{mally powell}

Day 14 - Inglorious isolation diaries

6 April 2020

I'm more than ever aware that moments of thankfulness for Titch - when he’s being particularly cool or loving and I take a second to marvel that all the years of wondering if we’d ever be parents brought us to him - are tinged with a flash of fear that it will all be taken away. Neither of us truly allowed ourselves to believe that pregnancy would end in a healthy baby and we’ve been acutely aware of our fortune ever since. But just at the moment, as more and more people face the horrors of this virus, those flashes of horrified fear feel sharper than ever.

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Someone shouted ‘IDIOT!’ at me as they drove past when I was walking the dog with the boy in town this morning. They may have been having a very bad time, they may just have been a prat. Either way, it rattled me and left me wondering if I should be out, and if I should have brought the boy out (he was dropping pokemon card swaps to old friends, arranged on a video chat at the weekend and dropped through morning letterboxes without seeing his buddies); we were so carefully within the advice, exercise and fresh air are so important, and yet… 

The people suffering this week were probably infected the week of 16th of March. We cancelled the conference on the 3rd of March, which was the last time I was in London. By the week of the 9th we were lightly self-isolating, only going out to school and very limited trips to the shops. Matt went to a lecture at the RI at the end of that week, I was supposed to go to London for work but cancelled. That all feels like A Good Thing now - in hindsight it seems insane that events like the Cheltenham cup went ahead - but it also feels that we’ve mentally been on lockdown for a month already. 

Strange times.

Day 9 - Inglorious isolation diaries

1 April 2020

I could smell the lilies in my Mothers Day bouquet in the kitchen when I woke up, which made me smile (inside. Outside was in bleary denial that it was time to get up already). 

Titch seems a bit more himself today, which is pleasing. He’s immersing himself in Alex Rider. Good days and bad days eh?

I tell you what, though: it would be really useful if I could get my brain to focus for more than 2 mins at a time. I've got stuff to do! I tried to look at the numbers for probate last night, got in a total mess with exchange rates and gave it up as a bad job. This morning I spent 10 mins excising a pattern into the black clay bowl experiment I made instead. The focus I find in make-and-do may prove to be a lifeline. If I could just extend it to work…

Day 8 - Inglorious isolation diaries

31 March 2020

Titch had a nasty sore throat and a slight temperature - as in above his norm, not something a medic would call a temp - at the weekend which gave us all pause. He’s fine. It came with an intermittent productive chesty cough and a snotty nose: classic cold. It meant that we didn’t leave the house for two solid days - not even to walk the dog. She nearly pulled my arm off when we ventured out on Monday! Haven’t been to a shop since, just in case, but might have to brave the supermarket tomorrow. I think we both feel quite hesitant about that. Wild how something so mundane suddenly feels fraught with risk.

Titch has been a bit blue today. Last week had the structure of school, which was easier. This week, for just about the first time ever, he has to entertain himself. We’re trying to minimise screen time, which may be a mistake but we’re both keen to try to work on his initiative. It’s hard to criticise him for not having strength in a skill he has so little opportunity to practice, bless him. I think he’s feeling a bit battered and bruised, like he’s not good enough, and also generally bored. Meanwhile some of his mates are on fortnight half the time (not that he really wants to play, in reality, but he’d happily spend all day watching Dan TDM play it on YouTube). They also make stop motion Lego films and Kahoot quizzes - both of which are options for him so need to nudge him in that direction I think. I’m hopeful he‘ll get there. 

Thank goodness for modern communications! FaceTime and zoom are lifesavers at the moment.

In other news I’m attempting to make a bowl as part of my ‘’serve a meal on own-made dishes’ challenge... I think I’ve gone too thin, and it’s not what I originally had in mind but if it works will be a nice black clay compliment to Plan A. My pottery class has been put on hold, of course, so I'm improvising around the bigger picture. It felt good to make something.

Day 3 - Inglorious isolation diaries

25 March 2020

The mum of one of Titch's friends set up a group Zoom call ‘after school’ each afternoon which a good chunk of the year 5 boys dial in to (so Titch has zoom now 🙄) and it’s a real tonic for them - especially the singletons with no siblings to torment/be tormented by. It’s 45 minutes of high volume mayhem and drivel, but they’ve mastered virtual backgrounds, gallery views and in-conference messaging chats…

I might ask for a lesson. 

Day 2 - Inglorious isolation diaries

24 March 2020

Titch is currently parked in front of a documentary about Georgian shipwrecks which I am calling ‘History: The British Empire’. Joe Wicks broke him yesterday so he’s hobbling like a geriatric, and he’s been locked out of Duolingo German until this afternoon because he’s lost all his lives. So far so good…

 

Fitness | Maths | Language | English | Non-verbal | History | Music | Computing

Reading

YouTube | iPad

Day 1 - inglorious isolation diaries

23 March 2020

Me to Titch earlier ‘You don’t NEED chocolate, you only want it.’ as I hand him a dish of unsalted nuts and dried fruit.
Also me: ‘why the hell didn’t I stock up on desk chocolate?!’

Later on, I’m at my desk listening to a bunch of 9 & 10 year old boys discussing groceries in the most over-excited way: ‘Whose got eggs? I’ve got EGGS!’ ‘We’ve got loo roll!!’ 😂

 

fitness | maths | english | language | music | verbal

Projects | cooking

YouTube | iPad

Strange new world

So today was the boy's last day at school for the foreseeable future. Things have been moving at lightening speed for the past three weeks as the coronavirus has spread with terrifyingly rapidity, every day bringing the new realities closer and restrictions tighter. 

As of Monday we - the entire country, together with great swathes of Europe and the world - will be home schooling as well as home working. Who knows how that will work!

The aim is to be a bit more relaxed about all the things. To stay home as much as possible; socialise on zoom and FaceTime while the bandwidth holds out; walk the dog, run and Take The Air until more hardline restrictions set in and then... I dunno? Laps of the garden?

So incredibly thankful we have a garden - even if it is, as my neighbour kindly observed (no, really - I think it was intended as a compliment...), 'wild'! 

Bon chance, mon amis.

Courage!

(wash your hands, don't touch your face, keep your distance, cough/sneeze into your elbow or a tissue... you know the drill)

Where are the women - and laughs - in literary 'classics'?

I was just looking at the Hive books site as I realised I'd got the wrong book for April bookclub and accidentally perused the 30% off Penguin Classics selection of 48 books. Two things struck me:

1) They aren't many laughs on the list; and

2) I counted 5 women authors.

Five. Doesn't seem many, does it?

Someone - I’m ashamed to say I forget who - was making the point on Instagram the other day that one of the reasons that many more male artists have risen to prominence through history than their female peers is that, broadly, they had a lighter care load on their shoulders. It is easier to find time to create when you are not also responsible for running the household and caring for children. Another commenter on that thread added that not only were many of these men not doing the caring, they were actively being cared for. They had someone to feed them, tidy up after them, make sure they had clean clothes and all the rest, leaving them to concentrate on feeding their genius.

There is, of course, a whole additional question concerning the value that is placed on the work of women: would Rebecca have been dismissed as ‘romance’ by contemporary critics if written by Dennis Du Maurier rather than Daphne? Indeed, as other commenters have noted, would Brooklyn have been considered a work of literary weight if written by Catherine Cookson and not Colm Tóibín?

The other point - the lack of laughs in 'Literary Fiction' (#NotAllLiteraryFiction, obvs) - is an ongoing mystery to me... 

The oddness of a pandemic

News of the Coronavirus has been spreading since the start of the year but over the past month the concern has grown exponentially - not coindidentally, like the virus itself - until yesterday the government finally gave up on its ‘herd immunity’ strategy and moved to a voluntarily shut down. For now. I suspect it will be a lot less voluntarily very soon.  

The government finally announced today that schools will close on Friday for the duration. No exams this summer, so it could be later rather than sooner that they’re back in anything resembling a normal routine.

I'm torn between relief to finally have some clarity, after mounting speculation over the last week, and mild (mounting) panic about what it will all mean. Juggling work and childcare, managing headspace, a 10 year old only child with no social contact for weeks on end... I would love to think they can still hang out in small groups at the beach, in the park etc, but can kids do responsible social distancing? I’m not sure they can! 

Oh boy.

Knowledge is power: the cost of minimising the breastfeeding learning curve

It occurred to me the other day, not for the first time - quite apart from how ridiculously unnecessary - how damaging the whispers and ‘Significant Looks’ approach to certain aspects of women health can be.

My cousin had a baby at the end of last year (her second corker of a little girl). As if the new born haze isn’t tricky enough, the poor things have spent much of their time since then struggling with assorted complications to do with breastfeeding which have resulted not just in tears of frustration and pain on both sides, but hospital stays and some weapons-grade antibiotics for my cousin. 

The enthusiasm to encourage new mothers to breastfeed their babies is understandable - the benefits, not least among them convenience and cost-saving, are well documented. However, this evangelism seems bring with it a tendency for some antenatal classes, midwives and health visitors to minimise the learning curve. Emphasising that it is ‘the most natural thing in the world’ while glossing over the fact that it is a real skill that both participants must learn, and that - frankly - when you first start feeding it bloody hurts [crushed glass being expressed through your nipples anyone?], serves no one well. If women are not equipped with an appropriate understanding of what to expect it is very hard for them to tell the difference between normal discomfort and concerning pain.

The result of this fudging is that many women struggle valiantly on feeling like utter failures when establishing feeding has been challenging. Some give up, racked with guilt - sometimes castigated, silently or otherwise, by other new mothers and even by health professionals - for ‘letting their baby down’ by switching to formula. Some, like my cousin, have eventually found support through lactation specialists or networks of women who have helped them identify tongue ties (still too often overlooked in postnatal checks, it seems) and other common challenges. Others give up when better support may have made a fundamental difference, or struggle on and develop serious issues which end up taking the choice of how to feed out of their hands, putting their own health in peril in the process.

To be clear, I am firmly of the view that ‘fed is best’ and new parents should be free to decide how to feed their baby without judgement (within reason - a friends’ baby book noted how much her 10-week-old self had enjoyed steamed steak pudding, perhaps not the ideal approach in the light of more modern understanding of digestive development). However, for parents to make an informed choice they really do need to be just that: informed.

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NHS breastfeeding support (includes a useful list of tools and support groups)

La Leche League