Dear Gina, do you hear that awful racket? Why, I’ve never witnessed such a pitiful crescendo of controlled crying! I really think this is the point where you’re supposed to creep into the bedroom and offer some sort of comfort. No, no, not to the Contented Little Babies. They’ve been out for the count since 7pm, sharp, just the way you like it. What you are hearing is a generation of fraught new mothers, weeping and caterwauling at your recent suggestion – in The Contented Mother’s Guide – that they whip the cabbage leaves out of their bras, glam up for a date night and resume conjugal relations even before their stitches have healed. Ouch.
My friend Mandy had a baby girl on Saturday and, you know, Gina, when I called to say that a parcel was on the way containing a white furry gilet, cute frilly knickers and socks with satin ribbons, she was thrilled. That is, until I explained they were for her not the baby. Then she said something unrepeatable and slammed the phone down on me. New mothers, huh? No wonder they need help.
But the trouble is, I’m really not sure you are the right woman to deliver it. Your strengths – routine and rules, unwavering principles – are a godsend to newbies wrestling with silly, disorganised crybabies who don’t know when to sleep or suckle. However, women who’ve recently expelled nine pounds of squirming human through their nether regions really (really) don’t want to be told they should start thinking about oral sex by a woman who has never endured the pain and indignities of childbirth.
If you had, you’d know that new mothers need casseroles and nice baths and first dibs on the Thorntons, rather than “post-birth essentials such as lubricant and massage oil” which, to be honest, sounds like an infringement of our human rights.
I freely concede that I’m a bit of a sourpuss on the subject. After the hideous, mismanaged birth of my first child, the offending midwife had “left” the hospital long before my husband and I had our meeting with the top brass and, indeed, the top brass’s lawyer. Weirdly morbid and prone to terrible flashbacks, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress by a psychiatrist at The Priory, prescribed antidepressants and endured two years of therapy, during which time the marital bed was as calm as a (celibate) millpond.
Baby number two’s arrival was a differently hideous experience. Again there was medication and therapy, but less of it, as I had common-or-garden post-natal depression. Because I’d had a C-section, connubial congress was resumed quicker. Mind you, not at four weeks, after a “lovey dovey” evening out, because I was doubled up in pain for months and spent the first year in my nightie.
I am keenly aware of the fact that I’m not fit to class myself alongside your serried ranks of date-night, flirty textbook mothers, Gina. Because, yes, you have produced a textbook. I imagine it will either raise a cheer or a groan from the sisterhood, depending on whether readers are contented converts or apostates. But either way, I have here in my hand, the latest addition to your growing library of vade mecums – think St Benedict’s Rule but with more Calpol – and I find myself scowling at the very title: The Contented Mother’s Guide. No pressure then, ladies.
Flicking through the index, every base is covered; from getting back in shape to relationships, returning to work and staying at home.
But here’s the thing, Gina, you may be a modern parenting guru who has brought order and calm to nurseries the length of Britain. You may have offered welcome succour to those of us too sleep-deprived and clueless to think for ourselves, but I fear that Nanny may have overstepped her authority in promising mothers that the secret of contentment lies within the pages of this paperback volume.
Contemporary parents already find themselves overwhelmed with choice, bombarded with conflicting advice and very often pulled in equal and opposite directions. Do we really need yet another how-to-be-happy book?
Granted, this manual isn’t nearly as unbendingly prescriptive as your previous works. In fact, much of the advice comes straight from the mothers who are members of your Contented Baby web forum, so there are quite a few shades of opinion represented. As a result, your love-me-or-loathe-me, wholly distinctive voice is unexpectedly diluted and there’s nothing here a reader couldn’t get from a website or, better still, from a friend, a mother or grandmother.
Are we really so devoid of common sense that we need to be told that walking is an effective and cheap form of post-natal exercise? Or that shaving our legs will cheer us up? As my children are now nine and three, maybe I’ve simply forgotten that nappy brain is even slower and foggier than preg head and taking the simplest decision is like wading through a vat of treacle.
Who will be next as you seek world domination, one contented peer group at a time? Contented Teenagers would be an impossible book to write but The Contented Daddy’s Guide might shed some useful light on why they ossify into grumps and how we can prevent it.
But back to contented mothers. Doesn’t the phrase conjure up a beatific image of home-baking, home-making Stepford serenity? And maybe that’s what I find so disturbing. It’s no longer enough to keep the baby alive and fed and watered and well-rested but stimulated, our husbands sexually sated, our figures trim and our work-life balance in a state of equilibrium. Now the pressure is on to be content as well. I’m all for multi-tasking, but this time you’re asking too much, Gina.
My advice is to stick to what you’re good at; a great many pre-schoolers and their frazzled parents have benefited from your wisdom. But mummies don’t need to be chivvied into shaving our legs; we need fewer expectations laid on our buckling shoulders. That, and first dibs on the Thorntons. No matter how old our children are.
http://community.earthflag.net/pg/blog/read/7168/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-notebook-tipis-harga-murah-terbaik
http://www.zewdi.com/blog/view/3900/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-notebook-tipis-harga-murah-terbaik
http://chattaspace.com/pg/blog/read/37058/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-notebook-tipis-harga-murah-terbaik
http://blackboxuniverse.com/blackbox17/pg/blog/read/8459/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-notebook-tipis-harga-murah-terbaik
http://foreverfriendsbook.com/blog/add/6263