Women called to freeze their eggs when they hit 30

There was discussion on daytime TV yesterday about whether women should freeze their eggs at 30 in order to take control of their fertility.

This would essentially mean that women who wanted to further their careers, had not met the right man or who simply were not ready to start a family could do so later down the track if they wished without the worry of their biological clocks ticking.

Now, I always have to be careful when I talk about this kind of thing because I realise it is so easy to sit here at age 30 myself with my whole little family complete, without a simple problem with fertility along the way.

But the thing is I really do strongly believe that in life we need to follow what nature dictates.

The very thought of freezing eggs and therefore going down the route of IVF later in life just seems too manufactured and alien to me.

I know that many women who were desperate to have children have gone on to have them through this process and in turn these children have been much loved. And it really gets to me how it seems couples who would make wonderful parents end up childless whilst others who are awful parents end up with whole tribes of kids.

But I think that despite this it is not for humans to interfere with what nature is saying should be. If a couple cannot have children there is the option of adoption and if more people were open to this, this would mean there would be more unwanted children finding loving and caring homes.

At the same time, for women it really does come down to making a decision. Despite what the Government and society in general are trying to tell us, you simply cannot have it all.

I was extremely career orientated but I also wanted to have a family, and at a young age, so I realised sacrifices had to be made. More women need to do just the same. If you want to carry on well into your 30s with your career then you are just going to have to take that gamble later on over whether you can have children.

The option of motherhood needs to be a far more recognised and valid career option if you ask me and then I think more women would be happy to take it and we wouldn't be so embroiled in this talk of freezing eggs and IVF in the first place.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness

Well the walls in our bedroom are remarkably clean now.

I could say it all began with a careless mummy leaving her glass of water on the bedside table and the disappearance of my daughter's sponge from the bathroom.

But in actual fact it goes back further than that to my daughter's desire to help mummy with the dusting. (Yes I know, not a bad thing for a toddler to want to spend her time doing). I can't even get the duster and polish out without my daughter wanting her own duster to waft around with her own little squirt of polish on.

I didn't think much of her desire to clean the walls with the said duster rather than any actual items of furniture at the time. When there are already so many restraints and boundaries in place, it seemed foolish to introduce more when it came to something as positive as my daughter wanting to help her mummy out with keeping the house tidy, so I left her to it.

It was when I came into the bedroom after my shower the other morning, that I realised that there was a problem not only with my daughter's desire to help with the cleaning, but more specifically her desire to keep the walls clean.

I was confronted with the whole expanse of one wall dripping with water. In that split second when I saw that water it could just as easily have been blood or gunk or any other equally gruesome substance, such was my shock.

I know water on the walls doesn't compare to being confronted with crayon scrawled all over the walls, food splattered irredeemably across the sofa or the television set pulled off the TV table but so far to date, this is as shocking as it has got in our house, and I was most certainly shocked.

It was just the way the water was slowly dripping down the walls, mocking me as it went, saying, 'yes, I may just dry and leave no trace, or maybe somehow I will stain and leave a permanent reminder of what your daughter did.'

It did dry without a trace but that wasn't the point. I was gob-smacked by the event itself but also stumped as to what to say to my daughter. She pretty much went off without any reprimand at all, because what can you say? My daughter thought she was doing a good deed.

You want my opinion on NHS maternity services?!

Here's a classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.

And I'm not talking about my inability to function as a normal sane human being at the moment. I nearly went out with my slippers on yesterday for goodness sake.

But no. What I'm referring to is the fact I have received through the post a letter inviting me to take part in a survey about my experience giving birth at the local hospital. The letter has been sent out by the local NHS Trust.

The key point is – and those who follow my blog closely will know – I ended up giving birth at home rather than at hospital in the end. To cut a long story short, events came on so quickly and sharply, by the time I realised my little baby boy was about to poke his head out into the big, wide world it was as much as my husband could do to call the ambulance staff to my bedside. Forget actually getting me to the hospital.

Admittedly I would have been down to give birth at the hospital throughout my pregnancy but after giving birth any further documentation filled out by me, the midwife or the health visitor quite clearly stated I gave birth at home.

It just shows you that NHS records are simply not in sync. While one body knows one thing, somewhere else another department is being left completely in the dark.

There isn't one big computer system where the fact I didn't give birth at hospital has been logged.

But there is a far more serious side to this. The letter states this survey has been sent out to all women who were due to give birth at around the same time as me. But if there has been no proper checks on the eventual outcome and circumstances of that birth, who is to say women who did not successfully go on to give birth to a baby, such as those who miscarried or those who lost their babies during the delivery, also received the same letter and survey as I did.

It's one thing me having a moan about the lack of co-ordination across the NHS departments but another for a grieving woman to receive this piece of buffoonery through the post.

Four-year-olds are 'fattist' - apparently

According to a newspaper headline yesterday, children as young as four are 'fattist'. In other words they have already developed a prejudice against fat people.

Now to me this is merely stating the obvious. I think most people are aware that young children can be the harshest of critics and have not yet developed any notion of holding back when it comes to pointing out differences in people.

I think it is only to be expected that they would be showing signs of prejudice against people who are on the large size.

What does need to be considered however is where these children are getting the idea that fat people are somehow inferior to their slimmer counterparts. A lot has to do with their immediate families as they are obviously picking up ideas from home. Again this is not radically different to any other time throughout history. Go back just a couple of generations and it would have been completely acceptable for adults to make racist comments in front of their children, which in turn the little ones would have brought into the school playground.

Essentially, I don't think this kind of behaviour warrants a newspaper headline, and certainly not one which suggests this behaviour is by any means new, or even something to be terribly worried about.

It is simply an unavoidable part of growing up as children recognise differences in other people, and unfortunately are going to point them out.

All we can do as parents is encourage them to be more accepting of different types of people and when they inevitably come across children at school who are not quite as accepting, hope they are not swept along.

A child is always going to make some kind of disparaging remark about a person when they are little. The difference is you have to hope that when it comes to your own children this remark does not grow into a genuine prejudice held in adulthood.

It is certainly up to us as parents to ensure it does not develop into this and that means looking into our own hearts to make sure we don't hold such prejudices ourselves.

Angelina Jolie - a shining example to mothers

The news that Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has had a double mastectomy demonstrates the lengths a mother will go to to be there for her children.

Of course there will be other factors than the fact she has six children which have driven her to have such a drastic operation. Finding out, as she has done, that you have an 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer in your life, is a huge blow to your mortality - but I think any mother will agree with me that the biggest motivation will be her children.

It is heartening to see that even a woman of her profile, whose life is consumed by an industry obsessed with vanity, is prepared to go through a procedure which so brutally affects a person's appearance, and femininity.

In this respect, it shows that it doesn't matter if you are one of the most successful actresses in the world or a lowly cleaner, when it comes down to it we are all the same.

Anyone can be vulnerable to cancer and everyone is put on a level pegging when it comes to having to decide how to move forward on hearing you have such a high chance of succumbing to the disease.

I have to say that I don't know if I could be brave enough to take such a bold step should I ever find myself in Angelina's shoes. It takes real guts but at the same time, now I am a mother myself, I can see that you become more than prepared to take steps which you would once never have dreamed of taking. So when it came down to a choice of doing something which could potentially ensure I was around longer for my children, then I have to say I would give it long and hard consideration.

Good on Angelina Jolie for making the right decision for her and may she be an example to all other women, and mothers, who find themselves in her position.

My daughter – the social butterfly

My daughter is becoming quite the social butterfly. She insisted on being allowed to play with all the other children in the Ikea play area at the weekend.

So off she toddled. However, she very quickly realised that playing with these children wasn't going to be as straightforward as playing with the little girl that lives next door.

All the other children in the Ikea play area were older and much bigger than my daughter, and, most significantly, were far too busy doing their own thing to take her under their wing.

This left my daughter rather alone in the corner of the play area until one girl came along to inspect the toy my daughter was half-heartedly playing with - before disappearing off again.

My daughter meekly followed after this girl and stood beside her waiting, for what – this older girl to start playing with her I guess, but again this girl ran off, leaving my daughter alone.

In that moment my heart went out to my daughter. Gone was all thought of the fact she wakes us up at ridiculous hours of the morning and throws terrible two-style tantrums over absolutely nothing.

Instead, she looked like my vulnerable little baby girl once more, trying to make it in the big, wide world.

Smoking tests for pregnant women?

They have been talking about whether mums-to-be should be made to take a carbon monoxide test to see if they are smoking.

On the face of it, I am all in favour of anything which will get more pregnant women to kick the habit as there is no worse sight than an expectant mum smoking. I cannot begin to fathom why these women would want to endanger their unborn children in this way when the effects of this smoke are very real and proven.

I understand that for some women it is not a simple matter of stubbing out the habit overnight, though at the same time I am sure there can be no greater incentive than wanting to stop smoking for the sake of your unborn child. You also have to think about after you have had a baby. I think that seeing even a mother with young children smoking is a little unsavoury, so surely before getting pregnant is the right time to give up smoking, and for good. At all stages of a child's life they are in danger of illness through passive smoking. The same goes for smoking fathers in this case.

On this basis surely before a woman thinks about trying for a baby they should stop smoking first. A little life is not something to mess with and surely these women want to provide the best environment for their babies to grow – and that includes a smoke free one. However looking at the evidence, many women are not seeing the situation in this light. In fact, one in five women carry on smoking whilst pregnant.

On the other hand though, I think, as a non-smoker, I would have felt quite offended if the midwife had asked to run a carbon monoxide test on me whilst I was pregnant simply because the very idea that I would be doing something like that is so far from my mind. I would be offended that the midwife would think it even necessary to do such a thing.

Therefore it is a tricky subject when it really comes to that moment when a midwife has to get out that test and ask the mum-to-be's permission to do it. Whilst it will catch out those mothers who are not being honest about smoking, and in turn hopefully help them give up – isn't it at the same time an affront to those innocent of such a filthy habit, tarring all pregnant women with the same brush, as it were?

Really it should be for individuals to look into their own consciences but the problem is too many women are selfish to their own needs, even ahead of the little life they are carrying inside.