08.08.05
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 10:51 am by
Why breast can be such a test
The winter vomiting bug a few years back was a godsend for new mothers trying to breastfeed in maternity hospitals. When the virus struck, it was necessary to ban all but essential visitors. The wards were cleared of overbearing aunts, unruly children, enthusiastic colleagues and sniffy mothers-in-law. Traumatised mommies could weep in peace, and breastfeed in private.
The one thing a breastfeeding mother doesn’t need is an audience. Particularly an audience ignorant of the true needs of a new baby.
I recalled this last week as we were reminded, to mark World Breastfeeding Week, that Ireland has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe.
This problem of visitors is the same at home. The mother has no control and I have heard many a sad story of breastfeeding being abandoned not because of a biological problem but a psychological one caused by bad visitors. I’ve heard of feeds being interrupted to greet well-meaning friends; of breast-feeding mums feeling guilty because visitors are waiting in the other room; of mums going through the misery of pumping so they don’t have to feed in front of people.
A good visitor will arrive having provided plenty of notice, preferably by text, since answering the phone is a big source of pressure when there is a baby around. A gift of lasagne, Irish stew or other carbohydrate-heavy meal should be proffered instead of a four-foot bear or a ridiculous outfit. Lactating mothers need food, not polyester.
When tea or coffee are offered, the good visitor will refuse, order the mother to bed, and make her a cup instead. A confinement of six weeks used to apply to new mothers and I am a firm believer in the benefits of this enforced rest.
After the births of each of my babies I remained in my nightdress for a full fortnight and accepted no invitations for the first 40 days. Some people thought that this was over the top and there were more than a few raised eyebrows when I received visitors in my boudoir. My view was that having recently expelled another human being from my body, I was quite entitled to allow myself a complete recovery. It takes about six weeks to settle into breastfeeding and you can only do this when you are rested.
The modern view is that good mothers quickly return to a normal routine. When I heard of a mother of just one week heading off to the supermarket, I shuddered. The strange thing was that report came to me as an example of a “great woman”. I didn’t think it was great at all.
Anyway, the poor babies have just spent 40 weeks tucked up tight in the womb and are appalled to find themselves in a bright, cold, noisy world. The only place they want to be is snuggled under their mother’s arm, a nipple within easy reach.
The good visitor will admire everybody and depart within 15 minutes, taking a pile of towels to launder on the way out. Should a breastfeed take place in the presence of the visitor, their behaviour is absolutely crucial to the success of the feed.
Any woman who has struggled to latch-on a new baby will know the feeling of immense pressure. Within 10 seconds both can be crying and if baby goes on wrong, there will be more tears from the pain.
The bad visitor, chatting into their second hour, will sympathetically comment that “sometimes they don’t get enough”. The bad visitor masquerading as a good visitor will announce that were there a bottle in use, mommy could have a sleep and she would feed the child. Doubt added to a lack of confidence equals a sense of inadequacy. If the dreaded bottle is tearfully introduced, the woman can thus embark on the lifetime of guilt that goes hand in hand with motherhood.
The good visitor will be calm and reassuring and offer to phone the hospital or La Leche for advice. There are always solutions to breastfeeding problems that don’t include a bottle. The sad thing is that the most negative comments a woman will hear about breastfeeding are from mothers who tried themselves and couldn’t manage it. The truth is that most women can, they just don’t know how. Breastfeeding isn’t just a particular skill, it involves an entire philosophy of minding babies that has been destroyed by the corporatisation of child rearing. Up to three months, babies require 24-hour care and the almost constant presence of an unpressurised mother. These days, praise is reserved for how quickly she can get her figure back, not for her devotion to her baby.
I loved breastfeeding. Anybody can change a nappy, but I was the only one who could indulge in this free, hygenic, perfect method of nourishing my child.
Unfortunately, since two generations of Irish women have been convinced that breastfeeding is unnecessary, the skill has been lost. Pregnant women attend lots of childbirth classes and stock up on books on how to have a baby, which will come regardless of how many books she reads. The lessons mothers-to-be should be attending are those about breastfeeding.
So if you know a pregnant woman, buy her The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, not What to Expect when You’re Expecting.
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08.05.05
Posted in Feminism at 10:32 am by
Today’s IT front page reports that the government is being asked to regulate auctioneers – a popular enemy. Since people hate paying huge money for houses they choose to blame the estate agents. A bit like people complaining about the CAO for high points even though its the students themselves who achieve the points. Anyway, as the family are auctioneers I feel duty bound to defend their profession.
Firstly there is the thorny issue of gazumping whereby a sale is agreed and the seller gets a higher price from someone else. Please note that it is the SELLER who accepts the higher price. If estate agents are so universally immoral why don’t the sellers refuse to accept the higher price and stick by their verbal agreement with the original buyer.
Secondly guide prices. Just last week my brother was selling a beat up old cottage in a nice area. Given that it will have to be completely refurbished he guided it at about €260k. There was a surprising amount of of interest in the auction and the week beforehand they increased the guide to €300k. The day before the auction I heard one of the auctioneers on the phone to an interested party who was looking for a specific figure. The auctioneer suggested that since big stamp duty kicks in at €317k that this would surely have to be a cut off point for a lot of prospective buyers. On the day, it went for €360. The staff couldn’t believe it and firmly believe that the buyers were all stone mad. But what can they do? I suppose critics would say that the auctioneers should predict the complete irrationality of some people when it comes to buying a house. Rationally, no one should have paid over the guide but on the day they all lost the head. How can you regulate this?
Finally, people assume that auctioneers are simply wafflers. I have always been amazed by the wisdom and cop-on that de family try to pass on to sellers. Their principle skill is in identifying early on so-called buyers who are complete time wasters and who are telling a heap of lies about their ability to pay for a house. Some buyers will claim that the sale of their own house is agreed and they have the funds to buy the next one. My sister in particular is a genius for seeing through the crap and advising sellers to sell to a lower bidder that has funds in place instead of hanging on for months waiting on money that will never appear from a big mouth.
There is nothing to stop anyone selling their house through the classifieds but they don’t do it because they want to expose their house to the biggest market possible through the auctioneers. If there is a screw up properly accredited auctioneers have public liability and everyone can sue.
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08.02.05
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 10:52 am by
There’s a gorgeous guest house called Delphi lodge down in Mayo. It’s run by totally charming anglo-irishy types and we had an hilarious stay there some years ago. It’s one of these places where all the guests sit at dinner together at one big table and we met some really interesting people.
We set off to stay there again last year and left the child with my mother. We were looking forward to the drive through Mayo as its really haunting: barren mountains and little civilisation. The part from Louisburgh to Delphi is particularly lovely. We half knew there was some story about a famous famine walk along this route and I asked my mother about it before we left. “Oh yes, the people walked from Louisburgh out to Delphi for food. It was very tragic”. Why? “They all died”. It appears they went to Delphi House in search of food and were sent away. On the way back to Louisburgh a storm got up and they were all blown into a lake and died.
We drove in silence along the road and when we pulled into the drive of the luxury guest house, we stopped, looked at each other and reversed. We both imagined famine victim ghosts haunting the entire area, not to mention our room with a lake view.
I really want to stay there again as the hospitality is excellent. But maybe next year.
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Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 10:47 am by
Apropos (as Pat Kenny says) ethical living I have two other stories.
Last week the landscaper arrived. I’ll give you his name as he is a member of a local famous family; the Holtons of Cloona. They are famous because there were 17 of them, 15 boys I think and maybe two girls. One of the wives did the plans for our house, one of them marked out our site, another works for Eircom and put in the broadband, another levelled the site and Kevin, the gardening one, arrived last week to sow grass-seeds and put in old railway sleepers as a kerb. We sat out on the patio with him on his last evening, drinking a beer and discussing the project. M. began to enquire about the origin of the sleepers. They are about 100 years old but Kevin told us that Ireland has run out of old sleepers to use and these ones actually came from Poland. There was a slight pause as we looked at the sleepers again….Poland…railways…oh noooooooooooooo.
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Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 10:45 am by
It’s time I started to think global, act local
How does one live a moral life? It used to be quite straightforward. Refraining from having sex without the intention of procreation pretty much qualified you as virtuous.
The sexual revolution and globalisation have made life much more difficult for those who crave a trouble-free conscience. Sex doesn’t feature on the moral checklist any more; our sense of entitlement to an orgasm outweighs any sense of obligation to partners, husbands or wives.
Loving your neighbour has become more complex in the 21st century. “Neighbour” used to mean next-door neighbour and dropping a spare dinner into an old lady once a week fulfilled our duties. In the global village our neighbours are all the people of the world, furry animals, the ozone layer and rare insects. The only neighbours we are not required to love are GM farmers and Shell executives.
The result is that the most innocuous of our daily actions are crimes against somebody or something, somewhere in the world. Our very existence creates a cycle of sin and self-loathing. One almost gets nostalgic for good old-fashioned Catholic guilt.
Just take my mink coat. (Well no, you can’t take it yet.) I didn’t buy it, so no additional minks were killed through my acquistion of this vile symbol of ostentation and cruelty. It came to me via a little old lady, her nursing home, some kindly nuns and my aunt.
My sisters and I haul it out for winter weddings and revel in the impact. No one wears them any more so when sweeping up a church aisle, it’s a bit of a laugh hearing the heads turn and the eyebrows lifting in a mixture of shock and curiosity. Although I enjoy the stir, one does feel a tad self-conscious wearing an item of clothing which is the epitome of ideologically unsound apparel.
Not any more. Last weekend my father was out walking along one of the streams running through his land. He came across a water hen squawking round her nest of chicks looking most distressed. He assumed his presence was the source of her anxiety and began to back off. Just then he saw a black slinky figure emerge from the water, and grab one of the chicks from the nest. A mink. The crime killed off any remaining shame over my unethical coat. Next time, I’ll wear it proudly.
It will join that old fox stole I rescued from a charity shop. My source of free-range eggs dried up last month when Mr Fox made off with our neighbour’s hens. And if anybody feels like serving me up rabbit stew, I will happily partake, thereby avenging the loss of half my hawthorn saplings by 4,000 rabbits that graze around my house.
Perhaps these are extreme examples of moral relativism, but fur no longer equates with immorality in my world. The white T-shirt I bought last week presents a much more difficult ethical issue.
I had scuttled into Next and asked an assistant to find me a plain white T-shirt. No logos, no glitter. By asking her I was avoiding the risk of inspecting rails of clothes and making an impulse buy. She duly returned and I brought it to the checkout. When the cashier asked for a mere €7 my heart sank. The only possible way it could cost €7 was if a child in Indonesia made it.
I briefly considered not buying it. But what was the point? The expensive stuff is probably made in sweatshops too. In dismay and defeat I handed over the money.
Back home I inspected the Next website. To their credit, its annual report contains a 22-page section on social responsibility, a code of practice for their supply chain, and a progress report on their supplier audit. They are members of the Ethical Trading Initiative and work with Oxfam in their efforts to maintain good standards.
Or maybe in their efforts to maintain good marketing. Surely it is impossible to produce an ethical €7 T-shirt? I could choose to believe that their intentions and practice were good, or I could be cynical and dismiss the documents as marketing rubbish. After all, both Shell and Tommy Hilfiger’s websites also devote considerable verbiage to their ethical intentions and yet both of these companies are morally questionable. Yet, I wear Tommy Hilfiger clothes and I buy my petrol wherever it’s cheapest, and sometimes that’s at Shell .
It would be easy to stop buying Shell petrol, but where would I start with the clothes? If I threw out every item suspected of sweatshop involvement I’d be left with a woolly jumper hand-knitted on the Aran Islands.
In the complicated battle to distinguish between right and wrong, one is invariably left with the lesser of numerous evils. I won’t use terry nappies because raising small children is drudgery enough without having to wash off poo. While my disposables are non-biodegradable I draw comfort from the claims that washing the cloth nappies uses so much soap that it’s an environmental hazard anyway.
If it is impossible to be a good global citizen, is there any point making the effort? When the latest pictures came in from Niger I took the only actions possible for me. I rang up Concern and made a donation and then made a conscious effort not to waste food in the house. It seemed sickening to throw out food when my stomach is sick from the misery caused by starvation.
Perhaps the only solution is to seek out a down-the-road neighbour instead of an across-the-world neighbour and offer my services. The ethical citizen seeks to reduce their footprint on the globe. Maybe if I got out of my house and increased my footprint locally, I could salve my consumerist conscience. Anyone know a little old lady in need of a dinner or a warm coat?
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