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Blog confessions

February 4th, 2010 · Daily Life, memes

Adrenalynn recently posted some confessions and I was inspired to do the same because I like to share. So here are my top five confessions:

Confession Number 1

I tell my children I cannot come out and play with them in the garden because I am busy doing chores. In reality I am on Facebook, and I occassionally wave out the window to them and look like I am busy at the sink. My justification: I didn’t go through childbirth four times and provide them each with three siblings just so they could whine that they are lonely outside and need me to come and play.

Confession Number 2

When my children don’t want to go to school I tell them I am going to work, even though I work at home. My justification: I work. They need an education. It stops them having a meltdown on the way to school. (They’re still self-centred enough that they haven’t thought to ask where I work. Which also means I should be good for another fifteen years or so.)

Confession Number 3

I have been known to be late for school once or twice. In the late book I write something grown up like ‘overslept’ or ‘couldn’t find car keys’, you know, something that makes me sound super-organised when in fact I just needed a few minutes to stand in my achingly blissful silent kitchen, watching the children’s behaviour slowly disintegrating in the car like a U-rated horror movie and say to myself   …….and BREATHE. About fourteen times. My justification? I may be late for school, but I look completely together about it.

Confession Number 4

I am having Botox. Don’t judge me, because I’m having the Botox in my ass.

Confession Number 5

Sometimes, just very very occasionally, although almost never you know, I am happier writing about my children than I am actually parenting them. OK so shoot me, but come and meet my children first and then make that decision. Come during the arsenic hour. It’ll be fun!

So, have you posted your confessions?

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Me and my compulsive internet habit

February 3rd, 2010 · Reports and Research

Uh oh!

People who spend a lot of time browsing the net are more likely to show depressive symptoms, according to the first large-scale study of its kind in the West by University of Leeds psychologists.

Researchers found striking evidence that some users have developed a compulsive internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. The results suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.

via Excessive Internet use is linked to depression.

That might explain a lot about me then.

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Counseling

February 1st, 2010 · All Gone Wrong

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On Friday we went for family counselling.

I could stop there and leave that loaded sentence to show how crappy things have really become round here. But there’s a reason I blog anonymously and it’s so I can share with you the, err, let’s call it grittier shall we, side of life. Basically, I’m everything you’re looking for on a Monday morning!

So on Friday we went for family counselling. I was apprehensive to say the least about talking to strangers about our circumstances but then I thought, hang on, it’s just like blogging! And so I smartened us all up, wiped a few snotty faces and off we went, me with pockets stuffed with bribes at the thought of the one hundred and twenty minutes ahead of us with someone who would be writing down everything, which would consist almost entirely of notes about my inability to control my rowdy children. Except, ha! I took ammunition in the form of food. Lots of it. About a hundred and twenty minutes worth in fact.

The counsellor talked to the children in turn, small talk at first to make them feel right at home, ALTHOUGH I’M THINKING THE LEGO BOX WITH ITS CONTENTS SPREAD ALL OVER THE FLOOR DID THAT, and then she gradually ramped it up to start getting to the heart of issues affecting us as a family. The bigger children were reasonably forthcoming, Harry actually giving them a ten minute impromptu presentation explaining how he behaves: ‘I hit, scream, kick and throw things‘ he said and I half expected him to turn and point to the whiteboard, or give a Powerpoint presentation entitled ‘Ten Things that Set off My Bad Behaviour’. If nothing else, he’s got a good future as a public speaker. Although given he didn’t try to put a spin on his actions at home, I’m guessing politics is out of the question.

William was equally forthcoming but given he has speech difficulties it was often up to me to interpret for the consellor. But he explained how he always picked the sad and angry faces when trying to tell his teachers how he was feeling. He told her how he had no friends and when he did make a friend, the friend was Someone Else’s Friend when he returned from another period off sick. He told her how he was too tired to play in the playground and often had to sit on the friendship bench. Then when someone offered to play with him, he said no thanks and that friend wondered why the hell he was sitting on the friendship bench (it doesn’t occur to him to tell them that he is tired). He told her about the pain and the medicines and the worries about having to go to hospital. He told her about the times he wished he was dead.

I can tell you that it feels like having a knife stabbed through your heart to hear your child talk like that.

The little two had really nothing constructive to say, which is hardly surprising given that the one year old can’t speak and the four year old’s world revolves around using the Force. But Ben’s stammer was apparent and she wrote it down in her notes. And possibly that he likes to Strike A Pose (I didn’t explain his ‘using the Force’ action – she’s the counsellor, it gives her something interesting to wrestle with).

I told her about my postnatal depression but how I had recovered and was better at looking after myself now. I told her how I basically fell apart between February and September last year after Wiliam was diagnosed but was doing better now.

Doing better.

I’m doing better, but as a family we are not.

She summed up at the end when the children had lost interest in spreading the lego into every corner of her office and I think she had us pretty much spot on. Although given I was doing a passable impression of a sheepdog trying to keep all four children rounded up and not bleating too loudly while she was summing up,  I’ll no doubt be marking her letter for mistakes, when it arrives, possibly with red pen because it will make me feel like I have JUST A LITTLE BIT OF POWER IN THIS WHOLE PROCESS. ‘Cos that sounds a bit more proactive than seeing the bottom of a wine bottle.

We have long term help in front of us. I think of all the intervention we have had in the last year and ahead of us and I think about the files being compiled on us, the private things being written about us not coping. It leaves me sick with worry, if I’m honest.

But then I imagine what our family might look like a few years down the road without help and I think it is my family is that is important. My family. Nothing else.

Photo credit: macinjoshdotcom

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What a week

January 24th, 2010 · Daily Life

Matthew returns today after ten days away in the US. He is frequently away so it is not like the last week has been anything particularly out of the ordinary. Still, I am surprised that I have survived.

Let’s see. What did I do?

Well, I parented four naughty boys without any of us really losing our cool. Result!

I billed a client for 30 hours of work. (Awesome.)

I cooked twenty meals from scratch, baked ten salt-free loaves of bread and prepared five low-potassium dishes (which required extra forward planning). Domestic goddess!

I only ate one chocolate bar. Honestly.

I went running. Round the garden with the boys, but it’s exercise right? I say great, my body say NO.

I entertained ten other children here and no-one ended up in ER. Again with the awesome.

I gave to charity and then, unsolicited, my children gave their pocket money to charity too. Gotta love their big hearts.

We tidied out a certain boys’ bedroom. This took WAY longer than it sounds.

I managed ten showers which is an outright miracle. The clothes may have only been changed once or twice though (getting four others looking presentable means number five – me – usually doesn’t, but I was clean underneath at least, right?)

I dealt with a certain four year old who likes to whine all the way from bed to school and back again. It was fun!

I got three children off to school with lunchboxes and bags and all their other crap and nobody got left behind. I did try to leave the whiny one behind but he insisted in getting in the car.

I was kept awake many nights by a one year old coming down with an ear infection. Gotta love how they like to do this when Daddy is away!

In short, COME HOME MATTHEW.

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Research finds first oral bacteria linking a mother and her stillborn baby

January 23rd, 2010 · Pregnancy, Reports and Research

New research linking oral bacteria to stillbirth suggests that women who are considering a pregnancy should seek dental care to take care of any oral health problems before getting pregnant. If pregnant, expectant mothers should practice good oral health and alert the doctor to any gum bleeding.

Yiping Han, a researcher from Department of Periodontics at Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine, reports the first documented link between a mother with pregnancy-associated gum disease to the death of her fetus.

The mother delivered her fullterm baby at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, at 39 weeks and five days.

During the 35-year-old mother’s pregnancy (her first), she told Han she experienced excessive gum bleeding, a symptom of pregnancy-associated gingivitis. Approximately 75 percent of pregnant women experience gum bleeding due to the hormonal changes during pregnancy.

Bleeding associated with the gingivitis allowed the bacteria, normally contained to the mouth because of the body’s defense system, to enter the blood and work its way to the placenta.

Even though the amniotic fluid was not available for testing, Han suspects from work with animal models that the bacteria entered the immune-free amniotic fluid and eventually ingested by the baby.

Han says normally a mother’s immune system takes care of the bacteria in the blood before it reaches the placenta. But in this case, the mother also experienced an upper respiratory infection like a cold and low-grade fever just a few days before the stillbirth.

“The timing is important here because it fits the time frame of hematogenous (through the blood) spreading we observed in animals,” Han said.

Postmortem microbial studies of the baby found the presence of F. nucleatum in the lungs and stomach. The baby had died from a septic infection and inflammation caused by bacteria.

Using DNA cloning technologies, Han found a match in the bacterium in the mother’s mouth with the bacterium in the baby’s infected lungs and stomach.

via CWRU research finds first oral bacteria linking a mother and her stillborn baby.

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Bisphenol A – the potential dangers and how you can avoid it

January 19th, 2010 · Reports and Research

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We went Bisphenol-A (BPA) free a few years ago because I wasn’t convinced about the safety of BPA so it is interesting to see that the FDA is changing its position on this component:

In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008.

The agency said Friday that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans.

via In Reversal, U.S. Expresses Concern Over Additive to Plastics – NYTimes.com.

What the NYTimes doesn’t mention though, is the potential problem with BPA leaching from canned food. We still eat some canned food – can’t find proper baked beans outside a can – but it is much less than it used to be. More info about BPA in cans here:

Consumers Reports Confirms Bisphenol A Leaches from Tin Cans

And if you want to read about Bisphenol-A this is a great site:

Bisphenol-A Free

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Bloggers for Haiti – shelterboxes

January 19th, 2010 · Ways you can help

I don’t know about you, but this picture makes my heart soar. These are the first shelterboxes arriving in Haiti.

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Bloggers for Haiti are on their way to raising the money for our seventh shelterbox. Seventh! That’s shelter and help for seventy people for many months while Haiti recovers from the devastation.

shelterbox

Each box contains:

  • a ten-person tent, designed to withstand extreme temperatures, high winds and heavy rainfall.
  • a range of other survival equipment including thermal blankets and insulated ground sheets, as well a life saving means of water purification.
  • a basic tool kit containing a hammer, axe, saw, trenching shovel, hoe head, pliers and wire cutters can be found in every box. These items enable people to improve their immediate environment, by chopping firewood or digging a latrine, for example.
  • every item is durable, practical and brand new. The box itself is lightweight and waterproof and has been used for a variety of purposes in the past – from water and food storage containers to a cot for a newly born baby.
  • a wood burning or multi-fuel stove – that can burn anything from diesel to old paint. This provides the heart of the new home where water is boiled, food is cooked and families congregate. In addition, there are pans, utensils, bowls, mugs and water storage containers.

Won’t you join us in raising money? You can donate via Just Giving here: The Bloggers for Haiti .

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Chase Community Giving – vote for Nephcure

January 18th, 2010 · Ways you can help

As most of you know, my son has FSGS, a leading cause of kidney failure in children. There is no cure and there are no effective treatments. JP Morgan Chase Bank is running a Facebook competition to give $1,000,000 to a non-profit charity.

If you are on Facebook, please vote for Nephcure, the charity researching FSGS and Nephrotic Syndrome. IT TAKES JUST A FEW SECONDS, that’s all, and they could win $1,000,000 from Chase bank. Click through, become a fan of Chase Giving and then press ‘vote for Nephcure’. It’s that simple!

And then if you felt able, please help spread the word on facebook, twitter, your blog or via email. Please help my son and children like him who are likely to end up on dialysis and facing a transplant.

Thank you. x

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Bloggers for Haiti

January 17th, 2010 · Ways you can help

Bloggers are getting together to raise money for the people of Haiti by raising money to buy fantastic shelterboxes like these.

shelterbox

Please consider donating to The Bloggers for Haiti Just Giving page and help a family recover from the devastation of the earthquake.

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British Mummy Bloggers Carnival

January 7th, 2010 · Carnivals

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The British Mummy Bloggers Carnival is being hosted this week by A Modern Mother http://tinyurl.com/yhvmjck.

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