Kathryn Mewes: The supernanny who is now a struggling mum

[MummRaaa]

This is quite a sad article, though part of me does want to say, "so it's not as easy as it looks then, love?!"

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/11977203/Kathryn-Mewes-The-supernanny-who-is-now-a-struggling-mum.html

If a child is healthy, tired, well fed, at the right temperature and has a clean nappy, there’s no reason not to leave them to it.

The sad thing about that is that the only reasons she can entertain for a child crying are physical; she apparently thinks that no child is ever crying for emotional reasons. A child of 6 weeks has no way of communicating other than by crying, ffs, it's not a straight alternative between crying for physical reasons and crying to be bloody-minded. The only reason a tiny baby stops crying in that situation is that she's learnt far too young that it won't get her anywhere.

It's worryingly reminiscent of those stories about children in Romanian orphanages - I've read accounts of how you could go into a room with 30 cots, each with three babies or toddlers in, and it would be eerily silent because they had all learnt there was no point in crying.

It also casts a bit of a blinding light on her methods generally. When she is dealing with a child who has always co-slept and advocates shutting them into their room in the dark and letting them cry themselves to sleep, it appears she has absolutely no concept of the fear and distress they may be feeling. So far as she is concerned they are fed, healthy and clean and therefore have no reason to cry, therefore they can be left to cry themselves into exhaustion. To be honest, wild horses couldn't force me to let her loose on a child of mine.

She's really not very likeable is she? Everything about her is really not very pleasant is it?

I can't fathom leaving your newborn baby to scream. Or, thinking it's a normal reaction.

Surely, if you were very rich, you would spend your money on cleaners, cooks, drivers, housekeepers, a laundry service, etc. so you could focus on your new baby.

Fusion, you're quoting the lit. there when you say 'depression is not a proxy for inadequate parenting'...it's actually from a paper which looks at the many cross-overs and complexities in the field. I wouldn't speculate whether anyone is an 'adequate' parent on the basis of an interview, and you're right to be cautious.

Severe depression - the mothers who cannot make eye contact, as I said - is strongly associated with attachment difficulties.

We can't say if any of that appears to apply to KM, but I'd stick to my guns in saying that leaving a small baby of a few weeks old to cry without comfort and believing that comforting is to 'pander' is not good for either mothers or babies and their relationships.

The OP is just a ad for nanny services by making mothers doubt their own natural abilities. The message being: if even supernannies cannot handle their own babies, then surely mere mortals but need outside help to look after their newborns.

She is a caricature. Her methods of baby training inherently alien and unnatural to me (but it works for her).

Yes, I know where it came from, I just like the sound of it and think it's a clear, resonant phrase and one that bears repeating. I didn't go looking for a citation given that I'm not writing an essay .

Honestly, the relationship between depression and attachment difficulties, particularly where there are longstanding sequelae, are not that clear-cut for a huge range of reasons.

The risk of insecure attachment is much higher with severe untreated depression but like all of these things it is complex, likely multifactorial and there may be genetic or familial factors at play as well. That's before you even start to scratch critically below the surface of what maternal depression is, and the chicken-egg factors e.g. marital conflict, poverty, history of trauma, psychiatric co-morbidity etc.

So we have to be cautious and sensible about making blanket statements because they can be quite damaging to people in recovery, and serve no pragmatic purpose in a discussion like this one really. It's particularly important to note that for women who have been through this difficult experience, worrying about the quality of attachment and feelings of guilt and sadness about missed experiences are very common and normal, so it can be helpful to avoid engaging discussions that suggest that their children may have experienced long-term harm because they had an illness that was not of their choosing and not their fault.

Nothing to do with suggesting that it's okay to say children's needs shouldn't be pandered to. Very much a different issue.

There's something wrong with her to behave like that to a newborn, she probably didn't have a good attachment to her own mother and is continuing the cycle with her baby. Very sad.

Diddly - the baby whisperer is a baby led book

“I wouldn’t say it was an amazing experience. I don’t understand those women who say they loved being in labour and they’d do it again,” Kathryn says with disarming honesty. “I think they’re peculiar, I can’t relate to them at all.”

I kind of understand this bit she mentions. I suffered from birth trauma/PTSD after having my son and couldn't relate to or understand women that found their birth experiences positive, lovely and joyous.

However it took me 3 years to understand what caused my distress and troubles surrounding the birth, to then accept the fact that I actually LIKED being in labour and the sensation of giving birth, but not what happened or how I felt about it afterwards.

"At night she couldn’t sleep, paranoid that Harriet would stop breathing."
It mentions that during the birth, her baby's heart rate monitor flatlined.

This article was published on Nov. 7th, and it says her baby is now 10 weeks - it's quite likely that she is still in denial about the birth, doesn't want to fully acknowledge it or maybe doesn't realise that her struggling could potentially, or partly, be caused by the traumatic birth. That's not to say that every mum who has birth trauma struggles, because I didn't. Mums that have straight forward births sometimes struggle as well.

No one knows what it's like until it happens to them.

She sounds very cold doesn't she? Having ds hit me like a truck and I can sort of relate a little to what she says about the first couple of weeks after her baby's birth but after that I disagree with her.A lot. I think the idea of sleep training a 2 week old is just awful- both for a mum and her baby.
Pp have written about attachment and pnd but the impression I got was not so much that she that she was suffering anything a lot of mums do, but more that she just wanted life to return to normal. Ignoring the fact she has a baby now. I can understand leaving your baby to cry/sleep training etc if you were suffering from pnd/anxiety or had other children that had to be dealt with but to do so just so that floors can be scrubbed and wine can be waiting for your husband is just .

Bloody hell. I'd never heard of Clare Byam-Cook until I read the Spectator link from Kathryn's twitter. She sounds........interesting .

I like her honesty that having a baby has shocked her and that she even admitted she shouted at her baby which many might not openly admit for fear of being judged.

My birth wasn't amazing but I don't find it peculiar that other mums enjoyed labour - it's different for everyone. The eye mask etc. could possibly seem dramatic but if it helps then it helps and lots of people include objects or methods in labour which seem crazy and unnecessary to those that haven used the same or don't understand it.

I am also surprised at sleep training a two week old but I put that down to not receiving the correct support or knowledge about it. Perhaps she knows only of the world of nannies where sleep training that young is the norm rather than receiving support from health care professionals and other friends who could have reassured her that sleep training that young is too soon.