Barefoot In The Kitchen

I’m sitting downstairs writing this, with the baby monitor turned on and a cat either side of me on the sofa.  David is upstairs, in his cot, quite happy to be there.  I’m managed not to eat Mars Planets for breakfast, and I’ve actually managed to have a bath, dry my hair, and put makeup on!  So why do I feel so bad?

I feel bad because I left my sick one-year-old watching an episode of In The Night Garden in his cot.  He was almost passing out on my lap, so I turned the TV and the Wii on, fired up BBC iPlayer, tucked him in, pressed “play”, and sneaked out.  Ten minutes later he was asleep, without any distress whatsoever.  Usually when he gets to that stage we tuck him in and run out, without the TV, but there’s still a little bit of crying.  I didn’t want to risk him crying and throwing up again today: that’s why he had the TV on.  It was a good decision because it was the right decision to make for David at that time, so why do I still feel bad about it?

Being a parent, especially a mother, opens you up to public criticism like never before.  Breastfeed?  Your child will be a bad sleeper and clingy.  Formula-feed?  Your child will be ill and obese.  Wean with purees?  Your child will be fussy.  Use baby-led weaning?  ”But they’ll choke!”. Controlled crying?  That’s cruel!  Co-sleep?  ”You’ll never get your bed back again!”  Give them the odd packet of chocolate buttons or crisps, or feed them just organic food?  Stay at home, or go out to work, or work from home?  Let them watch TV or none at all?  Put them in a forward-facing buggy or carry them in a sling?  Whatever decision you make, someone, somewhere, will be judging you for it.

Before David was born, Joe and I decided to use a Quinny Zapp lightweight pushchair and a Maxi-Cosi car seat instead of dragging a big pushchair around.  My mother was horrified, and bought us a leviathan of a pushchair/pram/buggy system that barely fitted in Joe’s estate car boot.  We’ve used it about twice since he was born.  When I switched to expressing milk and bottle-feeding, and then to combined-feeding, she was careful to tell me repeatedly that I was doing something wrong by depriving him of bonding time: that might be true, but I was also depriving him of tummy ache and wind, and giving him sleep.  When we decided to leave purees behind and switch to baby-led weaning, she bought us (I swear) every single book by Annabel bloody Karmel, and spent months pushing me to use them.  She fails to understand why we use cloth nappies and organic cotton (but that’s the subject of a whole other post!), why we won’t let him have juice in a bottle any more, why I snuggle him back to sleep for his morning nap instead of leaving him to cry it out.  She fails to understand that we do what works for our family.

I’ve come in for a lot of judgement, too, from complete strangers.  It’s probably the purple hair and the eyeliner.  Until the other day, when I had the misfortune to argue with an idiot in a supermarket car park, I didn’t think people used words like “feckless” and “irresponsible” unless they were using the Daily Mail comments section.  (Incidentally, bitch, parent and child spaces are for PARENTS AND THEIR YOUNG CHILDREN, not perfectly able-bodied middle aged women in fancy cars who have no children with them.  The fact that I am young and have purple hair doesn’t change that.)  I had a coffee shop outing ruined this week by someone who told me to keep David “under control”, and to this moment I’m still not exactly sure what his crime was.

I have little time for “extreme” methods of parenting.  I’m not sure I understand why there even needs to be a debate on any aspect of parenting: can’t each family do what works for them?  Why can’t people do things the way they want to, without the need to be evangelical about it?  When David was bottle-fed (both with the expressed milk and later, formula), I spent hours and days and weeks trying to justify it to myself: not because I thought I’d made the wrong decision, but because of other people’s judgement and opinions.  If I wasn’t trying to make a point, I wouldn’t be announcing to the world that David watched TV to get to sleep, for similar reasons.  It’s just not one of those things you admit to, is it?

We need to get to a point where, as parents, we all support each other, regardless of the decisions we make.  We’d all end up far less stressed and far happier if parents could turn to each other, without fear of judgement, for advice and support and help.

I can’t be doing much wrong, anyway.

When we introduced Eric to Snowball and Wily last June, we figured that by this point in time they’d all be getting on famously.  We forgot one thing: Snowball.

Snowball isn’t the most sociable of cats.  She loves Joe, she puts up with my attention if Joe’s not there, and she shows utter disdain for any other human.  Didain is fine, we can deal with it.  It’s her opinion of other cats that causes problems.  She is the tortured middle-child, the only girl amongst boys.  The boys annoy her simply by being present in the same room, or sitting on the chair that she was ABOUT TO SIT ON, DAMNIT, or by coming to Joe or I for a cuddle.  Eric knows which buttons to press, and there’s many a time I’ve caught him just about to tap her with his paw.  This provokes such a furious response that you’d have thought he’d have learned not to do it by now.

I’m getting a little tired of living in a house where the fur flies every day.  The solution?  To tire all three cats out so much that they don’t even notice when the others are there.  This has necessitated the purchase of Bob the Fish.

Snowball is Not Impressed with Bob the Fish, because he has a bell, therefore sounds like a collar, therefore sounds like Another Cat.  (Wily won’t go near it, or the camera, or anyone today.)

Eric, however, has rediscovered his kittenhood, found all his (and Snowball and Wily’s) old toys, and is spending so much time playing that he hasn’t got time or energy to piss the other two off.

Result.

Yes, we are still sick, and no, I don’t have time for emotions right now.  D is just about keeping down 10-20ml sugary water at a time, being fed from a syringe, refusing a bottle.  How the fuck we’re supposed to get antibiotics into him I don’t know.  Doctor says he’s not dehydrated enough to need hospital yet, they’ll just do exactly the same thing as us.  I am just looking forward to getting through this rough patch and having my happy little monster back again.

For a while, you were there.  Yesterday, you were gone.

For four-and-a-half weeks, to be precise.

Until a few days ago, I didn’t know it, nobody knew it.

I didn’t dare think about you.  I told nobody.  I’d said, “no more”, “enough”.  ”We’re done.”  I meant it, too, and I still mean it.

I’ve been here before.  It hurt, then.  This time I just feel empty and numb.  I didn’t want to be here again.

There was nothing I could’ve done to change this.  I’m not sure I would have if I could.  But still I feel guilty, guilty for thinking and feeling nothing.

I’m going to hold this little boy tight and be thankful for what I have.  That is all I can do.