Mrs Helicopter Writes

If you're someone who struggles to sleep *flings hand up* then you are possibly obsessed, like me, with how other people sleep. How do people sleep? How can anyone EVER sleep?!  You may be one of those super lucky people who can sleep on a chicken’s lip! You put your head on the pillow and poof! You're asleep! You absolute lucky dabber. My relationship with sleep has always been weird. Apparently, I slept well as a baby. I was a very early riser, but I needed my bed early. I remember in Junior school my bedtime was always earlier than my friends. Boo! No Adrian Mole for me! But if I got overtired, I would get really nauseous and often actually vom. (Bad times for my vom-averse mother!)  As an adult I've had lots of bouts of bad sleep especially during stressful periods. I remember visiting a lavender farm in Oz and left convinced that the "sleep balm" I'd bought held the key to the secrets of sleep! It didn't. My pregnancies were tricky, and sleep was ...

Ah shite. I’ve become THAT mum. The mum of a teen who wants to scream JUST YOU WAIT! I mean, I say I WANT to scream because I know I shouldn’t. But I did, accidentally, to a colleague the other day. She was talking about her niece battling a newly emerged three-anger from a very docile 2 yr old. And it just came out by mistake. I was mid-way through half term, half working, half battling bored kids. Stressed, thinking about all the things I need to do and haven’t done.   So, I blurted it. “Ugh, she should wait til they’re teens! Constant but incomprehensible anger, unmitigated selfishness and they NEVER go to bed”. My colleague, bless her, defended her niece. As well she should. “Well, she’s finding it pretty tough”. I felt awful. Of course, she is! Having a small, unreasonable being who doesn’t know if they want peas/chips/yogurt even when they have it in their hands, is exhausting. The tantrums leave you wrecked, you’ve likely been awake super early, no daytime naps to ha...

This is going to be a bit of an unusual post for me. Normally I launch straight into my opinions about parenting or some outrage about human rights. Today I’m going down a more personal route. I am going to write to about health. What advice would I give a friend who was looking to get healthier? I am being careful with my words here for a number of reasons. Obviously I am talking about losing weight. My real life friends know weight is something I struggle with constantly. I have done since I was in my late teens. I’m actually even cautious to use the words “struggle” when it comes to weight because I don’t want to convey a message of negativity to those who are large and happy. I’m a massive champion of body positivity. There are lots of reasons people are overweight / obese and none of them are laziness or greed, the common misconceptions. So I applaud anyone who out and out rejects societal pressure to adhere to a specific “acceptable” BMI and embraces their size/shape wi...

Got small kids? It gets easier. When I had my first baby, I noticed that whenever he appeared to be peaceful, certain people couldn’t WAIT to tell me what awful things I had to come. Not sleeping through? WAIT til the terrible TWOS! Terrible twos? Wait til he’s a threeanger! You think you have problems now, wait til they’re an ACTUAL TEENAGER! BE GRATEFUL. Actually, this is not very helpful thing to a new mum. Or in fact, ANY mum. You may be greeted with a wan smile if you say this to someone but inside that person will be swearing at you. Because NO one wants to hear that things get worse. Stop it! I often think about whether or not I actually would have wanted to know how hard I found EVERYTHING from pregnancy onwards. I’ve had many a conversation since with fellow parents starting “no one ever tells you …. *insert awful realisation about parenthood here*…” But would I have REALLY wanted to know?     Would I have wanted to know that: a) Pregnancy is s...

For International Women’s Day I want to celebrate all the glorious women in my life. I’m so lucky to have some amazing ladies around me. I thought about trying to write something worthy. Something about trying to celebrate unheard women’s voices from around the world, but as David Lammy pointed out about Comic Relief, it’s time we let their own voices be heard. We don’t need another white, middle class woman clumsily trying to write about inclusivity, without awareness of privilege or agency on the subject. So. I’m just gonna write about my mates and my family. My female loves. To tell them how much I appreciate them, need them and adore them. The Girls Who Are My Rocks I don’t have a “girl gang” or “tribe”. But I have a fantastic selection of super close friends who I’ve made since leaving school. They’re an eclectic bunch. I met them all over the place: Uni, work, friends of friends, family friends I’ve known since we were teens, Zumba, baby classes (which wei...

Let’s tackle some ridiculous myths about not labelling kids toys and clothes with specific genders OK? Because flipping HECK, I’ve heard some bloody stupid stuff making the rounds. From people who really aren’t stupid and should definitely know better. It’s over a year since John Lewis took down their signs for “boy’s clothes” and “girl’s clothes” in store but it seems there are still a lot of people out there who haven’t grasped the concept. I’m gonna break it down for you: Gender Neutral Clothing / Toy sections aren’t full of beige clothes / toys or not trucks or dolls. This is the silliest thing I’ve heard so far. That all kids clothes will become grey and beige…. akin to when you hedging your bets buying baby clothes pre birth. No. It means that we stop deciding for kids what colours they are limited to wearing / toys they are limited to playing with. If anything, the best thing any clothing or toy shop could do, right now, is add MORE colours to their palate. I’v...

Motherland is a relatively new comedy series on the BBC that follows a modern, middle class white working woman and her struggles with balancing childcare, cliquey playground mums, an unhelpful grandparent and an absent/selfish father. Whilst I do think it’s very funny, and in some ways quite perceptive, I am also depressed as shit about a few key details. And I actually don’t think it’s helpful to have another TV series which represents childcare as solely a woman’s responsibility, however hilarious and possibly true to life it is. I do get that art reflects life so in this instance the popularity of this show is down to the fact that mothers see their lives reflected back at them. That IS the experience of many women in the UK right now. They work and they struggle and they sort out the childcare. But if we keep portraying that as the norm on screen, it’s not going to change anything is it? At some point, instead of saying this is your experience...isn’t it shit? How about ch...

Festival Season is well and truly upon us. And I’m seeing loads of pics on social media from friends who’ve come back from Green Man and Camp Bestival and all sorts of other outdoorsy musical events and I must say, I’m a little bit envious. That’ will NEVER be me and my kids.   Big Day Out, Melbourne 2006 As a teenager, I absolutely LOVED a festival. I can honestly say that bunking off school at 17 and going to Glastonbury in the back of a battered old van with the local crusties was one of the definitive moments of my life. I didn’t think I could be any happier than when I was at that festival, surrounded by fellow drunken / high “alternative types”. Of course, in 1993 it was actually still hot and sunny during summer so this was long before the bog-fest of later years. It was all incense, tie dye, tassels, sun-scorched grass, stone circles, crazy dancing, jamming on guitars with strangers, delicious smelling food stalls and warm beer in plastic beakers. I’d see hi...

I’m gonna sum up this post with a little pop quiz before delving into the nitty gritty. Are you a woman? Do/did you want kids? = JUDGEMENT REGARDLESS OF ANSWER. Are you a man? Do/did you want kids? = JUDGEMENT? Not so much. I just watched a segment on daytime TV behemoth This Morning, about the pressures of being a childless woman which stemmed from NicolaSturgeon announcing that she’s suffered a miscarriage in 2011. Does Nicola Sturgeon suffering a miscarriage have an effect on your perception of her as a human? Does it have an effect on your opinion of her ability to do her job? Sadly I think the answer for most is yes and yes. “Yes I feel like we see a more relatable side to her now we know she WANTED to have kids but has not been able to.” This is because it’s seen in our society as a natural, instinctive response to being a woman...the desire to have kids. Women who don’t want to are often castigated as cold-hearted career women. SELFISH even in wanting ...

The other day, on the way to school my son and I had to have a conversation about gratitude. Obviously after I had explained to him what the word actually meant. Because it seems that however much he is given, he still always wants more. He gets a biscuit, he wants another one, he gets to stay up for an extra 10 minutes...he wants another five etc. This is all perfectly normal boundary pushing….yes, yes but then it never stops! Our bank holiday in ungratefulness: Sat – All day beach trip with homemade picnic, but shop-bought ice cream. Day ended in tears because we hadn’t done gluing and sticking. (Which we haven’t done in over a year….) Sun – Bowling party with friends, afternoon playing in his Nana’s sunny garden. Meltdown after dinner because he didn’t get anything from the sweet cupboard (which is not a prerequisite by the way!). FYI after he’d been at the party…the party he had consumed cake and a party bag full of sweets at, he’d had a bubble-gum ice cream (b...