Bitter irony, sweet truth

you just dont see things the same after you have had kids.
obviouse to those who have, patronising to those who havent, yet true.

this is not to say that childless people dont have insight, there are some extremely intuitive people in the world without children. and not all people with children are either wise or intuitive. but, in genaral- at some point after bearing children, there come a lightbulb moment and you think, "oh, THIS is what its all about...!".

being of the annoyiongly hard-to-describe variety of life changing events, if only for the sheer depth and magnimity of it, parenthood is left at that: "life changing". and, i guess, for those who havent ventured it seems a totally flimsy, at best obvious and at worst totally self centred phrase: of course parenthood is life changing, caring for someone 24 hours a day, spending the money now spent on lesure on childcare and baby stuff is hard.

but, if that were all the changes becoming a parent encompass, then it would be inconvenient, but not life changing.

becoming a parent means that a curtain literally lifts on your conciousness: the realities of life seem all too obvious when before the were obscured. the meaning of life itself is revealed, and this unifies you with all humankind, with every other parent on the planet. war seems crazy and inhuman in a whole different way: when you hear 'collateral damage' you know its not just faceless people, it is newborns, mothers in labour, pregnant women, children taking their first steps and learning to read that are killed. repugnant on a whole other level.

it also connects you with all those that have come before, an ever marching, overwhelming ancestral line of humans. being born: the thing we share with all humankind. personally i also felt strangely connected to all female mammals, (im sure having a 'mamalian' natural birth had alot to do with this)- the feeling of being an animal, of birthing, then suckling and tending my fragile young.

sexual stereotypes start to clarify and ring true (to varying degrees depending on the couple). it becomes overwhelmiongly obviouse how a women can become enmeshed, enslaved, literally bogged down by the task of mothering and all thew connected caring that can be snared along with it.

for me, as a woman the real essence, meaning and work of "woman" was disclosed. a womans body, made for this- not made just to please oneself, ones partner or the world at large, but to carry child. a womans feelings: the bodily cravings for the baby you have birthed and sustain, again an animal instinct. surely, this must be what it is to be "woman".

and edges become rounder: hard hearts become soft- a parents heart is forever on their sleeve. pride is numbed and humbled- the ego becomes secondary to the frighteningly urgent and basic needs of your offspring. vanity becomes less important and even the most narcissistic of people drop their standards with parenthood, if slightly.

and another, harder thing: in this new world order, where things are understood with more clarity, you suddenly become aware that up until now you were almost not living. there is this crazy sense that now it has begun, now it has started- now i see clearly. the conscious fallout of this is a sense of heightened creativity- the world is at our fingertips, there is just SO MUCH to do. ironically, being a parent especially of babies or young children, you are at the very worst point you can be to realise these things- time poor and sleep deprived you invent businesses and inventions and ideas as you push the pram, put baby to sleep or clear up after another long day.

thats the bitter irony, the sweet truth is that, you dont really have to

Real Living

Real Living... it could almost be the title for one of the hoards of 'Women's magazines' lining the news agent's shelves... yet 'real' is the exact opposite of what they are.

A friend recently passed me on a stack of her mags (living in a foreign country, mags tend to get passed around and well read). I almost put them straight in the bin. Over the years, and with maturity, I have noticed that directly after reading such magazines my dissatisfaction with some aspect of my life tends to grow, be it body, clothes, state of the house, career or cooking and parenting. Something always feels 'not quite good enough'. Through negative association, and a kind of self-aware damage limitation, I now simply stay away.

Yet, a stack of these mags made it into my house, and instead of the bin they ended up in the loo. Good toilet reading, I thought. Aware of their strong negative power, I have dipped in and out lightly, not taking much too seriously. But one new thing I noticed was the grand, grand in-authenticity of a life they portray. Yes, I know it sounds obvious, but for a while I have been mulling over the crazy situation in which we find a 'projected' (i.e. media-led) image of life and the huge, I mean HUGE, difference with real life.

In an interview with a celebrity, the said celebrity mentions her children, "...such a joy, when they are happy I'm happy, I love parenthood..." etc. Now, I guarantee that 99% of mums I know with 2 or 3 children would say something like "I love them but they are bloody annoying. On a good day I delight in their new experiences, their chat and their smiles, on a bad day I just want to walk out for a pint of milk and never come back. I miss my head space, I miss clean clothes and an orderly house, I miss being able to go to the cinema or for dinner without it costing just as much again in a babysitter, I miss eating at what time I want and just flopping down at the end of the day instead of having to pick up clothes, put out washing, prep stuff for the next day and always think ahead. I love them dearly, my heart cannot contain this strong love I feel for them , it overwhelms me and yet sometimes I feel it is sinking me."

In these mags we are portrayed this image of life as orderly, clean, neat, explainable, when it is the opposite of all that. Life is messy, confusing, grubby and ever changing. You grasp hold of a feeling, an idea, an answer... it slips away, to be replaced by something else. And always change, change, change. Nothing stay the same... not your children, your relationship, your home, job, the people around you. It is a constant swirl or dance of things coming and going and how could that really be orderly?

Sometimes, with hindsight, our brain manage to put a kind of meaning (and order) to events. We are trained to see patterns, so we see them, our life has narrative in retrospect. But really, in the moment it is all a swirl, a whirl, we fall form one thing to the next. Who doesn't? And I find that it's when we resist this, or the times we 'get it all under control' (as if WE were in control of the vast unknown) that we fall hardest.

Navigating life is navigating change, flowing with what comes at you, not stubbornly steering within 'acceptable limits' of appearance, cleanliness, career. Real Living is living with this change and uncertainty and the myriad of loose ends we exist with. Wouldn't it be refreshing to read about that for a change?

Different mothers, different methods

Have you ever been in a situation where you and a close friend ‘do’ some aspect of parenting differently?

How did you deal with it? Did you keep your mouth shut and silently chastise yourself for not being able to calmly, maturely put your side of the argument over without it becoming just that?

Or did you calmly and maturely put your side across without it becoming an argument but afterwards a) agonize about whether you offended your friend (was I too opinionated? Did I make her feel bad?!) or b) Feel like you yourself have been doing the wrong thing and are therefore a bad mother.

Have you ever talked in depth about a parenting issue with one friend, knowing that another mutual friend does the opposite to the two of you, and then felt terrible, just terrible, when seeing your beloved first friend?

My answers (and I’m guessing, yours) are yes, yes, yes and yes!

Parenting is such a personal thing it verges on ideology. Sometimes we are making different choices to our own parents, or to society at large and this means that our choices are backed up by reading, solid research and a fist-full ‘o’ facts’. Our choice becomes our position, our ‘thing’, part of our identity.

The facts are our ammunition, our defence against all those people (or companies) who would convert us to bottle feed/to breastfeed, to vaccinate/to not vaccinate, to make fresh baby food/to buy jars, to use washable nappies/to save time and an already overloaded laundry basket and harm the planet and use disposables (delete as appropriate).

We justify our choice many times by putting the other choice as ‘wrong’. But what if the other choice is being made by someone you love and respect? What if while lining up all those other ‘haters’ your best friend slips in? Hands up you cruel ferberising maniacs! Oh, sorry mate, not you, obviously…

I once heard someone say “each family is its own culture” and I couldn’t agree more. There may be overlap with others, and if we are lucky even overlap with friends and family, but one thing is for sure- there will be differences.

So what ever happened to respecting difference? Or not just respecting, but enjoying, even revelling in difference?

This means listening non-judgmentally (hard), discussing while not preaching (harder) and actually beginning to enjoy that we do things differently, enjoy that there is conversation, information, being flexible and open to change if it seems right, while not feeling either self righteous or guilty if we carry on just as we are.

I think an important part of being parents is working on accepting that probably every method of childrearing is at once both right and wrong, and that not one of us will do things perfectly, no matter how many facts we own. In the long run, our mistakes as well as our triumphs become part of who we are as people, as parents.

Let’s admit that, at times, we are all scared witless by this insane task and have no idea what we are doing. And, as the old saying goes- wouldn’t it be boring if we were all the same?

Accepting ourselves, accepting our kids

Many times as parents we are reminded just what a huuuuge responsibility being a parent is, and how muuuuch we influence our children's lives (duh). For many of us, this causes us to reflect a lot on how we want to be as parents, and how we want to be as people. We choose "a way", a parenting "style", we read books, attend classes, have debates with like (and not so like ) minded parents, write articles and blogs about it (!).

Many times we make parenting a way of life.

Then comes the day when your child doesn't do what you want them to do. The fuss, scream, have tantrums, give up piano lessons, swear at you, break your stuff, refuse your organic food, and eventually become chavs or bankers... where did I go wrong, we ask? You were supposed to become a vegetarian, flute-playing, pacifist carpenter? And you, you were supposed to be a ground-breaking, documentary activist, changing the world! I cooked you organic food, paid through the nose for an alternative education, I breast fed you until you were 3, co-slept with you for 9 years, damnit!

The "investment" of rearing children is huge. Aside from the financial aspect we jeopardise our relationships, careers, and irreversibly change (I prefer that word to "ruin") our bodies. What would that all be for if we didn't get something back?

We invest all we can and we expect rewards: well balanced, HAPPY, healthy, emotionally aware, ethical, environmental, peaceful, creative children... WOAH. What a burden.


But the eventual truth of parenting is that you may never get something back, and that you just have to swallow. They may never say thank-you.

It could be more useful to focus what we can give to each child at a particular time, not martyre ourselves against our kids and then take it out on them emotionally when they don't live up to whatever standards we have outlined. So if you can manage organic food and giving them 5-a-day this week, great. If it's beans on toast and a vitamin, that's fine too. If you can afford an expensive school right now and you like it, do it. If you can't, don't re-mortgage your house to do so, in the long run (measured by parental stress) it's simply not worth it.

It takes children to humble what many of us see as success or failure. With my first child I did everything "right": I did pregnancy yoga, ate right, had a homebirth, co-slept, breastfed... and had a fat, happy little baby that I carried around in a sling all day, thinking - clever me!

With number 2 I also birthed at home, carried in a sling, breastfed on demand, co-slept and she cried to high hell for the first 3 months. It brought me down a peg or two, and helped me to see that what we do (be it co-sleeping or paying for an expensive education) has to come from a desire to do it because you can, and should be independent of the end result (a quiet baby, an outstanding career).

It's called accepting ourselves as parents, out limitations, letting go of those ideas of perfection, and accepting our kids too, be they carpenters, chavs, documentary makers or bankers.

Kairos and Chronos

I learned something new this week, and relevant to my Greek heritage so it has added interest. The ancient Greeks had two different words (and concepts) of time: chronos and kairos.

Chronos is the sequential, clock time that we all know; the clock ticks, the months pass, we grow, age, die.

Kairos (beautiful name, have to save it for number 3!) means a moment between time, a sacred inspiration, a moment out of a moment, spiritual enlightenment, a pure other-worldly fragment, being firmly in the now.

Chronos: kairos.
Quantity: quality.
Past and future: the present.
Body: spirit.
Doing: being.

While chronos is a necessity, a fact and a reality, kairos must not be forgotten. Kairos is the moment you stop and look, see the colour of light or taste the year's first strawberry, slip into a crisp sea, notice a raspberry-hued cloud bank on the horizon, hear your child chuckle, feel that "all is well". Kairos makes chronos a joy, life worth living.

I'm happy to have the words to express something I already knew.

Dollars

Listening to Aloe Blacc's "I need dollar" this morning made me think of all the families out there struggling to meet their needs. Although we struggle, there is no doubt that food will be on the table, that we will have the things we need (and I differentiate between need and want).

What about the people that are spiralling into debt? For the average person, even defaulting on rent for a few months will create a debt cycle that can take years to get out of. With Christmas coming up it makes me feel so, so sad for these people and their families: in Greece, Ireland, Iceland, America...

What will it take for us to see the absurdity of the system? Because if we did all "share our dollars" like in the song, there would be no problem. The world has more than enough dollars to feed, house, clothe everyone and more, and that thought is perhaps the saddest of all.

A very personal trauma

A close friend has just given birth to her second child, and it brings up all sorts of emotions for me.The birth of my second was long and hard, at home but not the 'nicety-nice' type of home-birth, more the blood sweat and tears version.

Post-partum was worse. Much of it was spent re-living what I had perceived as a difficult labour, we had no family support in the country, and our eldest was going through a very difficult stage. To top it all off #2 was a crier for the first 3 months.

I spent most of the time with a crying child on each knee, dying inside. Or locked into my room with the newborn, a cabinet wedged against the door, my elder son hammering on it, smashing things, urinating on the carpet, biting us.

Looking at it from a distance, it was the portal into greater self knowledge, as only trauma can be: I went over the things that triggered my unease with an analyst who I found after a period of depression, and it was a great thing to do.

So as I imagine my friend right now, in hospital, with her tiny baby, not knowing how the next few weeks and months will be, I want to make them all better for her. I want to support her and prevent her from suffering and be there for her like no-one was for me.

Yet even if her experience proves to be difficult, and there's no saying it will, how could I protect her? And, would I even want to? Isn't the trauma also part of the spectrum of life, as important as the euphoria? Wouldn't I be doing her out of a learning process if I did manage to make it "all better"?

I also in some weird way want to relive those first few months of 2nd time motherhood, make them good, make them OK. I subconsciously want to live vicariously through her, this time doing all the right things. For some time after the birth I would imagine having a 3rd child just to do it "well", imagining how I would prepare better, how I wouldn't let it phase me, how I would be better this time.

It is no exaggeration to say that how a woman experiences childbirth is of utmost importance- it brings together her past (what she brings to to the birth psychologically) her present (how she perceives and experiences the event) and her future (the new life, how it fits onto the great river of life, does it help her bob along, does it drown her).

I hope I can strike the balance between supporting my friend without being overbearing, without injecting my experience into it. My stomach knots at the thought of what she may go through, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But I must have faith in her and hope. A difficult balance.