The same five meals....

It occurred to me recently it's been nearly a year since Cherry started eating solid foods.

I weaned her at just over five months, partly because I felt she was ready and partly because the persistent reflux she'd struggled with since birth showed no signs of clearing up.

Our doctor suggested I either wean her or introduce a thickener to her milk. As she was exclusively breastfed that would involve expressing every feed and mixing with infant Gaviscon. Introducing solids seemed the best solution all round. Sure enough the reflux cleared up almost straight away.

We began with purees. I'd been expecting Cherry to absolutely wolf anything I offered her, but the reality was she was entirely nonplussed about food. She didn't love it, she didn't hate it. She nothing-ed it. After just two weeks she point blank refused a spoon, so we started baby-led weaning and I let her go at her own pace.

For months and months she picked at morsels of whatever I offered her but she rarely guzzled with gusto. She did show preferences, but I was keen to introduce her to a variety of foods so she was as likely to only eat one bite as she was to clear her tray. She was healthy, happy, gaining weight and still taking plenty of milk, so I had no need to panic. She would get there in her own time.

A year on and Cherry does love food - some foods. She goes crazy for berries and grapes, to the point where we have to hide them from her to stop her demanding them all day long. She adores cheese and will root a packet out of the fridge and start gnawing on it, given the chance. She can destroy a meal if she likes it, and she can shove a new dish away without even trying it. In short, she's a typical toddler.

When I started thinking about Cherry's eating this past year, I realised I had fallen into the trap of making endless versions of the same five meals. I was offering her the same thing over and over again, because it was quick, healthy and I knew she would eat it.

This approach is great short-term if you want to get weight on your toddler but Cherry's never struggled in that department. The more I thought about it the more I realised not only was I dramatically narrowing the nutrition she was exposed to, I was inadvertantly allowing a toddler's picky palate to dictate. At just 17 months! Carry on this way and I could already see her becoming the kind of child who would only eat one thing - and I was enabling her.

There's nothing wrong with the foods she was eating - variations on tomato-based pasta, frittata, fish/chicken 'cakes' made with potato and a green veg, fish fingers, potatoes and peas, and sweet potato with beans and corn on the cob. All are healthy, substantial and nutritious. But the variety was shrinking. I know enough about food to know that the best way to get the best nutrition possible is to eat a wide variety of food, rather than turn to supplements and artificial alternatives.

In the past week I have offered Cherry lentil soup, salmon risotto, cauliflower soup, home-made bread and jam, wholemeal pancakes with leeks, mushrooms and cheese, pasta with purple sprouting broccoli and homemade pesto, courgette polpette with salad, sweet potato fingers with hummus, homemade honey and almond cake, and homemade apple and oat muffins. Unsurprisingly the bread, jam, cake and muffins have been a huge hit, as were the pancakes and she stuffed down a fair bit of the filling too so I'm taking that as a triumph. The other dishes have been less successful. She's tried bits and bobs but largely refused them.

I tend to eat with Cherry anyway and honestly, I have never eaten better! I've never eaten particularly badly but the emphasis on nutritious home-made foods means for the first time this pregnancy I've actually felt great. Not sick, not bloated, not 'bleurgh', just like a happy, healthy pregnant woman.

We will definitely keep this up. I plan to alternate new and interesting dishes with her staples - so at least once a day for lunch or dinner I will offer her something I know she will eat, and the rest of the time we will try new things. I love cooking and Cherry has started 'cooking' with me, stirring and playing with her own bowl of porridge oats. She also eats a fair few of them - but I have no problem with her snacking on oats! We've spent some very happy afternoons together in the kitchen - just as I did cooking with my mother.

Tantrums and toddlers

On Tuesday Cherry had a tantrum that lasted just over an hour.

I thought she'd had 'tantrums' before. Little fits of crying and throwing herself on the floor when I told her she couldn't have what she was asking for, calmed with a sympathetic kiss and a cuddle.

Overnight something changed. On Tuesday she asked for something and I said no. She began to whinge. I repeated that she could not have it and told her she was whinging because she was frustrated that she could not have what she had asked for. I confidently expected it to peter out.

An hour later she finally stopped screaming.

I happened to start reading Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for Toddlers the day before. However, I hadn't even got to the section on tantrums yet. I wasn't going to run off and read it whilst Cherry was rolling around thrashing and screaming the house down, so I had to go with my gut.

My gut told me - don't give in. Identify her emotions for her - 'I can see that you're very angry Cherry' - but don't give her what she's demanded. Try and distract, offer cuddles or even just a sympathetic hand. Don't plead, cajole or bribe. No offering her a chocolate biscuit! Don't force yourself on her, don't insist on cuddling her if she fights against me and kicks to get me off, don't brush off her frustration or tell her 'it's not that bad' or 'come on, snap out of it!' Allow her her feelings.

Cherry's feelings were, it turns out, very strong.

At some point the gut falters. Was I doing the right thing? Was there, in fact, something seriously and worryingly wrong with Cherry? Was I endangering her health? Was she going to throw up on herself? Was she ever going to stop?

After it was all over (she did stop and she didn't throw up on herself) I felt strange. After I'd put her to bed I got into bed myself and reflected on what had just happened.

At first I felt like I had failed Cherry. Surely no parent should allow a child to scream for an hour?

But how could I stop her? The only way to stop her, other than letting the tantrum run its course, would have been to give in. Giving in after ten minutes would have meant Cherry screamed for ten minutes with no purpose. Giving in after fifty minutes would have meant she screamed for fifty minutes with no purpose.

And giving in would guarantee - guarantee - that the next time I said no to Cherry she'd scream for twice as long - two hours if she and I could stand it - until I caved. Because she'd know already at some point I would cave.

I genuinely don't believe that my role as a mother is to make Cherry happy all the time. I have to help her develop the ability to cope with the full spectrum of human emotions - including frustration, anger, disappointment and unhappiness - and the first step is allowing her to feel her feelings.

As a child, anger for Cherry is being denied a chocolate biscuit.

I understand that Cherry is a very young child and I cannot expect her to manage her emotions in the way a grown adult would. But I can start teaching her now, knowing that it will take years.

I don't believe in saying 'oh she's just a baby/she's just tired/she's hungry/she's thirsty/she's teething' and making excuses for her more undesirable behaviour. I don't believe she will 'grow out of it' unless I help her. I don't believe in applying adult logic to childlike situations and telling her firmly not to be so silly when she dissolves into tears because she can't have a biscuit.

I want her to feel her feelings. Then she can learn to name her feelings. Then one day she will understand her feelings. And once she can feel, name and understand her feelings, she can learn how to manage them.

Cherry has undoubtedly begun to test her boundaries. In the last three days her behaviour has changed dramatically. It's like she woke up a different child. Thank God for books that tell you that's normal! Thank God also for the really rational approach of Tracy Hogg (The Baby Whisperer) and her principle that you must start by loving and accepting the child you have, not the child you want or thought you'd have.

(We'd all love a child that can sit quietly whilst we explain why they may not have a chocolate biscuit then stand up, satisfied with the explanation, give us a hug and a kiss and happily run off to play. I'm told there are children out there like that. I do not have one of those children! I have a child who is both sensitive and spirited. In short, she's very easily upset and very hard to console. And that's the child I love.)

So I'm writing this here to remind myself of how I feel about Cherry's emotional development and how I feel about discipline.

I sense Cherry has strong emotions - I certainly did as a child and she shows all the signs of taking after me in that respect. And I sense that she will find her emotions very hard to control for a good few years yet. So when I am exhausted, and at my wits end, and she is screaming in public and trying my every nerve whilst I probably have a wailing baby in tow and need the toilet and am starving, I hope I remember this post and remember that what will come out of it is a child able to feel, name, understand and manage her feelings.

Eventually.

(Good reading on this subject: Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for Toddlers and How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. Both take the 'allow your child to feel his/her feelings' approach and I can't recommend both books enough, the latter is really for parents of older children who have language, but the principles are sound)

Everyday Sexism

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Everyday Sexism project. This is a website set up to record women's routine experiences of discrimination, prejudice and harassment. The sort of stuff that gets overlooked, not because it's not wrong - but because it happens every day.

I cannot urge you enough to follow the @everydaysexism Twitter handle. It's eye-opening, horrifying and yet somehow very familiar, all at the same time.

It makes you realise not only that what women deal with on a daily basis is NOT normal and NOT OK, but also that 'that thing' that happened to you that one time - or every day - wasn't, and isn't, OK either. And it most definitely wasn't your fault.

I won't apologise for being forthright in listing my own experiences of everyday sexism here - I am not embarrassed about any of it. I know that none of the below happened because I was 'asking for it' or because of who I am as a person.

It happened because I'm female and if it happened to me, it could have and might have happened to you too.

For somebody who initially thought they had been lucky in not experiencing a great deal of harassment or prejudice, once I thought about it, I realised perhaps I wasn't so lucky after all.

Or perhaps what makes me 'lucky' is that I haven't let any of it change who I am and how I choose to live my life.

I am sharing these because I really believe in the Everyday Sexism project and I believe the more women that share their experiences - no matter how humiliating it may feel - the more we will be able to chip away at that notion that sexism doesn't really happen or only happens to a certain type of woman or that it's not worth making a fuss over.

It's always worth making a fuss over.

So, in honour of one year of the Everyday Sexism project, here are my recent, and not-so-recent, experiences of Everyday Sexism. All of which yes, made me angry and probably still would make me a bit angry if I let them, but all of which I have completely come to terms with and none of which affect my everyday life in any way, shape or form. Other than my taste in men has improved dramatically.

1. A PR agency responding to my negative feedback to my publisher with 'well Cathy was heavily pregnant when we met, perhaps her recollection of our meeting could have been affected?'

2. A man grabbing my backside with both hands as I tried to walk past him in a dark cinema.

3. A much older man, having attempted to kiss me and been rejected, saying if I didn't want that kind of attention I 'shouldn't be so gorgeous'. I was 14.

4. A boyfriend first attempting to coerce, then physically forcing, me into anal sex despite me repeatedly saying I didn't want to.

5. After explaining to a later boyfriend about the forced anal sex as part of a conversation about why I did not want any form of anal penetration at any time, the next time we had sex he forced a finger up my back passage. His justification after I'd kicked him across the bed? 'I wanted to prove to you that you'd enjoy it really.'

6. Being told that I was 'too hot to handle' for men on account of being intelligent and not hideously ugly. Therefore I would find it hard to find a man because I 'needed' somebody who was 'strong enough' to 'be the boss of me' and 'keep me in my place'.

7. Being told I am 'lucky' because my husband voluntarily spends time with his own child.

8. Being told I needed to think about how my husband might feel after I was promoted at work.

9. Being told by a boyfriend that he 'just couldn't relax and feel comfortable whilst a woman is driving'. Whilst I was driving him around after he'd written his car off in a crash.

10. Being told by a boyfriend that if we ever got married and had children he'd expect - his EXACT word - me to breastfeed.

Birth choices and that taboo

 Dress & blazer: Isabella Oliver

At my first midwife appointment of this pregnancy I was a little shocked to be told I was a high risk due to the third-degree tear I picked up giving birth to Cherry.

For those of you who really want to know, there are four degrees of childbirth-related tearing, ranging from a tiny nick to a fourth-degree tear or what my husband delightfully refers to as 'hole to hole'. The tear I experienced was classified as 3B, which means damage was caused to the anal sphincter, but it wasn't torn completely. Thanks to instant post-childbirth surgery and a lot of pelvic floor exercises, an endoscopy camera revealed the damage had repaired completely. 

 Top & skirt, Gap Maternity

I maintain the damage Cherry caused sounds much worse than it was. I had no pain relief for her birth - no drugs, no gas and air, no paracetamol, no TENS machine. I didn't need it or want it. I had what I thought was an incredibly positive birth experience. Cherry came out fast and she experienced no distress - her heart-rate barely increased. For her it was the perfect birth and the physical damage to me meant, and still means, absolutely nothing at all. 

The difficulty with this pregnancy is that no doctor or consultant can possibly know if I will tear again. However, a very positive meeting with a consultant last week revealed that some of the rather scary things I was told at my booking-in appointment were not necessarily true. I was told I would need a c-section or a fully-monitored, consultant-led birth on the delivery suite. No chance of a home-birth, midwife-led birth or water birth. 

The consultant I saw on Thursday seemed more informed - in that she looked at the result of my tests rather than just seeing '3B tear' and maintaining I was 'high risk' - and more pragmatic. 

For a start, she said, given the speed at which Cherry arrived, can I be certain I will even get to hospital in time? All of these deliberations about what kind of birth I should or shouldn't have may be null and void to begin with, if I don't make it past my front door. The thought of calling an ambulance and giving birth at home isn't unpleasant. If I don't feel like I will make it to hospital, that's what we'll do. 

I have an appointment with a consultant at 34 weeks for the final conversation about birthing options. From the admittedly mixed information I have been given it now seems unlikely I will even be offered a c-section let alone recommended one. 

For some reason I was expecting to be simply told what kind of birth I could have - from my first midwife appointment the word 'choice' wasn't exactly abundant. But from the consultant's point of view our 34-week appointment will be a two-way conversation about birth. I still don't know what my final 'birth plan' will be and I'm not sure it even matters. 

I didn't have much of a birth plan with Cherry and I sure as hell didn't stick to the plan I had (I wanted a water birth and ended up having her on a bed in the labour ward because I was pushing already and couldn't make it up the four flights of stairs to the midwife unit). 

My plan is to give birth. If I'm lucky I'll make it up to the midwife suite and have a nice water birth, or I'll have the baby at home with Noel and paramedics on hand. If I'm unlucky I'll have a c-section, but 'unlucky' is a pretty strong word. I'll be having a baby - how he or she gets here really isn't the most important factor, I'm far more concerned just that he or she gets here, full stop. 

On the above note I loved this piece in the Telegraph on stress incontinence, the last taboo for women. Childbirth can be brutal and few of us are lucky enough to be 'the same as we were before' no matter how positive our birth experience was. But we just don't seem to talk about the fact that sometimes, we might wee when we sneeze, or that trampolining in grey-marl trousers is a really, really bad idea, or that runners trots can be much harder to control post-childbirth. It's 'eeew, gross' and icky and 'yuck' and unglamorous. Unfortunately it's also reality for a great deal of women and yes, I include myself in that. I'm not ashamed of what childbirth has done to my body.

A few changes

 Dress: Gap Maternity. Cardigan: H&M

Yesterday I wore a maxi dress for the first time in my life. I'm not sure this particularly signifies anything other than I wanted to look fairly decent, because I was in a new and exciting environment.

Cherry and I have started going to The Third Door, an amazing idea for working parents. It's an OFSTED-registered and approved nursery downstairs, and a fully-connected workhub upstairs.

As soon as I heard about it I thought 'that's bloody genius'.

An arrangement like this is just perfect for Cherry and me. I work freelance and have managed, for 16 months, to balance my 35+ hours per week around her, with the help of Noel going part-time from August to give me Fridays as 'work days'. (Before that I worked just as many hours, I just never did anything but work or look after Cherry and Noel and I never had any time to ourselves or family time). 

But nothing lasts forever and it's been getting harder and harder to balance everything, particularly with the bone-crushing tiredness of pregnancy to factor into the equation. Even with this to consider, putting Cherry into a nearby nursery or finding a childminder or nanny didn't feel right. The Third Door was the perfect solution.

It's completely flexible - Cherry does two sessions of three hours a week which is more than enough for both of us. I don't know of any other way to get such short sessions of childcare without using grandparents - which isn't an option for us as both sets live too far away.

And it's got that all-important reassurance factor. I'm working, but I'm physically in the same building as Cherry. This provides great comfort for me. As soon as she's settled and I'm settled, the geography won't matter, but without this reassurance I don't think I'd have taken the step of putting her into childcare in the first place.

The bliss of having three full hours twice a week to focus completely on work without falling over Cherry's toys every time I get up to go to the toilet or freezing my backside off working on my messy, cluttered living room table next to the very cold, draughty windows just cannot be overstated. It's heaven. There's still obviously a huge amount of sitting at the living room table, but those six hours a week are currently absolutely golden.

My working life changed dramatically - of course - when I had Cherry. Going back to a full-time office job just wasn't on the agenda. Time with Cherry and whoever followed was the priority. But I spent nine years pre-Cherry working very hard to get to a stage whereby I had a recognised and fairly marketable skillset, and enough of a reputation to make the switch to freelancing. That wasn't something I was prepared to risk by taking time out. Nor was not working appealing in the slightest. I am not made to be a home-maker, I am not domestic, I am a worker and a creator and a go-getter and that's just who I am. Trying to change myself into a full-time housewife and mother seemed futile. I believe in playing to your strengths.

Instead, Noel, Cherry and I constantly work to find ways that suit all of us. All of our personalities, beliefs and priorities. It's a constantly shifting thing - this current solution won't last forever, not least because there is a new baby and a house move on the horizon and Cherry will continue to grow and change. But for now, this is working for all of us.

PS: My new cycling book was published this week! Check it out here on my cycling blog. 

20 weeks and the reality of pregnancy

So I'm doing outfit posts again. In the last two days I have read two pregnancy/maternity 'what I wore' type blogs that instead of featuring pictures of the blogger in the outfit, featured pictures of models in the outfit taken from the website of the clothing manufacturers. 

I'm afraid this has hacked me off something chronic.

I don't read blogs to look at pictures of models taken from the clothing manufacturers website, thanks. I know what the models at Seraphine and Isabella Oliver look like. They look like thin beautiful girls with prosthetic baby-bumps strapped onto them in Photoshopped poses that bear absolutely no relation to real life. I read blogs because I want to know what real women look like in the real outfits they wear. 

Dress, Jack Wills. Cardigan, H&M Mama. Leggings, Seraphine

If you're going to blog about your outfit, at least post your freakin' outfit. Don't wimp out with a picture of a model. Why would you do that? Do you think you look rough and fat because you're pregnant? Well I do too, lady. This is the reality of pregnancy. We don't look like tiny models with prosthetics strapped to our 23" midriffs. We don't all look 'sexy' and we don't all bloom. Some of us, and I firmly include myself in this category, look like knackered hippos.

Here's the reality of pregnancy. I'm 20 weeks and I look like a girl who ate too many pies. I don't have a neat, football-shaped bump. I have a sprawling wobbling kidney-bean that starts just below my comically-oversized boobs and reaches all the way down to my pelvis. I am carrying this baby EVERYWHERE and that's the reality of my body. I am not scoffing 20 cakes a day. I exercise, I eat well, but here's the thing. I'm pregnant. I've gained weight. I will continue to gain weight. This is healthy, and normal.

And this is what I look like in my clothes. I look absolutely nothing like a bony model in a prosthetic and my photography sucks and the lighting is shit and these shots look amateurish and crap but at least it's ME in these pictures. For me the beauty of blogs is that they reflect reality. Pregnancy doesn't get more real than this.

Taking pictures.

The main reason I wanted a new fancy-pants camera was to take photographs of Cherry and her impending sibling.

Children are difficult subjects really as you can't actually control much of what they do. This means I tend to take a lot of photographs in terrible lighting and with awful backgrounds. This, plus the fact I don't really know what I'm doing, means I take a lot of bad pictures.

But for every 100 bad pictures I take there will be one good one, and that photograph is worth every single click.

My favourite photos are always the non-posed ones. My favourite picture of Noel and I from our wedding is of us both giggling frantically while saying our vows. It's not posed or structured but I love it because it's us. And I love this picture of Cherry because it's her. It's also a picture in which I can see as much of myself in her as I can of Noel, and 100% of Cherry.

Like all parents I think my child is astonishingly beautiful (clearly though in Cherry's case this is true. She IS the most beautiful child in the history of the world ever). But I find the photos of her I love the most are not necessarily of her looking at her most beautiful. I love her face-splitting grins and her little gappy teeth. I love her unbridled enthusiasm and her already well-developed silly sense of fun.

And I love that the photographs of Cherry I love the most aren't always taken on my expensive camera and carefully thought-through when she's wearing her best clothes and her face is washed and her hair brushed. This second picture was snapped on my phone. It captures a moment though, and that's what a picture is supposed to do.

Meanwhile Cherry's sibling is growing nicely. I am almost at the halfway point already but look more like six or seven months pregnant. Thank you, biology! I grow through the day - this picture was taken in the morning. By the evening my bump is GIGANTIC. At a recent antenatal appointment the midwife told me the pregnancy felt a week or two further along than it actually was, so I have no doubt that this little one won't be so little either - just like his or her sister.