Imagining

In 2000 my friend and I went backpacking. Although we, aged 21, thought we were being intrepid, we actually took a well trodden tourist route taking in India, Vietnam and Thailand.

There's a brilliant scene that makes up the prologue to Jonathan Coe's The Rotter's Club. Patrick and Sophie are talking about their parents' pasts, specifically 1973:

- Was it really that different do you think?
- Completely different. Just think of it! A world without mobiles or videos or Playstations or even faxes. A world that had never heard of Princess Diana or Tony Blair, never thought for a moment of going to war in Kosovo or Afghanistan. There were only three television channels in those days, Patrick. Three! And the unions were so powerful that, if they wanted to, they could close one of them down for a whole night. Sometimes people even had to do without electricity. Imagine!

I think of this scene when I think about backpacking in 2000, albeit with some revisions. We'd not only heard of Princess Diana, we'd started to forget her. People had mobiles, but not everyone. I got my own later that year so I could have it for the beginning of my journalism course. We used email, but I also still wrote letters. I hadn't yet performed a Google search (I learnt about Google on a computer skills module on the journalism course - imagine!) Phones certainly didn't send emails. Instead we stopped every week or so in an internet cafe and touched base with home, sending what we thought we witty group emails to all our friends with pithy observations about life in South East Asia.

In August 2000 we were in Thailand and heard about a cookery school in Chiang Mai in the north of the country. We decided to go for several days and before we left I called my mum and told her where we were heading.

As far as my mum knew Chiang Mai was a small village and we were the only tourists. In fact it is a big tourist hub with lots of hostels and visitors. Consequently when a couple of days later she heard on the radio that a young British female tourist had been found murdered in Chiang Mai, and that the name wouldn't be released until the family had been told, she had no way of contacting me. For a short while, until the name was released, she thought it was me. My grandpa, I am told, who I never saw have an alcoholic drink, had to sit down and have a whisky.

It was a day later I went to an internet cafe. Although we were in the same town we hadn't heard the news - I don't remember the detail but perhaps my friend and I had had an early night or went for dinner the two of us and didn't speak to other tourists. A deluge of emails from my mum was the first I knew of the murder, the last sent after she knew it wasn't me, asking for me to call her anyway. I did, and my poor mum managed not to ask me to return home early. We barricaded ourselves into our hostel room that night, my friend and I, and didn't go out in the dark.

The woman who was murdered was called Kirsty Jones. She was 23 and from Tredomen near Brecon.

I hadn't thought about those few days that much for the ten years after returning home. Then I had a child. And now I think of it almost every day. I think of my parents hearing the news and assuming the worst. I think of the day my kids are going to come home and tell me they've booked a round the world ticket. And most of all I think of Kirsty's parents having the worst confirmed, and of Kirsty herself.

My application to work at Google

Dear Google HR department,

I have recently bought the book Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? I have not had time to read it yet, as since becoming a mother I have only read a handful of books, but I fully intend to take it on holiday with me next month and to pretend things will be different because I am using the word holiday, and that I may have a chance to read.

Nevertheless I would like to apply to work at Google, specifically in a very senior position that earns googols of pounds.

I have much experience working as a writer, editor and lecturer, including writing two non fiction books and teaching at a prestigious university. However my application focuses on the experience gained during the two years since my daughter was born including the recent arrival of my son.

During this time I have developed excellent skills in project management. Every activity my family is involved with includes planning, organising and research to ensure completion on time and within budget, from working out journeys that facilitate naps to checking the availability of refreshments. This often involves balancing the competing requirements of the group.

I also have much experience in logistics, making sure people, facilities and supplies suit our requirements. This has included the planning of several holidays and travel on many modes of transport.

As leader of my team I frequently liaise with other team leaders to arrange activities that are both fun and educational. This includes assessing external settings and applying the criteria set by many interested parties and maintaining effective networks.

My communication skills have also developed in my current role. I already had much experience writing, editing and broadcasting. However I can now convey with a look, a twitch, a small intake of breath or a barely perceptible shake of the head whether something is allowed, whether it is dangerous and what level of punishment can be expected if I am disobeyed.

Crisis management has become one of my specialities. I am able to quickly assess any situation and go to the person or object most needing help whilst being aware of the speed in which other crises may be developing. Nothing fazes me, from overflowing sinks to precariously balanced irons or paint about to spill on the sofa.

I have daily responsibility for my team's budget, and can quickly evaluate the value of a carton of apple juice versus a box of raisins. I also now understand the value of a chocolate button, and the value of a cuddle. I also know the price of a 6 pint bottle of milk, and indeed the value (and cost) of 30ml of expressed breast milk.

Learning to delegate and to split tasks to ensure all members of the team feel involved in every project has been a key area for me. This sometimes requires changing the direction of a task in the middle of it. However I feel this is worth it to create a harmonious environment for everyone to work in.

I can assess danger in an instant, explain my decision and persuade all parties that they want to do things my way, regardless of the position they adopt at the start of proceedings. I have also become an expert negotiator and my skills in this area include knowing which battles to pursue and using all resources at my disposal when something just has to be done. A good example of this is convincing a two year old to brush her teeth.

In additon to this I often have to present progress reports on my work to other interested parties such as my husband and my parents, and to ensure a cohesive approach when using external contractors.

I have also acquired experience of interviewing and applying HR functions including hiring and firing. This has involved visiting several nurseries and deciding which best serves the needs of all parties.

All of my work seeks to meet short term goals whilst contributing to a long term strategy.

I am happy to expand on any of these points and very much look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Ellie Levenson
Mother

The importance of party bags

My daughter loves parties. She loves cake and singing happy birthday and, above all, she loves party bags. Parenting forums such as Mumsnet are often full of threads bemoaning the plastic tat you get in party bags and suggesting you give kids a book or donate to charity instead. Well my daughter loves plastic tat, as did I. Give her a pot of bubbles, a balloon and a plastic dinosaur and you'll have a special place in her heart. Not that she doesn't like books or do-gooding as well, but they don't really suit the frivolity or jollity of a party.

We went to a party yesterday. She went to bed talking about her party bag and woke up asking for it. We will make a special trip to the park this afternoon just to blow the party bag bubbles and chase them. Ah, the small, yet massive, pleasures, that make up a childhood.

It's things such as these that upset me most about the 'Bedroom Tax' and benefit cuts. Well that and denying people enough money to have housing and food and clothing. Those tiny things that me and George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith probably think cost hardly anything, that we are making even harder for people on benefits to afford. A pot of bubbles. Birthday candles. A balloon. A day out to a museum with 50p to spend in the shop. An apple juice in the cafe after a run around the park. A present if you are invited to a birthday party. Just make a card you say? Sure - but how to afford the paper and crayons? A swim in the pool in the school holidays. The bus fare to go and see a friend. A magazine or comic that you have absolutely set your heart on. A piece of cake.

I don't go in for vouchers instead of money. Zoe Williams explains why perfectly in her column here. But even if you don't object to a voucher scheme, what would you do? A voucher for a candle? A voucher for a bubble?

That's the thing about this Government that strikes me even more than any other - they are not only anti-aspirational, using rhetoric about getting into work (what work?) and improving lives to actually make lives harder and dull any aspiration by removing the likelihood of achieving it, but they are actually preventing a whole generation of children from having what they and their own children take for granted, and should take for granted - the occasional thrills of an everyday party bag that to some is tat, but that is far far more precious than that.

Handprint chickens

I love crafting, though as anyone who has had the pleasure of teaching me art (the only subject I was told by the teacher not to do at GCSE, though whether because I lacked the skill or she just didn't want me in her classroom for two years who knows) will tell you, I am better at the concept than the execution. Nevertheless what I lack in talent I make up for in enthusiasm. Hence having to share these handprint chicks. They are my daughter's hands, not mine, and come courtesy of her nursery rather than our efforts at home, though I fully intend to add them to my repertoire as number #102 of things to do with handprints when you are bored.

Incidentally, I blogged some time ago about making rainbow rice. It took ages, stank of vinegar, costs loads of money to buy the rice and the food colouring, went everywhere and I threw it out after a couple of months (though we did have some fun with it the few times we played with it). A friend of mine had a baby shortly after I had number two. We're spending a lot of time together. "I never understood," she said, "why you didn't just buy a big pack of cheap tricolour pasta and play with that instead."

She's a bloody genius. I will do that next.

A doctors' charter

We've had our fair share of contact with doctors the past few years. I certainly feel that what with pregnancies and birth and the care of our children once born, we're quids in when it comes to tax, and that's before we've even accessed the education system. It has led me to think however about what makes a good doctor. And it's rarely their actual medical skills. I was comparing two Consultants the other day, and why it was that I think one is brilliant and the other riles me. Then I realised, the latter one never introduced himself - it fell to me to ask him his name before he poked and prodded my child. Nor did he once use my child's name.

So here is my charter for doctors when dealing with child patients and their parents, for GPs and hospital doctors.

1) Names matter. Introduce yourself and ask what you should call the child. My daughter is never called by her full first name, I am not even sure she knows it. If a doctor wants to make her feel comfortable they need to used the diminutive we all use and they will only find this out by asking, not by glancing at her file. Similarly, my name matters. As I have written before, stop calling me mum.

2) Keep things private. Remember that just because a child is a child doesn't mean they don't also have a right to confidentiality and privacy. Don't start talking to me about their medical history in the corridor or waiting room.

3) Explain. It is easy to assume that just because a young child doesn't understand you there is no point explaining things to them. I believe children understand way more than we often give them credit for, and pick up an awful lot from body language and tone.

4) Be honest. Don't say something won't hurt if it will.

5) Keep listening. Just because I'm neurotic doesn't mean some of my concerns aren't justified. You know when you stop listening to me at my sixth point - well how do you know the seventh point isn't going to be the important one?

6) Ask parents what their worries are. I didn't know how to phrase my questions at one appointment, but the doctor finally managed to get it out of me. What specifically was I worried about, she asked. No one had asked me that before. It freed me to say what was on my mind, in the case the impact of radiation on fertility and cancer, and to be reassured.

7) Remember probability is meaningless to a parent. When you say something has a one in a hundred probability, we hear the one, not the hundred.

8) Talk information. There is no point telling us to steer clear of Google or avoid online forums - we won't. Far better to point us in the direction of the best sources of information.

9) Be human. I have one doctor I have seen a few times who always empathises and tells me his sons had something similar, whatever that may be, I have a hunch, based solely on the fact there is a picture in his office of him and a young girl but none of him and young boys, that his sons are made up wholly for empathetic purposes. Nonetheless I am choosing to believe him. It helps, knowing about your doctor's family, and who it is that they care about.

10) Be nice. My absolute favourite doctor always runs late. And she always apologises profusely. Which makes it okay.

When sympathy meets empathy

A friend of mine asked me, when I was a few days overdue with child two, whether I yet felt the need to apologise to everyone I knew who had ever been overdue before me, for not being sympathetic enough. In fact I didn't feel the need to apologise until about ten days overdue, when a momentary lull in my grumpiness made me think again of all my friends who had been through the same previously. I sent them all an apology.

The same friend contacted me recently. She'd had trapped wind. She remembered me once telling her how excruciating such pain could be, and herself felt the need to apologise to everyone who had ever had it for her lack of sympathy. (I think of this when winding my baby and whenever I am tempted to be lazy and give up pre burp).

But it's now I have children that I feel I must make the biggest apology. For I understand what it must feel like to have a sixteen year old be home later than promised or a seventeen year old drive your car at night or an eighteen year old head off to the airport with a backpack. Let alone go hang gliding or scuba diving or drug taking or glacier walking. All I can do, though I know it can't possibly stop my own children doing such things, is say to my parents, and parents everywhere, how very very sorry I am.

The formula for life

Save the Children launched a report today on breastfeeding, Superfood for Babies, in their words calling the report "a global call to action to rediscover the importance of breastfeeding and to support mothers to breastfeed their babies – especially in the poorest communities in the poorest countries." Now I'm all for public health messages that ensure we're all well informed about the choices we make, but the report's recommendation that made the headlines in the UK, that there should be cigarette style health warnings on boxes of formula, made my blood boil.

Parents (that's right, parents, not just mothers, not that you'd believe it from reading the press around this that fathers are also involved in decisions about caring for their children), choose to formula feed their babies for many reasons, none of which are anyone else's business. And I just don't believe that any of those people do it because they don't want the best for their children.

What such a recommendation does is make parents feel guilty for decisions they have made when trying to do this best. That's why the breast is best slogan is wrong. Best in what way? Better than a mother so exhausted she has a breakdown? Better than infected cracked nipples? Better than slow decline into malnourishment? Better than being able to leave your baby and go out and earn a living? Sod it, who has the right to say it's even better than being able to wear an outfit with the confidence you won't leak all over it? We make decisions as individuals to suit our specific circumstances, and I just don't believe most people make decisions for anything other than the greater good of their family.

What's more, the recommendation is ridiculous. Once you have decided, or realised, that formula will be part, or whole, of your baby's diet, there is only a small window in which you can change your mind. Milk supply is difficult enough to establish in the first place, but almost impossible to re-establish. Do Save the Children really want people who stopped breastfeeding a week ago, a month ago, six months ago, to feel shit every time they give their child food?

I owe many people in the National Health Service a debt of gratitude for the care they have given me and my children. Midwives, surgeons, radiologists, fetal medicine experts, cleaners and so on. But one that sticks in my mind is the paediatrician who told me kindly when my daughter was (literally) slowly starving, that we don't actually have an obligation to breastfeed our children, but we do have an obligation to feed them. What did we do in the end? You can find the answer elsewhere on the blog. For the purposes of this post it's irrelevent. Not that you'd believe it from the headlines, or the parenting forums, but it's not us v them when it comes to breastfeeders and formula feeders. We're all parents, all muddling through, all trying our best, all hoping to keep our children safe. And fed.

Because that's the thing about formula - it feeds children safely. Contrary to popular belief, there were no halycon days in the past when all women contentedly breastfed their happy chubby babies. No, the past is littered with dead or malnourished children who may have survived had formula been on offer. Lack of milk, inability to breastfeed or circumstances that make breastfeeding difficult are not another kind of yuppy flu that only exist in modern times. They have always existed, but the outcomes were far worse than today. Cigarette style warnings Save the Children? Don't be ridiculous - bottlefeeding doesn't kill, it actually does the opposite. Sure, put large public health messages on boxes of formula, but make them accurate. 'Formula saves lives', that's what they should say.


Related post: The great unsaids - bottle feeding