The Steep Learning Curve

S has been at nursery for a month now, and already she's learning things...

• She's learned to eat off a plate/from a bowl without giving in to the urge to turn it over and launch her food across the room.

• She can now turn individual pages in a book, and will sit and read through her books, one page at a time.

• She can now take several steps unaided - has started doing it without me holding my arms out... or even watching her (that she knows of)

• She can, on occasion, take a drink from her cup without immediately spitting it all down her front.

• She will now let an adult wipe her nose, rather than covering her face with her hands and opting instead to wipe the snot on the nearest available leg.

• She points to things. A lot.

• She says "Hi" and "Bye" a lot more than she did before, and waves at every available opportunity.

• When she is eating, she has learned to put her hand to her mouth to push errant bits of food in, rather than just moving her head to try and catch what was trying to escape.

• She has learned to eat all sorts of new and exciting foods she wouldn't have had at home.

• She's learned to go to sleep without me, and sleep for a reasonable amount of time, on a regular basis. In fact, I think she now sleeps better at nursery than at home.

• She says "ta" when you give her something

• She appears to have learned that when I leave her, I'm coming back.

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Our Week, 31 Dec - 5 January

Monday 31 December
Last day of the year. Celebrated by doing housework. A visit from a dear friend and her three children, and a brief, damp visit to town, and then more housework. Rock and roll.

Tuesday 01 January
Finally, a break in the weather! Celebrated by bundling S into the pushchair and going for a wander around town. Good to get some fresh air and do some thinking. Afternoon spent catching up with an old friend, who enjoyed playing musical instruments with S while we chatted. Brief visit from mother and a family friend, then bed time. Happy New Year.

Wednesday 02 January
Up early to go to a poorly-timed doctor appointment. HYM was supposed to come with me to entertain S while I saw the doctor, but he didn't manage it. Instead, I tried to bounce her on my lap and keep her away from the blood pressure monitor and various other things on the doctor's desk while we discussed various things. Home by 10:30, visit from D, afternoon spent preparing food and playing with noisy toys. There is a lot to be said for noisy toys when you have things in your head you need to be distracted from.

Thursday 03 January
OU tutorial in the morning, where it was confirmed I really need to get my arse in gear and, you know, actually study if I want to complete the module that finishes in two weeks. Then a quick trip to town to pick up bits and bobs, home for some lunch and a visit from a wonderful friend who always brightens our day.

Friday 04 January
Up early for a visit from a truly awesome friend that we really don't see often enough. Especially since he turned up with Costa and croissants, and had driven all the way from Oxford just to say hi for an hour. Friends like this make me wonder why I've ever bothered with all the losers I've put up with in my life! Afternoon visit from two sisters and some nieces, evening spent with youngest sis A and a Chinese.

Saturday 05 January
S up in the night poorly, but slept in late. This is good in that I got some sleep, but bad in that it put her whole schedule out. We do like our schedule. Morning spent cleaning and tidying. Afternoon spent with more of the same; evening spent with HYM.

Our Week: 2 - 8 December

Sunday 2 Dec
Morning spent baking brownies, with a visit from mother. Hot date in the afternoon. evening spent... watching TV. Oh yeah, I know how to party. S barely slept through the evening, but did sleep for 5 solid hours in the night so can't complain.

Monday 3 Dec
Off to the Childrens' Centre in the morning for "8 Month Contact." Afternoon spent playing with S whilst moving furniture and bringing living room junk back downstairs now the floor is down. S had 3 long naps, which was odd but she's been sleeping badly lately.

Tuesday 4 Dec
Accidentally stayed in all day. Housework in the morning, and a visit from the nursery nurse about S and her eating/sleeping/development. World's messiest lunch: the kind where both mine and S's outfits needed to be changed afterwards. We were going to baby group at a local church in the afternoon, and looking forward to it since there was a Christmas tree festival to visit. But S decided to have a long afternoon nap, and we missed it. Had intended to go to the shops afterwards, but S did not wake in the world's best mood, and we'd already been through 2 pairs of socks today so abandoned all plans.

Wednesday 5 Dec
Up and out for a long walk in the morning, then an afternoon visit from a very dear friend I'd not seen forever and a day, and her gorgeous son. Evening and overnight spent trying not to hear the neighbours partying, and panicking about my maternity leave ending.

Thursday 6 Dec
Morning spent having a go at housework and waiting for a Tesco order. Afternoon spent at the local panto, Sleeping Beauty. We went with D, who got us tickets through Home Start which was awesome. S slept through the first part, but loved the lights and colours in the second half. Got home late (5pm) and neighbours had already begun their evening festivities so S slept in the living room in her bouncy chair. Again. No idea what we will do when she outgrows the thing, and the neighbours are still inconsiderate drunken idiots.

Friday 7 Dec
Off out to Buggyfun in the freezing cold; really didn't fancy it, but as usual once we got there it was great. then back home to feed S lunch and get my hair cut by a friend. Sneaky nap on the sofa followed by random housework tasks and a vague attempt at OU work. Must try harder with the OU stuff.

Saturday 8 Dec
Another morning pretending to do housework. I did vacuum though so that was good. Made brownies and tarted myself up for my hot date with the Handsome Young Man.Went out for hot date; bumped into my mother on the way home, whilst I was still with HYM. Awkward.

What We Did This Week

Monday 12 Nov

Up early and off to the hospital for a physio appointment. Then back into town and out the other side for a GP appointment for S. Then a walk home in the rain, and an afternoon of CBeebies. Evening spent doing OU work. I am living the dream.

Tuesday 13 Nov

Off to town to buy mincemeat supplies and pick up jars from my cousin, then home to mix all the ingredients in a massive bowl. World’s messiest lunch with S, then a visit from the nursery nurse, who ended up staying close to 2 hours while I talked about things completely unrelated to what she was visiting for.

Wednesday 14 Nov

A long walk over a very steep hill to deliver a book to a friend, then a mad rush around town to buy random things. Home to cook the mincemeat, and super messy lunch for S. Seriously, at the moment she’s going through 3 outfits a day.

Thursday 15 Nov

Quick trip to town in the morning to buy… I can’t remember what we bought. Main purpose for the trip was to get S to have a nap. Came home and made a vague attempt at tidying up the house in preparation from visitors. Lovely visit from a friend whose daughter is 3 months older than S; it’s like a taster session for what I have coming soon. Must baby-proof the flat ASAP.

Friday 16 Nov

Morning spent doing such fun stuff as washing and tidying. Little sis came over and painted my Christmas decorations, which was a bit awesome. Then went to cash & carry with a friend to get supplies. More fun than it sounds!

Saturday 17 Nov

Out for a walk with my sis A in the morning, then home. Had big plans to do all sorts, which I scrapped when I realised we were both knackered. Shared a long nap, then made a big old mess with some jelly. Bath and then bed for S, baking for me.

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.

Health & Fitness

A few weeks ago I posted on Facebook that I was having trouble deciding on subjects for blog posts. Someone suggested I write about health and fitness, and this is a post I’ve been working on, off and on, since that point…

A couple of years ago, I was a real gym bunny. I would regularly get up before 6 each morning and spend an hour in the gym before work. I would often go back for a class at lunch time, and on a weekend I would often spend three or four hours there. I saw a personal trainer regularly, who would inspire me to exercise and eat healthily, and really pushed me with my fitness. I would often be found in the weights bay at the gym, doing squats with a ridiculously heavy bar, or doing some weird exercise involving balancing on one leg whilst holding heavy dumbbells.

Then I had a nervous breakdown, and I never quite got back to the gym before I found myself pregnant and skint. I tried to stay active throughout my pregnancy, and would walk (or waddle) the two miles to and from work each day.

When S was born, and then her father left, I was very aware that I was at a high risk for postnatal depression – so was the health visitor, and she kept mentioning it. I was adamant I didn’t want the health visitor, doctors or anyone else to be at all concerned about me or my ability to look after my daughter. And I didn’t want to end up slipping into another pit I couldn’t drag myself out of. I knew from past experience that the best way of avoiding that was to ensure I exercised, and got out of the house every day – even on the days when I really didn’t feel like it. Especially on those days.

And so I went on Ebay and bought a cheaper, lighter pushchair so that I could lift it up and down the stairs on my own. And every morning, when S got me up at shit-o-clock, I would bundle her into the pushchair and go for a walk. We started off by going for a short walk, a couple of miles or so, and built up. On days we didn’t go for a walk, I would put S in the sling and walk around town while she napped.

Me walking with the pushchair

These days, I weight about a stone less than I did before I got pregnant. I started off going out for walks just for something to kill time, and to get us out of the house – but then I found I enjoyed feeling like I’d done some proper exercise, and would push myself to go further, faster than the previous day, incorporating hills, running between street lamps and taking the longer route wherever possible. There are several different routes I walk locally, and have even attempted to go “off road” and follow non-paths around a nature reserve a couple of times. There’s a notoriously punishing steep path called Stinky quite near to one of my usual routes, which I used to walk up every day last summer. I’m tempted to see if I can get the pushchair up there but I’ve not plucked up the courage yet.  Now I try to go for a long walk at least twice a week. Sometimes I will meet up with a friend, and on Saturday mornings my sister A will come along with us and we’ll do some extra cardio and conditioning work in the park too.

When I’d been doing my longer walks for a couple of weeks, I saw my old personal trainer in a park on the other side of town, busy putting someone through their paces. She stopped long enough to coo over S, and to tell me she ran a Buggy Fun class in the park on a Thursday morning. We went along that week, and had a great time. A, the trainer, now runs a local fitness company called Girls Love Fit with a friend, and is as crazy and motivating as ever. It was great to meet other mums and do something more energetic than the usual baby group stuff. We walked or ran up and down a hill in the park, did pilates-style conditioning moves, used park equipment to do push or pull-ups, talked about our weeks and felt good for working out while our babies played peekaboo with A or her 2-year-old daughter, who sometimes came along and made an excellent stand-in to play with the babies while we were laying on the floor doing crunches or leg lifts. Unfortunately the class I was going to merged recently with another one, and it is now run from somewhere different that I can’t go to, for reasons I won’t go into on here. It’s a crying shame, as I really enjoyed Buggy Fun and it gave me the confidence to push myself a lot more in my exercise. I would walk the long way out to the park for the class, and often on the way home I would push myself to run or to take a longer route. I’m hoping I can eventually go back to the class if my situation changes, and would definitely recommend it to anyone

I still have an umbilical hernia caused by my abs separating during pregnancy, which means I try to do a fair bit in the way of core work each week. If I fall behind on that, I really do notice it in a fairly painful way. That’s probably a good thing though, as it means I use my core muscles when I’m bumping the pushchair up and down the stairs, and am always pullign my belly in!

My diet is still less than fantastic, which is something I work on daily; especially since S started on solids. Most mornings I will have a fruit smoothie comprising of several of the following: raspberries and blueberries (frozen if fresh are not available); any other fruit I have hanging about the kitchen; fresh ginger; protein powder; spirulina powder; spinach (you can’t taste it); left over apple puree from S’s breakfast; yogurt; fruit juice. The drink tends to be purpley in colour, fills a pint glass, and usually keeps me happy until around lunch time. Lunch is usually a salad, either tuna, salmon or cottage cheese unless I’ve splashed out and bought something different or cooked some chicken. Evening meals are hit and miss: some days I’ll cook something “proper,” and other days I’ll have fish fingers and grill a red pepper at the same time to make it look a little healthier.

This all makes it sound like I have a super healthy diet and should be stick thin so let me just add that between meals, especially in the afternoons and evenings, I probably consume as many calories as contained in my regular meals in the form of cakes, biscuits, crisps and chocolate. This is the part I need to work on, along with all the Coke I drink. I did go through a (very yawny) couple of months where I went completely cold turkey on the Coke, what with the breastfeeding and all. Then Costa lured me back in again, and once I’d started on the caffeine it was easy to slip back into the Coke habit. I don’t drink anywhere near as much as I used to, but there are still a lot of empty calories (and chemicals, and caffeine) in there. I have switched to decaf Costa visits though, something that makes me cringe with each visit, as my order is now about 8 words long.

Today I am wearing jeans I stopped wearing months before I got pregnant, because they were a little too tight. These days they are too big, and I have to wear a belt. I have to admit I think I owe a lot of my post-pregnancy weight/inch loss to the fact I did a set of power plate sessions within a month of coming home from the hospital. I would go for a walk to ensure S was asleep in the pushchair, and then go and spend anything from 10 to 40 minutes doing various exercises on a power plate in the back of a local sunbed place. The advertisement posters they had up on the walls said that it helped to get rid of cellulite and “reset” your body, which I thought was a load of rubbish but to be honest, with very little effort I lost a fair bit of weight, and managed to tone up some quite saggy bits as well. Now I just have to make sure I don’t undo that with too many biscuits!

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Am I Setting a Good Example?

After yesterday’s post on bodyimage, I’ve been thinking about what I can do to ensure S grows up with a healthy attitude towards her body, food and exercise.

On the one hand, it’s tough because there is only me to guide her on this – and I know I have my own issues that I would do anything to avoid passing onto her. As her only (main) role model, I need to make sure that I’m always a good role model, and that I lead by example. There’s no point in my encouraging her to eat vegetables and balanced meals, if I’m sitting there munching on a packet of crisps and my fourth chocolate bar of the day.

On the other hand (there’s a glove), if it’s only me then I have 100% control over the parental influence on S’s life. This is good not only because I don’t want her father’s suspect ideas on nutrition to be passed down to her (his 11 year old son is encouraged to drink protein shakes, and fresh vegetables are a once-a-week affair), but also because I’m not necessarily sure there are many other adults out there whose ideas I would like passed onto my daughter. At least with only one adult to look up to, S only stands to inherit one dodgy set of ideals.

I’ve got the exercise covered; I go for a walk at every available opportunity, and can’t wait until S is interested in the ducks and horses we see while we’re out. We rarely catch the bus or go in a car. I would rather she see this than have a mum who does exercise dvds at home intermittently (who really keeps those things up on a long term basis?) or goes to a gym, leaving her elsewhere. Eventually, I will pluck up the courage to take us both swimming as well.

Since S started on solids, I’ve been more mindful of what I’m eating. People say, Oh you can just give them what you’re having. For breakfast I had a fruit smoothie, which would be fine except for the added protein powder which I’m sure is not meant for infants. For lunch I had chicken salad; fine in principal, not so much in practise for a 6 month old with no teeth. Have you ever tried to liquidise iceberg lettuce? Dinner hasn’t happened yet, but it’s likely to be yet more salad because that’s all there is in the fridge at the moment. My eating habits are probably quite strange to the outsider. I know from experience that I function better (and maintain a steady weight) if I eat more protein, and don’t eat much in the way of carbs. I don’t have potatoes in the house at all, and I rarely cook rice or pasta to go with my meal. I do eat sweet potatoes on occasion, but quite often I just plain can’t be bothered to cook them as an accompaniment so I go without. I stopped eating bread a long time ago, after finally accepting that it makes me bloated and gassy and uncomfortable and unhappy. If I do go through a stage of eating lots of rice or pasta, I feel tired and sluggish because of it.

So where does this leave S’s diet? Do I start buying bread again, just so that she can have beans on toast and boiled egg with soldiers? Do I make her have mashed potato with every meal when I don’t? I’d rather we didn’t have separate meals or separate foods; in fact I’m actively trying to avoid that, because I believe that way lies ruin: “my mummy eats special food” is not something I ever want to hear S say. It’s a bad idea to cut any food group out of a diet, especially for a child who is just learning about food. I want her to learn that all food is good in moderation; for all I know bread, pasta and rice will have no ill effects on her, so why should I keep them from her?

And then there’s the old issue of body image. I try to avoid scrutinising my body in the mirror these days (as if I even have time for such things!) but I still have fairly bad acne scarring on my face which does bother me. S watches me get up every morning, get in and out of the bath, and get dressed. When I remember, I still rub cream into my belly in a vague attempt to get rid of the stretch marks – but since I also moisturise the rest of my body, that’s not a standalone issue. I do still have a tendency to examine my appearance once dressed to check that my belly doesn’t look too huge; that’s a habit I’ve had for years so it’s a hard one to break. I’m working on it though.

Ponderings on Body Image

Look! It's Lizzie!

Some of my earliest memories are of my mother being on a diet. We would have our dinner; she would sit at the end of the table with a bland-looking baked potato with cottage cheese. It wasn’t just her; one day when I was no more than about 5, I walked into our living room to find her and two of her friends sitting on the floor, trying to walk on their bottoms like they’d seen on some exercise show. I remember them being very impressed that I could do it. It was the 80s, the era when Lizzie Webb encouraged us to exercise each morning on Good Morning Britain with that maniacal Jokeresque grin. The era when the workout video really began. The entire nation was on a diet.

When I was in first school, our PE classes were mainly playing with hula hoops in the playground, or kicking a ball back and forth. When I moved up to middle school, all of a sudden they wanted us to do cross country running through the woods. And so began my hatred of all things exercise. I spent secondary school coming up with elaborate excuses to get out of PE class, and was relieved when I went to college and found nobody cared whether I could play netball or not. I spent the next few years studiously avoiding all exercise. When I got a bit too chubby and needed to lose weight, I would go on a diet, as per years of examples in my life and the media. I never liked the way my body looked, and would usually just wear baggy clothes to cover my belly. At best, the shape of my body was something I tolerated.

A few years ago I joined a gym, and got really into it. I saw a personal trainer a couple of times a month, went to tons of classes, and at one point was in the gym every morning at 6:30am. I loved it. Then I had a breakdown, and it all stopped. Ironically, I also stopped eating for a time, and so finally my stomach was flat. I had something of an epiphany in a La Senza changing room where I realised my belly was flat, and yet I was completely miserable. I’d always thought if I could just take another couple of inches off my waist, I’d be happy.

Oddly, I think becoming pregnant and having a baby has done a lot for my body image. As soon as I had a bit of a bump, and I was supposed to be fat, I wore tight, figure-hugging clothes to show it off. Because I exercised throughout my pregnancy, and had some rather ridiculous amounts of stress to deal with, the weight I put on stayed on the bump. Once S was born, I was lucky in that the excess weight seemed to shift fairly quickly, and of its own accord. Because I was keen to ensure I stayed mentally fit, I went for lots of walks with S, which helped.

S's growth chart. Go us!

When S was born, she weighed 5 pounds. Relatively large for a baby born 5 weeks early, but still tiny. She was very skinny; I have photos of her sleeping where you can clearly see her ribs, and her legs were so small I couldn’t see how they would ever support her weight. As she’s grown, I’ve enjoyed the way she’s become podgy, like a baby is supposed to be. She has the most adorable little rolls of chub on her thighs and when she puts her head down she has a double chin. It feels strange to be celebrating fatness, when my whole life I’ve strived for exactly the opposite. She weighs 16 pounds now, and a friend commented to me that she looks really good for a premature baby who’s been fed only breast milk up until fairly recently. If I’m honest, the fact she is now on the 50^th centile on the growth chart in her little red book is probably the biggest achievement of my life to date.

Having a child, and thinking about the hang-ups I still have about my body, I am very mindful that I don’t want to pass that attitude onto my daughter. I remember a friend commenting a while back that her 5-year-old daughter had come home from school one day worried because someone had called her fat. I am very aware of the fact that although S is only 6 months old and cannot speak, she is very alert and takes everything in. She sees me inspecting myself in the mirror, changing my top if the one I first put on doesn’t look right. She sees what I eat, sees the crisps I grab when I can’t be bothered to put a proper meal together. Nothing motivates you to make an effort with your self image like knowing you could cause the same issues in your child. I love S with all my heart; she is the most perfect thing I have ever seen. To think that she could ever look in the mirror and not think the same would break my heart.

These days there is such an emphasis on image, and children seem to be sexualised earlier and earlier. Not so long ago a 4-year-old girl told me she had a new boyfriend at school. Makeup and bikinis are marketed to increasingly younger age groups, and the majority of toys for girls these days are based around appearance. It terrifies me to think my daughter will be growing up in this environment, where everyone looks up to Kim Kardashian as a role model because she… has flawless makeup? How do you make sure your child is happy in her own skin when society increasingly dictates what the dimensions of that skin must be in order to be accepted?

Thirty years on, the media is even more saturated with diets and exercise dvds. Magazines aimed at women are filled with photos of celebrities looking too fat or too thin or telling the secret of how they shed their excess pounds. In a recent issue of Closer Magazine there were 13 articles about celebrities’ weight or appearance; this made up 38% of all of the articles in the magazine. We are bombarded with it, and we are bombarding our children with it. How do I teach my daughter that the media and most of the women and girls she knows are wrong?

This post was inspired by this post on Hybrid Rasta Mama.
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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!

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!

A Change in Priorities

When I was pregnant, a friend whose baby had not long been born warned me: don’t worry about the birth; the thing you need to try to prepare for is afterwards. I thought she was ridiculous: I had no worries at all regarding my abilities as a mother, and was sure everything would be fine once we’d got the scary business of the birth out of the way.

Turns out my friend was more right than something that is really very right.

Since having S, everything has changed. My priorities are totally different. And I think all of these changes have been for the better.

The first, most immediate change was simply that I could no longer just pop out somewhere: wherever I went, S had to come too. From that very first day in the hospital, it felt wrong to be away from her, even if just for a shower in the next room. When she was in NICU and I had to leave her there overnight while I slept on the ward, I felt like I’d left a limb behind somewhere. The day after we came out of hospital, S’s father gave me some money to go out and buy some food, telling me to just pop out and leave S here with him. It was the shortest, most horrible shopping trip I have ever been on. It just felt wrong to be wandering around without S; the last time I’d walked around town was 2 weeks previously, and I’d been carrying her in my belly. Now I had no bump and no baby, and I rushed around the shop as quickly as I could in order to get back, convinced that something bad would happen while I was away. When I came home, she was still fast asleep and completely unaware I’d even left the room. Since then, I can probably count the number of times I’ve left her anywhere on my fingers.

There was the time I left her with my mother while I went into a salon: she cried the whole time and my mother didn’t come to get me.

I left my sister Z pushing her around town in the pushchair while I had my hair cut a couple of months ago, and spent what is normally an enjoyable experience hoping it would be over soon so I could get back to my baby.

Since then, I think the most I’ve left her for is playing in the living room while I go upstairs to the toilet, or stand outside on the balcony chatting to my neighbour. My friend tells me I have First Baby Syndrome; others tell me it’s not healthy and that I need some “me” time, that I should leave her with a sitter and go out with my friends. In all honesty though, I don’t want “me” time. In the evenings when she goes to bed, more often than not I come downstairs and after ten minutes I miss her. A couple of hours in the evening to read and study is plenty for me. I’m not interested in going out drinking or for a meal. Occasionally I wish I could go to the cinema of an evening, but I know that if I went I wouldn’t enjoy the film because I would be thinking about S the whole time.

I used to laugh at the cliché you always see on TV shows, where the parents go out and leave their child with a babysitter and a massive list of instructions, then spend their entire evening on the phone checking everything is ok – now I am worse than that.

When I fell pregnant I had not been in my job for long, and I only worked 4 days a week. I would often take on overtime working in another team on my day off, and sometimes on weekends too. I wanted to do well in the quarterly development meetings, to go on training courses and progress as much as possible. Although I knew I would be off work for a while when I had S, I figured I would go back and just leave her at a nursery or with her father or a family member. Now the idea of leaving her in a nursery, even the best nursery in the world, for that length of time, on a regular basis, terrifies me. While I was walking through town yesterday I overheard a lady with a pushchair telling a friend, “well my job will still be there if I want to go back, but I didn’t have a child so that I could leave it with someone else…” I have several friends who are returning to work after having a baby, and several of them have said to me that if they could find a way to afford being a stay at home mum, they would do it. On the other hand, though, I have another friend who suffered with Post-Natal Depression and knew that she had to get back out to work or she would be in trouble. She seems to enjoy her job and her children seem, if anything, brighter and happier than a lot I’ve met.

As for me, I’m still undecided as to whether I will go back to work. But if I do, it won’t be on the same hours as before; it’s likely to be considerably fewer.

Becoming a mum has made me more confident in myself, with the realisation that actually, I’m doing this on my own, S is doing well, I’m doing a good job. But it has also made me endlessly paranoid and worried I’m doing it all wrong. The other day while D, my Home Start lady was here, S was lying on her play mat and I noticed a mark on the side of her face. I was horrified: what could have happened to cause a massive bruise like that? I knew that if  D saw anything in my home that gave her cause for concern she was obliged to report it to the charity, and to my health visitor (everything is confidential unless it’s something like a massive bruise on a baby’s face; then they are obviously obliged to report it). I sat there on the mat saying, “oh gosh, look at that, is that a bruise? Oh no where can that have come from, what’s happened, oh no…” Then S moved, and it turned out it was just a shadow from the way she was laying. D looked and said: babies will always get little bumps from time to time. She told me that when her son was little he was completely fearless but very accident prone, and eventually the staff at A&E told her if they saw him again that year they would have to call social services. That reassured me for a while… until I found a couple of scratches on her leg yesterday afternoon!

I have definitely become a lot more health conscious, and my diet has improved massively. For a few weeks after coming home from hospital, I was living off crisps, microwave meals and chocolate. I was only taking my supplements as and when I remembered, which was not on a regular basis, and I generally felt like crap. All the while, in the back of my mind, I knew that if I improved my diet I would feel better; years of experience of eating junk and feeling awful have taught me how much difference the old 5 a day can make. Then one day I realised that as S grew and started to take in what went on around her, she was likely to begin to think that all food came either from a crisp packet, or the white box that goes ping in the corner of the kitchen. That day I went shopping and had a salad for lunch instead. Since then, I still eat a lot of chocolate (like you wouldn’t believe!) and my eating habits are definitely not as healthy as they could be, but I try to always eat as much fruit and vege as I can. I also feel that I need to be healthy, not just to set a good example to S, but so that I can be as healthy as possible to be a good mother to her. After all, if I die of heart disease at the age of 50, where does that leave my daughter? When I look back at my childhood, one thing that stands out is that my mum and all her friends were always on a diet. They we either starting a diet or breaking their diet or talking about the next diet. My auntie had a fridge magnet that said, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow… tomorrow… tomorrow…” One time my mum did a sponsored weight loss for charity. In the eighties everyone was on about diets and weight loss; nobody thought anything of it. But I don’t want S to look back on her childhood and see the same thing

I saw a documentary on TV about foods that are marketed as healthy but are actually just as bad as many others, and when I saw a brand of drink that I and a friend both enjoyed featured on the show, I texted her: “oh wow, that drink actually has more calories than a can of Coke!” I was really surprised. She responded that she was completely uninterested in the calorie content or healthiness of any foods. This really surprised me; this friend has a toddler, and I had just assumed that she would have the same “I need to be healthy for my child” feeling I had. I thought everyone had it. It’s not like I have a blind panic of “must exercise, must lose weight” or anything like that, but the thought that I need to keep myself healthy is always there, in the back of my head. In the past I have been somewhat reckless with my health. My diet has always been questionable and I was never one to read the instructions on a pack of medication. Now I read the instructions, the list of possible side effects, check whether it’s compatible with breastfeeding, and more often than not put it back in the cupboard and make do without it. As my health visitor pointed out to me very early on, S is entirely reliant on me, so while she is my first priority, I need to be second on that list and ensure I am fit and healthy enough to do a good job of looking after her.

This is a weird one, but I feel like a grown up now I’m a mother. I’m 31 years old, I moved out of my mother’s house when I was 20 and have spent a number of years living alone, paying my own bills and fending for myself. I’ve had jobs where I was responsible for the financial affairs of an entire company, or where I managed several other people’s workloads. And I spent last summer playing house with my ex and his six children. But that’s exactly what it was: playing house. I still feel a lot like I’m playing house now; every time I do a load of washing it feels like a complete novelty to me. Having S has made me actually grow up and behave like an adult though. I can’t just not wash up (well I can, but only for one day); I can’t just not get out of bed if I don’t fancy it. I have to get up, prepare food, change and wash nappies, clean things, make sure bills are paid. Before, if I ran out of money part way through the month I would just make do with living off whatever was left in the kitchen or go hungry. Now I have to be careful with my money and make sure it never runs out, that there is always credit on the gas meter.

Every time something else for the flat is sorted out (painting a wall, putting curtains up or a floor down) I feel like I’m one step closer to being a proper, actual grown up, with a home and a floor and curtains and a loo brush and bins that have to be taken out. The fact that S has to have two lots of supplements every day adds to this: they have to be measured out in a sterile syringe, and given to her at the same time every day. She can’t do that herself; I am responsible for it. It’s not just me any more, messing about and maybe tidying the living room every other week. I am entirely responsible for another human being, who has nobody else to rely on and I take that responsibility very seriously. Oh good grief, I’ve grown up.

The way I feel about my body has changed. Before I got pregnant, I was constantly worried about how my body looked, whether I looked fat, whether this outfit made my belly look too big. I exercised a lot in order to improve the way I looked in my clothes. I used all manor of lotions and potions on my skin and spent a fortune on hair care products. When I got pregnant and my bump started to get bigger, there was massive relief that now my belly was supposed to be big, so I could wear tighter tops and let it stick out. After having S, I just wore whatever was hanging around; I’d moved house shortly before giving birth, and it was a long while before I sorted through all my clothes so I didn’t have much to wear, and I didn’t much care about how I looked. So what if my belly was sticking out, I’d just given birth. Now, six months down the line, I think I probably have a healthier relationship with my body. My belly does stick out, but so do most people’s, and really nobody’s ever looking are they; they’re too busy worrying about their own lumps and bumps. I like the way my legs look these days, but I’m more impressed by how well they can carry S and I around and up and down stairs all day without collapsing. I would like to lose a little more weight, but I doubt that will happen before I stop breastfeeding, and I’m not going to stop just for that reason. And these days I’m more likely to just use the baby shampoo that’s on the side of the bath than to rush to Boots to buy the expensive stuff I used before. Who really cares whether my hair smells of a rainforest? I’m just glad on the days it doesn’t smell of baby sick! I do occasionally have days where I’ll wear make up, but that’s mainly because I still have a reasonably bad (for a 31 year old) case of acne that probably won’t clear up until I stop breastfeeding. I’m too lazy to put makeup on every day though; it’s only for really special occasions, or days when the bags under my eyes are just that little bit too dark.

It’s a very strange experience, to suddenly be responsible for another being. Because S’s father is not in the picture, I am acutely aware that I am all she has. If I don’t do something, it won’t get done. When I first got pregnant my boss told me: “I think having a baby might just sort you out.” What he meant was: you can’t sit about all day navel gazing and pondering the futility of it all, if you have to get up and change a nappy and sing several rounds of Row, Row Row Your Boat. I hate to say it, but he was 100% right, just as my friend was when she told me everything would change after S was born.

Diary Entries from Early Motherhood

I'm still working on a proper blog post, so in the meantime here are some more diary entries from earlier this year...

19^th May (5 weeks, 5 days)

Today a visit from another dear friend: C drove all the way from Oxfordshire to see us. He had to be somewhere else though, so could only stay for an hour or so. It’s strange to see people I’ve not seen for such a long time, and jarring to think of who I was the last time I saw them. It seems incongruous to now sit before them with a sleeping baby in a bouncy chair at my feet, my only topics of conversation how she is sleeping or what is going on with her father.

My mother came round in the afternoon; I find her being in the flat at all very irritating. I always feel that she is judging me, comparing my efforts with the way she successfully dragged 6 of us through childhood with no major injuries. I wait for her to tell me I’ve done something wrong but she doesn’t; instead she makes snide remarks about how rarely she is allowed to hold her granddaughter. Since my brother is not speaking to her, my mother tries to have S play the part of the two grandchildren she doesn’t see, as well as herself. S is too small for this responsibility. I don’t have the energy for an argument over it though, so I just pretend not to hear the comments and accept the gifts graciously. I feel ungrateful because the new baby clothes do not make me happy and I am too tired to smile; I just want her to leave so that I can share S’s next nap with her, before it is too late for a nap and I have to begin the bedtime routine.

I have made black and white patterns on old postcards and stuck them on the wall next to the table where I change S’s nappy. Apparently babies like to look at simple patterns and pictures of faces. I thought it was just one of those stupid things you read that turn out to be complete crap, but when I put her down for a nappy change today, she was completely mesmerised by my crappy drawings. I feel like I’ve finally done something right; perhaps I’m not such a rubbish parent after all.

20^th May (5 weeks, 6 days)

I have started going for long walks with the pushchair in the mornings. I don’t often use the pushchair, preferring to have S in the sling close to me, but now I take her for long walks and she has a nap. It kills time when we have gotten up early in the morning and the day is stretching out before me like some endless sentence of boredom and nappy changing. Today we walked a couple of miles, and then came back into town and I bought a cloth book for S. I’m hoping my recent success with the monochrome drawings will translate to a book with crinkly pages and pictures of faces.

Today S is wearing a baby-gro her father bought for her the day after she was born. She has only just grown into it. I love it, despite its reminding me of the life I thought I would be leading now, and the massive difference between that and what I actually do with my days. It was my sister’s birthday so we all went to Harvester for a meal. S slept through most of it, which was lucky as I am not so keen on breastfeeding in public places.

21^st May (6 weeks)

Today I did not leave the house at all. I know this was a bad move, because even before I had a baby I needed to leave the house at least once a day in order to feel normal. I feel lazy. My daughter has had no fresh air all day, that can’t be a good thing for her. I was just so tired though, and there was nothing I needed to do in town, no money to go frivolously shopping for baby clothes, and most of the stuff in the shops doesn’t fit her any way. She’s still wearing clothes for a newborn. Does 6 weeks still count as newborn? It feels like she’s been here forever now, no longer new but just as precious and breakable.

Although we spent so many hours in the flat, I cannot say what we actually did. We played with the rattles my mother bought for S, but she is a bit too young to even notice they are there. We played with the book, but that appears to be the same situation.

A lady from the childrens centre came round, I think the health visitor sent her. She had that sort of look a lot of people seem to have with me lately, the “oh poor you, you’re a new mum and there’s nobody to make you a cup of tea…” sort of expression. She gave me some leaflets and we signed up to do a baby massage class. I don’t think I even offered her a drink while she was here, what a terrible hostess. I should make an effort to go down to the centre though, I know it would be Good For Me to meet other mums; it’s just depressing because other mums invariably have a husband to share things with, and they invariably have that “oh-you’re-so-brave-you-poor-thing-I-could-never-do-this-alone-and-wow-she-was-early-too-however-are-you-managing” look once they know about me. I try to like other mums and to get on with them, but I tend to just feel jealous of them, which is never an endearing quality.

22^nd May (6 weeks, 1 day)

A friend came to visit today. She does not live locally so I’d not seen her since S was born. She had a baby a few months ago herself, and seems to have had a pretty rough time of it, though she doesn’t really mention it in much detail. She brought presents for the baby – clothes and such – but also some home cooked pasta for me, and some brownies. The perfect gift; I wish my family would take note of this. We sat and chatted for a long while, and she made me feel better about things. When she left she gave me a massive hug and told me I’m doing really well. I feel like I should be doing better though. Poor S only has me to rely on, I need to be two parents to her. When other babies are crying and their mothers are tired, their fathers take over the cooing and rocking. I don’t have that luxury; I cannot get tired. I am so lucky S does not cry very much, and seems to be a fairly chilled baby. When she does cry though, or when it takes her a long time to settle to sleep at night, I feel bad for her that she doesn’t have a second parent to come in and be all fresh about trying to get her to sleep. She just has me, begging her to please go to sleep. I’m sure other mothers don’t resort to leaving the hairdryer switched on in the bedroom for hours at a time each evening. I’m sure other mothers have more patience than me and for that I feel endlessly guilty.

Get Up, Get Out...

I almost didn’t leave the house today.

I aim to leave the house at least once a day, even if I feel like crap and there is nothing I need to do. Quite often in the mornings I will pack S into her pushchair and we will go for a ridiculously long walk.

Having suffered to a certain extent with depression, and considering myself to still be somewhat at risk of its return, I am ever mindful of needing to stay one step ahead of the black dog. For me this means making sure I eat reasonably well, take my vitamins, fish oils and various other supplements daily, see friends, have adult conversations, exercise, and get out of the house whenever I can. On a day when I have seen a friend for a chat, I notice the difference at the end of the day. On a day when I’ve not been out of the house, I really notice the difference at the end of the day!

This morning my sister in law came round with my niece for an hour or so, but I was planning to go out after they left, or perhaps after lunch when S had her nap. I try to time my leaving the house to coincide with her naps, because she always falls asleep in the pushchair or sling any way, and if she does that on top of a nap, bed time is far from fun. But when my sister in law left I did some housework instead, and then S had a ridiculously early (and long) nap which I didn’t want to wake her from just for the sake of getting out of the house. So I waited, and waited, and then it seemed like it was probably too late.

My ex’s daughter started a new school this morning. She was only moved there because I filled in the forms for her, and then sorted out her acceptance documents from my hospital bed after S was born. I know how excited she was to get a place there, and how much she will have been looking forward to starting there. I still have the thank-you card she gave me when she got the letter offering her a place there. I really wished I could have seen her or spoken to her to wish her well, but I know that’s not possible. By the time S woke from her nap this afternoon my reason for not wanting to go out had more to do with not wanting to bump into this girl on her way home from school. I miss her and her siblings terribly, but I also worry that they all hate me and would not react well to seeing me now. I do not imagine that anything even remotely pleasant has been said about me in that house for quite some time now.

Half-way through a Biggest Loser double bill though, I gave myself a stern talking-to. In the almost 4 months since S’s father left, I have bumped into him or members of his family around town precisely once, and that was my own fault for not taking note of what time it was when I was near the place his bus drops off in the mornings. It is ridiculous to stay home in order to avoid an 11-year-old girl who probably didn’t even go home through town today any way. So I bundled S into the sling and went for a little wander to post some letters and have a browse around Tesco. We were out for less than half an hour, and it was the highlight of my day. It’s easy to just stay in this flat, have my shopping delivered and only venture into town at times I’m not likely to run into anyone I don’t want to see. But I have done nothing wrong, and really, much as I appreciate people suggesting I should put a curtain over my front door so that nobody can tell whether I’m in or not, and avoid going anywhere near places I might bump into people who might be mean to me, that to me is cowardly behaviour, suggesting that I am ashamed of something. 

I would rather not have anyone shout abuse or accuse me of being an unfit mother in the middle of town, but really, that sort of thing reflects more on the person doing the shouting, doesn’t it? And I’d be a less fit mother (in both senses of the word) if I didn’t go out for some fresh air every day. 

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.