Mum-Shaming

Social media drives me potty. The amount of points scoring that goes on from parents is ridiculous. Points scoring complete with double standards, that is. Here’s my pick of some recent bollocks I’ve read.

“My child has never eaten a jar or pouch”

Bully for you, Earth Mama. The statement isn’t written simply as a fact. It’s written with an undercurrent of negativity towards parents who use the baby version of microwave meals. I don’t post on Facebook “I have never eaten pig’s arse” so why would I tell my friends/followers/fans that my child has never eaten squeezy mush? Who gives a shit what your child eats anyway? For the record, my kid’s nearly two and you know what, sometimes I don’t have time to arse about with a chainsaw trying to chop butternut squash so I give him a jar of baby food. So report me to social services.

“I don’t work because I don’t want to pay someone else to bring up my child”

I am absolutely devastated that I missed the boat with marrying David Beckham. Instead I ended up with some working class bloke who is paid an average wage (for up North). It might be unusual but I earn more than him (though I also only earn an average wage). We can’t afford to live off one wage. So, our child goes to nursery. I didn’t realise this was akin to giving him up for adoption. As far as I was aware we would still bring him up. In fact, last time I asked him, “Where’s Mummy?” he pointed to me. He points to a Bolton Wanderers badge, says “Bolton” and then does the White Army finger point. I can assure you these skills have not come from a nursery nurse. Believe me, if I didn’t have to work I wouldn’t. I’d go so far as to say I’m a little jealous of Mums who have the luxury of spending all their time with their children. I’ve cried as I’ve said goodbye to my son in a morning before leaving for work. So don’t make me feel even more inferior for having to use childcare. Especially not in the same breath as you say, “Just because I’m a stay at home Mum, it doesn’t make me lazy or a scruff”. Just because I go to work doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather be at home.

“Acting like you’re Mum Of The Year on Facebook, when you get pissed every Saturday night”

Friday, actually. Most Fridays I go out. Without my child. Sometimes I drink alcohol. Oddly enough, I find spending my time in this way more entertaining than listening to my fast asleep child breathing down a baby monitor. Some people like listening to their baby monitors, and that’s great, but why slag someone off who doesn’t? I haven’t left my kid in some Portuguese apartment on their own. He is still being looked after by a responsible adult. Sometimes I go to the football the next day and therefore don’t see him for over 24 hours. How he’s not in care I’ll never know. I’m Joanne and being Jack’s Mum is now part of my life but it isn’t my whole identity. Later this month I’m going abroad on a hen do for two nights. With other Mums. Other good Mums, who aren’t scrubbers and love their children very much. But they can spin more plates than just the Mum one. If you choose to be a home bird and stay in when the kids are in bed, that’s great. But it’s also great if you choose to socialise, or pursue a hobby, when your kids are in bed.

It doesn’t matter whether you breast or bottle feed as long as they’re fed, co-sleep or put your baby in their own room after two months as long as they sleep, send your child to school or home teach as long as they learn, work or stay at home as long as they’re looked after. Every child and parent is different, let’s stop judging one another.

Sleep Training

Sleep training is a touchy subject. Nobody likes the thought of it, some people do it as a last resort and some people are dead against it. I was dead against it.

Jack always went to sleep fine but, at eight months, was still waking twice in the night for feeds. Always at 1am and 5am. I spoke to my best mate the health visitor, who actually had some good ideas for once. I tried everything. Dream feeds, reducing the amount of milk, offering water. Nothing worked. He wanted 6ozs of milk at 1am and 6ozs of milk at 5am so fair enough, I thought, he’ll drop the feeds when he’s ready.

The health visitor disagreed, saying at his age he should be able to sleep through and if I’d tried everything else then the only thing left was sleep training. “Or how about you just accept that my baby is still hungry?” I thought.

The following week, my eyes were opened to the fact that my son was a sneaky little con artist preying on his soft arse Mum. He went to bed at 8pm as normal but then disturbed at 11pm. As he would be due for a bottle at 1am I decided to feed him at 11 to get it out of the way. And the little shit still woke up at 1am wanting feeding.

That was it. No more conning me, he was being sleep trained. I had plenty of dog treats in ready (NB Baby Police – that’s a joke, but you can still report me to social services for going out once a week). I spoke to a few people who had successfully sleep trained their children and they’d used the shush-pat method. That wasn’t for me as I’d give in too easily. It was full on ignoring him or nothing.

So that’s what I did. The first night he screamed for two hours, making himself sick, and I ignored him. No, it wasn’t easy and sleep training definitely isn’t for everyone, you have to be determined. But this was a baby who’d cried for 20 hours a day for six months and I’d developed my own coping strategies. If your baby is a placid child, you’ll definitely find it tougher than I did. If that makes me a heartless bad Mum of a bitch then sue me.

On night two, he cried for 40 minutes, then nights three and four he cried for just five minutes. And then he started sleeping 13 hours a night. I was less tired and much happier. I wish I’d done it at six months instead of nine. But that’s just me. If you’re not really feeling it then don’t do it. It’s hard and you need a thick skin. It was easier for me because I was used to him crying, yet I still found it tough. It goes against all your parental instincts and I understand why people are against it. But if it’s something you’d like to do, don’t let people put you off. I’d do it again. My child still loves me. My child is still happy. He probably doesn’t remember a time when he woke up during the night.

I’d never tell someone “you must do it”. If you disagree with it, I understand why. But if you disagree with it, don’t judge parents who’ve used it to help them and don’t discourage parents who want to try it. There’ll be things you do that they disagree with and, as there’s no manual, no one of us is more right than another.

Feeding Problems #2

Jack was a very unhappy young baby. I’m not the brightest ray of sunshine but this boy made me look like I was auditioning for a part in Glee. If he was awake he was crying. Actually no, that’s not quite true. If he was awake he was screaming. I absolutely hated motherhood because of it but you can’t tell anyone that because everyone else has perfect kids who slept through the night from 3 days old and spent their awake time smiling in a bouncer. No offence if your kids did do that but there’s an awful lot of parents who claim it.

He also had awful nappy rash and a gunky eye which the midwife told me was chlamydia…chlamydia! My week old baby apparently had chlamydia! So I googled “chlamydia in babies” and what did it tell me? That babies catch chlamydia in the womb when their mother has it! Well Mrs Midwife, thank you so much for your input but I can assure I do not have chlamydia. Bitch.

After about two weeks, Jack started vomiting milk. Not an “ooh sicky baby, put a muslin cloth on my shoulder” amount. A “that’s the whole frigging bottle, I need to wear a full on plastic suit” amount. So I googled that too. I’ve spent more time on Google in the past ten months than I have in the rest of my Google life (and Ask Jeeves before that). It looked like he had reflux and this was solved by purchasing anti-reflux formula. Off I went to Tesco and bought the new formula (and cut all his teats because it’s that thick). Brilliant, no more sick, amazing.

But he was still a screamer and still had a chlamydia-infested eye and bum of fire. Then, at about five weeks, I had the best coffee break I will ever have. I met up with a new friend for the first time (we met on a pregnancy app) whose baby is a week older than Jack. She too was a vomiter and a screamer…and she had a gunky eye. My friend had experience of reflux so she’d already solved that one herself and it was weird how our two babies had exactly the same symptoms. And I was quite sure my friend didn’t have chlamydia either.
Later on that week she texted me to say her daughter had a cow’s milk allergy as well as reflux. She advised me to do a trial run of hydrolysed formula myself and if it made a difference, get Jack to the GP.

I went to Tesco pharmacy and nearly keeled over when they wanted £12 for 400g of formula. It would only last me three days. £12 for three days! I’m still waiting for my Michelin star for serving food at that price. This had better work.

On the second night, someone snuck in to my room and swapped my little horror for a reasonably happy child. I was suspicious. I bought another tin of Marco Pierre White formula. The smiles continued. This was amazing (in the sense that my baby was happy, not that he had an allergy). It’s sad that another baby had to go through it for me to get the answer but Charlotte is now a wonderful, happy, funny girl.

I headed off to the GP appointment expecting it to be easy. I’d tell him how different Jack was on the Nutramigen with thickener, he’d give us a prescription for the milk and some reflux meds and all would be well. Except my GP is an idiot. He said to me, “yes I think we can say that Jack has reflux and cow’s milk protein allergy but I’m not a paediatrician so I can’t diagnose it. I’ll refer you as an emergency, ring this number for an appointment”.

He wouldn’t even prescribe the thickener, never mind the formula. And the next appointment was in twelve weeks! Some emergency. Phoned the GP and explained I didn’t really think a twelve week wait constituted an emergency referral. So we ended up being referred to Ormskirk hospital as their wait was ‘only’ six weeks. In that time, Ebay was my friend for Nutramigen and Carobel but I couldn’t get the reflux medication to repair his damaged oesophagus.

Thankfully getting the prescriptions when we eventually got seen was really easy. The thickener, alongside him being on solids now and being more upright, minimises his sickness and he’s still on hydrolysed formula. We have regular hospital and dietitian appointments and may start the milk ladder (a lot of babies outgrow the allergy and there’s a step by step way of reintroducing cow’s milk) in January. Until then, no ice cream, biscuits, chocolate or anything fun. I look like Mizzo Mum when we go somewhere and the staff say “would he like a biscuit?” “would he like a pudding?” and I have to say no. I’m not arsed about his teeth falling out through the sugar, I just can’t be arsed making them get the allergy book out to check if he can have it. I don’t want to have to make Jack a t shirt that says ‘my Mum’s not got chlamydia, I’m allergic to cow’s milk’.

Feeding Problems

I’d intended to breastfeed my baby but I did buy a set of standard Tommee Tippee bottles as well, just in case. That way, I thought I wouldn’t get stressed out with breastfeeding as I had a back up. When I was finally allowed to hold Jack he did start moving to breastfeed. The midwife said, “He’s going to be a top breastfeeder this one, watch him latch on in a second”. So I waited a second or a thousand and he hadn’t latched on. I was reassured that he would and it wasn’t a problem that he hadn’t fed.

When you’ve had a Caesarean you get put on a post-natal ward with other mums who have also had a section. You have a buzzer so that you can call a healthcare assistant if your baby needs picking up etc as it’s impossible to do this after you’ve just had the operation. So in the night I buzzed for them to pick him up for me so I could try feeding again. They show you different positions and help the baby to get latched on. They also torture you when the baby won’t latch on by grabbing your boob and forcing it in the baby’s mouth. They then claimed he was latched on. But I couldn’t feel anything. People had told me breastfeeding hurts so I just assumed I was lucky and it wasn’t going to hurt me. But he didn’t seem to be sucking. I pressed that buzzer so many times I felt that they were getting annoyed with me so I started to get a bit stressed.

In the morning I had a visit from a breastfeeding specialist. I raised my concerns and she showed me how to hand express into syringes which could be stored and given to him later. I wasn’t very good at that either. By this point it became clear that my baby was the only one in the hospital screaming constantly. Add that to the fact I just couldn’t get the hang of feeding him easily and I was getting really stressed. I mentioned a few times that I might just formula feed instead and the midwives and healthcare assistants were horrified. I was under pressure to crack this breastfeeding.  By the last night I was in hospital, I was on the verge of a breakdown. My baby kept everyone awake with his screaming, I was being mauled with by people trying to ‘help’ me feed and I felt so useless. So I buzzed a healthcare assistant and burst into tears, begging for formula. She was a young girl, so probably not of the old-fashioned ‘breast is best’ mould and she told me to get some rest, she’d feed Jack and put him to bed. I was so grateful when my baby returned asleep and stayed that way until morning. I could have kissed her.

I decided to have another go at breastfeeding when I got home. That night was hell. Jack screamed constantly, I cried all night and me and my partner rowed like buggery through the stress. In the morning I got a phone call from the Infant Feeding Team at Whiston. I broke down in tears again and she invited me down straight away. This lady was a volunteer (or maybe she got paid, either way she was a Joe Bloggs civilian with breastfeeding experience, she wasn’t a healthcare professional). She took one look at Jack and told me my baby would never be able to breastfeed as he had a severe tongue tie. This is where there’s a flap of skin towards the front of the tongue, attaching it to the gum so the baby can’t lift it and therefore can’t latch on properly. Hours of stress and crying, feeling like a failure, numerous breastfeeding experts, healthcare assistants, midwives and even a paediatrician who was specifically checking for tongue tie, and nobody had realised.

I experienced a mixture of emotions. Relief that it wasn’t me that was useless, but mostly anger that all these people who were meant to help my baby, had let him starve for three days. He wouldn’t have been able to get any milk, so that formula feed on the third night was the first meal he’d had.

I’m so grateful to that lady, and also to one of my fiance’s family members who showed me how to express using a pump so I could still breastfeed. She’d text every day with encouragement too and I was so relieved I could still give my baby breast milk. I’ll never be able to thank Paula enough for that encouragement as expressing is quite tough, you have to do it regularly so the supply doesn’t dry up, and Paula’s texts kept me going.

Eventually I couldn’t keep up with the demands of expressing and I moved on to formula. Jack had his tongue tie snipped so he’s able to move it freely now and hopefully his speech won’t be affected. All was well in the feeding world, or so I thought…until the next blog post!

If you’re struggling to breastfeed and it’s getting you down, please try expressing. You’re no use to your baby when you’re stressed out and you’ve got a hundred other things to stress about, don’t let feeding be one of them.

Bringing Baby Home

I finally escaped from hospital after eight days of incarceration. Instead of being excited, I was terrified. I had to take a small, helpless person home too. I couldn’t just leave him in Costa Coffee at the hospital (well, I could, but then I’d be incarcerated again).

Despite being so overdue, nesting had never kicked in so the house was nowhere ready. To be fair to myself, the run up to my due date was also the run up to Christmas. Who wants to be cleaning cupboards when they could be setting a new world record for the number of mince pies eaten in a minute? Not me. I’d not done any of the recommended batch cooking and freezing of meals either. So on the first night, I ordered pizza and stared at this human being I was entrusted with, thinking, “Shit”.

I’d had a caesarean yet now I was going to have to climb stairs, pick the baby up, put the baby down, manoeuvre around two dogs excited that Mummy was home who just wanted to jump up right where my wound was. The bastards had even removed my catheter so I had to, shock horror, go to the toilet. I hadn’t been to the toilet for four days. This was like forgetting how to flush a toilet manually after a week in Las Vegas. I’d become a diva. No food order lady to just barge in while the midwife was changing my pad (bet she didn’t make that mistake again after that sight), no buzzer to call the healthcare assistant when I wanted my phone plugging in, I had to fend for myself and Bear Grylls hasn’t done a series on newborn survival so I was unprepared.

Just 24 hours later I was ready to be institutionalised. People tell you that those first few weeks are hell but they say it with a smile on their face so you think they’re joking. Let me tell you, with my best ever resting bitchface: “THOSE FIRST FEW WEEKS ARE HELL“. I didn’t shower and lived off one meal a day. I wanted to strangle the midwives and health visitors who turned up and somehow expected me to have got up, opened the curtains and got dressed by 2pm. Were they having a fucking laugh? It’d have been bedtime by the time I was ready. I’ve never wanted to say, “Oh just fuck off” so many times.

The positive bit is: you survive. Somehow you do manage to get through it. After 12 weeks it just becomes hard work as opposed to hell. You can at least leave the house to socialise. Not before midday probably, but you can do it. I honestly didn’t expect me to be here now, let alone (mostly) loving spending time with my son. I’m lucky that I had good friends and family who helped me out where they could to preserve my sanity. I’m also lucky that my fiancé chose that first week at home as the week he’d learn to cook so I didn’t completely waste away. But, even with all that help, I hated motherhood (I didn’t hate my son, just motherhood – there’s a difference). For anyone struggling in those early weeks – it does get better. It gets easier and routines will form, however much you can’t see that happening at the moment. If you can survive those first 12 weeks, you can survive anything.

Birth

I don’t really remember a lot about giving birth so this story may be entirely made up. I do remember that I liked gas and air, which is why I don’t remember much about birth!

I was welcomed to the delivery suite with a cup of tea and six rounds of toast. I was allowed to eat three before a bitch of a midwife took my toast away and told me my waters needed to be broken. Woah, hang on a minute, I’ve been waiting round for five days being fobbed off yet they can’t even give me five minutes to finish my toast?  Talk about double standards.

Delivery rooms aren’t very nice places. There’s no natural light (obviously they’re not going to have windows so the workmen outside can see you in stirrups, but I didn’t consider this and wondered where the window was). They’ve got a toilet – I counted my lucky stars that the toast thief granted me enough time to wee before my waters had to so urgently be broken. The rest of the room is just like a standard hospital room – no calming colours or sensory lights etc – just…functional.

Toast thief put a few holes in my hand. I know one was for the drip, not sure what the other one did. Probably put me on a leash so I couldn’t go within five metres of any food items. When you’re induced you have a drip of Syntocinon. This substance puts you into artificial labour. You don’t get the build up that you do with natural labour, you go straight into ‘established labour’ as you’re only allowed to be on this drip for about 12 hours.

Then she called the doctor to break my waters. We were in such a rush to get these waters broken that he came straight away. Trouble is, they’d been in such a rush to find me a delivery suite for the past five days that I was now day fifteen overdue and there was no water left. So we have an argument where they tell me my waters must have gone the day before. My waters did not go, ever. No gush, no trickle, no water, they’d definitely dried up because they’d left me so long. I won the argument because I wasn’t backing down and they were in a rush. So I said bye to this doctor because I wouldn’t see him for a whole sixteen hours and they set my drip up.

The toast thief left and was replaced by a nice lady working with a student. When you are on a drip, in artificial labour, going mad on gas and air, you really don’t care who sees your bits so this student didn’t bother me at all. They were arranging for my epidural. Let me tell you this; contractions hurt. You don’t win a prize for only having gas and air. You don’t get a prettier baby for only having gas and air. You’re not a better person for only having gas and air. It’s not labour ward sports day, there are no medals, just have an epidural. You do not need to be in that amount of pain so why bother? Unless you’re worried about being paralysed or something, then I can understand. If you have an epidural, good on you. Those women who will sneer at you and say “I only had gas and air” as though they are better at birth than you? Punch them in the face. (Don’t punch in the face the women who tell you they only had gas and air in a normal, conversational manner – they don’t deserve it, they’re merely joining in a birth stories conversation, rather than being condescending).

While epidurals are fab and you can sit there having a chat, doing your make up, knitting a baby outfit, they aren’t 100%. Mine started to wear off after a few hours. It was just a patch as big as a playing card on my back that I could feel the pain in so the midwife got the anaesthetist to move my epidural. Big mistake. It was now just having no effect and I could feel everything. So now I was only having gas and air *smug face* *mum points* *that’s why my baby’s so gorgeous*.

My midwife had also changed over to someone called Rachel. Rachel was lovely. Rachel didn’t care that I was off my face on gas and air, she didn’t try and take it off me, she was lovely and so calming. When her shift ended, I tried to bribe her to stay by offering to pay her overtime. Although by this point, I was convinced I was dying and the new midwife was very unsympathetic of my impending death.

I’d been on gas and air constantly for about six hours. I was just having what felt like one constant contraction for hours so the only thing I breathed was Entonox. I wasn’t really with it when they were concerned about the baby’s heart rate and the flurry of mild panic convinced me that either me or the baby was dying so they should just let me die now. So I’m lamenting my demise and this nasty woman is trying to make me turn on my side. I couldn’t. I physically couldn’t move because of the pain. I tried and just couldn’t. So she shouted at me. Witch. Said something along the lines of I was being selfish thinking of my own pain and not my baby. Er.. I COULDN’T FUCKING MOVE. So, while she was on a roll she decided to tell me off for my gas and air misuse too. I was only meant to have it while I was having a contraction – well I was having one constant contraction so she could piss off with her preaching. I’m so glad someone decided I wasn’t progressing because, if I’d had to endure her for much longer, I’d have kicked her in the head.

My baby wasn’t coming out. Who can blame him when that witchy, miserable face would be the first thing he saw. So I had to have a caesarean section. The doctor who’d come to break my dried up waters was back telling me about the operation. Nothing he said went in as I was still hugging my best friend Entonox. I had to sign a form. I’ve no idea what was on that form. I probably owe him my life savings now or something.

They took me to theatre and gave me another injection in my spine for anaesthetic. They put up a blue screen so you can’t see them hacking you open. It’s a very weird sensation. You can feel that they’re touching you, pulling you and tugging at things but it doesn’t hurt. This time, I wasn’t out of it on gas and air so I knew full well something was going wrong. I decided I was dying again, but rather than calmly requesting to be let go, panic mode ensued. I asked them that many times what was the matter that they showed me the tube that was recycling my blood back into me. I don’t know where from, probably off the floor but I found out I’d lost a litre of blood so that tube had helped keep me alive and it was probably just an old part off a Hoover.

At 10:01pm on 10th January 2015, Jack Dylan Thomas was born. They sort of held him up over the screen and presented his testicles to me. Which was nice. All I remember thinking was, “Don’t babies have big balls?” He weighed 10lb 1oz and, to be honest, I didn’t give a shit. You’re meant to feel this overwhelming rush of love and bond and amazement. I didn’t feel anything. Now, I realise that it was because I’d spent so long imagining his birth and a section never came into it. My birth plan was to have my baby naturally, delivered on to me, cuddle them skin to skin for however long and be amazed that I was finally holding my baby.

I don’t think I coped psychologically with how he was born and the procedures around that. You can’t hold your baby after a section you can only look at it while you lie there with your arms outstretched like a weird crucifixion. I felt so detached from the birth and from my baby. A baby had just been held up over a screen, because I hadn’t seen him come out, my brain couldn’t compute that he’d come out of me. He’d then been taken away and, later, given to his Dad to hold while I just watched. I wanted to hold him too, cuddle him, kiss him, talk to him and I couldn’t. So, rather than get upset, the shutters came down and I felt nothing. Most women are probably baffled, how could I not feel this overwhelming love for my baby? But, if just one person reading this thinks “thank God I wasn’t the only one who felt like that” then I’m glad. Because not all mothers bond straight away with their babies for one reason or another. And that’s OK. Because you will bond in time. It doesn’t make you a bad mother. I used to think it made me the world’s worst mum. But now, at nearly six months old, me and my son have a right laugh and the way he looks at me and smiles at me tells me I’m his world. And I don’t think a mother who was head over heels with their baby instantly has a better relationship than me and Jack do. They’re no better at being a mum than I am. And, although they may have at first, they don’t love their baby any more than I love Jack. I thought I wasn’t maternal, I thought I was too selfish to be a mum, I thought I’d still have things in my life which were more important than my baby. Jack proved me wrong.