Socks

If you don't start at the beginning then you won't know when to end. Don't think too hard about that one, simply go back to Percy Street to start at the beginning.

 

There was a name that could strike more dread in me than extra time in a football match. Gina Ford. If ever there was a book to turn a neurotic mother into a fully fledged mental case it was her Contented Little Baby Book. I don't doubt its best intentions and I know it has proved invaluable to many mothers, but I am not one of them. I also know it has been a contentious issue since its first release a couple of years before Chicken was born, so here's my two penneth worth.

I am a character who strives for perfection, that doesn't mean I always attain it; sometimes it is as elusive as an olive at the bottom of a martini glass, highly deft at avoiding the cocktail stick, but I strive none the less. There is probably a label for my condition; OCD or obsessive compulsive or just plain control freak, the point is; I never knew I possessed such tendencies until I became a mum. In fact, I didn't even notice then; it was only with the benefit of hindsight and a near nervous breakdown eight years later that I began to recognise the signs. Poor Bob could incur my fastidious wrath for simply hanging the socks on the top rail of the clothes horse rather than the more practical bottom.
"What the f*** are you doing?!"
"I'm hanging the washing."
"No your not, you're creating a folding nightmare!"
"What? Oh, sorry, I thought I was helping."
"Well think again!"
And off he would sulk to leave me to hang the socks on the correct rail feeling fully justified in my behaviour. (Nut case!)

Clutter became my arch enemy. It seemed that no sooner had I cleared a space than it would be magically refilled once my back was turned. This always coincided with Bob's arrival home from work. His post, his shoes, his jackets hanging on the back of the chair, his body sitting in the chair! I had turned into one of those women comedians like Les Dawson made a fortune taking the piss out of. I had become the nag. My defence was; (and still is in this case) if he didn't make the mess in the first place then I wouldn't have to nag him. What I found strange though, was why this behaviour had not reared its fussy head before I had a baby. Bob would probably tell you he caught glimmers previously, but with work keeping us out of the house for the majority of time, the glimmers never had time to develop into floodlights. Or perhaps it was the sleep deprivation turning minor irritations into issues worth divorcing over, or, maybe Bob is a particularly messy bugger and it's all his fault after all!

The journey of self-discovery that becoming a mum initiated sent me reaching for a number of practical parenting books; of course, the one everybody was reading and apparently mastering was The Contented Little Baby Book. Lighting a fuse on a stick of dynamite couldn't have wreaked more destruction on my striving for perfection.

I read it from cover to cover and was enthusiastic about putting Chicken through the first routine. Chicken, however, had other ideas, and she hadn't even read it! I tried and tried to crush her free will (which she owned in abundance) and told her over and over that I was the captain of that will and she was very much mistaken if she thought she was. What a load of utter crap! Slicing through my own jugular with a butter knife would have been easier than getting her to eat at the designated times set out by Gina. I can't remember the specific times now, but I do remember clearly the feeling of abject failure when she would repeatedly and steadfastly refuse to feed for more than five minutes a time. Five minutes! Even with my atrocious maths I knew that was forty minutes short of Gina's ideal; and after her forty five minutes on the first boob I was supposed to offer her the second. The second? She'd barely touched the first! I was bursting with enough milk to rid Africa of infant famine and she was treating it like a snack bar! I took to pumping and freezing in case she found her appetite and needed a good binge, but she never did. I had boobs the size of footballs, a freezer full of milk and an inadequacy complex almost as big as my boobs. Of course I feared for her health and development as well to add to my fretful state, but she continued on her percentile despite her picky eating habits.

Her little and often approach to dining threw her nap times into an equal fiasco. I followed Gina's instructions to the letter and sealed up every last crack of light attempting to turn her room into a dull glow rather than the instructed pitch black and crept away. At first she was quiet while she digested the affront of my perceived power over her. Then I would hear the niggle as I stood pinned against the wall outside holding my breath as though she had supersonic ears and might be able to detect the heaving of my chest. As soon as I heard the full bellied scream I was in there faster than you could say defeat. I know, I know, I know! I know you're supposed to let them cry and they'll settle themselves, Gina told me - but when? When they're at university? I left her for a whole ten minutes once and it nearly ripped my soul in two. There are too many babies in the world who have to shed too many tears and my baby didn't have to be one of them. So what if it meant I ate my dinner with only a fork using one hand? So what if it meant I had to walk for hours as the only way of getting her to sleep during the day? So what if it meant I couldn't shower unless there was another adult to hold her? So what if my friends stopped coming because I smelt like a builder's armpit? She was a baby for such a short time and I didn't feel she should spend any of that precious time crying on my account. She's ten now, and has been sleeping through the night in her own bed since she was six months old, only coming in to us if she's not feeling well. My attempts at trying to put her down for her afternoon sleep seem like pointless pinpricks of memory now.

In summary: a lot of feelings of inadequacy resulting in nagging arguments with Bob could have been spared had I had faith in myself from the beginning. I never deemed myself army material, so why did I believe I could adhere to a routine so strict it could send a Sergeant Major running for his mummy? Peer pressure perhaps? Everybody else seemed to have the perfect Gina Ford baby, why didn't I? I found motherhood the most daunting and scary thing I had ever attempted in my life and I didn't feel qualified to handle it, so I turned to a book that professed to have all the answers. How silly; the human species has been amongst one of the most successful on the planet, surviving and thriving since long before the written word with only faith and instinct to guide them. However, embarking upon motherhood armed with the knowledge that a wet nose was a sign of good health and anal glands need periodic squeezing - no wonder I didn't trust myself! Oh why didn't I stick to dogs?