Archives for June 2013

Another day another breastfeeding smack in the face

June 26, 2013 by 2 Comments

I was never going to breastfeed my child.  I had vomited for what felt like forever, I had stopped eating sushi and I had given up my ankles and I just knew that I wanted my body back after my baby was born.  I was working in a corporate environment, no one around me had babies and I just didn’t think that breastfeeding was for me.

And then I had my son 10 weeks early and he was sick. Very sick and really ridiculously small.  He was whipped away into the Neonatal intensive care unit and I was transferred to high care. We were both sick it seemed. But him more so and before long a midwife was standing by my bed giving me instructions on how to express milk for a son that I had never touched or held.

There was no option it had to be done, and to be honest I was desperate and afraid in this very intensive medical setting and I did whatever the doctors/nurses/people wearing official uniforms said and I expressed.

I was happy to be doing SOMETHING for my child, anything because all his other needs were being met by machines and medical staff.  So I persevered and I pumped and I expressed and luckily he was only on 2ml feeds and I could manage  just about that. (I was really bad at expressing )

It didn’t really go so well though. Little Pencil failed to gain weight. The hospital added Human Milk Fortifier to his feeds (yes like formula but added to the breast milk!) and he didn’t handle that well. So he was taken off feeds and put back into intensive care. He got sicker. He required a blood transfusion. You get my drift – he was really unwell.

But he got stronger and better (just not much heavier) and after 2 months we left the hospital with my beautiful son weighing 2kgs.  Boy was I proud of him.

And then he was sick – all the time. He could not put on weight. Repeated and hideous invasive testing eventually showed that he was severely lactose intolerant. Breast milk is full of lactose.

What does a mother who has been told that “Breast is Best” for 8 months do? When for 8 months every day you hear people repeating the mantra “at least you are able to feed him, you are doing the best thing for him” Repeatedly. For 8 months. And then your doctor tells you to stop breastfeeding THAT DAY because you are damaging his stomach lining?

I know that my situation was extreme and that breast IS best for most babies. But I also know that sometimes it’s not. Sometimes formula is best – sometimes for the baby and sometimes for the mother.

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Breastfed babies have an increased chance of climbing the social ladder and carving a better life than their parents, research shows.

Breastfeeding increased the odds of moving up social classes by 24 per cent and reduced the odds of sliding down by 20 per cent, a large British study found.

The study, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, examined the social class of the children’s father – measuring them as unskilled, semi-skilled, professional and managerial – when they were 10 or 11 and their own social class at age 33 or 34.

“We found breastfeeding for longer periods increased the probability that someone would move up the ladder more than for someone fed for a shorter duration,” said lead author Amanda Sacker, of the University College in London.

But further down, and perhaps most importantly, there’s this

Professor Sacker said mothers who did not breastfeed should have skin-to-skin contact and cuddle while bottle feeding, adding that it was difficult to pinpoint if breast milk nutrients or bonding afforded the greatest benefit.

Wouldn’t it be great if the study results could be reported as “babies who are cuddled have better chance at success.”

Even though undoubtedly breast is often best even this study cannot claim whether it’s the breast milk or the close bonding that helps the child in the long run.  So why lead the article with breastfed babies when the link has been difficult to pinpoint?

Because it’s sensationalist scaremongering.

The Breast is Best message is strong. It is accurate (in most cases).  But sometimes it’s not. And no amount of guilt is going to make that different

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Featured Tagged With:

The place where nobody knows your name

June 20, 2013 by 2 Comments

Very keen readers (Hi Mr Pencil) will remember that I went to Byron about two months ago. It was on that trip that I uncovered the full extent of my sloth when we attempted to walk up to the lighthouse and I nearly died.  Seeing 70 year-old people literally prance ahead of me was bad, still being the colour of a beetroot and puffing a day after the event was a hideous reality check.

When I came back and my mum had surgerygym I went into the pre-op consult with her and listened to the anaesthetist tell her that the effect on the heart of  having an anaesthetic could be compared to a jog around the block.  I almost needed the services of a doctor myself when it dawned on me that I might actually die trying to jog around the block.

And so something had to change.

I signed up to Michelle Bridge’s 12 week body transformation challenge (which is a post of huge praise for another day) and bought new running gear. I used to be a runner so I was keen to get back on to the road.

The road running was going really well until it started to get rainy. And cold.  My husband very kindly suggested that I go to the gym and run on the treadmill.  “It will be kinder on your knees” he said. (And there I was thinking that I had been hiding the fact that my knees were so old sore that I couldn’t walk properly.)

So I stumbled off to the gym where he holds a contract. Except it’s not so much a contract as a key card that you swipe and it allows you into the gym 24/7 as long as you keep paying them money. Okay, I guess it is a contract.

It’s a wonderful thing this gym.  It has all the things about gyms that I love – ie

  • Treadmills
  • Loud music
  • Water

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And it has none of the things that I normally hate about gyms – ie

  • The smell of fear, sweat and exhaustion
  • Very fit people
  • Personal trainers who laugh at the way that you execute a squat
  • Anyone wearing lycra
  • People in general

Seriously there are so few people that I always go with a back up plan in mind lest I arrive and there is a “For Lease” sign hanging in the window.

It’s quite liberating training without eyes on you. Sometimes I worry that I might fall off the treadmill and be left to die but other times I just love the fact that no one is watching me. Trust me – I am NOT pretty when I exercise. Imagine a beetroot with sweat.

But there are one or two people there who I wouldn’t mind occasionally looking up. They work there. I know this because they wear shirts bearing the name of the gym and they sit behind the counter with multiple scarves on because it’s cold and they are not planning on doing any exercise.

I have set myself a little extra challenge – not only do I want to be able to run 5km without dying or pausing to catch my breath, I want to actually make eye contact with one of these staff members.

They see me 6 days a week and every time I walk past the counter to rehydrate I look at them with a red, sweaty smile and they look straight through me. Sometimes I say “hi” and they ignore me. Sometimes I try a “thanks” trying to show them how grateful I am for their services (which is basically paying the rent) and they look right through me.

I know not many people think to engage with sweaty beetroots but surely if you work at a gym you must be comfortable with seeing people look like this. Surely you should at least check occasionally to see if your customers are still breathing.

But nothing. Not even a raise of the head.

I guess I am not going to this particular gym for the great service because, in all honesty, personal trainer types intimidate me. But what kind of business runs itself without any eye contact at all?

I can’t wait to take my fitness back to Byron where the 70-year-old prancers on the lighthouse walk will look me in the eye and, in all likelihood, offer me some water and a lie down.

Do you go to a gym? Are you intimidated by the fit people or are you one of them?

 

Filed Under: Featured, My Life Tagged With:

Just don’t throw shit. And don’t joke about it either

June 19, 2013 by 18 Comments

This morning everyone is talking about the horrific train incident that occurred in Melbourne on Monday evening.  If you haven’t seen the rather disturbing footage of what happened after Roger Stapleford (the victim) asked one of two young girls to remove her feet from the chair apposite opposite him so he could sit, you can watch it here:

If you can’t watch right now or you don’t want to watch young kids abusing a grown man without even a skerrick of shame here’s what happened: The girls abused him verbally (even threatening to kill him) after assaulting him by throwing a can of drink at him resulting in a 5cm gash to his forehead.

It’s horrifying of course. Awful that it happened, that such hideous troubles teenagers are riding our trains and horrifying that nobody did a thing to come to Roger’s aid until the girls had left the carriage.

Just a few days ago we were up in arms that nobody said a thing when Charles Saatchi strangled his wife Nigella Lawson before tweaking her nose and pushing her face in public.  We argued that the photographer shouldn’t have taken pictures (although I believe he did a valuable thing) and that nobody came to her assistance.

It’s just as outrageous that nobody said a thing to these girls on the train. Nobody came to help a man on the train covered in some young kid’s drink and sporting a giant gash on his forehead. Just a lone person who filmed it on their phone – bravo to them.

Is assault and intimidation becoming so common place that people no longer bat an eyelid when it happens in front of them?  Is bad behaviour so easily accepted that we just laugh it off?

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I am not a confrontational person. Okay that’s not true. I am – but not usually in public. And hardly ever on Facebook. So my fingers hovered for more than a few seconds last night when I saw the Facebook status of one of the fathers of a child at Little Pencil’s school.

The kids are going to Canberra today and he had written some disparaging comment about arming his daughter with a sandwich lest she should meet Julia Gillard.  Apparently, according to the people that cheered him on, it was a joke. Except that I don’t think it is. And I said as much.

I don’t give a flying toss what you think about the Prime Minister personally but I would like to believe that we are teaching our kids respect for all people and then some again for the highest office in the country.  I want my son to know that violence and intimidation are never an answer and whether it occurred to the Prime Minister, the man delivering the newspaper or a casual bystander  – it never becomes a joke.

When some really misguided kid threw a sandwich at the Prime Minister he wasn’t honestly protesting some political ideology – he was just being abusive and rude.  There was no message in it.  Just like there is nothing noble about hurling a drink at a man on a train because he has asked you to move your legs.

I’d like to think as a society we know right from wrong. I’d like to think that I would stand up for someone if they were in strife. I’d like to think that I have caused the people who were making ridiculous jokes on Facebook about their 11 and 12 year old kids throwing sandwiches at another human being some reason to think.

 

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Featured

Discipline done the (old) school way

June 18, 2013 by 7 Comments

angry_teacherI’m sitting in my car waiting to pick my son up from school when the message appears with it’s customary ping on to the screen of my phone. It’s from my son.

“I got in trouble at school today. Don’t get super angry and please listen to me when I try to tell u in the car  🙁 sorry”

Well, what do you do with that? Other than the obvious which for me is to worry that your child is scared you are going to get super angry?

My son is a good boy. Okay he’s very naughty but in a mischievous, chatty kind of way.  He has been known to talk A LOT and one of his favourite things in the world is to make other people laugh. Maybe if I were his teacher I wouldn’t have started that sentence with using the term “good boy”.

But, even though he can er, chat a lot, he has a healthy respect for authority (where I am not seen as any kind of authority figure). He is scared of getting into  trouble at school and as part of his desire to make people laugh he also shows an amazing capacity to try make people feel happy – this stops him from playing against the rules because he knows that nobody’s gonna be happy with that!

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So what was I to make of his text?

He got into the car with tears brimming in his eyes and every single part of me melted.  I am putty in the hands of tears.

He explained his version of the story which I am sure had a grain of truth in it. Basically there was a “misunderstanding” about a ball being kicked when it shouldn’t have been played with – after the deputy head of the high school (cue more intimidation) had told him not to.  I heard his side of the story and assumed he may have been covering some of the truth and the teacher in question may have been feeling a little sensitive because she sent him to the headmaster of the primary school for a dressing down for, from what I have been told, seems like a fairly minor infringement that she could have easily managed herself.

So here I am with a child crying over something that happened at school and as far as I am concerned has been dealt with at school. His very excellent headmaster was kind, gentle but firm and asked him to write an apology to the teacher that he had “offended”.  Dealt with like a professional from where I stand. 

But what was I to do – do I punish my child for something that happened at school that I didn’t witness? Do I take his side? The teacher’s side? Or no side at all?

I think it’s important for my son to know that I care about his schooling, I have always taken an active interest in his school activities because of that (and because I actually am interested).  I sit with him while he does his homework because I want him to know that I think what he’s doing counts and that it is important and that I care about what he’s learning about (I don’t really).

I feel like I am part of his school life because of this and also because of the astounding community minded nature of the school (he goes to an extraordinarily brilliant school which I love and will defend to the death.)

But discipline at school belongs at school and so I calmed him. I told him I understood that there had been a misunderstanding, I told him to write the apology letter and put the whole thing behind him. I think all the fear and worry about telling me was punishment enough from our side…

What would you do if your child got into trouble at school? Would you punish him at home or would you let it go?

Filed Under: Featured, Little Pencil Tagged With: ,

For everyone who says they wouldn’t hesitate in employing someone with a mental illness…

June 17, 2013 by 8 Comments

Matt Kenyon 1411It would be wrong to say that last week was particularly hard for my husband – because in reality it was no different to most weeks.  No different to most weeks dealing with a family member who is really sick and has no chance of being cured yet being no closer to death. Just sick. Stuck with paranoid schizophrenia.

I could see him at times buckling under the pressure. Feeling the weight of his brother on his shoulders, in his veins – coursing through everything he does.  Feeling equal parts angered and repulsed by the illness at the same time as feeling huge love, compassion and sympathy.

This week his brother has called him or texted him at least 3 times a day. Like he always does.  Some days it’s many more. That doesn’t sound too bad – hell there are thousands of people who would love so much contact with their family. But, the messages his brother leaves are often confused, always pleading and mostly heartbreaking.

Uncle Pencil (which is what I will call him for now) has no friends. Not even acquaintances.  His days are empty and alone.  He has very little reason to get out of bed in the morning. Bar phoning his brother (and sometimes his mother and father), Uncle Pencil has no real contact with the outside world.  He comes over for dinner to our place or my sister once a week (my sister’s family treat him like one of their own) – that takes care of 4 hours, the other 164 hours of the week he’s alone. With the voices in his head.

These voices don’t make for very good company. They aren’t nurturing, they convince him things are wrong when they aren’t. They’re louder than we are – they’ve made him believe that he can’t communicate outside of his immediate family when all he wants to do is “fit in”.

He’s as sad as he is sick.

Last week I read an article about employing people with mental illness. All it took was the Twitter link to pique my interest. All Uncle Pencil wants is a job. He just wants to fit in – he wants to have people to talk to, to go to, he wants to feel a sense of worth. He wants a job.  The article says:

“Mitchell, 38, suffers from bipolar disorder. He is also author of Bipolar: a path to acceptance, about his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and how he learned to manage his illness. As a father of four, Mitchell wanted to show it’s possible to balance running a business with raising a family, all while managing his condition.

He says he would hire someone with a mental illness “as long as it is managed responsibly”. Mitchell believes: “It’s important for everyone to know that you can get there in the end and triumph over your mental illness.

When he has previously hired someone with a mental illness, he was proactive in supporting them. “On becoming aware of their illness I mentored them so that they could empower themselves to take the necessary action and ownership of their recovery plan,” he says.

I can almost guarantee you Mitchell would not hire my brother-in-law. Or he might. For a day.  Uncle Pencil’s illness does not look pretty. It’s not something you “become aware of” over time.  It’s there, it’s so much a part of him that it’s a part of his physicality.  Last week he shaved his own head – just some parts of it, random spots on the top of his head. Even without the haircut he looks scary – but that’s mostly just because you can see his own fear coming through in his eyes.
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And his behaviour is well, it’s mad. He’s not dangerous and in fact he’s not scary (even though he looks it)  he’s just not in touch with reality and following his train of thought is hard.

He manages his illness as responsibly as he can.  He takes his medication, he tries to continue going to occupational therapy and support groups but often he gets there and runs away because he is so frightened.

Hiring someone with a mental illness like schizophrenia is not like hiring someone with depression or anxiety. Oh Uncle Pencil has those in spades – but he’s “mad”.  Properly, distressingly, socially inappropriate and deluded

The article goes on to say

“Susan Bower, 41, owns Dressed for Success, a Brisbane-based property styling business. Like Mitchell, she would hire someone with a mental illness. “As a business owner that suffers from depression myself, I know that with treatment, people with mental illnesses can function just as well as anybody else.

“Mental illness is now emerging as a more common illness, so the likelihood of employing someone with a mental illness is much higher whether they disclose it or not.”

Uncle Pencil has no choice about disclosing his illness. It’s written on his face with the pain and fear he carries around Every. Single. Day.  However forward thinking and benevolent and depressed and anxious Australian employers are, they are running a mile from people like Uncle Pencil.

I’m not having a go at employers, I’m certainly not having a go at Valerie Khoo who wrote the article because I applaud anyone who starts the conversation. I do want to applaud organisations like Each, Nova Employment , even the ridiculously under resourced Job Access but I know that Uncle Pencil is too sick to work and worse than that he’s too sick to stay at home alone all day.

For everyone who says they would not hesitate in employing someone with a mental illness, nothing  would make me happier than introducing you to Uncle Pencil.  Give me a call

 

Filed Under: Featured, My Life Tagged With: ,

Do not click on this link unless you have tissues at hand

June 12, 2013 by 14 Comments

This is the saddest video you will see today. I’ve watched it more than once and I won’t even tell you how many times it’s made me cry.

The background: a woman by the name of Linda Whitaker captured this heartbreakingly beautiful moment between her parents (who had been married 66 years) while her father was in the hospital.

It may seem odd that I have chosen to put it up on my birthday but stick with me.  After you’ve wiped away your tears of course.

I know it may not be terribly hip or contemporary to admit that You Are My Sunshine is amongst on of my favourite songs, but at the risk of losing all credibility I’m going to lay it on the line and run with it.

When my husband and I met a billion years ago we where fresh faced teens, well at least I was – he had stubble. But we were young and naïve and in love and we had our first kiss in Cape Town, South Afica in 1985 when the song Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits was already a little hipster. The song formed the backdrop of our blooming love on that holiday and we named it ours.
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Hold Me Now by the Thompson Twins was on the first album I bought for him – and it really was an album, made of vinyl and everything.

When we got married we had our first dance to the dulcet tones of Phil Collins singing “Groovy Kind of Love”, a song that I had chosen myself (not very weddingy to choose songs without your groom but still) while Mr Pencil holidayed overseas with his friends a couple years before the wedding and I thought I might die of loneliness without him. I think I played the song on repeat a billion times and I don’t remember if we had yet even spoken about marriage when I declared it our wedding song.

But through the Dire Straits, the Thomson Twins, the many years of Tracy Chapman, my maudlin fascination with Cat Stevens, the Phil Collins, Depeche Mode, UB40, Midnight Oil, Talking Heads and Bloodhound Gang (him not me) right through to my current fascination with Macklemore (mine not his), Passenger and Bastille there is one song that still makes me think of my husband every single time I think of it or sing it to myself – because let’s be honest you don’t hear “You are my sunshine” on the radio all that very often.

This is the song that sums up exactly how I feel about him – he IS my sunshine, he makes me feel happy when skies are gray and I don’t know what I would ever do without him.

And my wish – and it’s my birthday so I get to make wishes that will come true – is that when we have been married for 66 years we will still be singing this song together.

sunshine

Filed Under: Featured, My Life Tagged With:

The perfect job

June 6, 2013 by 12 Comments

motheringOne of the things that happens when you suddenly stop working 20 hours a day 7 days a week is that you have a lot more time to think. Not about work and page views and headlines but about family and real views and heart lines.

Naturally, given that I am slightly neurotic and an extreme over thinker , I’ve spent a significant amount of my newly discovered time worrying that somehow I missed out on my family during my years of 20 hour days.

Let me just preface everything I am about to say with the fact that I support/respect/admire/love women that work outside the home just as much as I support/respect/admire/love women who don’t.  This is not about judgment or privilege (even though I realise what I privileged position I am in), this is not about pointing fingers or blaming the patriarchy or the feminist movement– it’s just about me, my position and the way that I feel about my own experience.  Read this paragraph again and again every time you feel like I may be judging you, talking about working women in general or your own personal situation.

I don’t resent the job that I did and I understand that it was as much my pursuit for perfection, as the role in a 24/7 cycle site that contributed to the fact that I had no life outside work for at least three very long years.

And I can’t help thinking and stressing and ruminating and worrying about my son.

It’s not that I believe that he missed out on anything while I was stuck in my laptop. He has an amazing father who plays as significant a role in his life as I do, he has an awesome and supportive extended family who have shown him unconditional love and support, and I have the kindest most givinng friends who have loved him as their own.  Added to which he goes to a school where the pastoral care is above and beyond the call of duty. So he’s been fine. Loved, cared for, stimulated, educated and supported.

But I worry that I missed out on him.  I worry that there were things about him I don’t even know I missed.  I worry that I nearly missed him growing up while I was watching the world go by on my laptop.
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Every week there seems to be some flare up in the media about working mothers – either they are really good or they are impossibly bad. But overwhelmingly I read the online comments that mothers make saying “mother’s deserve a break” and “working mothers make better role models” and “child care provides the best alternative for mothers and children” and, at the risk of sounding like the middle class white guy complaining about persecution, I almost feel bad to admit that I am happier not working full time, I am actually much happier to be parenting full time and working part time only when my child is at school. It’s not that I don’t want to work – I’m actively looking for work. But work that fits in with my son. I don’t want him to try and fit in with my work.

I don’t think we’re being anti-feminist or going back in time if we allow women to acknowledge that they want to stay at home with their kids.  I object to working mothers telling me that the mothering experience is lesser, especially those working mothers who have never known any different – if it’s my choice it’s not lesser for me.

If feminism is about choices I want to feel validated in my choice to look after my family. I want to be able to say to people – I choose not to work full time because I am lucky enough not to have to and because above all else I want to be a mother.  Children are children for a short time.

The other morning I confided to my husband that I feel awful that I have become the kind of mum that drops her child at school in her gym clothes and then spends the morning between a treadmill, a coffee shop and sometimes a meeting or two. I told him I didn’t feel like I was contributing.  In the best husbandly fashion that he exhibits on a regular basis he just looked at me and said: “You are making a bigger contribution now than when you were working full time – you are the family glue”

I didn’t feel offended or indignant being referred to as the glue. I didn’t fight with him about the fact that women don’t get to choose the work or family option because of the patriarchy because, more than anything, I want the family option. I feel loved and validated and grateful beyond words that I can be giving the biggest part of myself to my family.

It’s sad that I can’t say it out loud without worrying that someone is going to take offence. But you know what? I’m happier being a mother than I am being any other role and I am trying not to be ashamed to admit it.

Filed Under: Featured, Parenting, Work Tagged With: , ,

Parenting – you’re probably doing it right before you’ve even read one piece of advice

June 3, 2013 by 8 Comments

134056338(2)I have been sleeping through the night for about 9 years now. Since around the time my now 12-year old son turned 3.

He never really slept through the night until he was close to three years old. I was pretty tired, I probably was very snappy and I most certainly wasn’t fresh faced and doe eyed. But I was resolute that if he woke up in the middle of the night so would I.

I did not want him to cry himself to sleep, I did not want him to wake up in the middle of the night and not have me there and frankly I did not understand the reasoning behind a small baby with no means of expressing himself having to wait a minute before his needs were addressed.

While you may think I am stark staring crazy I am okay with that. It was a choice both my husband and I made very early on in our son’s life. He was a sick baby, he was very tiny and the doctors made silly pronouncements like he was “failing to thrive”. He wasn’t putting on any weight and we were missing NO chances at trying to get him to eat – be it at 1am or 3am or 9am or any time in between.

I read all the books. Yes really, when you don’t sleep you get quite a bit of reading time. I was warned about the “dangers” of letting your baby cry unattended and I was repeatedly “threatened” by the fact that my son would never learn to self settle and hence would never sleep by himself well, ever.

It’s all absolute tripe to me. And the benefit of hind sight is a wonderful thing. My child is 12, he self settles, can sleep on his own and is not the most spoiled creature on the planet – that title belongs to my dog. I am happy not that I chose to never let him cry – but that I listened to my heart. I did what was right for me and my child.

But the debate about self settling, controlled crying and learning to sleep rages on and with the so-called “benefit” of online parenting forums sprouting forth so much militant anger it’s surprising anyone gets any sleep. Certainly the comment moderators don’t.

It astounds me that people can get so angry about choices that other people make. Choices that will not affect them or their babies. Hell, if you want to let your baby cry in the middle of the night (and you love your baby) and I can’t hear the crying – go for it. I didn’t choose to do that for my baby – but that was the right choice for me. And my baby. Doesn’t make it right. Or wrong.

Last week Pinky McKay a famous Australian lactation consultant and baby massage therapist who believes “babies and toddlers are people too and they deserve empathy and respect, not ‘training’ through techniques such as rigid routines, controlled crying or spanking” unleashed what can only be described as a torrent of abuse at people she calls “tamers” (people who use techniques to get their babies to sleep) .

Included in her rant of “Most Frequently Asked Stupid Questions” was this

“1/ why does my baby cry when I leave him in his cot?
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For Pete’s sake (I hope ‘Pete’ was a Cuddler), you have a stone age baby in a space age world! He is programmed to expect a sabre tooth tiger or a crocodile or an eagle to swoop and gobble him up if he’s all alone. So don’t leave him alone in the frigging cot if he gets upset. If he’s still crying, for goodness sake pick the poor little bugger up before he is overcome with stress hormones that will fry his tiny brain and screw him up for life!”

You can read the whole tirade here if you have a strong stomach.

She sure got angry. And the veiled threat of being screwed up for life because of stress does not go unnoticed by exhausted mothers. Exhausted mothers who only turn to her for advice because they love their babies but they desperately need their sleep. Some people cope better without sleep than others. Fact.

Maybe  Pinky herself needs a little sleep and I think she acknowledges this by sort of apologising on her blog the very next day . (you can read that post here)

I get that she got angry that her message wasn’t getting through to people. I get that she believes so passionately in what she does – and to be honest I support her ideas that babies should be treated with empathy and respect, not ‘training’. I get that she just wanted to lash out and have a bit of fun with it.

But I also get that we have created an environment where people don’t trust themselves as parents.

We live our lives online and we read blogs and websites and forums and everybody seems to be following some technique or learned skill and we get frightened and confused and we forget to rely on our selves as good and instinctive parents.

We try and parent like the books say or the bloggers do or the lecturers demand. We often don’t tend to our children the way that our hearts dictate for fear it hasn’t been proven in some study to develop and enhance our kids brains and prevent their futures from becoming frazzled.

I’m not condoning Pinky McKay’s outburst because I do believe that mothers deserve to be supported whatever track they choose to take. But you know what;  it really doesn’t matter what she believes , she’s not the mother of your kids.

Maybe it’s time to stop taking the concept of the virtual village to raise a kid so seriously. Maybe we should just be supporting mothers to do what they believe is right for their kids. Even if we don’t agree with it.

Filed Under: Featured, Parenting Tagged With: ,

Thank you Luiz Antonio, for being the coolest kid on the internet

June 2, 2013 by 4 Comments

Luiz-AntonioGrowing up I was a meat and potatoes girl.  Literally.  I survived on chops and chips.  Occasionally just to gee things up a bit I ate spaghetti bolognaise, but that was about it.  As I grew older my taste matured and I started to eat different foods but meat and chicken were my staples.  I was very much a carnivore and to be honest, I was a little wary of vegetables.

I am not sure how the change happened or at what point my already overly sensitive nature decided to turn its focus on to food. But I do know that I started to think about where the meat I was eating came from and it made me feel distressed and in truth – it made me feel  extremely guilty.

For me it was not about eating animals as such, it was more about how the meat got to my plate.  I am under no illusion that an animal has to die before I can eat it and I knew it sure as hell wasn’t going to walk there but I worried about the journey that animal had made.  Death is one thing and, being a fatalist I can accept that, but it is the life that the animal experienced before death that really got to me.

I tried to pretend that cows chomped happily and idyllically on grass for the entirety of their lives before a sudden blow at the abbatoir made them into steak, but increasingly I heard the term “grain fed” beef.  I may not know a lot about farming or even biology but I do know that cows don’t naturally graze on grain.

I tried to pretend farmers spent their morning running after chickens that had, up until that very morning, roamed around the farm pecking at grain on the ground.  But I knew that the sheer number of eggs and chickens at the supermarket made that fantasy impossible to execute.

I tried to pretend that no-one in a humane society would ever torture animals by keeping them in concrete pens their entire lives with no access to sunshine, fresh air or place to stretch their muscles, but increasingly I discovered that I was wrong.

I made a conscious decision to stop eating meat, not because it is not healthy, not even because I don’t like the taste but simply because I could not condone cruelty to animals.  I am at peace with my decision, I feel better about my footprint on this earth and I feel healthier because of this (even if it is only my mental health that has been affected).  I only purchase meat for my family that has been ethically raised with respect and humanity.
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Interestingly the only really big change I have had to make is acceptance.  I have had to take a crash course in being tolerant of those around me because, as much as I feel completely validated in my beliefs, I am equally conscious about not ramming my thoughts or opinions down anyone else’s throats – even those of my family.  I know that it is all too easy to cross the line between idealism and fanaticism. I do not want to be a zealot, I think that scares people. It doesn’t educate them and it certainly doesn’t open their minds.

Where others see packaged dinner, I see death.  I simply cannot understand how they don’t see the same thing I do but then I know many religious people who probably cannot understand why I don’t see God or salvation in the same way that they do.

Whenever I become hysterical about the plight of the animals or I balk at the rows and rows of packaged meat in the supermarket, the animal carcasses hanging in the butcher window or the ducks in the local Asian take away – I realise that my beliefs may not translate so easily to people around me.

Thank God then for kids like Luiz Antonio – who is quickly becoming an internet sensation after his “animal epiphany” was caught on film. Please watch the whole thing because although you’ll fall in love with him pretty quickly, there is no doubt you’ll fall in love with his mother by the end.

How is your relationship with meat? Do you eat some things but not others? How do you handle that watershed moment when your kids make the connection between the fluffy lamb they saw on a farm or in a book and the chop on their plate?

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