I love this

What a beautiful idea this is. Can anyone make me some?

hanged for a sheep

I had various plans for my (what was it the mean college vampire called Buffy's clothes? The ensemble? That might have been it) ensemble for the Blog Awards on Saturday. Just in case anyone reading has missed it, the Irish Blog Awards are on Saturday ;)

Forninepounds is shortlisted for Best Group Blog so even though it's informal, on the off chance we win, I want to look nice. But my 7 months later and still there baby-belly messed with my plans, and MW is prepping as we speak so I felt I should make an effort too, despite the drastic finances.

I get my hair cut and blow dried four times a year, if that, at €50 a go, and I might buy a pair of shoes or two a year. I do buy bits and pieces, but generally from Dunnes. Despite the depressing clothes mountains all round my house, I never seem to have anything to wear.

So off I skipped to Dundrum, credit card in hand. And I found a gorgeous skirt, wrap top and bra in M&S, a going out bra, no clips or nothing! and a necklace and earrings grabbed at the last minute.

I was well pleased with myself, it was a fall in love moment when I tried the skirt on - Per Una rocks. And best of all, when I came home and tried it on, the husband got the horn, so I know I'm doing something right - though I will be wearing a vest over the bra on Saturday :)

It was fun shopping for an occasion, especially as I got what I wanted. If I hadn't had to rush home to get my daughter, and had unlimited cash instead of guilt and a loaded credit card it would have felt even better! One day. One day.

I'm looking forward to the Lady Bloggers' Tea Party that will take place first, in my favourite Market Bar. Being in there signifies being Out (out and about, not out of the closet) for me, Out in Town! I will fit in with other well dressed bloggerettes, it's ironic, as I, and I presume a lot of other people, blog mostly in their jammies.

I don't know what to do about driving or not, drinking or not, Nightlink or Taxis or not... I think not, after the spending frenzy today.

tisk

I annoy myself, possibly even more than I annoy other people...

The other day I was emailing back and forth to a friend and said I had to go, citing a list of business that included the slow, boring, not very well paid marking I have to do and housework, both of which had suffered as I had gone to knit night for the first time since the baby was born and was going out to a lovely dinner that night.

My friend is keen to discourage my habit of being negative, and so in response, she wrote 'sounds like you're having a good life at the moment'.

Here's the annoying bit - my knee-jerk reaction was to deny that I'm having a good life, I was almost offended at the idea. Now this is partly that I bridled at the admonishing, somewhat patronising tone of the comment - I was feeling fairly overwhelmed and under effective - the workload plus two kids and a house to look after really isn't coming together and I was stressed. I feel I should be able to express that! But still, how ridiculous, to be fighting against the idea that life is good! What is that? Why would I have trouble embracing that idea?

Well, I still have some answers to that question - the hassle involved in the going out almost makes me want to give up and stay in, to be honest, though both nights out were lovely. My husband just had the horrible experience of being fired, and even before that, money had become increasingly tight. I'm sleep deprived again. But most of all, I hate the work, and trying to do it and mind the kids is just unfeasible.

On the other hand, I don't live in a war zone. There is food and safety. My kids love each other. Up til yesterday, my daughter was being a happy sweet little girl again, though the demon's been rearing its head the last couple days, so I won't write the triumphant Indigo Essence Update I'd been hoping to just yet. Still, I am feeling awed by my daughter's beauty, intelligence and wit, and by the pure sweetness of my little boy. Dote-erama.

I'm not sure how counselling is going - both good and not enough, I suspect. Nothing is really going to be right between us til he stops smoking, and he's brought home enough packs to keep him going for several months, so that hope is out the window for now.


Urg, I must go to bed, too tired to make a closing point.

Life is good. And not as good as it could be. I'm not sure that having someone point it out meaningfully really makes me any happier though. I may find it difficult to sop dwelling on the negative, but I am extremely good at stopping to smell the roses and notice the changes in the sunset at the same time, thank you.

I was going to add something more but got interrupted by my children, consecutively!

Hurray!!!!!

I'm so happy - this made me cry! Glen's shiny happy face! Marketa's Dublin English - 'fair play' during your Oscar acceptance speech! The way John Stewart was so delighted and in love with them, to tell their little joke from off stage. Everyone was jsut beaming! Glen's famous 'Tanks', so annoying in Vicar Street, this unnecessary hunility, so totally appropriate at the Oscars! Glen's Ma all in silver, she must be so thrilled, to be there, and then to have them win! It's making me cry all over again.

I'm so proud and happy!

I'm a terrible snob

I really am. I watched an episode of 'Escape to the Country' the other day, where a couple were looking for a big country house in Lincolnshire, with a paddock for their daughter's pony. Grand. But the first house they were showed was so beautiful! It was an old Victorian vicarage, with huge rooms, high ceilings, beautiful views, a kitchen with all sorts of wonderful separate bits, like larders, prep rooms, etc, a bathroom 'wing' divided into three, shower, bath and toilet. It was just a gorgeous house, on sale for £440 thousand...

And the couple. They were very London, possibly very Essex - despite the fact that she loved the house and thought everything was 'lav-lay', her enthusiasm was muted - when she looked at the very Victorian sitting room, she wondered how their plasma screen would fit in with the decor, and when the presenter suggested she change it, she said 'Oh, I think the boys would have something to say about that'.

It's not that I don't watch tv all the time! I know I'm being a hypocrite. But that house is just crying out for children who read books, and who'll play Swallows and Amazons or whatever in it, not who'll play computer games and watch tv and fail completely to have the house capture their imagination. Awful as it is, I was watching the programme hoping for a happy ending, hoping they'd find something else. And they didn't, they wanted it.

I'm not being snobby about their accents or where they come from really. I mean, whoever the husband was he'd made his money better that I ever will - he can afford to live there, I can't. But it's the lack of culture and imagination, how divorced from the heritage of the house they seemed that frustrated me. There just wasn't any connection, it seemed such a nouveau riche situation.

I suppose the fact that I grew up in a house a bit like that, but is no longer mine makes it harder for me. It's hard to accept I won't have that again. Most people don't and I should just be grateful that I did. But I'm not that noble! They just won't appreciate it like I could!

breastfeeding controversy

Statue, Ensada, Mexico.

Alright. I've been resisting this post for lots of reasons. It's going to take me hours. I don't want to get into another fight about it. Tensions run high. I really don't want to upset anyone, and someone always gets upset.

But then I have to write this post because I felt so angry, and distressed by the conversation that engendered it. And because Milan asked me why I hadn't got involved, and the fact that I didn't get involved made me feel guilty in the first place. So here we go with the can of worms that is unfortunately the Breast Versus Bottle Debate, again. Whatever you may feel, this is necessary and important. I'm going to speak personally and frankly, and as I believe strongly in the importance of breastfeeding, I'm going to upset or infuriate those of you who don't, and I'm sorry about that. So if you're not interested, I'll say what I would say to anyone who had a problem with me feeding my child in public - if you don't like it, look away now.

Lactivists always end up upsetting mothers who bottle fed, making them feel judged, outraged, pissed off. We've had conversations on Roller coaster about this, it's NOT our intent. I've struggled to explain why I feel strongly enough about the topic to make bald statements about what is best for other people's babies. One thing that I want to stress is that there is a difference between a theoretical statement, and an individual situation. We talk theoretically, and a woman who has specific reasons for not having breastfed feels attacked. It's never that simple, of course it's not. But I don't think that's a reason to stop sharing the information.

Judgement. I'll give you that. I am judgemental. So are we all. And necessarily so at times. When we see parents hitting hteir children, crushingtheir self esteem, leaving them in or out by themselves. Spoiling them... Do we really not judge other's parenting? When I see a pregnant woman smoking, or people smoking round small children, I just can't understand it, it makes me want to cry. When I see people hitting their children. Or putting them down and crushing their self esteem. I've made some spectacular parenting no-nos in the last year - judge me for it, support me, show me a better way to deal. Please. Don't pat me on the head and tell me I'm doing fine. There are so many things we once considered private, and looked the other way. I wish that breastfeeding choices did not have to be one of those things.

Why won't lactivists respect women's choices? Well, I have to say, women who breast feed come in for a hell of a lot of abuse and undermining pressure, from their families, husbands, doctors... it can be really hard to do, especially if you're having trouble, or your child is not putting on weight according to standard, bottle feeding weight charts. But what we want to highlight are the conditions and social morées that may have informed those choices on a cultural level. It's one thing to talk about personal choice, but I believe that people need to look deeper. What may be seen as personal choice is far from it - it is a choice affected by the impact of decades of anti-breastfeeding propaganda, buried in our culture.

The chances are you grew up without seeing breastfeeding or images of breastfeeding - dolls all had bottles, babies were fed from bottles. Public breastfeeding was vilified, is still equated with urinating in public by some. My daughter's Montessori teacher asked if she could take her baby brother home - her answer was, 'No, you don't have the milk to feed him!' and her teacher said 'Can I not just buy some in a shop?' My daughter thought that was hilarious - as did her teacher. A mutual and fundamental non-comprehension on both their parts. But I can't see my daughter ever having to leave a room, sickened, by the sight of a woman feeding her baby.

My mother in law never knew that breastfeeding was an option, as she was simply handed a bottle. And being working class, she was well trained to do what she was told by people with authority - so she didn't question it, despite the milk spilling out of her that was tailor made for her baby. She regrets it now, and resents the choice having been taken from her. Poor women breastfeed, as they can't afford superior, modern, scientifically designed formula.

A friend of mine had a a friend who had her baby when she was nineteen, came home from hospital and worried because her breasts were leaking - it turned out she didn't know what breasts were for - and her response? 'That's disgustin'!' And where does that response come from? There has been a concerted movement to stop breast feeding in this country - Milan is right, customs change with the times - but breast feeding is not a fad, it's not that scientists are going to come out and say, 'oh we were wrong'. It's clear that doctors have been, and still are, hideously, moronically wrong about breastfeeding and the properties of breastmilk. And in the name of all the misinformation, what has happened is that the realm of birth and babies that should be a woman centred place, has been taken over by the consumer interests of corporate giants, and their advertising, and women have internalised and propagated negative feeling about breastfeeding, and become insecure about it due to the shitty mismanagement of it by a tragically patriarchal hold over the medical profession. Don't tell me maternity hospitals don't get financial rewards for pushing formula. When I had to take my newborn to hospital, the first thing they asked me was 'are you breastfeeding and topping up?' That's sabotage, right there. And if I hadn't known what I was doing, the nurse would have fucked things up for me the first chance she got, with her misinformation and emotional bullying.

Another huge factor that puts people off is the pathetic support women receive in trying to breastfeed. Now the HSE are pushing breastfeeding rather than discouraging it, but in a heavy handed and destructive way. They are putting people off, by forcing breastfeeding on women, but failing miserably to have the knowledge or educational support to help women who are having a hard time. One friend had real trouble with positioning as the chairs in Holles St all had high arms, so she couldn't feed the baby in them, and the bed had a plastic sheet she couldn't sit upright on. Every midwife gives different advice. Most are untrained in breast feeding support. Some will have aggressively pushed formula up to very recently, and will now be resentfully hostile about having to push breastfeeding, and their methods will reflect this - like refusing a woman in pain a bottle of formula and walking away - how does that help resolve a breastfeeding problem?? Stupid. Ignorant. Bitch.

I was breastfed, it's in my family, I'm from an educated middle class background, I had homebirths etc - so statistically, the odds were stacked in my favour. If I had not had that background, and was only surrounded by helpers like my MIL, no doubt I would have fallen at the first hurdle without question. The breastfeeding rate in Ireland is poxy, and it's largely down to the hospitals and their miserable support. I read one story about a new mother asking for help, and the midwife raised her eyes to the ceiling and said 'Did you not read the pamphlet?' It would be funny if it wasn't so outrageous and tragic. The amount of women who want to breastfeed, get no help, suffer, and end up feeling like failures - I hate that that word is even in the vocabulary of new mothers, it's just not right. One woman on RC was angry that a woman should have to breast feed though in pain, and that 'support' made no difference. She misunderstood - we don't mean support like someone patting your hand while you bite on a towel in agony - we mean educated help that will stop all need for that sort of experience!
As Ina May Gaskin said, she and her community never had any breastfeeding trouble because they just knew what to do. In an educated (and I mean about breastfeeding, not generally) supportive environment, the problems will not arise becaues they are pre-empted.

Too many women's opinions have been affected by their friends' and sisters' bad experiences. Fear and misinformation abound. Attitudes to breasts don't help (though apparently is the stretching that occurs during pregnancy, not breastfeeding that makes 'em droopy). If a woman does not even want to put her newborn to her breast, I cannot accept that that is a simple matter of 'personal choice', there have to be layers of reasons beneath that choice. Certainly trying to make her feel guilty, or force upon her something she is not comfortable with is not an answer, or option. But surely it should be all our jobs to investigate those layers, and unearth the source of such a negative opinion?

It is a baby's most basic need, to be held skin to skin and root for a breast to find comfort and nourishment from. Here's a quote: Mothers and infants sleeping side by side, also known as cosleeping, is the evolved context of human infant sleep development. Until very recent times, for all human beings, it constituted a prerequisite for infant survival; outside of the Western industrialized context, for the majority of contemporary people, it still does. Because the human infant's body continues to be adapted only to the mother's body, cosleeping with nighttime breastfeeding remains clinically significant and potentially lifesaving.
This is because, of all mammals, humans are born the least neurologically mature (25 percent of adult brain volume), develop the most slowly, and are the most dependent for the longest period of time for nutritional, social, and emotional support, as well as for transportation. Indeed, in the early phases of human infancy, social care is synonymous with physiological regulation. That is, holding, carrying, and/or caressing an infant, and emitting odors and breath in his or her proximity, induce increased body temperature, less crying, greater heart rate variability, fewer apneas, lower stress levels, increased glucose storage, and greater daily growth.1
Moreover, since the content of human milk is relatively low in fat and protein and high in sugar, which is metabolized quickly, and since human infants are unable to locomote on their own, continuous contact and carrying, with frequent breastfeeding day and night, is required. Thus, any biological scientific study that attempts to understand "normal," species-wide, human infant sleep patterns without considering the vital role of nighttime contact in the form of breastfeeding and maternal proximity must be considered inadequate, misleading, and/or fundamentally flawed.2

Of course a bottle fed baby receives love and nourishment. And women have different definitions of what a mother's role is. My personal feeling about it is that newborns have the right to be breastfed, if it's possible. That a certain sacrifice is part and parcel of the experience of motherhood. When I see babies drinking from a bottle propped up on a rolled blanket, it makes me want to cry, when I think about what they need, and are being denied. I'm going to be controversial now, but to me there is a certain rejection implicit in not wanting to feed your baby. At a basic level, and to agree with Candy from the original conversation, and I'm sorry for not saying so earlier, yes, I feel it is a fundamentally selfish choice to decide against breastfeeding without trying it, without researching it, without seeing what it can be. It makes me frustrated, it makes me sad.

And I think this is where lactivists' intrusive passion comes from. Nobody wants to demonise women who don't breastfeed. God, no - but we feel for the babies, and for the mothers, and for what they may be losing.

I totally take MW's point about not wanting that connection, and fearing the sacrifice involved would have threatened her sanity and therefore her children's well being. Individual situation - best choice. And I know nothing about Shan's wife's situation. A major reason I didn't respond was that I didn't want to upset her with my extreme views, which do not take into account specific situations, nor are they meant to. It does work for some people who are having a hard time - one woman told me her baby blues were so bad, one day she just got into the hot press. But she said that feed times were her only moments of control and clarity, a break from her fears and depression. I know it's not right for everyone. But generally, I think that's a reason we should be insisting on better knowledge and support, not throwing it out wiht the bathwater.

There's so much to say, everyone. About its physical and emotional benefits. Oxytocin and the role it plays in bonding, and general feelings of happiness for mothers and babies. How breastfeeding after labour stimulates the womb to contract. Decreased cancer risks. Eyesight benefits. Health benefits into adulthood. For anyone interested, here are some articles that say it all better than I do.

Of course there is personal choice, Just make sure it is personal choice, not choice affected by decades of emotional propaganda, misinformation, poor maternity services, medicalised births, lack of support.

Saying it better than me

Breastfeeding issues in the third world

Breastfeeding saving lives

Miracle properties of breastmilk

Stemcells found in breastmilk!

Being a bottle feeding society

2. J. J. McKenna, "An Anthropological Perspective on the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): The Role of Parental Breathing Cues and Speech Breathing Adaptations," Med. Anthrop. 10 (1986): 9-53.

what gnaws great mountains down?

My daughter's bored in Montessori at the moment - to be honest all this year - htey never really made an effort to design a second year curriculum for the ones who' been there longer. I realised yesterday that I'm pretty much just letting it go - I found myself thinking, 'well, at least it's only til June'.

I read that as you get older, from the age of about 18, you stop producing melatonin at the same rate, and one of its jobs is to regulate the sensation of hte passing of time. I certainly recognise that once I hit college, time just started going so fast - and now? Well, now I'm suddenly 31, need I say more? So June is a sneeze away for me.

But my daughter is four and a half. So every day is a week for her. Remember how long it was in school, waiting for the last two minutes before the bell went? Now I'm a teacher, and trying to cram your plan into a 40 minute class is impossible, it flies by - yet at the same time, my bored students sit there, wishing for release, as the clock goes tick...tock, and the seconds are leaden.

And that's secondary school. Remember being four? Christmas is a different country. For parents it seems to come round twice ayear, but when you're small... day after day of boring, repetitive Montessori work til June must seem like a life time. I'm not sure what to do? I've talked to the teacher, she basically doesn't have time, as she has other younger kids in the class. When they opened last year, there were three dedicated Montessori teachers in the room, now there's one, and a helper who has no Montessori trainging, and calls it 'creche'. Yet the price has gone up... hmm. There are still lots of other perks, but I don't know if they make up for the hour of tick...tock...tick... tock she's experiencing most days.

Mic Christopher nostalgia

This is what I'm thinking about right now. YouTube is great.

Happy Valentine's Day

Postsecret: A Valentine Video

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Postsecret.

Every year, my husband would write in my card 'I love you more with each passing year' - of late, it's been more like he hates me more with each passing year. But this year he rememebered to write a rhyme, and bought a card with the message 'I love you more with each brand new day!' I could choose to analyse this negatively (he can't actually write it, as it's no longer true' but I think I will instead take it at face value.

Have a nice day everyone. I hope someone makes a little effort for youall.

good news, for once

Chocolate is good for you in more ways than I knew!

If you're scouting for good blogs to read, the blog award website is the place to go - I just found the Murphy's icecream blog, above, there.

I think I need to curtail my blog reading htough, not extend it.

a diary entry

My daughter was wailing today because I'd turned off the tv as she'd been unplesasantly, unnecessarily rude to me. My husband shouted at her to shut up, and she screamed back at him. He stomped into the kitchen, glared at me, and said 'I hate Sundays'.

Christ. So do something to make them more pleasant. He works saturdays, so I think what he wants to do on sundays is drink tea and watch television. Well, hello, you can do that again in your 50s.

So I sent him out to plant bulbs (yes I know, we're too late, in fact by years, not months, but maybe some will come up in the summer?) and he did, and continued on doing the garden stuff he only does once or twice a year. And he got warm and rosy-cheeked and came in in a better mood. That's what you should do on Sundays.

This evening The Juice played a gig in Whelan's, the biggest, no highest profile venue they've played yet, and unfortunately it was a Sunday night, and the other band's fans left, so it was empty. We haven't had one of those in a long time, I think they were a bit freaked out. There were a few girls up the front giving it loads, one small but hefty wan playing a drumstick madly - at the end of the gig, the drummer threw his stick to her - she missed it and his sister bent to pick it up - the wee girl errupted inher face shrieking 'IT'S MINE!!!'

You might have had to be there, but we laughed hysterically. I felt a bit E'd up and full of love for everyone for some reason - the singer's girlfriend is the most striking beautiful girl I've ever seen, and I find it hard not to stare at her when I'm talking to her. The drummer's sister has corn silk strawberry blond hair, it's gorgeous - and her boyfriend is beautifully exotic looking. And a girl my husband works with told me she'd like to put me in her pocket, which is possible the cutest compliment I've ever got!

So my daughter just woke up and went to the loo, and gave me the hugest warm smile when she saw it was me coming up the stairs - getting back into bed, she looked at my nose, and said 'this part of your nose (the bit round your nostrils) looks like an M, like the McDonald's M,

I know they say some huge amount of three year olds can recognise the golden arches and Cacbury's purple from afar, but this is ridiculous.

typorama

Bear with the typos - I just can't see them. When will spellcheck return??

oh my god

Postsecret - it's heart breaking and beautiful.

I'm tired tonight. I was going to post and I just didn't have the emotional energy. My back muscles aren't strong enough and I just feel sapped. Must get workign with the sardine tins.

Then I started looking at my cousin's beautiful photos of her beautiful family in the Sandiego sunshine. Her little boy is a blond headed, blue eyed angel! There were a couple photos of her mother's house in Santa Barbara that made me feel so homesick - I've only stayed there twice but it's a very familiar, peaceful, beautiful smelling place. I feel strangely at home in California - strange, as my mother didn't. The photos make me sad though. I wish I was there. With people who belonged to my mother. It makes me think, screw the environment, screw the fact that I have no money, only debt, get me a plane ticket! I want to be where there are huge trees, the smell of cedar and eucalyptus, the smell of coffee shops and houses made of wood.

Then I found a link to photosecrets and that made me cry too. There's nothing like a simple line of truth to reveal people's inner depth and feeling.

trichotillomania

Twisting, curling, braniching, long, luxuriant streams of ringlets from her crown to her shoe: a profusion of lustrous, twining heavy swathes of hair, and it the colour of gold.

Sigh. I have many compulsions, but one of the worst ones (apart from the unconscious teeth clenching) is the fact that I pull my hair out. Yes, I know it's FUCKING INSANE. Yes, I would rather not do it. And yet, each time the urge to reach up and run my fingers down a strand,tug on it til it pops out, then run it through my teeth (I know, I know) comes, I don't care that I'm making bald patches, pulling out my remaing blond hairs, thinning my hair and uglifying myself. The urge is greater than all that. Once upon a time my hair was my one really good feature, now it's thin, limp, colourless and greasy. It doesn't help that it's still all falling out post-pregnancy. My daughter loves to fiddle and pull at it, a post-breastfeeding habit, and that just drives me mead, because I'm so self conscious about it. Yet do I stop? Nope.

I found a trichotillomania website, with lots of people's stories on it - my heart went out to the parents of a little girl who did it - they'd tried everything, pleading, rewards, spanking (which they felt awful about once they'd read up on the habit, but it's you can imagine their frustration). Another woman shaved her head to try and break the habit, but ended up keeping it shaved for years as it didn't work (I'm glad I read that , as I've been tempted!). The oddest thing was that the people who'd stopped, had no real reason for doing so, it just sort of happened. The time just came.

I've been doing this since I was 19, my second year of college. It started completely randomly, and before I knew it it was a habit.

I don't know that it's time, but I miss my hair. I miss the blondeness I had, though I know it's not coming back. So I'm going to give giving up a go this Lent. Not that I haven't every morning since I started doing it, but maybe this time will be different.

The picture above is one of my great uncle Oisín Kelly's tea towel designs - I try to use it as my inspiration! Both his daughter and my mother had long hair - and my mother asked him if it was her (it does look like her) and he said yes - but he also said the same to his daughter- it must be both of them :)

And...

Tooth Numebr Two, right beside the first one.

I know nobody but my immediate family (my MIL is strangely obsessed with shoving her fingers into my children's mouths when they get their teeth) is interested in this, but I figure when my poor son is asking me when he first did stuff and why there are no photos of him compared to his sister, I can run off and look it up here!

Tootens!

I have an evening to myself! Well, I jsut have to get some work done, but still! My daughter's gone to stay with her Granny, my husband's gone to play a gig, I had some sweet bonding time with the baby as his sister wasn't around to either make me feel guilty or just be demanding of attention etc. I don't know - I feel the loss of the one to one time with him I had with her - but if I spend too much time with him I feel that I'm excluding her. I used to thing the term 'rollercoaster' was so appropriate for parenting but now I think I'm just going to go with my new phrase - 'it's a fucking minefield!'

Anyway, it was my baby boy's six-month-birthday last week. It seems quite monumental to me for some reason - perhaps because I'm just starting to feel normal again. I've been cooking dinners that taste nice again, I'm doing a little more housework without spontanaeously combusting... the baby's sleep has been awful for the last couple weeks, though the last couple nights have been better - this morning all was revealed - a tooth!

I told his dad on the phone, though after a moment of delight he got really sad. I remember reading in my Penelope Leach book that babies cut their first tooth at drastically different times, and all you'll know for sure is that that little gummy smile wil be gone forever. I nearly cried when I read that - I love the gummy smile! His baby months have flicked by so fast, we can't help but feel we've missed them. And we have about 25% of the photos we took of our daughter, which pains me so - I really didn't want that to happen, it's such a cliché. But it's true! :(

Addendum: ARSE! The bloody child is coming home from her Granny's! I never should have written this post, the Universe hears all....

Further addendum - the baby woke up and wouldn't settle without a feed. My daughter is still awake and whinging in her room because he wants a story. Her wonderful granny apparently dropped her on her head (she insists on rough-housing with her despite the fact that she's got no control over it, and one of them gets hurt every time) and my daughter currently screams in agony (he most evil wail ever) if she's lightly tipped! My wonderful mother in law has denounced her a bitch - fucking charming, and pulled out her usual gem of telling my daughter she can never come and stay again. No wonder my husband doesn't know what to do with his emotions and can't talk about himself or his feelings. I wish I had people around me who could actually be a support when things are less than sunny. Oh well, back to the usual.

is parenthood martyrdom?

Well, yes. For those of us who don't leave the baby in its cot with a bottle and go out on the lash with seedy men night after night (this sounds pointed, of course it's not, I'm thinking of the ISPCC ad, 'Johnny doesn't cry anymore because he knows no-one will come'). My day is full of times when I shuffle through mundane and boring, or stressful child-related tasks and interactions.

My four year old is often seriously unpleasant to be around. Captivated as I am by my baby, sometimes I just don't get any joy from fighting mush into him and all over the kitchen, or playing ten thousand games of peekaboo (well, ok, I quite like that) or changing a nappy three times in a row. Sometimes I just want him to go to sleep, so I can sit at the computer, or read a book. I'd like to get drunk and come home whenever I want and sleep all day the next day and not have to be responsible for anyone else. I've even stood at the fridge swigging from a bottle because of being so strung out - nothing as ritual as one tequila slammer, that's far more healthy!

Because that's what it comes down to - the weight of being emotionally responsible for these small people, essentially 24 hours a day, whether you're with them or not. As my mother said, once you become a parent, you don't have the right to die anymore. The lucky among us have a co-parent to share this weight, ideally equally, but often with varying levels of responsibility.

Carrying babies makes women more responsible, it seems. You have a connection to your child that doesn't have to be learned. Is it for this reason that mothers are far less likely to leave their children than men? Women leave their children sometimes, but it apalls us in a way that the absent father doesn't. Even dedicated, loving men seem to be able to walk away from their children's daily lives. They share houses, give financial support, but they give up that weight of emotional responsibility easily. They forget the Christmas concert, they no longer mop up sick or wake for nightmares. Is it anthropological, this feeling that their role is to provide, rather than nourish?

This is why I am uncomfortable with pro-life people who insist that adoption is an easy answer to unwanted pregnancy. There's nothing easy about it, I don't think. There are, I have no doubt, countless adopted children who feel secure with their parents and have no feeling towards their biological parents. But I am confident that for every one of them, there is another who feels keenly the separation and abandonment their infant selves endured, assumes that they must be unlovable as their birth mother didn't want them. I'm not saying adoption is a bad thing, but it is no easy choice for anyone concerned, I don't think.

The issue I'm skirting here is the sacrifice that is at the core of motherhood. To have small children is necessarily to suffer a loss of self. Hopefully it's not permanent, but I believe it is inescapable.

You are tied, you are not free. Ideally you embrace that role and see it as furthering the future of the planet, in raising the best people you possibly can. It's hard to see that long view when you're in the middle of tanrums and poo. But you have to look, you do it with love, even if you grumble day to day. And don't devalue it,for yourself or others. .

For days now, I've had in my head an uncomfortable contradiction. Can you be pro-life but allow yourself to resent your children and the demands they make on your life? Isn't that the sacrifice you would impose on others who wish to abort their babies in order to live their lives by their own terms? Being pro-life should mean being pro-life: protecting and valuing children's lives, and the people who do so as parents. Not just stopping children's termination. I believe fully in quality not quantity. Where is the worth in populating the world with unwanted, damaged people? Mother Teresa said 'there is no such thing as an unwanted child! Show me an unwanted child and I will take them in' or words to that effect. In Mother Teresa's orphanage, the workers are not allowed to hold the babies, or stay with one too long;. They must feed them at arms length. So Mother Teresa's pro-life legacy is a legion of people who were not allowed to develop as they needed to, who were denied the love and comfort people need to become whole. And this in a country (or a world) so populous that children can be maimed to ensure a better income as beggers, or sold into sex-slavery. God's work indeed.

In our more moderate first world society, perhaps people don't have the same excuse. Certainly I would support reform of the support services so that they made it easy for women to have their children. Good maternity services, childcare services, parental leave, welfare systems that protect adn educate. I would support that over abortion rights, who wouldn't? But I don't believe that you can espouse a commitment to the pro-life movement on one hand, and on the other devalue the sacrifice we make in raising our children. Don't choose to have them against your own will and then blame them for ruining your life. Don't let your children feel they are in your way, that their existence is stopping you from doing something more worthwhile. It's often miserable, this job, but I just don't believe it's any less worthwhile that doing something in the adult sphere. Put it this way: raising a good, strong, whole son who knows how to love and respect women and be a dedicated father has got to be worth as much as helping someone who has been hurt by a man who is violent, damaged, incapable of love. Prevention is better than cure, perhaps.

I'm lucky. From an early age I wanted nothing more than to have children. I was desperate to be pregnant, to birth and hold a baby. My mother breastfed me and it has always seemed normal and instinctual to feed a baby from myself, skin to skin. I still get bored, impatient, frustrated. I don't always feel fulfilled, I feel challenged, inadequate, lacking. I certainly have not managed to adhere to the ideals I had before I had children. I still believe in them though. So it's easy for me to insist that raising the best people you can is enough, is as good as making money, as career ambition, as fame, charity or whatever.

I conceived my first child at an extremely inopportune time. I ultimately knew I couldn't go through with a termination, mostly because of the longterm affect it would have on me (and my husband) emotionally. But I would have been happy had my pregnancy happened to stop before it began, and if I had been able to take something to bring on my period after a month I would have. And here I am, I was right about the things that would be too hard, or all wrong, or miserable when they should have been happy. And I have to remember my comittment to trying to do right by my child when those feelings get overwhelming. Suck it up and do a better job, Jo. That is what motherhood comes down to. Get what you need for yourself within the boundaries of parenthood. Find a way. Accept the difficulty. And keep the bigger picture in mind.

Midge, I really do know how you feel. What it's like to feel that you gave up your twenties, that your thirties are falling away too. That there is more inside you than the life you fell into. You didn't ask for the life you got. And you never signed up to doing it alone. Why should you have to? Why should you shoulder the greater responsiblity and sacrifice? It's not fair.

I'm not for a minute questioning your love for your children. But given all the restraints, I hope you can find the grace to enjoy the good times and the positives within this tough stretch, and your lovely children, and not just see them as some sort of prison sentence. We should be able to give this time without martyring ourselves. I hope we can find a way to enjoy it, to gain from it as much as we give.