(down-to)earth mother

I had a special request from a super yummy mummy to address the issue of Mother Guilt. So I thought I’d tell you all the things I feel guilty about at this moment:
Today, both times Edith managed to fall into a good sleep, I had to pick her up and put her in the car.
Alfie didn’t want to go to day care today.
We had pancakes for breakfast.
I couldn’t be bothered finding socks and I lied to the day care girls and said he insisted on wearing sandals; It was cold this morning.
I worked today when I should have been enjoying precious time with my newborn, who will be 21 before I know it.
I didn’t eat enough vegetables, therefore my milk is not as nutritious as it should be.
I ate a Cherry Ripe instead of a carrot.
I left Edith in the car while I ran into the post office this afternoon. Naturally, there was a hold-up and I was in there for more than one minute and when I came out, she was screaming and bright red in the face.
I dragged Alfie out from the driver’s seat by his foot and roughly manhandled him into his seat in the car.
Edith cried some more on the way home from day care.
I let Alfie watch The Wiggles movie because I didn’t want him to mess up the living room.
I haven’t finished tidying up for the cleaning lady.
I have a cleaner.
Edith has had one sock on all day.
Alfie watched more than 30 minutes of TV and sat like a lobotomised vegetable throughout it all.
I got surly when he didn’t eat his dinner.
I let him eat an apple instead.
I did a crap job of brushing his teeth.
I only read two stories to him today.
I can’t be bothered feeding Edith again; she’s been on the boob all day. Sleep for god’s sake!
I’m writing this post instead of going to bed.

I’d better stop there because I am starting to bore myself. Now, if you were here, being a caring friend and all, you’d say soothing things. Something along the lines of, “Your daughter won’t suffer abandonment issues; your milk’s just fine; there’s nothing wrong with The Wiggles; Alfie won’t be obese; you couldn’t resist the Cherry Ripe – it was discounted to 50c; we all have our days…” and so on. That’s because you’re my friend and you’re lovely and you forgive me for all the things I can’t forgive myself for.

I think we mums could all do with being our own friends a bit more. You wouldn’t sit by and let someone you cared about say half the things you think about yourself, so be a good buddy and tell yourself to shut up.

In my family, we have a tradition of rubbing our earlobes when we feel guilty about something. I don’t know why it works, but it does. Try it sometime and give yourself a few kind words. You deserve them.

Image by Pranav Prakash on Flickr

I’ve always wondered about people who choose to video their child’s birth. What do they do with it afterwards? Watch it over a bowl of buttery popcorn? Invite the rellies round for a viewing? I don’t think I could handle reliving the experience so vividly… “Oh yeah, here comes the head. That bit really bloody hurt.”

I did, however, agree to let a photographer into the birthing room and I am now so pleased she was there. As you can see from this slideshow by Essence Images, birth can be a very beautiful thing, guts and all…

Edith’s Birth {Essence Images} from Jessica Chia on Vimeo.

I was about 90 per cent excited and 10 per cent apprehensive about having a photographer present at Edith’s birth. While I knew it was an amazing thing to have captured and preserved, I really didn’t know if I would be able to look at the pictures afterwards. My first labour was easy, I guess, and very calm, but still I woke in the night a few times recalling the shocking violence of it all and wondering “did that really happen to me?” The best thing about labour and birth, in my experience, is that you’re inside it, rather than standing on the outside looking in. I didn’t have to see any of the gore or the witness any of the pain on my face; I could simply close my eyes and concentrate. I suppose this is why I worried that I would find the images too confronting.

I wasn’t at all concerned about the element of having another person in the room. We already had the midwife and a student midwife, plus my husband Jon. Quite the contrast to my first birth when it was Jon and me alone in the birth suite for most of the time. I knew from last time that a herd of elephants could have marched through and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Also, from seeing Jess’s previous work, I could tell that she is an unobtrusive photographer. Her photos have a journalistic quality about them as she documents her subjects, rather than contrives shots.

We’d met and chatted about what was going to happen. Jess has had two children and put me at ease about her being witness to my labour. We talked about the sounds, the fluids, the emotions and the general rollercoaster ride of birth and it was easy to view her as a kind of birth partner – but with a lens.

I’d warned Jess that it would be a short labour, based on the fact that my first was only five hours. I started labouring at 1pm and Edith was born at 4.21pm, so it’s lucky Jess arrived when she did. At that stage, I was huddled in the corner of the single room – there was no room in birth suite at Redcliffe hospital that day! Jess arrived and got straight into it, if I hadn’t opened my eyes, I wouldn’t have known she was there. Throughout the fast and furious labour that followed, I was aware of her presence and the occasional click of the camera, but it all seemed very far away.

I was right about Jess being a kind of birth partner – she joined the chorus of support when I wanted it all to stop, and stayed with me when Jon had to tend to our daughter, who was being treated for distress. But the thing I am most grateful for is that she never stopped shooting.
As you can see from the results, Jess has captured the entire journey; her pictures tell a story and it’s about the beautiful miracle of Edith’s birth.

Suffice to say, I didn’t find the pictures confronting, but will cherish them forever. And I was able to share them with my mum who is thousands of miles away and felt she was missing out after being here when my son was born.

I absolutely adore the images Jess captured and encourage anyone who’s considering labour photography to go for it. To see more of Jess’s work, visit www.essenceimages.com.au.

Sorry to have disappeared off the face of the world, but I have been enjoying my baby daughter, who was born two weeks ago. Read on for her birth story, if you’re interested

I knew Edith was going to arrive in a hurry. My first labour had been five hours from first twinge to birth, so I was prepared for – and, yes, hoping for – a faster turnaround this time. Even still, when I felt a mild, period-pain like cramp while putting Alfie to bed at 1pm, I didn’t believe that This Was It. When the cramps continued, regularly but not very painful, I decided to phone Jon at work and tell him to stand by. I lay down and the cramps slowed. I stood up and they came thick and fast.

I phoned Jon again. “We’re on.”

Convinced Edith was going to be a week late, I had breezily sent her grandparents off on their bikes, so we had to call in a neighbour to watch the slumbering Alfie while Nanna and Grandad raced home. There really was no time to lose. The cramps had morphed into contractions and were already just a couple of minutes apart. We thanked the heavens we lived six minutes from the hospital and joked about how awful it would be to have to travel any further. This didn’t seem so funny when we found out that if we’d come an hour or two later, we would have been sent to another hospital 30 minutes down the Bruce Highway.

As it was, at Redcliffe hospital, the birth suite was full. For fifteen minutes or so, I leaned on the desk while they figured out where to put us. I kept telling them that it was going to happen very soon. As I was still smiling and laughing at this point, I don’t think they took me very seriously. Eventually, we were taken down to the maternity ward and put in a private room, “for the time being”. Jon and I knew we were going to have the baby here in this room and wanted to get down to the business of an active labour. But first – the ECG. For what seemed an eternity, I lay on my back with the belt around my belly. I was 4cm dilated and my waters were still intact. All I wanted to do was get down on my hands and knees and work through the contractions, but it took a while for my midwife to finish up with another labouring mum. Finally, I was able to get off the bed and let gravity do its work. Lying back on the bed made it feel like every contraction was pushing the baby into my tailbone so it was a huge relief to slump over the sofa in the corner of the room and whack my feet on the ground throughout the contractions. I have a clear memory of thinking how like an animal I was at this point, huddled in a corner and withdrawing into myself to focus on the job at hand. The small room contained the midwife, a student midwife, Jon and our photographer, Jess, who had just arrived. I was aware of everyone in the room, but completely oblivious to them at the same time. I’d made a conscious decision not to watch the clock, but I found out later from Jess that this was about 3.45pm.

Johanna, the midwife, suggested I get onto the bed on my knees, with the front end raised to support my arms. The contractions were intense by now, but they were fast – no more than a minute with only 25 seconds of that climactic, shuts-out-everything-else pain and then an easing. Jon was the perfect partner, offering water between contractions and handing me a polar bear and pilot from Alfie’s Little People set. During contractions, I focused on the different textures of the toys and when that failed, squeezed them so hard that the marks stayed on my hands until long after Edith was born.

Things got a little hectic from there. In my mind, I was thinking that I must be close to transition and expected a nice little rest before the urge to push came, but the contractions were on top of each other and I realised I was having to shout and bellow my way through them. The pressure in my bum was massive. I asked the midwife if I could push and she laughed and said “of course you can, do what your body tells you to do”. I was just thinking that this couldn’t possibly be it when I realised I was pushing. “I’m not ready for this!” I thought, but clearly I was no longer in charge. I screamed like a banshee through the burning and next thing I knew, she was out.

I slumped over the end of the bed, sobbing with relief, completely oblivious to what was going on behind me. I heard the midwife tell Jon to look and heard him cry out, “It’s a girl! We’ve got a little girl!”

Perched as I was on my knees, I couldn’t really see what was happening, but I became aware that our baby was surrounded by people on a table that had appeared from nowhere and that she was quite purple. Later Jon told me she was “Avatar-blue” when she came out. I didn’t understand why they hadn’t put her to my chest yet and couldn’t work out how to turn myself around so I could take her. She was having trouble breathing and there had been meconium in my waters, which came out immediately before she did. The doctors wanted to take her away and put her in a humidicrib, but I could see that the midwife and Jon were having some kind of silent conversation. Jon asked Johanna for her opinion and together they convinced the doctors to let me hold her for a while to see how she fared. Finally, I had my daughter in my arms and before long, she settled in for a feed and her colour started to look good. The doctors hovered, but they let me keep my baby with me throughout the night, and she has proved to be a little trooper ever since.

Edith Elizabeth was born at 4.21pm on the busiest day Redcliffe maternity had on record. She was 9lbs 4oz and a little bit shocked by the intensity of her birth (as was I!), but she is strong and well. Although I had been hoping for a shorter labour, I’d kind of imagined it would be a brief replica of Alfie’s birth, which, in retrospect, was so calm and controlled. It just goes to show that every birth is unique and unforgettable for its own reasons.

As we took off on an insanely-timed camping trip that bore the distinct possibility of my birthing my baby in an unfamiliar hospital, my hubby asked if I’d written a birth plan this time round. I replied, “What for? I know the plan, you know the plan. Just tell the midwife not to offer me any drugs and scrub up, cos this one’s gonna come fast.”

The whole idea of birth plans is fraught with irony and eye-rolling, but here’s the thing – my midwife mentioned more than once that she was grateful to have my birth plan for Alfie’s birth. Another friend and midwife told me she loves them. Yes, loves them. Soooo, I’m thinking of maybe writing a birth plan again. Maybe.

First-time round, there was no doubt in my mind I would go to hospital armed with a birth plan. I had a very clear idea of how I wanted things to go once we got into birth suite, even though I had NO CLUE what was actually involved. The pregnancy books all told me that a birth plan was a good idea. Nevermind that just about every mother under the sun snorted at the very words and muttered incomprehensible things about planning for avalanches and the end of the world. Harumph to them, I thought.

Instead of a birth plan per se, I wrote a letter to my midwives letting them know all about how I thought the birth should (and was going to) go. I can’t tell you what the letter said because I cannot bear to read it. I think my toes would fall off from curling them up with embarrassment. I was ten days overdue and my lengthy birth-plan-letter was so infused with hormones that it reads like Wordsworth on ecstasy. I think it started, “dear lovely midwives who are going to help me bring my baby into the world.” Every time I read it in that pre-baby haze, I added more gumph, and cried. Enough said.

But, as I said, my midwife thanked me for the letter and said it was really helpful – (although maybe she was just being nice to the clearly hormonally challenged new mother). And we did have a birth experience close to what I’d hoped for and imagined. Close. Ish. There was far less blood and gore in my version!

This time round, I think I’ll write a postcard instead of a flowery letter. And I think I’ll use dot points. Actually, maybe I’ll just write it on my hand. Something like: “If I want drugs, I’ll ask for them. No oxytocin after the birth. Thanks.”

Did you write a birth plan? What do you think of them now that you’ve been there, done that?

Pic by Sean Drellinger, Flickr

The Queensland state election is looming and I am in a bit of a state myself… I still don’t know who to vote for. Amid all the mudslinging, back-stabbing and discussion about feeling up one’s spouse, I am completely lost. What is the story with politics? Why does it have to be so damned political? I’d much prefer it if the state election were treated like a job application and we were all handed the resumes of the candidates and allowed to make our decision based on these.

Instead, we’re bombarded with flyers and personally addressed letters about bloody Cando attitudes (at what point did “can-do” become one word? BIG black mark in my book), not to mention the furious waving going on from the sides of every road. I just want to choose someone who can run the state, I don’t really care about their partners or what they did yesterday on the insane “campaign run”. But finding out the bare facts is time-consuming and tricky, and the whole thing makes me feel very, very tired.

Things were simpler when I was a staunch Labor supporter (I was willing to overlook the spelling anomaly). I come from a liberal (with a small “l” family) and therefore, we voted Labor. Easy. It always served me well: I resented Howard and his eyebrows, voted for Peter Garrett and cheered in Kev07, spending the night after my wedding engrossed in the federal election. But now, I’m older and wiser and things don’t seem so simple. Queensland has been Labor for a long, long time. Some things have happened that probably shouldn’t. Is it time for a change of the guard? But do we really want someone called Campbell running Queensland, someone with no experience in state politics? And will he even be the Premier? Crystal ball, where art thou?

I was all-but convinced to give my vote to the Greens because they are the only party that has a position on coal-seam gas mining, which is a disaster waiting to happen. But then I realised that I knew nothing about my local Greens candidate. In fact, he’s never run before and has declined to make any statements or local-level policies known. In other words, my Green is a bit of a wash out.

The only other party that opposes CSG mining is the Katter Australian Party and, well, although I’m tempted by the hat, the character, the colour as opposed to beige, I’m not quite ready to throw in my own hat with the Mad Katter just yet.

So here I sit, on the fence, a swing voter just waiting to see what happens when I walk into my local polling booth tomorrow. Have you decided?

I often wonder what kind of a world my kids are going to grow up in. I watched Bladerunner way too many times at uni, so I have always imagined some kind of sallow dystopia where light can’t penetrate the smog and we live above the muck we created below. This recent article didn’t do much to fill me with optimism. Apparently, 76 percent of 12-year-old kids think cotton is an animal product and that yoghurt is derived from some kind of plant.

“In a hypothetical lunch box of bread, cheese and a banana, only 45 per cent in year 6 could identify all three as from farms.”

I recently wrote that my dream family holiday would be a farm stay. As much for my education as for my son’s. See, I am very much an urban child. I had barely stepped foot on anything resembling a farm by the time I reached high school. To me, meat came on a styrofoam plate, wrapped in cling wrap. In my early 20s, I actually asked the butcher at David Jones to explain the difference between veal and lamb. I still remember how he narrowed his eyes to work out if I was joking. Or demented.

There’s a very real danger that our kids will completely lose touch with where food comes from. Our rural population is shrinking as families walk off the land at an alarming rate, and very few of our urbanised offspring are going to fill the gaps. Why would they? Why should they care about where food comes from? So long as it’s there. Food is just one of the zillions of things kids have every right to take for granted. Or do they?

Do you teach your kids where food comes from? Sometimes I’ll tell Alfie that milk comes from cows, but what does that really mean to a two-year-old? Until you’ve actually seen the stuff come out from a cow’s udder, it may as well come from a large animal called Woolworths. (Incidentally, thank God for the Sydney Easter Show or I too might have believed milk was derived from the sap of a willow tree.. or something.)

All I know is that I don’t want my kids to take food for granted or think that sandwiches grow on trees. I guess the answer is to produce as much food as we can and then hang out at farm gates (or the Ekka) hoping someone will let us in. But then you think, “will it traumatise them to know that we eat cute cows, or that pigs are, in fact, pretty ugly?”

What a peculiar modern dilema – how to educate our children about the food they eat. But I think it’s an important one. Do you agree? Do you try to teach your kids about the provenance of what’s on their plate? And how much do you tell them? (I can assure you, there are no sow stalls or battery chickens in the version Alfie gets!)

The only thing my two-year-old wants in the whole wide world right now is for Mummy to play with him. “Flay! Flay!” he implores, all big brown eyes and sticky (but surprisingly strong) hands dragging me to the floor. Problem is, I don’t really remember how to. Play, that is. And part of me wonders if I ever did.

I’ve trawled around on the web and found plenty of useful sites and articles with ideas for games and activities. These are all well and good, but many require planning, a bit of set-up and at least one Paddle-Pop stick. Oh and buckets of patience because there’s no way in hell a toddler is going to “do it right” and just when you think they might get it, they want to do something else. This is usually about 4.5 minutes into the game or activity.

And we’re back at square one: “Flay? Flay mummy?”

My tactic-du-jour is to follow Montessori-esque principles and “engage in toddler-led play”. So we sit on the floor, cross-legged, and I say “So what do you want to play?” If I’m lucky, Alfie will gather up a little collection of completely random artefacts and line them up. It’s a bit like being a contestant on Ready Steady Cook – “right then, measuring spoons, three broken pieces of Lego, a stuffed cat and Daddy’s Swiss army knife!” I dare you to come up with a game that involves those items and not murder.

While waiting for dinner in a restaurant recently, I thought I’d engage Alfie in a bit of imaginary play to pass the time. We had a cow and a car, so I made up a little story about how the cow was standing in the middle of the road and got run over by the speeding sports car. Alfie spent the rest of the night shouting “Road, Moo, BANG!” See, I’m really not very good at this play thing.

To further frustrate me, all the books I read about reading and creativity harp on about “rediscovering your sense of play” and connecting with your inner child. I can tell you what my inner child is doing: she’s sitting in a corner, reading a book. Because that’s what I did when I was little. All the time. Ok, maybe not when I was two; I was probably looking at the pictures.

Luckily for me, Alfie loves to read a book (or eight). But what he really, really wants right now is for mummy to sit on the floor and play. So we muddle on. My block castles are a disgrace and Lego skills definitely need work. I’m pretty good at bashing things and we do a pretty good tea party. Sometimes we pretend to cook. But then I start thinking about dinner. And then I look around and notice the detritus that has accumulated under the sofa in the three days since I last cleared it out. My mind wanders easily and I try to get up…

“Flay mummy, flay? Flay… FLAY! Flaaaaaaaay.” And then there are tears.

Help! Are you your toddlers favourite plaything? Are you good at flay- sorry, playing? Perhaps you can teach me?

I recently announced to a yummy mummy that the leading brand of stretch-mark cream was likely to be filled with hormone-altering chemicals that could cross the blood barrier via the placenta. I learned two things from this: that making huge statements like this on a regular basis will make people think you’re crazy; and always find out if the person you’re talking to used the product you’re about to slam.

What I should have said is the following…

As we all know (thanks to arm-waving nutters), we are constantly surrounded by hideous chemicals that undermine our health and poison our environments. Ok, maybe that’s not the way to introduce you to this topic. I’ll just dive right in there.

There are these specific chemicals called phthalates (pronounced thalates). They’ve been used in a massive range of consumer products for 50 years now, mostly as plasticisers. They are oil-derived chemicals that give cheap plastic toys that cheap-plastic-toys smell that we all associate beach toys or vibrators, depending on what stage of life you’re at. They also give things like rubber ducks and vinyl balls that soft rubbery-ness. They have many other wonderful properties like lubricating inks and making fragrances persist for a long time. This class of chemical (there are more than 20 of them) is used in everything from pool liners to garden hoses, shoes to medical equipment, glues to electrical wiring. Oh, and cosmetics, kids’ toys and food packaging, plus just about anything in your home that smells nice – laundry powder, air fresheners, deodorants.

Problem is, there’s a fair amount of evidence that these much-lauded and ubiquitous chemicals are bad for our health; a very inconvenient fact considering how widespread they are used. How much evidence? Too much to be ignored, according to Australian consumer watchdog Choice.

According to various studies around the world, phthalates can disrupt our hormonal balance and mimic certain hormones, which can lead to reproductive problems. Boys are particularly at risk, with one study showing that boys born to mothers with high phthalate exposure had an increased risk of testicular conditions. Low sperm count, obesity and diabetes in men have all been linked to phthalates.

Naturopath and author of Healthy Home Healthy Family, Nicole Bijlsma, whom I was lucky enough to interview recently, said children were at great risk, even before they were born. “For example, if a woman uses body butter for stretch marks in pregnancy, even at two weeks pregnant, the fragrance in that body butter can be enough to switch off testosterone to her unborn male foetus,” she said.

Nicole went on to say that hormone-disrupting chemicals such as phthalates, BPA and parabens (a class of preservatives) are going to be “the big ones” going into the future. “The thing that concerns me most is that because you can’t see cause and effect, you have to wait until the disease develops in the population before you see that we’ve stuffed up. So we have to wait, and we can see that the age of puberty is dramatically declining, which is a precursor to breast cancer. That breast cancer and testicular cancer have more than doubled in the last thirty years. What’s happening is the introduction of these chemicals when we didn’t really wait to see the impact they would have on our health.”

Unfortunately, avoiding phthalates is no mean feat. Just about everybody, at all time,s has some level of phthalate in their blood. It doesn’t last long, but as we’re continually exposed to it, it’s always present. In a study of 163 newborns, every single one had detectable levels of phthalate in their blood.

In Europe, bans on six particular phthalates came into play a decade ago. The US has restrictions on the same six. In Australia, the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme is looking into nine phthalates and there is an interim ban on children’s products containing more than 1% DEHP. (In the US, the ban applies to toys and children’s products with more than 0.1%).

It’s the same old story as BPA. The chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. Or will remain in use until the public kicks up enough stink to force producers to stop using them. It’s not like there aren’t alternatives – problem is they cost twice as much.

Here are some ways to reduce yours and your family’s exposure to phthalates:

• Switch to natural bodycare products – everything from stretch-mark cream to hand soap, baby bath foam to shampoo and insect repellent.
• Studying the labels of conventional products probably won’t make you any wiser as phthalates are rarely listed, but some incomprehensible names to look out for include DBP (di-n-butyl phthalate) and DEP (diethyl phthalate), DEHP (di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate or Bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate) BzBP (benzylbutyl phthalate), DMP (dimethyl phthalate).
• If a product lists an ingredient as “fragrance” or “parfum”, it is likely to contain phthalates.
• Ditch the chemical cleaning agents. Choose natural, or better still, use microfibre cloths and warm water.
• Forget about air freshener. Open the windows or buy some flowers.
• Eat as much fresh, non-packaged food as you can and try to avoid plastic packaging (which is a bit like saying “try to avoid stepping on ants”, I know).
• Avoid cheap plastic toys, especially if they are imported and/or soft and rubbery. Hell, avoid expensive toys if they are soft and rubbery.
• Keep an eye out for the declaration “phthalate-free”, which is bound to appear overnight, just as the BPA-free ranges popped up all over the place.

For more information:

Read what the government has to say

The Daily Green

Read what Nicole Bijlsma has to say on hormone-altering chemicals here

A couple of weeks before Christmas, I took a mumcation. In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a mumcation is where you go away, on your own, with no babies, no toddlers, no husbands or pets to worry about and spend time gloriously, blissfully alone.

Well, that’s how it goes for me. You may be different. I know most people in the world, most of the time, prefer to spend their holidays with others. However, I was in the need of some quiet time. I didn’t want to hear myself making inane chit-chat or have to ask anyone what they wanted for dinner, whether they’d done a poo or where they’d put mummy’s keys. I wanted to carry a small handbag with a novel in it and just do whatever the hell I wanted. For three whole days.

So I packed a small overnight bag (after evicting several nappies and a broken piece of Lego), stuffed my guilt into the glovebox and took off to the Mary Valley, a couple of hours north.

Why the Mary Valley? Well, for a start I had some work to do up there – and before you think this mum-cation sounds pretty lame, let me tell you that I love my work, and that being able to concentrate on it is a gift to me – and also because it’s a very quiet little corner of the world.

You may have heard of the Mary Valley because some Pollies tried to put a bloody big dam there, but then another ex-rock-star Pollie put a stop to it to save the lungfish and platypus that live there. In addition to reclusive wildlife, the Mary Valley is a place of fertile farmland, stunning walks and incredibly friendly people. An hour into my mum-cation, the man in the Kenilworth Tourist Information office had invited my to him home for dinner – so concerned was he that I would be spending time alone.

“That’s the point,” I told him.

And so I spent the night at the divine Melawondi Spring Retreat, soaking in the enormous spa bath and curled up on the couch eating chocolates and reading a whole book. In the morning, I beat a lazy path to breakfast and gazed into the green, drinking endless cups of hot, uninterrupted tea.

The rest of my mum-cation progressed in much the same way – lunch in a cafe with no spills, a long browse in an op-shop, reflexology in an eco-village, mindful bushwalks filled with the sounds of birds and wind… it was heaven. And did I miss my family? Ummm, please don’t think badly of me… But no. Not really. Or at all, for that matter.

Queensland Tourism’s “Vitamin Me” campaign has got me thinking again about my little mumcation and how I returned from it fresher, more patient, calmer and ready to face another baby. Along with Nuffnnag, they are running a competition with a $5000 Queensland holiday as the prize and I’ve thought long and hard about what I would do with this kind of dosh. There are all those beaches, of course. And the Reef, which I’ve never seen. And while the idea of a tropical holiday with paid-up babysitters is so very, very appealing, I’m going to turn my back on all that blue and look west to somewhere I’ve long wanted to explore, somewhere that my family would simply love.

The Outback.

Alfie is obsessed with farms animals at the moment and know he would get such a kick out of visiting a real, working farm. Daddy too. Hell, we could even take the dog. I’ve got my eye on Kilcowera Station, an organically-run cattle station, 1000 kilometres west on the Dowling Track. Or Carisbrooke Station out in dinosaur country, near Winton.

How would an outback farm stay boost my Vitamin Me levels? Well for a start, I love an adventure, and visiting the Great Out There is right up at the top of the list. I’m fascinated by the Australian landscape and desperate to see more of it. More importantly, though, hubby would be happy 4WDing and riding a tractor, son would be happy joining Daddy chasing chickens and talking to cows, which means Mum would be very happy stealing a few hours here and there to sleep, perchance to dream (or read or maybe sneak in a bath or massage). Because there’s no denying it. Right now, my happiness and my Vitamin Me levels are firmly linked to the happiness of my family. Nothing brings me greater joy than hearing Alfie whiny like a horse and pour his milk into the feed trough of his Little People farm. It’s sad but true, although my mumcation was much-needed and full of simple pleasures, unforgettable experiences are for the whole family.

What would you do with $5000 to spend on a Queensland holiday right now? How would you boost your Vitamin Me levels?

I feel a bit squirmy writing this post; it’s something I’ve wanted to talk about for a long while, but have been too chicken to face it. I don’t even know why. As I wrote last week, the idea behind this blog is to provide information, and for people to take what they want and leave the rest. I don’t want to make anyone feel guilty, but I do think there’s a big gap in awareness when it comes to the issue of TV and very young children, and I hope to address that. In a squirmy kind of way.

To lay it out plain: kids under two shouldn’t watch TV. Squillions of studies have shown there are no benefits to kids under two watching TV. More so, screen-time, which includes computers, games, ipads and DVDs, can have adverse effects on concentration, movement and eye development, lead to obesity and create a hyper-real sense of the world. In 2009, the Australian government released guidelines that made headlines around the world: “Australia says ban television for under-twos”. The report “Get Up and Grow”, aimed at tackling obesity, recommended that children under two have absolutely no TV time, while children two to five be limited to less than one hour per day of quality viewing. Click here to view the guidelines.

Considering that four-month-old babies here watch an average of 44 minutes of TV a day, it’s safe to say that the guidelines are a long-shot from reality. In fact, I know of very few parents who don’t let their baby or toddler watch some TV, even if it’s only “In The Night Garden”. Somehow, despite all the studies and the official recommendations (backed up by the American Academy of Pediatrics), there’s a general feeling that it’s actually okay for kids to watch TV; that the academics are wrong. And of course, there’s the rub – it’s easy to make recommendations like this when you’re looking at data and MMR scans, as opposed to looking at a tired, cranky child who wants your attention when you’re trying to make dinner. I completely understand why the TV is such a big part of children’s lives, I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t agree that it should be, know what I mean?

A lot of parents, 50% in a study in the US, believed that TV was good for tots because they learned from it. Well, in October last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics basically came out and said there is no such thing as educational TV for kids under two. Once you get past 24 months, it’s a different story, but according to Time magazine: “Sesame Street has been shown to contribute to improved language and social skills in children older than 2. But play the same programming for younger kids…and they will actually have delayed language skills”. Read more here.

Somehow, we’ve made it to 23 months without the TV. Alfie has watched a couple of episodes of “Minuscule” with Daddy, and we all sat down together to watch “The Snowman” at Christmas. From what I’ve read online and what people have told me, the real challenge will arrive in three months, when I have a baby and a toddler to look after. Hopefully, the diversion tactics I’ve used so far (when I needed to make dinner) will continue to work. Are they “better” than TV? Well, it depends on how you look at it… pulling stuff out of cupboards, chasing the dog around the living room, pouring water all over the floor, playing with Daddy’s new laptop… The tactics I use to get 20 minutes to get something done tend to be messy and/or noisy and occasionally end up causing bruises (jumping on and off the couch). There have been times where I’ve looked at the TV and thought, “Maybe just this once.” Fortunately, the only thing on was “Ready, Steady, Cook” and no-one should ever have to watch that. Suck it to me, though, the one time I really needed Alfie to get absorbed in a screen was when we flew to Sydney last year. The kindly lady next to me turned her screen onto the kids’ channel, but Alfie ignored it completely and continued trying to crawl into her lap. “He doesn’t really watch TV,” I muttered, embarrassed. (On that note, I’ve had a mum from an older generation shriek, “Oh the poor thing!” when I said Alfie hadn’t ever seen Playschool.)

My plan when number two comes along is to continue to leave the TV unplugged during the day and to introduce a DVD whenever that hideous day comes that Alfie drops his day sleep. Maybe we’ll watch stuff together when the little one’s asleep, but I’m (optimistically) determined to give my second baby the same benefits Alfie has had (but that’s a whole other post!). Babies are often exposed to what’s known as “second-hand” TV, and while you may think they’re not playing attention to the TV in the background, research shows they look at the screen every 20 seconds.

So there you have it, my views on TV and the real reason Alfie doesn’t recognise Thomas the Tank Engine or know any Wiggles songs. I’d love to know your thoughts…

Picture by allman was here