Chateau Singhlette: What's In A Name?

Monday

Thoroughly enjoyed reading the Sunday papers online, especially (note irony in voice) the article about drinking (moderately) during pregnancy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/nov/02/drinking-alcohol-pregnant-advice). If I read another article or hear another instruction as to what I must so whilst pregnant, I'm going postal. With a large sixtieth-anniversary Kalashnikov and nine months worth of amunition. Whilst information and education are wonderful things that transform people's lives, there's an awful lot to be said for the old adage 'a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing'. The article itself was down to earth, sensible thinking about the contradictions surrounding advice to pregnant women and a woman's choices (or lack of) whilst gestating her child (not, it has to be said, the the child of the bulk of people telling her what to do). What made me want to knock my head against a brick wall repeatedly were the many comments about persuading a woman to abstain totally from alcohol, about what terrible risks a woman puts in front of her child, yawn, yawn, interfering old gits.

Fact is, women have been having children for millenia. Fact is, there is so much pollution and toxins reaching our bodies from sources beyond our control, we have to be pragmatic and non-hysterical just to get to the newsagents and back. Women have babies, they aren't incubators - get over it. If a pregnant woman wants to have a glass of wine or (sharp intake of breath) a quick drag on someone's cigarette, frankly, it is no-one's business but their own. It does not mean they're a a bad mother and it does not mean they have condemned their child to a life of disability and learning difficulties as a result of selfish indulgence. If you're worrying about the country's children, do something useful and go foster.

A pregnant woman is not public property and, as an article yesterday pointed out, we might want to stop treating children as deities and remember that in our over-crowded world where we let have the population starve or suffer at the hands of our needless greed (such as Falluja - as a result of our interfering in an oil-rich state by bombing the fuck out of them with toxic nasties, there has been a dramatic rise in tumours and birth defects), it seems a bit rich to complain when one Western woman chooses a nice glass of Rioja over dinner with friends.

Mr Singh and I are now in the other ante-natal minefield of debating baby names. We have an excel sheet (I know, I know, I have excel sheets for everything - from barbecues to weddings) and we've got a list from the Penguin book of names that we're now adding comments and giving marks out of ten, a bit like the ice skating or Stictly Come Dancing. I like to think I'm at least consistent - the names I liked when we went through the book are the names I like now. But not Mr Singh who is liking things I snuck on the list thinking he wouldn't and disliking things he previously said he liked. We're also having an additional translational issue as he tries to say each name in English then Punjabi. When I ask him to get a wriggle on and just give me a score out of ten, incorporating both cultural considerations, he accuses me of not caring about his cultural heritage and wanting to drown out my child's Punjabi routes by making it completely white. He is, alas, only half joking as the bag of paranoid second generation immigrant chips jostle to be noticed on his shoulder.