Is it just me or does anybody else wonder if the powers that be in the media world have lost the plot? Our choice of headline over the last few days has either been about Katy Price and Peter Andre splitting up or about MP’s expenses. I am assuming that I’m not the only person who is not interested in either story. We all know politicians are devious and should never be trusted and now Gordon Brown has announced this morning that he is going to spend yet more public money going through EVERY SINGLE receipt for EVERY SINGLE MP over the last four years. What a bloody waste of time and money. Just charge each of them £10K and be done with it. I don’t want to see a list of what they’ve managed to charge us for, be it pipes under swimming pools or new gardens or chairs. It makes me feel mildly ill.
Why don’t they spend the money on sorting out Maternity units instead? According to figures from Unicef, less than 2% of mothers in Britain feed their babies solely with breast milk until they are 6 months old and about 90% of hospitals in England are insufficiently qualified to support breastfeeding mothers because according to the report “nurses lack basic knowledge”. Britain has one of the worst breastfeeding records in the developed world. In Australia almost a third of mothers breastfeed for the first six months.
Well. I can tell you exactly why Australia have more breastfeeding mothers and it’s certainly nothing to do with nurses lacking the basic knowledge in the UK. I have first hand experience of both countries, having had my first child in an Australian hospital and my other two in British hospitals. In Australia you are not kicked out of hospital 6 hours after having your baby. You are allowed to rest and you are given the time to practice how to breastfeed. It took me an age to learn. I thought my nipples were going to drop off. I had dreams about rummaging around on the floor of a restaurant looking for lost nipples. Breastfeeding is difficult. It doesn’t suit everybody. Some women don’t want to do it, some babies can’t or won’t latch on. Some women are taking medication that will affect the baby, but if you do want to have a go, you need to be given the time and space to make it work and our hospitals no longer give midwives/nurses/doctors enough money, support, time or space to be able to bother with every new mother. It is a disgrace. Oh and the other thing is Australian’s don’t have a problem with mothers breastfeeding in public.
Swine flu is still affecting our lives with my daughter especially obsessed with the daily increase in numbers and any physical symptoms. Last night she said “mum, I think I’ve got a Quinsy, feel my neck (I had to look it up. Never heard of it) and also when I breathe, my chest hurts, so I may have a respiratory infection”. She also found it relevant to note that the latest school to close was called “HAM..TON” – get it? Related to a pig?”.
She’s got her third cervical cancer vaccinations at school today.
My teenage son has gone slightly mad. I think it’s stress. His last day of school is Thursday and then he’s on study leave. His GCSE’s are starting imminently and he is working, but for some reason if I ask him a random question or look at him he starts responding in strange ways. “Do you want to eat now or later?” for example prompts him to shout “I DON’T MIND MUM, WHAT DO YOU THINK? YES OK OR MAYBE NOT BUT PERHAPS LATER” all in quite a sweet way, but just LOUDLY at the top of his voice. Or he’s singing, but you can’t really call it singing because he’s literally bellowing out lines of crap songs just to be annoying and the more he shouts the funnier he thinks it is because it’s really winding me up and now the other two seem to have joined in and my daughter was especially enjoying singing very loudly last night to Lily Allen’s new song entitled “It’s Not Fair” which is a jolly little ditty about sexual frustration and I kept saying “can you not sing that out loud in front of your younger brother please because it’s quite rude” and she pretends she can’t hear me and carries on singing “OH, IT’S NOT FAIR, I THINK YOU’RE REALLY MEAN, I THINK YOU’RE REALLY MEAN…and so on and then on to the next verse, which is as follows:-
“well I lie here in the wet patch in the middle of the bed
I’m feeling pretty damn hard done by, I spent ages giving head
then I remember all the nice things that you’ve ever said to me
maybe I’m just overreacting, maybe your the one for me”
Which doesn’t sound great when sung by a 13 year old I have to say.
My 8 year old is getting excited about his school trip next week. His year are going away for two nights. It’s a bit of a shame for him because my other two children have been there/done that and keep mumbling under their breath…”don’t get too excited it’s really shit” and when he talks about the “midnight walk” they do they say “god, that was so rubbish. It was at 4.30 in the afternoon and SO not dark and all you got to see were snails”. So far he hasn’t heard them thankfully.
He asked me this morning if I had organised his “beer tokens” for his trip.
I also discovered this morning that he’s been faking my signature in his trumpet homework book – for WEEKS. I mean really badly and the poor trumpet teacher has been leaving me notes and asking me to buy books and all I’m doing as far as he’s concerned is leaving a rubbish signature and he must have been thinking, bloody hell, she can’t even spell her own name properly and clearly must be drunk judging by her writing. How embarrassing. That is real rubbish mother behaviour isn’t it when you don’t check your son’s trumpet book.
Reasons to be Cheerful 1,2,3
May 13, 2009http://joanne-helpinghands.blogspot.com/2009/04/oh-per-lease.html
You might like the above. It’s about our little lady of good taste Lilly Allen and her lovely song.
Am with you re. breastfeeding. I needed help with two of mine, it’s not easy and women need time and support.
I also agree with you re the press, it’s like listening to a bunch of kids the whole time.
Claire
May 13, 2009Your 8yr old is classic! 🙂
Angela
May 13, 2009I can`t help but chuckling. Oh yes, the joys of a mother! But I remember how my mother never got up or actually WAS drunk, and so she made me write my own excuse slip (in my child handwriting) and tried to sign it in the dark. ALSO embarrassing, either way, I guess.
What we all try to do, I think, is make things nicer for our own children than what we went through. And we probably do it, though it takes a while (till after their teenage years) that they understand. Have you read Natalie`s blog (Musings from the deep) who also feels that she is not treated accordingly to all that SHE is doing for her family, and so asks, should I stop?
But from my own experience I can only say, Don`t pay too much attention to how THEY act, just be who you are. Later (in ten years, haha), you will be proud of all they DID learn from you!
My what a lengthy reply!
Anonymous
May 13, 2009Well I for one AM interested in what the MPs have been spending OUR money on, but I guess that I am naive in being so shocked that this could happen at all. I had twins in a british hospital. My mother was a midwife many years ago and her advice to me was to spend as long as possible in hospital to get enough rest before returning home. Little did she know that these days that was an impossibility. Even if you have to stay in, as I did for six days, you are pretty much left alone as there is simply not enough staff to look after you – I was literally exhausted by the time I got home. Not a good start to motherhood. My mum’s tales of sleeping, resting and baby only being brought to mother for feeding etc are all but history. I had my next baby at six in the morning and was at home by six that same night. They offered me a bed for the night but I knew that I would be better cared for at home.
Expat mum
May 13, 2009You should’ve put the Lily Allen words in quotation marks! I thought you’d taken leave of your senses there!
An with you with the teenage antics. My 13 year old is trying to be a rebel or a dropout, he can’t quite decide which. All I know is that he hasn’t handed in the last four bits of maths homework! Grrr!
Wife in Hong Kong
May 13, 2009Couldn’t agree more about time to learn to breastfeed. I had our three boys in hospital in Germany where they don’t let you out for a week until you’re sorted and settled with your baby. I couldn’t get our first born to latch on at all and was desperately upset. I know, had I been home alone, I would have given up for fear that the baby was going hungry and resorted to a bottle feed. As it was the midwives helped me through it and by the time we left all was well.
notSupermum
May 13, 2009Good grief, I’ve just picked myself up off the floor after reading about you lying in the wet patch…..I didn’t realise that was part of the song!!
The Discontented Little Mummy
May 13, 2009Am with Expat on that, nearly choked on my coffee, which would have been ironic.
family affairs
May 13, 2009SORRY GUYS – I have now put the song in quotation marks – I know sometimes my life can go a little squiffy, but I’m still not going to write about lying in wet patches – when Expat mum suggested I did that, I thought she was talking about the title to the post. All sorted now.
Yummy Mammy
May 13, 2009Oh the joys hey, never a dull moment is there.
You’ve been awarded over at my place http://yummiemammy.blogspot.com/
Expat mum
May 13, 2009Tee hee!
English Mum
May 14, 2009Oh that Lily Allen album is the bane of my life. I tried not to comment when that particular little gem came on, but it must have sunk in, because #2 came to me after seeing it (bleeped out) on MTV and said ‘why do they bleep out the bit about Lily Allen wetting her bed?’. And we had to have a whole excruciating discussion about how it was really nice she was getting the whole bedwetting topic out in the open etc etc. Nice one, Lil.
Exmoorjane
May 14, 2009Bunged up my (ghastly) experience of breastfeeding on http://brutallyfrank.wordpress.com just a few days ago… Mind you, I didn;t even have the booted out of hospital excuse – I was in for a week after having James (blood transfusions etc) and I think I counted over twenty midwives who had a go with the ‘difficult’ baby who just WOULD NOT latch on. Aaaghh. Still smarting about it ten years on.
LOVE the trumpet forgery….LOVE even more the idea of the teacher’s bemusement….
Studentmum
May 15, 2009Hi, just found your blog via another.
I didn't know Lily Allen's song was about sex! My 10yr olds were singing it loudly the other day – oops. Shows how much I listen!
Breastfeeding – I am probably not a good person to comment because, for me it was the only thing that worked well – all my babies were prem, I pumped for 6 weeks after their Caesarian delivery and breast fed my daughter for a year & my Twins for * months (I reluctantly stopped due to Post natal depression and I need to go on medication). However, I was also a Midwife. I think in this country we have too few midwifes, those that are in post are so overworked they don't have time to help mums and the attitude to womens bodies is, to say the least, disturbing – page 3, too fat, too thin, Boobs are only sexual not for nourishment, women sent to the toilet to feed so others are not 'offended'! As I said I am probably biased towards breast feeding!
I am also going to delete the Lily Allen song from their ipods!