Compulsion

So after about 90 minutes struggling with the Dude, trying to get him down for his morning sleep, he finally lay down next to me, cried with exhaustion, and passed out, feeding of course.  I’m desperately worried about his teeth, which already have holes in them, and I think it’s because he feeds to sleep.  I know we have to start brushing his teeth but it’s so hard to coordinate it, and if he keeps feeding to sleep, I fail to understand how brushing is going to make them better.  I wish I could get him to sleep without feeding but it’s just impossible.  I tried to give him water in a bottle today but he just played with it a bit, got water all over the bed and then got upset because he was so ridiculously tired.

I finally emerged from the room and went out to the kitchen to get some breakfast… at 12:20pm.  Turkish bread, fried eggs, butter, tomato sauce.  Yummy weekend breakfast.  Not the healthiest in the world but the bread is probably the worst thing. That should have been enough.  Yet as I was taking the last bites of the egg, I found myself beginning to think of what else I could eat.  Why?  Not because I’m still hungry. Perhaps because the little Dude is asleep and I don’t get a lot of time to myself to enjoy eating.  But why do I have to enjoy eating?  I wasn’t over analysing things.  I decided, initially, to sit with the idea for a few minutes, just while the food I’d just eaten made its way properly into my stomach. A few minutes was literally about 30 seconds…

Before I really knew what was happening, I jumped up and cut myself a slice of Woolies pecan danish, procured by husband yesterday.  Wolfed that down, yum.  Then I had already thought about the next thing: a bag of those yummy Red Rock Deli chips, cheese and onion flavour.  I didn’t eat the whole thing, mainly because they’re not really mine to eat.  They’re meant to be for Mr Chewbacca while he watched the ten nations or the championship dufusburgers or whatever the rugby is called at the moment.  So I ate about half of that, limiting myself only to the most crunchy, dense, curled-up chips.  I was full.  Too full.  Damn it!

Having gone to the doctor the other day for the Dude’s skin, I was thinking a bit about my eating issues and how they affect him.  I realised I feel incredibly guilty for having been unable to stop myself eating ‘bad’ food and knowing it’s going straight through to him through the breastmilk.  I confessed all this to the doctor, but it surprised me that she didn’t offer a way of stopping that.  She just said to notice what I’m doing when I do it.  So this is me noticing.

Yeah, okay this isn’t anywhere near as bad as recent binges.  I won’t even talk about those, it’s pointless.  What I really want to know is, why do I do it?  Why do I do it when I know it’s not good for me, not good for the Dude.  I’m totally overloading my liver and gallbladder, and I’m not getting adequate nutrition because I’m filling up on junk and not eating much of the basic good foods like simple fruit and vegies.  I’ve said before that I feel like the Dude has come to teach me how not to do that bingeing any more, because it’s affecting his skin and now his teeth which he’s only just got.  But as I said to the doctor, I feel like I’m failing at learning that lesson because I just can’t curtail it, I can’t stop eating shit.  Even for a baby, my baby!

But let’s get real here: I should be stopping eating shit for myself, not for anyone or anything else.  There’s a difference between motivation and misplaced focus.  I know deep down that doing it just for the Dude is silly because as soon as he stops breastfeeding I’ll just go back to where I was.  I know I need to find the root cause and tackle that.  But I have no idea how to do that.  Lord knows I’ve tried many times to find out why I eat like I do and I can’t put it down to anything in particular.  Yeah so it’s probably to do with boredom and comfort and self-loathing and pain referral.  But none of that is the root cause.  I feel like I’ve been stuck at some point in my life for years and I don’t know where or why.

Adjustments

So I’ve discovered a lovely chiropractor and both the Dude and I have just had assessments and adjustments.  Yes, I know, chiropractor, that’s so 1985, right?  That’s what I thought, but this chiro is different.  I’ve always gone to osteopaths, who I think are fantastic, but this particular chiro, Allison at Newtown Community Chiropractic, is something special.  The treatment and approach are very wholistic, which I like.  It’s nowhere near as expensive as I expected and I really feel like there’s going to be some progress here.

For the Dude, he is doing this odd crab-style crawl where he puts his right foot flat, and it appears he’s very much right dominant, so we’re going to see if this treatment helps him balance out a bit.  It may also help with his skin as that is very much constitutional.  I secretly think, though, that while it might help, it won’t cure it, and I need to change my diet before any change will occur.  I actually think he has come to teach me how to do this, or at least provide me with the opportunity to do it.  I don’t know if I can or will.

Which leads me to the reason I went to the chiro.  My body is so far out of balance, far more than ever in my life.  My weight and eating issues stemming from bad habits learned through life in response to traumatic events are my main concerns.  I never thought something like chiro, which I’ve always seen as very focused on the physical, could affect the emotions or mental state, but having spoken to the chiro I can now see how it can.  That’s not to say I think it’s going to sort out my issues, but I think it will help give me the opportunity to heal them for myself.  I found myself telling the chiro, during my assessment, about all my food issues and she really helped me look at how various traumas can trigger the formation of negative patterns of behaviour.

As she began the treatment and very lightly and quickly slid her hands down my back and all the way down to my ankles, I felt a very odd hot-cold sensation in my calves.  I didn’t say anything, but I remembered it.  She spoke a little about what we might achieve as she did the treatment, getting me to breathe in and out at certain points and making the table do its clunky up and down stuff.  When she mentioned establishing a heart-head connection I felt emotion rise in me, as though I was going to cry!  It was bizarre, totally unexpected.  But I noticed it and remembered.  The only part I found a little disconcerting was when she cracked my neck.  I didn’t expect it, and although I’ve had it done before and it wasn’t painful, it felt a little more invasive than I’d like.  My neck felt great, free and clear and flexible, afterwards but I’m not convinced that kind of manipulation is ‘right’.

Anyway, we’ll see what comes of all this.  If anything I hope the Dude gets his stuff sorted so he can grow without blockages and his nerves are firing on all cylinders.  For me, I’m not sure, perhaps this will lead me further on the path to healing.  It feels like I’ve got a massive mountain to climb, a sheer cliff face in fact.  So many things are out of balance in my life at the moment, both on a practical level and an emotional level and I find it hard to work out where to begin.  I’ve got grand plans though…

Death

So I’m doing this Fresh Horses link up post thingo because I read Edenland and she said I should. And I just want to. The question posed is around death and dying. Specifically, what is my funeral song, do I think about death, and am I totally petrified of it?  I’m going to attempt to answer, in my own unique round-about way.

Funeral song: well I once had this discussion with a uni friend of mine (a guy), and he said his would be Dire Straits Brothers in Arms, which I thought was an absolutely kick arse choice.  I mean, what a cracking song, up there with their very best stuff, and it’s so emotive!  It’s perfect, except it’s a guy song.  Makes no sense for chicks.  I am a massive fan of Tori Amos, have been for about 15 years now, and I have pretty much everything she’s ever produced.  So there are quite a few of her numbers I’d think about having as a funeral song.  Maybe Toast is a good one, makes me think of remembering someone after they’ve died.  But actually I think Bjork’s Unravel would be a freaking awesome funeral song.

Do I think about death and dying?  Yeah, I do.  I have been lucky as I haven’t known a lot of people close to me who’ve died.  And I have a very philosophical view of it all in that I believe it’s part of a greater cycle.  I don’t think it’s ‘the end’, I think it’s the beginning, a transition.  When I gave birth to my son, I knew exactly what people were talking about when they likened birth to death.  It’s that transition from one state to the next.  And I actually believe in reincarnation, so although I wouldn’t live life to anything but the fullest, I know it’s all part of the journey, a greater journey.

The other night I was telling Mr Chewbacca about how I held my dog Pickles while she slipped away and he was pretty freaked out.  I think I would have been when I was younger too, but at the time it was exactly what needed to happen and I found it a really spiritual experience, emotionally mind-blowing, if that’s not too much of a contradiction in terms (no, that’s not the right phrase, you know what I mean – emotions, mind, the opposite of each other, you know? Meh, doesn’t matter).  We acquired Pickles when my mum dropped her keys by the car in the Woolies carpark and this puppy leapt into her lap.  I was 13 and begged to keep her, as you do.  Turned out she wasn’t wanted anyway, so we kept her, and she was a wonderful bitsa dog, tough and boistress, but so loving and sweet and loyal.  She must have been about 16 when she was ready to go.  Her legs became arthritic to the point where she really couldn’t hold herself up any more and one day she just didn’t want to eat and drink, she was over it.  We looked into her eyes and we knew, she wanted out.  It’s bizarre, isn’t it, that we can just do that with animals, help them slip away peacefully, but we can’t with people, even though people can articulate clearly that they are ready to die.  We took her to one of those 24 hour emergency vets, as it was a Sunday.  Just my mum and me, as it was when she arrived on the scene.  The vet looked her over and agreed with what we thought, she was ready to leave us.  I can’t quite recall the specific reasoning behind it, there were some medical problems, but suffice it to say we agreed to give her the injection.  My mum was actually a little more emotional than I was for a change, which was odd because every other time we’d had to deal with the death of a family pet, I’d been the one totally freaked out and refusing to be involved.  When our cat Halley died I was about 16 and refused to even go down to the grave site, so my parents buried him together, despite hating each others guts at the time.  When our dog Jessie died, at the ripe old age of 16, I was 21 and I couldn’t look.  I did go down and stand with my back to the grave my parents yet again dug together, but that was as far as I would go.

This time, with Pickles, I wanted to be with her all the way.  I held her paw and stroked her head and ears as we looked into her eyes one last time and knew we were doing absolutely the right thing.  As the injection went in, I felt her relax, so gratefully and gracefully, and her body went limp ever so slowly.  A wee spread out across the table she was lying on and we knew that was it.  But as I held her paw and stroked her head, I could feel that although she was technically dead, her body was still full of life force.  Her spirit was strong and present, and it would be a while before it would go away completely.  I understood then completely why many traditions observe the 40 day mourning period and have another funeral service about 6 weeks after the death, to mark the final departure of the soul from the earth.  It makes sense.  I think this is how it happens.

So in answer to the final question, no, I’m not terrified.  I’m terrified of ghosts though.  For some bizarre reason, I am completely and utterly freaked out by the idea of ghosts hanging around and coming to find me and be near me.  Every time I knew anyone who died, animals included, I’d sleep with the light on for months.  When my grandmother died I was so scared, I couldn’t sleep properly for ages thinking for sure she’d come back to say goodbye to me.  I think it’s because I believe in ghosts.  My mum always tells the story of when her father died, in 1980, so I was not quite 2 years old.  She was in bed, with me sleeping next to her, and my dad had gone out to the living room to sleep on the couch, as he usually did when I was in the bed because my breathing was too noisy and kept him awake.  She heard someone coming into the room and immediately assumed it was my dad and thought, ‘I hope he doesn’t wake the baby’.  But then she heard my dad’s snore echoing down the hall.  And at the same time she felt that whoever was there definitely wasn’t my dad.  She knew it was her dad, come to say goodbye.  She felt him there, even glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye. And then he was gone.

My best friend once told me about how she woke up in the middle of the night and saw her dead grandfather standing in the doorway of her room!  She was about eight at the time.  It was so scary she just jumped up and ran through the spectre and upstairs to her parents’ room.  That story always freaked me out big time.

But I’m not sure that I’m too afraid of dying myself.  I never once thought about it while giving birth, even though it was such a full on mammoth thing and I thought I might never get through it at many points.  I’m afraid of a lot of stuff, wary I guess you could say.  I would never go bungee jumping or sky diving, just wouldn’t ever do it, doesn’t interest me, makes me feel sick.  I don’t get off on adrenaline, and I wouldn’t consider having overcome my fears as an achievement.  In fact I think even if by some miracle I did go sky diving, I wouldn’t overcome my fears, I’d just realise why I never wanted to do it in the first place.  So I guess I’m scared of activities that involve risk of death.  But the actual act of dying, the process, the happening, I’m not too afraid of that.  It comes back to this whole destiny belief that I have.  I think death, like birth, illness, addiction, accidents, tragedies, life in general, is not arbitrary and not random.  I believe in synchronicity.  It might sound clichéd but it’s what makes sense in my head.  So when someone dies, it may seem hopeless, pointless, horrific, but it happened because people needed to learn, and that was the only way.  I’ d never say that to someone who had just lost someone dear to them, but I do truly believe it.

Check out Fresh Horses over at Edenland to see what others have chosen as their funeral songs.  I’m sure their posts aren’t frigging 1500 words either, so happy reading! Oh and is it just me being a total dufus nerd freakazoid, but does anyone else think of Blackadder in the context of ‘fresh horses’?

For Christ’s sake, learn to spell!

I’ve been more than a little put off recently by all the spelling mistakes and typos in blog posts I read. Okay, I admit it, I’m a Nazi when it comes to spelling and grammar, it’s in the blood! And being an editor it’s just what I do.

I’m the first to admit my writing has plenty of mistakes scattered through it too, don’t get me wrong. But I hate text speak when it’s not in a text message, and I hate made up words. Yes, alright, I can hear the counter argument already: aren’t all words made up? Of course. I studied linguistics, I understand how languages evolved, and I’m fully aware that English is the most made up, random, inconsistent language of all. So I’ll narrow down my gripe a bit. What really shits me are words that sound like they could be words but really aren’t. “Agreeance” is a prime example. Dude, the word is “agreement”, there’s no such word as “agreeance”! It’s like saying something is “beautive” instead of beautiful, or that you felt “confusement” instead of confusion.

I guess I’m also kind of annoyed at bloggers who don’t proof read before hitting publish. Not to say that I expect no mistakes or typos – it’s a blog post, it is spontaneous by its very nature and you can’t expect some expertly-honed piece of literary genius. But I notice a significant variation between posts, to the extent that I enjoy some authors’ work less because it’s full of typos and mistakes. What really annoys me is when those bloggers are being paid to blog! I just think it’s sloppy and dodgy.

I’ll leave you with some new and wonderful words courtesy of Gertrude Perkins, aka Mr E Blackadder.

The thing about co-sleeping

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that the Dude sleeps with me and Mr Chewbacca and has done since he arrived. It’s not really an ideal situation for me at least because I can’t spread out in bed, can’t really turn over and get way too hot. But it is our only option.

People probably think I’m crazy or a tree-hugging hippy or just not a good parent when they find out we all sleep together. It’s not viewed as okay in mainstream society today. I’m not really sure why, given it’s a lot more logical than a baby sleeping alone, but I guess these days people have this idea that independence is everything. So it’s totally acceptable for a mum to spend at least 8-10 hours five days a week away from a baby over the age of a couple of months. People don’t seem bothered by babies not being with their mums. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but then again most aspects of mainstream society are questionable in my opinion. We seem to think that a baby growing fast, developing early, becoming an adult as soon as possible is this amazing achievement. I guess it stems from the general awareness that the job of parents is to get children to adulthood, so faster is better somehow.

These days, instead of people just saying, oh, right, your baby doesn’t sleep alone, that’s how things are for you, everyone’s different, they are so judgemental about it, like it’s some awful sin or big mistake. People are terrified of children becoming clingy. It’s bizarre to me because children are supposed to be clingy, it’s how it works, this parent-child bond. There’d be something seriously wrong if a child didn’t ever want his mum, yet there is apparently some invisible limit on just how much and how often he’s allowed to want mum. At sleep time, this limit becomes more rigid.

Let’s backtrack here: when I was having prenatal visits with the midwife, we talked about sleep and  how and where baby would sleep. I point blank refused to entertain the idea of cosleeping. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the  practicalities of it. I’ve always loved my sleep, so the idea of a baby right next to me wasn’t thrilling as I knew it would be difficult to really relax.

In addition, I had judgements about people who let their children sleep in their beds. I laugh when I think about it now. A very close friend had a baby, ten years ago now, and I distinctly remember going to her place when he was probably around the age the Dude is now. I noticed she had her son sleeping with her and her partner and I was really shocked and scathing in my comments about it, not to her face of course. I remember remarking to a very close mutual friend how weird it was that our friend let her son sleep with her and putting it down to her just being a crazy hippy. Why would you do it, I thought.

Fast forward ten years and I must be one crazy hippy! But here’s the thing: while I’m totally cool with cosleeping and mums who choose to do it until whenever the kid wants his own space, I am not doing it because I planned to, and I’m not doing it because I love it. I’ll admit, the Dude is very sweet sometimes sleeping next to me, and now he’s bigger and more huggable it’s sometimes nice to cuddle him. I’ve never been concerned about his breathing or rolling into his front or whatever. And I very quickly learnt how to sense him waking and how to get him in positions where it’s comfy for both of us, or relatively so. But given the option, I’d put the Dude in his cot. Let’s face it though, he is 9 months, he will still wake for a feed or two. Or he would, if he were a normal baby.

But our little Dude is one crazy ass mofo, as his dad would say. He’s actually been asleep in his cot perhaps four or five times ever. And he’s not lasted more than half an hour or so every time. This is the cot that is sidecarted to our bed, so he’s literally 30cm or one roll away from me. He’s fallen asleep without boobie or being in a carrier perhaps three or four times ever, and it’s never lasted more than five or ten minutes.

I’m sure people don’t believe me when I explain just how full on he is. This is a child who screams blue murder the moment you put him down to sleep, even if he’s fallen asleep in arms or I’m staying right next to him. I read all this stuff about patting and singing babies to sleep but that’s rarely worked for him. I did manage to pat him back to sleep in the middle of the night when he was about 5 months, but it only happened a handful if times. If I try it now he just screams louder and doesn’t respond to my touch. Some babies fall asleep in their mothers’ laps with a bit of rocking or just holding. Not Dude. He occasionally falls asleep in my arms while feeding if he’s dead tired but he’ll sleep for maybe half an hour then wake crying because he’s still tired but won’t fall back to sleep. He refused dummies, just spots them out or plays with them. He’s not interested in soft toys or blankets or clothes that smell like me or gristmill to comfort. You may as well put a block of I’ve next to him, that’s how much comfort he derives.

I am good at rocking babies, being as quiet and peaceful as possible, singing relaxing songs. I think my techniques would work with other babies. The Dude is the true definition of high needs. And any other person wouldn’t be able to deal with him and stay sane. There’s no way we could have done anything differently to have him sleeping in his cot. Unless I’m willing to get up every half hour, which I’m not. I know it’ll pass, but yeah, I’ll be so glad when I don’t have to cosleep any more!

I always get myself into trouble

Reading Lori’s post about her thoughts on blogging and how much one should reveal got me thinking. Again. I struggle with how much to divulge and how to do it. Yeah so no one reads my blog. Or at least no one I know that might be offended by what I’ve written. But let’s face it, that’s because I don’t tell people about it. If I facebooked all my posts I’m sure I’d get a few more people skimming and maybe a comment or two. But I don’t publicise it because I’m scared I’ll say something or there has been something I’ve already posted which would really offend them. I’ve written about friends and family, always using pseudonyms of course, but what if that isn’t good enough? What if I’ve said something to upset them? Or maybe they don’t like being mentioned on a blog, even if it’s not by name… That freaks me the hell out. And here’s why.

I’ve gotten myself in trouble with my big mouth so many times! I’m terrible! My family are really easily offended and even though I don’t have anything to do with most of them, I am terrified of pissing off the ones I do stay in touch with. I’m so judgmental at times, so cold and cutting, I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt, I just harshly cut them down. I don’t mean to. I just tend to be trying so hard to see everything objectively I guess and I have high and confusing standards. I also say too much. A lot. I can’t keep a secret.

Here’s an example: I had a friend at uni who was very bubbly and sociable and somewhat vacuous, or at least I had labelled her that way. She wasn’t unintelligent, but she was a social butterfly who liked sparkly things and would go out of her way to request extra froth on her hot chocolate. And would justify this by explaining to the waitress that she liked froth. I viewed her as someone who had friends just for the hell of it; if someone sat next to her in a lecture and said hi, that was her friend. I didn’t think she really had close friends, they were all acquaintances. Because how deep a conversation can you have about glitter and cupcakes, right?

Anyway, this friend, let’s call her Froth Chick, would organise social get togethers constantly. She’d send out emails to the world about parties or dinners or trips or other events. My small circle of uni friends were on her list and we’d often have a joke about the latest thing she was planning and whether we could be bothered going and potentially having to deal with her boring airhead conversations and giggling and odd science nerd friends. One day, Froth Chick sent out one such invitation. I think it may have been to her birthday. There were literally a few hundred people on that email list, it was insane! Remember the old days when you’d have to scroll down past the block of email addresses of other recipients? This email required about 10 seconds of scrolling just to get to the message! So I made a rude comment about how she’s invited anyone and everyone she’s ever met and most of them probably have no idea who she is nor she them. I didn’t think much about it and hit reply all, carefully deleting her and the few hundred randoms, but leaving my little group of friends. Including her boyfriend. I knew they were about to break up and in fact I’d been in conversations with the group where he’d inferred he had the same opinions of her, so I didn’t think to delete him. I should have. Next thing I knew I had an email from her, showing that the boyfriend had forwarded on my reply. She was understandably upset, saying thanks very much and how offended she was and yes she actually does know everyone on the list and just has a big group of friends etc. I was momentarily in shock. But what did I do? Yes I apologised for upsetting her, but I actually gave her what I considered to be some home truths. I told her she’s too obsessive and clingy with friends and has to stop being so superficial and needy. I can’t remember exactly what I said but would you believe she actually agreed with me and took it all on board, despite how harsh it was, and from that moment on she was significantly more sincere and down to earth. To the extent that I’m actually still in touch with her 13 years later. And I also once joked, right in front of her, about how you don’t need a law degree to do conveyancing and any idiot can do it, having just listened to her go on about how great and challenging her new conveyancing job was. And yes she has a law degree.

The point of that story, though, was not to demonstrate how good I am at mediating and confronting and helping people develop personally (I think I was just lucky and really deserved a slap for being nasty!). The point was, I can’t keep anything to myself, I speak before I think, and I’m really judgmental to the point of unfairness at times. So how can I ever blog and be me without getting myself in a huge pile of shit? Am I overreacting? How will I stick to the rules? I’m pretty sure I’ve already written stuff on this blog that would offend and upset friends or family. I don’t much care if I upset people I no longer have anything to do with and I don’t think I care so much about offending randoms across the interwebs, that’s just how being online is. But that excuse doesn’t fly with my nearest and dearest…

Nearly 9 months

Well, we’ve really hit some milestones this month. The main one is crawling! Yes, the Dude is on the move. And now he rarely overbalances when sitting which is a relief as we were getting sick of having to prop pillows around him. His crawling is a little one-sided as he usually puts his right foot flat and then drags his left underneath but he is capable of normal style as I’ve seen him do it. He makes his way around the new house with speed and efficiency.

Food is going well. I can’t say he’s that interested in actually swallowing food yet, he clearly doesn’t see it as required and is really just playing and experimenting now which is fine. I do give him one evening meal via spoon feeding but I think I may start to change that because it just doesn’t make sense. He is happy to take pureed food off a spoon but I don’t think this is necessary. I think when he is ready to ingest food he will so there’s no need for mushing things up and spoon feeding. I’ve been giving him the stuff out of the packet, organic with nothing bad in it, but many of the ones that are recommended for age six months and up have meat in them! And dairy… And there’s no way in hell I’m giving him either of those for as long as I possibly can, preferably until he’s at least 2. He just doesn’t need either and they will do more harm than good.

I feel kind of slack that I’m not making him food but it’s a bit of a hassle. Well for someone like me it is as I am not that coordinated with meals. I should steam or roast more vegies for him but I just don’t manage it. And I know what the baby-led weaning book says, that baby can just eat what everyone else eats but I disagree on two fronts. One, we have too much spice and seasoning in our food which I think is inappropriate for someone who is developing his taste buds and two, we have meat, dairy, nightshades, citrus etc and I don’t think any of those foods are suitable for his new digestion. He requires none of that for nutrition as he’s getting all his vitamins and minerals through breastmilk. I’ve given him vegies out of my stirfry or risotto which is fine and I’m not paranoid about him trying new things. I just don’t want his body to have to work too hard at digesting complex and toxic foods yet. Plenty of time for that later.

It was nice to go to the homebirth mothers’ group this week after a lengthy break over the holidays. All the babies have grown and changed so much! The Dude crawled around and totally fitted in with all the other kids, cruising around exploring. He definitely hasn’t inherited my shyness. Which is great actually because I think being shy made things harder for me. It’s amazing to see how big the Dude is compared to others! He isn’t chunky, quite slender actually, like daddy, but very tall and solid. He’s just so there, so present, which is the feeling I’ve had about him since he was born. There was never anything frail about him, he didn’t ever have that weak, semi-transparent look that some babies have, where you can see they’re not quite here physically yet. If anything, the Dude is desperate to be more present, and very angry and frustrated that he can’t do all the same stuff as everyone because, well, he’s a baby! It’s like he’s got some big things to achieve and he just wants to get stuck in!

He fell off the bed twice since we moved to Fibroland, once because we hadn’t put his cot up yet and the second time he was sleeping alone and I didn’t know he was awake and he just crawled off trying to come and find me. So we sorted his sidecart cot and invested in baby monitors. Just the basic kind, so I can hear as soon as he wakes. It’s been awesome, I can relax and not worry. In the other place we didn’t have a problem because it was so small. And he wasn’t crawling, or at least he’d only been crawling a week when we left.

Still no sign of him migrating to his cot for sleep. I wish I could say that cosleeping has been a conscious choice and we love it etc but the fact is that I’d be so happy and sleep so much better if he slept in his cot. Our new bed is so comfy and not squeaky like the old one but it’s so annoying to not be able to move into a comfy position because it will wake him or there isn’t enough room. In addition, I miss bedtime with husband. There are times when it’s the three of us snuggled up and it’s lovely but eventually I just want to have some space to spread out and relax. And cosleeping hasn’t had a positive effect on our sex life. I won’t go into any more detail but suffice it to say, it sucks. And all my fellow natural cosleeping parents just don’t get it! In fact neither do the mainstream conservative ones! The former group are like, ‘oh isn’t it great, you have to be more inventive and have sex all over the house and you always know your baby is safe by your side and you can feed without getting up, bla bla bla…’. Yeah, fabulous, if you have a baby who stays asleep for more than 20 minutes without you and your boobs in his face! I never liked having my breasts touched much to begin with, and now they get manhandled 24/7! Yeah, I don’t really enjoy breastfeeding. Not to say I’d stop, as Dude would be even more difficult! But I just don’t like it that much. I think it’s because I’m touch sensitive. Nipples are for the enjoyment of others, simple as that.

The latter group, mainstream parents, are all like, ‘oh my god, he sleeps in your bed? Oh I could never sleep well, I’d be worried I’d squash him’. Yeah, that’s how I felt too, until I had a child that screamed the house down unless he was either being carried around in a sling or feeding next to me in bed. People don’t get it. They all have normal children. They think their babies are high needs because they have to feed to sleep. But they wait for them to sleep then they put them in bed. And they don’t wake up. For a couple of hours anyway. The Dude will ALWAYS wake when being carried to bed asleep. Always. And he wakes when I get up too soon. And sometimes I’ve been lying with him for over an hour, he seems perfectly sound asleep, I creep out, and five minutes later he’s screaming. So it isn’t ever possible to rock him to sleep and then put him down. It has happened maybe three times that we’ve managed to put him in his cot and he’s stayed asleep but every time he’s woken after ten minutes or so. So although it is annoying, cosleeping means we all sleep reasonably soundly most nights. There’s really nothing wrong with the Dude, he is just very aware and very sensitive. Which is what Mr Chewbacca and I are both like so not surprising.

Size wise I’m not sure how we’re going but last time I measured he was 76cm tall and 10.1kg. So he’s still massive. We’re predicting he’s going to be 6’5″. Sometimes he stretches out and his body is just so long! He is pulling himself up to standing on just about everything and thinks he’s awesome when he does it, it’s very cute. Being so tall he can reach virtually anything on the coffee table. He loves all the most dangerous and inappropriate things: electrical cords, the garbage bin, the toilet, the oven when it’s hot, the mop… The list is endless! I try not to leave things around that could be dangerous, not because I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself but more because I don’t want to be saying no and stopping him from exploring.

After that massive complaining rant about the Dude not sleeping, he’s actually been asleep for an hour by himself now… A sign of things to come perhaps.