Easter, The Chocolate Festival

I heard a great idea today about laying out a treasure hunt for Easter gifts. One could make a trail of clues leading to the prize. I think it is a good improvement on the plain search we had when we were children.

We won't be doing chocolate eggs yet though as Arthur still doesn't eat sugar. Maybe next year we can do a treasure hunt with a non-chocolate prize.

We're aren't doing anything special today because Arthur still isn't really old enough to appreciate it. We will have a bit of a do for his birthday in a couple of months.

I have a chocolate egg for me, but I need to wait until after Arthur goes to bed. It's agony.

Happy Easter.

My Birth Story

I had my baby on the evening of 01/03/08. This is how it happened.

On Saturday morning I started having contractions, but I wasn't sure. I'd had a false alarm the day before so my cervix was sore from being prodded. After and hour or so, it was clear I was really in labour this time.

We called Mum and she took our first born away for the night. I spent ages pacing up and down. We attached the TENS machine. The TENS works wonders and really allowed me to stay at home much longer.

I ate some food, watched some telly, but found I needed to keep walking around to keep the contractions coming.

I phoned in and told the hospital I would be coming in later but wasn't ready yet. They were fine with this.

We finally ordered at taxi for 6:30pm. Then at 6:10pm my waters broke. It was a proper gush, soaking my trousers and going everywhere. And it just kept coming. I finally got dry enough in time for the taxi. Then the taxi was late. It didn't turn up 'til 6:50pm.

Luckily we got to the hospital dry, but once there I was awash with amniotic fluid again. So I was left hanging around in reception in drenched dungarees, waiting for the staff to find somewhere to put me.

Wythenshawe hospital was full on Saturday night. I was the last one in and all other labouring mums were being sent to Stepping Hill in Stockport.

They put me in the recovery room, where they bring people after surgery, but I had to be moved because they needed the room for it's intended purpose.

We allowed them to move us up onto antenatal (C3) on the premise that the room where we were going was big enough to push back the bed and labour on the floor. We got there and it wasn't. So T and I started kicking off. We got pushed around like this last time aswell.

One midwife suggested we could remove the bed from the room entirely so I could get a foam mat on the floor. This worked really well and we managed to make the space our own.

I was finally brought some gas and air, not before time. I managed really well labouring on my hands and knees with the TENS on full blast and pulling hard on the entenox.

I was aware of going into second stage of labour and really pushing. This hurt but I was coping well and just wanted to stay where I was. I told T that we should just carry on and to call the midwife when baby got here.

I was grunting loudly, so midwife checked on. I told her that I was pushing and that I was doing fine. She stayed in from this point, which I didn't mind.

The pain changed from the dull pain of contraction to a sharper pain as baby travelled down the birth canal. I kept going, relieved it would be just a few more pushes now.

Baby was born, purpley-grey and the midwife dried him off an put him on my tummy. I had a little look and I had a baby boy! He cried and gradually went pinker.

He managed to breastfeed within an hour of being born, which helped me deliver the placenta. I chose not to have the injection to hurry it out.

I had a post-partum fit about two hours after baby was born. It was about midnight and I had been getting twitchy for a while. T is rather cross that the midwife was dismissive of his urgency to get me to bed.

It wasn't an enormous fit and I only have about an hour missing from my memory, but I would still have rather avoided it.

We were moved into a very nice room, still on the antenatal ward where baby was born. It had a bed, a reclining chair which T managed to sleep in, and an en-suite bathroom, which was a luxury.

We stayed Saturday night and came home on Sunday afternoon. We were threatening to discharge ourselves, so were glad they rushed us through the neo-natal checks and paperwork so we could go home without upsetting too many more of the staff.

We are doing really well and Donald is asleep in my lap as I type.

On Impending Childbirth

Unsurprisingly, I've been thinking a lot about childbirth recently because I'm expecting my second child on 27^th Feb.

The NHS have been in the media in recent months and there has been a lot of criticism of their maternity services. Or it might be just that I've noticed the news stories.

I would like to have minimal intervention for this baby. Ideally I'll labour at home for as long as possible, with the assistance of T, the telly and a TENS machine, which is arriving on Saturday.

We will have to go into hospital before the delivery because of the risk of me having an epileptic fit during or after the birth. Otherwise I would be having a home birth as I don't really want to go in.

Today I had a tour of the labour ward with Carolyn, the midwife who has been leading the antenatal parentcraft class I've been going to. My impression is that the hospital is gradually moving in the direction of helping women to have more choice and the ability to have a more natural, holistic experience.

It's still a hospital and they don't have as many midwives or as many rooms as they need sometimes. That and some health professionals, in my experience the doctors rather than the midwives, over-medicalise birth, making it more stressful for the mother and so causing more need for intervention. It's a catch 22 situation.

I came across an idea called Unassisted Childbirth. The idea is that it is not necessary for any medical practitioner to help a woman give birth. She can give birth painlessly and naturally in her own home and it will be best for all. I for one am not convinced.

I think this is a backlash against the over-medicalisation of childbirth in the USA as well as being a romanticised mysticism of the natural human body. I suspect that the NHS are better at allowing women a birth with limited intervention than the USA health system, if only because it's cheaper and they are always strapped for cash.

I do believe that some women can give birth painlessly, but would not imply that it is something that everyone could do or should be expected to do. I don't expect my second birth to hurt any less than the first one (ouchy).

I'm quite looking forward to it now. I want to make sure everything goes right by me and babe. We're probably as ready as we'll ever be and I'm fed up of being pregnant.

Theoretical parenting discussions that are meaningless in the real world.

I'm feeling rather cross at the moment about some of the parenting ideologies to which I subscribe to a greater or lesser extent.

Please come back to Earth. It can be nice and fun and we can make it better if we try!

I go to great lengths to consider my child's point of view and we don't snatch things off him and a voice is never raised in anger in our family.

The snatching issue is high in my mind right now. We come to situations where my toddler clearly covets a toy or thing that someone else has. He will stand and watch hopefully to see if he might be offered a turn. Occasionally he is, but he won't dive in and snatch from anyone else. I normally have a quick scout around for an alternative so everyone can play.

My theory for this behaviour is that neither me or Daddy snatch things from him.

I see children have objects forcibly removed from their hands by parents. Interesting stuff like keys, mobile phones, pens and the like. These children are then chastised by the same parent when they copy their parent's behaviour and forcibly take toys from other children.

And they wonder why.

So I was whinging about impractically idealistic parenting theory.

What I do not believe makes me a bad parent is forcibly strapping our toddler into the pushchair in order cross the road safely. It makes him so much less dead.

Completely non-coercive parenting can never be more than an idea.

The Freegans demonstrate my point quite well. It is possible to have an idea which is used to inform one's behaviour without being intolerant of someone who does not apply the idea to every situation or every aspect of their life.

I find useful many parenting ideas but cannot subscribe wholeheartedly to any one, particularly those which encourage complete conformity to an unachievable ideal.

So tell me it's a cop out. Tell me I can't be bothered to find a mutually agreeable solution. My parenting happens in the real world today and is merely informed by abstract hypotheses that have never been near a real bedtime snotkiss.

Motor Vehicle Culture

One of my greatest bugbears is the insistence of most people that they cannot live without a car.

Before I became a parent, I would defend people with young families who feel they need a car, but now we do it, it's really not that hard to live without.

We use some taxies and are getting quite good at fitting the carseat at speed, although I can't do it on my own at the moment because of the bump.

T cycles to work each day, which is a trek and takes about an hour, but would probably be the same in rush hour in a car.

I'm on foot or bus, but am reduced to a distance of not much more than a mile from home because of the bump, but that should ease up after the baby arrives.

I don't know how we would ever fit in enough exercise if we drove everywhere. And we would be skint.

When I explain this I am usually showered with the list of excuses of why city living, able bodied people cannot live without a car. Nobody argues that they want their car because they like the privacy and comfort that being in one's own car provides. Nobody argues that they like their car because the choice of car is a fashion statement.

I hear, “Ah but I couldn't get to work any other way.” People choose where to work and I moved job to be closer to home. Frankly the people who say this have never tried to get to work any other way. The other excuses are often simply ridiculous.

And then there are the parking and congestion problems. If there is something that might get drivers out of their cars, it's gridlock.

When I am the benevolent dictator of the world, I will ban private motor vehicles from Manchester City centre, making it only possible to get in by public transport. Not that I have any real intention of going into Politics.

Give yourself a £2,000 payrise. Ditch the car.

Learning How to Blog

I'm not sure how to start, so I have spent some time reading other people's blogs to see how it's done. Some of them are great and some are awful. I don't like the "What I did today" diary style. I find the serious political blogs hard going and I don't think I have the time or energy to research such things properly.

Some blogs seem to suffer with verbal dioreah, which turns me off entirely. I like social comment and political blogging, even Political blogging in moderation.

I liked this,

'In a small village that was popular for tourism because it was picturesque, but still very small, a man once walked up to an old man of the village and asked him, “Were any great men born here?” The old man answered, “Nope. Only babies.”'

Which I have ripped from

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/category/atheism/

Other than is seems to be set in the strange world of Nowomen.

Hello.