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Pregnant females are still being patronised, blamed for our bodies failings, and made to feel guilty about our choices

I spent one third of 2015- about 120 days- on bed remainder. I moved only to visit a hospital or doctor’s office, where I was scrutinised and presented with a list of concrete and potential deficiencies. There was surely something wrong with my cervix, likely something wrong with my hormone levels, probably something wrong with my placenta, and perhaps something wrong with my baby’s heart. Every time I was investigated- which was constantly- a new potential problem surfaced. Having already lost two pregnancies, I was overcome by the looming prospect of cataclysm. I refused to prepare for anything more than a week in advance, as if hope were interchangeable with hubris and therefore deserving of punishment.

Throughout the pregnancy, I was grimly enthusiastic about suggestions, tests, and therapies- convinced that the more I suffered, the more likely I would be to bring a newborn home. I injected progesterone; sustained weekly ultrasounds; underwent a special MRI scan. I attended my appointments with the obstetrician, the maternal-foetal-medicine specialist and the foetal cardiologist. Most of all, I tried not to move. I believed that stillness might give me the best opportunity of giving birth to a healthy newborn. Also, a sense of self-preservation recommended me: if I were the most careful patient, then I would not have to blame myself were a tragedy to result. Lying flat at home, I was in a dull, perpetual panic.

That panic ended two years ago, replaced by the more welcome anxiety of how to care for a newborn. After so much dread , not a single could-go-wrong went wrong. I will never know if the precautions helped, or if everything was fine all along. My daughter, born healthy at full term, is a toddler now, and this, the spring of 2018, is the season of my fourth pregnancy.

Four pregnancies: two loss over two years, followed by one “girls “, followed by one baby, currently inside, who occupies a tentative place between a pregnancy and a living child. I assess her week by week: if she were born today, she may never take a breath; if she were born today, she would soon succumb; if she were born today, she might even live. Yet, for months, I’ve been seeing her face, formed and shifting, on a black-and-white screen, beamed out from within me. At the least, she is and has long been decidedly present.

As soon as my now-two-year-old daughter was placed, hollering, on my chest, the bitter struggle to have her receded in my mind. But now that battle has come back clearly, because it is repeating: specialists, scans, injections, constraints, doomsday scenarios, cautionary tales. But this new pregnancy, which began 18 months later, is occurring in a different decided, in the context of #MeToo. What once seemed like bad behaviour that girls were expected to bear has been revealed as oppressive, grotesque and often criminal. Pregnancy and birth experiences do not exist outside “the worlds largest” culture, but securely within, along an ugly, interminable continuum.

I entered my recent pregnancy, which began with my personal tradition of early bleeding and disarray, during the Trump presidency, a couple of months before the Harvey Weinstein allegations. My obstetrician, a feminist who skilfully guided me through my pregnancy in 2015, recommended that I find a specialist. She didn’t know much about him, except that he had a high success rate with complicated pregnancies. He utilized aggressive techniques, but she’d heard he saved babies.

I went to the expert for a series of intricate scans. I had 38 vials of blood taken at once; my limb operated out. The specialist diagnosed me with a mild clotting disorder. According to him, it meant that my placenta could be compromised; without therapy, it might not offer the baby enough nourishment. Or then again, it might, as it had before, with my daughter. That’s the tricky thing about pregnancy: nobody knows. If you weren’t so privileged, if the equipment weren’t so advanced, you are able never learn that something about you doesn’t fit the many textbook requirements, yet you may have a robust little newborn anyway. Or you might lose that baby and remain mystified as to why.

Once diagnosed, I was instructed to inject a blood thinner into my belly every day. I was also prescribed progesterone, though my levels were only on the lower end of “normal”, placed on pelvic rest- no sex for six months- and scanned every two weeks. I was still mobile, and could continue with my daily life, so I felt luck. Or that is what I told myself. To conceive my daughter, I’d spent years undergoing minor surgeries, miscarriages, fertility treatments. I figured any subsequent notion would be a similarly long, painful journey. Just in case, when I stopped breastfeeding, I visited my obstetrician to discuss birth control. Six weeks later, I was staring at a plus sign on a stick. My spouse and I had been sloppy just once, but as any moronic teen knows, once is enough.

The timing wasn’t ideal. Beneath a thick veneer of gratefulness, I felt a guilty, unspoken sadnes. In what I considered the selfish recesses of my mind, I longed to be free. The route to parenthood, as it unfolded, had been invasive and constant, shocking in its intensity, grief-inducing, medicalised and without pleasure until my girl was bear. Then I felt that I belonged to her. We were physically attached to each other, breathing the same pocket of air, and it had taken me more than a year to begin working in earnest again. After so long, I ultimately had autonomy over my own body- and then, before I knew it, someone was residing within me. But that tiny resident was the priority, I told myself. I wouldn’t dare tempt the universe with complaints.

At my 20 -week check, the ultrasound technician informed me that, while my baby was in perfect condition, my cervix – the portion of the uterus that stands between the newborn and the world – was shortening prematurely, the condition that had caused me much heartache two years earlier. The official diagnosis is” incompetent cervix “. In a “competent” female body, the cervix remains long and closed until full term, and then distends. But in an “incompetent” female body, the buffoonish cervix can abbreviate and open early, letting a baby to tumble out. The” incompetent cervix” joins a number of curious obstetric diagnosings: the” inhospitable uterus”,” hostile uterus”,” hostile cervical mucus”,” blighted ovum “. Meanwhile, humen experience” premature ejaculation” and not” inadequate testicles “; “erectile dysfunction”, but never a” futile penis “. They exhibit problems, but their anatomy is not defined as absence. Pregnant girls over 35 are of” advanced maternal age”, merely a slight improvement over the previous word, only recently defunct: “elderly”. Those who have suffered as a result more than two miscarriages are known as” habitual aborters “. We experience “spontaneous abortions”. A bad habit, that impetuous self-aborting: if only we had the self-control to stop.

The specialist entered the exam room and inspected the images of my bungling cervix. He would perform a cervical stitch the next day, in an emergency surgery. My obstetrician had performed a similar intervention during my prior pregnancy, but she wanted functional specialists to do it this time. Sitting on the examination table, I remembered my previous experience with bed rest. My obstetrician had steadfastly declined to order it, but another doctor had encouraged me to move very little and, frightened and vigilant, I decided to obey him. I recollected how, isolated and dull, I had worked half-heartedly on the edits of a book I’d spent four years researching and writing. Then, I had remained with my mother in a build with an elevator near the hospital. Now, I was living in a third-floor walk-up with a puppy, a toddler, a babysitter on the payroll and deadlines to gratify. The specialist appeared unmoved by the logistics of my life. I asked what I could expect in terms of physical activity and continuing with run. He did not answer, but told me to stay still for 24 hours.

The next day, I was wheeled into an operating room, where a male anaesthesiologist commented repeatedly on a tattoo on my back and then grappled, mumbling, to insert a needle into my spine, simply above my bare ass; general anaesthesia is bad for a baby, so I would be awake during the procedure. My feet and legs ran dead. I was manipulated into a most undignified stance, a sort of naked traction. A coterie of male medical professionals took to fixing my most intimate parts.

Later, my husband told me he knew how I must have felt. No, I told. Imagine that over the course of your lifetime a flock of people, many of them women, have prodded, inspected and peered at your nether region. Usually annually. Sometimes weekly and sometimes, while sighing in exasperation, shaking their heads in letdown, or nodding approvingly. Imagine, then, that for the second time in as many years a few cases of these women hung your legs up while you were fully conscious and sewed up your balls. My husband, a tint of pale grey, mumbled that I was right: he couldn’t relate.

As informed, I didn’t leave the house that week. I took a cocktail of drugs. They stimulated me sick, but, in agreement with the expert, they were good for my uterus. But they might be bad for the baby. But if I didn’t take them, and the newborn were born early, that would be worse for her: disabling, fatal. I stopped trying to assess the situation. I wondered if I would lose the baby because of either my flawed body or my poor selections or for no discernible reason at all. I also wondered about other things: if I would get to take a stroll, pursue a leading for a narrative, keep up contacts, honour contracts.

At my next appointment, I learned that the baby was prospering and the surgery had been successful. Nothing was insured- the situation could change mutely and abruptly- but this was good news. The specialist nodded and seemed satisfied as he inspected the ultrasound images of my insides- once rebellious, but now pliant and deferential. Before he left the room, I asked again about the restrictions on my job and movement.

” You care only about your work ,” he told, abruptly creating his voice.” You’re pressuring me .”

I am not a woman who shies away from conflict and have never once been mistaken for a people-pleaser. But had this interaction passed two years earlier, I would have experienced a furtive rush of fear, remain convinced that I was at the man’s mercy. For the sake of my baby, I would have told myself, I would do well to yield, to soothe him, to agree, to defuse- and then to go home and privately fury, feeling young and dumb and female. But now I assured the situation from the outside, through the lens of the feminist mutiny that saturated the news. From this view, a woman was sitting on the examination table, the specialist standing before her. He was up, she was down. He was the expert, she the civilian. He had recently been elbow-deep inside her. Each hour they met, only one of them was carrying a baby they could lose. And only one of them was wearing pants.

” I want to know how my medical situation will affect my professional life ,” I said , not sweetly, and appearing him straight in the eye.” You told me that we would assess it this week. I want to know what to expect .”

” What can you expect ?” he told, annoyed.” Fine, you can expect to be on bed remainder for the rest of this pregnancy .”

This was penalty, I felt, for pushing back: four months’ confinement.

Bed rest is not widespread protocol. It is, in fact, highly controversial. Some medical experts have deemed it ineffective, unsupported by data and risky: it can cause blood clots, muscle atrophy, depression, the loss of a job or fund. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cautions against it in most cases. Many argue that it’s an old-fashioned recommendation constructed when the stubborn mystery of female biology asserts itself. Doctors and patients want a answer, and bed rest allows them to prescribe and undergo something, rather than face the disconcerting reality of the unknown.

Then again, millions of women and doctors across the world have sworn by bed rest for centuries. They consider it a tried-and-true technique to maintaining a baby in. They have watched it run. To give your child a better opportunity, you simply have to stop your life for a few months. Can you really defy? I knew about this dispute, so when the specialist insisted that bed remainder was imperative, I wanted him to justify himself. I reminded myself that if I felt inferior to this man, it was only because he wished it to be so , not because it was true. I asked again for him to explain his reasoning.

He took another tack.” I’ve had people disregard me and they lose a baby they’ve wanted for 10 years ,” he said.” Because of an preoccupation with work .”

A woman who wanted or needed to work, then, and in so doing defied his orders, could be said to have caused her baby’s death. It seemed to me that he chose to place blamed on that girl- to imply that she had caused her own loss, even when that loss may have been unavoidable. Though this man had made a successful business in women’s health, I understood then that he didn’t know a thing about the interior lives of women.

I left the clinic. I would have liked never to return. But here is the pregnant woman’s conundrum: we are not unto ourselves. We hold within us the start of other people; we’re supposed to preserve our own independent humanity while growing new, dependent humanity. It’s a hard balance to strike, and we’re led to believe any decision, blunder, slip-up of the mind, can have atrocious outcomes. We’re were supposed to subvert everything in our lives if necessary. Also, if not necessary.

The expectations placed upon females by the obstetric establishment- especially if our pregnancies don’t follow a perfect course, and often even when they do- are presented as normal. The field of obstetrics requires females to enter into an absurd realm, or perhaps to simply remain within the absurd realm in which we already exist. We’re are submitted to techniques that verge on Victorian: to remain prone, and in extreme cases tilted on a hospital bed at an angle for months at a time; to forgo work, pleasure, fund; to allow painful interventions and invasive procedures; to agree to major abdominal surgery. We’re told it’s for baby’s sake; anything other than blind adoption is selfish at best, murderous at worst.

There’s no easy alternative. Decades ago, a group of midwives, frustrated that pregnancy was treated as a condition and women as incapable children, made an empowering birth ideology, encouraging women to be confident about their bodies’ life-giving abilities. Their devoted following has morphed into a movement, itself sometimes restrictive and dogmatic, in which women are encouraged to forgo pain drug during labour- which doesn’t hurt, some adherents claim, but is simply a series of powerful sensations. By following this approach, the midwives claim, a woman and her child can avoid a host of devastating health ailments, maybe caused by hospital interventions. While this can result in positive, liberating birth experiences for some, it’s not a safe or reasonable alternative for others, especially those with high-risk pregnancies or those who don’t have access to properly trained midwives. Plus, some girls simply want the epidural.

Whatever approach you pick, there are rules, and any discrepancy can result in devastation. Pregnant girls can ruin everything by eating sushi, ricotta or beansprouts; drinking wine or coffee; utilizing toxic face cream; riding a bicycle; vacuuming; running a long shift; taking out the dog; sleeping on our backs; having sex; reaching climax. By caring for older kids or trying to make a living. By not having supportive partners, or enough fund for babysitters, or helpful relatives. We can ruin it by being black, sick, poor, or rural- all factors that make a pregnancy or labour more dangerous. By moving, or not moving, taking medicine, or refusing to take medicine. By giving birth in the hospital, or in the home. Stress is harmful. We should relax. A bath could help, but could also be perilous. I often wake at dawning, hand on belly, feeling my newborn switching. I don’t know how to do right by her.

So many doctors deal in the dread surrounding pregnancy. They can enforce terror upon their patients with their diagnosis, prognosis, protocols and regulations, handed down with meagre justification , no personalisation and little consideration for the intricacies of a woman’s life. They are part of a system that should be tipped towards supporting a woman during a hour of vulnerability, but instead removes her free will and holds her, while attaining her responsible for almost any tragedy that may befall her or her baby.

Women now make up more than half of obstetrician-gynaecologists, but the field was designed and dominated by men for centuries. I don’t need the expert to know what it is to give birth, to be a woman, a mother. I don’t need him to be relatable, comforting, permissive, protective- or a pal, a father, a god or savior. I do need him to recognise my humanity while dispensing his expertise. I expect him, and his contemporaries, to be honest about the mysteries of pregnancy and birth- honest with themselves and their patients.

For all the research and money poured into this realm of medicine, so much remains unknown, unknowable. One cannot compare two treatments of the same pregnancy , nor can one experiment on pregnant women. I cannot judge whether it is right, then, to approach complications in a pregnancy as aggressively as possible. I do know that medical limiteds can radically affect a woman’s life, and because of this, the choice of how to proceed should not be a doctor’s to enforce. A woman should be able to choose how to conduct herself, rather than do it under threat. She must not be asked to pay a ransom of her own motion and free will.

I went back to my obstetrician. After discussing my situation, she and I decided together that I would stop many of the specialist’s interventions. But I have still chosen to follow some of his recommendations. I administer my shootings. I limit my motions when I can. But I wonder: am I erring on the side of caution, or on the side of fear?

During my last pregnancy, I didn’t ruminate on how the way girls are treated during birth is linked to a culture idea that the female body is necessary subdued, immobilised and controlled, and if the owner of that body is good and magnanimous, if she is on her way to becoming a wonderful mom, she must capitulate to any demand placed upon her. I didn’t wonder why, if growing a newborn and dedicating her life is such a powerful act, the experience of doing so is profoundly disempowering. I didn’t ponder structures or systems. I just wanted to meet my daughter.

Times were different then, even though it wasn’t long ago. More women lived in a sort of collective refusal, accepting the unacceptable. I was different, too. I’m a mother now, and I could tell I’m thinking of my two-year-old, and of the very best world she deserves. But, actually, I’m thinking these days of what I deserve , not as a mom or a pregnant woman, but just as every human being, at once apart from all of that and closely one with it. I’m thinking of how I should be treated, for the person that I was before I got pregnant, and the person or persons I will be after I am pregnant. The person I have been all along.

* Commenting on this piece? If you would like your remark to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend @theguardian. com, including your name and address( not for publication ).

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Rather than blame your genitalia for everything thats gone wrong says Annalisa Barbieri, try to work out where the real problem lies

Back in my youth, my love life was a string of rejections, based on lack of confidence in my physical attributes( 6ft 4in, reasonably attractive, bright, humorous, caring, but with dangly bits a hamster would be worried about ). It was ego-bruising, getting giggled at. I’d avoid beach holidays, changing rooms and even ran away from uni to avoid the shame.

Moving back to the capital, a miracle happened: two women I’d become friends with decided to stay the night, on different days, the same weekend. Who was I to say no? They were lovely and I felt safe. And, amazingly, they wanted things to continue. It was the most wonderful hour- but after four years of a heart-wrenching triangle, it was over. I’d lied, cheated, oscillated and hurt everyone, until my self-respect, friends, undertaking and trust had faded. I wasn’t the same person I had been.

I got back along with one of the women but things weren’t the same. Now here I am, 30 years and a string of uninteresting undertakings afterward, in an unhappy marriage, retired, with dodgy health and my only positive memories being from 35 years ago. I’m in my 60 s, live in the sticks and am bored out of my mind. I’ve tried joining clubs and do volunteer work but it’s not giving me what I want or require( if merely I knew what that was ). Every night I pray that I don’t wake up, as I’ve not the guts to aim it all. What to do ?

Being chuckled at for something as fundamental as the size of your genitalia must have been traumatising. But I do wonder about the accuracy of your description( of your penis size )? After all, you shied away from situations that may have helped you see that genitalia come in all shapes and sizes, and for four years you had two women opposing over you.

There was a line in your letter that gave me intermission:” I felt safe .” I get the impression your life didn’t- doesn’t- feeling safe? If so, can you work out where that feeling comes from?

I am really interested in this “before” and then “after” day, and can’t fully understand how and why you were so different after the episode with the two women. Why was it so catastrophic? Mostly, I get this sense of you looking in at their own lives like someone watching a conveyor belt go by, powerless to take what you want.

I consulted psychoanalyst Susan Godsil. She was struck by how” your best memory was of something exciting but empty , not of building something in your life you can value “. Sometimes, it is the most ordinary things that provide the richest memories. But I get no sense of that with you. It’s all excitement or disaster.

Godsil wondered why you are living “in the sticks”? Is a move a possibility?” Maybe[ downsize] to a town/ city where you have more life, and people ?” she indicated.” Retiring is a challenging life stage and inevitably involves looking back over their own lives .”

But is your current depression and sense of your ageing and, as you see it, inadequate body influencing your view? Because when you’re depressed, it can colour how you look at things. So at the moment all you can see is the bad stuff.

I also wonder whether you aren’t blaming your penis for everything that has gone wrong in your life. If you could start to tackle the depression- by talking to someone- I think this may be of more use to you than are concerned about your” dangly bits “.

I am confused about whether your spouse is one of the two women you oscillated between all those years ago. Nevertheless, you have constructed a 30 -year partnership- is there nothing good about that? What does she believe? Is it fair- to either of you- not to talk about your relationship?

I think you should get your emotional health looked at: talk to your GP or find a counsellor, someone you can safely talk to, to try to undo some of your past and make sense of it. You say you don’t know what you want, but you do seem to know what you don’t want. Suppose about moving, if possible, to somewhere more vibrant. After all, all those years ago, when you moved to a city” a miracle happened “.

Don’t look too far ahead. This will stop you feeling overwhelmed and despairing. Being in yours 60 s isn’t that old. Isn’t it time you stopped being a passenger in your own life?

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org . Campaign Against Living Miserably, thecalmzone.net

* Send your problem to annalisa.barbieri @mac. com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.

Follow Annalisa on Twitter @AnnalisaB

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

The former Oasis singer admitted in an interview that he still takes medications. Which may make it a bit tricky to caution his children off them, he says

Liam Gallagher

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Might as well do the white line: Liam Gallagher, still caning it at 45

The former Oasis singer admitted in an interview that he still takes medications. Which may make it a little bit tricky to advise his children off them, he says

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Why, when hearing my spouse and I have one child, do people ask about our plans for a second? Do they ever consider how intrusive and insensitive that question can be, that we have had multiple miscarriages?

My wife was talking to a mate in the hallway at work a week or so ago.

” Our son loves Blue Planet, it’s so funny. You know, even the scary bits? He loved it. And he’s only four .”

She is boasting, a tiny bit, but it’s true. He is an newborn Cousteau. I dream of diving with him one day. And even if she is boasting, it is just casual office chat; the kind we all fill our days with.

Then, a colleague from marketing walks past. Let’s call her Sarah. She overhears. Sidles up. Butts in.

Drops the bomb, eyebrows raised.” So, are you guys thinking about No 2 ?”

My wife winces, composes herself. Delivers what we have come to call: The Answer.” No, we’re not, actually. We’ve decided , now, that our family is the right size. Thanks .”

Just polite enough to suffice. But curt enough to shut things down. With that little verbal shove in the smaller of her back, Sarah walks off, face reddening with every step. Good.

My wife texts me.

Heart pounding. Someone just asked .

Who? Anyone that are important, or simply a random?

A random.

Did you give them The Answer?

Yeah.

Amazing. You OK?

Kinda.

Small talk over the biggest topic. How can people be so insensitive and intrusive? Because it seems that as soon as anyone detects out you have one child, they want to know when you plan to reproduce again. But they don’t hold where their clumsy terms will land. Sometimes, they land square in your face like a well-timed punch.

The answer, that I want to whisper into Sarah’s ear on my wife’s behalf is:” Actually, we’re not thinking about No 2 right now. We spent the last two years mourning Nos 2, 3 and 4. They never stimulated it. Fancy a casual chat about that, here in the hallway ?”

Then I would continue. I would spell it all out for her.

” Not sure we’ll ever get over No 4, Sarah. Some things change you, basically. That was one of them. Now, do you want to talk about our worst miscarriage, or the best one? The worst one was just a amaze abortion without anaesthesia. It shattered my wife like a champagne glass dashed on a slate floor.

” How about the one that happened while she was at work, panicking in white linen trousers? Appearing back now, that was actually the best one. She had to take a week and a half off to hemorrhage, mind. Or how about when she knew another had started as I was getting on a flight, but she remained quiet because she wanted me to finish the job that I had been working on for months?

” Sarah, come back. I’ve only just started. Do you want to hear about the style even dear, beloved friends, even my immediate family, pall, stutter and briskly change the subject the second I mention miscarriage? It is such a genteel, sidesaddling euphemism. Oops- miscarried! You ensure, miscarriage is birth and death wrapped up in one little bundle of misery.

” A good friend’s spouse who suffered equally said her womb felt like a graveyard. Dwell on that for as long as you can bear it. Pregnancy, Sarah, is quantum, unstable and mystifying. It’s a delight and a terror. A hope that can be crushed any second. It’s yes and no simultaneously. Fancy a Jaffa Cake ?”

That is what I would say.

Anyone who has one child and has not had a second, or any couple without children, may be going through what we were. They may be stuck at the blackjack table, playing the worst game ever: stick or twisting? To be or not to be? Do we keep trying to give our child a sibling until the eggs and our sanity have all gone?

Until we got The Answer to The Question, I expended the last two years looking at kids with brothers or sisters and felt a gnawing, impermissible resentment. Because to commit to having another child when you already have one is to know the difficulties of the first few years- the sleeplessness, the expenditure, the nappies, the hard physical graft, the fret and the exhilaration- and to embrace it. You have to want it so badly. And then you get it. And then it is taken from you by force.

After two years of trying, we reach a decision: we accept that we will have no more. I took a while to get there, but my spouse supported me, steadfast as structural steel, until I did. She astounded me with her strength, resolve and clear-sightedness. She worked it all out, logically, rationally, and emotionally. Some pain remained, of course, but we build the decision, together.

Then the real headwork begins. You have now made society’s last pariah: the only child. Lonely, selfish, maladjusted. Selfish mothers who wanted to stop at one. Selfish child who can’t share. Poor kid, all alone. Tell me you have never had these thoughts and I will gaze straight-out in your eyes and call you the liar that you are, because I have had them, too. It is the culture.

Lauren Sandler’s book One and Only– which deconstructs the myths and presumptions about “singletons” as she more kindly calls them- is an empowering source of comfort and knowledge. Such children, it turns out, are often gifted, generous, great at building friends and compassionate. That describes our son to the letter.

Sandler reads my intellect, though:” As mothers who choose to stop at one, we have to get used to the nagging help feeling that we are choosing for our children something they can never undo. We’re deciding not to know two kids splashing in the bath, playing in the pile of raked leaves, whispering under cover of darkness, teasing each other at the dinner table, holding hands at our funerals ,” she writes.

Who will hold our son’s hand? But you can’t think like that. Such thinking does not serve you, or your child, or your marriage.

There is light among the shade of course, looking back. The red dots on the calendar that entailed we had to have sex that week, every night. The limping in to run after marathon sessions as if we were adolescents who had just fulfilled. The lies you tell friends when they ask you out – you can’t say:” Sorry, can’t come to that gig, mate. My spouse and I have to fuck each other every night this week .” Well, you can, but only to certain mates. I’m not quite sure how Sarah would deal with it.

The Question hurls you, every time. It is meant well, sometimes, of course. But in my experience, it is nearly always thoughtless. Rebecca Solnit’s essential new feminist text, The Mother of All Questions, interrogates the idea that females should have children at all. She talks about her desire to be” genuinely rabbinical” in the face of hostile, shut questions. Solnit says she has developed a gnomic reply that turns the spotlight back on the questioner. When people ask her if she is planning to have children, she answers, with politeness:” Why are you asking me that question ?” I’m not sure Sarah, and the wider culture, could quite manage that yet. We require our own answer.

A few weeks before Sarah stopped my spouse in her tracks, I received in the post a rend of a tune by Kieran Hebden, AKA Four Tet. A relentless hard disco loop with an incessant, maddening vocal refrain:” I’ve got to find the answer to the question .” I laugh at the coincidence and listen to it for days.

Then, with no fanfare, I get the answer, in one of the most softly bizarre experiences of my life. One Friday a few weeks back, I get over the miscarriages and was at last able to write this piece. I felt as if I had somehow exorcised myself, in a moment of intense calm, a lambent, silent epiphany. I simply lay on the floor in our front room in silence for 45 minutes and did absolutely nothing. I was dispassionate, detached, and my intellect expanded. In that space, I accepted that the past two years of struggle are over. Our household is the right size, the right shape, and we love it as it is. We have not accepted second-best. We have not tried and failed. We have the greatest son I can imagine, I realise, wordlessly. He is more than enough.

As I am lying stunned, karma chameleoned there on the floor, my son arrives back from nursery with his mum and enters the room mutely, lies down with me, places his head on my shoulder, and remains there in peace for 10 minutes. He has never done this in his life. It is as if he knows.

” Want a snuggle ?” he asks.

We decide to honour the moment, and our decision, with a flame. To destroy, without indignation, the things that do not serve us, or that have held us back. Unabashed, we get the garden incinerator out on the night of the winter solstice, prepare ceremonial food and drink, and get the flames licking the sky.

With smiles on our faces and love in our hearts, we burn it all down- the whole sorry lot of it: the resentment of other households, the anxiety over what people think of our selections, the dread, frustration and fury of this godforsaken pair of years. We burn it to ash, and we will fertilise our garden with it. We will grow from here. We giggle and hurl whisky and fishbones on the flames.

We have decided , now, that our household is the right size, thanks.

There’s the answer.

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

Grant is on top form as a cravat-wearing rogue who frames Paddington for steal in a follow-up that lives up to Michael Bonds evergreen original

This year’s Christmas treat has arrived early, and Paddington Bear has incidentally shown us that Blade Runner isn’t the only movie around capable of giving us an exciting and impressive sequel.

This is the follow-up to the first Paddington movie of 2014 and it’s a tremendously sweet-natured, charming, unassuming and above all funny cinema with a tale that merely rattles along, powered by a nonstop succession of Grade-A gags conjured up by screenwriters Paul King( who also directs ), Simon Farnaby and Jon Croker. Their screenplay perfectly catches the tone of the great master himself, Michael Bond, writer of the original volumes, who sadly died in June this year at persons under the age of 91, creative and productive to the end.

The film is pitched with insouciant ease and a lightness of touch at both children and adults without any self-conscious transformations in irony or tone: it’s humor with the citrus tang of top-quality thick-cut marmalade. There’s a sight-gag involving the spurious transgres of a valuable vase that I especially enjoyed. And although one could say its work on diversity is not complete, the movie has a fair bit of material- now more pertinent than ever- about the route a confident, happy nation greets immigrants. The day-glo primary coloured design dedicates the movie a storybook feel, at some places a little like Wes Anderson. The uproarious finale meanwhile has something of Mel Brooks.

It may be bad form to begin with any character other than the young ursine hero himself, but Hugh Grant entirely pinches this, with an outrageously scene-stealing turn as the appalling villain. He is an ageing, cravat-wearing actor named Phoenix Buchanan with a moderate career behind him, brooding about the working day get a one-man thesp spectacular in London’s West End but now reduced to doing Clement Freud-style dog food TV ads. The ironically named Phoenix has just moved into this elegant west London neighbourhood, which is more or less as it was when Hugh Grant was here for Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill in 1999: picturesque, and plainly has still not been the conserve of the super-rich. In fact the movie has lots of quaint English things, like St Paul’s Cathedral, steam trains, and even- astonishingly- more than one fully functioning red public payphone, which characters use instead of mobiles.( These olden-days touches will do no harm to Paddington 2′ s opportunities in foreign marketplaces .)

Meanwhile, the Brown family are tootling amiably along as ever. Ben Whishaw is excellent voicing Paddington himself: curious, puzzled, innocent, but with a clear sense of right and incorrect. Hugh Bonneville is the paterfamilias Mr Brown, disillusioned at not being promoted at work , now experiencing a midlife crisis and experimenting with yoga and moisturiser. Sally Hawkins is quietly excellent in the unpromising role of Mrs Brown, and the same runs for Julie Walters as the housekeeper Mrs Bird, a job description that announces, like nothing else, that Paddington originated in an Ealing Comedy age. Sanjeev Bhaskar is a forgetful neighbour and Richard Ayoade is an eccentric forensic scientist.

The unspeakable Phoenix steals a precious pop-up volume from Mr Gruber’s shop: a volume which contains coded clues to where a fabulous cache of gem may be found- and he frames Paddington for the crime. So poor Paddington goes to prison for something he didn’t do, but there find consolation in relationship with the prison’s hot-tempered cook, Knuckles, played by Brendan Gleeson. Together, they are to plan a daring escape and the show-stopping climax involves a daring dash to the west country from London’s eponymous railway station. It’s very silly, but very likeable, the various kinds of thing that appears easy, but really isn’t.

It’s another impressive jaunt for Paddington. I incidentally is considered that these novelists need to cracking on with creating a feature-length adaptation of Michael Bond’s other, more neglected meisterwerk, The Herbs, with Russell Crowe as Parsley and Maggie Smith as Lady Rosemary.

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

There are no typical autistic people, despite the savant stereotypes. My son is just himself: hes me, with a coating of autism

I am so looking forward to my trip-up with my son next week. First up is Cern, in Switzerland, where my son gets an hour on the Large Hadron Collider all to himself. On Tuesday, it’s off to the National Portrait Gallery in London, where an exhibition of his crayon selfies is on demonstrate( royal attendance is rumoured ). Wednesday he’s being filmed for the BBC completing a Rubik’s Cube with one hand.

Thursday, he’s on at the National Theatre, where he’ll recite the works of Shakespeare from memory. Friday, we’re off to Vegas to win a fortune at blackjack. I’ve bought the matching suits and sunglasses and, get this, he gets to fly the plane home himself.

It is a whirlwind being the father of an autistic child– especially one as multitalented as mine. Some autistic children only have one special talent.

OK, so this isn’t true. I am the parent of an autistic child, and the first question I’m always asked when the subject of my son comes up is: ” Does he have a special talent ?”~ ATAGEND because everyone has read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and insured Rain Man, and presume all autistic children have special powers.

The charm of special powers … Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in Rain Man. Photo: Moviestore Collection/ Rex

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Cheeks burning while strangers judge your parenting abilities the child shrieking in the post office line we all have narratives of scarcely holding it together

A week ago, my five-year-old daughter depicted me a map.

It was early afternoon and I was in bed, fighting against a migraine and crossing my thumbs that my ridiculously expensive prescription drug would kick in soon. The migraine had begun early that morning and by the time I picked her up from kindergarten it was relentlessly hammering away at the right side of my skull; bringing with it the strong nausea and aversion to lighting, sound and reek it always does.

I lay down with a cold washcloth over my eyes, and my daughter busied herself with the intricate run of colouring, videotapeing and cutting newspaper into dozens of infinitesimally small pieces that are impossible to sweep up.

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I’d been in my room for perhaps half an hour when I heard the door swaying open and her footsteps pad over to the side of my bed. She tapped my shoulder and pulled the washcloth off my eyes.

” Mummy, I built you something ,” she said in an urgent whisper. I carried myself up to my elbows and took the paper she offered me, a strangely underwhelming thing made up of dotted lines and a few urgent scribbles.

” It’s a map ,” she explained.” It shows you what you need to do .”

Then, patiently, she pointed at one scribble and explained that this was me, in bed. She told me that I needed to get up and used her finger to trace the dotted line resulting from my bed to the second scribble- the stove, as it turns out.

” You need to attain me something to eat and then go here …”- her thumb traced the second dotted line all the way to its final destination-” to my room and read me narratives .”

All at once, this map became everything terrible and wonderful about being a parent.

It was the embodiment of a child’s singular, necessarily self-centered nature; concerned with having their own wants and needs met above all else. It was stark, embarrassing proof that my child felt she needed to draw me instructions for how to properly parent her- to remind me that she needed to eat lunch( of course she needed to eat lunch, how had I forgotten to prepare lunch ?) and wanted to have stories read to her instead of entertaining herself alone.

It was the frustrating result of the contradiction you get are applied to as a single mother, where no matter how much you love your life as two( or three or four) there are times when things just really would work better with another grownup around, somebody to picking her up from school and induce lunch and rub my back and persuade me to take a second pill if the first one hasn’t worked yet, for God’s sake.

I’ve been a single mother since just after my daughter’s second birthday, and this map isn’t the first failed parenting moment I wish could be erased from the registers of time.

There was the period of time when she was two and a half and she wouldn’t wear anything but a puppy attire and I just let her, because it was warm, and she was dressed, and who cares, really?

There was the time she fell down the steps of a stone terrace and sliced her teeth through her bottom lip while I stood just a few feet away, making sure a friend’s wobbly new-walking child didn’t fall.

There was the time that she wouldn’t stop talking during my little sister’s bridal and had to be removed from the ceremony by my brother, constructing the strangest-sounding monotonous groan as she was fireman-carried away under his arm.

For me, every single one of these moments comes down to me running out of something I desperately wish I had more of- period, patience, appreciation, awareness, premeditation, sleep. It’s hard being the only one to predict and remember and anticipate and discipline. Sometimes I would dedicate anything to be able to say to a partner,” Your turning” and check out.

Of course, parenting lows aren’t exclusively the outcomes of parenting solo, they’re the outcomes of parenting while working more than a full-time job, parenting while poor, parenting when your extended family lives a continent away rather than down the block.

Often, these low points are simply an expression of the results of parenting, period. This gig is hard, and it’s sometimes hard to talk about too because the cliches about motherhood are just as tired as we are.

We all have these moments. That’s the admission you pay to join the club of parenthood: the cheeks burning while strangers judge your parenting skills; the child shrieking in the post office line; you doing precisely the thing you judged other parents for in your pre-children life.

Share your story

We all have tales of scarcely holding our shit together( or losing it altogether) and I, for one, would love to hear yours. You can share your hardest moment as a mom through the secure form below( or here if you’re having trouble viewing it ). The Guardian will publish a selection of your narratives.

https://guardiannewsandmedia.formstack.com/forms/js.php/hardest_motherhood_moment

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Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

Far from espousing the school run, most men are still trapped by rigid cultural notions of being strong, dominant and successful. Is it leading to an epidemic of unhappiness similar to the one felt by Betty Friedans 50 s homemakers?

Back in the 90 s, it was all going to be so different. Not for our generation the lopsided approach of our parents, with their quaint postwar the idea of father-breadwinners and mother-homemakers. We would be equal; interchangeable. Our young lady would run companies, embassies, hospitals and schools, while our young men , no slouches themselves, would punctuate their careers with long, halcyon spells dandling newborns and teaching toddlers how to build tiny volcanoes out of vinegar and baking soda.

That equality would have formidable knock-on effects. The gender pay gap would constrict. Sexual harassment wouldn’t vanish, but decoupling professional power from gender would do a lot to erase it from the workplace.

A generation or so later, it is clear: this is the revolution that never happened, at the least not in the UK. The home-dad innovators among us who once flamed a trail , now look on aghast as successive waves of men scurry past and say:” Right. Back to run .”

What happened? Latest statistics for England demonstrate more than 80% of fathers still run full period, rising to virtually 85% for papas of very young children. This rate has hardly changed for 20 years. The ratio of part-timers has flatlined only above 6% throughout this decade( having risen through the 90 s and early 00 s ). Just 1.6% of men have given up run wholly to take care of the family home. New rights for fathers to share parental leave with moms have poor take-up rates.

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You can glimpse this paternity gap at 3.30 pm on weekday afternoons at school gates up and down the country. Far from being overrun with gaggles of enlightened humen in clothes covered with baby sick and badges saying ” World’s greatest dad”, the father quota is, in my own limited experience, disappointing. There are often more grandparents doing the pickup than dads.

At the same time, there is no deficit of surveys discovering legions of men saying they want to find more time for family life. So exactly what he stopping them?

In 1963, The Feminine Mystique, a seminal volume by Betty Friedan, helped launch the second wave of feminism by positing that American females faced” a problem that has no name “: they had basically become typecast as uber-feminine moms, home-makers, cake bakers and sexual slaves to their spouses. Forcing girls to live up to this idea of femininity left an entire generation depressed, frustrated or hooked on Valium.

The question is this: 50 years later, are humen facing their own” problem with no name”, a” masculine mystique” which imposes rigid culture notions of what it is to be male- superior, dominant, hierarchical, sexually assertive to the point of abuse- even though society is hollering out for manhood to be something very different?

Men who do change their working lives to accommodate their children generally say it can feel tough, lonely, incongruous, even emasculating. When, 15 years ago, I gave up run wholly for a year to do childcare, it took a while to get used to being the only daddy in the park; the strange human arguing with a difficult child outside the library on a damp Tuesday morning. People stared.

David Early and his son Jonah …’ There is a stigma when people see you doing a role that isn’t traditional .’

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

Study indicates babies as young as six months old may realise certain words are pertained and that interaction with adults boosts understanding

Babies as young as six months old may have an inkling that certain words and concepts are related to each other, say scientists in research that sheds new light on how infants learn.

The study also found that newborns who were more often exposed to adults talking to them about items in their proximity did better at identifying a picture of an object when the item was said out loud.

” What this is saying is that it is always a good notion to talk to your child and to show interest in whatever they are interested in, and it looks like the more you do that, the better- set very simply ,” said Dr Elika Bergelson of Duke University in North Carolina, who co-authored the paper.

In the first part of the study, 51 healthy six-month old newborns took part in an eye-tracking experiment in the laboratory. Sitting on the lap of a parent, who was unable to see the computer screen, each infant’s gaze was recorded as they were presented two images on a grey background, for example “car” and “juice”.

The parent, prompted through a decide of headphones, uttered a sentence containing one of the items. The squad then tracked how long the newborns looked at the item that the mother had mentioned.

The trial was carried out 32 periods, with half of the instances showing pairs of items related to each other, such as juice and milk, and half the time presenting unrelated items such as auto and juice.

The results, published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that the newborns appeared more at the image of the item that was mentioned by the mother when the other item on the screen was unrelated to it.

” The logic is, if newborns look more at an image after it gets named than they did before they heard anything, they know[ something about] what the word entails ,” said Bergelson.

“[ The findings indicate] babies know something about how words and concepts are’ related’ or’ go together ‘: if they had no notion that milk and juice had anything to do with one another, they would have performed similarly with the two types of displays ,” she added.

In the second part of the study, the team investigated whether the babies’ overall success at looking at the correct word was linked to their home surrounding, by recording the interactions between the newborns and those around them using video and, more extensively, audio recordings. These were then analysed by researchers for mentions of any objects or things, such as a spoonful or starrings, and it was noted whether the items were likely present in front of the newborn at the time.

The results from 41 newborns, of whom 40 had both audio and video data, reveal that the more babies were spoken to about objects that were present, the very best they did overall at looking at the correct term in the lab experiments.

” Even though they are six months olds- they are not doing much yet-[ they should be treated] as real communicative partners ,” said Bergelson.

Marilyn Vihman, prof of linguistics at the University of York who was not involved in the study, described the research as excellent and greeted the move to conduct research in the home environment. But she stressed that the study did not mean that six-month old babies “know” that words are linked.

” All the food words come in the same meal-time situation, all the clothing words and body-part terms come in the same nappy-changing and clothes-changing situation. All those words are going to be related to each other in the child’s experience and they haven’t sorted them out yet ,” she said.

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

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The ‘masculine mystique’ why men can’t ditch the baggage of being a bloke

Babies may be able to link certain words and concepts, research suggests

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Might as well do the white line: Liam Gallagher, still caning it at 45

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