Well ba-ba then, I've got places to go

I'm stopping this blog and this will be my last entry. Basically, I don't have enough time. The novel I've written now has an editor who say it needs lots of revisions, the housework is constant (seriously, a washing machine load every day or the laundry basket overflows), there's a job to do, a husband, family and friends to spend time with and oh yes, a baby too - now where did he get to?

For he has learnt to walk! On the trip to the USA (best tip ever, thanks again to the Great God Google, is: buy a small toy/odd little item from a pound shop for every half hour you will be on a plane. Brilliant.) he took his first, tottering steps. Then there was a gap of a few weeks, during which the new skill was occasionally spotted but he mostly kept on crawling. And then, after a quiet weekend, he suddenly stood up and walked. Round and round the living room, round the kitchen, through the hall, back to the living room. We just gaped at him. It was so sudden and so definite. He was delighted with himself. He just grinned at us and kept on walking.

There's a lovely documentary called, simply, Babies, about four babies, born in Mongolia, San Francisco, Tokyo and, I think, Nigeria. Of course they have very different lives (although surprisingly also many many similarities), but the film follows them from the moment they are born till each of them takes their first, wobbly, steps. So it is with this blog. I'd like to keep going but in the past year I've got my first grey hair and been busier than I've ever been in my life. Truly, I'm telling you, if you think you're busy and you don't have small children, you're not busy. I swear. I used to think I was a very busy person.
Ha. Ha. Ha.

Oh yes. And I've had the most fun and the most love - to and from me, the baby, my husband, family and friends, probably since I myself was a baby. Something worth giving up a blog to enjoy more of.

 

Is it a buh? Is it a air-lo-pluh? No, it's a baby, talking!

The baby is trying to say a lot of new words. He has 'car' down pat now, he even pronounces it properly - unlike the initial 'ka!' he came out with, it is now a fully developed 'car'. So now he is stretching his wings. He points to balloons and says 'ba', he points to the garden and says 'gar' (and then gets mad if you won't open the French windows and let him out - conversely, he yells in delight if he sees you get the keys out to unlock them). Outside, he points up over his head if you ask him where the sky is and when birds fly overhead he says 'buh!' Even better in his opinion, though, are the airplanes, which fortunately for us are not right overhead but pass fairly regularly in the distance. Undaunted by the long name, the baby has tackled this new word with enthusiasm. 'Air-lo-pluh', he announces, beaming, each time one goes by. Sometimes he says it and we have to look about us, but he is always right, he has spotted some minute speck of a plane in the sky somewhere and is pointing at it.

After the recent chaos of lost passports (and the stress of getting replacements), the latest tummy bug plus a fall causing a split lip which took us to A&E for an excruiciating combination of stress and boredom (luckily it was nothing very terrible, but gosh lips do bleed, don't they...), the time has come for a well-earned holiday. To America (wish us luck with a six-hour plane journey and a one year old child), for a small road trip round parts of New England which we are very much looking forward to.

But as my mother pointed out, will the baby realise he is inside an air-lo-pluh? That could be the highlight of the trip as far as he is concerned!

On your feet

Babies make you busy. This blog (or lack of for quite a long time) testifies to that. The baby's first birthday has come and gone - strawberry and cream cake with balloons everywhere and the presence of many grandparents seemed satisfactory to him, he ate lots, played with the balloons and enjoyed the attention - as well as a trip to Ireland to visit his cousins - and their myriad of animals which pleased him a great deal but not as much as the discovery that tractors are real, not just in books! Joy!

Meanwhile I have been rushing about replacing lost passports (left behind on plane) in readiness for a trip to the US - very stressful and no time to be writing anything except forms forms and more forms.

Today the baby is poorly, he threw up and sat about looking sad and tired so an early nap seemed called for. I hope when he wakes he will be able to take some water or milk without it coming straight back up again. It always frightens me (in the deep dark secret bits of your brain hidden beneath the logic that it's probably just a tummy bug or something he ate) to put him to sleep when he is ill, in a room where I can't see him and monitor him, afraid he might get worse or die or something. I know he'll be fine, but the dark bits of you worry in these moments.

But yesterday the sun shone and he was well. We played in the garden and giggled at peeping at each other through the windows of a tent/sun-shelter and for one brief second, as he let go of one hold and reached for another, he stood up, unaided. He didn't realise it and I wished the moment had lasted longer so I could truly have reveled in it and congratulated him, but there he was, standing, holding on to thin air.

Things are going to get busier.

We're going OUT

It's surprising how much babies understand. If you say 'We're going OUT' to the baby he is very interested. He likes going out and he understands this phrase perfectly. If you lead the way to the pram he will try to climb in, if you offer a jacket he will cooperate with putting it on. He will even sit happily in the pram and watch while you get your handbag, put on socks and shoes, find the keys, run back upstairs for something you've forgotten etc. All of this is acceptable because you're doing things he associates with being just about to go out.

But if you say the phrase and then start doing something that doesn't look like you are going out after all he gets mad. As far as he's concerned you've broken your promise and he makes his feelings felt. Going to get glasses of water, starting to tidy up etc is not acceptable. So you have to say it only when you really are just about to go out and then he's very happy.

Which makes it odd when you're planning things. He doesn't know that we are planning a weekend in Ireland. He doesn't even know we are planning to see his aunt tomorrow. I can't mention the going OUT because then he'll see we are not doing it right now and get mad. So he lives in a world with no tomorrows, not even a 'later', just right now this minute or perhaps five minutes away at the most. Life must be full of surprises.

Fruit bowl

As the baby likes fruit, it is only fitting that he should also like Carmen Miranda. The other day while I was cooking he sat at my feet and said "Ai-yai-yai!" a lot. I sang it back to him with her famous song -"Ai-yai-yai-yai-yai I like you verrrry much, Ai-yai-yai-yai-yai I think you're grand!" He was delighted. Now we sing it to each other all the time. I sing like Carmen, he helps out with the Ai-yai-yais. All we need is a way to balance the fruit bowl on our heads.

An apple a day...

The apple trees at the end of our garden have started production for the year, with apples turning red by the day. The baby has been gazing up at them for a long time with a lot of interest and been displeased by us refusing to pass him one even if he points vigorously. Now he has suddenly been offered the opportunity to pick one each day and he is delighted. He clasps them in his two hands and savagely bites them, making what sound like roaring noises. Surprisingly, considering they are the hardest textured thing he has ever been given, he really does eat them - it takes about half an hour but the apple does slowly get eaten. He is very happy.

I think I need to follow his lead and eat one every day myself. I have a horrid cold he gave me - he got over it quickly and seemed oblivious to it and his disgustingly snotty nose, whereas I feel like death warmed over. An apple a day...

Wrestling a baby

Today we attended our first Olympic event - the Graeco-Roman Wrestling. Don't laugh - the blokes in the heavyweight category (whom we were sat right next to) are HUGE and look like they take it very seriously. You really wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alley. The atmosphere was great - a lot of families, a lot of supporters from the various countries - Ukraine, Russia, Azerbaijan all featured heavily as did the Nordic countries - and a lot of people (like us) with no clue at all about the rules or knowledge of any competitors. Which made for a light-hearted, supportive attitude which, if all sporting events were like that, would get me attending more often. We bought the baby a commemorative London 2012 T-shirt for him to wear when he attains his full height. His growth chart says he will be 6ft 3 inches... we bought an XL.

The baby took it very seriously. He started in a jolly mood but once he'd seen some of the contenders he got into the spirit of things. Holding an 11+kg baby who is bored of sitting still and wants to escape is very much like partaking in a wrestling match yourself. We took turns, swapping him between us every 15 min, while the competitors took breaks between bouts and were dried off and fanned by their coaches.

By the end we retreated in abject defeat. Sadly we had no coaches to fan us. The baby, victorious, lay back in his pram with his arms under his head and had a well-earned sleep all the way home.

Olympic baby

The Olympics are underway and today there was women's pairs diving. The baby, who usually scorns TV (on days when you really need a break you find yourself wishing he'd just sit and stare at CBeebies for 20min but no such luck...) suddenly paid attention. He gaped as each pair of divers took to the diving board and bounced, then twisted and turned before hitting the water and appearing underwater to resurface and make their way to the side, anxiously watching the judging screens for their marks. He sat on my knee and stayed still and attentive throughout, seeming to espcially enjoy the slow-motion replays and the underwater sequences. I wondered if it was because of his swimming classes, if he could see that it was something akin to what he had experienced. Thus, his bespoke commentary by yours truly featured Water Babies-style lingo. "Divers, Ready, Go!" I exhorted, followed by "Wheeeeee - Splash!"(a little known technical expression used in diving) and, as they swam to the side and reached out for the edge, "Hold On, Hold On, Hold On."
The divers ignored this last safety warning, instead grabbing the edge only briefly and hauling themselves out in quick graceful moves. Still, I forgive them. They're probably past Intermediate One. I expect they're in the Advanced class.

The Iron Baby

The baby loves strawberries, as well as other soft fruits such as melons, pineapple, etc. He is also getting better at self-feeding - and has 8 teeth - so we started giving him chunks of fruit or whole strawberries so he could hold them himself, bite bits off and eat them. He was very pleased with this as he feels all important and grown up. However, he has now decided to exert his authority over these rebel fruits and he has no mercy. He holds a fruit - strawberries for preference - in his fist and then grips it very hard, while red juice drips down his arm and the berry itself is reduced to a sort of pulp that looks unpleasantly like some sort of crushed internal organ. He then opens his fist, inspects the berry for any last remaining act of defiance and grins when it just lies there, gasping its last breath. Then he shoves it in his mouth, chews rapidly and holds out his red-stained hand for another one.

Don't you step on my blue suede shoes

Today I bought the baby his first pair of shoes. A lot of fussing and cooing went on by the Clarks salespeople, who make a big deal out of it - I am now the proud owner of a photo of him taken by them - sitting on the floor of the shop wearing the new shoes and looking gobsmacked. In the shop we tried to make him 'walk' wearing them, something he is usually keen to do but he just stood, clutching my hands and keeping his feet frozen in place, perhaps feeling somewhat weighed down by them. I let him sit on the floor instead and he tried to remove them.

But once we got home he tried crawling in them and didn't seem to mind them so much. After some lunch we cranked up the music and danced together to Ray Charles singing Hit the Road Jack. He loves being held while you dance and also loves it if you sit near him and dance with your head and arms, he vigorously nods his own head back at you and smiles. My ponytail caused much laughter today because when I 'danced' it flew abut the place and he thought that was very funny.

At the 12 week scan of my pregnancy the ulstrasound revealed a tiny twisting creature. "A dancing baby" said the woman operating the scanner. Today he has his dancing shoes at last - maybe the next pair can be tap shoes.

Boys will be boys

Our baby has a pretty nice collection of toys, and looking them over today I would say 99% of them would be classed 'gender-neutral'. There's not much pink or blue unless its part of a rainbow set of stacking rings etc and there are only two vehicles - a pickup truck and a cement mixer (Bob the Builder toys picked up for 50p in a charity shop) and a few cutesy soft toys.

And yet - his first 'proper' word, reliably produced and firmly linked to the correct object whether in real life, photo, a drawing or even glimpsed on the TV show Top Gear as I surfed through a few channels, is 'car' - pronounced 'ka!' and the two vehicles are very much favourites. I saw him playing with one and made a few engine-like noises which he smiled at. My husband, informed of this, made a few more car noises. Now, when the baby plays with these items, he makes loud 'aaa, aaa, aaa' sounds, something he does with nothing else and which are pretty good copies of the engine noises we made. The childminder suddenly realised he could say 'car' when she held him in her arms near the street and he said it every time one went by. Apart from his colour books his most beloved book right now is a book about tractors - again, one of the very few 'boy' books he has. He ignores the cute soft toys. His Daddy is actually going to go and buy him a little car now because despite his huge interest he doesn't actually even have a toy car and we sort of feel sorry for him.

I don't get it. He's ten months old. He's had no particular encouragement in this direction so far. Is it just innate?!

Rover

The intelligence scale I mentioned a while back (i.e. your newborn is an earthworm, bit dispiriting really) has awarded my child the dubious distinction of being 'a quadruped mammal' by this age. Sort of insulting but then again if you watch the baby...

• He 'walks' on all fours
• He makes a lot of interesting noises to try and communicate though none of them are out-and-out what you'd call proper words
• He understands quite a lot of words though - things like ball, no, sit, up
• He likes feet and shoes, and will chew on either
• He likes waiting by the letterflap for the post to arrive and then chewing on it vigorously so that by the time you get it it's sort of raggedy round the edges
• He is very interested in (other) dogs and any animal
• He likes children and will try to bite them with great love and enthusiasm
• He likes the bins a lot

...so on balance I think maybe the scale has a point.

Walkies!

Dominoes....

... Except now my husband has the Roseola. Sigh. He is now feeling very sorry for himself - and for the baby as he now knows exactly how the poor mite was feeling just a few days ago. 'No wonder he wouldn't eat,' he moaned this evening. 'Awful sore throat.' Bit anoying after all the sites and books chirpily reassured us that adults hardly ever get it, just babies. Apparently 'everyone' is immune after about 4. Ummm, or not?

Really, really praying I am not up next. Enough already.

Down but not for long

The poor baby got Roseola (still no idea how to pronounce it) - a fairly mild virus involving fever and a rash - the fever was sad, he whimpered and looked miserable, felt burning hot and I had to reluctantly get out the Calpol and baby Nurofen - I know fevers are designed to 'burn up' the virus but the possibility of febrile convulsions always scares me... especially when it says in the books 'not to worry, they're really usually harmless, just scary to watch - but dial 999 if it happens...' umm, mixed messages?
Anyway once that stopped he got a rash and looked like a poor little sick monster. He carried on crawling, but in a desultory manner, as though it really wasn't worth the effort and sat about looking sad and weary. He stopped eating altogether and for one day barely drank, not even milk, which was a bit worrying. He somehow looked smaller, as though you need life force to make up the whole of your physical bulk and his was diminished.

But suddenly he turned the corner and woke up - at 2.30 am - full of beans and the joy of life. The rash had reduced quite impressively just overnight. By 3.30am we admitted defeat and allowed him to be awake - he was obviously feeling GREAT as you do after an illness and was keen to get back to exploring. It was almost a relief to watch him pull wine bottles out of the wine rack, huge books out of the bookshelf - which trapped his legs under them and then see how excited he was by a new swing kindly bought for him by his Great-Grandmother, which had arrived while he was languishing.

Normal service resumed.

And they're off...

He's crawling good and proper. His knees are covered with small bruises from whamming along our wooden floors, but he doesn't seem to care. What started as commando crawling (on his belly) became a tentative effort at all-fours crawling (with great Bambi-on-ice impressions along the way, the floors are pretty slippy), and then somehow his legs got stronger and he understood how it worked better. And now he crawls. Fast. As a result he has suddenly learnt several new things:

• Rooms interconnect.
• If someone leaves the room and you are all alone you can chase after them rather than cry for them to come back.
• There are amazing new things to discover because the grownups have not yet fully childproofed the house:
• House plants in pots of earth which is very yummy to eat.
• House plants with leaves that are nice to eat.
• Bowls of lavender seeds that can be eaten and spread around the whole living room, creating a lovely smell, as well as the appearance of:
• The vacuum cleaner, which has lots of buttons, cables and fluff to explore (and eat).
• Bins - and Mamma's 'cross' voice, hitherto not heard so much. Also the word NO.
• The recycling basket with a LOT of paper to be ripped, strewn across the floor and eaten, preferably before Mamma catches you at it.
• Stairs - and the hasty appearance of stairgates, disappointingly.
• The (muddy) wheels of the pram - and the contents of the changing bag, handily near floor level in the pram under-basket.
• Toilets, toilet brushes... and then bathroom door mysteriously started being kept shut. Sad really, that room had potential...
• Outside in the garden even more things have become accessible:
• Earth. Yummy.
• Watering can for drinking out of/showering with.
• Brambles.
• Aphids. And that word NO again.
• Small plants in neat rows. Well, they were neat.

With all these new things to explore the toys are mostly abandoned on the floor, except for two books of colours (i.e. a green page with photos of green things, etc) which are read continuously until they mysteriously disappear.... but they must be round here somewhere, it's just a case of pulling out all the books on the lower bookshelf till they are found again.

Pass the Pimms, Mater...

There's no accounting for babies' tastebuds. After a tummy bug our baby refused everything except yoghurt and fruit for about a month. Then (especially when he saw a slightly older baby eating new things) he got interested in more variety again. But it's no good making him 'baby-friendly' things like simple tomato sauce with teeny tiny pasta or peanut-butter sandwiches - which apparently are the favourite food of half the babies I know - no, he has higher aspirations, like -

Strawberries - I first gave him a tiny mashed up bit with some cream from an Eton Mess I was eating. Now he wolfs them down, biting them savagely and managing to get through eight large ones in one day. And the other favourite is -

Smoked salmon. No good giving him simple plain salmon, nicely cooked up a la baby cooking expert Annabel Karmel, no, he wants smoked salmon, which he'll eat and eat and eat. I'm sure this makes me a Bad Mother - the salt! the uncooked fish! but he loves it so, you know....

Meanwhile the baby rice and baby porridge and baby pasta are sitting untouched on the shelf. Given these fancy new tastebuds he's developing I've been thinking what else I could offer him. Champagne in his bottle? Pimms in his drinking cup? Canapes topped with caviar after a hard day at the childminder's? All I can surmise is he likes quite strong tastes and interesting textures. So I'm off to look round the supermarket and in my cookery books for ideas. Squid pieces? Chorizo?  Tapas selection? Crispy duck in Chinese pancakes with plum sauce and spring onions? Who knows.

I can see you...

We spent two weeks at my mother and stepfather's farm with the baby and a change of scene brought lots of new leaps forward.

First of all, me and my husband went out for lunch, twice, without the baby - for the first time in 9 months. Admittedly, we spent most of our time out talking about how sweet our (absent) baby is - it's true what they say, absence does make the heart grow fonder. But to just be the two of us with no baby in tow was a novel feeling and very pleasant. As with our childminder, leaving the baby with someone else gives you confidence to do it again - nothing dreadful happens and really they have a pretty good time! We're setting up a babysitting club with our NCT group shortly (poker chips give you hours to trade) so we hope to make it a more regular occurrence.

Meanwhile, the baby learnt to 'see' animals. I often point out cats and dogs we come across round London but he used to blank them. A trip to the zoo resulted in the same treatment of giraffes - even though they were right there in front of him, towering several metres above us. But on the farm he met horses, donkeys, sheep, dogs and puppies, cats and kittens, chickens and chicks, ducks and ducklings. He did his best to avoid his toes being nibbled by the donkeys while the cats did their best to avoid being nibbled by him. Yesterday, sitting on our front step waiting for his Daddy to come home, a dog walked by on the other side of the road with its owner. "Dog" I said, as I've been doing for months. He stared at it, grinned broadly, and frantically tried to stand up so that he could watch it as it walked further away.

Another baby staying at the house, one month older, inspired him to try new things. She ate new things, he looked at her and ate them too. She could pull herself to standing via the furniture and he promptly headed for the furniture and tugged at it, trying to hoist himself up. She could crawl, and he redoubled his efforts. His foot still seems to get in the way and he has resorted to Commando-style crawling (arms only, dragging his legs behind him) to get where he wants to get to, but having a role model made a difference. A new baby is starting at our childminder's, who is just four months older, I think he will continue to provide inspiration for new adventures.

These experiences make sense. He saw things another baby could do, he had time to experience animals up close for a prolonged period and he spent time with his grandparents before he was left with them so he was comfortable with them, so none of these events are really surprising.

But while we were away we missed two swimming classes. One of the skills they are being taught is to 'hold on' to the side of the pool, a safety measure should they ever fall in. Before we left he would place his hands on the edge and hold on, but he had to have a knee under him to hold him up and he was doing nothing to support his own body in that position. The day after we flew back was swimming class. "Hold on" we said, and he gripped the side firmly, put his feet against the side of the pool and hoisted himself forward. The teacher told me to let go and there he was, holding onto the edge of the pool, head clear of the water, keeping himself safe all alone. I was astonished. I had expected him to perhaps not remember some of the exercises, even maybe to be a bit scared by the regular dunking underwater. But he had moved on leaps and bounds. The change of scene must have been building up some new pathways in his mind.

The spirit of a great granny

I consider myself fortunate to have a (to normal eyes) ludicrously extended family. We don't just have stepmothers and stepfathers - that's ordinary. We have relationships like 'my half sisters' half brother' and I once flummoxed my fellow students by telling them that for Christmas we would be at 'my stepmother's stepmother.' And so on. I have five siblings, all 'halves' whom I consider wholes. We have family get-togethers that would be unthinkable in other families, with two ex-wives, the current wife and all their offspring in the same room as my father, and everyone happy to be together.

What this requires, to make it work, is a generosity of spirit, and this was exemplified by my stepmother's mother, who was always very grandmotherly towards me. But she impressed me even more when my own baby was born. She took a surprisingly great interest in him. "I can see he's very intelligent", was her first remark on having seen an early photo of him, wrinkled and pink. I sent more photos and she rang me every time to say thank you. I would start normal conversations with her and she would stop me. "Tell me about the baby," she'd say and I would describe his swimming lessons, his fun in the doorway bouncer, about him learning to sit up. When she met him she focused all her attention on him and held him gently, her growing-frail arms tenderly wrapped about his not inconsiderable frame.

Tonight a candle burns on our table for a person who knew what it meant to be a real Great-Granny, and that blood ties had nothing to do with it.

Lift me up, please

It doesn't take long before a baby cottons on to how they can play you at your own game. We hold our arms out to our baby before we pick him up and he started to respond by lifting his own up towards us, a sort of acknowledgment that he was about to be picked up, which we thought was sweet. But now he has gone one step further. My husband was trying to tidy the room while the baby sat on the mat with toys. But he was getting bored and kept throwing away the toys and whinging. My husband, needing a few extra minutes to finish tidying, attempted to pacify him with offers of different toys. But the baby wasn't about to be fobbed off like that. Instead, he raised his arms up to my husband, clearly signaling wanting to be picked up. It's a small step, but a giant leap as it were, because once he's realised that, there are an awful lot more steps along that road. "I wonder what his voice will sound like?" said my husband one day. I think we're going to find out pretty soon, and after that it won't be silent signals, it'll be full on, loud requests that are a lot harder to ignore. Recently, walking along a busy road with my pram and fairly silent baby I came across two grandparents being held hostage by a toddler in a little red coat, who was crouched in a heap, screaming her head off about something while the two of them attempted to pacify her. I smiled sympathetically and the woman, seeing my small baby smiled back. "All still to come," she prophesied.
Can't wait.
Gulp.

Divvying up

So now I'm back at work, albeit part-time and last night my husband and I were sitting trying to work out how the household chores will work out as we enter a new phase. While on maternity, and mostly because we wanted the baby to sit and eat with us, we ate dinner at 6pm, which meant the minute my husband walked through the door, which meant I made dinner every night (pre-baby we used to alternate this task religiously). That was okay, although I did run out of ideas - and interest - I enjoy cooking but every night is a chore, not a creative process. It made sense because of the social aspect, the timings, and because I wasn't out at work. But now? My husband's new chore is to drop off and collect the baby, every day that he is at the childminder's, so then it sort of make sense that I should cook. But five nights a week? Forever?

I don't feel hard done by or outraged. It's more of a nagging feeling. I could say okay, we'll eat late and he'll cook on alternate nights. But eating together matters to me and so that's 2 nights, and then the three nights where I am at work he has a new chore and I'm more likely to be at home by 5 while he (and baby) will not get in till 6.15.

I don't have an answer. The weekends are okay, he makes breakfast, I make lunch, each of us cooks one evening meal just like we always did. The best I've been able to come up with is that perhaps on Sunday night he should cook and cook double portions so Monday night is just heating up? And that I revise our shopping so that a few meals are very quick and easy to prepare... takeaway would be the easy option of course but that's really not very good for the waistline and I could do with my waistline decreasing, not increasing.

So... I think we'll have to mess around with the formula till we find something acceptable. It's a tricky one. The best solution is to find something acceptable, wait a few years and teach the kids to cook us dinner. After all, they don't work....

Sick of being sick

Thank God for washing machines. Ours has been on continuously for the past week and a half. Our baby got a tummy bug which resulted in endless throwing-up and - ahem - accidents the other end. Within two days he'd run out of all his clothes and was in a vest with the heating turned up to keep him warm while we frantically hung washing on every available radiator round the house. The bedding went the same way - our travel cot was pressed into use while the cot mattress was washed and dried sloooowly. Our own supply of clean clothes dwindled but his clothes took priority over ours on the radiators.

I'll give NHS Direct a nod here as they were unfailingly kind and helpful - and reassuring which matters most - on the phone when I rang. Although their first line of questioning, for meningitis, does make your heart stop for a moment and have you muttering prayers of 'please don't let it be that' while you're on hold for a nurse.

As the baby got better, my husband got worse, his own tummy bug exactly mimicking (in milder form) the pattern of illness - feeling better, then worse, over and over again. I stopped saying 'he's on the mend' after a few days of being proved wrong.

By the way don't call an out of hours doctor unless you are willing to be called in to see them. I rang NHS Direct for the last time just to check it was usual for a tummy bug to drag on for more than a week and whilst they were kind as usual they suggested I call my out of hours doctor just to be on the safe side. When I did (by this time it was 9pm and the baby had been asleep for two hours) they insisted I should bring him in. "What, now?" I asked. "Yes." I considered refusing (it seemed to me what he most needed was uninterrupted sleep) but when a doctor tells you to bring your baby in to the hospital where the out of hours surgery is... you sort of have to do it. So I called a taxi, got the baby out of bed (husband lying in bed feeling horrible), took him to the doctor who looked him over and said he wasn't dehydrated and to carry on as I was - we got back to bed by 11pm.

And then work loomed. Now that I'm back at work for two days a week initially it became clear the childminder was not going to be an option as the baby was still too ill and equally I could not, after only one week back, bring myself to cry 'ill baby' and not be at work. So I left a still-poorly husband with a still-poorly baby and the two of them mostly sat in bed with toys and telly (and plenty of spare clothes and towels for accidents) and were poorly together. Thankfully they were both reaching the tail end of the illness. Meanwhile on my second day at work I spent the day fighting off low-level nausea and as soon as I was safely through the work days started to feel vile myself.

So now my husband and the baby are back to normal and I'm at the tail-end of it all. It's been a week and half of household illness.

And there are still about 6 loads of washing in the laundry basket.

Piranha!

There's a rather depressing scale for artificial intelligence which compares AI to infants and various other creatures, so your baby is equivalent to an earthworm till it's 5 months old, then a fish till 9 months, then a quadruped mammal, etc. It's a bit disheartening to have your lovely baby (whom you think is an undiscovered genius) compared to a fish.

However in one respect my baby is certainly a fish. He is a piranha. He got teeth very early and with four teeth, two top and two bottom he launched himself on the world. He has tried to bite the childminder's nose off (this I blame on my husband who taught him the game), visitors have to be warned not to put a finger in his mouth and when you hug him he wraps his arms round your neck (ahh, sweet) and then savagely sinks his teeth into your shoulder. I have actual scars.

The first night after being at the childminder he slept a bit fitfully and I thought oh, cute, he missed us. Mmm, not so much. Yesterday a new upper tooth was revealed while its twin lurks on the other side, its white outline clearly visible, ready to pop out any minute. Soon he will have 4 teeth on top and two on the bottom.

I have to take my hat off to the amber teething anklet and necklace he wears in that we haven't used Bonjela since we got it (except one day when we left it off - fools!), so at least the teething process is going smoothly.

I need some sort of body armour for protection. Meanwhile I am offering crunchy apples and cucumbers so he has something to bite that isn't us.

I have warned him: don't push your luck. He may have almost 6 teeth now.
But I have 27.

Well, we missed YOU!

A photo of a happy baby playing on a rug shouldn't really make you cry but when our baby went for his first real day at the childminder's she very sweetly sent us reasssuring photos and texts all day long. The first photo made me burst into tears. He looked happy and I knew from the text he'd eaten all his breakfast and drunk a bottle of milk with no problems at all - but the thought of your own baby somewhere entirely 'other' for the first time can be a bit overwhelming. But as the day wore on and he passed every expected hurdle - eating/sleeping/drinking - and laughed and played and tried to bite the childminder's nose off, I felt myself relax. When he came home we lavished hugs on him and he looked faintly bewildered. My husband looked a bit cast down. " I thought he'd miss us a bit," he protested. "I'm glad he was happy, but still..."

He did wake a few more times than usual in the early part of the night, not wanting milk but just to be held for a few minutes before he drifted off again. I suppose he just wanted to make sure we were still there. So he must have missed us a bit.

And it's quite nice to work again... and I think they missed me - or at least needed me back to hit targets!

What I look for in a childminder: tickling advice

We're currently doing 'settling in' with a childminder prior to actually starting properly after Easter. Before choosing her I read her profile and about fifty others on childcare.co.uk, shortlisted down to about 20 for an initial contact, then down to a further 3 for a visit. My husband and I both met her, we read the Ofsted (outstanding) report on her, we got references, signed contracts and are now doing a week's worth of settling in visits. Then the baby will do two short days with her before building up to two full days and in a few months' time, three days a week which will be ongoing. So we've done our homework and we're doing it all by the book. But yesterday, on our first visit, she inadvertently won me over and made me feel I'd picked the right person. The two toddlers she had that day were playing around us as we chatted. One hurt her hand on a toy and casually held it out to be kissed better, then happily went back to playing. The other threw himself at the childminder for a vigorous tickling session. When she emerged from his embrace she nodded towards my baby. "Is he ticklish?" I nodded. "His ribs and thighs." She laughed. "And his jaw?" I looked puzzled. "Make him look away from you," she said. "Then you nibble along their jaw and they find it ticklish." I nodded and we carried on chatting. Later, at home, I tried it out. He collapsed in giggles.
So yes, of course you should read the Ofsted report and get the references. But you should also check if they have tips on tickling. That's the kind of childminder I want my baby to spend time with. 

A Room of One's Own: Do Not Disturb

Well, we put him in his own room for the first time, in fear and trembling of how the night might pan out.... and sure enough he woke barely an hour later and made a big fuss. "It's going to be a bad night," said my husband gloomily, after spending twenty minutes putting him back to sleep. I hastily rolled over and went to sleep myself despite it being only 8pm, hoping to squeeze in an extra half hour or hour's sleep before the fun and games set in.

Silence....

At half past one my husband went to the loo and paused on his way back to make quite sure the baby was breathing, which he was.

Silence...

At four am he cried softly and I changed and fed him and put him back down awake. There was a bit of shuffling.

Silence...

7am, we had to go in and wake him up - he's been awake by 6.20 every day for weeks.


So, um, we apologise, baby. Looks like it's been us waking you up all this time.
Sorry about that.

Spring!

At last Spring is here so that I could take our baby outside into the garden without a marathon session of bundling up (him and me both). Instead we just walked out into the garden as we were and could touch and smell to our hearts' content. Trembling with excitement he brushed his hands across the many crisp leaves of bluebells, poked at our pebbledashing, stroked the bark of the appletrees, crushed a daffodil (I was too slow to save it), smelt lavender, sage and rosemary and when I sat him on the grass leaned forwards and grabbed handfuls, urgently stuffing them in his mouth while I tried to get them back out again. Springtime!

Spring

BY KARLA KUSKIN

I’m shouting

I’m singing

I’m swinging through trees

I’m winging skyhigh

With the buzzing black bees.

I’m the sun

I’m the moon

I’m the dew on the rose.

I’m a rabbit

Whose habit

Is twitching his nose.

I’m lively

I’m lovely

I’m kicking my heels.

I’m crying “Come Dance”

To the fresh water eels.

I’m racing through meadows

Without any coat

I’m a gamboling lamb

I’m a light leaping goat

I’m a bud

I’m a bloom

I’m a dove on the wing.

I’m running on rooftops

And welcoming spring!

If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Feet

Often when I change my baby (supposing I'm at home and using our changing table in comfort, not kneeling down in a corridor or other unsuitable place when we're out) I sing If You're Happy And You Know It. As he can't clap his hands yet and I'm well-placed to do this, I 'clap' his feet together instead. He thinks this is funny. I wish I were so flexible.

At night, when he wakes to be fed (yes, this is still happening, sigh, though thankfully he only feeds once a night now) I also change his nappy. I do this first so that the milk feed will then lull him back to sleep - if you do it the other way round you end up with a well-fed and wide-awake baby who thinks it's time to play. But there is a downside, in that when you start to change his nappy he gets mad because he thinks you are not going to feed him. I said MILK, not NAPPY! I generally don't talk to him at night as this, too, wakes him up. But I've found something that cheers him up without talking. I lightly 'clap' his feet together and he stops crying at once, looking faintly puzzled but more cheerful, as though the song works in reverse.

Clap Your Feet and You'll Be Happy!

The Intelligent Stomach

When you've eaten something dodgy and been sick as a cat, afterwards it is often easy to tell what the offending item was. Mention Pastilla, a Moroccan speciality to my husband and he still shudders, years later. Somehow, your body knows which item it was, even if it was mixed in with everything else.

So it is with our baby. Along the weaning journey we occasionally offer something and after one or possibly two mouthfuls he refuses it outright. We usually switch to something else and he'll eat again happily. But beware of trying to 'fool' him by mixing the rejected substance with the more pleasant alternative. He'll eat it alright, but shortly afterwards will frequently bring the food back up - not all of it, you understand, just the food he didn't want in the first place. His stomach has somehow (don't ask me how) separated out the food into acceptable and unacceptable and sent the unacceptable straight back up.

So the moral today is, don't try to fool baby stomachs. They know. 

When Time Stands Still

Sometimes, with a baby, time goes so fast it's bizarre. I'm not sure where six months just went.
Equally, it can go very slowly, like when you've run out of games to play and you think "ah, this'll be fun," play it for what seems like ages, glance at the clock and realise it lasted all of five minutes - and now you need to think of something else to do.

Sometimes though, it stands still. I hug him sometimes and say 'huuuuuuug' to him and at these times he wraps his arms round you (and possibly gets a good hard grip on your hair, slightly less endearing) and we rock back and forth and it's such a nice moment, which feels as though the two of you are in a tiny bit of nothingness, just the two of you and the huuuuuuuug.

The other moment recently was at the pool where he does swimming with water babies. This week it was my turn in the pool and I had to walk backwards along the length of the pool with him in a 'swimming' position at the end of my outstretched arms. On the teacher's command I then had to fully submerge him, let go and keep walking away backwards, which creates a current, so that they then 'swim' alone, under the water, in your wake. I did this satisfactorily and he seemed very happy with the experience (they always do, which amazes me). But afterwards I had to check with my husband, who had been watching from the side. "Did I keep walking backwards?" I asked. "I don't remember it at all, I just remember looking at him under the water."

At least I remembered to pull him back up - the teacher told me about one mother who, whilst doing this exercise, gazed as though hypnotised into the water where her baby was holding his breath. "Amazing," she said. "Look at that. Look at him just there, like that, under the water, just floating in it."
"PICK HIM UP, PICK HIM UP!" yelled the teacher.

You have to watch out for time standing still sometimes.

Thou shalt not worship false idols

Since our baby is now six months old I feel a quick review is in order. In particular, of the false idols which are worshipped in countless charming baby images. In my experience thus far, they are a Bad Idea.

The Madonna and Child pose: You know what this looks like. You cradle the baby in your arms and look down lovingly at his face while he sleeps peacefully. Top tip: if you are trying to get him to sleep, this is a bad pose. If you put your hand where the baby's face would be and adopt this pose you will in fact realise that what you are doing is breathing on him, so he gets little gusts of cold air. Guaranteed to wake him up. Only attempt if your baby is in fact the Son of God and immune to such petty annoyances.

Holding your baby up in the air above your head like an airplane while they scream with delight. I tried this once and once only. He threw up on my face.

Cute socks in bright hues to cover up their tiny feet. I spent a day counting. I put them back on thirty-eight times.

Blowing raspberries on your baby's belly to which they respond with adorable giggles. Well they do, but only after weeks of training. The first time you do it, as my poor husband found out, they widen their eyes in terror and burst into tears.

Weaning: the cute baby with a smudge of carrot puree on the tip of their nose. So sweetly messy. So easy to clean. In reality, I've found bits of rice-cake under his armpits at bathtime. No idea how they managed to get there through two layers of clothes and a bib.

Stain removers which turn your grubby little child into a vision of pure white like some sort of heavenly cherub. Give them half a tangerine to suck on. I then invite the manufacturers to come and look at the (once) white babygro as it emerges from the wash and admit defeat.

That's just a few of them. I'm looking forward to the bit where they toddle about, taking their first, oh so special steps. I suspect bloody knees follow very shortly.

IOU: One Soul

"He's so tiny!" said my husband when our baby was born. "And he belongs to us!" Then he thought for a moment. "Well except his soul," he added. "That belongs to him." I shook my head. "No, he traded his soul to me for milk," I said. "He gets it back when he sleeps through the night for the first time."

So today, for my baby boy, IOU: One Soul. Well done!

Nudist

Spring is here. I know this, not because of the very pretty daffodils which are just emerging into bloom by the front door, nor even by the very London way of knowing it's spring - 'when you come out of the tube from work it's still light!' says my excited husband, but because of the nudist.

Opposite our house is another house with a very large bay window, with no curtains at all. In the room within, clearly visible to anyone passing (and especially to us) is an old lady nudist. When we first arrived I thought she was wearing a nude-coloured sarong before we realised no, she was actually naked. In winter, perhaps feeling the cold a bit (as you do in  old age), she covers up, but today is a warm day and there she is, all naked again.

My baby would like her. He, too, is a nudist. He is very happy to be undressed, delighted to wear nothing but a nappy, ecstatic at bath-time when he gets to wear nothing at all, and utterly livid when we dress him again afterwards. He grumbles at the nappy, starts to complain more loudly when we put on the vest, screams when the babygro goes on top. The very first photo of him, newly snatched from the womb, shows him lying on a hospital table, wearing only a nappy, his first ever clothes waiting by his side. He is howling, face scarlet with rage, hands in fists. He will be delighted when warm days arrive and he can wear nothing at all in the garden.

Until then, he will have to be jealous of the old lady nudist.

Here we go round the - cot

Our baby can now move quite a lot. In the daytime, we can only leave him safely for a few minutes on the floor on a mat - the bed, sofa and changing table are all too risky. He's also taken to leaning perilously out of his bouncy chair to try and retrieve fallen toys. Even on the mat, you can go and answer the door, take the parcel or wave off the salesman and come back to find he has mostly left the mat and is now lying with just his head on it, while the rest of his body is on the wooden floor. He doesn't seem to care that when he lifts up his legs and then whams his feet down it's a lot harder than the mat.

At night, though, his moving about is getting him into a tight spot. In his cot, he gradually wriggles until he is lying diagonally, feet lifted up and propped on the slats on one side, head against the other slats. Then he whams his feet down, which shoves his head back against the slats... and cries. I recall being at a friend's house and listening to the baby monitor as her one year old baby girl drifted off to sleep. There was a lot of snuffling and wriggly noises. This, apparently, was the baby creeping round the cot until she found a good corner to squash herself into and go to sleep, ignoring the vast expanse of soft comfortable mattress and blankets available to her in the rest of the cot. Perhaps it's something to do with finding a little cave or a safe spot and a big cot seems too exposed. It must take years before instinct gives way to the bliss of stretching yourself out fully in a kingsized bed.

I say he moves a lot, no doubt I will look back on this and laugh when he starts crawling/standing/walking. Probably this is a golden era of stillness.

Message Received

Three nights ago I made a new rule. The baby, now a strapping five month old, gets one feed between 9pm and 7am, and one feed only. This feed happens after 1am (so that the night is reasonably evenly split up). So the rule goes: not before 1, not before 7. I know he is able to go at least six hours without a feed and so any other time he can just be soothed back to sleep without feeding. I hope over time this will make him sleep better and move towards longer stints without feeding. I repeated this rule to him each night, usually at bathtime.

Bizarrely, since then he has not woken up before 1 and has willingly accepted just one feed, if he does wake up at other times he has meekly gone back to sleep with cuddles alone. Considering that the nearest thing he had to a pattern recently was to wake up at 11.30 or 12, and that he usually demanded about three feeds a night, it's very odd, almost as if he could hear me. This sounds silly but it's happened a few other times, nights when I say 'I can't bear another bad night, he has to sleep well' and he then sleeps beautifully or nights when I've said 'why don't you sleep until 2?' and he does. Even my husband noticed. "Can he hear you?" he asked, "Because when you say something like you really mean it he does it." I'm not sure if it's just random, or whether something about my intent rubs off on him or....? Who knows.

Anyway I'm thinking of asking if he could start potty training next.

Strange Treasures Lodg'd in this Fair World

We have a set of plastic stacking cups, bought for less than £5 but colourful and one of those items that get played with for years and years, pressed into service for every kind of game. Right now they float around in the bath and we pour warm water over our baby and use them to wash his hair. Each cup has three small holes in the bottom, probably some sort of health and safety regarding breathing although your baby would have to have a head the size of a cat to get stuck in there... maybe it's for cats. Anyway, when you scoop up a cupful of water, the three small holes slowly let the water out in thin streams. We hold one high over the baby's tummy and the little streams fall on him like a very pathetic showerhead. But he thinks this is one of the most extraordinary things he's ever seen. He gazes up at it with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open and tentatively holds out a hand to feel the water trickling on his palm, amazed that, for once,  he cannot grasp this thing he can see. Leaning over the bath we agreed that if that was your benchmark for 'amazing' then every day of your life would be extraordinary.

Creation Station run play sessions for babies and toddlers but their website also has great suggestions of things to do with babies at home and one of these was a Treasure Basket which is essentially a box or basket full of small objects which your baby can examine, building up their ideas around textures, sounds, shapes etc. It took less than ten minutes to fill one round the house but he loved it. His treasure box so far contains a toilet roll tube, some small stuffed animals from a mobile,  a chunky plastic sundae spoon, a tiny wooden bowl, his hairbrush (he has hardly any hair so no need for it for now!), a few interesting shapes from a box of building bricks, a measuring cup, some cupcake wrappers (horribly mangled in seconds) and a piece of brown felt. It took him twenty minutes to go through them, taking each one and putting it in his mouth, turning it over in his hands, dropping it and picking it up again before eventually flinging it over one shoulder, something he's started doing when an item is no longer of interest. His absorption with each item was quite touching and made me look again at ordinary objects around the house. I found a lovely poem which seemed a good description of what it must be like for a baby -

A stranger here
Strange things doth meet, strange glories see;
Strange treasures lodg'd in this fair world appear,
Strange all and new to me;
But that they mine should be who nothing was,
That strangest is of all; yet brought to pass
The Salutation, stanza 7; Thomas Traherne

Watching Paint Dry

Our garden is getting a makeover, courtesy of my husband's hard work and the discovery that our baby is willing to sit and watch paint dry. Until recently my husband had to dash out to the garden as soon as the baby napped if he wanted to squeeze in a bit of gardening and DIY at weekends. But recently we discovered that, bundled up in the absurdly warm all-in-one pramsuit (seriously, it's like clothing for the North Pole and suitably shaped like a baby polar bear, with ears on the hood) and sitting in a bouncy chair on the garden path, our baby enjoys watching us at work.

First up he watched me pruning our two rose bushes and four fruit bushes in the front garden. I chatted away and he seemed quite interested. Next my husband started painting the garden fence panels, turning them from rather weathered grey wood to a new-looking brown. The baby is willing to watch one fence panel being painted at a time, about twenty minutes, before beginning to wriggle about and want to do something else. He also stared curiously at a large hole being dug for a new bush in at the bottom end of the garden. My husband has fond hopes, in a few years, of telling him that there's treasure buried somewhere 'in that bed that needs digging' - I temper this with recollections of my own childhood where various children, over several summers, enthusiastically 'dug for Australia', creating a fair-sized duck pond rather than a neatly dug-over vegetable bed.
Still, we'd like a pond in the garden as well so maybe one day....

Water Baby

Our son's first bath came very early on and he was quite relaxed, but then we left the whole bath thing alone for about a month and when we came back to it he was utterly horrified by it. He lay in warm water in his lovely little blue bath, hands clenched in fists on his chest, staring fixedly ahead, ignoring our smiles and coaxing as well as the yellow rubber duck sailing around his legs. It took weeks to gradually unclench his fists and bring them into the water, let alone get a smile out of him.

Once he got the hang of it though, the small bath didn't stand a chance against the splashing water he kicked up, so a transfer from the bedroom to the main bath (with a brilliant bath divider given by a friend) was effected. he even got used to having water splashed over his face. Starting with a tiny stacking cup (number 1) we are currently up to number 6, quite a sizable amount of water in his face with no qualms.

But our first lesson at Water Babies, a swimming class for babies, was fairly terrifying as an onlooker. The class lasts just 30 minutes and within twenty minutes each baby was taken and their whole body including head submerged underwater - fortunately by the teacher, while the waiting parent was told to keep a big smile on their face as the baby resurfaced. Remarkably, no-one drowned and no mothers fainted although you could feel the tension rise from each woman as her baby was dunked. Quite possibly out of the fear of this very moment all the daddies were sent into the pool with the babies and all the mothers elected to watch from the side. Apparently it's good practice to alternate although other mothers I know who are a class ahead of us say it's usually the dads in the water and the mums on the side. My turn next week, eeek. The babies ranged from three months up to a year old and while some splashed in quite happily and didn't seem to care about being dunked at all, one baby howled, setting off our baby, who kept looking at the first baby's terrified face and crying, only to be comforted when looking at the happy babies.

Top tip for all baby watersports then: keep a big smile on your face - and turn your baby's face towards the happy babies!

Pride comes before a Puree

I read once that people get most upset by criticism which attacks something they hold dear. So if you were to tell me my house is untidy I probably wouldn't be that bothered, tidiness is not a virtue I believe I possess, nor one I value that highly - I have bursts of making everything tidy before happily messing it all up again.

But cooking is another matter. This matters to me - I like to eat, I like to cook, I like cooking for friends and family. I like finding new ingredients (my husband despairs of enthusiastic shopping trips where I come home with six kinds of seaweed or four kinds of obscure cereals) and learning new recipes (BBC Good Food, online, is my favourite now, not a single recipe has ever gone wrong from them).

So - baby is weaning - and here come the purees! Having started rather suddenly I began with baby rice and Ella's Kitchen purees, which taste very nice and seem to have very pure ingredients. But while the baby started on those I was marshaling my kitchen. New gadgets, fresh ingredients, a freezer drawer cleared out. I made pale golden pear as well as apple & cinnamon purees, a vibrant green pea puree which took forever to get through a sieve, luminous orange pumpkin and sweet potato purees.

And he won't eat them. I've tried three times now. Each time he makes a lot of faces, then begins to purse up his lips and refuse any more after about four spoonfuls. Crack open the Ella's Kitchen and he opens his mouth again and eats lots.

Maybe the texture is different. Maybe mine tastes more intense (this from my husband, hoping to make me feel better). Who knows. I'll keep trying but there's nothing like a pursed pair of baby lips for giving your cooking pride a knocking!

Pack Up Your Troubles

I'm loving rediscovering the books I enjoyed as a child. Before our son was born I went through my mother's extensive library and wrote down all the books I had thought wonderful and have been collecting them ever since. It's awful that some of them are out of print now but (big thank you Amazon) you can buy some second-hand and they are very much worth it - well, except for the fabulous Apple Pigs, now on sale for £60 - I sort of draw the line at that kind of price for a picture book - perhaps it could be reprinted if there's that much demand for the few remaining battered copies? My mother very kindly donated her copy to the baby's bookshelf. Books too old for him that are still in print I wait to buy but if I spot any that are out of print I buy them up, they may have gone entirely by the time he's old enough.

Reading books at bedtime is great - we're reading books more suited to five years old plus but then he doesn't care, he just likes the pictures, and if the stories are good enough we get to enjoy them too.

Today Jenna and the Troublemaker arrived, a lovely book with illustrations by Tony Ross. I noticed it was out of print and hurriedly bought a second hand copy. It's the story of the Troublemaker, who makes and delivers everyone's Troubles. When little girl Jenna sobs that her Troubles are too much, he lets her choose from amongst everyone else's Troubles. Of course she ends up choosing her own. The pictures are great. I read it to the baby as soon as it arrived and he laughed like a drain throughout. He obviously has no Troubles of his own!

Some great books we're enjoying reading at bedtime: many are now out of print but very worthwhile buying second hand.

Stone Soup - there are many versions, this one is Tony Ross again and my husband's favourite. A clever hen outwits the Bad Bad Wolf by making him a delicious soup out of a stone, while he cleans her house.

Apple Pigs - a little girl tends an old fruit tree which showers her with apples as a reward, precipitating a party for Man and Bird and Woolly Beast in an effort to eat them all.

Strega Nona - An Italian witch and her magic pasta pot cause chaos for her dim-witted assistant Antony.

The Wild Washerwomen - Quentin Blake illustrations really make this story of seven wild washerwomen who run away from their enormous pile of washing and terrify the neighbourhood.

Dr Seuss books - the baby really likes the rhymes, I think because of the bouncing rhythm. Horton the Elephant is a lovely story about an elephant who takes his parenting duties very seriously. Other rhyming books he's liked are Peepo and Each Peach Pear Plum, classics for babies.

Meanwhile a cloth book called Woodland Animals from Mothercare donated by my sister that his cousins used to have has actually taught him to turn pages, which is remarkable. He tries to turn paper pages now, a bit trickier but he has the right idea!

A Perfect Numbskull

I'm a fan of the concept of baby-led weaning, that is to say, you wait until the baby is about 6 months old and then skip the whole puree stage and just give them finger foods and foods they can eat by themselves and they take it from there, catching up quickly to eating whatever the rest of the family is eating. Years ago my younger sister, not yet weaned and left for a moment alone near a large bowl of roast potatoes, started enthusiastically stuffing them in her mouth - job done. So we were all set to go down that route until we were 'led' in a different direction.

The appalling sleep was really getting to me - after sleeping beautifully our baby suddenly started waking every two hours, all night long. I felt like a zombie, cried when I woke up in the morning. But the baby led weaning book was adamant that this was not a sign that the baby was hungry and should move on to solids. My older sister, with two children (both good eaters) of her own, had a different opinion. She took one look at the dark circles under my eyes and said, "Feed him." "Oh no," I protested. "Baby-led weaning and blah blah blah." She nodded kindly at the explanations and said, "Feed him."

The next day he was booked to see the osteopath. Before going I sat eating a Petit Filou with the baby on my knee. I offered him the loaded spoon to smell, as I do with most foods. Usually he would smell it and look slightly perplexed. This time, he grabbed the spoon and stuck it in his mouth, made a few grimaces at the unusual flavours and opened his mouth for more. I gaped at him but we were late and had to leave the house.

The osteopath was very kind and gentle, with an array of interesting baby toys (including one whose giraffe-like neck you yank so it sings a song, an ironic toy for an osteopath to possess). He asked lots of questions, examined my baby with great care and in the end sat back and smiled. "He's fine from my point of view," he said. "He has a perfect skull and excellent digestion. Feed him."

I know when to give in. I went and bought baby rice. At home, I tentatively offered the portion I had mixed up. He wolfed it down without hesitation. When my husband came home ten minutes later I made another portion just so he could see him eat a mouthful. "He's probably full now and won't want it," I warned. He gobbled the whole second portion. The next day he was more jolly than the last couple of weeks. That night, with food during the day again, he slept like a log.

And that was it. He's back to good sleeping, managing five or six hours at a stretch like he used to. He eats willingly and has so far swallowed everything including a broccoli/pear/pea mix which my husband and I were dubious about. It's like watching a new dawn - only sleeping through it, which is much better.

I feel a lot less sleep deprived. And a numbskull for holding out.

Mamma Rat

You know you're sleep deprived when...

You need more food: you make a beeline for the carbs at every opportunity: studies on rats showed that the sleep-deprived ones ate larger helpings of food and became obese.

You feel cold: Your bedtime apparel consists of flannel pajamas, socks, vest and heaps of duvets. If you look at your husband he's wearing nothing at all and has thrown the covers off.

You can't think straight. Where did that baby go? I'm sure there was one here a minute ago.

Your mouth is one big yawn. I think my jaw's about to dislocate.

You become 'incapable of putting an emotional event into the proper perspective' - but the commercial was so sad (sob sob)!

You get irritable. I said pass the muslin! Now!


Still, when it's really getting to you consider that the world record for not sleeping is 11 days. Yawn.

A kind word

Getting on the tube, somewhat zombie-fied after only four hours sleep, to visit an osteopath to see if he had any words of wisdom on the appalling new sleep patterns of my baby (see previous post), I found myself opposite an older woman, perhaps fifty, with a wheelie trolley. She smiled in acknowledgement when I excused the baby being scared and crying at the loud station announcements (meanwhile someone else changed carriages to avoid us). As the train started I managed to soothe him and he became calm as we journeyed onwards.

The woman and I got off at the same stop and she strode off ahead of me towards the escalator, but just before reaching it she did a u-turn and came back to me as I prepared to get on the escalator (always tricky). "You're very good with him," she said. "You look like a lovely mother." I just managed to say thank you and smile before she made her way onto the escalator and disappeared up ahead of me.

Standing on the escalator, balancing the pram, I very nearly cried. On a bad day when you can barely string thoughts together through lack of sleep and you've run out of ideas on how to make things better, to have someone stop their own life for a brief moment and offer some kind words makes a huge difference to how you feel.

So to the lady on the tube who turned back to say a kind word, whoever you were, thank you. It meant a lot.