In Defence of Pink (AKA the blog post I never thought I'd write)

This article by Jessica Valentini was recently published in the Guardian, I read it, thought it made some good points but wasn't brilliant and then largely forgot it.  Later it cropped up in my time line on facebook posted by the PinkStinks campaign and triggered quite a lively discussion.

To be honest I don't know much about Jessica Valentini, like most commentators sometimes I agree with what she writes, sometimes I don't.  I have long been a fan of PinkStinks having come across them when my eldest daughter was very tiny and I was panicking about stemming the tide of pink that threatened to overtake my life.

Back then I was very concerned about the effects of indoctrinating little girls into a belief that their lives must be dominated by one colour, a colour that stands for femininity and weakness.  A colour that must be applied to anything before girls or women can use it. (Bic pens, cooking toys, wellies, gardening equipment etc etc).  Girls can't possibly use the same version that boys use, it has to be prettified, appearances are after all important.  I didn't want my tiny daughter's life to be channelled into such a narrow view.  I banned pink from the house and set about bringing up my mini me.

Of course life isn't always so cut and dry.  This small person who is now nearly five turned out to have a personality of her own which was nothing like what I expected.  She is wilful, stubborn, opinionated (OK OK, I get where that's all from), she's also funny and bright and very very into princesses and pink (and space and science incidentally).  For a while I struggled against this but I have learnt to just go with the flow.  If I give her a choice she will go for the stereotype girly stuff every time.  Sometimes I get things for her without giving her a choice and I'll deliberately not buy the pink girl's option to get some variety.  This usually backfires spectacularly when she just refuses to use it.  That fabulous denim jacket that was a Christmas present last year has been worn about four times, each time under sufferance.  Also I always feel a bit guilty for going against what I know her choice would be.

The thing is how can I tell her or imply that the choices she makes are wrong?  How can I consistently tell her that the way she chooses to express herself is wrong?  Surely that goes against everything that a good feminist parent should be doing.

I sometimes feel that in some parts of the feminist online community mothers who let their children wear pink are looked down on as being substandard.  We can't possibly be properly offering our children choice or they wouldn't choose to wear that completely impractical pink flowery dress to the play park.  I commented on the PinkStinks thread about this and how my eldest hasn't worn trousers for the last two years.  This attracted a slightly aggressive sounding comment which didn't really articulate anything very much but seemed to imply that it had been my choice and not my daughter's to limit her wardrobe to skirts and dresses.  Cos obviously I just love putting tights on a pre schooler every bloody day.  I also got a slightly patronising comment about keeping her options open.  Yes, thanks for that.  It's much more useful if the campaign against pinkification is directed at manufacturers, not the parents of children who conform to gender stereotypes.

Part of giving our children (of both genders) choice is respecting their decisions.  If we do that we can teach them that they don't have to conform to a whole mind set if they are a girl who loves pink and princesses or a boy who loves blue and dinosaurs.  We can still help them to explore the world and their options while respecting their autonomy.  Banning pink was a simplistic way of dealing with what I now realise is a very complex issue.  From now on I pledge to let both my daughters be who they choose by giving them as much choice as possible (including all the pink rubbish).

My fabulous daughter proving that you can still climb a climbing frame in a pink dress and fake lelli kellis.

The Thorny Issue of Women in Politics.

There has been a lot in the media recently about David Cameron mooting the possibility of all women shortlists as a tool to get more women in the House of Commons.  I'm a bit torn by this to be honest because while I agree that something really needs to change, it is rubbish that this is the best way of going about it.

The fact that the current cabinet has three women to nineteen men is pretty crappy.  I very much doubt that women just don't want to get into politics, yet we wind up with very few women at the top.  All women shortlists would do nothing to address why this is, they merely try to fix the situation in a similar way to wall papering over the cracks in the sitting room wall.  Eventually the paper falls off and the cracks have gotten worse and worse.

In fact I think the cracks run deeply through society, the media and the whole of government.  There are some in the electorate will often not vote for women on the basis of her gender, or if they will vote for a woman then she has to prove herself way more than a man every would.  There are large sections of the media who focus on women in politics in a way they never would about men (their appearance, their age, their family life, the list goes on and on).  This often serves to make women look distracted, frivolous, naive, stupid or all of the above.  Then there is parliament itself which by all accounts is a hellish place to be if you don't have a dick in your pants.  Yvette Cooper had the details of her mastitis leaked to the press amongst many other misogynist incidences.  I can't imagine it very likely that a male politician would have the details of his prostatitis leaked in the same way.  It also appears that the upper echelons of the Conservative party particularly resembles the Bullingdon Club all grown up.  It must be tricky for David Cameron to encourage more women to the top when non of them went to Eton.

Indeed it is strange that suddenly David "calm down dear" Cameron is dangling this carrot out there.  Not wishing to be cynical but he obviously realises the torys aren't doing that well on the popularity front and so in an effort to appeal to the 52% of voters who are women he decides to make it look like his party is all for women.  In reality of course, they aren't.  If he was really bothered about this he could have done something about it ages ago but he hasn't.  What he has done however is ramp up his austerity campaign that disproportionately affects women, insult women in parliament and generally display himself as a bit of a misogynist.

So no, Cameron and his little buddies don't give a shit about women.  The only way to get women's voices really heard and to achieve true equality is to create change throughout society.  Sexism needs to be called out as much as possible, the media need to really think about what they report on where women are concerned (a tip; what comes out of a woman's mouth is more important than if her shoes match her handbag) and voters need to stop giving a shit what gender candidates are and start voting on people's ability to do the job.  And never forget the Conservatives are still the nasty party; that is unlikely to change.

This is an epic amount to change.  I suspect that the shortlists maybe needed in the meantime, and who knows, maybe just having more women visible and heard will help so in the future men and women can stand equally and be voted in equally.  I hope so.

Yes, I am a f*minist.

As I've got older I've thought more and more about my feminism.  I used to be happy with feeling able to call myself a feminist and that was that but now I want a bit more. 

A few things have happened recently, firstly at my induction for my new job we had an equality and diversity session, during a group discussion my neighbour came out with "...but I'm not a feminist or anything!", because woe betide anyone would think you were.  I said I was and felt a bit pleased with myself for standing by my convictions with no one running off screaming.

The other thing that has been developing over time is a the unfortunate pull of the Comments is Free section of the Guardian website.  There are a helluva lot of trolls below the line waiting for any remotely feminist post to go up so they can jump in with accusations of humourlessness, militancy, man hating etc etc and lots of "what about the menz" type comments.  It is the Guardian so you don't tend to get the "you must be ugly, fat, hairy and unfuckable" crap that floats around twitter but it can still get quite unpleasant, quite relentless and quite silencing.  I decided a while ago that I was going to challenge the misogyny below the line where I saw it and for a while I did.  It didn't take me long to realise that I'd have more luck challenging the brickish nature of a brick wall.

The whole experience has made me feel quite impotent, as if I am screaming my opinions to the wind while the world goes "yeah, whatever" and while I know that what I have to say isn't for everyone why the hell do people go and comment on those articles if they don't want to engage?  Oh yes, they don't want to engage, they just want to tell us what hysterical little bitches we're being and put us in our place.

Image from WickedQueer on Etsy.

Anyway, for the record:
- I am a feminist.
- I do have a sense of humour (I hope) but some things just aren't funny.
- I don't hate men (just the patriarchy).
- When I say I want equality I really mean equality for everyone, not just women...
- And I genuinely believe feminism will help achieve equality.
- I do care about things like the appallingly high suicide rate in young men but again I feel that getting rid of the patriarchy will help as men will no longer feel constricted by societal pressures to behave a certain way.
- I also care about lots of other things besides women's rights but conveniently they often slot nicely together.
- I am sometimes a bit hairy (but hey, that's my choice!).
- I'm probably not all that fuckable to everyone but I really couldn't give a shit.  As long as I think I'm fuckable and anyone I wish to fuck thinks I am then it's no one else's business.  So fuck off.
- I am sometimes a bit militant but some things are worth getting militant over.

So there you go.  I care not if my fellow feminists want to focus solely on women's rights, that is their prerogative.  I care not if they hate men, lots of women have good cause to.  I care not what they look like because it's none of my business.  What I do care about is that women are not silenced, their voices should be heard.  I care that my daughters and nieces grow up feeling confident in themselves with their horizons wide.  I also care that my two nephews grow up feeling able to express themselves however they see fit without censure and with the confidence to treat all fellow travellers of life as equals. 

And now I know that it's not enough for me to pipe up occasionally and declare myself a feminist, it's not enough for me to throw my words to the wind where they can be ignored, I want more.  I will make my feminism a priority in my life (and hopefully at the very least manage to attend the International Women's Day march next year).

Little Women

An article about an Indian politician who said "sometimes rape is right" was posted into my facebook timeline today.  It's the latest in a long line of stories about rape and misogyny from this part of the world, indeed just after reading it I saw this in the Guardian about a woman who was gang raped by the Police after she refused to pay the bribe for her husband's release.

There are lots of quotes in both articles from politicians, mainly along the lines of "boys will be boys", it's a private issue etc etc.  It's the view from the Prime Minister; Narendra Modi that really said a lot though: Politicians need to work together to protect women.

And that's the thing, the most positive thing that can be said over all this is that women need to be protected.  I am talking about the issue in India but this situation is world wide.  To avoid rape or violence women need to be protected, they need to follow certain rules, behave a certain way.  If they do experience sexual violence (as so many women have) then they must have stepped outside the rules laid down by society and it is therefore their own fault.

I don't want to be protected.  I don't want my daughters to be protected.  I don't want any woman to need protection.  I want us to be able to inhabit this world without fear, as equals with fellow members of the human race.  For this to happen it isn't women's behaviour that needs to change and we don't need to be wrapped in bubble wrap, it's men who need to change.  

This poster from Rape Crisis in Scotland has been seen by everyone but it's so good because it really gets it.

The only people who can stop rape, sexual violence and misogyny happening are men, women shouldn't be tucked away so boys can be boys with impunity, men should be held accountable for their behaviour.

This is why we should challenge rape culture where we see it, we should question our believes and those of people around us and we should start treating women as equal members of the human race, not as delicate flowers in need of protection or dirty whores who deserved it.

Tiny Activist

My friend described my eldest as her "Favourite Little Activist" recently which was very lovely!  It is true that she is dragged out on a fair few marches and protests and probably would rather not be there often enough but we try to explain why we do these things and when she's older maybe she'll be pleased that she did.  Anyway, I decided to put together a post about what my little activist has done!

Occupy London, Autumn 2011

She went to this with just her Dad but apparently really enjoyed it, probably because it didn't involve any marching and there was lots to see!  Also produced one of my favourite photos of her at a protest....

Love this one!  Many Small People.

Welcome to Occupy

Occupy London set up camp outside St Paul's cathedral to protest against the lack of affordable housing in the UK, social injustice and corporate greed.  They were there from October 2011 til June 2012.

Public Sector Strike, November 2011

This one was with both of us, I carried her much of the way and she was getting a little heavy by this point!

Sleeping through Ken Livingstone's speech.

Found this on Flickr, the woman who took it called it "United" which I thought was rather sweet!

This march was for the TUC's general strike protesting against pension changes for public sector workers.  Great atmosphere as far as I can remember.

Anti Austerity March, October 2012

This was a great march, we hung out with the Unison crowd from Meanderingfather's work.  Didn't stay for Ed Miliband's speech though, went to the pub with the union lot.  I was around 3 months pregnant with Lauren and this march was also the last time I carried Jess in the sling.  She ate an apple and went to sleep snuggled up on my back.  A small detail I will always remember.

Train home with her beloved NO CUTS sign.

The anti austerity march was protesting against the governments stringent austerity measures.

Save Lewisham Hospital march, November 2012 

15,000 people marched through Lewisham and finished in Ladywell fields outside the hospital.  Fantastic and huge community event despite the rain.  I remember one of the train drivers tooting as they went past on their way to Ladywell station.  Don't think I got any photos, probably because the weather was so horrible!  Met up with my brother and sister in law so escaped from the weather to their house afterwards.

The save Lewisham hospital campaign was set up after the Health Minister Jeremy Hunt decided in his infinite wisdom to shut down some essential parts of Lewisham hospital to help neighbouring trusts who were failing.  It would have set a dangerous precedent with regards to the government being able to shut down any hospital they felt like.  At the time of writing the hospital was generally winning and more info can be found here.

Save Lewisham Hospital march, January 2013

Another nice local march, saw some of our new friends and really felt like part of the community, however I was quite heavily pregnant with sore hips so was struggling towards the end.

 For some reason not a huge fan of being carried on shoulders at this point!

Gay Pride, 2013 

This was one I took Jess and Lauren (newest little activist) to with my work colleagues from 56 Dean St, it was a great place to work and felt a bit like I was part of the vibrant gay community in Soho.  Jess really enjoyed this one, lots of people were dressed up and she had a blast messing around with my friends from work.  Lauren was only a few months old and tucked up in the sling.  We were filmed by ITV news where I came out with the totally hackneyed phrase "it's a great family event", would have been nice to say something more original!  Lovely sunny day and we went for drinks in the big purple cow on South Bank afterwards.

The banner and being carried by the indomitable Jenna.

Know your status!!

Very taken with the feather boa.

Gay pride is held every year to celebrate the gay community.  It has a rich history which you can read about here.

RCN What if....? Campaign, June 2014

Gathering outside Lewisham hospital as part of nationwide protests.  Slightly disappointing as not many people turned up but at least it was a nice sunny day and the girls seemed to enjoy it!  Followed by going round to a friends house to enjoy the sun in their beautiful garden.

Newest activist props herself up.

"My Mum deserves a payrise"

Tasty unison sign.

This protest was part of a nationwide event protesting the governments decision not to award a recommended 1% across the board payrise for NHS nursing staff.

So there they are!  Hopefully many more to come for both of my girls.

Letter To A Friend

To my lovely friend,

You complemented me on how well behaved my children are today, ooh, if only you knew! But thankyou, actually they aren't too bad and like any mother I take immense pride in them so comments like this always make my heart swell with pride!

You are currently in the family way yourself and asked me if there was anything I did in particular as you had been reading some books. I do seem to have some weird compulsion for giving people advice and I have been thinking all afternoon about what would be the best piece of advice I could give and I think it's this:

To be the best parent you can just follow your instincts.

Read as many or few books as you like, research all or no parenting styles, talk to as many people as you can about what works for them then cherry pick the bits you like. When your have your children the best expert for them will be you. No one else has the experience you have of being you and parenting your children. It can feel a bit like you have no idea what you're doing but you'll all be learning together. For what it's worth, after Meanderingdaughter1 was born I thought I had this parenting thing down pat. Total pro. Then Meanderingdaughter2 came along and proved me otherwise.  I've spent the last 11 months feeling like I'm winging it. That's because each child is different and there is no best way of parenting.

It's likely that you'll often feel that you shouldn't be doing what you're doing because it goes against what you may have read or heard but if it feels right to you then I wouldn't worry.  You may well hear the phrase 'building a rod for your own back' bandied about but frankly if you don't want a back rod then you shouldn't have gotten pregnant!

So in answer to your question, I would say that in our family we are broadly attachment parenting orientated but I haven't read in depth about attachment parenting so couldn't accurately describe it to you. What I do know is that we have a fairly unhealthy amount of bribery, shouting, swearing, sweetie eating and television watching going on in our house which all piles on more of that parenting guilt but which really shouldn't cos no one is perfect and the girls are pretty much ok!

Also, there is a lot of baby equipment out there. You probably don't need 99% of it but something you swear by will be something others will swear off! You should use what suits you. For me I couldn't live without my sling(s). Purely because I like to be able to strap grumpy babies onto my back and crack on with whatever I'm doing. Mainly baking cakes. But I know that for many a sling is just a large bit of pointless material!

So what I am really trying to say is, the best person to listen to is yourself. You'll work it all out and you'll be great.

Good luck and much love xxx

Breasts, boobs and shaming.

If I spend five minutes on facebook these days I'll usually come across a thread about breastfeeding.  The comments on these threads are boringly predictable ranging from support of those who breastfeed, to suggesting that it's all good but woman should cover up, feed in the toilet, only breastfeed at home, are breastfeeding for attention and all the way down to the trolls who call woman who breastfeed dirty sluts.  I tend to think anyone who takes the time to call someone they don't know a dirty slut probably isn't doing it because she's breastfeeding, he's doing it because she's a woman so that can be discounted.  

One view that crops up with quite a regularity is the idea that woman breastfeeding is OK because it's wholesome and good and besides breastfeeders show off less flesh than your typical young woman out on the town of an evening, dressed up like a whore, which is frankly more offensive to my delicate sensibilities than angelic me feeding my child.

I used to let this point of view wash over me, didn't really think about it much and after all, it is such a prevalent opinion if you spend any time on parent's forums that it kind of seemed like the norm.  Recently however it has really got my goat.  Why is it that women are so keen to judge each other?  There is really no need to defend your decision to breastfeed so why is it that woman so frequently do try to defend it by pointing at another woman and saying "I'm not a slut, she's a slut, look at her"?  Given the quantity of men willing to call woman sluts and whores on a public forum why do other woman feel the need to stick the boot in too?

What this boils down to it woman's choice and the society we live in that blames woman's choices for what happens to them.

Women have the right to breastfeed or not, to wear clothes that cover them head to toe or cover very little, they have the right to work in the sex industry or anywhere else that takes their fancy and no one has the right to dictate to them what they should or shouldn't do.  It would be nice to see woman treating each other with a little respect and that could start with a little thing like not saying "I'm not being offensive, she is, that's offensive, not me".  Come on, up the sisterhood!

When it comes to breastfeeding itself, it is another one of those areas (like sleep) where my god parents go off on one!  Again, I suspect a lot of it is to justify our own choices (which we shouldn't need to) but the constant grinching over breastfed or bottlefed is getting a little tired.  I will be the first person to hold her hands up and say I am massively pro breastfeeding.  Anyone who knows me or has read this blog probably knows that.  I was determined to breastfeed and I think I would have felt like a failure had I not.  Meanderingdaughter1 fed for about 16 months and Meanderingdaughter2 is still going strong at 10 months. I am proud of this and I would always encourage women to breastfeed.  However I don't think women should be forced into it.  They shouldn't be made to feel like failures if they stop or like the devil incarnate if they decide not to do it at all.  They shouldn't be made to feel like attention seekers if they breastfeed in public or if they breastfeed over a certain age.  They shouldn't be abused if they are bottle feeding or told they are damaging their child.

The only things, in my mind, that are wrong with feeding your child is if you want to feed in a certain way and feel that you can't due to pressure or lack of proper support.  This should always be about the choice of the mother and society has no place to blame or shame women for what they choose to do.

Sleeping. Again.

Once again it has been a long time since I wrote a blog post, Meanderingdaugher2 is here and has been for 10 months, Meanderingdaughter1 has recently had her fourth birthday and is definitely no longer a baby or a toddler but a small person with a personality all of her very own.  It is fun having my two girls, I am achingly proud of them both and love them completely.  It's also exhausting and frustrating but show me a parent who doesn't say that!  

I have come to realise that Meanderingdaughter1 was a great sleeper and if I every complained about her then I apologise, I was wrong and a fool.  Meanderingdaughter2 has shown me the light in this respect.  In the last 10 months I have had one complete nights sleep.  Sometimes it's great and she only wakes up two or three times and goes back to sleep quickly, other times she refuses to sleep in her cot and spends the night kicking and crying in our bed, feeding six times or more although to be honest I kind of lose count after a while.  It's always worse after we've been away and she is unsettled.

I think what makes this worse is the guilt and uncertainty that goes alongside it.  She is what some may call very well attached and what others might call clingy.  She wants her Mummy, and will often scream this need to the rafters.  Now she crawls I have a little shadow around the flat and if I stand still she crawls up to my legs and headbutts me 'til I pick her up.  I keep reminding myself to appreciate it, it won't always be like this and if I'm honest it does feel so very good to see that little face light up when I walk in the room.  

I have come to realise that however you decide to parent your children (if we do actually decide and don't just fall into whatever is easiest), what we all have in common is someone making us feel that we are doing it wrong and for me, right now, it's my approach to the sleep.  I know the sleep deprivation is probably making me over sensitive but I often feel weak for giving in and feeding her in the night, I know it's not going to cause problems in the long run but it's that middle run.  Am I making it harder for her to sleep through by giving her what she wants?  Taking the easy option for both of us?  I was recently told by a mother of three that at three months her children are put in their own room and left to cry.  If she knows they are clean, fed and safe then that's it.  Apparently after a couple of nights they sleep through like angels.  I'm not going to say this approach is wrong, if it works for her then I am delighted for her.  

My issue is that I have seen Meanderingdaughter2's face crumble when I walk away, I have heard her scream when she thinks I am not coming and I have held her while she sobs herself to sleep after I have turned up.  I have never left her to cry herself to sleep because I do strongly believe that to do so would fracture that bond we have.  It wouldn't break it, she'd still love me in that primal way that babies do but it would teach her the meaning of rejection at a young age in a very harsh way and I am not prepared to do that.  So it goes on, I will continue to wake with her in the night and I will continue to feed her when she does wake to get her back to sleep quickly and with no stress.  One day she will sleep through and this will seem like a distant dream / nightmare. 

I would never dream of telling anyone who gets their children to sleep the other way is wrong or cruel, it's just not how I want to do it and you have to do what works for you.  What I would like is for others to stop telling me to let her cry it out, I may be building a rod for my own back but you start building that rod the day you start trying to conceive.  It's called being a parent, it's not easy and it is exhausting but it is worth it and it is your choice how you decide to go about it.

Body Hair

I think I had a plan to move this blog back into the realms of parenting but unfortunately I want to write about something non parenting that's been bothering me for a while so sorry about that!

The thing that has triggered today's rant was posted into my facebook timeline by a group I follow called Woman Against Non-Essential Grooming (WANG for short- fab!).  The link in question is this one from a website called Girls Talkin Smack which seems to be one of those lovely websites where woman go in for the patriarchy big time and start bashing each other over the head with perceived short falls  This post in particular was a gallery of shame of celebs who hadn't been quite so diligent in their hair removal as they should have been.  Ew, it's unsanitary, etc etc.

The things I noticed in the post were that there was very little hair on show so apparently it takes only tiny amounts to be unsanitary and for many of the photos it didn't appear to be hair but natural skin discolouration (which may be caused by constantly removing hair) so not only can you have no hair but you must have no sign that hair was ever there.  Great stuff.

The thing is that this view isn't limited to some crappy website half buried on the internet, it's a view that is so prevalent that even if you want to stop thinking like that it's hard to do so.  The internet and magazines are peppered with the circle of shame giving us permission to point at someone showing evidence that they are human and be disgusted by it.

For years I religiously shaved my legs and armpits, despite the cycle of stubble- shave- lovely silky smooth skin- appallingly itchy skin- scratching my legs to ribbons- stubble etc etc.  I decided enough was enough a few years ago when a shaving rash under my arms was made a million times worse from cycling in the summer.  I know, I sweat too, grim.  The pain was just horrible and for what?  So I stopped, then I stopped shaving my legs.  And I hated the way it looked and felt, it seemed unhygienic and looked "unsightly" however much I told myself that these views had just been pummelled into me from a young age by the society I live in.  But not having to deal with all the itching and pain was such a breath of fresh air.  Now I shave my legs occasionally in the summer and the armpits even less and while I couldn't really give a monkeys about the hairy legs, I have to cautiously admit I quite like the armpit hair.  It looks nice and it feels liberating and to be honest is absolutely no ones business whether or not it is in existence at all.  But it took so bloody long for me to get over the ew factor even though it was my own body.

I now I come to what is probably my most shameful confession, I find writing this post a little embarrassing, admitting that I am a bit hairy is embarrassing.  And while I like my hairy armpits I very rarely wear clothes that expose them because I don't want it to be a thing, I don't want to be looked at and I don't want to swim against the tide and "make a point".  What I want is to have hairy armpits and no one bat an eyelid, I want to see other woman with hairy armpits at places other than the anarchist bookfair (there were a lot there and it was great!).  I don't want everyone to feel that they can't shave because that's not the point, a nice smooth bit of skin is also very attractive and if that is someone's choice then go for it.  I just don't want to feel like a freak for my choices.

I don't need to point out the obvious thing that hair on a woman is no less hygienic than hair on a man because anyone with half a brain can work that out, it is just a shame that it is so much part of our collective psyche that we subconsciously think that.

Maybe I can turn this back into being slightly about parenting...  I love the fact that my daughters don't give a crap that Mummy is hairy (one is admittedly only 8 weeks old) but I do hate the fact that one day they'll grow up and think I'm strange, that makes me very sad. I highly doubt I'll be parading the hairy pits around the school gate as there is no way I'd want them to be bullied for being the hairy lady's girls.  

Some days I wish I had more courage....

Imminent Arrival

Well, here we go again.  I'm nearly 36 weeks pregnant so the next addition to the household will be with us very shortly.  I won't go into details about this pregnancy, it's been much harder going than the last one and no one needs boring with my gripes.  

My feelings towards the whole thing have varied alarmingly from last time.  At times I am very excited about the whole new born thing and even the whole labour and birth thing.  I mentioned in a previous blog post how amazing I found birth last time and I want to feel that kick again, especially as number two is the final one so this will be the last time I'll experience all this.  At other times the idea of being woken up in the night fills me with dread, although I know that new born love feeling which means the baby can do pretty much anything and get away with it.  While I still love Jess more than anything else in the world, I live in dread of that padding of tiny feet in the night time, shortly followed by cold feet in the bed kicking you in the kidneys for the rest of the night.

The negative feelings that have plagued me this pregnancy have mostly revolved around Jess.  Like pretty much every parent under the sun I can't imagine loving a second child as much as I love her.  I'll burst surely?  My overwhelming love for her was like being hit by a train and despite having felt that I can't imagine it happening again.  My life now revolves around keeping this little person safe, happy and hopefully well adjusted.  It'll be knackering doing that with two won't it?

I'm also so scared that Jess will reject me and the new baby and then I'll have problems bonding with the new one and it'll all go to shit.  To prevent this I have tried to include Jess in things as much as possible.  She's been to every midwife appt and scan with me, she has one of the scan photos blu tacked next to her bed and she knows that the new baby is a girl and what she'll be called.  I encourage her to talk to the bump and we discuss what things will be like with the new baby around as much as possible.  At the moment she wants it to sleep in her bed so I have been gently trying to put her off that idea!

Child's sling courtesty of the very talented katiecelf

Jess is very verbal and I suspect I often think her understanding of things is better than it is, so my attempts to explain that the new baby will take up a lot of my time and energy generally generate a blank look and a change of subject to why Mummy is a silly bum bum.  Not to be deterred I have spoken to her lots about where the baby gets its food from and how it'll be born. One of my proudest Mummy moments was when we were walking through the hospital to the first scan and I told Jess to tell her Daddy how the baby would be born.  She shouted out "from your vagina" and my sexual heath nurse's heart swelled with pride!  She's also developed a sweet habit of sticking her soft toys up her top to be pregnant and then pulling them out either to push around in the toy buggy or to carry in her toy ring sling.  She calls herself a little mummy a lot and has developed a bit of an obsession with family relationships and having us pretend to be someone different.

There is a part of me that would love to have her at the birth but I know she'd get bored during labour and obviously as I can't guarantee everything will go smoothly I wouldn't attempt to have her involved.  If I was having a home birth I'd probably think differently on this.  

On the plus side one of the things I am most looking forward to is seeing her becoming a big sister, I obviously hope that she enjoys it and everything will go swimmingly...  But one thing I do know is that she can be a bossy little so and so.  I suspect she'll love having an even littler girl to shepard about.

At the end of the day you can never really predict how things are going to be and like most parenting issues it'll be a case of taking each day as it comes and seeing how we get on.  I'd like to know preparations others made and how they found the second (or subsequent) babies arrival.  Any tips gratefully received!!!

Little Girl is Growing Up!

Lets get this straight, she's still very little but it occurs to me that her third birthday is looming and I haven't blogged about her in a while!

The last three years have certainly flown by, I continually find myself gobsmacked that I am a mother to a very chatty inquisitive being who has a brain like a sponge.  The things she remembers astonish me and the way she reflects my personality back at me regularly makes me cringe!  She makes her toys talk to each other now and a few nights ago Captain Barnacles earnestly told Paso he was being a pain in the bum.  Ouch.

She also has a definite personality that is asserting itself and it is nothing like what I imagined it would be.  I had assumed that any daughter of mine would eschew the girly, run around in jeans, embrace mud and generally be a bit of a tomboy.  Instead I have been told that I should wear make up because it's really good (only something Meanderinggranny has said to me before), I have regular rows about whether or not she's going to wear a dress or jeans, or even whether the dress I want her to wear is acceptable.  I sometimes think the only one that is acceptable is the one with fairy wings on the back.  She can be incredibly stubborn too and on a daily basis will employ the tactic of completely ignoring us so she won't have to do what we want her to.  It's infuriating beyond belief and to my shame I have less patience with these things than I'd hoped.  Amazingly she's overwhelmingly forgiving of my outbursts and I know I'm living on borrowed time with this, it'll be all too soon before she starts thinking I'm unreasonable and holding grudges.  Probably quite rightly too.

In april next year there will be another meanderingbaby on the scene.  I'm feeling apprehensive about going through the whole thing again but mostly I'm worried that it'll drive a wedge between my daughter and I.  She seems very aware of what is going on and broke the news to her nursery for us which suggests she's excited about it.  Since she found out she's really started mothering some of her soft toys and regularly brings me her tiger to tell me "my baby is crying" or "my baby is tired".  Admittedly she usually then slings him halfway accross the room but I'm choosing to ignore that bit...

Anyway I will try to blog more about how we all get on as we expand as a family, watch this space!

What a week for vaginas!

I know most of the readers of this blog will have heard me rant about this already but I thought I'd write a blog too!  Possibly so I can preserve my feelings on this for posterity.

This week saw an enormous fail for social media marketing, and I like to think I was there at the beginning of it all!  The company in question was femfresh and they are a company I have long been waging a very small personal war with.  Having worked in and around sexual health pretty much since I qualified I have never met a colleague who would recommend the use of femfresh, in fact when a women is diagnosed with bacterial vaginosis (BV) or thrush one of the first questions is "what do you wash with" and if the answer is femfresh the advice will be to stop using it.  It's a fragranced product and while it bangs on about being pH balanced and therefore appropriate for use on your "intimate area" the reality is that is upsets the balance of lactobacilli bacteria that are there to keep your vagina squeaky clean all on their own.

The fact that this stuff is on the market has long been something that irritated me and I was even more pissed off of late by seeing their new adverts around (their website version here), my irritation was partly caused because I hate seeing them spread the word about their noxious product and partly because of the language used, it's so infantile and most people would not use that sort of language over the age of five.  Their argument was that women call their vaginas all kinds of things and they were trying to make a light hearted play on that.  Now I know that advertisers have to be careful around their use of language but have we become so prudish as a society that we can't cope with the word vagina, which is definitely a word many women use?  I suspect not given the barrage of decidedly non prudish images we are exposed to on a daily basis so I suspect the problem goes deeper than that.

My feeling is that femfresh have managed to match up their advertising very well with their companies aims (although I suspect they may not actually realise what their aims are).  They want women to be ashamed of themselves and their vaginas.  They are creating insecurities and trying to make women believe that their vaginas shouldn't smell of anything, and while they shouldn't smell of anything we can't even use adult language to describe them.  They are creating these insecurities so they can create a problem and flog the cure, much as listerine did so many years ago, but unlike listerine which could be considered a fairly benign product, femfresh actually causes the problems it purports to prevent- one of the main symptoms of BV is a fishy smell from the vagina.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to find femfresh's relatively new facebook page which had picked up a number of negative comments around their adverts already, I added to these voicing my own concerns about the ad's language and my general view that their product was crap.  This was on thursday and as I wasn't working I left meanderingdaughter pretty much to her own devices and watched the shit storm unfold.  The page was gradually attracting more and more women and men voicing their opinions and it was incredible to see.  Eventually femfresh changed the cover photo on the page to add the word vagina but it was too little, too late.  They posted that they were listening to our feedback and pleaded with posters to keep it clean (because calling your vagina a nooni is celebrating it but calling it a cunt is a step too far) but still the comments kept rolling in.  Finally the facebook page and femfreshuk twitter account were removed and it the fun stopped.  I suspect the strength of the reaction partly came off the back of the broohaha caused by a politician in the USA using the word vagina in the Michigan House of Representatives.

Names for your genitalia, be you man or woman, is a tricky one.  As a nurse I would never use a euphemism while talking to a patient but I love the fact that our language is rich enough to provide us with so many different names and through all this I have learnt a fair few more.  I've even found an advertising campaign that has a very similar brief to the femfresh one but does it so much better, in fact, it's inspired!  I give you the mooncup Love Love Love Your Vagina song!

I think the reason this one works so much better is not just because it actually uses the word vagina but it's a bit naughty, it's grown up and it doesn't talk down to it's customers.  And obviously the fact that mooncups are a very useful and positive product which don't cause infections.

So there you go.  Embrace your vagina and its beautiful natural fragrance, call it whatever you want, wash it with water and aqueous cream if you want to use a cleanser and treat it to a mooncup.

Why Feminism is Still Needed

Of course this is such a huge subject so I'm not going to address the full myriad of reasons in one blog post but I have noticed a few things this morning which really struck me hard.

Part of my professional life involves providing women with contraception and this will often involve dispelling some of the huge amount of myths attached to contraception use. One in particular that stuck in my head from many years ago was a young woman (not yet 20) from a deprived area of East London attending for an abortion. She knew she had been at risk of pregnancy but had decided not to take the emergency pill because she thought it would leave her infertile. Because of this belief she was risking her fertility by having an abortion. Obviously the risk attached to having one abortion is low but it's still far greater than the non existent risk of taking the emergency pill. I'm aware that these ingrained beliefs do not allow women to fully take control of their own reproductive process, especially when pressure is put on them by husbands and boyfriends who readily buy into the idea that contraception is not worth the perceived side effects.

Dispelling these ideas around contraception sometime feels a bit like an uphill struggle but I have realised that they are nothing in comparison to what women in a number of other countries are facing. And I'm not even going to get started on Rush Limbaugh and the current situation in the US.

The first thing I do want to talk about is information I received in an email from Avaaz. Apparently in Honduras they are very close to voting through a law that would make providing the emergency pill illegal. Abortion is already illegal in Honduras and women seeking abortions or anyone providing an abortion risks a jail sentence. With the new law anyone caught with the emergency pill will be considered as attempting an abortion and treated accordingly.

This seriously impinges on women's reproductive rights. An abortion is effectively a forced miscarriage. And it's the wording here that is important. Without carriage, there can be no miscarriage and the way that the emergency pill works effectively means that it cannot cause an abortion or miscarriage. When a woman takes the emergency pill it delays her ovulation or prevents a fertilised egg from implanting. If an egg is fertilised she is still not pregnant until it implants. If the egg is implanted the emergency pill will do stuff all and won't have any effect on the pregnancy and will not cause miscarriage.

Obviously it is worrying that such a law is at risk of being enforced in this day and age but it also opens the door to other and even more restrictive laws. The emergency pill only works in similar ways to other methods of contraception, many of which prohibit ovulation or prevent implantation and if Honduras bans emergency contraception is theoretically opens the door to them banning other methods of contraception. This could lead to a slightly less amusing version of Monty Python's Catholic paradise.

Uzbekistan has apparently been taking a far more invasive and permanent attack on women's reproductive rights and in quite the opposite direction. Whereas Honduras wants women to be unable to stop themselves getting pregnant, Uzbekistan wishes to permanently prevent pregnancies. Women have been having forced hysterectomies after having c- sections. Doctors and health professionals are given quotas of how many sterilisations they need to perform. Sometimes they berate women into having the procedure, other times they just do it without consent whilst a woman is anaesthetised. And in a country where c- sections are at an unreported but possible 80% that's a lot of women at risk of having such forced sterilisations. This is just so awful it doesn't need me to go into it more.

I will only say that all you need to do to encourage women to use contraception is make it easily and cheaply available and provide education for both the men and women in your country. I know from my experiences of working in a country where education and health care are free and available for all there are still people who don't use contraception or who don't understand it but at least we can correct that in a less drastic manner. What is happening in both Honduras and Uzbekistan is a tragedy and could be another nail in the coffin of feminism if we let it.

Sign the Avaas Petition.

PIP Implant Row

Along with many others I tuned into Newsnight last night for the opportunity to watch Katie Price talking to Jeremy Paxman about her breasts. I was intrigued by the whole concept and probably my inner Benny Hill was rearing it's ugly head.

This was the bit of the show dealing with breast implants supplied by the French company PIP which stopped trading in 2010 after it was found to be using industrial grade rather than medical grade silicon. The implants are thought to be more prone to rupture causing health problems for the women involved. I say women because that's all we really hear about in the news, I am fairly sure that I read somewhere that PIP also provided testicle implants etc that would have been implanted into men and presumably would cause the same problem. I'm not sure why we're just hearing about the women... Is it that the media has seized on the titillation value of being able to talk about women's breasts in the name of real news?

Which brings me back to Newsnight. Although let me just explain something first which should demonstrate why I was so angry with Paxman from the second he opened his mouth!

I'm a sexual health nurse and I spend my working life discussing with complete strangers the intimate details of their sex lives. One of the cornerstones of the way I go about this is to only ask questions that are relevant to the care I am trying to provide. I may need to know what kind of sex someone has had but I don't need to know if it was on the kitchen table or not. I am very well aware that there is a world of difference between being a journalist and being a clap nurse but I think there are certain situations where asking yourself "is this question relevant" can be applied to both professions. So last night I was quite surprised to hear Paxman welcome a group of women who have PIP implants to the studio and the first thing he asked of a couple of them was why they decided to have implants in the first place.

Why women decide to have implants (and other cosmetic surgery) is a very valid question to ask that says a lot about our society and it's obsession with youth but in this instance it had no meaning to it apart from to make Paxmen look slightly yet uncomfortably pervy. The issue here is that women have had implants given to them which give them a greater risk of related health problems than they were led to believe. Thousands of women in this country are now being left in limbo with no definite plan in place to let them have their implants replaced. This is made more worrying for them because other countries in Europe are doing so. I worry as well that we are inclined to see some women as more deserving of sympathy- if they had implants following a mastectomy rather than to improve the size, shape, bounce or whatever of their breasts. It's slightly gross the way we like to judge individuals in this way.

I won't even go into how appalling it is that many private clinics are liquidising then reforming under a new name to avoid their responsibility in replacing the faulty implants they inserted. The NHS is offering to remove implants found to be faulty but not to replace them and I'm not sure where I stand on this.

That faulty implants that are a risk to a women's health or possibly life should be removed on the NHS goes without saying. If you say not then we're back in the argument of do we treat illnesses caused by lifestyle options: the obese, diabetics, smokers, drug users, people who drive too fast and wrap their car round a tree, christ, we could even include pregnant women! But do we replace the implants? Can the over stretched NHS afford to mop up a problem they didn't cause? Can they really offer to remove a women's implants, stitch them up and leave them to it? Surely if they have an operating theatre already booked up, fully staffed and the women under anaesthetic with the right incisions already made the added cost of popping a couple of new implants in isn't going to be that great?

Caitlin Moran said, then quickly retracted, on twitter last night, that if a woman can afford implants for vanity reasons can she not fork out to have them replaced if it might save her life? Like her I initially agreed with this idea then changed my mind. I think what we can all agree on that this is an argument that could go on and on and I'm not sure where I stand, although I am leaning towards replacing on the NHS if the private clinics refuse. And some tougher measures for clinics who shirk their responsibilities to their patients, although can we really expect more from profit driven private health care?

In comparison to the clunky and awkward questioning from Paxman, Price was actually excellent and spoke about her experiences very well. I was appalled to hear that before she had her first breast operation The Sun held a poll to see if their readers thought she should have it done. Nice. But again, another kettle of fish altogether.

David Lammy and My Increasing Disappointment in the Labour Party.

This one is as the title says really. I feel that another nail has been pounded into the over crowded coffin of the current Labour party. Even Diane Abbott has been disappointing me recently, and that's saying something.

Anyway, today there was an article in the Guardian quoting Tottenham MP David Lammy's interview with LBC where he outlines his support for slackening the current smacking laws (you are allowed to smack your child but nothing that causes a reddening or marking of the skin). He feels that parents should be allowed to be "sovereigns of their own homes" and able to use their own judgement when it comes to disciplining their children. He actually goes so far to suggest that the London riots could have been avoided if parents were allowed to discipline their children with as much force as they like. I don't even have a response to that, it's such a stupid comment I don't think it needs one.

He did actually make a couple of good points in the interview, firstly that the reddening of the skin distinction was a bit irrelevant for non-white parents and secondly that many parents are confused by changes in law around smacking and disciplining their children. Obviously skin comes in many different colours and shades and some reddens easier than others so therefore a law that makes this distinction is completely unworkable. And if laws are changed and different distinctions made then people will be confused. Hell, I'm confused by it!

Unlike David Lammy though, my resolution for these discrepancies and confusion is simple. Ban smacking. If there was a blanket ban on hitting children there would be no space for arguments of any kind.

I am actually one of those people who can stand up and say "I was smacked as a child and it didn't do me any harm". I was never smacked hard and I wouldn't say that the smacking was ever unmerited (I consider drawing on the carpet with felt tips would be enough to drive any parent to their limits), and it didn't do me any harm, I love my parents dearly and we're very close. It's not shaped me that much as an adult; I don't resort to physical violence to settle disputes and I wasn't out there looting JD Sports during the riots. But I was scared of this punishment as a child and I vividly remember being afraid of the possibility of a smack. I am therefore aware that there is a distinction to be made between what the majority of parents would consider reasonable chastisement and what is very blatantly unreasonable abuse. The loving and happy childhood (with very occasional smacking) I had is obviously not in any way comparable to the likes of what Victoria Climbie and Peter Connolley went through but the crucial point is where do we draw the line? If there is a blanket ban then fewer children will suffer and fall through the net.

I cannot understand how it is illegal to hit an adult who is annoying you but it's OK to hit a child. Shouldn't we be protecting the most vulnerable members of our society?

I'm also not going to pretend that I have all the answers when it comes to child discipline. I am blessed with a generally well behaved and easy going child whom we currently employ a variation on the naughty step for. We call it the "thinking step", bleeding heart liberals that we are! The idea is that meanderingdaughter sits on the step, is told why and we check she understands and apologises for her misdemeanours before she's allowed off. It is working well but I think that's because it hasn't really occurred to her that if she really wanted to, she could get up and walk off; at the moment she just sits there and looks sheepish... I know this approach is frowned upon by some and that's fair enough, I don't know if it's the right way to go but what I do know is that's it's not causing meanderingdaughter any harm and that's the most important thing.

I would like to add that I also do occasionally completely lose my rag with meanderingdaughter and have screamed at her and scared her in a way I would not do to an adult (except when they step in front of my bike). Consequently I can see how easy it would be to lose control and hit a child, especially in difficult circumstances (eg being a single parent of more than one child) and I personally wouldn't censure a parent for doing so occasionally. Saying that (and I know I'm vaguely contradicting myself here) I don't however think that physically disciplining your child should be legally acceptable behaviour.

So, unlike Lammy, I am all for a tightening up of our laws and attitudes to child discipline in this country. I think a little more respect for self and others all round would work better for preventing riots and hopefully create relationships based on understanding instead of fear.

As a last point it is a worry that Lammy is touting these views when he is an MP for part of Haringey, a borough with arguably a more troubled past than most when it comes to child abuse. What those cases should teach us is that children's safety and well being should be a priority and there is no excuse for hitting a child.

The Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund

I fear this blog may be about to make a comeback as a place for me to vent my irritations in more than 140 characters but I'll try to throw in some parenting posts as well!

This one is triggered by noticing an Evening Standard front page while on my way home today. I normally don't touch the Standard as I have a huge issue with the way its vile messages are handed out for free and seem to be absorbed without question by a large number of London's commuters. I don't even blame the commuters really, the paper is just there alongside the morning's Metro and they're so insiduous and easy to pick up and read without questioning the message within.

Anyway, I note that the Evening Standard is giving away £1.25 million to charity as part of their ongoing Dispossessed Fund. Very commendable, although I daresay they can easily afford it. My big problem were their three big quotes on the front page:

Prince William "I consider the Evening Standard's exposure of hidden poverty a call to arms for us all. This is a great city. However, the plight of the dispossessed in its many forms tarnishes it"

David Cameron "The Dispossessed Campaign has stirred London's conscience and will have a big impact in helping people climb their way out of poverty"

Boris Johnson "I am grateful to the Evening Standard for again highlighting the poverty and deprivation that shame this city while giving every Londoner the chance to help remedy the situation"

Um... excuse me?

Dearest Wills, once your family of scrounging throwbacks start supporting yourselves then you can have a say on poverty. Until then keep your mouth shut, you embarrass yourself.

David, Dave, Davey boy. You could single handedly have a much bigger impact on helping people out of poverty if you stopped destroying the job market, the welfare system and everything else that makes this country a great place to be. You are forcing huge numbers of individuals, families and children into poverty which they will have no chance to climb out of. Is your conscience not stirred? Oh, I forgot, you never had one.

And darling, bumbling, lovable Boris. You twat. You should be ashamed of what you have done to London and your role in helping keep people in poverty and deprivation.

Glad I got that off my chest.