Cross

Grrr. Today I woke up Cross. So did the kids. Isaiah had wet the bed in the night, always a sign we're all stressed! The last couple of days they've all been getting more and more tired, white faces, dark shadows under eyes and grumpy faces, and I'm no better!



It didn't help that the first thing I did was go online because I needed to cancel my shift on the NCT Breastfeeding Line this morning due to my slowly returning but still croaky voice. I got distracted by the news that obesity is causing more maternal deaths in pregnancy and birth, apparently.



Now, I'm not going to go into a raging paddy about my views on birth etc on just the third day of blogging. To give you a nice calm thumbnail sketch of how I feel - the numbers of deaths that occur are fairly small, tiny in fact, and there are far bigger causes such as obsteticians looking down at their machines and overusing interventions rather than treating women as individuals. I feel very concerned that a blanket statement such as 'obese women are more likely to die' will cause health professionals to look down at a woman's weight and notes rather than up at her as an individual, and will cause them to herd women into categories like farm animals rather than encourage them to take care of themselves and their own health and become informed about what symptoms etc could mean, even more so than they do already.



There, that was fairly calm, wasn't it?! Time to 'fess up - it's my second draft the first was horrendous! It reminds me actually of how I felt last night when I heard that my Godson may be referred to the hospital because his weight is on the 0.4 th percentile. Now, this baby is absolutely bouncing, he glows with health and zooms around the room. His dad is smallish, on the slim side anyway, and the baby eats well and always has done - and has always been fairly small for his age. Someone has to be down on the 0.4th and wasting the mother and baby's time, as well as NHS resources, by referring him to anyone is a result of the Health Visitor looking down at her chart rather than up at the baby and the bigger picture.



And for anyone who is now thinking 'oh dear me this woman is supposed to be a Christian - they are meant to be Good Little Girls' - the Jesus in my bible wasn't afraid to speak out when things weren't right. How are we meant to change things if we don't speak out? I just have to attempt to be a little more Christlike by doing it calmly rather than raging and insulting everyone which won't change anything!



Anyhoo - back to my day. It improved greatly when I took two breastfeeding calls from parents in classes I did and croaked at the mothers - I'm off out in a minute to visit one of them. This afternoon I took Rosie to bed with me because I was shattered and felt much better afterwards. She's soooo cute these days, she has discovered how to make a funny noise by going 'ahhh' and hammering her fist over her mouth so its 'Ah-ah-ah-ah' and today she did it to me too! She gets involved in intricate little tasks like putting things in and out of a pot and every now and then remembers I am there and leans over into my face and talks baby babble to me - and I wish I could bottle it and save it for when she's older! She still breastfeeds loads at the moment, when she was away from me yesterday I expressed 7 oz, but she kind of does gymnastics as she feeds, bum in the air. Very cute if occasionally a little painful.



I've just taken Martha to Brownies and waved off my mate down the road and her two boys who came for tea, oh the relief of some decent adult conversation on a day when my older three kids are driving me stir crazy! Better go and look up where I'm going for this visit tonight I suppose. Time to myself with cds in the car all the way there and back - woo-hoo!