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.