Topics from the School Run Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Woodsmoke and Wild Strawberries

A mum’s experience of sleep apnoea in children

June 24, 2015 by natalie 2 Comments

poor baby!

I am no doctor but I really wish someone had written a thoughtful case study on sleep apnea and paediatric ENT issues that I could have read a few years back. I am talking real experiences and examples. Details were few and far between. I am in no way qualified to diagnose anyone or give medical advice, but I felt like writing this post because this is an experience that might help anyone recognize a similar situation and I LOVE trawling the interweb for like-minded nerds to probe about their issues when WebMd just doesn’t cut it.

In layperson’s terms, there are basically two types of sleep apnoea: neurological and obstructive, the latter being the most straightforward for obvious reasons. It is the only one of which we have any experience. Most people don’t realize that sleep apnoea is neurologically damaging in the long run as essentially it stifles oxygen supply to the brain and can, apparently, trigger ADHD behaviour, impair concentration, and cognitive function. Adenoidal and tonsil tissue, we were told, is basically a bacteria-magnet, like a gross wet sponge harbouring crap even when they appear in relative good health. The adenoids, when enlarged can press against the ear canal leading to contamination from the nose and throat to the ear. This is particularly the case when your kid is horizontal as any infected mucus can wash back and converge in the middle of the head, where all three ENT areas meet. I hope this post is irrelevant to you and maybe your kid is just a sweaty little light sleeper and all this will bore you to tears but I thought it best to share as you never know….

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Pregnancy suits you? It’s a lottery

June 12, 2015 by natalie 2 Comments

Getting pregnant is a lottery. You spend your youth paranoid that you might fall pregnant when it would make your life difficult and then you realise one day that coming off contraception is not like an automatic “opt-in” guaranteeing you a child. Some are up the duff in a snap, then have tremendous issues with second children while others are told they will never conceive and suddenly find themselves surprised to be parents. Personally i think falling pregnant has a lot to do with probabilities and perhaps that is why there is so much “unexplained” infertility. Perhaps the gods of statistics just aren’t favouring certain individuals when really there is no biological reason that it shouldn’t happen. I have to confess that it irks me a bit when couples are self-congratulatory about being easily up the duff, as if it took any work on their part… as if it proved their superiority in some way. Just looking about you you can see that who ends up having kids has nothing to do with merit, just luck. If you ask me, the same can be said for the kind of pregnant woman you are and the pregnancy you have….

It takes a village to raise a child

June 12, 2015 by natalie 2 Comments

Italians consider cooking (and eating) good food at every meal an absolute given, a necessity, meaning that the work of many a home cook is taken quite for granted. Rain or shine my aunty every day of the year sets the table and cooks for her husband, and at least one grown son and his wife and children. Not dissimilar to an Autogrill she has them in and out in under an hour with a 3 course meal under their belts so that they can all return to school/work. The tide goes out then in and there she is suddenly sweeping up and clearing plates and getting on with the rest of her day as if it were all some delicious dream. I’m not saying this level of taking for granted is right, it just is. It is the way of things in some households. Roles are clear and logical. You are not lauded, but neither are you judged as a vacant housewife either. The role of the home-maker is truly appreciated. Mums rule the roost. They are obeyed, they are loved and they are valued and it is how so many of my peers manage to bring up their kids without losing their minds….

So shoot me, I make my own Pesto

June 10, 2015 by natalie 3 Comments

Pesto made and snapped by me. It is in a flavour-league all of its own.

I absolutely advocate shortcuts in family life. There is so much general friction just in getting out the door every day that if I can cut corners without compromising the end result too much then I’m all for it. I sometimes shake may head in numb disbelief at how much time of my life I spend just mechanically loading and unloading the dishwasher multiple times a day, scrubbing pots, emptying potties and picking peas up off the floor. It is hard to cook wholesome food that doesn’t generate lots of prep and clearing up etc. so, since I really am committed to wholesome food, I need to make it count and I need to know that nutritionally, my meal is going to blow the doors off to make it worth it. Pesto is one of those things that can vary in quality hugely. We’ve all fallen upon the odd jar of Sacla in our hour of need but I must say that I always feel underwhelmed and kind of disappointed after I’ve eaten it. It’s basically fast food masquerading as proper food. No aroma, no depth, cloying, too much acidity, and most probably very limited nutritional value. It is all about balance – would it be easier to just open a jar? Yes. Would it taste as good? No. Would it be as good value both nutritionally and economically? No. Too much of a compromise for me in that case.

One thing that makes me feel not so much old as very different from the childless segment of the population born after 1985 is their complete obliviousness to the fact that there will most likely come a day when you will have to put yourself last. It’s like a baptism of your own when you have kids. A watershed moment after which nothing is ever the same. You can’t unbreak eggs, just as you can’t unknow parental responsibility and love. I am a bit obsessed with those turning points in life that give you a sort of shell shock. It’s like the Gayle Forman quote:

“We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day.”

It’s like losing your virginity – you can’t imagine it will ever happen, and then suddenly you are on the other side of it and one of the initiated. At first you look around you, and at your parents and your neighbours and teachers and think “they all do this weird thing, it’s so weird!” The same temporal jump happened with all the crucial watersheds, school exams and then Finals, your driving test. It is that mind-blowing notion that you graduate to new dimensions of experience /achievement. When my mum died I just suddenly felt the door opening and shutting and and a cool realization that I had had scales on my eyes, that I was ignorant to so much, to what so many people deal with in their lives every day. I felt small. I actually felt dumb, I felt I had barely scratched the surface of life and what its purpose is. I became aware that I had seen, like a pre-enlightenment citizen, my world as flat, as mostly sunshine and light, with my concerns only stretching as far as my own eye could see, when in reality the world is spherical, riddled with hidden depths, dazzling light as well as the darkest shadow. It makes you realign your priorities, painfully reinvent yourself, give less of a damn and generally shake off much time-wasting and dithering. Death when it strikes close can prompt you to finally eliminate the chaff, be it badly written books from your bedside table, destructive relationships, clutter, with no guilt. One of the best blogposts I ever read was this one. I think it captures what happens as you feel more comfortable in yourself as you age.

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Neither blogging nor parenting require any credentials

June 9, 2015 by natalie Leave a Comment

My husband has a pet peeve – apart from the term “pet peeve”natch – that is the relatively new trend of opinions being spun as “news”. For example: a presenter interviewing a presenter and this being passed off as news, when it is in fact just opinion and “filler”. Or worse still, tweets being read out on broadcast shows as if they provide legitimacy / credibility. It is the rice cake of the broadcast world if you ask me so I think he has a very valid point… And yet…. The blogosphere is broadly based on this concept that “my opinion, may not be formally recognised but no matter, it probably has an audience somewhere that might be interested in it”. It was principally for this reason that I hummed and hawed about writing a blog. For years. My first blog I set up in 2008 and did two posts, felt like a fraud and then stopped. Now I just write for fun and because I am opinionated and full of vim (read: bile). I restarted blogging also because I realised that many people pass themselves off as authorities on subjects in which they have no formal qualifications a number of “Doctors” spring to mind, (you know who you are!) and that in the end, it doesn’t really matter as long as you have an interesting perspective/ style. I have to confess that I LOVE derived info masquerading as fact, even if I do feel a bit shallow after reading it. Take Mumsnet. Or a particularly guilty pleasure of mine: reading the Comments section of online articles. It is like Rod Liddle in the Spectator who said that his favourite weekend pastime is to buy the Guardian and read all the indignant diatribes of the public in the Letters section.

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Milk: Friend or Foe? Experimenting with Raw Milk and everything else…

June 5, 2015 by natalie 2 Comments

In my adult years I basically decided to give cutting out milk a bit of a whirl. Never in an extreme, ‘vegan’ way, but in a “a bit of a clear-up is needed” thrust of pseudo-detoxification. I never really mentally joined the dots in terms of my dairy consumption and my sluggish physical eliminatory responses but my body must have felt under assault, stressing eliminatory organs (skin, intestines) and triggering inflammatory responses in my mucus membranes. Hands up, I am not a doctor nor nutritionist. I am however very body aware and well-read when it comes to health, diet and nutrition, albeit as a layperson. Will we one day revise our view of dairy, in the way we have come around to understanding the roll sugar has to play on our systems? Who knows, maybe it is just another fad. I always think of the fabulously deflating Christ Rock sketch about allergies: Chris Rock – Allergies. Anyway for me, as a half Italian with regular stints in the homeland, I find it hard to reconcile my urban, cleaner, London eating style with the traditional, milennia-old grand culinary traditions of my roots which happily incorporates plenty of white wheat pasta, milk etc. I have yet to find a convincing replacement for milk in the perfect caffe-latte coffees that I love more than anything when I return home. My mind is willing to eliminate but my body is weak. It is my Italian Paradox.

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“We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day.”

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