Rehab for babies

Soother, dodo, dummy, pacifier, pipe of peace – whatever you, as a parent, choose to call this beloved item they are the best and the worst of baby paraphernalia.
In the hazy newborn days of punishing constant feeding they are the one magical item that can help wrecked new mums get an hour’s sleep. They really are a pipe of peace.
But as baby grows to toddler these beloved items can take over, take on a life of their very own, dictate sleep habits, moods even, and turn your child into a crazed and raving lunatic on a par with a drug addict.
Our youngest boy is 20 months old and will not give up his soother. We have tried everything from tough love to total cold turkey withdrawal but, may God forgive us, we buckled under the pressure of the screaming demon every time and gave the blasted thing back to him.
The child won’t go to sleep without it. He will literally cry for two hours straight (he inherited this difficult streak from his super stubborn father, his cuteness and charm are all me).
Such is his addiction we have to have emergency supplies in the car, in the cupboards at home, in my handbag. I’ve broached the subject with various health visitors and other mums and come away with the view that the boy is sure to grow up to follow a life of crime and drug addiction because of this mummy-induced early introduction to dodo-aholism.
The boy is nearly two. I don’t want him to be one of those 15-year-olds who still sucks a dummy. He needs to grow up and dump it.
We conducted a ‘throwing the dodo in the bin’ ceremony last week where we made a song and dance about bidding farewell to the blasted thing. The screaming you heard last Thursday at 2.14pm was not Concorde breaking the sound barrier, or a banshee with a loud speaker as you may well have thought. It was Finn O’Neill bursting everyone’s eardrums within a three-mile radius because his beloved dodo got trashed.
This high-pitched screaming lasted for the entire journey to the chemist. It continued while we waited in the queue behind a lady who wasn’t concerned about the level seven dodo emergency that was unfolding behind her and insisted on telling the cashier of a recent and quite fascinating trip to the frozen food department at Tescos. The screaming carried on unabated while I ripped the dummy out of the packet, dropped it on the floor, went to the shop next door to buy water to wash it, queued some more and plonked it into the boy’s mouth.
I could hear a universal sigh of relief when that magical, mystical dodo did it’s job and I gave a big ups to Jesus Christ himself for inventing such a wondrous thing.
That joy at him being reunited with his beloved soother lasted until the middle of the night when the boy woke us up enquiring loudly as to if one of us would kindly locate it within the blankets of his cot.
We’ve tried to explain about the dodo fairy – cousin of the tooth fairy, sister of the bobo fairy. This fairy collects dummies from children and exchanges them for cold hard cash or toys. She bags and tags these collected treasures and delivers them to Santa who gives them to the baby reindeers, apparently. But the woman has more chance of gaining unauthorised access into Buckingham Palace than to our house. I fear that if she happens to shimmer in some night to collect the boy’s dodo she may get a black eye or a busted lip for her trouble.
So we’ll keep on trucking with this soother –sometimes a blessing, more times a curse – until someone comes up with an invention to wean them off without all the screaming.
We may have to send him to rehab for dodo-aholics. Perhaps a dodo replacement patch along the same lines as the nicotine patches might work? Now there’s an idea…

Work at Home Madness

Years ago, before I was married and had kids, my career was very important to me. Starting off as a young journalist I saw my road in life pathed with front page stories, I pictured my byline in lights, I imagined myself making and breaking the news and being a bigwig reporter, one of those fancy pants reporters who use gold pens, not biros, to scrawl indecipherable symbols into their notebooks.
Then my first son came along. That passion for all things career orientated were more or less designated to the back seat (alongside the baby seat, the pram, the mountain of stuff one must carry to sustain a tiny individual).
I took six or seven months off when he was born and, truth be told, I almost went crazy with boredom within two weeks. Yes my days were filled with baby-related duties and looking after this beautiful little boy, but I’m the type of person who needs mental stimulation – and Jeremy Kyle just didn’t cut the mustard.
It was during these first few months of my son’s live that I decided to think about starting my own business. It stayed a dream for a few years until my second son arrived and I made it a reality.
I have been a working mother for seven years. I have been a Work At Home Mum or a WAHM for maybe five of those years.
I have a fancy office in town. I even have a nice big black leather chair and cool motivational frame pictures on the wall. But most of the time I choose to work from my home office. So I guess that makes me a sometimes work at home mum or SWAHM, which sounds rather like an exotic disease.
I know many mothers would love to work from home and I know that I’m incredibly lucky to be able to. But let me tell you, it’s not all rolling out of bed and sauntering up to your desk in your jammies. It’s not all two hour lunch breaks, a sprinking of Loose Women a smattering of Doctors and perhaps a bit of light computer work in the afternoon. It’s certainly not, as one former colleague put it, me typing with one hand and operating the chip pan with the other.
It’s actually really hard work, dare I say it but slightly harder work than your average nine to five job.
This week the three boys had chickenpox and still my working life had to roll on regardless. So I went to meetings drowned in Chanel to try and block out the smell of Calomine lotion, tried to stay awake at my desk even though I hadn’t slept for four nights, tried to take business calls from clients while several spotty children hollered loud demands from another room.
I know, having been on the two sides that being a working mother of any description is incredibly tough. When you have a normal nine to five it’s just that – clock off at five and wave that Godforsaken place goodbye for the evening, go home and be a mummy.
When you’re a WAHM you have no clock off time. The lines between work and home are so blurred that they are almost non-existent. I work in the morning straight through to school’s end. I sort homework, dinner and bedtime routines in between making calls, finishing jobs and meeting deadlines then it’s back to just plain old work, sometimes until 1am. I get up and do it all over again the next day.
My life is a bit of a head spinner. One minute I’m a business woman, taking calls and organising important goings on, the next I’m breaking up a fight between two boys who think that they have more right to be the red power ranger. One minute I’m deciding what picture should go on the front page of a magazine, the next I fishing a child’s dummy from the toilet.
Glamorous? These bags under my eyes scream ‘I think not’. Easy? These extra wrinkles are not actually laughter lines.
But this is the life I chose and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Embarrassing the kids

I don’t really remember my parents ever being a terrible embarrassment to me. They were always pretty cool and with it, well most of the time.
They were shameless tea-aholics and literally couldn’t go anywhere without a flask of tea and some biscuits in a sandwich bag. Looking back now, it’s kinda cute, but at the same time I remember the searing pain of embarrassment as they produced the flask in the cinema (I kid you not, it’s a wonder I turned out so well) or on a trip to the park.
Another source of embarrassment was Dad’s old red Ford Cortina that was as much use as a mode of transport as a washing machine. No matter where we went he always had to park it on a hill – the roll down gave him a hill start.
We can laugh now, but dear Lord I don’t think I’ll ever get over the shame of rolling past my friends outside school while Dad tried frantically – using the age-old method of thumping the steering wheel and cursing – to get the engine to kick in.
I realise I got off pretty easy. My friend’s Dad constantly wore a cowboy hat with wine corks on strings hanging from it. Another’s Dad was an Elvis impersonator (in his overweight, white sparkly jumpsuit era).
I thought back on my own, at times cringe worthy, childhood when I unintentionally embarrassed my oldest boy again this week.
Over the past few months I’ve been told not to show him physical affection in public – but am permitted to show affection in other ways such as monetary donations. I’m not to mess with his hair – just buy the hair gel and say no more.
Being a graphic designer I thought I’d fashion him and his brother some cool action hero pictures. I spent hours placing their faces over that of Ben10, Spiderman etc in various states of saving the world from destruction. I stuck them up on their bedroom walls and expected them to be delighted. Daniel showed his delight by ripping the pictures down and into tiny pieces, all the while shouting that they were stupid and his friends would laugh at him. I ended up apologising for any embarrassment caused and swore to him I would never do it again.
But I will do it again. I’m afraid that the child has to learn that embarrassing our kids is a right of passage for every parent. It’s payback for the pain of childbirth, the sleepless nights, the teething, the terrible twos. This is no one way street. What goes around comes around. And if there’s one strong personality flaw that I have it’s the inability to obey when people tell me I can’t do something.
So, from this day forward I will make it my mission to embarrass my kids and I strongly advise you to do the same. Embarrassing your kids toughens them up, builds character and prepares them for the big bad world. In short you’re doing them a favour.

Dress to impress
Go to town on this one. Dress like an historical figure and pick them up at school. I’m thinking the Queen’s turquoise twin set, wig and pearls – especially effective for dads – an alien, or indeed Napoleon Bonaparte. This method will be particularly embarrassing for teenagers, although aged seven and up will certainly be mortified also.

Dance like you mean it
Everyone’s Dad is an embarrassment on the dance floor. Even Justin’s Timberlake’s teenage kids will one day cringe when their da hits the floor to throw some shapes. The trick is to outdo the other parents in terms of technique. Use David Brent from the office as your inspiration. This will take a lot of practice at home. The secret is extensive floor coverage, uncoordinated arm and feet flailing, silly facial gestures with a splattering of robotics thrown in. Best used at weddings, kid’s birthday parties and teenage discos if they’ll let you in.

Just be cool
Engage your kid’s friends in conversation about music, technology or even skateboarding. Use terms like ‘killer ollie’, ‘rock n roll’, ‘dude’ or ‘cool’ – words that were ‘cool’ when we were young but are, like, so whack now. Talk about how things used to be in the olden days – and don’t just stick to the price of stuff. Ramble on and on about people they’ve never heard of and streets that aren’t there anymore and the fact that you had to walk to school in your bare feet in sub-zero temperatures.

Facebook friends
My kids aren’t quite there yet but if yours are the age for Facebook, be sure to get in there and become friends with their friends. Post and tag baby pictures of them, like every status update they publish and comment of their friend’s pages using all the wrong terminology. Like ‘I LMAO your dress in this picture Amy, OMAG!’
There. You have the knowledge. Now get out there and get some payback.

The cake that's not made from mush and car paint spray

Here's the Ben 10 cake I made for Dan's 7th birthday last week. In the end I didn't use car spray paint and went with white icing instead. Taste better apparently...

The Chickenpox

As is tradition in the O’Neill house any time there’s an event planned, someone always comes down with a horrible illness.
The oldest boy was 7 last weekend. We had been planning his birthday bash for months.. On the night before the party our middle boy complained of being sick. Before bed I noticed a few red blotches on his back. In the morning the child woke and expressed the depth of his illness through the medium of puke. And there were many, many more red spots. Chicken Pox was diagnosed and the day’s plans, so carefully thought out, were blasted off into the stratesphere.
My initial plans for Saturday were –
7am – Rise and feed my happy and contented children with nutritious, organic breakfast.
8am – Bake and decorate a fabulous three-tier Ben 10 birthday cake, which will make all the other mothers gasp in awe at my wonderfulness.
10am – Greet the bouncy castle man with a smile and a wave and watch as he turns our garden into a magical bouncy wonderland. Prepare fabulous party food.
11am – Have a soak in the bath while the paranormal pizzas and mutant milkshakes are bubbling, whizzing and whirring away in the kitchen.
1pm – Prepare my delightful children to greet their guests. Prepare the house with brightly coloured balloons (colour co-ordinated), streamers and flyers. Relax with a nice cup of tea and wait for guests to arrive.
2pm – Start the festivities, greet guests, laugh, smile and eat paranormal pizzas while the sun shines brightly on our back garden.
In an alternative dimension these plans would have panned out and all would have been well with the world. Unfortunately somewhere along my journey of life I’ve clearly done something to upset the natural balance of the universe – it may stem from the time I told my younger brother that he was abandoned on the doorstep by the travelling circus – and everything I have planned since goes pear shaped.
My reality was
6.30am – rise with sickly middle child. Sit with sickly middle child as he pukes at 10 minute intervals.
7am – Holler from the bathroom at other children to get their own flipping breakfast. Holler at children to mop up burst 2-litre carton of milk dropped on kitchen floor.
8.30am – Count spots on child’s face (total 36). Panic over promised three-tier Ben 10 birthday cake, and glaring lack thereof.
9.30am – Race to Sainsburys to seek out a three-tier Ben 10 birthday cake. Seriously contemplate buying three cakes, shoving them on top of one another and covering them with car spray or some form of spray on cream.
10.30am – Ask oldest son if spray on, three cake idea would cut it with his mates. He cries. Husband ponders likelihood of horrendous exploding inedible cake incident if car spray paint is used. Rush to buy ingredients to make real three-tier cake.
11.30am – Mop sickly middle child’s fevered brow, burn stupid three-tiered cake, panic, contemplate spray on cake again, sit down, contemplate crying.
12 noon – Pull myself together, cover burnt mush with white icing and fashion fabulous Ben 10 cake decorations from leftover icing.
1pm – Greet bouncy castle man with a big grumpy face. Tell him don’t care where he sticks the bloody bouncy castle.
1.30pm – Large dollops of rain fall.
2pm – Greet guests with flour covered hair, icing sugar clothes and a half-hearted smile. Present burnt pizzas and mutant milkshakes gone wrong.
2.30pm – Break up prison-style riots over bouncy castle, inform other people’s children that biting is not the answer, put bags of peas on bumped heads, answer complaints about burnt pizzas, mop brow of now scary looking sickly middle child.
3pm –35 children run amok in home as apocalyptic rain prevents bouncy castle play. Panic over lack of party games. Contemplate holding competitions of join-the-dots on sickly middle child’s poor Chicken Poxed face.
3.30pm – Husband saves day with alien making games, t-shirt drawing competitions and generally fabulousity. What a guy.
4pm – Throw children who aren’t mine out, fall down, go to sleep.

Insomnia

I can’t remember the last time I had a night of pure, unbroken sleep. It may or may not have been more than eight years ago, I daren’t ponder on it too long for it’s rather depressing. During this sleep-deprived, let’s say for extra dramatic purposes, decade I’ve been awoken from peaceful slumber by various whims – from a newborn’s demands for food to the need to exorcise wardrobe residing ghosts with a plant sprayer.
Now, almost seven months into a pregnancy, I have been afflicted with pregnancy insomnia. I fall asleep at 11pm, wake at 1.30am, stay awake until 7.20am exactly, then sleep for 10 minutes until the alarm goes off at 7.30am. That’s two hours and 40 minutes sleep per night.
Thanks Mother Nature.
Apparently Mother Nature gives mums-to-be a sprinkling of insomnia during pregnancy to prepare them for the sleepless nights that will inevitably lie ahead. Her thinking on this is that once mum’s brain and body has been conditioned to function on two hours sleep a night by the time baby arrives, it’ll be less of a shock to the system.
Well, Mother Nature, if you’re reading this – and I know you are, for I have it on good authority that you like Monday’s Irish News for the weekend’s GAA coverage and are one of my blog's followers – I believe you to be a cruel, heartless witch. I really don’t need conditioning, I am fully aware of the dog-tiredness that comes with a new baby. I honestly don’t need your sadistic form of assistance to prepare me for impending motherhood. It really is bad enough giving me severe cravings for the smell of Savlon antiseptic liquid and Flash floor wash, do you honestly think it enhances my life even a jot to be forced to function on such a scant volume of sleep?
And to add to my misery, because of my insomnia I have become addicted to Murder She Wrote on Sky, which is aired back to back in the twilight hours.
The programme follows a pensioner, Jessica Fletcher, who is also an author. No matter where this mild-mannered woman is invited – be it a wedding, a conference or even simply out to dinner – someone is always murdered. Every single time.
Her friends invite her to their home for the weekend – a friend is murdered. She’s invited to a book signing in New York – the bookshop owner is murdered. Last night they even ran out of places to send her – she’d got a bit of a black widow thing going on, I don’t think her friends want her about – so they sent her back in time. Brilliant.
In every episode the bungling police are baffled. In every episode this bold pensioner uncovers the terrible truth and catches the murderer. Perhaps it’s the fumes from the Savlon going to my head but I think it’s pure, undiluted, first-class entertainment.
In the morning over breakfast I recount Jessica’s antics for the husband and kids, who couldn’t be less enthralled. I fear the sleep deprivation is morphing me into a Murder She Wrote maniac, a Jessica Fletcher bore. Sadly, I even know the name of her onscreen cat and often speak of her as I would a dear friend. The husband drew the line when I was uploading the programme’s theme tune as a ring tone on my mobile.
But for every cloud there’s a silver lining. And for every crazy pregnant insomniac there’s a bottle of Savlon and a rubbish eighties TV drama to get them by.