Yesterday a friend of ours gave us a gold coin as a gift for Neve. The latest in a history of disguised acts of charity by my first real Turkish friend in the city. (There was the English conversation lessons during which I unloaded all my worries and then she took me to lunch, the gift of an oven when I wasn't sure how I was going to cook Christmas dinner.) I opened the tiny drawstring bag with beads to ward off the evil eye on the strings, and saw the tiny disc of gold with Atatürk's profile on it, and the safety pin and ribbon which is used to pin it to the new-born, newly circumcised or newly-wed. I had a fair idea of the cash value of this gift because Ville and I once tried to buy one as a wedding gift and had to leave the shop with out it because of the cost. On the few occasions I saw somebody with dozens of these coins pinned to their chests I was really moved by this investment in future hopes. Naively I imagined the honeymoon or the car that could now be afforded. Now I have a clearer idea of what it means for people here to live with so little social security. I have heard the cases of families who have sold everything, even their houses, to pay for the treatment of a sick child. When large in number the coins take on the appearance of armour, and they are insurance against life's uncertainties. In unstable economies they provide liquidity at crucial moments. I now know precisely the cash value of this gift because it was cashed in on the way home, it being rent day! I am sure we will give Neve its worth many times over and needs must, as they say. Walking home in the glorious sunshine yesterday I felt overcome by gratitude for the help we have been given while it was needed. And real pride that we have made it through. This month marks the final large payment to the solicitors for the case that finished in February 2010. Ville has a new job at least till the start of October. And this week Ruskin will be here for half term and we will finally have all four of the children together. We are wealthy indeed.

When Ruskin was born (1996) in my bath at home he was placed directly on my chest and I just stared at him in dazed wonder. After some time he was wrapped in a towel and handed to his father to hold. This is the last moment you could have taken him away from me without it feeling like ripping my heart out, because the next thing I did was breastfeed him. I felt surprised for days afterwards that the overwhelming, terrifying love that I have for my eldest son began not at the moment at which I saw him, but as I fed him for the very first time. This is, of course, not coincidental, by breastfeeding I began to release the hormones that have bonded me to Ruskin from that day forward. I then breastfed Ruskin on demand through the rest of my degree and the first year of an MA without a moment of difficulty or doubt that wasn't caused by other people.

My university department was great and people were happy for Ruskin to attend lectures. Most of the students had no idea he was there. When he was five months I did some research at a Buddhist monastery and Ruskin fed his way through meditation sessions. I breastfed Anton during many days in court so that I did not feel divided between the needs of my two children. Breastfeeding has enabled me to study, write, to manage several dozen flights without worry, to never feel panic when plans change, to feel free while making Ruskin, Anton and now Neve feel secure.

Anton's first few weeks, spent in our first (and very small) apartment on Heybeliada were quite a challenge. Ville was at the office all day and, speaking no Turkish, I felt fairly powerless against the inquisitiveness of the neighbours. In front of our apartment was a small courtyard where the neighbours congregated. I felt under siege. Women would lean through the window to see Anton and check on my milk supply by squeezing my breasts. Seeing him dressed only in a babygro in the 38 °C (100 °F) heat they would come into my house to wrap him in blankets. Later (once I was in the safety of the new house) it was easy to reflect that this was their way of showing kindness, but it was tough at the time.

Breastfeeding is still the norm in Turkey and no one has ever even frowned at me breastfeeding in public. However, when I got pregnant with Neve I was still feeding Anton (he was a year and a half) and a really shocking thing happened. Once people on the island knew I was pregnant some women began to tell me that breastfeeding while pregnant might damage my new baby. At first I thought it was a couple of daft village women, before realising that it was a widely-held belief. On three occasions, once I was noticeably pregnant, women came over to me on the boat to inform of this. One of them even pulled a feeding Anton off my nipple in order to make her point felt. I was told that I might miscarry or give birth to a deformed baby. Though I found this idea completely ridiculous, pregnancy is a time so laden with hope and fear and uncertainty that once or twice I had the awful image of the "we told you so's" I would face if something was actually wrong with the new baby.

The medical advice today relies on research that shows there is no harm to the mother, to the breastfeeding baby or to the foetus from continuing breastfeeding during pregnancy. But would it not have seemed quite implausible to think otherwise anyway? Until the last century we had no mass scale access to contraception or mother's milk substitutes, so pregnancy and breastfeeding must have commonly occurred together. One would imagine that if this had been a problem at the time, it would have been clearly known to everybody in the world, not only here in Turkey.

Summarily checking web sites from different countries on this topic, it first of all seemed a much bigger concern among users of web sites in Turkish than among users of English-speaking web sites. Overall, the expert opinions that were expressed were in both cases that there is no harm to it, although there was more of the "but..." language on the Turkish sites. Peer advice on Turkish sites was predominantly the same as I had received, with all kinds of theories of milk becoming poisonous, and what have you, flourishing.

I felt utterly convinced that I was right to continue and also very sad that there may be women that felt compelled to give up feeding their babies using a method that is safe and free, for some ungrounded superstition. My heart sinks when I consider the feeling of utter powerlessness that has brought about suffocating layers of superstitious practice. A lack of free healthcare and decent infrastructure has brought such a cost to individual lives. I imagine those who have faced the reality of infant mortality have to believe something, feel they can do something, to keep it away, and that this has created lots of rules such as this and the rule that the mother and child should not go out before the 40th day. And so babies are kept inside, too warm, too clean. The society here being much less individualistic than I am used to, these kinds of commonly held beliefs are also difficult to root out even when there is no need for them.

When I returned to the UK for Neve's birth I asked one of my midwives if there could be any harm from breastfeeding a baby while pregnant and was given a look that meant 'Is that a joke?'. The explanation for why breastfeeding might be considered a risk for miscarriage is because it releases oxytocin which is one of the hormones that begins labour. This is the love hormone and is also released when you hug, kiss and have sex. It helps bring about labour when your body and baby are ready for birth and not before. Despite Anton breastfeeding throughout this time I was 5 days overdue before giving birth to Neve. In the 4 days prior to her birthday, feeding Anton (which I only did at his bedtime by then) brought about an hour or so of contractions which, given that I had such an easy birth, may have helped prepare my body for labour.

I gave up feeding Anton soon after Neve's birth as he no longer needed it, but I had a few lovely experiences of feeding them both first. I have been reading a great blog written by another English woman in Istanbul who also talks about these issues. Luckily for me Anton and Neve have been born at a time when there are plenty of hip, beautiful, breastfeeding, baby-wearers out there on blogs like Marvellous Kiddo and Gregarious Peach to help me shed my fear of being a frumpy lactating lump! If it goes to plan I will have breastfed for over six years of my life when I finally stop feeding Neve (I am aiming for two). Sure there have been times when it was a bit draining or I just wanted to sleep without interruption or wear a dress without working out access. But it will be a bitter-sweet moment. It has been such a pleasure to nurture my children towards physical strength and emotional independence.

Anton breastfeeding in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

Too big? Anton breastfeeding on Burgazada.

Having lived on a farm in the north of England I know that the suggestion that you 'count sheep' to fall asleep is actually an invitation to lose yourself in the rhythmic, abstract nonsense of words that are on the edge of extinction. It would be no use asking Anton to close his eyes and visualise one sheep after another leaping over a gate. While he loves to count it still requires deep concentration. But sheep counting whispered into the ears of my children beckons them away from current preoccupations ('There are no dinosaurs are there?') and allows me to walk the hills I miss so much. So here it is (one of the many versions at least), lest it be lost:

Yan, tan, tether, mether, pimp.
Sether, hether, hother, dother, dick.
Yan dick, tan dick, tether dick, mether dick, bumfit.
Yan bumfit, tan bumfit, tether bumfit, mether bumfit, gigot.

Leading the children into sleep.

In the early days, when Ville and I just wrote, he would tell me about beautiful places in the city. One of these was a particular time of day in the Beşiktaş Fish Market. He described the mix of artificial light and fading natural light at dusk. For a time the light sources are complementary before darkness falls. When I arrived I wanted to see it for myself but it had been demolished and work started on a modern replacement. One day I was walking past and saw exactly the mix of light he had meant, the new market has at least some of the charm of the old. Having Anton with me (and limited skills) I didn't attempt to capture the subtleties of dusk but I love the hanging light-bulbs and the glow of the fish.

Less than ten days into my "write something every day for a year" project I have missed posts already. I do have the excuse of a 39.7 °C (103.5 °F) fever and the inability to stand comfortably though. As if we were in a film laden with corny symbolism, this coincided with a fantastic storm that flashed our house with white light throughout the night. Ville laid cold wet cloths on my forehead and Anton said "Doctor Brown Bear should bring you medicine" (thanks for the Peppa Pig DVDs Mum!). But in amongst this, there is a delight that there is time for me to be ill and actually be looked after, Ville having a very rare break.

While we would take the kids to the doctor for the slightest thing we do sometimes turn to Dr. Google for ourselves. As these sites have a full range of diagnoses for each symptom, every small ailment can have fatal consequences. So I typed in my symptoms "high fever" and "extreme tenderness on one side of my neck" and this is what I got:

"Hypothyroidism Symptoms

The symptoms of hypothyroidism -- an underactive thyroid -- tend to mirror the slowing down of physical processes that results from insufficient thyroid hormone. Common symptoms include fatigue, weight gain, constipation, fuzzy thinking, low blood pressure, fluid retention, depression, body pain, slow reflexes, and much more."

At least that explains my weight gain and my fuzzy headedness. In order to confirm the diagnosis, I tried another site:

"Lymph nodes can become swollen from infection, inflammatory conditions, an abscess, or cancer. You may have unexplained weight loss."

This one mentions weight loss, so definitely not it.

Luckily, the way this has worked so far is that we laugh and wait to get better. I hope it keeps working. It's definitely looking good for my current state.

The last time anyone was this ill in this apartment was when Anton was 2 1/2 months old. We were still in the middle of the year-long court proceedings to get Ruskin here and I was flying back and forth every few weeks. Since I had last been back, the judge had asked that we prove that we had a separate room for Ruskin. As we were living in a house with one room and an L-shaped corridor/kitchen, this was a bit of a problem.

Us in front of our little Heybeliada house before Anton was born.

As we had a bed-base smaller than the mattress (IKEA "Sultan". didn't feel that royal though) and we had Anton in bed with us, we had to put the mattress on the floor, leaving no room to even open the door fully. Over a week-end, Ville found a new apartment, so I arrived to lots of space, little furniture and Ville with a very high fever. I put single mattresses at opposite ends of the large living room and sanitising stuff in the middle and this way went between Ville and Anton. This scene was extra pathetic because the last occupants had removed the light fittings by cutting the wires close to the ceiling, so I acted all Florence Nightingale by candle-light.

Having a court case, schools and lots of flights to pay for, our furniture has mostly been what other people have thrown out. I have been living with stuff I might sneer at in a junk shop, if I was the sneering kind.

A certain lack of furniture.

It has to be admitted, though, that we prioritized the purchase of a data projector, big screen and Kindles, culture over comfort.

When we returned from Finland in early august 2010, our neighbour across the hall (to whom we had given keys to air the place) had scavenged left-over furniture from the empty apartments and created our first conventional looking bedroom, complete with bed-base with springs so slack we both spent the night exactly in the middle and (yes, again) a mattress larger than the base. This was crowned with mint and peach cushions. So, of course, we were very grateful, while at the same time calculating how long we would have to live with this arrangement. It has to be said that our neighbours daughters were mortified by this interference and also that we were very touched.
However, luckily (for us, not them) on our corner we are not the lowest in the furniture chain. The house opposite should look like this:

The house as it was designed.

It actually looks like this:

The house at it stands today.

Kurdish construction workers live all year round in the shell of a house that may never be finished. Many of them have families they have to live apart from to provide for and they live in this house so as not to spend any of their earnings. So, the hob with one ring working that we threw away a long time after we got good at one pot meals, snapped up! We even cleaned it well, knowing this would happen. The bed base we waited an appropriate interval before binning, was requested as we passed it over the balcony to the street.

Mmmm... I hope this post doesn't sound self-pitying. Having everything that money can't buy, it's been fairly easy to cope with this time of relative austerity, especially as it might be over for the time being.

One total bonus about being in Turkey with a new daughter is that the neighbours have starting some serious knitting. Not having much of a knitting sort of family (I will never hold it against you Mum!!) its quite a novelty to be given these home-made gems. This is what we have so far and you will be happy to hear that both the pink pom-pom skirt and luminous orange trousers are getting jackets to match! This pink skirt is definitely my favourite so far: kind of impractical but so so stylish. I just can't stop recalling the knitted swimming trunks in the early scenes of  'The Hairdresser's Husband'.