finally

Above: Squeak and Mummy after a particularly wakeful day, with a particularly tired boy.  All it took was 2 marathon nursing sessions, a 1.5hour walk and Mummy to come home and bounce him for an hour on the yoga ball. The result: A 40 minute nap.

Above: Unbridled bathtime joy. Mummy trying to escape the clutch of Squeaks full body, full throttle,  jaw clampdown open mouth kisses. So beautiful but so very painful, particularly when he uses your hair to pull himself closer!

vice

This blog entry pains me so. You see, for the better part of two years, right through TTC and pregnancy, I was coffee free. Mostly, I was completely caffeine free. The joy of reintroducing coffee and discovering that it didn’t impact my breastfed baby was insurmountable. Strolls to one of the many awesome local cafes for my daily soy latte have become a great highlight of this stay-at-home mother.

How sad I am thus, to report that I’ve been about 70hours without caffeine (coffee AND tea) and little Squeak has had 2 very good nights sleep. Of course, very good is relative and amounts only to stretches of 2ish hours without waking – but I think we even got a 3 hour stretch in there last night.

And if it’s not my lack of caffeine intake that’s helped, then it’s the added fibre in Squeaks diet. His latest passtime is devouring every piece of paper in sight!  Please let it be that!!!

void

A cold, a babe who doesn’t sleep and motherhood more broadly has eaten my ability to think creatively, or in fact, rationally, or even coherently. I so want to blog regularly. I want to complain about the all night nursing and the stints of no more than 1 hour of consecutive sleep all night. On bad nights, it’s 20 minutes. I also want to complain about the giant boy’s incapacity to nap during the day or sleep at night without me. I feel like we embody the reason that co-sleeping has a bad name. I love sleeping with my boy. I love the snuggles. I love the good they say it’ll do my boy. But there’s a niggling thought in the back of my mind that wonders if we’ve created a monster? Sleep training is not an option for us. I’ve read the books and if I’m not appalled by them, at the very least, I’m demoralised. So I’ve stopped reading the books and remain committed to co-sleeping and [maybe, probably not] being the mother of an only child! Some nights have been so bad that I’ve had to fight the urge to tell TTC’ers to quit while they’re ahead. But despite desperate moments my boy is still awesome and growing and changing so much.

At 5 months, every day brings a new little skill or idiosyncrasy. He’s so engaged with the world now. Nothing within his reach is safe – and I find myself sneaking cups of tea and toast rather than trying to avoid his grabby curiosity.  Cafe outings are timed with breastfeeding or naps in the ergo. If he’s awake it’s hard work! Teaspoons provide some respite but there’s never enough time to get through a meal!

Was he sitting last time I blogged? Well he’s sitting independently now – has been since 4.5 months – and is much happier for it. And it buys me a bit of extra time to try and get his nappies clean and food in my belly (seeing as naptime doesn’t afford me such luxury.)

He’s also become super kissy. He loves nothing more than grabbing our hair, pulling us to him and slobbering (and sometimes clamping down with that super strong jaw) all over our face. It’s so painful but completely adorable and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

And he’s recognising important ppl in his life. My Mum came back from 6 weeks overseas and he remembered her instantly. I was astounded. He adores her and beams from ear to ear whenever he sees her. Same story when Duck gets home from work! It’s gold.

Really, he’s gold. Everything about him is gold and despite some really dark nights [and days] the bliss far outweighs the misery.

I’m going to succumb to my headache now and leave you with a few pics from the last few weeks.

Giant babe

Every month, the nurse says to us ‘his growth will start to plateau now’ and every month, he’s put on another kilogram! This month he grew 6cm too. This babe is now just shy of 9 kgs and is 67.5cm long. That’s over 19 pounds and 26 inches.

At 4 months old, Squeak is very 4 months old. His sleep has regressed, his teeth are driving him nuts, he’s rolling from back to tummy, he’s squealing and squawking all.the.time. He loves books (he’s currently reading Goodnight Moon on my lap, thus affording me the opportunity to blog one handed!) and Sophie the Giraffe. Bath time is a total salvation and gets us through witching hour. He’s really strong and despite my hopes that he’d be late to be mobile, our osteopath predicts an early walker! He’s a total Mama’s boy and most often can only be soothed or settled by the boob.

Today I managed to get him to sleep by bouncing on the yoga ball but the second I tried to put him down, he woke up. Cue more bouncing and a 40 minute nap in Mama’s arms. I’m not exaggerating when I say that for the last month, he has not slept anywhere but in my arms, attached to my boob or in the hug-a-bub (moby) or ergo carrier. Not once. Day and night. And for a while there, he wasn’t sleeping for more than 45mins in a row either. We were already committed co-sleepers but were we not, we would be now! Thankfully, we’re getting chunks of 2 hours at night now and he’s easy to resettle (with the boob!) Naps are very short to non-existent.

Of course, our move was incredibly poorly timed in regard to child development but we had no choice in those stakes. The good news is that we didn’t have to move into my mother’s place and found an awesome place, with a beautiful garden, a great kitchen and only 2 streets from our last place, just in time. I do think that a lot of our challenges with the boy have been to do with the move. The further out from the move we get (we moved 2 weeks ago) the more settle Squeak seems to be.

But it’s awesome. I love him and motherhood soooooo much. I had coffee with a childless (but child friendly) friend yesterday whose observation was that committed feminist mothers seemed to complain A LOT. I think she was being a  bit harsh but I’m now conscious of appreciating all the good stuff. And telling people about it.  I have plenty of other feminist mothering observations about which to blog but the joy of Goodnight Moon has worn off and I must now attend to the tears…

One

so long…

It’s been such a long time since I blogged that I once again considered whether I’d ever bother getting back to it. That I titled this post ‘so long’ is meant to reflect the passage of time, it is not a bid to farewell blogland, though given my contemplation of giving up on blogging, perhaps there’s something still lurking in my subconscious. I know that it’ll probably be another long stretch before I blog after this!

We’ve been thrown a few challenges in the last little while. Our particularly big challenge is finding somewhere to live. We have 13 days left in this house and still haven’t found anything else. Nevermind that we haven’t started packing yet. The upshot is that we have the option of putting all our stuff in storage and staying at my Mum’s house for as long as we need. I have absolutely no desire to do this or to move twice but it looks like that’s what is about to happen. Writing it out makes me want to cry!

Our darling Squeak is now 14 weeks and has been tough work too though he’s chilled out in the last week and it’s all starting to feel much easier.

The boy has a tooth! And 3 more just waiting to break through. This is one precocious babe. He’s still HUGE – off the charts for weight and height – 8 and a bit kg’s and 65.5cm. (That’s almost 18 pounds and 25.5 inches!) I had a look at a baby growth chart and he’s the size of an average 6-7month old. Because of his size, we find that people expect way more of him than the average 3 month old. ‘No, he can’t sit up yet, yes he is a cuddly mama’s boy…and it’s all developmentally appropriate.’ And if we’re keeping score then it pays to note that he has already hit all his 3 month milestones. He’s seconds away from rolling from back to tummy. He pushes up and stays there for minutes, he lifts his head from the floor when laying on his back. I was kind of hoping that big baby would mean a late to be mobile babe but our osteo thinks he’s very strong and is likely to walk early. Geez.

I had some sadness a few weeks back when he graduated from newborn to infant but for all the sadness, I have to admit that I’m pleased the intensity is lessening. I can now put him down for reasonable periods of time and he’s starting to learn how to have decent naps during the day. He really is beautiful and he brings so much joy to so many people.

He’s awake now and I’m gonna hit publish before I’ve got all my thoughts out for fear that this may never be published at all…more later if I can find a minute.

Showers

It’s raining today. It rained yesterday and the day before too. After weeks of high alerts, bushfires and crazy temperatures, autumnal rain has hit – almost on cue with the flipping of the calendar page. Maybe this will be the rain that breaks our awful drought. The heater is on too. It’s 13 degrees outside which is certainly not the coldest it gets here but given that less than a week ago it was 36, it’s a bit of a shock.

Ducks expressed some concern about my ability to cope with the resulting cabin fever that’s inevitable in this kind of weather. Given my NEED to leave the house everyday, I wonder the same. Today though, it feels kind cosy and familiar. A whole decade ago, I worked as a nanny for 2 years in London. It was cold and wet and dreary a lot there and somehow I survived. So today I’m feeling nostalgic and capable with my beautiful boy sleeping on my chest and 2 loads of washing already done.

oh joy…

Our house was sold today. We had big hopes that an investor would buy it and we could continue to rent it. No such luck. This house has been awesome to us. The location is amazing and it’s by far the nicest house we’ve lived in. Squeak was conceived in this house. And now we’ve got 60 days in a very tight market to get out! Finding a house is hard enough…lesbians with 2 cats, a dog, a baby and a single income…I’m worried.

There better be some serious silver lining in all of this.

8 weeks and bushfires…

One day I’ll write a coherent post…with themes and continuity. Not today though.

8 weeks ago, after an almost 8 hour labour, our son was 8 hours old. Today it’s hard to imagine our world without him in it. At present, he is fast asleep in bed with Ducks and you’ve never seen anything cuter.

I like 8 weeks more than I liked 6 weeks. I’m not feeling as overwhelmed. I’m finding my feet and managing to get [some] stuff done. Hell, I’ve even worked out how to have a shower, do my hair AND get dressed while the boy is awake and happy. Ducks and I are learning to communicate and thus parent a whole lot better as a team. He still treats us kindly is going to bed earlier most nights and only waking once for a feed. Plus, I’m starting to really get my mama social life together and it REALLY helps.

I took the boy into work this week and actually considered the possibility that I might like to go back after my 12 months leave. Something has shifted because in November, I never would have entertained such a thought. For all my complaining and tears about work, I now see some of the good stuff. For that hour I was in the office, it felt good to talk about work projects and sector goings on. Of course, there’s all kinds of other things to consider…like our next babe and me going back to uni and maybe I want to do midwifery, not naturopathy….but I’ll think about that another day.

Meanwhile, Squeak’s 8th week has been something of a trip which he has fared incredibly well. There has been a lot of stress and anxiety in his life but he’s cruised through…It seems that the whole world knows about the horrific bushfires we’ve been weathering here. Ducks parents and many of our friends and acquaintances have been caught up in the drama. We know people who have lost their homes, people who are missing and sadly, people who have died. After being trapped by closed roads and fires for 3 days, Duck’s folks were finally evacuated – tired, shocked and traumatised – but luckier than those for whom leaving was never an option. There have been a couple of close calls but it looks like their home is going to be ok – coming out of this mess with a fair amount of smoke damage but with all walls still standing.

I don’t believe in hell, but if I did, it would would look like Victoria did this week. Everyone has been touched by this tragedy, that we had a couple of near misses and couldn’t go to the Rainbow Families picnic makes us some of the lucky ones.

the shine

I was not the mother I want to be today. In fact, I was not a good mother at all today. Poor little Squeak is going through something (developmental? growth?) and unless extremely engaged, fussed and cried for most of the day. I was feeling particularly tired and not at all patient. What resulted was lazy parenting and me leaning way too much on Ducks who was working from home today.

My mum suggested that I may be starting to comprehend the absolute enormity and the challenge of mothering now Squeak is 6 weeks and the shine has worn off a bit. She’s right. I knew there’d be days that I feel like this, but now that I’m in this place, I really don’t like it. Motherhood really is this incredible whirlwind of joy and boredom and exhaustion and bliss. Thank the stars that through it all, the love is constant ‘cos without it, I don’t know how I could do this day in, day out.

I cannot believe that so many women do this everyday and multiple times over without credit, without accolade and without complaining. Women really are amazing.

6 weeks

The boy is 6 weeks and 2 days today.

At 6 weeks, this is what we know about him:

• He’s huge. Off the chart for weight and in the 95th percentile for height. His head, fortunately is in the 75th percentile. Frankly, I think if were any bigger, he’d look like some kind of alien. The stats as of yesterday – 6155 grams, 60cm long, 41cm head circumference.
• He’s wearing 00 or 3-6mth clothes.
• He’s strong. He’s been doing push ups tonight.
• He smiles. We’re not always sure what at and there seem to be quite a few private jokes, but his smile, for whatever reason, makes it all worthwhile.
• He loves the boob. Sometimes, tonight for example, he gets a bit nuts about sucking and forgets to go to sleep.
• He likes melodic, girls with guitar type music. Perhaps he’s a lesbian? He finally fell asleep tonight to the sweet sounds of Ane Brun.
• He can pick my voice out from anywhere. If Ducks is trying to comfort him and I walk into the room and say something, she has no hope.
• He loves being worn.  The more time he spends in the sling or the hug-a-bub, the sweeter he is and the better he sleeps at night.
• He’s not such a fan of his pram unless we are in a super busy/noisy area where there’s lots of stimulation to distract him.
• He’s a good sleeper. His pattern overnight at the moment is 5 or 6hrs-feed-3hrs-feed-3hrs- wake for the day. I feel like we’ve got a pretty sweet deal.
• He’s willful. He sleeps well overnight, but some nights (like tonight) it can take us 3 hours to get a clearly tired boy down.
• He loves to be sung to. The more repetitive the better which is lucky because our repertoire doesn’t extend much beyond twinke twinke little star and row-row-row your boat.
• He has an uncanny ability to get fussy or wake up the minute my dinner is ready, my coffee has arrived or my toast has popped up.
• He likes battery operated, tinny sounding parenting aides! His vibrating, singing bouncer, given to him by his great aunt, was not very popular with his mothers until they realised it afforded them the time to eat their breakfast AND brush their teeth.
• He has two mothers and a whole bunch of others who think he’s the cutest thing ever and who love him very much.

Loads more pics on flickr. (toolbar on the right)