venturesque

Not Viable

I wasn't sure until now that I was going to write this post as it is deeply personal and extremely sad for me but I decided that this experience has at times been lonely and this is because the subject of miscarrriage is often not spoken about publicly.

I become pregnant in mid April and shared my news excitedly with close friends and family. I knew that the risk of miscarriage for a woman over 40 is around 20-30% so I knew there was a risk in sharing so soon. I also confess to being a bit smug at my effortless pregnancy (conceived first month of trying) at the age of 42 and a bit of feeling that couldn't happen to me surely. I also realised that if anything did happen I would need the support of people closest to me.

Almost from the beginning my pregnancy felt odd. I had very few symptoms except extreme cramping from about week 6/7 onwards. It felt entirely different from my previous pregnancy when constant nausea forced me to I live on mashed potatoes and crackers for at least 2 months. I sought reassurance from friends that each pregnancy can bring different symptoms or lack of symptoms. You're fine, we all agreed.The faint metallic taste in my mouth and inability to drink tea was part of both pregnancies but stopped in this one about week 7.

I remember being at my parents and googling 'miscarriage without bleeding' because I felt that things were not right. I found out that you can have a missed miscarriage but this is only found in 1% of pregnancies. As the weeks went by I was reassured by the lack of bleeding.

At my 12 week scan I lay down whilst the sonographer applied the ultrasound jelly and pushed and pressed into my belly. For too long. For way too long. Simon said to me 'the baby looks really small'. Just after that the sonographer said that she was having trouble finding a heartbeat and was going to ask another  colleague to step in. I knew at this point that our baby has died. Maybe there was a tiny flicker of hope until the second sonographer looked at us and shook her head but really as soon as I knew there was no heartbeat, I knew there was no baby.

The next few hours are a blur and I was buffeted by shock and disbelief. We were taken to the Early Pregnancy Unit where a lovely woman explained that I had had a missed miscarriage and the baby had stopped growing at around 7-7 and a half weeks. Nobody knows, she said, why sometimes the woman's body fails to acknowledge the pregnancy has ended.

This all happened just before Eden's second birthday. We carried on with the party we had arranged for her, I went into hospital for an ERPC (the charmingly named evacuation of retained products of conception) and the next day was Eden's actual birthday. At the time I think it made it easier to be so busy, to have friends around me. Many of the friends that knew had been through similar experiences and there was a lot of love and sympathy around but it is still the loneliest experience. I had had the miscarraige and Simon had watched me going through it. It is not the same.

A friend of mine said that shock protects you for a while and I agree. About 5 days after my ERPC I became totally overwhlemed with grief and sadness. Previously I had been telling people that I was going to be OK, that we did at least have a little picture from the scan to remind us. Worse than the grief almost was the anger, the rage at what had happened and how could life carry on for other people whilst I was going through such misery. My friends were great but they cannot be with me all the time. I spent days sobbing. My worst day was when I found a list of baby names that I had made. I don't ever want to go through a day like that again.

It's now 3 weeks since the scan and I feel sad but calmer. I can still change from laughter or at least feeling OK to tears in a few seconds but I know that I have to go through these feelings. I have to grieve for the baby that we will not have. We have the scan photo in a frame and I bought myself a gold bracelet to wear to remind me of her (because all babies start off as girls). I feel comforted by the scan photo because the baby is an embryo, so small, so un-babylike that it does make it easier. What helps for me is to think that we did not lose a healthy baby but a baby that could never have survived. The midwives said that sporadic miscarraiges are usually due to random genetic chromosomal problems with the egg, sperm or during cell division and these are random happenings that are unlikely to re-occur. They reassured me that I have a far higher chance of a healthy pregnancy than another miscarraige if we do decide to try again.

I wanted to write this because I know that many readers will have gone through the same experience. For such a common occurence, miscarriage is not really mentioned. Until now, I hadn't told anyone other than my closest friends. I was talking to a mum I know quite well at toddler group yesterday and she asked me how I was. I said fine. But I wish I'd said more. I think I don't want to embarrass someone else by a sudden display of my emotion that might be unleashed. I also know that if anyone told me they had had a miscarriage I wouldn't care if they cried and sobbed. I work, I get through the day but I never forget. I think one day I can feel the sadness without so much pain. That is what my friends have told me. You have to follow grief where it takes you and evetually it will let you go.

Mismatched sexual desire - when his 'not enough' is your 'too much'

Mismatched sexual desire is a common issue that I deal with in my coaching practice. Perhaps the majority of higher-desire clients are men but it is not a vast difference. There are plenty of men and women in relationships with people who just don't seem to be as into sex as they are. I hope that, if you are in this situation, I can give you some information to help you feel more in control and increasingly optimistic about your sexual relationship, whether you are high or low in desire.

There are 3 basic dynamics behind desire disparities:

1 SUFFOCATING/DOMINATING

The more one insists on sex, the more the other backs off. Both feel increasingly resentful. The lack of breathing space leaves no room for desire to build and blossom. The high desire (HD) partner feels punished, ignored and not taken seriously. The low-desire (LD) person feels pressured, misunderstood and tends top desire for sex as sex for their sake of sex rather than as a way of showing affection and love.

HD needs to back off and stop asking for sex. The more you demand, the worse things will get. Stop taking things personally. S/he is not being deliberately punished.

LD will benefit from seeing that  HD uses sex to express love and must stop denigrating their partner's desire as 'animal' or trivialise it in some other way.

2. DISTANT/WITHDRAWAL

One would like more sex but the other seems too busy. Both lead busy stressful lives and, classically, have 'no time for sex'. Sex has failed to become a priority. Emotionally the couple begin to drift apart, making it increasingly unlikely that they will make time for sex.

Both HD and LD need a reality check to address the dwindling emotional intimacy between them. They need to make time to spend together, having fun, relaxing and prioritise their sexual relationship. Both must take responsibility for what is happening.

3. BALANCED

This couple have good strong communication skills. They may both feel they are not having sex as often as they would like but they are not blaming, criticisingor resenting each other. They have a healthy intimacy, sharing feelings and anxieties regularly and without fear. Trust is intact.

Both HD and LDare in a great position to start sharing more of their sexual feelings together.

ALL clients need to work through the following areas to improve their sexual connection.

1. When they do have sex how satisfied are they? Disappointing sex will kill desire.

2. Evidence shows that HD and LD people experience desire very differently. HD feel a powerful explosion of excitement and LD tend more to a slow burn of subtle feelings. If the LD person learns to act on the flickering of desire can help you become  more sexual with each other.

3. Stop blaming each other and respect and take seriously your own and your partner's sexuality. Do not compare your partner to a previous lover. What possible good can this do you? Write down what you do like and appreciate about your partner's sexuality. What do they give you that you have not had before?

4. Give desire a chance to build. Learn to say no to sex but not to the person. The LD can offer an alternative (hug, touch, to masturbate your partner or watch them masturbating) so that a closeness can still develop. This often leads into sex without the pressure.

5. Sometimes the HD person must take care of their own sexual needs if their partner is not able to support them. But do so with the intention of having a good time by yourself. I have coached men who came to realise that their desire for sex was compulsive and they felt a need to match up to a notion of normality or to what their friends (who are probably lying) are doing. Make sure you are not obsessed with having a arbitrarynumber of sexual experiences a week, rather than acting from deep sexual desire.

6. For the LD partner, keeping a sex diary (of what increases your desire) is very helpful. It helps you become aware of desire that might otherwise go unnoticed. It puts you more in touch with your sexuality.

7. Intimacy issues - e.g. how much time do you spend talking to each other about your day? For may people emotional intimacy ignites their desire and, when this is lacking, desire disappears. MAke time to talk and share what is going on in your life.

8. A common pattern is one in which theHD person isvery controlling in the relationship and the LD respnds (not deliberately) but feeling less sexual towards them. Feeling powerless is very unsexy and drains desire. Steps need to taken to balance the power within the relationship.

9. Does the LD partner feel inhibited and sometimes lack of confidence and fear of failure makes them seize up sexually and withdraw from sex. Does the LD partner experience difficulties with erection/orgasm? Problems with sexual function will of course affect your level of desire.

10. Look at the way sex had developed within your relationship. This can help reveal whether current mismatches are temporary or more persistent. Remember that most sexual relationships start off with frequent sex, regardless of whether one partner isLD, because of the hormones, novelty and excitment flooding your body in the first months.

I have found that disparities in desire are common and solvable. Once both take responsibility, begin to appreciate each other's sexuality as it is and reconnect to what they like about their partner's sexuality, mismatched in desire can be dealt with successfully so that the couple end coaching with new insights into sex and feeling optimistic about their sexual future.

what's the difference between efficient sex and amazing sex?

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EFFICIENT SEX AND AMAZING SEX? 

 

There is a little-known piece of research by Masters and Johnson (called Persons Studied in Pairs) during the 1970s that looked qualitatively (i.e. asking participants for their own opinions and feelings) at the question of what makes for truly amazing sex.

 

Masters and Johnson were world-leaders when it came to the early scientific study of sex. They wanted to gain an insight into what factors make up great sex. They compared short and long-term couples and gay/lesbian and straight couples. The short-lived couples were so short-lived that they met at the research centre and were paired up by Masters and Johnson.

 

Masters and Johnson concluded that sex could be seen as efficient or amazing. Efficient sex is uninhibited and goal-directed. Both partners could orgasm but it was not valued as special or out of the ordinary by participants.

 

The stranger couples were more likely to have efficient sex. From talking to many people about sex, I would agree that casual short-lived encounters can be pleasurable, can lead to orgasm but it is rare to experience truly mind-blowing sex with someone you do not know very well. I think people want to be seen as sexually impressive when they first meet. They want to show what they can do and this concentration on athleticism and performance is a recipe for efficient but not necessarily great sex.

 

The long-term couples were more likely to report amazing sex. The best sex of all was had by gay and  lesbian couples. The factors identified by Masters and Johnson as making up an amazing sexual experience are probably just the same now as they were 40+ years ago. 

 

• to have amazing sex you have to take your time. With couples who sexually teased each other, moved slowly and lingered at each step of arousal, people said that the sex was special and extraordinary. All the long-term couples took longer and teased more than the new couples. 
• being able to feel turned on by your partner's sexual pleasure is another factor. Experiencing the power and pleasure of another's arousal proved highly exciting for those people reporting the best sex. Straight men in particular seemed to be sometimes quite mechanical in their arousal strategy (according to their partners)and rarely reported a sense of 'losing their self' in the sexual experience that many gay and lesbian participants felt. 
• being aware of your partner's precise level of sexual excitation adds another layer of the extraordinary to their experience. This means that you can stop-start and build arousal and suspend your partner in a pre-orgasmic state to heighten eventual orgasm (when you allow it!) 
• focusing attention on the whole body also feels good. Straight men and women tended to focus almost exclusively on their partner's genital area. Gay and lesbian couples lavished attention on the whole of their partner's body.
• the gay and lesbian couples talked more, communicated more openly about what they enjoyed, what they wanted more of. Open sexual communication is essential. You can never expect that your signature sex move (if you have one!) is going to work on everyone.

 

 

If we all learnt to lavish attention on our partner's entire body, were able to lose ourselves in sex and lose the idea of sex being something of a performance judged by the presence or absence of orgasm, took the time to learn about about our partner's arousal cycle so we can suspend him/her in pre-orgasmic delight, then we and our partners would all be much much happier.

WHICH PART OF THE BODY ELICITS NO SEXUAL RESPONSE?
A quick a random fact from a fantastic book I am reading (BONK:the curious coupling of sex and science by Mary Roach). What is the only part of the body that does not produce any sexual sensation/stimulation? Think about this. There was a part of the body that was used in early scientific research into human sexuality. When monitoring sexual arousal researchers needed a 'control' as a comparison: an activity that produced NO sexual stimulation at all. Apparently it's the kneecap. Kneecap manipulation has not been known to elicit any sexual response. And if you try it (as I did) you will probably find this an entirely accurate statement.

One Good Thing About Trinny and Susannah

My newsletter this month is about how to develop body confidence (sign-up for Venturesque at www.uksexcoach.com) and writing it reminded me of an interesting and encouraging experiment conducted by Trinny and Susannah on the show they did about Getting Britain Naked (or something similar). When I start working with clients who want to accept and celebrate their body, at some point we end up talking about sexual attractiveness and self-esteem. I ask people to think of at least 3 people that they would consider to be attractive but who they themselves are not attracted to in the slightest. And everyone can do this and do it easily. There is always going to be someone who is not attracted to you but this does not have to affect the way you feel about yourself and how much you like and value who you are. There is no one person who is attractive to everyone so why should we worry so much if someone is not attracted to us? A very positive take on this was provided in the unlikely guise of T&S who conducted an experiment that indicated that as well as there being no one person who is attractive to all of us, there is also no one person who is not attractive to someone.

T&S gathered together a large group of people of all ages and shapes and asked everyone to rate each of the others for attractiveness between 1 and 10. Grading physical appearance is not something I generally support but bear with me. What they found was that no one person was rated as highly attractive by everyone and also, and interestingly,

not one person was rated as less than 7 by at least one other person.

Every single person was seen as attractive by somebody else. I found this very encouraging and inspirational. As I talk to and work with so many different people I am able to see how attraction is something magical and wonderful and that far transcends social and cultural standards of physical ideals. No matter how good-looking someone is, if they bore you, if they have nothing interesting to say, if they don't make you laugh, if they can't listen and show an interest in you, sooner or later you will not want to be with them. Your attraction to them will fade and there beauty will no longer attract you. Working on body confidence is about the mind as much as the body, usually more so. It is a process of learning to love your life and who you are before clarifying how and whether you actually want to change anything about your body. We all need to be attractive to ourselves before we can become attractive to others.

The State of Independence

Eden is now over 14 months old. She walks, she points, she hurls things around, she can communicate what she wants and lets us know when she is unhappy at being thwarted (no you cannot eat biscuits all day just because you know where we keep them and can point at the box). She is no longer a baby.

I never thought I would miss the very early stages of babydom when you hold in your arms a tiny, mewling heap who doesn't seem to know who you are and certainly has no concept of appreciating how totally they have messed up your previously carefree life. I can remember when I was pregnant and ambivalent about the massive changes the baby was going to bring and comforting myself with the thought that I well at least she'll be an adult most of her life. There I was, wishing away the baby years. Now I look at tiny babies and remember Eden when she was that age, with an irrational yearning. I talk about this with my friends and we all remember the sheer horror of the very early months but yet also we forget the true emotional impact of how we felt and think nostalgically of having a very young baby. Whilst none of us has cracked yet and gone in for adding another addition to the family, some day at least one of us will. But I don't think it will be me. I have been ebaying some of Eden's outgrown items and finding it all a bit sad; sad that the experiences and feelings I had with her was she young are so fleeting and that I may never have those experiences again. All the people who told me to appreciate her when she was young were right, although at the time I thought that I only wanted those times to BE OVER and as soon as possible.

I wasn't aware this was going to turn into a slightly melancholy post. I had envisaged it as a jaunty, see she grows up and has wants that she can express - ha ha ha type of musing. I think I need to prepare myself for realising that motherhood is a series of new experiences and possiblities with your child, as well as an amount of mourning for the ways for being together that are now unattainable. And that doesn't sound so bad really. I remind myself that it is not important that I keep Eden's bouncer chair because as long as I have her, what does it matter?

One year on

Celebrating Eden's first birthday was both wodnerful and a bit sad for me. It was joyous because I could invite friends to share Eden's first year in the world and feel proud and happy of how much Simon and I had come through in that first difficult year. It was sad because I stopped breastfeeding after her birthday night and I missed the closeness and, to be honest, I probably mourned some of the loss of her dependence on me. Eden was not a very cuddly baby and so breastfeeding was the time I could be physically closest to her for any sustained amount of time. In actuality, as most things are, the thinking about giving it up was far worse than the actuality. Eden particularly was not very bothered. She had been down to only one feed a day and getting increasingly distracted so I feel the time was right. I had also been advised by a friend to stop before they can talk and start asking for milk. To make up for this, Eden is becoming more cuddly, especially when with strangers. Everyone used to be deserving of a smile but now she has reached the stage when new people are greeted with some suspicion smiles have to be earned. Whilst this occurs, she needs to clamber over Mummy. I am at the stage I thought I would never be at - feeling nostaglic for new babies and their utter dependency - their inability to move around and chuck CDs, DVDs, papers, diaries, note around gleefully. I want to encourage independence because I suppose I value it but I also like the fact that Eden clambers all over me when she meets new people. Is this bad? Will I end up as one of those parents who clings to their child's dependency and refuse to let them grow up? I dpon't think so but there are so many parental fears about the type of parent you may become that I have to keep telling ymself it's alright to want your child to be clsoe toy you, especially if they spent most of the first year preferring almost anything to a cuddle. I aslo am preparing to book Eden into nursery. This is something me and a friend have been discussing for about the last 3 months, saying oh yes we definitely have to look into this and then doing nothing. Eden also went through a hysterical phase when she would lose it when tired and in large groups of children and people. I could not bear the thought of this happening when she was on her own. She seems to be getting over this and I need more time to work and do the things that energise me and make me happy so nursery time it is. And only for a couple of days or half-days, not very long really. Every other mum I know who has a child in nursery says their child loves it so I expect that it can be good for Eden and she can enjoy it. I wanted to wait until she can walk as I hated the thought of her sitting in a heap, crying and uanble to move towards soemone that could help her. She still doesn't walk but I think in a couple of months she'll be up and about. Eden's modelling career is still in progress. She had a job for baby football gear, which went fine although the clothes were all massive and we had to wait around for an hour and a half. All the fears I had seem a bit ridiculous now. Dealing with her going to a casting and not being picked is actually fine because she does not have any concept of being rejected and so it doesn't really matter whether she gets the job or she doesn't. Ideally, I would like a little selection of photos I can show her when she is older adn some money she has earned that can wait in her account until she is ready to spend it. I hope she will feel proud of what she did - and that she spends her money wisely.

Return to Sanity

As many of you are aware, my baby has been breast-feeding at night since she was born in July 2009. This has been manageable until about March, when she went from feeding once at night to feeding between 2-4 times. I did cope for a while but by late April I was shattered. I was going to bed 8.30 or 9 each night and still waking up exhausted after dealing with a grumpy baby in the early hours. I wasa keeping endless sleep logs and spending large amounts of time on baby sleep forums joining similarly deranged parents to discuss and commiserate about our lack of sleep. I gradually realised that she wasn't hungry but was using feeding to get herself back to sleep. The next problem came from my resistance to letting Eden cry it out and not being able to find any other way to teach her to go back to sleep by herself. I tired gradually reducing the amount of milk but that merely enraged her. In the end I found a boom I'd bought ages ago by the Baby Whisperer, which introduced techniques for people not happy to let their child cry themselves abck to sleep. We made up our own version of PUPDCD (pick up, put down, cry down - all sleep techniques must be abbreviated to confusing acronyms!) called GIT ( Go In. Talk) which worked and Eden slept through on the 6th night and has been mostly doing so since. One advantage of breast feeding is that the partner is advised to manage the visits when you are stopping her feeding so Simon got up, went in with her, talked to her (whilst checking his emails) and stayed for 20 minutes and went back in after 10 minutes if she was still crying. After the first night she would stop crying when Simon went in the room, he got to check his emails (something not always easy to manage during the day with a baby around) and Eden would go back to sleep to the sound of daddy's voice. AAahh. Like a good coach, I have drawn out some lessons from this experience. 1. Don't underestimate other people. A 10 month old baby is able to be way more capable than I had expected and she did not cry anywhere near as much as I thought she would when no longer getting fed on demand. 2. Believe that there is a solution. Believe in your own ability to find your own ideas and your own way out of a problem. I read a lot of books and got a lot of help from a forum and in the end, Simon and I found a way to help all of us get more sleep in a way that felt right and safe for Eden. 3. Listen to yourself. Tune in what your instinct is telling you. Mine was saying 'do not let Eden learn to sleep by crying herself to sleep'. It's probably the right thing to do for some people but it wasn't for me (despite the fact that my health visitor said it was 'weak' not to let baby cry it out!). 4. Don't expect bad situations to get better by themsleves. For months I hoped that Eden would suddenly sleep through without my having to do anything or make any decisions. I could have saved us all from sleepless nights earlier had I acknowledged that I had to do something different to make things change. 5.Appreciate what you've got. After months of moaning about sleep, now that I do sleep for 6-8 hours a night, I find myself moaning about how we can't sell our flat. There is always going to be something you can worry about. If you let yourself.

The Strange World of Baby Modelling

I have mixed feelings about this new aspect of Eden's life, which Simon and I have introduced her to. Eden has been signed up by a modelling agency and has her first job on May 9th, a photo shoot for Mamas and Papas. I move between feeling excited about this and then oddly depressed and fearful. I think it gives me a chance to examine my fears and work out how realistic they are and how to deal with them. My worst fears are that she gets loads of work and I end up feeling that Eden has more of a career than I do! It is time-consuming going to castings and fittings and that's before the job has even started. Also I worry that she will come to think that being pretty is more valuable and praise-worthy than anything else (the photographers and assorted staff around constantly encourage her with 'ooh, aren't you pretty' etc). I worry that she will begin to think she is in some way better than babies that don't do modelling, that other children will be jealous of her later on. And so it goes. Weird fears that have grown out of all proportion to what is actually happening. Oh, and I also worry about why I ever wanted her to become involved in the first place. What must that say about me? To address my own fears I only need to take a big deep breath and remember that: 1. Simon and I can choose to stop whenever we feel like it 2. Eden's modelling is a tiny tiny part of her life and she is not going to become a spoilt terrible child overnight. I must have confidence that our parenting has an effect well beyond a few days a year being told how pretty she is. 3.Remember the positives. These are that we thought it would be great for her to see her photo in catalogues when she is older. She earns some money that she will be able to spend when she is older (this allows us to help her to budget at a later date). She gets experience mixing with new people. Simon and I get to have a change to the usual baby day routine. 4. Eden has no concept of modelling at the moment. She has no idea of the meaning of what is happening, She just gets to wear different clothes, sit down and have someone point a black thing at her while people around her coo and wave floppy rabbits around. Not a bad day for her really. 5. Baby modelling is less problematic for me than child modelling, when the child has an awareness of rejection and I am not sure whether I want that for Eden. Really, as yet we do not know what Eden is going to want so we can give her opportunities and wait until she gets older to see what happens next. 6. She might never get another job anyway! To compound my ambivalence, the BBC have been following some babies around to document their first experiences of baby modelling and Eden is one of those babies. Simon and I have been interviewed at castings and fittings about how we feel about what's going on and I seem to be asked questions that had never occured to me before and end up seeming slightly vacant! The interviewer is very nice but likes to ask very open-ended questions without any follow-up questions so it's left to you to stand there and dig your own grave. What do I keep telling clients? You cannot worry about what other people think of you because their opinions are not important. Relying on other's judgements for your own self-esteem dooms you to insecurity and anxiety. Only what I think is valuable. I will hold onto those thoughts. What to do with fear? Examine it and answer it back. My fears tell me that perhaps I am worried that I will come to value Eden for being pretty, although as I write this, I know that that will not happen. My fears are as much about me as about her. I worry about being the sort of Mum who has nothing in her life except taking her child to anotehr model casting. This also is not going to happen because I value and love my coaching work with a passion.Trust my instincts, be confident about the person that Eden is going to become and relax into what can be a fun experience that Eden can groan and laugh about in years to come.

Sleep

Within my group of mums with similar age babies, Eden is definitely towards the bottom of the league regarding sleep and heading for the relegation zone! We all think it is a bit of breast vs bottle (with bottle-fed babies seeming to sleep through way earlier). I have become obsessed with sleep. Sleep is the thing we all want our babies to master. I log day and night sleep times, only to discover that there is no pattern and logic. Last night we tried letting Eden cry it out - i.e. ignore her crying when she wakes up. The logic being that this will break the pattern of night waking, fancying some breast milk and then going back to sleep after a feed. We did what you are supposed to do. Simon got up and offered he some juice. Like she was going to be fooled by that. I don't think so. She cries more when we go to her, although the health visitors tell us to 'go and pat her off to sleep' at night. We lasted 45 minutes and caved in. Thus making the whole sorry palaver a waste of time. Even more scary is that my No Cry Sleep Solution book makes it clear that many babies continue to wake 2 or 3 times a night up until 12 months. At least. It doesn't help that she is still in our room, since we cannot sell our 2 bed flat. We have tried. The second bedroom is my office. She has no nursery. Yet. On a more positive note, she is becoming ever more adorable. She says 'dada' although she has no idea who or what dada is. It is just a thrill to hear her making sounds. She will be crawling soon. Having mastered putting weight on her hands, getting to grips with forward motion cannot be too far away. I will look back with dewey-eyed nostalgia for the times I could put her somewhere and leave her, I am sure. There is a very small photo of her new teeth in the photo album, I have not managed to position it as part of my posts yet.

How To Have a Better Argument

How important is it to be able to turn a potentially damaging argument into a fruitful and constructive discussion? Very, I say, with the recent experience of finding out how much having a baby challenges your ability to retreat from your own self-righteousness and actually listen to a different point of view. Those of you who know me are aware of my dislike of gendered generalisation. However, talking to other mums has led me to believe that there tend to be (there I go, unable to categorically support gender differences!) distinct differences in how Mummy and Daddy interact with their baby. Most of these differences seem to come down to different ways of viewing risk to the baby. Whilst I tend to view the world as a place of potential ongoing danger for Eden, Simon engages in what I see as more wantonly reckless behaviour with her.The kinds of Daddy does are: 1. crossing the road with the buggy at a red man (horror - what if a car turns without indicating!) It is possible to argue about this for a very long time. 2.forgetting that he has undone her highchair and then getting distracted by the weather report. This leads to Eden falling out onto her face and me becoming enraged at his carelessness, whilst forgetting the times when I have left her on the sofa for 'just a second' or placed her on a tall pile and precarious pile of differently-sized cushions with predictable results. I since discover that all parents I talk to have done such things and, so far, no baby I know of has come to any harm at all. 3.pushing the buggy along with one hand only - what dangerous casualness. This compares to me, who has relatively recently been able to give up using the buggy handstrap (which I have never seen anyone else using) as I feared me losing control of her buggy. This says so much more about me than I would like! 4.engaging in rough and tumble games involving holding Eden very high up in the air. 5.going to the playground and lettign Eden do things that I feel may be too dangerous for one so young One very interesting thing that Simon said made me realise how much I see my view of the world as right and his as wrong and slightly irresponsible. I told him I had been discussing with friends how our partners tend to do things that we see as too 'risky'. So, I said, there are obviously 'daddy' things that men like to do. As Simon, pointed out, the need of my friends and me to try reduce risk and worry about what daddy is doing is itself just a 'mummy' thing to do and does not represent the truth any more than what he chooses to do. Good point, I thought. So maybe I tend to worry more and he worries less. Neither of us is right. We have to learn to trust each other that each of us capable of looking after Eden and ensuring that she comes to no harm. To ask a good coaching question, what is the outcome that I want? And what I want is for Eden to feel safe and secure and not to feel that the world is a big scary place, full of potential dangers. If I measure my reactions against that, then I do manage to feel less anxious about things and have more faith that Simon and I can get it right enough to help Eden develop into a happy and confident child.