The formula for life

Save the Children launched a report today on breastfeeding, Superfood for Babies, in their words calling the report "a global call to action to rediscover the importance of breastfeeding and to support mothers to breastfeed their babies – especially in the poorest communities in the poorest countries." Now I'm all for public health messages that ensure we're all well informed about the choices we make, but the report's recommendation that made the headlines in the UK, that there should be cigarette style health warnings on boxes of formula, made my blood boil.

Parents (that's right, parents, not just mothers, not that you'd believe it from reading the press around this that fathers are also involved in decisions about caring for their children), choose to formula feed their babies for many reasons, none of which are anyone else's business. And I just don't believe that any of those people do it because they don't want the best for their children.

What such a recommendation does is make parents feel guilty for decisions they have made when trying to do this best. That's why the breast is best slogan is wrong. Best in what way? Better than a mother so exhausted she has a breakdown? Better than infected cracked nipples? Better than slow decline into malnourishment? Better than being able to leave your baby and go out and earn a living? Sod it, who has the right to say it's even better than being able to wear an outfit with the confidence you won't leak all over it? We make decisions as individuals to suit our specific circumstances, and I just don't believe most people make decisions for anything other than the greater good of their family.

What's more, the recommendation is ridiculous. Once you have decided, or realised, that formula will be part, or whole, of your baby's diet, there is only a small window in which you can change your mind. Milk supply is difficult enough to establish in the first place, but almost impossible to re-establish. Do Save the Children really want people who stopped breastfeeding a week ago, a month ago, six months ago, to feel shit every time they give their child food?

I owe many people in the National Health Service a debt of gratitude for the care they have given me and my children. Midwives, surgeons, radiologists, fetal medicine experts, cleaners and so on. But one that sticks in my mind is the paediatrician who told me kindly when my daughter was (literally) slowly starving, that we don't actually have an obligation to breastfeed our children, but we do have an obligation to feed them. What did we do in the end? You can find the answer elsewhere on the blog. For the purposes of this post it's irrelevent. Not that you'd believe it from the headlines, or the parenting forums, but it's not us v them when it comes to breastfeeders and formula feeders. We're all parents, all muddling through, all trying our best, all hoping to keep our children safe. And fed.

Because that's the thing about formula - it feeds children safely. Contrary to popular belief, there were no halycon days in the past when all women contentedly breastfed their happy chubby babies. No, the past is littered with dead or malnourished children who may have survived had formula been on offer. Lack of milk, inability to breastfeed or circumstances that make breastfeeding difficult are not another kind of yuppy flu that only exist in modern times. They have always existed, but the outcomes were far worse than today. Cigarette style warnings Save the Children? Don't be ridiculous - bottlefeeding doesn't kill, it actually does the opposite. Sure, put large public health messages on boxes of formula, but make them accurate. 'Formula saves lives', that's what they should say.


Related post: The great unsaids - bottle feeding

What rabbits can teach us about feminism

I suspect that my children won't give two hoots about my professional life pre (or post) their existence, so they will probably never read my book, The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism (buy it here).  

Nevertheless I hope to bring them up to be feminists just by modelling what I think the key aspects of feminism are - shared domestic duties, workplace equality, economic independence (or interdependence) and having and using choice in how you live your life.

When my daughter had an operation at three months old, we needed something to do while she was in theatre. We decided to go and buy her a present for when she woke up. We went to the Build a Bear Workshop and bought her a bear. Well, a rabbit actually. You can choose a heart and kiss it and put it in the toy while making a wish. Utterly schmaltzy, I know, but it seemed appropriate at the time. For an outfit we chose doctor's scrubs, and we called it Dr Ormond after the hospital.  

Our daughter has taken an interest in Dr Ormond recently, probably because we are at our GP with the regularity a newborn with all its newborn ailments requires, so all things medical hold a fascination for her.  She has also started to get to grips with personal pronouns, again probably due to the arrival of her brother. She is exploring he and she and you and its and mostly getting it right.  

One popular test of people's gender stereotypes is the riddle that goes something like this: a father and son are in an accident and are rushed to hospital. When they arrive the surgeon takes one look at the younger man and gasps "that's my son." How can it be?  

The answer of course is that the surgeon is the boy's mother.  

Yesterday my daughter was playing with Dr Ormond and dropped him under the bed. "I dropped Dr Ormond," she said, "Where is she?" I was so proud. There's no reason for her to think doctors are men - our regular GP is a woman and her consultant is a woman. Yet still I assumed she would assume doctors are men. Turns out it doesn't matter whether my kids read my book. They don't need to. 

When only a mum will do

When I was in hospital for the night after my second birth, the woman in the bed opposite me seemed to be having a difficult time. We both had our curtains shut so didn't communicate with each other, but I could hear her conversations. She'd had a C-section and needed help to pick up her baby for feeds and changes. Feeding was not going well. She was being patronised by midwives. Her baby kept crying. She was exhausted. 

I wanted to go and see her in her cubicle and tell her it would be ok. I was so reminded of the moment in hospital a few days after my first birth when my mum came on a mercy mission. "Your baby needs a cuddle" I told her. "Which one?" she said. I meant me of course. I was exhausted and feeling defeated. Feeding had not been working. Sleep was elusive. I was rapidly becoming institutionalised. 

But on this night I also knew that the kindnesses of strangers, whilst sometimes just what is needed, isn't always the right thing to do - perhaps she didn't want platitudes from a second time mum, or a stranger inviting herself in to her private space. 

So I did nothing. But I was so pleased the next day when her own mum arrived, flung down her bags and gave her a cuddle. She started telling her mum how upset she was. And her mum, lionesses that mums are, growled. Literally, I swear. "No-one treats my baby like that" she said, and soothed her grown up daughter. I knew then that she'd be ok. 

Whole number love

I didn't meet my husband, or anyone else with whom I wanted to have children (or who wanted to have children with me) until I was 29, so being a young mum was out of the question. If I could have planned it though, and with the caveat that it is my children created by that very sperm meeting that very egg at that particular moment in time and not any other that I want, I would have had children younger. 

It's partly the maths. Our son is two weeks old today. Two weeks! A lifetime. For me, aged 34 and a half and a day (blame Adrian Mole, I am slightly obsessed by age fractions) those two weeks are just 1/897th of my life. What a small proportion of my life he has been here for so far. Had I had him when I was, say, 20, these two weeks would have been 1/520th of my life. No wonder they say they grow up so fast. 

It reminds me, and forgive me while I take some time to bawl my eyes out, of Fiddler on the Roof's Sunrise Sunset: "I don't remember growing older/When did they?/Sunrise, sunset/Sunrise, sunset."  One sunrise and sunset, that's just 1/12601 of my experience. 

In Linda Grant's brilliant Remind me who I am, again she is reminded by an expert in care of the elderly that her mother was someone before she was her mother, just as with dementia she was someone other than her mother again. Each incarnation different, but as valid as the other. My children will not think of the thousandths of my life before they existed (and nor should they particularly) but I will, not with regret, because to have that life before being a parent was great, but with a little sadness for the missing fractions. 

Rules for a better birth

I hesitate to say that my first experience of birth, or rather the days after it, weren't that great, because you always know someone who had a worse time than you - a worse injury, a sicker baby, a meaner midwife, a more intense hormonal response, a longer labour. Nevertheless, the first time I had a baby it was very hard. Operations (immediately for me, in the near future for our child), health worries, possible infections, no sleep, five nights in hospital and the panic of first time motherhood made everything difficult. Wonderful, because our daughter was with us, but ever so fraught with fear and worry and exhaustion.

This time, everything has been easier, though it is still early days and I don't wish to count my chickens. But as a result I have come up with a list of things completely beyond your control that can lead to a better experience all round.

1) Go into labour in the morning after a proper night of sleep so you don't start the whole process tired.

2) Do not have an operation straight after birth taking you away from your partner and new baby and pumping you even more full of drugs. The drugs are great at the time, but there is a come down, and there is guilt at not being with your new baby from the beginning.

3) Get rid of any drips and catheters as soon as possible. Then have a shower, even if it's 3am.

4) Have a baby that can feed from the beginning. Or rather, feed your baby from the beginning, using bottle if breast not working. Contrary to the scaremongering breastapo, you can give your baby a bottle in the early days and still breastfeed later (as long as you don't stop breastfeeding or expressing completely). Unless I  am a freak of nature.

5) Go home after one night in hospital.

6) Accept that all of this is luck of the draw and that you cannot control it. A bad experience once does not mean you will have a bad experience a second time. None of it is your fault, or your achievement.

7) Despite the above rule, allow yourself to feel shit, or proud of yourself, or both. One day it will fade to be just part of your story. My mum said to me after my first birth, you will retell it and retell it and one day it will  lose its emotional hold on you. She's not right yet, but I see that she might be one day.

Raising men

We had a son. He's wonderful. 

So when he was about 30 hours old and we were settling in at home I thought it was time for the chat. The one about my role as his mummy and how he should feel able to tell me anything (but no need to tell me everything) and how it's my job, and his daddy's job, to help him grow up to be a man, and all that will entail. It must have been the hormones - the ones that place exuberance over exhaustion for a couple of days. 

You'll need, I told him, not necessarily to meet society's expectations of what a man is, but to know what it is that is expected. Know the rules to break the rules, that kind of thing. You'll be expected to be strong, I told him, whatever that means. And though you can cry, it'll be noted each time by people who either want you to or don't want you to. I want you to be happy and thoughtful and fulfilled and to love and be loved I told him. To care for the vulnerable and leave the world better than you find it and to value words and feelings but to also be able to create fire from sticks and unblock the sink. Not all that different from the chat I gave my daughter in fact, when it came to life skills. But above all, I told my son, in learning to be a man, you must be kind. 

My mum came over shortly after. I have been telling him all I will be teaching him to help him become a man I told my mum. I hope, she said, that number one was kindness. She's a wise woman my mum - she taught me everything I know. 

The fuck-it list

When I was single and a bit lonely, especially the year three of my best friends got married (how was I to know I'd already met my husband and would get together with him later that year?), I used to make myself feel better by writing a list of my achievements thus far. Not a bucket list, because it was already done, more of a fuck-it list, as in I might be feeling a bit miserable but fuck-it, at least I was doing other stuff.

It had things on such as 'I have surfed in the Pacific ocean' (if one can count trying and failing to stand up on a surfboard as surfing) and I have been handgliding from the top of a mountain and learnt to cook Thai food in Thailand and been front page news in New Zealand and performed stand up comedy in New York etc etc.

I was reminded of this when filling out my daughter's baby book this week having not filled it in for several months. It's been on my pre-baby arriving maternity leave things to do list for weeks and given I'm now overdue I took to heart the advice my friend's mum gave her about medical information and applied it to all life experiences* - that once you have more than one child you remember that one of them has had or done something but you can't quite remember which thing belongs with which child so write it down.

Writing captions for photos it also read a bit like a fuck-it list:

At four months I marched for the alternative against Tory cuts 

At five months I visited the Tolpuddle Martyrs museum 
(Sense a theme?) 

At six months I got a ferry to France and went camping 

At 18 months I went to the London Olympics

and so on...

I do hope some of it has an influence. Future Olympian I can manage without, but a Tory, please no...

 _________________________________________________________________

*Most of the time when I say 'a friend' and then recount an anecdote or piece of advice, it's from the writer of this awesome blog, When you ARE that woman.