Why You Shouldn't Ask Me For Advice

When I first had S, I thought I was in the worst situation possible. A single mother, alone with a tiny, jaundiced, premature baby. Sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it.

In the nineteen months since, I've realised that actually I am very lucky. As my friends (and my sister!) have had their own babies around me, I've realised just how lucky I am, and have always been, with my little bundle. You should probably never ask me for advice, because the only advice I can give is based on experience - and is therefore not likely to be helpful! Here's why:

• If your baby is constipated, my advice is likely to be "meh, just leave it; it'll be fine in the end." S has never been a prolific poo-er. She was exclusively breastfed until almost 6 months, and during that time she usually only did a poo once a week. She once went 18 days without a poo. I kept checking with health visitors and GPs (and Facebook, of course) as to whether my child was normal, and the resounding response was - if she's not in discomfort with it, it's fine. 

• If your problem is that your changing bag is just too big and heavy and it's such a mission to go out anywhere... my advice is likely to be "ahh, just leave everything home and take yourself and baby out for a bit!" Because S was breastfed and didn't poo much, and I live very close to the city centre, I've never had to worry about taking masses of supplies out with me. If I needed anything from town, I always just shoved her in the sling and made a quick dash for the shops. Also, the fact she wore cloth nappies meant that any poorly-timed poos were well contained; her first proper poonami was a couple of months ago. My sister has not been so lucky with her son; when she comes out of the house she has to bring at least two changes of clothes. He poos after (usually during, actually) every feed, and it usually wrecks every piece of clothing he's wearing.

• If your baby is crying, my advice will probably be "just give him a cuddle." S has never been a great wailer. She cried when she was hungry and that was about it. Yep, she never even cried when her nappy was wet. Still doesn't. She's just getting to the stage where she'll pretend to cry if she thinks it'll get her something she wants, but on the whole, she doesn't scream unless there's a big problem. On those rare nights where she's not settled, I've always just put her in a sling and rocked her to sleep. When she was very small and I couldn't get her to settle after a night feed, I'd just lay her on my chest and we'd sleep like that.

• If your baby doesn't settle to sleep at night, I'm a great advocate of feeding to sleep, and co-sleeping. From a very young age, I fed S to sleep and she shared my bed. Once she started nursery, the only time she was breastfeeding was at nap time or bed time. I was still feeding her to sleep when she was 17 months old. Everyone told me I was mad to be relying on feeding to get her to sleep, and that I should move her out of my bed soon or I'd never have it to myself again. Well, balls to you all. She stopped breastfeeding one week when she had a bad cold and couldn't breathe through her nose, and has never asked for it since (much to my dismay). She started sleeping in the cot one night when I was too tired to stay awake and watch her, and now she sleeps there every night. She started sleeping through the night at 13 months, though I was still waking every few hours to check she was breathing. No fights. No controlled crying. No begging. No pleading. No pain. No fuss. 

• If you can't get your toddler to let you clean her teeth, I'm likely to just say "well, leave it a few days and try again." I had terrible trouble trying to get S to clean her teeth. Proper screaming with the mouth clamped shut business. Eventually I just gave up trying. One evening I couldn't be doing with the fight before bed time, so I just gave her a cuddle instead. The next couple of nights I forgot... and then one evening she was in the shower and made a grab for her tooth brush on the side. I figured it was worth a shot, so I put some toothpaste on the brush, and we went for it. And so began our evening ritual of cleaning S's teeth with absolutely no fuss or bother. At all. Nothing.

• If your toddler has trouble settling at night, I'm likely to suggest you just stick a dvd on and leave em to it. We get by on a combination of Despicable Me and Peppa Pig. I am fairly sure this makes me the worst mother in the world. At the very least, it rules me well and truly out of the running for mum of the year. But we're happy; it works for us. I put a dvd on; S lays down in her cot with her books and her Tigger, and she goes to sleep. For anyone who wants to tell me "oooh, you want to get her out of that habit before it's too late..." - see my point above about the cosleeping and breastfeeding. And then knob off. 

I'd like to take credit for these lazy parenting tips, and to say that S is such a dream because of my amazing parenting skills - but I'd be lying through my teeth. I'm just a bit lazy and cut as many corners as I can legitimately get away with. I have been blessed with possibly the easiest child in the world. She's so easy, she makes me look like I have a clue what I'm doing.

So yeah, don't ask me for advice; I don't have much experience of challenging parenting!

Sleeping: Time for a Change?

I think it might be time to put S into her own bedroom.

She's coming up on 19 months old.

For a brief period when she was first born, she slept in a moses basket for a few weeks before I just gave up on it, and decided to just have her sleep in my bed. It was just easier for night feeds to have her right next to me,  and so much easier to get us both back to sleep afterwards too. I ended up feeding her to sleep most of the time, which everyone said was a bad thing, but it was the best choice for us at the time.

When S started being able to roll, I took me bed off its frame and we began sleeping on a mattress on the floor. For a brief period we experimented with me sleeping on my mattress and S sleeping on a single mattress right next to it, but I felt she was too far away from me, and so that idea did not last!

When S was around 11 months old, she went through a particularly difficult patch of teething. She cried all night in pain, and didn't want to be cuddled or held in any way. Many nights, I ended up putting a Baby Jake dvd on and rocking her to sleep in a long-outgrown bouncy chair (never underestimate the worth of a Fisher Price Calming Vibrations chair!) I'm fairly sure, hellish though those nights were for both of us, they helped S to get used to going to sleep without being fed.

When S got a little older, and had gone well past the point of no return where the bouncy chair was concerned, I moved the cot into our bedroom . I continued to feed her to sleep in my bed, but on the nights where she just couldn't sleep and didn't want a cuddle or a story or seemingly anything, I would put her in the cot to watch Baby Jake while I got a little rest.

After a while, I started feeding her to sleep in my bed and then carefully putting her down in the cot. Then when she woke in the night I would bring her into bed with me. Eventually, once she was 13 months old, she just slept straight through the night.

Since then, things have gone up and down. She's had trouble with teething, we've had nights where she's been rocked to sleep in a pushchair while watching Despicable Me on repeat. But on the whole, she sleeps in her cot. My bed is now back on its frame.

I have been thinking recently though, that perhaps she needs to be in her own bedroom. Not because I need my space - I've only just managed to tear myself away from sleeping head-to-head with her on a mattress on the floor - but because I think perhaps I disturb her when I go to bed.

Mummy Really Needs Some Me Time!

I had a minor meltdown this evening.

After a week of S waking up at 4am and not really settling;
A really hectic, unsettling weekend;
2 months of being back at work and my only time to myself being after bed time or 15 minutes on the way to and from work;
A really very hectic day at work


I really was very tired and fed up. The plan was for S to go to bed at 6 as usual. I would then eat some tea, watch some crappy telly, and go to bed shortly afterwards.

That didn't work. She went to bed at 6, but she didn't go to sleep. She sat in her cot periodically crying, then stopping just long enough for me to think perhaps she'd gone to sleep and I could have a break... And then starting to cry again.

I came up to try and settle her several times; nothing worked. She was not in a good mood. She wasn't even properly crying, there were no tears. She was just cross at being left alone.

In the end I abandoned my evening and any thoughts I'd had of eating tea or chocolate, or of catching up with Big Brother or putting another load of washing on. I came upstairs, lay down on the bed with her, and fed her to sleep.

Scared she would wake up again if I moved too far away from her for too long, I read my Kindle for half an hour. Then I decided to fetch the laptop from downstairs and see if I could use the time to catch up on reading some blogs.

The problem is that when I started feeding her, it was really just to calm her down. I didn't think she'd actually go to sleep. So of course she fell asleep star-fished in the middle of my bed, on top of my duvet. I managed to move her slightly though, and now I'm going to bed.

Yet again, a massive meltdown avoided by just giving up my rigid idea of what I had to do in order to relax. I should really learn to accept these situations before I start to hate everything shouldn't I!

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Bad Day.

Today, I don't want to be a single mother any more. Today, I'm stamping my feet and having a tantrum. I've had enough.

Today, I just want a husband/boyfriend/partner to turn around and go "aw babe, you're knackered, go and take a nap and I'll look after S." Past experience tells me how completely unlikely this is to ever happen though; I had a boyfriend at Christmas and not once did he say this. Even S's father never said it when he was here, and she's his child. 

Today I want to tell everyone who complains they're tired to just STFU because they really have no idea.

Today, I want to turn round to all my non-single mother friends and say to them, every single time your partner has held the baby, fed the baby, changed the baby's nappy, taken the baby out, made you a drink, given you a kiss and a hug... Imagine how you would have coped if they had not done that.

Logically, I know that most of my friends are alone with their child for large chunks of time, as their partner works during the day, so they do the bulk of the childcare any way.

Logically, I know that I am just over-tired and will feel better once I get some rest.

Logically, I know that being on our own is the best thing for S and I right now because I could never trust an outsider to come in here and take care of her, and I don't have the time to maintain a relationship.

But I'm just so tired. I can't think straight, I have a permanent headache. There is no proper food in the house because I can't make my brain function for long enough to walk around the supermarket and pick up anything of any use. I don't have the energy to get something for myself once I've fed S. I want to ask for help but realistically, who can I ask? There are very few people I trust with S and even if I did, what I really need is for someone to be here all night looking after a teething baby while I sleep. If there's no chance of her own father ever offering to do such a thing, why would anyone else do it?

Yes, I'm feeling very negative and fed up today. But I feel that I'm entitled to a bit of self pity, under the current circumstances.

How to Tell if You Need More Sleep...

Inspired by the rather exhausting time I've been having of late, here is a list of ways to tell if perhaps you need a little more sleep...

• You clean up the high chair from the latest meal, go to the kitchen and deposit a handful of soggy biscuits in the sink, a dirty dish and spoon in the laundry hamper, and a mucky flannel in the bin.
• You go upstairs to use the toilet, remember half way up that you need to pick something up from the bedroom. Go into the bedroom, forget what you went in for but see that the curtains are open when they should be closed. Close curtains. Remember you needed to take a clean babygro downstairs. Go into the baby's bedroom, grab a babygro and run downstairs with it, triumphant until you hit the bottom step and your bladder reminds you why you went up there in the first place. Back you go...
• You fill the sink to wash up, then remember there's an empty coffee cup on the side in the living room. Go to fetch it and see that the baby is doing something cute. Stop to join in the cuteness for a couple of minutes. See that the living room bin needs to be emptied so take it to the kitchen. Empty the bin, take the bin bag outside. Clean the bin, put a new liner in it, and remember you were washing up. Begin the washing up, remember there's an empty coffee cup on the side in the living room...
• It takes you four attempts to find the word you're looking for: "that's mummy's arm... face... foot.. HAND! That's mummy's hand"
• You arrange to meet a friend for coffee every week for 2 months, but never actually make it because you're sitting at home thinking, "I'm sure I'm supposed to do something today..."
• You sit down to write a blog post about being tired... and fall asleep.

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Why I Will Never Leave S to Cry.

The other day I posted a status on Facebook that S had gone to bed but cried when I got my dinner, so I had a cold dinner again. It seemed to attract several comments (not on the status itself, but to me personally via texts, emails and in person) telling me I was doing the wrong thing by going to her when she cried. This is my response to those statements.

Babies cry in order to get their carer to help meet their needs. Babies, certainly those under a year of age, do not know how to manipulate, and cannot be spoilt. The can’t say, “so sorry, I’m feeling a bit crap, I’ve woken up suddenly and it’s dark and I’m alone and I don’t like it; could you just give me a quick hug and help me get back to sleep?” They cry instead; it’s their only way of letting us know they need us.

A baby’s cry is supposed to be loud, and grate on your nerves, and make you feel emotional, so that you will want to make it stop – by doing whatever it is the baby is crying for, not by closing the door and turning the TV up. Evolution did not make babies cry in this way so as to make you ignore it until it stops; surely if a baby’s cry was meant to be ignored, it would be easier to do so?

In the 1970s, Mary Ainsworth and Sylvia Bell conducted a study into how mothers responded to their babies’ crying and how this affected the child’s later behaviour. They found that the more quickly a mother responded to her crying infant, even if she wasn’t able to stop the child from crying very quickly, the less the child cried later. They also found that “close maternal contact” was the most effective way of stopping a child from crying. The more responsive I am to S’s crying, the less she will cry in future. For me this is evidenced in the fact that actually, she cries very rarely.

There have been numerous studies into attachment theory (different from attachment parenting, which is an approach to parenting; attachment theory is the study of relationships between humans), and the overwhelming finding is that the more responsive a parent is during the first year of a child’s life, the more securely attached the child will be, and therefore the better the relationship between parent and child going forward.

These are the specific references to back up what I am saying here:

• Bell SM & Ainsworth MSD. Infant crying and maternal responsiveness.  Child Development (1972); 43: 1171-1190.
• Ainsworth MDS. The development of infant-mother attachment. In BM Caldwell & HN Ricciutti (Eds.), Review of child development research (1973) (Volume 3, pp 1-94); Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Egeland B & Farber EA. Infant-mother attachment: Factors related to its development and changes over time.Child Development (1984); 55: 753-771.
• Isabella RA & Belsky J. Interactional synchrony and the origins of infant-mother attachment: A replication study.  Child Development (1991); 62: 373-384.
• Isabella RA, Belsky J, & von Eye A. The origins of infant-mother attachment: An examination of interactional synchrony during the infant’s first year. Developmental Psychology (1989); 25: 12-21.

Many will say that the “cry it out” technique works – after a few torturous hours of screaming the baby “learns” and no longer cries. But what has the baby learned? Most probably, the baby has learned that crying does not work, and nobody will come to help them. If you view a baby as a creature trying to manipulate and trick you, then you would see this as a success. But it has serious implications. This is a psychological term called learned helplessness. Once infants have learned that they do not have control over their surroundings, they stop trying to affect them in any way; they stop interacting. Acting as if a child is trying to manipulate us when it’s crying removes the child’s control over their situation and risks their losing interest in interacting with the world. Studies by Dr Kevin Nugent of Boston Children’s Hospital have found that babies whose cries are routinely ignored show symptoms of depression. There is also evidence that leaving a baby to cry can impede their development. I don’t know about you, but if I’m stressed out, I’m not really able to concentrate on learning new things.

This Guardian article discusses how leaving a baby to cry can result in developmental damage. And here is another post about how excessive crying is harmful to infants.

I am not telling you that what you are doing/have done for your child/children is wrong. What you do is your own business. But stop telling me to leave my child to cry, because you are wasting your time. I know that when I am crying and need some support, I don’t like to be ignored. I know that if I feel shitty, I can ask a friend for help. My baby can’t speak yet; her only way of communicating that need is by crying. And yes, sometimes it is tiring and draining, and I’d rather be sitting downstairs eating a hot meal than spending my evening running up and down the stairs to console a crying baby – but that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore her for the sake of a hot meal. What I do now affects what will happen tomorrow, and I’m happy to have a few cold meals if it means my child will be happy, both now and in the future.

Short version of this post: don't tell me I'm doing the wrong thing and expect me not to answer you with facts and studies. 

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What We Did This Week

Monday 05 Nov

Up at 7, breakfast in our shiny new high chair, which was messy and fun. Then into town to meet a friend for coffee with her little girl. S sat in her pushchair shouting in excitement, playing peepo with my friend’s 3 year old, which was nice. Then home for a monumentally messy lunch, a short nap, and a short trip back to town to pick up the things I’d forgotten earlier. Bed time routine disrupted by fireworks for the third night running.

Tuesday 06 Nov

Wander around town in the morning with S having a little giggle and chat to herself. Bumped into my favourite aunt, which is always a bonus as she is awesome. Super, ultra messy lunch followed by a fun afternoon for S, watching me move furniture and books, then hoover and scrub the floor, then move more furniture. Bed time was more successful, possibly down to the fact she ate shedloads for tea. We may be onto a winner here!

Wednesday 07 Nov

Weekly visit from D in the morning; S played with her on her newly positioned play mats and shouted at the TV. Unsuccessful lunch attempt followed by visit from Auntie Smooch (Z) and a trip into town, wandering about the shops. Am so excited for the Christmas lights to go up; S seems to really enjoy looking at lights in shop windows. And on the living room ceiling, oddly. She had three naps, which was not ideal, but she still slept fairly well in the evening so can’t complain.

Thursday 08 Nov

Picked up copies of photos taken last week for local paper’s baby competition. S looks amazing, obviously. Came home to see something on Facebook that reminded me of the nasty situation with S’s father, kind of ruined my mood for the day, which S picked up on. Did manage to paint a wall though. S had an unsettled evening, but since I was feeling decidedly headachey and ropey, I just went to bed early and she settled.

Friday 09 Nov

Lazy morning spent lazing about the flat. Decided that since S was still in her PJs at lunch time we may as well make as much mess as possible, which was fun. A man came round about the water meter, and had fun trying to find the right tap outside. Brief trip into town to buy food (mainly to get out of the house), then home for tea and early to bed for a very sleepy baby… who slept of her sleepiness and was wide awake in her bouncy chair by 8pm. No point in leaving her upstairs, since people around here still have a lot of fireworks to get through, and the neighbours appear to be trying to chisel their way through the floor. Or the wall. Or perhaps just through my temper. Bang bang bang effing bang.

Saturday 10 Nov

Morning spent at a charity soup morning with S being passed around extended family and friends, wowing them with her smiles and giggles. Felt pretty smug! Feeling replaced by nausea when I came home to find that the baby S’s father conceived with his babysitter while I was pregnant has been born – seemingly exactly 7 months younger than S. How does one deal with such a situation? Answers on a postcard please.

Seven Months On

S is seven months old tomorrow. Things have changed a lot since Easter Sunday, when I woke up at 5am thinking I’d wet myself!

Seven months has gone so quickly, and I feel like I missed the first couple of months because I was so busy panicking, so busy struggling to just keep my head above water that I didn’t enjoy having a beautiful, tiny little baby.

S at 2 weeks (notice massive babygro)

When she first came home from the hospital, S was so small even the “tiny baby” clothes swamped her. While we were in hospital she wasn’t even dressed a lot of the time; she was either wrapped in a blanket, or snuggled under my t shirt. When we came home a friend posted us a bag of baby clothes her daughter had grown out of; they were lovely but massive, I couldn’t imagine S ever growing into them and assumed my friend’s daughter must be a lot older than S. She was three months old before any of the 0-3 months clothes fit her, but by the time she was 4 months old, she was starting to grow out of them! Now she’s growing so quickly I never know which size clothes to buy!

Until I had S, the fact a baby is born completely unaware of the things we all take for granted had never occurred to me. It’s been so lovely to watch her learn she has hands and feet, and that she can use her feet to kick things, her hands to grab. She has gone from a tiny, silent little bundle whose only noise was the occasional cry if she got hungry, to a burbling, grabbing, punching little monkey who has the best grin I have ever seen. She wakes me up by chattering to herself in the mornings and I go to sleep listening to her soft snoring next to me. The last couple of days, she’s been trying to stand as much as she can, which is worrying!

I’ve not had a full, uninterrupted night’s sleep since the middle of my pregnancy – and I don’t care! Don’t get me wrong; I love my sleep, and am exhausted in a way you would not believe, but over time I think I’ve just gotten used to it. Someone said to me early on that I should cherish those night feeds because they will stop all too soon. That person was so right. There is no feeling quite like being woken by S poking me in the ribs because she is hungry. On the nights where she sleeps a little longer between feeds I often wake up before her, wondering what’s going on and why she’s not hungry. I know that eventually she will stop feeding at night, and stop sleeping next to me too. That will be a sad day.

According to a Cow & Gate magazine that came through my door the other day, in their first six months a baby’s weight will double. The last time S was weighed, her weight had more than trebled since she was born. She’s currently on the 50^th centile line, which makes me stupidly proud, even though it’s just some stupid statistic. When she first reached her due date (she was 5 weeks early) her weight put her on the second centile line.

Yesterday when D (my Home Start lady) was here we were talking about the neighbours and she asked if I knew the people downstairs. I replied no, they’d moved in when S was still very small, and I was not particularly sociable at that time so didn’t really speak to them. D commented that often when we’re talking and I mention things like this, it’s as if I’m talking about someone else. She told me she finds it hard to reconcile this image of a depressed person sitting alone in the house and not speaking to anyone, with the confident single mother she sees every week. I was a bit gobsmacked to be honest. I spend a lot of my time with barely a clue as to what I’m doing, and hoping I’m not making huge mistakes on a daily basis. The fact I come across as confident was a completely alien concept to me; I’ve never thought of myself as a confident person. But then, after she left, I thought about it a little more. Although I don’t have all the answers, and I do make a lot of mistakes, I am confident when it comes to being S’s mother. I know when she is tired, when she is hungry, when she is bored. I have very definite ideas about how I want to raise her, what values I want her to grow up with, what I do and do not want to do. So yes, perhaps I am confident.

I was watching a phone-in show on TV earlier this week, where they were talking about cutting Child Benefit for families with more than two children. They commented that it tends to either be the very rich or the very poor that have a lot of children and a journalist on the panel made a very interesting point. She said that quite often young women coming from an underprivileged background have always felt worthless, as if they don’t have a place in society, and when they have a baby they finally have a purpose; they have produced a child and they feel worthwhile. Although I wouldn’t say I’d really grown up in a terribly poor family, I have always had a bit of an issue when it comes to self esteem and feeling like I was worth a great deal or good at anything. Now that I have S, and am over the initial total and utter shock of becoming a mother, I find that I completely understand what that journalist meant: for the first time in my life, I have a purpose and my life has a meaning beyond “if I don’t go to work today the other people in my team might get a bit swamped.” And yes, when I stop and think about it, I do think I’m quite good at being a mother. As much as you can be, when your child is only 7 months old, that is. When I was pregnant I would worry about how I could possibly fill the days of my maternity leave once the baby came. Now she is here, and I often look up at 5pm and wonder where the hours have gone.

 

The photo on the right shows one of S's first babygros (she is wearing it in the photo above: see how big it is on her!), against the one she wore to bed this evening. I remember being given that small one and thinking, gosh it's so big it'll be ages before she grows into it. She was completely lost in it. Now I look at it and wonder how she ever fit into it!

My tiny little premature baby in her teeny-tiny too-big babygros has become a big bruiser of a bouncing baby, laughing, burbling and grabbing at everything in sight. I know that all too soon I will look up and she will have become a toddler, a schoolgirl, a grumpy teenager, an adult. Seven months has passed in a flash and I am so glad I’ve taken a million and one photos to look back on and remind me of every single moment.


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Our Week: 29 Oct - 03 Nov

Monday 29 Oct

Despite not wanting to go to sleep in the evenings before me, once we both go to bed S does seem to settle well these days. Short walk around town punctuated by wailing and shouting any time we stopped for more than 5 seconds; made queuing really fun. S had a 3-hour nap in the afternoon, which was odd but she had been woken early from her morning nap so probably good. Evening spent lying next to her for 2 hours, reading the Kindle. Praise the Lord for Kindles.

Tuesday 30 Oct

Up early and off to town to run errands before entertaining two visitors (see Tuesday’s blog post). Made lamb casserole from scratch, ate it and didn’t die or anything. S skipped her afternoon nap, so bed time was an early and rather drawn out affair.

Wednesday 31 Oct

Visit from D in the morning; S spent the entire time sitting on her lap, playing and chattering. My sister Z came round in the afternoon, and we went for a wander around town in the pouring rain. Spent 2.5 hours getting S to sleep, then came downstairs in a daze and walked into the kitchen door. Or rather, I kicked it into my own face. No idea how, but there is a slight bruise I’ve had to cover with makeup for the rest of the week.

Thursday 01 Nov

Woken at 2am by roof leaking. Fuming. Called the council first thing, and then emailed my local councillor who seems willing to help. Then we went out to meet my friend K for coffee. She has the most gorgeous little boy who’s a couple of weeks younger than S, and it was so nice to have a good old gossipy catch up. S spent the afternoon puking her orange lunch wherever I pointed her face, which was nice. She went to bed early, listening to a classical lullaby cd I bought on a whim from Amazon. Best money I ever spent.

Friday 02 Nov

Took S to have her photo taken for the local Child Of The Year competition; younger sis came with me and we had a good old gossip. Very proud of S for managing not to vomit on her nice clean clothes until after the photo. Spent the afternoon playing with baby toys and discovering that No More Nails is no good for holding curtain poles above doors. Bugger.

Saturday 03 Nov

Our weekly walk with lil sis A was amended to become a walk to the out of town superstore for supplies. Then we walked back to town and went to Costa for drinks with the family. Realised my coffee order has become a farce, being as it is now seven words long. Came home and had an attack of the housewifes: made mango teething biscuits, beef casserole and bread rolls. Ruined the dumplings though; too much salt. Watched The Empire Strikes Back with S and then she went to bed and out like a light, but it’s highly likely she will be up within the hour, what with all the fireworks and shenanigans.

Two Visitors!

We had two visitors today; a lady from Home Start came to review our situation with D, and a nursery nurse came to chat about S’s sleeping and eating.

B is the Home Start co-ordinator for the area, and the person who “matched” D to us a couple of months ago. She came back to do a review, which they do periodically to check everything is ok, the volunteer is being useful/helpful and still needed, and that everything is ok. They do a lot of paperwork. S was busy playing with her toys when B got here, but soon decided she’d rather be part of the conversation so came and sat on my lap playing with a book while we chatted. B wanted to know how things were going with D, so I told her the truth: I look forward to her visits but worry that she must feel she’s wasting her morning, since all she does is drink coffee and play with S while I make a couple of phone calls and maybe do the washing up. B said no, that’s what a lot of her volunteers do and they come round to be company and reliable as much as to help with practical things. She had a good old chat with S, and held her while I filled out a questionnaire. It was one of those ones where there’s a statement and you ring a number from 1 to 5 for how positive you feel about it. I did one before D started coming, and despite the fact S has given up sleeping, the house is a mess and my bad hair day has lasted 2 months, my scores have improved. It reminded me of the depression questionnaire my GP makes me do every now and then: they ask you a bunch of questions, tot up your score and tell you how you’re doing at life. I suppose they have to do something to justify their work though, and show they’re being effective. She marked down on her paperwork that the “goals” we set when she first came (I don’t remember them, but hey ho) are “partially achieved” so that there is a reason for D to keep coming, which was nice because I enjoy her visits and think it’s good for S to have someone constant and reliable in her life. D turns up every Wednesday at 10:30, she’s always in the same chipper mood, she always smiles and plays with S, and gives me good advice for my myriad problems. Of course, we have other visitors and S sees other people, but I think D is the only one who has a set day and time that we stick to every week.

B saw my nice pile of fluffy clean nappies (I’d just done a load of washing and stacked them neatly in the corner) and commented that I’m her ideal mother. Then she asked if I was breastfeeding still, and we had a conversation about how more people should do it because it’s best for baby (in most cases) and easiest. She told me she complained to the Advertising Standards Agency about a Cow & Gate advert because she felt it was promoting the use of formula over breast milk. The ad is amazing, but she has a good point. It was refreshing to meet someone who seems to have the same views as me. B is a single mother herself, so she understands why it’s so important for us to have D visit once a week, even if she’s only there as someone to chat to. She doesn’t need to be told about how difficult it is to keep up with housework and everything else when you’re the only person there to look after a baby, and you’re hell bent on doing not just a good job but the best job possible. She got on really well with S and told me she thinks I’m a great mother – which is always good to hear! My feedback will be passed on to D as well, which is nice because when asked how things were going I looked at her and said “the woman is a legend, I really look forward to Wednesday mornings!”

Once B had gone, I just had time to put together a lamb casserole and stick it in the oven (from scratch, with no packet mix, get me!) when C, the nursery nurse, came to visit. She was sent to see us after I called the health visitor begging for some help with the sleep situation, and came last week to discuss weaning and sleep plans. This week she came back to see how we were getting on. The truth is that S is still not sleeping fantastically, but her naps have been improving, and it’s just the hours between 6 and 10pm that are a problem now. Also I think my attitude to the situation has improved as well, in that I’m less bothered by it and more inclined to just take the time to get her settled to sleep even if it takes two hours. Hopefully the fact she’s eating lots more will help her to sleep more too. S sat in her bouncy chair and had a nonsense conversation with C, which they both enjoyed. She also showed off her mad skillz at bouncing the chair with one leg whilst casually slouching in it like a teenager. I have absolutely no clue what I will do with her when she finally gets too big for that chair! We discussed the local children’s centre, and she left a leaflet with me, suggesting I go to their baby group and also that I could go to the breastfeeding group to be support for new mums. At first I laughed at the idea I could offer advice to anyone, since I still spend a lot of my time feeling completely out of my depth. But even I can see that I’ve come a really long way and since I feel so strongly about breastfeeding I’d like to be able to share that. I might even take S to the baby group to make some friends!

I chatted to C about being a single mother, and how in the evenings once S is asleep I will creep downstairs for my tea. I often sit on the sofa, shovelling food into my mouth as quickly as I can because if S wakes while I’m eating I can’t afford to just throw food away, but I also can’t leave her to cry, and it’s times like that I really don’t enjoy the fact I’m doing this on my own. She seemed to understand what I was talking about, but also pointed out that as it’s just the two of us, we can do as we please, go where we want, eat when we want, and don’t have to follow anyone else’s schedule.

So there we are: one day, two visitors, one inflated ego. Having had two professional people who know what they’re doing tell me they think I’m doing a good job, and that S is doing really well, has made me feel a lot better. On the nights where S is not at all interested in sleeping, and I’m knackered and desperate for the loo but she cries every time I leave the room, I tend to have an attack of “omg, I’m rubbish at this, he was right, I can’t do it on my own, S is going to grow up damaged because of meeeeeeee…” it’s nice to have someone who knows what they’re talking about, and sees this sort of situation all the time, tell me I’m doing ok.

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Our Week: 20-27 October

Monday 22 Oct

Up early after a less than peaceful night’s sleep. Went for a walk to my old office to drop something off for a friend, and to pick up a toy from another friend. That was basically our day. Walked the long way home in vain attempt to get S to have her morning nap. Failed miserably so came home and dealt with a grumpy baby who didn’t want to eat her lunch. Afternoon nap did not go well either, so in the end I took her upstairs and had a nap with her.

Tuesday 23 Oct

Up early so went into town for supplies before a visit from a nursery nurse, who came to fix all of our sleeping problems. Back into town after S’s afternoon nap to pick up the things we forgot in the morning.

Wednesday 24 Oct

Up early and into town to pick up what we forgot to buy twice on Tuesday. Our Home Start lady came and played games with S while I made some phone calls and sorted paperwork. After lunch we went to see my brother and his wife, who gave S a big black bag full of toys, as well as one of those zebra thingies for when she is a little older. No danger of getting S to bed on time so put her in her bouncy chair in a sleeping bag… she slept like a log til I went to bed.

Thursday 25 Oct

Up and off to the out of town supermarket to exchange something I’d bought at the weekend. Really it was just an excuse to get out of the house. S fell asleep while we were walking, so I took a detour around the park on the way home to prolong the napping. Came home and spent the afternoon doing not a fat lot. Evening spent rocking her back and forth in the pushchair intermittently begging her to sleep. Didn’t work.

Friday 26 Oct

A nice little trip to town with the baby sling followed by a quiet afternoon and another evening like Thursday. This seems to be becoming the norm and I am not best pleased about it.

Saturday 27 Oct

Long walk with my sister, A. Workout in the park that hurt both of us, then a walk back again. Cooked stew and dumplings from scratch and was pleased with myself. S slept through Star Wars all afternoon. In hindsight I should not have allowed this to happen, as bedtime was a joke. She actually laughed at me. There has been a lot of crying and a lot of running up and down the stairs, after I decided nothing but bad habits could come of having her permanently spending the evenings in the living room with me.

Diary Entries From Early Motherhood

12^th June (9 weeks, 1 day)

Today S had her first set of jabs. The nurse who did them has worked at the surgery for years and knows most of my brothers and sisters; she told me S looked exactly like my younger sister Z at this age. S cried a little with the jabs, but not too much. Once I’d got her back in the sling she seemed to forget there was ever a problem! These days, every time she wakes up from a nap it’s like she’s learned a new sound or expression. It’s amazing fun to discover her latest thing. Lately our favourite way to spend time is for her to stand on my lap while we take turns in kissing each other’s noses. Well, I say kiss – she generally just opens her mouth and slobbers on me, but I’ll take that!

23^rd June (10 weeks, 5 days)

S is not really sleeping much at the moment. It’s pretty difficult because if she doesn’t sleep then neither do I. I don’t mind though; I just have a little nap in the afternoons if I get too tired. She’s started making little noises, using her voice rather than grunting. It’s so sweet to listen to! Argh she is crying again… evenings are not much fun at the moment!

24^th June (10 weeks, 6 days)

S seems to be suddenly growing and changing really quickly, we saw a friend today who said that S had definitely grown since she saw us a week ago. She interacts more now too, which makes time spent with her a lot more rewarding. I’m feeling a bit more positive about things, but it’s still difficult a lot of the time. I worry about taking her out around town in case we bump into her father; I don’t want to deal with the confrontation, the accusations. Tomorrow we are going to visit a friend to have some photos taken, and he lives really close to S’s father. I know I can’t let something like that stop me from going out and doing things, but it’s tough right now.

25th June (11 weeks)

We went to see a friend today to have photos taken. S cried throughout, so it was largely a wasted journey. We saw one of the ex's friends on the bus up there, which was a bit nerve-wracking as I'm sure she will have texted to tell him we were headed in his direction. I walked home because I was nervous standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus. That wasn't much fun either, but once we'd got off the estate it felt a lot better. Good to get some exercise. I need to sort my diet out too, I've been eating crap and it's not doing either of us any good. I need to get more organised with the house work, it's like a bomb site round here lately and it's starting to do my head in.

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Our Week, 15 -20 Oct

Monday 15 Oct

Up reasonably early and off to visit a friend who lives on the outskirts of town, up a big hill. Perfect workout for the legs and the lungs, only slightly marred by being rained on. Had a lovely visit with said friend, though she did give me the whole “look how far you’ve come” speech and make me a bit emotional. Afternoon spent playing, evening spent trying desperately to get S to sleep before giving up and having her sit in her bouncy chair until I capitulated and took us both to bed at 9pm.

Tuesday 16 Oct

Tiring day. S slept badly, which meant so did I. Got up late, breakfasted late. S had the world’s shortest nap and woke up grumpy, so I took her out in the pushchair thinking she’d go back to sleep. She didn’t, but I did bump into my auntie, which brightened my day. Came home, spent the afternoon trying to placate her after another pointlessly short nap. Put her to bed and prayed. Had about an hour of quiet before S woke up. Went to bed early and had a couple of hours’ sleep before she woke up, and stayed awake and grumpy until 9am. Far from ideal.

Wednesday 17 Oct

Day started about 5 hours before I would have liked. D, my Home Start volunteer, brought cakes, biscuits and a gossip magazine. Spent most of the day trying to get S to nap, or playing with her. She’s not big into doing anything on her own at the moment. No housework was done, and I really could not be bothered to leave the house. The only way is up… right?

Thursday 18 Oct

Desperate to get S to have some proper sleep, I took her for a long walk. It worked; she had a 2 hour morning nap. But no afternoon nap, and no proper sleep in the evening. Called the health visitor and a nursery nurse is coming out next week.

Friday 19 Oct

Another day, another walk to try and get S to sleep. Sort of worked but not much. Very short nap, followed by lunch and another very short nap, and then a visit from my aunt and cousin. Still going through the motions of the bedtime routine and putting S to bed at 6, but it’s largely pointless; she’s back in the living room by 7pm and we don’t go to sleep til midnight.

Saturday 20 Oct

Another restless night followed by an early morning. Up and out for a walk with little sis, then back home for visits from other little sis and her bloke, a friend delivering clothes for S, and another friend showing off a shocking new hair colour. Three messy meals necessitated Bath Night, followed by lots of frustration at trying to fall asleep. S had three naps today, all relatively short; am not sure whether this bodes well or not for tonight’s sleep. Cross your fingers please!

Counting my Blessings

As my recent blog posts may have hinted, I’m having a pretty rough time at the moment. Whenever I am awake in the wee small hours, I often find myself getting pretty angry that I’m doing this on my own. This is not what I signed up for. When I got pregnant I was in a relationship. When I gave birth I was in a relationship. I assumed that when my baby was 6 months old and having trouble sleeping, I would still be in that relationship, and would therefore have a bit of help and support in dealing with extreme stress and sleep deprivation. I also assumed that my family would be there to rally round, that I would have a whole hoard of people I could call upon to come and lighten the load, either by helping with housework, or looking after S while I had a break. The reality is that I assumed wrong. And when I’m so tired and so  fed up I can barely see, and I’m walking into door frames and pleading my child to please just go to sleep, I find myself pretty cross about that. Where are all these people who are supposed to rally around a new mum? Aren’t they supposed to be helping me? I’m not meant to feel this alone and isolated.

It’s times like this that I think I just need to take a step backwards and look at the facts, reminding myself why I prefer my current position to any possible alternatives. Count my blessings, as it were.

• I may be the only person having to deal with S’s grumpy moods, but I’m also the only one who gets her regular cuddles, smiles and giggles. All her love is just for me and I don’t have to share.
• As pointed out by numerous friends on numerous occasions, I’m actually doing pretty bloody well on my own. The whole “look how far you’ve come” argument really is valid, as evidenced by the “diary entries from early motherhood” posts I’ve put up lately.
• I know from bitter experience that sadly we really are better off without S’s father – and that even when he was here, he didn’t help out with anything I would find useful at 3am. He bought us a cooker and then he buggered off, and it was the best thing for all concerned.
• Most of my family might not be banging down the door to offer their help, but lots of other people are. My Home Start lady is truly amazing, and I have some of the best friends a girl could wish for, who I know will help if I ask.
• Despite the current blip, and even for fleeting moments during the blip, S is a happy, healthy baby. I’d rather have this situation than one where she is less happy, less healthy, or perhaps in an unsafe situation.
• I might be tired, but other mothers are dealing with much worse, more worrying and stressful situations than just a baby who is not sleeping well.
• From what I’ve been told/reading lately, all babies go through an unsettled stage at 6 months. And at the moment a lot of babies are not sleeping well. There are a lot of sleep-deprived mamas on my Facebook; I’m not alone in this!
• Despite having a hard time, I have not compromised my beliefs with regard to how I want to care for S. I have resisted the urge to dump her in the cot and run away! She has a slightly more frazzled, grumpy mummy, but she still has a mummy who gives her lots of cuddles and kisses.
• As per yesterday’s post, this is a lesson in patience and acceptance. I’m doing my best to learn to just sit with it, take a deep breath and do what needs to be done – a life lesson that will no doubt come in very useful a few more times before S is old enough to fend for herself!
• I’m knackered and fed up, but at least I’m not sleep deprived and having to get up and go to work in the mornings! If S keeps me up all night, I can always share her nap later in the day, or go to bed earlier the next night.
• Because I’m alone in this, I don’t have to make an effort to maintain other relationships while I’m this tired and fed up. I would imagine couples going through this end up having an awful lot of arguments about nothing even vaguely important, because their fuse is too short to do otherwise! If I feel crappy I can cancel my plans with friends or family, and therefore avoid sniping at them over nothing.
• There is nothing in this world more awesome right now, than the look on S’s face when she’s pulled a blanket over her face to play Peekaboo with me. And it’s just for me.

There are a million other blessings I could, and probably should, count, but I’m too tired to think of them. It helps to think of the positives though, and remind myself that right now I’m in exactly the right place, doing the right thing, with the right people around me. Everything happens for a reason, and I’m learning a lot from this experience. You learn a lot more, a lot more quickly, from uncomfortable situations.

I’m trying to keep telling myself this.

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Buddhism for Mothers?

You know when you have an argument with someone, or they’ve irritated you in some way, and you just don’t feel like talking to them? So you don’t. Because you don’t have to.

Having a baby is a whole different kettle of fish. The other night, S was clearly knackered, but would (could) not sleep. I was also knackered so in the end, tired of the draft coming from her flapping her gro-bagged feet in her bouncy chair, I took us both to bed. I would have fallen asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow… but S had other ideas. I tried begging, I tried pleading, I tried rocking her, cuddling her, feeding her. I even tried putting her in the cot I’ve finally installed at the end of my bed (whatever made me think that might work, I cannot tell you – sleep deprivation causing dereliction of mental capacity probably). This sort of situation tends to make me panic. Not in the way you might think, though. My panic has more to do with the fact I have no control over this situation. Usually, if I do not like the situation I am in, I can get up and walk away – and I normally do. When I can’t just remove myself from something that I don’t like, it makes me quite agitated. When you are a single parent, you are often stuck in situations you have no control over, and no immediate way to resolve. There’s nobody to take over the rocking and cooing so that you can go to sleep; you just have to suck it up, pretend you’re not mortally tired, and get on with the rocking.

This is yet another of those things nobody warns you about. I don’t mean the tiredness (though really, no amount of explaining can prepare you for that); I mean the whole idea that you are no longer your own person, you can’t just go to sleep when you want to, or go for a walk when you feel like it, spend all day in bed, whatever. Obviously, single parent or not, your life changes dramatically when you have a child. But when it’s just you looking after them, the change is that much more noticeable. If the baby is crying but you need the toilet, you have to make a decision: do I comfort the baby, and hope she calms down before I get to the dangerous stage of needing the toilet, or do I leave the baby to cry and hope she doesn’t get to the house-screaming-down stage of crying before I flush, wash and return? S spends a lot of time sitting in her Bumbo seat in the bathroom doorway.

As I’ve jokingly lamented in a previous post, you can’t reason with a baby. You can tell them, “I’m just going to get a drink, and then I will feed you” but they won’t understand; all they see is that you are walking away, while they are very hungry. Similarly, the other night when S was clearly very tired but not sleeping, it was very frustrating for me not to be able to explain to her that if she just went to sleep we would both feel a lot better. I couldn’t say to her, “fine; you stay awake and play with your toys, but I’m going to sleep.” I also couldn’t say “for the love of God would you just close your damn eyes, I’m dying here!!” – tempted as I was. Also the next day, when my eyelids felt like sandpaper and I was far from on top form, there was little point in my saying to S, "sorry mummy is not moving quickly enough for you; perhaps if you had let mummy sleep last night..."

Every evening, I put S to bed upstairs and then creep quietly back down. Lately she has taken to waking again within an hour, and I have to go back up to her. Sometimes she takes 10 minutes to settle back down; other times it can be an hour, or she doesn’t settle at all, and bang goes my evening. It’s hard to do, but I find that if I just go back up and lay there with her, and don’t look at the clock or think about the dinner I could be eating or the TV show I could be watching, or the mountain of washing up that’s waiting, or the clothes I need to put away or the million other things I could be doing – it doesn’t feel so bad to be stuck there. I sometimes even enjoy laying there quietly for half an hour in silence, with no distractions. It’s an exercise in just accepting things as they are, without fighting against something I am powerless to change.

When I first had S, I downloaded a lot of parenting books onto my Kindle. One of them was called “Buddhism forMothers.” I think perhaps I should read that one.

Hooray for Home Start!

Tomorrow is Wednesday, which means my Home Start lady is coming round. As I sit here on a Tuesday evening, I’m surprised to find that I’m really looking forward to her visit.

You know when you have a week off work, and you get to Thursday and suddenly think, oh bugger, I have fewer days off in front of me than behind, my week off is almost over, I’d better Do Something? I’ve had that feeling periodically since having S: the feeling that I’m wasting my spare time, and it will be at an end soon and I should be doing more, appreciating it more. Of course, I know that eventually I will go back to work, S will go back to school, we will have less time together, and this time will seem like a far-off utopia of days gone by – but I tend to get a more urgent feeling, akin to the sort you’d get if you were going back to work after the weekend. Just lately, it has occurred to me that this is it: this is how my life just is now, and it’s not going to change any time soon. We have very little to fill our days with, and often spend large chunks of time wandering aimlessly around Sainsbury’s. I’m not going back to real life on Monday; this is real life.

This last couple of weeks has been really tough. I’ve realised just how much I need S to sleep well, even if that’s just so that I can have an hour watching TV or doing housework without having to try and simultaneously entertain her. It’s physically and mentally exhausting for her to be awake constantly, especially when her lack of sleep means she is usually grumpy as well. I’ve been doing this on my own for six months now, without a day off or more than an hour to myself here and there. On the one hand, there have been several times lately when I’ve been desperate for someone – anyone – to take S off my hands for a couple of hours so that I could have a break. On the other hand, the minute she is away from me, I miss her terribly, and feel horribly guilty for being apart from her.

There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother where a little girl brings Lilly a picture of a rainbow several times, and each time she says “oh wow, what a beautiful rainbow!” and then, the last time she brings one up Lilly loses her cool and says “seriously, are you kidding me? Another rainbow? Aren’t you sick of them?” This is what I feel like sometimes. S cries or gets grouchy over something, and most of the time I’ll go to her and calm her and chat baby talk at her and play with her toys or cuddle her or do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, until she’s ok… and then there’ll be an evening where I’ve been up and down the stairs to her five times, and I’m starving and about to bite into what is now a barely lukewarm dinner, and she cries… and the words I utter as I trudge up the stairs are a little more along the lines of “Another rainbow?”

I was talking to a friend yesterday about having a night out. The difference between us is that she is married, so if she goes out her kids are with their dad: they love him, they feel safe with him. She knows they will be looked after and she has nothing to worry about, and that they probably won’t notice much of difference than if she were there. For me, if I wanted a night out I would have to consider leaving S with someone largely unfamiliar. She has aunties and uncles, and I have several amazing friends, all of whom I know would do a good job of looking after her, but she only knows any of them as someone who’s danced around the living room with her for a couple of hours here and there. There’s nobody completely constant in her life with whom I could leave her and know she wouldn’t be upset by the disruption. And, of course, there is still the massive guilt at leaving here anywhere, with anyone – as if I don’t want her around.

I was toying with the idea of going to the health visitor to see if she would look into getting me some funding for a nursery place a couple of mornings a week, just to allow me a bit of a break and some breathing space from time to time. But this is largely unrealistic, since S is still mostly breastfed and won’t take a bottle (even if I could work the ridiculous pump I have enough to get a bottle full of milk for her). And I know that I would probably spend the entire time she was in a nursery, sitting at home pining for her and feeling guilty that I’d left her.

Wednesdays are my salvation at the moment. D only spends a couple of hours here, but during that time she will largely take over looking after S. She bounces her on her knee, plays on her play mat with her, pulls faces, sings songs and sometimes spends half an hour rocking her back and forth until she falls asleep. I do things like catch up on phone calls to the electricity company or sorting through paperwork. We have a cup of coffee together and I tell her about my week, and we chat about whatever comes up. She’s like a therapist and a babysitter in one! Plus, she always brings milk for coffee, and usually cake or biscuits too.

Mood Swings

The more astute among you may have gleaned from previous posts that I have a long-standing, ongoing battle with depression and general mental demons that just won’t leave me be.

Since getting pregnant I’ve not taken any medication for my mental health issues, and instead I take supplements, most notably fish oils, which I take three times a day, without fail. They tend to work quite well at balancing out my moods and helping me to not jump face-first into the pit of eternal despair. I have, however, noticed a pattern emerging. This in itself is a good thing, as I’m usually so completely un-self-aware that I don’t notice things like this. I’m the girl who spends a week convinced everyone really is out to get her… and then realises when her “monthly visitor” arrives that it was just PMT.

I tend to coast along nicely, not quite 100% together, but nowhere near as depressed and miserable as I have been known to be. An even keel, you might say. After a little while my moods will start to deteriorate, and with them the housework and general organisation of my life. This generally culminates in one evening spent wailing, convinced I can’t possibly continue with anything. S will pick up on my mood and become suitably grizzly, thus increasing the despair. And then we go to bed, and in the morning wake up and look around a little like the Very Hungry Caterpillar coming out of his cocoon. The world hasn’t ended overnight, you say? Everything is just fine, you say? This day is invariably a day where I will go a bit manic and catch up on everything I’ve let slip for the last week or so. I will wash up, clean the kitchen, do as many loads of washing as I can get through the machine in a day, vacuum, prepare baby foods, cook proper meals for myself and stock the fridge and freezer. I’ll be like this for a good few days, merrily going along getting everything done as quickly as possible and generally being rather awesome.

This has happened over the last couple of days: S was not sleeping, either for naps or at night. I was getting nothing done, not eating properly, getting stressed at her lack of sleep. Whenever I did manage to get her to drop off she would usually be woken up by someone knocking the door, or the phone ringing, or me being clumsy and dropping something because I was so tired. I was completely exhausted, and it’s entirely possible that if Jack the Ripper had knocked the door and offered to babysit, I would have let him in. Luckily for us, Jack the Ripper doesn’t come round much these days. Over the weekend I finally cracked and spent an evening pushing S back and forth in the pushchair in the living room, trying desperately to get her to sleep. I was distraught, convinced there was no way I could do this on my own any more but with clue as to how I could remedy that situation. I felt lost and miserable and fed up. So I went to bed at 8:30pm and decided to deal with it in the morning. And what do you know, S actually slept quite a bit, which meant I managed to get some sleep too, and we both woke up the next day feeling a lot better.

So there we have my pattern – Extreme low is always followed by extreme high, and then it evens itself out again for a few weeks. This is possibly something I should write on a Post-It and stick to my fridge, so that next time I’m burrowing about in the depths of despair, I can at least tell myself the words I have tattooed on my wrist: this too shall pass.

Our Week, 8-13 October

Monday 08 Oct

After a rather unsettled (and somewhat screamy) night’s sleep, we got up and walked across town to pick up some baby clothes. We were also supposed to walk to an out of town superstore in another direction to pick up an order, but I couldn’t be bothered. We came home instead, and spent a fair amount of time playing. And then a nap, and then more playing. Bed time appears to have become a two-stage thing, where S falls asleep and I sneak out, only to find her awake and crying 15 minutes later. This happened again, but fingers crossed it’s not a permanent change!

Tuesday 09 Oct

Walked in the pouring rain to the big out of town Next to pick up an order. Turned up at 9:45 to find they didn’t open til 10. Got drenched. Came home, got changed, and went to see the health visitor. My one has been off sick for months so I saw yet another lady I’d not seen before. It’s a different one every time these days, and far from an ideal situation.

Wednesday 10 Oct

Our Home Start lady came and brought cakes for me and two teething toys for S. In the afternoon my sister Z came round with some rice krispie cakes she’d made and I ate until I felt sick. We didn’t leave the house all day.

Thursday 11 Oct

Up and out early to run some errands around town. Home by 11am to attempt housework, but S had other ideas. Her poor sleeping pattern over the last few days has been getting gradually worse, and today she had no naps at all, and then couldn’t sleep at bed time. Ended up bringing her downstairs and pushing her back and forth in the pushchair until she fell asleep, then camping on the sofa.

Friday 12 Oct

Another day where we didn’t leave the house. Had plans to go out for a walk with a friend but after another poor night’s sleep I cancelled in favour of trying to get some rest. S actually managed a morning nap, and was in a fairly agreeable mood, meaning I managed to get a fair few things done. Unfortunately her afternoon nap, during which I was planning to sleep, was interrupted by a loud knock on the door, and so I spent the afternoon trying to distract S from grizzling; no mean feat. Despite this, I still managed to do some decorating, cleaning and washing – so not a complete loss.

Saturday 13 Oct

A slightly better night followed by a lazy morning. When it became clear S did not intend on having a morning nap, I took her out in the sling instead. She finally fell asleep after half an hour of wandering around the shops, so I stayed out for as long as I could in order to keep her asleep. Certainly feeling her weight gain in my back these days! When we came home she was in an agreeable mood, and even had a long afternoon nap, so I managed to get a lot done – baking, stewing and pureeing foods, cleaning the kitchen, washing up, more decorating, posting a gazillion items on Ebay. She is now in bed, but I’ve been up to her twice already. Fingers crossed she stays asleep now, and I get to have a lazy Saturday evening after a somewhat stressful week!

Things I Wish I Could Explain to S...

• You can wear your bib as a cape, but it won’t be quite so effective.

• You can either suck your thumb or my nipple; both doesn’t work so well.

• Hard to believe, but if you just give up and go to sleep for an hour or so, you will feel a lot better when you wake up.

• I’ve not disappeared off the face of the earth, just gone to the toilet. I’ll be back before you know it and you’ll feel silly for crying.

• It is entirely possible for you to grab my breast without clawing it to shreds. Please learn this quickly.

• If you just move your arm a little, you’ll be able to roll out of that position… No, move it the other way… No, not your leg…

• This toy is designed for teething; if you put it in your mouth it might make you feel a little better. The other toy is fluffy, and not really designed for anything mouth-related. Surely you can taste that?

• We share a bed. I can hear that you are awake from your chattering; I just pretend not to in the hope you will go back to sleep. Lifting your legs and banging them back down on the bed like that is just rude!

• If you’re so hungry you’re crying, the answer really is to stop crying and drink milk when it is offered. The crying won’t make you not hungry. Fact.

• I love you very much, but sometimes when I feel something warm and wet running down my arm, and I don’t know whether it’s pee or dribble, it’s hard not to question your motives.

• I know you love to stand and get a good old look around, but I’d really love if you could at least attempt the whole sitting/crawling thing first. You’ll love it once you get the hang of it and can sit yourself up without having to wait for me to figure out why you’re yelling every time!

• If you just cling to me a tiny bit, instead of going all floppy, our walk down the stairs in the morning will feel less precarious.

• I know you don’t enjoy the act of putting your coat on, but once it’s on, you’ll enjoy chewing on it, and you’ll enjoy being in the sling leaving a trail of slobber on my chest even more.

• It would be helpful if you could aim your sick at the muslin I am holding in front of your face, instead of turning your head and depositing it on me/the floor/my leg/the sofa.

• It is really not funny to wait until the minute I put a load of nappies in the washing machine before doing a great big poo. Nobody wants that smell hanging around the house until the next load goes in.

• You have a lot of toys designed specifically for babies of your age. There are fluffy things, chewy things, brightly coloured things, ones that squeak or make other annoying noises. There are blankets and play mats on the floor to keep you comfortable while you play… I can’t help but feel you’re a tiny bit ungrateful when all you want to do is sit on my lap and play with the tag on my cardigan.

• Your toes are cold because you kicked your socks off. I am more than happy to put them back on for you, but if you pull them straight back off again, your toes will stay cold.

• I understand that you want me to play with you, and you don’t like for me to leave you alone on your play mat, but if I don’t eat soon we run the risk of my collapsing on top of you.

• This is the most important one: I love you more than you will ever comprehend, more than chocolate and ice cream and duvets all put together. 

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