A Few of my Favourite Things

When you're a new or soon-to-be new parent, there's so much you're tempted to buy. There are so many books out there filled with so many product suggestions (although I found Robin Barker's "Baby Love" to be quite practical), it can be a little overwhelming. When I had Heike, I bought so many things that we just never used. Then there were the things we rushed out to get due to desperation, and I promptly fell in love with and proposed marriage to. The lifesavers. And I'm going to share them with you, because I'm nice like that.

Available at Mothercare for $39.95

1) The Love Me Baby Wrap - If you have nice friends with babies, you may have heard people extolling the wonders of this little wrap before. If like me your friends are relatively clueless about babies, then I'm going to give you some excellent free advice - buy a Love Me Baby Wrap. Buy three. Then buy three in larger sizes. Go home, put this on your baby, and enjoy some sleeping baby time. Now I know it won't work quite like this and I know all babies are different, but this little ripper SAVED MY LIFE to the extent that when Heike got bigger and was too old to be wrapped, I was actually terrified about laying the LM Wrap to rest. It kept ME up at night just thinking about it. She was fine, by the way, although she still sleeps with her arms up in the position you see on your left. Unique.

Freaky looking, but just $28.84 at Big W

2) The Fisher Price Seahorse - Um, I'm speechless. Purely because words cannot express how deeply fond I am of the Fisher Price Seahorse. Friends of mine actually brought this to the hospital when Heike was born, and I didn't really give it a second thought...until 3 hours later when she wouldn't sleep and I would have tried anything short of nothing to get her to sleep. I mean at this point I was squeezing tiny drops of milk out of my boobs so it was really desperate times. Anyway, you may have also read that Heike never really slept during the day, and without this seahorse I wouldn't have even been able to get her into the bassinet without a meltdown. Interestingly the product description online says "After five minutes the music fades, lights dim, and baby can drift off to dreamland". Good luck with that! Lots of shushing and patting was also required but the seahorse was truly fantastic. The day it ran out of batteries, I literally had tears in my eyes. Negatives? I couldn't work out how to change the batteries. But then again I have lost my car keys on top of my car...Oh oh, funny aside to this story, at my first mother's group meeting I raved on and on about my "Fisher & Paykel Seahorse". Ummmmmm yes Zoe that is a brand of WASHING MACHINE. Sadly I was trying so hard to be likable, but immediately unveiled my slightly dopey side.

$49.95 from Mothercare

3) An old school bouncer - Whenever I walk into one of those mega baby stores, I am blown away by the number and variety of bouncers you can buy. Plastic, wooden, rocking, rotating contraptions, and really they're all a waste of money. Because my old fashioned Bouncinette, handed down through a few generations, was totally kickass. It's so light that you can plonk baby in it and carry him or her around the house, chatting and being involved in household activities. I may have even baked a cake while Heike sat babbling at me in her bouncer. Lots of bubs can even be rocked off to sleep in these beauties, but not mine (not without a seahorse and a Love Me wrap anyway!). Still, it got us through those early days. Having said that, the floor is also an excellent option for babies. It's free and lots of babies who spend time on the floor end up being early movers and shakers. Which my daughter is most definitely NOT but more on that in the future.

What must-have items saved your life when your kids were little?

Z xx

The Art of Judgement

Let's admit it: mothers judge other mothers. I'm not saying all mothers and I'm not saying all the time, but it's something that I notice rather frequently both in daily life and in the media. Breastfeeding, starting solids, bedtime routines, play activities - we all do it differently and we all think our way is best, because of course we only want the best for the people we love most.

When reading blogs for women and mothers online, I'm constantly baffled by the level of judgement out there. For example, a comment relating to a woman who had dropped her kids at the library alone - "The fact that you would let your child wander around a library alone is sickening". Um, that's sickening? Really? Don't hold back, people.

Some say that there's nothing wrong with judgement, that it's just "having an opinion". Personally, I think there's a big difference between having an opinion and passing judgement. That's why they're not, linguistically, the same thing. Having an opinion is saying "Breastfeeding is better for your child than formula feeding," whereas judgement is looking at another woman and thinking "I can't believe she's feeding her baby formula - what a terrible mother."

The face of mothers everywhere

I might be giving women and mothers a hard time here, but I genuinely don't think men are judgemental beasts. It became clear to me at the local pool recently. It was a stinking hot day and of course half our suburb had decided they felt like a swim, so we'd had to park far enough from the pool that we might as well have walked. My husband and I carried one baby, one fully stocked nappy bag, one overflowing beach bag and one handbag all the way to the pool, only to get there and realise we hadn't brought Heike's hat. Neither of us was particularly keen to draw the short straw of going all the way back to the car, but luckily the pool has a large undercover area. Still, I decided that I couldn't take Heike into the water without a hat.

Justus thought this was ludicrous.

"It's so hot! And she'll only be in there for five minutes before she starts screaming. And she would have ripped her hat off anyway!"

"But all the other mothers will be staring at me thinking 'What kind of woman doesn't bring her baby a hat?'"

This prompted Justus to give me one of his drawn-out exaggerated eye rolls and a giant sigh. He absolutely refused to believe that any woman would give us a second thought, let alone ruminate on the failures of my parenting.

But I knew they would.

I recounted the story to a girlfriend with a baby girl the same age as Heike a few days later. When I told her what I thought the other mothers were thinking, she said yes, they probably were judging me. She got it. Because she's a woman too.

So why do women and mothers just know they're being judged? Well, because we ourselves judge. Yep, that's right, guilty. As much as I constantly bang on about not judging others, and not knowing other peoples personal circumstances, my evil little subconscious is constantly finding things to judge people on before my caring, conscious self can talk her down.

Recently I was at a mother's group catch up, the perfect breeding ground for judgemental thoughts. One clearly exhausted Mum said she just didn't know how to occupy and entertain her very active little boy.

"I think I'm creating a television addict!" she said. "I end up sitting him in front of the TV all day!"

We all nodded understandingly, but looking around I could see scores of twitching eyebrows just dying to be raised. Sure enough, as soon as this woman left, it began.

"Do you put Lucy in front of the television?" "I read no screen time until two years old!" "Did she say she puts him there all day?"

And I can't say I'm any better. I did have those same thoughts.

All this has prompted the inevitable question: why are we so judge-y? Psychology professors in America have recently linked judgmental thoughts to narcissistic behaviour and low self esteem. Professor Dustin Wood and his colleagues found that judging others negatively is associated with "a huge suite of negative personality traits" including general unhappiness, antisocial behaviour and neurotic tendencies. Conversely, viewing others positively is generally associated with happy, stable individuals.

I don't buy it though. So many happy, balanced, loving women I know judge others all the time. My theory is that there is just so much information out there, in books and in the media, telling women ho they should parent and what is right and wrong, that the moment someone strays from this they are judged as inferior. The amount of times my own mother has said "We didn't have parenting books in my day" is irritatingly high, however she does have a point. Maybe if we all trusted our instincts, and those of our capable fellow women, we'd be less inclined to pass judgement so quickly.

Be sure to comment if you think I'm a totally crap mother for writing this when I should be folding washing ;-)

Z xx

Pram I Am

When I was about six months pregnant, Justus and I started looking at prams. The prams we were interested in reflected our personalities - me, as a fashion follower with an overwhelming need to "fit in", wanting a Bugaboo, and Justus, who loves design and has VERY expensive tastes, on team Stokke. The prices of each are fairly comparable, but the Stokke is a bit more pricey and very design focused.

As he always does, Justus won the pram war and we bought a big expensive blue Stokke Xplory. The problem with buying prams when you're pregnant is that you really have no idea what you want or need out of a pram. You know what kind of person YOU are and what you enjoy doing, but there's no way of knowing what kind of baby you're going to have and what they're going to want from a pram. Also as a first time parent, you just generally have no idea about the logistics of getting out and about with a bub.

Before I launch into this, I have to say that there is so much I love about our Stokke. For one, Heike has always slept great in it and seems to find it comfortable. Now that she's bigger, she can sit up in it at the table and have a great view of the world. It's light to push, has a great turning circle and, let's face it, it looks snazzy. BUT... It's so big! And clunky! It takes up so much room in the boot, and so much time to take apart and put back together. It's fairly unstable on the rough pathways in the area where we live, and near impossible to get up and down stairs. In general, it's just a little bit too complicated.

Before I had Heike, I always thought fold out strollers looked kind of ugly. And uncomfortable. And hard to push. But in recent months, I've found myself looking longingly at mothers pushing around simple Maclaren strollers. Gradually my longing turned into obsession, which turned into nagging Justus in my favourite way, which is basically helpfully pointing out everything that annoys me about our current pram and pointing out benefits of the one I want instead. Fun for him! Anyway, last week victory was mine! He finally relented ("Just get it!!") and I trotted off to Baby Bunting to get myself a Maclaren. As much as I love Baby Bunting the lady there was kind of rude to me, not grasping my NEED for extendable handles (live a few days at 6 feet and get back to me) so I ended up heading to Toys R Us, where I picked up a Techno XT in a discontinued colour for $150 off. Which made the extendable handles a little more affordable.

So, what think I of my new Maclaren? I LOVE IT! It's soooo good. Light, easy to assemble, easy to push and plenty of storage. My reccomendation to new mums would be to borrow or buy a second hand pram that is more newborn friendly (the Techno XT meets newborn standards but personally I think it doesn't look as nice for sleepy newborns, and I loved having Heike facing me as a teeny bubba) and then at four, five months, get a stroller! They rock!! Heike loves it too, as you can see...

Z x