Parenthood and the Temple of Impending Doom

The trouble with becoming a new parent is that is it the first brand new thing you will do since, well probably since you started working. You have no idea what to expect. No experience to refer to. No silo of knowledge to draw upon. And this can be very, very daunting.

To make it worse you are relentlessly bombarded with the same phrase, usually from smug parents who have already successfully managed to raise a child or several without any signs of lasting trauma, visibly at least; “Don’t worry. It will all come naturally”. How exactly? How will dealing with a brand new baby come naturally? It’s hardly comparable with our other natural instincts like, say, walking. We all learnt to walk. That was easy. But the most serious consequence of getting that wrong is you get a cut knee that hurts for about three minutes. Actually, that can be pretty painful come to think of it, but temporary nonetheless. You get it wrong with a baby and the results could be catastrophic.

Your brain becomes your worst enemy and constantly dreams up ways that you can fail, and these thoughts hurtle round and round in your head all day until eventually they crash into each other causing your brain to implode in on itself in a shower of baby debris. How will I know when he needs feeding? How do I feed him? What if I can’t breastfeed? What if he is sick? How will I know whether to call a doctor? What if he has colic? What if I can’t stop him crying? What if I can’t stop crying? What about getting jabs? Is it safe? What if, what if, what if.

The other thing that doesn’t help is the lack of consistency from healthcare workers. You ask the same question to 5 different people, be it nurses, doctors, midwives, health visitors, pre-natal teachers, whoever, and I guarantee you will get 5 different answers.

It is easy to suffocate under the worry and stress that being an expectant parent can bring. But guess what? There’s no need for all this worry, because it really will come naturally. Seriously. I’ve done it. I’m one of those smug parents I mentioned earlier, and I remember people telling me the same thing then and dismissing it as some sort of post-natal hocus pocus. But weirdly it’s true. There really is some sort of secret hidden knowledge that you don’t even realise you have that mysteriously manifests when you have a baby.

So don’t worry. Enjoy your pregnancy while it lasts. Embrace the beauty that is impending motherhood safe in the knowledge that you really can’t go wrong. And even if you do, at least one of the raft of healthcare workers that you will be inevitably surrounded by will agree with you.

OK. So, no pressure then?

Wow. I have to say that I am a little overwhelmed by the response to my first blog entry. The downside is, it kind of builds up the pressure to deliver again next time!

I have been toying with the idea of starting an online blog for sometime, but there were always two things holding me back:

• My lack of knowledge about how to acheive this. There seem to be so many tools, some free, some paid for, some that use templates (like this one) and some that you would have to create and host yourself. For someone who works in IT I have very little knowledge of how these things work!
• What if no-one read what I had written? Or worse still, what if they read it and didn’t like it?

Then one day I had an epiphany. Why am I writing what I am writing? Am I writing to tell others? Or am I doing it for myself. I realised it was the latter, as I would guess is the case for most people. That would explain why there are so many unpublished blogs floating around in cyberspace. It’s the process that’s enjoyable. Of course, as I have discovered, it is an unexpected and welcome bonus when people do read it and can take something positive from it.

Anyway, I digress. My original plan was to post random musings about my life, my family, parenthood, you know all the usual things. I also wanted to share the things I enjoy, be it music, films, tv, comics, whatever. However, because my first post was such a behemoth and tackled what I would guess most people would consider quite a serious issue, I now feel under pressure to continue in the same vein. You’ll be pleased to know that I won’t!

I will continue to post random blogs on random subjects at random times, but expect it to be interspersed with all sorts of other crap that may interest/amuse/revile/bore you.

A friend of mine told me that when I was younger I was always too worried about what other people thought of me. Well, this is me standing up and saying “Yeah, here I am and this is what I’m about. Come and give me your best shot”.

But please don’t shoot me.

The Trouble with Pre-Teenage Angst

My eldest woke up in a foul mood this morning. The kind of mood reserved for stroppy 16 year old adolescent boys. She’s eight. And a girl. Nevertheless she proceeded to stomp and huff her way around the house making it clear to everyone that she was not happy to be up.

And so to the challenge of breakfast. First up, she asked for raisin bread (with jam). My wife duly obliged but no, she didn’t like that after all. Despite having the exact same thing for breakfast yesterday. She wanted chocolate spread on toast. Again, my wife obliged but no, that had one tiny piece of paper on it. The kind you get from the protective covering when you open a jar of chocolate spread for the first time. So the whole lot had to be thrown away. Not wanting my daughter to go to school hungry I gave her a banana and, in no uncertain terms I told her to eat it. So she peeled the skin, put it on the table and told me she doesn’t like bananas (all of a sudden).

So breakfast isn’t going well, and I can feel my blood starting to boil. Actually, it’s a full on cauldron of lava at the moment. I remember from yesterday morning that the very same daughter mentioned that maybe now as the weather is getting colder that she might like to wear one of her still-packaged new long sleeved shirts to school, rather than her usual short sleeved shirt. So I got a long sleeved shirt from the packet in her wardrobe (despite there being several short sleeved shirts ironed and ready to wear) and took it downstairs to iron. Once ironed, I gave it to my daughter and was met with a cry of “I don’t want to wear a long sleeved shirt” as she threw it on the floor. This was the moment I snapped. I’m ashamed to say that I shouted at her to go upstairs, sort herself out and stop being a little shit.

The thing is, and this is my problem with shows such as Super Nanny, it’s very easy to judge and to stay in control when they are not your kids, or when you don’t even have kids of your own, but when you are in that pressure cooker situation yourself - you’ve got to get yourself ready for work, and the kids ready for school, and make their breakfast, and brush their hair, and help get them dressed, and make sure they brush their teeth, and prepare their packed lunch, and get them out the door on time, not forgetting their school bags, water bottle, violin, p.e. kit and all your own stuff as well. Well, it’s tough and it wears away at you day after day.

Had I taken the time to step back then I’m sure I would have done things differently. If I had been able to detach myself from the situation, maybe it wouldn’t have got that bad. If, rather than shouting instructions and assuming that I knew best, I had listened then maybe we wouldn’t’ have got through three breakfasts and two shirts. If, if, if….

The walk to school started slightly easier. She held my hand and things returned to some normality. That is, until I decided to push things further. I asked her why, having been so horrible all morning, she now wanted to hold my hand. At which point she let go. Again, in my infinite wisdom I proceeded to tell her how upset she had made me and how her behaviour had been so appalling yadda yadda. I know I should have let it go, but as my wife will tell you I don’t know when to shut up and let things go. I expected some sort of an apology, but I was sorely mistaken and the upshot was that she proceeded to fall silent and walk several steps ahead of me. This came to a head when I wasn’t with her when we crossed the car park in front of her school, and she turned round to see where I was, saw me and turned straight back without even a wave goodbye and took herself into school.

I was hurt by this. Despite all that had happened I still would have given her a hug and a kiss goodbye, as I always do. It’s what we do as a family. Always. As my Mum used to say, you never know what’s around the corner. I was also angry. What a bitch. How dare she go without saying goodbye? I made a mental note to raise this again when I got home from work. I was determined to drag that apology out of her and make her realise how awful her behaviour was. Admittedly, mine wasn’t much better but I’m her father and I’m allowed to behave that way!

I was still dwelling on this when I got to the station to get the train to work. Then I bumped into an old school friend. This was someone who I had been very friendly with at school, and I have now known him for the best part of 25 years. Admittedly, we haven’t seen each other much since school, but when we do we always enjoyed a drink and a laugh, maybe even the odd dancefloor adventure at one of Reading’s premier nightclubs. The reason we haven’t seen much of each other is because my friend is an addict and I mean addict in the traditional, and worse, sense of the word. Heroin. He was always a bit of a loose cannon at school and was prone to hanging with the wrong crowd, but he was a really nice guy. One of those people that put friends before himself and would do anything for you. Even during his time as an addict, this never changed. However, stories began circulating about how he had stolen from his friends when they had been good enough to put him up for the night. About how he’d spent time in prison. About how he’d been in various fights. All the things you’ve been taught to expect. Each time I’ve seen him in the past he’s never been noticeably on drugs, but always looks as though he’s suffering a post high comedown, or is in need of his next hit. Seeing him today was different. He had a glint in his eye and seemed genuinely excited by something.

It turns out that he is in training to be a drugs counsellor. He’s kicked his habit., or rather kicking he’s it. He’s still on medication but he’s well on the road to recovery. He’s moved out of the house he was sharing with his addict girlfriend, and back in with his parents. His parents, much to their credit, have welcomed him back and are supporting him fully. He’s looking for a part time job to supplement his training, and he is actually excited (albeit a bit apprehensive) about working. And he can’t stop reading. Now this may sound like a trivial thing, I mean everyone likes to read right? But he is eating up books at the moment to try and understand his own addiction and how he can help others. And that is the inspiring thing about this guy. He has a desire to help others. He’s seen the system first hand, and how it fails addicts, and he wants to make a change. He knows it won’t be easy, he accepts that. But he now knows that he has something to give. Something positive he can take from his own experiences so they won’t have all been wasted. Through talking to him I got a truly bleak picture of how his life turned out. Several of his friends died either from overdosing or through taking their own lives. He himself has technically died on more than one occasion. No-one makes these decisions for you, and he chose his own road, but I still wouldn’t have wished it on anybody. I truly wish him all the best and hope that he can finally turn his life around and give the help to others that he never had himself.

It was this chance meeting that put things in my own life into perspective. My own problems were embarrassingly trivial compared to this guy. Where he longs for a family and children of his own, I am pushing my daughter away over a trivial argument? She woke up in a bad mood. That’s it. We’ve all done it. Yes it’s tough to deal with at the time, but it’s insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Rather than shout back I should have taken the time to sit with her for a few minutes and just cuddled her. Told her it was OK to be upset about stuff and that the day would get better. Taken the time to listen rather than bark instructions. That’s all it would have taken. Two minutes out of the morning. The benefit of hindsight is a precious gift and if I had to go through this morning again (and I’ve no doubt I will, many times over) I would take that step back before reacting.

So rather than raising the subject again this evening, I’ll hug my daughter, tell her that I love her, and most importantly listen to what she has to say.