No wonder I have to write everything down!

I clearly have too much on my mind. I started back at work this week, and whilst it's exciting, and great to be 'me' again for a few days each week, I appear to be losing my ability to think properly.

We left our freezer slightly open for, we think, a couple of days, before noticing it wasn't shut properly. So, as you'd expect, a whole load of food had to be thrown away, because even if it was OK, you just know I'd worry that it wasn't. OK, I hear you say, what's that got to do with not thinking? After all, anyone could make that mistake. You haven't heard the worst yet. Leaving the door open had ensured that it looked like there'd been a snowstorm in there; so I put down some towels, propped the door open, and left it to defrost.

The freezer is in the garage. It's one of two (don't ask). I went into the garage today to grab some food from the still-working freezer and happened to glance at the one I was defrosting. It was still frosty.

Hmm. I thought. That's taking a while. I suppose it has been cold the last few days though (our garage is freezing anyway.) And it took my brain a good couple of minutes to shout up enough for me to realise that it was still frosty because it was still turned on. The freezer door is wide open and I appear to be trying to freeze my entire garage. I dread to think what the electricity bill will look like.

I turned it off.

I think maybe I need more sleep.

If you go to work your children will be less healthy!?

I was told, ironically whilst taking my daughter to Tiny Tumblers (gymnastics for pre-schoolers), that there has been some research published this week that concludes that children of mums that stay at home are likely to be healthier than those of mums that go to work.

I'm a mum who has made a decision to return to work sooner than I had originally intended. The reasons for this are many and complex, but as you will note from my previous post, I've not managed to avoid a fair degree of guilt in coming to this decision. Ironic, as my girls already go to nursery two days a week; a move that we are very happy with having seen a huge improvement in my eldest daughters vocabulary and social skills in the first few months she went. So the girls won't be spending any less time with me. I then felt guilty that I won't be able to do the cleaning and laundry whilst they are out, but will have to do it in what it now their time with mummy. The guilt was short lived when I cottoned on to the fact that I could actually pay a cleaner to do all the chores (since I'd be earning) and therefore playtime isn't affected at all. Still felt guilty though. I think it's because I'm actually looking forward to working again, and almost feel that if I'm looking forward to doing something that's not with my girls I should feel guilty.

Knowing all this, you can perhaps imagine my response to this research report, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. It basically concluded that children of working mums were more likely to be fed junk food, and allowed to watch more telly and do less exercise.

As if I wasn't feeling guilty enough already! And then I got quite angry. As is the case with all research of this type, it's isolated. It doesn't measure how happy, contended or fulfilled the children, mums and dads in these families are. It doesn't account for mums that overcompensate and deny their children sweet snacks so vigorously that the children rebel as teens and end up even more likely to eat unhealthily as adults. It doesn't point out the other effect of mums going to work. The message it sends to the children that mum is a strong, independent woman, who works hard to provide for her family. Surely all positive?

As an accountant and statistician I felt compelled to look at this report more carefully. Typically I discovered that results had been 'adjusted' for confounding and mediating factors. In English, the results were originally the exact opposite. The unadjusted results show that children of mums who worked full or part time were more likely to eat fruit and veg between meals, eat three or more portions of fruit a day, participate in organised exercise three or more times a week, and eat fewer sweet snacks between meals.

These results were adjusted to take away the influence of the following factors; ethnicity, mum's job type, mum's marital status, mum's highest qualification, the number of other children and household income. This adjustment isolates the data to conclude that it was only the 'to work or not to work' status that affected health detrimentally.

The report did, to be fair, admit its limitations as all good reports do. (Pity the papers then reporting on them tend to pick out the sensationalistic bits only). It pointed out that results were based on answers to single questions, and that estimates were used where data was missing (for example assuming working hours continued at the same rate week after week).

Maybe the data would feel more helpful if they could somehow account for the mums (and dads!) values, beliefs, commitment and determination in these reports. When they find out who does the chores (maybe it's bought in, like my suggestion!), and measure the sizes of the food portions (one Jaffa cake for pudding is a bit different to large quantities of chocolate and ice cream. Half a packet of crisps after a large healthy meal isn't the same as half a packet of crisps when nothing else has been eaten.) Maybe then I could feel that it was a helpful report. But probably not. Afterall, I won't accept anyone telling me I'm a bad mother. I do the guilt thing quite happily on my own thank you.

I'd like to propose that all us mothers respond to this as follows. We take it with a pinch of salt.

We all have common sense, and we all know what we, and our children, should be eating. And to be fair I believe that there are a huge amount of people out there, parents or not, who already feel pressurised to be stick thin, tanned, gorgeous, successful, sexy... and calm, and despite all this ridiculous pressure, are living life the the best of their ability and doing a darn good job of it.
Give us all a break and let us figure it out ourselves. We know we could be healthier. There's unlikely to ever be a point when people tell us we're too healthy. So give it a rest!


Go to the guardian website just for the fun of reading the resulting comments that the press report obtained. Seems to be a general consensus that this scientific report will be, at best, ignored in the same way that the working dads were. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/29/working-mothers-child-health

View the actual report at http://press.psprings.co.uk/jech/september/ch84590.pdf

To Work or Not to Work?

I am discovering that this blog is quite therapeutic. The danger is that I start ranting and complaining all the time. I'll have to rely on you wonderful readers to let me know as soon as that starts I guess!

It would appear that the younger is much better now, and that the elder, though suffering from whinging syndrome this morning, appears to be fine to. We've had two undisturbed nights of sleep and I'm feeling more human as a result. Not quite yummy yet, but human is a start.

I'm due to go back to work shortly, and am struggling with the guilt that comes with it. Though both children go to nursery for two days each week already, and love it; and though I'll still have my time with them; I'm still beating myself up about it. As you know, I struggle to get all the chores done as it is, so how on earth will I cope if I have to work as well?

The only thing I am clear about is that I need to use my adult brain again. The one that manages intellectual conversations and analyses data for a living. There's the argument that I could do something else. After all, if I have time to work, then I could be learning a new skill, going to the gym, more easily managing the chores? But I like my job (I know it's unusual). So I figure, why not do that, and get paid for it. Then everyone will benefit from the improved holiday's we'll be able to afford!

The 'to work or not to work' debate does have a bearing on my ability to be yummy though. It will literally force me to get up earlier in the morning to make myself look acceptable for work, and not just for the school run. I'll let you know how that goes!

Sleep - or lack of it. Part 2

OK, so maybe reminding yourself how wonderful it is that your children need you, doesn't really cut the mustard at 4am when you've been trying to settle your baby to sleep (without waking your toddler) for the past 2 hours.

It turns out that my bout of sleepless nights wasn't over. I managed 2 hours sleep before she woke me, and 2 1/2 hours once she finally went back in her cot and stayed asleep. It was Thursday night, and, to be fair, it could have been worse. Yes, honest, it could have been! The elder managed to stay asleep, so I didn't have two of them to contend with, and since I was on my own that night I was incredibly pleased with that. And frankly, I could have had less than 5 1/2 hours sleep!

Last night they both slept. 7pm til 6.30am. It's so random. I've always found the unpredictability of it the most difficult to contend with. If I knew I'd get a full night sleep in 2 days, then I'd be able to cope with 2 nights of disturbed sleep before then. But I guess that's just one of the challenges that we face as parents.

It's 10pm tonight and the younger is coughing. So it sounds like she's not fully healthy quite yet! It remains to be seen how much sleep we'll all get tonight.

If you are the mum of a baby that is still waking in the night, I know how you feel. I've been there, done that, and although they are normally very good, I'm occasionally still doing that. And no, we don't all just cope with it easily. One of my biggest tests as a parent has been to learn to operate on less than 9 hours sleep a night. (I love my sleep!) Actually, scrap that. My biggest test has been to operate "without being grumpy" on less than 9 hours sleep a night.

My husband would definitely tell you that I haven't succeeded. It's best not to talk to me before, hmmm, say 10am, even though I've been up since 6am. It takes me that long to properly wake up and stop being grumpy! Well, at least until I'm falling asleep on the sofa at 10pm!

Speaking of which, that makes it my bedtime doesn't it! Goodnight.

Sleep - or lack of it!

Just when you think you’ve got the sleep stuff sorted, along comes another problem to test your patience and your ability to think coherently on next-to-no sleep.

We thought we’d got our two girls’ sleep sorted months ago. Bath at 6pm and asleep by 7pm for the one year old, and by 7.30 for the three year old. Both up somewhere between 6 and 7am. Closer to 6am more often than we’d perhaps like, but hey, you can’t complain at that. So, when the younger came up to her first birthday we didn’t expect to be experiencing a week of middle of the night wake ups from both of them.

I’m a big believer in the theory that babies cry because there is something they are trying to communicate, and therefore I should always, given long enough, be able to work out what the problem is and fix it especially once your got to know your babies cries quite well. So when the younger woke at 9.30pm one night, I thought her problem must be wind, since she only ever woke in the evening with that problem. I tried to wind her, and, sure enough, she snuggled up on my lap, in the ‘winding’ position, and tried to get back to sleep. But when I then kissed her goodnight and put her back in her cot, she screamed.

Now the younger only ever had a short period of needing to be settled to sleep. Being the second child she worked out how to settle herself fairly quickly, both through necessity, and the fact that I knew how to teach her this time. So crying, when put back in her cot, is for her, most unusual. Back out she came for more winding, but it soon became clear that wind wasn’t her problem. I tried sitting with her for a bit, waiting for sleep, and then attempting the cot transfer, but... no such luck. I then tried giving her baby paracetamol, sitting with her for a further half hour to give that chance to do its bit, assuming that her next tooth must be causing her problems (she’d been biting everything in sight that day), and attempted the transfer again. Nope. Changing her nappy, which wasn’t particularly necessary, but I did it anyway, also made no difference. In the end her dad sat with her for a further half an hour, and managed to get her in her cot. It’s funny how sometimes a change in parent can do the trick, particularly if the first one is starting to lose patience.

Not long after that the elder woke up, and wouldn’t settle without one of us being in the room for a bit. I fell asleep in her room. Not long after I’d returned to my own bed at about 1am, did the younger wake again, and dad went to resettle her. At 5am she woke again, I sat with her for a while, and the elder woke up at 5.30, so dad went to settle her. The elder, of course, didn’t go back to sleep. The younger had another hour to try and catch up and woke around 7.30am.

This pattern, of the younger waking early evening, settling her, then having to deal with the elder, and the younger waking again around 2/3am, continued for around two weeks. But it wasn’t nearly as simple as ‘wind’.  The younger had picked up Conjunctivitus and at the same time a cold consisting of a runny nose and nasty cough. The elder then picked up the cold. We ensured that both girls got a tissue with Karvol on it in their rooms. (It’s a very effective vapour that stops the nose running, effectively then stopping most of the cough, which had been the result of the phlegm running down the back of the throat.) The younger also got a big bowl of water in her room to increase the humidity and aid the cough further.

The next few nights slowly improved, but the elder kept being woken by the younger's crying. Then, just as the younger had a couple of days with almost no cold symptoms she got really bad nappy rash. Lots of cream seemed to help, but her night waking increased that night, every time she wet her nappy.

The next day we discovered spots on her legs as well as her bottom. She’d had a similar spotty rash during a previous cold, and the doctors had confirmed it was viral. This time the doctors thought the same, but were less sure when we discovered larger blister like spots on her fingers and toes. Strangely, other than the spots, you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with her. Her conjunctivitis had by this point cleared up, and the cold had gone. Well, until the next morning anyway, when the runny nose came back. But she was livelier than ever, and that night we gave her a dose of paracetamol before bed and for the first time in almost 2 weeks she slept through without needing intervention. (we heard her murmur a couple of times but that was it.) The doctor thinks the spots may be a common childhood condition called Foot, Hand and Mouth, but can’t confirm it.  If it is, it’ll just get better within the next week or so.

We’re convinced that she has, simultaneously, been teething, so the poor girl has really had a lot to deal with this last fortnight, but I’m hoping that this period of disturbed sleep is drawing to a close. It would appear that you never can tell with children. Especially children that have both recently gone back to nursery after the summer break. Pity they share illnesses so much more easily than toys!

I guess my reason for sharing this is to say, that there was a reason for the crying. She wasn’t just being difficult – I don’t believe babies know how to do that deliberately. She needed us for various reasons, and we weren’t quite as adept at fixing her problems as well as we perhaps did when the need was purely for milk! We are learning all the time. And struggling a lot of the time. So for all you mums out there short on sleep, take heart. The time when you are having to haul them out of bed to get them to school will be upon you before you know it. So what if you have a few disturbed nights now. There’s something quite comforting about sitting in the dark with a child falling to sleep in your arms. It’s a reminder that we’re needed. And though it’s sometimes difficult, we wouldn’t have it any other way.