Impossible Things Before Breakfast

The novel: progress update

2008-11-10T17:00:00.004Z

So, I can finally announce that I'm working on the novel without it being ~~an exaggeration~~ a total lie. Hurrah! I have the plot worked out and my main scenes outlined, and a first chapter drafted. Getting past the first chapter is probably the hardest bit, because the temptation is to revise, revise, revise. Especially for a incurable perfectionist like me. But onward and upward!

Twenty two months and sixteen days

2008-10-30T20:37:00.003Z

Alice is stringing more words together now, although her pronunciation is still idiosyncratic to say the least. Disturbingly, her longest sentence to date has been: 'Watch telly in a minute, mummy?' Disturbingly because I was quite convinced before she was born that we would remain a television-free household and thus avoid all such requests altogether. Ha! Ok, technically we are television-free in that we don't own a set. But then BBC iPlayer came along...

I'm not going to beat myself up about it though. When Alice still had a two-hour nap in the day, I used that time to do housework and maybe even have a nice cup of tea and a sit down. Now she only naps when she's out in the buggy, so a session with the electronic babysitter can feel like the only way to preserve a) a semblance of order and b) my sanity. And at least she doesn't see any adverts. [Cue sound of goalposts audibly shifting].

Speaking of TV, I sat down to watch Teletubbies with Alice the other day and thought to myself: wow, I can't believe it's ten years since I first watched Teletubbies and it's still on TV now! Then I realised that the REALLY unbelievable thing was that I'd watched it ten years ago. Willingly and with intent. Before I had a child. As did everybody I knew.

I know that at the time - the late 1990s - the country was still in the grip of Irony, and that infantilisation and nostalgia were all the rage. But looking back, I find that to be no excuse. After all, Teletubbies was a new programme at the time, not something from my childhood that I could legitimately get all gooey about. And as for it being somehow 'trippy', 'surreal' or 'psychedelic, man'... well, compared to lots of other children's programmes both before and since, it's pretty tame and orderly. I suppose it did speak to very studenty concerns though: toast, unpredictable cleaning appliances, and silly dancing. Oh and there was that one who was like, gay! Hilarious.

Twenty one months and fifteen days

2008-09-29T16:29:00.004Z

Most of the time I walk around congratulating myself on how advanced Alice's vocabulary and communication skills are for her age. But occasionally it will occur to me that just because I can understand her, it doesn't mean she is making sense.

Example: would an outsider necessarily glean anything from the words 'yoya poon'? No. Whereas the mummy-translator renders the above into 'yoghurt spoon' and further into the full intended meaning which is something like 'I would very much like to eat a yoghurt with my spoon now. Make it so.'

Poetry Archive update

2008-09-16T15:07:00.003Z

The BBC reports: Recordings of 14 major 20th-Century American poets have been added to the free online audio Poetry Archive .

Link to The Poetry Archive.

Twenty months minus 3 days

2008-08-11T10:32:00.003Z

New words: hello, biscuit, woof, Batman.

Surprised she didn't learn 'biscuit' earlier since she asks for one about every ten minutes...

At least they didn't ask what 'piss' means...

2008-07-22T09:48:00.004Z

Selected vocabulary that drew a blank with my non-English audience at the poetry reading/discussion yesterday:
'flailing', 'polished off', 'neat', 'thumbprint', 'chopped', 'haiku'...

But considering the language barrier, they were attentive, perceptive and engaged. And I feel much more confident talking in front of a group these days. I guess when you've - somehow - ended up leading a whole parent-toddler group in renditions of Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses, Hickory Dickory Dock, and Five Currant Buns, chatting about poetry to a few Catalan teachers holds no fear.

Tonight, the part of Mum will be played by...

2008-07-17T11:44:00.004Z

Seventeen months ago, I wrote about how I didn't really feel like a Mother - with all that word's associations. Not deep down. A lot has changed, and now I feel as odd and fraudulent if I'm walking somewhere WITHOUT Alice in the pushchair as I did then with it. Her health, safety, development, and bowel movements are constantly in my thoughts and I would do anything to protect her. I am her mum, no question.

But am I a Mother? When I was a child I thought about my mum, and other people's, as if a) that's all they were and b) they had always known exactly how to be it. I mean, SURELY there's a switch that goes on when you give birth, that makes you all-knowing, super-competent, infinitely patient, totally nurturing, and able to to sew on nametapes, make castles out of cereal packets and cook three nutritious meals a day - isn't there? Well, apparently not. I still feel like it's a ridiculous mistake that I have been put in a charge of a baby - a person. Far from bestowing new and perfect knowledge, parenthood has, like space exploration, only revealed even vaster areas of ignorance. Everything is improvised, accidental, piecemeal and experimental, full of compromise and error.

But I have gained ONE vital piece of knowledge in these past seventeen months. Which is that parenthood is that way for EVERYONE, always. I am not alone.

Nineteen months and two days

2008-07-16T08:17:00.002Z

Another installment in the series 'Alice with fruit and vegetables'. She doesn't look too happy about the pear though:

Nineteen months and one day!

2008-07-15T11:14:00.004Z

Okay, six months without blogging. That's quite a long time when I consider that it represents a third of Alice's entire life.

So, updates:

POETRY
Nothing doing. (I am giving a reading to 20 Spanish students next week but I don't think that counts as a major development compared to say, actually putting pen to paper.

NOVEL
I have begun my crime novel several times, and have been foiled twice by laptop meltdown and once (ok more than once) by a complete change of mind about plot, setting, tone and characterisation. Ha.

BABY
Alice is finally walking, with a determined John Wayne swagger. She goes to nursery 1.5 days a week, and loves it. Her favourite activities are looking at books (hm, don't know where she gets it from), eating and/or smearing food into every available surface, putting things into other things/taking things out of other things, throwing balls, and chatting to the ants in the garden.

She had her first speech assessment with the cleft team last month, and 'passed' with flying colours. Although the cleft palate is causing slight nasality, she can make all the key consonant sounds including the tricky 'p' and 'b', and her vocabulary and communication skills are very good for her age. Words mastered include: mummy, daddy, duck, dog, cat, rabbit, cow, mouse, pig, teddy, bear, ant, rain, star, ball, house, brick, book, bye, banana, please, bee, peas (the last three are a bit interchangeable), up, down, red, blue. The list grows daily. She's a constant babbler as well, but hasn't yet combined the conversational talk with the actual words.

Just lately, she is prone to instant tantrums if what she wants doesn't materialise, occasionally even before she asks for it, which is not a welcome development. I think we might have spoiled her a little, and now that she's not a baby any more and technically has other ways to communicate, I tend to panic when she does scream and just do whatever she wants. Oh dear.

Thirteen months and seven days

2008-01-21T14:54:00.000Z

Alice is suddenly able to clap her hands, having previously shown a resolute lack of interest/ability in that area despite keen demonstrations from all family members. However, rather than enthusiastically joining in with games of pattacake, she tends to reserve her applause for musical entertainments on the television, chiefly Dancing on Ice and Christina Aguilera concerts. I KNEW there was a reason we don't have a TV of our own...

She continues to thrive in every other way, eating like a horse (if the horse had a habit of flinging handfuls of food to the floor without warning), cruising the furniture at high speed (though not standing or walking unaided yet), and chattering constantly. Tentatively identifiable words include: mama, dada, banana, grandma, dog, book and - wouldn't you know it - 'no'.

Alice getting her five a day

2008-01-15T09:50:00.000Z

Eleven months and twenty seven days...

2007-12-05T10:56:00.000Z

... and two house moves, two lots of surgery, and god knows how many sleepless nights later, here we are, approaching Alice's first birthday. This time last year I was being scanned and poked and prodded by various consultants, and now the object of all that scrutiny is a person in her own right. It still terrifies and amazes me that we can cause whole new people to happen. By having sex! Crazy.

Ten months and fifteen days

2007-10-29T14:08:00.000Z

The last month or so has seen a bit of a spurt in Alice's development, and she can now do the following (all calculated to impress her unutterable cuteness so firmly upon her parents that they will instantly bend to her will, I'm sure):

- wave hello and goodbye
- give a thumbs up
- say 'mama' and 'dada' (not always in deliberate reference to us though)
- say 'muh', 'duh', 'guh', 'buh', 'thuh', 'luh' and various interestingly intoned combinations thereof
- give kisses when prompted (or at least bump her open mouth towards roughly the right area)
- crawl
- cruise-walk round the coffee table/along the sofa
- play peekaboo

Here she is at my poetry reading yesterday, with friend Flora:

Nobody told me I'd be playing drums as well...

2007-10-29T13:52:00.000Z

A photo from the fun (and gratifyingly well-attended considering the weather) event at Pelham House yesterday:

Lewes Live Literature festival event

2007-10-24T15:30:00.001Z

I have another reading - probably the last for a while - coming up: Sunday 28th October, 1.15pm @ Pelham House, Lewes.

The morning after the night before

2007-09-12T12:35:00.000Z

Well, I survived - and even enjoyed - last night's reading. And here's a photo, taken by my friend Alexandra, to prove it:

Tonight

2007-09-11T14:26:00.001Z

Tonight I am reading at the Komedia in Brighton. I still haven't produced any new poems. I have a cold (which I fondly imagine might make me sound gruff and sexy but in reality probably juthd bake be sound like dith). And my snotty, stuffed up head is full of boring house moving stuff. So it doesn't bode well.

Eight months and twenty days

2007-09-03T11:06:00.000Z

It's been three weeks since Alice's palate repair operation, which overall was a less traumatic experience than the previous surgery. Although she had an eight hour wait with nothing to eat before going into theatre, she's at a much more distractable age than she was last time. Similarly, although she was screaming her head off when she came out of the anaesthetic, we did induce her to smile within a few minutes (whereas before she was inconsolably miserable until the next day).

However, we still had a difficult time once we took her home. For a week she wouldn't drink any liquid, either from a bottle or from a cup, so any milk she had was mixed up with baby rice etc and taken off a spoon. She also stopped sleeping straight through for 11 hours at night (yes, I know how lucky we were) and instead refused to settle in her cot at all. We could only get her to sleep by taking her out in the buggy first, and she regularly woke in the night and wouldn't go back to sleep.

When you consider what she went through, two unsettled weeks isn't much to put up with... but my god it felt like a lifetime at the time. It can be quite difficult to see the wood for the trees at the best of times when you're looking after a small baby, but when even the tenuous routine you've established is disrupted you feel like you're never going to feel in control again.

However, here I am. And gradually I am remembering what it's like not to be exhausted.

Seven months and eleven days

2007-07-25T11:07:00.001Z

Alice having an apparently hilarious time in her cot:

Time poor

2007-07-25T11:04:00.000Z

I was obviously being facetious about publishing a novel before I'm 30, but the way things are going at the moment I'll be lucky to finish the damn thing before I'm 300... it's not for lack of ideas, or even motivation (for a change), it's the sheer impossibility of finding any TIME. Sometimes I write on the train on the way to work, but the actual process of putting the words on paper is frustratingly slow compared to the completed lines, paragraphs, chapters that already exist in my head. Then I usually use Alice's nap times to transfer the resulting garbled notes onto the laptop and edit them, but these are unpredictable snatched moments at best. Especially when you subtract the time it takes me to do the household chores that prove impossible to tackle when Alice is awake. How do other people manage?

Meanwhile, I have three poetry gigs booked in September and October, which is great but also worrying, because I haven't written any new poems for months. And I don't think a performance based on fragments of a barely started crime novel will be an acceptable substitute, somehow...

Guardian review

2007-06-19T10:32:00.000Z

A modest smidge of national attention for The Frogmore Papers this week, in the Guardian Review section. Link.

Meanwhile, I am actually writing! Poetry still not forthcoming, but this fiction lark is a doddle...

Oh and it's my 29th birthday today. Let's see if I can get a novel published before I'm 30.

Six months minus one day

2007-06-13T10:15:00.001Z

I remember calculating once that I had earned less than £100 from poetry in my entire life. This total doesn't look like going up any time soon, so I'm giving serious thought to writing genre fiction in an attempt to boost our now alarmingly reduced income. Murder mysteries, maybe. I have no idea if I have the patience to write a novel, but it's got to be worth a try.

Six months minus three days

2007-06-11T09:45:00.000Z

Today is my first day back at work. And despite the fact that I have intended all along to come back on this date, wanted to do it, and have had six months to prepare for it, it was still torture leaving Alice at home this morning.

So, to cheer myself up I've been thinking of the plus points:

1) I have a fighting chance of getting through the day without my clothes becoming covered in sicked up milk and half digested carrot (unless we have some REALLY ill-mannered students this year).

2) I might get some adult conversation instead of n repetitions of 'Row Row Row Your Boat'.

3) I don't have to think about routes avoiding steps whenever I go anywhere. And I can sit wherever I like on the train.

4) Nobody is likely to yank my hair out (it's not the searing agony that I mind so much as the alarming number of WHITE hairs that now end up being clutched triumphantly in a chubby fist...)

5) An actual lunch break, dictated by logic and preference rather than the whims of an infant.

6) Significantly less ear-splitting crying.

Five months and nineteen days

2007-06-02T18:48:00.000Z

Alice just can't stop smiling at the moment!

(Except when she's sceraming blue murder that is, due to those pesky bottom teeth she's sporting so proudly.)

Lots I've been intending to write, no time to write it...

Five months minus one day

2007-05-13T19:06:00.000Z

Depressing remarks from a professor at Liverpool University appeared in the News of the World last week, with reference to the possible kidnapper of Madeleine McCann:

Society probably regards the man as an oddball. Normally these offenders also have some sort of minor disability, which makes them feel even more isolated, such as a hare lip.

Where to start! Well, 'hare lip' for one thing - why is an academic using a completely outdated and offensive term? More seriously, on what does he base the assertions that a) 'these offenders' are likely to have a cleft lip and b) people with a cleft lip are more likely to feel isolated? I seriously doubt that any research could back up the claim that us clefties have criminal tendencies, and I was astonished to discover that I should be feeling isolated because of my cleft.

Happily, the chief executive of CLAPA has already written eloquently to Professor Canter to object to his ignorant comments, as have many of the users of the Faceforward forum.

Update: Professor Canter has since apologised graciously and made it clear that the News of the World printed a summary of his comments without clearing the content with him first. (What a shocker.)

Four months and twenty three days

2007-05-07T18:48:00.000Z

Lots of nice firsts with Alice lately:

- solid food (baby rice mixed with her formula; she enjoyed eating it and playing with the spoon etc but was so alarmed by the effect on her bowels (much harder poo) that we have stopped giving it to her for a little while.)

- sleeping in her own room and in the big cot (she loves it as long as she can sleep on her familiar lambskin - will I ever get to wash it? - and now has her daytime naps up there too where she goes off much more happily away from the tempting distractions of ooh, mum washing up.)

- rolled over from front to back (she can't do the other way yet - gets halfway over then doesn't quite have the momentum and just wobbles on her side).

- baby group (I've never been much of a joiner but I don't know many people in Seaford so last week I bit the bullet and went along. It was nice but a bit overwhelming and noisy even with only 7 or 8 mums and their babies. Alice was the youngest one and was much admired but got a bit over-excited and started crying, which curtailed my attempts at proper conversation slightly.)

Alice's lip repair: the aftermath

2007-05-01T11:07:00.000Z

Alice remained on staggered doses of liquid paracetomol (2.5ml) and ibuprofen (1.5ml) for a week after the op. It was quite difficult to know when to stop with them, as she did seem to be crying a lot, but whether it was from pain or just general discomfort and unhappiness after her experience was impossible to tell. With hindsight (again!) I think it was partly the painkillers themselves that were upsetting her with their effect on her tiny tummy :(

She continued to do well back on her bottle although didn't take as much in one feed as before. It's only now, nearly four weeks later, that her digestion seems to have settled and she's taking what I'd consider to be a full feed again. In the meantime she developed a serious crying habit and started fussing over every feed. The GP diagnosed colic, but the cleft nurse and I both felt that it was more due to reflux which in turn was causing her to eat less so that she was constantly slightly hungry and grumpy. However, we tried a 'staydown' formula to help combat reflux (Infacol having had no discernible effect) and she hated it, so who knows? Suddenly since this weekend she's been much happier and eating loads and I don't think it's due to anything we've done differently in the end. So frustrating that babies can't just tell you what's wrong!

Appearance wise, it took less than a week for the black eye and all the swelling to go down, although the inside of her nose on the cleft side was still very narrow and completely bunged up with snot and dried blood - but the cleft nurse assured us this was normal. The nose itself returned to a more normal, relaxed shape after a few days although it will never be totally symmetrical. The stitches fell out on their own over the course of about a fortnight and the redness around the scar disappeared too. We were told to wash it once a day with cooled boiled water and apply vaseline four times a day to keep it moist, and after six weeks we need to start massaging with Vitamin E oil/BioOil to help the skin stay supple. Her upper lip has puckered slightly as the scar has pulled together but apparently this will relax again in time; however, it's become slightly raised which is a sign that it's healing TOO well and overdoing the efforts to repair itself, so we have to get some cream from the doctor to halt this process.

This is probably all very boring in its detail but you never know, someone might find it helpful! I know I wanted to know what to expect beforehand, anyway.

Alice's lip repair: part three

2007-04-30T09:08:00.000Z

With hindsight, Alice improved immeasurably once the morphine drip was removed the morning after the op. Of course it's difficult to be sure about cause and effect, and babies can't tell you whether they're feeling better because the pain has gone anyway or because they're not being pumped with analgesic any more... but either way she perked up around midmorning and took a bottle of milk quite calmly, although it was still slow going. She also gave us her first post-repair smile which was indescribably wonderful!

One lovely thing about the ward which I think really helped Alice (and us) was the sensory room, all the way at the end of the floor and feeling a world away from the noise and bustle of the ward. It was a dark room, filled with soft mats, beanbags and shaped cushions, with a board of switches on the wall which controlled different light installations and effects. So there were bubble tubes, fibreoptic curtains, a mirrorball, wall projections etc. Alice has always loved looking at lights and colours and our visits to the sensory room seemed to distract her completely from her discomfort - and gave us a chance to sit and cuddle with her privately in a less medicalised environment. (Obviously this was only once the morphine drip was out and we could actually walk around with her.)

By early on Friday afternoon we were making plans to take Alice home, and having been given our supply of paracetamol and ibuprofen, vaseline and saline for wound care, and syringes in case bottle feeding regressed again, we walked back to Victoria - feeling I have to say like it had been far longer than 48 hours since we walked the same route in the other direction...

Alice's lip repair: part two

2007-04-23T21:13:00.000Z

We arrived in recovery at about 11.30 to find Alice absolutely beside herself screaming, which was pretty horrible. At first nothing seemed to calm her - she wouldn't touch the bottle we'd brought and wasn't impressed with being fed by syringe either, although she must have been starving. Lots of cuddling and a booster shot of morphine later and her heart rate had finally slowed down enough to move her back to the ward, but she was still upset. And we were so busy trying to calm her down that we hardly registered her new appearance at first, although it vaguely sunk in that she looked completely different. The rest of the day was spent alternating between trying to get her to feed and trying to get her to sleep, but it was a vicious circle really - she seemed too exhausted to eat but too hungry to properly sleep. She was getting automatic doses of morphine from a machine attached to a drip in her foot, which was keeping her dopey - and in retrospect may have been affecting her appetite - but not dopey enough to sleep for very long.

By the end of the day we'd managed to get a total of 250ml of milk into her through a syringe, with her fighting almost every tiny swallow. It was a painfully slow and difficult method of feeding and I really started to panic that she wasn't going to take the bottle ever again. But in the early hours of Friday morning she started to at least tolerate the teat in her mouth, and in the early afternoon she deigned to suck it again, thank god. It was an awful night though, me sleeping in snatches on a pull-down bed and Matt miles across town staying with a friend. It was just so counter-intuitive and cruel that we couldn't all be together as a family just when we needed each other most. I think the couple opposite us both managed to stay with their son somehow (even if one of them was sleeping in a chair) and I think we might do this next time if we possibly can.

Alice's new face was initially a bit swollen and the whole upper lip was bloodstained and covered with tape, so we couldn't really see the results at first. But it soon became apparent that the surgeon had done an incredibly neat job - I couldn't believe the smallness and straightness of the scar considering how wide the cleft had been. Her nose looked most different in a way - quite squashed and sort of pulled down in the centre where her 'new' nostril has been formed. But although I was a bit shocked by it all at first (I almost didn't recognise her), it's amazing how quickly I got used to the new look Alice. Especially once she had calmed down a bit and her same old personality began shining through again.

To be continued...

Alice's lip repair: part one

2007-04-23T20:30:00.000Z

We arrived at the Evelina Children's Hospital the afternoon before the op having walked from Victoria via St James' Park and Parliament Square, which was very pleasant and made us feel more like tourists than the parents of a baby about to undergo surgery. The Evelina is part of St Thomas's and is brand new - it looks great when you go in, lots of bright colours and art and entertainments, including a working helter skelter. The levels are all named and coloured after different bits of the natural world - Ocean, Mountain, Sky etc - and you ascend to each one through an atrium in lifts named Sun and Moon. So far, so unlike a hospital. But once we were on the ward and waiting in a very small and hot play area for Alice to have her pre-admission check, it did feel suddenly more institutional. Alice eventually had her weight, heart rate and blood pressure checked and we hung around for a while longer while the theatre schedule was confirmed so we knew what time to give her the last feed, before going over to the hospital accommodation on the main St Thomas's site.

We had a tiny room in a flat of about six rooms with a shared kitchen, toilet and bathroom. And although it was probably no more basic than some hostels I've stayed in (and had to pay for) there were a few things that really grated on our already frayed nerves. The kitchen had a kettle, a microwave and a steriliser but nothing else - no crockery or cutlery or utensils of any kind. Which made even having the kitchen rather pointless, I thought. With hindsight we should have gone over to the hospital restaurant to eat, but we were so knackered and anxious about the next day that we just wanted to hibernate. But the bathroom sink was blocked, the lift was covered in grafitti, there was nowhere to plug in a phone charger or anything else and the whole flat smelt of dirty nappies, so all in all it was hardly conducive to a comforting night.

We woke Alice for the last milk feed she was allowed at 1am, after which she slept better than we did I think. She didn't even seem too bothered not to be fed when she woke up at 5.30, sucking happily on her dummy and staying fairly quiet even when we got back to the ward to be admitted at 7am. After a while the anaesthetist came to have a chat about what was going to happen next, and we took Alice downstairs to theatre at about 8.30. I thought it was going to be completely traumatic watching her be put under with the gas, but in fact the anticipation had been far worse. She went to sleep very peacefully and it was almost a relief to know that it was all happening at last, we'd handed responsibility for her over to the surgeons and there was nothing more we could do for the time being.

We'd been told it would be two or three hours before Alice would be awake and ready for us to see her in the recovery ward, so we walked along the South Bank and had a coffee in the National Theatre cafe before returning to the ward to sterilise some bottles (there was a steam steriliser in the 'parents kitchen' on the ward but it didn't seem to be working and the nursing student on duty didn't know what to do with it either, so in the end we used our own cold water sterilising unit which we'd brought with us - I'm very glad we had it because it made me feel more in control, using something I was familiar with and not having to bother the staff all the time). Then we went for breakfast in Starbucks across the road and were on our way back when the nurses phoned to say Alice was awake.

To be continued...

Four months and three days

2007-04-17T12:05:00.000Z

Alice ten days after op:

Four months minus one day

2007-04-13T15:11:00.000Z

Can't believe Alice is four months old tomorrow! So much has happened but I've been unable to blog due to no internet access in our new house yet.

The main event has been her lip repair which was last Thursday. I will type up my notes about that later, but for now here's a few pictures:

Blissfully ignorant just before surgery:

Still a bit of a mess:

Cheering up:

Tape removed from stitches:

On the way home:

Three months and two days

2007-03-16T13:17:00.000Z

I'm being slightly haunted by an uncharacteristically stern comment from Penelope Leach (can't check the exact quote because the book is packed away ready for moving house). Something along the lines of 'don't get cross if your baby wants to be held all the time and cries when you try to put her down; it's not her who's being unreasonable, it's you'.

Unreasonable? Maybe. But only in the sense that human beings ARE partly unreasonable. Show me any person who wouldn't feel 'unreasonable' enough to want to put their baby down when by two o'clock in the afternoon they'd not eaten since the previous evening, been woken twice in the night, not showered or dressed, and not spoken to another adult for hours, and I'll show you a saint/liar. It's not that I want to deny Alice's need to be held, but it doesn't make me a bad mother if I also want to perform the basic functions necessary to my own survival and sanity, does it?

Another writer who I mostly respect, Naomi Stadlen, has also made me feel guilty/indignant with her take on 'maternal ambivalence', which she claims is NOT an inevitable part of the mothering experience. She quotes women writers who describe feeling wretched and angry when they couldn't get time away from their babies, and concludes that it's only when mothers want time to themselves - to read, write, earn a living etc - that they feel anger towards their babies. If they gave up these foolish desires they would be a lot happier and not hate their babies any more - voila, no ambivalence after all.

I don't think I would ever *express* anger towards Alice for crying incessantly. But I do want her to shut up without having to attach her to my person 24/7, and not just because I hate to see her upset (though I do). Sorry Penelope and Naomi, but I'm only human.

Three months and one day

2007-03-15T17:25:00.000Z

In theory I quite like taking Alice to the clinic to be weighed (10lb 13oz as of Tuesday), as there's toys and beanbags and a chance to chat to other parents. And yet in reality there's always one person there who makes me wish I'd stayed at home. This week, a well-meaning but irritating old woman, who came and looked over my shoulder while her daughter and grandson were in with the health visitors:

WMBIOW: I see you're bottle-feeding - it's taking such a long time...
Me: Well unfortunately she can't breastfeed because of her cleft palate [thinking: even if I was choosing to bottle-feed with no medical reason, it's really none of your business].
WMBIOW: Ooh, no! Aw. But don't worry, they can operate on that these days you know.
Me: Yes, she's having her first operation in a couple of weeks [thinking: oh REALLY, wow, they can operate? Thanks for the info, somehow I'd missed out on that despite being her MOTHER].

I then sat and gritted my teeth through her vaguely pitying noises until she changed the subject to knitting. Sigh.

Twelve weeks and four days

2007-03-12T12:21:00.000Z

Alice had her first trip to the beach yesterday, which judging by her smiles (not given lightly) she thoroughly enjoyed:

Twelve weeks

2007-03-08T21:11:00.000Z

Some of Alice's favourite things, at 12 weeks:

Colours: red, black, white, pink
Food: milk, milk and more milk
Music: yodelling, Star Trek themes (TNG and Enterprise), Baroque, jazz
Hobbies: riding in buggy, looking at stuff, sucking, bouncing
Toys: zebra rattle, cuddly elephant, daddy's nose/beard
Places: buggy, rocker chair, anyone's lap

Eleven weeks and one day

2007-03-02T11:44:00.000Z

I shouldn't laugh, but Alice's latest antics are reminding me overwhelmingly of the 'drinking problem' gag from Airplane - she is learning to suck her fingers but doesn't reliably remember how to do it yet, and frequently ends up mashing her fist into her eye or ear instead, then looking slightly puzzled. I must say it will be a great boon to her parents when she masters it properly, as we won't have to spend hours in uncomfortable postures while holding a dummy in her mouth to keep her happy any more.

Ten weeks and five days

2007-02-27T14:19:00.000Z

I'm really struggling to read novels at the moment. It used to be that I'd go to the library, take out five or six books (all fiction) and read them all within a few weeks. And I never stopped reading half way through, even if the book was a bit crap. But since Alice was born I find that pretty much every other book I borrow is incapable of holding my attention and I've given up on half of them, while the ones I do persist with take me ages to finish. (I've also run up £16 of library fines but that's another story.) Partly I suppose it's the nature of looking after a baby - what I have heard described as the endless 'interruptibility' of motherhood which means it's rare that I can settle down with a book for any stretch of time. And then because time is so precious I'm unwilling to waste it on mediocre novels any more.

Not that I'm on a diet of high literature either - fiction generally isn't floating my boat the way it used to. I can handle humourous or genre type novels if well written, but anything purporting to emotional/social realism may as well stay on the shelf. I suppose it's fairly obvious why - my own life is quite emotionally real enough just now without seeking out vicarious experiences as well.

Ten weeks and four days

2007-02-26T15:37:00.000Z

I must admit, I still don't feel like someone's mum. Walking round the park with Alice, I look at the other women with their buggies and think of them as Mothers, whereas I'm just somebody who happens to be pushing a baby. I'm just acting the part of 'mum', and even then I'm just the understudy, it's not my JOB or anything.

In fact I'm only just starting to emerge from thinking that Alice represents some sort of exam in which I'm being graded on how successfully I can keep her fed, clean and quiet while remembering to sterilise enough bottles, make up enough formula and wash enough nappies to prevent chaos descending. With bonus points if I can manage to have a shower, get dressed and eat three meals a day at vaguely normal intervals. All of which carries the assumption that it's a finite project and when I've completed it, I will be returning Alice to wherever she so miraculously came from. But as the practical tasks become more automatic and less time consuming, it's gradually dawning on me that she's a person, rather than some sort of Tamigotchi-style challenge. She's not going anywhere. And I AM a mother. And suddenly things are much more scary, and much more wonderful.

Ten weeks and one day

2007-02-22T12:22:00.000Z

24 Hours in the Life of Alice:

1800: big feed from dad, followed by sleepy cuddles
1900: bath ( still not sure if this is nice or nasty) then story, swaddled and put to bed
1930 - 2000: not ready to sleep yet, has a bit of a cry
2000 - 2030: sucking on dummy only thing which stops her crying
2030: still crying, v tired now though and falls asleep on her own (dummy removed as she can't keep it in by herself and I'm not going to hold it in her mouth all night)
1030: fast asleep but has 60ml 'dreamfeed' - bid to get her to have her long sleep starting from now instead of waking up at 0200
0145: damn, wakes up for a feed
0215: nappy change and back to bed
0230: won't settle, wide awake then crying
0300ish: eventually grizzles herself to sleep after a bit more food, shushing and pacing from dad, and rocking her cradle
0645: wakes up for a feed
0730: no more sleep just now thanks
0845: awake but quiet, comes into the bathroom with me while I have a bath
0900: crying again, nappy change
0930: decide to give a feed
1000 - 1100: dozing after feed. I manage to have breakfast.
1100 - 1200: grouchy, alternate crying and sleeping, nappy change
1215: sucks on dummy for a bit, grouches a bit more, falls fast asleep
1300 - 1315: still pretty much asleep but stirring to cry briefly once or twice
1330: not fully awake but not quite happy either - time for lunch (takes 120ml)
1345: face wash, new lip strapping and nappy change
1350 - 1425: little bounce and then play on floor mat and in chair with dangly toys (loves this - can follow toys with eyes but not yet reach out for them)
1425: yawning but not ready for a nap yet - we listen to some Classic FM
1430: leave A. with the radio while I wash and sterilise her bottles and hang up the washing
1445: crying and sleepy - has a suck on dummy
1450: after shushing, rocking and dummy, falls asleep
1520: unsettled unless sucking dummy
1530: dad gets home, briefly distracted and happy
1535 -1550: still won't settle, hungry AGAIN?
1600: feed (110ml)
1620 -1645: cuddles and play, alert and happy
1700: adult dinner time
1745: very sucky and grumpy so we go for another feed
1900: goes suddenly to sleep listening to Jocelyn Pook and doesn't wake up until 0200!

Nine weeks and five days

2007-02-20T12:04:00.000Z

Have just returned from the doctors, where Alice had her first immunisations in the form of a giant needle in each thigh :(

But they're confounding creatures, babies. The nurse advised me that she might be grumpy from the pain and have a temperature later on, so I stocked up with Calpol and braced myself for a crying jag. But although she screamed for all of two minutes when she had the jabs, she then fell immediately and peacefully asleep in her buggy and shows no sign of stirring yet. Whereas for the past two days, when she's had no particular reason to cry - at least not one that translates well into adult language - she's been constantly grouchy and clingy and waking for an extra bottle in the night. Sometimes I wish so much that she could just tell us what's wrong, for all our sakes...

Mind you, given that her face is only about three inches in diameter she can certainly convey a lot of expressions with it: surprised, delighted, suspicious, entranced, blissed out, miserable, cross, shocked, concentrating (ie. pooing), interested, indifferent, yawning, coughing, sneezing, hiccups, dreamy, excited, worried...

Eight weeks and five days

2007-02-13T15:25:00.000Z

Further dispatches from the 'people be interfering' frontline of parenthood: went to the clinic for Alice's weigh-in today and she started crying while we were waiting. The woman next to me confidently leaned over and told me 'she's hungry'. Why do people DO that? Even though I KNEW that Alice was crying because I'd woken her up and taken her out of her buggy into a noisy, hot room, and food wasn't really what she wanted, I ended up giving her a bottle just so a stranger wouldn't judge me.

Eight weeks and four days

2007-02-12T14:11:00.000Z

Just had a sudden pang while reading a book where a mother with a five week old baby was quoted. Alice will never - never! - be that age again. Already she's passed through so many stages, so many firsts, and she's not been alive two months yet. So even though I'm far from keen to repeat the experience of giving birth just yet, I do now understand why most people have more than one child - the miracle seems to be that they can usually stick at just two or three!

I'm just looking at Alice sleeping and considering again the issue of a 'routine'. I'm torn between letting her dictate when she wants to sleep, when to eat and when to play, and trying to establish some sort of pattern. We're told that babies respond well to routine and find it reassuring, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's really *parents* who need it. I would certainly prefer it if Alice slept peacefully and for long stretches at night, rather than in the day, and I'm worried that I've ruined all our chances of achieving this by not keeping her more wakeful during daylight. But it's a vicious circle - if she and therefore I have been up half the night, I am usually only too grateful for a long sleep in the day for both of us. And in any case, the amount of sleep and spacing of feeds in the day doesn't seem to affect her sleep or feeds at night - the whole thing is entirely random as far as I can tell.

Should I allow the randomness to continue and trust her to find her own routine in time? Or is it time to provide guidance? (I also can't figure out the apparent contradiction between the advice to always 'feed on demand' and the advice to establish a routine. How can we implement 'bedtime' rituals like feed-bath-story-cuddle-cot when we don't know when she'll want her evening feed ?)

Eight weeks and three days

2007-02-11T07:44:00.000Z

Just got back from five days holiday with my family. Alice's first experience of many things including snow, squirrels, deer, ten pin bowling and snooker. (Embarrassingly, I am only marginally more skilled at the latter than she would have been.)

We ditched the dental plate halfway through the week after phoning the cleft nurse for advice - although Alice had more or less got the hang of feeding, the plate had given her a huge ulcer on her tongue and when it started bleeding I couldn't bear to make her keep it in. We may try again once we see the orthodontist in Brighton, but the surgeon has said that if it's really distressing her (and us) we don't have to continue.

It's funny, until now I don't think I really believed that a seven week old baby had a defined personality. They might vary in their sleeping and crying habits, but basically they were still blank slates. But since observing the change in Alice brought about by the dreaded plate, I've realised what a strong character she already had beforehand.

Seven weeks

2007-02-01T15:47:00.000Z

Alice is still far from convinced by her plate. She's managing just about enough of her feeds now, although still fitting in one or two extra bottles a day, but her sleep is very disturbed - she keeps waking herself up at intervals with pitiful little cries, then dropping off again. And of course this plus the more frequent feeds means OUR sleep is still disturbed.

The cleft nurse came to see us today and was able to tell us that it's normal to react badly to the plate, especially if feeding has been well established for a while. We just have to persevere, and the more she wears it the sooner she'll get used to it. But although it's reassuring to know it's normal, it doesn't really help us.

It's funny, although to some extent I do want the health professionals to be reassuring and tell us that Alice is normal and the tiredness is normal etc etc, part of me would like them, just once, to say 'oh my god you poor thing that's TERRIBLE, nobody should have to cope with that, it's just much too hard isn't it?'

It's a fine line between 'normal' and 'yeah yeah tell us something we don't know'.

Six weeks and six days

2007-01-31T05:35:00.000Z

Wow. I thought that pregnancy tiredness was bad, but this is something else. Almost impossible to describe. In fact, I probably have been as tired as this before, but never before have I had to function through the tiredness for so long without giving in to it. Let alone been completely responsible for the survival of another human being. However, the thing that nobody can really explain to you before you've had your baby is that you CAN function through the tiredness, you can find reserves of energy you never knew you had, just from looking at the helpless little person who's forcing you to get up at ridiculous hours and intervals around the clock. Although I sometimes get angry and desperate and tearful, the main emotion I feel when Alice is crying and I look at her red scrunched up screaming face is pity for her. I just want to stop her pain, at any cost.

She had her orthodontic plate fitted on Monday, and although she seemed ok with it at first, it began to bother her a bit more once we got home, especially once we tried to feed her with it in. I could understand her distress, having worn the dreaded retainer myself in my teens which is basically the same thing. With the crucial difference that we couldn't explain to her what was going on in her mouth and how best she could adapt to it. So she was having trouble negotiating the reduced space for the teat and her tongue, and would get frustrated and tired before finishing her feed. Monday night was thus utterly miserable for all of us, as I had to give her a bottle almost every hour, she was taking so little - and crying pitifully in between as she realised that the alien thing in her mouth wasn't going away. (Sadly she is too young to be consoled by the fact that Mr Cash the orthodontist had made the plate using fetching pink sparkly plastic.) To make things worse, Matt has had flu so I've been on solo baby duty since Sunday.

Fortunately, Alice now seems to have decided that getting her full quota of milk overrides all other concerns and she's damned if she's going to let a bit of plastic and wire get in the way. I'm constantly amazed how adaptable she is. Far more so than me, anyway.

(Weight as of yesterday: 8lb 4oz, nearly 4lb heavier than at birth. Rocketing up towards the 9th percentile!)

Six weeks

2007-01-25T12:11:00.000Z

To celebrate Alice reaching the grand old age of six weeks, here are:

Six Things I Wish I'd Packed In My Hospital Bag:
1) more sanitary pads (oh so many more)
2) more baby clothes (babies be MESSY)
3) more towels (hospital towels are tiny and unforgivingly WHITE)
4) nice teabags (like on the Heart of Gold in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the hospital vending machine produced a liquid almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea)
5) lip balm (actually I had this but it was VITAL during labour so worth emphasising)
6) strong liquor (ok I wouldn't have been allowed it but Rescue Remedy just wasn't cutting it when it came to dulling the sheer shock of delivering a baby)

and I wish I'd left out:
1) books (couldn't concentrate)
2) carefully chosen 'birth' CDs (music last thing on mind during labour)

Six Pieces of Advice:
1) don't bother 'getting as much rest as you can before the baby arrives' - it's not like we can store up sleep like water in a camel's hump
2) don't buy any toys for the baby - he or she will be drowning in them from other people and won't appreciate them for months yet anyway
3) stock up your freezer with meals that require no further preparation, or ensure people bring you food - cooking will be the last thing you feel like doing
4) don't read baby 'bibles' etc if you can possibly stop yourself
5) go with the baby's flow at all times
6) ignore everyone else's advice, including the above :)

Six Things I Know About Alice:
1) she cries most between 7am - 10am (when I want to get washed and eat breakfast) and 7pm - 10pm (when I want to eat dinner and go to bed)
2) her favourite things to look at are bright lights and people's faces, in that order
3) she prefers hip hop and classical to indie
4) she finds her own hiccups quite entertaining
5) she will cry herself into a frenzy before admitting she's tired and just going to sleep
6) every day she will do something that makes me realise I don't know her at all

-

Five weeks and five days

2007-01-23T11:26:00.000Z

Alice took her trip to the clinic at Guys totally in her stride, which is more than can be said for me I fear. She was as good as gold all the way there and while being poked and prodded by the cleft surgeon and the orthodontist, although she did squirm a bit when the latter took a mould of her mouth and who can blame her? She now has 'strapping' on her lip - a ridiculously low-tech but fiddly contraption made from sticky tape and a rubber band which will help get her muscles ready for the first operation (scheduled for April 5th). She'll also have a plate inside her mouth which will be fitted next week (so *another* trip to London.)

It all makes her 'problem' seem much more real, somehow, now the medical and surgical teams are so visibly involved. And signing the consent form for the surgery was horrible - even though it's a minor procedure I still looked at the list of possible risks and thought: how can I do this to my baby? I know it's all for the best, but part of me wishes I could keep her safe at home just the way she is, instead of having to interact with the medical establishment and the big bad world in general.

Alice in her new facial attire:

Five weeks and three days

2007-01-21T17:55:00.000Z

Tough night and day with Alice. She's been feeding at totally random intervals, some as short as an hour, and my failure to anticipate this makes me feel like a horrible mother as I faff about getting the feeds ready while she screams inconsolably. She's had a few quite peaceful naps but when she's awake she's crying; there's no in between where she's awake and happy.

Didn't help that when I got to the checkout in Sainsbury's with her in the baby carrier this morning the cashier said 'doesn't your baby need a hat?' Instead of telling her to mind her own business I just pointed out that she had a hat, it was in the basket and I would be putting it on when we got outside. Undeterred, she then moved on to speculate that the suit Alice was wearing wasn't warm enough. I wonder if people realise the damage they do with comments like this. I knew that Alice was perfectly cosy and managed to stay calm by telling myself (and the cashier) this repeatedly, but it would take a very confident mother to shrug off other people's opinions altogether. And I don't think I'm that very confident mother...

Tomorrow we have to to take the train up to Guys in London so Alice can be assessed before her lip surgery in April. It's the longest/furthest trip we've done with her - I just pray she isn't in the same frame of mind as today, because I don't fancy dealing with all this in public and in a totally strange environment.

Five weeks and two days

2007-01-20T19:25:00.000Z

Ok, I need to amend what I wrote five days ago, I think. I just started reading What Mothers Do by Naomi Stadlen, which in its very first chapter addresses the issue of there being nothing to say about looking after babies:

a mother who has little to relate usually assumes that this is because there really is very little worth telling ... Our language can be very clear and precise about anything practical. A person who has 'tidied up' has both the word and a tidy area to show for it. It is much harder to find a word that describes the giving-up-things mode of attention a mother is giving to her baby.

At first I thought it was just coincidence that made me reach for that particular book (which I borrowed from the library before Alice was even born). But I wonder whether subconsciously I was uncomfortable about the 'motherhood is boring' trope that I'd flippantly evoked in the last post, and wanted something to counter my own words. Because deep down I know that what I do for Alice is NOT trivial and menial. It's just that it's hard to externalise the things that now feel important, because the language of the public world doesn't fit the achievements of the domestic one.

In other words, there might not be a conspiracy of silence as such, but a silence is imposed anyway through not having the right words.

One month and one day

2007-01-15T10:38:00.000Z

Alice was a month old yesterday, still feeding brilliantly and gaining weight which is about all she's supposed to achieve at the moment. She also spends more time awake, can focus on our faces for longer, and may have started awarding her first proper smiles (although wind is still a possibility).

I'm now beginning to understand why both celebrities and literary types have the urge to churn out baby books, but also why there are very few epic works about caring for newborns. One the one hand I do want to talk about her endlessly, and could no doubt fill pages about her biscuity baby smell, the changing shape of her eyes, the amount her hair has grown, the way she stretches her arms... but on the other hand there is pretty much nothing transcendent or miraculous or poetic about the daily tasks which fill up the majority of my hours. Maybe there's not some misogynist conspiracy of silence about motherhood after all; it's just that there isn't anything worth saying about the two fundamentals - feeding one end and wiping the other. However loving and amazed and transformed you feel towards the object of these attentions, it's still basically just feeding and wiping, feeding and wiping, feeding and wiping. And nobody needs to read about that.

(Having said that, my god, it's astonishing how many foodstuffs suddenly become anathema when you're exposed to a variegated menu of baby shit all day: peanut butter, hummous, mustard... all deeply unappetising until further notice.)

Photos

2007-01-01T10:54:00.000Z

Photos of Alice are here.

Two weeks and four days

2007-01-01T10:33:00.000Z

Well, Alice is now 18 days old, and since her dad went back to work it definitely feels like the 'babymoon' is over. I'm still smitten with her, but not so much with night feeds (especially when she's going through a phase of eating every two hours) or with the endless, mindless round of preparing formula and washing, sterilising, warming and cooling bottles and accessories.

I thought I was prepared for the consequences of her cleft, but now I realise that I was subconsciously expecting it to be like mine - a narrow cleft on one side of her lip, not the wide gap going through both lip and palate that she actually has. Aesthetically it didn't take long to get used to and she looks absolutely beautiful anyway, but I must admit to being deeply disappointed that I can't breastfeed her normally. I am expressing milk but we have to top her up with formula, something I never thought I would have to do. The ridiculous palaver of bottle-feeding doesn't help - I can't just stick her on a boob when she seems hungry, so it's a constant struggle to stay one step ahead with preparing feeds.

But she feeds very well (if a bit messily) from her squeezy bottle and at this point her cleft really doesn't make her different from any other baby, just more time-consuming. I don't know what the future will bring though, except that I'm already dreading the day we go for her lip surgery and her adorable face changes forever - even though I know I'll love her new smile just as much.

Six day wonder

2006-12-20T21:26:00.000Z

We had a baby! Alice Elizabeth was born on 14 December at 6.25 am, weighing a petite 4lb 13oz and making us fall head over heels in love the instant we saw her.

Heard the one about the pregnant woman?

2006-11-01T09:53:00.000Z

I seem to have well and truly lost my sense of humour regarding this pregnancy (another casualty to add to my wardrobe, my sex drive, my ability to bend down, and any spare scrap of energy I might have once had).

When I tell people I'm tired - the only possible response to 'how are you?' at the moment - they invariably chuckle indulgently and make some crack about it only getting worse once the baby's born. 'NO!' I want to shout, 'You don't understand! I'm so tired that I can barely focus on your face let alone produce a full sentence in reply to your question, I'm so tired that I am just barely staying upright, I'm so tired that it's a miracle I turn up to work at all, I'm so tired that I'm willing you to just leave me alone so I can sleep at my desk. I AM TIRED, OK. FOR REAL. I'm not comedy haha eye rolling tut tut oh well tired, and you don't get to make a joke out of how I feel.' Except of course they do, I never complain out loud, and my tongue has been bitten so many times that it looks like an old dog chew.

Oh and another thing I don't say out loud but probably should: comments about my size started to pall around week 20 and haven't got any more fun (especially when I say admittedly silly things like 'oof, I feel huge' and colleagues respond with something sensitive like 'ooh no, you'll get much bigger than that yet, hoho').

Weeks: 32+1

Cleft news

2006-10-18T13:42:00.000Z

New British research suggests the possibility of facial cleft repair in the womb. (Obviously a bit late for us, but interesting nonetheless.)

Incompetence

2006-10-16T12:35:00.000Z

A short hospital stay last week (all fine now) gave me cause to think about pregnancy/birth language again. Some of the terms in general use really do make you wonder about the people who invented them - they seem to reveal a totally negative and distinctly judgemental attitude towards maternity.

For example, I apparently have an 'irritable uterus'. This is an ok term I guess, although to a laywoman it does conjure up the image of my womb being cross with me, which is hardly comforting. But it reminded me of reading about 'incompetent uterus' or 'incompetent cervix' which basically means that the cervix is weaker than normal and starts dilating too early. Could there possibly be a more loaded word than 'incompetent' to describe this? Is it only me who would feel personally accused by such a diagnosis (even knowing on a rational level that I am not consciously responsible for the behaviour of my internal organs)?

Of course, it gets worse. If your labour doesn't move swiftly enough for those overseeing it (for example, stress can occasionally stop labour altogether), it is called 'failure to progress' and steps will be taken to get you going again. Fair enough, but why bring the concept of 'failure' into it? Failure sounds human and avoidable, even if it isn't, and is surely the last word we'd want associated with what is already the greatest test of physical endurance most of us will ever have to go through.

Oh and there are more failures on the horizon - once you actually have your baby he or she might be assessed as 'failing to thrive', a weirdly vague diagnosis (referring to slower than expected growth and weight gain) which in its lack of medical specificity just sounds like a scary accusation aimed at the parent.

What hope have I got of getting through the next 10 weeks in a conducively calm frame of mind when half the relevant terminology seems designed to scare me?

Weeks: 29+6

National Poetry Day

2006-10-05T09:25:00.000Z

Happy National Poetry Day!

Every year this day seems to receive less and less publicity, sadly, or maybe it's just because every year I've moved further and further away from the circles where anyone gives a damn (compared to say, 1999 when I was actually working for the Poetry Society on NPD where it was obviously experienced as the most important occasion of the year).

This year's theme is 'identity'. Something I am still thinking about a lot as I get closer and closer to adding a new label to my patchwork self: mother.

Weeks: 28+2

Frogmore news

2006-10-04T09:25:00.000Z

The new issue of The Frogmore Papers (#68) is now available, with another excellent cover designed by Neil Gower. Subscriptions are only £12 for two years (4 issues)...

And all of Frogmore #67 is now up on The Poetry Library's poetrymagazines.org.uk.

Amphibious midwifery

2006-09-13T12:55:00.000Z

I was inspired by the Guardian's free wallchart today to look up midwife toads (actually a type of frog). It turns out they are so called because the male carries the fertilised eggs on his back and subsequently wraps them around his legs to protect them from predators until they hatch into tadpoles. Er, maybe it's just me but that doesn't sound THAT similar to the duties of your average human midwife...

Speaking of which, having just read Misconceptions, Naomi Wolf's book about the medicalised, interventionist and downright inhumane model of antenatal care and birth in the USA, I am even more grateful for our cheery, practical midwives and their non-judgemental care so far. And especially for our specialist nurse from the regional cleft lip/palate team, who visited us at home and provided all the information and reassurance we could possibly want, including encouraging me to go ahead with the planned home birth if I want to. So now we just need to convince the obstetrician (although to be honest he is a lovely man too and I'm sure he won't be aggressive with his 'hospital care is best' agenda if we are really keen on home birth.)

Weeks: 25+1

Sauce for the gander...

2006-09-05T10:59:00.000Z

Given the recent suggestion that older fathers are more likely to produce autistic children, should the US be consistent and prosecute any man who is so selfish as to inseminate his partner once he hits forty?

Pre-pregnant or sub-human?

2006-09-04T14:17:00.000Z

OK, so the poem reading wasn't THAT bad. And they gave me a box of chocolates for my trouble which is more than I'm usually paid for poetry-related activities. In a way it was a pity that we only had 20 minutes, because it meant that I couldn't fully engage with the startling suggestion one of the students made, that male poets write about abstract concepts while female poets write about feelings. I don't know what evidence he was drawing on, but I think this view often has more to do with prior beliefs about men and women than anything in the poetry. If you expect male-authored poetry to be philosophical, abstract and rigorous and female-authored poetry to be emotional, concrete and woolly, then you will easily find examples to support you. But there are just as many counter-examples.

Even more proof that anti-woman sentiment is far from dead, and is in fact being written into law: the pregnancy police are watching you. This very disturbing article suggests nothing less than a return to state-sponsored biological tyranny the likes of which feminists thought they'd shaken off 40 years ago. We all want healthy children, but viewing women only in terms of their baby-making function, and criminalising them for failing in it, is hardly the way to ensure the best future for our society.

Weeks: 23+6

On the spot

2006-08-31T09:31:00.000Z

Panic. I'm reading one of my poems to a class of Chinese students in an hour's time, as a favour to their tutor. I hadn't thought much of it, just that I would read the poem and they'd maybe ask what bits meant and whether there was more story behind the poem etc. But I've just been given a sheet of questions they've prepared (two sides' worth!) and the first one is 'In your view, does your poem resemble the poetry of the contemporary Chinese Misty poets?' Er, well it may do but I couldn't possibly say as - to my shame - I have no idea who the Chinese Misty poets are. Can't you just ask me why my poems don't rhyme or something instead? Why did I agree to this?

[OK, a quick bit of research (thank heavens for the internet) tells me that the Misty poets rebelled against the officially sanctioned poetic ideology, so given that there IS no officially sanctioned poetic ideology to rebel against in this country, or at least not one that a 12-line poem about insomnia presents a challenge to, I will have to answer no to that particular question.]

Dedicated to the one I workshop with

2006-08-29T09:15:00.000Z

"Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity." - Eric Hoffer

Bloody hell. Just when I was feeling sort of ok about myself and my poetry career or temporary lack of it, an seemingly innocent brown envelope gets me all antsy again.

I was using the tail end of my bank holiday weekend to attend to my editorial duties for the Frogmore Papers, aka going through submissions with my most ruthless hat on. One of the submissions was a small selection from a forthcoming collection by a local poet, of poems dedicated to other local poets. Most of the dedicatees were people I knew slightly from workshops or, occasionally, readings where we'd shared a bill, and all of them are now doing much better than me, bringing out their own collections and running their own workshops instead of attending them. It made me realise how invisible I've been on the Brighton 'scene' for the past year or so, how my own social laziness has apparently damaged my chances of getting anywhere with my poetry just as much as any drop in the quantity or quality of my actual writing.

And yet I still want to believe that you can be a poet without having to hang out with other poets all the time. If I sometimes choose sitting at home with my husband watching West Wing DVDs over attending a reading on the other side of town, am I less of a writer? I fear the answer may be yes. While I am still friendly with a few local poets, the comparatively moribund condition of my 'career' reflects the fact that for some time I haven't bothered to show my face at the sort of events where poets circulate and network and, presumably, agree to publish each other and dedicate poems to each other. Partly I'm envious of this Brighton clique - who *doesn't* want to be in the gang, after all? - but partly I find it unappealing and fake. My friends are my friends for all sorts of reasons, but the reasons never include their poetic activities. I ended my involvement with Lewes Live Literature mostly because of the unbearable schmoozing that was so necessary and at which I was so inept. But will I ever get anywhere if I don't accept that a bit of 'who you know', a bit of networking even if it's disguised as getting pissed at a poetry event, is part of the deal?

Mothers, fathers, poets

2006-08-23T13:34:00.000Z

I think I may have been a trifle optimistic in my diagnosis of the poetry situation. My brain IS still going like the clappers, but this week it seems to be entirely employed in making lists of what to take into hospital with me, what we still need to buy/acquire and how we are going to create the space for it all in a one bedroom flat, and what I want to write in my birth plan. There is very little scope for poetics in a birth plan, it turns out. Nothing that includes the words 'episiotomy', 'squatting' and 'artifically ruptured' can really aspire to be lyrical.

Interesting thoughts from Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born:

Once in a while someone used to ask me, "Don't you ever write poems about your children?" The male poets of my generation did write poems about their children - especially their daughters. For me, poetry was where I lived as no-one's mother, where I existed as myself.

Although it was Rich's choice not to write about her children, this passage did remind me that, while no subject is verboten to the male poet, women who write about certain things (pregnancy, motherhood, domestic life, the female body) are condemned as being too limited, or too predictable, or just too damn GIRLY. If men get sappy about their children it is vaguely novel at worst, wondrous and transcendent at best, but if women do it it's redundant and boring - well of COURSE women love their children, duh. Or maybe you just have to be an exceptional poet to get away with it, whatever your gender.

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee

I love Frost at Midnight, but wouldn't we read these words slightly differently, more critically even, if Coleridge were a woman?

Or these from Waking with Russell by Don Paterson?

Whatever the difference is, it all began
the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers
and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again,
possessed him, till it would not fall or waver;
and I pitched back not my old hard-pressed grin
but his own smile, or one I'd rediscovered.

I think I'd love these poems just as much if they were written by women, but then I don't think they could have been. There is, I believe, a reticence among women poets to engage with their children too directly or emotionally in their work, because they fear not being taken seriously. Was that at the back of Adrienne Rich's mind? Did she really want to be 'no-one's mother' in her poetry, or did she just perceive that in the eyes of the poetry establishment, being someone's mother lessened her?

Weeks: 22+1

Imperfect perfection

2006-08-18T14:47:00.000Z

At our 20 week scan on Monday the sonographer detected a probable cleft lip, and on Thursday we were rescanned by a consultant, who confirmed that there was a cleft and that it looked to be unilateral (ie only on one side of the lip), although bubs was being very uncooperative and wriggling around too much to get a very clear view. Whether the palate is cleft as well probably won't be detected until after birth. Although the consultant had never seen a cleft inherited from a parent before, our own research had told us that the chances of having one go up from 1 in 700 for the general population to 7 in 100 if a parent also has a cleft. I don't think I'd thought about my lip in years, it's been such a non-issue for me, but suddenly I'm aware of it again.

Despite the fact that I don't particularly wish away my own cleft, the emotions I've felt about my baby's are a lot more conflicted. I feel guilty for passing on my faulty genes, and for not even considering that I might be doing so (although it could still be total coincidence as well.) I feel anxiety about the number of unknowns attendant on pregnancy, birth and child-rearing suddenly increasing in number. I feel irrational hope that the baby will have exactly the same sort of cleft experience as me rather than anything more traumatic. I feel a bit of anger that things will be difficult, and that I won't be able to have the home birth I was planning. And I feel sadness for the lost 'perfect' baby that never in truth existed, but in our imaginations was the only outcome we'd entertained. Websites about birth defects tell you that it's normal to go through a grieving process, however brief, for this imaginary perfection you've lost. But for me the grief is tempered by increased excitement, because where before there was only potential, now there is reality, a real human being. Because nothing makes us more human than our imperfections, after all. And the baby is otherwise healthy in every way as far as the scans can tell.

Many of our worries now are practical ones, about the surgery involved, the timescale and the recovery process, and the possible problems with feeding, breathing or speech. My parents must have experienced the same worries but they wisely and kindly never shared them with me. A child with a cleft doesn't need to know that it's a troublesome child.

We also found out that the baby is probably a girl, and again this knowledge closes off one avenue of imagination but makes the developing person more real and exciting at the same time. And cleft or no cleft, our baby WILL be perfect to us :)

Weeks: 21+3

Sad news

2006-08-11T18:50:00.000Z

The baby which one of my colleagues was expecting (due last week) didn't make it through the birth alive. It seems deeply unlikely and unfair that a tiny foetus can - against the odds - make it all the way through the pitfalls and miracles of pregnancy, that it can be protected and thriving for nine months, and then not be out of the woods. It made me realise all over again that in fact there IS no 'out of the woods', that every life is stupidly fragile from the moment of conception until the moment we die, whether that death comes tragically soon or after many flukey, healthy years.

You always know that losing a baby must be the worse thing ever, but I know it more sharply now I'm pregnant myself (even though I still can't imagine what they're going through). It's such a horrific reversal of the preceding nine months of expectation, planning, congratulation, excitement, happiness. When you're pregnant everyone celebrates with you; if you lose your child when it's barely arrived you must feel totally alone. I now feel terrified for my own little bump, of course, but mainly horrified that my colleague will eventually return to work and have to experience my pregnancy and happiness (assuming nothing DOES go wrong, universe forbid.)

Poetry in waiting

2006-08-11T12:41:00.000Z

Someone at work asked me if I was writing poetry at the moment, and I almost said yes. The truth is that although I haven't written a word, I can feel poetry bubbling and fermenting inside me, getting ready to be written. On the other hand, I have nothing to show for any of my ideas (odd how this parallels my pregnancy - the baby is kicking but the movements can't be seen or felt from the outside yet) and I've always taken note of Miroslav Holub's 'Interview With A Poet':

You are a poet? Yes, I am.
How do you know? I have written a poem.
When you wrote the poem, it means you were a poet. But now?
I shall write another poem some day.
Then you will again be a poet.

So no bandying the word 'poet' about again just yet...

The signs are encouraging though. So far I haven't suffered much with the famous 'mushy pregnancy brain'; if anything my brain feels more active. I used to be most inspired - although often in a hectic, undirected way - just before and during my period, and pregnancy seems to be providing an extended version of this. And I'm trying to *read* as much as I can now, because I suspect that once the baby's born I'll be entirely occupied with being and doing, rather than judging and reflecting. And everything I'm reading is coloured slightly, excitingly, by the perspective of pregnancy. As Rachel Cusk says in her book 'A Life's Work':

"my experience of reading, indeed of culture, was profoundly changed by having a child, in the sense that I found the concept of art and expression far more involving and necessary, far more human in its drive to bring forth and create, than I once did."

Weeks: 20+3

Gina Ford vs Mumsnet

2006-08-09T12:11:00.000Z

I had previously thought that the tyranny of the Experts was experienced chiefly inside the anxious parent's head. But it turns out that Gina Ford's influence might extend further. Not content with defamatory comments about her being removed from Mumsnet.com, she wants the entire site to be shut down. Now obviously defamation isn't the same as healthy debate about a writer's work, and if Ford and her lawyers are vigilant (some might say petty) enough to spot nasty message board postings then they should by all means do their thing to have them removed. But demanding that a whole community - one which benefits thousands of mothers - be taken down is outrageous behaviour from somebody who claims to be in the business of helping parents.

Birth or chocolate?

2006-08-09T08:44:00.000Z

It seems that even my subconscious can't yet process the idea of labour without cloaking it in metaphor: I'm sure that my dream last night was to do with my anxiety about the birth, but if it were a film I don't think many audiences would appreciate the symbolism.

In the dream I found myself in front of a vending machine, faced with the decision of what snack to purchase. I stood there for what felt like hours, unable to choose, mainly because everything on offer was in some way verboten to pregnanters because it contained peanuts or whatever. Finally I selected a bag of M&Ms which were really a mixture of acid drops and chocolate raisins. Then I found that I couldn't read the price properly, and when I deciphered it had to scrabble around for enough change as it was much more expensive than I'd thought; next I couldn't see the code I had to enter because it was hidden at the bottom of the cabinet, and each time I bent down to memorise it I'd forgotten it again by the time I straightened up to the keypad. (By this time an angry queue was forming behind me.) When the packet finally emerged it was disappointingly small and unappetising, and I was mortified by the whole experience.

OK, so maybe the symbolism isn't that opaque after all...

Weeks: 20+1

Body image

2006-08-08T08:44:00.000Z

There's nothing like pregnancy to highlight the extent to which you feel your physical appearance defines your identity. Throughout my entire adult life to date I have had an image of myself as a person with small breasts, slim hips and a stomach that although not flat can be relatively easily kept in check by reducing the number of cakes I eat. I don't think about my body type very much but I do, I suppose, try to choose clothes to suit it. My weight fluctuates, but only between a size 10 and a size 12.

I knew that my body could theoretically change, but I always thought in terms of changes that I could control through diet and exercise. And yet here I am facing the most dramatic change of all and I have no control whatsoever. Pregnancy is turning me into my own opposite: big boobs, big hips, big stomach. Despite being stupidly unprepared for this, I haven't minded it much. I am changing on the inside and it's only right that I change on the outside too. If nothing else it's been a glimpse into the sartorial options of the big and busty, and it's probably the only time I'll be regarding a growing stomach with pride and excitement instead of depression and anxiety.

My friend A, on the other hand, is at three months pregnant saying a heartwrenching goodbye to her skinny Miss Sixty jeans and her size 10 Benetton suits. But which body is really her? The willowy pre-pregnancy version or the swelling pregnant one? Both? For me, it's case of still feeling like myself, but a self that isn't the same any more.

Weeks: 20

Couvade

2006-08-03T14:50:00.000Z

I am fascinated that sympathetic pregnancy exists, and that it has such a poetic sounding name. I will not be very impressed if my husband does take to his bed during or after the birth though.

From Wikipedia:

The term Couvade is derived from the early French word (Couver "to hatch") and custom where the father, during or immediately after the birth of a child, takes to bed, complains of having labour pains, and is accorded the treatment usually shown women during pregnancy or after childbirth.

It is thought that couvade is a way to minimize sexual differences in the pregnancy and birthing experience. The couvade may also be a way to establish the father's role in the child's life and to give balance to the gender roles. An earlier theory suggests that the couvade was evidence of male envy. Couvade is more common where sex roles are flexible and female power and status high.

Western medicine has tended to see the couvade as a medical syndrome or pathology. Defined medically, couvade is another term for Sympathetic pregnancy.

Weeks: 19+2

Writing babies

2006-07-19T09:12:00.000Z

There are several different types of baby author. Firstly, there's the actual Writer. People like Anne Enright (Making Babies) and Ian Sansom (The Truth About Babies), who wrote their books because that's what they do, they write. Writers will, sooner or later, respond to most things in their lives by writing about them. There's often a slight note of apology in these books, as if it might be a bit self-indulgent and redundant to get all literary about something that happens to millions of people all the time. Which is probably is.

Then there's the celebrity parents (like Jules Oliver) who write their books because what they have to say is marketable. They often make claims for being 'ordinary' parents with the same struggles as the rest of us, but although celeb babies may puke and shit and cry as much as any other, the childcare and housekeeping options available to yummy mummies make them a very different proposition. I have no time for this sort of book at all. If it's self-indulgent for a writer to write about babies, it's even more so for a non-writer to do it.

Finally, there's the Expert (Gina Ford, Penelope Leach, Miriam Stoppard etc). I am currently in the grip of an overwhelming terror when it comes to books by Experts and I can't bring myself to read any of them. I think this terror stems from the fact that pregnant women are vulnerable to believing everything we read, and if I read two conflicting sets of advice I will be completely paralysed, unable to make a decision about how to proceed. So when this baby is born I will probably still be in a state of blissful, if panicky, ignorance.

Weeks: 17+1

Making a drama out of an identity crisis

2006-07-12T13:59:00.000Z

When I think about my friends I often think about the characteristics they have which I would like for myself. I define myself by them and by what I lack in comparison. So I envy my sister's artistic talent, Georgie's integrity and practicality, Sophie's compassion and motivation, Simon's career success, George's mental ability, Cat's emotional openness, Clarissa's creative energy, Wags' intellectual curiosity, Anna's fearlessness...

I was hit by the realisation this morning that I would probably be happier if I just appreciated and admired my friends instead of comparing myself unfavourably with them. And if I spent more time taking pleasure in the fact that all these great people have chosen to be friends with ME.

I might still be a way off from finding and being comfortable with my own identity, but it's a start. (And the above post may not seem to have anything to do with writing, or parenting, or anything, but I don't think I can regain my voice as a writer until I have regained some confidence as a person.)

Weeks: 16+1

Some thoughts on words

2006-07-04T13:37:00.000Z

The language of pregnancy is slightly odd when you think about it. I don't mean the technical terms and the endless mystical abbreviations, but the everyday words. Take 'conceive' for example. 'Conceiving' a child makes it sound like you just thought something up. That which you create when you conceive something - a concept - is practically the opposite of a child, surely. A concept has no physical manifestation; a child is the most amazing physical thing that human beings can create. Why is creating LIFE described with a word that can be equally well applied to dreaming up a project, a scheme, an artwork, a joke, an argument, a sonnet, a dress design? Not that these things aren't valuable, but it's a category error somehow. I did write a poem about this a while ago in fact, but at the time a child WAS only an idea to me. Little did I know...

Or 'expecting'. Why do we 'expect' a baby like we expect a letter, or a phone call? I suppose the word contains the sense of something that SHOULD happen at some future date, but might not. Which is an accurate, although rather pessimistic, way of describing pregnancy I suppose. Maybe 'I'm having a baby' sounds too definite for some people, too much like tempting fate. Or too much like the present tense.

Weeks: 15

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

2006-06-23T10:38:00.000Z

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.

Wallace Stevens

Weeks: 13+3

Character in search of an author

2006-06-20T13:11:00.000Z

I have come to the sad conclusion that much of my neurosis is due to the large quantities of fiction I read. I get through up to 100 books in a year, almost all of them middle-brow, not too experimental, escapist novels (I wonder how much my reliance on the public library has helped determine this...) But ever since I was a child I have seen my own life on some level as a narrative, myself as a protagonist. The older I got the less like a tragic heroine I imagined myself to be, but I never stopped looking for tidy conclusions, meaningful circumstances and universal insights like the ones to be found in my books. That's why I feel like a failure if I don't know where I'm going - ok so the women in the books may not know where they're going either, but there is always the guiding hand of the author to lead them toward their destiny on the final page.

I don't think I've ever properly accepted that I'm the author of my own life, not a character in it. Being the author should give you MORE control, I suppose, but being a character gives you security. And your every action is loaded with import and 'rightness' simply because there are no other choices you can make, only what has been written for you. All the books I've been reading lately have had happy endings, and all the female protagonists have 'followed a dream' in some dramatic way, 'just knowing' what the right thing to do would be. I guess I need to accept that I won't ever 'just know'. That nobody has a grand design for me. So I'm going on a diet of non-fiction and keeping my eyes on the road instead of on the page.

How silly to be having an existential crisis at the age of 28 - didn't I go through all that when I was 18? And why can't I get this down in poetry instead of going all emoblog?

Weeks: 13

A pregnant pause

2006-06-19T10:16:00.000Z

Well it has happened. I have finished my dissertation and next month will possess a piece of paper that means I can theoretically work as a librarian. Whether I WANT to or not has not yet been worked out in my head to my satisfaction. Anyway, the idea was that as soon as I emerged from academia I would have time to devote to poetry, and to the exploration of the writing process via blogging.

Only, another thing has happened in the meantime: I have become pregnant. It thus remains to be seen whether I will get any writing done before about 2050, but I am hopeful. Possibly I will write about babies.

Things I have learned so far:

1) Expecting a baby makes you radically review your entire life. I was prepared to feel anxious about being a good mother, but not about whether I was a good person. Do I deserve to bring a child into the world? If only I hadn't spent my 20s being too lazy/scared to get myself a proper career, we would have a perfect house and a sensible mortgage by now, instead of a rented one bedroom flat and a box full of unpaid bills. If only I had a dream to pursue instead of a lack of ambition that would put a stoned media studies student to shame, I could feel sure of being a serene and inspirational mother instead of a neurotic bore. If only I had paid more attention to my ecological footprint, done my own composting, bought organic all the time etc etc, I wouldn't be contributing to the global disaster that my child is going to inherit. And if I remain as expert in the art of beating myself up once I've actually given birth to this baby, I will be emotionally black and blue for at least the next eighteeen years.

2) Everyone else's opinions become simultaneously extremely important and extremely unwanted. It only takes one sniffy look at the words 'home birth', or one question about which blood tests I'm choosing to have, to make the whole fragile edifice of our choices and decisions threaten to tumble down on my terrified head. So if you're reading this and you have pregnant friends/family, try not to offer advice until asked for it. We're overwhelmed enough as it is.

Weeks: 12+6

Holding pattern...

2006-03-27T13:12:00.000Z

This is the blog that will become Impossible Things Before Breakfast. As soon as I finish my MA I want to start writing poetry again, and when I do, this space will be waiting...