The truth about health visitors
Only people who have children even know that health visitors are A THING.
Health visitors don't visit. At least, not after your baby is a week old.
No one knows exactly what health visitors are. Senior nurses? Junior nurses? Random people who like babies?
A health visitor's favourite question is 'Are you breastfeeding?' ARE YOU BREASTFEEDING ARE YOU BREASTFEEDING ARE YOU BREASTFEEDING I AM A ROBOT AND HAVE TO ASK YOU EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE HOLDING A BOTTLE
(Ahem. Sorry about that.)
Health visitors have a lot of leaflets.
Health visitors believe that leaflets can solve ALL THINGS.
If they don't have a leaflet for it, health visitors will tell you to go to your GP.
Health visitors always have a trainee with them. Always.
A health visitor's favourite skill is weighing your baby. They are very comfortable doing this, and don't use leaflets when doing it.
Health visitors tell you your babies weight in kg. This will mean nothing to you. TIME FOR THE BREXIT.
Health visitors are the only ones that can navigate successfully around The Red Book. SO MANY PAGES AND FOLD OUT BITS AND CHARTS WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN
If you ask your health visitor to measure your baby, she will tell you that it's not necessary again until she is one. If you ask if they can do it anyway 'seeing as we're here' they will tell you that now the baby has her nappy back on it will skew the measurements. Uh huh.
Everyone sitting in waiting area to see the health visitor is desperately hoping their baby won't be the one that starts screaming.
Baby clinics are heated to approximately 45 degrees. (To make sure the babies don't get cold). Everyone will sweat and the whole place smells of warm baby poo.
You will queue for three hours to see the health visitor for ten minutes.
If you live in London, your health visitor clinic will have friendly posters up in the waiting area saying things like 'This clinic is really busy. Could you possibly try the other one in your district, even though it's three miles away? Kthanksbye'
There will also be posters telling you to LEAVE BUGGIES OUTSIDE. Everyone will ignore them.
Health visitors are probably very nice people. At least they like babies, unlike your GP.
(Disclaimer: this is written from a place of love. Sorry to any health visitors out there!)
Read the truth about parenting sleep deprivation >
Read the truth about life with a newborn >
The truth about parenting sleep deprivation
You will start writing this post eighteen times before finishing it.
A 'good' night will be one when you sleep for more than three hours in a row. You will feel like superwoman after this night. Ideas will flow, ambitions will be unsurpassed. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING THAT DAY.
If your baby does decide to sleep for more than three hours in a row, you'll be terrified they've died. So you won't be able to sleep anyway because you'll keep leaning over their cot to hear them breathe, and probably waking them up in the process.
People will ask you how your weekend was, and you will have absolutely no idea. Even though it's only Monday.
Mothers whose babies sleep through the night will offer you unsolicited pearls of wisdom and you will understand what it is like to feel murderous rage. Topped off with a side of shame and failure.
'Have you tried a bedtime routine?' *headdesk*
It will become a twisted badge of honour to proclaim to anyone who will listen: 'Well, I didn't even sleep well when I was pregnant. So technically I haven't slept through the night since LAST JULY! Ha ha ha!'
Your dreams, when you have them and actually remember them, will have you considering a course of therapy... 'I did what with WHO?'
If you succumb to co-sleeping in desperation, you may wake your partner one night in a panic and scream 'where's the baby? WHERE'S THE BABY?' while pawing at the bed in the dark, not realising that she's actually - shock horror - happily asleep in her OWN COT.
Co-sleeping will turn you into the Hunchback of Notre Dame. So long as the baby's comfy right?
One night in the depth of the antisocial hours, you will pick up your partner's arm, instead of the baby, and try to put it back in its cot*. You will yank it and yank it and wonder why it isn't moving. Your partner will be so tired he will barely notice.
Many an evening will come when, while trying to get the baby to sleep using tried-and-failed methods such as shushing and stroking, you will fall asleep yourself.
You will shush until you faint.
No sheep will ever let you down like Ewan the Dream Sheep. Promised so much, delivered so little.
You will look back on the nights pre-baby when you had a mild bout of insomnia, or a bit of jet lag, and remember how you felt you WERE SO TIRED YOU COULDN'T FUNCTION. And you will laugh hollow laughter as you inject coffee into your eyeballs and try to do life admin while looking after a screaming baby, having slept for about thirty five minutes the previous night.
There will come at time when, at 4am and when your infant is singing away to herself with no intention of sleeping, you will burst into tears. And you'll just go for it. Really let loose - proper sobs. Accompanied by cries of: 'It's not fair! IT'S NOT FAIR! WHY DOESN'T SHE WANT TO SLEEP!!'. And your baby will be so shocked at the noise, she'll shut up and fall asleep.
Hunt-the-dummy in the pitch dark will become your newest and most hated game.
There will be approximately sixteen dummies in your bedroom - in the cot, in your bed, under your bed, in your hair... yet you will never be able to find one before the crying escalates to screaming.
You will consider using earplugs to drown out your baby's night-time singsongs but then be terrified of accidentally dropping one in their cot and having them swallow it. You will ball your fists as you realise even these small solutions are denied to you.
Your baby will often decide that the day should start at 5.30am. Nothing you do will persuade her to go back to sleep. So you will begrudgingly get up, pour yourself an enormous mug of tea, rub your eyes and entertain her, only to have her YAWN at you. For real.
Every now and then your baby will shock you by not waking up at her usual time in the middle of the night. But of course you still will. Ha ha.
*I actually did this. Sorry Oli.
A new identity
*slightly serious post warning*
It's official: I'm having a new-mother identity crisis.
As I said in my last post, when you have a baby and you go for check ups with health visitors or GPs or midwives, you get asked a lot about your emotional wellbeing. What they are really asking is: 'have you got postnatal depression?' Anyway, I am fortunate in that I haven't felt at all depressed since having Chip. I had a few days when I felt stressed and weepy but it was all quite logically connected to lack of sleep or her crying etc.
I have, however, been pondering a lot about who I am now.
I've recently started going out for dinner with friends again, without Chip (natch). The first time I went, on the way home on the tube I started yawning and wondering why on earth I felt so tired when it was only 10.30pm. And then, literally, like a weird bolt of lightning, I remembered that I had HAD A BABY, and that I hadn't slept properly since at least July and that - even more weirdly - I was GOING HOME TO A BABY.
I felt shocked and terrified all at once. And guilty of course, that I had actually FORGOTTEN I'd had a baby. I'd slipped back into my old life so easily. I mean, seriously, in those few sleepy moments between Clapham South and Balham, I had literally forgotten she existed. It was the oddest thing.
Since I had Chip, lots of friends with kids have said to me 'Do you hate it? It's OK to admit you hate it you know.' But I don't hate it. I actually love looking after her more than I ever thought possible. I've never been hugely maternal at all, and always regarded children as rather irritating. But this baby has me in the palm of her podgy little hand. The other day, when she did a massive poo, I found myself declaring with glee in that clichéd ridiculous baby voice, 'Oh Chippy, that really was a stinker winker!' which Oli found so hilariously un-me he wrote it down on the notes in his iPhone.
I am really quite surprised, and pleased, with how much love I feel for her, and for how much I DON'T resent her when all I've done all day is wash bottles, wipe up poo and listen to endless rounds of tinny classical music coming from the Baby Einstein play mat
However, although I adore her, and I really do quite adore looking after her, I never really realised how much my identity was tied up in my work and my independence. And so now, I'm a bit confused about who I am. I have a wardrobe full of beautiful client-meeting dresses, that are now useless (even if they did still fit, which they don't). I have eighteen Dior lipsticks in various West-London-appropriate shades, dozens of completely impractical Wolford tights, a lonely and neglected Prada tote, and a penchant for expensive meals out that I can no longer afford.
I hate the fact that I am no longer earning money. I had not planned to be having a baby with no job to go back to, and quite frankly, it's terrifying. My accountant told me to 'have a year off and enjoy the money you made selling the business' and not to worry about work for now, but that just made me irrationally angry. I've always worked! I'M A WORKER! For the last two years of my life my identity - and much of my self-esteem - was built around being a company director and all that entailed. I was proud of it and I enjoyed it. My life was pretty much all about my work and my friendships.
Not working is very strange, and I often get mild panic attacks in the middle of the night thinking that I should be doing something with this time 'off'. I read on someone else's blog that when you have a baby, it's OK for you to JUST be looking after the baby. You don't have to be trying to hold down a part-time job too, or finishing a long-neglected novel, or doing charity work, or whatever it is that you think you must do to somehow justify your existence as a SAHM. But it's still hard to give myself this time off. Even though I'm exhausted and probably working harder than I have done in ages - just in a very different way.
Oli wants us to move out of London, to get the sort of grown-up house with a driveway and - dare I say it - that one true mark of adulthood: AN OUTSIDE TAP. For Chip's sake, I am tempted. But for my sake, I am wary. My life - or the life that I am most familiar with - is based in London, in my storage-lacking, unbabyfriendly maisonette in the dodgiest part of SW19. It's so odd. Chip is ten weeks' old tomorrow, and in those short ten weeks the last thirteen years of my life have kind of been thrown out the window and it's almost like I need to learn to walk again. I need to find a new identity.
I am aware that women can't have it all. You never stop hearing it from the media. But this post isn't really about that. I don't particularly want to have it all. I just want to find out who the new me is, and what she wants. Without losing sight of the old me and all she achieved.
Hopefully in time, it'll all figure itself out. But in the meantime, I guess I'll keep buying Joules tops and flat shoes and Abercrombie hoodies and pushing my pram round the park like all the other mums. I suspect they're feeling much the same.
The truth about life with a newborn
Your washing machine will always, ALWAYS be on.
Even though you had a girl and thought you were safe, your baby will still wee on you at every available opportunity. Especially right after her bath, and especially when you've just wrapped her in a clean towel.
The bottles always need washing. Even though you're sure you just washed them all. Look! More dirty bottles! The dirty bottles cometh and keep cometh-ing!
Picking your newborn's nose is a) something you will do; and b) more satisfying than picking your own.
You will be terrified of your baby overheating. Your bedroom will therefore now be colder than an igloo's porch.
The first time your baby cries, it's like a million arrows piercing your heart. By week two, it turns into white noise.
You thought that once you'd had a baby you wouldn't care about your own appearance anymore. But you do. You'll be pissed off that you're fat. And pissed off that you have no time to do anything about it. And pissed off that biscuits are so readily available and CALLING YOU.
You'll rarely get out of bed before Homes Under the Hammer finishes. If you do, it'll feel like a massive achievement.
Percy Pigs = Percy Pick Me Ups.
You'll go so mad being trapped in the house that going for a long walk around your incredibly boring neighbourhood will cheer you up no end.
While on said boring walk, you will cheerfully sing aloud to your baby without caring that you look like a crazy person to passersby.
Cutting your newborn's fingernails will be the most traumatic part of your week.
You'll never watch a TV programme from start to finish again. But you won't really care either.
As soon as you serve up lunch/dinner, your newborn will decide that the world and everything in it is a truly disgusting place and launch an angry protest that will last at least an hour, by which time your food will be stone cold and your appetite non-existent.
You will secretly like the fact your baby smells of neck cheese. It will amuse you when you google neck cheese and discover 'the only cure for neck cheese is growing a neck'.
Neck cheese is impossible to remove.
Baby vomiting is not only spectacularly impressive for one so small, it also comes with no warning and can hit you in the face.
Burping your newborn will become a competitive sport.
Everything you own will have dried milk, vomit, wee or poo on it.
Episodes of colic will make you question your (once robust) mental health.
You'll know you have reached rock bottom when you turn to your partner and, through silent tears, whisper 'Why didn't we just get another cat?'
Everyone will buy you clothes that the baby 'can grow into' because they think everyone else will buy clothes that fit.
The (twisted) highlight of your day will be when your baby does a really huge poo.
If your daughter has a round face, she will look like Phil Mitchell when she does a huge poo. You will end up nicknaming her Phil Mitchell, and being full of regret.
You spend your whole time desperate for your baby to sleep. When she finally does, you'll be so shocked you'll then spend the whole time wondering if she's still breathing.
Everyone was right about how hard it is. And everyone was right about how much you love the little bugger anyway.
Drinking alcohol during pregnancy
Would you drink alcohol during pregnancy or not?
Another week, and there's another story in the press about the effects of alcohol on your unborn child. This latest report advises abstaining from alcohol completely throughout pregnancy, but most importantly in the first few months both before and after conceiving. If you don't, you apparently risk your child being brain damaged.
I’m lucky in that I don’t actually like alcohol very much. I never have and I don’t really know why. Wine makes me feel quite sick, and although I’m partial to the odd gin and tonic every now and then, if I’m honest I’d usually prefer a soft drink. Something poncey and full of sugar, like Amé or Bottle Green cordials…
So when I found out I was pregnant (which incidentally, was four days before Christmas, so possibly the WORST time of year to find out), I immediately assumed I wouldn’t drink at all. I probably had one or two alcohol drinks per week at most before I got pregnant, so it wasn’t like there was much to give up. And to begin with, I found it quite easy to avoid alcohol - even with various unwitting family members desperately trying to force glasses of Christmas champers on me. Being the designated driver always works as a good excuse.
However, deciding not to drink wasn’t really something I felt strongly about for the health of the baby. Actually, that sounds terrible - what I mean is that deciding not to drink wasn’t something I had to worry about much because I’m naturally not a big drinker, so it seemed easy to abstain. I was vaguely aware that in the UK they suggest you only have one or two units per week if you do choose to drink but I didn’t really think much more than that.
Then I watched an Exposure programme on it, ‘When Pregnant Women Drink’ (you can watch it below) when I was about two months’ gone. And it certainly put the frighteners on me. One memorable quote was an expert saying that taking heroin or cannabis is less dangerous for your unborn baby than drinking alcohol.
I did some more digging and found out that more shockingly, in most developed countries - places like the US and Australia, women are told not to drink ANY alcohol at all while pregnant. I felt quite smug that I’d been so ‘good’ over Christmas, New Year and my birthday and decided to continue avoiding it.
But then I started to talk to friends, and family, who said they had a few drinks every now and then while pregnant and had perfectly lovely healthy children. And one day I was celebrating something and thought, god, I’m such a bore, it won’t hurt to have ONE gin and tonic. It’s SO true that forbidden fruit tastes sweeter! I shared a G&T with Oli, and did really enjoy it. And then on his birthday earlier this month, while we were at The Pig hotel, I ordered a Pimm’s. It was a beautiful sunny day and I was in a good mood and suddenly I really really fancied a Pimm’s. I drank the whole thing (one and a half units I believe) and promptly fell asleep. I woke up later feeling really groggy and horrid.
Since then I’ve had about four thimblefuls of Prosecco at people’s houses, but that’s about it. And I steer from feeling guilty about it afterwards and thinking how pathetic I am for not being able to give up booze completely for nine short months, to thinking how ridiculous everything has become these days - with every week another story about how your health is somehow adversely affected by you having a cat, wearing a bra, writing with a biro, sitting on the loo too long etc etc. (Blame squarely placed with The Daily Fail for this.)
Interestingly in my many midwife and doctor's appointments, not once has alcohol been mentioned. I've been asked several times if I know I'm meant to take folic acid but that's about it for dietary advice. (That being said, I've probably been given a leaflet. I have a lot of leaflets).
So really, this post is more of a question, because I’m genuinely interested in other people’s takes. Would you and/or did you drink during pregnancy? What are your thoughts on it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGN-JDfG_zg