A mother bear's instinct.

It's been a long week. We got a lot done. I (finally) got Noelie registered in the French embassy. I got Marie's 'first big girl's' haircut. We went to a communion. We went to the hospital.

For a few days, I had a feeling that something was not quite right with Noelie. Call it a mother's instinct. There was nothing wrong with her. She was in great form. Crawling around, talking, clapping her hands, singing. Feeding well. Yet, something at the back of my mind was telling me that something was not quite right.

Friday, as opposed to the previous days, had been a quiet day. Until about 7.30 pm, when Noelie developed a high temperature. We gave her Nurofen and a lukewarm bath (in which Mr Foodie jumped fully clothed as apparently, 'it's easier to splash with her that way'). We brought the temperature down. She fed well, went to bed. We kept an eye on her during the night and she was fine. She slept well.

On Saturday, we had planned to go to Waterford for Mr Foodie's godson's communion. Noelie had a bit of a temperature in the morning. But it had gone so we decided to go down. It all went well but by 1pm, her temperature was back up. So we left early and made our way back to Dublin. At 6pm, her temperature was going up still. So we decided to bring her to the hospital.

Back in October, Noelie was admitted in for 3 days as she had a a UTI. And this time, the signs were the same. High temperature that came and went. A little cough (probably unrelated but still). Still herself and otherwise in great form. Nappies that were not as wet as usual. So we made the decision to go and get it checked out. Just in case.

We got there and she was admitted into the A&E. A nurse came over to check her out. She took her temperature that was still a bit high, checked her for rashes. Asked us the usual questions, checking for allergies etc.. Noelie is allergic to strawberries. It gives her eczema. And, what a surprise! The nurse came back to us with a syringe full of, yes, strawberry Calpol. We asked her for something else as first, Noelie doesn't like Calpol, and second, even though it is only strawberry flavoured, it still causes her to break out in a rash. Since there were no visible signs of anything in particular being wrong with her, we were asked to provide a urine sample. As the mother of the 2 year old little boy who was in the bed next to ours found out, it is not an easy task. Her little boy peed everywhere but in the little cup, not once, but twice. After a while, we did manage to get a few drops of the precious liquid in the cup and dropped it at the nurse's station. We got talking to a very nice health care assistant who informed us that she had sent the sample to the lab since it looked like Noelie had yet another UTI. All we could do now is hope that they wouldn't keep her in again. At 9.15, Mr Foodie went over to the nurse's station to see if the results had come back. Since that first nurse, nobody had been in to see us. The results had come back and she was being released with a prescription for antibiotics for the next week. So at 10.30 pm and after a well deserved detour via McDonald's drive through, we finally got home. Noelie went to bed and slept well and her temperature didn't come back until morning.

You would have thought that we had a bit of common sense and that we stayed at home and looked after our baby yesterday. But no, not us. Since her temperature was down, she was in good form and she had received her antibiotics, we decided to take a trip to the seaside. All of Mr Foodie's family had congregated there. It was also the first outing of the new baby. For those of you who are wondering, yes, they did call her the double barrel name that sounds incredibly like Noelie's real name. Arrrghhh. I did make a quick comment about it and left it at that.

At best, I'm a mother bear. It gets worse when my cubs are not feeling too good. And yesterday was a real test of my diplomacy skills. I think, at the best of times, people give the girls too much attention, especially Noelie. Comments such as 'she's so advanced for her age' etc make me grind my teeth. Our girls are not perfect. Our girls are average. Yes, they are advanced in some skills yet they are behind in others. I believe in praising the children, when they deserve it. Marie is 7, she is past the age of the 'good girl' for everything. She gets praise when she does something that is either out of her comfort zone, or she gets her homework right, or something a bit difficult for her. She doesn't get praised for picking up after herself, she gets a thank you. She gets recognition and encouragement and praise. Because in the real world, you don't always get recognition, let alone praise. I probably sound like a hard mother. I'm not. She receives praise and recognition and encouragement on a daily basis. I'm incredibly proud of my girls. I just don't like them to get too much attention and rewards for nothing. I don't believe that my children are better than all the other children (well sometimes), I don't believe that the sun shines out of their you know what. But that's just me.

As soon as we got there, Noelie was whisked away. She was pulled in all directions (metaphorically of course). 'Are you coming to me', 'Clap for X, Y, Z', 'Give us a smile', 'Are you giving me some?', 'Give the baby a kiss' were fusing, all at the same time, all by different people, who all knew that she had spent 4 hours in hospital the evening before and that her little body was fighting an infection. Despite all that, they were still asking her to perform. I felt like putting her hat in front of her. Give the monkey a penny and she will perform a trick for you! We thought that the new baby would 'deflect' some of the attention away from her. It didn't. We thought that people would understand that even though 'she looks in great form', she is not. They didn't. I felt like telling them to leave her alone, give her some space. She does not need anybody literally in her face when we are trying to feed her. She does not need anybody, trying to get her attention when we are trying to get her to drink the fluids that will help her flush away the infection. She would happily sit in her buggy and watch the world go by. She does not need to be asked to perform. She is not a performing monkey. She does not need 10 different people trying to get a piece of the Noelie cake, trying to hold her, trying to get her to say things, trying to get her to clap her hands, trying to get her to come to them. She needs space and peace. I was quite uneasy, so was Mr Foodie. All we could do was stand back, relegated to the back of the crowd while our baby was being taken over, while everybody was getting their little piece of her. After an hour or so, we made our excuses and left. We talked about it and we both felt the same way. Since it is his side of the family, I don't feel like it is my place to say anything. It's not really fair on him. I don't want to sound ungrateful. They are all caring, nice people. I am sure they don't realize that, sometimes, they just take over. I know it will be difficult. We don't want to fall out with people, we don't want them to take it the wrong way. But all we would like is just a bit of space for her and for us, time to get settled when we get there, without her being taken over, being whisked away, having people in her face asking her to perform. Even on a normal day, when she feels good. Unless they ask, unless we ask.

Have you ever had to ask people to 'back off' a bit? How did you approach it? Or are you just glad to go along with it?

A new addition to the family and other tails

I wish to apologize in advance. This post doesn't have just one topic but more than one. And they are absolutely not linked in anyway. Well maybe a little.

First I am very proud to announce that we have a new addition to the family. No I'm not pregnant. We just took in a poor stray cat. We had noticed a cat roaming around our back garden for the past few days. The day before yesterday, we realized that the poor cat was living in our shed. We assumed that it belonged to one of our neighbours. Yesterday morning I was woken up by the cat meowing at the door. I took pity on it and gave him something to eat. Marie came along and started pointing out that the poor cat was shivering. It was bitter outside indeed. Then, the cat proceeded to follow me around the house from outside. Like some kind of stalker. I went for a shower, the cat was at the bathroom window. I went to wash the dishes, the cat was at the kitchen window. I went to the girls bedroom, the cat was at the window. Quite spooky I must admit. So I placed a phone call to Mr Foodie and told him that the poor cat was cold and hungry. Now, Mr Foodie is not a lover of cats, he'd rather take a dog in anytime. But he agreed to let the cat in. That cat is the most placid cat I ever came across. I let the cat into the kitchen. And convinced Mr Foodie to keep her. And off I went to get cat essentials, litter box, food, collar, flea treatment etc...The cat roamed around the kitchen and sitting room. I kept a close eye on it with Noelie, not sure how she or the cat would react. Noelie got very excited. She tugged on the poor cat's tail, its ears and whiskers. The cat never blinked, or turned on her. All it wanted to do was get away. Marie, too, is delighted. She can't wait to go back to school and tell her teacher about he new cat. Now, I can only picture her teacher's face when she tells her the cat's name. The only condition Mr Foodie put on keeping the cat (apart from making sure it's not diseased, or aggressive etc of course) was to pick the name. So I hereby introduce the new addition to the family: Nama. I can hear the Irish grinding their teeth from here. For all the non Irish readers, you might not know what Nama is. Nama stands for National Assets Management Agency. In other words, it's the agency put in place this week that is going to allow the bankers to get out of the mess they created scoff free. Nama is going to pump billions of taxpayers money into the banks. You can read more about it on Irish Mammy on the run wonderful post. And as my mum said, Mr Foodie has quite a warped sense of humour, I know.

Talking about Mr Foodie, SuperFoodie has come out of his SuperFoodie cave once more. He has now decided to take on a big enemy: The Department of Social and Family affairs no less. I seem to be receiving every 3 to 4 months letters from the above asking me to confirm my children's school and doctor details. Failure to do so would result in my Children's Benefit being cut off. I duly send back the form every few months. After a while though, I talked about it with Mr Foodie's sister in law and other people. And it turns out that they don't receive such a form. Today, I received my 2nd form this year. And it just bugged me. So I decided to give them a call. One of my many disguises as FoodieGirl is that of an Irish woman. I sound like one. I don't have a French accent (to the disappointment of some people, to the amazement of others). Sometimes to the point when I'm asked to prove I'm French, usually in the form of 'Oh, Whereabouts in France do you come from? And I answer the question in my most pronounced French accent. So I called the Department of Social and Family affairs with my best Irish accent. I was happily surprised to wait only a few minutes. And I asked my question:
-' Why do I get that form every few months?'
-' Oh, everybody gets it.' was the answer.
-' None of my friends do.'
-' Well everybody will get it soon.'
And there I took my opponent by surprise:
-' Is it because I'm French?' and the answer was a plain Yes. Got her! Then she started muttering something along the lines of 'Well, I mean, you entered the country.' Which I did, more than 10 years ago!!! I thanked her for her help and hung up.
I then called the SuperFoodie phone, and told him all about it. SuperFoodie took the fight on from there, he called the Ministry of Social and family affairs and tore their argument of fraud avoidance to shreds. After all, Noelie is Irish. Marie is Irish. He is Irish. And the fact that it amounts to racial profiling really and is completely inefficient. If you're foreign and want to cheat the system, you can easily give somebody else's address and get them to fill it in and return it. And if you're Irish, well you don't have much to worry about since you don't get the form. So you could have left the country in search of greener pastures and still get Children's Benefit here. And if I'm not mistaken, that's fraud too, isn't it? Now SuperFoodie would like me to contact a solicitor, it might be worth a shot, what do you think?

Finally, I experienced the most humiliating experience this week. I went to collect my first unemployment benefit. See, again, in order to avoid frauds, you do not get that payment in the bank. Instead, you have to go and collect it at the Post Office. So, kids in tow, I went in. I can only describe it as confidence crushing, humiliating and I felt like crying. Once again, it could be because my name is not Irish, or it could just be me. The lady behind the counter was not particularly nasty, she didn't look like a witch or anything, she was just doing her job. I gave my card, I got the receipt and then she went on to count the money. Loud enough so I could hear. Loud enough so that anybody within earshot in the tiny post office could hear. And everybody knows what that amount means. And you walk away from the counter, and you might as well be wearing a big red arrow pointing down on your head, with the words Foreigner claiming Benefit here. Because I speak French to the girls you see, so people knew I was not Irish. I hated every single minute of it. It's probably all in my head. But having been self sufficient for years, it was quite a blow. It felt like taking somebody else's money. I was told to consider it like getting a small bit of the tax I have paid into this country back, and that with time it does get better. I hope so because I don't want to feel like this every week. As much as I am delighted to spend time with my girls and doing a good job at it, something in my head made me feel like a bit of a failure. And it's not a nice feeling.

4 and a half minutes.

That's exactly the time it takes a judge to assess what the 'best interest' of a child is.

Yesterday, we went back to court. Noodlehead (as Marie calls him) wanted more access and to stop me from removing her from the country. If you remember, a couple of months back, I wrote this post. The plan was to ask her what she wanted to do. And so it happened and she said she didn't want to stay overnight. Wasted time as he'd gone and applied to the courts already.

So we went there yesterday. You are summoned to be in for 10h30, yet the judge doesn't bother appearing until 11h00. You go through the role call. And then you wait. Well, we didn't wait that long. Between 11h15 and 11h45, the judge had gone through about 10 cases. If you average it, it takes approximately 3 minutes to decide the fate of a child. That's all it takes.

I am frustrated, and defeated. I am terribly sad and angry.

I am frustrated because they just won't listen. It's like a self service cafeteria. The judge asked him what he was looking for, how much access he had at the moment. Then he asked me what I had to say to that. I told him that she doesn't want to go, that he asked her and that she denied. The judge cut me off and told me that she was only 7, and that if she said she told me that she didn't want to go to school, I would send her to school anyway. So that's what she has to be told, she has to go up there, end of. And went on to grant overnights every second week end. Oh and existing access still in place for the in between week. Which leaves me with what??? Well, it leaves me with this: 1 Sunday ever second week. If I were to work full time again, I would see my child 1 day every second week end. We rarely have a family week end as it is, since she goes there every Saturday. It's only when they cancel that we get to spend a whole week end together. Or, if my parents visit, which is about 3 times a year. And now, well, we'll get to spend family time one Sunday every 2 weeks.

How can a judge decide what is in the best interest of a child if he doesn't listen to them, if he doesn't listen to any argument at all? What kind of crystal ball does he have that allows him to know what the child is like, what effect his decisions have on a child, any child? Had she failed miserably at school, or developed some kind of unhealthy way of thinking, I couldn't even had put it across as he just DIDN'T WANT to listen. Is it normal for a 7 year old child to wish them all dead and express it? Is it normal for a 7 year old to express a will to crack people's head open? Because she does. She has said it to me on numerous occasions, more of late. We told her when we picked her up from school yesterday. She cried for 45 minutes. I feel like I failed her but I know I am not to blame. Judges just do not WANT to listen. It took him 4.5 minutes to 'hear' both sides and make a decision. Not even 4.5 minutes. I had to press to know where it would take place as there had been mentions of bed sharing. Small victory, it is to take place at his parents which he wasn't happy about.

People are treated like cattle. Children, although the decisions are meant to be for their best interest, are silenced, not given a voice. That judge turned up late and had to go through so many cases in the space of so many hours. There is no consideration for the children, for their feelings, for the long term effects, no consideration for the parents, no considerations for the ins and outs of things. No details to be discussed. No time for anything. A decision to be made, quickly, because there are another 20 cases to go through still.

What kind of long term effect will this have on her? What happens if you MAKE a child do something they do not want to do, every week over a period of time? It is terrible to think but I wish it could affect her to such an extend that her school work suffers, that she is affected deeply so I can have the tools to get her out of it. But then again, if I went back there to say this, would the judge LISTEN? My experience tells me that he wouldn't. He doesn't want to. So, no, I don't want her to suffer from it.

She told me this morning that she knows I did my best. It just broke my heart. She doesn't blame me, which is a good thing. But what best can I do, in the space of a few minutes? Did that judge realize that he was giving my child a day every second week to spend with our family at the week end, time when everybody can be together without work, school etc? He probably didn't even notice. He didn't bat an eyelid. Did he consider her feelings? Well, no, she has to be told that this is where she is going, end of. His words. So how is that in the best interest of the child, I ask you?

Did he even know the law? I bet you not, because when he was asked about the removing of the country, he said there was nothing he could do about that. Which is not true. I have looked into it, my mother has looked into it. It's called parental kidnapping if it's done without the other parent's consent, or the courts consent. And it's covered under the Hague Convention. So did he even know the law?

I have been crying since I got up this morning. I stayed strong in front of her and she told me that we would have to be strong. But it just breaks my heart to know that my child has been ordered away from me without any of her feelings acknowledged, without her voice being heard, without long term effects being considered. The best interest of a child in this country is just to disregard them as humans, and treat them as numbers. Don't know them, don't want to know them, don't want to listen to them. Second class citizens that do not have a voice and whoever speaks in their place is being silenced too. Her name was not spoken once in that room. Not once! She was merely a number, not even a number. She was not an individual in that room, she was not even a ghost in there. She had no place in there. That judge could have been talking about a puppy or a piece of furniture even, it would have felt the same. She was an object without feelings, without a voice. He made up his mind within less than a minute. Based on what? On thin air. On the need to make a decision because there was another 20 cases behind. That's probably what went on in his head. Make a decision, any decision. Go with what is asked. Don't look too much into it, it would last longer than 5 minutes and then you'd be there all day. Judges are being paid a small fortune to sit and make decisions. Their pay can not even be cut under the Irish constitution. In a criminal trial, the defendant has a voice, the victim has a voice, their families have a voice, they have a victim impact statement. In family court, the child, the one at the centre of the case, has no voice. There is no victim impact statement. The child is the victim of a hastily made decision. It's the judge's way or the highway.

My only consolation is that in the long run, forcing her to go there just makes her not want to go even more. When she is at an age when she is considered to be old enough to make her own decisions, she will make a decision. But what age is that? How old does she have to be to decide for herself?

This is the sad state of affair of the Irish family law at the moment. We were looking into options last night, impractical ones, stupid ones, even illegal ones. We are trying to come to terms with it, see what we can do. Mr Foodie is my rock. He is such a support. I don't know how to thank him. I know it is not easy for him either. He loves her with all his heart. But while I am just one for despairing for a bit and then act, he is one for action. I think Super Foodie is amongst us once again. We will get through this. We will protect her as much as we can. We will try and lessen the impact as much as we can. We will support her as much as we can. And we will listen to her, unlike the judges and the legal system in this country.