The Mothers Day Interviews: Danielle Parry

This year to celebrate Mothers Day, I've interviewed a group of Mums that I particularly admire. They are all Mothers with different experiences, views, stories and opinions. Some are from the blogging and social media world whilst others are ones I know in real life. I'm running the series through out this week and we'll be talking about birth stories, parenting advice, sleep deprivation and much, much more!

My second interview is with Danielle Parry, who I (like many others) follow on Instagram. She takes some brilliant photos of her life with her son Gruffydd and they are always accompanied by a frank and often hilarious caption! Following her birth experience (which you can read more about below), Danielle found herself in the local newspaper and being interviewed on Good Morning Britain. If you value a Mother who tells you how it is and isn't a "coconut oiled vegan", you'll want to read this interview.

Who is your idol or hero and why?
My ultimate hero in life is, has, and always will be my Nan. We had the most wonderful relationship and she has influenced me to become the person I am today. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was 16 weeks pregnant with my son and unfortunately passed just a few short days after he was born. I’m not a religious person, however I do believe there is a reason for everything and the fact I fell pregnant when I did was a little sign of hope. Without him I don’t know how I would have coped. My Nan was louder than life, and was never afraid to say it how it was, I feel that this attitude has passed down to me and I still can’t decide if it’s a positive or not!

There is not a day that goes past when I don't miss her. The stories she would tell of what she got up to in the 60s, her road rage at 'slow women drivers' or quite simply someone who would be there to listen to me chat for hours about the most mundane subjects, yet showing great interest. Near her death she would say that she'd had the most amazing life and has the most loving family around her, all she wanted to do was hold on long enough to meet my son and she did. When I've reached the winter of my life, I want nothing more to be able to look back and have that same peace, the ability to know that if death is imminent, I can be happy with how my life has been. Knowing that she felt this was inspires me daily and will do for everyday I am here on earth.

Women With Influence

Last week the post I'd written last year, Don't Fear the C-Section re-surfaced itself on Twitter courtesy of Kirstie Allsopp. She'd come across it via a hashtag I assume, read my piece and deemed it worth a re-tweet to her 399k followers. How terribly exciting for me and very flattering of course. I've watched her television programmes for years and was quite taken aback by such a compliment. Fully aware that this would be the first and last time my blog received any level of notoriety from the outside world, I allowed myself to get a bit giddy about it, told anyone who would listen and congratulated myself with a large glass of wine at the end of the day. Oh yeah.
Then I got to thinking about why she'd done that, what was her motivation. Why does she care what I think about C-Section births? Kirstie Allsopp is typically known as a broadcaster of property programmes and has made a living selling vintage home ware and interiors. So I had a good google on her and discovered that it was a topic close to her heart, something she'd written an open letter about a few years ago. Having had two Cesarean births herself, she'd taken an exception to the "too posh too push" stigma and spoken out about how we should be better prepared for the eventuality of a C-Section birth, as now 1 in 4 results in one. Turned out she'd started a bit of a debate. With many women supporting and thanking her for speaking out and others slating her for promoting unnecessary birth intervention. She's not afraid to speak out about other women's issues either from her opinions on marriage and banning homework. Through to acknowledging your fertility window and considering putting that first before your education and career. You may or may not agree with her opinions but at least she has some and there relative and real. I found it really refreshing to see a woman with influence sparking a discussion about something important that actually relates to my life.

Don't Fear the C-Section

My son was born via emergency C-Section at almost midnight on a Tuesday in August, after 48 hours of induction nonsense, not a single push or any sleep.
Sounds dramatic doesn't it EMERGENCY CESAREAN? It really wasn't, it was all pretty calm and chilled and I had plenty of time to internalise and ask questions about what was about to happen. Thank god because I had not prepared for this eventuality in the slightest.

When I was first pregnant the idea of a Cesarean terrified me, actually terrified me, I would lie awake at night worrying that I would be the 1 in 4 who would have one. I thought it would kill me, I thought it would kill my baby. I thought the anesthetic wouldn't work and I would feel them cutting into me. I thought I'd bleed to death, I thought they'd cut through my baby, I thought I'd die on the table before I got to see him.
It worried me so much that in the end I blocked it out. I mentally removed it from my brain, I didn't even consider it, for me it was not a possibility. So much so that I didn't plan for it, I didn't educate myself about it. So naive was I in fact, that I couldn't bring myself to look at my C-Section scar for a whole week afterwards because I thought it was going to be this great massive hip to hip - stapled together flesh scar that I would never quite get over.
It wasn't so much that I desperately wanted the natural birth experience, it was just my negative view of C-Sections clouding my rational thought process. I didn't know anyone who had a cesarean, I had only ever heard negative things about them, I had only ever been told  'we hope that doesn't happen' or 'but don't worry that is very unlikely'.
It is not something that was ever discussed with me with my midwife and it was only briefly touched upon in the NHS antenatal classes. Sure we all spent an hour on floor doing a giant 'natural birth' process diagram/ jigsaw thing giving me all the information I already knew from basic GCSE biology and BabyCentre.com. But what about the other stuff? What about the less common and the less ideal? I'm not saying they should scare expectant mothers with horror birth stories but lets get real here, C-Sections are a reasonably common occurrence and they should try to prepare us for that eventuality.

I, myself with no birthing experience had a negative and prejudice opinion of C-sections - how did I get that opinion? I think from the media and sadly also from my peers.

10 Things I Wish I Could Tell Pregnant Me

1. You Don't Need All That Cotton Wool
You've bought shit loads of cotton wool, in like 5 different varieties - you are completely ridiculous. From Day Two you will be using baby wipes because cotton wool is a giant pain in the arse.

2. Don't Re-decorate Your House
You've got someone coming in to re-paint every wall during the first week of your maternity leave. What are you thinking? Its August, its 30 degrees, you live in a tiny little flat and you are the size of a house. Fool.

3. You Have No Fucking Clue How to Swaddle a Baby
If you can't do it now with an inanimate teddy bear, you wont be able to do it with a screaming, wriggling baby. Give it up.

C-Section Bashing

Ok so I read this article recently and well, it kind of pissed me off.

How-C-section-affect-baby-s-BRAIN-development

Here’s the link if you want to read it and obtain a more articulate overview but allow me to give you a brief outline.

It’s basically a piece about a study carried out in Canada comparing the spatial attention of babies born vaginally to those delivered by Caesarean section.

In a nutshell the study was carried out on 36, three- month old babies who had some stuff waved about in front of them. If their eyes followed the object, that meant their attention had been caught and everything was hunky dory. If their eyes didn’t follow the object, it was deemed that their spatial attention was slowed.

The results of the study found that babies delivered via C-section were more likely to fall into the latter category.