"Normal",

I might have written about this before, but it's something that really bugs me and continues to bug me this many months later, so here we go...

This isn't about being a "normal" person; that seems to have fallen by the wayside for a lot of people because there is an acceptance that "normal" doesn't exist because everyone is an individual. Cool. That's great.

So why do we still use the term "normal" when it comes to a birth?

Let's be honest, normal is used synonymously with vagina birth, despite the fact that there was outcry back in December that these number of births via C-section had risen so much that C-sections accounted for over 50% of births, to my memory. Even if these were the only two methods of birth possible, how does that make a spontaneous vaginal birth "normal"? 

"Normal" birth seems to refer to a spontaneous vaginal birth with no interventions needed, but instrumental assistance is needed in a percentage of births, induction is needed in a percentage of births, episiotomy is needed in a percentage of births.

Particularly when we interact with the NHS, the need for clarity and specificity seems to be lost behind this terminology that doesn't really have a whole lot of meaning, and doesn't give a lot of information, but rolls off the tongue. I've been on the receiving end of eye rolls and smirks because I question what they mean, but I don't know what they're asking me. Why is it so hard to say, was it a C-section or vaginal birth? if it was a C-section, do you know what category of C-section? Vaginal? Was intervention needed? Was medication required? Was it at home, a birth centre or a hospital? Did mum or baby need extra attention after the birth? 

What is beside the point, of course, is that this is all in my notes. And my son's notes. Why do I need to go over this information at every appointment or interaction with a doctor?

It's not a thing of making conversation, because using that word shuts down conversation about a person's birth experience. Saying a "normal" birth is like saying, if you followed a certain path, I know what your experience was. It's formulaic in a way that birth isn't. Some people are terrified of vagina birth because of the pain, because of the effort or because of the risk of bleeding or tearing. Some people are terrified of C-section because of the pain, or the recovery, because of the judgment of not being a real mum or not having experienced a real birth.

And maybe I am still just being sensitive because I haven't come to terms with the fact I had a C-section, or the parts that were done badly. Maybe I'm still mourning the birth I imagined or the birth I wanted, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that the language which is typically used by a lot of the NHS isn't working for the conversations we're trying to have. 

When Do We Grow Out of IKEA Furniture,

I've spent too many days not writing so I'm trying to write this from my phone because I can't be bothered going downstairs to grab my laptop. If this damn app closes one more time though I might find the motivation that I need to go...

I know that IKEA is like marmite for a lot of people, but personally, I love the place, and the work they're doing at the moment to redesign their furniture to taken apart and moved instead of being kind of one and done is awesome.

There are a lot of people in the world who will look down on IKEA furniture, and I kind of get it, if you own a certain type of home, because if you get something like a cottage with a lot of character or a Victorian or other period property with a lot of period features, and you go and stick a whole pile of flat pack furniture in it, it's going to look kind of silly, but I've genuinely heard people talk about IKEA as though it's the furniture or when you're a student (which it works as) or in your 20s (which it is, because you can buy it, get it delivered or even take small items on the tube, and yes I have seen that) but it's almost as though when you're in your thirties you should have "grown out of" IKEA furniture and be looking at something "proper" which I think is pretty mad.

There are some things I would be kind of reluctant to buy from IKEA. I bought a sofa bed from them when I had a studio flat in London and I was gutted to get rid of it, but managed to sell it on to someone else in a similar position. I think if I tried to sleep on it in my 30s, especially for any length of time, I would be really struggling. I'm not completely in love with their sofas in general, but that might be because I'm fussy about sofas. I have short legs so need a low ish seat and for it to be a short ish seat, too, as super deep seats mean no back support for me, but I want quite a high back for the support and it means just having a cushion behind me to "solve" the seat depth issue doesn't really work. I also might buy a bed frame from IKEA (maybe) but I wouldn't buy a mattress from IKEA.

I think I'd be more likely to have "grown out of" IKEA because I can't manage putting the flat pack together myself anymore - because I do it myself as a point of pride - rather than going off of a lot of products. Had we not already got our son's cot when we had him, we would have been getting it from IKEA because most of their furniture just makes sense, and I don't think I would ever get a kitchen from anywhere else.

Any hey, look at that, I wrote a blog that wasn't about parenting or the wedding. Yay me.

Nailed It,

I've mentioned on here before that my nails were something that ruined the idea of engagement photos and that I wanted to try and get them sorted before the wedding, and I was really happy to have been able to do it. It was something I started about three months before the wedding, getting my nails done with BIAB to make them stronger and less easy to bite, and now I have to come to a decision on what to do next. Do I soak the BIAB off and probably end up going back to biting my nails within minutes of them coming off, or paint them at home and hope that I can keep them in half way decent condition, or is this my life right now? Do I just have to accept that I'm going to be going to get my nails done every few weeks for the foreseeable?

It's not that I don't love the girl that does my nails, because I do. She's brilliant, she does brilliant work and I enjoy going spending time in the salon, so much so that I even managed to convince myself to get my hair cut there before the wedding and then was super thrilled to have the hair dresser come to help me get ready the morning of my wedding, but it's not exactly cheap to get them done and with the fact that I'm still on maternity leave it's not the most important thing in the budget.

I would also say it's not like they're perfect. It's not that my nail artist does anything wrong, but BIABs are a gel which uses UV to set it, and I've read a few things about how prolonged UV exposure, even little and often over time, can cause skin aging and potentially skin cancers, which is obviously more than a little concerning. I've also had a few episodes of catching my nails in things, because they're a lot longer than I've ever been used to, or catching them when trying to do things like closing the door, catching them on the handle and feeling like I'm peeling them straight off of the nail bed, which honestly made me feel pretty sick. I know I could trim them down and this would be less of a problem, and now that the wedding is over I feel like I don't need them to be elegant and pretty, just neat, but other than those incidents, and the fact that typing is different on either my phone or my laptop, I've actually really enjoyed my nails being longer.

The only problem I have with my nails at the moment is how quickly I need to get them replaced, though I think that that is at least in part because of the number of nappy changes and bottles I am doing, because it means I'm constantly washing my hands, and that doesn't help nails, even gels, to last as long as they can do.

Honestly. I think I'm going to message my nail artist tomorrow, because the last thing I want is to end up back at the stage where I'm biting my nails until my finger hurt, but I think I will get them done shorter so that I can let my nail beds have a bit of a rest from the peeling sensation and also get back to typing like normal. A bit driver in that though is because I don't think I could paint my nails well by myself, even if they were as strong without the BIAB gel on them, but it does mean it will soon be time to say goodbye to my wedding nails, which is kind of sad.

The Sucky Thing About NC500,

I say this as a person who is not a lover of driving and just sees it as a way to get from point A to point B, but I can say from experience as well as the input of my husband, the sucky thing about the North Coast 500 isn't anything to do with the parts that have been rebuilt, or the fact that some sections may or may not have average speed cameras, or the fact that there are definitely average speed cameras on the way up there. It's not the single track roads or the parts where you see abandoned homes and businesses which clearly couldn't make it through the seasonal nature of the trip (because you don't want to risk going and hitting closed roads with snow gates across them, or the conditions when the roads are so wet you can barely see) but the fact that in the UK we aren't taught to drive, we're taught to pass a test.

This is not meant to knock driving instructors because I loved my driving instructor. She had a lot to put up with because I legitimately panicked and cried behind the wheel, more than once, but once I had passed my test people who had been driving for longer told me that now was the time to learn to drive properly, which kind of annoyed me, but I also had no idea what it meant and that kind of continued until I met my husband.

One massive difference between the pair of us is that he learnt to drive when he was seventeen, and did his pass plus and then spent the next decade and a half driving all manner of different vehicles and in different environments which have shaped the way that he drives and how good of a driver he is. He is someone who loves cars and karting etc, but he's at home behind the wheel of a car, and he swaps between our little sports car (don't get too excited, she is a shed) and our big family car with ease whereas I still put the roof down when I revere the sports car (because the rear view mirror is tiny and the roof being off means much more visibility) and scream occasionally when driving the big family car, because it's a bus in my head.

Tangent, I know...

In the UK we're taught to check our rear view mirror when we're reversing or when we join a new road, but the NC500 is a lot of time on a small number of roads, so in theory, you can get away with checking your rear view mirror, less than ten times on the whole trip unless you're looking at the view, though that might be a bit of an exaggeration. The same drive in other countries would not look anything like the same. 

Now, there are signs in a lot of places which say 'Police Notice - Allow overtaking' or words to that effect, but it comes across more as a polite notice than an instruction. You'd think that it would be pretty simple though, because all traffic travels at the same speed, but that's where it gets more complicated. The route of the NC500 is generally single track or single lanes in each direction, so cars can go one speed, vans are ten miles an hour slower, and trucks and tankers are restricted as well, but that's mainly in terms of their size and capacity to accelerate. The signs referenced above are there to try and reduce traffic - telling slower vehicles to get in a lay by or passing place and allow faster vehicles past, not to say allow people to speed (but let's face it, this isn't Formula 1 and these bozos are not the safety car!) but to stop traffic building up by playing a game of follow the leader doing forty miles an hour (at best) when the speed limit is sixty.

This problem is amplified by the number of camper vans on the NC500, which is a great way to see the route, but they are vans, so lower speed limits, difficulties accelerating, yada yada yada, and there are specific companies who rent out camper vans in the area for people to hire to do the NC500. So not only do you have camper vans coming out the wazoo, some of them are being driven worse than noobs on Christmas Day and Boxing Day when it's their first time on Grand Theft Auto...

Worse still you have people like me that never really learnt to overtake, so even if you're in a car with a decent sized engine and not dragging a caravan, half a kitchen or a tent box on the roof, have a clear shot at the road with a straight line and good visibility, you might not know how to safely get around the van or vehicle in front, let alone doing it quickly, or have the inclination to do it, because any length of time driving on the wrong side of the road feels unnatural and I don't recommend doing it whilst screaming.

The stupid thing is, it's only really small adjustments which would make it so much easier and a much more pleasant drive for everyone. If you know you're not in a "fast" vehicle, check your rear view mirror, and if there is at least one faster vehicle behind you, pull to the side, but definitely if there is a small or medium queue developing, Pull. To. The. Side. There are plenty of passing places and lay-by's for a reason and they are very well marked. If you get stuck behind someone in a "slower" vehicle and for whatever reason you won't do an overtake, Pull. To. The. Side. Or at least leave a big enough gap so someone can overtake you, come back in and then go for an overtake on the slow vehicle. There are so many ways to make overtaking easier, but it's not even the important bit. The important bit is remembering that it's not about driving like you're Billy Big Potatoes or doing something out of frustration or because you feel like you have to, but just having a bit of consideration for other drivers etc and getting out of the way occasionally. Even if you forget to check your mirror and someone has to remind you by flashing their headlights or flicking their indicators at you to get you to just move your dawdling ass, don't then flip them the bird like they're the one in the wrong (because they're not, you are). I'm looking at you Mr Peugot, and I don't give a stuff if it was a rental.

Before anyone thinks it was something where we should have just put up or shut up, it was about fourteen miles of single track road with multiple passing places, where we were car number one in the queue behind them and by the time they pulled over and flipped the bird, there were twelve cars in the queue. Naturally that queue of twelve was only going to get longer the longer time it went on for, and this is on one of their less busy roads. One of the other vehicles in that line was a recovery truck. Yes, the NC500 isn't a race track - it's not like going to the Nurberg ring and trying to post the fastest time your vehicle can do or the fastest time you can manage, but there's a difference between a road trip at a reasonable speed where you see the sights of the edges of mainland Scotland and driving around in an ever extending queue which then takes an age to clear when the blocker gets out of the way. On the A9 on the way back we saw a wide vehicle which was either a large farm vehicle or part of the dualling works which are going on to try and reduce some of these problems and there was over a hundred and fifty cars already in a queue (and yes, we did count, like it was football passes during a screening of The Room) behind it with no chance of passing for a significant section of road. That is obviously more complicated because being a wider vehicle the options for being able to pull over and allow other vehicles to pass safely, but in that queue were multiple coaches, buses, lorries, vans and camper vans, so even if the schedule and the road allowed this vehicle to pull over, there would be additional issues, and I don't want to think about the amount of time added to the journeys of those joining the back of that queue. 

One Thing I Hate In AirBnBs Is,

I think this pre-exists being a mum, but at the same time I think it was amplified by the fact that when we were away last week (or last week to when this is posted, because I'm writing it on the last night of the honeymoon having been drafting it in my head for the past half an hour...) in Scotland, in an AirBnB, our son was the most mobile he has ever been and he was expressing his distaste for being contained. He's very much used to having his bottle by himself and he kind of likes it that way, but he doesn't tend to have his bottles in a high chair and I'm trying to convince him to, partly because I think it helps him get into the habit of having a bottle and food, without having to do bottle in one place and food in another, but I digress... 

When my son was in the high chair, he would lob things off the tray table or anything that was close to him and he's got a pretty good arm...

So why does this make me hate AirBnBs? Well, that's overstating it, but I do get frustrated when AirBnBs have these Scandi style sofas with the legs and the bases that are six inches off of the floor, or other furniture where there is a large gap at the bottom, because when little man decides he wants to throw things, I have more places to look to find them and more places to look after the stay, before checking out, to make sure we haven't forgotten anything. 

It's not just AirBnBs, of course, but the last hotel we stayed in had divan beds and I still lost a knitting needle and had to go back and check all around the furniture, but I knew it was far less likely to have been under the furniture and missed rather than furniture which is easy to hoover underneath but also easy to push things under, especially when you're a few months old and you get your butt right under the furniture for fun.

We had an awesome honeymoon and really enjoyed the AirBnB we stayed in except for a few little personal notes like the frying pan was terrible which massacred the omelettes I tried to make for breakfast one morning, and the fact that the wood fired hot tub was frustrating because when I want to go in a hot tub, I want to go in it now, not in two to three hours when I've chopped wood, built a fire and finally got it going and loaded it up enough to keep it going whilst I'm in it. Oh, and midges but that's not the AirBnBs fault... They provided a travel cot so we didn't need to bring our own, brought a high chair so that we didn't have to think about that either, left some small supplies in the kitchen and even put roses in a vase, rose petals on the bed and a bottle of champagne to enjoy because it was our honeymoon, but even without the added extras, the place was just stunning, modern, quirky and yet well thought out, and they had cows.

I just would have loved to not have had my husband (Christ that's still fun to say) waiting in the car with the baby whilst I checked every room from lying on the floor to make sure we didn't leave anything too many hours north of our place to want to go back and get it... 

The Night Before,

This is the last blog I need to write before the wedding to ensure that there is something prepped to be published whilst I'm on my honeymoon and I am honestly surprised and bemused I can even say that because getting to the stage where we booked a honeymoon seemed almost impossible at one stage for one reason or another, but there's going to be precious little time between us leaving the venue and returning home to when we need to leave home again so this needs to be done tonight...

...

Surprise, surprise, it did not get done... And I convinced myself that I would get it done on the night before the wedding, and surprising no one, that didn't happen either and now that we're post wedding, on the honeymoon and looking back no it all, I can't even remember what it was that I was thinking about writing or trying to write. I was the picture of organisation - not! - and then I realised that I still had a million things to do. Post wedding, I still feel like I have a lot to do, but it's less and I'm working on chilling out on the honeymoon, enjoying myself and time with my child and MY HUSBAND!, and trying not to stress about the fact that this was a rather long way to say nothing at all... 

Are You Trying To Be A Mummy Blogger Now?,

Did you miss the part where I said I'm terrible at Instagram? It was on my Instagram... But on stories, so it won't still be there.

I read something the other day which described maternity leave as a peak into a life that you never imagined and never knew you wanted. It's about slow mornings and spending time cherishing your child and the developments they are making and the learning they are doing and the growth that they are going through, and all too soon it's over and your back to meetings and emails and everything else your job entails, and so many of us are over it. So many mum's try to start businesses or side gigs that let them be at home more and stay present with their kid or kids. Am I trying to do that? No, I'm not, for a few reasons.

I'm not going to lie, the idea of sending my child to nursery and going back to work is daunting, partly because it feels so alien. Work was a completely different life ago and a wholly different version of me, but I also appreciate that the structure of it will be good for me, and the structure of nursery will be good for my son, and the socialising with other children will be good for him, too. He can play in different ways with different people and different toys, and it's something I would never be able to provide for him at home, and more than anything I want what is best for him, and being at home permanently with just me and his dad in the evenings, I don't think that is what is best for him.

One of the things I have to factor in as well is that I have a good job. Technically I have a great job. I work for the Civil Service and that affords me decent holidays, decent maternity leave and maternity pay, flexibility and stability in a way that my own part time, self employed, whatever thing never could, and there is a lot of value in that. There's also a lot of value in being able to go in, do my job, then come home without being mentally or physically exhausted like I might be from either turning the garden into a jam making, cider making or cake making exercise (we have A LOT of fruit) and actually be present with my child. Depending on different options, I can look at compressing my hours and having a day a week with him, or working term time only so that we actually have the school holidays to do something. Whilst it's possible to do that with your own side hustle or otherwise I think it's also possible that whilst work is there, you want to do it so that you make as much as you can from it to do other things, but then it bleeds over into family time. Something like that requires being strict with yourself in a way I'm not good at. 

I love writing. I have loved it for a very long time and when NaNoWriMo went down in flames it felt like a physical wound that took a long time to heal. I don't have the capacity anymore to write the way I used to. When I was single and wasn't a mother I could sit for hours and lock in on what I was writing and even if I thought afterwards that it was a waste of time, it didn't matter, because it was my time to waste. Now, it's my time with my husband, it's my time with my child, and I can't sit at the breakfast bar in my old flat and ignore the pain I put myself in hunched over the laptop typing furiously away at whatever I'm working on. I couldn't do it at the moment because typing with these nails is infuriating! Writing blogs, even when I write a few at a time and schedule them, is cathartic to me, but can I keep it up when I've got work to juggle, too? We'll see! Can I make it a side hustle? Probably not, because I won't have the time or the commitment to get through that slog to make it happen, and even then you have to be incredibly lucky. Would I make it my career like I used to want? Even if I was given the opportunity to, I don't think I would, because I wouldn't trust myself not to become very isolated and very distracted when my sole work place was in my home, and grabbing the laptop at 2am is an option, even if it's not a healthy one.

Also, I think a lot of mummy bloggers either post their children online - which we aren't doing - or post them with emojis over their faces - which still feels too risky to me - or write or share things I don't think their child will appreciate being online when they get older. Yes, I talk about my kid on here, but I'm not sharing every cough, spit and bowel movement and I never would. Children's online lives are the subject of a lot of debate and I honestly think that if there was a feasible way for myself and my husband to move with our child to Sweden we would genuinely consider it, partly because it would be an adventure and an experience but also because of the way that the country is rolling back on technology within education and refocusing on physical textbooks and handwriting. I know from personal experience that writing with pen and paper and writing with a laptop are two very different things. Add writing with a typewriter in there and I really understand why one of the attendees to the last Night of Writing Dangerously turned up with a Smith Corona on a sack truck with their novel pages in a box or a folder. (I regret not photographing that particular eccentricity - it was epic!) Personally I find that typing on a typewriter - the proper old manual types, not the later electrics, adds a darkness or moodiness to my writing that I love but have little use for since it's not really my preferred genre. Engaging with hand writing is not only a different skill but it uses and develops a different part of the brain and we are losing that, or the next generations are, because we focus so heavily on computers and how much they can do for us so that we don't have to. When you think about how far social media use goes with that, it's scary and that's without the bullying possibilities, the risks of the wrong sort of people accessing images of your child, cyber stalking and deep fakes using images of children to manufacture evidence of child abuse.

At the time of writing this, we're pre-wedding, pre-honeymoon, though when this is posted we will be away and enjoying ourselves. Where we are going has limited connectivity and I honestly can't wait because it gets us away from the beck and call of the phones or the computers. The only thing calling me will be the hot tub and you bet I will be answering that one! If I was trying to build any sort of consistent following, or mummy blogger brand or anything like that, I don't think even being away like that would help me to switch off and it would likely cause me more stress because I wouldn't be able to access everything, even if I had things prepped to go live without me clicking a button. 

So no, I'm not. It's not the plan, and I'm sorry if it feels like a departure from my usual self.