Taking on the Christmas Day challenge

This year, as for the past ten years (give or take), Drake and I divided our Christmas Day between his parents and mine. Before Duckling was born, we used to have Christmas lunch at his folks, then head to my parents late afternoon, usually arriving just in time for dessert following their evening Christmas dinner. Since Duckling and Gosling (his cousin) have been on the scene however, we've gone full Vicar of Dibley and have two full Christmas dinners in one day, arriving an hour or two before dinner at my parents to give the kids time to play together. Gaviscon is definitely our friend come Yuletide.

At 22 months, Duckling is still comparatively portable, and not sufficiently caught up in Crimbo mania to be particularly bothered about where he is or what's going on. By next year however, I suspect he'll rather more switched on, and won't be so keen to pack up his presents mid way through the day for yet more forced brussel sprout eating at his other Grandma's. To be honest, upping sticks at 3pm, ramming a range of oversized toys in an already bulging boot and driving 30 miles across South East England is not my idea of a fun either these days (and that's before we get on to the indigestion issues), so I'm definitely ready for a change.

As such, I have tentatively offered to host Christmas at our house next year, for the first time ever. It's a full twelve months away, but I'm already terrified. Our dual family Christmas has been a tradition for so long, I'm not really sure where to start when it comes to stamping my own, grown up identity on the day. Here follows just a few aspects that will need to be considered:

Opening presents. Drake's parents go for the slowly slowly, one at a time, everybody admires each other's gifts and is suitably complementary approach. His Mum and Dad give each other sensible, practical things, like garden twine and golfing shoes, and we get whatever we put on our Christmas list, and not much more. With my family, it's a bit more of a simultaneous wrapping paper rip fest, not least because my Mum always goes a bit mad on the presents and if we took them one at a time, we'd still be opening them some time in February.

Christmas dinner. Drake's mother cooks a small turkey crown (there are only four and a half of us), Paxo stuffing balls, a few roast potatoes, sprouts from the garden, and just about enough carrots to allow for four (five if you're lucky) batons each. My mother serves up a turkey large enough to feed an army, a navy and an air force combined; homemade sausage meat stuffing; bacon roll ups and pigs in blankets; roast potatoes and parsnips; new potatoes; a ham (usually eaten on Boxing Day); five different types of veg; cranberry sauce; bread sauce; and several pints of gravy. Plus a minimum of three desserts. She cooks everything from scratch (though my sister does help with the desserts), and it's always timed to perfection and absolutely bloody amazing. How in the hell I'm ever going to pull off Christmas day to anywhere near her standard, I do not know.

Helping out. Drake's folks tell us in no uncertain terms that we cannot help with the cooking, as we deserve a rest, and it's our time to put our feet up an relax. My Mum tells us we can't help out because she has it all planned, and it's difficult to delegate anything without spoiling the metaphorical broth (a.k.a we'll balls it up). I'm fairly sure I'll be in the latter camp when it's my turn, though I may try to pass it off as the former...

Post dinner activities. We spend the evening of Christmas Eve with Drake's parents, and the evening of Christmas Day with mine. At Drake's, we are plied with alcohol by Drake's Dad (he takes it as a personal failing if we do not have a full drink in our hands at all times) while everyone engages in polite, and increasingly slurred chit chat about people I mostly haven't heard of, and places I haven't been. Then at some time after midnight (we have to 'see Christmas in', however knackered) we all head to bed, after repeated reassurances that we really don't need hot water bottles as it's 16oC outside, thank you, and we really won't be bothered by the heating 'clicking on' at 5am (I have yet to hear the cacophonous din this apparently involves, but we are warned about it every year). At my parents, we collapse on the sofa, switch on a Christmas Day film on which nobody really concentrates, and vegetate until bedtime. Incidentally, at no point are apologies made for the heating, even though it's a blow-air system that sounds like a B52 bomber starting up every time it comes on.

Family relations. Drake's family are all about harmony, peace and avoiding any form of conflict or awkwardness. As such, discussions about religion, politics and psychology are off limits. Drake's mother once famously snapped at his father for fussing over some placemats, but that is honestly the only time I recall any tension whatsoever. My family, well, not quite so calm and collected. Christmas is usually a noisy affair (particularly with two nearly-twos together) with spirited debate welcomed, and at least one falling out over something pretty much guaranteed (most famously when my Dad bought my Mum a bread bin rather than an ice cream maker. Not well received). I don't want to exaggerate - the arguments are never on an Eastenders scale, and mostly we all have decent enough senses of humour to laugh things off and avoid real issues. But passions definitely run higher in my family abode than they do in Drake's.

In summary, it's a choice between moderation and tranquillity, and (moderate) excess and (mild) drama. Given that Drake and I both bring elements from each family, it's probably inevitable that next year's dinner - if I stick to my promise - will be an odd mixture of all of the above. Plus plenty of stress on my part. I can't cook for people without stressing (usually about gravy. It is my nemesis). Whatever we do, the most important thing will be making it memorable (in a good way) for Duckling. I'm pretty sure that doesn't require a million presents, or two dozen perfectly roasted chipolatas. It just needs happyish, probably slightly tipsy parents, the wonder of Santa, lots of fairy lights and a decent cardboard box to play in. If we stick to that I'm sure we can't go wrong.

Guns in America: a short rant

This is not going to be a long post, as what I'm going to say has been said many times before by people far more eloquent and informed than me. As a Brit, it's probably not even a subject I should hold a strong opinion on, but having a husband who has lived in the US for long stretches, and having spent a lot of time out there myself, I do.

The shooting last week in San Bernardino, California, was the 353rd mass shooting in the USA this year. Fourteen people killed, seventeen injured and the legislative response to such a shocking, appalling waste of life?  For the 353rd time this year, nothing, zip, zero. 

The Republican party's blocking of any form of gun control or even more disturbingly, any form of publically funded research into gun crime, highlights not only a casual disregard for human life, but also an apparently intractable issue in the US system of politics. While the two-house congress structure ensures checks and balances, in certain circumstances (e.g. when the opposition party controls one or both houses), it also prevents the US president, allegedly one of the most powerful people on the planet, from acting to protect his citizens.  A majority of Americans back greater gun control, but unfortunately, in the House of Representatives, gun advocates are in the majority, which means that any attempts to introduce legislation to better vet gun owners is voted down, every time.

Many argue that stricter gun control laws will not necessarily change gun death rates in the US much (although a total ban on hand guns almost certainly would), but even a small decrease would be important, as would the symbolic value to both US citizens and those internationally who look on with horror at the total lack of political action towards such routine slaughter.

I am aware of the mythical history around gun possession in the USA, of the constitutional right to bear arms, of the arguments put forward about guns being necessary to stop a dictatorial government rising up and oppressing the people, of the suggestion that the only thing that's going to stop someone with a gun is another person with a gun... Unfortunately, it's all utter bullshit without any foundation in empirical research, or even reasoned argument.  Look at any country in Europe (and many beyond), and you'll see that mass gun ownership is totally unnecessary to maintain peaceful, democratic nations.  The reality is that these beliefs stem not from fact, but from right-wing media generated fear, the glamorisation of guns and the macho culture surrounding them, and the lobbying power of the NRA and major arms manufacturers.

The problem is that mass shootings, which are on the up in the US despite a drop in other forms of violent crime, have become so commonplace now that they have seeped into the common consciousness.  If you are an individual on the edge of sanity, or belong to a culture where violence necessarily begets violence, shooting a bunch of people has become a legitimised response to whatever grievance you may have, and you have numerous past examples to inspire you.  With few restrictions to prevent you obtaining your weapon of choice, it's simply a matter of point and shoot until the bullets run out.

I am all for freedom - freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of belief. Freedom to purchase an assault rifle with, realistically, no other purpose than to shoot a lot of people in a very short space of time seems like a very perverse freedom to me though, given that it robs other people of their freedom to live unafraid, and could very well rob them of their lives.

Drake and I had the option to start a new life in the USA a few years back.  There are many things I love about America (mac 'n' cheese!) and most Americans, like people anywhere, are decent, honest and kind.  Were it not for my family ties, we would have gone.  Now we have a child though, I'm not sure I would consider it, not because I'd worry Duckling would get shot - the risk of that is actually still very small (though given you're thirty times more likely to be murdered with a gun in the USA than the UK, I would worry a little bit more), but because I don't want him to grow up in a country where lethal weapons are so revered by so many, and where guns - which, let's face it, are designed with the sole purpose of injuring/killing - are seen as an unfortunate but necessary tool for living in a civilised society.  Because no society where essentially one mass shooting takes place every day of the year can really be considered civilised; I don't care how good the mac 'n' cheese is.

The comedy stylings of Master Duckling

The last few weeks have been a bit of a roller coaster in the Duck household, with Duckling's various illnesses and the hospital admission. Now he's better though, he's making up for all the stress and worry in the best possible way: by making us laugh as only a toddler of one-and-three-quarters can.

Honestly, sometimes my child is pure comedy gold. I know every parent delights in the sweet hilarity of their kids (it's their primary saving grace) but Duckling seems to be on particularly fine form at present. At the risk of sounding rather indulgent, here are a few of my current favourite Ducklingisms:

• He's taken to seeking out my bras and thrusting them in my direction shouting "bye bye boobies!". Because, you know, logically that IS what happens when you don a brassiere...
• He's totally in love with sitting in items he's much too big for and spinning around. Like saucepans. And colanders. And the salad spinner. 
• His wonderful "make do" approach to talking. If he can't say the word, he uses something which roughly fits the bill. Hence the bath is a "puddle", an aeroplane is a "neeow", my brush is a "hair", coins and other small objects are "peas/bees" (hard to tell which) and Peppa Pig is a loud grunting noise. When he can say the word, he often likes to emphasise it by saying it twice too ("go go", "door door", "num num"). He can actually speak in rough sentences, but unless you have your Duckling to English dictionary handy, you're never going to understand what "Marmar go go neenor Mummy" means ("Grandma is going home in her car Mummy" for reference). And, my favourite part, if all else fails, he will just call an object a "deedah": his version of a doodah I believe. 
• The tongue of concentration. Not even two and already displaying one of the traits (sticking my tongue out while concentrating) I get teased about the most by Drake. I'm very proud.
• His obsession with the fridge. It's floor level and we have no way of properly locking it, so he's in there every time my back is turned. This mostly causes intense irritation and blueberries all over the floor, but it can be quite amusing too. Like the time he made a train out of all of the condiments. Or stuffed 5 cocktail sausages in his mouth at once just as Grandma arrived, then tried to yell "Heyo Marmar".... Or tried to eat a red onion thinking it was an apple...
• The moments of sheer surrealism. Yesterday he took his plastic farmyard pig into the bath with him. "Wo dat?" he asked, pointing to the line of nipples on the pig's belly. "They're her nipples" I said. "Like her boobies." "Ooooh, num num!" said Duckling, then pretended to pick off each nipple like a grape and pop it in his mouth, smacking his lips and declaring it to be "mmmmm, nummy". After I'd been handed a few invisible nipples and declared them 'nummy' too, it occurred to me I should possibly be disturbed by all this detachable nipple munching. Thankfully he hasn't tried it on me yet though.
• His odd clothing-related quirks. For example, he absolutely cannot possibly go to bed without socks on, and will wake up to protest if one falls off in the night. Or his love/hate relationship with hats - wears them when he doesn't need to, rejects them when he does. Or his pathological hatred of his snazzy red and grey hoody top (it's lovely - I honestly have no idea what he has against it).
• His insistence on shouting "Oh no!" at every instance of mild disaster, even when he has quite obviously been the cause of the disaster concerned. "Oh no!" he cried yesterday, with an expression of mock horror on his face as he rammed his block trolley repeatedly into his Duplo farm, scattering various plastic animals across the living room. "Oh no!" he yelled this morning, as he shoved his poor toy meerkat down the back of the bed for the seventeenth time in a row. "Oh no, oh no!" he screeched in the bath this evening as he emptied his watering can onto my lap...
• The fact that everything in life must be categorised into "Mummy", "Daddy" and "Me". Three different sized teddy bears? "Mummy bear, Daddy bear, Me bear!" Shoes under the stairs? "Mummy's doos, Daddy's doos, Me doos!", Random cars parked along the street? "Mummy's neenor, Daddy's neenor, Mummy's neenor, Mummy's neenor, Daddy's neenor, ME NEENOR!" Apparently he owns a 2005 Ford Mondeo. Who knew?

Yep, sometimes owning a toddler is utterly brilliant. Surreal, baffling and quite often messy, but brilliant nonetheless.

Returning to normality after a hospital stay

Well, as I stated back in August in my post about the frustrations of looking after a sick child, it was only a matter of time before we ended up in hospital for something. This particular something was a very nasty chest infection of the kind that makes kids breathe as though they're running a marathon and wheeze like an accordion. Poor Duckling didn't really know what had hit him. He'd been ill with a cold, cough and temperature for a couple of weeks, but by the weekend before last, appeared to have made a full recovery. We breathed a sigh of relief, but barely 48 hours of optimal health had passed before another cold hit him and the cough returned. For a day or two it seemed mild, but then a temperature developed again and mild turned into really quite wheezy. We saw the GP who diagnosed bronchiolitis and prescribed an inhaler, and this seemed to help a bit for a day or so, but then quite wheezy turned into really struggling to breathe and after a trip to the out of hours clinic on Sunday, we were sent straight to hospital.

Making the transition into hospital is a comparatively easy affair, apart from the lucky dip involved in sending your husband back for your overnight things (I ended up with one pair of hiking socks and one pair of knee highs but otherwise he did surprisingly well). One word from a doctor and suddenly there isn't any doubt in your mind that hospital is where you have to be. Nothing but your child then matters - not work, not social engagements, not loads of washing, not appropriate underwear. It's quite an out of body experience. Life is lived from one round of observations to the next, and your emotions become inextricably linked to a set of numbers on a chart. On day one, things generally went like this each time a nurse came to do Duckling's "obs":

Respiratory rate: 68 breaths per minute (Oh God, that's not good)
Heart rate: 182 beats per minute (Waaay too fast)
Oxygen saturation levels: 85% (Bad, bad, bad. Can he get brain damage from that?!)
Temperature: 40.1 o C (Holy crap)

By day three, it was more:

Respiratory rate: 48 breaths per minute (Great!)
Heart rate: 154 beats per (Super!)
Oxygen saturation levels: 97% (Hooray!)
Temperature: 37.5 o C (Whoop! We can go home!)

Ours was a ward of wheezers (as one nurse put it). The three other kids in the beds around us all appeared to have very similar illnesses involving fevers, breathing problems and coughs. Their reactions to their illnesses were notably diverse however. Duckling essentially breastfed and slept, breastfed and slept, occasionally perking up enough (when on Calpol) to go for a short toddle, watch a Peppa Pig or have a grumble about the pulse oximeter on his toe. The boy next to Duckling was a month younger than him. His approach was to veer wildly between mania (shaking the bars of his cage cot like a gorilla, wailing, throwing his toys on the floor) and extreme lethargy (collapsing in a heap and sleeping for hours). The girl opposite, who was about four, silently sat in her hospital bed looking serene and pale, like a painting of some Victorian moppet with influenza. In contrast, the little two year old girl next to her slept, then thrashed about, then woke, then coughed, then cried loudly and pitifully on an hourly loop that continued the entire time we were in there. I didn't hear her speak once except to moan "mama" though her tears.

While the children's reactions to their maladies were mixed though, as mothers, our reactions were remarkably uniform. We soothed, we stroked, we cuddled, we reassured, and at some point we all curled up with our little ones on their / our beds to sleep or comfort (or in my case hold the oxygen mask over a fidgety Duckling's face for five hours). Admittedly we weren't in the intensive care unit, but I don't remember once feeling panicked or thinking "help, what should I do?" - I just knew, and everyone else seemed to as well, as though our most basic, innate mothering instincts had been turned up to the max to drown out all other concerns. I was worried about Duckling of course, but for someone who usually worries a lot, I was surprisingly sanguine. Somehow the prospect of him not recovering was just too terrible to contemplate, so I think I unconsciously pushed it out my mind so I could focus on the present.

Caring for a really sick child strips parenting back to its most basic elements; love and care. You don't intellectualise, you just act. Rules, routines, discipline, stimulating creativity, encouraging independence, ensuring healthy eating; the usual framework of parental objectives suddenly isn't required - all you need to do is comfort, listen, and make sure that doctors and nurses are doing the same.

Herein lies the main reason why, as much as I wanted to leave hospital, I've found it quite difficult since coming home to transition back to 'normal' parenting. It has to be done for the sanity of all concerned, but it involves really thinking about what you're doing. You have to say "No" and "Stop" and "That's enough Peppa" and "Why don't you eat some raisins instead?". You can't just run on adrenaline and instinct in the exhausting but simple world of newborn-style "on demand" feeding and cuddles. You have be a conscious parent again, with all special dispensations put away for another day, even though all you want to do is vegetate after your week of stress and sleeplessness and / or hug your little one every time they whimper whispering "thank goodness you're all right."

It doesn't help that Duckling is not impressed at all by the return to normality. He may have been ill, but I think he also rather enjoyed having Mummy with him 24/7, at his beck and call, boobs at the ready. By the end of our stay, he was also delighting in the massive playroom full of cars, planes, trains and a kick ass Wendy House complete with plastic peas in a microwave. When I asked him as we drove home if he liked hospital, he replied "Yeah! Yeah! Me go door door and woo woo Mummy. And bees!" (Yes, I liked going through the door into the Wendy House and playing with the trains Mummy. And the peas!). Home by comparison is boring, and Mummy's refusal to get her boobies out every 10 minutes is not met with good grace and acceptance. At all. I know he's still on antibiotics and probably not feeling 100%, but there's only so much I can take.

Then of course there's the perpetual worry that he's not really quite recovered - he's still coughing, so can I really be sure he's OK without all the measuring and beepy machines? And there's a concern that this could happen again. Hospital is no longer a place where other people go. It is now a known entity where we could very well end up again if Duckling succumbs to another post-cold bacterial infection, or it turns out he has some underlying asthma issues (I hope not, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised). I can't in all honesty describe him as a 'healthy child' who just 'fights things off' anymore, because he's not: we had to intervene in a fairly major way this time, and if we've had to do that once, it's more than possible we'll have to do it again. Part of me wants to wrap him up in cotton wool and never let him out the house again for fear he will get another sniffle, but that's no way to live, and it's not fair to anyone. So, come Tuesday, we'll be back at the childminder's and normality will properly resume. I know this winter is probably not going to be fun or easy illness-wise, but I suppose if I can recapture the art of living in the present that I seemed to uncharacteristically master so well in hospital, we'll get through it somehow. And even if we do end up back in hospital, at least Duckling will be pleased to see the plastic peas.

Interviewing idiocy

I recently had to interview for a new position at work. I was the only candidate and the role had essentially been created with me in mind, so it shouldn't have presented much of a challenge. However, I still found myself exceptionally nervous, which resulted in me rambling my way through the first few questions, choosing a project where everyone ended up deeply unhappy as my example of a "win win" scenario, and rounding things off by tipping water down my front.

In a shock move, they still gave me the job and I'm now having fun trying to manage a team of four rather feisty ladies on three days a week. All good therefore, but the whole rigmarole made me question, not for the first time, how effective traditional interviews actually are in choosing the right candidate. Had I been up against others, there's a very real possibility that my rubbish interview would have scuppered me, even though the job is a great fit with my skill set, and I (and my manager) know I'm going to be good at it.  My problems with interviews (both as an interviewee and interviewer) are as follows:

• You're testing a candidate's ability to control their nerves first and foremost. To be honest, the people that do this best are either those that don't care about the job and thus have nothing to lose, people with planet sized egos who can't contemplate others not sharing their inflated opinion of themselves, or psychopaths, who don't care what others think of them full stop. Nerves turn competent, modest, bright people into gibbering and / or monosyllabic nitwits, which makes it very hard to judge their true value. Unless you're interviewing for a job that requires impeccable calm under pressure (A&E doctor, fighter pilot, war correspondent etc.) it seems a pity that something as human, normal and transitory as nerves should have such a big impact on your career prospects.
• Standard interview questions are inane. Everyone knows they're inane, and yet it's like we've signed some weird interview pact whereby we feel we have to ask them or the interview gods (or HR) will punish us. "Can you tell us how you prioritise your time?" Err, I do the most important and urgent things first. That's it. Even though in reality, I tend to start most mornings responding to whatever head-slappingly stupid email I received the night before. "Can you give me an example of how you dealt with a difficult individual?" Well, I had to wrestle a one year old into a nappy, vest, dungarees and socks this morning. I found brute force and bribes worked quite well. "Where do you see yourself in 5 year's time" Easy. On a beach in Bermuda having won the lottery. Doesn't everyone? 
• When the questions aren't inane, they're impossibly abstract. "Tell me how you develop effective strategies" was a question I had at my recent interview. Where to begin? It entirely depends on the issue you need to address with your strategy. And the resources available. And how you define "strategy". And, err, now I'm thinking about it, what is a strategy exactly anyway?! I think I rambled for five minutes or so before I struck upon something I could just about pass off as a 'strategy' and gave some non-waffley detail. Had they asked me "tell me how you get reports out of people who can't be bothered to write them" I could have given them a concise, fully fleshed out answer because I have to do that all the time. All. The. Sodding. Time.
• Candidates only get 45 minutes or so to prove their worth in comparison to two / five / twenty five others; they're never judged purely on their own merits (unless they're lucky enough to be the only candidate of course!). This is obvious, but it doesn't make it any less unfair. You could be amazing, but if the questions don't play to your strengths but do to someone else's, or someone who went to the same school as the interviewer comes along, and they hit it off, you don't have a chance, however much you've prepared and however impartial the interviewer might consider themselves to be. I once went for two interviews in one week for two very similar jobs, either of which I would have loved and could have done with my hands tied behind my back. Both told me I did a really great interview, but for the first that I was "over qualified" and for the second that I "lacked experience". Both were meaningless let-you-down-gently excuses, I know, but what it proved was that experience and interview technique are largely arbitrary in and of themselves - someone else had seemed better on the day for whatever reason, and they therefore got the job. 
• Interviewing doesn't always find you someone decent. I've had colleagues rave about interview candidates who turn out to be utterly useless. I've engaged temps with virtually no interview process who are amazing. Until someone has actually done the job for a while, you just can't tell with 100% accuracy how good they're going to be, however much you bombard them with questions about their approach to time management.

Short of hiring someone for a day to try them out, what would work better than a standard interview though? Truth be told, not a lot if you have to get though a number of candidates and keep things fair, but I think we can tweak the conventions a bit.  A conversational approach is still a lot more enlightening than your standard panel set up. Have a chat. Put the candidate at their ease. Figure out if you could actually work with them, day in, day out. You can absolutely weave some questions in there to test their knowledge and understanding, but if you make it relaxed and two-way, it's actually much easier for them to give good, well-developed answers as they will feel much safer asking you questions to test whether they're responding along the right lines.

Also, set them some small tasks or tests, give them some scenarios to work through, or run a bit of a role play. Make it less artificial and abstract, and more grounded in reality. Sure, you can ask about time management, but you're only ever going to get a stock, rehearsed answer that tells you nothing. So MAKE someone manage their time in front of you! A bit mean, but revealing.

Finally, ask them about themselves. People love to talk about themselves. I always find the last five minutes of an interview, where you enquire what the candidate will be doing for the rest of the day, very revealing. Suddenly they're on safe ground, and you get a proper insight into their personality. I've totally changed my opinion of someone based on that (I thought they were humourless, but turns out they were hilarious! They still didn't get the job though. They spelled our organisation's name wrong in their test.).

That concludes the post.  Thank you for reading.  I'll be in touch.

A bit of a knackered rant. Sorry.

There are times when I love being a Mum. Then there are the times when I find it utterly soul destroying.  I'm fairly sure that the highs and lows I feel as a parent are no different to the highs and lows I felt with my normal mood swings in my "former life".  Sometimes these were hormonal, sometimes they were triggered by events, and it's no different now, although interestingly, in some respects, I find motherhood has actually evened my mood swings out a bit.  Essentially, my mood now is mostly a kind of perma-knackered, so I don't have the time or energy to really reflect and feel melancholy in the way I did before Duckling, but then nor do I have the time and energy to really relish life either. When I do get a bit down though, it takes a lot less to tip me over into tears, because exhaustion means I'm usually quite close to them most of the time already.

The thing I find hardest is the total lack of a decent break. I've whinged a good few times on here about Drake being away all week, and how tough it is being a single Mum on weekdays (though I am acutely aware that it's nowhere near as tough as being a single Mum ALL the time).  Sometimes I feel like my record on this matter is so broken it doesn't make any kind of meaningful, recognisable sounds any more.  Nevertheless, the need for a break never goes away.  Sometimes it's just a mild niggling itch in the background.  Other times it's all I can do to stop myself screaming "I NEED A BREAK" at my fellow Sainsbury's shoppers before I drop to the floor and sob.  This week, things have been in the latter category.  Duckling's been ill again so I've spent a lot of time trying to work from home with him asleep on my lap / coughing his lungs up down the phone to my colleagues.   Drake's been ill too and had to fly out at 4.30 am this morning (Sunday) because his project is going live.  Essentially therefore, I had a couple of hours on Friday night off (I went out with friends and it was amazing, though Duckling was already screaming for me by the time I returned and then wouldn't go back to sleep), and a few loo trips and a shower on Saturday when I wasn't directly responsible for Duckling (Drake was packing and ironing and sorting car rentals and flights and doing the washing that I seem incapable of finding the time for, and watching football, and pissing about on his iPhone for whole strings of minutes at a time) and that was it.  No more respite / sharing the load (bar the time I'm in work) now until next weekend.  And now I'm ill too.

Boo hoo hoo, poor me, I want to cry in a sarcastic snarl.  I really don't know how lucky I am, do I, with my beautiful son and caring husband and a nice house and a nice life.  And it's true.  I am lucky and I have no right to complain.  That doesn't mean I'm not going to though, because I am still completely, bone achingly knackered.  Duckling has not slept through the night, 7 pm to 7 am, ONCE since birth (5 am is the closest we've come).  We're not talking one wake up a night.  We're talking minimum three if made to stay in his cot all night, and that's if we can actually get him to go back to sleep, which is mostly an impossibility after wake up no. 2. Co-sleeping thus remains a necessity - easier than constantly leaping out of bed, but still less than comfortable or conducive to a decent night's sleep.  I'm not going to go into a rant again about sleep training and how totally bloody ineffective it is as a long-term measure for instilling good sleep habits (the slightest cold or teething issues and we're back to square one, time and time again). I have largely just accepted that Duckling is just not a sleepy baby, and we'll just have to wait for him to sleep through in his own time, probably when I pluck up the courage to survive the screaming that will come with total breastfeeding withdrawal.  Sometimes though, when I think about the fact that I haven't had a single full night's sleep since I was about 6 months' pregnant (so, December 2013 - nearly two years ago), I want to weep.  Going out with my three friends on Friday, who all have younger babies, and were all shocked that Duckling still doesn't sleep through, rather rubbed this in.

Lack of sleep, lack of a break and illness are pretty much the triumvirate when it comes to parental burn out, and I am definitely in that zone today.  Right now, I would give anything for someone to say "we're going to clone you, and let your clone look after your son for 24 hours while you sleep, have a bath, go for a run and watch a couple of box sets."  Because that is the only possible scenario in which I know I could actually relax.  And herein lies the root of why I feel so stressed right now.  With Duckling under the weather, he is ultra, ultra clingy at the moment, so nobody - not Drake, not my Mum, not his childminder - will do except me.  He may tolerate them for a few minutes, maybe even an hour or two if I'm not in easy reach, but that's it.  After that, he just wants me.  And that's lovely, but it's also incredibly draining because as much as I love to be loved, I also need space and the ability to make a sodding piece of toast without a toddler trying to scale my leg to get to my boobies.  Yet I wouldn't be happy leaving him with someone else for purely selfish, relaxation reasons, when I know he will be distraught, and they'll then get stressed too.  So I can't win.  There is no solution to how I feel right now.  There is nobody who can clone me, or more realistically, be a surrogate Mummy for a day.  Furthermore, I already feel like a palm him off too much on others, given my work schedule.  I will have to leave him with my Mum tomorrow, as I have to go into work for an afternoon meeting (I don't usually work on Mondays), and on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday he'll be back at the childminder's all day provided he's well again. This will give me some headspace, admittedly, but work doesn't really quite count as relaxation, especially since I've been promoted.  So, all I can do is keep going.  Keep crashing along, bleary eyed and grumpy, in the knowledge that the need to be separate, sleep, have some space and regain some sanity will fade into a dull itch again eventually.  Hopefully before I have a nervous breakdown.

The myth that "complications are rare"

Last week was Baby Loss Awareness week. I planned to write something pertinent then, but struck by yet another Duckling-gifted mystery virus, didn't quite feel up to it in the end. So I'm writing it now, albeit a few days late. As I have mentioned before, I have had two miscarriages, both of which were hard to handle. However, what got me through (after great support from Drake and my family) was the knowledge that, statistically speaking, miscarriage was a comparatively common occurrence. My mother had lost a baby before she had me, so while very upset, I was half way prepared when the sonographer told me there was no heartbeat, or second time around, when I started bleeding.

Unfortunately, not everyone who encounters pregnancy problems has a mother who has been through the same thing. So many people I know (women and men) have been taken by complete surprise when something has gone wrong. And I know a lot of people for whom things have gone wrong.

During my seven years at the organisation I work for, five people have lost babies after 12 weeks (that mythical 'everything will be fine now' cut off point), including one whose baby died shortly after birth due to oxygen deprivation.  Three have had miscarriages (myself included) though I suspect there are many more out there I don't know about. One was so heartbroken by her loss at 42, she decided not to try again. Two can't have kids at all. Admittedly we employ an unusually high number of women of childbearing age, but this still seems a lot.

In my personal life, the list is similar. One friend lost two babies after 20 weeks and decided not to try again. One had a stillbirth at 24 weeks and then a miscarriage, and is currently debating whether she has the mental and emotional strength to try for a third time. Another took over a year to get pregnant, suffered a miscarriage, then took another year to get pregnant again (though she now has a healthy boy, albeit after developing sudden onset eclampsia during the birth). One had a very premature baby who later died. She then had a miscarriage at 16 weeks. She has one healthy son, but at nearly 40, is not trying again. Another has had multiple cycles of IVF and two miscarriages (no baby yet) and a yet another took over 5 years to get pregnant due to endometriosis, though she does now have a healthy little girl. Most recently, one of my best friends had a stillborn girl at 39 weeks, only finding out her baby had died when she went in to be induced. She is now pregnant again with all fingers and toes crossed.

Currently my sister is pregnant with her second baby too. Bar a slightly challenging birth, her first pregnancy went smoothly and her daughter was born happy and healthy. Her current pregnancy is of course not proving so straight forward - her baby was noted to have dextrocardia on her 12 week scan, which essentially means its heart is pointing the wrong way. This may not be a problem if her next scan shows all the baby's organs are reversed (we know its stomach is, but the sonographer couldn't see the others yet) as essentially the body will work normally, just the other way around.  If some organs are not reversed, or are missing altogether, or there's a problem with the heart, the prognosis will be much more serious.

If I really think about close friends and family of my generation with kids, I can only think of one who has completed their family without any serious issues getting pregnant, staying pregnant or giving birth. One. That is honestly it. 

So how can things go wrong so often, without it being more widely acknowledged?  How can so many people go through so much pain and heartache, not just once, but twice, or more times, and have their circumstances considered 'unfortunate but rare'. Part of me feels that I am a bit cursed; that being my friend is ill advised if you want to start a family, or complete it without issue. Rationally, I know that's not the case.  I know so many people who have had problems because all my friends are currently of sprogging age, and having had issues myself, I probably get to hear about more people's baby-related woes than I might do otherwise. More significantly though, the  rate of complications seems high because problems are really NOT that rare.

When you first get pregnant, your chance of miscarriage in the UK is about 20-25%. Of having a premature baby (live birth before 37 weeks) about 7% and of having a stillbirth (loss after 24 weeks), around 0.5%. About 2% of babies are born with birth defects each year too. And this is before we get onto the myriad possible birth complications. We're not talking one in a million risks here, or even one in a thousand. When you start adding up all the things that could go wrong in each and every pregnancy, it paints a pretty scary picture. Whether enough is being done to reduce these statistics is a debate for another day (essentially the answer is 'no' though). My question is why so many women (and men) are so utterly unprepared for an outcome other than a happy, healthy baby? 

There are a lot of reasons. Most obviously, a couple might simply chose not to think about it because, if you're going to remain stress free during pregnancy, you CAN'T be forever pondering the things that could go wrong. It's too painful, and largely fruitless as it won't change the outcome. It may be that couples receive false reassurance from friends, family or medical professionals.  It may be that they're simply uninformed.  They don't have the opportunity or desire to read much, don't know anyone who has lost a baby and have only ever seen pregnancy and birth depicted in a generic 'bump, birth, baby' way in the media (soaps and dramas have a lot to answer for). It could be that they simply don't believe it could happen to them because they're healthy and normal, and how could their healthy, normal body possibly generate a baby or pregnancy that isn't healthy and normal too? I know that's a thought that crossed my mind.

I'm not advocating that we scare all pregnant women by listing all the many things that could go wrong at every midwife appointment.  Sensitivity is vital, but pragmatism and honesty in response to women's questions would help too. Some of us are fragile, and yes, you are more emotionally vulnerable when pregnant (though personally my pregnancy emotions were nothing in comparison to my emotional vulnerability now I've had a child) but most of us are reasonably intelligent, resilient beings who want people - particularly doctors and midwives - to be straight with us. Wider societal recognition would be useful too. A lot of people talk about the 'taboo' of discussing baby loss and pregnancy problems.  I'm not sure it's necessarily taboo (a quick Google will tell you there are A LOT of people talking about it online) but it is very emotive, so no, I don't tend to bring it up in normal conversation because I don't want to make my conversational partner cry (or myself well up for that matter). That doesn't mean we shouldn't be recognising the difficulties women go through to get pregnant, stay pregnant and have a healthy baby though. Better (and more realistic) representation in the media would be a good starting point. Eastenders was widely praised for working with Sands to accurately portray the loss of Shabnam and Kush's baby earlier this year. Many people declared it too sad - because yes, stillbirth is incredibly, incredibly sad - and no doubt for many parents who have lost babies, it would have reawakened deep feelings of grief. If we're not upfront about it though, society remains unaware of how common it is (0.5% equates to 17 stillbirths in the UK every day) and less able to support those who suffer a loss. Knowing you might lose a baby doesn't necessarily make it any easier when it happens (I deliberately hadn't made any plans, bought anything or told anyone except close family when I suffered my losses, which did help me, but this is impossible once you're visibly and openly pregnant), and it doesn't make it fair when it happens, but if those around you are aware and informed, they can be in a better position to help, and not say totally the wrong thing.

I would love not to have so many friends who have had problems. Every time I receive a call or text telling me sad or worrying news, I think "No, please, surely not AGAIN?!" I feel for each and every one of them, and it makes me that bit more terrified of trying for a second baby each time. But I also know that should I go for a second,  and should tragedy strike again, I will not be alone. I can turn to pretty much any one of my friends and share the pain that is inevitable when our attempts to create new life, the very purpose of human existence, are so cruelly crushed. This is why it is so important that people know that complications are not rare. It's not their fault: the human reproductive process is actually massively flawed. But because it is, you are never going to be the only one to be facing the heartbreak that these flaws can bring. Chances are, if you just talk about it openly, you'll find that a surprising number of people will be able to relate to your story in some way. It's not a grim club you ever want to be a part of, but if you're ever in the unfortunate position of having to join, you'll be glad it's there.