Muddling Through Motherhood

We’re sorry to say that we felt we had to take Meg back to the dogs home yesterday. We were dealing with the weeing and pooing all over the kitchen floor, and the destructive chewing, but when she decided to bite the trousers of a friend of mine, we knew we couldn’t risk having her around Rowan - despite her previous good behaviour in that regard.

So, back she went. This wasn’t as hard as it could have been as we hadn’t really bonded with her yet, but we do feel sorry for her to have had a glimpse of a home then having to go back, but then it wouldn’t have been kind to keep her and feel like we had to shut her away from Rowan or new people all the time.

I’m a pretty active member of several online communities - mostly related to mothering, but other technical ones too.  Many of my friends come from these (although those I class as friends I don’t only know online) and a lot of support for parenting and technical issues comes from these places.

One on of these sites we’ve recently been having a discussion about how its a shame that new mothers have to come to strangers on a website to ask for advice and reassurance about perfectly normal (if tiring) newborn behaviour.  Its not the fact that they’re asking - we all happily give the needed advice and reassurance - its that they (we, really) have to wait until we have babies to experience them.

To quote my post:
“Before I had my son, I was good friends with 2 mothers. Most of my friends haven’t had kids, I don’t have that sort of relationship with my mother in law and haven’t spoken to my mother in 7 years. I’m one of these people that wants to know everything, so when I’d read loads of stuff on pregnancy and birth (and I agree pg women are really hung up on birth - its scary!) I started reading baby books. My tiny pool of motherly support was from two different extremes. My sister-in0law had had 2 fairly textbook babies (although I did hear about things like mastitis and colic from her, so was prepared for those as much as I could be) and my friend had a horrendous pregnancy, a difficult Caesarian (scar still infected nearly a year later) and various other medical problems that have made her life really difficult - so I didn’t feel she was representative.

Oh I hope I remember this when I am a MIL!”

I guess that says it with regard to babies, but I think the same goes for so much more.  We don’t live as a community any more - and I can’t see society ever becoming like that again - so we’ve lost so much shared knowledge and experience, its worse than a shame. I’m lucky to have had the help I have from David, and from Jenny and her family.  Add to that my antenatal group who have been there every week for us to compare notes, and support groups like the baby bistro (which I am now able to help people at, even in an unofficial capacity until they get more funding for training)

Hopefully by getting my nieces involved with Rowan I’m ensuring that they won’t grow up like that - they’re going to be older than all their cousins, and hopefully heavily involved with them all, so maybe they’ll do better than me - and not be shocked by some of the hard parts of being a mum!

Oh yes.  After ages trying and failing to find one of my existing bags (really don’t want to spend more money on bags!) that is comfortable with all my slings, I have failed and am constantly changing the nappy bag around.  Most of them are ok into town or whatever, but to walk further - as I often do - is a complete nightmare

To solve this (I would think) I want one of these.  In brown and blue.  Only I can’t justify £65 on it

Another thing for my Xmas list.

Following some nice sling threads on mumsnet, I’ve spotted these.  Considering recent hassle with rain recently (Little umbrellas don’t protect poor Rowan’s legs!)  I will be getting one when we can afford 100 quid!  I’ll also be shopping around trying to find them cheaper, but it seems they’re mostly stocked in the US and canada…

I’ve been an on-off dieter for the last 12 years (which at 28 is quite scary).  Strangely, each time I’ve gone on a fitness/diet binge, its been less food and more exercise focus.

Anyway, now Rowan is a bit more predictable at night, and is eating more solids (and presumably less milk) we need to think about getting fit again.  I’m already feeling fitter than I was after the birth (and about 6 months of sitting on my arse - I now feel I was a little too worried about overdoing it!) and am almost ready to make a start on something more serious.  I’ve been walking at least a mile every day during the week (pretty much) and regularly do 2-4 miles in a day to get to various things.

I don’t think I’m quite ready for running club yet, but I might just try out the gym at the dolphin centre (local council leisure centre).  It’ll be odd because I’ve never been an evening exerciser, but that’s the only opportunity I’ll get, so I’ll have to take it.

I’ve already ditched my regular biscuit/snack buying habit (although I currently subsituting with cream crackers - just not so many of them) and need to work on that suppertime bowl of ice cream and the chocolate I still like to buy when I’m out and about.  Of course I won’t be giving up everything just yet - I’m still breastfeeding after all - I just want to gradually start getting fitter again, as I felt great when I was running every week!

See here

This time it was ignorant teenagers rather than overzealous staff, but still, will they never learn?  What a pity those mcdonalds staff couldn’t call the police on the little bastards.

Today, while doing his favourite thing - running with his master - Mr Bob the dog was hit by a car.  He was taken to the vet by some friendly builders, but unfortunately his back was broken, and we decided that the kindest thing to do would be for him to be put down.

6 month old bob plays on the stairs in our aber house

Bob was a wonderful, loving dog - despite my constant complaints about the amount of hair he left behind - and he will be sorely missed.  Even Rowan loved Bob, following him around the room with his eyes, and trying to reach him when sitting on the floor - and being distracted by him at dinner time.

Bob starting on that trexy goat that slowly lost its stuffing to become a dirty empty goat shell!

Even with a loud baby, the house seems strangely empty now.

So far with Rowan I’ve been a very ‘take it as it comes’ sort of mummy.  I’ve liked the opportunity to take him out and about with me, and he’s napped and fed as he wanted to.  I loved it.

However, over about the last 6 weeks or so, this has been getting more and more unfeasible as he doesn’t pay attention when feeding in public, and, as I am discovering, hasn’t been napping as much as he needs to.

Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t have done the first 4 months with him any differently - I still believe he needed the frequent feeding and the cuddles to get the milk supply sorted / introduce him gently to this scary world - but as I observe my increasingly tired and grumpy baby and get up for the 5th/6th/7th time since I put him to bed, I begin to wish I had introduced a little structure a little earlier.

The catalyst for all of this has been his increasingly fragmented sleeping.  Its killing us all, and as I start to observe Rowans behaviour more closely (watching for sleepiness and overtiredness) I begin to realise that he’s been getting more and more overtired, with crazy shouting and mad hyper bouncing at times.  Before I started paying attention to all this, he was having 2/3 naps a day - but of only around 20 minutes each, which I now realise was nowhere near enough.

This is, I think, rebounding on his eating as I’m finding it hard to know when he is going to be in the right frame of mind to pay attention to his dinner and actually eat something.  We’re baby led weaning, so it requires his active participation, and he needs to be awake and alert for this - which when I try to get him to eat, he seems not to be!

So, we’re trying to change this.  In part I don’t like it as it isn’t what I wanted to do, but I’m not one of these people who makes a decision and sticks to it against anything.  If its not working, we find out what’s wrong and we fix it - even if the change I need to make sticks in my throat.  We will be aiming for 2-3 naps with a duration of at least 2 hours, preferably 3-4, at roughly regular times.  I know we won’t be able to manage this in his (or our) bed all of the time because we both love his activities and for my sanity at least, we’re not giving up all of them, so this will be subject to review once our term-time schedule starts come september.

Its going to be hard to get him to stick to this at first, as he doesn’t seem to know how to nap for a long time (although sometimes we’re lucky) and we’re trying various techniques.  I’m not going to write about these until we’re somewhat further down the line, as we’re in experimentation stage and I don’t know what is going to work yet.

Anyway, wish me luck, its going to be a hard few weeks (or maybe months)

Well we didn’t have that great a turnout, but we got a fair few signatures on our letter to Clare Short and we got in the Birmingham Mail!

We had a nice day, although I did feel a bit like David, I and the nice lady from the BfN were the only ones running around most of the time, we have made ourselves noticed and have plans for next year!

I guess I haven’t been very good at actually writing stuff about our own joyous journey through motherhood, so I’ll now write some cool things about Rowan.

He can sit up pretty well - even straight up now, although he still likes to fall forward onto his head, or flop to the side when he’s trying to do something

He sleeps like a baby (badly).  I sometimes get annoyed when people ask me “Is he sleeping through yet?” as I know many babies never sleep through.  At the moment, he wakes up who knows how many times during the night.  I think this is primarily because he’s too busy being a little baby and enjoying himself during the day to remember to get his fill of milk.  I don’t think the little food is helping either as he seems to have got a bit of wind during the night, so I need to remember to wake up and sit him up to let him get a bit of a burp - not easy when we feed him lying down, with both of us asleep!  On a side note, if we weren’t co-sleeping, I wouldn’t be coping at all.  I do, however, reserve the right to complain just occasionally when I’m tired, even though I have no intention of trying to do anything about it.  If he needs to eat, he needs to eat, whether its 2pm or 2am!

He likes to giggle.  If you hold him up close and pretend to chomp on the gap between his head and neck, Rowan will grin, and if you keep going, squeal with delight.  His beloved Aunty Jenny started this, and we just love the reaction, so we do it a bit :-)  Incidentally, he likes it on his tummy too.  Raspberries on tummies and cheeks work pretty well too, but not as well as the sort of chomping motion!

Rowan has started eating his solids.  We had intended to wait until 6 months, but as we are doing Baby Led Weaning, and it makes sense to me that his ability to eat the food will keep track with his readiness for it, we offered him food every so often, and at about 23 weeks he decided he wanted to actually eat it.  He’s been getting better every day, and now feeds himself 3 (very small) meals most days.  We’re definitely getting an interesting new nappy experience though.  We are also only offering fruit, vegetables and the odd rice cake until 6 months though, when it will be a free for all (except salt and honey and nuts)

He is the best and most wonderful baby in the world!  But of course its my job to think that.