Our Week 19-24 Nov

Monday 19 Nov

A night of sleep interrupted by screaming from S to confirm her teeth are indeed still working their way out of her gums. Out for lunch with some dear friends from my gym-going days, including a 2-year-old who was so quiet I forgot she was there! (definitely taking notes from her mother!). Afternoon spent playing; evening spent trying to get S to sleep. Teeth won that battle hands down.

Tuesday 20 Nov

Another night of screaming – way more than Sunday night, and medicine and cuddles made no difference. Up and dressed and out to see the health visitor, which was nice. Asked if there was any help available; answer was no. Afternoon spent trying to get S to drink horrid-tasting medicine.

Wednesday 21 Nov

Teething has combined with snottiness to ensure Macbeth has definitely murdered sleep in this house. Morning spent with D; she played with S long enough for me to tidy a bit, and also rocked her to sleep for me. The woman is a legend. Afternoon spent trying to entertain a rather grumpy baby. Evening spent similarly. Less said about the night, the better.

Thursday 22 Nov

Although there was precious little sleeping involved, S did sleep from 6:30 to 8am laying on my chest, like she used to when she was a lot smaller, which was a nice feeling and almost made up for that being the longest stretch of sleep we had all night. Shopping in the morning, playing in the afternoon with a brief visit from my sister.

Friday 23 Nov

Can’t tell if it was a slightly better night, or after a week of awful sleep, I’m just getting used to it. Went to town to buy the food I forgot/couldn’t be arsed to find in the shop on Thursday. Came home, ate some lunch and made gingerbread men. Afternoon spent waving my hands and pulling faces while S giggled. Every day should be like this.

Saturday 24 Nov
A visit from my sister; normally we would go out for a walk, but the weather was awful so we stayed in. Went to visit a neighbour whose son has a birthday today, while S was napping. Came back to find S had woken up and forced her auntie to play stand-up/sit-down with her. Decided against leaving the house; spent the afternoon napping and trying to do OU coursework. Not entirely successful at either.

On The Absence of a Man

One of the main issues I have with being on my own with S is that she only has me to look after her.

For the most part, that is a definite plus in our lives: we have half the bed each (well, to be fair I think she takes up more than half a lot of the time), we don’t have to share each other’s time with anyone else, and we’ve developed a very strong bond.

My friend says I have First Baby Syndrome: I use the sling more often than the push chair; I carry S everywhere with me; I rarely leave her with anyone. In fact, I’ve probably left her less than a dozen times, each for no more than an hour. Depending on who you speak to, this is either a really good thing and means we’ll have a firm bond that will last S long into adulthood, or it’s really quite bad and S will be some weird mummy’s girl forever tied to my apron strings. 

When faced with the choice between Gina Ford and Dr Sears’ Attachment Parenting, I’ll opt for Sears every time. Being on my own means I’m probably making life very hard for myself by going down this route. S is never left to cry if I can help it, and I get quite irate if someone I leave her with lets her sit and cry. She is breastfed on demand, and I have no interest in trying to find ways of tricking her into sleeping through the night before she is ready. As a health visitor pointed out to me not so long ago, if you decide you’re going to exclusively breastfeed, on demand, for the first six months, you kind of just have to accept that your life is not your own for that time. There are several people with whom I would happily leave S for extended periods of time, but at the moment there is no point exploring that avenue, because I need to be nearby to feed her every few hours; more when it is hot out, or she is teething or feeling otherwise unwell. I am perfectly happy with this. If S turns out a weirdo because of it, well then all the Gina Ford subscribers can have their perfectly-trained toddlers pelt me with copies of her books.

The only problem comes at times when it would be useful to have a second pair of hands. For example, if I’ve not had my dinner before S goes to bed (most nights), and she’s having trouble settling to sleep (every night at the moment), it can get fairly frustrating to spend an hour or more trying to get her to sleep when my stomach is growling and I’m tired and fed up. She is teething at the moment, and has had some fairly miserable, grizzly days when I’ve had no choice but to feed her Calpol and Nurofen every couple of hours and spend large portions of time with her sitting on my lap, chewing my hand through a muslin and crying whenever I try to put her down and sneak off to the toilet. I actually ended up putting a Bumbo chair in the bathroom in the end, so that I could just take her to the toilet with me. (incidentally, I hear that’s a good thing for helping them to toilet train early, but still, I’d rather pee in peace sometimes, ya know?) 

Also there are times when I could do with just popping to the shop to get some milk, or to post a letter, but I don’t bother going because it is too much bother to get S into the sling, and she usually falls asleep in it any way, which makes for trouble at bed time, which is something I have to then deal with on my own. 

Taking S out in the pushchair is also an ordeal, being as we are, on the first floor. It would be handy to have someone to help carry the pushchair up and down the stairs. Someone to carry the shopping, someone to help with the housework, someone to play with S when I want to spend more than 5 minutes in the bath in the morning, someone to answer the door when I am breastfeeding (that’s a sure-fire way to get rid of unwanted callers, let me tell you), someone to whom I can say, “wow, did you see what she just did, that was awesome!” 

I have been sitting here racking my brains to think of other examples of when it would be useful to have a partner, and can come up with none. Obviously it would be nice for me to have some adult company and hugs and kisses and suchlike. But realistically, when S is awake my attention is on her. History attests to the fact that I have, at best, shoddy taste in men. I would not consider having any potential new beau around while S is awake. My evenings are fairly full, what with housework, decorating, two Open University modules, a blog, and an unhealthy addiction to several TV series via Netflix. If I were to acquire myself a young man, realistically they could only spend one or two evenings a week (from 8 til 10pm at most) here. And since S shares my bed, there is no space for a man in it.

Obviously, S doesn’t know any different, so it’s not like she feels that she’s missing out. When her father first cleared off, I had major concerns about her missing out on having a daddy and feeling like she only had half a family. But actually, when you look around you these days, it’s not like when I was a kid and everyone lived at home with mummy, daddy, a dog, one or two siblings and a white picket fence. In fact, by the time I was a teenager probably a lot of my peers’ parents had divorced. The modern family is no longer a heterosexual, married couple with 2.4 children; in fact, one of those is quite rare these days. Many families are made up of children from past relationships, step-siblings, half-siblings, extended family either living together or spending a lot of time together, and neighbours or friends who are no relation at all spending more time with the child than one or both parents. The options I was faced with when S and I came home from hospital meant that either I maintained a strong bond and a good routine with her, or she spent time with her father. There was no middle ground to be had. Since then other details have come to light which mean that, even if he were to attempt to locate that middle ground, I would be having none of it.

From a financial point of view, I am probably better off being on my own with S. I know a lot of women who have had to go back to work after having a baby a lot sooner than they would have liked; many perhaps would have liked to stop work altogether and focus on their child, but they cannot afford to do so. For me, being a single mother, I will be skint whether I go to work and pay for childcare, or stay home and live off benefits for a couple of years until S is in pre-school. In that way, I probably have more of a choice than most women. 

I have no qualms about living off the state for a few years, until S is in school. I have paid my taxes all my life specifically for this reason, and while I am actively raising my child I feel I am still contributing to society by not producing a delinquent for the system to deal with. I am also studying for a degree, and looking at the possibility of taking on freelance work if I decide not to go back to my job. I may still opt to go back to my job, and if that happens I will be spending a lot of time making sure wherever she goes while I am at work is offering her a better environment than staying at home with me. It has to be worth her while for me to consider leaving her.

It looks like it’s taken me less than 1500 words to convince myself that S and I are fine on our own, and do not need a man about the house, her father or otherwise.

What Did You Do Today?

Quite often I think a day has been a write-off, and I’ve achieved nothing, only to begin writing about it and find that I didn’t do too badly. I was about to complain that I’d had a bad day, but actually that’s not true.

S was in a fairly good mood this morning, and we had a few rounds of "giggling baby flying around the living room" before getting dressed. When we came back from our morning walk though, the mood nose-dived fairly rapidly, and we found that actually, the only things she wanted to do today were the ones where I was sitting there next to or in front of her. 

I felt like I’d achieved very little when I finally crept down the stairs an hour ago, but actually I walked nearly 10km this morning, washed up the teetering pile of plates left over from yesterday’s complete refusal to be productive (not on a Sunday!), washed and dried a load of nappies and some towels, cleaned the sides and the cooker top, put away some washing upstairs, wiped down the play mats in the living room, and spent a good portion of time sitting on said play mats playing with my little monster. So actually, I think I did quite well.

These days the vacuum cleaner doesn’t always make its way out of the cupboard, and the washing up doesn’t often get dried and put away; but I’ve not run out of clean plates for a while, and my bedroom is no longer carpeted with discarded clean and dirty clothes. On the whole, today wasn’t bad – despite the fact I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to evict a ridiculous headache since 11am, and fell asleep whilst putting S to bed.

I think I tend to fall into the trap of judging my current productivity against my pre-pregnancy days, when I would clean the whole house in a morning, and spend the afternoon baking brownies, reading a book or at the gym. Well, in reality, before I was pregnant my home was probably a lot less clean and tidy than it is now, but you know what I mean. I tended to do more “stuff” then, whereas now I can spend an hour sitting on a play mat pulling faces at S, and that’s a constructive use of my time. 

I suppose priorities change in more ways than one when you have a baby.