Love to know what mum's think of the Scottish Baby Box poem

[toomuchpink]

Love to know what mum's - especially those in Scotland - think of this poem. It is going into the Scottish Government's new baby box of freebies for parents of newborns.

Tempted to ask for alternative suggestions which truly capture the experience of having a baby. But perhaps for some people this is what it is like?

Jackie Kay
Welcome Wee One

O ma darlin wee one
At last you are here in the wurld
And wi’ aa your wisdom
Your een bricht as the stars,
You've filled this hoose with licht,
Yer trusty wee haun, your globe o' a heid,
My cherished yin, my hert's ain!

O my darlin wee one
The hale wurld welcomes ye:
The mune glowes; the hearth wairms.
Let your life hae luck, health, charm,
Ye are my bonny blessed bairn,
My small miraculous gift.
I never kent luve like this.

I don't have Scottish cringe either although that poem is twee and cringy.

The SNP aren't doing too well - they no longer have a majority, and in fact have been instrumental in the Tory upsurge in Scotland as a backlash to their failing policies and their obsession with cringey poems

Your Scottish community might speak Scots (all of it, or just some of the words?) but the majority of Scottish people don't speak that mish mash of dialects.

Oh - and one person on here uses them as a pisstake, not 'some people'. I don't use them because I have no need to use them in 'my' community, wasn't brought up to use them, just in the same way I have no need/wasn't brought up to use any Yorkshire dialect. People like me are no less Scottish than those who do use them.

Notveryhappyvalley your poem is beautiful, I had quite a traumatic premature labour which ended with an emergency c section and DS being rushed of to SCBU. DS is now the most amazing healthy 1 year old and I'm so grateful for that, but I did go through a bit of a phase of mourning that 'perfect' birth I was planning. Your poem sums it up so well and brought me to tears, lovely

Arf at frothing cybernat

Much more nawbag frothing on MN. No idea why, they won after all

Arf at your nawbag

That poem is sentimental pish - it certainly gives me a Scots cringe

Morning Song by Sylivia Plath is my favourite poem about becoming a mum, it captures the complex mesh of of love, awe, physical exposure, fear and sheer exhaustion:

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry

Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

The image of being 'cow heavy' in a nightgown just captures those early days so well. I think we shouldn't patronise people with simplistic Hallmark verse when they are experiencing complex and valid emotions.

Just to add, I am Scottish, born and brought up in Scotland and I don't speak Scots.

awww, the Times didn't run my poyum!

Their loss demented - if I were in charge of the Times I'd have published your poyum

Love that poem btw what

I am at a loss as to how a thread discussing our views on a baby box can now be drawn up on the lines of Yes/No, have I moved from Scotland to some parallel universe where any criticism of government policy is seen this way. Quite scary.

It does appear to be a parallel universe in which there's only one way to properly be Scottish and you cannot criticise the Scottish Government without being accused of being a 'unionist' (which is apparently the worst thing anyone could be).

Because in the super-(but-actually-not-at-all)-liberal SNP-land that's at the bottom of this particular rabbit hole having an opinion that doesn't fit into their neat boxes is not allowed. Certainly not when all the people that vote in Scotland all think the same way, apparently.

The times are fools if they haven't publish Demented's poyum. It was quite clearly the highlight of the thread.

Oh FFS!!!!
Why does it not surprise me that something written in a way that precisely no-one speaks has been sneaked into this box. Just in case anyone had forgotten our extreme Scottishness and how very different we are from the rest of the UK...

I would have so much more respect for the current administration if they would just focus funding, time and energy on vital services instead of having a feckin nationalist agenda attached to absolutely everything they do.
By all means give these boxes to those who would benefit from them but this idea of everything for all regardless of need is an absolute waste of money. The Scots poem angle gives me the absolute rage.

Stop blaming Westminster for every Scottish Govt failure. Hold your hands up, admit you've made an arse of it and use the money instead to fund more health visitors, social workers, teachers if they really intend to try to close the attainment gap. Give schools back a proper ASN provision and stop forcing teachers to buy classroom supplies from their own pockets while wasting time and energy trying to implement an expensive overly complicated curriculum that doesn't work.

The education system and NHS is in turmoil but so long as we all remember how utterly Scottish we are then job's a good un. Apparently.

Well said Mint

Applauds mint

You're right, mint.

Yes. That's an excellent post MintChocAddict.

Midwifes or poems and boxes of fun for all? Good old SNP providing the Scottish people with easy distracting gimmicks since 2007.

FUCKING AWFUL.

Twee, sentimental, badly written in the SNP's pet "Scots language" which nobody actually speaks but suits their political purposes by demonstrating how different and unique Scotland is and therefore should be independent.

Massive, massive waste of money. Poor mothers would rather be seen dead than put their babies in one of Nicola's cardboard boxes. Middle class mothers will embrace the Scandi-chicness of it all and accept a hefty freebie. It will do nothing to eradicate poverty, it will do nothing to give babies a better start in life.

Typical fucking SNP shite and it makes me ill that they are ranting on about equality while not taking the opportunity to target resources more effectively.

"een bricht as the stars" my arse.

Give schools back a proper ASN provision and stop forcing teachers to buy classroom supplies from their own pockets while wasting time and energy trying to implement an expensive overly complicated curriculum that doesn't work. Clearly you've got no idea what it's like in English schools at the moment. People are leaving in droves.

Scotland is facing a teacher crisis too.

www.heraldscotland.com/news/14246061.Scottish_teacher_shortages_force_relaxation_of_tough_registration_rules/

We also had a fabulous year in 2015 when the pass mark was 34% (no, not a typo)!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-33760350

The SNP have destroyed the Scottish education system with their Curriculum for Excrement and I would never vote for them again over this whole debacle.

Sorry, meant to say the pass mark for higher maths was 34%.

Yep, it's the same up here derxa - the funding cuts in pupil support and the number of LS teachers is the thing that should be addressed as a matter of priority if they want to sort the attainment problem, but no, our Beloved Leaders are instead wasting more time, money and resources by reviewing governance (aka centralising and taking control of yet another core service).