Excuse me...

...whilst I rant for a little while.

On last night's BBC news, it was reported that scientists hope to have vaccines available to combat MRSA and C-Difficile within the next 10 years.

This is good news, especially for the many people who have picked up strains of these Superbugs on hospital trips over the last few years.

But here is my problem. Why are these bugs in hospitals in the first place?

Forget the handwringing, and the blaming of the 'visitors', and the apologists who point out that our hospitals were often built 50 - 100 years ago so are very difficult to keep clean. Can somebody please tell me why they are so present in our NHS system and yet why in other countries, i.e. Holland, there are 50 times fewer cases of these superbugs?

I'm furious, because both of these bugs have directly affected my family within the last 4 years.

Boy #2 picked up an unexplained skin infection in hospital within 2 days of being born. When he was a week old he was readmitted with a combination of jaundice and Scalded Skin Syndrome. (Apparantly a sizeable minority of us carry this bug on our skin. But we were all tested - and it wasn't from his family that he caught it).

The jaundice, whilst serious and nasty, was sorted within a few days. But the SSS meant he was hooked up to IV's to pump antibiotics into his bloodstream for the next week. He pulled out canula after canula, each time meaning that it needed to be re-inserted in a different vein. Not much fun when you're 8 days old.

For the majority who are I hope unfamiliar with SSS, imagine a carpet burn spreading and proliferating across your newborn's stomach at the rate of around 1 centimeter diameter a day. Then imagine that because they don't know whether it's being caused by Staph or Strep, they have to give a double hit of antibiotics to a baby weighing less than 3.5 kilos, just to make sure they are giving the right treatment.

Then imagine that after being sent home a week later, this condition continues to reoccur around once every 3 weeks. You give antibiotics again - usually a double hit for the same reason as before. The condition clears up. You finish the course. The condition reappears. Guess what? More antibiotics.

Imgagine 4 months of this, during which you are pushed to the limit, knowing that the last place you want your precious baby is back in the hospital you suspect to be the cause of all this, but which you have to use because your doctor is not on call 24 hours a day and invariably it's during the evening bath that you spot the return of the condition. And the condition is so aggressive that you can't leave it until the next morning to pop back into the doctor's surgery for yet another repeat prescription. So where do you go? Yes, back to the hospital.

Finally, when your baby is 4 1/2 months old, you pop back into the hospital for yet more results and guess what they tell you? Your darling has MRSA. And this whole thing may have been a side effect, who knows? (Again, we were all tested. Again, negative.)

This diagnosis, however, was not all bad news. We finally - after all that time - got to see the right doctors, who very quickly helped us sort the whole thing out. These were the peadiatric dermotologists who we asked to see when Boy #2 was first admitted at a week old, and who we were told repeatedly were fully aware of the case and directing treatment but who, funnily enough, were never available to see us. The same peadriatric dermatologists who, when they first met us following the MRSA diagnosis, told us they had never heard of Boy #2 or our situation.

Are you getting why I'm mad yet?

And Husband's grandmother, Omie, acquired C-difficile during intermittent hospital stays to deal with a very low blood count. Perfect for an elderly lady who's immune system is incredibly low.

Neither of these - Boy #2 or Omie - were prime candidates for vaccination. In fact, if someone had come to me and asked if they could give my newborn child a jab just in case he picked up something nasty in the 2 days we were in hospital following a c-section, I wouldn't have waited to be discharged; I would have picked him up right then and walked straight out.

So please, can somebody tell me, why should we be happy that there is going to be vaccine available to prevent the spread of superbugs that are already preventable?

It's a simple solution.

It's called keeping the damn hospitals clean.


Rant over.

Love is Blind

We live in a visual age. A picture is worth a thousand words - apparantly. I happen not to agree with that unreservedly - you may have picked up on that by the amount of drivel on my blog, along with the lack of images - but I can see the merit in that statement.

Everywhere you go, people are videoing, taking pictures, watching tv. They're 'preserving the moment'. Boxing it for the future. They do this anywhere, at any time. At home. At their desks. Out and about. In planes, trains and automobiles. Other than on a bike, there is no form of transport where you can't tap into some form of visual communication if you wish. Even the tube has jumped on board. It was once a bastion of the written word, with commuters hunkering down behind broadsheet and tabloid newspapers in an attempt to create a little personal space and an escape from the maelstrom surrounding them. But that's changed too now; one is no longer automatically removed from the onslaught by the simple means of going underground since the introduction a couple of weeks back of enormous tv screens to various underground stations, showing ads continuously throughout the day. How did we live without that, I wonder?

But still. This post is not a complaint about a society of people increasingly tuned in only to instant visual stimulation, or a lament about the falling numbers of people prepared to pick up a book and engage their brain. Hell, I'm sitting here blogging rather than reading 'War & Peace' or 'Daniel Deronda', who am I to comment?

No, actually this long-winded introduction is to a post about how photographs can cause you to reassess your memories of a particular time or person. How you can have a set of images in your mind that you are almost certain are a fair representation of reality, but that when you look back at the pictures, you realise that actually; it wasn't like that at all. And since this blog is mostly about my boys - well, you've probably guessed what's coming. It certainly isn't a deep philosophical reflection on the state of our media-driven society...


I bet, if you have had babies and young children in your lives, your own offspring or otherwise, you were pretty sure they were perfect. You cooed over them, you cuddled them, you took joy in every snuffle, snuggle, burp and puke. (Well, maybe not the last one). You knew that your baby - or your sister's baby, or your best friend's - was essentially the most gorgeous baby you were ever going to see. And you took pictures, to prove it. You showed them to your friends, your long-suffering colleagues, the strangers on the bus. You framed them, hung them in your sitting room, stuck them up on your desk at work, carried them around on your mobile phone. Visual communication Rules OK! Without even opening your mouth you were able to say; 'Look, look everyone! See how beautiful this baby is!'

And they are. No doubt about it, every baby is beautiful. In their own way.

Now, let's move on to birth announcements. (Bear with me here). For a lot of people these are really important. The Dutch especially, it seems. Over the years Husband and I have amassed what seems like hundreds of them. This is mainly because we are too disorganised to get round to having a birthday calendar, so this is an easy form of reference for when we are going to visit friends with kids and we have no idea how old they are, when their birthday is, and even in some cases - I'm ashamed to admit - what the children's names are.

A lot of our friends don't just send out the bulk-standard be-ribboned card, either. No, they will include a photo of their newborn cherub. (Can you see where this is going yet?) And sometimes - pre-children - well, sometimes I just wondered why that is. There has been at least one occassion when Husband and I have looked at the photo accompanying the card and thought 'oh, dear'. Now invariably the less attractive babies grow into beautiful toddlers and children, but those photos taken a few hours after they've fought their way out into the world are often not representative of the child's 'full potential'. (Have I put that tactfully enough?).

Before you have your own kids you look at these photos and think to yourself "I would never do that. Surely they can see what we can see?" But then, you have your own children. And suddenly you too develop this form of myopia. You don't just think your baby is The World's Most Beautiful; you know it. With all your heart. And you are absolutely certain that this is a fact that everyone must acknowledge, and that you alone have been spared the blindness afflicting other new parents.

Wake up and smell the coffee, new parent. No-one is immune.

A couple of years ago I was rifling through some photos and came across one that a friend had taken of Boy #1 and passed on to me. It stopped me in my tracks. Who was this 5 month old baby? Not mine, surely? I remember him having more hair. Better skin. Looking a little less like the michelin man. And then it hit me. I was blind too! How had this happened? Well, clearly it was hormones, but I determined on the spot that it wouldn't happen again.

And then I had Boy #2. Who was, it turned out, the most beautiful baby you could ever hope to see in your whole damn life. I was certain this time. What, you don't believe me? Just look at the photos...

Which I did this week, as I was putting together some 'eye candy' for the grannies birthdays, coming up in the next month or so. (Photobox do hardbacked printed albums of your little angels - what doting grandmother could ask for more?). And so I went back through our files of digital photos to pull some out of both my angel Boys at the various stages of their lives to-date.

Oh.

Apparantly, The Blindness got me again.

Luckily, though, it wears off. You can look at your children objectively as they grow older. Which is good, because if I couldn't, I wouldn't be able to say so definitively that my Boys are the best looking four and two year old that you're ever likely to meet.

What? I mean, come on! Just look at the photos...

Potted Wisdom

'Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift - that's why we call it the Present...'

Sounds profound, huh? I'm sure you're wondering which great philosopher wrote that. Check out 'Kung Fu Panda' and you'll see.

For yes, at the weekend I screwed up my courage and took Boy #1 on his first ever cinema visit. Not without some misgivings, I must say. And these were only further underlined when, in the morning before I took him, I had a conversation with a mummy of one of his friends who gasped in horror when I told her our plans for the next few hours.

It transpired that not only had she never taken her 4 year old to the silver screen, but she'd never taken his 7 year old brother either. All down to Control, it seems. Now, I'm the first to admit that if I buy a dvd for the Boys I normally watch it myself first, without them there. Come on, give me a break; Husband's travelling, tv is rubbish, and there are only so many times you can watch a new series of '24' without working out in advance that Jack is going to save the world in the end. Again. Ooops! Sorry, did I give it away?

Anyway, back to Control. So I freely admit to pre-vetting the Boy's dvds. I've yet to watch one that I couldn't show them, but it did give me due warning to fast forward through the opening scene of Finding Nemo. I pretend it's because Boy #2 couldn't take it, but really - it's me. I can't take it. I'm filling up right now at the thought of that poor little clown fish losing his loving mummy in such tragic circumstances. (What do you mean, it's not real?)

However Control mummy from Sunday morning then admitted that she not only fast forwards through that particular scene - and others like it in her children's favourite movies - but she cuts her own dvd's with the offending passages taken out.

Is it just me, or is that a tad over the top?

But I'm getting off the point. Boy #1 and I went where we had not gone before, and made a trek to our local Vue cinema complex to see the movie he'd been asking about since he first spotted Po the Kung Fu Panda in glorious technicolour on the side of a thousand London buses. Bearing in mind that Boy #1 worships television and would watch it until 3am everday given the opportunity, I had a sneaking suspicion this trip would be a success, and it was.

I did learn a couple of lessons, though. The first was not to get there too promptly. You know, when the programme actually starts. I sat there flinching as ads for other, scarier movies flashed up on the screen before the main picture started, whilst Boy #1 blithely ignored them. I ask you, how can the third episode of The Mummy be given the same certificate as Kung Fu Panda? But it has been, and so the ad in all it's gory glory was played out in full to a cinema full of 4 - 8 year olds.

So next time, we leave it another 10 - 15 minutes before going in to watch the feature.

The second was that taking a water pistol - an empty one, of course - to the cinema isn't such a bad idea. It gives your 4 year old something to wave at the screen when things become a little too scary and they feel the need to retaliate to the baddies. I could, of course, do without the muttered 'Freeze!' and 'Bang!'s that accompanied the gestures, but overall he kept the volume down, so I don't think anyone noticed....

(Note: before you judge, I did not buy Boy #1 the water pistol, or indeed, any gun he has in his collection. This one was handed out at the football party beforehand in the party bag. And I have long since given up trying to confiscate any weapons, since if I do so then a piece of lego, a stick, or even a rolled up napkin will apparantly do the job just as well as brightly coloured clearly toy piece of plastic. Boys. It's not like he ever actually sees these things in use. Unless, of course, C-beebies has started to run cop shows when the parent's back is turned.)

And I learned something else, too. Boy #2 and Husband were on their own fun-filled adventure that day, so for an extra treat I took Boy #1 for a pizza before the film. (It's pure coincidence that I didn't fancy walking home in the rain between the morning's football birthday party and our cinema extravaganza, and that Pizza Express have an outlet in the cinema complex. Pure coincidence). During our lunch, my son and I had the following conversation:

Boy #1: "Mama, what do teenagers do?"

Me: "Oh, well, they go to school." (I hope).

Boy #1: "No they don't!"

Me: "Don't they?" (Who have you been talking to? Their days are numbered.)

Boy #1: "I saw them. No, teenagers turn into animals."

Me: "Really?" (How observant of you at such a young age...)

Boy #1: "Yes, and then they tell other people what to do. And wave sticks."

Me: "Gosh. And how do you know this?" (This gets better and better)

Boy #1: "I saw them, I told you. On the wall. They're HUGE. In the car park. By the ant killer."

(A faint understanding starts to dawn).

Me: "Do you mean teenagers, Boy #1? Or do you mean Ancient Egyptians?" (pictured on the wall with various Jackal, snake and crocodile heads outside our local DIY store, where he and I had travelled for pesticide the previous week. They were clearly the subject of much interest)

Boy #1: "Yes, that's it. Teegiptiagers. Or something. How do you say it again?"

Tag! I'm it!

I've been tagged, by not one, but two bloggers: Tara at From Dawn 'till Rusk and Nunhead Mum of One, to reveal 5 of my favourite posts in the last month, and give anyone reading the chance to look in on them by linking to them.

An easy task, you'ld think. It certainly should be; there are loads of posts out there that strike a chord, made me laugh, or pulled at my heartstrings. But there's a problem. Me and Memory? We were never that close in the first place, but since the Boys have arrived we're not even really on speaking terms anymore. Ask Husband, he'll tell you. In fact, ask anyone. I have to write it down if I want to have any chance of remembering it. I am perfectly capable of sitting down, making a mental list of my chores for the next few hours, getting up, arriving in another room to do the first of said chores - and having forgotten what it is.

I blame my sister, actually. She clearly got my memory cells in addition to her own. She is capable of telling you not only where we went on holiday when we were aged 5 and 7 (Cornwall), but who we stayed with (my cousins), what we did when it was raining (visited the aquarium), and what flavour the lolly was we ate on the way (blackcurrant). I mean, that's not normal, is it? Though I am of course more than prepared to admit that neither is forgetting to look at your carefully prepared list when you get to the supermarket...

So, forgive me if I miss anyone out who should be on here, but these are the posts I can remember - and just as importantly, the ones that haven't already been hoovered up by the bloggers who have previously been tagged!

So, let's kick off with a post from Gone Back South. It's beautifully written. Of herself, she writes: 'I stomped away in my teens, and came back the day before my 40th birthday. At the little school where I once was a daughter, I am now a mother. Some people morphed slowly from one to the other, without setting foot outside this town. I see them in the mornings, ghosts from school-days past, looking exactly the same. Only 30 years older. '

Enjoy...

Next, right back at you Tara at From Dawn till Rusk with the post she wrote about her daughter speaking her mind at the supermarket. Very, very, very, very, very funny. And her daughter is right - it is disgusting...(though of course I speak as a mum who's boys may no longer use dummies but refuse to go to sleep without their blankets. So really, I'm no better...)

Now, onto Pig in the Kitchen. Pig is on temporary sabbatical (please god, let it be temporary), but she recently wrote the post linked to above, about a good friend giving birth and the impact it had. I love Pig's writing. She is in fact the reason I started blogging in the first place, so blame her for everything... (Oh yes, and if you're on a diet, I suggest you don't look at her photographs of food...)

Finally, I had to include this one by Elsie Button in Flower Fairies and Fairy Cakes. It tells how she got caught out on an ill-advised flip comment on some-one else's blog. Very funny...


I'm afraid I'm going to be a spoil-sport here, and not pass this tag on. I know I may never be tagged again (and consequently will lose out on a rich vein of subject matter when I can't think of anything interesting to write about), but frankly, I'm just too tired. Husband's in Moscow, I'm suffering from a sugar low (or is that a famine), and I went to Boy #1's graduation picnic today (more of which tomorrow), so I am taking myself off for a bath and some rubbish tv in the hope I will forget all about the two tubs of Green & Black's ice cream in the freezer....

Like that's going to happen.

Oops, I did it again.

Boy #1, sitting next to me at breakfast on Thursday morning, said in a delighted tone of voice "Mama! You're getting fatter and fatter!"

Needless to say, given the amount of food I haven't been eating and the amount of exercise I have been doing, I was somewhat less than delighted by this revelation. Grasping at straws, I replied: "Do you mean 'fatter', Boy #1, or do you mean 'thinner'?

Boy #1 realised he may have made a tactical error. "Thinner. I think."

"Because you know, 'fatter' means bigger, and 'thinner' means smaller."

Boy #1 glanced at my chest, clad in my most supportive sports bra and work-out vest top as I was on my way to the gym after dropping him and his brother at nursery. "Fatter. Definitely."

Out of the mouths of babes. But it was definitely the sports bra.


So, when I woke up this morning, I had even more incentive to do some exercise. Swimming today, I thought. The offending costume from last week had been binned and whilst I had taken Guinea Pig Mum's advice and checked out a swimsuit website, I hadn't actually been organised enough to make a purchase. Consequently, the only option swimsuit-wise was a Boden number that I inspected closely for fraying and perishing before leaving the house. Thankfully, it passed. No way was I going to put my merchandise on display again.

I thought.

Note to self; beach swimsuits, one piece or otherwise, are not designed for energetic front crawl in a pool. 1 1/2 lengths in, I realised that the pleasant feeling of freedom I was experiencing in the nipple area was because they were just that; free.

I completed the swim. But not without stopping at the end of each length and pulling up my suit at the expense of exposing a bikini line that could do with some attention. But hey - at least that was below the water line... You've got to compromise in this life, right?

And then, fully clad, no nipples on show, I went upstairs to gym reception and bought a new swimsuit. One fit for the job, that I had been planning on purchasing on-line. It was £6 more expensive to buy at the gym of course, but at least I now have it in my possession. And whilst paying, I tried - and failed - to ignore the tv screens behind the desk showing full views of the pool through the surveillance cameras...

To do AND Diet

The 'diet' has been going well. No chocolate, no bread, just good healthy food, plenty of water, and a 300% increase in the level of exercise. (That last is not hard to achieve if you also include walking to collect the Boys from school in the tally. Yes, I'm desperate). Still, knowing my luck, I will not have lost a single pound when I next weigh myself, though of course I can always console myself with the old 'muscle weighs more than fat' myth. I know this is a myth, by the way, because I trotted it out in front of my trainer at the gym when she gave me my new programme - and she laughed. Pityingly. I think she thought I had rather a way to go before that becomes a problem.

Anyway...

Checking my diary today, I noticed with horror that next Tuesday is Boy #1's school 'graduation' picnic. I know. Graduation - for four year olds. Has the world gone mad? But that's not all, oh no. Those of you with slightly older kids will no doubt already be shaking their heads, and saying "You didn't, did you? Tell me you didn't do it. Tell me you didn't give in to the pressure, pick up the pencil, and write your name next to an item on the list of party foods. You did, didn't you?"

Yes, yes I did.

"Well, tell me at least that it was something simple. Something like punnets of strawberries. Or sausage rolls, available frozen oven-ready in the budget section of the supermarket. Please tell me that, at least!"

I'm afraid I can't.

"Oh, for chrissake. I give up."

And you should, dear reader, you should. For what, in my jet-lagged post Australian trip haze did I sign up to? A batch of 40 home-made jam tarts, that's what. I must be crazy. Not for saying I would make the jam tarts - but for owning up to them in advance. It's one thing to take in a spontaneous offering of muffins or similar for the kids to consume in class, but this? This is a whole different ballgame, for at this Graduation Picnic... there will be Parents.

And not just any parents, oh no. West London Parents. The most competitive of the lot. Very few of them are British, and those that are have long ago spurned Fair Play as for weaklings. The result? Well, here's an excerpt from a post I wrote about Harvest Festival last October, and decide for yourself.

It’s Harvest Festival week at Boy #1’s nursery, and all parents were asked to bring in a box to be donated to the needy, filled with suitable tins, fruit, veg etc. To add to the general excitement it was suggested that the children should decorate them, and that the best would win a prize. Full of team spirit, we duly collected leaves in the park after school and last night Boy #1 and I indulged in an orgy of cutting and sticking whilst he decorated a (large) shoe box in a seasonal styley.

I then filled it with what I thought was appropriate fare (a couple of tins of soup, some biscuits, a home-made jar of redcurrant jelly – home-made but not by me, do you think I'm crazy? - some dried fruit etc). Oh, how little I knew… When we arrived at the school to drop Boy #1 off, I realised I had badly misjudged the situation.

We had to fight our way through the entrance hall; it had suddenly become home to acres of beautifully cellophane-wrapped wicker hampers, boxes, cartons and (I kid you not) one pink enamel rustic style bucket filled with goodies. The were all overflowing with the best that Fortnums, Harrods, Selfridges and Harvey Nicks could offer.

Suddenly our Waitrose goods looked a little cheap… Whilst his teacher valiantly rose to the occasion and pointed out that Boy #1 was one of the few kids who had actually risen to the challenge of decorating their own harvest gift, I must admit that if I were one of the ‘needy’ recipients I know which I would prefer. Am simply not sure that a foliage decorated shoebox - albeit a large one - could cut it compared with some of the grander offerings available...

So. These mommas take no prisoners. I expect most of them to have their chef/house-keeper already working on delectable offerings for next week, and those that don't have staff will probably have booked the local patisserie to supply whatever it is they are providing.

But I refuse to give in. Home-made I have promised, and home-made I will provide. Even though I can see a long weekend of tart making ahead, trying to make the perfect pastry, choosing the perfect jam. Not good, since I'm on a diet, so even if I do manage to restrain myself from testing the tarts during the baking marathon, I am likely to consume most of the results in a sugar-low induced frenzy on the way to drop them off at the school on Tuesday morning.

Something tells me that if I turn up with a few crumbs in the box, and jam around my mouth it may give the game away. Perhaps I'll task Husband to make this delivery.

I can resist anything but temptation.

Chitter-chatter...

One of my best girlfriends called today. She moved out of London a while back, so it's rare that we get to catch up without being besieged by husbands and children, but today we managed it. What we should have been discussing was where we are going to meet on a joint family trip in a couple of weeks time. After agreeing that this was a top priority we got distracted however, and our subsequent 15 minute conversation covered, in no particular order:


1. Babies sleeping through the night (her 10 month-old just did for the first time. Gosh, it's good to be out of the baby jungle).

2. Travelling husbands who take their gym kit / swim shorts away with them even though both they and we know the chances of their being used are none.

3. The same husbands refusing to get any help with their training regime from the professionals at their gyms in the form of exercise routines. We decided it must be because that sort of support is just not macho enough. Or that they are scared of that they might have to work harder at it...

4. Why we ourselves are so rubbish at taking the very helpful advice given to us by those same professionals at our gyms. Well, we do actually take it... for about 2 weeks. Then it's just quicker to cut out some of the exercises in order to make the school pick-up in time. And wouldn't you know it, the more difficult exercises are the ones that get dropped. Who'ld have thought it?

5. That Botox is no longer the preposterous idea it once seemed to us as relatively fresh-faced 20 somethings.

6. That beauticians have taken to offering us collagen 'filler' treatments when we go in for a facial. What, you mean I don't have the unlined face of 17 year-old?

7. That Botox is actually a pretty good idea and would probably a lot cheaper where she is.

8. How it's quite ironic that nowadays beauticians offer Cosmetic Enhancements in the wilds of Gloucestershire, but that the same town can't provide a dry-cleaning service that returns your clothes in less than a week.

9. How squeezing into your work clothes after your second baby is a mug's game - but that layering can hide a multitude of sins.

10. That unfortunately layering doesn't really work on the hottest day of the year so far...

11. That we used to have lives on a Friday night - and now we have ironing to do. (Layering is very wasteful on the linen front).


And did we arrange where to meet? Of course not.