Some blogs and articles I like (an occasional series)

I keep meaning to link to this brilliant blog by fellow freelance journo Cath Janes. We 'met' online through a forum for freelance journalists called Journobiz which was set up by the journalist Janet Murray. Before becoming a journalist Janet was a secondary school teacher. By chance I taught at Goldsmiths College, where I am a lecturer in journalism (and where Janet also now lectures), one of her former students who told me that she had been the best teacher she had ever had. Which is nice.

I am writing this assuming that now everyone admits to internet dating, unlike ten years ago when everyone was doing it and no one admitting to it, meeting on a forum is also no longer an embarrassing thing. If it is then please just assume we met at a party, had a chat and got on well so stayed in touch (which genuinely really is how I got together with my husband - not that I wasn't internet dating at the same time).

Anyway here is the blog - it's is insightful, (and sometimes inciteful), witty and often very very rude.

The Kraken Wakes

Why do I have so many readers in Norway?

Like all bloggers I am a little obsessed by my stats and seeing how many page views each article has had and other information about the demographics of my readership. I am thrilled this blog has readers from all over the world but puzzled why so many of my readers are from Norway (after the UK and USA). I just wondered whether any Norwegian readers could tell me why?

A mother knows

My friend Olivia for a time wrote a blog called A Mother Knows. I loved her rationale for choosing that name:


"My beautiful son, who is six months old (corrected) as I start this blog, became critically ill in the womb with a terrifying condition called hydrops fetalis and underwent fetal surgery. He was born two months premature and spent his first five months in hospital, finally coming home in June 2011. Although he is now doing really well, he still has some health issues. Why ‘A Mother Knows’? Because the one thing I have learned so far is that a mother knows her child best. Better than the health visitor, better than the midwives, better than the breastfeeding counsellors, better than the people selling useless baby products designed to make you feel bad, better than her own mother, better than any other mother."
 
I've been reminded of it these past few weeks, with an ill baby myself, and a host of medical professionals who I have no doubt have my child's best interests at heart but just don't know as well as me what my baby needs. What's more, different branches of people working in health have little regard for each other. Pharmacists don't like helplines. Helplines don't like nurses. The Specialists slag off the GPs. The GPs bristle at the thought of a referral and everyone is scathing of those working in the Out Of Hours service. And all the while I must tell every single one what it is we want and what it is we need.

I am reminded of the AA Milne poem, The King's Breakfast:

The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"
The Queen asked the Dairymaid,
The Dairymaid
Said, "Certainly,
I'll go and tell the cow
Now Before she goes to bed.
 
Only it's more dog's dinner than king's breakfast. And all the while it is me, the mother, who must go and tell the cow what test we need and what medicine we require. Because Olivia was right, a mother knows best of all.

Buggy microwaves and tramps' cocks

Sometimes if I have an idea for something I want to write about, I jot down a note and come back to it days, weeks or months later. I was looking at my list today, seeing if anything that seemed desperately interesting at the time of writing the note, retained interest now. One caught my eye. It simply says ‘Buggy microwave.’

I have absolutely no idea what this means. I’ve wracked my brains and all I can think of is the possibility that at some point I thought buggies (strollers, to foreign readers) should come equipped with a microwave. Or maybe I was musing sterilising our buggy in the microwave as it does smell, as one friend so eloquently put it, of a tramp’s cock, having had formula milk (fresh and regurgitated) splashed over it on several occasions.

Today I start my six months as Writer-in-Residence at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green (London, N22). In fact I am there now, shoes off, sitting on the sofa, laptop on lap. I’m going spend Tuesday mornings here writing, chatting, eating biscuits and scaring the real customers. Come and say hello. And buy books. By the end of the residency, in six months time, I hope to have remembered what I meant by 'Buggy microwave'. And to have cleaned our buggy.

Related post: The nicest bookshop

A blog about the blog (again)

It amuses me no end that the most common search term that bring people to this blog is 'what does a baby peacock look like?'

Let's remind ourselves:

Though I have regular crises where I worry that maybe some people will believe that is really what a baby peacock looks like. So feel I should include this picture which is what some baby peacocks also look like:

The second most popular search term is 'What shall I wear to give birth?'.

Here is a suggestion from the NCT:

"Every pregnant woman deserves a little black dress to birth in! The Womama Birthing Wrap is the only clothing designed specifically for labour and birth, allowing you to feel comfortable and feminine on your special day. This beautifully light, practical wrap is made from super soft cotton and allows for quick easy access for skin-to-skin contact as soon as your baby is born."

Bleurgh!

And here is what one woman wore on One Born Every Minute - a bikini/skirt combo she designed herself:

 

(I mock, but she seemed to have a lovely birth in water without too much pain and with the bikini on throughout.)

Sharing too much

Writing, be it a blog, journalism or books, inevitably draws on your own life and experiences. For this blog in particular, without the constraints of editors, I write about what I am interested in and this is sparked by what is happening in my own life. Which means I have an ongoing dilemma about what to share. This is not because I mind sharing personal things - anything that appears on here or published by me elsewhere I have thought through and decided I am fine for readers to know - but because many things that happen to me are not just mine to share.

Stories about my family life aren't just about me. They are about my husband, my daughter, my parents, my friends, my colleagues and others. So every time I write a post I have to ask myself the question 'is this mine to share?' Sometimes I probably get this wrong. But I am trying hard to ensure that while this blog is about me, and about parenting, and about my thoughts on parenting (with some books and products thrown in), it is not about my child in particular.

This means I have to censor some posts before I write them. Because it is not for strangers to know personal details about my daughter, be it her health, her name or what she had for breakfast. Occasionally I persuade myself that she won't mind, but then I delete the post before it is published. And whenever I almost slip up, I remind myself of the journalist who many years ago wrote an article in a national paper about a rare health problem his children have. Some years later I saw this journalist and his children out and about, and found myself scrutinising them for any signs of this health problem, which was of course absolutely none of my business.

Where do you draw the line though? If you write about problems bonding, or depression, or breastfeeding issues, might your child one day read your back catalogue of work (yeah right, as if they will take an interest in what you do!) and feel it reflects on their ability as a lovable child, as a source of happiness, as a competent feeder?

I remember the journalist Jon Ronson, whose funny column in The Guardian frequently featured his son, explained his decision to stop writing it as something he had always promised to do when his son asked him to stop, which he did. And Julie Myerson has made a career out of exploiting her children, which ended in tears when they found out they were the subject of her column and when she wrote a book about one son's drug addiction.

The publishing industry is to blame for some of this. My daughter sparks many ideas for articles I would like to write without giving her story, but parenting magazines do not want an article about an issue without a personal touch and preferably a picture of the two of us hugging. And journalists are to blame too of course - I don't want strangers to know about my child but it is my job to persuade other people to tall readers about their stories and the stories of their loved ones.

What it comes down to I suppose is that we all have our own line we will not cross. I do not think I will mind if one day my daughter says to me "I've read the cache of your blog mum and apparently parenthood is like, totally brilliant but totally terrible too." Perhaps it will spark a discussion about my love for her and how this trumps absolutely everything, even bitten nipples. But I don't want her to ever turn to me and say she saw a stranger looking at her oddly in the street, as if, you know, they were wondering about her health.

Blogging versus journalism

I'm guest blogging today over at Tots100 on the advantages of blogging over writing columns for newspapers. Read it here.

Related posts:
It's not just parents who should be interested in parenting
Why blog?

It's not just parents who should be interested in parenting

I'm back in the freelance market again after my maternity leave and, yawn yawn cliche cliche, I pitched an article to the family section of a newspaper. I liked the pitch - all about the rise of parent bloggers, but got a swift rejection from the editor. They try, the editor told me, to avoid articles about parenting, because the section is about family, not about parenting, and that they want articles that people can relate to whether or not they have young children.

Fair enough - they can publish whatever they want to publish - but I am quite surprised that they think parenting is only of interest to people actually doing it at that moment. Sure, the colour of your child's poo or their weaning habits may only be of interest to you and your partner, and perhaps an involved grandparent, but the wider issues of parenting go much further than this.

After all, who gets the blame if there are riots? Parents. Who is responsible for ensuring teenagers eat, drink and fornicate sensibly? Parents. Who needs to encourage children to ensure they get the skills necessary to contribute to society, economically and socially? Parents of course. Parenting isn't a niche issue - it impacts on us all, and I don't believe that only people going through it at the moment have views on it. I enjoyed reading about parenting when I was a child, when I was a childless 20-something and now. I imagine I will in the future.

"What we are looking for are stories from the other end of the spectrum, when families are grown up and the really interesting things in life have happened to them," the editor wrote back to me. And I am interested in these things too, but that's because I am interested in all types of human relationships. I am not old, but I am interested in stories about that part of life too. I am not adopted, but I find stories about adoption fascinating. I have discovered no deep dark secrets that I am willing to share, there are no famous people in my family, I think I know about all my siblings, no one has hidden any treasure and, luckily, there have been no great disasters. But I want to read about all of these things when other people write about them.

It's not to say my article should have been commissioned. Freelancers know that for every commission you get you also get twenty rejections. Indeed that is the job of an editor. And the joy of blogging, I am finding, is that you can write what you want without having to persuade anyone else to see merit in it in order to have it published. But I do resent the suggestion that being a parent and having young children is only interesting to those going through it at the time. I do believe it takes a village to raise a child, and I expect everyone in that village to be interested in how it is done, just as I am interested in their lives, whatever stage they are at.

Harumph.

Some blogs and articles I like (an occasional series)

This post from Sprinkles and Sprogs about pushing your luck.

This post from A Mother Knows about pre natal testing.

This post from When you ARE that woman on Gigglebiz and comic timing.

Why blog?

Since my daughter was born several months ago a number of people have asked me whether I have a blog yet. I've been a bit saddened that they expect me to be so cliched, after all every Thomasina, Dickette and Harriet is a mummy blogger these days, but when I say no it's not actually because I am trying to avoid being a cliche but because my brain has had barely a thought worth putting on paper, or screen, since giving birth. Turns out that 'baby brain' isn't a misogynistic attempt to put a woman down when she is at her most vulnerable after all, or rather isn't just a misogynistic attempt to put a woman down when she is at her most vulnerable. Rather it's a real condition created by the fact that every spare cell my brain has after remembering to breathe myself is spent on checking that the baby is breathing, and if there are any left over after that then they are used up wondering whether we've remembered to give her the medicine she must take, or thinking about when she last did a poo and whether it looked normal, or realising that weighing my breasts with my hands in public to check which one is fullest is not an acceptable activity. 

Then last week a eureka moment. I was driving, the baby was asleep in her car seat, I'd turned the radio off and  whoosh, a thought came into my head. Sure, it was connected to babies, but it was a thought nevertheless. It was followed by another, and another. And whilst I am not egotistical enough to think that anyone else wants to share my thoughts (I am actually, I am just pretending I'm not), now, nearly eight months after my daughter was born, I am, if not inundated by thoughts, then catching them pretty frequently, and feel it would be quite a good thing to have a place to write them down, expand on them and share them. And of course, there's nothing better for the soul than monitoring your blog stats and knowing that a total stranger got to your blog not because they find you fascinating but because it came top of a google search for 'milky tits', 'bladder control' or 'I got poo on me'. [Waves to the pervs who got here by mistake - well done on reading this far.]

So there you go, it's not 'I blog therefore I am' but rather 'I have started to think therefore I blog'. Let's see how long it lasts...