Motherhood Guilt No.1

Maggie took her first bottle of formula last night; it's been a few weeks of steadily worse nights, feeding every 2-3 hours, late evening feed creeping forward earlier and earlier and in the last few days my supply has gone into overdrive due to the insane amounts of feeding she's doing - tethered, I am. A dairy cow reincarnated, pandering to the whims of a frankly massive baby who doesn't exactly need any more podge. But then that's the point of on-demand parenting, you're too lazy to get into routines so you let the little buggers lead you wherever they please.

weeeeeeeeeeean meeeeeee

So, we have started weaning. I must stress I mean the British version of weaning - getting her onto solid foods. The Americans have all looked shocked that I've "already" started taking her off the boob. Madam has decided she doesn't like mushed up baby food, only grown up food in big chunks that she can pulverise in her squishy little hands. And while she's getting the hang grandually of actually digesting some of this food, it's not going to fill her up anytime soon. The sleep deprivation is too much so she is now getting a bottle of formula at bedtime in the hope it'll fill up her tummy a bit better than I what I can produce after a full day running on empty.

This is, well, timely considering the cover of Time Magazine a few weeks ago. For anyone living in a hole (or not currently embroiled in the breast.v.bottle debate), a feature was made about extended breastfeeding where this was the opening gambit image:

Cue Guardian journalists hurriedly hashing out jumbled up articles, debate flaring across the pages of mumsnet and friends on facebook superimposing each other's faces on the woman above (that was quite funny, I enjoyed it).

Off the back of a certan Guardian journalist writing aforementioned mismatched article, my closest mum-friends and I discussed our views on breast .v. bottle. Which are essentially the same - none of us are pro one and anti the other. We all believe there just ought to be access to all the information on both choices for all women, then all women should be supported no matter what path they decide. Three of us have chosen to breastfeed and are all currently breastfeeding, one of whom is into what in the UK is counted as extended breastfeeding her 14month old. The fourth chose to formula feed both her children from birth.

I exclusively breast fed Ethan until he was about 5 months old, when I introduced a dreamfeed of formula for similar reason for introducing it to Maggie. I remember clear as day sobbing over him while he gulped it happily down, feeling wracked with guilt and feelings of failure. Last night I just begged it to work. But the feelings of failure still simmer underneath.

I found it relatively easy getting breastfeeding going and have seen other struggle and suffer in order to breastfeed, to triumph after months of excruciating pain or to despair at their perceived failure at one of the great pinacles of early motherhood. So how come, compared to all these women, I dared to be so self indulgent as to weep over choosing to give my son one bottle of formula a day? Thankfully I've realised how ridiculous this is and this time am just praying to the formula gods that eventually this will make Maggie sleep longer again.

In the UK, I was often congradulated at breastfeeding Ethan until he was 9months. We stopped because he just suddenly refused - we were down to just one feed a day by that point and one morning he just pushed me away. And that was that. In the UK extended breastfeeding is counted as beyond 6months - I was aiming for 6months and was glad I'd managed to go a bit beyond it.

In LA almost every mother I know with a child under 18months is still breastfeeding. I don't know if some of them are supplementing with formula, but even the British mums here are thinking nothing of whipping it out for their darlings reaching and going beyond their first birthday. The fact that I'm surprised by this surprises me! Me - the homebirthing, anti-routine, on-demand parenting, breastfeeding, home-cooked-food weaning, wannabe-hippy mother is almost shocked that most mums I know in California are, by British definition, extended breastfeeders.

I'm not sure if I'm just very easily influenced - hmm, no, I know I'm very easily influenced. That or I have a big red button in my brain that gets pushed by evil gremlins every time something appears that might make me feel guilty about my ineptness as a mother. But this time I'm trying to bypass it, I am using the opportunity of living in a community that doesn't think breastfeeding beyond 6months is weird but also appreciating that I have a more than viable alternative. If I honestly believe formula is a completely fine option for one of my closest friends, how hypocritical of me to feel ashamed at giving it to my own babies.

I enjoy breastfeeding, I believe in the health benefits for my babies and me, it is free and easy. But my choice to mix feed is just as valid as any other. And the person who needs to accept that most is me.

Settling In?

I got a lovely comment on my last blog post yesterday from another blogger (not someone I know in real life - amazing!) whose blog I've been avidly following and reading for quite a while - in fact the only blog I follow written by someone I've never met! AliBlahBlah, thanks very much - you provided me with the inspiration to start this weird transatlantic/kinda motherhood/waffle-a-lot blog and now the kick up the arse I needed to write something for the first time since April - APRIL!!! It's nearly sodding June!!

One excuse I have is beavering away creating the programme for my theatre company's latest show - Henry V...

On the assumption that the lovely AliBlahBlah is my only non-real life follower, I won't bore you with the details of Theatre Delicatessen - if you're a friend of mine on facebook you're probably doing the usual eye rolling at the number of status updates begging you to spread the viral marketing campaign word and buy tickets to the show. I've been spending the limited computer hours I get (inbetween the sleep training of a certain Little Loy who has decided every bedtime and naptime shall start with an hour or more of screaming tears) doing one of the few jobs that can be achieved from the other side of the world. The programme is done and looks beautiful, even if I do say so myself - but has left me feeling even further away as opposed to closer to the show, the company and my professional (often personal) family. But do buy tickets if you're in London - it's directed by Roland who is one of the most exquisite directors of my all contemporaries, and stars some Theatre Delicatessen stalwarts who are incredible actors it has been my greatest fortune to work with.

Theatre Delicatessen

The other reason for absence has been the visit of the parents to the new house - and bearing in mind my mum is probably the biggest reader of my blog, it seemed a bit counter productive to write about what we've been up to when she's been seeing it for herself.

We moved and welcomed the arrival of our stuff off the boat a few days before Mum and Dad got here, and in a way that was perfect - they were present right at the start of us really beginning our lives in LA (you can't help but feel in limbo land when living in a glorified hotel room wih only a few clothes and photos to resemble home), so they now feel very much a part of it.

We managed a glorious mix of running round seeing sights and sounds of LA - was amazing to get out of Santa Monica for a bit, I REALLY need to learn to drive - and just chilling out and living our lives here. It does feel more like we're living a life here - I'm still thinking ahead to when we go home but it helps that Paul and the Little Loys seem really settled. But a part of me doesn't want to feel utterly settled, I want to go home - maybe not right now but eventually. My first impressions have improved since that particular post but I still can't see me falling in love with city - this weird mixture of chillaxation, yoga and granola eating with the frenetic and frantic need to be doing everything all the time, rushing around in cars that fill up massive roads, everyone living in their fast paced little bubble.

So I continue to feel like there is one foot still planted in the UK, spiritually by the side of my colleagues and friends as they open the first show in our most ambitious space yet, but feeling like I no longer have the right to say "our" company, "our" space because I left everything that is mine. The foot in California is gratefully padded however by a growing close network of people we can now start to call friends. So maybe a balance is starting to be achieved. We plod along, just the same.

Brothers and Sisters

Funny how people with the same parents can look totally alike. I mean, it's obvious when you think about it, but if I had a pound for every time people said how alike Maggie and Ethan were....Here are my identical children:

And if I had a pound for everytime people said my brother and I looked alike:

There is almost the same age gap between Edward and I as there is between my two. We apparently couldn't get enough of each other at their age either. Long years of a particular type of sadomasochistic love endured that only siblings understand: Edward spent inordinate amounts of time being dressed up in women's clothes, being covered in nail polish and makeup, gamely learning terrible dance routines, jumping off ever higher steps happily assured I would always catch him (took about seven years before he remembered this particular game always ended with me moving out of the way just as he launched himself off the top stair). My parents really did have him to be my playmate.

Then hormones kicked in and for six years my grandparents refused to have us to stay at the same time because we fought so much. We would scream, slam doors, hit, punch and kick, get into arguments for the sake of it and generally make my parents wish they could give us both up for adoption.

The turning point came when I was seventeen and he was fourteen. We went on holiday that Christmas to Jamaica, staying a beautiful house with a few of my parents' friends. Somehow we started drinking and smoking together sneakily behind the grown ups' backs; I don't think we ever got particularly twatted, but the rebel aspect of it slowly started to reforge our bond.

My gap year was a bit of a fraught time for all concerned but by the time I packed up my bags ready for an independant life at university, we were not just friends again, but allies, confidantes, conspirators, siblings. A weird role reversal had taken place wherein although I was technically the eldest, he was the one who tended to look out for and look after me.

This week both Maggie and I were parted from our brothers in ways completely new for us. Since she started actually paying any attention to him, Maggie suddenly had her first full day without Ethan. I'm not sure she particularly noticed but she did save her biggest "take my face over" smile for when we picked him from nursery.

And my brother flew to Afghanistan for his first tour with the Army. We are literally on exactly the opposite sides of the world from each other. I have never been so physically far from Edward and it feels like a limb has gone with him, there is a massive hole in my heart pumping with worry and love. Any political or moral views I have about war, particularly this, the war of my generation, are completely irrelevant now my brother is fighting in it. I don't want to have a debate about whether it is right or wrong, whether or not Tony Blair was a lapdog of Bush's; all I know is my brother is out there somewhere in the eternal desert doing what he believes is right, doing a job I would never, ever have the courage or temerity to do, making a difference in his own way.

We always joke that we only had a second baby so Ethan would have someone to entertain him so we could sit back and drink gin. But I hope in Maggie we've given him more than that - someone who's soul, life, history, memories are so entwined in his own that they don't just look the same on the outside, they breathe the same air. Even on opposite sides of the world.

Love you bro. xx