please support us

I took a few days off last week.

After the ILR process in Croydon't, (six hours waiting, and I'll kindly list the things I did while waiting, next time,) I wanted a few days to regroup.

During this time, I did some thinking. Inspired by many people who are doing inspiring, tough things to raise awareness about the sad state of the world.

It just seems the logical next step. It came to me suddenly and it was just "Yes. This is something we just have to do."

It would be therapeutic, raise some funds and awareness of something so important to us, keep us fit and healthy, something the Brit and I could do together.

We are doing a marathon *run folks! I run thrice a week, but I'm not very good at it. Running is something that I have always wanted to be good at, but sadly the glass ceiling sits just above my head.

Needless to say, to push beyond our boundaries for a worthy cause, and something I hope would make my Molly and Sebastian proud of me one day, we are going to do the London British 10k in July.

For Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity - who provide support and ongoing research into why babies seem to die, sometimes, for no reason at all. 

I have to hit the training hard now. I tend to dabble a bit on the 4 km point on the treadmill, not managing to go much further, so God knows how I will run through the streets of London, but here we are.

I'm not good at running. And I'm not good at asking for things.

But here I am: I would very very much love it if you could donate to my JustGiving page.

Proceeds, however small, will go such a long way. It's not for me, it's not for my husband. It's for little babies like Molly who died unexpectedly and no one is really sure why.

I will run every step of the way thanking you with every step.

* This is a marathon to me. Make no mistake.

This is a gif to show you how this might end.

how to do coffee outings with a baby

I think I have the Mums Who Coffee With Their Babies dialled.

Been meaning to impart this wisdom survival tactic now that I know what I'm doing my baby has started crawling and I can't actually visit coffee shops with him anymore because it's uncharted chaos.

For mothers-to-be, or those simply venturing out to buy a hot drink while carrying a child, this is how it is done. (It mustn't be crawling yet. I don't [yet] know how to do a [dignified] coffee visit if the child is moving. Sorry.)

Put a bib on the child

I've tried to do the whole "oh I'm just giving him five raisins, so he doesn't need a bib" thing before. I've also tried to just casually let him gnaw on an Organix Carrot Finger, thinking the whole rigmarole of pulling out the bibs, wipes, etc negates the relaxed atmosphere of grabbing a quick coffee.

There is always mess, and there is always aftermath.
I've given Sebastian his tea ("supper") while I've tried to casually sip on a flat white. This is so he is distracted for at least 45 seconds and I can then savour the taste of the Ethiopian beans.

If you like it, you shoulda put a bib on it.

Pick your coffee shop according to these three very important things
1) Your buggy must fit through the door without any heaving;
2) Notwithstanding, the cafe should ideally have a spot for you to park your buggy so that it doesn't take up space next to your table;
3)  Most importantly - it must have big tables that are not clustered close to one another.

I've been to coffee shops where there are lots of little tables all packed in together and I have had a bad time.

For one, Sebastian will turn around and try to pick the toast off a stranger's plate. Or knock over their teapot. And the whole session quickly becomes about trying to stop a cascading crescendo of destruction before it starts.

Secondly, other mummy friends have the same problem, so you end up throwing your coffee everywhere, apologising profusely to everyone around you, and not finishing a sentence with the person with whom you're trying to have a conversation with.

You need a big table, not one of those piddly Parisian cafe things. I live in London, and sadly restaurant tables the size of a dinner plate are commonplace. People are stuffed into small corners and are all but sitting on someone else's lap. So if you find a coffee shop or restaurant with wide[r] tables, stick with it.

You see, when you bring a kid to a public area, you bring a lot of crap with you. Wipes, hats, bottles, bibs, spoons, teething toys.
Then you forget that most tables at have a vase on it, salt and pepper shakers, a menu holder. Knives and forks.
You want something big. You need a dumping ground. So go to a place with big tables and lots of space between each one.
Chains are [sadly] usually more 'buggy friendly' than independent coffee shops, at least around Clapham anyway.

Some of the more buggy friendly chains in the UK are All Bar One, Byron Burger, Bill's, Costa Coffee, Nero.

Pay while the going is good

This is really important. It's the difference between being an amateur Mum Who Coffees and a professional. Some places do table service - a delight when the waiter thinks ahead and puts the coffee out of reach of little hands, but is a disaster when they plonk it down in front of the child - but this means you usually only pay right at the end.

Nine times out of ten I leave a coffee shop, my baby has declared he has had enough sitting around and starts to scream a little.
A panic starts to happen, and there's furious hunting through handbags for the right change or waiting for the card to be fucking approved and it's mayhem and disorder as the baby basically has a meltdown on your face.

Or, like one of my mummy friends, the child projectile vomits up her salmon risotto over everything and instead of being able to pick up her bag and run the fuck away, she has sit in her child's vomit waiting for the bill.

So. The moment they serve the coffee and cake, get the bill. Pay it.
If you have to leave in a hurry - which is pretty much always the case -  at least with my baby - you can.

Bring more snacks than is necessary

Ply little hands, and friend's baby's hands, with snacks. Do what you can to get your cuppa Joe. Out in a public place. With another adult human. Snacks are more distracting than toys.

(Even if, like mine, they eat their toys).

Do it in the afternoon

For some reason, there is more time. As your baby starts to drop naps and becomes more active, and then starts to eat and basically become a mini person, you'll find the day stretches out and starts to really lag between their afternoon nap and their bath time.

There are a good few hours there where you'll need to get out of the house and need a change of scene. This usually happens around 3pm, which collides pretty nicely with your dire need for a coffee because you haven't slept the night before and you're completely catatonic.

Morning coffees work well when the child is still sleeping four times a day.

After six months, it's afternoon coffees all the way.

People without children will stare at you

When you're a mum, you get judged. Especially by those who don't have babies. Yours will cry for no reason, or you'll wipe up its vomit with the arm of your coat instead of a muslin, or something will happen in public whereby other mums will look at you knowingly and give you an encouraging, exhausted smile, but others will just passively-aggressively frown at you. Because they somehow think you WANT your child to kick off. 

Learn to ignore and don't even look at these people. Sometimes your baby will start crying for no reason and you won't be able to stop it. It will feel like the whole world is looking at you, and you'll desperately start to sweat and beg your baby to calm down.

Just keep doing what you're doing. Don't even look around you. Your baby is going to drop stuff on the floor, smear stuff all over the high chair, scream loudly because they think it's fun, and cry. And it's going to be loud and messy.

If you care what others think, it'll debilitate you. So just keep on keepin' on.

Your coffee will never be hot

Just a final note. It's a common known fact that mothers never manage to finish (or sometimes even start) a cup of coffee. Because you'll have to attend to five other things the moment you sit down to take that first sip, and sometimes you forget you even made yourself a cup.

Don't worry, you'll get used to cold, or at best, luke warm, coffee. You might even start to not notice.

When I do finish a cup and it's still actually hot, I silently high five myself and get a real feeling of complete and utter satisfaction because I have managed to bust through my last best score.

It's like a little game of Tetris I play with myself to see how far I can get in my cup of coffee.

Try to pwn that shit.

my bump journey

How precious Saturday mornings have become.

The working week is over, and I survived. It's 3:34pm and I'm still in my pyjamas, but I intend to remain that way until I go out tonight.

My little boy has decided to refuse all food. He is either teething really badly (likely - he has every, single symptom and hasn't got any teeth yet), or he is traumatised by the fact his life has been turned upside down and to control the situation, has stopped eating. I was warned this might happen. It's heartbreaking.

His little fat leg doughnuts have shrunk considerably, almost to nothing - he is skinny again. It's crazy how quickly this happens to babies. Why can't this happen to me?

It's been 10 months, and it hurts to look at these pictures sometimes, but I finally got round to putting together a collage of my bump when I was pregnant.

The Brit took one of my bump every week, every Monday night. From 9 weeks until I was induced at 36 weeks.
The big milestones for me were:

9 weeks: I felt so sick, I remember struggling not to projectile vom over my fellow tube commuters in the morning. And the tiredness was ridiculous, I felt like I would pass out on the spot every afternoon, so I'd need to get up from my desk and walk around the building - aimlessly - just to stay upright.

12 weeks: You can tell everyone, as the most 'risky' stage of pregnancy is over (not with twins, it turns out.) But the morning sickness and tiredness start to go away and you feel 8 000 times better.

15 weeks: I was starting to show (That or they must've been like "Wow. She's really packed it on, hasn't she?), so I told work. I had to hide it the week before when I was with my colleagues in San Francisco at a conference. Where we usually all booze. That was hard. Pretending to booze is hard work.

19 weeks: I suddenly started to get big. Beeg. You could now tell I wasn't carrying a singleton, or many would've assumed I was onto my third child.

20 weeks: The best scan. They didn't look like shrimps anymore, they had arms and legs and were moving and waving and doing funny things like kick each other. Everything looked healthy and normal. We asked not to know the sexes, although I just knew it was a boy and a girl.

27 weeks: I was sizeable, so we thought we'd better go on a babymoon before I couldn't walk properly/actually enjoy it. I was sore, being kicked everywhere, and generally life was getting pretty uncomfortable. I was guzzling bottles of Gaviscon. We still drove to France and had a few days there. Mainly eating.

30 weeks: This was the last scan where I saw Molly alive. By now they were large enough that I couldn't see their whole bodies anymore, only pieces of who they were - heads, chests, hands. All was still normal and healthy, even though Molly (Twin 2) was the smaller twin.

31 weeks: Commuting was becoming the ultimate ball ache, walking was hard work, I was huffing and puffing and generally, pretty miserable to be honest. Everyone else who was pregnant and at the same timeline as me, had neat, compact little bumps and they all seemed very spritely. My bump was heavy and weighing me down. It was time to leave work.

32 weeks: I spent most days propped up by a fortress of cushions on my bed, not lying fat or they'd surely suffocate me, but not sitting upright either.
Molly, up until this point, was breech. They'd been lying yin and yang for all this time, and so they booked me in to have a c-section at 37 weeks and 5 days, on 4 April.

However, she suddenly decided to turn, and in the bath one night, I saw and felt it. It was like something out of Alien.
They estimated that this was the week Molly stopped growing. So when she was born, she was the size of a 32 week baby.

34 weeks: It was sometime between now and 35 weeks that she gave up the fight and died. I didn't notice that she wasn't kicking, as she was always a graceful little thing. She didn't kick the hell out of me directly in my ribs like Sebastian did (he was a boy from day 1. No question about it), she kind of fluttered. She would flutter, it felt like butterflies.

35 weeks: I went in for my final scan, and they confirmed that she had no heartbeat.
I stayed in hospital for a week to have Sebastian monitored.

36 weeks: I was induced. I was in labour for 18 hours, right up until the point where Sebastian got stuck and so I had an emergency c-section.

This was my twin journey.

south african airways. it's vibes.

In order to distract myself from The Big Thing That's Happening Tomorrow, and having now chosen my The New Girl But Actually The Old Girl outfit* already, I thought I'd tell you a story.

I really should be writing this as a letter and sending it to the appropriate powers in the hope they'd actually take heed of what I'm about to say, but then I realised that's fruitless because
1) I'll never fly South African Airways again;
2) SAA is owned by the South African government (I actually did not know this, but that means it all suddenly makes a LOT of sense); and
3) The last time I wrote an important letter, nothing happened. Still waiting, the NHS. I will wait forever if I have to; and
4) I'm fairly certain someone else on that flight would've already done the honours. If not at least five people. (Keyword: SA236 to LHR).

So. Imagine this scene for a second.

We arrive, after a lovely month of sun and South Africanness, to OR Tambo airport. We've packed up all our shit, prepared meals for our child, got into the travel zone vibe, and feel as mentally prepared as only parents can be, for the journey home. We know he might not sleep the entire way, as this time he will be lying across our bodies, but we venture forth in the hope that he will sleep at least some (maybe even most?) of the way.

Regardless, it'll be fine. One night of hell, and tomorrow morning we will be home in London.

We sit down for a meal just before boarding, order a final plate of sushi from the Ocean Basket, and an email pops through saying something like "Sorry folks, we've cancelled your flight, we'll depart at 8am tomorrow."

One of two things ran through my head.

1) Someone has obviously made a grammatical error, what they really mean is we will arrive by 8am. Not 7:20am as originally planned.

2) Fuck.

No one made an error, because after running around the airport, wild-eyed and with murderous intent, we found a check-in desk that confirmed the awful truth. We would be departing at 8am tomorrow. Which meant we would be flying with a baby all day.

We were too late to try and get onto another airline carrier by this time, and the next overnight flight was only scheduled for two days time.

SAA had plucked their spokesperson from a nearby broom cupboard, for this person had definitely never dealt with a crisis situation before. A mob of angry passengers demanding to know what the fuck; spittle a-flying. After some flustered and excruciatingly general corporate fliff flaff about "sorry but we're not sorry," it emerged that the windscreen was cracked and therefore fly, we could not.

Meanwhile, terror seared through our skulls. Eleven hours on a daytime flight with a child, our child, who doesn't know how to stop moving.
Sebastian doesn't crawl yet, but he might as well do. His attention span - at a stretch - spans about all of 3.4 seconds. He gets bored and needs to do something else, while wriggling, or pulling my hair, or eating the remains of his breakfast he finds in the soft folds of his leg. He is all boy. He is physically demanding on all levels.

We, back at seats 63D and E, would need to entertain this kinetic little ball of fun, for eleven hours. Non-stop. We knew he might nap - on us - twice. Maybe if were are lucky, for 40 minutes at a time. We also had to make sure he had enough food and milk, so while the full gravity of the upcoming situation was beginning to take hold, we walked ourselves off to the pharmacy to buy a bunch of bottled food.

We were put up in a hotel in Isando, and awoke at 5am only to stand in a queue to leave the hotel to catch a shuttle back to the airport.
Eventually - as it was going to be the longest day of our lives as it was - we decided to call an Uber to take us across the highway, basically.

We get on the flight. Sebastian and I immediately fall asleep. This wasn't ideal, as when we awoke an hour later, we realised that was Sebastian's morning nap done. And we hadn't even taken off yet.

It's now 9am; we've been sitting on the runway for an hour.
"This is the captain speaking. Sorry for the delay again folks. It's just that we realised we'd left 35 pieces of baggage on the runway."

Fawlty Towers of the skies maybe. All the lolz. Right? Wrong. We were also in the midst of the rudest staff contingent in the world.

Let me explain. Throughout the now 12 hour journey to London, this is the shit that went down:
Every time we tried to ask for something (er, like what time lunch was being served, for example), we got twice "In a minute, I am in the middle of a conversation with my colleague."

I'm not even fucking joking.

The staff clearly got bumped for the daytime flight too, and made sure we all knew about it. (Like we wanted to be on a longhaul daytime flight ourselves?!?!!?)
They had more attitude than Kelis when her milkshake lost appeal and stopped bringing boys to the yard. They were almost crazy rude.

They looked angry and sulky, and as we were sitting quite close the galley, we managed to catch most of their conversations, many of which included sentiments such as, "I hate the day flights, you have to look after everyone the whole time," and "It's so busy on daytime shifts, I much prefer the night time ones where you don't have to do anything for most of it."

Weren't air hostesses meant to actually like people?

One snapped at my husband for leaning on an armrest so that others could get past, and then telling me under no circumstances could I let my baby sit on the floor by my feet as it was "strictly prohibited."

(I let him sit and play on the play by my feet anyway, I had to. I thought I'd just play very, very dumb. "Oh this floor?" Or "Oh, the actual floor?" Or "Non comprehend des Anglais, wot eez a flaw?" Sebastian doesn't give us much choice when he doesn't stop moving. None of the hostesses saw anyway, mainly because they were "too busy.")

This is in vast contrast to the airline's customer service policy. "Warm and welcoming?"

But the cherry on the cake was the absence of a meal for 9 hours.

We ate breakfast at 10am, and dinner was served just before we landed at 8pm. In between Zambia and France, we nibbled on the canapes and finger foods placed about us. The pages of Sawabona magazine were especially tasty, when engulfed by the methanol jus of a refresher towel. Also liked gnawing on the earpiece of the headset, mmmm nom nom nom.

Eventually - because I was starting to snack on my husband's arm like in that movie about the Andean crash victims that eat each other - the Brit got up to enquire about food.

"Oh here it is, help yourself. We're too busy to give it out."

You have one job. That's to give out food. (And occasionally smile and point towards the toilets).

So many people didn't know it was on a help-yourself basis, and never got lunch. Because we grabbed a couple of sandwiches we managed not to eat each other, or the baby. (Who would've been more delicious. I almost nearly eat him everyday anyway.)

Then, just to top it all off, the entertainment systems started to pack in. I just had mine on the Map, staring it down with my crazy eyes, willing the plane to move faster - please Jesus - over the vast expanse of the African continent. But others were watching movies, and were therefore pissed.

It was at this point we genuinely started to consider whether we were, in fact, on a new season of Punk'd. And Ashton Kutcher would run through the aisles screaming "HAHAHAHAHA, I GOT YOU GOOD, DIDN'T I? HAHAHAHAHA YOU LIDDLE FUCKERS."

But no. This is apparently the vibes in which SAA operate now. I haven't flown them in a while, and the downhill slide into (bankruptcy, I believe?) is almost inevitable.

Look, I'm glad they didn't fly us with a broken windscreen. We all would've died. And given that planes crash quite a lot these days, one must always be grateful that they fucking didn't. Although truth be told, I really thought a lot about dying on this flight. I thought it just might happen on this one. (And at times, I just wanted it to.)

And it's unfair to compare this flight to the one out to Johannesburg. We flew overnight. However, apples and oranges, folks. We flew British Airways outbound, and Sebastian got a bassinet to sleep in (SAA doesn't allow children over 6 months to sleep in a bassinet, and don't stock "car seats," a reclined seat for older babies to strap into on the bassinet area. TAKE HEED. DON'T FLY SAA WITH A BABY OVER SIX MONTHS UNLESS YOU'RE PREPARED TO BUY THEM THEIR OWN SEAT/HAVE THEM ON YOUR LAP THE WHOLE JOURNEY.)

BA supply all this stuff, and are fantastic with babies. While Sebastian slept beautifully all the way to Johannesburg, the poor woman's baby next to me, did not. He cried, coughed, vomited, basically lost his shit, all the way to Joburg.
She was on her own, and the hostesses did everything they could to assist her. They rocked him, offered to change him, find antihistamine, bring him extra milk, you name it. She also said, "I only fly BA. They are the best with babies."

It was like night and day. Well, it was night and day.

What about compensation? SAA decided, after much furore and pants wetting, to give everyone on the flight, a free flight. To anywhere. This was one good shout, and finally got it right at the end, after everyone had had a shit fit about the delay. They also got a capable, calm spokesperson in front of the raging crowd.

Can we fly to Hawaii I wonder.

Anyway. Just thought I'd let you all know about our twelve hour marathon. And remind SAA that they really, really really need to up their game. It's embarrassing.

Now. Back to stressing about my first day back at work.

* In case you're interested, a grey Zara dress, faux fur gilet, and black tights and boots. Not jazzy; but not mumsy either. I think. 

the path - does it reach anywhere? Should it?

So. Relationships. Just my favourite topic on the planet. Right up there with “crazy monkey sex.”

There are so many “relationships” fusing around me right now, so many different ones, so many interesting ones, so many love stories.

God knows I've swung from one branch to another over the last 2-3 years, so I think I know enough about what I don't want. Is what you want essentially bad, or out of context with the basics? In other words, if you're set on getting married one day, should this be an important focus? What if your partner's apathy towards marriage is out of kilter with yours, would love be enough? (This is just an “if”, an example.)

Especially now, one can't help wondering whether your aspirations in a relationship are realistic. It's all very well telling your partner what you want upfront - but just as important– for it is about equality – should'nt we all ask our partners what their objectives are for a relationship? Sometimes knowing their objectives should give us a good background on whether they'll mirror ours.

Do they believe in marriage? Do they want children? Do they want to travel? Is a career their number one priority if they had to choose between you and work? If they went overseas tomorrow, would they want you to go with them, come hell or high water? (And would you want them to come along with you?) Perhaps these are questions every couple should face them at one point or another – it's just a matter of when.

So many couples have different criteria determining their own personal happiness. Taking my circle of friends as an example. Two of my best friends are in long distance relationships, and don't know whether they'll end up happily ever after, but are sure trying their hardest.
Another couple I know, the guy is moving overseas. Just like that. She doesn't want to go, so the end result remains open-ended.
Others are discussing children and weddings after a few months. Others have pushed one past the goal post and have married...[as a result?]
Others spend every waking moment together – sleep over most nights of the week, while some sort of stagnate with twice-a-week napovers. All of this leaves one with questions of their own. Or opinions of your own. (“I could never do that!” Or “I wish we were doing that!” Or “Are we even normal?”)

And this is what perplexes me. I know a couple who moved in together after two months. And are (apparently) happy as a collective pig in their own by-product. Then there are the couples who are happy to coast along, taking day-by-day for the next decade with no objectives or personal goals in all that time - I can quite openly say that is not me. But moving in after two months isn't me either. I firmly believe you only start to know someone when:

1)You've lived with them
2)You've weathered arguments/bad patches and come through the other side better people
3)You've seen and experienced them at their worst
4)You've spent a dense amount of time with them over a period of at least 8 months

I suppose one thinks of these things when times are a-changing. And it 'tis the season of baby-boomage and weddings. I'm obviously far far behind these people, but not only is it in your face the entire time, you can't help determining what you're doing, or at least if the path you're traveling, is right for you.

Just a leaf from a girl whose weathered a lot of hooks ups, fuck ups, cover ups and break ups.