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🤔Lately my criticism of certain sleep training practices has been met with a type of defensiveness and anger that I find difficult to name.

🤰The same has happened in the past when I have criticised the birth and maternity care system.

I’d like to make something clear here:

👉Nothing I say on this platform is a direct criticism of you, your loved ones, or your parenting.

🏨Yes, on a systemic level, I am concerned by the medicalisation of birth and the fear mongering that goes along with it.

🏕O…

“Fine. I’m leaving you behind”.

The mother walks away from the boy, all of 3 at best. He is wailing on the ground, she is swearing under her breath.

My daughter watches them. “Cuddle him. Crying. Cuddle his mum”, she says. She is stuck halfway up a ladder, transfixed by them.

“Nooo don’t leave meeeee”, the boy squeals.

I can feel my daughter’s distress rising, and my body closing down too.

My heart hurts with the sound - “just go to him, Mama”, I urge her silently.

Before long the critical…

[Following on from the image above]

What alienates us from our gut feeling as parents?

👉Traumatic or disrupted birth experiences or health system interactions that leave us feeling disconnected from our bodies and our babies

👉Social structures that prevent us seeing the breadth of normal infant behaviour before we have our own babies

👉A pervasive sleep training culture and lack of access to quality resources around how to make co-sleeping safe

👉Individualistic culture that leaves parents ex…

I have never felt so angry in all my life as in the last two weeks.

I'm certainly not immune to anger, but it often passes pretty soon. Until the last fortnight, the worst bout of anger I've had in recent years was the week I spent writing my book chapter on anger (funny that).

This time though, it's been epic. I didn't have a blue with my partner, and nothing particularly awful happened, but every tool in my tool-belt has been called on to avoid throwing the child I love most in the world acr…