this because the terrain in which we perform is constantly changing around us. The different ages and stages of our children need completely different approaches and methods. The state of our relationship with their other parent changes the emotional landscape of the family depending on how positive or negative it is. Outside agencies such as school and peers have a major influence. Etc, etc, etc. There are definitely wrong things that parents can do, but there are also a multitude of right ways and we have to choose and hone the right ways that work in our our home and family.

We must be allowed to learn, make mistakes, have highs, lows and ordinaries. I want to know that even the parents I really admire and learn from have them too. I want to be told the truth and knowing that all the best parenting advice, theories, ideas and stories are my learning and preparation. I want my teachers to be real and to have learnt from the good and the bad so that they can share it with me and empathise when they share their experience with me.

So let me alter my first paragraph.

I want it to refer to us parents and our parenting ‘teachers’ too. I want us all to have permission to share the reality of parenting and not some Brady-Bunch approximation that papers over all of the cracks and airbrushes the not-so-pretty bits. This is what I want to be able to say about the  parenting experts who share with us:

(The word execute is a bit dodgy here but I want to keep the message, so please give me poetic licence on this one!)

When I’ve listened to parenting experts sharing their experience and knowledge, many of them have talked about having to go out there and ‘execute’ which by the context seems to mean going out there onto the parenting stage and doing what they’ve been training and preparing to do. Sometimes it all falls into place for them and they give the performance of their life and sometimes some crucial factor goes awry and they are left feeling that they haven’t reached the pinnacle of their promise for their family. And these parents are stepping into a very public arena to show their triumphs and disasters. Though they will have had peaks and troughs before, the hopes pinned to family outcomes must be so intense and so enormous.

Admit It: Parenting has Highs, Lows, Mistakes and Ordinaries is a post from: The Parenting Geek

I’m sharing a link to a guest-post that I wrote for another site:

Active Kindness. Guest Post for www.storyofmum.com

Pippa from the lovely site www.storyofmum.com asked me to write a guest-post about activism. I read the other stories, written by other mums, and was inspired by the actions and stands the women had taken for the causes they believed in. My own post was less political. I decided to write about an issue that had been on my mind. The issue was the competitiveness and lack of kindness and empathy I was seeing from some mums to other mums. Here we are doing this 24/7 job, a job that our partners don’t even understand sometimes, and yet here we were treating our fellow mums with judgement and superiority.

My post was a plea for mums to be kind to mums.

Follow the link to read it on the Story of Mum site, and do yourself a favour and check out the site whilst you’re there.

Here is an explanation of what the site is all about.

I have swiped these words straight from them as they can explain what they do much better than me:

“What is story of mum? Story of mum is an interactive journey – a chance for mums to be creative, to share our stories, to explore what it means to be us, and to play.

We want to see your doodles. We want to explore the daily moments of creativity that are part and parcel of being a mum, yet which we don’t have the time to acknowledge. We want to connect with the joy of creating. We’ve created other human beings, how can it be so hard to believe in ourselves as amazing creative people?

With story of mum, we want to go on an adventure with mums we don’t yet know. We want to be brave and playful and thoughtful and surprised. And we want to have as much fun as the kids.

We want to share your stories – the words, the pictures, the sounds, your heart. The good stuff and the bad, happy and sad. We’re starting by sharing ours.”

Active Kindness to Other Mums is a post from: The Parenting Geek

In this website of mine, there is a page entitled “About The Parenting Geek” in which I tell you a bit about the experience and qualifications that lead me to become a school counselor and to set up my business in which I coach and teach children, parents and families.

Here are some other bits to tell you about me though and it’s really quite scary to tell you about them.

• I really like things to be organised and clear. Mess completely does my head in and I find it hard to function in conditions of chaos. I’m a stationery and list freak. I think it’s part of trying to be organised. I have a labeling machine and many things are labeled!
• I get angry and short tempered at times. Sometimes I shout. Sometimes I throw things. Sometimes I swear and sometimes I grit my teeth and roar with anger through my clenched teeth.
• I’m a procrastinator. I leave things until the last minute and then do some of the above angry, disorganized stuff whilst I race madly to the deadline.
• I want you to like me.  I’m afraid that I’m dull and boring with nothing of interest to say to you. I’m too straight (a bit too white and nerdy) and worthy and that though you’ll like me you won’t choose to spend longer with me than you need to.
• I very rarely feel like a grown up or like a woman. I feel more like a girl.
• I lack in commonsense and practicality. I used to sew the name labels on my children’s school uniform all the way around until a friend asked why I didn’t just sew the two short ends. I’d never though of that.
• I sometimes feel very lonely in a group of people. I’m smiled at and talked to, but somehow feel disconnected and not fully accepted or included and then I feel stupid, vulnerable, lonely and sad. I go home warm with shame at stupid things I said, a bit like the “I carried a watermelon” moment in Dirty Dancing.

And that is what this post is really about. It’s about vulnerability. It’s about the parts of self that cause shame or embarrassment.  It’s about the unfavorable comparisons made about ourselves.  It’s scary to talk about them.

What if you say so what? What if you think “I didn’t know she was like that. Sadcase?” What if you agree that I am boring and childish and  can now pinpoint why I’m nice but not enough to be your friend?

Well I’m afraid of all of those outcomes.

And yet here I am, airing my vulnerabilities for all to see and to comment upon.

Most parents who have ever come to work with me, or to meet and talk with me before I work with their child, have given me the gift of their courage. They have come and told me the story of their family as they see it. They tell me the problem their child or family is suffering with. They tell me the things they fear are their fault. They tell me why they think they may be to blame for the problems and the fears they have for the future if things stay the same. How scary is that? How amazing are they? VERY!

We create an image to show to the world. We cover up our soft, vulnerable underbelly and we try and fit in and look like all is fine. And everyone who does this gives the impression that they are coping. People in similar circumstances think they should also be able to cope. They feel weakness and failure for not doing as well as others.

So should we air every woe and trouble and fear and problem with everyone? Of course not. In fact if you do so randomly and constantly on Facebook I might unfriend you! For each type of issue you are dealing with in life, there are appropriate and inappropriate ways and people to share it with. The trick is to find the right person for you to share that issue with. You may have a friend you can tell all about the issues you have with your partner. You may have someone you go to with work worries.

I so admire the courage of the parents who speak of their fears, shame, vulnerability, mistakes, history, relationships and feelings. I am  honored when I am trusted to hear somebody’s story and for them to show me the vulnerability they have around it.

And in honour of the courage they show, the courage that is brought about by their deep desire to do the very best they can for their children, I take this small courageous step of my own and share some stuff that it is much more comfortable to keep hidden.

Let’s not habitually hide and try to look like we’re coping when we’re not, fellow parents; let’s connect. Let’s share and learn and support each other. Let’s be honest and open about the scary stuff and see how the connection and support of those we reach out to can nurture us.

You see me? I’m coping. Honestly.

I could do with a little help over here please.

Coping and Vulnerability is a post from: The Parenting Geek

It is very easy for time to pass by unnoticed. One Christmas and new year easily rolls into another, one hairstyle is succeeded by the next, a piece of clothing you still think of as a fairly recent addition to the wardrobe suddenly seems to appear in a photograph for the fifth year in a row! And then parenting gives time a whole new quality of fast and a thousand ways to notice that time is flying by.

I was never really ‘into’ new born babies in the way I saw other people around me being. I noticed that people would literally stop in their tracks to gaze upon one and coo and close their eyes and stroke and sniff the baby if they were given a chance to hold one. I found newborns difficult to hold, a bit scary in their tininess and always felt that I was the wrong shape to hold them as I couldn’t make them lie comfortably as I saw others do.

But now, I have become one of the  new-born-baby-gazer brigade. I can hold a newborn with ease and grace and I can make them comfortable and settled easily. I do close my eyes and place my cheek by their soft little head and stroke them and coo inwardly at how soft they are and at the newborn baby smell. I marvel at the perfection of their tiny little scaled-down features.

When my first daughter was a baby time slowed down. She was a newborn baby for what felt like decades. I was stuck in a time-vortex with a constantly feeding, nocturnal, squally, skinny, fragile little creature whose eyes were always closed and mouth was always open. I thought that this was what parenting was and I thought I wanted out. The demands upon me were intense and impossible to satisfy. I thought that this was going to go on forever. I was horrified and desperate at times.

A wise mum I met socially recently, put into words something that I have learnt since those early days though. She said that in parenting everything passes. She was explaining to a soon-to-be-mum that we often use the phrase ‘This too will pass’ to coach ourselves through tricky times and tough moments:

Is your baby still nocturnal in their sleep and eating routines? This too will pass.

Does colic or reflux keep your baby awake, screamimg and in pain for hours in the late evening? This too will pass.

Does your child have a terrible cold with a cough that disturbs their sleep and a tiny blocked nose that makes them snuffle like a piglet whilst they feed? This too will pass.

Does your child have night terrors that wake them and the household with blood-curdling screams, incoherence and panic? This too will pass.

Tantrums, teething, weaning, separation-anxiety, food and clothing fads. These too will pass.

But this wise mum said that she has come to realise that in parenting, everything passes, whether it’s a good phase or a bad one. Your child will grow out of every favourite outfit they own. Your child will not love the characters from their favourite TV programme forever. The book they want you to read every night (and dear God please don’t ever let me have to read Charlie and Lola ever again!) will suddenly be replaced. The funny smile they do when a camera points at them will stop appearing. How they hold your thumb and gaze at you whilst you feed them will pass. The spectacularly delighted smile that your  baby saves only for seeing  you, your partner and their siblings will change.

One of those special days x

And each thing that passes is replaced. Sometimes it will be replaced by a challenge and sometimes it will be replaced by something delightful and sublime. But it is this fact that I think has made me adore newborn babies along with their throngs of other admirers. Because this too will pass and will pass so fast. The decades for which my firstborn seemed to be a newborn were replaced by mere moments for which my third daughter seemed to be one. And it is experience that changed my perception of time in this way. With baby one I was afraid that this would last forever and I couldn’t cope. I did not know that this too would pass. With baby two I knew that it would and just put my head down and got on with managing a newborn and a toddler. At the times when I felt that I couldn’t cope I just kept going because I knew that this too would pass. With baby three I knew that this was the most fleeting of my children’s phases and that it would be gone all too soon. I knew I could cope and maybe that has made all the difference because I savoured it and enjoyed it and loved it.

So savour the good and manage the bad. Around the next parenting corner is a new experience for you to love or loathe. And around the next corner there is a new challenge or delight. And around the next corner there are things that are stable and balanced and things that are changing and in flux. We as learning-parents will use what we know and try and learn what we don’t know yet. Read books and Google it, but always balance this by talking to your friends and health professionals and other parents who are slightly ahead of you on the parenting road. They will help you keep perspective and share their experiences as you will do for the parents coming up behind you.

This Too Will Pass is a post from: The Parenting Geek

In 2000/2001 I was working as a class teacher in a primary school. For the first time I was going to be teaching year six, the oldest children in the school. I was a little nervous at the prospect, as there are important exams to be done in that year, we were overdue for an OFSTED inspection that was likely to come (and did!) and I’d be the teacher helping them to prepare and transition to secondary school. They were also to be my last class before I got married in the summer of 2001, so they were the last class who called me Miss Wickham. The class was called 6W.

As it turned out, class 6W were a brilliant class to teach. They got on well, they were smart, curious, funny, quirky, engaged, friendly, fun and of course just a little infuriating at times! I loved them. I could bore you with stories such as the unsatisfactory DT lesson in that blooming OFSTED inspection in which they forgot all the methods for joining wood that they’d learnt and designed, instead just going for kilometres of on the day. There were the amazing poems and dreams they wrote and shared when we chose to focus on Martin Luther King as an inspirational figure. There were the boys who made off with boxes of paperclips so that they could make lock-pickers as part of a (also unsatisfactory and therefore unsuccessful, thank goodness!) scheme to have full access to all areas of the school for spying purposes. There was sex education, the end of year production, games of head-down-thumbs-up and so many other memorable times that year.

The reason for this piece though, is to choose one of the children from class 6W to tell you about. His former classmates won’t feel left out or unfavoured by this. I know they would also want you to know about Peter.

Every mufti day, when the children came to school wearing their own choice of clothes rather than school uniform, Peter wore army-cadet style clothes. Peter was going to be a soldier. He’d been telling us this since he was tiny. He was going to join the army as soon as he left school. Peter was a lovely boy. He had a younger brother who he absolutely adored, and at the end of each school day, even though he was now a big grown-up year six, he would race from class and meet his mum and dad with a huge hug, kiss and smile. He was a loyal friend, he was well-liked by both the boys and girls in our class. I could always tell when he didn’t understand what I was asking of him as he’d tip his head sideways and frown whilst looking very intently at me as though he might find the clarity and answers he needed. He would get very cross if he felt misunderstood and would glower at us and be very still and silent until he was ready to explain what was wrong. We got on well all year- well, nearly! He was chosen to take the lead role as Prince Charming in our end of year production. He was so proud and he learnt his part and practised it with vigour and enthusiasm. But his mind was so on the role and the play that in the class I had to work very hard to get his attention with classwork and class matters as his mind was in the clouds with the play. We had a little discord during that time!

So Peter and 6W left our school in July. They (with more than a little help from my amazing classroom assistant) made me a book to wish me well for my wedding, I said goodbye to them all, and school and personal life moved on.

In 2006, as I walked home from school one day, a tall friendly-faced young man smiled and greeted me in the street. It was a 16 year old Peter who had just left high school and was about to start at a military college until he was old enough to join the army. We shared news, caught up a little, I bid him well and asked him to keep in touch and let us at school know how he was getting on and we parted.

Years passed. One evening in 2010, as I cooked dinner, I had a phonecall. I cried as I was told that Peter had died whilst on active duty in Afghanistan. He had lived and died his dream. Peter’s family was a very loving and close one. I cried as I thought of his lovely Mum, Dad and Brother. I cried when I attended his funeral and burial in a military cemetery in Folkstone one very snowy, winter’s day in early 2010. And I cry in my heart on Remembrance Sunday each year because I am now not just generally touched and saddened by the lost lives, but have the face of one I knew and cared about personally to remember.

So rest in peace Peter, Swift and Bold.

I am so pleased to have known you and so sad that the world has lost you.

Lest We Forget. For Peter. is a post from: The Parenting Geek

This is a Self-Help Post.

I do not mean me thinking I know enough to tell you all what to do. I literally mean that this is a self-help post. That is, this post is to help me.

I have a tendency towards laziness. I really quite enjoy pottering about and I have a habit of starting tasks too close to their deadline. For example, if the children and I are going out I completely underestimate how long it will take us to get ready to go out. Then I get narky and miserable as we race to be ready and the children fail to engage with my sense of urgency. These times do not bring out the best in me. Just ask the children. I seem to require this sense of urgency to start a job in earnest and so last minute races to deadlines are commonplace. In the worst case scenario, time runs out and we can’t do what I had planned. Instead of going out we stay in. Instead of doing an activity we do something more mundane. In all of these scenarios I end up feeling deeply dissatisfied and have a horrid sense of wasted time, wasted opportunity and of failing the children and myself. Heavy stuff, to be sure.

My Self-Help Tale.

This is a story I wish to remember and remind myself of when I’m not planning in advance and getting to an activity or deadline comfortably and happily.

Today was the annual London-Brighton Veteran Car Rally. Last night the girls and I decided to go around the corner and wave at the cars as they drove along the main road. On waking today, we found it to be pouring with rain, windy and cold. These were not good ingredients for standing at the side of the road and watching the cars go by. One daughter announced that she was not going. Another daughter asked what time we were going.

My usual form would have been to decide to have a shower and dry my hair, feed us and then dress us warmly and then 1-2 hours later be ready to go out when it was too late and then apologise and explain why I was changing our plan and not going. But not today.

I kept my pyjamas on, pulled on a track suit and warm socks over them, made 1 slice of toast and ate it very fast whilst getting the wellies out and on. I then dressed the baby very warmly, loaded her into the buggy, grabbed two umbrellas and and our warm, waterproof coats and got out the front door. Whilst in the midst of this I did turn my attention to the sheeting rain though I did  just kept going.

The Experience was Exhilarating and Fun.

We waved at each car that passed.  We felt happy when they waved or beeped their horns in answer to our waves . Some didn’t wave or looked the other way; after 12 miles of riding along in the rain we understood that their enthusiasm to wave cheerily had ebbed away along with their body heat and good cheer. My daughter splashed in puddles as we waited for the next batch of cars to appear. We were out for about an hour, with the cold only seeping into our warm-pyjama-cocoon towards the end. Inside the house was dull enough to need the lights on but out on the main road there was natural light, fresh air and a connection to the elements. Outside there was a connection with an event that I’ve been watching since I was a child and a chance to tell my daughter about how my Uncle Pat took me to see the start of the rally in Westminster when I was her age, and how my Mum and brother used to watch it as we walked home from church when I was a child. We smiled at our cocooned baby snug in her pram and lovingly agreed how cute she was. We had moments of quiet togetherness and we jointly agreed that we’d see ten more cars and then go home once we’d started to get cold.

I did what I planned. I enjoyed it. The ingredients that had almost put me off,  i.e. the rain and cold, didn’t spoil it. I just felt good for following through on a plan, delivering what I said I’d do for my daughter and for getting out  and doing it.

The Reminder and the Lesson for Myself

So this is a reminder to me to just do it. The next time I’m considering a bit of procrastination, laziness, lethargy or fear about an event or activity, I want to remember how exhilarated and energised I feel when I go places and do things. Today I stood by a main road, in the rain and watched the traffic. And I loved it. Providing experiences for me and the family makes me feel good. Procrastinating tires me and leaves me feeling fed-up and boring. The ingredients didn’t seem perfect and yet the experience was enjoyable and affirming.

So get off your backside Mrs! Remember the simple pleasure of seeing a plan through. Push yourself through the comfort-zone of leaving it all until the last minute. Seize the day and enjoy the experience. Get on with it because you feel much better when you do. Plan ahead, pre-prepare as much as you can so that the deadline is surrounded by time and space and getting stuff done well, instead of being stifled and strangled by panic and irritation.

We all deserve this of me.

Getting Off My Backside: A Self-Help Post to Help Myself. is a post from: The Parenting Geek

This is a selfish post. I am writing this for myself so that in a few weeks time when I am learning to manage being a mum to my 2 big girls and to my new baby who will have joined us, that I can regain my perspective and reason. I have found that when parenting, it is really, really easy to get stuck in the moment. I know that a lot of weight is given to the positive benefits of living in the moment, but in parenting, there are times when we need to get out of the moment and take the 10,000 metre view, so that we can see where we’re going.

Because in the moment, when we:

• want the baby to go back to sleep
• want a child to see reason, use their words and stop screaming
• need dinner to have been ready 20 minutes ago
• want our partner to read our mind and help/ do/ ask/ get off the computer
• expect the child to eat the teaspoon of vegetables and just move on
• want one child to treat the other the way they treat their friends instead of with sibling disdain
• just can’t see that everything will ever be ready for us to leave the house and just go out

etc, etc, etc, we actually need to really, really know that this too will pass. Getting too caught up in the issue of the moment can push unhelpful buttons. We can too easily feel irked, irritable, helpless and angry.

Too Caught in the Moment

When my eldest daughter was a newborn, she woke to feed every 1-3 hours and would feed for 60-90 minutes. During this time, I lived and experienced the true nature of relentless-ness. I thought this phase was what parenting was. I can even remember thinking that if I could reset the clock to pre-child, not remembering having had her and therefore not missing her, that I would do it. I was existing in a very reactive, in the moment phase, and I thought I was stuck in it forever. I was resentful of my husband who could still sleep relatively undisturbed and I was exhausted.

Then the Moment Passed . . .

And then the sun came out. My baby moved onto the next phase. She slept and ate well, I began to sleep, we started to go out more, I could plan further than the next feed and I slowly began to be able to function as a mum and as a person. I discovered talk radio and audio books, so that I had company during the night-feeds, I made new mum friends or met with old friends also on maternity leave, I built a schedule of activities that we attended and I started going to the gym and doing driving lessons again. The first 6 weeks was just a phase, as are all of the ages and stages of childhood and parenting. This too always does pass!

Looking Back On Those Days

And as I look back to that early first few months as a mum, I can see how warm and cocooned it was as well as being relentless. I can see how my world shrank for just a little while. And this will happen again this time too, but I still have all of the experience and all of the strategies I learnt before. My cocoon will be less cosy and my world will shrink much less this time, because the school-run still exists twice a day, my girls will still expect 3 meals a day and I know people and places to go with my new baby now. And I know that this too will pass, and just knowing that will make me appreciate the newborn phase whilst I’m in it, for I won’t be in it for long.

What Has This Perspective Taught Me?

And so I will nurture, love and enjoy my tiny baby. He or she who still folds into the foetal position even when perched on my shoulder, who makes newborn mewl sound when he or she needs something, and who gets me up for night-time feeds and snuggles through the dark hours and will no doubt sleep like a baby through the daytime! He or she who wears terry-towelling sleep-suits and knitted cardigans, who has the softest little head in the world and the newborn baby smell. He or she who I will inexplicably wake moments before because we’re somehow still linked biologically although we’re now becoming separate beings, who I will have the joy of sharing with my loving husband; my excited, loving girls; my ever supportive and present mum and all of the family and friends I am lucky enough to be surrounded by. He or she who will look so tiny when their daddy holds them and even when her sisters place their hands near beside them.

And So, My Message to Myself

So this is a message to me. As I sit here, 39 weeks pregnant with one more week to go before I meet our new  baby, I have the perspective that sleep deprivation and change may rob me of when the baby is born. So I want to remind myself that this too will pass, that I will learn to manage all that is coming my way and that there will be good and bad moments but they will all pass. I want to remind myself to take the 10,000 metre view, and remember that moment by moment I am in the business of raising a child. Somehow, my other two babies grew and developed and have become a five and a seven year old. Not in the blink of an eye, but then I wouldn’t have wanted that. Because I have loved watching them learn, grow and become. And I cannot wait to meet this new little person and see who they will become before my very eyes. The adventure is just about to enter a new phase, because it always does.

Parenting: Gaining Perspective and Getting Out of the Moment is a post from: The Parenting Geek

Dear Baby,

Each evening as I put your big sisters to bed, you are getting hugs and kisses from them and they are singing you the lullabies that me and daddy used to sing to them. Separately they have both told me that they are so excited to see you that they can hardly wait. Melissa tells you to have a nice sleep and not to kick mummy, but of course she doesn’t really know that you are just following in the footsteps of those 2 strong capable girls who also wriggled and kicked away to let us know of their presence before we got to meet them! Taryn wants to be a ‘proper’ big sister as she says she was only a toddler when Melissa was born and didn’t get to do big sister things. She’s been helping around the house a lot to practice, packing the lunches for her and Melissa and getting our breakfasts prepared.

I’m pleased to tell you that the preparations to our house for your arrival are well under way. Mummy and Daddy have swapped rooms with your sisters. This was necessary as they have been accumulating toys, books and treasures for 5 and 7 years now and needed more space to store them. And when you are big enough, you will have your own little room, so that you can begin to accumulate your own treasures!

I have 2 more weeks at work before I take some time off to be ready for when you come and to get myself ready for your arrival. You’ll have to excuse me if my looking-after-a-baby skills are a bit rusty. I know from experience that I will quickly learn them on the job.

And the most important thing for you to know is that you are part of a very lovely family and that we all love you very much already. We can be a bit loud, and we all have our moments of being the grumpy one, but we also know how to have a hearty laugh and a group hug. We’re not keen on ironing but we love to draw and make pictures with lots of sellotape and sparkles. Daddy knows if you are a boy or a girl, but us 3 girls have that surprise yet to come. If you are a boy, your name is ready and waiting, but if you are a girl, the choosing is still happening.

So grow well, little child of mine. Feel the protection that my body is affording you and know that you will be just as nurtured, cared for and protected when you arrive as you are now.

I will write again and bring you some messages from your sisters to go with the cards and pictures that they are already making for you.
All of my love, little one,
Mummy x

Dearest Baby . . . is a post from: The Parenting Geek