Book report from PBA (Parenting Books Anonymous)

Hi. My name is Violet and I'm a parenting bookoholic.

Still attempting to wean myself off books about babies and how to live with them, I've now read several stories in Garth Nix's Across the Wall. I loved Lady of the Lake and Hansel and Gretel, but I can only take so much fantasy at a time.

Then, in a bid to try a different genre altogether, I started Around the World in 80 Dates by Jennifer Cox. Supposedly a true story, it's about a thirty-something career woman's date-around-the world project in search of her soul mate. I'd call this travel writing chicklit. Unfortunately there's not much travel anecdotage and, seven dates in, not a heck of a lot of romance or sex either. Maybe it gets better, but life is too short to read anything which is neither gripping nor useful.

Then, a couple of parenting books came through which I had on hold at the library - Gary Ezzo's On Becoming Babywise and Christopher Green's Babies! A Parent's Guide to Enjoying Baby's First Year.

I had to pay a dollar each for reserving those volumes; to not read them just because of a teeny weeny itsy bitsy PBA pledge is just wasteful.

Babies! didn't tell me anything I hadn't already read elsewhere, but Green's writing is charming and funny. I'd read it just for his sense of humour.

Babywise has been subject to a bit of controversy, but on the whole I found much of it was common sense advice. His idea of a feeding and sleep routine based on a 3- or 4- hour cycle (feeding, awake time, sleep) wasn't too different from the concept on which Tracy Hogg's Secrets of the Baby Whisperer is based.

Apparently the criticism is over Ezzo's advice to feed to a schedule (as opposed to demand feeding i.e. feed 'em when you think they're crying out of hunger); if that's the case, then I wonder why Hogg's book hasn't been criticized for exactly the same thing.

It was a little distracting that Ezzo kept mentioning church in the book (e.g. as something I'd want to make time for), and there's certainly an emphasis on getting babies to sleep through the night, but I was expecting to be scandalized. No scandals here.

I'm not doing that well in fighting the parenting books addiction, am I?

Oh no!

It's official - the buggy has lost it's magical ability to send Baby to sleep when all other methods fail.

This news is more tragic than you could possibly imagine (unless you too have - or have had - a baby who hates to nap).

Changes

They say that after you have kids, your relationship is never the same again.

You start calling each other Mummy and Daddy even when your kids aren't around; sex is scheduled for weekends, if you're lucky; the phrase, "Not tonight dear, I have a headache", actually sounds like a plausible excuse for an early night.

On Saturday night, I knew that the boy's and my relationship had changed..

It was 2am and we were snuggled up in bed; he was asleep and I had just woken up to the sound of Baby making little snorty noises in her sleep. I dug myself deeper into the warm niche created by the boy's foetal pose, evilly intending to wake him up.

The boy responded by patting my side and murmuring "Hush hush, Baby; it's Sleep Time".

And I thought my mum was bad...

I now have evidence that my mum's prodigious amount of post-childbirth advice was probably on the conservative side. According to this article Flying Kiwi sent me, I shouldn't have walked around barefoot, eaten bananas or watched television, in the weeks after Baby's arrival.

And yet there's no mention of ginger.

From one extreme to the other

We were having a rough day with Baby's lack of naps. She no longer goes back to sleep on her own after her 7am feed, something we could always count on to allow us a lie-in in the mornings. She'd already missed the next mornig nap because she just protested and protested for an hour, instead of being a good girl and putting herself to sleep after no more than half an hour of grumbling.

By the time my brother saw me walking up the hill with Baby in the buggy (a failed last-ditch attempt to help her nap), it was well after midday and I looked like hell. He'd tooted his car horn and eventually had to pull over, get out of the car and shout my name, to get my attention. I was in a sleep-deprived fugue and was only conscious enough to avoid getting us run over whenever I stepped off the curb.

Well, my brother told his partner and his partner rang us up later today to offer us her babysitting services next Saturday morning. I really must have given him the impression that I was in a desperate state, because my sister out-law has two littlies of her own and she's busy enough.

On the Shock-Horror front, I'm pleased to report that Baby took a long nap this afternoon. For the first time in at least a month, she slept for the better part of three hours.

I've been reading the Baby Whisperer discussion board you see, and it was suggested that you can extend the baby's nap by creeping in about ten minutes before they're expected to wake up, waiting for them to stir and then gently settling them back down again. So thirty minutes after I managed to get Baby off to sleep this afternoon, I snuck in and hovered around until she stirred, crooned and stroked her and - she went back to sleep!

I nearly did my little dance of triumph, but it would've woken Baby.

Unfortunately, Baby woke up ten minutes later wanting to feed.

Fortunately, she didn't mind being put straight back into her cot post-feed, and slept for a couple of hours(!) - unheard of these days.

It may all revert back to non-napping normality tomorrow, but hey - there's always hope.

Tall and Baaad Like Him

The boy now has his own blog; it's called Born Again Geek. If you'd like to be privy to his innermost thoughts...then good luck to you.

Kicking the habit

When the Plunket nurse told me that Gina Ford's Contented Little Baby book ought to be burned, I initially bristled with a librarian's indignation. Then I had second thoughts about the usefulness of trying to fit my baby into a stranger's vision of how babies work, and have now decided it's time to stop reading parenting books (except for the ones I already have on hold at the library, that is; I've already paid for the privilege).

I'm also going to try avoiding reading novels and biographies about mothering too - that means leaving We need to talk about Kevin on the bookshelf for a few months.

I've started reading Across the Wall by Garth Nix. A book of short stories, the first is a novella which follows on from Abhorsen (a terrific end to a terrific trilogy).

It's going to be much harder for me to stop buying the parenting magazines though, because I have an addiction to magazines in general (unless they are girlie mags, golfing mags or fishing & boating mags). Perhaps if I smoke a cigarette every time I itch to buy a Practical Parenting?

Trying to remember

Once upon a time I saw a Japanese movie - I think it was called Afterlife - which really made an impression on me.

In the world this movie portrays, when you die you spend a few days in some kind of in-between place before you go on to Heaven. Whilst at this in-between place, you are expected to decide upon the one favourite memory of your life on Earth; this is the only memory you can take with you into the afterlife.

So there is this one middle-aged guy who can't think of a single thing. His life has been so boring that for a whole week he can't come up with anything memorable. So the staff lend him a record of his entire life (on videotape, actually), so he can watch the whole boring affair in the hope of finding a memory worth preserving for eternity.

This is where I was inspired. I didn't want to be like that guy, and have a boring life. I also didn't want to be unable to remember all the wonderful moments that I've experienced in my life so far.

Unfortunately my memory is so bad that people have actually pointed that out to me, so I decided henceforth to record worthy moments in a journal.

I kept this up for about six months before I got slack. However, now that I have a blog I can record almost everything going on in my life (except for the really, y'know, personal stuff). When I die and go to limbo-land, I can just read my blog to find my most-favoured moment (at least, as long as it happened no more than about 2 years ago).

Oh, and what happened to Mr Boring? He watched all those tapes and came across a scene in which he and his wife are sitting on a park bench, contemplating the possibility of going to see a movie. Nothing exciting had happened, but it was just an intimate moment between the two of them. And this is what he took with him.

Ear-splitting protestations

Up until today, Baby's sleep training was going fairly well; after 30-40 minutes of protests cries, the baby monitor would suddenly go all quiet, and I knew that she was headed for up to 45 minutes of slumber. During our visit to the Plunket Family Centre yesterday, the nurse considered 30-40 minutes of crying before settling in to sleep as "settling well" (which I was quite surprised about).

Today's naps didn't go so well. Her first nap of the morning was ruined because Baby turned out to have an unbelievably pooey nappy. Because I wasn't sure whether to put her straight back to bed or not (she'd already been there over an hour, fully awake), she ended up getting overtired and having a screaming fit before finally falling asleep. Her second nap was in the buggy. The third nap has been a disaster so far; her screams were, I'm sure, heard across the street, down the road and around the corner. I gave up after half an hour; after a cuddle and a feed, she's now lying on the bed in the study while I'm at the computer.

I'd like to tell her that this is for her own good; that if she'd only let herself fall asleep now it'll avoid another overtiredness screaming fit later. This is where it'd be handy if she could talk. I wonder whether one can say these things in baby sign language?

Bad-taste baby gear

Ever on the lookout for "interesting" clothes for Baby to wear, the boy has found some t-shirts of questionable taste. This is one of the more dodgy ones.

I don't think we'll be adding it to Baby's wardrobe.

Woman Worrier

Baby and I went to see the nurse at the Plunket Family Centre this morning, to discuss how we've been getting on in the eating and sleeping department (Baby's, not mine). She confirmed that I should try to feed Baby as often as I can during the day, and that I should keep trying to extend her naps.

The nurse told me I was doing a great job on looking after Baby - I wonder how many times I have to hear this before I actually start believing it?

Her main message to me was, in short, that I should loosen up. My anxious nature and my personal leaning towards organised living, are getting in the way of enjoying life as a mum.

In future I'll try not to avoid social gatherings just because they might make Baby overtired (because she's going to deal with it, as all babies do), and I'm going to have to get over the whole breastfeeding in public thing.

I was also encouraged to put Baby to bed with the minimum of fuss - no prolonged rocking crooning. How liberating was that!

After that ra-ra session, I felt like an ice cream. It was absolutely delicious.

A honeymoon destination?

Woohoo! My friend Mike, whom I've known for more then a decade (yet met only twice), is coming over with his new bride for a honeymoon downunder, all the way from Seattle. Being baby-bound, I'm not going to be able to take them out on the town (since I don't "express"); I'm also too unfit to offer a game of Ultimate (and anyway I gave my frisbee to the Salvation Army) - but I'm sure we can fit in a lunch or two somewhere in the neighbourhood.

The last time we had overseas visitors, it was another friend and his new bride, on their honeymoon (from the UK). Could be a pattern here...

Nap time

Baby never naps for more than 30-45 minutes at a time. When she's awake, she only lasts about half an hour (if that), before looking tired again; I'm sure it's because her naps aren't long enough. Maybe I could try extending her nap times.

Today's strategy was to go in when she woke (first waiting a reasonable amount of time to hear whether she'd go back to sleep again), and try to re-settle her for another round. However, what happens in effect is that she'll fuss a little and spend maybe half an hour looking around and vocalising to herself before going back to sleep again. In other words, instead of having a longish nap of 1 1/2 hours, she'll have two naps of 45 minutes with a long gap in between. Result - Lots of time spent in bed and still only able to stay awake happily for half an hour at a time.

So it's back to the drawing board.

A really sweet thing happened tonight after Baby woke up to have her first proper feed for the day (at 7pm, half an hour after being put to bed for the night). I fed her, wrapped her up in her blanket and put her to bed still awake. Then I lay down on my bed and pretended to go to sleep.

With one eye open, I watched as she turned to see me lying on the bed, turn the other way, and turn back to look at me again. And then she smiled and closed her eyes.

Could you bear the sight of tears on this face?

This morning I put Baby down for her nap at 10.20am. She only just stopped crying and it's been forty minutes. Presumably she's asleep...

(It's a photo of Baby looking at her mummy instead of having her lunch).

Crying and sleeping part two

I was quite pleased that Baby got to sleep within half an hour of us leaving her to nap on her own. But there would be further naps, and I didn't know how I was going to handle hearing my baby cry every single nap time.

The next nap she was to have today didn't go nearly as well as the first one. This was around 4pm, traditionally a very difficult time of day to get Baby to nap. She started protesting right from the start of the nap routine, when I wrapped her up in her blanket. She squirmed and yelled for a good quarter of an hour before I decided she was actually hungry (it's hard to tell these days, now that she's demolished her old feeding pattern); then I had to start all over again after her feed.

The crying was so much harder to take this time around. Not only did it start sooner, but she escalated from "angry" (my interpretation) to "utterly devastated" really quickly. Also, the boy had gone out to do the grocery shopping, so I was all alone in my vigil. I lasted about thirty minutes, including one walk-in, before deciding that she was too distraught, and anyway it was getting close to her bedtime routine.

As soon as the boy returned home with the groceries I had to quickly hand her over because my eyes had started watering. It actually took a little while for her to settle again, which made me feel even worse. Guilty, even.

Then I remembered one reason I'm so obssessed with reading parenting books at the moment; I need the reassurance that what we're doing is okay.

I'll have to do this to the poor girlie at least three times each day, and during the week I'll have to do it on my own. Thank goodness we have a good supply of tissues.

She cried, she slept

It's just ridiculous that it takes so long getting Baby settled for sleep. This morning she woke up at 7am; I fed and changed her, and played with her for about five minutes before it looked to me that she needed to go back to sleep (probably because she really wanted to sleep in). It took a whole hour of rocking, crooning, patting and stroking before she finally closed her eyes. Thirty minutes later she was wide awake again - awake but still tired.

Something had to be done. This weekend is the start of letting Baby cry to settle. It's not quite Ferberising, but along the same lines. I'll spend 20 minutes settling her before putting her down in her cot whether she's falling asleep or not. Then I'll walk out the door; if she cries I'll wait 20 minutes before going in to calm her down, then leave.

We tried it this afternoon, after she'd gotten by on two half-hour catnaps all morning. It wasn't easy to hear, and I was damned glad the boy was sitting in the lounge with me. The good part was, approximately half an hour after her initial wails (boy, did she sound pissed off at being left alone!), she went quiet. The boy went in to check on her soon after, and she was fast asleep.

You gotta be cruel to be kind.

The family saga continues

Baby celebrated her 15-week birthday yesterday by waking me up for a feed at exactly the time of day she was born - 3am. But she was nice enough to let me sleep afterwards,until 6am.

I think Baby has inherited more than her father's ability to hold her liquor (see the comments to this post) - she is also really good at sleeping in.

I decided that getting her out of bed at 6 or 7am or whatever was pointless because she'd display tired signs very soon after. So now, when she wakes in the morning for her first feed of the day, I feed her and put her straight back in the cot as though it were a night feed. This morning she slept in until 9.30am, allowing me time to shower and have breakfast before she called for room service. Her sleep-ins are good because if I fail to get her to nap well during the day, at least she's got 2 1/2 hours up her sleeve.

My mum continues to harrass me with phone calls to check whether I'm dressing Baby up warmly enough. She really tries my patience, which is already worn thin from having to spend an hour to settle Baby so she can wake up 15 minutes later for a last-minute feed. When she rang last, I'd just got Baby off to sleep again, and told her I really don't have an hour to spare listening to her go on about the same ole' thing yet again - I'd rather have a nap (or blog, but I wouldn't tell her that). Yeah, she means well, but still...sometimes you gotta judge people by their actions and not their motivations.

Well, I never

Despite my natural preference for researching from books (a quirk I share with BtVS's Giles), it turns out that the Internet is the place to go for information about my little problem. There's even a term for it - reverse cycling, and it's common when a baby hits the three month mark and becomes a distractible baby.

So I'm going to try some of these suggested fixes:

1. feed Baby in the bedroom with the curtains drawn so that it's relatively dark and boring for her

2. borrow a sling, and feed Baby in it (it should block out distractions)

3. keep trying to feed her at frequent intervals during the day (so she doesn't have to catch up at night)

4. find and wear what's called a nursing necklace; a necklace consisting of interesting-looking beads so that Baby has something interesting to focus on while she feeds.

I think I'll try 1. and 3. first because they don't require me to go shopping.

Published! Part two

Remember I told you that someone wants to use one of my photos on his website?

I asked him if he could pay me fifty bucks for the use of the photo. He said he'd check with his client, and eventually told me they didn't want to pay me thank you very much.

So...I decided he could use just that one photo on that one website, for free, as long as it's credited to me; any more photos and we have to talk turkey.

I'd put a link to the website on here, but I can't because it'll have my full name under the image. But I this is the picture they're using.

A vacuum in my head

I realised yesterday that I've heard advice from various Plunket staff, about my current sleeping and feeding concerns, on three separate occasions and they've all told me the same thing - but I only really clicked on to what they meant after the third time. It's as though the information went in through my right ear (my phone ear) and out the left. Or that is got stuck in a brain fog instead of heading to where it could do me some good.

What happened to the razor-sharp mind I used to pride myself on having?

I wonder whether it'll get so bad I'll be too scared to drive.


Anyway. It seems that my problem is mostly down to the fact that Baby can now see pretty well, and when it's light she'd rather look at stuff than fill her belly.

Why oh why oh why...haven't I come across this information in the multitude of parenting books I've read?

Low

I'm thinking I should stop telling my mum about the problems I have getting Baby to nap. She stopped by today, noticed that Baby was wearing "only" a long-sleeved winter-weight onesie and fleecy footed trousers (perfectly adequate for a room temperature of 15 degrees Celsius) and asserted that I wasn't dressing her warmly enough. My brother, who was present too, rolled his eyes at me. I rolled my eyes at him.

The phone rang half an hour later, just as I was trying to feed a very distracted Baby - so I pulled out the phone jack. It was my mum, who rang back to give me a very protracted monologue on how Baby isn't napping because she isn't warm enough (she is - I check the warmth of her chest frequently, obsessively even), and how irresponsible I've been in neglecting and spoiling an otherwise angelic baby.

In other words (at least, how I interpret it), she called me a bad mother.

This, from a woman who admits to caging my brother and I in a makeshift playpen made of drink crates - for hours - while she served in my father's shop.

Hmmmmph!

Sleep update

Following the advice I got last week from the Plunket nurse on what to do about Baby's daytime hunger strike and insomnia, I tried not feeding her the following morning at 4am. This was meant to get her extra hungry during the day.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to ignore a hunger cry, especially if she's in the same room.

It's downright impossible to re-settle a baby when she's hungry and you smell like the infant's version of a 12 course meal. (This is where it would be useful to have the boy do the dirty deed, except he's sleeping in the spare room and needs to be rested for work the next day).

The next two days were almost back to normal though. While it was still hard to get Baby down for her naps, she did at least feed properly during the day - like she was had the munchies but not as though she were starving. Then it reverted back to hunger strike levels.

Last night I tried to feed her only from one boob if she cried between mignight and 7am. Well, it didn't work. After feeding her at 2am and 6am, each time from one boob only, she wasn't in the least bit interested in any more food until 5 1/2 hours later; even then, she didn't exactly seem ravenous.

What a miracle it would be if her hunger was like this at night instead of during the day; I'd be getting 5-6 hours of unbroken sleep then.

Eighty-first birthday

Last Wednesday my mum turned 81. At least, according to the lunar calendar she's 81; according to the Gregorian, she's only a spritely 80.

That's not her on the left - it's just a gratuitous Baby photo.

Anyway. The birthday bash was yesterday, and it was Baby's first social outing. Instead of a big meal out in a Chinese restaurant (in which she'd be likely to complain about the quality and cost of the food), Mum wanted a family meal at home.

As it turned out, it was a good call. It meant that we could bring the buggy to wheel Baby around in, in case (okay, when) she started fussing. It also meant that our dinner could be timed sufficiently early to accommodate our respective kids' early bedtime.

The buggy was a damned good idea. My sister out-law and I wheeled our respective daughters down to the shops and back, ensuring at least 45 minutes of nap for Baby and a chance to bond over sleep talk.

When we're trying to coax Baby back to snoozeland in her buggy, that's the moment my hard-of-hearing mum chooses to walk in and shout "OH, LITTLE BABY'S SLEEPING, EH?". Being a Cantonese speaker and a bit deaf sure is a an unfortunate combination when quiet is required.

As usual, there was way too much food; after my brother and I divied up the leftovers, there were enough plates of spring rolls, noodles and roast pork keep me going in lunches for the next few days (which is great because my lunch consists of whatever I can whip up/heat up in about five minutes).

Baby was a little unsettled afterwards, but she got to bed okay. There was hell to pay today though - after a night of 4-hourly feeds, she was mostly uninterested in food between about 6am and 6pm. It took a couple of hours to get her to bed tonight, after she finally consented to cleaning her plate (so to speak) at 8pm. I'm gonna have to get tough on her night time feeds again.

Movies, when we can squeeze 'em in

Last night we started watching Bubba Hotep on DVD. It's got a great story; Elvis is alive and living grumpily in a rest home in Texas. He and the "real" JFK (who's black) realise that something is not quite right at the rest home, and before you know it they're killing over-sized scarab beetles and fighting an ancient Egyptian mummy who likes wearing cowboy hats.

I haven't seen the whole film though, because Baby's been having fussy evenings. Perhaps it's her way of protesting the changes I'm implementing in the way I respond to her early nap awakenings (by leaving her in her cot and trying to pat her to sleep, instead of picking her up and playing with her).

We've gotten into a habit of always recording Veronica Mars and Miracles, because there's a 99% chance I'll get called up for feeding or settling duties in the middle of at least the first show.

Apparently Joss Whedon really likes Veronica Mars too, and Charisma Carpenter is due to appear on the series shortly (Alison Hannigan is already on it). Miracles is pretty good too; it's sort of an X-Files meets Catholic Church mythology, and it's main character is played by the nearest thing to Johnny Depp I can think of (Skeet Ulrich).

Published! Well, maybe

Someone wants to use a photo of mine on his website. It looks like a commercial site; should I ask for a fee?

the lightbulb went on

After yet another night of frequent awakenings to feed, followed by yet another day of hunger-striking and insomnia, I rang the Plunket Line to get help. The nice woman on the other end of the line asked lots of questions, and in the process I realised that I don't really know what Baby's "hungry" cry sounds like. I always caught the little "cough, cough" noises and picked her up before it developed into a cry; now it looks as though I had it wrong all along.

Her theory was that Baby has indeed got day and night confusion, though only in the feeding sense (rather than in the sleep sense - she still knows that there's no Play Time when it's dark and quiet). Because of my habit of picking her up when she made noises in the night, Baby has been feeding so well at night that she doesn't need to feed much during the day. Obviously, it's better to have it the other way around.

Also, now that she's a little older (14 weeks tomorrow), she can go for longer between feeds; I can no longer assume that she'll get hungry every three hours.

Oh...

So tonight, when Baby makes noises I'm to stay put in my bed in case she settles herself for another round of Z's. If she starts crying I have to determine whether she's hungry (perhaps by looking for the rooting movement) before feeding her; preferably I'm to try to settle her back to sleep without feeding her, so she'll be nice and hungry in the morning.

Here's hoping...

"First Contact" meets "A desperately bad housewife"

This morning I went to my first PIN group meeting i.e. the social group consisting of mums of same-age babies. I was looking forward to it, and hoping I'd be able to keep Baby in her buggy for the duration - so I could keep her asleep.

The meeting was held at the home of one of the mums, just down the road a little from my place. Outside the venue, a nice workman helped me carry the buggy over the huge ditch which stretched all the way down the street, and onto the hostess's porch.

Here was a woman whose domestic abilities far exceeded my own. Not only was her house beautifully renovated and decorated, but it was intimidatingly tidy. She could've been a saner version of Bree, of Desperate Housewives.

The group was at the back of the house, in a beautifully apointed sunroom looking out onto a beautifully landscaped garden. Baby was fast asleep, so I parked the buggy under the shade and hoped she'd stay down.

There were about ten women plus their babies, and the ones I spoke to seemed really nice and friendly. However, in the twenty minutes I was there (I had to leave early to go see my physiotherapist) I'd already started to succumb to that infamous coffee group competitiveness I've read about in parenting magazines.

I was jealous that half of the mums there were successfully carrying their babies around in frontpacks, when I've just about given up on using one with my daughter; many of the babies present were already holding their heads up, while mine isn't (not much anyway); the woman sitting next to me had a baby who sleeps all the time, and you already know how much hassle we have getting Baby to sleep...I was a little jealous.

Mind you, none of the babies there were a fraction as cute as mine. Trust me.

Desperately bad housewife

I've been calling myself a housewife lately when I fill in forms; I'm not a wife as such, but there's no doubt that the household chores are now mostly my responsibility. Not that I've been doing a heck of a lot of housework these days though; vacuuming is done probably once a month, and the toilet is cleaned only when I find myself preferring use the public loos next to our local library.

I was in the bedroom crooning to Baby, singing Rock-a-bye Baby for the umpteenth time and desperately hoping to see her eyelids flutter, when I happened to notice how dirty one corner of the room was. Right above where our bed is, the walls were looking pretty filthy. I don't know whether it's mildew or what, but when I saw it I thought How the hell did it get that dirty without me even noticing? So I came back to with a wet sponge to wipe it off, and then I noticed how much dust had accumulated on the back of the headboard. It was an obscenely thick coating of the stuff. Yuck.

I really ought to do something about the levels of dirt and dust around this place. Perhaps I'll have time when Baby starts kindergarten.

Telling it like it is

Until I become bosom buddies with other mums of babies, I have to get my kicks reading about other other mums of babies. So far, I've read two books about mothers.

The first one was We Need to Talk About Kevin. I read this when I was pregnant; it was possibly an iffy choice for a first-time mother-to-be, but I'm actually re-reading it now because it's still a damned good book. Also, I'm afraid to say that I can relate to the character of Eva - specifically, her passion for travel and her ambivalence about giving up her old lifestyle for full-time motherhood.

The other book is Staying Mum by Mara Lee (interviewed here). It's a funny account of the first year of a woman's life after giving birth to her daughter, and reminds me of Kaz Cooke's Up the Duff, without the factual bits. It's light, it's honest and it's stroppy. It would have made a good baby blog.

back to front and upside down

Baby's being a pain in the butt these days. Sure, she's still really cute and has an adorable way of making small talk with those bubbly little noises of hers, but how about being a nicely regular feeder and sleeper for Mummy?

It's been like this since around last Tuesday - she wakes up and won't go back to sleep, but she isn't hungry. By the time she is hungry, it's past her nap time and the overtiredness makes her fuss instead of feed. Then we've got an overtired and hungry wee girlie who can't sleep and can't eat.

Or, she seems happy to go without food for hours and hours during the day (and gets all upset if I try to persuade her to eat), then makes up for it at night.

Last night she got me up at midnight, 2am and 5.30am. That was after a day in which she refused to feed for about 5 hours straight. Her first proper feed wasn't until around 3pm. It's as though her body clock has been set to start her day after midday, and end it sometime after midnight.

After weeks of painfully slow progress towards sleeping through the night, I'm suffering more from the sleep deprivation now than I did in the early days when I was always getting up every two hours.


According to the Baby Love book, this is normal, unexplained and usually temporary. Usually.

First Contact

I used to think that once I started taking Baby out for walks in the buggy, I'd meet other mums (or dads) wheeling their own precious bundles around the streets. I envisioned us recognising each other as fellow new parents, and giving each other smiles of fellowship - like being instantly member of the same club or something.

Except this doesn't happen. Most of the times when I come across another mum pushing a buggy, she completely ignores my smile, leaving me feel like an unwanted door-knocker. (I told the boy this; he thought that if he were doing the buggy thing, lots of women would would be willing to chat to him. I agree).

I've been dying to do the mum's coffee group thing, if only to be able to compare notes and hopefully stop feeling as though I'm the only one who spends two hours getting her child to take a one hour nap.

Yesterday I ventured to the Sally Army's play group, which accommodates newborns up to pre-school. Walking into the hall with Baby in my arms (buggys and prams had to be parked in a separate area) was like walking into a party where you don't know anyone, but harder; at least you can tank yourself up for a party, and you're more likely to have had a chance to shower and dress nicely before going.

I did start a couple of conversations, one with the mother of the ugliest girl baby I've ever seen in my life and the other with the South African grandmother of a two-week old, there with the baby's nanny. I had to cut the conversation short though, because the whole experience was just too much for poor Baby, who'd already had yet another nap-less morning.

I've got high hopes for tomorrow and next week though; tomorrow Baby and I are visiting a friend from library school who has a son the same age, and next week is the first coffee morning of the local PIN group (a Plunket-coordinated social group of mums with same-age children). Yippee - peers!

The greatest gift of all

Last weekend, the boy offered to look after Baby between feeds so that I could gallavant around town by myself. I was so excited at the prospect that I could hardly contain myself - all the shops I could go to which are normally too "cosy" to take a buggy into; all the dressing rooms I could try on clothes in, which are big enough only for one or two upright adults (without mobility devices); places I could go to which are feasible only via car (Baby gets agitated in the car seat and anyway my car has broken down)...

Then I remembered I had to be back home in time for each feed, plus allow for traffic hold-ups and the possibilty that Baby is hungry earlier than expected. In other words, I had to do my gallavanting in 2 hour spurts.

My first objective was to look for some nice t-shirts which would both cover my still-flabby belly and be suitable for feeding Baby in. This should have been an easy task, because most clothes shops sell t-shirts, right? Wrong. If you're female, finding a t-shirt which fits properly, is the right colour and has a friendly price tag on it is actually really hard. Why do all the shirts with the most interesting designs on them have such claustrophobically narrow necklines?

Despite my lower half now being slightly slimmer than it was pre-pregnancy, my voluminous boobies put paid to any hopes of fitting into a proportionately small sized shirt. Size "large" shirts are still on the menu. After a morning shopping session and an afternoon one, I was finally triumphant in finding a single soft and squishy t-shirt (in brown, of all colours) from the Max shop.

Next day, the boy made me the same offer, and this time I went to Spotlight and bought some blockout curtains for the bedroom (all the better to get Baby to bed by 7pm, with).

Although I can't say my shopping sprees were relaxing, due to the time constraints, it was still really good to be able to move about baby-less. I don't know if the boy's going to be game enough to do this for me every weekend, but this is the best thing anyone could have done for me.

superfun

I just watched tonight's episode of Desperate Housewives (called There won't be trumpets). It's the one where Mrs Solis the elder wakes up from her coma, slips on a wet hospital floor, falls down a flight of steps and dies with her daughter-in-law's secret unrevealed. I thought the nurse looking after Mrs Solis looked really familiar, and then I realised - she's the actress who played Buffy's college room mate in Season 4; the snoring Celine Dion fan who turns out to be a demon in disguise.

Almost enough to hire a supernanny. Or a cleaner.

A little calculator I found on this blog.

My blog is worth $18,629.82.
How much is your blog worth?

The baby, the car seat and the supermarket trolley

I was going to write a short post about the DVD we watched last night, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. However, I didn't find it that interesting (the best part was probably the invasion of the gigantic robots in the first half hour).

I'm not going to post about Baby's continuing post-jab fussiness, which has her calling for room service every 3 hours at night and then not settling back to sleep once she's fed, because you're probably bored of hearing about all that by now.

So I'll tell you about the time I took pity on my mum and went grocery shopping with her.

Of course, I had to bring Baby with me. I'd hoped that she would just sleep in her carseat, but she stayed awake throughout the two hour expedition, wide-eyed at her first glimpse of the Pak 'n' Save supermarket interior.

While my mum carefully selected fruit from the bottom of the oranges bin and olive oil from the back of the shelf (which is where she believes the newest produce is hidden), I tried to steer the trolly back and forth over the bumpier surfaces.

I was thankful that Baby didn't have a too-much-stimulation meltdown, but I was still concerned that she'd be heavily in sleep debt by the time we got home. By the time we got to the check-out, it was already and hour an a half into what would have been her nap time.

Then something rather embarrassing happened - I couldn't get the car seat off the shopping trolley. I tried and tried and tried and tried. The kind gentleman behind us in the queue tried too, but it was looking tricky. He suggested that I remove Baby from the car seat, so he could put a bit more grunt into it without tipping out it's precious cargo. Unfortunately I'm so short that I couldn't reach up to get her out without putting my hands into a painful manoeuvre. So the kind gentleman in the queue behind us had to do that for me too.

Finally he succeeded in removing the car seat from the trolley. It took maybe ten or fifteen minutes. I bet the other shoppers in the queue were none too impressed.

By then I was all hot and clammy from the effort, the pain in my wrists, the embarrassment and the worry about how Baby was going to handle missing her sleep. I told my mum it would be a good long time before I did this again. I told her it would have to wait until Baby either starts dropping off to sleep in car seats again, or is old enough to have longer awake times.

She rang me up a week later asking for a ride to the supermarket...

Last week my car broke down and hasn't moved from it's garage since, but really - I haven't been praying to the car gods.

The god(less) mother

Yesterday we had a lovely visit from The Editter and Flying Kiwi, Baby's god(less) mother. (I'm not sure that god(less) is really appropriate because Flying Kiwi is a pagan rather than an atheist; maybe polygod mother would be more accurate. Maybe people usually mean Godless, not godless.)

Unfotunately Baby wasn't in very sociable mood because she's been suffering from post-vaccination fussiness, but they were very understanding.

So here's a photo of Baby with her god(less) mother, watching season five of Buffy.

Hot child in the city

Gawd, but I hate those immunisation shots. Last time Baby got her jabs, it took at least a week for her to return to her settled self. This last lot has been even worse so far.

For a start, I'm sure she remembered the clinic and what happened to her last time she was there. This time around there were no cute smiles in the waiting room, but an anxious look on her face. The actual injections seemed to have hurt more too, because she cried more loudly and for longer.

Then, after we got home, Baby felt hot right into the night and into the next day. We tried giving her Pamol but she's become pretty adept at spitting the stuff out. There's this trick where you blow into her mouth to bring on her swallow reflex; well, it seems she's onto us because it doesn't work any more.

All the progress we'd made in getting Baby to bed nice and early in the evening, and without too much fussing, has gone out the door. She doesn't even go back to sleep after late night feeds, something she was good at doing up until two nights ago.

I heard that it's the Meningococcal B vaccination which has sparked off these side effects; well, she's got her last one about four days before Christmas. Yay.

Cute Quote

"If your baby's beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses, sleeps on schedule, burps on demand and an angel all the time, you're the Grandma" - Theresa Bloomingdale

Just a short meme

Wicked tagged me on this one; it's where I look through my blog archives to find the 4th sentence of the 23rd post, and copy it here.

Well, I did that, and it was really boring.

So here's the 6th sentence of my 23rd post, which happened to be a meme question:

Your most horrifying childhood memory of your parents -
Waking up one morning to find Mum really sick with an ulcer and about to be rushed to the hospital

He is the great consoler - not me

It's very discouraging when the one thing I can count on to calm my baby down - feeding her - seems to be making her upset. Feeding seemed to be a real problem today. After each mid-feed burp session, I'd position her for the other side, only to watch her kick and scream. Either she was frustrated by lack milk/too much milk/milk tastes funny, or she was really tired. But putting Baby in the hammock didn't work, because hunger seemed to be keeping her from falling asleep. Aiyaah, what a vicious circle.

In the end, I fed her lots and got only two short catnaps out of her all day. The frequent feeds make me anxious that I was setting her up for an evening of windiness, which is never good (an evening of windiness means heaps of crying and a bedtime of midnight or later).

By the time the boy got home from work I was shuffling around the kitchen like I had chronic fatigue syndrome or something. Thankfully, he took over the task of bathing Baby and rocking her to sleep (yes, we're still rocking our baby to sleep every night). It didn't take him long to get her settled either, which I am heartily jealous of but at the same time pretty damned grateful for.

On the plus side, Baby's been going to bed for the night at around 7, which leaves me time to blog in the evening. Yay.

touched up

Thanks to Onanymous, an earlier photo of Baby catching z's in her buggy has been beautified heaps.

baby buggy blues

I was not a happy chappy this afternoon. We've had our baby buggy for about five weeks now, and in this time it's already suffered two flat tires and displayed signs of surface rust. Now, I guess I'm just unlucky with the flat tires, but all the same; we paid quite a lot of money for this thing and the last thing I want is to have to return to the shop every other week because something's gone wrong with it.

At the shop, I told the owner I was really unhappy about this. Now here's a bit of customer service advice - if a customer complains because a product she bought recently always seems to have something go wrong with it, telling her that she's the only one who's had these problems really doesn't help.

What made me grumpier still was that he wasn't able to supply me with a replacement inner tube because they were out. Unless I was willing to wait until Monday (which is a long time without a buggy when you depend on one to get your baby to nap for more than 45 minutes), I had to trek out to another part of town and pay for a new tube, then return to the shop for reimbursement.

I really wanted to ask for a replacement buggy, but it would have to have been another all-terrain model; I'm sure that all of their all-terrain buggies have exactly the same kind of tyres, so I wouldn't have been any better off even if they'd go along with it.

So I relented, though not without imparting a remark about wanting a six-pack of inner tubes to save myself returning to the shop multiple times in the near future.

Warm 'n' fluffies

Just so you don't think that all I do is grumble about how hard it is mothering a baby, I've listed some of the things which make me go all gooey:

- When Baby gives me a big grin first thing in the morning (she also does it when I'm trying to put her to bed, but you're not supposed to smile back then).

- Baby has graduated from sucking her fists (they call it self-soothing) to sucking individual fingers (which means she now notices they're there).

- The fact that Baby hardly ever cries, even when she's sitting in a pooey nappy or can't breathe because her nostrils are full of snot (I don't know why, maybe I'm not vacuuming often enough).

- Watching the boy playing with Baby. They're so cute together, but he never lets me take a photo because then he'd have to shave first.

- Singing a lullaby to Baby when it's her bed time or nap time, and seeing her try to sing along.

- Turning "ah goo" into a two-way conversation.

Like a tyrannosaurus rex

Lately I've been looking a little like T-Rex. He had those powerful hind legs and puny fore-limbs; I have sturdy legs and two crippled wrists. Actually they don't look that puny, because they're heavily encased in neoprene wrist splints. When I'm hastily trying to put my jacket on before going out for walk with Baby and buggy, it's hard work getting my hands through the sleeves.

My thumbs are not so much opposable, as opposing any kind of activity which requires them - whether it's brushing my teeth or holding up Baby's surprisingly heavy head.

Apparently it's pretty common for women to be afflicted this way soon after giving birth. The fact that this happens at a time when one needs to use one's hands most - for picking up and holding babies etc - is, to me, evidence that there could be no such thing as "intelligent design". Unless it's God's way of punishing Eve's female descendants, that is.

I've heard that it's possible to get cortisone shots which would enable me to regain full and pain-free use of my hands and wrists, but I think I'll try acupuncture first. So I've booked myself in for another session with the physiotherapist for next Tuesday. This is the same therapist who was very understanding when, at our last appointment, I ended up having to do a very messy emergency nappy change in her office.

The best part about my making the appointment though was that the receptionist and I bonded over baby anecdotes. I can understand why mothers' coffee groups are so popular.

Beware of hairdressers with no hair

I got my hair cut yesterday, at one of those cut-price places that charge only $18 for a haircut but expect to be done with you in 20 minutes. The hairdresser was an interesting guy; instead of actual hair, his scalp was covered in tattoos, and instead of the usual chatter about what we're up to in the weekend, he talked about out-of-body experiences and how society would be much better off if everyone was the same.

He suggested that, instead of the usual blunt cut, he give me a jagged edge all around - how it would be more "modern". I was open to new hair experiences so I let him get on with it.

When I looked at the finished product, I wasn't overwhelmed; years of not being able to get the same style as the one I liked in a magazine (usually because I have Asian hair) have made me somewhat less fussy about my hair over the years. What made me worry was when he said that he would have liked to spend more time on my hair but had to stop now because it had already been 45 minutes. Oh, and also when he said something wistful about how this style usually works so well on Caucasian hair.
On
the other hand it was still better than the 10 weeks of overgrowth I had before.

You know that saying about being careful what you wish for?

For the last few nights Baby has been "sleeping through". Now, apparently this term means that the baby sleeps from midnight through to 5am without disturbance. Like most adults, I think of "sleeping through" as sleeping for eight hours. Baby seems to think of it as falling asleep at 9pm and not waking until 6am.

On Monday night, Baby did just that - fell asleep at 9pm and didn't wake up until I woke her up, at 6am. Meanwhile, I was waking up every few hours because my boobs were so engorged. By about 4am I was silently pleading Baby to wake up and make those "I'm hungry" noises. At 6am, I decided I couldn't hold out any longer and fed her.

Last night, I couldn't get her to bed sooner than 9.30pm. Then I woke up at 2am and decided I didn't want to suffer from imploding boobs again, so I woke her up, fed her and put her back to bed.

Truly, I never thought I'd been in a position where I'm waking her up. On purpose. There's a good chance that this will change next week, after Baby's next course of vaccinations (they make her really unsettled). Until then, I reckon my best bet is to persist with trying to get her in bed by 7pm so that I can relieve my boobs before midnight.

Photos galore

If, like the boy and me, you just never tire of looking at photos of my darling daughter, all you have to do now is link to this page. Most of these I've posted on this blog but there are one or two which I haven't. The link is also over on the sidebar.

What I can write in eight minutes

Quickly, before Baby wakes up...

We watched The Aquatic Life with Steve Zisou last night. It was quite funny and very quirky. For example, all the underwater scenes are so obviously fake that they remind me of illustrations in decades-old National Geographic magazines. I got the impression that the plot didn't really go anywhere, but that might have been because I was continually distracted by the need to feed, burp and nappy-change.

It's still taking several hours to get Baby to bed at night. Last night there was a three and a half hour gap between her bath and her getting to sleep; in between there was a lot of rocking and pacing, and some additional feeding. But once she fell asleep , she was down until 7am (score!).

After three weeks of wearing a splint on my left wrist, I have really distinct tan lines around the edges. The untanned parts of my hand and wrist really do look younger than the rest. Scary. It also means I really must get hold of a sun shade for the buggy; I wouldn't want Baby to look old before her time.

Strawberries don't last long, do they? The boy bought me some at the beginning of the week and I only got around to eating them today - I had to throw half of them out 'cos they were all furry.

At her mercy

I haven't been able to blog for a couple of days. Normally, I do my blogging right after we've been out for a walk in the buggy because Baby sleeps on even after we get home. Lately, Baby's sleep pattern has changed and she wakes up at the end of each 45 minute or 1 hour sleep cycle. If I don't time our return home correctly, she'll wake up as soon as we're home and demand attention.

Now that I tend to have Baby and buggy with me wherever I go, I've become much more appreciative of how difficult it must be for the wheelchair-bound to get around the shops. For instance, most cafes are far too small for a buggy, so even if I dared to go for a coffee (risking a hyped up infant to contend with) I would have to sit outside. I decided not to go into the local curtain shop today (to get blackout curtains for the bedroom) because there are steep steps to the entrance. And other shops I just don't bother going into because there's no room to get the buggy around.

Oops, better go - Baby's just woken up from her buggy sleep...

childsafe home

It won't be long before Baby starts crawling around and getting her fingers into rubbish bins, power points and our DVD collection. So the boy suggested we get us a baby cage. I quite like the transport cage, because it'd be easy to get on and off the bus, and wouldn't take up too much space in a cafe.

Buggyhead

Baby just loves being in her vibrating baby seat. We love her being in it too, because it makes her burp and calms her down when she's unsettled. The photo was taken by the camera in my palm pilot. She's nine weeks old now.

Yesterday Baby and I walked into town to look at timber cots. We found a nice one made by Genesis, which converts into a junior bed, a settee and even a change table (though I don't see the point of the last one - surely if you're going to need a cot and a change table, you're going to need them within minutes of each other). The cot, along with an innersprung mattress, arrive on Monday morning. Then we can start looking at musical mobiles!

While we were in the shop, the retailer kindly showed me how to make the front buggy wheel swivel. Perhaps she was doing it to avoid my adding to the trail of dents we were leaving at the base of every display stand I tried to manoeuvre around.

Another post about sleep

Yesterday I ran into two aquaintances, both mothers of seven month old babies, and both proponents of the Gina Ford routine-nazi system. Both women raved about how, by following Ford's The Contented Little Baby Book, their babies slept through the night from an early age and the mums actually had social lives.

I was starting to wonder whether we should've taken Ford more seriously. At the very least we're going to have to break our habit of rocking Baby to sleep all the time, because she should really learn to fall asleep on her own.

Freshly inspired to re-try the bath-feed-bed routine, I put Baby through it around 9pm while the Boy was in the next room in a computer game orgy. To my surprise, Baby went straight to sleep after her post-bath feed - no agitation, no pukes and no fretting. She was fast asleep before 10pm (a miracle!) and I was able to have my first early night for at least two weeks.

I was so excited about my success that I was unable to sleep for ages. Oh, the irony.

Baby didn't favour me with a long sleep last night though; my feeding services were demanded every 2 1/2 hours. Oh well, you can't have everything I suppose.

geek toy

Around about midnight, I realised I was going to have the worst start to a birthday ever - except for that year I got pleurisy. As per usual, Baby start acting up from early evening, and didn't go to sleep until the boy had rocked her to calmness three times, alternating with her need to feed and puke all over herself. It was after 1am by the time she crashed out on our bed, on the side where the boy usually sleeps; the boy having long ago realised that sleeping in the spare room was preferable to being woken up every few hours by the grunts and squawks of a breastfeeding baby.

Someone told the boy about my previous blog post, about him having forgotten my birthday. When he got home yesterday, he indignantly informed me that he'd already pre-ordered my birthday present way ahead in advance. But I had to wait until this morning to find out what it was.

This morning, I snuck out of the bedroom while Baby was still having her cutie sleep, and opened the two packages (as foretold by The Skirt) - inside were a high-tech palm pilot, including phone, camera and web capability and a wireless headset thingy (called a Blue something).

It must have been hideously expensive, and now I'm obliged to wade through the manual and familiarise myself with this gadget's inner workings. While I don't tend to make cell phone calls very often, and am more likely to note down appointments on the wall calender than in a small and easily misplaced electronic device, I reckon it will be useful for reading blogs while Baby's asleep in the lounge (I won't have to risk waking her up by cranking the squeaky door handle to get to the study).

Needless to say, the boy got his apology.

Tonight we celebrate that fact that I am one year closer to mortality (or, on the positive side, one more year of being alive and mostly well), with a restaurant meal - the New World supermarket does a lovely range in pre-cooked roasts and meatloaf...

Baby's bed - to cot or not to cot

Apparently it's not a good idea to put Baby to sleep in a travel cot day-to-day, which is what we've been doing; it says so in all the baby care books I've read (and that's quite a few), and the Plunket nurse told me it would be like asking a grown-up to sleep in a sofa bed or camp bed night after night.

So we're thinking of getting Baby a proper wooden cot, only it sounds like a good idea to get one which is either American sized cot (so she can use it until she's 4 years old - are they called American sized because American babies are bigger?), or one that converts to a junior bed. But is a wooden cot going to make Baby sleep any better?

Getting a proper cot isn't going to make getting Baby to bed in the first place, any easier - if it would, then I'd be out the door and in the shops right now, despite the cold and rainy weather out there.

What I need is more anecdotal evidence either for or against having one's baby using a travel cot every night (can they get bad backs or something?).

He's in trouble

I casually asked the boy this morning whether he'd told someone it was my birthday tomorrow, someone who'd left me an anonymous birthday greeting. I'd expected him to answer that he'd told someone who told someone else etc...but I didn't expect that he was surprised that it was my birthday tomorrow.

Not that I was expecting a surprise party or dinner at a posh restaurant - after all, we've a 8 1/2 week-old dependant to think of.

But he forgot, so he's in trouble.

Which Serenity character are you?

This must be based on the movie, 'cos I don't remember an "Operative" in the series. I would rather be River or Zoe. Found on Casyn's blog.

You scored as The Operative. You are dedicated to your job and very good at what you do. You've done some very bad things, but they had to be done. You don't expect to go to heaven, but that is a sacrifice you've made for a better future for all. The Operative 63% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 50% Shepherd Derrial Book 44% Simon Tam 44% River Tam 44% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 44% Capt. Mal Reynolds 38% Kaylee Frye 38% Inara Serra 31% Jayne Cobb 25% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Puke water

Every evening Baby makes it hard for us to settle her for her evening sleeps. Often it's because she's all agitated - with quick, shallow breathing and a really anxious look on her face - for some unknown reason.

So-called "relaxation baths" don't seem to help; she'll get agitated as soon as she's out of the water and into the relatively cold air, and sometimes she acts all nervous-like when she's still in the water.

We figured Baby's un-relaxed state was due to trapped wind, because she sure does regurgitate a lot; after a good puke-up she's usually a whole lot calmer. I read about some substance called Gripe Water, which is supposed to be good for wind, so I bought some at the supermarket to try.

I don't know exactly how Gripe Water is supposed to work, since the only instructions that come with the bottle are to do with dosage, but this is how it works for us - squirt up to 3 mls of the stuff into Baby's mouth and close her mouth to prevent it from being spit out. In about two seconds, Baby pukes out what appears to be a stomach-full of pre-digested mum's milk plus saliva. Baby feels much better, and the chances of getting her to sleep before midnight increase markedly.

Has anyone else out there used Gripe Water, or have an effective remedy for infant nervous tension?

"...cardboard box at side 'o' the road..." *

This guy reckons it's safer to put your baby to sleep in a cardboard box, than in bed with Mum and Dad.

I have to say that the few times we've put Baby in bed with us (out of sheer desperation I might add, because she wouldn't settle), I couldn't relax for fear of rolling over and squashing her accidentally. Those times, I'd fall asleep and then wake up, heart pounding, peering around for her little body amongst the duvet.


*Meant to be said with a Yorkshire accent, an homage to that hilarious Monty Python skit, The Four Yorkshiremen.

Sleeping like a grownup

While getting Baby to sleep in the evenings continues to be a challenge, I can now say that she has started to sleep through the night. That is, after we finally got her settled at around midnight, she "slept through", i.e. was quiet, right up until 6.30am.

I'm so proud.

Of course, this might have been a fluke; tonight she might go back to waking me up every 3 hours.

Gmail - huh?

I keep getting these messages from the gmail admin, telling me to go to a specified link and follow some instructions if I don't want to lose my gmail account. But the link only brings me back to my gmail inbox, and there aren't any instructions.

Has anyone else with a gmail account had this ?

Baby photo

Due to popular demand....here's another photo of the wee one; this time asleep in her buggy, as all good babies should be. The picture's a little dark, but the girl is still glowing.

Kiwi Gothic

Just for a change, this post isn't about babies at all, mine or anyone else's.

The boy suggested we rent a DVD for Saturday night, and left it up to me to decide which movie to get. Knowing full well that, if we were both at the video shop, we'd end up renting either a car-chase thriller or heist movie, I took this opportunity to look out for a dense, dark ,foreign language movie. Luckily for him, I didn't see one I liked, but I did find In My Father's Den, which I've been wanting to see for ages.

It was bloody brilliant, and what I think is characteristic of pre-Whale Rider New Zealand cinema. This film reminds me a little of Vincent Ward's Vigil, with it's rural NZ setting and creepy atmosphere.

This guy, Paul,returns to his small-town South Island home after the death of his father, after seventeen years away as a war photographer. He befriends a teenage girl who may or may not be his daughter (Celia), and soon afterwards she goes missing. Did she run away to escape her pervy stepfather? Or did the stepfather do away with her? Everyone suspects Paul's relationship with Celia wasn't totally non-sexual, so he's the first person taken in for questioning.

And the great thing iss that the DVD is a 7 Day hire, which means that I can rewatch it to catch all the bits missed when I was busy changing Baby's nappies.

A suprise visit from the poo fairy

My wrists are suffering terribly from Occupational Overuse Syndrome. My years as a computer programmer, followed by my current obsession with blogging, have resulted in horrible pains around the thumb joints every time I pick up my daughter or grasp anything. I'd planned to tell my doctor about it at the six week check-up; little did I know that the six week check-up is focussed solely on the baby and not the mother. The doctor did, however, find the time to advise that I go see a physiotherapist about getting some wrist splints.

It's damned difficult making an appointment when you don't know where your baby's going to be in her sleep-feed-poo cycle at any given time of any given day. Anyway, I made an appointment for yesterday afternoon.

As yesterday afternoon progressed, I realised that I was going to have to wake Baby up from one of her precious naps, in order to feed her before taking her with me to the appointment with physio. I roused her, fed her about half an hour before she'd normally be hungry, and bustled her into her carseat.

It's shocking how, in a short hour and a half, so much poo could be produced and distributed all over a small human's body.

I didn't even realise it had happened until I was just about to leave the physio's office, and was about to put Baby's little pink hoodie on for the homeward journey. I thought babies always complained when they had a wet or soiled nappy; not this one. Fortunately, the physio was very understanding about it, and let me use her room to do the nappy change.

After so many trips with Baby and baby bag, I finally got a chance to use the baby bag contents - all of them i.e. nappies, wipes, plastic disposal bags and complete change of outfit. I even had to dismantle the carseat upholstery so I could wash Baby's "contributions" from it.

How appropriate

Some baby clothes' text just rings so true. I really like the onesie with the words Sleep is for the weak on it. Have a look.

Pain

Baby was booked in for her six-week immunisation jabs this morning (diptheria, tetanus, acellular pertusiss, polio, Hep B, haemophilus influenzae type B and meningococal B). Initially I was content to take her to the medical centre myself, but the boy wanted to offer support - and just as well, too.

Held lovingly but firmly by her dad, she had two jabs in one thigh and a jab in the other - each time, Baby wailed with pain. Each time I heard her cry, my eyes burned with sympathy tears. Perhaps this is what motherhood does to you, making you feel someone else's pain. Actually, I was impressed by how well she took it; mere seconds after each injection, Baby stopped crying as though she'd forgotten all about it (though in truth she was probably succumbing to sensory overload).

The poor mite slept poorly until about half an hour ago - about five hours after her ordeal. After she spat out most of her Pamol (Paracetamol for babies) we made an unspoken decision to abandon our sleep training temporarily, and took turns cuddling her to sleep.

Sunday outing - foiled

What a gorgeously sunny Sunday it was turning out to be. The boy suggested taking Baby out for a walk in the botanical gardens; the tulips would be out, and a stroll amongst the flowers would be heaps more interesting than yet another schlepp around the local shops.

Unfortunately we forgot that the Spring Festival is on this weekend, which meant that every man and his dog would be at the gardens. It's not that we hate crowds (although I do), but there was not a car park to be found anywhere. We decided to go somewhere else for our walk in the sun.

There's a city beach close by which has a great promenade; on sunny Sundays the place is always packed with families stretching their legs after a lazy cafe lunch. We headed there, only find that road access to the beach was completely blocked off - no doubt it was due to either construction work or some kind of athletics competition. The car was getting hotter and we were getting hungry.

The boy lost heart; all he wanted now was food and a chance for a smoke. So we picked up some greasies from McDonalds and headed home. I was determined to get my walk in somehow, so I planned to take Baby out in the stroller after her next feed.

The next feed came and went. There was a distinct sense of urgency in the air as I hurried to put her jacket on and buckle her up into the stroller. Hmmm...the stroller didn't seem to be moving very smoothly...we had a flat tyre. By the time the boy had managed to pump the tyre up to a usable level, Baby was already making those jerky movements that signal her need for sleep. It was already too late*.


* Sure, I could have put her straight into the stroller and she would still have gotten her sleep. But we're trying to encourage her to get to sleep on her own, so we decided to put her in her hammock instead.

Boring for most,interesting for me

I never meant to be the sort of person who abandons her friendships when she's in a relationship, but that's what I turned out to be. Although I still keep in touch with my mates, the days of every-weekend dinners and movies, and Friday night drinkies were history soon after the boy and I hooked up. Now that we have a young baby, it's even more so. In fact, apart from the occasional evening when the boy has had a few wines and is in a philosophical mood, this blog is now my main medium for talking about movies, books, life and anything else. Is this sad?

Yesterday, in the middle of my afternoon of squawking non-sleeping Baby, I had a moment of success. The frontpack, which I'd bought a couple weeks ago and which Baby hated, is no longer a worthless piece of equipment which I should have traded in for a pair of non-maternity jeans. I tried Baby in it yesterday as a last resort; not only did she not hate it, but she actually dozed off in it. It's a small step for a blog-reader but a huge triumph for this new mother who loathes wasting money.

Another triumph this morning - we put Baby in her hammock as soon as she started yawning, ignored her plaintive cries, and were pleasantly surprised to find that she'd got herself to sleep within ten minutes. What an ego boost.

Angel days and hell days

I just spent 20 minutes writing this blog post, and then Blogger lost it. Nice one, Blogger.

Anyway, Monday was an angel day because, after the initial struggle getting Baby to take her nap, she went on to complete three whole sleep-feed-play cycles in textbook fashion.

Yesterday was utterly different – a hell day. Between 7am and 7pm, no naps were to be had by Baby nor by myself. There was much crying on Baby’s part, no doubt at least partly in frustration because mummy didn’t know what was wrong. There was much consolatory feeding, to stop the crying. By the time the boy came home from work, I was a physical and emotional wreck; I’d had no chance to catch up on sleep and my confidence in my mothering abilities was nil. Obviously this was karmic revenge for the previous day’s sweetness. To me, it was a hell day.

Today however, was angel day times two. Not only has Baby slept when she was supposed to, but I had some much-needed nannying help from a friend whom I hadn’t seen in years. Klav, whom I knew from my karate days, turned up with a large number of presents and then offered to look after Baby so I could have a leisurely shower. As if that weren’t enough, she then proceeded to make us cups of tea and do the washing up (no small offer, since there was about three days’ worth on the bench). I was so grateful I considered naming my second-born after her (if there is one, that is – ask me in twelve months’ time).

I’m realising more and more how childcare is not so much an inexact science, as an art. Methods for dealing with sleep, crying or whatever, that worked in the past aren’t necessarily going to work tomorrow. This doesn’t sit too comfortably with me, since by nature I’ve always been more comfy with the security of certainty. (This, and the fact that I’m neither a naturally clucky person, plus the fact that I’m a major grump when I don’t get enough sleep, might make you wonder why the hell I decided to become a mother. To answer that question - I was intensely curious as to how a child with my genes and the boy’s genes, would look.)

Childcare is seems to be one of those fields in which information gathering doesn’t so much result in an increase of knowledge, as an increase in confusion.

Battle-scarred

Lately we've been trying to get Baby into the habit of getting herself to sleep i.e. putting her to bed while sleepy, but still awake. Some amount of crying was going to be involved.

This morning when it was time for Baby's midmorning nap, I put her in the hammock and went next door to make some phone calls. One postponed WOF appointment and an immunisation appointment later, I returned to the living room to find Baby crying her heart out, face beetroot-red and tears sliding down her cheeks. Her lethally long fingernails hadn't been filed down for several days, and she'd managed to make a deep scratch on her left cheek; it was actually bleeding.

I'm sure that if someone had walked in on me in that moment, they would've thought I'd been beating up my child.

Fortunately, Baby's skin seems to have Slayer-like healing capabilities; by this evening that scary looking cut was already looking heaps better.

There was a happy ending to today's sleep training too - I gave her a feed, rocked her till her eyes were about to close, and was rewarded by three textbook naps.

The Slayer Mum

As far as we know only one Vampire Slayer has ever been a mum, and that was Nicky, the Seventies afro-ed black Slayer whose son Robin turns up in Season 7, as the headmaster of the new Sunnydale High.

What I want to know is, how on earth did Nicky manage?

Firstly, there are all sorts of physical limitations on any mother-to-be during pregnancy. Did Nicky just take it easy on the patrolling side of things for nine months? It wouldn't have been easy training while suffering from morning sickness, for instance, and her doctor's instructions to avoid heavy lifting would surely preclude her from most slaying duties. Her third trimester must've been been pretty unproductive; imagine attempting Buffy-style gymnastics at a time when bending over, walking around or even prolonged sitting, are really quite uncomfortable.

I bet being a Slayer would have helped immensely during Nicky's childbirth though. Slayers heal quickly, and probably don't hurt as easily as normal people. Perhaps she would have had to be really careful pushing little Robin out though, with her superhuman strength and all. We wouldn't want her baby scooting out so fast he ends up shooting out the door of the delivery suite.

However, I doubt that the effects of sleep deprivation during Robin's babyhood, could have been avoided - even by someone with Slayer power. Perhaps that's why Spike was able to kill her in the end - the stresses and strains of early motherhood compromised the Chosen One's ability to keep on top of her game.

Maybe this is why only one Slayer ever managed to produce offspring.

Plunket wisdom

Today, on the fifth week anniversary of Baby's arrival in this world, we had our first visit from the Plunket nurse.

My little bean (for that's what she reminds me of when her arms and legs are drawn in) now weighs in at 4.65 kg, now definitely too big for the Babylove brand of nappies but still okay for the Baby Supreme brand of which we've received another shipment of 120. So, despite any breastfeeding problems at my end, Baby is still getting all the food she needs.

Before she left, the Plunket nurse imparted some pearls of wisdom:

- I've been overdressing Baby. Apparently it's a Chinese characteristic to overdress babies, and I thought it was just my mother who was like that.

- We've also been heating up the rooms too much i.e. it wasn't actually necessary to have the heaters on at all (we've had the room temperature up around the 20 degrees Celsius mark, when it only had to be around 15).

- I should be a heck of a lot more patient about getting Baby to sleep. Next time she cries in her hammock, I'll actually try to soothe her for a lot longer (more than 30 seconds) before picking her up and cuddling her.

- Those crusty bits on her eyebrows are actually mild cradle cap, which we can treat by rubbing a little olive oil on them.

- There are other breastfeeding positions I should try, to avoid aggravating the pregnancy-related carpal tunnel syndrome which is affecting my wrists (how inconvenient, since it means that lifting Baby actually hurts).

All in all, a very productive visit for me.

Too soon

I got a phone call this morning, from the childcare place up the road. I'd visited when I was about 7 months pregnant, and was on their waiting list to start in late January. They already want me to confirm that I want to enroll Baby into the centre, and the days I want her to be there - but I feel it's still way too early to even decide for sure whether I want to go back to work that soon. I mean, I don't have to tell work until about 3 weeks before I'm due back, whether or not I'm really going back or not.

Pump it up

Baby met my workmates today. We were out shopping for a breast pump (think "mastitis"; think "rock hard boobies"), and my work is just up the road from The Baby Factory, so we popped in for a surprise visit. The women workmates were appropriately clucky. The guys had a look too and probably would've have hung around if I hadn't used the words "breast" and "pump" in my next sentence.

When we got home I had a go at the breast pump. It was going okay, once I realised that you have to create a bit of a vacuum before any milk appears. The only problem was that Baby kept demanding my attention, and it's impossible to pump a boobie and amuse a baby at the same time.

in public

My life is now being lived in 2-hour time slots. In what seems to be a fortnight-long (so far) growth spurt, Baby has started to demand feeds 2-hourly instead of 3-hourly. So that means that even if the boy is home and able to watch Baby while I go out to get my hair cut/visit my mother/shower, then I have approximately 1 hour, once I've fed her, before I have to get back for her next meal.

The alternative is to take her with me wherever I go, but that brings in different obstacles, like:

-trying to work the carseat-plus-wheels contraption, in public
-getting to grips with breastfeeding and nappy-changing in public
-being in my "mummy" role, including how I deal with a crying baby, in public

On the plus side, I'd have an excuse to dress Baby up in all those lovely girly clothes which friends have given her.

I've fallen prey to the baby gear industry

Wednesday, Baby was a real angel and took all her naps when she was supposed, for as long as she was supposed to. I was able to catch up on sleep, blog and clean the kitchen floor (for the first time since before Baby's birth - that's at least 4 weeks).

But yesterday was the karmic payback day. Between 7am and 3pm she just would not sleep at all. She wouldn't even lie on the floor and entertain herself. I thought that if I had her in a sling or frontpack, then I could keep Baby happy and go about my business at the same time; on our afternoon buggy ride, I went straight to the nearest baby gear shop and bought a little front pack.

$45 poorer, I tried it on and put Baby in it as soon as we got home.

She hated it.

Ethics question

My mate Tama sent me this; I thought it was a very useful guide to my ethical priorities, so here it is...

Now be honest; you will discover where you stand morally -

There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions.

You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless.
You're trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water. Nature is unleashing all of its destructive power. Suddenly you see a man floundering in the water. He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer . . Somehow the man looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is.

It's George W. Bush! At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to pull him under.

You have two options: you can save the life of G.W. Bush or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful men. So here's the question, and please give an honest answer :
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Would you select high contrast colour film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

Bedhopping

It's no simple matter trying to figure out how to get Baby to stay asleep, and it seems to be greatly influenced by where we put her down for her nap. For the first couple of weeks, she eschewed her cot in favour of her sprung hammock; now she resists being left in the hammock, possibly because she's resisting sleep itself.

For now, the best place to put Baby for her naps is this cushion. I use this cushion when I'm feeding her, and often she'll fall asleep there after half an hour filling her little stomach. Perhaps it isn't a good thing to encourage this, since it means that she now has two things associating sleep with food - the food itself, and the breastfeeding cushion. However, the only time I get to do anything is when Baby is sleeping, so at this stage anything that encourages her to snooze is okay with me (except alcohol I suppose).

Fever

After weeks of successful breastfeeding, I thought that I had the whole process down pat; sore nipples were a thing of the past and I seemed to have escaped all the potential problems I'd read about in Bestfeeding. But on Saturday night, my right boob was throbbing so much that I couldn't sleep during those 2-3 hours periods between feeds, and yesterday morning my joints ached as though I had 'flu or something. Feeding Baby on that side hurt like crazy; the needle-sharp pain was similar to that of a urinary tract infection.

I left two messages with the midwife, but by the time she returned my calls I'd already taken myself to the After Hours clinic. I had come down with mastitis. So now I'm on antibiotics, and the boy has opted to stay home today to look after me. Actually, I suspect the boy has stayed home with me because the plasma TV he bought yesterday has arrived, but I could be wrong.

Meanwhile, Baby celebrated the fact that both parents are home by refusing to go to sleep. From around 8am, she managed to follow feeding with pooing, burping and fussing, finally collapsing into a deep sleep at 2.30pm.

my poor mum

I felt a little bad for my mum today. She's been trying to help me out by making me special post-childbirth foods, as well as food in general, and is hampered by her lack of mobility.

Since her fall three or four months ago, she's been fearful of getting on buses by herself, and she doesn't drive. She seems to have trouble asking her friends to either drive her over to my house or to accompany her on the bus, and my brother is really busy with his own family stuff.

So - she makes all these special soups, full of scary looking fungi, and ends up giving it away because she can't get it over here while it's nice and fresh. I'd offer to go and pick it up myself, but of course I'm supposed to stay indoors for another week and a half. I could ask the boy to go and pick it up I suppose, but he works so hard during the week that I'm really loathe to ask him to drive out there after work.

I don't particularly believe in the usefulness of her soups and ginger preserves, but I do know she's trying to help out as much as she can. If only my Cantonese were much better, I'd try and tell her this myself rather than just blog about it in English.

A sorry excuse for a book meme

Xine has tagged me for a book meme, but I've only just gotten around to this perfunctory effort 'cos, really I can't spare the time. Hell, I sometimes don't even have time to go to the toilet these days.

1. How many books do I own?
I don't know and I won't spend any time trying to count 'em. Let's just say I used to buy books but nowadays mostly get my reading material from the library.

2. Last Book I Bought:
It was probably Bestfeeding, written by four (yes, four) breastfeeding experts (I can't remember their names and I'm not going to the living room to check the book, in case Baby wakes up and demands hours of cuddles again). It got me all anxious, anticipating various possible breastfeeding difficulties. As it turned out, I didn't have much problem feeding the little one.

3. Last Book I Read:
Basically all I'm reading these days is: anything I can lay my hands on about baby care; the fantasy novel I started before Baby was born (Raymond Feist and Janny Wurtz's Servant of the Empire), and The New Zealand Listener (because I got a free subscription through loyalty card points, and it tells me what's on tv for the next week)...

4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me (without explanation or apologies):
Remember, I'm suffering from postnatal mental fog; it takes time to think of life-changing books, you know. Okay, how about these three:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, Lionel Shriver'sWe need to talk about Kevin and Robin Barker's Baby Love.

Traffic-stopper

I know that on the other side of the world an entire city is practically submerged in water, and that stuff is going on all over the planet...and yet my brain only has room for thoughts about my daughter.

My little darling is growing at an impressive rate; from her birth weight of 3.66 kgs, she went up to 3.75 after a week, which is all the more surprising considering most babies actually lose weight initially and take up to two weeks to get back to birth weight. On Tuesday, the midwife weighed her again, and Baby is now up to a hefty 4.2 kgs. I'd only just that morning made a bulk online order of 120 newborn-sized disposable nappies, so I was a little anxious that perhaps she's going to be too big for them by the time they arrive! The shipment arrived the very next day, too late for me to change my order; however, it says on the package that they are okay for babies up to 6 kgs so we may be able to use half of them at least...

Baby's continuing to be a challenge in the evenings, usually only falling asleep 2 or 3 hours after I myself, have succumbed to sleep-deprived grumpiness. It was particularly hard on the boy 2 nights ago, when I went to bed and left him to sing her to sleep until 1am. In fact, the boy was a wreck the next day. I felt so bad for him that, instead of us all sleeping in the bedroom (which we've been doing for a week or so now), I offered to go back to sleeping in the lounge last night (on the couch), with Baby in the hammock. I didn't get a lot of sleep but at least the boy was in a reasonable condition to drive to work. Brownie points for me.

Baby continues to turn strangers to mush, when we go for walks around my neighbourhood. Today we went to a couple of banks to enquire about savings accounts for young children, and the woman at the Bank of New Zealand gushed over her for ages; we only got away when Baby started protesting that the buggy wasn't moving enough. I can tell she's going to be a real heartbreaker.

Toast-driven

Breakfast and snack disaster struck in the Short and Sweet household yesterday, when we discovered that our toaster (with crumpet button) had died. We are truly dependent on our little toaster.

Both the boy and I just love our toast, whether it be toasted crumpets, cheese on toast, baked beans on toast (which I hate but the boy finds yummy) or just plain old butter and jam on toast. In fact, we keep all our bread in the freezer because we never eat the stuff fresh; we only eat it toasted.

So for breakfast yesterday I had to resort to a side-trip to the local bakery while out with Baby on our morning calming-down outing. This morning, breakfast was bread which I'd remembered to defrost last night.

Having to do without a working toaster is like having to do without hot water; it's just not on.

And now going totally off-topic...
For Wellington Whedon fans, a little birdie tells me that there's a special screening of the movie Serenity in on Monday 19th September at 8:30PM at Reading Cinemas at Courtenay Central. Unfortunately for me, even the thought of an outing while caring for Baby makes me feel stressed; I will probably be waiting for the DVD :-)

What makes it worth the toil

Here's Baby totally ignoring the baby gym which her mum so thoughtfully set up. Perhaps in another few weeks, eh?



Here's Baby having her first fun bath - she hated the first two.


Baby in one of her less feminine poses (she might be having a poo)...and wearing Flying Kiwi's psychedelic bodysuit.