Shut up and push

dgd

Here are some recent ramblings of an enlightened male, that will no doubt make mothers everywhere grind their teeth in annoyance.

According to Michael Odent – a medical expert and ‘childbirth specialist’ – fathers-to-be should no longer be present at the birth of their children, and should be banned from the delivery room. Apparently they make our time in labour longer, more painful and more stressful.

Oh, what a load of crap.

I believe it’s the trying to push and pass out something the size of a bloody melon that is the cause of all the pain and stress, not having the father sat beside us in the room. Something that Mr Odent would know if he was to give it a go. Oh that’s right, he can’t, he’s a man.

Now I can only speak for myself, and the 22 hours in total I’ve spent in labour, but having my husband in the room helped, not hindered the situation. He made the time go faster by talking to me, making me laugh and occasionally laughing at me (as he winched me on and off the birthing ball). He fetched me reading material and fluids, and let me wrap my fingernails so snugly around the bones in his arm I left scars, without making so much as a whimper.

For me, high as a kite on gas and air, the time actually passed quite quickly. For him, unable to escape from my vice gripe long enough to even let the blood flow back into his fingertips, the time must have practically stood still.

His one very stupid idea of offering me a Jaffa cake half way through a contraction aside, my husband was an absolute god send, and made an otherwise traumatic occasion much more bearable. The thought of having had to go through that without him there doesn’t even bear thinking about.

So I really don’t care if Mr Odent has been ‘involved for more than 50 years in childbirth’. He hasn’t been there. Or got the t-shirt, weakened bladder or stretch marks to prove it.  So with all due respect, he should butt out and stop trying to fix something that isn’t broken. Recommending that a woman should give birth with only a silent midwife in the room is like suggesting an operation should be done without the general anesthetic – just because it might speed up the recovery time. Would Mr Odent particularly like to be sliced and diced whilst awake I wonder?

Of course midwives do a great job – my last one was lovely, if my somewhat hazy memory serves me right – but they can’t give you what you need while your pelvis splits in half and your pain levels go off the Richter scale. At a time when all dignity has left the room and you’re freaked out and panicking, you don’t need polite chit-chat with a strange woman between your legs, as she grapples with a slippery crowning head. You need a familiar face and the reassurance of the person who got you into this painful bloody mess in the first place.

The other, even more laughable observation made by Mr Odent, is that watching your wife give birth can ultimately lead to divorce. I’m sorry. Is this man for real? What he’s really saying is if a man is subjected to seeing his wife laid out on a table like a birthing cow, then he will ultimately be put off having sex with her again, and as a result, have no choice but to throw in the towel and his wedding ring.

Now THAT is the saddest excuse in the history of marriages for a man being forced to leave his wife. It’s actually justifying why a man can jump ship and run off with a younger, un-stretched, child-free model. If there’s a Mrs Odent out there, you must be so proud – and so very paranoid.

Generally speaking, the man who gets you pregnant already knows (or should already know) you inside out. If, after the birth, he literally knows you inside out, then that, unfortunately, is one of the side effects of procreation.

To say that men can’t stomach the sight of their wife in labour or that they will ‘stop feeling a sexual attraction towards them’, is an insult to husbands everywhere. It’s certainly an insult to woman to say that we’re no longer seen as anything other than a piece of reproducing meat after the birth.

If woman had their way, Mr Odent, we wouldn’t be forced to watch our husbands belch, scratch, itch and fart beside us on the sofa every night. None of these manly qualities really puts us ‘in the mood’ you know, but you don’t see us all rushing to file for divorce and citing these disgusting habits on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour.

Really, fancy telling us we should be giving birth in silence and on our own. Are you recruiting for the Church of Scientology by any chance? Next you’ll be saying that pain relief is illegal and Enya is no longer a suitable birthing artist.

For a father to be made to miss out on seeing his child born would be a terrible thing. Not only because he wouldn’t get to experience the incredible rush of euphoria when meeting your 5 second old offspring for the first time, but because for the rest of his life he would be forever reminded by his wife, that not only did she have to do all of the work, but that he wasn’t even there to hold her hand at the end.

And that, Mr Odent, is the part you seem to have forgotten. Woman want their men there with them at this time. Not just to offer them support and a back rub, but so that they can see first hand just how much pain childbirth involves. This way, regardless of how many bins are put out or paychecks earned, the man will always know that he owes something to his wife that can never be repaid.

Call it an unfair advantage in the guilt stakes, but childbirth is the one bit of power we woman still hold in this world. Don’t you dare try and take that away from us.

Educational rubbish

I cleared out our mailbox earlier, and as usual, there was at least half a tree trunks worth of junk mail in there. The usual stuff. All of which went straight into the bin. The recycling bin that is.

This isn't on my gate I hasten to add, still they make a very good point.

There were coupons for Dominoes, offering $1 off the XXL super deluxe –  if you order at least 5, collect them in person and consume them between the sociable hours of 3am and 6am.

There was an offer of a ‘Free house valuation’ from the local estate agent. Free? Free? I should bloody well hope so. With the housing market the way it is at the moment, agents should be so lucky to have a house on their books that they could actually sell.

There was an extremely tempting offer on some reduced rate security shutter blinds –  if we have a large billboard outside our house advertising their services. Ermmm, lets think about that one for a minute. Nope. I don’t think prison chic really does that much for a house’s curbside appeal.

Then there was one from the Government health department, inviting me along for my free mammogram. Well strictly speaking the letter wasn’t exactly addressed to me, but someone who obviously lived here before and fell into the right age bracket. Not to be deterred and curious to see what I have in store for me in years to come, I thought I’d have a read through the literature.

Who knew I would have such a choice of languages – 30 in total, or 31 if you decided to read it in bog standard, boring old English. The other options were Amharic, Arabic, Bosnian, Burmese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Croatian, Dari, Netherlandic, Farsi, French, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japenese, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Khmer, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Togalog, Thai, Tigrigna and Vietnamese.

Blimey, I’ve never even heard of some of those languages. Who knew that the northern suburbs of Perth were such a international melting pot of nationalities. The last time I took a look around, the only people living in the area were Australian’s, English, more English, even more English and a spattering of South Africans.

What I want to know is how do they even decide what languages to include on this type of bumpf?* Is it really based on the population of Perth, or do they just pick out the prettiest sounding languages and simply try to pad out the list to cover the entire alphabet?

Of course if you’re going to be really politically correct, then the literature should also have included Braille for the blind, a taped recording for the illiterate and a dictionary for the incredibly stupid. Then, when the whole lot is printed out on half a rainforest and delivered house to house, everyone at least has the option of either landing a job as a linguist in the UN, or using the 6″ wedge to stop their front door flying open in the storms.

* Incidentally, incase you’ve ever wondered about the history behind the word ‘bumpf’ –  it orginated in England during WW2, when the soldiers, who were overwhelmed with unnecessary printed materials, decided to do a spot of recycling and use them as loo roll – or ‘bum fodder’.

So there you go, don’t accuse me of never writing anything educational on my blog!

When BIG really isn’t beautiful

Some people might have thought that my previous post about parents murdering their kids was a little extreme. And then a story popped up on the world news that backed up everything I had said.

It’s about Leanne Salt. A 24 year old girl who is happily feeding her 8 month old triplets towards a life full of medical problems, and all but giving them a helping hand into an early grave. A girl who should be locked up for the great big helpings of child abuse that she is dishing out to her kids, along side the junk food she’s filling them up on.

Despite the fact that only a moron wouldn’t know better, this 30-stone lump sees nothing wrong with how she is bringing up her triplets. Far from it. She is actually proud of the fact that her babies became card carrying members of the Happy Meal club at just 6 months old.

Refusing to acknowledge that she is doing anything wrong, she believes that because she takes the batter off their fish and chips, she is giving them a healthy diet.

And after all,  as she says, she does feed her babies vegetables every Sunday. Perhaps she believes that an onion ring and a pickled gherkin count towards their 5 a day? Or should that be their 5 (at a push) a month.

Now 8 months old, these poor babies are being fed around 1,249 calories a day, with a diet consisting mainly of junk food, fish and chips, crisps and microwave meals.

Seriously? Is this woman for real?

It goes without saying that such an eating machine has zero respect for her own body, or her diminishing life expectancy, but how can she be so incredibly selfish when it comes to her kids?

And there in lies the problem. As well as being selfish, the girl is obviously plain stupid. Certifiably dumb actually. Devoid of brain cells and missing any sort of solid matter between her ears. After all, anyone who seriously believes that watching what you eat and consuming healthy foods leads to anorexia is one stitch short of a lobotomy.

Her line of reasoning? “I do worry my kids could get picked on if they get fat, but I’d tell them that big is beautiful.”

Yes, that will make them feel so much better when their mother is harpooned in the school car park by Greenpeace. Or when they get diagnosed with diabetes. Or when they drop down from a fatal heart attack as they turn 21.

Of course beauty is very much in eye of the beholder, and big can be beautiful. But there are always exceptions the rule, and this has to be one of them. I don’t know when Miss Salt last looked in a mirror, I suspect it’s been a while, but beautiful is not one of the words that immediately springs to mind.

And that brings me to the question that everyone who has heard about this girl is surely asking themselves. How in God’s name did she even snare anyone mad, brave or drunk enough to impregnate her in the first place? And when she did, presumably with the aid of chloroform, how did the the deed itself (I shudder as I write that) even take place.

Now I’m certainly no physicist, but aren’t there some laws regarding mass, volume, weight and proximity that would have made this nigh on impossible? It would be like trying to mate Dumbo with Mickey Mouse.

So taking the fact that some poor bugger did somehow manage to put 3 buns in her cavernous oven, and then wake up with a hangover from hell and run screaming from the house, how did she even know she was pregnant? Did she wake up one morning and think, that’s odd, my stomach looks slightly swollen today?

Let’s face it, she could have gestated an elephant without attracting any attention. Well apart from the fact by the 9th month she had gained a further 10 stone.

And now for the bit of the story that really makes you believe that the world has gone mad. Being that she was the fattest mother of triplets that medical science had ever clamped eyes on, it took a team of 68 people to deliver her babies, at a cost of £200,000 to the NHS. This included the operating table that had to be specially-built for her Caesarean section.

Well come on, you didn’t think that she was going to have a natural birth did you? All the crow bars in the world and a forklift truck wouldn’t make that a possibility.

Now that she is back at home with her brood and securely wedged into her 5 seater sofa, she is happy to live off benefits with no future plans to ever lift a 20 kg finger and do any work again. After all the poor girl is apparently already too busy to clean, tidy up or prepare proper meals for her children. The family only get dressed to leave the house once a week – so that they can collect her benefits.

And let’s not forget that if the governments latest  hair brained scheme takes off, then one day she’ll also he paid to walk (roll) her kids to school as well.

On the upside, Miss Salt is making some plans for their future. She has decided that she now deserves to be given her own council house, and is completely ready to face the world alone.“I know how to microwave a meal and make up instant mash, so I think we’d all manage.” Stand aside Jamie, the girl’s got your job in the bag.

And what is the shocking truth about this tale of chips and child abuse? This girl is not alone.

A recent survey by the Infant and Toddler Forum found that 29 per cent of children under the age of three ate a takeaway at least once a week, while 23 per cent eat crisps and 16 per cent drink fizzy drinks almost every day.