The Middle Way

And so another trip to the Baby Weighing Clinic draws to a close.

A trip in which I received a literal pat on the back from the health visitor for maintaining Piglet's centile, no less.

And then a metaphorical slap on the wrist for admitting that I sometimes (OK, maybe every day) feed him Organix baby fruit purees as desserts.

I can only imagine what the reaction would have been if I had said I gave him a tub of Ben and Jerry's. WHICH I DON'T, BY THE WAY.  What sort of mother do you think I am?

First it was "don't you make them yourself?" as though buying a ready made puree was the comestible equivalent of popping a fag in the baby's mouth "just so he could join in with the grown ups."  Oh sorry, I forgot, we are all supposed to be Surrendered Mothers now.  I am supposed to be carrying Piglet on my back in an organic woven sling while I go out to tend the fields, whilst simultaneously teaching him how to count to ten in Mandarin and contorting myself into a yoga pose, before returning home for a nutritious meal of self-grown quinoa and organic goji berries.

Then it was "he shouldn't be eating purees now.  It's time he fed himself."  This despite the fact that I had already pointed out that he ate the same food as me for his main course.  Like, real actual food.  Yesterday we had CURRY for Christ's sake.  And he feeds himself said curry, WITH HIS FINGERS. In fact, he wouldn't even accept a spoon until last month, and the only reason he's having any purees at all if because I'm so excited that he suddenly appears not only to like them, but to open his little mouth like a baby bird in the way that every other baby I have ever heard of has been doing since the age of six months.  FINALLY.

The Buddha once said that the best way was the Middle Way, which would presumably mean that the best way of going about things is somewhere between Surrendered Mother and My Mother, who advocates jars of baby food at every opportunity, because "it never did you any harm," and because it's the best way to preserve the carpets.  The again, the Buddha also abandoned his own wife and baby so that he could go and sit under a tree in the lotus position for seven years, so he's no Penelope Leach himself.  One simply cannot win.

Anyway, I came home and pureed an entire punnet of apricots.  At least I made them myself.

Let's all just end this madness now

Just come back from a visit to the health visitor where, in typical fashion, Piglet did an enormous wee on the baby weighing scales and I was told off for not taking vitamin supplements, despite the fact that (as I protested to the health visitor) they have been repeatedly shown to be useless.  Better just get used to the fact that whatever I do, there is always going to be someone judging my parenting decisions.

And speaking of judging, what is one to make of this?

Yes apparently, according to that bastion of the British high street, Poundland, these are the two vocations open to babies.  Pink-clad jockey, if you are a girl, and superhero, if you are a boy.  There are, of course, many problems with this.  Firstly, I have seen many pink-clad jockeys during my less productive Saturday afternoons spent channel hopping through Channel 4 racing, and few, if any, were women.  Secondly, superheroes clearly don't exist.  However, these points are unimportant (although more female jockeys please.  Given that women are generally smaller than men, is it not odd that horse-racing is mostly the domain of really tiny men?)  Bearing in mind the fact that encouraging a girl to ride a horse is significantly less bad than encouraging her to be a princess, I now give you that other bastion of the British high street, Wilkinson's (I know, I know, but when I say "British high street" I more specifically mean Wembley High Road, where the most upmarket establishment is a shop called Bland's that sells a curious mixture of cheap-looking prams and cots that actually aren't that cheap, ladies' underwear and hideous meringue ballgowns.  Because what everyone in Wembley needs is a hideous meringue ballgown to wear down the pub of a Friday night).

So this is a snapshot of the girls' toys section in Wilkinson's.  Now it goes without saying that the idea that there needs to be separate sections for boys' and girls' toys is itself abhorrent, but let's ignore this for a moment so we can look in more detail at what Wilko deem to be acceptable toys for young impressionable girls.  So let's see: we have a Barbie in a pink dress, a pink tutu outfit, a pink KITCHEN and a-yes, it really is-a PINK BABY CARRIER.  The boys' section is not shown here as I was too boiling with rage to linger in the aisles, but suffice to say it included police officer and fire brigade hats.

Yes ladies, the message here is clear.  Boys do the real jobs, like fighting fires and catching criminals, while the girls stay in the kitchen looking after the children.

The most ridiculous thing is that not only have things not moved on since I was a wee lass flicking through the toy pages of the Peter Craig catalogue lusting after a pink Barbie house and an A La Carte Kitchen, but they have got worse.  At least the A La Carte Kitchen wasn't pink!  And there were gender neutral toys available, such as the legendary Teddy Ruxpin.  Now admittedly I wasn't allowed any of the three toys mentioned above as they were all too expensive, but I do have photographic proof that for my second birthday, some progressive soul gifted me with a toy carpet sweeper.  Because, like, being a girl and all, all I could aspire to was a piece of already-obsolete equipment for cleaning a house, but AT LEAST IT WASN'T PINK!  End this madness now please!

For my part, I purchased both the bibs in the first picture, as at least then Piglet will know it's OK to be a boy who likes pink, right?

DOES THIS CHILD HAVE A PARENT?

It is 9pm and Piglet is asleep in his bouncy chair.

I am pretty sure that this is VERY BAD, as apparently babies are not supposed to sleep in their bouncy chairs.  Especially without the little seat belt attached to strap them in; the little seatbelt that Piglet has recently discovered and now regularly tries to eat.  However, for the last few nights, Piglet has (finally!) been going to sleep at the very reasonable time of 8.30pm (HALLELUJAH), with the result that Mummy is now in a quandary.  Do I join him in the bedroom at 8.30pm so I can keep an eye on him, or do I put him in his bouncy chair in the living room for a bit, so that if he wakes up I can immediately rock him back to sleep?  I have cautiously chosen the latter for now, on the assumption that should this happy routine continue, I will start putting him in his cot earlier.  Trouble is, I cannot now move Piglet to the cot while he is asleep, as then when he wakes he will freak out and start screaming, as he will not know how he got there, so now I have to wait for him to wake naturally so that I can move him into the cot while he's awake.  This is according to the oft-quoted Golden Rule of Baby Sleep: put them down in their cots drowsy but awake. Only then will they learn to go to sleep on their own in their cot, and only then will you be liberated from the potential future scenario of a child who wants to be rocked to sleep, preferably in your arms, and then sleep in your bed for ever and ever until they finally leave home at the age of forty five.

AHA!  He has just woken up and I have placed him in his cot.  I am no longer the cruel, neglectful mother making her child sleep in a bouncy chair instead of a proper bed like a properly cared for child.

Anyway, went to see the health visitor today.  I was given the usual large-print leaflets about what the local children's centre is for (special groups for fathers and male carers; how to live a healthy lifestyle).  I was disappointed, having settled Piglet to sleep and sat down with a nice cup of tea to read these rather hefty tomes, that they took mere seconds to read, as consisted of mostly pictures and a few massive words.  I know the NHS means well and is to be commended for trying to help people out, but not sure why it is automatically assumed that all men are feckless, irresponsible and unable or unwilling to spend any time with any children who may be related to them, and that as I have had a baby, I must have never heard of fruit or vegetables and be buying my groceries at Chicken Cottage.  Not to mention the fact that most of this literature seems to be written for someone with a reading age of five.  Then the health visitor (who also meant well) remarked about how happy Piglet must be to see his father every day and I had to say he didn't have one, thus unintentionally perpetuating the unfortunate stereotype of feckless babyfathers.  Also had to fill in a questionnaire which asked me how I felt about being a parent ('fantastic") and whether I was experiencing domestic violence ("no").  I'm not sure that many people with answers that varied greatly from those I gave would be willing to say so on a questionnaire, but as I said, they mean well.  And after all I don't particularly want them coming round to my house to check for domestic violence because they might notice that I haven't cleaned the kitchen.

I also wonder why it is, when it is automatically assumed in the literature that your first language is not English and that you may even be an asylum seeker, that when it comes to getting anything done or having a conversation with an actual human, everything is so impossibly complicated that if you were an asylum seeker who didn't speak a word of English, you would probably end up sitting in the waiting room all day wondering what was going on; that is if you could even find the entrance to the clinic.  When I got there the entrance was deserted and the door didn't appear to be working, so I had to wait for someone to come out so that I could actually get in, and when I managed to find the receptionist and ask where we needed to go for our appointment with the health visitor, she looked at me as though I was Oliver Twist proffering an empty bowl of gruel at the workhouse master, asking for some more, and gave me what turned out to be completely inaccurate directions.  When I finally asked another receptionist where I needed to go (shortly after the same receptionist had shouted across the crowded waiting room "DOES THIS CHILD HAVE A PARENT?" at the top of her voice because a small boy-mercifully not Piglet, who was sleeping peacefully in his perambulator-was fiddling with the blood pressure machine) she too seemed to assume by her tone that I was incapable any kind of rational thought, rather than was just someone who happened not to have visited the health centre before and so could hardly be expected to be on familiar terms with the layout, and told me that I had to go to a completely different waiting area.

Once we managed to get inside and actually see the health visitor, fortunately Piglet was on his best behaviour and seemed to enjoy basking naked in the bowl of the baby weighing scales.  In fact he is loving being naked in general at the moment, and it is getting to be quite a struggle to change his nappy, as he cannot stop kicking his legs around at a ridiculous pace every time they have a modicum of freedom.  I do hope he's not going to start taking his clothes off and running around naked in public.  I don't think I could stand the humiliation of the receptionist at the health centre hollering "DOES THIS CHILD HAVE A PARENT?' at me.

I'd have to blame the proverbial feckless and irresponsible babyfather.