Rebecca_In the Slow Lane

First published on The Motherload Blogzine, June 2020 Watching the evening news, people witness another awful killing and see the Anti-Racism protests, feeling sympathy with the cause.  They see the pain and the hurt and feel sorry that these tragic things happen in the world, and then settle in for some Gogglebox and tweet about celebrity home furnishings.  After all, we’re only human and that’s how we cope, serving ourselves small measures of reality, washed down with an effervescent tonic of escapist TV. For everyone struggles: dealing with life’s injustices, drowning in unfair systems, let down by fellow humans,  broken by Covid-19 .  No one is immune.  We’re all in this together. And then amongst all these hardships, this everyday trauma and pain,  some stranger tells you that you’ve had it easy compared to others,  that you’ve lived a charmed life.    Nobody likes to be told that they have had it easy .   Just today, another m...

First published in the Motherload Blogzine, June 2020 Racism is part of everyone’s history.  Racism is everyone’s business. Racism should not be our future. Yet racism is clearly our present.  Whatever our background, we have a role to play to make a change for our children’s futures: we are called on to be “Anti-Racist” in an age that can no longer progress with well-meaning ‘colour-blind’ apathy. The latest news bulletins force us to confront the realities of George Floyd’s last breath, Breonna Taylor’s last sleep, Sean Reed’s last drive and Ahmaud Arbery’s last jog: just some of the recent victims of the inherent racism fixed in our society, on both sides of the Atlantic. This is deeply uncomfortable, but recognise this as a healthy reaction to utilise, to make a change. As mothers, we already know that we have to do all we can to foster kindness, but do we know that “children notice race and the difference between themselves from the age of around three” ( Educational Psyc...

These are individual experiences but they are not the fault of any individual, but instead the collective system of racism, grown out of a history of oppression, misrepresentation in dominant media and a failure to deliver a more diverse curriculum in schools. There are many forms of privilege, many of which I benefit from: class, gender, financial, place of birth, education, but this post reflects only on racial. Part 1 On being half-Indian (Kenyan-Asian) growing up in small town monocultural Lincolnshire (mid 1980s- 2001) Mostly very positive as I was a very confident 3rd child and had a close group of (all white) friends in a comfortable happy family, good schools, a friendly middle class neighbourhood and a left-wing Government through my teenage years. Late 1980s. I don’t remember the specific event but I recall the conversations afterwards: My Punjabi Sikh Grandfather made a rare visit up to see us, leaving the relative safety of the multicultural North London neighbourhood where...

Dear Team Night Feed, I'm writing this particular blog as I was very anxious about this transition and wanted to hear about other parents' experiences, especially mothers who'd chosen to feed their babies and toddlers to sleep, maybe for two years or so, but were interested in gentle night weaning. I can't believe we made it this far, especially after writing this last summer!  I hope our story helps anyone else in the same position, even though every child/parent/home is unique and different. There's a background story to our first night of night weaning which you can read here , but in short, little one was 26 months with good communication skills, he'd stopped asking for "mummy milk" during the day and in the morning, and was only waking up once in the night.  He's got a big brother who's almost 4 years old and fully weaned (at 18 months).  I had routinely fed our youngest to sleep for every bedtime, back to sleep after every wake up a...

Our boys nursing their bunnies to sleep Four months ago, I published an article all about my rejection of the sleep training culture , extolling the virtues of following my baby’s lead, the second time around. The liberation from rules and schedules was the birth of my maternal instinct and true enjoyment of motherhood. When my eldest was just six months, he slept through the night, 7pm-7am every night. To outsiders, we’d discovered the holy grail of parenthood. Yet there were major cracks under the perfect, unbroken surface of sleep.  To achieve this, I had to leave him to “self soothe”; I rarely witnessed that magical moment of watching him pass from wakefulness to sleep; I had to rouse him if he fell asleep at the breast for fear of “bad sleep associations”, but I didn't dare break out of this, too worried about giving our child "poor sleep habits".  But if you’ve read my other blogs, you know all about this. When our second boy was born, all those rules went ...

Published First on The Motherload, 15.4.18 My confession: we tried sleep training. Is he sleeping/feeding/crying/playing too much/too little?  Like many other first-time clueless parents, coping postpartum with newborn life broke me.  The critical effects of the sudden onslaught of sleepless nights, anxious days and sore nips were far worse than I’d romanticised.We soon reached for books preaching routines and promising contentment. We read that feeding/cuddling/rocking to sleep would cause long lasting bad habits. We tried the recommended schedule and my husband took over bedtime duties.  After a breastfeed and a story, I’d ninja-step out of there as he'd sashay into the nursing chair.  Little one got cuddles galore with his Papa, along with all the rugby anthems he asked for.  I never knew that ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ had so many verses.  But after much perseverance, he managed to achieve the impossible: put down in the cot, sleepy, but awake....

Published first on The Motherload, 6.11.2017 Our parents did it. Our parents' friends all did it.  The Royal family routinely do it.  Having your children two years apart always seemed like a good idea. They get to grow up together, have the same  friends, share toys(!)... Sixteen months into being a mother to two, and I'm now able to see the light. However, I can say with recent experience, that it is so much harder than I ever imagined it could be. Our parents can only remember the good times. "My eldest (fourteen months older) used to bring me the nappies and wipes," my mother in law told me. "Your brothers were always the best of friends," my mum reminisced.  However, in our merry little foursome, my husband usually returns from work to find me a broken human.  Still standing, but only just. There's been times when all three of us have been crying, feeding off each other's misery. It was hard to define what the matter was; it was all just...