The First Time

Do First Steps really matter?

My colleague was upset yesterday because he missed his three month old first rolling over for the first time. I know everyone approaches this parenting thing differently but I can't help feeling annoyed at first time parents who see their baby's milestones as major achievements or Kodak moments.

We've all had to put up with the insufferable, never ending litany of stories from parents in close office quarters or facebook.

"Jack is onto solids!!!"

"Mia is almost walking!!"

"Cooper is constipated!"

I know you're proud, because I was proud when my kid starting walking a few months ago. But did I need to rave at length about it to colleagues, friends and strangers? No. It's not an achievement, just a natural first step to her becoming an independent adult which is my ultimate goal.

I honestly know what it's like to look at your little growing baby with wonder and marvel at how quickly they are growing up, or feel teary that you can't remember their babyhood. Actually I don't know what that last thing feels like, because not only do I remember very well, but I also took about 100 photos a day to 'record the moment'.

A friend cried when Grandma gave her one year old her first haircut. Really? Aren't there more important things in the world to get upset over? If you are actually sad because you'd rather be next to your little one's side 24-7 to hold her, walk with her and see all her firsts, I can guarantee you would not only possibly start feeling a little desperate and bored, but your family would miss out on the confidence and income you enjoy from working. Is it really a huge sacrifice to see a few firsts the second time round?

Many parents miss the first steps. My little one was walking before her first birthday - or more accurately had taken her first steps but didn't feel like repeating the trick - but I never saw her walk because her carer didn't tell me, and that's fine - since she's with her three days a week it's quite likely she'll be seeing a lot of her firsts.

Do I feel sad about this or like I'm missing out? No, because I see this as one of the more illogical aspects of keeping linear time. I don't share a cultural obsession with being the first, or seeing the first. The second is fine. Or the third time. And if you think it's the first but it's the 10th, what does it matter?

Why Revenge is Changing the Way Women in TV Operate Forever

Emily and Victoria...

The hit TV drama series of 2012 Revenge is breaking all the rules.

Its two female protagonists, Victoria Grayson and Emily Thorne/Amanda Clarke are carving a place for themselves in history as the first women to showcase both an abundance of talent and roles which snap the female mold in half. And it has proved so popular it is likely more TV dramas will go down the path of Revenge. Women will be finally allowed to kick, bite, fight, be slovenly and slatternly, be covetous and violent, take multiple lovers. Gays will get roles with real integrity and substance, not just as sexual vessels or playful accessories for pure comic relief.

Both Victoria and Emily have two love interests, both male. Victoria's two men are not her husband, the third man in her life. It is a coup for polyamorists everywhere and more audience friendly than Big Love. Even Victoria's affair and the resulting child, her only daughter, is no big deal for this taboo littered drama.

Emily is not only in love with two men simultaneously, she is shown in a bipolar existence, with two names and two very different personas: Emily, the belle of every Hampton ball; graceful, elegant and at the height of etiquette. Amanda on the other hand is the violent bad mannered juvie who beats up men. But so does Emily, when she has to 'defend the nest'.

It is a conflicted and fantastic departure from when television viewers have been fed for decades. These women are not just smart and feisty. They are bad. And the more bad they are, the more glamorous they are. It's a winning formula.

We see women behaving like animals in the wild, unrestrained, with multiple lovers and highly complicated desires. Their scheming sees them win over men every time and the sheer number of tools at their disposal makes them indomitable foes.

We see young Charlotte, the product of her mother's affair with falsely accused terrorist and Emily/ Amanda's father, David Clarke, getting addicted to Oxycontin and start kissing several men. As she falls into bed with her dealer, she follows the path of her mother Victoria and her half sister Emily/Amanda in getting active with more than one man.

It is just so refreshing to see women behaving badly, or naturally, on television and such a welcome departure from the tripe of the tired, sometimes slightly misogynistic dramas we get fed.

And like the rest of the world, I'm hooked.

Why Kim and Kanye are a Perfect Match

Our new king+queen of popular kultcha

The KnK publicity factory may be gearing up for another wedding season, or at the very least a baby announcement in about 3 months. And I think this is fantastic news.

Why? Because I know both sides of this KnK lurve story. I have been a huge fan of both Kanye and Kim and their families for years - and it's clear they are a great couple. It's also obvious they have been flirting for years but that for those funny forces behind love to work they had to engage with others before they could see their perfect partner right in front of them - wearing matching leather pants to boot.

Yeah I admit it, both are narcissists, both are in love with themselves and their image. But to dismiss this new king and queen of pop culture on that basis is to ignore the immense power they wield as a couple and to deny their respective family and cultural backgrounds which sees them perfectly matched.

They have a lot in common. Success in work and life, working ethic, material wealth, spiritual beliefs and strong family values. Both have lost their same sex parent - Kanye his mother and Kim her father. They have both been very deeply influenced by this loss, and supportive and protective of their remaining parent.

Both have had a long hard 15 year slug on the love front, including at least one failed marriage each under their Vuitton belts. Or as I prefer to call a marriage that didn't pan out, a 'relationship education' rather than a failure.

And yes, it is true, they both adore designer brands and probably spend an hour looking at themselves in the mirror before going out. But more interestingly, both dictate culture and start and finish trends. Both are style icons, both have their own multiple fashion labels, both are business experts, and both are publicity royalty. KnK are not only trendsetters, they are cultural signifiers, the ones we look to for messages about this uber fluid post modernist multiple reality culture we are living in.

And this is why I am so excited about their new sexual and commercial partnership and this is why I hope it blooms into a family empire, creating a new generation of babies: little girls dressed in Prada rapping to dad's Gorgeous, little boys playing with cousin Mason and helping stock the family's retail empire.

Both the West and Kardashian families have the same values. Success, hard work and self promotion play big roles. But the central player is family and this is synonymous with business values: loyalty, self confidence, support and love. Big love. For years we have seen Kanye popping into Kim' New York Dash store, helping with colour choices and attending drinks. Kim flirting with him. But it took Kim's attempt at marriage with a white boy who was so poorly suited to her for the two of them to finally get it together.

One more comment before I post again in a month to congratulate them on their impending parenthood. How did I know Kim's um, second husband Kris was glaringly unsuited to both Kim and the extended Kardashian klan? It wasn't just that his name was the same as her mothers, or actions and attitude, which did say a lot - especially his disgust when Kim cried over a lost diamond earring in Tahiti. It wasn't only that Khloe disapproved, which Kim should have paid attention to as she is an impeccable judge of character. (Khloe BTW wholly approves of this new partnership).

It was husband #2 Kris's comment to the Kardashian men during a male bonding golf game shortly before The Wedding. He expressed his disdain for their subjugation to their females, or less politely, his being unimpressed they were pussy whipped. I wish Kim had been there at the time, but probably she would have ignored it, like all the other warning signs, because she had a big wedding in her sights, and a baby, two things on her upcoming agenda she had made a space for mentally. Just not emotionally.

So I wish the new couple, who I already knew would get together years ago, much happiness. They clearly bring out the best in each other and Kanye reportedly makes Kim less boring, which is fantastic! And I can't wait for the baby news in a short while...

Time Magazine's 4yo breastfeeding cover

Care factor?

Judging from the reaction to the latest Time magazine's May cover of a young mum breastfeeding her kid, it's apparent we don't like the look of a kid on the breast. But really, are they hurting anyone? And why does the feature title read Are You Mom Enough: a deliberately antagonistic and confronting question? As if the desire to connect child's mouth with nipple proves you are, or are not, a good mum. How ridiculous.

Why should you care if another mother is still breastfeeding, or not breastfeeding, or enjoys sleeping in bed with her child, or carries the kids in a sling until age 10? Who cares, really?

Last time I checked, the term mother covered quite a variety of women, roughly from ages 10-60 plus of every race, religion and persuasion. The only thing many mothers have in common is they conceived a child, which is possibly the most universal act on earth apart from copulation and digestion. So why do we have such strong expectations and opinions about how mothers are supposed to raise their young?

Why does the image of a nipple in someone's mouth provoke such strong feelings? No one seems to really care when it comes to who is involving who in oral sex or nipple play, as long as everyone is a consenting adult. I guess that's where the problems start: we think children are asexual. But they are not. Does anyone not remember being a child? As Belle Du Jour's - sorry Dr Brooke Magnanti's - new book, The Sex Myth explains, childhood is a time of sexual exploration. Not an opinion, but as evidenced by extensive research.

And most mothers know this. They either ignore or temper their young child's sexual behaviour.

Is it because we know that children are sexual that we don't want them going near a woman's nipple - women's nipples should be reserved for sexual pleasure, but not for children, and only for a strictly short time for babies as a source of food. I mean, who really cares what a woman does with her nipples? We don't stand around discussing the ins and outs of which mothers are engaging in nipple play with their lovers, why do we care so much about her giving breast milk via the nipple to her child?

Like many mothers I had multiple problems with breastfeeding and one of them was the cultural struggle to see my own nipple as a source of food, comfort and pleasure for a little creature who was not my sexual partner. I was also a little jealous of mothers who found breastfeeding so easy they could feed baby on the go, while I had to mess around with sterilised bottles, cooled boiled water and carefully measured powders.

After I finished breastfeeding I was a much freer person, able to leave my baby for more than three hours and venture back into the city and other adult only venues. I met another mother who was still breastfeeding her four year old and when I laughed in surprise she explained she had had to train her daughter to only ask for the boob at home, not in public. The image of a four year old girl in scruffy shoes reaching up to have a suck on her mum's nipple was strange to me, just as the Time magazine cover is deliberately confronting. But I didn't really care. Why would I? This is not a child rights issue.

Breastfeeding is, however, a human rights issue. That is, a mother's right to breastfeed and not be thrown out of cafes or off the bus because she is feeding her infant, something that still happens in Australia today. But when I trained companies on this issue and how to implement a lactation friendly workplace, the issue of child's age never came up.

I asked if the legislation would stipulate a cutoff age, so that we would not have a mother of an eleven year old asking for her right to breastfeeding breaks, but legislators apparently did not see this as an issue, despite the increasing awareness of breastfeeding older children raised by Little Britain's skit of a grown man breastfeeding.

In Australia we had the fantastically misogynistic but uncomfortably realistic peek into parenthood via the award winning novel The Slap and its fabulously produced ABC TV miniseries. This novel, bought to us by single gay childless author Christos Tsiolkas, explored modern parenting matters via central character Rosie. Rosie was characterised as the ultimate victim loser by her attachment parenting methods, including the continued breastfeeding of her three year old Hugo who happened to be a little demon. The Slap of the title occurs when Hugo's behaviour slides into the unacceptable and an adult belts him. Is Rosie abusing this child's rights by breastfeeding him? No. Is slapping a child a child rights issue? Um, yes.

We can talk nipple until we're blue in the face but really we should stop demonising, as The Slap does, or martyring, as Time does, women who breastfeed. And focus on more engaging and practical parenting topics such as what activities you can do with your toddler lying down.

Who's Afraid of the Cervix?

Inside the Cervix...

Before I became pregnant there were many things I did not know.

Many of the things I was didn’t know about were inside me.  Isn’t that always the way? I’ve lived in Italy, Vietnam and Thailand and travelled widely, but the secrets waiting to be discovered were not in ancient ruins or modern temples. They were locked in the uterine vault that would later create another human, inside me.

Take my cervix. In my culture, the cervix is an invisible player. No one talks about it. No one values it. The speculum, a duck shaped medical instrument used to gain access to and a decent view of the cervix, is not discussed in popular culture.

Except perhaps by Annie Sprinkle.

Not so my Indian friends, who chat about the cervix and how they’re hoping for a good dilation over the baby shower gulab jamon. But in my anglo environment, no one is aware that the cervix may be impotent, that it opens and closes, or how it works, except women who are mothers, and a tiny minority who apparently use it to engage in BDSM. Not really something I even want to think about, as I am endowed with a very potent but very sensitive cervix.

Since my first pap smear, I have been aware of my cervix. I asked to see it with a mirror during my first smear, so I know it looks like a pink donut. Well, a healthy one looks like a big pink donut, and changes in appearance and texture during the menstrual cycle and during pregnancy.

After the whole labour ordeal, I have a new awareness of the cervix’s potential and limitations. I enjoyed three days in hospital being plied with tablets inserted by medical staff into the back of my cervix. They were up to their elbows inside me and my naughty cervix remained closed despite the best in modern medicine (prostaglandin pessaries by the dozen) and ancient traditions (uploading semen onto the cervix regularly as well as digesting papaya, pineapple and raspberry leaf tea).

I indulged in large amounts of gas to alleviate the pain this process caused. Other women experience no such pain. Those are the women who “feel a little discomfort and pressure” then birth a baby an hour later to not much fuss. Often in the car or on the side of the road. They were born with hardy tough cervixes. Obedient cervixes.

Some facts about the cervix I didn’t know include:

• It can go from 0 to 10cm dilation in seconds - and vice versa
• It typically takes hours, days or weeks to dilate for birth, but all women are different
• The dilation is accompanied by effacement which is a thinning out of the donut
• Touching the cervix is generally uncomfortable and opening or closing the cervix can be extremely painful. A stretch and sweep is performed on overdue pregnant women, where the midwife actually tries to insert something long and sharp into the cervix for the stretch, and to sweep the membranes of the baby's amniotic sac...no comment required.
• According to doctor friends, when a women births a baby vaginally, the cervix pops out of the body, then is sucked back up and into place within minutes.
• If you have cancer of the cervix it gets really messy. It’s a great idea to prevent cancer spread by having regular pap smears, as early detection and treatment will usually prevent cancer spread.
• The cervix is called the neck of the uterus, and is usually 1mm open, which is my gynaecologists joke about their job being like wallpapering a dining room through the letterbox
• Women may have trouble conceiving if their cervix is at an unusual angle

My cervix was correctly noted in my medical notes as being UNCOOPERATIVE. Not unlike the rest of me. In the end, my own birth story concluded with a Csection as the front door was closed for business.

I encourage you to celebrate this silent player and essential component of the continuation of the human race by having a good look at your own or a friend’s cervix, and checking out these beautiful photos of a cervix here at The Beautiful Cervix Project.