Is It Just Me? (4 page)

My three-year-old is seven kilos overweight. This might not sound like much, but for a preschooler, this is a big deal. I'd noticed he'd started getting larger in the past twelve months. Looking at photos of him taken this time last year showed a huge difference in appearance.

Sure, he'd grown taller. He'd had his first proper haircut where his cherubic blond curls had been snipped away to reveal a very serious and surprisingly dark businessman's hairdo. But his baby softness had gone, too. In its place was a little boy who was just too heavy. I denied and denied. Then I started to panic. Then I went straight to Google.

Immediately, juice was banned. No juice. Not even diluted. He reacted to this new rule not unlike a possessed child being splashed with holy water. He writhed. He screamed. I think I actually saw his head rotate 360 degrees. But the no-juice rule stayed.

But the chub was still there.

I was put on my first diet at the age of eleven. This involved turning up to group meetings with grown women in a church hall, slipping off my shoes and being publicly weighed.

I was counting kilojoules and whipping skim milk into fluff, as a snack, before I had left primary school. I didn't want anything like this for my son. But in my desire to avoid the demonisation of food and the low self-esteem it inevitably creates, I had unwittingly set my beautiful son on a rocky path.

It wasn't until I took him to his first day of creche that I saw how different he was. The other kids seemed so small compared with my little sweetheart, whose shoes and pants were at least two sizes bigger. Mild panic set in. What happens if someone is mean to him? What happens when, after three years of being told he is magnificent, someone tells him otherwise, based on his weight? I could barely breathe.

Last month, he had his check-up with the maternal health nurse, and that was when the news of his extra seven kilos was broken. The nurse was wonderful about it, and I'm certain it's not an easy conversation to have. Mercifully, my concern was palpable. She knew I was out of my depth and gently suggested I go to see a paediatric dietitian.

This sent me into a spiral. For as long as I can remember, eating disorders and an obsession with weight have been a girls-only domain. Girls I knew in the '80s were eating only a packet of chicken-noodle soup and a green apple for the entire day. And they were thirteen. I was one of them. Sadly, statistics show that boys are not immune to this madness.

I imagined turning up to a clinical office, my baby being stripped and weighed.

I imagined this as the day his self-loathing would be born. I called the dietitian and asked if it was necessary for her to sight my son, as I was paranoid about him being made to feel that he was anything less than perfect. She assured me it was necessary to see him, but it would be okay.

I knew she would ask me what a typical day of food entailed for him and I thought she would think I was lying. But this is a child who doesn't know chicken nuggets. He's never had a fish finger. He hates cream. Sure, he loses his mind and acts like a kelpie off a leash at a party with cake, but don't all kids?

I told her what he eats. Fruit. Lots of fruit. Cheese. Toast. Chicken breast. No other meat. He will eat around the meat in a spaghetti bolognaise, which is quite a skill. She listened intently for twenty minutes while I expressed my bafflement. Then she helped me.

My three-year-old eats too much good stuff. Turns out that four bananas a day, if you're only one metre tall, will make you fat. And if you throw in three mandarins, a punnet of strawberries and four Cheestiks, you're in a pair of size-6 elasticised jeans before you can say, “Is it creche today?”

My shame for getting him into this mess has turned to relief. He's now eating all the things he knows and loves, just far less of them … and not every day!

But we are the lucky ones. We can afford to see a professional who will probably change our lives. We are also a family who know about good food, grow vegetables and always have a bowl of fruit on the table (or up high in the pantry now, to stop the daily disappearance of five kiwi fruit). What happens to the kids whose families have no idea about nutrition, and no money to talk to someone about it? I am an educated woman with a wealth of knowledge about food, and even I stuffed up badly. It's all very well to bleat on about the obesity epidemic, but until we make education about basic nutrition accessible for everyone, it will just get worse.

 

3rd June 2012

My magazine editor casually mentioned to me over email that the next issue's cover story would be about vibrators and sex toys and if I could just explore that topic a bit … it might be nice … a little tie-in. I quickly tapped out an email saying that I couldn't possibly write about that as I found the whole concept to be a bit “icky”. That's the exact word I used. Icky.

Then I thought, why do I find it, as I so intellectually put it, icky? What's wrong with it? And if every woman is harbouring a plastic gherkin with an on/off switch in her knickers drawer, then why can't I?

I went to a Catholic girls' school. Now, before you jump to any conclusions about me wandering the timber halls protecting my candle from the breeze during prayer vigils (and let's be honest, there was a fair bit of that), let me just say for the record that if I could've had a boyfriend, I would've. I had rampaging crushes that inspired behaviour that today would probably get me jailed for stalking. I obsessed. I calculated compatibility according to how many letters our combined names had in common with the word “loves”. If I got a low score with the boy I was in love with I'd just change the spelling. I tried this trick with everyone I ever met, and only stopped when I'd reached a rare 99 per cent compatibility with Omar Camel.
*

Boys were just a mystery. I never knew what to say when they were talking to me. I felt like the guys I knew wanted small, quiet blonde girls. Not big, brunette, curly ones who belly-laughed and loved the Smiths. I always felt so conspicuous, and “less” than.

I clearly remember watching a film clip in 1986, possibly on
Countdown
. The song was “Breakout” by a one-hit-wonder band called Swing Out Sister. They had a bob-haired woman as the singer and two other male members. I studied the clip intently, and learnt all the words.

That achieved, I continued on with thoughts such as: “Wow. That woman is in a band with men. They're not married … so they must be friends? Imagine having a male friend? What do they talk about? Is she always trying to keep quiet and not be funny? Do they want to kiss her even though she looks like a bit of a show-off?”

So I never had any boyfriends and was deeply jealous of the girl at our school who was rumoured to be “doing it”. Boohoo.

But now I believe I've hit the man jackpot. My fella is both charming and sexy. He really likes me, and I like him, and we are enormously happy, and, frankly, I don't want to mess with it by doing what many articles suggest and go off to “buy a vibrator together”. I just can't imagine it. I would laugh. A lot. Then I'd get worried it would get weird and I'd have to mumble, “Only joking. Let's get home to the kids.” Oh, yeah. Foxy. That's me!

I've even heard people say that women who are adamant they don't have a toy at home are lying. I assure you, I'm not lying.

It may be a generational thing. Those “aids”, in my memory, are sold in creepy stores that always seem to be accessible only via a shady doorway and a flight of stairs. The windows are painted out. If anything, I've always found this particular line of merchandise to be funny, not sexy. And definitely just for other people.

It seems, though, that women have been secreting away these pleasure machines for decades. My friend's brother actually found a little something in his own mum's shelves. Let's say he got a little more than he bargained for one Sunday afternoon in the '80s while playing murder in the dark in her walk-in wardrobe. Technically, he wasn't snooping … because who knew glow-in-the-dark technology and sex toys were a match made in heaven? The horror/hilarity of this story has gone down in folklore among that group of friends. And his mother's name, Brenda, is now only pronounced “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrenda”.

Perhaps that has scarred me? The hushed laughter we all shared over that story has meant that this topic has hitherto meant comedy, not titillation. There's no doubt, as I write this, that I am showing my age, conservatism and possibly immaturity.

But by all accounts “things have changed” … so excuse me while I get enlightened and turn to the naughty pages in the magazine. I always did love a sealed section!

 

10th June 2012

There is a lot to dislike about winter. It's cold, for a start. And I, for one, always seem to be in a maniacal hurry from one form of heating (car, office, home) to another and back again. My skin cracks up from the change in climate. My winter coat gets snugger year on year. And I don't like scarves. But all these negatives magically disappear when you remember that there is soup. And shanks. And mash.

Nothing puts me in a better mood than when I stop at my local butcher to pick up some chicken bones for my world-famous cream of chicken soup. Meticulously dicing the celery and carrot is not just a recipe step … I kind of commune with them.

Summer in Australia is the stuff of legend. November hits and the suburbs are awash, or at least mine is, with the smoky aroma of sizzling snags and fatty lamb chops. But let's not forget the chillier cousin. Winter is the season when the oven comes into its own. And it's also the season when I happily pull out all my nifty appliances that have been gathering dust while the metal skewers and salad servers get a good workout. I have a slow cooker. I think I wept when I chose the one with a timer. This means I can throw all sorts of things in it before I go to work, and when I get home the smell of succulent chicken pieces, herbs from the garden and sweet, translucent shallots greets me before my three-year-old has even had a chance to tear around the corner on his trike.

Nothing says, “Welcome home,” like the smell of a winter meal.

I remember playing in the streets around my house when I was about six years old. We lived in a newish suburb in the late '70s and there were lots of dark-brown brick and quarry tiles and ferneries. There were also great casseroles. Early one evening, in that delicious free time between primary school knock-off and when Dad wanted to watch the news, I was playing with an Indian boy who lived close to my place. We might have been having a heated discussion about which Kiss member we most identified with and – bang! – it hit us: the aromatic waft of a slow-cooked-from-scratch curry.

Kavin's mother was a petite woman who wore bright saris and said very little. I believe that when you know your way around a cumin seed and a knob of ghee like she did, you can let your cooking do the talking. Instead of calling out to her children to come in for dinner, or ringing a bell (as my Irish Catholic friend's mother used to do), she would simply open the front door of her home. Slowly, the warm smells of dinner would creep out into the street and tell Kavin he was about to get the feed of his life.

Discussion stopped. He ran inside. And I moseyed back to my place for my evening meal, probably of apricot chicken. Or, if it was
Blankety Blanks
night, Rice-a-Riso.

The cooler months are the patron saints of home. We can't wait to get back there. In summer we're always out. We're splashing in pools, picnicking in parks and licking ice-creams on bustling streets at 8pm, because we can. Not in winter. Winter is for corduroy and remote controls. For mugs of things and doonas. For lamb shoulder and pork belly.

In fact, I think roasts might just be the overall heroes of winter. I was always scared of roasting a chook and only perfected my technique a few years ago. A crisp-skinned bird, stuffed with rosemary, parsley and thyme and a lemon, if I have one, is to me the perfect frosty weather treat. It ticks all the boxes. Delicious, obviously. Economical, yes (there's the next-day sangas, stock from the bones and let's not forget the sneaky post-dinner clean-up “pickover”). But there's also the chicken smell. It's a smell that says to my family that I love them madly. It fills the house and even surrounds the garden with the misty aroma of care. Even the next-door neighbours can smell it. I like to think they get envious.

And when my fella has been out all day working on a building site, hunched over a tepid sausage roll for smoko, then listening to the dire traffic reports on the radio on the way home, it makes me swell with pride knowing that as soon as he pulls into our driveway, he will take great sniffs of a home-cooked meal. The house will be warm. He will come in, dump his little blue lunchbox, unzip his coat and say, “Dinner smells great, Cakie.” For me, that means job done.

Now … why am I so hungry?

 

17th June 2012

My parents thought they had finished having their children in their twenties, just as all their friends had. So when, in her thirties, Mum discovered she was pregnant with me, she was, to put it mildly, surprised. My sisters were much older than me and all our family friends had children of similar age, so I spent my childhood really feeling like the odd one out.

It never crossed my mind that someone's mum could be pregnant because I'd never seen it. At primary school my friends' mothers must have finished their families, too, because no one ever welcomed a baby sister or brother. We all dreamt about it, but it never happened – until Year 5 when a schoolmate announced her mum was having a baby.

I eyed her mother off at school pick-up and watched her belly grow. I was two parts fascinated and one part jealous as hell. Wasn't it every ten-year-old girl's dream to have a real live baby at home to put in a stroller and dress up like Holly Hobbie?

At the last school pick-up of the year, I saw my friend's mum in something smocky, heaving her other small kids into the Nissan Prairie, and I knew that by the time we'd covered our maths books in contact paper for the following year, she'd be strapping another little one into the people mover.

But that was not to be. When we returned to school there was no baby.

He had been born. He had been named. He had been shuttled home in a hand-me-down baby suit to the embraces of his eager siblings and awe-struck parents. But one morning, a few weeks into his new life, he did not wake up. He just didn't. No symptoms, no illness, no warning. He was gone.

And that was my first experience with the unfathomable horror that is sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). I can imagine nothing knocks you down quite so quickly and permanently as losing a baby.

When my babies were small (and not so small) I would get such a thrill walking into their bedrooms to see them first thing in the morning. To find your baby still and silent when you excitedly go to see their face … well. Even the thought of it brings tears to my eyes and a little crack across my heart.

A few years after my friend lost her baby brother, Red Nose Day – run by the SIDS and Kids charity – began. Initially, I thought the idea was crass. It was such a serious thing, to lose a baby. How can we clown around about it? But as Red Nose Day became so popular, so visible, so effective, I realised the red nose was not about making light of a devastating topic – it was about making a point. It was about speaking about the unspeakable.

Red Nose Day has worked. The research that has been done by SIDS and Kids has been, quite literally, life-saving. The fact that we sleep our babies on their backs, keep their cots uncluttered, keep them in the same room as us where possible and breastfeed if we can is reducing cases of sudden infant death syndrome every single day.

We weren't always doing all of that before. Plenty of families have cringeworthy recollections, usually with a '60s or '70s soundtrack, of their mother, her mouth with a ciggie hanging out of it, rearranging a toy-infested bassinet and wondering, “If a nightie is highly inflammable, does it mean it's likely or unlikely to go up in flames when placed in front of a molten-lava bar heater?”

We have come so, so far.

Since the first Red Nose Day was held in 1988, cases of infant death by SIDS have decreased by 80 per cent. That's thousands of babies who are now growing up and destroying rusks and writing notes to Santa and dragging their parents to
Dora the Explorer Live!
Thousands. Of. Babies.

We can thank SIDS and Kids for this, but we can thank ourselves, too. By buying that silly red nose and putting it on our faces, or on the front of our car or our office building, we have contributed to life-saving research.

I always buy whatever I can from the SIDS and Kids card table outside my supermarket, and when my children were newborn I popped onto their website to make sure I was doing everything I could to reduce the risks.

So if you can spare a few dollars on the next Red Nose Day, I can just see the thousands of tiny hands that will applaud you – or high-five you, if you're into that instead.

 

24th June 2012