A Modern Mother

I wish I had given my daughter the swine flu jab

My 7-year-old daughter had swine flu and it was hell.

It lasted two weeks. She had a sore throat and a high fever. She had a chesty, hacking cough that would lead to getting sick (not that she had much to throw up, she wasn't eating). She was tired and listless. At one point she recoiled when I touched her. She just wanted to be in bed, alone, with the lights off. She had a respite after a week, but then it came back with a vengeance; more coughing, more getting sick, more high fever. My main goal was to keep her temperature down and to make sure she took liquids.

Please, leave your sick kid at home!

 To all mums,

If your child threw up last night’s dinner or had the loo permanently stuck to their bottom last night, PLEASE 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 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.

Then other children get the sick bug, and they in turn get their siblings sick, and their parents. Soon the whole town is sick is and throwing up in unison and there is a run on paracetamol at Tesco .

Check your child's head. NOW!

This is a message to all parents:

It has come to our attention that head lice are active in the school. Please get off your friggin' arse and check your child's head. Do not just take a quick look; this can be misleading, especially in blond or light brown hair. Go out and spend £1.80 on a proper nit comb, slather in some conditioner (you can pick some up at Tesco for £1) and comb through every inch of your darlings' locks. IF YOU SEE LITTLE BLACK THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE SAND IT IS MOST LIKELY BABY HEAD LICE. Now treat it. If you refrain from doing this, the children whose parent's treat this condition properly will be re-infested.

We appreciate your immediate attention to this matter.

The Staff

Photo credit: gipukan 

School dinners ... PLEASE

After a rocky start, HM (4) is settling in school. Thirty four-year-olds is a lot and our school is handling the larger credit crunched intake very, ahem, creatively. The first week HM went mornings (9 - 12). The following week afternoons (1 - 3). This week she goes mornings, and gets to stay for lunch.

Therein lies the next hurdle. She doesn't want school dinners, she wants a packed lunch.

School dinners are healthy, good and affordable (thank you Jamie Oliver). I really don't want to be buttering ham sarnies and washing grapes in between the brushhairgetdressedeatbreakfast out-the-door palava. More importantly, I most likely don't have anything in the fridge suitable for a packed lunch (parmesean cheese and limp carrots?) I pleaded with her to try school dinners.

Hey America, socialized medicine is not that bad. Really.

OMG, I can't believe all the hoopla about health care reform in the US. After nearly three weeks here, and talking with family and friends, I have come to the conclusion that no one really understands the issues (who would, the documents run in the thousands of pages). Opposition comes down to partisan politics and the fear of socialised medicine.

When I first moved to the UK nearly 20 years ago I was leary of the National Health Service (NHS) from years of right wing warning: It's government-run. It's inefficient. It's socialism, ferchristsake. You won't have access to good care.

You know what I've discovered after years of living abroad and extensive use of the NHS: The UK "socialised" system is not that bad. Really. In fact, I'm a huge fan.

My daughter didn't speak! How we beat selective mutism

I'm a planner. I write lists. I think ahead. I try to deal with the unexpected. But when we moved back to the UK two years ago, I didn't anticipate that my five-year-old daughter would not speak for three months.

She would talk in the comfort of our home, but she would not utter a word in public. Not to her teachers, the other students, the GP, the dinner ladies, no one. She would clam up any public situation. Not really an ideal position to be in.

We came back to the UK in 2007 because we had a reception place at our very popular local school.  If we didn't accept the spot, we would lose it and most likely not get back in again. So we left our beach house in La Jolla (I can hear you moaning) to resume life in the Chilterns.

The phone call

I never really thought much about my body, I mean what went on inside my body, until I got the phone call.

I’ve learned since to appreciate the intricate patchwork of organs and hormones and neurons all connected in a delicate balance and tucked away nicely under your skin, so you don’t see it. Believe me, you don’t want to see it. I accidentally had a glance at a monitor in an operating room, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I didn’t really even think much about my body when I was pregnant. Sure, I read every text book I could get my hands on, as if that would ensure a passing grade, and most things played out chapter by chapter (except of course when I got severe preenclampsia—another story entirely). I was busy with work then, and now I was busy with the children.

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.

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

Moms 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. 

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.