Geriatric Mummy, Author at Musings from a Geriatric Mummy

Babies & Supermarkets Part 2 – Parking Spaces.

Until having a baby, I didn’t understand why a parking space for parents and children was even necessary. For twenty years I had been unable to join the parent fraternity and then to add insult to injury, those lucky enough to have children were able to park closer to the entrance!!

However, after David’s birth, I understood. My first time parking in the supermarket was a disaster (again). There simply wasn’t space to get the baby carrier out without smashing a hole in the car door next to mine. I could have reversed, fished out David and left him on the carpark whilst I reparked but even in my state of panic, I realised that this would have been a high-risk strategy. I resolved the problem by driving home and sending my husband out later.

Our first use of the official parent & baby spaces was memorable. It was the only time we had ever seen one free. We were happy. I would even go so far as to say we were excited. As we reversed in, a car slowly drove past and a woman who looked very angry indeed mouthed at me “Where’s your child?”. I panicked. She looked scary. I almost forgot I was allowed to park there. I mouthed back “Behind me” in an apologetic manner. My husband asked what I was doing and I explained. I should say that my husband can be delightful and engaging with all manner of people but if he is insulted or feels insulted, he has a steely/murderous look in his eye that reminds me of Robert De Niro in Goodfellas. You wouldn’t want to cross him. He was all for hunting this couple down and shoving David in their face. I calmed him down and we went about our day happy that we were able to get the baby carrier out of the door.

I should also add that my husband is a performer who doesn’t seem to care what other people think of him. I am the opposite, and he loves to embarrass me. For example, early on in our relationship, he suddenly lay down in the middle of a department store and grabbed my legs as I tried to move away shouting “don’t leave me” as I dragged him across the floor. Unfortunately, the angry parking space lady gave my husband something new to wind me up about. Since then, he has tried to incite people to anger and righteous indignation by asking me to get David out slowly. I do not comply because I understand that those spaces are necessary for safe baby removal and because I don’t comply generally.

My issue now is how long do I make use of them. David is able to reach his own seat belt and I can hold the door open whilst he climbs down. Is it poor parking etiquette to use the space after your child hits this sort of development stage? This probably isn’t something normal people worry about, but I have never claimed to be normal!

I found the rules!!! Parent and child parking bays – the law and who can use them | RAC Drive

Working

As older parents who had never expected to be fortunate enough to have children, we had settled into a life of work and holidays. We were lucky enough to have good jobs where we could buy what we wanted as well as what we needed. However, what we should have been doing instead of spending was saving!

David, despite the initial fertility treatment costs (which were obviously huge) isn’t really that expensive and if we could have left him at home with a bag of snacks, the telly on and a toddler walker coming to see him mid-morning, then we would have been fine but apparently you can only do that with pets.

With the cost of living rising, I wisely decided to leave my job as head of a primary school last August. It was a scary move but necessary both for my mental health and to not waste the time I can spend with David. In my former role, I would leave the house at 6:30am, pick up David from nursery at 5:30pm, eat and then put him to bed. I would then work until 9/10pm before collapsing into bed. I salute all those who continue to work in our education system, but I wanted and needed a job where I could leave work at work and have evenings and weekends with my family. I have fortunately gained a position in a completely different area which starts in September and which I am really excited about.

Meanwhile, I have been doing supply teaching to pad out our nearly vanished savings. The point I think I’m getting round to is that as older parents (who weren’t wise about saving), we are probably going to have to stay in the workplace for a lot longer than we intended. Someone informed me recently that the current average age for children leaving the family home is twenty-four. If that happens with David, I will be seventy-one and my husband seventy-six. Our long, laid-back retirement sipping gins in the south of France is looking a lot shorter and cheaper. However, when I pick up my little boy from school and he asks if we can run a café together in his bedroom until dinner, the easy retirement doesn’t matter a jot. (Also, perhaps the after-school café could become a new income stream!)

Babies & Supermarkets

I feel that I am an intelligent and capable woman but when it came to managing normal household chores and a baby, I often turned into an incoherent mess.

The first time I went supermarket shopping on my own I hadn’t thought about the potential difficulties.

I parked in a normal parking spot and then realised why you need the parent and child parking. I couldn’t get the baby carrier out of the door. I had to repark. Next step was what on earth do you do with the shopping as you go round. First time I decided to limit the shopping and balanced a basket on one arm. This seemed to work but we were missing a lot of shopping. On my second and subsequent trips I pulled the trolly whilst pushing the pushchair or pushed the trolly whilst pulling the pushchair. It was very cumbersome, and I could take out a whole aisle of people, but I was starting to feel impressed with my steering capabilities when I ran into a friend and discovered that I was an idiot. Of course! You can put the baby carrier into the trolly! I tried to pretend that I knew that and I was just doing the ridiculous two vehicle shopping because I had sooo much to buy that day. I think she saw through me.

There is so much you don’t know as a first-time mother that even the easiest tasks can become huge hurdles. I read recently about The Mum Ribbon Movement suggested by Anna Mathur where mums tie a ribbon to their pram/pushchair or changing bag and it says:

– I am open to you offering me some kind words or support
– I’m here if you need some kind words or support

It is a wonderful idea and is gaining lots of followers. I only wish it had been around 5 years ago.

The Instagram link is here: ANNA MATHUR ~ Psychotherapist ~ Author ~ Mother on Instagram: “Grab a ribbon and share the square! The ribbon says: – I am open to you offering me some kind words or support – I’m here if you need…”

miniature of shopping cart with sweet strawberry

Sleep

David slept through the night from three months. This is not something you should ever share with fellow parents of three month olds.

We did nothing special. It is highly possible that he did wake up and we were so tired that we just slept through it, but it stuck. We listened to our friends talk about the nightmares they were suffering with sleep issues and felt extremely sympathetic but couldn’t really empathise. Some of them did not have a full night’s sleep for two years!

However, things started to get weird, and we started to feel less smug.

When we first converted David’s cot into a single bed, he would listen to his bedtime stories in the bed and then once we had left, would take himself out of bed and sleep on the floor next to his bedroom door. We decided that allowing this to continue till adolescence was probably not good parenting, so we started a multi-step plan. First, we set up the travel cot in his room to move him away from the door. This was like a teepee and he eventually crawled in, but he was still basically sleeping on the floor. We next had to butcher the travel cot so that it would go over the top of the single bed and he finally slept off the floor.

The next step was to remove the butchered tent like cover and this we successfully did by moving house. A little drastic but it worked as we got him a bunk bed and he sleeps on the bottom, near the floor.

As David has got older, our 12 hours of peace and quiet has been eroded from both ends. David comes in to see us as soon as the sun is up. To help, we purchased a clock that changes colour to show him when it is time to get up. David very kindly comes in to inform us that it hasn’t changed colour yet. He does understand the concept of lie ins and will remind us of whose turn it is to get up and pander to his every need. “Mummy, it’s your turn. It was daddy yesterday.” At bedtime, David has recently been unable to go to sleep unless I am in the room with him. I can hear wise parents everywhere shouting, “No! Don’t start that!”

Too late! Maybe we are (sorry – I am) pandering too much but that’s okay because it won’t be that long before he is a smelly, teenage boy who will not want me anywhere near his bedroom and as long as he needs me to help him sleep, I will be there.

Baby-led Weaning

Finally got round to this. As an introduction to the topic and information on my own food background, I should mention that I have no great awareness of nutrition, healthy eating etc and that I was brought up on a meat and two veg diet with regular access to what was called the ‘chocolate cupboard’. Also, one thing that I only recently discovered was unique to my mother’s preparation of school lunches is the ‘defrosting sandwich lunch’. Mum would take a whole loaf and make cheese sandwiches. The cheese sandwiches would go back in the loaf bag, and it would be placed in the freezer. Then, in the morning, we would chip off a frozen cheese sandwich for our lunch bags. During the summer this was great as it would keep the chocolate wafer from melting. During the winter, not so great. Nobody wants a frozen cheese sandwich for lunch.

Before having David, my only knowledge of how babies ate was from the remaining Heinz apple sauce food jars in our cellar and a vague recollection of Farley’s rusks. Having just about mastered the breast-feeding/formula combo when I finished the breast-feeding part at about three months, I was determined to be super well informed when it came to the next step. I bought handbooks, recipe books, read lots of online information and joined Facebook groups. I decided that for us, baby-led weaning (BLW) was the way to go. The NHS have a useful information page: Your baby’s first solid foods – NHS (www.nhs.uk)

Once David hit six months and was meeting all the suggested requirements for BLW, we started feeding him small amounts of our food at dinner time. This meant that he was in charge of what he ate, how fast he ate and how much he ate. There are many different studies that say BLW can help prevent later obesity as children are more in touch with their hunger and are better able to recognise fullness and that BLW helps to make them less picky eaters as they grow up. However, there are just as many studies that say this is not true. For us, it was simply the easiest and most relaxed way of introducing David to food. I won’t lie, I was exceptionally nervous and worried that David was going to choke to death on the very first thing I fed him, but it turned out fine.

My fear of grapes continues to this day; the knowledge that the shape of a grape could create a vacuum in a child’s throat that would make them impossible to remove in a choking situation. David is five now and I still cut them into small pieces. My health and safety (paranoia) training has clearly been passed on. If David has a whole grape from somewhere, he brings it to me and shows me that he has bitten it in two!

I found it fascinating that as a baby, David wanted to try every different flavour and would eat lots of fruit and vegetables. I thought I was doing amazingly. However, as he has got older, his interest in vegetables has waned and it seems that the idea of BLW making children less picky eaters later has not worked for us! The best way we have found to keep him eating at least some vegetables is the ‘magical powers’ of broccoli and asparagus. Who knew that when eating a green vegetable you would be able to turn your parents into an animal of your choice! The confusion on a neighbouring restaurant table when my husband starts quacking is an easy sacrifice to ensure David has his five-a-day.

Sisters

I was going to do baby-led weaning this week, but I was distracted again. Sorry. Next week, I promise.

I have 3 siblings. Two older brothers and one younger sister and I am fortunate that we are all very different, (apart from the ability to use sarcasm in any situation) but in a way, we all complement each other. Aside from my husband, my sister is my closest friend and confidante.

In March 2020, she decided to move to New Zealand for a 6 month trial, living with her new partner who she had met whilst travelling. Of course, just after she entered New Zealand, they closed the borders for two years. Thankfully the relationship worked and the lords of technology invented WhatsApp so I could have my weekly sister fix.

Rather selfishly, the loss was all about me, but her absence started to become normality and I could save all our news for a Sunday morning catch up. However, the loss should, of course, have been all about her. Yes, it was exciting and she had met and was living with her perfect partner but she had left her career, her friends (she has millions of close friends!), her routines and her family.

I only realised how much she was missing after I became very drunk one evening and rang her telling her I would come and visit soon. When I say drunk, I mean more drunk than I have been in years. It turned out a great number of things were said but as there were three phone calls and I can only remember one, a lot of what passed between us is gone forever.

When I rang her to apologise about the alcohol, she asked me when I was coming. It was obvious that she was quite excited and I apologised that I had made false promises and could not afford to come to New Zealand. Her excitement and subsequent attempt to cover disappointment with humour made me realise how much she was desperate to share her new life with someone from home.

Soooo. I carefully prepared the best sales pitch of my life and told my husband that I thought it would be an amazing thing for my sister if I was to go to New Zealand. I explained that it would be a sort of holiday for him as he could take two weeks off work and look after David. By the end of the conversation it was agreed and at my husband’s suggestion, it was decided I should take three weeks to make it worth my while (the man is amazing!).

It was kept a secret and on Sunday night I left the UK for 24 hours of travel to Christchurch, New Zealand. I arrived at her house while she was out. Her partner had told me how to get in so I hid behind the microwave in her kitchen to leap out and cause her a coronary. I was hoping to get one of those TikTok videos where no one believes it was really a surprise because it looks so fake but I pressed record at the wrong time and you just hear loads of sobbing and a film of our legs. The surprise, the journey, the husband and child abandonment were worth it. She was so happy.

That is what siblings are for. To annoy you, to share childhood memories that no one else understands, to nag you, to surprise you and to make you sob with happiness.

Weight, food, gestational diabetes and all that jazz

I am a comfort eater and am easily swayed by a chocolate bar. I kept the weight pretty much at bay when I was younger and my most natural dress size was probably a 14 though I desperately wanted to be a 12. How things change!! I pine now to be a size 16. Unfortunately comfort eating because I couldn’t have a child and was working ridiculous hours in a super stressful job meant that was never going to be. I am however excellent at faddy dieting for at least two weeks.

Becoming pregnant as a geriatric mother put some extra strains upon my body besides my death wish unhealthy eating. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes (incidentally I was absolutely famished during that test!). My understanding of food had to take a steep learning curve. I had a special wireless machine that measured my blood sugar from pricking my finger twice a day and sent the numbers to the diabetic nurse. I wasn’t doing well at keeping it below the expected figure and when she checked in, it turns out Shreddies aren’t a healthy choice. Who knew cereal had sugars in. probably everyone except me but my awareness of the different types of food was raised considerably.

I also had gall stones which meant that I was avoiding fatty foods for fear of the crippling pain that would typically ensue after a tub of pringles and a packet of dips. When you can’t eat sugars and fatty foods are no good either, your food choices become very limited. As a result, when I was weighed at 8 months pregnant, I was the lightest I had been in years! Thank you David.

This gratitude was to be short lived however because it turned out that following the pregnancy, I developed hypothyroidism. (This is the one where your thyroid is under active), so with that and the menopause, and my insatiable desire for mint chocolate, the weight came back and I have now been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Last check I was back in the pre-diabetic scores but as ever I’m up and down with the weight. My desire to see David through to 40 means I have to conquer this and I will.

I have just realised how much I have gone on about me. When I sat down to write, I was going to talk about baby-led weaning. I will talk about that in the next post but to keep you engaged, here is a picture of David with his first green bean:

Nappies

Our experience with nappies started at the NCT sessions where we were given a doll and a nappy. At exactly that point, my husband said that he had to nip to the loo. He came back 10 minutes later with a coffee and an explanation that he didn’t think he’d be able to do nappies.

I reassured him that he would be doing nappies and that no he wouldn’t enjoy it, but he would be making me and his child happy.

As a geriatric mummy, I come from a generation before disposable nappies and grew up in a house with a cupboard full of terry towelling squares that my mother had used on all four of us. I loved the idea of not contributing to the millions of used disposable nappies so I informed my husband, that not only would he be changing nappies, but he would be washing them too.

A friend informed me that I wouldn’t keep it up. I laughed and smugly said that he might have struggled, but we would be fine. Unfortunately, he was right! We were defeated by the fact that it was impossible to get them dry quick enough. I had nappies on every radiator in the winter but in the end I gave up. I felt very guilt and still very aware of our environmental footprint. We were fortunate enough to be able to afford a brand that were biodegradable.

I still stand by the fact that financially and environmentally, real nappies are the way to go. Check your local area for nappy libraries as well. This is the website for the UK Nappy Network: Find a library – UK Nappy Network Since we have stopped using nappies, I’ve since discovered you can buy heated drying racks which would have solved our problem.

My husband (who I have just realised has never been referred to as a ‘Geriatric Daddy’) was a pro within a week.

Half-Term Horrors

(Don’t read whilst eating or if you have a low disgust threshold)

We have just had half term. Up until last August I was head of school at a primary school. Half term was craved, sought-after and desperately needed to recharge, catch up on piles of paperwork and occasionally see your family.

This year, it crept up and surprised me. I didn’t have to work through the holiday, we could do fun things and have quality family time. That was until the sewage explosion. We literally had a s**t half-term.

We moved in November to a lovely house (we headed further north to upsize and down price. There’s no heading back south now!!). What we didn’t know is that the previous tenants had cleverly been flushing wet wipes. We discovered this when the sewage finally backed up to our downstairs toilet. There were many complications regarding whether the blockage was on our land or common land but finally we had a chap in to clear them. Clear them he did with a huge pressure blast. However, it cleared the blockage down to past the next manhole and the force pushed the manhole cover and all the sewage up all over the path and lawn. A poo explosion! Suddenly, our beautiful new house and garden had become a cess pit.

Many years ago, my sister did some psychological research for a masters on disgust thresholds. I was an outlier in her statistics because my tolerance for disgusting things was ridiculously low. You can only imagine how well I coped with the whole sewage issue. The constant anxiety and nausea was not helped by the fact that we have an Otterhound. Otterhounds are absolutely gorgeous dogs but they do like to eat poo. After an incident with an open manhole cover, she was banished to her grandparents for three days to consider her actions.

It was Thursday before the smell subsided and it wasn’t until yesterday that I could bring myself to walk across the lawn even though I know the lovely men from Dyno-Rod (who should be paid vast quantities of money) had disinfected and cleaned everything.

On a positive note, we now have sparkling drains and I think my disgust threshold has risen a little.

Granny???

I have been called grandmother a few times now and although I knew that this might happen, it still hurts.

The first time, I was with my husband and we were just getting David (about 6 months at this time) out of the car. An older couple were walking past and said something along the lines of “It’s tough having to look after the grandchildren!”

I was instantly defensive and proclaimed in a loud voice to the world that he was mine! My husband just glanced quizzically at me and said nothing.

The second time. I was again with my husband and some people passing by commented on us being the grandparents. I immediately leapt in again and assured them that he was mine and I was absolutely young enough to have a baby. Again, my husband said nothing and that’s when it hit me. It only happened when I was with him!!!

I decided not to leave him for a younger model but took on board his views which were pretty much along the line of ‘What’s it got to do with them and why do they feel they have the right to comment?’ (except with more sweary words)

He was right. I know I’m old enough to be David’s grandmother but that doesn’t mean that I am not also the perfect age to be his mother.