It is December, and unbelievably, my baby daughter is nearly 6 months old, and my maternity leave from my PhD is over. I am now faced with the daunting prospect of returning to Sheffield and writing up the last few chapters of my thesis before my new submission date of March 2011. It still seems a world away! Once upon a time, I naively thought that having six months away from the thesis would give me a fresh perspective on it all when I returned. As it is, I've almost decided that everything I wrote before is now rubbish and feel the need to redo it all.
One thing I am looking forward to is the 'brainwork' required for a PhD. Not that motherhood is a brainless activity, far from it; I have learned so, so much about babies, about myself, my capabilities, and also about my parents which I didn't anticipate. But PhDs require a high level of concentration, the ability to focus entirely on such a specific topic in such detail, that you seldolm get to use those skills in 'normal' life - if caring for a 5 month old, very alert, curious baby can ever be considered normal to other students.
The hard part is going to be the juggling; caring for my daughter and giving her the attention she needs and craves as well as writing something that actually has to make sense. I am very proud of my baby, but I do want to be proud of my thesis as well. My priorities have changed, perhaps inevitably, but I remain determined to finish and be Doctor Mummy, even if most of the thesis is written during "nap time"!
Miranda coped
fine with the plane ride back from South Africa, we were utterly
exhausted, Auntie Jo had looked after the house and it's furry
inhabitants with no problems, and we finally put Miri to sleep in her
own cot again, had a sauna and managed to get some sleep. The problem
was then, how on earth do we top these last two weeks? I am worried
that she will no longer be content with my normal routine as it pales
in comparison with globe trotting, and she'll get bored. I suffer the
same - every time I go away, it is harder and harder to come back. I
worry we have inadvertantly passed on itchy feet syndrome to our baby
daughter...
Jopo and Grarr
This weekend
was not exactly "normal" however, as it was Whitby Goth
Weekend. We had our one night at home, and then drove straight to a
self-catering cottage my Mum had hired for the weekend at Runswick
Bay just outside Whitby. Booking anything actually inside Whitby is
impossible since everything has been booked up for months, but this
place slept my parents, us with Miri in a cot in our room, and Jo and
Graeme who came along too, following us on the bus. We got lost but
not majorly lost, but it turns out there is absolutely no phone
signal there, so when Jo and Graeme missed their connecting bus and
turned up an hour and a half after they said they would, they
couldn't phone us, and we had to scour the tiny village trying to
find a public payphone! Help! Wilderness!
I
love Whitby Goth Weekend. It is daft really, because we don't really
do much when we are there. There are bands on, a club night and
occassionally other evening events, but I have only ever bought
tickets for the evening events once and then decided it wasn't worth
it. During the day we dress up and pose and be silly, then go round
the stalls at the Bizarre Bazaar shopping for outfits for the next
Goth Weekend. Then we eat fish and chips and get nicely tipsy (or
worse) in our big gang of friends, which gets bigger every year. Carl
never used to dress
up at all, prefering to "be an individual" and look normal
amongst the sea of freaks. He is slowly getting to it though,
particularly steampunk styles!
Of course we
dressed Miranda up too. On the Friday she was our Devil Child with
red lined cape and a horned red hat. The next day she was all in
black and purple; her Granny has supassed herself knitting a little
Victorian dress, bloomers, cloak and lacey bonnet. She looked
amazingly cute and we got paparrazzi'd all day! There are always
hundreds of goth-spotting photographers there but despite our best
efforts with my indecently short dress, the multitude of corsets and
chris's spikey goggles, Miranda got more attention than the rest of
us combined.
Herein lies
the rub: should I really be inflicting my own dress sense on Miranda?
I am fairly certain she will be extremely embarrassed about these
pictures, and pretty much everything about her Sad Old Goth parents
when she's older. But really, what is the alternative? She may just
as easily grow up to hate pink or pastel colours and will still be
embarrassed by us even if we both dressed ourselves and her
"normally". I've already written about inflicting
femininity on her and I don't really see it as any different. When
she is older, she can choose for herself whether she wants to come to
Goth Weekend with us, but until then she can be Mummy's Little
Vampire, and be admired all over Whitby!
Miranda has a few new words in Miri-Speak:
Eeh-Goo - "Ooh shiny thing!"
Uuneng! - "I've got farts!"
Ehgaah - "Yum" or possibly "I'm full!" after feeding....
Iyurl - "I'm bored."
She seems to be using the last one rather a lot at the moment. She is so alert nowadays and the downside of her sleeping through the night is that she is VERY awake, all day. This means I have to devote more attention to her (even writing this is extremely difficult) and I'm constantly trying to find new ways to amuse her. Granny found her a bouncer - as in, a swing on a spring that you clip on to the door frame, not a security guard - she is not to sure about it yet, but it amuses me no end!
With the aim of Entertaining Miranda, I head into town every day with no real purpose other than getting out of the house. Fortunately Miri is still interested in most of the shops in Darlington, so we traipse round for hours window shopping. The other day, however, we had a specific aim: Primark. I know you may grooooooan at this, dear reader, but I am aware that most of their clothes are chavvy and very probably made by Asian kids not much bigger than Miri... (though pretty much every high street clothes shop is guilty of that!) - but it is cheap. Since Miranda grows so quickly and needs new ones every other week, I can't afford to spend more than a few quid on Tiny Jeans.
Plus, Auntie Jo informed me of this:
Ridiculous!!!
Of course, I had to test our local branch but unfortunately for this groundbreaking research, Miranda was, miraculously, not hungry. According to Beryl from Coventry (see the comments on that article), getting your breasts out in public to feed is just attention seeking, anyway. This reinforces my already pretty negative view of Daily Mail readers, as you may imagine. Which actually attracts more attention? a) someone breastfeeding a baby, b) a hungry baby yelling it's head off, or even c) women wandering round with huge boobs popping out of Primark's cheap vest tops? Answers on a postcard....
Anyway, I left with a pair of very tiny grey jeans for Miranda for £4, and promptly disposed of the hideous pink belt that came with them. Babies do not need belts and my baby does not need pink! Actually, this is something else the Daily Mail, or at least, it's bloggers, disapprove of: babies wearing jeans. Apparently I am making Miranda into a mini-adult by dressing her in jeans. On the other hand, they are warm, practical and generally Not Pastel....
I don't do all my shopping in Primark, by the way. Most of my clothes, and now Miranda's too, come from all over the place. She was so exhausted here, I couldn't get her out of the sling!
Miranda wears jeans by Primark, "My Mum Rocks" t-shirt from Pandemonium in Whitby, Poncho from Some Efnic Stall Outside Sheffield Student Union, and sling by Infantino for Boots. Socks, model's own. Styling by Mum at Caffe Nero.
When I had twelve weeks left of my pregnancy, I was already fed up with it and very impatient, and another three months seemed an impossibly long time to wait to meet our baby. Now, however, the twelve weeks that have passed since giving birth have just vanished! Miranda has changed and grown so much in that time but I still haven't got used to it all yet
We took her to see her Great-GrandNan (Big Nan) yesterday as she was vaguely in the vicinity for once. Of course, to her, Miri has grown enormously, as she wasn't quite a month old last time we did a great-grandparent visit. Nan had been a little optimistic though, knitting Miri a new outfit with a hat big enough to fit me! Never mind, it is incredibly cute all the same!
With Great-GrandNanny
The little brain in Miranda's head is now working overtime at the moment. She is sleeping through the night (Woohoo!!) and what's more, sleeping in her own room in her lovely tram cot, while I lay awake all night anxiously and obsessively listening to the baby monitor. This means, of course, that she is now awake for the majority of the day, and I struggle to find new ways to entertain her. I have been investigating the library again (during the Competitive Parenting classes, sorry I mean, Under 5s Rhymetime!) and we now have books in Spanish and English. Leo the naughty kitten and Lucia la Gatita are great fun, and Lucia learns a valuable lesson; if you save the little children from a TIBURON ENORME (huge shark), then Mama buys you a Helado Grande (a big icecream). Every child should know this. 'Augusto y su sonrisa' - about a tiger losing his smile is a bit beyond my level of Spanish, however but I remain confident in the fact that Miranda is not going to correct me. Yet.
I also envy Miranda's ability to be entertained for hours by her own feet. She has got the hang of reaching out and grasping things very well indeed now and grabs, glares at and bashes the rattly things hanging above her chair, and when she gets bored of them, she reaches for her feet and kicks the about. I've invested in an interesting array of brightly coloured socks just for this purpose.
Her motor skills, or lack of them, are beginning to frustrate her, however. She is so close to crawling! she can lift her head and shoulders with her arms, and lft her bum and wriggle with her legs, but she just can't get the hang of doing both at the same time. And she gets cross about it and shouts. She loves standing and walking though (with on of us holding her up, obviously) and showing off how tall she is. Babyzilla!!
***
At the twelve week mark I think I am just about qualified to hand out a bit of advice now too. Ahem. Well one friend of mine has she announced she's pregnant with her first, and another friend is now training to be a midwife. So to these at least, I suggest the following:
1. Breastfeed. Even if you think you can't, you probably can, despite what the companies who sell formula milk would have you believe. And stick at it - it really does get easier!
2. Do Not Read Parenting Books, especially NOT Gina Ford. The woman is draconian and utterly delusional! Babies, like everyone else, do not fit into nice neat little boxes, and find routines that suit themselves. Reading parenting books only leads to making comparisons between your baby and The Ideal, which doesn't actually exist, and then you just end up feeling crap and guilty and inadequate and worried. Trust in your own common sense and baby will be fine.
3. Set up a spam email account and then sign up for every single thing you can - it is possible to get tons of freebies this way!
4. Never be more than 3ft from a Yuk Cloth.
5. Buy a baby sling. Provided you tie it right, they are comfy, perfectly safe and infinitely easier than lugging round a pushchair, plus being so close to you is very comforting for the baby and will probably send her to sleep. Think "hands-free buggy".
6. Be prepared for Lochia. That is, the utterly humungous, disgusting flood of a period you get after giving birth. None of the midwives told me about this!!!! It is a period, basically, it's just huge and heavy because instead of all the lining that has built up over the course of a month coming out, it is what built up around baby for the entire nine months, and it goes on for weeks. Unless you are very brave and very quick to heal, you can't use tampons either, so you need the startlingly unattractive, mahoosive sanitary towels designed to be worn all night. I told Miri I had to go change Mummy's nappy too at times. I bled for ELEVEN WEEKS AND THREE DAYS. It is soul destroying after a while, more so because I was never warned about it and worried constantly that it wasn't normal. Unfortunately, it is.
Any other Mums want to dispense advice that I haven't mentioned?
Our baby is 11
weeks old! We have been to visit the grandparents AGAIN this weekend,
a flying visit but they were insistent and I know it will be quite a
while before we can see them again. The visit did incorporate Miri's
first swim however. I armed myself with waterproof nappies and
mentally prepared for Miranda to scream the place down. But she
didn't! She was very well behaved; a little unsure at first but
certainly happy to try and she kicked her legs about enthusiastically
enough that we took her again the next day. Actually I think she just
liked the excuse to rid herself of her clothes and nappy, she does love being naked!
As usual, she
got admired wherever she went but fortunately no-one thought she was
a boy this time - possibly because she was wearing the little purple
dress I got her in Guatemala. I was ranting on Facebook the other day
about this and sparked a bit of a debate. It annoys me that people
assume that Miri is a boy, not because I have any objection to her
being masculine in character if that is the way she turns out, but
because I know that assumption is based solely on my refusal to dress
her in pink, and preference for comfy, practical baby trousers. The
lack of pink isn't even a feminist statement, I just can't stand the
colour. But people see her wearing baby jeans or black t-shirts and
ask "how old is he?" This winds me up no end.
I have even
been advised to put a ribbon in her hair "just so you know".
Now, which is more infuriating, the fact that ribbons in hair must
denote gender, or the idea that babies MUST be seen to be one gender
or the other? She is 11 weeks old! Surely we shouldn't be inflicting
constructed social dichotomies on her just yet? I don't think of her
as being feminine yet, or masculine for that matter. She's just my
baby, and she's beautiful. And until she can choose her own clothes,
she can wear what I think is cute, which is predominantly purple and
black. Her gender isn't really part of her personality yet. Of
course, her name gives it away, but really that is a social norm that
it would be too cruel to break. A little girl going off to school
named Donald or Keith or something will be teased even more than if
she were called Ophelia or Esperanza or any of the other names I
loved but we decided were to weird to inflict on her.
A comfy baby, with pink socks on "just so you know"!
I don't wear
pink, and I rarely wear dresses, I do wear giant boots though and I
am very tall, and yet few mistake me for a bloke. (I did however once
convince people I was a very passable transvestite, just so I could
use the men's loo in a oub and avoid the queue...but that is a
different story!!). Pre-pregnancy, I didn't even feel very female, although I have never been sure exactly what that is supposed to feel like anyway. I did a project for a gender studies class years ago about transexualism and gender identities. One friend in an interview put her views very succinctly: "I am Me, my body is female. That's about it.". I almost subscribe to that view myself although I am dimly aware that it is never that simple.
At the moment, I am feeling more female than I ever have, and it's all to do with being Mum. Ooo and now I can hear my more feminist friends howling in the background.... Miri's Uncle Ol already accuses me of being anti-feminist, I am never quite sure where he gets that impression from. I am not anti-feminist; most of the time I am just apathetic to the whole issue because it's never been an issue in my life. Selfish, I know, but there we go. Now, though, it throws up a whole new set of dillemmas. I am suddenly feeling Female, because I am a mother and I am breastfeeding my child, which is something you have to be a woman to do and really understand. And I really, really love it. According to some branches of feminist argument though, it is breastfeeding and child-rearing that 'holds women back' and is used as a justification of female oppression. Instead, I should be striving at least for equality (read: getting Carl to share half of the Miri-minding - which I have no problem with if it wasn't for more pragmatic things like the fact Carl has a job and I don't) - if not matriarchal dominance. And feeding her would obviously have to be done with formula milk and a bottle, thus 'empowering' mother to go back to work, of course....
Caca del toro!
This is another idea that annoys me intensely. I can't think of anything more empowering than being indispensible to your child, able to provide her with everything she needs, adapting as she grows, for free and on demand, particularly when men are incapable of doing the same! If that does not fit in to the routine of the (male-dominated) workplace, then it is the workplace that needs changing. Or better still, I'll just invent myself a job that I can take Miranda along to!
"If a multnational company developed a product that was a nutritionally balanced and delicious food, a wonder drug that both prevented and treated disease, cost nothing to produce and could be delivered in quantities controlled by consumers' needs, the annoucement of this find would send its shares rocketing to the top of the stock market. The scientists who developed the product would win prizes and the wealth of everyone involved would increase dramatically. Women have been producing such a miraculous substance, breastmilk, since the beginning of human existence, yet they form the least wealthy and least powerful half of humanity."
(from "The Politics of Breastfeeding" by Gabrielle Palmer.)
Miranda is 10 weeks old now! Unbelievable. She is now sleeping through the night, (almost!), has full control of her neck, has grown out of all her newborn clothes and best of all, she has started smiling, gurgling and giggling! She is soooo beautiful and I love it when she starts talking to me in Miri-speak. She is also capable of registering her disgust when necessary:
"We are not amused."
I haven't updated this blog for a while because everything has been completely hectic for the past few weeks. We dared to Go Out without her once; it was our eleventh anniversary and we left Miri in the capable hands of Auntie Jo and Uncle Graeme. I armed them with the Miranda Dictionary (see below) and they did a great job - and I resisted the urge to ring them every five minutes to check on her! Mum asked the other day if all my friends are going to be Honorary Aunts and Uncles. I still have Honourary Auntie Cathy - Mum's best friend, so I see no reason why not. Sadly Miranda will have no aunts or uncles on my side of the family, although Mum and one other friend with a good memory have commented on the fact that Miri, on occasion, looks a little bit like Uncle Rohan. Something about the gumpy grin, and her expression sometimes. I don't know if mine are genuine memories of how Rohan looked, or whether my imagination and wishful thinking are filling in the gaps... Despite my sad lack of siblings now though, I have a lot of wonderful friends who I hope will be around to see her grow up. I've been Auntie Bel to little Ione since she was born so I'll return the favour!
At five weeks old, I had to take Miri to the photographers to get her passport photo done. Yep, even tiny babies are now expected to have their own passports, complete with straight-on-white-background-eyes-open-head-shot-photograph. It's hard enough getting the photo right in the first place, but I pity the customs people who have to tell the difference between month-old babies. Even more stupidly, she'll have this passport until she is five years old. She doesn't look the same a month later, let alone four years later....
Anyway, Miri has to have a passport so we can go to South Africa to show her off to her only real aunt, Carl's sister, and her paternal grandad in Johannesburg. Carl has a neice who also has two children and one more on the way - these are the nearest Miranda has to cousins. So even more reason to appoint friends as adopted family - my friends are people she will actually see regularly! Even so, I am really looking forward to Miri's first adventure abroad, seeing the in-laws again, and meeting my latest great-nephew!
Speaking of cousins though, my second cousin is most definitely Uncle Ol. He has a very very distant blood-relationship to Miri, but no matter how tentative the connection, he seems to absolutely adore her. It's really sweet, and this makes me smile a lot. I love my baby being admired! :) Ol came up last week under guise of helping me out with our Doctor Coffee stall - but really just to see Miranda, obviously. Miri is a fantastic advert for the business; so many people come up to see the cute baby and we waved coffee under their nose appropriately.
"I said I wanted a skinny three-shot caramelatte you fool!"
She is sitting on Granny's knee in that photo. The (grand-)parents came up for a few days last week as well, complaining that they hadn't seen Miranda in over a month! Could well be because they live 200 miles away.... Anyway, it was good to see them and of course they spoiled Miri rotten. It was difficult to prize her away from them; Dad must have taken hundreds of photos, Mum wouldn't let me push the pushchair at all the entire time they were up, and they even moaned when she was asleep! If it wasn't for the fact they couldn't feed her, I don't think we would have got her back at all, she would have been kidnapped and taken to the Welsh wilderness forever more.
Saltburn pier- one of the rare occasions I was allowed to hold my own daughter
It does concern me that I am morphing in to my Mother, as the above photo demonstrates. Miranda's future will probably be decided pear-shaped! Having my parents around is reassuring in a strange way. Being Their Daughter makes me feel more like Me - I am used to that role. Being Miranda's Mummy is still a very new and unnerving concept. I've got to be All Growed Up, responsible, an Adult. I don't feel like it sometimes. It is all so scary still. I am so careful of Miranda, I just want to protect her from everything and I honestly couldn't bear it if anything hurt her! It's entirely irrational I know, but I just feel completely over-protective of her and at the same time, completely incapable and unprepared.
However, it is comforting that she seems to be such a happy little soul. The grins and the beginnings of little giggles make my heart melt. It is not just me and Carl now, we've gone from being a couple to being a family, and I think we're doing pretty well at it so far!
Miranda is one month new!
Hard to believe really. Don't feel like we've got the hang of it yet. Sadly, one month in to parenthood means no more paternity leave for Carl; he has gone back to work and I have survived two days on my own with Miri. It is HARD. She was obviously so excited about her birthday that she woke up and wanted to start the day at 5.15am, slept deliberately through more human times of day including our outing, and then yelled solidly for over three hours - just for the hell of it - when Carl got in. Headaches all round, and poor Carl couldn't enjoy dinner or just splop and relax in the evening.
Miri is growing up quickly, which is both exciting and scary and saddening in that there is so little time to appreciate the little things. She seems more alert and active every day, and is now (well, at times) happy to sit and stare at things, absorbing and processing information. She seems fascinated by lights, and was very very interested in the fruit machine in the pub, for example. I am convinced she smiles too. I know everyone says it's only wind - but I fail to see how she is capable of moving her face so that she frowns when she's cross or looks sad when crying, but apparently cannot express happiness yet? On the upside, when she is grumpy, she is looking more and more like Carl. I am told she looks like me when she sleeps though (ie: mouth wide open, occasionally drooling). She is also getting far more mobile, developing those neck muscles very well - but only using them when she wants to. She straightens her legs far more now too, and happily kicks me in the stomach. She can follow objects with her eyes when we move them about and makes steady eye contact with me when I talk to her, and she has successfully reached out for things and grabbed them once or twice too. Clever girl! (Actually, I was more proud of her when she aimed a flood of yellow poo straight down my Mum's leg, but that is besides the point!)
For her birthday, I got her a library card! She is now the youngest member of Darlington library, and of course, all the library staff cooed over her and admired her, as usual complimenting me on the amount of hair she has, as if I grew it for her intentionally! I got a few things out and signed up for Bookstart so she gets freebies in a few months time. I read to her already, even if she has no idea what I am saying. This gives me the chance to read the things I want, rather than the bloody Very Hungry Caterpillar(!!) and the sound of my voice sends Miranda to sleep quite easily - though I am not sure whether that is a good thing or not. She already stares hard at all the books on our shelves - lots of pretty colours in rows, I guess. Books are important, and no doubt she shall have lots of them. Though the library means Free Books for now, and if I get them out on her library card and she drools on them, they don't fine me. What a great system!
I also finally paid off the £3.60 library fine I accrued over a year ago, just so I could get out a book for myself. I found "My Mother Wears Combat Boots" by Jessica Mills. It is yet another (American) parenting book so I didn't have high hopes, but it is written with "alternative mums" as target audience. The author also has a blog: My Mother Wears Combat Boots which is more up to date. I am all for anything to make a change from average parenting books, because I believe they are written by faceless women who actually like the Mothercare-esque range of entirely-pastel, pink for girls, blue for boys baby clothes, call their children things like Lexy or Jayden or Chlamydia, and drive 4x4s 200 yards down the road to nursery. Miranda's Mother wears New Rocks and rides a cheap Chinese scooter called Binky. And Proud! Sadly, there are very few books that cater for people like me.
