Mumsnet Talk

What a horrible, nasty piece of editorial. My skin is crawling reading that. So many horrible things in such a short piece of writing, she must be very bitter and twisted inside. And her bum crack must be chaffed to bits with her yanking up her judgey pants all the time...

When DS was 2 weeks old I had hideous mastitis and was exhausted and in pain. My lovely next door neighbour took DS and his 4 year old sister outside to play for 2 hours whilst I napped on the sofa. I am eternally grateful to her for this simple kindness. I'm sure Megan Fox is just as grateful to her nanny.

venomous article
if I'd had the money id have hired staff 24-7 damn right

Yep, co-sleeping is the answer to every situation, every child, every mum ever. And all HCPs are crap and liars.

This article is disgusting because it is both judgemental and poorly reasoned. And I don't even particularly like Megan Fox.

What a horrible article. I would have loved to have been able to afford a night nurse. I can't remember most of the first eight months from exhaustion due to a never sleeping for more than an hour at a time, constantly hyperactive, attention seeking baby. It didn't make me a better mother but it did make me forgetful, non thinking, aggressive, always sobbing and a little bit crazy and I doubt dd benefited from that.

How lovely for Megan to be able to enjoy her new baby from the get go. Some people get lucky with good sleepers, others are fortunate to have help, nothing wrong with that. I don't understand what the 'mummy martyrs' are trying to prove. There's nothing wonderful or admirable about not being able to function properly on a day to day basis and not being able to focus on or enjoy your baby because you're wrecked from months of not sleeping....ever...

10 days

So actually the article should have been about what a bloody slacker Megan Fox is compared to proper celebrity mums in the US who give birth actually on the treadmill whilst rehearsing scenes for the first day of filming the next day.

Lots of women only get 10 days. The big investment banks are considered 'generous' with 6 weeks maternity leave but it does vary depending on employer and state.

It’s why maternity leave was invented.

Don't American women in general have about half an hour off on maternity leave, compared to our European allowance?

But other than that - good god. I am extremely glad I didn't give the Indie the page hit to read that complete load of hate-filled toss. And if Megan Fox was 'courting admiration' why would she have admitted she had employed a night nanny?

This is the text:

To Megan Fox and other celeb mums - night nurses are a sign of flawed motherhood
Is it natural to allow someone else to take responsibility for your baby's needs?

So Transformers star Megan Fox has been on prime American TV to inform the world that, aged 26, she cannot cope with looking after her baby who was born on September 27.
Fox and her husband, Brian Austin Green, have hired a night nurse so that they, the child’s parents, can get a night’s sleep.

Well, I think that’s pretty disgraceful on several counts and I am about to be Very Judgmental - so if you don’t like condemnatory views of other people’s behaviour then look away now.

Babies are born to women – whether some feminists like it or not and wish it otherwise – and nature provides the baby’s food in the form of breast milk. That milk, and suckling it from the mother’s breast, is the child’s entitlement. Direct access to its mother’s breast milk is, in my book, every child’s human right.

That doesn’t mean extracting it with a pump and handing it over to someone else to pour into the child either. It means proper tactile feeding from the breast and all the bonding which goes with that. Everyone knows that there is nothing better than breast milk for a baby’s health and, there are benefits for the mother too – not least, it is much easier to lose the baby weight if you breast feed than if you don’t. It is also considerable less hassle – at a time when you’re tired and maybe stressed – than fiddling about with bottles which have to be sterilised. And you have it with you, on tap as it were, wherever you and the child happen to be.

If you hire a night nurse the child may be losing out on part of this and I regard that as a form of neglect.

Second, all young babies need frequent feeds, usually every two to four hours throughout the day and night. You know that – surely – from the outset. Nights are difficult and new mothers are likely to feel tired because for a while they won’t be able to sleep for more than two or three hours at a stretch either. It goes with the territory of motherhood. It always has and it always will. It’s a phase which doesn’t last long though and, with sensible management, most babies will sleep through before they are six months old – both mine did so from three months. That is why it really isn’t sensible for mothers of babies under six months to be trying to do lots of other things – such as work, having a social life or appearing on TV - at the same time. It’s why maternity leave was invented.

If you can’t accept that this is how things are – and hirers of night nurses presumably can’t - then should you really be embarking on motherhood in the first place? Not everyone is cut out for it, after all.

Third, pregnant women get fat. Not only do they have the obvious baby bump but most female bodies lay down extra fat reserves in pregnancy too. It is nature’s insurance because you need extra reserves to draw on once the child is born. It takes a few months to shed it. Breast feeding helps because you are giving away calories all the time. So do long walks with a sleeping baby in a buggy or pram.

What isn’t natural is to regain your model figure (with tight breasts – it is not known whether Miss Fox is actually breast feeding at all) in a couple of months looking as if there had never been a baby and presenting this as if it were some kind of triumph of feminism.

When a mother is very much in the public eye and makes an appearance like this it gives the impression that this is how it should be in an ideal world. Hire a night nurse, get plenty of sleep, leave your infant with someone and then look like you've spent hours in the gym. Then court admiration for your fantastic achievement.

Far too many gullible women will try to ape this – and fail. Most can’t afford night nurses or other help, even if they want them, and very few will, for whatever reason, manage the workouts Miss Fox must presumably have fitted in to look as she does.

Actually I think that to look slim, sexy, well groomed, relaxed and not tired, when there’s a baby at home under three months old is a sign of flawed motherhood rather than anything to be proud of.

It implies that people who are not lucky are doing something wrong.

Not read the article (don't want to reward the journo by opening the link) but this is an interesting thread. I think the idea that we should subsume ourselves into our babies explains why mothers are judged so harshly. We have to cope without anyone seeing us sweat.

Yes Amber, you were lucky.

Not all babies are the same and it's incredibly damaging when people insist that what worked for them should work for all babies, as BOF has already said. It's not really that giant a leap of imagination to understand that.

I co slept out of desperation, and it made things slightly more bearable but I was still desperate for an unbroken night's sleep.

Sorry to hear your DS is bad too PleaseLets. DD was up countless times the last few nights. Sleepy vibes from me to both of them!

i guess that dependshow much notice you take of what doctors say,im very wary,i tend to go with what feels natural and do my own research but i understand not everyone is like that.

I must of just been lucky with my 4?

Amber cosleeping is not recommended by many doctors. That's why many parents choose not to do it. I had no intention of doing it with my kids and was very conscientious of always putting dd in her cot.

Ds would not have it and I had to keep him in bed with us which meant I got no sleep as I have sleep apnea and was scared shitless of rolling on him.

Yes, it is exactly what I meant. It is never (or rarely) done with malice, but it can make people feel a bit crap. Generally, we all just muddle through doing our best, and we've often tried what other people are suggesting and have found that, for whatever reason, it hasn't worked for us.

Amber- With the greatest of respect, I think that's an example of what BOF was talking about. Extrapolating personal experience to the general. I didn't find it that hard in early days either, though dear god knows I do now it is still going on after 18 months (and I reckon that, with DD1 added to the mix, I've had about 9 months of a full night's sleep since early 2009, most of which I spent pregnant and so exhausted I thought I would die anyway).

But there are any number of reasons why people do. Babies that don't just go back to sleep and stay up for hours. Babies that wake every 30 minutes. Mothers who find that they just can't sync with their baby's sleep cycle and are dragged from a deep sleep every time. Mothers who have medical conditions where they need decent, deep sleep. And 'just' mothers who personally find it hard having their sleep interrupted - and for a lot of healthy youngish woman, that is probably as much as a psychological level as anything. I know I found it tougher being up with DD1, just because it was such a huge adjustment and the mental strain of this tiny being even being able to control you not resting when you are knackered is tough.

while i dont think theres anything wrong with a night nurse i dont understand why people find it so hard in the night,i co slept with all of mine and when they woke up to feed i just latched them on and then went back to sleep,did the same with a bottle later on too.

I fantasised about a night nurse when ds was waking every two hours for a feed...

I am confused as to why the Daily Mail is outsourcing its misogyny to the Independent.

It seems like a sign flawed journalism to do so. Totally unatural

Yes Galaxy, my DS is a terrible sleeper too, I feel for you I really do. Which is why this article has got to me so much.
Christ if I could afford help I'd get it. I'm sure most of us would.

*vile

Vil article. I fantasised about being able to afford a night nanny when DS was born, I would quite happily have killed for a full night's sleep.

What a crock of shit. She would not like to meet me in real life.

I think the reason I'm worked up about it is that she basically seems to be saying that every woman should totally subsume themselves, any desires of their own, because they are a mother. The clear message is that Megan Fox, by deciding to do something which presumably she feels is for her benefit more than the baby's (not to imply it harms the baby, but as in, not getting up in the night isn't a sacrifice she is making because she thinks it's better for her baby) is a shit mother.

And that message is one that comes across too often in discussions about motherhood.

I don't think we're meant to feel more for her, mintyy, but IMO it's like anything - you get women who're buying into the patriarchy who are more or less culpable, and women and men who're protesting the patriarchy or going their separate way. And you get people who are both cementing the patriarchy and benefitting from it. I have no idea who Megan Fox is, but she's obviously not doing the last one of those. She may be buying into the patriarchy, but she's also been taken down by it, I think?