Just munching on a pear like it ain’t no thang
I went on strike this week. Milk strike. I think Mum was a little stressed. I have been focussing my energy on other important things like sticking out my tongue on cue, sucking in my cheeks to do a fish face, and trying to hang my head upside down (stuff looks different when you do this!). I’ve also become more snuggly and ‘snarfly’ and bury my head into Mum or Dad if there are strange new people around.
It ain’t all sweetness and light.
Just in case you thought I was a super-cute happy smiling baby all the time, Mum thought she would keep it real by posting this photo of me. It is apt. I am incredibly clingy and don’t like being put down on the ground, or on my change table, or in my cot, or in my chair. I’m also getting really, really upset when I am playing with something awesome like a lovely crunchy packet of wipes and then it gets taken away from me. These are basically the worst things to have ever happened in my tiny life. The humanity. SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN.
The parental units try to feed me three solid meals a day but I’m not so keen on eating any more. It used to be fun but now I just want to put my hands in the bowl and clamp my mouth shut when a spoon comes anywhere near me. I still like finger food a lot but that is mostly about making a mess, not eating. Also I have learnt to bang my hand on things and I highly recommend you give this a go because not only is it fun, but it’s noisy too!
Because I can crawl on my belly now, I am hearing the word ‘no’ a lot. I have figured out that if I go near the totally rad stuff like the power cords or the guitar stand, Mum and Dad don’t like that, and I’m not supposed to go near them. They tell me that everything else in the room is okay but pffft, everything else in the room is boring. So, I go to play with the power cords anyway when I think they’re not looking. They always catch me. I got stuck under the TV cabinet one time when Mum was on the phone which was a bit upsetting. But it was worth it.
The one thing that happened this week that I LOVED was when I went into the GIANT BATH. I had to wear a special suit and there were lots of other kids there and little water fountains and Mum and Dad got in with me and we played and splashed and IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER.
As we hover just out of reach of the seven month mark, there is a lot to be said for raising this little human thus far. There are a lot of things we said we wouldn’t do, and naturally we did a bunch of them (anyone for television?), but to our credit we have also stuck to our guns on a lot of things that I feel has really benefited both Penny and us (as lovely as co-sleeping can be, it is even lovelier for Husbandito and I to have our own bed).
We weren’t going to start solids early. So much for that idea. But when your baby looks so tiny compared to everyone else’s (I know, we shouldn’t be comparing, blah blah blah), and everyone you meet comments on it, and you watch her weight percentage dip lower and lower every passing week and month, of course you do it. Our doctor has been great. At Penny’s last check she weighed in at 6kg – still 6kg, mind, meaning not a gram of weight was put on in a whole month despite her growing taller – but the doctor has just shrugged it off. Feed her some dairy, she says. Logic prevails when you look at the kid, bright and healthy, but niggles are niggles and as a parent I’m pretty sure guilt is a default setting.
I didn’t believe in routines when this started. “Routines are for the convenience of the parent, not the good of the baby!” scoffed by ignorant brain. That did make sense, at first, because a baby only a few weeks old isn’t going to respond to a routine. But as she got to learn day from night, and she started spending more time awake and alert, it all began to make sense. Knowing what is going to happen next makes life easier for both of us. Not just reading her tired signs, but having an idea of when to expect them. Planning the day in terms of her awake periods so she doesn’t fall asleep in the car (unless I want her to), or she doesn’t freak out if we’re somewhere busy because she is supposed to be in bed. I’m not a complete stickler for routine, but a loose sequence of events for the day is fabulous, and these days entirely necessary. It means if I get her to nap in her bed three times a day, I can reset my brain, take a miniature time-out, prepare for the next onslaught. It is more than convenient, it is invaluable.
I am proud to say that not once have we put a stupid big old flower or bow on our daughter’s head. That drives me nuts. Every second person on your facebook feed has the exact same photo of their baby girl curled up on her tummy asleep with a ridiculous headband on her big bald head like she’s come straight from an Anne Geddes shoot. Alright, I get it. She’s bald. You want people to know she’s a girl. Bravo. Am I being a dick about this? Yes. I am, and I know. Go right ahead and stick a pink flower on her head, it’s none of my business. The ironic thing is, not only did we get a baby with a head full of hair, but she now has a fringe not unlike an English sheepdog. Covering her eyes. Necessitating some kind of hair accessory. The trick now is trying to find one that isn’t hideously ugly (so far, nada).
We also said we wouldn’t give her a dummy. We managed to get by without one. For a while there I thought she was going to go down the thumbsucking route but that seemed to only last a week. I’m really glad we avoided the whole dummy thing. Not that I have a problem with dummies, just that it’s one less habit we need to break later.
Cloth nappies: yeah. Husbandito had big plans for this. I was never convinced. And while I haven’t ruled it out completely, especially now Penny is on solids and not doing poonamis every day, in reality it is just way more impractical than people think. I know everyone did it a generation ago, and I am conscious about the environmental impact, but you’ve got to draw a line somewhere. We do use ‘modern cloth’ sometimes and I am really excited by that. It’s an expensive outlay but I think totally worth it, particularly if you plan to have more than one kid to use them on.
Self settling: the fact that Penny even has three naps a day is something that I forget we had to work towards. I really did put in the hard yards teaching her how to sleep without various crutches, and I feel like we did it at exactly the right time and it has really paid off. Are the nights still shocking? Absolutely. But you can’t win ’em all I guess.
What do I wish we had done differently? Firstly, give her a bottle sooner. It was a nice idea not to confuse her in those early weeks, but once she had the hang of the boob I wish we had made sure she learnt how to drink from a bottle. There are multiple reasons for this: convenience, yes, to be able to have somebody else feed her. But also to have started pumping earlier to keep my supply in check (it is basically non-existent now). To have had the option to give her a top-up feed after a breastfeed – maybe it would have helped fatten her up. To be able to give her formula now, for the same reason. I mean, it’s easy to say now. I had so much grief with those evil white spots and pumping is a super hassle, but just a tip for my future self should a brother or sister come along: get on the bottle early.
Sleep training is a whole other thing that deserves it’s own post. Besides I have blathered on enough. I can’t believe she’s slept long enough to let me type this. It’s a minor miracle.
Happy half-birthday, Penny! What a shame you are still too little to eat cake. But don’t worry, I will have to be an obliging mumma and eat some for you. I’m really thoughtful like that.
There’s a lot to reflect on at the 6 month mark. We have a lovely happy little girl, bright and healthy, babbling and grabbing and kicking and trying desperately to crawl. Some days I feel like I’m really nailing this motherhood thing. (Three good naps and excellent eating today! And I got so much stuff done! I feel human, there’s food in the fridge, and we had some really fun times, and the house doesn’t look like a giant rag doll has vomited clothes and toys up all over it – I am totally WINNING at LIFE.) Other days it’s like a panic-ridden spiral into madness. (What the hell are you crying about now?? Where is my everything?? Why don’t you go to sleep?? What are we going to do for dinner?? Shut up! I’m so tired! ) And each one of these makes it difficult to see the other. (Today was such a great day! My baby is awesome! There’s no reason why we can’t do that again tomorrow, this is easy!) (Oh God I can’t function like this any more, I don’t understand, what should I do now, why is it so difficult?? If you just calm down for half a second I can eat my lunch, is that too bloody much to ask???) And so on.
Given some perspective, Penny is a pretty damn sweet kid. We’ve been incredibly lucky that she hasn’t had more than a sniffle when so many of her little friends have endured multiple illnesses, she hits her milestones like nobodies business, she loves new people, going out for walks, and *mostly* sleeps okay.
An average day goes like this: she wakes up around 6-6.30am, then we take the day on a roughly feed-play-sleep cycle. Her feeds only last around 5 minutes per boob now, if we’re lucky and there isn’t anything else more exciting going on (which there almost always is). Morning play is mostly with Husbandito before he heads off for work, and floor time while I eat breakfast and we watch the news. Sometimes Penny will have a snack but she doesn’t tend to be very interested in food in the morning. She is generally happy enough to amuse herself for enough time for me wash up or do some laundry. She starts getting tired and whingey after 1.5 to 2 hours and then she goes back to bed, around 8-8.30ish, which she resists with gusto. An average nap for her is 30-40 minutes. A good nap is 1-1.5 hours. After Nap #1 we have milk then solids (puree) and depending on how successful that is and what we have in the house that is baby-appropriate, she has a finger food snack as well. I am usually ravenous again by this time so I might have an early lunch while she is attempting to feed herself so that we eat together. After food we sometimes have a bath, sometimes go on some sort of play date / adventure / walk / yoga class, or just amuse ourselves at home depending on her mood. Nap #2 is somewhere between 11-12 and if I’m lucky lasts long enough for me to tidy up the complete bombshell that is baby-led weaning, ie. getting bits of fruit or mashed up avocado off every possible surface. After Nap #2 and more milk and solids, we will go out in the pram and maybe pick up groceries or do some other kind of errand. The wheels are starting to come off by the time the afternoon rolls around and so Nap #3 can be anywhere from 2pm-4.30pm. The last awake period of the day is basically a free-for-all. The little dictator lets you know how she would like to proceed. Around 5ish when it is starting to get cool again we will often take a late walk in the bjorn. The idea is that by the time we get home, Daddy won’t be far away and then begins the home straight into bedtime, where he usually takes over for the nappy-pyjamas-play session, I give her some milk, then a story depending on how sleepy she is. It’s a huge blessing that Penny has no problems with falling asleep at bedtime, with barely a grumble. We did it, kid! We made it through another day!
So yeah. It’s not exactly a rock and roll lifestyle, but there you have it.
There is plenty more to blether on about but seeing as during the time it has taken me to write this post I now almost have a 7-month-old (meaning that some of the above has already changed), I figure we’ll leave it here for now. The glory of winning the eternal game of blog catch-up will remain elusive.
My favourite things this week are blowing bubbles and making my new sounds, which are ffffff and b. Sleeping is for chumps though. Fffff. I am back to waking up every 1.5 to 2 hours in the night, then every 45mins or so after 4am. I don’t know why Mum doesn’t just play with me and insists on whispering about ‘night time’. Ffffffff.
I hold my neck like a pro these days and when I am sitting in my chair I push my chest out when I want to be picked up. I love to ‘fly’. Most of my 000 clothes are getting too tight so I am wearing a lot more 00 now (Mum has had to upgrade my wondersuits and my swaddles no longer zip up!). I still can’t figure out how to drink from a bottle and it is really frustrating, but the doctor told me that in a month I’ll be able to drink from a cup, whatever that is, so Mum and Dad can “stop torturing themselves”. Ffffff.
My hair is getting thinner and lighter in colour, and the back of it is now what Dad describes as ‘post-apocalyptic’. Mum says it is very punk and some people pay good money to have a hair style like mine. I have a fantastic semi-circular bald patch, a little rat’s tail, short on the sides where I have rubbed it all off doing my squirm dance, and long all on top. Sometimes the back gets very knotty but Mum tells me I’m not allowed to get dreadlocks until I go through my teenage hippie phase. Ffffff.
Tummy time is also drooling time.
I’ve become used to this business of sleeping during the day, although I must admit I’m not always such a big fan. I eat every two hours during the day, and night time I am all over the place – sometimes I only get up once, sometimes two or three or even four times. 6am is morning play time! I don’t know why Mum doesn’t look happier about this. I have done a lot of laughing, because Dad is pretty weird. He sings me really ridiculous songs and dances about, which I love. I’m still trying to roll over but it’s hard! I like being on my tummy now that I can hold my head up really high, so it would be handy to be able to move into that position on my own.
Oh yeah, and all of our stuff got put into a big truck and taken out of our house, and there was a weird couple of days where Mum and Dad kept doing things in the empty space, including feeding and changing me on the floor, and then we went to this other place and it had all of our stuff in it! I don’t know what that was about but I’m glad I’ve got all my stuff back. It’s a nice place. I have a lot more room to squirm about in now.
My cossack dancing really took off this week.
Remember how I was telling you about that thing where the parents put me to bed and I’m still awake and how outrageous that is? Yeah well, Mum’s been doing it in the daytime now too, but with a little less ceremony. Dude, I can see the sun is still up. Yes, I know I’m really tired and have been rubbing my eyes and making noises for the last half hour but what has that got to do with anything? Anyway. I’ve quickly learned that the same rules apply. So I sleep. Sometimes. Sometimes I just kick and whinge and wail. In fact, I have been cranky in general this week. Everyone and everything is so annoying! Oh, except that I saw that baby in the mirror again, and she was being pretty funny, so I laughed at her. Dad has been doing some very silly dancing lately so I’ve laughed at that too.
I used to just be concerned with the milk when I was feeding, but it has come to my attention that other stuff keeps happening around me, and that is way more interesting. Like sometimes in the middle of my meal I’ll hear a noise, or see a shadow, so I have to pull off and turn around to see what that’s about. Mum seems to get a bit irritated by this but I can’t imagine why. Sometimes when I’m feeding I will try to have a chat with her about it. She tells me not to talk with my mouth full.
The grown ups have been doing this thing where they put me to bed at night around a certain time, and they zip me up in my swaddle and read me a story (that caterpillar sure does eat a lot of stuff on Saturdays), kiss me on the forehead and say goodnight, switch off the lights leaving only my lamp on and then leave the room. Leave the room! But I’m still awake and they aren’t paying attention to me! What the hell!
So anyway I was pissed about that for a few weeks. But this week I figure that if I’m quiet they aren’t coming back anyway, and being noisy for a long time is really hard work, so I might as well just go to sleep. It’s quite nice, actually. I still wake up every three hours or so through the night for the tasty milk though.
Also, this one time, Mum lifted me in the air and I made a noise out of my mouth, and her and Dad seemed awfully happy about it, and they tried to get me to do it again, but I wasn’t sure what they were talking about.
It’s getting towards the end of Week 9, and things are starting to change for me. Penny is still an absolute joy, but I’ve got to admit, for the first time since she came along I’ve felt… bored. Slap me on the wrist if you will. A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked, doesn’t it ever get boring? At the time I was taken aback. Never! No! I suppose sometimes the tenth nappy change of the day can feel a little tedious, and there is only so long you can commentate everything you’re doing before you start to feel a little bit nuts (“okay Penny, I’m just getting the soup out of the microwave now but we’ve got to be careful because it might be a bit hot, and now I’m just going to give it a stir, and let’s get some bread and butter out to have with the soup, mmm I’m spreading butter on the bread now, butter-butter-butter, so yummy!” etc), but it’s never boring. … Some time has passed. Can I reserve the right to change my mind?
I realised I felt this way today when we were supposed to do ‘something nice’ with Husbandito this morning but we ran out of time before he had to leave for work, and then my brunch plans fell through, and the babe was crying, and I met head on with the resignation that holy crap, if I want even a second to myself it is going to involve lying underneath her for at least half an hour patting her butt. Which in itself isn’t such an unpleasant thing, but still, to have to plan your day in three-hour-long chunks before the next feed can be more strenuous than it sounds. It’s not that you can’t do other stuff, you just have to be prepared. But preparation takes time, no matter how ready your nappy bag is or how well you’ve planned your outfit for maximum warmth with best boob accessibility. You can’t just duck around the corner for a bottle of milk any more. Not if she’s asleep and you want her to stay that way, anyway. And why is it that she can be quietly and happily sitting in her rocker and then start to scream the very moment I need to take a dump? And I still can’t go to the shops to get her a baby gym because I will never be able to carry the damned thing back with me on my own, and it is so fricking cold now that the lady headlights come on and ache like crazy and there is very little I can do about that unless I am making a new hot water bottle every couple of hours. Husbandito will call and I’ll say we’ve been dancing for the last twenty minutes and I’m tired, and he’ll say but that’s a nice thing to do isn’t it? And it’s like, well, yes, but the fun starts to wear off into the third hour. I’m sorry if I sound like an ungrateful, selfish old sod, but there it is.
I am realising many things about the way I am feeling. Ironically, you would think that the boredom should be easy to beat by meeting up with other new mums, but I find myself not wanting to do this so much. Don’t get me wrong. I love the girls from my prenatal classes and they have really been a lifeline in these early weeks. It is also really, really nice knowing that I get to meet up with my new parent’s group once a week, for four weeks. After that I thought it was just, let’s exchange details and we can hang out sometimes, catch up for coffees, meet up at kiddie places when they are big enough to play, sounds awesome. But then I realised it is encouraged that we continue to meet up once a week after the official bit is over. And I’m not sure how I feel about that. You do that once a week, you do yoga once a week, you meet up with those parents again somewhere else like a mums-and-babes movie session (I’m still refusing to use the word ‘bub’)… why does the appeal of this wear thin to me? It’s not that I don’t like the women in the new parent’s group, because I do, a lot, and I think I’ll make some good friends here. But I figured it out: I don’t really want new friends. Another slap on the wrist. What kind of idiot doesn’t want to make new friends? I mean, I value these women and their babies and their stories and experiences; their sympathetic ears and their awesome tips; their wins and their failures. But it feels somehow stressful to think I should want to be tied to them on a regular basis. Perhaps I have commitment issues.
Before you write me off completely, here’s the rub. The thing is, I miss my regular friends. Even before the babe came along, it was hard enough to find time to meet up and spend time with them all. Making new friends feels like less time that I am putting into those relationships, and besides, some of them have babies too, can’t I just talk to them? Of course I know it is possible to have my cake and eat it too (and don’t worry, there is a lot of cake-eating in my busy schedule), but I think I am feeling the first of my identity crises now that the immediacy of motherhood’s early weeks are passing and the wonder of Life 2.0 becomes the norm. What are you going to do? people ask, find work, or stay home with her, or what? and I shrug, and furrow my brow, and rack my brain for options that don’t involve us taking money out of savings every week just to pay the rent. And I meet up with those old friends, and I try to think of something to say that doesn’t involve Penny’s sleep patterns, or what a great burp she did this morning. And I can’t. I secretly dread becoming this person. I am proud of my girl, and there lies the value of the other new mums – a guilt-free open forum to discuss such things. Even when Husbandito gets home, all I want to do is tell him about her huge poop, or how long she fed for. As her father he is obviously more than happy to listen, but I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if my brain is turning to moosh. I feel a little stupider. It is totally worth it to spend time exchanging smiles with the girl and reading books to her that she doesn’t appear to be terribly interested in, and I wouldn’t trade her for the world, but is it so bad to also miss the person I used to be? Who am I, again? A mother, now, certainly. The best thing ever. But what else? I have forgotten.
The world of infertile bloggers is not always a fun place to be on Mother’s Day, but it is heartwarming to know that this year there are so many of us enjoying being a mum, or a mum-to-be, for the first time. For others, it is just another year getting by without a blessed baby to hold. Some of my good friends have suffered miscarriages or lost children. Another one, an old flatmate, unexpectedly lost her mum in a horrible accident just two months ago, making this her first Mother’s Day without one to celebrate with. Husbandito and I are both spending another year far away from our mums. Nellie is celebrating her first with her much longed-for baby girl Grace, but also remembering that it has been seven years since she lost her own beautiful mum to cancer.
I have not made any grand statements about our infertility on the book of faces until now. When we got pregnant it didn’t interest me to post an ultrasound photo of our little Ponyo, back when she was still Ponyo. It was softly-softly, and while the bump photos did start to creep in towards the end, both Husbandito and I got a lot of nice messages from people who slowly started to put the pieces together rather than having had it shoved it their faces. Now that she’s here, we have turned into those people who proudly post pictures of our girl, but hopefully not with annoying frequency. On Mother’s Day I decided to ‘out’ my fertility problems as part of my expression of gratitude for what I was able to celebrate this year, and hopefully open a few eyes. We got many beautiful messages in response, from parents and non-parents alike. I had half expected some other people to come forward with their own stories of struggles, but nobody did. I hope that’s because there are none, rather than because it felt too hard.
Our first Mother’s Day together
Penny basically got me the best possible Mother’s Day gift – a decent night’s sleep. For the second night in a row (and fifth night straight to date!) she has been sleeping through the night, which in baby terms means a stretch of five hours or more. She has consistently slept from whatever time she finally goes down of an evening – anywhere between 8.30 and 10.30pm depending on how resistent she is – for five or six hours through to around the 3am mark, feeds anywhere from 10 to 30mins, has a nappy change and then goes back to sleep within 45mins or so for another three-ish hours, before waking up bright eyed and bushy tailed somewhere between 6.30 and 7am. This possibly doesn’t sound that restful, but for me it is absolutely blissful. I of course had the obligatory “is this okay? Should I be waking her for an extra feed? Will my supply freak out? Is she getting enough?” etc etc before dismissing it all. It’s not something we’ve tried to initiate; this is a pattern she has fallen into on her own, I know she is doing fine, and we should count our blessings while it lasts.
Besides that, I also got a gorgeous card and the most amazing pair of earrings which I love-love-LOVE – a squirrel on one side and an acorn on the other. I heart squirrels. They are the fricking BEST. And they are studs which I don’t own that many pairs of; perfect for me right now as I usually wear danglies but have stopped now that I find myself throwing the babe over my shoulder and therefore her face into the direct path of such things. Later we went out to Newtown for a walk around the park (which also turned into a feed and a nappy change in the park) followed by a pub lunch at our friend’s brand new bar. We actually know them from birth class (baby arrived on the same day the bar opened, talk about timing) and Luna’s dad was so happy to see us and meet Penny that our meal was on the house. Happy Mother’s Day! I even had a half pint of cider and Husbandito basically had to carry me back to the car after that.
Dad and daughter park cuddle times
whatvioladidnext 