Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

Well, the week is improving but i’ve got killer lurgy. I feel terrible, nearly as bad as with the terrible tonsils except i really don’t know what is up. Gungy throat yes, but not actually sore but achy, shivery, gruesomely horrid. I keep kneading my boobs feverishly trying to decide if i’ve got mastitis, but i’m sure i haven’t.

Anyway, dosed up on nurofen and codeine we’ve made it through. Fran made a world jigsaw ready to look at tomorrow (but Max has just packed it away!) and we found some pictures of Australian Animals and others of landmarks, and tomorrow we have half a hundred weight of National Geographics, a cd-rom or two and some stamps and stuff to look at. I think i’ve never quite recovered from the Tudors so i thought we’d try a series of very short projects, just a week unless it really grabs anyone. A week of Australia i can handle.

Then we got back to “the boxes” - today we started Getty Dubay, since i thought maybe Fran had lost confidence in her writing cos we have gone quite fast recently. Seemed to work, she liked the format of it anyway. Started with Book B since A really is very large and simple. The she read some Flying Boot and did brilliantly, some mental maths (easy) and then todays new thing… table tables!

We’ve sold out on sticker charts - 4 tables stuck into door panels and when she can tell me any sum, out of order, without having to work it out (which she is actually doing really well, so at least she’s “got” the patterns) she gets a sticker next to it. They are quite prominent too so hopefully it will prompt her to try and learn some of the ones that she hasn’t yet nailed. About to start on 3x tables now, bored of 5’s!

BeadMerrily has been busy which is fab, i’m so pleased with it. Posted 14 parcels tonight, just orders since saturday, so that is a big increase. Had to leg it out at 4.45 when i remembered i’d not taxed the car - ho hum. Maddy had got upset at nursery, someone wouldn’t play with her or something. Heigh ho again. Off to sit in my armchair before the nurofen wears off. Hope you are feeling better Alison.

Josie has a spot on her chin…hmmmmm….

The clouds seem to have lifted rather, not sure why although i think i’m less hormone-y. Strange though, i’m now really poorly, with some indefinable glands up, achy, shivery/gungy throat rubbish that’s gone on since saturday. Even leaving aside the Implanon/tonsilitis malarky of the other year, this is now the 3rd time recently i’ve been poorly with a burst of hormones. I’m really starting to wonder if i’m allergic to progesterone. Can one be allergic to ones own hormones i wonder?

Anyway, i’m going to have a better week, its a bit of a busy one actually, so we’ll get some education in today i think. Maddy’s already left for the day (grumble) and i’m dosed up so i’m going to hit clipart.com and make some Australia clipart for Fran to use in a lapbook.

Oh, we have a lovely postcard from Matilda - thank you :~) Must get Fran’s email working…

I need to add some films i want to see to my Amazon rental list. I watched The Last Samurai last night, i’ve watched Troy, Master and Commander and Cold mountain since i started it. Quite liked The Last Samurai, a touch over dramatic and self indulgent at times but good to look at anyway. Besides i like Tom Cruise. I’ve only admitted to liking it after checking MovieGazette hadn’t panned it of course.

I need some recommendations, i’m hopelessly un-filmy really and i’ve not seen anything really that is new in the last 4 years except LOTR and Harry Potter!

So can i have some i suggestions?

And while i’m at it, we’ve obviously done something to our dvd player as it automatically goes to the German version of films now and if the film has Deutsch on the language list, that is the one it defaults to. Any ideas?

Its okay, she’s still here. Only just, but still here. Dunno what was up with her last night but she narrowly avoided being battered, i’m not sure i’ve ever got so angry with her. Normally her sleeplessness is itch related; well you just can’t get angry at that but last night it was a “where is daddy, i hate yoooooou” type of thing. For 5 hours. I finally lost it and whipped back my arm to give her a smack (pushed to the limit by being screamed at, bitten, punched and kicked through to dawn) and smashed my hand backwards into the headboard of the bed. And thought better of it through the pain. Bruised knuckles, parenting credentials more-or-less intact. :~/ I dunno, Nic, you have my full understanding on this one.

So she fell asleep at 6.15, Josie woke at 6.20 - we all dozed till 9.30, my sleep only interupted by having a passionate affair with Wayne Rooney and getting pregnant by him. (He was a VERY caring person in “real life” :~/) Honestly i worry about myself. We didn’t even have our own house; we were living in centerparcs and sharing a bathroom with someone. Cheap skate.

Ammi and i have passed a pleasant day; lego, my friend Jennie and her daughter K (who looks a little like Lulah and thereby confuses Ammi somewhat), videos, Auntie Mabel, more lego, singing made up songs, gooze, cuddles and silly games. Yes, we had quality time i think. I even managed to clean out the kitchen so its spotless, degreased, washed up, reorganised and all the etcs - Khadijah, flylady would be proud ;~)

Max and the girls are back after a lovely night away with Grandpa; they’ve bought Buckaroo, so that’ll be more pieces lost by morning. Still not found the Downfall piece. Grumble grumble.

Just want to say a big thank you for all the emails, kind offers and thoughtful gestures i’ve had over the last few days. I needed it. There was something faintly reassuring about Jennie visiting today and saying within about 2 minutes (she’s known me a long time) “Oh, you’ve got depressed again, that’s a bit earlier than normal. Have you been to the doctors yet?” How lovely to have friends who care, know and don’t mind saying.

So - camping in the top field only? People still going? That is going to be unbearably hard, my lot will miss not being up against the playground terribly.

Oh just hold me back. I’ve got to stop reading that list. Endless rants about women who dare to have sections, then someone asks for help to avoid one and guess what? Silence. Please let me remember how this feels when i’m a midwife…

I think i’m teetering on the slightly depressed just at the moment, well, i’ve got spots, so maybe its just hormones. Certainly something is changing, lbs are falling off, Josie is feeding like a maniac (ALL night last night) and i can’t stop crying. Or rather, i CAN stop crying, by just not saying anything outloud. Clearly even Max has spotted there is something wrong because i said something innocuous last night about why i had to get up and go and find him in the night and he immediately looked expectantly at me as if i was about to reveal some inner feelings. Which i wasn’t, i was just cold. So if he’s noticed, it must be obvious. So excuse the verbal drivel, i’m just venting in small spurts. Its not really like me not to be able to talk about things, i used to be very good at venting emotion. I must be getting old, or turning into Max, or something. Do people get like their husbands? OMG, is Autistic Spectrum CATCHING????????

Todays hysterical ranting has revolved around the game of Downfall, which i bought yesterday. And today, less than one game after opening it, Amelie (may the gods save her) has lost one of the bits - AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE. And frankly that is driving me mad; i’ve already moved sofas, emptied toy boxes, cleaned out the rabbit looking for it- i found one in MY SLIPPER for gods sake. But she ran off with them, then ran back with some of them, so i don’t know where she went to lose it. And how angry am i????? I once spent ALL DAY looking for a block from a Plan Toys board thing, only to find it balanced in a picture frame i had stared at for much of the day. I CAN’T STAND missing bits of toys. ARGH.

Rant number two is a pair of trousers from Cotton Traders - they are a 16, they seem to fit round me, not too loose, not too tight but they walk down my legs all day - every 15 steps i have to haul them up or i look like Sarah’s gravatar. I swear its the pile on them, its pulling them down, i’ve even tried them on backwards to see if that helped (it didn’t). ARGH, GRRRR, BAH HUMBUG.

So - forced the children to do something worthy in-between Shrek-ing today. (22 hits on the Shrek related this last night btw).

Fran wrote out more in her healthy eating book and then did some writing and reading. Reading good, writing crap. Honestly, its getting worse, 50% of her letters seem to go backwards now, its virtually consistantly backwards too - wtf is going on????? 3 weeks off and she’s lost all the progress she had made, Maddy is doing better.

I’m in despair - if i’m brutally honest i’ve found myself seriously wondering if i can do this today. I really don’t know if i can face years of struggling to get the basics into smallish children. I really don’t know if i can face having to slog at having just one child who can read and write for much longer. I just don’t know if i can do this. I don’t think school has ever seemed so appealing as it does when i realize i’ve probably got another year before i can set Fran on at a project without having to spoonfeed her. And in the meantime Maddy waits, in the meantime along comes Josie and Amelie needing the same. I just don’t know if i can cope with carrying on taking all this on my shoulders. And don’t tell me i should just leave it. If i’ve convinced myself of anything, its that Fran isn’t going to get this without a lot of practise and effort and encouragement.

At least Fran was better at her maths, she did a page of the Yr 2 Exeter book (although one sum baffled me, some of them are so weirdly presented), she seemed to know her 2, 5 and 10 times tables okay. We are going to have to get back to our hour or so of structure a day. It made us all feel so much better.

Maddy did fabulously. I started her on the Yr 1 Exeter book and she loved it and did several pages straight off. She did nice writing and she wanted to do more but Amelie got disruptive. Tomorrow Max and the big girls are out all day so its me and the little ones; in our current state of National Emergency, Amelie may not last the day, so if any of you local lot (wittered on at girls/women there and copped out) fancy coming over, please do. You might just save someone’s (Amelie’s) life.

The girls have just discvered that, rather like covering a budgie cage with a blanket, you can stop Josie making her patented squeaky sound if you smother her with a blanket….

Hmmm…. must get off the computer.

Because the only way i can live with this is because i have easy access to this. otherwise i would have gone mad already! Anyway, the girls have played this this afternoon and evening, all at the same time and had a ball. They’ve been very co-operative and worked it out a lot. We’ve only had to use the cheats once i think. And tbh, if we were more used to that style of game, we wouldn’t have needed to do that. In danger of getting a bit stuck now though… blooming mice…

Had to spend quite a bit of the day in town, in heaving snow too. Yuk. Which meant saying “NO!!!!” a lot and stopping at Burger King. Still, thanks to the company of Auntie Kate, it was bearable. Aside from a slightly loony moment when Fran lost the plot on an escalator and ran back down it, followed by Maddy, thereby nearly killing themselves and about 50 other people. (Well, okay, me, Josie, Kate and a rather surprised looking youth.) Ho hum.

The kids are hugely into lego and Happy Street atm, i could interupt to make them learn something but tbh, i think they are really benefitting from the play, so i won’t. There has been a LOT of Zoombinis though, Fran’s logic is definitely coming on a lot.

Apologies for all that self pity. I’m back on track now.

I think it would bve fair to say things are a bit fragile around here, mummy not least. However, i won’t dwell.

What has been good? Maddy doing a lovely illustrated story, with foam sticking pictures, Fran playing with Josie beautifully, Josie talking away to us all. Amelie and i spending time sat down doing dominos, snow, a room messy because its been thoroughly played in. Business doing well. A visit from our first ever student which made me laugh. Knowing (thank you Alison) on reading yet more caesarean rubbish , that *I* am right and everyone else is wrong and horrid. Being able to stand shoulder to shoulder on a list with someone i respect and come out with the same reply to (yet another) insensitve and stupid post. Having to face the fact that its hardly surprising that ‘I’ failed to give birth when midwifes who consider thmselves radical don’t get it either.

I have beautiful children, i have granted them the right to an “intentionally extended babyhood” - i know it will be good for them. I do trust myself. Pyjama days are not the end of the world. I’ve lost another 2lbs, my parcels are posted, nobody expired from lack of attention.

I’ve drunk too much wine… stuff the children too, Jax? Interestingconcept, stuffed children… ;~)

No, its okay, i’m not about to burst into song!!!

I thought i ought to just quickly round up yesterday, which wasn’t all me ranting about birth choices. Incidentally it got far worse after that, when someone decided to announce to the world-in-small that if you have a caesarean you don’t give birth to your child. Charmed. Mechanics are everything, then? I didn’t vaginally deliver all my children, so i didn’t give birth to them. I didn’t feed Fran from my breast, so i didn’t feed her? I don’t see her dying of malnutrition, of course i fed her. My babies were born from my body, of course i gave birth. I admit, its hard to say it about Fran, its not hard to say it about the other two.

Anyway, ranting aside, yesterday was okay - i had more TT help, Jax and i fixed the site a bit more, i did stock vcounts etc. Fran made more of her board game and did some pictures, some reading, some maths, some writing. Its all happening slowly. Ammi had a lovely day. The the big two went dancing, Ammi and i went to play at the toy shop. Now how funny is this, i bought some hama stuff i wanted to look at without buying 10 of them, and the cashier recommended my website to me! Snigger…

We managed to get really held up on the way to collect the girls from dancing and were quite late. And i was panicking, i was envisaging two girls weeping and frightened or standing out in the cold, or abducted, or something. But no. I wasn’t there, they’d got dressed, told a teacher i was late and where they were and sitting calmly waiting for me under the eye of the staff memeber they’d alerted. How proud was i?

The reason for the darkening skies that held us up was of course snow and today we have buckets of it.

They lasted less than 10 minutes in it! *rolls eyes*

Still, we made pretty pictures instead.

***I give you fair warning, this is a birth stories rant and i make no apology for it. Those of a delicate disposition should look away now. This rant is not at a single person i know, but its boiled over in me with the anger i felt at some list conversations i read today. I’m putting it here because i really hope someone who needs to will read it***

One of the many things that Victoria Beckham and i have in common is that we have both had 3 caesareans. Admittedly, the more obvious things about VB are NOT the things we have in common, fame, fortune and fabulous figure being three of them, but the things are there.

If there is one thing i’ve felt sorry for VB because of, its that she has had to live out her births in the media spotlight and there is nothing like an elective section for bringing out the oh-so-perfect-fanatic in some people it seems. Damn VB for having a section for a first breech baby, damn her for having them at The Portland, damn her for not being brave/better informed/perfect/ a role model/ an earth mother; damn her for taking Doctors Orders and Doctors Advice. Just lets damn her everywhere, in the press, on websites, on, i’m ashamed to say, support groups that are supposed to be “with woman.” If she had a just passable reason for her first section, a breech, she had no excuse for going with elective the second time. She should have stood up and demanded a vbac for number 2, how DARE she have an on demand elective this time, how dare she go out of her way to want privacy in hospital, when the world can’t wait to hear her milk come in, how dare she just want to do it her way. HOW dare SHE?????

Well, i’ll tell people something about elective sections and any other sort of section. I’ll tell them something about only finding out too late you were uninformed and not ready for it all. I wasn’t. I thought i was well informed when i was expecting Fran. I had a book, i read it. I was terrified. I didn’t think much about anything except how scared i was of all that degradation and pain. Birth didn’t sound like anything to be enjoyed to me, it sounded like something to get through and endure - and my god i endured. I only found out i’d been uninformed afterwards, when the reality of the moment when i screamed “yes” to the offer of a section really hit me. When i realized that i hadn’t been prepared and i hadn’t known what i was doing and that having no peer group to discuss it with and no inofrmation i understood had let me down badly. Yes if i ‘d known that a homebirth was possible, maybe i wouldn’t have been in this mess now - but i didn’t. I believed what i was told. How stupid of me. How stupid of VB to believe the people who are supposed to help her.

And it wasn’t much better for Maddy, i didn’t know i was planning a VBAC, i didn’t know it had a name, i didn’t know the risks, i didn’t know to be afraid or excited or gung-ho or anything else. I didn’t even have a book for that one, no email lists, no supportive midwife, not even a leaflet. I didn’t even know if it could be done without dying. I clung to a loony need to give birth and luckily it went well - more luckily than anything because i daresay i uttered “I’ll give birth if it kills me” without realizing what i was saying. I went for that VBAC without giving Max or Fran a second thought. It wasn’t a considered decision. It was self-preservation.

But if i’d been paying people, if i’d thought i was in the best place money could buy, if more than anything i had wanted privacy and quiet and a chance to be “just a new mum” - if my carers had made my first section a good one, would i have gone after it? Would i have deserved to be pilloried for NOT wanting a VBAC? Where does a VB go for VBAC support these days anyway? An email list? A website, an IM? and hope to god you can trust them?

I’m all for VBACs, of course i am. I know every feeling i’ve felt backwards and forwards and inside out. I know i don’t actually feel that positive about the one i had, i feel more positive about the labour i finally got with Josie where i finally got to be in control. I feel more positive about that because i chose to hang on to feeling that experience just for what it was. But i don’t go around belittling people who don’t want/ didn’t try/ didn’t know. Lack of information is just that, lack of information. Choices and decisions are another thing. I’m not a lesser person because i only did it once, i’m not a lesser person because when it came to it, my courage gave out before my body did. I’ve got better things to worry about now than exactly how or why or via what route. I’m a mum. And so is VB. And it makes me sick to my stomach to see someone laughed at because of the decisions she made in giving birth. Especially by people who should know better. Stupid columnists who write “too posh to push,” which imho only serves to show they know fuck all about it, people who make remarks that they’ve heard she wanted to keep herself nice “down there” for DB, people who say she didn’t want to risk having a contraction. People who would empathise and sympathise and support anyone else, but when it’s a celebrity its okay to trash them.

Well maybe she was just scared. Maybe she got so frightened the first time that the breech thing was the perfect way out. Maybe she went with the flow the second time because she didn’t know what to do and a million things pushed her this way and that. Maybe they opened her up that time and found a hole and that killed it for her forever in her head. Maybe she hasn’t stopped crying since, this time. Maybe she would have loved a vbac this time but she’s had a hell of a year and her marriage is a bit rocky and she was terrified of doing a labour in front of someone she isn’t totally together with at the moment but was frightened to push him away too. Maybe she really didn’t fancy it and doesn’t give a monkeys. Maybe DB feels a bit like Max and more than anything can’t bear to see stress and strain and feel all the fear that he and i felt in the two weeks before Josie was born. Its the type of mother we are that should matter to everyone else, not the type of birther.

Maybe people should shut up and leave her alone, let the births of her children be the one thing she doesn’t have to have on show or be looked at for. Yes she made her lifestyle choices, she lives her life in view but somethings ought to be sacred. Because if its all right to snigger at VB, maybe its all right to snigger at me.

Caesareans are not an easy way out - if you are too posh to push, are you too posh to lie around unable to change your own pad, while your wee drains into a bag, a drain hauls out moisture from a weepy, oozy wound and makes you scream when its removed? Shall i slice a few people across the abdomen and then hand them a newborn to look after? Shall i take away an experience and say “you cannot EVER have that and neither money or begging will get it for you?” If people think they wanted a labour to end because it hurt, you want to try discovering your baby is out in the air and you didn’t even feel it. You want to try hearing a baby cry and not realizing its yours. Or never seeing a cord still connected to your body, or being the first to hold the child you grew. You might like to try having your husbands terrified face as the only thing to focus on while you feel the worst you have ever felt in your whole life. You might like to try actually being envious of a splash of blood on a wall that is left over from someone else’s homebirth. Yep, i’m that pathetic. If VB went into her first section uninformed, you can bet your life she didn’t go into the other ones quite so naive.

And yes, today was the day i got upset about it.