While a good night’s sleep may never cure all that ails you, there are few obstacles that don’t seem quite so insurmountable after eight peaceful hours.

Which is why life seems so very harsh right now as I lie here – wide eyed, mind racing, heart palpitating – while the house is so quiet you could hear a nappy being soaked.

Before motherhood I experienced mild insomnia, as they call it – bouts of sleeplessness due to temporary anxiety that last three, four days at most. But months of night-waking, breastfeeding, worrying about my newborn sleeping on her tummy in the next room, sprinkled with some lingering jetlag and a partner prone to snoring so loud it sounds put on mean that these days I am unable to achieve that satisfying nirvana we’ve worked so hard to bring our children: a full night’s uninterrupted sleep.

The discussion with my GP was oddly familiar. “Make sure you use your bed only for sleep,” he said. “Follow a bedtime ritual.” A warm bath was recommended. A soporific story on the bedside table. Cosy pyjamas and temperature control. Warm milk. Exercise. Fresh air in daylight. It slowly became clear that if I were ever going to see another REM cycle, I would have to sleep-train myself.

In the end I took the GP’s advice, plus I cut out naps and caffeine. And for good measure I sought out a prescription for sleeping tablets, which were, frankly, superb: one page into Dreams from My Father and I was lost in my own euphoric reveries.

And then, as if they could sense their mother had turned her attention elsewhere, the kids awakened, one after the other, wanting a piece of you know who.

Which has afforded me some time to write this column but made my day a total write-off.

Ellen Himelfarb is a freelance writer and mother of two. You can reach her at ellen.h@mac.com

This is the Win Green Rose fabric childrens pavilion with floor quilt.

Win Green

They come from Win Green who are based in a barn in a Kentish fruitfarm a (long) stonesthrow from Leeds castle, Win Green have a range of items for imaginative play, handwoven cotton Cottages, Pavilions, Tents, Wendy houses and Wigwams in gorgeous fun detailed designs. Most have matching cotton floor quilts.

Wigwams

The Wigwams are imaginative and gorgeous, sure to charm any child.  This cowboy wigwam from is 100% cotton, appliquéd and embroidered with mountains, cacti and a horse drawn wagon.

Win Green Wigwam

Toy Cottages

This Fairy cottage from Win Green is 100% cotton, appliquéd and embroidered. With pretty curtains on the door and windows adding to the charm.The toy cottages certainly have a place in any nursery. Or lawn as seen here.

Win Green Fairy Cottage

Hanging Tents

These Win Green hanging tents are 100% cotton with side windows. Rope, tent pegs and storage bag included. Really good looking as you can see.

Win Green hanging tents by the pool.

When my parents were newlyweds, my father was seconded to an American branch of his firm. My mother – hardly easy to please in the rosiest circumstances – naturally hated it. (To her credit, this wasn’t New York or San Francisco but a relative backwater in the midwest.) But they stuck it out for several years, not only for his CV, but to bear two children with the inalienable right to US citizenship. For years after our return to their native Canada they reminded us of the gift we’d been given – the chance to travel, work, even settle down in the Land of Opportunity with the coveted blue passport.

That was all the inspiration we needed. By our 20s, my sister and I were both living abroad. The fact that we had chosen Hong Kong and Europe was the unpleasant surprise that did nothing to improve my mother’s disposition. My sister caved to the guilt (or so I’d like to say) and returned home, but I ended up in the UK. So these days, instead, I am reminded that I’ve broken the family deal. I’ve gone too far – literally.

Now that I have two girls of my own I feel my parents’ pain. We have just submitted forms for the children’s third passport (at birth they were eligible for British, Canadian and American citizenship). We already travel with a stack so thick we require an entire pack of Rymans foldback clips to manage them. As they get older, the girls will gradually come to favour one passport over the rest. Or perhaps they’ll seek out a fourth after seeing the world and entertaining exotic suitors attracted to their adventurousness and willingness to up sticks. And desert their family. After all that we’ve done for them…

And so I reinforce the adage that we are all destined to become our mothers.

Ellen Himelfarb is a freelance writer and mother of two. Contact her at ellen.h@mac.com

Back in the days before parenthood, when SARS was the exotic epidemic of the day, I relegated nasty flus to that sealed file in my consciousness marked Other People’s Business. Well, it didn’t take long for swine flu to hit home – or, at least, our gentrified corner of east London.

My neighbour got the call this morning from her son’s childminder. Apologies, she said, but she had neglected to mention at drop-off this morning (and, incidentally, at pick-up last night) that her teenage son has been stricken. And is convalescing directly upstairs from where several children frolic in one another’s saliva.

Mercifully, the heat wave has forced the lot of them out into the garden, where a malignant sneeze has its work cut out for it. But is it not irresponsible to act so casually about a plague that could eventually force entire schools to shut if not the whole rotten borough?

That’s what the pundits are saying about so-called swine-flu parties, contemplated by some British mothers – you can track them down on message boards like Mumsnet – who figure a mild case will toughen up their kids before more virulent strains appear later in the year. Puh-leez. This is not chicken pox, there is no vaccine, and one of the known symptoms is death. Not something you want to dole out in the goodie bags.

I’ve heard no reports of such a party actually happening, so my neighbour’s childminder could be a real trailblazer. Therein lies the dilemma: nobody likes a party pooper.

I say spare him the misery, before they start the first game of kissing tag. A pox on the nanny… though it may already be too late.

Ellen Himelfarb is a freelance writer and mother of two. Contact her at ellen.h@mac.com

This is a Manhattan Toy Whoozit.

The Manhattan Toy Whoozit soft toy.

Cheerful isn’t he?

Many Varieties

We have many varieties of Whoozit, also in the Manhattan toy range is a rather clever teething toy, the Winkel, a Whoozit baby gym, the Sqwish  and a water filled tummy mat. These baby toys are very reasonably priced and might make a wonderful baby gift.

You can see these Manhattan Toy baby toys on the Hello Baby site.

Tidybooks Slimline bookcase, choose your book from the cover.

This rather nice Tidybooks bookcase shows of the attractive covers of children’s books to advantage. There is also the smaller bunkbed buddy, somewhere for the top bunk dweller to keep their books and bedtime things. All you need to do now is to get your children some books!

It is unfathomable, the loss of a young child. Unfathomable because the fortunate among us will never get close to the vile experience. And even if we were able to truly empathise, the horror would be too great to bear. So we dance around it, sharing the news over tea; feeling pangs of guilt as we watch our own children laugh and play; checking on the cot hourly; weeping to ourselves late at night, when we should be storing up sleep. We may wake up bloodshot and miserable, but we know that we’ll get over it in time. Lucky us.

Mostly we obsess over the appropriate thing to say. Will we ever get it right? Can we? We imagine the faux pas those without children might utter: “Perhaps you can try for another.” Or: “At least you had X amount of time with him.” Surely we parents can do better than that? Not bloody likely.

There is a mountain of material to be read about what not to say to a grieving parent – anything to do with God, angels or heaven, for instance – but few can agree on the dos. Some decent examples are purely subjective, of course – what brings comfort to one may be wildly offensive to another. Recently, I wrote in a card simply that I could be reached any time, in any form and for any reason, only to learn later that too was a no-no. Too much pressure to reach out to someone who, ultimately, could never understand.

Claire Prosser, who wrote in the BBC’s online magazine a few months back of losing her teenaged son, recommends a “silent hug”; a voucher for a healing masseuse; a charitable donation; and a few well regarded books: Sad Book by Michael Rosen and The Bereaved Parent by Harriet Sarnoff Schiff.

We can only hope that our mere existence doesn’t cause even more misery: a happy mother passing by on the pavement, pushing a double buggy and singing nursery rhymes. I secretly dread that day, but also relish it so I can stop and hold out my arms for a silent hug.

Ellen Himelfarb is a freelance writer and mother of two. She can be reached at ellen.h@mac.com

Pull!

Two phone numbers in a single trip to the market – one after a ‘Come here often?’ chat in the coffee queue. The other by the yoga instructor handing out flyers at the exit. It’s a relief to know I’ve still got it.

At least where the neighbourhood mums are concerned.

When you’ve been partnered up for better part of a decade and your most meaningful social interaction takes place while strapping your child into a buggy in the creche foyer, you know you’ve entered a parallel universe where your hottest dates are with other mothers (or, even weirder, fathers). The most popular serial-daters can fill an entire day loitering at the school gates or the playground or the café or the sweaty rainy-day soft-play, spouting Ofsted wisdom and vomit anecdotes.

But what do you do when you’re new on the scene? Or if you’ve been off the market for a while? How do you progress from the number-exchange to that important next step: the first date? Do you ring up on a lonely day, ostensibly to find out how she rates her son’s play-group? With an invitation to your daughter’s birthday party? What’s your entrée? “Um, hi. You probably don’t know my name. Come to think of it, I don’t know yours either. My daughter tried to steal your son’s scooter from the sandpit last Tuesday. Purple Crocs? Matted hair? Anyhoo… up for the paddling pool tomorrow morning?”

Then, if she says yes, you face the awkwardness that comes with realising your children would rather philander with other, anonymous children. And what do you do when you spot another mum-friend across the pool? Pretend your sunglasses aren’t prescription? Invite her over for a rice cake? Wait for her to introduce herself to your new friend so you can take note of both their names?

If someone is familiar with The Rules, could you please clarify?

Ellen Himelfarb is a freelance writer and mother of two. Contact her at ellen.h@mac.com

A campaign has been started to ban these covers and an early success was Ofsted reversing it’s policy of requiring child-minders to use the covers¹. Co-founder of the FatallyFlawed Campaign, David Peacock said “In recent years, many companies have been marketing plastic “safety socket covers” in the misguided belief that these are an essential tool to prevent children from inserting their fingers or other objects into the plug.  It has now been established that plug-in covers are actually unsafe”².  The Campaign’s patron is the Broadcaster, Dr Adam Hart-Davis who said “I normally refuse to join in campaigns but this seemed so important, and the “safety” covers so absurd and dangerous, that I agreed”¹.

As expected, the manufacturers refute the claims pointing out that they have had no complaints but equally there have been no reported incidents with the fully shuttered sockets in use in the UK for the past 60 years.  They still do the job they were designed to do all those years ago - providing the safest mains socket in the world!  The images and video produced by the Campaign graphically shows the cover issues and how simple misuse or toddler inquisitiveness can negate the inbuilt safety features of the socket.

To review the issues visit the Campaign website, www.FatallyFlawed.org.uk Look at the Picture Gallery and watch the video which, for convenience, may be found at this link.  www.tinyurl.com/cjly6r - then throw away your covers!

Safety is designed into UK sockets - plug in covers reduce safety!

References

1. The IET Engineering & Technology magazine Vol 4, Issue 5 14^th March 09

2.  Daily Telegraph 23^rd March 09

Picture courtesy of FatallyFlawed

This week our guest blogger tries not to blame her husband for trying.

I was offered the morning off this weekend, and I have to say, I find it a mixed blessing. Handing over your daily grind to another, less experienced partner comes with its pitfalls – for you, for them, for the children, for the relationship. Why is the heat turned down, you might ask upon returning to your subzero household. Have the kids’ teeth been brushed? How many pots does it take to make macaroni? And why are they all in the sink? Where are the clean bottles? And why, oh why, is there screaming coming from the upstairs rooms? When it comes to multitasking, nobody is better than Mum, or so we like to think.

Much newsprint has been given over to the battle over parenting styles and who is the big loser when the tasks are shared. The New York Times, more than a year ago, studied a study in which couples attempted to split parenting duties down the middle. And guess what? Even in homes where both spouses shared “caregiver” status, mothers got stuck with the lion’s share of the housework. Sabine Durrant, in The Guardian, moans about dirty bathwater and wet towels on the floor – two things that men commonly overlook, along with having to leave work early to collect a sick child from school. Viv Groskop fares marginally better in an experiment she documented for her article in The Guardian earlier this year – inspired by the Equally Shared Parenting website. But the bottom line is that dads just don’t share our talent for the nitty gritty of day-to-day parenting.

Ask my partner and he will concur – or at least concede that his wife is at best dissatisfied with his competence in the childcare department. But still I am one of the lucky ones. This past week I have heard of no fewer than three break-ups. All in a home with a new baby. All the result of deeper angst than simple household chores, to be sure, but scary nonetheless. One friend recently hauled her toddler and newborn to visit her parents for a week’s respite from the battleground their house had become. By the end of that week she’d sent her parents to collect her, and their, belongings and retained a solicitor.

So I’ll take that morning off, and I’ll also refrain from that other thing mothers excel at: nagging.

Ellen Himelfarb is a freelance writer and mother of two. Contact her at ellen.h@mac.com