I’m writing a book on my phone

The subtitle of this post should be: “How parenting a high needs child is completely at odds with being a writer”. I made the excuse a while ago that I hadn’t been blogging because I was busy transcribing my granddad’s memoirs. And that was true, a while ago. I got to the end of the first 90-minute recording which equated to about 10,000 words, and discovered that the other three even longer recordings are barely intelligible. I scoped out some software to fix the sound quality (turns out we already had it on the computer). But before I could do anything, the Dude decided to mix things up a bit. No more going down for sleeps! Therefore no more uninterrupted showers and no more computer time. We soon got the stroller on his first birthday so I’m now taking him for walks every day and he usually sleeps then. I’m pretty sure this is some kind of premature transition to one sleep a day. And he’s close to walking and talking, plus his molars are due any time now. So I can forgive him for being out of sorts.

The problem is, I can’t sit at the computer to write for more than ten minutes. He hates it! And that’s fair enough, in basically ignoring him. But the fact remains that I no longer get any writing time. I’m writing this on my phone. It’s frustratingly slow as I’m a touch typist so can more or less type fast enough to keep up with my brain.

I know this may be a short period, and it’ll pass soon enough, but I’m finding it very frustrating. I must have a dozen posts half written in draft, and all these ideas punching me in the head every day but I just don’t get any opportunity to write.

How do others tackle this? I guess the majority of people have babies who actually fall asleep fairly predictably.  Babies that calm down and relax when given a bedtime routine and lots of milk. Babies that don’t smack you across the head and then laugh within two minutes of waking up.

So instead of wallowing in misery (not really, slight exaggeration there), I’m going to think positively about this. Perhaps I’ll be the first person to write a 50,000 book entirely on a hand-held mobile device!  Imagine what Dickens or Tolstoy would think about that!  They’d probably think it was nonsensical and ridiculous. Aside from being confused as to how one can write a book on something the size of your palm. Technology is pretty cool, let’s face it, and I can safely say my iphone (actually Samsung Galaxy SII now) has saved my sanity millions of times while I lie for hours trying to get the Dude to stay asleep.

But the fact remains, parenting has gotten in the way of my writing, my passion.  And it’s not just general parenting, it’s the kind of child I have, his personality, mixed with the way I’ve chosen to parent.  Oh God, should I really say it, should I really attach that term to myself? Shit, I think I already did. Yes, Attachment Parenting.  I’d never heard of it until after I had the Dude, and frankly I thought it was all a bit of a wank.  Not the principles of AP per se, those make sense, but more that people are yet again being sheep and just going with a certain theory or way of doing things.  Of course many so-called AP parents will tell you that they just do what comes naturally and have fallen into the AP category.  I’m one of those.  And I actually refute the assertion that I’m AP.  It’s a label. We know how I feel about those.

I had the Dude at home, as readers of this blog may be aware, and I had no interventions in pregnancy and birth.  Well actually that’s a lie, I had three ultrasounds (all of them completely unnecessary) but yeah, no real interventions.  I’ve still never been to hospital in my life, apart from when I was born.  I plan on keeping it that way!  I don’t vaccinate my son, never been done myself actually. He has only ever drunk breastmilk and water.  We know about nutrition and natural ways of helping the body thrive. We don’t take drugs like paracetamol and ibuprofen. We like homepathics and they work for us.  Dude enjoys the ergo regularly, and previously enjoyed the Hugabub and even a ring sling for a short time. We generally like to avoid regular mainstream doctors as our experience has been that they have little idea what they’re talking about and recommend toxic chemicals that just cover up symptoms and don’t help the body heal. Oh and we co-sleep.  Now I’m sure I’ve said before, co-sleeping was not really my plan.  I was totally against it when my midwife first mentioned it, but once the Dude was here it was the only way I ever managed any sleep.  He’s a crazy dude.  His cot has been side-carted to our bed for the last nine months but he’s pretty much never slept in it.  Occasionally he’ll squirm into it half asleep and pass out there, usually with half his body still on the bed. But generally speaking, he is right next to me; taking up half the bed to himself. He’s beautiful and I love having him right there but I would LOVE to have my own bed again.  I am very touch sensitive and find it hard to be comfortable with someone right up next to me.  I even push my husband away when I’m going to sleep sometimes.  I like my space.  Which was the whole reason I had an issue with co-sleeping in the first place.

Anyway, because of this attachment style parenting we practise, and because the Dude is so full on, I don’t get a lot of time to myself. Now let’s be clear here: if I was into letting the Dude cry it out and leaving him in bassinets to go slowly insane or fobbing him off to childcare centres, I’d be in a worse situation.  Yes, okay, we might have more money because I might actually earn some, but the Dude would be miserable, we’d be sleep deprived and he’d probably be sick a lot. I’m sure about my choices. And I’m not asking for sympathy for them or for my predicament. I just think it’s ironic that I slacked off for so many years, sat around watching Seinfeld repeats and eating Sarah Lee Honeycomb and Butterscotch icecream instead of writing my heart out when I had the chance.  Things will change. This will pass. Before I know it this little crazy blonde dude currently sitting on the floor next to me destroying daddy’s uni notes will be asking for lifts to concerts and sneaking vodka from our liquor cabinet like we wouldn’t notice half a bottle of it slowly but regularly disappearing. The old ‘evaporation’ explanation never worked.

One year ago…

The Dude turned one last week! He is growing and changing faster than ever and seems to have come so far in just the last month alone. New skills include clapping, which he just randomly did one morning. He woke up, immediately sat up in bed and just started clapping! He seems to do it a lot in bed for some reason.

He has also began waving but like the clapping, he doesn’t do it on demand. In fact that’s a theme that has been running through everything; he never imitates. I read Dr Sears’ The Baby Book and it went on about how babies learn by copying, so you stick your tongue out and they do it back. I’ve been poking my tongue out at this baby for nine months now and never once has he done it back! Oh he’s had plenty of tongue poking practice, it’s not like he has a tongue tie or can’t do it, but it’s never on command or in response. Same goes for anything else, waving, clapping, making noises, he just looks at us like, “go for your life, man, but I’ll do that when I feel like it thanks!”

Some words are definitely coming out. He knows mama and dada, numnums (our word for food) and I’m convinced he says zeh-zeh (his version of his name, Izzy). He also says “ohhhh”, to which I always reply, “what’s occurring?” (Gavin and Stacey anyone?).

He adores music, any kind, from hiphop to classical to rock to dance to the little jingles that emanate repeatedly from various toys. He dances, it’s so cute, bounces up and down while sitting, standing and even in the ergo. I’m not that surprised, given the musical appreciation and raw talent running rampant in both my and Mr Chewbacca’s families, but I’m secretly very chuffed. I will do my best not to impose my shit on him or force him to embrace anything just so I can live vicariously, but I would love it if the Dude ended up doing something with music. I hugely regret not learning piano as a kid. So does Mr Chewbacca in fact. Anyway, his latest favourite is the classic Chili Peppers “Give it Away”. He likes it when I sing the “oh yeeeeeah” bit.

We’ve had so many changes this last month. Dude grew another centimetre so he’s now at 79, and he put on 600g so he’s now 11.5kg. That puts him in the 75th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height. He’s eating more, and I’m allowing more variety, so he now has peanut butter on toast, more variety of fruit and veg and the odd tidbit from our plates. I even gave him a little of the pasta from a homemade lasagne today and he loved it. I know he’s keen to eat everything we eat but I believe it takes time to introduce such variety. So it’s just little bits at a time for now.

My dad bought the Dude a stroller for his birthday and I was thrilled to discover he actually loves it! He falls asleep in it and everything, which is a massive contrast to how he was months ago when he screamed after ten minutes. Lucky, because he’s getting too heavy to carry for any length of time. He’s been on my back now for about an hour and I can feel it.

We went out without the Dude for the very first time since he was born. It was a few days before his birthday. We got a breast pump, and I pumped a couple of bottles of milk. Urgh, hate it, so hard, don’t know how some women do it full time! I think they must have firmer, perkier, smaller boobs. Anyway, moving on… We left the Dude at home with my aunt for the evening while we went to a friend’s wedding. It was hard! I had such anxiety when I first left home without him, and I just kept checking my phone every five minutes. It was great though, to just relax with friends. We got home around 11:30 and Dude was asleep, although he woke soon after we arrived. He’d refused the bottle entirely! I think the milk wasn’t fresh enough. Anyway, it was a success and although I wouldn’t do it all the time, it’s good to know it’s possible.

We had a little party for him on Sunday. It went really well, considering neither of us has ever hosted a party for twenty odd people before. I am so disorganised. I like planning but don’t like actually scheduling the work and sticking to the schedule. So given I made all the food, I think we did okay. The cake was a serious disappointment, to me anyway. It looked alright, as I did a hundreds and thousands cover up job, but it was nothing compared to what I’d planned. I just didn’t prepare properly and guessed a lot, which is always bad.

Anyway, despite the mould-coloured slightly curdled icing hiding under those tiny coloured spheres, it tasted pretty yummy. The kids wolfed it down and went for seconds. Dude was given a piece but was more interested in the plate at first, then started mashing it into the table and floor, then finally tried to eat some.

He was really the highlight of the day for me. He fell asleep on my back for half an hour or so before people started arriving and then he just socialised! He loved having.everyone in the house, other kids to play with, so much stuff to do. There was really only one point where he seemed to get tired, probably three or four o’clock, and a good friend who was at his birth offered to carry him round in the ergo. That was great. He didn’t sleep but he chilled out, and then just kept going. Once everyone had gone about 6:30-7, he suddenly realised he was beyond tired and screamed the house down while we quickly got him ready for bed. Nothing out of the ordinary there, he does that more nights than not.

Speaking of sleep, I can’t say it’s great but it could be a lot worse. He goes down between 6 and 7, and then wakes two or three times before we go to bed at 10:30 or so. Sounds awful! But it’s not that bad. At least when we do come to bed he’ll often sleep through, or only wake once. He usually wakes around 6:30-7am, although has been known to sleep in for no particular reason. His itchy skin is what interrupts sleep. I wish I could say we’ve sorted his eczema but it’s still an issue. It’s not totally out of control but it’s not being well-managed. We can’t afford the Graham’s cream any more and I still don’t know the cause of it. I thought it might have been a zinc deficiency but I’ve been giving him a supplement for about a month now and I’m not seeing a massive difference. I thought maybe it might have been healing just the other day but I’m not sure. I’ve just upped his dosage as I realised I read the label wrong, so we’ll see, it might help.

I must finish now and turn off my phone as the light is distracting for him as I try and get him to sleep. He’s now sitting up in his cot playing very seriously with some stuffed toys and a blanket. He’s in the ‘pick it up, throw it down’ stage. Pick up the blanket, thrown it down, pick it up, put it down, all the while with great focus and effort. You’d never know he’s dead tired…

Nearly 10 months (actually nearly 11 months)

Very nearly!  He’s going to be 10 months tomorrow, holy shizzle!  Currently he is sitting in my lap watching me type, about to pounce, so this post will take a while but… yep, there he goes, he wants that mouse!

***

Well, that first bit was drafted nearly a month ago – yeesh, has it been that long? So this post is the “nearly 11 months” lumped in with the previous one. He’s going to be 11 months on Monday!

So, what’s happened since 9 months? So much! He is really mobile now and very vocal. The crawling is still an odd sort of crab-like variation of the cross-crawl, so his left leg is dragged under his body a bit and his right goes out at the side to plant his foot flat.  He’s very fast though, and occasionally he’ll crawl a bit on all fours, with both feet flat, or alternatively he’ll crawl normally once or twice. I’ve been taking him to see a chiropractor to see if we can sort out his crawling, and it has helped a lot, but I very much doubt he’ll ever do a normal cross-crawl permanently before he walks.  He stands very well now, and will let go and stand unassisted for a few seconds at a time, smiling to himself in triumph.  His motor skills are good, and he can grab really tiny things between finger and thumb as well as larger things with both hands.  Recently he acquired a rugby ball and has been throwing it around and chasing after it, it’s very cute.  I remember about a month ago he discovered that his little soccer type ball makes a ‘boing’ noise when you throw it, and he was absolutely delighted!  He’s had that ball since he was about four months, but he only just discovered the noise is associated with throwing the ball.  It’s nice to see these little discoveries.  He gets into every drawer and cupboard at his level to the extent that we’ve had to finally do some baby-proofing. I think I’ve probably bought every type of baby-proofing lock/latch/device on the market and we still haven’t gotten around to installing them all.  So he opens the drawers and pulls out the wooden spoons and turkey baster and clingfilm and all sorts of random stuff.  He’s also started putting things in places, so I’ve found his rugby ball has been deposited back into his toybox and random toys or his sippy cup have ended up in the bottom drawer in the kitchen.  He unpacks the plastics cupboard on a daily basis.  It’s all about emptying things at the moment, so if there are smaller containers or lids or other items in a larger container, his mission is accomplished as soon as it has been tipped out on the floor.  I take him outside with me when I hang up washing and he sits at my feet and tips the pegs out of the plastic bucket. Endless entertainment!

I took the Dude to an anthroposophical doctor, mainly for his eczema, and we formulated a plan of attack.  I got him an anthroposophical medicine (like homepathic only more refined) which he has three times daily, plus some calcium compound morning and night, to help his teeth.  In addition, if it’s an imbalance in the gut, I’ve given him a course of probiotics daily in his porridge.  I’ve got the most amazing cream, made by Graham’s, with colloidal oatmeal as the active ingredient, as well as some other creams like goats milk and rescue remedy.  I haven’t really been eating much dairy, not drunk milk in a long time, and I think that’s helped both me and him.  So his skin has improved amazingly, it’s such a relief!  It’s still itchy unfortunately, but it’s under control now, which is great.  And of course taking to the chiropractor regularly has had an impact I’m sure.

Another big milestone was reached a few weeks ago.  He had his first fever!  It was due to teething, his eighth tooth coming through, and it only got to 38.2, but still, I was impressed.  I could see his body just going through the motions, so efficiently processing, the fever just doing its job.  For a whole day he didn’t really want to play and just fed and whinged and slept and cried and whinged and was generally annoying, but because he was so hot I could easily forgive him.  I knew it wouldn’t last long, so I just gave him homepathics and fed him when he wanted and spent a lot of time lying down with him.  At first I was resentful that Mr Chewbacca went out (it was a Saturday night, St Patrick’s Day, good friend’s birthday and other good friend doing World’s Greatest Shave), but later I was very glad as he was too drunk to be woken when Dude woke and cried three times during the night.  In fact at one point Dude was crying loudly right next to Mr Chewbacca’s face and he didn’t even stir.  It was annoying at one point when Mr Chewbacca decided to snore loudly, just as Dude was drifting back off to sleep, so I had one hand on Dude and was hitting Mr Chewbacca in the face, holding his nose and twisting his head from side to side with the other.  Now I know what you’re thinking, who co-sleeps with a drunkard, right?  Yeah, probably technically against the guidelines, but I seriously didn’t think he was affected, he seemed fine when he came home, and the Dude sleeps next to me anyway.  He has been so dead tired recently, not getting enough sleep, due partly to his own crazy body clock but also to the fact that Dude is waking up earlier. Anyway, the fever was gone less than 24 hours later and when we woke the next morning, everything seemed back to normal and the tooth had come through.

And yes, the inevitable has happened, no more sleeping in for us, Dude is getting up early like normal kids!  He is waking around 7 these days, and I’m trying to get him in bed by 7 at night as I know he’ll sleep 12 hours given the opportunity, but it’s been a real chore to get him to sleep recently.  The feeding to sleep is getting really tiresome, mainly because the majority of the time he doesn’t really want it, but it’s the only way he can go to sleep.  He squirms around, makes grunting noises and is always too full.  So then he turns over and comes off the boob, and then sits up and chats and crawls into his cot and all over me, going everywhere head first as he is so dead tired his head just wants to make him lie down.  He fights sleep til the bitter end! Some nights this week it’s taken me well over an hour to get him down.  But the good news is, once he’s down, he (touch wood!!) hasn’t been waking, or has been going a good couple of hours before waking.  And when he does wake and go in to get him back down again, he goes down again very fast, definitely ready to be asleep.  So things are shifting, vaguely closer to normal/happy.

He suddenly wants to eat a lot more, which is great. I’m doing a fair bit of spoon-feeding, mainly because the baby-led solids are so difficult to do without totally trashing the floor.  I still give him chunks of food, rice cakes, fruit and veg, other snacks and things, but I’ve been cooking up just simple pasta and two vegies and freezing it in portions.  He’s also been having some millet porridge for breakfast which he’s been eating all of for just the last week or so, since his big fever transition. I’m getting a bit more lax with what I let him eat, so he has had the teensiest taste of my yoghurt, which he loved, and I usually give him a couple of crusts of my morning toast, if he’s awake when I’m eating it, which he also loves.  I figure if there’s a trace of butter or vegemite on it, it’s not really bad, and it’s good that he gets used to more variety in taste.  I made some humous the other week and put a little too much garlic in it, but I let him try some and he really liked it, I was so surprised!  I still haven’t given him any meat or cheese or egg or other types of full on protein, mainly because I don’t think his body really needs to deal with foods that complex yet, but I would like to give him some actual protein, so I’ve bought some chick peas and lentils and will work out what to do with them at some point.

The other big thing that’s happened with the Dude recently is that the holes in his teeth (have I mentioned them before?) have gotten bigger and then just a week ago he chipped one!  The enamel/structure of those teeth is obviously compromised and I’m suspecting that’s the cause of the decay more than anything, as the chip just goes straight into the spot of decay.  The fact that the spots are slap bang in the centre of each front tooth says to me there’s something weak about their structure as well.  I wondered whether all my prenatal nutrition had done something bad to them, and I shuddered thinking all that icecream and chocolate and dodgy food I ate when pregnant might have had an effect.  Not to say I didn’t eat healthily most of the time – if anything I ate healthier when pregnant than any other time in my life, mainly because anything with acid or dairy or sugar gave me shocking reflux and I had these bizarre cravings for steamed vegies and salads, especially in the first trimester.  So yeah, it’s hard to believe something as simple as nutrition could be the only contributing factor to his teeth being compromised. When he chipped it, we realised it was time to find a dentist.  Mr Chewbacca was saying just take him the first place you can find, although preferably a children’s dentist.  I, in typical fashion, secretly sought out a holistic dentist and booked him in.  As luck would have it, they had an appointment on the Monday, which was the soonest we could get him into a regular dentist anyway.

So on Monday, despite having no money at all, I took the Dude along to this holistic dentist in Neutral Bay.  I didn’t know what to expect, but I’d read up online so I was hoping for the best. I knew they’d say my feeding him to sleep was a bad thing as the milk would be staying on the teeth all night and breastmilk does have lots of sugar in it.  We saw the loveliest female dentist who he took a shine to (he rarely doesn’t take a shine to people though) and she did agree with me about the feeding to sleep.  She said there’s not a lot to be done as it’s impossible to get him to keep his mouth open and keep still for enough time for her to drill away the decay and seal off what’s left of his teeth.  She gave me a referral to a paediatric dentist but warned me that although they are great, they are mainstream, and will probably recommend a general anaesthetic to do the drilling and stuff.  She said she personally wouldn’t subject her children to that at this age, and I said I doubt I would allow it either.  She said the decay is quite soft and probably going to get worse.  There were a raft of questions about other influences, vaccinations, nutrition, the pregnancy, the birth, illnesses, medications, but of course I haven’t done any bad stuff in respect to all that.  Needless to say she was impressed!  I will take him back there in about six months, as she said he should be able to sit still enough by then for her to do something, if needed.

Just as we were finishing up, another male dentist walked past and she called him in to ask his opinion.  Turns out this guy is something of an expert in holistic dentistry and been around for quite a long time.  I connected with him immediately.  He was serious but kind, and he immediately began to do some cranial stuff to Dude who is used to all that by now.  He asked me a few questions about the pregnancy, specifically how my relationship was during that time.  I said fine, if anything, better than at any other time.  So he asked me if I’d had any other stresses during early pregnancy.  And then it dawned on me. I had the most stressful job of my life in the first trimester, and experienced probably one of the most traumatic, emotional situations of my life at work.  It still upsets me now when I think about it.  He asked if I’d been treated for that, and I looked at him like he had two heads. Treated? What kind of treatment would you recommend?  Homepathics, kinesiology, he said.  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t considered this before.  The first trimester and early second is when much of the tooth formation takes place apparently, so those stresses could have really affected things.  The good news is that his adult teeth will be great as they are being formed now, so whatever we’re doing now will be instrumental in forming his adult teeth.

Anyway, I’ve decided to seriously look into the treatment. The dentist recommended someone and as soon as we can afford it, I’ll make an appointment.  As I was waiting to pay, the male dentist made a point of coming up to me. He said out of the blue how strong Dude’s energy is, and mine too, and that I should get back into meditation as when I calm down, he will.  Wise words.  Just got to find the time!

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.

My movie date with the Dude

Since before he was born, I’ve been planning to check out the mum and bub movie sessions, which are run weekly at my nearest cinema. Husband and I love going to the movies and have really missed it over the last 7 months.

The Dude, as you may already be aware, is a freaking full on baby. He doesn’t fall asleep alone, and in fact requires either walking in the ergo or similar, or booby in bed to fall asleep. I think he’s dropped off maybe three times ever without one of those elements, and he’s woken in a few minutes every time. So I’ve not had the guts to go to even the mum and bub cinema session as I know he’ll make such a fuss.

With the release of the latest Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn Part 1, I decided to chance it and head along. Husband saw it the night before with work people and I’ve read the book so I figured I’d be able to follow it even if I have to attend to the Dude most of the way through.

Unfortunately, it’s a 10:15am session, which is perfect for most with young ones, as normal babies wake at the crack of dawn. Not my Dude; he sleeps in, sometimes til past 11am! So this morning I crept out of bed about 9, leaving him sleeping, and showered and dressed. When I came out of the shower he was still soundo, flat on his face, so I carefully adjusted his head so he could breathe. He kept sleeping. Typical. Every time I need him ready to go somewhere he won’t wake up! And when I need him asleep he just won’t go down! I got everything ready to leave, even cut his fingernails, but still he slept. Eventually, about 9:50, I just picked him up and headed out, whereupon he woke of course, but wasn’t totally with it. I made it into the carpark at 10:10 but wasn’t worried as I figured there’d be previews.

I didn’t rush, even bought a shitty cinema coffee and an ice-cream for breakfast (it was either that or a bag of M&Ms) and made it to my very big comfy seat with plenty of time to spare.

By this time, Dude was fully awake and doing his latest routine which involved bouncing up and down gleefully while saying “ngeng ngeng” over and over. He is too cute! The cinema was dark enough but with enough light to see what you’re doing and I had to navigate through a massive traffic jam of prams but that was easy enough with Dude in my trusty Ergobaby.

Most mums (and one dad) were sitting at or near the back, which made sense after a while as they had good access to the exit when bubs inevitably got grizzly. My seat was halfway down. Dude refused to be put on the floor for changing so I just left him in his ridiculously full nappy and propped him up on the seat next to me.

The movie started and it was soon obvious he was tired so I tried to feed him off to sleep but he wasn’t down with that plan and just had a few sips before really kicking off so no one could hear Edward and Bella’s wedding vows. I took him up the back and tried to rock him to sleep, following the example of a few other mums but he wasn’t having that either. Plus he is teetering on the brink of 10kg these days so he’s hard to hold consistently. Eventually I strapped him into the Ergo, hood straight up, and rocked for what seemed like about a quarter of the movie. Finally he slept!

I went back down to my seat and perched gingerly on the edge so as not to wake him. Then I ate my Magnum Caramel, wondering what the hell I’d been thinking buying an ice-cream to eat with a squirming baby! But it was all good in the end, he slept through the rest of the movie and I really enjoyed it. It was very heartening to see other mums working just as hard to get their babies to chill out. The Dude is loud and intense but he is still quite a typical baby in many ways.

I can’t wait for next Wednesday at 10:15, whatever the next movie is, for $8.50, I’m there!

Nearly 6 months

Can it really be six months since I felt that weird little trickle and leaked all over the bathroom floor? Six months since I had a full night’s sleep? Since I met this gorgeous little boy and thought, who are you?  Next week really does mark six months since the Dude’s arrival (although he was technically here before, making his presence and personality known by kicking the hell out of me and hiccuping at every chance).  He still kicks a lot but hiccups a normal amount these days.  He says words, although they’re not in English I don’t think.  So far, his favourite words are ‘ngeng’ and ‘geh’.  I think ngeng means ‘I want stuff’ and geh means ‘so, what’s happening?’  He has recently taken to whacking himself over and over, especially when stimulated or excited.  He rolls both ways quite easily, although I don’t think he realises yet that he is actually able to roll whenever he likes, so he still gets frustrated on his tummy and I have to turn him over.  When on his tummy he is gathering his legs under him and sticking his bum in the air, gripping onto the floor with his toes, all obviously in the lead up to crawling.  He’s been growing like crazy and it well and truly right at the top of the scale in terms of length, weight and head circumference.  We weighed him at about 5 months and he was 8.9kg!  That’s heavier than my friend’s 8 month old… yeah.

The eczema has been interesting.  I’m pretty sure my eating dairy aggravates it, especially things like milk and cheese and icecream.  So I’ve been trying to stick to the dairy-free diet, which isn’t that difficult, although my constant need to eat junk doesn’t help.  I notice if I eat any dairy (apart from good yoghurt) the Dude will sometimes throw up a bit after a feed or sometimes even between feeds, so I’m sure it makes him a bit refluxy.  The eczema has changed and I think gotten a little worse but is really plateauing at the moment, with a big concentration round his neck and under his chin, and some on his wrists and ankles that’s nowhere near as bad.  Sometimes it appears on his tummy and in his belly button, but just as red patches, not really dry or scaly.  I’ve tried a variety of things, from Hope’s Relief cream which is nice and natural but not as effective as I expected, to coconut oil which is a decent moisturiser but really doesn’t last too long.  Recently I put some paw paw ointment on which has been awesome, although not necessarily good to get rid of any itch.  Some nights he just wakes every couple of hours and feeds feverishly and scratches his chest and neck constantly, sometimes until he gets frustrated and cries, and other times I hold his hands and stop him working himself up into a scratching frenzy.

We are still co-sleeping, which, to be honest, isn’t the greatest thing in the world.  I would never want him in a bed in another room, don’t get me wrong, and it’s great knowing he’s right there and safe next to me, but our bed isn’t really big enough even though it’s a queen size, as he rolls to get the boobie and ends up taking up a third of it to himself.  And he kicks me in the stomach, wriggling and writhing, grabbing my top, pushing the boob away when he actually wants it.  He’s no good at getting it for himself really.  And he wakes so easily when we stir, it’s quite frustrating.  There are only rare times when he’s really deeply asleep and won’t stir.  His cot is side-carted alongside but he has never slept in it.  It’s just not logistically possible to get him to sleep in it, I’d end up being up all night and he wouldn’t get enough sleep.  He so very rarely falls asleep in my arms these days, and it’s usually only because he’s exhausted.  Even then, if I dare to move he wakes, it’s as simple as that.  I don’t think I’ve ever successfully put him down to sleep.  Actually I think that’s not true, I’ve done it, but it was before he was 8 weeks old, before he’d sleep through the night, when I couldn’t feed him lying down.  I don’t miss those nights!

Breastfeeding is still going well.  He is obviously thriving on my milk, of which there continues to be an abundance, and he feeds to sleep every night and some naps, unless I put him to sleep on me in the ergo which means standing almost permanently.  And now he’s about 9kg he gets heavy!  I can’t say I enjoy breastfeeding any more than I did to begin with, it is what it is, just part of the process and I’m glad it’s so straight forward for me (relatively speaking) and will do it until he seems like he doesn’t need it any more.  Just quietly, I hope that’s sooner rather than later!

The biggest milestone of late is the arrival of teeth!  Two of them in fact, about a week ago, one poking through one day and the second the next, at the bottom.  They are very sharp!  His teething symptoms have gone down a bit I guess, he certainly doesn’t have the one red cheek any more, but he is still irritable much of the time.  Some days he’s okay, others he just has bad days and I can’t really work out why.  He is just really nervy and full on and demanding but doesn’t really know what he wants.  Like his dad!  Infuriating sometimes!  I was reading SouleMama’s blog just this morning and she wrote about her littlest one who is a few days younger than the Dude – oh how different!  I’m kind of jealous actually, as he little one will suck her thumb and put herself to sleep on the couch with all sorts of noise going on around her!  Oh what joy that would be!  Currently I’m listening to the Dude getting louder and louder in his cot… the mobile (second one we’ve bought) just doesn’t cut it, and he soon gets bored and angry.  He is interested in dummies but won’t really just lie there and suck it, he has to hold it and then he pulls it out of his mouth, examines it, then puts it in sideways and chews on the plastic, then gets sick of it and throws it away.  So still a no go.  Speaking of which, I better go and get him before he gets too upset.  He’s already had a two hour sleep this morning and it’s only midday but apparently that wasn’t sufficient!!  Ho hum…

Nearly five months

Gosh, has it really been that long since I’ve updated?!  So much has happened!

So the Dude is going to be five months on Sunday (I think he’s 22 weeks this week, kind of losing count).  He rolled from front to back for the first time at 19 weeks and has since done it a handful of times.  He mostly doesn’t do it though, when I put him down for tummy time.  He does stay down longer than he used to, without losing it, but daddy still hasn’t seen him roll!  And then yesterday for the first time I witnessed him roll from his back to his front!!  I couldn’t believe it, it was awesome, he just did it with a little effort.

I took him to visit a friend yesterday, who has a little girl two months older than him, and she is really wriggling about, twisting and turning over and over, pretty much crawling.  When I put him next to this little girl, however, I suddenly realised just how massive he is!  He is slightly bigger than this little girl, even though she’s so much older.  And she’s not a small baby, I’d say probably around average.  But he just sort of lay there and watched her wriggling about in awe, like, wow, why can’t I do that?  ha ha!

So speaking of his size, I did take him for his first check up.  We went to the doctor as I’d had a blocked ear for ages and although I’d killed any infection in there with onion juice, my ear just wasn’t clearing.  I finally relented and went to the doctor (the same one I’d gone to when I was first pregnant).  She’s a nice woman but god she’s so ignorant!  The things she said to me during the appointment, I had to really make an effort not to laugh.  She actually started telling me how to ‘discipline’ my four month old baby and she even referred to babies as being ‘like puppies’!!  Can you imagine!  She didn’t help my ear problem either.  She just looked in it, confirmed it was blocked beyond syringing (der, that’s why I went to see the doctor!) and then told me to go and get Ear Clear from the pharmacy!  Seriously, I could have just gone and asked the pharmacist, what a waste of time and money that was.  She weighed the Dude (which is main thing I was interested in) and he was 8.14kg!  So he’d doubled his birth weight!  He is in the 97th percentile for weight, height and head circumference, so yes, he’s a biggie.  She asked me if I was practising ‘attachment parenting’ and I was like, erm, I don’t actually like to apply any labels to things, I just do what I do, but I guess it’s along the lines of attachment parenting.  She thought we were co-sleeping because it was AP, but it’s got nothing to do with wanting to practise AP, it’s just about what feels right and what’s simplest and easiest.  She also asked if I was vaccinating and I said no and got her to sign the conscientious objection form, which she had no issue with (yay!).  She looked at his skin and advised me to get a cream with cortisone in it!  I didn’t say anything but there’s no way I’d put it on him – I wouldn’t put it on my own skin, let alone a baby’s!  Anyway, so the only good things to come out of the appointment were finding out how much he weighs and getting the form signed. Ho hum.

You’ll be happy to know my ear has unblocked itself (although the infection soon arrived in the other ear, which I killed with onion juice again and the blockage is just about gone there too).  No thanks to Mrs Useless GP!  She means well, she’s not a bad person, but gawd, ignorant as hell!  I could provide a better service and I have no medical qualifications!

I don’t want to wish time away, as there’ll never be another time where the Dude will be little like this, but I really can’t wait for him to be more mobile and to sit up by himself.  He gets so frustrated that he can’t, I can tell.  Anyway, it’ll come soon, he’s almost there.

His skin has been pretty bad, comes and goes, so although I didn’t think he had intolerances I think the dairy does contribute to his skin so I’m going back off it again.  My eating, that’s a whole other story and not for this post… anyway, he has what seems to be eczema, and also recently started getting red blotches with white dots in the middle randomly on him, and they’d disappear as fast as they appeared so I think he’s allergic to something, possibly the wool fleece my mum bought him.  I am just keeping an eye on it really, I think it’ll come and go as his constitution works itself out.

We had a couple of very successful osteo appointments where there was total relaxation achieved twice, it was great, and he’s been much more relaxed since.  And we took him to a wedding about five hours drive north, and that was fine, we managed, although I was quite illegal a few times and just took him out of his seat to feed him while we drove.  Meh.  I used to sit on my mum’s lap for every long trip we ever did and nothing ever happened, so I’m not worried.

Must stop, as he’s just woken, I can hear him chatting to himself in the bedroom.

The ‘routine’

“Babies like routines.”  I’m sure you’ve heard that one.  Or even, “babies need routines”.  I tend to agree, now I’ve got a baby.  He has found his own sort of patterns, but the problem is, any change from the outside (ie. if I go to the shop or if something prevents him falling asleep when he’s ready or if his tummy is sore), and all is lost.  People ask me, “how’s he sleeping?” and I always proudly say that he has slept through the night from eight weeks.  But technically what happens is that he wakes a couple of times, has a quick bit of boobie, and goes back to sleep.  This is still pretty good.  And I always found myself telling people that I hadn’t had to get up in the middle of the night with the Dude since he was eight weeks old.  Well that streak has now been broken.

Yesterday was an odd day, I suppose.  But I’ll start with some background.  Since he’s reached the three-month milestone, a few things have changed.  He is suddenly much more aware, so he notices his surroundings and is distracted easily by random things happening around him, especially the tv.  Prior to this, when he wanted boobie and sleep I’d just put him on as I watched tv and he’d fall asleep.  I’d sometimes succeed at taking him to bed to sleep by himself at this point, or most of the time I’d let him stay asleep in my arms.  Suddenly this is not doable at all.  Similarly, we thought he was the most social kid ever, as we’d taken him out with friends to noisy restaurants and whatnot and he’d just fall asleep in the carrier, not bothered by what was happening.  In fact he seemed happier when out and about, listening and watching calmly and then just passing out happily.  But not any more.  We took him to lawn bowls and then out to dinner the other night and he hardly slept at all the whole time!  He even cried in front of our friends, which has never happened.  He’d feed a bit, get distracted, look around, get angry because he was tired but couldn’t just go to sleep.  The only time I got him to sleep was once when I took him outside away from any noise and fed him – passed out in minutes, and then finally at the end of the night he eventually passed out in the ergo, totally shattered.  So in the last week I’ve been recognising when he’s really tired, then taking him straight to bed and feeding him to sleep lying down.  Sometimes I’ve stayed next to him for an hour or so to get him really sound asleep (thank you trusty old iphone for keeping me amused!) and then he will stay asleep at least an hour by himself.  When he stirs I go in quietly and if he is grumpy and still has his eyes shut I just feed him again and he goes back to sleep.  That was great!  I actually got a few things done around the house!

That brings us to yesterday.  I got a text from a new friend who has a little baby as well asking if I wanted to go for a walk and a coffee, as she lives nearby, which was fine, we did that.  As per his recent distracted/alert phase, the Dude stayed awake most of the way to the coffee shop and finally dropped off, only to wake again when I sat down.  He then fell back to sleep on the walk home, and woke when we got inside, although he was trying to settle himself back down to sleep which was great to see – he sucked on his little hand and kept his head down.  He even did this the other day and settled himself back to sleep for another hour with no input from us, it was amazing.  Anyway, yesterday I think I made a bit of a mistake.  I tried to feed him to sleep as usual, but I think I tried to put him to bed before he was quite tired enough because the rest of the evening was an utter disaster.  I guess I had in my mind that if I could get him to sleep and stay asleep by 8pm then if we get up at 8am he’d have had a full 12 hours sleep overnight and that’ll be the beginning of our little routine.  Husband got home at something like 9:30 and I’d just given up trying to feed him to sleep and begun changing him.  I tried again and he wasn’t having it, obviously had his fill of milk without drifting off and just didn’t want to lie down.  I tried walking him around and hung out in the lounge for half an hour or so, but no, still wasn’t having the boobie.  So I relented and put him in the ergo, where he promptly fell asleep, phew!  But that wasn’t the last of it.  I managed to get him out of that and into bed and asleep, and I finally crawled in myself at about 11:30… only to be woken at 2am!  He was trying to feed back to sleep but it was clearly too much and he was starting to cry in frustration.  It was pitch black but I could tell he was awake.  Not ready to be awake, but awake nonetheless.  I tried so many things to get him to settle back down, and eventually he woke husband (who’d probably been awake all along anyway), and, frustrated, I decided to take him out to the lounge before he got any louder.  I was tired. He was tired. I couldn’t do any ergo pacing in the middle of the night, although in hindsight this probably would have worked the best.  Instead he worked himself up and cried for what seemed like forever!  I wrapped him in the warm blanket I’d just finished edging, held him and looked at him and told him I could do nothing more for him.  He looked back at me as he screamed and I think he knew what I meant.  So I waited.  And he screamed and then he began to go quiet.  It must have been four or five times he went quiet and briefly fell asleep but then woke himself up with a sob and started again!  It wasn’t nice to sit through and I did feel sad for him but at the time I felt there was nothing more I could do.  I was despairing, thinking ‘what have I done wrong here? could this have ended up any other way?  is this a sign of things to come? no more night waking, please!’  Finally he went quiet and stayed quiet, falling into a deep, exhausted sleep.  I sat for a few more minutes, just to make sure he was soundly asleep before I brought him back to bed.  He was pretty restless a few times through the morning too, and at one point I got rid of the blanket he’d been wrapped in and he fell back to sleep, obviously that was too hot and uncomfortable.

Anyway, so it was a freaking nightmare, and I’m scared now that it’s going to be that way every night!  Thank god I’ve got him booked in at the osteo on Friday, hopefully that’ll help him settle. I realise he’s going to wake and need comforting during the night, that’s why he sleeps in bed next to me, but I don’t think I can handle him fully waking and freaking out every night.  It’s so much harder now because he has this awareness and he’s so sensitive to what’s going on around him.  I want him to feel secure and relaxed, that’s all.  Genetically, the odds are not on his side in terms of sleeping and relaxation, that worries me too.  My mum seems to think it was all very simple and normal but I didn’t feel like that about sleep.  I hated night and sleep, hated the dark, hated having to quiet my brain for sleep.  I remember tossing and turning night after night, turning the light back on to read, always having problems getting to sleep.  I never had a problem staying asleep, but my dad is and always has been a real insomniac.  Mind you, this was probably heightened by the fact his mother used to lock him in the bathroom to cry as she didn’t know what else to do!  That’s one thing I’ll never do, I’ll never leave the Dude to cry himself to sleep.  No matter how hard it is I will always at least be there for him when he’s upset, that’s my vow.

Three-month ups and downs

So he was three months yesterday, a big milestone!  I don’t think I had any real expectations of what he’d be like at three months, in fact I don’t have expectations at all really.  But I guess at the moment he is having a hard time of it.  Sometimes I think I just don’t have the patience and focus to give him what he really needs, like if I wasn’t so interested in my own indulgences – tv, blogs, reading, eating, showering – I’d be more in harmony with him and he’d be happier.  I have these images in my head of other mums who are so in love with their babies and want to spend every waking moment with them.  Don’t get me wrong, I love him very much and certainly miss him if he has a big sleep or if I have to leave him for a moment.  But right now he is quite unsettled and it can be trying.

Yesterday was slightly worse than today I guess, but today’s still been a bit difficult.  He is so demanding!  He wants constant stimulation, and just having toys dangling above him is not enough, he wants me, all the time!  And even then, he gets tired so quickly and then gets very cranky.  He’s started doing an angry/frustrated type of cry, like the equivalent of an adult saying, ‘gaah, for fuck’s sake, I’m pissed off now’!  It’s quite funny actually, but you have to take it seriously otherwise he just gets out of control and almost impossible to console.  I feel so horrible when he gets really upset, and it happens pretty much every day, usually when I finally realise I need to have a shower but he won’t go to sleep and won’t play by himself.  So I do what I did today, I lie him in his cot, hang some toys next to him, give him one of his ‘starfish’ Steiner-type toys to hold and prepare myself for his screams as I get into the shower, which get progressively more intense the longer I’m away from him.  It’s awful actually because when I get out and dressed and pick him up, he gives these little sobs as he calms down, and it’s obvious he’s really upset and has worked himself up so much.  I just wish there was a way to avoid that, but there isn’t because it’s so hard to get him to sleep by himself.  Even in the car he complains very loudly and works himself up into a frenzy very easily, it’s not good.  Luckily I am not easily distracted and can still drive while he screams, but it’s still not a nice experience for either of us and it’s such a relief when I can get him into the car and staying asleep, although that’s not often.  He has fallen asleep in the car before but only on the odd occasion, it doesn’t really rock him to sleep.  I guess we won’t be those parents who put their baby in the car to get him to sleep in desperation!

He is progressing in terms of his development well, I think, although I found out that a friend’s baby who was born the day before him is already pulling herself up onto her elbows during tummy time and even rolling over!  At three months!  Is this extreme?  Mind you, she’s also already getting teeth, so I think she’s an early one all round.  And girls progress faster than boys, that’s pretty much a given.  The Dude is getting great at gripping and holding things and almost always grabs and holds the little toy I give him every time I change him.  When he’s on his front and on his back he can swivel himself right round 90 degrees, and he does lift his head a fair bit quite easily.  He’s also becoming very vocal and has started making more high-pitched squeals and excited shouty type noises.  He and I have these little back and forth mimicking conversations and he loves it, just being able to communicate with me like that, to know that I can copy him and that his noise is really his own.  He’s also noticed his hands recently and I’ve caught him examining them intently.  We’ve both noticed his left hand is a bit more dominant than his right, but my mum says that’s just because we are right-handed, which makes sense.  His little outie belly button is finally becoming an innie, and his feet are catching up to his hands in size.  His thighs are so chubby I bought crawler nappies (6-11kg) for him, as the other nappies just weren’t staying on him properly because you can’t get them properly round his chunky thighs!  I have no idea what he weighs, as his last check was at 6 weeks and I think he weighed 5.5kg then, but I’m sure he’s at least 6.5 now, he is heavy.

So on the bright side, we finally put up his cot on the weekend, and it’s pretty cool, almost completely level with the bed.  There is a little gap between the bed and his cot, so I must get some masonite from Bunnings and put it between, then stuff the gap with towels or something so he doesn’t fall in it.  There’s not much chance of that happening now, as he’s not rolling over yet, but it won’t be much longer I’m sure.  It was really good to finally put him in his cot and be able to turn on my left side and have the bed back again, even if it was only for an hour or so.  It’s so much easier if he sleeps right next to me because he can pretty much latch himself on in the middle of the night when he wants a feed, and I don’t have to gingerly try to put him in his bed, we just both fall asleep as we are.  I must admit I was never a fan of the idea of co-sleeping, and the two main reasons for that were firstly I thought I’d squish him in the middle of the night or he’d suffocate, and secondly I like my space in the bed and I like my sleep and I didn’t think I’d have either with him there.  Turns out there’s no chance I’d squish him as I know he’s there, even when I’m asleep.  Plus my sleep is longer and better because he’s there; if he were in his own bed even next to ours I’d have to get up and wake up to feed him in the middle of the night.  But why wouldn’t I just train him to sleep through the night, you ask?  I think it’s really unnatural; think about it, how often do babies need to feed during the day?  Every hour, two hours, three hours?  Maybe every four hours, let’s say.  So why to they suddenly not need it during the night?  But he slept six hours during the night quite a few nights, he obviously doesn’t need it, right?  Wrong.  Just because he sometimes sleeps through for six hours doesn’t mean he doesn’t ever need feeds during the night.  I can see for myself that even slight variations to the way things unfold during the day, different levels of activity, different amounts of milk, different lengths of sleep at different times during the day, all add up to a different experience every night.  Yes, he has a routine, as much as you can impose one on a baby – why would I force something on him and make him miserable and myself stressed?  It’s much easier to be aware and notice the natural routine and support that.  I think it’s unfair of me to impose my routine on him – not that I have one I guess, but why would I try to force something when the natural way will unfold and he won’t ever have to be unhappy?  And seriously, I wouldn’t ever try control crying techniques, but even if I did I very much doubt they’d work on this kid without doing him a serious injury!  Sometimes when I’m in the shower and I can hear him crying and I just want to stay under the hot water a few moments longer, I do drag it out, I admit it, just to see if he’ll quiet himself and eventually go to sleep.  It never happens.  Yes, his cries sometimes get a bit quieter, and for a moment he stops, but within seconds he’s back on it again, crying his little heart out, and sometimes sounding like he’s being murdered, it’s awful!

I guess the one thing I could do to really help him is to go to bed early, like 9pm… but it’s really hard for me, I’m never tired that early, and I feel like I haven’t had enough wind-down time with my husband.  I’ve considered trying to put him down earlier, but it virtually never works, especially at night – he’s not a night person!  I’ve decided not to give up with getting him to sleep on his own.  I think a lot of people who end up always having to have their sleeping baby strapped onto them or sleeping next to them have just given up trying to get bubs to sleep in his own bed, so they say, oh he won’t sleep by himself, but what they mean is, he didn’t do it when he was two months old and we gave up trying.  I think babies just get to certain points and suddenly they’re cool with things.  It was that way for us, with sleeping.  I religiously sat up in bed to feed numerous times every single night until the Dude was 8 weeks old; until one morning I woke and realised he’d been asleep next to me from midnight til 6am – what?!  He got to a point and he was ready to stay lying down through the night, so he did that and now we never get up in the middle of the night (touch wood, don’t want to jinx anything!!)  I think the same thing will happen with sleeping by himself, and getting to sleep without being rocked or fed, he’ll do it when he’s ready.  I thought that time had come the other week when he fell asleep on the couch while I dangled a toy over his head, and that was a big breakthrough, even if it only lasted ten minutes and he hasn’t done it since.  This kid has a lot of energy running through his system, that’s all, and it’s hard to fall sleep when you’ve got ants in your pants.

That reminds me of the other thing I wanted to mention: I was thinking today about inherited stuff, and I really have this strong sense that one can inherit constitutional things and build ups of toxic energy from one’s ancestors.  I think it’s kind of like everyone collects stuff through their lives, and they don’t let it go during their lives, they let these toxins build up in them and pass them on at some energetic level to their children and grandchildren.  The Dude’s eczema rashy thing is a good example of that.  It’s like his body is fighting this crazy toxic heat, trying to throw it off, but being burdened by it, and it’s making him all hot and itchy inside.  I know this sounds weird and crazy, but I just get the impression this is what’s happening for him.  That’s why I am not taking him to a regular doctor as they’d just prescribe cortisone cream and tell me, oh lots of babies have eczema, same as when/if he gets asthma they’ll prescribe ventalin and tell me, oh lots of children have asthma.  Yeah, great, doesn’t mean we should just accept that it’s a part of childhood, right?  At some level I believe that these things are very constitutional and therefore I shouldn’t be interfering and should just let his body deal with it, but at another level I think they are inherited and I feel like we could do something cleansing that could release him from the burden of them.  Unlike childhood illnesses which run their course, provide immunity for future exposure and you never see them again, things like eczema and asthma are unnecessary.  So we’re off to the osteopath next week, just to see if some adjustment will help him.  The midwife still believes he went from breech to head down during labour, and if that’s the case it’s highly likely there will be something out of alignment.  I wonder if it will make a difference?  I’m determined not to tell the osteo too much and let him just do what he does and see the results.  Plus I need to convince my sceptical husband that it’s worthwhile, as he doesn’t think they do anything.  I’ll be sure to report back once we’ve been…  I’m trying to add more oil to my diet in the hope it will help his skin clear up, but if it’s still like this in a couple of weeks I’m going to take him to a homeopath or an anthroposophical doctor, if I can find a decent one.  I also rang the baby health centre people and they said the next checkup between 6 weeks and 6 months is at 4 months, so even though I’m wary I will take him down to the one at Bondi Beach and get him weighed and measured etc.  At some stage I’ve got to take him to a doctor and get the conscientious objection form signed, not looking forward to that experience!

Currently he is asleep in the ergo on my front.  Thank the good lord for baby carriers like the Ergo and Hugabub, they are amazing things and I am a better mother because of them!

12 week update

So he’s 12 weeks now, just coming up to three months old and thriving.  He’s huge!  I don’t know how fast babies are meant to grow but 1cm per week is pretty fast I think.  He’s changing and reaching new milestones every day, it’s great to watch.  I went walking yesterday, and when I got to the spot we reached the day before he was born, when we went walking to ramp up the contractions, I thought, wow, I can’t believe how much has happened in those 12 weeks.

Sometimes pretty amazing happened with his sleep too.  He has been consistently sleeping through the night since 8 weeks, not without a couple of wrestles in the middle of the night where he just has some boobie and goes back to sleep, but I haven’t had to sit up with him.  He did have a meltdown the other night for at least an hour, was pretty awful actually, and I kind of gave up and just laid him next to me and tried to wait out his crying.  Husband had gone into the living room to sleep but couldn’t possibly drift off with all the crying, so he eventually came in, picked him up and had miraculously rocked him to sleep in a few minutes.  I felt kind of guilty because meltdowns like that don’t need to happen any more.  His patterns are more obvious, and I know he wants to be in bed pretty much as soon as it gets dark, or at least by about 8 or 9pm, as he gets grumpy in the evenings and doesn’t like waking up properly at night, wants to just feed and fall back to sleep, but because we’re up and watching tv or whatever he gets woken and then is too awake to feed back to sleep; by the time he can drift off, there’s too much milk coming out and he gets frustrated as he just wants to suck but the milk keeps coming.  So yeah, my fault.  But aside from that, a miracle happened two days ago.  We’d gotten up as usual between 8 and 9am, I’d fed him and eaten breakfast myself, and just had him lying on the couch next to me as I watched a Love My Way repeat (remember that show?  It was pretty good!)  I dangled a toy above his head and he chatted to it and batted it.  I watched him for a few minutes and realised he was sleepy – his little eyes would close momentarily.  I thought, no way he’ll fall asleep, but I kept the toy dangling, and sort of swung it back and forth like a pendulum.  He grizzled momentarily, and I thought that might be it, but suddenly his eyes closed and he dropped off to sleep!  I couldn’t believe it!  I very gingerly sat up and crept away, putting my phone on silent and texting his dad to announce this miraculous event.  Unfortunately, it was short-lived, as he was woken by some fluid needing to be coughed up.  Ah well.  But I was still proud, just amazed actually that he’d do it.  So I’ve made a couple of attempts since and nothing, but I’ll keep trying.  I’m going to keep trying to get him to sleep alone, at least for a few hours each day and eventually at night, although he needs a cot for that to happen – still in its box from Ikea!