Muddling Through Motherhood

Most of you will know that I have been involved in campaigning for rights for breastfeeding women and babies for a little while now. I try to do some small things, and regularly write to my MP about issues.

The latest thing is the Equality Bill currently being considered. Morgan sums up the problem brilliantly as normal. Basically the government are fobbing breastfeeding women off with inadequate protection – certainly far less than what Scotland already has.

I wrote to my MP expressing my concerns about this – I sent her the following letter

Dear Julie Kirkbride,

The time of year has come around again where I am organising a picnic
in Birmingham to highlight the issue of the lack of legislation
protecting the rights of babies to be fed in public places. You may
remember that we organised one last year at short notice, but managed
to get some publicity. We hope that you will be able to join us this
year, knowing that you share our interest in protecting and promoting
breastfeeding.

We are holding the picnic on 20th July to coincide with the
parliamentary recess, coordinating with another picnic in London and
other regional picnics.

Tying in with this are the issues of the proposed Equalities bill that
is being touted as providing protecting for breastfeeding mothers.

I would like you to seek clarification from the Government on the
details of how breastfeeding in public spaces is protected under the
proposed Equalities Bill. Specifically, could you ask what would happen
if a mother was asked to stop feeding her child, and leave a cafe?
Would she have to leave, when asked, and then bring a claim after the
event?

I’d also appreciate you enquiring what protection a mother has if she
is approached in the street, or on premises, from a passer-by and not
the staff or owner of the premises? If a fellow passenger on the train,
for instance, starts to demand she stop feeding and leave the carriage,
what protection would the mother have under the Equalities Bill?

I am also concerned that 26 weeks after birth is specifically mentioned
- even if the proposed legislation was sufficient, protection for the
first 6 months will not help mothers to reach the target of at least 2
years recommended by the WHO.

As you know, if this took place in Scotland, the mother could have
either staff, or passer by, charged for an offence liable to a £2500
fine. I’m greatly concerned that the proposals in the Equalities Bill
are not equal to this and would ask that you seek clarification on my
behalf.

Many thanks for your assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Kat Goodwin

I recently received a reply, passed on from Vera Baird QC, MP

I haven’t had a chance to scan it yet, but this is what it says:

Thank you for your letter of 13 May 2009 … passing on correspondence from your constituent, This letter has been transferred to me as the Equality Bill forms part of my Ministerial responsibilities. Your constituent is concerned about discrimination associated with breastfeeding and shows support for the Equality Bill which is now being taken through parliament.

I am very pleased that your constituent supports protection against discrimination for breastfeeding mothers contained in the Equality Bill

The Government recognises the important contribution which breastfeeding can make to the health of mothers and infants. That is why we are doing everything we can to encourage mothers to breastfeed and to make sure that they are aware of its benefits. But, for many mothers, the uncertainty surrounding where they can breastfeed is a real deterrent. Babies do not get hungry to order and mothers have to be confident that they can feed their infants in a cafe, restaurant or shop without the embarrassment of having the owner as them to stop. This is what the Bill will do.

In the past, the law has not been as clear as it could be on this. People have been unsure of their rights and their responsibilities in this area. That is why the Equality Bill makes it clear that women who are treated less favourably outside work just because they are breastfeeding are protected from such discrimination.

Your constituents comments on this important piece of legislation are welcome. I am particularly encouraged at the strength of support and enthusiasm within the community and especially mothers for our efforts to eliminate breastfeeding discrimination.

Clearly I did not express support for the legislation, and none of my questions were answered. I shall have to try again.

Just a quick note to mention that I’ve manged to lose 8lbs in 3 weeks on weightwatchers. It has worked for me before but I’ve always lost interest, however more than half a stone in 3 weeks, and the idea that I’ll soon be breaking a stone barrier that I haven’t seen in more than 10 years is a very nice one.

I’ve got the fun challenge of my birthday coming up – and I have no intention of being too well behaved for that – but I have been sticking to this, and really feel like this time I can get down to the weight David and I agreed on in order for me to be nice and healthy before trying for another baby.

Another, less fun, challenge is that of getting to the gym. I never feel like going in the evenings, and mornings are hard when Rowan hasn’t been sleeping (although he seems to be back to normal with one feed a night the last few nights). I’m hoping that if I feel more rested I can get my arse out of bed a bit quicker and rush off nice and early. We’ll see.

In the meantime, at least Rowan keeps me active and walking.

This morning, in the gym, I noted a sign saying something along the lines of “in order to save paper, please use a towel to wipe down the equipment”. I then watched an employee of the leisure centre polish the gym equipment with a large quantity of said paper towel.

Today I’ve been reading about Unconditional Parenting and some related parenting methods. I should be working so I’ll just note them here so I’ll get round to reading them eventually. And maybe you can read them too and discuss them with me

Punished by rewards?
The Risks of Rewards
Taking Children Seriously

Typically for me, once I get an idea in my head, if I’m going to go for it, I do it quickly. So, Rowan has started nursery already.

Last week he had 4 settling in sessions. He was as expected – plenty of tears at dropoff and pickup – and a couple of times he cried on and off throughout his (short) time there. On Friday he was there for 4 hours and they actually managed to get him to sleep and eat

He has been quite clingy since he started – whenever we go out of the house he thinks I am going to leave him, but he does relax after a while.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how things are going.

In other news, the little angel keeps waking up at 5.30. We’ve tried fitting a blackout blind but it needs to be set back against the window rather than over the top of the whole window area as too much light is still getting in, but we’ll see if it helps tonight.

My last post – only 6 weeks ago – was an update about how (some time ago now) I had decided that going back to work was not the right thing for me.

Now that Rowan is 15 months and really not much of a baby any more (walking really well and starting to communicate) and now that I am looking at the prospect of having to go back to work for 9 months while Lyne is on maternity leave (from around June, though perhaps earlier) I am starting to reconsider.

Its funny. Although Rowan has been interacting with other kids for some time, he’s now so much more of a little boy that I now walk past the nursery he would have gone to, hearing them playing outside, thinking how much he would love that.

My plan was for him to go to a play group from 2 (next January) but I think that’s term time only, so won’t work for us. That means reconsidering nursery, and I’m finding that that is actually something I can think about now – after hating the idea once it came to actually going to work. The fact that there’ll be plenty of work to do, and that he responds so much better to organised activities is helping me with the idea. I’m looking at a couple of 6 hour days a week until he’s 2 and can go for longer with his free place.

In other news, Rowan is now walking really really well (since the week before easter) and has a couple more teeth coming through – his second pair on the bottom at the front. They’ve just broken and seem to have stopped causing him pain now, though we can’t see them very well yet

When I was pregnant I really thought I would go back to work.  I couldn’t imagine losing interest in the company we spent years building up, but it seems that having a baby drives everything else out – for a while at least.  I have tried going back to work, but we just haven’t managed to find anything that works for all of us.

Currently I’m trying to spend some of my time keeping the house tidy and taking some of the housework burden from David so he can spend more time at work – something he still enjoys, but cuts short because nothing is more important than time with his son.  Hopefully that will work out for all of us, until later this year when I’ll need to be back to cover the admin when Lyne goes on maternity leave.

That leaves me as almost a full time mum.  At the moment Rowan is making this quite easy as he has a good cheery time in the morning when I can get some housework done.  And recently he’s been napping, on his own or with minimal resettling, for an hour and a half or more each morning (but I’m not going to bank on keeping that as it might have been last week’s MMR that is making him sleep more).

To keep a little bit of myself seperate from mummyness I’m trying to keep BabySlingHire going and hopefully increase sales .  I suspect I might need something else in the long run, but as Rowan gets older I’m learning that plans are made to be broken.  There aren’t many decisions I made when pregnant that have stuck – and quite rightly because I really had no idea what to expect.

In other news Rowan is still not walking, and I am being an annoying pushy mum because I expected him to be walking early – after all he’s been cruising for more than 5 months!  He is getting better with his talking but of course nobody but David, Jenny and I understand him.  He can say odd things like “this “(dish”), “that” (“dat”) (normally in the context of “I want” with furious gesturing at something), “Daddy” (but only when he wants to), “Datch” (Patch) and I’m pretty sure he said “Anne Yenny” (“Auntie Jenny”) in Ikea yesterday.

The BEST year of my life, so far.

One year ago, in an hour or two, my labour started, kicking off the most wonderful, emotional, exhausting, frustrating, amazing year ever.  It’s Rowan’s birthday tomorrow and suddenly all those memories start flooding back.  I think of my labour and the first hours of Rowan’s life, and how upset I am in retrospect that things didn’t go the way I now wish they had – even though really everything turned out fine in the end.  I think of how I can actually contemplate going through that again (but not yet).

I think about being so nervous of this tiny being that was depending on us.  So nervous that we asked the nursery nurse to do his first nappy change and bath.  So nervous that we spent every night for the first week convinced that he was too hot or too cold.  I think of sitting up in bed for hours desperately trying to stay awake while Rowan fed and fed and fed and how I should just have learned to feed lying down and gone to sleep (instead of falling asleep with him propped in my lap and waking to find he’d slipped his head into my armpit.

For all the mistakes I think I made, and all the things I could have done better, we still have the most amazing son.  He may be demanding at times, but he is loving and caring, funny, attentive, clever, cheeky and just wonderful.

Tomorrow we shall enjoy Rowan’s first birthday with a couple of baby groups, a trip to his favourite coffee shop and a family tea in (as is the Birthday Tradition in Bromsgrove) Wetherspoons – and a late bed!

Everyone who has sent cards and presents – thank you.  Rowan is a very lucky and loved little boy.

This year, I’ve got a lot to work on. Don’t get me wrong – I’m really happy with my life. I think I’ve got the work/Rowan balance right, we’re all sleeping better, I’ve got more energy and just feel generally great. However, I feel like its time for the next step – that I can do things better.

So first things first – the obvious one. This is a new start on an old promise. Before I got pregnant, I promised David I would lose 4st before we started trying for a baby. Rowan had other ideas though, coming as a nice surprise. I had lost around a stone and a half, and thankfully didn’t put on too much when pregnant etc. Thanks to breastfeeding (but no thanks to lots and lots and lots of biscuits) I’m now back down to the lightest I’ve been (several times) over the last 10 years, give or take a pound or two. So only another 2.5st or so to go. The nice thing about it this time is that I’m not starting from my heaviest, as I have before. And I’m happy for this to take the whole year. At the end of it, I’ll be hoping to have some discussion with David about #2.

Fitness is another one that I’ve done before and of course its a clichéd resolution. Before I got pregnant I was the fittest I have ever, ever been. I could run a good portion of 5k, and it was getting easier and easier. When I got pregnant though, I was pretty scared of doing something to hurt the baby, so stopped running (that bit was sensible as I looked like a beetroot after every run and there was a real danger of overheating) and also stopped exercising generally (which was bad, and over the top!) Again, its different this time because I know I can do it – and the lighter I get, the easier it all gets. Fitness wise I am planning to walk – for one of Rowan’s naps, with him in the sling for extra ballast – for at least an hour, for around 5 days a week, then when the weather picks up, Jenny and Helen are going to chivvy me along with a running program for us all. I’m not planning to use the gym this time as its very difficult with Rowan, but I might do an aqua-aerobics class or similar if I can fit it in. I want to be running 5k by the end of this year, so that if we do have another baby in 2010 I’ve got a good fitness level to start from and can keep it up with lots of walking and other gentle exercise.

My other resolutions are generally about my time management. I’ve been used to having plenty of time to myself, and have generally wasted a lot on trivial things. I still do – although of necessity less than I used to – and I want to cut down on that and make better use of my time in various ways:

• Less Mumsnet / Facebook

Mumsnet is invaluable to me as a support resource, but I do spend too long reading stuff just as something to do – because its more interesting than washing up or put the clothes out to dry. I’m going to limit myself to a few threads I post on regularly, and a little time in the evenings. This means no laptop in the morning, (emails only perhaps if I’m not going to work that morning). Facebook is often just a waste of my time, but good for keeping in touch with friends, so I need to cut down on that too.

• Be Prepared! (like a good girl guide!)

When I am well organised I plan each week’s menu, have an internet shopping delivery for that food, and often cook the dinner the night before (where possible). I want to do this every week, not just every so often. If I can’t do dinner the night before, I may well be able to give Rowan his breakfast in the kitchen and at least do some veg prep in the morning. I also want to use this morning time to make sure we all have a healthy lunch ready for the day ahead.

• Do more around the house

David does a lot of the housework. A bit more than his fair share – and I’ve always admitted this. In order to free up his time so that he’s not pressured when work gets busy again, and so that he can continue to spend more time with Rowan as he has been since we moved office, I’d like to do some more of this. I feel Rowan’s got a lot out of his extra time with Daddy, so want it to continue. So in the time when I would have been messing around on my laptop, I shall instead do something useful around the house.

• Spend my evenings constructively

I have two businesses – one is covered by Jenny looking after Rowan – and that’s generally enough time to get everything done. The second is one I’ve invested a bit of money in and would like to step up in the new year. That means work on the website, SEO stuff, possibly expanding my product range, but definitely making sure that everything I do have is on the site. I haven’t been doing that and its a wasted opportunity. I should be able to make money out of the web side of things, without cutting in to Rowan’s time.

• Make sure my time with Rowan is quality time

I don’t mean spending all day on my hands and knees building towers with him, I just mean more interaction. Perhaps one or two less baby groups, and a bit more time with me and him doing normal things together – he actually likes most housework – particularly the hoovering and washing side of things (sorting those clothes is fun!) so I can get him more involved in that rather than sitting at my laptop and interacting with him every few minutes (I don’t do this all the time, but more than I feel I should)

So there it is. It seems like a lot to do this year, but mostly they are small changes that should make me more productive and my life more fulfilling. We’ll see. Oh, and I want to blog more – this should be an interesting year, so I’d like to keep a record of it, and my changing relationship with my beautiful, wonderful son.

…marries a man who cheated on his first wife and left his children, pretty much as soon as the divorce is through?