Evelyn Tsitas Motherland

Dearly Departed: Should Children Go To Funerals?

2010-08-31T22:29:00.003+10:00

People die. We mourn, but one thing is certain; we all have to go through having someone close leave this world, and if we are parents we have to help our children deal with that as well.

Mahatma Gandhi wrote that we should "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." That's not a bad thing to teach our children.

Yet there seems to be a division as to whether we must shield children from the harsh reality of death or expose them to it. I remember, many years ago before I was a parent, watching a my mother's friend's three year old grandchild at my grand father's elaborate Greek Orthodox funeral.

His grandmother was babysitting him that day, and so he came along – and there was a point where he stood at the open grave, hands behind his back, and peered down. It was with profound curiosity; it was a deep hole, after all. He was also interested in watching the black robed priest pouring oil over the coffin and sprinkling wheat as is the Orthodox ritual.

Being a Greek funeral, no one moved him away. But I know plenty of Anglo Saxon friends who have no such memories – indeed, the graveside was deemed "too traumatic" for them. His grandmother, however, was Irish, and not worried about him attending a "good funeral".

I too am a firm believer in letting children know about and embrace death in all its sadness. If a friend or relative has a miscarriage, we discuss it openly. I tell them the reason we celebrate birthdays, and go all out with flowers and gifts for new parents, is because life is precious and uncertain.

This was brought home recently with a friend who suffered a miscarriage and had the difficulty of her mother's grief; what about me? I lost a grandchild! This compounded her trauma. What made it worse were the indifferent remarks from co-workers who said "does this mean I have to pick up your work for the next few days?" Maybe as children they never attended a funeral and stood at a graveside to see a coffin lowered into the ground, or picked up a handful of dirt and stood to hear it hit the wood below. Or watch a flower from a wreath flutter and fall into the open wound below.

Last week, my children's grandfather died. It was after a very long illness, and a life well lived, so amongst the sadness there was plenty to celebrate in reflection. He touched a great many lives both personally and professionally. I wanted his grandsons to remember the day of the funeral and to participate.

Yes, they were terribly sad. I sat next to my 12 year old and held him tightly as he cried and cried, passing him tissues. My nine year old spent the funeral service asking his grandmother questions about the intricacies of the Catholic mass. She said later it was actually a good thing to have him there distracting her.

The boys handed out the booklets to the congregation, and they wheeled the coffin down the Church – and even helped carry it to the hearse. At the gravesite, they watched the coffin lowered in the ground – for funerals are goodbyes in painful stages – and then plucked a flower from the wreath and dropped it on the coffin. And they ate a Haigh's After Dinner Mint in memory as we stood under the gum trees in Warrandyte, all thinking about the man who opened his house to so many, loved to be a host, and always brought out the chocolate at the end of a wonderful meal.

Back at their grandmother's house, they sat in front of the fire with their cousins and elderly relatives, hearing everyone talk about the man they knew as Grandpa. So many stories to cherish, so many histories all interwoven around a pivotal person. How much better that they see all sides of grief. Of funerals, of saying goodbye. Of death.

I do believe we do our children a disservice if we hide them away from death. Not just of older relatives, but of babies and children as well. Speak to them about babies lost before they are born, if that is what is happening. It is a cliché, but death reminds us of how precious life is.

And children, as well as adults, should embrace this fact.

Scouting for role models

2010-03-31T00:01:00.001+11:00

I stood shivering in a cold scout hall proudly taking photos while my eldest son was inducted to scouts. I'd done it before, when he first entered cubs, and dutifully sewed on the badges and attended the sausage sizzles. My parents sniggered, my childless friends were bemused. Even many of my friends with children couldn't see the point.

Academics love a cheap shot at the scouting movement. Dr Leslie Canold (The Age, 7/10/08) declaring them more predatory than controversial artist Bill Henson, who uses naked youths in his works.

Cannold, an academic and parent, maintained that children are more at risk from family, friends and scoutmasters than artists on the prowl for young models.

This is of course disingenuous of Cannold, who would know that history is littered with its share of abusive artists. Back in 1600, Caravaggio was a brilliant painter, a killer, a drunk and died young and miserable. Picasso was a genius but renowned for his destructive relationships with women, and by all reports Jackson Pollock (notorious in Australia for his abstract work Blue Poles) was a mean-spirited drunk, a fast, reckless driver, parasitical toward his brother, and abusive to women.

These are highlights only: artists as a group operate as outsiders, for their ability to reflect the pulse of the times they live comes from a heightened sensitivity and introspection.

So who are the monsters lurking in the scout movement who are more likely to ask your kids to strip off than Bill Henson? Well, sorry to disappoint both the moral panic merchants and the cultural bullies, but modern scout and cub leaders are drawn from the ranks of the parents of cubs and scouts - these kids' mums and dads. In my son's cub pack, it is mostly mums, the same sort of local primary school mums who also supervise school reading and help at the tuck shop.

In fact, all the cub leaders in my kids' troop were the mums they'd literally grown up with. The women I had a much needed gin and tonic with on those ragged Fridays of their early childhood, when husbands were late at work, and it was only the camaraderie of other women with similar food stains on their clothes that made it possible to get through another week.

These women want their children to be strong and independent, to have a life beyond the xbox and playstation and schoolyard bullying. So, they give up their time, put on a not particularly flattering scout shirt, and do things like take groups of 8 year olds down to the local shops by train, buy a 50 cent ice cream and get on a tram back to the scout hall. Oh, evil women!

What thoughts are on their minds as they show the kids how to catch public transport?

I'll tell you what – they probably wish they had their feet up watching TV or reading a book and enjoying a glass of wine.

But Cannold thinks these women are more predatory than an artist who asks teens to pose nude. I wonder whether she even knows the sort of people who are today's scout leaders.

Lest anyone think I side with the anti-Henson brigade, I want to make it clear I think the majority of those who bleat about his art are hypocrites. For it is usually the same parents who allow their own kids to watch television shows with strong adult themes like NCIS, Two and A Half Men, Criminal Minds and America's Next Top Model.

And they are the same parents who dress their little girls in trainer bras and mini skirts, or pre teens in chain store clothes that would make Brittany Spears blush.

Dr Michael Carr-Gregg (The Age, 1/10/09) said he was surprised that more money was not put into organisations such as the Scouting Movement, which gave a sense of purpose and belonging.

The turn around can be seen in grim statistics on street crime and the regular violence that young men in particular inflict on each other, fuelled by alcohol, boredom and what Carr Gregg dubs "spiritual anorexia."

As a feminist I am often asked how I bring up two sons. I parent for independence and respect. I am not a slave to my children and in fact "I am not your slave" is one of the phrases they most often hear me say, after "mummy has a deadline." The scouting movement - starting with cubs – supports me on this. It fosters independence and cooperation and who could argue this is not a good thing?

As much as I have moaned to colleagues about sewing on endless cub achievement badges, I am secretly happy to do so as each one symbolises another step away from me and into the world. My 11 year old knows how to shop and cook – in fact, it's a hassle going to the supermarket without his help. He can make a three course meal with minimal supervision and the cat relies on him as well to get fed when I'm at work late.

But it's not just these domestic life skills that are so important, it is the scouting movement's expectation that children need to look after themselves and respect others and cooperate with a group that its real importance lies.

For instance, my eight year old son came home from cubs ecstatic that his pack had come first in a competition to see who could cooperate to build the highest tower out of spaghetti and Blu Tack. Not a very amazing thing on most people's scale of achievements, but he had learnt many valuable lessons in the safety of the drafty scout hall. He needed to work together and also rely on others - to negotiate, to listen. How many of us would appreciate that every day in the workplace, for instance?

Perhaps most importantly, the scouting movement fills another hole in the plight of 'spiritual anorexia' that Carr-Gregg speaks of. Not in a religious sense but in one of connection with others. Barack Obama warned young people to be circumspect about posting their entire lives online.

The real problem with social networking sites and the dependence upon them that young people develop has much more to do with a social disconnection, rather than possible long-term privacy issues.

The world online is a second life indeed, and not one that children, drawn of course to technology, need any more encouragement with. For let us not forget every parent's nightmare; the death of their child at their own hand because of bullying, as apparently happened to a 14 year old Victorian girl, after being cyber bullied.

Children need a sense of purpose and belonging, and to concentrate all one's social energies through school is unhealthy at best - ditto sitting sad and lonely in front of a facebook site with hundreds of virtual friends. The Scouting movement provides another circle of real life friends with common interests and goals.

A woman confided to me that her son had been badly bullied at school and the only thing that saved him was his involvement in scouts and the annual Camberwell Showtime concert, which gave kids who couldn't say boo a chance to shine even for the briefest moment in the spotlight. He is now a successful published genre writer.

With the positive benefits from an organised youth movement like scouts, why the reluctance for so many parents to embrace it? I wonder if it is apathy. It takes an effort to get involved in any organised long term activity, not the least in driving your child and others to weekend camps or evening activities.

My parents – practicing atheists – refused to let me join girl guides because they said I would be made to swear an oath to God and Queen. These days, there is an oath to "one's God"- whatever that might be. And yes, to the Queen of Australia, but I don't blame the scouting movement for this, rather my fellow Australians who refused to vote with me to rid our country of the monarchy.

Their concerns were in reality they now admit more do with their lack of commitment in driving me to and from Guides and probably sewing on badges than anything else. And such is the attitude of many parents I know. For them, it's easier to haul out the line about pedophile scout masters than get involved.

So I am looking at more years sewing on scout and cub badges. A small price to pay I think, for what my sons will get out of the movement. Anyway, a young colleague – a former scout himself – dismissed my concerns. "Your son needs to earn his sewing badge – so get him to sew them on himself!"

Yes, resourcefulness and independence – the true badge of a scout.

When the babies grow up, does the friendship end?

2010-03-14T17:49:00.003+11:00

Mothers' groups. Where would we be without them? The group I was assigned to after my first child was born were my saving grace, port in the storm, shoulder to cry on and once weekly fix of sanity.

As we moved from the trials of breastfeeding, toilet training, sibling rivalry and school selection, one thing remained: it was good to have the camaraderie of others in the same situation.

It's true that the intensity of the mother's group lessened when our first children started school. Suddenly, there were new timetables, new friends and new demands. Our children were by and large at different schools, some opting for private, others for catholic and others for different local state schools. Yet in these early primary school years, we continued to meet for a monthly dinner.

This was as much about us as our children. Who'd done a recent renovation? Bought new furniture? Gone back to the gym and finally lost the baby weight? Perhaps surprisingly, given the national statistics, we didn't count divorce or separation in the conversation, although one of the group was diagnosed with a serious illness.

As our children grew, so did the friendships, and inevitably, the drop-off rate of attendances at dinners. But now my eldest is going to secondary school next year, is the group still relevant? In fact – is it still there?

Yes and no. I have remained friends as I guess you do, with the women I have most in common with, such as the energetic Italian lawyer who is now a mum of three and looking for a business of her own. That's because two high flying lawyers in a family mean problems with child care.

The Golden Gate Mothers' Group is way ahead. Who'd not find it easy to be a San Fran 'mom' when this group: "facilitates playgroups for our members with children in the same age range, mothers of the same work status and families in the same neighborhoods." They also have specialized playgroups based on a variety of factors and interests."

In Melbourne, count yourself lucky if you get assigned to the local maternal health centre group. If you move into the area after your baby is a certain age, it's fend for yourself time. Hence, we had several "ring-in's" of lonely mums we met at playgroups.

A desperate soul, recently arrived from the UK with a toddler, new baby and a PhD in psychology, got smart and joined five mothers' groups to see which fitted the best. Now, that's taking matters into your own hands!

Last week, one of the mums in my mothers' group hosted a Tupperware party, for a cousin starting out in the business. Did I need more storage containers? No. Did I want to see other mums again and have a glass of bubbly? Yes!

When I arrived, none of the usual mother's group was there. It didn't matter – I was happy to mingle with a different group of mums, because we had one thing in common. We had children, and when you're in the paid workforce, you don't get to connect outside the school gate when the bell goes.

You miss out on those vital conversations; how do you get your kids to do piano practice? What if they won't eat meat? What films are they allowed to see; are they still doing gym and swimming and – after a few glasses of bubbly – how much action are you getting with your husband?

One woman paid a babysitter so she could come to the Tupperware party. She didn't need anymore plastic, either. Another brought home made cake to share. Alas all I contributed was conversation and the observation maybe more women would have attended if the items for sale were adult toys. Though as my friend suggested – there are so many things you can do with Tupperware in your house. (And you do need somewhere to store the toys).

It was a great group of women, so what if it was Tupperware that brought us together? Though then again, someone was very interested in obtaining the same color lids for her vast collection so it all matched – so maybe some did come for the "Store 'N More".

I had so much fun I was one of the last to leave. I found myself drinking a rather unusual Tupperware cocktail made from a litre of softened icecream, tropical fruit drink and sparkling wine, which of course got everyone talking about things other than "pantry storage systems".

I listened as two women chatted about how their waters broke and the rush into hospital with their first child – pause and laughter as they knew now that labour would take perhaps all day and there was no hurry.

Having had two planned caesareans because both were high-risk births, I had nothing to contribute. It suddenly reminded me of that day nearly 12 years ago, when I gathered with a group of mothers at the local maternal health centre.

We were all so inexperienced at motherhood, and somewhat shell shocked. I still vividly recall the nurse asking us to relay our birth stories and feeling like a complete failure as one after the other the other women spoke of their "normal and natural" births.

What I did discover down the track was that a normal pregnancy and birth do not mean easy sailing when it comes to parenting.

For instance, the woman I met at the Tupperware party. Sure, she managed to have a "natural" birth, but her son was born with an undiagnosed heart condition, and she spent four months with him in hospital as he had rounds of surgery.

She has to monitor his condition every day and even a playground scrape could lead to an infection that would weaken his compromised heart. I counted my blessings, and stopped that automatic fretting I get about being a failure because I was high-risk.

In fact, I was reminded yet again of what one father said when I interviewed him for Handle With Care. His wife nearly died in the first pregnancy, and I asked him; why try for another baby in the face of her blood clotting condition?

"Life is risk", he said. "We either embrace it and live, or we live in fear."

The next day, I found a Tupperware egg separator in my handbag when I was at work; a party gift from the night before. I smiled – storage solutions or not, it's good to connect with women who are on the same journey.

Road Kill on the Mummy Track

2010-03-09T01:46:00.003+11:00

Author Mem Fox has not had many supporters in her attack on parents who leave babies in long day care, which is hardly surprising. There is a lot of money propping up the childcare industry, and a lot of people with a loud voice in the media have their children in childcare or have used childcare extensively to keep their jobs.

But if childcare is not great for kids, as Mem Fox claims, then the corollary is that being cared for at home is best for them.

The problem is, someone has to care for them at home, and this usually tends to be women. And women at home, we are told constantly, are a dying breed, a 1950s white picket fence throw back for all but the most privileged few who don't have to rush back to work.

Their opinions should not be counted, as what do they know of the real world? They can, after all, afford to stay at home and look after their children. This - we are told - is simply not a choice for most people.

Actually, in this privileged world, of which we can count middle class professional women in their thirties and forties, very few actually stay at home with their children. The reason is however, not financial, as they might have you believe. It is because staying at home with children can be soul destroying, grindingly boring, and badly paid, and ruins careers and aspirations – not to mention superannuation.

I should know – I am one of the privileged few who opted "out", stayed at home and paid the price.

I never expected to be one of these women. I loved my career; I had five years of university behind me, and had traveled and owned a terrace house in a trendy inner suburb. Then I had the misfortune of interviewing a childcare expert when I was six months pregnant with my first child.

I understand why Mem Fox is getting howled down in the media for what she said, because this expert told me the same thing when I was in a very vulnerable position, and I believed her. I read her book and spoke to her at length and made the decision not to put my child into care.

It is a decision my career probably regrets every single day. My two children, on the other hand, feel differently. But, damn it; it's not about them, is it? It's supposed to be about me – me, me! My wants, my needs, my aspirations, my desires.

I feel duped. Why did I realise that I was the last person who counted, and that when I had children, it was all about them, when so many of my friends and colleagues thought otherwise, and sailed through the early parenting years without missing a beat. Child care? Oh yeah!

My mistake – in believing older, wiser experts like Mem Fox – was brought home to be when I attended a local council seminar on feeding fussy eaters. I got my mother to babysit and dragged myself away from the toddler and recently weaned fifteen-month-old who wouldn't take to solids.

I looked like a slumpadinka after a day at home in the trenches – an unbelievably a well dressed woman in a smart business suit beat me to the seminar door. I figured she must be the guest speaker, but low and behold, she took her place next to me and asked some questions, such as "should I believe the child care centre when they say my daughter has eaten everything that day, when she cries from hunger at night?"

Three things occurred to me – with shoes that expensive, the woman's decision to work was a lifestyle choice, second, that if she stayed at home she'd know what her child was eating, and finally, looking down at my exercise shoes embedded with home made play doh, I had made a big, big mistake.

The thing about staying home to raise children is that it takes time – a great deal of time. If you make the decision to stay at home until they are, say, three years old, you have to also factor in extra time needed for subsequent children.

Before you can blink, you are road kill on the mummy track. I have a friend who impressively had her first child at the age of thirty after getting her PhD, and then had three more eighteen months apart, in order to both beat the biological clock, and to minimise her time out of the workforce. She stayed at home for all of them, up until the youngest started school this year.

Can you do the math? Her four children haven't been in childcare, but she hasn't worked in ten years. That's not a concern, however, because in that time she has been earning superannuation, a basic salary and has been guaranteed reentry into her profession using all the skills she has gained in that time.

Okay – that last paragraph is an outright lie. Like all the women I shared my stay at home journey with, she still hasn't got her career back. Stay at home mums will know it is a lot easier to get your figure back after children, than get your career back. Because once you have a couple of children, full time work in a demanding career is impossible unless you use child care, after school care and hired help.

That is why women put babies into childcare – because the birth of a child is the slippery slope to the death of a career. The privileged professional women in our society who wait until the 'right' moment to have children will soon realise there is no right moment because everything changes once you become a mother. I once pitched a novel on the phone to a publisher while my son tried to get my attention by trashing the house and finally taking off his nappy and weeing on the dining room table. That was a harder task than meeting any newspaper deadline.

Given my time again, would I have put my children into long day care as babies and kept my career on track? I had two high-risk pregnancies, which puts a lot into perspective. Being in danger and having your babies in danger means you are quite the lioness when it comes to their care. If you have fought hard to become a parent, chances are you will fight hard to parent them yourself.

The fact is that children's demands are as never ending as the constraints of a big career. It is no wonder so many of these privileged women toss the corporate job away, stay at home and then ease into the "mumpreneur" role with their own innovative businesses when their children are older. This is simply the only way to "have it all" without a corporation overseeing – and judging – your every move.

3

The red flag: depression and high-risk pregnancy

2010-02-24T23:24:00.000+11:00

High risk pregnancies come in two versions – take your pick which is worse. The first: knowing you'll have problems because of a pre-existing medical condition. The second strikes you down in pregnancy as a complete surprise. One day you're glowing, the next, bleeding and about to lose the baby.

In some respects, women who suddenly develop pregnancy problems have an easier time from the world at large. They are victims. They have had an "act of God" befall them. Women who are known to be "defective" from the start – and I include myself here with my essential hypertension – are either told not to make a fuss about their condition, or are subtly discouraged from having children in the first place.

And if despite good medical care something goes wrong – it's a case of "well, what did you expect?"

Women are supposed to be good and cheerful incubators. But what if they really want a baby but have a health issue?

In response to an earlier blog on high-risk pregnancies, Sarah commented that: "if women are told the truth about what can go wrong, I suspect that some women would choose to opt out of biological motherhood."

Sarah reveals she has a history of depression and is trying to conceive. She says she has been 'red flagged' for possible issues throughout and after pregnancy. "I have an excellent relationship with my GP, and at this stage I am happy to take her advice and prepare myself, literally, for the worst, regardless of the fact that I haven't had depression for many years. I told my female work colleague about my 'red flag' and I was told 'stop thinking about yourself and stop being so negative.' "

Sarah felt that somehow she had already failed – and she wasn't even pregnant yet. It reminds me of a woman I met at my son's school social. She heard I was writing a book about high-risk pregnancies and came up to me, slightly tipsy. "Interview me, I'm a real loser, I had three high risk pregnancies."

Well, I did interview her, but told her straight away she was no loser – she had the courage to go back to have two more children after nearly bleeding to death after the first birth. She said something terribly haunting – that it felt like such a peaceful way to die and that it wasn't only because a nurse by chance was in the room that they managed to save her.

No – losers are not heroes like this. So why did this woman feel like a loser? Because she wasn't a physically perfect incubator. She had failed this crucial test of womanhood. She was made to feel a loser not by her husband – who nearly lost her and is immensely proud of being a parent with her – but by other women. The ones I call the "smug healthy".

I want to tell Sarah that she won't have this experience. But she already has – and as she points out, she isn't even pregnant yet.

I wish it was different. My sons are now 11 and 8 years old, and I have been fighting for recognition for high-risk women in pregnancy since I had my own pregnancies. I am sorry to say nothing has changed. The media are still not interested in writing our stories. Instead they write articles in papers and on the web like the one Sarah read – about a mother who killed her infant. She had post natal depression and had mostly kept it to herself despite her history of clinical depression. Initially when she said she wasn't coping, she was told 'welcome to motherhood'.

Yes - the media will write about the death, but not the struggle when it's happening. Not the ongoing battle. As I was told by publishers when pitching Handle With Care, the book I wrote about high-risk pregnancies, "the subject isn't sexy enough".
It's time this changed. High risk pregnancy may have been a neglected area of past discussion on maternity services, but this can no longer be the case. As complicated or high risk pregnancies increase - due to maternal age, lifestyle issues and infertility among other influences - more consideration must be given to women in this category.

Yes, Sarah – it's true. High risk women are more likely to suffer from antenatal and postnatal depression because they feel isolated and suffer from high anxiety about the pregnancy outcome and their own health.

The fact is, mental illness and depression in our community is more common than most of us realise. Because one in five Australians will be affected by mental illness at some stage of their lives, it is an important area to consider when looking at those health issues that can, and do, place pregnant women in the high-risk category. But these challenges are not insurmountable.

What can we do? Rather than leave antenatal education to the hospitals which are focused on normal births, high risk women should be offered a fortnightly group session in their area where they can see other high risk women and hear psychologists talk about what they are going through. This occurs in the excellent range of antenatal high risk clinics in hospitals around Australia, including the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. But if women are not identified and/or hospitalised, they miss out on the care.

After the birth, the maternal health centres are a lifeline for women but they may only get to these places weeks after their baby is born.

It would be better to have them attend a fortnightly session while pregnant to meet other women. Obviously because of numbers, the most local centre might not be appropriate, but certainly one centre in every metropolitan shire, and in every regional town, could host such an event.

Pregnancy and birth is not only a physical or medical experience, it is very much an emotional journey and for the high risk mother who has the odds stacked against her, the journey and the lack of services available means its often an uphill battle.

The government needs to get serious about high-risk women, instead of simply issuing finger wagging directives against caesarean birth statistics. It needs to recognise the existence and needs of high risk mothers with provision of relevant services.

Australian women and their babies should be able to access high quality safe maternity services, as close to home as possible, in line with their assessed level of risk.

And society needs to extend some compassion and understanding when the red flag is raised for women like Sarah.

I'll just write that down: the study and kids juggle

2010-02-17T15:05:00.000+11:00

After 20 years in the workforce, I'm back at university doing a higher degree. It's not the first time I've worked and studied – but this time, instead of juggling journalism and media law I'm juggling children and creative writing.

I've been asked by fellow students if I work and I reply that I am the primary carer of two young children. There is an initial blank look then the swift politically correct reply "Oh, god, that's tough" before they do the sign of the cross and quickly step away, as if parenthood might be contagious.

What's harder – juggling children or paid work while studying? The answer is everyone should have the exhilarating experience of spending four years at university after you leave school, with nothing more taxing than intellectual advancement, a social life and that nagging frenzy about your future.

For having a fully fledged grown up life and studying is always a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Family, friends, cooking and bills go on the back burner when there is a major university deadline – except that before children no one suffered buy your waist line if you chose to eat takeaway while hitting the text books after a day at work.

Kids demand to be fed, loved, cared for and taken to school and back – a working day with children isn't like a day in the office – kids might be dropped off at school in the morning, but unless you leave them to languish in aftercare five days a week, you have to down tools at 3 pm to pick them up – and then it won't be possible to hit the books again until they have gone to bed.

It's hard to be creative at 9 pm after a solid five hours of referring, taxing, cajoling, homework supervising and nurturing. Harder than it was after a day in the office – sure, in the former life you might have ended up brain dead, but after motherhood's demands, you are dead on your feet.

But the rewards are plentiful – the dirty little secret of motherhood is that one aspect hasn't changed – you still lose all vestiges of self esteem the second you spend a moment more than designated maternity leave with your children. It gets worse the longer you are out of the paid work force - honestly who thought of that phrase? Interesting how caring for children is only work if you are looking after someone else is getting paid to do it.

So getting back to a world of adults by going back to university is like eating meat after a vegetarian diet. It might get stuck in your teeth but it fills you with energy. Not that the mothers I've met in motherland haven't been interesting – I've met better minds who've had more interesting careers standing in drafty suburban playgroup halls that sitting around newspaper offices.

It's just that there is a certain segment of the population in a little land called Privilege who don't want to do paid work again, don't want to go back to their demanding careers, and have partners who earn a hefty salary so they can be stay-at-homes.

Not for them the realisation they can suddenly start their own business, go back to university, volunteer for a charity. No – these women want to cocoon. Wallow. Fester. Smug in Privilege, it's all about the lifestyle.

I had a momentary free pass to Privilege. I couldn't stay long and I didn't like the people who lived there. It was back to work for me – albeit part time paid work and kids juggle for some time.

So how to nurture the mind in the mean time – when life was about the school pick up? Back to the books to retrain and reinvent. After all – if everyone has more than one career, why should mothers miss out?

Technology has conspired to make it easier than ever to juggle children and studying. When they're asleep you can access every library catalogue in the country online, and order books that way too. Look up journal articles in between the laundry….after all, my if my mother could do it back in the 1970s – why not me?

When it all seems too difficult, when the other mums look at me as if I have three heads and wonder why I bother – I think of my mum. She went back to finish her teaching degree and also her arts degree and I proudly remember going to two different graduations of hers on the same day – at two different universities.

She always said at the time I'd remember it. Did she imagine that it would sustain me now – and inspire me to copy her?

I believe it will help teach my children that hitting the books, being disciplined and making time for your mind – and let's face it, damn hard work and deferred gratification – are the norm. And eventually rewarding

I hope so.

When the journey to motherhood is fraught with danger

2009-12-10T00:24:00.006+11:00

By Evelyn Tsitas

The media loves the story of the miracle baby who struggles to survive against the odds of being born premature. However, there is an equal lack of silence on the reasons behind such births. The fact that women's bodies fail – and fail regularly – to ensure a smooth passage to a normal, 40 week birth reflects a deeper issue that puts them at odds with feminist perspectives of health.

On every level, women who have high-risk pregnancies are made to feel like outcasts. As a society, we do not like imperfect people, bodies that fail. This is especially true of women's reproductive success. Women who repeatedly miscarry or only achieve motherhood because of high-tech medical intervention are not celebrated and their stories remain largely untold. The language used by the medical profession highlights this: these women are referred to as “habitual aborters” or have an “incompetent cervix”.

It's not just the media who ignore these imperfect women. Other women ignore them, too. I am not just talking here about the competitive birthers, the women who trade easy labour stories, or even "zero to hero" stories, but the feminists who decry any intervention in pregnancy and birth as a medical conspiracy.

As a feminist, and a woman who had two high-risk pregnancies, it is hard to reconcile this. How can we sustain feminist thinking from outside the mainstream, from the marginal site of high-risk pregnancy? We are not women who can free birth, home birth or even use a birthing centre. Where do women who can only achieve motherhood through invasive medical intervention in pregnancy fit in?

Are these women the pawns of the medical profession? Mere passive bodies that are under biological surveillance? Controlled, voiceless, compliant?

I argue otherwise. My experience and those of the women I interviewed for the high-risk pregnancy book Handle With Care is these women are in fact strong, in control, determined. We have both challenged and confronted the medical profession. We may have had caesareans, we may have been medicalised, we may have had a less than ideal picture postcard experience. But by and large, we have become, in the end, mothers.

Against the odds, is that not a triumph in itself?

Monica Dux, co-author of The Great feminist Denial, writes that there are parallels between Susan Sontag's point about cancer patients in her groundbreaking work Illness as Metaphor, and contemporary attitudes to fertility. "If she'd only started earlier….stuck with IVF…then perhaps she'd have a baby. And then if she doesn't do those things, then who does she have to blame? Only herself." (The Age, 3 Dec, 2009)

The blame game is difficult with high-risk pregnancy. Can you blame people with a pre-existing medical condition such as cystic fibrosis or heart disease? Can you blame women whose cervix fails in pregnancy for no apparent reason? I suggest that though we would like to as a society, we do not. And that is why it is easier to focus on the premature babies who are born as a result of women's bodies failing in pregnancy.

While there are no accurate figures on the actual numbers of high-risk pregnancies in Australia because of discrepancy in categorizing, medical experts believe there are more coming through the system, both in public and private hospitals. In fact a great many pregnancies can be considered high-risk. There are many reasons that women are facing greater complexity in pregnancy. Obesity and diabetes are on the rise. In general women are older in their first pregnancy, with fertility issues and medical conditions such as hypertension more likely.

Yes – society can perhaps blame women who are obese – and also women who have waited "too long" to become pregnant. However, high-risk pregnancies can affect women of any age. Women are likely to be considered high-risk if they have a pre-existing medical condition or have had complications with a previous pregnancy. Examples of complicated pregnancies include medical, surgical or psychiatric problems or fetal complications, such as multiple births, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, kidney disease, epilepsy, bipolar, premature birth, poor fetal growth and blood group incompatibilities.

These are not things you can plan to avoid. The only way of maximizing your chances of a successful outcome if you are high-risk is having top quality medical care and often being bed ridden and on a lot of medication. You are prodded, probed and monitored. Even then, there is no guarantee of coming out of the experience with a live baby in your arms. As for a nine month journey – few high risk women make it that far along. They are the women whose babies fill the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or have the low birth weight babies who struggle to breastfeed and establish sleeping patterns.

This poses a conundrum for those of us who are both high-risk and feminist, as who is surveilled, when and for what purposes with the new reproductive technologies are key feminist questions.

As Adele E. Clarke and Virginia L. Olesen, the editors of Revisioning Women, Health and Healing note: feminists have taken up cultural and scientific analyses of women's health with both "vengeance and enthusiasms." They agree that conflicts among feminists about reproductive and other women's health issues have just begun to be examined.

They ask: how can we sustain feminist thinking from multiple standpoints – from outside centres of power, from various marginalised sites, as well as from the hearts of federal bureaucracies?

I suggest that we open up the debate here – and give a voice to high-risk women and their closely monitored pregnancies. Do they see themselves as victims of the medical profession – are they passive but defective vessels? Do they on the other hand feel stigmatized and responsible for their own predicament? Or, despite being medicalised, do they feel somehow empowered that despite the odds, they are on the journey to – or have achieved – motherhood?
It is important to remember that some pregnancies begin normally but problems develop later. Even the fittest, healthiest woman can suddenly discover her pregnancy falls into the high-risk category when she develops a problem. According to the South Australian clinical research program SCOPE, one in five (nineteen per cent) of all first pregnancies encounter major problems in late pregnancy such as pre-eclampsia, spontaneous preterm birth and fetal growth retardation, and these problems are life threatening in three per cent of pregnancies.

Having only achieved motherhood myself thanks to high level medical care in two high-risk pregnancies, I continue to be astounded at how the media chooses to ignore high-risk women's stories. I co-wrote Handle With Care, a book on high-risk pregnancy to give these women – and their partners – a voice. A small independent publisher picked it up, as well as a major book distributor. Mainstream publishers dismissed the book as "not sexy enough". After all, I was told, who wants to read about an "incompetent cervix?"

It is as if high-risk women are an affront to the natural order for somehow daring to strive for what doesn't come naturally. What does it say about a society that celebrates IVF success stories, but ignores the courage of a woman lying flat on her back in a tilted hospital bed for 15 weeks, or the woman with cystic fibrosis juggling her medication so she can have a baby without birth defects?

I would suggest that binaries are not useful. We are not perfect or less than perfect, we are not high-risk or low risk. All journeys to motherhood are full of risk. The human race continues because some have less risk and an easier journey than others, but it also continues because those who have the hardest time also are prepared to endure and to fight and to take charge. They are more determined, and play that journey to motherhood in their heads as well as their wombs.

This is what my motherland blog is about – a social critique of the stories about pregnancy, motherhood and risk in the media.

Join me and my co-author Caroline van de Pol as we offer a different perspective of women's health issues. And please – go to our website and buy the book for someone who needs it – www.preciousfamilies.com

Evelyn Tsitas is a doctorate student at RMIT University, Melbourne, and the co-author of Handle With Care. She has two school age children.