This Girl Of Mine

My daughter is amazing. She's clever and funny and kind and a million things rolled into one beautiful package. She's asleep beside me, curled up with her favourite blankie, a raggedy old thing, that was once her older brothers.  She looks so peaceful, content now that the anxieties that drove her from her own bed to mine have been kissed away.  

Watching her dream her dreams makes my heart swell.  I want so much for her, this incredible girl of mine, who tests me every single day with her fierce determination.  The very things that challenge me while trying to parent her are the things I'm most proud of  - her passion, her spirit, her tenacity, her confidence, her creativity, her exuberance.  She loves and loathes with equal ferociousness.  Watching her chest rise and fall I smile.  I smile because she's the kind of girl who throws her clothes off in the store so she can immediately wear the new dress we've bought.  I smile because when I'm in the middle of correcting her she'll turn her shinning green eyes towards me and blow me a kiss. I smile because when she puts her little arms around my neck and tells me I'm the best mom in the universe I know there could be no greater compliment.  I think about a time in the future when she might hold her own child and in that moment understand how utterly she is loved.  I smile because yesterday she asked me how to spell shoe rack! 

And I worry.  I worry because the very word vagina still causes blushes. I worry because breasts, partially covered by a nursing babies head cause hysteria. I worry because around the world almost one third of women who have been in a relationship have experienced physical and or sexual violence by their partner.  For all our advancements as a society, my daughter is still growing up in a country where women are paid 14% less than men.  The board members of the largest publicly listed companies here are 90% male.  Gender quotas are being introduced to boost the paltry representation of women in Dail Eireann.

The difficulty with quotas is that they don't tackle our culture of masculinity and they sure don't foot the bill for some of the most expensive childcare in the world. 

I worry that against this backdrop my daughter will doubt herself, her capabilities, her power. I fear that the same lack of confidence I possessed as a girl will hold her back. I hope that I am doing enough to build her up so tall that life won't knock her down. I so desperately want the world to hold its magic for her.  She's my princess, my warrior, my adventurer, my comic. She's my girl.

Calling Time On Controlled Crying

This morning on a parenting website I read an article (I use the term loosely) on controlled crying - a technique for training babies to fall asleep on their own, in which the child is left to cry for gradually increasing periods of time before being comforted.

This particular article suggested that the period of time not exceed 15 minutes.  15 minutes of standing outside a bedroom door listening to your infant child communicating in the only way they know how and ignoring that communication.  I was appalled.  And thankfully I wasn't alone as during the course of the morning numerous complaints led to the article being withdrawn.

I'm really not one to interfere in other people's parenting decisions but come on, have we really moved so far from our mothering instincts that it is not only considered normal but is being actively advised by so called sleep training experts that we control our babies cries?  That we control how our baby sleeps?

Look, I understand that being in a zombie like state for much of the day isn't necessarily fun.  I have spent a large portion of my adult life dealing with periods of insomnia.  I know that lack of sleep can have a huge impact on mood, on decision making, on our relationships.  I also know that if I were left alone in a room crying my heart out for up to 15 minutes at a time while the very people who are supposed to love and care for me most were standing just a few feet away I'd feel pretty damn bad about myself.

If your best friend were crying on your door step would you say "oh sorry buddy, hang on there for 15 minutes" and shut the door in their face?  No? So why the hell is it OK to do it to an infant?  And not just any infant, our own infants, that only months before were cocooned in the safety and warmth of our bodies.  I simply do not get it and I imagine it's pretty damn confusing for them too.

Co-sleeping with 2 of my three children

The advice explicitly said "do not pick up your baby".  Babies are not manipulative.  They don't come into the world with an express interest in making sure our sleep is disrupted forever more.  This notion of a "good" baby, a baby that sleeps "through the night" from two weeks of age is a myth and a dangerous one.  Babies are biologically designed to wake frequently during the night, aside from the obvious fact that their tummies are tiny and therefore they require food little and often, frequent waking also helps prevent sudden infant death syndrome.

During my training as an infant massage instructor I came across a book by psychotherapist Sue Gerhardt called "Why Love Matters".  In it she draws on the field of neurochemistry and examines how daily interactions between a baby and his primary care giver have a direct impact on the way in which that child's brain develops.  Our earliest experiences are translated into physiological response patterns which in turn become the rules that govern how we deal with not only our feelings, but the feelings of others for the rest of our lives.  In other words the love we receive in infancy and early childhood forms the blueprint for our future.

When an infant is crying, the hypothalamus (the link between the nervous and endocrine systems) produces a hormone called cortisol.  Normal amounts of cortisol do not pose difficulties and in fact fuel our fight or flight response but if a baby is exposed to stressful situations, such as being left to cry for too long or too often then the brain can become flooded by cortisol.  Every time thereafter, that child is exposed to stress, his or her brain will produce either too little or too much cortisol.  Too much has been linked to depression while too little has been associated with emotional detachment and aggression.

If stress hormones are chronically elevated, cortisol will destroy healthy immune cells that fight viruses and tumors and keep the immune system healthy.

Maybe, just maybe this is the stuff that we as parents need to know.  Maybe we should be guided by our infant and our instincts rather than a timer.  Maybe if our baby is crying, we should simply hold them in our arms and let them know they are safe and they are loved, even if it does mean we have to stay awake to tell them!

My almost 4 year old regularly seeks reassurance in our bed during the night 

Why I love being at home with my children

Before having my first child I was given lots of well meaning but sometimes utterly terrifying advice ­ sleep when they sleep, enjoy your free time now because you’ll never have it again, your body will never be the same, labour is ***** (insert expletive of choice here). What no one told me was that I might love becoming a mother so much that I would happily hang up my stilettoes, office job and perfectly coiffed hair in favour of a less glamorous but for me infinitely more rewarding career as Chief Executive Mom!

Here’s some of my favourite things about being at home with my kids:

Being there 100% for my children 
Although sometimes completely exhausting, not to mention a little overwhelming, this is one of the main reasons I chose to stay at home. I get to spend all day with these incredible people. I get to see them grow and develop everyday. Their first smiles were when our eyes met, funny faces at their first tastes of food, falling into my arms when taking faltering first steps. I kiss away sad tears and laugh outrageously at the chicken crossing the road for the 70th time. I’m there for first thing in the morning cuddles and last thing at night I love you’s and all that happens in between.

Lazy Days
Life gets a bit more restrictive as the children get older with school schedules and extracurricular activities but in those early days of being a Mommy the hours, days and weeks spent curled up on the couch or in bed with my newborns are some of my most precious memories. The smells, the skin­-to­skin, the breastfeeding, the gentle humming of lullabies.

New Interests
It turns out that chasing butterflies around the garden and explaining the life cycle of the earthworm has led me to develop interests I never in a gazillion years imagined I’d pursue. As well as growing our own veggies, we raise our own chicken (singular due to an unfortunate incident with the family dog). We compost! I’ve discovered I like to plant things and I take immense pleasure when little green buds emerge and I have somehow managed not to kill said herb / vegetable / flower /scrub. I even know how to make garden lasagne ­who knew!!  I make a mean chocolate cake too.

Friendships
I’ve been lucky enough to have the time to build long­lasting, close friendships with other mums. The kind of friendships that when the suppositories have run out and it's 2am and you have a screaming child on your hands you know they can come to your rescue. We share laughs and tears, struggles and joys as we move through our mothering journey together. They’ve got my back. They get it.

An Appreciation of My Body
My body is freaking awesome. There I've said it. My body grew three amazing people. Sadly it wasn't able to carry to birth the three more that grew within but in­spite of that it carried on working, even with it's heart broken it got me out of bed and kept me putting one foot in front of the other until I was eventually able to smile again and carry on, even with parts of me missing. My body nourished my babies with milk tailor made to suit their needs. My body has superpowers because a simple kiss from my lips can stop tears dead in their tracks.

Respect for other women
We laugh, we love, we cry, we hurt, we make tough decisions, we are hard on ourselves, we are hard on each other, we live, we lose, we birth, we bury. Women are incredible. We are a million different things rolled into one.

A Desire To Be Healthy
I want to be the best me that I can be for my children. I want to be around to see my grandchildren and maybe even their children. Being at home gives me time to learn about the foods we eat and their benefits to our health and well being. It gives me time to meal plan and to cook from scratch. I can bake cookies with my daughter whenever our greedy guts tell us we need them ­ which is a lot! I’m more conscious of taking my time reading labels and trying to steer us away from processed foods.

Me Time
O.k. so I love being with the kids but that doesn’t mean there aren’t days when my husband gets home that he literally doesn’t see me for dust I hightail it out of here so fast. We give so much of ourselves away and it is very easy for the children to become the sole focus of our energies. It’s so important to take time out to do the things we love and to remember the essence of who we are without having anyone demand anything of us. For me triathlon training gives me the time and space I need to recharge my batteries and come back to my family with my own spark in my eye.

Freedom
 I love creating my own schedule­ in the words of Princess Jasmine “No one to tell us no, or where to go lalalala”. Some days are jammie days just because someone hasn’t slept well or it’s cold and miserable outside or I just feel like snuggling my babies. Yes the school run gets in the way but sometimes a long coat and winter boots are all that’s needed to disguise a telltale onesie!! Being at home gives us the freedom to have an impromptu beach trip, a forest walk, a splash in the local pool, scones with jam and cream in a fancy cafe.

The Intensity Of Emotion
I never imagined that watching my eldest son score his first try at rugby training or my daughter skipping out of ballet practice or my littlest rolling over could make my heart swell with such immense pride. I never knew that seeing them cry would make my heart ache. I didn’t know that my last desire at night would be to creep into their rooms and plant one more kiss on their sleeping foreheads. I never dreamed that the ordinary could be so extraordinary. And I certainly never for one second believed that I deserved so much happiness.

Meeting My Rainbow Baby - November 2014

My darling little rainbow baby Ruairí was born peacefully at home on Wednesday the 19th of November at 7.17am. He emerged into water in the caul, totally unaffected by his birth journey. He crawled to the breast and fed within minutes of being born. It was an incredible experience, everything I had dreamed of and prepared for in the preceding months.

Supporters of home birth in Ireland will be only too familiar with the debacle that the HSE created with the unlawful removal of Philomena Canning's indemnity insurance.. We were one of families directly affected by this removal. I was 29 weeks pregnant when I learned of the situation via Facebook. To say it took away from the joy of my pregnancy is an understatement and I don't say that lightly. Philomena had been my midwife in 2011 when I had my daughter Evie.  I had engaged her services again in 2012 as soon as I discovered I was pregnant. Sadly that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage in the 13th week. It was Philomena I turned to for advice and support after leaving my local hospital without so much as a paracetamol, a sanitary towel or an information leaflet. Philomena talked me through the "mini labour" I would experience and advised my to have a bowl to hand so that I would be able to see the baby. This is something I am so grateful for. I was able to "birth" my baby at home, to hold him and love him and to say goodbye in a really personal and dignified way. 

Soon after, I discovered I was pregnant again and again engaged Philo's services. Sadly 7 weeks into the pregnancy I started to experience pain and dizziness and required emergency surgery after it was discovered that the pregnancy was ectopic and that I was experiencing internal bleeding. I lost my baby and my right fallopian tube. Those few months were the most horrendous of my life and there were dark days when I truly thought I would never smile again. And then in March after over a year of ovulation kits, negative pregnancy tests and sinking spirits we finally got our two blue lines and my journey towards healing my heart began.

Philomena was naturally an integral part of that journey. Her quiet confidence and calm reassurance helped me when I was sometimes so scared that I could barely breathe. To have that taken away from me with ten weeks to go in my pregnancy was devastating. It was heartbreaking to lose Philomenas care but also to see such a truly wonderful woman treated in such a disgusting way. Luckily for me the DMO for my area is a huge champion of home birth and truly couldn't believe the situation. She immediately organised to have my care transferred to Brenda O'Toole, whom I rang in a fit of tears asking her to take me on but at the same time not to take me on depending on whether or not the situation with Philomena were to be resolved. Brenda was so kind and sympathetic and we agreed to see how things panned out. After our rainy protest outside the Dail when I was 34 weeks pregnant, Philomena gave me a hug and told me she wouldn't be my midwife. I went home that day feeling deflated but I knew I needed to draw a line under it, shake myself off and focus all my energies on the positives.

The biggest being that I was still in a position to have my baby at home. Brenda was going to enable me to do that and she did. She fitted in seamlessly, being very unassuming, getting to know myself and my children, organising for our second midwife Nuria to call and meet me prior to birth and soon the horribleness of the HSE was exactly where it should be ­ far from my mind. The last few weeks of my pregnancy were hectic. Both of my children were born in the 37th week and so I had it in my mind that this baby would be much the same but as the time approached I felt run off my feet. We had a family wedding, I got a chest infection and then my aunt died. I was having a lot of braxton hicks and a couple of times felt things were really starting but then all would go quiet again and I felt that I was simply too busy and overwhelmed for a baby to be born and I trusted my baby and my body to know what to do. Every night I went to bed making sure the living room was tidy. The pool was inflated, the burco was plugged in, the hall press was full of all the things I'd need, my playlist was ready,my mood board was hanging up, positive affirmations were scattered around the house.

At 39+2 I went to bed with some back ache. I listened to my positive affirmations and I felt my baby squirming. He was really active,much more than he had been for days and I took that as a sign that we wouldn't be meeting for a while yet but a little while later a real sense of calm came over me and the words 'I'll be there soon Mommy' rang in my ears. I fell asleep with a huge smile, hugging my precious bump. I woke at 3am with that nagging periody ache. I couldn't settle back to sleep and by half 3 I thought I better pay attention to surges. I got up, made tea and a hot water bottle and pottered about for a few minutes. Surges came every 15 minutes and at 4.30 I decided to text Brenda. I was feeling nauseous.. I went to wake Alan, my husband and told him that I thought the baby was going to be born that day. He groggily said he wouldn't go to work, to which I replied never mind go to work, you need to get up now. I think it was only at that point that I knew the baby wasn't far away. We both went back downstairs. I rang Brenda and she said she was on the way. I lit my candles and oils and started to get in my comfort zone while Alan started to fill the pool. My daughter had been born in such a hurry that I hadn't gotten to use it last time and really wanted this baby to be born in water. When Brenda arrived at 5.30 I was using the ball to stretch out and listening to my relaxation tracks. Surges had gone pretty much straight to five mins. Brenda had a listen into babs and all was perfect. The next hour passed quickly, I was using the ball to rest my elbows on while circling my hips, or leaning against the wall during surges and really rocking my hips deeply from side to side, trying to stay loose and limp. Brenda was doing some really light massage on my back which really helped to focus me. I tried to use my tens machine but couldn't adjust it properly and was getting flustered. By that stage Nuria had arrived and both herself and Brenda just stayed in the shadows. By about 6.45 I was feeling a lot of pressure and was in and out to the toilet. The last trip to the toilet I asked Alan to come with me and while there I had a really big surge and felt a bit out of control. I was pacing and I remembered the feeling of being a lioness from the birth of my daughter. It’s that raw power of your body taking over and you just have to go with it. I went back to my den and quickly had another big surge. I said to Brenda that I felt I should get into the pool. I wanted to sit back and birth baby and catch him myself but two attempts at sitting down were too uncomfortable and so I stayed on my hands and knees,letting the water ease me. I must admit that I didn't feel particularly calm but then Nuria listened to the baby and took my pulse and she said 'wow you are both so calm, it's obvious you are athletic because your pulse is barely raised'. That made me feel like a total champion. In my head I thought 'yeah damn right I'm an athlete'!!!.

Alan was holding my hands and I could feel our baby descending and reached around to feel his head emerge. One more surge brought the rest of his body and I felt my waters release. Brenda passed our beautiful baby boy to me and I held him there in the water and my heart swelled with love and pride for the wonder that is birth.

It was 7.17. Alan brought our other children in to meet their baby brother and it was just so lovely to be all together. They had come in at 7 to say good morning and were watching cartoons and eating breakfast in the play room and then a few minutes later were greeting their brother. It was magical and for me just felt full circle.

I moved from the pool to the couch and delivered the placenta quite quickly thereafter. We named our little boy Ruairí and I placed him on my tummy and watched mesmerised as he crawled to my breast and started to feed. Later after lots of naked cuddles he was weighed and measured. He was 7lbs 6 ounces and 53cms. Nuria had asked me when he was born if she could take some pictures and I'm so glad because Alan had said he would but these things quickly get forgotten when there's a tiny, handsome newborn to stare at! She got some great pics and then we took some more with herself and Brenda before she left. Alan started to clear up, Brenda was doing her notes etc and I was laying on the couch wrapped in blankets holding my new love.

At about 11 Alan sat down with me and said 'this is exactly how it should be, look at us, at home, fire lightening, everything is cleared away, all our children are together, it's great'. And he was so right. It was exactly how it should be and so much more. It was magical.

Brenda was incredible. Her care was beyond fantastic, bringing me scones and homeopathic remedies when feeding was a struggle, suggesting books and articles I might find useful, constantly encouraging me. Nuria has also been great. As a lactation consultant she has been at the end of the phone for me with great advice while we wait for a tongue tie assessment. These two women enabled me to have the birth I desired and I'm so incredibly thankful for them and the work they do.

Philomena, although not physically present was with me in my heart, where there will always be a place for her. Sometimes I look at my little son and can't believe he's actually here and sometimes it's like I've always known him, with his little dimpled chin and calm way. He's like a missing jigsaw piece. I am totally and utterly head over heels and I feel complete.

I am once again honored to call myself mother to these three wonderful earth children and my two butterfly babies and I'm thankful to the HBA, AIMS, Gentle Birth and the three strong, passionate, loving midwives Philomena, Brenda & Nuria that I've been lucky enough to encounter for helping to empower and inspire me to have the births I wanted and to give myself and my babies the best possible start to their precious lives.

Thanks women, ye are terrific. Keep on keepin’ on!