I sometimes think about when I die. @MindCharity and others fill my twitter with discussions of depression and suicide and other nasties in the name of raising awareness. I like these, they are usually messages of hope. And there have been a couple of terrible news stories lately; the worst, probably, a father coming home […]
When I was pregnant with Spider-boy I spent a lot of time thinking about Christmas even though he was a summer baby and I had barely been scanned in December. The thing was I rather felt that festive traditions could sum up your parenting techniques, aims and hopes. I still do, a bit, though in […]
Here’s some good news. With background. When I was 7 months pregnant with Spider-boy, a colleague and friend took me to the side. She had her first son in his pram and she wanted to give me a warning. She said that though lots of people would tell me that giving birth was the happiest […]
Our holiday is over and we are back in the whirl, and the occasional birdsong floating through the sunny afternoon quiet, of our city home. Spider-boy is back at nursery and Thathusband is back at work. So follows the post-mortems. And some questions. Are family holidays always strained? Do we remember them as more fun […]
The last couple of weeks have contained a few not so great days. Along with school stress as noted, I had Newborn sickly again and Spider-boy making it quite clear that he preferred Daddy. ‘Mummy?’ he asked, all innocent eyes. ‘Why does Daddy have to work so late. Why can’t you work late, not him?’ […]
When Spider-boy was little he didn’t smile a lot. I used to think, in the dead of night, it was my fault for not smiling enough when he was tiny, a dread fear that I’d broken him by crying too much on my maternity leave. I’ve been persuaded he just had a bit of ‘tude, […]