We’re on holiday for two weeks from tomorrow - hooray!  Going to Pembrokeshire with my parents.  Obviously won’t be blogging, but will be back writing as soon as we return - with all the joys of packing our house up to move 10 days later.

Ok, so we had guessed Mopsy’s pinching was in some way an attention thing.  Then the incidents on Tuesday happened - what could be more obvious:  “Daddy’s playing with Flopsy too much, how can I remind everyone I’m there and would like to be played with too?  I know what gets people’s attention - I’ll go and pinch a baby!”.  Ok, it sounds horrific, but when we remind ourselves that, if I’m right, this is the thought process of a very intelligent, very frustrated 18m old.  Mopsy is very bright and understands nearly everything we say to her.  She has a lot of words, but of course no where near enough to make herself understood when it comes to feelings.  She is constantly reminded that her big sister, Flopsy, is far more articulate than her, and therefore much less frustrated, which leads to her being much more pleasant to play with and which means, very unfortunately, that she tends to get played with a little bit more .  We’re less likely to be pinched or yelled at by Flopsy simply because she can tell us exactly what she wants us to do - poor old Mopsy just can’t do that.  If she wants us to do something, and we don’t understand her, her immediate, and very understandable, response is to lose her temper and pinch or scream at us.  Flopsy used to do exactly the same thing, but it wasn’t so frequent or so pronounced, probably because we had the time to pay clear attention to her.  Gah!  Remind me why we’re having a third baby?  Is it fair?  Ho hum…bit too late for worrying about that now!  Anyway, back to the matter in hand:  My very good friend persuaded me I should go to the BF Support Group (a different one) yesterday, that I had intended to miss for fear of more baby pinching.  She very sensibly said that I could go and spend the whole time playing with Mopsy if that was what was necessary, and leave if it got too much.  I didn’t have to leave - Mopsy was a dream.  I was careful to play with Mopsy a lot at the beginning, until she’d had enough of me and wanted to go off and run around on her own for a bit.  When she came back to me, I showered her with attention, until she was ready to go off on her own again.  She played beautifully with the other toddler there (a boy of about Flopsy’s age) and with Flopsy and we didn’t have one pinching incident all day long - not even Flopsy when we were at home.  What a huge change from the last few weeks!  And how stupid of me not to catch on sooner to what she was trying to tell us!  So I’m now hoping that by playing with her lots and lots, and paying her attention before she wants it, she might ‘forget’ about her unpleasant little method of trying to get attention from us.  The more I can prevent her getting to the stage where she’s thinking of pinching, the less she’ll do it, I’m hoping, and the more she’ll forget about it.  And hopefully she’ll soon learn some better ways of expressing herself!  Of course, I’m not expecting her to stop pinching out of frustration when she wants something she can’t have (e.g a toy of Flopsy’s etc.), but that’s just normal sibling bickering, isn’t it?

So, onto Flopsy:Dh has a colleague at work called Paulo, who once came over to our house for a meal and played with Flopsy a lot.  She sees him everytime we go into Dh’s work and he’s always lovely to her.  She’s got a real crush on him and it’s very sweet to see her go all coquettish when she sees him.  At the time she really got keen on him, her way of expressing that she really, really liked someone was to say that they were a family member because of how people who constantly told her they loved her would also explain their relationship to her e.g. I’d tell her she was my daughter, or that she was Mopsy’s sister.  She’d say things like “I love you, Grandma, you are my Granddaughter”.  So when she got very keen on Paulo, she told us she wanted him to be her sister - we explained that boy-sisters were called brothers (obviously something she has no experience of yet!), so she started saying “I love Paulo, he’s my brother” an awful lot.  Of course, we didn’t contradict her and just said things like “He is good fun to play with, isn’t he?  Maybe he’ll come round again sometime to play with you”.  When I got pregnant and we started talking about the baby a lot, we mentioned that it might be a boy or a girl - a new brother or sister.  She told us very often she wanted it to be a boy - a brother for her - and she wanted it to be called Paulo.  I soon noticed that she constantly referred to it as ‘he’ and told anyone who asked her that it was a brother called Paulo.  I thought nothing of it except that that was her current favourite boys’ name and we agreed we wouldn’t disappoint her just yet by telling her that if it was a boy it probably wouldn’t be called Paulo!  Dh, meanwhile, told Paulo what Flopsy was saying.  Then yesterday we went into Dh’s work - we hadn’t been there for a while - and Paulo came up to us to say ‘hello’.  Flopsy looked at him with a sort of amused, surprised look and said “You’re in Mummy’s tummy!”.  Dh and I looked a bit confused and then it dawned on us - Flopsy had been under the impression that it actually was real-life, grown-up Paulo in my tummy and that when he ‘popped out’ (as she calls it!), he’d be her brother and be able to play with her forever!  No wonder she was so keen for the baby to come!  She very quickly realised her mistake and the poor little girl was really embarrassed!  She made me pick her up and she buried her head in my shoulder - she wasn’t upset that Paulo wasn’t actually the baby, but that she’d made a mistake like that in front of everyone.  I was so sorry for her, really felt for her, but tried to remind myself that everyone will experience moments of acute embarrassment in life, and that she’d get over it.  She soon did, and was happily running round the store again, hiding from Paulo.  I’ve yet to broach the subject of the baby again with her - thought I’d leave it a bit for her to get her head round the fact that it isn’t Paulo coming at Christmas! 

I have quite firm feelings about this subject, all beautifully articulated in Andrea’s most recent post, so I won’t write anything here, as there’s not much more to add!  Go read it .

On a more down note - Mopsy has been going through an unpleasant phase of pinching Flopsy, and occassionally other children, really hard - nails and everything.  It’s been upsetting anyway, particularly when Flopsy has been so patient and has only just started to retaliate after a good few weeks of being attacked by her little sister, often for no reason, but occassionally just because Mopsy wants to nick her toy!  But this morning, at one of the BF support groups, she pinched two babies .  She’s been working her way up to this, I can see now, but it’s clearly her new speciality as this morning she was playing happily, got up, went over to a baby and pinched her cheek, then did it to another baby a bit later.  Luckily, although it was very painful for the babies, both were over 7m old, and second siblings themselves, so their mums understood, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I just can’t keep going to these groups until she’s grown out of it, in case she pinches some poor firstborn who is only very young, and who’s mum is going to be absolutely distraught!  I’m really, really upset about it, and just hope it doesn’t last so long she pinches the new baby.  It’s really hard as I’ve never been able to help feeling a little smug that Flopsy never went through a hurting-other-babies/children phase, but now I can totally understand how mortifying my friends who’s toddlers did go through that phase found it.  One of my friends had three children, and it was only her third that did it…I guess at least you know then it really is ‘just a phase’ and not to do with your hideous parenting skills, or lack of them!  If anyone has some positive stories to tell, please do…feeling a bit despondent at the prospect of being in ’solitary confinement’ for quite some time!

Oh, and just so this post isn’t totally negative about darling Mopsy - she really is lovely in every other way.  She was helping to wash the car this afternoon, and was concentrating so hard on scrubbing it - it was lovely to watch.  And when you spray her with water from the hose (which, let’s face it, is pretty irresistible when it’s scorching hot!), she does this sharp intake of breath every single time, really cute.  I love her to bits, she’s very affectionate still, and full of cuddles and kisses - must focus on the good bits, of which there are many!

I’m in a brilliant mood tonight for several reasons:

1. I just finished my essay and have sent it off to my tutor to check over - hopefully she won’t suggest too many changes, then it will mean polishing it off a little and being able to say ‘only three more assignments to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!’.

2. I managed to finish my presentation in time for our tutorial today and, despite the fact I thought it sounded very monotonous (I hadn’t made much effort to do any fancy visual aids or anything, other than pinching a couple of my tutor’s nipple shields and a knitted breast which I got her to demonstrate anyway as I’ve never used a nipple shield in my life!), my fellow students said it was very good - hurrah!  Besides, I learnt so much from doing it, I don’t really mind what they said LOL.  I’ve always shied away from learning about nipple shields, having an instinctive aversion to anything that takes breastfeeding away from the natural.  However, I’ve recently had to support several mothers trying to wean their babies off nipple shields, so the presentation came at a good time for me.  I now feel no less horrified at the suggestion that they are ever essential and that there aren’t better ways of helping women with the various problems it is cited they are useful for, but a whole lot more prepared to support a mother who is trying to cope with the aftermath of an unhelpful person getting her to start using them . 

3. My friend emailed me back to say she didn’t know what I was talking about and of course I hadn’t done anything to upset her - it was just a bizarre internet-induced misunderstanding caused by blog comments mysteriously disappearing.  So I’m very happy about that indeed!

4. An exercise we did on our tutorial today managed to open the floodgates a bit for me, and I ended up crying for the first time ever over Flopsy weaning.  I won’t go into it now, or I’ll probably start crying again, and it’s far too late at night to start a torrent of tears just now!  But what I wanted to say, really, was that I think it was a good thing as it had been slowly building up lately, my sad feelings about weaning, and I think that crying today will hopefully spur me on to write a good old cathartic blog post about it asap!

 I was all set up to write a nice up-beat blog about our day, when something’s happened that’s made me feel all upset.  I think I’ve upset a friend, although I’m not certain, and if I have, I don’t know how.  And she’s the sort of friend who hates any sort of conflict and wouldn’t bring it up with me.  I’ve emailed her - if you’re reading, E, please, please contact me! 

On a more positive note: I’ve been blog-surfing (or whatever you call it) and found lots of lovely blogs I think I’m going to like, mostly about unschooling/autonomous education. 

I ought to be working on a mini-presentation for my tutorial on Saturday but I can’t work out how to print off the wonderful mind-map I’ve done on the computer and it’s totally brought me to a motivational halt!  I, therefore, really ought to decide that since I can’t work on my presentation, even if the reason is my own fault!, I should continue writing the essay I am currently working on.  But despite the fact I really want to, I have this silly thing that means that I can’t seem to start one thing unless I’ve finished the first thing - something that would have applied to my presentation had I not had a deadline for it (no deadlines for essays on this course :-)).  So if I get started again on the essay, I’ll get all confused about where I am, and what I’m writing about. 

Maybe I should just settle down to writing about Flopsy and Mopsy!  There was something I wanted to note down, and that’s Mopsy’s current vocabulary and the odd phrase that Flopsy uses that I don’t want to forget as she grows up and stops using them!

Flopsy first:

• Cood’aft = look after e.g. “Can you cood’aft my dolly for me Mummy?”
• eye on = keep an eye on e.g. “I’ll eye on Mopsy for you”
• talk to = read e.g. “can you talk to this book?”

Mopsy’s words:

• Pease = please
• Beedah = thank you
• Ree-ooh = Rosie
• Mummy
• Dada
• Baabaa = Grandma
• Dadad = Grandad
• Nana
• Bapa = Grandpa
• yeah
• no
• Oof = foot
• arm
• ah = hand
• eeyah = hello
• cheese
• cheers
• gokgok = yoghurt and chocolate
• numnum = yum yum
• yah yak = mummy’s milk
• poo poo
• wah wah = wee wee
• baba = baby
• ball
• pop
• boh boh = bottom
• oh no!!!
• doodoos = doodles (Clark’s plimsoll-like summer shoes)
• ooo = shoes
• air = hair
• ear
• dickick = sticking
• star
• dog
• cat
• pig
• duckduck = duck or bird
• tada! = said with a look of delight when standing on top of something e.g. table, chair or even something as mundane as a piece of paper!
• Bedoh = playdoh

Wow!  She’s got loads of words - there are probably a few I’ve missed, and no one except for me, my mum, DH and Flopsy understands most of them, but who cares eh?

Ok, feel a bit less despondent now, but obviously still very concerned about the situation with my friend.

…is a very bitter woman’ is what I first thought when I started reading her book ‘A Life’s Work: On becoming a mother’.  She seems to be fuming that she’s pregnant, fuming at what pregnancy/birth books say, fuming at the health care professions, fuming at the whole world, despite the fact she chose to become pregnant.  Once her baby is born, despite the fact she professes her great love for her child, she proceeds to bemoan nearly everything she experiences of motherhood.  Her book angers me because it is so negative - it probably did her an awful lot of good writing it, but I can’t imagine what good it could do to any mothers or potential mothers reading it, except to learn that motherhood is one of the biggest sacrifices you can possibly make, and you will probably hate it, whilst simultaneously experiencing desperately profound feelings of love and awe for your child.  I’m sorry to say that, having had a rather depressing first trimester, I didn’t feel up to continuing to read past the first four chapters - maybe the book doesn’t continue this way and I’m doing her a great injustice!  However, despite how much I disliked reading the book, I have learnt a huge amount from it and can understand why it is one of our ’set texts’ for the BFC training.

Cusk is clearly illustrating fairly common feelings for modern mothers; mothers who maybe have delayed motherhood in order to pursue a career; mothers for whom Gina Ford is the most important baby ‘expert’ since time began.  The mothers I am imagining appear to have such trouble reconciling themselves with the concept of not having complete control over their lives that they need the desperately strict routines that Ford encourages them to enforce.  And it’s hardly surprising…whilst clearly there are many exceptions (and I’m sure that this is also an experience of some young mums), most women having children in their mid- to late-thirties have experienced a relatively long adulthood so far, being in near-complete control of their lives.  They have spent the last 17+ years deciding when and what to eat; where to go and when to go there; how their schedules will pan out for the next year, let alone the next day!  Speaking as a young mum, who spent only 5 years in this way, I can’t really imagine what it must be like to realise that the minute you become pregnant you effectively ‘lose control’.  No wonder some women find it so hard to feel a part of their body move without having asked it to do so.  No wonder some women feel overwhelmed at the prospect of having no idea when or where labour will start, and not knowing how long it will take, or how close it will be to what you plan.  All this we have to somehow learn how to cope with and then comes the baby!  How can you plan what time you will eat, or leave the house if your baby is fed on demand and poos or sleeps at unpredictable times?  How does one easily change one’s lifestyle so totally?  Gina Ford offers a way out: force your baby to fit your life.  Make him sleep when you want him to, leaving him to cry if that’s what it takes; feed him when it suits you; wake him when the timetable says it’s time.  All this also apparently makes it easier when your nanny arrives to take over care when it is time for you to go back to work.  Unsurprisingly, a lot of mothers find that Ford’s routines don’t actually have much basis in reality and they soon learn that their hormones simply won’t allow you to strictly follow what Ford says. 

However, I’m digressing a bit here.  From what she says, Cusk wasn’t a Ford-follower, but she does come from the same group of mothers that are more likely to turn to Ford.  Cusk admirably breastfed for a few months; gave up work to be a full-time mother; and tried to be led by her baby’s needs.  However, the difference between the Cusk-style mother and the ‘earth-mother’-style mother is vast, and it boils down to one thing, I think: where the main motivation for mothering comes from.  I think that Cusk-style mothers have children primarily because of their ‘biological clock’ - because it is what is expected of them, and because they feel the distant calling of their hormones, whether or not they realise that that is what it is!  They get married or move in with their partners (must be PC here ) - the next step is to procreate.  This is what is known among psychologists as ‘extrinsic motivation’ - motivation to do something based on rewards, or something done for someone else out of the goodness of your heart.  ‘Earth-mother’-style mothers, on the other hand, primarily choose to have children not just for the sake of the children, but for themselves - they hear the calling of their bodies and want to birth and mother children just because they want to.  This is known as ‘intrinsic motivation’. 

Before I go on, I just need to clarify that a lot of psychologists and educationalists and other experts, believe that a job or task is easier and learning is more effective, the more intrinsic motivation features in one’s reasons for doing or learning something.  This has clear parallels in the philosophies of most home educators: children will learn more and better if they are learning because they want to; not because they feel they ought to.

Back to mothering: How about feeding choice?  BF helpers are well aware that women are more likely to succeed at breastfeeding if they have decided to breastfeed, or to continue to breastfeed, if they are doing it not just for the baby.  Mothers who decide to breastfeed primarily because it’s ’best for baby’ often don’t get past the first hurdle.  On the other hand, mothers who don’t consider how they will feed their baby to be a choice, who just know they will breastfeed because that’s what they want to do, usually perservere through the tough early weeks (or months if they’re unlucky!) and go on to enjoy a very mutually satisfying breastfeeding relationship.  Indeed, Cusk says she had to give up breastfeeding when her daughter was 3 or 4 months old (I can’t remember exactly which!) - a common time for primarily extriniscally motivated breastfeeders.

Cusk also decides to stay at home with her children rather than go back to work and this decision, I believe, sets the whole tone of the book.  Cusk is extrinsically motivated to make this decision, believing that it will be better for her children for her to care for them herself.  The consequences of this decisioncan be disasterous for mothers: Cusk feels isolated and resentful of her child, experiencing desperately conflicting emotions when she considers the depth of her love for her child.  She is becoming a martyr, sacrificing her fulfilling career for the benefit of her children, and she can’t enjoy her job as a mother because she doesn’t value it - all she values are the incredibly self-less sacrifices she has made.  Mothers who choose to be full-time mothers not only for the benefits they believe it will give their children, but also for the benefits and rewards they believe they will recieve, are less likely to experience these feelings.  They are primarily intrinsically motivated and are therefore more likely to enjoy their new job.  Cusk talks about how hard she finds it to move between her self as a mother and her self as an independent being.  But intrinsically motivated mothers don’t see the two ’selves’ as separate.  Their self as a mother is just a new improved version of their self pre-motherhood.  They enjoy motherhood because they genuinely value it as a job in itself, and they allow themselves to experience the joys motherhood can bring. 

This long-winded rant is not intended to be a ‘I think some mothers are better than others’ post.  It is leading me on to saying that what I have learnt is that, while I have long believed isolated parenting decisions to be right for some families and not for others, and that that should be respected and accepted, I had not realised the depth and importance of this fact.  I had not realised that parenting decisions not being right for a family, might actually mean that they are down-right wrong for that family!  Cusk gave up her job believing that her children would benefit from being brought up full-time by their mother: I suggest that maybe she’s wrong.  Maybe they would benefit only by being brought up full-time by their mother if their mother actually wants to be doing it.  Maybe Cusk’s children would be better off being cared for by a nanny or other childcare for some of the time.  If you ask someone to do you a favour, and they do it, but they really don’t want to be doing it, you feel uncomfortable and guilty.  I wonder if the same thing is true for children.  Children aren’t stupid, they pick up on minute changes in mood and atmosphere - why wouldn’t they be totally aware of their mother’s reluctance to mother them, however careful she is to hide it from them?  And these thoughts could be applied to any parenting choice you could think of.  We are taught, in our training, to offer to mothers certain ‘core conditions’ (a counselling thing), one of which is known as unconditional positive regard, or non-judgemental warmth.  Up until now I have been working on this core condition by looking at my own biases and prejudices, acknowledging them and putting them to one side when supporting a mother.  I now believe, having read Cusk’s book and come to the conclusions I have, that I can offer this core condition even easier just by accepting that, whilst I am able to change a mother’s extrinsic motivation for doing something, by offering her accurate and un-biased information, I can do nothing whatsoever to change her intrinsic motivation for her decisions - only she can do that.  Occassionally mothers come to our groups complaining of a common breastfeeding problem, and whatever we suggest they reject, often without even trying.  They are not coming to the group to try to remove the problem, they are coming hoping that we will say ‘you’re right, your nipples are too sore/you don’t have enough milk/your breasts are too big etc. - you probably need to stop breastfeeding’ - they want permission to stop.  They are breastfeeding primarily for the baby’s benefit, and they don’t want to be the one to make the decision to stop, understandably.  They want to be able to say ‘I had to stop’. 

Ok, I’m rambling now - trying to untangle the mass of thoughts in my head that I haven’t spent any time working out lately.  Will post a bit about my darling girls soon!

Well, after a simply hellish first trimester, puking three times a day and feeling utterly bemused by our decision to get pregnant again, I have decided to start blogging properly again.  I didn’t want to while I was feeling so rotten as I thought every post would be so negative and moany everyone would stop reading pretty quickly .  I am now feeling mostly good, less tired, no more puking, just the odd bout of nausea.  I’m 16 weeks pregnant now and have been feeling the baby moving, which has at last given me cause to smile that he/she/it is there .

I’m not going to do a huge update, will just start off afresh, I think.  The only notable things to say will probably come out in future posts anyway.  I’m having to look out for stray wee-wees at the moment as Mopsy is potty training, surprisingly early - I was expecting to have to wait until after the baby was born, but she did loads on the potty yesterday once I got it out following one on the loo (she’s always asking us to take her nappy off and put her on the loo - usually unproductive, of course!).  So she is naked and lovely this morning, and I am expecting a few puddles! 

Oh yes, and we’ve got to move house again - landlord has decided to sell earlier than we expected and we can’t afford to buy.  We’re going to look at a house tomorrow morning that looks promising, but there’s hardly anything around at this time of year, so the house-hunting is going rather slowly!  Off to read a few other blogs now.  Good to be back, I can tell you!