War Memorial

We circle the Arch of Remembrance, the war memorial in the park. It is a war of attrition, this trying to get you to nap. Your little head bobs up and down, little grey rabbit ears on your hat flapping gently. There is too much to interest you, your senses assaulted from every angle with noise and colour and pattern. So we stop our walk around the park at the memorial and I just circle. Around and around. There are wood pigeons cooing in the trees. The high pitched call of a bird I cannot name. I pause to let you listen before carrying on, steadily circling this monument of sacrifices. Gradually, your muttering and grizzling quietens and your little grey head rests gently on my chest. You are asleep. The battle won. I stop to rest on a bench but you, as if sensing my surrender to tiredness, start to stir, ready to wake again. So I carry on walking, circling the memorial, as if pulled into orbit by a gravitational force I can't resist.

'Remember in gratitude', the engraving above the arch reads. 'All who served and strove and those who patiently endured'.

There is no comparison of course, no true similarities between the battles fought and the losses suffered by these men whose unspoken names are celebrated by this monument. Nor of those who continue, to this day, to fight in wars across the globe. I am not so arrogant to assume that there is. But I feel a kind of comfort in the prescence of this giant arch of rock. It is a visual symbol of this very idea of 'patient endurance'. It seems to acknowledge battles of a different kind, albeit without pomp and ceremony.
It is guarded by iron railings, topped with brass finials. The gates into it are locked. It is sacrosanct. Entirely separate and untouchable but right now its energy is palpable. I have walked past it so many times on walks like today and barely registered it, save for it's size and the fact it seems to be a magnet for personal trainers and yoga fanatics to work out on the path which leads up to it. Yet, today, for some reason, it calls me in. I circle again, stopping frequently to look up and read the inscriptions. As if seeing it for the first time.

'I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand'. Jerusalem rings out in my head. I remember myself in another park, in another lifetime. A girl in my 20s. Last night of the proms, soaked in rain and watered liberally with beer and nourished by the rousing chorus of my girlfriends around me. I sang the words then but did not appreciate their gravity. How very distant that person feels now. How very ignorant she was of what lay ahead. Good things and bad.

Government rhetoric throughout this pandemic has called upon the metaphor of war. Whether its really an apt or appropriate analogy to draw is up for debate of course, but there is no denying that this situation has faced us all with daily battles of our own kind. This certainly feels like a kind of war. And there have, undoubtedly, been losses. We have all been enlisted to fight with small, every day sacrifices and means of attack. We have been asked to show resilience. To think of others as comrades needing our protection.

I am heading back to my battle ground now. You have woken up. Your little cheeks pink from the cold but giving the smallest smile as I kiss them. We stop circling and start to walk back home. I wonder what war will lay ahead of us between here and bedtime.

I don't want to feel this way about it. 'I want to enjoy my children, not endure them', I told my husband the other day. 'Pithy', he said. But there it is. That's how it feels. Each day a battle. My little allies sometimes feeling like the enemy. My own thoughts and feelings of inadequacy torturing me. A bombardment of guilt. Each day the battle lines are drawn, the advancing battalion of three small people who weaken my defences steadily with repeated requests for snacks and tv and attention at all costs. Repeated skirmishes between your elder brother and sister as they fight over toys and territory. And each day I feel the weapons at my disposal less effective at countering the barrage. I will not cease from mental fight nor shall my sword sleep in my hand. It will not sleep, but it is blunted nonetheless. My body is weary. My skin is literally scarred with the scratches and bites and pinches where you have tried to seek comfort from teething gums. My mind feels shell shocked.

I want to serve and strive. To endure this situation with the quiet patience that surely a good mother should feel. I want to stand strong and proud like the limestone of the war memorial in the park. But sometimes I wonder how much longer this struggle will last and just how much fight I have left in me. This writing is my memorial to this time. A testimony of the struggles that I, like thousands and thousands of mothers, have faced over this past year. It is my own anthem of remembrance and I hope that, one day, I will feel I can sing it out loud, a chorus as rousing as that girl singing Jerusalem in the park twenty years ago. 

 

Night Sailing

Things look different at night.

We sail, us two, in a boat of muddled dreams, docking at small islands of sleep, dotted across deep seas of disquietude.

In the dark we cannot fathom the waters depth, cannot know what lies beneath its murkiness. The beacon of morning often feels all too far off, beyond our horizon.

But we journey on. Our travels accompanied by the soft peaks and troughs of your daddy's breathing as he makes his own separate trip on another ocean beside us.

We navigate this journey differently sometimes. You wanting to paddle on, delighting in the waters lapping around you and the feeling of being rocked, whilst I - eyelids heavy - long for soft, warm shores and a bed of feathers for my head. Or, other times, you settle long before me and I am all adrift, wakened by thoughts which squirm and writhe like creatures of the deep.

But, still, we navigate this journey together. Every night. Our boat a shared bed. Our sails billowing with a guiding wind of love between us.

Things look different in the dark. Tonight I feel I am lost at sea. I have no compass or map for how to make this trip all over again.

But your body lays next to me. I feel my way to the soft, downy roundness of your head and run my hand along your familiar back and, all at once, I am anchored.

Phosphorescence

I stand alone by this window, alone with you. A cellophane windowed envelope beneath my foot betrays my rocking motion to the dark room. You answer it. You are awake. 

It is 2am. Late January. Snow has fallen in the garden below us. Thick. White. Virginal. Ready for the delighted feet of small children who will surely trail across it tomorrow morning when they awake. Heavy footed siblings. Sleeping now. Breathing softly and quietly in beds in rooms below us.

The falling of snow. Is this the source of this nighttime merriment? Did you want to make sure I saw the snow at it's freshest? When it lights up the night sky with the reflected glow of white?

Your arms are waving, grabbing, pulling at my hair. Your hands, in my face, rubbing at your eyes. I wonder at what those little hands would make of their first touch of snow. Those same fingers which, earlier today - on making a break for it out the kitchen door - had crawled, spider like, for the garden wall and caressed the soft, moist moss which grew upon the brick. How you studied it! I will let you touch the snow tomorrow little one. If it's still laying there come morning.

I stand alone by this window and I wonder, how many other parents stand alone at other windows? Rocking, wrestling, waiting, willing, wishing for sleep.

2.30am. A time when another me might have been padding home. Teetering. Shivering in clothes definitely not designed for winter protection. Lightheaded from noisy, jostling bodied dark rooms and nourished by fast food before falling into bed. Now I dance only in my kitchen and waver over my resolve to not eat one more biscuit from the tin. I stumble, with the hangover of yesterday's parenting, through days and am daily drunk on the delicious prospect of bedtime and 'maybe tonight will be better'.

3am. The snow will be silently melting. I hear a drift break away and fall across the roof. I see it's shadowy patterns on the dormer window of our bedroom. Your resolve is melting too. You cry, fuss, fight but you are slipping, sliding, slowly losing your resistance to sleep. I carry you back to our bed and offer you a breast again. You take it. Your eyes eventually closing.

I lie awake. I am aglow with the I interruption of my sleep. Thoughts tumble and crystallize through my weary brain. I cannot settle now. I pray that the snow will still be there come the morning. 

A Homebirth Story: Lockdown Baby

Each of my labours have been so very different. With this, my last, it felt like we got things right. 'Right', not that there is a correct or incorrect way to birth, but in the sense that it felt truly intimate, empowering, unforgettable. If I could choose a way to birth again this would be it.

The decision to have a homebirth turned out to be so right for us in many ways and I am incredibly grateful we were able to achieve this and so thankful for the support of the homebirth team who made it possible. I'm also so much in debt to the lovely community midwife - Sofia - who, recognising my high levels of anxiety about labour, prompted me to refer to the homebirth team in the first place, and to Sally the doula who also played such a vital part in our story.

So, as for the birth story, here's how it happened...

Edie was due on 16th May. In the run up to my due date I had already started to have what I thought might be signs of impending labour with bits of my mucus plug coming away and lots of Braxton Hicks, and various back pains and twinges. When the days started to pass by after my due date I started to feel more and more anxious - what would happen if I needed to be induced? Could I still have a homebirth? Would I have to face going into hospital alone?

I was feeling extremely anxious and fearful about the birth. Every day it would be the same - during the day I would feel ok but come the evening I would start to panic. My mind would spiral into frightened thoughts of labour, scenarios in which I would be out of control and/or something would go terribly wrong. And being pregnant in the context of a pandemic only served to make all these anxieties worse.

To try and overcome these anxieties I had taken some steps in pregnancy to try and best prepare myself for a fear free labour. One was signing up for an online hypnobirthing course with the Yes Mum Birth Project. I found the content of this course so useful and completely transformative in terms of my understanding of the physiology of birth. I'd also got into some good habits with listening to the audio tracks - positive affirmations as I got dressed in the mornings or whenever I had a free moment, and at night time I would listen to the relaxation track. In addition to this the Rescue Pack materials created by the Positive Birth Company came at just the right time and provided me with extra resources I could draw upon to navigate some of the fears which had arisen out of the UK lockdown - including a virtual doula, Sally, who agreed to support me on a 'just in case' basis in the event I had to face a transfer to hospital alone and without Tom.

In addition to these resources I had also developed a few other nightly rituals:

- massaging my bump when I got into bed with Lush's Sleepy lavender body cream
- creating and listening to a relaxation playlist of classical music (which I also played whilst I was doing activities I enjoy such as embroidery or reading, to create happy and relaxed connotations for the music)
- turning the lights down low and popping on my oils diffuser with lavender and geranium essential oils
- flicking through my positive affirmations cards from YMBP and reading aloud the ones which resonated most with me.

These nightly rituals proved to be really useful when it came to creating the right atmosphere during labour.

So, as mentioned, I had been having vague signs of labour starting in the preceding weeks but, with so many false alarms I was beginning to fear the day would never come spontaneously. On the Wednesday night (40 +4days) however I slept pretty badly as I woke frequently with surge like pains deep down into my pelvis. I woke on the Thursday morning (40+5) early at 5am and just felt, well, on edge, like something was going to happen today. I couldn't get back to sleep so I got out of bed and was up and dressed by 5.15am. I figured if I was going to go into labour I wanted to be ready for it! (With hindsight I really wish I had had more sleep to prepare me!)

All that day I had on and off surges. They were mild enough to be bearable and get on with my day but distinct and uncomfortable enough for me to notice them. By the time my midwife, Lou, came for my planned antenatal visit around 3pm that afternoon I was starting to feel a bit emotional and frustrated. Was this labour starting or another false alarm? Assuming the latter, Lou and I discussed my options for an induction at 40+12 and an appointment plus Covid screening was provisionally scheduled for the following week. Lou seemed confident I probably wouldn't need this and I found this really reassuring.

A couple of hours later, by 5pm, I was starting to feel more pains so, feeling like I couldn't cope with juggling the elder children anymore I stuck them in front of the TV and rested on the sofa. Tom came down from working upstairs in his office to help out and prep dinner.

By 6pm we sat down to eat. I managed to eat a bit but by then I could feel the surges were becoming more regular and a bit more intense and I was starting to feel a bit emotional. I had the most overwhelming urge to run upstairs and hide in the dark, like an animal wanting to find a quiet space to birth their young. So Tom finished off doing dinner and the bedtime routine with the kids and I went up to our bedroom. (We explained to Emmy that mummy wasn't feeling great because of the baby in her tummy and so could she please be extra helpful for daddy at bedtime and she very sweetly cooperated, first of all running up the stairs after me to give me a 'big cuddle to feel better' and to say she hoped 'the pains didn't hurt me too much in the night' and that I could use her pink heart cushion to cuddle to make me feel better. Really, she is just too lovely!).

When I got up to our room I started to panic a little as it suddenly felt like time was moving really quickly and I couldn't figure out in my head what to do first to prepare. First of all I phoned the homebirth team mobile to let them know I thought labour was starting and they agreed they would get someone to drop the pool round and do an initial assessment. Then I jumped in the shower for probably the quickest shower of my life and brushed my teeth - for some reason I was worried the baby was going to come really quickly and it felt important I be dressed and clean. Why I thought this I'm not sure now?! I got dressed into some fresh, comfy clothes, closed the curtains to get the room nice and dark, got my essential oils going in the diffuser, massaged myself with an anxiety relief blend of oils (purchased from Emma Parr) and loaded up a hankie with my pain relieving blend (black pepper, lavender, peppermint and bergamot) to sniff during contractions. Then I laid out my affirmation cards on the bed and turned on my relaxation playlist - a mix of lots of classical music.

With the scene all set I sat down on the bed to close my eyes and ride out each surge but that's when the reality of labour hit. With Tom downstairs still settling the kids to bed and me alone the fear began to kick in. I started to get tearful and just really, really wanted my mum. (The plan had been for her to be here for the birth but with the lockdown in place that sadly couldn't happen - a huge disappointment and upset.) I called and cried down the phone to her and she just sat and listened to me, offered calm words of encouragement as I paused to breathe through each surge and chatted to me about her garden to distract me between each one. Just hearing her voice was such a source of comfort. (You never get too old to want your mum!)

Once Tom was able to come upstairs to join me the surges felt like they were coming with increasing regularity and intensity. I hadn't heard back from the homebirth midwife team yet so I called again whilst Tom popped downstairs to clear the kitchen/dining room to make way for the pool. The midwife confirmed that someone was on their way and would be with me shortly.

Then, at 8pm, the lovely Lucy arrived - just in time to be cheered on by neighbours on our street who were out on their doorsteps doing the Clap for Carers! When she arrived the first thing she asked was how I was feeling and I levelled with her that I was feeling very frightened and shed a few tears. She couldn't have been kinder or more reassuring, telling me that I was good at having babies and that this was an exciting time - I was going to meet my baby soon! After doing an assessment and running through some questions with me we agreed that Lucy would leave Tom and I for a bit as, as she put it, I was looking a bit too comfortable with my contractions and things needed to get going a bit more. We felt confident that we could handle things and that we could call her back at any time so it seemed best to let her go on to deal with other patients. This was one just after 9pm.

With Lucy gone, Tom helped me pop on my Tens machine and we headed upstairs to our room to settle down on the bed. We watched back to back episodes of the American Office to distract me and ate jelly babies to keep my energy up. I carried on using the Tens and my oils hankie to manage each surge and I monitored how long they were/their intensity. By around 10.30/11ish I was starting to get tired and a bit restless. Should I be calling the midwife back yet?, I asked Tom. He felt, based on what he was seeing of the way I was handling contractions, that it might still be too soon so we held on for a bit longer.

Then things seemed to change. My surges, which had been regular and feeling pretty intense, suddenly seemed to really slow down. I started to panic a bit. What was happening? Was this all a false alarm? So just before 1am I called and spoke to Lucy (another midwife of the same name!) and told her what was going on. She was reassuring, telling me that my body knew what it was doing and that sometimes contractions can slow down a little to give your body a chance to rest. She suggested cuddling up with Tom and watching something nice on tv to get the oxytocin flowing and so we did exactly that, popping on yet another episode of The Office and eating more jelly babies.

I'm not sure if we even made it through a whole episode after that however as very soon the surges seemed to come back with even more intensity and I was finding it harder to concentrate on them. I started to feel really shaky and we decided to head downstairs whilst I felt I could still get down there to fill the pool and ring the midwives again.

Once downstairs I sat on the edge of the sofa, by now really starting to tremble uncontrollably and beginning to feel more pressure down into my botttom which made me panic a little that it wouldn't be long till baby would be wanting to arrive. Tom started filling the pool then called the midwives again to update them. I could hear them on the end of the phone explaining that they were just finishing up at another birth around 25 minutes drive away so the earliest they could be with us was realistically 45 minutes to an hour. They briefed Tom on what to do if I felt I needed to push or suggested the other option was to call an ambulance now if I felt I couldn't wait and transfer to hospital.

Tom ended the call and I was feeling very emotional. I really didn't want to go to hospital but the thought of the midwives not making it in time was terrifying. Tom was so calm however. He felt, having watched me in two previous labours, that I wasn't as far a long as I thought and said he thought the time would fly by.

Still feeling quite frightened however I decided to give Sally, our virtual doula, a quick call (I had already messaged her early that evening to give her a heads up I was in labour and she had said some lovely messages back with lots of positive affirmations that I could do this). At that moment I just wanted to hear her voice of reassurance and to keep her posted in case I really did end up in an ambulance to hospital. If I'm honest I don't really remember exactly what was said on that call but I remember how Sally made me feel. Just hearing her voice helped me refocus and regain my sense of control. She was so calm and confident that I would be ok. I remember her sense of excitement that this was it, I was going to meet my baby soon! - and it was genuine excitement too, all the more lovely given that I had just woken her up in the small hours of the morning! I remember her saying she wished she could be there with us, but just that short phone call really did bring her into our birth space with us. I'll be forever grateful for that as I feel that her reassurance, along with Tom's calm confidence, kept us on track for the homebirth I wanted.

Whilst we continued to wait for the midwives to arrive I rode out each contraction sitting on the edge of the sofa with Tom sat behind me. He rubbed my bump and held me tight through each surge and softly told me what a great job I was doing and how proud he was. I have no idea how long we sat like that but it was such a beautiful and intimate time, just us two, waiting to meet our baby.

The feeling of pressure downwards and the sense of wanting to push soon was really beginning to intensify, so I was SO relieved to hear the doorbell ring. "Oh great, it'll be that takeaway I ordered", Tom quipped as he went to get the door.

The midwives - Lucy and Lucy - arrived around 2.45am (just as our milkman was delivering our milk strangely, for some reason I remember hearing the bottles clinking from the front door through my labouring fog!). They found me, still sniffing away at my oils on my hankie with each surge and muttering to myself relentlessly "It's all ok, release, release, it's all ok..." as I rode the wave of each contraction. I apologised to Lucy for sounding crazy talking to myself. "Hey, whatever works!", she said.

The next bit is all a bit of a blur really. Building contractions, Lucy doing all the necessary observations of baby and I, Tom making sure the pool was the right temperature...

Then it was time to get in the pool. I was just about to strip down to my bra vest to get in when I felt like I needed a wee again and so I waddled off to the downstairs loo - I remember calling for Tom to wait outside the door as I didn't want to be alone. When I got to the loo however I sat down and felt a sudden pop and a release of pressure. "I think my waters just broke", I cried out, half panicking that I had just given birth in the loo!

What followed was the most intense surge so far, so strong it brought me to my knees on the toilet floor, accompanied by the most overwhelming urge to push. I remember Lucy coming quickly to the door and encouraging me to get up and just feeling like I couldn't stand. "It's so hard!", I cried. But Lucy was great, "I know," she said, "Let's get you in that pool", helping me up.

The walk from the loo across the kitchen to the birth pool, set up in the dining room, felt like the longest walk I've ever done and I remember having to stop half way and feeling panicked the baby was going to fall out of me onto the hard kitchen floor. But I made it to the pool and, with Lucy and Tom's helped, managed to climb in and rest on my knees with my head leant on the side of the pool.

Time does strange things when you're in labour and the next and last bit of labour, the pushing, simultaneously felt like it took forever and no time at all. I remember so vividly that incredible sensation of pressure, of baby bearing down, and just crying out - first with actual words "It's burning!! Is it ok?! Is it all ok?!" and then just noise, roars and cries, and sounds I didn't know I could make under normal circumstances. But although it felt like this went on for ages, looking back at my discharge notes from the midwives it seems there was only 17 minutes from waters breaking to baby arriving so I really wasn't pushing all that long at all. And then there she was! All 7lb 90z of her!

That moment meeting your baby for the first time defies capturing in words. It's like meeting a complete stranger but simultaneously feeling like you've always known one another. It's like the biggest adrenaline rush ever and yet also the hugest sense of calm and relief imaginable - they're here, my baby is here and safe. It's a moment of gratitude of 'I never have to go through that pain again!' and yet also somehow almost instantly forgetting it ever hurt and romantically hoping you'll get to have that same addictive rush of love just one more time. It's nothing short of miraculous.

We had chosen not to find out the gender this time around (we had with the first two) so it was a genuine surprise. I think I held her for quite some time however before I even looked to find out she was a girl - I just wanted to hold my baby and try to take it all in. But, if I'm honest, I had been dreaming of and hoping for another little girl and so could not have been happier.

After a few minutes of just holding her and kissing her tiny little face, whilst she cried - the loudest and fiercest cry of all three of my babies! - Lucy encouraged me to try and deliver the placenta. I felt so incredibly weak and shaky at this point I struggled with this a bit, plus I must admit I felt a bit freaked out by the feeling of yet more pressure down into my botttom - "Oh god, it's not another baby is it?!", I asked Lucy. Eventually, after some more attempts at pushing and nothing happening, Lucy helped me to stand up to see if gravity would help. It did, and my placenta was delivered with a loud splash into the pool. (It turned out, in closer inspection, that my placenta had started to calcify and fragment, making me even more grateful in hindsight that she arrived when she did and I didn't have to wait another week for induction. I also ended up with a bit of suspected retained placenta and an infection a few days later which made me feel really rotten and needed a course of antibiotics.)

With the cord cut Tom finally got the chance to take our baby for a first cuddle. He stripped off his tshirt and settled down for a bit of skin to skin whilst Lucy and Lucy helped me out the pool and onto the sofa which they had covered with masses of maternity pads and towels. They checked me over - no tearing, no stitches, whoop! - and then it was time for me to have more cuddles and try to give that first all important feed.

It's funny - having breastfed two babies to 2 years of age, and only having finished feeding Max 4 months ago I'd have thought I'd know what I was doing, but it still felt strange and scary trying to latch on this tiny and delicate newborn, and little did I know then we would have many struggles ahead of us over the coming days, but we managed and I held my little girl and stared down at her in wonder as she took her first mouthfuls of that precious colostrum.

I laid like this on the sofa for some time whilst Lucy and Lucy cleaned up and packed up around me and did all the necessary checks on baby and I. Tom helped empty the pool (my front garden reaped the benefits of the water from the pool and any blood it contained!) and then made me tea (with actual caffeine, the joy!) and a toasted cinnamon bagel. Post delivery food really is the best food ever!

By about 5.30am Lucy and Lucy had done everything they needed to do and reassured us that a midwife would be in contact to arrange coming out to check on us the next day. They congratulated us again on baby's arrival and then left - leaving Tom, baby and I to just try and process what had happened! We sat there, still a bit in happy shock and wanting to call everyone to share the news. About half an hour to an hour later we heard footsteps upstairs and then the little patter of Emmy's feet as she came in to the room to meet her little sister. Being able to be at home so that the children could wake up to a new sibling in this way was just so incredibly special and just one of the very many benefits to having a homebirth.

I feel so very very lucky to have had the birth we did with our little girl. It could not have been more perfect and I am so very very grateful to the homebirth team of midwives who cared for me so brilliantly - from antenatal care right through to their very sensitive handling of a post natal (and very emotional!) me. I really was struggling with a lot of anxiety ahead of labour - and at points during labour - but being at home hugely helped me to stay calm. I felt completely in control and safe throughout. Being able to set the atmosphere exactly how I wanted it and having a large part of my labour in the comfort and safety of my own bedroom with just Tom and I cuddled up together really did totally transform my experiences of birth. It could not have been more different to the first two - a scary hospital delivery with epidural, two hours of pushing and 2nd degree tears with the first, an incredibly speedy birth centre pool delivery with the second. I totally appreciate that homebirth is not for everyone for many reasons. (I didn't think it was for me if I'm honest - having practically laughed at Sofia when she suggested it when I was pregnant with Max!) Having now experienced it however I cannot recommend it highly enough and would do it again in a heartbeat... I'd have to convince Tom that even numbers of children are best though!

If you've made it this far, thanks so much for reading my birth story. I'm really happy to answer any questions or talk further about it if it would help anyone out, please do just drop me a line on kirstylauramason@googlemail.com

Also, if you have made it this far please check out the Five X More website at https://www.fivexmore.com to read more about the campaign to address the disparity in maternal mortality rates of black, Asian and ethnic minority women in birth compared with white women. Please consider donating if you can, because ALL women deserve the very best standards of care during pregnancy and birth.

Christmas Past, New Year Present

When I was younger I used to play the flute. For hours and hours and hours on end. No one would ever have to tell me to 'go to your room and practice'. I just did. And I'd stand at the top of the stairs playing Faure's Pavane or Debussy's L'Apres Midi or some suite by Telemann, indulging in every note and the acoustics of our high ceilinged hallway. Totally engrossed. Totally immersed. 

Later, when I went off to university to study Philosophy, reading and note taking in the library had the same effect. I would study for hours - actual page turning, content digesting, mind mapping study. Totally engrossed. Totally immersed. 

Now, I struggle to read a single page of a book. I watch TV with a phone in my hand. I have no real hobbies to speak of. I cannot focus. 

Of course memories are by their nature tinted things, nostalgic rose or otherwise. But even so I am convinced that this immersion happened, that these times in my life were the last time I genuinely found it easy to really allow myself to focus in such a full sense of the word. 

So what happened? At what point did 16 year old me, or even 21 year old me become someone who is now so easily distracted? Someone who actually looks at those 'estimated reading time' notifications at the top of online articles and winces if it says it's more than 5 minutes? Someone who can’t watch a film without googling an actor or hopping onto IMDB to look up the trivia? 

When - and why - did I lose the ability to be engrossed? 

There’s no doubt in my mind that technology has at least played some part in this. I don’t know where scientific research stands on this but I’m convinced that with the advent of mobiles, more frequent internet use and the explosion of social media we’ve all experienced a kind of rewiring of our brains. Absorption and concentration have been replaced with click-bait distractions, swiping screens and flashing pop-ups. It seems fairly obvious to me that with all this background noise we can’t help but lose our focus. We think differently because we experience the world differently.

The increased anxieties and stresses which accompany this faster paced way of living surely don’t help either. It’s hard to truly engross yourself in something when there’s that little voice nagging in the back of your mind about all the things you should really be worrying about. Like whether you’re spending too much time on Facebook and should take a ‘Social Media Holiday’, whether you’ll win that eBay item you’ve been bidding on or should have just gone for the ‘Buy Now’ option, or whether you remembered to put Coco Pops on the Morrisons online shop before you checked out. You know, really important stuff.

And on a personal level, becoming a parent has perhaps had the biggest impact on my ability to focus on any single thing for any period of time. Parenting, it seems to me, is ALL about multi-tasking, and hence the very antithesis of focus. Cooking dinner / putting on a washload / washing up / preparing a bath / scraping food off the floor from the previous meal / trying to reset the TV settings so crying, cranky and food flinging baby can watch a bit of CBeebies to keep them quiet so as to get things done – all executed whilst simultaneously singing “I am the music man’ (with actions, oh yes) in order to distract said baby from the indignity of having to sit in a high chair, and all within a time space of about five minutes? Yeah, that feels like being a parent. On a quiet day.

So, with all of this to consider, it’s probably not really any wonder that I don’t often find myself indulging, engrossed, in hours of activity anymore. There’s just too much distraction out there.

This time of year seems to me a good time to reflect on these things, perhaps even to force us. After all the tinsel decked, mulled wine drenched, pine needle prickling intensity of Christmas those days afterwards become one long weekend. Everything slows down. No-one really knows what day of the week it is. And there’s still that panettone in the kitchen cupboard, unwrapped and untouched. We can’t help but lounge around and digest for a bit – in every sense of the word.

Amidst the lull the new year beckons us with the promise of fresh starts supposedly around the corner. We start planning – holidays, house moves, resolutions. “2017 will be the year that I really…(insert good intentions here). This year, perhaps even more than ever, we all seemed to want to wish away the old year and see in the new, hopeful that the chime of midnight would herald in new opportunities, renewed resilience, a new kind of world. But then New Year’s day arrives, and we’re all too hungover and tired to really follow through on those resolutions (“Not today, it’s still technically the Christmas holidays, right?”) and the world in which we passed out in bed is pretty much the same world this morning, perhaps with a few more used fireworks laying about and with slightly less stocks of paracetamol available in the average bathroom cabinet.

Still, the desire to start a new year with real and meaningful change is a strong one. And even if it does seem fairly ludicrous that we traditionally assign ourselves this one annual opportunity to ‘start again’, to ‘resolve to be different’, these kind of good intentions still remain good. They are worthwhile.

So, in the midst of Christmas and New Year this year, having over-indulged my nostalgic yearning for hours and hours spent ‘just doing stuff I like’ as much as I over-indulged my appetite for Quality Street, I had a bit of a moment of realisation. A moment of resolve.

It’s not about having a hobby, or studying, or even about trying to escape the noise of our busy technology driven lives. It’s about presence. About being in the moment.

The reality is that I can’t go back in time to a moment in my life when, being young and free from responsibility, I could – if I wanted – do whatever the hell I like for hours on end. It’s unlikely that the outside influences of 21st Century living are going to go away, or even quieten down for a bit. And I probably won’t ever be able to entirely escape that little nagging voice in my mind that makes me worry about things, nonsensical or otherwise. These things will always be there, distracting and pulling focus. But ultimately I have to take responsibility for how much I let them.

So my resolution this year? My Christmas present to myself? Presence. I resolve to find the small moments of joy in just stopping and thinking about what I’m doing. To pause more and take note of when and how I get distracted and try to overcome those influences as much as possible. For myself I hope for this to lead to some inner peace in living more in the moment, and for my daughter I hope to help model for her the joy in life which can be found in immersing yourself in something you love.

Will I succeed in keeping my resolution this year? Will I make it to next December, or even till the end of the month? Well, who knows. Let’s just take one day at a time shall we?

At leisure...

Well hello there, old blog of mine. It's been a long time. A very long time. Why the hiatus? What's happened you ask?

Well, first there was a career change (the bad one), then another career change (the good one - becoming a teacher). Then came love, then came marriage, then came the most beautiful baby (but not a whiff of a baby carriage). 

I cannot and will not complain. I've been - and am - bloody lucky. I truly do reflect every day how blessed I am to have so much good stuff in my life. Frankly I don't know what I did to deserve it. So, given that this blog has historically been an outlet at less "I'm bloody lucky" moments in my life, why write now?

Because I've rediscovered another old friend - leisure time. 

Yup, baby is at nursery and I'm unemployed so find myself in that weird, desirable and magical state - at leisure. I have a coffee. I have a book. Dammit, I even have a muffin. So why aren't I feeling leisurely? Why am I, in fact, feeling stressed? 

In the absence of answers I did what I always do. I googled. 

"Stuff about leisure time please Google". 

According to Ovid, "In our leisure time we reveal what kind of people we are." A bit of a nail biter then. Thanks for that insight. 

I found this more helpful...

"A man can never be idle with safety and advantage until he has been so trained by work that he makes his freedom from trials and tasks more fruitful then his toil has been." (Hamilton Wright Mabie)

Nail with sore head. 

Aha!, I realise. I can't enjoy this rare moment of leisure; I don't know how to make it fruitful. And I can't seem to clear my head enough to figure out how. 

It's a weird thing but over the last year or two I have longed - as most of us do - for moments like this: alone, with free time and caffeine. But - like most of us find - there has always been something in the way: 70 hour teaching weeks, marking loads, home improvements, home tidying, defrosting the fridge... More recently it's been baby juggling, with all the joys and stresses one can imagine that brings. But now, with time on my hands, I just feel a heavy mix of paralysis and nausea. 

What should I go with these hours ahead of me? Should I do more job hunting (or just cut out the middle men of the job market and just go and thrash my head against the wall?) Tidy the house? A cup of tea perhaps? Or maybe I should do some of that sewing / knitting / drawing / exercise I'm always saying I want to do? Alternatively I could just sit, paralysed and overwhelmed, checking Facebook and my emails for the god-knows-how-many-th time today, hoping for some divine inspiration or contact from the outside world.

And whilst this frozen in time inability to make any kind of meaningful choice feels uncomfortable enough there's also the wave of sickness, the stomach churning post rollercoaster feeling of not being able to stand still for a second to process the barrage of thoughts...

Is the baby ok? Is it normal she cried when I left her at nursery? Am I bad mum for leaving her? Maybe I should go pick her up?

Will I ever, ever, ever find a job? Why is this so bloody hard to find one? But should I work at all? Maybe I should be at home with the baby. Am I selfish or ungrateful for wanting more? Should I go get the baby? 

And why can't I read books anymore? What if I can never concentrate for long enough again? Should I have more coffee and try a bit more? Or go home and vacuum? Oh and when will the bloody damp patch on the wall ever dry out? 

I shouldn't have eaten that cake. Will my marshmallow post baby tummy ever go? Will I end up diabetic if I keep drinking chai lattes?! Maybe I should just go get the baby...

I cannot, it seems, feel idle with safety and advantage. And without you, old blog, I don't know how to make the time fruitful. I don't know how. 

Believe me, I know such time is a gift. I can sense - and trust me am berating myself for - the undertones of ingratitude which might seem to reverberate through this post. But I don't mean to be ungrateful. I really don't. I am lucky. I AM blessed. In so many ways.

I just wish leisure time felt a bit more, you know, leisurely. 

No Inconsistencies Aloud?

Sometimes we think we know stuff. Sometimes we think we know it better than anyone else. Particularly when that stuff is something we know about ourselves, about how we feel about things. But it’s often when we come to talk about what we know that we realise all the stuff we don’t – or else don’t know well enough. Safe inside our heads our thoughts about things seem solid, sturdy, watertight. But get them out in the open by speaking about them and all of a sudden gaps can become apparent.

I have a pair of boots I like to wear. They have a habit of letting the water in when it rains and I end up with cold, wet and dank smelling socks. It’s not terribly attractive (nor fragrant) when it comes to taking my boots off at the end of the day, and it’s not terribly comfortable either. So why do I wear them? Because they fit. Because I like how they look. Because they go well other things I’m wearing. But are they the best thing for my feet? Maybe not. Maybe I need to get myself some wellies.

I think thought can be a bit like my leaky boots. We all have ideas, opinions, views on things. We feel comfortable with them. We know we can pull them out the back of the wardrobe when we need them and slip into them with great ease. But thoughts are not always built for an all-weather terrain; sometimes they can stand up to the scrutiny of questioning no more than my boots can a heavy downpour.

I wonder then, do all our thoughts need to have the robustness of a pair of wellington boots? Or is it ok to let the water run in a bit?

I experienced a leaky-boot moment in my thinking not so long ago when I agreed to take part in some research for a BBC radio show. I was to be interviewed on my thoughts on the concept of an interventionist God – undoubtedly a biggie when it comes to ‘Stuff to Think About’. I have views about God though, and I’m very happy to talk about them - so what could be easier? Or so I thought. For it wasn’t until I started to try and verbalise my thoughts on things into a microphone that I suddenly realised how hard it was. All my certainty about what I know, what I feel, suddenly began to slip away into the gaps of what I don’t know. What’s more, I heard myself talking and was struck by how many inconsistencies there were in what I was saying.

I stuttered.

I stammered.

I felt my skin prick with tiny beads of waffling perspiration.

I said “Err” quite a lot.

Realisation: What I think just isn’t watertight.

Now, being charitable towards myself, I could say, well wasn’t this just the subject matter, or the circumstances of being interviewed? It’s none to easy talking into a Dictaphone at the best of times, let alone on such a grand subject. And maybe I’m just not that great at talking about how I feel about things in front of strangers?

Or, I wondered, is it something about the nature of thinking aloud? Does the act of speaking thoughts highlight all the murky spots in our thinking in the same way an apple oxidises when you open it up to reveal its insides? And, more to the point, how much do the murky spots matter? Being an ex-Philosophy student I love listening to people talk and watching out for inconsistencies in what they’re saying. Whether I’m listening to a politician espousing policy on TV, a work colleague making recommendations on ‘how we should be doing things’, or a friend talking about their views on such-and-such and whatever, I’m always on the lookout for those points in someone’s expression of their thinking when I can say inwardly to myself “Well, that doesn’t really make sense does it? You’ve just contradicted yourself”. I like to think that this isn’t arrogance or geekiness on my part, but rather by-product of my study that I search out inconsistencies in the same way a train spotter is always searching for that elusive model number missing from their pocketbook. In any case, I consider myself as someone who appreciates a well constructed and well grounded argument.

A certain degree of robustness of thought is important I think. It really does matter that we submit our thoughts and views to a certain amount of internal scrutiny before we put them out there, speaking them aloud for others to hear – and obviously more so in some contexts than others. But is it not also the case that it’s part of being human that sometimes we just don’t make sense?

As much as we might like to pride ourselves on our ‘superior intelligence’ in the animal kingdom and kid ourselves that we, as humans, have a level of mastery of logic, the fact remains that we are not perfectly rational beings and we don’t always spot the inconsistencies in our own thinking; sometimes it’s full of holes and thoroughly leaky boot.

I’m not sure though, that it always really matters. This isn’t to advocate that we should all go around thinking what we like and spouting out our views to others with any consideration or scrutiny over the logic of our thinking – most definitely not. But just that maybe perfect waterproofness is an unreasonable goal when the best we can really aspire to is water resistant – with the holes filled in as best as we can. It’s ok to embrace the inconsistencies, and it’s ok to speak them aloud, so as long as we recognise them for what they are – opportunities to reflect and review our own thought processes. After all, to err in our thinking is human, to be gifted with the power of thought at all is nothing short of divine.