Jamie Oliver's Nightmare

World War One of parenting may be bedtime but World War Two is mealtime.  From birth the media, parenting guides, midwives, health visitors, perfect parents and Jamie Oliver are telling us what we should be feeding our Gremlins - and if we don’t follow the laws of those who have time to cook three perfectly balanced meals per day and recoil in horror at a chicken nugget, then we’re inadequate parents and we get “the frown”.

 

 

We all know that we should breastfeed exclusively from birth until at least six months old and shake our heads at processed formulas – we know the pros and the cons of each so there’s no point in me drawing up lists to compare the two and sparking a grand debate - but there is so much pressure on mothers to be milked by their offspring that it creates this ginormous divide between those who do and those who don’t (or can’t). I was one of those mothers who didn’t, though I did try it. When Owen was born, we immediately had “skin to skin” contact and a midwife flipped my nipple straight into his mouth. I tried for four days with a midwife grabbing, rubbing and yanking my boobs in different directions, testing “position of the fortnight”, encouraging me to keep trying and being so desperate for success that I thought she was going to latch on herself. I thought that breastfeeding would help me to bond with my baby, I knew the health benefits, it was on tap unlike expensive formulas, and less hassle than cleaning and sterilising bottles – but I hated it. I hated the sensation, it felt uncomfortable, my baby was losing weight as he wasn’t feeding enough and instead of bonding, I didn’t want my baby near me in case he wanted to superglue himself to my sore, sensitive teats. So after an internal battle that left me feeling incompetent and selfish, I spent hours persuading a disappointed midwife that I didn’t want to do it, and when she gave me a bottle to feed my little boy, I felt a huge wave of happy relief and the bonding with my baby began. With Ava, I knew I didn’t want her on the breast but I wanted her to have the health benefits of breast milk, so I bought a pump (the perfect contraption to keep a horny husband at bay) and tried to extract it myself. But after giving birth, the midwives were too busy with labouring women to show me how to use it and by the time someone was available to see me the following day I was told that it was too late to try. I later found out that this was rubbish but by that time I’d sold it unused on Ebay and Ava was also formula fed. So in the eyes of nutritionists everywhere I failed my children from the get go.

 

 

Now they both have teeth and the ability to chew, feeding time has become the ultimate battle of wills, wit, cunning, diversion, competition, patience, willpower, temper and perseverance. Both of my Gremlins come with their own set of hurdles when their bellies are rumbling. Owen will eat nothing. He would happily go for days without eating a meal and it’s common for him to lose weight, especially when he’s having a growth spurt (and he’s very tall for his age). When he does eat he will usually only eat something that’s made of potato – like chips, waffles, alphabites and smiley faces – but he won’t  eat actual potatoes unless they’re blended into a puree and covered in mounds of butter.  He’ll eat chicken nuggets but not chicken, pizza with cheese but not cheese, fromage frais but not yoghurts, fish fingers but not fish and he won’t eat a single vegetable. We’ve tried coercion, bribery, threats, promises, shouting, force feeding, indifference, distraction, hiding vegetables in or under other things, dying stuff with food colouring, funny shapes and pictures, persistence, scare stories, punishment and keeping him at the table for hours at a time. Nothing works. Owen will only try food when Owen wants to try food and when that happens a fanfare sounds and we all parade around the house like we’ve won the Euromillions.  And when my friend, Wonderwoman, declares that her son will only eat vegan, non-processed, sugar-free, salt-free, 100% Omega3 vitamin enriched green substances, nuts and seeds and wouldn’t even know what a sausage roll looks like, I smile in false agreement that my children would never visit McDonalds and in my head I flick her the middle finger.

 

 

Ava is Owen’s exact opposite (of course) and will eat everything in sight – even if it’s not edible. She’s like a human hoover and expects to be fed every ten minutes. When she’s not eating she expects to be drinking and will loudly demand a “dink of doocee NOW” (translation: a drink of juice immediately). If she finishes her meal quickly she’ll start tucking into everyone else’s (to Owen’s joy) and I’ll often find her grubby hands splatted in my ketchup. She wakes up in the night demanding food and drinks, heads straight to the kitchen when we visit friends and family and can chew her way through any packet or container. She eats the dog’s biscuits as well as my placemats, picks crumbs off the ground in the park and will swipe candy from any baby whose parents are looking the other way. She’s developed a stealth operation that involves pushing chairs across the kitchen, to stand on and reach the top shelf of our fridge so that she can steal yoghurts, which she’ll eat with her fingers whilst hiding under our dining table...

 

 

People would think we starved the girl if she didn’t resemble a Weeble by the end of each day. So needless to say, mealtimes are not the most enjoyable experience in our house. We try to have family meals wherever we can where we all sit at the dining table and talk about our day whilst enjoying a wholesome home cooked meal. But usually Daddy’s at work, Mammy’s just finished work and is exhausted so can only muster the energy to reach into the freezer and switch on the oven, Owen will have a meltdown and dangle off his chair in dramatic protest before kicking Ava repeatedly under the table and deciding he needs a poo halfway through his dinner; and Ava will screech at Owen, launch most of her meal at my walls and curtains, feed some to our increasingly overweight dog then she’ll clamp her jaws on my plate. At some point Owen will knock a whole glass of juice all over the table, Ava will swipe a plate onto the floor, Owen will roar like a monster which will scare Ava who’ll scream some more, I’ll take five deep breaths then declare mealtime is over and spend ten minutes wiping down the walls and mopping up drinks (Fudge takes care of the floors – hence his obesity).

 

 

I used to adore eating at nice restaurants that served an array of dishes from around the world and take my time to savour the quality meal that I’d purchased and enjoy the ambience of my surroundings and the fact that I had no washing up to do afterwards. Now I prefer to take a packed lunch out and eat on a picnic bench, as when we try to dine out we have to choose somewhere that will cater for noisy, messy, moaning Gremlins who’ll fire fries at the waiters and try and eat the candles. On the rare occasions that I meet friends for lunch or go for an evening meal, if I spot a family struggling with a crying or excitable child, while my childless friends scowl in annoyance, I flick the parents a look of pity that says “been there”.

 

 

And as always, Mammy and Daddy do enjoy getting their revenge on the little darlings from time to time and one can be very creative with food substances to play with.  When Owen had been for one of his mid-meal poos one day and of course “forgot” to wipe his toosh – Dad wiped his bottom for him with some toilet roll and without Owen noticing he stuck his fingers into a pot of chocolate mousse. “Urrrrggghhh Owen look at all this on my hand because you didn’t wipe your bum,” he said. Owen stood in silence for a few seconds and scrunched up his face in mild disgust until Dad began licking his fingers and Owen screamed, ran away and almost passed out.

 

 

We may not win the battles now but we will win the war!

Sleep....whats that?????!!!

Sleep.....what’s that?????!!!

I was going to end this chapter right there just for dramatic effect – but there is so much to say about sleep - the lack of it and the longing for it. Non-parents will always smile and nod in apparent understanding when a parent complains about being tired and how many times their child has been up during the night – but seriously – until they have survived on about six hours of broken sleep continuously for two years they have absolutely no idea what tired is or how doolally it can send you.

In the “olden days” before babies, whilst at university or at the weekend, I could easily sleep until lunchtime. Anything less than 12 hours sleep was deprivation. I only had two meals a day because lunch was breakfast; that’s probably why I was a stone lighter then even though I survived on cereal and Chinese takeaways.  There were times after a wild night that I’d get to bed at 7am and be up at 8am for work – but I got by on Red Bull and E-numbers and knew I would sleep for 2 days afterwards so it wasn’t a problem and my lethargy was a sign of a good social life.

When I fell pregnant with Owen, we jointly decided that the first thing we’d nail was the sleeping. And we did. I read every parental guide possible on sleep and formulated my golden rules –

1. Put the baby down awake so that they learn to fall asleep by themselves without being soothed and rocked. We did this from birth, swaddled cosily in blankets.
2. Let the baby establish the difference between day and night. Day naps can be had in a moses basket in the living room (or elsewhere) but the room will remain light, and when baby awakes, you can pick them up and make a fuss.  At night, baby sleeps in the bedroom, keep the room dark, don’t take the baby out of the room even for night feeds and minimise talking and stimulation.
3. Never bring baby into your bed until a reasonable time in the morning so that this doesn’t become a difficult habit to break.

By six weeks old Owen was sleeping through the night from about 11pm until 6am and we were very happy new parents. He still sleeps like a log today and when he’s out he’s gone, which we feel is our greatest achievement to date. When Dad and I are feeling particularly evil – or if Owen has been particularly naughty and we want to get our own back - we like to play tricks on him to see if he’ll wake up. He’s had shaving foam on his hand and a tickle on the nose. Dad’s pumped on him once or twice. We’ve told him it’s time for school at 10pm, we’ve tickled his feet and licked his ear. My favourite is dressing in my red onesie with the hood up and saying “ho ho ho” while Dad shouts “Santa’s here!”  You may think we’re cruel but he never wakes up. So he’s unaffected and we have a chuckle.

Then along came Ava....I stuck to the same golden rules but she came with her own set. She didn’t sleep through the night for the first time until she was six months old. To some parents that may not seem too bad but to us it was torture. She’s now two years old and it’s still extremely rare for her to sleep through without disturbing. She went through a stage of asking for “juice” about every half an hour all through the night and it killed us to drag ourselves out of bed to meet her demands. I’ve spent many a night screaming into my pillow (not in a good way), thrashing about in my bed (not in a good way), deep breathing (not in a good way), crying, stomping, slamming doors, sending crazed text messages to Dad on his night shift at work, trying everything in my power to contain my rage and despair when for the eighth night in a row my daughter has decided that she won’t let my eyes close for a moment – and the following day I have to go to work for nine hours. There are nights where I’ve had to let her cry herself back to sleep, with a pillow over my head and my heart breaking because I didn’t have the energy or the sanity to move from my bed.  Lack of sleep has been the hardest part of being a parent of small children and after two years of sleepless nights I was ready to admit myself to a secure unit. Or put Ava up for adoption. Or hire a night nanny with her own sound proof annex. We would put her to bed awake and she would drop off to sleep no problem, but keeping her asleep was impossible. Then one day – resisting the urge to dope her with Nytol - I made the overdue decision to forbid juice in the bedroom.  Ava has plenty of fluids during the day and has a small sip before bed, but bedroom drinks are now banned. We had a couple of nights of screaming to contend with and she tried the throw-the-dummy-across-the-room game for a while, but we stayed strong and she got bored and now....(fingers, toes, knees and elbows crossed)...she only wakes up about once a night. She’s recently moved from a cot to a toddler bed, however, and her new game is let’s-get-out-of-bed-and-dance-on-the-landing-for-an-hour-at-bedtime. Or let’s-eat-the-Sudocrem. Or let’s-escape-and-put-Mammy’s-Clinique-makeup-all-over-my-face. Or let’s-spread-Welsh-Nanny’s-hard-skin-remover-all-over-the-walls. One baby gate on the bedroom door, all cosmetics out of reach, and all objects she could stand on removed from the room and we are almost getting there with the littlest Gremlin...

And THEN....Dad develops Sleep Apnoea and starts snoring like a tractor revving in the lowest gear while running over a pig attached to a megaphone! Dad has a teeny tiny mouth, which is a standing joke between us (it really is the tiniest mouth ever seen on a fully grown human), but the noise that comes out of it is not from this world. He falls asleep within seconds of his head hitting the pillow so I don’t even get a head start - I think his record is eight seconds from pillow to snore - and it’s beginning to affect our relationship because I want to murder him in his sleep. Instead of missing him when he’s working a night shift, I now whisper a subtle “get in”, spread out like a starfish under my duck feather duvet and enjoy my six to seven hours of sometimes unbroken shut eye. When he’s at home, he tops up my supply of extra thick earplugs or he sleeps on Owen’s bedroom floor – because luckily Owen could sleep through an atomic bomb.  Unfortunately, Ava can’t and he contributes to her night waking even though the bedroom doors are shut and there’s a wall between them. Those are the nights when he sleeps on the sofa. He’s sought medical advice and the doctor basically said “you’re fat”. I creased myself laughing at this diagnosis but Dad didn’t find it funny when the GP prescribed him some Slimming World vouchers.

But despite wanting to throw myself out of a window to run away forever between the hours of 11pm and 6am, and despite wishing for two or three more hours of slumber when Ava begins the morning wake up call, I do enjoy seeing their little faces pink and fresh from their sleep as they clamber into bed with us for morning cuddles. At least until Ava stands on my head whilst trying to look out of the window, or her piddly nappy leaks all over my sheets, or the two Gremlins begin their morning chinning session, or Dad farts under the covers and we all choke and suffocate.

Best of Frenemies

We try to encourage the Gremlins to be best friends. As we get older we learn how important connections and relationships are, especially when times are hard and we need someone to turn to. If the children are best friends then they will always have someone there for them, because we parents aren't going to be around forever (especially if one of us decides to cash in the life insurance). But trying to get the Gremlins to agree to this lifelong contract is proving harder than we first thought.

 

When Ava was born we bought Owen so many toys it was like a June Christmas. We told him that the baby had bought them for him because she loved him very much. With some verbal prompting and gentle shoving, he reluctantly gave her a kiss on the forehead and from that day forth they became Frenemies.

 

Owen likes to show off his baby sister, he'll introduce her to complete strangers in Asda with an attitude that says "yeah look at me, I've got a sister, what have you got? A Tikka Massala? Phfft. The thing in my trolley can pump the theme tune to Balamory." He'll strut around like her mini bodyguard and if any bigger boys go near her in the park he'll be at her side like a shot, eyeballing them and tensing his weeny arms. He'll offer to fetch her yoghurts and snacks from the fridge, he'll call her to play in his bedroom, he'll take her hand when they're racing through the kitchen and he'll push her around on her trike. And we'll sit back and admire how adorable they both are...for about three seconds...

 

It didn't take us long to figure out that Owen introduces Ava to everyone in the hope that they'll take her away. He doesn't eye up what people have in their trolleys, he's measuring the space to see if she'll fit. He seeks out the bigger boys in the park and assesses whether they're strong enough to carry her, so they can grab an arm and a leg each and turf her into the sand pit. He'll fetch her a yoghurt and give her a knife to eat it with.  He'll give her a lolly, leave the wrapper on and watch her scream and try to gnaw her way through it. He'll call her upstairs to play so he can tattoo her arms in Angry Birds, shut her in the dark and scare her witless with monster noises. He'll hold her hand whilst running so he can pelt her into a wall - and when they're not holding hands he'll stick his foot out and watch her fly then slide across the room - and he'll push her on her trike so he can let go. He taught her how to slide head first on her belly down the staircase and how to jump from the back of the sofa onto the beanbag below...then yanked the beanbag away. When they're eating together, he'll gesture to her to throw food around the kitchen and when I go mad because I have Porridge dripping down my walls, his jaw will drop in practiced shock horror while he points to his grinning sister.

 

But don't be fooled by the large innocent blue eyes that belong to my two year old daughter as she can hold her own. When we're not looking, she'll sneak up behind Owen and yank him by the hair and when he lunges at her she lets out an ear-splitting piercing scream, so when we all come running we catch Owen with his hand in the air - and those innocent little bluies narrow with satisfaction as he's sent off to his bedroom. Ava will instigate a light saber fight then swipe the legs from under him and clonk him round the ears. She'll wait till he's running at full pelt through the house then slam a door in his face. She knows he'll scream if he gets his hair wet so she'll empty a jug over his head. When Owen is playing happily with his marble zone she'll dash into his room and kick down the towers before making off with half the marbles. She hit him on the head with a Barbie doll and licked his DVDs.

 

So we're not off to the best start.

 

Then again, isn't it normal for all siblings to try and choke hold each other? There are ten years between me and my brother and when I would babysit him for half an hour I would tie him to the dining table and play Cowboys and Indians. Every time we passed a gutter in the street I'd push him onto it and yell "the crocodiles will get you!" When he was a baby he fell from his high chair face first into some ice cream and I almost asphyxiated from laughing. I'd chase him from my room with a book end and take photos of him on the toilet (I still have those somewhere). But if anyone had harmed a hair on him I would've put that book end to good use (and still would).

Owen's been in Wales with his grandparents for a week and Ava hasn't asked for him once. I think she's enjoying all of Mammy and Daddy's attention without competition. Owen is being spoiled with love, attention and presents as I type but it doesn't prevent that ache of guilt from gnawing away at my gut because I get very little opportunity to shower him with my time in this way when he's home. Being the oldest, its easy for me to send him off with his cars or sit him in front of the computer whilst I attend Ava in the bath, change a nappy, dress her, undress her, fetch and carry for her and jump to her squeals. He must be tired of hearing "one minute Owen", "not now Owen" "hang on Owen" when Ava is being demanding. I can understand why he'd want to yank away the beanbag as Ava absorbs everybody's time. And when Ava is occupied, I have food to prepare or dishes to wash or bathrooms to clean or a shower to have. When Ava's in bed I have an opportunity to spend an hour with Owen on our own and give him my full attention, but by that time I'm usually ready to drop and just want to put my feet up with a Chinese and an episode of Big Brother.

So I will make a mental note to timetable in some quality one-to-one time with my son as soon as he returns home from his little holiday - and I will write that quality time onto my daily "to do" list as I don't want my boy to ever feel that he is less important than the laundry. Or a TV programme that's been pre-recorded anyway. Perhaps when Ava is slightly older and more self-sufficient and the age gap appears less relevant, perhaps with some quality time spent with both Mam and Dad together and apart, the Gremlins will stop trying to colour each other in with permanent markers and begin to look out for each other instead. I thought we'd made some progress recently when Owen said -

"Mam when I'm a grown up I'm going to marry Ava."

Although I told him that this was wrong and illegal, I thought it was sweet. Though when I asked him why he wanted to marry his sister he replied...

"Because I'll lock her in a cupboard and eat all her sweets."

Hmmm. Maybe not then. His suggestion to paint her green so she'd look like a jelly baby didn't reassure me either.