London Mums Blog

The curse of the common cold

The whole family is suffering from colds at the moment. I rarely got colds before our son was born and now in his ten months of life, I’ve lost count of the number of colds we’ve all had and how many sick days my husband’s taken!

Being ill with a baby is in itself something challenging too. You can’t just have a duvet day and wallow in your own self-pity when there’s a little one to look after. They are miserable with their sniffles and you are miserable with yours and it all makes for some long days. Parents of older children tell us how it only gets worse, as once they attend school they pick up bugs all the time.

In a desperate attempt to reduce the number of colds we get (as we move into prime cold-catching season), I researched cold prevention and the best ways to deal with a cold when you do have one. I learnt that I don’t spend long enough washing my hands – you’re meant to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice as a measure of how long to wash and rub your hands.

Oh what heaven and joy

Oh what heaven and joy. Last Sunday morning my husband took the children to a party in Richmond Park for a few hours. Precious free time to have a long bath, write a blog post, make a fish pie and go to my club.  No not to dance in the dark recesses of a hip basement. This particular club is set in 27 acres in leafy, suburban Acton and is a twenty- minute walk from my house.  The Park Club has large outdoor and indoor swimming pools, acres of tennis and every class you could think of. 

During the credit crunch journalists have been urging people to give up expensive club memberships and go jogging, power walking and star jumping in the park, but this doesn’t work if you have children. You have to take them to the park and watch them jump, run, climb  etc. while you hang around on the side-lines feeling frankly bored.

In sickness and in health

I have just recovered from flu, which then morphed into a chest infection. It was soul destroying and went on for so long, that at one point I doubted whether I had flu, and thought perhaps that I was inflicted with something more sinister. I've never had real flu before. The thing about flu is that the body and soul is ravaged from all angles. Nothing is left unturned. I was racked with pain and negativity and at moments vaguely high on Syndol painkillers. For the first couple of days I couldn't speak. For the whole ten days I coughed all the time, and woke up with each morning with the mother of all headaches. The worst part was that I was in a foul mood and when I wasn't being foul I was depressed. It was like having severe pmt for 10 days. Can you imagine having to live with someone like that?

Prick me, please! Nature’s way to tell me ‘Take it easy, luv!’

The first time it hit me, I was walking down Islington's Upper Street, struggling under the weight of too many shopping bags, mobile phone in one hand, clutching files in the other. The pain was sharp, sudden and so strange, it made me laugh out loud. Did somebody just shoot my bum?

I limped back home, unable to put pressure on my right foot and swearing with each step. I rang Francesca Topolski, an angel with a diploma in kinesiology and cranio-sacral therapy, and she gently rocked, jiggled and wiggled the twisted pelvis in its proper location.

A few days later the pain had miraculously disappeared and I filed my experience under 'inexplicable curiosities of early pregnancy'. Little did I know, that this was just a tiny foretaste of what my sciatica had in store for me.

Help! I've lost my pelvic floor muscles

I knew I shouldn’t have laughed at the incontinent old lady sketch on Little Britain. My mum was right when she said it was cruel. But no, even though I knew she was right and I did feel a bit guilty, I still giggled and said ‘but mum, they’re only taking the piss’ and of course, that unintentional pun just, very childishly, made me guffaw even more. So, it was a recent trip to the gym that made me realise my childhood saying of ‘Ha. God paid you back’ - often uttered in glee to my annoying older brother as he stubbed a toe or something after having given me a massive Chinese burn or some other siblingly torture - is true. Only, as a grown up, I think ’Ha, God paid you back’ is normally termed Karma.

It's Sextucation month at school

Since last term, there’s been quite a build up to the S-E-X Education lessons for Year 4.  I’ve tried to explain a few things to Miniminx, but she’s tended to cover her ears and gawp in horror for most of it.

From the beginning of this term there’s been a change of attitude, Miniminx has been determined to be ‘cool’ about "Sextucation", even though she hasn’t quite been able to separate the words yet as a way of avoiding saying the S word. In fact, cool has become emboldened into curiosity and she’s got a bit too bolshy for my liking, saying it’s time she started watching Sex and the City so she can learn about ‘it’! (Samantha’s antics are just too graphic - it’s non negotiable, it’s banned).

A Calpol Christmas

We once went to stay with some friends who rather sheepishly showed us an entire draw stuffed with Calpol spoons. It was an impressive number; clearly their two small children had consumed vast quantities of the pink stuff in their short lifetimes (and these parents were both doctors - go figure).

Anyway, it reminded me of a famous quotation from TS Eliot's Prufrock: 'I have measured out my life in coffee spoons'. Well, this year, we have measured out our Christmas with Calpol spoons. We have got through more bottles in the past week than we have in the past 12 months. Even The Doctor, whose usual opinion about these things is that less is more, was doling it out liberally. Meanwhile we ourselves have been high on Lemsip for the past couple of days.

An introduction to head lice

Oh no. A sign on the door.

I dreaded these notices more than staying at Scottish grandma's in the winter, where once it was so cold I could actually see my breath escape from my mouth. Scottish grandma has a miniature wooden Swiss chalet on her fireplace mantle, a memento we had brought back from a skiing holiday, and it kindly reminded me of the temperature. Forty-two friggin' degrees. Fahrenheit. Inside the house.

We have had several cases of headlice recently – please check your child’s hair diligently.

Please, don't send your sick kids to school!

First, check out the Best of the British Mummy Bloggers. It's up over at Potty's and is a nice collection of cries tales from the trenches of motherhood.

Second, I want to plead with my fellow mums -- PLEASE, if your child threw up last night’s dinner or had the loo permanently stuck to their bottom, DO NOT SEND HIM TO SCHOOL.

I don’t care if you asked him if he wanted to stay home and he said no. I would want to get out of the house too if I was faced with the choice of helping a grumpy, tired mummy with the growing mountain of laundry the size of Everest or playing with my friends.

The thing is, when you send your sick child to school, they spread their germs. They don’t do it intentionally – they cough or sneeze and the virus suspends itself in mid air, non discriminate on where, or on whom, it lands.

Hey Mums, do you wear your baby as a fashion statement?

Mums in the US are up in arms about a recent Motrin ad, the J&J brand of Ibuprofen in the US.

The ad implies that wearing your baby in a sling hurts your back, buy hey, you do it because it is fashionable and "supposedly" good for your child.

Twitter Moms especially did not like this one bit. And in my opinion you shouldn't piss off a group of about 14,000 mothers that are active in microblogging. 

Nits again!

We’ve only just been back at school.  The standard school lice letter hasn’t even been sent home. Yet, we have nits again.

The days of being a smug “never had nits” family is sadly long past.  It was so much easier when we just had a boy with very short hair.  It's those girls with the flowing locks that ruined added to my long list of qualifications on my parent CV. 

I don’t recall nits being part of my school life ... and neither does my mother.  I have no idea what has changed since then but they are here and it's best to keep a fine tooth comb handy.

The scenario is played out as follows:  my eight-year-old daughter is itching her head at breakfast and suddenly alarm bells go off. 

“Why are you itching your head?”  A quick morning inspection reveals a few nits.

Coffee mornings and threadworms

I love coffee mornings. Women get together and discuss all sorts of things that they wouldn’t dream of mentioning on the playground or at a dinner party.

This week the topics drifted from Sarah Palin (the UK is actually frightened) to Jerusalem artichokes (I had no idea!) to threadworms.

My ears perked up when the discussion turned to threadworms. It’s one of those topics people don’t often talk about in public, like flatulence, headlice, and sex.

It turns out that threadworms (knows as "pinworms" in the US) are quite common in the UK, and most of the mums at the coffee morning had dealt with them at one point.

Oh, my.

A couple of my daughters have been complaining lately of itching “down there” and I had put it down to, how shall I say this, a lack of understanding on how to use toilet paper properly.

The end of finger sucking?

I was dreading the dentist. I knew that he would comment yet again on how my 4 1/2-year-old should not suck her fingers.

I also knew I didn't have a plan to combat this habit -- apart from the occasional “serious” discussions about my daughter's future beauty and other equally unsuccessful activities.

However, this time the dentist had a plan...or at least tangible advice.

He produced a leaflet about thumb and finger guards which are sold in the UK and are apparently quite successful. Our dentist gave the product a resounding thumbs up and that’s all I needed.

I promptly went to Thumbguard and bought a finger guard for £49.99 plus the usual extras.